From the collection of the

o PreTinger
i a

V -

San Francisco, California
2007

ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS.

THE

POPULAE SCIENCE

MONTHLY

EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS.

VOL. XLIV.

NOVEMBER, 1893, TO APRIL, 1894.

Public Library

NEW YORK :
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
1894.

COPYMGHT, 1894,

BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

JOHN ERICSSON.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

NOVEMBER, 1893.
THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY.

BY ROBERT F. WALSH.

"/~\YSTER culture, properly so called, the production of spat
^-J by aid of artificial methods, has never been resorted
to in this country." And " as the scarcity of seed is one of the
greatest difficulties now encountered by the oyster planter, this
subject offers an interesting field for investigation."

These statements occur in the Report of the United States
Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries for the year ending June 30,
1889 ; and as the propagation of spat by artificial means has not
been resorted to since that time, it will be interesting to examine
the general conditions of our oyster supply, and, from ascertained
results in foreign waters, consider whether or not such methods
would tend toward restocking our depleted oyster beds, or eco-
nomically increasing the oyster supply.

In the consideration of this subject it will be well, first, to give
a brief, general account of the conditions of the existing, working,
and outworked oyster beds ; and, having ascertained these condi-
tions, as nearly as possible, and made some necessary compari-
sons, we can more easily consider the advisability of raising spat
by artificial methods. The natural oyster of America can not
continue to be produced in such abundance as we have been
accustomed to find it. The beds of South Carolina have practi-
cally given out; the famous oyster beds of Maryland and Virginia
—in the Chesapeake Bay region, which Captain Collins calls "the
most important oyster region of the world" — are being so de-
pleted of oysters that the "gravest apprehension" is caused as to
their future; and only in Connecticut has. there been a marked
increase, both in the acreage of oyster beds and oyster production.

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY. 3

and in the methods, number of persons, and capital employed for
the building up of the industry.

In the present conditions an oyster famine is not a far-away
nor impossible contingency. We have been large consumers of
oysters, and we did not sow where we had reaped. Luckily, this
condition of affairs attracted the serious attention of the United
States Fish and Fisheries Commission ; exhaustive investigations
were made, and finally, in the autumn of 1891, Mr. Bashford Dean
proceeded to France, under instructions from the United States
Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, and there, at the great
French homes of oyster culture — around Arcachon and Auray—
he examined the French methods of artificial culture, his obser-
vations being chiefly made so as to be as pertinent as possible to
the conditions of American waters. I can not, however, agree
with some of the statements which Mr. Dean makes in the intro-
duction to his report. He says that, considering the condition
and methods of oyster culture in France, it is apparent that in
this country " all costly methods of cultivation could have proved
of little practical value." Prof. W. K. Brooks, Mr. E. C. Black-
ford, and other authorities are positive in their statements to the
contrary. For instance, in his report to the Legislature of New
York State, in 1887, Mr. Blackford says : " The rapid deterioration
of the natural growth of oyster beds . . . has made it absolutely
necessary that the artificial propagation of the oyster should be
encouraged to prevent its entire extermination." But, as it will
be necessary to enter into this subject more fully later, I shall
now briefly examine the general conditions of the industry as it
exists to-day, making short historical and comparative allusions
as I proceed.

Taking the oyster beds in the order in which I have placed
them, we shall first examine those of South Carolina. " The en-
tire coast margin " of this State is well provided with natural
beds ; but, says Mr. Dean, " they are strangely unlike the natural
beds occurring further northward." In this region the oyster is
found on the margin of the shore in positive reefs, part of which
are at low tide exposed — so that the oysters live almost "as
much in the air as in the water." These ledges are formed of
curious clusters — those oysters which are on the top being called
"raccoons," because of their peculiar shape. These oysters can
barely be said to live, and are in their present condition utterly
unfit for the table.

Prof. Ryder says that the cause of this peculiar clustering is
that, because of the muddy and unhealthy condition of the bottom
in the deeper water, the oysters of South Carolina cling to the
shore line and there build upon one another, generation after
generation, until sometimes ledges are formed over ten feet in

4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

height. This crowding together prevents individual develop-
ment, and consequently millions upon millions of oysters are lost
to the people of this country in this one State alone. That the
" planting " of " raccoon " seed in the deeper waters for cultiva-
tion would be profitless is shown by the natural growth of the
oysters themselves in the marginal waters. They would soon
become asphyxiated in the soft, silting mud bottom which occurs
along the entire coast line of this State. But it has been demon-
strated that, under almost as unfavorable conditions, excellent
and healthy grounds could be prepared at comparatively slight
cost, as has been so successfully done in Connecticut ; and Mr.
Dean shows conclusively that the " raccoons " might be scattered
in "marginal waters about a fathom in depth/' with an almost
certain prospect of successful development. Curiously enough,
in his article on the Biology of the Oyster Grounds of South
Carolina, he advocates the artificial collection and rearing of spat.

There are miles upon miles of these "raccoon" ledges, and
even islands which have been formed by the "raccoons," upon
this part of the coast ; they contain enough seedlings to stock the
entire Atlantic coast, and a very little enterprise or judicious
State interference would undoubtedly restore to South Carolina
and the oyster-consuming population of the United States what
must have been in ages past one of the most prolific natural
oyster beds of the world.

The conditions in Chesapeake Bay are much more favorable
than those which we have just considered. Here Nature has
created, as Captain Collins has truly said, the most perfect oyster
ground in the universe. But, as is the case with the prosecution
of many other fisheries, man — either in his greed or ignorance,
or both — has outraged a bountiful Nature by continuously fishing
for the oysters without replanting, and as a consequence this
remarkable oyster region is becoming rapidly less important.

In his report, Captain Collins accounts for the recklessness of
the fishermen and oystermen in this way : " The general belief (in
the Chesapeake Bay region) has been, that the natural wealth of
the oyster beds is inexhaustible," and that, " trained from child-
hood to look upon the oyster grounds as their patrimony, ... it
is perhaps not remarkable that the fishermen of the Chesapeake
have bitterly, and to this time successfully, opposed all attempts
at legislation intended to convey proprietary rights in the
grounds."

Illustrating their reliance upon Nature, the report just re-
ferred to quotes the following paragraph from a local publica-
tion : " The value of the oyster business alone to southeast Vir-
ginia is nearly $2,500,000 per annum. It is a crop constantly
harvested, except in the months of May to August inclusive, and

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLT. j

is as constantly replenished by the bountiful hand of Nature." I
have already shown how this same greed and ignorance of the
Chesapeake oystermen have jeopardized not only their oyster
supply but also their means of livelihood.

As a matter of fact it is in this erroneous assumption that lie
the truth and reason for the apparent diminution of not only
the oyster supply, but also the supplies of other fish food in our
waters. Nature distinctly claims her rights when she demands
that we must sow where we have reaped ; and in this lies the
true axis for the more satisfactory revolution of our fish and
other food products.

I shall now pass to the third oyster ground which I have
mentioned, and shall more pleasurably outline the prosperous
conditions existing in Connecticut. Prior to 1784 no restrictions
were placed upon the oyster fishery of this State ; it was perfectly
free, and as a consequence the beds soon became depleted. In
that year the Legislature passed an enactment empowering every
town of the State " to make rules and ordinances for regulating
the fisheries of clams and oysters within their respective limits."
This, however, did not materially aid in rehabilitating the beds ;
but the law continued in operation for seventy-one years — 1855 —
when, the condition of the oyster grounds was so poor, a law was
passed enabling private individuals to obtain two acres of ground
for the cultivation of oysters. This was the first step in the right
direction. The private owners discovered that, instead of plant-
ing small oysters, they could collect spat artificially on shells and
other objects ; this discovery " led to an extension of deep-water
planting," and it was undeniably the source of the present pros-
perity of the Connecticut oyster fisheries.

Captain Collins says that at first the planting was confined
to shallow waters; but, in 1865, many beds were planted "in as
much as twenty feet of water." And so the development in-
creased until 1874, when steam was introduced for dredging. In
1881 additional legislation became necessary, in order to enable
the owners of private grounds to enlarge their territories, as they
complained that the cultivation of oysters in deep waters re-
quired much additional and costly apparatus. And since that
time the number of acres of oyster grounds owned by individuals
— according to the Connecticut State Shellfish Commission — has
increased from 33,987 acres in 1881 to 70,132 in 1889, of which
15,400 were planted. Apart from this calculation there are
19,911 acres of public oyster grounds — which, however, can not
be dredged by steam.

In 1889 the value of oysters from natural beds amounted to
only $31,305, whereas the yield of the cultivated beds was sold for
$1,040,372. So that, if Connecticut relied upon her natural beds,

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as do they in Maryland and Virginia, her oyster fisheries would
have been a practical failure, as they threaten to be in the Chesa-
peake, unless there is speedy and judicious State legislation.

As a matter of fact, the present condition of affairs in the
Chesapeake points ominously to a not far distant appeal from the
fishermen of that region to the General Government to assist
them in rehabilitating their oyster grounds. Such a contingency
is at all times best avoided ; but in this case I have shown, by
comparison, that all that is needed in the Chesapeake region, to
insure a renewed prosperity of the oyster fishery, is judicious
State legislation in the direction of conveying proprietary rights
to individuals or companies for the purpose of planting and culti-
vating the oyster. This plan has already been attempted in the
Chesapeake, but has so far been successfully resisted by the fish-
ermen. The prosperity of the Connecticut fisheries is entirely
owing to the State enactments conferring proprietary rights ; and
there can not be a doubt but that similar legislation in Maryland
and Virginia would bring about a return of prosperity to the
Chesapeake oyster fisheries.

The usual method employed in Connecticut for the collection
of spat is to first clean the ground by dredging and then cover it
with shells, to which the spat will adhere, nearly 7,500.000 bushels
of shells being used for this purpose during the past five years.
" It is estimated that twenty-five or thirty adult oysters produce
enough eggs each season to equal the annual product of Connecti-
cut waters." So that, were it not for the starfish and other ene-
mies which infest this coast, the supplies of food oysters would out-
rival in quantity the hundreds of thousands of acres covered by
the now useless "raccoons" of South Carolina. No judicious ex-
pense is spared to make the oyster beds of Connecticut prolific :
if they are too muddy, as are those of South Carolina, they are
easily " made," by placing one hundred to two hundred tons of
gravel over each acre, and the report of the commissioner states
that " this system has produced excellent results."

Of course, there are other oyster grounds on the Atlantic coast
besides those which I have mentioned — notably the famous
Shrewsbury River beds; but they are not so extensive, nor do
they so particularly affect the question, by comparison, of the ad-
visability of adopting artificial propagation. And now, having
briefly explained the conditions of our oyster grounds, we are
brought face to face with the statement which prefaces this arti-
cle, namely : " As the scarcity of seed is one of the greatest diffi-
culties now encountered by the oyster planter," would the propa-
gation of spat by artificial means profitably assist in rehabilitat-
ing our depleted grounds ?

As I have already mentioned, Mr. Blackford not only thinks

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY, n

so, but says that the artificial propagation of the oyster " is abso-
lutely necessary " to prevent its " entire extermination." In a re-
port to the General Assembly of Maryland in 1887, Prof. Brooks
also advocates the introduction of artificial propagation in
these waters ; Captain Collins suggests that such an experiment
would be valuable ; and Mr. Dean says that, although in this
country " all costly methods of cultivation could have proved of
little practical value, . . . enough has been said in this connection
to show the necessity in practical oyster culture of collecting spat
on floating collectors and of allowing it to attain, before planting.
a considerable size." And notwithstanding all this testimony,
Mr. Richard Rathbun, in the Report of the Commissioner of Fish
and Fisheries for the year ending June 30, 1889, tells us that " the
production of spat by aid of artificial methods has never been re-
sorted to in this country, in consequence of the fact that the prac-
tical utilitjr and economy of any proposed system has yet to be
established." I should have thought that this matter could have
been long since determined at the hatchery at Cold Spring Har-
bor, where, I have learned, such experiments have been success-
fully made. But, as the artificial propagation is not generally
understood, and as it is extremely interesting, I shall briefly ex-
plain the most successful and general method employed in France :
and I believe that the most obtuse reader will then see the feasi-
bility of carrying on similar operations here.

The collection of the floating spat upon pieces of wood and
stone is said to have been discovered by M. de Bon, Commissaire
of Marine at St. Servan, France, in 1853 ; and we know that, when
he announced his discovery, the matter was "at once taken up
most enthusiastically by M. Coste," Professor of Embryology in
the College of France. They undoubtedly drew public and scien-
tific attention to this all-important branch of oyster culture ; but
I find that several years before the discovery of De Bon, the oys-
termen of the East River, New York, had not only made a simi-
lar discovery, but that they conceived the idea of utilizing it, and
used tiles (a recent invention in French oyster culture) for collect-
ing the spat, which they planted in the river and sound. Fur-
ther, and in circumstantial proof of the statement, it is a fact that
in 1855 — the year when De Bon made his discovery — the Legisla-
ture of the State of New York enacted a law " to preserve to the
private (oyster) farmers the fruits of their labor."

I am chiefly indebted to Mr. Bashford Dean's report on the
Present Methods of Oyster Culture in France for the following
brief description of the artificial propagation of the oyster in that
country : The manner in which the spat or swimming oyster fry
is obtained is very simple. Culturists place arched tiles, wooden
trays, and other materials in the neighborhood of the natural

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY. 13

banks about the 1st of July; the little spat at once cling to
it, if they are anywhere near, and they are allowed to remain on

FIG. 7. — TILE COLLECTORS.

the tile until October, when they have attained " about the size of
a finger nail." The tiles are then carefully placed upon lighters
and floated ashore, where the seedling oysters are detached from
them " by short pushes of a chisel-like knife." The spat usually

FIG. 8. — WOODEN-TRAY COLLECTORS.

averages on moderately clean ground about four hundred per
tile, but as many as two thousand have been counted on one tile
of fourteen inches by six.

i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The seed oysters having been removed from the tile or wood
" collectors," they are taken to the low- water line and arranged in
flat wire-gauze rearing cases, which " lift from the bottom and
prevent the young from being stifled by the shif tings of mud;
it also renders the growth regular and rapid, and, above all, it
protects the oysters from their enemies," the starfishes, drills,
etc. " During the first few months rapid growth renders it neces-
sary to pick out each fortnight and transfer to other cases the
largest oysters." This is generally done by women, who at , the
same time take out the dead shells. And so the process goes on

FIG. 9. — WOODEN TRAYS IN POSITION ON MACADAMIZED BOTTOM.

until the oyster is sufficiently grown for table use, usually two
to three years.

Sometimes the river banks or beaches selected for the oyster-
developing cages are soft and muddy ; and here again the French
culturist teaches us a lesson. He is not deterred by the unsuit-
able bottom; he at once macadamizes it with sand and gravel,
giving a crust tluat is clean and serves admirably for cultural
purposes.

Another method for collecting spat is in enclosed ponds pro-
vided with spawning oysters. Flood gates prevent the escape of
the water, which is kept at " an average depth of about four feet."
The same style of " collectors " that are used in the open sea
"parks" (as each individual's holding is called) are used in these

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY. 15

FIG. 10. — EXAMINING A TILE COVERED WITH OYSTER SPAT.

ponds ; but the result in the latter seems to be much more satis-
factory. The pond, having been macadamized, is first thoroughly
dried " for two months, . . . doing away with all animal and plant

FIG. 11. —DISENGAGING SEED OYSTERS FROM A TRAY COLLECTOR.

i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

life " ; then the water is let in gradually from the sea until the
required depth is obtained. For ordinary evaporation a small
quantity of fresh water is allowed to be introduced, but sometimes
it becomes necessary to admit tide water. There are hundreds of
ponds along our coast that could be utilized in the same manner as
the one which I have just described, and a little care to observe a
proper density and temperature of the water, after the inclosure
and macadamizing had been done, is all that would be necessary to
secure quite as satisfactory results as have been obtained in France.
Stringent regulations governing the dredging of the French
natural oyster beds have succeeded in rehabilitating the depleted

Fio. 12. — CASES FOR BEARING SEED OYSTERS AT CANCALE, FRANCE.

banks at Granville, St. Malo, and Cancale ; and it appears to me
that similarly stringent State enactments in Maryland and Vir-
ginia would immensely benefit the productivity of the Chesa-
peake grounds. "Dredging within the prescribed limits (in
France), as at Cancale, is granted so seldom that such occasions
have become like holidays." The time allowed in 1890 was "be-
tween two and three hours." Mr. Dean thus describes this annual
dredging expedition : " The beach is filled with spectators. At a
cannon shot the little vessels start as in a regatta, each striving
to be first on the ground. The dredges, four or five to a boat, are
operated by half a dozen fishers. A cannon shot closes the dredg-
ing, and the little fleet returns shoreward, usually well laden."

THE CONSERVATION OF OUR OYSTER SUPPLY. 17

FIG. 13. — SORTING THE GROWING SEED OYSTERS AT ARCACHON.

This scene is precisely similar to that which takes place at the
opening and closing of the great sturgeon fishing of the Don Cos-
sacks in southern Russia, which I described, in an article on Stur-
geon Fishing on the Don, in 1890.

FIG. 14. — THE CELEBRATED FRENCH OYSTER PARK AT BRENEGUY.
VOL. XLIV. — 2

i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

To sum up, I think I have proved that State interference is
necessary for the protection of the natural oyster beds on the At-
lantic coast ; that the artificial propagation of spat would ma-
terially assist in providing an abundant supply of food oysters ;
that private ownerships in certain plots of marginal waters should
be induced by protective State legislation, thus encouraging oys-
ter planters and cultivators to invest their time and money in the
industry; and that, unless speedy measures are taken in these
directions and for a more general "planting" of seed oysters,
something akin to an oyster famine is not measurably far away.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.*

BY PROF. THOMAS H. HUXLEY, F. E. S.
I.

Soleo enim et in aliena castra transire, non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator.
(L. ANN.SI SENECA EPIST. II, 4.) [For you must know I sometimes make an excursion into
the enemy's camp, not by way of deserter, but as a spy.]

is a delightful child's story, known by the title of
-L Jack and the Bean-stalk, with which my contemporaries
who are present will be familiar. But so many of our grave and
reverend juniors have been brought up on severer intellectual
diet, and perhaps have become acquainted with fairyland only
through primers of comparative mythology, that it may be need-
ful to give an outline of the tale. It is a legend of a bean-plant,
which grows and grows until it reaches the high heavens, and
there spreads out into a vast canopy of foliage. The hero, being
moved to climb the stalk, discovers that the leafy expanse sup-
ports a world, composed of the same elements as that below, but
yet strangely new ; and his adventures there, on which I may not
dwell, must have completely changed his views of the nature of
things, though the story, not having been composed by or for
philosophers, has nothing to say about views.

My present enterprise has a certain analogy to that of the
daring adventurer. I beg you to accompany me in an attempt to
reach a world which, to many, is probably strange, by the help of
a bean. It is, as you know, a simple, inert-looking thing. Yet,
if planted under proper conditions, of which sufficient warmth is
one of the most important, it manifests active powers of a very
remarkable kind. A small green seedling emerges, rises to the

* The Romanes Lecture, delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, May 18, 1893.
Reprinted by the kind permission of Macmillan & Co.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 19

surface of the soil, rapidly increases in size, and at the same time
undergoes a series of metamorphoses which do not excite our
wonder as much as those which meet us in legendary history,
merely because they are to be seen every day, and all day long.

By insensible steps the plant builds itself up into a large and
various fabric of root, stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit, every one
molded, within and without, in accordance with an extremely
complex, but at the same time minutely denned, pattern. In each
of these complicated structures, as in their smallest constituents,
there is an immanent energy which, in harmony with that resi-
dent in all the others, incessantly works toward the maintenance
of the whole and the efficient performance of the part which it
has to play in the economy of Nature. But no sooner has the
edifice, reared with such exact elaboration, attained completeness
than it begins to crumble. By degrees the plant withers and dis-
appears from view, leaving behind more or fewer apparently
inert and simple bodies, just like the bean from which it sprang,
and, like it, endowed with the potentiality of giving rise to a
similar cycle of manifestations.

Neither the poetic nor the scientific imagination is put to
much strain in the search after analogies with this process of
going forth and, as it were, returning to the starting point. It
may be likened to the ascent and descent of a slung stone, or to
the course of an arrow along its trajectory. Or we may say that
the living energy takes first an upward and then a downward
road. Or it may seem preferable to compare the expansion of
the germ into the full-grown plant to the unfolding of a fan, or
to the rolling forth and widening of a stream, and thus arrive at
the conception of " development," or " evolution." Here, as else-
where, names are " noise and smoke " ; the important point is to
have a clear and adequate conception of the fact signified by a
name. And in this case the fact is the Sisyphsean process, in the
course of which the living and growing plant passes from the
relative simplicity and latent potentiality of the seed to the full
epiphany of a highly differentiated type, thence to fall back to
simplicity and potentiality.

The value of a strong intellectual grasp of the nature of this
process lies in the circumstance that what is true of the bean is
true of living things in general. From very low forms up to the
highest — in the animal no less than in the vegetable kingdom —
the process of life presents the sajne appearance * of cyclical evo-

* I have been careful to speak of the " appearance " of cyclical evolution presented by
living things ; for, on critical examination, it will be found that the course of vegetable and
of animal life is not exactly represented by the figure of a cycle which returns into itself .
What actually happens, in all but the lowest organisms, is that one part of the growing

20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lution. Nay, we have but to cast our eyes over the rest of the
world and cyclical change presents itself on all sides. It meets
us in the water that flows to the sea and returns to the springs ;
in the heavenly bodies that wax and wane, go and return to their
places ; in the inexorable sequence of the ages of man's life ; in
that successive rise, apogee, and fall of dynasties and of states
which is the most prominent topic of civil history.

As no man, fording a swift stream, can dip his foot twice into
the same water, so no man can with exactness affirm of anything
in the sensible world that it is.* As he utters the words, nay, as
he thinks them, the predicate ceases to be applicable ; the present

germ (A) gives rise to tissues and organs ; while another part (B) remains in its primitive
condition, or is but slightly modified. The moiety A becomes the body of the adult and,
sooner or later, perishes, while portions of the moiety B are detached and, as offspring, con-
tinue the life of the species. Thus, if we trace back an organism along the direct line of
descent from its remotest ancestor, £, as a whole, has never suffered death ; portions of it
only have been cast off and died in each individual offspring.

Everybody is familiar with the way in which the " suckers " of a strawberry plant be-
have. A thin cylinder of living tissue keeps on growing at its free end, until it attains a
considerable length. At successive intervals it develops buds, which grow into strawberry
plants : and these become independent by the death of the parts of the sucker which con-
nect them. The rest of the sucker, however, may go on living and growing indefinitely,
and, circumstances remaining favorable, there is no obvious reason why it should ever die.
The living substance B in a manner answers to the sucker. If we could restore the conti-
nuity which was once possessed by the portions of JB, contained in all the individuals of a
direct line of descent, they would form a sucker, or stolon, on which these individuals would
be strung, and which would never have wholly died.

A species remains unchanged so long as the potentiality of development resident in B
remains unaltered ; so long, e. g., as the buds of the strawberry sucker tend to become
typical strawberry plants. In the case of the progressive evolution of a species, the devel-
opmental potentiality of B becomes of a higher and higher order. In retrogressive evolu-
tion the contrary would be the case. The phenomena of atavism seem to show that retro-
gressive evolution — that is, the return of a species to one or other of its earlier forms — is a
possibility to be reckoned with. The simplification of structure which is so common in the
parasitic members of a group, however, does not properly come under this head. The
wormlike, limbless Lerncea has no resemblance to any of the stages of development of the
many-limbed active animals of the group to which it belongs.

* Heracleitus says " nora/jtif ykp OVK ecr-rt Sis 3/j.&rjvai TU> oArif " ; but, to be strictly ac-
curate, the river remains though the water of which it is composed changes — just as a man
retains his identity though the whole substance of his body is constantly shifting.

This is put very well by Seneca (Ep. Iviii, 20, Ed. Ruhkopf) : " Corpora nostra rapiun-
tur fluminum more, quidquid vides currit cum tempore ; nihil ex his quae videmus manet.
Ego ipse dum loquor mutari ista, mutatus sum. Hoc est quod ait Heraclitus ' In idem flu-
men bis non descendimus.' Manet idem fluminis nomen, aqua transmissa est. Hoc in
amne manifestius est quam in homine, sed nos quoque non minus velox cursus praeter-
vehit." [Our bodies are carried away as a river : all that you see runs down with time :
nothing still remains the same : even while I say these things are changed, I am changed
myself. This is what Heraclitus means, when he says, " We go not twice into the same
river." The river still keeps its name but the water passeth away. This indeed is more
manifest in a river than in man ; but yet as swift a course carries us likewise away. —
Morelfs translation.]

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 21

lias become the past ; the " is " should be " was." And the more
we learn of the nature of things, the more evident is it that what
we call rest is only unperceived activity ; that seeming peace is
silent but strenuous battle. In every part, at every moment, the
state of the cosmos is the expression of a transitory adjustment
of contending forces ; a scene of strife, in which all the combat-
ants fall in turn. What is true of each part is true of the whole.
Natural knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that
" all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth " are the transi-
tory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road
of evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths
of sun and planet and satellite ; through all varieties of matter ;
through infinite diversities of life and thought ; possibly through
modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are
competent to form any, back to the undefinable latency from
which they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the cosmos
is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a per-
manent entity as of a changeful process, in which naught endures
save the flow of energy and the rational order which pervades it.

We have climbed our bean-stalk and have reached a wonder-
land in which the common and the familiar become things new
and strange. In the exploration of the cosmic process thus typi-
fied, the highest intelligence of man finds inexhaustible employ-
ment ; giants are subdued to our service ; and the spiritual affec-
tions of the contemplative philosopher are engaged by beauties
worthy of eternal constancy.

But there is another aspect of the cosmic process, so perfect
as a mechanism, so beautiful as a work of art. Where the cos-
mopoietic energy works through sentient beings, there arises,
among its other manifestations, that which we call pain or suffer-
ing. This baleful product of evolution increases in quantity and
in intensity, with advancing grades of animal organization, until
it attains its highest level in man. Further, the consummation is
not reached in man, the mere animal ; nor in man, the whole or
half savage ; but only in man, the member of an organized polity.
And it is a necessary consequence of his attempt to live in this
way ; that is, under those conditions which are essential to the
full development of his noblest powers.

Man, the animal, in fact, has worked his way to the headship
of the sentient world, and has become the superb animal which
he is, in virtue of his success in the struggle for existence. The
conditions having been of a certain order, man's organization has
adjusted itself to them better than that of his competitors in the
cosmic strife. In the case of mankind, the self-assertion, the un-
scrupulous seizing upon all that can be grasped, the tenacious

22 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

holding of all that can be kept, which constitute the essence of
the struggle for existence, have answered. For his successful
progress, as far as the savage state, man has been largely indebted
to those qualities which he shares with the ape and the tiger : his
exceptional physical organization ; his cunning, his sociability,
his curiosity and his imitativeness ; his ruthless and ferocious de-
structiveness when his anger is roused by opposition.

But, in proportion as men have passed from anarchy to social
organization and in proportion as civilization has grown in worth,
these deeply ingrained serviceable qualities have become defects.
After the manner of successf ul persons, civilized man would gladly
kick down the ladder by which he has climbed. He would be only
too pleased to see " the ape and the tiger die/' But they decline
to suit his convenience ; and the unwelcome intrusion of these
boon companions of his hot youth into the ranged existence of
civil life adds pains and griefs, innumerable and immeasurably
great, to those which the cosmic process necessarily brings on the
mere animal. In fact, civilized man brands all these ape and tiger
promptings with the name of sins ; he punishes many of the acts
which flow from them as crimes ; and, in extreme cases, he does
his best to put an end to the survival of the fittest of former days
by axe and rope.

I have said that civilized man has reached this point ; the as-
sertion is perhaps too broad and general ; I had better put it that
ethical man has attained thereto. The science of ethics professes
to furnish us with a reasoned rule of life ; to tell us what is right
action and why it is so. Whatever difference of opinion may
exist among experts, there is a general consensus that the ape and
tiger methods of the struggle for existence are not reconcilable
with sound ethical principles.

The hero of our story descended the bean-stalk, and came back
to the common world, where fare and work were alike hard ; where
ugly competitors were much commoner than beautiful princesses ;
and where the everlasting battle with self was much less sure to
be crowned with victory than a turn-to with a giant. We have
done the like. Thousands upon thousands of our fellows, thou-
sands of years ago, have preceded us in finding themselves face to
face with the same dread problem of evil. They also have seen
that the cosmic process is evolution ; that it is full of wonder, full
of beauty, and, at the same time, full of pain. They have sought
to discover the bearing of these great facts on ethics ; to find out
whether there is, or is not, a sanction for morality in the ways of
the cosmos.

Theories of the universe, in which the conception of evolution
plays a leading part, were extant at least six centuries before our

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 23

era. Certain knowledge of them, in the fifth century, reaches us
from localities as distant as the valley of the Ganges and the Asi-
atic coasts of the J£gean. To the early philosophers of Hindu-
stan, no less than to those of Ionia, the salient and characteristic
feature of the phenomenal world was its changefulness ; the un-
resting flow of all things, through birth to visible being and
thence to not being, in which they could discern no sign of a be-
ginning and for which they saw no prospect of an ending. It was
no less plain to some of these antique forerunners of modern phi-
losophy that suffering is the badge of all the tribe of sentient
things ; that it is no accidental accompaniment, but an essential
constituent of the cosmic process. The energetic Greek might
find fierce joys in a world in which " strife is father and king " ;
but the old Aryan spirit was subdued to quietism in the Indian
sage ; the mist of suffering which spread over humanity hid every-
thing else from his view ; to him life was one with suffering and
suffering with life.

In Hindustan, as in Ionia, a period of relatively high and tol-
erably stable civilization had succeeded long ages of semi-barba-
rism and struggle. Out of wealth and security had come leisure
and refinement, and, close at their heels, had followed the malady
of thought. To the struggle for bare existence, which never ends,
though it may be alleviated and partially disguised for a fortunate
few, succeeded the struggle to make existence intelligible and to
bring the order of things into harmony with the moral sense of
man, which also never ends, but, for the thinking few, becomes
keener with every increase of knowledge and with every step
toward the realization of a worthy ideal of life.

Two thousand five hundred years ago, the value of civilization
was as apparent as it is now ; then, as now, it was obvious that
only in the garden of an orderly polity can the finest fruits hu-
manity is capable of bearing be produced. But it had also become
evident that the blessings of culture were not unmixed. The
garden was apt to turn into a hothouse. The stimulation of the
senses, the pampering of the emotions, endlessly multiplied the
sources of pleasure. The constant widening of the intellectual
field indefinitely extended the range of that especially human
faculty of looking before and after, which adds to the fleeting
present those old and new worlds of the past and the future,
wherein men dwell the more the higher their culture. But that
very sharpening of the sense and that subtle refinement of emo-
tion which brought such a wealth of pleasures, were fatally at-
tended by a proportional enlargement of the capacity for suffer-
ing ; and the divine faculty of imagination, while it created new
heavens and new earths, provided them with the corresponding
hells of futile regret for the past and morbid anxiety for the

24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

future.* Finally, the inevitable penalty of overstimulation, ex-
haustion, opened the gates of civilization to its great enemy,
ennui ; the stale and flat weariness when man delights not, nor
woman neither — when all things are vanity and vexation, and life
seems not worth living except to escape the bore of dying.

Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges.
Problems settled in a rough-and-ready way by rude men, absorbed
in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be
still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent
demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells among the
tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses
to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral
wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all
time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection asks for their
credentials; judges them by its own standards; finally, gathers
those of which it approves into ethical systems, in which the rea-
soning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption
of foregone conclusions.

One of the oldest and most important elements in such systems
is the conception of justice. Society is impossible unless those
who are associated agree to observe certain rules of conduct
toward one another ; its stability depends on the steadiness with
which they abide by that agreement ; and, so far as they waver,
that mutual trust which is the bond of society is weakened or
destroyed. Wolves could not hunt in packs except for the real,
though unexpressed, understanding that they should not attack
one another during the chase. The most rudimentary polity is a
pack of men living under the like tacit, or expressed, understand-
ing; and having made the very important advance upon wolf
society, that they agree to use the force of the whole body against
individuals who violate it and in favor of those who observe it.
This observance of a common understanding, with the consequent
distribution of punishments and rewards according to accepted
rules, received the name of justice, while the contrary was called
injustice. Early ethics did not take much note of the animus of
the violator of the rules. But civilization could not advance far

* " Multa bona nostra nobis nocent, timoris enim tormentum memoria reducit, provi-
dentia anticipat. Nemo tantum praesentibus miser est." (Seneca, Ep. v, 7.) [Thus many
things, really good in themselves, hurt us : for memory recalls and forecast anticipates the
torment of fear. No one is wretched from what is present only. — MorelVs translation.]

Among the many wise and weighty aphorisms of the Roman Bacon, few sound the reali-
ties of life more deeply than " Multa bona nostra nobis nocent." If there is a soul of good
in things evil, it is at least equally true that there is a soul of evil in things good : for
things, like men, have " les defauts de leurs qualites." It is one of the last lessons one
learns from experience, but not the least important, that a heavy tax is levied upon all forms
of success, and that failure is one of the commonest disguises assumed by blessings.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 25

without the establishment of a capital distinction between the
case of involuntary and that of willful misdeed — between a merely
wrong action and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement
of moral appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of
this distinction, acquired more and more theoretical and practical
importance. If life must be given for life, yet it was recognized
that the unintentional slayer did not altogether deserve death ;
and, by a sort of compromise between the public and the private
conception of justice, a sanctuary was provided in which he might
take refuge from the avenger of blood.

The idea of justice thus underwent a gradual sublimation from
punishment and reward according to acts, to punishment and re-
ward according to desert ; or, in other words, according to motive.
Righteousness — that is, action from right motive — not only be-
came synonymous with justice, but the positive constituent of
innocence and the very heart of goodness.

Now when the ancient sage, whether Indian or Greek, who
had attained to this conception of goodness, looked the world, and
especially human life, in the face, he found it as hard as we do to
bring the course of evolution into harmony with even the ele-
mentary requirements of the ethical ideal of the just and the
good.

If there is one thing plainer than another, it is that neither
the pleasures nor the pains of life in the merely animal world are
distributed according to desert, for it is admittedly impossible
for the lower orders of sentient beings to deserve either the one
or the other. If there is a generalization from the facts of human
life, which has the assent of thoughtful men in every age and
country, it is that the violator of ethical rules constantly escapes
the punishment which he deserves ; that the wicked flourishes like
a green bay tree, while the righteous begs his bread ; that the sins
of the fathers are visited upon the children ; that in the realm of
Nature ignorance is punished just as severely as willful wrong ;
and that thousands upon thousands of innocent beings suffer for
the crime or the unintentional trespass of one.

Greek and Semite and Indian are agreed upon this subject.
The book of Job is at one with the " Works and Days " and the
Buddhist Sutras ; the Psalmist and the Preacher of Israel with
the tragic poets of Greece. What is a more common motive of
the ancient tragedy, in fact, than the unfathomable injustice of
the nature of things ? What is more deeply felt to be true than
its presentation of the destruction of the blameless by the work
of his own hands, or by the fatal operation of the sins of others ?
Surely (Edipus was pure of heart ; it was the natural sequence of
events — the cosmic process — which drove him, in all innocence,

VOL. XLIT. — 3

26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to slay his father and become the husband of his mother, to the
desolation of his people and his own headlong ruin. Or, to step
for a moment beyond the chronological limits I have set myself,
what constitutes the sempiternal attraction of Hamlet but the
appeal to deepest experience of that history of a no less blameless
dreamer, dragged, in spite of himself, into a world out of joint ;
involved in a tangle of crime and misery, created by one of the
prime agents of the cosmic process as it works in and through
man ?

Thus, brought beforetthe tribunal of ethics, the cosmos might
well seem to stand condemned. The conscience of man revolted
against the moral indifference of Nature and the microcosmic
atoms hould have found the illimitable macrocosm guilty. But
few, or none, ventured to record that verdict.

In the great Semitic trial of this issue, Job takes refuge in
silence and submission ; the Indian and the Greek, less wise per-
haps, attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable and plead for the de-
fendant. To this end, the Greeks invented Theodicies ; while the
Indians devised what, in its ultimate form, must rather be termed
a Cosmodicy. For, though Buddhism recognizes gods many and
lords many, they are products of the cosmic process ; and transi-
tory, however long enduring, manifestations of its eternal activ-
ity. In the doctrine of transmigration, whatever its origin, Brah-
manical and Buddhist speculation found, ready to hand,* the

* " There is within the body of every man a soul which, at the death of the body, flies
away from it like a bird out of a cage, and enters upon a new life . . . either in one of the
heavens or one of the hells or on this earth. The only exception is the rare case of a man
having in this life acquired a true knowledge of God. According to the pre-Buddhistic
theory, the soul of such a man goes along the path of the Gods to God and, being united
with him, enters upon an immortal life in which his individuality is not extinguished. In
the later theory, his soul is directly absorbed into the Great Soul, is lost in it and has no
longer any independent existence. The souls of all other men enter, after the death of the
body, upon a new existence in one or other of the many different modes of being. If in
heaven or hell, the soul itself becomes a god or demon without entering a body ; all super-
human beings save the great gods being looked upon as not eternal, but merely temporary
creatures. If the soul returns to earth it may or may not enter a new body ; and this either
of a human being, an animal, a plant, or even a material object. For all these are possessed
of souls, and there is no essential difference between these souls and the souls of men — all
being alike mere sparks of the Great Spirit, who is the only real existence." (Rhys Davids,
Hibbert Lectures, 1881, p. 83.)

For what I have said about Indian philosophy, I am particularly indebted to the lumi-
nous exposition of primitive Buddhism and its relations to earlier Hindu thought, which
is given by Prof. Rhys Davids in his remarkable Hibbert Lectures for 1881, and Bud-
dhism," (1890). The only apology I can offer for the freedom with which I have borrowed
from him in these notes, is my desire to leave no doubt as to my indebtedness. I have also
found Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha (Ed. 2, 1890) very helpful. The origin of the theory of
transmigration stated in the above extract is an unsolved problem. That it differs widely
from the Egyptian metempsychosis is clear. In fact, since men usually people the other

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 27

means of constructing a plausible vindication of the ways of the
cosmos to man. If this world is full of pain and sorrow ; if grief
and evil fall, like the rain, upon both the just and the unjust ; it
is because, like the rain, they are links in the endless chain of
natural causation by which past, present, and future are indissol-
ubly connected ; and there is no more injustice in the one case
than in the other. Every sentient being is reaping as it has
sown ; if not in this life, then in one or other of the infinite series
of antecedent existences of which it is the latest term. The present
distribution of good and evil is, therefore, the algebraical sum of
accumulated positive and negative deserts ; or rather, it depends
on the floating balance of the account. For it was not thought
necessary that a complete settlement should ever take place. Ar-
rears might stand over as a sort of " hanging gale " ; a period of
celestial happiness just earned might be succeeded by ages of tor-
ment in a hideous nether world, the balance still overdue for
some remote ancestral error.*

worlds with phantoms of this, the Egyptian doctrine would seem to presuppose the Indian
as a more archaic belief.

Prof. Rhys Davids has fully insisted upon the ethical importance of the transmigration
theory. " One of the latest speculations now being put forward among ourselves would
seek to explain each man's character, and even his outward condition in life, by the char-
acter he inherited from his ancestors, a character gradually formed during a practically end-
less series of past existences, modified only by the conditions into which he was born, those
very conditions being also, in like manner, the last result of a practically endless series of
past causes. Gotama's speculation might be stated in the same words. But it attempted
also to explain, in a way different from that which would be adopted by the exponents of
the modern theory, that strange problem which it is also the motive of the wonderful
drama of the book of Job to explain — the fact that the actual distribution here of good
fortune, or misery, is entirely independent of the moral qualities which men call good or
bad. We can not wonder that a teacher, whose whole system was so essentially an ethical
reformation, should have felt it incumbent upon him to seek an explanation of this appar-
ent injustice. And all the more so, since the belief he had inherited, the theory of the
transmigration of souls, had provided a solution perfectly sufficient to any one who could
accept that belief." (Hibbert Lectures, p. 93.) I should venture to suggest the substitu-
tion of " largely " for " entirely " in the foregoing passage. Whether a ship makes a good
or a bad voyage is largely independent of the conduct of the captain, but it is as largely
affected by that conduct. Though powerless before a hurricane, he may weather many a
bad gale.

* " The outward condition of the soul is, in each new birth, determined by its actions in
a previous birth ; but by each action in succession and not by the balance struck after the
evil has been reckoned off against the good. A good man, who has once uttered a slander,
may spend a hundred thousand years as a god, in consequence of his goodness, and, when
the power of his good actions is exhausted, may be born as a dumb man on account of his
transgression ; and a robber who has once done an act of mercy, may come to life in a king's
body as a result of his virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell or as a ghost without
a body, or be reborn many times as a slave or an outcast, in consequence of his evil life.

"There is no escape, according to this theory, from the result of any act; though it is
only the consequences of its own acts that each soul has to endure. The force has been set
in motion by itself and can never stop ; and its effect can never be foretold. If evil, it can

28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Whether the cosmic process looks any more moral than at first,
after such a vindication, may perhaps be questioned. Yet this
plea of justification is not less plausible than others; and none
but very hasty thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent
absurdity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of transmi-
gration has its roots in the world of reality ; and it may claim
such support as the great argument from analogy is capable of
supplying.

Every-day experience familiarizes us with the facts which are
grouped under the name of heredity. Every one of us bears
upon him obvious marks of his parentage, perhaps of remoter
relationships. More particularly, the sum of tendencies to act in
a certain way, which we call " character/' is often to be traced
through a long series of progenitors and collaterals. So we may
justly say that this "character" — this moral and intellectual
essence of a man — does veritably pass over from one fleshly taber-
nacle to another and does really transmigrate from generation to
generation. In the newborn infant, the character of the stock
lies latent and the Ego is little more than a bundle of potential-
ities. Bui?, very early, these become actualities ; from childhood
to age they manifest themselves in dullness or brightness, weak-
ness or strength, viciousness or uprightness ; and with each fea-
ture modified by confluence with another character, if by nothing
else, the character passes on to its incarnation in new bodies.

The Indian philosophers called character, as thus defined,
" karma." * It is this karma which passed from life to life and

never be modified or prevented, for it depends on a cause already completed, that is now
forever beyond the soul's control. There is even no continuing consciousness, no memory
of the past that could guide the soul to any knowledge of its fate. The only advantage
open to it is to add in this life to the sum of its good actions, that it may bear fruit with the
rest. And even this can only happen in some future life under essentially the same condi-
tions as the present one ; subject, like the present one, to old age, decay, and death ; and
affording opportunity, like the present one, for the commission of errors, ignorances, or
sins, which in their turn must inevitably produce their due effect of sickness, disability, or
woe. Thus is the soul tossed about from life to life, from billow to billow, in the great ocean
of transmigration. And there is no escape save for the very few who, during their birth as
men, attain to a right knowledge of the Great Spirit : and thus enter into immortality, or,
as the later philosophers taught, are absorbed into the Divine Essence." (Rhys Davids,
Hibbert Lectures, pp. 85, 86.)

The state after death, thus imagined by the Hindu philosophers, has a certain analogy to
the purgatory of the Roman Church ; except that escape from it is dependent not on a
divine decree modified, it may be, by sacerdotal or saintly intercession, but by the acts of
the individual himself ; and that while ultimate emergence into heavenly bliss of the good,
or well-prayed for, Catholic is professedly assurred, the chances in favor of the attainment
of absorption, or of Nirvana, by any individual Hindu are extremely small.

* "That part of the then prevalent transmigration theory which could not be proved
false seemed to meet a deeply felt necessity, seemed to supply a moral cause which would
explain the unequal distribution here of happiness or woe, so utterly inconsistent with the

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 29

linked them in the chain of transmigrations ; and they held that
it is modified in each life, not merely by confluence of parentage,
but by its own acts. They were, in fact, strong believers in the
theory, so much disputed just at present, of the hereditary trans-
mission of acquired characters. That the manifestation of the
tendencies of a character may be greatly facilitated, or impeded,
by conditions, of which self-discipline, or the absence of it, are
among the most important, is indubitable ; but that the character
itself is modified in this way is by no means so certain ; it is not
so sure that the transmitted character of an evil liver is worse,
or that of a righteous man better, than that which he received.
Indian philosophy, however, did not admit of any doubt on this
subject ; the belief in the influence of conditions, notably of self-
discipline, on the karma was not merely a necessary postulate of
its theory of retribution, but it presented the only way of escape
from the endless round of transmigrations.

The earlier forms of Indian philosophy agreed with those
prevalent in our own times, in supposing the existence of a per-
manent reality, or "substance," beneath the shifting series of
phenomena, whether of matter or of mind. The substance of the
cosmos was "Brahma," that of the individual man "Atman";
and the latter was separated from the former only, if I may so
speak, by its phenomenal envelope, by the casing of sensations,
thoughts and desires, pleasures and pains, which make up the
illusive phantasmagoria of life. This the ignorant take for real-
ity ; their "Atman " therefore remains eternally imprisoned in de-
lusions, bound by the fetters of desire and scourged by the whip
of misery. But the man who has attained enlightenment sees
that the apparent reality is mere illusion, or, as was said a couple

present characters of men." Gautama " still therefore talked of men's previous existence,
but by no means in the way that he is generally represented to have done." What he
taught was "the transmigration of character." " Gotama held that after the death of any
being, whether human or not, there survived nothing at all but that being's ' Karma,' the
result, that is, of its mental and bodily actions. Every individual, whether human or divine,
was the last inheritor and the last result of the Karma of a long series of past individuals —
a series so long that its beginning is beyond the reach of calculation, and its end will be
coincident with the destruction of the world." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 92.)

In the theory of evolution, the tendency of a germ to develop according to a certain spe-
cific type, e. g., of the kidney-bean seed to grow into a plant having all the characters of Pha-
seolus vnlyaris, is its " Karma." It is the " last inheritor and the last result " of all the con-
ditions that have affected a line of ancestry which goes back for many millions of years to
the time when life first appeared on the earth. The moiety B of the substance of the bean
plant (see note, p. 20), is the last link in a once continuous chain extending from the primi-
tive living substance ; and the characters of the successive species to which it has given rise
are the manifestations of its gradually modified Karma. As Prof. Rhys Davids aptly says,
the snowdrop " is a snowdrop and not an oak, and just that kind* of snowdrop, because it is
the outcome of the Karma of an endless series of past existences." (Hibbert Lectures,
p. 114.)

3o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of thousand years later, that there is nothing good nor bad but
thinking makes it so. If the cosmos " is just and of our pleasant
vices makes instruments to scourge us," it would seem that the
only way to escape from our heritage of evil is to destroy that
fountain of desire whence our vices flow ; to refuse any longer to
be the instruments of the evolutionary process and withdraw from
the struggle for existence. If the karma is modifiable by self-
discipline, if its coarser desires, one after another, can be extin-
guished, the ultimate fundamental desire of self-assertion, or the
desire to be, may also be destroyed.* Then the bubble of illusion
will burst, and the freed individual "Atman " will lose itself in
the universal " Brahma/'

Such seems to have been the pre-Buddhistic conception of sal-
vation and of the way to be followed by those who would attain
thereto. No more thorough mortification of the flesh has ever
been attempted than that achieved by the Indian ascetic ancho-
rite ; no later monachism has so nearly succeeded in reducing the
human mind to that condition of impassive gwasi-sonmambulism
which, but for its acknowledged holiness, might run the risk of
being confounded with idiocy.

And this salvation, it will be observed, was to be attained
through knowledge, and by action based on that knowledge ; just
as the experimenter, who would obtain a certain physical or
chemical result, must have a knowledge of the natural laws in-
volved and the persistent disciplined will adequate to carry out
all the various operations required. The supernatural, in our
sense of the term, was entirely excluded. There was no external
power which could affect the sequence of cause and effect which
gives rise to karma ; none but the will of the subject of the karma
which could put an end to it.

Only one rule of conduct could be based upon the remarkable
theory of which I have endeavored to give a reasoned outline. It

* " It is interesting to notice that the very point which is the weakness of the theory —
the supposed concentration of the effect of the Karma in one new being — presented itself to
the early Buddhists themselves as a difficulty. They avoided it, partly by explaining that it
was a particular thirst in the creature dying (a craving, Tanha, which plays otherwise a
great part in the Buddhist theory) which actually caused the birth of the new individual
who was to inherit the Karma of the former one. But, how this took place, how the crav-
ing desire produced this effect, was acknowledged to be a mystery patent only to Buddha."
(Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 95.)

Among the many parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism, it is curious to find one for
this Tanha, "thirst," or "craving desire" for life. Seneca writes (Epist. Ixxvi, 18): "Si
enim ullum aliud est bonum quam honestum, sequetur nos aviditas mice aviditas rerum
vitam instruentium : quod est intolerabile infinitum, vagum," [Besides, was there any
other good than what is right and fit, we should be persecuted with the desire of life, and
an insatiable hankering after all the requisites thereto, which is intolerable, infinite, vague.
— MoreWs translation.]

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 31

was folly to continue to exist when an overplus of pain was cer-
tain, and the probabilities in favor of the increase of misery with
the prolongation of existence were so overwhelming. Slaying
the body only made matters worse ; there was nothing for it but
to slay the soul by the voluntary arrest of all its activities. Prop-
erty, social ties, family affections, common companionship, must
be abandoned ; the most natural appetites, even that for food,
must be suppressed, or at least minimized ; until all that remained
of a man was the impassive, extenuated, mendicant monk, self-
hypnotized into cataleptic trances, which the deluded mystic took
for foretastes of the final union with Brahma.

The founder of Buddhism accepted the chief postulates de-
manded by his predecessors. But he was not satisfied with the
practical annihilation involved in merging the individual exist-
ence in the unconditioned — the Atman in Brahma. It would seem
that the admission of the existence of any substance whatever —
even of the tenuity of that which has neither quality nor energy
and of which no predicate whatever can be asserted — appeared to
him to be a danger and a snare. Though reduced to a hyposta-
tized negation, Brahma was not to be trusted ; so long as entity
was there, it might conceivably resume the weary round of evo-
lution, with all its train of immeasurable miseries. Gautama got
rid of even that shade of a shadow of permanent existence by a
metaphysical tour de force of great interest to the student of phi-
losophy, seeing that it supplies the wanting half of Bishop Berke-
ley's well-known idealistic argument.

Granting the premises, I am not aware of any escape from
Berkeley's conclusion, that the " substance " of matter is a meta-
physical unknown quantity, of the existence of which there is no
proof. What Berkeley does not seem to have so clearly perceived
is that the non-existence of a substance of mind is equally argu-
able ; and that the result of the impartial application of his rea-
sonings is the reduction of the All to coexistences and sequences
of phenomena, beneath and beyond which there is nothing cog-
noscible. It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety of Indian
speculation that Gautama should have seen deeper than the great-
est of modern idealists ; though it must be admitted that, if some
of Berkeley's reasonings respecting the nature of spirit are pushed
home, they reach pretty much the same conclusion.*

* " The distinguishing characteristic of Buddhism was that it started a new line, that it
looked upon the deepest questions men have to solve from an entirely different standpoint.
It swept away from the field of its vision the whole of the great soul-theory which had
hitherto so completely filled and dominated the minds of the superstitious and the thought-
ful alike. For the first time in the history of the world, it proclaimed a salvation which
each man could gain for himself and by himself, in this world, during this life, without any
the least reference to God, or to gods, either great or small. Like the TJpanishads, it placed

32 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Accepting the prevalent Brahmanical doctrine that the whole
cosmos, celestial, terrestrial, and infernal, with its population of
gods and other celestial beings, of sentient animals, of Mara and
his devils, is incessantly shifting through recurring cycles of pro-

the first importance on knowledge ; but it was no longer a knowledge of God, it was a clear
perception of the real nature, as they supposed it to be, of men and things. And it added
to the necessity of knowledge, the necessity of purity, of courtesy, of uprightness, of peace,
and of a universal love far reaching, grown great and beyond measure." (Rhys Davids, Hib-
bert Lectures, p. 29.)

The contemporary Greek philosophy takes an analogous direction. According to Hera-
cleitus, the universe was made neither by gods nor men ; but, from all eternity has been,
and to all eternity will be, immortal fire, glowing and fading in due measure. (Mullach,
Heracliti Fragmenta, 27.) And the part assigned by his successors the Stoics, to the knowl-
edge and the volition of the " wise man " made their Divinity (for logical thinkers) a sub-
ject for compliments, rather than a power to be reckoned with. In Hindu speculation the
" Arahat," still more the " Buddha," becomes the superior of Brahma : the stoical " wise
man " is, at least, the equal of Zeus.

Berkeley affirms over and over again that no idea can be formed of a soul or spirit : " If
any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he
can form any idea of power or active being ; and whether he hath ideas of two principal
powers marked by the names of will and understanding distinct from each other, as well as
from a third idea of substance or being in general, with a relative notion of its supporting
or being the subject of the aforesaid power, which is signified by the name soul or spirit.
This is what some hold : but, so far as I can see, the words will, soul, spirit, do not stand
for different ideas, or in truth for any idea at all, but for something which is very different
from ideas, and which, being an agent, can not be like unto or represented by any idea what-
ever [though it must be owned at the same time, that we have some notion of soul, spirit,
and the operations of the mind, such as willing, loving, hating, inasmuch as we know or
understand the meaning of these words "]. (The Principles of Human Knowledge, Ixxvi.
See also §§ Ixxxix, cxxxv, cxlv.)

It is open to discussion, I think, whether it is possible to have " some notion " of that
of which we can form no " idea."

Berkeley attaches several predicates to the " perceiving active being mind, spirit, soul,
or myself " (Part I, II). It is said, for example, to be " indivisible, incorporeal, unextended,
and incorruptible." The predicate indivisible, though negative in form, has highly positive
consequences. For, if " perceiving active being " is strictly indivisible, man's soul must be
one with the Divine spirit ; which is good Hindu or Stoical doctrine, but hardly orthodox
Christian philosophy. If, on the other hand, the " substance " of active perceiving " being "
is actually divided into the one Divine and innumerable human entities, how can the predi-
cate " indivisible " be rigorously applicable to it ?

Taking the words cited, as they stand, they amount to the denial of the possibility of
any knowledge of substance. " Matter " having been resolved into mere affections of
" spirit," " spirit " melts away into an admittedly inconceivable and unknowable hypostasis
of thought and power — consequently the existence of anything in the universe beyond a flow
of phenomena is a purely hypothetical assumption. Indeed, a pyrrhonist might raise the
objection that if " esse " is " percipi " spirit itself can have no existence except as a per-
ception, hypostatized into a " self " or as a perception of some other spirit. In the former
case, objective reality vanishes ; in the latter, there would seem to be the need of an infi-
nite series of spirits each perceiving the others.

It is curious to observe how very closely the phraseology of Berkeley sometimes ap-
proaches that of the Stoics : thus (cxlviii) : " It seems to be a general pretense of the un-
thinking herd that they can not see God. . . . But, alas ! we need only open our eyes to see

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 33

duction and destruction, in each of which every human being has
his transniigratory representative, Gautama proceeded to elimi-
nate substance altogether ; and to reduce the cosmos to a mere
flow of sensations, emotions, volitions, and thoughts, devoid of
any substratum. As on the surface of a stream of water we see

the Sovereign Lord of all things with a more full and clear view than we do any of our
fellow-creatures ; ... we do at all times and in all places perceive manifest tokens of the
Divinity : everything we see, hear, feel, or any wise perceive b/ sense, being a sign or effect
of the power of God." . . . cxlix. " It is therefore plain, that nothing can be more evident
to any one that is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of God, or a s pirit who is
intimately present to our minds producing in them all that variety of ideas or sensations,
which continually affect us, on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short,
in whom we live and move and have our being." cl. " [But you will say hath Nature no
share in the production of natural things and must they be all ascribed to the immediate
and sole operation of God ? ... if by Nature is meant some being distinct from God, as
well as from the laws of Nature and things perceived by sense, I must confess that word is
to me an empty sound, without any intelligent meaning annexed to it.] Nature in this ac-
ceptation is a vain Chimcera introduced by those heathens who had not just notions of the
omnipresence and infinite perfection of God."

(Compare Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv, 7.)

" Natura, inquit, haec mihi prasstat. Non intelligis te, quum hoc dicis, mutare Nomen
Deo ? Quid enim est aliud Natura, quam Deus, et divina ratio, toti mundo et partibus ejus
inserta ? Quoties voles, tibi licet aliter hunc auctorem rerum nostrarum compellare, et Jovem
ilium optimum et maximum rite dices, et tonantem, et statorem : qui non, ut historic! tra-
diderunt, ex eo quod post votum susceptum acies Romanorum fugientum stetit, sed quod
stant beneficio ejus omnia, stator, stabilitorque est : hunc eundem et fatum si dixeris, noil
mentieris, nam quum fatum nihil aliud est, quam series implexa causarum, ille est prima
omnium causa, ea qua caeterae pendent." [" Nature," says my opponent, " gives me all
this." Do you not perceive when you say this that you merely speak of God under another
name, for what is Nature but God and divine reason, which pervades the universe and all its
parts ? You may address the author of our world by as many different titles as you please ;
you may rightly call him Jupiter, Best and Greatest, and the Thunderer, or the Stayer, so
called, not because, as the historians tell us, he stayed the flight of the Roman army in
answer to the prayer of Romulus, but because all things continue in their stay through his
goodness. If you were to call this same personage Fate, you would not lie ; for since fate
is nothing more than a connected chain of causes, he is the first cause of all, upon which
all the rest depend. — Bohn's translation^]

It would appear, therefore, that the good bishop is somewhat hard upon the " heathen,"
of whose words his own might be a paraphrase.

There is yet another direction in which Berkeley's philosophy, I will not say agrees with
Gautama's, but at any rate helps to make a fundamental dogma of Buddhism intelligible.

" I find I can excite ideas in my mind at pleasure, and vary and shift the scene as often
as I think fit. It is no more than willing, and straightway this or that idea arises in my
fancy : and by the same power, it is obliterated, and makes way for another. This making
and unmaking of ideas doth very properly denominate the mind active. Thus much is cer-
tain and grounded on experience. . . ." (Principles, xxviii.)

A good many of us, I fancy, have reason to think that experience tells them very much
the contrary ; and are painfully familiar with the obsession of the mind by ideas which can
not be obliterated by any effort of the will and steadily refuse to make way for any others.
But what I desire to point out is that if Gautama was equally confident that he could "make
and unmake " ideas — then, since he had resolved self into a group of ideal phantoms — the
possibility of abolishing self by volition naturally followed.

34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ripples and whirlpools, which last for a while and then vanish
with the causes that gave rise to them, so what seem individual
existences are mere temporary associations of phenomena circling
round a center, " like a dog tied to a post." In the whole uni-
verse there is nothing permanent, no eternal substance either of
mind or of matter. Personality is a metaphysical fancy ; and,
in very truth, not only we, but all things, in the worlds without
end of the cosmic phantasmagoria, are such stuff as dreams are
made of.

What then becomes of karma ? Karma remains untouched.
As the peculiar form of energy we call magnetism may be trans-
mitted from a loadstone to a piece of steel, from the steel to a
piece of nickel, as it may be strengthened or weakened by the con-
ditions to which it is subjected while resident in each piece, so it
seems to have been conceived that karma might be transmitted
from one phenomenal association to another by a sort of induc-
tion. However this may be, Gautama doubtless had a better
guarantee for the abolition of transmigration, when no wrack of
substance, either of Atman or of Brahma, was left behind ; when,
in short, a man had but to dream that he willed not to dream, to
put an end to all dreaming.

This end of life's dream is Nirvana. What Nirvana is the
learned do not agree. But, since the best original authorities tell
us there is neither desire, nor activity, nor any possibility of phe-
nomenal reappearance for the sage who has entered Nirvana, it
may be safely said of this acme of Buddhistic philosophy — the
rest is silence.*

* According to Buddhism, the relation of one life to the next is merely that borne by
the flame of one lamp to the flame of another lamp which is set alight by it. To the " Ara-
hat " or adept " no outward form, no compound thing, no creature, no creator, no existence
of any kind, must appear to be other than a temporary collocation of its component parts
fated inevitably to be dissolved." (Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, p. 211.)

The self is nothing but a group of phenomena held together by the desire of life ; when
that desire shall have ceased " the Karma of that particular chain of lives will cease to
influence any longer any distinct individual, and there will be no more birth ; for birth,
decay, and death, grief, lamentation, and despair will have come, so far as regards that
chain of lives, forever to an end."

The state of mind of the Arahat in which the desire of life has ceased is Nirvana. Dr.
Oldenberg has very acutely and patiently considered the various interpretations which have
been attached to " Nirvana " in the work to which I have referred (p. 285 et seq.}. The re-
sult of his and other discussions of the question may, I think, be briefly stated thus :

1. Logical deduction from the predicates attached to the term " Nirvana " strips it of
all reality, conceivability, or perceivability, whether by gods or men. For all practical pur-
poses, therefore, it comes to exactly the same thing as annihilation.

2. But it is not annihilation in the ordinary sense, inasmuch as it could take place in the
living Arahat or Buddha.

3. And, since, for the faithful Buddhist, that which was abolished in the Arahat was the
possibility of further pain, sorrow, or sin ; and that which was attained was perfect peace ;

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 35

Thus there is no very great practical disagreement between
Gautama and his predecessors with respect to the end of action ;
but it is otherwise as regards the means to that end. With just
insight into human nature, Gautama declared extreme ascetic
practices to be useless and indeed harmful. The appetites and
the passions are not to be abolished by mere mortification of the
body; they must, in addition, be attacked on their own ground,
and conquered by steady cultivation of the mental habits which
oppose them ; by universal benevolence ; by the return of good
for evil ; by humility ; by abstinence from evil thought ; in short,
by total renunciation of that self-assertion which is the essence of
the cosmic process.

Doubtless it is to these ethical qualities that Buddhism owes
its marvelous success.* A system which knows no God in the
Western sense; which denies a soul to man; which counts the
belief in immortality a blunder, and the hope of it a sin ; which
refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice ; which bids men look
to nothing but their own efforts for salvation ; which in its origi-
nal purity knew nothing of vows of obedience, abhorred intoler-
ance, and never sought the aid of the secular arm ; yet spread
over a considerable moiety of the Old World with marvelous
rapidity, and is still, with whatever base admixture of foreign
superstitions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind.

[To be concluded.]

his mind directed itself exclusively to this joyful consummation, and personified the nega-
tion of all conceivable existence and of all pain into a positive bliss. This was all the more
easy, as Gautama refused to give any dogmatic definition of Nirvana. There is something
analogous in the way in which people commonly talk of the "happy release" of a man who
has been long suffering from mortal disease. According to their own views, it must always
be extremely doubtful whether the man will be any happier after the "release" than before.
But they do not choose 10 look at the matter in this light.

The popular notion that, with practical if not metaphysical annihilation in view, Bud-
dhism must needs be a sad and gloomy faith, seems to be inconsistent with fact ; on the con-
trary, the prospect of Nirvana fills the true believer, not merely with cheerfulness but with
an ecstatic desire to reach it.

* The influence of the picture of the personal qualities of Gautama afforded by the
legendary anecdotes which rapidly grew into a biography of the Buddha, and by the birth
stories, which coalesced with the current folk lore and were intelligible to all the world,
doubtless played a large part. Further, although Gautama appears not to have meddled
with the caste system, he refused to recognize any distinction save that of perfection in the
way of salvation among his followers ; and, by such teaching, no less than by the inculca-
tion of love and benevolence to all sentient beings, he practically leveled every social, polit-
ical, and racial barrier. A third important condition was the organization of the Buddhists
into monastic communities for the stricter professors, while the laity were permitted a wide
indulgence in practice, and were allowed to hope for accommodation in some of the tem-
porary abodes of bliss. With a few hundred thousand years of immediate paradise in
sight, the average man could be content to shut his eyes to what might follow.

36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

LAPLACE'S PLAN FOR PERPETUAL MOONLIGHT.

BY DANIEL KIRKWOOD.

ONE of the questions considered by Laplace in the early part
of the century, and which he thought of sufficient interest
to have a place in his System of the World, has dropped almost
wholly out of view. I refer to the relation of the moon to the
earth — what it is and what it might have been. The subject is
not even referred to in any recent text-book on astronomy. The
conclusion of Laplace, however, was not hastily reached, and it
remained in his hands, without modification, for a number of
years. The great name of the author probably prevented astrono-
mers of the day from undertaking any criticism of his conclu-
sions, and especially from the expression of any opinion on a
mathematical question different from that of the greatest astrono-
mer of the century. If Laplace himself ever saw his mistake he
never mentioned it, as in the case of a mathematical error pointed
out by Dr. Bowditch,the translator of the Me'canique Celeste. Dr.
Bowditch's letter informing him of the error was never acknowl-
edged. The mistake, however, was rectified in a new edition. But
I proceed with the subject.

If moonlight, it has been said, be always pleasant and desira-
ble— if it contribute to the convenience and enjoyment of life, and
if its perpetuity be not inconsistent with the laws by which the
world is governed — why has its use been so largely denied us ?
Why has Nature, or the Author of Nature, left us so great a por-
tion of our time in almost total darkness ? Such questions have
doubtless occurred to thoughtful minds in all ages. The subject
is one of interest and curiosity. Let us briefly consider some of
the possible relations of a satellite to its primary, including a spe-
cial case proposed by Laplace.

Sir Isaac Newton, who preceded Laplace by about a century,
had found evidence, as he claimed, that the material universe is
the work of an all-wise designer. The author of the Me'canique
Celeste, the greatest mathematical astronomer of his age, seldom
discussed questions of a moral nature ; but, not accepting New-
ton's views on the doctrine of final causes, or the doctrine of de-
sign in the material world, he took occasion to point out a so-called
failure of Nature in adapting means to ends. If the moon was
designed to give light by night, the purpose, he said, had largely
failed, and he (Laplace) could suggest a better plan. But the en-
tire passage is quoted as follows :

" Some partisans of final causes have imagined that the moon
was given to the earth to afford it light during the night. But in
this case Nature would not have attained the end proposed, since

LAPLACE'S PLAN FOR PERPETUAL MOONLIGHT. 37

we are often deprived at the same time of the light of both sun
and moon. To have accomplished this end, it would have been
sufficient to have placed the moon at first in opposition to the sun
and in the plane of the ecliptic, at a distance from the earth equal
to the one hundredth part of the distance of the earth from the
sun, and to have impressed on the earth and moon parallel veloci-
ties proportional to their distances from the sun. In this case, the
moon, being constantly in opposition to the sun, would have de-
scribed round it an ellipse similar to that of the earth. These two
bodies would then constantly succeed each other, and as at this
distance the moon could not be eclipsed, its light would always
replace that of the sun." *

The plan here proposed was one of startling boldness ; but
without assuming to defend the doctrine of final causes, it must
be said in fairness that to afford light by night had never been
claimed as the only design for which the moon was given. Other
purposes no less important may be readily imagined. Moreover,
the moon's light at the distance named by Laplace would have
been little more than one twentieth part of that afforded by the
full moon at its actual distance, or less than that of our new moon
two days after the change. Such moonlight, though perpetual,
would have had little comparative value. Again, the tidal effect
upon the earth would have been scarcely perceptible. But with-
out further insisting on these points, however important, let us
compare the proposed arrangement with that of Nature. Would
it have involved nothing inconsistent with the system's stability ?
or would its adoption have resulted in depriving our world of the
moonlight enjoyed in the existing system ?

The annexed figure f illustrates Laplace's proposed arrange-
ment. The distance at which he would have placed the moon
from the earth is about 1,000,000 miles, or a little more than four
times the actual distance. An eclipse of the moon is caused by
its falling into the earth's shadow. This can extend into space
only about 860,000 miles, and, as this is less than the distance of
Laplace's proposed moon, the latter, as he remarks, could never
be eclipsed.

Let us suppose the distance of the moon from the earth to be
increased, what changes would be effected in the observed phe-
nomena ? At 478,000 miles, twice the present distance, the length
of the lunar month would be seventy-seven days ; the quantity of
moonlight would be one fourth of what we now enjoy ; and the
height of tides in the open seas would be but a few inches. At
717,000 miles, three times the present distance, the length of the
month would be one hundred and forty-two days, and the appar-

* Systeme du Monde, Hart's translation, vol. ii, p. 79. \ Figure omitted.

3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ent size of the moon would be reduced to one ninth of its present
value. With increasing distance the phenomena would still fur-
ther change, till at the orbit named by Laplace the month would
be equal to the year, and the moon's enlightened hemisphere
would be turned constantly to the earth. But the great astrono-
mer's dream of perpetual moonlight — how long would it be re-
alized ?

Another question of vital importance is here involved in the
theory under consideration — the variation of the earth's attrac-
tion on the moon supposed to be removed to a greater distance.
This variation is more rapid than that of the sun's attractive
force on the same body, as the distance between the sun and moon
is four hundred times that between the moon and the earth. At
what point, then, would our satellite escape from the earth's con-
trolling influence and commence to revolve as an independent
planet about the sun ? This question, strangely enough, seems
never to have received Laplace's consideration ; at least his state-
ment was continued without change in a later edition of his
Systeme du Monde. This problem touching the moon's limit
of stability was not solved until sixteen years after Laplace's
death.*

The relative distances as well as the direction and force of the
impulses necessary to produce the required motions in the scheme
of Laplace were given by himself in the paragraph quoted. The
state of things at double the moon's distance has also been esti-
mated. At four times the distance, or somewhat more, we find
Laplace's position of perpetual moonlight ; but just here we find
the region where the earth loses its control over the moon's mo-
tion. The moon escapes from the earth's influence, and henceforth
owns allegiance only to the sun. She becomes a primary planet,
with a year somewhat greater than ours and a day of doubtful
length. As regards the earth, lunar tides can no longer exist.
Moonlight and the moon would forsake us together ; and the new
condition of things, could it be realized, would be worse than the
first.

From the case here considered we may learn (1) that dogma-
tism in regard to the divine plan in the structure and constitution
of the universe is not always wise. Final causes may engage the
attention of thoughtful minds, but who shall set limits to their
extent or application ? " Touching the Almighty," said Elihu,
" we can not find him out." (2) The wisdom manifested in the
adaptations of material things around us transcends that of man's
highest efforts. Attempts to disparage the skill of Nature's handi-
work must end in failure and disappointment.

* The solution was first given by M. Liouville in 1842.

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 39

The failure of the theory proposed in the case of the earth and
moon is no less striking when applied to Mars, Jupiter, or any
other planet. In every instance the position of the satellite as-
sumed to afford permanent moonlight would be one of instability.
This striking fact renders the oversight of Laplace the more re-
markable. It may be stated, however, that by the arrangement
of several moons about the same planet almost, if not entirely,
perpetual moonlight might be possible. The system of Jupiter
and his moons furnishes a clear illustration.

In conclusion, we have seen, then, that where one of the great-
est mathematicians of all time suggested a change — a so-called
improvement in the system of the world — the modification would
have left us without tides, or, worse still, the earth in the system
proposed would have lost control of her satellite, and we would
not only have been deprived of moonlight, but also of the moon
itself.

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.

BY CHARLES M. LUNGEEN.
II.

facility with which a high temperature may be obtained
- with electricity, and the heat controlled and located just
where it is wanted, makes this agent peculiarly well adapted to
the heating of metals for welding and forging purposes. This
was early recognized by Prof. Elihu Thomson, to whom the de-
velopment of the art is chiefly due, and who has devised a great
variety of apparatus capable of performing all classes of work,
from the simple welding of two wires to the making of large and
complicated joints.

The principle involved is very simple. If a current be passed
through a rod or wire, heat will be developed in it if the current
be of sufficient volume. If this circuit, instead of being formed
of a continuous conductor, be a broken one, such as would be
furnished by two rods whose ends abut, the heat will be developed
first at the surface of contact, as this is the point of greatest re-
sistance, and then spread along the rods. And if, while the rods
are in a heated condition, they be pressed together, they will be-
come strongly united and form a perfect joint. On account of
the radiation of heat from the surface and the cooling effect of the
air, the rods become hotter at the center than at the surface, which
is the reverse of what happens with a forge-heated bar, where the
heating begins at the outside and gradually extends to the inte-
rior. This feature of the electric welding process has an impor-
tant advantage in producing a firmer and more perfect joint, and

4o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MO N'T ELY.

in diminishing the formation of surface scale. Tests show that
the electric weld is much stronger than that made in the ordi-
nary way in a forge, and, indeed, is in some cases stronger than
other parts of the bar.

The machines designed by Prof. Thomson for carrying out
this method of welding are extremely simple, the mechanical
part consisting essentially of on© or more pairs of clamps to hold
the pieces to be united, and means for pressing them together
while in a heated condition. In operating the machines the cur-
rent is turned on by the workman by means of a switch ; but
Prof. Thomson has taken advantage of the movement of the
pieces toward each other while the weld is being made to break
the circuit, thus rendering the operation automatic and insuring
the equal heating of the welded pieces. In machines for wire and
small rod the welded wires and rods are pressed together by means
of springs, but in those for larger work the necessary pressure
is applied by hydraulic apparatus. The necessity for this will
be appreciated when it is stated that the pressure requisite for
steel is 1,800 pounds to the square inch, that for iron 1,200 pounds,
and for copper 600 pounds.

Electrically the apparatus is as simple as it is mechanically.
The alternating current, which has shown itself so flexible in the
hands of the engineer in other departments of electrical work, is
here called into requisition. Through the medium of converters
the high potential machine current is transformed into others of
great volume and low voltage suitable for this class of work.
Currents of this character are rendered necessary by reason of the
fact that all metals are very good conductors of electricity, and
can therefore be heated only by currents of great amount. These
currents range, in fact, from a few hundred amperes to eight and
ten thousand. The voltage, however, is very low, rarely being
more than four or five volts, and in large and heavy work some-
times not more than a single volt. On account of this very low
electrical pressure all danger from the current is eliminated and
the apparatus may be handled with the same freedom as any ordi-
nary metal- working machine. In the distribution of the electrical
appliances the current is usually generated by a machine conven-
iently located with reference to the source of power, and the cur-
rent carried by wires to the welders, where the transformation
takes place, each welder being provided with its own converter,
proportioned so as to supply the character of current best suited to
the special work of the machine. The current is under perfect con-
trol by means of regulating devices operated by the workman, the
usual device employed being a reactive coil. The range of work
possible with this method of welding is very great. It not only
may be used in forming all ordinary welds with iron and steel, but

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.

has been found capable of welding metals which have heretofore
resisted all attempts to unite them direct, and which have there-
fore had to be brazed or soldered. Wrought iron, copper, brass,

silver, platinum, gold, aluminum, and even cast iron may not
only be welded together, but may also be welded to one another
in many different combinations. In addition to welding, all sorts
of brazing may be done by this method, as the same heat which

VOL. XLIV.-

42

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

will soften a metal sufficiently to allow it to be welded will, of
course, render the various solders fluid.

The process is, moreover, on account of the extreme rapidity
with which welds may be made, and the ability to concentrate all
the heat at the point of union, a very economical one. Practical
commercial work has shown that the cost of the coal burned
under the boiler to produce the electricity is just about that of the
coal used in a forge to do the work in the old way, and that the
saving in time, and hence labor cost, is clear gain, to say nothing
of the cleanliness of the process, the freedom from deleterious ma-
terials in contact with the metal, such as sulphur and ash, and
the advantage of having the work always in clear view. How
great the saving in time is may be appreciated by the following
statement of actual work vouched for by Mr. Frederick P. Royce
and cited in a paper read by him before the National Association
of Carriage Builders :

Axle Welding.

1" round axle requires 25 horse power for 45 seconds.
1"

u
u

2"
2

square "

" 30 " "

48

'

:" round "

" 35 " "

60

:" square "

" ^Q U U

70

i

round "

" 75 "

95

i

square "

" 90 " "

100

Tire Welding.

1" X A tire

requires 11 horse power for 15 seconds.

H" x F "

" 23 " '

< 25

<

1JL" V i" "
1Z /S 8

" 23 " '

' 30

i

if' x i" "

" 23 " '

' 40

i

2" \S 1 * it
s^ ~2

" 29 " '

' 55

i

2" X i" "

" 42 " ' ' 62 '

The process, though only introduced into commercial work in
1888, has gone largely into use, and electric welders now form a
part of the regular equipment of the carriage and bicycle factory,
the boiler and tool shop, the wire mill, the yard of the ship-
builder, and the thousand and one establishments which have to
do with the working and shaping of metals. It has been applied
with marked success to the joining of the parts of railway frogs,
of chairs to rails, and other heavy work, and in ordnance work,
to the manufacture of shell and shrapnel. One of the most novel
uses to which the process has been put is now to be seen in Boston
on a section of the West End street railroad. This is the welding
of the ends of the rails together without removing them from
their places in the track, the object being to render the line of
rails efficient return conductors for the current used with the
trolley cars. To accomplish this the necessary apparatus is
mounted upon a car provided with driving motors to enable it to

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 43

be moved along the track as the work proceeds. The current to
supply both the motors and the converters is taken from the line
wire by the ordinary trolley arm. In making the weld the earth
is removed from about the joint, clamps applied, and the current
sent through the rail ends until these are brought to a welding
heat.

Another method of utilizing the electric current in the work-
ing of metals shown by the Thomson Company is due to M. de

FIG. 9.— TIRE WELDER.

Meritens, a well-known French inventor and constructor of dyna-
mos. This consists in forming an arc between the object to be
heated and a movable electrode carried in the hand of the opera-
tor. In this case the work forms one terminal of the electric cir-
cuit and the hand tool the other. This hand tool consists simply
of a stick of ordinary arc-light carbon mounted in a suitable
holder, and connected with the circuit by a flexible cable.

The workman is by this simple device provided with a tool of
remarkable range and flexibility. He has at his command the
enormous temperature of the electric arc, yet in such a form that
he can vary it from the heat of a taper to full intensity, and reach
with it parts of his work that would otherwise be inaccessible.

44 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is chiefly used at present in forming the longitudinal seams of
tubes and vessels, and in filling in blow holes and other imper-
fections in castings. In this latter operation additional pieces of
metal are fused into the openings, rendering the castings as sound
and good as though they had come from the mold in perfect con-
dition.

A method of using the electric current, substantially the same
as that of Thomson, is employed by Mr. George D. Burton, and
shown in operation at the exhibition by the Electrical Forging
Company. Mr. Burton's object is not, however, to heat the metal
simply at the line of juncture and then complete the union of
the parts in one operation, but to heat a piece of metal either
throughout its entire length or any particular part, and then
forge it into shape by the hammer or special machines designed
to produce particular forms. He uses, as in the Thomson appa-
ratus, the alternating current transformed to one of great volume
and low voltage ; but instead of employing a number of converters,
each adapted to the special work in hand, he makes one large one
suffice, tapping this at as many points as desired. The holding
device for the bars to be heated consists merely of a massive pair
of copper clamps easily manipulated by the workman, and from
which the work may be quickly transferred to the anvil or shap-
ing machine.

The economy in time of electric heating is very strikingly
shown where long bars and rods are heated. For instance, a
round bar of tool steel, seven eighths of an inch in diameter and
eleven inches long between the clamps of the machine, may be
brought to a welding heat in one minute by the expenditure of
thirty-two horse power. A bar of the same material, half an inch
in diameter and five inches long, requires but twenty-seven and a
half horse power for half a minute ; while one an inch square and
twelve inches long is raised to a white heat by thirty-six horse
power in two minutes and a half. Generally speaking, the elec-
tric heating may be done in a tenth of the time required by the
forge or furnace, and the power required is between three and
four horse power per cubic inch of metal heated. The feature of
electric heating already noticed of a bar becoming more highly
heated at the center than at the surface when exposed freely to
the air, is shown in a very convincing manner at this exhibit by
fusing the core of an inch bar without it losing its shape. A
consequence of this internal heating of a bar is the holding of its
heat much longer than a forge-heated one, permitting of forging
operations with one heat which would require two or three by
the old method.

One of the most striking things in the exhibition — remarkable
on account of being so entirely out of harmony with all our ideas

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 45

of the conditions under which we expect to see heat generated — is
the apparatus to be seen in this exhibit which may be appropri-
ately termed the " water-pail forge/' This consists of an ordinary
wooden pail filled with water into which dips a metal plate con-
nected with one terminal of the electric circuit. The other termi-
nal is attached to a pair of blacksmith's tongs, with which the op-
erator picks up and holds the piece of metal to be heated. Imme-
diately upon his plunging this into the water the liquid begins to
sputter and the metal to glow, until in a few seconds it is brought
to a welding heat and is then speedily melted. The heating is
so rapid that neither the water nor the metal a few inches away
are more than slightly warmed. This curious phenomenon appears
to be due to the localization of the resistance of the circuit at the
surface of the heated metal by the interposition of a layer of hy-
drogen between the metal and the liquid. This is the explanation
offered by two Belgian engineers who recently brought out the
process abroad with apparently no knowledge of its prior use in
this country. In their apparatus they used a glass jar lined with
lead which formed the positive pole. The water was acidulated
to render it conducting. When the circuit is completed by the
immersion of the metal to be heated the current decomposes the
liquid, the oxygen going to the lead plate and the hydrogen to the
iron or other immersed metal and preventing any direct contact
of the metal and the liquid. As hydrogen is a very poor conductor
of electricity, the resistance would then be localized at the surface
of the metal plate, with the result of heat being rapidly developed
at this point. An American investigator, Mr. Jules Neher, who
has experimented with the process, regards the heating as being
due to the formation of an arc between the heated metal and the
liquid, as he has observed that the heating does not take place if
the metal be immersed before the current is turned on, the energy
of the current then being spent in the electrolysis of the liquid.
His explanation is that immediately the metal touches the liquid
hydrogen begins to be liberated and, interposing itself between
the metal and the liquid, draws an arc in the act of pushing the
two asunder. This arc formed under water quickly raises the
metal to a high temperature. Whatever the precise explanation,
it certainly is a most astonishing thing to see pieces of iron and
steel glowing at a white heat and running away in melted glob-
ules while surrounded by water. The capabilities of the appara-
tus would appear to be almost unlimited, and it is not too much
to say that it is destined to find wide application in the arts. The
operator has at his command the practically unlimited energy of
electricity, and should be able to reach temperatures with it here-
tofore unattainable. The Belgian experimenters are reported to
have succeeded in fusing carbon, and it has been suggested that

46

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is within the range of possibility that we may in this way reach
the solution of the problem of the artificial production of dia-
monds.

Another and very different use of the heating power of the
electric current is its application to cooking and house heating.
Attempts have been made for some years now to adapt the cur-
rent to these purposes, and what has been accomplished in this

FIG. 10. — AN ELECTRIC KITCHEN.

direction is to be seen at the exposition. After considerable ex-
perimenting the final form which has been given to the appa-
ratus for such use as hot plates, broilers, and water heaters is
that of a wire imbedded in enamel such as is at present used
upon kitchen utensils. The wire most commonly employed is
German silver, though in some cases platinum has been used. In
applying this construction to a flatiron, for instance, the base of

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 47

the iron is made in the form of a shallow tray into which the
enamel is poured. The wire in the shape of a zigzag forms a flat
coil completely surrounded by this insulating compound. A hot
plate suitable for heating a kettle of water or baking griddle cakes
is made in the same way, and a grid or frame with gutter-shaped
bars filled in with the enamel serves as an oven heater, a sufficient
number of these grids being disposed at various parts of the oven.
Operations such as the broiling of steak are performed on a modi-
fied form of broiler in which the ordinary wires give place to
narrow inverted U-shaped bars. The heating wires are carried
through the hollow space of these bars and imbedded in enamel.
For the heating of water in special vessels, such as the ordinary
kitchen boiler, the vessel is made with a bottom in the form of a
hot plate. In all the utensils shown at the exhibition the enamel
used is of the ordinary gray variety which requires firing, but an
enamel for this purpose has been introduced in England which
needs no baking. When it comes to heating either by direct
radiation or through the medium of hot air, the form finally
adopted is that of a coil of wire wound over a pottery or porce-
lain center and partially inclosed in an iron case. For car warm-
ing, heaters are placed under the seats, and located so that they
can radiate directly into the car, wire guards being placed in
front of them to protect the clothing of passengers. Such heaters
have been introduced quite extensively into trolley cars, and are
said to have been found economical when everything is taken

FIG. 11. — ELECTRIC HOT PLATE. 9

into consideration. They require no attention, and take up no
room which would otherwise be occupied by passengers, both
items of economic advantage in such a use. Heaters designed
to take the place of the hot-air furnace are constructed in the
same general manner as those for car use. The plan is to place
a large primary heater in the cold-air box of the ordinary fur-
nace, and then subsidiary heaters just inside the grating of
registers, by means of which additional heat may be obtained
when the main heater is insufficient. All classes of apparatus
are made to be used with either an alternating or continuous cur-

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rent, and adapted to be attached directly to the ordinary electric
supply circuits.

Ideal this method of cooking and heating certainly is, and
ideal it is likely to remain. There are many things electricity
can do — many things it is doing which were without the bounds
of our expectation of even yesterday — but supplying heat in

economic contrast with coal
and gas for the ordinary op-
erations of the household is
not one of them. This is, of
course, upon the condition
that the current is generated
by the combustion of fuel.
In situations in which the
current is produced by water
power, and in which fuel is
scarce and dear, the unit of
heat furnished by electricity
may very well bear compari-
son with that by direct com-
bustion; but that you can
not start with combustion,
suffer the tremendous loss of
the steam engine, the various
losses of the electrical appa-
ratus, pay a profit to the elec-
tric supply company, and still
compete in point of economy
with the primary process of
combustion, would seem to
be a proposition too clear to
need demonstration. Looked
at from the point of view of
percentages, the steam engine
makes a return of but ten
per cent of the heat energy
of the fuel, the dynamo can
hardly be depended upon in
practice for more than ninety
per cent, and the converter,

when this is used, may be counted to absorb ten per cent of the
energy delivered to it. This leaves in the one case but nine per
cent and in the other a little over eight per cent of the original
energy at the disposal of the consumer. Some of this must in-
evitably be lost in the final heating operation, for, though the ap-
paratus be designed never so well, it can not have an efficiency

FIG. 12. — ELECTRIC COIL HEATER.

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 49

of a hundred per cent. The consi?.mer, therefore, can have in an
available form not more than ten per cent and probably not over
seven per cent of the heat in the fuel with which the cycle of
operations started. This is an efficiency much below that obtain-
able from the direct combustion of the fuel by even the most
wasteful methods, and at no price at which electrical energy can
be furnished could the two forms of heating be brought on the
plane of economic equality. A direct comparison of the actual
number of heat units (pound-degree Fahr.) present in each in-
stance will show with perhaps greater clearness the economic re-
lations of the two methods of heating. A horse power of elec-
trical energy is equivalent to 2,565 heat units per hour. A pound
of coal contains 13,000 heat units, and costs, with coal at five dol-
lars per ton of 2,000 pounds, a quarter of a cent. If we give to
the coal an efficiency of but ten per cent, it will require two
pounds to equal the available heating power of the electrical
horse power, allowing that all the heat in the latter case is-
utilized. This will cost the user half a cent, and making due
allowance for the collateral expenses of coal as a fuel, such as
kindling, removal of ashes, and cost of handling, it is very evi-
dent that electricity can not hope to offer any economical com-
petition. The commercial promoters of electrical heating count
upon a charge to the consumer of five cents per horse power per
hour for cooking purposes, and a cent and a half for heating pur-
poses. This is very much under the figures at wnich electric
power is now being furnished for lighting purposes — the charge
for this being at the rate of from twelve to fifteen cents per horse
power-hour — but it is proposed to make the same discrimination
between light and heat that the gas companies have instituted.
At the lower figure electric heating is nearly three times, and at
the higher nearly ten times, as expensive as that by coal, allot-
ting to coal the above very low duty. But coal has no such low
efficiency. The radiant heat from hard coal is fully twenty-five
per cent of the total heat generated, and of this fully one half is
utilized in a grate fire, which is the most wasteful of the heating
devices in use. In the best forms of grates which have been de-
vised, in which the surplus heat is used to warm the air supply
of the room, as much as thirty-five per cent of the heat may be
made available, while in close stoves of the best patterns the effi-
ciency will not fall below seventy per cent.

With gas the comparison is of course much more favorable, as
here the cost of a unit of heat is much greater than in the case of
coal. Illuminating gas has a heating value of six hundred and
fifty to eight hundred heat units per foot, according to the qual-
ity of the gas. At the lower figures it requires a trifle under
four feet to equal the heat value of an electrical horse power.

50 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Gas may be counted upon for a duty of seventy-five per cent ; so
that the amount necessary to do the heating work of the electri-
cal horse power will be five and a third feet. This, with gas at a
dollar and a half per thousand will cost *078 of a cent, and with gas
at a dollar a thousand — a not uncommon price at present in the
United States — will cost but little more than half a cent. For
cooking purposes the two methods of heating are on an equality in
the matter of ease of manipulation, absence of collateral expenses,
and limitation of the use of the fuel to the exact time required to
perform the operation in hand. Their value to the householder is,
therefore, in direct ratio to their cost. Gas clearly has the advan-
tage of being from five to ten times the cheaper source of heat,
an advantage so great as to make its supremacy secure. With
the cheaper forms of fuel gas which have grown up, and will
doubtless come into larger and larger use as the lighting field of
gas dwindles, electricity can have even less chance of competing.
This method of heating will doubtless find a field of its own, in
which its use will be determined by other conditions than those
of economy, but it can never hope to take over to itself any con-
siderable part of the heating domain, so long as fuel remains
at anything like the present prices.

The Centennial left us in the telephone a new method of com-
munication, which in the time since then has grown into one of
the necessities of business life. The Columbian will leave us, in
the telautograph of Prof. Elisha Gray, another method of commu-
nication which promises to rival the telephone in utility. This
new method is not exclusive of the earlier one, but rather supple-
mentary to it. The telephone has endowed us with the power of
talking at a distance ; the telautograph will confer upon us the
ability to write in the same way. It supplies an essential feature
lacking in the telephone — a record — and hence becomes available
for many uses for which the telephone is unfitted. Mistakes so
liable with speech transmission are here impossible, as the receiv-
ing instrument reproduces faithfully all the movements of the
transmitting pencil, and only a blunder upon the part of the send-
ing operator can cause misunderstanding or confusion. With
telautograph exchanges established in cities after the manner of
those of the telephone, it will be possible for subscribers to do by
means of it much of the correspondence now carried on by mail ;
and when the system is extended to provide communication be-
tween cities, the business man will have at his disposal a method
of letter transmission incomparably more swift than the most
rapid of fast mails. The extent to which such a system may be
used in substitution of mail service will, of course, depend upon
the expense attending it, and as this must always be greatly in

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR. 51

excess of letter carriage, it can apply only in cases in which im-
portant interests are involved and dispatch is of moment. Such
instances are, however, growing increasingly frequent in the
modern business world, so that the telautograph, if it prove as
successful in actual commercial work as it has in experimental
tests, will not lack for a large and profitable field.

The attempts to realize facsimile transmission go back almost
to the beginning of telegraphy. As early as 1846 Alexander Bain
attempted such reproduction by means of trailing contacts pass-
ing over the face of metallic letters at the transmitting end of the
circuit, and like contacts sweeping over a chemically prepared
paper at the receiving end. When the contacts were on the faces
of the letters a current was sent to line ; and these current im-
pulses, decomposing the chemical preparation of the receiving
paper, made brown or blue marks, according to the nature of the
chemical solution, which reproduced in broken outline the origi-
nal letters. This method of operation was ten years later much
improved by Caselli, who transcribed the message or sketch to be
sent on a metallic-faced paper, and caused a stylus actuated by a
pendulum to traverse in succession all parts of the design. A
similar stylus reproduced the drawing or writing on chemically
prepared paper at the receiving end. Many attempts have been
made by subsequent inventors to adapt this method of transmis-
sion to commercial work, but without success. All systems of
this kind, it will be observed, depend upon the establishment of
exact synchronism between the transmitting and receiving instru-
ments, and this is a condition very difficult to realize in practice.
Moreover, the message must first be written either in a special
ink or on a special paper, and afterward transmitted, which ren-
ders the process slow and necessitates expert knowledge to oper-
ate it.

The telautographic method proceeds upon entirely different
lines. In this the movement of the transmitting pencil in the
hand of the operator causes electrical impulses to be sent over
the line, which impulses, through the medium of appropriate
mechanism, act upon the receiving pen and cause it to duplicate
the movement of the sending one. The possibility of doing this
depends upon the geometric principle that the movement of a
point in describing a plane curve, no matter how intricate, may
be resolved into two rectilinear movements at right angles to
each other. In order, therefore, to have the pen at the receiving
end of the line follow all the motions of the transmitting one, it
is only necessary to resolve the movement of this latter into its
right line components and reproduce them at the further end. A
point situated at the focus of these lines of movement will then
describe the exact motions of the original one. Simple as this

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

conception is, it has been found by no means an easy one to* real-
ize in practice. The first one to attempt the application of this
principle to autographic transmission appears to have been Mr.
E. A. Cowper. In his apparatus, constructed in 1874, the receiv-
ing pen was mounted upon a light armature located between the
poles of two electro-magnets placed at right angles to each other.
These magnets were included in separate line circuits, and when
energized by currents from the transmitting end of the line, at-
tracted the pen armature, causing it to describe a line or curve
which was at every instant the resultant of the two right-angled
magnetic attractions.

These magnetic attractions were varied in exact accordance
with the movements of the transmitting pen by augmenting and
diminishing the strength of the current flowing through the mag-
net coils, and this variation of current strength was in turn ac-
complished by causing contacts attached to the transmitting pen
to pass over the terminals of resistance coils and successively cut
out or introduce resistance in the line circuits. On account of
the very limited movements which could be given to both the
transmitting and receiving pens, the writing had to be done upon

a strip of paper which
was moved under the
pen. The writing with
the transmitting pen was
done through a square
hole about an inch on a
side, and the characters
had therefore to be made
practically one over the
other. There was thus
but little opportunity for
the operator to follow
the work and see clearly
what he was doing, and

only an expert could make an intelligible writing. The details of
this method were subsequently much improved by two American
inventors, and the apparatus employed for a time in commercial
work; but the essential limitations of the method proved too
serious a handicap, and the system soon fell into disuse.

In taking the subject up experimentally Prof. Gray at first
used the method of a variable resistance, but he speedily aban-
doned it as impracticable, and adopted the step-by-step method of
operation, which he now uses. This cgnsists in causing the trans-
mitting pen to send to the line a succession of distinct electrical
impulses, the number of which is governed by the extent of the
pen's movement, which are employed, not in affecting the receiv-

FIG. 13. — TELAUTOOKAPH TRANSMITTER.

ELECTRICITY AT THE WORLD'S FAIR.

53

FIG. 14. — TELAUTOGRAPH EECEIVEB.

ing pen directly, but in controlling the mechanism which actuates
it. As the extent of movement of the pens is determined only
"by the number of electrical impulses, these may be given any
desired range, and it becomes possible to use the transmitting pen
with almost the same freedom as a pen or pencil in ordinary
writing, and to write in the same way — that is, in successive
lines extending across a page.

In the final form given to the instruments by Prof. Gray and
shown at the exposition the transmitter consists of a box provided
with a leaf upon which
the paper rests. The pa-
per is drawn continu-
ously from a roll, and
is shifted mechanically
from time to time by the
operator. The writing
pen consists of a pencil
lead mounted in a holder,
to the lower end of which
two silk threads are at-
tached. These threads
are at right angles to
each other, and lead from

the pencil to two drums, upon which they are wound in such a
manner as to cause the drums to rotate backward and forward
as the threads follow the movement of the pencil point. The
drums, therefore, move in exact accordance with the rectilin-
ear components of the pen's motion, and it is only necessary to
reproduce their motions at the other end to cause the receiving
pen to duplicate the movements of the transmitting one. In an
•earlier form of the transmitter each drum carried an arm, which
was swept by its movement over a series of radial electrical con-
tacts, and thus sent a succession of electrical impulses to line.
The friction of this moving arm was, however, found to be objec-
tionable, and this arrangement has therefore been replaced by a
magnetic device in which a toothed iron disk acting magnetically
upon a soft iron lever keeps this in vibration. This lever plays
between two contact points, and according as it is upon one or the
other of the contacts a positive or negative current impulse is sent
by a battery through the line circuit. These current impulses
of alternating polarity serve to operate at the receiver polarized
relays, which control by means of escapements drums similar to
those in the transmitter, which drums actuate the receiving pen.

This pen consists of a glass tube drawn to a capillary bore at
the end and supplied with a free-flowing ink from a reservoir by
means of a rubber tube. It is mounted upon and at the junction

54 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of two light aluminum arms, making a right angle with each
other. Each of these arms is attached to its operating drum by
means of a cord passing around the drum, so that the rotation of
this moves the arm to and fro in the direction of its length after
the manner of the ordinary bow drill. The drums are given a
tendency to rotate by a small electric motor located in the case of
the receiver, and as this rotation is controlled by the polarized
relays, which are in turn operated by the current impulses sent
out by the transmitting pen, it will be seen that the movement of
this latter determines that of the receiving pen, both in amount
and direction, and that hence the two pens must move in exact ac-

As written. As received.

FIG. 15. — SAMPLE WORK OF TELAUTOGRAPH.

cordance with each other. The mechanism of the receiving instru-
ment is at present a little intricate, and some of the operations to
be performed, as the lifting the pen from the paper, shifting the
paper, and reversing the motion of the operating drums, require
in the present construction two additional line wires, but these, it
is expected, can by contemplated improvements be dispensed with,
leaving only two line wires for the performance of all the necessary
operations. The system has so far been operated over a distance
of only thirteen miles; but from the character of the currents
used — distinct successive electric impulses — there would seem to
be no reason why it should not be capable of operation over as
long distances as the ordinary telegraphic instruments.

THE PESTALOZZIAN SYSTEM. 55

THE PESTALOZZIAN SYSTEM.

BY HON. GEOEGE S. BOUTWELL.

IN the May number of The Popular Science Monthly is an arti-
cle by Prof. W. W. Aber, entitled The Oswego State Normal
School, in which the writer claims for that institution the credit
of introducing and promulgating over the country the system of
teaching known as the Pestalozzian system.

Upon the statement made the Oswego School was founded in
1853, but upon ideas far away from the system of Pestalozzi, and
it was not until 1859 that " lessons on form, color, size, weight,
animals, plants, the human body, and moral instruction were
prominent."

As to moral instruction it may be said that there was never a
time when it was not prominent in the schools of Massachusetts,
with object lessons drawn from passing events. In 1859 or even
in 1853 nothing could have been gained in Massachusetts from
the system of Pestalozzi as to the wisdom or the method of teach-
ing morals in the public schools.

Physiology had been taught in the normal schools of the State
and by the aid of the manikin for nearly two decades. It had
been introduced and urged by Horace Mann, who disappeared
from the Massachusetts schools about the year 1842.

In the year 1859 there were four State normal schools in Mas-
sachusetts, three of which had been in existence for about twenty
years, and the junior was established in the year 1854.

In all these schools the art of teaching was taught according
to the system of Pestalozzi and by well-informed teachers and
professors, and with the knowledge that it was the system of Pes-
talozzi.

In the year 1856 Prof. Hermann Kriisi, who is credited in the
article with aiding in the introduction of the system at Oswego,
was employed by me in the Teachers' Institutes and Normal
Schools, and he continued in that service for about three months
in each year until 1860, inclusive. Of the other teachers and pro-
fessors who were employed in the Teachers' Institutes and Nor-
mal Schools in the fifties I may mention President Felton, of Har-
vard College, Agassiz, Guyot, Alpheus R. Crosby, George B.
Emerson, Lowell Mason, and William Russell, all of whom gave
lectures and illustrated the art of teaching on the system of Pes-
talozzi.

I recall examples of the art of teaching grammar, through the
aid of an object, given by Mr. Emerson, and I can not imagine
that he has been surpassed to this day.

Previous to the year 1859 the art of teaching according to the

5 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

system of Pestalozzi had been taught and the practice of the art
had been illustrated to thousands of students in the Normal
Schools and teachers in the Teachers' Institutes in the State of
Massachusetts.

Of the system of Pestalozzi everything was then known that
is now known, although the application of the system may have
been improved in these thirty years.

Much credit is due to Dr. Sheldon,, the founder of the Oswego
School, but it is manifest that in 1859 he was ignorant of the edu-
cational condition of the country, and consequently he sent across
the Atlantic for information which he could have obtained in New
England.

As to the system of Pestalozzi there was nothing new but the
system. The mode of teaching had been exhibited occasionally
and unsystematically through many long years. In my boyhood,
in the thirties, the scholars in a country village school were trained
in the science of astronomy by outdoor lessons in clear evenings
and with the aid of a celestial globe. In Morse's Geography, pub-
lished in the last century and prepared by the father of the in-
ventor of the telegraph, physical geography is made the primary
fact of the study, thus anticipating Guyot, whose system was
based on the teachings of Pestalozzi.

The opening questions of Colburn's Mental Arithmetic, " How
many thumbs have you on your right hand ? How many on your
left hand ? How many on both hands together ? " contain and
•express the rudimental truths of the Pestalozzian system.

In one particular Pestalozzi stands with Bacon: Pestalozzi
did not discover a new method of teaching, Bacon did not dis-
cover a new method of reasoning. Each systematized a desultory
but long-existing practice.

GEEAT hopes are entertained by manufacturers from M. Cbardonnet's method
of making silk from wood-pulp, which has been set in operation at Besancon,
France. The pulp, having been carefully dried, is treated for transformation
into collodion, similar to that which is used in photography. This collodion,
which is sticky and viscous, is inclosed in a stiff receptacle, furnished with a
filter in the lower end. An air-pump sends compressed air into the receptacle,
by the pressure of which the collodion is passed through the filter into a horizon-
tal tube furnished with three hundred cocks, the spouts of which are made of
glass and pierced with a small hole of the diameter of the thread of a cocoon as it
is spun by the silkworm. The collodion issues through these holes, when the
cocks are opened, in threads of extreme delicacy, of which it takes six to make
one of the consistence required in weaving. This thread is hardened, previous to
winding, by water, which takes up the ether and alcohol of the collodion, when
it becomes as resisting and brilliant as ordinary silk. It is made slow of combus-
tion by treating with ammonia.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 57
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN.

Br HENRY LINCOLN CLAPP.

AT a recent meeting of prominent educators in Boston to con-
sider means of promoting work in elementary science, a
well-known professor of science said that there was danger that
college professors would make out a scheme for teaching science
and impose it upon the elementary schools ; that the work was
likely to be begun at the wrong end.

This led another member to say that not a little danger was
to be apprehended from the scientists themselves, because many
of them taught as if the scientific method demanded that they
should begin with the ultimate, undecomposable constituents of
things. There was danger that they would hold to their own
conceptions of elements and ignore the child's elements. There
was a difference of opinion among their pupils, who became teach-
ers, as to what elementary science meant. Not a few held that
science was classified knowledge and but little else, and that no
lesson could be a science lesson unless the objects studied were
selected in a natural sequence. He added that children are mid-
way between profundities and sublimities, that they know no
more about nitrogen than about ether in stellar space, and that
they should neither be dragged down nor up to satisfy the de-
mands of some one's so-called scientific method. They have their
own starting points, and those should be taken by the teacher.

To this the professor heartily agreed, as did all the others who
openly expressed an opinion. Likewise, many other teachers of
science readily agree with the points named, when they simply
talk about them, but practically deny them in their teaching, for
a considerable time at least. It is noticeable that the systematic
plans, which they put on paper easily enough at the outset, under-
go much modification in course of time as they work with large
classes of children. In some unaccountable way the laboratory
methods with which they are acquainted prove disappointing
when tried with children.

The method of beginning to teach science with ultimate unde-
composable elements, and "building up" step by step, with com-
plete sequences and fine inferences, exhibits one phase of science
work, especially that done in scientific schools by adult students.
In the case of many teachers it seems to furnish all the fascina-
tions and advantages of a thoroughly logical method, and to be in
perfect consonance with the educational principle, " From the
known to the unknown " ; but there seems to be some unreason-
able bias or ignorance of facts in the interpretation of the prin-
ciple as applicable to children. This interpretation is apparently

VOL. XLIV. 5

5 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

based on the assumption that the known is simple rather than
complex, is in parts rather than in wholes, and that the child's
knowledge must of necessity be built up constructively or syn-
thetically. There is some truth in this interpretation, but, fol-
lowed out with children as far as we too often see it, it involves
difficulties and errors of considerable magnitude. In this case, as
in others, excessive generalization is dangerous.

Children's natural sequences are from wholes to parts, from
the complex to the simple, from the superficial to what lies under-
neath, from the indefinitely known to the more definitely known,
and the mental processes involved are analytical, especially in the
early part of their school days. In this case, also, excessive gen-
eralization is dangerous. Undoubtedly, children acquire some
knowledge synthetically, and as they approach adult life their
powers of analysis and synthesis are increased by more frequent
use, and no system or method that is excessive in either direction
can be rightfully called scientific.

There is a time appropriate for working toward the profound
and the sublime, but the start is fraught with danger. No
method of teaching whose beginning is not definitely known can
be called thoroughly scientific. So far as it fails to interest chil-
dren, to make them use their own senses in the best manner, to
make them think best in their own way, and to develop them
best by means of their own activities, so far it fails to be sci-
entific. If it succeeds only by reason of the teacher's great
knowledge of the materials to be studied in a special line of
work, or his "magnetism" or holding power, rather than by
reason of the natural attractiveness of the things studied and
the unobtrusive but skillful directive power of the teacher, it is
unscientific. If it does not start independent motive powers, it is
unscientific. The magnet seems to infuse life into iron filings,
when placed near them, but when it is withdrawn they lie inert.
Agassiz's method, as carried out by him, started many independ-
ent motive powers which are now vigorously at work throughout
our land.

Among educational experts there is a difference of opinion as
to where the best starting point is in teaching children element-
ary science. Dr. Mary P. Jacobi would use the flower in begin-
ning to teach children botany, because it is the most attractive,
makes the largest impression upon the senses, is easy of appre-
hension, and leads to the appreciation of specific differences.
These are valid reasons, and might consistently be held by all
who believe in that natural mode of working which embodies
what the child likes, as clearly indicated by the history of the
race, and what will develop his faculties in the happiest and most
effective manner, such a mode as gave us Agassiz and Darwin.

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 59

Miss Youmans would begin with the leaf, on the assumption
that it is simpler than the flower, and in tracing its scientific rela-
tions deeper intellectual pleasure is received.

The evolution of leaves into flowers is at the same time pro-
found and sublime, outside of children's experiences and beyond
their range of thought. Its teaching at the beginning results in
cramming, however perfectly it may satisfy the demands of a
philosophical but artificial system. Moreover, beginning with
roots, as so many systematic teachers have done, and following
with stem, leaves, flowers, and ending with fruits as the ultimate
work of the plant, although logical to adults, full of regular
sequences, and scientific from one standpoint, is unscientific from
another. Children do not start to work with plants in that way,
unless they are obliged to, but in a way diametrically opposite —
attractive flowers and fruits first and unattractive roots last. It
is certainly natural, although it may be heathenish and show
their natural depravity for them to do so, but to scientific reform-
ers they furnish an extensive field for missionary work in improv-
ing on the imperfect works of the Creator.

The uncertainty of where to begin and what to do in element-
ary science work during the last decade has resulted in much
experimentation on the part of superintendents of schools, who
are gradually feeling their way down to where the children are.
They have entered on the work with unbiased minds, and, while
laying no claims to scientific methods in conducting it, have
thrown upon the subject valuable side-lights, which, if summa-
rized and classified at a later day, will demonstrate what the sci-
entific method with children must have for a basis.

In this work the scientific schools have played a very unimpor-
tant part. They are sending out graduates who do not know the
principles of education, who have had but little if any experience
with children in the schoolroom. Their efforts for a considerable
time are nugatory, to say the least, if not mischievous, and tend
to bring science work into disrepute and to make it seem impos-
sible to any but specialists. Not only do they grope around when
they attempt to teach the large classes inevitable in a city school,
but the professors themselves have but little if any advantage
when they "take hold." The methods and results of work in
scientific schools are wholly admirable in the fields which such
schools have thoroughly and honorably won ; but as yet their
methods have not been made suitable for different fields lower
down. The methods of cultivating the hill country are in many
respects unsuitable for the lowlands. The child's way of working
is, or should be, different from the adult's. Many instructive
illustrations of questionable methods may be given and added to
indefinitely.

6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Not long ago one of the distinguished botanists of this coun-
try put into the hands of his pupils a sixteen-page syllabus con-
taining full outlines of lectures on the seed — origin, structure, and
uses ; the stem and root ; the leaf — structure and function ; the
flower — form and use ; the fruit — kinds and functions ; ferns, moss-
es, algse, and fungi. The whole was covered in six lectures, and
the published account bore the title Beginnings in Botany. If
the scientific method, or any other, will insure such a work being
well done, starting with no knowledge of the subject on the stu-
dent's part, it has much to commend it to the attention of teachers
of science.

Another scientist, who claims to teach by the " natural meth-
od/' advocates a course of study on animals in the primary
schools, which includes the study of the following subjects to be
taken up in the order given : starfish, sea urchin, and the same
compared ; the earthworm ; a bivalve shell, clam shell, oyster
shell, and the same compared ; snail and snail shell ; classification
of shells ; lobster, crab, and the same compared ; habits of crabs ;
and an excellent line of insects.

The attempt here made to select subjects in a natural (?) se-
quence is attended with some drawbacks. Away from the sea-
coast all of the material named, except insects, would have to be
brought from a greater or less distance, and, being out of the range
of the children's common field of observation, would necessitate
more or less cramming. Things seen only in the schoolroom do
not make the deepest impressions. An extensive use of imported
material is directly opposed to Agassiz's injunction to use the
material nearest at hand.

Moreover, it is worth while to remember that materials and
methods which are serviceable enough in teaching adults often
become forced and mechanical in teaching children. It should
not be taken for granted that the teacher's sequences, laboriously
studied out or taken from some book, are the pupil's sequences,
or that he can assimilate them. Prof. McMillan, of the Univer-
sity of Minnesota, says : " No mistake could be greater than to
suppose that the sequence most logical for the trained intellect is
necessarily the best method of presentation to the novice. In our
zeal to eliminate evils of systematic botany we are prone to intro-
duce evils of anatomical botany no less great and equally to be
avoided." So in our efforts to prevent pupils from being over-
whelmed with information " away over their heads " and almost
entirely the product of the adult mind, we have taken on the
shackles of a rigid system or scientific method, also the product
of the adult mind for the adult mind, and between the two meth-
ods the children have generally come to the ground.

One of the best illustrations of the uncertainty that exists as

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 61

to the best materials and methods to be used in teaching element-
ary science may be found in the public schools of Boston. About
a dozen years ago a course in science for elementary schools was
formulated and an attempt made to carry it out. The systematic
study of animals was begun in the lowest grammar grade, fourth
year in the elementary course, and the specimens to be studied in
order were thus laid down : " Sponge and coral compared ; star-
fish and sea urchin (dried specimens) examined and compared ;
oyster, clam, and snail compared ; shells of different forms com-
pared." The lessons that preceded the study of the objects named
were information lessons on "grass-eaters, flesh-eaters; animals
with hoofs, claws, wings ; land animals, water animals, etc." Sys-
tematic mineralogy, without any previous work on minerals, was
begun in the sixth grade on these mineral substances : " (1) met-
als that are native minerals (gold, silver, copper) ; (2) metals
from ores (lead, zinc, tin, iron) ; (3) non-metals (sulphur, carbon) ;
(4) gases (oxygen, hydrogen) ; compounds : iron rust, carbonic-
acid gas."

This course, of which parts have been given as illustrations,
was the best product of one of the leading spirits in science work,
aided by the advice of teachers of science in the scientific schools
of that time. It is questionable whether the scientific schools of
to-day can formulate a better course for children. The method
employed to carry out the course satisfied the demands of those
who were regarded as experts in science work as to elements,
natural sequences, synthesis, and system ; but although the work
was pushed vigorously in the beginning, it soon began to stick,
and finally failed altogether. Of course, scientists called the work
scientific, and teachers who were simply literary thought it dis-
creet not to question that decision ; but it is evident now that a
very important scientific element was lacking — namely, the science
of success, knowing how to succeed ; and that lack resulted from
a failure to recognize the child's standpoint.

It is claimed by teachers of science now that the reason why
such a course in natural science can not be carried out successfully
is the lack of specialists to teach in every class the particular sub-
jects named by the method used in the scientific schools. Doubt-
less an adequate supply of specialists would suffice to force the
study to an apparently successful result ; but the necessity for the
application of so much force to a study that has the term " natu-
ral " so frequently applied to it should make us pause and con-
sider whether the resistance to be overcome is not caused by some
artificiality into which we have unconsciously drifted. Natural
education is unconsciously easy, and difficulties increase as it be-
comes artificial. " The lines of least resistance " should not be
overlooked in any educational plan.

6 z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The former course in science in the Boston schools having
failed, a somewhat radical change of base in such work has re-
cently been made. In the first place, the term " elementary sci-
ence " is not approved by many teachers who adhere to the dic-
tionary meaning of the term. They say that no real science work
can be done in elementary schools, and will not admit that ele-
mentary science means simple knowing, when used to designate
children's acquisitions of knowledge at first hand, but insist on
limiting the term to the scientist's elements and organized knowl-
edge. They give an unscientific excuse for failing to teach sci-
ence in a natural and successful manner. On the whole, " ob-
servation lessons" is an acceptable term to use in designating
children's work with natural objects. If a mere name be made a
stumbling block, it had better be changed at once.

Now, the course in the Boston schools requires " observation
lessons " on the " structure and habits of familiar and typical
articulates and vertebrates," including the frog, fish, robin, hawk,
hen, duck, cat, dog, pig, rabbit, horse, and cow, in the fifth grade.
In the sixth grade the work is continued by observation lessons
on "typical and familiar specimens of radiates and mollusks
(sponge, coral, starfish, oyster, snail, jellyfish)," and ends with
observation (?) lessons on the elephant, whale, seal, cochineal, and
ostrich.

The study of minerals is begun in the sixth grade, as before,
but the materials used are common rocks, instead of native min-
erals and chemical elements, which are studied in the ninth grade.

In this radical change from the former course there is an evi-
dent intention to depart from the so-called scientific standpoint
and approach the child's point of departure ; but those inevitable
errors have been made that always attend the laying out of courses
on paper before working them out carefully with many large
classes of children.

It is manifest that there can be no proper observation lessons
— not to mention what commonly pass for science lessons — on the
whale, the seal, the ostrich, etc., in an ordinary city grammar
school. The same may be said of the frog, the hawk, the pig, the
cow, etc. Such things can not be brought into the schoolroom
with compensating advantages. If pictures are made a substi-
tute, the work with them deserves no better designation than in-
formation lessons, and speedily degenerates into first-class cram-
ming.

Concessions to the scientists may be seen in the requirements
in regard to the structure and classification of articulates and ver-
tebrates in the fifth grade, typical radiates and mollusks in the
sixth grade, and the order of studying minerals in the ninth grade,
beginning with elements and working up synthetically to com-

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 63

pounds. Such, study is unquestionably better adapted to the ninth
grade than to the sixth or lower grades. The classification of radi-
ates, articulates, and vertebrates has never had marked success in
high schools, and nothing worth mentioning has been done in that
line in grammar schools.

After all that has been done in formulating courses in ele-
mentary science on paper in Boston, not to mention other places,
the work has never been in a more unsatisfactory condition than
now, since the first course was introduced into the schools a dozen
years ago. What has been called the scientific method has failed
in the elementary schools, if not in the high schools ; and now
another overturn of the course in science work is taking place in
Boston.

How far the traditions and methods of the scientific schools
are responsible for the delay in reaching the child's point of de-
parture for things scientific can not be set down with exactness ;
but their isolation and conservatism certainly have not furnished
them with such conditions as could be turned to the advantage of
children just starting out into school life.

In writing, we no longer adhere to pothooks and trammels ;
learning the alphabet and spelling a-b abs are not our best means
of teaching reading ; mere ciphering with abstract figures in arith-
metic has been superseded by more rational processes ; commit-
ting to memory paradigms and grammatical rules has failed to
enable students to use language fluently and correctly ; neverthe-
less, all those things were formerly considered essential elements,
and the only proper starting points for scientific teaching in the
lines of work indicated. So the starting points of the scientific
schools must be discarded for more natural and appropriate ones
in the elementary schools. We shall use the children's elements,
and discover upon what they work with interest and independ-
ence, how they work, what will best call out their activities and
enable them to teach themselves, and by what means they can
express their ideas best. The basis of instruction in elementary
science must be the child's natural method of working upon his
own elements, the things that are simple to him. His elements
of expression in language are words, not the elements of words ;
in drawing outlines, not points and straight and curved lines ; in
science, what he knows at first hand through the medium of his
own senses — superficies, externals, not internals, anatomy, and re-
mote elements. A lack of knowledge of this side of science work
will make all other sides ineffectual.

The science of teaching demands full recognition of an ade-
quate presentation of the subject to be taught. The normal
schools rightly claim that good reproduction naturally follows
good presentation ; but unfortunately they too often assume that

64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the teacher must make the presentation. The consequence is, that
all the points of a subject are set forth as clearly as possible by
the teacher, and a summary closes the first stage of the instruc-
tion. Teachers often acquire excellent reputations by thus illus-
trating their skill in developing a subject logically and bracket-
ing out the syllabus of the work, as some one has said, " on a rod
of blackboard/' Then comes the reproduction or presentation by
the pupil, and, if he does not reproduce the instruction well, the
subject is thought not to have been presented clearly enough, and
often the presentation is repeated. This method is said to be psy-
chological and scientific ; nevertheless, it induces passivity, a habit
of waiting to be told what to do, and a wrong attitude for the
work of investigation. It is distinctively a literary method that
is carried over into science work with disastrous results.

The best presentation of a thing is made by the thing itself,
which must be suitable for the grade in which it is used, being
simple in form, color, and parts for low grades — not necessarily
of simple and regular form, nor of one color, nor of two parts.
"The presumption of brains" must apply to the youngest pupils
of school age. Experience shows that pupils who are permitted
to draw and describe in writing simple, natural objects, guided
only by a very few words written on the blackboard, acquire such
a habit of application and power of expression as can be developed
in no other way as well or as soon. They are so pleased with the
expression of their own ideas, when they have been well started,
that the disposition to appropriate other persons' ideas to save
themselves from thinking or to copy the expression of them is
counteracted. Their most imperative needs are opportunities
to ivork by themselves, skillful guidance, and generous encour-
agement.

The question-and-answer method is the principal method of
instruction in both the normal schools and the scientific schools.
It appears to be the most scientific method generally known, and
accordingly is the method used in teaching science. The teacher,
in giving a lesson on a natural object, prepares her questions care-
fully in a systematic order, anticipates the probable answers of
the pupils, and determines the exact answers which they must
give at last. To do this heavy work a multitude of "leading
questions " is necessary, and to ask and answer the questions con-
sumes much time and calls for exhausting labor on the part of the
teacher. The questions are put in order with considerable diffi-
culty, which varies with the amount of freedom permitted, and
the pupils are said to be led to investigate for themselves. The
answers of the brightest pupils are frequently written on the
blackboard, where the dullest pupils may read them and try after-
ward to pass them off as their own. The process insures con-

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 65

siderable uniformity but is very deceptive. A small proportion
of the pupils most responsive try to answer as they think the
teacher wishes, and a large proportion wait to hear what the others
say and try to remember that. The questions are in a way an-
swered by observations of the specimens in hand, but the " lead-
ing " process is so powerful that practically it amounts to indirect
telling. Information much disguised is the staple material of the
lesson, although it is not intended, and the giving of it is simply
transferred from the teacher to a few responsive pupils. As a
whole the pupils do not " take hold/' and the disposition to make
independent investigations is not cultivated.

A principal of a training school on hearing such a lesson com-
ments thus : " This brought us to the end of a very logical lesson,
but one which was at the same time one of the most mechanical,
most wooden, most stupid and profitless lessons to which I ever
listened. It was all right according to the letter of the law, but
where was the spirit of education ? I need not tell you of the
unrest, the inattention, the new channels of activity that the chil-
dren opened up for themselves, the imitation, the lack of spon-
taneity, the utter inability to hold the mind to this dreary
treadmill/'

Isolation tends to exaggerate variation. The normal school
has not been connected with the scientific school, and neither has
been closely connected with the elementary schools. Only within
a very few years have city normal pupils had somewhat regular
practice in teaching in elementary schools ; and even now the
practice must be very limited in city schools, since the latter must
do regular and efficient work and not be interfered with much by
novices in teaching. Pupils of the scientific schools have not had
the meager opportunities for teaching which have been furnished
normal pupils. If they attempt to teach science in elementary
schools, they are obliged to experiment with children, not only to
find out what the children are prepared to do, but what they them-
selves can and can not do ; and their experiences, as well as those
of their pupils, are full of surprises and disappointments. Some
graduates of scientific schools take charge of the science work in
normal schools, whose special work is to instruct teachers in nat-
ural methods. It is fair to ask whether such graduates, who have
the opportunity of influencing so many teachers, are helping or
hindering the cause of elementary science. Neither the normal
schools nor the scientific schools, although they differ widely in
methods and seldom touch common ground, consider the possi-
bility of graduating pupils who are more than likely to prove un-
scientific teachers of elementary science.

The correlation of the normal school, the scientific school, and
the elementary school, practically carried out, would give us a

VOL. XLIV. 6

66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fair prospect of discovering the true scientific method in teaching
children.

I have seen an elementary school of some six hundred pupils,
in which teachers and pupils follow closely the scientific spirit, if
not the very letter, so far as it should be followed by children
varying from five to fifteen years of age. All do the same kind
of work, which is allowed to vary in quantity and quality in ac-
cordance with the natural ability, individuality, and originality
of each pupil. Local material almost exclusively is examined in-
dividually, each pupil thinking and passing judgment for him-
self, and expressing his ideas accordingly in writing and drawing.
The disposition to attack, to take hold, to investigate, and to make
careful records of his own ideas and discoveries is cultivated stu-
diously by keeping the pupil in the foreground and the teacher
in the background. The prominent instructor, questioner, talker,
gives place to the quiet director, inconspicuous but working with
the effectiveness that characterizes the silent forces of Nature.
The work is entirely independent of the normal school and the
scientific school, but it is suitable, plastic, and power-giving.

A brief mention of some of the materials used in the work and
a description of how they are used may serve to show whether
the work is worth doing.

Each pupil is supplied with a specimen (all the specimens be-
ing of the same kind), such as can be found in the neighborhood
— a leaf, a vegetable root, a nut, an insect, a rock, a flower, etc. —
which he examines carefully, draws, and describes in writing, ac-
cording to a very simple plan consisting of four or five words
written on the blackboard. The words indicate the order of the
work and the paragraphs of the description. The pupil is let
entirely alone until he has done all he can do.

To draw his specimen he looks at it one way and gets one good
presentation and impression; to describe it he examines it in a
different way and gets another good presentation and impression
— a process that holds him to his work without his being told
what to look at, what to draw, and what to describe. He helps
himself, and soon forms and fixes the habits of application and
self-reliance. His work shows his teacher exactly where he is in
drawing and descriptive work. Constantly judging of propor-
tions, especially those of irregular objects, he soon learns to grasp
the proportions of various forms quickly and to represent them
with such facility and accuracy as to surprise teachers who have
carried out only the regulation course in drawing. Many pupils
can draw natural objects much more satisfactorily than they can
describe them in words, and that, too, without formal instruction.

The ordinary courses of instruction in drawing, treating al-
most exclusively of artificial and symmetrical forms, have not

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD WITH CHILDREN. 67

helped children to draw the natural objects which they study to
any great extent, but often have hindered them by taking all
their drawing time for dogmatic instruction in mechanical draw-
ing, historic ornament, geometric solids, and regular, symmet-
rical objects generally. No instruction in natural history work
can be called scientific that fails to develop the pupil's power to
draw what he examines. Darwin said that a great amount of his
otherwise valuable manuscripts became useless on account of his
lack of ability to draw.

The part that language takes in the plan should now receive
brief consideration. The pupil, being accustomed, from the time
he begins to write sentences, to describe in writing what he him-
self sees, recognizes the connection between his ideas and their
signs on paper ; his facility in expressing his ideas more and more
correctly increases ; and when his work is criticised, he is in the
proper mental attitude to receive and assimilate the criticism.
By examining the pupil's work after his first essay on a new sub-
ject the teacher gets at the defects in the pupil's vocabulary at
once, and sees just where to help him. In no other way can the
teacher reach that point so soon. Since the pupil is left to him-
self, he must describe his object in his own words, and he will not
use any that he does not understand ; if those are wrong in form,
he can remember the corrected form easily ; but if new words,
which he does not understand, are given to him, he remembers
their correct form with difficulty.

The teacher helps at the right time when the pupils need help.
He examines their papers to discover excellences and errors in
regard to matters of fact and forms of expression, gives class in-
struction at the blackboard on the prevailing errors, makes illus-
trative sketches, rubs out all illustrative work at last, and directs
the pupils to redraw and redescribe the objects previously stud-
ied, confining their work closely to what they see in their speci-
mens.

Up to this point all information not obvious in the specimens
is rigorously excluded. Information must be divorced from ob-
servation. No other course can be followed safely by the rank
and file of teachers. The pupils, having had the opportunities
required for observing, thinking, and recording for themselves,
and a substantial basis for information having been thus laid,
individual experiences, readings from books, and reasons, causes,
and results are considered, and the whole, observation and infor-
mation, is incorporated into a composition most carefully written
during the time devoted to language work. The power thus de-
veloped in the lower grades enables pupils of the higher grades
to stop with first drafts.

Again, Darwin confesses that he was much hampered by his

68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lack of facility in expressing his ideas. In his youth he had no
training worth naming in drawing or in written description.
To know and not to know how to express what is known is ques-
tionable science. The true scientific method must include ade-
quate expression.

As a rule, such objects are selected for study as will serve for
a good drawing (thirty-six rocks and minerals excepted) — shells,
crystals, leaves, seeds, seed-vessels, flowers, ferns, mosses, and in-
sects— including butterflies, moths, crickets, grasshoppers, locusts,
flies, dragon flies, beetles, bees, wasps, and hornets — each kind be-
ing sufficient in number to supply each pupil with a specimen.
Butterflies emerge from chrysalids and moths from cocoons dis-
covered and brought in by the pupils, who draw and describe the
various stages of these insect metamorphoses as they see them
going on. They have studied in the same way seedlings in suc-
cessive stages of growth — corn, squash, maple, acorn, etc. — each
pupil having his own marked pot.

The school garden contains much available material — many
varieties of wild asters and golden-rods, spring flowers, fall flow-
ers, wild and cultivated, vegetable roots, small patches of wheat,
rye, oats, barley, and buckwheat, cucurbitaceous plants, conns,
tubers, bulbs, and ferns. The pupils cultivate the plants, and com-
pare, draw, and describe the varieties from notes taken on the
ground.

Once a year, on " public day " in May, the pupils bring in for
exhibition their collections of minerals, rocks, shells, woods, in-
sects, and pressed plants — usually from five to six thousand speci-
mens which change from year to year. All the specimens are
labeled carefully, classified, and arranged in the large hall on
long tables covered with white paper. The best collections have
a printed card label accompanying each specimen.

The work done outside of school in getting these collections
together is of great educational value and the natural result of a
method suited to the child's condition. It runs neither into hap-
hazard channels nor into cast-iron molds. The child, rather than
the subject matter, is the focusing point. The principal things
sought are the science of his interests and habits of work, and the
development of his powers of observation, expression, and self-
reliance.

Many schools in various parts of our country are doing simi-
lar work, and in the summaries of such work made accessible to
educators we shall soonest discover a scientific method thorough-
ly suited to the needs of elementary schools. Colleges and scien-
tific schools have not the points of vantage to make the discovery.

NATURE AT SEA. 69

NATURE AT SEA.

BY FRANCIS H. HEKKICK,

PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY IN ADELBERT COLLEGE.

IN crossing the seas, as in walking through the fields, there is
always the anticipation of making some new discovery. To-
day Nature may reveal to us some long-withheld secret. This
illusive bird or wild flower which we hitherto missed we now meet
face to face. So it is in traversing the great blue fields of the
ocean. On this voyage hardly a living object may be seen. The
sea-serpent lies low. The captain complains of meeting few sail.
Again, on the same track, the winds are fair, the ship makes her
course, and the storm cloud no longer baffles the navigator. The
inhabitants of the sea show themselves at the surface; and the
long days lose their monotony. The voyage is a memorable one
in the sailor's calendar.

A good traveler and genuine lover of Nature has the advantage
often of turning the rubbish heaps of another to the best account.
He finds gold where his companion sees only sand. We can
hardly imagine Agassiz or Thoreau (the one representing the
scientific, the other the poetic naturalist) at a loss to turn Nature
to account anywhere under the sun. Thoreau delves in his Con-
cord meadow and brings up some precious nugget, while Agassiz
studies the waterworn pebbles and finds them more interesting
than arrowheads. Yet our good observer is, no doubt, put to a se-
vere test at sea, where he may often have occasion to repeat with
feeling those familiar lines :

"Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion ;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."

I left Nassau, New Providence, the 1st of July, on a sailing
vessel bound for New York. Our boat was a trim schooner of
a hundred and fifty tons burden, clean and well ordered, and did
credit to this kind of craft. We sailed out of the harbor and
crossed the coral bar at high water under a steady southwest
breeze which soon drove us out of sight of land and wafted us
many miles away in the night.

The Bahaman capital shows to best advantage from the water.
Its peak-roofed, chimneyless houses and stuccoed walls of coral
stone make a strong contrast with their deep green setting of
tropical foliage, the ever-encroaching bush which comes up to the
threshold of the town on all sides, and covers these rocky islands
with a perpetual mantle of vivid green. The impenetrable maze

70 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the fig and silk-cotton trees, and the looser, stiffer foliage of the
almond, add here and there a bolder touch to the landscape, and
the unmistakable cocoa palms, seen from afar, adorn the hillside
or wave their feathered crests above the beach.

The town skirts the shore for some distance, covering the slope
of a low ridge which lies parallel with it. From the brow of the
hill an old fort looks down upon the clustering roofs below, upon
the white streets, and the dazzling bluish-emerald waters of the
bay. A remote fortress half hidden by mantling shrubbery stands
guard on a low bluff to the right, while cottages and fishermen's
huts, following the main street eastward, dot the shore for several
miles on the opposite side. This picturesque little harbor has a
livelier appearance to-day than usual. Dingy sponging boats and
leaky-looking fishing craft lie along the wharf and down the bay,
or are beached at low tide. There are larger vessels bringing ice
from Maine, and the iron-gray sides of an English steamer loom

FIG. 1. — HEAD AND FOOT OF WILSON'S STORMY PETREL.

up from yonder low dock, where it now discharges its merchan-
dise fresh from over the sea.

Sailing northeastward, Nassau and its shipping are soon ob-
scured by the long green bar of Hog Island. This is in turn over-
lapped by similar keys, which gradually fade to green lines and
dip under the waves.

For several days the ship speeds on with every sail set. Day
and night not a sound is heard but the rustle of waves and the
occasional flapping of a sail or sharp report of a rope on the
taut canvas. On the sixth day out the sea was nearly calm,
like glass, heaving in long, subdued billows, or like a silvered
mirror, with slow, undulating tremors spreading far out to the
horizon edge.

We noticed that the petrels now rested for the first time on the
water after their long journey by wing. These little waifs appear
never to alight except in calm weather. Day after day they fol-
low the vessel in search of the stray scraps of greasy food thrown
overboard. Now they flit noiselessly alongside, then dash on
ahead or fall back astern, and so over the same course again hour

NATURE AT SEA.

after hour for days at a time, without uttering a note or showing
the least sign of fatigue.

Dauntless, brave-hearted little bird ! — bred in the storm and
passing thy life on the ocean wastes. How nimbly you trip along
the surging waves, now hid in their deep valleys, or skimming
their crests, which you pat with your
slender webbed feet, as if to caress them
when ready to ingulf you !

We had not been at sea long before
these petrels found us out, and they fol-
lowed us hundreds of miles. At night I
heard, or thought I heard, low, crooning
notes from them, but was not sure this
mournful sound did not come from some
part of the ship's rigging. This is Wil-
son's petrel (Oceanites oceanicus), named
in honor of that great lover of the birds,
and well described by him in his Ameri-
can Ornithology. Wilson had an oppor-
tunity to study this species while com-
ing by sailing vessel from New Orleans
to New York. In order to examine them
more particularly he shot a number, not-
withstanding the superstitions of the
sailors, who lowered a boat and helped
him pick them up. These genii of the
storm remind you of the swallow, whose
graceful movement and power of wing
they have, but, unlike the latter, they
never soar above the turmoil of the sea.
Their plumage is of a nearly uniform
sooty-brown hue, excepting the tail cov-
erts, or feathers at the base of the tail,
which are snow-white. The physiognomy of the bird is marked
by the beak, which points downward, thus enabling it to pick up
objects with greater ease from the surface of the water. These
delicate, soft-plumaged creatures are the scavengers of the sea.
Toss out a few scraps of food, and the object of their comradeship
is at once seen. Immediately their quick sense detects it, and all
from far and near collect about the floating object, making a little
dark cluster on the water. In thus taking their food they never
alight, but hover over it, standing tiptoe on the wave or lifting
their delicate black feet up and down as if dancing on the water.
From this characteristic performance the name petrel is said to
be derived from Saint Peter, in allusion to the story of his walk-
ing on the sea.

FIG. 2. — PORTUGUESE MAN-OF-
WAR.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This and the rarer stormy petrel and a third species, which all
resemble one another very closely, are commonly known to sail-
ors as " Mother Carey's chickens," a name quite generally applied

to this family, and proba-
bly suggested, as Wilson
observes, by their myste-
rious appearance before
and during storms, their
great power of flight, and
obscure habits. The super-
stitious mariner may in-
deed have regarded his lit-
tle comrades not as har-
bingers merely, but as
agents in league with the
FIG. 3.— COMMON PORPOISB. powers of darkness, direct-

ly concerned in bringing

the storm. Mother Carey is the mater cara ; so with the French
these birds are " oiseaux de Notre Dame." The gigantic fulmar
of the Pacific is known as " Mother Carey's goose," and hence the
phrase " Mother Carey is plucking her goose " — that is, " it is
snowing."

While the petrels do not " carry their eggs under their wings
and hatch them while resting on the sea," as seafaring men
affirmed, yet their domestic life seems to be curtailed as much as
possible. They nest in cavities in rocks alorfg the coast or in bur-
rows in the ground, laying a single white egg. This species is
said to breed in Florida and the West India islands.

The petrel belongs to the wild wastes of the sea, as the gull
belongs to the shore, and the swallow to inland districts. Sea
birds are as completely helpless when driven far inland as the
strictly land species are at
sea. Every now and then we
hear of some wanderer from
the coast being picked up
half dead from exhaustion
and fright hundreds of miles
from the ocean, having been
shipwrecked apparently and
blown in thither during a
storm. A case of this kind

was communicated to me some time ago by a gentleman in
Sharon, Vermont, where a specimen of the dovekie, or sea dove, a
common bird of the northern New England coast, was found one
morning in the fall on a neighbor's porch.

The helplessness of our song birds when carried to sea is piti-

FIG. 4.— SALPA..

NATURE AT SEA. 73

able in the extreme. I rarely make a voyage of any length but
some small bird is shaken out of a sail where it hid in its fright,
or is found taking refuge in the rigging. Once, while off Cape
Hatteras, a finch or sparrow of some species came aboard our
schooner, showing great fatigue and fear by its tremulous, hesi-
tating flight. Its small wings were of little avail to cope with the
wide blue expanse on which distance is so deceptive. It fluttered
about from rope to spar, glad to find "rest for the sole of its
foot," and although it made short detours — reconnoitring sal-
lies now and then from the boat — I think it invariably returned,
and decided to take passage with us to the land.

On a calm evening I saw another larger bird looking like a
petrel, swimming about with Mother Carey's chickens. It had
long, swordlike wings, and was of a dark slate color above and
below pure white. Once a pair of tropic birds crossed our track.
We frequently catch glimpses of the bold shearwaters skimming
the distant seas, and hear their piercing cries as they dart along
the waves, now lost in the
trough of the sea or soaring
aloft, their breasts white as
the foam below.

How welcome is every
unusual sight and sign of
life on the desert sea plains !
The great schools of fish
ruffling the surface, now FlG 5._FLYING GURKABD.

and then leaping into full

view; the sleek porpoises showing their powerful tails or rac-
ing the ship under her bows ; the chance shark which dogs the
vessel ; the splendid physalias, or Portuguese men-of-war. How
eagerly the sailor scans the horizon to catch a glimpse of a sail,
and the discovery is soon known to every one on board ! A mere
phantom to an ordinary eye, he tells whether it be schooner,
bark, or brig, knows her course, perhaps also where she is bound
and what she carries. Now we see the topmasts only of some
vessel standing off on the horizon, or the gray form of a ship half
screened by the fog. Now a steamer passes us, and the thud of
the wheel and clang of its foghorn are heard long after it vanishes
in the mist.

I never saw the physalia so abundant as on one afternoon of
this voyage. The surface of the sea heaved in long, gentle swells.
At times a dozen of these little sails could be counted from the
vessel. Those farthest away appear as white, glistening specks.
One, unusually large and handsome, floats near by. It looks like
a diminutive boat blown out of iridescent glass. Its transparent,
gleaming sail, gathered at the edge, is tinged with pink and blue

74

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

next the water. Once we dipped one in a net, and placing it care-
fully in a pail of sea-water, examined it at our leisure on deck.
It was then seen to consist of a float or air bag, and thick clusters
of pink bodies attached, and longer blue ones which extend down
in the water.

Our little man-of-war bears a truer resemblance to a well
manned and ordered warship than might at first be supposed,
since it is not an individual, but a community of polyp-like ani-

FIG. 6. — ANTHNNARICS.

mals bound together for common support and protection, with a
division of labor recalling that maintained aboard a vessel, or,
better still, like that seen in a hive of bees. There are four kinds
or grades of persons in the physalia community. There are the
feeders, the pink bodies just mentioned, which procure and di-
gest the food for the whole community, all the polyps communi-
cating freely with each other ; the defenders, the long, indigo-col-
ored tentacles, which may be distended like flexible threads to the

NATURE AT SEA.

75

length of several yards, and which are covered all over with bat-
teries of poison cells, a touch from which is like the sting of a
dozen nettles ; the reproducers are the very small polyps at the
bases of the tentacles; while the locomotor float represents a
polyp or hydra which has become modified the most of all.
This float, like a miniature sail, may be raised or reefed by ad-
mitting or expelling the air, and if punctured it collapses like a
toy balloon.

The physalias are hydrozoa — that is to say, they belong to
that large class of marine forms which include, with the little

FIG. 7. — SHIP IN PHOSPHORESCENT WATERS.

green and brown hydras of fresh- water ponds, the highly colored
or glass-like jellyfish or medusae, and those numerous hydroid
colonies or branching stocks which often remind one more of
small shrubs or some vegetable growth than of a community of
animals. Many hydrozoa possess marvelously complicated life
histories. By " alternation of generations" — that is, by the regu-
lar alternation of a sexual generation with one or more genera-
tions reproducing asexually by budding or division — and by divi-
sion of labor, an almost unlimited number of individuals with
various functions, as we saw in physalia, may arise from a single
polyp egg.

7 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Porpoises bent upon voyages of their own pass us at intervals.
At each turn in the water we see their huge fins and shining, con-
vex bodies. The porpoise describes a graceful, undulatory line in
its course through the water ; now appearing at the surface and
immediately diving below it, showing itself only as it rounds the
crest of each wave. When a number rise together in line, their
dorsal fins and backs alone being visible, you are reminded of a
great saw with huge, incurved teeth. Here, again, are others .ap-
parently at play. How they lash the water into spray with their
powerful tails ! Now one shoots like an arrow into the air ; an-
other jumps, and clearing the water for several feet, enters it
again with a plunge. This may be anything but play, however.
A whale or some other enemy is perhaps giving them chase, and
they are fleeing for their lives.

We saw several whales during this voyage, and on one even-
ing two crossed our bows. They swam side by side, rolling along
at an easy gait, much like that of the porpoise, and spouting a jet
of spray as they came to the surface to breathe.

At another time a very large school of porpoises was seen ad-
vancing toward our vessel. There must have been several hun-
dred of them. They formed a long, not very deep line, swimming
in several squads of fifty or more each, and crossed our course
without altering theirs. Some passed by the stem or bow, or with
a plunge shot under the vessel as if it were a plank. Both dol-
phins and porpoises like to race with a ship, although it costs many
their lives. You can see their brown, spotted bodies and blunt
noses as with great speed they shoot to this and that side of the
cutwater. The faster the ship goes the greater seems to be the
sport. The porpoise is little more than a powerfully muscular
tail, developed at the expense of the rest of the body. Most sail-
ing craft carry a spear or harpoon, for the sailors not only like
the excitement of taking these animals, but also find in their flesh
a welcome variety to the monotonous ship fare.

One morning, as I stood with the captain on the forecastle
deck, he attaching his harpoon line as I watched the porpoises, I
saw a large loggerhead turtle under the bow, his brown back be-
ing barely under water. He appeared to be asleep, but in a mo-
ment the vessel struck him, and down he slowly paddled out of
sight. The spear did not happen to be in readiness, so that our
turtle soup that day was a strictly Barmecide dish.

The number of small invertebrate animals which come to the
surface on calm evenings is quite astonishing. Once in May,
while in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream, near the Florida coast,
there appeared regularly at about four o'clock in the afternoon
countless swarms of a brown jellyfish or medusa — " sea thimbles,"
as sailors call all animals of this class — and this species (Linerges)

NATURE AT SEA.

77

is about the size of a thimble. The clear indigo water was
speckled with them. You could dip them up anywhere in a
bucket, and we sailed miles without noticing any appreciable
diminution in their numbers. This and like spectacles give us a

faint conception of the incalculable wealth of the sea in living
things, and of their superabundance if allowed to multiply un-
checked.

Another marine organism seen floating near the surface is
three or four inches long and looks like a little roll of white lace
with a pink spot in the center. This is a species of salpa, which

y8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

belongs to the class of Ascidians, and is especially noteworthy
since its embryonic history bears a strong resemblance to that of
the lower vertebrates. The life history of the salpas is greatly
complicated by the process of alternation of generations seen in
physalia, and it was in them, in fact, that this phenomenon was
first noticed.

The flight of the flying fish recalls that of some insects. When
a ship plows through a school of these creatures, how they scud
off on all sides like grasshoppers rising from underfoot in the
fields, and by the aid of their gauze wings, the pectoral and ven-
tral fins, fly to a place of safety ! From the indistinct halo seen
about these fish in flight, from the abrupt turns which they exe-
cute, going as readily against the wind as with it, and from their
apparently uniform speed, we naturally infer a rapid beating of
those delicate wings, as in the case of humming birds and certain
insects, and this inference is probably a correct one. Many ob-
servers, however, contend that this is not a genuine flight, but
scaling. According to this view, the fish project themselves with
a great velocity from the water, press with their wings, held at an
advantageous angle, against the air, and are thus kept up, while
they are carried forward by their own inertia. Their motion
would thus be gradually retarded until they finally entered the
water again, like that of a stone skimmed along the surface of a
pond, while on the contrary their flight appears to be quite uni-
form. This and other mechanical difficulties, and the fact that
the beating of the fins can be clearly seen in other species of
flying fish, show that the common belief that these animals fly in
the strict sense of the word is probably the true one.

The vegetation of the sea is limited to the brown masses of
sargassum or " gulf weed," which is most abundant in or along
the borders of the Gulf Stream and may be seen growing on the
sheltered reefs about Nassau. This alga is especially interest-
ing for the wealth of marine life which it shelters. A large mass,
which has been a floating island for some time, possesses in fact
quite a varied fauna. If you fish up a handful of it and shake it
over the deck, the little animals pour down like rain. Here are
crabs and shrimps without number, some of them very delicate,
no longer than a pin; barnacles, mollusks, and fish of several
species, one of which, the Antennarius, regularly lives and builds
its nest in these little islands. This grotesque fish is two or three
inches long and nearly as broad in a vertical plane, and is vari-
ously spotted and mottled with light and dark-brown colors. Its
lower fins resemble a pair of hands in shape and function, and its
head recalls that of a mediaeval war horse armed and plumed.

These little communities furnish a striking instance of the
protective coloring of animals, a phenomenon of which there

8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seem to be nearly as many examples as there are living things.
The general cast of the plant and animals inhabiting it is a dull
brown. The goose barnacles, which are attached to the sprays in
great numbers, have white shell-cases with brown stalks. The
crabs are brown with usually a large white spot on their backs,
apparently in imitation of the barnacles, while many of the little
shrimps are marked in the same way. The spherical floats of the
sargassum are, furthermore, incrusted with the white lacelike
skeletons of bryozoa. The brown gulf weed is thus dappled with
white, and it is evidently advantageous for animals living in it to
simulate its colors, which they do in an extraordinary manner.
These colors are certainly protective, and if produced by the slow
process of natural selection, by which the hue of the organism
comes to harmonize with that of its environment, to the evident
advantage of the former, we must imagine this species of alga
to have floated about with these and similar animals for long ages.

The salpas and medusae are beautifully phosphorescent at
night, and in fact most of the invertebrate life of the sea, which
on calm evenings swarms in myriads at the surface, possesses
this remarkable power. Then is every ripple followed by a train
of glowing sparks, every wave which breaks against the ship by
a brilliant meteoric shower. The larger medusae, which look like
softly glowing balls of mystic fire, and the barrel-shaped cteno-
phores are stars of the first magnitude, while behind there is a
whole galaxy of lesser lights, to count which would be much like
counting the stars. As I sat one evening watching our rudder,
after which trailed a long, curling line of sparks, four small fish
made their appearance and swam by the stern for several hours.
Their forms were illumined in the black water, and a train of fire
followed each as like little meteors they darted after the ship.

We can form at most but a very imperfect idea of the life of
the sea from the chance glimpses afforded on the most favorable
voyage. We see but transient tokens of that vast life which the
sea holds in her teeming bosom.

Could we project vertical sections of the ocean upon a screen
and examine these pictures in detail, what revelations might they
not unfold ! We would have the dwellers in every story of the
sea caught in their natural attitudes, the hosts of smaller ani-
mals at the surface, the many fish and other monsters of the
deep, and those far off dwellers in the abyssal sea. Scientific
study with the microscope, the tow-net, and deep-sea dredge is
revealing little by little those wonderful forms of life which have
been so long hidden from human eyes.

AMERICAN ABORIGINAL NAMES. 81

NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN ABORIGINAL NAMES.

BY M. V. MOORE.

r INHERE are numerous evidences showing that the same abo-
J- riginal peoples who named the waters of North America
coined also the prehistoric geographical titles in South America.
Scores of actual identities are revealed in the prehistoric nomen-
clatures of the two portions of this continent. These identities
are not only in various terms that appear in the river names
which still survive and betray the tongue of indeterminate ages
here, but the very same ancient words in* full are apparently re-
produced in many instances. The reproductions are indeed of
such a character as to induce the belief that the earliest civ-
ilization of both North and South America had origin in one
common ancestry. The oldest nomenclature surviving in the
countries both North and South certainly indicates origin in
civilization.

We have now no definite knowledge as to how some of the old
aboriginal names should be properly written in our English
idiom. There are slightly different versions or expressions of the
ancient words which have been perpetuated in the idioms of the
French, Spanish, and Portuguese — words that are evidently the
same thing in remotest origin and structure. From the very be-
ginning of the modern European conquest and colonization, the
" Indian " names have been invested chiefly with what is purely a
fanciful and conjectural orthography in their English writings.
There has been no surviving testimonial, in either living or dead
tongues, fixing the definite expression of the ancient words just
as the native man would have written them had he been possessed
of the proper facilities.

Sometimes the old native names have been made to appear un-
necessarily grotesque in their writing — in some instances as much
so as the rude savage himself appears personally — the fact illus-
trated in the writing Youghiogheney for simply Ya-og-ha-na, and
in Esquemeaux for Es-ka-mo. Many purely poetic garbs of the
old words have become incorporated into our permanent geo-
graphical literature. The names Mississippi and Tennessee are
examples of the fanciful versions of the old aboriginal titles : the
former is supposed to have been in sounds represented by the
English writing Mes-sis-a-pa, while the oldest historic records
extant showing the latter give the writing as Ten-as-sa. What is
evidently one ancestral word appears in the modern versions of
Shewanee, Sewanee, Suwanee, Sivanan, and Chowan. The French
writing Cheyenne is the same word in the remote ancestry, as is
now believed.

VOL. XLIV. — 7

82 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There is a South American river name written in our English
idiom Amaccura. In Florida we have the old aboriginal title
Amaxura. No man is now learned enough to maintain, with any
assurance of truth or authority in his favor, that from either
standpoint, historical or etymological, there is any real or essen-
tial difference in the two names.

The same thing may be said of two other well-known ancient
"Indian" appellations — Orinoco and Oronoko, as they are now
written in our English versions. The former is a native South
American word, while the latter — Oronoko — is unquestionably an
aboriginal North American river name. A corruption of the an-
cient name has been applied, as the permanent modern title of the
stream, in the word written Roanoke, the old initial vowel sound
in o finally dropped. Our wisest philologists are unable to deter-
mine any difference in the true etymology of the two writings,
Orinoco and Oronoko.

Nor can they perceive the real difference — for none exists — in
the Carolina river name Occonee and the South American appella-
tion written Ocona. We have in North America the name Paw-
nee ; in South America they have what is doubtless the very same
thing in the writing Pana (Pawna). We have in New England
the native name Chicopee ; South America has Chicapa. (Our au-
thorities tell us that " oopee," " upa," " opee," " ippe," " epe/' " apa,"
etc., are simply dialectic expressions showing one common ances-
try— each being a term for water or river in the native tongues of
the continent.) We have Omalia ; South America has Omagha.
We have Aboite ; South America has Abaite. We have in South
Carolina the river name Saluda ; South America has the Salado-
rio, the Sal-aw-dow River. We have Tygar River ; South Amer-
ica has Tigri. (The Old World has the name written in English
Tigris — really Te-ga-ri, or the De-ka-li of the Hebrew ; all three
of the names — Tygar, Tigri, and Tigris — showing a common
though very remote ancestry.)

Chico and Chota are found in native names in both North and
South America. We have Choco and Choccolocco ; while South
America has Choco-loochee. "Loochees" and "oochees," or
" uchas," without number, are found all over the continent, North
as well as South, in the native names of waters. In South Amer-
ica are several Ubas, ancient appellations of waters. California
has two rivers, the prehistoric Indian names, written Yuba. There
are scores of " oobas " and " ubas " in the ancient names of waters
of the continent both North and South. And what is a more
startling feature of the prehistoric speech of the New World is
the fact that this same word, or the sounds heard in the writing
" uba " or " yuba," is found in the prehistoric water nomenclature
of various peoples of the Old World.

AMERICAN ABORIGINAL NAMES. 83

South America has Pachitae ; Georgia has Pachita. Brazil
has Paculi, or Pacoolee ; South Carolina has Pacola, or, as it is
written in the old French idiom, Pacolet, the final letter silent.
Illinois has Peoria, an ancient Indian name of a lake; South
America has Piura and Peru; while Louisiana has the bayou
name Pero, the French idiom rendering the old word as Perot.

It is scarcely reasonable to conclude that all these — and many
more that are known to exist in the way of coincidences, iden-
tities, and similarities in the prehistoric water nomenclature of
the continent — are the result of mere accident, or in conformity
to any universal lingual law. The vast array of actual corre-
spondences can be accounted for reasonably or properly only on
the theory or hypothesis that one common ancestral tongue was
known and understood by the race of peoples who overran and
colonized the continent in the remote indeterminate past — a race
of peoples who so fixed their speech in the river names of the
Western world that the words have survived through all the
mutations of governments, and through all the changes incident
to the human tongue in the countless ages that have intervened
since the beginning when the words were first applied here to the
waters. It is a very singular and striking fact in human history
that the names of rivers or other waters have outlived all other
evidences of the prehistoric human speech. There are yet in exist-
ence the names of the waters of the very primitive home of man
itself, when all other evidences of the Adamic age and tongue
have been swept into utter oblivion. We know that the names of
most of the waters of the Old World have origin in indeterminate
eras: the old word-landmarks have been preserved and perpet-
uated through the countless changes in nations and tongues
since, with no other variations save those incident to the different
idioms in the old and the new, our word Nile being the English
idiom rendering the Latin Nilus and the Sanskrit Noli. Rhine is
the English of the old Rhenus or the older Rina. The ancestral
germs in the respective words are easily determined and read in
each idiomatic expression.

We find in great frequency in the prehistoric river names of
both North and South America a word or term that is variously
written in our geographical literature as augua, agua, aqua,
auqua, ogga, occa, and otherwise. Many of the old names have
come to us through the early Spanish records, these showing in
most instances the Spanish form or idiom in writing the (Spanish)
term or word for water or river, augua. But we can not believe,
with reason in our favor, that wherever the term appears in the
writing of the prehistoric names its presence is wholly due to the
Spanish influence on the continent. The term occurs in native
names in localities where there is no evidence showing that the

84 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Spanish influence was ever felt there. It is found also in sections
where the Spaniard did not remain long enough to permanently
inject his term agua, or augua, into the dialects of the aborigines.
Indeed, no native tribes or peoples have been known on the con-
tinent who have readily adopted the tongue or even the general
terms of a foreign race. Even the modern Indians have persist-
ently rejected the tongue of the European.

And yet we have such South and Central American names as
the following — titles that are regarded as native or aboriginal — in
the modern writings: Ur-augua, Par-augua, Agua-pi, Nicar-
agua, Conch-augua, Des-augua-dero ; these and many more
showing the same term that is conspicuous in our native Indian
appellations, written Wat-auga, Chicam-auga, Canadian-augua,
Nottas-augua, Aut-augua, and the like, in North America — words
that are quite universally regarded as pure aboriginal names, the
main term entirely free from the influences of the Caucasian
tongue.

IMMATERIAL SCIENCE.

BY E. S. MOSER.

Material View of Life and its Relations to the Spiritual,
by Prof. Graham Lusk, Assistant Professor of Physiology,
Yale Medical School, in The Popular Science Monthly for August,
1893, presents to the mind of a layman a unique combination of
facts and fancies, of scientific deductions and metaphysical as-
sumptions. The professor's "material view" in the main finds
adequate support in the domain of demonstrable knowledge, but
his " reasoning " process in support of his spiritual view is dis-
tributed over a good deal of imaginative and unknown territory.
The professor observes : " Matter is divided into ponderable and
imponderable — ponderable, that which can be weighed ; imponder-
able, that which can not be weighed." Some proof is certainly
required in support of this statement. The conventional terms of
speech employed in treating of matter admit of a division of
matter within certain limitations, to more clearly establish the
differences in material forms ; but to boldly imply that a portion
of the matter in existence has no weight — is imponderable — is to
challenge the presentation of clearly defined evidence. The pro-
fessor may be right, he may be wrong. He may believe he is
right, yet belief in the absence of knowledge is mere belief, and
one belief in the abstract is of about as much importance as any
other belief, however ridiculous. Moreover, to assume to estab-
lish the existence of an " ether " as a means of explaining " some-
thing otherwise inexplicable/' is a process of reasoning which

IMMATERIAL SCIENCE. 85

may pass at par with very learned metaphysicians, but it can
hardly claim the serious attention of thinking minds, particularly
when the "something otherwise inexplicable" is something the
existence of which is taken for granted. The professor continues
his process of reasoning : " A man dies ; the spirit passes from
him ; the flesh is left." The synthetical activities of the body
which produced the phenomena of life have ceased ; the analyti-
cal or destructive process is master of the situation; but "the
spirit passes from him " ! What passes from him ? What is
this spirit, professor ? " Imponderable spirit " is it ? I don't un-
derstand you, because I do not know what you are talking about.
You may explain that the spirit is ethereal matter. Will I be
informed as to what spirit may be or is, when I know nothing
about imponderable matter ? "And likewise may there not be a
spiritual ether surrounding us, a medium through which impulses
may come to the spirit from on high, and from the spirit be trans-
mitted to the intellect ? Such influences come to us strongly at
times, as at the communion table/' This may be so, but even
your single illustration, as to causation, lacks confirmation. We
have observed so-called evidences of " the spirit from on high " in
the prostrate forms of persons at sacred altars, persons in a state
of unconsciousness produced by brain acting upon brain. I
know, if I know anything, that a certain amount of physical
energy is involved in every instance of nervous excitation, and
that the influence of this energy acting upon matter is easily com-
municated to, and will act upon, willing subjects. Still further :
" Now, is it not conceivable that, in the spirit after its severance
from the flesh, our present imperfect senses may become perfect,
and the influence of other now unthought-of sensations become
possible ? " No, it is not conceivable, if the conception is to rest
upon a rational basis — truths at this time demonstrable. The exist-
ence of " unthought-of sensations " is a bold assumption. The con-
ception is not scientific, because our present " imperfect senses "
are the outcome of purely physical (earthly) conditions, so far as
science knows anything about the senses. What science does not
know, or what science may know hereafter, has nothing to do and
can have nothing to do with the professor's conception at present.

I concede to every man the right to formulate a belief that
will afford him some needed consolation in his struggle for exist-
ence, so long as he is perfectly willing to allow other men to do
likewise without let or hindrance, but no belief should be set
forth in the name of science unless there be tangible evidence
produced in support of it.

It is frequently observed that some scientists are loath to ac-
cept and to abide by the results obtained as the fruitage of their
laborious investigations. They observe the operations of Nature,

86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

closely study causes and effects, discern principles of action, and
thereupon formulate truths. Forthwith these truths must be util-
ized to bolster up preconceived notions which have no foundation
in fact. Thus valuable time is wasted, and the progress of scien-
tific research is retarded as well. No scientist should start out
in search of nothing. He must have an object in view, and that
object must in a measure be defined. Science has no business to
halt by the wayside and inquire whether or not the truths found
in the book of Nature will horrify those who are nursing some
creed or dogma. Truth is truth, and an apology for its existence
received from any quarter is quite superfluous. If the truths of
science have terrors for a man's religion there must be something
wrong and untrue in connection with his religion. If his religion
be based upon knowledge, love, justice, and mercy, he will en-
counter no terrors in the realm of science ; if his religion means a
desire to know the why and wherefore of existences about him
and the determination to add his mite of power in helping to
ameliorate human conditions, the truths of science will serve as
his handmaiden.

The assumed cleverness and wisdom attributed, in the pro-
fessor's article, to certain thinkers may apply in some instances,
but no one realizes more fully than the student of Nature himself
the fact that he knows but little and can never know a great deal.
But he finds in this reflection no reason why he should quit his
labors or even turn aside to ingeniously weave an apologetic yarn,
lest his conclusions unmixed with sophistry might possibly hor-
rify some prejudiced minds.

AN ARGUMENT FOR VERTICAL HANDWRITING.

Br JOSEPH V. W1THERBEE.

WHY is it that the business men of to-day find so much fault
with the chirography of the boys who are seeking, or have
obtained employment ? They assert with great positiveness that
the average boy of thirteen or fourteen years does not write legi-
bly ; that his labored copy-book hand, with its pale and sight-
destroying hair-lines, is not at all adapted for business purposes.
Their cry is for a style of penmanship that is practical, that a
boy or girl can write rapidly, and that will not injure their eyes
when forced to read it for any length of time.

It is the purpose of this article to show that there is such a
style of penmanship, that it is easier to teach, that it is easier
to read, that it is more rapid, and that, from a hygienic point of
view, it is incomparably superior to the present slanting writing.

AN ARGUMENT FOR VERTICAL HANDWRITING. 87

In England, I believe,
Prof. John Jackson is the
pioneer in the new style of
writing ; and now, so much
favor has it found over
there, by reason of its su-
perior legibility, that the
examiners require its use in
all branches of the civil
service. Sampson Low &
Company, London, have
published Prof. Jackson's
copy-books, which have had
a wide sale in England.
Many English schools have
adopted them and require
their exclusive use. On
the Continent the Austrian
schools lead in approval
and support of vertical
chirography, though many
of the more progressive
German schools have taken
up this system and are en-
thusiastic in its praise. As
yet, I believe, no American
publishers have issued a
series of copy-books with
the upright letters, though
one house contemplates it
in the near future.

From long and careful
observation, I think every
teacher of a beginner's class
in school will bear witness
to the fact that the first at-
tempts of a new pupil with
pen or pencil are nearly
perpendicular, and that it
is only by keeping constant-
ly at him that the child
manages to make his let-
ters at the required slant
of fifty-two degrees. Even
then, after all his work
with exaggerated copies

CO

o
o

<

o

»— H

cc

88 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and other devices, if nothing more is said about the slope, he
lapses back to his natural inclination to write straight. From
this it would seem that the present mode of teaching penman-
ship is contrary to Nature, and therefore a great waste of energy.
How much easier and pleasanter, too, it would be to adopt the
vertical writing from the start, and thereby avoid that continual
friction necessary to get the artificial slant !

I know not how to make clearer the second point — that straight
writing is plainer to read than slanting — than by placing before

(^7^^s&£^££z> ^^^^s&ertir^^^&.^ed^
'::^<^~£^^e^<^^^

/) / *./ • /

S^&Z^Z/' -^Z^^^_^Z^Z>2?*'2^^^

C^^^'"'-*^'^^^^

*

the reader actual specimens of the same pupil's work, written
twelve weeks apart. The pupils selected are twelve and thirteen
years old. (It may be well to state here that the class to which
these pupils belong had but four weeks' regular instruction of
thirty minutes a day, using the above copy-slips, printed on
gummed paper, so that they could be readily pasted on the desk
immediately in front of the pupil, or on cardboard, as suited the

AN ARGUMENT FOR VERTICAL HANDWRITING. 89

teacher's fancy. The other eight weeks the class received some-
times two and sometimes three thirty-minute lessons per week.)
Let it be understood that these are not isolated cases, but that
every member of the class shows the same marked contrast. The
slanting writing is part of a composition, while the straight
writing was from dictation.

• Now let the reader hold the page farther and farther from him
until the vertical writing becomes indistinct, and then try his

AJJOJV, JLAJU

xr/

*

j

/<7V

AA/VwJi/

u 4

Uxiy(>u^^^ XTV

eyes on the slanting writing at this distance. Unless his sight is
different from that of a large number of persons whom the writer
has tested, the universal verdict will be in favor of the legibility
of the vertical writing. The test becomes much clearer when a
short-sighted person, who wears glasses, takes them off and tries
to read the two styles of writing. To such people, so plain is the
proof that they wonder why straight writing has not been adopted
in the schools long ago.

It is claimed that vertical writing can be more rapidly written
than slanting for the reason that the perpendicular of every right-
angled triangle is shorter than the hypotenuse, and therefore

VOL. XLIV. - 8

9o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

there is less distance for the pen to travel in making vertical lines
than in making slanting lines. The mathematical fact here enun-
ciated will not be denied nor can the deduction be refuted, and
yet I fear many will still deny that upright writing is more rapid
than sloping writing.

To the parent as well as the educator the position of the pupil
when writing should be of the greatest interest. That there is an
alarming increase of spinal curvature and near-sight in children of
the present day goes without saying. There must be some reason
for it. If we accept the statement of the Vienna commission of

experts appointed to investigate the cause of this increase, we find
it charged to the account of sloping writing, with its unavoidable
faulty positions. Compare the pictures of two children as actu-
ally found in class, and let any one say which child stands the
best chance of growing up with a straight spine and unimpaired
eyesight if kept in these postures long at a time. Observe that
the position of the girl on the right in the first cut is by no means
an exaggerated one, but quite as favorable to the advocates of
sloping writing as they could ask for, and yet the twisting of the

AN ARGUMENT FOR VERTICAL HANDWRITING. 91

head and the curvature of the spine are noticeable here, the latter
more especially in the second cut. Notice, too, that the other girl,
who is in the correct position, might lean forward however much
she pleases, and still her shoulders would be of the same height.

If the pupil who slants his letters sits sidewise to the desk (a
very common position), not only is one shoulder usually higher
than the other, but the head is commonly turned until a line con-
necting the pupils of the eyes is parallel to the line on which he

W/T" sMsmju JutnMuu

JLAJU

~J
XMxriA/vaxTU

U

/vvu-a/w.

is writing. Nature impels him to twist his neck so that one eye
shall be the same distance from the letters he is making as the
other. Unless he does turn his head, the eyes are not equidistant
from his work, which tends to shorten the sight of one eye and
lengthen that of the other. This accounts in large measure for
the need of two glasses of different power for the same person, so
frequently met with at the present time.

It is hardly worth mentioning that vertical writing takes up
less space than sloping writing, as this is self-evident and only
needs stating to be admitted. Years ago, when paper was costly,
this argument would have more weight than now.

92

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Let me digress a little, to enter a protest against the use of
double-lined paper after the first year of a pupil's school life, and
to express my belief that it is altogether unnecessary in the pri-
mary school. A child does not need a walking machine after he
has learned to walk; neither does he need a guide-line in pen-
manship to dwarf his eye-training and judgment of distance after
he can distinguish the difference between a whole space and a
half space. In my opinion, any child of ordinary ability in the
primary school distinguishes half an apple from a whole one, or
half an inch from a whole inch — not in name, to be sure, but in
reality — long before he enters the school. It is an undisputed fact
that the longer a pupil uses the double-ruled paper, the more he
misses the guide-line when it is taken away. It has been proved
that first-year pupils can get along without the second line from
the very outset practically as well as with it, and they thereby

Hygienic position.

FRONT VIEW.

Unhygienic position.

avoid learning to write twice, as it really amounts to a second
beginning when the single-lined paper is taken up for the first
time at the fourth year. In some cities this is the period in the
child's school life when much more writing is required, necessi-
tating more rapid work on the part of the pupil. Hence, instead
of one difficulty at a time, a long-honored rule of pedagogics, the
child loses his guide-line when he has become most accustomed to

AN ARGUMENT FOR VERTICAL HANDWRITING. 93

it, and is forced to wield his pen more swiftly than before. Is it
to be wondered at that children, struggling against these two dif-
ficulties at once, show poorer penmanship, as a rule, the first year
after dropping double-lined paper than at the end of the first year
of school life ?

Some educators say that vertical writing is a " fad " that will
run its race and die like all fads ; but there is this important fact

Unhygienic position.

BACK VIEW.

Hygienic position.

to be noticed, that they never have tried it themselves, and, be-
cause it is new, therefore it must be fleeting. Grant them that
vertical writing is not more legible, more easily taught, and more
rapidly written than sloping writing, all false as false can be, the
simple fact that it puts the pupil in a perfect position in regard
to the spine and the eyes is bound to win its way into popular
favor. Vertical writing has come to stay.

THE porcupine, which was living fifty years ago in Andalusia and Estrema-
dura, Spain, has wholly disappeared from these provinces. The ichneumon, Me-
loncillo, which was formerly common in many places, has become very rare. The
Magot monkey is preserved at Gibraltar with much difficulty by frequent renew-
ing of its blood. The Meloncillo ichneumon was a favorite animal with the Span-
iards before the domestic cat was introduced, and is still, according to Sefior
Regnera, greatly esteemed by the inhabitants of the Sierra Morena.

94 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

VEGETABLE DIET.

Br LADY WALB. PAGET.

I DO not write this paper with the intention of converting or
even convincing anybody, for nobody is more impressed with
the great truth that what is good for one person is not good for
all. The infinite individuality of the human race is what distin-
guishes it from animals. A certain kind of food will be liked and
digested by all animals belonging to the same species, while, as
an eminent doctor remarked the other day, there is not one article
of food in the whole world which is eaten with pleasure by every
human being alike. All I wish to do is to put my experiences
before those to whom they may be useful, and who may profit by
them without making the disagreeable mistakes my ignorance
led me into.

I have all my life thought that meat-eating was objectionable
from the aesthetic point of view. Even as a child the fashion of
handing around a huge grosse piece on an enormous dish revolted
my sense of beauty ; and I was delighted when, on my first visit
to England, a small and thin slice of beef was unobtrusively
shown to me behind my left shoulder, to be accepted or rejected
ad libitum. I quite agree with Lord Byron, who said he would
not marry a pretty girl because she had asked for two helps of
lobster salad, though if beefsteak had been substituted I should
understand it better still. The biftek a I'anglaise, which seems to
be the only idea a foreign waiter ever has when he is asked to
suggest something to eat to English-speaking travelers, is simply
a piece of hot raw meat, far more fit for the Zoological Gardens
than for human food ; for, despite of constant and sometimes in-
dignant disclaimers, it is generally believed on the Continent that
it forms the staple food of the British nation — that the strong
limbs of the young men, the lovely complexions of the girls, and
the bright eyes of the children are entirely due to this nourish-
ment, and anxious mothers of families abroad are constantly im-
pressing upon their offspring and everybody else about them the
utility and necessity of this panacea, if they wish to be in good
health and feel fit and strong. It is a curious fact that in places
where this regimen of viande saignante is followed anaemia is
very frequent.

I have been told, though I have not read it myself, that some-
body has written a description of a town where the whole popula-
tion was vegetarian. The change this would make in all the
sights and smells is far greater than we at first imagine. The
ghastly butchers' shops which meet one at every turn appear to
me an incongruity, not to say more, in this civilized age ; they

VEGETABLE DIET. 95

would disappear, as well as the fishmongers', which are hardly
any better. Then there are the sausage shops, which, especially
in southern countries, persecute one with their pungent odor.
How often have I been driven away while admiring the fagade
of an old palazzo or the portico of an ancient church by the ema-
nations of the terrible pizzicheria half-way down the street ! An-
other dread sight which meets our eyes abroad, especially in Ger-
many and Austria, where much veal is eaten, are the slaughtered
calves paraded about the streets, a dozen or two of them hang-
ing over the sides of the cart. There can be little doubt, too, that
our kitchens and dining-rooms would be far more sweet and at-
tractive if no animal food was ever brought into them. The eyes
certainly would be gainers, and our olfactory senses too. In pic-
tures and in poetry the tables are laid out with luscious fruit and
sparkling wines, whenever charming and pleasant scenes are to be
conjured up before our minds. When coarseness and discomfort
are portrayed, " men brought in whole hogs and quarter-beeves,
and all the hall was dim with steam of flesh." It is the difference
between one of Giulio Romano's garden banquets, such as he
painted in the vaulted chambers of the Palazzo del Te, and a
peasant orgy by Ostade or Teniers.

It is not, however, this aspect of the Pythagorean regime
which will make many converts, nor did it ever influence me for
very long, as most doctiors lay, or rather laid, about twenty years
ago, so much stress upon the eating of sufficient meat and the
anaemic tendency of this generation, that one naturally felt it one's
first duty to prefer health to beauty.

A more serious consideration, and one which grew upon me
every year, was the sad and distasteful necessity of killing a liv-
ing being in order to live one's self. The great mystery of pain
in this world, which if it once gets a hold upon the mind is so ter-
ribly difficult to shake off, often dimmed my greatest pleasures.
But this feeling too I tried, but less successfully, to subordinate
to what I then considered right and reasonable.

The first serious shock I experienced in this theory was when,
a few years ago, one of the most eminent German professors from
a great university dined at our table, and would not touch any-
thing because he was a vegetarian. I looked over the bill of fare,
and realized with consternation that everything down to the
sweet was either meat or fish or fowl, that vegetables and fari-
naceous food played the very smallest part in it, and even they
were tainted with sauces not free from reproach.

I had the evening before listened to an historical discourse
delivered by Prof. O to an audience of all that is most intelli-
gent and distinguished in this city. I had been struck by his ex-
traordinary vigor and clearness. The words dropped like pearls

96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from his lips, and though the voice was scarcely raised it appeared
to search out the remotest corners of the hall. Every rounded-off
sentence presented a vivid picture to the mind. The subject was
the chancellor Prince Metternich, and we all felt when, after an

hour and a half, Prof. O ended apparently quite as fresh and

collected as when he began, that we not only knew the prince
personally, but that we understood his politics and the workings
of his mind far better than his contemporaries had done. The
thing which, however, impressed me most, was the sense of power
held back, and to the good as it were, which the professor gave
me while speaking, and even after he had finished. When,
therefore, the next day he told me that he never touched animal
food, I was very curious to hear his experiences.

He told me that some years before he had been very ill, nigh
unto death, and given up by all the doctors. Then came one who
said he could cure him. All the strong soups and beef jellies and
raw minced meat were eliminated and replaced by fruit and light
farinaceous food, but fruit especially, and he soon got well and
strong — so well and strong, indeed, that he determined to go on
with his simple fare, especially as he felt an unwonted ease and
extraordinary lucidity of the intellect when working. His wife,
he told me, soon followed his example, and also his daughters and
sons-in-law. At last his servants came and said they would like
to be vegetarians too, as it seemed to agree so well with their mas-
ters. I felt that where so clever a man was so fully convinced of
the expediency and efficiency of this diet that he carried his whole
family and household with him, he must have gone into the ques-
tion deeply, and have the very best reasons upon which to found
his belief. I could not enter with him into further discussion, as
he had to leave Vienna, but he sent me some books on the sub-
ject. These books were German, and they would be well worth
translating, for their whole tone is like a bracing mountain air.
In every one of them vegetable diet is the foundation whereon is
built an edifice of hygiene, which if we could or would but strictly
follow might bring us to a pinnacle of animal spirits and bodily
vigor only to be compared to the centaur of Henri de Gue'rin. To
those who have not read this charming fragment, let me recom-
mend it as a tonic on a day of languor and prostration. The
thorough enjoyment of life and strength in which the centaur
revels while careering over wind-swept plains, down breezy
mountain-sides, plunging into deep green forests with the scent
of the earth and wood flowers in the air, is better than any dose
of sal volatile or quinine. These little German books, for none of
them are very long, have mainly for their object to bring us back
to a healthier and simpler mode of life. They are full of cold
water and open windows by day and by night. Sun-baths and

VEGETABLE DIET. 97

air-baths in the woods and on the hills, swimming and gymnas-
tics, everything on the simplest and most economical lines, as they
are mainly written for schools and the middle classes, where ex-
pensive adjuncts must be omitted. No medicines are tolerated
by the strict vegetarian ; everything is cured by diet, exercise,
water, hot or cold, or in the shape of steam.

There are now all over Germany and Austria a great number
of what are called " Nature doctors," who cure on these principles,
though they need not necessarily be vegetarians. The poor prefer
them, as they are often men well off, who have a vocation for this
calling ; the medicaments cost very little or nothing. Father Se-
bastian Kneipp, at Worichshofen in Swabia, belongs to this class,
and the thousands he cures every year have made his name
famous in all the German-speaking lands. He too deprecates the
use of much meat. Everywhere baths and sanatoriums are
springing up where cures with these simple means alone are
effected, and medicines utterly discarded. The Hygeia, a publi-
cation founded by the well-known Dr. Paul Niemeyer, and edited
at Munich by his disciple and successor, Dr. Gerster, is one of
the many organs of the new and independent school ; many doc-
tors and a few laymen write in it. It is interesting and amusing,
full of unexpected information, and much read by the most intel-
ligent section of the public. The German vegetarian books are
full of a number of excellent recipes for dishes of all kinds, suited
to every time of the year and to different countries, which is most
important, for the new-fledged vegetarian always thinks he is
going to die of hunger. In the preparation of vegetables the Ger-
man Pythagoreans bear off the palm, and I am bound to say that
even their puddings and sweets are better than those known to
the meat-eater. From what I have heard of English vegetarian-
ism, I fancy that the movement, which in many respects might
prove so useful, is much impeded by the inadequate way in which
the vegetables are cooked, and until this defect is thoroughly
remedied, and a greater variety is introduced into the vegetarian
bill of fare, there is no prospect of an extension, which might
prove so great a boon to the poorer classes.

In spite of the persuasive language of my books, and the
promise of health and happiness, I could not, somehow, make up
my mind to take a step which I imagined would in a certain way
cut me off from my fellow-creatures ; and it was not till rather
more than a year ago, when I was obliged to read up certain
papers about the transport of cattle and slaughter-houses, that the
irresistible conviction came upon me that I must choose between
giving up the eating of animal food or my peace of mind.

Years ago, when I lived in Italy, this same subject had given
me much pain. At Rome it was the habit for every butcher to

TOL. XLIV. — 9

98 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have his own boys in the slaughter-houses to kill the cattle.
These boys were often unskillful or not strong enough. When the
beautiful milk-white oxen, with their large, pathetic black eyes,
were brought to be slaughtered, these butcher boys had often to
give thirty blows before the poor beast fell. Every animal that
was brought into the town paid by weight at the octroi, but they
were generally kept waiting for days in sheds outside the town.
In these sheds there were drinking-fountains always running,
but the plug at the bottom was taken out, so as to prevent the
animals from drinking, and thus their weight was lightened.
The railway companies never dreamed of watering the cattle dur-
ing the many days that they were packed together in the trucks,
sweltering and faint under the fierce Italian sun. The Roman
Society for Protection of Animals sent a dozen pails to Foligno,
a central railway station, offering to pay a certain sum annually
for the watering of the cattle. The pails were returned after two
years, never having been used once. Nor are things much better
in this country. The cattle which come up from Transylvania
and other distant parts of the empire are neither fed nor watered
on the journey, which sometimes takes a week. Then when un-
shipped they are tied together in threes and fours, hit and fright-
ened, and thus driven to the slaughter-houses. They sometimes
fall down in the road from terror and exhaustion.

Galician pigs often lie in thousands for a week together in the
snow and slush outside the slaughter-houses, waiting to be killed.
Thus far my own experience and things I ^.ave seen. In England,
if I am to believe newspaper paragraphs and statistics, things are
as bad if not worse. For a short resume of the horrors attending
the transport of cattle by land and by sea, let anybody whom it
interests turn to pages 65-69 of Dr. A. Kingsford's Perfect Way
in Diet, headed The Sufferings of Cattle, and they will learn well-
authenticated facts which will fill them with pain and. disgust.
The following figures are sufficiently significant. They are taken
from the report of the Veterinary Department of the Privy Coun-
cil for the year 1879.

In 1879, 157 cargoes of Canadian cattle were shipped for Bris-
tol, Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, in which total there were
25,185 oxen, 73,913 sheep, and 3,663 pigs ; but of this number 154
oxen, 1,623 sheep, and 249 pigs were thrown into the sea during
the passage, 21 oxen, 226 sheep, and 3 pigs were landed dead, and
4 oxen and 61 sheep were so wounded and suffering on arriving
that they had to be slaughtered on the spot. In the same year
there were shipped from the United States for the ports of Bris-
tol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Grimsby, Hartlepool, Hull, Leith, Liver-
pool, London, Newcastle-on-Tyne, South Shields, and Southamp-
ton 535 cargoes of animals, of which 76,117 were oxen, 119,350

VEGETABLE DIET. 99

sheep, 15,180 pigs ; but of this number 3,140 oxen, 5,915 sheep, and
2,943 pigs were cast into the sea during the transit ; 221 oxen, 380
sheep, and 392 pigs arrived dead at the place of landing ; and 93
oxen, 167 sheep, and 130 pigs were so mutilated that they had to
be sacrificed on the spot. In resume, 14,024 animals were thrown
into the sea, 1,240 were landed dead, and 455 were slaughtered on
the quay to save them dying of their wounds and sufferings. One
asks one's self what state the remaining animals were in, which
were sold for human food ?

It is not an unnatural or far-fetched idea to connect this state
of things with the excessive and inexplicable extension of can-
cer within the last decade. The more and the further cattle are
transported under these conditions, the more tainted (though per-
haps not perceptibly so) meat must be eaten, the more poison is
infused into the blood. It is not possible that the flesh of an ani-
mal which has been knocked about, frightened, starved, exposed
to the heat of the sun or icy cold for days and weeks, should be
as healthy as that of those taken from our own fields and slaugh-
tered at once, as was the case in the days of our ancestors.

These considerations, however, were riot the only ones that
moved me. I do not think that anybody has the right to indulge
in tastes which oblige others to follow a brutalizing occupation,
which morally degrades the man who earns his bread by it. To
call a man a butcher means that he is fond of bloodshed. Butch-
ers often become murderers. I remember two cases in the papers
last summer where butchers had been hired to murder individuals
whom they did not even know. After this comes the irrepressi-
ble thought, Is it right to take life in order to feed one's self,
when there is plenty of other available food which will do just
as well ?

Having answered these questions to my own satisfaction, I
plunged at once into full-blown vegetarianism. I got very little
to eat, and that not very good, for neither I nor my cook was a
la hauteur of the situation. I had, however, one, and that a very
great compensation — I felt superior to my fellow-beings, treading
on air, my head delightfully clear, and altogether lifted up above
material things. The poet laureate's lines to Fitzgerald will give
in a few words the story of my first and unsuccessful attempt :

"... . live on milk and meat and grass;
And once for ten long weeks I tried
Your table of Pythagoras,
And seemed at first a thing enskied
(As Shakespeare has it), airy- light,
To float above the ways of men,
Then fell from that half- spiritual height
Chilled, till I tasted flesh again.1'

ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I, too, felt chilled and sleepy "by day and night, so tired that I
could hardly walk. The doctor said : " You have no pulse at all,
and must give in ; it does not suit you/' The winter was icy cold
and depressing, and for the moment I followed Tennyson's ex-
ample. Mais je ne reculais que pour mieux sauter, and with the
first breath of spring, when all those delightful fruits and leaves
and roots which Raphael did not disdain to paint as ornaments
in his loggias reappear on our tables, I made my second method-
ical and successful attempt, eliminating week by week one kind
of animal food only, and replacing it by some equally nutritious
vegetable preparation.

The very strict ascetic sect of vegetarians who only live upon
seeds and uncooked food look down upon their weaker brethren
who eat eggs and milk and butter, in fact, everything which does
not necessitate the taking of life, which appears to me to be the
only reasonable standpoint. I will not, therefore, enter into dis-
cussions whether our teeth are those of a carnivorous or frugiv-
orous animal, though the latter appears to me the most likely
theory, as fruits are the only edibles we can eat and digest with-
out cooking ; everything else requires the aid of fire to make it
palatable and wholesome. It is certain that the giving up of ani-
mal food cures many illnesses which no medicines can reach.
Everybody knows the bad effects of butcher's meat in gout and
rheumatism. In affections of the heart it is often the only
remedy, and the wonderful results are not difficult to explain in a
case where rest often means cure, if one reflects that while the
meat-eater's heart has seventy-two beats in the minute the vege-
tarian's only has fifty-eight beats, therefore twenty thousand
beats less in the course of the twenty-four hours. Insomnia and
nervousness are affected in the same way ; there is less wear and
more repose in the constitution. I could enumerate many other
illnesses in which vegetable diet does marvels, but will only men-
tion those of the skin. Most vegetarians have unusually clear
and often beautiful complexions. I need only remind those who
know them of the old Carthusian and Trappist monks, who all
have smooth white and pink Fra Beato Angelica kind of faces,
which are not found among the orders that do not habitually
live on Lenten fare. The splendid teeth of the Italian peasantry,
who never touch meat, speak for themselves, and it is the same in
other countries where the people live under similar conditions. It
is foolish to associate vegetable diet with temperance, as so many
do : they are quite astonished to see a vegetable-eater drinking
wine or beer. One thing, however, is true, viz., that it is far easier
to cure a drunkard if you deprive him of meat, because, as Dr.
Jackson, head doctor of the Asylum for Dipsomaniacs, Dansville,
United States, says : " It is clear that meat contains some not nutri-

VEGETABLE DIET. 101

tious particles, which, excite the nervous system so much that it
at last becomes exhausted and unstrung. In this state of exhaus-
tion unhealthy reaction follows, which brings on a paroxysm and
violent desire for spirits and the excitement which they create."
G. Biinge, Professor of Physiological Chemistry at the University
of Bale, writes, in his book on vegetarianism, page 33 : " The appe-
tite of the drunkard is directed almost exclusively to animal food,
and vegetarians are quite right when they teach that spirit-drink-
ing and excessive use of animal food are in connection with each
other."

Vegetarianism is often called a fad, but it is a healthy and an
innocent one, and the natural reaction against the present state of
things. It imparts lightness and elasticity to the body, bright-
ness and clearness to the mind. The vegetarians I know are all
unusually strong, active, and young-looking people for their age :
one of them walked without stopping for thirty-four and another
time twenty-seven hours, without a rest, while on an excursion
in Norway, feats not easily equaled by the most inveterate beef-
eater. Traveling, mountain-climbing, all seem easier and less
fatiguing on this light and soothing diet ; and why should it not
give strength to the limbs and sinews if one reflects that all the
strongest animals who do the heaviest work in the world, like
horses, oxen, and elephants, are entirely herbivorous ?

There is, of course, a great deal more to say on so wide a sub-
ject, but I have in these pages confined myself almost entirely to
my own experiences. Being but a beginner myself, there is much
for me to learn, and I have not even touched on the possibilities
and probabilities this theme opens out into the domain of psy-
chology. But only a few days ago one whose experience and
knowledge on this subject are greater than those of most men
told me he owed almost everything he had attained in his domain
to his strict adherence to a vegetable diet. It certainly gives, to
those who live on these lines, a kind of detachment from material
things, a sense of calm and content. It is in the hope of helping
some who may feel nervous and worried in mind, or ill in body,
that I write these lines, to point out a simple remedy everybody
can apply. It not only costs nothing, but even puts money in our
pockets — only, like everything else, it must be governed by good
sense and reason in order to be successful.

It is not my intention to be understood to say that I look upon
vegetable diet, even with its necessary accompaniments of fresh
air, frequent ablutions, gymnastics, and exercise, as a panacea for
everything, and that medicines become useless. We are mortal,
and there is no perfection in this imperfect world. Nobody has a
greater belief than I have in remedies judiciously given during
illness, but it is the many who are out of health and below par,

102 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

without hardly knowing what is the matter with them, who
would be all the better for trying whether their discomforts
spring from too high and rich a diet or from the inability to pro-
cure any but inferior meat or fish. In the first case they would
soon feel their tired digestions rested and their irritated nerves
calming down, while in the latter they would find out that it is
easy to get a healthier and an equally satisfying meal for half the
cost of what they were in the habit of spending before.

Though these motives are not perhaps the highest which
ought to lead us to a result, they are those which exercise a most
general influence. The small number who change their mode of
life from principle only kriow how far above bodily health the
blessings are which grow out of the sacrifice. Before the eyes of
everybody the lines of the Latin poet must conjure up a delight-
ful and attractive picture :

" Forbear, O mortals, to taint your bodies with forbidden food ;
Corn have we ; the boughs bend under a load of fruit ;
Our vines abound in swelling grapes ; our fields with wholesome herbs,
Whereof those of a cruder kind may be softened and mellowed by fire.
Nor is milk denied us, nor honey smelling of the fragrant thyme ;
Earth is lavish of her riches, and teems with kindly stores,
Providing without slaughter or bloodshed for all manner of delights."

ORIGIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAINFALL.

BY J. HAERIS PATTON, PH. D.

IT has been assumed that the evaporation oft7 the Gulf of Mexico
furnishes the most part of the rainfall of the great valley.
Says an authority, when speaking of that of the whole country,
" By far the greater portion comes from the gulf and spreads over
the central and eastern part of the Mississippi Valley, and even
much of the Atlantic slope." Let us examine the data on which
this statement is based. The area of the Mississippi Valley is
estimated at 1,244,000 square miles, and the annual average rain-
fall on its surface is forty-two inches — that is, if the rain water
did not penetrate the earth, run off, or evaporate, at the end of
the year the depth would be three feet and a half.

The area of the Gulf of Mexico is estimated to be one fourth
that of the valley. It is easily shown by mathematical calculation
that it would require an annual evaporation off this area of four-
teen feet to furnish the required rainfall, even if all the water thus
raised into the atmosphere were utilized. Again, the area of the
gulf is swept by the extreme right flank of the trade winds.
These winds must carry toward the west a large portion of the

ORIGIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAINFALL, 103

surface vapor rising off the gulf ; this is evident because of the
unusual distance to which the sea-breeze penetrates into Texas
and the adjoining region of Mexico. In addition, the water of the
gulf is not as warm, as that of the Atlantic equatorial current —
to be noticed presently— by an average of ten or twelve degrees
Fahr., and in consequence, in proportion, its evaporation is just so
much the smaller. The equatorial current penetrates the gulf
about five hundred miles, but does not diffuse itself and thus im-
part its heat to the adjoining waters, but in a compact body the
current turns toward the east and finds its way out through the
Florida Strait, and thus becomes the Gulf Stream.

It is estimated that if the " gulf was landlocked and evapora-
tion checked," the volume of water poured into it by the Mis-
sissippi alone would " raise the level of this great area one and a
quarter feet each year." (Appletons' Physical Geography, p. 130.)
The height of the surface of the gulf, however, remains uniformly
the same year in and year out. It follows from this that the out-
flow of water and its evaporation combined amount each year to
only one foot and a quarter. This leaves twelve feet and three
quarters to be obtained elsewhere, in order to furnish the rainfall
for the great valley. The question is, Where can this be obtained ?

The Atlantic equatorial current may furnish an answer. This
vast stream is about four thousand miles long and about three
thousand wide. Taking its rise in the Gulf of Guinea, it flows
westwardly, but, dividing on Cape St. Roque, the much greater
portion moves along the north shore of South America, and just
before entering the Caribbean Sea it unites with the northern
counter current. (See Appletons' Physical Geography, pp. 50, 51.)
These currents are both under a broiling tropical sun, and their
water is heated from 80° to 82° ; " the evaporation is rapid in the
equatorial regions, and most of all in the warm belts constantly
swept by the trade winds." Thus, when the warm, saturated air
next the surface rises, it is rapidly carried away by the wind, and
cooler air flowing from the north takes its place, to be in turn
heated and floated upward. Says Captain Maury, U. S. N. (Geog-
raphy of the Sea, p. 102), " Off this ocean belt there is, in the form
of vapor, annually floated up into the higher air fifteen feet of
water." Says Prof. Arnold Guyot, in Earth and Man, p. 85, when
speaking of the same, " The sun causes these invisible vapors to
rise, which, being lighter than the air itself, increasingly tend to
soar into the upper atmosphere, filling it and constituting within
it another aqueous atmosphere." This vapor is carried by the
trade winds steadily westward at the rate of about thirty or thirty-
five miles a day, and meets its first obstruction in the plateau of
Mexico, which is five thousand feet above sea-level. On the west
coast of Mexico stand the Sierra Madre Mountains, whose altitude

10 1 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is five thousand feet above the plateau. (Appletons' Physical Geog-
raphy, p. 23). The latter furnish the second impediment to the
onward progress of these winds, since they run southeast-north-
west ; but the trades blow directly west, and thus impinge upon
them at an angle which deflects the winds themselves toward
the north.

The Sierra Madre are more than one thousand miles long, and
are an insuperable barrier to the progress of these vapor-loaded
winds. This is evident, as there is no indication of their pres-
ence on the west side, neither on the land nor on the water, as the
Pacific trade winds appear to originate about one hundred and
fifty miles west of the coast of Mexico. An analogous case is
cited by Prof. Orton, in his Andes and the Amazon, p. 118, who
says, when speaking of the Andes, " So effective is that barrier
that the trade winds are not felt again on the Pacific till you are
one hundred and fifty miles from the coast."

These winds appear to be shoved up, strata upon strata, on the
Mexican plateau, and when they finally reach the Sierra Madre
Mountains, over which they can not -pass, they are rolled back
upon themselves. They must have an outlet. The rushing wind
from the east prevents their moving in that direction, and the
force of the main current forbids their flowing toward the equa-
tor, and thus their outlet can only be toward the north. They
are now so high that they must be beyond the influence of the
rotary motion of the earth, and are governed by the force of
gravitation alone. In accordance with the latter law they flow,
as on an inclined plane, over the colder and more dense air toward
the north, and thus restore the equilibrium of the atmosphere
that has been disturbed. This disturbance is caused by a con-
tinual flow of the cold and heavy surface air from the extreme
north toward the equator, because along the tropical belt a par-
tial vacuum is created by the air becoming heated and lighter
and in consequence floating upward, and the cold air rushes in to
supply that vacuum.

These comparatively warm strata, though high in the atmos-
phere, have a tendency to reach the earth, but, being lighter than
the surface air, they float above it until their respective densities
are about the same. The point of contact with the earth of the
lower strata of these " return trades " is near 30° north latitude in
the summer, but still further north in the winter. This point of
contact is near and along the north shore of the gulf, and the
blending of the moisture of the " return trades " with that off the
gulf may account for the unusually large rainfall of sixty inches
near that line ; meanwhile the main and higher strata blow on
and reach the earth further north.

" The polar winds, seeking the equator, strike obliquely against

ORIGIN OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY RAINFALL. 105

the Rocky Mountains,, and in running along their eastern slopes
are deflected to the southeast, and become the northwest winds of
the valley of the Mississippi. . . . These cool winds meet the sur-
plusage of the moist return trade winds, and by their coolness
condense still more the latter's vapor, which descends in rain-
storms that are sometimes quite violent, but furnish water for the
head streams of the Missouri and its branches" (Prof. Guyot,
Earth and Man, p. 100).

It has been suggested that this warm air, thus saturated with
vapor, loses the latter when it floats aloft, because of the cold in
the higher regions of the atmosphere, and consequently such air,
floating north, could not deposit moisture when it reached the
earth. That theory is not consistent with the fact that vapor
often- becomes visible in the form of clouds, which frequently
float higher than the altitude of the Sierra Madre. In this special
case it is worthy of notice that the plateau of Mexico is five thou-
sand feet above sea-level, and it is also under a tropical sun, and
therefore the incumbent air is so much the more heated. In such
circumstances the vapor-loaded winds would not be likely to lose
so much of their warmth and moisture as under conditions where-
in there was no similar elevation. The great valley being free
from mountain barriers at both ends, the winds flowing either
way are unobstructed. In consequence, the comparatively warmer
and vapor-loaded winds off the equatorial current meeting those
coming from the north that are nearer the surface and also cooler
and drier, the moisture of the former is condensed into mists and
clouds, and finally descends to the earth in copious rains.

ONE of the most perfectly adapted pieces of machinery for handling heavy
weights is the modern "rapid-transit elevated railway traveling crane," which
has been found highly useful in manufactories of locomotives and other ponder-
ous machinery. Before it was introduced, heavy weights were moved from one
part of the shop to another by means of jib cranes, the arms of which swung in
arcs of a circle. A series of them occupied the middle of the floor. The weight
to be moved was swung upon one of them and borne round to the next, when it
was changed ; and so on, till it reached its destination. These machines cum-
bered the floor, and were otherwise inconvenient. The traveling crane requires
no floor room, but is wholly poised above. It consists of four essential parts:
(1) the elevated tracks, which are supported by iron columns or built into the walls
and run parallel with the walls from one end of the building to the other ; (2) the
traveling bridge, which is constructed of two parallel plate girders extending
from rail to rail, spanning in mid-air the breadth of the building and mounted on
wheels; and (3) heavy steel tracks laid between the girders, bearing (4) a trolley
car, which runs back and forth, carrying the hoisting mechanism. By the longi-
tudinal motion of the bridge and the cross-motion of the trolley, every square
foot of available space in the building can be covered, and the position of a steam
boiler or of a locomotive engine changed at will.

io6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

MATHEMATICAL CURIOSITIES OF THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY.

BY M. V. BRANDICOUET.

IN the great intellectual revival of the sixteenth century,
mathematics as well as letters and the arts were recuperated
first from the pure sources of antiquity. Casting away poor
Latin translations, second-hand versions through the Arabic, on
which the Middle Ages had fed, geometricians emulated one an-
other in zeal for learning the Greek language, in order that they
might read in the original text the works of Euclid, Archimedes,
Ptolemy, and Diophantus. Most of the works published at this
epoch were only translations from Grecian authors. " The great
thought of that time," says Montucla, " was simply to refine the
minds of students and cause them to taste of a learning almost
unknown till then. This could not be done all at once, and the
human mind, like a weak stomach which too solid food would
tire out, had to be brought by degrees to considerations of a
higher order."

One of the earliest translations of Euclid is found in the Mar-
garita philosophies of G. Reisch, prior of La Chartreuse at Fri-
borg — a Latin book printed in Gothic characters at Heidelberg in
1496. It is a sort of encyclopaedia of the science of the beginning
of the sixteenth century, and certifies to the very extensive
knowledge of the author. Each of the scientific treatises con-
tained within it is adorned with very curious engravings of a
naive character.

Memmius, a noble of Venice, made a translation of the works
of Apollonius in 1537, which was published after his death by one
of his sons.

The mathematical sciences were then cultivated with most
success in Italy ; and when Francis I, of France, sent across the
Alps for architects, painters, and sculptors to construct and adorn
the magnificent chateaux of Chambord and Chenonceaux, he was
thus also able to ask for his colleges algebraists who were cer-
tainly the first mathematicians in Europe. Algebra was not then
what it has since become, a science employing only letters, signs,
and symbols, having a well-defined significance and serving as
the characters of a very clear and very precise language, which
the initiated could understand as well as they could their mother
tongue. The unknown quantity was then called " the thing " (res,
coser ; from which algebra was for some time named the art of the
thing), and it was often represented by R. The square of the un-
known quantity was called census (2). The signs + and = were
not known, but the initials of the words for which they stand

MATHEMATICAL CURIOSITIES. 107

were used. The sign — was not required, for the fruitful theory of
negative quantities was not as yet known. In equations the co-
efficients of the unknown quantities were always figures, which
became combined with the other factors during the operations,
and of which no trace appeared in the final result. "We may
conceive/' says M. Chasles, in his History of Geometrical Meth-
ods, " that this cramped condition of imperfection did not consti-
tute an algebraic science like that of our days, the power of which
resides in those combinations of the signs themselves which as-
sist the reasonings of intuition and lead by a mysterious way to
the results sought/'

Tartaglia Nicolo was an illustrious figure among the mathe-
maticians of Italy. Born at Brescia in 1500, he was terribly mu-
tilated at an early age, when his native city was captured by
Gaston de Foix. His skull was broken in three places and his
brain exposed, his jaws were split by a wound across his face, and
he could not speak or eat. He nevertheless recovered, but always
stammered, whence his name (tartagliare, to stammer). He was
his own schoolmaster, and, after he had learned to read and
write, devoted himself to the study of the ancient geometricians.
At thirty-five years of age he taught mathematics in Venice.
There he accepted a challenge which Fiori sent him, to solve
twenty problems, all of which depended upon a particular case of
cubic equations. Tartaglia solved them in less than two hours,
and to commemorate his triumph composed mnemotechnic verses
containing the solution. He was also the author of the ingenious
formula for finding directly the area of a triangle of which all
three of the sides are known.

Cardan Jerome, who was born in Paris, of Italian parents,
September 24, 1501, was one of the most extraordinary men of his
time. At twenty-two years of age, when he had just terminated
his studies at the University of Pavia, he taught Euclid publicly.
He also taught medicine, traveled in Scotland, Germany, and the
Low Countries, and returning established himself in Rome as a
pensioner of Pope Gregory XIII, and died there in 1576. Sca-
liger and De Thou assert that he had calcuiated the day of his
death by astrology, and then starved himself to secure the fulfill-
ment of his predictions.*

Such was the final eccentricity of this mathematician, who be-
lieved firmly in astrology and had visions, and he professed that

* In one of his excursions to England he cast the horoscope of Edward VI, for whom
he predicted a long life. Unfortunately, the king died in the next year. Having become
used to such accidents, he was not disconcerted, but revised his calculations, rectified some
of the figures, and found that the king had died in full accordance with the rules of
astrology.

io8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he had been informed in a dream of all that was to happen to
him. His costume, his bearing, corresponded with his strange
character. He appeared sometimes in rags, sometimes splendidly
dressed ; ran through the streets at night, and the next day was
drawn in a three-wheeled carriage. Yet he published a treatise
on mathematics, Ars magnet, which was remarkable for the age.
Pertinently to the publication of this work he had controversies
with Tartaglia, of which something should be said, for the curi-
ous picture they offer of the manners of the learned world in the
sixteenth century.

Tartaglia, as we have said, discovered the solution of cubic
equations. Cardan employed toward him all the persuasions in
his power to obtain a communication to himself of the famous
discovery. " I swear to you on the holy gospels," he promised,
" that if you teach me your discoveries I will never publish them,
and will, besides, record them for myself in cipher, so that no one
shall be able to understand them after my death." Tartaglia,
trusting in Cardan's good faith, communicated to him his rules
summarized in twenty-seven mnemotechnic verses, in three
strophes of nine verses each. Cardan, assisted by his pupil Fer-
rari, succeeded in extending the rules, solved equations of the
fourth degree, and published the whole in the Ars magna. Tar-
taglia, irritated at the algebraist astrologer's violation of his
word, fell into a violent rage. He sent to his enemy, according
to the fashion of the time, several challenges, and in one of them
went so far as to threaten Cardan and his pupil that he would
wash their heads together and at the same time, " a thing which
no barber in Italy could do." Cardan finally agreed to attend a
disputation, which was to be held in a church in Milan on the
10th of August, 1548. He did not appear, but sent his pupil Fer-
rari. Ferrari bore his part in the contest alone, and the affair
would have resulted in favor of Tartaglia if the hostile attitude
of Cardan's friends had not caused him to leave Milan by a by-
road. "These mathematical jousts," says M. Victorien Sardou,
" these challenges proclaimed by heralds and trumpets, with great
parade of pompous«words and swelling eulogies, were more be-
coming to charlatans than to really learned men ; but charlatan-
ism was then in fashion ; a discovery was the finder's secret, and
a method of calculating was speculated upon as if it was a new
medicinal powder." We do not wholly agree with M. Sardou.
We see an example of intellectual activity and find a proof of the
importance that was attached to algebraic discoveries in these sci-
entific tournaments in which all classes of society are interested —
as formerly, in ancient Greece, they applauded the challenges of
poets and the contests of athletes.

Leaving the Italian mathematicians and crossing the Alps, we

MATHEMATICAL CURIOSITIES. 109

find in Paris Pierre de la Rame'e (better known by his Latinized
name Ramus) occupying at the College Saint- Gervais a chair of
Mathematics which he had founded and which was subsequently
made illustrious by Roberval. Ramus was born in 1515, at the
little village of Cutry, and, a simple domestic at the College de
Navarre, he found time to study all alone. He had the audacity
at one-and -twenty years of age to sustain in the open Sorbonne,
which swore by Aristotle alone, that all that the Stagy rite philoso-
pher had said was false. Stranger still, " he seems to have con-
vinced his judges, who conferred the degree of Master of Arts
upon the bold innovator. Teaching philosophy, he continued to
decry Aristotle. The Sorbonne was moved by his course to bring
him before a tribunal, which declared him rash, arrogant, and
impudent for having presumed to condemn tha course and art of
logic received by all nations." He was prohibited from writing
and teaching contrary to Aristotle, " under penalty of corporeal
punishment/' He translated Euclid ; and his Schola?, mathemati-
cce, in thirty-one books, was long used as a guide in the teaching
of mathematics.

A mathematician of far superior merit to these was Viete, who
expounded for the first time some of the most profound and most
abstract theories that the human mind has ever invented. Born
in 1540, in Poitou, he was appointed in 1580 maitre des requetes
in Paris. His time was thenceforth divided between the duties
of his office and the study of mathematics. He had an extraordi-
nary power of labor. De Thou, his historian, relates that he
sometimes spent three days in his study, taking no more food and
rest than were absolutely necessary, and not leaving his chair or
desk for them. He was commissioned by Henri IV to decipher
some dispatches which the court of Madrid had sent to the Gov-
ernor of the Low Countries. He acquitted himself very well of
this difficult task — so well, indeed, that the Spaniards accused him
of sorcery. He also solved in a few moments and in the presence
of Henri IV a problem that had been proposed by Adrien Remain
to all the mathematicians in the world. It was a problem extem-
porized as a diversion — an equation in the forty-fifth degree. The
great analyst demonstrated that the equation depended upon the
division of an arc into forty-five parts. He was the one who
first in equations represented all the quantities by letters, with
which all operations were performed which it had been usual to
perform with numbers.

Viete published trigonometrical tables, in which he enun-
ciated for the first time the law according to which the series
of multiple or submultiple arcs increase. An enumeration of
all his labors would require more space than we can spare.
By his learned labors of analysis this man, the creator of mod-

no THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

era algebra, prepared the way in which were to follow with
giant steps, making themselves illustrious, Descartes, Fermat,
Pascal, and finally Newton. — Translated for The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly from La Nature.

BIRDS' JUDGMENTS OF MEN.

BY M. CUNISSET-CARNOT.

WE put animals under all sorts of contributions, taking even
their lives for our necessities, pleasure, and caprice, with-
out once considering what their views may be of our proceedings
or of us, or whether they have any views. We need not doubt
that they have views, and some very definite ones. Mute wit-
nesses of our lives, they examine, observe, and judge us ; and some
judge with a marvelous accuracy.

Birds, in particular, are all the time fluttering around us ; they
witness all our motions, interpret all our gestures, and very quickly
form a perfectly just opinion of our character. The selection ex-
ercised by swallows has been remarked — they are said never to
build their nests, except in quiet houses — and the prudence of the
crow, which readily marks the difference between a harmless pe-
destrian and a hunter, and always keeps itself out of reach of the
sportsman's gun, is well recognized. The accuracy of the obser-
vation of birds goes beyond this ordinary sagacity, and I am cdn-
vinced that those birds which reside near man utilize for their
advantage, security, or pleasure a multitude of very complete,
fine, and judicious remarks which they make concerning their
dangerous neighbor. I will tell here of two recent examples as a
contribution to the study of the pyschology of birds.

The house I live in is situated in a faubourg of Dijon, in the
midst of a garden surrounded by other gardens. The quarter is
a chosen haunt of birds — nightingales, warblers, tomtits, finches,
redthroats, wrens, etc., are abundant, besides the innumerable and
undisciplinable army of sparrows. All the people of the house
profess for the inhabitants of the garden feelings of the highest
sympathy, which are manifested in numerous good ways by bath-
ing-troughs judiciously placed in the shadows of thickets, various
seeds put in good places where they will be found, by leaving the
nests in absolute solitude, etc. There result such a cordiality and
security of relation between our birds and us that the former
sometimes manifest a familiarity in our quarters exceeding the
limits of good taste.

Some time ago, the weather being pleasant, although it was as
yet but little after six o'clock in the morning, I was working with

BIRDS' JUDGMENTS OF MEN. 111

one of the windows of my room open. All at once I heard a sound
of wings, and perceived a redthroat, its bill still bordered with
the yellow characteristic of infancy, fluttering frightened across
the room. It had probably, in its first attempt at flight, met a
cat or a squirrel, and had taken refuge with me under the stress
of a panic-stricken terror. It was so frightened that, in trying to
get out, it did not see the open window, and beat obstinately
against the glass of those which were shut. I thought it best not
to interfere, lest I might frighten it still more ; hoping, besides,
that it would be more perspicacious when it had recovered its self-
possession. It soon desisted from its attempts and perched itself
on a corner of my bookcase. I watched it with the corners of my
eyes without moving ; I observed that its respiration gradually be-
came more regular, and its expression resumed its calm. It com-
pletely recovered itself in a few moments, but, instead of trying
to escape, it stayed where it was, uttering frequent light cries.
In response to these calls, another redthroat came in, adult and
experienced, evidently the father of our frightened one. He flew
rapidly round in my room, like one examining the resources and
means of the country ; then, having beaten his wings for a few
seconds before his offspring to encourage him to follow him, I
fancied, he went out alone with a jerk of his wings, without miss-
ing the window. Here, I thought, is a father who takes things
philosophically ; sure that his chick will be in no danger, he
plants it there and goes back to his business. But I judged too
hastily. In less than a minute the father came back, bringing
a caterpillar in his bill ; he gave it to the little one, then went
out, returned, and made twenty journeys for provisions, bringing
in all sorts of insects, to the great satisfaction of the young one,
which became quite contented and made itself well at home, erect-
ing its feathers, smoothing them, working itself into a ball, and
peeping. But its skill did not correspond with its appetite: it
dropped the insects on my books, not to my pleasure ; then there
came a spider of respectable size, when, having a horror of spiders
as unreasonable as unconquerable, and disliking the litter left by
the little bird on my books, I thought it was time to give these
creatures to understand that their familiarity was a little in excess
of the limits. I opened all the windows, and, shaking my hand-
kerchief, sent them to continue their feast in the woods.

Among our birds are a pair of redstarts which faithfully re-
turn to us every April. We are old acquaintances, and a degree
of confidence is established between us above anything that can
be imagined. These birds habitually make their nests, within
reach of the hand, in a large ivy that grows on the wall near the
garden gate. Whether this situation had ceased to please them,
or some accident had happened to a first nest that we did not see,

112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they this year set up their household in a new spot, selecting the
letter-box. One of the boards of the frame of the box having be-
come detached, an opening was made in it large enough to allow
them to pass back and forth. This box is fixed to a little foot-
gate connected with the large wagon-gate, which is opened and
shut more than a hundred times a day ; about twenty inches
above it is a bell that sounds loudly enough to be heard within the
house, two hundred and fifty feet distant, which is rung every
time the little gate is opened. I should say that, as soon as I saw
my birds take the box for their house, I asked the postman to put
nothing more in it ; but when I perceived that the nest was in
building, it was nearly done, and the letter-box had been used as
such for nearly two days without the birds being troubled by it ;
and I should add that during those two days the box was emptied
by a groom too small to see to the bottom of it, and the nest being
in a corner, he had not seen or disturbed it. There are now four
eggs in the nest, and the birds have begun to sit upon it.

It is therefore evident that these redstarts as well as the red-
throats had formed a correct idea of the kindliness of their host,
that it had taken deep root in their little brains, and that the con-
fidence they showed in us was the result of very attentive, precise,
and just observations which they had been able to make upon the
inhabitants of my house. — Translated for The Popular Science
Monthly from La Nature.

SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON.

arts of marine engineering and naval construction have
-L been revolutionized through the inventions of Captain Erics-
son. As is remarked in a passage cited by Mr. F. C. Church,
in his biography of him, "in the closing years of his life he
could look back upon 'a change in the physical relations of
man to the planet on which he dwells, greater than any which
can be distinctly measured in any known period of historic time/
and this he had no small part in creating."

JOHN ERICSSON was born at Langbanshyttan, in the province
of Wermland, Sweden, July 31, 1803, and died in the city of New
York, March 8, 1889. His ancestry is traced back to the family
of Leif Ericsson, the son of Eric the Red, the Norse discoverer of
America. He was also related to Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, who
was descended, according to Mr. John Fiske, from the son of Thor-
finn Karlsefne, the first white child born on American soil. His
father, Olaf Ericsson, was a proprietor of mines ; his mother was
a daughter of an ironmaster, who was possessed of gifts which,

SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON. 113

according to Mr. Church, she transmitted to her sons Nils and
John. She used to relate that an old man had prophesied to her
father that two boys would be born in the family who would be-
come famous. John manifested an aptitude for constructive
work at an early age. As a child he amused himself with draw-
ing, boring, and cutting. A little older, he watched the engines
at the mines, copied their models in his drawings, and studied
their motions. He traced the first suggestion of his future career
to the day when, in his seventh year, he dug a mine a foot deep
and made a ladder for the use of imaginary miners. When nine
years old he had learned the use of drawing instruments and the
art of preparing constructive plans.

In the industrial disturbances occasioned by the war with
Russia Ericsson's father lost all his property and was thrown
out of business. In 1811 he obtained a responsible position in
connection with the construction of the Gotha Canal, in which he
gradually rose. John in the meantime was improving in the
exercise of his rare talents. In the deep forests, to which his
father had removed, drawing tools were hard to get. He had a
pen and pencil. He made compasses of wood, with needles for
the points ; contrived a drawing pen out of a pair of tweezers ;
and made brushes of the hairs of his mother's sable cloak. With
these home-made instruments he executed the drawings for a
pumping engine to be operated by a windmill.

The best use was made for the Ericsson boys of the limited
educational advantages which the region afforded. A governess
was furnished them in the years 1811 and 1812. A draughts-
man, connected with the work on the canal, taught them how to
finish their drawings in a style which rivaled that of engraving.
They were given access to the draughtsman's office of the canal
company. John exhibited his first drawing to the scale when
eight years old, and he learned to sketch maps. One of the
superintending constructors of the canal was engaged to teach
the boys algebra and architectural drawing. Another tutor
" plagued them with lessons in Latin grammar," from whom also
John learned " chemistry and many other things," he says, " of
great use to me ; for instance, how to make and mix colors for my
drawings out of materials bought at the druggists for a few
cents." The curate at Fredsberg on the Lefsang was engaged
to teach them French. The most distinguished mechanical
draughtsman in the country gave them further perfection in his
art ; and other instructors, drawn also from the professional men
engaged on the canal, taught them algebra, field drawing, geom-
etry, and English. While John was naturally disposed to think
and act for himself, these lessons tended to promote and encour-
age his intellectual self-reliance. When a friend spoke to him

TOL. XLIV. 10

ill THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with, regret of his not having been graduated from some tech-
nological institute, he answered that the fact, on the other hand,
was very fortunate. If he had taken a course at such an institu-
tion, he would have acquired such a belief in authorities that he
would never have been able to develop originality and make his
own way in physics and mechanics.

When John was eleven years old he and his brother became
pupils in engineering of Captain Edstrom, who had been sent to
England to study the most approved methods in canal construc-
tion. He was so pleased with their work that he recommended
them to Count Platen, President of the Gotha Ship Canal. This
officer had been shown specimens of what John had done, and,
receiving him, predicted that if he continued as he had begun, he
would some day produce something extraordinary. When twelve
years old John was employed, under the direction of his chief, in
drawing profile maps and plans for use on the canal, and to be
filed in the archives of the company ; in the next year he was
assistant to the niveleur (or leveler) in charge of the station of
Biddarhagen ; and in another year, when only fourteen years old,
and obliged to stand on a stool to reach the eyepiece of his sur-
veyor's level, he was put in charge of the Rottkilms station,
where he had to give directions daily to six hundred men. About
this time he became assistant to the chief of the work. While
engaged as leveler he made drawings of the Sunderland iron
bridge, which Count Platen admired very much. He drew for
his private use maps and sketches of important parts of the canal
and of the machinery used in its construction, which he began to
publish several years afterward, inventing an engraving machine
to enable the work to be more speedily done. He found, however,
that the machinery illustrated by his drawings was being super-
seded in the rapid progress of improvement in mechanical con-
struction, and discontinued this enterprise.

In 1820, when Ericsson was seventeen years old, after his
father had died, he entered the military service of Sweden, and
was appointed an ensign in the Royal Field Chasseurs of Jamt-
land, and stationed at Froson, near Ostersund. The step was
taken against the protest of Count Platen, and was the occasion
of a breach between them. Soon after joining his regiment he
was recommended for promotion, but his colonel was out of favor
at court, and the recommendation would not have been heeded,
had not the Duke of Upland, son of King Bernadotte, pleaded for
him. The duke showed his Majesty one of Ericsson's military
maps, whereby the promotion was secured, and the king's atten-
tion was directed to Ericsson's skill as an engineer. Ericsson
was subsequently commissioned to draw maps to illustrate the
campaigns of Bernadotte as marshal of Napoleon. He passed the

SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON. 115

examination for and obtained an appointment on the survey of
northern Sweden, and in connection with that work made de-
tailed drawings of fifty square miles of the country.

On the advice of friends, including the king, who considered
his abilities greater than could be adequately rewarded in Sweden,
and himself, no doubt, willing to seek a larger field of usefulness,
Ericsson in 1826 secured a leave of absence from the service and
went to England. He took with him plans, including a flame
engine which he had experimented on successfully with wood as
fuel, but which was not available when coal was used ; and a still
undeveloped idea in his mind of a vessel which " it was possible
for Sweden to build, and which would render the wooden walls of
England of no avail against her." He had intended to resign his
lieutenancy, but, overstaying his leave of absence without obtain-
ing an acceptance of his resignation, he was placed in an embar-
rassing position, from which he was extricated by the intercession
of the crown prince ; and in October, 1827, he received a promo-
tion to a captaincy and an acceptance of his resignation. The
title of captain thus obtained, and a degree of LL. D. from an
American university, were the only honors he cared to display to
the public, though he had many others equally high.

In the two years, 1828 and 1829, after he went to England,
Captain Ericsson completed seven inventions. One of these, a ma-
chine for compressing air, was used in clearing one of the Cornish
mines of water ; another involved the use of artificial draft for
steam-boiler furnaces. Sir John Ross was preparing for his sec-
ond arctic expedition, but not wishing his purpose known, con-
cealed it in ordering the engines of his vessel ; and the contractors,
Braithwaite and Ericsson, supposing that the voyage was to be of an
ordinary character, put in one of these engines with other append-
ages not adapted to arctic navigation. "When Captain Ericsson
learned the destination of the vessel, he warned Captain Ross that
the engine had not been built for that kind of work and would
be useless. His prediction was fulfilled as soon as the vessel en-
tered arctic waters, and the engine was thrown overboard. The
principle was, however, retained for ordinary steam, vessels, with
results quite satisfactory. The third invention was a steam fire
engine. The first, an experimental engine, was followed by four
others, completed, one of which, sent to Prussia, proved so efficient
that the designer received, in recognition of its value, an honorary
membership in the Berlin Institute. Another engine, employed
in London, extinguished the fires, but was objected to and rejected
on account of the quantity of water it required ; and it was nearly
thirty years before London would have another steam fire engine,
inferior to Ericsson's.

In 1829, while it was still undecided whether stationary or

u6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

locomotive traction should be adopted for the railway between
Liverpool and Manchester, a prize of £500 was offered for the best
locomotive. Although five months were given the competitors
in which to prepare themselves, Ericsson did not learn of the
offer till within seven weeks of the day of trial. Stephenson
brought out his " Rocket " engine, with every appointment per-
fect and tested. Ericsson produced his " Novelty," graceful in
design and structure, and with every part planned on sound prin-
ciples, but built in haste and untested. It suffered two break-
downs in the trial, caused by undetected faults in workmanship ;
but not before it had passed the " Rocket " and reached a speed of
thirty-two miles an hour. Ericsson withdrew it in disgust, and
the prize went to Stephenson. But every one admired the beauty
of the " Novelty " ; the judges spoke of its appearance as being very
much in its favor, and commended the ingenuity with which the
machinery was so contrived as to work out of sight, and the com-
pactness of its form ; and John Scott Russell, the eminent English
engineer, wrote in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1840 that " the
( Novelty ' had to be withdrawn through a series of unfortunate
accidents which had no reference to the character or capabilities
of the engine. And we well recollect that it made a profound
impression on the public mind at the time. On the first day of
the trial it went twenty-eight miles an hour (without any at-
tached load), and did one mile in seven seconds under two min-
utes/' Two other elegant locomotives were built by Ericsson,
but they failed to give entire satisfaction in the working, and this
field of construction was left to Stephenson.

In 1830 Captain Ericsson devised the centrifugal fan blower
which afterward came into general use on our river steamers ; in
1834 he took out a patent for a deep-sea lead, on a principle simi-
lar to the one employed in a lead designed by Sir William Thom-
son. He received a prize from the London Society of Arts for a
hydrostatic weighing machine. He exhibited at the Interna-
tional Exhibition of 1852, and received a medal for them, an in-
strument to measure distances at sea ; an alarm barometer which
sounded a gong in warning of approaching storms; and a py-
rometer which measured temperatures up to the boiling point of
iron. He invented an instrument for measuring the compressi-
bility of water ; methods of propelling boats on canals, one of
which has been applied to the heavy grades of Swiss mountain
railroads ; a water meter, a centrifugal pump, a file cutting ma-
chine, an apparatus for making salt from brine, and numerous
applications to the steam engine, many of which came into use,
while others were abandoned. He experimented with super-
heated steam ; and Mr. Church says that he designed more than
five hundred steam engines.

SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON. 117

While he was making all these machines he was also exper-
imenting with designs for a caloric engine. His researches in
this direction were begun with the " flame engine " already men-
tioned. He contributed a paper on the subject to the English
Institution of Civil Engineers in 1826 ; built three engines in 1827
based on the principle of the expansion of air; brought out a
completed caloric engine in 1833, to which he applied improve-
ments as his investigations continued ; received the Rumford
medal in 1856 for his researches into the nature of heat; and,
according to Mr. Church, spent in thirty years, including the
engines for his caloric ship, more than a quarter of a million
dollars in building twenty-seven experimental engines. The ca-
loric system was not successful when applied to the propulsion of
large vessels like the Ericsson, although that vessel registered a
speed of eight and attained at one time a speed of eleven miles
an hour, but for lighter work it has proved very practicable and
efficient ; the smaller machines have been extensively used, and
the inventor derived large profits from them.

The first experiment with the screw propeller was made in
1836 by Captain Ericsson, in conjunction with his friend Francis
B. Ogden, of New Jersey, United States consul at Liverpool. A
model of the apparatus was built and tested in a public bath.
Then a boat forty feet long, propelled by a double screw, attained
a speed of ten miles an hour on the Thames. The Lords of the
Admiralty were passengers on the trial trip ; but seeing was not
believing with them, and, while they witnessed the successful
performance of the craft, they declared that no vessel could be
steered if the power was applied at the stern, and would have
nothing to do with it. Captain Robert J. Stockton, of New Jer-
sey, afterward United States Senator, was visiting England at the
time on business connected with the Delaware and Raritan Canal,
and, witnessing the performance of the propeller vessel, ordered
one built for himself and named after him. It was sent across
the Atlantic, and when it reached New York the freedom of the
city was given to its captain. This vessel was employed for
many years in the waters of the United States, and, passing into
the possession of the Messrs. Stevens, of Hoboken, N. J., was
known as the tug New Jersey till 1866, when, or about that time,
it was broken up.

On the invitation of Captain Stockton, Captain Ericsson re-
signed, in 1839, the position of Superintending Engineer of the
Eastern Counties Railroad in England, and removed to the United
States. By the aid of Captain Stockton's influence he obtained a
commission to build a steam-propeller frigate, the Princeton, for
the United States Navy. Before this vessel was finished, in 1844,
his screw had been placed in forty-one commercial vessels of the

n8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

United States. Another new and valuable principle was intro-
duced in the Princeton — that of applying the power directly to
the shaft turning the screw. Ericsson's propellers with direct-act-
ing engines below the water line were also applied in the French
frigate Pomona in 1843, and in the British frigate Amphion in
1844. The Princeton was fitted with a twelve-inch wrought-iron
gun, forged after Ericsson's designs, and strengthened with bands,
which had been tested ; and with a heavier gun ordered by Cap-
tain Stockton, called the Peacemaker. This gun, when fired —
Ericsson's friends claim, against his advice — during a visit of
President Tyler and members of his Cabinet to the Princeton,
February 28, 1844, burst, killing the Secretaries of State and the
Navy, and Colonel Gardiner, of New York.

From the year 1826 Ericsson had entertained the idea of con-
triving an " impregnable and partially submerged instrument for
destroying ships of war," and had a plan matured for it in 1835 ;
and the idea of protecting war engines for naval purposes was
as old with him, he wrote, as his recollection. He had become
satisfied also that armor plates that a vessel could carry could
not be forged which a gun could not be constructed to penetrate
if fired directly at them. From these ideas was developed the
plan of the submerged vessel carrying a turret, which was em-
bodied in the Monitor. In August, 1861, he proposed to President
Lincoln to build a vessel for the destruction of the Confederate
war-craft, declaring that his purpose was not private profit but
only to serve his country. No settled purpose or idea of what
was to be done seems to have existed in Washington ; but Erics-
son, after presenting his plans, was directed to construct the
Monitor according to them, within a hundred days. The result
of the first experiment with this vessel constitutes one of the sen-
sational incidents of history. The Monitor's guns were not allowed
to be charged in that action as heavily as Ericsson desired — they
would have borne, in fact, a charge three times as great as was
given them — consequently the Merrimac was not destroyed, as it
probably might have been. Nine other monitors were built for
the Government by Ericsson and his business associates, of which
the Dictator was completed, as he reported to the Navy Depart-
ment, with a displacement of a fraction of an inch less than he had
calculated.

In 1869 Captain Ericsson contracted to furnish the Spanish
Government with thirty gunboats after his own designs, for use
against Cuban insurgent blockade-runners. They were all afloat
within four months, two months before the time they were to be
called for by the contract, and half of them had their engines and
boilers on board. Several novel features were introduced upon
them ; they proved admirably adapted to their purpose ; and in

SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON. 119

recognition of his service the Spanish Government conferred upon
Ericsson the decoration of Isabel la Catolica.

Captain Ericsson's ideas of a war vessel for submarine work
more seaworthy than the monitors were embodied in the De-
stroyer, which was launched in 1878. " It is an iron vessel, one
hundred and thirty feet long, seventeen feet wide, and eleven feet
deep, protected by a wrought-iron breastwork of great strength
near the bow," carrying a submarine sixteen-inch gun thirty feet
long, the muzzle of which projects through an opening in the
stem near the bottom, and which is intended to carry a fifteen-
hundred-pound projectile charged with three hundred pounds of
guncotton. The vessel is intended to attack "bow on," and to
discharge its projectile from within three hundred feet of the
object of assault. The bill for the purchase of this vessel by the
United States, although it passed the Senate in 1885, failed to be-
come a law.

" Three distinct purposes," says Mr. Church, " are apparent in
Ericsson's labors : first, to improve the steam engine and extend
the scope of its application ; next to discover some more econom-
ical and efficient method for changing the mode of motion we call
heat into the mode of motion we call power ; third, to force the
great maritime nations to declare the ocean neutral ground, by
making naval warfare too destructive a pastime to be indulged
in." We have seen how he worked out the first of these ideas in
his numerous adaptations of the steam engine, and the third in the
monitors and the Destroyer. In trying to make the second idea
practical he devised the caloric engine and devoted many of the
later years of his life to the investigation of the solar heat and of
methods of converting it into a direct source of mechanical power.
He devised and constructed a solar engine in 1883, which was de-
scribed and illustrated in Nature (Vol. XXIX, p. 217), and labored
until within two years of his death to improve and perfect it. In
his description of this engine he showed that with reflecting
plates of one hundred and thirty by one hundred and eighty
inches and a steam cylinder of six by eight inches he could
obtain a speed of engine of one hundred and twenty turns per
minute, with an absolute pressure on the working piston of thirty-
five pounds per square inch. He devoted himself regularly and,
except for the daily walk for his health, unremittingly to his
work. Fitting up his office and workshop in Beach Street, New
York, he occupied his whole time in investigation, experiment,
and construction, refusing to be interrupted, and shutting himself
out from general visitors. He was a man of great physical
strength, and some remarkable stories are told of his feats in
lifting. In one of them, when in youth he raised a weight of
six hundred pounds, he thought he overstrained himself, and

120 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

he ascribed to it certain pains in his back from which he suf-
fered.

He participated eagerly in physical sports, was expert in
Swedish gymnastics, was one of the best shots, the best leaper,
and the champion wrestler in his regiment, and was famed as an
athlete, skater, and swimmer. Mr. E. H. Stoughton, formerly
minister to Russia, is said to have surprised him once at sixty
years of age standing on his head, to prove that he had not lost
his agility. He was a man of unbounded benevolence, and never
refused the petitions of those who came to him in need.

While his literary works were not numerous, Captain Ericsson
was a writer of force and ability, with imaginative faculties that
might have been developed under cultivation. In his youth, and
while engaged in his surveying work, he sometimes, he says,
" wrote poetry to the wonderful and enchanting midnight light of
Norrland. Connoisseurs often doubted that it came from the sec-
ond lieutenant and surveyor among the mountains." His com-
munications to the periodical press on the subjects in which he
was interested were clear and vigorous, and always acceptable.

He was a man of intense patriotism, which he manifested
equally toward his native land, although he never returned to it,
and the United States, the country of his adoption. In his studies
and inventions he had always in view the protection of Sweden
against the aggressive stronger powers ; and he gave the fruits of
them ungrudgingly to the United States — not always insisting
upon his reward as persistently as he had a right to do, and too
often not receiving it, or receiving it at the expense of delay and
trouble not creditable to our Government. His gifts to Swe-
den, after he became prosperous, were numerous and bountiful,
and included contributions for the relief of sufferers from fam-
ine and from a fire at Carlstad, and for a benevolent fund for
the aged miners and miners' widows of his native province ; a
subscription to the Royal Library of Stockholm ; the guns for the
first Swedish monitor ; and a gunboat for coast defense. In 1867
the miners of his native region erected in front of the house in
which he was born, at their own expense, a large granite monu-
ment, bearing the inscription, in Swedish, " John Ericsson was
born here in 1803."

We are very largely indebted for the detail of the facts con-
cerning Captain Ericsson's inventions to the excellent biograph-
ical articles concerning him by Mr. William C. Church, which
were published in Scribner's Magazine in 1890.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

121

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF
EVOLUTION ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS.

rjlHE following very pertinent ques-
-L tions were proposed for discussion
at the World's Congress of Evolution-
ists, held during the last days of Sep-
tember in connection with the Colum-
bian Exposition :

" Does the doctrine of evolution in
its sociological aspects offer wise sugges-
tion for the solution of the grave social
and economic problems of our time?

" What in accordance with such sug-
gestion should be the next step taken in
our own country looking toward the
solution of these problems?"

At the moment of writing we are
not in possession of the result of the
discussion thus provoked ; but, as the
questions must be of interest to very
many of our readers, we propose to at-
tempt such an answer to them as our
brief limits permit.

The doctrine of evolution in its
broadest aspect is simply that doctrine
which teaches us that everywhere
throughout Nature there are action and
reaction between organisms and their
environments ; that where the result of
this action and reaction is increasing
heterogeneity and complexity of the or-
ganism, with more complete and vari-
ous adjustment or adaptation to the
environment, a process which may be
called evolution is in progress; and that
when, on the other hand, the result is
the obliteration of special adaptations
and combinations and a return toward
simpler modes of organization, a process
of dissolution is in progress. It is a
doctrine which proclaims the supremacy
of natural law, and which keeps promi-
nently before the mind the necessity of
an efficient cause for every change that
takes place. It thus introduces into the
realm of organic Nature and into the

moral and social spheres the Newtonian
principle that the direction of motion
can not be changed without the appli-
cation of force. The mind that has ac-
cepted the evolutionary view of things
has done with vain superstitions and
idle credulity. It feels no less than be-
fore the vastness and mystery that sur-
round human life and limit human
thought, but it has lost all appetite for
what may be called the vulgar marvel-
ous— that toward which childish minds
of every age go so eagerly forth.

When, therefore, we try to bring
the doctrine of evolution to bear on the
social and economic problems of our
time, the first thought that occurs to us
is that the so-called problems are aspects
of the change that society is undergoing
in its progress toward higher organiza-
tion. That the process in the midst of
which we live is one of evolution and
not of dissolution is evident by many
signs. What we see is the effort of the
different classes and elements of society
to achieve the establishment of satisfac-
tory mutual relations, or, as we may
otherwise express it, to discover and
give effect to a modus vivendi. That
this involves occasional conflict is just
what might, on general grounds, have
been anticipated. The market price is
not fixed without a good deal of " hig-
glng," and precisely the same process
applies to the adjustment of social rela-
tions. " Higgling " may not be a beauti-
ful thing to witness, but it does its work
in the fixing of prices much better than
would a competition in altruism, which
could only lead to utter confusion. The
evolution philosophy would therefore
suggest to us extreme caution in inter-
fering at all with the process which we
see at work. What is manifestly neces-
sary, however, is that no one individual
or group of individuals should be al-

122

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lowed to exercise arbitrary and irre-
sponsible power in the effort to advance
their claims. Power, in the last resort,
belongs to the community as a whole,
and no man or group of men should be
encouraged for one moment to think
that he or they can be allowed to usurp
the authority of society. There is no
"higgling" if one of the parties to the
bargain takes a club and forces the other
to accept his price. Society should be
the sole club-wielder, and, while slow to
wield it in general, should be quick to
wield it upon those who would take the
club out of its hands. It is bad for the
individual not to insist upon his rights;
but for society not to insist on its rights
is absolutely fatal.

In the popular mind the theory of
natural selection is largely identified
with the doctrine of evolution, and
many are impressed by the work of
Darwin who have but a scant knowl-
edge or appreciation of that of Spencer.
Darwin was buried in Westminster
Abbey, but whether an equal honor
awaits the author of the Synthetic Phi-
losophy is perhaps doubtful. The the-
ory of natural selection, however, far
from being the whole of evolution, is
only a subordinate aspect of it. At the
same time, if we would gather the prac-
tical lessons of the evolution philosophy,
the views elaborated by Darwin claim
our serious attention. "We have learned
from him how Nature is continually
selecting those who are to carry on the
great chain of life. Not every one who
is called is chosen, which, interpreted
by Darwin, means that not every one
who is called into life is chosen to carry
on life. Far from this, the vast mul-
titude of living things meet untimely
death, and go to aid, either actively or
passively — actively if they minister to
their sustentation. passively if by their
absence they lessen the demand on food
supplies — the lives of the survivors.
There is perhaps no greater or more
serious problem confronting society to-
day than this: how to pay just heed to

the above law without injury to our own
moral sensibilities and particularly to
our sense of the sacredness of life. It
is impossible to doubt that the law on
which the well-being of every other
animal species depends must be vindi-
cated in the case of the human species
also ; and yet the very fact that we are
sensible of the problem before us shows
that we are called to solve it in a man-
ner suitable to our higher intellectual
and moral development. As every one
is aware, there is at present an impor-
tant controversy in progress between
Mr. Spencer on the one hand and Prof.
Weismann on the other, upon the ques-
tion as to whether modifications ac-
quired by an organism during the course
of its individual existence are transmis-
sible by inheritance. The discussion is
not one into which we can enter ; and
we only refer to it for the purpose of
remarking that, though it seems to
touch a vital point in the doctrine of
evolution, the great fact of evolution re-
mains unassailable. The practical dif-
ference between one view and the other
is that, if Mr. Spencer is right, a larger
scope seems to be opened for educative
effort, and more encouragement for such
effort is afforded ; whereas, if Prof.
Weismann is right, the one all-important
principle to keep in view, if we would
preserve society from degeneration, is
that of selection of stocks, seeing that
an inferior individual, however much
we may improve him personally by edu-
cation, must, if he have progeny, trans-
mit, not the qualities imparted by edu-
cation, but those bestowed upon him by
Nature at birth.

The doctrine of evolution thus shows
us the necessity for struggle in the set-
tlement of the bases of society, and it
indicates, in a general way, how that
struggle should be carried on, namely,
by a firm and decent assertion of indi-
vidual rights, and the acceptance by
each and all from time to time of such
compromises as circumstances prescribe.
Should there be, in any given society,

EDITOR'S TABLE.

123

such a relaxation of the moral fiber of
individuals as would lead them to fore-
go their just claims, in presence of vio-
lent demands unsupported by reason,
there would be great cause to fear that
the society as a whole would also ab-
negate its just authority and thus leave
the way open for lawless, ambitious,
and anarchic forces. If not the greatest,
the surest service, therefore, which any
individual can render to the community
in which he lives is to stand on his
rights, not in his own interest or for his
own sake merely, but in the interest and
for the sake of all his fellow-citizens;
for in this way others will be encour-
aged to stand on their rights, unjust pre-
tensions will be discouraged, and the
whole fabric of society strengthened.
We say this is the surest service an in-
dividual can render; because there is
no doubt whatever as to the beneficial
results of such a line of conduct, where-
as all purely altruistic measures are of
more or less uncertain tendency. This
is shown by the frequent failure of bene-
factions to accomplish the purposes for
which they were intended, or, we may
even say, their frequent perversion to
purposes entirely opposed to the objects
in view. It requires a vast amount of
wisdom to be generous without doing
more harm than good ; but, in practicing
and insisting on justice, no risk what-
ever of doing harm is incurred.

If there is any one thing in the way
of positive effort which the doctrine of
evolution seems clearly to prescribe as
advantageous, it is the exposition of the
doctrine itself to all who are capable of
understanding it, so that there may be
a general comprehension of the true
goal of society and of the conditions
necessary for unimpeded social progress.
How few persons, comparatively speak-
ing, understand that justice is the one
vital principle, the one essential condi-
tion of social welfare ! How few per-
sons are prepared to make allowances
for the necessary imperfections of human
society, or to see in what is commonly

regarded as evil a preparation for higher
good! How few have the balance of
mind that enables them to place a true
value on the nostrums of would-be re-
formers, who undertake to make you a
new society if you will only allow them
to pass a law or two! How few have a
true and reasoned faith in the possibil-
ities of social progress! In regard to
all these matters there would be a great
increase of public intelligence if the doc-
trine of evolution, with all that it im-
plies, were as earnestly and industrious-
ly taught as certain other views of life,
which appeal more to emotion than to
reason. The doctrine of evolution stands
to-day for the scientific view of life,
and, the more that view can be brought
home to the masses, the surer will be
the foundations of the state, and the
more rapidly and happily will the stages
that yet separate us from a condition of
perfect social health be accomplished.

SCIENCE AT THE COLUMBIAN
EXPOSITION.

THE great Fair at Chicago marks the
utmost achievement of the kind that the
world has beheld, and probably the last
effort which America will see on the
plan of universal inclusion. Science
and art in these latter days have become
so broad in development, so minute in
specialization, that from sheer unwieldi-
ness it would be scarcely possible to re-
peat the programme of Chicago, ex-
panded as it inevitably would be in the
flight of time. In Great Britain the
universal exhibition has been differenced
into a series of expositions of fisheries,
inventions, "healtheries," and so on, a
sensible plan which America is likely to
copy. In displays so vast as those of
Jackson Park the ordinary visitor can
bestow no more than a passing glance
on rows upon rows of cases, often filled
with objects of beauty and high in-
terest. Those who have been instructed
by the Fair are those who went to
study a particular feature of it, or the

124

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fortunate few who have been able to
devote months to its examination as a
whole. And yet something will be lost
when the days of universal exhibitions
are past. There is a cross-fertilization
of ingenuity illustrated only when dis-
plays of the utmost diversity are brought
together. In Machinery Hall is the fa-
miliar festoon of perforated cards guid-
ing the Jacquard loom ; in the Federal
Building is a new indexer for libraries
identical in principle; in the Transpor-
tation Building is an extensive array of
the maps whose marginal letters and
figures indicate the particular square in
a chess-board where a sought town or
village may be found; in Machinery
Hall the compositor is superseded by a
machine which adopts the same prin-
ciple in casting type from a manuscript
reduced to perforated symbols.

In so far as there may be a science
and an art in disposing a universal ex-
hibition the Fair at Chicago evinces a
distinct advance. Mr. G. Brown Goode,
of the National Museum at Washington,
defines an efficient educational museum
as a collection of instructive labels, each
illustrated by a well-selected specimen.
Add to this the intelligent custodian to
answer inquiry or to show a machine or
an apparatus at work, and from muse-
ums are born an exhibition interesting
and informing. Something else, how-
ever, is necessary — an exhibition must
mainly, but should never wholly, de-
pend upon the good will, the enterprise,
or the generosity of individual exhibit-
ors. Wherever needful, it should be
made comprehensive by the board of
management buying or hiring what they
can not borrow. Because of the strike
at Homestead last year there is at Chi-
cago no adequate display of the iron and
steel industry which has in America
made so remarkable progress within re-
cent years. In the Electricity Building
there is no display of Edison's kineto-
graph, an instrument which nearly two
years ago had been brought to the point
of reproducing by instantaneous pho-

tography with remarkable fidelity the
visual impressions of motion.

With abundant means, with trained
skill and comprehensive purpose, much
the best group of exhibits at Chicago is
presented by the national departments,
in the Federal Building. Within its ap-
pointed limits the displays in the An-
thropological Building are as admirable
in arrangement as those of the Federal
Government; here the debt is mainly
due to the devoted labors of the officer
in charge, Prof. F. W. Putnam, of Har-
vard University. In the Agricultural
Building the State experiment stations,
which owe their origin to Prof. W. O.
Atwater, in their systematic array of
appliances and results show how much
the farmer is profited by his new part-
nership with the man of research. Agri-
culture, it would seem, in certainty of
results, is fast taking on the conditions
of manufacture. Many of the industrial
exhibits in excellence of arrangement
vie with those formally scientific ; as a
type of these displays that of the Stand-
ard Oil Company deserves particular
mention. In the same building, that of
mining industry, the western gallery
bears a small but capital exhibit of alu-
minium, from its ore, bauxite, through the
processes of the electrical furnace until
pure metal is derived : all the principal
uses of the metal are illustrated; these
are accompanied by specimens of its most
valuable alloys. This exhibit is in strik-
ing contrast to others within the same
walls — displays some of them as ill as-
sorted as the con tents of an auction room.

In designing several of the State
buildings at the Fair they were con-
trived to pay a double debt : they illus-
trate noteworthy styles of architecture,
or reproduce famous structures, as well
as serve as show places and club houses.
In much the same way it would have
been easy for, let us say, the Shoe and
Leather Building to have exemplified
the slow-burning construction for fac-
tories which in the Eastern States has
so much reduced the fire tax.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

125

These are not times when inventors
or manufacturers wait for an exhibition
to give the world its first view of their
work ; hence, in the Electricity Build-
ing, for example, there is little of nov-
elty, and yet in its mass and variety the
contents of the great hall and galleries
are most impressive. Here are shown
ho\v, in the seventeen years since the
Centennial Exhibition, electricity has
passed from the experimental labora-
tory to become the most versatile and
powerful servant that industry and do-
mestic economy know.

Within the past two decades Pho-
tography has stridden along almost as
fast as her sister Electricity. In an in-
conspicuous booth in the gallery of Lib-
eral Arts is an exhibit without an at-
tendant, lacking adequate labels, and yet
withal marking an epoch in the applica-
tion ot scientific research to this art and
industry. The display presents photog-
raphy in colors, an achievement due to
Dr. H. Vogel, of Berlin. In observing
the fugitiveness of some aniline dyes, it
struck him that the very sensitiveness
to certain rays of the spectrum which
rendered the dyes as such worthless,
meant a photographic quality of the first
importance. Experiment proved the
soundness of his surmise, and ortho-
chromatic and color photography were
born. In pure and applied chemistry
Germany, as her show-cases at Chicago
amply attest, is far in the lead. In
Germany practice and theory have long
ceased to look askance at each other,
and the lesson should not be lost on
America, for theory and practice have
at last arched toward each other until
at many points they touch, with the
effect that both are vastly the stronger.
To-day the observer can pass to predic-
tion, the experimenter can build to
order a molecule, a flower, a cereal, or
a beeve. The convincing word of Ger-
many to America is that to begrudge
the means for original research is sim-
ply to withhold the seed-corn of prog
ress. But America, too, has something

to teach. In science her most worthy
and characteristic display is that of in-
struments of precision. The dividing
mgine of Prof. W. A. Kogers, the dif-
'raction gratings of Prof. H. A. Row-
and, the parallel planes in glass of Mr.
J. A. Brashear — with a limiting error
of one millionth — the lenses with per-
iect color correction of Prof. C. S. Hast-
ings, mark a distinctively American field
of attainment and make clear why this
ountry divides with France the leader-
ship in modern astronomy, and in appa-
ratus for the most refined measurement
bas no rival. It is gratifying to see at
the Fair the magnificent new telescope
for the University of Chicago, the re-
fractor for which, forty inches in diame-
ter, is the largest in existence.

In education the exhibits at the Fair,
repetitious though they are and often
poor in quality, show progress. The
large spaces given up to manual train-
ing, to instruction in sewing and cook-
ing, to the all-round development of the
senses, abundantly prove that the old
and wasteful clerkly instruction has its
hat in its hand and is moving toward
the door. In the Children's Building
the kindergarten and kitchen-garden
classes are giving admirable lessons not
only to many little people but to un-
counted thousands of interested parents.
At many other places in Jackson Park
how sound education brings out an in-
telligent interest in every-day work and
duty is attractively demonstrated. Take
for example the Rumford Kitchen, where
with the minimum of toil and offense a
meal both palatable and nourishing is
cooked at a cost of less than five cents.
Mr. Edward Atkinson, who leads in
this branch of household economy, is
desirous that the State experimental
stations should add courses in cooking
to their instruction. Why, he argues,
should we be anxious that food stuffs
be produced with the utmost saving of
labor, and then in the cooking waste
them one half? For education con-
ceived in its broadest reach one of the

126

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

most significant services has been ren-
dered at the Fair by the psychological
exhibit and laboratory, over which
Prof. Jastrow presides, in the Anthro-
pological Building. Here, amid the
most extensive collection of appliances
ever brought together in America, quan-
titative tests of faculty are made: the
effect of this new science of experi-
mental psychology on education must
be to sift out good methods of instruc-
tion from bad, and in the fullness of
time to awaken and direct in the indi-
vidual mind the ambitions which to-day
either remain unaroused or ignorantly
run riot.

In some respects the most audacious
and the least satisfactory part of the
programme at Chicago has been the
Auxiliary Congresses. Assembled seven
miles from Jackson Park, in a building
directly abutting on a noisy railroad,
filled with smoky and dusty air from
locomotives and factory chimneys, the
sessions have often been too much for
human endurance. With utterly inade-
quate means the president, Hon. C. 0.
Bonney, has been unable to provide fit-
ting attendance, or to give suitable pub-
licity to the daily proceedings. Never-
theless, despite shortcomings on every
hand, the Art Institute has during the
past five months given a hearing to nearly
every eminent American teacher, and it
has opened its doors to Prof, von Helm-
holtz, and to other men of science from
abroad scarcely less illustrious.

LITERARY NOTICES.

SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMIS-
SIONER OP LABOR, 1891. CARROLL D.
WRIGHT, Commissioner. Washington :
Government Printing Office. Pp. 841.

IT is the duty of the Department of La-
bor to provide for reports, at intervals of
not less than two years, on the general con-
dition, so far as production is concerned, of
the leading industries of the country. A
shorter period is prescribed than that fixed
for the taking of the census, in the belief

that a fairer average would be shown in the
run of consecutive reports of short terms
than could be obtained from reports made
every ten years, any two or more of which
might be, relatively to the intervening years,
exceptional ones. Two years from the or-
ganization of the department, however,
brought it to the census year 1890, when its
report would be merged in or superseded
by the census returns ; so that it was not
deemed expedient to establish the system of
reports contemplated till 1892. A method
has accordingly been under organization for
securing proper information relative to the
leading industries of the country which will
enable the public to make comparison with
the census reports of 1890 as to the move-
ments of production. The department was
represented at the Congress on Accidents to
Labor held in Berne, and at the Congress of
the International Statistical Institute, held
at Vienna, in 1891 ; and it is believed that
the experience of American statisticians
with reference to labor statistics and the
influence of the American representatives
prompted the introduction and unanimous
adoption of the resolutions of the institute
recommending the adoption of similar meas-
ures in other countries. The present report,
the seventh, continues the investigation of
the cost of production in leading countries
of articles dutiable in the United States,
which was begun in the sixth report and
applied in it to iron, steel, bituminous coal,
coke, iron ore, and limestone, extending it to
the textiles and glass. The facts inquired
into include the different elements of cost or
approximate cost, the wages paid in the in-
dustries involved, the comparative cost of
living, the kind of living, etc. All feasible
means are used to secure complete informa-
tion, and, in order that no establishment mav
be embarrassed by having its inner concerns
exposed to the public, the names of all
companies and persons who have contributed
to the value of the investigation are care-
fully kept out of sight. The department
has aimed to make a judicious selection
both as to representative concerns and rep-
resentative facts ; but it does not presume to
flatter itself that it has given everything
that everybody will want. Two hundred
and seventy-eight establishments are repre-
sented in the tables, of which forty-nine are

LITERARY NOTICES.

127

in Europe. The articles reported upon are
cotton textiles, cotton yarns, woolen and
worsted textiles, woolen and worsted yarns,
linen textiles, silk textiles, window glass,
green-glass bottles, flint-glass bottles, and
lamp chimneys.

THE SHRUBS OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA.
By CHARLES S. NEWHALL. New York:
G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 249. Price,
$2.50.

THE author has already published The
Trees of Northeastern America and The
Leaf-collector's Handbook, and is prepar-
ing The Vines of Northeastern America — the
four constituting a series of work which
the botanist, the admirer of native plants,
and the possessor of a home to be adorned,
can not fail to find useful and acceptable
in every way. The purpose is to furnish
means by which one strolling in the woods
can easily recognize the woody plants he
meets, and information concerning their
adaptability to planting in the house-
grounds ; or to introduce the many who
have no technical botanical knowledge to
the author's " friends, the shrubs." The
shrubs described are those which are found
native in Canada and the United States east
of the Mississippi River and north of the
latitude of southern Pennsylvania ; and with
them, the more important of the introduced
and naturalized species. Besides the bo-
tanical descriptions — which are clear, easy,
and satisfactory — and one hundred and
sixteen illustrative plates, there are given a
list of families and of genera, directions and
a key to the signs used, guides to the shrubs
by flower, by leaf, and by fruit, an expla-
nation of terms, a glossary, a list of shrubs
worthy of cultivation, and an index to the
shrubs.

HOMES IN CITY AND COUNTRY. By RUSSELL
STURGIS, JOHN W. ROOT, BRUCE PRICE,
DONALD G. MITCHELL, SAMUEL PARSONS,
JR., and W. A. LINN. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. With One
Hundred Illustrations. Pp. 214. Price,
$2.

THE papers in this volume relating to
city homes are partly historical, and treat of
the evolution of the plans from the first at-
tempts to adapt room space to narrow lots,
to the modern styles. The first one, by Mr.
Sturgis, on the City Homes in the East and

South, relates to houses in New York, Bos-
ton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, Va.,
etc. The views and plans show how the
New York house, and still more the Boston
house, were cramped by the small size of the
lot and the high price of land ; while the
houses in the more southern cities, Philadel-
phia, Baltimore, and Richmond, with greater
freedom of space, were expanded, and much
more convenient and comfortable ; and an
almost endless variety prevails in the cities
farther south. Mr. John W. Root begins
his account of the city house in the West
by showing how the device of the " balloon
frame " has assisted in the spread of settle-
ment and civilization ; for almost any one
can put up that kind of a house, with the
simplest implements, in a short time and at
comparatively little cost ; and it resists the
high winds very well too. The younger
Western cities are more than half built of-
such houses ; and they are beneficial to the
city's future and to its architecture, for be-
cause of them " every old Western city must
be almost entirely rebuilt, and this under
modern and enlightened auspices, as if it
had been devastated by a great fire or cy-
clone. ... It certainly presents possibili-
ties to the architects of the West such as
have never been given to any other groups
of men." On the other hand, the balloon-
framed house can never become a landmark,
or a link in the architectural development
of the country. Western city houses are
marked by the absence of blocks like those
of the Eastern cities, by the tendency toward
greater enlargement and importance of the
living and dining rooms at the expense of
the parlor and living rooms, and by their
openness. The outlook for Western city
houses seems to be promising. The archi-
tecture is free from the bondage of archi-
tectural tradition, and among the various
rival cities dominant fads are likely to be-
come less common, and problems will be
more generally determined by the nature of
the case. In the subject of The Suburban
Home, Mr. Bruce Price has a theme on
which, regarding the colonial houses, the old
country houses, the transitory styles of the
later past, the present styles, and their
tendencies, he might write well for an al-
most indefinite length. He satisfies himself
with considering chiefly the more meritori-

128

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ous styles of the present. The old colonial
houses are considered as in all " the best ex-
amples built upon classic lines, with a classic
base for all their details and classic feeling
in all their outlines," but the author con-
cludes that " in the planning, designing, and
building of the moderate-cost suburban vil-
la of to-day the American architect has no
equal. His work (that is, his best work) is
well above and beyond any period of the
school anywhere." A chapter by Donald G.
Mitchell on Country Houses follows — a
theme which was congenial to the author's
taste, and is treated by him as if it were,
and is not in disaccord with Mr. Price's
Suburban Houses ; for while Mr. Mitchell
insists the more emphatically that his coun-
try house shall be a real home, Mr. Price
evidently regards his suburban house in the
same light; but Mr. Mitchell's houses are
all, or nearly all, old-fashioned and also old.
The best treatment of Small Country Places
is described by Samuel Parsons, Jr., and
the Advantages and Operations of Building
and Loan Associations are explained by W.
A. Linn.

A HANDBOOK OF INVALID COOKING. By
MARY A. BOLAND, Instructor in Cooking
in the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training
School for Nurses. New York : The
Century Company. Pp. 323.

THIS volume has an attractive aspect,
more than a soupfon of science, and a flavor
of good sense. It is intended to fill a need
in the training of nurses for more exact di-
rection in cookery, for some knowledge of
the chemistry involved, and for a better com-
prehension of the precautions necessary to
secure healthful food. The first part is de-
voted to preliminary lessons. These deal
with chemical and physical changes, the
composition of the body, the general con-
stituents of food, and the important topics
air, water, milk, digestion, and nutrition.

In the dissertation on milk, directions are
given for testing its acidity, finding its spe-
cific gravity, per cent of fat, and methods of
sterilization are carefully explained.

In the article on nutrition it is stated that
the noblest thoughts and most original ideas
do not come from an underfed or dyspeptic
individual. This certainly ought to be the
case, but the shades of Carlyle, Heine, and a

host of their ilk would confront us if we
affirmed this to be a matter of fact. If, as
the author claims, material substances pro-
duced as exact results in the chemical physi-
ology of the body as they do in the labor-
atory, we should understand many metabolic
processes that are now inexplicable. Starch
and albumin sometimes remain starch and
albumin in spite of all digestive juices to the
contrary. When the nerves cry " Halt ! "
the solvents and acids obey. We recognize
this inhibitory action if we follow the sugges-
tion to " serve chocolate in dull red." By
pleasing the nerves of sight, we strive to
put the body in good nervous condition. It
is, however, acknowledged that " it can not
be said that any particular kind of food will
ultimately produce a poem ! "

The second part of the book offers a col-
lection of recipes and menus suited to in-
valids, with special consideration of serving,
feeding of children, and district nursing.
The recipes are well chosen and, for the
most part, clearly given. In the introduc-
tion the author complains that the majority
of cook-books do not furnish intelligible aid,
and it is sad to see that she does not im-
prove upon their example. Three recipes
for cake are given, and two of these direct
the use of an ingredient whose quantity is
not mentioned in the formula. In addition
to this, it is doubtful whether unfledged
cooks will handle successfully unmixed soda
and cream of tartar ; a good baking powder
is much safer and simpler.

There are many hints for gratifying
aesthetic tastes in the article on serving.
In the feeding of children the naive ques-
tion is asked why a child should thrive best
upon mother's milk, and it is answered that
it is, no doubt, because micro-organisms are
found in cow's milk. Sterilized milk may
reduce the chances of disease a hundred-
fold, yet it can not be adapted to a human
child as well as the fluid provided by the
cunning chemistry of Nature. As well in-
troduce artificial sap into a flower and
query why the tints are not true. This
leads us to what we deem an important omis-
sion in the book — there is no chapter on the
nourishment of mothers. If mothers were
adequately and properly fed, the preparation
of artificial food for infants would need little
attention.

LITERARY NOTICES.

129

A number of useful lists are appended to
the book, including the bibliography, appa-
ratus needed by a cooking school, charts on
the composition of foods, and an index.

A CLINICAL STUDY OF DISEASES OF THE KID-
NET. By CLIFFORD MITCHELL, A. M., M. D.
Chicago: W. J. Keener, 1891. Pp. 432.
Price, $3.

THIS is a volume intended for a profes-
sional audience solely. It has been written?
the author states, with particular reference
to the bearing of uranalysis upon the diag-
nosis and treatment of renal diseases and
associated disorders.

The recent literature of the subject, par-
ticularly that referring to the toxines con-
tained in the urine of persons either in good
or bad health and their influence on the or-
ganism, is but cursorily referred to ; and the
pathology in general seems too meager for a
work of this character. The author has not
been an original experimenter in the field
treated of by his work, rather contenting
himself in clinically determining the efficacy
and truth of the observations reported by
others. He has quoted from many of the
more recent writers on this subject, and that
portion of his work devoted to dietetics and
hygienic treatment is very satisfactory. His
therapeusis is that of what is called the ho-
moeopathic school, and we do not believe that
the text-books of homoeopathy could more
carefully or efficiently discuss the subject.

AN INTRODUCTION TO PRACTICAL BACTERI-
OLOGY FOR PHYSICIANS, CHEMISTS, AND
STUDENTS. By Dr. W. MIGULA. Trans-
lated by M. CAMPBELL. New York : Mac-
millan & Co., 1893. Pp. 247. Price,
$1.60.

IT is intended that this little volume should
serve as a practical guide for a short labora-
tory course in bacteriology. The apparatus
necessary for bacteriological research is de-
scribed, and instructions are given for ex-
amining living bacteria, for preparing nutri-
ent media, for making plate or tube cultiva-
tions of micro-organisms, for cultivating these
organisms at high temperatures and also
without the access of air, for staining the or-
ganisms and their spores, and for mounting.
Certain of the more important microphytes
are described in order that the student may
familiarize himself with them. It is not in-

TOL. XLIV. 11

tended that the volume should supplant the
larger and well-known text-books on this
subject, and it seems that its practical char-
acter fits it for a guide for students desir-
ing a knowledge of the elementary princi-
ples of this interesting and important topic.

THE SOIL IN RELATION TO HEALTH. By H.
A. MIERS, M. A., F. G. S., and R. CROSS-
KEY, M. A., D. P. H. New York : Mac-
millan & Co., 1893. Pp. xvi-135. Price,
$1.10.

THE object of the authors has been to
prepare a work that will give information on
the principles of geology hi so far as they
concern sanitary science. There is a brief
review of the origin of rocks, of their de-
composition, and of the formation and dis-
tribution of soils. The relation of humus
and micro-organisms is then discussed, at-
tention being called to the soil being a habi-
tat for pathogenic micro-organisms and to the
necessity for preventing soil infection there-

by-

The distribution of water in the soil is
described, the subject of subsoil water afford-
ing an opportunity of presenting Pettenko-
fer's theory that, as the authors truly state,
has not been confirmed. Sufficient reference is
made to the relation between the dampness
of the soil and the prevalence of phthisis,
though the authors seem unaware of Bow-
ditch's pioneer work in this matter.

There is a chapter on the constituents of
water derived from the soil, and the influence
that certain of these constituents exercise
upon the prevalence of certain diseases.

The chapter on the relation of the soil to
the air considers not only the movement of
ground air, but also the influence of specific
heat, radiation and absorption, conductibility,
and color of the soil upon the climate.

The final chapter, on the geographical
distribution of disease, very properly calls
attention to the fact that while disease maps
are of great value in indicating the geograph-
ical distribution of disease, they can not be
used as maps illustrating the geological distri-
bution of disease until statistics are grouped
by similar geological areas where the other
conditions are absolutely uniform.

There are several errors in the chapter on
humus and micro-organisms. It was Laveran,
not Marchiafava and Celli, that discovered

130

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Hcematozoon malarice ; and no bacteriol-
ogist or pathologist attaches any importance
to Tommasi-Crudeli's alleged Bacillus mala-
rice. The typhoid bacillus was discovered by
Eberth, not Gaffky, who simply confirmed
in 1884 Eberth's discovery and announce-
ment made in 1880. Nor did Dr. Klein dis-
cover the Bacillus pneumonia in 1888, as
Friedlander had made pure cultures of these
organisms in 1883. In fact, the bacteriology
of the volume has been written by a person
having a very limited acquaintance with the
subject. No reference is made to Miquel's,
Adametz's, Beumer's, Maggiora's, Frankel's,
Giaxa's, Proskauer's, Manf redi's, and Fiilles's
investigations of the relation of micro-organ-
isms to the soil.

While the book might have been more
complete, it is still sufficiently extensive to
be of great use to any student of sanitary

THE DISEASE OF INEBRIETY FROM ALCOHOL,
OPIUM, AND OTHER NARCOTIC DRUGS. Ar-
ranged and compiled by the American
Association for the Study and Cure of
Inebriety. New York : E. B. Treat. Pp.
400. Price, $2.75.

THE association named above was organ-
ized in 1870, and has a membership com-
posed of physicians connected with asylums
for inebriates, and other persons interested
in the study of the drink problem. Its car-
dinal doctrine is that inebriety is a disease,
and is curable as other diseases are. It fur-
ther postulates that all methods hitherto em-
ployed for the treatment of inebriety that
have not recognized the disordered physical
condition caused by alcohol, opium, or other
narcotics have proved inadequate in its cure ;
hence the establishment of hospitals for the
special treatment of inebriety, in which such
conditions are recognized, becomes a posi-
tive need of the age. The association has
been in the habit of holding annual and semi-
annual meetings, in which a large number of
papers have been presented, read, and dis-
cussed. Six volumes of Transactions were
issued, and the Quarterly Journal of Ine-
briety was established. Its special work has
been to gather and group the scientific liter-
ature of the subject and make it available
for future study. In addition to this liter-
ature many members of the association have
published volumes on the subject ; valuable

papers have appeared in this country and
Europe. Many of these works having passed
out of print, the secretary of the society, Dr.
T. D. Crothers, was authorized to prepare a
volume to contain the most reliable conclu-
sions and studies of eminent authorities on
all phases of the disease up to the present
time. In this volume are discussed the etiol-
ogy, pathology, treatment, and medico-legal
relations of inebriety. The selections have
been gathered from more than five thousand
pages of printed matter published in the
Journal and Transactions, and are from pa-
pers which have not appeared elsewhere, and
hence will be new to most physicians. But it
is acknowledged that, while the facts are very
numerous and startling and fully sustain the
principles of the association, they are not
yet sufficiently studied and generalized to be
accepted as absolute truths.

MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN, FOURTH AN-
NUAL REPORT. St. Louis : Published by
the Board of Trustees. Pp. 226, with
23 Plates. Price, $1.

WHILE no extensive improvements have
been undertaken at the garden during the
year, the liberal appropriations made for its
support have been judiciously expended, and
the accounts show a handsome surplus of
funds. The library contains now 11,455
books and pamphlets, and the herbarium
203,000 sheets of specimens. The number
of visitors to the grounds has considerably
increased as compared with previous years ;
and so far as could be gathered from their
remarks, they have shown an appreciation of
the improvements that have been made, es-
pecially of the more natural grouping of the
plants, and of the addition of large speci-
mens of cacti, yuccas, etc., from the arid re-
gions. The last include a number of repre-
sentatives of characteristic species from the
dry districts of Texas, Arizona, and Cali-
fornia. The additions to the herbarium have
consisted of the current American collections,
about three thousand duplicates from the
herbarium of the late John Ball, a set of the
valuable Exsiccatce of the Austrian flora,
given by the Vienna Museum, and many
smaller collections and single specimens pre-
sented by correspondents. A card index to
the species of plants described and figured
in works at the garden has been begun ; and

LITERARY NOTICES.

the large collection of pamphlets has been
put in shape for permanent preservation.
Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant has presented to the
garden his extensive and valuable collection
of specimens, manuscripts, and illustrations,
largely in color, of the genus Capsicum, on
condition that the genus should be studied
with reference to an ultimate monograph of
the wild and cultivated forms ; and prepara-
tions have been made to supply living mate-
rial for this study. He has further presented
his entire botanical library, including the
scrapbooks of his own writings and his
manuscript notes on edible plants, on condi-
tion that he enjoy the use of the books dur-
ing his life or so long as he wishes them.
This library is said to be the most complete
and valuable American collection of pre-
Linnaean botanical books. The course of
study for garden pupils has been shortened
to four years, without omitting any of the
manual work or any of the studies originally
included. Undergraduate engineering stu-
dents have been secured in the School of
Botany for a study of the histological and
other means of distinguishing timbers. The
volume of the report contains the three regu-
lar anniversary publications — the Flower Ser-
mon, which was preached by the Rev. Cam-
eron Mann ; the proceedings of the Banquets
to the Trustees of the Garden and to Gar-
deners, Florists, and Nurserymen ; a list of
Plants collected in the Bahamas, Jamaica,
and Grand Cayman ; and Additional Notes
on Yuccas and their Pollination, by Prof.
Trelease, to which most of the twenty-three
photogravure plates are illustrations.

HOUSEHOLD NEWS. Monthly. Edited by Mrs.
S. T. RORER. Philadelphia: Household
News Company, Limited. Price, $1 a
year.

THE first number of this new household
magazine was issued in July. Its editor is
the head of the Philadelphia Cooking School
and author of a successful cook-book, besides
smaller special manuals on Hot Weather
Dishes and Canning and Preserving. Cook-
ery, Mrs. Rorer's specialty, occupies most
space in the magazine. Under this head hi
the first number is a series of seventeen
bills of fare, with explanations of their novel
features, an account of the corn kitchen at
the World's Fair presided over by Mrs.

Rorer, answers to inquirers, and miscellane-
ous recipes. The Department of Diet and
Hygiene, in charge of Dr. Charles M. Seltzer,
contains a leading article and answers to in-
quirers. Dr. Henry Leffmann, widely known
as the author of books on chemical and
sanitary subjects, has a department of House-
hold Chemistry, to which he contributes an
article on Water in the Household. The
Nursery Department is under the guidance
of Dr. D. J. Milton Miller, physician to the
Children's Hospital and to the Episcopal
Hospital in Philadelphia. Other departments
are the Kindergarten, conducted by Mrs. M.
L. Van Kirk and Miss M. G. Clark ; Decora-
tion, by Mrs. Hester M. Poole ; Architecture,
by Isaac Pursell; and Literature, by Miss
Elizabeth Carpenter. A department on the
Nurse is to be added. The field of dress is
left to magazines devoted exclusively to that
subject. There seems to be no room in this
periodical for the trash that is too common
in so-called " ladies' journals." Its tone is
eminently practical, and as there are plenty
of housewives who prefer sense to nonsense
it has good prospects for generous support.

SOAP MANUFACTURE. A Practical Treatise
on the Fabrication of Hard and Soft
Soaps, etc. By W. LAWRENCE GADD,
F. I. C., F. C. S. New York : George Bell
& Sons (Macmillan & Co.). Pp.218. Price,
$1.50.

THERE is probably no manufactured arti-
cle that is used more generally and is of
more importance in the household than soap,
and yet there is perhaps no substance about
which the ordinary consumer knows so little,
either as regards composition, methods of
manufacture, or adaptation to its various
uses. The prevalence of the minor forms of
skin diseases, for example, is very general,
and there is little doubt that many cases are
due, in part at any rate, to the use of im-
properly prepared soaps, while others are ren-
dered more serious by applications of some
of the various medicated soaps, which are so
numerous, and often of no medicinal value.

The first chapter of the book introduces
the reader to the chemical reactions in soap-
making, a knowledge of which is necessary
for understanding the subsequent processes,
and also gives a few words on the antiquity
of the manufacture of soap and its growth
as an industry.

132

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The next chapter, entitled Fatty Acids,
contains an account of these as they occur
in the various essential oils used in soap-
making. Chapter III, headed Materials, is
devoted to a consideration of the various raw
materials employed in the manufacture, the
methods of preparing them for use (refining
processes), and accounts and cuts of the
necessary machinery. Chapter IV deals with
the water used in soap manufacture, detailing
the undesirable impurities and giving meth-
ods for removing them.

The next chapter, on The Manufacture of
Soap, gives an account of the essentials of
the art as it is practiced to-day. This is fol-
lowed by a chapter on Packing and Stamp-
ing. Chapter VII considers special soaps ;
Chapter VIII, toilet soaps, and Chapter IX
the perfumes commonly used. The next
chapter is an account of the methods used
for recovering the glycerin set free in the
process of saponification. The last chapter
consists of a systematic scheme of soap
analysis.

The book, although not intended as a
popular treatise, contains much that is suited
to the untechnical reader, and for one with
a little chemical knowledge, who desires to
know something of the manufacture of this
important article, it is a good text-book.
The cuts and detailed descriptions also make
it valuable to the manufacturer.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. By DANIEL G.
BRINTON, LL. D. Philadelphia : David
McKay. Pp. 292. Price, $1.

To seek for happiness and to be happy is
not only a legitimate aim in life, but, accord-
ing to Dr. Brinton, there is no higher object ;
it alone makes life worth living. The al-
truist may label this pure selfishness and
proclaim that our duty is to live for others ;
the ascetic may extol self-abnegation as the
greatest of virtues ; yet if we are to diffuse
happiness, we must first be charged with it
ourselves — " he wastes his life who devotes
his time to anything else than the pursuit of
happiness or the search for truth." These
quests may be identical, for the first step in
learning how to be happy is to get knowledge.
Even through " the yearning for joy " evo-
lution has come to us ; in groping for pleas-
urable sensation the amoeba has developed
into man. The human individual attains hap-

piness when his self -consciousness is brought
into harmony with his faculties and surround-
ings. This involves growth and action. Hap-
piness is not momentary pleasure, it is even
compatible with physical pain and mental
suffering if these enhance the realization of
self. To be happy, one must work and fight
as for the promised land. It follows that
there is an art of felicity whose laws we may
study.

The author considers in detail what are
the conditions of happiness ; how far it de-
pends on Nature and fate, how far it may be
controlled by ourselves and by others, and,
finally, what are the consolations of afflic-
tion.

On the whole he is a cheerful philoso-
pher, although his view of old age is somber
— " a malady that is absolutely fatal," whose
pleasures are tolerable. To women he ac-
cords justice rather than flattery, for which
rare tribute they should be grateful. There
is excellent advice to be found in the book,
and, unlike many treatises that offer it, this
is entertaining and free from pretense or
cant of any sort. The range of topics, how-
ever, is wide and we meet strange maxims :
less than your best will often answer the
purpose, and good enough is good. We
query whether the author would be satisfied
to have these taken as the gauge of his
work.

THE DISEASES OF THE STOMACH. By Prof. C.
A. EWALD, M. D. Translated by MORRIS
MANGES, M. D. New York : D. Appleton
& Co. Pp. 497. Price, $5.

THIS is a translation of a work that has
gone through three editions in Germany, a
statement that implies intrinsic merit in a
work on a medical subject. This translation
has had the further advantage of the au-
thor's revision, and thus includes his most
recent studies on this subject.

The work is arranged in a series of twelve
lectures as they were delivered in the au-
thor's course at the University of Berlin ; the
subjects include the methods of diagnosis
and the various diseases of the stomach. The
chapter on the neuroses of the stomach is by
Prof. R. Ewald.

The author is a clear and logical writer,
presenting all the facts that will assist the
clinician in making his diagnosis. But he

LITERARY NOTICES.

133

calls attention to the fact that not even the
most careful chemical examination of the
functions of the stomach will put within our
grasp the divining-rod that will, as it were,
" magically call forth the fountain of knowl-
edge from the adamantine rocks of obscure
symptoms."

The reputation that the American people
have of being a nation of dyspeptics is not
altogether without foundation; and where
gastric disorders are even moderately preva-
lent, such a work as this must be of value in
enabling all physicians to be well informed
regarding the latest methods of diagnosis
and treatment of gastric diseases.

The third and concluding volume of Prof.
A. B. Harfs Epochs of American History —
Division and Reunion — brings down the nar-
rative from the accession of Jackson to the
end of President Cleveland's first administra-
tion. In the construction of the series each
author has kept his own point of view, and
no pains have been taken to harmonize
divergencies of judgment ; but it is believed
that all these substantially agree as to the
underlying causes of the growth of our coun-
try. The present volume is by Woodrow
Wilson, and is the work of a master. Only
a sketch in broad outline has been attempt-
ed— not so much a compact narrative as a
synopsis, as rapid as possible, of the larger
features of public affairs in the sixty years
it covers. The story is told in four parts :
the period of critical change, when the spoils
system was introduced and sectional diver-
gence began to be disclosed ; the period of
the prominence of the slavery question ; the
period of secession and civil war ; and the
period of the rehabilitation of the Union.

A paper on The Financial History of
Virginia from 1609 to 1776, published by
William Zcbrina Ripley in the Columbia Col-
lege Studies in History, Economics, and Pub-
lic Law, is a contribution to the effort to
trace the gradual development of systems
and theories in financial management. One
does not look, the author says, " to primi-
tive society and its institutions for well-
rounded principles and technical details ; for
to construct a science of finance where there
was none in fact, would be to pervert the
course of history. Theories do not arise
until experience has taught man the abuses

attendant upon social life. Consequently
the financial history of this oldest American
Commonwealth for many years is merely the
story of the simple methods adopted by a
people too fully occupied in conquering a
wilderness to spin fiscal theories, who wanted
to support the incipient Government in the
easiest possible way." The institution of
slavery had a marked influence on the
course of development in Virginia, and was
the ultimate factor that distinguished this
colony from those of New England. The
fiscal systems of the two regions became
radically different, because the outward con-
ditions of climate, soil, and situation were
totally unlike ; and the history attests the
truth of the law that the direct environ-
ment is, after all, the most powerful factor in
shaping early social institutions.

The study of Bankruptcy in the light of
comparative legislation, contributed by S.
Whitney Dunscomb, Jr., to the Columbia
College Series of Studies in History, Eco-
nomics, and Public Law, comprises a re-
view of the laws and processes of the Euro-
pean nations and the United States relative
to insolvency. In the first chapter the con-
ditions are stated which constitute bank-
ruptcy or insolvency under the laws of the
several States, and terms are defined. Then
the effects are described as to the person
and juristic status of the bankrupt, as to
his property, and as to the acts performed
by him ; the operations of bankruptcy ; the
closing of it, by composition relinquish-
ment of assets, and other methods ; the reha-
bilitation of the bankrupt ; and preventive
compositions or compositions before bank-
ruptcy. The second part of the essay relates
to Bankruptcy in the United States under
the National Bankrupt Law and the insolvent
laws of the several States.

A book fitting the prominent feature of
the immediately present time is A Brief
History of Panics, "Englished" from the
French of Clement Juylar, and edited by De
Courcy W. Thorn, who has also furnished
an introductory essay setting forth the indi-
cations of approaching panic. The book
was written before the present disturbances
in the money market set in, the premonition
of which is spoken of as " a somewhat uneasy
feeling about silver," and when some of Mr.
Thorn's symptoms were already apparent;

134

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

yet it conveys the pleasant though now con-
tradicted message that the signs in general
justify the prediction " of the steady devel-
opment of a prosperous period."

In transmitting his Twentieth Annual
Report of the Geological and Natural His-
tory Survey of Minnesota, the State Geolo-
gist, N. H. Winchell, characterizes the sur-
vey, as a State enterprise, as unique in its
plan, its supervisory auspices, its slow but
uninterrupted progress, and the duration of its
personal directorship. Ten years ago, in sub-
mitting his tenth annual report, the author
ventured to congratulate the university and
the State on the success that had accom-
panied the survey at that date ; but the
second ten years have been more prosperous
than the first ten. The present report con-
tains a paper on the structures and origin of
the crystalline rocks, by Mr. Winchell ; field
observations on certain granite areas, by U. S.
Grant ; the Mesabic iron range, by N. V. Win-
chell ; the abandoned strands of Lake Su-
perior, by A. C. Lawson ; and Diatomaceae of
the Interglacial Drift, by B. W. Thorns and
H. L. Smith.

The papers in No. 2 of Volume V of
the Studies in the Biological Laboratory of
Johns Hopkins University are on The Effect
of Haemorrhage and of Fasting on the Pro-
teids of the Blood of Cats, by G. P. Dreyer ;
The Respiratory Function of some Mus-
cles of the Higher Mammlia, by Theodore
Hough ; The Latent Time of the Knee-
Jerk, by E. C. Applegarth; and The
Physiological Effects of Differential Respi-
ration, by Prof. H. Newell Martin and G. P.
Dreyer.

A collection of translations of papers on
The Mechanics of the Earths Atmosphere,
published by Cleveland Abbe in the Smith-
sonian Miscellaneous Collections, includes
essays of great technical interest and value
by Professors Hagen, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff,
Oberbeck, Hertz, and Bezold, Lord Rayleigh,
and Professors Margules and Ferrel. Prof.
Abbe expresses the opinion that there is a
crying need for more profound researches
into the mechanics of the atmosphere, and
believing that meteorology can be advanced
beyond its present stage only by the devotion
to it of the highest talent in mathematical
and experimental physics, he earnestly com-
mends these memoirs to such students in

our universities as are seeking new fields of
applied science.

The Introductory Manual for Sugar
Growers of Mr. Francis Watts is the out-
come of several years' experience in the
West Indies, by which he was shown the
necessity for a handbook containing an out-
line of the principles of agriculture based
on modern scientific discoveries, and of the
principles underlying the manufacture of
sugar. The author hopes that his book may
be useful as a starting point for young men
beginning their training, and that it may
help guide older men to other works. Special
attention is given to tropical conditions.
(Longmans, Green & Co., $1.50.)

The History of Modern Education, which
comprises an account of the course of educa-
tional opinion and practice from the revival
of learning to the present decade, by Prof.
Samuel G. Williams, has grown out of the
lectures given by the author in Cornell Uni-
versity during the past six years, and com-
prises the last half of his course on the his-
tory of education. It presents a compact,
comprehensive, and intelligible summary of
the subject. After an introductory chapter
on ancient and mediaeval education, the his-
tory proper begins with the account of the
Renaissance, phases of education, educational
opinions, and distinguished teachers of the
sixteenth century. This is followed by simi-
lar notices of characteristics of education in
the seventeenth century, the educational re-
formers and their principles, Female Edu-
cation and Fenelon, the Oratory of Jesus
and Beginning of American Education ; then
of the eighteenth century, in the general
review of which education in New England
and New York are characterized, early text-
books are described, and the foundation of
colleges and of the University of the State of
New York is recorded. Among the " edu-
cational characteristics of the nineteenth
century " are great activity in literature, etc.,
Herbert Spencer's treatise, the general dif-
fusion of popular education, professional
training of teachers, supervision of schools,
industrial and manual training, improve-
ments in method, the kindergarten, and the
discussion of the relative disciplinary value
of studies. (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.
Price, $1.50.)

Practical Lessons in Language is a man-

LITERARY NOTICES.

'35

ual by Benjamin G. Conklin, the lessons in
which are intended to cover the last two
years of the primary course, and are graded
to suit the capacity of pupils as they ad-
vance. A picture is given, or a passage to
be read ; followed by a heading, Things to
Notice, under which are included " develop-
ment questions," which the pupil is to an-
• swer in his own language, and the deductions
from his answers ; and Things to Do — a title
which covers varied exercises, all intended
to be of a nature to interest the pupil. The
aim throughout the book is to lead the pupil
to see and think for himself, and when he
has mastered it he will have undergone a
course of training in observation and original,
spontaneous, literary composition. (Ameri-
can Book Company. Price, 35 cents.)

The Presentation of the Life and Educa-
tional Works of John Amos Comenius, Mo-
ravian bishop, the famous educator, by 8. S.
Laurie, is believed by the author to be the
most complete and, so far as he knows, the
only complete account of Comenius and his
works that exists in any language. In pre-
paring it, the author has gone through all of
Comenius's didactic writings, and has writ-
ten the whole from original sources. The
volume contains the life and a synopsis of
the principal features of the works of Come-
nius. The publisher, C. W. Bardeen, Syra-
cuse, N. Y., has furnished the present edition
with headlines, five portraits, and a bibliog-
raphy, with photographic reproductions from
early editions of the works of the bishop.

The idea of presenting the handbook
Three Roads to a Commission in the United
States Army (D. Appleton & Co.) was sug-
gested to the author, Lieutenant W. P. Burn-
ham, when, shortly after assuming the duties
of Professor of Military Science and Tactics
at St. John's Military School, Manlius, N. Y.,
he was surprised to find so much interest
manifested in the army, and more so to find
how little was known of its real workings.
The most remarkable impressions were en-
tertained regarding the character, hardships,
and privations of the rank and file of the
army. The fact that a commission could
easily be obtained from the ranks was not
comprehended, many not knowing that such
a thing was possible in time of peace. The
author has endeavored to throw sufficient
light on these points. The character and

extent of the examinations for obtaining a
commission from the ranks of the army
were considerably changed in 1891 and 1892.
The rules governing the examinations are
taken from the official records of the War
Department, which are based on acts of Con-
gress. The three roads to a commission de-
fined and explained in the book are those
from the Military Academy, from the army
by the appointment of meritorious soldiers,
and from civil life — the least frequented of
the number.

Science Stories (J. R. Osgood, Mcllvaine &
Co., London) is a collection of descriptive es-
says relating principally to the habits and vari-
ous features of the existence of different ani-
mals and plants, originally contributed by the
author, Daniel Wilson, to the Glasgow (Scot-
land) Herald. They are reproduced with the
view of encouraging " that popular interest
in science which is, happily, a feature of our
modern life."

The American Mental Arithmetic has
been prepared by Mr. M. A. Bailey for a
drill book hi which the principles of written
arithmetic, except as applied to large num-
bers, shall be concisely stated and illustrated.
Among its features are the placing of prin-
ciples and illustrations in parallel columns ;
the beginning of each subject at the top of
a page ; the systematic placing of explana-
tions and directions under exercises ; the
prominence of the combination method ; the
indication of the number of seconds that
should be required for the solution of each
example ; the introduction, in factoring, of
the conception of numbers severally prime
to each other; the method of presentation
of the metric system ; the teaching of per-
centage without rules or formulas ; and prac-
tical exercises at various places of business.
(American Book Company. Price, 35 cents.)

In the Commercial Arithmetic of Head-
master S. Jackson (Macmillan & Co.) it is
assumed that the reader has a competent
knowledge of elementary arithmetic, and
therefore the theoretical portions of the
work are limited to the methods which are
best adapted for commercial calculations.
An endeavor has been made to give full and
accurate information on all commercial sub-
jects of first-rate importance. Certain meth-
ods of readily saving labor are suggested.
Emphasis is laid on the immense superiority

136

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of decimal operations over all others, and the
adoption of the metrical system and a deci-
mal coinage with the sovereign as the basis
is favored.

Mr. Francis Browning Owen, of Cloquet,
Minn., published a volume of poems twenty
years ago, and now offers a second and en-
larged edition of his writings under the title
of Columbian and other Poems. His aim has
been throughout to write nothing but what
would elevate mankind, and to give utter-
ance to " soul-language " rather than to mere
words. (Ann Arbor, Mich. : The Register
Publishing Co.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins:
Delaware College, No. 20. Anthrax. — Massachu-
setts, No. 49. Analyses of Commercial Fertilizers,
etc. — Ohio, No. 49. Field Experiments with Com-
mercial Fertilizers. — Purdue University, No. 45.
Field Experiments with Wheat, etc. — Special.
Commercial Fertilizers.

Arizona, University of. Annual Register, 1892
-1893.

Bandolier, A. F. The Gilded Man. D. Apple-
ton & Co. Pp. 302. $1.50.

Brooklyn Ethical Association. Factors in
American Civiliza ion. D. Appleton & Co. Pp.
417. $2.

Car No. — . Chicago: The Ferris Wheel Co.
Pp.22.

Dawson, Miles Menander. Elements of Life
Insurance. Chicago : Independent Printing &
Publishing Co. Pp. 163. $2.

Eiloart. Arnold. A Guide to Stereochemistry.
New York: Alexander Wilson. Pp.104. $1.

Gratacap, L. P. As to the Public Schools.
Pp. 32.

Guide to the Exhibits of the American Wool
Manufactures, World's Columbian Exposition.
Pp. 34.

Gunzbnrg, B. Railway Passenger Cars. St.
Petersburg: The author. Pp. 4.

Hatch, J. L., M. D. Consciousness from a Bio-
logic Point of View. Reprint from University
Medical Magazine. Pp. 4.

Henderson, Charles R. An Introduction to
the Study of the Dependent, Defective, and De-
linquent Classes. D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 277.
$1.50.

Howard, B. Douglas. Life with Trans-Siberian
Savages. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 209. $1.75.

Howells, W. D , Mark Twain, and Others. The
Niagara Book. Buffalo : Underbill & Nichols.
Pp.235. $1.25.

Hughes, Robert M. General Johnston. D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 353. $1.50.

Illinois State Board of Health. Zymotic Dis
eases in Chicago. Pp. 51.

Kemp, James F. The Ore Deposits of the
United States. Scientific Publishing Co. Pp.
302. $4.

Kirkpatrick, E. A. Inductive Pyschology.
Winona, Minn. : The author. Pp. 104.

Linnsean Society. Abstract of Proceedings,
1892-1893. New York. Pp.41.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Courses
in Electrical Engineering and Physics. Boston.
Pp. 45.— Department of Chemistry. Pp. 16.

MacDonald, Arthur. Abnormal Man. Wash-
ington: Bureau of Education. Pp. 445.

Marcou, Jules. The Geological Map of the
United States and the United States Geological
Survey. Cambridge: The author. Pp. 56.— A
Little More Light on the United States Geologic. 1
Survey. Pp. 11.

Michigan. Report of the State Board of Health,
1890. Pp.331.

Minnesota. Geological and Natural History
Survey. Bulletin, No. 8. Pp. xxiv + 48.

Minnesota. Souvenir Manual of the Minne-
sota Educational Exhibit at Chicago, 1893. Frank
T. Wilson, Stillwater, Minn., General Secretary,
Pp. 112.

Ohio. Board of State Charities. Report of
Committee on Prisons. Pp. 42.

Orndorff, W. R. A Laboratory Manual in
Organic Chemistry. D. C. Heath & Co. 40 cents.

Osborne, Grover Pease. Principles of Eco-
nomics. R. Clarke & Co. Pp. 454. $2.

Poore, George Vivian. Essays on Rural Hy-
giene. Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 321. $2.

Ridgway, Robert. Birds collected on the Is-
lands of Aldabra and Assumption. Pp. 4.

San I rancisco Microscopical Society. Trans-
actions. Volume I, Part i. Pp. 72.

Spencer, Herbert. The Inadequacy of Natu-
ral Selection. D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 69.

Stoddard, William O. On the Old Frontier.
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 340. $1.50.

Taylor, D. W. Resistance of Ships and Screw
Propulsion. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 234. $3.75.

Thompson, Alfred. The Skirts of Chance,
etc. New York: Town Topics Publishing Co.
Pp. 255. 50 cents.

United States Commissioner of Labor. Seventh
Annual Report. Volume II. Pp. 843-2048.

United States Department of Agriculture.
Weather Bureau. Bulletin of the N D. Weather
and Crop Service. July, 1893. Pp. 15.

United States Marine Hospital Service. Ab-
stract of Sanitary Reports. Volume VIII, No. 34.
Pp. 743-780.

Vivian, Thomas J. The Status and Extent of
American Domestic Water Commerce. Washing-
ton: The author. Pp. 24.

Willett, James R. Heating and Ventilation of
Residences. Chicago: The author. Pp. 34.

Wright, Mark R. Heat. Longmans, Green &
Co. Pp. «36. $1.50.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Spencer's Education in English Training
Colleges^ — For several years Herbert Spen-
cer's book on Education has been a text-book
in the schools of England and Wales which
correspond to normal schools in America,
and has been very highly appreciated. Mr.
J. G. Fitch, the widely known educator, who
is one of H. B. M.'s chief inspectors on the
training colleges for schoolmistresses, says
of this work : " In my conferences with the
staff of teachers I have occasionally heard
that the work of Mr. Spencer was regarded
as incomplete and unsatisfying, that it left
out of view some important factors in moral
training, and that in particular it exalted
scientific instruction at the expense of the
' humanities.' But, withal, it is generally

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

137

acknowledged to be one of the most stimu-
lating and suggestive treatises on education
in the language ; and those of the lecturers
who have made the book a theme for com-
ment, and occasionally for adverse criticism,
speak in the strongest terms of the value of
that intellectual discipline which is to be
had in discussing both its shortcomings and
its many merits." That its alleged imperfec-
tions were not deemed very serious even by
their discoverers is shown by the fact that,
although Locke's Thoughts on Education
was permitted as an alternative, Spencer's
book was chosen, in 1891, by all but the two
Catholic colleges and one other out of twenty-
six. Mr. Wilde, one of the inspectors of
colleges for schoolmasters, reports that the
students " had in all the colleges given to me
invariably taken this book." Mr. Byrne,
another inspector, speaking of the general
influence of the book, says : " Mr. Spencer's
little work on education is doing an incal-
culable amount of good to the elementary
teachers of the rising generations. The ob-
ligation now imposed on them to study it is
bearing fruit by awakening in them an in-
terest in the proper ends and methods of
education and instruction which they had
never possessed before. That their occupa-
tion is an art, and does not consist in obedi-
ence to a number of arbitrarily devised rules,
is something to have learned."

Pennsylvania Folk Lore. — Dr. D. G.

Brinton's account of the folk lore of his early
home in Chester County, Pennsylvania, has
little that is peculiar, but in most of its
traits recalls familiar English customs. The
usual superstitions about the moon were in
vogue, and there was a mysterious buried
treasure of blood money with a legend at-
tached. Some mythical animals were be-
lieved in ; among them a descendant of the
were wolf of the middle ages — a big black
dog with fiery eyes, which never appeared
except at night, and was an object of terror
to those who heard him. He was supposed
to haunt a certain valley which people
avoided. Another animal of this class was
the hoop snake, which was said to form it-
self into a ring with its tail in its mouth,
and to revolve like a wheel, faster than a
horse could trot. Dragon flies, as " snake
servants," were supposed to warn snakes of

approaching danger, and as " snake-feed-
ers," to seek out food and notify the snakes
where it could be found. Cats were un-
canny ; many animals could predict the
weather ; and " conjuring " was held respon-
sible for many ills, while charms were cher-
ished as competent to remove them. Ghosts
were familiar in popular belief, and were in
many cases associated with spots connected
with scenes of the Revolution. The author
was himself somewhat of a ghost-seer in his
early days — a faculty which he regrets hav-
ing lost as he advanced in years. Having
such evidence of his own, he was quite pre-
pared to accept without question the state-
ments of others on such points. The later
influx of Irish laborers has introduced a mass
of folk lore and superstitious notions that
did not exist in the region in the author's
boyhood. For instance, he never heard that
Friday was an unlucky day, or that the
number thirteen at dinner was ominous, or
that one should stroke himself to avoid the
influence of a bad sign.

Animal Life in the Death-Valley Region.

— A pointed illustration of the effect of
change of environment on the life of a region
is given in Dr. A. K. Fisher's report of the
birds observed in the course of the examina-
tion of the Death-Valley region, California,
undertaken by Prof. C. Hart Merriam, under
the direction of the Department of Agricul-
ture. While the bird life of any region is
affected by various agencies, such as the
results of the destruction of forests, the dry-
ing of springs and watercourses, etc., in the
high Sierra the sheep industry is doing more
than any other cause to make that region un-
inhabitable. During the summer the sheep
destroy all the smaller plants and shrubs to
such an extent that they do not grow again
till the following spring. The author has
walked for miles along the hillsides where
sheep had recently grazed without seeing
any plants except the larger woody shrubs.
That this destruction is a potent cause of
the scarcity of ground-inhabiting birds is evi-
dent by contrast to any one visiting the na-
tional parks, where no sheep are allowed to
graze, and where vegetation is consequently
uninjured and many species of birds abound.
Yet two hundred and ninety species and sub-
species of birds were found in this region,

138

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and are reported upon. The collection of
reptiles and batrachians made by Mr. Leon-
hard Stejneger is particularly noteworthy as
being the first attempt in this country on a
similar scale to gather the material of this
class according to a national plan and with
a definite purpose in view. The result is a
fine series of nine hundred specimens, unique
in its completeness with respect to geograph-
ic localities within the area explored by the
expedition, a tract of almost a hundred thou-
sand square miles, comprising a number of
nearly parallel desert valleys separated by
intervening narrow mountain ranges. The
effort to collect every species in all the char-
acteristic localities has resulted in the ac-
cumulation of a material by which it has
been possible in many instances to follow
the geographic variation in its several direc-
tions. Thereby the author has been enabled
to settle many vexed questions, and to point
out various nice distinctions where some of
his colleagues had failed, chiefly from lack of
suitable material. According to Prof. Mer-
riam's own observations, most of the desert
shrubs are social plants and are distributed
in well-marked belts or zones, the vertical
limits of which are fixed by the temperature
during the period of gro vth and reproduc-
tion. The boundaries of the several belts
conform largely to the contours of altitude,
with such flexures as variations in base level
and slope exposure impose.

Conventionalism and Originality. — Hav-
ing discussed the tendency of conventional
and original minds to come into collision on
social matters, the London Spectator finds
the occasions for collision less in the case of
purely intellectual questions, for the conven-
tional would take so little interest in mat-
ters requiring real thought that they would
dismiss them unconsidered. But to those
capable of appreciating such subjects, how
refreshing in their distinctiveness of charac-
ter are the workings of the original mind,
both in ideas and in expression ! For there
is a touch of genius, or what the French call
feu sacre, kindling its thoughts. " Life can
never be an altogether dull thing in the com-
pany of the original man, for his inventive
mind will so combine its various elements as
to produce a new and unexpected result. He
will see things from some point of view dis-

regarded before ; like what we have seen,
yet somehow quite different — fresh and un-
expected as the thoughts of a child. For, in
truth, we shall find there is a close kinship
between his mind and that of a thoughtful
child. Both continually sui prise and de-
light us, because, through ignorance in the
one case and disregard in the other, of the
ordinary points of view, they simply and nat-
urally take their own. And in both cases
there is the probability that they will strike
the truth, because, unblinded by convention
or prejudice, they aim straight at the heart of
a question. We see, both with children and
with poor people, that education, however
useful as a refiner of the raw material of
originality, is no necessity of its existence.
For what rare and racy originality do we
often find in the sayings of the poor and un-
educated ! Their conversation may be often
richer in this golden ore than that of those
who are called their betters ; for having
heard less of other men's views, their
shrewd, observant minds are driven to take
their own. . . . Yet, on the other hand, who
that delights in certain gifted authors would
deny that mental cultivation gives an added
grace to originality ? "

The Alaskan Climate. — The climate of
southeastern Alaska, says Prof. J. J. Steven-
son, in the Scottish Geographical Magazine,
is a source of constant surprise to visitors
from the Atlantic slope. On the same par-
allels with bleak and dismal Labrador and
Cape York on Hudson Bay, where the sum-
mer heat penetrates only a few feet below
the surface, trees grow three thousand feet
above the sea at Wrangel, and up to the
mountain tops at Juneau. The rainfall is
great, and the variation in temperature is
not ; the mercury rarely falls below ten de-
grees above zero at Sitka, and as seldom
rises above seventy-five degrees. Of course,
the extremes are much greater on the main-
land beyond the mountains, where the sum-
mer heat and winter cold are much more in-
tense than immediately on the coast. Alas-
ka has not been an unprofitable investment
for the United States. The purchase money
has been repaid, or nearly so, by royalties on
seal-fishing. But the agricultural capabili-
ties are limited indeed. There is little land
fitted for tillage ; and the moist summer

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

with its low temperature is unfavorable
for the ripening of grain. Gardens, how-
ever, are successful at Sitka and Wrangel,
and the commoner vegetables are raised
without difficulty. Berries of many kinds
grow luxuriantly. The remarkable contrast
between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of
North America is due to the influence of the
Kuro-Siwo, or great Japanese current, which
is similar to that of the Gulf Stream on the
west coast of Europe. There are many
points of resemblance between the two
streams. The Japanese current is divided
by a cold current, and fogs are produced by
the contact, as they are when the Gulf Stream
meets the Labrador current in the North At-
lantic. The Kamchatka or northerly branch
flows into Bering Sea and passes through
Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean, first
striking the coast of northern Alaska ; the
mild climate of that coast is due to it, and
possibly its influence on the ocean tempera-
ture has much to do with the presence of fur
seals in Bering Sea. The main body of the
stream crosses the ocean and reaches the
American coast not far from the strait of San
Juan de Fuca, whence it flows southward to
join the great northern equatorial current off
Lower California. In spite of the superfluity
of rainy and cloudy weather, southeastern
Alaska is said to be by no means an unin-
viting place. In summer the twilight almost
meets the dawn, but winter restores the day-
light to the general average, for at Sitka
lamps are extinguished at nine in the morn-
ing, to be relighted at three in the afternoon.

Characteristics of the Tropical Forest.

— To the naturalist, says the London Spec-
tator, the most marked feature of the great
tropical forest south of the equator is the
inequality in the balance of Nature between
vegetable and animal life. From the forests
of Brazil to the forests of the Congo, through
the wooded heights of northern Madagascar,
to the tangled jungles of the Asiatic Archi-
pelago and the impenetrable woods of New
Guinea, the boundless profusion of vegetable
growth is unmatched by any similar abun-
dance in animal forms. A few brilliant
birds of strange shape and matchless plum-
age, such as the toucans of Guinea and the
Amazon, or the birds of paradise in the Mo-
luccas or the Papuan Archipelago, haunt the

loftiest trees, and from time to time fall vie
tims to the blowpipe or arrow of the na-
tives, who hardly dare to penetrate that food-
less region, even for such rich spoils, until in-
cantation and sacrifice have propitiated the
offended spirits of the woods ; but, except the
sloth and the giant ant-eater, there is hardly
to be found in the tropical regions of the
New World a quadruped which can excite
the curiosity of the naturalist or form food
even for the wildest of mankind. In the
corresponding tracts of Africa and the Asi-
atic Archipelago the rare four-footed animals
that live in the solitary forests are for the most
part creatures of the night, and do not leave
their hiding places till the tropical darkness
has fallen on the forest, when they seek their
food, not on the surface of the ground, but,
imitating the birds, ascend to the upper sur-
face of the ocean of trees, and at the first
approach of dawn seek refuge from the
hateful day in the dark recesses of some
aged and hollow trunk. There is nothing
like the loris or the lemur in the fauna of
temperate Europe. We may rather compare
them to a race of arboreal moles, the con-
dition of whose life is darkness and invisi-
bility. But, unlike the moles, the smaller
members of these rarely seen tribes are
among the most beautiful and interesting
creatures of the tropics, though the extreme
difficulty of capturing creatures whose whole
life is spent on the loftiest forest trees is
further increased by the reluctance of the
natives to enter the deserted and pathless for-
ests. The beautiful lemurs, most of which
are found in Madagascar, are further be-
lieved by the Malagasi to embody the spirits
of their ancestors ; and the weird and plaint-
ive cries with which they fill the groves at
night, uttered by creatures whose bodies, as
they cling to the branches, are invisible, and
whose delicate movements are noiseless, may
well have left a doubt on the minds of the
first discoverers of the island as to whether
these were not in truth the cries and wail-
ings of true lemurcs, the unquiet ghosts of
the departed.

Indian Basket Colors. — No chemist, says
the Lewiston (Maine) Journal, has ever pro-
duced brighter colors than are made by the
Maine Indian basket makers. For the
greater part of the material, ash logs are

140

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taken, though maple is cut for rims and
handles. In the salt marshes sweet grass is
found, which when dry gives out a fragrant
odor. Alder is steeped for pale red, white-
birch bark for bright red, cedar boughs for
green, and sumac for yellow. Black comes
from white-maple bark. A light solution
of maple, however, shows purple instead of
black. Lazy Indians buy logwood for black,
redwood for red, and fustic for yellow. A
family of four basket makers in Oldtown
cleared one thousand dollars last year, in
addition to the household expenses. In the
same house where the baskets were made
are a four-hundred-dollar piano, a Brussels
carpet, lace curtains, plush furniture, a pic-
ture of a priest and one of the Virgin Mary,
a Catholic epitome, a set of Cooper's novels
a stuffed owl, and a peacock, also stuffed.
Two canary birds sang in a cage hanging in
the room, and on a mat a tired foxhound
snored.

Ancient Beginnings of Chemistry. — In a

paper presenting evidences of careful study,
Prof. H. Carrington Bolton has shown how
the beginnings of chemistry were in the
very earliest times, when already many arts
were practiced involving chemical operations,
such as working in metals, purification of
natural salts for pharmacy, etc., dyeing of
cloths and the preparation of pigments,
brewing of fermented liquors, and others.
Hence we find that long before chemistry
became a science, even before it became in-
oculated with the virus of alchemy, furnaces
and apparatus of earthenware, metal, and
glass, adapted to special work, were in com-
mon use. The Egyptians attained great
skill in industrial arts at a remote period,
and have left records of a most enduring
character, pictures cut in their granite tombs
and temples. There we see the processes of
gold washing and smelting ; the use of blow-
pipes and double bellows for intensifying
heat, various forms of furnaces, and cruci-
bles having a shape quite similar to those
of to-day. Some of these crucibles preserved
in the Berlin Museum date from the fifteenth
century B. c. The earliest chemical labora-
tories of which we have any knowledge are
those connected with the Egyptian temples.
Each temple had its library and its labora-
tory, commonly situated in a definite part of

the huge structure. In these laboratories
the priests prepared the incense, oils, and
other substances used in the temple services,
and on the granite walls were carved the re-
cipes and processes. These are still to be
seen by the archaeologist. The Israelites
carried with them from Egypt to the prom-
ised land knowledge of the technical and
artistic skill of their contemporaries, and the
Holy Bible contains frequent allusions to
industrial arts. Cupellation is plainly de-
scribed by Jeremiah ; metallurgical opera-
tions are mentioned in Job, Ezekiel, and
other books, and bellows by Jeremiah.
Geber, the Arabian physician and chemist
of the eighth century, wrote very plainly of
chemical processes, describing minutely so-
lution, filtration, crystallization, fusion, sub-
limation, distillation, cupellation, and va-
rious kinds of furnaces and apparatus em-
ployed in these operations. He describes in
detail the aludel (or sublimatory of glass),
the necessary apparatus for filtration, and
the water-bath. The last piece (bain-marie
in French) is said to have been invented by
an alchemist named Mary, who is identified
with Miriam, the sister of Moses. Perhaps
the earliest drawings of strictly chemical
apparatus are those in the so-called manu-
script of St. Mark, which is a Greek papyrus
on the " sacred art " preserved in Venice
and recently edited by Berthelot.

Adaptability of the South to Cotton
Manufacturing. — The feasibility of establish-
ing profitable cotton manufactures in the
Southern States was recently discussed in
the Manufacturers' Record of Baltimore by
D. A. Tompkins, of the Atherton Mills,
Charlotte, N. C., and Henry G. Kittredge,
editor of the Boston Journal of Commerce.
Mr. Tompkins believes that the conditions at
the South are more favorable to the manu-
facture of cotton than those of any other
part of the world — because no freight
charges or only trifling ones have to be in-
curred ; the profits of dealers in cotton are
eliminated ; labor and living are cheaper
than in other parts of the United States ; the
cost of bagging and ties is almost entirely
saved, because they can be sold back to the
farmers ; and the loss of cotton in transpor-
tation to other points is saved. Mr. Kit-
tredge does not regard these advantages as

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

141

of permanent consequence, or as such as can
not be offset by things unfavorable ; and he
mentions as an opposing condition of great
magnitude the enervating effect of the
Southern climate. He points to the region
within the limits of the Appalachian Moun-
tain system, where the climate partakes to a
greater or less degree of the characteristics
of that of the Northern States, as the most
propitious region for the establishment of
the cotton manufacture of the South. The
Record expresses the belief that the delight-
ful and salubrious climate of the Piedmont
region of the Carolinas lacks nothing needful
for successful manufacturing operations.

German Schools. — According to a sum-
mary of the German school system by Prin-
cipal Ernest Richard, of the Hoboken Acad-
emy, the people's school ( Volksschuk) com-
prises a course of eight years in the common
branches, with natural history, geography,
history, and religion, from which everything
that belongs properly to the competency of
special schools is carefully kept out. The
spirit of these schools, however, changes,
according to the relative strength of liberal
or reactionary tendencies in the spirit of the
times. In many States a compulsory course
in the Fortbildungsschule, or continuation
school, has been introduced, to attend which
employers are obliged to give all their em-
ployed below a certain age leave of absence.
The course in these schools is generally an
enlargement of the subjects taught in the
people's schools, with a view to the future
occupation of the pupils. In the city they
try to give instruction most useful for the
prospective mechanic, while in agricultural
districts the future needs of the farmer are
of leading influence in shaping the course of
study. Girls are trained in domestic econ-
omy and prepared for their future position
of wives and mothers. Special trade schools,
or industrial or commercial schools, adapted
to the special occupations of the place, are
also open to the boy who has completed his
people's school course. From these element-
ary schools, with a variety of other schools
which one may attend, the pupil passes to
the secondary schools — the Obcr-Realschule
the Realgymnasium, and the Gymnasium ;
or the schools of science and modern lan-
guages ; of these with Latin added ; and the

humanistic school. These schools are in
nine grades, which all have Latin names,
from Prima superior (the highest) to Scxta
(the lowest). At the close of the complete
secondary course the Abiturienten Examen
takes place, an examination of maturity for
work in the university and the highest tech-
nical schools of university rank. The uni-
versity is considered the soul, the life-giving
element of education. Its proper province,
even more than preparation for a profession,
is, as Prof. Virchow has shown in his rec-
toral address published in the August Month-
ly, the search for truth for the sake of truth,
the production of new knowledge, the pro-
viding of material for the progress of civili-
zation in all its branches. No matter what
the political constitution of the State may
be, it is free; and the professor's right to
teach what in his conviction is the truth is
not limited.

Accuracy of American School Books. —

The results of an offer recently sent out by
the manufacturers of an article of popular
use of a prize for the detection of errors in
school books are very creditable to the ac-
curacy and thoroughness of American text-
books. The conditions of the offer required
that the book be in the English language
and actually used in some school, and the
error one susceptible of proof, and taught
hi lectures or lessons, and not merely a typo-
graphical mistake, or an error inadvertently
made in spelling or grammar ; it should not
be one that had already been corrected in
later editions ; it should not be a disputed
question of history or opinion ; and should
be usually recognized by the publisher of
the book on submission to him as an error.
Two hundred and thirty-five answers were
received to the offer, representing one hun-
dred and sixty-eight alleged errors. The
greatest number of errors — thirty-eight —
were alleged to appear in geographies ; next
were histories, twenty-one ; arithmetics, nine-
teen; grammars, sixteen; natural history,
twelve; readers, ten; chemistries, eight;
languages, etymology, civil government, sev-
en each; geometries, four; geologies and
miscellaneous criticisms, two each ; defini-
tions, zoologies, books on English, anatomies,
astronomies, botanies, drawing-books, trigo-
nometries, and political economies, one each.

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Only one misstatement was found in Web-
ster's Dictionary, and only two in Prof.
Fiske's Civil Government in the United
States. Another offer, on slightly modified
terms, has been sent out by the same house,
which will doubtless lead to a still more
thorough examination of the books. From
the present outlook, whatever may be the
shortcomings of our school books, they do
not lie to any great extent in outright mis-
statements of fact.

Expenses at Harvard. — The cost of liv-
ing while at school is a very important item to
most college students. Since Prof. Palmer, of
Harvard University, showed how it was possi-
ble for a student to live there on four hundred
and fifty dollars a year, or a little less, many
changes have taken place in college life and
its surroundings, and aids to economizing
have been introduced that did not exist then.
In the Foxcroft Club, with its bill of prices
ranging from two slices of bread or two
cookies for a cent, to ten cents for roast
meats, many have been able to board for as
little as two dollars a week. The Twenty-
one Club has been an active force in lowering
the average of student expenses ; the Furni-
ture Loan Club, which began in 1890, has
been another. The list of rooms in private
houses, published at the opening of each
college year, has aided, by directing students
to the cheapest rentals ; and an employment
bureau, established in 1887-'88, helps stu-
dents who may wish to earn their way or a
part of it. In order to ascertain the present
conditions as to expense, Secretary Frank
Bolles recently requested a number of Har-
vard men to prepare, each in his own way,
a statement of his necessary expenditures
during the time of his residence at the uni-
versity, selecting men known to be very poor,
earnest, and scholarly, eager to secure re-
munerative work, and likely to be methodical
and accurate in money matters. He pub-
lishes, in a pamphlet entitled Students' Ex-
penses, the replies received from forty of
them. These replies show that "students
of the most intelligent kind are able to meet
the expenses of an academic year by a sum
appreciably smaller than the four hundred
and fifty dollars which was the normal mini-
mum in 1887." As a rule, the letters have
a cheerful tone, showing that the student

who lives economically " is not necessarily
dreary," though he may have less of pleasure
and ease than many of his associates. While
some of the men have been forced to devote
too much time to making money to attain
the very highest grade of academic scholar-
ship, few of them have records below the
average ; and the number of those having
conspicuously high records is greater than
that of those having poor grades. Several
of them have taken active part in athletic
supports, and have found time to enjoy them-
selves in other ways.

The First Climbing of an Alp.— Accord-
ing to Mr. Edwin Swift Balch's interesting
paper on Mountain Exploration, the first
real Alpine ascent took place in the same
year as the landing of Columbus, when
Chamberlain Julien de Beaupre, by order of
King Charles VIII of France, and with the
help of ropes and ladders, climbed Mont
Aiguille, " a long narrow wedge, six thou-
sand and eighty feet high, flat at the top,
where there are grass and trees." The con-
temporary account reads that " on June 26,
1492, Fran9ois de Bosco, almoner to the
Seigneur Julien de Beaupre, in company
with other hardy adventurers, ascended the
Mont Eguille, or Mount Inaccessible, and
the day following, having said mass on the
said mountain, ate, drank, and reposed there-
on. The Seigneur Julien de Beaupre
changed the name of the mountain from
Eguille, or Montagne Inaccessible, to Eguille
Fort, causing it to be baptized in the name
of the Holy Trinity by a certain Sebastian de
Carect, one of the royal chaplains, and
afterward chanting the Te Deum, Salve He-
ffina, and many other anthems." They saw
numerous chamois on the summit, where
they spent six days, and found the descent
still more horrible than the ascent.

The Zoological Garden of Philadelphia.

— The Directors of the Zoological Society of
Philadelphia say in their report for the last
year that they have been confined in the ad-
ministration of the affairs of the society to
its legitimate purposes, by the provisions of
its charter and their sense of a proper con-
duct of the trust confided to them. Their
constant object has been to place the garden
— purely as a zoological garden — in the

NOTES.

front rank of such instituiions. In this
they feel that they have succeeded in a
greater measure than is perhaps commonly
recognized by the people of the city. The
public services rendered by such an institu-
tion are comprised in the very definition of
education, in its broad modern sense, and
need demonstration in this day quite as
little as do its other functions in the direc-
tion of recreation ; yet it is doubtful if the
general public perceive as yet the full educa-
tional value of an institution that attracts at
the same moment, into the same path, two
such different elements of human intelli-
gence as the capacity for observation and
the love of enjoyment. The last year's
season of the garden was less profitable than
usual, partly on account of the severity of
both the summer and the winter, and partly
also, the directors fear, because it has be-
come the victim of that sort of popular
apathy to which such institutions are ex-
posed which eschew sensational methods
and are not all the time offering novelties.
It is to be hoped that the intelligent people
of Philadelphia will not permit so worthy an
institution to suffer on account of its deter-
mination to maintain its high standard.

Ancient Mexican and Hopi Danees. — Cer-
tain resemblances, fancied or real, between
ceremonials which, according to Spanish his-
torians, were observed by Central American
aborigines at the time of the conquest, and
those which are at present performed in the
least modified of the pueblos of the South-
west, afford a series of interesting facts,
which, if they do not point to the kinship of
those peoples, may throw light on the study
of the comparative ceremoniology of the
American race. An example of such re-
semblance is found by Mr. J. Walter Fewkes
in a ceremony described by Padre Sahagun
as practiced by the ancient Mexicans, which
is comparable in many respects with the
Hopi snake dance. In his published study
of the subject, Mr. Fewkes gives the Nahuatl
text cited by Sahagun, a German translation
of it by Dr. Seler, an English translation of
that, and a Spanish version with a Mexican
plate or tablet illustrating the text. There
are many differences between the described
ceremony and the Hopi dance, but a strik-
ing resemblance appears in the carrying of

the snake in the mouths of the participants.
The resemblance leads one to look for like-
ness in symbolism, especially as appertain-
ing to the mythological snake, between the
two peoples. A close likeness in this sym-
bolism has not been found among the Nahua
people, while with the Mayas there is a re-
markable case of similarity or identical sym-
bolism apparently connecting the plumed
snake of Yucatan with that of the Hopi
towns. From the speculative side there
seems probable an intimate resemblance be-
tween some of the ceremonials, the symbol-
ism, and the mythological systems of the
Indians of Tusayan and those of the more
civilized stocks of Central America. In the
author's opinion, we are not yet justified in
offering any but a theoretical explanation of
the origin of the Hopi ceremonial and myth-
ological systems, but their intimate relations
with those of the neighboring pueblos indi-
cates a close kinship. The facts recorded in
his study look as if the Hopi practice a cere-
monial system of worship with strong affini-
ties to the Nahuatl and Mayas. He has not
yet seen enough evidence to convince him
that the Hopi derived their cult or ceremoni-
als from the Zunians or from any other single
people. It is probably composite.

NOTES.

Polygonum sakhalice is the name of a
forest plant from the island of Sakhalien,
Japan, of which flattering accounts are given
by M. Doumet Adanson, who has cultivated
a few stools of it in France. He got it as
an ornamental plant, and it is really very
handsome. It grows to be about six feet
high in three weeks ; produces a consider-
able foliage of which cattle are fond ; and
yields a good second crop after the first cut-
ting. A section of root planted will produce
a stool covering a square metre of surface.
It takes care of itself.

A LEAGUE has been formed at Aix-en-
Provence, France, for promoting agricultural
interests by preserving the small insect-eat-
ing birds, and has allied itself with state and
local authorities. It will seek to suppress
nets and all machinery for capturing birds ;
to insure the preservation of nests ; to for-
bid the manufacture and sale of spring nets
and other bird-catching machinery, and to
prohibit the use of poisons and of bird-lime
against birds, and in general of anything
except the gun for their destruction. It
will favor the use of all means for the res-

144

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

toration and renaturalization of all useful
species that are now tending to disappear.
It will also strive to enlist the co-operation
of the authorities and administrative officers
in all practical measures to save the birds,
and so to instruct the public that a genera-
tion shall grow up who have not been taught
by the example or indifference of their elders
that birds are mischievous creatures, to be
got rid of, but the contrary.

THE second medallist of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society this year (M. Selous, the
African explorer, being the first) was Mr.
Woodland Rockhill, an American diplomatist,
who had made himself famous by his ex-
plorations in western China and northeastern
Thibet.

A WRITER in the Genie Civil has shown
that there is a difference in electric potential
between the water and gas pipes in all houses,
and that if one terminal of a telephone is
joined, say, to the water pipe, on lightly
touching the gas pipe with the other, a
crackling sound will be heard in the tele-
phone, indicating the passage of a current.
When the telephone is replaced by the gal-
vanometer, the negative pole is found to be
formed by the gas pipe, and the galvanom-
eter deflection to be permanent and con-
stant in amount during several months, but
with a slight diurnal variation. The cur-
rents are attributed to slow chemical changes.
With the currents developed in these pipes
the author has succeeded in carrying on a
conversation between two houses a hundred
metres apart.

A GORILLA which had acquired consider-
able fame died recently in the Berlin Aqua-
rium. The papers have published accounts of
its daily operations. It awoke at eight o'clock
in the morning and took a glass of milk. At
nine o'clock it made its toilet with as much
care as a civilized man, and ate its breakfast
a few minutes afterward. This consisted of
two Vienna loaves, Hajnburg smoked meat,
cheese, and white beer. At one o'clock in
the afternoon it had a cup of chicken soup
with carrot, rice, and potatoes, and an egg.
Its evening meal consisted of fruits, bread and
butter, and a cup of tea.

THE Hindus are curiously frank in speci-
fying their occupations for the census re-
ports. Among the accounts many of them
give of their trades they designate themselves
as debtors, living on loans, men of secret re-
sources— or plainly thieves, village thieves, or
robbers. Others more modestly call them-
selves guests, visitors, story-tellers from
house to house, dependents on relatives, sup-
ported by their sons-in-law, or idlers ; and
one is without work because he is silly.
Among the more serious occupations are
declarer of oracles, cleaner of eyes, sorcerer,
foreteller of storms and hail, player of the
tom-tom, or player, barber, doctor according

to the Greek method, servant of a candidate,
marriage broker of young domestics, mar-
riage broker of his own daughters for money,
etc.

ACCORDING to an address by C. Theodore
Williams before the Royal Meteorological
Society, the chief features of the climate of
Colorado appear to be : 1. Diminished baro-
metric pressure, owing to altitude. 2. Great
atmospheric dryness, especially in winter and
autumn. 3. Clearness of atmosphere and
absence of fog or cloud. 4. Abundant sun-
shine all the year round, but especially in
winter and autumn. 5. Marked diatherman-
cy of atmosphere, producing an increase in
the difference between the temperature in
the sun and in the shade, varying with the
elevation in the proportion of one degree for
every rise of two hundred and thirty-five feet.
6. Considerable air movement, even in the
middle of summer, which promotes evapora-
tion and tempers the solar heat. 7. The pres-
ence of a large amount of atmospheric elec-
tricity. Thus the climate is dry and sunny,
with bracing and energizing qualities, per-
mitting outdoor exercise all the year round.

ACCORDING to a paper by Prof. Washing-
ton Matthews, of Fort Wingate, New Mexico,
read in the American Association, the major-
ity of the very numerous songs of the Nava-
jos are divided into groups and follow in
regular sequence ; whence they may be called
sequence songs. The order of the songs is
arranged to correspond with a series of myths,
there being a special myth for each set. The
set of the " songs in the form of the house
god " has thirty songs. In some instances
the myth is the more important part of the
work ; but in more cases it is only a trifling
element, and seems devised merely as an aid
to the memory, or a means of explaining and
giving interest to the songs. The master of
ceremonies or leader in the production of
these songs, called the thaman, must be a
man of superior memory and of great intel-
lectual industry. He must commit to mem-
ory many hundred songs, some of which are
so sacred that the slightest mistake made in
repeating them renders void an elaborate and
costly ceremonial.

Two reforms in the system of life insur-
ance commended in the English journals are
the perfection of a plan by one company the
object of which is to lighten the duties of
trustees and enable the assurant to make bet-
ter provision for his wife and children, the
details of which are too technical to be pub-
lished here ; and the adoption by another
company of a policy affording full and satis-
factory information on all subjects concern-
ing its operations and the nature and value
of its policies, including those facts by the
aid of which the assurant can see for him-
self what he can get every year upon his pol-
icy should he be constrained to sell it or
borrow upon it.

DANIEL WILSON.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1893.

THE STORY OF BOB.

BY DAVID STARR JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF LELAND 8TANFOBD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

WE called him Bob. We never knew his real name. That
had been left in the jungles of Borneo. He was born in
1890, a prince of the tribe of Cercopithecus which inhabits the
palm forests of the south sea islands. Stolen from his parents
by a south sea trader, he was brought to San Francisco, ex-
changed for a keg of beer, and found his way at last to a Kearny
Street curiosity shop.

Not long after, a student of evolution saw him there, ransomed
him by a subscription from his fellow-students, and Bob was
transferred to a new home in the university beside the Tall Tree.
Here he was placed in the custody of a young naturalist from
Japan. Otaki being likewise Asiatic by birth, understood the
wants and feelings of Bob better than did any of the others by
whom he was surrounded.

We first knew Bob as a wild and suspicious creature, who
looked at all who came near him with fear or hatred. If any per-
son touched him, Bob would look him straight in the eyes, with
scowling face and lips rolled back, every muscle tense for action
in case of any injury or indignity. Whenever he was lifted from
the ground, all these expressions would be intensified ; but he
never ventured to bite any one who seemed beyond his size, or to
escape from any one he thought able to hold him. Toward
women he showed from the first great aversion, for they had
poked him in the ribs with their parasols while he was in prison
in Kearny Street. Furthermore, he seemed seriously to disap-
prove the unseemly freedom allowed to women in our country.

VOL. XLIV. 12

146

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In such matters, our manners and customs are very different from
those which prevail in the tribe of Cercopithecus in Borneo.

After a time, under protest, he let one young woman iead him
about by his chain, and refrained from open enmity ; but he
never gave her either trust or affection. Children he held in
utter abhorrence, for it was their delight to ridicule him and to
vex his dignity with sticks and clods of earth. When any of

them came near
him, he would
jump at them,
hissing and scold-
ing, and often
only the strength
of his chain saved
them from in-
jury.

When Bob
came from Kear-
ny Street his hair
was infested with
the small, louse-
like parasite ( HCR-
matopina quad-
rumanus) which
always abounds
where those of
his race are gath-
ered together.
Bob did not try
to conceal this
fact; he made it
the joy of his lei-
sure. A large part of his time was spent in searching his arms
and legs in quest of the insect. When he found or pretended to
find one, he would eat it with much appearance of satisfaction,
keeping up all the while a vigorous smacking of the lips. A
young entomologist became interested in this, and sought to
make for himself a collection of these insects from Bob's hair.
But while he made his explorations, putting his captures in a
small vial, Bob conducted a similar search among the hairs on
his friend's hand. The bystanders laughed heartily, but Bob
saw nothing funny about the affair. If one could judge by his
movements and the smacking of his lips, he was more successful
than the naturalist himself. But all this with Bob was simply
an excess of politeness. In his tribe of Cercopithecus it is the
height of courtesy for one individual to go over the head and

BOB AND THE NAPA SODA.

THE STORY OF BOB. 147

shoulders of his friends, taking hold of hair after hair, drawing
them through his fingers, so that no parasite can escape. If a
stranger in any way earns his good will, Bob will show it by de-
voting himself to this search either on hand or coat sleeve. At
these times Bob is the perfection of courtesy. He pretends to
find numberless Hcematopince, on his friend's hands, even though
you can see with your own eyes that he finds nothing at all.
And all the time he chuckles and smacks his lips as though
each discovery were an object of personal satisfaction to him.

Of snakes, large or small, Bob has always stood in abject
terror. If he is held firmly and the snake is placed near him, he
looks piteously in the face of his keeper, and sometimes, more in
sorrow than in anger, he will bite if he is not let go. At one time
a snake in a paper bag was shown him. When the paper bag
was afterward left near him, he would furtively approach and
open it, to peep a moment shiveringly into its depths, and then
retreat ignominiously, only to approach for another peep when he
had summoned sufficient courage.

A live salamander was placed on the table by his side. This
he looked at with a great deal of interest, finally taking it in his
hands, with many precautions. When he saw how inert it was,
he laid it down and lost all interest in it.

Toward a flat skin of a coyote and one of a wild cat, used as
parlor rugs, Bob showed the same fear as in the presence of the
snake. If one brought them near him he would jump wildly
about or cower in terror behind a chair. This instinctive fear is
apparently an inheritance from the experience of his fathers,
whose kingdom was in the land where tigers and snakes were
dominant and dangerous. A similar skin without hair and eyes
he cared nothing for. At one time he climbed on the back of a
chair to get away from the coyote skin. The chair was over-
turned by his efforts. He saw at once that when the chair fell it
would carry him backward to the coyote, so he let go of the chair
and, seizing his chain, swung himself off out of the reach of the
coyote, while the chair was allowed to go over. This was re-
peated afterward with the same result.

Bob grew very expert in the use of this chain, which he came
at last to regard as a necessary part of his environment. In
climbing chairs or trees he always took it into consideration.
He never learned to untie knots in it, but would very deftly
straighten it whenever it became tangled or kinked. Sometimes
he would break fastenings, escaping to the top of the house,
clanking his chain as he went. It was not easy to catch him
then, for he delighted in freedom. At such times he would
manage the chain most skillfully, going back to set it free if it
caught on any projection. When very hungry, however, he

1+8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would come down to the ground or sit patiently outside the
kitchen window, waiting to be coaxed and caught. At one time,
after we had been entreating him for an hour, he came down

from the house in a
rage to scare away
some boys who were
mocking him from be-
low, and who fled in
terror at his approach.
When loose in the tall
grass, Bob would walk
on his hinder limbs,
holding his head high,
and looking about for
birds, in whom he
seemed to take much
interest. For some
reason their calls at-
tracted him. His hands
meanwhile were held
with drooping wrists
like the wrists of per-
sons afflicted with the
Grecian bend. Toward
most animals and to-
ward persons he could
not frighten he usual-
ly affected perfect in-
difference, often not
deigning to grant them
even a glance.

Toward horses and cows, and to other animals " big and un-
pleasant" to him, he held a great dislike. When Billy, the
saddle horse, came near him, Bob would crouch like an angry
cat, erecting his hair, humping his back, and scolding vehemently.
When in his judgment he was safely out of Billy's reach, he
would advance boldly and scold loudly. When he thought Billy
too near, he became as small and inconspicuous as possible, to
avoid the horse's notice. At one time he was placed on Billy's
back, where he went into spasms of fear. When taken into the
house, he grew bolder, and, climbing on the back of a chair, he
described his adventures volubly and with many gestures to his
friend Otaki, who understood it all.

To the big dog Rover he also had strong objections. Rover
looked down on Bob with tolerant contempt, as a disagreeable
being, not to be shaken like a rat because possibly human. But

AFTER CLAHF.T — KATZENJAMMER.

THE STORY OF BOB.

149

when Bob would strike him in the face with the flat of his hand,
Rover would snap at him, barking indignantly; but he never
caught him, and Bob was careful to keep out of his reach. His
discretion could be counted on to get the better of his courage.
With the little terrier, Dandy, Bob's relations were often friendly,
although there was very little mutual trust. At one time Dandy
was deep in the ivy in search of a rat, while Bob had also entered
the ivy by another opening for other reasons. They met in the
dark in a rat-hole through the ivy leaves, and a sharp conflict
ensued, marked by much scolding on the one part and pulling of
hair and barking on the other. When Dandy had dragged Bob
to the light, both were very r~-
much surprised, and they
parted with mutual apolo-
'gies and much shamefaced-
ness.

Being offered a glass of
milk, Bob looked at it for a
moment, then took the glass
in both hands and drank
from it. His mouth being
small, much of the milk
was spilled on the floor.
Being then offered a glass
partly full, he handled it
more deftly, seeming to
understand how to use it.
When offered a pewter cup
with a handle, he took it in
both hands and drank as
from the glass, but, notic-
ing the handle, he set the
cup down and raised it
again properly. Then he
drank from it as a child of
any other race would have
done. He soon learned to
drink water from bottles.
If the bottle were large, he
would use one of his hands
to hold it, guiding it to his
mouth by his hinder legs. At the first trial he understood the
purpose of the cork, which he would draw with his teeth. Then
he would look down into the neck of the bottle to see if the water
were really there and no deception practiced on him. He also
usually shook the bottle before drinking, apparently a custom in

IN DEVOTIONS.

150 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Borneo. Once a bottle of carbonated mineral water ("Napa
soda ") was given him. He drew the cork, much surprised at the
explosion, and the character of the water caused him equal sur-
prise ; still he drained the bottle and was apparently pleased with
it. A bottle of claret being offered him, he drank eagerly and
became much exhilarated, but at the same time much confused.
After this he always refused claret, putting the bottle away with
a gesture of disapproval. Of water colored by fruit juices he was
very fond.

Being left alone in a student's room, he experimented on the
bottles there. He drew the cork from bottles of ink and of bay
rum ; not relishing the contents of either, he poured both into the
wash basin.

When he was offered an empty egg shell, he raised it up and
looked intp the crack from which the contents had been taken.
Then he would use his fingers to pull the shell apart, licking the
inside of the shell, but apparently disgusted with the small
amount of food it contained.

Being shown his reflection in the mirror, he advanced toward
it scowling, but soon detecting the sham, he lost all interest in it.
A hand glass was given him, but he paid very little attention to
his reflection in it, laying it down and turning to other things.

The life of Bob was not without its tender passages. He was
loved in turn by the vivacious Mimi and the gentle Nanette.
The two stood in much the same relation as the

"... ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old dean."

In Borneo, among the tribes of Cercopiihecus, the male is
easily the lord of creation. The female expects to be crowded
aside and frequently punished, and takes rude treatment as a
matter of course. A kind expression now and then, an occasional
hour devoted to hunting Hczmatopince, in her hair, or even a
cessation of blows and bites, and she is thankful and satisfied.

Mimi was of the tribe of Macacus, gentle in manner, excess-
ively quick of foot, impatient of restraint or even touch from any
hand except that of her chosen lord and master. She had large,
projecting gray eyes — "pop-eyes" her rivals might have called
them — and a wrinkled face suggestive of an age she did not
possess. Her face readily assumed an expression of most im-
patient contempt if any one not of her race attempted to caress
her or to take any liberty with her. Mimi had been brought as
a child from the south sea islands, and had grown up in a May-
field beer hall, where she had learned to drink beer with the rest
of them, and in general " knew the world," as most of us who
live outside the jungles of Borneo are compelled to know it.

THE STORY OF BOB.

Mimi pleased Bob from the first, though he was careful never
to let her forget her proper station. If, for example, she had any
food he wanted, or if others showed her special attention, he
would seize her chain, draw her up to him, and bite her forcibly
in the neck, which is the time-honored sign of domestic suprem-
acy in Borneo. At this she would squeal lustily, but she never
offered resistance or showed any kind of resentment. Masculine
supremacy is acknowledged in the tribe of Macacus as in that of
Cercopithecus. Of-
ten Bob would draw
Mimi to him to bite
her in the neck, ap-
parently to remind
her of his superior-
ity. At night they
slept together in one
box, each with a soft
arm round the oth-
er's waist.

Nanette, who
came later, was also
of the tribe of Ma-
cacus, but she was
of a different branch
of the great family.
She was much larger
than Mimi, nearly as
large as Bob him-
self. She had lived
in a French family,
where she had ac-
quired her name and
her calm,considerate
manner. She was a
gentle blonde, with
a pensive, averted

face, as though the present was merely an object of toleration
with her. Evidently Nanette had had a history, but what that
history was no one now can tell. Perhaps there was no history,
and her sadly patient expression came from the absence of one.

Mimi was soon very jealous of Nanette, but without good rea-
son, for Bob treated Nanette with uniform contempt, pushing her
about and biting her in the neck whenever she came near him.
In this Mimi would assist, often seizing Nanette's chain and
pulling her about till she was brought within Bob's reach. After
a time Mimi's former master returned ; she went back to her

CuriiiiY."

152

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

drinking of beer, grimacing at visitors, and Bob and this history
see her no more.

Meanwhile Nanette and Bob were left together. He remained
contemptuous toward her, robbing her of her food and treating
her with indignity. Often, when others were looking, Bob would
show his authority over her by ostentatiously drawing up her
chain and nipping her in the neck ; but at other times, when no
one was watching, he would relax his dignity and the two would
_^ lie for hours in the sun-

shine, each picking fleas
from the other's hair.
However, roughly as she
was treated, Nanette nev-
er showed resentment,
and seemed only too glad
to be the slave of her
royal Bob.

At one time Bob had
treated Nanette with pe-
culiar severity, for which
reason Lady Jane gave
him a good beating.
Nanette, the gentle, took
his part, turned on the
lady, and would have se-
verely bitten her had sha
not been taken off. For
two months after, when-
ever the Lady Jane ap-
proached Nanette, she
would fly into a pas-
sion, scolding, trying to
bite, and showing every
sign of hate possible ta
the race of Macacus.
But Bob had only con-
tempt for feminine wrath
and its manifestations.
Whenever Nanette made any demonstration against the lady,.
Bob would seize her and bite her in the neck until she cried for
pain. But all this time she would not look at him, but kept her
wrathful eyes fixed on the lady, willing to suffer anything rather
than have Bob's feelings hurt.

Nanette would often leap into the lap of her keeper, seeking
the caresses she did not always secure from Bob. This she would
do with the manners of a lapdog or a pampered cat. But Bob

ASPIRATIONS.

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 153

never sought caresses. He was always serious, never in the least
playful or sentimental. Any new proposition he always takes
seriously. He expects the worst, and scowls and shows his teeth
until the matter is thoroughly understood, when he usually be-
comes indifferent.

One day the children vexed him overmuch, and breaking his
chain he came out among them. They fled in consternation, all
but the younger one, who was a brave little knight and who
stood his ground, though at the cost of a serious biting.

And thus it came that after two years of freedom Bob has
returned to the curiosity shop in Kearny Street — not the one on
the right as you go up Pine Street, but the other one, where the
red-tailed parrots scold and swear, and among whose oaths you
may hear all the varied languages of the south sea islands.
And there in a little iron cage he remains cramped and unhappy.
All day long he rolls back his sneering lips, shakes the cage by
pulling against the bars, and swings himself to and fro, trying
to overturn the cage and cast it on the floor. And here he waits
till his ransom is paid again. Fifteen dollars, I believe, is the
sum at which it is fixed. Whoever does this will open for him
the door to another series of adventures.

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?

BY PKOF. WARREN UPHAM.

"TTTTTHIN the memory of men now living, and especially dur-
V V ing the last thirty years, the processes of the creation of
the earth and its inhabitants, of the solar system, and of the
starry heavens, have come to be understood in a very different
way from that in which they were thought of by our fathers and
forefathers. Instead of the former belief that divine fiats at suc-
cessive times suddenly spoke into existence the forms of animal
and plant life now occupying the earth, the earlier faunas and
floras found fossil in the rocks, and at still earlier dates the earth
itself, the sun, and the entire astronomic universe, it is now recog-
nized and confidently accepted on all sides that all animals and
plants, the globe which we inhabit, and the sun and stars, have
been created through slow processes of development, which are
well denominated evolution — that is, an unrolling or unfolding.
These changes have been in progress during unnumbered and in-
conceivably long ages ; they are still going forward ; and they will
probably continue as far into the unfathomable future as they
have come to us through the dimly and in part somewhat clearly
discerned past. To us who are borne upon its bosom this current

VOL. XLIV. — 13

154 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seems like the lower Amazon, too broad for us to see its banks,
coming from the high Andes and the lower plains, and going to
its rest in the ocean.

According to the well-approved nebular hypothesis of Kant
and Laplace, the material of our earth and moon became sepa-
rated from the condensing mass of the sun after the outer planets
had been similarly produced, but before the birth of Venus and
Mercury. At early stages in the condensation of the revolving
nebula, it had thrown off successively the portions of matter
which were afterward gathered, by their independent condensa-
tion and revolution, to form Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter,
and Mars ; while another portion, which was probably never united
like the other planets, made the many small asteroids. The mat-
ter which has been changed into our splendidly luminous sun was
at one time very attenuated and occupied the whole space inclosed
by the orbit of the outermost planet, which was developed from
a comparatively very small cloud or ring of this matter, centrif u-
gally detached from the revolving exceedingly tenuous mass. In
like manner the material of each of the planets, including the
earth, was shed from the whirling nebula at times during its
decrease in volume when its circumference was approximately
coincident with their orbits.

Again, in their turn the planetary masses have undergone the
same evolutionary process, taking a rotary motion and throw-
ing off, as they condensed, the material which now circles about
them in the shape of moons and rings. In the case of our own
planet and its single large satellite, probably the far greater part
of the original cloud or ring whence they were produced had
assumed a somewhat globular or discoid form and taken a move-
ment of revolution which still continues as the earth's daily rota-
tion, before the moon's mass was separated from that of the
earth. It seems to me, however, very improbable that the
present contour of our globe should preserve, as suggested by
Fisher, the scars of this loss in the depressions of the deep ocean
basins.

Many relatively small portions of the ring of matter produc-
ing the earth and moon may have become early separated from
the chief condensing mass, and after its division in our globe and
its satellite have been drawn by gravitation into them, marring
the face of the moon, as Gilbert supposes, with its multitudes of
both small and very large crateriform scars. On the earth, too,
if this hypothesis be true, such falling asteroid-like bodies must
also have made similar small and huge blots by their violent im- .
pact; but they evidently were effaced by the slow processes 'of
atmospheric and stream erosion, or in basin areas were deeply
covered by sediments, before the formation of the oldest of our

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 155

fossiliferous strata. The absence of either air or water on the
moon has allowed the steep and jagged mountain rims of the
deeply depressed lunar craters to remain nearly unchanged from
the almost inconceivably remote time, according to this view,
when the asteroid bombardment of the moon was completed.

Geology, or the science of the earth's changes- and develop-
ment, deals with the rocks forming the crust of our globe. From
their stratigraphic sequence and the successive fossil faunas and
floras found in them, the geologist gathers the history of the sedi-
mentation or volcanic eruption of the rocks and the concurrent
changes of animal and plant life. Moreover, by reasoning from
the physical condition and structure of the rock formations, from
volcanic action, earthquakes, and the upheaval of continents and
mountain ranges, he conjectures what may be the condition of
the deep interior of the earth, through its observed influence upon
the crust. Both these phases of the science have yielded estimates
of the age of the earth, the former based on the geologic processes
of erosion and deposition, the latter on the earth's loss of internal
heat, the magnitude and the effects of the oceanic tides, and other
conditions whose investigation belongs more specially to the
physicist and astronomer. Each takes up the question for the
later part of the earth's planetary existence, after it was so far
condensed and cooled that it had already attained approximately
its present size and was enveloped by a crust which, through
many stages of diverse changes, has continued to the present day.

The estimates derived from these two directions of inquiry,
however, differ considerably among themselves, and especially it
is noticeable that in general the physical and astronomical inves-
tigations of the question yield smaller estimates than those drawn
from stratigraphic and paleontologic data. Sir William Thom-
son (now Lord Kelvin) long ago estimated, from his study of the
earth's internal iieat, its increase from the surface downward, and
the rate of its loss by radiation into space, that the time since the
consolidation of the surface of the globe has been somewhere
between twenty million and four hundred million years, and
that most probably this time and all the geologic record must be
limited within one hundred million years. Mr. Clarence King,
from very careful experiments on the volcanic rock diabase, sup-
posed to represent the average constitution of the earth's crust,
when subjected to extremes of heat and pressure, applying his
results in the same way as Lord Kelvin, has within the present
year published his conclusion that the earth's duration measures
only about twenty-four million years. Prof. George H. Darwin
computes, from the influence of tidal friction in retarding the
earth's rotation, that probably only fifty-seven million years have
elapsed since the moon's mass was shed from the revolving molten

156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

earth, long before the formation of its crust. From, the same
arguments and the rate at which the sun is losing its store of
heat, Prof. Guthrie Tait affirms that apparently ten million years
are as much as physical science can allow to the geologist. Prof.
Newcomb writes : " If the sun had, in the beginning, filled all
space, the amount of heat generated by his contraction to his
present volume would have been sufficient to last eighteen million
years at his present rate of radiation. . . . Ten million years . . .
is, therefore, near the extreme limit of time that we can suppose
water to have existed on the earth in the fluid state." Not only
the earth but even the whole solar system, according to Newcomb,
" must have had a beginning within a certain number of years
which we can not yet calculate with certainty, but which can not
much exceed twenty million, and it must end."

The geologist demurs against these latter far too meager allot-
ments of time for the wonderful, diversified, and surely vastly
long history which he has patiently made out in his perusal of
the volume of science disclosed by the rocks. He can apparently
do very well with Lord Kelvin's original estimate, but must
respectfully dissent from the less liberal opinions noted. Some-
where in the assumed premises which yield to mathematicians
these narrow limits of time, there must be conditions which do
not accord with the actual constitution of the sun and earth. It
must be gratefully acknowledged, however, in the camp of the
geologists, that we owe to these researches a beneficial check
against the notion once prevalent that geologic time extends back
practically without limit; and it is most becoming for us care-
fully to inquire how closely the apparently conflicting testimonies
of geology and physics may be brought into harmony by revision
of each.

Among all the means afforded by geology for direct estimates
of the earth's duration, doubtless the most reliable is through
comparing the present measured rate of denudation of continental
areas with the aggregate of the greatest determined thickness
of the strata referable to the successive time divisions. The fac-
tors of this method of estimate, however, are in considerable
part uncertain, or dependent on the varying opinions of different
geologists. According to Sir Archibald Geikie, in his presiden-
tial address a year ago before the British Association, the time
thus required for the formation of all the stratified rocks of the
earth's crust may range from a minimum of seventy-three million
up to a maximum of six hundred and eighty million years. Prof.
Samuel Haughton obtains in this way, " for the whole duration
of geological time a minimum of two hundred million years."
On the other hand, smaller results are reached through the same
method by Dana, who conjectures that the earth's age may be

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 157

about forty- eight million years since the formation of the oldest
f ossilif erous rocks ; and by Alfred Russel Wallace, who concludes
that this time has probably been only about twenty-eight million
years. With these, rather than with the foregoing, we may also
place Mr. T.. Mellard Readers recent estimate of ninety-five million
years, similarly derived. Again, Mr. C. D. Walcott, in his vice-
presidential address before Section E of the American Associa-
tion for the Advancement of Science, in its meeting last August,
gave his opinion, from a study of the sedimentary rocks of the
western Cordilleran area of the United States, that the duration
of time since the Archsean era has been probably some forty-five
million years.

Selecting the lowest of these various estimates as the nearest
in accord with the conclusions of physical and astronomical
science, let us scrutinize the processes of Wallace's measurements
and computations. It has been found that the rates at which
rivers are lowering the altitudes of their basins by the transpor-
tation of sediments to the sea vary from an average of one foot
taken from the land surface of its hydrographic basin by the
river Po in seven hundred and thirty years, to one foot by the
Danube in six thousand eight hundred years. As a mean for all
the rivers of the world, Wallace assumes that the erosion from
all the land surface is one foot in three thousand years. The sedi-
ments are laid down in the sea on an average within thirty miles
from the coast, and all the coast lines of the earth have a total
measured length, according to Dr. James Croll and Mr. Wallace,
of about one hundred thousand miles, so that the deposition is
almost wholly confined to an area of about three million square
miles. This area is one nineteenth as large as the earth's total
land area ; hence it will receive sediment nineteen times as fast as
the land is denuded, or at the rate of about nineteen feet of strati-
fied beds in three thousand years, which would give one foot in
one hundred and fifty-eight years. With this Wallace compares
the total maxima of all the sedimentary rocks of the series of
geologic epochs, measured in whatever part of the earth they are
found to have their greatest development. Prof. Haughton esti-
mates their aggregate to be one hundred and seventy-seven thou-
sand two hundred feet, which, multiplied by one hundred and
fifty-eight, gives approximately twenty-eight million years as the
time required for the deposition of the rock strata in the various
districts where they are thickest and have most fully escaped
erosion and redeposition.

Most readers, following this argument, would infer that it
must give too large rather than too scanty an estimate of geologic
duration; but to many students of the earth's stratigraphy it
seems more probably deficient than excessive. All must confess

158 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that the argument rests upon many indeterminate premises, since
the total extent of the land areas and the depths of the oceans
have probably been increasing through the geologic eras, and the
effects of tides have probably diminished. The imperfection of
the geologic record, so impressively shown by Charles Darwin in
respect to the sequence of plants and animals found fossil in the
rocks, will also be appealed to as opposing the assumption that
the one hundred and seventy-seven thousand two hundred feet,
or thirty-three and a half miles, of strata represent the whole, or
indeed any more than a small fraction, of the earth's history. To
myself, however, this last objection seems unfounded, since in
many extensive and clearly conformable sections observed on a
grand scale in crossing broad areas, there is seen to have been
evidently continuous deposition during several or many successive
geologic epochs ; and by combining such sections from different
regions a record of sedimentation is made well-nigh complete from
tbe earliest Palaeozoic morning of life to its present high noon.
But perhaps we may do better to change somewhat the premises of
our computation, in view of the extensive regions where the rock
strata remain yet to be thoroughly explored, and because of cer-
tain large inland tracts having little rain and therefore no drain-
age into the sea. If we assume that the total maxima of strata
amount to fifty miles, and that the mean rate of the land denuda-
tion is only one foot in six thousand years, we then obtain a
result three times greater than before, or about eighty-four mil-
lion years for the deposition of. the stratified rocks.

Another method of considering this problem is afforded by the
determination of one term in a sequence of ratios, whereby the
sum of the whole becomes known. Though geologists differ
widely in their estimates of the earth's age, up to the seven thou-
sand million years claimed by McGee, in an address last year
before the American Association, they are approximately in
agreement as to the ratios of the several great divisions of geo-
logic time. From the thicknesses of the strata and the changes
in the animal and plant life, it is comparatively easy to determine
the relative lengths of the successive eras, while yet it is very
difficult to decide beyond doubt even the approximate length in
years of any part of the record. The portions for which we have
the best means of determining their lengths are the Glacial and
recent periods, the latter extending from the Champ] ain epoch, or
closing stage of the ice age to the present time, while these two
divisions, the Glacial or Pleistocene period and the recent, make
up the Quaternary era. If we can only ascertain somewhat nearly
what has been the duration of this era, from the oncoming of the
Ice age until now, it will serve as a known quantity to be used as
the multiplier for giving us the approximate or probable meas-

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 159

ures in years for the recedingly earlier and far longer Tertiary,
Mesozoic or Secondary, Palaeozoic or Primary, and Archaean or
Beginning eras, which last takes us back almost or quite to the
time when the cooling molten earth became first enveloped with
a solid crust.

Haughton has estimated time ratios from two series of data.
His results deduced from the maximum thickness of the strata
for the three grand divisions of Archaean, Palaeozoic, and subse-
quent time, expressed in percentages, are 34'3 : 42'5 : 23 '2 ; and
from his computations as to the secular cooling of the earth, 33'0 :
41'0 : 26'0. The ratios reached by Profs. J. D. Dana and Alexan-
der Winchell from the thicknesses of the rock strata are closely
harmonious, the durations of Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic
time being to each other as 12 : 3 : 1. The Tertiary and Quater-
nary ages, the latter extending to the present day, which are here
united as the Cenozoic era, Dana would rank approximately in
the ratio of 3 : 1, giving to the Quaternary a sixty-fourth part of
all time since the beginning of the Cambrian period, to which our
earliest well-preserved fossil faunas belong. For reasons to be
stated later, I think that this estimate of the relative length of
Quaternary time is greatly exaggerated ; but this would not sen-
sibly affect the general ratios.

Prof. W. M. Davis, of Harvard University, without speaking
definitely of the lapse of time by years, has endeavored to give
some conception of what these and like estimates of geologic
ratios really mean, through a translation of them into terms of a
linear scale. Starting with the representation of the postglacial
or recent period, since the North American ice-sheet was melted
away, as two inches, he estimates that the beginning of the Ter-
tiary erosion of the Hudson River gorge through the Highlands
would be expressed by a distance of ten feet ; that the Triassic
reptilian tracks in the sandstone of the Connecticut Valley would
be probably fifty feet distant ; that the formation of the coal
beds of Pennsylvania would be eighty or one hundred feet back
from the present time ; and that the Middle Cambrian trilobites
of Braintree, Mass., would be two hundred, three hundred, or four
hundred feet from us.

Having such somewhat definite and agreeing ratios, derived
from various data by different investigators, can we secure the
factor by which they should be multiplied to yield the approxi-
mate duration of geologic epochs, periods, and eras, in years? If
on the scale used by Prof. Davis we could substitute a certain
time for the period since the departure of the ice-sheet, we should
thereby at once determine, albeit with some vagueness and ac-
knowledged latitude for probable error, how much time has passed
since the Triassic tracks were made, the coal deposited, and the

160 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

trilobites entombed in the Cambrian slates. Now, just this latest
and present division of the geologic record, following the Ice age,
is the only one for which geologists find sufficient data to permit
direct measurements or estimates of its duration. " The glacial
invasion from which New England and other northern countries
have lately escaped," remarks Davis, " was prehistoric, and yet it
should not be regarded as ancient."

In various localities we are able to measure the present rate
of erosion of gorges below waterfalls, and the length of the post-
glacial gorge divided by the rate of recession of the falls gives
approximately the time since the Ice age. Such measurements of
the gorge and Falls of St. Anthony by Prof. N. H. Winchell show
the length of the postglacial or recent period to have been about
eight thousand years ; and from the surveys of Niagara Falls Mr.
G. K. Gilbert believes it to have been seven thousand years, more
or less. From the rates of wave-cutting along the sides of Lake
Michigan and the consequent accumulation of sand around the
south end of the lake, Dr. E. Andrews estimates that the land
there became uncovered from its ice-sheet not more than sev-
enty-five hundred years ago. Prof. G. Frederick Wright obtains
a similar result from the rate of filling of kettle-holes among
the gravel knolls and ridges called kames and eskers, and like-
wise from the erosion of valleys by streams tributary to Lake
Erie ; and Prof. Benjamin K. Emerson, from the rate of deposition
of modified drift in the Connecticut Valley at Northampton, Mass.,
thinks that the time since the Glacial period can not exceed ten
thousand years. An equally small estimate is also indicated by
the studies of Gilbert and Russell for the time since the last great
rise of the Quaternary lakes Bonneville and Lahontan, lying in
Utah and Nevada, within the arid Great Basin of interior drain-
age, which are believed to have been contemporaneous with the
great extension of ice-sheets upon the northern part of our con-
tinent.

Prof. James Geikie maintains that the use of palaeolithic im-
plements had ceased, and that early man in Europe made neolithic
(polished) implements, before the recession of the ice-sheet from
Scotland, Denmark, and the Scandinavian peninsula ; and Prest-
wich suggests that the dawn of civilization in Egypt, China, and
India may have been coeval with the glaciation of northwestern
Europe. In Wales and Yorkshire the amount of denudation of
limestone rocks on which bowlders lie has been regarded by Mr.
D. Mackintosh as proof that a period of not more than six thou-
sand years has elapsed since the bowlders were left in their posi-
tions. The vertical extent of this denudation, averaging about
six inches, is nearly the same with that observed in the southwest
part of the province of Quebec by Sir William Logan and Dr.

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 161

Robert Bell, where veins of quartz marked with glacial strise
stand out to various heights not exceeding one foot above the
weathered surface of the inclosing limestone.

From this wide range of concurrent but independent testimo-
nies we may accept it as practically demonstrated that the ice-
sheets disappeared from North America and Europe some six to
ten thousand years ago. But having thus found the value of one
term in our ratios of geologic time divisions, we may know them
all approximately by its substitution. The two inches assumed
to represent the postglacial portion of the Quaternary era may be
called eight thousand years ; then, according to the proportional
estimates by Davis, the Triassic period was probably two million
four hundred thousand years ago ; the time since the Carbonifer-
ous period, in the closing part of the Palaeozoic era, has been about
four or five million years; and since the middle of the Cam-
brian period, twice or perhaps four times as long. Continuing
this series still further back, the earliest Cambrian fossils may be
twenty or twenty-five million years old, and the beginning of
life on our earth was not improbably twice as long ago.

Seeking to substitute our measure of postglacial time in
Dana's ratios, we are met by the difficulty of ascertaining first its
proportion to the preceding Glacial period, and then the ratio
which these two together bear to the Tertiary era. It would fill
a very large volume to rehearse all the diverse opinions current
among glacialists concerning the history of the Ice age, its won-
derful climatic vicissitudes, and the upward and downward move-
ments of the lands which are covered with the glacial drift.
Many eminent glacialists, as James Geikie, Wahnschaffe, Penck,
De Geer, Chamberlin, Salisbury, Shaler, McGee, and others, be-
lieve that the Ice age was complex, having two, three, or more
epochs of glaciation, divided by long interglacial epochs of mild
and temperate climate when the ice-sheets were entirely or mainly
melted away. Prof. Geikie claims five distinct glacial epochs, as
indicated by fossiliferous beds lying between deposits of till or
unstratified glacial drift, and by other evidences of great climatic
changes. In this country Mr. McGee recognizes at least three
glacial epochs. The astronomic theory of Croll attributes the
accumulation of ice-sheets to recurrent cycles which bring the
winters of each polar hemisphere of the earth alternately into
aphelion and perihelion each twenty-one thousand years during
the periods of maximum eccentricity of the earth's orbit. Its last
period of this kind was from about two hundred and forty thou-
sand to eighty thousand years ago, allowing room for seven or
eight such cycles and alternations of glacial and interglacial con-
ditions. The supposed evidence of interglacial epochs therefore
gave to this theory a wide credence ; but the recent determina-

FOL. XLIV. 14

162 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions of the geologic brevity of the time since the ice-sheets dis-
appeared from North America and Europe make it clear, in the
opinions even of some of the geologists who believe in a duality
or plurality of Quaternary Glacial epochs, that not astronomic
but geographic causes produced the Ice age.

Glacialists who reject Croll's ingenious and brilliant theory
mostly appeal to great preglacial altitude of the land as the chief
cause of the ice accumulation, citing as proof of such altitude the
fiords and submarine valleys which on the shores of Scandinavia,
and the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific coasts of North America,
descend from one thousand to three thousand and even four thou-
sand feet below the sea level, testifying of former uplifts of these
continental areas so much above their present heights. But
beneath the enormous weights of their ice-sheets these lands sank,
so that when the ice attained its maximum area and thickness
and during its departure the areas on which it lay were depressed
somewhat lower than now and have since been re-elevated. This
view to account for the observed records of the Glacial period is
held by Dana, Le Conte, Wright, Jamieson, and others, including
the present writer. It is believed to be consistent either with the
doctrine of two or more glacial epochs during the Quaternary
era, or with the reference of all the glacial drift to a single glacial
epoch, which is thought by Wright, Prestwich, Lamplugh, Fal-
san, Hoist, Nikitin, and others to be more probable. To myself,
though formerly accepting two glacial epochs with a long warm
interval between them, the essential continuity of the Ice age
seems now the better provisional hypothesis, to be held with can-
dor for weighing evidence on either side.

The duration of the Ice age, if there was only one epoch of
glaciation, with moderate temporary retreats and readvances of
the ice border sufficient to allow stratified beds with the remains
of animals and plants to be intercalated between accumulations
of till, may only have comprised a few tens of thousands of years.
On this point Prof. Prestwich has well written as follows : " For
the reasons before given, I think it possible that the Glacial epoch
— that is to say, the epoch of extreme cold — may not have lasted
longer than from fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand years,
and I would for the same reasons limit the time of ... the melt-
ing away of the ice-sheet to from eight thousand to ten thousand
years or less."

From these and foregoing estimates, which seem to me accept-
able, we have the probable length of Glacial and postglacial time
together thirty thousand or forty thousand years, more or less ; but
an equal or considerably longer preceding time, while the areas
that became covered by ice were being uplifted to great altitudes,
may perhaps with good reason be also included in the Quaternary

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH? 163

era, which then would comprise some one hundred thousand years.
Comparing the Tertiary era with the Quaternary, however, I can
not agree with Prof. Dana's estimate that the latter was a third
as long as the former, and am quite at a loss to discern evidences
justifying that view. The best means for learning their ratio I
think to be found in the changes of faunas and floras since the
beginning of the Tertiary era, using especially the marine mol-
luscan faunas as most valuable for this comparison. Scarcely
any species of marine mollusks have become extinct or undergone
important changes during the Glacial and recent periods; but
since the Eocene dawn of the Tertiary nearly all of these species
have come into existence. Judged upon this basis, the Tertiary
era seems probably fifty or a hundred times longer than the Ice
age and subsequent time ; in other words, it may well have lasted
two million or even four million years. Taking the mean of these
numbers, or three million years, for Cenozoic time, or the Quater-
nary and Tertiary ages together, we have precisely the value of
Prof. Dana's ratios which he himself assumes for conjectural
illustration, namely, forty-eight million years since the Cambrian
period began. But the diversified types of animal life in the
earliest Cambrian faunas surely imply a long antecedent time for
their development, on the assumption that the Creator worked be-
fore then as during the subsequent ages in the evolution of all
living creatures. According to these ratios, therefore, the time
needed for the deposition of the earth's stratified rocks and the
unfolding of its plant and animal life must be about a hundred
million years.

Reviewing the several results independently reached through
the geologic estimates and ratios supplied by Wallace, Dana, and
Davis, we are much impressed and convinced of their approximate
truth by their somewhat good agreement among themselves,
which seems as close as the nature of the problem would lead us
to expect, and by their all coming within the limit of one hundred
million years which Sir William Thomson estimated on physical
grounds. This limit of probable geologic duration seems there-
fore fully worthy to take the place of the once almost unlimited
assumptions of geologists and writers on the evolution of life, that
the time at their disposal has been practically infinite. No other
more important conclusion in the natural sciences, directly and
indirectly modifying our conceptions in a thousand ways, has
been reached during this century.

164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

MODERN WAR VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES

NAVY.

BY W. A. DOBSON, M. S. N. A.
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES C. DODGE.

AT the close of the civil war the United States possessed a
navy consisting in the main of monitors, double and single
turreted, and a large fleet of wooden vessels of various types and
classes ; they were armed principally with smooth-bore guns and
Parrott rifles, all of which were muzzle-loading ; but the four years
of strife which developed the monitor, the fifteen-inch gun with
its mammoth powder, and the destructive capabilities of the
torpedo were destined to overthrow Old World ideas of battle-
ship requirements, to turn the thoughts of naval men abroad in
entirely new and novel directions, and to inaugurate a new sys-
tem of design and construction. Among the forms of naval
architecture developed by the exigencies of the war the most
notable is the monitor type, and therein contained was the germ
from which was to spring a new development of war vessels, for,
although the nation was so worn with the long struggle that it
was glad to turn the energies that had been devoted to the enter-
prises of war to the pursuits of peace, and found itself too
heavily burdened with debt to embody its naval experience in a
new navy, the lessons given in naval construction and war-
fare were eagerly seized upon by European naval architects,
and from the monitor of Ericsson, combined with Timby's re-
volving fort and its successors, was evolved the battle-ship of
to-day. The United States having thus laid down the broad lines
along which was to be developed the present fighting machine,
with its steel built-up rifled guns, the slow-burning smokeless
powder, the automobile and dirigible torpedoes, contented itself
for the next decade and a half with building a few vessels of
iron, building and repairing its wooden vessels, and converting
the smooth-bore guns into makeshift rifles. Abroad, the navies
of France and England adopted the monitor idea of protection to
hull and machinery by means of vertical side armor, extending
from a few feet below to a few feet above the load line, sur-
mounted by a flat armored deck, with the guns placed in re-
volving forts or turrets, protected by walls of heavy armor ; and
in order to increase the habitability and sea-going qualities,
light upper or false works were erected upon the armor deck,
in which were placed the quarters and secondary armament.
In order to obtain a hull structure sufficiently light and strong
to allow a considerable amount of displacement to be devoted

i66

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to purposes of protection, a style of construction now universally
adopted and known as cellular was developed by Sir E. J. Reed,
then chief constructor of the British Navy, in which the maxi-
mum of strength with the minimum of weight was sought after
and very fairly obtained. Then began, what has continued to
this day, the race between armor and armament; the makers
of armor striving to make plates that would effectually resist
the largest guns, and the gun-makers using every means at
their command to produce guns capable of breaking up or pene-
trating the heaviest armor. The outcome is, on the side of
armor, the solid steel plate with a face case-hardened by the

Harvey process — a face so hard
that no drill will in the slightest
degree affect it, and this extreme
hardness gradually shaded off to
a soft back to prevent through
cracks. On the other hand is the
steel built-up breech-loading gun,
with a length of from thirty-five
to forty-five times its diameter of
bore, using slow-burning powder,
having low initial pressures and
giving a muzzle velocity from two
thousand to twenty-five hundred
feet per second, and special steel
armor-piercing projectiles for the
purpose of racking or breaking up
the armor and then piercing the
hull. This competition has indi-
rectly opened up a new material
of some twenty per centum great-
er strength when compared with
wrought iron, known as mild steel,
FIG. 2.— IOWA. Section through Armor, which naval architects are em-
ploying to enable them to produce

lighter structures, and to use the weight saved in giving greater
thickness to the armor, increased armament, or added power and
speed, as the necessities of the design contemplated may demand.
Shortly after the introduction of this material, or in 1882, the
Congress of the United States appropriated for the construction
of three cruisers and one dispatch boat, which are now familiar to
us all under the names of the Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and
Dolphin ; fortunately for our Government, its corps of naval con-
structors and engineers had by repeated visits to the ship-yards
and gun factories abroad, and a close study of the principles in-
volved in the new methods of construction, kept themselves fully

MODERN WAR VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES. 167

CDCD.

abreast of the progress being made in shipbuilding, marine engi-
neering, and naval artillery, and were thus enabled when the
opportunity was given by Congress to promptly take up the
work of rehabilitating the navy, and carry it forward success-
fully. Congress in its appropriation had stipulated that the
new vessels were to be constructed of steel ; this meant a consid-
erable outlay in
capital to the metal
producers of the
country, who, with
the exception of
some firms making
a specialty of tool
steel, had been en-
gaged mainly in
the manufacture
of wrought iron.
However, having
full confidence in
the determination
of Congress to give
the country a new
navy, they did not
hesitate to at once
install plants capa-
ble of manufactur-
ing steel suitable
for shipbuilding
and boiler con-
struction, of steel
of a higher grade
for the construc-
tion of high-pow-
ered built-up guns,
and of producing
steel for armor
plates weighing
from thirty to forty
tons each. It is
worthy of note that
these industries, built up within a decade under the stimulus
given by the rebuilding of the navy, to-day challenge the world
to produce better material. So rapid has been the progress of our
manufacturers, and so fully have all demands upon them been
met, that one of our shipbuilding firms is now constructing two
mammoth steamers for the Inman International Line, whose ves-

Fio. 3. — IOWA. Midship Section.
C, C, C, coal ; P, P, P, passages.

i68

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sels have, since its organization, been constructed on the other
side of the Atlantic.

The types of war vessels considered by naval authorities to be
best suited to the needs of our service may be classed in general
terms as battle-ships, armored cruisers, protected cruisers, har-
bor-defense monitors, gunboats, torpedo-boats (surface and sub-
marine), and rams. The uses and functions of each type differ
greatly ; some of the more prominent may be broadly stated here.
Taking first the battle-ships, we find them to be, of all the types
of war vessels, the most powerful in the feature of offense and de-
fense ; they are intended to stand and fight, to give and take blows
like giants in a prize ring ; and the reason can be plainly seen when

we appreciate the fact that an
enemy can bring his battle-ship
within twelve miles of our large
seaboard cities, and there tak-
ing up a position of vantage,
secure from any attack by land,
shell the city ; the only vessel,
then, that can dispute posses-
sion with him point by point is
a ship of similar powers of do-
ing battle, however successful
an attack by torpedo-boat, either
surface or submarine, may be
when the conditions are suita-
ble. The points, therefore, to
be emphasized in the design are
protection and armament, or the
power to deliver heavy blows
with the ability to withstand
those of its antagonist; with
these must be combined power
to enable it to act on the offen-
sive, such as speed, endurance,
habitability, and form of hull that will insure seaworthiness.

As a purely harbor-defense vessel the monitor stands pre-emi-
nent, the entire hull and battery being protected by armor, and
at the same time offering such a small target that it is extremely
difficult to hit ; but its military value is very seriously impaired
when in a seaway, by the short distance of the guns above the
water, it being impossible to use them in a heavy sea. Perhaps the
vessels most useful for all-around work are the armored cruisers,
as they are intended to have great speed, great endurance, guns
capable of coping with vessels inferior only to battle-ships, with a
very considerable amount of protection afforded to the hull and

FIG. 4. — IOWA.

Section through Coffer Dams, etc.

170

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

armament ; their function in war is to capture the commerce-de-
stroyers of the enemy, to act as commerce-destroyers themselves,
and to convoy and protect fleets of large and fast merchant ves-
sels. To accomplish these purposes great speed is necessary, either
to overtake or convoy swift merchantmen ; great endurance or coal
supply, to enable them to keep the sea for long periods on the

path usually frequented
by merchant vessels ; and
offensive and defensive
power sufficient to enable
them to successfully re-
sist the attacks of vessels
of their own class.

The type next in im-
portance and general use-
fulness is styled the pro-
tected cruiser, or those
whose only protection
against injury consists of
sloping armor decks of
varying thickness, in
combination with coffer
dams filled with water-
excluding material and
closely divided compart-
ments in the region of the
line of flotation. The
characteristics of this
type are not capable of
being so clearly defined
as those already consid-
ered, as they include such
widely differing vessels
as the triple-screw Co-
lumbia of 7,350 tons dis-
placement, the Olympia
of 5,500 tons, down to

FIG. 6. — BROOKLYN. Midship Section.

A, air duct; CE, cellulose; C, 0, C, coal;

P, P, P, passages.

cruisers of 2,000 and 3,000
tons displacement as rep-
resented by the Cincinnati and Detroit. Their function is a
varied though exceedingly useful one ; some are designed particu-
larly for preying upon the commerce of an enemy so as to cripple
its resources, the most notable examples being the Columbia of
our own and the Blake of the British Navy.

Speed and endurance are the features emphasized, combined
with guns of light caliber for dealing with unarmed vessels ;

MODERN WAR VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES. 173

others again, like the Chicago, Newark, Baltimore, and San Fran-
cisco, are designed for purposes of general utility, such as protect-
ing our mercantile interests abroad, the one feature emphasized
being endurance, with those of speed, protection, and armament
very fairly developed. Our gunboats of the Yorktown and Machias
types are miniature cruisers, except that speed has been sacrificed
to enable them to carry heavy batteries ; at present they are con-
structed entirely of steel, although many fruitless efforts have
been made to adopt in this class the style of construction known
as composite — that is, all the parts of steel as is customary, except
the outer covering of the hull, which is formed of wood planking
coppered instead of steel plating. This system has been most
earnestly and ably advocated by Chief Naval Constructor Philip
Hichborn, and has formed the subject of special reports by him
to the Navy Department, but the wording of the congressional
appropriations has been such as to preclude its adoption.

The advantages to be gained are cheapness and ease of main-
tenance, freedom from fouling and consequent ease of propulsion,
with the ability to keep the sea for long periods without being
docked. All vessels of war are in a certain sense compromises
between speed, endurance, protection, and armament ; no one fea-
ture can be largely developed without corresponding sacrifices in
the development of the others : for example, if great speed is re-
quired, it entails machinery of great power and weight with a
large supply of coal ; the weights, therefore, of the other main
features must necessarily be reduced in order to emphasize that of
speed ; therefore, when Congress has appropriated for a certain
type of vessel and fixed the limit of cost, a very careful study of
all existing vessels of the desired type is made by the designing
staff of the construction department, the particular requirements
of the service are considered, the features to be emphasized deter-
mined, and the results embodied in a carefully prepared design.
It is a very usual custom, and perhaps a natural one, for the
press, when the design is made public, to compare it with some
similar vessel of a foreign navy whose conditions of service are
very dissimilar, sometimes to the seeming disadvantage of the
proposed vessel, especially when such criticism may have been
suggested by private builders who desire greater latitude in
certain directions, and the general public may receive the im-
pression that the best has not been attained ; but to those who
know the care and study given to the preparation of the design
in view of the service required, and are able to comprehend
fully its military value, the conclusion is very different. Tak-
ing, then, our battle-ships, we find the highest representative in
the Iowa (Fig. 1), now building at the Messrs. Cramp's, which
has a displacement of 11,250 tons, and carries a battery of four

174 TBE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

12-inch, eight 8-inch, and ten 4-inch breech-loading guns, be-
sides twenty machine guns and six tubes for discharging 18-inch
automobile torpedoes. It is one thing for a vessel to carry a large
battery capable of firing a tremendous weight of metal when all
the manipulating apparatus is in perfect order, but quite another
in these days of high explosives to have that battery and appa-
ratus securely protected from the guns of its antagonist, therefore
the 12-inch forty-four-ton guns of the Iowa are mounted in pairs
in turrets having walls of solid steel fifteen inches thick, and
protected from the water-line up by steel of the same thickness,
which effectually protects the loading, turning, and controlling
mechanisms. In order that these guns may be fought in heavy
weather the forward turret is placed on a forecastle deck with
the axis of the guns some twenty-five feet above the load line,
and has a train of three hundred degrees, or only sixty less than
a complete circle ; the after 12-inch guns are mounted in the same
manner, but on a deck seven feet nearer the load line. Both for-
ward and after turrets are placed in the mid line of the vessel, in
order to have a great train and be as free as possible from the
motion due to rolling ; the turrets are revolved by steam power
at the rate of one revolution per minute. Some idea of the
power of these guns may be obtained from the following data :
The weight of one powder charge is four hundred and twenty-
five pounds ; that of the projectile, eight hundred and fifty
pounds ; its muzzle velocity, 2,100 feet, or four tenths of a mile
per second ; the muzzle energy, 25,985 foot tons, or capable of
raising that amount one foot in a minute, with a penetration in
wrought iron of 27'6 inches. The 8-inch guns are also mounted
in turrets, having great range, and are protected by armor vary-
ing from ten inches to seven inches and a half in thickness ; the
ten 4-inch guns, each discharging projectiles of thirty-six pounds
weight at the rate of ten rounds per minute, are protected by
fixed segmental shields four inches thick.

While so much has been done to develop the battery and its
protection, the features of defense, stability, speed, and endurance
have received most careful attention ; the magazines, boilers, en-
gines, steering mechanism, etc., are all inclosed in a belt of steel,
covering about sixty-five per cent of the load-line area, of a maxi-
mum thickness of fourteen inches, and extending fr in three feet
above to five feet below the load line : at the upper edge of this
is worked from side to side of the vessel a horizontal deck
three inches thick (see Figs. 2 and 3) ; above this, to protect the
stability, a steel belt four inches in thickness is worked to the
main deck, and at the unarmored ends double coffer dams six feet
wide, the outer one filled with obturating and the inner one with
water-excluding material, are provided as shown in Fig. 4.

TJ

"

J

MODERN WAR VESSELS OF THE UNITED STATES. 177

Great care has been given the water-tight subdivision, both
above and below the armor belt, in order to prevent a catas-
trophe such as that which befell the Victoria ; especially above
the armor belt, where the subdivision of that unfortunate vessel
was very weak, has the Iowa received most careful attention.
The machinery is capable of developing 11,000 horse power, and
will propel the vessel at a speed of seventeen knots per hour ; the
engines are of the triple-expansion type, being inverted, direct
acting, and surface-condeilsing, driving twin screws. The coal
supply is sufficient when steaming at ten knots to admit of cross-
ing the Atlantic and back without recoaling. The United States
steamship New York (Fig. 5), which lately created so much
enthusiasm on account of her remarkable development of speed,
is of the armored-cruiser type; but the Brooklyn, now being
built under contract, is a very distinct advance upon the general
design of the New York, and will here be taken as the exponent
of her type. We find her to be provided with sufficient power to
drive her at the rate of twenty-one knots or twenty-four miles
per hour, and to have a coal supply of 1,800 tons, which will give
her a very large radius of action. The main battery carried is
eight 8-inch and twelve 5-inch breech-loading rifles ; the 8-inch
guns are mounted in pairs in turrets, protected by steel armor
seven and a half and five inches in thickness; the 5-inch guns
and the battery of machine guns, eighteen in number, are pro-
tected by steel armor varying in thickness from four to two
inches. The protection to the hull, machinery, and magazines is
afforded by a steel deck of a maximum thickness of six inches,
being five feet below the load line at its outboard edges, and
sloping upward and inward to the height of the load line on the
flat portions, as shown in Fig. 6.

Beneath this deck are placed engines, boilers, magazines, steer-
ing gear, and electrical generating plant, in fact all such parts as
would be injured by and disable the vessel if exposed to the
enemy's fire. To protect the stability an armored belt four inches
in thickness is worked from the sloping armor to four feet above
the load line for the space occupied by the engines and boilers,
the object being to provide resistance sufficient to cause high-
explosive shells to explode before entering the sides of the vessel.
Inside of this and extending the whole length of the vessel is a
coffer dam of obturating material, as shown in the outline mid-
ship section, Fig. 6, and the spaces both above and below the
armor deck are closely subdivided by longitudinal and athwart-
ship bulkheads into many compartments in which coal and stores
are stowed, thus as far as possible, with the means now at the
command of the naval architect, precluding the sinking of the
vessel when injured.

VOL. XLIV. — 15

178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A class of vessels of much interest, on account of their great
destructive capabilities when the conditions are suitable, is the
torpedo vessel, of which the Ericsson (Fig. 7), now building, is a
representative; they are lightly constructed and provided with
powerful machinery to enable them to attain great speed, reach-
ing as high as twenty-eight to thirty-five miles per hour. They
are armed principally with torpedo-launching tubes from which
are ejected, by compressed air, automobile torpedoes, capable of
traveling at a rate of speed of twenty knots per hour at a pre-
determined depth. The boat or launching tube is trained directly
upon the target, and the torpedoes are expelled in a direct line
toward it, certain automatic rudders being acted upon by hydro-
static pressure to enable them to keep their course. The head is
fitted with a torpedo net-cutting device to enable the torpedo to
pass through the net protecting the ship's side and to explode
against the side by impact. The most noteworthy achievement
by this class of vessels was the blowing up and sinking of the
Blanco Encalada by the Almirante Lynch during the late Chilian
struggle.

In closing this article it seems eminently proper to acknowl-
edge the distinguished services and untiring zeal of ex-Chief
Constructor Theodore D. Wilson, who for eleven years, or during
the period of rehabilitation, has most ably shaped the general
design and construction of the hulls of our war vessels.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS.

BY PROF. THOMAS H. HUXLEY, F. E. S.
[Concluded. ]

T ET us now set our faces westward, toward Asia Minor and
J-J Greece and Italy, to view the rise and progress of another
philosophy, apparently independent, but no less pervaded by the
conception of evolution.*

* In ancient times it was the fashion, even among the Greeks themselves, to derive all
Greek wisdom from Eastern sources ; not long ago it was as generally denied that Greek
philosophy had any connection with Oriental speculation ; it seems probable, however, that
the truth lies between these extremes.

The Ionian intellectual movement does not stand alone. It is only one of several spo-
radic indications of the working of some powerful mental ferment over the whole of the area
comprised between the JSgean and northern Hindustan during the eighth, seventh, and
sixth centuries before our era. In these three hundred years prophetism attained its apogee
among the Semites of Palestine ; Zoroasterism grew and became the creed of a conquering
race, the Iranic Aryans ; Buddhism rose and spread with marvelous rapidity among the
Aryans of Hindustan ; while scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 179

The sages of Miletus were pronounced evolutionists; and,
however dark may be some of the sayings of Heracleitus of
Ephesus, who was probably a contemporary of Gautama, no

It would be difficult to find another three centuries which have given birth to four events
of equal importance. All the principal existing religions of mankind have grown out of
the first three, while the fourth is the little spring, now swollen into the great stream of
positive science. So far as physical possibilities go, the prophet Jeremiah and the oldest
Ionian philosopher might have met and conversed. If they had done so they would prob-
ably have disagreed a good deal; and it is interesting to reflect that their discussions
might have embraced questions which at the present day are still hotly controverted.

The old Ionian philosophy, then, seems to be only one of many results of a stirring of
the moral and intellectual life of the Aryan and the Semitic populations of western Asia.
The conditions of this general awakening were doubtless manifold : but there is one which
modern research has brought into great prominence. This is the existence of extremely
ancient and highly advanced societies in the valleys of the Euphrates and of the Nile.

It is now known that more than a thousand — perhaps more than two thousand — years
before the sixth century B. c., civilization had attained a relatively high pitch among the
Babylonians and the Egyptians. Not only had painting, sculpture, architecture, and the
industrial arts, reached a remarkable development, but in Chaldea, at any rate, a vast
amount of knowledge had been accumulated and methodized hi the departments of gram-
mar, mathematics, astronomy, and natural history. Where such tracks of the scientific
spirit are visible naturalistic speculation is rarely far off, though, so far as I know, no re-
mains of an Accadian or Egyptian philosophy, properly so called, have yet been recovered.

Geographically, Chaldea occupied a central position among the oldest seats of civiliza-
tion. Commerce, largely aided by the intervention of those colossal peddlers, the Phoeni-
cians, had brought Chaldea into connection with all of them for a thousand years before
the epoch at present under consideration. And in the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries
the Assyrian, the depository of Chaldean civilization, as the Macedonian and the Roman, at
a later date, were the depositories of Greek culture, had added irresistible force to the other
agencies for the wide distribution of Chaldean literature, art, and science.

I confess that I find it difficult to imagine that the Greek immigrants — who stood in
somewhat the same relation to the Babylonians and the Egyptians as the later Germanic
barbarians to the Romans of the Empire — should not have been immensely influenced by
the new life with which they became acquainted. But there is abundant direct evidence of
the magnitude of this influence in certain spheres. I suppose it is not doubted that the
Greek went to school with the Oriental for his primary instruction in reading, writing, and
arithmetic, and that Semitic theology supplied him with some of his mythological lore.
Nor does there now seem to be any question about the large indebtedness of Greek art to
that of Chaldea and that of Egypt.

But the manner of that indebtedness is very instructive. The obligation is clear, but its
limits are no less definite. Nothing better exemplifies the indomitable originality of the
Greeks than the relations of their art to that of the Orientals. Far from being subdued
into mere imitators by the technical excellence of their teachers, they lost no time in better-
ing the instruction they received, using their models as mere stepping stones on the way to
those unsurpassed and unsurpassable achievements which are all their own. The shibboleth
of Art is the human figure. The ancient Chaldeans and Egyptians, like the modern Japan-
ese, did wonders in the representation of birds and quadrupeds ; they even attained to some-
thing more than respectability in human portraiture. But their utmost efforts never brought
them within range of the best Greek embodiments of the grace of womanhood, or of the
severer beauty of manhood.

It is worth while to consider the probable effect upon the acute and critical Greek mind
of the conflict of ideas, social, political, and theological, which arose out of the conditions

i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

better expressions of the essence of the modern doctrine of evo-
lution can be found than are presented by some of his pithy
aphorisms and striking metaphors.* Indeed, many of my present

of life in the Asiatic colonies. The Ionian polities had passed through the whole gamut of
social and political changes, from patriarchal and occasionally oppressive kingship to rowdy
and still more burdensome mobship — no doubt with infinitely eloquent and copious argu-
mentation on both sides at every stage of their progress toward that arbitrament of force
which settles most political questions. The marvelous speculative faculty, latent in the
Ionian, had come in contact with Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician theologies and cos-
mogonies ; with the illuminati of Orphism and the fanatics and dreamers of the Mysteries ;
possibly with Buddhism and Zoroasterism ; possibly even with Judaism. And it has been
observed that the mutual contradictions of antagonistic supernaturalisms are apt to play a
large part among the generative agencies of naturalism.

Thus, various external influences may have contributed to the rise of philosophy among
the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century. But the assimilative capacity of the Greek mind —
its power of Hellenizing whatever it touched — has here worked so effectually that, so far as
I can learn, no indubitable traces of such extraneous contributions are now allowed .to exist
by the most authoritative historians of philosophy. Nevertheless, I think it must be ad-
mitted that the coincidences between the Heracleito-stoical doctrines and those of the older
Hindu philosophy are extremely remarkable. In both the cosmos pursues an eternal suc-
cession of cyclical changes. The great year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire cycle
from the origin of the universe as a fluid to its dissolution in fire — " Humor initium, ignis
exitus mundi," as Seneca has it. In both systems there is immanent in the cosmos a source
of energy, Brahma, or the Logos, which works according to fixed laws. The individual
soul is an efflux of this world-spirit, and returns to it. Perfection is attainable only by in-
dividual effort through ascetic discipline, and is rather a state of painlessness than of hap-
piness, if indeed it can be said to be a state of anything save the negation of perturbing
emotion. The hatchment motto " In Ccelo Quies " would serve both Hindu and Stoic, and
absolute quiet is not easily distinguishable from annihilation.

Zoroasterism, which geographically occupies a position intermediate between Hellenism
and Hinduism, agrees with the latter in recognizing the essential evil of the cosmos, but
differs from both in its intensely anthropomorphic personification of the two antagonistic
principles, to the one of which it ascribes all the good, and to the other all the evil. In
fact, it assumes the existence of two worlds, one good and one bad ; the latter created by
the evil power for the purpose of damaging the former. The existing cosmos is a mere
mixture of the two, and the " last judgment " is a root and branch extirpation of the work
of Ahriman.

* There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of ancient lore are more easily
entangled than that which is spread by the similarity of the language of antiquity to mod-
ern modes of expression. I do not presume to interpret the obscurest of Greek philoso-
phers ; all I wish is to point out that his words, in the sense accepted by competent inter-
preters, fit modern ideas singularly well.

So far as the general theory of evolution goes, there is no difficulty. The aphorism
about the river ; the figure of the child playing on the shore ; the kingship and fatherhood
of strife, seem decisive. The 6Sbs &vu K&TW fj.ii] expresses with singular aptness the cyclical
aspect of the one process of organic evolution in individual plants and animals ; yet it may
be a question whether the Heracleitean strife included any distinct conception of the strug-
gle for existence. Again, it is tempting to compare the part played by the Heracleitean
" fire " with that ascribed by the moderns to heat, or rather to that cause of motion of
which heat is one expression ; and a little ingenuity might find a foreshadowing of the doc-
trine of the conservation of energy in the saying that all the things are changed into fire
and fire into all things, as gold into goods and goods into gold.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 181

auditors must have observed that more than once I have bor-
rowed from him in the brief exposition of the theory of evolution
with which this discourse commenced.

But when the focus of Greek intellectual activity shifted to
Athens, the leading minds concentrated their attention upon eth-
ical problems. For saking the study of themacrocosm for that of
the microcosm, they lost the key to the thought of the great
Ephesian, which I imagine is more intelligible to us than it was
to Socrates or to Plato. Socrates more especially set the fashion
of a kind of inverse agnosticism, by teaching that the problems
of physics lie beyond the reach of the human intellect ; that the
attempt to solve them is essentially vain ; that the one worthy
object of investigation is the problem of ethical life ; and his ex-
ample was followed by the Cynics and the later Stoics. Even the
comprehensive knowledge and the penetrating intellect of Aris-
totle failed to suggest to him that in holding the eternity of the
world within its present range of mutation, he was making a
retrogressive step. The scientific heritage of Heracleitus passed
into the hands neither of Plato nor of Aristotle, but into those of
Democritus. But the world was not yet ready to receive the
great conceptions of the philosopher of Abdera. It was reserved
for the Stoics to return to the track marked out by the earlier
philosophers, and, professing themselves disciples of Heracleitus,
to develop the idea of evolution systematically. In doing this,
they not only omitted some characteristic features of their mas-
ter's teaching, but they made additions altogether foreign to it.
One of the most influential of these importations was the trans-
cendental theism which had come into vogue. The restless, fiery
energy, operating according to law, out of which all things emerge
and into which they return, in the endless successive cycles of the
great year ; which creates and destroys worlds as a wanton child
builds up and, anon, levels sand castles on the seashore, was meta-
morphosed into a material world-soul, and decked out with all
the attributes of ideal Divinity ; not merely with infinite power
and transcendent wisdom, but with absolute goodness.

The consequences of this step were momentous; for, if the
cosmos is the effect of an immanent, omnipotent, and infinitely
beneficent cause, the existence in it of real evil, still less of neces-
sarily inherent evil, is plainly inadmissible.* Yet the universal

* Pope's lines in the Essay on Man (Ep. i, 267, 268),

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul,"

simply paraphrase Seneca's " quern in hoc mundo locum deus obtinet, hunc in homine ani-
mus : quod est illic materia, id nobis corpus est " (Ep. Ixv, 24) [And what God is in the
world, such is the mind or soul in man ; what in the world is matter, in us is body. —

182 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

experience of mankind testified then as now that, whether we
look within us or without us, evil stares us in the face on all
sides ; that if anything is real, pain and sorrow and wrong are
realities.

It would be a new thing in history if a priori philosophers
were daunted by the factious opposition of experience, and the
Stoics were the last men to allow themselves to be beaten by mere
facts. " Give me a doctrine and I will find the reasons for it,"
said Chrysippus. So they perfected, if they did not invent, that
ingenious and plausible form of pleading, the Theodicy, for the
purpose of showing, firstly, that there is no such thing as evil ;
secondly, that if there is, it is the necessary correlate of good ; and
moreover, that it is either due to our own fault or inflicted for
our benefit. Theodicies have been very popular in their time,
and I believe that a numerous, though somewhat dwarfed, proge-
ny of them still survives. So far as I know, they are all varia-
tions of the theme set forth in those famous six lines of the Essay
on Man, in which Pope sums up Bolingbroke's reminiscences of
stoical and other speculations of this kind :

" All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood ;
All partial evil, universal good ;
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: whatever is is right."

Yet surely, if there are few more important truths than those
enunciated in the first triad, the second is open to very grave ob-
jections. That there is a " soul of good in things evil " is unques-
tionable ; nor will any wise man deny the disciplinary value of
pain and sorrow. But these considerations do not help us to see
why the immense multitude of irresponsible sentient beings which
can not profit by such discipline should suffer ; nor why, among
the endless possibilities open to omnipotence — that of sinless,
happy existence among the rest — the actuality in which sin and
misery abound should be that selected. Surely it is mere cheap
rhetoric to call arguments which have never yet been answered

MoreWs translation], which again is a Latin version of the old Stoical doctrine, e«s airca> rov
K&ff^ov fiepo? Si^Kfi 6 vovs, icaQdirep a</>' i)/j.S>i> fi tyvx'fl-

So far as testimony for the universality of what ordinary people call " evil " goes, there
is nothing better than the writings of the Stoics themselves. They might serve as a store-
house for the epigrams of the ultra-pessimists. Heracleitus (circa 500 B. c.) says just as
hard things about ordinary humanity as his disciples centuries later ; and there really seems
no need to seek for the causes of this dark view of life in the circumstances of the time of
Alexander's successors or of the early emperors of Rome. To the man with an ethical
ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem full of evil.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 183

by even the meekest and the least rational of optimists sugges-
tions of the pride of reason. As to the concluding aphorism, its
fittest place would be as an inscription in letters of mud over the
portal of some " stye of Epicurus " ; * for that is where the logical
application of it to practice would land men, with every aspira-
tion stifled and every effort paralyzed. Why try to set right
what is right already ? Why strive to improve the best of all
possible worlds ? Let us eat and drink, for as to-day all is right,
so to-morrow all will be.

But the attempt of the Stoics to blind themselves to the reality
of evil, as a necessary concomitant of the cosmic process, had less
success than that of the Indian philosophers to exclude the reality
of good from their purview. Unfortunately, it is much easier to
shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at
our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness, and the prints
of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced. Before the grim
realities of practical life the pleasant fictions of optimism van-
ished. If this were the best of all possible worlds, it nevertheless
proved itself a very inconvenient habitation for the ideal sage.

The stoical summary of the whole duty of man, " Live accord-
ing to Nature/' would seem to imply that the cosmic process is an
exemplar for human conduct. Ethics would thus become applied
natural history. In fact, a confused employment of the maxim
in this sense has done immeasurable mischief in later times. It
has furnished an axiomatic foundation for the philosophy of
philosophasters and for the moralizing of sentimentalists. But
the Stoics were, at bottom, not merely noble but sane men ; and
if we look closely into what they really meant by this ill-used
phrase, it will be found to present no justification for the mis-
chievous conclusions that have been deduced from it.

• In the language of the Stoa, " Nature " was a word of many
meanings. There was the "Nature" of the cosmos and the
"Nature" of man. In the latter, the animal "nature," which
man shares with a moiety of the living part of the cosmos, was
distinguished from a higher "nature." Even in this higher
nature there were grades of rank. The logical faculty is an in-
strument which may be turned to account for any purpose. The
passions and the emotions are so closely tied to the lower nature
that they may be considered to be pathological rather than nor-
mal phenomena. The one supreme, hegemonic faculty which con-

* I use the well-known phrase, but decline responsibility for the libel upon Epicurus,
whose doctrines were far less compatible with existence in a stye than those of the Cynics.
If it were steadily borne in mind that the conception of the " flesh " as the source of evil,
and that the great saying, " Initium est salutis notitia peccati " [the beginning of salvation
is the recognition of sin], are the property of Epicurus, fewer illusions about Epicureanism
would pass muster for accepted truth.

184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stitutes the essential " nature " of man, is most nearly represented
by that which, in the language of a later philosophy, has been
called the pure reason. It is this " nature " which holds up the
ideal of the supreme good and demands absolute submission of
the will to its behests. It is this which commands all men to love
one another, to return good for evil, to regard one another as
fellow-citizens of one great state. Indeed, seeing that the progress
toward perfection of a civilized state, or polity, depends on the
obedience of its members to these commands, the Stoics sometimes
termed the pure reason the "political" nature. Unfortunately,
the sense of the adjective has undergone so much modification
that the application of it to that which commands the sacrifice of
self to the common good would now sound almost grotesque.*

But what part is played by the theory of evolution in this view
of ethics ? So far as I can discern, the ethical system of the Stoics,
which is essentially intuitive, and reverences the categorical im-
perative as strongly as that of any later moralists, might have
been just what it was if they had held any other theory — whether
that of special creation, on the one side, or that of the eternal
existence of the present order, on the other, f To the Stoic, the

* The Stoics said that man was a £cpov \oyiKbv iroXiriKbv 4»A.aAArj\o>/, or a rational, a
political, and an altruistic or philanthropic animal. In their view, his higher nature tended
to develop in these three directions as a plant tends to grow up into its typical form. Since,
without the introduction of any consideration of pleasure or pain, whatever thwarted the
realization of its type by the plant might be said to be bad, and whatever helped it good ;
so virtue, in the Stoical sense, as the conduct which tended to the attainment of the rational,
political, and philanthropic ideal, was good in itself and irrespectively of its emotional con-
comitants.

Man is an " animal sociale communi bono genitum." The safety of society depends upon
practical recognition of the fact. " Salva autem esse societas nisi custodia et amore partium
non possit," says Seneca. (De Ira, ii, 31.) [The safety of society depends upon the love
and care of its component parts.]

f The importance of the physical doctrine of the Stoics lies in its clear recognition of
the universality of the law of causation with its corollary, the order of Nature : the exact
form of that order is an altogether secondary consideration.

Many ingenious persons now appear to consider that the incompatibility of pantheism,
of materialism, and of any doubt about the immortality of the soul, with religion and
morality, is to be held as an axiomatic truth. I confess that I have a certain difficulty in
accepting this dogma. For the Stoics were notoriously materialists and pantheists of the
most extreme character ; and while no strict stoic believed in the eternal duration of the
individual soul, some even denied its persistence after death. Yet it is equally certain that
of all Gentile philosophies, Stoicism exhibits the highest ethical development, is animated
by the most religious spirit, and has exerted the profoundest influence upon the moral and
religious development not merely of the best men among the Romans, but among the
moderns down to our own day.

Seneca was claimed as a Christian and placed among the saints by the fathers of the
early Christian Church ; and the genuineness of a correspondence between him and the
apostle Paul has been hotly maintained in our own time by orthodox writers. That the

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 185

cosmos had no importance for the conscience, except in so far as
he chose to think it a pedagogue to virtue. The pertinacious
optimism of our philosophers hid from them the actual state of
the case. It prevented them from seeing that cosmic nature is no
school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of ethical
nature. The logic of facts was necessary to convince them that
the cosmos works through the lower nature of man, not for right-
eousness, but against it. And it finally drove them to confess
that the existence of their ideal "wise man" was incompatible
with the nature of things ; that even a passable approximation to
that ideal was to be attained only at the cost of renunciation of
the world and mortification, not merely of the flesh, but of all
human affections. The state of perfection was that " apatheia "
in which desire, though it may still be felt, is powerless to move
the will, reduced to the sole function of executing the commands
of pure reason. Even this residuum of activity was to be re-
garded as a temporary loan — as an efflux of the divine, world-
pervading spirit, chafing at its imprisonment in the flesh, until
such time as death enabled it to return to its source in the all-
pervading logos.

I find it difficult to discover any very great difference between
Apatheia and Nirvana, except that stoical speculation agrees with

letters, as we possess them, are worthless forgeries is obvious, and writers as wide apart as
Baur and Lightfoot agree that the whole story is devoid of foundation.

The dissertation of the late Bishop of Durham (Lightfoot, Epistle to the Philippians) is
particularly worthy of study, apart from this question, on account of the evidence which it
supplies of the numerous similarities of thought between Seneca and the writer of the
Pauline epistles. When it is remembered that the writer of the Acts puts a quotation from
Aratus, or Cleanthes, into the mouth of the apostle, and that Tarsus was a great seat of
philosophical and especially stoical learning (Chrysippus himself was a native of the adja-
cent town of Soli) there is no difficulty in understanding the origin of these resemblances.
See, on this subject, Sir Alexander Grant's dissertation in his edition of The Ethics of
Aristotle (where there is an interesting reference to the stoical character of Bishop Butler's
ethics), the concluding pages of Dr. Weygoldt's instructive little work, Die Philosophic der
Sjoa, and Aubertin's Seneque et Saint Paul.

It is surprising that a writer of Dr. Lightfoot's stamp should speak of Stoicism as a
philosophy of " despair." Surely, rather, it was a philosophy of men who, having cast off
all illusions and the childishness of despair among them, were minded to endure in patience
whatever conditions the cosmic process might create, so long as those conditions were com-
patible with the progress toward virtue, which alone for them conferred a worthy object
on existence. There is no note of despair in the stoical declaration that the perfected
" wise man " is the equal of Zeus in everything but the duration of his existence. And in
my judgment there is as little pride about it — often as it serves for the text of discourses
on stoical arrogance. Grant the stoical postulate that there is no good except virtue ; grant
that the perfected wise man is altogether virtuous, in consequence of being guided in all
things by the reason, which is an effluence of Zeus, and there seems no escape from the
stoical conclusion.

* Our " apathy " carries such a different set of connotations from its Greek original that
I have ventured on using the latter as a technical term.

186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pre-Buddhistic philosophy, rather than with the teachings of
Gautama, in so far as it postulates a permanent substance equiv-
alent to " Brahma " and " Atman " ; and that, in stoical practice,
the adoption of the life of the mendicant cynic was held to be
more a counsel of perfection than an indispensable condition of
the higher life.

Thus the extremes touch. Greek thought and Indian thought
set out from ground common to both, diverge widely, develop
under very different physical and moral conditions, and finally
converge to practically the same end.

The Vedas and the Homeric epos set before us a world of rich
and vigorous life, full of joyous fighting men —

" That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine," ....

and who were ready to brave the very gods themselves when
their blood was up. A few centuries pass away and, under the
influence of civilization, the descendants of these men are " sick-
lied o'er with the pale cast of thought" — frank pessimists, or at
best, make-believe optimists. The courage of the warlike stock
may be as hardly tried as before, perhaps more hardly, but the
enemy is self. The hero has become a monk. The man of action
is replaced by the quietist, whose highest aspiration is to be the
passive instrument of the divine Reason. By the Tiber, as by the
Ganges, ethical man admits that the cosmos is too strong for him ;
and, destroying every bond which ties him to it by ascetic dis-
cipline, he seeks salvation in absolute renunciation.*

Modern thought is making a fresh start from the base whence
Indian and Greek philosophy set out ; and, the human mind being
very much what it was six and twenty centuries ago, there is no
ground for wonder if it presents indications of a tendency to move
along the old lines to the same results. t

We are more than sufficiently familiar with modern pessimism,
at least as a speculation ; for I can not call to mind that any of its
present votaries have sealed their faith by assuming the rags and
the bowl of the mendicant Bhikku, or the cloak and the wallet of
the Cynic. The obstacles placed in the way of sturdy vagrancy
by an unphilosophical police have, perhaps, proved too formidable
for philosophical consistency. "We also know modern speculative

* Many of the stoical philosophers recommended their disciples to take an active share
in public affairs, and in the Roman world, for several centuries, the best public men were
strongly inclined to Stoicism. Nevertheless, the logical tendency of Stoicism seems to me
to be fulfilled only in such men as Diogenes and Epictetus.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 187

optimism, with, its perfectibility of the species, reign of peace, and
lion and lamb transformation scenes ; but one does not hear so
much of it as one did forty years ago ; indeed, I imagine it is to
be met with more commonly at the tables of the healthy and
wealthy than in the congregations of the wise. The majority of
us, I apprehend, profess neither pessimism nor optimism. We
hold that the world is neither so good nor so bad as it conceivably
might be, and as most of us have reason, now and again, to dis-
cover that it can be. Those who have failed to experience the
joys that make life worth living are, probably, in as small a
minority as those who have never known the griefs that rob
existence of its savor and turn its richest fruits into mere dust
and ashes.

Further, I think I do not err in assuming that, however diverse
their views on philosophical and religious matters, most men are
agreed that the proportion of good and evil in life may be very
sensibly affected by human action. I never heard anybody doubt
that the evil may be thus increased or diminished, and it would
seem to follow that good must be similarly susceptible of addition
or subtraction. Finally, to my knowledge, nobody professes to
doubt that, so far forth as we possess a power of bettering things,
it is our paramount duty to use it and to train all our intellect and
energy to this supreme service of our kind.

Hence the pressing interest of the question, to what extent
modern progress in natural knowledge and, more especially,
the general outcome of that progress in the doctrine of evolu-
tion, is competent to help us in the great work of helping one
another.

The propounders of what are called the " ethics of evolution,"
when the " evolution of ethics " would usually better express the
object of their speculations, adduce a number of more or less
interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favor of
the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other
natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt,
for my own part, that they are on the right track ; but as the im-
moral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as
much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and
the murderer follow Nature just as much as the philanthropist.
Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tenden-
cies of man may have come about, but in itself it is incompetent
to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable
to what we call evil than we had before. Some day, I doubt not,
we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of the aesthetic
faculty ; but all the understanding in the world will neither in-
crease nor diminish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful
and that is ugly.

188 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

There is another fallacy which appears to me to pervade the
so-called " ethics of evolution/' It is the notion that because, on
the whole, animals and plants have advanced in perfection of
organization by means of the struggle for existence and the con-
sequent " survival of the fittest " ; therefore men in society, men
as ethical beings, must look to the same process to help them
toward perfection. I suspect that this fallacy has arisen out of
the unfortunate ambiguity of the phrase " survival of the fittest/'
"Fittest" has a connotation of "best," and about "best" there
hangs a moral flavor. In cosmic Nature, however, what is " fit-
test" depends upon the conditions. Long since, I ventured to
point out that if our hemisphere were to cool again, the survival
of the fittest might bring about, in the vegetable kingdom, a pop-
ulation of more and more stunted and humbler and humbler or-
ganisms, until the " fittest " that survived might be nothing but
lichens, diatoms, and such microscopic organisms as those which
give red snow its color ; while, if it became hotter, the pleasant
valleys of the Thames and Isis might be uninhabitable by any
animated beings save those that flourish in a tropical jungle.
They, as the fittest, the best adapted to the changed conditions,
would survive.

Men in society are undoubtedly subject to the cosmic process.
As among other animals, multiplication goes on without cessation
and involves severe competition for the means of support. The
struggle for existence tends to eliminate those less fitted to adapt
themselves to the circumstances of their existence. The strongest,
the most self-assertive, tend to tread down the weaker. But the
influence of the cosmic process on the evolution of society is the
greater the more rudimentary its civilization. Social progress
means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the sub-
stitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process ;
the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to
be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which exist,
but of those who are ethically the best.*

* Of course, strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it
advances toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution, just as
the gregarious habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of immense advan-
tage to them, is so. A hive of bees is an organic polity — a society in which the part played
by each member is determined by organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so
to speak, castes, divided from one another by marked physical barriers. Among birds and
mammals, societies are formed, of which the bond in many cases seems to be purely psy-
chological ; that is to say, it appears to depend upon the liking of the individuals for one
another's company. The tendency of individuals to over self-assertion is kept down by fight-
ing. Even in these rudimentary forms of society, love and fear come into play and enforce
a greater or less renunciation of self-will. To this extent the general cosmic process begins
to be checked by a rudimentary ethical process, which is, strictly speaking, part of the
former just as the " governor " in a steam engine is part of the mechanism of the engine.

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 189

As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically
best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of con-
duct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which leads to suc-
cess in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless
self-assertion it demands self-restraint ; in place of thrusting aside,
or treading down, all competitors, it requires that the individual
shall not merely respect, but shall help his fellows ; its influence
is directed, not so much to the survival of the fittest, as to the
fitting of as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladia-
torial theory of existence. It demands that each man who enters
into the enjoyment of the advantages of a polity shall be mindful
of his debt to those who have laboriously constructed it ; and shall
take heed that no act of his weakens the fabric in which he has
been permitted to live. Laws and moral precepts are directed to
the end of curbing the cosmic process and reminding the indi-
vidual of his duty to the community, to the protection and influ-
ence of which he owes, if not existence itself, at least the life of
something better than a brutal savage.

It is from neglect of these plain considerations that the fanat-
ical individualism of our time attempts to apply the analogy of
cosmic Nature to society. Once more we have a misapplication
of the stoical injunction to follow Nature ; the duties of the indi-
vidual to the state are forgotten and his tendencies to self-asser-
tion are dignified by the name of rights. It is seriously debated
whether the members of a community are justified in using their
combined strength to constrain one of their number to contribute
his share to the maintenance of it ; or even to prevent him from
doing his best to destroy it. The struggle for existence, which
has done such admirable work in cosmic Nature, must, it appears,
be equally beneficent in the ethical sphere. Yet, if that which I
have insisted upon is true ; if the cosmic process has no sort of
relation to moral ends ; if the imitation of it by man is inconsist-
ent with the first principles of ethics ; what becomes of this sur-
prising theory ?

Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of
society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in
running away from it, but in combating it. It may seem an auda-
cious proposal thus to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm
and to set man to subdue Nature to his higher ends ; but, I venture
to think that the great intellectual difference between the ancient
times with which we have been occupied and our day, lies in the
solid foundation we have acquired for the hope that such an enter-
prise may meet with a certain measure of success.

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have
succeeded in building up an artificial world within the cosmos.
Fragile reed as he may be, man, as Pascal says, is a thinking

190 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reed : * there lies within him a fund of energy, operating intelli-
gently and so far akin to that which pervades the universe, that
it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process. In
virtue of his intelligence, the dwarf bends the Titan to his will.
In every family, in every polity that has been established, the
cosmic process in man has been restrained and otherwise modified
by law and custom ; in surrounding Nature, it has been similarly
influenced by the art of the shepherd, the agriculturist, the artisan.
As civilization has advanced, so has the extent of this interfer-
ence increased ; until the organized and highly developed sciences
and arts of the present day have endowed man with a command
over the course of non-human nature greater than that once at-
tributed to the magicians. The most impressive, I might say
startling, of these changes have been brought about in the course
of the last two centuries ; while a right comprehension of the
process of life and of the means of influencing its manifestations
is only just dawning upon us. We do not yet see our way beyond
generalities ; and we are befogged by the obtrusion of false analo-
gies and crude anticipations. But Astronomy, Physics, Chemis-
try, have all had to pass through similar phases, before they
reached the stage at which their influence became an important
factor in human affairs. Physiology, Psychology, Ethics, Political
Science, must submit to the same ordeal. Yet it seems to me irra-
tional to doubt that, at no distant period, they will work as great
a revolution in the sphere of practice.

The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipa-
tions. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward
road, yet, some time, the summit will be reached and the down-
ward route will be commenced. The most daring imagination
will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and the
intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great
year.

Moreover, the cosmic nature born with us and, to a large ex-
tent, necessary for our maintenance, is the outcome of millions of
years of severe training, and it would be folly to imagine that a
few centuries will suffice to subdue its masterfulness to purely
ethical ends. Ethical nature may count upon having to reckon

* " L'homtne n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pen-
sant. II ne faut pas que 1'univers entier s'arme pour 1'ecraser. Une vapeur, une goutte
d'eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais quand 1'univers 1'ecraserait, 1'homme serait encore plus
noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt ; et 1'avantage que 1'univers a sur lui,
1'univers n'en sait rien." — Pensees de Pascal, chap, ii, x. [Man is but a reed, weakest in
Nature, but a reed which thinks. It needs not that the whole Universe should arm to
crush him. But were the Universe to crush him, man would still be more noble than that
which has slain him, because he knows that he dies, and that the Universe has the better
of him. The Universe knows nothing of this. — Bohrts translation.]

EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 191

•with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the world lasts.
But, on the other hand, I see no limit to the extent to which intel-
ligence and will, guided by sound principles of investigation, and
organized in common effort, may modify the conditions of exist-
ence, for a period longer than that now covered by history. And
much may be done to change the nature of man himself. The
intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the
faithful guardian of the flock ought to. be able to do something
toward curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.

But if we may permit ourselves a larger hope of abatement of
the essential evil of the world than was possible to those who, in
the infancy of exact knowledge, faced the problem of existence
more than a score of centuries ago, I deem it an essential condi-
tion of the realization of that hope that we should cast aside the
notion that the escape from pain and sorrow is the proper object
of life.

We have long since emerged from the heroic childhood of our
race, when good and evil could be met with the same " frolic wel-
come " ; the attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek,
have ended in flight from the battle-field ; it remains to us to
throw aside the youthful overconfidence and the no less youthful
discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and must play

the man

" strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield,"

cherishing the good that falls in our way and bearing the evil, in
and around us, with stout hearts set on diminishing it. So far,
we all may strive in one faith toward one hope :

" It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

"... but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done."' *

"TEACH, and let the examination take care of itself," was the advice given by
Mr. A. E. Hawkins, in his Notes on Science Teaching in the Public Schools, read
in the British Association. In his experience he had found that a little knowl-
edge went a long way in an examination. If necessary, the experiments of the
lecture could be performed by one of the boys, the rest watching him ; but it was
better that all the boys should make experiments, preferably working in pairs.

* A great proportion of poetry is addressed by the young to the young ; only the great
masters of the art are capable of divining, or think it worth while to enter into, the feelings
of retrospective age. The two great poets whom we have so lately lost, Tennyson and
Browning, have done this, each in his own inimitable way ; the one in the Ulysses, from
which I have borrowed ; the other in that wonderful fragment, Childe Roland to the dark
Tower came.

192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS.

THE preceding article concludes Prof. Huxley's famous Ro-
manes Address, the first part of which was given in The
Popular Science Monthly for November. As bearing on the
author's main contention that the ethical progress of society is
opposed to the cosmic process of evolution, the following letter
will be read with interest. — ED.

To the Editor of The Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : He who crosses swords with Prof. Huxley in a dialectical
encounter takes his life in both hands. I am not unaware, there-
fore, of my temerity in entering the lists against a scholar so fully
equipped on all subjects ; and my timidity is greatly increased
when I venture to question his interpretation of the law of
the "survival of the fittest," a subject upon which he is uni-
versally recognized as an authority. Yet it is because of what
I deem to be a misinterpretation of that law that goes to the
very marrow of a recent discussion by him that I venture to
differ with him.

In his exceedingly thoughtful and suggestive Romanes Lec-
ture on Evolution and Ethics, Prof. Huxley maintains that the
cosmic process of evolution is directly opposed to the ethical de-
velopment of mankind, " that the cosmic process has no sort of
relation to moral ends" [see this number of the MONTHLY, p. 189],
and that the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest
can never help man toward ethical perfection. " Social progress,"
he says, " means a checking of the cosmic process at every step,
and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the
ethical process ; the end of which is not the survival of those
who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the
conditions which exist, but of those who are ethically the best.
As I have already urged, the practice of that which is ethically
best — what we call goodness or virtue — involves a course of con-
duct which, in all [the Italics are mine] respects, is opposed to
that which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence.
In place of ruthless self-assertion it demands self-restraint; in
place of thrusting aside, or treading down, all competitors, it re-
quires that the individual shall not merely respect, but shall
help his fellows ; its influence is directed not so much to the sur-
vival of. the fittest, as to the fitting of as many as possible to sur-
vive " [pp. 188, 189]. Holding these views it is to be expected that
Prof. Huxley should describe man's development in the following
words : " Man, the animal, in fact, has worked his way to the
headship of the sentient world, and has become the superb animal

EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS. 193

which, he is, in virtue of his success in the struggle for existence.
The conditions having been of a certain order, man's organiza-
tion has adjusted itself to them better than that of his competi-
tors in the cosmic strife. In the case of mankind the self-asser-
tion, the unscrupulous seizing on all that can be grasped, the
tenacious holding of all that can be kept, which constitute the
essence of the struggle for existence, have answered " [November
MONTHLY, pp. 21, 22].

Are the qualities here emphasized the only essential ones ?
Does this statement include all the facts or cover the whole
truth? To me it seems to be far from doing this, although it states
clearly and vigorously what all must admit to be partially true.

The benefits of co-operation in the development of man are
too well recognized to be denied. Physically weaker than many
of the animals that surrounded him, he could not long have
survived in a struggle for existence against them had he been
forced to continue that struggle alone. Nor could he have at-
tained the mental development upon which so much of his suc-
cess has depended without contact with his fellows. The most
important if not the necessary condition of man's success in the
struggle for existence is society. Social growth becomes possi-
ble only through the survival of the socially fit. In an advancing
society this process must ever tend toward the production and
preservation of the " ethically best." Recognition of the rights
of others has been equally as important in the evolution of man
as self-assertion. Indeed, it may be claimed that, under the con-
ditions of social life, it is a necessary consequence of self-asser-
tion. Men could not live long together unless they recognized
the right of each to his own, and respected it. The survival of a
society, like the survival of the individuals composing it, becomes
possible only through adaptation to the necessary conditions of
life, and it will not be denied by Prof. Huxley that morality is
essential to social well-being. Indeed, he admits as much, for he
says : " One of the oldest and most important elements in such
systems is the conception of justice. Society is impossible unless
those who are associated agree to observe certain rules of conduct
toward one another ; its stability depends on the steadiness with
which they abide by that agreement ; and so far as they waver,
that mutual trust which is the bond of society is weakened or de-
stroyed" [November MONTHLY, p. 24].

I am somewhat at a loss to reconcile this statement with the
general teaching of the lecture. It seems to me that this moral
development is just as much a part of the " cosmic process " as
physical or mental development, neither of which are excluded by
Prof. Huxley. Moral development comes, to be sure, in recogniz-
able quantities, rather later in history than the others, and is of

VOL. XL1T. 16

194 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

greater consequence in a high civilization than in a low ; is, in-
deed, or ought to be, considered one of the principal signs of the
existence of the former. While it was essential in even the low-
set form of social organization, it was for a long period of less
apparent importance. The earlier struggles for existence were
chiefly intertribal or international, and in these the qualities em-
phasized by Prof. Huxley as necessary for success were undoubt-
edly predominant. While the struggle still goes on in this form,
it no longer occupies the time and attention of mankind to the
same extent as formerly. Among civilized societies at least the
struggle for existence has also taken on another form, and the
conditions of success have greatly changed. Industrial competi-
tion has taken the place of war, and notwithstanding that the
theories and the methods of international conflict are still some-
what potent in this field, they are so mostly because our ethical,
and, for that matter, even our intellectual, training has not gone
far enough. It can not be denied that the reign of industrialism,
or at least the absence of war, has softened the manners if it has
not changed the character of men. Prof. Huxley himself bears
witness to this, for he says, "The cosmic nature born with us
and, to a large extent, necessary for our maintenance, is the out-
come of millions of years of severe training, and it would be folly
to imagine that a few centuries will suffice to subdue its master-
fulness to purely ethical ends" [p. 190].

It can, however, be shown, I think, that those societies will be-
come the victors in the struggle for industrial supremacy, who
are mentally and morally the most highly developed, or, in other
words, socially the fittest. In an article on Ethics and Econom-
ics, published in The Popular Science Monthly for October, 1888,
I have discussed this proposition at some length, but the follow-
ing quotation will, I think, answer my present purpose :

" For the purpose in hand, we desire to call attention to the
necessity of basing our political economy on moral rather than
on selfish instincts. Powerful though the latter be, they are
more or less anti-social in their nature, and therefore would not
of themselves favor economic growth. That depends for its de-
velopment on social growth, and it is only when the selfish in-
stincts are held in due check and subordination to the higher im-
pulses that the latter is possible. Strength, keenness, and shrewd-
ness are important factors in determining the survival of the
individual, and, in so far as they do this, they favor also the sur-
vival of the race. But of more importance still are those traits
which, by enabling men to live together in peace, render possible
the organization of labor in such manner as to secure the great-
est economic return. In a word, our political economy, which has
been unmoral, must be made moral, if it is to be the science

THE CREATION. 195

which shall direct men into the proper paths for the production
and distribution of wealth" (pp. 773, 774).

If this be true, then even under existing conditions it may be
said that "the stars in their courses " fight for righteousness.
For it would appear that co-operation, which has been so essen-
tial to man's success in the struggle for existence, by cultivating
the moral qualities upon which social fitness depends, has at
length brought about conditions where moralization becomes a
prime factor in the success and survival of society. At all
events it can, I think, be maintained that the law of the survival
of the fittest admits of another interpretation than that put upon
it by Prof. Huxley. It is not of necessity, as he thinks, opposed
to the ethical progress of the race, but under it and because of it
men become better through the survival of the socially fit.

ROBERT MATHEWS.

ROCHESTER, N. Y., June 29, 1893.

THE CREATION.

A PENOBSCOT INDIAN MYTH TOLD BY ONE OF THE TRIBE TO
ABBY L. ALGER.

IN the beginning God made Adam out of the earth, but he did
not make Glus-kabd (the Indian God). Glus-kabe' made him-
self out of the dirt that was kicked up in the creation of Adam.
He rose and walked about, but he could not speak until the Lord
opened his lips.

God made the earth and the sea, and then he took counsel with
Glus-kabe' concerning them. He asked him if it would be better
to have the rivers run up on one side of the earth and down on
the other, but Glus-kabe' said, " No, they must all run down one
way."

Then the Lord asked him about the ocean, whether it would
do to have it always lie still. Glus-kabe* told him, " No ! " It
must rise and fall, or else it would grow thick and stagnant.

" How about fire ? " asked the Lord ; " can it burn all the time
and nobody put it out ? "

Glus-kabe' said: "That would not do, for if anybody got
burned and fire could not be put out, they would die; but if it
could be put out, then the burn would get well."

So he answered all the Lord's questions.

After this Glus-kabe' was out on the ocean one day and the
wind blew so hard he could not manage his canoe. He had to go
back to land, and he asked his old grandmother (among Indians
this title is often only a mark of respect and does not always in-

196 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dicate any blood relationship), Mahli Moninkwess (the wood-
chuck), what he could do. She told him to follow a certain road
up a mountain. There he found an old man sitting on a rock
flapping his wings (arms) violently. This was Wuchowsen, the
great wind-blower. He begged Glus-kabe* to take him up higher
where he would have space to flap his wings still harder. So
Glus-kabe' lifted him up and carried him a long way. When they
were over a great lake he let Wuchowsen drop into the water.
In falling he broke his wings and lay there helpless.

Glus-kabe' went back to sea and found the ocean as smooth as
glass. He enjoyed himself greatly for many days, paddling about,
but finally the water grew stagnant and thick, and a great smell
arose. The fish died and Glus-kabe' could bear it no longer.

Again he consulted his grandmother and she told him that he
must set Wuchowsen free. So he once more bore Wuchowsen
back to his mountain, first making him promise not to flap his
wings so constantly, but only now and then, so that the Indians
might go out in their canoes. Upon his consent to do this, Glus-
kabe' mended his broken wings, but they were never quite so
strong as at first, and thus we do not now have such terrible winds
as in the olden days.

This story was told to me by an old man whom I had always
thought dull and almost in his dotage ; but one day, after I had
told him some Indian legends, his whole face changed, he threw
back his head, closed his eyes, and without the slightest warning
or preliminary began to relate, almost to chant, this myth in a
most extraordinary way, which so startled me that I could not at
the time take any notes of it, and was obliged to have it repeated
later. The account of Wuchowsen was added to show the wisdom
of Glus-kabe's advice in the earlier part of the tale, and is found
among many tribes.

STATE INTERFERENCE IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS.*

BY JOSEPH SHIELD NICHOLSON, D. So.,

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

WE are confronted with the limited power of the state and
the infinite variety of individual enterprise. To the older
economists the difference seemed so great that they considered
the presumption against state interference to be established. The
rule, it is true, was never absolute and unqualified. Adam Smith

* From the presidential address before the Section of Economic Science and Statistics of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Nottingham meeting, Sep-
tember, 1893 (London Times Report).

STATE INTERFERENCE IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS. 197

himself indicated some of the most important of these exceptions,
and the list has been extended by his successors. But these ex-
ceptions were all based upon reasoned principles, such as the in-
capacity of the persons concerned, e. g., children to make fair con-
tracts ; the lack of individual interest in public works, e. g., the
maintenance of roads, and the importance of the highest security,
as in the regulation of the issues of bank notes. And in spite of
all these exceptions — strengthened and purified by these excep-
tions— the presumption remained undisturbed. Recently, how-
ever, some writers, under the influence of the ideal of maximum
happiness and impressed by the power "of the state, have sought
to extend its interference far beyond these admitted principles-
But, so far as this movement has any theoretical support, the re-
action has already begun. The fundamental importance of free-
dom of contract has become more apparent than ever through the
application of the comparative and historical methods to juris-
prudence ; the proposition that the progress of society has been
from status to contract has almost acquired the force of an axiom.
The analysis, too, of modern industrial systems in which division
of labor has become more and more intricate and interdependent
has shown the hopelessness of the attempt to transfer the man-
agement and control to the state. Changes in the methods of pro-
duction, in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the transport of
material commodities have been so rapid and so great that no
executive government could have overtaken them. In the most
advanced communities even that legislation which is necessary
for the new conditions lags behind; even those elementary
forms which simply aim at giving an interpretation to contracts
in doubtful cases, or which are necessary for the adjustment of
responsibility (as in bankruptcy and partnership), are behind the
times. The growth of joint-stock enterprises has outstripped the
development of the law of companies, and there is a crop of new
frauds without corresponding penalties. Turning to the execu-
tive and administrative functions of government, the analysis of
existing conditions shows that we have not yet overtaken those
exceptions admitted by the strongest supporters of laisser faire.
The British Government has, it is true, wasted its energies in
devising temporary expedients of various kinds, but it has not
yet accomplished the programme of Adam Smith. Not only are
there privileges and restrictions that ought to have been abol-
ished long ago, but on the positive side the programme is not
complete. We have just begun universal education on the lines
laid down by Adam Smith, but his scheme for imperial federa-
tion is not yet within the range of practical politics. We have
effected great financial reforms, but we still fall far short of the
full development of his principles. Even in matters of currency

198 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and banking — in relation to which the function of the state has
always been recognized — we are lamentably in need of reform.
But if the state can not overtake those duties which are so neces-
sary and persistent that they were forced on the attention of the
strongest supporters of laisser faire, how can we possibly justify
the assumption of new functions which rest upon no better prin-
ciple than the vague idea that the state ought to do something ?
Not only theoretically but practically signs of a reaction in favor
of the old position are rapidly increasing. The experiments al-
ready made at playing the role of omnipotence and omniscience,
against which governments were so emphatically warned by
Adam Smith, have begun to bring forth thorns instead of figs.
A government which lends its power and assistance to one set of
people must be prepared to act in a similar manner in all similar
cases. If once this principle is abandoned, governmental action
becomes either a matter of chance or depends upon clamor and
jobbery. It is wonderful how quickly the human mind discovers
analogies in grievances, and how soon one cry leads to another.
How can we justify the use of state credit for the purchase of
lands in Ireland and fishing boats in Scotland if we are not pre-
pared to give similar aid to the poor of England who are simi-
larly situated ? If we grant judicial rents in the country, why
not in the towns, and if we fix by law one set of prices why not all
prices ? We must not be content with looking at the immediate
effects of legislation; we must consider also the secondary and
more remote consequences. The British Government is begin-
ning to find that the camel is getting too far into the tent. The
admission of a single ear is nothing to the admission of the hump
and the knees and the rest of the beast. Now the ear may be
interpreted to mean the grant of a few thousand pounds to Scot-
tish fishers, the hump is universal old-age pensions at a cost of
some fifteen or twenty millions a year, and for the knees you may
take the nationalization of land at a cost of some two thousand mil-
lions, and for the whole beast you have the complete socialist pro-
gramme. The conclusion that when the beast was in the Arab
was out needs no interpretation. We have not yet reached the
limits of tolerable taxation, but at the present rate of growth of
imperial and local expenditure we are rapidly approaching those
limits. It has been firmly established in theory, and confirmed
by the experience of many nations, that excessive taxation is ruin-
ous to a country. It may be replied that those who demand a
large increase of expenditure for public purposes do not propose to
tax the poor, but only to take the superfluities of the rich — to take,
as is sometimes said, twenty shillings in the pound from that part
of every income which extends above four hundred pounds a year.
The certain effect of this kind of taxation would be that in a very

STATE INTERFERENCE IN SOCIAL AFFAIRS. 199

short time nobody would have more than four hundred pounds
a year, and the sources of taxation would dry up just as people
had become used to and dependent on governmental assistance.
[Laughter.] The general argument may be summarized in the
favorite phraseology of the day. The utility of every increment
of governmental work rapidly diminishes, and the disutility of
every increment of taxation rapidly increases. The classical
economists maintain that even if the state could do something for
individuals as cheaply and effectively as they could do it for
themselves, it is in general better to trust to individual effort.
The decisive consideration is the effect on the character and ener-
gies of the people. Self-reliance, independence, liberty — these
were the old watchwords — not • state reliance, dependence, and
obedience. In the matter of pauperism, for example, they teach
us to distinguish between the immediate effects of relief which
may be beneficial and the effects of reliance on that relief which
may be disastrous. They are bold enough to maintain that the
condition of life of the dependent pauper should not be made
by aids and allowances better than that of the independent
laborer. They insist on the great historical distinction between
the sturdy rogues and vagabonds — who can work and will not —
and the impotent poor, the poor in very deed, who can not sup-
port themselves. They look upon the payment of poor rates as
they look upon other forms of taxation — namely, as the lesser of
two evils ; they do not try to persuade themselves and other peo-
ple that it is a duty which is essentially pleasant. If Christian
charity realized a tithe of its ideal there would be no need for
relief on the part of the state. It does not take ten ants to relieve
another ant, and in this land of ours there are more than ten pro-
fessed Christians to every pauper. To the student I would say,
political economy has a vast literature, and you will not find all
the good concentrated in the last marginal increment ; you must
master the old before you can appreciate the new ; a portion of
truth just rediscovered for the hundredth time by some amateur
is not of such value as a body of doctrines that have been devel-
oped for more than a century by economists of repute. And to
the legislator I would say, vaster than the literature of political
economy is the economic experience of nations ; the lessons to be
learned from the multitudinous experiments of the past can never
become antiquated, for they have revealed certain broad features
of human character that you can no more disregard than the
vital functions of the human body. Just as Harvey did not in-
vent but discovered the circulation of the blood, so Adam Smith
did not invent but discovered the system of natural liberty. And
nothing has been better established than the position that legisla-
tion which neglects to take account of the liberties of individuals

200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is foredoomed to failure. If they can not break through the law
they will get behind the law. The first duty of the legislator is
to take account of the natural forces with which he must contend,
and the classical economists have made a survey and estimate of
these forces which, based as it is on the facts of human nature
and the experience of nations, it would be willful folly to overlook.

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

BY CHARLES HOWARD SHINN.

TT seems to me that an account of the present condition of the
-L fruit industry in California would be of economic value, pro-
vided that it were entirely free from the advertising element. By
the " advertising element " I mean that very natural and almost
irrepressible desire of a resident of any portion of this magnificent
country to attract others to his particular district. There ought
to be some way of presenting statistical and other facts relating
to one department of horticulture in a given American State, in
exactly the same spirit that an expert upon cotton manufacture
would arrange the statistics of the mills of Massachusetts.

A considerable area of California lands is planted to orchards
and vineyards. Some of these, as with other human enterprises,
are profitable, and some are unprofitable ; but all are producing
fruit, most of which finds its way in some shape to markets out-
side the State. The range of these fruit products is very great,
and many American producers, as well as those of Europe and
other parts of the world, feel the competition of this food supply.
An immense number of consumers, as well as this army of rival
producers, must wish to obtain statistics of the California in-
dustry under consideration. The following article is an attempt
to present the facts of a great fruit-growing industry so plainly
that all its departments can be understood by the reader.

First, let us examine the best available statistics of the area
planted, and the kinds of fruit used. These are much more com-
plete now than when the officers of the last national census at-
tempted to collect them from county officials, because competent
agents of the State Board of Horticulture, themselves fruit-
growers, spent the greater part of last year in making a " house-
to-house canvass." They asked every man who owned an orchard
to write down the number of acres he had in fruit trees, and
classified the result, in many cases, by actual inspection of the
orchard. The mass of details is of course too ponderous to be
printed here, but the results can be analyzed so as to justify
presentation in a series of tables. There are several ways of pos-

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA. 201

sible classification, but I can think of nothing better than to take
the principal fruit-growing counties, give their areas and the
acreage now planted, arranging the fruits reported upon in four

1 • •« J"l__ _ * J „ ,1 n n-w*. •» 4- -M x-v -m-i -i y» tw^.f\f*t f\C* 4~ r» ft TmT—KkOQ 1*1 T\ flT

divisions — the citrus and semitropic
trees, the ordinary deciduous
fruits, and lastly the vines and
small fruits.

The principal citrus and semi-
tropic fruits grown in California
are the fig, olive, lemon, and
orange. The citron of commerce
flourishes, but has not been much
planted, and the lime does well
in some districts. The pomegran-
ate is in many gardens, but few
commercial orchards exist, and
the same is true of the loquat
and guava. Here and there in
sheltered, f restless places are the
beginnings of some small planta-
tions of pineapples, bananas, and
date palms, and a few specimens
of cherimoya, granadilla, alliga-
tor pear, jujube, melon shrub,

species, the nut-bearing

CLUSTER OF UVARI* OLIVES.
(One half natural diameter.)

chayota, the best species of opuntia, and other tropic and semi-
tropic fruits that are being tested on a very small scale. Easily
first, and type of the whole class, is the orange. It is commer-
cially grown to the extent of a hundred acres or more in fifteen
counties of California ; eight counties contain over five hundred
acres apiece. The acreage of the new county of Riverside, created
by the last Legislature, is necessarily included in San Bernardino,
and that of Kings County in Tulare.

TABLE I. — Acreage of Semitropic Fruits.

COUNTT.

Oranges.

Olives.

Lemons.

Figs.

Butte

2,664

755

50

259

Los Angeles ....

12,297

788

2,000

973

Orange. .

5,412

270

681

82

San Bernardino ....

38,237

1,200

2,003

362

San Diego

1,500

1,063

4,790

291

Santa Barbara

540

871

1,276

950

Tulare

604

320

63

182

Ventura

548

613

443

62

Total (8 counties)

61,802

5,880

11,306

3 161

The forty-five remaining counties of the State contain acreages
as follows: Oranges, 1,559 ; olives, 3,394 ; lemons, 1,090 ; figs, 2,119.

VOL. XLIV. 17

202

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Adding these totals, we obtain the area of the semitropic orchards
of California, according to the latest and most reliable data. There
are 64,361 acres of oranges, 9,274 acres of olives, 12,396 acres of
lemons, and 5,280 acres of figs. The entire acreage devoted to the
semitropic fruits above classified is 91,311. No reasonable allow-
ance for small orchards overlooked would be likely to bring this
total to much more than 95,000 acres. Studying the table, we

YOUNG FIG TKEK. Tejon Ranch.

observe that the leading orange-growing counties are San Ber-
nardino and Los Angeles; the leading fig county is Los Angeles,
with Santa Barbara very close, but both still under the thousand-
acre mark ; the leading olive counties are San Diego and Santa
Barbara, and the leading lemon counties are San Diego and Los
Angeles. Placer, Butte, Sacramento, and Yuba are the only coun-
ties in the Sacramento Valley and northern Sierra foothills that

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

203

have a hundred acres of oranges ; Fresno, Stanislaus, and Tulare,
in the San Joaquin Valley, have also barely commenced the cul-
ture of semitropic fruits. But the industry is more at home in
the Coast Range valleys from Santa Barbara south and southeast.
There, also, it is of longer growth, three out of four trees being
in bearing, while in the counties that have but lately begun to
plant semitropic fruits more than half the orchards have not yet
fruited to any extent. The beginnings of fig and olive orchards
are more generally distributed throughout the State than are
lemon and orange orchards. Classified from this standpoint, the
lemon is represented by one or more acres in thirty counties, the
orange in thirty-eight, the fig in forty-two, and the olive in
forty-four.

Deciduous fruits cover a very wide range, both in variety and
distribution. The apple, apricot, cherry, peach, prune, and pear
are the principal deciduous fruits grown in California. There are
some nectarine and quince orchards, and the Japanese persimmon
is planted to some extent. Many other deciduous fruit trees
find place in family orchards and experimental grounds, but
those named comprise all that are of commercial value at the
present time.

A complete table of the deciduous fruit acreage by counties
would include every one of the fifty-three. The apple, for in-
stance, is grown everywhere. The peach and prune better repre-
sent the deciduous fruits. A unit of one hundred acres would
force us to classify some forty-five counties. Even five hundred
acres as a unit would list twenty-nine counties ; but, by raising it
to a thousand acres, we include all, or nearly all, of the famous
deciduous fruit districts.

TABLE II. — Acreage of Deciduous Fruits.

COUNTY.

Apples.

Apricots.

Cherries.

Peaches.

Pears.

Prunes and
plums.

Alameda

505

3,310

2,171

1,375

1,701

4 236

Butte

307

540

165

3,286

913

1 144

El Dorado

225

29

39

],338

200

279

Fresno

185

556

7

2,058

634

1 601

Kern

338

320

25

1 079

315

946

Los Angeles

1 511

2 899

18

4 059

1 661

3 748

Orange

128

1,492

10

1,203

900

905

Placer

332

280

272

3,621

1,070

615

Sacramento

139

535

160

2870

2 900

1 770

San Bernardino

222

1,554

15

2,090

402

1 463

Santa Clara

750

4 350

1,250

5,570

900

8 900

Solano

153

3,733

436

4,915

3 05O

2 870

Sonoma

4 121

229

317

2,507

1 407

2 600

Tehama

86

574

100

3 182

520

1 328

Tulare

147

724

10

3,800

642

5 270

Yolo

75

824

50

1,040

621

1 522

Total (16 counties)

9,224

21,949

5,045

43,993

17,836

39,197

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

205

The remaining thirty-seven counties of the State contain acre-
ages as follows : Apples, 10,753 ; apricots, 8,176 ; cherries, 1,883 ;
peaches, 11,007; pears, 5,906; prunes and plums, 15,445. Adding
these totals, we obtain the area of the deciduous orchards. There
are 19,977 acres of apples, 30,125 acres of apricots, 6,928 acres of
cherries, 55,000 acres of peaches, 23,742 acres of pears, and 54,642
acres of prunes and plums.

The deciduous fruits lead in acreage and value of products all
other branches of California horticulture ; and as the above table

ALMOND TREE IN FEBRUARY. Kancho Chico.

plainly shows, the same concentration of each separate variety of
fruit in some particular district is manifest everywhere. There
are apple counties, peach counties, prune counties, and always will
be, although some changes will take place in a decade or two.
Peaches, prunes, and apricots occupy nearly three fourths of the
acreage. The cherry orchards, although covering the smallest

2O6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

area, are more profitable, and give employment to more laborers,
in proportion to acreage, than any others of the class. The greater
part of the apple crop is consumed at home, but all the other
fruits must find their chief market outside the State.

In addition to the acreage already tabulated, there are 1,080
acres of nectarines, 300 acres of quinces, and about 100 acres of
Japan persimmons. This makes a grand total of 191,894 acres
devoted to this class of fruits. Statistics are somewhat incom-
plete for some of the mountain counties, but it will not be safe to
add more than five per cent, and we can then say in round num-
bers that 200,000 acres are planted with the deciduous fruits.

The leading apple counties of the State are Sonoma, Los Ange-
les, Siskiyou, Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Humboldt. Nothing
could better illustrate the extent to which the climate of Califor-
nia is modified by local conditions. San Diego is the most south-
ern county, Siskiyou is the most northern, and they are sepa-
rated from each other by more than seven hundred miles, but both
contain great apple-growing districts. The leading apricot coun-
ties are Solano, Alameda, and Los Angeles. The cherry is chiefly
grown in Alameda and Santa Clara. The peach industry has
been most completely developed in Santa Clara, Solano, Los Ange-
les, Tulare, Butte, and Tehama. Nectarines are mostly planted
in Sonoma and Alameda. Plums and prunes seem to belong chief-
ly to Santa Clara, Tulare, Alameda, and Solano. Lastly, the great
pear districts are in Sacramento, Solano, Alameda, and Los Ange-
les. The Coast Range lowlands and foothills, together with a few
districts in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, produce the
bulk of all the deciduous fruits.

Third among the horticultural divisions that I have thought
it desirable to tabulate are the nut-bearing trees, comparatively
small in present acreage, but likely to become more and more
important industries. The nuts grown on a commercial scale are
only two, the almond and the walnut. The chestnut, pistachio,
filbert, pecan, and a few others have been planted to some extent.
The following table shows the counties that have 1,000 acres and
upward of either almonds or walnuts :

TABLK III. — Acreage of Nitf-bearing Trees.

COUNTY.

Alameda

Butte

Los Angeles . . ,

Orange

Santa Barbara

Solano

Ventura

Total (7 counties)..

Almonds.

1,237

1,588

107

102

340

1,470

150

4,984

Walnuts.

36
12

1,789
2,592
1,203
70
6,310

11,022

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

207

The remaining forty-nine counties only bring the total of al-
mond trees in the State to 9,400 acres and that of walnuts to 14,912
acres. One can easily see how limited are the districts as yet
devoted to these products. Three almond counties — Butte, Solano,
and Alameda — contain nearly one half of the total acreage of the
State ; four walnut counties — Ventura, Orange, Los Angeles, and
Santa Barbara — contain more than four fifths of all the trees
planted. The almond, however, is grown to some extent in forty-
six counties and the walnut in forty-five. Italian chestnuts, pe-
cans, and filberts have been planted to the extent of perhaps 100
acres. This makes the total acreage of nut-bearing trees in the
State 24,412. It is not likely that more than 100 or 200 acres were
overlooked. In round numbers there may possibly be 25,000 acres
in this class of trees.

The last division contains the grapes and small fruits. Wine
and raisin grapes have been very carefully tabulated each year,
but table grapes with less attention to details, and small fruits not
at all until recently. The grape industry is mostly carried on in
the fourteen counties represented by the following table :

TABLE IV. — Acreage of Grapes.

COUNTY.

Wine grapes.

Raisin grapes.

Table grapes.

Alameda

6,396

194

236

Fresno

5,474

43,928

100

Los Angeles

4,632

671

1,182

Napa

18,177

10

52

Placer ...

354

500

1,421

Sacramento

3 131

385

2,550

San Bernardino

1 024

2,591

274

San Diego

132

4,455

510

Santa Clara . .

10294

200

1,200

Santa Cruz

1,365

103

1,253

Solano . .

1,928

1,328

1,167

Sonoma .

22351

427

Tulare

70

10,264

100

Yolo

1 575

5,500

1,500

76,903

70,077

11,972

The total acreage of wine grapes is 91,428 ; that of raisin grapes
is 81,773 ; and that of table grapes is 18,732. Besides, the area
devoted to small fruits, as far as can be ascertained, is 5,081 acres.
Alameda, Sacramento, and San Joaquin contain over three fifths
of the small-fruit area of the State.

Returning to grapes, the results are obtained from the statis-
tics of the State Viticultural Commissioners' Report of 1891, with
the figures for a few missing counties filled in from other reliable
sources. As in previous tables, the chief centers of each depart-
ment of the industry are easily recognized. Table grapes are of

208 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

especial importance in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, Santa Cruz,
Santa Clara, Solano, and Los Angeles, in which counties more
than half the table grapes are found. Two counties of the San
Joaquin Valley, Fresno and Tulare, have planted five eighths of
the total raisin-grape area of the State. Three wine counties —
Sonoma, Napa, and Santa Clara — contain five ninths of the total
wine-grape area.

In round numbers, then, the fruit and vine acreage of Cali-
fornia in October, 1893, is as follows :

Citrus and semitropic 95,000

Deciduous fruits 200,000

Nut-bearing trees 25,000

Grapes 191,933

Small fruits 5,081

Total 517,014

Having ascertained the total acreage, the approximate number
of fruit-bearing plants of the kinds tabulated can be readily found.
Orchardists set trees at different distances apart according to the
soil and the variety: 12'X12', 15'xlo', 18'X18', and 20' X 20' can
be found within a mile of each other. Walnuts and other strong
growing trees are often set 30' X 30', with cultivated crops planted
between for 'a few years. The above systems of planting give
respectively the following number of trees to the acre : 302, 193,
134, 108, and 48. Of course, there are many other planting dis-
tances in general use. The ordinary rule of multiplying the
acreage by 100 has never seemed to me sufficiently accurate,
and I should choose 150 as more nearly representative of the
orchards of to-day. Grapevines are planted 4'X6' in the case
of some varieties, and 4' X 8', 6' X 6', and 8' X 8' in ordinar y vine-
yards. These distances give the following numbers of plants to
the acre: 1,815, 1,361, 1,210, and 680; about 1,200 is probably a
fair average.

Tabulated, with a fair allowance for the acreage planted in the
spring of 1893, the sum of the whole matter is as follows :

Number of trees on 320,000 acres 48,000,000

Number of vines, etc., on 200,000 acres 240,000,000

Trees and vines of the plant of 1893 (about) 7,500,000

Total number of plants (about) 295,500,000

The reader must remember that every one of these plants,
excepting vines grown from cuttings, has been propagated in a
nursery, set out by hand with more or less carefulness, and pruned
and cultivated. About sixty per cent of the fruit trees are now
in partial or full bearing; in the vineyards the proportion is
probably somewhat greater.

210 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

What is the gross yield from these trees ? Like wheat, or any
other staple crop, the average per acre is very much less than one
would expect.

There are often such heavy losses from late frosts, drought,
insect pests, and fungoid diseases that only a person of more than
ordinary intelligence can successfully manage large orchard in-
terests. The average orchard, like the average farm, just about
makes a fair living for an industrious man. That this is true
can be easily shown by the following figures, and deductions
from them :

Orchard and Vineyard Products in 1891.

CLASS. Pounds.

Canned fruit 64,790,120

Dried fruit 66,743,134

Fresh, deciduous 101,097,940

Prunes 10,220,700

Raisins 45,558,370

Citrus fruits 88,194,560

Figs 50,000

Nuts 10,318,060

Total shipment, in pounds 386,972,884

It requires not less than 600,000,000 pounds of fresh fruits, be-
sides the nuts, to produce the above results. In round figures, then,
600,000,000 pounds represent the fruit surplus of the State, in the
departments of deciduous fruits, citrus fruits, raisins, and table
grapes. In addition there was a surplus of

Wine (gallons) 11,114,029

Brandy (gallons) 799,614

Olive oil (cases) 12,088

Now, there are in California about 500,000 acres of the trees
and vines which produce these 600,000,000 pounds of fresh fruit.
That is 1,200 pounds to the acre, worth in the orchard from twelve
to forty dollars, the average gross value of the crop from an acre
of fruit. Of course, many of the trees are not yet in bearing, and
some fruit-growers will always have far better returns than this.
But the above average is very significant. It shows plainly that
the industry can not exist upon a lower average price than one
cent a pound for fruit in the orchard. But if the present orchards
were in full bearing there might come an especially favorable sea-
son which would give a total, even without further planting, of
fully 1,500,000,000 pounds. If there are 50,000 acres planted every
year, and the old orchards are kept up, the present acreage will
be doubled by 1901.

But, to show what has been done under favorable circum-
stances, I give the following statement of the yield of a 700-acre
San Joaquin Valley irrigated orchard in 1890 :

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA. 211

Yield of 700- Acre Orchard.

Pounds.

Apricots 339,411

Peaches 2,115,314

Nectarines 210,518

Pears 280,124

Plums 4,705

Prunes 22,283

Total 2,972,335

This is a well-authenticated yield of nearly 3,000,000 pounds
from the orchard, or, to be more exact, within a fraction of 4,246
pounds to the acre. This fruit was sold for $84,365.61, or $120 per
acre, gross receipts. The annual product of the 1,200 acres of vines
and trees upon this ranch is confidently expected to be 10,000,000
pounds of fresh fruit when every acre comes into bearing, and
that is practicable under first-class management. Ignorance or
neglect would ruin both orchard and vineyard, however, in less
than three years. The average yield per acre, as previously shown,
is only 1,200 pounds, but here is a tract of 700 acres, not in full
bearing, that gives three and a half times as much. By obtaining
the highest possible price, the estimated possible sale of about $45
per acre (when the yield was 1,500 pounds) has been raised in this
case to $120 per acre. Should the whole 1,200 acres ultimately
yield 10,000,000 pounds, the average per acre will be more than
four tons of green fruit, the increase being largely in the item of
grapes. Four tons per acre, at a uniform price of one cent a pound,
would yield $80, as against the average value of the State crop at
that price, $12 per acre.

If the 200,000 acres of deciduous fruits in the State could be
made to yield at the rate of this irrigated San Joaquin Valley
orchard, the product would now be about 850,000,000 pounds of
fresh fruit. The same acreage in full bearing at the expected
average would reach the enormous yield of 1,660,000,000 pounds.
If the semitropic fruits and vineyards could be depended upon
to yield in like proportion, it is safe to say that the fruit supply
of the world would be more than provided for, and the transpor-
tation facilities of the great railroad lines would be overburdened.
But horticulture, like agriculture, is subject to drawbacks and
limitations. Orchards and vineyards, exactly the same as corn
fields and wheat fields, give only a low general average. The in-
dustry of fruit-growing is established upon a solid foundation and
is very prosperous, but the whole yield of the State can never be
made proportionate to the yield obtained under exceptional cir-
cumstances.

The acreage and yield of the orchards and vineyards have now
been ascertained. The cash value of the total output can not be

212

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as closely calculated. Floating estimates vary even more than
the floating estimates of the acreage. Healthy, well-managed
orchards probably average gross sales of $100 per acre, taking all
classes of fruit together, and one season with another, but there
are no reliable statistics of this side of the industry. Returning
to an estimate of a present surplus of 600,000,000 pounds of fresh
fruit, this at two cents (the average value in the orchards one year

VACAVILLE PEAR TKBE.

with another) would yield the growers $12,000,000 and would prob-
ably cost the consumer $36,000,OOG. This does not include the
value of the product of the wine grapes. It only represents the
output of the gold mine of the orchards. Commercially, of course,
the volume of business created is represented by the cost to the
consumer.

Studies of the future of an industry are seldom useful. Plant-
ing of trees and vines continues steadily, and if there is a demand

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA. 213

the present output can be indefinitely increased. It is believed
by the best horticultural authorities that fruit, in various forms,
will become more and more a great food staple, used by the masses
of the people, and that new markets for the enormous output can
be developed from time to time in the United States and in Europe.
Like wheat, a staple, fruit in the future will not make fortunes
nor "pay for a ranch in one year," but will give safe, steady re-
turns upon the labor and capital invested.

The extensive area that might be devoted to fruit culture, if
the demand justified such a use, can be seen by the following
figures : San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Los Angeles
Counties, all noted for their semitropic fruits, contain 26,913,000
acres, or in round numbers one fourth the area of the State.
Fresno, Kern, and Tulare, the great irrigated counties of the San
Joaquin Valley, famous for their vineyards and deciduous fruit
orchards, contain 14,737,000 acres. The rich and beautiful fruit
counties of Alameda, Butte, Placer, Sacramento, Santa Clara,
Solano, Sonoma, and Ventura, added to the above, bring the total
area to nearly 50,000,000 acres. It need not be supposed that all
these immense districts can be cultivated. There are deserts and
barren mountains, as well as fertile valleys, plains, and hillsides.
But if only one third of the area of these counties is capable of
being cultivated, and if only one third of the cultivated acreage
is used for fruits, these counties alone can produce, when their
orchards are in full bearing, twenty times as much fruit as the
present entire yield of the State. The future of the fruit indus-
try of California depends upon the growth of the demand for
fruit products. All the other conditions are favorable for the
development of the business, but the problem of the possible
demand can only be solved by continuing to plant trees, gather
fruit, and send it to the markets of the world.

The picturesque side of California fruit-growing is very attract-
ive and must long remain so. Just now everything is in the
creative stage : vineyards and orchards are being extended along
the valleys and up the slopes ; the cabins of pioneers are giving
place to modern cottages and stately dwellings ; villages are fast
becoming towns ; and towns are rising to the rank of cities. Only
about the old missions can one find orchards that deserve to be
called venerable, as measured by European standards. Take out
-a few old trees of olive, fig, orange, and pear, and all that is left
are less than forty years old.

Blossoming springtime in these great orchards is charming,
as almonds, apricots, peaches, and all the rest of the deciduous
fruit trees come into flower over square miles. The very road-
sides are sometimes covered with drifts of petals blown from the
overhanging boughs. Loquats ripen and are fit to market almost

214. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

before the last apple blossoms are gone in the orchards ; cherries
come next, then the early apricots and plums ; the procession goes
on month after month, even after the leaves fall. Late apples,
pears, and Japanese persimmons mark the California December,
mingling as they do with the ripening oranges and lemons and a
few figs hanging on the leafless trees.

Although the details of the orchard work vary considerably
in different parts of California, the more important elements are
much the same everywhere. The winter work of pruning is suc-
ceeded by the spring work of cultivation and the summer work of
harvest. A highly organized system has been developed ; labor-
saving machinery is used to a great and increasing extent; and
the actual cost of producing a pound of fruit can be proved to
have lessened every year. One hesitates to say how cheaply fruit
can be grown under favorable circumstances by intelligent Amer-
icans who know the business. Men are becoming rich at prices
that ten years ago would have seemed ruinous. Of course, there
is a limit to the process of cheapening production, but the end is
still far off. The planting and culture of orchards ; the thinning
of green fruit ; the gathering, handling, packing, shipping, and
marketing of ripe fruit ; the canning, drying, preserving, and other
methods of utilizing fruit products — all these are in a process of
continuous evolution.

The foregoing glimpses of the subject indicate more than the
beginnings of a great industry. Whoever visits California will
see surprisingly vast and imposing results in concrete forms.
Valley after valley, town after town live by the toil of the or-
chardist and vineyardist. The sight is a cheering one, because
successful fruit culture requires a high degree of skill and intel-
ligence, a thickly settled rural community, and especial facilities
for communication with all that these things imply. The road-
improvement societies are little needed in California fruit colo-
nies. Sometimes the macadamized and sprinkled highways extend
six or eight miles out of the town to the very edge of the orchards ;
then, as the wheat fields are reached, they degenerate into very
ordinary country roads.

But the educational requirements of this specialized industry
extend into new departments of science, and are continually de-
veloping so rapidly that only a few trained observers can take
note of the advance. Horticulture, applied to the daily needs of
such industries as I have described, leaves its servants no time to
dream dreams about possibilities of orchard life a century or
even a decade hence. Multitudes of perplexing problems of cul-
ture and management arise, but two great tasks are always with
the educated orchardist or vineyardist. One, briefly stated, is,
" Can I produce new and vastly superior varieties by cross- fer till-

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA.

215

zation and scientific study of the laws of heredity and variation
applied to plants ? " The answer is, " Yes ; there is no assignable
limit to the capacity of our cultivated fruits, and of fruits still
wild, to improve and develop new characteristics."

The second great task relates to the ceaseless struggle with the
lower forms of animal and vegetable life which prey upon useful
forms in immeasurable and innumerable hosts. Gophers and
jack-rabbits are now only pests of minor importance in thickly
settled orchard-districts, but the warfare of the horticulturist

FUMIGATING TENT. Hydrocyanic-acid gas process for destroying scale. Chino Valley.

with fungoid diseases and parasitic insects long ago passed its
amusing stage. It is a serious business of importance to the
whole human race, because whatever threatens the food supply
threatens the life of man. The practical applications of skill
and capital in the field of preventive and remedial agencies have
been remarkable. Every successful Californian fruit-grower has
now learned that he must as regularly treat his trees for scale
and other inflictions as he must plow his land, thin the fruit, or
gather the crop. At the spraying season in the fruit districts

2l6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it is literally true that the odor of the various preparations used
to destroy insect life is universal for miles and for days at a
time. Nine tenths of the discussions in the innumerable local
clubs of fruit-growers that are doing so much for the practical
advance of the industry in California are discussions upon meth-
ods for the destruction of these
pests. Sometimes one sees
hundreds of acres of orchard,
in February, snow-white over
every inch of twig, with " salt
and lime wash," or other acres
are brown with sulphite of
soda or oil and alkali. Now
and then comes an orchard
where the remedies have been
used in too great strength, and
the buds and tender bark seem
blighted and blackened.

The prevailing enemy of
the orchards is the insect fam-
ily Coccidw. The species that
do most harm are the oyster-
shell scale (Mytilaspis porno-
rum), the pernicious scale (As-
pidiotus perniciosus), the yel-
low orange scale (Aspidiotus
citrinus), the red orange scale
(Aonidia aurantii), and the
apricot scale (Lecanium ar-
meniacum). The Florida red
scale (Aspidiotus ficus) and
the mining scale (Chionaspis
biclavis), a very dangerous
species from Tahiti, are being

quarantined against by the horticultural commissioners. A cargo
of 325,000 orange trees infested with the Tahiti species was once
destroyed by Mr. Craw, the quarantine officer of the State Board.
Another group of scale insects known as " cottony scales " (Icerya
and Dactylopius) are among the worst enemies of the orchardist.
Aphides, canker worms, caterpillars, and fungoid diseases are as
yet of much less immediate danger to the fruit-growers than
the various Coccidce of which I have named only the prominent
species.

Many valuable formulas for summer and winter washes, for
kerosene emulsions, and other preparations were first used in Cali-
fornia. The hydrocyanic-acid-gas method is also a Californian

ALMOND BOUGH IN JULT.

THE FRUIT INDUSTRY IN CALIFORNIA. 217

invention. Derricks and tents are used in this gas treatment, and
it solves many difficulties in the way of using washes and the spray
system on the citrus fruit trees. The city of Riverside owns sev-
eral complete sets of the necessary apparatus, and rents at a nom-
inal rate to fruit-growers, who hire operators and furnish the neces-
sary chemicals. Since this is not a technical treatise, however, I
must refer students of the perpetual struggle going on in Cali-
fornia between the orchardist and his insect enemies to the pub-
lications of the Agricultural Department of the State University
and of the State Board of Horticulture. Here, in thousands of
pages, the story is told in every detail. There is not only an active
warfare going on against insect foes, but various predaceous and
parasitic insects that destroy dangerous species have been called
to the aid of the horticulturist.

In conclusion, one must ask, " How goes the fight ? " The sta-
tistics of the fruit industry answer this question. The cost of
destroying insect pests has become a permanent item of expense,
the results of which are increased profits. Care and manage-
ment of orchards now include preparation of the soil ; selection
of varieties adapted to the place ; planting and culture of the
trees ; pruning, according to different systems for different spe-
cies and localities ; the use of special fertilizers, and the destruc-
tion of noxious insect life. The various coccids that infest the
California orchard valleys are only to be found in dangerous
numbers upon the orchards of the careless or the ignorant fruit-
growers. Their multiplication is readily and safely checked on
as large a scale as desired, and at a cost paid many times over
by the increased crop. Sometimes, for several seasons and over
large districts, the coccids disappear, but they return, and re-
newed expenditures of time and skill are necessary to conquer
them again. The expense lessens, however, and the certainty of
success increases, year after year as the fruit-grower becomes a
specialist. Does this appear too difficult ? It is the same old
demand for intellect, inherent in the order of things. Horti-
culture in every division is a science as well as an art, and it
more and more amply rewards the technical skill of the well-
equipped specialist.

DURING the discussion in the British Association on anthropometric measure-
ments, Dr. Garson expressed the opinion that there could be no better system
than that adopted in the United States, where an enormous number of observa-
tions were made on a uniform plan in many schools. If the American plan could
be adopted in Great Britain we should be able to compare children on both sides
of the Atlantic, and have full details of the growth of the English race. The dif-
ferent methods of anthropometric observation now adopted rendered the results
absolutely useless.

VOL. XLIV. — 18

zi8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CRIMINAL WOMAN.

BY Miss HELEN ZIMMERN.

E school of criminal anthropologists is making great strides
in Italy. New works are continually pouring from the
press which record the observations of students of this modern
science, all of them striving to establish the data on which to base
the phenomena of crime and degeneration. The world-famed
name of Prof. Cesare Lombroso constantly appears on new works,
which are fresh guides to science. La Donna Delinquente
(Criminal Woman) is the title of his latest book, which is a joint
work written together with one of his pupils, Prof. G. Ferrero.
This book completes his previous admirable study entitled
L' Uomo Delinquente (Criminal Man). This new study on abnor-
mal woman is a very important work, which offered much greater
difficulties in the way of research and observation than that on
man. Indeed, Lombroso writes in his preface : " The chief results
of our first investigations were in opposition to the usual prem-
ises ; even individual and partial observations seemed to clash ;
so that if one wished to be logical one was obliged to hesitate as
to definite conclusions. We were, however, faithful to the maxim
that we have always pursued ; we followed facts blindly, even
when they appeared to contradict each other and seemed taking
a false turning. And we were not wrong : in the end the facts
which seemed most opposed, fitted into their places like the pieces
of a mosaic and formed a uniform and perfect design, although at
first it seemed as if we were groping in the dark and that it was
difficult to collect them. When at last we reached the desired
goal, we tasted the bitter delight of the hunter who seizes his
prey after scouring rocks and precipices, and feels the joy of his
success redoubled by the losses and fatigues his conquest has
cost him."

In this quotation is given truly the keynote to the whole vol-
ume. It explains to the reader what difficulties the authors have
had to surmount, in order to draw a precise and certain conclu-
sion, and to determine the characteristics of female criminals,
just as other similar works written by modern savants define
those of male offenders. The work is divided into four principal
parts: 1. Normal Woman. 2. Female Crime. 3. Pathological
and Anthropometrical Anatomy of Female Criminals and Pros-
titutes. 4. Biology and Psychology of Female Delinquents and
Prostitutes. The first part is full of observations on normal
women, and is a contrast to the second, which treats of female
criminals in all their different changes of organism and mental
attitude. In the section devoted to normal women, Lombroso

CRIMINAL WOMAN. 219

treats of the women of primitive nations and compares them with
those of civilized peoples. The study is minute, subtle, and val-
uable. Nor does Lombroso hesitate even to make comparisons
with female animals. This attitude, which might be called a want
of respect, Lombroso explains in his preface, saying : " Those who,
writing about women, are not content with the close logic of
facts, but continue or rather counterfeit the traditions of the mid-
dle ages and use chivalry toward the gentle sex, will think that
we have often been wanting in respect to them in our work. But
if we have not respected our most cherished preconceived ideas,
such as the idea of the ' reo nato ' (born criminal), neither have we
been afraid of the apparent contradictions which to ordinary eyes
might have seemed deleterious to our work. How could we be-
come followers of a conventional and unscientific untruth, which
only acquired shape in order to lose it directly ?"

And truly science can not feed on rhetoric, and Lombroso's
books are not those of a poet or novelist, but those of a scientific
man, who believes in his work and who devotes himself seriously
to its exigencies, no matter whither its necessary conclusions
land him. In his study on criminal woman he brings before us
women in every condition of life ; he makes a minute study of
their good qualities and of their defects, analyzing both, and only
speaking when he can draw conclusions from what he has ob-
served and studied. Hence his work is a powerful contribution
to that affirmation of modern theories on crime which are destined
to change entirely the theories of penal law which have ruled up
to the present time.

The first portion of Lombroso's work is divided into chapters
which treat of the females of the zoological world ; of the anatomy
and biology of women ; of the senses and mind of women ; of their
cruelty, pity, and maternity; of their love, ethics, vanity, and
intelligence. These chapters are so many monographs and pre-
sent normal woman from every point of view. She is described
as always inferior to man, because her faculties are less developed.
Strange to say, according to Lombroso, she has less feeling than
man. This seems a direct contradiction of all legends and tradi-
tions. And is it not woman, rather than man, who is the most
ardent opponent to all useless suffering ; is it not women who have
been the chief promoters of anti-cruelty societies, no matter if
this cruelty be practiced on human beings or on animals ? But
the contradiction is explained, according to Lombroso, by the
greater excitability of women and their lesser inhibition. As
soon as the primitive barbarities of sexual selection began to be
mitigated, men chose as wives the prettiest and gentlest instead
of the strongest women, so paying tribute to beauty and the
moral qualities that are associated with it. Thus women were

220 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

perfected in gentleness, grace, and pleasing manners, and with-
drew from those qualities that required strength and cruelty.
Other influences, not least among which is the longer duration of
maternity, cause civilized women to become more compassionate ;
but in every woman there is an undercurrent of cruelty, which
appears either when her nature is wicked or when her strongest
feelings, such as those of mother or wife, are attacked. Hence
Lombroso adduces that woman's attitude with regard to cruelty
and pity is a contradictory one, which will by evolution give way
in favor of gentleness and mercy. In the second part of his
work Lombroso compares the crimes of female animals with the
crimes of primitive and savage women ; and in the third chapter
he gives a brief history of prostitution, which he considers as one
of the great factors in the promotion of crime. Under the head-
ing, "Crimes of Primitive Women," the writer discusses adul-
tery, abortion, infanticide, witchcraft, and poisoning, and con-
cludes thus: "In general, women savages, like other women,
commit fewer crimes than men, although their nature is rather
worse than better ; and the crimes for which they are punished
are in great part conventional, such as those contained in tabu
and witchcraft. What corresponds to crime among men is for
savage women prostitution."

In the Pathological and Anthropometrical Anatomy of Female
Criminals and Prostitutes, which forms the third part of the book,
all the measurements which serve to establish those irregulari-
ties from which the criminal school draws its conclusions have
been taken with the greatest care. According to Lombroso, they
are for women the following : Height, the length of the arms
when opened, and the length of the limbs are inferior in crimi-
nals— weight being, in relation to their stature, greater in prosti-
tutes and assassins than in ordinary women. The hands are lon-
ger and more developed in prostitutes, the foot shorter, the fin-
gers less developed than the rest of the hand. The size and cir-
cumference of the skull in female thieves, and even more so in
prostitutes, are small; vice versa, the facial diameter and espe-
cially the jaw are more developed than in normal specimens. The
hair and iris are apt to be darker in criminals, and up to a cer-
tain point in prostitutes, in whom, however, fair and red hair are
often lighter or darker than the normal color. White hair, which
is rare in ordinary women, is twice as frequent in criminals ; vice
versa, with them baldness is rarer during youth and middle age
than among ordinary women, while wrinkles are more frequent
only when they are middle-aged. It has been difficult to gather
these facts with certainty about prostitutes, who are nearly all
painted and made up even when quite young ; but from the data
Lombroso had to go upon, precocious white hair and baldness

CRIMINAL WOMAN. 221

would be a common defect, as it is in those who are born delin-
quents. Irregularities of countenance are to be met with in a
greater degree in female assassins and poisoners than in infanti-
cides. The real criminal type is rarer among female than male
delinquents; it is found more frequently among prostitutes, and
according to a still more precise study made by Tarnowsky, there
are more female murderers than thieves, while prostitutes are the
most numerous of all.

" In short," as our author writes, " female criminals have less
typical faces, because they are less criminal than men, and women
in every degeneration present fewer digressions than men, be-
cause women being organically conservative preserve the average
type even in their moral aberrations ; besides which, beauty being
a supreme necessity for them, this overcomes all the attacks made
by moral degeneracy. Still, it can not be denied that when
wickedness is deep-rooted, then the general rule which stamps
crime with a type, conquers every obstacle, at least in civilized
races, and this is particularly the case with prostitutes, because
the latter recall the type of primitive woman much more than fe-
male criminals."

The third part closes with a fine chapter on tattooing in
women, the tendency to tattoo being, according to Lombroso, an
infallible indication of criminal tendencies.

The fourth and last part of the work is entitled The Biology
and Psychology of Female Criminals and Prostitutes. It is di-
vided into twelve chapters that are crowded with the most minute
and subtle researches. The first three treat of female criminals
and prostitutes in general ; the others make a separate study of
women born with criminal tendencies and those who have be-
come criminals through incidental causes, such as love ; suicides ;
women born with a natural inclination to prostitution ; women
who have become prostitutes through circumstances; insane
criminals ; epileptic and hysterical delinquents. It is this portion
of the work that has required the greatest circumspection. It is
so easy here to fall into errors in drawing conclusions from such
complicated and various data as presented themselves, and the
more, because the variety of subjects examined is very large.
Lombroso, in making a resume of the second chapter, observes
that fatness of the palm of the hand and irregularities in the
pupil of the eye are greater in prostitutes than in female crimi-
nals, but are never so marked as in male criminals. The reflec-
tions in the pupil of the eye in prostitutes are, however, duller
than in male criminals, this being accounted for by the direct
action of syphilis on the nervous centers.

Few women are born with criminal tendencies, according to
Lombroso; but when this is the case, criminality is more intense

222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and depraved in them than in men. They prove themselves most
cruel, and when compared with normal women they are found
wanting in every attribute belonging to the latter. For example,
among women born with criminal tendencies there is a total want
of maternal affection, pity, and love ; they are excessively erotic
and revengeful, revenge among women naturally criminals being
one of the chief motives for crime. By a curious contrast in this
class a mawkish sentimentality, which is particularly apparent in
their letters, takes the place of real and strong sentiment. For
instance, Avelina wrote to her lover thus: "I am jealous of
Nature, which seems to madden us by its beauty. Dearest one,
don't you think that this beautiful weather is made for lovers
and speaks of love ? " Again : " How I wish the undertaking
which would render us free and happy were over" (the murder of
her husband) ; " I must succeed in it, as paradise is in view. The
turning of the path is full of roses." Lombroso concludes thus :
" Since these women are morally insane, and are wanting in all
noble and deep sentiments, they exchange them for exaggerated
sophistications, just as a coward boasts of a chimerical and ab-
surd courage in his discourses."

Women born criminals are intelligent, and make up for their
weakness and want of physical power to satisfy their natural de-
pravity by having recourse to cunning in their fight against
society. But as a whole the type of the woman born to be a
criminal shows a great likeness to the type of men criminals, and
in the rare case of complete criminality women surpass men in
wickedness. Females who have become delinquents by accident —
and the greater number of female criminals belong to this class —
may be divided into two categories : the one represented by fe-
males born with only slight criminal tendencies, the other con-
taining delinquents who differ very slightly from normal women,
and who sometimes are nothing but ordinary women whose con-
dition in life has been such as to develop that fund of immorality
which is latent in every woman. Prof. Lombroso determines by
indubitable data the much-debated question of the affinity be-
tween prostitution and criminality, concluding that the psycho-
logical and anatomical identity between criminals and born pros-
titutes could not be more complete ; both being morally insane, by
a mathematic axiom they become equal. In drawing his conclu-
sions on women who have become prostitutes through circum-
stances Lombroso says that mentally these are more abnormal
than women who have become criminals by choice, because, ac-
cording to the theory of his school, prostitution and not crimi-
nality is the true degeneration of woman, innate female criminals
being rare and monstrous exceptions. He says: " Chastity is the
strongest feminine sentiment after maternity; it is a sentiment

CRIMINAL WOMAN. 223

toward which the minds of women have worked for so many
centuries in order to create and consolidate it : thus, if a woman,
who though not wanting in chastity loses it easily, she must be
more deeply abnormal than a woman who when exposed to great
temptations forgets to respect other people's property. This fact
is almost normal ; the other being instead most abnormal. This
is the reason that women who have become prostitutes by chance
present many of the characteristics of those born with a natural
tendency to prostitution ; while female criminals who are almost
normal have little in common with innate criminals, these last
being a double exception from many points of view, and a spo-
radic monstrosity." The last chapters treat of insane, epileptic,
and hysterical criminals.

This terrible but most necessary examination of criminal
women occupies a large volume of six hundred and fifty pages.
What remedy can be found ? This is the subject of the second
volume, which will soon appear, and in which Lombroso will speak
of the different social importance of crime and prostitution, the
two different forms of male and female crime. The present vol-
ume is largely illustrated by designs which serve as proofs of the
data collected. It is most interesting to see the reproduction of
the different types of female delinquents. As usual, Lombroso
speaks with the true modesty of a scientific man.

" Not one line of this work," he writes, " justifies the many
tyrannies of which women have been and are still the victims —
from the tabu, which forbids them to eat meat or to touch cocoa-
nuts, up to that which prevents them learning or, still worse, car-
rying on a profession once they have learned it. These are cruel
and overbearing practices by whose means we have certainly
contributed to maintain and, what is worse, to increase the in-
feriority of woman, so as to be able to despoil her for our advan-
tage, while hypocritically we were covering the docile victim
with praises which we did not believe, and which were a prepara-
tion for fresh sacrifices rather than an ornament."

His love for his science he has again and again abundantly
proved. It is deeply interesting to read the conclusion he himself
draws from his labors — a conclusion that "all who believe in
woman and her future can but rejoice in."

MTJOH suggestive work has recently been accomplished in the domain of chem-
istry, in the attempt to apply the principle of gravitation to account for the inter-
actions of the molecules of the elements. " So far," says Prof. Reynolds, of the
University of Dublin, "the fundamental hypothesis of 'Newtonian chemistry'
has led to conclusions which are not at variance with the facts of the science,
while it gives promise of help in obtaining a solution of the great problem of the
nature of chemical action."

224 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE.

BY LESLIE STEPHEN.

TN his deeply interesting Romanes lecture, Prof. Huxley has
-L stated the opinion that the ethical progress of society depends
upon our combating the "cosmic process" which we call the
struggle for existence. Since, as he adds, we inherit the " cosmic
nature " which is the outcome of millions of years of severe train-
ing, it follows that the " ethical nature " may count upon having
to reckon with a tenacious and powerful enemy as long as the
world lasts. This is not a cheerful prospect. It is, as he admits,
an audacious proposal to pit the microcosm against the macrocosm.
We can not help fearing that the microcosm may get the worst
of it. Prof. Huxley has not fully expanded his meaning, and says
much to which I could cordially subscribe. But I think that the
facts upon which he relies admit or require an interpretation
which avoids the awkward conclusion.

Pain and suffering, as Prof. Huxley tells us, are always with
us, and even increase in quantity and intensity as evolution ad-
vances. The fact has been recognized in remote ages long before
theories of evolution had taken their modern form. Pessimism,
from the time of the ancient Hindu philosophers to the time of
their disciple, Schopenhauer, has been in no want of evidence to
support its melancholy conclusions. It would be idle to waste
rhetoric in the attempt to recapitulate so familiar a position.
TKough I am not a pessimist, I can not doubt that there is more
plausibility in the doctrine than I could wish. Moreover, it may
be granted that any attempt to explain or to justify the existence
of evil is undeniably futile. It is not so much that the problem
can not be answered as that it can not even be asked in any intel-
ligible sense. To " explain " a fact is to assign its causes — that is,
to give the preceding set of facts out of which it arose. However
far we might go backward, we should get no nearer to perceiving
any reason for the original fact. If we explain the fall of man by
Adam's eating the apple we are quite unable to say why the apple
should have been created. If we could discover a general theory
of pain, showing, say, that it implied certain physiological condi-
tions, we should be no nearer to knowing why those physiological
conditions should have been what they are. The existence of
pain, in short, is one of the primary data of our problem, not one
of the accidents for which we can hope in any intelligible sense to
account. To give any " justification " is equally impossible. The
book of Job really suggests an impossible, one may almost say a
meaningless, problem. We can give an intelligible meaning to a
demand for justice when we can suppose that a man has certain

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 225

antecedent rights which another man may respect or neglect.
But this has no meaning as between the abstraction " Nature "
and the concrete facts which are themselves Nature. It is unjust
to treat equal claims differently. But it is not " unjust " in any
intelligible sense that one being should be a monkey and another
a man, any more than that one part of me should be a hand and
another a head. The question would only arise if we supposed that
the man and the monkey had existed before they were created,
and had then possessed claims to equal treatment. The most logi-
cal theologians indeed admit that as between creature and creator
there can be properly no question of justice. The pot and the
potter can not complain of each other. If the writer of Job had
been able to show that the virtuous were rewarded and the vicious
punished, he would only have transferred the problem to another
issue. The judge might be justified but the creator would be
condemned. How can it be just to place a being where he is cer-
tain to sin and then to damn him for sinning ? That is the prob-
lem to which no answer can be given ; and which already implies
a confusion of ideas. We apply the conception of justice in a
sphere where it is not applicable, and naturally fail to get any
intelligible answer.

The question therefore resolves itself into a different one.
We can neither explain nor justify the existence of pain; but of
course we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, pain predominates
over pleasure, and we can ask whether, as a matter of fact, the
" cosmic processes " tend to promote or discourage virtuous con-
duct. Does the theory of the " struggle for existence " throw any
new light upon the general problem ? I am quite unable to see,
for my own part, that it really makes any difference : evil exists ;
and the question whether evil predominates over good can only,
I should say, be decided by an appeal to experience. One source
of evil is the conflict of interests. Every beast preys upon others,
and man, according to the old saying, is a wolf to man. All that
the Darwinian theory can do is to enable us to trace the conse-
quences of this fact in certain directions, but it neither reveals
the fact nor makes it more or less an essential part of the process.
It " explains " certain phenomena, in the sense of showing their
connection with previous phenomena, but does riot show why the
phenomena should present themselves at all. If we indulge our
minds in purely fanciful constructions, we may regard the actual
system as good or bad, just as we choose to imagine for its alter-
native a better or a worse system. If everybody had been put
into a world where there was no pain, or where each man could
get all he wanted without interfering with his neighbors, we may
fancy that things would have been pleasanter. If the struggle,
which we all know to exist, had no effect in promoting the " sur-

226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vival of the fittest," things — so at least some of us may think —
would have been worse. But such fancies have nothing to do
with scientific inquiries. "We have to take things as they are, and
make the best of them.

The common feeling, no doubt, is different. The incessant
struggle between different races suggests a painful view of the
universe, as Hobbes's natural state of war suggested painful
theories as to human nature. War is evidently immoral, we
think ; and a doctrine which makes the whole process of evolu-
tion a process of war must be radically immoral too. The strug-
gle, it is said, demands " ruthless self-assertion/' and the hunting
down of all competitors ; and such phrases certainly have an un-
pleasant sound. But, in the first place, the use of the epithets
implies an anthropomorphism to which we have no right so long
as we are dealing with the inferior species. We are then in a re-
gion to which moral ideas have no direct application, and where
the moral sentiments exist only in germ, if they can properly be
said to exist at all. Is it fair to call a wolf " ruthless " because it
eats a sheep and fails to consider the transaction from the sheep's
point of view ? We must surely admit that if the wolf is without
mercy he is also without malice. We call an animal ferocious
because a man who acted in the same way would be ferocious.
But the man is really ferocious because he is really aware of the
pain which he inflicts. The wolf, I suppose, has no more recog-
nition of the sheep's feelings than a man has of feelings in the
oyster or the potato. For him, they are simply non-existent ; and
it is just as inappropriate to think of the wolf as cruel as it would
be to call the sheep cruel for eating grass. Are we, then, to say that
" Nature " is cruel because the arrangement increases the sum of
general suffering ? That is a problem which I do not feel able to
answer ; but it is at least obvious that it can not be answered off-
hand in the affirmative. To the individual sheep it matters noth-
ing whether he is eaten by the wolf or dies of disease or starvation.
He has to die anyway, and the particular way is unimportant.
The wolf is simply one of the limiting forces upon sheep, and, if
he were removed, others would come into play. The sheep, left
to himself, would still have a practical illustration of the doctrine
of Malthus. If, as evolutionists tell us, the hostility of the wolf
tends to improve the breed of sheep, to encourage him to climb
better and to sharpen his wits, the sheep may be, on the whole,
the better for the wolf : in this sense, at least, thus the sheep of a
wolfless region might lead a more wretched existence, and be less
capable animals and more subject to disease and starvation than
the sheep in a wolf -haunted region. The wolf may, so far, be a
blessing in disguise.

This suggests another obvious remark. When we speak of the

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 227

struggle for existence, the popular view seems to construe this
into the theory that the world is a mere cockpit, in which one
race carries on an internecine struggle with the other. If the
wolves are turned in with the sheep, the first result will be that
all the sheep will become mutton, and the last that there will be
one big wolf with all the others inside him. But this is contrary
to the essence of the doctrine. Every race depends, we all hold,
upon its environment, and the environment includes all the other
races. If some, therefore, are in conflict, others are mutually
necessary. If the wolf ate all the sheep, and the sheep ate all the
grass, the result would be the extirpation of all the sheep and all
the wolves, as well as all the grass. The struggle necessarily im-
plies reciprocal dependence in a countless variety of ways. There
is not only a conflict, but a system of tacit alliances. One species
is necessary to the existence of others, though the multiplication of
some implies also the dying out of particular rivals. The conflict
implies no cruelty, as I have said, and the alliance no good will.
The wolf neither loves the sheep (except as mutton) nor hates
him ; but he depends upon him as absolutely as if he were aware
of the fact. The sheep is one of the wolf's necessaries of life.
When we speak of the struggle for existence, we mean, of course,
that there is at any given period a certain equilibrium between
all the existing species ; it changes, though it changes so slowly
that the process is imperceptible and difficult to realize even to
the scientific imagination. The survival of any species involves
the disappearance of rivals no more than the preservation of
allies. The struggle, therefore, is so far from internecine that it
necessarily involves co-operation. It can not even be said that it
necessarily implies suffering. People, indeed, speak as though the
extinction of a race involved suffering in the same way as the
slaughter of an individual. It is plain that this is not a necessary
though it may sometimes be the actual result. A corporation
may be suppressed without injury to its members. Every indi-
vidual will die before long, struggle or no struggle. If the rate of
reproduction fails to keep up with the rate of extinction, the
species must diminish. But this might happen without any in-
crease of suffering. If the boys in a district discover how to
take birds' eggs, they might soon extirpate a species ; but it does
not follow that the birds would individually suffer. Perhaps they
would feel themselves relieved from a disagreeable responsibility.
The process by which a species is improved, the dying out of the
least fit, implies no more suffering than we know to exist inde-
pendently of any doctrine as to a struggle. When we use an-
thropomorphic language, we may speak of "self-assertion." But
" self-assertion," minus the anthropomorphism, means self-preser-
vation ; and that is merely a way of describing the fact that an

228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

animal or plant which is well adapted to its conditions of life is
more likely to live than an animal which is ill adapted. I have
some difficulty in imagining how any other arrangement can even
be supposed possible. It seems to be almost an identical proposi-
tion that the healthiest and strongest will generally live longest ;
and the conception of a " struggle for existence " only enables us
to understand how this results in certain progressive modifica-
tions of the species. If we could even for a moment have fancied
that there was no pain and disease, and that some beings were
not more liable than others to those evils, I might admit that
the new doctrine has made the world darker. As it is, it seems to
me that it leaves the data just what they were before, and only
shows us that they have certain previously unsuspected bearings
upon the history of the world.

One other point must be mentioned. Not only are species
interdependent as well as partly in competition, but there is an
absolute dependence in all the higher species between its different
members which may be said to imply a de facto altruism, as the
dependence upon other species implies a de facto co-operation.
Every animal, to say nothing else, is absolutely dependent for a
considerable part of its existence upon its parents. The young
bird or beast could not grow up unless its mother took care of it
for a certain period. There is, therefore, no struggle as between
mother and progeny, but, on the contrary, the closest possible
alliance. Otherwise life would be impossible. The young being
defenseless, their parents could exterminate them if they pleased,
and by so doing would exterminate the race. This, of course,
constantly involves a mutual sacrifice of the mother to her young.
She has to go through a whole series of operations, which strain
her own strength and endanger her own existence, but which are
absolutely essential to the continuance of the race. It may be
anthropomorphic to attribute any maternal emotions of the
human kind to the animal. The bird, perhaps, sits upon her eggs
because they give her an agreeable sensation, or. if you please,
from a blind instinct which somehow determines her to the prac-
tice. She does not look forward, we may suppose, to bringing
up a family, or speculate upon the delights of domestic affec-
tion. I only say that as a fact she behaves in a way which
is at once injurious to her own chances of survival and abso-
lutely necessary to the survival of the species. The abnor-
mal bird who deserts her nest escapes many dangers ; but if all
birds were devoid of the instinct, the birds would not survive a
generation.

Now, I ask, what is the difference which takes place when the
monkey gradually loses his tail and sets up a superior brain ? Is
it properly to be described as a development or improvement of

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 229

the " cosmic process," or as the beginning of a prolonged contest
against it ?

In the first place, so far as man "becomes a reasonable being,
capable of foresight and of the adoption of means to ends, he
recognizes the necessity of these tacit alliances. He believes it to
be his interest not to exterminate everything, but to exterminate
those species alone whose existence is incompatible with his own.
The wolf eats every sheep that he comes across as long as his ap-
petite lasts. If there are too many wolves, the process is checked
by the starvation of the supernumerary eaters. Man can preserve
as many sheep as he wants, and may also proportion the numbers
of his own species to the possibilities of future supply. Many of
the lower species thus become subordinate parts of the social
organism — that is to say, of the new equilibrium which has been
established. There is so far a reciprocal advantage. The sheep
who is preserved with a view to mutton gets the advantage,
though he is not kept with a view to his own advantage. Of all
arguments for vegetarianism, none is so weak as the argument
from humanity. The pig has a stronger interest than any one in
the demand for bacon. If all the world were Jewish, there would
be no pigs at all. He has to pay for his privileges by an early
death ; but he makes a good bargain of it. He dies young, and
though we can hardly infer the " love of the gods/* we must ad-
mit that he gets a superior race of beings to attend to his comforts,
moved by the strongest possible interest in his health and vigor,
and induced by its own needs, perhaps, to make him a little too
fat for comfort, but certainly also to see that he has a good sty,
and plenty to eat every day of his life. Other races, again, are
extirpated as " ruthlessly " as in the merely instinctive struggle
for existence. We get rid of wolves and snakes as well as we can,
and more systematically than can be done by their animal com-
petitors. The process does not necessarily involve cruelty, and
certainly does not involve a diminution of the total of happiness.
The struggle for existence means the substitution of a new system
of equilibrium, in which one of the old discords has been removed,
and the survivors live in greater harmony. If the wolf is extir-
pated as an internecine enemy, it is that there may be more sheep
when sheep have become our allies and the objects of our earthly
providence. The result may be, perhaps I might say must be, a
state in which, on the whole, there is a greater amount of life sup-
ported on the planet : and therefore, as those will think who are
not pessimists, a decided gain on the balance. At any rate, the
difference so far is that the condition which was in all cases ne-
cessary, is now consciously recognized as necessary ; and that we
deliberately aim at a result which always had to be achieved on
penalty of destruction. So far, again, as morality can be estab-

230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lished on purely prudential grounds, the same holds good of rela-
tions between human beings themselves. Men begin to perceive
that, even from a purely personal point of view, peace is prefer-
able to war. If war is unhappily still prevalent, it is at least not
war in which every clan is fighting with its neighbors, and where
conquest means slavery or extirpation. Millions of men are at
peace within the limits of a modern state, and can go about their
business without cutting each other's throats. When they fight
with other nations they do not enslave nor massacre their prison-
ers. Taking the purely selfish ground, a Hobbes can prove con-
clusively that everybody has benefited by the social compact
which substituted peace and order for the original state of war.
Is this, then, a reversal of the old state of things — a combating of
a " cosmic process " ? I should rather say that it is a development
of the tacit alliances, and a modification so far of the direct or in-
ternecine conflict. Both were equally implied in the older condi-
tions and both still exist. Some races form alliances, while others
are crowded out of existence. Of course, I cease to do some things
which I should have done before. I don't attack the first man I
meet in the street and take his scalp. The reason is that I don't
expect that he will take mine ; for, if I did, I fear that even as a
civilized being, I should try to anticipate his intentions. This
merely means that we have both come to see that we have a com-
mon interest in keeping the peace. And this, again, merely means
that the alliance which was always an absolutely necessary condi-
tion of the survival of the species has now been extended through
a wider area. The species could not have got on at all if there
had not been so much alliance as is necessary for its reproduction
and for the preservation of its young for some years of helpless-
ness. The change is simply that the small circle which included
only the primitive family or class has extended, so that we can
meet members of the same race on terms which were previously
confined to the minuter group. We have still to exterminate and
still to preserve. The mode of employing our energies has
changed, but not the essential nature.

Morality proper, however, has so far not emerged. It begins
when sympathy begins ; when we really desire the happiness of
others ; or, as Kant says, when we treat other men as an end and
not simply as a means. Undoubtedly this involves a new principle
no less than the essential principle of all true morality. Still I
have to ask whether it implies a combating or a continuation of a
cosmic process. Now, as I have observed, even the animal mother
shows what I have called a de facto altruism. She has instincts
which, though dangerous to the individual, are essential for the
race. The human mother sacrifices herself with a consciousness
of the results to herself, and her personal fears are overcome by

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 231

the strength of her affections. She will endure a painful death
to save her children from suffering. The animal sacrifices herself,
but without consciousness and therefore without moral worth.
This is merely the most striking exemplification of the general
process of the development of morality. Conduct is first regarded
purely with a view to the effects upon the agent, and is therefore
enforced by extrinsic penalties, by consequences, that is, supposed
to be attached to it by the will of some ruler, natural or supernat-
ural. The instinct which comes to regard such conduct as bad in
itself, which implies a dislike of giving pain to others, not merely
a dislike to the gallows, grows up under such protection, and in
the really moralized being acquires a strength which makes the
external penalty superfluous. This, indubitably, is the greatest
of all changes, the critical fact which decides whether we are to
regard conduct simply as useful or also to regard it as moral in
the strictest sense. But I should still call it a development and
not a reversal of the previous process. The conduct which we
call virtuous is the same conduct externally which we before re-
garded as useful. The difference is that the simple fact of its
utility — that is, of its utility to others and to the race in general
— has now become the sufficient motive for the action as well as
the implicit cause of the action. In the earlier stages, when no
true sympathy existed, men and animals were still forced to act
in a certain way because it was beneficial to others. They now
act in that way because they perceive it to be beneficial to others.
The whole history of moral evolution seems to imply this. We
may go back to a period at which the moral law is identified with
the general customs of the race ; at which there is no perception
of any clear distinction between that which is moral and that
which is simply customary ; between that which is imposed by a
law in the strict sense and that which is dictated by general moral
principles. In such a state of things, the motives for obedience
partake of the nature of " blind instincts." No definite reason for
them is present to the mind of the agent, and it does not occur to
him even to demand a reason. " Our father did so and we do so "
is the sole and sufficient explanation of their conduct. Thus in-
stinct again may be traced back by evolutionists to the earliest
period at which the instincts implied in the relations between
the sexes, or between parents and offspring, existed. They were
the germ from which has sprung all morality such as we now
recognize.

Morality, then, implies the development of certain instincts
which are essential to the race, but which may in an indefinite
number of cases be injurious to the individual. The particular
mother is killed because she obeys her natural instincts ; but if it
were not for mothers and their instincts, the race would come to

23 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an end. Prof. Huxley speaks of the " fanatical individualism " of
our time as failing to construct morality from the analogy of the
cosmic process. An individualism which regards the cosmic
process as equivalent simply to an internecine struggle of each
against all must certainly fail to construct a satisfactory morality,
and I will add that any individualism which fails to recognize
fully the social factor, which regards society as an aggregate in-
stead of an organism, will, in my opinion, find itself in difficulties.
But I also submit that the development of the instincts which
directly correspond to the needs of the race, is merely another
case in which we aim consciously at an end which was before an
unintentional result of our actions. Every race, above the lowest,
has instincts which are only intelligible by the requirements of
the race ; and has both to compete with some and to form alli-
ances with others of its fellow-occupants of the planet. Both in
the unmoralized condition and in that in which morality has be-
come most developed, these instincts have the common charac-
teristics that they may be regarded as conditions of the power of
the race to maintain its position in the world, and so, speaking
roughly, to preserve or increase its own vitality.

I will not pause to insist upon this so far as regards many
qualities which are certainly moral, though they may be said to
refer primarily to the individual. That chastity and temperance,
truthfulness and energy, are, on the whole, advantages both to
the individual and to the race, does not, I fancy, require elaborate
proof ; nor need I argue at length that the races in which they
are common will therefore have inevitable advantages in the
struggle for existence. Of all qualities which enable a race to
hold its own, none is more important than the power of organiz-
ing ecclesiastically, politically, and socially, and that power im-
plies the prevalence of justice, and the existence of mutual confi-
dence, and therefore of all the social virtues. The difficulty seems
to be felt in regard to those purely altruistic impulses which, at
first glance at any rate, make it apparently -our duty to preserve
those who would otherwise be unfit to live. Virtue, says Prof.
Huxley, is directed " not so much to the survival of the fittest/'
as to the " fitting of as many as possible to survive." I do not
dispute the statement, I think it true in a sense ; but I have a
difficulty as to its application.

Morality, it is obvious, must be limited by the conditions in
which we are placed. What is impossible is not a duty. One
condition plainly is that the planet is limited. There is only
room for a certain number of living beings. It is one conse-
quence that we do in fact go on suppressing the unfit, and can
not help going on suppressing them. Is it desirable that it should
be otherwise ? Should we wish, for example, that America could

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 233

still be a hunting ground for savages ? Is it better that a country
should contain a million red men or twenty millions of civilized
whites ? Undoubtedly the moralist will say with truth that the
methods of extirpation adopted by Spaniards and Englishmen
were detestable. I need not say that I agree with him and hope
that such methods may be abolished wherever any remnant of
them exists. But I say so partly just because I believe in the
struggle for existence. This process underlies morality, and oper-
ates whether we are moral or not. The most civilized race — that
which has the greatest knowledge, skill, power of organization —
will, I hold, have an inevitable advantage in the struggle, even if
it does not use the brutal means which are superfluous as well as
cruel. All the natives who lived in America a hundred years
ago would be dead now in any case, even if they had invariably
been treated with the greatest humanity, fairness, and considera-
tion. Had they been unable to suit themselves to new conditions
of life, they would have suffered a euthanasia instead of a partial
extirpation ; and had they suited themselves they would either
have been absorbed or become a useful part of the population.
To abolish the old brutal method is not to abolish the struggle
for existence, but to make the result depend upon a higher order
of qualities than those of the mere piratical viking.

Mr. Pearson has been telling us in his most interesting book
that the negro may not improbably hold his own in Africa. I
can not say that I regard this as an unmixed evil. Why should
there not be parts of the world in which races of inferior intelli-
gence or energy should hold their own ? I am not so anxious to
see the whole earth covered by an indefinite multiplication of the
cockney type. But I only quote the suggestion for another rea-
son. Till recent years the struggle for existence was carried on as
between Europeans and negroes by simple violence and brutality.
The slave trade and its consequences have condemned the whole
continent to barbarism. That undoubtedly was part of the strug-
gle for existence. But if Mr. Pearson's guess should be verified,
the results have been so far futile as well as disastrous. The negro
has been degraded, and yet, after all our brutality, we can not
take his place. Therefore, besides the enormous evils to slave-
trading countries themselves, the lowering of their moral tone,
the substitution of piracy for legitimate commerce, and the
degradation of the countries which bought the slaves, the supe-
rior race has not even been able to suppress the inferior. But the
abolition of this monstrous evil does not involve the abolition but
the humanization of the struggle. The white man, however mer-
ciful he becomes, may gradually extend over such parts of the
country as are suitable to him, and the black man will hold the
rest, and acquire such arts and civilization as he is capable of

VOL. XLIT. 19

234. THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

appropriating. The absence of cruelty would not alter the fact
that the fittest race would extend ; but it may insure that what-
ever is good in the negro may have a chance of development in
his own sphere, and that success in the struggle will be decided by
more valuable qualities.

Without venturing further into a rather speculative region,
I need only indicate the bearing of .such considerations upon prob-
lems nearer home. It is often complained that the tendency of
modern civilization is to preserve the weakly, and therefore to
lower the vitality of the race. This seems to involve inadmissible
assumptions. In the first place, the process by which the weaker
are preserved consists in suppressing various conditions unfavor-
able to human life in general. Sanitary legislation, for example,
aims at destroying the causes of many of the diseases from which
our forefathers suffered. If we can suppress the smallpox, we of
course save many weakly children, who would have died had they
been attacked. But we also remove one of the causes which
weakened the constitutions of many of the survivors. I do not
know by what right we can say that such legislation, or again the
legislation which prevents the excessive labor of children, does
more harm by preserving the weak than it does good by prevent-
ing the weakening of the strong. But one thing is at any rate
clear. To preserve life is to increase the population, and there-
fore to increase the competition, and, in other words, to intensify
the struggle for existence. The process is as broad as it is long.
If we could insure that every child born should grow up to ma-
turity, the result would be to double the severity of the compe-
tition for support. What we should have to show, therefore, in
order to justfy the inference of a deterioration due to this process,
would be, not that it simply increased the number of the candi-
dates for living, but that it gave to feebler candidates a differen-
tial advantage ; that they are now more fitted than they were be-
fore for ousting their superior neighbors from the chances of sup-
port. But I can see no reason for supposing such a consequence
to be probable or even possible. The struggle for existence, as I
have suggested, rests upon the unalterable facts that the world is
limited and the population elastic, and under all conceivable cir-
cumstances we shall still have in some way or other to proportion
our numbers to our supplies, and under all circumstances those
who are fittest by reason of intellectual or moral or physical quali-
ties will have the best chance of occupying good places, and leav-
ing descendants to supply the next generation. It is surely not
less true that in the civilized as much as in the most barbarous
race, the healthiest are the most likely to live, and the most likely
to be ancestors. If so, the struggle will still be carried on upon
the same principles, though certainly in a different shape.

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 235

It is true that this suggests one of the most difficult questions
of the time. It is suggested, for example, that in some respects
the " highest " specimens of the race are not the healthiest or the
fittest. Genius, according to some people, is a variety of disease,
and intellectual power is won by a diminution of reproductive
power. A lower race, again, if we measure " high " and " low " by
intellectual capacity, may oust a higher race, because it can support
itself more cheaply, or, in other words, because it is more efficient
for industrial purposes. Without presuming to pronounce upon
such questions, I will simply ask whether this does not interpret
Prof. Huxley's remark about that "cosmic nature" which, he
says, is still so strong, and which is likely to be strong so long as
men require stomachs. The fact is simply that we have not to
suppress it, but to adapt it to new circumstances. We are engaged
in working out a gigantic problem : What is the best, in the sense
of the most efficient, type of human being ? What is the best
combination of brains and stomach ? We turn out saints who are
<l too good to live," and philosophers who have run too rapidly to
brains. They do not answer in practice, because they are instru-
ments too delicate for the rough work of daily life. They may
give a foretaste of qualities which will be some day possible for
the average man ; of intellectual and moral qualities which,
though now exceptional, may become commonplace. But the
best stock for the race are those in whom we have been lucky
enough to strike out the happy combination in which greater
intellectual power is gained without the loss of physical vigor.
Such men, it is probable, will not deviate so widely from the aver-
age type. The reconciliation of the two conditions can only be
effected by a very gradual process of slowly edging onward in
the right direction. Meanwhile the theory of a struggle for
existence justifies us, instead of condemning us, for preserving
the delicate child, who may turn out to be a Newton or a Keats,
because he will leave to us the advantage of his discoveries or his
poems, while his physical feebleness assures us that he will not
propagate his race.

This may lead to a final question : Does the morality of a race
strengthen or weaken it ; fit it to hold its own in the general equi-
librium, or make its extirpation by lower races more probable ?
I do not suppose that anybody would deny what I have already
suggested, that the more moral the race, the more harmonious and
the better organized, the better it is fitted for holding its own.
But if this be admitted, we must also admit that the change is
not that it has ceased to struggle, but that it struggles by differ-
ent means. It holds its own, not merely by brute force, but by
justice, humanity, and intelligence, while, it may be added, the
possession of such qualities does not weaken the brute force,

236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

where such a quality is still required. The most civilized races
are, of course, also the most formidable in war. But, if we take
the opposite alternative, I must ask how any quality which really
weakens the vitality of the race can properly be called moral ? I
should entirely repudiate any rule of conduct which could be
shown to have such a tendency. This, indeed, indicates what
seems to me to be the chief difficulty with most people. Charity,
you say, is a virtue ; charity increases beggary, and so far tends
to produce a feebler population ; therefore, a moral quality clearly
tends to diminish the vigor of a nation. The answer is, of
course, obvious, and I am confident that Prof. Huxley would so
far agree with me. It is that all charity which fosters a degraded
class is therefore immoral. The " fanatical individualism " of to-
day has its weaknesses ; but in this matter it seems to me that we
see the weakness of the not less fanatical " collectivism."

The question, in fact, how far any of the socialistic or reli-
gious schemes of to-day are right or wrong, depends upon our an-
swer to the question how far they tend to produce a vigorous or
an enervated population. If I am asked to subscribe to General
Booth's scheme, I inquire first whether the scheme is likely to
increase or diminish the number of helpless hangers-on upon the
efficient part of society. Will the whole nation consist in larger
proportions of active and responsible workers, or of people who
are simply burdens upon the real workers ? The answer decides
not only the question whether it is expedient, but also the ques-
tion whether it is right or wrong, to support the proposed scheme.
Every charitable action is so far a good action that it implies
sympathy for suffering ; but if it implies such want of prudence
that it increases the evil which it means to remedy, it becomes
for that reason a bad action. To develop sympathy without de-
veloping foresight is just one of the one-sided developments which
fail to constitute a real advance in morality, though I will not
deny that it may incidentally lead to an advance.

I hold, then, that the " struggle for existence " belongs to an
underlying order of facts to which moral epithets can not be
properly applied. It denotes a condition of which the moralist
has to take account, and to which morality has to be adapted, but
which, just because it is a "cosmic process/' can not be altered,
however much we may alter the conduct which it dictates.
Under all conceivable circumstances, the race has to adapt itself
to the environment, and that necessarily implies a conflict as well
as an alliance. The preservation of the fittest, which is surely a
good thing, is merely another aspect of the dying out of the unfit,
which is hardly a bad thing. The feast which Nature spreads
before us, according to Malthus's metaphor, is only sufficient for a
limited number of guests, and the one question is how to select

ETHICS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 237

them. The use of morality is to humanize the struggle ; to mini-
mize the suffering of those who lose the game ; and to offer the
prizes to the qualities which are advantageous to all rather than
to those which serve to intensify the bitterness of the conflict.
This implies the growth of foresight, which is an extension of the
earlier instinct, and enables men to adapt themselves to the
future, and to learn from the past, as well as to act upon the
immediate impulse of present events. It implies still more the
development of the sympathy which makes every man feel for
the sufferings of all, and which, as social organization becomes
closer, and the dependence of each constituent atom upon the
whole organization is more vividly realized, extends the range of
a man's interests beyond his own private needs. In that sense,
again, it must stimulate " collectivism " at the expense of a crude
individualism, and condemns the doctrine which, as Prof. Huxley
puts it, would forbid us to restrain the member of a community
from doing his best to destroy it. If it be right to restrain such
conduct, it is right to carry on the conflict against all anti-social
agents or tendencies. I should certainly hold any form of col-
lectivism to be immoral which denied the essential doctrine of
the abused individualist, the necessity, that is, for individual re-
sponsibility. We have surely to suppress the murderer as our
ancestors suppressed the wolf. We have to suppress both the
external enemies, the noxious animals whose existence is incom-
patible with our own, and the internal enemies which are inju-
rious elements in the society itself. That is, we have to work
for the same end of eliminating the least fit. Our methods are
changed ; we desire to suppress poverty, not to extirpate the poor
man. We give inferior races a chance of taking whatever place
they are fit for, and try to supplant them with the least possible
severity if they are unfit for any place. But the suppression of
poverty supposes not the confiscation of wealth, which would
hardly suppress poverty in the long run, nor even the adoption
of a system of living which would make it easier for the idle and
the good-for-nothing to survive. The progress of civilization de-
pends, I should say, on the extension of the sense of duty which
each man owes to society at large. That involves a constitution
of society which, although we abandon the old methods of hang-
ing, and flogging, and shooting down — methods which corrupted
the inflicters of punishment by diminishing their own sense of
responsibility — may give an advantage to the prudent and indus-
trious and make it more probable that they will be the ancestors
of the next generation. A system which should equalize the
advantages of the energetic and the helpless would begin by de-
moralizing, and would very soon lead to an unprecedented intensi-
fication of the struggle for existence. The probable result of a

238

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ruthless socialism would be the adoption of very severe means for
suppressing those who did not contribute their share of work.
But in any case, as it seems, we never get away or break away
from the inevitable fact. If individual ends could be suppressed,
if every man worked for the good of society as energetically as
for his own, we should still feel the absolute necessity of propor-
tioning the whole body- to the whole supplies obtainable from the
planet, and to preserve the equilibrium of mankind relatively to
the rest of Nature. That day is probably distant, but even upon
that hypothesis the struggle for existence would still be with us,
and there would be the same necessity for preserving the fittest
and suppressing, as gently as might be, those who were unfit.—
Contemporary Review.

THE CALUMET IN THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY.

BY PROF. G. H. PEKKINS.

OF the many interesting objects which have been found in
different localities in the United States none more fully
illustrate the artistic skill and taste of the aborigines than do
the stone pipes, and it is probably true that they represent the
finest work in stone which the Indian was able to execute. In
form, though not perhaps in material, the pipes exhibit greater
variety and less conformity to conventional types than do other
classes of prehistoric objects. No other specimens in our ar-
chaeological collections recall so completely the ceremonial usages
of the Indians as do the pipes; no other ob-
jects occupied so important a place among the
possessions of the tribe or the individual, as
the student of Indian customs soon learns.

Pipes there may have been, and undoubt-
edly were, many of them of common mold,
which were used and regarded very much as
are modern pipes, simply as a means of social
or personal enjoyment, and these may have been
of earthenware, or even of wood or bone, more
often than of stone ; but the real calumet, the
elaborately wrought ceremonial pipe, was a
very different affair. With this were associated in the Indian
mind the most solemn ceremonies, the most impressive experi-
ences of life. Without the calumet no treaty could be ratified,
no war declared, no important tribal or religious question settled.
This single object combined in itself a dignity and an essential
significance which can hardly be overestimated.

It is not strange, therefore, that the pipemaker should have

FIG. 1.

THE CALUMET IN THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY. 239

exercised his best skill and his most patient labor upon that
which he wrought. As Dr. Abbott, in Primitive Industry, well
says, " To know the whole history of tobacco, and the custom of
smoking and of the origin of the pipe, would be to solve many of
the most interesting problems of American ethnology."

The beauty and variety of the pipes which have been found in
the Mississippi Valley are unequaled in specimens from any

FIG. 2.

FIG. 3.

other part of the country, and because of this, and because these
pipes are so well known, the simpler forms of less favored locali-
ties have sometimes been too much overlooked. But the less
elaborate New England specimens are not without importance
because they have a place in the archaeology of the whole country.

In beauty of material and in finish the pipes of the Champlain
Valley are quite equal to the best of the mound pipes, but in
elaborateness of form they are much inferior. So far as our an-
cient pipe-makers attempted the execution of any particular form,
they usually did very well — that is, unless they destroyed all their
failures ; but they do not appear to have tried to fashion any very
difficult shapes, and very seldom attempted to imitate those ani-
mals which were common about them as did the Western tribes.
Inasmuch as no two of our pipes are the same in size or form,
there is no single type which represents this region.

It is probable that the pipes which have been found in the
Champlain Valley were used and, unless obtained in trade or war,
made by Algonkins or Iroquois, for these tribes occupied the
region from no one knows how early times. Pipes, whether of
stone or earthenware, are very uncommon in the Champlain Val-
ley, though diligent search has brought to light a considerable
number. In the descriptions and illustrations which are here
presented it is the intention of the writer to give a tolerably com-

240

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plete account of such specimens of the class under consideration
as have been obtained up to the present time. All the specimens
figured are in the collection of the University of Vermont, and
all, except Fig. 11, are given of full size.

Our simplest pipes — and it is difficult to imagine a simpler
form — are represented by Fig. 1. This is merely a rounded bit
of steatite of a grayish color, fairly well shaped and smoothly
finished. The excavation is of the same general form as the out-
side and is very well done. At the top it is rather more than
half an inch across. As the figure shows, the opening for the
stem is a little below the middle of one side. It is about a fourth
of an inch in diameter on the outside, and slopes upward, so that
the bowl hung obliquely on the stem. Such a pipe as this must
have had some sort of a stem, either a bit of hollow reed, a twig
with the pith removed, or the wing bone of a bird.

In Fig. 2 we see a somewhat more elaborate specimen, though
the material is very much the same. As the line showing the
excavation indicates, the stem, if there was one, entered at the
bottom. It is also noticeable that the inside does not at all cor-

Fio. 4.

FIG. 5.

respond with the outside, but is more regular. About the upper
margin there is a rather weak attempt at decoration in rudely
incised lines around the bowl and oblique lines between. This
pipe is well polished. It is two inches and a quarter long and
seven eighths of an inch in diameter at the top.

No other specimen from this region is in any respect like that
shown in Fig. 3. As may be readily seen in the figure, there are
two bowls of nearly equal size. The separation of the bowls is,

THE CALUMET IN THE CHAMP LAIN VALLEY. 241

however, more apparent on the outside than it is inside, since the
partition is largely cut away, the two cavities being distinct only
at the top and a short distance below it. Most unfortunately, the
lower end is broken, so that it is not possible to know exactly how
it terminated. Probably, however, this part
of the pipe grew narrower and formed a
stem or mouthpiece. As is true of most of
our pipes, the excavated portion was cut,
not bored, for the numerous tool-marks are
parallel with the long axis of the bowl;
moreover, the openings are not quite circu-
lar, as they must have been if the bowl had
been drilled out. The opening at the top of
each is nearly five eighths of an inch in
greatest diameter. The height is about two
inches. At a is the small opening into the
double bowl. The specimen is very well pol-
ished. The material is a fine-grained, dark-
green steatite. It was found near Swanton,
in the northern part of Vermont, as also
were those previously described.

Another very unique specimen is seen in
Fig. 4. It is apparently intended to repre-
sent some quadruped, and if so it is espe-
cially interesting, as the only object thus
far discovered in this region having the
form of an animal. Although a rather
clumsy piece of work, I think that there can
be no doubt that the maker tried to fashion
the pipe after a bear or some other familiar

animal. The four legs are well defined, and those on the one side
are separated from those on the other by a deep groove. The
material is the usual steatite, of a gray color, and the surface is
smooth and fairly well polished. As the figure shows, there are
about the bowl several oval or quadrangular excavations, which
may have been considered sufficiently ornamental in themselves,
or they may have been filled by some ornamental bits of stone or
shell. As compared with the entire pipe, the hollow of the bowl
is small and not much larger than the opening for the stem. The
length of this pipe is over two inches and the width is one inch,
while the height is a little more.

In an article by the writer in The American Naturalist,* a
Vermont pipe is mentioned and figured which has a projection on
one side of the rim that may very probably have been intended

Fio. 6.

* Vol. xiii, p. 735.

VOL. XLIV. — '20

242 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for the beak of a bird, and if this is true we have two animal
carvings, such as they are, from this region.
. In some respects the most interesting of all our pipes is that
shown in Fig. 5. Its form is quite peculiar, but the chief impor-
tance consists in the carved human faces, one on each side of the
top, one of which the figure shows. As may be seen at the base,
the pipe is oval in section, the transverse diameter being an inch
and a half. The cavity is unusually large and is about three
fourths of an inch deep. The stem opening is seen on one side of
the figure near the middle, and is about as large as an ordinary
pencil. The whole height is over two inches. The faces are in
rather bold relief, and of the form seen in the figure ; the face on
the side not shown is very nearly like that shown. As the figure
shows, there are two lines, one from each side of the nose. Do
these indicate streaks of paint, or are they intended to represent
a mustache and therefore a European face? At the base, which is
flat, there is, just below the place where the stem entered, a small
hole, as if to enable the owner to attach a thong for suspending
the pipe when not in use. The material is very dark steatite.
The specimen was found on Grand Isle in Lake Champlain.
Only one other specimen having upon it the carving of a face
has been found in the Champlain Valley ; this is a pipe of oval

section and in general a bag or pouch-like form, bearing in full
relief on the edge of the bowl a small but distinctly marked
head. Singularly, this face also has lines under the nose, which
may, as in the pipe figured, indicate by the mustache a European.
A very regularly shaped and beautifully polished specimen
is that shown in Fig. 6. It is three and a half inches long and
an inch in diameter at the top. The opening for the stem is at
the point marked A, and this is at the bottom of the bowl, the

THE CALUMET IN THE CHAMPLAIN VALLEY, 243

portion below this being solid. The bowl is polished inside, and
ornamented about the top by a series of transverse lines.

The well-known platform pipes of the West and many other
localities are not common here, but now and then a specimen is

found. Fig. 7 gives one of the best of these. It is of a very
pretty, light yellow stone, well polished. The opening through
which to draw the smoke is at A, and this is so small that it is
most probable that no other stem than that afforded by the base
itself was used. The platform is nearly three inches long, and
the bowl is an inch and a quarter high. The bowl of this pipe
differs from that of most of those found here in that it bears cir-
cular striae, and was evidently worked out with a drill.

Pipes of a more modern form than those described, though
there is no reason to consider them as actually more recent, are
not uncommon among our speci-
mens. The finest example of this
class is that shown in Fig. 8, and
it is very elegantly finished. The
material is a dark, clouded gyp-
sum, hard enough to take an ex-
cellent polish. The outside of
the bowl was ornamented, like
that of Fig. 4, by inlaid pieces of
stone, the excavations for which
are evident in the figure. There
can be no doubt in this case that

the cavities were intended not for ornament, but to receive some
different material, since they are left in an unfinished state, while
the rest of the pipe is unusually well finished. The bowl is pol-

244

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ished inside near the top, but lower, circular strise are to be seen.
The stem is rather thick ; the upper surface is made up of two
sloping planes, and there is a narrow groove running from the
bowl to the end. Measured on the outside, the bowl is two inches
high ; the stem is about a fourth of an inch longer. Several quite
similar pipes have been found on both sides of the lake. A sim-
pler though well-made pipe is that given in Fig. 9. It is not so
perfectly polished as the preceding, and is one of the more com-
mon sort.

It is well known that no material was so highly valued for
making pipes as the famous red pipestone. If the calumet had
any ceremonial significance in itself, as it certainly had, this be-
came doubly great if the pipe were made of the red stone. This

FIG. 10.

material was regarded as the petrified flesh of ancestors and was
revered accordingly, and the single quarry where it could be ob-
tained was a very sacred place. We often find this red pipestone
mentioned by early writers, and it is strange that specimens made
of it are not more often discovered, but they seem to be very rare
everywhere, except, of course, those made in recent times.

The single specimen that has been found in the Champlain
Valley was thrown out by the plow a dozen miles south of Bur-
lington, and is shown in Fig. 10. . It is made of the ordinary
dark red catlinite, and has the form given in the figure. It is
larger than most of our pipes, the stem being rather more than
three inches long and the bowl about two inches and a quarter
high. The cavity of the bowl is peculiarly excavated, as it is

THE CALUMET IN THE GHAMPLAIN VALLEY. 245

strongly conical, being three fourths of an inch in diameter across
the top and only a sixteenth of an inch at the bottom. On the
flat upper side of the stem there are rudely scratched outline fig-
ures, as seen at A, and there are also outlines on the rim of the

FIG. 11.

bowl. The surface of this pipe is well polished. The inside of
the bowl shows both circular and vertical striae.

Stone tubes, of somewhat different form in different localities,
have been found in almost every station which has been carefully
searched for archaeological specimens, and few objects have ex-
cited greater curiosity than these. Always well made, often of
handsomely colored and veined stone, they have been regarded as
pipes, musical instruments, medicine tubes, and even telescopes,
by different authors. When one examines these tubes he very
readily sees that it is more than probable that all can not be
placed in the same class, for, not only do they vary in size very
widely — some being only two inches long and of small diameter,
while others are ten, fifteen, and rarely twenty inches in length —
but the bore is even more variable, in some being as large as the
outside will allow, and of uniform size
from end to end ; in others it is large at
one end and grows smaller toward the
opposite end, where it is often of no
greater diameter than the bore of some
of the pipestems. Very likely the tubes
of the first sort were used in the perform-
ances of the medicine man, and those last
named were used as pipes, as are the very
similar pipes smoked to this day by Utes
and other West coast tribes. The tubes
appear to be everywhere rare, and yet no
form of pipe so often occurs in the Cham-
plain Valley, especially on the Vermont
side.

Our Vermont tubes have a bore which
is very much smaller at one end than at
the other, and the small end was, I think, always stopped partially
by a rudely ground and imperfectly fitting stone plug, as it cer-
tainly was in most cases, for we find the plug in some of the tubes.
The general form of the tubes of this region is somewhat differ -

FlG. 12.

246

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ent in each, specimen, but Fig. 11 shows a typical example, the
heavier line giving the outline of the bore. This tube is eight
inches and a half long, nearly an inch and a half in diameter at
the largest part, and about an inch at the smallest. The material
— and this is the same in all — is a drab talcose slate. The figure
is one third full size. Other tubes have been previously figured
and described by the writer in the Portland volume of Proceed-
ings of the American Association for -the Advancement of Sci-
ence. The tubes are all very carefully shaped and well finished.
The bore was probably first drilled with a reed and sand, and
then at the large end worked out by means of some pointed tool,
for circular striae are plainly seen at the small end, while at the
other only longitudinal marks occur. Whatever may have been
the design of other tubes, it seems by far most probable that those
found here were used as pipes, for they are in all essential re-
spects like those mentioned above, now and anciently in use on
the Pacific coast, as may be seen by reference to the seventh vol-

FIG. 13.

ume of the Wheeler Survey, Plates 7 and 8, and also to Volume
III of the Contributions to North American Ethnology.

In Fig. 12 there is shown a pipe which may be considered as
representing the transition from stone to modern forms ; for, al-
though it was dug in a locality that has yielded more of our stone
pipes than any other, it is made of pewter. It does not appear
as if cast in a mold, but rather as if worked out of a solid block
in the same manner that a stone pipe would be made. The sur-
face is covered with tool-marks, and the bowl bears inside both
vertical and circular striae. Of course, the material of which this
specimen is made arouses suspicion that it was the work of a
white man ; but its appearance, as well as the circumstances in
which it was found, all indicate that it is of Indian origin. The
material was of course obtained from Europeans.

A people who had attained to such skill in working clay into
jars as had the aborigines of the Champlain Valley would un-
doubtedly make many of their common pipes of this material,

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN REY. 247

and we find numerous fragments of earthenware pipes of various
forms, but most of the specimens of this sort are merely frag-
ments. A few entire pipes of the same mixture of clay and
pounded stone which we have in the jars are in existence. One
of these is shown in Fig. 13. Earthenware pipes of the same
general form as that seen in Fig. 8 have also been found, and
very likely this was the more common shape. The pipe repre-
sented in the figure is unusually thick and heavy, and apparently
was made for service rather than ornament. It is three inches
long, and the diameter at one end is an inch and a half, at the
other about an inch. The bore is rapidly contracted, so that it
soon becomes quite small. Most of the earthenware pipes of
this region are very smooth on the outside, having received a
finishing coat of fine clay, but this is without it, though the
surface is tolerably smooth.

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN REY.

BY MM. L. A. HALLO PEAU AND ALB. POISSON.

A MONO the men of science of the first half of the seventeenth
-£j- century the name of Jean Rey, doctor, of Pdrigord, was
long forgotten and is still little known. He was born toward the
end of the sixteenth century, at Bugues la Dordogne. Hardly
anything is known of his life. He was a doctor of medicine, and
devoted himself for several years to researches in chemistry and
physics, in co-operation with his elder brother, also named Jean
Rey, Sieur de la Perotasse, proprietor of the iron forge at Roche-
beaucourt, la Dordogne. He died in 1645, and his days may have
been cut short by grief over a disastrous lawsuit.

Jean Rey invented a water thermometer, or thermoscope, and
a wind arquebus, and he even thought of applying his thermome-
ter to the uses of medicine. It was certainly one of the first in-
struments invented to measure differences of temperature. In
his description of it he said : " It is nothing but a little round
vial with a long, uncorked neck. In using it, I place it in the
sun or in the hands of a fever patient, after having filled it, all
except the neck, with water. The heat, dilating the water, causes
it to rise more or less, according as the heat is great or little."

He wrote one little book of a hundred pages, dedicated to the
Count de la Tour d'Auvergne, which was printed in 1630, under
the title of Essais de Jean Rey, Doctor of Medicine, on an investi-
gation of the cause of the increase in weight of tin and lead when
they are calcined. This work was not understood by the learned
men of that period. It was probably not very widely published,

248 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and only two copies of the edition existed in the middle of the
eighteenth century. But one of these copies was complete. It
belonged to the great library of the king. It was, however, re-
printed in 1777 by Gobet, who also reprinted, about the same time,
the works of Bernard Palissy. After the essays, Gobet published
a part of Key's correspondence with Pere Mersenne relative to
them, and there are probably still other letters in the manuscript
correspondence of Pere Mersenne. Rey's book was therefore well
published at the close of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless,
this edition, too, is now very rare, and only three copies exist in
the libraries of France.

As very few persons of this age have read the Essays of Jean
Hey, we have thought it might be of service and cast some light
on the history of science, obscure in its beginnings, to give a brief
but exact analysis of its contents. Judging by his writings, Jean
Rey appears to have had very extended scientific knowledge and a
talent for experimentation rare in his time. He was, furthermore,
in pleasant relations with most of the learned men of the period,
who were accustomed to consult him in difficult cases, while he
was correctly informed of all that had been done in France and
other countries. Three men in particular were closely associated
with his works — viz., the Sieur Brun, master apothecary of Ber-
gerac ; Deschamps, a physician of the same city ; and Pere Mer-
senne, of the order of the Minims, who had a continuous and in-
teresting correspondence with him.

Rey's experiments were undertaken at Brun's request. Brun's
letter, giving as it does an idea of the confidence which Rey in-
spired among his contemporaries and of his high reputation,
merits publication entire. He wrote : " Desiring a few days ago
to calcine some tin, I weighed two pounds and six ounces of the
finest English metal, put it in an iron kettle on an open furnace,
and, stirring it continually without making any change in the
adjustment, I converted it in six hours into a very white earth.
I weighed it to determine the loss, and found that it weighed two
pounds and thirteen ounces. This astonished me incredibly, for
I could not imagine where the surplus seven ounces had come
from. I performed the same experiment with lead, and calcined
six pounds. I found it had gained six ounces. I asked the cause
of this from many learned men, particularly from Dr. N. (Des-
champs), but none of them could explain it to me. Your brilliant
mind, which soars, when it is so disposed, above the common, will
find matter to occupy itself with in this. I implore you with all
my affection to employ yourself with the search for the cause of
so rare an effect, and to oblige me so much that by your aid I may
be enlightened respecting this wonder."

Rey immediately set himself to work to find the answer to this

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN REY. 249

question — one of "the most difficult that philosophy has ever
brought forth." It was not without emotion that he took up the
pen : " Believing I have reached the end of the matter, I produce
these my essays, not without well foreseeing that I shall be called
rash, for in them I shall disturb some of the maxims that have
been approved for ages by most philosophers. But what can
there be rash in exposing the truth to the light after having found
it ? " The book of twenty-eight chapters or essays is divided into
distinct parts. In the first part the author, as it were, prepares
his reader for the ideas he is about to set forth in the second. He
first demonstrates the weight of the air — an entirely new fact in
science then — and next he applies the ideas he has just enunciated
to the explanation of the weight of lead and tin when calcined in
the air.

The great physicists of the seventeenth century had as yet
produced nothing when Jean Key's essays appeared. Otto von
Guericke was only twenty-one years old ; Torricelli was still
studying mathematics at Rome, and his celebrated experiment
was not performed by Viviani till 1643. Galileo was the only one
who might at that moment have had established ideas on the
weight of the air, and his Dialogues on the Motion and the Re-
sistance of Fluids was not published at Leyden till 1638.

Rey was therefore the first person who declared that the air
has weight, and he alone has the right to all the honor for this
important discovery. His first essay is entitled Everything Mate-
rial under the enclosure of the Sky has Weight. He supposed
that the earth occupied the center of the world. " Matter, filling
at every point the space inclosed under the curvature of the sky,
is continually urged by its own weight toward the center of the
world. True it is that earth, being the heaviest, promptly oc-
cupies that place, and, forcing its contraries into retreat, makes
water, second in weight, also second in place ; so that air, driven
from the lowest and the second place, is confined to the third,
leaving to fire, the least ponderous of all, to abide in the highest
region." Thus Jean Rey showed very precisely that all bodies
have weight, that there is nothing light in Nature, and " no up-
ward movement that is natural." Let us give his own words : " I
say, if there was a channel from the center of the earth up into
the region of fire, open at both ends and full of the four elements,
everything in its usual place, that, on drawing the earth down,
water would descend to occupy its place, leaving its own to the
air, and the air leaving its place to fire. Then, withdrawing the
water from that place, the air would come down to fill it ; and
this, too, being taken away, the fire would take possession of the
vacant space and fill the whole channel, descending to the center,
just by that being removed which prevented its doing so. Those

250 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

who say that this would be done to avoid a vacuum do not say
much. They point to the final cause, and this demonstration
concerns the efficient one, which rules that there can not be a
vacuum." Key's book, however, while it marked an immense
progress in science, contains some considerable errors. Thus, he
undertakes in his fifth essay to show, by the acceleration of the
motion of falling bodies as they descend, that fire and air are
heavy, and he attempts to prove by an ingenious but fallacious
demonstration that they are forced down more and more rapidly
by the increasing weight of the air and fire above them.

Having tried to " impress upon everybody's heart that air has
weight," Rey announced the proposition, then new to science,
deduced from this principle, that " weight is so closely joined to
the primal matter of the elements, that changing from one to
another they always keep the same weight. The weight which
each portion of matter takes from its cradle it will carry to its
grave. In whatever place, under whatever form, and to whatever
volume it may be reduced, always the same weight." This prin-
ciple, which he discovered more than a century before Lavoisier,
was confirmed by a curious experiment of Brun's, who in 1644,
having constructed a distilling apparatus, hermetically sealed,
inclosed within it wood of guaiac, box, or oak, weighed the whole,
and distilled it. The wood was destroyed ; but a new weighing,
made at the end of the experiment, showed that the total weight
of the apparatus had not changed during the distillation. The
experiment was a delicate one, and proves that they knew how to
work in Rey's time. Mistakenly believing that water could
change into air, Rey constructed an apparatus for determining
what volume of air a given quantity of water would form. It
consisted of a bulb (seolipile) in which water could be boiled,
connected by a tube with a cylinder open at the top ; a piston
was worked in this cylinder. The piston was brought down to
the bottom of the cylinder. Heat was applied to the seolipile
and the water was made to boil or was " transformed into air " ;
the piston of course rose, under pressure of the steam or " water
air," and the capacity of the part of the cylinder below it showed
the volume of the air that was supposed to be formed. Then the
seolipile could be removed, the opening from it into the cylinder
stopped up, and the cylinder exposed to cold, when the piston
would be forced down and the vapor frozen or turned into
water. Unfortunately for himself, Rey did not personally try
this experiment, or he might have anticipated Papin by half
a century. But not more than a year after the publication of
his essays — September 1, 1631 — Pere Mersenne said : " As to the
experiments with the seolipile, I have made them; but it is a
false imagination to suppose that the water which issues from

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN RET. 251

it is turned into air; it still remains water, and will naturally
return to itself."

Resuming his study concerning the weight of the air, Rey
observed that his predecessors had failed to find it because they
had weighed the air in itself : " Balancing the air in the air itself,
and not finding weight, they have thought that it had none. But
let them balance water (which they know is heavy) in water
itself, and they will find no weight there too ; it being a fact that
no element has weight when balanced in itself. Everything that
is weighed in the air and everything that is weighed in water
should, for an equal volume, have as much more weight as it has
more matter than the air or the water in which the balancing is
done." Air, he said, could be made heavy by mixing it with
some foreign matter having more weight; by compressing its
particles; or by removing the lighter portions. In demonstra-
tion of the first principle, Rey determined by experiment that
moist or cloudy air was heavier than dry air ; of the second, he
showed that, if a globe was filled by a strong draft of air from a
bellows, it would be heavier than the same globe " empty." He
even tried to make use of compressed air in the construction of a
wind arquebus, but he did not carry out his idea ; and the honor
of making this invention practical belongs to the Sieur Marin
Bourgeois, of Lisieux. Inversely, Rey observed that if one takes
a glass vial cold, warms it a little on a chafing dish, and weighs
it, he will find that it weighs less, because air has gone out from
it ; and in order to find how much, the pipe should be put, still
warm, into water, which it will suck up till as much water comes
into it as air has gone out of it. Rey was, however, not the first
who had observed this fact, for Drebbel had anticipated him.
The converse of these principles was also enunciated by Rey, viz.,
that the weight of air may be diminished by purifying it from
heavier foreign matter, by extending it to ampler limits, and by
extracting its heavier parts. " Even the balance sometimes de-
ceives " ; for, " if we examine the balances, cases may be found in
which the object weighed will appear heavier or lighter without
adding or subtracting foreign matter ; as when it has been con-
tracted or expanded." In support of this view, Rey cited as ex-
amples the cases of a ball of feathers tightly tied up, which will
weigh more than the same feathers loose ; and of two ingots, one
of gold and the other of iron, which will balance one another
without having the same absolute weights, "for the gold occupies
a smaller volume for equal weight, and consequently displaces
less air." These views were confirmed about 1650 by the inven-
tions of Otto von Guericke.

Rey was now able to answer the question put to him by
Brun, and to explain the cause of the increase of weight shown

2 <; 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by tin and lead when they are calcined. " Now/' he said, " that
I have made my preparations, that is, have laid the foundations
of my answer to his question " (as to the source of the seven
ounces which the two pounds and six ounces of tin gained when
heated for six hours ; the difficulty of the problem was en-
hanced by its being necessary also to find the other matter
required to compensate for the loss which the tin sustained
through expansion in heating): "to this question, then, resting
on the formulations already laid, I answer and maintain glori-
ously, that the increase in weight comes from the air, which has
been thickened in the 'vessel, made heavy, and in no way adhe-
sive, by the vehement and long-continued heat of the furnace ;
which air mingles with the earth (the frequent stirring aiding
this) and attaches itself to the smallest particles ; not otherwise
than water makes sand heavy when sand is wet and the mass is
stirred, by moistening and adhering to its smallest grains/'

Several authors had already spoken of the increase of weight
in metals on calcination. Cardan, in his Traite' de la Subtilite*,
tried to explain the increase of the weight of lead in the forma-
tion of white lead by saying it was because the lead died and lost
the celestial heat which was its soul and made it lighter; and
added that an animal is always heavier dead than living. Rey
remarked, in answer to this, that lead is void of life and can not
be compared with the body of an animal, and showed that it was
easy, by a known process, to recover the lead from its earth.
Further, " nothing increases in weight except by the addition of
matter or by contraction of volume," and this can not take place
in the present case, even under Cardan's hypothesis, for the celes-
tial heat in disappearing takes away matter, while on the other
hand the volume increases perceptibly through the whole dura-
tion of the experiment. It will be noticed that Rey shared in the
prejudice of his time in regard to the weight of animals increas-
ing after their death, and with him many of the learned men of
the period. Pere Mersenne was the first to refute this error. He
ascertained by experiment that a dog and a hen weigh more,
though very little more, alive than dead, and wrote to Jean Rey,
September 1, 1631, " You can yourself try the experiment with-
out losing any of the blood, or a hair, or a feather, of the animals,
by smothering them, as we have done."

Scaliger had undertaken to refute Cardan's assertions, and
said that the increase in the weight of the calcined lead was
caused by the fire consuming its aerated particles, comparing lead
with the Jtile, " which is heavier baked than unburned." Noth-
ing could be more simple than Rey's answer : " If the lead loses
airy particles, would it not diminish in volume ? On the contrary,
it increases. And then, if this reason is correct, why do not

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN REY. 253

stones and plants increase in weight when they are calcined ? I
add, finally, that air which is forced into a globe full of it, com-
ing out diminishes the weight of the vessel instead of increasing
it, as Scaliger believes." He rejected the comparison of the lead
with the tile, saying, " The tile increases in weight by the shrink-
ing of its extent ; the lead by the matter that is added to it."

Csesalpin had supposed, as Libarius records, in explanation
of the phenomenon, that the soot produced by the fire struck the
roof of the furnace and fell back upon the matter. Rey answered
that the soot would blacken the lead instead of communicating a
white tint to it. Moreover, if this were the cause, the production
of earth might be carried on indefinitely by keeping up the fire,
which was not the case. Libarius said that even apprentices in
chemistry would laugh at Csesalpin's theory.

Rey also showed that the increase in weight could not come
from the iron vessel in which the calcination took place, for the
earth would not continue white in contact with the dust of iron ;
besides, the vessel would be consumed in two or three operations,
instead of being serviceable every day for several years; and,
finally, if it was so, we should obtain from a very small quantity
of tin or lead a very large quantity of earth, which is contrary to
the experiment. Furthermore, a German chemist, Modestinus
Fachsius, who also occupied himself with the question, concluded
from the examination of the metals, the cupel, the lead, and the
metal under trial, that all are heavier after the calcination than
before they were exposed to the fire.

Deschamps assumed that the increase of weight was due to
vapors of charcoal traversing the vessel. Rey answered that such
vapors could not traverse a globe of glass, a plate of tin, or an
earthen pot, because boiling water, sauces, and potages were not
infected by them. How, then, could they traverse an iron vessel ?
Even if they did, why should they stop in the earth instead of
going on?

Deschamps did not stop with this, but insisted that charcoal had
two parts or natures, a vegetable and a metallic nature, and that
each of them had two others, one fixed and the other volatile.
The fixed part remains in the ashes, from which a fixed salt can be
obtained by washing ; but the volatile part, being of a mercurial
nature, ascends around the vessel ; and he made the objection to
Rey's proposition that " the volatile part, lifted up on the wings
of moisture, meeting the air which is directly on the vessel, being
more rarefied and less heavy than the vapor that issues from the
coal, is taken up by that in the vessel, and attaches itself by a
close sympathy to the fixed salt of the earth of tin, which, having
taken a certain quantity of it, and being, as it were, satiated, rejects
the surplus." This observation, purely theoretical and made by

254 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a man of science, has a curious appearance now, but was all in
place in Key's time. Rey, who had answered the other objections
by argument, had recourse this time to experiment. " If a fur-
nace is built in a wall separating two rooms, in such a way that
the vessel shall be on one side and the ventilating registers and
doors for feeding in coal on the other, I maintain that the increase
in weight will still take place, although no vapors can enter the
chamber containing the vessel. I have confirmed this by an ex-
periment which I made at the forges of Jean Rey, Lord of Perro-
tasse, my elder brother, where I found the increase in tin, which
I calcined on a pig, as they call it, or an ingot of sixteen or twenty
quintals of iron, at the instant when, coming out of the furnace, it
was cast into its mold ; for it can not be said that vapors of coal
contributed anything to it. Therefore, the volatile salt can not be
accepted in this case."

Finally, with a single experiment Rey swept away all the ob-
jections in a lump. " I have just read in Homerus Poppius," he
said, " in the third chapter of his book entitled Basilica Antimonii,
of the new way that he practices in calcining antimony. He takes
a certain quantity of antimony, weighs it, and having pulverized
it, puts it in the shape of a cone on a marble ; then takes a burn-
ing mirror, holds it in the sun so as to bring the pyramidal point
of the reflected rays upon a point of the cone of antimony, whicn
fumes abundantly, and in a little while the antimony, touched by
the rays, is turned into a pure white earth, which he separates
with a knife and turns the rays upon the rest till all has been
turned white, and then the calcination is done. It is a wonderful
thing that, although in this calcination the antimony loses much
of its substance in the vapors and fumes that exhale from it
copiously, its weight increases instead of diminishing. Now, if
we ask the cause of this increase, will Cardan say that it is the
disappearance of the celestial heat ? That has been infused more
largely by means of the solar rays. Will Scaliger say that it is
by consumption of the airy parts ? Thinning into earth and increas-
ing in volume, it forces more in. Will Csesalpin allege his soot ?
There is no fire to produce any soot. Does the vessel give up any
of its own substance ? Indeed, the rays are conducted so directly
upon the matter that they do not touch the marble. Do you speak
of the vapors of charcoal ? No charcoal is used in this transac-
tion. The volatile salts which have been so ingeniously brought
forward lose here all their savor and grace. Perhaps moisture
will be suggested, as has been recently done by some one. But
where can it come from ? From the marble ? No, no, that is not
conceivable. From the air ? Still less ; for the operation is best
practiced in the warm days of summer, in the most violent heats
of the dog star."

THE ESSAYS OF JEAN REY. 255

The final objection to his theory was one of Key's own sugges-
tion : Why does not earth go on increasing in weight indefinitely ?
Because " the thickened air attaches itself to it and continues to
adhere to the most minute of its particles, so that its weight goes
on increasing from the beginning to the end ; but when it is all
enveloped in air it can not take any more." He concludes then,
and terminates his treatise by declaring with pride that he has
found the real way of the truth, breaking the road for his success-
ors, and advising them not to go astray from it.

This is the summary of the works of Jean Rey. A skillful
experimenter, he knew how to use the balance, and it was the
balance that suggested to him the result of his experiments. His
book is a brief one. A single principal experiment is described, a
single object is pursued in it. But he made two great advances
in science. He discovered the weight of the air, being the first
to publish that hypothesis, and verified it by experiments in
chemistry and physics. The increase of the weight of lead and
tin on calcination had been noticed for a long time by the al-
chemists, and even Galen knew of it. But nobody before Rey
found that the cause of that increase in weight came from the air
— from that thickened and heavy air. It was certainly a remark-
able achievement to announce such a fact at a time when chemis-
try had made so little advance. No gas was yet known ; and it
was not till about 1719 that a misunderstood man of science,
Mortrel d'Eldment, found means to decant air through water into
bottles, and taught in a public lecture in Paris " how to make air
visible and perceptible enough to measure it in pints or in what-
ever quantity you will." It was not his fault, therefore, that he
did not advance further. — Translated for The Popular Science
Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

As a possible solution, or working hypothesis, of the reason of the migration
of birds, Canon Tristram suggests: "Instinct in mammals and birds attracts them
to the place of their nativity. When the increasing cold of the northern regions,
in which they all had their origin, drove the mammals southward, they could not
retrace their steps, because the increasing polar sea, as the arctic continent sank,
barred their way. The birds reluctantly left their homes as winter came on and
followed the supply of food. But as the season in their new residence became
hotter in summer, they instinctively returned to their birthplaces, and there
reared their young, retiring with them when the recurring winter impelled them
to seek a warmer climate. Those species which, unfitted for a greater amount of
heat by their more protracted sojourn in the northern regions, persisted in revis-
iting their ancestral homes, or getting as near to them as they could, retained a
capacity for enjoying a temperate climate, which, very gradually, was lost by the
species which settled down more permanently in their new quarters, and thus a
law of migration became established on the one side, and sedentary habits on the
other."

25 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON.

BY HORATIO HALE.

r| ^HE late President of Toronto University was distinguished
-L not only for his educational work and his achievements in
science, literature, and art, but also for the happy combination in
his mind and character of qualities which are commonly deemed
incongruous. An ardent votary of science, prepared to follow
every investigation of Nature to the utmost limit of actual knowl-
edge, and to welcome every accession to this knowledge, he was
equally firm in maintaining his belief in the religion which ex-
plained to him those mysteries of the universe that lay beyond
this limit. Strongly conservative of ancient landmarks in his
quality of artist and antiquary, he was in education and in poli-
tics fearlessly liberal and progressive. Endowed with an energy
of will and an intellectual power which inevitably brought him
to the leadership of any enterprise or institution in which he took
part, he was at the same time utterly devoid of personal ambi-
tion, and shrank from titular honors with the same earnestness
with which some are wont to seek them. Generous almost to a
fault and careless of the arts of money-making, his natural fore-
sight and indefatigable industry preserved him from the pecun-
iary troubles by which scholars and writers are too often ham-
pered, and secured for him throughout his life that good fortune
for which poor Burns vainly sighed, "the glorious privilege of
being independent."

Sir DANIEL WILSON was born in Edinburgh on the 3d of Janu-
ary, 1816. His father, Archibald Wilson, was a merchant of that
city ; his mother was a woman of rare natural gifts, who fostered
in her children the love of knowledge which they inherited from
her. Of a large family, only four — two sons and two daughters —
survived to mature age. The sons, George and Daniel, both
proved to possess talents which insured them early distinction.
George, a physician, became Regius Professor of Technology in
the University of Edinburgh and Director of the Industrial Mu-
seum of Scotland. Though he died at the early age of forty-two,
he had already gained a European reputation. To his biography,
written by his sister, Daniel contributed reminiscences which are
of interest as indicating the existence in childhood of tastes which
afterward became prominent. " Edinburgh," he writes, " was the
scene of all our youthful years, and that itself was no unimpor-
tant element in life's training. Among my earliest recollections are
scramblings on Arthur's Seat, where we knew every cleft and gul-
ly. A Saturday's ramble carried us away to old Roman Cramond,
where the sculptured eagle of the legionaries of the second cen-

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON. 257

tury, still visible on the rocks, was a source of never-failing won-
der to us. The ruins of Both well and Crichton Castles, of Roman
camps, and historical scenes already possessed an interest for us.
A good deal of antiquarianism mingled with our natural history,
and two of us were already embryo numismatists, and knew a
Roman denarius from a bodle as well as Edie Ochiltree himself."

Daniel's education was commenced in the famous High School
of Edinburgh, whence he passed to the still more famous univer-
sity of that city. At this period the special turn and capacity for
art which he always retained was so strong as to induce him, on
his graduation, to decide to make the pursuit of it his profession.
With this object he removed to London, where a notable group
of great painters was then rising into fame. At their head was
Turner, with whom he soon became intimate. He describes him
as an " old, slovenly, slouching little man, as remote from the
ideal of artist or poet as could well be conceived ; but the flash of
his keen gray eyes redeemed the face from the otherwise vulgar
and sensual look/' The door of the strange house in Queen Anne
Street was freely open to the young student ; and he found in his
repeated visits that the great painter could be kind and genial to
an enthusiastic youth, while grimly ridiculing his enthusiasm.

In 1840 Wilson brought to London as his bride a Scottish lady.
They had three daughters, the first of whom was born in London.
She died ten months later, when with her mother visiting the old
home. This affliction changed the course of the parents' life.
They decided to return to Edinburgh, and Wilson, giving up art
as a life-pursuit, devoted himself to literature. His diligent pen
and varied talents soon found ample occupation. " He was," we
are told by one of his biographers, " a constant contributor to The
Scotsman, and wrote for Tait's Magazine, Chambers's Miscellany,
the British Quarterly, North British Review, Edinburgh Philo-
sophical Journal, Gentleman's Magazine, and other periodicals.
He contributed articles to the edition of the Encyclopaedia Bri-
tannica then in progress, as well as to subsequent issues, and he
edited for a time the Proceedings of the Scottish Antiquary. He
also prepared for friendly publishers some historical books, which,
though creditably written, he afterward refused to include in the
list of his acknowledged writings, counting them mere compila-
tions and craftsman's work, as distinguished from the produc-
tions of original research, to which he was soon to owe his fame.

The first of these was published in 1848, under the title of
Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, by Daniel Wilson,
Acting Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. It
filled two quarto volumes, illustrated throughout with fine en-
gravings of the buildings and localities described, all from his
own drawings. The pictures are enlivened by characteristic

VOL. XLIV. — 21

258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

figures of people engaged in their ordinary vocations, presented
with a life and spirit which show how far superior in these quali-
ties the higher efforts of the draughtsman's art are to the best
photography. The description and historical explanations evince
deep research, combined with a genial temper and lively humor,
which make the work attractive reading. It has been twice re-
printed, the latest revised edition appearing in 1890. In his next
publication the author found a subject of wider scope, and as-
sumed a higher position. He had passed from art to literature,
from literature to archaeological study, and now emerged on the
loftier plane of pure science, to which his intellectual tastes and
faculties naturally tended. In 1851 appeared his Archaeology and
Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which was revised and repro-
duced in two volumes as Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, in 1863.
The expressive adjective " prehistoric," which was first employed
in this title and work, has since made its way into the language
of almost every civilized nation, and in France constitutes, as Le
Prehistorique, the title of an important science. In his preface
the author dwells earnestly on the importance of this science
of prehistoric man, and expresses his surprise that " the British
Association, expressly constituted for the purpose of giving a
stronger impulse and a more systematic direction to scientific in-
quiry, embraced within its original scheme no provision for the
encouragement of those investigations which most directly tend
to throw light on the origin and progress of the human race.
Physical archaeology was indeed admissible, in so far as it dealt
with the extinct fauna of the paleontologist ; but it was prac-
tically pronounced to be without the scientific pale whenever it
touched on that portion of the archaeology of the globe which
comprehends the race of human beings to whom we ourselves
belong." A delusive hope had been raised by the publication, in
the first volume of the Transactions of the Association, of " one
memoir on the contributions afforded by physical and philologi-
cal researches to the history of the human species"; but the
ethnologist was doomed to disappointment. From that time all
papers relating to this important branch of knowledge had been
constantly rejected. It was no small triumph for Sir Daniel
Wilson when, thirty-three years later, at the Montreal meeting of
the British Association, in 1884, in which he held a prominent
position, anthropology was admitted to the rank of a distinct
" section," and a committee was appointed, of which he was a
member, to investigate the tribes of northwestern Canada — a com-
mittee from which very extensive reports of " physical and philo-
logical researches " have been warmly welcomed by the Associa-
tion, and have formed a conspicuous feature of its recent volumes.
The publication of this work changed his entire career. The

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON. 259

high reputation which it gave him — a reputation sufficiently in-
dicated by Hallam's opinion that the book was " the most scien-
tific treatment of the archaeological evidences of primitive history
that had ever been written " — procured him the appointment, in
1853, to the chair of History and Literature at University College
in Toronto. He removed to that city, and, as one who knew him
and the colony in those days has written, "he brought a new
element into the life of the place, and indeed of the province.
Representing ' letters,' and winning favor to them by his eloquent
speech, in a community too much absorbed in business, he has
left his mark clear and deep on young Ontario and the whole
Dominion. Thousands have been consciously benefited by his
character, life, and works." From this time till his death, nearly
forty years after, his life was bound up with the interests of the
college. It was his boast that for thirty years he never omitted a
lecture. The work of his professorship harmonized with his
tastes, and gave him a field in which his powers were soon felt.
" As a lecturer in history," we are told, " he was noted for the
breadth and liberality of his views, and for the spirit of toleration
and courtesy which he displayed toward those who differed from
him. In archaeology and ethnology, subjects peculiarly his own,
he never failed to excite interest, and generally succeeded in
arousing no small degree of enthusiasm."

But other and less congenial duties were frequently cast upon
him. The large endowment granted by the Government to the
secularized university was deemed by the denominational col-
leges an injustice and an injury to themselves. A determined
effort was instituted by their supporters to secure a division of it
among the different colleges. An appeal was made to the Legis-
lature, which referred the question to a committee. Before this
committee, Prof. Wilson, as the foremost member of University
College, was appointed to appear and defend the interests of his
college and the cause of secular education. This he did with so
much force of argument that the hostile attempt was promptly
defeated, and was never afterward renewed. All controversy was
distasteful to him, but when a cause dear to him was endangered,
and the " perf ervid Scottish temper " was once aroused, he could
strike heavy blows. In the present case the usual reluctance was
felt, but finally, he wrote, "I plucked up heart of grace, and
found a grim satisfaction in mauling the assailants of our college
militant."

In 1880, on the death of the Rev. Dr. McCaul, who was the first
President of University College, Prof. Wilson was promoted to
that office. The position gave at last the needed opportunity for
the display of his remarkable energy and organizing talent, al-
ways directed by a judicious forethought and impelled by an un-

260 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tiring zeal. In a sketch written soon after his death, we are told
that " the twelve years of his regime have been marked by an
extraordinary rapidity of development in various directions. The
attendance of students has greatly increased, so that they now
number about five hundred in the faculty of arts alone. The
teaching medical faculty has been restored to the university, and
is now in a highly prosperous condition. A foundation for a law
faculty has been laid. The university has been brought into
more effective and beneficial relation to the secondary schools, by
the establishment of a co-operative supervision over their leaving
examinations. During the past six years women have been
permitted to attend lectures in the university and University
College, their number being now about one fifth of the whole
attendance, and the ratio rapidly increasing. Several additional
institutions have been taken into affiliation with the university,
which has thus been strengthened with the whole community, as
well as with many special and powerful interests."

As originally established, the University of Toronto and Uni-
versity College were to a certain extent distinct institutions. The
university was simply an examining and degree-conferring cor-
poration, while University College was a teaching institution,
with a faculty of arts. By a recent change, part of the teaching
function, comprising all the work in science, philosophy, and his-
tory, has been transferred to the university ; and as a result, the
President of the College became actually, as he had been in com-
mon parlance, the President of the University.

For the interests of science and literature it was probably for-
tunate that Prof. Wilson's accession to the college presidency,
with the consequent great increase in his scholastic duties, did
not occur at an earlier day. During the twenty-seven years
which elapsed between his arrival in Toronto and this accession,
he had leisure to pursue his studies in various directions. In 1862
appeared his most important work, entitled Prehistoric Man : Re-
searches into the Origin of Civilization in the Old and the N"ew
World. This work attracted much attention on both continents,
and gave a new direction, particularly in Germany, to anthro-
pological inquiry. A second edition appeared in 1865, still in one
volume. The continuing demand and the growth of scientific
knowledge called for a new and revised issue, with many addi-
tions, which appeared in 1875, in two large and finely illustrated
volumes.

The author's literary taste and judgment were happily shown
in his admirable book, Chatterton : a Biographical Study, which
appeared in 1869. It was a thoroughly successful effort to re-
habilitate the moral character of the " marvelous boy/' as well as
to display the real nature and extent of his surprising intellectual

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON. 261

powers. The attraction which drew the biographer to his sub-
ject was doubtless the similarity of archaeological and poetical
tastes. Early in life he had published — like Chatterton, under an
assumed name — a little volume of verse, entitled Spring Wild
Flowers : Poems, by Wil. D'Leina, of the Outer Temple. By re-
quest of the publisher, the collection was reprinted in 1875, with
the author's name, and with a modestly deprecatory preface, in
which he solicits indulgence for these " sins of his youth/' But
an impartial critic would find nothing to offend and much to be
admired in the volume. Caliban : The Missing Link, appeared
in 1873, a genial, half -humorous, and wholly shrewd and happy
commentary on Shakespeare, Darwin, and Browning, full of keen
suggestions, which the admirers of those famous authors would
do well to study with care. The vivid recollections of his early
home appeared in his Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh, published
in 1875, in two charming volumes of mingled history, description,
and gossip, beautifully illustrated by pen-and-ink sketches from
the author's hand, in his peculiarly vivid and animated style.
Among other claims which may be made for this work is that of
being the best commentary (next to Scott's own) on the famous
" Scotch novels " of the author's illustrious townsman.

For a time the duties of the presidency interrupted Sir Daniel's
authorship. But in 1891 appeared a volume on Left-handedness,
comprising, as a reviewer remarked, " a careful and comprehen-
sive discussion of the origin and nature of the prevailing distinc-
tion between the uses of the two hands and the consequences which
follow this distinction." Sir Daniel was himself left-handed ; but,
like other eminent men who have been subject to this apparent
disability — including a personage no less distinguished than the
illustrious artist and mechanician, Leonardo da Vinci — he was
able to convert it into an advantage by the simple process of cul-
tivating the use of his right hand, and thus making himself am-
bidexterous. He was accustomed to write with his right hand
and draw with his left ; and both his handwriting and drawing
were of unusual excellence. This volume was followed in 1892
by his latest work — and, as it proved, a posthumous publica-
tion— entitled The Lost Atlantis and other Ethnographic Stud-
ies. This was a collection of essays on various ethnological
and archa3ological subjects, reprinted from the Transactions of
scientific societies, and chiefly from those of the Royal Society of
Canada. The volume of four hundred pages comprises only eight
essays, but each of them, as a reviewer has said, " is a complete
monograph on the special subject to which it relates ; and every
subject has its peculiar interest and value to students of history
and the science of man." These subjects comprise, besides the
well-known Atlantis legend, The Vinland of the Northmen, Trade

262 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and Commerce in the Stone Age, Pre- Aryan American Man, The
JEsthetic Faculty in Aboriginal Races, The Huron-Iroquois — a
Typical Race, Hybridity and Heredity, and Relative Brain-weight
and Size. The volume may be said to fitly sum up its author's
life-long studies of these important topics.

But this anticipates. Sir Daniel's later years were marked by
events of grave moment. In 1885 a great and irreparable per-
sonal loss befell him in the death of his wife, " after forty-five
years of as great wedded happiness as ever fell to the lot of man."
The event made little change in his outward demeanor ; but how
deeply it affected him was shown three years later, when the
honor of knighthood was unexpectedly bestowed upon him. In
general, as has been said, he cared nothing for merely titular dis-
tinctions. For her sake, to gratify her wifely pride and affection,
this honor might have been acceptable. As it was, he at first
positively declined to accept the title. But pressure from all sides
came upon him. He wrote in his own amusing vein : " I have had
the honor and glory of knighthood for a full week — telegrams,
cable messages, letters of congratulation, time for little else but
replying. To a jolly old bumble-bee the process of feeding on
honey and being smothered in rose leaves is probably the ideal of
happiness ; but to a wingless biped like myself a little goes a long
way. And what are most covetable honors, now that my Maggie
is gone ? " But the friendly urgency proved too great for resist-
ance, and he yielded at last to the general desire of the commu-
nity, which, reasonably enough, saw in the title simply an evi-
dence of well-earned respect and public gratitude.

Not long afterward, his unremitting labors for the advance-
ment of his university were interrupted by a serious calamity.
On the 14th of February, 1890, a fire broke out in the principal
college building, which destroyed nearly the whole of its con-
tents, including its fine library of thirty-three thousand volumes
and most of its museum collections. The president's action was
characteristic. Instead of being depressed by the blow, as might
have been expected in a man of seventy -four, his spirit rose with
the occasion. He was early on the ground, giving every assist-
ance in his power to rescue what could be saved. Returning
home late at night, he said to one anxiously watching for him :
" Wei], the old building's gone ; but never mind. It wasn't large
enough for us. We'll soon have a better one." To a colleague who
came in a few minutes later, saying, " O Mr. President, don't be
discouraged," he replied: "Discouraged! I should think not.
You'll see, we'll soon have a far finer building." Before sleeping
that night he had formed his plans. On the next day, which
happened to be Saturday, he so arranged for Monday's lectures
being held in various buildings kindly placed at his disposal, that

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON. 263

the college and university work continued without the interrup-
tion of a single lecture. Hundreds of letters poured in, but not
one of them was left without a suitable reply. " Courtesy does
not cost much," was his frequent answer, when urged to take no
notice of seemingly trivial letters. Encouraged by public sympa-
thy, and bent on seeing his much-prized university more than
itself again, he seemed to renew his youth. " Sir Daniel is the
youngest man in college/' was a common saying at the time. " I
mean," he wrote, " not to bate heart or hope ; but trust, near as I
am to the goal of life, to see the renovated pile in its old beauty,
and vastly improved within." This hope was fulfilled, mainly, it
may be said, through the influence of his own great reputation and
the character for liberality of comprehension, irrespective of class,
creed, or race, which he had stamped upon the institution. Offers
of substantial aid to the building fund, the library, and the mu-
seum came from numerous and often unexpected quarters in
Europe and America, including a generous contribution from the
Legislature of Roman Catholic Quebec. So rapidly was the
work of renovation pushed on that at the college "commence-
ment " of 1891 he was enabled to give his presidential address —
one of the most eloquent and brilliant, and unfortunately, as the
event proved, the last of his efforts in that line, in one of the new
halls ; and before his death the restoration of the university, in
a condition far superior to that which it held before the fire, had
been practically completed.

Among other honors it may be mentioned that he received the
degree of LL. D. from the University of Aberdeen, and later also
from McGill University, of Montreal, of which, at an earlier day,
he had been offered the presidency. He was for several years
President of the Canadian Institute of Toronto, the leading scien-
tific association of Ontario. When the Royal Society of Canada
was founded by the Governor-General, Lord Lome, he was at first
made president of its Literature Section, and three years later was
elected president of the society. He was a member of various
learned societies in Europe and America, too numerous to men-
tion. In religious and charitable associations at home he was an
active worker. He aided in founding Wycliffe College in To-
ronto, and was at his death a member of its governing board.
The newsboys of the city attracted his special care, and it was
mainly through his efforts that the " Newsboys' Home," a most
useful and well-managed charity, was founded and maintained.

Near the close of his life one special honor came to him which
he highly prized. In the summer of 1891 he paid his last visit to
Scotland. While he was there, the " freedom " of his native city
was, with much public ceremony and cordial demonstration, con-
ferred upon him, and he thus happily " renewed his youth as the

264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

youngest burgess of the guild." His portrait was also painted by
request, that it might have a place in the Scottish Portrait Gal-
lery. It now hangs there, an admirable work of art by Sir George
Reid, President of the Scottish Academy. To Sir Daniel, Edin-
burgh was (in his own words) "as Jerusalem was to the royal
Hebrew, or the city of the violet crown to the old Athenian " ;
and these marks of the esteem and personal regard of his early
friends and their children were specially grateful and cheering.
On his return home the elasticity of his spirits was noted by his
friends and correspondents. A busy winter followed, in which
his energy and intellectual force showed themselves in no way
abated. Then, almost suddenly, the end came. A brief and near-
ly painless illness closed with his death on August 6, 1892, in the
seventy-seventh year of his age.

His life was, as he himself said, "a singularly happy one."
" I have been fortunate/' he wrote, " beyond my deserts, and seem
to have had far more than my share of God's best gifts." The
qualities which insured this singular happiness appear to deserve
particular note. A naturally sanguine and sunny temperament
had doubtless much to do with it, but the main element was un-
questionably his entire unselfishness. His thoughts were con-
stantly for others, and were only for himself so far as the power
of serving others was concerned. This disposition was quickly
evident to all with whom he came in contact, and was evinced in
many ways, great and small. " His colleagues," we are told by
one who knew him intimately, " noted his extreme thoughtfulness
for others and f orgetfulness of self. This naturally led to har-
monious relations and strong attachments. One writes, "My
friendship for him is one of the sweetest recollections of my
life " ; and he was not alone in the expression of such a feeling.
In his students he took a deep personal interest, frequently invit-
ing them to his house. In their debating societies, sports, and
Young Men's Christian Association they could always rely on his
practical sympathy. No length of years diminished his interest
in a former student's fortunes. The result was a strong affection
for him, which was displayed whenever an occasion offered.

A striking characteristic, we are told, " was his unfailing fun.
It made his home a very merry one. His letters are full of it,
and remind one of Thackeray in their humor. With his students
a joke was a .more potent weapon for maintaining order than a
reproof. He would cleverly turn the laugh of the class against
some idler or disturber of the peace. Senate and council meet-
ings were relieved of their tedium by his ready wit ; and when in
good spirits — and he was rarely otherwise — he was a great ac-
quisition to any social gathering. In early days he wrote valen-
tines for his daughters, and was found out in delivering one of

SKETCH OF SIR DANIEL WILSON. 265

them by losing his spectacles, which had to be recovered the next
day."

He shone as a correspondent. Few idle men kept up so large
a correspondence as this extremely busy one. His letters, frank,
cordial, sympathetic, full of lively touches, apt suggestions, and
pleasant reminiscences, were highly prized by all who were
favored with them, and gave naturally to strangers who read
them a most pleasing impression of the writer's character. The
fortunes of his friends were always in his mind. Nothing of joy
or sorrow could happen to one of them without eliciting from
him a letter of sympathy, which exactly fitted the need. The
dumb animals about him — " My poor relations," as he was wont
to style them — shared his tenderness. Long after his death, " a
favorite cat haunted his vacant study, evidently seeking the
friend who would rather resign his favorite chair than have her
disturbed." His benevolence was not undiscriminating, as the
regulations of his " Newsboys' Home " sufficiently show ; but in
his private charities he allowed himself a freer hand and, so to
speak, a willing credulity. " He was a perfect fortune to beggars.
Taken in again and again, every new applicant seemed to him ' a
very decent-looking fellow/ especially if he happened to be
Scotch. And if nothing else could be said, he would excuse his
generosity by ' It's hard to be poor/ or ' I was once poor myself/
He did, indeed, note that the word ' borrow ' seemed to have no
connection with that other word ' repay ' • but he went on lend-
ing still." A poor woman who, coming to ask for him, found
crape on the door, went away saying, " The blessing of those that
consider the poor will surely fall on him and his."

It is easy to predict that this singularly fine character, illus-
trious for many great qualities and achievements, and with no
shadows except such pardonable failings as "lean to virtue's
side," will shine brighter in becoming better known, and will be
hereafter ranked among the beacon-lights of the age. In the sci-
entific world, the large-minded and far-seeing scholar, who first
gave a place and a name to the science of " prehistoric man," must
always be a conspicuous figure.

IN his presidential address before the Geographical Section of the British
Association, Mr. Henry Seebohm expressed the opinion that life areas or zoo-
geographical regions are more or less fanciful generalizations. Animals recog-
nize facts, and are governed by them in the extension of their ranges ; they care
little or nothing about generalizations. The mean temperature of a province
is a matter of indifference to some plants and to most animals. The facts that
govern their distribution are various, according to the needs of the plant or
animal concerned. Actual temperature governs them, not isotherms corrected
to sea level.

266

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CORRESPONDENCE.

A CRITIC CRITICISED.

Editor Popular Science Monthly.

ANY one who reads the book notices in
journals wherein literary criticism is
conducted as it is in many important newspa-
pers will be impressed with the necessity of
abolishing the custom of anonymous reviews,
if we are to have any criticism worth any-
thing. Under the present system such notices
are the work largely of flippant critics, com-
petent only to frame condemnatory epithets,
who assume to judge everything without spe-
cial knowledge of anything ; and also of those
who have special acquaintance with the topic
in hand, but are consumed by feelings of
jealousy which prompt them to underrate, to
disparage, to stab in the back, to break down
reputations acquired, or to prevent the ac-
quiring of any on the part of new authors
who may apparently be rising. All these
things can be done and are done constantly
under the system of anonymous criticism.
The critic is safe in his concealment, and can
send forth his poisoned arrows with impunity.
Whether he is a giant or a dwarf can not be
known, save, perhaps, by his weapons ; but if,
as is usually the case, he is a pygmy, he is not
less dangerous, since retaliation is impossible.
The New York Evening Post of October
25, 1893, contains a notice of Mr. Herbert
Spencer's latest volume, Parts V and VI of
the Principles of Ethics, which furnishes a
complete illustration of the degradation of
criticism. If there were space I would ask
the editor of The Popular Science Monthly
to reprint it as such, without comment. But,
since the article can not be reprinted, I shall
draw attention to one or two of its features.
It begins by assertions of the marvelous
dullness of Mr. Spencer's works, his " cheap
and superficial platitudes," making him " an
accomplished artist in tedium." This cer-
tainly is a novel charge to be brought against
the author in question. Of all the modern
philosophical writers, according to the gen-
eral judgment expressed in numberless re-
views, notices, and comments published here,
there, and everywhere, Mr. Spencer has been
esteemed the one most free from the quality
of tediousness ! His power of holding the
reader's attention without wearying, his lu-
cidity of statement, his felicity in illustra-
tion, make his books eminently readable.
Of course, they imply a capacity to take
hold of thought, but, if this be presupposed,
few readers will call Mr. Spencer dull. As
to the matter of platitudes, it never occurs
to the average reviewer that criticising a
scientific writer on this score is often much
like criticising a sculptor or painter because
his work is true to life. If the philosopher

keeps within his topic, it is evidence of his
greatness that his statements are so clear,
so true, that they seem indisputable. It is
his crowning excellence that he says things
which the reader recognizes as so evident
that he believes he himself and everybody
else must always have held the same ideas.

The writer in the Post endeavors to dis-
parage Mr. Spencer's work by the old charge
that he is no scholar, that he reads little
and knows little of the progress of modern
thought. He claims that Mr. Spencer has
admitted his ignorance of Kant and is not
familiar with German idealism, while the list
of authorities he cites is " crude and uncrit-
ical material." It is difficult to deal with
these charges of little scholarship and failure
to know what is significant in philosophical
literature, in any other way than by a flat
contradiction. That Mr. Spencer has not
read everything in German philosophy, or in
recent philosophical literature of other coun-
tries, is no doubt true, but any one who knows
Mr. Spencer's habits is well aware how care-
ful he is to ascertain what literature is pro-
duced from time to time and its bearings
upon philosophical truth. For an ignorant
man and one who takes no note of what is
passing in the world Mr. Spencer shows a
remarkable aptitude for getting hold of facts
and theories bearing upon his own doctrines,
as is evinced in his recent discussions of Prof.
Weismann's theories in the Contemporary
Review. If, then, a critic declares Mr. Spen-
cer has fallen behind the times, he may dis-
cover, if he makes inquiry of those who know
what Mr. Spencer does, that it is easier to
write misleading statements for a newspaper
than to prove them when challenged. Per-
haps it is expected of Mr. Spencer that he will
turn aside from his work and prepare book re-
views, to demonstrate his scholarship and his
familiarity with questions of present impor-
tance in philosophy. But if he should have no
better success in that way than his anonymous
critic, it would scarcely be worth his while.

This critic is especially severe because, as
he says, Mr. Spencer, in a passage quoted,
" represents every operation of the mind as a
recognition of a likeness or the recognition
of an unlikeness. According to this, every
operation of volition, every operation of go-
ing to sleep, and every other mental operation
is but an act of recognition." The passage
quoted by this able reviewer is this (Italics
mine) : " One division of an earlier work in
this series of works — the Principles of Psy-
chology— was devoted to showing that all in-
tellectual operations are ultimately decompos-
able into recognitions of likeness and unlike-
ness." The writer who assumes to inform

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

his constituency so confidently of Mr. Spen-
cer's paucity of knowledge and his general
decrepitude does not seem to know that
intellect, feeling, and will are three depart
ments of mind, and that Mr. Spencer's state-
ment is applied to one only. "Intellectual
operations " are not all the operations of
mind. What Mr. Spencer says he may be
criticised for, not what his blind critic avers
that he says. Yet this perversion with its
comments occupies a long paragraph.

I have not space for further illustration
of the heedless, dogmatic, crude, and false
statements with which this worthless critique
abounds ; but the public will be exposed to
its like so long as anonymity is the fashion
in book reviews.

DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPSON.
NEW YORK, October 30, 1893.

COLORED AUDITION.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

DEAR SIR : Struck with M. Binet's paper,
The Problem of Colored Audition, in The

Popular Science Monthly for October, with-
out questioning the facts, when consulting
my own recollections I was unable to re-
call any one who possessed such curious
powers.

Happening to meet to-day a young lady,
the talk was about pleasant or unpleasant
voices, such as are in use in ordinary conver-
sation. Both of us commented on the voice
of a person of our acquaintance, when the
lady said : " So-and-so has a green voice. It
always sounds green to me."

Without bringing M. Binet to the front,
I questioned the lady in regard to this color
comparison. I found that voices, intonations,
and sounds had positive color effects on her
mind. There was a gentleman whose voice
was " red " to her. Then I asked her if she
had read M. Binet, and she said she had no
acquaintance with the article published by
you, nor had she any conception that there
was anything peculiar in her associating tones
with colors. She said she always did it.

Respectfully, BARNET PHILLIPS.

BROOKLYN, October 6, 1893.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION,
T MHE close of the great Columbian
-L Exposition at Chicago naturally
suggests reflections as to its general sig-
nificance and import. The Exposition
was meant to furnish a conspectus, as
it were, of what the art of man is able
to accomplish toward the end of the
nineteenth century ; and, as a memorial
of the civilization of to-day, its general
catalogue would be to future ages a
most important document. That the
Exposition as a whole was a vast and
overwhelming demonstration of the re-
sources of modern life, no one can
question. Until the riches of the world
are gathered together in some such way
we wholly fail to realize, and even
when they have been so gathered to-
gether, we but imperfectly — very imper-
fectly indeed — realize what the achieve-
ments of our age have been. When the
idea has, however, in some measure
been brought home to us, we involun-
tarily ask, What has made our age to
differ so much from past ages, when

whole centuries would pass with very
little change in the outward conditions
of society ? The answer lies on the sur-
face : The modern world has found the
key to real knowledge. In former ages
a certain number of useful arts were
discovered empirically and more or less
fortuitously ; to-day we have learned
how to make discoveries, as it were, by
rule. We regard Nature as a book,
every leaf of which contains useful les-
sons, written sometimes in characters
difficult to decipher, but always deci-
pherable in the end if but proper pains
be taken and proper methods pursued.
In former ages men's minds were pos-
sessed by a number of absolute notions
and a priori principles which they ap-
plied to the interpretation, or rather
misinterpretation, of Nature; and as a
consequence the discovery of truth
lagged and languished. How greatly,
for example, was the progress of as-
tronomy retarded by the assumption
that as the circle was a perfect figure,
the planets must move in circles; that

268

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

because the earth was big to the eye
and the sun small, the former must be
the central orb and the latter the satel-
lite; that mystic powers resided in cer-
tain numbers, and so on ! To-day we
come to Nature as simple questioners,
not telling her what she must be, but
asking her what she is, and what are
her laws. A certain amount of knowl-
edge, of course, we have gained, and
this we use as capital for the accu-
mulation of more; but even our best-
established conclusions we hold subject
to revision, at least as regards their
theoretical expression. Even on the
strength of experience we do not under-
take to dictate as to what must be, for
all experience is, we are aware, imper-
fect. We know in part, and therefore,
when we are wise, we prophesy but in
part. To revert for a moment to the
science of astronomy, it may be said that
we find there an unending series of les
sons against a priori and absolute views.
The planets are not perfect spheres;
their orbits are not perfect circles, nor
do they perfectly retain their form ;
their rates of movement are not uniform ;
their inclinations to the planes in which
they move undergo constant changes.
It might be supposed beforehand that
they would all be developed on the same
plan and in some regular order of gra-
dation; but no, they increase in size
from Mercury to the earth ; then we
have the moon (which is strictly a
planet) of much inferior size; then
Mars, much larger than the moon, but
much smaller than the earth ; then the
fragmentary asteroids ; then the giant
Jupiter; then Saturn and Uranus suc-
cessively smaller; and finally Neptune,
larger than Uranus but smaller than
Saturn. Again, as if to show a unique
example of the way in which rings were
thrown off from the original nebula,
Saturn alone of all the planets is sur-
rounded by rings which, in some way,
managed to preserve their equilibrium
as rings instead of being rolled together
by gravitation into spheres. The solar

system as a whole seems to speak to us
in commanding tones and say, " When
the laws and phenomena of Nature are
concerned, don't assume to know what
ought to be, but find out what is." On
this line of the patient study of Nature
all the victories of modern science, we
might almost say of modern civilization,
have been won.

Science is now of age and can take
care of itself, but we have not to look
back very far in the history of the world
in order to come to the time when it
had to ask the permission of Theology
and so-called Philosophy for every step
it took, and when frequently its progress
was absolutely barred by some arbi-
trary mandate. In our own day even,
what opprobrium has been heaped upon
geologists like Lyell, and biologists like
Darwin, simply because their conclu-
sions threatened to disturb those in
which the orthodox world, on wholly
insufficient evidence, had been pleased
to settle down ! Henceforth Science
will brook no dictation. She will not
herself dictate to Nature, and she will
suffer no arbitrary authority to dictate
to her. What is scientifically true will
be determined by evidence industrious-
ly gathered, carefully sifted, and cau-
tiously interpreted ; and the world will
reap the benefit of the principles thus
established in ever new additions to the
comforts and refinements of life. Still
more important, however, it may be
hoped, will the progress of scientific
thought prove in the intellectual and
moral sphere. We want what we have
never had as yet, but what the labors
of that truly great philosopher Her-
bert Spencer have at least in part pro-
vided for us, a true science of life —
that is to say, a scientific treatment of
the duties of life and the means of hap-
piness. But meanwhile much advan-
tage will result from the gradual spread
of scientific methods of thought — meth-
ods which incline to caution, to a care-
ful scrutiny of causes and consequences,
in the sphere of social action. Here-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

tofore wisdom has been largely won
through suffering; but we may hope
that, with the wider establishment and
recognition of sound principles of con-
duct, this will more and more cease to
be the case. There does not seem any
very good reason why men might not
be taught to love right conduct just as
they may be, and are, taught to prefer
temperate and wholesome to intemper-
ate and unwholesome eating and drink-
ing. To tell the truth an advance of
science is more wanted to-day in the
sphere of conduct than in the mechan-
ical arts. We could get on very well for
the next quarter of a century without
traveling any faster, or without any fur-
ther cheapening of cotton goods; but
every day we feel directly or indirectly
the need of greater wisdom in the con-
duct of life ; for daily we suffer either
through our own errors or those of
others. Ancient codes of ethics are
very well — some of them at least — as
far as they go ; but it will be a good day
for the world when it is universally
recognized that the true canons of con-
duct are dedncible by sound reasonings
upon the facts of life and the relations
of individuals, and that, so deduced,
they have the highest authority that
any moral code can possess.

A SCIENTIST, BUT NOT A
PHILOSOPHER.

AMONG the papers contributed to the
World's Congress of Religions was one
by Sir William Dawson, of Montreal,
entitled Religio Scientife (the Religion
of Science). This eminent geologist
never loses an opportunity of attacking
the doctrine of evolution, and it is not
surprising, therefore, that he should
have done so on this occasion. No evi-
dence has ever been afforded, however,
that Sir William Dawson has taken
proper pains to ascertain what evolu-
tion, as understood and taught by the
leading believers in the doctrine, means.
Speaking of man's moral nature, he

says : " On this point a strange confu-
sion, produced apparently by the doc-
trine of evolution, seems to have affect-
ed some scientific thinkers, who seek to
read back moral ideas into the history
of the world at a time when no mun-
dane moral agent is known to have been
in existence. They forget that it is no
more immoral for a wolf to eat a lamb
than for a lamb to eat grass." Now, it
would be simply impossible for any one
who had read even so brief a treatise as
Spencer's Data of Ethics with any atten-
tion to have made such a remark. Let
any one to whom that treatise is in the
least familiar try to imagine Spencer
forgetting that "it is no more immoral
for a wolf to eat a lamb than for a lamb
to eat grass " ! A man with Sir William
Dawson's reputation should really not
commit himself in this way. Not only
is there not one word in Spencer's writ-
ings to indicate that he thinks it im-
moral for a wolf to eat a lamb, but his
whole method of treating the subject of
the development of morality shows that
he utterly repudiates such a view. What
Spencer does attempt to do is to prove
that the conduct we now call moral must
be regarded as a development from con-
duct to which it is impossible to apply
the term. He traces for us in the most
careful manner every stage of the pro-
cess ; and if Sir William Dawson would
undertake to point out where the line of
succession fails, or, to express it other-
wise, where the evolution of one stage
from that immediately preceding it has
been incorrectly assumed, he would then
be grappling seriously with the ethical
side of the doctrine of evolution. To
do this, however, lie would have to study
Mr. Spencer's Principles of Ethics with
careful attention, and this would prob-
ably not be agreeable to him. It would
be easy to note other points in Sir Wil-
liam's address to which, from a scientific
point of view, exception might be taken.
Our purpose, however, on the present
occasion is sufficiently served by show-
ing that this really able geologist allows

270

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

himself to speak on philosophical sub-
jects with altogether too slender an
equipment of necessary knowledge.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF MONEY. By
SIDNEY SHERWOOD, with Addresses by
Dr. WILLIAM PEPPER and others. Phila-
delphia : J. B. Lippincott Company. Pp.
413. Price, $2.

THE American people has heard more
about the theory of money during the past
summer than in a long time before. Much
that has been said has been erroneous, and,
unfortunately, the error has often been put
forth so speciously that many of those who
have not given the subject of finance serious
study have mistaken the false for the true.
During the early months of 1892, when the
subject of money was also attracting con-
siderable attention, a series of lectures was
delivered in Philadelphia, under the auspices
of the American Society for the Extension
of University Teaching, and the patronage
of the bankers of Philadelphia. These lec-
tures were given by Dr. Sherwood, of the
Wharton School of Finance and Economy,
and, with certain supplementary matter, con-
stitute the volume before us. The twelve
lectures are evenly divided between history
and theory ; under the former head the prin-
cipal topics are coinage, past fluctuations in
the supply of the coin metals, the develop-
ment of credit, the history of the Bank of
England, and the history of American cur-
rency. The first lecture on theories is also
historical, while the remaining five are de-
voted wholly to monetary theories now cur-
rent. Dr. Sherwood affirms that the prac-
tical law of value of money is the law
of demand and supply. Governments can,
within narrow limits, make money more or
less desirable and more or less plenty, thus
affecting its value. He presents the argu-
ment both for and against a large volume of
currency, and then sets forth certain impor-
tant facts that bear upon this matter. Paper
money he describes as a promise to pay. In
treating of banks of various kinds he states
that there is a growing tendency to divorce
note-issue from the deposit and discount
functions of banks ; that the latter functions
are constantly becoming more important,

while there are tendencies both for and against
the extension of the former. The eleventh
lecture deals with the monetary question of
greatest current interest — the Battle of the
Standards, or monometallism versus bimetal-
lism. Dr. Sherwood gives the arguments of
both parties in the controversy, and states
his conviction that bimetallism based on an
agreement of the chief commercial nations
would be advantageous, but attempted by
one nation alone would be disastrous.
France maintained it only so long as certain
accidental conditions existed. The policy of
the United States under the Sherman law is
not bimetallism. The subject of the closing
lecture — monetary panics — is also a timely
one. The lecturer points out seven causes
of panics, and states the measures taken
by financial institutions for allaying them.
Each of the lectures was followed by a dis-
cussion, which is reported. Appended to the
volume are a syllabus of the lectures and a
list of books for reading. Addresses made
by Dr. William Pepper, Mr. William H.
Rhawn, and others, at the opening and
closing of the course, are also included.

BRIEF GUIDE TO THE COMMONER BUTTERFLIES
OF THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES AND
CANADA. By SAMUEL HUBBARD SCUDDER.
New York : Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 206.
Price, $1.25.

THE LIFE OF A BUTTERFLY. By S. H. SCUD-
DER. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Pp. 186. Price, $1.

THE former of these small volumes is a
manual for amateur collectors. The author
has aimed to guard against alarming the
beginner by its size, and to give quite full
life-histories of the butterflies that are in-
cluded in it. It is described further in his
own words as follows : " I have accordingly
selected the butterflies — less than a hundred
of them — which would almost surely be met
with by any industrious collector in the
course of a year's or two years' work in the
more populous Northern States and in Can-
ada, and have here treated them as if they
were the only ones found there. I have
omitted many species which are common
enough in certain restricted localities (such,
for instance, as our White Mountain butter-
fly), and included only those which are com-
mon over wide areas. As the earlier stages
of these insects are just as varied, as inter-

LITERARY NOTICES.

271

esting, and as important as the perfect stage,
descriptions are given of these under the
guidance of the same principle." The work
opens with a short introduction to the gen-
eral study of butterflies, which is followed
by keys to the various groups, based respect-
ively on the perfect butterfly, the caterpillar,
and the chrysalis. The body of the work
consists of concise descriptions arranged
systematically, each comprising first a de-
scription of the butterfly, the caterpillar,
and the chrysalis, then some account of the
eggs and habits of the species. An ap-
pendix furnishes instructions for collecting,
rearing, preserving, and studying, with cuts
of apparatus.

In The Life of a Butterfly, Mr. Scudder
has described one of the most conspicuous
American butterflies — the large orange and
black milkweed butterfly — and at the same
time he has, by introducing comparisons,
given some account of the lives of the other
members of its tribe. The several habits of
the chosen type are also used to illustrate
such general scientific topics as the struggle
for existence, mimicry, distribution, classifi-
cation, etc. Four plates, showing the type
insect and its important parts, are given.

GENERAL GREENE. By FRANCIS VINTON
GREENE. Great Commanders Series. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 332.
Price, $1.50.

SOME splendid fighters have come of
Quaker stock, and Nathanael Greene was a
notable one of these. His comparatively
short life was a most valuable one to this
country, and to-day his statue stands with
that of Roger Williams to represent Rhode
Island in the Capitol at Washington. His
life up to thirty-three years of age was un-
eventful. Then the Revolution broke out,
and the Assembly of his colony elected him
brigadier general to command the Rhode
Island militia. The choice was amply justi-
fied by Greene's career, first as a thorough
organizer hi camp near Boston, then as the
friend and trusted subordinate of Washing-
ton in the operations about New York and
Philadelphia, as quartermaster general, and
most of all as the strategist, ever active and
vigilant, who manoeuvred the British out of
the Carolinas. The volume before us gives
a vivid and detailed account of his part in

the struggle for independence. The descrip-
tions of battles are clear and precise and all
important ones are illustrated with maps.
An engraving from the portrait of Greene
by Charles Wilson Peale forms the frontis-
piece of the volume.

GEOLOGY. By A. J. JUKES-BROWNE. New
York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 248. Price,
$1.

THIS is one of the volumes of Whittaker's
Library of Popular Science, and its simple
style amply justifies its appearance in such
a series. It is a small book, containing only
the information that would be desired by
an intelligent person who did not care to
make a study of the subject. Its twenty-
one short chapters are divided into three
groups : the first telling how rocks are
made, and what they are made of ; the sec-
ond telling how the rocks were brought into
the positions they now occupy ; and the last
describing the rocks of different ages, and
the fossils which serve to identify them
There are ninety-four illustrations.

A HISTORY OF IRELAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY. By W. E. H. LECKY. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Five vol-
umes. Price, $5.

IN this work Mr. Lecky develops a pro-
foundly interesting chronicle. Not only does
it present much that is novel to those whose
ideas of the subject have filtered through
English media, but it reveals the forces
which have aided in the evolution of Irish
character.

The typical traits of the Irish are often
carelessly ascribed to racial differences. The
influence of the Celtic element is not easily
traced and is apt to be overestimated. What
are termed distinctively Irish evils character-
ize chiefly the counties settled by English-
men. Religion has been a more potent factor
in modification, while the climate and situa-
tion of the country have had an important
share in the formative process.

The suppression of her industries con-
tributed largely to the downfall of the na-
tion. The policy of England, however, was
essentially the same toward Scotland and
America, but Ireland was for various causes
more completely in her grasp. It is difficult
to read unmoved the struggles of this unfor-

272

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tunate people. Not only was their land con-
fiscated, all commerce and manufacture le-
gally restricted, their religion made a crime,
but premiums were put upon bribery and
treachery. The feeling in England was car-
ried to such an extreme that petitions were
presented to prohibit Irishmen from catch-
ing herrings, because they might forestall
English markets ! According to Burke, " the
Irish were treated as a race of savages who
were a disgrace to human nature itself," and
even the poet Spenser advocated their sub-
jection by systematic starvation. The ob-
ject of English rule seemed at first to wipe
out the Irish race rather than their religion ;
later, it assumed the phase of a war of
creeds.

It is shown by Mr. Lecky that the Irish
were naturally tolerant. They harbored
Quakers and Huguenots, sheltered Protest-
ant clergymen, and did not indulge in the
burning of witches. The English, on the
contrary, were relentless persecutors, and
although there was no summary destruction
of Papists in Ireland, such as there had been
of Protestants in Spain, yet the results of
legislation were further reaching and more
pernicious. " The law did not suppose any
such person to exist as an Irish Roman
Catholic." Every office and profession was
closed to him ; it was even a penal offense
to pick up the crumbs of learning as an usher
in a school. Land he could not buy, nor
own a horse over the value of five pounds.
He could not appoint a guardian for his own
child, and if he married a Protestant, the
ceremony was null and the priest who per-
formed it could be hanged. The degrada-
tion of the Irish by this penal code was un-
paralleled, since it affected not a minority
but three fourths of the population and was
in force nearly a century. A perusal of the
laws in the light of the present day is enough
to make one blush for English ancestry.
Judged even by the intolerance of the age,
they were excessive and short-sighted, and
form an indelible blot upon English govern-
ment. The disputed character of Irish his-
tory necessitates frequent reference to origi-
nal materials ; these include the correspond-
ence and records of the English and Irish
Governments and a vast number of private
papers and letters. The reader is thus en-
abled to judge the truth for himself, and, far

from finding the narrative a dull one, is al-
most persuaded that he is in the current of
events.

The limits of this work do not correspond
to those of the History of England, previously
issued. They include the rebellion of 1798,
the legislative union of 1800, and the events
of the two succeeding years, as properly be-
longing to the same epoch.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE SENSES. By JOHN
GRAY MCKENDRICK, M. D., and WILLIAM
SNODGRASS, M. B. New York : Charles
Scribner's Sons. Pp. 318. Price, $1.50
net.

IT is the aim of this book, which is one
of the series issued under the name of Uni-
versity Extension Manuals, to give a suc-
cinct account of the functions of the organs
of sense in man and the higher animals.
The authors have refrained from discussing
with fullness of detail either the compara-
tive physiology of the senses or the numer-
ous interesting questions of a psychological
character that are connected with the study
of the sensory mechanisms. The volume
has been written so as to be readily under-
stood even by those who have not made
physiology a special subject of study. Some
comparatively simple experiments have been
given, by which the reader may test certain
of the statements for himself. The last
chapter is of a speculative character, being
an attempt to elucidate the nature of the
physiological basis of sensation. The vol-
ume is illustrated with one hundred and
twenty-seven figures.

BRITISH FOREST TREES AND THEIR SYLVICUL-
TURAL CHARACTERISTICS AND TREATMENT.
By JOHN NISBET, D. (Ec. New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 352. Price, $2.50.

ONE more evidence of the growing at-
tention that is being paid to forestry is fur-
nished by the appearance of this work. It
is devoted to what may be called the larger
considerations of sylviculture, such as the
choice of kinds of trees for plantations, the
mixing of different kinds, so that they will
help and protect each other, the proper
density of forests, underplanting, etc., de-
tails of such matters as sowing, planting, and
tending being omitted. The greater part of
the volume is devoted to special considera-
tions regarding the growth of individual

LITERARY NOTICES.

273

species of British forest trees. Among
those classed as minor species not usually
forming pure forests in Britain are five coni-
fers introduced from North America. Some-
thing is told also in regard to the yew, juni-
per, hazel, alder, buckthorn, and hawthorn
among useful shrubs.

LECTURE NOTES ON THEORETICAL CHEMISTRY.
By F. G. WIECHMANN. New York : John
Wiley & Sons. Pp. 225.

A LARGE body of notes, corresponding to
an extended course of lectures, is given in
this book. Many of the facts, laws, and
processes which it includes are stated with
much fullness and are accompanied with
illustrative examples. As indicated by the
title, the work is confined to theoretical
chemistry, and much of the history of chem-
ical theory is included in it. A chapter is
given to solutions in which the recent work on
that subject finds a place. Therino-chemis-
try receives due attention, and there are short
chapters on photo-chemistry and electro-
chemistry. Considerable prominence has
been given to stoichiometry, but for prob-
lems in this subject students are referred to
special manuals. The author is instructor
in chemical physics and chemical philosophy
at the School of Mines, Columbia College.

THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF ORNAMENT.
By F. EDWARD HULME, F. L. S., F. S. A.
New York : Macmillan & Co., 1893. Pp.
340. Price, $1.50.

THIS book is an attempt to put into small
compass and cheap form a general view of
the origin and growth of the use of ornament.
The opening paragraph follows : " The Birth
of Ornament ! Countless centuries before man
appeared upon the earth, the Creator of the
universe had gazed upon the work of his
hands, and declared that all had reached his
lofty ideal." Certainly the author can not be
accused of too modern a starting point, and
he further on puts this beyond question.
" Hence we claim for our subject nothing short
of infinite antiquity, nothing less than divine
authority." The first chapter deals with the
value of a knowledge of past ornamentation,
the study of principles, and various other
general matters. Chapter II really opens the
subject, with a consideration of Egyptian,
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Phoenician art.
YOL. XLIV. — 22

Chapter III deals with Greek and Roman art
Chapter IV, division of the Roman Empire :
Byzantine, Romanesque, and Early English
Art ; Chapter V, Causes of the Decay of Goth-
ic Art, and the Renaissance ; and Chapter VI,
The Art of Islam, Persian, Indian, Chinese,
Japanese, Mexican, Peruvian, and, finally, Art
among the North American Indians and the
Primitive Savages. The work seems to be
the result of a large amount of labor and
time. It is very well illustrated with exam-
ples from the various periods, and abounds
in quotations from such authorities as Sir
Joshua Reynolds, Guizot, Ruskin, and Wil-
kinson. It contains a useful index.

A DICTIONARY OP APPLIED CHEMISTRY. By
T. E. THORPE, D. Sc., F. R. S., assisted by
Eminent Contributors. In Three Vol-
umes. Vol. III. 0-Z. London and New
York : Longmans, Green & Co. Pp.
1058. Price, $20.

WE congratulate the editor and the pub-
lishers upon the completion of this valuable
work. So many subjects requiring extended
treatment fall within the latter part of the
alphabet that the concluding volume has
grown far beyond the size of the other two,
and its price has been increased by five dollars.
The article on Sulphuric Acid occupies sixty
pages, and treats fully each detail of the
process of manufacture. Sixteen cuts, show-
ing brimstone burners, steam jet pipes, Gay-
Lussac and Glover towers, and other appa-
ratus are given. Another subject demand-
ing large space is the making of sodium car-
bonate, which is described with like fullness.
The making of other compounds of sodium
and the extraction of the metal itself also
receive due attention. Under the head of
Silver the extraction of that metal is de-
scribed, and under Zinc we find the methods
of extracting the metal and the composition
of its alloys. The article on Water, con-
tributed by Prof. Percy F. Frankland, is
characterized by a large number of results
of analyses of waters from sources of various
geological characters and from various local
supplies — mainly in the British Isles. The
composition of many saline and other min-
eral waters is given also. Modes of purify-
ing water for drinking and for industrial
purposes are described, together with a pro-
cess of chemical analysis. Prof. Frankland
also gives a special section on the bacteriol-

274

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ogy of water, and refers inquirers to half a
page of authorities. Among the organic sub-
stances treated in this volume are the oils,
paraffin, petroleum, starch, and sugar. The
Vegeto-alkaloids, grouped under this head,
are also found here. The Triphenylmethane
Coloring Matters are another important group
of organic substances treated in the present
volume, the author of the article being Prof.
Otto N. Witt, of Berlin. Alfred H. Allen,
author of the Commercial Organic Analysis,
contributes the article on Fixed Oils and
Fats ; Prof. W. A. Tilden, those on the Es-
sential Oils, Terpenes, and Resin ; the one
on Sugar is by Messrs. J. A. R. and B. E. R.
Newlands ; that on Russian Petroleum is by
Boverton Redwood; and that on American
Petroleum by Prof. S. P. Sadtler, of the
University of Pennsylvania. Among the
more purely scientific articles are those on
Specific Gravity, Solution, and Spectrum
Analysis ; while others whose technological
character are more marked are Paper, Pot-
tery and Porcelain (by William Burton, Esq.,
of the Wedgwood Works), Photography,
Soap, Tea, and Wine. The contributions of
the editor (unsigned articles) are many and
important. When so much chemical knowl-
edge is spread before us, perhaps we ought
not to expect Prof. Thorpe to know what
Americans mean by saleratus, or even the
current spelling of the word (p. 364) ; and
it is still less material that he allows his con-
tributor, John Heron, Esq., to annex Long
Island to New Jersey (p. 579).

A GUIDE TO STEREOCHEMISTRY. With an
Appendix : Models for Use in teaching
Organic Chemistry. By ARNOLD EILOART,
Ph. D., B. Sc. New York : Alexander Wil-
son, 26 Delancey Street, Agent. Price, $1
net ; postage free.

THE scope and purpose of this book may
be best indicated by the f ollowing quotation
from the author's preface :

" Although no new branch of chemistry
is found more interesting by chemists and
students than that which treats of the ar-
rangement of atoms in space, so that lec-
tures on the subject are everywhere wel-
come, yet it has been difficult to give guid-
ance and permanence to this interest. . . .
It seemed desirable in attempting to supply
such a book to make it as compact as pos-
sible without stripping the subject of the

charm so natural to it. In this Guide, there-
fore, established facts have been promptly
accepted as such. . . . Living issues appro-
priate the pages thus gained, so that more
than the usual proportion of space is occu-
pied by the later and more daring develop-
ments of stereochemistry ; the theories con-
cerning the space-relations of nitrogen are a
case in point. At the same time especial
care has been taken to notice the criticisms
of those hostile to such innovations."

It should be added that this work, while
it may be used as a text-book by students,
will also be read as a critical and historical
review of the subject.

The American Book Company adds
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice to its
series of English Classics for Schools. An
account of the sources whence the play was
derived, a notice of the occasion on which it
was written, suggesting that it was designed
to take advantage of current sensational
events, and an analysis, are given in the in-
troduction.

The Letters from Queensland (Australia),
reprinted from the special correspondence of
the London Times by Macmillan & Co., con-
tains, besides sketches of travel and scenery
and incidental observations of Chinese and
Kanaka labor, valuable information and sta-
tistics about the sugar industry and mineral
wealth of the colony, cattle and sheep rais-
ing, and a political chapter on the Separa-
tion Question, or the question of the divi-
sion of the colony by the separation of North
Queensland.

Moses or Darwin ? A School Problem for
all Friends of Truth and Progress, is the title
of three papers on Evolution and Darwinian-
ism which were originally delivered as lec-
tures by the author, Dr. Arnold Dodel, at
Zurich and St. Gall, Switzerland. Their im-
mediate purpose was to direct the attention
of the public " to the calamitous gulf lying
between the higher and the common schools "
— which he further describes by the words
" Truth for the few " (higher school pupils,
to whom the scientific doctrines of evolution
are taught) and "Errors for the many"
(lower school pupils, who are taught " the
Mosaic myth "). The translator and Ameri-
can editor, Frederick W. Dodel, furnishes a
preface, in which is a disquisition on School

LITERARY NOTICES.

275

Reform in the West, the burden of which is
the installation of science and the elimina-
tion of all religious teaching in all the schools.
(The Commonwealth Company, Boston.)

The character of the Essays included by
Mr. Henry Smith under the general title of
Religion of the Brain is indicated by the
frontispiece, which pictures an ivy- grown
tree with the motto, " The Ivy has nearly
killed the tree, Theology has all but destroyed
religion. Science will kill Theology, then
Religion will revive." Submitting to theo-
logical teachings during half of his life, he
professes to have found them barren. Then
he turned to science, and, while it took from
him the hope of heaven, it taught him how
to make this life happy ; it took from him
theology, and gave him natural religion. He
sets forth in this book how he accepts
the teaching of science and declines that of
theology. (Watts & Co., London. Price,
2s. &d.)

Karl Heinzen, the author of a volume on
The Rights of Women and the Sexual Rela-
tions, published by Benjamin R. Tucker, Bos-
ton, is described by Karl Schmemann, editor
of this present edition, as " one of the most
enlightened and humanitarian spirits of our
time, whose libertarian and reformatory la-
bors were not limited to his German father-
land and our republic, but extended to the
entire civilized world by their unique and
masterful many-sidedness." The author ad-
vocates, with great freedom and little reserve,
the complete emancipation and independence
of woman, with " liberty to choose her com-
panion and liberty to change."

Instead of a Book is published by the au-
thor, Benjamin R. Tucker, because, he says,
he was " t3O busy to write one " ; that is, to
give orderly arrangement, finish, symmetry,
and due subordination to his thoughts on the
cause he champions. He has been for twelve
years editor of a journal called Liberty, in
which he has expounded the principles of
"Philosophical Anarchism." Pending the
arrival of the man having time, means, and
ability to produce the book that is desired in
maintenance of this cause, he has put forth
" as a makeshift " a partial collection of his
writings for his journal. The volume opens
with a paper on State Socialism and An-
archism, which represents, in a way, a sum-
mary of the entire scope of the work. In the

sections, or groups of essays following this,
the fundamental principles of human asso-
ciation (as he regards them) are dealt with ;
applied to the two great economic factors,
money and land ; the " authoritarian social
principles that go counter to them " are dealt
with ; and the methods by which the cham-
pioned principles can be realized are dis-
cussed. Other articles, less subject to classi-
fication, follow. While the work is highly
objectionable from the conservative point of
view, it is not at all wanting in vigor and
earnestness. ($1.)

In preparing his Standard Arithmetic for
schools and academies, President William J.
Milne of the Normal College at Albany, has
aimed to secure together in the student skill
in numerical computations and a proper un-
derstanding of the reasons for the steps in
the explanation of processes and the solution
of problems. Either can be acquired with-
out the other, but the student will not then
be a full arithmetician, while with both he is
qualified for any work. The book, therefore,
contains examples to promote accuracy and
rapidity, and exercises to train the analytical
powers and develop the reasoning faculties.
Business methods of computation are pre-
ferred to the processes of the schools. (Ameri-
can Book Company.)

Mr. R. Lachlan's Elementary Treatise on
Modem Pure Geometry, and the Elementary
Treatise on Pure Geometry of Mr. J. W. Rus-
sell, cover substantially the same ground in
very similar manners. Pure geometry is de-
fined in the new regulations for the Cambridge
Tripos as " namely, Euclid ; simple properties
of lines and circles ; inversion ; the element-
ary properties of conic sections treated geo-
metrically, not excluding the method of pro-
jections ; reciprocation ; harmonic properties ;
curvature." Mr. Lachlan has brought togeth-
er in his treatise all the important proposi-
tions— bearing on the simple properties of
lines and circles — that might fairly be con-
sidered within the limits of this regulation ;
and has at the same time endeavored to
treat every branch of the subject as com-
pletely as possible, in order to attract a
larger number of students to the science.
Mr. Russell has attempted in his treatise to
bring together all the well-known theorems
and examples connected with harmonies, an-
harmonies, involution, projection (including

276

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

homology), and reciprocation. In order to
avoid the difficulty of framing a general
geometrical theory of imaginary points and
lines, the principle of continuity is appealed
to. The properties of circular points and
circular lines are then discussed, and applied
to the theory of the foci of conies. This
work is also well furnished with examples.
(Macmillan & Co. Price, $4.25 and $2.60.)
The Primary Lessons and the Advanced
Lessons in Human Physiology, by Prof. Oli-
ver P. Jenkins, are successive volumes in the
Indiana State series of common-school text-
books. The author insists that the books
be used only as a guide to the study of the
human body, and not as the object to be stud-
ied. " If this or any other elementary book
in physiology is used simply as a book to be
learned and recited, the time spent on it is
worse than wasted." The author shows that
many parts of the body can be put directly
under study and their operations carefully
observed and analyzed, while the lower ani-
mals can furnish the rest of the illustrations.
The body should also be observed in action.
Charts and drawings have their place in the
teaching, but " they should come after the
objects and never before, and certainly should
not stand for them." In the second book of
the series — Advanced Lessons — directions are
introduced for the practical demonstration
of many anatomical and physiological facts.
Recognizing the change that has come in re-
cent years over the tone and spirit of physio-
logical thought and discussion, the author has
endeavored to infuse enough of this spirit
into his work " to introduce even the young
student into its influence." (Indiana School-
book Company, Indianapolis.)

A Student's Manual of a Laboratory
Course in Physical Measurements, by Wal-
lace Clement Sabine, is a guide to experi-
ments. It was primarily written for one of
the Harvard courses in physics, and the ex-
periments detailed in it are based upon those
performed in that course. It has been given
the form of an abstract of the daily lectures
preceding the laboratory work and describ-
ing the experiments to be performed, and is
intentionally condensed. Efforts are made
to explain all the corrections to be applied,
and to call attention to all the precautions
which should be taken in the accurate and
proper performance of the experiments. On

the other hand, in the majority of cases, the
description is purposely not such as will ad-
mit of a mechanical and unintelligent inter-
pretation. (Boston: Ginn & Co.)

The second part of Jane H. NeweWs
Header in Botany contains selections for
reading, adapted from well-known authors,
on flower and fruit. In it Christian Con-
rad Sprengel is represented by passages on
Cross-Fertilization and Fertilization of Tro-
paeolum, Darwin in Cross-Fertilization, Het-
erostyled Flowers, and the Habits of Insects
in Relation to Flowers, writers in the Ger-
man Pfianzenleben in The Protection of Pol-
len, The Dissemination of Pollen by the
Wind, and The Color of Flowers as a Means
of attracting Insects ; Wallace in Attractive
and Protective Colors of Fruits ; Gray in
Fertilization of Orchids ; Grant Allen and
Byron D. Halsted in Weeds ; F. L. Sargent
in The Common Dandelion; Sir John Lub-
bock in Habits of Insects in Relation to
Flowers ; Miss Buckley in Epochs in the
History of Botany ; and four papers have
no names attached. (Boston : Ginn & Co.)

The Orum System of Voice Education,
for reading and conversation, recitation,
dramatic expression, and Bible reading, by
Julia A. Orum, is based on the system of
James Fennell, as transmitted through his
pupil, L. G. White, and Mr. White's pupil,
James B. Roberts. The author has made its
illustration and establishment her special
work for sixteen years. The book is a tran-
scription of her method of instruction in
schools and classes which include children
and men and women of various vocations.
It is based upon physiological principles, and
begins with the elucidation of the elemental
functions of the body in the expression of
sentences. (Published by the author at
Philadelphia.)

The Manual of Current Shorthand, — or-
thographic and phonetic — of Mr. Henry Sweet
is intended to supply the want of a system of
writing shorter and more compact than long-
hand, and at the same time not less distinct
and legible. None of the systems most in
use at the present time, the author affirms,
fully meet these requirements, because they
sacrifice efficiency to brevity. The present
system is on a script basis instead of a geo-
metrical one, like Pitman's — that is, is formed
on its model of ordinary longhand, reduced

LITERARY NOTICES.

277

to its simplest elements ; it provides for the
vowels, and is on an alphabetic and syllabic
basis. (Macmillan & Co., $1.25.)

The seventeenth monograph of the Geo-
logical Survey is The Flora of the Dakota
Group, a work on fossil botany by the late
Leo Lcsquereux (Geological Survey, $1.10).
The specimens from which the descriptions
in this work were written are mostly in the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cam-
bridge, the museum of the University of
Kansas, and the private cabinet of Mr. R.
D. Lacoe, of Pittston, Pa. This was the
last production of its author, and the chief
events of his life are appropriately set forth
in the editor's preface.

A monograph on the Gasteropoda and
Cephalopoda of the Raritan Clays and Green-
sand Marls of New Jersey, by Robert Parr
Whitficld, is the eighteenth in the series of
the Geological Survey, and forms also a
part of the report on the Survey of the State
of New Jersey. The material for this re-
port was very meager, the gasteropods being
represented in the several formations only
by casts and the cephalopods largely by
fragments. Fifty plates, each bearing from
one to thirty figures, illustrate the text.

The United States Geological Survey has
issued A Dakota-English Dictionary, by
Stephen Return Riggs, a quarto volume of
665 pages. The author, who died in 1883,
was a student of the language for mission-
ary use for over thirty years, having pre-
pared a grammar and dictionary that was
published by the Smithsonian Institution in
1852. The present volume has been edited
by James Owen Dorsey.

In the Report of the Commissioner of
Education for 1889-90 it is shown that the
property used for common schools had
reached the value of $350,000,000, an aver-
age increase of $10,000,000 a year since
1870. In the same period the school at-
tendance in the South Atlantic States had
risen from six to twenty- two per cent of the
whole population, and in the South Central
States from seven and a half to twenty-three
and a half per cent. The enrollment for
the whole country is twenty-three per
cent. This is a better showing than that
of any other nation except Saxony. But
many European states have a much longer
yearly session than we have. Here, says

the commissioner, is the place to show
improvement in future years. Among the
subjects on which special reports are pre-
sented are the educational congresses held
in Paris hi 1889, education in Scotland,
the higher schools of Prussia and the school
conference of 1890, temperance instruction,
and the curricula of professional schools.
Numerous other topics receive attention also,
and there are the usual statistics.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

ASronautics. M. N. Forney, Editor and Pro-
prietor. New York : American Engineering and
Railroad Journal. Monthly. Pp. 16. 10 cents.
$1 a year.

Arnold, Thomas K. First and Second Latin
Book. Pp.416. — Latin Prose Composition. Ameri-
can Book Company. Pp. 415. $1 each.

Bardeen, C. W. History of Educational Jour-
nalism in the State of New York. Syracuse, N. Y. :
C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 45. 10 cents.

Bedell, i rederick, and Crehore, A. C. Alternat-
ing Currents. New York : W. J. Johnston Co.,
limited. Pp.325.

Benedict, James E. West African Crustaceans .
Washington : Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 10.

Bennet, C. W. History of the Philosophy of
Pedagogics. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen.
Pp. 43. 50 cents.

Bowen Cooke. C. J. British Locomotives. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 376. $*.

Bradford, E. G. Search Lights and Guide Lines
(Man and Nature, etc.). New York: Fowler &
Wells Co. Pp.103.

Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Pro-
spectus for 1893-'94. Pp. 55.

Brown, Marshall. Bulls and Blunders. Chica-
go: S. C. Griggs & Co. Pp. 304. $1.

Calvin, Samuel, State Geologist, and Assist-
ants. Iowa Geological Survey, 1892. Volume I.
Des Moines. Pp. 472.

Carter, Oscar, C. S. Artesian Wells. Pp. 9.

Carus, Dr. Paul. Our Need of Philosophy.
Pp. 14.— The Religion of Science. Pp. 103. 25
cents.

Cox, Frank P. Continuous-current Dynamos
and Motors. New York : W. J. Johnston Co.,
limited. Pp. 871.

Dall, William Healey. A Subtropical Miocene
Fauna in Arctic Siberia. United States National
Museum. Pp. 10, with Plate.

Davy, R. B., M. D., Olema, Cal. Evolution and
Involution of the Special Senses. Pp. 10.

De Quincey, Thomas. Joan of Arc rnd The
English Mail Coach. Edited, etc., by J. M. Hart.
New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 138.

Drake, N. F., and Thompson, R. A. Report
on the Colorado Coal Field of Texas. Austin.
Pp. 136, w ith Maps.

Fontaine, William M. Fossil Plants from the
Trinity Division, Texas. United States National
Museum. Pp. 26, with Plates.

Gould, George M., M. D., Philadelphia. The
Duty of the Community to Medical Science. Pp.
12. — A Temporary Change in the Axis of Astig-
matism. P. 1. — The Meaning and the Method of
Life, reviewed by Josiah Roice. Pp. 7. — The Med-
ical Press. Pp. 12.— The Spelling of some Medi-
cal Words. Pp. 8. — The Pernicious Influence of
Ajbinism on the Eye. Pp. 10. — A New Illustrated
Dictionary of Medicine, Biology, and Collateral
Sciences. Specimen pages.

278

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Hart, Ernest. The Profession, the Public, and
the Code. Address before the Pan-American Med-
ical Congress.

Hang, W. P. Blind Crayfishes of Indiana, etc.
United States National Museum. Pp. 4. with
Plate.

Hayes, M. Horace. The Points of the Horse.
New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 379, with
Plates. $10.50.

Hill, David J. Genetic Philosophy. New York:
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 382.

Hill, Robert T. Palaeontology of the Creta-
ceous Fossile of Texas, etc. Biological Society of
Washington. Pp. 12, with Plates.

Jenner, Sir William. Lectures and Essays on
Fevers and Diphtheria, 1849 to 1879. New York:
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 581.

Killeman, W. A. Photographing Certain Nat-
ural Objects without a Camera. Pp. 2.— Experi-
ments in Germination of Treated Seed. Pp. 5. —
Bibliography of Ohio Botany. Pp. 2',>.— Killeman,
W. A., and Selby, Aug. D. Analytical Synopsis
of the Groups of Fungi. Pp. 8.

Kirk, Hyland C. The Revolt of the Brutes.
New York : C. T. Dillingham & Co. Pp. 123. 50
cents.

Leffmann, Henry, and Beam, William. Analy-
sis of Milk and Milk Products. Philadelphia: P
Blakiston, Son & Co. Pp. 92. $1.

Leo XIII. Encyclical on the Condition of La-
bor. Boston: Pilot Publishing Co. Pp. 16.

Loewinson-Lessing, F., and others. Tables for
the Determination of Rock-forming Minerals. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.55. $1.25.

McAulay, A. Utility of Quaternions in Phys-
ics. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.107, $1.60.

McKinley, William. Speeches and Addresses.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 664. $2.

Michigan Mining School. Reports of the Di-
rector. Pp. 102.

Monroe, W. 8. The Educational Labors of
Henry Barnard. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen.
Pp. 35. 50 cents.

Mflller, F. Max. Three Introductory Lectures
on the Science of Thought. Chicago: Open Court
Publishing Co. Pp. 125. 25 cents.

Munro, J. C. Elementary Text-book of Com-
mercial Law. New York: Macmillam & Co. Pp.
191. 90 cents.

Newton, Alfred, and Gadow, Hans, etc. A
Dictionary of Birds. Part II. Ga-Moa. New York:
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 212.

New York Academy of Sciences. Transac-
tions, 1892-'93. Pp. about 300.

Nutting, C. C. President's Address, Iowa
Academy of Sciences. Pp. 5. — Report of Com-
mittee on State Fauna. Pp. 3.— Significance of
the Concealed Crests of Fly-catchers. Pp. 5.

Peck. James I. Pteropods and Heteropods
collected by the Steamer Albatross during the
Voyage from Norfolk, Va., to San Francisco, Cal.,
1887-'88, United States National Museum. Pp.
17, with Plates.

Pilling, James Constantino. Bibliography of
the Chinookian Languages. United States Bu-
reau of Ethnology. Pp. 81.

Powell, J. W. Report of the Bureau of Eth-
nology, 1886-'87. Washington. Pp. 298, with
Plates.

Preece. William H., and Stubbs, Arthur J. A
Manual of Telephony. New York: Macmillan &
Co. Pp.508. $4.50.

Prosser, C. S. The Upper Hamilton and Port-
age Stages of Central and Eastern New York.
Pp. 18.

Rein, Prof W. Outlines of Pedagogics. Syra-
cuse, N. Y.: C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 1<(9. $1.25.

Richmond, Charles W. On a Collection of
Birds from Eastern Nicaragua and Rio Frio, Cos-
ta Rica, etc. United States National Museum.
Pp.54.

Romanes, G. J. An Examination of Weisman.
ism. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co. Pp.
221. $1.

Roscoe, Sir Henry, and Lunt, Joseph. Inor-
ganic Chemistry-for Beginners. New York: Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 245. 75 cents.

Sanford, Henry R. The Limited Speller. Syra-
cuse, N. Y. : C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 104. 35 cents.

Saunders, Frederick, Editor. Addresses com-
memorative of the American Centennial and of
the Discovery. New Yoak: E. B. Treat. Pp. 1041.

Scientific Alliance of New York. Third An-
nual Directory. Pp. 40.

Scott, Sir Walter. The Lady of the Lake.
American Book Company. Pp. 192. 85 cents.

Siemens, Werner von. Personal Recollections.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 400. $5.

Smith, John B. Catalogue of the Lepidopter-
ous Superfamily Noctuidae found in Boreal Amer-
ica. United States National Museum. Pp. 424.

Speakman, Thomas H. Divisions in the So-
ciety of Friends. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott
Co. Pp. 112.

Stearns, Robert E. C. Mollusk Fauna of the
Galapagos Islands. Pp. 96, with Plates.— Rare or
Little-known Mollusks from the West Coast of
North and South America. Pp. 12, with Plate. —
Molluscan Species collected in West Africa, 1889-
'90. Pp.20.

Todhunter, Isaac, and Pearson, Karl. A His-
tory of the Theory of Elasticity and of the Strength
of Materials from Galilei to the Present Time.
Volume II, Parts I and II. New York: Macmillan
& Co. Pp. 762 and 556. $7.50.

University School of Engineering. Laboratory
of Chemistry. Pp. 23.

Virgil's Aeneid (six books) and Bucolics.
Edited; etc., by W. R. Harper and Frank J. Mil-
ler. American Book Company. Pp. 564. $1.50.

Welch, George T., M. D. Therapeutical Super-
stition. Pp. 29.

Werner, E.. "Clear the Track." New York:
The International News Company. Pp. 319. 50
cents.

Wright, Carroll D. The Phosphate Industry
of the United States. Pp. 145.— Wright, Carroll
D., and Gould, E. R. L. The Gothenburg System
of Liquor Traffic. Pp. 253.— Washington: Govern-
ment Printing Office.

Xenophon's Anabasis (seven books), edited by
W. R. Harper and James Wallace. American
Book Company. Pp. 575. $1.50.

Zirret, Alexander. An Elementary Treatise on
Theoretical Mechanics. Part I, Kinematics. New
York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 181.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

The World's Congress on Geology. —

This auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition
occupied the week August 21st to 26th, hav-
ing a large attendance of geologists of the
United States and Canada, with a few from
other countries, though many papers were
sent to the Congress by foreign geologists.
The sessions were held only in the forenoons,
leaving the afternoons for attending the
World's Fair. Forty papers were presented
before the Congress, of which thirteen were
t>y women who are teachers and special stu-
dents of geology, three of these being from

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

279

England, one from Belfast, Ireland, three
from Massachusetts, two from Ohio, two
from Illinois, and one each from Iowa and
Colorado. Of the twenty-seven papers by
professional geologists, twelve were from the
United States and three from Canada, the
twelve others being as follows : from Brazil,
two ; Venezuela, one ; England, Scotland,
and Germany, each two ; and Sweden, Nor-
way, and Switzerland, each one. Besides
the formal papers, interesting discussions fol-
lowed, and the programmes for three of the
days ended with questions for special dis-
cussion, these being, Are there any natural
geological divisions of world-wide extent ?
What are the principles and criteria to be
observed in the restoration of ancient geo-
graphic outlines? and similarly, What are
the principles and criteria to be observed in
the correlation of glacial . formations in op-
posite hemispheres ? Among the geologists
present at this Congress were Prof. Dr.
Groth, of Munich ; Mr. Hjalmar Lundbohm,
of Stockholm ; Dr. A. R. C. Selwyn, Director
of the Geological Survey of Canada; the
venerable Prof. James Hall, whose work in
geology began sixty years ago; Profs. Le
Conte, Chamberlin, Salisbury, Lindahl, Wal-
cott, H. S. and G. H. Williams, N. H. Win-
chell, G. F. Wright, and many others from
the United States.

Subdivisions or Unity of the Glacial
Period.— The final day of the World's Con-
gress on Geology was devoted to papers on
the Glacial period, of which eight were pre-
sented. Brief notes of these papers and of
the ensuing discussions will be of popular
interest, as they all were specially directed
to the recently much debated question wheth-
er the ice age comprised two or several
glacial epochs, separated by warm intervals,
as has been urged by Croll, Geikie, Wahn-
schaffe, Penck, De Geer, Chamberlin, McGee,
and others, or was a single and continuous
period of glaciation, as maintained by Dana,
Wright, Upham, Lamplugh, Kendall, Falsan,
Hoist, Nikitin, and others.

The first paper of this series was by Prof.
James Geikie, of Scotland. This distin-
guished glacialist concludes, from his obser-
vations in Great Britain and their correla-
tion with the northern drift-covered portion
of continental Europe, that no less than five

distinct glacial epochs are recognizable there,
separated by long times of interglacial tem-
perate climate. These alternations are held
to be in accord with Dr. James Croll's astro-
nomic theory of the causes of the Ice age,
affording indeed a demonstration of the truth
of that theory.

Mr. Hjalmar Lundbohm, of Sweden, giv-
ing the results of his own studies and of the
more extended observations of Baron De
Geer in that country, thought that good evi-
dence is found for two epochs of ice accumu-
lation and drift deposition. During the first
glaciation the Scandinavian ice-sheet flowed
outward over the northwestern half of Rus-
sia and the northern half of Germany, while
southwestward it covered the basin of the
North Sea and was confluent with the British
ice. The later glaciation, in which a great
ice-lobe stretched south and southwest over
the basin of the Baltic Sea, formed conspicu-
ous moraines in Finland, northern Germany,
and southern Sweden. Since the retreat of
this ice-sheet Scandinavia has been differ-
entially uplifted to a maximum amount of
about one thousand feet in the center of the
peninsula, and the Baltic Sea has been alter-
nately open to the ocean and closed from it,
so that for some time it was a fresh-water
lake.

Mr. Andrew M. Hansen, of Norway, also
declared in favor of two glacial epochs, each
of them including two or more stages of ice
advance and retreat. The glacial drift of
Norway, however, was described as affording
little testimony of an interglacial epoch,
which this author accepts from its stratified
deposits underlain and overlain by till in
other parts of Europe.

Dr. Albrecht Heim, of Switzerland, from
the glacial drift with intercalated beds con-
taining lignite coal and plentiful plant re-
mains in valleys of the Alps, confidently as-
serted that the glaciers must three times
have advanced far beyond their present
limits. The second advance was the far-
thest, and was doubtless contemporaneous
with the maximum extension of the ice-sheets
of Scandinavia and Great Britain.

Dr. Robert Bell spoke of the glaciation
of Canada, which was wholly enveloped by
the North American ice-sheet, excepting a
tract west of the lower Mackenzie Valley and
perhaps a narrow area adjoining the east

z8o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

side of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta.
The stratified beds, some of them fossilifer-
ous, and others containing layers of lignite,
which are found in Canada between deposits
of till, may probably be explained by moder-
ate advances of the ice-sheet interrupting its
general recession, not so prolonged nor im-
portant as to be called interglacial epochs.

Prof. T. C. Chamberlin reviewed the his-
tory of the Ice age in the United States,
concluding that it has probably a threefold
division. Two long glacial epochs had pre-
ceded the chief time of deposition of the
loess, which was followed by the principal
interglacial epoch with retreat of the ice bor-
der perhaps generally to the northern line of
the United States. The last great ice ad-
vance and stages of its retreat were attended
by the formation of the remarkable marginal
moraines, ten to twenty in order from south
to north, which have been mapped across
the northern United States and portions of
Canada, while others doubtless remain to be
traced in regions farther north.

Mr. Warren Upham noted the uniqueness
of the climatic conditions of the Ice age, and
the absence of glacial periods from the far
longer Tertiary and Mesozoic eras. So ex-
ceptional climate during the Quaternary era
must have resulted from very unusual causes,
which could not be astronomic, for in that
case records of frequently recurring general
glaciation would be found in the long pre-
ceding eras. Great uplifts of glaciated coun-
tries to such altitude that they received
snowfall instead of rain during all the year
are regarded as the cause of the ice accumu-
lation ; but the vast weight of the ice-sheets
finally depressed the land, bringing on a
warm climate by which the ice was at last
rapidly melted away. Only one epoch of
glaciation, with fluctuating advance and re-
cession of the ice, is held to be a sufficient
explanation for the observed glacial phenom-
ena of both North America and Europe;
and the Glacial period in each of these con-
tinents appears to have ended only some six
thousand to ten thousand years ago.

Mr. Frank Leverett described the diverse
deposits of the older drift in northwestern
Illinois, showing on a map of that State the
courses of the glacial boundary and retreatal
moraines which he has traced. Comparison
of the depths of stream erosion in the older

and newer drift indicates that their times of
formation were divided by a much longer
interval than the time from the end of the
Ice age until now.

In the discussion following these papers,
Prof. G. F. Wright spoke of the rock gorges
eroded by the Delaware, Susquehanna, and
upper Ohio Rivers below the highest drift-
gravel terraces. This erosion has been re-
ferred to an interglacial epoch, but he finds
evidence that it was preglacial, and that the
valleys were filled with the early drift gravels
from their present bottoms to the level of
the high terraces. The general parallelism
of the drift boundary' and the successive re-
treatal moraines is thought to imply the for-
mation of all the drift during a single epoch.

Prof. R. D. Salisbury cited the much
deeper oxidation and leaching of the older
than of the newer drift as proof of their
widely different ages, separated by a long
interval of ice departure and mild climate.

Major C. E. Button objected to the ex-
tension of theories beyond the warrant of
facts observed. He thought it too early at
the present stage of investigations to decide
the causes of the Ice age ; but he doubts the
astronomic theory, and looks rather to geo-
graphic conditions.

Lack of time prevented the consideration
of the subject assigned for special discussion,
on the correlation of glacial formations in
opposite hemispheres, which, however, had
been more or less touched upon by several
of the papers. The prevailing view seemed
to be that the glaciations- of Europe and
America were nearly or quite at the same
time, and that there was a close agreement
in the sequence of events constituting the
Ice age on both continents.

The World's Fair Model Library.— The

model library of five thousand volumes shown
by the American Library Association at the
World's Fair is to be sent to the Bureau of
Education at Washington for use and exhi-
bition. This library marks a noteworthy
step in advance in the choosing of books —
in each department the selection was com-
mitted to an authority in his field. In the
sections of electricity, photography, general
political economy, and American govern-
ment, lists were printed, each title being fol-
lowed by a note of description and appraisal

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

281

from an eminent teacher. This method,
were it applied to the whole working litera-
ture of education, would place the judgments
of the best teachers at the service of all the
people. Of the catalogue of this library the
Bureau of Education is printing twenty
thousand copies.

Thickness of Oil Films. — From experi-
ments made in the Baltic Sea off Greifswald,
Prof. Oberbeck, of the University of Greifs-
wald, has found that the surface of water
calmed by one litre of rape-seed oil or ma-
chine oil oscillates around nineteen thousand
square metres, indicating that the thickness
of the film is about one twenty-thousandth of
a millimetre. The oil doubtless extends also
in an imperceptible film outside of the circle
of calm, whence the average thickness of this
inner layer is probably even less. The author
has made skillfully devised series of labora-
tory experiments to determine still more pre-
cisely the minimum thickness of a percepti-
ble film, and found it to be two millionths of
a millimetre. This is the same thickness as
that which Lord Rayleigh found adequate
to arrest the movements of camphor. Mr.
Rontgen has also found that the vapor of
ether striking upon oil scatters it till it is re-
duced to the same thinness. According to
Herr Oberbeck, a film six times thinner is still
coherent. If the quantity of oil is gradually
increased the pellicle becomes more and more
resistant, and of uniform thickness. When
it reaches eighteen millionths of a millimetre,
the oil collects in droplets which rise above
the rest of the surface ; and the film does
not become uniform till enough oil has been
poured on to equal the entire thickness of
the droplets.

Advances in the Dairy Indnstry. — At

the Dairy Building at the World's Fair there
were daily demonstrations of the best mod-
ern practice in butter and cheese making.
Prof. S. M. Babcock, of the University of
Wisconsin, the chemist in charge, as part of
his apparatus, employed the milk tester in-
vented by him in 1890. This tester is used
by adding to milk an equal quantity of sul-
phuric acid of 1'82 or T83 specific gravity.
The mixture is poured into a series of glass
bottles, each drawn out at the neck as a
narrow and calibrated tube ; the bottles, laid

in an inclined position on a frame, are rotated
700 to 1,200 times per minute ; the sulphu-
ric acid separates the fat, and this fat, by
centrifugal motion, is sent up into the cali-
brated tubes, where it is easily read off.
This test places the dairy industry upon a
business footing, and not only enables the
proprietor of a butter or cheese factory justly
to appraise the milk he buys, but also de
cides for the dairyman which of his cows is
most profitable and which should be sent to
the butcher. The importance of this simple
and ready test is evident when we learn that
in Wisconsin alone there are 1,700 butter
and cheese factories. The Babcock tester
is manufactured by some twenty firms in the
United States, and by a firm in England and
a firm in Germany. Due as it was to the
experiments of a servant of a State, the de-
vice has not been patented. To this fact is
in part due the wide sale of the tester ; it is
so simply manufactured that no costly pat-
terns and plant are needed for its produc-
tion; at retail the price is but eight to
twelve dollars, according to size. To his
forerunners in the task of fat testing Prof.
Babcock declares his indebtedness. Mr.
Short, of the University of Wisconsin, had
invented an apparatus in which milk fat was
saponified and driven forth by centrifugal
motion ; Prof. Patrick, of Iowa, employed,
in a tester of his design, an acid instead of
an alkaline combination. Uniting an idea
from each of these devices, Prof. Babcock
hit upon success.

Vegetarian Pedestrians. — The result of a
pedestrian contest recently completed be-
tween Berlin and Vienna was a triumph for
two vegetarian walkers, who came out a long
way ahead of their carnivorous competitors.
The fact corresponds with other evidence of
the enduring power of non-meat-eaters. If
there is one thing certain, says an English
journal, remarking on the achievement, about
the races that eat no meat, it is that they
can march. " Thousands, probably scores of
thousands of Sikhs and Hindostanees would
have performed the German feat, and not
have thought at the end of it that they had
done anything wonderful ; and they not only
eat no meat, but they are the descendants of
men who have eaten no meat for perhaps
two thousand years. They have eaten wheat

282

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or millet, and drunk plenty of milk; and
they can walk rapidly as long as life re-
mains in them. A Sepoy regiment which
means it will walk a European regiment to
death, and do it on food which their compet-
itors would pronounce wholly insufficient to
sustain vigorous life. A regular Hindostanee
carrier, with a weight of eighty pounds on
his shoulders — carried, of course, in two
divisions hung on his neck by a yoke — will,
if properly paid, lope along over a hundred
miles in twenty-four hours, a feat which
would exhaust any but the best English
runners." But the writer doubts whether
this power of endurance is parallel with
what is called physical strength.

Hypnotism in Remedial Treatment. —

An unnamed writer, whose views are pro-
nounced by the Lancet " eminently wise and
judicious," has been publishing a series of
articles in the London Times on the New
Mesmerism, in which he identifies the hyp-
notism of the French and other neurologists
of the present time with the mesmerism of
a former generation and the hypnotism of
Braid. He affirms that denial of the exist-
ence of hypnotism is out of the question.
To the inquiry whether it is sufficiently
beneficial to justify its use, he replies that
" a method which has been already tried and
found wanting ought not to meet with the
same open reception as a new remedy. What
would be mere caution in the latter case very
properly becomes suspicion in the former."
Quoting from the old authors to show that
hypnotism was practiced in former days for
the same maladies and with the same alleged
results as to-day, he concludes that if it had
possessed a real efficacy it would never have
been allowed to fall into disuse. He accepts
Charcot's view that the hypnotic condition is
essentially morbid and dependent on a dis-
ordered brain, and that its employment is
only justifiable in a few exceptional cases
here and there. The writer sums up his
conclusions by saying : " Hypnotism in treat-
ment has a real but very limited value, and
it should only be used with great care. It is
not likely to die out altogether, but neither is
it likely to be generally adopted, or even to
spread much beyond its present limits. Hyp-
notic experiments, unless they have the pa-
tient's benefit in view, are injurious and un-

justifiable alike on the platform and in the
laboratory. Finally, if I may offer any prac-
tical advice to the public, it is this : Regard
hypnotism with extreme caution, and do not
resort to it except on the advice of an un-
prejudiced medical man in whose opinion
you have implicit confidence."

Tree-top Vegetation. — The plants that
grow in the tops of willow trees near Cam-
bridge, England, have been recorded during
the last few years. They represent eighty
species, and have been found altogether 3,951
times among about 4,500 trees. Of the eighty
species, only eighteen furnish one per cent
each of the whole number of records; the
others occurring only in very small numbers.
Classifying the plants according to means of
distribution, nineteen species, of which 1,*763
records, or 44'6 per cent, occur, have fleshy
fruits ; three species with burs were found
in 651 instances, or 16'4 per cent; thirty-
four species, with winged or feathered fruit,
gave 996 records, or 25'1 per cent; seven
plants with very light seeds, 421 records, or
19'6 per cent; and plants whose means of
distribution is poor or somewhat doubtful,
120 records, or 2'9 per cent. It is thus very
strikingly shown how the various mechanisms
for distribution succeed, for only the better
ones present any considerable numbers in
the list. The bird-distributed plants appear
higher here than in such cases as the flora of
the churches of Poitiers, because birds visit
trees more frequently. The observations
show that a seed is carried only a short dis-
tance by its mechanism for distribution.
Plants are always found upon the soil within
two hundred and fifty yards, at most, of those
found in the trees. An analysis was made
as far as possible of the birds' nests found in
the trees, and pieces, often with ripe fruits,
of many of the plants in the list were discov-
ered in them ; so that probably this means of
distribution is of some importance.

Athletics and Scholarship.— Mr. Wil-
liam Odell, of Torquay, England, recently ad-
dressed the question to the headquarters
of some of the large public schools as to
whether the boys who excel in athletics are
as a rule also excellent in school work, ex-
aminations, etc. A similar inquiry made by
a Mr. Cathcart ten years ago elicited an-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

283

swers that were full of enthusiasm and un-
stinted praise of athletics. The replies to
Mr. OdelPs questions are more reserved and
critical. One correspondent answered that
as a general and rarely broken rule, excel-
lence in athletics and in intellectual work
are not met with at the same time in the
same person ; another, that " the spirit of
athleticism needs controlling." Dr. Horn-
by, of Eton, notes that " some years ago it
was quite possible for a boy who had an
aptitude for cricket or rowing to attain to the
highest excellence, according to the stand-
ard of that day, in athletics and school work.
I doubt whether it is so now. Athletics of
all kinds have become so developed and
brought into a system, and, I may almost
say, professional, that the time required for
a very high excellence in them is, I think,
a serious obstacle to a reading man or a stu-
dious boy's engaging in them with a view to
athletic distinction. This is a serious evil in
our day " ; and Dr. Percival, of Rugby, that
" the great publicity given to athletics tends
to give them an undue prominence in the
minds of both boys and men." These re-
plies suggest that physical education in pub-
lic schools may have been overdone and
overestimated, and that the enthusiasm of a
few years ago may have carried matters fur-
ther than was intended.

The Glory of Columbus. — In his presi-
dential address before the American Geo-
graphic Society on Discoverers of America,
the Hon. Gardiner S. Hubbard claims for
Columbus, in the face of the recent attempts
to depreciate his work, all the credit that
has at any time been given him. There was
no map published until after the sixteenth
century, Mr. Hubbard says, that gave a cor-
rect delineation of the seacoast of America.
" It is no wonder that Columbus never com-
prehended the nature or extent of his discov-
eries. The more we study the history and
geography of the times, the influence of the
Church, the difficulty of determining longi-
tude, the ignorance of the movements of the
mariner's compass and of the distance to
Cipango, the greater will be our admiration
for Columbus. Yet a recent writer speaks
of the discovery of Columbus as a blunder,
and others say, as if in disparagement of his
work, that he knew of the discoveries of the

Northmen, and was only following their
track ; that the chart of Toscanelli, which
Columbus took on his first voyage, indicated
clearly his route ; that Columbus died in
the belief that he had discovered Cipango
and Cathay, never realizing that it was the
New World, and that Americus Vespucius is
entitled to the greater credit." Sebastian
Cabot is quoted by the author in testimony
of the admiration with which Columbus's dis-
covery was received at the court of Henry
VII, where it was affirmed "to be a thing
more divine than humane to saile by the west
into the easte, where the spices growe, by a
chart that was never before knowen." It is
very doubtful if Columbus knew of the voy-
ages of the Northmen, nor would such knowl-
edge have been of much value, for Greenland
was then believed to be a part of Europe and
joined to Norway. If Columbus had known
of their discoveries and sought the countries
they had found, he would have sailed north-
westward instead of westward. Many before
Toscanelli and Columbus believed the world
to be round, and that by sailing westward
Asia might be reached. Columbus not only
believed but proved it. He made no blun-
der, for he sought land the other side of the
Atlantic, and he found it. Vespucius knew
little more than Columbus of the New World,
and never realized that North America and
South America were one continent. The
maps show that learned geographers long
after the discoveries of Columbus, Vespucius,
Cabot, and Magellan, did not understand the
geography of the New World. " All voyages
before that of Columbus had been coasting
voyages, the sailors keeping in sight of
land. Columbus pushed into the unknown
and trackless ocean, leaving the land far be-
hind. Good seamen were unwilling to under-
take such a voyage, so convicts were obtained,
liberated from prison on condition of sailing
with Columbus. A brave, resolute, and self-
contained spirit was necessary to command
such a crew on such an expedition. New
wonders startled him each day. . . . No voy-
age like that was ever made before, and none
like it can ever be made again, for the great
discoverer solved the problem and reached
the east by sailing west."

The Pose of Egyptian Drawings. — The

first thing that a Western observer remarks

284

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the pose of Egyptian drawings of the hu-
man figure is that it is an impossible combi-
nation according to our ideas. We see the
face in profile, the eye full length, the chest
in front view, and the legs sidewise. But
before we condemn this as contrary to Na-
ture, it is well, as Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie
suggests, to see what the attitude of a mod-
ern Egyptian is, and how far our notions are
correct. To avoid all ideas of posing for the
subject, he selects the figure of a boy from a
large group that was photographed without
any special aim by a Cairo dealer. In the
kneeling figure are seen the profile of the
face, the eye full, the chest in front view,
and the legs sidewise. Everything that we
have heard condemned as unnatural and im-
possible in the ancient sculpture is seen in
the modern native, without any constraint,
when simply taking an easy position. This
shows what is the true ideal of the conven-
tional Egyptian pose ; it is a three-quarters
view, modified by the omission of the much
foreshortened parts beyond the profile — a
simplification which was essential to an out-
line system of representation.

Variety in the Eyes of Animals. — It is

hard, in studying some of the lower animals,
to determine whether they have a proper
sense of vision. They can all recognize
light and distinguish it from darkness ; but
that is probably all the sight that a few or-
ganisms possess. In such creatures as earth-
worms, for instance, the whole skin is sup-
posed to be sensitive to light ; and there is
some evidence that they have a choice be-
tween colors. Mollusks have eyes of vari-
ous qualities : those of the snail distinguish-
ing light from darkness ; those of the cuttle-
fish very highly developed ; the unique and
curious eyes of the nautilus ; and the two
kinds of eyes of the onchidium. Some of
these animals possess the power of restoring
their eyes, as well as other lost members,
when they are cut off. Great differences
appear in the organs of sight of crustaceans.
They are of all sorts, from a simple eye-spot
in some species up to two compound eyes
on a movable eye-stalk (as in the crab and
lobster), with complete optical apparatus ;
and some have both simple and compound
eyes. Most insects have two kinds of eyes :
the large compound eye, one on each side of

the head ; and the ocelli, or simple eyes, of
which there are generally three, placed in a
triangle between the other two. The com-
pound eyes are complex in structure, consist-
ing of a number of hexagonal facets, each
with its system of nerves. It is not known
whether the combination forms one aggre-
gate eye, or whether each facet is an eye. Many
insects have thousands of these facets — some
beetles as many as twenty-five thousand.
The vision of scorpions, though they have
six eyes, is imperfect ; and that of spiders,
equally well provided as to the number of
ocelli, is not much better. The dexterity
and unerring aim with which many reptiles
catch their insect food in the air proves that
they have very keen vision. The chameleon
has the additional faculty of moving its eyes
independently of each other, so that it can
look up with one eye while looking down
with the other, backward and forward, or
in other different directions. The eyes of
deep-sea fish are very varied : some have no
eyes or sight ; some have greatly enlarged
eyeballs ; and others are provided with phos-
phorescent processes or spots. Birds and
many of the smaller mammals have very
acute vision, while that of the larger ani-
mals is very much like our own.

Co-operation in Nature. — That crude
competition is the universal law of Nature,
while combination is the invention of the
mind of man, is doubted by Mr. Henry Far-
quhar. The position, he says, is " difficult
to reconcile with even the most hasty con-
sideration of ruminants feeding in herds,
where, instead of a tumultuous crowding for
the occupation of the best places, we see
some individuals taking posts in which they
can be of service in warning the whole herd
of impending danger — or of the wolves that
prey upon them in co-operating packs. It is
not to be rashly claimed that mind ... is ab-
sent from the conduct of the ant and her colo-
nies ; but surely their example is convincing
evidence that the lesson of the economic su-
periority of concert over cutthroat individual
competition is one that has been well taught
and learned in realms of Nature widely sun-
dered from ours. ... If not with man as
a self-conscious being, where in the course of
evolution does an implicit recognition of the
wastefulness of indiscriminate competition

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

285

begin ? Not even, I think, with the first
appearance of gregarious animals. It is
found at the point where parents first begin
to care for their feeble offspring. . . . We
may go back further yet — much further. It
is an application of the same principle es-
sentially unchanged when the organic cells,
which are in the lower organisms independ-
ent beings, first unite in filaments to form
an aggregate of the second order, each cell
giving up a part of the strength with which
it could carry on a rivalry with its comrades,
for a power of co-operation which makes the
aggregate far better able to sustain itself
than as many separate rival cells could ever
be."

The Blloxl Indians. — The title Biloxi, as
applied to the Biloxi Indians of Louisiana,
said Mr. J. Owen Dorsey, in a paper read at
the American Association, was probably a
corruption of the name they gave themselves,
Lakes or Lakeau, meaning the first people.
They lived in 1669 at Biloxi Bay, Mississippi.
In 1763 they moved to Louisiana, where their
number has been reduced to seventeen. De-
scent among them is in the female line. A
Biloxi can not marry his wife's brother's
daughter or his father's wife's sister, wherein
they differ from the Sioux, but a Biloxi man
can marry his deceased wife's sister, and a
Biloxi woman can marry the brother of a
deceased husband. They believed that the
spirit of a deer revived and went into another
body, and this could be repeated thrice ; but
when the fourth deer was killed the spirit
never revived again. The thunder being is
very mysterious and must not be talked
about in cloudy weather, but only on a fair
day, when thunder stories may be told.
When the Biloxi see a humming bird they
say that a stranger is coming ; and the hum-
ming bird, they believe, always tells the
truth. The crackling of the fire is supposed
to be a sign of snow or rain, and a nuthatch
pecking the house a sign of coming death,
If a child stjps over a grindstone its growth
will be stopped. Snipe must not be killed or
eaten, because the bird always gathers deer
fat, and is the sister of the thunder being.

Playing with Electric Eels. — A writer in
the London Spectator has described his ex-
periences in handling the electric eels in Re-

gent's Park, the largest of which is about
four feet and a half long, and weighs be-
tween sixteen and eighteen pounds. " When
grasped in the middle of the back, there was
just time to realize that it had none of the
' lubricity ' of the common eel when the first
shock passed up the arm with a ' flicker,'
identical with that which a zigzag flash of
lightning leaves upon the eye, and, as it
seemed, with equal speed. A second and
third felt like a blow on the ' funny-bone,'
and the hand and arm were involuntarily
thrown back with a jerk which flung the
water backward on the pavement and over
the keeper, who was kindly assisting in the
enterprise. This slight mishap recalled a
far less agreeable result of a shock inflicted
on a previous inquirer, whose recoiling hand
had struck the assistant a severe blow in the
face. Unwilling to be baffled by a fish less
in size than the salmon which form the
common stock of a fishmonger's window, the
writer once more endeavored to hold the eel
at any cost of personal suffering. But the
electric powers were too subtle and per-
vading to be denied. The first muscular
quiver of the fish was resisted ; but at the
second the sense of vibration set up became
intolerable, and the enforced release was as
rapid and uncontrollable as the first. The
smaller eel was neither so vigorous nor so
resentful as its fellow ; but though the first
and second shocks did not compel the grasp
to relax, a third was equally intolerable with
that given by the large fish. The electrical
power seems to increase rapidly in the heavier
eels." The writer thinks that the eel controls
at will the power of its electrical discharge.

The Earliest Man. — In his public lecture
at Madison, Wis., during the meeting of the
American Association, on The Earliest Man,
Prof. D. G. Brinton said that science in-
clined to the belief that man originated in
one spot, and that all others descended from
one first pair. Some eminent men of science
believed that man was on the earth ev<jn in
the Tertiary period. What is called the pres-
ent period was divided many thousand years
ago by the Glacial period ; and it was prob-
able that in certain parts of the world man
lived during the ice period, which would
place the antiquity of the race at least 100,-
000 years. Man could not have first appeared

286

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on any small island nor in such cold regions
as would expose him to death from that
cause, nor anywhere where the remains of
the highest animals below him were absent.
This reasoning excluded Australia, all of
America, South Africa, South India, north-
ern Europe, and northern Asia. Nor did it
permit the acceptance of the ancient Atlantis
as that sunken land which Haeckel named
Lemurea. It left only, in fact, the southern
slope of that great mountain chain which
began on the east with the Himalayas and
extended to the farthest west of Spain.
There also were found man's very oldest
remains and weapons, and the oldest of them
all in western Europe, in France and Spain.
On the present evidence it must be said that
man originated in western Europe or north-
ern Africa. The earliest man was of the
average height of men of to-day, muscular
and strong, walking not always erect, but
stooping forward. His skin was hairy, of a
reddish color, and the women were some-
what smaller than the men. His forehead
was low, but his brain was fairly well devel-
oped. He knew the use of fire, how to make
weapons of stone, bone, and wood, traps for
animals, and some kinds of boats. Then he
used some sort of shelter ; he lived in com-
munities ; he had a language ; he loved his
family and took care of the sick, but he did
not seem to have had a religion. He was
brave in battle and loved to roam. All this
can be proved by a careful study of his re-
mains. It was concluded, therefore, that the
earliest men were of the same spirit and soul
with ourselves, endowed with like faculties
and with a similar capacity to advance.

Inheritance Taxes. — Mr. Max West, in his
study of that subject (Columbia College Series
in History, Economics, and Public Law), finds
the recognized origin of the inheritance tax
in its imposition by Augustus in Rome, 6
A. D. ; but thinks it probable that the Romans
borrowed the idea from the Egyptians. There
are evidences that Egypt had an inheritance
tax, probably of not less than a tenth, from
which even direct heirs were not exempt. A
papyrus has been found which relates that a
certain Hermias was sentenced in a heavy
penalty for failing to pay the tax on suc-
ceeding to his father's house. Another in-
scription records a sale of property by an

old man to his sons at a nominal price, ap-
parently for the purpose of evading the in-
heritance tax. Mr. West's review of the
history of the tax in different countries
and through its various phases leads him to
the conclusion that it is pre-eminently an in-
stitution of democracy. It is found in nearly
every civilized country, but it is only in the
most democratic countries — Great Britain,
France, Switzerland, Canada, and the Aus-
tralasian colonies — that it reaches its fullest
development, with high and usually progress-
ive rates, and becomes an important source
of revenue. The United States seems thus
far to be an exception to this rule, but the
increasing popularity of this mode of taxa-
tion, and its rapid extension from State to
State, indicate that at no distant day it may
be general in America. In the assessment of
the tax a graduation according to relation-
ship is nearly universal hi practice. Direct
heirs are in many cases exempted, and in
others are taxed very lightly, as compared
with collateral and distant heirs. A progres-
sion in the rate of the tax corresponding with
increase in the amount of the estate is some-
times adopted. Bequests for public, benevo-
lent, and educational purposes might well be
exempted, for in such cases, if the gift is
wise, the whole amount accrues for the bene-
fit of the community. The question of what
to regard as inheritances for purposes of tax-
ation is sometimes a difficult one. A bequest
of freedom to a slave has been held to be
taxable. A succession is sometimes defined
as any beneficial interest in property accruing
in possession or expectancy on the death of
any person. The English law includes in-
terests accruing by survivorship in the case
of joint ownership, by general powers of ap-
pointment, and by the extinction of de ter-
minable charges ; but life insurance is ex-
cluded. That the inheritance tax is regarded
as something more than a purely fiscal meas-
ure is shown by frequent proposals to use
the proceeds for benevolent or educational
purposes. Such proposals have sometimes
borne fruit in legislation.

Fish Culture in America and Europe. —

It appears from a statistical review of fish cul-
ture in Europe and North America, prepared
by N. Borodine, of the Russian Association of
Pisciculture and Fisheries, that the eighty

NOTES.

287

fish-hatcheries in North America (sixty-six
in the United States and fourteen in Canada
and Newfoundland) produced in the year of
their last report 1,616,027,192 fish hatched;
and four hundred and sixteen hatcheries in
Europe, 277,973,016 young fish. The North
American hatcheries are all governmental ;
most of those in Europe are in private hands.
The average production of one hatchery is
668,000 in Europe and 13,400,000 in North
America. In Europe the largest amount of
money for fish-cultural works is spent in
Germany — the most by the Deutsche Fisch-
erei Verein. France, which has contributed
more than any other nation toward the de-
velopment of piscicultural work, now ranks
behind several other countries. Italy has
recently begun piscicultu ral work under the
control of the Government. The appropria-
tions for this work by the Government of the
Netherlands are small, while none are made
by Austria-Hungary. The appropriations of
the British, Russian, and Swedish Govern-
ments are also small. "When," says Mr.
Borodine, " we compare the total amount of
$37,032 spent for piscicultural work by all
European countries with the appropriations
of North American countries, we shall not
be surprised at the enormous difference in
the amount accomplished in the Old and New
Worlds. Europe originated and developed
the methods of fish culture, but it has be-
come an industry only in America."

NOTES.

THE Primitive Woman as a Poet was
the subject of a paper at the American Asso-
ciation by Prof. A. F. Chamberlain. Lulla-
bies, the author said, are known in every land,
and the folk poetry of all people is rich in
songs whose text and whose melodies the
tender mother has herself imagined and com-
posed. But not alone cradle-songs are the
product of the genius of the woman. As in
modern so in primitive times maidens in-
spired by love have vented their feelings in
song. We find such poetesses among the
Arabs and Bedouins of the desert, in Poly-
nesia and Australia, Madagascar, etc. Women
improvisators are known among the Amer-
ican Indians, among the African tribes, etc.
The share of woman in the transmission of
song and story from generation to generation
is very great. Indeed, among some of the
tribes of Guiana the bards of ancient times
are represented as old women. Among the
Bedouins as elsewhere, women and girls have

special songs which are never imparted to the
men, and it is very difficult, often impossible,
for a traveler to obtain the text of such
songs.

IN a paper on Indian Migration, read
at the American Association, C. S. Wake
endeavored to trace the migrations of the
tribes from their traditions. An examina-
tion of these traditions, the author said,
showed that besides the Algonkins, Iroquois,
and the Cherokees, the people of the Sioux-
Dakota stock also dwelt at an early date near
the St. Lawrence. Probably all the people
thus brought together in the neighborhood
of the Eastern lakes had a common origin,
the place of which may have been north of
the St. Lawrence. The primitive long-headed
Indians of North America spread originally
over the continent from some part of the
northwest coast, or the foreign element to
which they owe their special characteristics
was introduced there. This element has its
nearest representative on the American con-
tinent in the Eskimo. The Eskimo skull ap-
proximates the type found among the Caro-
line islanders, the Fijians, and the aborigi-
nes of Australia. The long-headed tribes of
North America may thus find their oldest
allies among the islanders of the Pacific.

M. MAEEY has found, from his continued
studies of animal locomotion by means of
instantaneous photography, that the modes
of progression of the viper and the eel are
much alike ; that the postures of batrachians
in water (after they have acquired their limbs)
are much like those of men swimming, and
that lizards trot like horses.

A PAIR of catbirds having built a nest in
a honeysuckle vine on the house of Dr. R.
W. Shufeldt, he took the paius to observe
their nesting habits. The first egg was laid
twenty-four hours after the nest was built,
and three others on three succeeding days,
all very nearly at the same hour in the morn-
ing (between 9.15 and 10.35). For the first
few days the mother bird sat on the eggs at
irregular intervals, leaving them often for an
hour or more, but finally gave them her un-
divided attention. On the fourteenth day
from the first laying there were no birds
hatched at dark, but on the next morning
there were three ; and the fourth egg was
hatched during the next night. On the
twenty-fifth day all the birds left the nest
together; but not going away, the young
were easily caught. They were put in a
cage and hung under the roof close to the
nest. Here the parents faithfully fed them
through the cage wires for three days, when
they were let loose in some dense under-
brush, to the great joy of the parents.

THE report of the managers of the Observ-
atory of Yale University says that while only
a small percentage of the thermometers sold
are sent there for certification, it is presum-

288

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ably true that those which are sent by the
manufacturers are carefully selected and
therefore far more reliable than the average
of those sold without certification. Never-
theless, the testers are obliged to reject
twenty-five, fifty, and even seventy-five per
cent of those sent them. As a rule, these
are not rejected without receiving double the
time and care required by the large majority
of those to which certificates are granted.

THE course of instruction in naval archi-
tecture recently established at the Massachu-
setts Institute of Technology provides for a
thorough training in the theory and methods
of devising and building ships, together with
a study of the properties requisite for safety
and good behavior at sea. It is arranged to
occupy four years, and leads to the degree of
Bachelor of Science. It is intended to cover
the same ground and accomplish the same
results as the English and French Govern-
ment schools for training naval constructors,
and to give, in addition to professional and
technical training and equipment, a good sci-
entific and liberal education.

HITHERTO disorders observed among
workmen in hemp have been regarded as
originating wholly in mechanical causes, as
in the inhalation of vegetable dusts. Dr. L.
Salomon, of Savigne l'Ev6que, France, who
has studied two cases of such disorders, at-
tributes them to intoxication by the active
principles of hemp, similar to those produced
by hashish.

THE Laboratory of the Psychological In-
stitute at the University of Gottingen — de-
scribed by Prof. W. 0. Krohn as in many
respects the best for research work in Ger-
many— owes its excellent equipment to a
liberal gift from a private person, the state
contributing only a pittance to its support.
This person is a former student of Prof.
Miiller.

THE Report of the Division of Entomol-
ogy (Bulletin No. 29) on the Boll Worm of
Cotton (Heliothis armiger) covers in the first
part observations made by Mr. F. W. Mally
upon the parasites and natural enemies of
the insect, and presents in the second part
bacteriological experiments made by the
same observer with certain insect diseases
affecting it. The paper also contains ob-
servations of the depredations of the larva
upon corn, and upon the use of corn as a
trap for it.

THE courses of instruction in the Depart-
ment of Geology of Colgate University, while
designed to give such knowledge of the sev-
eral subjects as a scheme of general educa-
tion requires, are so arranged as to provide
two years of continuous work to those who
may wish to teach geology or pursue it as a
profession. The instruction is given by
lectures, with text-books for supplementary
reading, oral and written reviews, and labo-

ratory and field work. Besides the general
collections of minerals, and in geology a dy-
namical collection, illustrating weathering,
glacial action, the work of springs, under-
ground waters and the ocean, the results of
volcanic and mountain-building forces, the
work of organisms, and various structures,
with specimens illustrating lithology, and a
systematic collection of fossil remains have
been begun. In economic geology sample
blocks of building stone have been acquired.

OBITUARY NOTES.

THE death is announced of M. Daniel Col-
ladon, of Geneva, one of the most eminent
of the former generation of physicists, in the
ninety-second year of his age. He was born
at Geneva in 1802; became an engineer;
studied physics and mathematics in Paris;
returning to Geneva, performed in co-opera-
tion with Sturm, in 1827, his famous experi-
ments on the propagation of sound in water.
The two also studied together the resistance
of materials and the compressibility of liq-
uids. In 1829 he^ became Professor of Me-
chanics in the JEcole Centrale des Arts et
Manufactures in Paris ; later, professor in
the academy at Geneva. Near the begin-
ning of his career he studied the properties
of liquid veins, and executed the remarkable
experiment of the transportation of luminous
waves by a column of water, which is the
basis of the curious luminous fountains.
One of his most important discoveries was
that of the use of compressed air as a me-
dium for the transmission of energy — a dis-
covery which has found practical application
of great value in apparatus for perforating
tunnels. He was also an earnest student of
meteorological phenomena, and made many
observations on lightning and hail. Like
most students of broad minds, he took much
interest in the popularization of science.

HENRY J. PHILPOTT, a writer who had
gained considerable distinction in the discus-
sion of economical subjects, died of consump-
tion in Niles, Cal., September 24th. He was
a resident of Iowa; had been engaged in
editorial work in that State ; and had gone
to California as a last resort for the possible
benefit of his health. He was prominent in
the organization of the Free-Trade move-
ment in Iowa; was interested in the work
of the Society for Political Education of this
city ; and published many bright and forci-
ble papers on the subjects he held near at
heart. He contributed to The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly articles or letters on The Joint-
Snake Idiocy (vol. xxx); Social Sustenance
(vol. xxxi); Origin of the Rights of Prop-
erty (vol. xxxv); Irrigation of Arid Lands,
and A Novel Water-Cooler (vol. xxxvi); A
Little Boy's Game with a Ball (vol. xxxvii) ;
and Almond Culture in California (vol. xli).

fiLISEE RECLUS.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

JANUARY, 1894.
THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY.

BY PROF. E. P. EVANS.

M YHE world of the primitive man was bounded by the circle of
-L his vision. He regarded the horizon as a fixed line which
separated the earth from the sky, and which it would be possible
for him to reach by going far enough. He did not deem it less
real because it unfortunately always eluded his search, like the
fabulous pot of gold which, according to popular superstition, lies
buried at the point where the rainbow rests on the ground. In
like manner the barbarian of to-day has no conception of the fact
that the line of junction of earth and sky has no real existence,
but is " all in his eye."

Indeed, it is but recently that man has learned to appreciate
aright the wholly subjective character and significance of the
terms north, south, east, and west as applied to places on the
globe, and to recognize the relativity of all his geographical ideas,
inasmuch as these are dependent for their accuracy and exactness
upon the position of the speaker. It is one of the rare achieve-
ments of high culture, and has always been the prerogative of
exceptionally thoughtful minds, to be able to distinguish between
the apparent and the actual, to keep mental conceptions free from
the influences of optical illusions, and not to be deceived by the
surprises and sophistries of the senses.

An old English legend entitled The Lyfe of Adam, which has
been preserved in a manuscript of the fourteenth century, relates
how " Adam was made of oure lord god in the place that Jhesus
was borne in, that is to seye in the cite of Bethleem, which is the
myddel of the erthe." It then goes on to state that the first man
was made out of dust taken from the four corners of the earth,

TOL. XLIV.— 23

290 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which meet in Bethlehem, and that he was called by a name com-
posed of the four principal planets: thus he was formed as a
microcosm, the miniature counterpart and organic epitome of the
universe, the synopsis and symbol of all created things.

There is a tendency in every savage tribe and isolated people
to regard the portion of the earth which it happens to inhabit,
and especially the spot which is the cradle of the race or around
which its sacred traditions cluster, as not only the political and
religious but also as the physical center of the world. Such were
Jerusalem to the Jews and imperial and papal Rome, urbs et orbis,
to the ancient Romans and mediseval Romanists ; such has Ben-
ares been from time immemorial to multitudes of Hindus, and
such is Mecca to-day to millions of Moslems. Before the discov-
eries of the Western hemisphere, made by Columbus and his com-
peers, not even the most enlightened peoples had any proper sense
of their relations to the rest of mankind, either morally or geo-
graphically. International ethics and comities began with the
growth of clearer and more correct ethnical notions, and have
always kept pace with it. The knowledge of the rotundity of the
earth gave a strong and permanent impulse in this direction, and
has contributed not a little to the recognition of the equal rights
of all races of mankind.

The language of every civilized nation contains curious sur-
vivals of the primitive conceptions which sprung out of what
might be called the self -conceited and self -centered spirit of the
savage. It is interesting to note how a single people, emerging
from barbarism and taking the lead in civilization at an early
period, imposes its forms of speech, and especially its geographical
terms, upon after ages and upon remote races of men for whom
they have really no meaning. We still speak of certain countries
as the Levant and the Orient, the 'AvaroXiy of the Greeks, but these
designations have no significance except for the dwellers on the
shores of the Mediterranean, with whom they originated. So, too,
Asia means etymologically the land of the rising sun and Europe
the land of the setting sun, and these names expressed the actual
position of the two continents in their relation to the Greeks.
But to an American, and especially to a Calif ornian, Europe is an
Eastern and Asia a Western continent, and these strictly ethno-
centric appellations would be wholly unsuitable and extremely
confusing were it not for the fact that their etymology has become
obscured and their primitive signification been forgotten, or is at
least lost sight of and ignored, so that they are now mere arbitrary
terms or distinguishing signs, with no suggestion of the geograph-
ical direction or situation of the regions to which they are applied,
just as we speak of Chester, Edinburgh, Oxford, Berlin, or Munich
without thinking of a Roman camp, King Edwin's castle, a ford

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 291

for oxen, a frontier fortress, or a community of monks ; and chris-
ten a child George, Albert, or Alexander without intending him
to be a tiller of the soil, or wishing to imply that he is of noble
birth, or will distinguish himself as a defender of men. All such
proper names denote particular places or persons, but have wholly
ceased to connote, as the scholastic philosophers were wont to say,
the qualities or attributes which were at first associated with them
and brought them into use.

The Chinese call their country the middle realm (Chung-kue)
or the flower of the middle (Chang-hud), thus characterizing it as
the central and choicest portion of the earth, in distinction from the
savage wastes inhabited by savage men outside of the Great Wall
(Wan-li-ch'ang-ch'ing). The Jews looked upon themselves as the
chosen people, set apart as Yisrdel, or champions of the true God,
and lumped all other tribes of men together as go'im, gentiles,
poor pagan folks, who had no rights which a child of Abraham
was bound to respect. The Greeks divided all mankind into two
classes, Hellenes and barbarians ; the latter were also called ayXwr-
TOL — i. e., tongueless — because they did not speak Greek. Aristoph-
anes applied the term (3apf3apoi even to birds, on account of the
inarticulateness and unintelligibleness of their chirpings and chat-
terings. It is from Greek usage that we have come to designate
any corruption of our own language by the introduction of for-
eign or unfit words as a barbarism. The persistence of this primi-
tive tribal conceit is shown by the fact that a people in many
respects so cosmopolitan as the English can pronounce no severer
censure and condemnation of the manners, customs, and opinions
of other nations than to call them un-English, and really fancy
that an indelible stigma attaches itself to this epithet. Not long
since several British tourists in Italy actually protested against
some foolish, perhaps, but otherwise harmless features of the Ro-
man carnival, and demanded their suppression on the ground that
they were "thoroughly un-English," thus virtually assuming that
no amusements should be tolerated on the Tiber which were not
customary on the Thames. It is due to the same feeling that the
word " outlandish " has gradually grown obsolete in its original
sense, and is now used exclusively as an expression of contempt.
Slavonic (slovene) is derived from slovo (speech), and means peo-
ple with articulate language ; whereas the Slavic nations call the
Germans Nemici, which signifies speechless, dumb, and therefore
barbarian.

Geocentric astronomy and ethnocentric geography have *been
relegated long ago to that " limbo large and broad " which is the
predestined receptacle of all exploded errors and illusions engen-
dered by human vanity and ignorance ; but from the bondage of
ethnocentric ethics, manifesting itself in national prejudices and

292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prepossessions, and often posing as a paragon of virtue in the
guise of patriotism, even the most advanced and enlightened peo-
ples have not yet fully emancipated themselves. The Hebrews
thought they were doing the will of their tribal god (the personi-
fication of the tribal conscience) by borrowing jewels and fine
raiment from their too-obliging Egyptian acquaintances and then
running away with them. That this mean abuse of neighborly
confidence and civility was not a mere momentary freak of f raud-
ulence or sudden succumbing to temptation, but the outcome of
settled principles of morality and a general rule of policy, is evi-
dent from the approval with which it is recorded, as well as from
the laws subsequently enacted, which permitted them to take
usury of aliens and to sell murrain meat to the strangers in their
gates.

This is the kind of ethics which finds expression in the legis-
lation of all barbaric and semi-civilized races, from the Eskimos
to the Hottentots. The Balantis of Africa punish with death a
theft committed to the detriment of a tribesman, but encourage
and reward thievery from other tribes. According to Caesar's
statement (De Bello Gallico, lib. vi, c. 23), the Germans did not
deem it infamous to steal outside of the precincts of their own
village, but rather advocated it as a means of keeping the young
men of the community in training and rendering them vigilant
and adroit. But we need not go to African kraals or American
wigwams or primeval Teutonic forests for illustrations of this
rule of conduct. Quite recently a Frenchman succeeded as com-
mis-voyageur in swindling a number of German tradesmen out
of large sums of money, and was applauded for his exploit by Pa-
risian shopkeepers, who readily condoned his similar but slighter
offenses against themselves on account of the satisfaction they de-
rived from the more serious injury done to their hereditary foes
on the Rhine. This incident proves how easy it is for the primi-
tive feeling of clanship, euphemistically styled patriotic senti-
ment, to put in abeyance all the acquisitions of culture and set the
most elementary principles of honesty and morality at defiance.
International conscience is a product of modern civilization, but
it is still a plant of very feeble growth — a sickly shrub, whose
fruits are easily blasted, and for the most part drop and decay
before they ripen.

Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in his Lectures on the Early History
of Institutions, has shown with admirable force and suggestive-
ness that rude and savage tribes uniformly regard consanguinity
as the only basis of friendship and moral obligation and the sole
cement of society. The original human horde was held together
by the same tie of blood-relationship that produces and preserves
the consciousness of unity in the animal herd or causes ants and

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 293

bees to lead an orderly and mutually helpful life in swarms. In
all these communities the outsider is looked upon as an outlaw ;
whoever is not a kinsman is a foe, and may be assailed, despoiled,
enslaved, or slain with impunity. Indeed, it is considered not
only a right but also an imperative duty to injure the alien by
putting him to death or reducing him to servitude. The instinct
of self-preservation asserts itself in this form with gregarious
mammals and insects ; and all primitive associations of men are
founded upon this principle and cohere by force of this attraction.

A superstitious regard for blood pervades all early ideas and
institutions of mankind. The ancient Hebrews were forbidden
to eat the blood of a slaughtered animal, because the blood is the
life ; and the orthodox Israelite still clings to this notion and will
not partake of butcher's meat that is not gosh or ceremonially
clean — i. e., from which the blood has not been carefully drained
off, although he knows that this process of ritual purification de-
prives the flesh of much of its succulence and nutritive value as
food.

It is a widely diffused belief among aboriginal and lower races
that the blood is the seat of the soul ; hence blood-relationship is
synonymous with soul-relationship. The child was also recog-
nized as a blood-relation, of the mother, but not of the father.
Out of this conception of consanguinity arose the custom of de-
scent in the female line, whereby the children of a man's sister
became his heirs to the exclusion of his own offspring. Curiously
enough this notion is confirmed, to some extent, by modern sci-
ence, which would ascribe to the female the function of conserv-
ing and transmitting the permanent qualities and typical char-
acteristics of the race, whereas the influence of the male in
propagation is variable, innovating, and revolutionary, and tends
to produce deviations from the hereditary norm.

Cannibalism, too, as a tribal rite, originated in the belief that
the soul resides in the blood, and that by drinking the blood of
the bravest foemen their courage, cunning, and other distinctive
and desirable traits may be acquired and thus serve to increase
the fighting force and efficiency of the tribe.

Brotherhood was also created artificially or ceremonially by
mingling a few drops of the blood of two persons in a cup of wine
and drinking it. Each received into his veins a portion of the
other's blood, and thus they became blood-related and were bound
by the same mutual obligations as they would have been if the
same mother had given them birth. The heroes of old German
sagas are represented as drinking brotherhood in this manner ; it
is thus that Gunther and Siegfried swear inviolable friendship
and fidelity in Wagner's Gotterdammerung ; and German stu-
dents, in the festive enthusiasm of a Commers, are fond of imi-

294 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tating their mythical forefathers in the solemn celebration of this
mystic rite.

It is interesting to note the rhetorical and metaphorical sur-
vivals of this once strong conviction. In referring to political
parties in France the Journal des De*bats recently remarked : " It
is not true that our nation consists of two nations — the heirs of
the Emigration and those of the Revolution. This distinction no
longer exists. The last vestiges of it have been obliterated on
the battlefields, where all Frenchmen have mingled their blood.
France is henceforth one and indivisible/'

The noble sentiment expressed by the Greek comic poet Me-
nander and handed down to us in the language of Terence, his
Roman imitator, "I am a man, and regard nothing human as
alien to me," was doubtless shared by many individual thinkers
of antiquity, especially among the Greek Stoics and their Roman
disciples. Cicero, who may be taken as one of the most eminent
representatives of this ethical school, lays great stress upon " love
of mankind " (caritas generis humani), in distinction from the love
of kindred or countrymen. " A man," he says, " should seek to
promote the welfare of every other man, whoever he may be, for
the simple reason that he is a man " ; and declares that this prin-
ciple is the bond of universal society and the foundation of all
law. He returns to this topic again and again, and never tires of
enforcing this doctrine as fundamental in his treatises on duties
(De Officiis), on the highest good and evil (De Finibus Bonorum
et Malorum), and on laws (De Legibus). That he regarded this
broad, cosmopolitan view as a new departure in ethics is evident
from his remark that "he whom we now call a foreigner (peregri-
num) was called an enemy (hostis) by our ancestors."

The distinguished Christian apologist Lucius Lactantius bases
the duty of human kindness upon the hypothesis of human kin-
ship, thus reviving and amplifying the old tribal notion which
limits moral obligation to those who can claim a common pro-
genitor. " For, if we all derive our origin from one man, whom
God created, we are plainly of one blood ; and therefore it must
be deemed the greatest wickedness to hate a man, even though he
be guilty." He adds that " we are to put aside enmities and to
soothe and allay the anger of those who are inimical to us by re-
minding them of their relationship. . . . On account of this bond
of brotherhood God teaches us never to do evil, but always to do
good." He also quotes a passage from the Epicurean Lucretius
to the effect that " we are all sprung from a heavenly seed and
have all of us the same father " ; and draws from this statement
the conclusion that " they who injure men are to be accounted as
savage beasts."

Lactantius has been surnamed the Christian Cicero, but the

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 295

fundamental principle of his ethics, as formulated in his Divine
Institutions, is in its motive character and moral elevation far
below the height attained four centuries earlier by his pagan pro-
totype. The results of their teachings, practically applied, were
equally cosmopolitan ; inasmuch as Lactantius based his theory
of duty on the Hebrew legend of the origin and descent of man,
and thus enlarged his essentially tribal system of ethics so as to
embrace the whole human race.

Marcus Aurelius defines his own ethical and humanitarian
standpoint with his wonted epigrammatic terseness: "As an
Antonine, my country is Rome ; as a man, it is the world/' Un-
fortunately, the liberal spirit of the philosopher, even when he
happens to sit upon a throne, seldom exerts any direct and decisive
influence in liberalizing the minds of the masses of mankind.
Homer praises the kind and sympathetic heart of him who treats
the stranger as a brother. But this fine sentiment does not change
but rather confirms the fact that, as a rule, strangers were not thus
treated in the Homeric age. As a general statement it remains
true that in ancient times aliens had no legal rights whatsoever,
and that international relations, so far as they existed at all, were
relations of hostility.

But this outlawry de jure was mitigated de facto by investing
the rite of hospitality with a certain sacredness. Such is still the
case with all savage and semi- civilized tribes, as, for example,
with the Bedouins, who hold the person of a guest inviolable,
even though he may be their deadliest foe. This custom origi-
nated in the defenseless and helpless condition of the stranger,
whose alienage placed him beyond the pale of law and the
sphere of sympathy ; it furnished a sort of compensation for the
lack of all natural or conventional claims to protection, and thus
supplied a temporary modus vivendi, without which intertribal
intercourse would have been absolutely impossible.

We have an indication and illustration of this peculiarity of
primitive society in the story of Cain, who, as a fratricide, was not
only guilty of murder (a matter of comparatively small moment
in the eyes of the aboriginal man), but also of treason against the
tribe by violating the law of brotherhood fundamental to its con-
stitution and essential to its existence ; and when, by reason of
this crime, he was driven out of the sheltering circle and sanctu-
ary of his own kith and kin and became a fugitive and vagabond
in the earth, his first feeling was the fear lest he should be slain
by any stranger who might chance to meet him. The Lord is
also represented as recognizing the possibility of such a catastro-
phe, and as setting a mark upon him in order to avert it.

The stipulation contained in the Hebrew code, as well as in the
code of other Eastern nations, which made it the duty of a man to

296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wed his brother's widow, provided the first union was childless,
and to raise up seed to the deceased, was only a modification of
polyandry and differed from the conjugal relations still in vogue
among the Thibetans in the fact that the possession of the same
wife was successive instead of simultaneous. Both of these matri-
monial customs are survivals of the earliest form of marriage,
which was not individual, but tribal. We have a relic of this
primitive kind of wedlock among the Californian Indians, who
practiced promiscuous sexual intercourse, so far as the members
of the same tribe were concerned ; the woman was regarded as
faithless or adulterous only when she cohabited with a man be-
longing to another tribe.

The Greeks, with all their superior culture, never became as a
people sufficiently enlightened to lay aside their deep distrust and
depreciation of foreigners. Sparta was notoriously hostile to
strangers (IxQpo&vos, or guest-hating), and how impossible it was
for even a cultivated Athenian to look at the world at large from
any but a strictly Hellenic point of view is curiously and comic-
ally illustrated in the drama in which .^Eschylus glorifies the bat-
tle of Salamis, where the Persians are made to speak of them-
selves as barbarians balked of their purpose, and to describe their
lamentations over their defeat as dismal barbaric wailings.

It is a somewhat surprising and quite significant concession to
Greek arrogance that Plautus should use the phrase vortere bar-
bare in the sense of turning or translating into Latin. It is pos-
sible, however, that he may have borrowed this phrase from Phi-
lemon and other Greek playwrights, whose comedies he imitated
with more or less freedom, but always with a touch of native
genius. Still, we know that the Romans were uniformly called
barbarians, and seem, to have recognized the correctness of this
appellation down to the age of Augustus, when the term began to
be applied chiefly, if not exclusively, to the Germans. As our
earliest information concerning the Germanic peoples was derived
from Greek and Roman sources, we have been misled by the use
of this depreciatory designation to think of them as wild and law-
less hordes, and to form a wholly false conception of the grade and
quality of their civilization.

When individuals of different race or nationality formed
friendships they were wont to confirm the pact by an exchange
of tokens, which remained as heirlooms in their respective fami-
lies, and were prized by their descendants as pledges of mutually
kind and hospitable treatment. The duty of helpfulness was, in
such cases, quite as imperative as is the vow of vendetta, which
passes as a precious inheritance of hatred from Corsican father
to son. These tokens were called by the Greeks o-u'^oAa, and by .the
Romans tessercz hospitales, and, although they were eventually

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 297

superseded by better and more comprehensive methods and ended
by playing only the frivolous part of a sentimental pastime in
social life, like the modern philopena, they had originally a more
serious purpose and were of no small importance as means of pro-
moting intertribal intercourse and thus encouraging trade and
leading to the establishment of commercial treaties.

Another step toward the realization of the conception of human
brotherhood was the custom established at a very early period
whereby chiefs of tribes came to address each other as kinsmen
and members of one family. This assumption of consanguinity,
which originated in the desire of dynasties to strengthen their
position and to perpetuate their power, naturally led to increase
of friendly intercourse and to frequent intermarriages, so that
they finally became in fact what they at first claimed to be by a
polite and politic fiction. Traces of this usage are found in the
oldest records of royalty. Among the treasures of the Berlin and
British Museums are preserved two hundred and forty-one tablets
of cuneiform inscriptions containing letters written to Amenophis
III and Amenophis IV of Egypt by Burnaburiash, King of Baby-
lonia, and Dushratta, King of Mesopotamia, which show that, at
least sixteen centuries before the Christian era, " dear brother "
was the ceremonial title of salutation which monarchs were wont
to use in their epistolary correspondence. This feigning of a com-
mon lineage still survives among crowned heads, and the vilest
plebeian adventurer who, by force or fraud, gets himself pro-
claimed king or emperor is admitted to the select circle of sover-
eigns and greeted as " dear cousin."

Principles, once grown obsolete, are denounced as prejudices ;
religious beliefs, which have been supplanted by superior creeds,
are scoffed at as superstitions ; and dethroned deities haunt the
imagination of their former worshiper as demons. In like man-
ner, the lower classes of civilized communities correspond, in a
measure, to the lower races, and reflect atavistically the ideas and
passions of primitive man ; and in periods of great social and
political upheaval we are often rudely brought face to face with
tumultuous masses of these strata of palaeozoic humanity violently
and unpleasantly thrown to the surface. It crops out in the Eng-
lish boor, who at the sight of a stranger is ever ready to " 'eave
'arf a brick at Jim," and would deem the neglect of this duty a
treasonable lack of local patriotism and loyalty to time-honored
tradition; in the Cretan herdsman, who instinctively seizes his
cudgel whenever a traveler in trousers passes by; and in the
Egyptian fellah, who teaches his children to spit at every man
with a hat on and cry out : " Yd nasrdniy I Yd ~k~hinzir ! O you
Nazarene ! O you pig ! "

The publican, in some parts of southern Italy, is still disposed

298 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to reckon with the foreigner as a foe, a forlorn vagabond, whom
it is his native-born privilege to spoil. The blood of his ancestor,
the brigand, courses in his veins, and his first impulse is to plun-
der the wayfarer. Prudence and the police may curb this pro-
genital, predatorial proclivity ; but the self-restraint always costs
an effort, and, as a compromise with his instinctive feelings, in-
stead of relieving the guest of his purse by force, he robs him of
an undue portion of its contents by adding two or three hundred
per cent to the usual price of fare and lodgment.

In many cantons of Switzerland, and especially in the Bernese
highlands, we have the spectacle of a whole people apparently
born and bred to consider mountain passes, romantic valleys, gla-
ciers, and waterfalls as so many traps for curious and unwary
tourists, and to prize sublime scenery merely as a ready-made snare
to catch coots, dupes, gulls, boobies, and other varieties of too con-
fiding summer birds of passage, which the categorizing mind of
the German has reduced to two essentially distinct but closely
connected classes, Bergfexen and Sommerfrischler.

This clannish spirit even invades and desecrates the courts of
justice, and the Helvetian Themis is especially notorious for her
propensity to blink the legal rights of the case and to tip the bal-
ance in favor of her cantonal or federal compatriots as opposed to
the stranger within her gates.

In France the droit d'aubaine OTJUS albinagii confiscated to
the crown the property of all aliens who died within the limits of
the realm, to the exclusion of the natural heirs, unless these hap-
pened to be the king's subjects. This barbarous law was abolished
by a decree of the National Assembly on the 6th of August, 1790,
but was re-enacted twelve years later and incorporated in the
Code Napoleon, modified, however, by a clause making the testa-
mentary capacity of aliens dependent upon reciprocity ; in other
words, it was stipulated that the will of a foreigner should be
declared valid in France, provided the laws of the said foreigner's
country placed on the same footing the will of a Frenchman de-
ceased within its jurisdiction. On the 14th of July, 1819, the
droit d'aubaine was finally abrogated throughout the entire
kingdom, after having been already considerably mitigated and
partially annulled by the municipal authorities of Lyons and
other industrial and commercial cities, which found this relic of
mediaeval legislation a serious obstruction to foreign trade.

Akin to this system of right was the German Wildfangsrecht
or jus wildfangiatus, also known as jus kolbekerlii, which, as the
term implies, accorded to human beings the privilege which game
laws guarantee to the quarry, namely, that of being legally hunted.
Kolbenrecht is equivalent to club law. An old and often quoted
proverb, Kolbengericht und Faustrecht ward nie schlecht — the

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 299

law of the strong was never yet wrong — is the cynical expression
of protesting submission to the inevitable, recognized as outra-
geous. It is the same bitter sarcasm that mocks at unjust and
irresistible power in the popular saying, " Might makes right " ;
it is despair taking refuge and finding relief in ironical humor,
which turns the first principles of ethics topsy-turvy.

Wildfangsrecht was originally applied to fugitive serfs and to
strangers, but was soon extended to bastards and bachelors, glee-
men and professional champions in ordeals by battle, all of whom
lived more or less in a state of outlawry as to their persons and
property, and could, under certain circumstances, be reduced to
the condition of chattels. Foreigners who could prove the place
of their nativity were subjected to a poll tax (cherage) for the pro-
tection vouchsafed to them by the reeve or Vogt, and were there-
fore called Vogtleute. In the Canton de Vaud and elsewhere in
Switzerland this pollage is still levied as permis d'etablissement,
a lingering vestige of mediaeval extortion which the most enlight-
ened European governments have now abolished. Persons of un-
known origin were treated as waifs (epaves), the mere flotson and
waveson on the drifting tide of humanity, and were liable to be
seized and envassaled by any petty lord on whose territory they
chanced to strand. Perhaps a diligent study of these old laws
might suggest to American legislators some drastic means of purg-
ing the country of tramps.

In " the good old time " in England any alien could be arrested
and punished for the crimes and misdemeanors of other aliens,
although having no complicity with them. They were all lumped
together as a class, any individual of which was liable to be ap-
prehended and held accountable for the debts incurred or for the
offenses committed by any other individual of the class.

The idea of justice implied by such a proceeding corresponds
to that entertained by the aboriginal Australian or American,
who, when his wife dies, feels himself in duty bound to kill the
wife of some member of another tribe, and avenges an injury in-
flicted upon him by a white man by slaying the first white man
he happens to meet. The loss or offense, whatever it may be, is
tribal, and is satisfied with tribal expiation or retaliation.

A case of this kind occurred quite recently in Dakota. A Sioux
Indian, on the death of his squaw, went forth from his lodge with
his gun and shot a missionary who was passing by. The red man
had no grudge against the white man as an individual ; on the con-
trary, he was personally fond of his victim, from whom he had
received many acts of kindness ; but the vow of vengeance was as
sacred as that made by Jephthah the Gileadite, and had to be as
religiously kept.

The old English custom, just referred to as a survival of the

300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

earliest and crudest conception of tribal ethics, prevailed at least
as late as the reign of Edward III — i. e., till about the middle of
the fourteenth century ; and long after this period it was exceed-
ingly difficult to enact and almost impossible to enforce laws for
the protection of foreigners, so deeply rooted and intense was the
prejudice against them. Even far down into the eighteenth cen-
tury they continued to be regarded with extreme suspicion, and
were often subjected to gross indignities, independently of any
personal qualities or any peculiar conduct on their part. The
mere fact of their alienage sufficed to kindle against them the
anger of the populace and turn the masses into an unruly mob.
This is still the mental attitude of the cockney, and cockneyism is
only a local form of philistinism by no means confined to the pre-
cincts of Bow Bells.

The laws of Venice, as expounded by Portia in the case of Shy-
lock vs. Antonio, discriminated against aliens as opposed to citi-
zens in a manner extremely fatal to the plaintiff and exceedingly
characteristic of mediaeval legislation.

Under the influence of the political panic caused by the ex-
cesses of the French Revolution, Lord Grenville succeeded, in
1793, in persuading the British Parliament to pass an alien bill,
in which the spirit of feudalism reasserted itself ; and since the
abolition of this retrogressive law, which was effected chiefly
through the enlightened energy of George Canning, the leaders
of the Tory party have repeatedly endeavored to re-enact it. In
every age and every country landed aristocracies have always
shown a marked tendency to narrowness, provincialism, and dis-
trust in their international relations. Indeed, from time imme-
morial, agricultural communities have been excessively conserva-
tive in this respect and hostile to progress ; whereas commercial
states and cities, whose prosperity is in proportion to their cos-
mopolitanism and dependent upon it, are naturally philallogeneal
(to coin a word from the Greek of the Alexandrian patriarch
Cyril, who unfortunately seldom exemplified in his conduct the
virtue expressed by the epithet), or friendly to foreigners and
easily accessible to influences from without.

Even in America, where all portions of the population are
more mobile and undergo more rapid and radical changes than
in other lands, the farmers are notoriously tenacious of old ideas
and suspicious of reformatory movements of all kinds, following
their traditions and clinging to their prejudices long after arti-
sans and other handworkers of the manufacturing centers and
large cities have cast aside these notions as obsolete and injurious.

All European governments appear to be periodically or epi-
demically affected with spasms of antipathy to aliens. France
suffered from a particularly severe attack of this sort just before

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 301

the Napoleonic coup d'etat, and now betrays serious symptoms of
a relapse, which it is to be hoped do not portend an imperial res-
toration. As a rule, such manifestations may be regarded as evi-
dences of internal derangement, which is pretty sure to break out
sooner or later in some violent disorder. Knownothingism in the
United States was the symptom of such a crisis, although its indi-
cations were at that time only partially understood.

It is but recently, in fact, that civilized nations have rid them-
selves of the most obnoxious relics of ethnocentric prejudice in
their legislation — such, for example, as the gabella Jiereditaria,
which discriminated against foreigners in matters of inheritance ;
and the detracius personalis, which virtually punished emigra-
tion by the imposition of a heavy fine. These vestiges of vassal-
age were removed from the statute-books of the German states in
relation to each other by the acts of federation of 1815, and have
been successively abolished between Germany and other countries
by independent treaties.

The English law of extradition with other European powers
still refuses to deliver up or to prosecute an Englishman who has
committed a felony in a foreign land, unless the crime has been
committed against one of his own countrymen. Some years ago
a case of this kind occurred in Zurich, and still more recently in
Munich. In the latter instance, one of the burglars, although re-
siding in London, proved to be an American by birth, and was
therefore handed over to the Bavarian police, and finally sen-
tenced to ten years' imprisonment, while his English confederate
in crime was set at liberty. Here we have, as the result of insu-
larism, a survival of ethnocentric ethics in its crassest and most
offensive form, such as one would expect to find only among a
people still in the tribal stage of development.

In the volume already cited, Sir Henry Sumner Maine not only
shows kinship to have been the original basis of society, but also
indicates the process by which mankind may have gradually
grown out of this primitive condition. The head of the family
soon became through natural increase the head of a clan or tribe.
The patriarch possessed the authority and exercised the functions
of a chieftain over his lineal and collateral descendants, who were
known as his men and were called by his name. He was honored
and obeyed as their first man, Filrst, or prince, their stem-sire or
king, an appellation which has nothing to do with personal " can-
ning " or cunning, as Carlyle, in his excessive admiration of hu-
man force and faculty, would fain make us believe, but refers
solely to race (kuni). The ruler was an ethnarch in the strictest
sense of the term, and held his position by virtue of his primo-
genitureship or procreative seniority.

The correctness of this theory, so far as the genetic connection

3oz THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the tribe with the family is concerned, may be questioned. In-
stead of the former being an aggregation or expansion of the lat-
ter, it is highly probable that the primitive tribe is older than the
family and the product of promiscuous sexual relations, and that
families originated in a subsequent process of domestic differenti-
ation. Polyandry and the custom of tracing descent exclusively
in the female line would seem to point in this direction. The in-
stitution of the family, even in its polygamous form, presupposes
a certain ethical element, which can hardly be predicated of pri-
meval barbarism.

So, too, the most prominent feature in the social organization
of the anthropoid apes and in all simian communities is the troop
or tribe under the leadership of the most powerful male. A band
of orang-outangs is doubtless an association of blood-relations,
but there is no recognition of patriarchal authority as such and
no evidence of distinct divisions into families. The community
is a gregarious group of individuals joined in affinity, but not yet
separated into single pairs with clearly recognized and jealously
defended conjugal rights ; and sovereignty is simply the assertion
of superior force, although this constitution of the simian tribe
does not entirely exclude the existence and exercise of moral qual-
ities in the mutual relations of its members.

It is, however, a matter of no moment for the further evolution
of society, whether, at the beginning, the family expanded into the
tribe or was gradually differentiated out of it. The fact remains
that the tribe was held together by the cement of consanguinity,
and that the authority of the tribal head was derived primarily
from the respect and reverence due to him as common progenitor,
aided, of course, by his ability to enforce his claims to rulership
in case an ambitious and rebellious Absalom should be disposed
to question them. So strong and persistent is this sentiment that,
even now, the number of a man's noble ancestors is supposed to
entitle him, by the grace of God, to sovereignty, or to confer upon
him some exceptional privilege and power.

With the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary social state,
an important change takes place. No sooner has a people ac-
quired fixed habitations and established permanent settlements
than there arises the idea of ownership in the soil, and the chief
of the tribe becomes the lord of the land. He is no longer merely
the head of an organized body of roving men, but he also claims
and exercises jurisdiction over a more or less definitely circum-
scribed district or domain and over all persons dwelling within
its borders. Tribal sovereignty or chieftainship is thus super-
seded by territorial sovereignty or dominion, and with this trans-
formation the state, in the modern sense of the term, really begins.

'At this early stage, however, proprietorship in land was not

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 303

individual, but communal. It was the realization, to some extent,
of the socialistic ideal of collective or governmental ownership of
landed property, the return to which a modern school of reform-
ers would fain persuade themselves and others to regard as a step
in advance.

It is also interesting to note that this most important and
epoch-making transition from pasturage to tillage was due to the
initiative and activity of woman. Everywhere in the growth of
society women have been the first agriculturists. While the men
were leading the life of hunters or herdsmen, with frequent epi-
sodes of pillage and predatory warfare, women began to cultivate
the soil and to rear domestic fowls, to spin and to weave, and to
develop, in a rude way, various kinds of industry. This is the
condition in which we still find all savage and semi-civilized
tribes. Herodotus (vol. vi) says of the Thracians, " They regard
tillage as the most degrading and pillage as the most honorable
occupation." The savage looks upon all forms of manual labor,
and especially husbandry, as ignoble, and therefore leaves such
work to his squaw.

At first, her efforts in this direction were quite ignored and
often thwarted by the sudden removal of the tribe to another
place before she could reap the fruits of her toil. The little patch
of ground which she had planted was deemed of small account,
compared with the pleasures and products of the chase, and was
frequently abandoned without hesitation before the meager har-
vest was ripe. For this reason barley was the earliest grain cul-
tivated, because it is the hardiest of all grains and matures soon-
est. It was a long time before the fields tilled by women became
of sufficient importance, as supplying means of subsistence, to
keep the tribe settled for a whole season in one spot, or even to
induce them to return thither in the autumn and remain there
until the crop was gathered. This semi-nomadism was the first
step toward a sedentary life and the starting point of a higher civ-
ilization, and woman was the chief agent in its accomplishment,
although unconscious of the immense change which her humble
efforts were effecting.

For a similar reason the weakest male members of the tribe
were the first artificers and mechanical inventors. Men who were
crippled or otherwise incapable of waging war and following the
chase, if they had not been left to perish at their birth, remained
at home and made hunting implements and weapons of war for
their more vigorous and valorous tribesmen, and thus acquired
skill in handicraft, sharpened their wits, and developed their in-
ventive faculties. In my thology, the gods of the smithy, Hephaes-
tus, Vulcan, and Veland, are represented as lame, and the experts
in ores and workers in metals are dwarfs, gnomes, and creatures

304 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of stunted growth. These physical peculiarities are not mere
mythopo3ic whimseys and creations of the fancy, but correspond
to real facts in the primitive history of the race, and point to the
class of persons who were the earliest promoters of the arts.

The supersession of tribal by territorial sovereignty, although
radical and permanent, was gradual and scarcely perceptible in its
character, and did not begin to express itself in language till many
centuries after the change had been fully accomplished. Mediaeval
and modern history furnish numerous illustrations of this process
of social evolution and the manner of its operation. As Mr. Maine
has remarked, there had been kings of England and of France
long before John the Landless and Henry IV assumed respectively
these official titles ; although their predecessors had always been
styled kings of the English and of the French. The Czar, who,
while bearing sway as a territorial sovereign, preserves more than
any other European ruler the peculiarities of a tribal chieftain,
still calls himself Samode'rshez, or Autocrat of all the Russias,
and it was perfectly in keeping with the character and career of
Napoleon I, as a condottiere on a colossal scale, that he took the
title of " Emperor of the French." His interest was centered
wholly in the army, which he loved and fostered in the same
spirit that Tamerlane cherished his Mongolian hordes and Fra
Diavolo his band of brigands. The King of Prussia bears the title
of " German Emperor " (Deutscher Kaiser), not Emperor of Ger-
many, since the latter would be inconsistent with the political ex-
istence and integrity of the other German states and a manifest
usurpation of the rights and prerogatives (Holieitsrechte) of the
confederated princes and potentates. His imperial sovereignty is,
therefore, essentially tribal ; he is, so to speak, the chief of the
German confederated monarchs, and exercises territorial sover-
eignty only as King of Prussia. There has been a long succession
of Roman-German and German emperors, but never an Emperor
of Germany.

A nomadic people, wandering from place to place, is not asso-
ciated in any sense with the soil ; the tribe remains the same, but
not the territory it occupies. With the beginning of agriculture
and sedentariness this relation is reversed. The conception of a
nation, nowadays, implies fixed or at least well-defined geograph-
ical boundaries. Changes may take place in the character of the
inhabitants and in the constitution of the government as the re-
sult of emigration and revolution ; individuals and families may
disappear and be superseded by others of a different stock, but the
nation remains, as it were, adscripta glebcz within certain terri-
torial limits and is not destroyed by any admixture of foreign
with native elements in the population. Mr. Maine states this
point very clearly and concisely when he says : " England was

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 305

once the country which Englishmen inhabited. Englishmen are
now the people who inhabit England." An East Indian by blood
may be an Englishman in the modern sense of the term as well as
an Anglo-Saxon of purest lineage, however earnestly Lord Salis-
bury may deprecate the idea that a Hindu or any other " black
man," even though he may be, like Dadabhoi Naoroji, a gentleman
and a scholar, and the peer of the Tory premier himself in political
wisdom and ability, should be sent to the British Parliament by
an English constituency. It would seem, therefore, that, even at
this late day, a man may be her British Majesty's first minister
of state and yet entertain the notion, which prevailed in the days
of Warren Hastings and still lingers among the siibalterns of the
colonial service, that an East Indian is a " nigger."

Nowhere is national feeling stronger and race feeling weaker
than in the United States, where the negro, notwithstanding the
prejudice growing out of his former condition of servitude, is as
truly an American and as fully sensible of this fact as any scion
of the Pilgrim fathers. It is unquestionable that the old Puritan
stock is rapidly disappearing from New England, partly through
natural extinction and partly through westward migration, and is
being supplanted by Irish and Canadian French ; but this circum-
stance does not blot New England from the map nor convert it
into New Ireland or New France. On the contrary, the descend-
ants of the Celtic immigrant are assimilated and transmuted by
their environment and become New-Englanders. The conscious-
ness of what might be called common territoriality tends not only
to bind together and to blend diverse races into that " unity of a
people " which constitutes a nation, but also to attenuate and to
loosen the social and political unions, which are based upon com-
mon descent, and finally ruptures them altogether.

The aborigines of British America, who can not regard human
beings otherwise than from a tribal point of view, still speak of
the English as King George's men ; but the inhabitants of Canada
consider themselves Canadians irrespectively of their ancestral
origin, and the same readiness to sink the claims of lineage when
they conflict with territorial interests manifests itself even in the
more recent colonies of Australia and New Zealand. Geographical
contiguity proves, in such cases, stronger than genealogical con-
nections ; the old proverb, that blood is thicker than water, does
not hold true of oceans.

The appeals that have been made in recent times to ethnic an-
tipathies and ethnic sympathies for the purposes of political propa-
gandism or the promotion of personal ambition are anachronistic
attempts to resuscitate the tribal spirit under new forms and on a
larger scale by a perverse and pseudo-scientific application of the
results of comparative philology to public affairs. The hobby of

VOL. XLIV. 24

306 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Napoleon III concerning the unity of the Latin nations, and the
necessity of their closer confederation under the hegemony of
France, was, like his Life of Csesar, an act of historical self-justi-
fication, a desperate endeavor to explain his own raison d'etre, and
thus set up a temporary prop to a rickety and rootless dynasty.

Panslavism may continue, for a time, to please the imagination
and to fire the zeal of a people so peculiarly subjected, in many
respects, to primitive social conditions and so powerfully swayed
by primitive ideas as are the Russians ; but Germany has long
since outgrown the swaddling-clout of Panteutonism, and no rant-
ing of anti-Semitic agitators and men of that ilk about ur-deutsch
and rein-deutsch can permanently affect the public mind or elicit
a favorable response in legislative enactments.

There is no cry so foolish or pernicious that it will not find a
ringing echo in the empty brain-pan of some fanatic, no whimsey
so silly and absurd that it will not be caught up and preached as
a new gospel of universal redemption by a few pamphleteering
demagogues or ill-balanced apostles of reform. Impecunious own-
ers of poorly furnished and tenantless garrets are only too ready
to let them to the first vagrant that knocks at the door, however
seedy his appearance and doubtful his repute. Even the anti-
Semitic crusade, so far as it has succeeded in getting a hearing
and making any headway among sensible persons, has done so by
appealing to the liberal spirit of the age and representing itself as
a protest against the tribal exclusiveness of Judaism.

The constitution of the aboriginal tribe as a compact body of
kinsmen, animated by feelings of hostility toward all other tribes,
necessitated the intermarriage of blood-relations. If, on account
of scarcity of females, or for any other reason, a man desired to
wed a woman of another tribe, instead of wooing her as a friend,
he waylaid her as a foe, stunned her with a blow of his war-club,
and carried her off as booty rather than beauty to his camp, where
she served him henceforth, not so much as his companion and
helpmate as his slave and beast of burden.

Even after this tribal exclusiveness and isolation had ceased
and a certain amount of amicable intertribal intercourse had
grown up, it was still deemed more virtuous or, as we would say,
more patriotic for a man to marry his own kin than to take his
wife or wives from an alien people. The tribal religion also lent
its special sanction to such nuptials. Survivals of this sentiment
are found in the ancient customs and in the sacred scriptures and
traditions of many nations, especially in the Orient.

Thus, in the Avesta, a marriage of next of kin (quaetvadatha)
is declared to be particularly praiseworthy and well-pleasing to
Ahurainazda, the Good Spirit (Visparad, iii, 18). This "kinship-
union " is a prominent article of faith in the Mazdayasnian creed

THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 307

(Yasna, xiii, 28) ; and in the Book of Arda Viraf (ii, 1, 2) Viraf is
said to have had seven sisters, who were to him as wives (chigun
neshman), and this circumstance is adduced as evidence of his ex-
traordinary piety. The connubial relations of this model of a re-
ligious man were both polygamous and incestuous.

Herodotus states (iii, 88) that Cambyses, the son and successor
of Cyrus, was wedded to his own sister Atossa ; and when, in the
Hebrew story, Tamar rebukes Amnon for his guilty passion and
tells him that " no such thing ought to be done in Israel," she re-
fers solely to her brother's folly and wickedness in seeking a secret
and illicit connection, and suggests that, if he will only speak to
the king on the subject, there would be no obstacle to their union.
That such marriages were common in the earlier history of the
Jews is evident from the fact that Abram took to wife his half-
sister Sarah, and this event is not recorded as an unusual occur-
rence.

Among the Persians this custom seems to have been confined,
for the most part, to priests and kings, who constitute always and
everywhere the two most conservative classes of society. Thus it
came to be regarded as a mark of distinction or an enviable privi-
lege, of which wealthy persons of inferior rank sometimes en-
deavored to avail themselves; but there is no evidence that it
remained, within historical times, a law for the entire nation or
was generally practiced by the people at large. The Magians
continued to wive their sisters in conformity to ancient usage and
holy tradition, for the same reason that stone knives and hatchets
are used in sacrificial rites and fire for the altar is kindled by
laboriously rubbing two sticks together long after these clumsy
methods have been superseded in secular life by steel implements
and lucifer matches.

A THEORY of Dr. Maurel, of the French marine, that the Khmers of Cambodia
represent the leaders of the easternmost wave of migration of the Aryan or Indo-
European stock, is noticed with approval by Dr. Brinton in Science. The ruins
around Ang-kok decorated with bas-reliefs of scenes from the Eamayana give
evidence of their having had an Aryan culture. They are supposed to have
reached Cambodia about the third or fourth century of the Christian era, having
apparently come from the delta of the Ganges across lower Burmah and Siain.
Even at this time most of their followers may have been non-Aryan, and the
leaders rarely of pure blood. In later generations they received a large infusion
of Mongolian blood from the tribes they found in Cambodia. These conclusions,
according to Dr. Brinton, are borne out by a close study of the existing popula-
tion and of the history and archaeology of the country.

DAKWIN'S theory of the formation of coral reefs is not as near obsolete as
some students have supposed. It had several friends in the discussion of the sub-
ject at the recent meeting of the British Association.

3o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

T1

NIGHT HAWKS AND WHIP-POOR-WILLS.

BY DR. E. W. SHUFELDT.

'HERE is hardly a season goes by that I am not asked, by
some one more or less interested in our native birds, " What
is the difference between a night hawk and a whip-poor-will ? "
Generally the belief is that these two very interesting forms are
one and the same species ; but this is by no means the case, and a
full reply to the question leads us to the consideration of one of
the most attractive groups in the entire range of our American
avifauna. A number of years ago the writer made a very careful
study of the representatives of this family as they occur in our
country, and some of the more important facts as brought out
by that research will be set forth in the present article. Those
most familiar with the habits and anatomical structure of night
hawks and whip-poor-wills and their allies place them in a sub-
order Caprimulgi, which primarily presents us with a family
Caprimulgidaz, which family in the United States contains at
least the four very distinctive genera Antrostomus, PhalcBnop-
tilus, Nyctidromus, and Chordeiles. To the first-named genus
belong the true whip-poor-will (^4. vociferus), together with
Stephen's whip-poor-will, and the chuck-will's-widow of the
Southern States, with others. Phalaznoptilus Nuttalli, the inter-
esting little poor- will of the Western States, is found in the sec-
ond genus, while Nyctidromus albicollis is representative of the
third. Finally, in Chordeiles we have the night hawks, as the
common form, C. virginianus, as well as the Western night hawk,
the Cuban night hawk, and the Texan night hawk (C. texensis).

To start with these it will be seen that our night hawk and our
whip-poor-will belong to two very different genera of the Capri-
mulgidce. Not only is this the case, but these two birds are in
habits and in structure more widely separated from each other
than is the whip-poor-will from any other genus of the family.
Indeed, night hawks are quite aberrant types, while, as a matter of
fact, none of our United States caprimulgine birds give us any
hint of the extraordinary foreign representatives of this suborder,
some of which will be referred to further on.

Upon comparing a night hawk with a whip-poor-will we find
that, apart from the very well defined difference these birds ex-
hibit in their internal structure and in the general tone and
markings of their plumage, there are a few external striking
features that ought to enable any person to distinguish one from
the other at the most casual glance.

I refer especially to the long, conspicuous bristles projecting
from about the mouth of the whip-poor-will, a character almost

NIGHT HAWKS AND WHIP-POOR-WILLS.

3°9

entirely absent in the night hawk. Further, the tail of the former
is very much rounded, with its four middle feathers like those of
the back, the three outer ones, on either side, having their termi-
nal halves white. In the night hawk the last-mentioned portions
are black, and the form of the tail is very different. Our night
hawk also has a distinctive white patch on the outer aspect of
each wing, which is not present in the whip-poor-will. Again,
the habits of these two birds are by no means similar. The whip-
poor-will, with rare exceptions and under certain circumstances,
is active and feeding from dark until daylight, and sleeps on the

FIG. 1. — THE NIGHT HAWK (C. virginianus), $ . Drawn by the author and much reduced.

ground in the forest all day, the very reverse of this being the
case with the night hawk. In some localities the latter is known
by the name of the " bull bat," the first word undoubtedly having
reference to the booming noise it emits during its plunging freaks
through the air, in which it indulges while out .abroad for food.
Audubon and Wilson disagreed on the score as to how this noise
was produced by the bird, the former claiming that it was per-
formed by the wings, and the latter that it was " doubtless pro-
duced by the sudden expansion of his capacious mouth." lam
inclined to the opinion of Audubon in this matter.

Among our native-born Americans I have never heard the
name of goatsucker applied to our whip-poor-will, whereas that
is a very common appellation for the species in many parts of
Europe, where still all manner of crimes are accredited to this
very harmless bird — that is, to its European congener. It is now,
of course, an old story that long, long ago the goatherds of Italy
and Greece, observing those birds at dusk flying around the

310 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

goats among their hilly pastures, and associating this fact with
the known gaping mouth of a Caprimulgus, soon put the scandal
on foot that they suck the teats of the animals, and thus rob them
of the milk. That ancient philosopher Aristotle also believed the
story, and enlarged upon the legend when he wrote that the " bird
called cegothelas is a mountain bird, a little smaller than the
cuckoo. It lays two or three eggs, and is of a slothful nature ;
flying upon the goats, it sucks them ; they say when it has sucked
the teat it becomes dry, and the goat becomes blind."

That charming naturalist White, of Selborne, did much toward
breaking down this kind of rank superstition, informing us, as he
has, that " the country people have a notion that the fern owl, or
churn owl, or eve jay, which they also call a puckeridge, is very
injurious to weanling calves, by inflicting, as it strikes at them,
the fatal distemper known to cow-leeches by the name of puck-
eridge. Thus does this harmless, ill-fated bird fall under a double
imputation which it by no means deserves : in Italy, of sucking
the teats of goats, whence it is called the Caprimulgus, and with
us, of communicating a deadly disorder to the cattle. But the
truth of the matter is, the malady is occasioned by a dipterous
insect, which lays its eggs along the chines of kine, where the
maggots, when hatched, eat their way through the hide of the
beast into the flesh, and grow to a very large size." Another
name for this European goatsucker (C. europc&us) is the "night-
jar," and a popular writer on the natural history of the class thus
accounts for its origin : " The jarring sound, which gives name to
the bird, is uttered sometimes while flying, but usually when it is
at rest ; it seems to be produced in the same manner as the pur-
ring of a cat, and resembles it, though much louder. One of them,
emitting this sound while sitting on the cross of a small church,
communicated a sensible vibration to the whole building." (I
doubt that that story will find many believers among us at the
present day !)

If the accounts of the habits of such gentle creatures, as re-
corded by men, have passed, in time, through the various stages
of traditional superstition, myth, and inaccuracy, to one of en-
lightenment, fact, and exactness, it has been none the less so with
the various ideas of natural historians in the matter of their opin-
ions as to the place occupied in the system by the Caprimulgi.
One chapter is quite as full of interest as the other. More intelli-
gent observation has cleared and is clearing away the mist that
enshrouded the first, while this, combined with modern methods
of scientific research, is rapidly rectifying the latter. Erroneous
classification, in other words, is being corrected through the steady
progress of our knowledge of the morphology or structure of the
class Aves. From an evolutionary point of view such changing

NIGHT HAWKS AND WHIP-POOR-WILLS. 311

taxonomical advances stand among the most engaging of all les-
sons to the philosophic ornithologist. External appearances, it
has taught among other things, are by no means a safe guide to
the orderly classification of any series of objects. Some old works
upon my library shelves, formerly considered " standard " and
"classic," contain many chapters in those premises which are
highly instructive on this point. One of them now open before
me places, according to its author, such utterly diverse bird-groups
as the trogans, the kingfishers, the swifts, the goatsuckers, and the
humming birds, all among the Passeres. Linnseus arid a number
of his successors had no better appreciation of the truth, for the
scientific light shed over such fields was to them still quite dim.
He placed, with all confidence, the Caprimulgi in his order Pas-
seres. Later, this created the usual intelligent, incredulous smile
of the scientific taxonomer, and in the next epoch we find in their
writings an " order " created to contain, among other types, the
swallows, the swifts, and the goatsuckers ! Then, too, think of
Huxley, who as late as 1867, upon osteological grounds made a
division Cy~'" ^"morphce,, to which he restricted the swifts, the
humming bii . ^S'W the goatsuckers. A decision of that kind
coming from suoJJiffej. 'nnuential quarter has carried with it the
weight of conviction £ \e minds of our most recent ornithologi-
cal writers and systematists. And we find Elliott Coues, in his
last revised edition (1890) of his Key to North American Birds,
still adhering to the old order Picarim, in the first group of which,
the Cypseliformes, he places the swifts (Cypselidm), the goatsuck-
ers (Caprimulgidce) , and the humming birds (Trochilidce,). But a
far more unnatural grouping is seen in the Manual of North
American Birds, by Mr. Robert Ridgway, where an order Macro-
chires is retained to contain the goatsuckers, the swifts, and the
humming birds, and in this he is followed by the check list of the
American Ornithologists' Union. What special kinship the sys-
tematist sees between a humming bird and a whip-poor-will, the
morphologist in these days certainly fails to appreciate. Ana-
tomically the writer has examined in great detail several species
of different genera of both humming birds and goatsuckers, as he
also has many swifts and swallows, and is of the opinion that the
Caprimulgi are most nearly related to the owls, while the swifts
are but profoundly modified swallows. To thoroughly appreciate
such affinities it is necessary that we should have before us the
so-called " outliers " of the various groups just named.

Representatives of the suborder of birds, United States species
of which we are here considering, are found in many parts of the
world, though they appear to be entirely absent from the avif aunse
of Polynesia and New Zealand. In South America, in Asia, in
Africa, and in Australia we meet with goatsuckers of the most

312

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

varied kinds, both in the matter of form and plumage. One of the
most evident types exemplifying the kinship between the Capri-
mulgi and the owls is the extraordinary species found in the caves
of Caripe in South America and in Trinidad. This is the well-
known " oil bird," the Steatornis caripensis of science, and also
called the guacharo by the natives, who enter every season the
caves where it breeds to collect the young. This is done to obtain
the grease by trying out their fat-laden bodies, and thus the spe-
cies has a certain economical importance. In its structure Stea-
tornis is much like some owls, and its two to four white eggs, laid

FIG. 2. — THE WHIP-POOR-WILL (A. vociferw*, $ . Drawn by the author and much reduced.

in a nest built by the bird of clay, closely resemble the eggs of
certain birds of that group. Likewise it is nocturnal in habit, and
markedly differs from the average goatsucker inasmuch as it feeds
upon fruit and certain oily nuts. Structurally it has been exam-
ined with some care by the British anatomist Garrod, who fully
appreciated its relation to the owls. Well it may be said that
most owls have long legs which they can use to full advantage,
which our night hawks and whip-poor-wills do not possess, those
members being so short in them that they can only shuffle over
the ground with difficulty. Yes, but there is also a Central and
South American species of goatsucker, with legs so long that it
can run upon terra firma with all the swiftness and ease of one of

NIGHT HAWKS AND WHIP-POOR-WILLS. 313

our peculiar little burrowing owls of the Western prairies (Speo-
tyto). Again, it is said that such owls as our screech owls (Mega-
scops) exhibit a dichromatism of plumage, being " rufous " in one
and, when adult, " gray " in the other, and that they have " ear
tufts " or plumicorns ornamenting their heads. Here it is inter-
esting to know that in the Malay Archipelago and in China we
meet with the goatsucker Lyncornis, which is also characterized
by the possession of " aural tufts " and a dichromatism of plumage
— the same species having been taken in both a rufous and a gray
one. And so we might pass from one species to another, gathering
one habit here, and another point in anatomical structure there,
until the most skeptical person in the world would at last be con-
vinced that the two groups (Caprimulgi and Striges) were in some
strange way related.

Plumicorns are also possessed by the remarkable Indian capri-
mulgine bird Batrachostomus, a species which also occurs in the
Malay Archipelago, and still other very curious genera of other
parts are the Nyctibius and dSgotheles and Podargus; Podargus
cuvieri being fully three times as large as any known North
American species of goatsucker, being found in the island of Tas-
mania, where its peculiar cry has caused it to receive the name of
" morepork " by the colonists of that distant quarter of the globe.
But for the greatest oddities among these birds, especially in the
matter of plumage, we must turn to Africa, and that paradise for
the explorer, Madagascar. For instance, the Macrodipteryx of
Africa has the ninth primary feather of either wing developed to
a pennant-like length, and when the bird is seen during flight
these appendages float out in the most striking manner; being
still more peculiar in an allied species where the shaft of these
elongated feathers is naked, and it is only at their extremities that
a spatulate form of the web is retained. Madagascaran species
exist that even have still more remarkably developed wing feath-
ers, while in the South American Psalurus, again, it is the lateral
tail feathers that are greatly lengthened.

In concluding this brief paper I would invite attention to the
fact that we find the family of goatsuckers immediately following
the family of owls in Audubon's Birds of America, and of the
former he observes that they are " very nearly allied in some re-
spects to the owls " ; and I am strongly inclined to the belief that
that " careful dissector of birds/' the " Scotch anatomist " William
Macgillivray, had much to do with bringing the mind of our dis-
tinguished Franco- American ornithologist to that opinion.

TOL. XLIV. — 25

3i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

RECENT RAILROAD DISASTERS.

BY LAFAYETTE C. LOOMIS.

rpHE frequency and the frightful fatality of recent railroad
-L disasters have come to be most appalling. Among the more
prominent causes put forth in explanation or in extenuation is
that of the overtaxed and exhausted condition of the trainmen.
This excuse, while reluctantly accepted in part "by the public, is
little better, however, than none at all, as, so far as it is valid,
it simply transfers the responsibility from the trainmen to the
officers, and substitutes criminal mismanagement for criminal
carelessness.

But this statement by no means meets the case.

Among some of the most sanguinary that come to my mind
at this moment — the calamity of the Wabash, the Chester Bridge,
the two on Long Island, and not long since at Yonkers, at Ger-
mantown, and near Dedham — with none of these had fatigue
anything whatever to do. The men responsible for these calami-
ties were comparatively or altogether fresh.

That the men forgot, or were careless, or inattentive, or neg-
lectful, is true ; but that in these and in many other cases, the
men were overtaxed and exhausted is not true. Some other and
more comprehensive cause of these oft-recurring calamities must
be sought.

The science of railroad transportation, to whatever extent it
has advanced, has been almost wholly the result of experiment
rather than of theory. From first to last the theories, for the
most part, have proved very wide of the actual results. Nor is
this a matter of surprise when we consider what a revolution the
locomotive wrought among mankind.

As the successor of the stagecoach, steam travel was inaugu-
rated upon the general principles which that earlier mode of
travel had evolved from long years of experience. The steam
road in all its multitudinous appendages was cast to meet certain
supposed requirements as to speed and volume of traffic. The
roadbed, ties, rails, engines, and cars had all been calculated to
meet a certain assumed pressure, strain, wear and tear. Such, how-
ever, was the almost immediate demand for larger facilities, that
hardly had the various appliances of the road become adjusted to
each other and their new conditions, before the extension and en-
largement of the road in all its capacities had become imperative.

It was not difficult to construct an engine with greater steam
capacity, and hence greater power and speed ; but what a series
of calamities followed! The roadbed, the ties, the rails, the
wheels, were all disproportionate and inadequate.

RECENT RAILROAD DISASTERS. 315

Who that recalls the railroad conditions of forty years ago
does not remember the constant succession of misfortunes charge-
able to the single track, the imperfect bed, to broken rails and
wheels, and a hundred other imperfections in machinery and the
necessary appliances ?

All these mishaps and catastrophes were a part of the new
conditions men were seeking to master.

Not only was the whole scheme new to mankind, but the
burden at once thrown upon it was utterly beyond its design or
its capabilities. No one was more keenly alive to the inadequacy
of these first plans to meet the public want, than were the railroad
men themselves. But an enterprise involving millions of dollars
in a definite, precalculated system is not like a garment that can
be thrown aside and replaced by another at pleasure.

However desirable, the abandonment of existing conditions
and the adoption of others must necessarily be slow in enter-
prises of such magnitude and expenditure.

Nevertheless, during those forty years, such was the mastery
of general principles and detail in the construction of the road
and the rolling stock, and such the perfect adaptation of part to
part, that to-day failure — i. e., so-called accidents — pertaining to
either of these particulars is rare.

During these years experience met each weakness as it became
apparent, until now a first-class road runs thrice the weight at
thrice the speed with almost entire immunity from casualty from
these causes. The " accidents " of the earlier years have been well-
nigh eliminated from our modern train.

But "accidents" yet remain no less frequent than in those
days of inexperience. This undreamed-of accession of power and
speed has also brought a larger range of liability, new conditions,
and new perils.

In the earlier mishaps the fault was found to exist mainly in
our want of knowledge of the innate strength of the materials
used — a fault inseparable from our inexperience. In our later
" accidents " the fault has not been found in the material nor in
the structure. Quite otherwise.

In that frightful Yonkers calamity the fault was found to be
in " the man." In the two Long Island wrecks, in the Dedham,
the Chester Bridge, in the Wabash, the Germantown, and so on
almost without variation, the fault has been in " the man," not in
the road.

That is, in the development of these immense steam forces we
appear to have reached a point where the brain force undertaking
the guidance and control has become the fault-bearing element and
the more fruitful cause of calamity. And so manifest has this pre-
ponderance become, that it calls for the most serious consideration.

3i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In general terms, the brain force in our modern rapid transit,
seems incommensurate with the demands laid upon it.

A fast Atlantic steamer has ordinarily, for fair weather, three
or more men on watch, and two officers on the bridge ; and in
thick weather often not less than ten or twelve, whose sole busi-
ness it is to guard the ship against outside contingencies.

We start out an express at four times the speed in equally
thick weather, under the care and direction of a single man — in a
few cases, perhaps, with an assistant.

Let us note the ordinary duties of this man with hundreds of
lives in his keeping, plunging into the darkness, storm, snow, and
fog at a speed of sixty to ninety miles an hour.

He is supposed to stand with his hand upon the throttle, look-
ing to scan every rod of his fast-flying track, to note every cross-
ing, every approaching vehicle, every straying animal, to observe
every signal and every switch, while there are beside him in his
cab from fifty to seventy-five levers, valves, cocks, gauges, handles,
and what not, which he is expected to apply instantly as the
exigency may arise, as danger may spring into view, or calamity
confront.

It is said that Wellington, at a critical moment of Waterloo,
when a message was brought to him that a certain battalion was
without ammunition, failed to respond to the call. Afterward,
referring to his failure and to the disaster which resulted to the
battalion, he said : " It is true ; but no man can think of every-
thing."

In the heat and stress of battle a man may be pardoned an
inability to recollect, even at the cost of human life ; but a system
of business that, every hour of the day and night, intrusts the
lives and safety of the public to the care and protection of a brain
overburdened and distracted, like that of a locomotive engineer,
is open to the gravest criticism.

Nor is it in the duties of the engineer only that this peril
abides. The Yonkers disaster, and one of those on Long Island,
were from the rear ; the Wabash and the Germantown from the
siding. It thus appears that the demands of the modern train are
insufficiently met by the intellectual guiding force at all points-
front, rear, and on the sides.

The New York World in a recent article approached this ques-
tion under the title of " A Psychological Puzzle." Referring to
the Wabash switchman, the article says : " What made that brake-
man turn the switch and let the express train plunge into the
waiting freight ? The accounts all agree that Thompson was a
man of experience, a trusted man, and of more than ordinary in-
telligence. He had frequently stopped at the same siding to let
the same train go by. ... Why did he do it ? Not to wreck the

RECENT RAILROAD DISASTERS. 317

train and kill the passengers. His mind wandered for a moment,
he forgot his duty, and before he came to himself the mischief
was done. Carelessness is hardly a complete explanation, nor is
f orgetfulness. . . . Does our mental machinery suddenly fail us at
times?"

The continuity of the track is ordinarily broken by a like
switch every few miles. An hour's ride takes the train over a
dozen such breaks, any one of which misplaced means a horror
like that of the Wabash. The rear guard may at any moment,
from some irregularity to his train, be called upon to hasten back
with the danger signal against an on-rushing second section or
a close-following train. Should he stumble amid the storm, be
blinded by the snow, or should the wind extinguish his light, or
should he, like Thompson, fail from some unaccountable cause, a
second Yonkers would follow.

Whether the explanation suggested by the World be the true
one or not, one thing is very evident in the light of our modern
experience, and that is, that such responsibilities as now attach to
the trainman of a modern express, whether it be engineman,
switchman, or brakeman, ought not to be longer intrusted to the
protection of any single mind, however faithful, however consci-
entious. Were the human mind and body perfect as a machine,
faultless in its workings, and with no liability to irregularity, fail-
ure, or lapse, we might be so justified. But, not to speak of the
body, no mental organization is perfect. Frailty is a part of man's
inheritance. Against that frailty, against that fatal moment, we
have now no protection whatever. We are abandoned by our sole
guardian, by the only divinity that stands over us, and we are
left to a horrible death or to the tortures of hell. It is idle to say
these men are careless, that they are regardless of duty. They
are as faithful and as trustworthy as would be any other men put
in their places — as faithful as our human nature permits.

It simply appears that we have been attempting to force from
our human organization a degree of exactitude in the operations
of the mind which the brain refuses to yield. And in view of the
sanguinary record of the few past years, directly at the hands of
the men in charge, we may well question the wisdom of a longer
trial. It no longer remains an uncertainty where the weakness of
our present system lies, where the danger abides. That the brain
power of a modern express is disproportionate to the requirements,
admits no further question. Safety in land travel, no less than
in ocean travel, demands a duplication of the officers in charge.
Whether it be engineman, rear guard, brakeman, switchman, or
whoever undertakes to stand between the passenger and the mul-
tiplied dangers of the road, there should be a first and a second
officer, that, in any and every emergency, whether through care-

318 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lessness, forgetf ulness, or lapse of conscious thought, the duties
of that post should be sustained.

Does any one for a moment suppose that, if there had been a
second officer whose business it was to inspect that Wabash switch
and see and certify that it was properly set, or that if the Yonkers
brakeman had been followed by a second signal light fifty yards
in the rear, either of those catastrophes would have occurred, or
any of these recent rear-end and siding calamities ?

When, ordinarily, human life is taken, the whole machinery of
the criminal law is exercised to bring the offender to justice. But
here a score of persons are put to death, or to a torture the like
of which exists not elsewhere in any portion of our globe, either
civilized or savage — torn, mangled, crushed, scalded, burned — and
it is held excusable as an " unavoidable accident/'

To say that these things are a necessary part of the progress
of mankind is a libel on civilization. To declare them unavoid-
able accidents is, for the most part, to assert that which is not
true — to attempt a justification through what we know to be false.
Accidents they are not. They are simply criminal maladminis-
tration.

When one's life is sacrificed, or when one is maimed for the
remainder of his miserable years, it is of little import to the suf-
ferer or to his family whether it be the result of criminal intent
or of criminal neglect. The shade of difference is not so very
clear between life needlessly taken and life purposely taken.

Since the foregoing was written, the death-angel has pursued
his appalling railway harvest with unabated fury, seventy-seven
deaths and one hundred and eighty-four mangled in thirty days,
being the record for the United States, so far as heard.

From the general facts as given in the public prints, these
calamities, like those above referred to, and like the most of
those now occurring, appear to be attributable to " the men " and
not to " the road." There have also appeared in the public press
some explanatory or apologetic statements from officers of several
roads, some of1 which are worthy of attention as expressing the
views of the officials into whose care the public intrusts its wel-
fare ; none of which, however, give it any assurance of any greater
degree of safety.

An officer of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western is re-
ported as saying, " I can not explain the unusual number of acci-
dents just now " ; adding, however, " the train-dispatcher's duties
have become very much more exacting." This means, if it is in-
tended to mean anything, that the fault lies in the train-dispatcher,
not in the road or machinery.

One of the superintendents of the New York Central says :
" Railroad accidents are like epidemics ; they can no more be fore-

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 319

told or arrested (prevented ?).... When a train is on a double-
tracked road, the danger is reduced, I may say, one hundred per
cent."

The first statement of this superintendent, if spoken hastily,
without thought, may be excused as a careless utterance ; but as
a deliberate opinion that this railroad slaughter is not prevent-
able, and that there is nothing left for the public but to submit to
its continuance, it is simply atrocious and worthy of a savage of
the Congo.

Such a statement from a railroad official, into whose hands we
must perforce place our lives and those of our wives and children,
is ample ground for impeachment. It makes one?s blood boil.

It is to put up a sign over every station entrance on the New
York Central : " Slaughter permitted here. Accidents can not be
prevented." Yet, in the next breath, this superintendent adds
"Double-tracking the road reduces the accidents one hundred
per cent" (sic).

It seems, then, that one hundred per cent of the accidents were
not only preventable, but that on the New York Central they had
been so prevented. When the road was the source of danger, the
weakness was met and overcome by re-enforcing the road. Now
that the weakness is found to reside in the men, the slaughter of
to-day makes an imperative demand for an augmentation of the
forces, at the present moment, so inadequately and disastrously
attempting control.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY.

BY ST. GEOKGE M1VART, PH.D., F. K. S.

SO many adventures of gods and heroes, alternately defeated
and restored, with so many other myths of earlier religions,
merely (we are told) describe, in figurative language, the simplest
physical phenomena, that most of us now expect to find "the
dawn," or " sunset," latent in every one newly met with.

Our fairy tales also may be similarly treated, but most of them
will also serve to represent, under an allegory, notable events or
circumstances of human life.

The history of that gentle animal, beloved of our childhood,
the White Cat — an enchanted princess, doomed to bear that feline
form till freed, through the loss of head and tail, by the sharp
sword of her royal lover — admits such an allegorical interpretation.
1 Some learned professor might tell us its real purpose was to
show that pain and loss can serve to restore a noble soul, deformed
by evil influences. He might also enlarge upon the text, describ-
ing how the spellbound maid herself demands the blow, and point

320 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

out we ought to learn from this that our higher aspirations should
bid us brave death itself if, by a voluntary martyrdom only, we
can so hasten on the triumph of " the good, the beautiful, and the
true."

But this transformed princess, as also the Sleeping Beauty,
Biquet with the Tuft, and Beauty and the Beast, all may alike
serve to image forth an aspect of the Cosmos which is particularly
interesting to us to-day. They all indicate, by some astonishing
transformation, how every one and everything is affected through
new conditions of environment, how change pervades the universe,
and how all of us must undergo a process of evolution, though
not, by any means, one in the entirely beneficent direction, nor
with the rapidity these fairy tales indicate. But rapidity is
essentially a relative term ; and so the swift sword-stroke of the
one prince or the awakening kiss of the other can quite well sym-
bolize the slow, as well as rapid, processes of the natural world.

That universal and unceasing process of change which goes on
throughout the Cosmos must affect the mind as well as the body
of every one of us. Nor could a reasonable man wish that it were
altogether otherwise with him, since " to cease to change is to
cease to live." But we naturally shrink from decay, and should
do so from mental degradation, while evolution (as above said,
and as every one knows) is not universally or necessarily benefi-
cent. Among the many evils around us (the existence of which
none but an irrational optimist will deny) are the results of
evolution in certain minds — minds which, in the battle of life,
have become more and more morally degraded and intellectually
darkened, and so continue till the end.

We might, in truth, put forward as an argument in favor of
a brute element in our being, the fact that increasing years so
often fail, in men as in monkeys, to produce any visible increase
of " sweetness and light." On the other hand, we are most of us
fortunate enough to know men in whom long life has served to
ripen the most precious mental fruits.

It is the process of evolution in the mind which should above
all things interest us. The great cosmic process considered as
evolving suns and planets and bringing forth vegetal and sentient
life is of course a wonderful and admirable process. Yet it is
nothing to the formation of a single self-conscious being. So far
as our knowledge extends, it is true that

" In Nature there is nothing great but man :
In man there is nothing great but mind."

Phases in the development of one human intelligence must there-
fore form a really nobler object of study than that of myriads of
stellar orbs devoid of intellect.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 321

But if mental processes should "be thus interesting, a fortiori
should they be so if they are those of a great expositor and apostle
of the doctrine of evolution itself. Above all ought they to con-
cern us if that expositor exercises great influence, is looked up to
by multitudes of disciples, and has been in the habit of coupling
with his expositions, precepts respecting matters which most of
us think extremely important.

These considerations lead me to think that the time has come
for some one to say a few words with respect to the process of
evolution which seems to have taken place in the mind of Prof.
Huxley. I venture, therefore, on the following observations.

Though it can not be affirmed that any sharp edge of criticism
has transformed him as the sword-blade transformed the en-
chanted princess, nevertheless some changes of aspect are, I think,
to be detected in certain of Prof. Huxley's recent utterances.

To these I desire to call attention, since they appear to justify
the hope that ripened experience and mature reflection have called
forth statements which, if (as is possible) they do not denote any
consciously changed views, must surely, at the least, indicate
their latent presence.

There are two matters with respect to his last publication *
especially noteworthy : (1) The first of these concerns our ethical
perceptions ; the second (2) relates to the nature of man as con-
trasted with that of other organisms.

Besides these matters, I would also refer to certain corollaries
which, in my humble judgment, result from the views he has put
forward with respect to humanity and ethics.

The present inquiry is no hostile one, but is made in a spirit of
sympathy — such as a decade of pleasant memories should occa-
sion. Long ago,f and also recently,^ I said, " No one, I believe, has
a greater regard for Prof. Huxley than I have, and no one is
more convinced than I am of the uprightness of his intentions and
his hearty sympathy with self-denying virtue."

If I may have the great satisfaction of finding that, as to
ethical perceptions, he has approximated to the standpoint I long
ago advocated, that satisfaction will be free from any taint of
triumph. I am far too keenly aware of my own past difficulties to
wonder at another intellect having been obscured by clouds which
so long overshadowed my own. Indeed, the clearing away
of those obscurities is indirectly due to Prof. Huxley himself.
Such is the case, since it was in that lecture room in Jermyn
Street — where, owing to his kindness no less than his ability,
I gained much of the biological knowledge I possess — I made the

* The Romanes Lecture, 1893. f Contemporary Review (January, 1872), p. 196.

J Essays and Criticisms (Osgood, Mcllvaine & Co.), ii, 101.

322 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acquaintance of a dear and valued friend, whose acute intellect
first taught me to fully understand in what the essence of " good-
ness " consists, as his virtue led me to appreciate its active exercise.
But my enlightenment ultimately resulted in controversy ; and,
in order that my readers may be able to judge what signs of
ascensive evolution Prof. Huxley has lately shown, I must briefly
refer to a passage of arms which took place between us one-and-
twenty years ago.

I had, in a little book, then recently published,* contended that
the process of " natural selection " could never have evolved our
ethical perceptions and our clear intellectual idea of "duty" as
distinct from mere feelings of " sympathy," " fear," etc. I said :

These two ideas, the " right " and the " useful," being so distinct here and now,
a great difficulty meets us with regard to their origin from some common source.
For the distinction between the " right " and the " useful" is so fundamental and
essential that not only does the idea of benefit not enter into the idea of duty, but
we see that the very fact of an act not being beneficial to us makes it the more
praiseworthy, while gain tends to diminish the merit of an action. Yet this idea,
" right," thus excluding, as it does, all reference to utility or pleasure, has never-
theless to be constructed and evolved from utility and pleasure, and ultimately
from pleasurable sensations, if we are to accept pure Darwinism : if we are to
accept, that is, the evolution of man's psychical nature and highest powers by the
exclusive action of "natural selection " from such faculties as are possessed by
brutes; in other words, if we are to believe that the conceptions of the highest
human morality arose through minute and fortuitous variations of brutal desires
and appetites in all conceivable directions.

It is here contended, on the other hand, that no conservation of any such
variations could ever have given rise to the faintest beginning of any such moral
perceptions; that by ''natural selection" alone the maxim fiat justitia, mat
ccelum, could not have been excogitated, still less have found a widespread accept-
ance; that it is impotent to suggest even an approach toward an explanation ot
the first beginning of the idea of " right." It need hardly be remarked that acts
may be distinguished, not only as pleasurable, useful, or beautiful, but also as good
in two different senses : (1) Materially moral acts ; and (2) acts which are formally
moral. The first are acts good in themselves, as acts, apart from any intention
of the agent, which may or may not have been directed toward "right." The
second are acts which are good, not only in themselves, as acts, but also in the
deliberate intention of the agent who recognizes his actions as being " right."
Thus acts may be materially moral or immoral in a very high degree without
being in the least formally so. For example, a person may tend and minister to
a sick man with scrupulous care and exactness, having in view all the time noth-
ing but the future reception of a good legacy. Another may, in the dark, shoot
his father, taking him to be an assassin, and so commit what is materially an act
of parricide, though formally it is only an act of self-defense or more or less
culpable rashness. A woman may innocently, because ignorantly, marry a mar-
ried man, and so commit a material act of adultery. She may discover the facts
and persist, and so make her act formal also.

* The Genesis of Species (Macmillan & Co.), 1871, second edition, p. 219.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 323

Actions of brutes, such as those of the hee, the ant, or the beaver, however
materially good as regards their relation to the community to which such ani-
mals belong, are absolutely destitute of the most incipient degree of real — i. e.,
formal — '' goodness," because unaccompanied by mental acts of conscious will
directed toward the fulfillment of duty.

By the examples thus given, it was surely plain that I repre-
sented the formally moral character of an act to reside in the in-
, tention wherewith it was performed, as distinguished from mere
good results, and also in the goodness of that intention. This was
made still plainer in my Quarterly article * on The Descent of
Man. Therein, to guard against the absurdity of supposing I
meant that it was necessary, in order that an action should be
good, for its goodness to be deliberately thought of and reflected
on, I said :

An action which has ceased to be directly or indirectly deliberate has ceased
to be moral as a distinct act, but it is moral as the continuation of those preceding
deliberate acts through which the good habit was originally formed, and the
rapidity with which the will is directed in the case supposed may indicate the
number and constancy of antecedent meritorious volitions.

Prof. Huxley reviewed f my book and this Quarterly article,
simultaneously and at much length, in an exceedingly interesting
paper entitled Mr. Darwin's Critics, which I strongly advise those
interested in the question to read before reading my reply to it.
Therein, entirely siding with Mr. Darwin, he did not hesitate to
sayj (as to my distinction between "material" and "formal"
morality) :

For myself, I utterly reject it, inasmuch as the logical consequence of the
adoption of any such principle is the denial of all moral value to sympathy and
affection. According to Mr. Mivart's axiom, the man who, seeing another strug-
gling in the water, leaps in at the risk of his own life to save him, does that which
is " destitute of the most incipient degree of real goodness,'' unless, as he strips
off his coat he, says to himself, " Now, mind, I am going to do this because it is
my duty, and for no other reason " ; and the most beautiful character to which
humanity can attain, that of the man who does good without thinking about it,
because he loves justice and mercy and is repelled by evil, has no claim on our
moral approbation. The denial that a man acts morally because he does not
think whether he does so or not may be put upon the same footing as the denial
of the title of an arithmetician to a calculating boy, because he did not know how
he worked out his sums.

I wondered, and I wonder still, how Prof. Huxley could have
written this, he having before his eyes the passage of mine, just
above cited, from the article of the Quarterly Review which he
was criticising I

* See Quarterly Review, July, 1 871, p. 82 ; and also my Essays and Criticisms, 1892, ii, 49.
f See The Contemporary Review for 1871 ; and also his Critiques and Addresses, 1873,
p. 251. $ Critiques and Addresses, p. 288.

3 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

However, my point now is simply to remark how far the right
honorable professor then was from assigning "motive" as the
one essential character of a good action. Most certainly, neither
sympathy nor affection is always moral, and as to unconscious
"beneficent actions, I remarked, and repeat, How can a man " love
justice " if he can not distinguish it from injustice ? Can he ap-
preciate " mercy " without knowing it ?

A calculating boy who does not understand arithmetic can not
be properly termed an arithmetician, whatever his automatic
power of rendering solutions may be. But my opponent not only
took the opposite view to this, but went still further; for he
wrote : *

If a machine produces the effects of reasoning, I see no more ground for deny-
ing to it the reasoning power because it is unconscious, than I see for refusing to
Mr. Babbage's engine the title of a calculating machine on the same grounds.

It would be hardly possible to imagine a better illustration of
the absence of discrimination between what is merely " material "
and what " formal " in reasoning ; and this defect runs singularly
parallel with the absence of a like discrimination— the discrimi-
nation as to motives — in the domain of ethics on the part of Prof.
Huxley in 1871.

Finally, so complete was then his identification of " duty " with
" pleasure," that, when attempting to assume, for the moment, the
position of an " absolute moralist," he wrote : f

To do your duty is to earn the approbation of your conscience or moral sense ;
to fail in your duty is to feel its disapprobation, as we all say. Now is appro-
bation a pleasure or a pain? Surely a pleasure. And is disapprobation a pleas-
ure or a pain ? Surely a pain. Consequently all that is really meant by the
absolute moralists is that there is, in the very nature of man, something which
enables him to be conscious of those particular pleasures and pains.

Inasmuch, therefore, as Prof. Huxley would then have said
that the proper object of life is to do one's duty, he must likewise
have thereby meant that its object also was to escape from the
pain and sorrow consequent on its non-fulfillment. Such is the
necessary consequence of identifying an ethical perception (a mat-
ter of intellect) with a " feeling."

But it is not a fact that every perception of duty performed,
and recognized as such, is necessarily pleasurable ; nor every con-
sciousness of duty similarly violated, a painful experience.

In a perfect nature, of course, moral sentiments will always
harmonize with ethical perceptions. But who is perfect ? To do
right is often a labor and a sorrow, and it is certainly not less
meritorious on that account.

* Loc. tit., p. 281. f P. 289.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 325

But, unhappily, men sometimes take pleasure in acts which
their conscience disapproves, and enjoy them the more on such
very account. " I'm a sad dog, I am, no mistake about that ! " has
"been said, now and again, with a pleasurable chuckle of immoral
self-consciousness, by men not by any means the worst of sinners.

Real merit depends exclusively on motives, and thus one and
the same act may be moral or immoral, according to the direction
taken by the will in performing it — as in the instances above
given of the sick nurse and the woman materially an adulteress.

But this ethical distinction between acts formally and only
'materially good — the distinction of motive and consequent merit
or guilt — is the most important distinction which it is possible for
us to draw in the whole domain of human thought, from element-
ary arithmetic up to the highest regions of philosophy.

The reader will readily understand then my satisfaction when,
on perusing the right honorable professor's recent lecture, I read
as follows : *

Civilization could not advance far without the establishment of a capital dis-
tinction between the case of involuntary and that of willful misdeed ; between a
merely wrong action and a guilty one. And, with increasing refinement of moral
appreciation, the problem of desert, which arises out of this distinction, acquired
more and more theoretical and practical importance. . . . The idea of justice
thus underwent a gradual sublimation from punishment and reward according to
acts, to punishment and reward according to desert ; or, in other words, accord-
ing to motive. Righteousness — that is, action from right motive — not only be-
came synonymous with justice, but the positive constituent of innocence and the
very heart of goodness.

The position of the absolute moralist could not be better ex-
pressed than in those admirable words : The " very heart of good-
ness " lies in action due to right motives and good will.

I add the words " good will " because, with the attribution of
guilt or merit to actions according to the motives of the doer of
them, a certain freedom must also be attributed to the will itself.
Moral blame or approbation can not (as the universal custom of
mankind shows) be attributed to any being destitute of all power
of choice or of any control whatever over the actions he performs.
Prof. Huxley will not deny that " our volition counts for some-
thing as a condition of the course of events."

An act of free will is no uncaused event. Its cause is the spon-
taneous self-determination of him who freely acts.

But some noble words in the recent Oxford lecture specially
merit notice as containing in them an energetic repudiation of
the utilitary theory of morals. They are: f "We should cast

* [November Popular Science Monthly, pp. 24, 25.]
f [December Monthly, p. 191.]

326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aside the notion that the escape from pain and sorrow is the
proper object of life."

I will now pass to the second of the two processes of evolution
which his recent writings seem to indicate as having taken place
in the mind of Prof. Huxley.

He and I worked simultaneously and harmoniously to show
how much less the human body differs from that of an ape, than
does that of an ape from any other animal.

In his work on Man's Place in Nature (1863), he diverged
from Cuvier and followed Linnaeus by including man in one order

— Primates — with the apes and lemurs. In the first scientific
paper I ever published,* I went yet further and reduced man
(anatomically considered) to the rank of a section of a suborder
of the Primates, for which section I first proposed the term
" Anthropoidea."

But while the professor took the position of an entire sym-
pathizer with and supporter of Mr. Darwin's views as to man's
origin, I have ever maintained that, in spite of the closeness of
bodily resemblance, the psychical gulf between him and them
constitutes a profound difference not merely of degree, but an
absolute distinction of kind — one involving a difference as to
origin.

The position I at once assumed, which I have unfalteringly
upheld, and now maintain more confidently than ever, is that no
mere process of evolutionary natural selection, no cosmic process,
could ever have produced from irrational Nature a being " look-
ing before and after " — a being who could say either " this must
be absolute truth," or " such is my duty and I will, or will not, do
it." It was with great satisfaction, therefore, that I perused some
of the passages on this subject in the recent Romanes lecture.

Therein, after having affirmed f that the mere animal man had
attained his position by the cosmic process — a view I had sup-
ported J in 1871 — the lecturer makes the following statement : *

The practice of that which is ethically best — what we call goodness or virtue

— involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that which
leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless self-
assertion it demands self-restraint; in place of thrusting aside, or treading down,
all competitors, it requires that the individual shall not merely respect but shall
help his fellows ; its influence is directed, not so much fo the survival of the
fittest, as to the fitting as many as possible to survive. It repudiates the gladia-
torial theory of existence.

* Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1864, p. 634. See also The Philosophical
Transactions, 1867, p. 300.

•f [November Monthly, p. 21.]

$ See The Genesis of Species, p. 325. * [December Monthly, p. 189.]

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 327

We read also :

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step, and the
substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process. It de-
pends (he tells us on the next page) not on imitating the cosmic process, still less
in running away from it, but in combating it.

It is yet further said : *

The history of civilization details the steps by which men have succeeded in
building up an artificial world within the Cosmos. Fragile reed as he may be,
man, as Pascal says, is a thinking reed : there lies within him a fnnd of energy,
operating intelligently, and so far akin to that which pervades the universe that
it is competent to influence and modify the cosmic process.

I have always maintained that the cosmic process, since it
often favors the ill-doer more than the virtuous man, could
never by any possibility have evolved the ethical ideal.

Prof. Huxley now bears the most satisfactory witness to this
truth, saying : f

The thief and the murderer follow Nature just as much as the philanthropist.
Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and evil tendencies of man may
have come about ; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason
why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.

Just so! It would be difficult to declare more emphatically
that ethics could never have formed part and parcel of the general
process of evolution.

But with that change, whatever it may have been, which first
introduced into this planet an intellectual, and therefore ethical,
nature, it is no wonder that consequences thence resulted de-
structive of antecedent harmonies.

Many persons deplore the ravages which the one intellectual
animal (man) has effected on the fair face of Nature. As a natu-
ralist I feel this strongly, and the extinction of so many curious
and beautiful forms of life which human progress occasions is
very painful to contemplate. It seems to us hateful that the
harmonious results of Nature's conflicting powers should be dis-
turbed and upset to meet the vulgar needs of uncultured human
life.

Yet reason should convince us that this sentiment is a mis-
taken one. We may, indeed, most reasonably regret the loss of
species of animals and plants which greater care and foresight
might have preserved ; yet we should never forget that over the
irrational world man legitimately holds sway, and that weighed
in the balance with him the rest counts for nothing. The very
poorest homestead, the ugliest row of cottages, the most common-

* [December Monthly, pp. 189, 190.]

f [December Monthly, p. 187.J The Italics are mine.

328 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

place suburb, and the manufacturer's chimney, with its grimy
surroundings and furnaces which make verdure impossible, are
each of them priceless in value compared with all the charms of
irrational Nature which the most skillful poet can depict. They
are of such value, because each is an arena wherein good thoughts
and words and deeds may find a place, and so help on the world to
fulfill what is for us its one great end.

A nature must be wonderful indeed which demands for its
existence the reversal of that great cosmic process which, so far as
we know, has ever and everywhere prevailed antecedently to its
advent. The difference between a being of so transcendent a
nature and every other must surely be something altogether dif-
ferent from the difference between mercury grass and a field but-
tercup, or between a wolf and a badger !

But the reader must not imagine I would represent Prof.
Huxley as an entirely conscious convert to a view opposed to that
he had before advocated. Some of his utterances concord with
the latter, and I can not presume to say to which he will ulti-
mately adhere.

Thus, as to the future of evolution, he tells us : *

Some day, I doubt not, we shall arrive at an understanding of the evolution of
the aesthetic faculty.

He affirms also that those who seek to find "the origin of the
moral sentiments " [the right honorable professor's term for ethi-
cal perceptions] in evolution " are on the right track."
In a note f he declares that —

Strictly speaking, social life and the ethical process, in virtue of which it advances
toward perfection, are part and parcel of the general process of evolution, just as
the gregarious habit of innumerable plants and animals, which has been of im-
mense advantage to them, is so.

Is this only an inconsistent adherence to old opinions, or is it
meant to be seriously maintained as an essential truth ? If the
latter, it nullifies all that was said as to the distinctness of the
ethical process and the wonderful reversal of the great cosmic
process by man ! Every one knew that gregarious creatures, such
as wolves, have different habits from solitary animals, such as
badgers, and many know that the growth of mercury grass has
consequences whereof that of the buttercup is devoid. No prophet
need arise in Israel to tell us such things as these. No special
university lecture was required to teach them to us, and I, for
one, must decline to believe that all those eloquent expressions
which have been quoted — respecting "righteousness being the

* [December Monthly, p. 187.]

f [December Monthly.] Note, p. 188. The Italics are mine.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 329

very heart of goodness"; the explicit denial that evolution can
teach us why good is to be preferred to evil, and the representa-
tion of the ethical combating the cosmic process — mean no more
than that a difference has been established essentially similar to
that which exists between social and solitary caterpillars.

I am confident that in my interpretation I can only be doing
the right honorable professor justice, for who out of Bedlam
would call the gregarious mode of growth of a patch of mercury
grass an ethical process ? We might just as truly attribute
" calculation " to crystals, and " amorousness " to oxygen.

Of course, evolution will cause a social organism so to grow or
so to act as not to destroy itself. To do this is one thing, to see
that it is its duty so to act is quite another.

Prof. Huxley informs us * that to his knowledge no one

professes to doubt that, so far as we possess a power of bettering things, it is our
paramount duty to use it and to train all our intellect and energy to the service
of our kind.

But it is questionable whether some pessimists would not only
doubt, but even deny, this assertion ; and it is only too plain that,
without professing to doubt it, multitudes of men and women by
their actions practically deny it. Prof. Huxley's assertion is an
uncompromising " categorical imperative," and, of course, will re-
ceive the support of absolute morality ; but whence does he derive
such an ethical ideal ? Man did not voluntarily and consciously
invent it. It was in him, but not of him. To this it may be re-
plied that only developed man has such perceptions, and that the
thoughtless brains of a savage are devoid of all ethical intuitions,
while every one must admit that the infant gives no evidence of
their presence. But to say that because the infant does not mani-
fest them it does not possess them, would be as reasonable as to
say that because a field shows no sprouting corn there can be no
corn beneath its surface ! As to savages, I have elsewhere f stated
my reason for believing they have essentially the same nature
that we have ourselves. If I were wrong in this, I should not
regard them as men. I should not care if it could be proved that
intellect and ethical perception did not anywhere exist a hundred
years ago. I know that they exist now, and I know that a being
who possesses them is, and must be, of an absolutely different
nature from one who does not. As a fact, I think few will dis-
pute that most infants which live to adult age and many savages
who come in close contact with Europeans clearly demonstrate
that their " nature " was rational, however tardy and impeded
may have been their manifestation of rationality.

* [December Monthly, p. 187.]

f See On Truth (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.), chapter xix, pp. 282-294.
VOL. XLIV. — 2fi

330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But the advent of a being who has such faculties as man has,
and whose career really conflicts with, and reverses the great pro-
cess of cosmic evolution, may well have had an origin different in
kind from that of every other animal — at least, so far as regards
his intellectual principle.* For he is a being with two natures in
one person, and thus it is that when we speak of " the whole of
Nature," or " the natural world," a definition of our meaning is
needed in order to avoid ambiguity. The term " Nature " may be
used in a broad or in a narrow sense.

In the broad sense f of the word, it includes man with all his
powers and their effects, while in the narrow sense of the word
Nature he is excluded from it.

Much may be said for the latter use of the term, since man, by
his intelligence and will, is able to change the whole course of
physical causation. Thus his power, when contrasted with all the
other powers of Nature known to us, may, in a sense, be termed
" supernatural," and he may be truly said to " perform miracles."
So great, indeed, is the contrast and distance between man and the
world of irrational nature, that it suggests now, as it suggested of
old, a contrast and difference on the other side — I mean, it sug-
gested the existence of a " real supernatural " — of a mode of being
which is raised above all human nature, as man himself is raised
above all infra-human nature.

And so I come to one of the corollaries which I think results
from such a change of view with respect to man as the words
above quoted J from Prof. Huxley would seem to indicate — namely,
the recognition of a Divine All-perfect Creator of the world and
man.

This corollary Prof. Huxley seems as yet indisposed to admit,
although he has elsewhere * spoken of man as " here and there re-
flecting a ray from the infinite source of truth ! " He is, as yet,
plainly indisposed to admit it, because he declares || that the exist-

* In my Genesis of Species (1871), p. 325, I said : " Man, according to the old scholastic
definition, is a rational animal (animal rationale), and his animality is distinct in nature
from his rationality, though inseparably joined during life in one common personality. Man's
animal body must have had a different source from that of the spiritual soul which informs
it, owing to the distinctness of the two orders to which these two existences severally belong.
. . . That the first man should have had this double origin agrees with what we now ex-
perience. For, supposing each human soul to be directly and immediately created, yet each
human body is evolved by the ordinary operation of natural physical laws. . . . Man is,
indeed, compound ; in him two distinct orders of being impinge and mingle ; and with this
composite nature an origin from two concurrent modes of action is congruous, and might be
expected a priori"

•{• The sense used by me in my Lessons from Nature (John Murray), 1876.

\ See p. 327. *See Man's Place in Nature, p. 112.

| [December Monthly, p. 181.]

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 331

ence of evil is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent
and infinitely beneficent Cause.

But, assuming the existence of evil to be to us inexplicable, we
are but thereby landed in a choice of difficulties, between which,
it seems to me, no rational man should for one moment hesitate.

One difficulty is the existence of a complex Cosmos, which
could never have been naturally selected, and whereof intelligence
and goodness (in ourselves) form part, without an adequate cause
— i. e., without God.* To regard this non-theistic view as a pos-
sibility is, in my eyes, the acme of irrationality.

The other difficulty is the possible accord with God's infinite
goodness, of evil, permitted for purposes we can not conceive of,
and due to attributes higher than, though not inconsistent with,
beneficence. How any one, who has not the presumption of pre-
tending to understand what God is, can really find this second
difficulty a serious one, is to me amazing.

Christianity can supply not only an explanation but also a
profound consolation for the troubles of this life, and mere ordi-
nary experience shows us that things we have now and then
desired would, if obtained, have been baneful for us, as also that
apparent evils have been blessings in disguise. Prof. Huxley,
indeed, very truly says : f

That there is a " soul of good in things evil " is unquestionable; nor will any
wise man deny the disciplinary value of pain and sorrow.

On this we have often insisted ; but none the less we are from
asserting that ours is the best of all possible worlds. All I would
affirm is that God must have created a Cosmos such as to respond
most fitly to the intention of a Being infinite in intelligence and
goodness, but also possessing attributes of which we can have no
conception whatever.

Heartily do I echo Prof. Huxley's denunciation of the words,
" Whatever is, is right," as opposed to all our noblest aspirations,
and most true is his remark \ that —

To the man with an ethical ideal, the world, including himself, will always seem
full of evil.

But the teaching of the lecture, as a whole, is a depressing one.
Many years ago Prof. Huxley taught * that in " sadness " lay " the
essence of all religion," and little comfort is to be gained from his

* As to " Natural Selection " in this relation, and as to adequacy and the eternity of the
Cosmos and its Cause, see On Truth, chapter xxvi, pp. 450-499.

•j- [December Monthly, p. 182.] His difficulty rather concerns the merely animal world.
As to this question, space does not allow me to do more than refer my readers to my book
On Truth, p. 471.

\ [December Monthly, p. 182, note.] * Lay Sermons (1870), p. 15.

332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

latest utterance. He tells us, * " The theory of evolution encour-
ages no millennial anticipations." This is true, indeed ; and
though the world's existence may seem long when measured by
the span of a human life, it is but " a flash in the pan " compared
with the infinite ages. And if we suppose the cosmic process to
continue indefinitely, and suns with their attendant planets so to
pulsate into and from separate existence, yet it promises nothing
for all mankind but absolute annihilation and utter nothingness.
The Oxford lecturer, however, discoursing on truly "vain
philosophy," predicts a mere recurrence of pulsations for the best
human thought. Its modern form, he tells us f —

is making a fresh start from the base whence Indian and Greek philosophy set
out; and, the human mind being very much what it was six and twenty centuries
ago, there is no ground for wonder if it presents indications of a tendency to
move along the old lines to the same results.

The human mind is, of course, very much what it was, but it
has now what then it had not — the light of Christianity to aid its
progress. Its influence has ground and sharpened the weapons of
the intellect as they have never been ground and sharpened before.
No doubt, the prejudices which have grown up under the teach-
ing of Descartes and Locke, which have been intensified by Berke-
ley, and which culminated in Hume, will continue to dominate
those who can not extricate themselves from that sophistical
labyrinth wherein I was once myself imprisoned. The labyrin-
thine spell, which makes escape impossible, consists in the words :
" We can be supremely certain of nothing but our own present
feelings." Hypnotized by this formula, the victims fancy they
can not know with certainty their own substantial and con-
tinuous existence. But the spell is at once dissolved by the
recognition that such feelings are not primary declarations of
consciousness, but simply the result of an act of reflection parallel
with that which tells us of our own persistent being.J

The dreams of Brahmanism and Buddhism, Ionian philosophy,
Idealism, which may be called the philosophy of Janus,* and the
noble inconsistencies of pantheistic Stoicism are all impossible
for those who have come to apprehend the truths enshrined in
Christian philosophy.

* [December Monthly, p. 190.] f [December Monthly, p. 186.]

\ It is, of course, impossible in these pages to draw out the reasons which justify the
above assertion. For them the reader is referred to my book On Truth, chapters i, ii, and ix.

* Because the system can readily be inverted so as to become materialism. Its ma-
terialistic face belongs to it as properly as does its idealistic visage. Prof. Huxley says
[November Monthly, p. 31], " Granting the premises, I am not aware of any escape from
Berkeley's conclusion." Neither am I. But I am no less unaware of any necessity to
accept those premises, the truth of which I unhesitatingly deny.

EVOLUTION IN PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 333

It would be an important approximation toward that philoso-
phy on the part of the second Romanes lecturer, if those words of
his I have here cited signify an acceptance of the distinction be-
tween what is " formal " and what only " material " in the sphere
of ethics on the one hand, and an appreciation of the essentially
distinct nature of man on the other. His expressions seem to me
to justify the hope that the process of mental evolution has in
him had this result. -

I can not, however, regard them as decisive. It may be I have
been deluded by my earnest wish that those words,

Whose faith and work were bells of full accord,

which have been said of a valued friend of us both, may one day
also be said of him. If, however, I have been mistaken, I shall
not on that account cease to hope that ultimately my wish will be
fulfilled.

For my own part my conviction grows ever stronger that,
though corporeally man is but a sort of ape, his intellectual na-
ture is so distinct that, thus considered, there is more difference
between him and the oraiig than between the latter and the
ground beneath its feet.

But high as he is raised above the rest of Nature, the very
limitations of his reason, considered in the light of the highest
ethical aspirations of his being, demand something beyond Nature
— a Divine revelation.

This is what the higher races of mankind seem to me to have,
consciously or unconsciously, sought and striven for, from the
dawn of history till the advent of Christianity. The acceptance
of that revelation (of course without the surrender of a single
truth of physical, biological, historical, or any other science) is, I
believe, the logical outcome of the Theistic corollary implied by
that power of ethical intuition which so forcibly proclaims both
the responsibilities and the dignity of man. — The Nineteenth
Century.

AN incident related by Persifer Frazer in his biographical sketch, in the
American Geologist, of Thomas Sterry Hunt, may be regarded as illustrating the
force with which first impressions strike the mind. At the first scientific con-
vention which the young chemist and geologist attended, that of the Association of
American Geologists and Naturalists, in 1845, Dr. C. T. Jackson read a communi-
cation on the copper and silver of Keweenaw Point, and Prof. H. D. Eogers
submitted some remarks on the question of the Taconic rocks, two subjects which
afterward received great attention from Dr. Hunt to the last days of his life.
"One might easily and perhaps profitably trace," Dr. Frazer remarks, "the
origin of many investigations which Dr. Hunt has pursued to brilliant discoveries
in the sometimes vague but to him suggestive questions and observations at these
scientific meetings/'

334

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED.

BY G. W. LITTLEHALES.

IT was not until long after astronomers had begun to sound out
the realms of space and to measure the distances and weigh
the masses of the planets that the longing which has always ex-
isted in the human mind to know more of the mysteries of the
sea began to be gratified. Indeed, the deep sea remained unfath-
omed and mysterious until after the second half of the present
century had dawned upon the world ; and the contemplative mari-
ner of fifty years ago, as he looked upon the heaving bosom of
the ocean and wondered at its mysteries, had -nothing but myths
and legends to sustain his meditation.

Under the stimulus created by the achievements in investigat-
ing the earth, the air, and the heavens attempts had already been

made to fathom the ocean
both by sound and pressure,
but in what sailors call " blue
water " every trial was a fail-
ure repeated.

In 1856, Maury writes:
"The most ingenious and
beautiful contrivances for
deep-sea sounding were re-
sorted to. By exploding
heavy charges of powder in
the deep sea, when the winds
were hushed and all was still,
the echo or reverberation
from the bottom might, it
was held, be heard and the
depth determined from the
rate at which sound travels
through water. But though
the explosions took place
many feet below the surface,

echo was silent and the sea gave out no answer. Ericsson and
others constructed deep-sea leads having a column of air in them
which, by compression, would show the pressure of the water to
which they might be subjected, and therefore the depth. This
plan was found to answer well for ordinary purposes, but in the
depths of " blue water/' where the pressure is equal to several
hundred atmospheres, the trial was more than these instruments
could stand/'

Lieutenant Maury planned and constructed an ingenious deep-

Section, Sute Elevation.

FIG. 1. — MODERN SOUNDING CYLINDER.

HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED.

335

sea sounding apparatus in which there was attached to the lead,
upon the principle of the screw propeller, a small piece of clock-
work for registering the number of revolutions made by the little
screw during its descent ; and it having been ascertained by ex-
periment in shoal water that the appa-
ratus in descending would cause the pro-
peller to make one revolution for every
fathom of perpendicular descent, hands
provided with the power of self-regis-
tration were attached to the dial, and
the instrument was complete. It worked
well in moderate depths, but failed in
the deep sea on account of the difficul-
ty of getting it down if the line used
were large enough to give the requisite
strength for hauling up.

Such was the state of the develop-
ment of the appliances for measuring
the depths of the sea in the middle of
the present century, when the idea of
using a heavy weight attached to a sim-
ple hempen cord was proposed. The
plan of stretching a line under the strain
of a weight at its lower end from the
surface to the bottom underlies the
method which is now universally em-
ployed for sounding the depths of the
sea. In shoal water there is cast from
the vessel a plummet in the form of an
elongated truncated cone attached to a
hempen cord which has been previously
divided into feet or fathoms. The line
is allowed to run out through the hands of a man who detects, by
the sense of touch, the instant when the lead reaches the bottom,
and reads the depth by noting the division of the line which cor-
responds with the surface of the water. By filling a small cavity
in the base of the lead with tallow, a quantity of the sand or gra-
vel or mud upon which the lead strikes becomes imbedded in the
tallow and gives an indication of the character of the bottom soil.

The rough surface of a rope presents an obstacle to its free
passage through the water, and therefore as the depths increase
it is necessary to employ heavier weights to carry the line swiftly
in a straight course to the bottom, and, moreover, stronger rope to
bear the increased weight of the sinker. In great depths the size
of the rope which is necessary is such as to present considerable
surface to the action of submarine currents, which carry the line

FIG. 2. — THE SOUNDING CYLINDER
WITH SHOT ATTACHED.

336

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more and more out of the vertical direction in proportion to the
duration of the passage of the sinker to the bottom, and render
the results less and less accurate. Moreover, as the weight of the
submerged portion of the rope in addition to the weight of the
sinker soon becomes so heavy that a man can not lift it, and there-
fore can not assure himself by the sense of touch when the lead has
reached the bottom ; and as the weight of the submerged parts is
sufficient at great depths to cause the unwinding of the reel, the
line may continue to pass out long after the
sinker has reached bottom, and the length
unwound may thus bear no relation to the
depth to be measured. In addition to these
sources of error there is another arising from
the drift of the vessel during the period of
several hours which is required to effect a
deep-sea sounding with rope.

These causes, tending to carry the line off
in the direction of the subsurface currents in
an ever-increasing complication of loops and
bends, and impeding more and more the ve-
locity of the fall of the plummet until it sinks
into the oozy soil without communicating to
the surface any evidence of its arrival at the
bottom, explain the reports of the vast depths
of the sea that astonished the public mind
less than half a century ago. Lieutenant
Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin,
reported an unsuccessful attempt to fathom
mid-ocean with a line thirty-nine thousand
feet in length. Captain Denham, of her Bri-
tannic Majesty's ship Herald, reported bottom
in the South Atlantic at as depth of forty-six
thousand feet ; and Lieutenant J. P. Parker,
of the United States frigate Congress, in at-
tempting to sound the same region, let go his
plummet and saw fifty thousand feet of line
run out after it as though the bottom had
not been reached. The deepest spot in the
South Atlantic is not more than twenty thou-
sand feet beneath the rolling waves that sealed its mysteries fifty
years ago ; and the deepest spot yet discovered in the world not
more than twenty-eight thousand feet.

By the use of wire for sounding great depths many of the dif-
ficulties and uncertainties which characterize the use of rope are
obviated, for the wire, being light in weight and of small cross-
section, is not greatly affected by submarine currents, but allows

FIG. 3. — THE SOUNDING
CYLINDER AS IT is
HOISTED FROM THE
BOTTOM AFTER THE
SINKER HAS SLIPPED
OFF.

HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED.

337

the sinker to pass swiftly to the bottom. While the apparatus
for sounding the sea consisted of a weight secured to the end of a
hempen cord which was paid out from a simple reel on the deck
of a vessel, no reliability could be attained in the measurement of
depths, because the cord employed was necessarily so large as to
become a controlling element in the weight of the system. But
when the project for the Atlantic telegraph
cable made it necessary to obtain accurate
measurements of the depth of the ocean,
Midshipman Brooke, of the United States
Navy, took the first great step
in providing means for trust-
worthy deep-sea sounding by
inventing an implement in
which the sinker, en-
veloping a tube se-
cured to the sounding

FIG. 4. — THE SIOSBEE DEEP-SEA
SOUNDING MACHINE.

line, was detached on striking the bottom and left behind when
the tube was drawn .up.

The modern form of deep-sea sounding cylinder, which is the
result of the experience of Commander Sigsbee, of the United
States Navy, during his great work in developing the orography
of the Gulf of Mexico, is provided with valves at the upper and
lower ends which open upward, and during the descent allow

HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED. 339

the water to pass freely through the cylinder so that it expe-
riences a minimum of resistance. On striking the bottom, the
slackening of the sounding line, which is secured to the ring
shown at the upper end in the accompanying illustration, causes
the trigger to spring back and release the sling that supports the
detachable weight. As the lower end of the sounding cylinder
sinks into the bottom a specimen of the soil forces itself through
the lower valve and lodges in the interior of the cylinder. When
the cylinder is hauled up the valves at the top and bottom are
closed by their own weight and the pressure of the water, and
the specimen is sealed until its arrival at the surface, when it is
removed for examination by unscrewing the upper and lower
halves of the cylinder.

In 1872 Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) succeeded in
adapting piano-forte wire to successful use as a sounding line in
his navigational sounding machine, and a few years afterward
Commander Sigsbee, besides contributing by his inventive genius
most of the smaller instruments and implements used in modern
deep-sea research, achieved the crowning triumph of the art in
his elaborate deep-sea sounding machine, by which, while reliev-
ing the delicate sounding wire from the sudden strains to which
it would otherwise be exposed by the pitching of the ship while
lying to for the purpose of sounding, the profoundest depths are
measured with celerity and exactness.

In this machine the wire passes outboard from, the reeling
drum over a guide pulley mounted on a crosshead that works
between two upright guide frames. Each of the guide frames
incloses a spiral spring called an accumulator, which is connected
with the guide pulley by means of a, rope that passes over a pulley
at the top of the guide frame. If the ship is suddenly borne upon
the top of a wave while the sinker is going down, instead of caus-
ing a jerking strain upon the sounding line, the stress is com-
municated to the guide pulley, which moves downward under the
additional load and extends the accumulator springs ; and, like-
wise, when the ship suddenly sinks into the trough of a wave, the
tendency to slack the sounding line is counteracted by a rise in
the guide pulley brought about by the normal tendency of the
accumulator springs to contract.

A ship regularly engaged in deep-sea sounding usually has the
sounding machine mounted at the after end, and when about to
sound is brought to a standstill with the stern to the sea. The
stray line with the sounding rod and sinker attached is over the
guide pulley and carefully lowered to the water's edge, the regis-
ter is set to zero, and the deep-sea thermometer is clamped to the
sounding line ; a seaman is stationed at the friction line which
controls the velocity with which the wire is unreeled, another at

34°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the brake, and a third on the grating outside to handle the sinker
and instruments and to guide the wire as it passes overboard ; a
machinist is at the hoisting engine, and the recorder takes a posi-
tion for reading the register. When the sinker is let go, the ves-
sel is manoeuvred so as to keep the wire vertical, and the friction
line is adjusted so as to allow it to descend from seventy to one
hundred fathoms per minute. The instant the sinker strikes bot-

FIG. 6. — SOUNDING : THE SINKBTR GOING

torn, which is unmistakably indicated by the sudden release of
the wire from strain, the reel is stopped by the friction line and
brake ; the recorder notes the number of turns of the reel indi-
cated by the register and determines the depth ; the cranks are
shipped and sufficient wire is hove in by hand to allow the end of
the sounding rod to clear the bottom. Steam is then admitted to
the cylinder of the hoisting engine, and the wire is reeled in slowly
at' first but finally at the rate of one hundred to one hundred and
fifty fathoms per minute. The last ten fathoms are reeled in by
hand, then the thermometer is read and the specimen of the bot-
tom soil brought up in the sounding cylinder is examined.

HOW THE SEA IS SOUNDED. 341

In an hour this messenger of man's ingenuity makes its excur-
sion through five miles of watery waste to the abysmal regions of
perfect repose and brings to the light of day the soil with which
the rain of shells of minute infusorial organisms from the upper

\

\

FIG. 7. — DREDGING.

waters has been for ages mantling the ocean's floor. Here and
there a giant peak rising from these sunless depths lifts his head
to see the sky, and the dredge and trawl tell us that all along his
rugged sides, and on the hills and plains below, and even in the
inky blackness and the freezing cold of the deepest valleys, there
is life.

THE origin of life, said Dr. J. S. Burdon-Sanderson in his presidential address
before the British Association, " the first transition from non-living to living, is a
riddle which lies outside of our scope. No seriously minded person, however,
doubts that organized Nature, as it now presents itself to us, has become what it is
by a process of gradual perfecting or advancement, brought about by the elimina-
tion of those organisms which failed to obey the fundamental principle of adapta-
tion. . . . Each step, therefore, in this evolution is a reaction to external influ-
ences, the motive of which is essentially the same as that by which from moment
to moment tbe organism governs itself. And the whole process is a necessary
outcome of the fact that those organisms are most prosperous which look best
after their own welfare."

342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EMOTIONS AND INFECTION.

BY M. CH. FEKE.*

n~^HE relation that exists between the activity of the nervous
system and resistance to causes of destruction may be illus-
trated by facts of different sorts. It has been often remarked,
and the registers of the academies confirm it, that we find many
old men among scientific and literary people. Whether the re-
sistance in question is attributable to the habitual exercise of the
mental functions, or vital resistance and mental power are con-
jointly attributable to a good natural organization, the relation
is no less certain. The same relation is found, susceptible of like
interpretations, among persons without cultivation, whose exist-
ence has been, as we might say, all organic, and who are more
exposed to the action of atmospheric inclemencies and to all the
chances of mortality. The remark is attributed to Baillon by
Cabanis that porters and laboring men offer only a feeble resist-
ance to blood-letting and purgatives. Nothing is more remark-
able than the facility with which weak-minded persons succumb
to acute diseases of every kind.

Many violent maladies have been supposed to have been pro-
duced under the operation of moral influences. Sennert believed
that fear was capable of provoking erysipelas. Hoffmann also
made fear and the adynamy resulting from it play an important
part as the predisposing cause of contagious diseases. Dr. H.
Tuke believed, in particular, in the influence of fear upon the
contagion of rabies. The breaking out of rabies has been some-
times observed after psychic emotion. Bouley cites the case of
a dog which went mad after having been immersed in water.
Gamldia cites a similar case in a man, and another in a woman
who was frightened by a drunken man. In order to avoid
the influence of fear, Desgenettes concealed the name and the
nature of the plague ; and it is to be remarked further that the
Turks died less rapidly of it than the Christians. Cullen sup-
posed that sad emotions favor contagious diseases, and particu-
larly the plague. This disposition to contagion after violent
emotions which determine discharge of the secretions may be
partly explained by the fact that the conditions that diminish the
proportion of the liquids of the blood favor absorption. It, how-
ever, seems at least probable that the nervous discharge is accom-
panied by alterations of the blood and modifications of the in-
terior medium which justify the popular expressions concerning
having bad blood and turning the blood. It is admitted that

* From his work on the Pathology of the Emotions. Paris : Felix Alcan.

EMOTIONS AND INFECTION. 343

violent emotion is capable of causing and of curing intermittent
fever. In the latter part of June, 1889, M. Jullien, a surgeon of
Saint-Lazare, called me in consultation over a neurasthenic and
hypochondriac patient who thought he was suffering from ataxy.
He was a vigorous man, without any stigmatic marks of degener-
escence, but very emotional. He had had some attacks of marsh
fever in Poland about twelve years before, but had not suffered
from it since. At St. Petersburg, when near the place where
Czar Alexander II tragically perished, he experienced a violent
emotion, after which he suffered for three days attacks of well-
characterized fever. A new attack came on at Paris a few
months before my visit, corresponding with the emotion he ex-
perienced on finding a friend dead in the Hopital Beaujon.

The old authors give the moral emotions a part in most erup-
tive fevers. We meet them in the etiology of cholera. Pneu-
monia sometimes appears on the occasion of a strong moral emo-
tion. Rostan relates the story of a woman who was suddenly
struck with a very severe pneumonia on receiving news of the
death of her son. Grisalle observed it in a woman who, learning
that she had been robbed, experienced instantly a violent attack,
which was followed promptly by a chill, a stitch in the side, and
spitting of blood.

Depressing emotions often seem to have an action on the de-
velopment of tuberculosis. Laennec believed that griefs and
annoyances were important constituents in the frequency of
phthisis in large cities.

Puerperal infection is also favored by depressing moral emo-
tions. " I have often in my practice," says M. Hervieux, " seen
young women in childbed, in a fair way toward recovery, take a
chill and become mortally ill after a visit or untimely reproaches
from their mother or relatives; or after the agitation or per-
plexity occasioned by their resolving to abandon their child, un-
fortunate girls, till then doing well, falling ill on carrying out the
resolution and succumbing in a short time." Riviere, Willis, Den-
man, Delaroche, Paul Dubois, Alexis Moreau, Tonnele', and others
attribute an important part in the etiology of diseases of women
in childbed to the moral affections ; and this opinion is supported
by more recent observations.

The emotions, like wise, have a part in the evolution of surgical
diseases, and particularly in their infectious complications. The
theories recently put forth to explain contagion and immunity
from infectious diseases may agree with the facts we have learned
relative to the influence of the emotions. Among these theories
is one to which the facts lend an important support. In this
theory the mesodermic cells, and particularly the white globules,
are charged with the protection of the organism against the in-

344 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

vasion of microbes. We know that the leucocytes have the
property of moving and putting out prolongations, by means of
which they surround foreign bodies and force them into the mass
of their protoplasm. They behave in a similar way toward mi-
crobes, which, once surrounded, are destroyed by a real intra-
cellular digestion, and we give the name of phagocytism to the
whole of these operations. Now, dilatation of the peripheric ves-
sels occurs in sthenic emotions, in which it is manifested by rud-
diness, increase of volume, and functional exaltation. In asthenic
emotions, on the contrary, inverse phenomena betray a diminu-
tion of circulation and a decrease in the caliber of the vessels, and
consequently a condition unfavorable to the sally of the white
globules and to phagoyctism. Asthenic emotions, from this point
of view, lead to the same conditions as traumatisms, fatigue (Char-
rin and Bogen), chill (Pasteur, Wagner, Platania, Charrin), inani-
tion (Canalis and Morpurgo), loss of blood (Serafini), and nervous
sections (Charrin and Ruffer, Roger and Herman).

Not only do the conditions of the vessels change, but the pha-
gocytes and the white globules especially are modified as to their
vitality and their chimiotaxy, and their property of being at-
tracted or repelled by the microbes or their products of secretion
vary under the same circumstances. Under the influence of cold
the white globules tend to become paralyzed. MM. Massert and
Bordet, whose experiments seem to demonstrate the absence of a
relation between the chimiotaxic action of the leucocytes and the
condition of the vessels, admit that under defective conditions of
nutrition the whole organism is more easily impregnated by a
poison which provokes at every point the chimiotactic activity of
the leucocytes, which then have no occasion to direct themselves
toward any particular point. The modifications in the composi-
tion of the blood after nervous excitements and under emotions
which we have mentioned can also be adapted to this theory. Ex-
perimental data show that in all conditions in which nutrition is
deficient — and painful emotion is one of these conditions — infec-
tion is caught more easily. Evidence of this is not only derived
from animals ; I have had occasion to observe on man several
facts which give support to results obtained in the laboratory.

Having to revaccinate patients in my practice, I inoculated a
dozen hemiplegic persons symmetrically in both arms in order to
see whether the paralyzed side would offer a different resistance
to the virus. Real vaccine was not developed in any of these pa-
tients, all of them having been vaccinated not more than three or
four years before. Upon three of them only were developed pus-
tules of false vaccine, exclusively on the hemiplegic side of one,
and with a marked predominence of volume and duration on the
other two.

EMOTIONS AND INFECTION. 345

In the case of a little girl eighteen months old, afflicted with
infantile spinal paralysis of the left leg, with considerable chill, I
made four punctures on the outer side of each arm with a lancet
carefully charged with vaccine matter ; the inoculation was suc-
cessful only on the diseased side. Some more recent experiments
bear in the same direction. On the other hand, certain medicines
quieting to the nervous system, like opium, morphine, chloral, and
bromide of potassium, seem also to favor infection.

The influence of the emotions on infection is further suscepti-
ble of a direct experimental demonstration. Having under my
care a number of weak-minded persons susceptible of taking in-
terest in a monotonous exercise, I profited by the opportunity to
try upon a considerable number of animals — pigeons, rabbits, and
white mice — the effect of fear, which was excited by means of
noise or threatening motions, through several consecutive hours.
The experiments may be divided into three groups : 1. The blood
of frightened animals and of witnessing animals was sown. While
the blood of the latter animals was sterile, that of the former gave
in half the cases more or less numerous colonies of microbes. 2.
Animals, some of which had been left at rest, and others had been
disturbed, were inoculated with cultivations of pathogenic mi-
crobes— of carbuncle, hen cholera, pneumo-enteritis of swine, and
Fraenkel's pneumococcus. In all the experiments, without ex-
ception, the frightened animals died first, if the cultivations were
virulent ; while if the cultivations were attenuated they alone died
or were ill. We have seen animals little susceptible to an infec-
tion succumb to it under the influence of fear ; frightened pigeons
yielded to pneumo-enteritis of swine, while mere witnesses did not
appear to be affected at all. 3. On introducing under the skin of
the ear or of the brow of rabbits, or under the skin of the wing of
pigeons, capillary tubes closed at the end and filled with cultiva-
tions of pathogenic microbes or of saprophytes, we discovered con-
siderable differences in the chimiotactic properties of the white
globules, according to the condition of the animals. With fright-
ened animals the tubes were often found at the end of thirty-four
hours entirely filled with transparent liquid, while with witness
animals the tubes containing whitish trails through their whole
length were choked at the ends with a compact wad of leucocytes
two or three millimetres long. Most of the microbes had disap-
peared in the case of healthy animals, while a very large number
of them remained in the fluid of the other animals, in which the
microscope could discover only a very few leucocytes. We are
therefore able to show experimentally in frightened animals that
one of the conditions of resistance to infection is absent. The
study of these facts deserves to be pursued in detail.

We know the influence local traumatisms have on the location

VOL. XLIT. 27

346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the accidents of infection and of diseases of nutrition. Moral
shock is in reality equivalent to a cerebral commotion ; and, with-
out forcing analogies too far, we are able to understand that it all
the more readily can provoke cerebral lesions. — Translated for The
Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

UNCLE SAM'S LIFE SAVERS.

BY FRANK G. CARPENTER.

United States Life-saving Service is now one of the great
-- institutions of our Government. Its system embraces the
dangerous parts of our Great Lakes and oceans, and its hundreds
of stations cover a coast line of more than ten thousand miles in
length. It began to be as far back as 1848, but in its present
organization its life commenced in 1871, when Congress made an
appropriation of $200,000 and established some experimental sta-
tions along the New Jersey coast. These at once showed the value
of the system, and to-day on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico
there are one hundred and eighty-two different stations, while
there are about fifty on the chain of the Great Lakes, and a
steadily increasing number on the Pacific.

The buildings are located sufficiently far from the water line
to be safe from high tides. They are plain structures, designed to
serve as barracks for the crews and to afford convenient storage
for boats and apparatus. Each station is generally equipped
with two surf boats and their accessories, two sets of " breeches-
buoy" apparatus, life lines, life car, a vehicle for the transporta-
tion of boats to points where needed, a Lyle gun, cork jackets,
signal lights, rockets and flags, well-equipped medicine chest, in-
struments of various kinds, together with everything necessary
for the comfort and well-being of the crews. Where practicable
along the Atlantic coast, the stations are connected by telephone.
At a few points there are long stretches of uninhabitable coast,
and houses of refuge have been established at intervals of about
twenty miles for the shelter of shipwrecked persons. They are
supplied with cots and provisions for twenty-five persons for ten
days. On the Ohio River, at Louisville, there is a floating sta-
tion. The great rise and fall of the river renders impracticable
the use of a stationary building. In recent floods the crew of this
station were of incalculable service to the people of Louisville.
Hundreds of imperiled persons were rescued, and thousands who
for days could not leave their houses were supplied with food and
other necessaries.

Each station and its crew are in charge of a " keeper," who

348 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

must be of good character and habits, sound, able-bodied, and a
master of boatcraf t and " surfing." He must live at the station,
exercise absolute control over the crew, and direct all operations.
In times of danger he must lead where duty calls, sharing with
the men all the perils of wind and wave. The crew usually num-
bers six or seven, who are selected with especial reference to their
fitness for the service required of them. It is indispensable that
they be experienced surfmen and skilled in the handling of boats.
It may be here remarked that political considerations have not
the slightest influence in the life-saving service from its chief
down. If politics were permitted to dictate appointments, a serious
impairment of the service would speedily result.

A surfman is paid sixty -five dollars per month, with no allow-
ances except quarters at the station. He provides his own food
and clothing. No man or officer is permitted to have an interest
in any wrecking apparatus, or to be connected with any wrecking
company ; nor is he entitled to salvage upon any property saved.
If disabled in the line of duty, a member of the crew receives full
pay during such disability, not exceeding one year. If he loses
his life — and this is not infrequent — his widow or children under
the age of sixteen are entitled to his pay for two years.

When the season of active duty begins, the men establish
themselves at the station for a residence of eight months, embrac-
ing on the sea-coast the autumn, winter, and spring seasons. On
the Great Lakes their active service is from the opening to the
close of navigation. For domestic convenience they resolve them-
selves into a committee of the whole which they term a "mess."
They take weekly turns in catering and cooking. The keeper
organizes his crew for the season, designating them as Number
1, Number 2, etc., in the order of merit and efficiency. Each man
holds rank according to his number. Watches are kept by day
and patrols by night. If two stations are within communicating
distance, the patrols meet midway each time they traverse their
beats. Every patrolman is equipped with signal lights with
which to warn vessels or to give an alarm in case a vessel in dis-
tress is discovered.

The members of the crew are drilled daily in the handling of
boats and life-saving appliances. By practice they acquire agility
and expertness that are almost incredible. The highest possible
efficiency in times of actual service is thus secured. The men are
also instructed and practiced in applying the most approved
methods for the restoration of persons apparently drowned. In
some cases this is accomplished after twenty or thirty minutes
of unconsciousness. It will be readily understood that these
men must possess great courage and powers of endurance. Their
service is full of danger and often their lives are in extreme

35°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

jeopardy. Their devotion to duty and humanity are beyond
praise.

For convenience of supervision the stations are grouped into
districts, of which there are twelve. Each is in charge of a super-
intendent, who must, at least once a quarter, visit the stations in
his district, and who is held responsible for their condition in all
respects.

The means employed to rescue people from stranded vessels
are everywhere essentially the same. The tumultuous waters be-

FIG. 3. — BRINGING CREW ASHORE IN BREECHES BUOY.

tween the wreck and the shore are either crossed by a lifeboat or
are spanned by strong lines over which a car or breeches buoy is
passed to and from a wreck. There are many kinds of lifeboats
and many other devices for effecting communication by lines be-
tween a wreck and the shore. The type of boat in most general
use in our service is distinctively known as a surfboat. It is
made of white cedar upon a white-oak frame. It is from twenty-
five to twenty-seven feet in length, with its other dimensions pro-
portionate. It is propelled by six oars, 'and will carry, besides the

UNCLE SAM'S LIFE SAVERS. 351

crew, from ten to fifteen persons. The excellence of these boats is
shown by the record during the eighteen years they have been
used in the hands of the life-saving crews. They have been
launched in actual service six thousand seven hundred and
thirty times, and have safely landed from wrecked vessels six
thousand seven hundred and thirty-five persons. They have cap-
sized but fourteen times, six of these accidents being attended
with loss of life. Of the boats' crews, twenty-seven were drowned,
being one for every two hundred and forty lives saved.

A " self-righting " lifeboat is largely used in the English
service, and in our own to a limited extent by way of experiment.
This boat is constructed with air-chambers at the bow and stern
and several hundred pounds of iron in the keel. These cause the
boat to " right " itself when capsized by the waves. It is of neces-
sity heavy and cumbersome, and the record for actual service is
on the whole favorable to the smaller and lighter surfboats
adopted by our own Government. The proportionate loss of life
from capsizing is considerably less with the surfboats. The self-
righting boat is fourfold heavier than the other, weighing about
four thousand pounds. Boats are being constantly improved and
perfected, one of the latest devices being for self -bailing, by which
water that may be " shipped/' or fills the boat as the result of a
capsize, is instantly expelled. A boat combining successfully the
properties of self-righting and self-bailing would seem to be the
nearest possible approach to the ideal.

The " Lyle gun " is the means adopted for effecting line com-
munication with stranded vessels. It is of bronze, and of 2|-inch
bore. It weighs with its carriage but a hundred and eighty-five
pounds, and throws a shot weighing seventeen pounds. This pro-
jectile is a solid cylinder fourteen inches and a half in length, into
the base of which is fixed an eyebolt for attaching the shot-line.
The latter is from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in diameter,
and pays out from a coil as the projectile flies upon its way. The
aim is to carry the projectile directly over the vessel in distress.
The line falling upon the deck is seized by the sailors, and by it
a large line is hauled from the shore and made fast, affording
means for the immediate use of the life-saving appliances. The
Lyle gun will project a line, under favorable conditions, a dis-
tance of seven hundred yards. It is easily operated by day or
night. During a storm at night great skillf ulness of aim is neces-
sary, as there is no guide save the dim light upon the swaying
vessel. When the distance is not too great, the practiced eye
rarely fails.

The vehicle in most common use, in this and other countries,
for transporting persons to the shore, is the " breeches buoy." It
is a primitive, simple, and yet most effectual means of saving life.

352

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It will carry but one person at a time, but it is easily and rapidly
handled, and this fact renders it invaluable. It is made of stout
canvas, something like a pair of breeches for the legs, from which
it takes its name. From a circular float which comes just under
the armpits ropes are attached, which suspend the buoy from a
pulley block running upon the large line. It takes but a minute
for a man to fix himself in the " breeches," and then he is hauled
through the air — perhaps part of the way through the water — to
the shore. Whenever practicable, the line at the vessel is fastened

FIG. 4. — LIFE CAB. United States Lite-saving Service.

tight upon a mast, so that the passage may be made without im-
mersion. Many thousands of lives in all parts of the world have
been saved by this simple but effective device.

The " life car " is brought into requisition when the number
of persons to be saved is large and circumstances require that the
work be done quickly, as when a vessel shows signs of breaking
up. It is a covered boat, perfectly tight with the exception of a
few small holes for the admission of the air. It may be hauled
upon the water by means of lines, or suspended from the hawser
and passed to and from the wreck. It will contain six or seven
persons, and is a comparatively safe and speedy means of rescue.
The life car was designed by Joseph Francis, who but a short
time ago received, at the hands of the President, a superb gold
medal, voted by Congress in recognition of its value. Upon the
first occasion of its use more than two hundred persons were safely
landed from a wreck.

UNCLE SAM'S LIFE SAVERS. 353

The value of the telephone as a means of communication be-
tween contiguous stations was lately illustrated. During one of
the worst and most destructive storms that ever visited the At-
lantic coast a large number of vessels were driven ashore at and
near Cape Henlopen. The crews of three life-saving stations were
summoned, and their combined labor effected the rescue of a hun-
dred and ninety-four persons from twenty-two vessels. Of these,
a hundred and thirty-five were landed with the " breeches buoy."
Not one life was lost during the operations. Crews, with their
boats and apparatus, are often transported long distances by rail
to meet emergencies. On the shore of Lake Superior such a trip
was once made a distance of a hundred and ten miles, the railway
train running at the utmost possible speed. The spot was reached
at midnight, and in the midst of a blinding snowstorm thirty-
four persons were brought safely to shore from two stranded
vessels.

At the stations shipwrecked persons are cared for with dry
clothing, nourishment, and medicines. Often they are exhausted
by exposure or hunger, or injured by the accidents of wreck and
rescue. Frequently they are to all appearances dead. The record
shows that during the existence of the life-saving service there
have been treated a hundred and eighteen cases of apparent
death. In sixty of these resuscitation was successful, failing in
fifty-eight. In a few instances respiration was restored after
several hours had elapsed. While the saving of life is the pri-
mary object of the service, it has a secondary duty in the saving
of property, which runs up into the millions.

Before the service was established no statistics of loss of life
were recorded, so that it is not possible to show by comparison
the decrease of deaths by shipwreck as the result of the efforts of
the life-savers. It is learned from authentic information, how-
ever, that upon the Long Island and New Jersey coasts, during
the twenty years from 1850 to 1870, the average annual loss of life
was twenty-five; while during eighteen years of the service the
yearly average has been but seven. No doubt a similar ratio
would apply to other points of danger along our coasts. Each
successive year shows a better record, as life-saving appliances are
more nearly perfected, abundantly attesting the efficiency and
value of this branch of Government effort in behalf of its people.

IN the opinion of Mr. Henry Seebohm, the extreme views of the theory of an
ice age have been to a large extent abandoned. No one now believes in the
former existence of a polar ice cap, and possibly when the irresistible force of
ice-dammed rivers has been fully realized, the estimated area of glaciation may be
considerably reduced. The so-called great ice age may have been a great snow
age, with local centers of glaciation on the higher grounds.
VOL. XLIV. — 28

354 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

WINDOW LIGHTS AND THEIR VALUE.

BT JAMES L. GEEENLEAF,

ADJUNCT PROFESSOB OF CIVIL ENGINEEBING IN COLUMBIA COLLEGE.

MOST subjects of analysis can be studied both in quantity and
quality, and light is no exception to the rule. Color as a
quality of light has always been a popular study. A vast deal
of experiment and attention has been given to the harmonics
of color, and many who make no claim to scientific attainment
are well versed in it. Every child knows the colors, but the ex-
pression " quantity of daylight " has a strangeness and a vague-
ness about it that are not felt by children only. This is largely
because there is such a wealth of daylight about us. "Silver
was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon." Light is
not measured, because it is lavished upon us by an unstinting
hand. But light can be measured. Although intangible, it has
quantity — quantity of effect, if it may be so expressed. If this
seems fanciful, it may be remarked that there is nothing fanciful
about the measurement of heat, and yet the case is quite analo-
gous. The thermometer is simply a contrivance for measuring
variation of intensity in heat. Quantities of heat effect are con-
tinually being estimated, for economy in its use is of prime im-
portance. Light, on the contrary, is ready at hand. Ordinarily
objects are flooded with a brilliancy of daylight which is as free
as air. There can scarcely be need of economy with light when
the world is floating in it. But there is nothing impossible in its
measurement. Possibly, if the sun were less prodigal in pouring
out his rays upon the earth the measurement of daylight would
be a more common operation than at present. Every means
would be taken to utilize it without waste. We would see the
owners of buildings making careful estimates of the light belong-
ing to their properties — even dividing it into lots and renting
them separately. At the least, we would see them more jealously
than now defending their light from obstructions built around
them.

Windows are the natural and all-important resource of the
architect. All the light which enters the building must pass
through them. It is a very patent fact that the larger they are,
and the more numerous, the greater the total amount of light
which enters. It is not as widely appreciated, however, that there
are other conditions affecting the amount and quality of the enter-
ing light that are sometimes ruling in their effect.

Looking from a window, one sees a variety of surfaces — sees
them because of their reflecting different intensities and colors of
light. If asked to classify them according to relative reflecting

WINDOW LIGHTS AND THEIR VALUE. 355

power, lie will probably speak of the sky first as the great source
of light to the window. Then, if he does not ignore them alto-
gether, the objects on the earth are grouped in one class of com-
paratively little importance. This is not Nature's method. There
is no sharp division between the strong reflecting surfaces and
the weak, between the sky and the earth. We are prone to such
a distinction, because the sky seems prominent as a reflecting sur-
face, but it can be shown that circumstances arise when this is by
no means true.

Imagine the window to look out upon a landscape. Earth, foli-
age, and sky all combine to reflect light into the room. The
water may be very dark, from the shadow of overhanging trees,
reflecting less than ten per cent as much light as comes from the
sky, but there is a path across it where the sunlight is cast back
far more brilliant than the sky itself. The beaten highway gleams
in the sun so that it is a relief to look away from it into the blue
above. Even- the foliage, delightfully dark and cool in the shad-
ows, may have a brightness where the sunlight strikes it which is
fifty or eighty per cent of the intensity of sky light.

On turning from the country to the city view we find the less-
ened importance of the sky as a source of light especially empha-
sized. There the great value of space causes one building to en-
croach upon the sky light of another until frequently the patch of
blue visible from the windows is limited to a mere streak, or may
be cut off entirely. If the sky were the only means of lighting,
the windows would be useless in such cases; but the fronts of
buildings, the paved streets, and other surfaces combine to throw
much light into them, and give a reason for their existence.

The reflecting power of the sky dome is due almost entirely to
the particles of vapor contained in the atmosphere, and hence must
be considerably affected by changes in its aqueous condition. Con-
trary to what might be imagined, the clearer the sky the less valu-
able is it as a reflector. The more haze that it contains within
limits the more intense the light obtained from it. An observer
will recall dreamy summer days when the sun has seemed to shine
softly as through a gauze cast over its face and the shadows were
mellowed and diffused, yet the sky was white with a radiance
painful to the eye. There was little suggestion of ethereal blue
in the white light sent down from this atmosphere charged with
particles of moisture. Again, a clear day comes ; the air fairly
dances with brilliancy, and distant objects stand out in the sun-
light as clear-cut as a silhouette. The sky is a beautiful Italian
blue, but does it occur to one how really dark it is except in the
immediate vicinity of the sun ? Try to match it with a sheet of
blue paper, and it is almost startling to discover what a somber
surface the sky dome is. Its value as a source of light is greatly

356 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

less than on days when it is a duller blue, or when gray better
describes its color. Some experiments which are at hand show a
difference of over seventy per cent in the reflecting power of the
northwest sky on two sunshiny days, and they were by no means
extremes of the two conditions of atmosphere discussed. No ex-
periments upon extreme states of the atmosphere are available,
but it is safe to say that the reflecting power of the sky dome in
this climate is one and a half times greater on some days than
on others. Between the extremes are all possible variations.

Thus far the thought has been only of an unbroken expanse of
sky, but if clouds float across the field they greatly change the
conditions. A cumulus cloud piled high in great masses is car-
ried past the window by the wind. It gleams beneath the sun's
rays like a ball of cotton, and pours down a flood of light that
may have as much as four times the intensity of the light from
the sky directly beside it. At another time heavy thunder clouds
will roll up from the horizon — a dark gray/ unillumined by the
sun. They obscure the sky and replace it by possibly ten per cent
of its intensity of light.

Indeed, does it not seem as if there were no stability about the
sky light ? And yet, brushing the clouds aside, it will be found
that the changes in any one day are not usually great. There is
enough permanency in its reflecting power to make it serve as a
practical standard of comparison — a standard not for the direct
sunlight, which so far transcends any other light on the earth as
to be unique, but for the vast variety of lights which crowd into
the windows — the reflections from brick and stone, from wood
and paint, from earth, water, and foliage.

Turning from the sky to the earth, a vast variety of reflecting
surfaces is encountered. Each has its peculiar power of altering
the light it reflects, both in intensity and quality. The amount
of their influence upon window light is apt to be underestimated.
Many rooms through the entire day and nearly all rooms for a
portion of it have no direct sunlight, and all the light they do
receive is entirely by reflection. Of this the portion coming from
surfaces on the earth is a very considerable part.*

It is true that most surfaces reflect but a small percentage of
the light which strikes them, but when that light is the great
flood from the sun itself the pittance which comes from them is

* In a number of cases carefully determined in city locations it has been found that the
sky gave only from eight to forty per cent of the total light reaching a point inside a win-
dow on the ground floor. The remainder came from opposite building surfaces and from
the street — this, with the sun shining upon these reflecting surfaces. At another time of
day the sky value would be comparatively greater, yet not so much as might be imagined,
because all the surfaces would not lie in shadow at the same time.

WINDOW LIGHTS AND THEIR VALUE. 357

by no means contemptible. An illustration of this may be given.
While reading on the shady side of a railway car one afternoon,
a sudden flush of warm-tinted light seemed to cover the page and
as quickly it was replaced by a cold gray light. The change was
very noticeable and the cause easily revealed. At intervals along
the track were stretches of rough-faced masonry, perhaps seven
feet high. The stones looked in shadow a dull gray and a buff
color, but when the sun struck them they glowed with a light
that flashed into the car window. In spite of the fact that the
area of sky light was far the greater of the two, that rough retain-
ing wall determined in a great measure the character and inten-
sity of the illumination on the paper.

Light- colored surfaces are the most valuable reflectors, and
among them white paint and whitewash stand pre-eminent.* Even
in shade, when illuminated only by other objects or by the sky,
they will give sixty per cent or more of an average sky light.
Sometimes they will run up to the full value of sky light, if a
reflecting surface near by shines brightly upon them, or they may
fall to twenty per cent or even less in deep shadow. But when
the direct rays of the sun fall upon a newly whitewashed surface,
the volume of light it reflects is almost blinding. Three hundred
to four hundred per cent is not too large an estimate to place upon
it in comparison with the sky light. On this account the well-
known expedient is used of whitewashing or painting in some
bright tint the walls of a light-shaft or surfaces facing a window
which is much shut in. A case is known of the rear of a house
so treated being in summer time a source of great annoyance to
dwellers on the next street, because of the blaze of light reflected
into their rear windows. White marble is quite similar in its
powers of reflection. A striking example can be seen in the spires
of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. Rising far above the
dust of the city, they are not yet covered with its grime, and
their pure white glistens in beautiful contrast to the dark blue
of the sky.

From the white of paint or marble there are many variations
in building surfaces, all the way down to black. A large number
are to be found among the granites. Some varieties are very dark
in tone, reflecting little light unless polished, but the gray gran-
ites give considerable light. A freshly tooled gray granite will
certainly yield one hundred per cent of sky light when in sun-
shine, and some varieties give far more. The writer has known
the gray granite of an old building to give one hundred and forty

* The percentages stated in the following pages are based upon a large number of pho-
tometric measurements of the light from building surfaces, made by the writer at various
times and places.

358 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

per cent, as compared with the sky light of a clear day. When it
was in shadow the intensity fell to only ten per cent.

The "brownstone, so familiar in building construction, is justly
looked upon as a gloomy material for the purpose. Connecticut
stone is the darkest, and, especially when oiled, is a somber thing
with which to enliven architecture. But even when oiled it does
not absorb quite all the light which strikes it. The searching
light of the sun will find many little particles among the grains
of the exterior that give surface reflection, and this white light
mingles with the dark interior hue of the stone to brighten it
considerably. The Connecticut stone under ordinary conditions
gives some sixty to seventy per cent of the intensity of sky light,
when the sun shines brightly upon it. Belleville stone is much
lighter, and has been shown to exceed the sky light by twenty or
thirty per cent when illuminated by the sun.

Among the bricks there is a large opportunity for choice in
their capacity for reflecting light. The Philadelphia pressed brick
is popular for its richness.of color, but deserves no prominence for
its reflecting power. In that respect the coarser Hudson River
brick is an improvement. There is, of course, considerable vari-
ety, but it may in general be said that walls of Philadelphia brick,
and those painted red to imitate that shade, will reflect sunlight
to an extent varying between fifty and eighty per cent of ordinary
sky light. When illumined by only indirect light from the sky
or other sources they have an intensity of fifteen to twenty per
cent of the same sky light. With rough brick walls there is al-
ways a considerable show of light-colored mortar, and this, with
the lighter surface of the bricks themselves, causes a greater re-
flecting power. It is easy to find surfaces of this character with
a reflecting power when illuminated of ninety to one hundred per
cent.

Buff-colored bricks make admirable reflecting surfaces. With
the sun upon such a surface it will often reflect one hundred and
sixty per cent or more of sky-light intensity. Many opportunities
will offer in modern construction for the observer to bring such
an illuminated surface against a sky background, and see how
much brighter it will ordinarily be. Its practical value as a re-
flector is greatly lowered in his estimation, however, when he finds
that, if the sun is not shining upon it, twenty-five per cent is a
liberal estimate of its powers of reflection.

The climax of reflecting power in brickwork is reached in the
cream and white enamel brick that are in the market. They are
chiefly used for interior work, and their polished surfaces place
them in a different class of reflectors from the ordinary building
materials.

Slate roofs belong to the same class in a certain degree. The

WINDOW LIGHTS AND THEIR VALUE. 359

ordinary slate when held in the hand appears a very dark blue ;
little light is reflected from the interior, and that little is mainly
blue, while the very small amount of white light reflected from
the surface is not enough to pale the interior hue to any great
extent. But turn the slate so as to reflect the light differently,
and then there is such an excess of surface reflection as to give
even a silvery tone to what was a moment before a dark material.
A twist of the wrist will easily make a difference of two hundred
per cent in the reflecting power. The extremes and all the inter-
mediate conditions can be seen in slate roofs, and these are in a
position where comparison is easily made with the sky. One roof
will look almost black, as it stands out against the sky ; another
that reflects the sunlight will gleam like a white sail on the hori-
zon. At another time it may melt away with a hue and shade
that are not to be distinguished from those of the blue sky back
of it. The same effect is obtained with shingles, but in a less de-
gree.

The pavement of city streets affords some interesting observa-
tions. It is ordinarily looked upon as only fit to be trodden under
foot of man, and very little credit is given its reflecting power.
Paving stones appear of a rather somber color when held in the
hand, and ordinary blue flagstone is similar. Hence it is surpris-
ing to learn that dry flagging, when illuminated by sunlight, is
about the equal of the highly prized sky as a reflector of light. A
considerable number of experiments, taken at various times and
places, go to show this. Under ordinary conditions of dirt the
pavement may be slightly darker than the bluestone flagging,
but they will both give approximately one hundred per cent of
sky light. Moreover, their hue is not unlike that of many skies.
The idea is perhaps difficult to grasp, in view of their condition ;
but if a section of New York street could be purified and trans-
lated, it would quickly be lost to sight, ascending in a sky of its
own color. When in shadow, fifteen to twenty per cent represents
the amount of light that the street will give as compared with the
sky. If the stones are wet, not more than ten per cent of light
comes from them, except where there may be a powerful reflec-
tion of white light from the water upon the surface.

It has perhaps been noticed that thus far, in discussing reflect-
ing surfaces, attention has been confined to the changes they pro-
duced in the intensity of light. These are not, however, the only
alterations that occur. Quality as well as intensity is affected by
the surfaces which throw light into the window. Leaving now
the intensity of reflecting power, let us endeavor to realize what
is taking place in every city street. It may be a thoroughfare
filled with the noise of travel, but the air is crowded with silent
lines of light. Back and forth they fly in all directions, every

360 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

surface receiving light, every little grain and fiber acting as a
reflector to send it ont again. Reflection and re-reflection are tak-
ing place with enormous rush and intricacy. But the extent of
complication is not yet reached. These various lights are not
all white. Each substance has its effect upon the light that it
reflects. Some of the light undulations are absorbed, and those
reflected give the effect of color characteristics of the object. The
colored lights are then flashing back and forth, continually chang-
ing as they leave the different surfaces. Neither is this a com-
plete statement of the situation. Each surface is illuminated by
a variety of colored lights, depending upon the surfaces opposite
it. The color of any one material depends upon the color of the
light striking it, as well as upon its own nature. Hence possibly
none of the surfaces in the street are seen in their true tones, the
hues belonging to them when illuminated by pure white sun-
light. They are slightly off color, modified by the colored lights
that strike them. All this wonderful play of lights darting across
the street is put in action by the steady, powerful, pure white
flood of light coming from the sun.

It may be questioned why this condition of affairs is not more
noticeable. Why are not the bright hues of the rainbow seen in
all directions ? The absence of brilliant coloring is briefly ac-
counted for by the large amount of surface reflection iaking
place, through which we see objects as if a gray glazing had been
washed over them.

However, conditions will occur when there is a very noticeable
flush of color cast over objects which is not their normal hue, and
it can be traced to the predominating influence of some one of the
reflecting surfaces. Occasionally most striking effects of this
character are seen during the sunset hour. Sun-illumined clouds
are in the west holding their bright color when all other sources
of light in sky and earth are waning. The predominating power
of their colored light is enough to make a modest little sunset
in the east, and the sky there will glow with a soft tint sympa-
thetic with the display in the opposite part of the heavens. The
western sky may even give a glamour of colored light to the land-
scape, casting a weird, strange effect over meadow and hillside,
ere they disappear in the darkness.

" Where the quiet-colored end of evening smiles miles and miles on the
solitary pastures. ..."

Those who use colored parasols understand perfectly the result, if
not the theory, when the lining of the parasol is selected so as to
add to natural charms by casting a soft flush of color over the
complexion.

But illustration of the influence of the effect of surfaces upon

WINDOW LIGHTS AND THEIR VA1UE. 361

the color of light can be found in more prosaic subjects. Build-
ings offer examples. Ordinary brick and stone often have more
influence than is imagined upon the light that enters windows. A
brilliant although exceptional example of this occurred once in
the writer's office. It has an eastern exposure and nearly opposite,
at a distance of over one hundred feet, is a large red-brick build-
ing. The sky area exceeds all others, and ordinarily the amount
of gray or light-blue light entering is enough to entirely overcome
the effect of the red surface. On this special occasion, however,
after a rainy day the sun suddenly burst through the clouds. The
face of the building was illuminated by clear white sunlight, and
stood out brilliantly against a backing of heavy, dark clouds.
The effect in the office was most noticeable. Where had been
nothing but a cold gray light in an instant a glare of red was cast
over everything. Table and book that had been dull looked warm
in color, and the walls appeared, as if by magic, in the most deli-
cate rose tint fit for a fairy's boudoir. True, these were conditions
most admirably adapted to illustrate the point that surfaces oppo-
site windows can affect the quality as well as the intensity of the
light reflected, but others more common lead to the same con-
clusion.

An excellent opportunity for alternating contrast is offered by
a ride on an elevated city railway. Let one select a time in the
afternoon when the eastern sky is not so bright as to obliterate
the effect, and seat himself on the right-hand side of a down-town
train in New York city. If the buildings are not too far removed
from the track, a very decided change is noticed as each block is
passed. Where the opening of the street brings a considerable
sky area into view an ordinary gray light is cast upon the news-
paper. This is succeeded by a sudden flush of rose as a high block
of red-brick buildings is passed, and again a street opening allows
the western sky to assert itself. Moreover, let it be noted that this
may occur not with a bright sunlight pouring upon the buildings,
but when they are in shadow, except as the eastern sky illumi-
nates them.

Occasionally the effect of surfaces opposite the windows upon
the color of the light can be noticed inside of buildings, even with
no exceptional atmospheric conditions existing. On any clear
day, by limiting the rays striking a marble slab in a certain
room chiefly to those from a brick building opposite, one can
change the white marble to a deep rose tint of a most beauti-
ful shade.

These various illustrations have many corroborations in ex-
perience. They show that the light entering windows must be
considerably influenced in color by reflecting surfaces opposite,
even though the effect be not noticeable. Usually this is not a

362 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

matter of any concern, because a slight difference in hue from
their appearance under pure white light does not materially affect
our appreciation of most objects. There are, however, special
operations which are thus affected to an extent that is of practical
importance. A conversation with a cotton broker, for example,
will do much to increase respect for the sensitiveness of the
trained eye, and convince one of the practical bearing of these mat-
ters. Careful observation is needed to judge cotton and grade
different samples, and the eye becomes wonderfully skilled in
doing so. A steady, clear sky light is desirable. Evidence is at
hand of the injurious change upon the light caused by alterations
in buildings across the street from a cotton sample room. In the
course of building operations in Pearl Street, New York city, a
dull, buff-colored wall was taken down and replaced by red brick.
The result when the sun shone upon the surface was a noticeable
and injurious change in the light that came into the windows. A
flush of pink was cast over the cotton samples, perhaps too slight
to be noticed ordinarily, and yet giving a tone to them which
interfered with the judgment of their quality.

And now a few words in conclusion concerning the service the
light performs when it finally reaches the room. That light which
passes directly from the window to the eye is of no benefit, except
as it enables one to see the outside view. Nearly all the light
serves a far more useful purpose. It enters the window and sets
in operation on a smaller scale the same phenomena that are tak-
ing place in the street. It is bandied back and forth between
walls, carpet, furniture, and occupants. The light that these vari-
ous surfaces reflect gives impressions of form and color by which
we appreciate objects. By means of it we see our friends' faces,
enjoy the pictures, read the book. It should be noted that light
and color are entirely subjective. They are effects produced in
the brain by different kinds of light undulations. We perceive
the color of the upholstery and carpet because these have the
faculty of sorting out undulations of special wave lengths and
reflecting them. We perceive the outline of chair or of face partly
by change of color, but chiefly by light and shade, the difference
in intensity of the undulations coming from them and from ob-
jects behind them. To make the objects in the room distinct the
light entering the windows must be conserved as much as pos-
sible. This will best be accomplished by banishing all dark ma-
terials. Heavy hangings absorb light as well as dirt. Oak or
enameled furniture reflects the light that black walnut or rose-
wood absorbs, and a light-colored wall will do almost as much as
a sunny disposition to fill a room with sunshine and good cheer.

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN. 363

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN.

BY LTLLIE EGINTON WAKREN.

"T ESS than thirty years ago no attempts were made to give
J-J speech to the deaf children of this country. Signs, writing*
and finger-spelling were the means of communication employed.
It had been a gigantic task to arrange a system of education for
a class of persons previously supposed incapable of advancement,
and it is not surprising that articulation in its early days fought
hard for recognition among the older teachers. Happily, the
spirit of opposition is waning, and there is now a friendly admira-
tion manifested by them for the best intelligible speech given to
the deaf. They are right in demanding that it be intelligible.
It is easy to accustom one's ears to the articulation of a person
seen daily, and if the pupil conversed with none but his relatives
and teachers there might be no complaint about peculiarities.
Such is not the case, however. With rare exceptions the deaf
child must struggle in the world just as his hearing brothers and
sisters do. The speech that comes easily to them is acquired by
him at the expense of time and effort ; it is his due that it should
be made intelligible and agreeable.

As is generally known, the various States have large institu-
tions for the deaf and dumb, or, as sometimes called, deaf-mutes.
Dumb and mute are terms no longer applicable to the deaf who
receive the best instruction ; for it is now conceded to be a mark
of neglected education to be unable to speak to some extent.
Formerly they were dumb because deaf; now those who are
dumb are so because untaught. The first superintendents to give
articulation any place in their institutions considered it an added
touch to give occasional pleasure. They were too strongly at-
tached to signs to believe instruction in the various school
branches could be given by speech and reading from the mouth.
A comparatively few scholars, chiefly those who once heard, were
put in classes and received lessons in speech a half hour daily,
or four times a week, perhaps less. During the other hours
there was no practical use of what was gained. In all the
branches of the course, the teacher, in many cases a sign-taught
mute, conducted the recitations in signs, finger-spelling, and
writing. Spoken words were not used more than is German or
French by the average child who has a lesson in the language
with many others a few times a week. Thus articulation failed
to obtain a fair opportunity to show its merits. Gradually some
of the various obstacles to its success have been removed, and its
teachers are making persistent efforts to secure to every deaf
child a chance to speak and to read the lips.

364 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Upon the question how far school instruction can be imparted
through these means without the aid of signs and finger-spelling
opinions differ. In justice to many it must be remembered that
they receive all classes of pupils; often they are bright and in
good physical condition, but some are diseased, of ignorant pa-
rentage, and small ability. It may be the latter class remain in
school but a short time. While there, thanks to the State's gen-
erosity, they need not be of any expense to their relatives ; it
often happens, however, that they can not be spared long from
home duties. The principal must arrange to give them all the
knowledge he can while they remain with him. No plan cover-
ing years will answer for them. Neither will a plan suitable for
them be sufficient for those better situated and conditioned. Per-
haps the teacher is himself deaf, the graduate of some State insti-
tution, a member of one or more organizations of deaf-mutes,
associating daily with sign-taught adults. Without casting any
disparagement upon his abilities, we beg leave to say he is not as
competent to decide the matter as a hearing person would be;
he receives opinions from, both sides, but he can not judge im-
partially. The greater his faith in the character of those who
advocate articulation, the greater his faith in that system, but
being sign-taught himself, he would like to feel his education was
superior. Some principals have an oral department, by which is
meant that a certain number of pupils are taught speech, and
by speech receive instruction in all studies. As much as possible
they are kept apart from the other pupils. This is a decided im-
provement upon the first arrangement, though it is a matter for
regret that some should have such an advantage over others. A
few superintendents feel this, and are arranging to have all new
pupils taught speech, and as the older ones are graduated the
manual department becomes small. Other institutions advocate
a combined method, using both speech and signs with all pupils,
one or the other system receiving the greater attention according
to the views of the principal in charge. Schools have been opened
which give instruction to all pupils by speech only, and are called
oral schools, and a number of teachers are scattered over the
country who fill the positions of resident or visiting governesses.
Thus there is a disposition to advance the cause of the education
of the deaf, and a wide difference in opinion as to what is best.

The true test is in results. That system is excellent which
enables the deaf pupil to take his rightful place in the world,
attain business and social success, to be like unto others. Correct,
fluent speech, with voice more or less agreeable, and the ability to
understand others by watching the facial movements (whch is
called lip-reading or speech-reading), may be acquired by the boy
or girl suddenly deprived of hearing by illness or born deaf. To

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN. 365

secure these desirable gifts the pupil must "be educated by a sys-
tem which gives speech in the beginning and imparts all instruc-
tion through that medium. Prof. A. S. Hill, in calling attention
to the poor showing in written language even among the college-
bred, dwells upon the importance of practice sufficient to enable
the pupil to write without thought of the mechanical difficulties,
maintaining that to be the first essential in efforts to acquire a
good style. " A boy must have written much before he can form
his letters without special pains ; and much more before he can
set down what he has to say without stumbling over punctuation,
spelling, and grammar; and more still before he can write with
facility." Upon the same principle the deaf child must articulate
words long before he can do so readily ; must speak in sentences
long before he can do so fluently ; and must talk on every occa-
sion, to his teacher, to his classmate, in his lessons and in his play,
before he can do so easily to the stranger and in society. Practice
is the only means of attaining a spontaneous use of the vocal
organs. Nothing else will do away with a consciousness of the
mechanical difficulties.

The hearing power of the young infant is an unknown quan-
tity, because the sensitive bundle of tissues responds quickly to
impressions from various sources and is thus misleading. A loud
noise may startle by its strong vibrations against the skin fully
as readily as by the auditory sense. Intelligent parents have
failed to discover deafness until their children were over a year
old. The look of the very young deaf child is usually an inter-
ested one, accompanied by fewer unnecessary movements of the
eye and less play of the facial muscles. From increased observant
faculty conies a marked development of the imitative functions.
The child's hands spring to his help. He goes through motions
that he has noticed those about him use ; in their case, however,
speech and lack of observation have kept them from conscious-
ness of those movements. They begin to see his, they are un-
aware of theirs ; to them the child has invented his own signs.
This fact discovers another. It is impossible for the normal hu-
man being of tender age to imitate easily a position of the mouth
unaccompanied by the sound belonging to it ; thereby proving the
ear guides him more than the eye, and it is the absence of the
hearing sense that obliges the vision to act early in behalf of the
deaf child. A boy of two years was told to imitate what he saw
in another's face ; the lips were pursed, but he failed to round his
until the sound of oo was made, though his deaf brother, noticing
his difficulty, brought a spool to him to show the shape. Through
hereditary tendencies the connection between the ear and the
speech center is short and practicable ; through educative means
that between the eye and the speech center may be complete and

3 66 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

effective. Hearing need not be lacking to secure this result, for
one possessing an acute ear may read speech from the facial move-
ments. It is doubtful if there are many of the teachers of articu-
lation to the deaf, a work requiring sensitive hearing, who con-
sciously or unconsciously do not put to practical use some of their
knowledge of the appearance given to the features by speech.
This ability of the eye to take upon itself duties heretofore sup-
posed to belong to the ear exclusively is a priceless boon to
the deaf. Let others be instructed according to Francis Gouin's
axiom : " The organ of language — ask the little child — is not the
eye ; it is the ear." We may add, if the ear has lost its cunning,
the eye is a wonderful substitute.

The. signs used in educating the deaf were perfected by hear-
ing men and are arbitrary, learned by teacher as well as pupil,
and unintelligible to most persons. The first signs employed by
the little child, being copied from those in daily use among all
classes of people, are termed natural. They express the putting
on and taking off of the hat and coat, and thus the going out and
the return home ; the opening and closing of books, boxes, and
doors ; the acts of eating and drinking, driving, whipping, push-
ing, pulling, beckoning, running, and jumping. Animals are
watched. The shape of the cat and the dog's mouths while giv-
ing their peculiar cries, " meaw " and " bow-wow," is copied ; the
curious action of the rabbit's legs when the creature is lifted by
the ears is noticed and imitated ; the first and second fingers of
both hands raised to the head show that the movements of a horse's
ears are observed. Impressions being conveyed through the sense
of touch, the child communicates with others by describing in
gestures the shape of the object he has felt. His eye has seen the
form of a ball ; but he knows more about it than the eye can re-
veal, for he has put his hands around it. Touch, taste, and smell
come to his aid. The lack of facial movement gives place to
grimaces ; the nose becomes an expressive feature, and bitter and
sweet, like and dislike, are revealed by strong looks. Accompany-
ing ignorance of sounds there is an unconscious play of the vocal
organs, forming a series of more or less unpleasant grunts and
screams. The child's mental food is in what he sees, pictures or
" images." He makes good use of all, showing an excellent ability
to reason, but is liable to mistakes incidental to the fact that he
may not have had the truth presented to him. A piece of chalk
has been broken. He puts the parts together, appealing in that
way to have it mended. His faith is large and his knowledge
small. Some one takes them from him, dexterously substitutes a
fresh crayon, and gives it to the child. He is not to blame for
thinking it is possible to put together the pieces so perfectly that
no one can see the mark of break. At another time, the honest-

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN. 367

minded person who tries to show him that such injuries can not
be repaired will be thought unkind and unwilling to join the
parts.

In the opinion of many, deaf persons are high-tempered, un-
ruly, obstinate, and vindictive. The untrained, uneducated deaf
may become so, just as the untrained, uneducated child in full
possession of hearing may grow into a dangerous brute. It is not
the deafness that is responsible. Too much stress can not be laid
upon the importance of inculcating prompt obedience. There is
no reason why a deaf child should not respond quickly to anoth-
er's wishes. It is impossible to explain matters to him ; teach
him to obey, and let him learn by observation why he is required
to do so. Obedience implies self-control. All progress, mental
and moral, must be regulated by the greater or less amount of
self-control. A deaf child may give a telling blow ; unable to
hear it, he fails to realize the degree of force exerted. How shall
he be taught he has done wrong ? By a blow directed to him ?
That would teach him that what he gave another can hurt, but
what does he think of the adult who strikes him ? Would he not
be likely to feel that the older person by giving a blow practically
indorsed its use ? The next step would be to reason that it is jus-
tifiable to give one, but well to avoid receiving another in return.
The best way to punish and thus teach the child to drop lawless
expressions of his displeasure must be to show one's power with-
out a trace of anger. If he is held firmly in a chair despite
struggles and cries he will realize he is being controlled. He is
conscious of his act and knows he is deprived of his liberty in
consequence. He sees determination but no anger in the face of
his instructor, and learns that tears and screams are unavailing.
There is no need to indulge in such useless efforts. He has tired
himself, only to find his keeper fresh and undaunted. A slap
would have suggested retaliation. Pinching could be easily re-
turned. This superior, calm strength is something different and
so far beyond his own abilities as to compel respect. In time the
expression in the face is sufficient to enforce obedience, and the
hands need rarely exert their firm, strong hold. The child's con-
science is formed by the series of impressions he receives from
the decided approval or disapproval in the faces about him.
There may be times when more severe punishment is required,
but rarely if proper training is received in early life. It should
be remembered that the deaf child is not conscious of the effect
of the unpleasant screams and resounding kicks he may give
when he throws himself down some day in temper. All his dra-
matic exhibition may have less behind it than has the " No, I
won't ! " of the hearing child. We admit that the scene made by
one and the attitude of the other are equally unpleasant, but the

3 68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

second may reveal greater defiance than the first. Speech is the
expression of feeling, and feeling is best aroused through the
hearing. Here is a means of cultivation cut off from the deaf.
Can the education of the eye ever become sufficiently developed
to atone for the loss in this direction ? Most certainly not. The
diversion made by hearing a remark, a laugh, a song, or a mu-
sical instrument has oftentimes prevented a quarrel, dissipated a
worry, or broken a willful determination. The deaf are deprived
of this means of receiving a fresh turn to thought, and this fact
should be borne in mind when it is noticed that their disposition
is not to give up a plan once adopted.

What the deaf may become if untaught is not an agreeable
picture to face. Some idea may be formed by recalling that they
were classed among the idiotic in the years they were neglected
and deemed unworthy of efforts to educate. Here is a child,
bright, healthy, and active, with an avenue to his brain obstructed.
Reasoning from limited knowledge gathered by his observations
alone, he misunderstands many efforts to do well by him. He is
conscious of lack of communication with others ; in a little while
he may be morose and unhappy. Give him the speech he knows
not, and the language that is to him a sealed book. With care
during the first years it is possible to develop an agreeable voice.
It would be wrong to claim it can become always musical or per-
fectly natural ; just as wrong is it to assert that some voices hap-
pen to be good, some acquire peculiar tricks for which there is no
remedy, or that it is right to be satisfied with any vocal efforts ob-
tained. The exhaled breath pushing its way between the edges of
the glottis becomes voice. If poor, it must be so from incorrect
action of the edges ; if good, from correct action. The teacher who
understands how to secure the proper working of this delicate
instrument can give the pupil a good voice. Speech is related to
the affections more than to the intellect. The prompting of the
actions of the vocal organs comes from the stirring of some emo-
tion. If the intensity is great, cool judgment has no influence
upon the voice unless long experience has developed self-control ;
if fear or timidity is felt, results are noticeable immediately. The
deaf child's happy state is therefore absolutely the first essential
for securing a warm or affectionate tone ; next, his thoughts must
be thrown out away from himself to enable the organs to act with-
out tension. It is for this reason we are not impressed with the
wisdom of educating the touch of the finger tips to feel the vibra-
tions of the vocal cords, believing as we do that such a method
by centering attention upon the throat, a part of the pupil's body,
prevents the developing of pure, resonant tones.

The voice formed in the larynx is molded into the numerous
vowels by various shapes assumed by tongue, lips, and soft palate,

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN. 369

and into consonants by decided actions of the same organs. Com-
pare voice thus changed to a stream of water lazily moving amid
green banks, now cutting its way through rock, broken into rapids
or plunged over a precipice. The smooth running is like the
vowels formed by open positions molding a steady current of
voice; the breaks and plunges like the consonants formed by
actions producing friction or even obstructing the breath momen-
tarily. Vowels are the life of speech; in them lies expressive
voice. The consonants are the receptacles giving temporary lim-
its to the vocalized breath. Thus the secret of agreeable voices
among the deaf is instruction based on a realization that all useful
exercises in vocal culture should be founded upon perfect action
of the edges of the glottis. This assured, vowels and consonants
combined, forming words, may be learned as rapidly as they can
be memorized. The hearing child has listened months before
attempting to talk, gradually gaining confidence to use his own
organs, and as nearly as possible imitating the sounds about him.
Very crude are his first efforts, differing widely from his speech
model. Yet no one doubts his ultimate success. Let the same
confidence be manifested with the deaf child in his first lessons.
Care in securing correct positions for sounds brings out lines of
beauty in his face, previously disfigured by unpleasant and un-
necessary movements.

How is the pupil to know the meaning of the words he learns ?
It is necessary to explain by the natural signs he employs ; conse-
quently his first spoken and written words must be equivalents of
the same objects he has designated by a gesture, of the daily
actions about him, of the qualities he has appreciated by taste,
touch, and smell. Single words thus become intelligible to him.
He drops the sign and speaks ; his vocabulary constantly enlarges.
Now a new difficulty presents itself. The grouping of words, the
forming of phrase and sentence, he has no knowledge of ; more-
over, when grouped he does not grasp the shades of meaning thus
conveyed to the hearing person. He is likely to say " Sugar like/'
to express his fondness for the sweet; "Horse car go" to him
means " I will go in a horse car." He has no use for a, an, and
the, is contemptuous of the changes in tense, and is baffled by
idioms. No one can realize without experience the need of
patience and ingenuity in the teacher who imparts language to
the deaf child ; no one can have sufficient of these qualities who
does not strive to keep in mind the pupil's limited range and thus
bear with his ignorance. The hearing person studying a foreign
tongue has his own language to help him. Grammar can be re-
membered because similar or dissimilar to his own ; arrangement
of words, by resemblance or want of resemblance to the forms in
his daily use. Nothing of the kind is present to aid the child born

TOL. XLIT. — 29

370 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

deaf ; he knows no reason why words should be arranged in cer-
tain orders. Day by day the same forms are repeated until,
brought into play on every appropriate occasion, they are used
spontaneously. Fortunately, the scholar does not know what is
before him. Ignorant of the amount he is to learn, he absorbs his
daily allowance of language, his ideas expanding, and his mind
unfolding. All is delightful to him. It is the teacher who feels
the great work to accomplish. Various studies can be taken up
by the pupil after he has secured some hold of language and his
education can be made identical with that of a hearing student.
There are no limits for him but his inclinations or circumstances.

A large number of the deaf were not born in their present
condition ; statistics prove that many have lost hearing by disease
or accident after learning to speak in ,the natural way. If this
should occur when two or three years of age, or when even some-
what older, and no educative means are employed immediately,
the speech becomes impaired in a short time. Should the child
be ten or more years old, he retains his articulation fairly well,
but in common with those younger, the voice rapidly acquires
unpleasant characteristics. Such children in former years were
silenced in the institutions. Their knowledge of speech and re-
membrance of forms of expression in language develop into a
great advantage over those of the same age who never heard.
The difference is inestimable. There is far less chance for mis-
understandings, less mystery about ordinary matters ; the mind
is older. The impaired speech may be corrected, the voice
brought under control, and instruction in speech-reading imparted
at once.

Formerly the ability to understand what is said by movements
in the face was called lip-reading ; the term is unsatisfactory, for
more than the lips must be watched. Of late this accomplish-
ment has received the name of speech-reading. It is an ability
to follow the varying expressions in the face as quickly as they
appear, and thus to convey thought through the medium of the
eye instead of by the hearing. Persons reading the above will
look up at some one present, and after watching the face awhile
will wonder how it is possible for any being to follow those
movements and understand speech thereby. They attempt too
much at once. Preliminary steps must be taken. The little
child just beginning to read can not scan a page quickly. Suc-
cess in speech-reading means an education of the eye secured by
practice. Its attainment by the child born deaf grows with his
knowledge of spoken language ; the child who has lost hearing
after having learned speech naturally, advances in ability to
understand others in proportion to his dependence upon that
method of communication. The wonderful organ which gives

SPEECH FOR DEAF CHILDREN. 371

us so much happiness, and which we find early in life carries
messages to the brain in behalf of some sense lying dormant,
must concentrate its gaze upon a small space, the human face.
The range being limited, more detail is noticeable ; attention is
not diverted by general movements embodying arbitrary or natu-
ral signs, to the hand and arm, or to the whole figure. There is
an opportunity to increase constantly an appreciation of shades
of expression just as a discernment of the nice distinctions of
well-chosen words is attained. The result is, the deaf child fol-
lows in the face of a reader the details of a story with all the relish
the hearing would in listening. There is no staring, simply a
quiet, steady gaze. The repeating of the words seen, proves the
close connection between the eye and the speech-center.

There is no doubt many children born deaf have hearing suffi-
cient if educated to enable them to receive correct impressions
through that sense, and to be in a condition similar to that of
so-called hard-of -hearing persons. One reason they do not use
the ear to better advantage is that they are ignorant of linguistic
sounds. The adult losing his hearing power has the advantages
of a full vocabulary, a knowledge of the structure of the lan-
guage, and a mastery of its idioms, combined with an ability to
hold conversation in his own hands ; he can learn speech-reading,
which with him is a high degree of expression-reading, and he
need not change his vocation or pleasures, save those requiring a
somewhat sensitive condition of the auditory sense. It would be
far otherwise if he had to secure language with the small amount
of hearing he now possesses. Many children are deaf because of
a slow perception of sound, without reference to any functional
disability. They must be taught to listen, for without the strain
of attention the loudest noises may be unheeded. The work of
opening to them an appreciation of the world of sound is called
development of hearing, and is thus designated to distinguish it
from improvement of hearing ; the latter is an assistance to deaf-
ness arising from a diseased condition of the ears, and is rendered
by various mechanical aids, such as noise, hearing tubes, and
trumpets. In developing hearing, progress depends upon using
the auditory sense alone. "When the vision and hearing work to-
gether in aural instruction, there is an unnatural dependence of
the latter upon the former, and no regard paid to the hereditary
tendencies to action between ear and speech-center. The result is
that the pupil seldom understands a new word unless he first sees
it upon the lips. After instruction which compelled the hearing
to rely upon its single efforts the various sounds of the language
are appreciated immediately in any order given ; as all words are
but rearrangements of the same elements, new ones can be re-
peated as readily as familiar ones. The strain of attention being

372 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

undivided, ability to hear sounds at a longer range grows some-
what. Noise acts as an irritant in these cases instead of aiding as
in deafness due to disease.

With speech and speech-reading attained, and perhaps the
happy addition of some perception of sound, the deaf need
not be thrown together as a class distinct from others. They
may and do receive instruction in common with their hearing
friends, attending leading schools and entering professional du-
ties side by side with them. Such persons have been charged
with an unwillingness to associate with the other deaf. Lack of
interest in their welfare we do not believe possible, but a prefer-
ence for the companionship of the hearing proves the existence
of a satisfying method of communication. All are easily influ-
enced by surroundings, and if deprived of any particular sense,
especially so. The deaf need every advantage possible, and not
the least of them should be adjudged daily intercourse with the
most evenly balanced characters, persons possessing a normal de-
velopment of all the senses.

LOGICAL METHOD IN BIOLOGY.

By FEANK CEAMEE.

npHE logical processes involved in scientific reasoning are the
-L same in kind as those used in the everyday life of the masses.
The difference between the two lies in the clearer recognition of
the processes and their importance in the scientific field. There
is nothing like exactness in the applied logic of everyday life, and
the reasoning of science is superior to the " common sense " of
mankind only in being more exact. In science the comparatively
little work that survives and does not have to be done over and
over owes its superiority to this same exactness. Science has no
peculiar method of its own either of discovering facts or of treat-
ing them.

Scientific students spend little time on the consideration of
logical processes, because the mind follows them instinctively ; and
the study of them, for practical purposes, seems to be superfluous.
But apart from the fact that they present a set of phenomena as
worthy of scientific treatment as the phenomena of light or of the
molluscan nervous system, it is important to consider them because
of their direct bearing on every department of science. Even the
best established sciences have reached their present states by suc-
cessive approximations toward exactness, by the gradual elimina-
tion of errors of both fact and method ; and even the novice knows
that the degree of confidence placed in the statements of fact of a

LOGICAL METHOD IN BIOLOGY. 373

scientist by his contemporaries or succeeding generations depends
directly on their confidence in his method. The history of any
biological problem will furnish material for a comparison of
methods. The present state of the problem will be found to owe
its superiority over any earlier stage not simply to the greater
number of facts that can be brought to bear upon its solution, but
chiefly to more exhaustive methods for the discovery of new facts
and interpretation of old ones.

There are comparatively few models that will serve as illus-
trations of the applied logic of the sciences, or of a sound and
complete scientific method. Apart from quantitative exactness,
the problems of biology can be given the same rigid application
of logical principles as any other science; and in recent years
much progress has been made toward giving numerical expression
to both facts and laws in biology. The two following examples of
scientific method — the one from experimental physiology, and the
other from invertebrate morphology — show themselves, on analy-
sis, to "be models of vigorous generalization and deductive infer-
ence, prompt verification, reinterpretation of old facts, explana-
tions of old contradictions, and removal of old obstacles to a clear
understanding of the matters in question.

Fifty years ago Arnold discovered that the iris of the eeFs eye
contracts, producing contraction of the pupil, on being exposed to
light after the eye is cut out of the head, and even when the an-
terior part with the iris is separated from the posterior part of
the eye ; but that when the outer or ciliary rim of the iris is cut
away no reaction follows. It seemed to be conclusively proved
that in the production of the phenomenon light acts directly on
the ciliary part of the iris. A few years later Brown-Se*quard dis-
covered the same reaction in the frog's eye, and inferred that the
light acts directly on the muscle elements of the iris. This infer-
ence he left entirely without verification, and even asked himself,
without trying to answer, the question why, if light acts directly
on the muscle fibers of the iris, it does not act thus on the other
muscles of the body. In 1854-'55 Budge, after apparently ex-
haustive experiments, denied that the pupil of the excised eye
contracts when light falls on the iris and not on the retina. In
1859 Muller proved that light acts directly not only on the outer
rim of the iris, but more intensely on the inner or pupillary part.
After a lull of twenty years in the dispute, Edgren proved that
after destruction of the retina there is no reaction at all, and that
therefore light does not act directly on the iris. The only fact
that remained undisputed in this strife of fifty years was that the
pupil of the excised but otherwise unmutilated eye of frogs and
eels contracts when the eye is exposed to the light. It was still
unproved whether the phenomenon is due to an intraocular reflex

374 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which involves the retina or to direct action of light on the iris.
The latter view was the favorite one, but no efforts were made to
characterize the elements of the iris on which the light acts, and
so to clear up the physiological conditions of the phenomenon.

" Stick to the facts ! " impetuously shriek many biologists
when some luckless fellow insists that scientific method, with the
principles of logic at its foundation, requires careful and incessant
attention in biological investigation. In this case the sequel shows
that there can be no doubt of the truth of any of the statements
made during the whole fifty years. But vociferous discussion
could not remove the contradictions, and experiment only multi-
plied them. Confusion is as consistent with facts as harmony is.
It was the lack of a clear logical analysis of all the conditions of
the problem that led to the contradictions. Nothing was demon-
strated until these were removed, and it is an important fact that
they were finally removed, not by disputing them, but by repro-
ducing the conditions of the contradictory experiments and incor-
porating the contradictions themselves into the final solution of
the problem.

Steinach,* by his recent experiments, demonstrated that the
sensitiveness of the iris varies immensely in different individuals
of the same species ; that the iris of frogs, kept for days in glass
cases, does not respond at all to alternate shading and exposure to
diffused daylight, but slightly to concentrated gaslight, and gives
a regular reaction of appreciable amount only on exposure to con-
centrated sunlight ; that when frogs are kept for a long time in
the dark the iris responds promptly to diffused daylight ; but if,
after the light has produced contraction of the pupil, the frog, in-
stead of being put back in the dark, is left exposed to the light,
the pupil gradually dilates in spite of the light, and after some
hours acquires a state of comparative insensibility, so that mod-
erate changes in the light produce no changes at all in the iris ;
and that the difference in pupillary reaction between frogs kept
in the dark and frogs exposed continuously to light is greater in
the excised than in the normal eye, greater still when the iris is
isolated from the rest of the eye, and that, while in frogs of
medium excitability of iris the isolated eye still responds to light
after shading, the iris, when separated from the rest of the eye,
no longer responds even to the strongest light. One would think
that at least some of these preliminary conditions of success would
have thrust themselves upon the attention of the earlier investi-
gators if they were not altogether lacking in the qualifications of
true scientists. They were probably no more lacking in analytical

* Investigations on the Comparative Physiology of the Iris. II. Pfliiger's Archiv fur
Physiologic, vol. Hi.

LOGICAL METHOD IN BIOLOGY. 375

power than any other set of investigators, but they had certainly
not made the most of it. Steinach exhausted the conditions by
taking into account, one at a time, the different degrees of inher-
ent excitability, effect of exposure to and exclusion from light,
and the reactions of the normal eye, the excised eye, and the iso-
lated iris, against the different degrees of light, thus :

( Diffused light.

{Normal eye. •< Concentrated gaslight.
Excised eye C°nCentrated SUDlight>
Isolated iris.
I Exposed continuously
Frog's eye. -| *- to light.

Medium excitability.
[ Low excitability. Etc.

These do not include all the conditions which he detected, but
they are sufficient to indicate the difference between his method
and that of his predecessors. The modifying conditions were not
discovered in the order in which they appear in the table, but
tabulation shows very quickly whether or not they have been
exhausted.

When all the favorable conditions were combined there in-
variably resulted a characteristic contraction of the pupil, on
exposure to light, whether the object experimented on was the
normal eye, the excised eye, the isolated iris, or the isolated iris
deprived of its ciliary rim. In other words, the contraction of the
pupil in the excised eye of fishes and amphibia does not depend
on an intraocular reflex involving the retina, but on the direct
influence of light on one or more of the elements of the inner or
pupillary part of the iris. It had been suggested that the phe-
nomenon was due to the action of light on the endings of the
nerve fibers in the sphincter muscle of the iris. Steinach removed
this suggestion from the group of remaining possibilities by para-
lyzing the nerves of one eye of an animal with atropine and leaving
the other normal, and showing by comparative tests that the two
eyes continue to act alike. He showed by a special experiment
that the posterior pigment layer of the iris has nothing to do with
its contraction. The branched or stellate pigment-cells — the chro-
matophores — in the front part of the iris were possible factors in
the problem. They were known to undergo changes due to the
action of light. Light causes a redistribution of the pigment
within the cell, causing it to collect at the center. When the eye
of an animal which has been kept in the dark is alternately
shaded and exposed to the light, there follow a prompt alternate
dilatation and contraction of the pupil. This process can be car-
ried on for some time before there is any visible change in the
chromatophores ; at the end of half an hour or more the chro-

376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

matophores are " contracted/' but the pupil contracts and dilates
as before. Therefore the contraction of the iris is independent of
the changes in the chromatophores.

At this point physiological experiment had to be abandoned,
and it would have been extremely comfortable for Steinach to
do as one of his predecessors had done — ride the rest of the way
on a cantering hypothesis ; but he appealed to histology. In his
effort to determine in what other parts of the iris there was
pigment, through which the light must produce its effect, he
found that his judgment was confused by particles of pigment
from the posterior layer, which were scattered at random over
his histological preparations. This difficulty was obviated by
removing the posterior layer of pigment before making the sec-
tions. After taking this precaution he showed that there is no
ordinary pigment in the stroma of the iris ; neither are there any
ordinary smooth muscle fibers like those in the iris of the higher
vertebrates. He found the sphincter muscle of the iris composed
of spindle-shaped pigmented cells. That these are really muscle
fibers he proved by their form, size, characteristic fibrillar struc-
ture, and function. It was impossible to observe directly the con-
traction of these fibers ; he adopted the indirect method of killing
the iris in the relaxed and in the contracted states and observing
the condition of the fibers in each. In the former they were
slender and narrow, in the latter shorter and thicker. The ciliary
muscle fibers are not pigmented, and this accounts for their being
indifferent to the light. His general conclusion is that light pro-
duces contraction of the isolated fish and amphibian iris by act-
ing directly on the fibers of the sphincter muscle through their
pigment.

The striking characteristic of this investigation is the exhaust-
ive consideration and removal of alternative beliefs. His final
conclusion is only an inference, and derives its " certainty " from
the fact that it is the only belief that is left. In its relation to
this conclusion the evidence is circumstantial. If now the reac-
tion of the pigment and fibers could be directly observed, Stei-
nach's conclusion would be set down as a verified prediction.
Though unverified, it is unhesitatingly accepted, like so much of
our "knowledge," as an important truth ; for most minds its veri-
fication would add little or nothing to its certainty, and would
even deprive it of some of its interest. This inferential knowl-
edge forms a large part of scientific truth, and other instances
of it will appear in the following example of method in mor-
phology.

Various ciliated organs of unknown function in different
mollusks had never been brought under the yoke of homology.
One of the most decisive tests in morphology for the determination

LOGICAL METHOD IN BIOLOGY. 377

of homology is the mode of innervation of an organ. Spengel *
reasoned that the homologies of these organs could be best estab-
lished by a comparative study of their modes of innervation — in
other words, by discovering their relations to other organs known
to be correlated in definite ways among themselves. In this way
he succeeded in proving their morphological identity, although
the belief that they are olfactory organs is based simply on the
morphological fact that they invariably occupy a certain position
in relation to the respiratory organs, and not on any physiologi-
cal data.

He demonstrated the general occurrence of this particular
kind of organ in the prosobranch gastropods, inferred that it
ought to occur among the opisthobranchs, and succeeded in dem-
onstrating its presence in the division of tectibranchs. He had
already in his possession the hypothesis that the organ is one be-
longing to the mollusca as a whole and drew from it the deduc-
tion that it ought to be present in the lamellibranchs, among
which it had not been hitherto known. He said : " The position in
which such a one would have to be sought was clearly enough
indicated to me by rny observations on the gastropods. It would
have to be in the neighborhood of one of the ganglia of the vis-
ceral commissure." Trusting this definite anticipation, he looked
for the olfactory organ and found it in Area Now, the first mus-
sel he opened for the purpose. In this species the organ is char-
acterized by pigment, which made its recognition easy. In other
species that he examined the pigment is absent, and had he first
opened one of these, he might have had a long and possibly fruit-
less hunt for the organ. This well illustrates how important a
part chance frequently plays even in deductive investigation. It
is interesting to note how the deduction might have remained un-
verified and possibly have been adandoned and yet have been a
true one.

The organ typically consists of thickened epithelium innervated
from a ganglion underlying it. Theory required the presence
of a ganglion under the olfactory organ of lamellibranchs, but
there was apparently only a strong nerve, which had hitherto
been universally interpreted as the "gill nerve." Histological
examination proved it to be an elongated ganglion inserted on
the nerve between its origin and its ending in the gill. Here
again, a deduction led to a discovery and the correction of what
had seemed for years to be a settled fact.

Spengel had shown, in his study of other groups, that the
nerve on which the olfactory ganglion lies arises from the vis-

* Die Geruchsorgane und das Nervensystem der Mollusken. Zeitschrift fur wissen-
schaftliche Zoologie (April 22, 1881), vol. xxxv, pp. 333-383.

378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ceral ganglia inserted in the visceral commissure, and not from
the pleural ganglia. With one stroke of deduction he swept
away a whole brood of old views. He reasoned that the parieto-
splanchnic ganglia of lamellibranchs, from which this nerve
arises, must on account of this very fact be the visceral ganglia,
and not what they had been universally assumed to be — the
homologues of the pleural ganglia of gastropods. The old view
necessitated the belief that the renal, reproductive organs, etc.,
of lamellibranchs are innervated from the pleural ganglia, and
that the foot with all its accessories is included within the
oesophageal ring of ganglia ; whereas in other mollusks the renal,
reproductive, and associated organs are innervated from the vis-
ceral ganglia and the foot lies outside of the oesophageal ring.
If the parieto-splanchnic ganglia of lamellibranchs are homolo-
gous with the visceral ganglia of other mollusca all the above-
mentioned organs hold the same relations in lamellibranchs as in
the other groups. This reinterpretation of so many known facts
harmonizes the lamellibranch type completely with that of the
general molluscan type and marks a distinct step in the progress
of molluscan morphology. He pursued a similar though less
complete course with the cephalopods.

By this method of morphological reasoning, accompanied and
corroborated or corrected at every step by morphological investi-
gation, a heterogeneous mass of facts was bound together under
the principle of homology, and many new ones were discovered
that would not have been brought into notice in any other way.
Indeed, the principle of homology, together with the principle on
which it depends, the correlation of organs, furnishes a basis
without which it would be nearly impossible to make intelligent
search for new facts. Incessant use is made of the general logi-
cal principle that things that are similar in some respects, are
likely to prove similar in other and unknown respects, and that
things similar in many respects are likely to prove similar in most
or all respects, in anticipating biological facts. It is well known
that many of the facts of greatest theoretical importance in biol-
ogy have been overlooked until hypothesis pointed them out. Yet
this power of prevision is one of the most dangerous of pitfalls.
No rule can be laid down for the use of the principle, because
there is none. There is a general precaution to be observed:
similarity in a few respects is no warrant for inferring similarity
in many respects, much less all respects. Too many biologists,
among them some of the most eminent, seem to have a wrong con-
ception of the function of this logical principle. Scholastic
methods are the favorite butt of scientific wit, but that notorious
old tendency to speculate without due regard to facts is not dead
but only facing in another direction. The stupid blunders and

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 379

worthless "results" due to it are charged up against tlie far-
reaching logical principle itself and have given rise to a counter
tendency that is no more creditable. The old cry, " Stick to the
facts ! " simply means that the danger of going wrong increases
very rapidly as one passes by inference beyond known facts,
especially when these are few in number. Perhaps the greatest
boon that could fall to biological science would be such a
thorough study of the history of the science by its own votaries
that they would learn beyond the power of forgetting the fact
that speculation alone is worse than useless, and that reasoning
with verification is indispensable.

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH.

BY BAETON H. WISE.

THE antagonism between the plantation interest on the one
hand, and commerce and manufacturing on the other, was
pointed out at an early period of our history. The institution
of negro slave labor repelled white labor and immigration from
the South; and while the North received continuous waves of
population, and the growth of commerce and manufacturing
caused cities to spring up in every direction, the South remained
a sparsely settled section, almost purely agricultural. These con-
ditions have been attributed in part to climatic influences, but
this theory hardly holds when we reflect that what we call the
South is not only part of the Northern continent and in the tem-
perate zone, but that its southernmost point is seventeen hundred
miles north of the equator. So much did the increase of popula-
tion in the South, however, lag behind that of the North, that in
1850 there were in the former only IS'93 inhabitants to the square
mile, to 45'8 in the latter. Not only could capital at the South
be more profitably invested in lands and negroes than in manu-
facturing, but in addition efforts at establishing manufacturing
plants were unsuccessful, as negro labor was not suited to it.

In considering the subject of inventions at the South, we can
not afford to overlook these facts, nor can we overestimate the
depressing effect that negro labor was calculated to produce,
though indirectly, upon the inventive faculties of the people. In
the North every circumstance tended toward the encouragement
of manufacturing, and among a people who, as a consequence,
were accustomed to the use of machinery of all sorts, the invent-
ive faculties were stimulated to their utmost.

In the South these conditions were exactly reversed, and noth-
ing tended to the growth of manufacturing or of an urban popu-

380 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lation. If we except Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis, neither
one of which is an exclusively Southern city, New Orleans re-
mains even to-day as the only city in the South of over one hun-
dred thousand inhabitants. Neither Richmond, Atlanta, Charles-
ton, Memphis, nor Nashville has a white population of fifty
thousand. With these various conditions borne in mind, it is not
strange that the talent of the Southern people was exercised in
other directions than those of inventions.

The military qualities of Southerners have been demonstrated
in every war in which the United States was engaged ; and the
leadership in the Revolution, the second war with England, the
war with Mexico, and on the Confederate side during the civil
war, fell to the part of Southern men. Even on the Northern side
during the last-named contest numbers of the foremost soldiers
and sailors were men of Southern birth, prominent among whom
may be mentioned Thomas, Ord, Fremont, Newton, and Farra-
gut. Abraham Lincoln, the head of the civil administration
during the same period, was a born Southerner, and Grant was of
Southern extraction. In statesmanship the South had held the
highest rank always, and under Southern leadership all the addi-
tions to the national domain were made. His English ancestry,
the republican form of government under which he lived, the
call of a new country for political thinkers during its formative
period, the passion for governing engendered by the ownership of
slaves, and lastly the long antislavery agitation which saturated
the atmosphere with politics, all contributed to cause the ambi-
tious Southerner of the past to drift into public life. The de-
scendants of the Jamestown colonists inherited the Anglo-Saxon
spirit of adventure which characterized their ancestors, and it is
not strange that Virginia led the rest of the States of the Union
in the number of her pioneers who settled the West and South-
west. While all this is true, the talents of the South were largely
confined to these channels when exerted at all, and the ability of
the North, as has been said of it, " sought expression in a wider
range of subjects than that of the South." Conditions at the
South were not favorable to the growth of literature, art, or in-
vention, and there being no cities of large size, there were hence
no common centers of activity, where either literary workers,
artists, or scientists could be sure of employment, and be in con-
tact with sympathetic minds following kindred pursuits. Edgar
Allan Poe toiled away at Richmond as editor of the Southern Lit-
erary Messenger, but was compelled finally to drift northward to
maintain a livelihood. William Gilmore Simms, the only man of
note in the South,* besides Poe, who followed literature as a pro-
fession, plodded along in South Carolina among a people who
afforded him little encouragement, and his numerous efforts to

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 381

found a literary magazine in Charleston all met with, failure,
despite the fact that an unusually cultivated society dwelt in
that city. Washington Allston, after finishing his art studies in
Europe, located in Boston, which was able to hold out to him
greater inducements than the little city of Charleston, the metrop-
olis of his native State. Gottschalk, the composer, whose dreamy,
sensuous music suggests his Southern birth, after finishing his
musical course in Paris, made his debut there, and died finally in
Brazil, spending but little time in New Orleans. Audubon, with
his dog and gun, and his pencil and drawing pad, searched the
woods and bayous of his native Louisiana for his specimens of
birds and natural history that were to win for him the name of
the greatest naturalist of the New World. But he labored under
adverse conditions, and he had to canvass the large cities of Eu-
rope for subscribers to enable him to publish his book on the
birds of America, the greatest ornithological work ever under-
taken. This he brought out at New York in 1830, with plates
containing over one thousand birds of life size, and Cuvier pro-
nounced it " the most magnificent monument that Art has yet
raised to Nature."

In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, James Madison, of
Virginia, and Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, proposed the
clause protecting authors and inventors, which was the founda-
tion of our copyright and patent-right system. The Patent Office
was organized and placed on a firm basis largely through the ef-
forts of Jefferson, who is credited with being its founder, and later
on it was reorganized and perfected during Jackson's administra-
tion. Jefferson was himself an inventor, being the first American
to study and improve the plow. The year 1789 is memorable as
the date upon which Rumsey, a Maryland machinist, then living
in Virginia, launched his boat upon the Potomac, propelled by
steam, Fitch performing a similar experiment upon the Delaware
about the same time. Later on, in 1792, Rumsey went to England
and made a successful trial trip on the Thames. This same year
Eli Whitney, a young New-Englander, invented his famous cot-
ton gin, that maybe said to have revolutionized the history of the
South and the Union. As an illustration of the scarcity of manu-
facturing and mechanical establishments in the South at that date,
it may be mentioned that Whitney had to draw himself the iron
wire he needed and make his own iron tools at the plantation of
Mrs. Greene, the wife of General Nathanael Greene, on the Sa-
vannah River, where he was residing. It is a notable circum-
stance that the first canal in America of any consequence, the
first telegraph line, and the first railway propelled by steam were
all constructed in the South, and the first steamship to cross the
Atlantic embarked from a Southern port. The first canal of im-

382 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

portance was the James River and Kanawha, which began at
Richmond, and was designed to connect the Chesapeake Bay
with the Ohio River. It was proposed by Washington and begun
in 1785, and afterward carried as far westward as Buchanan in
Virginia. During the year 1818 leading merchants of Savannah,
Ga., had constructed, through the advice of Captain Moses Rog-
ers, of that city, a combination steam and sailing vessel to run
between Savannah and Liverpool. The machinery and engine
were built in New York by Daniel Dod, a Virginian, who had
moved to that city, and on the 20th of May, 1819, this vessel,
which was christened the Savannah, steamed out of the Savan-
nah River for Liverpool, making the first transatlantic trip by
a steam vessel in twenty-two days. It created a great sensation
in England, and "the people crowded the Mersey's banks filled
with surprise and admiration when she entered the harbor of
Liverpool under bare poles, belching forth smoke and fire, yet
uninjured/' From Liverpool the Savannah steamed to St. Pe-
tersburg, where it aroused the curiosity of the Czar, and attracted
great attention. The log book and cylinder of the vessel are at
present on exhibition in London. Charleston secured in 1827 the
first railway charter granted in the South for the South Carolina
Railroad ; and when a few years later it was completed to a point
on the Savannah River, opposite Augusta, called Hamburg, it
was one hundred and thirty-six miles in length, and the longest
line of railway at that time in the world. The directors of this
road determined as early as November, 1829, to make steam the
sole motive power, which had not then been adopted elsewhere in
America, and the first locomotive constructed in the United States,
which was called the " Best Friend," was planned for this road
by E. L. Miller, of Charleston. The South Carolina Railroad was
the first steam railway to carry the United States mail, and the
system of double-truck running gear, including the application
of pedestals to the springs, which was later on copied by all the
railroads, was instituted by Horatio Allen, their engineer. Strenu-
ous efforts were made in the South in the way of railway construc-
tion, but in a sparsely settled section the rate of increased mile-
age naturally fell far short of that in the more densely populated
North. The inscription on the bust of Robert Y. Hayne, in
Charleston, records that " his last public service was his effort to
open direct communication with the vast interior of our conti-
nent." " Next to the Christian religion," said Hayne, " I know
of nothing to be compared with the influence of a free social and
commercial intercourse in softening asperities, extending knowl-
edge, and promoting human happiness." He might at this par-
ticular period have named one thing more potent even than rail-
ways in uniting the different sections of the country — namely, the

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 383

doing away with the system of African slavery, for which, though
the South was not responsible, it having been fastened upon her
by the greed of England and New England, yet which blighted
her industries and made her isolated in her modes of thought and
out of touch with the world at large.

Despite the fact that the people of the South were but little
engaged in scientific or mechanical pursuits, and that their intel-
lectual energies have for the most part been absorbed with other
thoughts, yet many notable inventions and contributions to sci-
ence have been made by Southern men. Cyrus H. McCormick, a
native of Rockbridge County, Va., and the inventor of various
agricultural implements, among them his famous reaper, received
the thanks of the French Academy of Sciences for having done
more for the cause of agriculture than any other man living.
" Owing to Mr. McCormick's invention," said William H. Seward
in 1860, " the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each
year." Richard J. Gatling, of Hertford County, N. C., devised va-
rious machines and the " Gatling gun," now an arm of the United
States service and adopted by foreign governments as well. Both
McCormick and Gatling moved West — the former to Chicago and
the latter to St. Louis — the country districts of Virginia and North
Carolina affording them poor fields for their endeavors. Henry
J. Rogers, a Baltimorean, was the practical adviser and assistant
of Morse in the construction of the first telegraph line in the
United States, which was built in 1844 between Washington and
Baltimore. He was the superintendent of it and made many im-
provements in it, and was the inventor of several telegraphic in-
struments. Rogers also devised the first system of pyrotechnic
signals in the United States and the one by means of flags that
was adopted by the navy in 1846. The author of international
fog signals was Samuel P. Griffin, of Georgia ; and the inventor of
the first complete system of ciphers used by the associated press
was Dr. Alexander Jones, of North Carolina. The name of Maury
stands above that of every other Southerner, if not of every Ameri-
can, in his contributions to science. Maury's writings demon-
strated that meteorology could be raised to the certainty of a sci-
ence, and Humboldt credited him with being its founder. He was
also the first to give a complete description of the Gulf Stream and
to mark out specific routes to be followed in crossing the ocean,
which won for him the name of the " pathfinder of the seas." In
addition to these he founded the method of deep-sea sounding,
and his letters to Cyrus W. Field, now in the National Observa-
tory at Washington, prove him to have been the first to sug-
gest the idea of connection between the two continents by means
of a cable on the bed of the ocean, and the present cable was laid
along the lines pointed out by him. The plan of splicing the

384 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cable in mid-ocean was devised by Dr. James C. Palmer, of
Maryland.

The limits of this article do not admit of giving a list of all
the Southern men who have made inventions of note. Some of
them are John Lawrence Smith, of South Carolina, the celebrated
mineralogist and inventor of the inverted telescope ; " Sibley, of
Louisiana, and his conical tent ; Gibbs, of Virginia, and his sew-
ing machine; Janney, of Virginia, and his car coupler; Gorrie,
of Louisiana, and his ice machine; McComb, of Louisiana, and
his 'arrow' cotton tie; Gaynor, of Kentucky, and his fire tele-
graph ; Stone, of Missouri, and his grain roller mill ; Remberts,
of Texas, with his roller cotton compress ; Clarke, of Texas, with
his envelope machine, and Campbell, with his cotton picker;
Bonsack, of Virginia, with his cigarette machine ; Coffee, of Vir-
ginia, with his tobacco stemmer; Stevens, of Florida, with his
fruit wrapper ; Law, of Georgia, with his cotton planter ; Avery,
of Kentucky, with his plow sulky ; Watt and Starke, of Virginia,
with their plows ; McDonald, of our own day, with his fish lad-
ders and hatcheries, filling our streams with fish/* Henry Draper,
a Virginian by birth, who removed to New York, made what has
been called "the most original discovery ever made in physical
science by an American/* He was an authority upon telescopic
work, and his experiments in his specialty of celestial photogra-
phy led to the discovery of oxygen in the sun by this means and
a new theory of the solar spectrum.

In the practice of medicine the Southern physician was under
the disadvantage of having thinly populated country districts as
the field of his labors, and he lacked the benefits of association
and co-operation with "those of his own calling that a city phy-
sician enjoys. But his isolated situation, as has been said of him,
often stimulated boldness of thought and original investigation.
Ephraim McDowell, M. t)., a native of Rockbridge County, Va.,
and who had moved to the little village of Danville, Ky., per-
formed here in 1809 the first operation on record for the extirpa-
tion of the ovary — an announcement received with incredulity in
Europe, but the truth of which was established, and which won
for him the title of the " father of ovariotomy." Crawford W.
Long, M. D., a Georgian, performed in Jefferson County, his State,
on March 30, 1842, the first surgical operation on record, with the
patient in a state of anaesthesia, which was produced by the in-
halation of sulphuric ether. Of a like class of men was J. Marion
Sims, M. D., of Alabama, the pioneer in gynaecology and abdomi-
nal surgery. The eminent surgeon, Dr. Hunter McGuire, whose
position as Medical Director of Stonewall Jackson's corps, Army
of Northern Virginia, gave him exceptional opportunities of in-
formation, said of the surgeon in the Confederate army : " His

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 385

scanty supply of medicines and hospital stores made him fertile
in expedients of every kind. I have seen him search field and
forest for plants and flowers whose medicinal virtues he under-
stood and could use. The pliant bark of a tree made for him a
good tourniquet ; the piece of a green persimmon, a styptic ; a
knitting needle, with its point sharply bent, a tenaculum, and a
penknife in his hand, a scalpel and bistoury. I have seen him
break off one prong of a common table fork, bend the point of the
other prong, and with it elevate the bone in depressed fracture of
the skull and save life. Long before he knew the use of the por-
celain-tipped probe for finding bullets I have seen him use a piece
of soft pine wood and bring it out of the wound marked by the
leaden ball. Years before we were formally told of Nelaton's
method of inverting the body in chloroform narcosis, I have seen
it practiced by the Confederate surgeon. Many a time I have
seen the foot of the operating table raised to let the blood go by
gravitation to the patient's head when death from chloroform was
imminent, and I will add that in the corps to which I was attached
chloroform was given over twenty-eight thousand times, and no
death was ever ascribed to its use." The talents which the stern
necessities of war called forth in medical science were exhibited
in every other department by the Southern people. It has been
said that " one of the compensations of war is a swift ensuing
excitation of the mental faculties/' and in this instance it would
seem to have been so. The outbreak of the civil war in 1861
found the seceding States with a population of eight millions,
about one half of whom were negro slaves, as against twenty-four
millions in the non-seceding States. The disparity in population
between the two sections, however, great as it was, was not greater
than that of their equipment in the implements of warfare. A
widely separated, almost exclusively agricultural people, without
manufactories or skilled labor, were to contend with a people
accustomed to the handling of machinery of all sorts, operated by
the highest class of trained mechanics, and in whom the inventive
faculties had been developed to their utmost. One of the greatest
curses of negro slavery was not only that it was in itself an inef-
ficient labor for the higher classes of work, but it also served to
drive out white labor of the better sort, which invariably shunned
the black districts. A striking instance of the scarcity of skilled
labor in the South was furnished in the matter of making gun-
powder with which to carry on the war. In the spring of 1861
Mr. Davis authorized Colonel George W. Rains to undertake the
construction of powder works for the Confederacy. These mills,
begun in September of that year at Augusta, Ga., were finished the
following April. For the first year of the war the Confederates
were almost entirely dependent upon the powder captured from

TOL. XLIV. — 30

3 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the enemy, and more than once military movements were ham-
pered owing to the scarcity of ammunition. We have it upon the
authority of Colonel Rains that " but one man — Wright — could be
found in the Southern States who had seen gunpowder made by
the incorporating mill, the only kind that can make it of the first
quality ; he had been a workman at the Waltham Abbey Govern-
ment Gunpowder Works in England." During the period that
the Augusta mills were in process of construction a small powder
factory was run at Manchester, Tenn. The output of this was
very limited, and it was conducted mostly as a school of instruc-
tion, and as soon as the Augusta works were completed the opera-
tives and machinery were transferred there. At the same time,
at a refinery in Nashville, workmen were being taught to refine
saltpeter and distill charcoal. Notwithstanding these methods of
obtaining competent labor, it was with the greatest difficulty that
a sufficient supply could be procured, and as a consequence every
sort of labor-saving device possible was adopted. Among the
improvements introduced by Colonel Rains in this way was a
crystallizing machine of his own invention for refining saltpeter,
the main constituent of gunpowder, and which has to be brought
to a high state of chemical purity. By means of this machine
eight or ten thousand pounds of saltpeter, used by the works daily,
which had to pass through many stages and undergo much ma-
nipulation, which at first required a large force by manual labor,
was prepared by two or three workmen. Other improved meth-
ods of powder-making were brought into use for the first time,
and the Confederate powder works were pronounced among the
finest in the world, and the London Times and other foreign
papers gave lengthy and commendatory descriptions of them.

The Confederacy was furnished with one thousand three hun-
dred and seventy-five tons of gunpowder from these works. Colo-
nel Rains is authority for the statement that " notwithstanding
the admirable serving of the heavy artillery at Fort Sumter dur-
ing that engagement, it would have fallen and Charleston been
captured had any but the strongest gunpowder been used. The
armor of the ironclads, though constructed expressly to withstand
the heaviest charges and projectiles, gave way before its propel-
ling force." General G. J. Rains, a brother of Colonel Rains of
the powder works, was the inventor of the sub-terra shells, that
were first used after the battle of Williamsburg, and which proved
effectual in retarding the advance of the Federal forces. At the
time that McClellan was in command below Richmond, in 1862,
and his vessels in James River, General Rains was placed in com-
mand of the submarine defenses by the Confederate Government.
Here, opposite Drury's Bluff, the first submarine torpedo used
in the war was made. This mode of defense had been previously

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 387

experimented with by the Russians in the Crimea, but it had
proved ineffectual against the allied fleets. Under the spur of
dire necessity the Confederates turned their attention to it, and it
was brought to such a state of efficiency that Charleston, Wil-
mington, and Savannah maintained a successful defense till near
the end of the war, despite the efforts of Dupont and Dahlgren to
force an entrance through their harbors. Their destructiveness
was demonstrated at many other points, and fifty-eight vessels,
including ironclads, were destroyed by this means in Southern
waters.

Shortly after the breaking out of the war, the naval depart-
ment of the Confederacy began experiments of various sorts with
floating batteries and naval rams, many of which were conducted
under the supervision of Lieutenant Catesby ApR. Jones. The
name of Lieutenant Jones, together with that of Lieutenant John
M. Brooke, the inventor of the " Brooke gun," and deviser of the
plan by which the hull of the frigate Virginia was converted
into the ironclad Merrimac, deserve mention along with Maury
and Buchanan, as being the men who probably did most toward
rendering the naval appliances of the Confederates effective.
English and French officers who witnessed the fight in Hampton
Roads of March 8, 1862, when the Merrimac sunk what were then
considered as among the finest war ships, remarked to a Confed-
erate naval officer, Captain H. B. Littlepage : " We have not a war
ship in our navy ; a wooden ship is no longer a war ship ; that
fight will rebuild and remodel the navies of the world." " The
British navy," says Captain Littlepage, " which cost hundreds of
millions of dollars, was as effectually destroyed on that eventful
8th of March as was the noble old Cumberland, sunk to her top-
sail yards by the Merrimac's ram, a weapon practically unknown
before. The 9th of March but emphasized the value and impor-
tance of iron-plated vessels, and illustrated two principles in the
construction of war ships which must last for all time — i. e., the
deflecting and turreted armors."

The Confederate Ordnance Department had at its head a
highly competent officer, Colonel Gorgas, and through a system
of rigid civil-service examinations a set of efficient men were
obtained. In the early part of the war, before the blockade be-
came stringent, ordnance stores were purchased in Europe, and
these, with what were captured from the enemy, were used.
Many instances might be cited to show the difficulties that were
gone through with to supply the army, such as the making of
percussion caps for the last year of the war (the Confederates be-
ing armed entirely with muzzle-loaders) out of turpentine and
brandy stills gathered in North Carolina, the only copper mines
in the South having fallen into the hands of the enemy. Another

388 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

illustration was the substitution of chlorate of potash and sul-
phuret of antimony for mercury to fill the caps, the latter not
being obtainable. These and many other similar facts might be
quoted to confirm the statement of Colonel William Leroy Brouii,
the head of the Richmond Arsenal, and at present the superin-
tendent of the Alabama Polytechnic Institute, that "when we
consider the absence of manufactories and machinery and of
skilled mechanics in the South at the beginning of the war, its
[the Ordnance Department] successfully furnishing ordnance sup-
plies for so large an army during the four eventful years is a
striking instance of the wonderful energy and resources and
abilities of its people to overcome difficulties." We have but to
look at the table of manufacturing establishments in the South at
present, in comparison with past years, to realize the rapid in-
crease in that line and the growth of skilled labor that must in-
evitably accompany it. From 1880 till the present there has been
a wonderful forward movement. Data have not yet been collected
in full by the Census Department for 1890, but the bulletins issued
on the principal Southern cities all show a large increase in the
number of plants of every sort, and the cities of Memphis, Nash-
ville, New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, Richmond, Norfolk, Savan-
nah, Augusta, and Baltimore, all of them more than doubled, and
some of them more than quadrupled the amount of capital invested
in manufacturing enterprises between 1880 and 1890. Railroad
mileage in the South increased from 23,811 miles in 1881 to 44,805
in 1891, and the number of cotton mills during the same period
from 161 to 356. All of these facts speak for themselves, and
need no comment to point out their influence upon the future.
Another potent factor, in its influence in stimulating invention
in the future, is the great increase in industrial and polytechnic
schools in the South, and the attention now paid to the study of
natural science, which was formerly neglected for the classics.
As has been recently pointed out in an interesting article by
Prof. Charles W. Dabney, in the early days of American history
the preachers were the learned men and the leaders in educational
work. Nearly all the older colleges were the offspring of the
churches, and in the South this continued to be the case, not only
down to the period of the war, but for a decade afterward. The
University of Virginia, one of the few institutions not under
church influence, was naturally the first to open advanced scien-
tific departments. It may be mentioned also that this university
was the first in the Union where the elective system was intro-
duced, in contradistinction to the curricular method in vogue
elsewhere. Harvard and other Northern colleges have in late
years modeled their courses much after the Virginia plan. The
South has also within its borders probably the first college in the

INVENTION AND INDUSTRY AT THE SOUTH. 389

world to confer a degree upon a woman. The higher education
of females was undertaken at an early date in Georgia, and the
Georgia Female Institute, opened in 1839, is "believed to have pre-
ceded both Oberlin and Mount Holyoke in granting degrees to
women. Of late years there has been a marked improvement in
the number and character of educational institutions of all sorts
in the South, but the most significant change is in the number of
technological schools, scarcely one of which was in existence twenty
years ago. Prof. Dabney quotes the reports of the United States
Bureau of Education for 1888 and 1889, which show that there
were at that time " a total of twenty-eight schools, or departments
of schools, giving regular instruction in science and technology,
an average of over two for each State." If the list of patents
taken out by residents of the different States for the past century
shows that the South has been considerably behind in the race,
the more recent statistics are suggestive of a different result in the
near future. The following figures give the number of patents
granted residents of the Southern States for the years named:
1860, 667 ; 1870, 1,469 ; 1880, 2,656 ; 1885, 1,633 ; 1890, 3,159.

If it be asked what in the future will be the effect of negro
labor and the race problem on the South, the answer is that there
will be no negro labor and no race problem, for the very good
reason that there will be no negro there. This will doubtless
strike the average reader as a bold and perhaps absurd predic-
tion, but every circumstance points to its fulfillment. The idea is
by no means new, and Jefferson, probably the prof oundest political
philosopher of his country, a strong opponent of slavery, and it
should be added a resident of a slaveholding State, and whose
knowledge of the institution was actual, not theoretical, long ago
gave this as his opinion. He asserted that nothing was more cer-
tainly written in the book of fate than that the negro was to be
free, and he added that it was equally certain that when free the
two races would not continue to live side by side. This was also
the view of Calhoun, who, while unlike Jefferson a proslavery
man, held his opinion as regards the impossibility of the two races
continuing together after emancipation. The industrial condi-
tions of the South at present point clearly to the realization of
these prophecies at a period not far distant. We hear and talk
much of the conflict between capital and labor. We forget that
the real conflict is not between capital and labor, but between
labor and labor. No race has ever stood in the way of the Anglo-
Saxon in his onward march, and it is not probable that the negro
race, among the lowest in the scale of civilization, is to be the
sole exception to that rule. As the poor white of the South, re-
enforced by the laborer from the North, enters more and more
into the field as a competitor with the negro, the latter will meet

390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with an antagonist that must sooner or later press him to the
wall, and in conformity to his racial instincts the African will
move on farther and farther southward.

The number of farms at the South has increased rapidly since
the war. This does not mean more land, but the subdivision of
the larger estates of the past into smaller holdings, and an in-
crease in the number of white yeoman farmers who do their own
labor. Besides these circumstances, the census of 1890, contrary to
the general idea, showed that the natural rate of increase of popu-
lation among the Southern whites over the negro was almost in
the ratio of two to one. The effect of this excess of white in-
crease is apparent, and besides it is by no means probable that
the white inhabitants of the South are not to be added to by
large immigration from the North. The granting of the suffrage
to the negro, partly through a misguided and in part a pretended
friendship, will aid to further his displacement, for his aspira-
tions as a politician have not been favorable to his success as a
laborer and the betterment of his material condition. Neither
the sword and bayonet nor plague and pestilence are necessary to
a work of uprooting, for by a natural racial and economic law
the negro will be driven out and supplanted by the white, and
Louis Blanc's theory of extermination be illustrated as never be-
fore. There was a certain fitness in the emancipation proclama-
tion being signed, when it came to be, by Abraham Lincoln, a
representative of that class of Southern whites upon whom the
institution of slavery had borne most hardly, and who were
crowded out of the slaveholding districts. Time and the de-
velopments of the future will show more and more that in slav-
ery the negro found his preservation, but the laboring white his
curse. The historian Green tells us that after the Norman con-
quest there was among the English people " an immense outburst
of material and intellectual activity/' and that " the long men-
tal inactivity of feudal Europe broke up like ice before a summer
sun." It would be anything but correct to refer to the " mental
inactivity " of the ante-bellum South, for in the lines that its
talents were exerted it showed an ability fully equal to that of
any other section, but the incubus upon its material growth, and
the problems which then demanded its intellectual energies, are
now in a large measure removed ; and we may say of the South,
as Green does of the England of King John, that it is " quickened
with a new life and throbbing with a new energy." We need
not fear the effects of an enervating climate or Southern sun.
The upper tier of Southern States and the Southern Appalachian
region form probably the best climate on the Atlantic side of the
continent, and in the more Southern States, such as Alabama and
Louisiana, while the summers are longer, yet the heat of the sun

LEGAL PREVENTIVES OF ALCOHOLISM. 391

is not as oppressive as in the North, though the air is as "balmy as
that of Italy. History does not show that a softer air and sky
are less favorable to intellectual growth in any line than a more
harsh and uncongenial clime. Italy is not only the land of
Michael Angelo, of Raphael, and of Titian, but of Volta, Galvani,
Torricelli, and Galileo as well, and the atmosphere that excites
the imagination is as favorable to inventive genius, as applied to
natural science or mechanics, as to painting, sculpture, or music.
Of the Southern States we may say that no section of the Union
gives promise of greater achievement ; indeed, none is so rich in
what the future has in store.

LEGAL PREVENTIVES OF ALCOHOLISM.*

BY M. J. BEEGEKON.

WE have met to study together the means of combating alco-
holism, to which we can not refuse the well-merited title
of the scourge of the nineteenth century, for it has produced and
is still producing more victims than the plague and the cholera
combined. We all know that it is what multiplies assassinations
and suicides, populates insane asylums, crowds hospitals, and
contributes to the sterilization of the race. We are not here to
repeat what has been said over and over again till it has become
tedious, since the days of Magnus Hus, or to indulge in sterile
lamentations over the ravages of alcoholism, but to seek a remedy
for the terrible evil.

I do not bring you this remedy, but come to ask for it ; for I
hope that this congress — more fortunate than its predecessors —
may be able, if not to shape the details of a law or of measures
applicable to all civilized states, at least to point out, in a more
precise fashion than has hitherto been done, a way to reach most
promptly and surely the end we are all aiming for. We ought
then, first, to inquire into what has already been attempted in
some of the states of Europe : and I shall begin with the country
I know the best, France, which has not, more than the northern
states, escaped the invasion of alcoholism. It is of recent origin
there, it is true, but its progress has been frightfully rapid ; yet it
was not till after the delirium and crime of the Commune, during
which it played a terrible part, that our thoughts became fixed
on the study of the means of arresting the spread of the scourge.

It was toward the end of 1871 that M. Thdophile Roussel pre-

* A paper read at the Fourth International Congress against the Abuse of Alcoholic
Drinks, held at The Hague in August, 1893.

392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sented and secured the adoption by the National Assembly of a
law against intoxication ; and about the same time, too, the Acad-
emy of Medicine commissioned me to prepare an Advice to the
People on the dangers of the abuse of alcoholic drinks ; and that
the lamented Lunier, seeking to carry out practically a conclu-
sion of my Report on Vinage, organized the French Temperance
Society. But the law against intoxication, executed leniently
from its promulgation, soon fell into desuetude ; * the Advice to
the People has been a dead letter ; and I am obliged to confess that
the Temperance Society, which decorated me after two years of
presidency of it with the title of honorary president, in spite of
the zeal and talent of its general secretary, M. Motet, drags on a
precarious and obscure existence, and has, I believe, accomplished
to the present time nothing more than to reward a few brave men
who have remained sober, without diminishing by a single indi-
vidual the number of drunken men.

The state has attempted to intervene in the struggle against
the progress of the evil no further than to raise the taxes on alco-
hol to an amount which seems exorbitant, but is still much lower
than the tax the English consumer pays ; but this increase has
exercised no influence on the consumption, which, on the other
hand, has not ceased to advance, as it has also done in England
since the establishment of the new taxes.

We might apparently base great hopes on the reduction of
the taxes on the substances entering into the preparation of hy-
gienic drinks, such as coffee and tea, and of the sugar tax. In-
deed, I think that these are excellent measures, and of advantage
to sober persons accustomed to these salutary drinks to the ex-
clusion of intoxicating liquors ; but I hardly believe that they are
of such a nature as to cause drinkers of alcohol to give up their
favorite beverage, or to secure youth, workmen, or others from
the attractions of the inn, where more alcohol and distilled liquors
are sold than wine.

The consumer can not be induced to use coffee and tea instead
of alcohol, unless he can find in those hygienic drinks the excita-
tion which alcohol and all the mischievous preparations of which
it is the base will procure for him. Now, this excitation of the
brain is the source of all the harm. To beginners, who as yet use
alcoholic drinks with moderation, they give the agreeable sensa-

* In the first years following the promulgation of the law against public intoxication,
there were drawn up annually from eighty thousand to ninety thousand indictments for
violation ; since 1885 the number of prosecutions has fallen off one half; it varies between
forty-five thousand and fifty thousand ; and it is to this relaxation in repression that we
should attribute the diminution in the number of indictments, and not to progress in tem-
perance, for the ravages of alcoholism keep on increasing.

LEGAL PREVENTIVES OF ALCOHOLISM. 393

tion of seeing everything on the good side, and of experiencing
a momentary augmentation of strength. We should not be sur-
prised, therefore, to find that people who have for the first time
felt this sensation are tempted to seek it anew, and to ask of it
continually a forgetting, even though it "be only momentary, of
the difficulties of life, of the fatigues of their occupation, and the
illusion of a greater capacity for work which neither tea nor cof-
fee will ever procure for them.

We might, therefore, regard the reduction of the duties on
wines as a suitable measure for diminishing the ravages of alco-
holism. I believe, in fact, that even the abuse of wine, supposing
it to be pure from all addition of alcohol, is not so injurious as
even the moderate use of alcoholic drinks ; but, with wine the
drinker will obtain the excitation he seeks only by drinking con-
siderable quantities, while a small portion of alcohol suffices for
producing, at less expense, the desired effect.

Rational as these different measures may be, I consider them
powerless so long as the drinker of alcohol can find everywhere,
at every hour and every step, a shop for the sale of his favorite
beverage. To suppose them efficacious in the present state of
affairs — that is, with unlimited liberty to every one to open a shop
— is to expect on the part of the drinker, and especially for one to
whom life is a hard trial, a moral constraint and an effort of
reason of which he is incapable, at least in many mediums and
under many social conditions. For this reason, without discredit-
ing the results which may be reached by adjustment of taxation,
I am still convinced that the surest means of restraining the
drinker swiftly descending into alcoholism, and of preventing the
fall of those as yet unacquainted with the mischievous seductions
of the infirmity, is, first of all, to protect him against the tempta-
tion ; then, if the measures which I shall call prophylactic fail, to
inflict a punishment upon him proportionate to the gravity of his
offense ; and I am obliged to acknowledge with regret that noth-
ing serious has been as yet done in France in either of these direc-
tions. Norwegian legislation, on the contrary, appears to me to
be admirably conceived from the point of view of prophylactics.
In Norway, whoever wishes to open a liquor shop must ask per-
mission from the municipality, which may refuse it. In order to
take away all retroactive effect, they had, in the beginning, to ex-
empt dealers already established from the necessity of obtaining
a permit ; but when the successive extinctions did not diminish
the number of shops fast enough, the municipalities were au-
thorized to expropriate, on condition of indemnifying them, a
suitable number of the existing shops.

This is evidently a measure which might give salutary results
in every country, provided the municipalities are sufficiently im-

394 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pressed with the importance of the object sought, and comprehend
that it is nothing less than to save the country from a serious
peril.

A priori, we might hope much from the Gothenburg system,
which consists chiefly in intrusting the management of the public
houses to temperance men, who, in selling alcoholic drinks, the
use of which it is very hard to suppress completely in northern
countries, and giving them to consumers only in proportions
compatible with the maintenance of health, should make every
endeavor especially to induce their customers to prefer tea and
coffee. But I do not know whether this system has been greatly
extended or has been generalized, with good results. I believe,
however, that the most radical measure, and the one that has been
most efficacious, is that of giving to municipal councils the right
of absolutely prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors. Where
this system is in operation we may sometimes go considerable
distances, it is said, without finding a single liquor shop. If a less
restrictive rule is adopted, the prohibition of the sale on religious
holidays, and before eight o'clock in the morning and after six in
the evening on working days, can not but contribute to the suc-
cess of a campaign like that so intelligently undertaken and ener-
getically conducted by Norway. Whatever part may have been
contributed by each of these measures to the realized results, it is
a fact testifying eloquently to their efficiency that in that country
the consumption of alcohol, which was in 1843 eight litres per in-
habitant, has fallen to 1*70 litre, while in France it is now four
litres, having risen, since 1850, from only 1*45 litre. In Germany
the taxes on liquors are light, although they have recently been
quadrupled ; but increase of taxes has not brought about any
reduction in consumption, which is 4*5 litres per inhabitant. On
the other hand, it should not be forgotten that no serious effort
has been made there until recently to contend against the scourge.
It is announced, however, that the Government, struck with the
dangers threatening the people by the increase of alcoholism, is
preparing new legislation which will apply to sellers and con-
sumers. For dealers it requires a license which will be granted
only when competent authorities are satisfied of the need of the
shop, or are given incontestable moral guarantees ; prohibits their
selling on credit, declaring all debts contracted for liquors null ;
forbids sales to children less than thirteen years old and to in-
intoxicated persons ; and makes them responsible for disorders oc-
curring in their establishments, with penalties consisting of fines
or imprisonment for not more than four weeks.

The new system affects consumers through the measures it
provides for the protection of society and families against injury
from drunkards. The principal of these measures are, besides the

LEGAL PREVENTIVES OF ALCOHOLISM. 395

pecuniary punishment for the public scandal of a man in a state
of intoxication, removal to a special establishment for victims of
alcoholism, and putting the drunkard under guard if he shows
himself unfit to manage his affairs, or misbehaves in a way
to imperil the safety of third persons. While the dealers do not
accept with good grace a measure which will so greatly compro-
mise their interests, and are petitioning against it, the women see
in it a hope for the salvation of their families, and are also cir-
culating petitions in which it is declared that when the free use
of alcoholic drinks, often adulterated, is energetically prevented,
prosperity will return to the homes of numerous workmen. The
women are right this time, and I would sign their petition with
both hands ; and I wish that our French women might form a
league for the same purpose, which might perhaps awaken our
legislators from their indifference.

Austria has increased the tax on intoxicating drinks, and has
endeavored to limit the number of public houses ; but I have no
documents at hand from which I can learn the effect of these
measures. Belgium has not adopted any restrictive law except
one against intoxication, and the consumption of liquors there has
risen to twelve litres per inhabitant, while public houses have
multiplied till there is now an average of one for every forty-
three inhabitants, and in some places one for every twenty-four,
or for every five or six adults. In the grand duchy of Luxemburg
the number of drinking shops has become so excessive that a
law has been promulgated raising the license fees and subjecting
dealers to a tax proportioned to the number of inhabitants, with
a proviso for considering the debts of the concern in fixing the
fees.

Coming now to the Netherlands, I am glad to be able to recog-
nize the wise enactments which your legislators have given you.
They have thought, without doubt, and with strong reasons, in
my opinion, that all fiscal measures would be ineffective so long
as anybody or everybody should be at liberty to offer these mis-
chievous drinks to the public. They have, therefore, prudently
prohibited the combination of the trade in drink with a wholly
different trade ; and I appreciate this feature all the more because
I see in France every trade, whatever be itS nature, serving as a
pretext for the sale of liquor, so that every person entering a
shop, without thinking of harm, to buy food or any other goods,
is exposed to the temptation of drinking alcohol, which he finds
displayed before him. I am not, however, completely informed
concerning the value of the results which this plan has brought
forth. I have no data for comparing the statistics of the time
before the measure was adopted and those following it, and the
only statistics I have relate to the proportion of the victims of

396 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

alcohol per hundred of insane ; from these it appears that after
suffering a slight diminution on the application of the law, the
proportion rose between 1878 and 1882.

From this summary I find that of the measures so far adopted
against alcoholism those have produced the most important re-
sults which, taking account of human weakness and of the hard-
ships of the struggle for existence in certain classes, have aimed
to remove from the man the occasion for falling, in the adoption
of which Norway leads among European states.

The repression which appears to me to be indispensable has so
far played only a very secondary part ; but I acknowledge that
the German project presents a collection of repressive measures
which may be of real efficiency.

If I could venture to formulate a few principles as the basis of
legislation against alcoholism, I should propose : aiming at the
dealers by limiting their number to a pro rata of the normal needs
of the population ; raising the license fee to the highest possible
amount; giving license, as the German plan contemplates, only to
persons of known morality ; imposing on them, by a system of in-
spections and frequent analyses of their stock, the obligation to
sell only completely rectified spirits ; prohibiting their selling on
credit, and declaring drink debts null ; forbidding their selling to
youths of less than twenty years of age ; making them responsible
for all mischief committed by persons coming from their establish-
ments ; and absolutely refusing license to all commercial establish-
ments other than those especially devoted to the sale of liquors.

If we add to this an increase of the taxes on alcohol large
enough to make the price of a glass too high for the man's purse,
complemented with a reduction of the taxes on natural wines, tea,
coffee, and sugar ; supplementing this with frequent lectures on
the benefits of sobriety and the anatomical injuries and physio-
logical disorders produced by alcohol ; and especially if we
endeavor to preserve the rising generation from promiscuous
associations and the corruption of the great centers, and instill
into their hearts from infancy the principles of sound morals ;
and if the repressive laws against intoxication are rigorously
executed the penalties against it are faithfully inflicted, and
the protection of children against demoralization and abuse by
unworthy parents which I have had introduced into our laws
is guarded, we may perhaps see the rising wave of alcoholism
recede.

This is the course, in my opinion, upon which those govern-
ments which, having assured the grandeur of their countries, per-
ceive how it is threatened by alcoholism and how urgent is the
necessity of arresting the progress of the vice, should now reso-
lutely enter.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ALUMINUM. 397

I do not know all the obstacles that may interfere in different
countries against the efforts of the state to remove the danger. I
know that in France and Germany the good intentions of the
Government and Chambers will be strongly opposed by the inn-
keepers ; but I know, too, that no obstacles are insurmountable to
a political power strongly impenetrated with love of its country.
— Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue
Scientifique.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ALUMINUM.

BY M. J. FLEUEY.

AT the Universal Exposition of 1855 appeared for the first
time an ingot of that silver-white metal from clay, as Sir
Henry Roscoe called it. Aluminum does not seem to have at-
tracted much attention from the public at that time. When it
was exhibited again at London in 1862 and at Paris in 1867, in
the shape of utensils of every sort, and jewelry, it had at first a
success of curiosity, provoked by its extraordinary lightness of
weight. But the difficulty of its manufacture and the consequent
high price at which it was held, the delicacy of its color so easily
soiled, caused it to be gradually abandoned in some of the arts,
for which it was at first thought a new resource had been discov-
ered. Its alloy with copper, aluminum bronze, notwithstanding
its remarkable qualities of resistance and its beautiful golden
color, hardly kept its place in industrial practice. Perhaps alu-
minum would have passed out of mention, except in laboratories,
where its place is always marked, if its early history had not been
associated with that of the progress of electricity, and if, by the
aid of this new agent, its manufacture had not become so easy
and so economical as to permit a considerable extension of its
applications, and to provoke a revival of the hopes which had wel-
comed its beginning. These hopes are reasonable and are founded
on the solid basis of the most serious scientific considerations.
We have a right to expect much from this metal, an extensive
use of it, and its substitution in many cases for others now at our
service, provided it can be furnished at a price corresponding with
that of other materials known in the arts.

• Whether it presents itself in the earth of colors varying from
yellow to brown, of which our fields are composed ; or showing
itself pure white, as in kaolin, clay is nothing else than a combi-
nation of alumina, silica, water, and other foreign bodies in varying
proportions. Of this abundant earth, which forms approximately
about half of the crust of the globe, the mass is about equally
divided between silica the substance of rock crystal, and alumina ;

398 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and this, in turn with its earthy appearance, is oxide of aluminum.
This metal, therefore, constitutes nearly a sixth part of the soil
on which we spend our lives. The most abundant of all the
metals, it is at the same time the one that is nearest to us. Thus
alumina, and consequently aluminum, is literally under our feet —
clay, of which it is the principal component, being found nearly
everywhere. Rarely, and scattered in the masses of the rocks,
precious gems may be found — emeralds, amethysts, sapphires,
rubies, and topazes — which are only alumina, nearly pure in
corundum, but alloyed with a little magnesia or lime in spinel.

It was not till modern chemistry was born that it became pos-
sible to separate aluminum from its earth. Carbon, which had
been the chief agent for isolating the known metals from oxy-
gen, was not effective in separating the elements of alumina ; and
even the electrical process with which Sir Humphry Davy pro-
duced sodium and potassium failed here. A roundabout process
was devised. Oersted converted the intractable oxides of alu-
minum and magnesium, also not yet conquered, into chlorides,
and Woehler decomposed them with potassium, taking advantage
of the superior affinity of that metal for chlorine. Applying
potassium to chloride of aluminum in the crucible, he obtained
metallic aluminum and chloride of potassium. It appeared as a
grayish dust, with a few globules, the largest of which was not
bigger than a pinhead. From this small quantity only an incom-
plete determination of the properties of the element could be
made. A more exact description was reserved for Henri Sainte-
Claire Deville, who repeated Woehler's experiment in 1854. For
the rare, expensive, difficult, and somewhat dangerous potassium
he substituted sodium, which he found a simple method of ex-
tracting from sea salt ; and instead of clay, the use of which re-
quired a preliminary separation of the silica and the alumina, he
employed hydrated alumina, known as bauxite, of which consid-
erable beds were worked in France for the manufacture of alum.
Under the direct action of chlorine, a mixture of bauxite and sea
salt became a double chloride of sodium and aluminum. The
addition to this mixture, at the melting point, of the proper quan-
tity of sodium, caused a separation of the aluminum, which col-
lected in the bottom of the crucible. By remelting, the metal was
cleared of most of its impurities and greater cohesion was given
to its molecules, so that it could be cast into ingots. All this in-
volved great expense, and the investigation could not have been
effectively continued had not Napoleon III come to the chemist's
aid with some of the unlimited funds of which he had the con-
trol. The next year, June 18, 1855, Jean Baptiste Dumas presented
to the Academy of Sciences the first ingot of aluminum made in
an industrial shop.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ALUMINUM. 399

Under more extensive manufacture the metal has been studied
at ease, and its physical and chemical properties have been ex-
actly determined. It is silver-white, but little changed by the air,
which gives it a slightly bluish tinge — except when it contains
iron. Its most striking quality, and one which makes it most
suitable for a large number of industrial applications, is its light-
ness of weight. Its density varies from 2'56, when it is in a mol-
ten condition, to 2'71, when its particles have been consolidated by
hammering, and its mean density may be put at about 2'60 — that
is, it weighs about two and a half times as much as water, while
steel is nearly three times as heavy, and copper three and a half
times, silver four times, and gold nearly eight times ; so that four
times as many articles can be made from a given weight of alumi-
num as from the same weight of silver. In many cases one metal
may be substituted for the other without inconvenience. While
not so hard as gold or silver, aluminum is equally malleable and
ductile : it can be beaten into thin pellicles that a breath will blow
away, with which objects can be aluminum-coated as they are
gilded. It can be drawn into wires finer than a hair, and yet so
firm and supple that they can be woven with silk. It is less fusi-
ble than zinc and more so than silver, and is easy, therefore, to cast
and mold. Although very sonorous, it has not yet been success-
fully cast into bells, because the repeated strokes of the hammer
make it hard and brittle ; but the tuning forks made from it are
satisfactory to musical artists. The sulphurets, which blacken
silver so quickly, are without action on aluminum. Similarly in-
sensible to organic secretions, it lends itself to the making of cer-
tain surgical apparatus. Ingenious tubes have been made from
it which permit patients who have been operated upon for tra-
cheotomy to breathe, and American dentists have utilized it in the
construction of their modern apparatus. It is equally fitted for
making into plate and kitchen utensils, for which its specific
lightness makes its use convenient. Its conductibility for both
heat and electricity authorizes us to predict a fine future for it.
It is, it is true, an inferior conductor to gold and silver, about
as good as copper, and twice as good as iron ; hence an aluminum
wire will carry twice as great a quantity of electricity in a given
time as an iron wire ; or, to carry an equal quantity the aluminum
wire need be only half as large ; and aluminum being only one
third as heavy as iron, it will have to be only one sixth as heavy.
These properties should, were the cost equalized, make aluminum
vastly more available for telegraphic and other electric wires than
iron. Furthermore, aluminum not being acted upon by the air,
galvanization, which is necessary for the preservation of iron
wire, could be dispensed with.

Aluminum is, however, inferior to iron and steel in tenacity,

400 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the quality of resisting the forces of pulling, bending, and twist-
ing, which tend to break the metal or separate its molecules.
Equal volumes of aluminum and cast iron have about the same
power of resistance to these actions. That of copper is not quite
double, but that of wrought iron is more than three times, and
that of steel about five times as great. For purposes, therefore,
where this quality is demanded, aluminum offers no advantages ;
but there are numerous other uses in which the question of a
greater or less resistance is of no interest ; and the other qualities
of aluminum — its ductility, conductibility, and lightness — may be
dominant reasons for employing it. Its use has hitherto been lim-
ited by the consideration of cost.

This difficulty is fast passing away as improved processes are
applied, and the use of aluminum has been greatly extended and
diversified since Sainte-Claire Deville exhibited the first manu-
factured specimen. In 1856 it cost one hundred and eighty dol-
lars a kilogramme ; the next year Deville was able to prepare it at
La Glaciere under more favorable conditions, and the price fell
to sixty dollars. A year afterward the factory was removed to
Salindres, where fuel and bauxite were within convenient reach.
The price gradually fell ; cryolite, a new aluminum mineral, dis-
covered in Greenland, was introduced, and the metal cost only
eighteen dollars a kilogramme in 1883. The manufacture was
undertaken at several places in England, with improved processes
based on the method of Sainte-Claire Deville. Mr. Castner devised
a method of producing sodium by which the cost of that metal was
largely reduced, and the price of aluminum suffered another fall.
Then Mr. C. Netto devised a direct process for producing sodium
by exposing pulverized caustic soda to the action of incandescent
charcoal, and the cost of aluminum fell to seven dollars a kilo-
gramme.

The brightest promises for the future of aluminum are offered
through the electrical processes. When the flame of the voltaic
arc is turned upon a mixture of pulverized mineral and charcoal
a fusion takes place, and the metal, relieved by dissociation, flows
out fluid, limpid, and brilliant. So fine a result, however, can be
obtained only under the most favorable conditions, to secure
which, not always with certainty, great pains are required. An
easier process is to turn the voltaic arc, not upon the pulverized
mixture, but upon a bath of mineral substances which have been
previously brought to a condition of igneous fusion, as is done
in the Cowles electrical process. Complex phenomena are then
produced, both calorific and chemical. Important factories have
been established for obtaining by this process both pure alu-
minum and its alloys with other metals, particularly with iron
and copper. By it the company at Pittsburg obtained almost

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF ALUMINUM. 401

chemically pure aluminum from the crude bauxites and corun-
dums of which considerable quantities have been discovered in
the northern United States. The factory at Neuhausen utilizes a
part of the falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen for the propulsion
of powerful turbines which directly work the dynamos whence
electricity is obtained for the production of aluminum and its
alloys. Important manufacturing centers have also been estab-
lished in England and Germany, and there are some in France.

By these new methods, which are still susceptible of improve-
ment, a considerable saving over the old purely chemical processes
is gained in the treatment of the minerals. In either case the
chief effective agent is heat, and it is utilized far more completely
in the electrical furnaces than in the older furnaces, which were
subject to many cooling influences. Not more than four hundred
grammes of coal burned in the furnace of a steam engine driving
a dynamo will produce electrical energy sufficient to isolate in
a molten electrolyte one kilogramme of aluminum. More than
twenty times as much would have been required in the old chem-
ical process. By virtue of this better utilization of heat, with
greater profection in the equipment and management of the
shops, the price of aluminum has continued to decline, till it is
now very near the point when the metal can be profitably applied
to the fabrication of many articles.

The alloys of aluminum now occupy a high position in practi-
cal industry. Aluminum bronzes and platings, lighter and more
tenacious and more resisting than copper, and conducting heat
and electricity better, will take its place. The new shops are also
working for the production of cast and malleable iron, and they
are in request by smiths for refining cast iron and steel.

The metallurgy of iron is now an exact science as well as an
industry. Informed by analysis of the exact composition of the
elements that enter into the fusion-bed, and of the character of
the products at each moment of the operation, the metallurgist
can determine with accuracy what be must eliminate and what
add to give his product the quality required for the use to which
it is to be put. A few hundredths of alloy will decide what it
shall be. A little chromium will render artillery projectiles proof
against breaking ; nickel increases the resisting power of sheath-
ings. Introduced at the right time into the Bessemer converter
or the Martin furnace, a small proportion of the alloy of iron and
aluminum communicates to the melted metal a fluidity which
facilitates the disengagement of the gases that would otherwise
remain imprisoned in the metallic bath, producing blow-holes,
and destroying homogeneity and resistance in large pieces.

New uses are constantly found for the pure metal ; less em-
ployed in jewelry, it is more used in the modest ranks of plated

VOL. XLIV. — 31

4o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

•ware and kitchen vessels. In Germany it has been introduced
experimentally into the equipment of soldiers. Its alloy with the
rare metal titanium, while still light, is very hard and tough.
Could not picks, bayonets, sabers, and mess plates, imposing
lighter loads on foot-soldiers, be made of it ? The Russian army
tried horseshoes of aluminum, and the horses of the Finnish
dragoons, on which the experiment was made, are said to have
gained perceptibly in speed by it. It has been introduced into
machines, to reduce the dead weight — a gain of special value for
aerial navigation and for cyclers. A canoe entirely of aluminum,
hull and machinery, has been launched on the lake of Geneva,
and suggests a new resource for the bold explorers of rivers with
numerous rapids in Africa and elsewhere. Its application to
aerostats is talked of.

The supposition is consistent with past experiences that new
wants will arise as the means of satisfying them increase, and
that the new metal, without infringing upon the domains of its
predecessors, will in some way create the uses for which it will be
employed. A salient fact in the history of the aluminum in-
dustry is the rigorously scientific character of the progressive
steps in the discovery and production of the metal. Nothing has
come about by chance, but all is the work of human intelligence.
— Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Revue des

Deux Mondes.

**+

ELISEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS.

BY Miss HELEN ZIMMERN,

EDITOB OF TUB FLORENCE GAZETTE.

IT is strange how sometimes two men distinctly different seem
to reside in the same person. Who would believe it at first
sight that Elisde Reclus, the eminent geographer, the careful, accu-
rate, and scientific writer, should also be an anarchist of the most
pronounced and uncompromising type — the man who actually re-
gards Ravochal, the perpetrator of the outrage last winter at the
Cafe" Very at Paris, as a great man who died for his principles
without betraying his friends ? This great, large-brained enthusi-
ast and kindly human being has unfortunately got this bee in
his bonnet, a moral twist, that hinders him from seeing that the
wrongs of mankind can not be righted by laws or lawlessness,
but are inherent in the very constitution of our globe and of our
imperfect organization. In a perfect world, with perfect inhab-
itants, a perfect society, perfect conditions would follow as a
necessary corollary. But when a great man goes astray it is al-
ways interesting to try and discern the why and wherefore. It
is on this account that in this article we deal rather with Reclus

ELISEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS. 403

the theorician than Reclus the eminent geographer, whose fasci-
nating books on geography have vivified a science too often pre-
sented in dull and lifeless shape before the world. As great a
geographer as Humboldt, he surpasses him in the fact that, like
all Frenchmen, and unlike most Germans (and Humboldt was no
exception), he is a fine stylist. His eloquent, graceful periods
make even dry dissertations pleasant reading. Had he not held
such extreme opinions he might have attained even greater fame,
if this be possible. In any case we might have had more scientific
books from his pen had he not given so much time to writing and
speaking on his hobby. As this hobby reveals the man, may we
expose it in these pages, without, however, on that account com-
mitting ourselves to any idea that we share them or wish to com-
mend them to our readers. But a psychological study is always
worth making, especially when the subject is so eminent and
world-known. Before laying before our readers Reclus's mature
opinions, let us cast a glance over his past.

Elise'e Reclus is the son of a French Protestant minister, one of
twelve children, of whom several have distinguished themselves
in various departments. With a father so overweighted with an
enormous progeny it is obvious that Reclus early made acquaint-
ance with the pinch of poverty, for to maintain such a family in
luxury would drain even the resources of purses deeper than
those of French Protestant pastors. Elise'e was educated in Rhen-
ish Prussia, and his university studies were made at Berlin. It
was no doubt in that city that he became inoculated with rev-
olutionary ideas, for his student life fell in the time of ferment
that preceded the uprising of 1848. Owing to his extreme demo-
cratic opinions, he left France after the coup d'etat of December
2, 1851, and for several years traveled through Europe and
America. It was on his return from these that he first wrote
for 'the Revue des Deux Mondes and other periodicals the ac-
count of his journeys and geographical researches, which at once
placed him in the forefront of all living geographers. But side
by side with these geographical studies he continued to take an
interest in social politics. It was he who was the first to point
out in France the rights and wrongs of the American war of se-
cession. It was he who helped to enlighten French public opinion
concerning the cause defended by Lincoln. In consequence, the
minister of the United States in Paris proposed that, as an ac-
knowledgment of the great services rendered by Reclus, a consid-
erable sum of money should be presented to him. This money the
young learned man indignantly refused, although at the time he
was in great pecuniary straits. He stated that he wrote entirely
that right and liberty might triumph, and not for pecuniary per-
sonal recompense. Soon after this he published his magnificent

4o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

work on physical geography, entitled La Terre ; and about the
same time, to mark his disapproval of the despotism of the em-
pire, he enrolled himself in the ranks of the International. Dur-
ing the siege of Paris he assisted M. Nardar, the well-known
aeronaut, in sending communications out of the city, and also
fought bravely in the National Guard. When the insurrection
of March 18, 1871, broke out, Reclus, after publishing an eloquent
appeal to his countrymen in favor of conciliation, flung in his lot
with the Commune, and was taken prisoner by the Versailles
troops. He was sentenced to transportation for life, after having
been retained prisoner for seven months at Brest, where he occu-
pied himself with giving lessons in algebra and mathematics to
his fellow-prisoners. Meantime, however, the scientific world of
Europe was roused to indignation at the condemnation to perpet-
ual exile of so eminent a man ; and when peace was once more
restored in France, a number of eminent men, among whom fig-
ured the names of Darwin, Wallace, Lord Amberley, and others,
sent in a petition to the head of the French Government, begging
him to consider that in sentencing so eminent a man to transpor-
tation for life he was depriving science of great and incalculable
services. Their petition was listened to, and M. Thiers commuted
the sentence of transportation into one of banishment. Reclus in
consequence went to live in Italy, where he resumed his labors,
and where after a short time he had the sorrow to lose his young
wife, whom he ardently adored, and who had shared his exile.
After this he resided for a time in Switzerland, on the shores of
Lake Geneva, working alternately at his geographical and com-
munistic studies. He refused to return to France before all the
prisoners of the Commune should have been amnestied, an am-
nesty was not granted till 1879. Thus it will be seen that his
scientific labors and his humanitarian endeavors have ever gone
hand in hand, nor is it so very long since he returned to France.
Scarcely had he come back than he gained for himself fresh no-
toriety as the frank initiator of the anti-marriage movement.

He lives in Paris in the greatest retirement, and is in his per-
son a very modest and refined man who hates notoriety above all
things, and dislikes even the idea of being spoken of in a news-
paper or a review ; and nevertheless he is perpetually acting and
writing in a manner that must necessarily draw public attention
to him. He is a friend in heart and idea of Prince Kropotkine,
the celebrated Russian anarchist, and he too styles himself an
anarchist in the true sense of the word as he would explain it
— that is to say, not the man who blows up houses and mur-
ders innocent women and children, but one who wants to change
society and objects to every form of government ; who has no
feeling for country or patriotism, but only for humanity. Prac-

ELI SEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS. 405

tically Reclus never meddles with politics, he cares only for social
questions — outside, of course, the range of his geographical work.
He holds that the Revolution of 1789 destroyed the privileges of
the nobles, but that humanity has not advanced at all, never-
theless, because the bourgeoisie has disadvantageously taken the
place of the aristocracy and usurped their privileges ; hence, that
the people are rather more unfortunate than formerly, because
they know now that they are so. He considers that the state of
society in which there are only what he calls " les satisfaiis " and
" les miserdbles " is a most abominable state of things, and he and
his friend ardently hope that their doctrines will prevail sooner
or later and change the face of things entirely. From every
point of view Reclus is a most sincere, good, and excellent man,
who would not hurt a worm, but would not budge an inch from his
opinions. He has two daughters, and, as he considers marriage a
bondage, he has united them himself to the men they loved. They
were married by him in his own fashion, without any religious or
civil ceremony, in the presence of witnesses. They have children
who bear the father's name, as they also bear it themselves, but
it does not appear that any steps have been taken to legitimize
these children according to the laws of the state. Rumor has it —
but for the accuracy of this rumor we can not vouch — that Reclus
has had to suffer for his departure from the recognized social
forms, for it is said that recently one of these illegal husbands
abandoned the wife thus given to him.

In order that his ideas may be spread among the masses, for
whose instruction they are primarily intended, Reclus has writ-
ten a little pamphlet, which is included in the publications of La
ReVolte, a weekly communist anarchical organ published in Paris.
Among the contributors to this series we find Louise Michel
and the German Most, whose pamphlet bears the uncompromis-
ing title The Plague of Religion. If Reclus, who is now no longer
young, and who less and less likes to be disturbed in his life of re-
tirement, is asked to explain his ideas on social subjects, he has of
late invariably referred his interlocutors to this little booklet, say-
ing that if any one would know exactly what he thinks about
the present state of things, and what he hopes for in the future,
they must read what he has written there, and also read the con-
tribution to the same series of his friend Prince Kropotkine, for
he entirely shares his views. Evolution and Revolution is the
title of Reclus's pamphlet ; Anarchic Morality, that of Prince
Kropotkine. The price of these small pamphlets is ten centimes.
They are bound in a glaring pink cover and printed on villainous
and utterly abominable paper, making us feel that, if this be a
specimen of the aesthetics of the future, we rejoice to think that
that future will not be ours. The matter is in both cases, f ortu-

4o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nately, greatly superior to appearances. Though we may differ
a whole sky's breadth from each of the writers, we can but ac-
knowledge the ability displayed by both. Reclus writes in a
style so pure, so limpid, so exquisite, that we find ourselves read-
ing on and on for the mere pleasure of reading, almost without
pausing to analyze the meaning of what we read. Prince Kro-
potkine's way of writing, on the contrary, is bold, almost rough,
sharp, and incisive, extremely well calculated to impress his
meaning on the memory of his readers. Both works are the very
reverse of reassuring in their tendency. Reclus's fundamental
idea is that " evolution and revolution are by no means contra-
dictory terms ; in fact, that the first includes the second as a greater
includes the less/' " Evolution/' he says, " the symbol of gradual
and continued development in custom and ideas, is ever repre-
sented as if it were the contrary of that terrible thing revolu-
tion, which implies change of a more or less brusque description.
Men discuss the history of evolution, the history of the gradual
development of feeling and intelligence in the depths of cerebral
cells, with apparent and perhaps even sincere enthusiasm. But
woe if some one mention to them the abominable theme of revo-
lution, which issues out from the depths of thought into the
street, accompanied by the roar of crowds and the crash of arms !
But evolution implies revolution, because those classes of society
which possess the advantages which revolution is calculated to
destroy oppose themselves to the peaceful march of evolution,
and thus are the cause of those same violent movements which
they deplore." In melodious tropes Reclus describes these phe-
nomena. Both evolution and revolution, he says, have two faces,
one benignant and one harmful. Religions, which from his point
of view are most undesirable plagues, invented to keep the human
mind in bondage, are but springs ever welling up afresh from
the relics of the past. Thus, Christianity uprose from the relics
of paganism. The American and French Revolutions were the
moments in history when at last the rights of man were pro-
claimed, but their utterance proved barren, for a new privileged
class established itself on the ruins of the old. " It may be said
that until now no revolution has been absolutely spontaneous,
and therefore none has been completely successful. All the great
movements that have occurred up to the present, without excep-
tion, have been more or less directed, and have in consequence
only been successful for the man or class directing ; hence each
has had its morrow of reaction. Now, however, the effects of
social science are recognized by all, and the study of social move-
ments must lead to the logical and instructive progress of the
human race." How a revolution undirected is to succeed does not
appear. " We can only arrive at social peace," says Reclus, " by

ELISEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS. 407

a profound study of the laws of history. The chessboard is "be-
fore us — we have but to win the game." In eloquent pages he then
sets forth the objects of the great general revolution he longs for.
Religion, war, and marriage are denounced in fervent terms ; even
universities and engineers come in for the general denunciation.
Some one must suffer in such a general disturbance — let it be the
rich, say some agitators ; not so, says Reclus, there must be no
suffering class. There will come a day when wisdom shall be
stronger than power, but to this end all bonds must disappear, and
patriotism among the rest. He points out in one passage how the
present French revolution has but assumed the arms and the
ways of the Government it succeeded, and is a despotism in all
but in name. Anarchy, the human ideal, can never come from
the republic, which is a form of government. Science itself has
become the ally of power : witness anthropometry, which he holds
is turning the whole of France into a prison. Hereupon follows
a tirade in praise of the International, with allusions to the
eight-hour movement and the 1st of May. "So the great days
approach ; evolution is finished, revolution will not lag far be-
hind. Is it not accomplished from day to day before our eyes ?
The time will come when evolution and revolution will succeed
each other, when we shall pass from desire to action, from the
idea to the realization; it is thus that life works in a healthy
organization, be it man or the world."

Thus far the thinker Reclus leads us, leaving us at last with
this oracular prediction. The frank, outspoken sentences of
Prince Kropotkine have a less melodious but more powerful
and awakening ring : " Why should I be moral ? " he asks.
" Why is one line of conduct good and another bad ? All the
motives which were placed before us in the past have gone
away." He is as iconoclastic as his companion — nay, more so.
None of the old rules have any force for him, yet even for him
there exists a right and a wrong — the right and wrong of the
hive and of the anthill, in which he sees the only fundamental rule
of right and wrong ; in this not differing at all from Christian
thinkers, who also hold that that which is good for the human
race, which in effect produces or permits the human creature to
obtain the largest amount of pleasure and to submit to the small-
est amount of pain, is good, while its reverse is bad. Very para-
doxical is this Russian prince. Thus, he maintains that in some
forms of society even cannibalism is a virtue, especially the de-
vouring of the aged and infirm. He is decidedly unjust to
Christianity, which enjoins the doing to others as we would they
should do unto us, crediting that system only with an order to
abstain from doing to others that which we do not desire should
be done to us. It seems as if he really anticipated with desire

408 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and appreciation a state of social existence resembling that of the
bees and the ants, though how this is to be reached through the
entire and unchecked development of every human creature, no
matter what his propensities or passions may happen to be, he
does not explain. We will not be governed, he cries ; but should
this not also mean we have no wish to govern ? Like Elise'e
Reclus, he aspires toward the so-called perfect state of society —
the state of things, as painted by them, which the unillumined
intellect can but look upon as most outrageously and abominably
dull, not to say tyrannical. Where in their human anthill or hive
would be the place for such distinguished and brilliant intelli-
gence as their own ? Not even by the help of Richter's delicious
skit, The Social Democratic Future, can one realize what a society
founded upon absolute equality would become. Equality, says
Prince Kropotkine, is equity ; but he forgets that his models, the
bees, destroy one class of their number, and that the ants are as
warlike as the Zulus. In the model society of Reclus and Kro-
potkine the person who has the largest number of moral habits is
the superior, if one may use such a word when the fact is no
longer supposed to exist. They hold that the immensely large
proportion of humanity, if left uncontrolled, would act in a man-
ner useful to their fellow- creatures. It is only the fatal effects
of war and religion which have warped them from this tendency.
This wonderful faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity is
exceedingly touching. Both Reclus and Kropotkine would be
willing to risk trying the experiment of removing all restraint
from the actions of mankind, and it is this perverted, childlike
faith that makes such good men dangerous to society as at pres-
ent constituted. Leave men entirely free, they say ; fear not their
passions. In a society entirely free they offer no danger ; yet in
the same breath they say : " Defend your own liberty, do not let
yourselves be enslaved. Oppose your social passion to the anti-
social passion of your antagonist. The great causes of depriva-
tion— capitalism, religion, law, government — must cease to exist.
The source of morality is the conviction of one's own strength.
Life can only exist on condition of spreading and growing. Be
strong ; overflow with passionate and intellectual energy, and you
will shed over others your intellect, your love, your power of ac-
tion. Behold to what all moral teaching is reduced when freed
from the hypocrisies of Oriental asceticism ! " " Fallen cherub to
be weak is miserable/' says Milton's Satan. " Every one," says
Kropotkine, " has his ideal, and to act in disaccord with this ideal
is to be wretched. Make the good of humanity your ideal, and
morality follows as a matter of course." Such are the ideals of
these studious dreamers — a dreamer's ideals, and realizable only
in a dream.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

409

CORRESPONDENCE.

IMMATERIAL SCIENCE.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :
rT^HE criticism made by Mr. E. S. Moser,
i in his article in the November Monthly,
is undoubtedly sound from the writer's point
of view, which is that of physical science.
And yet there are many persons — for one,
the writer of this letter — who, while recog-
nizing the untenableness from the scientific
standpoint of the positions taken in Prof.
Lusk's article, yet as to the main idea accept
it as true. When Mr. Moser asks, What is
the spirit? he well knows that no answer
can be given in the terms of science. Never-
theless, the one who is put to silence by the
question may have certitude of the reality of
man's spiritual nature.

It seems to the writer that the plain issue
which is raised in this ever-recurring discus-
sion of the natural versus the spiritual is
whether man possesses faculties higher than
the rational faculties, by which he can have
conviction of truth that can not be reached
by deductive reasoning. That there is no in-
herent absurdity in this idea is evident on
the principle of evolution. In the history of
the animal kingdom there was a time when
sentiency was the highest form of mentality
manifested by animals. From animals of
this grade were evolved others of a higher
grade, possessing not only sentiency but also
rationality. Why should there not be a
further evolution, giving rise to another set
of faculties, higher than the rational facul-
ties ? Through the exercise of these higher
faculties man may have certitude of truth
which the rational faculties alone are inca-
pable of attaining.

May we not say that the faculties which
are exercised in the acts of prayer and praise
to a Supreme Being are such higher facul-
ties ? In the ideal human mind — one in
which all the normal faculties have propor-
tionate development — would there not be
such higher faculties ? Who has not expe-
rienced moments when it seemed natural to
pray to God, and others when it seemed nat-
ural to praise him ? And by the exercise of
these higher faculties is there not attained a
certitude of truths which belong to a higher
realm than the truths about material Na-
ture?

Let any one who thinks he must give a nega-
tive answer to these questions before making
a final decision go back in thought to that
stage in the evolution of his animal ancestors
when first a rational nature was being added
'to the powers of sentiency. How long may
not the animals of that stage have hesitated
to be guided by the dawning light of reason ?

how long doubtful of the truths which the
exercise of their newly received faculties
revealed to them ? JAMES H. STOLLER.

UNION COLLEGE, SCHENECTADY, N. Y.,
October 29, 1893.

TAMABILITY OF BIRDS.
Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR : The article in The Popular Science
Monthly for November — Birds' Judgments
of Men — was one that was full of interest for
me by reason of the matter contained in the
article itself, and also because it recalled
some of my own experiences with our little
feathered friends.

Situated, like the house of M. Cunisset-
Carnot, on the outskirts of the city, the one
in which I spent the summer at the time in
question was surrounded by trees of various
kinds. Here the robin, bluebird, finch, ori-
ole, and the sparrow, among others, came
and built their nests season after season
without fear or molestation.

Without doubt the kindness that was uni-
formly shown them and the care with which
all avoided disturbing their nests prepared
the way for the more familiar intercourse I
succeeded in holding afterward with these
cheery little tenants of our woods and fields.

One of the first methods I adopted for
this purpose was to place a number of shelves
in the trees, keeping them always supplied
with foods, taking care as well that it should
be done under their observation. This was
easily performed, as they soon learned to
note any movements on my part with this
object in view.

My first advances were made toward the
English sparrow, that Anglo-Saxon of our
smaller birds. Always on the lookout to
discover and recognize anything that may be
of profit to himself, he is also the first to
take advantage of it, to the exclusion of his
less fearless companions. I taught them to
know my whistle, to come at my call, and to
eat the crumbs I dropped from my hand.
Then I succeeded in having them take their
food from the palm of my outstretched hand.
At last, whatever doubt I might have felt as
to their confidence in my good intentions
was wholly dissipated by seeing them bring
their young to me. These showed no signs
of fear. On the contrary, they appeared to
be as unconcerned about me as the parent
birds that were feeding them at my feet.

They were always on the alert for their
breakfast, flying from different quarters to
my windows when I pushed back the blinds
at rising. If for any cause they remained
closed beyond the usual hour, the presence

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of my little feathered pensioners was made
quite evident by the hail-like pattering of
their feet upon the tinned roof just below,
where they hopped impatiently to and fro
waiting for their matutinal repast.

The English sparrow, by reason of his
domestic habits and acquired capability of
adapting himself to the manifold and vary-
ing circumstances of our city and country
life, has become one of the most knowing
and observing of all our birds. But once a
change in my clothing puzzled them. They
knew my call, but the different color of my
new garments seemed to have changed my
personality. They would fly to me at my
call, flutter about my head, hover over the
food in my hand, and then, perching near by,
would proceed to look me over and over
with the most perplexed and serious air to
fathom the mystery. After a while I estab-
lished my identity and our old confidence
was renewed. Indeed, it had become so
complete that I now felt myself under a spe-
cies of obligation never to disappoint them
in their expectation of food, as they were on
the watch for me whenever I appeared.

With the other birds my success was not
so complete. But this was only what was
to be expected. My attention had been
mostly directed to the sparrow ; the summer
was drawing to a close, and they were seek-
ing more congenial haunts. All, however,
had become more familiar, for they seemed to
have recognized my good will, and so much so
that I feel assured that with the proper pa-

tience and favorable surroundings we can
enter into very close and cordial relations with
many of these little joyous minstrels whose
beauty, song, and winged grace have bright-
ened some hours in most of our lives.

Referring again to the English sgarrow,
it may be interesting to observe that* have
seen him follow the robin about and snatch
from his bill the worms as he pulled them
out of the ground. Why the latter did not
resent such audacious robbery I can not
fancy, unless he knew that " discretion was
the better part of valor " — that any attempt
upon his part to chastise such a questionable
messmate might bring down upon himself a
mob of his companions.

His influence is already perceived in our
streets, from which the once familiar pigeon
is disappearing, as are many of our songsters
from the field and garden, due also to his
omnipresence. There is very little, if any,
poetry or song in his life. His chief pur-
pose seems to be " to possess the land," and
to bring up as large a family as possible.
Yet, while many have learned to regard him
as a " wretched interloper," we can not but
admire his hardihood, his intelligence, and
his plastic instinct, by means of which he
fits himself, like his human prototype, to the
environments of the many regions he has in-
vaded, and where, if the signs be true, he has
come to stay and to exclude from their na-
tive haunts his more attractive and gracious
rivals. P. F. SCHOFIELD.

NEW YOHK, November 18, 1893.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

PUBLIC OPINION.

I1ERE is nothing more tiresome than
-L the platitudes in which popular ora-
tors and journals indulge when, generally
for some sinister purpose, they set them-
selves to extol the wisdom and virtue
of " the people." People who have any
sense know just how wise and virtuous
they are, and quite fail to see the point
of the excessive adulation thus bestowed
on them. It is difficult indeed to im-
agine what class of persons it is that can
be gratified by praise of so inordinate
and conventional a kind. Why should
a lot of people who have chosen repre-
sentatives of a certain kind care to be
told that they are so very much wiser
than the men they have chosen? yet

that is the common refrain : the people
are so much wiser and better than the
politicians. If the people are so much
wiser and better than the politicians,
why don't they show their wisdom and
goodness by bringing better men to the
front? The men who are elected to-day
may in a short time return to private
life and become electors themselves: do
they thereupon acquire a sudden increase
in wisdom, and do they show their in-
creased wisdom by helping at the first
opportunity to elect worse men then
themselves? That seems to he the way
it is understood to work : the whole
thing is fulsome and absurd to the last
degree.

The truth, which, if it does not give

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

rise to this kind of talk, occasionally
seems to afford a certain justification of
it, is that, from time to time, " the peo-
ple " defeat the expectations of the poli-
ticians by refusing to carry out the plans
and arrangements which the latter have
made; so that a "ticket" which, con-
sidering the party organization behind
it, might have been supposed sure of
victory, meets with ignominious defeat.
It is much better to be wise sometimes
than to be wise never; but it is not
very satisfactory to reflect that an elect-
orate which is capable of exercising
wisdom and properly branding political
immorality should require the stimulus
or shock of some great scandal to bring
its virtue to the front. The reason why
politicians are encouraged to proceed
every now and then to some unusual
length in defiance of political principle
is that, in general, they can reckon on
the partisanship of their followers to
support whatever they may propose.
What the public have to do, therefore,
when by a tardy or fitful exercise of
political conscience they have escaped
some disgrace, is not so much to con-
gratulate themselves on a remarkable
achievement as to wonder, with some
little humiliation, why the achievement
was necessary — why their political lead-
ers ever came to propose to them any-
thing so disgraceful. It is rare that a
man is approached with a disgraceful
proposition unless he has in some way
created the impression that the proposi-
tion might be well received ; and there-
fore, mixed with any lofty indignation
with which he repels it, should be some
heart-searching as to how the whole
thing came about. Applying this to a
case which is fresh in the recollection
of all, how much of moral inertness,
how much of blind partisanship, how
much of indifference to higher consid-
erations of national welfare must have
been shown on many occasions by re-
spectable voters, before the managers
of a great party could venture to place
on their ticket a name which the most

elementary considerations of political
or moral principle should have sufficed
to exclude from it !

It is, of course, satisfactory to think
that there are bounds which can not be
passed — that there is a point at which
the better sense of the community re-
bels— but it is impossible not to think
at the same time that this better sense
might be kept in more regular exercise.
Instead of descending like a deus ex ma-
china into the political arena on critical
occasions to safeguard the state against
some signal danger, why should it not
be the daily providence and bulwark of
the state? The modern state depends
for its prosperity and security on the
faithful performance by citizens of their
political duties ; and it therefore behoves
every citizen to inform himself as to the
issues of the day, to consider carefully
which side he should take, looking to the
greatest interest of the country, and to
vote and otherwise shape his course ac-
cordingly. If this were done as a rule by
all voters capable of forming an intelli-
gent and honest judgment, there would
be very little encouragement given to dis-
honest political machinations ; and those
elements in the country that count on po-
litical corruption in one form or another
for liberty to pursue fraudulent and im-
moral ends would find their action so
circumscribed that all the profits of
their several nefarious trades would be
gone. There is reason to hope, we are
very glad to say, that the sounder ele-
ments in the community are becoming
more conscious of their strength and
more disposed to use it for the purifica-
tion of politics. Not one recent election
only, but many, have turned more or
less on moral issues, and have turned
in the right direction. Let there be
no pause in the good work; above all,
let there be no reaction. The effect
upon the administration of the govern-
ment in any country of a decided ex-
pression of public opinion in favor of
what is right, rather than of what is ex-
pedient in a party sense, can not but be

412

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beneficial. Does any one suppose that
the public geta full value for the enor-
mous expenditure incurred for the sala-
ries of officials? If any one does, we
venture to say that he is seriously in
error. Neither the intelligence nor the
zeal of public employees in general
comes up to the standard that might be
realized if our politics were dominated
by higher principles ; and not only is a
vast burden thus laid on the industry of
the country, but many advantages which
might be secured to the public are lost.
Let us make the most of any encourage-
ment we have received ; but let us not
draw the lesson, either that the people
at large are very wise and good, or that
the forces of evil have been permanent-
ly discouraged. The people at large are
good enough to do a great deal better
than they generally do; that is about as
much as can be said on that point. The
forces of evil are hard to discourage and
very hard to destroy. They watch their
opportunity, and are as assiduous as the
spider in repairing the party webs which
an outraged public sentiment may have
torn. Public opinion is something that
should be invoked at all times against
every form of evil, and every possible
means should be used to keep it alive
and active and watchful. The adula-
tion so frequently bestowed upon "the
people " is a moral narcotic rather than
a stimulant, as it suggests that every-
thing must go well in a country where
there are such vast reservoirs of wis
dom and virtue. The true note to
strike is that of responsibility. An hon-
est man does not require to be told he
is honest; and a dishonest man is not
made better by it. The message to each
and all is, that we have public duties
and responsibilities commensurate with
the great advantages we derive from
our membership in a civilized state,
and that we can not neglect these
without dishonor and loss.

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.

IT is greatly to the credit of the
United States and Great Britain that
they should now on several occasions
have submitted disputes which might
otherwise have given rise to war, to
the decision of a court of arbitration,
or, as in the case of the San Juan
question, to that of an individual ar-
bitrator. One conclusion that may be
drawn from this course of procedure
is that, as between these two coun-
tries at least, war is a discredited and
obsolete method of settling disputes.
The question now is why it should not
soon become the same for all civilized
nations. The burden of military taxa-
tion in Europe is becoming well-nigh
intolerable. One or two countries, nota-
bly Italy, are now on the very verge
of national bankruptcy, and all because
the wit of man, at the close of the nine-
teenth century of what has been called
the " Christian " era, can not devise any
adequate means save war on a huge and
most destructive scale for the adjust-
ment of conflicting international claims.
It seems impossible that the sin and
shame of this should not before long
become intolerable to all well-disposed
men; and on the continent of Europe,
not less than in England and the United
States, the great majority of men may
come under that designation. The time
has arrived, we think, for a serious
demonstration in favor of arbitration as
a substitute for the barbarous method
of the sword ; and the duty of initiating
such a movement would seem clearly
to lie with the two nations who have
themselves set the example of a success-
ful and happy use of arbitration. The
project of persuading the nations to
turn their back on war is indeed a vast
one, but that is no reason why it should
not be taken in hand — why, in the first
place, a rough sketch, as it were, of the
conditions necessary for the realization
of the object in view should not be
made and taken into consideration. Of

LITERARY NOTICES.

413

coarse, if any one nation is cherishing
schemes that are in their nature incon-
sistent with peace with its neighbors,
that nation could not be counted on for
any sincere co-operation ; and therefore
the first thing to do would be to invite
from each nation as frank and full a
statement as possible of its views and
aspirations, in order that the extent to
which these came into conflict with
those of other nations might be deter-
mined. We can not resist the belief
that, if the matter were taken in hand
seriously, the British Government, as
being more directly interested in the
peace of Europe, taking the lead, and
the Government of this country lending
it all the moral support possible, a
hopeful beginning might be made. The
thing could not be done in a day ; but,
nnless we have faith enough to believe
in the possibility of its being done, how
is it going to be done at all or at any
time? War has lasted through nine-
teen centuries of the Christian era, and
still exists as a horrible fact and still
more dread possibility in the era of sci-
ence. It has lasted too long. Chris-
tianity and science should unite their
forces to crush it.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE PSYCHIC FACTORS OF CIVILIZATION. By
LESTER F. WARD. Boston : Ginn & Co.
Pp. 369. Price, $2.

IN this book Dr. Ward elaborates and re-
enforces the main plea of his Dynamic Soci-
ology, published ten years ago. His central
thought is that civilization owes its chief im-
pulse to man's conscious effort to better his
lot — an effort in which, so far from imitating
the operations of Nature, man has modified
or even reversed them. In this view, civili-
zation for its further advance must look
more and more to a control in the highest
sense artificial, which shall aim solely at the
public good, restraining all self-regarding
activities in conflict therewith. The chap-
ters before us embody the observations of
an accomplished naturalist, and add original

and brilliant illustrations to an argument
somewhat familiar. Every skillfully drawn
picture such as this, which limns the felicity
awaiting mankind when self-love and social
shall be the same, kindles the moral imagi-
nation, and in so far has distinct value. But
whether the practical orchestration of hu-
man wills and motives, which Dr. Ward holds
to be eminently feasible, is feasible, or even
possible, may well be questioned. As time
goes on, and the problems of life, political
and social, grow in complexity, the task of
bringing self-interest and the public weal
into accord does not become easier, as multi-
plied failures abundantly attest. One of the
reasons is that the democratic spirit which
justly maintains the equality of rights is apt
unjustly to ignore or resent the inequalities
of talent and character which difference man
from man. And only a hearty acknowledg-
ment of these inequalities can yield the as-
sured leadership and the loyal adhesion upon
which social progress largely depends. Dr.
Ward holds that with better social conditions
character would be reformed. True. But
how can there be that in the mass which is
not in the atom? Our author is of the
school which would have reform begin at
the outermost circle of human life, the po-
litical, and thence pass to the core and cen-
ter, the individual heart. In this kind of
project there is an oblique and subtle flattery
hi that blame for individual woes and priva-
tions is laid solely at the door of " society,"
of institutions, of somebody or something
outside the sufferer himself. Never by any
chance do the painters of social Utopias
show how wide is the home acre for im-
provement, how much neglected it is, albeit
that its plow awaits no sanction from the
lawmaker, and how the despised field for
tilth which surrounds every man's door is
just the place for him to gain the skill, the
discipline, needful in planning and carrying
out the large transformations which gild the
dreams of socialistic prophecy. Dr. Ward
enlarges, and without exaggeration, on the
wastes and burdens of industrial competi-
tion. Experience in Great Britain amply
proves that many of these wastes and bur-
dens disappear on the simple organization of
the co-operative store — an establishment in
this country as rare as an observatory. Co-
operation requires forbearance, steadfast-

414

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ness, strict probity; shall men be expected
to manifest these first of all with regard to
a few things or to many things ? Our au-
thor has a passing word for " natural mo-
nopolies," and deems it desirable that they
be nationalized. In the current discussion of
these monopolies land always figures as the
chief, and the one way of escape from the
ever-increasing exactions of the landlord is
declared to lie in his being superseded by the
Government. Of a different stamp from the
people who harbor this doctrine are the two
million families in this country who have
slipped from beneath the landlord's yoke,
through the undramatic agency of the build-
ing association. Homely and humdrum
enough is the virtue of thrift, but thrift
and its fellow virtues of industry and so-
briety mean trustworthiness. With its birth,
and only with its birth, can the attack upon
the obstacles to social reconstruction take
heart of hope. In its hands self-help holds
opportunities which, were they exhausted,
would not simply contract the area for cen-
tralized sway, but incidentally prepare men
to establish that sway in so far as it may be
gainfully done.

Dr. Ward is too careful an observer to
miss as a trait of the American public its
distrust of governmental interference with
individual activity. That distrust has not
been unaffected by recent events. The Sil-
ver Purchase Act was an attempt to over-
rule the individual impulses of the people in
a way which was to create for them new and
gratuitous blessings as a community. At the
date of its repeal the act had involved the
nation in a loss of at least $400,000,000.
This sum, vast as it is, forms after all but a
solitary item in the cost of that more am-
bitious overruling of all for a few which
masquerades as protection. In socialistic or,
to adopt Dr. Ward's term, sociocratic legis-
lation there ever lurks the danger that the
interest of a band of manufacturers, mine-
owners, soldiers, or office-holders can be
made to appear identical with that of all.
Experience proves that legislators are apt to
form a class apart, separated from the pub-
lic in a fool's paradise of echo and subservi-
ency, and with interests often opposed to
those of the people whom they ostensibly
represent. At Albany and Washington a
minority of them cemented together by the

pursuit of plunder have repeatedly defied a
majority whenever that majority has lacked
close regimentation.

Dr. Ward adduces examples of species
which with swift pace have stridden ahead
on the artificial withdrawal of competition ;
he fails to refer to cases more numerous still
where the absence of competition has ended
in the degeneracy which overtakes the para-
site. In the author's own city of Washing-
ton attention last year was drawn, on the
floor of Congress, to the waste of public
money in the counting and recounting, the
polishing and labeling the pebbles of science
by officials in the borrowed garb of the ge-
ologist ; and last spring Secretary Morton,
in taking charge of the Department of Agri-
culture, found one of his first duties to he in
setting adrift the barnacles which in four
short years had fastened themselves upon a
single, and not particularly inviting, ship of
state.

MODERN METEOROLOGY. By FRANK WALDO.
Contemporary Science Series. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 460. Price,

$1.25.

THE chief aim of this treatise is, in the
words of the author, " to bring the reader
into closer contact with the work which has
been and is actually engaging the attention
of working meteorologists rather than to
present finished results." More than a third
of the volume is devoted to descriptions of
meteorological instruments and the meth-
ods of using them, with some account of
certain meteorological laboratories. The de-
tails of equipment and routine of the ob-
servatory at Pawlowsk, Russia, are given
with much fullness, and the author states
that he knows of no similar account of the
regular work of an observatory. A number
of views of observatory buildings and their
surroundings are presented, including several
mountain observatories in the United States
and Europe. The work of German meteor-
ologists is given large space in this treatise.
Thus the chapter on Thermodynamics of the
Atmosphere is maiuly a presentation of the
ideas of Prof, von Bezold, as set forth in his
several memoirs recently communicated to
the Berlin Academy of Sciences. There is
also a history of the various theories of gen-
eral and secondary atmospheric circulation.

LITERARY NOTICES.

415

This is followed by an account of the prin-
cipal results of meteorological observations
up to the present time, and the work closes
with a section on the application of meteor-
ology to agriculture. Besides the views al-
ready mentioned the volume is illustrated
with a large number of diagrams, charts, and
cuts of instruments.

ZOOLOGY OF THE INVERTEBRATA. By ARTHUR
E. SHIPLEY. New York : Macraillan & Co.
Pp. 458. Price, $6.25.

THIS is a text-book for college students
who have some knowledge of biology, but is
not intended as an advanced treatise. The
author has undertaken to describe one ex-
ample of each of the larger groups, with
specified exceptions, and then to give a short
account of the most interesting modifications
presented by other members of the group.
A great extension of our knowledge of the
invertebrata has been made in the last few
years, leading to a rearrangement of material
and a revised classification. These facts
have led the author to treat the subject
largely from the morphological standpoint.
More space has been devoted to animals in-
termediate between the larger groups than
to the more specialized members of the
groups. The text is illustrated with 263
cuts.

THE GENESIS OF ART FORM. By GEORGE

LANSING RAYMOND. New York: G. P.

Putnam's Sons. Pp. 311. Price, $2.25.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. By EDOUARD COR-

ROYER. Edited by WALTER ARMSTRONG.

New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 388.

Price, $2.

THE former of these two very suggestive
and interesting works on subjects of art is
described in the subtitle as "an essay in
comparative aesthetics, showing the identity
of the sources, methods, and effects of com-
position in music, poetry, painting, sculp-
ture, and architecture." It is the result of
an endeavor to trace to their sources in mind
or matter the methods employed in the com-
position of the art forms; and as an inci-
dental though seemingly necessary step to the
accomplishment of this object the action of
the mind in these methods has been identi-
fied with its action in scientific classification ;
and, having arranged them according to
their logical order and development and

added to them those methods hitherto recog-
nized only indirectly or not at all, their char-
acter and effects are shown to be exemplified
in all the arts, including music and poetry,
etc., as well as in painting, sculpture, and
architecture. It takes many centuries, the
author says, " for such methods to develop
into arts like those which have been named.
But, after a while, these all appear. It is
important to notice, too, that the way in
which they differ from ordinary and merely
natural modes of expression is the fact that
they are not used, or, if so used at first, have
ceased to be used for expression's sake alone.
. . . While, therefore, the art-product is
traceable to an expression of mental thoughts
and feelings, the elements of which it is con-
structed are forms borrowed from Nature,
and the method of construction, or composi-
tion as it is ordinarily called, is a process of
elaboration." The theoretical has been so
connected in the essay with the practical, as
the author hopes, to adapt the work to the
wants of readers who, while interested in one
or other of these phases of the subject, are not
interested in both ; and the effort has been
made to distinguish between well-grounded
tastes and mere fashions or whims.

M. Corroyer's Gothic Architecture, trans-
lated from the French by Miss Florence
Simmons under the editor's direction, is in-
tended to give such an account of the birth
and evolution of that form of the art as may
be considered sufficient for a handbook. The
author, writing from a thoroughly French
point of view, is apt to believe that every-
thing admirable in Gothic architecture had a
Gallic origin. He dismisses vexed questions
of priority with a phrase, and finds French
influence in the examples which he cites
traceable to suggestion from a French mas-
ter or a French example. In this disposition
he is very like nearly all other Frenchmen,
in whatever field we take them — with a few
shining exceptions like M. Taine, or, in the
author's own field, M. Viollet-le-Duc, whom
he sometimes contradicts. This character-
istic weakness may, however, be discounted,
and, when the allowance is made, does not
greatly affect the value of the author's
observations as a picture of Gothic de-
velopment. Taking an evolutional view of
the growth of Gothic architecture, he points
out how material conditions and discov-

4i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cries and their consequent social changes
brought about one development after another
in the forms and methods of the architect.
Both of these books are liberally illustrated
with engravings of the world's best works in
the departments considered, or — when mis-
takes are presented as warnings — of some
that are not so good.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF WERNEK TON
SIEMENS. Translated by W. C. COUPLAND.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 406.
Price, $5.

WE have already given the readers of the
Monthly a foretaste of this delightful book
in the sketch of Dr. Siemens, published in
the October number, the data for which were
derived from it. The book affords abundant
instances of racy incident and adventure,
keen character sketches, and historical remi-
niscences. The author came to the task of
composing his recollections with a hesita-
tion he need not have felt, for all the care
they called for to give them the living in-
terest they possess was the simple telling
of them just as they presented themselves.
But he was desirous of being his own chroni-
cler, in order to preclude the possibility of
future misunderstanding and misrepresenta-
tion of his endeavors and actions, "and I
have an idea also," he adds, " that it will be
instructive and stimulating to the coming
generation to be shown precisely how a young
man, without inherited resources and influen-
tial supporters — nay, even without proper pre-
liminary culture — may, solely through his own
industry, rise and do something useful in the
world. ... I shall, however, at the same
time try to indicate those inner and outer
forces which have borne me through weal
and woe to the desired goals, and which have
made the evening of my life an easy and
sunny one." All this we find in the book
duly presented, with the result, probably, of
making the work a more interesting one than
if the author had been bound by restraints
and conventionalities. As we read, we are
shown the surroundings and conditions of
his childhood and youth, the salient traits
of his various instructors, his joys and mis-
haps at school, his first experiments, and
the adventures to which they led him ; his
military and political experiences, his intro-
duction to commercial and public life, the

gradual development of his inventions and
enterprises, and the impression they made
upon the arts and industries of the world.
The last is, of course, the important feature
of the work, around which the other and
minor incidents entwine themselves as the
vine around the tree trunk. The more we
regard his inventions the more we are struck
with the importance of the part they fill, and
the extent to which they cover the industrial
development of the world during the last
half century. They include experiments with
electricity when that force was still new as a
worker ; electroplating, in which Siemens was
a pioneer; some of the earliest efforts at
electric-telegraph signaling ; the building of
the first telegraph lines in Germany ; the
carrying of the telegraph through the coun-
tries of northern Europe and into Asia ; in
connection with these, trials of the relative
advantages of underground and overhead
wires and experiments in insulation, all of
which were then new ; journeys, full of ad-
venture, full of amusing and exciting if not
often thrilling incident, in connection with his
enterprises ; the laying and working of the
first electrical submarine batteries ; tentative
experiments in cable laying under water ; the
laying of the first submarine cables, and the
laying of cables thousands of miles in length
under all the oceans — in all of which Sie-
mens had a great part ; the beginnings of
electric railroading ; and numerous other in-
ventions of greBter or less importance. Then
the men with whom Siemens had to do dur-
ing his busy life are introduced to us ; per-
sons in royal station, statesmen, ambassa-
dors, financiers, philosophers, and men of sci-
ence— the latter classes including, at least in
Germany, some of the brightest lights of the
half century. Besides the references to them
as they come up in the course of the narra-
tive, a separate chapter or appendix is given
to the account of the author's scientific writ-
ings, in which the particular points he wished
to bring out in them are more fully indicated.
This enables us to mention one which, though
only a theory that no one has yet ventured to
accept — while no one has successfully con-
tradicted it — must ever be associated with
Siemens's deepest scientific studies : his the-
ory of the maintenance of the sun's heat and
light.

As may be readily perceived, the Recol-

LITERARY NOTICES.

417

lections cover a considerable variety of sub-
jects, the presentation of which might have
been made very dry and uninteresting. Sie-
mens, in his artless way of telling of them,
makes them all as interesting as the story of
his first heroic act — his discomfiture of the
gander that threatened and frightened his
sister. The facts are among the most im-
portant landmarks of the scientific advance
of the times ; the presentation of them gains
immeasurably in value by being made at-
tractive.

THE GILDED MAN (Et DORADO), AND OTHER
PICTURES OF THE SPANISH OCCUPANCY OP
AMERICA. By A. F. BANDELIER. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 302.
Price, $1.50.

MR. BANDELIER, one of the most painstak-
ing and accurate of American archaeologists,
has in this volume presented the result of
his researches in the history and dramatic
incidents of the early gold-hunting expedi-
tions of the Spaniards in Venezuela and Co-
lombia and along the banks of the Amazon,
and of the first invasions and early settle-
ments of New Mexico. The book concerns
two distinct scenes of adventure — the north-
ern part of South America, and the South-
western part of North America. On the
stories of both Mr. Bandelier casts new and
clear light. We do not know that the story
of El Dorado has ever before been fully set
forth and traced to its exact origin and foun-
dation in fact in a book intended for popu-
lar use. It is so set forth in the first part of
this book. With it is related the story of
the expeditions of which this semi-mythical
personage and his gold were the object ; the
foundation of the military and trading posts
by hardly responsible adventurers on the
coasts of Venezuela ; the lease of Venezuela
to the house of Welser & Co., of Augsburg ;
the condition and relations of the Indians of
Bogota, where El Dorado resided ; the expe-
dition of Dalfinger and the conquest of Bo-
gota by Ximenes de Quesada ; his meeting
on the plateau of Cundinamarca with his
rival adventurers Benalcazar and Federmann,
approaching the spot with the same object
from different directions ; the adventures of
Georg von Speyer on the Meta, and of
Philip von Hiitten in search of Omagua ;
the tragic journey of Pedro de Ursua and
TOL. XLIV. — 32

Lope de Aguirre from Peru down the Ama-
zon ; and other expeditions of more or less
significance, all marked by dangerous ad-
venture and generally by disaster; and all
prompted, in one way or another, by the vi-
sion of the Dorado, which the author likens
to a mirage, " enticing, deceiving, and lead-
ing men to destruction." In the second part
of the book, Mr. Bandelier does a like serv-
ice for the myth of the seven cities of Ci-
bola, which were the object of expeditions
into New Mexico leading to the first settle-
ments of that territory. To the determina-
tion of the location of Cibola he brings a
considerable fund of linguistic knowledge
and the fruits of industrious geographical
and archaeological exploration, and decides
upon Zuni as the chief of those cities. The
story of the search for Cibola includes the
relation of the marvelous adventure of Ca-
beza de Vaca, the missionary journey of Fray
Marcos de Nizza, and the expedition of Coro-
nado to Cibola, and thence, in search of
Quivira, to the plains of central Kansas.
Three additional chapters include an inquiry
into the facts of the massacre of Cholula,
inflicted by Cortes in 1519; the determina-
tion of the age of the city of Santa F6, New
Mexico; and the story of the later life of
Jean l'Arch6veque, the youthful accessory
to the murder of La Salle, and of the for-
tunes of his family in New Mexico. These
histories afford no end of exciting incidents
and of themes on which romances and sen-*
sational stories might be founded ; but Mr.
Bandelier's object has not been romance or
sensation, but the elucidation of the facts,
the discovery of the real history. To this
history his essays are a valuble contribu-
tion.

THE POINTS OF THE HORSE. A Familiar
Treatise on Equine Conformation. By
M. HORACE HAYES. New York : Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 379, with Plates.
Price, $10.60.

THE author of this book assumes that
exact ideas on the subject of conformation
are not current either in the traditions of peo-
ple familiar with horses or in English lit-
erature. Both English authors and French
have erred in trying to make general rules
suitable to all kinds of horses, instead of
pointing out that the standard of shape
should to a great extent vary according to

418

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the work demanded. Illustrations, more-
over, of horses, or of special points of them,
drawn without the aid of photography, are
liable to be affected by the bias of the art-
ist. In this book, photography, as far as
practicable, is relied on for illustration. For
further light on the respective points of
speed and strength in the horse, the con-
formation of other animals that are distin-
guished by the possession of one or other of
these gifts in a high state of perfection is
examined. A more exhaustive inquiry is
also made into the nature of the paces and
of the leap of the horse than has previously
been attempted ; the object being to obtain
from it exact deductions as to the best kind
of conformation for various forms of work.
The first principles of conformation having
been laid down, descriptions are given of
the structure of the body, the anatomy, the
mechanism of breathing, the distribution of
weight, the levers, the mechanism of loco-
motion and of draft, the attitudes and paces,
the comparative shape, the trunk, the limbs,
action, hardiness, and cleverness, condition
and good looks, weight-carrying and stay-
ing power ; blood, symmetry, and compensa-
tions, special points of various classes and
various breeds of horses, wild horses, asses,
the evolution of the horse, photographing
horses, and proportions of the horse ; con-
cluding with criticisms of painters' horses.
The book is furnished with a bibliography
and an index, and is illustrated with seventy-
seven plates, reproductions of photographs,
and two hundred and five drawings.

In reading over the Rev. A. J. Church's
book of Stories from the Greek Comedians,
we are reminded again of the intense human-
likeness that pervades all the Greek writings,
which has given them their long life and
makes them as fresh and readable as the day
they were written. We should hardly an-
ticipate finding in the little pieces of Aris-
tophanes, written in the days of the Peleopon-
nesian war to make the Athenian populace
laugh over the petty vices and follies of their
fellow-citizens — and reflect, if they would,
over their own course — character sketches
that would fit as well to-day in New York
or any other American city: exposures of
tricks and devices to gain influence, wealth,
and power, from which those now familiar

among our own politicians and speculators
might have been copied; views of similar
" rings " and similar demagogues currying
favor with the people in the same ways, and
a similar populace binding itself in consid-
eration of little bits of patronage and flat-
tery to them ; the " labor element " with its
demands and threats and the leaders bowing
to them. But these are all to be found in
one or another of the nine comedies of Aris-
tophanes ; and he might as well have lived
and written in New York or Chicago at the
end of the nineteenth century as in Athens
2,300 years ago. His manner of presentation
might be changed to suit modern fashions,
but the substance and the essential features
of the characters and situations would be
the same. Besides Aristophanes, Philemon,
Diphilus, Menander, and Apollodorus are rep-
resented in the book, having passed through
the Latin versions of Plautus and Terence.
Mr. Church does not give us the plays as
such, but the kernel of them, in the form of
stories, with parts of the dialogue. (Price,
$1.)

The bulletin on TJie Salt and Gypsum
Industries of New York, contributed to the
New York State Museum by F. J. H. Mer-
rill, Assistant State Geologist, is published in
accordance with the law of 1892 relating to
the appropriation for the geological map.
Its purpose being not merely to publish such
new information as can be gathered, but to
give in concise form what has previously
been made public, besides the author's own
surveys, other authentic sources of informa-
tion have been drawn upon. The account
proper of the New York salt beds is pre-
ceded by general observations on the distri-
bution and origin of salt, the composition of
sea water, and the deposition of salt beds.
Then are given the story of the development
of the Onondaga salt field, the discovery of
rock salt, the geology of the salt and gyp-
sum, the altitude of the salt beds, well bor-
ing and tubing, the mining of rock salt,
analyses ; descriptions of the manufacture of
salt in the State of New York by solar
evaporation, direct fire evaporation, steam
evaporation, and vacuum evaporation ; with
comparison of brines and processes, and
statistics and facts. The account of the
gypsum industry in New York, following the
articles on salt, includes the descriptions of

LITERARY NOTICES.

419

gypsum quarries, statistics of the annual
production of gypsum, and an account of the
uses of gypsum.

In The Cosmic Ether and its Problems
that mysterious substance or agent is pre-
sented by Mr. B. B. Lewis as the invisible
actuator of the world of matter and life.
Accepting the current theories of the ether
the author elaborates them and applies them
to the accounting for various cosmic and
terrestrial phenomena more positively, per-
haps, in some instances, than sober science
is yet ready to assert, though we have not
noticed that he transcends the bounds of
some scientific speculations. The field of
knowledge outlined in the essay seems to
find a definite limit, the author says, only on
the one hand in the direction of inquiry as
to the nature and origin of the material
molecule, and, on the other hand, " as to the
separate entity and perpetuity of that ether
inspiration constituting the sentient, intelli-
gent personality actuating the physical life
organism" — which will doubtless remain
"permanently unanswerable to scientific
methods of investigation." (Published by
the author at Bridgeport, Conn.)

The same subject is treated in a very differ-
ent manner by Terence Duffy, author and pub-
lisher, of San Francisco, in a book entitled
From Darkness to Light, which is further
defined as Duffy's Compendiums of Nature's
Laws, Forces, and Mind combined in one ;
conformable to this, his great discovery that
the sun and earth are the poles of the mag-
net. " Explains the motion of the earth, how
maintained, what space is, what force is,"
etc. The author has intended, he says, to
write as he understands, and to be as con-
cise as possible, in plain words without any
elaboration. We can not tell whether he
keeps within science or flies away beyond it.
His statements, as they read, have an air of
absurdity; yet when we take a passage,
analyze it, and translate it into usual lan-
guage, it appears that the author may mean
well, after all. The book's only value is as
a curiosity.

A study of The Deadly and Minor Poi-
sons of Toadstools is published by Charles
Mcllvaine, of Haddonfield, N. J. By toad-
stools the author means visible fungi as
distinguished from microscopic. To the
alkaloid, or poisonous principle, he gives

the name of amanitine, preferring it, as de-
rived from the name of a family of plants,
to muscarine, the usual name, which relates
to a species. Its most certain and powerful
antidote he finds to be atropine.

The Eleventh Annual Report of the
United States Geological Survey contains the
usual account by the director of the opera-
tions of the year, in which the value and
efficiency of the several divisions are care-
fully pointed out, followed by administrative
reports of the heads of divisions. Two pa-
pers are appended to the report of opera-
tions : the first is on The Pleistocene History
of Northeastern Iowa, by W J M'Gee; and
the second on the Natural Gas Field of Indi-
ana, by Arthur John Phinney. Mr. M' Gee's
paper is illustrated with forty plates and one
hundred and twenty cuts and Mr. Phinney's
with five plates. A second volume contains the
second annual report of the director upon the
Irrigation Survey. This embraces the re-
sults of the work of the divisions of hydrog-
raphy, topography, and engineering for the
year ending June 30, 1890, together with
a detailed statement made by the director
before a committee of the House of Repre-
sentatives, discussing the problems of irriga-
tion in the arid lands of the United States.
It appears from the report that a great deal
of work has been done in locating agricul-
tural lands that are accessible to water, in
gauging rivers and rainfall, and in survey-
ing reservoir sites. The text is accompanied
by sixty maps and views and four cuts of
apparatus.

In A Select Bibliography of Chemistry,
an attempt is made by H. Carrington Bolton
to collect the titles of the principal books on
chemistry published in Europe and America
from the rise of the literature (1492) to the
close of the year 1892. The term chemistry
is taken in its fullest significance, and the
bibliography contains books in every depart-
ment of chemical literature, pure and ap-
plied. It is confined, however, to independ-
ent works and their translations, and does
not include academic dissertations nor " re-
prints " and " separates," and no attempt has
been made to index the voluminous chemical
literature, except hi the section of Biography.
Full bibliographical details have beea given
where possible. A considerable number of
the books have been personally examined,

420

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and are distinguished by a mark signifying
the fact ; " and for these alone can the com-
piler be wholly responsible." To facilitate
reference the work is divided into the sev-
eral sections of Bibliography, Dictionaries,
History, Biography, Chemistry, pure and
applied, Alchemy, and Periodicals — the last
section having been taken from Prof. Bol-
ton's Catalogue of Technical and Scientific
Periodicals. Notes and comments, biblio-
graphical and explanatory, have been occa-
sionally introduced to aid students in con-
ceiving the character of a book or the status
of its author. The Bibliography forms vol-
ume xxxvi of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections.

Mr. £. Douglas Howard, in a book en-
titled Life with Trans-Siberian Savages, de-
scribes his visit to the Ainus of Sakhalin,
whom he characterizes as " the most ancient,
distant, and least known savages surviving
in Asia." There has been very little com-
munication between this island and the rest
of the world, and there will hereafter be less,
as the Russians have made it a penal colony
and secluded it. Mr. Howard's relations of
his observations sound more like those of a
globe trotter than of a profound student,
and his accounts differ in several respects
from those given by other writers of the
Ainus of Yezo. He represents them as
plunged in the lowest savagery. He also
visited the Ainus in Yezo, and found them
little better. Yet he thinks that through the
Ainus of Yezo, with whom an intercourse
exists, we may learn to understand their
more primitive brethren in Sakhalin. He
further attempts to elucidate the Ainu re-
ligion. (Longmans, Green & Co., New York.
Price, $1.75.)

Mr. W. J. Johnston has aimed, in the
preparation of his Elementary Treatise on
Analytical Geometry, at an easy and gradual
development of the subject. The require-
ments of two classes of students have been
kept in view : First, students in the univer-
sity colleges, by whom a limited course of
the subject is read, and for whom such a
course is marked out ; and, secondly, candi-
dates for mathematical honors, for whom
the chapters on Trilinears, Reciprocal Polars,
and Projection are included. These chap-
ters will also serve as an introduction to the
writings of Dr. Salmon. Many other features

are introduced, the usefulness of which will
be perceived by the student. (Macmillan
&Co.)

A work on Heat, prepared by Mark R.
Wright, is intended for those who have had
some elementary reading on the subject, or
who are able at once to attack a more ad-
vanced work, and is intended to place be-
fore such the leading facts and principles.
Among its features are the incorporation of
numerical examples to be worked out by the
student, and descriptions of experiments to
be repeated. While the author rejoices at
the disappearance of the method of studying
a science from a text-book alone, he suggests
that too much as well as too little time may
be spent over experimental science ; " mental
inertia is as possible in the laboratory as in
the lecture room." An elementary chapter in
thermo-dynamics is given, with an attempt
to explain and illustrate by examples the
first two laws and the meaning of Joule's
and Thomson's experiments. (Longmans,
Green & Co., New York. Price, $1.50.)

In connection with the system of mete-
orological observations established by the
Smithsonian Institution, a collection of mete-
orological tables was compiled by Dr. Arnold
Guyot, and published in 1852 as a volume
of the Miscellaneous Collections. Second
and third editions were published in 1857
and 1859, and a fourth in 1884 — all the suc-
cessive issues being revised and added to.
The editions having been exhausted, the
work has been recast; and the tables are
divided into three parts — Meteorological
Tables, Geographical Tables, and Physical
Tables — each representative of the latest
knowledge in its field, and independent of
the others ; but the three forming a homo-
geneous series. The first of these parts —
Smithsonian Meteorological Tables — now pub-
lished, is, therefore, essentially a new publica-
tion. It is conformed, as far as practicable,
with the International Meteorological Tables.
A large number of tables have been newly
computed.

Cortlandt F. Bishop contributes to the
Columbia College Series in History, Econom-
ics, and Public Law a study in the History of
Elections in the United States. General and
local elections are considered separately. The
history is given for each of the several colo-
nies. The qualifications required of electors

LITERARY NOTICES.

421

are classified as ethnic, political, moral, re-
ligious, those of age, sexual, residential, those
of property, and miscellaneous ; and the con-
ditions regulating the admission of freemen
are described. The account of the manage-
ment of elections includes many particulars
of routine, with provisions against fraud,
proceedings in contested elections, the privi-
leges of voters, compulsory voting, bribery
and other means of influencing voters, and
the sanction of the election laws. Local elec-
tions are classed as town elections, parish
elections, and municipal elections. Addi-
tional documental and tabular information is
given in the appendices.

Mr. Arthur J. Maginnids volume on The
Atlantic Ferry ; its Ships, Men, and Work-
ing, was the first work in which the trans-
atlantic steam trade was fully described in
all its parts and all its relations. It was,
however, a large volume and expensive. A
popular edition of the work is now published
in which, by the omission of a few chapters
not of great interest to the general public,
and of illustrations whose value is mainly
technical, the public demand and the average
purse are more directly catered to. It em-
bodies a careful and complete record of the
doings of the great transatlantic steamship
companies from early days to the present
time. (Macmillan & Co., New York.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Adler, Cyrus. The Shofar; its Use and Origin.
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 16, with Plates.

Agricultural Experiment Stations — Bulletins,
etc. Illinois. The Forest Tree Plantation. Pp.
40.— The Babcock Milk Test. Pp. 4.— New Jer-
sey. Report of the Botanical Department for 1892.
Pp. 11.

Appleton, D., & Co. Library Lists in Hygiene
and Sanitary Science, Philosophy and Metaphys-
ics, Technology and Industrial Arts. Pp. 16. —
Syllabus of a Course of (Teachers') Professional
Study, First Year. Pp. 51.

Butler, Edward A. Our Household Insects.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 342. $2.

Carhart, Daniel. A Field Book for Civil En-
gineers. Boston : Ginn & Co. Pp. 281. $2.50.

Casey, T. L. Annual Report of the Chief of
Engineers, United States Army. Washington:
Government Printing Office. Pp. 542.

Clark, John. Manual of Linguistics. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 318. $2.

Collier. Peter, Geneva, N. Y. The Progress
and Practical Value of Agricultural Science. Pp.
20.

Columbia College. Contributions from the
Geological Department. Pp. 20.

Cope, E. D. Vertebrate Paleontology of the
Llano Estacado. Geological Survey of Texas.
Austin. Pp. 87, with Twenty-two Plates.

Davis, C. M. Standard Tables for Electric
Wiremen. New York: The W. J. Johnston Co.,
limited. $1.

Foster, M. A Text-book of Physiology. Sixth
edition. Book I. New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 337. $2 60.

Geikie. Sir Archibald. Text-book of Geology.
Third edition, revised and enlarged. Macmillan
& Co. Pp. 1147. $7.50.

Glatfelter, N. M., St. Louis. A Study of the
Venation of Salix. Pp. 15, with Plates.

Gorton, D. A. The Monism of Man. G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 297. $1.

Gray, Jane Loring, Editor. Letters of Asa Gray.
Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Two Volumes. Pp. 838. $4.50.

Guerber, H. A. Myths of Greece and Rome.
American Book Company. Pp.428. $1.50.

Hale, E. M., M. D., Chicago. Angina Pectoris.
Pp. 6.

Hamon, A. La France, sociale et politique,
annee 1891. Paris : A. Savine. Pp. 765. 6 francs.

Harper, W. R., and Castle, C. K. An Induct-
ive Greek Primer. American Book Company. Pp.
416. $1.25.

Holden, W. A. An Outline of the Embryology
of the Eye. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 69, with
Plates. 75 cents.

Houssay, F. The Industries of Animals. Im-
ported by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Pp.258. $1.25.

Huxley, T. H. Method and Results. Nevr
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 430. $1.25.

Idaho, State of. Messages of Governors W. J.
McConnell, 18937'94J and N. B. Willey, 1891-'02.
P. 63. — Communications and Special Messages of
Governor McConnell. Pp. 27. — Report of the Au-
ditor of State. Pp. 134.— Biennial Report of the
Treasurer of State, 1891-'92. Pp. 44.— Report of
the State Penitentiary, 1892. Pp. 15.

Iowa State Board of Health. Monthly Bulle-
tins, September and October, 1893. Pp. 16 each.

Love, A. E. H. A Treatise on the Mathemat-
ical Theory of Elasticity. Volume II. Pp. 327.
Macmillan & Co. $3.

Lubin, David, Sacramento, Cal. Farm Prod-
ucts moved as Mail Matter. Pp. 32.

Martin, Prof. H. N., and Brooks, Prof. W. K.
Studies from the Biological Laboratory of Johns
Hopkins University. Volume V, No. 4. Pp. 72,
with Plates.

Mather, A. C., Chicago. The Practical Thoughts
of a Business Man. Pp. 86.

Michigan Mining School. Reports of the Di-
rector for 1890-'92. Lansing. Pp. 102.

Moore, J. W., M. D., Easton, Pa. Thoughts
on the Necessary Preliminary Training for the
Medical Profession. Pp. 12.

New Mexico School of Mines, Socorro, N. M.
First Annual Announcement. Pp. 29.

North Dakota Weather and Crop Service, Bis-
marck. Bulletin for September, 1893.

North German Lloyd. Bremen. Pp. 41.

Orr, H. B. A Theory of Development and
Heredity. Macmillan & Co. Pp. 255. $1.50.

Parker, E. W. Production of Coal in 1892.
Washington : Government Printing Office. Pp.
290.

Preyer, W. Mental Development in the Child.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 170.

Ridgway, Robert. On a Small Collection of
Birds from Costa Rica. Smithsonian Institution.
Pp.6.

Stejneger, Leonhard . Notes on Japanese Birds.
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 22.

Tennessee State Board of Health. Bulletin,
October, 1893. Pp. 24.

Tracey, Frederick. The Psychology of Child-
hood. Boston : D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 94.

422

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Chart
Corrections, etc., September, 1893. Pp. 10.

United States National Museum. Index to Pro-
ceedings for 1892. Pp. 30.

Von Hillern, Wilhelmine. On the Cross. New
York: G. Gottsberger Peck. Pp.442. $1.

Willoughby, E. P. Handbook of Public Health
and Demography, MacmilLn & Co. Pp. 509.
$1.50.

Woods, Henry. Elementary Paleontology.
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 222.

Zinet, Alexander. An Elementary Treatise
on Theoretical Mechanics. Part II. Macmillan
& Co. Pp. 183. $2.25.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Political Science at the Brooklyn Insti-
tute.—The School of Political Science of the
Brooklyn Institute announces an advance
course in American politics, conducted by Dr.
Lewis G. Janes. It will be the aim of the in-
structor to give a concise and correct history of
our national politics from the Eevolutionary
period to the present time, with some ac-
count of the great statesmen and political
leaders of our country. A clear statement
of the facts of each political situation, with
a just view of the great legal and constitu-
tional questions involved in our political
controversies, without partisan bias, will
enable the student to form an intelligent
judgment upon the several topics. The lec-
tures of the first term will be devoted to the
formative period of our politics, from the
Revolution to the Mexican War ; those of
the second term to the period of reconstruc-
tion, from the Mexican War to the present
Five discussions are also provided for, con-
cerning the relative influence of the ideas of
Jefferson and of Hamilton in molding Amer-
ican institutions ; the good or evil of the
influence of Andrew Jackson in our politics ;
the justice of the Mexican War ; the im-
peachment of President Johnson ; and the
wisdom of President Cleveland's pension
vetoes. The courses will be given to two
classes, in two sections of Brooklyn, on dif-
ferent evenings of the week.

The Grare of B. A. Proctor.— Prof.

Richard A. Proctor, the eminent astronomical
writer, died in this city on his way from his
home in Florida to fulfill lecture engage-
ments in England, September 12, 1888, of
yellow fever. The attack wag sudden, and
death followed very quickly. None of his
family were near him, and he was buried by

strangers in the lot in Greenwood Cemetery
owned by the undertaker who took charge
of his remains. No further care seems to
have been taken of his grave until attention
was called to its neglected condition through
dispatches published in the papers by Mr.
Edward J. Bok. A lot was then provided
and a suitable monument was ordered by
Mr. G. W. Childs, of Philadelphia, and on Oc-
tober 3, 1893, the remains were removed to
this lot in the presence of a number of citi-
zens, thus expressing their regard for Prof.
Proctor's memory and for his services to
science, with religious exercises and a eulogy
by the Rev. Dr. T. De Witt Talmage. The
lot in which the remains have been perma-
nently interred is near the Fort Hamilton
Avenue entrance to Greenwood Cemetery,
opposite the village of Flatbush, and is sur-
rounded by a substantial railing. The mon-
ument is of polished bluish Quincy granite,
and besides the formal record bears the
following tribute by Herbert Spencer : " On
public as on private grounds Prof. Proctor's
premature death was much to be lamented.
He united great detailed knowledge with
broad general views in an unusual degree,
and, while admirably fitted for a popu-
lar expositor, was at the same time well
equipped for original investigation, which,
had he lived, would have added to our astro-
nomical knowledge. Prof. Proctor was also
to be admired for his endeavors to keep the
pursuit of science free from the corrupting
and paralyzing influence of state aid. HER-
BERT SPENCER."

Indnctoscripts. — At the Nottingham
meeting of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science an interesting fea-
ture was introduced in the display of novel
scientific apparatus and exhibits. Among
these were the " inductoscripts " of Rev. F.
J. Smith, obtained by placing an ordinary
photographic plate, film upward, on a metal
plate. A coin, or other metallic conductor
with a design upon it, is then laid on the
film and a discharge of electricity is passed
from the coin to the metal plate. On de-
veloping the photographic plate in the ordi-
nary way the design of the coin appears
upon it. An instrument designed by Prof.
Milne, F. R. S., of Japan, for registering the
intensity of earth tremors, was also exbib-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

423

ited. A pyrometer of platinum, in which
was measured the electrical resistance of
the metal when exposed to high tempera-
tures, was shown by Mr. Callendar. The
display of electrical apparatus also included
a very fine high-resistance galvanometer de-
signed by Prof. Oliver Lodge for physio-
logical work ; and a magnetic curve-traces
contributed by Prof. Ewing. An instrument
invented by Mr. John Anderton for project-
ing solids on a screen attracted much atten-
tion. Prof. Boys exhibited photographs of
flying bullets, and Dr. Isaac Roberts some
admirable photographs, chiefly of nebulae,
showing the probable formation of heavenly
bodies. The marked success of the exhibi-
tion may lead to like collections being dis-
played at future meetings of the American
Association.

Diversity of Forms and Conditions of
Animal Life. — In a paper presented to the
Convention of the College Association of the
Middle States and Maryland, Dr. Spencer
Trotter, speaking of the diversity of life on
the earth's surface, remarks upon its corre-
spondence, in a broad way, with the diver-
sity of surroundings. Aquatic animals, like
fishes, crayfish, and many insects, inhabit the
waters of ponds, lakes, and streams. Frogs
and other amphibious creatures are denizens
of bays and streams. Some snakes and tur-
tles are aquatic, while others are wholly lov-
ers of the dry land. Birds are found in
every situation : ducks and divers on the
lakes and rivers; herons and bitterns in
marshy fens ; gulls and petrels on the open
sea ; sandpipers along the shores ; eagles
on lofty mountain peaks ; while a host of
species enliven the woods and fields. The
haunts of mammals are no less diversified.
The tree-loving squirrels, the burrowing
ground hog, the mole digging out its long
subterranean galleries, the water-loving bea-
ver and otter, are each and all associated
in the mind with their favorite surroundings.
The idea of the animal and its particular
home is not new. The story is told in pecul-
iar language in Psalm civ : " The cedars of
Lebanon, which he hath planted ; where the
birds make their nests : as for the stork, the
fir trees are her house. The high hills are a
refuge for the wild goats ; and the rocks for
the conies." If this diversity of life is so

apparent in a limited area, it is far more so
when we come to journey over an extended
portion of the earth's surface. As the hori-
zon widens newer and more significant fea-
tures rise into view. Lofty mountain ranges,
broad seas, trackless deserts, treeless plains,
and vast forests successively present them-
selves. Climate and vegetation change from
one region to another, and it is not a matter
of surprise to find corresponding changes in
animal life. Many kinds of animals are
limited to particular regions, while others
range through wide areas of country under
a variety of physical changes. A traveler
starting on the Atlantic seaboard of the
United States and journeying westward along
the fortieth parallel will pass successively
through a number of distinct regions, each
characterized by certain conditions of cli-
mate, vegetation, and peculiar animals. A
number of familiar forms will, however, be
found throughout the entire extent of the
journey across the continent. If the traveler
cross the Pacific to Japan, he will find forms
of familiar types, though the species are all
different from those he knew in America.
Should he sail westward by the shortest route
to England, he would pass the shores of
countries wholly different from those he had
left and from each other, each tenanted by
strange forms of life — beasts, birds, reptiles,
insects, and vegetation — distinct from any he
had previously seen. In England, he would
be struck by the likeness of the birds to
those of Japan, while he would see none of
the familiar species of North American birds.
We learn from a survey of these conditions
how intimately related an animal is to the
earth, and how each species is fitted to the
special conditions of the region it inhabits.

Crocodiles, Alligators, and the Heloderm.

— Crocodiles from the Nile, India, and Ceylon
share the tanks at the London Zoological Gar.
dens with the alligators from America. The
crocodile, says an English writer who has ob-
served them, evidently bears the same anal-
ogy to the alligator as the frog to the toad.
It is lighter in color and in build, and a more
active as well as a more malicious creature.
It is not so entirely hideous, though the lower
jaw shows projecting tusks like those of a
wild boar. The creature's eyes, celebrated
in connection with the " crocodile tears "

424

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with which legend declared that it attracted
its sympathizing victims to the bank of the
stream, are highly decorative, if not beauti-
ful. The head, narrow and flat, resembles
the head of a snake ; the nose is sharp, and
the fixed and motionless eyes are of the palest
dusty gold, set in a short, horny pillar of
a deeper golden brown. The crocodile's coat
of armor is less complete than that of the
alligator, and its quick, vivacious movements
make it far more troublesome to the keepers
when the tank has to be refilled and cleaned
than the big alligators, which will allow
themselves to be used as stepping-stones as
the water ebbs away. " The heloderm, a fat
and torpid lizard from Arizona, is supposed
to be the sole existing member of its tribe,
which possesses not only the poison glands
that exist in most of the toads, but also the
true poison teeth, with a channel for the
emission of the venom. The lizard is about
a foot and a half long, with a fat, fleshy body,
around tail ending in a blunt point, and a flat
head with squared sides, resembling a small
padlock. The whole body is covered with a
curious coat of scales, like black and pink
beads, arranged in an arabesque pattern. In
its daily life it is a dull and stupid creature,
feeding mainly on eggs, which it breaks and
laps with its tongue. Its first and only vic-
tim was a guinea-pig that was put into its
cage with a view to testing the reports as
to its poisonous nature, which were by no
means universally credited. The lizard bit
the guinea-pig in the leg, and the animal died
in a minute and a half, almost as soon as
after the bite of a cobra."

Fresh Air for Legislators. — The Speaker
of the British House of Commons recently
pointed out a great need of the house over
which he presides, and of other legislative
bodies as well. Having arrived at Leaming-
ton for a little rest, he expressed his pleasure
at finding himself there, " under the open air
of heaven," after scenes of great anxiety and
responsibility. There are very few men, as
the Lancet remarks, commenting on this ob-
servation, having business of their own to
attend to who can stand the work of Parlia-
ment from three in the afternoon till twelve
at night without breaking down. The air of
the house — whatever the " scientific ventila-
tion " — is not the " open air of heaven." In

addition to the want of air and want of space,
are the temperature of discussion and the
tension of highly strung men greatly differ-
ing in opinion. The Speaker is quoted as
saying that the deterioration of members in
health is evident from day to day, and that
he sees men gradually becoming degenerate.
He has been told by a cabinet minister, who is
a peer, that he can recognize members of the
House of Commons " by their pallid counte-
nances," and can distinguish between them
and members of the House of Lords. " It is
the height of unreason to expect good legis-
lation under such absurd conditions."

Requisites of a Flying Machine.— The
principle seems to be accepted now by most
of the students of aerial navigation that the
successful air vessel, instead of a balloon,
must be a body heavier than the air, and
must be sustained as well as propelled in
some way similar to that by which a bird
flies. This principle was fully set forth in
The Popular Science Monthly for January,
1892, by M. G. Trouve, whose aviator,
therein described, had wings acting almost
precisely like those of a bird. M. Trouve
proposed for his machine an ingenious motor,
which was to be actuated by the alternate
compression and expansion of a gas in a
Bourdon tube. Previous to M. Trouve's
paper, articles setting forth the principle of
" heavier than the air " had been published
by Mr. 0. Chanute, Prof. S. P. Langley, and
Mr. H. S. Maxim, and several have been
published since in American magazines and
journals. A writer who discusses the sub-
ject of aerial navigation in the Boston Herald
raises the objection to a wing-motion, such
as M. Trouve's aviator contemplates, that
the power needed to secure the velocity
which an oscillating machine would require
would probably cause the machine to destroy
itself by the violence of its own vibrations.
He proposes instead to depend on an aero-
plane to hold the machine in the air, and to
use a screw propeller as a source of motive
power. He would pattern and proportion
the aeroplane after the position of the mo-
tionless wings of a loon in scaling descent,
as after they have been paralyzed by a shot
hitting the brain ; place the screw in front,
on the principle that an arrow can not fly
except with its heavier end foremost, and

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

425

guide the machine by horizontal and vertical
rudders. The machine may be started by
causing it to descend an inclined plane, and
then to move horizontally, when its course is
that of a scaling bird, and the power is ap-
plied, with the rudders, to keep up and direct
the motion. Few persons who have seriously
considered the subject now doubt the pos-
sibility of aerial navigation on the principle
of " heavier than the air." But the construc-
tion of a practicable machine demands a va-
riety of gifts and resources not to be found
in one man: there must be an inventor,
a mechanical engineer, a mathematician, a
practical mechanic, and a syndicate of capi-
talists.

Tbc Earliest Historical Art.— The earliest
condition of art in Egypt, says Prof. W. M.
Flinders Petrie, stands in a far different light
from that of the history of art in other coun-
tries. In the first place, it is as early as, or
earlier than, any other source of art that we
know. Other countries have largely bor-
rowed from Egypt or from Mesopotamia,
but these two great deltas have not had any
external influence acting on them ; they
stood far in advance of the civilization of
the rest of the world in the early ages, and
their art appears to be the outcome of the
first stable and well-organized governments
that were known. Tranquillity and the com-
mand of large resources were needful before
any great progress could be made in archi-
tecture or the imitative arts ; and no land
appears to have enjoyed such conditions be-
fore the dawn of the historical period in
Egypt. We have, then, to deal with a state
of things in which art was, in the course of
actual growth, free from the influence of
any external guidance, and with only its
own antecedents to build upon. This art
also stands apart in the fact that all traces
of its origin and rise are absent. We are
still as much ignorant as ever of the course
of its development. Where the tentative
stages are to be found which led up to the
triumphs of the fourth dynasty is as yet a
mystery. Certain sculptures, which are un-
doubtedly very early, have been assigned to
the second and third dynasties solely on ac-
count of the style. But there is no absolute
evidence of the date of a single sculpture or
a single block before the first king of the

fourth dynasty, Snefru (the predecessor of
Khufu, or Cheops), under whom we find
some of the most perfect works that ever
were executed. In one line, however, there
are remains of an earlier style. The rock
carvings of Upper Egypt certainly date back
to a long prehistoric age — an age when the
ostrich and the elephant were familiar in
Egypt. But these rude figures have no re-
lation to the art of historical times ; and we
should as soon learn the history of the Par-
thenon from the weapons of the stone age in
Greece as trace the Egyptian schools in the
rude carvings of the primitive man.

Pnblie Parks in Massachusetts. — The
Trustees of Public Reservations of Massa-
chusetts is a chartered body established for
the purpose of providing a ready instrument
by means of which any person or body of
persons may insure the preservation of any
beautiful or historical place in the State.
This may be accomplished by putting the
tract in its hands. It also receives money
for the maintenance and adornment of such
places. As the years pass, a variety of
motives are found to inspire the giving of
lands into the hands of the trustees. The
largest recent instance of this confidence is
the gift of twenty acres of fine woodland in
Stoneham by Mrs. Fanny Foster Tudor, now
deceased, named by her desire, in memory
of her daughter, Virginia Wood, for which a
maintenance fund — the Virginia Wood Fund
— has been collected and invested by other
friends. It appears, from facts collected by
Mr. J. B. Harrison respecting the present
provision of open spaces in Massachusetts,
that the large areas of undivided common
lands which were once to be found in most
of the townships of the Commonwealth have
all been allotted or sold to individuals, except
in Nantucket, where there still remain at
least one thousand acres open to the pub-
lic. The Park Board and Water Board of
Lynn have lately restored to public owner-
ship about two thousand acres of woodland
which was once a common of this large
kind. The smaller commons which the first
proprietors of townships almost invariably
laid out for " training fields " and sites for
" meeting houses " appear to be still the only
public open places in most of the townships
of the State. Some of them have been en-

426

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crouched upon, some have passed into the
exclusive possession of the " first churches,"
some into the exclusive possession of the
townships, and some are said to be still
owned jointly by township and church.
Where the towns have come into possession
they have frequently given the charge of the
commons to village or township improvement
associations. Only a few of the rural town-
ships have acquired new public open spaces
in recent years. In Manchester public rights
in certain sea beaches have been established
and a long strip of roadside woodland has
been deeded to the town in trust. In Shef-
field a beautiful pine grove is held in trust
for the public by five trustees. Georgetown
has laid out nine small spaces within forty
years. In the cities of the State the General
Park Act, passed in 1882, has borne excel-
lent fruit.

Sanitary and Climatic Influence of For-
ests.— Concerning the sanitary and climatic
relations of forests, Mr. B. E. Fernow con-
cludes, after a discussion of the subject, that
the influence claimed for them in promoting
greater purity of the air through the greater
production of oxygen and ozone does not
seem to be sufficient ; that the protection
they afford against sun and wind and conse-
quent absence of extreme conditions may be
considered a favorable factor ; and that the
soil conditions of the forest, which are un-
favorable to the production and existence of
pathogenic microbes, especially those of the
cholera and yellow fever, and the compara-
tive absence of wind and dust, in which such
microbes are carried into the air, may be con-
sidered as constituting the principal claim for
the hygienic significance of the forest. We
may summarize, he says, by saying that the
position of the forest as a climatic factor is
still uncertain, at least as to its practical and
quantitative importance, but that its relation
to water and soil conditions is well estab-
lished. As a climatic factor the forest of
the plain appears to be of more importance
than that of the mountains, where the more
potent influence of elevation obscures and
reduces to insignificance the influence of
their cover. As a regulator of water con-
ditions the forest of the mountains is the
important factor ; and since this influence
makes itself felt far distant from the loca-

tion of the forest, the claim for the atten-
tion of government and for statesmanlike
policy with reference to this factor of na-
tional welfare may be considered as well
founded. Every civilized government must
in time own or control the forest cover of
the mountains, in order to secure desirable
forest conditions.

The Scrnb Lands of Australia. — The
London Times's correspondent, in his little
book on Queensland, mentions the " lawyer
vine " as the worst obstacle which the clearer
of land in that country has to encounter. It
is a kind of palm that grows in feathery
tufts along a pliant stalk, and festoons itself
as a creeper upon other trees. From be-
neath the tufts of leaves the vine throws
down trailing suckers as thick as stout
cords, armed with sets of sharp red barbs.
These suckers sometimes throw themselves
from tree to tree across a road that has not
been lately used, and make it as impassable
to horses as so many strands of barbed wire.
When the vines escape from the under-
growth of wild ginger and tree-fern and
stinging bush that fringes the scrub and
coil themselves in loose loops upon the
ground, they become dangerous traps for
man and horse. In the jungle, where they
weave themselves in and out of the upright
growths, they form a net that at times defies
every means of destruction but fire. The
work of clearing ground thus encumbered is
not light. In some districts it is done by
Chinamen. They are not allowed to own
freehold land in the colony, but scrub land
is often leased to them to clear and use for a
certain number of years. The ground, when
it is cleared, is extraordinarily rich, and they
appear to recoup themselves for their labor
with the first crops they grow upon their
leaseholds. The owner afterward has it in
his power to resume his land, and the China-
man passes on to clear and use the scrub. In
this way the Chinese are employed as a sort of
self-acting machine for the opening of the
country. They devote themselves principal-
ly to the cultivation of fruit. A walk round
a Chinese garden is an instructive botanical
excursion, so many and strange are the edi-
ble varieties of fruit to which one is intro-
duced. Spices, too, and flowers flourish
under the care of the Chinamen, and the

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

427

fields of bananas and pineapples dotted with
orange and mango orchards, which stretch
for miles beside the sugar plantations, are
nearly all Chinese. They ship fruit to the
southern colonies, but their profits must be
very small, for one of the principal complaints
made against them is that they can make a
living where a white man would starve.
Nevertheless, it is found that when they
hire themselves out to work they are not a
very great deal cheaper than white men.

Worlds and Molecules. — In his lectures
at Geneva and Lausanne, M. Raoul Pictet
presented mechanics as an exact science,
comprising chemistry and physics in its do-
main. The principal phenomenon of physics
is astronomy. The laws of sidereal gravita-
tion apply likewise to the smallest bodies on
the earth, to infinitely small ones like the
molecules, and also to the atoms. Thus we
have a unity of matter in which atoms,
uniting from molecules, these group them-
selves into bodies, and these form worlds.
The attraction which controls infinitely large
bodies may therefore be regarded as similar
to that which unites infinitely little ones. If
the atoms touched in a molecule, there would
be no force capable of separating them.
We are, however, acquainted with dilatation
and various ways of separating the atoms
and augmenting the distance between them.
The hypothesis that they touch is, therefore,
not admissible. To explain the theory of
chemical phenomena, let us suppose a mole-
cule, A, placed somewhere in sidereal space,
having a rectilineal motion toward another
molecule, B, immovable, and very remote.
In its approach to B there will come a mo-
ment when A's motion will slacken. Then
astronomical phenomena will end and the
phenomena special to physics will begin. At
last the molecule A will stop ; it has become
inert, and can not advance further toward B.
It is bound by cohesion. If, now, we sup-
pose a pressure to be imposed on A, to bring
it down to B, physical phenomena will cease,
the resistance of A will diminish with the
distance, and finally the molecule will ally
itself with B without touching it ; then we
have chemical phenomena. The force that
unites A and B is affinity. M. Pictet supposes
that the absolute zero of temperature, when
bodies can no longer react upon one an-

other, is found between t'^ese last two
phases, and his idea is confirmed by experi-
ment. When sulphuric acid with potash is
cooled down to — 150° C. ( — 236° Fahr.), no
reaction is apparent. The bodies are no
longer able to combine at that temperature,
when occurs a complete death of such ac-
tion. At — 80° C. (—112° Fahr.), potas-
sium remains unattacked in alcohol and
water for whole days. A slight warming
produces a small reaction ; and if the tem-
perature is raised a little more, combination
takes place with energy and an explosion is
produced.

Heating and Ventilation of Electric-
lighted Bnildings. — In his paper on the
Heating of Large Buildings, A. R. Wolff,
consulting engineer, shows that the intro-
duction of electric lighting with isolated gen-
erating plants in large buildings has had a
sensible effect on the solution of the heat-
ing and ventilating problem by practically
conditioning the use of exhaust steam for
heating. The quantity of steam required
for heating such buildings is nearly equal to
the amount used independently for their
electric lighting. Since electric-light engines
convert only about ten or fifteen per cent of
the heat of the steam with which they are
supplied into mechanical energy, from eighty-
five to ninety per cent of it is retained in
the exhaust steam, available and just suffi-
cient, as a rule, to meet the heating and ven-
tilating needs of the building. This means
practically that a boiler capacity ample for
the heating and ventilating will take care, in
addition, of the electric lighting of a large
building, or vice versa ; and that in the
winter months the electric lighting is se-
cured at only a slightly increased fuel expense.
It is this fact that makes it difficult for either
city or district heating or electric-lighting
companies to supply steam or electricity re-
spectively to large buildings. They can not
compete with the cheapness of generation of
the isolated plant within the building. The
facts that electric lights give out less heat
and vitiate the atmosphere less than gas, and
that they do not flicker, have also an impor-
tant bearing on the problem of heating and
ventilation. The fresh-air supply can be
brought in at the top of the room, where
there are no lights for it to blow out, and ex-

428

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hausted at the bottom, in reversal of the
ordinary process, and under this condition
it does not produce the draft or cause the
sudden cooling that are so objectionable
under the usual method of ventilation.

Work of the United States Fish Commis-
sion,— In the work of the United States Com-
mission of Fish and Fisheries, the summer
of 1890 was spent by the steamer Albatross
in Bering Sea, where the principal banks
frequented by the cod were surveyed. The
season was too short to complete the work,
and it will have to be resumed at some fu-
ture time. The position of the western mar-
gin of the continental platform was, how-
ever, defined for a considerable distance,
and a good beginning was made toward a
knowledge of those physical and biological
features of the sea which relate to the habits
and distribution of the fur seal and other
aquatic mammals. By the surveys of the
coasts of Washington, Oregon, and Califor-
nia, the contour of the continental border
has been developed from the shore line into
depths of two hundred fathoms as far south
as Point Conception, while the region be-
tween that place and San Diego had been
previously explored. Temperature, density,
and biological observations in different parts
of San Francisco Bay indicate that the waters
of that region are not, as has hitherto been
supposed, unsuited to the breeding of Atlan-
tic coast oysters. A scientific investigation
was made with the Albatross during the
early part of 1891, under the direction of
Prof. Alexander Agassiz, of the waters ly-
ing off the western coast of America between
Cape San Francisco and the Galapagos Is-
lands on the south and the Gulf of Califor-
nia on the north. The most extensive and
important operations on the Atlantic coast
were conducted in the interest of the oyster
industry, in the coast waters of South Caro-
lina and Maryland and Virginia, and in Long
Island Sound. Dr. Bashf ord Dean, of Colum-
bia College, was commissioned to study the
methods of oyster culture practiced in Euro-
pean countries and to prepare a series of
illustrated reports concerning them. The
physical inquiries in the mackerel region off
the southern New England coast, under the
direction of Prof. William Libby, Jr., were
continued in 1889 and 1890 ; and the investi-

gations respecting the interior waters of the
country were conducted in twelve States and
Territories on an extensive scale and with
important practical results. The work of
the Division of Fish Culture was continued
at twenty-two stations in fifteen States.

The Theory of Special Assessments, —

According to the study of this subject made
by Victor Rosewater (Columbia College Se-
ries), the underlying principle of special
assessment for benefit first appeared in this
country in the provisions of a provincial law
of New York in the year 1691. The effect-
ive clause of this statute was copied from
an English act passed in 1667, and re-enact-
ed in 1670, to regulate the rebuilding of
London after the great fire. Thus the idea
was not, as some have supposed, a native
American one, but the substance of the
plan had been put into English books twenty
years before. The New York law remained
unrepealed, but inoperative, till 1787, when
it was adapted more closely to existing ne-
cessities. This method of raising revenue
for local improvements remained for a long
time peculiar to New York. It did not be-
gin to extend to the other commonwealths
till after the people had begun to recover
from the effects of the War of 1812. The
first development of the system, therefore,
corresponds roughly with the movements for
the construction of internal improvements
covering the years just before and after
1830, and dying out with the crisis of 1837.
The era of premature railway building about
1850 witnessed another movement of the
kind in the newer States and Territories.
The last movement, begun immediately after
the close of the civil war, was more general
than the others ; has not yet wholly ceased ;
and has passed over into Toronto, Canada.
The justification of the policy of special as-
sessments is to be found in the principle that
where an expense is to be incurred by a local
authority which results in special, distinct,
and measurable advantages to the property
of particular persons, it is more equitable that
those who benefit thereby should contribute
to the expense to the extent of those benefits
than that the burden should be placed upon
others who have received no such special ad-
vantages. Among other methods of recover-
ing the expense of improvements, besides

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

429

general taxation, are the imposition of tolls,
which has now been generally abandoned,
and recoupment, or buying the property be-
fore the improvement is made — as in the
opening of new streets and public places —
and reselling it afterward, which involves
a large outlay of capital, and runs counter to
the generally existing constitutional provi-
sions respecting the exercise of eminent do-
main. For young and growing municipali-
ties the method of special assessment is
considered the best. "With few excep-
tions and abuses, it has been operated in the
United States to the general satisfaction of
all. It rests upon principles of right and
justice. It brings quick results at the very
time when needed. It discourages the
speculative holding of unimproved urban
property."

Characteristics of Lunar Craters. — In

the study of lunar physiography or physiog-
nomy, says Prof. G. K. Gilbert, interest nat-
urally centers in the craters, for these are the
dominant features. All theories begin with
them. Their range in size is great, extend-
ing from a maximum of about eight hundred
miles in diameter to a minimum of less than
one mile. The size of the smallest ones is
not known, as they are beyond the present
power of the telescope. Within this range
are several varieties, more or less correlated
in size, but their intergradation is so per-
fect that they are all regarded as phases of
a single type. To describe them one should
picture to himself a circular plain, ten, twenty,
fifty, or one hundred miles in diameter, sur-
rounded by an acclivity which everywhere
rises steeply but irregularly to a rude ter-
race, above which is a circular cliff likewise
facing inward toward the plain. This cliff
is the inner face of a rugged, compound, an-
nular ridge, composed of shorter ridges
which overlap one another, but all trend con-
centrically. Seen from above, this ridge
calls to mind a wreath, and it has been so
named. From the outer edge of the wreath
a gentle slope descends in all directions to
the general surface of the moon, which it is
convenient here to call the outer plain. The
outer slope of the crater may be identical in
surface character with the outer plain, or it
may be radially and somewhat delicately
ridged as though by streams of lava. The

inner slope from the base of the cliff to the
margin of the inner plain is broken by uneven
and discontinuous terraces. From the center
of the inner plain rises a hill or mountain,
sometimes symmetric but usually irregular
and crowned by several peaks. From the
outer plain to the base of the wreath the
ascent is one thousand to two thousand feet,
and the ascent thence to the top of the
wreath may be as much more. The descent
from the wreath to the inner plain is ordi-
narily from five thousand to ten thousand
feet, and the height of the central hill is
from one thousand to five thousand feet.
With rare exceptions the inner plain is sev-
eral thousand feet lower than the outer plain.
The central hill is not universally present, but
appears in rather more than half the craters
of medium size, and tends to disappear as the
craters become larger. Mr. Gilbert attempts
to account for the origin of these craters by
collisions of meteoric bodies with the moon,
or of the moonlets by the aggregation of
which under the meteoric theory the moon
has been formed, and is supported by the
fact that the splash produced by dropping a
pebble into pasty mud, etc., has the form of
a crater.

The Royal Cinnamon of Tonkin.— The

cinnamon of Thanh-Hoa, Tonkin, called roy-
al cinnamon, is highly esteemed by the An-
namites, and great value is attached to
pieces of its bark as presents. It is not
cultivated, but grows in thick, hardly acces-
sible forests on the Muong Mountains, where
some cantons are tributary to Annam. Each
canton must furnish the king a tribute of
three stools of cinnamon a year. When an
inhabitant learns of a stool, he immediately
informs the mayor of his village ; the mayor
informs the sub-prefect, and he advises the
governor of the province of the fact, who
makes report of the matter to the court.
The Quang phu, or sub-prefect, sends a
squad of men to guard the tree, who are not
relieved till the crop is gathered, in the
presence of the Quang phu or of some man-
darin deputized by him. The whole crop is
supposed to go to the king, but the officers
know how to retain a little of it. So pre-
cious a spice as is this particular kind has
not entered into commerce, and so jealously
is it guarded that it is extremely difficult to

43°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

obtain a specimen except through some
fraud; and persons detected in defrauding
the government of its cinnamon usually have
to atone for the offense with their lives.

A Himalayan Landscape. — Mr. W. M.

Gonway, the Himalayan explorer, describes
the view as an astonishing one which sur-
rounds the traveler from Srinagar to Gil-
git when he has emerged from the defiles
which sunder the valley of Hunza Nagyr
from Gilgit, and has climbed the vast ancient
moraines near Tashot that form the final
rampart of the fertile basin. "The bottom
of the valley is, as usual, deeply furrowed by
debris, the surface of which is covered by
terraced fields, faced with Cyclopean mason-
ry, and rich with growing crops and count-
less fruit trees. The mountains fling them-
selves aloft on either hand with astounding
precipitousness, as it were, into the upper-
most heights of heaven — so steeply, in fact,
that a spring avalanche falling from the sum-
mit of Rakipershi on the south must almost
reach the bottom of the valley. Rakipershi
is 25,500 feet high ; the Hunza peak is about
24,000 feet high. Their summits are sepa-
rated by a distance of nineteen miles. Both
mountains are visible from base to summit
at one and the same time from the level floor
of the valley between them, which is not
more than 7,000 feet above the sea. No
mountain view I saw in the Karakorums
surpasses this for grim wonder of colossal
scale, combined with savage grandeur of
form and contrast of smiling foreground."

Composition of Clays. — The word clay,
says Mr. Robert T. Hill, in his paper (United
States Geological Survey) on the Clay Mate-
• rials of the United States, has a diverse and
elastic meaning. To the popular mind it is
the familiar, gritless, plastic earth which is
readily molded when wet. To the manufac-
turer it is the material he molds and bakes,
which may be the natural plastic material of
the popular mind, or a mixture of many in-
gredients either natural or artificial, accord-
ing to the refinement of the ultimate prod-
uct ; this product varies as to simplicity of
processes from the ordinary brick clays,
which are natural mixtures of the essential
sand and clay with iron and other accesso-
ries, to the washed, ground, screened, and

compressed mixture of kaolin, feldspar, flint,
and plastic clay from which the potter shapes
china and porcelain into works of art. Clay
material in nature is not always plastic, and
many of the most valuable products are made
from consolidated rock, as the Cornwall stone
or rock kaolin, which is a crumbling granite.
Many common brick clays are more like im-
pure sand than clay, and some of these, from
the earliest times, have been molded with
straw to give them sufficient tenacity for the
handling necessary before burning. Much
of the aboriginal pottery of America is com-
posed of various earths, with just enough
clay to hold the particles together. The
chief function of clay in the fictile arts is
its partial fusion upon firing, and upon this
and the skill of the artisan who fires the kiln
depends the product, which is wonderfully
varied by the mixtures of fluxes and temper-
ing material. Plasticity is desirable for the
handling of the unfired material. Nearly all
unconsolidated or powdered material may be
made to adhere by water and other ingre-
dients than clay, so that it can be shaped
for burning, but plastic clay is the cheapest
natural material used for this purpose in all
clay burning. The material for the coarse
products occurs naturally, and is mixed with
the non-plastic kaolins by the porcelain-mak-
er to give the " clay " the necessary tenacity
for handling and shaping.

NOTES.

AN Experimental Study, by William 0.
Krohn, of simultaneous stimulations of the
sense of touch, made upon ten different per-
sons, among its interesting results showed
that skin over the joints is much more sensi-
tive than at other places ; that touches on
the back of the body are more distinctly
felt, more clearly remembered, and therefore
better localized than on the front part of the
body ; that the localizations are better for
points not on the median line than for those
on it ; that they are not so correctly made
on the left as on the right side of the body ;
that they are better on hairy portions than
on those not covered with hairs ; and that a
difference in the power of correct localization
exists between usually clothed and usually
unclothed parts ; the parts not covered, ex-
cept in case of the joints, giving the more
correct localizations.

BY exposing hen's eggs to the vapors of
alcohol for periods ranging from twenty-six
to forty- eight hours, M. Ch. Fe>6 has ascer-

NOTES.

43 i

tained that their development is much re-
tarded and often results in the production of
monstrosities. In some instances alcoholized
eggs of nearly a hundred hours were hardly
as far developed as normal eggs of twenty
hours. These facts may be regarded as hav-
ing a bearing on the frequency of sterility
and premature abortions in human beings
afflicted with alcoholism. They show, fur-
ther, that alcohol may have an effect on the
embryo, even when the progenitors have not
been subject to chronic alcoholism.

THE character of the writing found in the
Maya codices and inscriptions has been a topic
of discussion among students of the subject,
and three theories have been sustained : one
that the symbols are ideographic ; another,
that they are chiefly phonetic ; and a third,
or middle theory, by Dr. Brinton, that they
are in the nature of rebus-writing, or " icon-
omatic." The personal statements of cer-
tain old Spanish writers — particularly of
Bishop Landa, who assumed to publish the
alphabet — are in favor of their phonetic
character. This is also maintained in a re-
cent paper — Are the Maya Hieroglyphics Pho-
netic ? — by Dr. Cyrus Thomas, who presents
interpretations which, he believes, if they
are accepted, will settle the question.

AT the last annual meeting of the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice,
the president, Mr. Samuel Colgate, spoke of
the encouragements that existed for the con-
tinuance of the work. The money receipts
for the year 1892 had been equal to those of
any previous year. The large proportion of
prisoners convicted to the number brought
to trial is cited as showing that the society
is careful in instituting prosecutions. Sev-
eral evidences were cited to show that the
society had been brought into closer touch
with public sympathy than ever before ;
among them was the fact that the year had
been exceptionally free from newspaper as-
saults and adverse criticisms. Yet defects
in the law needing amendment, and even
legislation in favor of vice, and frequent
laxity in the administration of existing laws,
were complained of.

A UNIVERSITY course of thirty lectures on
Celestial Mechanics, by G. W. Hill, is now in
progress, beginning October 14, 1893, at Ham-
ilton Hall, Columbia College. The lectures
are given every Saturday except the last two
in December, at 10.30 A. M. A full presen-
tation of the subject is given, rather than a
rapid summary.

M. JANSSEN has telegraphed the fact that
the observatory on the summit of Mont
Blanc is completed, and nothing now re-
mains to be done but carry out the interior
arrangements. The machinery adopted for
hauling materials up over the snow worked
to perfection and contributed greatly to the
success and comfort of the workmen. M.

Janssen used it to assist in his own getting
up, and it was " curious, extraordinary," he
says, " to see materials moved by these en-
gines climbing over the icy slopes of the peak
by ways of a new sort, which science only
was able to contrive and realize."

IN an interference experiment described
by Lord Rayleigh the light from a single slit,
illuminated either by sunlight or a lamp
flame, passes down a tube about a foot long
and is received on two very fine and very,
close slits. An eye placed at the back of
these sees a beautiful set of interference
bands. No lens is required, because the eye
itself acts as such. The two slits are really
scratches made by a knife on an evenly sil-
vered microscope cover-glass.

THE consultative committee appointed in
Italy to study the question of alcoholism has
recently presented its report to the Govern-
ment. It appears from the document that
the yearly mortality ascribed to alcoholism
for the whole kingdom is 1'62 per hundred
thousand inhabitants. It was greatest in
Liguria (3'46) and the March (3'11), and
least in Campania (0'53) and the Abruzzi
(0-75). Under the application of the new
penal code, which makes intoxication a crime,
16,504 offenses were reported in 1890 and
16,382 in 1891.

IN a paper on the wearing of rings in an-
cient Rome, M. Maximin Deloche shows that
in the early days of the republic the iron
ring was reserved for persons who had dis-
tinguished themselves by some splendid act
in war or had rendered the state some impor-
tant service. Afterward, patricians, knights,
and magistrates had the privilege of wearing
it. When the wearing of rings became gen-
eral the metal used became the distinctive
sign of the several classes of citizens, and
the metal worn was determined by birth.
The most precious metals were worn by the
ingenui ; senators and knights alone had
golden rings ; while the plebeians' rings were
of iron. The freedmen in time made claims
to the privilege of wearing gold, and it was
given to them by a constitution of Justinian.

NOTICING the fact that the Smithsonian
Institution has obtained a table in the Zo-
ological Laboratory at Naples, the Revue
Scientifique remarks that it is curious that
Americans should go to Europe to seek sub-
jects for study when they have so abundant
and varied a fauna at home.

A MANUFACTORY of flints for guns and
tinder boxes still exists at Brandon, England,
in which, according to Mr. Edward Lovett,
the methods supposed to have been used in the
stone age are employed without much change
at the present time. The flint is broken
into conveniently sized fragments by placing
it on the knees and striking with a hammer.
The pieces are then split into flakes, and
these into squares, which are trimmed into

432

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

finished gun flints. Most of the gun flints
are sent to Zanzibar and African ports, and
the tinder-box flints to Spain and Italy.

A THEORY has been put forth by M. Ra-
teau in the French Academy of Sciences that
the crust of the earth beneath the continents
does not touch the fluid globe, but is sepa-
rated from it by a space filled with gaseous
matter under pressure. The continents would
therefore constitute a sort of blister, much
flattened, inflated and sustained by gases,
while the bottom of the oceans is supposed
to rest directly on the fiery mass. By this
hypothesis the author believes that many
phenomena of the terrestrial crust may be
explained which are not clearly accounted
for under the present theory.

A RAPID deterioration is described by Mr.
C. H. Morse as being produced in the water
pipes of Cambridge, Mass., by the electro-
lytic action of the current from the electric
cars. It is observed in pipes composed of
lead, iron, galvanized iron, brass, and rust-
less iron. In one instance the current was
so strong as to set on fire oakum which was
applied in making a joint. A partial check
to the deterioration has been found in con-
necting the water and gas pipes and the nega-
tive pole of the dynamo.

THE Bank of France has put in circula-
tion notes printed on ramie paper. The
notes are of the same form as the old-fash-
ioned ones, but the new paper is lighter and
at the same time firmer than the old, and per-
mits a clearer impression, rendering counter-
feiting more difficult.

UNDER the Thibetan system of polyandry,
as observed by Mrs. Bishop (Isabella Bird),
the eldest son alone of the family marries,
and the wife accepts the brothers of her
husband as secondary spouses. The whole
family is thus held to the home. The chil-
dren belong to the elder brother, while the
other brothers are "lesser fathers." The
natives are strongly attached to this custom.
The women, in particular, despise the mo-
notony of European monogamy, and the
word " widow " is a term of reproach among
them. Children are very obedient to their
fathers and their mother, and the family
feeling is strongly developed.

STRONG additional evidence of the pres-
ence of cretaceous strata beneath the most
of Long Island is adduced by Mr. Arthur
Hollick, in a paper on that subject. They
have been found in the shape of fossil re-
mains of plants at Williamsburgh, Lloyd's
Neck, and Glencove. Clays containing the
fossils have been found in place in the neigh-
borhood of Glencove; while at other sites
the rocks appear to have been glacially
transported. " Only a beginning," says Mr.
Hollick, " has yet been made in the search
for plant remains ; but now that attention
has been called to the matter they are being

reported from a number of localities, and
specimens are constantly coming to the light,
and there seems to be no doubt that the en-
tire north shore of the island will present the
same story to the searchers when it has been
carefully explored."

TREES in London, as in other cities, have
two adverse influences to resist — coal smoke
and the heat reflected from miles of brick
and stone work. The past unusually hot
summer has afforded a fine opportunity for
observing what species can most successfully
contend against these influences. Among
them Mr. Herbert Maxwell names the Ori-
ental plane tree, which has stood the trial
fairly well, coming out with half its leaves
gone and the other half fresh and green ;
aspens and poplars, which " have suffered
not at all " ; the ailantus, " which is (Sep-
tember 7th) in splendid foliage " ; and our
common locust (Robinia pseudacacia), which
" for beauty of form or freshness of verdure
can not be e.xcelled for planting in towns."

OBITUARY NOTES.

TRAUGOTT FRIEDRICH KUTZING, a pioneer
in the scientific study of the Algae, died at
Nordhausen, September 9, 1893, in the eighty-
seventh year of his age. His latest work is
more than twenty years old, and all his most
important works appeared before 1851. Yet,
although much that he did and taught has
been superseded or supplemented by more
recent investigations, his Phycologia gene-
ralis, published in 1843; his Tabulce phycolo-
gice, published in twenty volumes, 1845 to
1870 ; and his Species Algarum, 1849, are
still standard works. His extensive collec-
tion of dried Algae has long been in the pos-
session of the University of Leyden.

DR. ALEXANDER STRAUCH, Director of the
Zoological Museum of St. Petersburg, who
died in September, 1893, at the age of sixty-
one years, was an authority on reptiles and
the author of several zoological works. "

PROF. HERMAN AUGUST HAGEN, of Har-
vard College, a distinguished entomologist,
died in Boston, Mass., November 9, 1893. He
was born in Konigsberg, Prussia, where his
ancestors had been connected with the uni-
versity for two hundred years, and, having
pursued his studies there and at other places,
settled there in the general practice of medi-
cine. He was assistant in' the surgical hos-
pital there and incumbent of local civil of-
fices when he was invited by Prof. Agassiz to
come to Cambridge as assistant in entomol-
ogy at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
In 1870 he was made Professor of Entomol-
ogy at Harvard. His first scientific paper
was published in 1834. His publications in-
clude more than four hundred articles, of
which the most important is the Bibliotheca
Entomologica.

DAVID STAKE JORDAN.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

FEBRUARY, 1894.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.
XIX.— FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
BY ANDREW DECKSON WHITE, LL.D., L.H.D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

PART I.
THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.

A BOVE the portal of the beautiful cathedral of Freiburg may
-£-*. be seen one of the most interesting of thought fossils. A
mediaeval sculptor, working into stone various theological concep-
tions of his time, has there represented the creation. The Al-
mighty, in human form, sits benignly making and placing upon
the heavens, like wafers upon paper, sun, moon, and planets ; and,
at the center, platter-like and largest of all — the earth.

The furrows of thought on the Creator's face show that he is
obliged to contrive ; the masses of muscle upon his arms show
that he is obliged to toil ; naturally, then, the sculptors and paint-
ers of the mediaeval and early modern period frequently repre-
sented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied had
done : as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil, enjoy-
ing well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven.

In this fossilized thought at Freiburg, and in others revealing
the same idea in sculpture, painting, and engraving during the
middle ages and the two centuries following, culminated a devel-
opment of human thought which had existed through thousands
of years, and which has controlled the world's thinking until our
own time.

Its beginnings lie far back in human history ; we find them
among the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and

VOL. XLIV. — 33

434- THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of
the world. In nearly all these there is revealed the conception of
a Creator, of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally
and directly created the visible universe with his hands and fin-
gers or voice.

Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscrip-
tions which have been recently recovered and given to the Eng-
lish-speaking peoples by such scholars as Layard, George Smith,
Oppert, Sayce, and others, show that in the ancient religions of
Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a narrative of the
creation which, in its most important features, must have been
the source of that in our own sacred books. Or, at least, it has
now become perfectly clear that from the same sources which
inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe among
the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other
ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent a
place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In the two accounts
imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in the third ac-
count of which we have indications in the book of Job and in the
Proverbs, there is presented, often with the greatest sublimity,
that same early conception of the Creator and of the creation — the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a Creator
who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own
hands, and of a creation which is " the work of his fingers." To
supplement this view there was then developed the belief in this
Creator as one who, having

" from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space,"

sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens," perpetu-
ally controlling and directing them.*

Among the early fathers of the Church this view of creation
became fundamental ; they impressed upon Christendom more
and more strongly the belief that the universe was created in a
perfectly literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and

* A somewhat similar series of sculptures representing the Almighty creating the heav-
ens and the earth is also to be seen at the cathedral of Upsala and elsewhere. For an ex-
act statement of the resemblances which have settled the question among the most eminent
scholars in favor of the derivation of the Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see
Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 304, 306 ; also, Franz
Lukas, Die Grundbegriffe in den Kosmographien der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893, pp. 35-
46 ; also George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, especially the German translation with addi-
tions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testa-
ment, Giessen, 1883, pp. 1-54, etc. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. i,
chap, .i, L'antique influence babylonienne.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 435

there sundry theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more
spiritual view regarding some parts of the creative work, and of
these St. Augustine was chief. Ready as he was to bend his pow-
erful mind to meet the literal text of Scripture, he revolted
against the material conception of a creation of the visible uni-
verse by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this he
was followed by Bede and a few others ; but the more material
conceptions prevailed, and we find them taking shape not only in
the sculptures and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illumina-
tions of missals and psalters, but later, at the close of the middle
ages, in the pictured Bibles and in general literature.

Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception
of the creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed
especially to the deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century
Csedmon paraphrased the account given in Genesis, bringing out
this material conception in the most literal form ; and a thousand
years later Milton developed out of the various statements in the
Old Testament, mingled with a theology regarding " the creative
word " which had been drawn from the New, his description of the
creation by the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing
could be more literal and material.*

" He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things.
One foot he centered, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, ' Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds :
This be thy just circumference, 0 world! '

But as the evolution of theology proceeded, two new points
in this materialistic view were especially developed. The first of
these was that no material substance existed before the creation
of the material universe — that "God created everything out of
nothing." Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning
upon the first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view — name-
ly, that the mass, "without form and void/' existed before the
universe ; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight. The vast
majority of the fathers were explicit on this point. Tertullian
especially was very severe against those who took any other view
than that generally accepted as orthodox; he declared that, if
there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the world
was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it ; that by not men-
tioning it God has given us a clear proof that there was no such
thing ; and he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view,

* For Caedmon, see Bouterwek's edition, Giitersloh, 1854, vol. i; for Milton, see Para-
dise Lost, book vii, pp. 225-230.

436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with " the woe which impends on all who add to or take away
from the written word."

St. Augustine, who shows signs of a "belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world had been made of some
material, that very same material must have been made out of
nothing."

In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily
followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created
everything out of nothing ; and at the present hour the great
majority of the faithful — whether Catholic or Protestant — are
taught the same doctrine. On this point the syllabus of Pius IX
and the Westminster Catechism fully agree.*

The other point of which there came a great theological de-
velopment referred to the time occupied by the Almighty in the
creation. The natural tendency of theology was, of course, more
and more to glorify the great miracle ; and, as a result of this
tendency, it began to be held that the so-called Mosaic account of
the creation in six days must be subordinated to the text, " He
spake, and they were made," and that in some mysterious manner
God created the universe in six days, yet brought all things into
existence in a moment. Origen and Athanasius especially pro-
moted this view in the East, and St. Augustine in the West.

Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views,
which to the natural mind seemed absolutely contradictory ; but
by ingenious use or suppression of facts, by dexterous play upon
phrases, and by plentiful metaphysics a reconciliation was effected,
and men came at least to believe that they believed in a creation
of the universe instantaneous and at the same time in six days.f

Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so
fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and
Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, with
the indications of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job,
a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As re-
gards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain oc-
cult powers in numerals. Philo Judseus had declared that the
world was created in six days because " of all numbers six is the
most productive " ; he had explained the creation of the heavenly

* For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps, xx and xxii ; for St.
Augustine regarding " creation from nothing," see the De Genesi contra ManichaeOvS, lib.
i, cap. vi ; for St. Ambrose, see the Hexameron, lib. i, cap. iv ; for the decree of the
Fourth Lateran Council, and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Crea-
tion in Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.

\ For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap. xxxvi, xxxvii ; also his De Principibus, cap.
y; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi contra Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram,
passim ; for Athanasius, see his Discourses against the Arians, 5i, 48, 49.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 437

bodies on the fourth day by " the harmony of the number four " ;
of the animals on the fifth day by the five senses ; of man on the
sixth day by the same virtues in the number six which had caused
it to be set as a limit to the creative work ; and, greatest of all,
the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass of mysterious vir-
tues in the number seven.

St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce
the work of the second day " good " is to be found in the fact that
there is something essentially evil in the number two, and this
was echoed centuries afterward afar off in Britain by Bede.

St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in
the following statement : " There are three classes of numbers —
the more than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, ac-
cording as the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than
the original number. Six is the first perfect number ; wherefore
we must not say that six is a perfect number because God finished
all his works in six days, but that God finished all his works in
six days because six is a perfect number."

Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval
Church until a year after the discovery of America. It was re-
echoed in the Nuremberg Chronicle as follows : " The creation of
things is explained by the number six, the parts of which, one,
two, and three, assume the form of a triangle."

This view of the creation of the universe in six days, each
made up of an evening and a morning, as stated in the first of the
accounts given in Genesis, became virtually universal. Peter
Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor, authorities of vast weight in
the Church, gave it their sanction in the twelfth century, and im-
pressed it for ages upon the mind of the Church.

Both these lines of speculation — as to the creation of every-
thing out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous
creation of the universe with its creation in six days — were still
further developed by sundry great thinkers of the middle ages.

St. Hilary, of Poictiers, reconciled the two conceptions as fol-
lows : " For, although according to Moses there is an appearance
of regular order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of
the dry land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation
of the heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land
and water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other ele-
ments is seen to be the work of a single moment."

St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinc-
tion which for ages eased the difficulties in the case : he taught in
effect that God created the substance of things in a moment, but
gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this crea-
tion six days.

In the seventeenth century the old view, in exact accordance

438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the first of the two accounts in Genesis, was sanctioned by
Bossuet. In his universal history he declared, " Moses teaches
us that this Potent Architect wished to create the universe in six
days to show that he did not act under necessity or blind impetu-
osity, as certain philosophers imagine/' *

The early reformers accepted and developed the same view,
and Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion.
With his usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses " spoke
properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively,"
and that therefore " the world with all creatures was created in
six days/' And then he goes on to show how, by a great miracle,
the whole creation was also instantaneous.

Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of
nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six
days, citing the text : " He spake, and they were made ; he com-
manded, and they were created."

Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid
especial stress on the creation in six days ; having called attention
to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not
quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he
says that " creation was extended through six days that it might
not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the considera-
tion of it."

Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring : " So impor-
tant is it to comprehend the work of creation in the faith that we
see the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were
this article taken away there would be no original sin, the prom-
ise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our
religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines in draw-
ing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as neces-
sary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created
not only out of nothing but in exactly six days.

Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protes-
tant reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the
so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of

* For Philo Judseus, see his The Creation of the World, chap, iii ; for St. Augustine on
the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad Litteram, iv, ch. ii ; for Peter Lom-
bard, see the Sententiae, lib. ii, dist. xv, 5 ; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see De Sacramentis,
lib. i, pars i ; also, Annotat. Elucidat. in Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii ; for St. Hilary, see
De Trinitate, lib. xii ; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his Summa Theologica, quest. Ixxxiv, art.
i and ii ; the passage in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii ; for Bossuet, see his
Discours sur FHistoire TJniverselle ; for the sacredness of the number seven among the
Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 21, 22 ;
also George Smith et al. ; for general ideas on the occult powers of various numbers, espe-
cially the number seven, and the influence of these ideas on theology and science, see my
chapter on astronomy.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 439

the eighteenth century, when Buff on attempted to state simple
geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced
him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation
'which ended with these words: "I abandon everything in my
book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all
which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses/' *

But to these discussions was added yet another, which, be-
ginning in the early days of the Church, was handed down the
ages until it has died out among the theologians of our own
time.

In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the
distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day,
while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day.
Masses of profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning
have been developed to account for this — masses so great that for
ages they have obscured the simple fact that the original text is
a precious revelation to us of one of the most ancient and uni-
versal of recorded beliefs — the belief that light and darkness are
conditions or entities independent of the heavenly bodies, and
that the sun, moon, and stars exist not merely to maintain or in-
crease light but to " divide the day from the night, to be for
signs and for seasons, and for days and for years/' and " to rule
the day and the night."

Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and
especially in St. Ambrose; in his work on creation he tells us:
" We must remember that the light of day is one thing and the
light of the sun, moon, and stars another — the sun by his rays
appearing to add luster to the daylight. For before sunrise the
day dawns but is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still
further to its splendor." This view became one of the " treasures
of sacred knowledge committed to the Church," and was faith-
fully received by the middle ages. The mediaeval mysteries and
miracle plays give curious evidences of this : In a performance of
the creation, when God separates light from darkness, the stage
direction is, " Now a painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half
black and the other half white." This theory, leaving out all
quibblings and special pleadings, which in the light of modern

* For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction, and his comments on
chap, i, verse 12 ; the quotations from Luther's commentary are taken mainly from the
translation by Henry Cole, D. D., Edinburgh, 1858 ; for Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici,
in Melanchthon's opera, ed. Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270; also pp. 637, 638; for
the citations from Calvin, see his Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671,
torn, i, cap. ii, vol. i, p. 8) ; also in the Institutes, Allen's translation, London, 1838, vol. i,
chap, xv, pp. 126, 127 ; for Peter Martyr, see his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zock-
ler, vol. i, p. 690 ; for the articles in the Westminster Confession of Faith, see chap, iv ;
for Buffon's recantation, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap, iii, p. 57.

440 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

knowledge are fast coming to be recognized as profoundly im-
moral, was without doubt the understanding and the belief of the
person or persons who compiled from the Chaldean and other
earlier statements the account of creation in the first of our
sacred books.*

Thus down to a period almost within living memory it was
held, virtually " always, everywhere, and by all," that the uni-
verse, as we now see it, was created literally and directly by the
voice or hands of the Almighty, or by both — out of nothing — in
an instant or in six days, or in both — and for the convenience of
the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and foundation
of the whole structure.

But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of
another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early
as the Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find
recorded the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of a development of the uni-
verse out of the primeval flood or " great deep," and of the animal
creation out of the earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at
least, into monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books
of the neighbors and pupils of the Chaldeans — the Hebrews ; but
its development in Christendom afterward was checked, as we shall
hereafter see, by the more powerful influence of other inherited
statements which appealed more simply and powerfully to the
mind of the Church.

Far more striking was the effect of this idea, rewrought by the
early Ionian philosophers, to whom it was doubtless transmitted
from the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of
lonians like Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most strik-
ingly developed ; the first of these conceived of the visible uni-
verse as the result of processes of evolution, and the latter pressed
further the same mode of reasoning, dwelling on agencies in cos-
mic development recognized in modern science.

This geneal idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold
upon Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some
wonderfully ingenious, some curiously perverse. Plato, indeed,
withstood it ; but Aristotle sometimes developed it so as to re-
mind us of modern views.

* For scriptural indications of the independent existence of light and darkness, compare
with the first verses of the first chapter of Genesis such passages as Job xxxviii, 19, 24 ;
for the general prevalence of this early view, see Lukas, Kosmogonie, pp. 31, 33, 41, 74,
and passim ; for the view of St. Ambrose regarding the creation of light and of the sun,
see his Hexameron, lib. 4, cap. iii ; for an excellent general statement, see Huxley, Mr.
Gladstone and Genesis, in the Nineteenth Century, 1886, reprinted in his Essays on Contro-
verted Questions, London, 1892, note, pp. 126 et seq. ; for the acceptance in the miracle
plays of the scriptural idea of light and darkness as independent creations, see Wright,
Essays on Archaeological Subjects, vol. ii, p. 178.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 441

Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extend-
ing the evolutionary process virtually to all things.

In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation
direct, material, and by means like those used by man, was all-
powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on evolution.
From the more simple and crude of the two views of creation
given in the Babylonian legends, and thence incorporated into
Genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought on the subject,
which grew into a flood and swept on through the middle ages
and into modern times. Yet here and there in the midst of this
flood were to be seen high grounds of thought held by strong
men. Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus, among the schoolmen,
bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of this an-
cient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified form,
doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary
theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano
Bruno, who evidently divined the fundamental fact of what is
now known as the " nebular hypothesis " ; but with his murder
by the Inquisition at Rome this idea seemed utterly to disappear —
dissipated by the flames which in 1600 consumed his body on the
Campo del Fiore.

Yet within a generation after Bruno's death the world was
introduced into a new realm of thought in which an evolution
theory of the visible universe was sure to be rapidly developed.
For there came, one after the other, five of the greatest men our
race has produced — Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and
Newton — and when their work was done the old theological concep-
tion of the universe was gone ; " the spacious firmament on high/'
"the crystalline spheres," the Almighty enthroned upon the
circle of the heavens, and with his own hands, or with angels as
his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the bene-
fit of the earth, opening and closing the " windows of heaven,"
letting down upon the earth the " waters above the firmament,"
setting his bow in the cloud, hanging out signs and wonders,
hurling comets, casting forth the lightnings to scare the wicked,
and shaking the earth in his wrath — all this has disappeared.

These five men had given a new divine revelation to the
world ; and through the last, Newton, had come a vast new concep-
tion, destined to be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had
shown throughout the universe, in place of almighty caprice, all-
pervading law. The bitter opposition of theology to the first
four of these men is well known ; but the fact is not so widely
known that Newton, in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was
also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged against him that
by his statement of the law of gravitation he " took from God

442 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in
Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he
" substituted gravitation for Providence." But, more than this,
these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as distin-
guished from the theory of creation.

Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes,
erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack
of physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to
weaken the old conception. His theory of a universe brought out
of all-pervading matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by
movements in accordance with physical laws — though it was but
a provisional hypothesis — had done much to draw men's minds
from the old theological view of creation ; it was an example of
intellectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the ad-
vent of truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost
morbid fear of the Church, this part of his work was no small
factor in bringing in that attitude of mind which led to a recep-
tion of the thoughts of more unfettered thinkers.

Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different
sort, but with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cud worth pub-
lished his Intellectual System of the Universe. To this day he
remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tol-
erance, and in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English
Church, and his work was worthy of him. He purposed to build
a fortress which should protect Christianity against all dangerous
theories of the universe, ancient or modern. The foundations of
the structure were laid with old thoughts thrown often into new
and striking forms; but, as the superstructure arose more and
more into view, while genius marked every part of it, features
appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings.
From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by
the Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law,
rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, point-
ed out the fact that in the natural world there are " errors " and
"bungles," and argued vigorously in favor of the origin -and main-
tenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of
Nature in obedience to an inward principle. The Balaks of
seventeenth-century orthodoxy might well condemn this honest
Balaam.

Toward the end of the next century a still more profound
genius, Immanuel Kant, took up the theory, and in the light of
Newton's great utterances gave it a consistency which it had
never before had ; and about the same time Laplace gave it yet
greater strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power
and extent, thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea
that our own solar system and others, suns, planets, satellites, and

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 443

their various movements, distances, and magnitudes, necessarily
result from the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws.

Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once
against " atheism," and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others
pointed out many nebulous patches yet in the gaseous form.
They showed by physical and mathematical demonstrations that
the hypothesis accounted for the great body of facts, and, despite
clamor, they were gaining ground, when the improved telescopes
resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter into multitudes
of stars. The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were over-
joyed ; they now sang pseans to astronomy, because, as they said,
it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the
conclusion that all nebulse must be alike ; that if some are made
up of systems of stars, all must be so made up ; that none can be
masses of attenuated gaseous matter, because some are not.

Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this :
That the only reason why all the nebulae are not resolved into
distinct stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful.
But in time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum
analysis, and this was supplemented by Fraunhofer's discovery
that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is non-continuous,
with interrupting lines ; and this, in 1846, by Draper's discovery
that the spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no inter-
rupting lines. And now the spectroscope was turned upon the
nebulse, and about one third of them were found to be gaseous.
Here, then, was excellent ground for the inference that in these
nebulous masses at different stages of condensation — some ap-
parently mere patches of mist, some with luminous centers — we
have the process of development actually going on, and observa-
tions like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confir-
mation to the scientific view. Then came the great contribution
of the nineteenth century to physics, aiding to explain a most
important part of the vast process by the mechanical theory of
heat.

Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever,
and about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rota-
tion of a fluid globe came in to illustrate if not to confirm it ;
even so determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at
last acknowledged the nebular hypothesis as probably true.

Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological
views to science under the claim that science concurs with the-
ology, which we have seen in so many other fields ; and as typical
an example may be given, which, however restricted in its scope,
throws light on the process by which such surrenders are ob-
tained. A few years since one of the most noted professors of
chemistry in the city of New York, under the auspices of one of

444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

its largest churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in the
public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to show
that science supports the theory of creation given in the sacred
books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and a bril-
liant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It
was beautifully made. As the colored globule of oil, represent-
ing the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal
density, as it became first flattened at the poles, as rings then
broke forth from it, and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of
these rings broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to
circle about the central mass, the audience, as well they might,
rose and burst into rapturous applause.

Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of
the audience to the eminent professor for " this perfect demon-
stration of the exact and literal conformity of the statements
given in Holy Scripture with the latest results of science." The
motion was carried unanimously and with applause, and the audi-
ence dispersed, feeling that a great service had been rendered to
orthodoxy. " Sancta simplicitas ! " *

What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen
elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage.
Scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in
knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavored to " recon-
cile " the two accounts in Genesis with each other and with the
truths regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy,
geology, geography, physics, and chemistry. The result has been
recently stated by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor
of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He declares, " No

* For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see McCosh, The Religious
Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103, 104 ; for germs of an evolutionary view
among the Babylonians, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876,
pp. 74, 75 ; for a germ of the same thought in Lucretius, see his De Natura Rerum, lib. v,
187-194, 447-454; for Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons, Principles of Science,
London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 299; for Kant's statement, see his Naturgeschichte des Himmels;
for his part in the nebular hypothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i, p.
266 ; for value of Plateau's beautiful experiment, very cautiously estimated, see Jevons,
vol. ii, p. 36 ; also Elisee Reclus, The Earth, translated by Woodward, vol. i, pp. 14-18, for
an estimate still more careful ; for a general account of discoveries of the nature of
nebulae by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science ; for a careful
discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gaseous bodies, see Schellcn, Spectrum
Analysis, pp. 100 et seq. ; for a very thorough discussion of the bearings of discoveries
made by spectrum analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537 ; for a presen-
tation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see an article by Plummer in the London Popular
Science Review for January, 1875; for an excellent short summary of recent observations
and thought on this subject, see T. Sterry Hunt, Address at the Priestley Centennial, pp.
7, 8 ; for an interesting modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's writings.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445

attempt at reconciling Genesis with the exacting requirements of
modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without entail-
ing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to which,
in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse."

The revelations of another group of sciences, though some-
times bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theolo-
gians, have finally set the whole question at rest. First, there
have come the biblical critics — earnest Christian scholars, work-
ing for the sake of truth — and these have revealed beyond the
shadow of a reasonable doubt the existence of at least two dis-
tinct accounts of creation in our book of Genesis, which can
sometimes be made to agree, but which are generally absolutely
at variance with each other. These scholars have further shown
the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of priest-
craft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and the-
ologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the
noblest of purposes by those who put in order the first of our
sacred books.

Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the de-
voted students of ancient monuments and records ; of these are
such as Oppert, George Smith, the Rev. Prof. Sayce of Oxford,
Jensen, Schrader, and a noble phalanx of similarly devoted schol-
ars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially
the inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at
Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the origin
of the world identical in its most important features with the
later accounts in our own book of Genesis.

These men have had the courage to point out these facts and
to connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylo-
nian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of
the Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we
have in our sacred books; and they have also shown us how
natural it was that the Jewish accounts of the creation should
have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest He-
brews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew
poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred
traditions of these earlier nations or from antecedent sources
common to various ancient nations.

In a summary which in its profound thought and fearless in-
tegrity does honor not only to himself but to the great position
which he holds, the Eev. Dr. Driver, Royal Professor of Hebrew
and Canon of Christ Church at Oxford, has recently stated the
case fully and fairly. Having pointed out the fact that the He-
brews were one people out of many who thought upon the origin
of the universe, he says that they " framed theories to account for
the beginnings of the earth and man " ; that " they either did this

446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbors"; that "of
the theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have
been preserved, and these exhibit points of resemblance with the
biblical narrative sufficient to warrant the inference that both are
derived from the same cycle of tradition."

After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets
he says : " In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same
source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is plain,
derived their materials from the best human sources available.
. . . The materials which with other nations were combined into
the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque poly-
theism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of
the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle of
profound religious truth."

Not less honorable to the sister university and to himself is
the statement recently made by the Rev. Prof. Ryle, Hulsean Pro-
fessor of Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a
Christian " must either renounce his confidence in the achieve-
ments of scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a
monstrous perversion of Christian freedom." He declares : " The
old position is no longer tenable ; a new position has to be taken
up at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." He then
goes on to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier
stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the
Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are from the
same source. He points out that any attempt to explain particu-
lar features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific
ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but he says
that if we adopt a natural interpretation " we shall consider that
the Hebrew description of the visible universe is unscientific as
judged by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of
the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was committed to
writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's physical
origin, he says that it " is expressed in the simple terms of pre-
historic legend, of unscientific pictorial description."

In these statements and in a multitude of others made by emi-
nent Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what
the victory is which has now been fully won over the older the-
ology.

Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other
sources, it has come to appear and to be acknowledged by the
most eminent scholars at the leading seats of Christian learning
that the accounts of creation with which for nearly two thousand
years all scientific discoveries have had to be " reconciled " — the
accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and Galileo, and

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447

Newton, and Laplace — were simply transcribed or evolved from a
mass of myths and legends largely derived by the Hebrews from
their ancient relations with Chaldea, rewrought in a monotheistic
sense, imperfectly reconciled, and then thrown into a poetic form
in the sacred books which we have inherited.

On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted
to the physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the
universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an evolutionary
process — that is, of the gradual working of physical laws upon an
early condition of matter ; on the other hand, we have other great
groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and archaeologi-
cal science whose researches all converge toward the conclusion
that our sacred texts were the result of an evolution from an early
chaos of rude opinion.

The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the
conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fighting es-
pecially for " the truth of Scripture/' and their final answer to
the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the
material universe has been the cry, " The Bible is true." And they
are right — though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed.
Science, while conquering them, has found in our Scriptures a far
nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which theo-
logians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more as
we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great
sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the steady
striving of our race, in obedience to divine law, after higher con-
ceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both in morals and religion.
Unfolding this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred
books of the world is precious, and all in the highest sense are
true. Not one of them, indeed, conforms to the measure of what
mankind has now reached in historical and scientific truth; to
make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it simply exposes
those who make it and the books for which it is made to loss of
their just influence.

That to which the great sacred books of the world conform,
and our own most of all, is the evolution of the highest concep-
tions, beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its childhood
through the great turning points in its history. Herein lies the
truth of all bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they
indeed often are as a record of historical outward fact; recent
researches in the East are constantly increasing this value ; but
it is not for this that we prize them most — they are eminently
precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the
evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true because
they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing

448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem,
chronicle, code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect
this development of what is best in the onward march of human-
ity. To say that they are not true is as if one should say that a
flower or a tree or a planet is not true ; to scoff at them is to scoff
at the law of the universe. In welding together into noble form,
whether in the book of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book
of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions of men acting under
earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Per-
sia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to humanity a
possession ever becoming more and more precious ; and modern
science in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old
— the reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolu-
tion for that of creation — has added and is steadily adding a new
revelation divinely inspired.

In the light of these two evolutions, then — one of the visi-
ble universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend — science and
theology have at last been reconciled. A great step in this
reconciliation was recently seen at the main center of theologi-
cal thought among English-speaking people, when, in the col-
lection of essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the col-
lege established in these latter days as the fortress of orthodoxy
at Oxford, the legendary character of the creation accounts in
our sacred books was acknowledged, and when an archbishop
suggested that the "Holy Spirit may at times have made use
of myth and legend." *

IN a communication to the Belgian Geological Society M. Dallo has called at-
tention to some truly scientific conceptions expressed or foreshadowed by Dante
in his great poem, including such truths as the moon the principal cause of the
tides; the level, except for the relief of the waves, of the surface of the sea; the
existence of a centripetal force, illustrated in the fall of bodies; the spherical
form of the earth ; that the land above the sea is simply a protuberance from the
surface of the globe ; that the continents are grouped in the northern hemisphere ;
the existence of universal attraction ; that the elasticity of vapors is a motive
power; that the continents have been upraised; and the existence of the chem-
ical elements, more or less as they were conceived by Lavoisier.

* For the first citations above made, see The Cosmogony of Genesis, by the Rev. S. R.
Driver, D. D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in The
Expositor for January, 1886 ; for the second series of citations, see The Early Narrations
of Genesis, by Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, London,
1892. For evidence that even the stiffest of Scotch Presbyterians have now come to dis-
card the old literal biblical narrative of creation and to regard the declaration of the West-
minster Confession thereon as a " disproved theory of creation," see Principal John Tul-
loch, in Contemporary Review, March, 1877, on Religious Thought in Scotland — especially
page 550.

A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 449

NOTES FROM A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY.

BY PROF. WILLIAM S. WINDLE.

FOR the past fifteen years it has been customary for the mem-
bers of the Biological Department of the Johns Hopkins
University to devote the summer vacations to pursuing their
studies on the seashore. "The Johns Hopkins Marine Labora-
tory," as the organization is called, is under the direction of Prof.
W. K. Brooks, and has been confined to no permanent location,
but has been moved from place to place as the wishes of those in-
terested demanded. Many seasons were spent in studying animal
forms found in waters of the Chesapeake Bay. For a few years
the laboratory was stationed at Beaufort, N. C. Then Green
Turtle and Biminy Islands of the Bahamas were chosen as sta-
tions for biological research. Finally, the organization went so far
south as the island of Jamaica. The site of the present marine
laboratory is Port Henderson, Jamaica, where it was located two
years ago. To secure best results in research upon embryonic
forms, our party set out early for the sea. With full equipment
for the laboratory we boarded the steamer Ryvingen and sailed
down the Chesapeake Bay en route for the West Indies. The
voyage was uneventful for the most part. After the lighthouses
and white sandy hills of the Eastern Shore had disappeared be-
neath the horizon, we continued our course steadily to the south-
east, with little to entertain us but occasional schools of flying
fish and the flock of " Mother Carey's chickens " which followed
•our boat all the way. Large jellyfish and ctenophores floated by
occasionally. On the fourth day out we passed Watling's Island,
or San Salvador, and other smaller islands of the Bahamas. Next
day we rounded the eastern coast of Cuba, and by using the cap-
tain's field glass could easily determine the characteristic features
of the island. Its mountains appear quite high and rugged in the
interior, and they slope rapidly by foothills and broad terraces
down to the sea. The shores of Cuba afforded us our first glimpse
of cocoanut palms, banana and sugar-cane plantations. It was a
beautifully clear and starry night when we sailed into Windward
Passage. The gray mountains of Cuba outlined against the
northern horizon were slowly fading from view, when the cres-
cent moon arose out of the waves in the east. The north star
hung low, and in the south the Southern Cross appeared to us for
the first time. With such new and charming surroundings we
spent the evening very delightfully on deck. Not the least inter-
esting was the phosphorescence in the waves and spray. Each
crested wave, as it receded from the bow, seemed alive with hosts
of glowing fireflies. It was a grand sight to watch the turbulent,

VOL. XLIV. 34

450

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sparkling stream that followed in the ship's wake. Disturbed by
the motion of propeller and rudder, millions of minute phospho-
rescent organisms were thrown to the surface like brilliant, spark-
ling gems. Now and then large ctenophores emerged from the
depths, displaying rich halos of light for a moment, then disap-
peared in the surf. In no other place did we notice such rich dis-
plays of phosphorescence.

After a six-days' voyage we landed safely at Port Henderson,
on the north side of Jamaica. Here we took carriages for a drive
of sixty miles across the island to Kingston, its capital. The road

FIG. 1. — THE VICINITY OF KINGSTON.

we traveled was a well-built public thoroughfare, fully equaling
the American "gravel road." It followed the coast line pretty
closely for twenty-eight miles to Annotto Bay, then extended into
the interior by way of the Wag Water River. Reaching the
" divide " of the Blue Mountains, the road rapidly descended by a
circuitous route into the broad valleys of the south side of the
island. This drive across Jamaica affords the tourist a fair idea
of its life and scenery. The majestic cocoanut palm, the luxuri-
ant banana plant, and the feathery bamboo grace the landscape in
every direction. The primitive bamboo cabins, with their dusky
occupants, the barefooted market women, " John Crow" the buz-
zard, and " Old Joe " the pelican, soon become familiar objects to
the tourist in the West Indies. On reaching Kingston we found
our way through its narrow streets to Market Wharf, where we
took passage on the steam launch Firefly for Port Henderson,
our final destination. This is a little village of a dozen or more

A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 451

buildings lying across the harbor to the southwest about four
miles from Kingston. It is a seaside resort for Jamaicans of leisure,
and a more attractive and suitable spot about the harbor could
not have been chosen. In the rear of the village Salt Pond Hill
rises abruptly to a height of one thousand feet or more, and upon
its highest point are the ruins of an old stone fort known as
" Rodney's Lookout." From this position a glorious view of the
surrounding country is obtained. Here, in the early days of
pirates and buccaneers, Admiral Rodney had his stronghold,
whence he could look out upon the harbor and sea and detect the
approach of enemies.

From the veranda of our laboratory we had a grand view of
Kingston Harbor, in which the entire fleet of the English navy
might anchor with safety. Following the low, sandy beach to the
left we see the fishermen's hamlets and old Port Augusta. Across
the harbor the city of Kingston appears in dim outline ; and off to
the right, upon the end of the " pallisadoes " protecting the har-
bor, lies old Port Royal, which was nearly destroyed by the earth-
quake of 1692. To the southeast the harbor opened out into the
deep waters of the Caribbean Sea. The beautiful landscape
stretching out thus before us was completed by the Blue Moun-
tains, which formed a dark gray background. The highest point
of the range is Blue Mountain Peak (7,560 feet). It appears in
bold relief above the range, twelve miles east of Kingston. Two
years ago some of our party made the ascent of the mountain.
They encamped on the peak overnight, and enjoyed the rare
luxury of soft beds of tree-fern leaves improvised for the occa-
sion. The location of our laboratory offered many facilities for
biological research. Numerous coral reefs, mangrove swamps,
and salt ponds were all within an hour's sail from our port. Good
opportunity for study is also found on land. The hills in the rear
and the broad valley of the Rio Cobre, not far away, are stocked
with land crabs, lizards, termites, scorpions, and the like. Bird
life is not so abundant as we had anticipated, but to a botanist
the flora of Jamaica offers a most attractive field for study.

By those who are acquainted with the coast of Jamaica, Port
Henderson is thought to be the most suitable location on the island
for a permanent marine laboratory. It offers many advantages
for study of life in tropical waters ; its collecting grounds and its
facilities for " towing " and " dredging " are next in value to
those of the Gulf Stream. The location is in the immediate vicin-
ity of Kingston, whence the temporary wants of the party may be
readily supplied. It is also in direct communication with New
York and Liverpool by steamer and cable. With a view, then,
of locating a permanent laboratory for promoting the study of
marine biology, a plan is at present being considered by promi-

A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 453

nent biologists at home and abroad for establishing an "Inter-
national Marine Biological Station" at the place above named.
It is sincerely hoped that the preliminary steps taken in this
direction may lead to the establishment of the much-needed in-
stitution on American shores.

The building -which we called our " Marine Laboratory " was
a large, one-story stone structure, known as the " Sister Houses."
It was light, airy, and comfortable, affording ample room for our
party of seven. Each member of the company occupied a sepa-
rate table, and upon this his microscope was placed, together with
a varied collection of specimens, " preserving " fluids, dishes, scal-
pels, etc., the whole forming a veritable " biologist's corner." In
other parts of the building were our nets, buckets, jars, gun, and
dredge, also books and chemical reagents, arranged as occasion
and space suggested.

Our usual programme for the day began with early coffee and
toast ; then we repaired to our sloop with nets, water glass, dredge,
etc., and rowed out to the coral reefs or so-called cays. Landing
on one of these, we waded about in water, varying in depth from
tiny waves that rippled over the sandy beach to breakers whose
white crests dashed over our shoulders, and filled our faces with
salty spray. After collecting for two or three hours we would
sail for port. One rule adopted for these expeditions shows the
ease and freedom existing among the members of our party — i. e.,
" No one is allowed to capsize the boat more than three times ;
more than this is considered dangerous on account of sharks."
The regulation was closely observed. When the laboratory was
reached, the morning's collection was set aside for an hour, while
all prepared for breakfast by taking a plunge into a large swim-
ming pool near by. Our meals were served after the English cus-
tom prevailing on the island, and were characterized by a large
variety of tropical fruits and vegetables. The Ripley pineapples,
No. 11 mangoes, and sapodillas were luscious fruits, but quite
forgotten when we returned to the States and found American
melons and peaches. After breakfast the remainder of the day
was generally devoted to the study and preservation of the morn-
ing's collection. After a lunch of fruits and limeade we fre-
quently took walks over Salt Pond Hill or up the valley of the
Rio Cobre, in search of termites, scorpions, centipeds, and lizards.
Late in the evening was the best time for " towing," although we
often went out early in the morning. To do surface collecting we
would row out upon the quiet bay about a mile from shore, then
throw out two nets made of fine silk bolting cloth. These were
tied by long cords to the stern of the boat, so as to drag near the
surface of the water. The nets were carefully emptied into buck-
ets of fresh sea water every few minutes. The " tow," or material

454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

thus captured, was taken directly to the laboratory and examined.
By dipping out small portions in glass dishes and holding them
up to the light we could detect a great number of minute pelagic
animals swimming about in great commotion. These "surface
collections " are intensely interesting, for in them the biologist
finds multitudes of embryonic forms in various stages of their de-
velopment. The larvae of starfish, sea urchins, shrimps, conchs,
and other forms, appear in their normal living state under his
lens. Besides larvae, numerous adult forms, as Sagitta, Appen-
dicularia, platoid worms, Meduscz, and green Algcz, are collected.
A careful survey of the hosts of forms thus captured, and a fair
understanding of their true significance, prepare one for the often-
repeated statement that "the ocean is the original home of all
life." We are impressed with the fact that it is from this source
that we must seek further information that shall throw light
upon many biological problems at present unsolved. A few
days of general collecting in the sea suffices to reveal the great
abundance of life in the ocean as compared with its scarcity
on land.

The various expeditions taken by our party in the tropics
would have been interesting and enjoyable to almost any one.
To the casual observer they may have presented the appearance
of pleasure excursions, rather than trips for earnest work and
study.

On one occasion we sailed to Salt Pond, a kind of lagoon bor-
dering the sea, where numbers of crocodile and turtle were fre-
quently found. We had been rowing about for some time in the
pond with no success except that of catching mullet with a throw-
net, and taking note of the numerous cranes, pelicans, and bitterns
flying about, when we came upon a " crocodile slide/' This is a
smooth, broad trail leading up the bank, which the beast fol-
lows when it wishes to prepare a nest in the sand for its eggs, or
take a ramble beneath the underbrush.

No sooner had we neared the slide than here came a frightened
crocodile about seven feet in length, dragging himself down the
slippery bank into the water. As it swam out in front of our
boat, its black nose protruded above the surface, offering a fine
shot, but fortunately for the crocodile our gun was left at home.

Before leaving the pond we secured a fine collection of large,
beautiful jellyfish (Cassiopea), and luckily for us the boatman
discovered a dozen or more little crocodiles among the mangrove
roots ; we all repaired to the scene, and amid much excitement
succeeded finally in capturing one.

One of the most productive collecting fields for our studies was
that in the mangrove ponds off the " pallisadoes," near Port Royal.
The mangroves in this region have extended into the shoal water,

A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 455

thus forming a number of quiet ponds and canals. We found life
very abundant here. Upon the mangrove roots great clusters of
Clavelina, simple ascidians, and colonies of hydroids hung near
the surface of the water. Battery actinians and Botryllus grew in
the warm waters, attached to blades of eel grass. Echinoderms
were very abundant. Sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus) were thick-
ly strewn over the bottoms of the ponds. Of starfish we collected
three forms (Echinaster, Asteropectin, and Astorina). For holo-
thurians no other place along the coast was better. They were
profusely scattered about over the muddy bottoms of the ponds.
Some were dark brown, others large and spotted, growing to a
length of eight and ten inches. Our experience in collecting and
preserving these large holothurians was always exasperating, for,

FIG. 3.— THE MARINE LABORATORY.

try any experiment we might, they would always end with nega-
tive results. About the time we considered them fully narcotized
they began contracting the muscles of the body walls, then sud-
denly eviscerated themselves. One very interesting form (Synapta
vivipara) was found in great numbers growing among the fila-
ments of a certain alga in the ponds. Sponges, gasteropods, and
annelids were also numerous about the mangroves.

Taking the animals alive to the laboratory was an impor-
tant part of our expeditions. For this purpose we used water
buckets and open jars. The various specimens were distrib-
uted in different vessels, so as not to be crowded; these were
allowed as much fresh sea water as possible, which was changed
repeatedly.

A MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY. 457

Of all our excursions during the season, those of most popular
interest were to the cays which were out in the Caribbean Sea,
two to ten miles from our laboratory. They may be described as
small islets jutting above the waves a few feet. Some were cov-
ered with mangrove bushes, others were of bare rock and sand,
over which large waves would break. By overturning stones in
the shallow water we found many interesting animals. Brittle
stars and sea baskets often shared their homes with spiny annalids
and coiling synaptas. Darting about among the rocks were little
rock crabs, young lobsters, and small shrimps. Beautiful sea
anemones and turbellarian worms were numerous upon the rocks.
Wading out a few steps into the deeper water we came to rich
coral formations ; and looking through a water glass we could see
as through an open window into these beautiful gardens under
the sea. There were massive brain corals (Meandrina) growing
in scattered groups, with other interesting species between ; clus-
ters of star corals (Astrcza) and branching stag-horns (Oculina)
covered large areas. In the clear, open spaces were exquisite sea
fans and sea feathers (Alcyonaria) waving their graceful forms to
and fro with the tide. The scene was made even more charming
when schools of beautifully colored coral fish, goldfish, and mul-
let swam in and out among the corals and into the open sea. A
poet has seen these quiet parlors of the fishes and thus described
them :

" There with a light and easy motion

The fan-coral sweeps through the clear deep sea,
And the yellow and scarlet tufts of ocean

Are bending like corn on the upland lea,
And life in rare and beautiful forms

Is sporting amid those bowers of stone ;
"Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove,

"Where the waters murmur tranquilly,
Through the bending twigs of the coral grove."

Any report of the Johns Hopkins Marine Laboratory in
Jamaica would be incomplete without mention of the kind hospi-
tality shown us by the citizens. Our party was cordially received
wherever it went ; and at the laboratory we were honored by calls
from chief officials residing in Spanish Town, Kingston, and Port
Royal. As a body of American students, we had the pleasure of
taking lunch at " The King's House " with Lady Blake, the gov-
ernor's wife. It was very gratifying to find the prominent citi-
zens of Jamaica enthusiastic in their encouragement of biological
research on the island.

As to the results of the summer's work in the tropics, lit-
tle can be said at present that is final, since much of it is not
yet completed. A good quantity of valuable material was pre-

TOL. XLIT. 35

458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

served for future study. Very full notes and drawings of the
animals in their living and normal condition were made. These
notes and drawings, together with the alcoholic specimens, are
stowed away awaiting further investigation, to be carried on
chiefly at the Johns Hopkins University.

THE RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO POLITICAL

ECONOMY.

BY CHARLES S. ASHLEY.

IF the reader will call to mind the great work of John Stuart
Mill, which still contains the best exposition extant of the
whole subject of political economy, he will remember that Mill
considers it by an analysis of production, distribution, and ex-
change, to which he adds a book on the influence of the progress
of society on production and distribution, and another on the
influence of government.

The first three books are devoted, as Mill himself says, to an
examination of the " statics " of the subject. They are an analysis
of the phenomena mentioned as exhibited at a given time ; or,
more accurately speaking, Mill's work is really an analysis of the
manner in which products are distributed throughout society un-
der a single set of social conditions.

To an evolutionist accustomed to seeing in industrial society
an organism which grows and changes like all others, Mill's
omissions, including those of his fourth book, are more striking
than his inclusions. There is, indeed, a bare mention of the fact
that the progress of society is accompanied by increased security
and co-operation. But the evolutionary conception that industrial
society, like all other organisms, begins with a simple germlike
state and by constant changes increases its structures and its
functions, nowhere occurs. Political economy is considered with-
out material reference to time or environment. And it is treated
as if industrial society were only to be considered with reference
to the way in which social sustenance, however obtained, is distrib-
uted along the social alimentary canal. Processes of production,
changes in methods caused by inventions, and changes of condi-
tions are ignored, and the formation of industrial organizations of
men engaged in common works, corresponding to organic struc-
tures, is passed by. Included in this is the all-important subject
of the division of labor, the examination of the conditions under
which it takes place, and the like. Strange as it may seem to one
who looks on industrial society from a standpoint of facts rather
than books, the functions performed by railroads, by banks, by

EVOLUTION AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. 459

boards of trade, and "by telegraphs, without which existing society
would instantly dissolve, are nowhere set forth. And likewise
the great subject of industrial disorders, their origins, progress,
and decline, a subject which promises so much to scientific study,
is not even hinted at. In a word, the conception of industrial
society as an organism, subject to the same laws of evolution as
others, and like other organisms having its structures and func-
tions, its changes in response to environment, its health and dis-
ease, is entirely absent.

It is the province of evolution to introduce these ideas into
political economy ; to point out the harmony of the evolution of
industrial society with that of universal Nature. Evolutionary
political economy begins with the formation of those simple social
groups whose members lived by hunting and fishing, and the first
step in industrial life is shown to be the selection of a member
surpassing the rest as a maker of weapons and implements for
that duty. This step increases the strength of the group and
leads to a further increase in size. Presently, by the interaction
of this and other factors, the size of the group becomes such that
it is partly encouraged, partly forced into the pastoral and then
into the agricultural state.

And, however blended and complicated with other social phe-
nomena industrial evolution may be, no one who has once fixed
his eye on the cardinal principles of evolution will fail to see how
strikingly they reveal themselves in economic history. As the
yolk slowly divides and again divides until head and limbs and
stomach and feathers faintly appear, and finally the chick steps
forth, so industrial society, impelled by an indwelling force,
evolves from time to time as conditions permit the organizations
of men necessary for the better supply of social wants, and also
the functions they perform and the processes by which they
work.

To me the supreme lesson evolution has to offer to students of
political economy is the automatic and irresistible nature of the
process by which society evolves the functions and structures
needful for its betterment. No philosopher or statesman invented
boards of trade or foresaw their indispensable necessity as the
social agents for the distribution of grain throughout the world,
for the steadying of prices, and for the guaranty they afford of a
close approximation of the prices paid the producer to that paid
by the consumer. No economist established banks or conceived
the vast uses they would subserve. No human mind foresaw the
uses of the railroad, the steamboat, or the telegraph, nor were
any of these created with much thought as to such uses. Gun-
powder had accomplished its mission of establishing the physical
supremacy of intelligence before anybody understood what that

I
460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mission was. The same may be said of the alphabet and printing.
If one reads the vivid account Lord Macaulay gives of the found-
ing of the Bank of England, of the debates thereon, and the still
more violent debates on the usefulness or danger of the gold-
smiths who originated banking, he will get a good illustration of
the utter unconsciousness with which social improvements are
made, and the universality with which they arise from a desire
for the attainment of some immediate individual end. The great
financial invention of our own day — building and loan associa-
tions— has begun in the desire of wage-earners, who never heard
of Mill, or Spencer, or Das Kapital, to get homes for themselves
and each other, and has been perfected in humble and unknown
hands till now, having built a million homes, earned a high rate
of interest for millions of members, they have grown to hold
more money than the savings banks, and may at length aspire to
engage the notice of Chauncey M. Depew when next he tells the
public what to do with a thousand dollars of savings. Industrial
improvements unfold as silently and modestly as the leaf on the
tree. New structures, for new uses, do not spring from old
structures, fixed in other uses, but from the undeveloped part
of the organism, and gradually by iuconsidered increments the
mightiest economic changes are made. These characteristics of
social evolution give us greater faith in the natural progress of
society, and have a most important and decisive bearing upon
many of the questions agitating social philosophers so much and
the rest of the world so little.

Evolution teaches us to expect further changes to be additions
to the present state rather than anything like subversions. There
will be a continual increase in division of labor, increased social
stability, and we may expect increased industrial co-operation by
means of market reports, by which production in the various
trades will be kept more perfectly equilibrated than at present,
and the overproduction of any one product prevented. All labor
will become more and more specialized, and unskilled labor will
have a continual tendency to disappear.

Perhaps the most important and interesting topic that evolu-
tion brings into political economy is the vast subject of industrial
disorders. That these are capable of scientific treatment no evo-
lutionist will deny, because they are essentially like all other ills
of humankind. What are industrial disorders ? How do they
originate ? What course do they run ? How and when do they
subside ? Evolution can and will treat these great questions in a
comprehensive way, and when it does we shall for the first time
have clear ideas on the most engrossing subject of our own day.
That evolution has a panacea to offer I do not believe, for it re-
minds us at every turn that pain and suffering are an inseparable

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 461

accompaniment of organic growth and development. But it will
at least teach us not to aggravate social ills by quack nostrums
interfering with Nature's laws.

Finally, evolution will rescue political economy from the mist
of words and disputation which now surrounds it by reason of
the narrow basis on which it has rested. It will bring us back
from the uncertainties of analysis and inference from insufficient
data to the clear light of universal history — to the experience of
great Nature's self, and will for the first time raise political econ-
omy from empiricism to science.

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA.*

Br SIDNEY J. HICKSON, M. A., D. Be.

IT is not surprising that the naturalists of the early part of the
present century could not believe in the existence of a fauna
at the bottom of the deep seas. The extraordinary conditions of
such a region — the enormous pressure, the absolute darkness, the
probable absence of any vegetable life from want of direct sun-
light— might very well have been considered sufficient to form an
impassable barrier to the animals migrating from the shallow
waters and to prevent the development of a fauna peculiarly its
own.

The fragmentary accounts of animals brought up by sounding
lines from great depths might, it is true, have thrown doubts on
the current views ; but they were not of sufficient importance in
themselves, nor were the observations made with such regard to
the possibility of error, as to withstand the critical remarks that
were made to explain them away.

The absence of any evidence obtained by accurate systematic
research, together with the consideration of the physical character
of the ocean bed, were quite sufficient to lead scientific men of that
period to doubt the existence of any animal life in water deeper
than a few hundred fathoms. We now know, however, that there
is a very considerable fauna at enormous depths in all the great
oceans, and we have acquired, moreover, considerable information
concerning some of those peculiar physical conditions of the abyss
that fifty years ago were merely matters of speculation among
scientific men.

The relation between animals and their environment is now a
question of such great interest and importance that it is necessary

* Abridged from The Fauna of the Deep Sea. By Sidney J. Hickson, M. A., D. Sc.
Modern Science Series. In press of D. Appleton & Co.

462 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in any description of the fauna of a particular region to consider
its physical conditions and the influence that it may be supposed
to have had in producing the characteristics of the fauna.

The peculiar physical conditions of the deep seas may be
briefly stated to be these : It is absolutely dark so far as actual
sunlight is concerned, the temperature is only a few degrees above
freezing point, the pressure is enormous, there is little or no move-
ment of the water, the bottom is composed of a uniform fine soft
mud, and there is no plant life. All of these physical conditions
we can appreciate except the enormous pressure. Absolute dark-
ness we know, the temperature of the deep seas is not an extraor-
dinary one, the absence of movement in the water and the fine
soft mud are conditions that we can readily appreciate ; but the
pressure is far greater than anything we can realize. At a depth
of twenty-five hundred fathoms the pressure is, roughly speaking,
two and a half tons per square inch — that is to say, several times
greater than the pressure exerted by the steam upon the piston of
our most powerful engines. Or, to put the matter in other words,
the pressure per square inch upon the body of every animal that
lives at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is about twenty-five
times greater than the pressure that will drive a railway train.

A most beautiful experiment to illustrate the enormous force
of this pressure was made during the voyage of H. M. S. Chal-
lenger. I give the description of it in the words of the late Prof.
Moseley : " Mr. Buchanan hermetically sealed up at both ends a
thick glass tube full of air, several inches in length. He wrapped
this sealed tube in flannel, and placed it, so wrapped up, in a wide
copper tube, which was one of those used to protect the deep-sea
thermometers when sent down with the sounding apparatus.
This copper tube was closed by a lid fitting loosely, and with holes
in it, and the copper bottom of the tube similarly had holes bored
through it. The water thus had free access to the interior of the
tube when it was lowered into the sea, and the tube was neces-
sarily constructed with that object in view, in order that in its
ordinary use the water should freely reach the contained ther-
mometer.

"The copper case containing the sealed glass tube was sent
down to a depth of two thousand fathoms and drawn up again.
It was then found that the copper wall of the case was bulged
and bent inward opposite the place where the glass tube lay, just
as if it had been crumpled inward by being violently squeezed.
The glass tube itself, within its flannel wrapper, was found, when
withdrawn, reduced to a fine powder, like snow almost. What
had happened was that the sealed glass tube, when sinking to
gradually increasing depths, had held out long against the pres-
sure, but this at last had become too great for the glass to sustain,

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 463

and the tube had suddenly given way and been crushed by the
violence of the action to a fine powder. So violent and rapid had
been the collapse that the water had not had time to rush in by
means of the holes at both ends of the copper cylinder and thus
fill the empty space left behind by the collapse of the glass tube,
but had instead crushed in the copper wall and brought equilib-
rium in that manner. The process is exactly the reverse of an
explosion, and is termed by Sir Wy ville Thomson an ' implosion/ "
It is only reasonable to suppose that the ability to sustain this
enormous pressure can only be acquired by animals after genera-
tions of gradual migrations from shallow waters. Those forms
that are brought up by the dredge from the depths of the ocean
are usually killed and distorted by the enormous and rapid dimi-
nution of pressure in their journey to the surface, and it is ex-
tremely probable that shallow-water forms would be similarly
killed and crushed out of shape were they suddenly plunged into
very deep water. The fish that live at these enormous depths are,
in consequence of the enormous pressure, liable to a curious form

Equator -* Pole

• • • 30*1 Superficial

zff-> waters

Intermediate
waters

f= / -^— —5*

s« - =y A ^^

5« _ / \ 4 Bottom
/ \- 3" waters

s°

-2'

FIG. 1. — DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING THE PASSAGE OF AN OCEAN CURRENT ACROSS A BARRIER (A).

of accident. If, in chasing their prey or for any other reason,
they rise to a considerable distance above the floor of the ocean,
the gases of their swimming bladder become considerably ex-
panded and their specific gravity very greatly reduced. Up to a
certain limit the muscles of their bodies can counteract the tend-
ency to float upward and enable the fish to regain its proper
sphere of life at the bottom ; but beyond that limit the muscles
are not strong enough to drive the body downward, and the fish,
becoming more and more distended as it goes, is gradually killed
on its long and involuntary journey to the surface of the sea.
The deep-sea fish, then, are exposed to a danger that no other
animals in this world are subject to — namely, that of tumbling
upward. That such accidents do occasionally occur is evidenced
by the fact that some fish, which are now known to be true deep-
sea forms, were discovered dead and floating on the surface of the
ocean long before our modern investigations were commenced.

Until quite recently, every one agreed that no rays of sunlight
could possibly penetrate the sea to a greater depth than a few

464 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hundred fathoms. Moseley says that " probably all is dark below
two hundred fathoms excepting in so far as light is given out by
phosphorescent animals," and Wyville Thomson speaks of the
" utter darkness of the deep-sea bottom."

Within the last few years a few authors have maintained that
it is quite possible that a few rays of sunlight do penetrate even
to the greatest depths of the ocean — a view mainly based on the
fact that so many deep-sea animals possess extremely perfect and
complicated eyes and very brilliant colors. Verrill says : " It
seems to me probable that more or less sunlight does actually
penetrate to the greatest depths of the ocean, in the form of a soft
sea-green light, perhaps at two or three thousand fathoms equal
in intensity to our partially moonlight nights, and possibly at the
greatest depths equal only to starlight. It must be remembered
that in the deep sea far away from land the water is far more
transparent than near the coast." Packard is of a similar opinion.

There seem to me to be very slight grounds for this view.
The fact that, comparatively speaking, shallow- water fish avoid
nets that are rendered phosphorescent by entangled jellyfish does
not justify us in assuming that deep-sea fish avoid regions where
there are phosphorescent Gorgonians or Pennatulids. It is not
by any means certain that fish avoid sunken nets on account of
their phosphorescence. Most fish possess, as is well known, a very
acute sense of smell, and it is very probable that they avoid such
nets on account of the putrid odors of the dead animals that re-
main attached to them.

Nor is there much strength in the further argument that it
can hardly be possible that there can be an amount of phospho-
rescent light regularly evolved by the few deep-sea animals, having
this power, sufficient to cause any general illumination, or power-
ful enough to have influenced, over the whole ocean, the evolution
of complex eyes, brilliant and complex protective colors, and com-
plex commensal adaptations.

"We have no sound information to go upon to be able to judge
of the amount of light given off by phosphorescent animals at the
bottom of the deep sea. The faint light they show on deck after
their long journey from the depths in which they live to the sur-
face may be extremely small compared with the light they give
in their natural home under a pressure of two tons and a half to
the square inch. The complex eyes that many deep-sea animals
exhibit were almost certainly not evolved as such, but are simple
modifications of eyes possessed by a shallow- water ancestry.

The more recent experiments that have been made tend to show
that no sunlight whatever penetrates to a greater depth, to take
an extreme limit, than five hundred fathoms. Fol and Sarasin,
experimenting with very sensitive bromo-gelatin plates, found

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 465

that there was no reaction after ten minutes' exposure at a depth
of four hundred metres on a sunny day in March. But although
it is very highly probable that not a glimmer of sunlight ever
penetrates to the depths of the ocean, there is in some places, un-
doubtedly, a very considerable illumination due to the phospho-
rescence of the inhabitants of the deep waters.

All the Alcyonarians are, according to Moseley, brilliantly
phosphorescent when brought to the surface. Many deep-sea fish
possess phosphorescent organs, and it is quite possible that many
of the deep-sea protozoa, tunicates, jellyfish, and Crustacea are
in their native haunts capable of giving out a very considerable
amount of phosphorescent light. If we may be allowed to com-
pare the light of abysmal animals with that of surface forms, we
can readily imagine that some regions of the sea may be as
brightly illuminated as a European street is at night — an illumi-
nation with many very bright centers and many dark shadows,
but quite sufficient for a vertebrate eye to distinguish readily and
at a considerable distance both form and color.

To give an example of the extent to which the illumination
due to phosphorescent organisms may reach, I may quote a
passage from the writings of the late Sir Wy ville Thomson :
" After leaving the Cape Verd Islands the sea was a perfect
blaze of phosphorescence. There was no moon, and although the
night was perfectly clear and the stars shone brightly, the luster
of the heavens was fairly eclipsed by that of the sea. It was easy
to read the smallest print, sitting at the after-port in my cabin,
and the bows shed on either side rapidly widening wedges of ra-
diance so vivid as to throw the sails and rigging into distinct
lights and shadows."

A very similar sight may frequently be seen in the Banda seas,
where on calm nights the whole surface of the ocean seems to be
a sheet of milky fire. The light is not only to be seen where the
crests of waves are breaking, or the surface disturbed by the bows
of the boat, but the phosphorescence extends as far as the eye can
reach in all directions. It is impossible, of course, to say with any
degree of certainty whether phosphorescence such as this exists at
the bottom of the deep sea, but it is quite probable that it does in
some places, and hence the well-developed eyes and brilliant
colors of some of the deep-sea animals. On the other hand, the
entire absence or rudimentary condition of the eyes of a very con-
siderable proportion of deep-sea animals seems to prove that the
phosphorescent illumination is not universally distributed, and
that there must be some regions in which the darkness is so abso-
lute that it can only be compared with the darkness of the great
caves.

It may be stated then with some confidence that in the abysmal

VOL. XL1V. 36

466

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

depths of the ocean there is no trace of sunlight. It is highly im-
probable, on the face of it, that any ray of light could penetrate
through a stratum of water four miles in thickness, even if the
water were perfectly pure and clear, but when we remember that
the upper regions, at least, are crowded with pelagic organisms
provided with skeletons of lime and silica, we may justly consider
that it is impossible.

The temperature of the water in the abyss is by no means con-
stant for a constant depth, nor does it vary with the latitude. It

is true that, as a rule, the
water is colder at greater
depths than in shallower
ones, and that the deeper
the thermometer is low-
ered into the sea, the low-
er the mercury sinks.
This is consistent with
physical laws. If there
is any difference at all in
the temperature of a col-
umn of water that has
had time to settle, the
thermometer will always
reach its highest point at
the top of the column and
its lowest at the bottom,
for the colder particles
being of greater specific
gravity than the warmer ones will sink, and the warmer ones will
rise. The truth of this will be clear if we imagine a locality at
the bottom of a deep ocean with a source of great heat such as an
active volcano.

Such a source of heat would, it is true, raise the temperature
of the water in its immediate vicinity, but the particles of water
thus heated would immediately commence to rise through the
superjacent layers of colder water, and colder particles would fall
to take their places. Thus the effect of an active volcano at the
bottom of the deep sea would not be apparent at any very great
distance in the same plane. In fact, unless the bottom of the ocean
was closely studded with volcanoes we should expect to find, as in-
deed we do find, that the temperature of the sea rises as the water
shallows.

If then we were to consider a great ocean as simply a huge
basin of water, we should expect to find the water at the surface
warmer than the water at the bottom. The temperature of the
surface would vary constantly with the temperature of the air

FIG. 2. — SICYONIS CRASSA : M, mouth ; S, ciliated
groove ; T, tentacles. Each tentacle is perforated
by a single large aperture. (After Hertwig.)

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 467

above it. That is to say, it would be warmer at the equator than
in the temperate regions. The temperature at the bottom would
be the same as the lowest temperature of the basin, that is, of the
earth that supports it. The great oceans, however, can not be re-
garded as simple basins of water such as this. The temperature of
the surface water varies only approximately with the latitude. It
is, generally speaking, hottest at the equator and coldest at the
poles, but surface currents in the intermediate regions produce
many irregularities in the surface temperature.

Again, although we have no means of knowing what the tem-
perature of the earth is at one thousand fathoms below the surface
of the ocean, it is very probable that in the great oceans the tem-
perature of the deepest stratum of water is considerably lower than
the true earth temperature. This is due to currents of cold water
constantly flowing from the poles toward the equator. If these
polar currents were at any time to cease, the temperature of the
lowest strata of water would rise. Although the polar currents
can not be actually demonstrated nor their exact rapidity be accu-
rately determined, the deduction from the known facts of physical
geography that they do actually exist is perfectly sound and be-
yond dispute. A few considerations will, I think, make this clear.

If the ocean were a simple basin somewhat deeper at the equa-
tor than at the poles, the cold water at the poles would gradually
sink down the slopes of the basin toward the latitude of the equa-
tor, and the bottom temperature of the water would be constant all
the world over. A few hills here and there would not affect the
general statement that for a constant depth the temperature of the
lowest stratum of water would be constant. But in some places
ridges occur stretching across the ocean from continent to conti-
nent, and these ridges shut off the cold water at the bottom of the
sea on the polar side from reaching the bottom of the sea on the
equator side. If A (Fig. 1) represents a ridge stretching from con-
tinent to continent across an ocean, and the arrow represents the
direction of the current, then the water that flows across the ridge
from the polar side to the equator side will be drawn from the lay-
ers of water lying above the level of the ridge, and consequently
none of the coldest water will ever get across it, and from the level
of the ridge to the bottom of the sea on the equatorial side the
water will have the same temperature as the water at the level
of the ridge on the polar side. It follows from this that in places
where there are deep holes in the bed of the ocean surrounded on
all sides by considerable elevations, the temperature of the water
at the bottom will be the same as the temperature of the water
on the summit of the lowest ridges that surrounds them.

This explains why it is that we find that the bottom tempera-
ture for a given depth is frequently less in one place than it is in

468 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

another, even in places of the same parallel of latitude. One or
two examples may be taken to illustrate these points. The, tem-
perature off Rio Janeiro in latitude 20° south was found by the
Challenger to be 0'6° C. at a depth of 2,150 fathoms. In a similar
latitude north of the equator at a depth of 2,900 fathoms the tem-
perature was found to be 2'2° C., and at a point near Porto Rico
there is a deep hole of 4,561 fathoms, with a bottom temperature of
2-2° C.

Again it has been shown by the American expedition that the
temperature of the water at the deepest point in the Gulf of Mexi-
co, 2,119 fathoms, is the same as that of the bottom of the Straits of
Yucatan, 1,127 fathoms, namely, 4'1° C. And, passing to another
part of the world altogether, we find in the small but deep sea that
lies between the Philippines and Borneo that, at a depth of 2,550
fathoms, the temperature is 10 '2° C. These facts then show that,
although at the bottom of the deep seas the water is always very
cold, the degree of coldness is by no means constant in the same
latitude for the same depth.

We must now return to the polar currents. We have assumed
above that these currents do exist, and it is probable that by this
time the reader must have seen why they are assumed to exist-
The water at the bottom of the ocean is exceedingly cold. Where
does this coldness come from ? It is obvious that in temperate and
tropical climes it does not come from the surface. Nor is it at all
probable that it comes from the earth upon which the water rests ;
for, if it were so, the temperature for water of a given depth would
always be the same. We should not find the bottom temperature
of 2'4° C. at 2,900 fathoms off Rio de la Plata and a temperature of
2'2° F. in 4,561 fathoms off Porto Rico.

In fact, the only hypothesis that can with any show of reason be
put forward to account for the temperature of the bottom of the
ocean is that which derives its coldness from the polar ice.

Perhaps it is of the nature of an assumption to say that there
are no rapid currents and tides in the abysmal depths of the ocean,
for we have no means of demonstrating or even of calculating the
rate of flow of these waters. But it is a reasonable hypothesis and
one that we may well use until the contrary is proved.

A fact of some importance that supports this hypothesis, as re-
gards some parts of the ocean at least, is presented by the sea-anem-
ones. Many of the shallow- water actinians are known to possess
minute slits in the tentacles and disk, affording a free commu-
nication between the general body cavity or coelenteron and the
exterior. In many deep-sea forms the tentacles are considerably
shorter and the apertures larger than they are in shallow-water
forms. It is difficult to believe that such forms, perforated by,
comparatively speaking, large holes, could manage to live in rapid-

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 469

ly flowing water, for if they did so they would soon be smothered
by the fine mud that composes the floor of all the deep seas. In
fact, anemones of the type presented by such forms as Sicyonis
crassa are only fitted for existence in sluggish or still water.

Another character that must be taken into consideration is
that presented by the floor of the great oceans. The floor of the
ocean, if it were laid bare, would probably present a vast undu-
lating plain of fine mud. Not a rock, not even a stone, would be
visible for miles. The mud varies in different parts of the globe
according to the depth, the proximity to land, the presence of
neighboring volcanoes, or the mouths of great rivers.

The globigerina ooze is perhaps the best known of all the dif-
ferent deep-sea deposits. It was discovered and first described by
the officers of the American Coast Survey in 1853. It is found in
great abundance in the Atlantic Ocean in regions shallower than

FIG. 3. — GLOBIGERINA OOZE. (After Agassiz.)

2,200 fathoms. Deeper than this it gradually merges into the
" red mud." It is mainly composed of the shells of f oraminif era,
and of these the different species of globigerina are the most abun-
dant. It is probably formed partly by the shells of the dead fo-
raminifera that actually live on the bottom of the ocean and partly
by the shells of those that live near the surface or in intermedi-
ate depths arid fall to the bottom when their lives are done. So
abundant are the shells of these protozoa that nearly ninety-five
per cent of the globigerina ooze is composed of carbonate of lime.
The remaining five per cent, is composed of sulphate and phos-
phate of lime, carbonate of ammonia, the oxides of iron and man-
ganese, and argillaceous matters. The oxides of iron and man-
ganese are probably of meteoric origin ; the argillaceous matter
may be due to the trituration of lumps of pumice stone and to the
deposits caused by dust storms.

Globigerina ooze may be found on the floor of the ocean at

470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

depths ranging from 500 to 2,800 fathoms of water in equatorial
and temperate latitudes. The reason that it is not found in arctic
seas may be that the cold surface waters of these regions do not
bear such an abundant fauna of foraminifera. This is supported
by the fact that it extends ten degrees farther north than south in
the Atlantic, the warm water of the Gulf Stream bearing a richer
fauna than the waters of a corresponding degree of latitude in the
southern sea.

The pteropod ooze has only twenty-five per cent of carbonate
of lime. It contains numerous shells of various pteropod s,hete-
ropods, and foraminifera, but nearly fifty per cent of its substance
is composed of the siliceous skeletons of radiolaria and the frus-
tules of diatoms. According to Murray, it is found in tropical and
subtropical seas at depths of less than 1,500 fathoms.

The radiolarian ooze is found only in the deepest waters of the
central and western Pacific Ocean. In some of the typical ex-
amples not a trace of carbonate of lime was to be found, but in
somewhat shallower waters a few small fragments occurred. A
diatom ooze, mainly composed of the skeletons of diatoms, has also
been found in deep water near the Antarctic Circle, but it has not
apparently a very wide range.

Of all the deep-sea deposits, however, the so-called " red mud "
has by far the widest distribution. It is supposed to extend over
one third of the earth's surface. It is essentially a deep-sea de-
posit, and one that is found in its typical condition at some con-
siderable distance from continental land. Like the globigerina
ooze it is never found in inclosed seas. To the touch it is plastic
and greasy when fresh, but it soon hardens into solid masses.
When examined with the microscope it is seen to be composed of
extremely minute fragments, rarely exceeding 0'05 millimetre in
diameter. It contains a large amount of free silica that is prob-
ably formed by the destruction of numerous siliceous skeletons,
and a small proportion of silicate of alumina. It usually contains
the remains of diatoms, radiolaria, and sponge spicules, and occa-
sionally lumps of pumice stone, meteoric nodules, and, in colder
regions, stones and other materials dropped by passing icebergs.

In the great oceans, then, we find in the deepest places red
mud, or, where there is an abundant radiolarian surface fauna,
radiolarian ooze; in water that is not deeper than about 2,000
fathoms, we find the globigerina ooze ; in shallower waters and in
some localities only pteropod ooze. It must not be supposed that
sharp limits can anywhere be drawn between these different kinds
of deposits, for they pass gradually into one another and present
many intermediate forms.

It is probable that the sea water, by virtue of the free carbonic
acid it contains in solution, is able to exert a solvent action upon

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE DEEP SEA. 471

the calcium carbonate shells of animals as they sink to the bot-
tom, and during the long and very slow journey from the surface
to the bottom of the deepest seas these shells are completely dis-
solved. The first to be dissolved would be the thin, delicate shells
of the pteropods and heteropods, for besides the fact that they
present a wider surface to the solvent action of the water they are
probably influenced more by tide and currents, sink more slowly
and erratically, and thus have a longer journey to perform. Then
the smaller but more solid and compact shells of the foraminifera
are dissolved, and lastly, in the deepest water only the siliceous
skeletons of the radiolaria and diatoms are able to reach their last
resting place at the bottom of the ocean.

These four oozes then are characteristic of the floor of the deep
oceans. In the proximity of land and in inland seas where deep
water occurs, other muds are found differing from one another in
accordance with the character of the coasts in their vicinity.

One more character of the deep-sea region must be referred to,
and that is the absence of vegetable life. It has not been deter-
mined yet with any degree of accuracy where we are to place the
limit of vegetable life, but it seems probable that below a hundred
fathoms no organisms, excepting a few parasitic fungi, are to be
found that can be included in the vegetable kingdom. While then
the researches of recent times have proved beyond a doubt that
there is no depth of the ocean that can be called azoic, they have
but confirmed the perfectly just beliefs of the older naturalists
that there is a limit where vegetable life becomes extinct. It is
not difficult to see the reason for this. All plants, except a few
parasites and saprophytes, are dependent upon the influence of
direct sunlight, and as it has been shown above that the sunlight
can not penetrate more than a few hundred fathoms of sea water,
it is impossible for plants to live below that depth.

NOTICING the proceedings of the recent meeting of the British Association at
Nottingham, the London Spectator remarks upon v'a singular deficiency in those
careful descriptions of the precise position of any science which have so frequently
wakened up ordinary men to careful thought." There is a popular side to the
association's work which is not less important than the one by which it seeks to
advance science. The aim of that side is ''to arouse such general interest in sci-
ence that the minds which are fitted for such study will be inclined to devote
themselves to it. To obtain the ablest in any pursuit we need a vast reservoir of
men who are more or less interested in it. You can not have your Napoleon of
science without an army to draw him from, and the work of increasing the area
of recruiting is not unworthy a great association. Of course, 'interesting papers'
often add little to positive science; but then, neither do music and banners and
tine uniforms add to military force. But they bring recruits, without which such
force remains latent and useless/'

472 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION.*

BY WESLEY MILLS, M. A., M. D.,

PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL.

IT is of course necessary that the education of a country shall
be systemized, harmonized, and consolidated. This involves
so much machinery, including examinations, inspections, reports,
etc., that those concerned are under constant temptation to take
the form for the substance, and to mistake the immediate issue
for the great end. It will not be denied that this state of things
exists or has existed in connection with every attempt to pro-
duce what has been termed a system of education. Manifestly
system is essential to success. Without system, concerted plans,
and co-operation you would not be here to-night. One of the
great problems of the day is the extent to which system should
prevail. The answer to this question, which is filled with practi-
cal issues, may be inferred, in part at least, from my treatment of
education this evening.

The teacher has to do, in reality, primarily with methods, ex-
aminations, results, etc., only in so far as these are means to an
end, that end being the development of human nature.

The teacher is, or should be, first, last, and always, a devel-
oper. If he sees no further than methods as set before him by
others ; if he assumes that the one method will suit all his pupils
equally well ; if he believes that there is any one invariably best
method, he will become after all but a sort of machine. The
educator is concerned with human nature, and must endeavor to
study it in as broad a way as possible. To him the knowledge
of the development of man from more primitive conditions is the
study of all studies. His great aim should be to carry on in
some measure this progress, this evolution or unfolding, for we
know as yet but indifferently the possibilities for mankind.

Whether man was derived from some form of life lower in
the scale or not, it is perfectly clear that he has passed through
states not very distantly removed from the condition of the
brutes, or, at all events, immeasurably remote from that of the
civilized man of to-day. And the history of the race is in some
measure the history of the individual. The teacher who does not
realize this can scarcely understand the peculiar behavior of boys
in particular. At times, especially when left to themselves, they
seem to act like savages ; for the moment they appear to revert
to a savage state. But knowing the tendency of human nature to

* An address delivered before the Ontario Educational Association in Toronto, April,
1893.

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 473

right itself under favorable conditions, the teacher is considerate,
hopeful, and wise in the guidance of his pupils.

But equally important is the study of the individual, and it is
the neglect of this that constitutes perhaps the greatest danger of
modern education. We adapt our methods to human nature as
we conceive of it, but is the individual as much considered as he
was ? The tendency of the age is to aggregation of men, to con-
certed action, to adaptation of methods to the masses, to the aver-
age man or boy or girl, while John Smith and Eliza Brown are
apt to be regarded as simply units and nothing more. If I were
asked to state what I considered the greatest evil threatening
education or actually existing in education, if not in our entire
civilization to-day, I should reply that in my opinion it was just
what I have referred to — not recognizing the individual as such
in the masses.

Allow me to point out that the available energy of the world
is increased in proportion as we develop individuals — i. e., human
beings differing from their fellows. We see this in the passage
of a community from a savage to a civilized condition. There is
division of labor with differentiation of function. It is better
for the community that there should be carpenters, blacksmiths,
masons, etc., than that there should be an attempt to make each
individual a Jack-of-all-trades. So in education we should aim to
develop those differences that Nature has established. So-called
education has done much harm by running counter to Nature.
Evidently, then, the great business of the teacher is to study
Nature with a solicitous anxiety to learn her meaning as to man.

Froebel, after ages of educational blundering by mankind, set
out on the right path, because he, like the one who would enter
the kingdom of heaven, became as a little child, and so under-
stood children and adapted methods to human nature as it is —
methods in which their individuality is recognized at the very
outset. Would that we had followed this great genius closer ;
would that we were to-day applying his methods in their best
aspects to our education more fully ! I mean in the sense that we
adapted our methods to human nature as it is, and not with any
so-called practical end in view, such as fitting the boy or girl
merely to sit at a desk in a warehouse, or stand behind a counter
in a shop.

But our schools, like our other institutions, are a reflection of
our general state of human progress ; and while we have much to
be thankful for, I must, with President Eliot, of Harvard Uni-
versity, consider that our school education is still in no small de-
gree a failure, partly because we have not grasped the purpose of
education and partly because we do not recognize that men are
more than methods after all — that John Smith is more than

TOL. XLIV. — 37

474 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

simply a human unit — that what suits him would not equally
well suit Tom Jones.

Allow me to put the problem of education in a sort of com-
bined biological and psychological form. It is impossible to con-
ceive of any organism as existing apart from relations to other
things that immediately or remotely affect it — in other words, its
environment, which term will be used to designate the sum total
of all those influences of whatsoever kind that are in any way
related to or can affect such organism. Very often the most im-
portant factors in the environment are other organisms of the
same kind, and this applies especially in the case of man.

In the discussion of educational problems it seems to be of
vital importance to realize that we must consider man as a whole.
Great mistakes have been made, and are being made, from regard-
ing mind and body apart. As a matter of fact, we never know
them apart. We have to do with that complex whole we call
man. We only know the mind through the body, and speaking
generally, so far as we can see, for every psychological manifesta-
tion there is a correlated or corresponding physical process. It
is of importance not only to concede this in a theoretical way, but
to be fully convinced of it ; otherwise our education will labor
under those misconceptions, irregularities, and inadequacies which
have beset it in the past.

We get at the mind through the body. To one devoid of all
sensation the world is as good as non-existent, and such an indi-
vidual would be a mere vegetative organism incapable of any ap-
preciable development. Apart from the senses there are probably
no avenues to the mind for us. The dependence of the mind on
the body in this broad way is then clear. It is not, however, very
fully recognized yet that what hinders the development of the
body or stands in the way of physical vigor or growth must be in
a corresponding degree an impediment to the growth and devel-
opment of the mind. Modern psychologists are more and more
recognizing the mind as a growth and development ; and undoubt-
edly when this great fact and the complete interdependence of
mind and body are recognized we will be free from misconcep-
tions that have fettered education of all kinds in the past.

The teacher who realizes this inevitable relation of mind and
body can not be indifferent to the hygienic conditions and phys-
ical state of his pupils. The condition of the atmosphere of the
schoolroom, the temperature, the quality and the direction of
rays of light will be as much considered as the three R's, for in
fact they are of vastly more importance in the development of the
organism, as a whole, with which he is concerned.

Up to this point I have been endeavoring to show that the
educator, in proportion as he has correct and comprehensive views

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 475

of human nature, is supposed to devise methods that accord with
them. Even with such views he may not become a very success-
ful teacher, because teaching is an art, and it is one thing to un-
derstand in the abstract and another thing to apply. But given
the natural aptitude for the art, it is surely plain that the applica-
tion will be more in harmony with our nature if that be under-
stood. And in the application great skill will be required so that
the individual will not be lost sight of. In fact, it is just here
that the art of so many falls short. They lack the insight to
recognize just what constitutes the individuality in each case and
to adapt to this. I will therefore endeavor to assist in some meas-
ure in the solution of this problem by calling attention to a
guide to the individual nature through the subject of heredity.

From the earliest times heredity, or the resemblance of offspring
to parents, has been admitted in some vague way at least ; and if
this were now as clearly recognized for man as it is by breeders
of our domestic animals, I would anticipate greater human prog-
ress than is likely till sound views on this subject are more
widespread and more deeply impressed. How few have ever seri-
ously sat down and pondered upon such questions as these : Why
is my nature such as it is ? To what degree am I and in what
measure are ancestors concerned in my being what I am ? What
am I likely to become ? I presume one might safely affirm that
most persons here never directly faced such considerations at all.
Probably many would regard it as impossible to account in any
approximately satisfactory way for their physical and mental
status, and would be very apt to refer the latter in no small degree
to what is commonly known as education.

But if we were to visit the establishment of some successful
breeder of domestic animals we would find no such hazy mental
condition. The breeder does know why his stock is such as it is.
You point to some admirable specimen and compare it with an-
other of plainly inferior merit and ask him the reason why. He
does not attempt to explain the difference by the pasture, but he
tells you that the less valuable animal is a common cross-breed
without extended pedigree, while the other is derived from an-
cestors that he can trace for generations, and the parents of which
are now on his farm, the purchase price being a large one.

The breeder would have been greatly puzzled if such ancestors
had produced offspring entirely unworthy of themselves. The same
applies to the vegetable world. " Do men gather grapes of thorns
or figs of thistles ?" But apparently we often expect this rule to
be reversed in regard to human beings. The fact is, man was so
much regarded as a creature apart by himself with laws of his
own — laws that were every now and then at least interfered with
in some inexplicable way — that the public mind got demoralized ;

476 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for nothing can be so disastrous as to believe that the laws of Na-
ture are subject to change. We may require to modify our views
as to what -the laws of Nature really are, but so far as the world
has yet learned these laws are invariable.

I must confess myself to have had at one time almost un-
bounded faith in the changes that the environment could work,
and especially that part of it that we call education, in the nar-
rower sense. But a close study of the subject by observation
and experiment in breeding some of our domestic animals for a
term of years has very strongly impressed upon my mind the
strength of heredity. Galton, Ribot, and others have given us
the most convincing proofs that heredity is stronger than its an-
tagonist variation or than its modifier environment. In account-
ing for variations — for no two beings are quite alike — we must
admit great ignorance ; however, it is impossible to ignore or dis-
believe in the effect of the environment. We know that unless
there be some favorable features in the environment the best
nature can never develop.

The very same breeder we before visited might possibly be
able to show us an animal that through accident, inadequate feed-
ing, or other unfavorable condition in the environment had never
proved worthy of its parentage, and the observer will meet many
cases like this among human beings. They are instructive inas-
much as they illustrate the relative part played by heredity and
environment in the total result. Galton, after most exhaustive
and careful examination of large classes of men, as statesmen,
judges, commanders, divines, authors, artists, and others, shows
that of all those that attained great distinction a fair proportion
left posterity worthy of them. He concludes also that if a man
be possessed of really high-class native ability he will rise in spite
of the environment, or, as Shakespeare has it, " Some men are
born great/'

But what of the mediocre ? Do the same laws as to heredity
and environment apply ? The best way, in my opinion, to be-
come convinced on this point is to make an honest and careful
study of one's self. It sometimes takes years to realize the extent
to which we represent, often in an occult manner, our ancestors ;
and we must remember that law, which Darwin has emphasized,
that traits of ancestors tend to appear at the same period of life
in the offspring as in the parents. It is further to be remem-
bered that by a study of parents alone we can not get nearly so
good an idea of the heredities of any individual as if more dis-
tant ancestors and collateral lines (uncle, cousins) be taken into
account. Indeed, the believer in man's evolution from lower
forms of life takes a much wider view of the whole subject.

It must be plain that each individual in some measure is the

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 477

resultant of all those forces represented in ancestors — forces
which have been modified in innumerable ways by ancestors — a
consideration which greatly complicates the study of heredity.
But if any one principle has been established it is that heredity
is stronger than environment. However, we must point out that
the weaker the heredity the stronger the environment. Educa-
tion, in the proper sense, can do more, relatively, for a mediocre
or weak nature than for a very strong one. A real genius or a
criminal will be such regardless of education ; so that the practi-
cal issue for educators narrows down very much to the question
of heredity and environment for the mediocre or submediocre. It
is with the latter classes that the teachers of the land have mostly
to do, though we must not overlook the possible best and wisest
that may be intrusted to our care. Our systems are not well
adapted to discovering them, especially those of high talent or
genius, affairs so tend to averages and mediocrities in all direc-
tions these days.

It will now be my aim to indicate how the educator may, by
a study of heredity in a practical, individual way, as well as he-
redity as a general fact in Nature, increase his usefulness by di-
recting his energies to better advantage, from more exact knowl-
edge of the individuals with whom he has to deal. However
skilled the teacher may be in reading the individual from his con-
duct, the diagnosis (to borrow a medical term) will be much safer
if we know the family history and the ancestral tendencies. It is
so as regards disease — i. e., tendencies of the physical organization
— and it is equally so with the mind, though not yet so generally
recognized. The teacher who knows nothing of the parents of a
child is but poorly prepared to do the best possible in developing
that child.

With all the disadvantages associated with the career of a
country school teacher who " boarded 'round " or was expected to
make periodic visits, it can not be denied that he had opportuni-
ties for understanding that all-important home environment of
his pupils, and of studying the parents and other relatives, and
gathering hints from scraps of family history that greatly helped
him who was not a believer that all children are to be treated
educationally just alike, all minds to be compressed into the same
mold.

With all its imperfections, I am bound to say that the indi-
viduality of the pupils in the old log schoolhouse was often more
developed than in the city public school of to-day, where for a
boy to be himself frequently brings with it the ridicule of his fel-
lows— a condition of things that has its effect afterward on the
lad at college. I find this fear of being considered odd — out of
harmony with what others may think — one of the greatest draw-

478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

backs to the development of independent investigating students
at college. The case is still worse for the girls. When women
begin to be really independent in thought, feeling, and action, I
shall be much more hopeful of the progress of mankind; and
happily the dawn of this better day has already begun.

It is scarcely necessary to point out that, in the nature of the
case, the parents are in the best position to learn the hereditary
tendencies of their children; but inasmuch as in the large pro-
portion of cases the subject has never been given any serious
attention by them, it remains with the teacher to work it out by
such means as he can. As with the physician, practice makes
perfect in observation, interrogation and diagnosis. Often a little
conversation with the children when at their ease at home will
give more information as to their real tendencies than weeks of
observation at school. Parents frequently judge of the natural
fitness of their own children for the various callings in life very
badly ; and the assistance of the skilled teacher in deciding such
matters would be of inestimable value. By the skilled teacher I
now mean the one who is an expert diagnostician of powers and
especially of natural leanings in which heredity plays so very
prominent a part. How often is the college teacher, who re-
gards the mistake in the choice of a profession or career as fatal,
pained when dealing with certain of his students who plainly
should be somewhere else ! Yet it is hard for him to tell a young
man that he is out of place. This should all have been settled
long ago.

In the course of some lectures on education given at the Johns
Hopkins University several years ago, Dr. Stanley Hall, the emi-
nent psychologist, drew attention to what he called a " life-book."
In this a record as impartial as possible of such sayings and
doings of each child of a family from infancy to adolescence as
may be a guide to real tendencies is recommended to be kept.
Teachers may widen their sphere of influence by making this rec-
ommendation according to discretion to at least some of the par-
ents with whom they come in contact. Dr. Hall lays stress on re-
cording the exact words of the child and on stating everything
with extreme accuracy and impartiality, as the fond mother is very
apt to put a flattering interpretation on sayings and doings and
fail to record the indications of weakness or evil. It is interest-
ing to paste in also the first letter, first story, first rude sketch,
etc., indeed anything that will give a clew to the real nature of
the child.

But, as before indicated, the teacher may discover in a visit to
the home what may have escaped even the parents. I know my-
self of a born artist having been discovered in the very depth of
poverty by a physician who was making a professional call.

HEREDITY IN RELATION TO EDUCATION. 479

That child has since developed into a distinguished man. Wheth-
er innate genius was sufficiently strong to have forced him
through and above his environment apart from such early dis-
covery and encouragement I can not say. At all events it would
in all probability have been a case of devious ways, diverted en-
ergy, and lost time, if not final partial or complete failure, but for
this early recognition.

No doubt the difficulties in the way of meeting all the parents
in the case of a large class in the city school are considerable ;
and it may not be feasible to visit all, though much is gained in
more ways than one by ascertaining the home environment- as
well as the heredities of the pupils. When once the teacher has
made a somewhat complete and reliable estimate of the tenden-
cies, good and bad, of any pupil and their relative strength, a
large part of the problem of development is already solved.

Every human being may be regarded as an organism with a
combination of qualities of varying strength, some of which, in-
deed most of which, are good in themselves but either weak or
strong relatively to a common standard or with reference to each
other, so that the question of balance is one of the most vital.
The most dangerous of all members of society are those that are
ill-balanced and lack self-control. The real criminal organization
is of this nature. But so also is the faddist or extremist of any
type dangerous, because being ill-balanced he himself tends to
lead mediocre minds astray ; and much energy that might be bet-
ter employed must be used to counteract his dangerous doctrines
and vigorous efforts.

The question with the teacher then is, How can I develop
each nature committed to my charge so as to strengthen its weak
parts physical, intellectual, and moral, so that no faculty shall be
unduly developed and that the balance of the whole shall be good
— while I do not overlook those faculties that are strong and on
which the success of the individual so much depends ? It can
with the utmost confidence be assumed that in all human beings
some powers are by inheritance of different strength from others.
Some children are so weak in mathematical perception that they
must receive careful and special attention to nurture this faculty
up to an approach to the average, while at the same time it must
not be made almost the sole standard of intellectual strength or
excellence, as I fear has been too much the case in schools within
the past twenty years, at all events. An intellect thus weak may
have a good deal more than the average capacity for artistic or
moral feeling, and men are not mere calculating machines but
rather organisms, endowed with feelings that like the steam en-
gine supply the source of power, the moving forces.

How sadly have we neglected the culture of right feeling in

480 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

our educational institutions ! It was a natural consequence of the
misleading because partial doctrine that the great purpose of the
public school was to teach " the three R's." It can not be too much
insisted on that the great purpose of all education is to furnish a
favorable environment (using that term in the widest sense) for
the development of the highest type of human beings consistent
with the innate inherited tendencies. We can not make silk
purses out of sows' lugs, but we must take care that we do not
convert silk purses into lugs by our bungling and lack of insight,
all the more likely if we place undue confidence in our educa-
tional systems which we call great because according to the tend-
encies of the day they affect vast numbers.

A study of heredity tends to prevent and mitigate discourage-
ment, and it also shows us how great is the power of the organism
to vary with changes of environment. In other words, education,
in the true sense, can do much to modify. The world has passed
from stages of almost bestial degradation to the present state of
civilization through this tendency to vary under environment by
some processes which we can appreciate and possibly by others
that we do not fully understand. We have every reason to hope
for the future ; but this hope should be a rational one founded on
the adaptation of means to an end, and in this the organisms must
first of all be considered.

Regarding the human race in this light, it becomes clear to me
that, after the parents themselves, the teacher may become the
most potent factor in the development of the human being. He
can not radically alter hereditary tendencies, but it is his great
privilege to guide and modify them. In some cases he may re-
quire to steer so as to avoid Scylla and not fall into Charybdis ;
in others to develop energy in weak natures that only tend to
drift along in life. But one thing is certain, that to attain these
truly great results the teacher must himself be very much of a
man ; and the public would do well if it could but stop long
enough in the race for wealth, power, or distinction to consider
whether it is taking the right means to find and retain such peo-
ple. Mankind must study and observe the laws of the heredities
if the race is to make the greatest possible progress ; and next to
that the race must seek out and cherish in every way those that,
after the parents themselves, have the greatest influence in mold-
ing and developing — the teachers of youth.

All other questions are subordinate. My colleagues in this
noble work, let us in our day and generation realize our great
opportunity and seize it.

THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 481
THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS.

BY MRS. ELLEN BATTELLE DIETEICK.

ONE of the curious anomalies of history is found in the ex-
istence of a race whose men are characterized by a passionate
love of freedom, equaling that of a William Tell, but whose
women habitually accept slavery as the most desirable of earthly
conditions. No more thrilling story of spirited resistance to an
invader can be found than that of the long struggle of Circassia
against the persistently encroaching Slav. After forty years of
continual warfare, overwhelmed by Russia's superior wealth and
numbers, thousands of Circassians voluntarily chose expatriation
rather than abide in their native land under the yoke of the con-
queror, and deserted en masse the best part of the country, to take
refuge in Turkey. Yet, from the time Circassia was first known
to Europe, it has been the regular custom of these independence-
loving, self-governing mountaineers to sell the sisters and daugh-
ters whose beauty has given chief fame to the name of Circas-
sian ; and, difficult as it may be for an American generation
reared to abhor slavery to credit the statement, the testimony
that these beautiful Circassians gladly accept, and even hasten
to meet, their sale is too universal for doubt upon this point.
The mystery, however, is largely solved when we learn that to
the women of Circassia slavery and marriage are purel y synony-
mous terms. To them slavery has meant an exchange from a
laborious life of poverty in the mountains to that of ease and
luxury as a wife — either chief or secondary — in a city harem.
To the Turk, Circassian slavery has meant purchasing a wife to
whom he need not give the name wife unless he choose (the
sultans never thus distinguish any woman), and thus obtaining
one or more companions who will, almost without doubt, be more
obedient and contented in that capacity than any one he might
secure from among the women of his own blood and rank in
society. A Turkish woman of to-day writes : " Formerly a Turk
rarely married his countrywoman ; on the principle, I suppose,
that ' exchange is no robbery/ he would marry a Circassian slave,
and give his sister to a Circassian man slave, or to some penniless
Circassian subaltern in the Turkish army. This was caused by
the innate Jove of power existing in both sexes. A Turkish girl
wedded to her equal would, by the laws of religion, feel herself
obliged to treat her husband with nearly servile respect, while,
when wedded to one so decidedly her inferior, she would be mis-
tress in her own house, and, reigning supreme over her husband
and slaves, would never fear a rival."

Far from dreading their sale, the girls of Circassia look for-

482 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ward to it as the great opportunity of their lives. They go to
seek it as a conscious jewel might start in search of a costly set-
ting. They show no more reluctance than Esther manifested
when Mordecai delivered her over as one of the fair young vir-
gins gathered from far and near to adorn the palace of Ahasuerus.
Indeed, the history of Esther reveals the motives which probably
animate each of the many maidens of Circassia who to this day
re-enact that old biblical story. Each believes that it is she who
may find grace and favor in the royal crown, and thus control at
will the rise or fall of the royal scepter. But even if not chosen
by royalty, those who purchase the beautiful damsels of Circassia
are the wealthy and titled ; and not the slightest social degrada-
tion is attached to their position, even when taken to harems
wherein a Turkish wife may be installed as head of the household.
The common dependence of all the inmates of a harem upon the
favor of a lord who may at any time elevate the Circassian
slave to the position of a lady fosters a spirit of equality — of
pure, practical democracy, that would be inconceivable under any
other circumstances, and in our Southern slave relation to nomi-
nal mistress was totally undreamed of. As a Turkish lady ex-
plained to an astonished English visitor, " A slave may become a
lady any day, and in treating her as one beforehand we take off
very much of the awkwardness which would else ensue." When
we consider that all the children of slaves are acknowledged as
the legitimate children of their father, we must confess, in justice
to the Turk, that theirs is a condition in which the evils of slavery
to the slave are reduced to a minimum.

The first step after purchasing a Circassian girl is to give her
(as unto Esther) a special retinue of personal slaves, brought from
Africa, who relieve her henceforward of the slightest necessity
of unpleasant exertion. Though she may not, like Esther, be put
through "six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with
sweet odors," every accessory of the toilet which may enhance
her original attractiveness is bestowed upon her, accompanied by
careful lessons in the graces of deportment. Thus to the mountain
girl who looks forward to life in Turkey reports of that life go
back freighted with all that could allure and blind the unthinking.
Dread of an evil fate is reduced to a mere vague and flitting sur-
mise, while the lottery matrimonial is represented to her as one
filled with magnificent prizes. As the Circassians, though pos-
sessed of much native intelligence, have no written literature,
none of these girls can read or write. They are trained for the
marriage market as a fine horse is trained for a race course, and
the higher price they bring the greater their satisfaction. " Ask
a higher price for me, dear brother/' says a Russian nobleman,
" is their not uncommon admonition to the brother who is man-

TEE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 483

aging the bargain." This affords a double gratification, that of
being rarely valued for themselves, and of being most highly
profitable to the family left behind in the mountains. Great
was the astonishment of the first Russian crew which " rescued "
a vessel-load of Circassians on their way to Turkey, to have the
rescued ones entreat not to be returned to their homes, but to
be forwarded to their destination. In spite of the combined
efforts of Russian and English, their attempts at prohibition of
slavery among the Turks have merely driven the trade into an
appearance of secrecy here and there, without at all diminishing
either demand or supply.

But a more effectual mode of changing human conditions is at
work, silently and subtly undermining the whole system of slav-
ery, polygamy, and concubinage in Turkey. Two remarkable
letters, written by a Turkish inmate of a harem, appeared in the
Nineteenth Century (of August and December, 1890), which give
an interesting view of the transformation slowly fermenting in
that last stronghold of extreme conservatism on the woman ques-
tion— the seraglio. The writer, who signs herself "Adalet " (and
who therein makes her first essay at writing), explains that the
foreign education of Turkish boys inevitably paved the way for
that of Turkish girls ; that now sons and brothers are being edu-
cated at Oxford or in Paris, and have thus learned that " when her
intellect is not crushed by continual fear and impotent ignorance,
woman can become the helpmate and support of man " ; that "the
view also of the cheerful homes existent in Europe has taught
them that one wife is better than twenty slaves ; and as the Turk-
ish girls are better adapted by nature to second their views than
the Circassians, it is to them that they turned for help. It needed
but little time to teach the Turkish mothers what was needed at
their hands ; and where before a little French was the maximum
of learning acquired by a Turkish girl, she was now taught to
read and write in several languages, to play the piano, to draw, to
paint — in a word, to have as complete an education as any young
lady destined to appear in society. This system, of course, in-
cluded novel-reading ; and in them the young girl, who before
believed that the highest happiness for her was to be tyrannized
over by a man she did not know, in common with five or six rivals,
suddenly saw opened before her a long vista of unknown bliss,
which, to her dazzled eyes, seemed more beautiful than anything
promised in paradise. She heard of balls, fetes, parties, where
women spoke openly with men who were not doctors or cousins ;
she heard, for the first time, that a woman is considered as highly
as a man, and may even claim from him the homage which, till
now, she thought had been exclusively his prerogative ; she saw
in them the description of happy homes, where one wife alone

484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

possessed the love and confidence of her husband, and little by
little the poison imbibed circulated through her veins."

The writer continues, that as it is impossible for a reaction to
occur in a country without its rushing to the opposite evil, in
Turkey the leap from ignorance to knowledge had the first effect
of so dazzling the Turkish woman that, in casting off the ancient
trammels, she also in many cases abandoned the code of honor
existent among women in every country. " Of our old customs,
as well as of .our old faith, very little remains, and it is only in
the lower orders, or the most secluded harems, that some vestige
of them can be found. At Constantinople women hardly hide
their faces, and think it no shame to appear before the public in
habiliments which would be hardly considered decent with the
lowest dregs of European society."

But, as Adalet sagely observes, " All this is a secondary ques-
tion/' She rightly appreciates that freedom is a gift which can
be wisely used only by practice in the use of freedom, and does
not forsake her faith in freedom because its first possession has
intoxicated those unaccustomed to it. Perceiving that slavery
is the corner stone of polygamy, she urges that the women of
Turkey should strive with all their force for the abolition of
polygamy by themselves enfranchising their own slaves. But
she also declares that, however good, as far as negroes are con-
cerned, may be the result of the action of the English Govern-
ment in Egypt for the enforced abolition of slavery, the effect
upon the Circassians has been only evil, and that continually, and
for these reasons : " No Circassian would ever condescend to go to
the slave -home, or work as a servant. What has, then, been the
result ? Hundreds of white slaves have gone to the police court
for their freedom, and from there have gone to the bad. In fact,
they only took their papers with that intention, as no Circassian
ever thought that slavery was a shame, or that it was irksome in
any way. Freedom to them means nothing unless the freedom is
accompanied by a husband and a home, and they know very well
they can not expect these from the police court, as no marriage
can be valid with the paper taken from there. . . . They have
given a bad repute to the police court, and now no slave who
respects herself will go there." Thus Adalet concludes : " I
frankly own that I think, in the case of the Circassians, no
efforts made for the abolishment of slavery will be successful,
when coming from the outside. It is we, we alone, who can, by
enfranchising and marrying out, little by little, those we possess,
and buying no more, end a custom as bad to ourselves as to them.
Every scheme in which we do not participate will end by doing
the slaves more harm than they will ever suffer in a harem."

The extreme of injury done to the body politic by a mode of

THE CIRCASSIAN SLAVE IN TURKISH HAREMS. 485

life which entirely divorces the public interests of women and
men is strikingly illustrated in the vicissitudes of Mohammedan-
ism. In the Koran itself there originally existed conditions
which, taken as a whole, were far more favorable to women than
the common law of England. Originally, women of the Moham-
medan faith were as highly educated and moved abroad as freely
as men, mingling unveiled in their company, and actively par-
ticipating in public affairs. Those were the centuries when the
liberal and enlightened rule of Mohammedans made the name of
Spain glorious, and when all Europe sought education in Moham-
medan universities. It was during those centuries that the Turk
passed from victory to victory, proceeding from western Asia
into Europe, until his conquering army stood on the eve of a con-
quest of Austria.

But, as had so often happened before in warlike nations
grown rich with enormous booty, women of the higher class sur-
rendered themselves more and more to an indoor life of extrava-
gant luxury and idleness, only too truthfully mirrored in the
tales of "A Thousand and One Nights." The veil was doubt-
less at first worn as a sort of portable tent, into which one could
withdraw to escape the bold stare of unwelcome admirers ; partly
as a result of a growing refinement, which led them to shun the
gaze of a rude soldiery; partly to enhance their own attractive-
ness by affected concealment of their beauty. Thus in England
also, during the warlike period of the Crusades, English women
of rank habitually wore, even within doors, a veil which could
be used for such purposes. And the somewhat like circum-
stances resulting from like causes conspired to make the English
woman, likewise, at one period of her history, a creature whose
dense ignorance and silliness equaled that found in the Turkish
harem. The Asiatic woman, however, having once become an
objet de luxe, plunged deeper into the gulf of helplessness, and
has much more slowly begun to grow out of that condition. She
is as one fallen into a pit, who can only escape by her own
co-operation, but whose enervated arms are so weakened that
every movement has become a burden. As woman is the life-
stream of each race — the source which must be lifted high as the
fountain is to rise — the enslavement of womanhood in Turkish
harems has inevitably wrought its own revenge of terrible evil
upon the nominal enslavers. Most miserable to-day is the lot of
that people born of a race of slave mothers ; most significantly
is that debilitated empire known as " the Sick Man of Europe."
Nothing but a patient upbuilding from the very foundation can
restore that invalid whose disease is so deep-seated and long-
abiding. This upbuilding has already begun. The elixir of
modern ideas has not stopped with placing novels and teaching

486 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

showy accomplishments to girls in the harem. Already the
invalid has begun to help himself by free schools and public
libraries, which must inevitably, in time, revolutionize public
thought. Even if the germ of the desire for freedom has, as
Adalet confesses, entered woman's views in its least desirable
form, it is something to have the love of freedom reawakened at
the source whence youth draws its first impressions ; and, after
the desire for freedom for what it can give to the woman her-
self, must surely follow a desire for that which will enable
her to give most worthily to others.

WHERE BANANAS GROW.

BY JAMES ELLIS HUMPHEEY.

TN spite of the fact that a bunch of bananas was a rare sight,
-L and a single one a luxury, when we who are still young were
children, they have become so common that we have ceased to
ask the questions naturally prompted by unaccustomed sights;
and this, not because those questions are no longer unanswered,
but as the result of that familiarity which makes us forget our
ignorance. We know that we owe this acceptable addition to our
bill of fare to the tropics. We admire its texture and enjoy its
flavor ; but we rarely give it serious thought unless constrained
to do so while yielding to the smooth invitation to tarry a while
that its cast-off skin extends. We shudder at dreadful stories of
venomous tarantulas and scorpions lurking in those compact clus-
ters ; and the horrors of a region that harbors such creatures out-
weigh all other thoughts. Concerning the facts of its climate,
the growth of its products, the life of its people, we rarely
inquire.

There is, perhaps, no other temperate country where the use of
fruit is so widespread or so extensive as in the United States. Not
only does our own unrivaled domain furnish varied soils and cli-
mates perfectly adapted to the temperate and subtropical fruits of
the world, but our facilities for transporting and preserving them
place the products of the most favored regions within reach of
every one during prolonged seasons. The dweller in New York
or Boston is thus able to supplement his home fruits by those of
Delaware and New Jersey, of the Indian River, and of Los An-
geles and San Bernardino in an uninterrupted and unfailing suc-
cession which has nearly banished the dried apple of our child-
hood.

But the influence of external conditions is as potent here as in
other features of our life, and the nature of the food supply

WHERE BANANAS GROW. 487

largely determines the character of our food. We owe our good
fortune to the abundance and cheapness of the fruit brought to
our gates even more than to our growing appreciation of the
hygienic value of good fruit. Our neighbors of northern Europe
are relatively so far removed from fruit-growing regions that
their winter supply of fresh fruit seems likely to remain limited
and costly, however great their willingness to buy.

The stores of fruit which have been instrumental in this
happy development of a nation of fruit-eaters in the last genera-
tion have come, as has been said, chiefly from our own territory.
But the banana, which has played as great a part as any one sort,
is strictly tropical, sensitive to very moderate cold, and growing
safely in our own country only in extreme southern Florida.
But here is little good banana land, and the prospective grower
of this fruit must look beyond, to the South, for the scene of his
operations.

The banana is probably a native of southern Asia and the
Malay Archipelago, but has been known and esteemed from very
early times in tropical America. It is now extensively cultivated
in the West Indies and Central America both for home consump-
tion and for export. One may form some idea of the growth of
our appreciation of bananas from the statement of one familiar
with the trade for the past twenty-five years, that an importation
of twenty-five hundred bunches into Boston in a summer week,
twenty years ago, could with the greatest difficulty be disposed
of. Yet the usual receipts for a corresponding period at present
are over fifty thousand bunches, and double that number have
found a market in a single week. We may try ;to realize some-
thing of the quantity of bananas we eat from the careful trade
estimate of importations into the United States in 1892, which is
as follows :

Into New Orleans 4,483,351 bunches.

Into New York 3,715,625

Into Philadelphia 1,818,328

Into Boston 1,710,005

Into Baltimore 625,077

Into minor Southern ports 343,000

The total of 12,695,386 bunches represents an increase of 1,578,632
bunches over the previous year. It is true that when we talk of
millions of bunches, which means hundreds of millions of ba-
nanas, the mind quite fails to grasp the hugeness of the fact. So
we may add that this quantity represents about twenty bananas
to each person in the whole United States, and a value of not less
than five million dollars at the points of shipment before they are
placed on board. Formerly our Northern ports received a large
part of their supply from Central America and the Isthmus ; but

488 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more recently the shorter distance and better fruit have given the
advantage to the nearer islands ; and now, while New Orleans
still draws from the older source, Cuba and Jamaica supply the
North almost exclusively ; and of these two, Jamaica is the
more fertile, yields better fruit, is the more healthful in climate,
the more beautiful for scenery, the more agreeable for residence
or travel. A visit to the " gem of the Antilles, then/' may show us
something of the growth and treatment of this fruit which has
come to vie with our own apples as a staple article in our dietary.

Like the palms and the grains, the banana plant is one of the
" endogenous " plants of the older botanists. Its nearest relatives
familiar in our climate are the Cannas, of late much grown,
which give to our summer lawns an air so distinguished and
so tropical. While broad-leaved, like the Cannas, the banana
plant has the treelike aspect of the palms, with a stout, erect, and
rounded bole capped by the splendid cluster of spreading leaves.
Yet, unlike the palms, it is not truly a tree ; for, while the palms,
like all trees, have solid, woody trunks, albeit constructed on a
plan radically different from that of the woody plants of our own
fields, the apparent trunk of the " banana tree " is made up only
of the soft, sheathing bases of the leaves. These arise from the
true stem, a rounded, fleshy mass at the surface of the ground,
from which also the roots descend. The huge leaf -bases, several
feet in length, tightly inclose each other and form a compact
body as thick as a man's thigh, narrowing upward into short leaf-
stalks, which bear the large though graceful oblong blades.
Within this cylinder of leaf -bases is the growing-point, or bud,
from which new leaves continue to be pushed forth until the
plant is full grown. Each leaf emerges in its turn from the
center of the crown of leaves, a beautiful, erect roll, pushing
straight upward into the air. Gradually unrolling as it finds
room, the blade at last flattens out and bends to one side, and an-
other leaf is added to the crown. Few leaves are more attractive
than these young banana leaves in their first freshness of delicate
green, of perfect form and grace, and of spotless purity. But
with increasing age the color deepens, and the first wind and rain
tear the exquisite blade in numberless places between its parallel
veins ; so that an old leaf becomes finally but two rows of rib-
bons and tatters, dull or dry, fringing a battered leaf -stalk.

After the last leaf has pushed forth and the foliage crown is
complete, there appears from its middle the bud for which all the
previous activity of the plant has been but the preparation. It
emerges as a lanceolate mass borne on a rapidly lengthening
stalk. The compact bud may be seen to be composed of close-set
purple bracts of fleshy, leaflike texture, tightly overlapping.
After a time the outer bract is raised from the underlying ones

WHERE BANANAS GROW.

489

and, separating more and more, at length falls away, leaving a
scar to mark its place, and, just within the scar, a group of tubu-
lar, pale yellow flowers. Their petals soon wither and fall away,
leaving the ovaries as a row of tiny bananas which will become
one of the "hands" of the future bunch. Thus successive bracts
fall away from the bud and successive rows of bananas appear.
But after a time, though the bracts continue to fall and to un-
cover new flower clusters, these are found to be sterile, and young
fruits are no longer formed. A bud may, then, contain only two
or three fertile bracts, or it may have as many as fifteen or more

FIG. 1. — BCTT OF BANANA PLANT, WITH "EYE," AND "SET" READY FOK PLANTING.

— that is, the number of fruit clusters in the ripened bunch may
vary between those extremes. The development of sterile flowers
continues indefinitely. Each bract, as it falls, uncovers a fresh
group to furnish pollen for the impregnation of the fertile flowers
of a neighboring plant, as those of their own bunch, uncovered
first, have already received the fructifying stimulus from a neigh-
bor. Thus Nature provides for the cross-fertilization on which,
as Mr. Darwin first showed us, she lays so much stress, sending
the fecundating dust from plant to plant by those loveliest and
swiftest of her messengers, the humming birds, and rewarding

VOL. XLIY. 38

4.90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their industrious service with, frequent draughts of nectar of her
own inimitable brew.

While the flowers are thus developing and giving place to
fruits, the stalk of the bunch is lengthening and carrying the
clusters farther apart, making room for the growth of the fruits,
which pretty well keeps pace with that of the stalk. Very early
the stalk begins to bend over and, as soon as it has become long
enough, turns completely on itself. Thus the bud, and finally the
bunch of fruit, hang downward between the leaves. On the
other hand, the young bananas turn upward in their growth, and
come at last to point directly up. As the tip of the stalk still
lengthens, when the bananas are full grown it often hangs a yard
below them, tipped by the purple plummet of yet unfallen bracts.
It is by this sterile stalk that we see the bunches hung in our
shops ; that is, in a position just the reverse of that in which they
grow.

In the Eastern tropics, the number of varieties and species of
bananas and banana-like plants is large; but in America those
which are cultivated to any extent are very few. Indeed, of true
bananas we need notice only two. The common yellow variety,
which is almost exclusively that which our markets receive, is
the only one raised in Jamaica, and the chief one everywhere.
But in Cuba and Central America the stout, red-skinned variety
is still somewhat cultivated and occasionally shipped. It pro-
duces smaller bunches, but larger fruits, as a rule, than the yellow
one. Another plant, so like the banana in habit as to be prac-
tically indistinguishable, but with larger yellow fruits which are
eaten only when cooked, is the plantain. Its fruit is a staple arti-
cle of food with the natives of Jamaica ; and, when sliced and
fried in sweet cocoanut oil as a Creole cook can do it, is a dish to
tickle the palate on which the flesh-pots of Egypt pall.

It is a matter of common observation that bananas contain no
seeds. Cultivation through unnumbered generations has led to
the atrophy of these organs through the substitution of a vegeta-
tive mode of propagation, much to the advantage of the eater of
the fruit, at least. Only in one or two isolated regions of the Old
World are the primitive seed-bearing bananas known. If we
examine the rounded mass at the base of a well-grown plant,
which is its true stem, there will be found one or more knob-like
outgrowths which are plainly large buds. As the plant becomes
older, these buds, or " eyes," as the banana grower calls them,
develop upward, breaking through the soil and unfolding their
first leaves. From the bases of their own stems, which are merely
differentiated bits of the stem of the parent plant, roots are sent
down ; and thus the shoots become separated or capable of sepa-
ration from the parent, and so, of independent life. At this stage

WHERE BANANAS GROW.

491

the plantlets, now perhaps two feet long, are called " sets/' and it
is these which, taken from a vigorous plantation, are used for
establishing a new one.

Although they will do fairly well in the climate of Jamaica in
a great variety of soils, the best land for bananas is the deep,
rich, and moist alluvium of the river valleys. Here plants and
fruit reach their perfection, and the largest returns reward the
least labor. In short, the very lands which were the basis of
Jamaica's wealth in the old days of sugar and rum and slavery,
and which, during the years of her decadence, have lain waste

FIG. 2. — NATIVE HILLSIDE HOMES SURROUNDED BY BANANAS.

and "in ruinate," are destined again to give her a substantial
prosperity in the new days of the banana and the cocoanut and
freedom. And we may hope that this prosperity will be more
real and more permanent than the former, because founded on
principles of personal liberty and righteous dealing, and without
the accompaniment of the semi-barbarous luxury and the wholly
barbarous license that cursed the former time.

It is but a few years since the crumbling evidences of the ma-
terial prosperity of the rule of sugar and rum were to be seen on
every hand. Magnificent estates, teeming with a tropical luxuri-

492 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ance of riotous vegetation, only awaiting the directing hand to
turn their fertility to use, were everywhere. Old sugar works
and stillhouses, monumentally built of stone, still contained the
massive remains of machinery which even the corrosion of the
tropics had not yet wholly destroyed. And on each estate the
splendid " great house," still splendid in its desolation, enshrouded
in creepers and climbers, in clinging mosses and " wild pines " and
orchids, stood an eloquently mute witness to the external grand-
eur of the life of the sugar planter of an earlier part of the
century. And all these things are still far too common. But al-
ready the change is evident. These old estates are being rapidly
taken up and cleared. The great houses are being renovated or
replaced by new if less pretentious homes. Life and activity are-
replacing death and decay. One hears of thrifty men who have
bought fine estates, renovated and equipped them, and estab-
lished fruit plantations hundreds of acres in extent, at an expense
of thousands of pounds, and from the profits of the first five years
have stood free of debt and independent. These are not isolated
or exaggerated cases ; but they will, of course, become less fre-
quent as the fruit supply increases. The pioneer in growing and
shipping fruit has been a Cape Cod sea captain, who, trading
among the islands, had the foresight to seize the opportunity
when it was his for the seizing, and faith that Americans would
buy all the fruit he could offer them. In twenty years his real
estate and shipping interests have grown too extensive for a
single man, and are now in the hands of the Boston Fruit Com-
pany, of whose Jamaica interests he is still in charge. This com-
pany now owns or controls over thirty of the finest fruit estates
in the island, from Morant Bay around the eastern end as far as
Buff Bay. Jamaicans cordially recognize their indebtedness to-
Captain L. D. Baker for the present hopeful outlook for their
island.

One of the largest and perhaps the most successful of the fruit
company's estates is that called " Golden Vale," eight miles south
of Port Antonio, its headquarters in the island. Here some two-
hundred acres of genuine " banana land " are now under cultiva-
tion, and the area is being steadily increased. A visit to this
plantation will give the best idea of the details of banana culture.
The road takes us directly away from the coast through the hills
that come down to the very shore almost everywhere in eastern
Jamaica. The fine government roads make driving a pleasure,,
and the magnificent hill views and wonderful vegetation are an
unfailing delight. So it is all too soon that we descend the hills
into the valley of the Rio Grande, pass through the plantation
and settlement of " Friendship," on the hither side, ford the river
with wheels hub deep in water, and enter Golden Vale. Thanks.

WHERE BANANAS GROW. 493

to a telephonic message that has preceded us, the superintendent
awaits us to show us everything of interest and, with unfailing
courtesy, to answer the endless questions of a Yankee.

After the ground is cleared, holes about a foot and a half deep
are dug fifteen feet apart each way. They are then filled with
surface soil to a depth of six inches, leaving them a foot deep.
In these holes the sets are then placed obliquely, so that their
upper ends just project beyond the edges of the holes, and are
covered closely. Many planters place the sets upright and cover
only their bases ; but, though they then make plants rather more
quickly, the best growers believe the resulting plants are not so
strong, and produce less and poorer fruit. A set covered as above
may then " shoot/' in technical parlance, either from an eye at
the base of the set or by the continued growth of its principal
bud within the sheathing leaves. This results in a new growth
bursting through the old leaf-bases — " breaking the husk," the
growers say — and is considered to give the best plants. Good
sets will show vigorous growth in three or four, sometimes even
in two, weeks after planting, and then grow rapidly, pushing out
leaf after leaf, aud finally the flower stalk. At length, eleven or
twelve months after planting in good soil, each plant stands from
twelve to fifteen feet high, and bears a bunch of fruit full grown.
Since a plant bears only a single bunch of fruit, it is removed
when the bunch is cut to make room for another. And by the
time it is ready for cutting others are ready to take its place in
the young plants which have come up all about it from the lat-
eral sprouts of its stem. The best of these are selected to re-
main and the rest removed. In this selection of plants and the
resulting thinning lie the secret of success with bananas. The
first to grow from sets in a new plantation are called " plants,"
while succeeding growths from their shoots are " rattoons," first,
second, third, and so on, in succeeding generations. This word
rattoon is a corruption of the Spanish retono, a new shoot, and
originated in connection with the culture of sugar cane, which is
propagated in the same way. An amusing example of the extent
of its use may be seen in the Jamaican reference to a meal made
off the remnants of a previous feast as " eating the rattoons."

By careful selection and thinning of the rattoons a good plan-
tation comes in a couple of years to its full development. Then
one finds, as nearly as may be, in each " hill," as we may call the
group of plants standing where each original set was placed,
four plants strong, vigorous, and in stages of development which
present a regular succession from oldest to youngest. Placing
the hills fifteen feet apart each way gives nearly two hun-
dred to the acre, and a well-managed cultivation should yield
two marketable bunches per hill a year. The plants and first

494

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rattoons give the best fruit, and there is a steady degeneration
with succeeding rattoons. The limit of profitable yield for a plan-
tation varies especially with the soil. But the maximum for deep
and moist banana lands may be said to be about ten years. Then
the ground must be cleared and a new culture begun with fresh
sets. Very little is done in rotation of crops, and the soil has as
yet received little fertilization except such as results from the
decay of the old plants.

It is not alone on the great estates, nor even chiefly on them,
that our enormous supplies of fruit are being produced. Scattered

FIG. 3. — IN THE " GOLDEN VALE " PLANTATION.

all over the hills are little clearings of a few acres, or even less
than one acre, thickly set with banana plants. It is from these
little patches that perhaps a majority of our fruit comes. For
even the Boston Fruit Company, with all its estates, is compelled
to buy largely to supply its trade, and most of the other shippers
are wholly buyers. Thus the smaller and less available tracts are
turned to account, which is a matter of the first importance in a
country so irregular and so mountainous as Jamaica.

Whether for shipment or for home consumption the fruit is
cut as soon as it is " full " — that is, when it has reached its adult

WHERE BANANAS GROW. 495

form and size, but is still quite green. The plant is cut off by a
single blow of a machete wielded by a powerful arm. As it falls
the bunch is caught, lopped off, and laid aside, while the harvester
goes on to the next bunch. It is a popular supposition that ba-
nanas " ripened on the tree " are incomparably superior to those
cut green. But as a matter of fact one never eats them thus
ripened in Jamaica. They are said to be not so good; at all
events, one finds no better fruit in texture or flavor than the best
of our own markets. But every lover of this fruit knows that
its quality varies extraordinarily as it is offered to us. This is
due partly to the different sources from which it comes. The
best that is brought to us comes from Jamaica. It is also due
still more to the condition of the fruit when cut. Bananas which
are perfectly full will ripen mellow and delicious ; but those cut
when immature, as too many are, will turn yellow, yet never truly
ripen, retaining always their hard texture and unripe taste. In
Jamaica, as elsewhere, the competition of buyers leads the un-
scrupulous ones to accept fruit of any sort, even when totally
unfit ; and this sort of competition makes all the more unavail-
ing the efforts of honest buyers to raise the standard and to teach
the people to withhold their fruit until it is properly developed.
Americans can give moral support to these efforts by accepting
only such fruit as is mature at any price. A little pains will soon
enable one to distinguish good from poor fruit, though it is diffi-
cult to give a general statement of the distinctive differences.
But, as a rule, it will be found that bananas which are largest,
deepest yellow, and least angular are the most mature and best.

The view over Golden Vale from the superintendent's house,
which stands at a little distance on a slight elevation, recalls a
grain field with its level surface of waving foliage. The drive
along the roads within the plantation is beautiful. One may go
on and on between the stretches of luxuriant plants, to the soft
rustle of the leaves overhead, while below the forests of trunks
reach away on either hand beyond the power of the eye to pene-
trate. But the experience never to be forgotten is a ride over the
estate with the superintendent. On tough little Jamaica horses,
docile and sure-footed, we leave at once the wagon road, plunge
into the wilderness of plants, and soon lose sight of every land-
mark. Pushing on, sometimes along foot paths just distinguish-
able, of tenest where there are none ; jumping ditches and prostrate
trunks, surrounded only by banana plants in all stages of growth,
yet so alike, so monotonous, that one might as easily find his way
in midocean. Above us is an overarching roof of foliage sup-
ported by massive clustered columns. Beneath our feet is a dense
carpet of some of the prized adornments of Northern greenhouses
— the Tradescantia or " wandering Jew," beautifully contrasting

496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the deep maroon of the lower faces of its leaves with the green
and silvery stripes of their upper sides ; the delicate pink-flowered
Oxdlis, and the dainty " sensitive plant/' whose modest shrinking
from the slightest touch has been uncharitably attributed to a
bad conscience, both by the botanist who named it Mimosa pudica
and by the darky boys who call it " shame." Emerging at last
into the full blaze of the tropic sun, which seems all the more
garish by contrast, we cross the open for a time and soon begin
the ascent, by a slight bridle path, of one of the steep hills that
inclose the valley. Slowly but surely the horse creeps upward,
now stopping with all four feet together to poise for a leap over a
gully, then pressing on over a track that nothing else but a
mountain goat could climb, close past and under trees that almost
brush one from the saddle. At length we come out upon open
ground near the summit, to be a hundredfold repaid by one of
the fairest sights the fancy can paint. At our Jeet lies the sea
of bananas ; beyond and on either side stretches the amphitheater
of hills, plumed with cocoanut palms and fringed with feathery
bamboos, and covered with verdure. Back to the house by a good
path, we taste true Jamaican hospitality in a cup of tea and that
most melting and luscious of Jamaica's fruits, a Ripley pine — no
one says pineapple here.

After cutting, it is important to ship the bananas as promptly
as possible and to handle them carefully, for the less they have
ripened or been bruised before reaching their market the better
prices they bring. So each bunch is carefully wrapped with
" trash " — dried banana leaves — and taken at once to the nearest
shipping port. From the great properties like Golden Vale they
are transported in two-wheeled or four-wheeled mule carts, the
former drawn by two mules, the latter by three abreast, carrying,
respectively, about twenty and forty bunches. These carts are
lined with trash to prevent bruising. The mule team consists of
a large mule in the shafts and a small one harnessed to an outrig-
ger on one side or on each side, as the case may be. From the
smaller clearings and dooryard patches of the peasants come sin-
gle bunches on the heads of their owners, or lots of two or four
bunches packed in trash and slung pannier-fashion across the
backs of donkeys.

As the bunches are received at the wharf they are unpacked,
inspected, and checked off by a tallyman, and placed in trash-lined
bins according to their size and quality. A glance shows an ex-
perienced eye how many groups or " hands " of bananas a bunch
contains. A bunch of nine or more hands is a, whole bunch, and
brings the full-bunch price either at the port of shipment or in
the Northern market. I am told that bunches of sixteen hands
are occasionally met with, but have never seen one of more than

WHERE BANANAS GROW.

497

thirteen. A bunch of eight hands is a three-quarter bunch, one
of seven hands a half bunch, and a six-hand bunch sells for a
quarter or a third of the full-bunch price. Bunches below this
size are not ordinarily marketable. Since a hand may contain
from a dozen to twenty fruits or " fingers/' the number in a mar-
ketable bunch may vary from six to twenty dozen. The poorer
bunches are sometimes reserved for the few schooners still in the

FIG. 4. — LOADING AT THE WHARF, PORT ANTONIO.

trade, chiefly with our Southern ports, while all the best go by
steamers.

Originally the entire trade was carried on in sailing vessels,
but their slowness and uncertainty have compelled them to give
way to the present fleet of stanch and fast steamers, whose regu-
lar time of about five days to New York and six to Boston f rbm
Jamaica, or half a day less from Baracoa, Cuba's largest fruit
port, gives them every advantage in the transportation of perish-
able freight, in spite of greater running expenses. Most of these
steamers, while built especially for the fruit trade, are of the
class called tramps, taking short charters wherever they can ob-
tain them, and with no allegiance but to their owners. It is with
a twinge of regret that an American sees ship after ship, as she

498 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

enters port, break out at her taffrail the ensign of Britain or of
Norway.

There are but five ports in the West Indies and Central Amer-
ica which boast wharves where ships may load or passengers may
land. Two of these are chief centers of the fruit trade in Ja-
maica— Port Antonio and Port Morant — which owe their facilities
to the enterprise of the Boston Fruit Company. Here the fruit
is transferred to the ships, bunch by bunch, upon the shoulders of
men. But at all the other ports, which lie scattered along the
northern and eastern coasts at intervals of ten to thirty miles,
from Morant Bay to Lucca, ships m ust anchor an eighth to half a
mile off shore, and receive their cargoes from large surfboats,
manned each by three stout negroes, two rowing in the bow and
the other standing in the stern, alternately sculling and steering.
These boats bring out at each load from a hundred and fifty to
two hundred bunches, which are passed on board ship by way of
a staging let half way down her side. Each bunch, as it comes
on board, whether from wharf or boat, is passed down a line of
men reaching from the deck to that part of the hold which is be-
ing filled. The first man, as he receives the bunch, calls out its
number in series, and, following him, the tallyman on deck keeps
the score in his book. Often half a dozen men will join in the

refrain :

" One — let 'er go.
Two — put 'em down.
T h ree — carefully.
Four — banana.
Tally— oh !"

This is shouted or chanted with a slow rhythmic swing, and is
most frequently heard at night. At such a time; — for when once
the loading of a ship is begun it continues without interruption
until she is ready to sail — the effect is particularly weird. The
splash of the oars of boats emerging from the darkness, the shouts
of the men, the scantily clothed dark forms dimly lighted by flar-
ing lanterns, and, dominating all, this almost unintelligible chant,
suggest some orgy of voodoo. In the hold the bunches are placed
upright, resting on the thick ends of their stems, and as close to-
gether as possible.

So a steamer is loaded, in from twenty-four to forty-eight
hours, with twelve to fifteen, or rarely twenty, thousand bunches.
In the busy season, from April through July, the Boston Fruit
Company alone loads five ships per week on an average, including
two for Boston and two for Baltimore. Their supplies are drawn
chiefly from the region between Morant Bay and St. Ann's Bay,
and up the east coast as far as Annotto Bay they are the chief
shippers. Their leading competitors are the Jamaica Fruit Com-

WHERE BANANAS GROW.

499

pany, at Port Antonio, which supplies its Jamaica fruit to the
Philadelphia market, and J. E. Kerr & Co., the leading buyers
between Annotto Bay arid Lucca, who run steamers to New York.
Besides these there are numerous smaller buyers. Unfortunately,
it can not be said that all buyers deal fairly with the people,
though they keep their trade by taking all fruit that offers, re-
gardless of its quality or fitness. Many of them are dealers in
general merchandise, and, by paying their ignorant clients in
goods, not only make a double profit, but keep running accounts
with them which are never closed and always show a balance on

FIG. 5. — LOADING FROM A BOAT, BUFF BAT.

the dealer's side. While this may not be carried as far as the in-
famous truck system, which holds the people of the Bahamas in
practical slavery, the tendency is the same, and should be sharply
.checked before its logical conclusion is realized.

And now something as to the people who are engaged in the
work of culture and shipment already described. With few ex-
ceptions they are native Jamaicans. Some of the most respon-
sible positions in the Boston Fruit Company's offices at Port An-
tonio and Port Morant are filled by Americans, who with their
families form a delightful colony at the former place. To them

5 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

visiting Americans are indebted for many kindnesses. The clerks
and tallymen at the ports, the superintendents and overseers, or
" head bushers," on the cultivations are chiefly white, Creole, or
mulatto Jamaicans. A parenthesis here about this word " Creole."
Webster and others define a Creole as a child of white parents born
in the tropics ; but this certainly is not the popular use of the
term in Jamaica. There it is synonymous with the perhaps com-
moner expression " brown man," and is applied to a person with a
small proportion of negro blood, which, while showing its presence
slightly in complexion or hair, or both, still distinguishes its pos-
sessor but slightly from a white person. These people are far
more numerous than the whites in Jamaica, and enjoy complete
social equality with them. This is not only fortunate for all con-
cerned, but is the inevitable result of the free intermarriage of
persons of all shades of complexion and all degrees of blood mix-
ture, as well as of the looser relations which were even recently
very common, but which, happily, seem at present to be less con-
doned among people with claims to respectability. One always
finds Jamaicans of the better class kindly, hospitable, polite, and
unaffected, without the veneer of more elaborate civilization.

But the manual labor in any industry is largely performed by
the negro peasantry, who constitute a very large and steadily in-
creasing majority of the population of the island. In the culture
and shipment of the banana both men and women were formerly
employed, but at present men are almost exclusively engaged, re-
ceiving from one to two shillings per day, according to the work.
There is much of interest about the Jamaica negro — some good
points and many bad ones ; but this is not the occasion for their
detailed discussion. His life is a curious combination of almost
primitive savagery, with some of the least attractive features of
our so-called civilization. Living chiefly in wattled bamboo huts
thatched with palm leaves, and upon the lavish products of the
soil, dressing in the simplest manner, his wants are easily supplied.
Very religious in theory and equally immoral in practice, a child
in mind and an animal in spirit, he presents a practical problem
worthy of any philanthropist's best efforts.

The short time in which, even at his small wages, he can pro-
vide for the needs of a week, his entire lack of ambition for more
than a bare subsistence, and the seductions of that liquid fire called
new rum, make the average negro an uncertain quantity in the.
labor problem. This has led to the importation into the British
West Indies of a class of steadier and more reliable laborers, the
low-caste Hindus, or coolies, from India. These slender-limbed
and bronze-skinned Caucasians are, as a class, temperate, indus-
trious, and frugal ; quiet and peaceable when fairly treated. They
make excellent laborers, and their picturesque and comfortable

WHERE BANANAS GROW. 501

costumes are far better suited to the climate than the imported
European one which the negro apes. Living by themselves in
villages of bamboo huts, the coolies have little intercourse with
the negroes, whom they regard as their inferiors ; and rightly so,
from a mental or moral standpoint. The negro, on the other hand,
looks down on them, but has learned from experience that their
reserved and quiet manners are no more the outward sign of
timidity than his own bluster and braggadocio can replace real
courage in an emergency.

The typical agricultural tool in Jamaica is the machete. These
heavy, swordlike blades are made in Europe and have clumsy
handles with grips of rough wood. For a good one the buyer
pays a shilling, and then takes it to a smith. Here the wooden
grips are removed and a large strip is cut out from the handle to
make it narrower and more comfortable ; the blade is ground to
a keen edge, and its sharp tip is cut off as a safeguard against too
serious accident should the tool be dropped upon some always
naked foot. The owner now fits to the handle convenient grips,
preferably of calabash wood, winds them evenly and tightly with
stout cord, and his constant companion is ready at a total expense

FIG. 6. — MACHETE READY FOB USE.

of about two shillings. Whether for grubbing up weeds and
clearing ground, for gathering grass for his donkey, for harvest-
ing bananas, for cutting yam-poles, or for husking cocoanuts,
this implement is indispensable. It is formidable in appearance,
and would be so in fact were its owner disposed to use it with
sanguinary intent. But, happily, he has rarely the courage that
makes a dangerous man, and the blood of the cocoanut is the
machete's most exciting draught.

To return to our bananas. When the responsibility of the
Jamaica people ends with the sailing of the ship, its captain's re-
sponsibility begins. And this is no slight one. In warm weather
the holds must be kept wide open but constantly protected from
the sun by awnings, and the great ventilating funnels must al-
ways be turned to catch the full force of the wind and change the
air below as often as possible. In cold weather it may be neces-
sary to cover the hatches and close the ventilators to prevent the
freezing of the delicate cargo as our shore is neared. And if the
ship arrives during a cold snap she may have to lie several days

502 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

before the weather will permit unloading. Either the closeness
of the air beneath tightly battened hatches or the heat of mid-
summer weather causes the rapid ripening of the fruit, and it
may be the case at either season that when the ship is unloaded
there is found a mass of ripe and decayed fruit which will not
pay the cost of its transportation. Thus the shipper's lot is likely
to be by no means a happy one, and the success of a trip may
depend largely on the skill and judgment of the shipmaster.

Fruit which arrives in good condition is transferred by wagons
to cool and dark storehouses to ripen, or by rail to interior mar-
kets with the utmost dispatch. One may often see a fruiter just
arrived at her pier in one of our large seaports, by whose side lies
a huge scow bearing freight cars, into which the green bunches
are being rapidly passed and stowed for transportation hundreds
of miles inland.

And so, throughout the year, the work goes on, affording
profitable occupation to people who need it and healthful variety
to tables that welcome it. Surely the story of one of the choicest
products of Nature's laboratory can not be without interest
where that of every result of human ingenuity finds so large an

audience.

**>

TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT.*

BY Miss E. A. YOUMANS.

IN the death of Prof. Tyndall science has lost one of its greatest
modern leaders, and the century one of its most striking per-
sonalities. In early life he became prominent as an original in-
vestigator, and later he was even more distinguished as a popu-
lar scientific teacher. Probably no man of his time did more to-
ward freeing science from the shackles of ecclesiasticism, and
vindicating its claims to public regard. With less than the usual
advantages of birth or position, he rose by sheer force of char-
acter and natural ability to the headship of one of the foremost
scientific institutions of learning and research in the world, the
Royal Institution of Great Britain. Here, as Professor of Physics,
which appointment he received in 1853, he continued those origi-
nal researches which had already made his name familiar in sci-
entific circles, and subsequently, on the death of Faraday, he suc-
ceeded to the directorship of the institution.

His researches in physics embraced magnetism, electricity,
light, heat, and sound, the latter including a long series of experi-
ments on the atmosphere as a vehicle of sound, with a view to the

* A biographical sketch of Prof. Tyndall, with a portrait on steel, appeared in The Popu-
lar Science Monthly for November, 1872.

TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 503

establishment of fog signals on the coast of England. Indeed, his
studies branched out toward the practical in a variety of direc-
tions ; chief among them being his investigations concerning the
nature of the dust particles in the air, and their relation to the
germ theory of disease.

It is said that he had from youth a faculty of examining his
premises with extreme minuteness, so that he was hardly ever
known to proceed on a false assumption ; and no theory ever pro-
pounded by him as the result of mature deliberation has been
upset or seriously controverted. Another of his characteristics
was that a research once entered upon, the work was carried on
with the unflagging industry and persistence of an enthusiast.
He has himself furnished the explanation of this in the following
passage taken from his later writings :

My going to Germany had been opposed by some of my friends as quixotic,
and my life there might perhaps not be unfairly thus described. I did not work
for money ; I was not even spurred by the " last infirmity of noble minds." I bad
been reading Ficbte and Emerson and Carlyle, and had been infected by the spirit
of these great men. The Alpha and Omega of their teaching was loyalty to duty.
Higher knowledge and greater strength were within reach of the man who un-
flinchingly enacted his best insight. It was a noble doctrine. It held me to my
work, and in the long, cold mornings of the German winter, defended by a Schlaf-
rock lined with catskin, I usually felt a freshness and strength — a joy in mere
living and working derived from perfect health — which was something different
from the malady of self-righteousness.

Again he says of this German experience :

I risked this expenditure of time and money not because I had any definite
prospect of material profit in view, but because I thought the cultivation of the
intellect important — because, moreover, I loved my work and entertained the sure
and certain hope that, armed with knowledge, one can successfully fight one's
way through the world. And I must not omit one additional motive, which
was a sense of duty. Every young man of high aims must, I think, have a spice
of this principle within him. There are sure to be hours in his life when his
outlook will be dark, his work difficult, and his intellectual future uncertain.
Over such periods, when the stimulus of success is absent, he must be carried by
his sense of duty.

But it was his power as a scientific expositor that gave Prof.
Tyndall his worldwide reputation, and it is on this that his fame
chiefly rests. His ability to present even abstruse subjects to a
popular audience was unexcelled. The vividness of his imagina-
tion, which enabled him to form clear mental pictures of the phe-
nomena he sought to explain, and his aptness in illustration led
him to translate abstract ideas into their concrete equivalents.

On this point, the Athenaeum remarks :

His lectures were not merely marked by logical reasoning expressed in for-
cible language, but they were models of method: nothing was left to chance;

5 04 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

everything, down to the minutest detail, was prepared with nicety ; and the ex-
periments were consequently performed with a precision uuequaled by the manip-
ulation of an accomplished conjurer.

The qualities which characterized his lectures were reflected, as far as pos-
sible, in his writings. There was the same clearness of thought, the same vigor of
expression. Most of his writings were, indeed, reproductions or developments
of his lectures ; witness his popular works on Sound, Light, and The Forms of
Water. His best-known book, Heat considered as a Mode of Motion — in which
he presented, thirty years ago, an admirable exposition of the phenomena of heat
in accordance with the dynamical theory — may be accepted as typical of his
felicity of expression and readiness of illustration.

It was these rare gifts as an interpreter of science which first
drew the attention of American readers to Prof. Tyndall, and
which finally led to his visit to this country in~1872. Many now
living will recall that event and the impulse given to American
science by the brilliant course of lectures which he delivered in
our chief Atlantic cities.

Having been asked to prepare a brief account of this visit, and
being assured that it will be of interest just now to the readers of
the Monthly, I have decided to comply with the request. I am
enabled to do this by the aid of documents and letters left by my
lamented brother, E. L. Youmans, who for many years enjoyed
the friendship of Prof. Tyndall, and was in frequent correspond-
ence with him.

Tyndall's first book, The Glaciers of the Alps, was brought out
here by Ticknor and Fields in 1861. All who read it were fasci-
nated by the clearness and beauty of its style and the ease with
which its facts and principles could be understood.

The year following, my brother made his first visit to England,
and while in London it was his good fortune to be introduced to
Tyndall. In a letter of September 25th he writes :

I went with Spencer at his request to see Tyndall respecting the publication
of his forthcoming book. He was at the Royal Institution, where his researches
are carried on in a dingy hole down cellar, which Tyndall denominated " the
den." He is a single man of forty, with a scanty strip of forehead, and big,
straight, prominent nose — the most restless, nervous creature I ever set eyes on^
We stayed but a few minutes, and nothing was said of anything but the book, and
the publication of books.

The work here referred to was Heat as a Mode of Motion, at
that time in the hands of the printers in London.

Another letter written from Cambridge during the same visit,,
when he was attending the meeting of the British Association,
describes Tyndall's manner as a lecturer :

Last night there was an address by Tyndall before the association in the
lecture room ; subject, water in its several conditions. It was altogether the
most brilliant affair of the kind I have ever seen. The new philosophy of forces-

TTNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 505

permeates everything. All science seems worked with reference to it. Tyndall
not only assumed it, but it was the foundation of his philosophy. While I was
with him the other day Spencer started the point of using the term persistence
of force rather than conservation. They had quite a spurt over it. But to-day
Huxley used the term persistence of force. The experiments last night were,
first, testing oxygen and hydrogen separately; second, exploding them together;
third, bursting iron bottles by freezing; fourth, exhibiting the formation of crys-
tals by the electric light in a vacuum ; fifth, formation of an immense spectrum
on a screen, absorption of its different parts by colored glasses; and sixth, regela-
tion of iron. He had splendid diagrams of the glaciers, but hardly referred to
them. He was not still a moment, but bending and twisting in all possible
shapes as if he had the St. Vitus dance — twisting his legs together, bending
down to the desk, and working and jerking himself in all possible directions.
Everybody was kept awake, entertained, and instructed. It was a work of enthu-
siasm.

One of the consequences of that first interview with Tyndall
appears in the following extract from a letter of my brother's
written to Mr. Spencer in March, 1863. He says : " I received the
advance sheets of Prof. Tyndall's book on Heat, and beg of you to
express to him my sincere thanks for the kindness. The Apple-
tons will issue it at the earliest moment, the cuts being already
nearly all re-engraved. It is a very fascinating and altogether
remarkable book, and it will be a pure pleasure for me to work
for its circulation. It can not fail to have a good sale."

A letter of Prof. Tyndall's to my brother relating to the publi-
cation of his work on Heat, and bearing date April 29, 1863, is the
earliest one in my possession. It is as follows :

MY DEAR SIR : As soon as I received the letter with which you kindly favored
me some months ago, I communicated at once with Mr. Longman and requested
him to forward you the separate sheets of my work on Heat according as they
appeared. I intended to accompany the sheets with a letter which should ex-
press my desire to leave the management with the Messrs. Appleton entirely in
your hands, but I have been so knocked about — sometimes so ill, sometimes so hard
worked, and sometimes engaged so far away from London— that I have delayed
thus far to write you. My friend Spencer called to see me a few days ago, and
from him I had the great gratification of learning that the book has interested you.
Indeed, he read portions of letters from Mrs. Youmans and yourself which gave
me very great pleasure. Since the appearance of the work I have had communi-
cations from many of my eminent Continental friends regarding it, and they, I am
happy to say, concur in your opinion. A French translation of it has already
been commenced. I can assure you that I have spared no labor to render a diffi-
cult subject intelligible, and it gives me great pleasure to find that I have, at least
in some measure, succeeded.

I am now giving a short course of lectures on Sound at the Royal Institution.
If I have time I may throw them into a readable form. I have for some time
entertained the idea of publishing my lectures gradually and of afterward collect-
ing them and fusing them into a book on general physics. But the time necessary
to the proper accomplishment of the task deters me almost from undertaking it.
However, it may perhaps be executed by slow degrees.
VOL. XLIV. — 39

506 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Mr. Huxley informs me that you are thinking of bringing out his work also.
I am glad to hear this, for it is an extremely able production. Indeed, there are
parts of it which in point of writing power have scarcely ever been excelled. . . .

Good-by, my dear sir ; accept my best thanks for the trouble you have taken
in my behalf, and believe me Most sincerely yours,

JOHN TYNDALL.

The book appeared in the summer of 1863, two years after that
on the Glaciers, and, although dealing with a difficult subject, was
received with equal favor and appreciation. These two works
gave their author a high reputation in America as a popular
expositor of science, and created an eager demand for his later
writings, nearly all of which have been republished by the same
house, and have been widely read. Meanwhile Tyndall's success
as an experimenter and his gifts as a popular lecturer had come
to the knowledge of many Americans, and the result was a great
desire on the part of our more intelligent classes to see and hear
the man. This found expression in frequent solicitations to lec-
ture in the United States, among others Mr. John Amory Lowell
sending him an urgent invitation to come over and deliver the
Lowell lectures in Boston. But it was not until some years later,
on the receipt of a request signed by twenty-five names " distin-
guished in science, in literature, and in administrative position,"
that, yielding to his democratic sympathies and his ardor in the
diffusion of science, Prof. Tyndall finally consented to come.

The first letter in which I find any mention of his coming to
America is dated December 24, 1869. I give it entire :

MY DEAR YOUMANS : It is a long time since I have heard from you, and the
reason, no doubt, is that you wrote to me last. Well, I must not allow you to
fall utterly away from me, so by this day's post I send you the copy of an article
which is to appear in the next number of the Fortnightly Review.

Your last letter made me smile. I know you imagine me to be a screw in
money matters, and therefore you thought it would please me to know that I
should be well paid for that short scrap from Macmillan. Well, if you feel an
interest in the matter you may ask my friends whether I am a screw or not.
Sometimes I certainly wish to put the screw upon publishers; for they sometimes
need it much. Let me say now that you may do just what you please with any
article of mine, and feel not a thought on the money side of it, as far as I am con-
cerned.

I am trying very hard on a boy's book on optics. Ostensibly for boys, but
equally for teachers; for boys thus far do not know how to learn and teachers do
not know how to teach. I am so treating the subject that boys and teachers may
make the experiments for themselves. My aim is to teach them both to experi-
ment and to reason upon experiment. I suppose a boy to be alongside, and that
we are working together. I try to overcome the apathy and the repugnance aris-
ing from awkwardness in the first stages of experiment. I speak, therefore, not
only to the boy's brain, but to his blood — stirring him to action.

I had a fall with ugly consequences in the Alps this year. One morning,
after allowing a mountain cascade to tumble over me, I was returning across

TTNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 507

some blocks of granite naked to my clothes when I staggered and fell all my
weight against the sharp crystals. Three of them stamped themselves into the
fiber of my shin, and the shin was generally much bruised. But four days of
perfect quiet destroyed all pain, and there was no inflammation. So I came down
stairs, moved about, excited inflammation, had erysipelas twice over, and was six
weeks in bed. It required three months to set me right. I am now well, and
just on the point of beginning the Christmas lectures.

I wish much you would tell me what kind of lectures (scientific) you are ac-
customed to in New York. Yours ever,

JOHN TTNDALL.

The subject is again alluded to in the following letter :

April 13, 1870.

MY DEAR YOUMANS: I thank you more fully for the friendly interest you
have taken in my affairs than for the money which has resulted to me through
the exercise of your kindness.

I have had many letters of the most gratifying description from the United
States, and this is why I mentioned lectures in my last note to you. I am not,
however, certain whether it would not be better to pay you a visit without
any thought of lecturing. I love freedom, and a scamper through the States,
without the incubus of lectures, would be as instructive to me as it would be
pleasant.

I saw Huxley last night. To him you have been acting as you have to me.
The philosophers of England have much to thank you for. I was sorry to hear
from Huxley that his little book is not so successful in America as it might be.
This surprises me, for it is an excellent piece of work. I wish I had time to do
something similar in physics.

When I last saw Spencer he was flourishing. He told me he had written to
you regarding an amanuensis. He endeavors to persuade me to lighten my
labors in this way. But with me an amanuensis would not be so successful as
with him. I have to rasp and rasp at my work myself before it pleases me.

With regard to the future I have to say that I am pinned this year by the
meeting of the British Association at Liverpool ; next year I am pinned by my
lectures and researches. If I go to the States without lecturing I could probably
fly off in 1872. But should I lecture, the needful preparations would throw the
visit back to 1874. This is a long time to look forward to.

But whether I go or tarry, or whether I go as a lecturer or as a friendly
visitor, it will make no difference in the feelings with which I reciprocate the
kindness shown to me by your countrymen and yourself.
With best regards to Mrs. Youmans,

Believe me, yours ever faithfully, JOHN TTNDALL.

Tyndall's next letter referring to the subject is interesting as
showing the force of custom upon a man of such independence of
character :

March 26, 1871.

MY DBAS YOTTMANS: . . . The desire for lecturing in America seems to be
very strong. My relative, Hector Tyndale, who is now in this country, was the
bearer of a very flattering proposal to me. Suppose I ask you what would be
expected of me were I to close with the terms suggested in your last letter ? I

5o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

want to know the amount of slavery that will, under the contract, be inflicted
on me.

I take it for granted that I should occupy no other position than that habitu-
ally accepted by such men as Emerson, Sumner, Wendell Phillips, Wendell
Holmes. I should not, of course, dream of becoming a traveling lecturer in
England, and I should as little dream of doing so in America if the constitution
of society were not such as to render the work of lecturing not unworthy of your
own best men.

The best men in England, be it remembered, would engage in nothing of the
kind.

Between the time of his first visit to Europe, in 1862, and the
time, ten years later, of Prof. Tyndall's coming to this country,
my brother had made several visits abroad, and his acquaintance
with Tyndall had ripened into friendship. In 1871, when he was
in England establishing the International Scientific Series (of
which the first volume was prepared by Tyndall), he received
from him much friendly counsel and important aid, and, in
fact, in a letter of June 23, 1871, from my brother, I find it
stated that —

Tyndall is arranging to come over next year. Two illustrated lectures on the
glaciers, two or three on heat, others on light and electricity. " I want you to
take entire charge of me so far as the public is concerned ; my assistant will take
charge of experiments. I will not enslave myself. I will take it just as easy as
I have a mind to. I don't want your money, nor will I bring away one dollar of
it. I will help your scientific institutions with it; but it shall not be said that I
went to America to line my pockets. I have no reflections to cast upon those
Englishmen who have chosen to do this. It may have been right for them, but
it won't do for me."

The next letter bearing upon the subject shows that plans for
his lectures here were on foot, and that he had asked Prof. Henry
to arrange the times and places for him. This is quite in keep-
ing with English reverence for institutions, and Prof. Henry stood
for the Smithsonian Institution.

May 28, 1872.

MY DEAR YOUMANS : You will have your kindness toward me tested by Prof.
Henry in regard to the coming lectures. I wrote to him saving that I knew you
would help me, and he has written to me to say he would call upon you.

He proposes five cities (and perhaps others) in which to lecture — I have ex-
pressed my willingness to give a course of six lectures in each at the rate of three
a week. Two things render it desirable that the number should not exceed three
a week. Firstly, I must keep up my physical vigor, and the night subsequent to a
lecture is only too likely to be a sleepless one. Secondly, it is above all things
desirable to make sure of the experimental arrangements the day before the
lecture. . . . Yours ever, JOHN TYNDALL.

The revelation given in the next letter of Prof. Tyndall's men-
tal state concerning the commercial resources of Boston is too
characteristically English to be omitted :

TTNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 509

August 31, 1872.

MY DEAR YOUMANS : I am in the midst of my preparations here, and shall
have them ready so as to enable me to start in the Eussia on the 28th of Sep-
tember.

I shall need your friendly aid in getting my apparatus through the custom
house. . . .

With regard to the lecture rooms, in all of them I must be able to lower the
lights promptly. Most of my experiments will be projected on a screen.

I purpose mixing experiment and philosophy in due proportions.

I deal with the illustrative phenomena of light: the laws of reflection and
refraction, analysis and synthesis, the bearing and significance of theories. Spec-
trum analysis and its revelations regarding the constitution of the sun. The
higher phenomena of optics, interference and polarization, reaction of crystals
upon light. The building of crystals. The extension of radiation beyond the
range of the eye. The identity of light and radiant heat. This is a rough sketch
of the subjects which will probably occupy me. I shall not know for a certainty
until my preparations are complete.

Do your audiences look down upon the lecturer?

I suppose I can borrow an air pump in New York if I need it.

I suppose if they do not possess ice in Boston I can have a clear block sent
there from New York.

Acids, of course, are to be had everywhere.

Are they in the habit of using compressed hydrogen and oxygen in iron bottles
in America, and, if so, could I borrow such bottles ?

I am taking one screen with me, but I shall sometimes require two. Is such
a thing to be borrowed ?

Now, like a good fellow, answer these questions within twenty-four hours, and
oblige Yours, ever faithfully, JOHN TYNDALL.

And again :

FOLKESTONE, September 19, 1872.

MY DEAR YOUMAWS : . . . I hope they have clear ice in Boston, also nitric
and sulphuric acid ; if not, I must stock myself from New York. I have written
a line to Dr. Draper on this point, but I should be truly thankful to you if you
would make this point out for me, and if the acid is not to be had at Boston send
there a carboy of nitric and one of sulphuric acid.

I am quite shocked at the mass of apparatus I have collected round me. Still
I thought it best to take light apparatus — batteries, electric lamps, and costly
optical apparatus — with me, having just given the experiments with them here.

Yours ever, JOHN TYNDALL.

Prof. Tyndall arrived in October, and began his work at once
by giving the Lowell lectures in Boston. Then followed courses
in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.

Of his Boston lectures he says :

BOSTON, October 84, 1872.

MY DEAR YOUMANS: The hall of the Lowell still continues crowded, but I
shoot above their heads sometimes.

In fact, this is my difficulty. I do not know the scientific level of my audience.

Still the people are most kind and attentive, and the newspapers, I believe,
are very civil.

5io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I go to Niagara next week, so that the fortnight will be one of relaxation in
part and in part of preparation.

I have pledged myself to lecture in New Haven in January. They would be
sorely disappointed if I did not do this. ... I remain here till Wednesday, when
I propose starting for Niagara.

The following letter gives Tyndall's first impressions of Ni-
agara Falls :

INTERNATIONAL HOTEL, NIAGARA FALLS, Monday morning, November 4, 1872.

MY DEAE YOUMANS : I came here on Friday afternoon and have been active
ever since. The first impression made upon me by the Falls was tame, because
my point of view was not a good one ; but they have grown in strength and
majesty as I have seen more of them. I had a somewhat exciting day on Satur-
day, penetrating into unexpected regions under the Horseshoe Fall. I had a fine,
strong fellow with me as guide ; he had been put upon his mettle, and he led me
into extraordinary places — into places, indeed, where no prudent man ought to
be found. . . .

I remain here doing some work until Thursday, when I start for Philadelphia.
If I find from my assistants that matters are all right in Philadelphia, I may be
induced to stay till Friday. There is nothing, I suppose, to be arranged regarding
New York ? If there were, I could go that way and have a word with you.

I arn stronger than when I came, and my work will gradually become easier
to me — at least I hope so. I quitted Boston on Thursday, not completing all I
wished to do, nor seeing all I wished to see. Still, my sojourn there was a mo>t
pleasant one. The only drawback was that many people — thousands I was told
— wished to hear the lectures who were unable to hear them.

With kind regards to Mrs. Youmans and your sister, also to Mr. Appleton,
Believe me ever faithfully yours,

JOHN TYNDALL.

I find by contact with intelligent people here and there that you are well
known in your own country and that your work is duly appreciated.

In the following letters Prof. Tyndall gives his impressions of
his audiences in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington :

PHILADELPHIA, November S3, 1812.

MY DEAE YOUMANS : The second ordeal has been passed, and I believe success-
fully. The audience at first might have damped a person who reckoned on ap-
plause, for the Quaker element is strong in Philadelphia, and Quakers eschew
the clapping of hands. But the attention was unflagging throughout. I drew
heavily upon their patience, occupying them sometimes for nearly two hours. I
did not see one yawn in the assembly, nor one mark of weariness from begin-
ning to end.

They warmed up, moreover, and behaved very much as other Christians in the
end. I hardly think any Englishman ever spoke so freely to an American audi-
ence as I did to mine last night. I repeated one of De Tocqueville's hardest say-
ings with reference to the poverty of their achievements in the higher walks of
science. I took to pieces the claims of the so-called practical man, not attenuat-
ing his merit in the slightest, but opening to their view a region of antecedent
discovery to which practical men were not contributors, but from which they

TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 511

drew their supplies. I managed to say all this and a good deal more without
exciting a murmur ; nay, I was frequently interrupted by expressions of approval,
and when I ended the burst of applause was as hearty as I have ever heard.

So this matter is past, and I am now preparing for Baltimore. I have re-
ceived innumerable requests and invitations to lecture, and could I hope to be
able to respond to them or any of them, I should send them to you and ask you
to select from the many those that you think most suitable. But I see no hope
of being able to prolong my visit beyond the end of January. I dare say I shall
be pretty well used up by that time.

As regards science, the newspapers that I have glanced at here are very dull
and poorly reported. Perhaps I have not seen the best of them. . . .

Always yours, JOHN TYNDALL.

BALTIMORE, December 1, 1812.

Nothing could he more genial and sympathetic than my reception at Balti-
more. They declare the lectures entirely successful. Both at Philadelphia and
here I have spoken very strongly about their duty as regards scientific investi-
gation.

WASHINGTON, WELCKERIE HOTEL, 15™ ST., December, 1872.

MY DEAR YOTTMANS: . . . The lectures here are going off well. Lincoln Hall
is crowded, and I am assured that no such audiences ever assembled in Washing-
ton before. I was brief the first night, but gave them two hours the second
night, and an hour and three quarters last night. By the way, when I came to
the hall I found to my horror that I had put the wrong notes in my pocket, and
so I had to speak for the hour and three quarters without once looking at a note.

No sign of weariness or inattention was to be seen in the audience from first
to last.

You will not forget the taking of quiet rooms for me. Expense is quite a sec-
ondary matter, so if the Brevoort be the best, please let me have rooms there.
Quiet is the great thing — more precious than gold ; yea, than much fine gold.

It is difficult to report these experimental lectures. Ordinary reporters can
not possibly do it. Now, if you think the New York papers desire to report the
lectures I might throw my notes into such a form as would help them, and let them
have a copy of the notes of each lecture. What do you say to this?

I hope you are all right again. I am well aided here, and have brought a
colored man from Philadelphia, who is very useful.

Always faithfully yours, JOHN TYNDALL.

Prof. Tyndall's lectures in New York were given in Cooper
Institute, then one of our largest public halls. It was densely
crowded throughout the course by the most intelligent people of
the city and adjacent towns, who listened with close and absorb-
ing attention. The ablest men of science and the professions,
successful men of business, and cultivated ladies followed him
with sustained enthusiasm, and it was felt that no such assem-
blages had ever before been gathered in New York. Much of
this success was due to the attractiveness of the experiments, and
much to the felicity of the professor's manner ; but the indica-
tions of an earnest desire to comprehend the argument and get a
thorough understanding of the phenomena presented were abun-

5i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dant. The concluding part of the last lecture of the course was
without experiments, and consisted of an estimate of the work of
science and of the claims of original investigators. This was
listened to by the vast audience present with almost breathless
attention and made a profound impression.

A remarkable test of the public enthusiasm occurred on the
evening of one of the lectures. During the preceding twenty-
four hours the city was the scene of a raging snowstorm, a
heavy body of snow falling, which was piled into drifts by the
violent wind. With all his Alpine experience Tyndall spoke of
this as " stupendous weather." Although it stopped snowing and
the wind went down at nightfall, the horse cars were blocked
and the streets were almost impassable. Tyndall, thinking there
would be no audience on such a night, questioned whether it
would be worth while to go to the hall, but finally decided to do
so. To his astonishment and that of everybody else, the crowd
was again on hand, not a seat remaining unoccupied. Prof.
Tyndall afterward alluded to " that heroic audience which paid
me the memorable compliment of coming to hear me on such an
inclement night."

Tyndall had always said that it was not for him to exploit the
United States as a lecturer for money, and that he should not
take away a dollar of the profits that might accrue from his lec-
tures. This was not generally known, and when it was publicly
announced, the statement was received with a good deal of in-
credulity. A widely circulated weekly said " it was a pleasant
story, but not exactly true. . . . After paying all expenses he will
take home about fifteen thousand dollars, which on the whole is
what the printers call a 'fat take' for three months' work." But
the truth is that for nearly six months' labor * he did not take a
dollar of his earnings above actual expenses.

The total receipts for his lectures were $23,100, made up as
follows : Boston (six lectures), $1,500 ; Philadelphia (six lectures),
$3,000 ; Baltimore (three lectures), $1,000 ; Washington (six lec-
tures), $2,000; New York (six lectures), $8,500; Brooklyn (six
lectures), $6,100; New Haven (two lectures), $1,000. After de-
ducting expenses, $13,033 remained, and before leaving the
country Prof. Tyndall placed this fund in the hands of a board
of trustees consisting of Prof. Joseph Henry, Dr. E. L. Youmans,
and General Hector Tyndale, with the recommendation, as ex-
pressed in his deed of trust, that they appropriate the interest of
the fund in supporting or assisting to support, at such European
universities as they may consider most desirable, two American
pupils who may evince decided talents in physics, and who may

* This includes the time spent in preparation before leaving home.

TYNDALL AND HIS AMERICAN VISIT. 513

express a determination to devote their lives to this work. " My
desire would be that each pupil should spend four years at a Ger-
man university, three of those to be devoted to the acquisition of
knowledge, and the fourth to original investigation/' The plan
for carrying out this purpose was fully set forth in the deed of
trust, but it did not work well in practice. Several students
were aided, with satisfactory results, but. the selection of young
men with suitable qualifications was found to be more of a
task than had been anticipated. The trustees were scattered,
were busy men with little time for correspondence, and the
employment of a paid secretary was deemed impracticable. As
a consequence the income accrued faster than it was expended,
the fund having been so well invested that in thirteen years it
amounted to $32,400. Prof. Tyndall then decided to divide this
sum into three equal amounts, to be given, one to Columbia Col-
lege, one to Harvard University, and one to the University of
Pennsylvania, for the founding of three permanent fellowships
in physical science. These fellowships were designed for the
benefit of students desiring to prepare themselves for the work
of original research, and the incumbents might study at home
or abroad, as the authorities of the respective institutions should
decide.

There was a widespread feeling that in giving his genius, time,
and labor to advance the cause of science in this country, Prof.
Tyndall had earned the gratitude of all the friends of science and
education in the country; and when it became known that he
would also devote his money to the same end, this feeling was
deepened and it was thought by many that there should be some
form of acknowledgment of the great value of these gifts to the
American public. So a meeting was called, and it was there re-
solved to honor Prof. Tyndall with a public banquet to give ex-
pression to the general feeling and bid him farewell. This took
place the evening before his departure. About two hundred
guests were present, and numerous letters were received from
persons unable to attend, the list embracing the leading men of
science, the professions, and public life in the country.

The following letters, written after Prof. TyndalFs return to
England, and containing some interesting allusions to his Ameri-
can experience, may fitly close this account of his visit :

ROYAL INSTITUTION, LONDON, March 11, 1873.

Many thanks to you, my dear Youmans, and many thanks to the Tribune for
the cordial expression of good will contained in the number which you have just
sent me.

Two hundred thousand copies! It is certainly a most extraordinary phenome-
non, and one which the English public will probably take to heart. Nothing
could be more gratifying.

5 14 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I am throwing my experiences at Niagara into a readable shape, intending to
make a Friday evening lecture out of them on the 4th of April. As soon as
ever the paper is ready I shall send it to you.

I have not yet got properly into harness ; indeed, this is always a difficulty
with me. "When I get into a rut I tend to persist in it.

Had a letter yesterday from Hector. He tells me that he has forwarded the
deed of trust to Prof. Henry. I did not keep a copy of it, and should like some
time to have one, but there is no hurry. . . . Yours ever,

JOHN TYNDALL.

April 12, 1873.

MY DEAK YOTTMANS : The " Tyndall number," as the World calls it, of The
Popular Science Monthly duly reached me. I wish you had sent over a dozen of
them. I took the number to Bence Jones (who to my great grief is dying) and
to others. They were mightily struck by its tone, and Bence Jones predicts all
manner of great things for a nation which can evoke the spirit manifested in the
address of President White.

... I send you by this post a proof of my little paper on Niagara ; it may be
printed as it stands if time be an element of importance,* otherwise I am having
a little map of the Falls prepared which will add to the clearness of the paper. . . .

Faithfully yours, JOHN TYNDALL.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG.

BY JOHN MONTEITH.

IN his recent work on Justice, Mr. Herbert Spencer turns a new
light upon old questions in ethics, by tracing the roots of
ethical principles to the animal community. There is something
wonderful in the way certain animals form a society and ex-
emplify the egoistic and altruistic sentiments of justice working
in harmony. With all their selfish quarrels and contests, the
compact of animals throws many an attempt at human combina-
tion into the shade.

But such co-operation by limitation and adaptation is only
possible where there is power of perception, thinking, emotion,
and purpose. Therefore, we must either assume or constantly
prove, until demonstration is secured, that some animals, like
human beings, think, reason, and feel, and execute intelligent
purposes. Do they ?

It is in the line of answer to this question that I introduce the
subject of the following sketch, and record some careful observa-
tions I have made of the mental operations of my subhuman
dog. I am unable to gratify the curiosity of the fancier touching

* This very interesting paper may be found in the third volume of The Popular Science
Monthly, page 210.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 515

the group into which Toots would "be placed in a bench show. I
suspect he is a somewhat mixed individual. He has the pointed
nose, large brain-capsule, small drooping ears, and rough coat of
the collie, with the short legs of the dachshund, and weighs about
ten pounds. His mother was left by an English gentleman in
charge of a scissors-grinder in San Diego. She was stone-blind.
Her most remarkable feat was a return to her home by the lead
of her nose, after having been transported to a place six miles
away.

The mental development of this dog so closely resembles the
unfolding of the human intellect during infancy, that it will be
well to bring the two sets of phenomena into comparison. Let us
break the thread of this narrative long enough to refer to some
mental characteristics of the baby.

A very old objection to the possession, by animals, of mind
higher than that manifested in instinct is founded in an equally
old fallacy, that thinking is impossible separate from an acquaint-
ance with the language of speech. Particularly is it urged that
general ideas, or concepts, are impossible without words to repre-
sent them. If we think only in words, then dogs, who have no
words, can not think. Even what we call memory in animals has
been restricted to mere " association " by those orthodox philoso-
phers from whom some of us have learned our lessons. It has
not been without a struggle against prejudice that we are able to
give the dog his due.

Prof. Preyer, in his excellent work on The Development of the
Intellect, has, to my thought, proved conclusively that the baby,
even before it has learned to speak, thinks and forms general
ideas. By carefully registered observations, extending through a
period of forty months of infant life, the Jena psychologist finds
that, so early as the second month, the baby begins the " associa-
tion of memory-images." The possession of this primitive faculty
is proved not only by many examples of infants who in due
time learn to speak, but by the most remarkable practical demon-
stration in the development of deaf-mutes.

Nothing further could be desired in the way of positive proof
of the power to generalize, in the first years of life, than that the
deaf-mute expresses the concept " red " by touching his red lips,
and then pointing to the redness of the sunset sky. From a wide
induction of such facts, Prof. Preyer safely concludes that " many
concepts are, without any learning of words whatever, plainly ex-
pressed and logically combined with one another, and their cor-
rectness is proved by the conduct of any and every untaught child
born deaf." And he further sums up his case by declaring that
" it was not language that generated the intellect ; it is the intel-
lect that formerly invented language ; and even now the newborn

5i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

human being brings into the world far more intellect than talent
for language."

We may now proceed with Toots, since we have found for him
common footing with the speechless human baby. The necessity
of words to thinking will not be an a priori bar to the proper
interpretation of his acts. Mere tricks acquired by dogs are of
small value for our purpose, since they may be referred to reflex
action. Our concern is rather with those spontaneous and self-
directed acts of perception, adaptation, combination, and inven-
tion which can not be performed without the exercise of genuine
intellectual power. At an early period Toots discovered an in-
stinctive hostility to mice, moles, and black cats. His puppyhood
was passed in company with a gray kitten, whom he treated with
respect and affection, never failing to impress a kiss on its nose
when morning came, or after temporary separation. His associa-
tion of mice, moles, and black cats, and his discrimination in
favor of light- colored cats, suggest a perception of color, if not a
concept, which his actions have rendered unmistakable. I took
him to the house of a neighbor one day, where he fell in with a
litter of white-and-gray kittens, entirely strange to him, and he
treated them with the utmost kindness. A day or two afterward
he was introduced to a litter of black kittens, when, had he been
permitted, he would have torn them in pieces. In this idea of
" black " it will hardly be claimed that Toots has an abstract con-
cept of color, but has not he a vague concept such as a baby has
of " red/' not redness ? Otherwise, why is it that he entertains
an equally intense aversion to black dogs ?

The observing powers of this witty animal, and the resulting
inventions and devices, have experienced spontaneous develop-
ment in company with his human friends. He possesses in a rare
degree the power of laughing, or, more correctly, of smiling. In
a high state of pleasurable emotion he parts his lips, shows his
teeth, and wrinkles the skin of his cheeks, so as to leave a corru-
gated appearance, like the permanent expression of the nose in
the ribbed-nose or mandrill baboon. He reserves this laugh for
his friends, however, when he knows that they are returning from
an absence of considerable length, and never bestows it for a
brief separation, unless called upon to laugh. His sign and vocal
language is of his own adaptation. For a drink of water he has
one combination ; another for a request to be let out of the house,
and still a different one to pass out at the gate into the street.
He instantly observes any change in the dress of his three mis-
tresses, which change he assumes as a preparation for an outing,
and makes a corresponding request. The putting on of a skullcap
by his master brings from him a mild petition to go out into the
yard ; but when the tall hat appears, and a cane in hand, he runs

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 517

through his extended vocabulary of freedom, for this means a
walk abroad. Are not these acts precisely those of the "baby dur-
ing the primitive period of its thinking life ? And are they not
due to a mental process which in a child we always ascribe to
thinking ?

Toots's perception of ideas, even thoughts, conveyed in sen-
tences uttered in ordinary conversation, surpasses anything I
have ever observed in dogs, except in Scotch collies. If, in the
course of ordinary family chat, the question is interpolated, " Do
you want to go out ? " he bounds to his feet ; if in the same tone
he is told, " You can not go out/' he takes his disappointment
without further demonstration, though no other words or ges-
tures of command are added. Even while asleep, if the word
"cat" is used in the current of conversation, he remains undis-
turbed ; but utter the combination " black cat," and he rushes to
the window to take an observation. The examples thus far given
can not be referred to automatic or reflex action ; they belong to
the operation of cerebration, and involve ideation, classification,
and judgment — in other words, thinking. At least such would
be the conclusion were they the acts of a two-year-old baby.

Very early in his history Toots was taught to sit on his
haunches, receiving bits of food as a reward for the performance.
It was observed that he spontaneously raised his hands, as an
additional expression of desire. This act was encouraged and de-
veloped by taking hold of his arms and waving them vertically,
until the whole combined action became habitual, and was ren-
dered in answer to the command, " Wave your hands ! " After a
long period of practice in sitting posture with hand-waving,
under various circumstances and in most fascinating fashion, he
disclosed the power of imitation. When held upright in the arms
of another, and when already satisfied with food, I waved my
hands before him, and he at once copied the same motion, and is
always ready to do so in answer to this gesture.

Here appears to be a case of imitation, pure and simple, that
calls for a reasonable explanation. Prof. Preyer says : " In order
to imitate, one must first perceive through the senses ; secondly,
have an idea of what has been perceived ; thirdly, execute a move-
ment correspondent to the idea." * And further, it may be added,
since a volition is involved, there must be a consciousness of self,
or a formation of the concept " I." All this is granted in the case
of a child ; why not also in the case of a dog ?

Scarcely anything is lacking in the mental furniture of this
psychological dog to make him the equal of a baby two years old,
except thinking in words ; and who can prove that he is destitute

* The Senses and the Will, p. 282.

5i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of this faculty, although not possessing articulate speech ? The
other evening, while I was giving my plants a drink, he came to
me several times, asking to have the gate opened. Not caring to
lay down the hose, I paid little heed to his teasings, and he deter-
mined to compass his purpose in another way. To the front door
he went, and, pressing it, found it not latched, but requiring some
force to throw it open. Then he backed out the full width of the
veranda, and running, threw his weight so violently against the
door as to drive it open. Very soon he reappeared with his mis-
tress, to whom he had made his supplication, and she, without
knowing of his failure with me, opened the gate and gave the
little fellow his coveted freedom.

It should be explained, in regard to the wit shown in opening a
heavy or sticking door, that Toots acquired his experience with a
fly door closed by the reaction of a spring. He found by experi-
ments that if with his fore paws he pressed this door open just far
enough to emit his body, it would spring to and pinch his tail ;
and that by retreating and running the whole length of a small
entry he could impart momentum enough to open the door wide
and thus clear his tail, at the same time letting out a dependent
companion. This act, I am inclined to think, is a little smarter
than is usual in a two-year-old child.

The skill thus acquired is regularly applied by Toots in open-
ing the door of the kitchen, in which his bed is made, when he
proceeds with the first morning sunbeam to visit his friends in
the sleeping apartments of the house. The door is closed but is
not latched, to enable the dog to open it without help. Even in
this condition it is moved with difficulty, owing to its friction on
the sill — a difficulty intentionally allowed to remain for the pur-
poses of my experiments.

The first effort of Toots is to press upon the door, to find
whether it is fastened. As will be seen, he has come to apply this
test as the result of his own experience. If the door is unlatched,
he goes to the opposite side of the room and runs, throwing him-
self against the panels with the whole weight of his body. This
act he repeats five times, after each impact retreating to the oppo-
site side of the room to get a fresh start. With the sixth attack
the passage is forced, and he scampers away with his companion,
a dog with no wit at all, and is happy. More recently he has
found that he can decide whether the door is fastened or not by
quietly pressing his fore paws against it. Before he had adopted
this test, on one night I fastened the door. He pounded it with
his running catapult precisely six times ; then gave up and cried
for help, which was ready at hand. Such repetition of an adapt-
ive act requires no analysis to make its psychological value ap-
parent.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A DOG. 519

I have recorded another still more interesting act in the
comedy of the kitchen door, which act raises the question whether
animals are capable of emotions of a religious nature. Romanes
claims to have proved that some animals exercise all the human
emotions, " with the exception of those which refer to religion,
moral sense, and perception of the sublime." * On the other hand,
Mr. John Fiske makes a category for Toots. In discussing the
" primeval ghost- world," he quotes from Nature as follows : " A
Skye terrier accustomed to sit on his haunches when wanting
favors from his master would also sit up before the mantelpiece
before his rubber ball. This illustrates Auguste Comte's re-
mark that dogs, apes, and elephants may have a few fetichistic
notions." f

It is a habit of Toots, when alone and occasion requires, to per-
form his sitting and hand-waving supplications to inanimate
things as if they were capable of volition. He has been discov-
ered thus paying his addresses to a rubber doll, beseeching it to
descend from the mantelpiece for his benefit. But as to rubber
playthings, there is reason to believe that he conceives them to
possess real life on account of the resumption of their form by
elastic reaction after they are pressed. The same address, how-
ever, is made by him to a door he can not open, or to a glass of
water he can not reach or ought not to have without asking, when
no human friend is present to serve him.

So also when he failed to force open the kitchen door that was
fastened, there followed his last effort a silence that led me to
conclude it was the little fellow's moment of prayer. Accord-
ingly, at the right instant, I thrust open the door, when I found
that he had been sitting up before the unyielding object and wav-
ing his suppliant hands with a genuine earnestness that would
shame the hollow formality of many a human worshiper.

The question naturally arises, Does Toots believe in ghosts ?
And, if so, have we not found in him the evidence of an incipient
fetichism, an inspiration of rude religious emotion and a glim-
mering perception of the sublime ?

FROM observations made at two Prussian stations and Teneriffe in 1889, 1890,
and 1891, showing slight and continuous changes of position of the plane of the
horizon, Dr. von Rebeur Paschnitz has concluded that the relatively rigid surface
of the earth is subject to a movement of rising and falling like the ocean move-
ment that produces the tides. The amplitude of the observations is very slight,
but the apparatus used made it clearly perceptible. The direction of the plumb
line also points to a daily disturbance, which is attributed, in conjecture, to solar
radiation. A third kind of movement may be referred to distant earthquakes.

* Mental Evolution of Man. f Myths and Myth Makers.

520 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS.

BY Miss BLANCHE L. MACDONELL.

folklore of Canada is the more interesting that it has its
origin in various sources. The Canadian transported with
him from fruitful Normandy, from poetical and superstitious
Brittany, a wealth of popular myths, traditions, legends, and be-
liefs which are almost as firmly held in French Canada of to-day
as ever they were in the ancient days of faith. Civilization has
scarcely invaded the sanctity of earnest faith, or broken its spell.

In the legendary lore of Canada the devil plays a prominent
part. He does not appear as the strong angel, who fell through
pride, the enemy of God, but as the mediseval devil of monkish
legend, the petty persecutor of man. In the rural districts of Can-
ada, Satan is supposed to be very active. His company may be
looked for on all occasions. The accidental appearance of a little
child in the room often betrays the presence of the evil spirit, as
the poor innocent is sure to bewail itself vigorously. The Prince
of Darkness may be met at a ball, in the guise of a handsome
young man who excels all the rustic gallants in appearance. He
wears gloves to conceal his claws, and disregards the trammels of
conventionality by keeping his hat on his head to hide his horns.
He selects the prettiest girl in the room as his partner, but his
choice is usually the village coquette, whose vanity or levity has
exposed her to the evil influence. In the midst of the gayety a
piercing cry is heard. A strong odor of brimstone becomes per-
ceptible, and the attractive cavalier is wafted out of the window,
carrying with him some useful domestic utensil, as, for instance, a
stove or the frying pan. The girl may escape with a sharp scratch
of a claw, particularly if she should happen to wear a cross or a
crucifix. Canadian rustics never answer "Enirez" when a knock
is heard at the door ; they invariably respond " Ouvrez." This
is founded upon an old legend of a young woman who replied
" Entrez " to such a summons, when the devil came in and carried
her off.

When one is starting in a hurry to bring the priest to the sick,
the devil is stimulated to the most lively activity, for then it is
the question of the loss and gain of a soul. On such occasions an
endless variety of the most unforeseen accidents are sure to hap-
pen. The horses are found unharnessed, or the harness breaks
without any reason, and strange lights flash before the horses'
eyes. Prudent persons guard against such contingencies by pro-
viding themselves with two vehicles ; then, if an accident happens
to one, the other remains available.

The werewolf legend constitutes one of the most somber of

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS. 521

the traditionary beliefs existing in French Canada. The story of
a human being assuming a wolf's shape is certainly one of the
most generally diffused throughout the world, and the werewolf
story comes down to us from old Roman times. The French Ca-
nadian believes that if a person does not partake of the sacra-
ment for seven years, he will turn into a loup-garou — a shapeless
animal without head or limbs ; the loup-garou might also appro-
priate the form of a wild cat, a hare, a fox, or even a black hen,
but at night he was obliged to range through woods and desert
places. At dead of night the loup-garou steals from his bed ;
climbing the highest tree in the neighborhood, he hides in its
branches, and is instantly transformed into bestial shape. He is
endowed with supernatural speed and strength. A fierce creature,
with appetites exaggerating those of the animal he resembles, his
especial delight is in slaughtering and devouring little children.
When he returns to human semblance he may be recognized by
his excessive leanness, wild eyes, and haggard countenance. In
order to regain his estate of humanity, it is necessary that the
blood of the monster should be shed. This kindly office being per-
formed by a friend, a complete restoration results.

The wandering Jew legend in various forms was also very
popular in Canada. In many parts of the country cats of three
colors were considered lucky, therefore the fortunate possessor of
a puss mottled with black, white, and gray should preserve the
animal carefully. When a Canadian lumberman is sufficiently
fortunate to shoot a deer, he wraps himself at night in the skin,
in order to keep off witches.

The souls of the lost, or spirits in purgatory, naturally occu-
pied a prominent position in Canadian folklore. The dead fre-
quently returned to the world ; among old-fashioned persons there
were few who had not held converse with a spirit or revenant.
In punishment for sin, the dead were often detained on the scene
of their past misdeeds. One dead person could not help or relieve
another ; the wrong committed on earth could only be righted by
the intervention of a living being. The evil spirits were unable
to cross the blessed waters of the river St. Lawrence without the
help of a Christian. These haunting spirits were numerous, and
of various descriptions.

The aurora borealis, called les marionnettes, les eclairons, les
lustrions, are supposed to be lost souls. It is a common habit
among the country people to sing aloud to keep off evil spirits —
as they express it, " Lorsqu'ils ne sont pas trop assures." They
believe that the sound of an instrument, or the human voice raised
'in song, will cause the marionnettes to dance. However, dire mis-
fortune threatens the reckless being who adopts this method of
amusing himself : unless the precaution is taken of touching him

VOL. XLIV. 40

522 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in time with a palm that has been blessed, he gradually yields to
a weird fascination, his eyes dilate, his voice grows feeble, and
before morning dawns his body lies stiff and stark in death, while
his soul has flown to join in the giddy whirl of les lustrions.

Fireflies, known asfeu-follets, called by country people fi-follets,
are also considered to be lost souls, whose goblin lights lure the
unwary to destruction ; a sad prerogative possessed by fireflies in
common with other lights of the century — less brilliant, perhaps,
but whose seductions are quite as much to be dreaded. A simple
charm will curb the malicious designs of these airy, glittering
imps. If the object of their persecution can retain sufficient
presence of mind to thrust either a needle or a sharp knife into
the nearest fence, the fi-follet is obliged to stop short in his course.
One of two things must then happen : either the fi-follet will im-
pale himself upon the sharp instrument, and thus find deliver-
ance ; or else he will exhaust himself in frantic efforts to pass
through the eye of the needle, an attempt which proves quite as
difficult to the fantastic spirit as to the most substantial of mor-
tals ; this gives the traveler time to seek the shelter of a dwelling.

The Lutin is a tricky spirit, delighting in mischief. How
often may it happen that, on entering his stable in the morning,
the habitant finds his best horses exhausted! One must be stupid
indeed not to guess that this is a trick played by Lutin, who
enjoys a ride at other people's expense, and is not at all likely to
spare the animals of which he takes possession. A remedy for
this imposition exists. Lutin is most orderly in all his ways and
methods, and is forced to leave everything in its place exactly as
he found it. To prevent the horses from being taken out, it is
only necessary to scatter a quart of bran before the stable door.
The imp will be obliged to step on the bran, the grains of which
will naturally become disarranged by the pressure of his footsteps.
In scrupulous fulfillment of his obligation, he must replace them
one by one; the night passes in the fulfillment of this tedious
task, and, when once morning dawns, farewell to Lutin's hope of a
gallop.

The early French missionaries ascribed a very diabolical char-
acter to the sorcery practiced by the Indians, and many tradi-
tional beliefs held by the French Canadians can be traced directly
to the influence of these heathens. It is said that the taking of
Canada by the English was predicted by an Indian witch many
years before the event actually happened. The French believed
that several different descriptions of sorcerers existed among the
savages, and that various degrees of magic were practiced among
them. It was always agreed that savage magic could exercise no
power over a baptized Christian except when that person hap-
pened to be in a state of mortal sin. One kind of Indian wizard

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE FRENCH CANADIANS. 523

was called an adocte — that is, one who had made a secret compact
with a mahoumet. It is difficult to find the origin of this term,
which the French colonists applied to the familiar spirits of the
Indian wizards. A Canadian writer (Dr. J. C. Tache*) offers the
explanation that, considering the founder of Islamism the incar-
nation of all evil, the French applied his name, slightly altered, to
these diabolical spirits. The mahoumet was a species of goblin,
who devoted himself to the service of his votary on the condition
that the latter should obey him in all things and should offer him
frequent sacrifices. This mahoumet is described as a little man,
about two feet high, having a skin gray and shining, like that of
a lizard, and eyes that glowed like living coals. The adocte bound
himself by a solemn oath, and it was only the sacraments of bap-
tism, confession, and absolution that had power to break the com-
pact, Treachery between the contracting parties was not rare,
neither being deterred by any scrupulous delicacy from striving
to outwit the other ; but as the adocte was the slave of his tor-
mentor, he usually got the worst of the bargain. The mahoumet
counseled his adocte, and, when not restrained by the power of
magic superior to his own, aided him in his difficulties. Feuds
were frequent between these wizards ; through the powers of
their mahoumets they played each other many tricks. The con-
flicts between them might continue for a long time, but in the
end one must perish. Unless a wizard abandoned his evil prac-
tices he never died a natural death.

The Canadian sailors and fisher folk have superstitions pecul-
iar to themselves. A belief in mermaids is very general. There
are certain fishes which the fisher folk never touch ; for instance,
a certain kind of haddock, commonly called "St. Peter's fish,"
which legend declares to have been the first fish taken out of the
net by the apostle on the occasion of the miraculous draught of
fishes. The back of the fish is said to bear in black marks the
imprints of St. Peter's fingers.

The Abbe* Ferland, a well-known Canadian writer, gives an
account of flames which are said to be seen dancing upon the
waters of the Baie de Chaleurs, and which the fishermen declare
are caused by the souls of sailors who have perished on that spot,
and who send this weird appearance that the living may be re-
minded to pray for their souls, "According to the reports of
those who have examined them," he observes, " they rise from the
sea between Caraquet and Paspebiac. Sometimes no larger than
a torch, then again like a vast conflagration, they advance, retire,
rise, fall. As a boat approaches they disappear ; then, as it retires^
the light acquires fresh brilliancy."

The sailors and fisher folk are also firmly persuaded that Ad-
miral Walker, with his phantom fleet, appears occasionally in the

5 24 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Gulf of St. Lawrence. The sight of this weird spectacle invari-
ably presages disaster for mariners. A very terrible shipwreck,
which took place at Isle aux GEufs many years ago, was believed
to have been caused by this ghostly appearance. Before it appears
the sea is smooth as glass ; suddenly the waters are agitated, the
waves rise mountains high, rolling wildly one against another ;
then a vessel appears, striving against the force of the raging bil-
lows. The deck is crowded by soldiers and mariners whose ancient
uniforms date from another century. On the main deck stands
the commanding officer, who is pointing out the somber heights
of Cape Despair to the pilot, while a beautiful woman in white
draperies clings to his arm. The ship is driving straight on to
Cape Despair. Then, as the shattered vessel is ingulfed, piercing
cries are heard mingling with the growling of thunder and the
hoarse roar of the tempest ; then, abruptly as it appeared, the
vision has vanished ; the sunshine dimples on a sea like a mirror,
and the waves ripple softly to the foot of Cape Despair.

The word ignolee designates both a song and a custom im-
ported from France by our ancestors. Both flourished for many
years in Canada ; though now, even in the most remote country
districts, they have fallen completely into disuse. M. Ampere,
chairman of le Comite de la langue, de I'histoire et des arts de la
France, calls this song " a chorus which is perhaps the only actual
fragment left of the Druidical epoch." The custom is believed to
have come down from the time of the Gauls, and is said to have
originated in the habit practiced by the Druids of going out on
New Year's eve to gather the mistletoe which clung to the oaks
of their sacred forests, and the rejoicing cry uttered by the pagan
priests as the hallowed plant fell beneath their golden sickles,
" Au gui, Van neuff" (" Mistletoe for the New Year ! ").

Christianity accepted the pagan rite, and sanctified it by
charity. In Canada, a party of men, called les ignoleux, went, on
New Year's eve from house to house, collecting for the poor of
the parish, or in some localities begging wax to make tapers for
the altar. They sang a chorus, in which the term ignolee fre-
quently occurred, the term assuming slightly differing forms
according to the dialects of the various provinces of France from
which the colonists had originally come, as ignolee, guillonee, la
guillone, aguilaulen. Troops of children, shouting "La ignolee
qui vient ! " preceded the procession. A table was immediately pre-
pared for those who cared to partake of refreshments, as well as
gifts for the poor. When the ignoleux reached the house, they
beat time upon the door with long sticks as they shouted the
chorus ; but they never entered until the master and mistress, or
their representatives, pressed hospitality upon them. The invita-
tion was accepted with great state and ceremony, compliments of

THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 525

the season were exchanged, and the charitable donations were
placed in a bag, which was emptied into a sleigh that followed
the serenaders. In begging for the poor, request was always made
for a chine of pork with the tail attached, called Vechignee, or la
chigne. In high good humor, heralded by barking dogs and
shouting children, the whole party started for the next house.

Tradition constitutes the archives of a people, the treasures of
their faiths and beliefs, the landmarks of their past history. The
people's superstitions are, in truth, the people's poetry — crude,
grotesque, but surely most pathetic efforts to find shape and sub-
stance for images cast by their own innate emotions, fears, and
aspirations. These blind searchings after truths that lie beyond
the confines of the senses, and outside the domain of logic, possess
a deep significance from a human as well as from a literary point
of view. These strivings are themselves phenomena to be taken
into accoun't before we can solve the problem of life.

THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE.

BY M. HENRI COUP1N.

is always something of truth in even the most con-
fused legends. Such is the case, for example, with the wide-
spread legend of the Wandering Jew, which seems at first sight
to have been wholly invented, but which can in reality be ex-
plained by examples originating in neuropathy. A very curious
essay on this subject has been recently published by Dr. Henry
Meige, from which we cite a few of the facts.

The beginning of the story of the eternal traveler Cartophilus,
Ahasuerus (Fig. 1), or Isaac Laquedem — according to the country
in which it is told — is familiar. By the account of Matthew Paris,
Cartophilus was the bearer of Pontius Pilate's pretorium. When
Jesus Christ was passing through the gate, he struck him with
his hand, and said : " Go on, Jesus, go faster ; what are you stop-
ping for ? " Jesus, turning to him, replied, " I am going, but you
shall tarry till I come again, and shall be always wandering." Ac-
cording to another version, Ahasuerus is a large man, with flow-
ing hair, a Jew in nationality, a shoemaker by trade, " who was
present at the death of Jesus Christ, and has continued in life
ever since." Historians agree, whichever version is taken, in
representing the Wandering Jew as marching hither and thither,
visiting cities hastily, appearing now in Hamburg, now in Mos-
cow, now in Paris, etc., but always with the same aspect. . Paint-
ers are no less agreed in representing the portraits after a single
model ; whether executed at Bautzen or at Epinal, in 1600 (Fig. 2)

526

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

or in 1800, the figure is always that of a typical Jew, wearing a
large cloak, with curled beard and hair, downcast eye (Fig. 3),
sadly contracted brow, etc. ; with differences of the secondary
order, according to the locality or the imagination of the designer.
It is evident that historians and engravers have not conspired,
from one end of Europe to the other, to talk about the Wander-
ing Jew, or represent him. He has really existed, and those who
talk of him do so in good faith. How then can we make the uni-
formity of the de-
scriptions, that ever-
lasting life and end-
less wandering, agree
with the data of sci-
ence ? M. Meige as-
sumes that there have
been many wander-
ing Jews, who have
been taken for one
and the same person,
because they usually
have the same gen-
eral appearance and
the same manner.
These persons have
been neuropathic
Jews, possessed by
an irresistible incli-
nation to travel. Fur-
thermore, such inva-
lids still exist, and
have been often seen
at the Salpetriere, at-
tracted thither by the
world - wide reputa-
tion of M. Charcot. When they are observed, even superficially,
and are made to relate their history, one might really believe he
had in his actual presence the hero of the well-known complaint :

" There is nothing on the earth
More cruelly piteous
Than the unceasing misery
Of the poor Wandering Jew ! "

From M. Meige's collection of cases let us cite that of Moser

B , called Moses, aged thirty-eight years, a Polish Jew, born

at Warsaw (Fig. 4). While still a child, he was drafted by the
Russian military authorities and put into a special school, where

FIG. 1. — AHASUERTTS. Facsimile ot an old German engrav-
ing of 1648. (After Champfleury.) .

THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 527

he received a certain

kind of instruction.

Urged by his supe-
riors to renounce the

Jewish religion, he

struggled long before

deciding to deny the

faith of his fathers;

feeling that he was

in danger of yield-
ing, he ran away and

left Russia. He was

then fifteen or sixteen

years old, and had

no trade. From that

time on he wandered

from one country to

another, without any

fixed purpose. He

married in Buda-

Pesth, and lived there

for some time, and

had three children

there. The sojourn

was longer than

suited his disposition, and he was continually troubled with the

desire to travel. He
took his family to
Jerusalem, and left
them there while he
traveled over the
world. Every five
years he returned
from his pilgrimage,
visited his family for
a few days, -and then
turned toward new
countries. The mo-
tive of these perpet-
ual journeys from
place to place, he said,
" was to find a rem-
edy for a malady from
which I have suffered

FIG. 3. — TRUE PORTRAIT OF THE WANDERING JEW AS HE 0;,,,,Q T TITQO fv^anfTr

-_ ,„.-.. oiiiut) x Wets twoiiLy-

WAS SEEN PASSING THROUGH AVIGNON, ApRTL 22, 1784. . J

(Sketch taken at the Bibliotheque Nationale.) five years old, which

FIG. 2. — THE WANDERING JEW, from the oldest known en-
graving. (Munich Library.) (Reproduced by Champ-
fleury.)

528

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gives me no truce or rest, and concerning which I have con-
sulted all the specialists in the world." He traveled in this way
through Poland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, England, and other
countries.

At last the fame of the school of the Salpetriere drew Moses to
Paris during the year 1892. He made his appearance in a shabby
costume, wearing a long black frock-coat, worn and patched. His
mien was that of a Polish Jew. The thin face, with hollow fea-
tures, was buried in a full, untrimmed beard, curling at the sides ;
the thick hair fell over his ears and upon the nape of his neck
in greasy ringlets ; his high, round forehead was crossed by deep
wrinkles ; his heavy eyebrows came together over the nose with
two very marked folds, which gave the physiognomy an expres-
sion of pain and attention ; his long, hooked nose hung over
thick lips; a deep wrinkle separated it from his cheeks, and

was so mobile that one
never knew whether
he was going to laugh
or cry. He was ac-
quainted with Eng-
lish, Turkish, Rus-
sian, and Hebrew, but
generally spoke Ger-
man. When he was
admitted into M.
Charcot's office, he be-
gan a long story of
his troubles, and drew
out a detailed list of
the symptoms he felt,
and began to read it.
At times he would
describe his suffer-
ings with something
like enthusiasm ; then
he would suddenly
break out into an af-
fecting lamentation
over them. When a
course of treatment
was suggested to him,

he assumed an air of attention ; then, gradually, a smile would light
up his face, and he would shake his head with a skeptical air, say-
ing that he had tried all that with no success. Moses stayed a year in
Paris, receiving electrical treatment ; then, finding that of not much
effect, he went away in search of a cure that could not be found.

FIG. 4. — MOSER B , OR MOSES, AN ISRAELITE, NEURO-
PATHIC WANDERER.

THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 529

Gottlieb M (Fig. 5), forty-two years old, a native of a vil-
lage near Wilna, like Moses, began to travel very early, and has
been a frequent visitor to the hospitals. Never finding any remedy
for his ills, he passed
from Russia into Ger-
many, then into Aus-
tria, England, and
France.

The history of oth-
er sufferers, in all es-
sential features, is
very like these.

If we compare the
wandering neuro-
paths with one an-
other and with the
Wandering Jew of
the legend, we find a
remarkable uniform-
ity among them. In
the first place, we are
struck with the com-
mon origin of the suf-
ferers, who all seem
to have come from the
same source, which is
situated on the bor-
ders of Germany, Po-
land, and Austria.

All, while polyglots, speak German by preference. The Wander-
ing Jew has the same characteristics. " Wherever he went/' says
a legend of 1618, "he spoke the language of the country." On the
other hand, the persons who thus become wanderers, usually with-
out apparent cause, are always Jews ; they find in themselves the
impulse that urges them to travel; most frequently it is the
necessity of consulting a new doctor, of trying a new remedy.
On the road, they live on alms ; on the other hand, profiting by
the solidarity which prevails between Israelites, they find in every
city credit houses where they can enjoy a modest revenue that
makes them eternally rich, while it leaves them eternally poor ;
and thereby is explained in a remarkable manner that strophe in
the complaint which awakens wonder at first :

"I have five sous in my purse,
In that is all my means,
And everywhere and always
I have enough."

FIG. 5. — GOTTLIEB M , AN ISRAELITE, NEUROPATHIC

WANDERER.

53o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Like the Wandering Jew, again, these neuropathic wanderers
are shabbily dressed in a great cloak or a long robe reaching
nearly down to the ground. They are nearly always men thirty
or forty years old, but whom we might, from the wrinkles on
their faces, suppose to be double that age. Their beards are long
and uncombed. The beard of the Wandering Jew is, perhaps, the
most characteristic trait of his figure. The primitive painters, as
our figures show, represented it with great sincerity :

" Never was seen
A man so bearded."

The beards seen in the most ancient engravings are as exactly
as possible like those of the sufferers observed by M. Meige '•>
they are curled in all their length or are rolled in ringlets on the
sides, where they mingle with the hair, also curled.

The faces of all the neuropaths express suffering, lassitude, and
despair ; a meager countenance, salient cheek-bones, hollow cheeks,
and wrinkled foreheads appear in all the sufferers and all the por-
traits.

From the pathological point of view wandering neuropaths
suffer chiefly from nervous exhaustion — neurasthenia — of which
they present all the physical and psychical marks. Hysteria may
sometimes be added. The Wandering Jew seems likewise never
to have had a firm nervous equilibrium, for every time he had
occasion to speak to any one he complained of being persecuted.

Thus, after all that we have just said, the Wandering Jew still
exists, and under the same form he assumed in past centuries.
His figure, his costume, his manners have preserved the same char-
acteristics through the ages. The Wandering Jew of the legend
and the Wandering Jew of the clinics are one and the same type :
a wandering neuropath, a perpetual pilgrim, appearing to-day,
vanishing to-morrow, and followed soon by another who resem-
bles him in all points ; a third will come like his predecessors, and
then a fourth, and so on. Cartophilus, Ahasuerus, Isaac Laque-

dem, Moser B , etc., are children of nervous pathology. Their

resemblances result from attacks of the same malady, and have
an identical origin. — Translated for The Popular Science Monthly
from La Nature.

A CUEIOUS phenomenon is sometimes observed near Wetter Lake in Sweden,
in the standing still of the Motala River. The flow of water ceases and the bed
of the river is dried up, while the water is held back in the lake. It was for-
merly regarded as a miracle and portent. It is attributed by Block to a sudden
sharp frost, which freezes the river to the bottom at a shallow place without
allowing time for the formation of mere surface ice. An eas?t wind and the
growth of reeds near the outflow of the lake may also contribute to the stoppage.

SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 531
THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM.

BY PROF, J. H. GORE.

IT was thought that a maximum paradox was reached when
the quotation ex pede Herculem (from the foot, Hercules)
forced its way into use. Hercules, in laying out the stadium, the
length of the running course in the Olympian games, used his
foot as the unit, and made the stadium six thousand feet long.
From this distance, which was preserved, Pythagoras obtained
the length of the foot of Hercules, and from an arbitrary ratio
between the parts of the body deduced his height, thus restoring
from the foot, Hercules.

But we can now propound a greater paradox, and say from a
pendulum, the earth. Not the world that one can put in a sling,
but the earth's shape. This striving after the shape of the earth
has occupied men's attention for centuries ; to know this shape
they have braved the cold within the Arctic Circle, endured the
heat of the equatorial regions, and penetrated India's malarial
jungles. Peaks have been climbed, deserts traversed, and hostile
tribes subjugated. To the theoretical side of this problem scores
of the world's most profound mathematicians have devoted their
time, while the practical side has been pushed ahead by the ener-
gies of countless troops of observers, artisans, and laborers, sup-
ported by the expenditure of millions upon millions of dollars.

While this great work is going on, looking toward a solution
of this problem, with staffs of specialists in sixteen nations, em-
ploying instruments most complicated and refined, making, as it
appears, an onslaught on the earth itself to compel it to yield to
direct measurement, it now seems that from a modified form of
the device which regulates our clocks — the pendulum — we may
expect the most accurate knowledge regarding the earth's shape.

When Galileo deduced from observation that a pendulum is
isochronal — that is, would make all its oscillations in the same
interval of time whether the arc be long or short — he did not
dream that the swinging lamp in the dome of Pisa's great cathe-
dral in the year 1583 would be the prototype of the accurate geo-
detic instrument of three centuries later.

If the ball of a pendulum be drawn away from the vertical
and released, its first impulse is to descend perpendicularly ; but
being held in restraint by the string, or connecting rod, it does the
next best thing, and, keeping as near to this perpendicular direc-
tion as possible, it swings down a circular arc whose center is the
point of support. Wnen the lowest point of this arc is reached,
an amount of energy has been stored up and the ball ascends
the other side of the arc until this supply of energy is exhausted ;

532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

then stopping for an instant the ball again descends, to ascend on
the other side, thus adding oscillation to oscillation. Were it not
for the resistance of the atmosphere and certain mechanical im-
perfections these arcs would be the same, but, what is more im-
portant, the times of oscillating are the same.

The rapidity with which the pendulum descends depends upon
its length and the amount of this impulse to drop vertically.
This impulse is known as gravity. Therefore, with a pendulum
of constant length the time of oscillation will be dependent upon
gravity, and thus time and gravity are determinable one in terms
of the other.

Newton had shown that gravity on the earth's surface de-
pended upon distance from the center of the earth, and also the
diminishing effect of the revolution of the earth on gravity. To
this theory other mathematicians made valuable contributions,
notably Clairaut, who demonstrated that the relative lengths of
the equatorial and polar radii could be ascertained directly from
the force of gravity at the equator and at one of the poles. Then,
since the gravity is obtained directly from the time in which a
pendulum makes an oscillation and its length, it was necessary to
simply swing a pendulum at the equator and at one of the poles
to have at once the coveted ellipticity — that is, the ratio of the
difference between the equatorial and polar radii to the equatorial
radius.

Unfortunately, it has not been possible to swing a pendulum
at one of the poles. This inability, however, is made of no mo-
ment by a law which gives the value of the polar gravity when-
ever the gravity of a given place is known, together with the lati-
tude of the place.

From this it appears that the earth's figure becomes known
through a determination of the length of a pendulum and the
time required for it to make an oscillation at the equator (or near
it) and at the pole (or as near to it as possible). If the same pen-
dulum is used and the constancy of its length assured, it becomes
necessary to make sure of the length of time required for an oscil-
lation at these two places. Inasmuch as the pendulum appears to
stop for an instant when it reaches the highest point in its arc,
it is a difficult matter to determine with exactness the time of an
oscillation; but if one counts the number of oscillations in an
hour, in two hours, or in any number of hours, a simple division
will give the time of one oscillation.

The figure of the earth desired is an ideal figure, such a figure
as it would have if one could remove all the land now standing
higher than the surface of the sea — were a sea to occupy the place
of the land. Hence it is the sea-level earth whose figure we want.
Newton's law of gravity would require that a pendulum, if raised

SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 533

above the level of the sea, would make its oscillation in a longer
time than when swinging at sea level. Therefore it is necessary
to know the elevation of the station in order to ascertain the force
of gravity in that latitude on the ideal earth.

If the parallels were perfect circles and if observations were
absolutely correct, it would be necessary to swing a pendulum at
only two points on the earth's surface in order to determine its
shape. However, the results obtained by combining observations
two and two are not harmonious ; not only because the observa-
tions may be affected by errors, but the attraction of dense mat-
ter immediately beneath a station might seriously impair the
observations made there ; and as we never know the exact consti-
tution of the earth's crust at any point, it becomes necessary to
eliminate, as far as possible, this uncontrollable error by making
observations at many places.

The ideal pendulum would consist of a ball of symmetrical form
suspended by a wire stiff and uniform. Like all ideal conditions,
these are never attained, but a close approximation is sought. In
seeking rigidity the pendulum rod must be so large in cross sec-
tion as to make the instrument cumbrous. This was a serious
feature when, in order to avoid slips in counting, it was not
thought feasible to use a pendulum that made an oscillation in
less than a second of time — that is, a pendulum about thirty-nine
inches long. Again, as the pendulum was provided with sharp
knife-edges on opposite sides near its upper end, shaped like a
V, on which it swung, the greater the weight of the pendulum the
more wear there would be on these knife-edges. This becomes a
serious matter, as the length of the pendulum is estimated from
the line of support furnished by these same knife-edges. Then,
too, the swinging of a large and heavy pendulum was liable to
induce a swinging motion in its support, unless the latter were
exceedingly rigid, thereby vitiating the results.

Several years ago it was realized that the resistance of the
atmosphere would vary with different conditions of moisture and
density, and hence retard the pendulum more at some times than
at others, more at some elevations than at others. Therefore it
seemed necessary, in the absence of any well-accepted correction
for these hurtful resistances, to swing the pendulum always under
the same atmospheric pressure and surrounded by similar condi-
tions as to moisture. This could be done only by inclosing the
entire pendulum in a chamber in which the air could be main-
tained at the same density and dryness. One can readily see how
difficult this would be with an apparatus more than four feet in
length and weighing many pounds.

Although the shortcomings of the ordinary pendulum forced
themselves into recognition one by one, still the readiness with

534 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which observations could be made, in comparison with direct
measures of the earth, has caused it to be regarded as a most im-
portant geodetic instrument.

As early as 1735 observations were made at St. Domingo, Pana-
ma, and Quito, using a plummet suspended by a thread of the
aloe ; about the same time the party sent to measure an arc
of the earth within the polar circle swung a pendulum within
twenty-four degrees of the pole. Lacaille carried a pendulum to
the Cape of Good Hope and the Isle of France, Legentil took one
on his voyage to the Indian Ocean, Phipps on his voyage toward
the north pole, and Malaspina while visiting the Spanish posses-
sion in the Western hemisphere. Biot, Arago, and Borda were
perfecting the pendulum and measuring gravity at different places
in France; the labors of Ross, Kater, Foster, and Sabine were
giving to England the supremacy in matters pertaining to gravity
determinations ; while Bessel, in Germany, was busy investigat-
ing corrections for the weight of air by swinging a pendulum in
a vacuum, then in gases of known elasticity.

The French, not willing to follow in the lead of others, sent
out expeditions under Freycinet and Duperrey, who brought back
pendulum data that still find their places in the discussion of
the earth's figure. These were followed up by Sawitsch in Rus-
sia, Plantamour in Switzerland, Basevi in India, and Peirce in
the United States.

During all this time attention was given chiefly toward per-
fecting the mechanism of the pendulum without changing mate-
rially its form. It became heavier rather than lighter ; the sup-
ports were correspondingly more cumbersome; the knife-edges
subjected, because of increased weight, to greater danger of dull-
ing, while theory was continually devising corrections because of
atmospheric pressure and viscosity. The defects in structure took
on an exaggerated magnitude, and the chance to discover absolute
corrections appeared hopeless when the rapid advance in physical
science set a limit of error to direct observation, and it looked
almost as if the pendulum would be a doomed instrument of in-
vestigation.

Just in this emergency Superintendent Mendenhall, of the
United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, called to his aid his ex-
perienced assistants to so modify the form of the pendulum as to
bring it into its proper sphere of usefulness. Skilled as a physicist,
it was not possible for him to waste time stumbling through the
mistakes detected by the experience of others. He started anew
where they had stopped.

The first point reached was the important one. By an applica-
tion of the principle of coincidences first employed by Foucault in
1850 in determining the velocity of light, it became possible to as-

SHAPE OF THE EARTH FROM A PENDULUM. 535

certain the number of oscillations made by a pendulum within an
interval of several minutes without counting them. This at once
suggested that the danger of making a slip in counting the oscil-
lations, should they be as frequent as two in a second, might be
avoided, and thus a short or half-second's pendulum be employed.
This shortening resulted, of course, in a lightening, and each
ounce of diminution added to the safety of the knife-edge, thereby
contributing to the permanency of the pendulum. Nor was this
all : the parts now became of such wieldy size that the whole could
be incased in a chamber sufficiently air-tight to maintain a con-
stant atmospheric pressure either by exhausting a portion of the
air near sea level or forcing air in when stations at great altitudes
are occupied.

With a pendulum so compact one can visit places heretofore
inaccessible with the larger forms, and require distant islands and
inhospitable climes to give a voice in determining the earth's
shape. Large land areas are needed for the measurement of arcs,
and hence less than one fourth of the earth only is available to de-
termine geodetically its shape. But now each party sent out on
a voyage of discovery or to observe astronomic phenomena can
take one of these compact pendulums along and make stations
within the bounds of the three fourths so that they may not be
encompassed by a figure dictated by the minority.

Now that differential methods are used almost universally — that
is, comparing the times of oscillation of the same pendulum at dif-
ferent places — it is essential that the length may continue to be
what it was when swinging at the base station, or station where
absolute gravity had been determined. Supposing that due cor-
rection has been made for such changes in length as would be
occasioned by differences of temperature, the only possibility for
variation in length could come from disarrangement or wear of
the knife-edge. Any chipping of this knife-edge — made of agate
— could not be rectified, and dullness could not be removed with-
out making in so doing a new pendulum, thereby destroying its
differential value. In swinging, this agate V rests on a steel plane,
and as this plane, forming no part of the pendulum proper, is less
liable to injury or derangement, the idea occurred to the survey
officers to let these parts change places. So now we have a pendu-
lum with a slit in the upper end of its rod, having for its upper
surface a plane of hard steel. This plane rests on the agate knife-
edge which projects into the slit. If now the agate becomes dull
or injured it can be repaired or a new one substituted, and the
pendulum remain the same.

As already stated, the usual procedure has been, when observ-
ing with a pendulum, to note the number of oscillations made in
a given interval of time ; then, by dividing this interval by the

536 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

number, the time of one oscillation is obtained. Of course, the
clock or chronometer which furnished this time might be running
too fast or too slow. However, it has been customary to determine
the rate of the timepiece by making an astronomic observation be-
fore swinging the pendulum and then again after. This would
give the amount of time gained or lost in the interim, but does not
prove that this amount, or even more, was not the change within
the interval of swinging, or that the keeping of time was not per-
fect while the pendulum was swung, and the error occurred either
before or after.

From this uncertainty arose the need to eliminate time error,
and it has been most ingeniously met in the survey pendulum.
Here two pendulums are employed — one at one station and one at
another, connected by a telegraph wire. Each is made to record
its own coincidence with a beat of one and the same chronometer,
so that if the chronometer has a constant rate for a minute or two
it is sufficient. The chronometer at the other station is then used
to eliminate such errors as might arise in the transmission of sig-
nals. In this way the relative time of the oscillations of two pen-
dulums is known with absolute accuracy, and from these relative
times relative gravity is obtained, and from relative gravity we
have relative distances to the earth's center, or the shape of the
earth.

In this enlightened age it is not necessary to enumerate rea-
sons why we should know the shape of the earth. It enters as a
potent factor in astronomic computations ; it is indispensable in
map-making, and no boundary line can be drawn without its aid.
Besides carrying on the special cartographic functions prescribed
for it by law, the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey has
lost no opportunity to improve our knowledge of this important
factor, and under no regime has the survey so completely filled this
dual purpose as under the superintendency of Prof. Mendenhall.

We do not measure the earth with a span, but with a pendu-
lum one span in length we find its shape.

THREE hundred tombs, apparently dating from the period of the Huns, were
discovered last year in the commune of Cika, in Hungary. They contained bodies
of knights in armor, with the skeletons of their horses by their sides. The faces
of all were turned toward the east. The bodies were reinterred, and the articles
found in the graves were sent to the museum at Buda-Pesth.

THE publication of an Index to the Names and Authorities of all Known
Flowering Plants and their Countries, which was contemplated by Mr. Darwin,
has been undertaken at the Clarendon Press, under the direction and supervision
of Sir J. D. Hooker. Part I of the work is now ready, and Part II is well
advanced.

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 537

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY.

BY PROF. JOSEPH PKESTWICH, F. K. S.

position of geology in this country at the present time,
more especially as relates to the later geological periods, is
anomalous and possibly without precedent. On one side its ad-
vance is barred by the doctrine of uniformity, and on the other
side by the teaching of physicists. The former requires that
everything should be regulated by a martinet measure of time
and change. It asserts that the vast changes on the earth's sur-
face, effected during long geological periods, are to be measured
by the rate at ivhich similar but minor changes are effected in the
present day, and that the agencies now modifying the surface have
been alike, in every respect, in all past time. It is true that no
restriction is placed on the extent of the changes, but such pro-
longed time is insisted on for their accomplishment as to destroy
the value of the concession. Not that time is in itself a difficulty,
but a time rate, assumed on very insufficient grounds, is used as
a master key, whether or not it fits, to unravel all difficulties.
What if it were suggested that the brick-built Pyramid of Hawara
had been laid brick by brick by a single workman ? Given time,
this would not be beyond the bounds of possibility. But Nature,
like the Pharaohs, had greater forces at her command to do the
work better and more expeditiously than is admitted by unif ormi-
tarians.

On the other side, physicists would lead us to suppose that
those great movements of the earth's crust, with which we are all
familiar in the form of high mountain and continental upheavals
in the earlier stages of the earth's history, were impossible in
those times which more immediately approached our own. They
maintain that if the earth is not solid throughout, its outer crust
at least must have now attained a thickness estimated to vary
from eight hundred to twenty-five hundred miles, and is so rigid
that we are forced to believe that for a long preceding period it
must have been in a state of comparatively stable equilibrium.
This, however, would have rendered the great earth movements,
considered by geologists to have continued up to the threshold of
our own times, impossible. And to this finding the physicists
would have geological speculations conform. At the same time,
judging, among other reasons, from the rate of cooling of hot
solid bodies, they would assign a much shorter term to the earth's
history since it became habitable than is compatible with the views
of the uniformitarian school of geologists. The one side counts
in round numbers upon some three hundred million years; the
other sees no reason to go beyond fifteen to twenty million years

TOL. XLIT. — 41

538 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

— a term, in our humble opinion, much more probable than the
other.

On another point our two allies (allies in the sense of work-
ing at the same subject) are in irreconcilable antagonism. The
physicists tell us that uniformity of action in all time is impos-
sible, while the uniformitarians say that such a shortening of
geological time as would follow on the acceptance of the physical
argument is against all geological experience. Not only do these
opinions clash, but those also concerning the rigidity of the earth
and the thickness of its crust are widely divergent. None of these
contentions can, however, be disregarded, for we must all rec-
ognize the importance of considering the question from every
point of view. The argument in favor of uniformity of action
has been put before us with so much skill and ability, and possess-
ing as it does the charm of an infallible faith, that uniformitari-
anism has become the accepted doctrine of the dominant school of
geology. Besides, within certain limits and in certain lights, the
arguments of the uniformitarian and of the physicist might hold
good — that is to say, if we would restrict the deductions of the
former to the recent period, and could adopt the propositions of
the latter. Our part, however, is to see whether their conclusions
agree — not with their respective assumptions, but with the geo-
logical evidence : for no conclusions can be accepted that do not
meet with the full concurrence of all the copartners interested
in the result, and without respect for their mutual claims progress
is not possible. The geologist must attend to the claims of the
physicist, and the physicist ought not to overlook those of the
geologist. How then stands the case ?

With regard to the geological problem, we are told by the uni-
formitarians that the forces acting on the surface of the globe
have been in all past times the same, both in kind and degree, as
those now in operation. On those grounds they have proceeded to
estimate, first, the time required for mountain and continental
elevation ; secondly, the rate of erosion of the valleys, and of the
denudation or lowering of the land. Their conjecture is that our
limited experience of two thousand to three thousand years has
sufficed to furnish us with instances of all the various vicissitudes
and changes that the earth has undergone during the illimitable
past — a generalization incompatible with what is known of the
evolution of the earth, and in contradiction to their own premises.
For even geologists who recognize no change admit the original
molten state of the globe. This of itself involves, in the cooling
of the mass, the intervention of stresses and strains, with all their
consequences, which render it inconceivable that there was noth-
ing in all those stages of the earth's history beyond what our
limited experience has brought us in contact with.

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 539

But although the assumption of the uniformitarians on the
question of degree may be disputed, that on the question of kind
admits of no dispute. That rivers excavate and currents dis-
tribute the excavated materials, and that the land is mobile and
subject to changes of level, no one will contest. The point of
contention is the rate at which these operations and changes
proceeded formerly as compared with the rate at the present day.
The many observations made on the erosive and transporting
power of rivers, and on the movements and waste of the land, are
admirable in so far as they apply to the silting up of ports, the
recession of the coast, and the reclamation of marsh lands ; but,
though valuable to the engineer, they are misleading to the
geologist. They furnish him, it is true, with standards appli-
cable to present changes, and indicate the method in which the
erosive power of the rivers and seas has acted in all time, but
they give no measure of the amount and rate of work they did at
different periods. Nevertheless, knowing what at present is ac-
complished by their means, it is reasonable to judge, by ascer-
taining what their agency accomplished in former days, of the
difference in the forces in operation at the several periods. Those
forces have to be estimated by the work done in the past, and not
by any fixed rate founded upon present work.

Few geologists would, we presume, contest this position ; not-
standing which, and though many now profess a modified uni-
f ormitarianism, the old lines of argument still, with few excep-
tions, prevail, and the concessions made are more apparent than
real, or are of little value. In our opinion, no partial concession
can be entertained on the question of degree. It must be an
unconditional surrender ; for, in contradistinction to method, or
manner, where we are on common ground, no common scale on
the question of degree is possible in judging of the past by com-
parison with the present.

As an example of the present position, we may take one
argument as presented by the advocates of the uniformitarian
school. The observations on the transporting power of the large
rivers of the world have shown that the quantity of sediment
carried down by them to the sea is, according to one of their esti-
mates, such as would suffice to lower the level of the land about one
foot in six thousand years, or about a thousand feet in six million
years. Exception might be taken to this estimate in that no ac-
count is taken of the calcareous matter removed in solution, which,
in fact, is not far from the quantity of insoluble matter carried
down mechanically. Let that pass. This measure, or one ap-
proximate to it, has been very generally accepted, and is in
common use. Hence those geologists, proceeding solely on the
assumed postulate, and not attaching due weight to other con-

540 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

siderations, have, it seems to us, placed the later Quaternary
times at far too great a distance from the present. In the same
way, the rate at which the elevation of the land took place hav-
ing been estimated on the mean of two and a half feet in a
century, would, if that scale were accepted, manifestly push back
to a very remote distance even later geological changes.

The importance of determining these points more accurately
became more evident when it was discovered that man existed
with the extinct mammalia ; and therefore upon the solution of
the time-rate problem depended the determination of the an-
tiquity of man upon the earth. Various have been the attempts
since made ; but, as they have almost all been made upon meas-
urements based on the above-named scales, they necessarily
involved a very free use of time. For long, geologists had held
to the belief, prevailing half a century ago, that man could not
have existed on the earth for more than five to six thousand years.
When evidence was given, and at last accepted, to prove a higher
antiquity, the uniformitarians were placed in the difficulty of
proving too little or too much. If they adopted a short chro-
nology, it would clash with the corner stone of their belief as to
the age of the Quaternary deposits ; if, on the other hand, they
retained their belief in the great length of time they held to be
necessary for the formation of the post or later glacial deposits,
they would have to assign to man an antiquity which would
clash sorely not only with their own previous belief, but also
with that held on various grounds by other geologists and an-
thropologists.

The fetich of uniformity prevailed, the uniformitarians made
volte-face to their former contention, and hesitated not to claim
for man an antiquity going on for a million years. One old
friend of ours, in a public lecture, even put in a claim for two
millions, heedless of the cries of his unprepared audience to re-
mind him of the rights of Adam. At a loss to prove their case
by independent geological evidence, they found an unexpected
ally in a novel and ingenious astronomical hypothesis, which
apart from its connection with geology we will not contest. The
object of the hypothesis was to show that there had been cycles,
in which at times the position of the earth in its orbit was such
as would cause a great lowering of the terrestrial temperature
and give rise to recurring glacial periods. Here were offered
the definite measures that geology failed to furnish, and which
tallied too well with the time needed by the uniformitarians to
be neglected. It was therefore eagerly adopted, and has since
been prominent in geological literature. That the hypothesis,
however, is not in accordance with the facts of geology has been
abundantly shown both in America and in this country ; never-

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 541

theless the "belief prevails. The result is that, as the last of these
astronomical periods was calculated to have commenced two hun-
dred and fifty thousand years and to have ended eighty thousand
years ago, these numbers have become stereotyped as those of
the beginning and the end of the Glacial period.

The able author of this hypothesis, in his attempt to reconcile
geological and astronomical time, built his geological argument
upon the rate of erosion of rivers at the present time, as held
by the unif ormitarian. Nevertheless, an observation of his own,
that must be indorsed by all geologists, whatsoever their creed,
shows the fallacy of adopting the rates of the present day as
measures for the past, for he remarks : " If the rate of denudation
be at present so great, what must it have been during the Glacial
period ? It must have been something enormous." Very true, yet
the argument proceeds as before. With the admission here made,
how is it possible to adopt a scale admitted by its advocate to be
subject to such variation ? Its retention only serves to divert the
real issue and stay inquiry.

Another objection to this chronology is that it fixes the date of
the disappearance of palaeolithic man and the Quaternary fauna
at a distance of eighty thousand years from our own times. Of
these eighty thousand years, we can account for ten or twelve
thousand during which neolithic and recent man has been in
occupation of the land ; but this leaves some seventy thousand
years unaccounted for. Unable satisfactorily to show on geologi-
cal grounds the need of so great an interval between the end of
the Quaternary period and the present time, the uniformitari-
ans find a more colorable defense on biological grounds. They
point, in a manner we do not quite understand, to the circumstance
that with the close of the Post-glacial period a number of the
animals then living disappear from the scene, and contend that
for the dying-out of so many species long ages must have been
required. Had they been able to show the working of evolution
in the coming in of new species by -descent from the extinct
species, or of change in the contemporary species still living,
their argument could not be gainsaid. But there is no question
of evolution. The mammoth and woolly rhinoceros disappeared
for good; the reindeer, musk ox, and glutton were driven to
northern latitudes, and there still survive unchanged ; while the
horse, ox, red deer, wolf, fox, badger, hare, and others remain on
with us without variation of species. The extraordinary change
of climate which then took place is quite sufficient to account
for such changes as these, which are chiefly of those of faunal
distribution, having been effected in a measurable length of time,
instead of needing the vastly long period mentioned. This length
of time could hardly have failed to involve more extensive changes

542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the species, even without the aid of the physical changes
which then took place, than are apparent in the species now exist-
ing. There is, in fact, no sufficient evidence either geological or
biological to show the need of the long interval assumed. On the
contrary, there is every reason to believe that it did not exist, but
that palaeolithic man and his companions came down to within
some ten to twelve thousand years of our times. We can not
suppose that either man or geological work would have remained
stationary during seventy thousand years, and yet that is the
conclusion we should be driven to adopt. Are we to be debarred
from pursuing these inquiries by a hypothesis having no better
foundation, and involving such unquestionable difficulties ?

Another barrier to inquiry is the postulate which would fix
the rate of upheaval of the land during geological periods upon
observations based — not upon the experience of even two or three
thousand years — but upon observations which do not extend be-
yond two centuries. These observations have shown, as put by
uniformitarians, that the mean rate of elevation of the coasts of
Norway and Sweden has been during that time two and a half
feet in a century, and this scale has been accepted and employed
unhesitatingly as a safe and sure basis for calculation of geologi-
cal time. The determination of a secular rise of the land is of
itself an interesting fact, as settling the question of a retained
mobility in the earth's crust ; but it is quite insufficient, even if
it were applicable, to establish a definite rate, not only for the past
but even for the present. It is not a mean rate that is wanted.
No upheaval can be otherwise than local and graduated. The ex-
tremes are what is needful. No engineer would take the mean
delivery of a river as the measure to be depended upon for a
water supply. It is the limit in both directions, or the minimum
and maximum quantities, that are essential. To know what earth
movements can still effect, we should at least take the maximum
rate, which amounts in the above case, at the North Cape, to five
feet in the century, or double the measure of the mean adopted
by uniformitarians.

If also, in calculating the present rate of elevation of the land,
the mean rate along the whole length of the axis is adopted, the
same rule should at least be applied to elevations of past periods,
and the time should not be estimated by the height of any one
point, as that may prove to be more or less in excess of the mean.
Thus, for example, the Westleton marine shingle is found in
Buckinghamshire at a height of six hundred feet. Estimating this
upheaval at the rate of two and a half feet in a century, the
uniformitarian would put in a claim for twenty-four thousand
years. But this bed, as it trends eastward, is met with at grad-
ually lower levels, until in Suffolk it falls to the sea level. A

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 543

mean of three hundred feet should therefore "be taken, with a cor-
responding shorter time-term of twelve thousand years; or are
we to ignore any interval of time and to look only at the beds on
the coast where they are consecutive ? From every point of view
such estimates must be worthless.

More than this, the very leaders of the belief that the average
rate of motion does not exceed that above named allow that " the
average rate proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one"
It is admitted also that it is not improbable that during the last
four hundred years there has been a still faster rate in high
northern latitudes. Not only, however, is the half measure
adopted, but the warning that higher measures exist is neglected.
When therefore the mean is applied to determine the length of
time required to effect such elevations as that of the marine shell
bed on Moel Tryfaen, fourteen hundred feet above sea level and
of late Quaternary age, uniformitarians are obliged to ask for a
term of fifty-six thousand if not eighty thousand years. Should
the case of Moel Tryfaen be objected to as uncertain, there are
still the unquestioned raised beaches of Norway and Sweden,
which are from two hundred to six hundred feet above the sea
level, and of still more recent date. These, on the same esti-
mate, would have taken for their upheaval some eight thousand
to twenty-four thousand years. We need not, however, pursue
this subject further. The very admissions of the advocates of the
two above-named measures of time, based upon present rates of
denudation and of elevation, show how untenable their conclu-
sions are.

Such observations, howsoever useful and suggestive, are in
fact futile so far as regards their application to former rates of
upheaval, and needlessly play with time. If we could suppose
that the causes which produced those movements had always
acted with the same degree of energy, the reasoning would hold
good ; but, as that regularity depends upon the stresses to which
the earth's crust has been exposed at any particular time, the
effects must have varied in proportion as the stresses varied.
With a cooling globe it could not have been otherwise. What
those movements of the past were, and what their duration,
must therefore be judged of by other circumstances and on
surer data.

We trust we have now said enough to show upon how insecure
a basis the uniformitarian measures of time and change stand.
They have probably done more to impede the exercise of free
inquiry and discussion than any of the catastrophic theories
which formerly prevailed. The latter found their own cure in
tho more accurate observation of geological phenomena and the
progress of the collateral sciences ; but the former hedge us in by

544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dogmas which forbid any interpretation of the phenomena other
than that of fixed rules which are more worthy of the sixteenth
than of the nineteenth century. Instead of weighing the evi-
dence and following up the consequences that should ensue from
the assumption, too many attempts have been made — not unnatu-
rally by those who hold this faith — to adjust the evidence to the
assumption. The result has been strained interpretations framed
to meet one point, but without sufficient regard for the others.
We repeat that we would not for a moment contend that the
forces of erosion, the modes of sedimentation, and the methods of
motion, are not the same in kind as they have ever been, but we
can never admit that they have always been the same in degree.
The physical laws are permanent ; but the effects are conditional
and changing, in accordance with the conditions under which the
law is exhibited.

Such are the barriers which seem to us seriously to retard the
advance in one direction of an important branch of theoretical
geology, while in another it is fronted by the stern rules of an ap-
parently definite calculation.

We must ask to be forgiven if we can not accept the conclu-
sions of physicists respecting the extreme rigidity of the earth
and the immobility of the crust as conclusive. That the rigidity
is now very great — as great, we will admit for argument's sake,
as if the globe were of glass or steel — may be as asserted, but that
conclusion can only be accepted in so far as it conforms to the
facts of geology. Were the data on which the conclusion is based
fixed and positive, like those on which the laws of gravitation and
light are established, there would be nothing for the geologist to
do but to bow to the decision of the physicist, and, if possible, re-
vise his work. But in this case the tidal observations, on which
the calculations of rigidity are mainly based, are of such extreme
delicacy that, failing as the hypothesis does to satisfy the require-
ments of geology, the geologist may be excused for his dissent,
pending further inquiry. Should this tend to confirm the extreme
rigidity of the globe, we must seek for some explanation of earth
movements consistent with that rigidity. It is indisputable that
up to the latest geological period — that touching on our own
times — the mobility of the crust was very considerable, for the
raised beaches of Europe and of the Mediterranean prove conclu-
sively that in that period extensive tracts were raised at intervals
to heights of from ten to six hundred feet or more above their
former levels. It is difficult to conceive that a globe, of which
the crust was then so mobile, could have acquired, in the com-
paratively short interval between the latest of the beaches and
our own time, so great a rigidity as to be practically immobile.

For similar reasons the conjoint conclusion that the crust of

THE POSITION OF GEOLOGY. 545

the earth is not less than from a thousand to twenty-five hundred
miles thick is open to question. We can not imagine that a crust
of that enormous thickness could, in such recent geological times,
have possessed so great a flexibility as is indicated by the move-
ments we have referred to. Independently of that improbability,
there are certain geological facts which are inexplicable on that
assumption. Volcanic phenomena would be unintelligible ; for
vents traversing that thickness of solid rock could hardly be kept
open owing to the cooling which the lava in its ascent would
undergo. The rock fragments ejected during explosions are also
those of rocks which lie at no great depth, while, with the in-
crease of temperature in descending beneath the surface, there is
every reason to suppose that at a depth to be measured by tens,
and not by hundreds of miles, the immediate underlying magma
at least is in a state of plasticity such as would allow of compara-
tively free movements of the crust. Again, surely, if the crust
were so thick, we might expect to find, when that crust was broken
and its edges thrust up by compression or protrusion of the igneous
rocks, that some indications of that enormous thickness should be
exhibited ; but none such are forthcoming. Whatever may be the
state of the nucleus, there is nothing geologically to indicate,
as some physicists also have contended on other grounds, that
the outer crust of the earth is more than from about twenty to
thirty miles thick. The effective rigidity will therefore, if it
be necessary, have to be explained in some other manner than
that of a comparatively solid globe or of a crust of enormous
thickness.

We are thus brought face to face with apparently irrecon-
cilable opinions. That they admit of adjustment there can be no
doubt, but it must be by mutual understanding. How it is to be
effected is a problem for the future.

These, briefly, are the barriers which restrict inquiry on many
important questions. On the side of the uniformitarians, it is
assumed that every position must be reduced to a fixed measure —
where fixity is not possible — of time and speed ; and, on that of
the physicists, geologists are gently reminded that the subject is
outside their immediate sphere of inquiry, in a way somewhat
suggestive of " the closure."

It would be an unfortunate day for any science to have free
discussion and inquiry barred by assumed postulates, and not by
the ordinary rules of evidence as established by the facts, how-
ever divergent the conclusions to which those facts lead may be
from the prevailing belief. In any case it must be remembered
that no hypothesis can be true which does not satisfy the con-
ditions both of the geological phenomena and of the physical
laws.

VOL. XLIV. 42

546 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The foregoing remarks are intended to apply mainly to ques-
tions connected with the more recent geological periods. The
older epochs have happily been treated as beyond the barriers,
and consequently have enjoyed and made good use of their greater
freedom. It is to be hoped that, when the phenomena of these
later periods are judged of by the evidence of facts rather than by
rules, they will receive more independent interpretations — inter-
pretations that may escape the dwarfing influence of uniformi-
tarianism. — Nineteenth Century.

SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN.

BY PKOF. MELVILLE B. ANDERSON.

DAVID STARR JORDAN was born in 1851, at Gainesville,
New York. His father was a farmer who devoted far more
attention to the elder poets than to the Rural New-Yorker. His
mother is characterized by strength of will, depth of feeling, and
pithiness of speech. Goethe tells us that he owed to his father his
stature and his- seriousness, and to his mother his happy disposi-
tion and his delight in story-telling. In Jordan's case this order
was reversed. From the mother he seems to have inherited his
executive power, and from the father his literary instinct. He
grew up a very unusual farm product — a shy, observant lad,
much given to- lonely excursions with a copy of Gray's Botany
in one pocket and Longfellow's poems in the other. He early
exhibited his instinct for classification by attempting a catalogue
raisonne of the Assyrian kings, but as his teacher could supply
him with data for but two categories, viz., the good and the ~bad,
his labors were not very fruitful. Owing to his distaste for the
severe manual labor generally expected of boys on a farm, young
Jordan was considered lazy by the neighbors, and doubtless some
of them blamed his parents for allowing him to loiter and dream
his time away.

Not that he was idle. He attended first the village school, and
afterward, no secondary school for boys being accessible, was
admitted to the academy for young ladies in the neighboring
town of Warsaw. He learned French and Latin ; he made a cata-
logue of the plants of his native county ; he read a good deal of
history, and grew intimate with the best American and English
poets. But he was the victim of no rigorous system of academic
routine. He came to his studies, as a boy comes to a well-spread
table, with a healthy appetite. A stranger to " cram," his mind
assimilated its own, rejected what was not food, and was never

SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 547

converted from a natural organ into a machine for gerund grind-
ing.

At a time when most of our teaching is little better than or-
ganized interference, the attitude of Jordan's parents is instruc-
tive. It is told of Darwin that, when one of his friends expressed
surprise at the way he allowed his boys to run at loose ends, his
reply was : " I dare not interfere ; Nature can manage them better
than I can." This recalls Wordsworth's abiding faith

" that there are powers
Which of themselves our minds impress ;
That we can feed this mind of ours
In a wise passiveness."

It would be wrong to assume that this attitude toward education
is purely negative. In a very positive sense it may be said of
young Jordan, as of the good Lord Clifford, that

" His daily teachers had been woods and rills."

Such an education might, or might not, be a good one for a
bookkeeper, a forge master, or a minister ; for a naturalist it was
ideal. One of its outward results was that when, in 1869, the
youth of eighteen entered the first freshman class at the Cornell
University, he was found to be a learned authority on such diverse
subjects as hoof-rot in sheep and the flora of Genesee and Wyo-
ming Counties. His career as a teacher had already begun at the
Warsaw Academy. In his junior year at Cornell he was ap-
pointed an instructor in botany. In his senior year he became
President of the Natural History Society, which then counted
among its members several men of unusual activity and ability,
whose names are now not unknown in the scientific world. At
least two of these gentlemen have made their grateful recogni-
tion of his high example and bracing personality a matter of
record.

In 1872 he was graduated with the degree of M. S., being the
only man who ever received the Master's degree from Cornell
upon completion of an undergraduate course. Perhaps it is worth
remarking that he shares with Mr. Andrew D. White alone the
distinction of an honorary degree from the same university. Im-
mediately after graduation he was appointed to the professorship
of Natural History at Lombard University, Galesburg, Illinois.
Here he began that systematic study of the fishes of the Missis-
sippi Valley and the Great Lakes which he continued with so
much success during the many years of his residence in Illinois,
Wisconsin, and Indiana. Throughout these years all his summer
vacations were spent in scientific excursions fruitful of result.
Passing over some minor positions which he held but for a short

548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

time, it is important to note that he was enrolled as a student at
Penikese under Louis Agassiz, who was not slow to observe the
remarkable powers of the young naturalist. In 1874 Jordan re-
turned to Penikese as lecturer in marine botany. In the follow-
ing year he became Professor of Biology at Butler University, near
Indianapolis; in 1879, Professor of Zoology at the Indiana Univer-
sity; and in 1885, president of the same institution. This last
position he held until 1891, when he was selected as the first Presi-
dent of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

In 1880 Jordan was appointed " Special Agent of the United
States Census Bureau " for the investigation of the marine in-
dustries of the Pacific coast. In this capacity, with the assist-
ance of Prof. Charles K. Gilbert, Jordan made the first compre-
hensive survey ever undertaken of the fishes, both fresh-water
and marine, of our Occidental seaboard. The records of the scien-
tific discoveries made in the course of this survey are scattered
through many bulletins of the United States Fish Commission,
while the chief economic results are recorded in the section of
the Tenth Census Report devoted to fisheries.

Of Jordan's hundreds of published works, great and small,
but a few of the most important can be enumerated here. The
most bulky of them, A Synopsis of the Fishes of North America,
is a book of nearly twelve hundred pages, the authorship of which
is shared with Prof. Gilbert. The Manual of the Vertebrate Ani-
mals of the Northern United States (A. C. McClurg & Co.) has
grown through several successive editions from a small pocket
volume to a stout octavo of nearly four hundred pages. It is an
extremely useful work, and attempts to give such guidance with
respect to the classification of vertebrate animals as a botanical
key gives with respect to our flora. In his Science Sketches (A. C.
McClurg & Co., 1887) are collected several papers and addresses
of a popular character. Noteworthy among them are The Story of
a Salmon (first published in this magazine), The Story of a Stone
(first published in St. Nicholas), Darwin, and The Ascent of the
Matterhorn. Some of these sketches are marked by a union of
sound knowledge, with a whimsical humor and delicate fancy
which is sufficiently rare among men, whether scientific or liter-
ary, and which goes far to convince readers that Jordan might
have attained a place in literature perhaps as distinguished as his
place in science.

What always strikes even a casual observer in Jordan is that
he seldom does things as other men do them. If it can not always
be said that his way is the best, his unfailing success attests that
it is anyhow the best for him. In bearing, phrase, turn of wit, and
simplicity of life, he is unique, and that without the slightest
affectation of originality. This was true of him as a student. He

SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 549

was probably the best man of his time at college, yet he was rarely
seen to study. He paid his expenses in one way and another by
his own labor, yet he was a man of leisure. Despite his careless-
ness with respect to his personal appearance, and despite his
whimsical address, his spiritual qualities marked him out as a
man of fine breeding.

As a teacher, Jordan makes the impression of weight, sincer-
ity, and simplicity. He rests down confidently upon the subject
and makes that speak. He has the instinct attributed by Matthew
Arnold to Wordsworth : he lets Nature speak through him " with
her own bare, sheer, penetrating power/' Students say he is the
simplest of lecturers. Others may seem more profound because
less lucid. Perhaps Jordan does not see everything — he does not
wish to see everything — it is enough for him to see what is vital.
Those who have time may dwell, if they will, in the skirts and
suburbs of things ; Jordan strikes for the center. He has the
sense of an Indian for direction, and may be relied upon to bring
his followers out of the woods as promptly as any guide who could
be mentioned.

As an administrator, Jordan is a man of distinguished per-
formance and splendid promise. In the course of six years he
raised the State University of Indiana from a condition of ob-
scurity and ineffectiveness to its present position in the front
rank of Western colleges. This he did in the face of very great
obstacles, of which, perhaps, the remoteness of the seat of the
university and the parsimony of the State were the most for-
midable. His success was largely due to his policy of surround-
ing himself with a Faculty of young, energetic, progressive men,
and of keeping the university in touch with society at large. As
President of Stanford University he has to confront still greater
difficulties, but he has the enormous advantages of far greater
resources and of a vastly widened field of action.

Jordan is singularly fitted for the multiform duties and per-
plexities of his present position. Physically and mentally he is
a massive man, as imperturbable as a mountain. He eats heartily,
sleeps soundly, and turns off his work promptly, almost impercep-
tibly. Labors which break down ordinary men he takes as easily
as a game of baseball, in which he delights ; grinding disappoint-
ments seem to affect him little more than does the defeat of the
Faculty team by the Freshmen. He is incapable of being inter-
rupted ; he will answer your questions and dispatch your business
while finishing the identification and description of a new species
of fish. He is impervious to the bore, not because he is thick-
skinned, but because he does not stop long enough to let the bore
insert his sting. His mind seems to be organized on the co-opera-
tive principle, so that he can carry on several lines of work simul-

550 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taneously. It is, however, absurd to use the word " work " of the
productive energy of a man who does everything with the uncon-
scious ease of a child at play. The only thing that really worries
him is a full-dress dinner, with its dissipating accompaniments
of smoking, drinking, and speech-making. He is so thoroughly
imbued with the conviction that a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points that he is incapable of the circui-
tous treatment of a subject essential to the after-dinner speech.
Like all penetrating minds, he is intolerant of verbiage, and has
never been known to be guilty of a lapse into " fine writing."

Jordan is still in his prime, his vigor of mind and body unim-
paired, and it is reasonable to hope that his main life work is still
before him. But even should his career be cut short at any time,
its influence would survive. The nature of this influence may be
partially inferred from his published utterances on educational
subjects; but only those who have been associated with him,
either as fellow-teachers or as students, can be aware of its per-
vasive power. To scores of teachers and to hundreds of earnest
students, Jordan has been something like a spiritual emancipator.
It was delightful to see him, at the University of Weissnichtwo,
confronting hide-bound pedants with the simple nature of things.
He went quietly about his business ; he did not strive nor cry,
much less scold; but somehow tradition, system, dialectic, cur-
riculum— everything in short that had hitherto passed unques-
tioned in that place — softly faded like the ghost when it begins
to scent the morning air. Cautiously, after much debate, some
changes were made ; the timid hied to cover ; but the sky did not
fall. Once it became understood that change was possible in
matters academic without greater harm than that of converting
impotent philippics into whining jeremiads, things moved very
rapidly. The great discovery was made that the laws of Nature
operate in college as well as elsewhere. It was suggested that the
way to educate a man is to set him at work ; that the way to get
him to work is to interest him ; that the way to interest him is to
vitalize his task by relating it to some sort of reality. Teachers
were amazed to find that students work better when they are led
than when they are driven. The abounding ingenuity of Ameri-
can youth, which had hitherto been exhausted in cheating at ex-
aminations, victimizing professors and freshmen, evading duty,
eluding detection, and framing perennial excuses, found ample
scope in fascinating experiments leading up to some scientific
result. Without losing their natural vivacity boys became men,
bringing to the serious work proper to men the spring and hope-
fulness of youth. College pranks ceased, but by no means college
sports. Academic rules and regulations became dead-letter, not
because of their frequent infringement, but because no need

SKETCH OF DAVID STARR JORDAN. 551

longer remained for their enforcement. It came to be seen tliat
a university community where every man is absorbed in his
work may be made practically self-governing. Such a body
of students has channels for the excretion of the idle and the
vicious.

As may be surmised, the effect upon the instructor of such a
series of reforms as those here glanced at was profound. The
college scout was converted into the university professor. In case
he proved recalcitrant to this high calling, he was permitted to
"seek some other field of usefulness." In case he turned out
worthy, his life acquired the value and dignity of high purpose,
even when the practical work of organizing an educational ex-
periment gave him little time for scientific or literary production.
Upon the indebtedness of such men at several seats of learning to
President Jordan, this is not the time to dilate. Suffice it to say
that at Stanford University, where of course his influence is at its
height, he has drawn a large number of diverse and energetic
personalities into abiding harmony touching matters that pertain
to educational salvation. Jordan's favorite quotation is the say-
ing of Ulrich von Hutten, "Die Luft der Freiheit weht " ("Free-
dom is in the air"). This free air is to us the breath of life.

THE common opinion, cays Mr. Horatio Hale, in one of his anthropological
paper?, that women among savage tribes in general are treated with harshness,
and are regarded as slaves, or at least as inferiors and drudges, is based on error,
originating in too large and indiscriminate induction from narrow premises. A
wider experience shows that this depressed condition of women really exists, but
only in certain regions and under special circumstances. It is entirely a question
of physical comfort, and mainly of abundance or lack of food. Where, owing to
an inclement climate, as in arctic or subarctic America, or to a barren soil, as in
Australia, food is scanty, and the people are frequently on the verge of famine,
harsh conditions of social life prevail. When men in their full strength suffer
from lack of the necessaries of existence, and are themselves slaves to the rigors
of the elements, their better feelings are numbed or perverted, like those of ship-
wrecked people famishing on a raft. Under such circumstances the weaker mem-
bers of the community — women, children, the old, the sick — are naturally the
chief sufferers. The stories of the subjection of women, and of inhumanity to the
feeble and aged, all come from these inhospitable regions. Where plenty pre-
vails, as in tropical or subtropical America, and in most of the Polynesian islands,
the natural sentiments resume their sway, and women enjoy a social position not
inferior, and sometimes actually superior, to that which they possess in some civ-
ilized countries. The wife of a Samoan landowner or a Navajo shepherd has no
occasion, so far as her position in her family or among her people is concerned,
to envy the wife of a German peasant. The change which took place in the social
condition of the Tinneh women, when their emigration had carried them from
the bleak skies and frozen swamps of Athabaska to the sunny uplands and fruit-
ful valleys of Arizona, is thus explained.

552

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE LATE PROF. TYNDALL.

BY the death of Prof. Tyndall Eng-
land has lost not only one of her
foremost men of science, but a man who,
by his labors and his character, has con-
tributed in an eminent degree to render
the science of the nineteenth century
honorable. Some men take to science
as to a gainful trade, hoping that, in the
competition of life, it will serve their
turn better, perhaps, than any other
career they see open to them. Others
are led to it by a more or less amateur-
ish curiosity. Others again enter upon
the study of it from a sense of the im-
portance of the truths and principles it
unfolds and from a desire to place such
knowledge as they may gain at the
service of mankind. In the latter class
we must place the late Prof. Tyndall.
No man ever felt more fully and deeply
than he that the investigation of the
laws of Nature was a ministry, the es-
sential preparation for which lay in a
candid mind and a readiness to impart
as freely as one received ; and no sci-
entific man of our time, it may confi-
dently be said, has maintained a more
unbroken record of personal bigh-mind-
edness, of broad humanity, and un-
grudging helpfulness.

In the various notices of him that
have appeared in the press since his
death, the leading incidents of the late
professor's life have been sufficiently
stated, and we need not on the present
occasion go into many biographical de-
tails. From his father he inherited
neither social position nor wealth ; but
what he did inherit was of far more
importance than either or both — a sound
constitution, a well-developed brain, and
a character in which courage, independ-
ence, and love of truth were the pre-
dominant elements. The philosopher
Schopenhauer prefixed to the second

edition of his principal work an elabo-
rate dedication to the manes of his
father, whom he eulogized chiefly for
having left him an ample provision of
worldly means, whereby he had been
enabled to devote himself to intellectual
labor without any anxiety for his sub-
sistence. " Thy presiding care," he says,
" hath sheltered and home me, not
merely through helpless childhood and
unregarding youth, but even in man-
hood and up to the present day. For
as thou didst bring into the world a son
such as I am, thou didst also make pro-
vision that, in a world like this, such a
son should be able to subsist and de-
velop himself." "We quote this as evinc-
ing a spirit the very opposite of Tyn-
dall's. He did not trouble himself about
what kind of a world he was born into,
but from the first resolved to take
things as he found them and make his
way in the world by dint of honesty,
industry, and courage. Leaving school
in his nineteenth year, he took service
on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, and
in turn performed every branch of the
work from the most mechanical to the
most theoretical, and thus made con-
siderable progress in what were already
favorite studies of his — geometry and
trigonometry. This was not sufficient,
however, for his active mind and stren-
uous disposition. A few words of coun-
sel given to him by an official of the
survey as to the best use to which to
put his spare time caused him to enter
on a systematic course of study. At
five o'clock next morning he was at his
books, and, having adopted this plan,
he kept it up without interruption for
twelve years. The salaries paid on the
Ordnance Survey, at least to the juniors,
were not large, and when Tyndall re-
tired from it in 1843, after four or five
years' service, his wages were only

ED IT 'OR' S TABLE.

553

twenty shillings a week. " I have often
wondered since," he observed in an ad-
dress * delivered in the year 1884, " at
the amount of genuine happiness which
a young fellow of regular habits, not
caring for either pipe or mug, may ex-
tract even from pay like that." He
next found employment in railroad sur-
veying, the railway-building mania in
England being then at its height. The
remuneration was a little better than
in his former position, but the work
was terrible. " The day's work in the
field," he tells us, " usually began and
ended with the day's light, while fre-
quently in the office, and more espe
cially as the awful 30th of November —
the latest date at which plans and sec-
tions of projected lines could be de-
posited at the Board of Trade— drew
near, there was little difference between
day and night, every hour of the twenty-
four being absorbed in the work of
preparation. Strong men were broken
down by the strain and labor of that
arduous time. ... In my own modest
sphere I well remember the refresh-
ment I occasionally derived from five
minutes' sleep on a deal table with
Babbage and Callet's Logarithms under
my head for a pillow." A better school
for expelling any sickly dreams or pes-
simisms that might haunt a young man's
brain could not easily be imagined.
Possibly more than one rather discour-
aging philosophical treatise might never
have been written had the authors been
required to go through a similar expe-
rience. At one moment the idea of
speculating in railway shares took pos-
session of the young surveyor's mind.
He made a purchase in the most legiti-
mate way, and for three weeks was the
most miserable of men; when, finding
the burden intolerable, he went back to
his brokers and " unloaded " at the ex-
act price he had paid.

* My Schools and Schoolmasters. Reprinted
in The Popular Science Monthly for January,
1885.

After four years of railway work
Tyndall accepted a position as teacher
of mathematics at Queenwood College
in Hampshire. Here he learned by prac-
tical experience that two factors went
to the formation of a teacher, ability to
inform and ability to stimulate. To
quote his own words in the address al-
ready referred to : "A power of char-
acter must underlie and enforce the
work of the intellect. There are men
who can so rouse and energize their
pupils as to make the hardest work
agreeable. Without this power it is
questionable whether the teacher can
ever really enjoy his vocation — with it
I do not know a higher, nobler, more
blessed calling than that of the man
who, scorning the cramming so preva-
lent in our day, converts the knowledge
he imparts into a lever to lift, exercise,
and strengthen the growing minds com-
mitted to his care." After a year of
teaching the ardent student gathered
all he had saved up to that time, some
two hundred pounds, and went over to
Germany in order to take a course in
science at the University of Marburg,
which at the time was enjoying great
repute through the lectures of the illus-
trious chemist Bunsen. It was neither
a desire for money nor a desire for
fame, he tells us, that took him to Ger-
many. He had been reading Fichte and
Emerson and Carlyle, and had been
touched by their spirit. "The Alpha
and Omega of their teaching was loyalty
to duty. Higher knowledge and greater
strength were within reach of the man
who unflinchingly enacted his best in-
sight." Living was cheap at Marburg
in those days : a good dinner could be
got for eightpence — a more bounteous
dinner, indeed, than so abstemious a
liver as Tyndall cared to eat; for it con-
sisted of several courses, while he gen-
erally limited himself to one, not caring
to waste any of his energy in needless
wear and tear of his digestive organs.
After studying for a time at Marburg he
went to Berlin, where he fell in with a

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

number of very eminent men of science,
with all of whom he formed the most
satisfactory relations. " The philoso-
phers of Germany," he says — and the
testimony is one of which Germans
may be proud — " were men of the lof-
tiest moral tone.1' It was the recogni-
tion which Tyndall's scientific essays
received in Germany which awakened
the world of science in England to a
sense of his greatness. In 1852 he was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,
and in June of the year following he
was appointed Professor of Natural
Philosophy in the Royal Institution, of
which, on the retirement of Faraday a
few years later, he became superin-
tendent.

It is needless to give an enumeration
of the works which Prof. Tyndall gave
to the world, but we may remark that
his life-work falls into two portions,
original research into the most abstruse
questions of science and earnest at-
tempts at the popularization of scien-
tific knowledge. There are those who
are pleased to say that scientific knowl-
edge can not be popularized ; but the
statement would be safer if it affirmed
merely their own inability to popularize
it — an inability which, in some cases,
we have very little doubt, springs from
unwillingness. No man ever knew
better or felt more strongly than Prof.
Tyndall how rigorous are the demands
of scientific investigation in the way
both of preparation and of method, and
yet no man was more willing than he,
whenever his severer engagements per-
mitted, to open, or try to open, the door
of knowledge to the unlearned public.
"Look jealously," he said twenty years
ago, on the occasion of the banquet to
him in this city, " upon the investigator
who is fond of wandering from his true
vocation to appear on public platforms.
The practice is absolutely destructive of
original work of a high order." True
enough, the man who, being supposedly
equipped for the work of advanced in-
vestigation, is fond, of wandering from

that work in order to appear on public
platforms, is a man our confidence in
whom as an original investigator is apt
to be weakened ; but it is one thing to
be fond of escaping from the severer
tasks of science and quite another to re-
linquish them from time to time under
a sense of duty ; and we should be in-
clined to say that no man should be so
immersed in the specialties and tech-
nicalities of minute investigation as to
be unable to lay before a popular audi-
ence a general view of some portion ot
the scientific field. How the possession
of the power to do the latter would in-
terfere with the power of carrying on
even the profoundest studies we are at
a loss to imagine, though we are pre-
pared to admit that possibly the con-
stant habit of dealing with difficult and
abstruse problems, the very language
and symbolism of which are absolutely
unintelligible to the lay mind, may, if
allowed to do so, develop a real incapaci-
ty for popular exposition. It did not,
however, lead to this result in the case
of Prof. Tyndall, nor in that of his even
greater predecessor Faraday; and we
venture to conjecture that the great Sir
Isaac Newton himself could, if he had
wished, have delivered a very good pop-
ular lecture in astronomy.

We have spoken of Prof. Tyndall's
visit to this country. No man of sci-
ence from abroad was ever more hearti-
ly received ; perhaps none was ever so
heartily received, and yet we have had
among us Huxley and Spencer, who both
stand very high in the opinion and re-
gard of the American people. How dis-
interestedly he pursued his vocation
here is doubtless known to all our read-
ers. Had his object been to make money
he could have returned to England with
the respectable sum — for a scientific
man — of thirteen thousand dollars in
his pocket. That was not his object,
however ; and, finding himself possessed
of this sum over and above all the ex-
penses of his tour, he placed it in the
hands of trustees for the assistance of

LITERARY NOTICES.

555

students without means who might wish
to devote themselves to scientific re-
search. Difficulties having presented
themselves in the way of applying the
money precisely as intended, the trus-
tees retained it with Prof. Tyndall's ap-
proval, aud finally divided it between
the Universities of Harvard, Columbia,
and Pennsylvania, each receiving — so
successful had been the management of
the fund — no less a sum than ten thou-
sand eight hundred dollars. The gen-
erous donor of the original sum had a
good right to say as he did at the ban-
quet, "Not as a servant of Mammon do
I ask you to take science to your hearts,
but as the strengthener and enlightener
of the mind of man." These words
were the key to his own life, and might
well be engraved on any monument
raised in his honor.

DE. ANDREW D. WHITE contributes
to this number of the Monthly the first
of a group of papers which, while they
form part of his New Chapters in the
Warfare of Science, have also a distinc-
tive leading idea. Their general title is
From Creation to Evolution, and they
are intended to show that the modern
scientific conception of the universe, in-
cluding man and his activities, has been
developed out of the theological and
metaphysical conceptions through a con-
tinuous progression. In the article pub-
lished this month the change of belief
in regard to the formation of the earth
and stars is traced, and, as our readers
will find, with all the wealth and defi-
niteness of evidence which always char-
acterize Dr. White's writings.

LITERARY NOTICES.

ROMANCE OF A BORN CRIMINAL. Milan : Chie-
si, 1893.

THIS remarkable book, published and
prefaced by a well-known Italian criminal
anthropologist, can not and ought not to be
judged by the usual canons of criticism. The

title of romance must be subjectively justi-
fied, since the feeling that inspired the pro-
tagonist, a convict, to write these pages was
certainly not diverse from that which moves
other contemporary authors to expose their
intimate ideas and sentiments in biograph-
ical form. Le Crime et le Chatiment, by
Dostojewski ; La B£te Humaine, by fimile
Zola, Giovanni Episcopo, and L'Innocent, by
Gabriele d' Annunzio, are the latest examples
of this pathological literature, in which the
skill of the authors opens before our minds a
vista of deep knowledge of morbid states of
mind, in which art takes the place of truth.
In this book art there is none, but of truth
there is perhaps a great deal more, and the
very literary inexperience of the writer throws
this into high relief ; for, if truth comes to
the fore because it is touched with the ac-
cent of veracity, what is false can not be
glossed over here as with professional scribes,
who know how to varnish and pleasantly
hide by means of a pleasing and misleading
style. It may have been the writer's inten-
tion to indite a work of art, but he has suc-
ceeded rather in furnishing the world with a
most precious scientific and human document,
and as a scientific document the book must
be perused. The adventures of this capo ca-
morra, a perfect type of the instinctive crim-
inal, who believes he can justify and rehabili-
tate himself in the eyes of the world by re-
counting his crimes, his changes of fortune,
are not without interest. The protagonist
endeavors to attenuate and almost to vindi-
cate the former by excusing them in his own
way. In publishing this work A. G. Bianchi
wishes to give a practical illustration of the
theories of the new penal school of criminal
anthropology which, thanks to Lombroso, Ta-
massia, and other well-known observers, has
developed so greatly in Italy, and is begin-
ning to influence the decrees of human jus-
tice when called upon to decide on the culpa-
bility of criminals. This book by Bianchi is,
in short, the offspring of analytical studies.

" This work of mine," says Bianchi in his
preface, "ought to be a help to the study of
individual criminality, whether subjectively
by the narration of his own adventures by
the delinquent himself, or objectively and
scientifically, thanks to the help of the great
savant, Silvio Venturi, professor at the uni-
versity at Naples and director of the lunatic

556

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

asylum at Girifalco, who was able to know,
observe, and study the subject of this book."

Bianchi defines Antonino M. as a grapho-
maniac. His memoirs are important docu-
ments in many ways. For example, they
help us to estimate how far those modern
and ancient writers were sincere who have
given to us real or fancied confessions. In
some respects, mutatis mutandis, these pages
recall to our minds Rousseau's famous Con-
fessions. Here, as there, we encounter an
absolute lack of the sense of shame which
seems a distinctive feature of the instinctive
criminal. And who, judging Rousseau by
modern standards, would deny that he had in
him many traits of the born criminal ? This
work should make jurists and sociologists
pause to think Surely prison life should turn
out its inmates not only punished but correct-
ed. Yet from these pages we learn that they
are apt to issue forth more expert thieves
than they entered. This book is really to the
thoughtful an indirect apologia for capital
punishment.

Signer Bianchi's book is a new proof of
how incessantly the positive school of crimi-
nal anthropology labors in Italy, and what
many and diverse modes they adopt to make
known and to popularize their science.

THE BIBLE : ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH, AND CHAR-
ACTER. By J. T. SUNDERLAND, D. D. Put-
nams.

THIS book makes no claim to originality,
but is an excellent summary of the most
probable conclusions of modern scholarship
on the questions discussed. It covers the
ground admirably for so small a work. It is
reverent in spirit and judicious in statement,
and all who desire to know just what the
best thought on biblical criticism is should
read this book. Its chapters on the canon, the
text, and the infallibility of the Scriptures
are specially fine and interesting, and it is as-
tonishing that any one, with such facts before
him as are here stated, can believe in the in-
errancy of the Bible, and it is still more as-
tounding that those who dispute this dogma
should be expelled from the Church. The
vexed question of the Pentateuch, or rather
the Hexateuch, the origin and authorship of
the Old Testament histories, the Psalms, the
Prophecies, etc., the composition of the Gos-
pels and Epistles of the New Testament are

all ably discussed. The author holds that
"sacred books or Bibles come into being
naturally. They are a necessary and inevi-
table outgrowth of the religious nature of
man." Again he says : " Our Bible, particu-
larly our New Testament, is greatly superior
to any of the Bibles of the so-called heathen
peoples. But the difference is one of degree,
not of kind." He denies the mechanical
theory of inspiration, which makes the Bible
writers mere penmen of the Deity, but ad-
mits that they were " quickened by touch
with the Infinite Mind and illuminated by
that Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world." These quotations
are sufficient to give a general idea of the
nature of the book. An excellent biblio-
graphical appendix is added.

THE STORY OF MY LIFE FROM CHILDHOOD TO
MANHOOD. By GEORG EBERS. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 382.
Price, $1.25.

IN this volume Dr. Ebers tells of his
family relations in childhood, of his school
days, of the beginning of his career, and
of the friendships he formed, with only a sin-
gle sensational element in the political dis-
turbances of 1848 ; and we follow the whole
with deep interest. As he was born in a
country quarter of Berlin where now the
city is dense around, before there were rail-
roads, when the journey to his grandfather's
in Holland required several days, and when
tinder boxes had not been superseded by
matches, his story helps us realize the extent
of the social changes that have taken place.
Remarkable changes have likewise been
wrought during his lifetime in the political
affairs of Germany ; and nothing gives him
more cause for gratitude " than the boon of
being permitted to see the realization and
fulfillment of the dream of so many former
nations and my dismembered native land
united into one grand, beautiful whole. I
deem it a great happiness to have been a
contemporary of Emperor William I, Bis-
marck, and von Moltke, witnessed their great
deeds as a man of mature years, and shared
the enthusiasm which enabled these men to
make our German Fatherland the powerful
united land it is to-day." A picture is given
of the revolutionary excitement of 1848 in
Berlin. Dr. Ebers passed through the Keil-

LITERARY NOTICES.

557

hau Institute, where Froebel's spirit pre-
vailed, the gymnasium at Koltbus, and the
University of Gottingen, and after a serious
illness began to prepare himself for his life
work. He relinquished the study of the
law, which he had begun, and was attracted
to Egyptology. He had no guide, but found
an adviser in Jacob Grimm. Grimm told
him he was beginning at the wrong end. His
decipherment of hieroglyphics could only
make him a dragoman, while he must be-
come a scholar in the higher sense, a real
and thorough one. " The first step is to lay
the linguistic foundation." He obeyed this
counsel, studied, with Lepsius and Brugsch
to oversee and advise him ; and after he had
studied, wrote his sketches and novels. In
teaching this example of thorough prepara-
tion the book, besides the pleasure it gives,
furnishes a valuable lesson.

BUILD WELL : THE BASIS OF INDIVIDUAL,
HOME, AND NATIONAL ELEVATION ; THE
PLAIN TRUTHS RELATING TO THE OBLIGA-
TIONS OF MARRIAGE AND PARENTAGE. By
C. A. GREENE, M. D. Boston : D. Lothrop
& Co. Pp. 233.

THE rough self-regulation by which so-
ciety protects itself against evil influences is
seen in its treatment of books of this class.
Written so often by charlatans from purely
mercenary motives, and hence appealing to a
widely prevalent craving for loose literature,
it has happened that all books upon this
theme done in a popular style are considered
disreputable if not positively pernicious.
This feeling keeps down their circulation
and prevents a great deal of mischief that
would arise from the perusal. But in creat-
ing a feeling that prevents the proper study
of these subjects in the family other grave
evils are begotten for which the only remedy
is a more discriminating public opinion. Cer-
tainly there is no other form of knowledge
that so vitally interests the individual or the
nation as this relating to the obligations of
marriage and parentage.

It concerns the one function to which all
others are subservient, which governs our
actions in a greater degree than any other,
which has the greatest power for happiness
or misery over our lives, and which, above
all, owing to the more or less unnatural posi-
tion in which modern civilization places us,
is not satisfactorily governed by our instincts

and desires. It seems very irrational that
this central function about which all others
are grouped should be a tabooed subject, not
to be read about or even thought about till
the individual has suffered oftentimes irrep-
arably through his ignorance.

This work, Build Well, has evidently
been written with an earnest and devout de-
sire to help the public in this greatly needed
direction. And nobody can understand more
truly the perishing need there is of such help
than its author, who for more than thirty
years has been in charge of a successful
sanitarium for the treatment of the diseases
of women. If profound learning, wide expe-
rience, marvelous powers of intuition, and
the tenderest sympathy with suffering are
a proper warrant for treating this subject,
Dr. Greene can certainly claim her right
to a hearing. It is a work that ought to
be read and pondered over by every father
and mother, and it will be the greatest help
to any young person of either sex about to
join fortunes with another for life. It is a
book that will do much toward correcting
many false impressions regarding not only
purely physiological questions, but also some
social fallacies, more especially having to do
with the marriage relation. In the first
chapter, entitled Introductory Thoughts and
Inquiries, the author asks the question, " Are
all the unfortunate results of heredity a ne-
cessity ? " and answers it strongly in the
negative. Chapter II, headed Man, deals
with the outward results on face and form
of certain ways of living and habits of
thought. Chapter III is given over to an
embryological excursion, and sums up with
the conclusion that " dual force is indispen-
sable in our world to the full conservation of
all living things." Chapter IV gives in de-
tail the more important physiological facts
relating to and governing the phenomenon
of reproduction. In Chapter V the author
treats of the same subjects, but more in
their dual and emotional aspects. Chapter
VI deals with the proper care of the mother
during intrauterine life. Chapter VII is de-
voted to a discussion of the Proper Conduct
of the Marital Relations. The remainder of
the book — with the exception of two chap-
ters, The Love of Manhood and The Love of
Womanhood — consists of a consideration of
some of the various diseases, both mental and

558

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

physical, which may affect the reproductive
function. The book is an extremely satis-
factory one and calculated to do much good.

TEXT-BOOK OF GEOLOGY. By Sir ARCHIBALD
GEIKIE, F. R. S. Third edition, revised
and enlarged. London and New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 1147. Price,

$7.50.

IT is little enough to say of this text-
book, by the most eminent of living geolo-
gists, that it is a most able and authoritative
work. Its scope and characteristics were set
forth in the notice of its first edition, in the
twenty-second volume of this magazine. The
present edition has been entirely revised, and
in some portions recast or rewritten, so as to
bring it abreast of the continuous advance of
geological science. The additions made to
the text, which extend to every branch of
the subject, increase the volume by about
one hundred and fifty pages. The position
of the author as Director-General of the Geo-
logical Survey of Great Britain and Ireland
has given him exceptional facilities for se-
curing the utmost fullness and accuracy at-
tainable in a geological treatise, and it is
greatly to the credit of the British Govern-
ment that it keeps such a man in such a
place.

ESSAYS ON RURAL HYGIENE. By GEORGE
VIVIAN POORE, M. D., F. R. C. P. Lon-
don : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1893.
Crown 8vo, pp. 330. Price, $2.

THE author states that eight of the thir-
teen chapters of this work have been pre-
viously published as lectures, addresses, or
essays, but notwithstanding the desultory
manner of their appearance there is a con-
tinuity in the subject matter, and the book
has none of the characteristics of a collec-
tion of published papers.

He tells us that the title Rural Hygiene
was chosen because it is only in places hav-
ing a rural or semi-rural character that it is
possible to be guided by scientific princi-
ples in our measures for the preservation of
health and the prevention of disease. He
considers that the hygienic arrangements in
cities are the products of expediency rather
than principle, and are not infrequently car-
ried out in defiance of the teachings of pure
science. He truly says that if the rural ele-
ment be entirely banished from our towns,

and if the fearful concentration of popula-
tion that is seen in the modern city, both in
England and America, be allowed to proceed
unchecked, we are in a fair way to increase
rather than decrease the liability of our
towns to suffer from epidemics. He ex-
presses the Utopian sentiment that before
the nineteenth century closes people will be-
gin to see the advantages not only of rural
features in the city but also of urban fea-
tures in the country.

In the first and second chapters, on the
concentration of population in cities, it is in-
sisted that this is an indirect effect of our mod-
ern sanitary methods, that give a fatal facility
for the packing of houses in dangerous prox-
imity to each other. It is shown that the re-
tention of a rural element in rapidly develop-
ing towns, by allowing open spaces to exist
between houses, has great advantages on the
score of health as well as on that of finance.

Some of the shortcomings of modern sani-
tary methods are dealt with in the third chap-
ter ; such as the mixing of putrescible matter
with water, that leads to the dissemination
of water-borne diseases, to the pollution of
rivers, and the poisoning of wells.

The fourth chapter, on the " living earth,"
shows that by virtue of the animal and vege-
table organisms contained in humus it has
the marvelous power not only of turning or-
ganic matter into food for plants, but of pro-
tecting the air and water from animal pollu-
tions.

The many evils associated with what are
known as modern sanitary fittings are re-
viewed in the fifth chapter, on the house.
It is insisted upon that no house can be se-
curely and permanently wholesome unless it
have tolerably direct relations with cultiva-
ble land.

The sixth chapter discusses some of the
elementary facts in regard to air as well as
the relationship that exists between the earth
and the air. The latter is freshened by vege-
tation, and when the air in cities becomes too
foul to allow vegetation to flourish a danger
to health is in existence.

The seventh chapter shows that, if we
want pure water, a scientific and careful dis-
posal of putrescible refuse is necessary ; and
the relations that exist between earth and
water are discussed.

In the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh

LITERARY NOTICES.

559

chapters the practical details of the various
problems of domestic sanitation are discussed
from the standpoint of personal experience.

The author advocates, in the twelfth chap-
ter, the advantages of inhumation over cre-
mation, because the former is cheaper, sim-
pler, and quicker, and it is productive, not
destructive.

The thirteenth chapter gives a brief bi-
ography of Nicolas Thomas Bremontier, and
describes his successful efforts in the recla-
mation of the sand wastes of Gascony.

There is a great deal of sound common
sense in this volume, and the advice it gives
can not but be of advantage to every house-
holder.

THE MEANING AND THE METHOD OF LIFE. A
SEARCH FOR RELIGION IN BIOLOGY. By
GEORGE M. GOULD, A. M., M. D. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. Pp.
297. Price, $1.75.

IT would seem that the anagram that
some schoolman of the middle ages made of
Pontius Pilate's question, Quid cst veritas?
(What is truth ?) the letters being ingeniously
transposed into Est vir qui adest (It is the
man who is before you), anticipated the fun-
damental fact of Dr. Gould's philosophy. For
as in the life of Him that was tried by Pilate
is to be found an explanation of life's mean-
ing and a suggestion of its method, so in all
living matter does Dr. Gould find an evidence
of the Deity. He says, " It is plain that a
practically omnipresent, invisible, living, in-
telligent force is operating in and through
every living thing." He does not consider
that the inorganic world shows any hint of
design or of divinity. In the word Itiologos
he would connate the purpose, wisdom, and
intelligence instinct in every living thing,
and his philosophy takes no heed of un-
known power and possibility. This is a wide
step beyond agnosticism, that the author
considers an unmanly resignation and despair
after a first defeat, and yet beyond monism
that he says is muddleism, or pantheism that
ignores the dead material, or materialism
that ignores the living worker. Rather than
an infinite there is a finite creative being,
aiming at the highest, encouraging all that
is good, and while combating the bad still
often baffled because of the refractoriness of
material laws.

The world may be considered as a letter
direct from the Father's own hand, advising
us, telling us of himself, and urging us to
hasten our return to him. During the long
journey we read it over and over again, de-
lighted,at the kindness it witnesses, and the
beautiful suggestions it gives of his thought-
fulness and wisdom and lovableness.

The author's creed is that the extension
and perfection of healthy life over the globe
are the plainest aim and the most primary
work of Biologos. Whatever aids in that is
right and whatever opposes it is wrong.

Many will not, can not accept Dr. Gould's
conclusions, but all must be impressed by his
earnestness that finds expression in such sen-
timents : " Dazzled and dazed the scientific
mind is at present like the aphakic, suddenly
brought to see, but not recognizing or know-
ing what he sees. It still sees men as trees
walking, and does not know that what it sees
is at last the benignant and beckoning God
himself."

A DICTIONARY OF BIRDS. By ALFRED NEW-
TON, assisted by HANS GADOW. With
Contributions from RICHARD LYDF.KKER,
CHARLES S. ROY, and ROBERT W. SHU-
FELDT, M. D. Part I (A to Ga) and II
(Ga to Moa). London : Adam and Charles
Black; New York: Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 304. Price, $2.60 each.

THIS work is founded on a series of arti-
cles contributed to the ninth edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, modified so as to
make them more continuous so far as al-
phabetical arrangement will admit, and sup-
plemented by the intercalation of a much
greater number. Of the additional articles
the most important, chiefly anatomical, are
furnished by Dr. Gadow. Dr. Shufeldt, of
Washington, who is well known to our read-
ers by his contributions to the Monthly, has
also furnished valuable aid. In the choice
of subjects for additional articles the author
has aimed to supply information which he
knows, from inquiries made of him, is
greatly needed. Hence he has had regard
to names found in books of travel and other
works, which no dictionary will explain.
But there are other names, compounded
(mostly of late years) by writers on orni-
thology, which have not come, and are not
likely to come, into general use; and these
are left out, for " these clumsy inventions

560

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are seldom found but in technical works,
where their meaning, if they have one that
is definite, is at once made evident." Hence
many local names, except those which have
found their way " into some sort of litera-
ture," are omitted. Yet, though arbitrary,
the author has tried to make his method
tend to utility. The longer articles consist
chiefly of descriptions of birds, with notices
of synonyms, and excellent papers on bird
anatomy. A map of the world on Mercator's
projection shows the bird regions and their
boundaries.

A POPULAR HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY. By AGNES M.
CLARK. Third edition. New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 573.

THE revision called for by the great num-
ber and importance of the astronomical dis-
coveries that have been made since the last
previous edition of this book was published
has been made with great care and pains,
and with the aim, not only of furnishing the
new information, but also of so completely
incorporating it with the pre-existing text as
to leave no gaps in the narrative suggesting
interpolations. The book has thus grown
and been brought down to date " by a pro-
cess of assimilation rather than of mere ac-
cretion." The foot-note references have
been multiplied ; the index has been made
more copious; the chronological table has
been considerably extended ; and several new
tables of data have been appended.

THE ORE DEPOSITS OF THE UNITED STATES.
By JAMES F. KEMP. New York: The
Scientific Publishing Company. Pp. 802.
Price, $4.

THE claim is made for this book that it
fills a vacancy in our scientific literature, for
no complete review of the ore deposits in our
country has appeared since the publication
of Whitney's Metallic Wealth in the United
States in 1854. Yet within the last forty
years enormous developments have been
made in new mining districts, the relative
importance of different regions has changed,
and great advances have been made in our
theoretical knowledge regarding the origin
and formation of ore beds. The present
work has been conceived with such consid-
erations as these in view. A twofold pur-

pose is to supply a condensed account of the
metalliferous resources of the country which
shall be readable and serviceable as a text-
book and book of reference; and to treat
the subject in such a way as to stimulate
investigation and study of the phenomena.
The ore deposits are taken according to the
metals they yield. The treatment is geo-
logical, and the principles of origin have
been made prominent. To the descriptions
of others the author adds observations made
by himself in travel during the last ten
years.

CAMP FIRES OF A NATURALIST. By CLARENCE
C. EDWORDS. New York: D. Appleton
& Co. Pp. 304. Price, $1.50.

PROF. LEWIS LINDSAY DYCHE, of the
University of Kansas, enjoyed in his boyhood
and youth the life of a pioneer on the plains.
He lived in close communion with Nature,
among the animals and plants, and grew up
a naturalist. He acquired a school and col-
lege education largely by means of his own
efforts, was graduated from the university
at the head of his class, and became an as-
sistant and afterward professor of anatomy
and physiology there, of zoology and animal
histology, curator of the natural history mu-
seum, and director of the taxidermical work.
In the museum stands, according to Mr. Ed-
words, the finest collection of mounted ani-
mals in the world — his creation. This book
is devoted to the relation of the story of the
incidents and adventures of his fourteen ex-
peditions after North American mammals.
It is taken from his note-books and diaries,
with nothing added to the facts he has re-
corded. The adventures are not of a thrill-
ing kind, but present the life of the woods
as it actually is, in a dramatic form, with
sketches of scenery and the life of the hunt-
ing camp, and information about the charac-
ter and habits of the animals hunted.

SOCIALISM AND THE AMERICAN SPIRIT. By

NICHOLAS PAINE GILMAN. Boston and

New York : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp.
376. Price, $1.50.

THE development of socialism in the
United States is thoroughly discussed in the
thirteen chapters of this volume. Whether
the American spirit conforms to Mr. Gilman's
outlines is a doubtful matter. He may de-

LITERARY NOTICES.

561

pict a stage of its existence. There are
other times when it does not fly, but crawls,
or else is wrapped in a web of indifference.
The preface contains the lesson of the book
— the way to Utopia is for all of us over the
difficult road of moral improvement.

According to strict definition, pure indi-
vidualism separates man from his kind, calls
government an evil, and tends toward anar-
chy, while socialism makes man dependent,
exalts government, and ends in communism.
Either alone is impracticable as a method of
life. The wise man therefore uses both as
he employs his two eyes or hands. In the
domain of politics and property, the indi-
vidualist seeks liberty, private capital, own-
ership, and competition ; the socialist de-
mands authority, common possessions, and
collective capital. The thorough American
is an opportunist, wary of extremes, caring
little for theory, and adopting only what is
successful in practice. The tendency of the
time, however, is in all countries distinctively
socialistic.

Mr. Oilman deprecates the pseudo-scien-
tific method in treating politics, economics,
and ethics. The right order of things has
been strangely mistaken by scientists —
more properly sciolists. The knowledge of
man is of more importance than the most
astonishing development of natural science.
Pure individualism, he conceives, is best illus-
trated by the struggles of brute man in pre-
historic ages. We have, or ought to have,
outgrown this struggle-for-existence ethics.
It is a blunder in thought to introduce the
evolution philosophy in place of the higher
law for man.

The social problem, largely due to unre-
stricted immigration, belongs to the city.
The labor question does not trouble the farm-
er, and it must be remembered that three
fourths of the population still dwell outside
the large cities. A difference is noted be-
tween English and American individualism.
Twenty-five years ago liberal Americans
avowed Mr. Spencer's political creed. No
longer do they belong to the Suspenceru-
maru-homi — the sect that swallowed Spencer
whole! Government is not a monstrosity,
but the organ which expresses the intelli-
gence and will of a reflecting community.
Elsewhere the author states that to take any-
thing out of politics in civilized countries
VOL. XLIV. — 43

means to take it out of corruption into hon-
esty !

Among socialistic measures the Ameri-
can accepts free schools, free libraries, and
free text-books as benefits, while he rejects
the state publication of books as a failure.

Nationalism, or romantic socialism, flour-
ishes chiefly on paper. It was doomed to
failure since it ignored the separate common-
wealths. Christian socialism aims to accom-
plish by religious influence what socialism
attempts in the reconstruction of society.

Without violent reforms the industrial
situation may be much improved by means of
boards of arbitration, building associations,
life insurance, and a better form of labor
contract. There are now over three hun-
dred business firms that practice some
form of profit sharing. We may expect the
functions of the state to be enlarged, but
purification of existing method should pre-
cede this extension. As a way of escape from
present evils, the author directs us to a
higher individualism, properly Christian.
This favors voluntary co-operation, and aims
at fraternalism.

Mr. Joseph John Murphy is the author of
a book entitled The Scientific Bases of Faith,
published twenty years ago, the purpose of
which was to show that the new ideas of the
nature and origin of things, including the en-
tire doctrine of evolution, constitute a better
basis for Theistic and Christian faith than
the old. Since the book was published
much has been thought, said, and written on
the subjects of which it treats ; and a second
book, Natural Selection and Spiritual Free-
dom, is now presented by the author to set
forth his newer thoughts on the same class
of subjects. In it Prof. Drummond's Natu-
ral Law in the Spiritual World receives promi-
nent attention, and Mr. Murphy has to " re-
mark with wonder over the vast change that
must have come over the religious mind of
the English-speaking people before Prof.
Drummond's work could have been received
as an orthodox book," which, we may say
by the way, it is not, because " there is not
one of Drummond's characteristic passages
which might not have been written by a
denier of the characteristic doctrines of
apostolic and Nicene Christianity." Drum-
mond's doctrine of conversion is first ex-

562

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

amined ; then the Darwinian doctrine of
progress by natural selection among sponta-
neous variations is shown to be a case of
" natural law," which is true also of the
" spiritual world." The question of the fate
of those rejected in God's selective judg-
ment and the subject of freedom are next
considered ; and the final chapter contains
an argument against both gnosticism and
agnosticism, and in favor of " religious com-
mon sense." (Macmillan & Co. Price, $1.75.)

Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer believes
that landscape gardening is a real art, and in
Art Out of Doors asks that it be recognized
as on a par with architecture, sculpture, and
painting. " The mere statement of its pur-
poses," she says, " should show that it is
truly an art. The effort to produce organic
beaty is what makes a man an artist " ; and
this is done by the man who uses ground and
plants, roads and paths, and water and acces-
sory buildings, with an eye to organic beauty
of effect. Then, having shown what are or
should be the aims and methods of landscape
gardening, she goes on to describe its particu-
lar features and accessories — the home ground
and " close to the house," roads and paths,
piazzas, formal flower beds and formal gar-
dening when they are in place, architecture,
outdoor monuments, and trees. In the chap-
ter entitled " A Word for the Axe " she ad-
vocates the removal of trees that interfere
with the artistic plan, no matter how dear
they may be to the individual owner. Other
chapters deal with' cemeteries, the love of
Nature, books as an aid to the love of Nature,
and the artist. (New York : Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons. Price, $1.50.)

The Niagara Book is designed to rem-
edy what its projectors regard as a lack
of a good souvenir of Niagara Falls. They
have tried, " by securing the co-operation of
the most prominent literary men in Amer-
ica, to supply such a need. By following an
idea of their own they have persuaded repre-
sentative men in their lines to write for the
book original stories, sketches, and essays —
descriptive, humorous, historical, and scien
tific — dealing directly with Niagara Falls."
The articles are of unequal merit. They
are : Niagara, First and Last, by W. D.
Ho wells ; What to See, by Frederick Almy ;
The Geology of Niagara Falls, by Prof. N.
S. Shaler ; The First Authentic Mention of

Niagara Falls, by Mark Twain ; Famous Vis-
itors at Niagara Falls, by Thomas R. Slicer ;
Historic Niagara, by Peter A. Porter ; The
Flora and Fauna of Niagara Falls, by David
F. Day ; As it Rushes by, by Edward S. Mar-
tin ; The Utilization of Niagara's Power, by
Coleman Sellers ; and The Hydraulic Canal.
These are illustrated by photo-copies from
water colors and drawings by Harry Fenn.
(Underbill & Nichol, Buffalo. Price, $1.50.)

The Revolt of the Brutes (C. T. Dilling-
ham, 50 cents) is unique among the books of
the year. It describes a convention consist-
ing of an " upper house " of air-breathers,
which is supposed to meet on the shore of
Lake Michigan, and a " lower house " of
water-dwellers assembling in the lake itself.
After a lively debate, in which the wrongs
done by man to the brutes are set forth, the
extermination of the human race is resolved
upon, and means are chosen for putting this
purpose in execution. The proceedings of
the convention are humorously recounted
and the officers of both " houses " are de-
scribed in the same vein. Throughout the
text is kept up a running fire of allusions
and witticisms, and one must be widely read
to appreciate them all. The author is Mr.
Hyland C. JZirk, who has published Heavy
Guns and Light, The Possibility of not Dying,
etc. A word must be said for his illustra-
tions, which are many and display great in-
genuity in the posing of the creatures repre-
sented.

The merits of William Swinton's School
History of the United States are too well
known to need elaboration at this day. It
was prepared to meet the views of teachers
who are aiming at definite results in the
study. A revised and readjusted edition of
the book is now offered by the American
Book Company, in which are added an intro-
ductory chapter on Prehistoric America, and
a chapter giving some account of the settle-
ment of the three colonial centers — Boston,
New York, and Philadelphia. Price, 90
cents.

The American Book Company publishes,
as additional volumes in its series of English
classics for schools, Matthew Arnold's poem,
Sohrab and Rustum, and Ralph Waldo Em-
erson's essays on The American Scholar.
To the former volume are prefixed an ac-
count of the life and the critical and educa-

LITERARY NOTICES.

563

tional work of Mr. Arnold and an outline of
the story on which the poem is founded ;
and to the latter, a sketch of Mr. Emerson's
life and an inquiry into his religious belief,
which is deemed necessary for a proper un-
derstanding of his writings. (Price, 20 cents
each).

Mr. E. A. Kirkpatrick, of the State Nor-
mal School, Winona, Minn., has prepared,
primarily for use in his own classes, a man-
ual of Inductive Psychology, or introduction
to the study of mental phenomena, in which
a kind of experimental method is applied.
The pupil, instead of taking what the author
tells him about imaginary mental processes,
is expected to analyze and observe the actual
processes of his own mind and those of
others, whereby he may be led to observe,
judge, and think for himself. (Published by
the author.)

The Exercises in Greek Prose Composi-
tion, based on Xenophon's Anabasis, of Wil-
liam R. Harper and Clarence F. Castle,
originated in the belief that Greek prose
composition is not an end to be sought for
its own sake, but a means for learning the
principles of the Greek language, that they
may become the key to unlock its litera-
ture. The method adopted is believed to be
one that will stimulate observation and in-
vestigation, and so become an inductive pro-
cess. The text book matter is preceded by
some helpful suggestions about composition,
and followed by a series of inductive studies
in the uses of the Greek modes. (American
Book Company. Price, 75 cents.)

The Principles of Fitting — engine fit-
ting it is usually called, but the author ob-
jects to that designation as being too special
— by a foreman pattern maker, is a manual
designed for apprentices and students in
technical schools. The author has directed
his attention to those cardinal matters which
lie at the basis of the trade, in preference to
entering into a multitude of details that
would be applicable only to the practice of a
limited class of shops. He has also assumed
that his readers are thrown upon their own
resources without the aid of the automatic
machines of modern shops, and has devoted
considerable space to vise work. (Macmillan
& Co. Price, $1.50.)

The main purpose of the Duchess of
Cleveland's relation of The True Story of

Kaspar Hauser from Official Documents ap-
pears to be the vindication of her father,
the Earl of Stanhope, who had the care of
the mysterious personage during the latter
part of his career, against the aspersions
which have been cast upon his motives and
conduct by certain writers who have assumed
to tell the story. The author's version is
told in a terse and vigorous style, with pun-
gent criticism and comment. She regards
Kaspar Hauser as simply an impostor and
liar, whose whole life and conduct were a de-
ception, and who fabricated the attacks that
were made upon him, including the one from
which he died, the fatality of which was due
to some awkwardness or blunder of his own.
She rejects the idea of his having been a
person of any importance. (Macmillan.
Price, $1.50.)

In Castorologia, or the History and Tra-
ditions of the Canadian Beaver, Mr. Horace
T. Martin has presented a popular mono-
graph on that subject, in which he has en-
deavored to separate the tradition from the
history, while giving each its due present-
ment. His book includes chapters on the
mythology and folklore respecting the ani-
mal, Indian legends of giant beavers, and the
mammoth beavers of geology ; the European
beavers ; the more important American ro-
dents ; the life history of the Canadian
beaver, its geographical distribution, its en-
gineering accomplishments, the economical
uses that are made of it, the chemico-medi-
cal properties of castoreum, the importance
of the animal in trade and commerce, the
uses made of it in manufactures, the hunt-
ing of it, Experiments in Domestication, its
anatomy and osteology, and the Beaver in
Heraldry — all handsomely illustrated. (Mont-
real, William Drysdale & Co.)

Mr. D. W. Taylor's book, largely mathe-
matical, on the Resistance of Ships and
Screw Propulsion originated in the author's
own sense of the need of a treatise on
the subject, containing data, formulas, and
tables. Much of the material has been de-
rived, necessarily, from papers read by the
late William Froude, and R. E. Froude, his
son, before the Institution of Naval Archi-
tects ; and much of it is original. The au-
thor has intended to discuss ships as they
are, not floating bodies in general ; and to
set forth methods and deduce results aa sim-

564-

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pie as the nature of the subject will allow,
and sufficiently accurate for every-day use.
(Macmillan & Co. Price, $3.75.)

Helen Gilbert Ecob makes a plea for
rational dress in The Well-dressed Woman,
which she designates as a study in the practi-
cal application to dress of the laws of Health,
Art, and Morals. The study is made in the
light of scientific investigations of the injuri-
ous effect of certain features of modern dress
upon the vital organs. Of these features the
tight corset is the worst and most formidable ;
and several chapters are devoted to the ex-
hibition of the ills it causes on the breathing,
the liver, heart, circulation of the blood,
stomach, and pelvic organs ; while the feet
and the proper fitting of the shoes are not
forgotten. Physical culture is commended
as authorized by the laws of our being, and
as teaching .muscular economy as well as
muscular development ; and " one great step
toward physical restoration will be taken
when women adopt a style of dress which
allows diaphragmatic breathing and muscu-
lar freedom." But " the failure of reform-
ers who have appealed only to the conscience
of women shows that correct dress will be
adopted only when it is made beautiful."
The latter part of the book is therefore de-
voted to showing how this may be done.
(Fowler and Wells Company, New York.
Price, $1.)

The Bureau of Education has issued a
Circular of Information on Shorthand In-
struction and Practice, by Julius Ensign Rock-
well, which is in part a revision of a similar
circular issued in 1884, but with some new
matter. One important addition is a digest
of legal decisions in regard to shorthand
writers. The statistics of the new volume
are for the scholastic year ending June 30,
1890. We can not see why any part of the
taxes paid by the people of the United States
should have been used for publishing this
book. In justification of the outlay it is
stated in the letter submitting the publica-
tion to the Secretary of the Interior that of
the earlier circular " an edition of twenty
thousand was soon distributed, and was fol-
lowed by another of equal size, which was
exhausted in a few years, and for the past
three years I may say that there have been
more frequent calls for this circular than for
any other published by the Bureau of Edu-

cation." Now the people, represented by
the Government, are supposed to publish
only such useful books as have no money in
them for private enterprise. But a book of
which over forty thousand gratis copies are
called for would doubtless sell to half that
number at a price covering cost, royalty to
the author, and a fair profit to the publish-
er. The persons to whom the book has
value would pay for the copies, and those
who have no interest in it would not be
forced to contribute to the cost of producing
it. In no case should a second or a revised
edition of an inexpensive book for which
there is a large demand be published by the
Government.

Part XXIV of the Proceedings of the So-
ciety for Psychical Research (Paul, 3*. 6d.)
contains three papers. Mr. F. W. H. Myers
furnishes two chapters in continuation of his
series on The Subliminal Consciousness, the
first of which describes phenomena that
seem to indicate the existence of a double
personality, and the second brings together
a considerable number of cases of thought-
transference, under the head of Motor Au-
tomatism. The defense which the theoso-
phists have made against the adverse verdict
of the society upon their operations and
claims is reviewed by Dr. Richard Hodgson.
There is also a joint paper by A. T. Myers,
M. D., and F. W. H. Myers on Mind Cure,
Faith Cure, and the Miracles of Lourdes.
Their provisional judgment on this class of
cures is that no evidence of their being mi-
raculous has been furnished, but that they
produce, " by obscure but natural agencies,
eifects to which no definite limit can as yet
be assigned." Dr. Hodgson, 5 Boylston
Place, Boston, is the agent of the society in
America.

Professors James Harkness and frank Mor-
ley have published a Treatise on the Theory of
Functions (Macmillan). The earlier chapters
are made complete in themselves by includ-
ing indispensable theories which are given by
some, but not all, recent writers on algebra,
trigonometry, the calculus, etc. The authors
have aimed at a full presentation of the
standard parts of the subject, with certain
exceptions. Thus the theory of real func-
tions of a real variable is given only so far as
they deem necessary as a basis for what fol-
lows. In the account of Abelian integrals

LITERARY NOTICES.

565

their object has been to lead the student as
simply and rapidly as possible into what is
itself a suitable theme for more than one
large volume. The automorphic functions
have been entirely passed over, since it was
not possible to give even an introductory
sketch within the space available. However,
an account of some of Kronecker's work,
which is necessary for the study of Klein's
recent developments of the theory of Abeh'an
functions, is included, and one chapter is de-
voted to a treatment of double theta-f unc-
tions, which goes further than the immediate
purpose of the authors, for the reason that
the subject is not very accessible in English.
A glossary is added which gives the prin-
cipal technical terms employed by German
and French writers, with the adopted equiva-
lents. There are also an index and a table
of references.

The second volume of the Treatise on the
Mathematical Theory of Elasticity, by A. E.
II. Love (Macmillan, $3), has now been
issued, the first volume having appeared a
year ago. Volume II opens with a Historical
Introduction, tracing the work of the two
Bernouillis, Lagrange, Saint- Venant, Poisson,
Kirchhoff, Thomson and Tait, Boussinesq,
Clebsch, Rayleigh, and others. In the eleven
chapters forming the body of the volume
the author treats first the elasticity of thin
rods, passes from this to thin plates and
shells, and concludes with a chapter on the
stability of elastic systems. There is an in-
dex to the present volume, and forty dia-
grams are employed in the text.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Adney, Tappan. Milicete Indian Natural His-
tory. Lmnaean Society, New York. Pp.41.

Andrews', Captain, Cruise in the Sapolio. New
York: Enoch Morgan's Sons. Pp. 198.

Apgar, Austin C. Pocket Key of Birds in the
Northern United States. Trenton, N. J. Pp. 03.

Arthur, J. C. A New Factor in the Improve-
ment of Crops. Pp. 8.

Ashmead, William H. Monograph of the
North American Proctotrypedse. Washington:
United States National Museum. Pp. 472, with 18
Plates.

Bailey, Vernon The Prairie Ground Squirrels
or Spermophiles of the Mississippi Valley. Wash-
ington: United States Department of Agriculture.
Pp. 69, with Maps.

Barber, Edwin At Lee. The Pottery and Por-
celain of the United States. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 446. $5.

Benton, George Willard. A Laboratory Guide
for a Twenty Weeks' Course in General Chemis-
try. Boston : D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 163. 40
cents.

Bernhard, Marie. For My Own Sake. New
York : The International News Company. Pp.
258. 50 cents.

Bollman, Charles Harvey. The Myriapoda of
North America. Washington : United States Na-
tional Museum. Pp. 210.

Branner, John C., State Geologist. Marbles
and other Limestones of Arkansas. By T. C.
Hopkins, Little Rock. Pp. 443, with Volume of
Maps.

Brinton, Daniel G. The Native Calendar of
Centra] America and New Mexico. Pp. 59.

Brooks, W. K. The Genus Salpa. Balti-
more: The Johns Hopkins Press. Pp.371, with a
Volume of Plates.

Budge, E. A. Wallis. The Mummy : Chapters
on Egyptian Funeral Archaeology. New York:
Macmill. n & Co. Pp. 404. $3.25.

Carus, Paul. Primer of Philosophy. Chicago:
Open Court Publishing Company. Pp.232. $1.

Cooglan, J. Gordon, Columbia, S. C. Poems.
Pp.64.

Coppe"e, Henry. General Thomas. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 331. $1.50.

Crooker, Joseph Henry. The New Bible and
its Uses. Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp. 286.

Dall, William Healey. Land Shells of the Ge-
nus Bulimulus in Lower California. Washington:
United States National Museum. Pp. 12, with
Plates.

English, William T. Introductory Address to
the Medical Department of the Western Pennsyl-
vania University. Pittsburg. Pp. 22.

Farnham, Edwin, M. D., Cambridge, Mass.
Some Conditions affecting the Health of Students.
Pp. 11.

Fewkes, J. Walter. A-Wa'-to-bi. An Archaeo-
logical Verification of a Tuscayan Legend. Pp.

Flint, Weston. Statistics of Public Libraries
in the United States and Canada. Washington :
Bureau of Education. Pp. 213.

Foster, Michael, and others, Editors. The
Journal of Physiology. Volume XV, Nos. 1, 2,
and 3. Cambridge, England. $5 a volume.

Gore, J. Howard_. Congressional Manual of
Parliamentary Practice. Syracuse, N. Y. : C. W.
Bardeen. Pp. 112. 50 cents.

Grunell, J. P., Alliance, O. Phonetic Alpha-
bet of the English Language in Roman Type and
Script. Pp. 8.— A Concise Disquisition of the
English Language, and a Plea for improving its
Orthography. Pp. 31.— The Character, Object,
and Scope of the Medical Profession. Pp. 12.

Hawkins, C. C., and Wallis, F. The Dynamo:
its Theory, Design, and Manufacture. New York:
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 520. 10s. Qd.

Heilprin, Angelo, Editor. Around the World.
Monthly. December, 1893. New York and Phila-
delphia: The Contemporary Publishing Company.
Pp. 20. 15 cents. $1.50 a year.

Howard. George Elliott. The American Uni-
versity and the American Man. Palo Alto, Cal.
Pp. 22.

Hoyt, Charles S., Secretary. Twenty-sixth
Annual Report of the New York State Board of
Charities. Pp. 591.

Huxley, T. H. Darwiniana. New York: D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 475. $1.75.

Jordan, David Starr. Temperature and Verte-
brae. A Study of Evolution. Pp. 36.

Julien, Alexis A. Suggestions in Microscopical
Technique. Pp. 20.

King, John H. Man an Organic Community.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Two Volumes.
Pp. 327 and 328.

Lee, Rawdon B. A History and Description
of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Division) of Great
Britain and Ireland. London: Horace Cox. Pp.
584.

566

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Leffmann, Henry, and Beam, William. Analy-
sis of Milk and Milk Products. Philadelphia: P
Blakiston, Son, & Co. Pp. 92. $1.

Lord, John. Two German Giants— Frederic!
the Great and Bismarck. New York : Fords
Howard & Hulbert. Pp. 173. $1.

Macfarlane, Alexander, University of Texas
On Rainmaking. Pp. 10.

Mayer, I. H., M. D. Domestic Economy. Lan
caster, Pa. Pp. 283.

Mendenhall, T. C., Superintendent. Funda
mental Standards of Length and Mass. Washing
ton: United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
Pp.5.

Philadelphia Record Almanac for 1894. PD
96.

Pickering, E. C., Director of Astronomical Ob
eervatory ofHarvard College. Miscellaneous Re
searches during the Years 1883-1893. Pp. 227.—
Comparison of Positions of Certain Stars, 1870 to
1884. By W. A. Rogers. Pp. 381.— Account of
the Observatory. Pp. 4.— Investigations of the
New England Meteorological Society for 1891. By
W. M. Davis, J. W. Smith, and R. D. C. Ward
Pp. 284, with Plates. — Observations made at the
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory in 1892 un-
der the Direction of J. Lawrence Rotch. Pp. 138

Pilling, James Constantine. Bibliography o)
the Salishan Languages. Washington : United
States Bureau of Ethnology. Pp. 86.

Plummer, Fred. G. Illustrated Guide-book to
Mount Tacoma. Tacoma, Wash. Pp. 10, with
Plates.

Pope Manufacturing Company, Boston, Mass.
Columbia Desk Calendar for 1894. Pp. 365.

Powell, J. W., Director. Ninth Annual Report
of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1887- '88. Washing-
ton : Government Printing Office. Pp. 617.

Pressinger, W. P. The Widening Use of Com-
pressed Air. New York. Pp. 7.

Preston, E. D. Results of Observations for the
Variations of Latitude at Waikiki, Hawaiian Is-
lands. United States Coast and Geodetic Survey
Pp.20.

Putnam, George Haven. Authors and their
Public in Ancient Times. New York : G. P. Put-
nam's Sons. Pp. 309.

Pyle, J. S., Canton, Ohio. A Plea for appro-
priating Capital Criminals to the Experimental
Physiologist. Pp. 8.

Richards, Ellen H. The Story of the New Eng-
land Kitchen — and Leaflets. Boston.

Ricks, George. Object Lessons and how to
give them. First and Second Series. Boston:!).
C. Heath & Co. Pp. 202 and 212. 90 cents each.

Ridgway, Robert. A Revision of the Genus
Formicarius Boddaert. Pp. 20.— Description of
some New Birds collected in Islands near Mada-
gascar. Pp. 9.— Remarks on the Asian Genus
Myiarchus. Pp. 4. Washington : United States
National Museum.

Riley, C. V. Report on Insects., Arachnida,
and Myriapoda of the United States Eclipse Expe-
dition of 1889-'90.

Rotch, J. Lawrence. The Meteorological Sta-
tions on Mont Blanc. Pp. 4. — The Highest Me-
teorological Station in the World. Pp. 6, both
with Plates.

Savage, M. J. Jesus and Modern Life. Bos-
ton: George H. Ellis. Pp. 229. $1.

Scott, Sir Walter. The Abbot. American Book
Company. Pp. 536. 60 cents.

Shufeldt, R. W., M. D. Mechanics of the Up-
per Mandible in the Scolopacidae. Pp. 8.

Smock, John C., Trenton, N. J. Annual Re-
port of the State Geologist of New Jersey for 1892.
Pp. 367, with Map.

Stevenson, John J. Origin of the Pennsylva-
nia Anthracite. Rochester, N. Y. : Geological So-
ciety of America. Pp. 70.

Simpson, Charles T. Fossil Unios and Fresh-
water Shells from the Drift at Toronto, Can.
Washington : United States National Museum.
Pp.6.

True. Frederick W. Notes on Mammals from
Tana River, East Africa. Pp. 4.— Description of
a New Species of Fruit Bat from Aldabra Island.
Pp 2. Washington: United States National Mu-
seum.

Underwood, B. F. New Occasions. Monthly.
Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co. Pp. 53. 10 cents; $1
a year.

Van der Heyden, W., M. D.. Yokohama, Ja-
pan. Description of a newly devised Sanitary
Building. Pp 2.

Weed. Clarence M. A Descriptive Catalogue
of the Harvest Spiders of Ohio. Washington :
United States National Museum. Pp. 24.

West, James H. Uplifts of Heart and Will
Boston: George H. Ellis. 50 cents.

Wheatley, William A. The German Declen-
sions Simplified and Symbolized. Syracuse, N. Y. :
C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 53. 25 cents.

Wilder (Burt Green), The, Quarter-century
Book. By some of his Former Students. Ithaca,
N. Y. : Comstock Publishing Company. Pp. 494.
with Plates. $5.

Woolcomber, W. G. Practical Work in Heat.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 61.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Pestaiozzianism in America. — An article
under this title, by Mr. George W. Boutwell,
in The Popular Science Monthly of Novem-
ber, 1893, undertakes to correct in one im-
portant point my article on the Oswego Nor-
mal School, in The Popular Science Monthly
of the preceding May. I fully agree with
Mr. Boutwell that Pestalozzian principles
were known and discussed in this country
ong before the Oswego movement. This
>vas implied in my article, if not distinctly
tated. I did not state where, when, and by
whom they were introduced, not because of
a desire to detract from the honor due to
'estalozzian pioneers in Massachusetts or
Isewhere in America, but because these
matters were not directly within the scope of
my article, and limitations of space did not
>ermit excursions from the subject. It is
Maimed for Dr. Sheldon and his associates
hat they were the first to systematically ap-
ly Pestalozzian methods to a system of pub-
ic schools in all its grades, and the first to
give to teachers systematic training in these
methods. This claim will, I believe, bear
nvestigation, and will keep in honorable
emembrance the work done at Oswego. —
WILLIAM M. ABER.

Prehistoric Trepanning. — A considerable
umber of examples of trepanning and of in-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

567

struments used in the operation have been re-
covered from the prehistoric remains in differ-
ent countries, the chronological dates of which
range from the earliest neolithic age to his-
toric times. Hippocrates was not a stranger
to these processes, but performed them in
cases of accidents to the skull, and even of
headache. The Montenegrins submit to the
operation ; and it has been suggested as prob-
able that in both instances the procedure is
simply a custom surviving from primeval
ages. A paper reviewing this subject, by
Dr. Robert Munro, records a strange blend-
ing of medicine and theology in the earlier
periods of this treatment, for he shows that
during the neolithic period the operation
was performed on children afflicted with cer-
tain internal maladies, and that the skulls
of those who survived the treatment were
considered possessed of special mystical qual-
ities. When such persons died, fragments
were often cut from their skulls and used as
amulets ; and pieces cut from the margin of
the cicatrized opening were preferred. The
process in prehistoric times was practiced
chiefly on children, partly, probably, because
it could be more easily accomplished upon
them, and possibly, also, as an early precau-
tion against certain supernatural and demo-
niac evils. The Chaldean magic, according
to Lenormant, mentioned "the wicked de-
mon which seizes the body, which disturbs
the body," and taught that " the disease of
the forehead proceeds from the infernal re-
gions ; it is come from the dwelling of the
lord of the abyss." We have a right to sup-
pose, in view of these evidences, as Broca
has suggested, that many of the convulsions
peculiar to children were regarded as the re-
sult of demoniacal possession. It would be
natural, then, to try to assist the escape of
the imprisoned spirit by boring a hole in the
skull by which it was confined. The belief
in the medicinal efficacy of cranial bones per-
sisted till the beginning of the last century ;
and such bones have been worn in recent
years by aged Italians as charms against epi-
lepsy and other nervous diseases. When
once the dogma was promulgated that sanc-
tity and a perforated skull were correlated,
fond relatives might bore the heads of the
departed to facilitate the exodus of any ma-
lignant influence still lingering within, and
to insure them, by the venerated aperture,

a satisfactory position in their new existence.
For similar reasons the bone was buried
with the deceased, and sometimes it was
even placed within his skull. Dr. Munro,
while accepting Broca's view and amplifying
upon it, suggests further that the post-mor-
tem trepanning may have been such a pious
endeavor to carry sacramental benefit beyond
the grave as induced the early Christians to
be baptized for the dead, and that it points
to a belief in the supernatural and in the ex-
istence of a future state.

Prof. Huxley and the late Sir Andrew
Clark. — Prof. Huxley has furnished the Lon-
don Lancet with the following reminiscence
of his first meeting and subsequent acquaint-
ance with Sir Andrew Clark, the eminent
English physician, who has recently died : " I
was appointed assistant surgeon to H. M. S.
Victory at Portsmouth hi March, 1846, and
was, in the ordinary course, detailed for duty
at Haslar Hospital until such time as the
Admiralty might be pleased to order me to
join a seagoing ship. Some time after — I
think two or three months — a young Scotch-
man joined our mess. He was very slender,
of somewhat stooping carriage, and with that
florid delicacy of complexion which common-
ly marks the poitrinaire. Most of us were
tolerably vigorous young men, and we thought
that our new colleague, Andrew Clark, had
a good dqal less prospect of standing the life
that was probably in store for him than we
had. In fact, he looked just the sort of man
to die of consumption before the age of
thirty-five. Now it so happened that three
out of the small company of assistant sur-
geons at Haslar during the five months of
my residence — Alexander Armstrong, John
Watt Reid, and myself — were destined to
prove our competency to go through a fair
share of hard work, official and other ; and
it would have very much surprised us to hear
that Clark was not only to work harder, but
to go on working for years after we had been
put upon our respective shelves as retired
veterans. I doubt if a good deal more wis-
dom and experience than any of us possessed
would have divined in our very quiet, and
even retiring, young messmate the prodigious
store of mental and physical energy upon
which he was able to draw in later life ; and
I venture to be certain that, of all careers

568

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

imaginable, that of the most fashionable
physician in London is the last that any one,
however sagacious, would have predicted for
him. I went my way to the other side of the
world, for four years, in the fall of 1846, and,
after my return to England, the kindly fates
determined I should no longer be exposed to
the risk of committing homicide as a griev-
ously incompetent member of the noblest of
professions. So my former messmate and I
drifted far away from one another on our
several courses, and only indirect accounts of
him reached me from time to time. I heard
that destiny had withdrawn him from the
service, no doubt for reasons directly oppo-
site to those which led to my removal ; then,
that he was practicing in some far-off region
of London, eastward of the fashionable
Eden ; then, as it seemed quite suddenly, I
learned that he was a hospital physician of
great repute and rapidly increasing practice,
residing in the very omphalos of jEsculapia
— Cavendish Square. We met now and
again, as busy men in London do ; but I sup-
pose our renewed acquaintance would have
stopped there, had I not fallen ill in 1871 of
what it was then the fashion to call over-
work. I was desired to rest, go to Egypt,
and do all sorts of other things ; which I did,
but with no other result than that of gradu-
ally descending into lower and lower circles
of the inferno of hypochondriacal dyspep-
sia. After a year or more of this increasing
wretchedness, a friend fairly worried me into
consulting the doctor who was all the fash-
ion, and who, I confess, seemed nowise the
better in my eyes for being so. It is difficult
for me to speak in moderate language of the
time and pains which one of the hardest-
pressed of physicians devoted to my case;
of his thoughtful and self-sacrificing care not
only of me, but of several members of my
family ; of the scientific sagacity of his diag-
nosis ; or of the firmness with which he in-
sisted on somewhat ascetic remedial meas-
ures which, in the opinion of not a few of
my friends, tended to speedy euthanasia.
Suffice it to say that I was practically well in
three months, and remained in a very good
state of repair for a dozen years. From that
time onward we were fast friends, none the
less for heartily disagreeing about a good
many fundamental questions. Thoughtless
people blame Sir Andrew Clark for not leav-

ing off work when he had reached wealth,
fame, and the official headship of his profes-
sion. But though he may have liked these
rewards as well as another, my friend did
not live for them. His work was his life,
and no true friend would have desired for
him, of all men, a prolongation of that
shadow-life of enforced rest, in which there
is no repose."

Action of Light on Dyes. — The report of
the British Association's committee on the
action of light on dyed colors refers chiefly
to coloring matters belonging to groups of
dyes known as eosins, rosanilines, indulines,
and azo colors, producing various shades of
red. The results show that relative fastness
or permanence of the colors when exposed to
light is practically the same on silk as on
wool. The most fugitive red dyes are those
of the eosin group and their allies, while the
most permanent, with very few exceptions,
belong to the group of azo colors. One very
important result is that the rate of fading of
a dye depends mainly on its chemical consti-
tution, and does not depend upon whether it
is an artificial or a natural product. It fol-
lows that, contrary to the common belief,
artificial coloring matters are made that are
quite as permanent when exposed to light as
the colors obtained directly from vegetable
products.

Guesses and Proof. — Dr. Pye-Smith, in
the course of the last Harveian oration, de-
livered in London in October, said : " As
Paley justly puts it, ' He only discovers who
proves.' To hit upon the true conjecture
here and there amid a crowd of untrue
guesses, and leave it again without apprecia-
tion of its importance, is as a sign, not of in-
telligence, but of frivolity. We are told that
of the seven wise men of Greece one — I be-
lieve it was Thales — taught that the sun did
not go around the earth, but the earth
around the sun, and hence it has been said
that Thales anticipated Copernicus — a fla-
grant example of the fallacy in question. A
crowd of idle philosophers, who sat through
the long summer days and nights of Attica
discussing all things in heaven and earth,
must sometimes have hit upon a true opin-
ion, if only by accident ; but Thales, or who-
ever broached the heliocentric dogma, had

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

569

no reason for his belief, and showed himself
not more but less reasonable than his com-
panions. The crude theories and gross ab-
surdities of phrenology are not in the least
justified or excused by the present knowl-
edge of cerebral localization; nor do the
baseless speculations of Lamarck or Erasmus
Darwin entitle them to be regarded as the
forerunners of Erasmus Darwin's illustrious
grandson. Up to 1859 impartial and com-
petent men were bound to disbelieve in evo-
lution ; after that date, or at least so soon
as the facts and arguments of Darwin and
Wallace had been published, they were
equally bound to believe in it. He discovers
who proves, and by this test Harvey is the
sole and absolute discoverer of the move-
ments of the heart and of the blood."

Habits of Scorpions. — A study is con-
tributed to Nature by Mr. R. J. Pocock, of
the habits of living scorpions. They were
made upon the two species Parabuthus capen-
sis and Suscorpius carpatkicus. The speci-
mens were evidently nocturnal, spending the
daytime huddled together in the corners of
their box, or under pieces of wood, and wan-
dering about at night. " It was easy, how-
ever, at any time during the day to rouse
them from their sluggishness by applying a
little artificial warmth to the box." If the
warmth was very moderate, they would seek
it and bask in it ; but as it increased, even
while the author could bear it for several
minutes without inconvenience upon his
hand, " they were at once in a state of con-
sternation." While walking, both species
carried their pincers well in advance of the
head, where they served as feelers. Eu-
scorpius dragged its tail along the ground ;
Parabuthtis carried his, curled in a vertical
plane, over the hinder part of the back. All
scorpions appear to be carnivorous, and to
live principally on insects or other articu-
lated animals, but the species differ con-
siderably in their choice of food from the
variety offered them. " As soon as a cock-
roach is seized the use of the scorpion's
tail is seen ; for this organ is brought rap-
idly over the latter's back, and the point of
the sting is thrust into the insect. The poi-
son instilled into the wound thus made, al-
thougb not causing immediate death, has
a paralyzing effect upon the muscles, and

quickly deprives the insect of struggling
powers, and consequently of all chance of
escape. If the insect, however, is a small
one — one, in fact, that can be easily held in
the pincers, and eaten without trouble while
alive — a scorpion does not always waste poi-
son upon it." The only one of the higher
senses that seems to be highly developed is
that of touch. M. L. Becker says that that
sense and hearing are excessively developed,
but Mr. Pocock finds no evidence of audi-
tory organs, and the sight very poor. The
external organs of touch are the hairs that
thickly or sparingly cover various parts of
the body ; and the pectine or ventral combs
appear to play an important part in this
office. The stinging by a scorpion is not a
random thrust, delivered indiscriminately at
any part of a captured insect. The scorpion
" generally feels carefully for a soft spot,
and then with an air of great deliberation
delicately inserts its sting into it. There
can be little doubt that this care is taken
that there may be no risk of damaging the
point of the sting against a substance too
hard for it. ... The same care of the sting
is shown in the carriage of the tail, this
organ being curled in such a way that the
point can not come in contact with any for-
eign bodies. Even when turned with a piece
of stick, or irritated by being crawled upon
by a cockroach, a scorpion is not often suffi-
ciently provoked to use its sting. The tail
is certainly used to knock aside the instru-
ment or sweep off the insect, but the sides
or lower surface of the organ are employed,
the vesicle being carefully tucked down."
The author did not find his scorpions so pug-
nacious as they are generally said to be, and
he doubts if they ever deliberately commit
suicide, though they may do so accidentally,
or in desperation.

The Illne Mountains of Jamaica. — The

first object that greets the eye of the voy-
ager, as he nears the shores of Jamaica,
says Commissioner Charles A. Ward, in
his account of the island prepared for the
Chicago Exposition, is the mass of dark blue
mountain looming upon the horizon ; and as
he draws nearer and nearer, though peak
and ridge assume clearer and more distinct
shapes, each still retains the tint of deep
azure that gives its name to the chain.

57°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

From its highest point, 7,500 feet above
the sea, it throws out branches north and
south, which now open into alluvial . plain,
now descend sheer into the girdle of warm
blue sea that encircles the island. The trip
to the highest point — Blue Mountain Peak —
is one of two days, the night being spent in
a hut on the summit. Provisions must be
laid in and guides procured, who will also
serve as porters. The road mounts ridge
after ridge, winds down steep descents,
crosses the streams that rush down every
gorge, skirts along the slopes and goes over
the tops of the intervening hills, and now
and then leaves one valley and follows the
course of another. An easy ride of about
four hours brings the traveler to Farm Hill
Coffee Plantation, where the keys of the
hut on the summit may be obtained. The
road then winds along past Whitfield Hall to
Abbey Green, whose houses and terraces of
solid masonry are perched on slopes so steep
that they appear in imminent danger of tum-
bling into the abyss beneath them. Behind
this the road zigzags up the steep sides of
the mountain, threading its course between
fields of coffee, some of them of such vener-
able age that many of the bushes have as-
sumed the appearance of dwarfed trees from
the constant lopping and pruning, with trunks
from six to nine inches in diameter, and only
about four feet high. The leaves of cin-
chona, blotched with scarlet, now add their
quota of color to the scene, for we are leaving
the coffee region and reaching the elevation
at which this plant best nourishes. Hundreds
of acres were planted here some fifteen years
ago, but their cultivation is less profitable
now, and the cinchona runs wild and self-
sown, growing in rank thickets. At the top
of the peak, about two hours from Farm
Hill, is a small open space covered with soft,
springy turf and fringed with stunted trees,
at one side of which stands a little hut of
two rooms. It has a stove and a supply of
fire-wood, which can be used on condition of
replacing the wood before leaving — a most
rigidly observed point of peak etiquette.
South of the hut is a narrow track leading
down a precipitous ravine, near which is a
small pool of water sufficient for one's ab-
solute needs — except in extraordinarily dry
weather, when it fails. The thermometer
sometimes falls to 40° Fahr., and solid ice

was once found on the summit during a wave
of unusual cold. Only one of the peaks —
Sir John's Peak, which is 6,100 feet high —
approaches within 2,000 feet of the altitude
of this one. The southern and western slopes
of the range are largely cultivated with cof-
fee and inhabited.

Concurrence of Parts in the Living Or-
ganisfflt — The presidential address of Dr.
J. S. Burdon Sanderson at the British Asso-
ciation was devoted to the exposition of the
character and scope of biology. Aristotle
was named as the true father and founder of
the science, while the name was given to it
by Treviranus. He conceived the difference
between vital and physical processes to lie,
not in the nature of the processes them-
selves, but in their co ordination — that is, in
their adaptedness to a given purpose, and to
the peculiar and special relation in which
the organism stands to the external world.
His conception, the speaker declared, " can
still be accepted as true." It suggests the
idea of organism as that to which all other
biological ideas must relate. It also sug-
gests, although perhaps it does not express
it, that action is not an attribute of the or-
ganism but of its essence ; that if, on the
one hand, protoplasm is the basis of life,
life is the basis of protoplasm. Their rela-
tions to each other are reciprocal. We
think of the visible structure only in con-
nection with the invisible process." It is
also of value as indicating at once the two
lines of inquiry into which the science has
been divided by the evolution of knowl-
edge. These two lines may be easily de-
duced from the general principle from which
Treviranus started, according to which it is
the fundamental characteristic of the organ-
ism that all that goes on in it is to the ad-
vantage of the whole. This conception has
at all times presented itself in the minds of
those who have sought to understand the
distinction between living and non-living. It
was expressed by the physiologists of three
hundred years ago by the term consensw
partium — which was defined as the concur-
rence of parts in action, of such a nature
that each does its share, all combining to
bring about one effect, " as if they had been
in secret council, but at the same time by
some constant law of Nature." It means

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

that, regarding a plant or an animal as aa
organism, we concern ourselves primarily
with its activities or its energies. These are
naturally distinguishable into two kinds, ac-
cording as we consider the action of the
whole organism in its relation to the exter-
nal world or to other organisms, or the ac-
tion of the parts or organs in their relation
to each other. This distinction has always
existed, but has only lately come into such
prominence that it divides biologists into
two camps — those who make it their aim to
investigate the action of the organism and
its parts by the accepted methods of phys-
ics and chemistry ; and those who interest
themselves rather in considering the place
which each organism occupies and the% part
it plays in the economy of Nature.

A Tear's Work in Physics. — Among the
notable papers of the year resulting from
studies in physics, Mr. R. T. Glazebrook, sec-
tional president in the British Association,
mentioned Mr. E. R. Griffith's redetermina-
tion of the mechanical equivalent of heat
— a work which it has taken five years
to complete. With the exception of one
group of experiments the results differ by
less than one part in ten thousand. During
his investigation Mr. Griffith proved an exact
accordance between the scale of tempera-
ture as determined by comparing his plati-
num thermometer with the air thermometer
made in 1890 by Callendar and himself, and
that of the nitrogen thermometer of the
Bureau International at Sevres. Among
other long investigations completed during
the year was Rowland's Table of Standard
Wave Lengths. The photographic map of
the solar spectrum taken by Mr. Riggs with
a Rowland grating was also finished. Lord
Rayleigh's paper on the Intensity of Light
reflected from Water and Mercury at nearly
perpendicular incidence, combined with the
experiments on reflection from liquid sur-
faces in the neighborhood of the polarizing
angle, establishes results of the utmost im-
portance in optical theory. " There is," says
Lord Rayleigh, "no experimental evidence
against the rigorous application of Fresnel's
formula — for the reflection of polarized
light — to the ideal case of an abrupt tran-
sition between two uniform transparent
media." Prof. Dewar has continued his ex-

periments on the liquefaction of oxygen and
nitrogen on a large scale. To a physicist
perhaps the most important results of the
research are the discovery of the magnetic
properties of liquid oxygen, and the proof of
the fact that the resistance of certain pure
metals vanishes at absolute zero. The last
discovery is borne out by Griffiths and Cal-
lendar's experiments with their platinum
thermometers. Mr. Williams's article on
the Relation of the Dimensions of Physical
Quantities to Directions in Space led to an
interesting discussion.

The Polar Basin. — In his presidential ad-
dress before the Geographical Section of the
British Association Mr. Henry Seebohm, after
stating that the foundation of all geography
is exploration, and that its scientific study
requires a knowledge of cartography and of
meteorology or climatology, elaborated these
subjects in detail, taking the polar basin as
an example. There is, he said, only «ne
polar basin ; the relative distribution of land
and water and the geographical distribution
of light and heat in the arctic region are ab-
solutely unique. In no other part of the
world is a similar climate to be found. The
distribution of land and water round the
south pole is almost the converse of that
round the north pole. In the one we have
a mountain of snow and ice covering a lofty
mass of congealed water surrounded by an
ocean stretching away with very little inter-
ruption from land to the confines of the
tropics. In the other we have a basin of
water surrounding a comparatively flat plain
of pack ice, some of which is probably per-
manent (the so-called palacocrystic sea), but
most of which is driven hither and thither
in summer by winds and currents, and is
walled in by continental and island barriers
broken only by the narrow outlets of Bering
Strait and Baffin's Bay, and the broader gulf
which leads to the Atlantic Ocean, and even
that interrupted by Iceland, Spitzbergen, and
Franz Josef Land. If we assume that the
unknown regions are principally sea, then
the polar basin, including the area drained
by all rivers flowing into the Arctic Sea, may
be roughly estimated to contain about 14,-
000,000 square miles, of which half is land
and half water. In the coldest part of the
basin the land is either glacier or tundra,

572

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and in the warmer parts it is either forest or
steppe. Greenland, the home of the glacier
and the mother of the icebergs of the North-
ern Atlantic, rises 9,000 or 10,000 feet above
the sea level, while the sea between that
lofty plateau and Scandinavia is the deepest
known in the polar basin, though it is sepa-
rated from the rest of the Atlantic by a
broad belt or submarine plateau connecting
Greenland across Iceland and the Faroes
with the British Islands and Europe. Ice-
land, Spitzbergen, and Novaya-Zemlia, the
latter a continuation of the Urals, are all
mountainous and full of glaciers. The gla-
ciers of southern Alaska are some of the
largest in the world.

Aspects of the Antarctic Regions. — The

subject of antarctic exploration was dis-
cussed at the meeting of the British Associa-
tion. Mr. W. S. Bruce contributed Notes of
an Antarctic Voyage. Dr. C. M. Donald, re-
porting some observations made on the voy-
age, said that the antarctic regions differ in
many respects from the arctic regions, the
differences arising probably from diversities
in geological structure. Bird life is scant in
the south, and the birds are of different
kinds from those of the north. The ice-
bergs, too, instead of being rugged and
irregular, are plateau-shaped, rising with
straight sides about two hundred and fifty
feet from the water, and often of vast ex-
tent. One was met thirty miles long. Two
of the steamers of the expedition worked
through the pack ice — impenetrable to a
sailing ship — and approached the sixty-fifth
parallel. Mr. Seebohm described the pen-
guin as being, with the exception of a few
petrels, almost the only bird found in the
ntarctic aregions. Penguins were so differ-
ent from all other birds that some had di-
vided the order into penguins and not-pen-
guins. The penguin was found almost to the
equator ; not only where there is a cold cur-
rent. The Australian Antarctic Expedition,
much talked of a few years ago, is in a state
of suspense on account of the difficulty of
obtaining the money needed.

The Place of Geology in Education. — In

the discussion, in the British Association, of
the Place of Geology in Secondary and Pro-
fessional Education, Prof, Greenville A. J.

Cole urged that geology formed a subject of
such far-reaching importance that it should
be included in the general course for boys
and girls of about the age of sixteen or sev-
enteen. Every one should be capable of ap-
preciating his surroundings, and particularly
the past history of life upon the globe, if he
was to be able to pass judgment upon cur-
rent affairs and to play his part as an indi-
vidual organism. Geology was as funda-
mentally important as history, and tended to
modify very largely our conceptions of the
relations between what is called antiquity
and ourselves. In common with other natu-
ral sciences it encouraged a love of truth
where statements could be safely made, and
of reserve where assertions would be merely
dogmatic. The course suggested for all
pupils was one in which mineral details were
subordinated, except where they were impor-
tant in explaining the origin of certain broad
features, such as familiar and local land-
scapes. The greatest stress for general pur-
poses was to be laid upon an outline of
stratigraphical geology and its illustration
by such beds, unconformities, etc., as might
be exhibited in the environs of the school.
The outdoor character of the study should
be insisted on ; and the fact that the broader
generalizations of the science were based on
the collation of local observations would not
be among the least valuable results of the
introduction of the subject into our educa-
tional systems. Prof. G. A. Lebour thought
that in teaching geology to students destined
to be engineers or to have charge of mines
it was desirable that they should have such
a knowledge of the subject as would enable
them, not to solve problems, but to under-
stand the grounds on which experts base
their reports.

Finger Marks. — In the British Associa-
tion Mr. Francis Galton gave a description
of his system of finger-print impressions
which had been recently introduced into the
Indian army. There is affixed to the nomi-
nal roll an impression in ink of the fore,
middle, and ring fingers of the right hand of
each recruit. This plan is found very useful
as a check upon personation. Sir William
Herschel used the method with success in
Bengal for many years. If a clear impres-
sion with the finger tips were made, there

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

573

would be obtained between thirty and forty
bifurcations or ridges which were absolutely
persistent through life. For purposes of
identification the impression of three fingers
would be sufficient, but for purposes of regis-
tration it was desirable to take the whole
ten. It was suggested that this method
might be adopted in the case of illiterates
instead of making the usual cross-mark as a
signature to legal documents. The President
of the Anthropological Section said that this
method was used by prehistoric man for pur-
poses of ornamentation.

A Scheme of Education. — In one of his

Johns Hopkins University lectures on the
Philosophy of Education, Prof. W. T. Harris
marks three epochs of school education —
the elementary, secondary, and higher; of
whidi the first or elementary stage is the
opening of the " five windows " of the soul :
arithmetic, the foundation of our knowledge
of Nature, by which we measure and count
all things inorganic ; elementary geography,
by which the distribution of animal and plant
life is learned ; reading and writing, which
give a glimpse into literature; grammar;
and history (of the pupil's own country).
Literature, says the author, "lifts up the
pupil into the realms of human nature and
discloses the motives which govern the ac-
tions of men." In history, one sees " re-
vealed the aspirations of his countrymen, his
own nature, written out in colossal letters."
The secondary education takes up human
learning and continues it along the same
lines — namely, inorganic Nature, organic Na.
ture, literature (the heart), grammar and
logic (the intellect), and history (the will).
Algebra deals in general numbers, geometry
and physics continue inorganic Nature, while
natural history continues the study already
begun in geography. Then come Greek and
Latin, " and here is opened up a great field
of study into the embryology of our civiliza-
tion. In the dead languages we have the
three great threads running through the
history of our civilization. The Greek, with
its literature and aesthetic art and philoso-
phy, shows the higher forms of human free-
dom ; the Roman seeks the true forms of
contracts and treaties and corporations ; and
the Hebrew thread is the religious one. So
with the secondary education we begin to get

the embryology of our forms of life." The
higher or collegiate education is the compara-
tive step. Each branch is studied hi the light
of all the others. The first or elementary edu-
cation, then, is but superficial, a mere inven-
tory ; the secondary insists on some reflec-
tion on what has been learned ; and the third
or higher education is the unity and com-
parison of all that has been learned, so that
each is explained by the whole.

Mineral Resources of Missouri. — The ter-
ritory occupied by the State of Missouri, ac-
cording to a report by Arthur Winslow,
State Geologist, has been known as a mineral-
producing area for nearly two hundred years.
Penicaut, one of Le Sueur's party, which as-
cended the Mississippi River in 1700, refers
to a mine west of the Mississippi and west
of Sainte Genevieve, whence the Indians
got their supply of lead. This indicates
with reasonable certainty the date when the
French began to make use of the mineral
resources of the region. Iron mining was
begun about 1815. Records of the existence
of coal date from 1804; in 1840, 8,903 tons
were mined, and production has since been
continuous. Zinc was mined with lead ores
for many years, but was not utilized till
1869. Since then the growth of production
has been rapid. The principal mineral prod-
ucts of Missouri are zinc, in respect to
which the State ranks first in the country ;
lead, in which it !s second only to Colorado,
and iron. In addition, Missouri is a large
producer of coal, its clays have a national
reputation, and it has a great variety of
excellent building and ornamental stones.
Among the minor products are quicklime,
glass sands, copper, and baryta. Several
of the more common classes of mineral
waters are scattered all over the State. The
zinc region is in the extreme southwest;
lead is known to occur in thirty or more
counties, and was mined during the past
year in fourteen. Iron mining is confined
to a part of the State south of the Missouri
River and east of the marginal line of the
coal measures. Of the four prominent
mineral products of the State coal is the
most widespread. Clays suitable for all or-
dinary uses are very abundant. Building
stones are plentiful for home use, and ship-
ments are made from many of the quarries

574

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to foreign points. They include marbles,
sandstones of excellent quality, and the
Mexican " onyx " (arragonite, or carbonate of
lime). Sands suitable for the manufacture of
glass are abundant in the eastern part of the
State. Silver occurs at one place, but the
mine has been abandoned.

Prospects of Negro Education, — The
problem of the comparative intellectual or
ethical capacities of the Caucasian and the
negro is treated by Dr. J. L. M. Curry, chair-
man of the Executive Committee of the John
F. Slater Fund, as a speculative question
that need not be studied as yet. What is
called the " negro problem " is remote from
its final or satisfactory solution. To settle
it will require more than the thirty years
that have elapsed since the Proclamation of
Emancipation and more data and calmer and
more scientific generalizations — free, too,
from prejudice, fanaticism, sectarianism, and
partisanship — than are yet at hand. The
education of the negro is encompassed with
peculiar complications, difficulties, and limi-
tations. What has been accomplished is
encouragement to do more. What has been
attained is the demonstration that other and
better things can be reached. In adopting
means and methods to secure the highest
results in education it must not be forgotten
that the negro is still fettered by the hered-
ity of thousands of years and by the in-
grained and slowly eradicable weaknesses
of slavery. It is proper to remember that
African slavery has strengthened the neces-
sary evils of the " peculiar institution " into
habitudes, and that these in the course of
years have become racial characteristics.
Conferences were held during the last year, at
which the normal and material condition of
the negroes and the obstacles to their prog-
ress, the methods and means of progress,
and the influence of women were discussed.
Unquestionable as has been the improvement
in normal and industrial work in the schools,
it is equally beyond question that the in-
struction is not what it should be in any of
them. What is called normal instruction is
too often of very superficial character and a
mere annex to the ordinary literary course,
while what is done in manual training is un-
scientific and based apparently on merely
utilitarian considerations. The Slater Fund

has heretofore been operated in connection
with the denominational and other schools
already established in the South. While its
managers have sought to emphasize as much
as possible its peculiar objects of normal and
manual training, it could not interfere with
their objects or expect them to subordinate
them to its purpose. The Hampton and
Tuskegee Schools and the one at Montgom-
ery are, however, not under these embarrass-
ing conditions. A proposition is now before
the trustees for establishing or aiding in es-
tablishing an independent school in which
the purposes of the fund shall be predomi-
nant. The amount of the fund is $1,220.375.

NOTES.

A Correction. — The article on Vegetable
Diet, by Lady Walb. Paget, which appeared
in the Monthly for November, 1893, was re-
printed from the Nineteenth Century, to
which magazine it should have been credited.

THE Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, has
the awarding of certain medals for merito-
rious discoveries and inventions which will
contribute to the promotion of arts and man-
ufactures, as follows: The Elliott Cresson
medal, gold, for some discovery in the arts
and sciences, or for the invention and im-
provement of some useful machine, or for
some new process or combination of mate-
rials in manufactures, or for ingenuity, skill,
or perfection in workmanship ; the John Scott
Legacy Premium (twenty dollars) and medal,
bronze, for useful inventions ; and the Ed-
ward Longstreth medal of merit, silver, for
useful invention, important discovery, and
meritorious work in science or the industrial
arts, or contributions to them. Persons desir-
ing full information on the subject may corre-
spond with William H. Wahl, secretary.

M. DTBOWSKI, in a recent journey in the
interior of Africa, encountered a tribe who
have reduced cannibalism to such a system
that they have only one object of purchase —
slaves to be eaten. They refuse to sell food
or any other products of their country for
anything else, and the surrounding tribes
capture and export canoe loads of slaves for
this purpose.

ATTENTION was recently called by M.
Dollo in the Belgian Geological Society to
some scientific conceptions of Dante. Thus
there are references in the Commedia Di-
vina, which was published about 1320, to the
facts that the moon is the principal cause of
the tides ; that the surface of the sea is uni-
form except for the waves ; that there exists
a centripetal force, causing bodies to fall ;

NOTES.

575

that the earth is spherical ; that the land
above the waters is only a protuberance on
the surface of the globe ; that the continents
are grouped in the northern hemisphere ;
that there exists a universal attraction ; that
the elasticity of vapors is a motive power ; that
the continents have uprisen ; and that chem-
ical elements exist, more or less as Lavoisier
conceived them.

THE largest continuous distinct forest
district in West Prussia is known as the
Tucheler Haide, and extends over an area of
thirty-five square miles. It is subject to
great and sudden changes of temperature.
Snow has fallen as late as May 19th, and
night frosts have occurred as late as the 1st
and 3d of June. Prehistoric remains are
found belonging to the later stone and to
the bronze ages. The inhabitants are occu-
pied almost entirely with forestry and agri-
culture. Polish is still the prevalent lan-
guage, though German is now generally un-
derstood.

As to the speed with which the migra-
tion flights of birds are accomplished, Canon
Tristram, in the British Association, quoted
Herr Gatke as maintaining that godwits and
plovers can fly at the rate of 240 miles an
hour. Dr. Jerdon had stated that the spine-
tailed swift, roosting in Ceylon, would reach
the Himalayas, a thousand miles, before
sunset. In their ordinary flight the swift
was the only bird the author had ever no-
ticed to outstrip an express train on the
Great Northern Railway.

TOBACCO juice is very useful to agricul-
turists as a remedy for sheep mange and an
insecticide, but its value is greatly lessened
by its rapid fermentability. Experiments
are making in the French Department of
Manufactures for a process for concentrating
an extract which shall be rich in nicotine and
capable of indefinite preservation. A color-
less extract is also sought which cultivators
may use upon flowers attacked by insects.

PHOTOGRAPHS of the invisible are what
M. Zenger calls two pictures which he took
about midnight of August 17th from a win-
dow looking out upon the lake of Geneva.
They gave weak images of the lake and
of Mont Blanc, which could not be seen in
the darkness. Mr. Bertrand remarks that
invisibility is a relative term, the significance
of which depends on the power of the ob-
server's eyes. The photographs were taken
with a light of very small intensity, and did
not represent an invisible object. So sky-
photographs taken in observatories show
stars which can not be discerned by the
most piercing vision.

THE absorption of light by platinum at
different temperatures was the subject of a
recent memoir to the Academy of Sciences
of Turin by Signer Rizzo. The author ob-
tained pellicles of unoxidizable platinum under

the action of heat the transparency of which
he found increased with the temperature, es-
pecially in the more refrangible regions. The
determination of this fact establishes a new
correlation between light and electricity, the
augmentation of the electrical resistance of a
conductor being accompanied by an increase
of transparency.

AN International Congress of Applied
Chemistry has been called by the Belgian
Association of Chemists, to meet in Brussels
August 4, 1894. A number of interesting
subjects appertaining to biological chemistry
are to be considered, including those of the
establishment of a Review of Reviews of Pure
and Applied Biological Chemistry ; pure yeast
in practical fermentation; new researches
of the relations of oxygen and yeast ; raw
grains in brewing ; studies on the morphol-
ogy and physiology of vinegar eels ; analyses
of grains as suitable for brewing, distilling,
and the manufacture of glucose ; and analy-
sis of molasses with a view to distilling.
Communications may be addressed to M. H.
Van Laer, General Secretary of the Congress,
15 Rue de Holland, Brussels.

ACCORDING to one of the latest visitors to
the Ainus of Japan, Mr. A. H. Savage Lan-
dor, the supposed pious ejaculations, on the
strength of which these people have been
credited with a religious system, are really
execrations.

AN examination of the molluscan fauna
that accumulate in the fresh-water pipes of
Paris, brought there from the rivers whence
the water is drawn, has been made by M. A.
Locard, of Lyons. The author's attention
was given chiefly to the study of the changes
the animals undergo in their new abode. The
medium differs from that of their native one
in that it is one of water in perpetual mo-
tion, that food supply is scant, that the tem-
perature is more constant than in open air,
and that there is no light. Under these con-
ditions the animals appear diminished in
size, pale in color, somewhat elongated in
shape, probably by the mechanical action of
the running water, and with shells uniform,
glossy, brilliant, without incrustations and
without vegetable deposits. Though their
presence contributes impurity to the water,
it is not enough, under ordinary conditions,
M. Locard believes, to do harm.

THE schooner Ripple, in which the Swed-
ish explorers Bjorling and Kalstenmus
started in 1892 on their expedition to study
the fauna and flora of the arctic shores,
has been found by Captain Mackey, of the
Aurora, of Dundee, fast in the ice of Carey
Island, Baffin Bay. The vessel had been
cleared of boats and provisions, indicating
that she had been abandoned. The dead
body of a man was found in a cairn on the
shore; and in another cairn close by were
manuscripts written in English, with in-

576

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

structions to forward them to the nearest
Swedish consul. The manuscripts have not
been fully examined.

PROF. FRANKLAND says that while the
virility of many bacteria can be greatly
reduced by successive cultivations, and the
poisonous effects of such active bacteria as
those of typhoid and cholera can be intensi-
fied by passing them repeatedly through the
bodies of animals which at first offered
great resistance to their pathogenic action,
this increase in toxic effect can not be pro-
duced by artificial cultivation, and it has not
been found possible to convert a harmless
organism into a pathogenic one.

A CURIOUS case of resuscitation of an
optical image has been described by Prof. T.
"Vignoli from his own experience. After a
railway journey in a bright sun and two
days' walking in the heat, he looked from
the room in which he was engaged in con-
versation upon a balcony standing out in the
bright sunlight. Early in the morning two
days afterward, while lying awake in bed,
he saw upon the ceiling an exact reproduc-
tion of the balcony, in all its colors and de-
tails. The image disappeared on closing the
eyes, and reappeared on opening them again.
Its appearance was not changed when it
was regarded with one eye, looking with
either alternately. It was interrupted by
putting the finger in front of the eye, and
responded in every respect to the usual
features of ordinary vision. A cage of birds
which hung upon the original balcony ap-
peared, swinging as the real cage did.

WHAT is undoubtedly the first publication
of Asa Gray, although it is not included in
the published lists of his writings, has been
sent to Garden and Forest. It is a cata-
logue of the indigenous flowering and filicoid
plants growing within twenty miles of Bridge-
water, Oneida County, New York. It consists
of nine pages, is dated January 1, 1833, or
when the author was just in his twenty-fourth
year, and is contained in the forty-second an-
nual report of the Regents of the University
of the State. It is also included in Prof.
Britton's List of State and Local Floras of
the United States and British America, where
it is entered under Onondaga County.

CONCERNING his experience with horse-
shoes of aluminum, M. Japy reports that as
that metal is four times lighter than iron a
complete outfit of shoes of it will weigh no
more than a single iron horseshoe. Horses
accustomed to iron shoes when shod with
shoes of aluminum imagine themselves bare-
footed, and are as careful in planting their
steps as if they were unshod. The shoes
open out as the hoof expands, and conse-
quently never cramp it. An aluminum horse-
shoe will last from forty to sixty days, ac-
cording to the composition of the alloy and
the kind of work done by the horse. M.

Japy concludes that aluminum can be util-
ized in shoes for race and carriage horses,
and that it may be of service in the treat-
ment of diseases of the hoof. It should, how-
ever, be used only by persons experienced hi
working the metal.

AN instrument which he calls a formeno-
phone has been invented by a French en-
gineer, M. E. Hardy, for detecting the pres-
ence and estimating the proportions of gas-
eous impurities of an atmosphere by the
sound they give in a pipe. It is based upon
the principle that air passing through an or-
gan pipe gives a definite and constant tone,
while if any other gas is mixed with it the
tone varies according to the gas and the
quantity of it. Two instruments of similar
construction are used — one arranged so that
pure air, the other that the air to be meas-
ured shall be made to pass through pipes
of identical construction.

THE importance of taking thorough pre-
cautions in the case of animals dying of in-
fectious disease is newly illustrated in an ob-
servation made by the Russian Diatroptoff.
The water of a particular well was supposed
to be the cause of an epidemic outbreak of
anthrax among certain sheep. Xo contami-
nation was found in the water, but the mud
at the bottom of the well contained a microbe
which produced anthrax on being inoculated
into a sheep. The germs are supposed to
have percolated through the soil to where
they were found. The anthrax among the
sheep ceased on the well being closed.

IN a paper on Grinding and Polishing,
Lord Rayleigh, after referring to the accu-
racy with which optical surfaces can be
worked, said that the operation of grinding
did not produce scratches on a glass surface,
but that pits were cut into an otherwise plane
surface by it. A surface so ground, when
used for a lens, gave excellent definition, but
great loss of light by irregular reflection. To
remove this defect the lens had to be pol-
ished, by which operation the pits were
gradually removed. He gave reasons for
believing that in the process of polishing the
glass was worn off molecularly, whereas
grinding removes fragments of the glass. He
found that in poh'shing a certain thin disk of
glass a thickness equal to about six wave-
lengths of yellow light was removed. It was
easy to remove as small a depth as half a
wave-length by means of hydrofluoric acid if
proper precautions were taken.

MOLDS differ from bacteria, according to
Prof. Frankland, in their action, and pro-
duce an oxidation, or burning up, instead of
fermentation.

A NEW section, that of physiology, has
been formed in the British Association. It
is the ninth section, and will be designated
by the letter I.

JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT.

THE

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1894.
ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS.

BY APPLETON MORGAN.

f MHE creation of crimes by means of statutes providing for
-L their punishment has generally proved itself bad policy. In
the days of Henry VIII it was the maxim that " a tinker was a
rogue by statute " ; and in Queen Elizabeth's time actors and
" stage-players " were put into the same category as tinkers. But
it came in time to be understood that the soldering of tin kettles
was not a crime because a tinker here and there had robbed a hen-
roost, and that the profession which had produced a Shakespeare
was not, by any salutary public policy, a criminal profession.

The absolute, unqualified, and distinguished failure of all laws
for the abolishment of the traffic in liquors is speedily convincing
even the most sanguine prohibitionist of the expediency of wiping
them from every statute-book in the land. Their failure has not
been so much a protest against interference with the personal
liberty of the citizen as an illustration of the venerable maxim
that no law can exist without, or can survive, a reason for its
existence. These laws, indeed, never had any adequate or logical
reason for existing at all. They have had their origins always
and without exception in sparsely settled communities where per-
sonal liberty was so absolute and unquestioned that it became irk-
some, where liquor was almost unknown and the user of it a curi-
osity, and where the only knowledge of the horrors of intoxica-
tion the village possessed was derived from itinerant temperance
orators who dilated upon the terrible consequences of the rum
habit to a roomful of tearful old women, none of whom knew the
taste of liquor or of anything stronger than green tea. The early
Puritans of New England, who enacted the most ferocious of blue

VOL. XLIT. 44

578 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

laws, who would not let a man step over a stone in his path or
kiss — not his neighbor's, but his own — wife on a seventh day, no
more thought of prohibiting the drinking of liquor than of prohib-
iting the preaching of eight and ten hours' sermons. When they
settled a town, they built, first of all, a meeting house and, next
to it, a jail. The jail was for those who did not want to go to the
meeting house. But the pint of " new " rum per laborer in the
hayfield was as much a matter of course as the minister's madeira
or sherry, or the magistrate's metheglin or eggnog or toddy. In the
wainscoting around every fireplace was the sunken toddy-shelf to
be drawn out of evenings, and when a meeting house was to be
raised, the community were expected to drink as freely as Heaven
had blessed them in good things or the means to pay for them. So
lately as 1804, when the frame of the new meeting house in Brim-
field, Mass., was to be raised, the town voted $121.22 for " rum,
sugar, brandy, lemons, and wine " for the occasion. And there
are but few towns in Massachusetts that are smaller than Brim-
field. The Puritans, in their courts of justice, cited edicts and
precedents, not from the reporters, but from the Pentateuch, and
sent men to the jail or to the gibbet according to the laws of Reho-
boam or Jeroboam. But, because the sons of Rechab drank no
wine or strong drink, it no more occurred to them to forego wine
and strong drink themselves than it did to forsake their substan-
tial frame dwellings and camp out because these same Rechabites
had forsworn houses and lived in tents on the plains of Arabia
thirty centuries previously !

Liquor is legitimately and logically a subject of excise, and ex-
cise laws, which may operate in rem — that is, against the thing
itself — are proper and constitutional. But it would puzzle writers
upon constitutional law to find an origin for laws prohibiting the
manufacture or purchase or sale of an article of commerce,
though laws regulating all three are neither unconstitutional nor
improper. Besides unwritten and written or statute law, there is
also what is called the " police power " of a state or a community,
that is, the power of keeping the public peace. All three of these
jurisdictions may deal with the individual out of whom too much
liquor may have made a law-breaker. That is to say, the drunk-
ard has fractured the unwritten or moral law by breaking the rule
of temperance in all things. He has broken the written law by
becoming a public nuisance or a public charge, and the police
power of the State may lay hands upon him and lock him up for
being disorderly, or for lying drunk and so blocking up the public
streets that orderly persons may not pass and repass. But in what
manner or form the commodity we call liquor has broken or come
under the penal force of any one of these three jurisdictions, it is
difficult to imagine ; and, therefore, because this is a hard ques-

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 579

tion to answer, it is difficult to find a legal or logical origin for a
prohibitory liquor law. Publicists assure us that all salutary laws
and statutes which have proved to be for the general good are
found to have invariably come from a demand for protection, or
for warrant from an individual or a class asking either for pro-
tection or for franchise to benefit the state and himself by carry-
ing on some useful business, art, or trade ; or they have been en-
acted for the raising of revenue, or (as I have said above) for the
conservation of the public peace. But not of such have been the
origins of the various statutes against the selling of liquor which
are borne on the statute-books of a great many, indeed of most
of, our American States. These laws, when not copied verbatim or
adopted substantially from other States — as the Kansas law was
copied from the Maine law — have originated, not with a class of
citizens who asked for protection, but with a class who proposed
to protect some other class against its will. I fancy it would
be difficult to find a prohibitive liquor law which was not in the
first instance proposed by one who was himself either a teetotaler
by preference, or one without himself any taste for anything
stronger than water, and therefore without the slightest practical
experience of the evils of intoxication ; or by one whose knowledge
of the terrors of liquor-drinking came at second hand from the
description of the itinerant " temperance " orator ; or possibly by
witnessing the effects of the abuse of liquor upon some weaker-
minded brother. In other words, it was exactly as if all the per-
sons who preferred to go to bed at nine o'clock should revive the
old law of curfew and get it back upon the statute-books ; or, as
if all those who loved to go to Sunday school should legislate to
make it criminal not to go to Sunday school. So far as the records
go (and I consult only those published by the prohibitionists
themselves), not one single proposition for the policy of prohibit-
ing the sales of liquor has originated from a demand for protec-
tion, or from cause of necessity, or even of expediency ; or in a
locality where the evils of such sales were apparent or largely ex-
perienced, or indeed experienced at all. In a rural community,
however, absolutely without amusements, where personal liberty
resembles, as somebody has well said, " the desolate freedom of the
wild ass/' and so becomes absolutely irksome — where a man with
a theory or a crank with a hobby is welcome as a diversion — it is
necessary to burrow in unusual paths for a relaxation. In such a
precinct as this, a proposition to forbid somebody something, to
prohibit something — it might be the wearing of crinoline or of
birds in ladies' hats, or card playing, round dancing, Sunday news-
papers, or the eating of animal food — anything, so long as it is
something any one enjoys — will become fortuitously popular.
Any one of the above would furnish a topic for conversation, a

58o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

call for a conference in the meeting house after singing school,
might appear in the choice of a selectman, or in the election for
the Assembly member, and so speedily become "practical poli-
tics/' especially in a State where a Governor is chosen every year,
and so which lives in a state of perpetual gubernatorial canvass !
If laws preventing the sale of liquors should be demanded in a
petition of those who used and habitually purchased liquor, but
who desired to be relieved from the temptation of purchasing it,
a wise public policy might have decreed that the petition prevail.
Or, if the best sense of the most enlightened citizens of a com-
munity (and it is usually its most enlightened citizens who best
appreciate the value and understand the judicious use of liquor)
had felt the need of a law prohibiting the sale of cheap and
poisonous adulterations of liquor to those who were unable to
buy the pure article and whose healths were being deteriorated
thereby — in any one of these cases these laws might have wisely
been forthcoming, under a general pursuit of the greatest good
for the greatest number. But for the non-users and non-pur-
chasers of liquor, finding themselves in a majority, to resolve on
their own motion that the minority of their fellow- citizens needed
a protection, for which they had not asked, from temptations
against which they had not protested, but which were not temp-
tations to the majority, savors rather more of what old Butler
characterized as " compounding sins one had a mind to by damn-
ing those ones not inclined to," than of legislation for the greatest
good of the greatest number ; of paternal rather than of popular
government !

Once originated, however, the history of the paternal prohib-
itive liquor law is invariable — namely, its appearance in local
politics, then in State politics, and so on, up to the dignity of a
balance of power, where the numerical insignificance of the sup-
porters became a tower of strength, and the supporters themselves
grew to have fat things at their disposal. The earliest liquor
law I can find, for example, grew out of some letters begin-
ning on February 15, 1832, in a local newspaper* in Essex
County, Massachusetts ; certainly at that time one of the soberest,
most law-abiding and church-going communities in the world ;
whence it was carried by one of the letter-writers, who became a
member of the Maine Legislature, into that learned and economic
body. If there was a State in our Union of States, at that date
almost Arcadian in its innocence, where the foot of the tempter
and the setter of snares, or the sybarite, or the debauchee were
unknown, that State was Maine ! And yet from the immaculate
vicinage of Essex County, Massachusetts, to the virtuous State of

* The Salem Gazette.

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 581

Maine, the policy of prohibiting that which did not exist, of pro-
tecting the few from temptations which had no attractions to the
many, flew on the wings of oratory and became fixed by the edicts
of legislation. Into the older community, Essex County, it may
be feared that Satan has entered ! But the sovereign citizen of
the State of Maine still lives on, in comic slavery to its prohibitory
liquor law — a law indeed marvelous to behold, and a sight for the
nations of the earth ; alternately sending its citizens to jail for
being free men, and rewarding them for becoming slaves ! Under
the malign influences of the Essex reform the State of Maine
has introduced into its economy a new industry, that of the
" smeller." Its extraordinary courts and constables and special
magistrates, its bailiffs and petty officers who earn salaries on the
pretense of enforcing laws which none of themselves, and prob-
ably no officers of the State or of its courts, from chief justice
to tipstaff, thinks of observing, are legion. Of the published
volumes of its reports the bulk are ponderous decisions on and ex-
pounding of its peculiar blue laws, which read between the lines
like statutes of the Grand Duchy of Gerolstein! And for all
this the intelligent citizens of Maine pay the bills and dodge the
laws as well as they can ! Sixty years or so ago, when the Essex
law crawled into Maine, surely, as I have said, it was a virtuous
and an Arcadian State. At present, whether it is more temperate
than any of its sister States, whether there is less immorality,
drunkenness, and crime therein than in any other State in the
Union, the citizens of Maine are not fond of expressing an opinion,
and doubtless the less said the better ! It is. to be added, more-
over, that the Essex County letter-writers who thus builded
better, or worse, than they knew, did not themselves propose a
total prohibition from the sale of wines, ales, and other vinous or
malt liquor, but one solely from the sale of ardent spirits, and of
this only a mild restriction (a sort of " jug law ") — that is, that
spirits should be sold only to prevent the public drinking in rum-
shops and bar-rooms, and the public spectacle of intoxication and
brawling which so often resulted (and that what they sought is
desirable to-day, as desirable as then, nobody can deny). But the
idea that a gentleman who desired to use ardent spirits could not
first purchase them, it is simple justice to the writers of the let-
ters to say, did not present itself to them at all. When the mat-
ter got into the Maine Legislature, however, whether because the
distinction between wines and liquors was too subtle or from other
causes, that distinction disappeared. As the pure and simple
prohibition of the sale of any liquor, even of domestic manufac-
tured cider, it became a law ; the prohibition has since been writ-
ten into the Constitution of Maine itself, until that State has be-
come a Commonwealth of law-breakers not only but of constitu-

582 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tion-breakers, for the law against selling lias become a law against
manufacturing, and so against purchasing. And all these laws
have been written in the Constitution of the State itself, and the
citizens go on buying, selling, and purchasing, with a pretense of
surreptitiousness that, comic as it all is, keeps buyer, seller, retailer,
and purchaser alike in breach of the statutes in scecula sc&cu-
lorum !

But, from whatever source or sources ingrafted upon a long-
suffering community, no honest student of these laws can deny
that they have had one of three effects, if not all three of them
— namely, (1) to increase the demand for, while deteriorating
the quality of, the supply of liquors ; (2) to stimulate the inge-
nuity of the subject in evading the law itself, if not to produce
the appetite for liquor drinking where it existed not before ; or
(3) to give to the visionary or " crank " class in a community polit-
ical balance of power — that is, an absolute even if a temporary
power. In other words, prohibitory liquor laws are dangerous
to the physical, moral, and political health of a community : to
the physical health, by inducing venders who can not afford to sell
pure liquor at the risk of the penalty, but who can not well resist
the temptation in view of the enormous profits of selling cheap
and vile mixtures at the enhanced prices for pure liquor, to keep
their poisons on sale ; to the moral health, by making honest men
law-breakers (with the dangerous tendency of the law-breaker in
petto toward law-breaking in extenso, which the writers of moral
poetry, from Dr. Watts up, have versified about until the memory
of man runneth not to the contrary) ; and to the political health,
by putting power into the hands of dangerous classes, the theo-
rists, the " cranks," and the people with " missions " and visions
as to reforming the world! (It might be added, perhaps, that
these laws offend the religious sense, for in some States, as in
Maine and in Kansas, the use of wine for the sacrament has been
held a violation of law. But this aspect we are not at present
discussing.) And all this in addition to the fact that prohibitory
liquor laws are, always and everywhere, an infringement of the
liberty of the subject, in opposition to the inalienable rights of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness which it is the business
of constitutions to decree and of States to secure.

Drunkenness is a crime in itself and the fruitful mother of
other crimes, and with it the criminal law should deal. But no
commercial law or municipal law, no form of civil (as distin-
guished from criminal) law has anything to do with crimes-
The legal maxim, as old as civilization, that one must so use his
own as not to injure his neighbor, takes ample care of the liquor-
seller who sells liquor to one who he knows will do violence or
wrong under its influence. Let the criminal law, then, attend to

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 583

the case of the drunkard and of the rumseller who will knowingly
make his feeble or hereditarily weak fellow-man a drunkard. But
as there is no commandment in the decalogue, " Thou shalt not
sell liquor," it is not in the unwritten law, and so can not justly,
equitably, or legally be put into written law. That it is ever put
there means some ulterior object, or if not an ulterior object al-
ways, certainly always it means, because it always has, an ulterior
effect.

But prohibitory liquor laws have still another and ulterior ef-
fect, to wit : They beget an exaggerated oratory and an appetite
for sweeping statements which, by the cultivation of false statis-
tics, becomes absolute dishonesty, and so a burden upon and a re-
proach to public morals. For it is quite as heinous a sin, in the
court of conscience, to lie about the number of persons who have
died from using liquor as it is to lie about the amount of one's
collections for charity, as did Ananias, or about the value of one's
farm to the autumnal assessor. And yet another, more of an eco-
nomical than a moral consequence, perhaps, might be catalogued.
It has become in some communities practically impossible to dis-
cuss certain important questions. For example, it is to-day prac-
tically impossible in many quarters of this fair land to discuss so
important a question as the effect of alcoholic liquors upon the
human system. Impossible, I say, for no sooner is such a question
broached than the most tropical statements, backed by the glassy
fascination of enormous round numbers, would be hurled at the
general public until the modest man of science, and science itself,
are put to rout. This writer himself heard, in the Columbian
year and from a Columbian orator, the following masterpiece of
statement, to wit : " The champions of slavery, having declared
their purpose to shatter the Union, withdrew from Washington
and opened fire from without. Not so the liquor power. It plants
its cannon, charged with hell's dynamite (enough of them to
stretch in a line from this spot to the homes, the churches, the
schools of the people) ; and there, sheltered and protected by the
strong arm of the Government, the work of destruction goes
mightily on among Americans ; every five years there is an array
of dead as a consequence equal in number to those killed on both
sides in the civil war." By a coincidence, these words were ut-
tered at a time when the courts of the State of New York had
been several months, and at an expense of several hundred thou-
sand dollars' worth of high-priced expert testimony, trying to as-
certain whether Mrs. Carlyle Harris died of morphine poisoning,
and was beginning to make an equal outlay to find if Mrs. Dr.
Buchanan had died from the effect of morphine or atropine.
And yet, here and meanwhile, this glowing orator announced that
not one more nor one less than a million human beings had, in the

584 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

five years past, perished from being poisoned by liquor — by alco-
hol, an extremely mild toxicant that in some form or other chem-
ists tell us exists in almost all our food, solid or liquid ! Did it
not, perhaps, occur to the orator, or possibly to another of his au-
dience besides the present writer, that in the million of cases as-
sured, say in two or three, even in one of them, a latent or contrib-
uting cause might possibly have mitigated the responsibility of
this murderous alcohol; that one of those million of men may
have been, perhaps, indiscreet in something else besides drinking
beer, or had somewhere latent in his system some congenital or
local contributive cause ; or perhaps had met with some accidental
incident to his alleged untimely taking off ?

But this is a single sample only of the intemperance, not to
say the voluptuous dalliance with tropical statistics, of the pro-
hibition orator, who asserts that liquor has slain more than
wild beasts, than wars, pestilences, famines and even deluges
and Johnstown floods (which latter, by the way, were bursts of
water and not of alcohol, which therefore has not, even in the
mouths of prohibition orators, achieved the record of water,
which certainly did wreck Johnstown, and which, according to
Holy Writ, in one case did actually destroy the whole world).
Indeed, nothing is more common upon their lips than the maxim
" Liquor destroys both body and soul." But if the annual
deaths actually and beyond question traceable to liquor were
arrayed against the annual mortality (which is said to be a con-
stant figure indifferently as to wars, famines, tidal waves, and
the like cataclysma), it might be disputed as above if liquor
always destroys the body, while as to the soul what mortal can
depose and say ? The danger of the tropical statement which
appears to be inseparable from prohibition politics, however, is a
very great one. Falsehood is falsehood and lying is lying, even
in the mouths of lecturers and reformers ; and temperance is a
cardinal virtue in speech as well as in liquor drinking. Were
such opulent misrepresentation and dishonesty confined only to
the so-called " temperance " orators or " reformers," it would be
bad enough, as teaching looseness and unreliability of statement
and an irresponsibility of language, which would be and is dan-
gerous to any community at large. But not only the tramp and
the circulating itinerant, but eminent men, men of brains and
personal worth, whose influence for good in their own neighbor-
hood might be very large, are often so warped in their very
fiber by this sort of misfortune as to become incapable of see-
ing things as they are — dealers in untruth, wrapped in untruth
as in a garment. I have in mind one eminent gentleman, a
man of large affairs and of otherwise unblemished integrity,
who has the misfortune of being a prohibitionist leader, and

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 585

the author and supporter of many prohibitionist statutes. As
the standing chairman of a committee in the Legislature of a
certain State to report annually as to the value and the opera-
tion of these statutes, his reports are invariably enthusiastic as
to their great value, as to their effect in closing liquor stores,
and in making drunkenness almost unknown. And this in the
teeth of the facts, which everybody else admits, that these stat-
utes are stupendous failures, that they have multiplied the
number of liquor shops, and added to whatever harm they are
capable of by disguising them as " pharmacies/' " groceries/' or
other sorts of shops, and that they have enormously increased,
almost squared, the number of inebriates reported before their
passage ! Nobody impeaches or dreams of impeaching the state-
ments of this dear old gentleman, nameless here for evermore, who,
foolish and fond and lovingly proud of his statutes, can see noth-
ing but utility and salvation in them ! But, all the same, it is an
actual wrong, and in time it will be surely an actual damage to
the Commonwealth that its intelligent citizens can so deliberately
misstate facts. If its best citizens can not tell the truth on public
matters, what can the Commonwealth expect of its masses ?

But everybody knows that drunkenness is a curse, and if we
abolish all prohibitive liquor laws how shall the curse be removed ?
To enact a law compelling every man, woman, and child to drink
a pint of whisky — or its equivalent in other spirits, or in vinous,
or malt liquors — daily, might indeed do it. But such a law would
probably be impossible to propose in a legislative body — cer-
tainly impossible to pass to a final reading. The question can
not probably be answered at present. Most things, however,
have their limit of value. And it might be a question whether
even the soul of a drunkard were worth saving at the expense of
the liberty, the morals, and the health of an entire community.
But something very near to an answer can, I think, be approxi-
mated. Let us enforce the common law we have, and make it
" common " indeed ; and forbear to pass statutes against which the
sense of justice of the enlightened community rebels, and which
can not be enforced, or whose enforcement is only, and can in the
nature of things be only, a sham. Let us wipe out forever from
every statute-book in America those prohibitive liquor laws
which an experience of sixty years has proved to be worse than
worthless, and even worse than useless, because they not only can
not be enforced, but enlarge, by stimulating, the alleged evils they
pretend to abolish! These laws emphatically have not lessened
the manufacture, sale, or consumption of liquor. There are not
to-day ten times as many people in the country as there were on
January 15, 1832. But, unless figures are as unreliable as the
temperance orators themselves, there are many hundred times as

5 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

many liquor stores and shops for the public drinking of liquor in
our fair land as there were upon that date. Various causes have
doubtless operated to produce this enormous increase. But one
cause which may have done its contributive share toward the
result, perhaps, is that, under rigid statutes, any moral obligation
not to use liquor which may have existed on January 15, 1832, has
become a sort of moral obligation to use it as a sort of Declaration
of Independence of laws which interfere with the personal liberty
of the subject ; which exist not by consent of those whom those
laws govern, but by the consent of those whom they do not gov-
ern, and who never come within their operation ; whose prosecu-
tion, since it can only be achieved by recourse to the services of
the spy, the informer, and the " smeller," is persecution, and tends
to bring all law into contempt and into public disgust.

That these laws do exist by reason of the judgments of appel-
late courts (even the Supreme Court of the United States having
affirmed their " constitutionality ") is not to militate against their
injustice or their inconvenience. Those decisions are not as to the
expediency, but only as to the technicality, of these statutes ; all
that those decisions amount to is that as between the individual
— the citizen — in their breach, and the State, the State has a right
to enact the law under its special (State) Constitution, and that
the question of internal traffic — so long as it is not interstate traf-
fic— is not one with which the Federal jurisdiction concerns itself.
Legally a State has a right to do what it will within its own
boundaries, so long as it does not interfere with the rights of its
neighboring States or violate the Federal Constitution. And
however absurd its local statutes may be, once legally enacted
they must be reviewed at the polls, not in the Federal courts.
But there is a question beyond the polls.

Laws are for the greatest good of the greatest number, at
least in republics, where the paternal jurisdiction of States is
not invited and will not be tolerated. Granting everything that
can be said as to the bad effect of liquor itself, every logician
will admit that if it can be proved that in a single instance
or class of instances the effect of liquor is salutary, that it
cures as well as kills (as, for example, in a case of partial
drowning or of rattlesnake bite), then to prevent its sale is not
only illogical but oppressive. A law can not be judged as be-
nign or harmful accordingly as it is negatively inoffensive. If
in a single instance it refuses to save life, then it has ceased to
operate benignly and has commenced to operate fatally. No law
can exist without a reason for its existence, and when the reason
for it fails the law disappears. But when a law operates not only
unreasonably but fatally, there should not be much hesitation as
to its doom. It is illegal. And this is another case where liquor

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 587

laws are dangerous to the community — namely, they might pre-
vent the purchase of enough liquor to save a human life. As it
is, there are rural communities, not a thousand miles from the
metropolis of New England, where the apothecary will refuse
(and in my own experience has refused) to sell the mother of a
sick child enough alcohol to light a spirit lamp to warm the little
sufferer's sustenance on a summer night at a strange hotel, where
no other artificial heat could be procured ! This same apothecary
could sell Paris green by the pound for the destruction of alleged
potato bugs, or morphine, or arsenic, or any other poison on pres-
entation of a scrap of paper beginning with an " $ ," and signed
by any scrawl which the writer might choose to affix, and call it
the signature of a physician. Our apothecary that night was
illogical and dangerous to the community, not by instinct or by
choice, but by the virtue of the laws of his State — by the laws, as
it happened in the case I have in mind, of the noble old Common-
wealth of Massachusetts !

But we have not closed the catalogue yet; there is still an-
other, and this by no means a slight, evil, which is caused to the
community by prohibitive liquor laws, which might be called,
perhaps, the intellectual evil which they work. This is the
begetting of the very general horror of wines, spirits, malt
liquors, and other drinkables of more or less vinous character,
which is allowed to prevail, not only, but is sedulously and per-
petually cultivated in certain communities, until very young
people are apt to consider themselves as virtuous paragons sur-
rounded by alcoholic demons seeking their destruction, whose
fault, and not their own, it will be if they tumble. This idea and
sentiment are enormously prevalent, thanks to those industrious
people the " temperance " reformers (though they insult one of
the cardinal virtues by so calling themselves). I can indeed in-
stance no severer proof of it than to narrate that, having been so
fortunate, in the case of some special investigation then on hand,
as to unearth the diary kept by an officer of the Revolution dur-
ing the march of Arnold's and Wooster's commands through the •
snows of the terrible winter of 1775-'76 to relieve the army in
Canada, and the subsequent retreat in rags, hunger, freezing, and
wretchedness, I intrusted its copying to a worthy lady, a de-
scendant of the officer who kept the diary. In due time she
returned the copy, but wrote me, " I have omitted all references
to brandy and eggnog, as not part of our country's history." And
yet to me, and I fancy most of us, it was " history " — ay, and the
"history of our country" too! How those patriots lived through
and managed to survive at all the terrors of that winter, certainly
was history ; and I for one am thankful that, at least, if there
was no food betimes, there were brandy, and an occasional egg-

588 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nog, for those sturdy and starving patriots ! But this worthy lady-
lived in rural New England, and had been taught from her youth
of the terrors and misery that lay hidden — not for fools only, but
for everybody — in a bottle ! And she could not see that God's
gifts to men sometimes have come to his perishing creatures in
the liquor form. The public inconvenience of this belief is not
inconsiderable. Not only are its citizens deprived of the sanitary
potency of liquor in emergencies (for I have heard apparently
sane persons, in a village not a thousand miles from the city of
New York, declare that they would rather die than have their
lives saved by a glass of liquor), but the youths are taught, not
to be virtuous and sober, and to shun drunkenness, but to perse-
cute liquor sellers and to waste liquor by emptying it into the
gutters : that the unfortunate who drinks himself into imbecility,
or into becoming a public nuisance, is not a criminal or a law-
breaker, but an example of the wickedness of the hotel keeper —
and so not the sinner but the sinned against ! Not he to be dis-
ciplined or chided, but the innocent liquor is to be cursed, and
the liquor dealer to be deprived of his property ! It would appear
to most of us that to preach a little less about the holy horror of
rum, and a little more about the political obligation of the citizen
to keep himself from drunkenness — to notify him that the law
locks up the wretched drunkard, not because he is not a citizen
who can not drink if he please, and not because liquor is a sinful
thing, or because his neighbor has no right to invest his capital/
if so pleased, in hogsheads of liquor and to retail it by the glass
or spoonful, but because he is drunk, and because a drunkard is
a nuisance and a threat to the community — would be an experi-
ment worth the trying. Another experiment would be to rely
upon such an administration of what laws we have as will en-
courage temperance by punishing the drunkard, not the liquor
which he drinks or the manufacturer or the seller of it, nor yet
the community whose misfortune and for .whose sins it is that the
drunkard is a part of it. We can not reclaim our wayward youth
by sending their parents to Sunday school; we can not rid the
community of drunkards by refusing to sell liquor to the sober
man. But it requires no statute to refuse to sell it to the debau-
chee. This land of ours is ruled by law. The trend of progress
is toward a larger and a more enlightened, not a lesser and more
ignorant liberty; and civilizations move not backward. In the
calm eye of the law, the owner of pipes of liquor is as much
entitled to his own as is the owner of a " temperance " newspaper,
as long as he injures not his neighbor. He of the wine pipes must
not sell to the habitual drunkard, or to the hereditary victim of
alcoholism who works damage in his cups; neither shall he of
the printing press libel in words him of the wine pipes, or invite

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 589

his fellow-citizens to violence against him or destruction of his
worldly goods. For over one and all is the law of the land. Let
our youth learn this, and not that others have obligations and
stand at their peril, while he alone is free, if he only will sign a
pledge and wear a blue ribbon !

In still another way the prohibitive liquor laws have worked,
and are still working, hardship to our people. The liquor-drink-
ing habit in large and metropolitan cities is palpably on the de-
cline. Here the ever-increasing complexity of affairs, the im-
mense demand of competition, the necessity of care and vigilance
lest one be outrun in the race for success, and the strain of busi-
ness methods, render it injudicious to drink much wine or liquor ;
large corporations exact a rigid temperance, often total absti-
nence, from their officials and employees. Either because edicts
of fashion for once have followed the demands of business, or for
some other cause it appears to be absolutely no longer fashionable
in cities to drink deep or long at table. In the natural course
there is reason to believe that this fashion might reach the inte-
rior, to prevail there. But, in the towns and cities of the liquor-
law-ridden States, the more stringent the ordinances, and the
more important and bustling the " smeller/' it more and more be-
comes a point of self-respect, almost of honor, between man and
man, to drink much and often, and liquor drinking increases
daily. Even lads of tender years, clubbing together, buying a
demijohn of what purports to be something of which they have
heard their elders speak, and hiding in some cellar or bedroom,
experience all the fearful joys of dissipation ! In other interior
precincts where there never was much liquor drinking, but where
the itinerant reformer stands in lieu of lyceum or theater or as-
sembly, the liquor habit will remain about the same, not increas-
ing, but not allowed by the reformers to die out and their occu-
pation be gone. So the maxim of Horace Greeley, that a habit-
ual drunkard is quite as useful a member of society as a tem-
perance reformer, remains unerringly true, not only, but he is
positively a retarder of public progress. But once let every
liquor law be expunged from the statute-books of our American
States and the temperance reformer would disappear, the benign
influences of the city would spread to the country, liquor drink-
ing being no longer a matter of courtesy or self-respect, but an
indifferent matter of taste, would decrease, as it always has de-
creased in the civilized communities when let alone and to itself.
The horror of liquor would disappear, and only the horror of the
drunkard would remain. And the enormous gain would not only
be the salvage of the money wasted in pretending to enforce in-
competent and disrespected laws, but in behalf of public morality,
because with no sumptuary laws to break, there would be no

59o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

decent and honorable citizens turned into law-breakers ; no per-
sonal and paternal statutes to evade, and so no statute evaders.

But until we wipe out all these present restrictive liquor laws
we can not hate the drunkard. We must be charitable with him,
even cherish as well as pity him ; we must even respect him as a
man who is upholding the liberty of the subject at the expense of
his health ; as a sort of public martyr. We must reverse many a
popular maxim in his behalf. Instead of " Drunkenness leads to
poverty/' or " Drunkenness leads to wretchedness/' we must read
it " Poverty leads to drunkenness/' " Wretchedness leads to drunk-
enness." Instead of worrying lest the horrible inebriate go home
and brain his family and smash his furniture, we must cry, " Poor
man, he is out of employment/' " Poor man, he has an unhappy
home, a shrewish wife and bad children, and there was nothing
left him but drink," " It is not his fault, it is the fault of that
horrid liquor seller." And so on, as if the selling of liquor and
not the besotting of one's self with liquor, were the crime ; as if
the seller and not the drinker were the criminal ; as if one who
would not drink could be made a drunkard by the selling of
liquor ; or as if the fruits of the earth expressed or distilled were
unholy and abhorred, when in any other form they were God's
best gifts to man.

Like most admirable servants, liquor is apt to be a bad master
if allowed the upper hand or permitted to get into politics. But
there are many persons, not habitual drunkards themselves, who
actually believe that malarious and impure water is a circulator
of disease, but can be disarmed and rendered safe by the dilution
with whisky. . The boards of health of cities (New York city, for
example), in their printed directions to the public for the preven-
tion of cholera, advise that the water given to infants and very
young children in the heated season be diluted with a few drops
of whisky. But liquor laws are legislation, not against sick
babies, but against the few drops of whisky which might save
their little lives, and if the poor parents can not afford to pay a
physician for a slip of paper giving the Latin name of whisky,
the poor baby must die, or run the risk of death, by drinking ma-
larious water. If there is any such thing as a salutary liquor law,
not derived from excise or police jurisdiction, it would be per-
haps a statute insuring the purity of liquor ; reviving that old
English functionary, the " ale-taster," with his care over all drink-
ables publicly offered for sale. This would be a legitimate and
a constitutional law, as providing for the public safety (which is,
after all is said, the origin and the summit of all laws). There is
no greater charm to the tourist in rural England than the cer-
tainty that, no matter how small the village through which he
passes, he will find at the inn refreshment and comfort, " eatable

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 591

things to eat and drinkable things to drink." Indeed, the ale-
taster was once a public benefactor and more important than the
mayor, and such was his benign influence that old Harrison, writ-
ing in the sixteenth century, declared that the glory of England
was her inns. The roads might be rough and full of highway-
men, but at any inn the traveler could take his ease and be sure
he would not be poisoned. For four hundred years it has been
possible to enter an inn in the smallest and most insignificant
rural hamlet in England and get a thimbleful of liquor without
peril to one's stomach or to one's self-respect. How is it in those
of the United States which prohibit the sale of liquor ? As to
one's stomach, I merely copy an item from a local newspaper
printed in one of those States (suppressing the localities only) :

" Some recent cases of poisoning hereabouts have brought out the statement
that poor whisky is abundant in this city. It is sold principally in the kitchen
dives and in places on the outskirts. Some of the whisky, it is said, has been so
poor that wholesale dealers have disclaimed all knowledge of having sold it.
Some of the unlicensed dealers have been selling ' whisky,' but where obtained it
has been one of the mysteries that are impossible to explain. With the poisoning
of the three men on Sunday night and the investigations which have followed,
some light has been shed upon the subject."

"It was stated in these columns on Monday that there had been a man about
selling a receipt for making whisky. Investigation proves that this is so, but it is
impossible to find a liquor dealer who will say he purchased it for five dollars —
the price asked. This receipt as near as can be ascertained is as follows: One
drachm of oil of vitriol or sulphuric acid, six drachms of spirits of turpentine,
three drachms of spirits of juniper, six draehms of oil of almonds, and a quart of
elderberry wine ; a seductive decoction indeed. These fluids diluted with twenty-
four gallons of water will make about twenty-five gallons of whisky, and cost in
the neighborhood of one dollar and twenty-five cents, while the same quantity of
distilled whisky would cost from forty to seventy-five dollars. Just how much

of a business this man has conducted in is not known, but that he has

been favored with a fairly good trade is not doubted by the regular wholesale

liquor dealers. He has been all through the villages in the and has also

been to ."

So much for the visitor's stomach ; now for his self-respect !
As a native of the State most strenuous in its policy of prohibit-
ing the sales of liquor, I have been now and again a curious col-
lector of the divers and sundry ruses resorted to in evasion of the
statutes by its best citizens, and I am able to note the latest as
experienced during the present summer. At a certain watering-
place hotel within its paternal jurisdiction, guests who desired
wine at dinner, or stimulants at other times, were invited to pur-
chase a keg of an interesting compound known as root beer. A
price for this alleged keg was charged to them on their hotel bill,
and they were at liberty to visit the wine room, or to order from
the waiters any liquors desired, until this price was exhausted,

592 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when another keg of root beer was charged to them, and so on !
This, of course, is only one of hundreds of such devices, which
are the rule and not the exception in the liquor-prohibiting States.
And I beg to ask, what respect a State can expect its citizens to
have for its laws, or for themselves, when forced to habitually re-
sort to a deceit which deceives nobody, in order to live as they
see fit and as they have an inalienable right to live ?

Liquor has always properly been, and always properly will be,
a subject of revenue, or, as it is called, excise, and this excise is
most conveniently levied in the shape of licenses. Of licenses,
high and low, high license is doubtless the best for all concerned,
as providing cleaner and more sumptuously appointed drinking
places, with that modulation and betterment of manners and of
speech to which elegance of surroundings will always conduce.
But prohibitive liquor laws should be discontinued, because sixty
years of certainly faithful trial have shown them to be failures,
dangerous to the public peace, the public health, and the public
morals ; against public policy as tending to bring all reasonable
laws into bad repute, and against absolute right as an interfer-
ence of the law merchant with the jurisdiction of the criminal
law ; enacted, as criminal laws are enacted, by those who are not
supposed to come under their operation.

Much of what has been said of prohibitory liquor laws in this
paper might also be said of the usury laws,* which are of the
family of crime- creating statutes, which are always readily evaded
and which interfere with the market value of the commodity
protected. But there is this difference, that usury laws are de-
manded by the protected class, while prohibitive liquor laws are
not, and never can be.

Admitting freely all that can be said about the horrors which
liquor can work, sociologists as well as Samaritans know that no
public evil can be dealt with abstractly — dragged up by the roots
and exterminated in a single swoop of virtue. Sinful as the
liquor industry may be, its absolute and sudden annihilation
would throw millions out of employment, and put starvation into
the room of competence in countless homes, to remain until, by
the slow labor of economists and publicists, capital and labor had
readjusted themselves to the new condition. And the literal in-
terpretation of statutes at present upon the statute-books of cer-
tain American States would send fathers of families to State
prisons to serve out terms of sixty or a hundred years — under
cumulative sentences which more than cover the natural lives of
men. Fortunately, however, the drinking of liquor does not de-

* In Queen Elizabeth's time the analogy was still more perfect, for the price of liquor
was regulated as the price of money now is sought to be by usury laws — by statute.

ABOLISH ALL PROHIBITIVE LIQUOR LAWS. 593

stroy either the body or the soul. The best evidence obtainable
by medical industry intimates that, while, as everybody knows,
the temperate outlive all other classes, even the habitually intoxi-
cated man may, and does, outlive the rigid and inexorable total
abstainer who refuses to his organism the stimulant which over-
worked or overstrung human systems sometimes insist upon.*

I do not know what evidence can be subpoenaed as to the loss
of souls. But, admitting the occasional loss of a soul, the question
might arise as to whether a soul could not be saved at too high a
price. Should an entire community like the State of Vermont, or
of Maine, or of Kansas, or like Boston, or the city of New York,
for example, imperil its sanitary existence to save any one given
human soul ? Or how large or how small a community should
be allotted to peril per soul ? It requires a strong stomach and a
tranquil nervous system to absorb ice water, and dyspeptics and
excitable persons are not always deserving of death at the hands
of the State.

I know that the easy-going humanitarian answer to this is,
that all prohibitive liquor policies carry within themselves the
seeds of their own dissolution, since they are only agitated in
sparsely settled localities, from which, as populations thicken
there, they gently disappear.! But, meantime, if the traffic in
liquor is dangerous, these policies are working an enormous harm
to the communities where they are tolerated. All history proves
that there is no institution or system in the world which it has
ever been attempted to stifle by legislation which is not to-day as
fixed and immutable as the hills. The efforts of the English
Puritans to abolish the theater made theatrical performances
parcel of English civilization. The attempts of the middle ages,
the Inquisition, and the Index, to destroy the printing press made
the printing press a necessity of life everywhere. If liquor is
dangerous to the United States of America, philanthropists and
patriots should be careful how they pass laws against it !

* I believe the figures are claimed to be as follows : Out of 4,234 cases of mortality
from ordinary causes, the lengths of life were :

Temperate livers 62-13 years.

Careless drinkers 59'67 "

Free drinkers 57'59 "

Habitually intemperate 52'03 "

Total abstainers 51'22 "

According to a recent report of the British Medical Association, in their journal in the
year 1891.

•j- The little town of Westfield, N. J., has two or three active prohibition societies, and I
am told that all the churches (except the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal) preach pro-
hibition from their pulpits. Ten years ago, with a population of two thousand, the town
cast three hundred prohibition votes ; last year, with a population of thirty-seven hundred,
as I am informed, it cast just fourteen !
VOL. XLIV. — 45

594 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.*

BY FREDERIC HOUSSAY.

WE find among animals not only hunting and fishing but the
art of storing in barns, of domesticating various species, of
harvesting and reaping — the rudiments of the chief human indus-
tries. Certain animals in order to shelter themselves take advan-
tage of natural caverns in the same way as many races of primitive
men. Others, like the fox and the rodents, dig out dwellings in
the earth ; even to-day there are regions where man does not act
otherwise, preparing himself a lodging by excavations in the chalk
or the tufa. Woven dwellings, constructed with materials entan-
gled in one another, like the nests of birds, proceed from the same
method of manufacture as the woolen stuffs of which nomad
tribes make their tents. The termites who construct vast dwell-
ings of clay, the beavers who build huts of wood and of mud, have
in this industry reached the same point as man. They do not
build so well, no doubt, nor in so complex a fashion as modern
architects and engineers, but they work in the same way. All
these ingenious artisans operate without organs specially adapted
to accomplish the effect which they reach. It is with such genu-
ine industries that we have to deal, for the most part neglecting
other productions, more marvelous in certain ways, which are
formed by particular organs, or are elaborated within the organ-
ism, and are not the result of the intelligent effort of the indi-
vidual. To this category belong the threads which the spider
stretches, and the cocoon with which the caterpillar surrounds
himself to shelter his metamorphosis.

STRUGGLES OF THE CHASE. — It is not always sufficient for the
hunter to find game and to reach it. If the game is of large size
it may be able to hold its own, and the pursuit may end in a vio-
lent struggle, in which both skill and cunning are necessary to
obtain conquest.

The bird which displays the most remarkable qualities in this
struggle which terminates the • chase, exhibiting indeed a real
fencing match, is the secretary bird (Gypogeranus reptilivorus,
Fig. 1). He is the more interested in striking without being him-
self struck, since the fangs with which his prey, the snake, is gen-
erally armed might at the first blow give him a mortal wound.
In South Africa he pursues every snake, even the most venomous.
Warned by instinct of the terrible enemy he has met, the reptile
at first seeks safety in flight ; the secretary follows him on foot,

* An abstract from the author's book under this title in The Contemporary Science
Series. Imported by Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

595

and the ardor of the chase does not prevent him from being con-
stantly on guard. This is because the snake, finding himself
nearly overtaken, suddenly turns round, ready to use his defen-
sive weapons. The bird stops, and turns in one of his wings to
protect the lower parts of his body. A real duel then begins.
The snake throws himself on his enemy, who at each stroke par-
ries with the end of his wing ; the fangs are buried in the great
feathers which terminate it, and there leave their poison without
producing any effect. All this time with the other wing the sec-
retary repeatedly strikes the reptile, who is at last stunned, and

FIG. 1. — FIGHT BETWEEN THE SECRETARY BIRD AND A SNAKE.

rolls over on the earth. The conqueror rapidly thrusts his beak
into his skull, throws his victim into the air, and swallows him.

HUNTING WITH PROJECTILES. — It has often been repeated that
man is the only creature sufficiently intelligent to utilize as weapons
exterior objects like a stone or a stick ; in a much greater degree,
therefore, it was said, was he the only creature capable of striking
from afar with a projectile. Nevertheless, creatures so inferior as
fish exhibit extreme skill in the art of reaching their prey at a
distance. Several act in this way. There is first the Toxotes
iaculator, which lives in the rivers of India. His principal food is
formed by the insects who wander over the leaves of aquatic
plants. To wait until they fell into the water would naturally
result in but meager fare. To leap at them with one bound is

596

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

difficult, not to mention that the noise would cause them to flee.
The Toxotes knows a better trick than that. He draws in some
drops of water, and, contracting his mouth, projects them with
so much force and certainty that they rarely fail to reach the
chosen aim, and to bring into the water all the insects he desires
(Fig. 2). Other animals also squirt various liquids, sometimes in

attack, but more especial-
ly in defense. The cepha-
lopods, for example, emit
their ink, which darkens
the water and allows them
to flee. Certain insects
exude bitter or fetid li-
quids; but in all these
cases, and in others that
are similar, the animal
finds in his own organ-
ism a secretion which
happens to be more or
less useful to his conser-
vation. The method of
the Toxotes is different.
It is a foreign body which
he takes up, and it is an
intended victim at which
he takes aim and which
he strikes ; his move-
ments are admirably co-
ordinated to obtain a pre-
cise effect.

Another fish, the Che-
linous of Java, also acts
in this manner. He gen-
erally lives in estuaries.

It is therefore a brackish water which he takes up and projects
by closing his gills and contracting his mouth ; he can thus strike
a fly at a distance of several feet. Usually he aims sufficiently
well to strike it at the first blow, but sometimes he fails. Then
he begins again until he has succeeded, which shows that his
movements are not those of a machine.

METHODS OF UTILIZING THE CAPTURED GAME. — Frequently it
is not enough for the animal to obtain possession of his prey.
Before making his meal it is still necessary to find a method of
making use of it, either because the eatable parts are buried in a
thick shell which he is unable to break, or because he has captured
a creature which rolls itself into a ball and bristles its plumes.

FIG. 2.— THE TOXOTES THROWING WATER AT INSECTS.

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

597

Here are some of the more curious practices followed in such
cases.

Sometimes it is a question of carrying off a round fruit which
offers no prominence to take hold of. The red-headed woodpecker
(Melanerpes eryilirocephalus) of North America is very greedy
with regard to apples, and feeds on them as well as on cherries.
It takes him a considerable time to consume an apple, and as he
is well aware of the danger he runs by prolonging his stay in an
orchard, he wishes to carry away his booty to a safe and sheltered
spot. He vigorously plunges his open beak into the apple ; the
two mandibles enter separately, and the fruit is well fixed ; he de-
taches it and flies away to the chosen retreat.

The combination is complicated, and approaches more nearly
the methods employed by man, when the animal makes use of a
foreign body, as a tool or as a fulcrum, to achieve his objects. A
snake is very embarrassed when he has swallowed an entire egg
with the shell ; he can not digest it in that condition, and the mus-
cles of his stomach are not strong enough to break it. The snake
often finds himself in this condition, and is then accustomed either

FIG. 3. — THE LANICS STOCKING ITS LARDER.

to strike his body against hard objects or to coil himself around
them until he has broken the envelope of the egg he contains.

Neither the beak nor the claws of the shrike or butcher bird
(Lanius excubitor) are strong enough to enable him to tear his
prey easily. When he is not too driven by hunger he installs
himself in a comfortable fashion for this carving process, places
on a thorn or on a pointed branch the victim he has made, and
when it is thus fixed easily devours it in threads.

598 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Lanius collurio, an allied bird, uses this method still more
frequently. He even prepares a small larder before feasting.
One may thus see on a thorny branch spitted side by side Coleop-
tera, crickets, grasshoppers, frogs, and even young birds, which
he has seized when they were in flight. (Fig. 3.)

Of all these well-attested facts that which perhaps best shows
how animals in certain circumstances may take advantage of a
foreign body to utilize the product of the chase is the following,
the observation of which is due to Parseval-Deschenes. He fol-
lowed during several hours an ant bearing a heavy burden. On
arriving at the foot of a little hillock the animal was unable to
mount with his load, and abandoned it — a very extraordinary fact
for one who knows the inconceivable tenacity of insects. The
abandonment, therefore, left hope of return. The ant at last met
one of his companions, who was also carrying a burden. They
stopped, took counsel for an instant, bringing their antennae to-
gether, and started for the hillock. The second ant then left his
burden, and both together seized a twig and introduced its end
beneath the first load which had been abandoned because of
its weight. By acting on the free extremity of the twig they
were able to use it exactly as a lever, and succeeded almost with-
out trouble in passing their booty on to the other side of the little
hillock. It seems to me that these ants who invented the lever
are worthy of admiration, and that their ingenuity does not yield
to our own.

Animals construct dwellings either to protect themselves from
the cold, heat, rain, and other chances of the weather, or to retire
to at moments when the search for food does not compel them to
be outside and exposed to the attacks of enemies. Some inhabit
these refuges permanently ; others only remain there during the
winter ; others, again, who live during the rest of the year in the
open air, set up dwellings to bring forth their young, or to lay
their eggs and rear the offspring. Whatever the object may be
for which these retreats are built, they constitute altogether vari-
ous manifestations of the same industry, and I will class them,
not according to the uses which they are to serve, but according
to the amount of art displayed by the architect.

DWELLINGS FORMED OF COARSELY ENTANGLED MATERIALS.—
Diurnal birds of prey are the first animals who practice skillfully
the twining of materials. Their nests, which have received the
name of eyries, are not yet masterpieces of architecture, and re-
veal the beginning of the industry which is pushed so far by
other birds. Usually situated in wild and inaccessible spots, the
young are there in safety when their parents are away on distant
expeditions. The abrupt summits of cliffs and the tops of the
highest forest trees are the favorite spots chosen by the great

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

599

birds of prey. The eyrie generally consists of a mass of dry
branches which cross and mutually support one another, consti-
tuting a whole which is fairly resistant.

Even these primitive nests are not, however, without more
complicated details of interest. Thus Mr. Denis Gale wrote to

FIG. 4. — THE STICKLEBACK AND ITS NEST.

Bendire concerning the golden eagle in America : " Here in Col-
orado, in the numerous glades running from the valleys into the
foothills, high, inaccessible ledges are quite frequently met with
which afford the eagles secure sites for their enormous nests. I
know of one nest that must contain two wagon-loads of material.
It is over seven feet high, and quite six feet wide on its upper sur-

6oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

face. In most cases the cliff above overhangs the site. At the
end of February or the beginning of March the needful repairs
to the nest are attended to, and the universal branch of evergreen
is laid upon the nest, seemingly for any purpose save that of util-
ity. This feature has been present in all the nests I have exam-
ined myself, or have had examined by others ; it would seem to
be employed as a badge of occupancy."

It is scarcely necessary to recall the skillful art with which the
stickleback, which inhabits all our streams, plaits its nest and re-
mains sentinel near it. (Fig. 4.) This fish has indeed monopo-
lized our admiration, and is considered as the most skillful if
not the only aquatic architect. Yet, besides those which I have
already mentioned, there is one which equals the stickleback in
the skill it displays in constructing a shelter for its spawn. This
is the Gobius niger, met on our coasts, especially in the estuaries
of rivers. The male interlaces and weaves the leaves of algse, etc.,
and when he has finished his preparations he goes to seek females,
and leads them one by one to lay in the retreat he has built.
Then he remains in the neighborhood until the young come out,
ready to throw himself furiously with his spines on any impru-
dent intruders.

DWELLINGS WOVEN WITH GREATER ART. — Without doubt the
class of birds furnishes the most expert artisans in the industry
of the woven dwelling. In our own country we may see them
seeking every day to light and left, carrying a morsel of straw, a
pinch of moss, a hair from a horse's tail, or a tuft of wool caught
in a bush. They intermingle these materials, making the frame-
work of the construction with the coarser pieces, keeping those
that are warmer and more delicate for the interior. These nests,
attached to a fork in a branch or in a shrub, hidden in the depth
of a thicket, are little masterpieces of skill and patience. To de-
scribe every form and every method would fill a volume. But I
can not pass in silence those which reveal a science sure of itself,
and which are not very inferior to what man can do in this line.
The Lithuanian titmouse (dSgithalus pendulinus), whose works
have been well described by Baldamus, lives in the marshes in
the midst of reeds and willows in Poland, Galicia, and Hungary.
Its nest, which resembles none met in our own country, is always
suspended above the water, two or three metres above the surface,
fixed to a willow branch.* All individuals do not exhibit the same
skill in fabricating their dwelling; some are more careful and
clever than others who are less experienced. Some, also, are
obliged by circumstances to hasten their work. It frequently
happens that magpies spoil, or even altogether destroy with blows

* Baldamus, Beitrage zur Oologie und Nidologie, 1853, pp. 419-445.

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

601

of their beaks, one of these pretty nests. The unfortunate couple
are obliged to recommence their task, and if this accident hap-
pens two or three times to the same household, it can easily be
imagined that, discouraged and depressed by the advancing sea-
son, they hasten to build a shelter anyhow, only doing what is
indispensable, and neglecting perfection.

THE ART OF SEWING AMONG BIRDS. — There are birds which
have succeeded in solving a remarkable difficulty. Sewing seems

FIG. 5. — THE TAILOR BIRD AND ITS NEST.

so ingenious an art that it must be reserved for the human species
alone. Yet the tailor bird, the Orthotomus longicauda, and other
species possess the elements of it. They place their nests in a
large leaf which they prepare to this end. With their beaks they
pierce two rows of holes along the two edges of the leaf ; they
then pass a stout thread from one side to the other alternately.
With this leaf, at first fiat, they form a horn in which they weave

6O2

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

their nest with cotton or hair. (Fig. 5.) These labors of weaving
and sewing are preceded by the spinning of the thread. The bird
makes it itself by twisting in its beak spiders' webs, bits of cotton,
and little ends of wool. Sykes found that the threads used for
sewing were knotted at the ends. It is impossible not to admire

FIG. 6.— AN EDIBLE BIKDS' NEST AND THE SWALLOW THAT MAKES IT.

animals who have skillfully triumphed over all the obstacles met
with in the course of these complicated operations.

GELATIN NESTS. — These are made by certain swallows who
nest in grottoes or cliffs on the edge of the sea. After having
collected from the water a gelatinous substance formed either of
the spawn of fish or the eggs of mollusca, they carry this sub-
stance 011 to a perpendicular wall, and apply it to form an arc of
a circle. This first deposit being dry, they increase it by sticking
on to its edge a new deposit. Gradually the dwelling takes on
the appearance of a cup, and receives the workers' eggs. (Fig. 6.)
These dwellings are the famous swallows' nests so appreciated by
the epicures of the extreme East, which are edible in the same
way as, for example, caviare.

CONSTKUCTIONS BUILT OF EARTH — SOLITARY MASONS. — Cer-

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

603

tain animals, whose dwelling participates in the nature of a hol-
low cavern, make additions to it which claim a place among the
constructions with which we are now occupied.

The Anthophora parietina is in this group : it is a small bee
which lives in liberty in our climate. As its name indicates, it
prefers to frequent the walls of old buildings, and finds a refuge
in the interstices, hollowing out the mortar half disintegrated by
time. The entrance to the dwelling is protected by a tube curved
toward the bottom, and making an external prominence. (Fig.
7.) The owner comes and goes by this passage, and as it is curved
towards the earth the interior is protected against a flow of rain,
while at the same time the entry is rendered more difficult for
Melectes and Anthrax. These insects, in fact, watch the departure
of the Anthophora to endeavor to penetrate into their nests and lay
their eggs there. The gallery of entry and exit has been built
with grains of sand, the debris produced by the insect in working.
These grains of sand glued together form, on drying, a very re-
sistant wall.*

The other animals of which I have to speak are genuine ma-
sons, who prepare their mortar by tempering moistened earth.

FIG. 7. — HOMES OF MASON BEES.

Every one has seen the swallow in spring working at its nest in
the corner of a window. It usually establishes its dwelling in an
angle, so that the three existing walls can be utilized, and to have
an inclosed space there is need only to add the face. It usually
gives to this the form of a quarter of a sphere, and begins it by

* Latreille, '' Observations sur 1'abeille parietine (Anthophora parietina)" Annales du
.Museum d'Hist. Nat., t. iii, 1804, p. 257.

6o4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

applying earth more or less mixed with, chopped hay against the
walls which are to support the edifice. At the summit of the con-
struction a hole is left for entry and exit. During the whole of
its sojourn in our country the swallow uses this dwelling, and
even returns to it for many years in succession, as long as its work
will support the attacks of time. The faithful return of these
birds to their old nest has been many times proved by attaching
ribbons to their claws ; they have always returned with the dis-
tinctive mark.

MASONS WORKING IN ASSOCIATION. — Ants have already fur-
nished us with numerous proofs of their intelligence and their
prodigious industry. So remote from man from the anatomical
point of view, they are of all animals those whose psychic facul-
ties bring them nearest to him. Sociable like him, they have un-
dergone an evolution parallel to his which has placed them at the
head of insects in the same way as he has become superior to all
other mammals. The brain in ants, as in man, has undergone a
disproportionate development. Like man, they possess a lan-
guage which enables them to combine their efforts, and there is
no human industry in which these insects have not arrived at a
high degree of perfection. If in certain parts of the earth human
societies are superior to those of ants, in many others the civili-
zation of ants is notably superior. No village of Kaffirs can be
compared to a palace of the Termites. The classifications separate
these insects (sometimes called " white ants ") from the ants, since
the latter are Hymenoptera, while the former are ranked among
the Neuroptera, but their constructions are almost alike, and may
be described together. These small animals, relatively to their
size, build on a colossal scale compared to man ; even our most
exceptional monuments can not be placed beside their ordinary
buildings. (Fig. 8.) The domes of triturated and plastered clay
which cover their nests may rise to a height of five metres ; that
is to say, to dimensions equal to one thousand times the length of
the worker. The Eiffel Tower, the most elevated monument of
which human industry can boast, is only one hundred and eighty-
seven times the average height of the worker. It is three hun-
dred metres high, but to equal the Termites' audacity it would
have to attain a height of sixteen hundred metres.

The lofty nest, or Termitarium, constitutes a hillock in the
form of a cupola. The interior arrangement is very complicated,
and at the same time very well adapted to the life of the inhabit-
ants. There are four stories in all, covered by the general ex-
terior walls. The walls of the dome are very thick ; at the base
they measure from sixty to eighty centimetres. The clay, in dry-
ing, attains the hardness of brick, and the whole is very coherent.
The sentinels of herds of wild cattle choose these tumuli as ob-

INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS.

605

servatories, and do not break them down. The walls of this
exterior enceinte a're hollowed by galleries of two kinds : some
horizontal and giving access from outside to all the stories, the
others mounting spirally in the thickness of the wall to the sum-
mit of the dome. When the colony is in full activity, after the
construction is completed, these little passages have no further
use. They served for the passage of the masons when building

FIG. 8. — SECTION OF A PALACE OF THE TERMITES.

the cupola, and they could be utilized again if a breach should be
made in the wall. At the lower part these galleries in the wall
are very wide, and they sink into the earth beneath the palace to
a depth of more than 1*50 metre.

These subterranean passages are the catacombs of the Ter-
mites, and have a very close analogy with those of old and popu-
lous human cities. Their origin is similar; they are ancient
•quarries. The insects hollowed them in obtaining the necessary

6o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

clay for their labors. Later, when the rains come, they serve as
drains to carry off the water which might threaten to invade the
dwelling.

Comparative anatomy has long since removed the barriers,
once thought impassable, raised by human pride between man
and the other animals. Our bodies do not differ from theirs;
and, moreover, such glimpses as we are able to obtain allow us
to conclude that their psychic faculties are of the same nature
as our own. Man in his evolution introduces no new factor.

The industries in which the talents of animals are exercised
demonstrate that, under the influence of the same environment,
animals have reacted in the same manner as man, and have
formed the same combinations to protect themselves from cold
or heat, to defend themselves against the attacks of enemies,
and to insure sufficient provision of food during those hard
seasons of the year when the earth does not yield in abundance.

It must only be added, to avoid falling into exaggeration, that
man excels in all the arts, of which only scattered rudiments are
found among the other animals ; and we may safeguard our pride
by affirming that we need not fear comparison. If our intelli-
gence is not essentially different from that of animals, we have the
satisfaction of knowing that it is much superior to theirs.

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS.

BY J. MARK BALDWIN,

PROFESSOR OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

question "Why are we right or left handed ?" has exer-
cised the speculative ingemiity of many men. It has come
to the front anew in recent years in view of the advances made in
the general physiology of the nervous system ; and certainly we
are now in a better position to set the problem intelligently and
to hope for its solution. Hitherto the actual conditions of the
rise of "dextrality" — as the general fact of uneven-handedness
may be called — in young children have not been closely ob-
served. It was to gain light, therefore, upon the facts themselves
that the experiments described in the following pages were car-
ried out.

My child H was placed in a comfortable sitting posture, the

arms left bare and free in their movement, and allowed to reach
for objects placed before her in positions exactly determined and
recorded by a simple arrangement of sliding rods. The experi-
ments took place at the same hour daily for a period extending
from her fourth to her tenth month. These experiments were

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS. 607

planned with very great care and with especial view to the test-
ing of several hypotheses which, although superficial to those
who have studied physiology, yet constantly recur in publications
on this subject.* Among these theories certain may be men-
tioned which my experimental arrangements were aimed to test.
It has frequently been held that a child's right-handedness arises
from the nurse's or mother's constant method of carrying it ; the
child's hand which is left free being more exercised, and so be-
coming stronger. This theory is ambiguous as regards both
mother and child. The mother, if right-handed, would carry the
child on the left arm, in order to work with the right arm.
This I find an invariable tendency with myself and with nurses
and mothers whom I have observed. But this would leave the
child's left arm free, and a right-handed mother would be found
with a left-handed child. Again, if the mother or nurse is left-
handed, the child would tend to be right-handed. Or if, as is the
case in civilized countries, nurses replace the mothers, it would
be necessary that most of the nurses be left-handed in order to
make most of the children right-handed. Neither of these posi-
tions is true. Further, the child, as a matter of fact, holds on
with both hands, however it is itself held. Another theory main-
tains that the development of right-handedness is due to differ-
ences in weight of the two lateral halves of the body ; this tends
to bring more strain on one side than the other, and so to give
more exercise to that side. This evidently assumes that children
are not right or left handed before they learn to stand. This my
results giveD below show to be false. Again, we are told that in-
fants get right-handed by being placed on one side too much for
sleep : this can be shown to have little force also, when the pre-
caution is taken to place the child alternately on its right and left
sides for its sleeping periods.

In the case of the child H certain precautions were care-
fully enforced. She was never carried about in arms at all — never
walked with when crying or sleepless (a ruinous and needless
habit to cultivate in an infant) ; she was frequently turned over
in her sleep ; she was not allowed to balance herself on her feet
until a later period than that covered by the experiments. Thus
the conditions of the rise of the new right-handed era were made
as simple and uniform as possible.

The experiments included, besides reaching for colors, a great
many of reaching for other objects, at longer and shorter dis-
tances, and in unsymmetrical directions. The following table (I)

* Cf. Vierordt's remarks, Physiologic des Kindesalters, pp. 428, 429. For a detailed
statement of theories on this topic, see chapter x of the very learned monograph on The
Right Hand : Left- ban dedness, by my late lamented colleague and friend Sir Daniel Wilson.

6o8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gives some details of the results of the experiments in which sim-
ple objects were used, extending over a period of four months
(fifth to ninth in her life). The number of experiments at each
sitting varied from ten to forty ; the position of the child being
reversed after half of each series.

TABI.K I.

DATE.

No. of

series.

No. of ex-
periments.

Right
hand.

Left
hand.

Both

hands.

1890. February 10th to March 15th.. .
March 14th to April 14th

30
25

744
623

173
134

166
141

405
343

April 14th to May 14th

25

546

213

130

203

May 14th to June 19th

16

274

57

131

86

Total

96

2,187

577

568

1 042

It is evident from Table I that no trace of preference for either
hand is discernible during this period ; indeed, the neutrality is as
complete as if it had been arranged beforehand, or had followed
the throwing of dice.

I then conceived the idea that possibly a severer distance test
might affect the result and show a marked preferential response
by one hand over the other. I accordingly continued to use a
neutral stimulus, but placed it from twelve to fifteen inches away
from the child. This resulted in very hard straining on her part,
with all the signs of physical effort (explosive breathing, sounds
resulting from the setting of the larynx, rush of blood to the head,
seen in flushing of the face, etc.). Table II gives the results ; the
number in each series was very small — i. e., one to twelve (in one
instance only) :

TABLE II.

DATE.

No. of
series.

No. of
trials.

Right
hand.

Left
hand.

Both
hands.

1890. May 26th to June 10th

32

80

74

5

1

The same cases, distributed according to distance, give us
Table III.

TABLE III.

12 inches.

13 inches.

14 inches.

15 inches.

Right hand

29

10

33

2

Left hand

5

Both hands

1

A comparison of II and III with I shows a remarkable differ-
ence— i. e., during the month ending June 15th, the child showed

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS.

609

no preference for either hand in reaching straight before her
within easy reaching distance (ten inches); but she was right-
handed to a marked degree during the same period as regards
movements which required effort or strain, such as grasping for
objects twelve to fifteen inches distant. The left hand was used
in only five cases as against seventy-four cases of the use of the
right hand ; and further, all these five cases were twelve-inch dis-
tances, the left hand being used absolutely not at all in the forty-
five cases at longer distances.

In order to test this point further, I varied the point of expos-
ure of the stimulus to the right or left, aiming thus to attract the
hand on one side or the other, and thus to determine whether the
growth of such a preference was limited to experiences of conven-
ience in reaching to adjacent local objects, etc. The result appears
in Table IV :

TABLE IV.

12 inches.

13 inches.

14 inches.

15 inches.

Hand used.

Deviations from median line —
2 to 6 inches to left

10 cases

2 "

15 cases
3 "

4 cases
1 "

::::)

Right.
35

15

Left.
2

2 to 6 inches to right ....
Same conditions with color
stimulus

This table shows that deviation to the left in front of the body
only called out the right hand to greater exertion, while the left
hand fell into still greater disuse. This seems to show that dex-
trality is not derived from the experience of the individual in
using either hand predominantly for reaching within the readiest
range of that hand.

Proceeding upon the clew thus obtained — i. e., that a stronger
effort brought a preferential hand reaction — a clew which seems
to suggest that the hand preference is a function of the relative
strength of the influence of the eye stimulus, I introduced hand
observations into a series of experiments on the same child's per-
ception of the different colors which I was making at that time,
thinking that the color stimulus which represented the strongest
inducement to the child to reach, might have the same effect in
determining the use of the right hand as the increased distance in
the experiments already described. This inference is proved to be
correct by the results given in Table V :

TABLE V.
( Hand Right.

Color stimulus,

10 to 15 inches ( Number of cases

Left.
2

Both,

[ May 23d to June 19th.

It should be added that in all cases in which both hands are
said to have been used, each hand was called out with evident in-

VOL. XL1V. 46

6io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dependence of the other, both about the same time, and both car-
ried energetically to the goal. In many other cases in which either
right or left hand is given in the tables, the other hand also moves,
but in a subordinate and aimless way. There was a very marked
difference between the use of both hands in some cases, and of one
hand followed by, or accompanied by, the other in other cases. It
was very rare that the second hand did not thus follow or accom-
pany the first; and this was extremely marked in the violent
reaching for which the right hand was mainly used. This hand
was almost invariably accompanied by an objectless and fruitless
symmetrical movement of the other.

The results of the entire series of experiments on the use of the
hands may be stated as follows, mainly in the words in which
I reported them summarily some time ago : *

1. I found no trace of preference for either hand as long as
there were no violent muscular exertions made (based on 2,187
systematic experiments in cases of free movement of hands near
the body : i. e., right hand, 577 cases ; left hand, 568 cases ; a differ-
ence of nine cases ; both hands, 1,042 cases ; the difference of nine
cases being too slight to have meaning).

2. Under the same conditions the tendency to use both hands
together was about double the tendency to use either (seen from
the number of cases of the use of both hands in the statistics given
above), the period covered being from the child's sixth to her tenth
month inclusive.

3. A distinct preference for the right hand in violent efforts
in reaching became noticeable in the seventh and eighth months.
Experiments during the eighth month on this cue gave, in 80 cases,
right hand, 74 cases ; left hand, 5 cases ; both -hands, 1 case. This
was true in two very distinct classes of cases : first, reaching for
neutral objects (newspaper, etc.) at more than the reaching dis-
tance ; and, second, reaching for bright colors at any distance.
Under the stimulus of bright colors, from 86 cases, 84 were right-
hand cases and 2 left-hand. Right-handedness had accordingly
developed under pressure of muscular effort in the sixth and
seventh months.

4. Up to this time the child had not learned to stand or to
creep ; hence the development of one hand more than the other is
not due to differences in weight between the two longitudinal

* Science, xvi, October 31, 1890; discussed by James, Science, November 8, 1890, by
Dr. J. T. O'Connor, ibid., xvi, 1890, p. 331, and by myself, ibid., xvi, November 28, 1890.
The report is quoted in full in Nature, November 13, 1890, and in part in the Illustrated
London News, January 1Y, 1891. See also Ebbinhaus's Zeitsch. fiir Psychologic, ii, 1891,
p. 239 ; Wilson, The Right Hand: Left-handedness, pp. 128-131 ; Revue Scientifique, 1891,
ii, p. 493 ; discussed by Hazel, Revue Scientifique, 1892, i, p. 113. Both writers in the last-
named journal cite these experiments wrongly as Wilson's.

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS. 611

halves of the body. As she had not learned to speak or to utter
articulate sounds with much distinctness, we may say also that
right or left handedness may develop while the motor speech
center is not yet functioning.

5. In most cases involving the marked use of one hand in prefer-
ence to the other, the second or backward hand followed slowly
upon the lead of the first, in a way clearly showing symmetrical
innovation of accompanying movements by the second hand. This
confirms the inference as to such movements drawn from the
phenomena of mirror-writing, etc., by Fechner and E. H. Weber.

Some interesting points arise in connection with the interpre-
tation of these facts. If it be true that the order of rise of mental
and physiological functions is constant, then for this question the
results obtained in the case of one child, if accurate, would hold
for others apart from any absolute time determination. We
would expect, therefore, that these results would be confirmed by
experiments on other children, and this is the only way their cor-
rectness can be tested.*

If, when tested, they should be found correct, they would be
sufficient answer to several of the theories of right-handedness here-
tofore urged. The phenomenon can not be due to differences in
balance of the two sides of the body, for it arises before the body
begins to stand erect. It can not be due to experience in the use
of either hand, since it arises when there is no such difference of
experience, and since the hand preferred is used, as a matter of
fact, for purposes for which in experience the other would be alto-
gether more convenient.! The rise of the phenomenon must be
sought, therefore, in more deep-going facts of physiology than
such theories supply.

If, on the other hand, heredity be brought to the aid of these
" experience " theories, it is possible to claim that, as structure is
due to function, experience of function must have been first ; and
only thus could the modification in structure which is now suffi-
cient to produce right-handedness in individual cases have been
brought about. On the other hand, if we go lower in the animal
scale than man, analogies for the kinds of experience which are

* Vierordt says concerning such experiments : " Adequate observations are wanting on
the grasping movements of the infant's left and right arm — a kind of observations which
would be of the first importance for this inquiry " (Physiologie des Kindesalters, p. 428) ;
and Wilson : " Only a prolonged series of observations, such as those by Prof. Baldwin
already noted, made at the first stage of life, and based on the voluntary and the un-
prompted actions of the child, can supply the needful data " (Left-handedness, p. 209).

f An additional point, which I think is true, is that a right-handed child learns to shake
hands properly — using the more inconvenient hand across his body — more easily than the
left-handed child.

612 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

urged as reasons for right-handedness are not present ; animals do
not carry their young, nor pat them to sleep, nor do animals shake
hand's! It must therefore be shown that animals are right or
left handed, or that they differ in some marked respect in regard
to function, in their nervous make-up, from man. Admitting the
need of meeting these requirements; admitting again that we have
little evidence that animals are dextral in their functions ; admit-
ting also the known results as to the control of the two halves
of the muscular system by the opposite brain hemispheres respect-
ively ; admitting further that the motor speech function is per-
formed by the hemisphere which controls the stronger side of the
body, and is adjacent to the motor arm center in that hemisphere ;
and admitting, finally, that the speech function is one in which the
animals have little share — all these admissions lead us at once to
the view that there is a fundamental connection between the rise
of speech and the rise of right-handedness.*

Looking broadly at the methods of nervous and muscular
development, and accepting all the results of neurology we are
able to gather, we may say that in the differentiation of func-
tions in the animal series certain principles may be recognized :
1. The deep-seated vital functions represent least nervous differen-
tiation, as is seen in the simple organs known as the lower nerv-
ous centers. 2. New unsymmetrical functions give a differential
or twofold organic development, the great instance of which is
found in the cerebral hemispheres. 3. New symmetrical or uni-
lateral functions find their counterpart each in one of three kinds
of nervous adaptation : (a) co-ordination of the hemispheres in a
single function — i. e., functions which are crippled if either hemi-
sphere is damaged ; (6) co-ordination of particular functions in each
hemisphere — i. e., functions which are not crippled unless both
hemispheres are damaged ; and (c) co-ordination of particular func-
tions in one hemisphere only — i. e., functions which are crippled
if one selected hemisphere is damaged. All these kinds of co-or-
dination exist.

It is easy to see that both speech and right-handed function
belong under the last head of the last class — co-ordinations of
particular functions in one hemisphere only — and that they be-
long in the same hemisphere. Why is this ? What have they in
common ?

A very essential kind of hand movements are the so-called " ex-
pressive " movements, meaning those which serve to convey a
meaning, or express a state of consciousness. Of course, speech is

* This much has been before surmised (see Mazel, Revue Scientifique, 1892, i, p. 113).
He makes no attempt, however, to account for the association, except by calling both func-
tions expressive.

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS. 613

par excellence the function of expression. It is further only a
part of the position upon which the psychological theory of ex-
pression is based, that all movements are in so far expressive, and
that details of expression and its relative fullness are matters of
co-ordination. Now, this co-ordination has attained its ripest and
most complex form, apart from speech, in movements of the hand.
Upon this view it is easy to hold that right-handedness is a form
of expressive differentiation of movement, and that it preceded
speech, which is a further and more complex form of differentia-
tion and adaptation.

The neurological basis upon which this hypothesis rests is
adequate, and affords a presumption as to the psychological devel-
opment as well. The facts I have now given, for the first time,
go some way to support the view : 1. Right-handedness arose be-
fore speech in the child H . 2. Imitation by the hand of move-
ments seen arise before articulate imitations of sounds heard ; *
this in spite of the fact that hearing, in its development in the
child, becomes perfect before sight. 3. Characteristic differences
in children in respect to their general mobility of arm and hand,
manual skill, and quickness of manipulation, extend also to speech.
As compared with my other child, E , the first-born, H , is re-
markably agile and motile generally in her temperament ; and her
speech development was relatively much earlier and more rapid.

It is further interesting to note that musical ability is asso-
ciated with speech ability — a connection which would be expected
when one takes due account of the expressive character and func-
tion of music. As far as theories of the rise of musical expression
have gone, they unite in finding its beginnings in the rudiment-
ary emotional expressions of the animals. The singing of birds is
undoubtedly connected with their mating instincts. Pathologi-
cal cases also show a marked connection between musical execu-
tion and speech, to the extent that, while musical defect almost
invariably involves speech defects, the reverse is much less gen-
erally true — a fact which confirms the view that music is an ear-
lier form, but still a form, of expressive reaction.

Late observations also show, as far as they are sufficient, that
the center for music expression is also located normally in the
left hemisphere for right-handed persons. Oppenheim reports a
case f of total aphasia with total amusia (lack of musical ability
from disease) in which the recovery of speech brought with it
musical recovery also. Furthermore, another case of Oppen-
heim's shows motor aphasia with motor amusia only — i. e., the

* It is interesting that of both hand and speech movements the latest to be lost in dis-
ease are those involved in the so-called " mimicry " of movement and in imitative speech,
f Charit6 Annalen, xiii, 1888, p. 286.

6i4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

patient could still understand tunes, and, further, could imagine
tunes "in his head" (what the French call interieur), while he
could not sing them. This shows a close connection in locality
between motor speech and motor music function, while a slight
separateness of the two centers in locality in the left hemisphere,
explains cases of motor aphasia in which musical execution is
preserved. Further, Frankl-Hochwart declares that no cases are
recorded of amusia from lesion in the right hemisphere,* and
Starr says (in a private letter) of a patient of his : f " My patient
is right-handed, and music does follow speech in being unilater-
ally located ; ... it is well proved that the musical faculty is one-
sided in location." Despite these positive opinions, I think more
critical cases with autopsy are necessary to make the position
quite secure.

All this means simply that the general cause to which is due
the fact of right-handedness is also the cause, through further dif-
ferentiation and emphasis in the same local seat, of the develop-
ment of musical ability and of speech. It now remains to ask :
What was or is this cause, and when in the race-history series did
it begin to operate ? There are only two hypotheses of any force
— either " experience " or " spontaneous variation " at some stage
in biological development.

It is extremely improbable that dextrality should have arisen
among the quadrupeds (or amanous bipeds), for experience was
lacking of unilateral stimulation, and a spontaneous variation of
this kind would have produced such inconvenience of locomotion
and ultimately such asymmetry of form that it would have been
weeded out. J As an extreme example, fancy a bird which is dex-
tral in its flight.*

As soon as we come to bipeds with hands, however, these rea-
sons do not hold. Their locomotion does not depend on manual
symmetry, and any dextrality, however slight, would be of direct
advantage in climbing, fighting, breaking sticks, and pulling
fruit ; since a disproportionate growth of one side would give that
side greater strength than either side would possess in animals
of symmetrical development in the same environment. A very
strong one-armed man can keep at bay a weaker man with two
arms, or destroy him, and this is emphasized in animals, where
brute force is the only resource. It is difficult to find, however,
in the habits of simians any ground for believing that there has

* This means that all cases noted have been right-handed. Deutsche Zeitsch. fur Ner-
venheilkunde, 1891, i, p. 295 and foot-note.

f Referred to in The Psychological Review, January, 1894, p. 92.

\ For this reason the human leg, as Brown-S6quard says, is not as right-sided as the arm.

* The only evidence I know of such a thing is that a cat swims in a circle ; but then
dogs and horses do not.

THE ORIGIN OF RIGHT-HANDEDNESS. 615

been a form of unilateral stimulation which would act to effect a
structural change in one hemisphere over and above the other.
But, apart from this, there is every reason to expect, quite inde-
pendently of function, that two organs of such comparative sep-
arateness and independence of function would not remain exactly
balanced in function; in short, spontaneous variations giving
advantageous dextrality would inevitably arise and persist as soon
as the habits of life were not such that more important functions,
such as locomotion, tended to suppress them and restore bilateral
equilibrium.* There are, as far as I know, very few published ob-
servations of fact in regard to simian or animal dextrality. f

It is likely, therefore, that right-handedness in the child is due
to differences in the two half-brains, reached at an early stage in
life, that the promise of it is inherited, and that the influences of
infancy have little effect upon it. Yet, of course, regular habits
of disuse or of the cultivation of the other hand may, as the child
grows up, diminish or destroy the disparity between the two.
And this inherited brain-onesidedness also accounts for the asso-
ciation of right-handedness and speech — the speech function being
a further development of the same unilateral potency for move-
ment found first in right or left handedness.

THE Marquis of Salisbury has been nominated as president of the next meet-
ing of the British Association, which will be held in Oxford, August 8th. In
proposing him, Sir F. Bramwell mentioned, as among the claims of the marquis,
that he had been Chancellor of the University of Oxford since 1880, that he
would therefore represent both hosts and guests, that he was a distinguished
statesman, a courteous gentleman, a member of the Council of the Koyal Society,
and a true man of science. Ipswich has been designated as the place for the
meeting of 1895.

* It is on this point that 1 differ from Wilson, who claims that while some are natu-
rally right or left handed, most people owe the peculiarity to education ; the evidence, apart
from my experiments, is well put by Mazel, foe. cit.

f I know only the assertion of Vierordt that parrots grasp and hold food with the left
claw, that lions strike with the left paw, and his quotation from Livingstone — i. e., "All
animals are left-handed" (Vierordt, loc. cit., p. 428). Dr. W. Ogle reports observations on
parrots and monkeys in Trans. Royal Med. and Chirur. Society, 1871. Dr. Ogle informs
me in a private letter that the chimpanzee which recently died in the Zoological Garden in
London was discovered by him to be left-handed. I have addressed a circular letter to some
of the officials in zoological institutions here and abroad, and hope to gather some facts in
this way. It is evident that on this theory of spontaneous variation any change which pro-
duced a permanent organic superiority of one hemisphere would be sufficient, and the view
that the difference in the hemispheres is due to a better blood supply to the left hemisphere
might thus have its justification. As a matter of fact, the arterial arrangements do seem
to indicate a more direct blood supply to the left hemisphere (cf. the note of Dr. J. T.
O'Connor, apropos of my experiments, in Science, xvi, 1890, p. 381). It is an interesting
inquiry whether this arterial arrangement is reversed in left-handed persons. Wilson cites
two cases in which there was no such correspondence (loc. cit., p. 179).

616 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

FOSSIL MAN.*

BY JOHN G. ROTHERMEL.

TTTITHIN a comparatively short time our knowledge of man'g
» V existence upon the earth has been greatly increased. By
the aid of monuments, language, man's handicraft in stone, brass,
bronze, and iron in constructing implements of warfare and hus-
bandry, the anthropologist has been able to classify prehistoric
man into ages — namely, the chipped stone or palaeolithic, the pol-
ished stone or neolithic, the brass, the bronze, and the iron ages.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the evidence of the
earliest of these. The records are to be found in Nature's infal-
lible history of the world's development printed on pages of rock
in fossil type. In order that those present not conversant with
geology may more clearly understand what is to follow, it will
perhaps be well to briefly explain the order and arrangement of
these pages of rock.

To carry out the simile, we might say that this great history is
written in three volumes — the first and earliest called Palaeozoic
or Primary ; the second, Mesozoic or Secondary ; and the third,
Kainozoic or Tertiary. The first volume, or Palaeozoic, is divided
into three books, each book treating of the flora and fauna which
existed at the time of which it speaks. The first book is called
Silurian, and treats of that part of the age when invertebrates
predominated ; the second, Devonian, and treats of that part of
the age when fishes predominated ; the third, Carboniferous, and
treats of that part of the age when coal plants predominated.
The second volume, or Mesozoic, is a record of the times when
reptiles predominated. The third volume, Kainozoic, is a record
of the times when mammals predominated.

It must be understood that there is no clear-cut line of demar-
cation separating the life of these ages, some of the forms of the
earliest existing to-day, others having become extinct, the orders
of life named with each age being simply the predominating life
of the period. All these periods are divided into many minor
subdivisions. Man being a mammal, we are, however, interested
only in the subdivisions of the Kainozoic or Tertiary. This
period, beginning with the earliest, is divided into Eocene, Oligo-
cene, Miocene, Pliocene, and Post-Pliocene or Post-Tertiary, also
called Quaternary. For the purposes of this subject we are in-
terested mainly in the Post-Pliocene or Quaternary, which some

* A lecture delivered May 12, 1893, in the Popular Course before the Academy of Nat-
ural Sciences, Philadelphia.

FOSSJL MAN.

617

geologists subdivide, beginning with the earliest, into Pleisto-
cene, Glacial, and Recent.

The most important features of the Post-Pliocene or Quater-
nary period are : First, the advent of man and contemporaneous
flora and fauna. Second, the great Glacial period — the period when
the glaciers extended over
the greater part of Europe
and North America, as at-
tested by the drift forma-
tion with its immense bowl-
ders torn from mountain
sides and carried a hun-
dred miles or more ; glacial
scratches — grooves made
by the rocks carried by the
glaciers on the surfaces
upon which they moved;
terminal and lateral mo-
raines, heaps of rocks left
by the melting ice marking
the limits of the glaciers.
This Glacial epoch sepa-
rates the Post-Pliocene in-
to the three divisions men-
tioned before, which may
be called Preglacial, Gla-
cial, and Post-glacial, in-
stead of Pleistocene, Gla-
cial, and Recent.

It will, perhaps, be of
interest to briefly indicate
some of the hypotheses
that have been advanced
to account for this Glacial
epoch. In the first place,
any hypothesis, in order to

satisfy the necessities of the proposition, must include two seem-
ingly opposed conditions and explain their interaction. To form
a glacier, both heat and cold are necessary ; to form an ice mass,
there must be something to be frozen ; therefore there must exist
sufficient heat to vaporize water, charging the atmosphere with
aqueous vapor, which when carried to higher altitudes or sub-
jected to cold is condensed and precipitated in the form of snow,
the accumulation of which forms the glaciers. Hence, in a glacial
region, if the mean temperature is comparatively high, the snow-
fall must be great, otherwise the heat would melt the snow faster

VOL. XLIV. 47

FIG. 1. — THE SKULL FROM THE NEANDERTHAL CAV-
ERN. A, side; B, front; and C, top view. The
outlines from camera lucida drawings, one half
the natural size, by Mr. Busk ; the details from
the cast and from Dr. Fuhlrott's photographs,
a, glabella; &, occipital protuberance; d, lamb-
doidal suture. (From Huxley's Man's Place in
Nature.)

6i 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

than or as fast as it accumulated ; if the mean temperature is low,
the snowfall may be light and yet the glaciers accumulate, as the
heat would be insufficient to melt that which did fall ; but if the
mean temperature is so high as to prevent the accumulation of
snow, or so low as to prevent the formation of aqueous vapor,
there can be no glaciers formed, the last conclusion being subject
to the qualification that a vapor-laden atmosphere may be carried
by prevailing winds from a warm climate to a cold one, and the
vapor there condensed and precipitated.

One hypothesis is that the whole solar system passes at times
through stretches of space of different temperatures, and that
the Glacial period coincides with a time when the solar system
was passing through a low-temperature area ; another is that the
heat of the sun varies, such variations being the result mainly of
contact with meteorites, as the impact of bodies generates heat,
the idea being that the Glacial epoch coincides with a time when

FIG. 2. — SECTION THROUGH CAVE.

few meteorites were colliding with the sun, the heat emanating
therefrom being therefore decreased. These two hypotheses agree
in one particular — they can neither be proved nor disproved, con-
sequently their only value is speculative.

Again, it is supposed that the earth's axis has shifted — that
during the Glacial period the north pole was in Greenland. This
seems to be negatived by the slight observed shifting of the pole,
and the fact that Tertiary fossil flora, immediately preceding the
Glacial period, of both Greenland and the present arctic regions,
indicate a temperate climate.

Adhe'mar the astronomer advanced the hypothesis, also ad-
vocated by the late Dr. James Cjroll and Prof. James Geikie,
that, as the earth's orbit is elliptical and as the sun is not central
to this orbit but some three million miles nearer one end than the
other, this fact in connection with the precession of the equinoxes
may explain the Glacial epoch ; it being held that during that

FOSSIL MAN. 619

period when winter in the Northern hemisphere coincides with
the earth's position in its orbit farthest from the sun, the mean
temperature of the Northern hemisphere will be considerably
lower than when the reverse conditions prevail — that is, when
winter in the north coincides with the earth's position in its orbit
nearest to the sun, as at present. Moreover, this change of posi-
tion of the earth in its orbit would likely result in a change in
direction of the trade winds, the air currents being mainly caused
by the expansive action of heat creating a vacuum into which
the air rushes from colder areas ; therefore, as the Southern hemi-
sphere would become the warmer, the prevailing winds would be
southward, thus changing the direction of ocean currents, like
the Gulf Stream, to the southward, this being a secondary cause
resulting from the first and further intensifying the cold.

This hypothesis is supported by the fact that at present win-
ter in the Southern hemisphere coincides with the earth's position
in its orbit farthest from the sun, and the ice around the south
pole extends much farther toward the equator than that around
the north pole, the antarctic ice extending as far as the sixty-
seventh degree of latitude. The antarctic summers are also said
to be more humid, cold, and chilly than the arctic summers.

But the earth's orbit is not always the same ; there have been
periods when the orbit described resulted in a considerably greater
difference than three million miles, and it is thought that if this
ordinary eccentricity of the orbit is insufficient to account for
the Glacial epoch, the periods of greater eccentricity would.

This hypothesis seems to explain rather overmuch, for if true,
it accounts not only for the Glacial period, but for many glacial
periods in the past, for, other conditions remaining the same,
there would result a Glacial period for every period in the past
that the earth held the proper relative position in its orbit ; and if
true, there should be geological evidence to sustain it, which there
does not appear to be, for such evidence of earlier glaciers as the
rocks of past geological ages exhibit would seem to indicate local
glaciers, not any widespread glacial action ; but it would be rash
to maintain that the other conditions remained the same ; geology
can not be said to show that they did.

Still another hypothesis is that the Isthmus of Panama was in
glacial times submerged, thus allowing the Gulf Stream to flow
into the Pacific Ocean and thence north ; also that the northern
coast of British America was more elevated than at present.
There is geological evidence to sustain both these propositions,
but not conclusively. It is obvious that under these conditions
the eastern part of the northern coast would be much colder,
being more elevated and having lost the heat emanating from the
Gulf Stream, while the western part would be warmer, having

620

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gained the heat of the Gulf Stream ; thus for the eastern part we
have cold accounted for and for the western part heat — but the
glacial condition extended the whole length ; therefore, while it
seems possible that glaciers might form on the western part by

reason of the snowfall

being great, the case
is different for the
eastern part, which
seems to have been en-
tirely deprived of its
vapor - making ele-
ment, heat, for even
under existing condi-
tions the mean tem-
perature of Greenland
and Labrador is low
and the snowfall light
as compared with
Alaska. The answer
is made to this that
western winds carried
the moisture-laden at-
mosphere from the
west coast to the east,
but these winds would
have to cross the Sier-
ra Nevada and Rocky
Mountains, forcing
them to higher altitudes, resulting in the condensation and pre-
cipitation of their vapor upon the mountains. This difficulty is
overcome by having recourse to the immense lava outflows, cov-
ering thousands of square miles west of the Rocky Mountains,
which are supposed to have taken place about the Glacial period ;
this molten mass is supposed to have generated so much heat as
to modify the customary effect of mountain ranges and get the
vapor-laden atmosphere to the needed point and thus satisfy the
hypothesis, but it offers no explanation of the Glacial period in
Europe.

Many leading geologists favor this view, while others think
the truth will be found in a combination of the last two hypothe-
ses, both being in some measure contributory to the result.

Fossil man has been found in certain countries associated with
the remains of certain animals, among which are the mammoth,
woolly rhinoceros, cave bear, fossil horse, Irish elk, cave hyena,
cave tiger, reindeer, elk, musk ox, aurochs, hippopotamus, lion,
and others. These animals are either now extinct or are, for cli-

Spy Ho. 1 Spy No. 2

FIG. 3. — SUPERIMPOSED OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF SKULLS.

FOSSIL MAN.

621

matal and other reasons, no longer inhabitants of the countries
where fossil man has been found ; hence, as related to those coun-
tries, they are all extinct.

It will be noticed that, of these animals as we now know them,
the lion, tiger, hyena, and hippopotamus are tropical, or indige-
nous to warm climates. The reindeer and musk ox are arctic,
and no doubt the extinct mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were
arctic also. During glacial times these arctic and tropical ani-
mals appear to have occupied the same territory contemporane-
ously. This fact seems more particularly conspicuous with the
lion, tiger, hyena, hippopotamus, mammoth, and woolly rhinoce-
ros; the reindeer and musk ox appearing, at least abundantly,
somewhat later. This fact has given rise to considerable differ-
ence of opinion. It has been argued that the tropical forms are

-p

Chimpanzee.

Spy Man No. 1.

D T
Spy Man No. 2.

Modern Man.

FIG. 4. — OUTLINE DRAWINGS OF THE SYMPHYSES. (From Fraipont and Lohest.)

post-glacial, and that subsequent to the Glacial period the glaci-
ated area passed through a period of tropical conditions.

This argument seems clearly untenable from any point of
view, as there is no evidence of a tropical climate intervening be-
tween the Glacial epoch and the present temperate climate. All
the evidence shows a gradual amelioration of climate until the
present conditions are reached. Again, as the mammoth and
woolly rhinoceros, supposed to be arctic forms, appear associated
with the tropical forms in the same deposit, side by side, they
would have to be considered tropical. For this there is reason,
as their present representatives, the elephant and rhinoceros, are
tropical.

But the facts are these: the reindeer and musk ox, known
arctic forms, appear later than the supposed tropical forms. In
all excavations through glacial material the tropical forms with
mammoth and woolly rhinoceros appear in the lower levels,
never superficially ; where several fossil beds are gone through,
the upper or superficial beds contain the reindeer more abun-

622 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dantly; where the reindeer occurs in the lower levels associated
with the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, hyena, etc., it is not
abundant.

It seems more reasonable to suppose that these tropical forms
were adapted to the cold climatal conditions in some way, as the
mammoth and woolly rhinoceros were, or that the conditions
were not as severe as the immense accumulations of ice would
lead us to imagine, for, as we have seen, if the precipitation is
great, the mean temperature need not necessarily be very low.

Prof. James Geikie thinks that during the Glacial epoch there
were periods of high temperature, when the glaciers retreated and
tropical animals migrated into the glacial region. However this
may be, it is evident from what has been said that these tropical
animals, with the woolly rhinoceros and mammoth, were either
interglacial or preglacial or both. These data are important, as
they fix the age of the associated human remains.

There is considerable diversity of opinion as to the value of
the evidence of man's existence prior to the Pleistocene or early
Quaternary — such evidence as we have being open to criticism or
at least to the objection that it is not conclusive ; it is founded
principally upon roughly worked flints and flint chippings, per-
haps and perhaps not made by man, as their occurrence can, at
least to the satisfaction of some, be otherwise accounted for ; also
upon fossil bones of extinct mammals that bear markings sup-
posed to have been made by contemporaneous man. Such bones
have been found in both Pliocene and Miocene formations, and
their incisions differently interpreted by different naturalists.
Quite recently Prof. Cope has found in the Pliocene of southwest-
ern Oregon obsidian implements of human manufacture associ-
ated and interbedded with remains of fossil birds, but by what
agency they got there has not been determined.

The argument has been advanced as to Miocene man that, as
all the mammalia of this period are extinct, it does not appear rea-
sonable that man alone should survive the causes that proved so
fatal to the rest of the mammalia. Against this it may be urged
that man's superior intelligence would enable him to overcome
adverse circumstances that would prove destructive to other
forms. In fact, this superior intelligence may have been a potent
factor in the destruction of the other forms.

In 1863 M. Desnoyes found in the gravel pit of Saint Prest,
near Chartres, a leg bone (tibia) of a rhinoceros. It bore marks
resembling those undoubtedly made by man on other more re-
cent bones. Reasoning by analogy, the marks on the Saint Prest
bone are also supposed to have been made by man. In the Vic-
toria cave, Yorkshire, there was found a human leg bone (fibula).
Both of these deposits have been considered by competent au-

FOSSIL MAN.

623

thority to belong to the transition period between the Pliocene
and Pleistocene.

In the year 1700, at Cannstadt, Wiirtemberg, Germany, there
Avas found a portion of a human skull associated with animal
remains. Its value was not known until 1835, when Jaeger recog-
nized its importance as evidence of the coexistence of man with
the extinct mammals. This appears to have been the first true
fossil of man found.

In 1857 a human skeleton was discovered in a limestone cave
in the Neanderthal gorge near Hochdal, between Diisseldorf and
Elberfeld, Prussia, associated with remains of extinct mammals.

Spy

Man.

Modern

Man.

FIG. 5. — SHOWING LEG BONES. (From Fraipont and Lohest.)

Unfortunately, the value of this find was not known to the work-
men who made it, and most of the skeleton was lost. Dr. Fuhl-
rott, however, succeeded in securing the cranium, both thigh
bones, two arm bones (a right radius and a left humerus), and a
hip bone (left ilium). In the same year these were described by
Dr. Schaffhausen. All the facial bones were lost. The cranium
consists only of that portion situated above the roof of the orbits
and the superior occipital ridges. This skull has become famous,
and is known as the Neanderthal skull. When first found its re-
markable peculiarities gave rise to much discussion. Many nat-
uralists considered it a special species or even genus; others con-

624 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sidered it as intermediate between man and the apes, and at last,
in order to find some place for it, it was regarded by many as the
skull of an idiot.

The peculiarities that gave rise to these opinions consist main-
ly as follows: A long, narrow skull, a low, rapidly retreating
forehead, and an exceptional development of the brow ridges (su-
perciliary ridges) ; these are so prominent that there is a depres-
sion behind or between them and the frontal bone. They, more-
over, coalesce in the middle line, making a deep depression at the
root of the nose. The bones are also unusually thick, the whole
configuration remarkable and decidedly apelike and brutal.

The other bones found are in keeping with the skull, being
thick and characterized by the unusual development of ridges
and depressions for attachment of muscles; they would indi-
cate a stature of five feet six to five feet eight inches (1'68 to
172 metre).

The cranial capacity has been calculated to be 74'42 cubic
inches (1,220 cubic centimetres), said to be equal to that of the
Malays and superior to that of the Hindus of small stature. The
cranial capacity of the most capacious gorilla skull yet measured
is thirty-four and a half cubic inches, while the largest human
skull had a capacity of one hundred and fourteen cubic inches, the
mean European skull being from ninety to ninety-six cubic inches,
so that, while in capacity there is a wide difference between the
Neanderthal skull and the gorilla skull, there is also a wide dif-
ference between it and the European skull.

In what is known as the cephalic index this skull does not
compare unfavorably with skulls of some existing races. The
cephalic index is based upon the proportion between the antero-
posterior and transverse diameters of the brain case. It is ascer-
tained by multiplying the transverse diameter by one hundred
and dividing the result by the antero-posterior diameter ; this re-
sult is the cephalic index. When it is less than eighty the skull
is said to be dolichocephalic, or long-headed; when more than
eighty the skull is brachycephalic, or short-headed. The antero-
posterior diameter of the Neanderthal skull is eight inches, the
transverse diameter 575 inches ; the cephalic index is therefore
seventy-two, and the skull is dolichocephalic, having an index
less than eighty. The mean cephalic index of the existing Eski-
mos is 69'3.

Similar crania have been found in the tufa beds of La Denise,
in Auvergne, France ; at Eguisheim, in Alsace ; and in the lowest
gravels of the plain of Grenelle. All these are long-headed,
or dolichocephalic, and correspond in other characteristics, but
none are so apelike and brutal. It was therefore until recently
thought that the Neanderthal man was simply a more pro-

FOSSIL MAN. 625

nounced or exaggerated specimen of a general type existing at
that time.

The facial bones are wanting in all these skulls, but a skull
found in the Forbes quarry near Gibraltar, unfortunately of
doubtful geological horizon, but with facial bones intact, coin-
cides very closely in craniological characters with the Neander-
thal skull. These facial bones are rude and massive, the upper
jawbone (superior maxillary) being sensibly prognathic, the nasal
bones prominent, and the nasal orifices very broad ; the dental
arch is of horseshoe-shape, narrowing backward.

A lower jawbone found by Dupoiit in the cave of Naulette in
the valley of the Lesse, Belgium, has been regarded as possibly
belonging to a man of the Neanderthal type. This jaw is remark-
able for thickness ; the molar teeth increase in size backward, the
wisdom tooth being the largest ; there is also an absence of the
chin prominence.

In the year 1886 MM. Fraipont and Lohest, two thoroughly
competent scientific men, discovered two skeletons of the Nean-
derthal type (a man and a woman) at the mouth of a cave in the
commune of Spy, in the Belgian province of Namur.*

These men of Spy were found in the terrace in front of a lime-
stone cave or grotto (as represented on the screen, Fig. 2, by a,
section through the deposit) at the point E, after cutting through
the formation A, nine feet six inches (2'9 metres) thick, composed
of rubble and brown clay, containing calcareous blocks of several
cubic metres volume ; B, a yellow argillaceous tufa, two feet seven
inches (0'8 metre) thick, containing calcareous blocks and difficult
to cut with a pick ; C, about six inches (15 centimetres) thick, of
strong red color, containing flint chippings, angular fragments of
limestone, charcoal, and debris of mammoth tusks ; D, also about
six inches (0*15 metre) thick, a yellow calcareous clay passing into-
a tufa of same nature as B, at the base of which is a small vein of
wood charcoal ; F, brown clay, sometimes black, containing angu-
lar limestone pebbles and flint chippings, under which is t he-
limestone in which the cave is formed, K.

There are no fossils in A, nor at the point where the opening
is made were any found in B ; but the bed B was found to be-
fossiliferous at other points, containing bones of mammoth and
deer, and toward the upper part, in discontinuous layers, flint
chippings. The zone C, above the human bones, is a hard breccia,
resisting the blow of a hammer, and composed of fragments of
mammoth ivory, flint chippings, angular calcareous pebbles, and
pieces of wood charcoal. The continuity of this zone C, the fact

* Rech. ethnograph. sur des ossiments humaines, par Julien Fraipont et Max Lohest.
Archives de Biologic, vii, 1886.

6z6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that the human bones were contained in a very hard bed, from
which they were removed with difficulty, together with the care-
ful examinations of MM. Fraipont and Lohest at the time of find-
ing, preclude any hy-
pothesis of burial or
change of position due
to reworking of strata.
The only logical
conclusion is, that the
men of Spy died at the
entrance of the cave
that served them for a
home, on the ground
that was partly formed
of their kitchen debris.
The animal remains
found on a level with
and below the Spy skel-
etons were woolly rhi-
noceros (abundant),
fossil horse (very abun-
dant), red deer (rare),
reindeer (very rare),
aurochs (plentiful),
mammoth (common),
cave bear (rare), badg-
er (rare), cave hyena (abundant). The utensils found at the side
of the skeletons were two triangular pointed flint instruments
dressed on one face, a thin polished sandstone, many unformed
flint splinters, and a bone instrument.

If we adopt the classification of Quaternary man, based on the
associated fauna and archaeological remains, proposed by M. de
Mortillet, this man of Spy belongs to the Moustieriennes period.
M. de Mortillett recognizes a Quaternary human station earlier
than this, but from it there have been no human bones reported.

The two fossiliferous beds, C and B, above the skeletons, also
contained archaeological remains. Without taking time to de-
scribe these, it may be stated that both beds contained flints of
the same type as those in the bed with the skeletons ; also bone
and ivory instruments. The flint instruments were more elabo-
rate in workmanship and finish, progressively so, being more so
in B than in C.

MM. Fraipont and Lohest regard the men of Spy as being of
the same age and type as the Neanderthal and Cannstadt men.

The superimposed outline drawings (upon the screen) of a side
and top view of the skulls, in which the solid line represents the

FIG. 6. — SKULL OF THE MAN OF SPY. From Prof. G. F.
Wright's Man and the Glacial Period. (From a photo-
graph.)

FOSSIL MAN.

627

Neanderthal, the dotted line Spy man No. 1, and the broken line
Spy man No. 2, show how closely they coincide, especially in the
case of Spy man No. 1, which is scarcely distinguishable from the
Neanderthal. The skull of Spy man No. 2, while retaining the
general characteristics of the Neanderthal, is more arched and
higher in the frontal region. The cephalic index of Spy No. 1 is
seventy ; that of Spy No. 2, seventy-four to seventy- six.

The immensely developed brow ridges (superciliary crests) are
not known in any existing race, nor is the rapidly retreating fore-
head, except in rare and isolated cases. Both are well-known
characters in the Simiidcz. The characters exhibited by the lower
jaw are remarkable, and are presented by no existing human race.
The angle formed by the anterior face of the mandibular sym-
physis with the inferior border of the horizontal ramus (that is,
the angle between the chin and the lower jaw) is an obtuse angle,
while in all existing races it is an acute angle. There is no chin
prominence in the Spy men.

The posterior face of the mandibular symphysis (that is,
separating the lower jaw at the chin and exposing the separated
faces) presents characters approaching an outline intermediate
between the anthropoid apes and existing man, as illustrated on
the screen by outline drawings of the symphyses of the chimpan-
zee, Spy No. 1, Spy No. 2,
and modern man. By
comparing the corre-
sponding parts as repre-
sented by the letters this
will be evident. Thus
the concavity P exists in
the chimpanzee and Spy
No. 1 and No. 2, but is
scarcely discernible in ex-
isting man ; the promi-
nence G exists in the
chimpanzee, Spy No. 1
and No. 2, and is scarce-
ly discernible in existing
man. The concavity T
has the same relation ;

the prominence B, for the insertion of the genioglossal muscles,
exists in all ; and from this point the outline slopes rapidly for-
ward in existing man and Spy No. 1 and No. 2, while less so and
to a less denned termination in the chimpanzee. The upper part
of the outline, except that it is more vertical, corresponds more
nearly with the chimpanzee, while the lower part corresponds
more nearly with existing man.

FIG. 1. — SKULL OF THE OLD MAN OF CRO-MAGNON,
EYZIES. (Reindeer epoch.)

628 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The absence of the chin prominence is also shown in these
views. As will be noticed, the line A C, let fall from the anterior
superior angle of the symphyses, falls entirely outside of the rest
of the anterior outline in the chimpanzee, Spy No. 1, and Spy No.
2, while in modern man it cuts the outline, leaving a considerable
prominence anterior to it.

The molar teeth increase in size posteriorly. Prof. Cope, from an
examination of the teeth from casts furnished him by M. Lohest,
points out many interesting peculiarities in dentition, prominent
among which is the fact that the superior molar teeth are quadri-
tuberculate. In Europeans they are generally trituberculate. In
some lower races — Malays, Polynesians, and Melanesians — they
are quadrituberculate, as they are also in the anthropoid apes.
The bones of the forearm, radius, and ulna are so curved as to
produce a wide interosseous space, not observed in any existing
race, but common in apes.

The thigh bone, or femur, is round in section and curved ante-
riorly. This is only known among existing races in the Negritos-
of the Philippine Islands. It is normal among apes.

The tibia has an oval section, and is shorter in relation to the-
femur than in any existing race. This is also a simian character.

The condyles of the femur are wide, and are more produced
posteriorly than in any existing race.

The articulation between the femur and tibia is such that the-
men of Spy must have walked with a fixed bend at the knees.
Moreover, the body must have been bent forward in order to pre-
serve equilibrium. These men were of short, powerful build.

In general the man of Spy presents many simian characters,,
but he is still distinctively a man. To use the words of MM.
Fraipont and Lohest, between him and the highest apes there is-
" an abyss " ; to which Prof. Cope adds, " though, from a zoologi-
cal point of view, it is not a wide one/'

On the other hand, this man of Spy presents characters that
seem to distinctly define and separate him specifically from all
other known races of men. In recognition of this fact, the name
Homo neanderthalensis has been proposed for him.

MM. Quatref ages and Hami regard the Cannstadt man and the-
Neanderthal man as being of the same age and type, and have
classified with them the crania found at La Denise, Eguisheimr
and in the lowest gravels of the plain of Grenelle, under the name
of the Cannstadt race. As before stated, MM. Fraipont and
Lohest consider the Spy man to be of the same age and type,,
referring it also to the Cannstadt race. Of this race Quatrefages
says : " It dispiited the ground with the great extinct mammals,,
with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave bear, and the-
cave hyena ; it belongs, therefore, to the earliest ages of the Qua-

FOSSIL MAN.

629

ternar}r." Dr. Schaffhausen thinks it can be traced to an earlier
period still. In view of the discovery of the Spy man with its
better definition of the Cannstadt race, it is possible that the men
of La Denise, Eguisheim, and the lowest gravels of Grenelle will
have to be separated from this race.

In the valley of the Vdzere, in the southwest of France, in
that of the Somme in the northwest of France, at Grenelle near
Paris, in the Gourdon grotto in the middle of the central Pyre-
nees, in the department of the Basses-Pyre'ne'es, in the valley of
the Meuse in Belgium, and in several other localities needless to

JFiG. 8. — THE SKULL FROM THE CAVE OF ENGIS — viewed from the right side, a, glabella,
i, occipital protuberance (a to b, glabello-occipital line); c, auditory foramen. (From
Huxley's Man's Place in Nature.)

repeat here, there has been found a fossil man, morphologically
much different from the Cannstadt man.

To this man MM. Quatrefages and Hami have given the name
•of the Cro-Magnon race, from the rock shelter of this name in the
valley of the Ve*zere, near the village of Les Eyzies, where in the
year 1858 the bones of three men, one woman, and a child were
found.

This race is regarded as more recent than the Cannstadt race.
The evidence to sustain this view is quite convincing.

In the Grenelle basin, near Paris, the Cannstadt man, the Cro-
Magnon man, and a skeleton approaching a type known as the
JFurfooz man (to be described later) appear in chronological order,

630 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

superimposed one upon the other, the Cannstadt race occupying
the lowest gravels, the Cro-Magnon race the alluvial beds at a
depth of ten to thirteen feet, and the Furf ooz race at a depth of
five to eight feet.

The Cro-Magnon skull is similar to the Cannstadt in one par-
ticular only — they are both dolichocephalic, long-headed — the
cephalic index of that of the old man of Cro-Magnon being 7376,
that of the Engis skull from the Meuse, Belgium, being 70'52 ; so
that we have in both races long, narrow skulls, but here the re-
semblance ceases. The forehead of the Cro-Magnon skull is well
proportioned, rising above brow ridges (superciliary ridges), but
slightly marked in some instances, better defined in others, but
never excessively prominent and apelike as in the Cannstadt
skull. The vault presents fine proportions, tne calculated capa-
city being 96*99 cubic inches (1,590 cubic centimetres). This is
higher than the mean capacity of existing European skulls.

The facial bones indicate the type of heads called by Pruner
Bey disharmonic — that is, a head with a skull elongated from
before backward and a face elongated from above downward is
harmonic. When there is a disagreement in these proportions it
is disharmonic. In this case the face is broad while the head is
long. The eyes were small, the nose bold and narrow. The max-
illary bones projected outward, so as to produce decided progna-
thism ; the chin projects forward ; in stature they were tall, meas-
uring from five feet ten to six feet eight inches. All the bones of
the skeleton are solid, thick, and indicate a powerful people.

In the valley of the Vdzere within a distance of seven or eight
miles there have been found eight settlements of this race. I will
not detain you to enumerate these or describe them separately.
Suffice it to say that, while the remains are all undoubtedly of
the same race, the associated animal and archaeological remains
indicate clearly that they are not of the same age, but rather
those of successive periods of development ; thus the eight settle-
ments give, as it were, an epitomized history of the race.

The most ancient, being connected by its fauna with the lower
alluvium of Grenelle, the men of this period were probably little
superior to the Cannstadt race. In the next settlement, that of
Cro-Magnon itself, the arms and implements were more numerous
and varied, though lighter and made of flint ; the large animals —
mammoth, bear, and hyena — were still killed for food. In other
more recent settlements the cutting of flints was developed to a
marvelous perfection ; arrowheads, spear and lance points were
made with much care and finish.

In the most recent settlements when the reindeer predominated
the industry underwent a change. Bones and the antlers of rein-
deer were fashioned into weapons, while flint appears to have

FOSSIL MAN.

631

been used for tools only. They made harpoons, barbed arrow-
heads, and needles not much longer than our own, with pierced
eyes. Burned wood and ashes are evidence of their knowledge of
fire and perhaps cooking, though no vessels for this purpose have
been found. From the needles it is a fair inference that they
made clothes out of the skins of animals. They also carved with
flints on the bones of animals, some of these of fair artistic merit ;

FIG. 9.— DELINEATIONS ON PIECES OF ANTLER (La Madelaine). 1. Drawing of a fish on rein-
deer horn. 2. Kepresentation of a squatting stag on stag horn. 3. Eunning reindeer on
reindeer horn. 4. Piece of reindeer horn, showing on one side two heads of the aurochs,
and on the other a human figure, an eel (?), two horse heads, and three rows of marks.
The portions which would not be visible, owing to the roundness of the piece of horn,
have been drawn beyond its contour.

most of the representations are of animals, few attempts being
made at the human form, and these not good. They visited the
seashore, as marine shells are found, and from the character of
the burial places the inference is fair that they had some idea of
a future existence.

The skeleton found in the cave of Mentone in the Mediterra-
nean (just east of Nice) was probably of this race.

Toward the latter part of the time of the predominance of the
reindeer there is a decrease in the bone implements found, and a
greater finish is noted in the flint implements ; no doubt, with the

632 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

amelioration of climate, retreat of the glaciers, and consequent
moving northward of the reindeer, the conditions of existence
materially changed. It is maintained by some naturalists that
the man of Cro-Magnon followed the reindeer north, that the set-
tlements remained for a long time uninhabited, and that the man
who made the polished flint implements is another and distinct
race — neolithic man, the earliest man of the present period. On
the other hand, it is held that the polished flint race is but a de-
velopment of the Cro-Magnon. In support of this it is claimed
that in the upper levels of a rock shelter at Sorde, in the depart-
ment of the Basses-Pyre'ne'es, human bones of the Cro-Magnon
type and cut flints were found, but with them a narrow, thin

FIG. 10. — PREHISTORIC MAN FROM THE CAVE OF MENTONE. (From Dana's Manual of

Geology.)

blade and a triangular dagger, which are very similar to the
finest productions of the neolithic age. The most plausible conclu-
sion would seem to be that many, but not all, of the Cro-Magnon
men followed the reindeer and retreating ice northward, and that
those remaining amalgamated with the neolithic immigrants, ac-
cepting in a measure their industries ; thus we have the mixtures
of the implements of palaeolithic and neolithic man.

The most recent of the races of fossil man have been grouped
by MM. Quatrefages and Hami under the name of the Furfooz
race, from Furfooz in the valley of the Lesse, Belgium ; here a
complete station, comprising a grotto where they lived and a
burial grotto, was found. As before mentioned, a race allied to
this is found in the Grenelle basin near Paris. Grouping on cranio-
logical characters, and considering a head found at La Touchere
in a bank of the Seille as an allied form, we have in this group

FOSSIL MAN. 633

<

four type's. They are all short heads (bracJiycephdli) , the first
Furfooz. race having a cephalic index of 79'31 ; the second, 81'39 ;
that of ,Grenelle, 83'53 ; that of La Touchere, 84'32. The La Tou-
chere 'skull is remarkable for a disharmony the inverse of that of
the Crc/-Magnon. In this case the skull is broad and short while
the face is long.

The two races of Furfooz have a family resemblance, but are
distinctive types : in the first the head is harmonic, the forehead
retreating, the face broad, a sufficiently prominent nose, square
orbits, and an almost orthognathous superior maxillary ; in the
second Furfooz race the forehead rises somewhat perpendicularly,
the orbits and the face are longer, and the superior maxillary pro-
jects forward, producing a decided prognathism. In the Gre-
nelle race the brow ridges are full and give a slightly oblique
direction to the base of the forehead, but the arc soon rises and
is regular, the head is harmonic, the cheek bones are prominent,
the orbits approach the square form, the nose is sufficiently promi-
nent, and the maxillary bones are prognathous. The men of Gre-
nelle and Furfooz were of small stature, five feet four to five feet
six inches. The bones of the limbs and trunk are strong.

Some investigators are disposed to regard these Furfooz races
as neolithic or belonging to recent times, but the associated ani-
mal forms seem to place them among the Quaternary forms,
though perhaps near the close of the Glacial period. The remains
of their handicraft would indicate a peaceable people. Their im-
plements were made of flint and reindeer horn. Knives, saws,
scrapers, and bodkins were made of the former, and lances or
javelins of the latter. The workmanship was inferior to that of
the most recent Cro-Magnon men. Skins were used for clothing,
and their burial places indicate a belief in another life.

It is probable that this race met with the same fate as the
Cro-Magnon ; with the retreating ice the animals upon which they
lived moved northward and to higher altitudes, the majority of
the Furfooz men following, others remained stationary, and these
were eventually absorbed by long-headed and short-headed men
of the neolithic or polished stone period.

Pruner Bey advanced the hypothesis that this brachycephalic
race were the ancestors of a so-called Mongoloid type of man, he
considering that a type of man exists uniting the characters of
the Mongol proper and the white races, and extending over the
greater portion of the north of the old continent and even into
America.

While, so far as our knowledge goes, the long-headed races
antedated the short-headed, there is no evidence that the latter
descended from the former. As we have seen, the long-headed
Cro-Magnon and the short-headed Furfooz both had represents-

VOL. XL1T. 48

634 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tives in the reindeer period. No doubt these fossil races, modi-
fied by intercrossing and other causes, persisted up to present
times.

In this connection it may be well to refer briefly to the con-
tention now prevailing as to the origin and original habitation of
the ancestors of the present inhabitants of Europe. This subject,
very interesting, is full of difficulties, which open it up to specu-
lation and give full play to that class of scientists whom Prof.
Huxley has called the Uhlans of science. Philology seems to take
precedence in these investigations. The long-recognized simi-
larity in the so-called romance languages — French, Italian, and
Spanish — led Sir William Jones, about a century ago, to point out
the alliance between Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin,
Lithuanian, Slavonian, German, Celtic, etc. Inasmuch as the
similarity of French, Italian, and Spanish would be unintelligible
if it were not for Latin, so the relation between all of the above-
named tongues is unintelligible without a root tongue and a peo-
ple who spoke it.

At first this honor was given to Sanskrit and the inhabitants
of the valley of the Ganges. Subsequent investigations demon-
strated that Zend and Sanskrit were modifications of an Indo-
Iranian tongue, of which Zend and Sanskrit were offshoots. Then
the region of the Hindu Koosh and Pamir was thought to be
the original seat; this idea crystallizing, as it were, long held
sway. As the people spread northwest into Europe and south-
east into India, they were called the Indo-Germanic race, and
have now come to be called the Aryan race, said to be the name
by which the Persians and Hindus knew themselves before their
separation.

More recently speculation as to the original seat of the Aryans
has, we might say, run wild. Russia, Finland, the shores of the
Baltic, Scandinavia, and the Caucasian region all have or have
had their advocates. The claims made for the Caucasian region
and Russia appear to be the most plausible. They are, moreover,
to some extent complementary to each other.

For the first locality the principal reason advanced is philo-
logical. It is held that the root language would necessarily con-
tain names for the familiar objects of the environment. As there
appear to be no words in Aryan to represent certain animals —
camel, lion, and tiger — it is supposed these forms did not exist in
the locality ; being unknown to the people, they had no names for
them. Hence, by studying the confines of animal life, a locality
where the unnamed life did not exist would fill the linguistic re-
quirement. The Caucasian region is said to do this. This reason-
ing is, however, of the negative kind, and is open to the objec-
tions that all negative reasoning is.

FOSSIL MAN. 635

The argument for the Russian locality is known as Latham's
Sarmatian hypothesis. It takes for a starting point the position
that one important prerequisite for the development of the Aryan
race was that in its nascent stages at least it should be kept pure.
It is well known to geologists that at a not very remote period
Europe and Asia Minor were continuous across the Bosporus, the
barrier being about two hundred feet above the sea. Going east
from this point we encounter the Black Sea, at present on a level
with the Mediterranean ; the Caspian, eighty-five feet above ; and
the Aral, one hundred and fifty-seven feet above. Therefore, at
the time that Europe and Asia Minor were continuous, all this
area represented by the above-mentioned seas and the intervening
land was one vast sheet of water, which in connection with the
mountain ranges would effectually bar the progress of a non-
maritime people, thus preserving it from contamination with
other races and at the same time leaving it a vast area in which
to develop. If the Aryan race existed at this time, this was no
doubt an ideal place for its development. Moreover, the wide
area covered gave room for considerable differentiation in lan-
guage before it began to spread over India and the rest of Eu-
rope, as many dialects must have prevailed, with considerable
difference between those of the central tribes and those of the
periphery.

When by the erosion of the Bosporus the land was drained
and assumed its present condition, the race is supposed to have
spread in all directions. This spreading from a central point
appears, in view of the great diversity of the Aryan languages,
yet all with an Aryan root, as more reasonable than the hypothe-
ses, like that of the Caucasian region, which necessitate their
spreading in successive migratory waves.

As to the origin of the Aryan race all is as yet speculation.
On this point the Uhlans have the field. That there was a race
or a people speaking the root tongue of all the Indo-European
tongues is beyond dispute, but that all the Indo-European people
speaking the so-called Aryan languages are of this race is not so
clear. Whatever the truth may be as to the original seat of the
Aryan race and as to its origin, they seem to be a distinct people
and not to have developed from fossil or palaeolithic man, as we
know him, unless perhaps Pruner Bey's idea (alluded to before)
may prove to be true, viz., that the Furfooz man developed into
a so-called Mongoloid race, and the Aryans are a division of this
race.

We have seen in some of the abodes of fossil men described
that there was evidence that they had mixed and acquired some
of the customs of another, more advanced, so-called neolithic race.
These neolithic men may have been and possibly were the pio-

636 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

neers of the migrating Aryans, and existing Europeans are no
doubt the descendants of the union of the two — the Aryan lan-
guage having in great measure or entirely replaced the mother
tongue, perhaps a very crude one, of fossil man. It is, however,
maintained by some investigators that palaeolithic or fossil man
died out, and that a period or hiatus existed between his time and
the peopling of Europe by neolithic man.

In America we have one skull reported from Brazil, the Lagoa
Santa skull, but of doubtful geological horizon. It is, however,
figured as of the Cannstadt type. In the United States we have
one skull from the gold sands under Table Mountain, California,
known as the Calaveras skull. This find has met with much
criticism.

Weapons and implements of palaeolithic man have been re-
ported from the Pacific coast, Minnesota, Indiana, Ohio, and the
Atlantic coast in the Delaware River Valley. Investigators re-
gard this man, whose existence is proved by weapons and imple-
ments rudely fashioned of argillite, as being interglacial. Prof.
Holmes has within the past two months severely criticised the
Minnesota and Ohio finds. The question here also arises, What
became of him ? Did he follow the retreating ice northward ? for
it seems pretty generally agreed that the American Indian, come
from where he may, is not the descendant of palaeolithic man.

We saw in the first part of this paper that there was no posi-
tive evidence of man prior to the Pleistocene period ; neverthe-
less, man must have existed before that time, for during that
period his known fossil remains covered a wide area, and when
we take into consideration the few fossils that are preserved by
the rocks in comparison to the whole number of any species that
perish, it is evident that Pleistocene man must have been numer-
ous ; and, as he must have descended from antecedent man, there
can be little doubt that he existed in Pliocene and perhaps Mio-
cene times.

There have been many attempts made to measure the age of
geological strata — none, however, that can be said to be satisfac-
tory. Not only are any experimental data that can be used very
uncertain indices of what actually took place in the remote past,
but the bias of the experimenter in favor of this or that hypothe-
sis is apt to be impressed on the result attained. It may be stated,
however, that scientific opinion, based on careful observations
and comparative computations from these observations, the de-
tails of which our time will not permit us to go into, seems now
generally agreed that the Glacial period closed from ten to fifteen
thousand years ago.

We must remember that fossil man existed in preglacial or
interglacial times, long anterior to the close of the Glacial period.

PROFESSOR TTNDALL. 637

All or some part of that period, when North America and Europe
were for the most part covered with glacial ice, intervenes be-
tween the time of man's undoubted existence — the time of the
Cannstadt, Cro-Magnon, and Furfooz races — and the beginning
of the time figured by these savants.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL.

Br PROF. T. H. HUXLEY.

PERSONAL, like national, history has its epochs ; brief sea-
sons, during which life is fuller than usual, and the present
is more obviously pregnant with the future than at other times.
For me, the year 1851 constitutes such an epoch. In November,
1850, I had returned to England after an absence, which not only
extended over a considerable period of time, but covered the
critical age of transition from adolescence to full manhood. In
the course of these four years, largely spent in little-explored
regions of the other side of the globe, I had been in the world as
well as round it, and stored up varied experiences of things and
men. Moreover, I had done some bits of scientific work which, as
I was pleasantly surprised to learn on my return, were better
thought of than I had, I will not say expected, but ventured to
hope, when I sent them home ; and they provided me with an
introduction to the scientific society of London. I found the new
world, into which I thus suddenly dropped, extremely interesting,
and its inhabitants kindly disposed toward the intruder. The
veterans were civil, the younger men cordial ; and it speedily
dawned upon my mind that I had found the right place for my-
self, if I could only contrive to stop in it. As time went on, I
acted upon this conviction ; and, fortune greatly aiding effort, the
end of it was thirty odd years of pretty hard toil, partly as an
investigator and teacher in one branch of natural knowledge, and
partly as a half-voluntary, half-compelled man-of-all-work for
the scientific household in general.

But the year 1851 has other and even stronger claims to be
counted an era in my existence. In the course of the twelve
months after my return, I made acquaintances which rapidly
ripened into friendships, knit with such strong bonds of mutual
affection and mutual respect, that neither the ordinary vicissi-
tudes of life, nor those oppositions in theory and practice which
will arise among men of mental constitutions diverse in every-
thing but strength of will, nor, indeed, any power short of al-
mighty Death, has been able to sunder them from that time to
this. And among those friends who, as the years rolled on,

638 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"... mir so oft
In Noth and Trftbsal beigestanden," *

to whom, indeed, I have found the old shikaree's definition of a
friend, as " a man with whom you can go tiger-hunting," strictly
applicable, almost the earliest was John Tyndall.

My elder by some five years, Tyndall's very marked and vigor-
ous personality must have long taken its final set when we fore-
gathered in 1851. The dyer's hand is subdued to that it works
in ; and, it may be, that much occupation with types of structure,
elsewhere, is responsible for a habit of classifying men to which I
was, and am, given. But I found my new friend a difficult sub-
ject— incertm sedis, as the naturalists say ; in other words, hard
to get into any of my pigeon-holes. Before one knew him well,
it seemed possible to give an exhaustive definition of him in a
string of epigrammatic antitheses, such as those in which the
older historians delight to sum up the character of a king or
leading statesman. Impulsive vehemence was associated with a
singular power of self-control and a deep-seated reserve, not easily
penetrated. Free-handed generosity lay side by side with much
tenacity of insistence on any right, small or great ; intense self-
respect and a somewhat stern independence, with a sympathetic
geniality of manner, especially toward children, with whom Tyn-
dall was always a great favorite. Flights of imaginative rhetoric,
which amused (and sometimes amazed) more phlegmatic people,
proceeded from a singularly clear and hard-headed reasoner, over-
scrupulous, if that may be, about keeping within the strictest lim-
its of logical demonstration ; and sincere to the core. A bright
and even playful companion, Tyndall had little of that quick
appreciation of the humorous side of things in general, and of
one's self in particular, which is as oil to the waves of life, and is
a chief component of the worthier kind of tact ; indeed, the best
reward of the utterer of a small witticism, or play upon words, in
his presence, was the blank, if benevolent, perplexity with which
he received it. And I suppose that the character-sketch would be
incomplete, without an explanation of its peculiarities by a refer-
ence to the mixture of two sets of hereditary tendencies, the one
eminently Hibernian, the other derived from the stock of the
English Bible translator and Reformer.

To those who have been privileged to become intimate with
Tyndall, however, sketch and explanation will seem alike inade-
quate. These superficial characteristics disappeared from view,
as the powerful faculties and the high purposes of the mind, on
the surface of which they played, revealed themselves. And to

* ... have so often stood by me
In trouble and adversity.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 639

those who knew him best, the impression made by even these
great qualities might well be less vivid than that left by the
warmth of a tenderly affectionate nature.

" If I pull through this it will be all your care, all your doing."
These words (I give them from memory), uttered the night before
his death, were meant for no ear but that of the tireless nurse,
watcher, secretary, servant, in case of need, to whom they were
addressed ; and whose whole life had been, for many years, de-
voted to the one object of preserving that of her husband. Ut-
terly hateful to me as are the violations of a privacy that should
be sacred, now too common, I have sought and obtained permis-
sion to commit this, and take all responsibility for it. For the
pitiful circumstances of Tyndall's death are known to all the
world ; and I think it well that all the world should be enabled
to see those circumstances by the light which shines forth, alike
on the dead and on the living, from the poor crumpled piece of
paper on which these treasured words were, at once, recorded.

But I have wandered far from the year 1851 and its nascent
friendships.

At that time Tyndall and I had long been zealous students of
Carlyle's works. Sartor Resartus and the Miscellanies were
among the few books devoured partly by myself, and partly by
the mighty hordes of cockroaches in my cabin, during the cruise
of the Rattlesnake ; and my sense of obligation to their author
was then, as it remains, extremely strong. Tynd all's apprecia-
tion of the seer of Chelsea was even more enthusiastic ; and, in
after-years, assumed a character of almost filial devotion. The
grounds of our appreciation, however, were not exactly the same.
My friend, I think, was disposed to regard Carlyle as a great
teacher ; I was rather inclined to take him as a great tonic ; as a
source of intellectual invigoration and moral stimulus and re-
freshment, rather than of theoretical or practical guidance. Half
a century ago the evangelical reaction which, for a time, had
braced English society was dying out, and a scum of rotten and
hypocritical conventionalism clogged art, literature, science, and
politics. I might quarrel with something every few paragraphs,
but passing from the current platitudes to Carlyle's vigorous
pages was like being transported from the stucco, pavement, and
fog of a London street to one of his own breezy moors. The
country was full of bowlders and bogs, to be sure, and by no
means calculated for building leases ; but oh the freshness and the
freedom of it !

Our divergent appreciation of Carlyle foreshadowed the only
serious strain to which our friendship was ever exposed. When
the old Cavalier and Roundhead spirit woke up all over England

640 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

about the Jamaica revolt and Governor Eyre, I am afraid that, if
things had been pushed to extremities over that unfortunate busi-
ness, each of us would have been capable of sending the other to
the block. But the sentence would have been accompanied by
assurances of undiminished respect and affection; and I have
faith that we should not have spoiled our lives by quarreling over
the inevitable.

Carlyle's extraordinary peculiarities of style, even at his worst,
were not, to me, the stumbling-blocks which they often proved
to other people, who, in their irritation, would talk of them as
affectations. Even admitting them to be indefensible, it seems to
me that if he is chargeable with affectation at all (and I do not
think he is), it is rather when he writes the classical English, say,
of the Life of Schiller. As any one who ever heard Carlyle talk
knows, the style natural to him was that of The Diamond Neck-
lace.* These observations have a bearing on the adverse criticisms
of a like kind, to which Tyndall was sometimes subjected. Modes
of speech and action which some called mannerisms, or even af-
fectations, were, in fact, entirely natural ; and showed themselves
in full force, sometimes with a very droll effect, in the smallest
gathering of intimate friends, or with one or two on a hillside,
from whom abundant chaff was the only response likely to come.
I say, once more, Tyndall was not merely theoretically, but prac-
tically, above all things sincere; the necessity of doing, at all
hazards, that which he judged, rightly or wrongly, to be just and
proper, was the dominant note of his character ; and he was in-
fluenced by it in his manner of dealing with questions which
might seem, to men of the world, hardly worth taking so seri-
ously. Of the controversies in which he became involved, some
of the most troublesome were undertaken on behalf of other peo-
ple who, as he conceived, had been treated with injustice. The
same instinct of veracity ran through all Tyndall's scientific
work. That which he knew, he knew thoroughly, had turned
over on all sides, and probed through and through. Whatever
subject he took up, he never rested till he had attained a clear
conception of all the conditions and processes involved, or had
satisfied himself that it was not attainable. And in dealing with
physical problems, I really think that he, in a manner, saw the
atoms and molecules, and felt their pushes and pulls. A pro-
found distrust of all long chains of deductive reasoning (outside

* In reading the very positive conclusions, based upon differences of style, about the
authorship of ancient writings, enunciated by some critics, I have sometimes wondered
whether, if the two pieces to which I have alluded had come down to us as anonymous
ancient manuscripts, the demonstration that they were written by different persons might
not have been quite easy.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 641

mathematics), unless the links could be experimentally or observa-
tionally tested at no long intervals, was simply another manifesta-
tion of the same fundamental quality. I was not overburdened
with love for such dialectic festoon-work myself, but I owe not a
little to my friend for helping to abolish as much as remained.

Once again, this quality of active veracity, the striving after
knowledge as apart from hearsay, lay at the root of TyndalPs
very remarkable powers of exposition, and of his wealth of ex-
perimental illustration. Hence, I take it, arose the guarded preci-
sion of the substance of a lecture or essay, which was often poetic-
ally rich, sometimes even exuberant, in form. In Sir Humphry
Davy and Mr. Faraday the Royal Institution had possessed two
unsurpassed models of the profound, yet popular, expositor of
science. Davy was before my time, but I have often had the
delight of listening to Faraday. An ineradicable tendency to think
of something else makes me an excellent test-object for oratory ;
and he was one of the few orators whom I have heard to whom I
could not choose but listen. It was no mean ordeal, therefore, to
which Tyndall was subjected when he was asked to give a " Fri-
day evening" in 1852; but he captured his hearers so completely
that his appointment to the Fullerian Professoriate of Physics,
with the use of a laboratory such as he needed for the original
work he loved, soon followed. And for more than thirty years he
held his own. From first to last, the announcement of a Friday
evening by him meant a crammed theater.

Sheridan's reply to the lady who told him that his writings
were such charmingly easy reading — " Easy reading, madam, is
damned hard writing " — has never got into the general mind ; and
very few of the thousands of delighted listeners, I imagine, ever
had an inkling of what these facile discourses cost the lecturer.
I used to suffer rather badly from " lecture fever " myself ; but
I never met with anyone to whom an impending discourse was the
occasion of so much mental and physical disturbance as it was to
Tyndall. He was quite incapable of persuading himself, or of be-
ing persuaded by others, that, after all, a relative failure, now and
then, was of no great consequence ; indeed, from the point of view
of pure art, might be desirable. Whatever he gave, it must be the
best he had, whether it were a lecture or a dinner. Now that sort
of housekeeping costs. But some think with Shakespeare :

" The painful warrior, famoused for fight,
After a thousand victories, once foiled,
Is from the book of honor razed quite ,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled."

And Tyndall was not minded to be forgot ; at any rate, for that
reason.

VOL. XLIV. 49

642 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the autumn of 1851, rny friend and I went to the meeting of
the British Association at Ipswich, as scientific " items " not, in-
deed, wholly unknown to the " pillars " of that scientific congrega-
tion ; and perhaps already regarded as young men whose disposi-
tion to keep their proper places could not, under all circumstances,
be relied upon. Being young, with any amount of energy, no
particular prospects, and no disposition to set about the ordinary
methods of acquiring them, we could conduct ourselves with perfect
freedom ; and we joined very cordially in the proceedings of the
" Red Lion Club," of which I had become a member in London,
and which had been instituted by that most genial of anti-Philis-
tines, Edward Forbes, as a protest against Dons and Donnishness
in science. With this object, the "Red Lions "made a point of
holding a feast of Spartan simplicity and anarchic constitution,
with rites of a Pantagruelistic aspect, intermingled with extremely
unconventional orations and queer songs, such as only Forbes
could indite, by way of counterblast to the official banquets of
the Association, with their high tables and what we irreverently
termed " butter-boat " speeches.

Fuimus I * The last time I feasted with the " Red Lions " I
was a Don myself ; the dinner was such as even daintier Dons than
I might rejoice in ; and I know of only one person who, under a
grave, even reverend, exterior, lamented the evolution of " Red
Lionism " into respectability.

It was at the Ipswich meeting, that Tyndall and I fell in with
Hooker, just returned from the labors and perils of his Himalayan
expedition, and who was to make a third in the little company of
those who were, thenceforward, to hold fast to one another through
good and evil days. Frankland had long been a friend of Tyndall's,
Lubbock soon joined us ; and it was we four who stood, pondering
over many things, in Haslemere Churchyard the other day.

Tyndall became permanently attached to the Royal Institution
in 1853, while I cast anchor in Jermyn Street, not far off, in the
following year. Before reaching this settlement, we had both
done our best to expatriate ourselves by becoming candidates for
the chairs of Physics and of Natural History in the University of
Toronto, which happened to be simultaneously vacant. These,
however, were provided with other occupants. The close relations
into which we were thrown, on this and many subsequent occa-
sions, had the effect of associating us in the public mind, as if we
formed a sort of firm ; with results which were sometimes incon-
venient and sometimes ludicrous. When my wife and I went to
the United States in 1876, for example, a New York paper was
good enough to announce my coming, accompanied by my " titled

* We were.

PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 64.3

bride " — which was rather hard upon plain folk, married twenty-
one years, and blessed with seven children to boot.*

My friend's exploits as a mountaineer are sufficient evidence of
his extraordinary physical vigor. I could manage a fair day's
work in reasonable up-and-down walking myself, but I lacked his
caprine sureness of head and foot ; and, when it came to climbing,
I was nowhere beside him. By way of compensation, I stood the
wear and tear of London life better, though I had not much to
boast of, even in that respect. From the first, Tyndall suffered
from sleeplessness, with the nervous irritability which is fre-
quently cause and consequence of that distressing malady. It is
not uncommon for this state of the nervous system to find a vent
in fits of ill temper ; but, looking back over all the long years of
our close intercourse, I can not call to mind any serious manifes-
tations of that sort in my friend. Tyndall " consumed his own
smoke " better than most people, and though that faculty is worthy
of the highest admiration, I suspect that the exercise of it tells a
good deal upon the furnace. When things got bad with him, his
one remedy was to rush off to the nearest hills and walk himself
into quietude. Pleasant are the recollections, for me and others,
of such hard tramps, it might be in the Lake country, or in the
Isle of Wight ; in the Peak of Derbyshire, or in Snowdonia. On
such excursions Tyndall was the life of the party, content with
everything and ready for anything, from philosophical discussion
and high-flying poetics, to boyish pranks and gymnastic comic-
alities.

Sometimes we traveled further afield. Thus, in 1856, we made
an expedition to Switzerland which had a large influence on Tyn-
dall's future. In 1845 I had my first view of a glacier, at the head
of the Lac de Gaube in the Pyrenees ; and when, ten years later,
I was led to interest myself seriously in geology, in connection
with the study of fossils, I read all I could lay hands on about
these curious rivers of ice. At the same time Tyndall was occu-
pied with his important investigations into the effects of pressure
in giving rise to lamination, and I naturally heard a good deal
about what he was doing. It struck me that his work might
throw some light upon the production of the veined structure of
glacier ice ; and one day, when he was dining with us, I mentioned
the notion that had come into my head. The upshot was that we,
then and there, agreed to go and look into the facts of the case for
ourselves. More suo,\ he would have nothing to do with specula-
tion till that essential preliminary operation had been effected.

* I have just received the report of a sermon, delivered on the 15th of December, 1893,
by a curious curate, who, in his haste to besmirch the dead, abuses " the late Professor
Huxley " ! f After his way.

644 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

To Switzerland accordingly we went, and I joined him at the
Montanvert, where he had taken up his quarters with Dr. Hirst,
who was, I think, the closest of all his friends. I have never vis-
ited the place since, but I am told that it now possesses a grand
hotel. In our time there was nothing but a rough mountain au-
berge, opposite to which, on the glacier side of the road, was a
hut for guides. Into this Tyndall moved his bed, as he could not
bear the noise of the wooden house. Accommodation and fare
were of the roughest; our chef was a singularly dirty old woman,
who met all our suggestions about dinner with a monotonous
" C'est ga " * — as if the stores of a Parisian restaurant were at her
disposal — while, practically, our repasts were as uniform as her
speech. But as we used to start for the Jardin, or other of the
higher regions early, and rarely returned much before sunset, there
was no lack of hunger sauce ; while the condiment, which gives
herbs a better flavor than stalled oxen, abounded. Tyndall's skill
and audacity as a climber were often displayed in these excur-
sions. On one occasion, I remember, we came upon a perpen-
dicular cliff of ice of considerable height, formed on the flank of
the glacier, which seemed to present a good opportunity for the
examination of the structure of the interior. A hot sun loosen-
ing them, the stones on the surface of the glacier every now and
then rattled down the face of the cliff. As no persuasion of ours
could prevent Tyndall from ascending the cliff, by cutting steps
with his axe, in order to get a close view of the ice, we had to
content ourselves with the post assigned to us, of looking out for
stones. Whenever any of these seemed likely to shoot too close
we shouted, and Tyndall flattened himself against the cliff. Hap-
pily, no harm ensued ; but I confess I was greatly relieved when
my friend descended at his own pleasure, and not at that of a
chance fragment of rock.

It was on this trip that we attempted the ascent of Mont Blanc
direct from the Montanvert, with a couple of porters to carry the
needful stores as far as the Grands Mulets ; and a guide, who, as
it turned out, was of the blind sort. I found I was by no means
in training ; and as, under the circumstances, any failure on my
part would have obliged the others to give up the attempt, I de-
termined to remain at the Grands Mulets. My friends and the
guide set out before dawn, and should have been back in eight or
ten hours at furthest. The weather was magnificent, and I should
be puzzled to recall a morning spent in more entire enjoyment
than that yielded by the wide and varied prospect from my tem-
porary hermitage, in a solitude broken only now and then by a
vagabond butterfly or a strayed bee, drifting upward. But when

* Which might be translated " All right."

PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 64.5

the early hours of the afternoon glided away without any sign of
my companions, and the sun got low, things began to look serious.
Neither the people at the Montanvert, nor those at Chamounix,
knew anything about our intentions. In our way from the Mon-
tanvert we had had to cross some troublesome crevasses, and I knew
nothing about the route down to Chamounix. If any accident
had happened to my friends I could not help them ; nor could I
reckon upon getting assistance from Chamounix, unless, perhaps,
I set fire to the timbers which sheltered me. My anxiety and per-
plexity may be imagined, and at last, as it grew colder, I went
into the hut to ponder over the situation. As I sat over the em-
bers, trying to see my way to some clear conclusion, I suddenly
heard the clink of an alpenstock upon the rock at the foot of the
Grands Mulcts. The sound has ever since been pleasant to my
ear ; and, rushing out, I saw the three slowly making their way
up — Tyndall pretty well exhausted, for the first and last time I
ever saw him in that condition ; Hirst snow-blind ; and the guide
thoroughly used up. He had mistaken the route and led the
party into all sorts of superfluous difficulties.

As we intended to have descended to Chamounix, without
stopping a second night at the Grands Mulets, provisions were
not over-abundant and there were no candles. I am proud to
say I made myself useful in various ways ; among other func-
tions, performing that of a chandelier with a perpetual succes-
sion of lighted lucifer matches. We were soon a merry com-
pany ; and the next day we descended in glory, to the great dis-
gust of the orthodox guides of Chamounix, to whom an ascent
of Mont Blanc, up to that time, had meant the organization of
a large and profitable expedition.

The love for Alpine scenery and Alpine climbing, which re-
mained with Tyndall to the last, began, or at any rate became
intensified into a passion, with this journey; and, at the same
time, he laid the foundations of his well-known and highly im-
portant work upon glaciers and glacier movement. His first
paper on this subject was presented to the Royal Society in
1857, and bears my name as well as his own, in spite of all my
protests to the contrary. For beyond two or three little observa-
tions, and perhaps some criticism, I contributed nothing toward it,
and all that is important is Tyndall's own. But he was singularly
scrupulous — even punctilious — on points of scientific honor. It
would have been intolerable to him to have it supposed that he
had used even suggestions of others, without acknowledgment ;
so I, being thicker skinned, put up with the possibility of being
considered a daw in borrowed plumes. The memoir became the
starting-point of a long and hot controversy. While it was at its
height, some supporters of the other side endeavored to throw the

646 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

weight of the award of one of the Royal Society's medals into the
scale against Tyndall. It seemed to some of his friends, myself
among the number, that this was unfair; and a lively battle,
eventually decided in our favor, took place in the Council of the
Society. I refer to these old troubles, merely for the purpose of
finally removing the impression, if any such remains, that Tyn-
dall had anything, directly or indirectly, to do with what took
place. On the contrary, the two persons who were chiefly respon-
sible, thought it desirable that he should be absolutely ignorant
of what was going on ; and I can answer for it that he remained
so until long after, when, rummaging among my papers, I found
some documents which I labeled " Ashes of an old fire/' and sent
to him.

Tyndall was a highly esteemed and popular member of the
Royal Society and always loyal toward it ; but the sensitiveness
to which I have alluded led him, very early in his career, to do
what, so far as I know, nobody had done before, nor has done
since. In 1853, the Society awarded one of the two royal medals
to him, the other recipient being Charles Darwin. Unluckily,
one of the members of the Council, a person of high scientific posi-
tion, who had wished to dispose of the medal otherwise, took his
defeat badly ; and, being a voluble talker, exhaled his griefs with
copious impropriety to all and sundry. As soon as the report of
this reached Tyndall's ears, he wrote a polite note to the senior
secretary declining the honor. Frankly, I think my friend made
a mistake. The Council was in no way responsible for the ill-
judged and, indeed, indecent proceedings of one of its members ;
and perhaps it is better to leave an enemy alone than to strike
at him with the risk of hurting one's friends. But, having thus
sacrificed at the altar of strict justice, I must add that, for a
young man starting in the world, to whom such recognition was
of great importance, I think it was a good sort of mistake, not
likely to do harm by creating too many imitators.

As time went on, as the work became harder, and the distrac-
tions of life more engrossing, a few of us, who had long been in-
timate, found we were drifting apart; and, to counteract that
tendency, we agreed to dine together once a month. I think, origi-
nally, there was some vague notion of associating representa-
tives of each branch of science ; at any rate, the nine who event-
ually came together — Mr. Busk, Dr. Frankland, Dr. Hirst, Sir
Joseph Hooker, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Spottiswoode,
Tyndall and myself — could have managed, among us, to contrib-
ute most of the articles to a scientific encyclopaedia. At starting,
our minds were terribly exercised over the name and constitu-
tion of our society. As opinions on this grave matter were no less
numerous than the members — indeed, more so — we finally ac-

PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 647

cepted the happy suggestion of our mathematicians to call it the
x Club; and the proposal of some genius among us, that we
should have no rules, save the unwritten law not to have any, was
carried by acclamation. Later on, there were attempts to add
other members, which at last became wearisome, and had to be
arrested by the agreement that no proposition of that kind should
be entertained, unless the name of the new member suggested
contained all the consonants absent from the names of the old
ones. In the lack of Slavonic friends this decision put an end to
the possibility of increase. Once in the year there was an outing,
to which our respective wives were invited.

If I remember rightly, the meetings of the x Club began early
in the sixties. They were steadily continued for some twenty
years, before our ranks began to thin ; and, one by one, " geistige
Naturen " (departed spirits), such as those for which the poet * so
willingly paid the ferryman, silent but not unregarded, took the
vacated places. Tyndall was a constant attendant and a great
promoter of vivacious conversation, until his health failed. Two
years ago, a deep gloom was cast over one of our meetings by the
receipt of a telegram to the effect that he had but few hours to
live, and his partial recovery, at that time, was a marvel to all
who knew his condition. I believe that the " x " had the credit of
being a sort of scientific caucus, or ring, with some people. In
fact, two distinguished scientific colleagues of mine once carried
on a conversation (which I gravely ignored) across me, in the
smoking room of the Athenaeum, to this effect : " I say, A, do you
know anything about the x Club ? " " Oh, yes, B, I have heard of
it. What do they do ? " " Well, they govern scientific affairs ;
and really, on the whole, they don't do it badly." If my good
friends could only have been present at a few of our meetings,
they would have formed a much less exalted idea of us, and
would, I fear, have been much shocked at the sadly frivolous tone
of our ordinary conversation. Assuredly Tyndall did not usually
help us to be serious.

But I must bring these brief and too hurried reminiscences to
a close. I believe that ample materials exist, and will be used,
for a fitting biography : indeed, the putting these materials into
autobiographical form was the final piece of work to which Tyn-

* " Nimm dann Fahrmann, Take, ferryman,

Nimm die Miethe Take triple fare,

Die ich gerne dreifach biete : Which I freely offer thee ;

Zwei, die eben iiberfuhren, Two who just went over

Waren geistige Naturen." Were departed spirits.

I quote from memory ; but it is long since I read these verses, and more likely than not
the citation errs.

648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dall, with his wife's aid, proposed to devote himself. With the
exception of the investigations upon the aerial germs, which,
though, strictly speaking, they might be continuations and am-
plifications of Pasteur's labors, yet had a very great effect in
putting an end to the tough-lived speculations of the advocates
of the so-called " spontaneous generation " hypothesis, Tyndall's
later scientific labors do not lie within the competence of my
judgment. On that point, I leave it to contemporary experts to
speak ; and to time to give the final verdict, which is not always
such as contemporaries imagine.

Neither do I offer any remark about Tyndall's philosophical, re-
ligious, and political views ; in respect of which my opinions might
possibly be impartial ; but nobody would believe that they were so.

All that I have proposed to myself, in writing these few pages,
is to illustrate and emphasize the fact that, in Tyndall, we have
all lost a man of rare and strong individuality ; one who, by sheer
force of character and intellect, without advantages of education
or extraneous aid — perhaps, in spite of some peculiarities of that
character — made his way to a position, in some ways unique ; to
a place in the front rank not only of scientific workers, but of
writers and speakers. And, on my own account, I have desired
to utter a few parting words of affection for the man of pure and
high aims, whom I am the better for having known ; for the
friend, whose sympathy and support were sure, in all the trials
and troubles of forty years' wandering through this wilderness
of a world. — Nineteenth Century.

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE.

BY AMHEEST W. BAEBEK.

IT is a startling anachronism to an American reader of 1894 to
stumble upon a large vellum-bound law-book of the last cen-
tury, prescribing in minute detail all the rules and conditions
that must attend the proper infliction of intense physical pain on
persons merely accused of any offense, and containing an appen-
dix full of engravings, given by royal authority as working draw-
ings to govern every operation of legal torture. Such a relic of
an almost forgotten system of law rests in obscurity at the na-
tional capital, intruding its grim savagery of language and its
coldly fiendish pictures upon a few minds accustomed to the mod-
ern idea of gentleness to every living being.

This book, printed in obsolete and barbaric German, with
marginal syllabus in monastic Latin, seizes on the mind with a
grasp of horror, and brings back the reader again and again to

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 649

delve among its dry bones of ancient delusion and wrong. It re-
veals a wide field of ideas which not long ago ruled the " civi-
lized " world, but now are forever put away. In fact, it exhibits
with photographic accuracy the Inquisition of central Europe.

The prevalent idea of torture seems to be about as follows:
That two or three centuries ago a wicked portion of a priesthood
set up the Inquisition as a means of religious persecution, which,
after all, was probably not nearly as bad as reported. Another
class, somewhat better informed, can discourse at large of the
Spanish and German Inquisitions, and describe their ghastly relics
still shown in museums ; while others, again, full of ignorant zeal,
will denounce the whole subject as a base slander on human nature.

But comparatively few now realize the full truth that in vari-
ous lands torture was the established method of authority to force
prisoners to convict themselves of every sort of crime for more
than a thousand years before the Holy Office was set up by church-
men ; that it still survived in parts of Europe as an authorized
court process for generations after they had abolished the Holy
Office; and that the much-advertised doings of the Inquisition
were but a few rough waves of that bloody ocean of wrong which
flowed over Europe from the time of Herodotus down to the nine-
teenth century.

Books of reference give the facts mildly, softened from old
authors inaccessible to the many. But one must beware of his-
tory written, perhaps, for partisan purposes or with sectarian
bias. What is wanted to-day is scientific proof, impartial and un-
impeachable. For this is a delicate matter of family history. In
examining into the mental and moral condition of ancestors only
three or four generations back, let us beware of hearsay evidence.
But we shall be justified in the inquiry if we can obtain their
own testimony and make them convict themselves in their own
favorite style.

For this purpose the Constitutio Criminalis Tlieresiana, or
criminal code of Austria and Hungary, put forth in 1769 under
the imperial edict of Maria Theresa toward the close of her
reign, outweighs a whole library of recent suppositions. This
book contains three hundred and fifty folio pages,jvith one hun-
dred and four articles or chapters arranged in two parts, prefaced
by a lofty proclamation over her Majesty's hand and seal, ordain-
ing and enacting it as the lawful code of her domain.

Part I is a general commentary upon crime and criminal pro-
cess, beginning with this benevolent and modern principle : " The
punishment of criminals is designed chiefly for the reformation
of evil-doers." The subject of torture is reached in Article 38,
where eleven large pages are devoted to an exhaustive treatise
on its principles and practice. It is called in the text " die pein-

650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

liche Frage" or the painful questioning. In this code of explicit
directions reference is made to the pictures in the appendix, show-
ing all the authorized apparatus for torture. They are drawn,
lettered, and explained with the exactness of a patent drawing,
and were not to be varied from in the least detail by the judicial
operators. This treatise begins with the fundamental definition :
" Torture is a lawful means of compulsion to bring to confession
a denying malefactor, who, in the absence of full proof, has been
strongly accused — or perchance to clear him from a burden of
suspicion and accusation." This is paraphrased in the Latin note
by saying that torture is a subsidiary means of tearing out the
truth (eruendce veritatem).

Part II takes up the whole calendar of crimes, arranged in
forty-eight distinct classes, giving to each a brief separate trea-
tise combining principles, law, exceptions, penalties, and questions
to be used in the trial. More than three fourths of these chapters
specially prescribe torture to make the accused convict himself.
From blasphemy, the greatest crime in the list, down to the most
trivial, a suspected person could in nearly every case be visited
with deathly torment upon mere suspicion.

Human progress exhibits no contrast more surprising than is
seen between the mercifulness of to-day and the cruelty of the
past. What do we now observe as proofs that mankind does not
now approve nor enjoy the bodily suffering of fellow-creatures ?
Human slavery largely abolished, with the stocks and whipping
post ; cruel punishments prohibited by the Constitution ; capital
punishment done away in various sections; painless execution
introduced ; all minor penalties reduced to fines and restraint of
liberty, with good sanitation of prisons ; anaesthetic medical treat-
ment everywhere in use ; corporal punishment in schools becom-
ing unfashionable ; humane societies interfering to prevent ill
treatment of children and dumb beasts ; and, especially, we see
prisoners on trial permitted to sit unfettered and at ease, attended
by weeping relatives to excite sympathy; allowed unequal ad-
vantages over the prosecution in the selection of a jury ; given
the benefit of every doubt, often of the most fictitious; furnished
all opportunities for acquittal which money and dishonest counsel
can procure ; allowed to testify in their own behalf ; and never re-
quired to give an answer that would tend to criminate themselves.

In contrast with this picture, take the manner of conducting
trials under the elaborate rules laid down in the Theresian code.
A man accused of felony, such as arson, sedition, sorcery, or poison-
ing, must be arrested, jailed, and brought to trial. If two or more
so-called witnesses made oath that they believed him guilty, though
no positive proof could be found, the court decreed it a casus tor-
turce, a proper case for torture, and proceeded to apply some pre-

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 651

scribed form of physical pain. An engraving shows one of the
moderate methods. . The victim's wrists are crossed behind the
back and tied with a strong cord attached to a rope which passes
over a pulley in the ceiling and down to a windlass. The Henkers-
Tcnecht, or hangman's assistant, turns the windlass and the arms
are strained upward, while the Scharfrichter (sharp judge, execu-
tioner) fiercely propounds the list of questions laid down in the
code. In a trial for poisoning, for instance :

" Did you or did you not administer the poison that killed
A. B.?

" When and where did you do it ?

" For what reason ?

" Who assisted or advised it ?

" Who was present at the time ?

" What sort of poison was it ?

" Where and how did you procure it ?

" Did the apothecary know your intended purpose ?

" Have you ever poisoned others, or attempted it ?

" What were the effects on the deceased ?

" How long did he live after it ? Was the body swollen ? Did
the nails turn blue or black ? Did he froth at the mouth ? " Et
cetera.

The person undergoing torture (der Inquisit} of course stoutly
denies each charge ; so the servant gradually hoists him till he
swings clear of the floor, with his arms undergoing backward dis-
location, and the questions are thundered in his ears again and
again as he whirls in dizzy agony. If able to persist in denial
he is lowered for a brief rest, then raised again with a twenty-five-
pound weight attached to the cord that bound his ankles, and the
questions are repeated. If the man has unusual strength of body
and will, he may still remain obdurate ; in which case Theresa's
code requires a third hoisting with a forty- six-pound weight
added. This may or may not draw from his screeching lips words
of confession, which the eager scribe will record, to seal his fate
on the gallows or at the stake ; but it can hardly fail to cripple
him for life.

This is but one of the many ways enacted and vividly de-
picted in this code for " tearing out the truth," or " putting him
to the question," as Shakespeare and other English writers de-
nominate similar practices of our ancestors ; for qucestio (seeking
or inquiry) was the mild legal term for such proceedings ever since
the days of ancient Rome. Wherever Roman conquests spread
and the code of Justinian was fastened upon new possessions, there
the torture system was ingrafted. Perhaps it was nothing new to
the Gauls and Germans, but Greece and Rome are generally held
responsible for its wide prevalence in ancient times.

652 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The dangerous privilege of using these " methods for the dis-
covery of truth " was greatly abused, and often carried to a fatal
extreme. Through ages of unrecorded tyranny the party in
power put down its enemies and all opposing thought by such un-
bridled cruelty as no one now cares to contemplate. The public
conscience seemed to approve the principle of torture as a divine
prerogative of kings. Barons, judges, priests — in brief, all great
robbers and politicians — cherished it. The more humane mon-
archs, such as the Empress Theresa, could only limit its cruelties
by precise and moderate safeguards, exempting from all torture
the sick and feeble, the old men, pregnant women, young chil-
dren, and weak-minded, and providing that medical and surgical
skill be always at hand to restore those who are near death, and
reduce dislocations or fractures.

In some of the histories and cyclopaedias are misleading state-
ments that torture was abolished from the Austrian dominions
about the middle of the last century, whereas this Austrian code
was promulgated nineteen years later. Again, it is recorded of
Maria Theresa, after an account of her general European war of
seven years, ending in 1748, that " she now turned her attention
to the internal affairs of her states. She introduced numerous re-
forms, alleviated the burdens of the peasantry, abolished torture,
and promoted industry/* Her code, however, proves otherwise ;
for she had reigned twenty-one years after the peace of 1748 when
she re-enacted these laws to perpetuate these terrible outrages on
human justice. Whether she abolished it at all in the remaining
ten years of her life is open to doubt. Other statements from
the same sources, regarding the continuance and decline of the
Holy Inquisition, appear equally questionable.

The study of such customs suggests strange and difficult ques-
tions. What sort of minds had those people ? Did they possess
conscience ? If so, was it anything like the conscience of the
moderns, who cherish the same sacred books ? Was human jus-
tice then a false moral guide ? Is it a true one now ? Is human
nature the same from age to age, or can it reverse itself while
standing on the same basis ? Was the woman-heart tender and
sympathetic in those days ? Or what sort of women reared the
monsters who kept up torture for twenty centuries ?

The persistence of that legal crime, in spite of all the morals,
philosophies, and religions that held sway through those ages, is
a hard and stubborn fact. Its phenomena seem to fit no favorite
theory of general progress. What a world of intellectual power,
of tender morality, of spiritual zeal, has blazed as with heavenly
fire through those ages of unjust torment, without taking any con-
cern in that system ! It stood forth above all such influences like
an upheaval of archaic rock which all the tides and storms of

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 653

progress had been powerless to beat down. Grecian culture and
beauty did not care to assuage one pain. The magnanimity of
Roman power did not hold out one merciful reform toward the
suspected offender. Cicero wrote against the system, but all in
vain.

The young nobility and students of Europe, nocking to great
universities like Salerno in the middle ages, and learning from
imported Arabic professors from milder Asia, do not seem to
have acquired any noble horror of human cruelty. New reli-
gious sects arose and competed for public favor, but all were more
ready to use torture than to condemn it. The leading minds of
Europe were full of the New Testament, but they did not find
legal torture referred to therein. Only the command not to suffer
a witch to live seemed to fit the case.

A theory is greatly needed to harmonize these incongruous
facts — a bright, clear, comprehensive, optimistic theory, credit-
able alike to humanity and the forces which guide human devel-
opment. But such an explanation is not readily found. In de-
fault of a broad and able-bodied theory, fitted to carry us over all
difficulties, one is left floundering among some unpleasant reflec-
tions. All races may have risen from barbarism. Before bar-
barism they may — just possibly — have come up from a still more
brutish state. Yet this instinct of enjoying the torture of others
can hardly be called a survival of brutishness, since animals do
not seem to consciously practice cruelty; it is rather a distin-
guishing trait of mankind.

This element of savagery is a most persistent and incorrigible
offender in the happy family of our virtues. How it has defied
culture, development, moral training ! In theory all advancing
races should properly have this Canada thistle of our moral field
pretty well eradicated by this time by the strong hand of social
and religious development. But when it has been well dug out,
burned up, and killed very dead, the weary reformer, resting on
his hoe, sees the thorny shoots of human cruelty here and there
pushing boldly up in new places, fresh from the ancient seeds of
inherited brutality that still lurk in the soil. Yet he cheerfully
begins anew, and attacks the inexhaustible evil with never-tiring
zeal.

It is also depressing to reflect that all men have been savages
in infancy ; that children pass through the ascending grades of
mere animal life ; that each young pupil, rightly observed, has
been a sample of slow or rapid evolution through the stages of
cave-dweller, nomad, and barbarian, to the half-civilized or even
a higher grade. The childhood of races reflects the development
of individuals. In the rapid march of the infant mind there
comes a time when it gives pleasure to see and produce suffering.

6S4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

This part of the regular course is omitted by few, and in some
cases is adopted as a ruling life-trait. This was probably the
usual result in those early days.

Another discouraging obstacle to any pleasant theory is that
apelike propensity for imitation which kept primitive races fol-
lowing the old tracks of their predecessors. Antiquated custom
gave them inviolable laws, against which reason and justice might
protest in vain. The mere imitative trait has sometimes ruled
the action and belief of masses of mankind as surely and un-
thinkingly as it does a colony of the simian tribe or a commu-
nity of cigarette-using boys.

A race of beings so tainted with original savagery, so ruled
by imitation, and so averse to change, must have found it hard
to abolish torture from the court-room. To accomplish the re-
form one of the grandest moral battles of the world had to be
fought. An ethical rebellion against the allied powers of mon-
archy, hierarchy, and aristocracy had to be triumphantly carried
through. Necessarily there were brave leaders, who went into
the fray with their eyes open to the fate of Jerome and Huss, of
an earlier age, who for having dared attack the sin of torture
were burned alive by the offended Church.

It was but recently, speaking comparatively, that the Inquisi-
tion, both secular and ecclesiastical, was in full force, and that
the reform mentioned was made successful. When the code
before us was printed at Vienna, the present writer's grandfather
was a youth of thirteen years. America was then already re-
formed from her imported sins against justice. The whirlwind
of delusion which culminated at Salem had been over for seventy-
seven years, and its reaction had blotted from the minds of most
Americans much of the witch-belief of former ages. Benjamin
Franklin had long been the ambassador of America to his king,
pleading for political rights. England had partly reformed her
cruel laws. Human torture was not legal in America, save under
the cloak of African slavery.

Yet in the Theresian code, Article 38 is found filling eleven
broad pages with the law of torture, as if it were a fundamental
institution which would exist forever. It specifies the cases in
which courts are warranted in using torture to induce confession,
which seem worth giving in full :

When one is accused by one credible, sworn witness, aided by
evidence of previous bad character.

When, after detection in the act, he boldly denies it.

When informed against by an accomplice.

When he has admitted the offense which was known to be
committed.

When any two or more of the, following causes concur to

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 655

show guilt, though singly they are not sufficient to incur torture,
such as —

Previous bad character or worthless conduct.

Previous similar misdemeanors, either proved or rumored.

Being found in proximity to the crime.

Being seen with the appearance, dress, arms, or horse of the
actual culprit, or approaching or leaving the spot.

The finding of any of his dress or weapons, or of his tracks in
snow or earth.

His previous companionship or domicile with those who com-
mit such acts.

Previous enmity, envy, or threats toward the injured person.

Dying declarations or sworn accusation by a person injured.

Absconding suddenly without good cause.

Altering his personal appearance, disguising, giving false ex-
cuses, etc.

To entitle the prosecution to obtain a decree for full torture
of one accused of a capital crime (and most of the offenses
were then capital), two or more of the above conditions must
be shown to the satisfaction of the judge. The warrant must
specify not only how many of the successive grades may be
used, but just how long each process shall be applied. But
in every case of torture a strange preliminary proceeding was
required, called territion (territio, Schreckung], a mental tor-
ture, by terrifying the prisoner to extort confession through
fear of pain. It was derived, like all the rest, from the ancients,
whose law writers prescribed forms similar to those of the Aus-
trian code.

Territion was of two grades — verbal and real. In verbal terri-
tion the judge exhorts the prisoner to confess, and tells him what
pains await him ; he describes the process vividly, with the exe-
cutioner acting the scene in pantomime. The victim is fiercely
seized by the hangman, dragged from the court-room down into
the place of torment (Marter-ort), and shown the painful machines
and their use. The executioner seizes him again and pretends to
be about to apply them.

Verbal territion failing to secure admission of guilt, he re-
sorts to the real. He seizes the Inquisit once more, drags him
to the rack, binds him in place, but does not apply the ropes or
screws to any painful extent. Returning him then to the court-
room, they again solemnly warn him to confess his guilt, lest
worse shall befall him. If he still remains obdurate, his day of
grace is past ; territion gives place to actual torture.

The code gives a few merciful limitations of this power. Idi-
ots, invalids, feeble men over sixty, children, and, of course, all
officials and clergy, are exempt ; and women can only be subjected

656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the two milder grades, the other two being reserved for men
accused of atrocious crimes.

Then comes a minute and intricate code of procedure for those
very common and puzzling cases when the sufferer pleads guilty
under torture, but reasserts his innocence after it, declaring that
the pain irresistibly drove him to make a false confession to obtain
a brief respite. In such cases the judge is forbidden to " put him
to the question " anew till he has certified the conflicting statements
to a higher court, and received new orders to proceed. But the good
empress commands that "beyond three times shall no one be
tortured ; but he who endures it three times without confession, or
who has each time recanted his confession, shall be set at liberty,
because he is sufficiently cleansed from the accusations by the
martyrdom endured. And the martyr can not say that injus-
tice was done him, for the judge has the evidence to justify his
action/' etc.

The four grades are then defined, the first being the thumb-
screw (polletrum, Daumstocke). Two separate forms are pictured
by life-size scale drawings ; one sort was legal in Austria and one
in Bohemia. It is a strong little vise, seven inches long, of two
flat iron bars connected by screw bolts. The thumbs are to be in-
serted to the first joint, and the inner surfaces are armed with
toothlike points. While the questions are asked one servant
helps hold the vise and turn the nuts with a wrench or key, while
another clasps the victim tight around the body to prevent con-
tortions. A third may or may not be employed to increase the
pain by hammering on the vise.

The picture of this scene is very effectively drawn. The con-
flict of stubborn wills between the roaring victim and the iron-
hearted bailiffs is fearful to witness. The judge is in no hurry ;
he gives the wrench an additional turn now and then till the very
bones are crushed, and the clerk can triumphantly write down
the confession of guilt.

The second grade, which is now seldom heard of, was the cord
(fidicula). Its exact size and use are fully pictured. The arms
of the accused are stretched forward with the palms together. A
strong rope, like sash-cord, is looped upon the wrist, then wound
tightly round both arms to the elbows, cutting deep into the flesh
and tending to break the elbow joints. This was regarded more
terrible than the thumb stocks. This was the Bohemian method ;
but another form was prescribed for Austria equally effective
and ingenious.

The famous rack, which comprised the third grade, was of
great utility in the " discovery of the truth." It was called equu-
leus, or little horse, by the Austrian as well as the Roman jurists.
Four full-page engravings depict the exact form, size, mechani-

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 657

cal construction, and practical use of this machine. It is a wide
ladder of two strong poles with many rounds, and is fixed in a
slanting position from the stone floor to the dungeon wall. The
culprit must climb to the upper part and sit down ; his wrists,
previously bound behind his back, are tied to the fifth round.
His feet are bound with a rope, which is drawn down by a wind-
lass attached to the base of the ladder. As he is pulled downward
his arms are twisted upward behind him. When fully carried out
the desired result was complete dislocation of the shoulders, as
the explanatory notes declare with great exactness of detail.

The Scharfrichter must stand on the rack beside the Inquisit,
keeping one hand on the breast and one on the back to watch his
vital condition ; as his accusations are persistently denied, he sig-
nals to the windlass-man to apply more force, till at last the arms
are wrenched into a straight line with the body, tearing the liga-
ments and breast muscles from their attachments. Then, if the
martyr is a hero who can endure still more without denying his
faith, the judge may proceed to the fourth grade, if in Bohemia,
though it was forbidden in Austria.

The final grade, ignis, or burning, is figured by several cuts,
showing torches of candles bound together, eight in each torch,
lighted and burning brightly, which the tormentor, bending over
his broken victim, applies to the naked sides of the chest until a
space about seven inches in diameter is burned to a blackened
crisp. The law strictly forbids burning a larger space, or any
other region of the body ; but it allows the assistants to aggra-
vate the anguish of suspension and of racking by beating with
scourges.

These four grades are extended by equivalent tortures of other
forms, such as the Spanische Stiefel, or iron boots. Two broad
iron plates, curved to fit the shin and calf and extending between
the knee and ankle, are connected by screw bolts at the margin to
compress them together. The inner surface of each is studded by
thirty blunt nails, half an inch long, to be forced into the flesh
and bones. To increase the pain in special cases these plates may
be hammered upon. One of the most realistic engravings shows
a group of inquisitors applying this boot to an old man, who
seems visibly shrieking for relief by death.

Yet there was one heinous sin for which torture had no ter-
rors. Suicide had need of a different chapter in our book of jus-
tice. When some poor hunted soul had broken the jail of the
body, driven from the certain cruelties of this life to the imagined
terrors of the next, the torturers were exasperated and disappoint-
ed; yet something must be done to relieve their brutal fury,
just as the mob of to-day invariably " riddles with bullets " the
corpse of its victim. The chapter on suicide proclaims the great

VOL. XLIV. 50

658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

double sin of the deceased, denies him respectable burial (honesta
sepultus), and dooms the poor remains to dog-burial (canina se-
pultus) at some cross-roads, with or without a stake driven
through. It then proceeds to render his family infamous by at-
tainder and to impoverish his heirs by confiscation of all their
property. There being nothing left to destroy, Theresa's code
here suspends hostilities against the suicide.

In the gradation of crimes, blasphemy was held infinitely
worse than all others ; while second in enormity was apostasy
from the ruling faith. This is carefully limited to those who
have been within the fold and have backslidden, thus excluding
the different offense of heresy. The omission of heresy from the
book shows that it fell within the special province of ecclesias-
tical courts, or else that there was a glimmering of spiritual tol-
eration in those days.

The third great class of crimes, transcending in awfulness trea-
son, murder, and all that follow, comprised the imaginary delu-
sions called magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. There is an extreme
effort made in this chapter by the solemn wise men of 1769 to be
very judicious, calm, and reasonable. A full translation of this
treatise on the ghastly joke called witchcraft, would form an
exquisite satire on the self-complacent wisdom of that or any
other age. It enjoins on judges great care to avoid the errors and
foolish superstitions of the ignorant lower classes, and warns them
never to convict, except upon positive proof that the accused is
a genuine witch or sorcerer. It argues and establishes the actual
existence of the black art, the evil eye, and possession by devils.
Then it sets all the wheels and screws of torture at work against
" all those God-forgetting wretches who commune with the devil,
raise great storms, bring about cattle-plagues, or go sailing
through the sky upon a goat."

The forty-odd other classes of crimes follow in descending or-
der, each having a little chapter containing its special code and
commentary, with the following usual subdivisions :

Definition and general principles of the offense.

Different gradations of its enormity.

Amount and character of evidence necessary for issuing the
warrant and arresting the suspect.

Evidence requisite to show probability of guilt and justify use
of torture on trial to secure confession.

List of special interrogatories for each crime, to be used before
and during torture.

General and special directions to the magistrate for unusual
cases.

List of possible circumstances tending to aggravate the offense
and calling for additional severity.

THE EUROPEAN LAW OF TORTURE. 659

List of possible mitigating circumstances under which prosecu-
tion may be relaxed and penalties reduced.

Scale of punishments for different grades, and forms to be used
in pronouncing sentence, after torture and conviction.

The irrepressible savage love of causing pain was shown by
the methods of execution as well as those of examination and
trial. A translation of the prescribed forms of final judgment
exhibits a tediously elaborate array of fiendish methods to make
death slow and agonizing, and strike terror into myriads of be-
holders. Though foreign to our present topic, they illustrate the
ruling passion of that age.

The chapter on allowing the accused the privilege of attorney
and defense, begins with the fine assertion that defense is to be
denied to no one. Then comes an intricate list of conditions and
exceptions, which narrows the privilege to a very small chance.
The final condition, however, might well be adopted for the reform
of modern courts : " Before the defensor takes up the case of a
prisoner, he shall bind himself not to act dishonestly to suppress
the truth, but to do everything in bona fide."

To determine guilt or innocence, the ancients — that is, savage
races in general — have used all sorts of divination, more or less
senseless or cunning. There were water tests, fire tests, poison
tests, and exposure to wild beasts. One favorite fashion was by
single combat, which has degenerated into the modern duel. The
wager of battle, like all the rest, presumed the idea that the Deity
would interfere to protect the guiltless. Races sprung from Vi-
king stock were especially liable to this error, which even to-day
is firmly rooted in the minds of whole nations when pugnaciously
disposed.

In trying to account for judicial torture, some have held it a
sequel and substitute for the wager of battle, showing a moral
advance of ideas in the growth of the nation. But this theory
hardly fits with the great antiquity and wide extent of the system.
If torture was a sequel of the judicial duel, then it was a case of
retrograde evolution ; for the high moral features of the combat,
such as faith in divine help, trust in a just cause, fair play, and
championship of the innocent, were thrown aside. They were
exchanged for a system of mean, cowardly cruelty, all the power
of the rulers working out hatred upon one defenseless prisoner in
the secrecy and safety of a dungeon vault.

It is also idle to claim that torture was based on that sophism
credited to Jesuits of old, that it was lawful to do evil to attain a
good result ; for torture was ancient before Loyola began his
work. On the other hand, it is idle to make the common asser-
tion that all progress, conscience, and mercy were conferred on
the world by some particular religious system or event. For it

660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was such a system which maintained the tortures portrayed in
the Theresian code, and which, during centuries of supreme con-
trol, had sole power to remove the curse, yet never took a step in
that direction till driven by outside pressure.

There is a great work to be written by some student who can
relate the decline and fall of that engine of tyranny. Many na-
tions successively were freed from its terrors. It was a long and
bitter war between the allied powers of kings and priests, and the
true lovers of humanity. It was a secret war of ideas, and its
weapons were the clandestine publications of daring freethinkers,
secretly translated and circulated over Europe at the risk of a
lingering death in the torture chamber.

Such a work would be a history full of joyous reading. One
would fain learn everything about Beccaria, the first and greatest
successful mover in that holy cause. We would confer all due
honor upon Hommel, Voltaire, Howard, and those who helped
spread the great Italian's burning words over the continent. Our
copy of Theresa's code was printed five years after Beccaria had
issued his great work for the abolition of capital punishment and
torture. The conflict of the age had begun, but the great empress
knew or heeded it not.

The old system left its marks on our language. Persistent
questioning is called " inquisitive," and when one's acts are put
under sharp inquiry they are " called in question." People who
do not know what the rack was, complain of racking pains.
Ladies " suffer excruciatingly," without thinking of the myriads
who have really been excruciated, or put to death on the cross.
The word torquere, applied by the Latins to the twisting of human
limbs, gave us such words as torture, torment, and extortion.
Ladies may now be called "bewitching" without being accused
of actual dealings with Satan. In short, words once of deadly im-
port are now the weakest of hyperbole.

Since these reforms of ancient abuses became universal, their
ideas have been extended in America to an unwise and absurd de-
gree. Sentimental mercy has not only destroyed the efficiency of
courts of justice, but has impaired national confidence in them.
A second reaction takes place, from the false mercy of maudlin
sympathy with crime, to the deliberate and lawless fury of mobs
and lynchers. The prevention of cruelty to animals is an absorb-
ing " fad " with some who would not concern themselves with the
heart-breaking tyranny of a drunken husband in the nearest
house.

Yet evolution works steadily on. Whether it be a hundred
years hence or a million, the day may come when every mortal in
his strength and pride will be too noble to torment the weak or
helpless.

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 661

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS.

BY MRS. A. D. LE PLONGEON.

TpROM ancient Maya books and inscriptions we learn that the
J- Mayas at one time formed a great nation, occupying the ter-
ritory between Tehuantepec and Darien. To-day those Indians, as
they are called, live in the peninsula of Yucatan, famous for its
ruins ; in Guatemala, in Peten, in the Lancandon country, on the
banks of the Uzumacinta River, and in the valleys between those
mountains where the mysterious " land of war " is supposed to be«
Among all people, civilized and uncivilized, superstition ex-
ists, though the former are more careful to conceal their peculiar
notions. The Mayas are more superstitious now than they were

INDIANS BLASTING ROCKS TO LEVEL A ROAD.

five hundred years ago, for, added to their own queer notions,
they have a vast store of strange fancies imported by the Spanish
conquerors. Many of the native ideas are of great antiquity,
such as the belief in metempsychosis and metamorphosis. Those
people hesitate before killing the most venomous reptile, if found
in or near the old palaces and temples left by their ancestors, and
now gradually crumbling beneath the dense foliage of tropical
forests. Urge them to destroy a viper within or near those de-
serted halls, and they say : " Ah, no ! it belongs to the Xldb-pak
yum " (lord of the old walls), " whose spirit roams here." Under
such circumstances they recoil from inflicting death, much as

662 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they would if told to murder their father or mother — a thing un-
heard of among them, for they revere and honor their parents
above all others. To their elders they show much respect, never
presuming to contradict them beyond remarking, if they do not
agree with what is said, " So says my elder," implying that but
for that they would express an opinion.

When questioned about the old ruined citios, they reply, " The
dwarfs built them/' and insist that the pixan, or souls of those
dwarfs, always walk about at night, coming into their houses,
though the doors be shut. In the daytime they are supposed to
dwell among the ruins. The reputation of the alux (dwarfs) is
not much better than that enjoyed by the " little people " of Ire-
laud and Scotland, accused of stealing butter, souring milk, and
changing pretty babies for ugly little creatures with wrinkled
faces. The alux are said to disturb tired laborers by shaking
their hammocks, lash those who slumber too heavily, throw stones,
and whistle. They terrify all who look at them, and steal food ;

SCHOOL OF MESTIZAS GIRLS AT HOCTAM.

for, though not taller than a child four years old, they can eat
more than any man does. Their only article of apparel is a very
wide brimmed straw hat.

Belief in these dwarfish apparitions is perhaps induced by a
vague knowledge that several centuries ago a race of remarkably
small people did live in those parts. Edifices built by them are
found on the east coast of Yucatan and on adjacent islands. There
are several temples only nine feet high, and triumphal arches of

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 663

the same height, while the doorways are but three feet high and
eighteen inches wide. In some of those houses domestic utensils
have been found, very small. Any traveler may examine the
strange little houses; and doubtless the belief in the phantom

SOUTHEAST CORNER OF NORTH WING OF CAN'S PALACE, UXMAL.

alux is an outgrowth of tradition concerning the dwarfish people
who constructed them.

Directly opposed to the alux is Huahuapach, a gigantic spec-
ter supposed to put himself in the way of belated travelers and
make them fall so as to injure themselves. This, again, would be
some dim recollection of those big men whose bones have at vari-
ous times been unearthed in different parts of the peninsula. Sev-
eral historians testify to such gigantic remains having been dug
from the ground in the early part of the Conquest. We have also
been assured by people of Spanish descent, now living in that
country, that they themselves have disinterred enormous skulls
and other bones of the human body. None had the curiosity to
keep them. To this may be added that on the walls of certain
ancient structures there are imprints, eleven inches long, of hands
that had been dipped in red liquid and pressed upon the stones, as
it was customary for the owner of the building to do.

664 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Xtdbai is a wicked, deceitful phantom, said to haunt the high-
ways at night. It appears as a beautiful woman, always combing
her luxuriant locks with a plant that the natives call " the comb
of Xtdbai." This lovely being generally runs away when any
one approaches, but, if a lovesick laddie does succeed in clasping
her in his arms, she instantly transforms herself into a sack of
thorns that rests on two duck's feet. After embracing this prickly
arrangement the deluded youth is ill with fever.

Another much-dreaded nocturnal, unsubstantial individual is
Balam, god of agriculture, an old fellow with a long beard, said to
walk in the air and whistle as he goes. Should his people fail to
make offerings to him, he would vent his spleen by afflicting them
with sickness ; therefore, the first fruits of the field are for him.
The corn first ripe is scattered upon the ground, and pies, the
crust made of corn, are also prepared for the god to enjoy at his
leisure. These pies are seasoned with enough red pepper to tor-
ment the palate of any number of balams (leopards). One pie is
put in each corner of the field, three being sprinkled with a liquor
called balche. The fourth is left without this sauce, possibly for
the benefit of any teetotaler friend who may happen to call.

Balche' is a liquor made by soaking the bark of a tree thus
named in a mixture of honey and water. When fermented and
kept some time it is very intoxicating. The Indians use it in all
their ancient rites and ceremonies, and the Fans of equatorial
Africa make liquor in the same way.

Catholics in name, the Mayas in fact prefer to render homage
to any stone figure that once ornamented the temples of their
forefathers. We have seen one, kept in a cavern underground,
that served as a personification of Balam, for it represented a
man with a long beard, and to it they make offerings of corn. As
a work of art the figure is worthy of notice. Its antiquity can
not be doubted, similar ones being sculptured on pillars at the
entrance of a very ancient castle in the famous ruined city of
Chichen. The figure in the cavern is on its knees ; its hands are
raised to a level with the head, palms upturned. On its back is a
bag containing a cake of corn and beans, the whole cut from one
block of stone. This statue is now black, owing to the incense
and candles with which its devotees smoke it. Previous to sow-
ing grain they place before it a basin of cool beverage made of
corn, also lighted wax candles and sweet- smelling copal, implor-
ing the god to grant them an abundant harvest. When the crops
ripen the finest ears are carried to the smoke-begrimed divinity
by men, women, and children, who within the cavern dance and
pray all day long, some of their quaint instruments serving as
accompaniment to the Christian litanies which they chant with-
out having the vaguest idea of their meaning.

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 665

An instrument that they use in their religious practices is the
tunkul. The literal meaning of this word is " to be worshiping."
The tunkul is a piece of wood three feet long and one in diameter,
hollowed out. On one side it has a mouth extending nearly from
end to end ; on the other are two oblong tongues starting from
the extremities and separated in the middle only by the thickness
of a carpenter's saw. Its mouth is placed in contact with the
ground, and the tongues, serving as two keys, are struck with
sticks whose ends are covered with India rubber, which makes
them rebound. The tones thus produced can be heard five or six
miles off, when the wind is favorable, and sound like a great rum-
bling in the earth. The same instrument was used in Mexico.

A WELL BT THE WAYSIDE.

In the museum of the capital of that republic some finely sculp-
tured tunkuls are preserved.

The Maya Indians take a great deal of pleasure in ceremonies
and religious observances ; religion is a very important matter
with them, though it is doubtful if they could tell exactly what
they believe. They punctually attend church, but their worship
is in reality an odd mixture of paganism and Christianity. Being
fond of sweet things, and by nature indolent, their idea of heaven
is a place where they will rest beneath the spreading branches of
an evergreen tree and enjoy an inexhaustible supply of sweet
things ; while hell is a region where they will suffer intensely
from cold, fatigue, and hunger. Nor do they hope to escape that

666

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

torment, for it is their "belief that when death claims them they
will be conducted to the gloomy abode to suffer for all the wrong
they have done, after which they will be in heaven for a time as
a recompense for their good deeds ; that then — some ages having
elapsed — they must be reborn on this earth, without any recol-
lection of the past or knowledge of the future.

When one is dangerously ill, his relations make offerings to
the yumcimil, or " god of death." This offering consists of food

A ToNKTJL.

and drink, which they hang outside of the house. They call it
kex, or " exchange," because they offer it as a ransom for the life
of the patient.

From remote times they have been accustomed to make offer-
ings to the souls of the departed, particularly a certain pie that
they call " food for the soul." The crust must be of yellow corn ;
the interior, tender chicken and small pieces of pork. These pies
are wrapped in leaves of the banana tree and baked underground
between hot stones. When done, they are placed on the graves or
hung from trees close by. Sometimes, after leaving them there
for an hour or two, the living take home the pies and enjoy them,

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 667

saying that the souls have already drawn from them all the ethe-
real part of the substance.

When among the ruins in the ancient city of Chichen Itza, we
happened to be very hard pressed for food on All Saints day, as
on many other occasions, and knowing that the "feast of the
dead " would be celebrated in a not very distant village, we al-
lowed some of our men to go there and take their chance of
enjoying a good meal.

In that they were most successful, the natives being at all
times exceedingly hospitable, and never failing to invite those
who approach their home to partake of what they have. But the
men also thought of us. We had early taken to our hammocks,
remembering the saying, " Qui dort, dine " (He who sleeps,
eats). About two o'clock in the morning we were aroused by a
man only just returned from the village. He had waited there
till all were asleep, then made his way to the graveyard, and
gathered from a tree a fine fruit in the shape of a large pie. This
he brought to us, wisely arguing that the embodied needed it
more than the disembodied. The dead man's food was still
wrapped in its banana leaf, and we were not sorry to avail our-
selves of this chance to breakfast at two o'clock in the morning.
No tender chicken was concealed within that particular crust,
only a pig's foot with a few stray bristles on it, and a most liberal
dose of red pepper, but hunger made it excellent.

When overtaken by disease, the Indians doctor themselves
with certain herbs, and if that fails, call a medicine man, who
knows about as much of their malady as they themselves do —
perhaps less. They never attribute illness to natural causes, but
either declare that they are bewitched or that their time has come
and Death wants them. The medicine man pretends that he can
discover the party who has done the bewitching, and for that pur-
pose demands three days' meditation in the home of the patient,
during which time he must be supplied with all the good food
and drink procurable. On the third day he drinks balchd, nectar
of the gods, until he falls into a heavy sleep. The instant he
awakes he looks into a crystal and there pretends to see the witch
or wizard. He then scrapes the mud floor under the hammock of
the patient, and produces a small figure that he, of course, had
concealed about his person, and declares that that was what
caused the sickness. For this simple trick he receives a fee. If
the patient recovers, the medicine man's reputation is greatly in-
creased. If death results, the mourners say : " It is very hard, but
so it was written ; his time had come ; it had to be thus/'

The little figures used by the trickster are made of wax and
have a thorn stuck in the part corresponding to the seat of great-
est pain in the body of the victim. This particular superstition

668

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

may therefore have been introduced by the Spaniards, for at one
time I'envoutement was believed in nearly all over Europe ; even
yet credence is given to it among voodoo societies in Louisiana.
L'envoutement consists in pricking and slowly melting a small
wax figure representing the individual intended for a victim of
magic art. Charles IX, of France, was said to have come to his

NDIAN WOMEN SPINNING.

death by means of wax figures made to his likeness and cursed
by magic art which his enemies, the Protestant sorcerers, caused
to melt, a little every day, thus extinguishing the life of the king
by degrees as the figures were consumed.

That same monarch is said to have expelled thirty thousand
sorcerers from the city of Paris ; and during the reign of Henry
III, France was supposed to be infested with one hundred thou-
sand individuals who practiced the black art. Physicians in
those days made the sorcerers responsible for all diseases that
they failed to cure. Consumptives especially were supposed to
waste away as the wax figures did when melted.

In former times the Indians used to abandon a house after one
died in it, because they buried the body either in the house or at
the back of it, and were very much afraid of seeing the ghost of
the dear departed. Strange creatures, to weep so much at losing
them, and then be terrified at the thought of their returning !

They believed that the lower animals also had souls, for they
used to put with the corpse of their relations certain provisions

CUSTOMS AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE MAYAS. 669

which they said was to feed the souls of the animals they had
eaten during life, so that these might not harm them.

They bred a species of dog, quite hairless, called tzom, consid-
ered a great delicacy. They killed them by choking them in a
pit, and this seems to have weighed heavily on their conscience,
for they were particularly careful to provide deceased relations
with food to pacify the slaughtered tzoms.

Being constant and careful observers of Nature, and seeing the
remarkable works of many creatures, they attribute intelligence
to small insects, such as the ants and bees. In some parts of Eng-
land it is supposed that bees will not remain on the premises after
there is a death in the house of their owner, unless an intimation
of the fact be conveyed to them. Therefore some go and tell the
bees ; others tie a piece of crape to a stick, and set it in front of
the hives.

The Indians in question would not tie crape near their hives,
for they themselves never use any kind of mourning, retaining
always their white garments. They suspend from the hives
gourds filled with a beverage made from corn, in order that the
bees may not go away, but produce abundant honey and keep
sickness from the home. The hives are not like those in use
among us, but simply pieces of trunk hollowed out, wooden walls
being fitted into the ends and covered with mud so that the name

YUCATAN VILLAGE.

of the owner may be stamped on it with white ashes. A small
hole is left in the middle of each end for the passage of the bees.
If the hives are not cleaned from time to time, the bees desert
them. In order to do this, the operator removes the end walls,
cleans the interior thoroughly, and rubs it with a little honey and
an aromatic plant that is much liked by the bees. Unlike our
bees, these are quite harmless, black and small, though they mani-

670 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

fest their annoyance when intruded upon, by swarming about
ones head, getting into hair, ears, eyes, and nose. After their hives
are cleaned they make no mistake as to their homes, every insect
returning with unerring precision to its own quarters. At each
entrance a bee sentinel constantly stands, to give warning of ap-
proaching danger, when, from within, the door is immediately
blockaded.

We must not forget to mention the Ez, the genuine wizard,
supposed to call to his aid the black art for evil purposes, whereas
the medicine man is believed to be a good magician. The Ez may
and does " bewitch " those who offend him, but the medicine man
can break the spell. They are very careful to make this distinc-
tion between magician and sorcerer.

While in the eastern part of Yucatan, we frequently heard peo-
ple speak of the Jew's Book, a medical work bearing that title.
At last it fell into our hands — not a printed copy, though it has
been put in type, but the old Spanish manuscript. The contents
rather astonished us. As a cure for leprosy, patients are advised
to drink the water in which an unplucked turkey buzzard has
been boiled for three hours !

However, we found some very important recipes. Here, for in-
stance, is one to cure the bewitched : " First take a root of ver-
vain, cook it in wine and make the patient drink it. This will be
thrown up. To know if the person is bewitched, pass over him a
branch of the plant called skunk. If the leaves turn purple, the
patient is bewitched. To free him from the enchantment, let him
wear a cross made from the root of the skunk plant." The odor
of that plant would most undoubtedly remove all charm from any
person !

Side by side with those absurd prescriptions, there are others
quite in accordance with the materia medica. The book is be-
lieved to have been written by a white man, and many white peo-
ple and half-breeds have the greatest confidence in it. As for the
Indians, they summon the medicine man to give them herbs and
dispel the evil power of the wizard that has prostrated them.

THE work in chemistry of 1893 is described by Prof. J. E. Reynolds as having
been substantial in character, though almost unmarked by discoveries of popular
interest. Amoug its features are Moissan's artificial production of the diamond;
the studies of Dr. Perkins on electro-magnetic rotation, of Lord Rayleigh on the
relative densities of gases, of Dewar on chemical resistance at extremely low tem-
peratures, and of Clowes on exact measurements of flame-cap indications. Hor-
ace Brown and Morris, studying the physiology of leaves, have led to novel
conclusions respecting the formation of cane sugar and of starch; and Cross,
Bevan, and Beadle have added to our knowledge of members of the group of
celluloses.

BIOLOGY AND ETHICS. 671

BIOLOGY AND ETHICS.*

BY SIR JAMES CKICHTON BROWNE, M. D., F. R. S.

IN the case of civilized man natural selection is subject to nu-
merous and extensive limitations. The struggle for existence
still goes on vehemently enough ; but it is changed in character,
and instead of animal rapine we have industrial competition.
The brutal and relentless acts of self-assertion that in a savage
state secured the survival of the fittest — that is to say, of those
best adapted to savage surroundings — have been condemned as
unsuitable to a more artificial existence and are punished as
crimes, and the conflict is carried on by cunning devices which
abolish the weakest slowly and unobtrusively and do not outrage
certain moral feelings opposed to violence which have in the
meantime grown up. But, more than that, in social progress the
struggle for existence becomes in certain directions a surrender
not of the feeblest but of the strongest and the best. A recogni-
tion of the obligations which man owes to his fellow-men and the
promptings of " Love's divine self-abnegation " impose restraints
on some of the competitors who, instead of forcing their way to
the front, as they are well able to do, stand aside and allow them-
selves to be beaten by those less fitted to survive. To adapt the
illustrations of Malthus, Nature still spreads her feast for twenty
guests, while thirty stand by ready to partake of it, but, whereas
in primitive times the twenty strongest would have unhesitat-
ingly appropriated the sustenance, in these more virtuous days
fifteen of the strongest and five of the weakest secure it, because
five of the strongest have chosen to abrogate their natural claims.
The census returns clearly show that while the age of marriage
in this country steadily rises among the educated and affluent
classes, it remains painfully low in agricultural districts and in
the poorer quarters of the great towns.

The interference with the struggle for existence which civili-
zation and ethical development involve is familiar to medical
men above all others, for their professional career is one sus-
tained endeavor to prevent the extermination of the unfittest and,
therefore, to check the operation of natural selection. It is theirs
to succor the victims who have been smitten in the fight, and
who, but for their aid, would perish ; it is theirs to preserve
weakly lives which left unprotected would be ruthlessly stamped
out ; it is theirs to circumvent conquering bacteria and so pre-
vent mortality and swell the millions contending for a bare sub-

* From an address delivered at the opening of the session of the Sheffield School of
Medicine at Firth College, Sheffield, on October 2, 1893, and printed in the London Lancet.

672 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sistence ; it is theirs, as the chosen ministers of the higher ethics,
on the one hand, to counteract the life-destroying checks which
operate chiefly on the feeble and incompetent, and, on the other,
to inculcate the prudential considerations which are most influen-
tial with the finest types of mankind. No doubt the wider scope
which modern science has given to medical practice enables those
who pursue it to render services to the strong as well as to the
weak, and to compensate in some degree for the general lowering
of vitality which the maintenance of sickly lives tends to produce.
Sanitary improvements and the removal of many of the causes
of disease not only keep the infirm alive but insure increased
vigor to the constitutions of the robust. But still the result of
medical work as a whole at the present time must tend toward
the intensification and the thwarting of the struggle for existence
and perhaps to some deterioration of the species, for medical work
does intermeddle with Nature's rough and ready methods in
selecting her breeders. Great numbers of weakly infants who
would formerly have perished in their infancy are now reared to
a weakly maturity and enabled to propagate their weakliness (for
the weakly are often highly prolific), while they take part in the
life battle on terms sometimes made unduly favorable to them by
the commiseration that their weakliness commands ; and this fact
ought not to be lost sight of when we are congratulating our-
selves on our greatly diminished death-rate. An enormous sav-
ing of life has been effected, but mainly in life's earlier decades.
The death-rate is actually increasing among males at all ages
above thirty-five and among females at all ages above forty-five ;
and it is not difficult to prove that this increased mortality at
post-meridian ages is due partly to the enhanced wear and tear of
modern existence and partly to the survival of weakly lives arti-
ficially protected and prolonged.

The origin of those moral sentiments which, in the case of our
race, are modifying the course of natural selection and which
have evoked and molded the profession to which we belong is as
inscrutable as the invention of natural selection itself, but their
development" has some light thrown on certain of its stages by
biological considerations. In the life history of living organisms
we can trace out some rudimentary phases of a new struggle for
existence, a struggle between ethical principles and animal pro-
pensities, a struggle that has to be fought out in the brain and
mind of man, but that is foreshadowed in paltry protoplasmic
particles. For very early in organization may ethical rudiments
be detected ; indeed, the moment we get beyond the solitary cell,
a simple organism which merely feeds and grows and liberates
superfluous parts of its substance to start new organisms like
itself, mutual obligation or what might be called a moral relation

BIOLOGY AND ETHICS. 673

is discernible ; antagonism is converted into co-operation and
conflict gives place to harmony, and the higher we ascend in the
scale of being the more far-reaching and complicated does co-
operation become. Individualism is gradually subordinated to
collectivism, and the struggle for existence becomes mainly the
concern of the organism as a whole and is only in a minor degree
that of the units of which it is composed. Growth, form, and
structure are regulated by an organic process only very slightly
modified by external conditions and not at all by the selection
of the fittest among the growing, formative, and tissue-making
parts. " In each of these complicated structures," says Huxley,
in referring to the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruit of a
bean, "as in their smallest constituents, there is an immanent
energy which in harmony with that resident in all the others in-
cessantly works toward the maintenance of the whole and the
eflicient performance of the part it has to play in the economy of
Nature." In a higher animal we have untold millions of cells of
widely different constitution and habits, not merely dwelling
together in amity but co-operating for the good of the system in
which they are incorporated and undergoing harmonious and
efficacious metamorphoses as it unfolds. The system is still en-
gaged in the struggle for existence, but its constituents can not
in any true sense be said to be so on their own account. Their
self-assertion is limited by the organic process, or what would at
one time have been called the law of design, the equilibrium and
comity of tissues being secured by a self-restraint that is inherent
in them, that was inherent in the vital impulse that called them
into being, a restraint on the nutrition and reproduction of each
to secure the nutrition and reproduction of all, a restraint that
when from any cause it is broken down leads to disease, as in the
overgrowth of cancer. And, as in the case of the cell, so in that
of the animal, the moment we get beyond the solitary animal
fighting for its own life, mutual obligation or consensus becomes
apparent, for if two animals combine to fight together there must
be a tacit understanding that they are to forbear from fighting
each other while so engaged. In all associations of animals the
association which is useful to them in their struggle for existence
is only maintained by some curtailment of the self-assertion that
is of the very essence of the struggle. Sheer animalism is to some
extent restained, antagonism for certain purposes is merged in
co-operation, and individualism is modified in its manifestations
by self-denial. In the ant-hill and beehive and among all state-
forming insects may be observed an orderly polity involving the
co-operation of different classes which exist not for their own
advantage but because they are of value to the state and have
given it a superiority over differently constituted colonies, and in

VOL. XLIV. — 51

674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

all packs, herds, and communities of animals there is some subor-
dination of self-will to secure the realization of the universal will
in social existence. And the higher we ascend in the scale of
gregariousness the more conspicuous does co-operation become,
until among the higher races of civilized man we find that it has
in some degree transferred the pressure of the struggle for ex-
istence from the individual to the body corporate, and that it
tends to do so more and more. Social organization is loose and
shadowy when compared with that of living beings, and differ-
entiation of structure and function in it are partial and ill-
defined, but still it is readily perceived that its development is
regulated by a social process which, although it may seem to
emerge from environment and the struggle for life, clearly im-
plies as it goes on not only the harmonious coexistence of differ-
ent classes differently employed and interested in a larger life
than their own, that of the system or nation of which they form
a part, but the subjection of individual self-assertion to social
growth, in accordance with some social ideal or, shall we say,
design. In the social not less than in the organic process we see
pause given to the life struggle and the co-operation of diverse
parts to a common end. In highly civilized societies certain
classes — propertied and pensioned classes — are practically re-
lieved from the struggle for existence by the operation of moral
restraints, and it is the avowed aim of state socialism to make
that struggle less and less the concern of the individual and more
and more that of the state. In the intercourse between nation
and nation traces of co-operation may be recognized.

But it is in sexual relations far more than in the organic or so-
cial process that the embryonic forms and cotyledons of the moral
sentiments that among mankind, when in full leaf and blossom,
mask and overshadow and sometimes choke natural selection may
be most clearly recognized. Nutrition is everywhere egotistic,
but reproduction is invariably altruistic in its character. In its
lowest form, where two exhausted cells flow together, reproduc-
tion corresponds with what has been designated protoplasmic
hunger ; but wherever true sexual union takes place we have ac-
tivities that are other, regarding and whenever genuine maternity
is differentiated we have hints of self-sacrifice. Sexual prefer-
ences and the selection of mates have obvious reference to the
continuance of the species and the welfare of the offspring and
imply co-operation, and the fatality that attends the triumph of
motherhood represents the immolation of the individual for the
collective advantage. Among the insects we have the pairing of
mates preceded by courtship and followed by associated industry,
as in the aterechus, where the male and female beetle disinterest-
edly toil together in rolling up receptacles for their unborn off-

BIOLOGY AND ETHICS. 675

spring, and throughout the whole animal kingdom, from the
mesosoa, where the female dies in giving birth to her ova, up-
ward, we have illustrations of the sacrificial nature of the repro-
ductive process. Rooted in physical wants and sensation, the
reproductive impulse and parental instincts are gradually re-
enforced by psychical sympathies and branch into altruistic mani-
festations. The fierce fight of the stickleback with his rivals and
his jealous guardianship of the nest to which he has conducted
his bride may be but expressions of blind instinct, and the brood-
ing of the hen on her eggs may be a mere indulgence in an agree-
able siesta, but it is impossible to doubt that in the action of the
walrus or tiger in desperately defending its young, even when
wounded and suffering, and at the expense of its own life, there is
an element of disinterested love. Such maternal devotion evinces
not reckless self-assertion and the desire to hunt down competi-
tors, but the antithesis of these : self-abandonment and care for
others. Between the mother and her offspring there is no struggle
for existence, but there are alliance, affection, and co-operation.

In the pairing of mates, then, in their copartnership often ex-
tending far beyond the breeding season, in the provision made for
offspring, in the care and training bestowed on them after birth,
and in the establishment of family groups, all reproductive phe-
nomena, we have in the animal series the analogues, minute but
distinctive, of the altruistic emotions which in human beings, fos-
tered and transmuted by various agencies, have enabled them as
regards certain relationships to struggle out of the dismal swamp
of the " struggle for existence/' And in the case of human beings
it has, I believe, been the formation of distinct family groups that
has more than any other reproductive influence been contributory
to moral progress. The family is the social unit, the nursery of
goodness, the school of character, the germ-plasm of the loftiest
virtues, for it is by a diffusion of the feelings that well up within
its precincts to the clan, the nation, and the race that we become
public-spirited, patriotic, and philanthropic. The savage owes to
it his first glimmerings of ethics, and we in this country owe to it
the prosperity we enjoy. Its associated life necessitates a curtail-
ment of self-assertion, a discipline of self-will, and is incompatible
with irresponsible atomism, but favors the evolution in due se-
quence of the dispositions that fit for companionship under civi-
lized conditions.

Now we have been told lately that the family is played out
and doomed. Mr. Pearson, in his remarkable and able work, has
argued that it will ultimately, to a great extent, be merged in the
nation. He looks forward to a state of things in which there will
be a weakening of the marriage bond, wedlock being, instead of a
union for life, a partnership during good behavior or pleasure,

6; 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and in which children growing up, better educated than father or
mother, will know that they have to thank the state for schooling
and protection and are little indebted to their parents, who have
simply taken advantage of their tender years to confiscate the
proceeds of their industry. In these halcyon days there will be a
state creche, a state school and state medical institution, supple-
mented by state meals, and the child when well drilled in the
state gymnasium will pass from the state school into a state
workshop, and finally on to the state crematorium. The result
of all this will be that as marriage becomes legalized concubinage
the obligation of family duties will attenuate ; as children under-
stand that it is to the state they have been indebted for mainte-
nance the old feelings of gratitude and affection which bound
them to their parents will dwindle away; and as parents lose
their proprietary and administrative rights over children they
will more and more shift the responsibility for them on to the
state. The family with all its sacred traditions and precious
training will decline, and man — like the cuckoo — will be con-
stantly seeking to foist on others the maintenance of his off-
spring. Mr. Pearson's prognostications, however, are, I venture
to think, of an unnecessarily gloomy description. They are
founded on the assumption that society is destined to become
more and more secular ; they betray ignorance of human nature,
for surely the love of children for parents is not founded solely
on a sordid calculation of what they owe them ; and they involve
the error that the volume of feeling must always be the same and
that its expansion in one direction, so as to embrace the sphere of
state action, implies its contraction in another direction, so as to
exclude family ties and claims. But there is no reason to doubt
that reverence for the state may grow without supplanting rev-
erence for the family ; nay, there is reason to hope that parental
and filial affection will become stronger and more tenacious as
time goes on. The restrictions placed by the state, as the expo-
nent of enlightened opinion and sentiment, on the autocratic
powers which the head of the family at one time possessed — the
very existence of which provoked antagonism and the arbitrary
exercise of which corrupted — may be expected to soften and ce-
ment the family relationship and make it more complete and last-
ing than it has hitherto been. Then it is to be remembered that
the period of dependence of offspring on parents steadily increases
as evolution advances. The higher the animal the longer the
duration of this period of dependence. It is more protracted in
civilized than in savage races and now than it has been hereto-
fore. And this protraction of intimate intercourse and reciprocal
relations between the members of a family certainly means a
deepening of the sense of kinship. We may flatter ourselves

THE ACTION OF MASSAGE UPON THE MUSCLES. 677

with the hope, then, that the tender and, indeed, sacred feelings
which have been nurtured in household association will retain
their dominion over us, and that the family will survive in
unimpaired integrity, the fountain head of altruistic emotions,
the palladium of sound morality.

THE ACTION OF MASSAGE UPON THE MUSCLES.

BY DOUGLAS GRAHAM, M D.

THAT " science follows art with limping strides," as so well
expressed by an able physician, is perhaps nowhere oftener
seen than in the various branches of the practice of medicine.
Experience has taught us from time immemorial the value of
massage as a nerve and muscle tonic, and, like all good things,
the possibility of its overuse. But the recent experiments of
Prof. Arnaldo Maggiora, of the University of Turin, so clearly
and beautifully detailed in the Archives Italiennes de Biologie
(tome xii, page 225), have demonstrated that this matter can be
brought into the sunny light of exact science and away from the
somber shades of quackery, where it has been so long relegated
by the vast majority of the medical profession. Zabludowski, it
is true, had in part prepared the way for this by showing that
when after fatigue from a definite amount of work a rest of fif-
teen minutes was insufficient to restore the tired muscles to their
former vigor, after massage for five minutes they were capable
of doing as much work as before, and after massage for fifteen
minutes they could do twice as much work as at first.

Prof. Maggiora endeavored to ascertain :

1. The action of massage upon muscles in a state of repose.
For this purpose the fatigue curves of the right and left middle
fingers in maximum voluntary flexion every two seconds with a
weight of three kilogrammes (6'6 pounds) were taken at 8 and 11
A. M., at 2 and 5 P. M., and the following day the fatigue curves of
the same muscles with the same weight and rhythm were 'taken
after mixed massage (friction, percussion, and kneading) for three
minutes at the same hours of the day. The average result showed
that the muscles did almost twice as much work after massage as
they did before. The average of the work without massage was
4'252 kilogrammes for the left middle finger, but after massage of
the finger and forearm the average was 8'019 kilogrammes before
extreme fatigue stopped further contractions. An analogous series
of experiments was next made in which the electrical current was
employed to tire the muscles by applying it directly to them, and
also to the median nerve. The results without and with massage

678 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

were similar to the first series, and showed that it takes much
longer to fatigue the muscles by contraction from electrical irri-
tation after massage than before.*

2. The next series of experiments were undertaken with a
view to determine whether the beneficial effects of mixed mas-
sage (friction, percussion, and kneading) increased in proportion
to the duration of its application. At 8 A. M. the normal fatigue
curve was taken, then every two hours and a quarter after this
the curve was taken, having been preceded by two, five, ten, and
fifteen minutes of massage of the right and left middle fingers
and their corresponding muscles in the forearm. Ten fatigue
tracings were thus taken, and the result showed that with five
minutes of massage all the useful effect that could be produced
was obtained. When the massage was continued longer, for ten
or fifteen minutes, there were but slight variations in the amount
of work above and below that after five minutes. Similar experi-
ments were made in which electricity was used to tire the mus-
cles in place of voluntary flexion, and the same result was ob-
tained.

3. The object of the next series of experiments was to ascer-
tain the effects of the principal maneuvers of massage — friction,
percussion, and petrissage, or kneading. The mode of procedure
was as before : first, the normal fatigue tracing was taken ; then
at regular intervals during the day, every two hours, the fatigue
curve was inscribed after five minutes of friction or effleurage,
after five minutes of percussion, after five minutes of petrissage,
and finally after five minutes of friction, percussion, and petris-
sage alternating. The results showed that there was very little
difference in the work that could be accomplished after five min-
utes of friction as compared with five minutes of percussion. But
there was a great increase in the number and strength of the
contractions after petrissage. The best effect, however, was ob-
tained after the alternations of all three. (It would be interesting
to reproduce the tables and tracings if space allowed.) Like
results were obtained when the contractions were produced by
electricity applied to the median nerve or to the muscles directly,
and the friction, percussion, and petrissage employed separately
and alternately.

4. The effects of massage upon muscles weakened from various
causes were also studied in the same exact manner by Dr..Mag-
giora. Upon muscles weakened from fasting the effect of massage
was to restore them temporarily, so that they gave normal trac-

* I have elsewhere called attention to the fact that .after massage muscles give a much
more ready, vigorous, and agreeable response to the will and to the faradic current than
they do before. — D. G.

THE ACTION OF MASSAGE UPON THE MUSCLES. 679

ings of fatigue ; and the same result was obtained -when the elec-
tric current in place of the will was used to tire the muscles.

5. As the result of general fatigue, the muscles of the hand
were also tried in an indirect manner. Prof. Maggiora, after a
walk of ten miles, to which he was not accustomed, took a trac-
ing of the fatigue curves of the right and left middle fingers as
before, and found that they were only capable of doing one fourth
as much work as when he was rested. After massage for ten min-
utes they were so much temporarily rested that they did nearly a
normal amount of work and gave nearly a normal tracing. The
work probably would have been equal to normal had it not been
for the superadded fatigue of taking the fatigue tracing half an
hour before the massage ; for it has been found that the muscles
of the middle finger when tired by contractions with three kilo-
grammes every two seconds require about two hours' rest in order
to give normal fatigue tracings every two hours during the day.

6. The effect of massage upon muscles weakened by loss of
sleep was also inspected. In muscular fatigue from fasting rest
alone does not restore them, and in fatigue from wakefulness
nourishment alone affords no appreciable relief. After the loss of
a night's sleep the fatigue curve was taken and found to be very
small, but after ten minutes of massage it was temporarily re-
stored to a natural curve, which could not be obtained on previ-
ous occasions by rest nor by nerve tonics alone.

7. Intense and prolonged intellectual work produces a state of
general lassitude. After the final examination of twenty medical
students, which lasted for five hours, Prof. Maggiora was much
exhausted. He then took a fatigue curve of flexion of the middle
fingers of both hands. This was only about one fifth normal.
Half an hour later, after ten minutes of massage, the number of
contractions was little less than natural, and might have reached
natural but for the fatigue induced by the preceding experiment.

8. After a slight attack of fever of ten hours' duration the
muscles were weak the whole of the following day, but after mas-
sage the aptitude for work was increased so that the contractions
of the fingers gave almost a natural tracing of fatigue.

9. The effect of massage upon anaemic muscles was most in-
teresting. Dr. Maggiora demonstrated that anaemia for a short
time — from three to five minutes — produces phenomena in mus-
cles similar to fatigue ; or, in other words, lessens their vigor and
resistance to work. Compression of his brachial artery was made
for three minutes, and at the end of this time, while the compres-
sion was still maintained, a fatigue tracing was taken and found
to be very small, the finger contracting only eleven times. Two
hours later the brachial artery was again compressed for three
minutes, and at the same time the forearm was subjected to mas-

68o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sage. At the end of three minutes, the anaemia being kept up,
another tracing was taken, and the muscles contracted but nine
times, when prevented by fatigue from doing more. Massage has,
therefore, no effect upon muscles thus rendered so completely
anaemic in the way of increasing their capability for work.

This experiment was made with a weight of one kilogramme
(2'2 pounds) and contractions every two seconds. It was found
that in a natural condition the middle finger could thus contract
two hundred and sixty-five times without any fatigue.*

In comparing this last experiment with the preceding ones it
is found that the effect of massage consists essentially in re-
awakening the phenomena of the local circulation, in bringing to
the muscles a greater quantity of material necessary for their
contraction, and in removing the retrograde products of muscular
work.

RESUME. — 1. Massage, when applied upon a muscle in a state
of repose, increases its resistance to work and modifies its fatigue
curve by retarding the manifestation thereof.

2. The beneficial effect of massage is within certain limits in
proportion to the duration of its application. Beyond these limits
there is not obtained any further increase in the production of
mechanical work.

3. Massage can hinder in muscles the accumulated effects of
fatigue proceeding from the effects of work when not sufficient
intervals of rest have been allowed.

4. The various manceuvers of massage act with different in-
tensity upon the aptitude of muscles for work. Percussion and
friction are inferior to petrissage and to mixed massage.

5. In muscles weakened by fasting we can, by means of mas-
sage, notably ameliorate their resistance to work.

6. Upon muscles fatigued or weakened by a cause which acts
upon the whole muscular system, such as prolonged walking, loss
of sleep, loss of food, excessive intellectual work, etc., massage
exerts a restorative influence which brings back to them their
power of doing a natural amount of work.

7. The beneficial effects of massage upon the phenomena of
muscular work are no longer produced when it is applied upon a
muscle in which the circulation of blood has been suppressed.

THE potato, according to Mrs. Lily Grove, grows native in the islands of
Chiloe, in the wildest districts, even at the top of the highest mountains. A
whole region is called after it, and it is often the sole food of the people.

* In all these experiments the massage was done with the same energy by Prof. Mag-
giora's assistant, Dr. Grandis. The ergograph of Prof. Mosso was used to take the tracings
of the fatigue curves.

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 681

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK.

BY ALFRED R. WALLACE, F. R. S.

ERRATIC BLOCKS AND ICE-SHEETS.

I.

IT is little more than fifty years ago that one of the most potent
agents in modifying the surface features of our country was
first recognized. Before 1840, when Agassiz accompanied Buck-
land to Scotland, the Lake District, and Wales, discovering every-
where the same indications of the former presence of glaciers as
are to be found so abundantly in Switzerland, no geologist had
conceived the possibility of a recent glacial epoch in the tem-
perate portion of the northern hemisphere. From that year,
however, a new science came into existence, and it was recog-
nized that only by a careful study of existing glaciers, of the
nature of the work they now do, and of the indications of the
work they have done in past ages, could we explain many curious
phenomena that had hitherto been vaguely regarded as indica-
tions of diluvial agency. One of the first fruits of the new science
was the conversion of the author of Reliquiae Diluvianse — Dr.
Buckland, who, having studied the work of glaciers in Switzer-
land in company with Agassiz, became convinced that numerous
phenomena he had observed in this country could only be due to
the very same causes. In November, 1840, he read a paper before
the Geological Society on the Evidences of Glaciers in Scotland
and the North of England, and from that time to the present the
study of glaciers and of their work has been systematically pur-
sued with a large amount of success. One after another crude
theories have been abandoned, facts have steadily accumulated,
and their logical though cautious interpretation has led to a con-
siderable body of well-supported inductions on which the new
science is becoming firmly established. Some of the most impor-
tant and far-reaching of these inductions are, however, still
denied by writers who have a wide acquaintance with modern
glaciers ; and as several works have recently appeared on both
sides of the controversy, the time seems appropriate for a popular
sketch of the progress of the glacial theory, together with a more
detailed discussion of some of the most disputed points as to
which it seems to the present writer that sound reasoning is even
more required than the further accumulation of facts.*

* The works referred to are : Do Glaciers Excavate ? by Prof. T. G. Bonney, F. R. S.
(The Geographical Journal, vol. i, No. 6); The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, by Sir
H. H. Howorth, M. P., F. R. S. ; Fragments of Earth Lore, by Prof. James Geikie, F. R. S. ;

682 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the last century, Swedenborg, Linnaeus, Pallas, De Luc, and
many other eminent writers took notice of the remarkable fact
that in Scandinavia, Russia, Germany, and Switzerland detached
rocks or bowlders were found, often in great abundance and of
immense size, and of a kind that did not exist in situ in the same
district, but which were often only to be discovered in remote
localities, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Those who ven-
tured to speculate on the origin of these traveled rocks usually
had recourse to water power to account for their removal ; and
as their large size and often elevated position required some un-
usual force to carry them, there arose the idea of enormous floods
sweeping over whole continents ; and for a long time this diluvial
theory was the only one that appeared to be available, although
the difficulties of its application to explain all the phenomena be-
came greater the more closely those phenomena were studied.
Still, there was apparently no other known or conceivable means
of accounting for them, and for the enormous mounds of gravel
or clay intermixed with bowlders which often accompanied them ;
and the efforts of geologists were therefore directed to the discov-
ery of how the water power had acted, and by what means the
supposed floods could have been produced.

There were not wanting men who saw that no action of water
alone could account for the facts. Sir James Hall pointed this
out with regard to erratics on the Jura, whose source was un-
doubtedly in the far-distant Alps ; and Mr. Grainger, in America,
described some of the parallel grooves and flutings running for
nearly a mile in Ohio, strongly arguing that no action of running
water could have produced them, but that an agent was required
the direction of whose movement was fixed and unalterable for
long distances and for a great length of time. No light was, how-
ever, thrown on the problem till 1822, when Venetz, a Swiss en-
gineer, finding that existing glaciers varied in extent from year
to year and that historical records showed them to have consider-
ably increased during the last eight centuries, was further led to
observe that long before the historical era the glaciers had been
immensely more extensive, as shown by the smooth and rounded
rocks, by longitudinal scratches and grooves pointing down the
valleys, and by numbers of old moraines exactly similar in form
and materials to those deposited by existing glaciers. He read a
paper before the Helvetic Society of Natural History, and urged
that glaciers once stretched down the Rhone Valley as far as the

Man and the Glacial Period, by Prof. G. F. Wright, F. G. S. A. ; La Pe>iode Glaciaire, by
A. Falsan ; and the Glacialist's Magazine, edited by Percy F. Kendall, F. G. S. ; from which
works, and from those of Lyell, Ramsay, Geikie, and the American geologists, most of the
facts referred to in the present article are derived.

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 683

Jura, and there deposited the erratic blocks which had so puzzled
the diluvialists to explain.

Other writers soon followed the clew thus given. In 1835
Charpentier, after a close study of the erratic blocks and of their
sources, adopted the views of Venetz. Agassiz followed, and by
his strenuous advocacy did much to spread correct views as to
the former extension of the Alpine glaciers, and their capability
of explaining the numerous superficial phenomena which in all
northern countries had been thought to afford proofs of enor-
mous floods and of the submergence of a large part of Europe un-
der a deep sea. He has, therefore, gained the reputation of being
the originator of the modern school of glacialists, which undoubt-
edly owes much to his energy, research, and powers of exposition,
though all the more important facts, as well as the logical con-
clusions to be drawn from them, had been pointed out by previ-
ous writers.

Before proceeding further, it will be well to give a brief out-
line of the phenomena which lead to the conclusion that gla-
ciers have formerly existed in districts and countries where even
perpetual snow on the mountain tops is now unknown. These
may be briefly classed as — 1. Moraines and drifts. 2. Rounded,
smoothed, or planed rocks. 3. Striee, grooves, and furrows on
rock surfaces. 4. Erratics and perched blocks.

1. Moraines are those heaps or ridges of rock and other debris
which are deposited on the surface of a glacier from the preci-
pices or mountain slopes which border it, and which form what are
termed lateral and medial moraines while upon it, and terminal
moraines when, being gradually discharged at its end, either from
above or from beneath it, they form great heaps of rock and
gravel corresponding in outline and extent to that of the ter-
minal ice-cliff. Such moraines can be seen on and near all exist-
ing glaciers, and their mode of formation and characteristics are
perfectly well known. If the glacier is continuously retreating,
then the terminal moraine will form more or less irregular heaps
over the surface the glacier has formerly covered ; but when, as
is usually the case, the glacier remains stationary for a consider-
able period, then the terminal moraine will have a definite form,
and will often stretch quite across the valley, but presenting one
or more openings through which the glacier stream has cut its
way. Such moraines form steep mounds, usually curved and
often very regular, seeming from a little distance to block up the
valley like an artificial earthwork. Among hundreds that might
be enumerated, good examples may be seen in Glen Isla (Forfar-
shire), in the Troutbeck Valley near Windermere, and in Cwm
Glas, on the north side of Snowdon, this latter being so regularly
curved, evenly sloped, and level-topped as to look from below

684 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

exactly like an ancient fortification. The characteristic features
of moraines are their position in valleys where there are other
indications of glacial action, their steep slopes and often level
tops, but especially their composition of earth, stones, and gravel,
with large fragments of rock irregularly scattered through them
from top to bottom without any sign of stratification, while usu-
ally one or more large blocks rest upon their summits in positions
where they could only have been left by the retreat of the glacier,
or possibly stranded from floating ice. Where extensive glaciers
have covered large areas of nearly level ground, the moraines
form great sheets extending for many miles, often concealing the
original contours of the country, and then receive the general
name of drift. The composition of drift is usually the same as
that of well-marked moraines, large blocks of stone being dis-
tributed throughout its mass. It is this which mainly distin-
guishes drift from alluvial or shore deposits, in which the ma-
terials are always more or less assorted and stratified ; but the
angular forms of many of the contained blocks and the striated
surfaces of others are also characteristic. Besides the terminal
moraines of extinct glaciers, lateral moraines are also left along
the slopes of open valleys from which glaciers have retreated. As
a whole, moraines are well distinguished from all accumulations
formed by water, and it has not been shown that any other
agency than glaciers is capable of forming them. In all recently
glaciated countries they are to be found more or less frequently,
and thus afford an excellent first indication of the former exist-
ence of glaciers.

2. Smoothed and rounded rocks, called in Switzerland " roches
moutonne'es," from their supposed resemblance at a distance to
sheep lying down, are perhaps the most general of all the indi-
cations of glacial action. Every glacier carries with it, imbedded
in its under surface, numbers of rocks and stones, which, during
the slow but unceasing motion over its bed, crush and grind down
all rocky projections, producing in the end gently rounded or
almost flat surfaces even on the hardest and toughest rocks. In
many of the valleys of Wales, the Lake District, and Scotland
every exposed rock has acquired this characteristic outline, and
the same feature can be traced on all the rocky slopes, and often
on the summits of the lesser heights ; and the explanation how
these forms have been produced is not a theory only, but has been
observed in actual operation in the accessible portions of many
glaciers. Rocks and stones are to be seen imbedded in the ice
and actually scratching, grooving, and grinding the rock beneath
in their slow but irresistible onward motion. The rocky islets in
Windermere, Ullswater, and other lakes, as well as the Thousand
Islands of the St. Lawrence, are thus ice-ground ; and the amount

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 685

of the grinding can often be seen to be proportional to the pres-
sure and motion of the advancing glacier. I recently noticed in
the marshy alluvial plain above Derwentwater a projecting rock
which has been ground down to so regular a curve as to look like
a portion of an enormous globe buried in the earth. By rough
measurement and estimate this rock was about two hundred and
fifty feet across, and twenty or thirty feet high. It was formed
of hard slate, with numerous quartzite veins, the whole ground
down to a uniform spherical surface. It had evidently once been
an island in the lake, having a much broader base now hidden by
the alluvium, and may originally have been one of those abrupt
craggy rocks a few hundred feet high, which, owing to their su-
perior hardness or tenacity, resisted ordinary denudation, and
which, when above the old ice-level, form those numerous " pikes "
which add so much to the wild and picturesque scenery of the
district. Looking at such rocks as this, with outlines so utterly
unlike any that are produced in similar formations by subaerial
denudation — and they are to be seen by scores in all glaciated re-
gions— we can not but conclude that the ice tool has done more
than merely rub off the angles and minor prominences, and that
it has really ground away rocky hills to an unknown but very
considerable extent ; and this conclusion is, as we shall see, sup-
ported by a very large amount of confirmatory evidence. It may
be noted that ice-ground rocks usually show the direction in
which the ice has moved, by the side opposed to the motion being
more completely smoothed than the lee side, which often retains
some of its ruggedness, having been protected partly by the ice
overriding it and partly by the accumulation of its own debris.
Where such rocks occur in the higher parts of valleys the smooth
side always looks up the valley from which the glacier has de-
scended. In the more open parts of valleys, or in high coombs or
cirques, where two or more small ravines meet and where the ice
may have been embayed and have acquired a somewhat rotary
motion, the rocks are seen to be ground down on all sides into
smooth mammillated mounds or hummocks, showing that the ice
has been forced into all the irregularities of the surface. An ex-
ample on a small scale is to be seen in Cwm Glas, on the north
side of Snowdon, above the fine moraine already mentioned, and
in many other places around the same mountain. On the whole,
considering their abundance in all glaciated regions, and the
amount of information they give as to the direction and grinding
power of ice, these rounded rocks afford one of the most instruc-
tive indications of the former presence of glaciers ; and we must
also agree with the conclusin of Darwin (in a paper written after
studying the phenomena of ice-action in North Wales, and while
fresh from his observations of glaciers and icebergs in the South-

686 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

era hemisphere) that "one of the "best criterions between the
effects produced by the passage of glaciers and of icebergs is boss
or dome-shaped rocks."

3. Striated, grooved, and fluted rocks, though closely connected
with the preceding, form a distinct kind of evidence of the great-
est value. Most of the bosses of rock just described have been
exposed to the action of the atmosphere, perhaps since the ice left
them, and have thus become more or less roughened or even dis-
integrated ; but where the rocks have been protected by a cover-
ing of drift, or even of turf, and have been recently exposed, they
often exhibit numerous parallel striae, varying from the finest
scratches to deep furrows a foot or more in diameter. Fine ex-
amples are to be seen near the lakes of Llanberis, and they occur
more or less frequently in every glaciated country. Perhaps none
of the effects of ice so clearly demonstrate the action of glaciers
as opposed to that of icebergs, owing to the general constancy of
the direction of the striae, and the long distances they may be
traced up and down slopes, with a steadiness of motion and even-
ness of cutting power which no floating mass could possibly ex-
ert. Sir A. Geikie tells us that in Gareloch, Bute, and Cantyre
the striations on the rocks run up and over the ridges, and are as
clearly shown on the hill tops as in the valleys. Mr. D. Mackin-
tosh states (in his paper on the Ice-sheet of the Lake District and
of North Wales) that in the valley above Windermere the striae
cross Rydal Fell, Loughrigg Fell, and Orrest Head, ascending and
descending their slopes, often obliquely. But it is in the United
States that the most remarkable rock-groovings are to be found,
extending over a large portion of the northeastern States. In his
report on The Bock-scorings of the Great Ice Invasions Mr. T.
C. Chamberlin gives many fine illustrations, from photographs,
showing striae and grooves along sloping, curved, or vertical sur-
faces, the striae following the changes of curve, so that the grind-
ing material must have been slowly forced into close contact with
the irregular surface. Of one of these examples Mr. Chamberlin
says:

The climax of adaptability is reached in the striation of warped and twisted
surfaces, and of tortuous valleys. One of the most remarkable known instances
of this within the limits of photographic illustration is furnished by the great
glacial grooves at Kelly's Island (Fig. 17). These exhibit not only the pliancy of
the ice, but at the same time its strong hold upon the armature with which it did
its work of abrasion, grooving, and striation. For, while these grooves can
scarcely be supposed to have been originated de now by the gouging action of the
ice, they are, nevertheless, plowed with deep furrows, the symmetry, continuity,
and peculiar form of some of which are only intelligible on the supposition that
they were cut by a single graving tool, held with sufficient tenacity by the ice to
execute by a single movement a deep, sharply defined groove. There is, perhaps,
no finer illustration of the pliancy with which the ice yielded to its encompassing

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 687

barriers, the tenacity with which it held its armature, and withal the pressure
that both forced it into compliance with its tortuous channel, and pressed it
relentlessly forward. *

Kelly's Island is at the western end of Lake Erie, and in the
direction of the striae to the northeast there is no high ground for
about four hundred miles. Looking at these facts, I can not give
any weight to the opinions of those who, from observations of
existing glaciers, declare positively that ice can not go up-hill, and
can exert no grinding power on level ground.

4. Erratic blocks were among the phenomena that first attract-
ed the attention of men of science. Large masses of granite and
hard metamorphic rock, which can be traced to Scandinavia, are
found scattered over the plains of Denmark, Prussia, and northern
Germany, where they rest either on drift or on quite different
formations of the Secondary or Tertiary periods. One of these
blocks, estimated at fifteen hundred tons weight, lay in a marshy
plain near St. Petersburg, and a portion of it was used for the
pedestal of the statue of Peter the Great. In parts of North
Germany they are so abundant as to hide the surface of the
ground, being piled up in irregular masses forming hills of granite
bowlders, which are often covered with forests of pine, birch, and
juniper. Far south, at Fiirstenwalde, southeast of Berlin, there
was a huge block of Swedish red granite, from one half of which
the gigantic basin was wrought which stands before the New
Museum in that city. In Holstein there is a block of granite
twenty feet in diameter; and it was noticed by De Luc that the
largest blocks were often found at the greatest distance from the
parent rock, and that this fact was conclusive against their hav-
ing been brought to their present position by the action of floods.

It is, however, in Switzerland that we find erratic blocks which
furnish us with the most conclusive testimony to the former
enormous extension of glaciers ; and as these have been examined
with the greatest care, and the facts, as well as the main induc-
tions from the facts, are generally admitted by all modern writers,
it will be well to consider them somewhat in detail. It will be
found that they give us most valuable information both as to the
depth and extension of ancient glaciers, and also to the possibili-
ties of motion in extensive ice-sheets.

The most important of these facts relate to the erratic blocks
from the higher Alps, which are found on the flanks of the Jura
Mountains wholly formed of limestone, on which it is therefore
easy to recognize the granites, slates, and old metamorphic rocks
of the Alpine chain. These erratic blocks extend along the Jura

* Seventh Annual Keport of the United States Geological Survey, p. 179. Arrange-
ments have now been made for the preservation of these remarkable examples of ice-work.

688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

range for a distance of one hundred miles, and up to a height of
two thousand and fifteen feet above the Lake of Neufchatel. The
first important point to notice is that this highest elevation is
attained at a spot exactly opposite, and in the same direction as,
the Rhone Valley, "between Martigny and the head of the Lake of
Geneva, while north or south of this point they gradually decline
in elevation to about five hundred feet above the lake. The blocks
at the highest elevation and central point can be traced to the
eastern shoulder of Mont Blanc. All those to the southwest come
from the left-hand side of the lower Rhone Valley, while those to
the northeast are all from the left side of the upper Rhone Valley
and its tributaries. Other rocks coming from the right-hand
side of the upper Rhone Valley are found on the right hand or
Bernese side of the great valley between the Jura and the Bernese
Alps.*

Now, this peculiar and definite distribution, which has been
worked out with the greatest care by numerous Swiss geologists,
is a necessary consequence of well-known laws of glacier motion.
The debris from the two sides of the main valley form lateral
moraines which, however much the glacier may afterward be
contracted or spread out, keep their relative position unchanged.
Each important tributary glacier brings in other lateral moraines,
and thus when the combined glacier ultimately spreads out in a
great lowland valley the several moraines will also spread out,
while keeping their relative position, and never crossing over to
mingle with each other. So soon as this definite position of the
erratics was worked out it became evident that the first explana-
tion— of a great submergence during which the lower Swiss
valleys were arms of the sea and the Rhone glacier broke off in
icebergs which carried the erratics across to the Jura — was alto-
gether untenable, and that the original explanation of Venetz
and Charpentier was the true one. Sir Charles Lyell, who had
first adopted the iceberg theory, gave it up on examining the
country in 1857 and ascertaining that the facts were correctly
stated by the Swiss geologists ; and there is at the present day
no writer of the least importance who denies this. Sir Henry
Howorth, who is one of the strongest opponents of what he con-
siders the extreme views of modern glacialists, gives a full sum-
mary of the facts as to the old Rhone glacier from Charpentier.
He states that between Martigny and St. Maurice the moraine
debris on each side of the valley shows the glacier to have reached
a height of three thousand feet above the river ; farther on,
where the valley widens over the Lake of Geneva, it sank to

* A map showing the lines of dispersal of these erratics is given in Lyell's Antiquity of
Man, p. 344, and is reproduced in my Island Life, p. 111.

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 689

two thousand feet, while on the Jura itself it seems to have been
again raised to three thousand feet at its highest point ; * and
he quotes Charpentier's general conclusion :

It goes without saying that not only all the valleys of the Valais were filled
with ice np to a certain height, but that all lower Switzerland in which we find
the erratic debris of the Rhone Valley must have been covered by the same gla-
cier. Consequently all the country between the Alps and the Jura, and between
the environs of Geneva and those of Soleure, has been the bed of a glacier.

And then, after quoting the observations of Agassiz on the same
phenomena and of those of North America, he gives his own con-
clusions in the following words :

It is plain to those who would look without prejudice that the rounded and
mammillated surfaces, the scratched, polished, and grooved rocks, and a great
number of the phenomena which accompanied the distribution of the bowlders
and the drift, are consistent only with the fact that in the last geological age
there was an immense development of glaciers which occupied not only the
high ranges of the Alps and the Dovrefelds, but the secondary ranges and lower
heights of the continents of Europe and North America. This conclusion seems
supported by every form of converging evidence, and is apparently beyond the
reach of cavil. So far there is no question at issue.t

We may take it, therefore, that the views of Charpentier, Agassiz,
and Sir Charles Lyell as to the extent and thickness of the great
Rhone glacier are admitted to be correct, or, at least, not to be
exaggerated, by the most strenuous opponents of the extreme
glacialists. We may, therefore, use this as a fixed datum in our
further investigations, and I think it will be found to lead us
irresistibly to conclusions which in other cases these writers de-
clare to be inadmissible. — Fortnightly Bevieiv.

THE cities and towns visited by the Rev. J. A. "Wylie during an excursion to
central Manchuria in September and October, 1892, were centers of trade for the
surrounding country, many of them having very large distilleries, inn-yards of
great extent capable of accommodating hundreds of guests, and oil-works of
various kinds; while outside their walls were generally some brick-kilns, brick-
works, and lime-kilns. The houses were chiefly built of brick; burned brick
was used for the better houses in the town, while unburned brick or mud only
was used in the country. In some of the towns the shop-fronts were quite im-
posing, substantially built, and lavishly decorated. The streets were wide and
level. Mr. Wylie visited the region in the dull season, and saw, either in town
or country, none of the stir which all these arrangements betoken for the busy
season.

* These figures are almost certainly incorrect, as the upper surface of the glacier must
have had a considerable downward slope to produce motion. The recent work of M. Fal-
san, La P6riode Glaciaire, gives the thickness as about 3,800 feet at the head of the lake
and 8,250 feet at Geneva.

f The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood, p. 208.
VOL. XLIV. — 52

690 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE FOUNDER OF THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL.

BY M. JACQUES BOYEE.

WHEN recently the statue of Theophrast Renaudot, the
founder of French political journalism, was unveiled, the
literary and scientific journals were alike full of praises of him
and his work; but none of them recollected another pioneer in
his field, the modest and profoundly erudite Denis de Sallo, the
founder of the Journal des Sgavants, who did for letters and sci-
ence what Renaudot so successfully accomplished for politics.

Without undertaking a full sketch of the history of the French
scientific press, I desire only to show here how new in 1665 was
that idea, which seems so simple and natural now, of the creation
of a scientific journal ; how many impediments were raised against
its creator by the commonplace authors whom the new tribunal
condemned without appeal ; what patience, what erudition, what
a prodigious sum of labor were required from its founders to sur-
mount all the obstacles, avoid all the perils they met every day,
and give their work a vitality strong enough to permit it, rising
repeatedly from its ashes, to perpetuate itself till our time.

Denis de Sallo, Seigneur of la Coudray, was born in Paris in
1626, of an old noble family of Poitou. His lessons in early child-
hood were not brilliant ; but after he entered the courses of rhet-
oric at the College des Grassins he obtained all the prizes of his
class ; became in the next year a distinguished pupil in philoso-
phy, and having sustained in public remarkable theses in Latin
and Greek, gave himself up with ardor to the study of law. His
advance was so rapid that he was able in 1652 to succeed his
father, Jacques de Sallo, in his ofiice as counselor at the Parlia-
ment of Paris. Three years later he married Elizabeth Menar-
deau, daughter of a counselor in the Grand Chamber, by whom
he had one son and four daughters. He died on the 14th of May,
1669, of apoplexy. His death, according to Vigneuil Marville, was
caused by the loss of all his fortune in gambling in 1665 ; but,
besides that this story has little probability in view of the char-
acter of De Sallo, who was industrious through all his life, it is
controverted by a letter of Guy Patin's of the 13th of November,
1665, which proves that at that time De Sallo had no thought of
dying, and by the testimony of Pere Honore" de Sainte Marie, who
agrees with More'ri in placing his death in 1669 and not in 1665.

Having given an outline of the principal events of De Sallo's
life, which was otherwise quiet enough, we pass to the study of
his character and work. " He read all sorts of books," says Mo-
re'ri, " with incredible care, and kept secretaries continually em-
ployed to write down his reflections and the passages which he

FOUNDER OP THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL. 691

marked, so that by this plan of studying he fitted himself to com-
pose treatises on every kind of subject, as he showed on several
occasions."

It was probably the considerable quantity of material that he
collected in this way that suggested to him the thought of giving
the public those extracts the utility of which he had recognized
in his experiences. He associated with himself in the execution
of this work, which was colossal for that time, a number of men
of science and letters : De Bourzeis, a distinguished theologian ; De
Gemberville, chaplain, the famous author of La Pucelle ; and the
Abb£ Gaulois, who, according to Fontenelle, seemed " born for that
work " ; but De Sallo revised all the articles — not very numerous
— which his colaborers furnished, and himself wrote the largest
number.

The authorization having been obtained, the support of Colbert
assured, and the plan and periods of publication fixed, the Jour-
nal des Sgavants appeared on Monday, January 3, 1665, in a sheet
and a half quarto, under the pen signature of Hedouville ; * and
it continued to appear every Monday till the 30th of March of
the same year, when the authorization was withdrawn. Although
its criticisms were always moderate and just, it had made many
enemies among men of letters, and among the Jesuits, then all-
powerful, " who were not pleased to see a literary and philosoph-
ical tribunal that was not set up by them, and who, moreover, de-
tested De Sallo and his friends as Parlementarians and Gallicans
suspected of Jansenism ; these added their complaints to the cries
of wounded self-love. They secured the aid of the papal nuncio,
and he obtained a prohibition against De Sallo's continuing the
publication." The pretext alleged for this act was a passage in
the Journal in which De Sallo criticised a decree of the Inquisitors,
" whose delicate ears required so great circumspection."

Colbert, however, still retained a friendship for his client,
recompensed him for the suppression of his journal with an
office in the treasury, and, realizing the full value of De Sallo's
work, commissioned the Abbe* Gaulois to continue it. The Jour-
nal reappeared on the 4th of January, 1666, and was henceforth
illustrated;! hut Abbe" Gaulois, who held the direction of the

* The name of one of his servants.

f As a specimen of the illustrations, we mention a superb engraving representing a
louse as seen under the microscope ; it measures not less than forty or fifty centimetres
(year 1666, page 292 of the reprint of 1729). This reprint is a nearly textual reproduction of
the original edition, which is now very rare. It is well to remark here that the Journal des
S9avants, like all similar journals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were
successful, was reprinted as the numbers were exhausted ; thus in the set that I have con-
sulted at the library of the Arsenal, the year 1665 is of 1733, and the year 1666 of 1729,
while the year 1676 was reprinted in 1717. Hence it is almost impossible to find two- col-

692 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

paper for nine years, published it very irregularly; thus there
was only one number in 1670, and none in 1673.

In 1675 the Journal passed into the hands of Abbe* La Roque,
who exhibited in his work a punctuality worthy of praise, but
was far from knowing as much of science as his predecessor ; then
in 1686 Chancellor Boucherat, who declared himself its protector,
intrusted its direction to President Cousin. Finally, in 1701, the
Journal was acquired for the state by Chancellor de Pontchar-
train, who gave the preparation of the numbers no longer to one
man, but to a company of students, consisting of Dupin, Rassicad,
Andry, Fontenelle, and Vertot, with Julien Pouchard as director.
Thus renewed, supported by Abbe" Bignon, nephew of the chan-
cellor, the Journal des Sgavants appeared again on the 2d day of
January, 1702, and its history till 1792, when political events com-
pelled its suspension again, offered the single noteworthy feature
that its period of publication was changed in 1764, and from a
weekly it became a monthly, with supplements every six months.*

Sylvestre de Sacy tried to resuscitate the Journal in 1796 ; but
his attempt was abandoned after the publication of twelve num-
bers, from the 16th of nivose to the 30th of prairial of the year V.
It was re-established September 1, 1816, on the proposition of
Barbd Marbois, Keeper of the Seals, and Dambray, chancellor,
on a report of the historian Guizot, then general secretary to the
Minister of Justice, and has not been suspended since. The presi-
dency of the editorial committee appertained to the Keeper of the
Seals from that time till the imperial decree of May 4, 1857, by
which it was transferred to the Minister of Public Instruction,
under whose auspices the Journal is still published.

Such has been the checkered career of the first French scien-
tific journal — a career that demonstrates, better than any eulogy
can, that the work of De Sallo possessed the qualities of merit and
utility which make intellectual work fruitful and durable.

The detailed history of the Journal des Sgavants may be found
in Hatin, Histoire politique et litte'raire de la presse en France,
1859, vol. ii, p. 151, and those following ; and in the Me'moire his-
torique sur le Journal des Sgavans, in the table of the Journal, by
the Abb6 de Claustre, 1764, vol. x, 595 and following pages. —
Translated for The Popular Science Monthly from the Eevue Scien-
tifique.

lections of the sets exactly alike. If we add to this that the publisher has sometimes inter-
calated notes in the reprints without indicating that they were not in the original edition,
and that some of the series have been counterfeited in Holland, one may have some idea of
the difficulty of the investigation and of the lamentable differences of the editions.

* There were also supplementary volumes for each of the years 1707, 1708, and 1709,
and in 1773 only ±he five numbers of the first five months were published.

SKETCH OF JEAN MARTIN CH ARGOT. 693

SKETCH OF JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT.

A GREAT deal has been added to our knowledge of nervous
disease by the labors of Charcot ; and extensive fields of
investigation hitherto untried have been opened by him.

JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT was born in Paris, France, November
29, 1825, and died near Chateau Chinon, le Morvan, France, whither
he had gone on a pleasure trip with a few friends, in August, 1893.
He was industrious in his youth, acquitted himself brilliantly in
his classical studies, and, when the time came for choosing his
profession, hesitated whether to become an artist or a doctor.
Against the latter was the expense of preparing for the profes-
sion, but, encouraged by the assurances of his father, who pre-
ferred that line, he began the study in 1845. He became chef de
clinique in 1852, and obtained his degree in 1854. Having ob-
tained several prizes, by which attention was drawn to him, he
became a hospital physician in 1856, an adjunct professor in the
University of Paris in 1860, and was appointed physician at the
hospital of La Salpetriere in 1862. Here he spent the remainder
of his active life, and prosecuted the researches which have made
his name famous throughout Europe and America. " In order,"
the Lancet says, "properly to appreciate the ability which he
brought to bear upon his work and the enthusiasm which he
could inspire it should be remembered that when he began his
now well-known Legons at the Salpetriere the institution was
little less than an ill-assorted collection of five thousand women,
comprising the aged, the imbecile, the idiotic, the epileptic, and
the paralyzed, in which scarcely an attempt had been made to
extract from the wealth of material anything more than a nar-
row individual experience. In a few years it had been trans-
formed into the very Mecca of neurologists, and this it has re-
mained up to the present time." Besides teaching in his clinic at
the Salpetriere, Charcot conducted an external course in pathology
at the Ecole pratique. He was given the chair of Pathological
Anatomy at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris in 1875, and filled
it till 1883. Since 1877 he elucidated with a rare clearness of
vision a large number of questions relating to diseases of the
liver, kidney, and spinal marrow. He enriched physiology by
contributing to the celebrated theory of cerebral localizations.
All his studies have borne fruit ; they touch a multitude of prob-
lems of cerebral pathology or of nervous affections, and have
been fertile in practical results, especially as concerns locomotor
ataxia, medullary perturbations, aphasia, hysteria, and epilepsy.
As Dr. G. Daremburg observes in a notice of him, " He brought
order and precision into a multitude of questions which were

694 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in litter disorder previous to him." His chief work was his
study of nervous diseases. For years his lectures in the Salpe-
triere on neurosis, hypnotism, and the different forms of hysteria
attracted universal attention. In no official chair had th,e attempt
been hazarded to take up the study of that series of occult phe-
nomena which have excited public curiosity and baffled the sa-
gacity of observers from ancient times. Charcot subjected these
strange phenomena to the precise examination of the experiment-
al method. He studied them with keen vision, so as to be able
to reproduce them at will, and often revealed the existence of ex-
traordinary facts which had been before regarded as chimerical.
Although his conclusions may sometimes transcend the limits of
scientific rigor, it is nevertheless true that he cast a new light on
a whole region of investigation hitherto concealed in the dark.
Besides making new medical discoveries in this line of research,
he opened fresh horizons to science, initiated many pupils, and
founded a new school, widely known now as the School of the
Salpetriere.

In connection with the Salpetriere he founded a laboratory, an
anatomo-pathological museum, electro-therapeutic wards, and a
photographic studio, where he pictured sections of diseased brains
and spinal cords, and formed a collection of portraits of neuro-
pathic patients.

In his studies of gout and the maladies arising from it, to
which he gave great attention in the early years of his practice,
he discovered relations between disorders which had till then
been thought independent of one another. He traced certain
kinds of deafness, arthritic rheumatism, and kidney disease to
gout, and found the origin of that disease in an overwrought liver
and a sluggish skin. Pulmonary diseases also engaged his atten-
tion. In his lectures on phthisis he held that all caseation is
essentially a tuberculous process, and assigned a secondary place
to pneumonic phenomena.

Having been born at the time of the reaction in favor of
clericalism, which was encouraged by the devotedly Catholic
court of Charles X, and intensified the disgust of the freethink-
ing people of Paris, Charcot grew up with a strong tendency
toward extreme heterodoxy. He delighted later in life in demol-
ishing the fetiches set up by the priests with which his investi-
gations brought him in contact ; and as Mrs. Crawford says, in
the London Illustrated News, " humored the irreligious people in
power by reducing the Lourdes and other miracles to suggestion.
Gambetta, Naquet, Paul Bert, and other political atheists at-
tended his lectures. He produced the phenomena of stigmates on
hysterical girls.'' In like manner he pointed out analogies in
other forms and manifestations of hysteria or hypnotism with

SKETCH OF JEAN MARTIN CHARCOT. 695

various signs and wonders of religious history and tradition.
Regarding them all as remarkable hypnotics, the mystics of the
past were favorite subjects of contemplation with him. He
accumulated the works of the mystical painters, Andrea del
Sarto, Deudato Delmont, Matteo Roselli, and Van Breughel, and
read the works of the great mystical writers — Thomas a Kempis,
Fe*nelon, Pascal, and St. Francis of Sales. Hysteria had before
this time been regarded as peculiarly the disease of women. He
found it attendant upon many forms of disorder from which men
suffer, detected it in some of their petty weaknesses and vanities,
and regarded it as lying at the bottom of the literary peculiari-
ties of some of the most popular French authors.

He was an intense materialist, and in this he and his school
were directly opposed to the other school of alienists in France,
that of Nancy and the Charite* Hospital, who supposed a psychical
force behind the phenomena which came under their observation.
With this he had a touch of intolerance toward his opponents.
At his demonstrations, according to Mrs. Crawford, he " seemed
to command every nerve of his patients. There were but two
seats in the room where he taught — one for himself and the other
for the patient. The students, disciples and laics — which last
came in crowds — stood, some taking notes, and others listening
with profound attention. He flattered himself that he forced by
the mere power of his will the idlers to be attentive. There was
nothing he more resented than for persons of rank, whom he
thought not competent to understand him, to compliment him.
. . . He began to lose his power ' to fascinate ' his pupils some
time before his death, and noticed it with sorrow. Though he
despised the eulogiums of the incompetent, or wanted no conven-
tional praise, he enjoyed feeling that he was celebrated."

Charcot's literary work was considerable. He published a
large number of memoirs, articles, and studies on chronic and
nervous diseases, rheumatism, and softening of the brain ; and his
writings are known, appreciated, and sought for in all countries.
His lectures have been translated into several languages. The
Lancet, in its estimate of his publications, says: "It is rather
more than twenty years since the first part appeared of Legons
sur les Maladies du Systeme Nerveux. Modest and unpretending,
with a gray paper cover and no great thickness of letterpress, the
publication was somewhat long in attracting general attention
among the profession in this country (England) ; but to those
who had the good fortune to open the brochure, what a wealth of
interest was laid bare ! Custom has made us so familiar with M.
Charcot's style that it is difficult to describe the charm of a first
introduction to his writings. Putting aside for an instant the
scientific value of the material, there was something in the writ-

696 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

er's graphic power of imparting information which came with
extraordinary force, even upon those who had lingered with
delight upon the pages of Watson or Trousseau. In Char-
cot's case it was not merely that we descried an astonishing
facility of picturing by the pen, but above and beyond this was
the evidence of the influence of a fresh and powerful mind
pervading every paragraph. Lesions of the nervous system for-
merly huddled together and massed under some name which, pre-
tending to describe, had only obscured, began to emerge with a
sharp outline and clearly differentiated form. . . . The written
works of Charcot naturally fall into two great divisions — those
dealing with nervous diseases generally, and those concerned with
the more recondite and abstruse phenomena of hysteria and hyp-
notism. Probably his most notable works are* his Lectures on
Nervous Diseases and his volume on Cerebral Localization, both
of which are accessible to English readers in the Sydenham So-
ciety's translations. In these are chronicled the great advances
in our knowledge of nervous symptoms and nervous pathology
with which Charcot's name will always be associated." A com-
munication published in the Archives de Physiologie in 1868, on
the condition known as "Charcot's joint," is also mentioned as
one of his most interesting and important contributions.

Charcot's manner is described as having been short, " but in
his way he was kind to his incurables," and " he felt remorse for
having treated unfortunate patients as if they had no more feel-
ing than subjects for dissection." He " was truth itself, but he
wanted imagination, and was for that reason unable to look with
any eyes but his own upon effects and their various causes." In pri-
vate conversation he had none of the impatient vivacity frequently
associated with the French manner. " He was anything rather
than loquacious. An attentive, respectful, and sympathetic lis-
tener, he ever avoided any dogmatic expressions of opinion, even
when dealing with subjects upon which his thought and experi-
ence had given him more than ordinary qualification for pro-
nouncing judgment. He would listen with interest to a sugges-
tion, conflicting perhaps with some published opinion of his own,
and then, lifting his hands and shoulders with a little expressive
gesture, would quietly say, ( It may be so.' He was fair and just
in his references to the work of others." A resemblance has been
remarked in his face and figure to the conventional type of an
abbe*.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

697

EDITOR'S TABLE.

TEE CONDITIONS OF EFFICIENT
GOVERNMENT.

"TTTHEN a private employer of labor
VV wants work well done he tries
to employ, in the first place, persons
who are presumably, and to the best of
his judgment, competent to do it well,
and then he gives them an opportunity
to show what their qualifications really
are. He tests their work as they go on
in every way possible, and, if he finds it
satisfactory, he congratulates himself on
the excellent service he is getting and
on the prospect of still better results in
the future as his workmen, clerks, su-
perintendents, or whatever they maybe,
acquire greater experience. If any one
were to come and suggest to him to in-
quire into the political opinions of his
assistants and to replace any who did
not think quite as he did by inexpe
rienced persons whose one certified vir-
tue was that their political complexion
was exactly the same as his own, he
would conclude that he had struck a
lunatic, and would probably inform the
gentleman that such was his opinion.

But, turning to the people of the
United States, we may say, in the words
of the Koman poet, " The story is told
of you with a simple change of name."
Yet, after all, there is more than a
change of name; for we have assumed
that the private employer of labor would
treat the person who made such a sug-
gestion to him as a lunatic ; but not so
do the people of this country treat those
who make like suggestions to them. Far
from it ; they have iu past times appeared
to find such advice good, and have made
those who gave it their trusted counsel-
ors. They have cut short the official
careers of men who had just begun,
after a few years' necessary experience,
to be fully competent in their several
positions, in order that the work might

be taken up by incompetent (because
inexperienced) men of a different po-
litical profession of faith, on the under-
standing that the latter should remain
in office only so long as their party
was "on top " or so long as they them-
selves continued to be meet instruments
of party policy. A given official might at
a given moment be carrying on impor-
tant investigations, the various threads
of which were gathered in his own
hands and head — possibly a post office
inspector trying to get on the track of
a series of mail robberies, or a customs
officer similarly employed as regards
frauds on the revenue, or a statistician
marshaling an elaborate array of facts
by methods which he himself had care-
fully devised and could alone apply with
the best results, or the head of some
scientific bureau who, after a battle
with disorganization and sloth and the
indifference bred of the political sys-
tem, had conquered the forces of oppo-
sition, established order, and prepared
the way for a vigorous advance of the
important work committed to him —
what would it matter? — whatever he
was, or whatever he was doing, when
the hour came that a stronger than he
politically wanted his place, the sup-
posed guardian of the public interests,
cabinet minister or President, would
order his dismissal, and bring in the
new man to throw everything into con-
fusion, or, at the very least, to retard in
a more or less serious degree operations
that might have been carried on with-
out a break, to the great advantage of
the community.

We do not mean to say that changes
have never been made for the better.
That has been as it chanced; and cer-
tainly under our system changes for the
better have for the most part been only
too possible. Who that has any ac-

698

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

quaintance with the public service of
the country is not thoroughly familiar
with the official in the last year or so of
his terra, looking forward to removal
and too profoundly discouraged to throw
any zeal into his work, or to form any
plans for putting things around him into
better shape? We have seen him and
know whereof we speak, nor will it be
devised that the type abounds in the
country to-day. As to plans for the
future, the simple knowledge that his
successor in office will want to do things
in his own way, and will lack the ex-
perience necessary to the appreciation
of arrangements based on experience,
would alone dispose the retiring official
to live a kind of hand-to-mouth exist-
ence till his change came.

Even as we write this article we no-
tice by the dispatches from Washington
that the excellent appointment made by
the last administration of Prof. T. 0.
Mendenhall to the superintendence of
the Coast Survey is in danger of being
canceled in the interest of a Democratic
aspirant to the office. There does not
appear to be any pretense that Prof.
Mendenhall is not in all respects suited
to the office he fills, or that he has not
already rendered very valuable service
in it. It is stated, indeed, in journals
not unfavorable to the present adminis-
tration that he has been and is most
efficient, and that under his management
the survey is doing better work than
ever before ; and yet the wolves are
howling round Mm, and the impression
is gaining ground that the wolves are to
be satisfied. Now, if the public would
only reflect a little on what this means
and what it costs, we think there would
be a more serious revolt against the
subordination of civil administration to
party politics than this country has wit-
nessed yet. We either want good, faith-
ful, and intelligent service or we do not.
If we do, then we must also want the
means to the desired end ; and an im-
portant part of the means will be a se-
cure tenure of office for capable and

faithful public servants. If we are in-
different as to the service we get, and
wish to keep all the more important
offices as rewards for partisan service,
let us avow it distinctly and cease to be
surprised when officeholders show that
they understand why they were appoint-
ed and make the public interest as sec-
ondary in their own calculations as it
was in that of those who gave them their
positions. Of course, to avow this would
be to accept a very low place in the
scale of civilized nations, but if we can
not screw our public virtue up to any
higher pitch, let us at least honestly ac-
knowledge where we stand.

A POSSIBLE EEFOEM.

THE saying that " all is for the be«t
in the best possible of worlds " is one
which does not at every moment come
home to us with conviction. It some-
times seems as if many things went
unnecessarily awry, as if evil results
were being incurred in many quarters
through simple carelessness and indif-
ference to the conditions of well-be-
ing. It is difficult, for example, to be
quite satisfied with the general effects
of popular education, or with the fruits
which have as yet been reaped from
the diffusion of scientific knowledge.
If we ask whether the popular press ex-
hibits a higher intellectual stamp than
it did twenty or thirty years ago, the
answer will not be altogether reas-
suring. It is within about thirty years
that most of the devices now used by
the press for taking the strain off the
attention of lazy readers have been
introduced ; and what a development
there has been within the same period
in the ignoble industry of purveying
and tricking out in all the adornments
of newspaper rhetoric a kind of news
for which the simplest considerations
of public interest would prescribe the
briefest and driest treatment, it is quite
needless to declare.

We have noticed with pleasure lately

EDITOR'S TABLE.

699

two or three articles drawing attention
to the great evil which must undoubted-
ly be wrought by the highly colored
and vigorously expressed representa-
tions of vice and criminality with
which most of our daily papers teem.
That such matter is read with avidity
by a large class of the population is
only too true; and with the average
publisher, unfortunately, no other justi-
fication is needed for serving it up in
unlimited measure and with the most
piquant flavorings that his ahle " young
rnen " can devise. Apart from the
elaborate reporting of vicious and crim-
inal actions, the press gives a large por-
tion of its space to personalities of a
very trivial character, which in their
way exert almost as hurtful an influence
as the more sensational matter. Noth-
ing is more directly or fundamentally
opposed to anything like nobility of
nature than undue occupation of the
mind with personal trifles, particularly
when it takes the form of a prying
curiosity regarding the private affairs
of others. Anything more vulgar than
the desire so widely manifested to tear
aside the veils which persons who, in
certain capacities, are obliged to come
more or less before the public eye wish
very naturally to draw over their pri-
vate lives, could not well he imagined.
Yet papers which in some respects de-
serve commendation make the very liv-
ing of their reporters depend on the
success they are able to achieve in this
terrible business of destroying a lawful
privacy, and encouraging the public
to gaze with shameless intrusiveness
upon scenes and incidents and. senti-
ments with which they have nothing
whatever to do, and which ought to be
kept as inviolate as a letter in the
mails.

The question of responsibility for
the evil done to the community in these
ways is one that is dismissed too light-
ly by those on whom it rests. True,
within the limits within which most
papers confine their operations, there is

no civil tribunal that can interfere with
them. Still, the question is a haunting
one, " Am I or am I not, for a pecuni-
ary consideration, inflicting deliberate-
ly and with full knowledge an injury
upon society ? " Granted that large
numbers are craving for a depraved nu-
triment, is a man justified in meeting
such a demand ? If so, the thing may
be carried further, and, however vi-
cious the indulgence sought, the mere
fact that there is a demand will justify
him who undertakes to supply it. Yet
there are trades from which many pub-
lishers whose journals are highly sensa-
tional would shrink. It is a question,
evidently, as to where the line should
be drawn ; and it is a great pity that
enterprising journalists can not see their
way to drawing it a little nearer to
sound morals and public duty.

The fact we have to face to-day is
that an agency of unlimited range and
influence exists for the popularization
of evil, for filling the imagination of
young and old with everything that is
most unprofitable and pernicious from
a moral and social point of view — tales
of unbridled license, of violence and
revenge, of selfishness and fraud. The
same journals that contain this noxious
stuff may also contain able editorial arti-
cles, and other more or less useful read-
ing matter ; but how many read the able
editorials compared with the number of
those who fasten chiefly or exclusively
upon the gossip and the crime? Be the
proportion or disproportion what it may,
can the fact that a portion of the paper
consists of good and useful matter fur-
nish any defense for filling the rest of
it with poisonous matter ? Mr. Henry
Wood, in an article in The Arena on The
Psychology of Crime, cites very appo-
sitely the apostolic injunction, " What-
soever things are true, honest, just,
pure, lovely, and of good report," to
"think on these things," and contrasts
it with the invitation constantly held
out by the press to drench the mind
with thoughts of whatever is false, dis-

700

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

honest, unjust, disgusting, and of ill re-
port. The contrast is indeed flagrant,
and possibly the apostle, if he could be
revived and given a week's reading of
some very widely circulated daily pa-
pers, might be disposed to wonder that
a community which openly and sys-
tematically violated an ethical precept
so authoritative in its very simplicity as
that which he had laid down, should
still be very jealous for the name and
character of Christian. Then, if he were
regaled with a course of pink- tinted
police literature, and had spread out be-
fore him the numerous illustrated pur-
veyors of vileness that may be seen on
most news-stands, he would be too pro-
foundly discouraged, we fear, even to
think of inditing a stinging epistle to
the Church in these lands.

We do not need, however, to resur-
rect an apostle in order to arrive at a
moral judgment on this matter. By
every rule, both of psychology and of
common sense, a certain kind of jour-
nalism is morbific in its tendency. It
brings and is known to bring a plague
in its train, perverting the thoughts of
youth, and relaxing moral sanctions that
are none too strong even in old age.
The question then is, How long will it
be before the better portion of the com-
munity rises in revolt against so great
and unnecessary an evil? The ever-
ready resort of some, when a reform is
to be accomplished, is to legislation : that
idea we wholly repudiate ; legislation
can not touch this particular evil. What
is required is that intelligent and well-
disposed people should discriminate be-
tween papers that treat acts of crime or
moral disorder with brevity and reserve
and those that seek to make capital out
of them, bestowing as far as possible their
support on the former and withholding
it from the latter. This is a very simple
remedy, but it would be wonderfully
efficacious if tried on a large scale. But
no one need wait for others in this mat-
ter. It is a thing which concerns the
home, and no one should wait to see

whether others are going to protect
their homes before taking steps to pro-
tect his.

One other word before we leave this
subject. When we get down to the root
of the matter we find that all this mor-
bid interest in what is evil and trivial
arises from a lack of individuality.
"You have no soul — that makes you
weigh so light," says an old dramatist.
It is those who have no deep personal
interests of their own, no cultivated
tastes, no definite opinions, nothing spe-
cial to fix and characterize them as in-
dividuals, who are insatiable for gos-
sip, and whose love for gossip naturally
passes into a love for scandal and what-
ever else is morally miserable. Multi-
ply individuals in the true sense, and
scandal mongering will just proportion-
ately decline, while the scum-gather-
ing which now forms so large a part of
what is called "journalistic enterprise"
will become a neglected and dishonored
art. How large a part the teaching of
science might play in the development
of individuality we can not now attempt
to indicate : we can merely say that
here we see a field of infinite promise
which has yielded but little as yet, sim-
ply because workers of the right stamp
have been few.

THE MOON OF ROMANCE.

THE novelists will not leave "the
young moon " or " the crescent moon "
alone, and three times out of four they
contrive to get it into the wrong place.
How to explain the conviction which
haunts the minds of so many of them,
that the crescent moon may be seen al-
most any fine evening rising gracefully
in the east, is altogether beyond us.
The point seems to be one for psy-
chologists. Here is a thing that never
was seen since the world began ; and
yet a number of otherwise sane gentle-
men are firmly persuaded that it is a
regularly recurring natural phenomenon.
Surely the philosophy of this hallucina-
tion deserves investigation. The last

LITERARY NOTICES.

701

case that has come under our notice is
in a well-written story called A Comedy
of Masks, by Ernest Dowson and Arthur
Moore. Two friends are sitting out
one summer evening, looking over the
Thames, and the story goes on : " By
this time the young moon had risen,
and its cold light shimmered over the
misty river." A novelist need not be
an astronomer, but he should at least
try to draw from Nature, and should
not pretend to have seen the young
moon rising at the very hour when it
was being packed off to bed. Some
day, perhaps, a little acquaintance at
first hand with the broadest facts of
Nature will be thought a requisite for
writing a good novel, but the time is
not yet. Meantime, if our novelists
would try to bear in mind that the
young moon, like other young things,
goes to bed early — that Nature does not
trust it out late at night — they might
get into the way of seeing it at the right
time and in the right place, and not
treat us to "cold shimmers" that are
only moonshine in the least favorable
sense of the term.

Since the foregoing was put in type
our attention has been called to a pre-
cisely similar blunder in an article en-
titled Notes from a Marine Biological
Laboratory, written by a man of sci-
ence and a college professor, and print-
ed in the February number of this
magazine.

In the light of what has previously
been said, the situation, we must con-
fess, is decidedly awkward, and not at
all to the credit of our editorial scrutiny.
Yet, while freely admitting that the
case is far less excusable than the one
cited above, we are still inclined to re-
gard it as an even more emphatic ad-
monition that writers, and particularly
writers on scientific subjects, are under
obligations to know what they are talk-
ing about, and should also be able to
subordinate their poetical ambitions to
the requirements of truth.

LITERARY NOTICES.

THE RECRUDESCENCE OF LEPROSY, AND ITS
CAUSATION. A POPULAR TREATISE. By
WILLIAM TEBB. London: Swan, Sonnen-
schein & Co., 1893. Pp. 20-21 to 412.

IN the first chapter of this polemic against
vaccination the author states that leprosy has
greatly increased and is still increasing, and
he cites as evidence reports from various
countries that the disease is more or less
prevalent. We submit that there is no evi-
dence of the increase of anything, disease or
other, unless facts are given regarding the
number reported each year for a series of
years. What social economist would be rec-
ognized that stated the population of a coun-
try was increasing because he saw more
children in the maternity hospitals ? What
financier would be regarded as authority that
said the country was richer because he had
so many thousands of dollars deposited in
his bank, though he was ignorant of the
amount of deposits of fifty years previous ?

Let us cite an example. Leprosy is in-
creasing in the United States because Dr.
Blanc reported forty-two cases of leprosy in
New Orleans in 1889. We have practical
personal knowledge regarding leprosy in Lou-
isiana, and it is a statistical fact that leprosy
is less prevalent there to-day than it was one
hundred years ago, and, whether the heredi-
tary causation is always known or not, the
disease only affects those having Creole an-
cestors. Dr. Allen's and Dr. Morrow's specu-
lations regarding the increase of 'leprosy in
this country are worthless, and are not ac-
cepted by the leading dermatologists.

No reference is made to the paper of
Hansen, the discoverer of the lepra bacillus,
who stated that his investigations among
Norwegian lepers that had emigrated to the
United States showed that the disease had
died out among them.

An elaborate account of the increase of
leprosy in India is given ; and yet since the
publication of this volume the Indian Leprosy
Commission has made its report, and, while
its figures suggest a decrease rather than an
increase in the prevalence of the disease, the
commission conservatively prefer to say that
the leper population has remained stationary.
This lack of the critical facultv in the author

702

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is only equaled by his ignorance of the eti-
ology and pathology of disease. Contagion,
inoculation, and predisposition have to him a
meaning that is alien to that attached thereto
by the medical profession.

Our personal experience in Norway and
the United States justifies our statement that
if the author's reference to other countries is
no more accurate than to these two, then, as
a work on leprosy, the book is useless.

Its real purpose, however, is to promulgate
the theory that the leprosy that exists to-day
is perpetuated by vaccination. We can not
trespass upon the space of these columns to
discuss so unsubstantial a theory. One swal-
low does not make a summer, nor do one or
more cases of leprosy inoculated with sup-
posed vaccine sustain the author's thesis.

GENERAL THOMAS. By HENRY COPPEE, LL. D.
New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1893.
Pp. 332. Price, $1.50. (Great Com-
manders Series.)

THIS volume of the series in no way falls
behind the previous issues, either in the in-
trinsic interest of the man and his career, or
in the style of treatment. General Thomas
was born on July 31, 1816, in the south-
eastern portion of Virginia. Little is known
of his early life. In his nineteenth year he
began the study of law, but shortly after-
ward was offered a cadet appointment at
West Point, which he promptly accepted.
He was graduated in 1840, twelfth in his
class. Thomas's first commission was that
of second lieutenant in the Third Artillery.
He joined his regiment on Governor's Island,
New York Harbor, but was soon ordered
south to take part in the Florida War, where
he gained much distinction and slight pro-
motion. After this he served at several of
the Southern military posts. He was with
General Taylor during the Mexican war, and
was brevetted major for brilliant work.

His personal appearance, about 1850, is
thus described : " He was cast in a strong
and large mold, and had many of the per-
sonal traits of Washington, whom in his in-
tellectual and moral character he greatly re-
sembled." In 1851 he was detailed as in-
structor of artillery and cavalry at West
Point, and while serving here was promoted
to a captaincy. It was also during his resi-
dence here that he married Miss Frances L.

Kellogg, of Troy. In 1855, while in Cali-
fornia, he was appointed a major. In 1861
he was advanced to a colonelcy after the
resignation of A. S. Johnston, Robert E. Lee,
and W. J. Hardee, all of whom joined the
Confederacy. General Thomas seems never
to have wavered in his allegiance to the
Union.

He was appointed brigadier general in
1861. He played an important part in the
civil war, and his achievements in its various
battles form most of the bulk of the book.
He has been accused of being too slow and
ponderous in his military manoeuvres, but
the biographer emphatically denies this and
says that the foundation for these statements
was derived from his great caution and clear-
headedness in military matters. After the
war he was appointed commander of the
Military Division of the Pacific, where he
served only a year, his death occurring sud-
denly in 1870 from apoplexy. This series
has a double value for youthful readers, be-
ing really history, in the form of biograph-
ical story.

CONTINUOUS-CURRENT DYNAMOS AND MOTORS ;
THEIR THEORY, DESIGN, AND TESTING. By
FRANK P. Cox, B. S. New York : W. J.
Johnston Co. (Limited), 1893. Pp. 271.
Price, $2.

THIS is an elementary treatise on con-
tinuous-current dynamos and motors, which
deals not only with the theories and laws
governing their construction and action, but
also with the application of these to their
construction and running in the shop and
power house. The first four chapters treat
of the general principles of the machines,
and serve as an introduction and preparation
for the succeeding portions. Chapter V has
to do with the mathematics of the magnetic
circuit; and here the author has carefully
abstained from using the higher mathematics
and has only assumed for his student a
knowledge of algebra and elementary ge-
ometry. Chapter VI deals with the theory
of windings, losses, etc., and Chapter VII of
the special features in motor designing.
Chapters VIII, IX, and X relate to the
practical application of the previously stated
laws. In Chapters XI and XII, testing and
handling the completed machine occupy the
attention. The last two chapters deal with

LITERARY NOTICES.

7°3

the steam engine in its relation to electricity.
There are four appendices on tests of irons,
ampere turn tables, determination of sizes of
wire for armatures and field coils, and on the
calculation of belting.

Two GERMAN GIANTS : FREDERICK THE GREAT
AND BISMARCK. By JOHN LORD, D. D.,
LL. D. New York : Fords, Howard &
Hulbert, 1894. Pp. 173.

THIS is a brief account of the early years
of these statesmen, followed by a considera-
tion, more philosophical than historical, of
their careers. Frederick the Great as the
founder, and Bismarck as the builder, of the
German Empire, are the aspects in which
they appear, and while the author greatly
admires their wonderful statesmanship and
perseverance under the most overwhelming
difficulties, he finds them both, and more
especially Frederick, wanting in moral per-
ception. He explains this by their absorb-
ing ambition and love of country which led
them to adopt that most dangerous of mot-
toes, that the end justifies the means. A
character sketch of Bismarck by Bayard
Taylor, written in 1887, is given, and also
Bismarck's great speech on the enlargement
of the German army in 1888. The book
contains portraits of both Frederick and
Bismarck.

ELEMENTARY PALEONTOLOGY FOR GEOLOGICAL
STUDENTS. By HENRY WOODS, B. A.,
F. G. S. New York : Macmillan & Co.,
1893. Pp. 222.

THIS little book, which gives an elemen-
tary account of invertebrate paleontology,
is one of a valuable series, the Cambridge
Natural Science Manuals, which are edited
by A. E. Shipley, M. A. The author has de-
voted most of his space to the treatment of
those groups of fossil animals which are
especially useful to the geologist, and but
briefly considered those of interest mainly to
the zoologist. The author thus describes his
method of treating the subject : " My plan
has been to give, hi each group, first an ac-
count of its general zoological features with
a full description of the hard parts ; second-
ly, the classification and characters of those
genera which are important geologically ;
and, thirdly, a sketch of the present and past
distribution of the group." For the use of
those who wish to obtain a more extended

knowledge of the subject, there is appended
a list of some of the more important and
easily accessible works on paleontology.

AMERICAN TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE. By ST.
GEORGE MIVART, F. R. S. Boston : Little,
Brown & Co. Illustrated. Pp. 374.
Price, $2.

A SERIES of sketches of the various
groups of animals which are either peculiar
to America or have their most typical repre-
sentatives here. It is intended to serve as an
introduction to zoology, more particularly to
the vertebrata, and more especially the mam-
malia. The first animals considered are the
monkeys, to which thirty-five pages, contain-
ing several pictures, are devoted. The rarer
and more striking forms are especially dealt
with, and several amusing and instructive
anecdotes related. Next comes the opossum,
which is of peculiar interest to us, as it is a
form of marsupial found only in America.
It has been much studied by the zoologist
and geologist, because of its isolation from
other marsupials, and is considered an impor-
tant link in the evidence which connects the
South American continent with Australia, as
well as one of the many things indicating a
close relationship between North America
and the Europe of Tertiary times.

The turkey forms the subject of the third
essay. He is so peculiarly an American in-
stitution, and, so far as we know, always has
been, that, aside from his value as an edible,
he deserves careful consideration. That this
was appreciated so far back as Revolutionary
times is shown by the fact that he was pro-
posed as the national symbol by Franklin.
The following extract is interesting in rela-
tion to the turkey's identification with holi-
day occasions :

"In 1566 twelve of these birds were pre-
sented to the French king Charles IX ; and
the first record of its appearance at a state
banquet was at his wedding four year's later.
Soon after that it seems to have become
common in England, and already to have
found its place as a family dish at Christmas
dinners."

The next twenty-five pages are about
the bullfrog and his relations. The author
speaks of him as follows : " The frog has
special claims to our gratitude and com-
miseration on account of all it has done and

704

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

suffered to increase our knowledge. In
every physiological laboratory frogs are such
ceaseless subjects of experiment that the
animal may well be called the 'martyr of
science.' What their legs can do without
their bodies, what their bodies can do with-
out their heads, what their arms can do
without either head or trunk, what is the
effect of the removal of their brains, how
they can manage without their eyes, what
effects result from all kinds of local irrita-
tions, from chokings, from poisonings, from
mutilations the most varied : these are ques-
tions again and again answered practically
for the instruction of youth."

The rattlesnake, "the exclusive posses-
sion of which will not excite the envy of
other geographical regions," is next on the
list. The serotine or Carolina bat is the rep-
resentative of this family selected, because
it is the only animal of this kind found in
both the Old World and the New. The
American bison gives the title to Chapter
VII. It is of interest because of probable
extinction in the near future. The raccoon,
another peculiarly American product, is next
selected as an introduction to the carnivores
in general.

The sloth, the typical arboreal animal, is
given thirty pages. " A marine animal and
a quadruped " is studied in the sea lion in
Chapter X. Whales and Mermaids is the
title of Chapter XI. The last essay, entitled
The Other Beasts, describes briefly the
lemurs, rodents, and insect-eating animals,
and then follows a recapitulation and sum-
mary of what has gone before. The book is
extremely interesting, not only because of the
good selection of individuals for description,
but more, perhaps, because of Prof. Mivart's
lively style, and his avoidance of anything
which might be termed " dry." The book is
well printed and nicely illustrated.

DYNAMIC BREATHING AND HARMONIC GYM-
NASTICS. By GENEVIEVK STEBBINS. New
York: Edgar S. Werner. Pp. 155.

THIS work is intended to set forth a pe-
culiar system of combined mental and mus-
cular calisthenics, part of which, at least,
though perhaps of therapeutic value, seem
unusually difficult. The following, entitled
Yoga Breathing, occurs on page 86, and is
a good example of the teaching of the book :

" 1. Lie relaxed in an easy position. 2.
Breathe strongly with vigorous vertical surg-
ing motion, with the same rhythm as in Ex-
ercise 1, which stretches the whole trunk like
an accordion, and let the mind concentrate
itself as follows :

" (a) Imagine the ingoing and outgoing
breath drawn through the feet, as though
the legs were hollow; (b) divert the same
mental idea to the hands and arms ; (c) to
the knees ; (d) to the elbows ; (c) now breathe
through the knees and elbows together. . . .
(/) Complete this mental imagery, with breath-
ing through the head and the whole organ-
ism in one grand surging influx of dynamic
life."

And again, on page 2, under the heading
Dynamic Breathing :

" To those, however, whose studies in life
have enabled them to penetrate beneath or
to rise above the bias of theological dogma
on the one hand, and the speculative hypothe-
ses of scientific schools upon the other, there
will be no difficulty in reading between the
lines of the present controversy between re-
ligion and science. ..."

There are many other equally irrelevant
passages in the book ; and taken all together
we do not see that it is likely to be of much
service to the general reader. It contains a
portrait of the author.

IDEALE WELTEN IN WORT UNO BILD (Ideal
Worlds in Description and Picture).
AD. BASTIAN. 8vo. Three Parts. Pp.
791. Twenty-two Plates. Emil Felber,
Berlin, 1892.

ADOLPHE BASTIAN, the Director of the
Royal Ethnographic Museum at Berlin, is a
veteran explorer, a wonderful collector, and
an interesting writer. As the result of a
journey to Farther India in 1890, we have
this great work of nearly eight hundred
pages — Ideale Welten. The book should
particularly interest us, for the learned au-
thor has dedicated it to the Bureau of Eth-
nology in Washington and other ethnological
workers throughout the Union, in memory
of our celebration of the quadricentennial
The work consists of three parts, separately
titled and paged — Reisen auf der vorder-
indischen Halbinsel, Ethnologic und Ge-
schichte, and Kosmogonien und Theogonien.
They are a model to every one who would

LITERARY NOTICES.

705

make a journey productive to science. Few
travelers know what things among any peo-
ple are interesting to science; still fewer
know how to get at them. Bastian goes to
the heart of things, and although he gives
much of general interest he aims particu-
larly to secure knowledge of the philosophy
and the religion of these Eastern peoples.
Brahmanism and Buddhism are illuminated
by his research, but it is particularly Jainism
that he discusses. His work is undoubtedly
a most important contribution to our knowl-
edge of this curious religion. Twenty-two
interesting plates, mostly copies of drawings
or paintings made by Asiatics, give the
Brahman, Buddhist, and Jainist ideas of
heavens, earths, and hells.

DOMESTIC ECONOMY. By I. H. MATER, M. D.
Lancaster, Pa. : Published by the Author.
Pp. 283.

THIS is a work on thrift in the house-
hold, rather disconnected, but containing
much valuable information. It deals not
only with the actual ontlay, but also with the
facts and behavior which determine and
modify the necessity for outlay in special
directions. Among the subjects discussed
are : The Home — its location, both as regards
sanitation and ready accessibility ; Educa-
tion ; Recreation ; Time — its use and misuse ;
Fuel ; Clothing ; Pets and Pests ; Food ; Drink ;
Mother and Child ; Exercise ; and Accidents.

OUTLINES OF FORESTRY. By EDWIN J. HOUS-
TON, A. M. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippin-
cott Co., 1893. Pp. 254. Price, $1.

THE general conclusion seems to be that,
unless something in the way of intelligent
and ordered action is attempted toward the
preservation of our forests, they will soon be
things of the past, so far as commercial value
is concerned, and that their destruction will
profoundly modify the climate of large sec-
tions.

This interesting little book bears direct-
ly on the important question of the function
of forests in determining climate, and the
means of preserving and replacing them. It
is a question which is of increasing importance
in all countries as they advance in population
and manufacture, and has been more or less
under discussion in this country for some
years past. In view of these facts, it be-
TOL. XLIV. — 53

comes desirable that there should be not only
concerted action between large landowners
and the Government, under the supervision of
especially qualified men, but also that each
individual farmer shall appreciate the value
of his " wood lot," not simply as a " wood
pile," but also and even more as a " wood
lot," as an important factor in determining,
in common with those of his neighbors, the
climate and fertility of the region, and hence
indirectly his own and his neighbors' pros:
perity. The latter function is the one which
this book is intended to fulfill ; it is a primer
of forestry. The first five chapters give a
brief description of plant physiology and
soil formation. These are followed by some
pages on the forest's enemies and the forces
tending to its destruction. Then comes a
consideration of the effect of vegetation on
rainfall, drainage, climate, and the purity of
the atmosphere. These preliminary discus-
sions are followed by a consideration of the
methods by which a barren country may be
timbered, or a section from which the for-
ests have been removed may be retimbered.
An appendix contains lists of trees suitable
for replanting in different portions of the
United States.

INORGANIC CHEMISTRY FOR BEGINNERS. By
Sir HENRY ROSCOE, F. R. S., assisted by
JOSEPH LUNT, F. C. S. New York and
London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 241.
Price, 75 cents.

IN this little text-book Roscoe has treated
the elementary principles of chemistry more
fully than in his Elementary Lessons, while
he has restricted the descriptions of elements
and their compounds to a few typical exam-
ples. In the first portion of the book the basal
principles of chemistry are taught in eight
chapters or lessons, with the aid of carefully
described experiments. At the end of each
lesson is a summary under the heading
" What we have learned," and a set of ques-
tions on the lesson. The rest of the volume
is devoted to descriptions of selected ele-
ments and their compounds. Nonmetallic
Inorganic Chemistry would be a more exact
title for the book, as no metals are included
among the elements described. There are a
hundred and eight cuts of apparatus, etc.
The chief characteristic of this text-book is
that it boldly abandons the idea of covering

706

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the whole ground, which most schoolbook
writers cling to, and aims chiefly to impress
the principles of the science upon the pupil's
mind. Enough descriptive matter is used to
illustrate these principles, but not so much
as to obscure the main purpose of the book.

BRITISH LOCOMOTIVES ; THEIR HISTORY, CON-
STRUCTION, AND MODERN DEVELOPMENT.
By C. J. BOWEN COOKE. New York:
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 381. Illustrated.

• Price, $3.

THE usual books on this and kindred
subjects are either so technical as to be in-
comprehensible to the general reader, or so
popular as to be of no considerable value to
any one. Mr. Cooke has attempted to strike
a happy medium, and while giving the me-
chanical construction and action of locomo-
tives, accurately and in detail, he does so in
untechnical language, and assists his text with
carefully prepared drawings and diagrams.
An idea of the scope of the work may be
gathered from some of the chapter head-
ings : Early History ; Action of the Steam in
the Cylinder ; Valve Motion ; The Boiler ;
General Details ; How an Engine is put to-
gether ; Classification of Engines ; Brakes ;
Compound Locomotives ; Combustion and
Consumption of Fuel, and Engine Drivers
and their Duties. The book is nicely printed
and fully illustrated.

TEXT-BOOK OF ELEMENTARY BIOLOGY. By H.
. J. CAMPBELL, M. D. New York : Mac-
millan & Co., 1893. Illustrated. Pp.
284. Price, $1.60.

THIS book belongs to the series of Intro-
ductory Science Text-books which this firm
is now publishing, and is one of its most im-
portant volumes. The subject is one about
which students should have something more
than vague ideas; and yet, unfortunately,
this is about the extent of their ordinary
biological knowledge at the time of gradua-
tion. Biology lies at the root of human
physiology, and this in turn should dictate
that self-care and self-preservation upon
which all our other actions in life depend.
The scheme of the book is, first, a discourse
on living as distinguished from non-living
matter ; followed by an examination into the
properties and characteristics of protoplasm.
Then the cell in its various forms, followed
by a chapter on embryology. The tissues,

both animal and vegetable, are next dis-
cussed; and finally there are several pages
pointing out the differences between plants
and animals, which sum up as follows :

" We have thus seen that there is no sin-
gle attribute of animals which is not shared
by some plants; and, on the other hand,
there is no plant characteristic which is pos-
sessed by plants alone ; hence it is necessary
to allow that plants and animals are funda-
mentally identical, and, in fact, are only divi-
sions of a single vital stock." An elementary
examination follows of the forms of life usu-
ally considered in introductory text-books —
the amoeba, yeast plant, vorticella, tapeworm,
leech, etc.

Dr. Campbell has given us a work well
suited to beginners, and hence an important
addition to our text-books on the subject.
The book is well printed and illustrated.

A KEVIEW OF THE SYSTEMS OF ETHICS

FOUNDED ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

By C. M. WILLIAMS. New York and
London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 581.
Price, $2.60.

WE have in this volume a substantial
contribution to the literature of its subject.
It consists of two parts, the first being a
presentation of the most prominent systems
of evolutionary ethics, under the names of
their respective propounders, while the sec-
ond is a general examination of the whole
field. The authors whose views are set forth
are Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer,
Fiske, Rolph, Barratt, Stephen, Carneri,
Hoffding, Gizycki, Alexander, and Ree. Mr.
Williams must be a hero-worshiper who
sees all wisdom in Darwin, else he would not
have lugged in the great biologist's name at
the head of this list. He calls Darwin " the
first laborer in this line," and says that " a
review of evolutional ethics must, therefore,
in order to start with the proper origin of
the science, begin with Charles Darwin."
He gets together ten pages of extracts from
Darwin's works, the first four pages of which
relate to nothing but instinct and heredity.
These are from the Origin of Species, which
appeared in 1859, and the essay on Instinct
prepared for that work, but not published till
after Darwin's death. Then follow quota-
tions from the Descent of Man, some of
which do relate to ethics, but the date when

LITERARY NOTICES.

707

that book appeared (1871) is much too late
to be taken as " the proper origin of the
science." Quotations from A. R. Wallace
beginning in 1871 come next, and are fol-
lowed by some from Haeckel beginning in
1874. Having thus examined the theories of
what our author calls "the great original
authorities," he proceeds with " writers who
have turned these theories to account and
elaborated them." In this second group of
writers he places Herbert Spencer first, and
says, " In treating of Mr. Spencer's work, it
is necessary to begin with a book which
made its appearance before the publication
of the Origin of Species, namely, Social Stat-
ics (1851)." Mr. Williams's designation of
Darwin as '• the first laborer in this line "
needs no further comment. The views of
Spencer are then presented as found in his
Social Statics (both the 1851 and the recent-
ly revised edition), his Collected Essays, The
Man versus the State, The Principles of Psy-
chology, the several divisions of The Princi-
ples of Ethics, and one or two minor writ-
ings. By letting Spencer speak for himself
in quotations our author secures a nearly
correct representation of his ethical theory,
but he states that Spencer in the original
Social Statics "advocates the nationalization
of land," and neglects to say that Spencer
has since repeatedly abjured this doctrine,
and leaves nothing in the revised edition that
can be construed as supporting it. More
space is found needful for Spencer, forty-
eight pages, than for any other writer repre-
sented. John Fiske is taken up next, and
the theories of the other authors noticed fol-
low in the order in which they are named
above.

The treatise which forms the second part
of this work is one in which a wealth of data
has been used, and a highly instructive and
suggestive result has been attained. The
author begins by examining the operation of
heredity and variation in evolution, and
passes next to a consideration of intelligence
and " end." Among the other topics con-
sidered are the mutual relations of thought,
feeling, and will in evolution, egoism, altru-
ism, and conscience. There is an interesting
chapter on The Moral Progress of the Hu-
man Species as shown by History, in which
the morals of ancient Greece and Rome and
mediaeval England are shown to have been

far below modern standards. In the closing
chapter, on attainment of the ideal, the
author touches upon a variety of considera-
tions, and ends with some helpful words on
the transition from the belief in a personal
immortality to the expectation of persisting
after death only as an influence upon those
remaining in life.

So valuable a book should not have been
issued without an index.

ON THE OLD FRONTIER, OR THE LAST RAID
OF THE IROQUOIS. By WILLIAM 0. STOD-
DARD. Pp. 340. Price, $1.50. New
• York : D. Appleton & Co.

THIS is a novel dealing with frontier life
in Revolutionary times, when most of the
fighting men were with Washington in the
East, and the frontiers were therefore very
weakly garrisoned. It describes the motives
and nature of a raid by the Indians on a set-
tlement known as Plum Creek.

The hero is a boy, who was stolen by the
Indians when very young and brought up
among them. He finally escapes and makes
his way to Plum Creek, where he is adopted
by the gunsmith of the settlement. He is
able, by reason of his Indian training, to
render valuable assistance to the settlers
during the skirmishes preceding the con-
centrated attack, and just at the last, when
the fort is about to fall into the hands of
the Indians, he appears with a detachment
of United States troops and saves its in-
mates, besides giving the death blow to the
Indian raids. He then discovers a relative
in the commanding officer of the soldiers,
and learns that his family, which he had
supposed were massacred at the time of his
abduction, are alive, and mourning his early
demise. The characters speak in dialect,
and the book is well illustrated.

The story is " a fiction founded on fact."

After an interval of seven years the first
volume of the History of the Theory of Elas-
ticity, by the late Isaac Todhunter, has been
followed by the two parts of Volume II (Mac-
millan, $7.50). The manuscript that Dr.
Todhunter left has been edited and com-
pleted by Prof. Karl Pearson, the physical
and technical branches of the subject being
wholly the work of the editor, likewise the
general history of the subject after the date

708

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at which Dr. Todhunter left it. The present
volume covers the period from Saint- Venant
to Lord Kelvin. It carries the analysis of
individual memoirs completely to the year
1860, but after that point the editor has
found it practicable to deal with the work of
certain elasticians only. These are the two
just named, with Boussinesq, Rankine, F.
Neumann, Kirchhoff, and Clebsch. Although
the part since 1860 is only the framework
of what Prof. Pearson hoped to make it, the
work is a monumental one. The number of
the memoirs included in the thirteen hun-
dred pages of the second volume by no means
measures the work expended upon this part
of the history. The study and analysis of
many other memoirs were involved in the
task. A systematic index, carefully prepared
by Prof. Pearson, is appended.

We have received Part I (Kinematics)
and Part II (Dynamics and Statics) of An
Elementary Treatise on Theoretical Mechanics,
by Prof. Alexander Ziwet, of the University
of Michigan (Macmillan, $2.25 a volume).
The work owes its existence mainly to the
difficulty of finding a good modern text-book
suited to the requirements of the American
student. While it is intended first of all as
an introduction to the science of theoretical
mechanics, the author has aimed to make it
serve as a preparation for the applications
in engineering practice, and to bring out the
utility of the purely mathematical training.
To keep the whole work within reasonable
bounds, the more advanced parts of the sub-
ject had to be strictly excluded. A third
part (Kinetics) will complete the treatise.

The Book of the Fair, published by the
Bancroft Company, Chicago and San Fran-
cisco, is intended to reproduce and preserve,
by engraving and letterpress, all the charac-
teristic features of the recent exposition at
Chicago. The publishers claim that it is the
only work attempting to reproduce the expo-
sition in this way entire. " It confines it-
self," they say, " neither to art alone on the
one side nor to dry statistics on the other,
but aims to present in attractive and accu-
rate form the whole realm of art, industry,
science, and learning, as here exhibited by
the nations, so far as can be done within
reasonable limits." The work will consist
of one thousand pages of twelve by sixteen
inches, will be issued in twenty-five parts of

forty pages each, at the price of a dollar a
part, and will contain more than a thousand
illustrations, many of them full page.

In J. E. Mulholland's revision of Dr.
Arnold's First and Second Latin Book and
Practical Grammar the labors of the editor
have been directed, first, to the removal of
all errors ; second, to a change of excep-
tional Latin expressions, which are declared
out of place in an elementary work ; third,
to simplicity of design, so that subjects
should not be prematurely thrust upon the
attention of the pupils ; and, fourth, to a
more consistent arrangement of the parts of
the Second Book. In the revision of Ar-
nold's Practical Introduction to Latin Prose
Composition, by the same editor, the matter
on the Sequence of Tenses, hitherto scattered
throughout the work, has, by means of refer-
ences, been unified, and that on Conditional
Propositions has, by the removal of much ver-
biage and some errors, been arranged so as to
be comprehensible to the ordinary student.
Also, whereas in the old book reference was
merely made to certain works on Synonyms,
in this edition, the works quoted not being
commonly in the hands of pupils, the proper
word is given. (Both of these books are
published by the American Book Company.
Price, $1 each.)

The Inductive Greek Primer of Drs. W.
R. Harper and C. F. Castle is designed for a
beginner's Greek book and to meet the wants
of younger pupils as well as of those for
whom the Method is adapted. It differs
from the Method in that the lessons are
shorter ; the notes are more copious and
elementary; the exercises are simple; the
pupil's knowledge of Latin grammar is
drawn upon to illustrate and facilitate his
knowledge of Greek grammar ; the pupil is
taught to read Greek in the order of the
original ; the first occurrence of words is
specially indicated in both the text and the
vocabulary. The volume articulates with
the Greek Prose Composition of the same
authors. (American Book Company. Price,
$1.25.)

In a book entitled The Gospel of Paul,
the author, Charles Carroll Everett, Profess-
or of Philosophy in Harvard Divinity School,
presents an interpretation of Paul's doctrine
of the atonement which he believes to be
new ; not a theory of his own " of a possi-

LITERARY NOTICES.

709

We scheme of atonement, to which some of
Paul's words may be made to fit more or less
loosely. I mean a statement which has noth-
ing in it of my own, but which is based wholly
upon an examination of the words of Paul,
these being taken in their most natural and
direct signification." This interpretation
forced itself upon him when he first began
the serious reading of the New Testament,
and all his subsequent study has confirmed
its truth ; and while it is remote from our
habits of thought, it does not, the author
believes, contradict our moral sense, and he
hopes it "may do something to reconcile
the New Testament and the conscience of
the Christian world." (Published by Hough-
ton, Mifflin & Co. Price, $1.50.)

The edition of the ^Eneid (six books) and
Bucolics of Vergil prepared by President
W. R. Harper and Instructor F. J. Miller is
intended to present the Latinity of the au-
thor hi as suggestive and accessible a form
as possible, and to afford stimulus and ma-
terial for the study of the poet from a liter-
ary point of view. The plan of the studies
is inductive throughout. In the Introduction
are given a series of studies for developing
important principles of syntax, and a new
presentation of the Vergilian verse and prin-
ciples of quantity. Materials for literary
study are provided in a bibliography ; a list
of topics for investigation ; an account of
the Royal House of Troy ; Rhetorical Study ;
and notes of various kinds. The Eclogues
are introduced at the request of teachers
who desire to give their classes more than
the first six books of the ^Eneid. (This edi-
tion of Vergil is published by the American
Book Company. Price, $1.50.)

President W. R. Harper, of the Univer-
sity of Chicago, and James Wallace have
prepared a handsome, compact edition of
Xenopbon's Anabasis for class-room use,
with suitable illustrations and other aids to
enhance interest and facilitate the study of
the noble classic. The text is that of the
recension of Arnold Hug. The notes are
brief and elementary, supplemented by ref-
erences to the grammars and to the histor-
ical introduction which precedes the text.
The first occurrence of words is indicated
by special type. Great pains have been
taken with the vocabulary. Guides are
furnished for etymological study. Maps of

Greece and of the route of the Anabasis and
the retreat are inserted. Three of the books
have been edited for sight-reading. Tables
of paradigms are given. The Historical In-
troduction, Bibliography, and Itinerary are
rich in information and can not but contrib-
ute much to make the story seem real.
(American Book Company. Price, $1.50.)

For his book of Logarithmic Tables,
Prof. George William Jones, of Cornell Uni-
versity, has compared the figures of the
principal larger tables, and applied every
known test for accuracy, computing anew
where there was doubt ; has sought, by simi-
lar examinations of standard tables and by
consultation, to secure a plan that would
promote rapid and easy nse ; has employed
such type and adopted such arrangement as
would so far as possible prevent straining of
the eyes; and presents the work at the
small cost of seventy-five cents. The tables
are preceded by a satisfactory set of explana-
tions, and include logarithms of numbers,
trigonometric functions, addition-subtraction
logarithms, prime and composite numbers,
squares, cubes, square and cube roots, recip-
rocals, quarter-squares, Bessel's coefficients,
binomial coefficients, and errors of observa-
tion. (Published by the author at Ithaca,
N. Y., and by Macmillan & Co.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins.
Nebraska: Influence of Changes of Food and
Temperature on Milk. Pp. 12. — Purdue Univer-
sity: Shelter of Milch Cows in Winter; Skim
Milk as a Food for Calves. Pp. 12.

American Book Company. The School Calen-
dar.

Atwood, George E. Complete Graded Arith-
metic. Part I. Pp. 200. 45 cents.— Part II. Pp.
382. 85 cents. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co.

Badenoch, L. N. Romance of the Insect
World. New York: Macmill.n & Co. Pp.841.
$1.25.

Bell, Alexander Meleville. Speech Tones.
Washington, D. C. Pp. 18.

Bolin, Jakob, New York. Mental Growth
through Physical Education. Pp. 18.

Bradley, F. H. Appearance and Reality. New-
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 553. $1.75.

Burpee, W. Atlee, Philadelphia. Selection in
Seed Growing. Pp. 98.— Burpee's Farm Annuals,
1894. Pp.172.

Carter, Oscar S., Philadelphia. Diamonds in
Meteorites. P. 1.— Artesian Wells. Pp. 8.

Cattell, J. McKeon, and Baldwin, J. Mark.
The Psychological Review. Bi-monthly. Vol I,
No. 1. Pp. 112. New York : Macmillan & Co.
75 cents; $4 a year.

Davis, C. H. S., Editor, Meriden, Conn. Biblia-
Monthly. January, 1894. Pp.32. 10 cents; $1 a
year. New York: B. Westermann & Co.

7io

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dawson, Sir J. William. The Canadian Ice
Age. Montreal : W. V. Dawson. New York :
Scientific Publishing Company. Pp. 301.

Day, David T. Mineral Besources of the
United States, 1892. Washington: Geological
Survey. Pp. 850.

Denison, Charles. Climates of the United
States. In Colors. Chicago: The W. T. Keener
Co. Pp. 47. $1.

De Quatrefages, A. Les Emnles de Darwin
(The Kivals of Darwin). Paris: Felix Alcan. 2
vols. Pp. 454 and 289. 12 francs.

Du Puis, N. P. Elements of Synthetic Solid
Geometry. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.
239. $1.60.

Foreman Pattern-maker, A. Helical Gears.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 127. $2.

Forney, M. N., Editor. Aeronautics. Month-
ly. New York: American Engineer and Kailroad
Journal. Pp. 14. 10 cents; $1 a year.

Fort Worth (Texas) Public Schools. Annual
Keport for 1893. Pp. 21.

Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York. A
Standard Dictionary of the English Language.
Vol.1, A to L. Pp.1060.

Gamgee, Arthur. A Text-book of the Physio-
logical Chemistry of the Animal Body. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 528. $4.50.

Hectoen, Ludvig. Technique of Post-mortem
Examination. Chicago: W. T. Keener Co. Pp.
172. $1.75.

Hitchcock, Romeyn. The Ancient Pit Dwellers
of Yezo, Japan. Pp. 10.— The Ainos of Yezo. Pp.
75. — Shinto, or the Mythology of the Japanese.
Pp. 14.— Ancient Burial Mounds of Japan. Pp.
16, with Plates.— Some Ancient Relics in Japan.
Pp. 2, with Plates. All published at the United
States National Museum.

Hoffmann, Charles Frederick. Christ the Pat-
tern of aU True Education. Pp. 209.— The Li-
brary of a Divine Child. Pp. 110. New York :
E. & J. B. Young.

Huxley, Thomas H. Method and Results-
Pp. 430.— Science and Education. Pp. 451. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. $1.75 each.

Jackman, W. S. Number Work in Nature
Study. Chicago : W. 8. Jackman. Pp. 198. 60
cents.

Julien, Alexis A., New York. Notes of Re-
search on the New York Obelisk. Pp. 166, with
Plates.

Keen, W. W., M. D., Easton, Pa. Medicine as
a Career for Educated Men. Pp. 19.

Klein, Felix. Lectures on Mathematics. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.109. 50 cents.

Kroeh, Charles F., Hoboken, N. J. The Liv-
ing Method for learning how to Think in German.
Pp.272. $1.50.

Langmaid, J., and Gaisford, H. Elementary
Lessons in Steam Machinery and the Marine
Steam Engine. New York : Macmillan & Co.
Pp. 265, with Plates. $2.

Le Galliene, Richard. The Religion of a Liter-
ary Man. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. PD.
119. $1.

Liptay, Alberto. Sovre la V y la B in Castel-
lano (on the V and the B in Castilian, and on se-
curing an International Idiom by Universal Suf-
frage). Santiago de Chile. Pp. 103.

Muskett, Philip E. The Art of Living in Aus-
tralia. New York : Macmillan & Co. London :
Eyre & Spottiswood. Pp. 421.

Nassau Literary Magazine. Princeton College.
No. 1. December, 1893. Pp. 52.

Pickering, E. C. Forty-eighth Report of the
Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College,
1893. Cambridge, Mass.

Powell, J. W., Director. Ninth Annual Re-
port of the Bureau of Ethnology. 1887-'88. Wash-
ington: Government Printing Office. Pp. 61 T.

Public Ledger Almanac for 1894. Philadel-
phia. Pp. 77.

Rand, Rev. S. T. Legends of the Micmacs.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 452.

Schabilitz, J., Publisher, Zurich, Switzerland.
Der Untergang Israels (The Downfall of Israel).
By a Physiologist. Pp. 17.

Scott, Sir Walter. The Abbot. American
Book Company. Pp. 536. 60 cents.

Seary, Manson. Practical Business Bookkeep-
ing by Double Entry. Boston : D. C. Heath &
Co. Pp.238. $1.55.

Southard, W. F., M. D., San Francisco. The
Modern Eye. Pp. 32.

Stokes, Prof. S. G. C. Natural Theology. New
York : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 272. $1.50.

Stillmann, J. D., M. D., St. Louis, Mo. Natura1
Medicine. Pp. 69.

Strahan, S. A. K. Suicide and Insanity. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 238. $1.75.

Suess, Eduard. The Future of Silver. Trans-
lation by Robert Stein. Washington : Govern-
ment Printing Office. Pp. 101.

Tarr, Ralph S. Economic Geology of the
United States. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp.
509. $4.

Teetzel, Frances Grant. Poems. Vagrant
Fancies. Milwaukee: Published by the Author.
Pp.68.

Thacher, John Boyd. Address to the Ameri-
can Exhibitors at Chicago. Pp. 16.

To-day. Monthly. Vol. I, No. 1. Philadel-
phia : F. A. Bisbee and M. Whitcomb, Editors
and Publishers. Pp. 44. 10 cents; $1 a year.

University of Pennsylvania. Contributions to
the Botanical Laboratory. Pp. 125, with Plates.

Watson, H. W. A Treatise on the Kinetic
Theory of Gases. New York: Macmillan & Co.
Pp.87. $1.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Geological Society of America. — The sixth
annual meeting of the Geological Society of
America was held December 27-29, 1893, in
Boston and Cambridge, Mass. The sessions
of the opening and closing days were hi the
hall of the Boston Society of Natural His-
tory, and those of the second day were in the
Harvard University Museum, Cambridge. The
Geological Society has a membership oiSabout
two hundred and twenty-five, comprising most
of the prominent working geologists of North
America. It holds two meetings yearly, one
in the summer in connection with the Amer-
ican Association for the Advancement of
Science, and a winter meeting in the holi-
days following Christmas. Each of these
meetings is held successively in different
cities of the United States and Canada, pre-
vious winter meetings having been held in
New York, Washington, Columbus, and Ot-
tawa. The officers elected for the year 1894
are Prof. T. C. Chamberlin, of Chicago,
president ; Prof. N. S. Shaler, of Cambridge,

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

711

end Prof. George H. Williams, of Baltimore,
vice-presidents ; and Prof. H. L. Fairchild,
of Rochester, N. Y., secretary. About sixty
papers were presented at this meeting, a few
of which are here briefly noticed :

In his address as the retiring president,
Sir J. William Dawson, of Montreal, chose
for his subject Some Recent Discussions in
Geology, considering especially the building
up and development of the continents. He
noted the controversies respecting the age of
the older crystalline rocks, the true founda-
tion stones of continents, instancing those of
the Highlands of Scotland as described by
Geikie, and the older rocks of North America
as worked out by Logan and his successors.
He was inclined to think that the oldest
rocks that we shall know are the gneisses of
the lower Laurentian, and that these may be
regarded as the igneo-aqueous products of
the earliest action of the waters on the crust
of a cooling globe. He then referred to the
rival theories of mountain-building, and,
after distinguishing between mountains of
eruption (volcanoes), like Vesuvius and Co-
topaxi, mountains of slightly inclined strata,
like the Lebanon and the Sierra Nevada, and
mountains of contorted strata, like the Alps
and the Appalachians, noted the diverse
views as to the origin of the latter. He fa-
vored the time-honored contraction theory as
explained recently by Le Conte, but saw no
objection to connecting with this the depo-
sition theory of Hall and others, the ex-
pansion theory of Mellard Reade, and the
isostatic theory of Button. When it is neces-
sary to account for the compression of vast
masses of rock into a third of their normal
dimensions and for their elevation thousands
of feet above the level of the sea, we may
be thankful to invoke all available powers
each in its proper place, and the sculpturing
due to atmospheric agencies besides.

Prof. C. H. Hitchcock, of Hanover, N. H.,
spoke about Ancient Eruptive Rocks in the
White Mountains. He said that in his re-
ports of the New Hampshire Geological Sur-
vey he had described in detail a great va-
riety of granites occurring in the White
Mountains, without having discovered the
principle of their association. He then re-
viewed the order of these varied igneous rocks
and showed that the same structure found in
volcanoes appeared in the White Mountains.

He was therefore convinced that the granites
were truly eruptive. If the modern view of
the formation of granite is correct, the depth
at which it is formed, as shown in the White
Mountain region, is from two thousand to five
thousand feet, and decidedly not forty thou-
sand feet, as some geologists have maintained.

Prof. George H. Williams, of Johns Hop-
kins University, treated the subject of An-
cient Volcanic Rocks along the Eastern Bor-
der of North America. He proposed to
designate as volcanic only such igneous rocks
as had flowed up through vents to the sur-
face. All existing knowledge of the occur-
rence of these rocks during the early geo-
logic ages in eastern North America was
summarized, beginning with Newfoundland
and passing southwestward along the Appa-
lachian mountain belt.

Mr. Alexander Agassiz, Director of the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard
University, presented An Account of an Ex-
pedition to the Bahamas, which were de-
scribed as formed of wave-worn and wind-
blown coral sands.

Among the papers relating to the glacial
drift, Prof. T. C. Chamberlin and Mr. Frank
Leverett discussed Certain Features of the
Past Drainage Systems of the Upper Ohio
Basin, concluding that the lower portions of
the rock valleys of the upper Ohio and its
tributaries were eroded during an intergla-
cial epoch. Prof. G. Frederick Wright, de-
scribing parts of the same region in a paper
on the Glacial History of Western Pennsyl-
vania, referred the valley erosion in rock al-
most wholly to a preglacial time of higher
altitude of the country, citing the occurrence
of glacial gravel deposits extending from the
high terraces down to the bottom lands, and
regarding the Ice age as continuous and
geologically short.

The Harvard Observatory. — The begin-
ning of the Astronomical Observatory of
Harvard College is usually identified with the
appointment of Prof. W. C. Bond as observer
in 1840. The appearance of the first comet
of 1843 excited fresh interest in the subject,
and funds were collected to buy the great
telescope, which then had only one match in
the world, in 1 847. The resources of the ob-
servatory have since been increased by vari-
ous subscriptions, gifts, and bequests. The

712

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

general expenses are largely provided for
from the bequests of Edward B. Phillips and
Robert Treat Paine. The Henry Draper
Memorial, established by Mrs. Draper, fur-
nishes the means of studying the spectra and
other physical properties of the stars. The
observing station near Arequipa, Peru, 8,050
feet above the sea, was established under the
bequest of Uriah A. Boy den. By maintain-
ing a station south of the equator, work at
Cambridge may be extended to the southern
stars ; and all important researches there are,
therefore, now made to include stars in all
parts of the sky, from the north to the south
pole. Miss C. W. Bruce, of New York, has
provided the means for a photographic tele-
scope, which will be mounted first in Cam-
bridge, and later in Peru. In meteorological
work the observatory is associated with the
Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, the
New England Meteorological Society, and the
New England Weather Bureau, and provides
for the publication in its annals of the results
obtained by the observers of these associated
stations. Meteorological stations connected
with the observatory at Arequipa, Peru, are
situated on Mount Chachani, 16,650 feet, and
on El Misti, 19,200 feet, above the sea. Sev-
eral large prisms have been procured for
photographing the spectra of the stars.

Women in Postal and Railway Serv-
ice.— According to the Journal des Econo-
mistes, France was the first country to admit
women to places in the postal administration,
and their engagement has proved so satisfac-
tory that the authorities are inclined to pre-
fer them to men wherever it is possible. In
the United Kingdom, deducting the letter
carriers, 25'2 per cent of the persons em-
ployed in the post offices are women. In
Switzerland women are eligible equally with
men for vacancies in the postal and railway
departments. Many women are engaged in
the telegraph and telephone departments, and
the railways employ them in various capaci-
ties. In Holland only eight classes of em-
ployment in the administration of posts and
telegraphs are open to women. The railways
employ seven hundred and twenty women.
In Italy a few women are occupied in the
postal and telegraph offices. In Spain nearly
all the positions in the telephone offices are
held by women, and their work in the tele-

graph offices has been so satisfactory that
the Government has decided to have more of
it. In Sweden more women than men are
found in the telegraph offices, and single
women are admitted to all departments of
the post-office service, except that of letter
carriers. Women have the same salaries and
equal positions in the telegraph and post
offices of Norway and Denmark as men, and
in Denmark may become " station masters "
on the railway, while they also figure as
shorthand writers in the Parliament. We
find them also in public offices, on the most
liberal terms that have been made, in Fin-
land and Iceland. They occupy many posi-
tions in Germany, Austria, Roumania, Russia,
and in the British colonies. The Republic of
Brazil admits women to all the Government
departments ; the United States of Colombia
has provided a class in telegraphy for them ;
and in Chili, besides filling places in the
postal and telegraph departments, they mo-
nopolize the function of conductors on the
tramways.

The Russian Village. — While the dissolu-
tion of the community of laud in western
Europe is of comparatively recent date, in
Russia, as Mr. Isaac A. Hourwich shows in
his Columbia College study of the Economics
of a Russian Village, the process of evolu-
tion has been less rapid, and this primeval
institution has been preserved till to-day.
There is not, however, found there within
historical times that tribal communism which
Mr. Lewis H. Morgan met with among North
American Indians. The Russian village
community of historical times consists of a
number of large families, often, yet not ne-
cessarily, of common ancestry, who possess
the soil in common, but cultivate it by
households. The ancient communal co-oper-
ation reappears sporadically, on various spe-
cial occasions, in the form of the potnoch (or
help). Some householder invites his neigh-
bors to help him in a certain work (just as
in the times of our early settlements) — to
mow his meadow lot, to reap his field, to cut
down wood for a new house he has under-
taken to build, etc. This is regarded as a
reception tendered by the family to its neigh-
bors, and different kinds of refreshments are
prepared for the occasion, which constitute
the only remuneration for the work done by

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

713

the guests. Of course, there is nothing com-
pulsory in the custom, and no one is bound
to answer the call in case he does not like to
do so. On the other hand, the party bene-
fited is under an obligation to appear at the
call of those who participated in the pdmoch.
This custom does not play as conspicuous a
part as in former days, when rural settle-
ments were scattered clearings in the forests,
and pioneer work was constantly needed.
Still, even then it was only a social revival,
hinting at a preceding epoch of closer com-
munistic co-operation, and at the same time
pointing out the existing severance between
the households of which the community was
formed. The Russian family is not identical
with the Roman family, in which the pater-
familias was absolute master, or of any of
its derivatives. It is a union of individuals
having their individual rights recognized by
the law, though sometimes not without cer-
tain limitations in favor of the head of the
family. It is a perfect communistic com-
monwealth. All the movables belonging to
the household, as well as its whole income,
constitute the collective property of the
family, but not of its head. The old Rus-
sian family resembled a community even in
the number of its members. One described
by Mr. Krasnoperoff numbered ninety-nine
members, and was composed of a grand-
mother with her children and married grand-
children, all of whom were living together
and working for their own common benefit.
Such households, exceptions now, were uni-
versal in the past. Thus ownership of land
by the community without, and complete
communism within the family, were the
fundamental elements in the structure of
the village at the dawn of Russian history.

Chinese " Letter Shops." — According to
the United States consul at Fu Chau, the
Chinese Government has not yet established
any post offices or postal system for the
masses of the people ; yet communication is
easy between the people in all parts of the
empire through private enterprise, which
has established what are called " letter
shops." Official dispatches are carried by
couriers, at a rate so rapid, in cases of emer-
gency, as from two hundred to two hundred
and fifty miles a day. These official couriers
are not allowed to convey private dispatches.

At the treaty ports " letter shops " are used
by the natives only ; but in the interior, or at
places not reached by the foreign postal ar-
rangements, they are employed by foreigners
as well, chiefly by missionaries. All letters
and parcels to be sent may be registered and
insured. When given in at a " letter shop,"
the contents of the envelope are displayed
before it is sealed up, and stamped with the
" chop " of the shop. Charges for the trans-
mission of valuables are made on a percent-
age of declared value, and, as with letters,
differ according to the distance to which the
package is to be carried. A receipt is given,
and the shopkeeper then becomes respon-
sible either for its safe delivery, with un-
broken " chop " or seal, at its destination,
or for its return to the sender. In some
parts of the empire about two thirds of the
expenses of transmission are paid by the
sender, while the remainder is collected from
the receiver ; thus the shop is secured against
entire loss from transient customers, and the
sender has some guarantee that his letter
will be carried with dispatch. There are
said to be nearly two hundred letter shops
in Shanghai, but in many remote villages
there are none.

Protection of Birds' Eggs. — A short dis-
cussion took place in the British Association
concerning the best method of protecting
birds' eggs. In presenting the report of the
committee on the subject, Dr. Vachell said
that, while everybody agreed that eggs should
be protected, serious differences of opinion
prevailed as to the way in which the object
should be reached. Some thought the tak-
ing of particular eggs in particular places
should be prevented at particular times of
the year. Against this, it had been found
impossible, on account of resemblances, to
prove in court the specific identity of many
kinds of eggs. It had therefore been sug-
gested, as a better plan, to protect the special
areas in which particular species were found
to be declining. The question was asked,
What was to be done with the little boy ten
years old who might be tempted to rob a
nest '? Was he to be sent to jail ? Mr. Wal-
ter found bird-nesting an intolerable nui-
sance, eggs being collected, not for scientific
purposes, but simply to ornament rooms.
Mr. M. S. Pemberry argued that many boys

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

began a study of natural history by the col-
lection of eggs. Mr. Milne Redhead did not
think the act of bird-nesting the greatest
evil, but the collection of eggs for sale in
large towns. Prof. Newton spoke of the
practical impossibility of convicting bird-
nesters on account of the difficulty of distin-
guishing between the eggs of one species and
those of another.

Various Speeds. — The horse, said Mr.
Jeremiah Head, in a paper recently read,
though he could not walk faster than man, nor
exceed him in jumping heights or distances,
could certainly beat him altogether when gal-
loping or trotting. A mile had been galloped
in one hundred and three seconds, equal to
thirty-five miles per hour, and had been trotted
in one hundred and twenty -four seconds, equal
to twenty-nine miles per hour. How man's
position as a competitor with other animals
in speed was affected by his use of mechan-
ical aids, but without any extraneous motive
power, was considered in reference to loco-
motion on land, in water, and in air. But
the most wonderful increase in the locomo-
tive power of man on land was obtained by
the use of the modern cycle. One mile had
been cycled at the rate of 27'1 miles per
hour, fifty at twenty, one hundred at 16'6,
three hundred and eighty-eight at 12'5, and
nine hundred at 12 '43 miles per hour. Un-
aided by mechanism man had shown himself
able to swim for short distances at the rate
of three, and long distances (twenty-two
miles) at the rate of one mile per hour. He
had also given instances of being able to re-
main under water for four and a half min-
utes. Credible eye-witnesses stated that
porpoises easily overtook and kept pace with
a steamer going twelve and a half knots, or,
say, over fourteen miles an hour, for an in-
definite length of time. This was five and
fifteen times the maximum swimming speed
of a man for short and long, distances re-
spectively.

Tendencies of Population.— In a paper
read in the British Association, Mr. E. Can-
nan, of Oxford, sought to show that, con-
trary to the general belief that the population
of the great towns is being increased almost
as much by immigration as by excess of
births over deaths, the excess of immigrants

over emigrants, or net immigration, is rapidlv
diminishing, and seems likely to disappear
before the end of the century. The net im-
migration into London in the last ten years
was only fifty-six per cent of what it was in
the previous ten years, and only sixty-three
per cent of what it was thirty years before,
when the population was two and a half mil-
lions less than it is now. In this matter Lon-
don is by no means in advance of the other
great towns. In Liverpool the net immigra-
tion was 68,000 in 1851 to 1860, 56,000 in
1861 to 1870, 49,000 in 1871 to 1880, but in
1881 to 1890 the balance was the other way,
and there was a net emigration of 15,000.
In the case of Manchester the decline of the
net immigration was neither so continuous
nor so great as in Liverpool, but it was con-
siderable. In each of the first two decades
it was about 32,000, then it rose to nearly
50,000, but in the last decade it has declined
to 17,700. The three great Yorkshire towns,
Leeds, Sheffield, and Bradford, showed con-
siderable fluctuations. Into the three taken
together the net immigration was 25,000 in
1851 to 1860; in 1861 to 1870 it made an
enormous jump up to 78,000, and then
dropped right down to 18,000 in 1881 to
1890. The net immigration into the towns
was affected by migration between the towns
and other countries as well as by migration
between the towns and the rest of England
and Wales.

Animal and Artificial Mechanism. —

Comparing animal mechanism with artificial,
Mr. Jeremiah Head said, in his sectional ad-
dress at the British Association, that all ani-
mals were in their bodily frames, and in the
intricate processes and functions which went
ou continuously therein, mechanisms of so
elaborate a kind that we could only look and
wonder and strive to imitate them a little here
and there. The mechanical nomenclature of
all languages was largely derived from the
bodies of men and other animals. Many of
our principal mechanical devices had pre-
existed in them. Mr. Head proceeded to
consider how far man was in his natural con-
dition, and had become by the aid of mechan-
ical science, able to compete successfully with
other and specially endowed animals, each in
tiis own sphere of action. The bodily frame
of man was adapted for life and movement

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

715

only on or near to the surface of the earth.
Without mechanical aids he could walk for
several hours at a speed which was ordinarily
from three to four miles per hour. Under
exceptional circumstances he had accom-
plished over eight miles in one hour, and an
average of two and three quarter miles per
hour for a hundred and forty-one hours. In
running he had covered about eleven and a
half miles in an hour. The power of the liv-
ing human mechanism to withstand widely
diverse and excessive strains was altogether
unapproachable in artificial constructions.
Thus, although fitted for an external atmos-
pheric pressure of about fifteen pounds per
square inch, he had been able, as exemplified
by Messrs. Glaisher and Coxvvell in 1862, to
ascend to a height of seven, miles and breathe
air at a pressure of only three and a half pounds
per square inch, and still live. And, on the
other hand, divers had been down eighty feet
deep, entailing an extra pressure of about
thirty-six pounds per square inch, and had
returned safely. One had even been to a
depth of one hundred and fifty feet, but the
resulting pressure of sixty-seven pounds per
square inch cost him his life. No animal
burrowed downward into the earth to a
greater depth than eight feet, and then only
in dry ground.

The Phillips Prize Essay Fund.— The

Herbert M. Phillips prize essay fund of five
thousand dollars of the American Philo-
sophical Society was founded by Miss Emily
Phillips in memory of her deceased brother,
who was an honored member of the society.
Its purpose is the provision of prizes, to be
awarded from time to time from the income
of the fund, for the best essay of real merit
on the science and philosophy of jurispru-
dence. In pursuance of the conditions of
its establishment, a prize is now offered by
the society, to be awarded during 1895, of
five hundred dollars lawful gold coin for the
best essay on either of the following sub-
jects: 1. The sources, formation, and de-
velopment of what is generally designated
the common law of England. 2. The the-
ory of the state, treated historically, and
upon principle, with a discussion of the
various schools of classical, mediaeval, and
modern thought upon the subject. 3. The
historical and doctrinal relations of the Ro-

man law and the English law, illustrated by
parallels and contrasts. The essays of com-
petitors should be in possession of the so-
ciety before the first day of January, 1895,
and should be sent addressed to Frederick
Fraley, president of the society.

Oxygen as a Remedy for Choke Damp. —

A committee appointed at the Edinburgh
meeting of the British Association, 1892, to
determine whether oxygen gas was useful as
a restorative in cases of carbonic-acid poison-
ing, and particularly in those of choke-damp
asphyxia in mines, reported to the recent
meeting its conclusions, from experiments on
rabbits, that oxygen was of no greater service
than air. It suggested, however, that the
experiment of keeping a few cylinders of
air with nose and mouth pieces ready for use
in those parts of the workings where men
could be most easily imprisoned might be
attended with valuable results. It seemed
quite reasonable that where a person had to
be dragged long distances through a con-
taminated atmosphere the chances of ulti-
mate recovery would be greater if the
effects of this poisonous atmosphere were
neutralized at the commencement and dur-
ing the progress of the work of rescue than
if no such attempt were made until fresh air
was reached in the ordinary way.

Isolation of Fluorine. — A demonstration
of the isolation of fluorine was made before
the British Association by Dr. Meslans, the
representative of the French chemist, M. H.
Moissan. The apparatus employed consists
entirely of platinum and fluorspar. A power-
ful current of electricity is passed between
platinum electrodes through anhydrous liquid
hydrogen fluoride mixed with one of its
salts, and cooled to a very low temperature
by means of methyl chloride. Under these
conditions fluorine is given off from one of
the electrodes, and hydrogen gas from the
other. The fluorine is an almost colorless
gas, and its presence is made evident by
its action on various compounds. Crystal-
lized silicon, amorphous boron, phosphorus,
sulphur, alcohol, and various metals take fire
at the ordinary temperature and bum bril-
liantly in a current of the gas. These phe-
nomena were exhibited to the section, and
the demonstration was in every way success-

7i6

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ful. Sir Henry Roscoe moved a vote of
thanks to M. Moissan and M. Meslans. The
vote, he said, must be regarded as coming
from the whole Association and not simply
from the Chemical Section. Prof. T. E.
Thorpe seconded the motion, which was car-
ried with loud cheers, and the president of
the section, Dr. Emerson Reynolds, sent a
telegram to M. Moissan congratulating him,
on behalf of the section, on the great success
of the demonstration.

Bacteriology in Chemistry. — Bacteriol-
ogy, said Prof. Frankland, opening the dis-
cussion of that subject in the British Asso-
ciation, although originally an offshoot of
botany, received its great impulse from the
association with chemistry which began
with the researches of Pasteur, while the
greater part of our more recent knowledge
was due to the labors of those medical men
who had followed in the steps of Koch and
his pupils. The progress that has been
made of late years in this line of research
was mainly due to the methods of producing
pure and selective cultivations. These meth-
ods did not at present seem capable of any
great modification, and a knowledge of them
might be regarded as essential in a really
liberal education. Pure cultivations of
yeasts were now articles of commerce, and
pure cultivations of microbes for purposes of
research could be obtained in the same man-
ner as pure chemicals. Bacteria, whose
properties had been modified by successive
cultivations, are also supplied in quantities
for the preventive inoculation of cattle.
Later work had shown that the differentia-
tion of even the most carefully studied bac-
teria, such as those of cholera and typhoid,
was very difficult, and the morphological
characteristics which were originally em-
ployed almost exclusively had given way to
chemical and pathogenic tests. Individuals
of the same bacterium under different con-
ditions will show greater variations than
are shown by different species. The fer-
mentations produced by bacteria, as distinct
from those produced by yeasts, were of con-
stantly increasing importance, and had
afforded means of splitting up certain com-
pounds and isolating new products that
could not be obtained in any other way. The
compounds fermentable in this way belonged

to a very few chemical groups, and the
products of the change were few in num-
ber and comparatively simple in character.
It would seem that while the same com-
pound might yield different products when
acted upon by different organisms, one and
the same organism would yield the same
products even when it acted on substances of
very different composition. By reason of
their selective action and their tendency to
attack certain compounds in preference to
others in the same liquid, bacteria enabled
us to separate substances of identical chem-
ical composition but different physical proper-
ties which could not as yet be separated in
any other way.

Arctic Rivers. — The rivers which flow
into the Arctic Ocean, said Mr. Henry See-
bohm in the British Association, are some of
them among the greatest in the world.
Some idea of the relative sizes of the drain-
age areas of a few of the best-known rivers
may be learned from the following, in
which the Thames, with a drainage area of
6,000 square miles, is the unit : Nine Thames
equal one Elbe (54,000) ; two Elbes equal
one Pechora (108,000) ; two and a half Pe-
choras equal one Danube (270,000); two
Danubes equal one Mackenzie (540,000);
two Mackenzies equal one Yenisei (1,080,-
000) ; two Yeniseis equal one Amazon (2,-
160,000). There is nothing that makes a
greater impression upon the arctic traveler
than the enormous width of the rivers. The
Pechora is only a river of the fifth magni-
tude, but it is more than a mile wide for
several hundred miles of its course. The
Yenisei is more than three miles wide for at
least a thousand miles and a mile wide for
nearly another thousand. Whymper de-
scribes the Yukon as varying from one to
four miles in width for three or four hun-
dred miles of its length. The Mackenzie is
described as averaging a mile in width for
more than a thousand miles, with occasional
expansions for long distances to twice that
size.

Investigation of Earthquake Phenome-
na.— The committee of the British Associa-
tion, appointed to investigate the volcanic
and earthquake phenomena of Japan, has
reported that the records of horizontal pen-

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

717

dulum motions during the past ten years
show that the earth tremors of Japan have
no direct relation to its earthquakes. Rec-
ords of both have been kept. A well-
marked periodic tilt of the land has been
detected, corresponding to a rise of the land
on the northeast side, and a more rapid
subsidence of it again. Similar effects had
been recorded in Germany, but of much
smaller amplitude. In Germany, barometric
changes caused the tilting, but the relation
between the two was not so marked in Ja-
pan; there may possibly, however, be some
connection of them with magnetic influences.
The directions of earthquake motions and of
earth tremors across Japan were each at
right angles to the mountain axis of the
country, a fact which suggests that both are
caused by crumpling of the mountains round
their axis. The observations of earth tre-
mors had gone so far as to demand atten-
tion from practical astronomers and others.
When a tremor occurred it rendered delicate
weighing impossible, inasmuch as the bal-
ance swung irregularly and altered its zero.
Similarly astronomical observations would be
upset. A practical outcome of the commit-
tee's reports was the alteration in the design
of bridges in Japan. After earthquakes it
was found that bridges and other masonry
gave way at the base ; the form of a wall or
pier had been calculated which, on being
subjected to a horizontal reciprocating medi-
um, would be equally likely to break at any
part.

Mount Tacoma. — An effort is making by
the citizens of Tacoma, Washington, to re-
store to their lofty and graceful mountain — to
which the name Rainier has been attached —
its aboriginal designation of Tacoma. This
term, according to the analysis of it by the
Hon. James Wickersham, quoted in F. G.
Plummer's Illustrated Guide Book, means
" snow-covered mountain." The mountain is
in full view from the city of Tacoma, bearing
south, 56° east, a distance of forty-four miles.
It stands about twelve miles west of the
Cascade Range, and its entire drainage flows
westward into Puget Sound and the Colum-
bia River. It " has the form of a dome sur-
mounted by three small peaks, with a maxi-
mum elevation of fifteen thousand feet. It
rises almost from the sea-level; and as its

average diameter at the base is about twenty
miles, its mass is roughly estimated at two
hundred cubic miles. Upon its slopes on
every side are enormous glaciers and ice-
fields, arranged on radial lines and forming
a system that for extent and grandeur is un-
excelled on the earth. The limit of perpet-
ual snow is at four thousand feet, but the
timber line extends much higher. Natural
groves, meadows, and prairies surround the
mountain, except where the river canons and
glaciers cut the slopes. Upon the northeast
the Urania, Elaine, Inter, and Winthrop gla-
ciers drain into White River and thence to
Duwamish Bay. To the northeast the Car-
bon, Willis, North Mowich, South Mowich,
and Pugallup glaciers form the Pugallup
River, which flows to Tacoma harbor. To
the southwest the Tahoma, Kautz, Van
Trump, Nisqually, and Paradise glaciers
drain into the Nisqually River, which flows
through Succotash Valley to Puget Sound.
The Cowlitz River is the drainage from the
Cowlitz, Willinakas, and Little Willinakas
glaciers, and flows into the Columbia River."
The mountain is reached from Tacoma by
electric railway, eleven miles to Lake Park,
stages to Paradise Park, sixty-seven miles
from the city, and thence by a day's hard
work climbing nine thousand feet up in
seven miles. Mr. Plummer's Guide Book
(Tacoma, Wash.) is full of information about
the mountain, clearly and precisely given.

Dr. Alfred L. Carroll.— Dr. Alfred Lud-
low Carroll, of New York, who died October
30, 1893, was a physician of high standing,
a vigorous writer on subjects of medicine,
sanitation, and hygiene, and an active la-
borer for the elevation of the standards of
medical science and practice and the diffu-
sion of sound principles of hygiene. A full
sketch of his life has been prepared by
Dr. J. W. S. Gouley for the New York
State Medical Association, from the advance
sheets of which, kindly furnished us by him,
we gather that he was born in New York
city, August 3, 1833, the son of parents of
good scholarship and refined tastes. He be-
gan the study of his profession when eight-
een years of age, with Dr. Valentine Mott,
expecting to become a surgeon, but after-
ward turned his attention to general medi-
cine. He began to contribute to the med-

7i8

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ical press in 1857, and wrote many papers
and editorial articles for several journals;
and from 1867 to 1871 edited the Medical
Gazette. As editor he " labored industrious-
ly to raise the standard of medical morals
and of scientific essays. His reviews of
literary and scientific works are so many
pleas for thoroughness in research, accuracy
in statement, simplicity in diction, and good
taste in composition. . . . His dislike of
shams and of irrational methods is exhibit-
ed throughout his essays, both medical and
literary, in verse and in prose." With his
other qualities he had a keen wit, which was
used to good effect in his writings, and in
drawings and models satirizing follies,
abuses, exaggeration in fashions, and hygi-
enic improprieties. Retiring from the edit-
orship of the Medical Gazette in 1871, he
settled for practice in New Brighton, Staten
Island, till 1889, when he removed to New
York city. He was a member of the Coun-
cil of the New York State Medical Associa-
tion, and for three years edited its transac-
tions. His most important work was per-
formed in sanitary science. Dr. Gouley
names thirty-seven editorial articles on pub-
lic health, which he published while editor
of the Medical Gazette. He wrote for the
World a series of articles — the Ollapod
Papers — on hygiene, conveying useful infor-
mation respecting the prevention of disease
and the general care of the person, which
were widely read. During his residence in
New Brighton he gave a series of free popu-
lar lectures on hygiene. His address on the
Philosophy of Health before the Alumni
Association of the University Medical Col-
lege of New York, and those on Public
Health before the New York State Medical
Association in 1 885, and the American Med-
ical Association in 1890 were of high charac-
ter. In 1884 he became Secretary of the
New York State Board of Health, succeed-
ing Dr. Elisha Harris, deceased. In this
position he was much consulted with refer-
ence to health laws and general sanitation.
While in this office he delivered an accept-
able course of lectures on hygiene at the
Albany Medical College; and he gave
courses on the same subject at the Mott
Memorial Hall in 1890, and at the New York
College of Veterinary Surgeons in 1891. Dr.
Thudicum, of London, speaks of his later

writings, with which only he is acquainted,
as " full of original observations, keen appli-
cation of the most progressive science, and
conclusions of the greatest practical value."

Cheating Ancestors and Gods. — A curi-
ous industry in some of the provinces of
China is the manufacture of mock money for
offering to the dead. Formerly sham paper
money was burned, but now mock dollars are
used. They are only half the size of real
dollars, but the dead are supposed not to
know the difference ; and, moreover, there is
no more harm in cheating the dead than there
is in cheating the living. To make them, tin,
hammered out till it is not thicker than the
thickest paper, is punched to the size of half
dollars and pasted on disks of cardboard. A
boy then takes the pieces, and with two dies,
one representing the one side and the other
the reverse, hammers impressions of dollars
upon them, and the money is ready for use.
Some districts of the Anhui province having
been ravaged by an epidemic, so that in many
places the people were not able to attend to
the harvesting of the crops, an attempt was
made to deceive the gods by playing at New-
Year's day. Every preparation — burning
fire-crackers and pasting happy sentences in
red paper on the doors, and the rest — was
made for celebrating the bogus New Year.
The object was to make the god of sickness
think he had made a mistake in the seasons,
and had erred in bringing an epidemic on the
people at a time when, in the course of Na-
ture, no epidemic should appear. As any ac-
tion contrary to Nature done by the gods is
liable to punishment by the King of Heaven,
the actors in this farce thought that the god
of sickness would gather his evil spirits back
to him for fear of the displeasure of his su-
perior divinity. This child's play received
the permission and co-operation of the local
authorities.

The Fntnre of Geographical Exploration.

— In his recent annual address as President
of the Royal Geographical Society, Mr. Clem-
ents R. Markham said that the work of geo-
graphical discovery during living memory
had proceeded with such rapidity that many
had been half inclined to think that there
was little left to be done. There were still
wide tracts, however, in all the great divisions

NOTES.

719

of the earth, which were unknown to us and
which would furnish work to explorers for
many years to come ; while the examination
of ocean depths was an important task which
had but lately been begun. Moreover, there
were regions of vast extent which were only
very partially known to us, the more detailed
examination of which would enable explorers
to collect geographical information of the
highest value and of the greatest interest.
It was from the methodical study of limited
areas that science derived the most satisfac-
tory results. When such investigations were
begun it was found how meager and inaccu-
rate previous knowledge, derived from the
cursory information picked up during some
rapid march, had been. A detailed scien-
tific monograph on a little-known region of
comparatively small extent supplied work of
absorbing interest to the explorer, while he
had the satisfaction of knowing that his la-
bors would be of lasting value and utility.
There was sufficient work of this less am-
bitious but not less serviceable kind to oc-
cupy a whole army of field geographers for
many decades. Exact delineation by trigo-
nometrical measurement was their work. It
was hardly begun. With the exception of
countries in Europe, British India, the coast
of the United States and a small part of its
interior, the whole world was still unmapped.

NOTES.

THREE lectures for young people were
delivered in January in behalf of the Royal
Geographical Society, by Douglas Freshfield,
President of the Alpine Club, on Mountains.
The special subjects were a brief general de-
scription of the structure and features of a
mountain region; the steps by which the
High Alps have gradually been discovered,
conquered, and converted to human uses ;
and the lecturer's special field of exploration,
the Caucasus.

As many as a hundred and thirty papers
were read in the Meteorological Congress, in
Chicago, in August, 1893. The congress was
divided into nine sections: A, Prof. C. A.
Schult and H. H. Clayton presiding, discuss-
ing instruments and methods of observation,
especially methods of observing in the upper
air; B, Prof. Cleveland Abbe, president,
dealing with questions of meteorological
dynamics, including thunder-storm phenom-
ena ; C, Prof. F. E. Nipher presiding, climatol-
ogy ; D, Major H. C. Dunwoody, president,
the relation of climate to plant and animal

life ; E, Lieutenant W. H. Beehler, marine
meteorology, ocean storms and their predic-
tion, methods of observation at sea, and in-
ternational co-operation; F, Prof. Charles
Carpmel and A. Lawrence Rotch, improve-
ment of weather service, and especially the
progress of weather forecasting ; G, Prof. F.
H. Bigelow, problems of atmospheric elec-
tricity and terrestrial magnetism ; H, Prof.
Thomas Russell, rivers and the prediction of
floods ; I, Oliver L. Fassig, history and bibli-
ography.

THE name of the Chinook wind is taken,
according to H. M. Ballou, from that of the
Chinook Indians, near Puget Sound. During
the prevalence of the wind the thermometer
rises in a few hours from below zero to 40°
or 45°. It is analogous to the Fohn of
Switzerland, and similar winds are reported
from various parts of the world. All that is
needed to produce them are high and low
pressure areas, whereby the air is caused to
pass over the mountains, depositing its mois-
ture on the ascent, and descending on the
leeward side.

STRIKES, it appears, are not a modern in-
novation, but were known centuries ago, with
outcomes as disastrous as those of the pres
ent. In the year 1329 a strike of brasswork-
ers was begun in Breslau, Silesia, which lasted
a year. Fifty-six years later, in 1385, one of
blacksmiths took place in Dantzic, which end-
ed when the local authorities obtained per-
mission to issue an edict proclaiming that
until further notice any workman refusing to
obey the lawful dictates of his employer as
to continuing operations was to be summarily
deprived of his ears.

THE English National Society for the Em-
ployment of Epileptics has bought an estate
in every way desirable for a proposed colony
of epileptics, and is collecting means to fit it
up and set the colony in operation. It will
enjoy the guidance of the experience of Ger-
many, where an epileptic colony has been in
existence at Bielefeld for twenty-six years
with very encouraging results, and has now
more than eleven hundred epileptic inhab-
itants on an area of four hundred acres. The
plan of the English society is to give the col-
ony as little as possible the character of an
institution. The houses will be small, as in
Germany, and the inmates of each will form
a separate family. The industries will be
market gardening, cow-keeping, dairy work,
poultry farming, and other similar occupa-
tions, besides various trades and handicrafts.
The women, who will be accommodated on a
separate part of the estate, will be engaged
principally in laundry work, sewing, cooking,
and domestic service. The children will be
suitably educated and trained to various in-
dustries.

THE powers of certain miraculous cura-
tive places apparently do not extend to all

720

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

diseases. W. R. Le Fanu, in his Seventy
Years of Irish Life, gives the following tes-
timony of an invalid who had sought the
benefits of Knock Chapel : " Indeed, sir, I
took all the rounds and said all the prayers,
but it was of no use ; not but what it's a
grand place. It would astonish you to see
all the sticks and crutches hanging up there
— left behind by poor cripples who went
home cured. It's my opinion, sir, that for
rheumatism, and the like of that, it's a grand
place entirely ; but as for the liver, it's not
worth a d — n."

THE third session of the School of Applied
Ethics will be held at Plymouth, Mass., in
July and August, 1894. Lectures will be
given by leading scholars in three depart-
ments, namely : those of Ethics, under the
direction of Prof. Felix Adler; Economics,
Prof. H. C. Adams, director ; and History of
Religions, Prof. C. H. Toy, director. A com-
plete programme of the lectures is to be is-
sued. S. Burns Weston, Secretary, 118 South
Twelfth Street, Philadelphia.

OBITUARY NOTES.

FRANK BOLLES, Secretary of Harvard Uni-
versity and an esteemed contributor to The
Popular Science Monthly, died at his home
in Cambridge, Mass., of pneumonia, January
10th, in his thirty-eighth year. His father
was the first editor of the Boston Journal,
and was distinguished in public life; his
mother was a sister of General John A. Dix.
He was a graduate of the Columbia and the
Harvard Law Schools ; had considerable ex-
perience in journalistic work ; contributed to
literary periodicals under the signature of
" Eugene Raleigh " ; was a hard worker over
books, and was enthusiastically fond of out-
door life and the study of Nature in all her
aspects, making specialties of mountains and
birds. A few years ago he bought an aban-
doned farm, on the edge of Chocorua Lake
and at the foot of the mountain of that
name, where, as he told a gentleman who
called on him last summer, he spent " every
minute "he could spare from his duties at
Cambridge, and where he kept his pet owls
and mice, etc., in summer, wintering them
at Cambridge. He contributed to The Popu-
lar Science Monthly an article on Ways of
the Owl, published in June, 1892, and other
articles which will appear in time ; published
two books, describing his outdoor and moun-
tain excursions and studies, entitled The
Land of the Lingering Snow and To the
North of Bear Camp Water, and was the au-
thor, besides, of some books of information
concerning Harvard University, the Genealo-
gy of the Family of Anthony Dix, Important
English Statutes, and an essay on Interna-
tional Arbitration, which secured him the
Bowdoin prize at Harvard. As Secretary of
Harvard University he kept the interests of

the students at heart, established an employ-
ment bureau for them, and was beloved by
them.

THE Rev. Samuel Lockwood, Ph. D., who
died at Freehold, N. J., January 9th, aged
seventy-five years, was well known by his
popular articles on scientific subjects, which
he invested with a rare charm of sympathetic
interest. He was a close observer, particu-
larly of animals in their various moods, and
his descriptions were always picturesque,
while accurate. He contributed sixteen arti-
cles to The Popular Science Monthly, begin-
ning with the first volume. The subjects
were: Crabs, Audubon's Lily, the Coati-
mondi, Cultivating Wild Flowers, The Ene-
mies we Import, The Eucalyptus, Glass
Sponges, The Great Cemetery in Colorado,
A Mastodon, Musical Mice, The Oyster,
American Owls, Scratching in the Animal
Kingdom, and Sea Anemones.

MR. ROBERT BENTLEY, of Earl's Court, an
eminent English botanist, died in December,
1893. Soon after becoming a member of
the College of Surgeons, in 1847, he was ap-
pointed lecturer on botany in the Medical
School of the London Hospital, and Professor
of Botany in King's College. His subsequent
life was entirely devoted to the advancement
of botanical science, and he was the author
of numerous books and papers bearing upon
it, and upon the application of botanical
knowledge to medicine and in the arts. One
of the last of his works of this kind was the
editing jointly with Profs. Redwood and Att-
field of the British Pharmacopeia of 1885,
which is still the official standard for all
medicinal preparations required by the Med-
ical Council.

T. W. KENNARD, C. E., founder of the
Monmouthshire Crumlin Works, Wales, and
designer and constructor of the Crumlin Via-
duct, who died in September, 1893, was the
engineer-in-chief of the Atlantic and Great
Western Railway in the United States.

REAR-ADMIRAL MARIN H. JANSEN, of the
Royal Netherlands Navy, died at the Hague,
September 9, 1893, on the last day of his
seventy-seventh year. He was largely en-
gaged during his active life in geographical
exploration and surveying ; was a corre-
spondent of Lieutenant M. F. Maury, of the
United States, in his scientific work ; con-
tributed much information in aid of his re-
searches, and published a translation of his
Physical Geography of the Sea, with valuable
appendices on land and sea breezes in the
tropics and on ozone, which Maury incorpo-
rated into his own subsequent editions ; pub-
lished an important work, in 1864, on The
Latest Discoveries in Maritime Affairs ; was
the chief promoter of the revival of arctic
exploration in Holland; and contributed
other valuable services to science. He was
an honorary corresponding member of the
British Royal Geographical Society.

LEWIS DAVID VON SCHWEINITZ.

Publk ' -dry,

THE

POPULAE SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

APRIL, 1894,

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE.
XIX.— FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
BY ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D., L.H.D.,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UM1VKKSITY.

PART II.
THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS REGARDING THE ANIMALS AND MAN.

IN one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulna a mediaeval
glass-stainer has represented the Almighty as engaged in
creating the animals, and there has just left the divine hands an
elephant fully accoutered, with armor, harness, and housings —
ready for war. Similar representations appear in illuminated
manuscripts and even in early printed books, and, as the culmina-
tion of the whole, the Almighty is shown as extracting, with evi-
dent effort, the first woman from the side of the first man.

This view of the general process of creation had come from
far ; it appeared under varying forms in various ancient cosmogo-
nies, and, passing into our own sacred books, became the starting
point of a vast new development of theology.

The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two
accounts of creation in Genesis literally, and then,- having done
their best to reconcile them with each other and to mold them
together, made them the final test of thought upon the universe
and all things therein. At the beginning of the fourth century
Lactantius struck the keynote of this mode of subordinating all
other things in the study of creation to the literal text of Scrip-
ture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit of
philology, saying the final being created " is called man because
he is made from the ground — homo ex humo."

VOL. XLIV. 54

722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the second half of the same century this view as to the
literal acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St. Ambrose,
who, in his work on the creation, declared that " Moses opened
his month and poured forth what God had said to him." But a
greater than either of them fastened this idea into the Christian
theologies. St. Augustine, preparing his Commentary on the
Book of Genesis, laid down in one famous sentence the law which
has lasted in the Church until our own time : " Nothing is to be
accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is that
authority than all the powers of the human mind." The vigor of
the sentence in its original Latin carried it ringing down the cen-
turies : " Major est Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani in-
genii capacitas."

Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no
other than St. Augustine himself, and followed by a series of in-
fluential churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a
modification of the accepted view of creation, this phrase held
the minds of men firmly. The great Dominican encyclopedist,
Vincent of Beauvais, in his Mirror of Nature, while mixing ideas
brought from Aristotle with a theory drawn from the Bible, stood
firmly by the first of the accounts given in Genesis, and assigned
the special virtue of the number six as a reason why all things
were created in six days ; and in the later middle ages that emi-
nent authority, Cardinal d'Ailly, accepted in a general way every-
thing regarding creation in the sacred books as written. Only a
faint dissent is seen in Gregory Reisch, another authority of this
later period, who, while giving in his book on the beginning of
things a full-length woodcut showing the Almighty in the act of
extracting Eve from Adam's side, with all the rest of new-formed
Nature in the background, leans in his writings, like St. Augus-
tine, toward a belief in the pre-existence of matter.

At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown
in favor of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the source of
natural science; the allegorical and mystical interpretations of
earlier theologians he utterly rejected. " Why," he asks, " should
Moses use allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical crea-
tures or of an allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a
visible world, which can be seen, felt, and grasped ? Moses calls
things by their right names, as we ought to do. ... I hold that
the animals took their being at once upon the word of God, as
did also the fishes in the sea."

Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of
creation given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by
taking another view than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to
expect a judge who will annihilate them." He insists that all
species of animals were created in six days, each made up of an

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 723

evening and a morning, and that no new species has ever ap-
peared since. He dwells on the production of birds from the
water as resting upon certain warrant of Scripture, but adds, " If
the question is to be argued on physical grounds, we know that
water is more akin to air than the earth is." As to difficulties in
the scriptural account of creation, he tells us that God " wished
by these to give proofs of his power which should fill us with
astonishment."

The controlling minds in the Roman Catholic Church stead-
fastly held this view. In the seventeenth century Bossuet threw
his vast authority in its favor, and in his Discourse on Universal
History, which has remained the foundation not only of theological
but of general historical teaching in France down to the present
republic, we find him calling attention to what he regards as the
culminating act of creation, and asserting that, literally, for the
creation of man earth was used, and " the finger of God applied
to corruptible matter."

Protestant Europe held this idea no less persistently. In the
seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice- Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time,
attempted to reconcile the two accounts in Genesis by saying that
of the " clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind created,
three couples for breeding and the odd one for Adam's sacrifice on
his fall, which God foresaw " ; that of unclean beasts only one
couple was created ; and finally, that " heaven and earth, center and
circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and
clouds full of water," and that " this work took place and man was
created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B. c., at nine o'clock in
the morning." Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's meth-
od, the result of a thousand years of biblical study and theologi-
cal thought since Bede, in the eighth century, and Vincent de
Beauvais, in the thirteenth, had declared that creation must have
taken place in the spring. Yet, alas ! within two centuries after
Lightfoot's great theological demonstration as to the exact hour
of creation, it was discovered that at that hour an exceedingly
cultivated people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed
civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of Egypt,
and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that time
reached a high development in Asia.

So literal was this whole conception of the work of creation
that in these days it can scarcely be imagined. The Almighty
was represented in theological literature, in the illustrations of
Bibles, and in works of art generally, as a sort of enlarged and
venerable Nuremberg toymaker ; a pictorial representation in ac-
cordance with the well-known sacred account, showing the Crea-
tor in the act of sewing skins of beasts into coats for Adam and

724 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Eve, presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the middle
ages and Reformation period ; hence it was that, when the dis-
covery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared
to be " models of his works approved or rejected by the great
Artificer, outlines of future creations, sports of Nature/' or " ob-
jects placed in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity " ;
and this kind of explanation lingered on until in our own time
that excellent naturalist, Mr. Gosse, in his anxiety to save the
literal account in Genesis, has urged that Jehovah tilted and
twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through them, scratched
the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them the marks of
erosion by water, and set Niagara pouring all in an instant, thus
mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but for his
own glory/' *

The next important development of theological reasoning had
regard to the divisions of the animal kingdom.

Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring
mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the
question therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers
and serpents, thorns and thistles ? The answer was found in
theological considerations upon sin : To man's first disobedience
all woes were due. Great men for eighteen hundred years devel-
oped the theory that before Adam's disobedience there was no
death, and therefore neither ferocity nor venom.

Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are
worthy of a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed
and emphasized the view that the vegetable as well as the animal
kingdom was cursed on account of man's sin. Two hundred years
later this utterance had been echoed on from father to father of
the Church until it was caught by Bede ; he declared that before
man's fall animals were harmless, but became poisonous or hurt-
ful on account of sin, and he said, " Thus fierce and poisonous
animals were created for terrifying man, because God foresaw
that he would sin, in order that he might be made aware of the
final punishment of hell."

\ * For the citation from Lactantius, see Divin. Instit., lib. ii, cap. xi, in Migne, tome vi,
pp. 311, 312; for St. Augustine's reat phrase, see the De Genes, ad litt, ii, 5 ; for St.
Ambrose, see lib. i, cap. ii ; for Vincent de BeauvaSs, see the Speculum Naturale, lib. i,
cap. ii, and lib. ii, cap. xv and xxx ; also Bourgeat, Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais, Paris,
1856, especially chaps, vii, xii, and xvi ; for Cardinal d'Ailly, see the Imago Mundi, and
for Reisch, see the various editions of the Margarita Philosophica ; for Luther's state-
ments, see Luther's Schriften, ed. Walch, Halle, 1740, Commentary on Genesis, vol. i ;
for Calvin's view of the creation of the animals, including the immutability of species, see
the Comm. in Gen., tome i of his Opera omnia, Amst., 1671, cap. i, v. xx, p. 6, also cap. ii,
v. ii, p. 8, and elsewhere ; for Bossuet, see his Discours sur 1'Histoire universelle, (Euvres
de Bossuet, tome v, Paris, 1846 ; for Lightfoot, see his works, edited by Pitman, London,
1822; for Bede, see the Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, p. 21.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 725

In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter
Lombard into his great theological work of the Sentences, which
became the text-book of theology through the middle ages. He
affirmed that " no created things would have been hurtful to man
had he not sinned ; they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying
and punishing vice or of proving and perfecting virtue; they
were created harmless, and on account of sin became hurtful."

This theological theory regarding animals was brought out
in the eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He
declared that before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to
devour or in any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as
harmless as the fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." Not only
Wesley, but the eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and Dr. Richard Wat-
son, whose ideas had the very greatest weight among the English
Dissenters, and even among leading thinkers in the Established
Church, held firmly to this theory. Not until, in our own time,
geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous
creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of other
creatures in their stomachs, all extinct long ages before the ap-
pearance of man upon earth, was a victory won by science over
theology in this field.

A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief
drawn by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the
serpent in Genesis — a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was
evidently that of the original writers of the account preserved in
the first of our sacred books. This belief was that, until the
tempting serpent was cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood
erect, walked, and talked.

This belief was handed down the ages as part of " the sacred
deposit of the faith " until Watson, the most prolific writer of the
great evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the stand-
ard theologian of the evangelical party, declared : " We have no
reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in
any mode or degree until its transformation ; that he was then
degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the con-
trary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." Here,
again, was a ripe result of the theologic method diligently pur-
sued by the strongest thinkers in the Church during nearly two
thousand years ; but this " sacred deposit " also faded away when
the geologists found abundant remains of fossil serpents dating
from periods long before the appearance of man.

Yet more troublesome questions arose among theologians re-
garding animals classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was
especially exercised thereby. He says : " I confess I am ignorant
why mice and frogs were created, or flies and worms. . . . All
creatures are either useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us. ... As

726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for the hurtful creatures, we are either punished, or disciplined,
or terrified by them, so that we may not cherish and love this
life/* As to the "superfluous animals," he says, "Although they
are not necessary for our service, yet the whole design of the
universe is thereby completed and finished." Luther, who fol-
lowed St. Augustine in so many other matters, declined to follow
him fully in this. To him a fly was not merely superfluous, it
was noxious — sent by the devil, and perhaps possessed by the
devil, to trouble him when reading.

Another subject which gave rise to much searching of the
Scriptures and long trains of theological reasoning, was the dif-
ference between the creation of man and that of other living
beings.

Great stress was laid by theologians from St. Basil and St.
Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther
to Wesley, on the radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God
having created man " in his own image " ; what this statement
meant was seen in the light of the later biblical statement that
"Adam begat Seth in his own likeness, after his image."

In view of this and well-known texts incorporated from older
creation legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be
widely held that, while man was directly molded and fashioned
separately by the Creator's hand, the animals generally were
evoked in numbers from the earth and sea by the Creator's voice.

A question now arose naturally as to the distinctions of species
among animals. The vast majority of theologians agreed in
representing all animals as created "in the beginning," and
named by Adam, preserved in the ark, and continued ever after-
ward under exactly the same species. Some difficulties arose here
and there as zoology progressed and revealed ever-increasing
numbers of species ; but through the middle ages, and indeed
long after the Reformation, this difficulty was easily surmounted :
by making the ark of Noah larger and larger, and especially by
holding that there had been a human error in regard to the unit
of measurement for the ark, all difficulty was at first avoided.*

But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics
and laymen a human desire to go beyond these special points in
the history of animated beings — a desire to know what the crea-
tion really is.

* For St. Augustine, see De Genesi and De Trinitate, passim ; for Bede, see Hexaeme-
ron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, pp. 21, 36-38, 42 ; and De Sex Dierum Creatione, in Migne,
tome, xciii, p. 215; for Peter Lombard on "noxious animals," see his Sententias, lib ii,
dist. xv, 3, Migne, tome cxcii, p. 682 ; for Wesley, Clarke, and Watson, see quotations from
them and notes thereto in my chapter on Geology ; for St. Augustine on " superfluous
animals," see the De Genesi, lib. i, cap. xvi, 26 ; on Luther's view of flies, see the Table
Talk and his famous utterance, " Odio muscas quia sunt imagines diaboli et hsereticorum."

tfEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 727

Current legends, stories, and travelers' observations, poor as
they were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.

Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made
the first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity ; he had
begun a development of studies in natural history which remains
one of the greatest achievements in the story of our race.

But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the
early Church — that all study of Nature was futile in view of the
approaching end of the world, indicated so clearly in the New
Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St. Augus-
tine— held back this current of thought for many centuries. Still,
the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself. There
was indeed an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves which wrought powerfully to this end. In spite of
all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to the futility
of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms re-
garding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of
the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom
logic drew away from it.

But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and through-
out the middle ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mold.
Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edifica-
tion they were considered futile ; too much prying into the secrets
of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to body
and soul ; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes in
the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great work of
Aristotle was under eclipse. The early Christian thinkers gave
little attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming
it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and
method. In place of it they developed the Physiologus and the
Bestiaries, in which scriptural statements, legends, and fanciful
inventions were mingled with pious intent and with childlike
simplicity.

In place of research came authority — the authority of the
Scriptures as interpreted by the Physiologus and the Bestiaries —
and these remained the principal source of thought on animated
Nature for over a thousand years.

Occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in the
Church even of such poor prying into the creation as this, and
in the fifth century a synod under Pope Gelasius administered a
rebuke to the Physiologus ; but the interest in Nature was too
strong ; the great work on Creation by St. Basil had drawn from
the Physiologus precious illustrations of Holy Writ, and the
strongest of the early popes, Gregory the Great, virtually sanc-
tioned it.

Thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the

728 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

divine purpose in Nature, which went on developing from the
fourth century to the nineteenth — from St. Basil to St. Isidore of
Seville, from Isidore to Vincent de Beauvais, and from Vincent
to Archdeacon Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises.

Like all else in the middle ages this sacred science was devel-
oped purely by theological methods. Neglecting the wonders
which the dissection of the commonest animals would have af-
forded them, these naturalists attempted to throw light into Na-
ture by ingenious use of scriptural texts, by research among the
lives of the saints, and by the plentiful application of metaphysics.
Hence even such strong men as St. Isidore of Seville treasured
up accounts of the unicorn and dragons mentioned in the Scrip-
tures and of the phoenix and basilisk in profane writings. Hence
such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk kills ser-
pents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when
pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the peli-
can nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay
aside their venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches
fire, that the hyena can talk with shepherds, that certain birds
are born of the fruit of a certain tree when it happens to fall into
the water, with other masses of science equally valuable.

As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
Physiologus gives an example in illustrating the passage in the
book of Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of
prey. Out of the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in
the text there came a curious development of error, until we find
fully evolved an account of the ant-lion, which, it gives us to un-
derstand, was the lion mentioned by Job, and it says : " As to the
ant-lion, his father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an
ant ; the father liveth upon flesh and the mother upon herbs ;
these bring forth the ant-lion, a compound of both and in part
like to either ; for his fore part is like that of a lion and his hind
part like that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither able
to eat flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he
perisheth."

The same sort of science flourished in the Bestiaries, which
were used everywhere and especially in the pulpits for the edifi-
cation of the faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early
in the thirteenth century by an ecclesiastic, William of Nor-
mandy, we have this lesson, borrowed from the Physiologus :
" The lioness giveth birth to cubs which remain three days with-
out life. Then cometh the lion, breatheth upon them, and bring-
eth them to life. . . . Thus it is that Jesus Christ during three
days was deprived of life, but God the Father raised him glo-
riously."

Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 729

monkish, preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves
the doctrine of the resurrection ; the structure and mischief of
monkeys prove the existence of demons ; the fact that certain
monkeys have no tails proves that Satan has been shorn of
his glory ; the weasel, which " constantly changes its place, is a
type of the man estranged from the word of God, who findeth
no rest."

The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works
on natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these re-
ligious teachings of Nature. Thus from the Dominican Thomas
of Cantimpre', who called his book De Apibus (On Bees), we learn
that " the wasps persecute the bees and make war on them out of
natural hatred " ; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who
dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex
mankind — whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such
demonic warfare on mortals. In like manner his fellow-Domini-
can, the inquisitor Nider, in his book the Ant Hill, teaches us
that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to have horns and to
grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious here-
tics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite against the
truth ; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of the
sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of
it, symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out
the gold of Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no
purpose.

This pious spirit not only pervaded science, it bloomed out in
art, and it meets us especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles
overhanging the walls, in the grotesques clambering about the
towers or perched upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under
archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts
carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into the windows,
wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders
of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested every-
where morals from the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the Ex-
empla.*

* For the Physiologus, Bestiaries, etc., see Berger de Xivrey, Traditions Teratologiques ;
also Hippeau's edition of the Bestiary of Guillaume de Normandie, Caen, 1852, and such
mediaeval books of Exempla as the Lumen Naturae ; also Hoefer, Histoire de la Zoologie ;
also Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation Fra^aise, Paris, 1885, vol. 5, pp. 368, 369 ; also
Cardinal Pitra, preface to the Spicilegium Solismense, Paris, 1855, passim; also Carus,
Geschichte der Zoologie ; and for an admirable summary, the article Physiologus hi the
Encyc. Brit. In the illuminated manuscripts in the Library of Cornell University are some
very striking examples of grotesques. For admirably illustrated articles on the Bestiaries,
see Cahier and Martin, Melanges d'Archeologie, Paris, 1851, 1852, and 1856, vol. ii of the
first series, pp. 85-232, and second series, volume on Curiosites Myste"rieuses, pp. 106-164 ;
also J. R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1887),

73o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

•

Here and there among men who were free from church control
we have work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies Abd Allatif made observations upon the natural history of
Egypt which showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor
Frederick II attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Na-
ture ; but one of these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the
other as an infidel. Far more in accordance with the spirit of the
time was the ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book on the
topography of Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals
of the island, and rarely fails to make each contribute an appro-
priate moral. For example, he says that in Ireland " eagles live
for so many ages that they seem to contend with eternity itself ;
so also, the saints, having put off the old man and put on the new,
obtain the blessed fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us,
" Eagles often fly so high that their wings are scorched by the
sun ; so those who in the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the
deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what
is allowed, fall below as if the wings of the presumptuous imagi-
nations on which they are borne were scorched."

In one of the great men of the following century began to ap-
pear a slight gleam of healthful criticism : Albert the Great, in
his work on the animals, dissents from the widespread belief that
certain birds spring from trees and are nourished by the sap, and
also from the theory that some are also generated in the sea from
decaying wood.

But it required many generations for such skepticism to pro-
duce much effect, since we find among the illustrations in the edi-
tion of Mandeville published about the time of the Reformation
not only careful accounts but a pictured representation of birds
produced in the fruit of trees.*

This general employment of natural science for biblical illus-
tration and the edification of the faithful went on after the Ref-
ormation. Luther frequently made this use of it, and his exam-
ple controlled his followers. In 1612 Wolfgang Franz, Professor
of Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his sacred
history of animals, which went through many editions. It con-
tained a very ingenious classification, describing " natural drag-
lecture vi ; for an exhaustive discussion of the subject, see, Das Thierbuch des worman-
nischen Dichters Guillaume le Clerc, herausgegeben von Reinisch, Leipsic, 1890 ; and, for
an Italian example, Goldstaub und Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius, Halle,
1892, where is given, on pp. 369-371, a very pious but very comical tradition regarding the
beaver, hardly more than mentionable to ears polite.

* For Giraldus Cambrensis, see the edition hi the Bohn Library, London, 1863, p. 30;
for Abd Allatif and Frederick II, see Hoefer, as above ; for Albertus Magnus, see the
De Animalibus, lib. xxiii ; for the illustrations in Mandeville, see the Strasburg edition,
1484.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 731

ons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he piously
adds, " the principal dragon is the Devil."

Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great
Jesuit professor at Rome, holds back the skeptical current, insists
upon the orthodox view, and represents among the animals enter-
ing the ark sirens and griffins.

Yet even among theologians we note here and there a skeptical
spirit in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century
Eugene Roger published his Travels in Palestine. As regards the
utterances of Scripture he was soundly orthodox ; he prefaces his
work with a map showing, among other important points referred
to in biblical history, the place where Samson slew a thousand
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which Adam
and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot
where Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob wrestled with
the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed of
devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which
was once Lot's wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed
by the whale, and "the exact spot where St. Peter caught one
hundred and fifty-three fishes."

As to natural history, he sees, describes, and discusses with
great theological acuteness the basilisk. He tells us that the
animal is about a foot and a half long, is shaped like a crocodile,
and kills people with a single glance. The one which he saw was
dead, fortunately for him, since in the time of Pope Leo IV — as
he tells us — one appeared in Rome and killed many people by
merely looking at them ; but the Pope destroyed it with his
prayers and the sign of the cross. He informs us that Provi-
dence has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the
monster to cry aloud two or three times whenever it leaves its
den, and that the divine wisdom in creation is also shown by the
fact that the monster is obliged to look its victim in the eye and
at a certain fixed distance before its glance can penetrate the vic-
tim's brain and so pass to his heart. He also gives a reason for
supposing that the same divine mercy has provided that the crow-
ing of a cock will kill the basilisk.

Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the
influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science ; for, hav-
ing been told many stories regarding the salamanders, he secured
one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that
the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue.
He also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the
stories told of it were to be received with much allowance : while,
then, he locks up his judgment whenever he discusses the letter
of Scripture, he uses his mind in other things much after the mod-
ern method.

732 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the second half of the same century Hottinger, in his Theo-
logical Examination of the History of Creation, breaks from the
belief in the phoenix ; but his skepticism is carefully kept within
the limits imposed by Scripture. He avows his doubts, first, " be-
cause God created the animals in couples, while the phoenix is
represented as a single, unmated creature " ; secondly, " because
Noah, when he entered the ark, brought the animals in by sevens,
while there were never so many individuals of the phoenix spe-
cies " ; thirdly, because " no man is known who dares assert that
he has ever seen this bird " ; fourthly, because " those who assert
there is a phcenix differ among themselves."

In view of these attacks on the salamander and the phcenix,
we are not surprised to find before the end of the century an at-
tack on the basilisk ; the eminent Prof. Kirchmaier, at the Uni-
versity of Wittemberg, treats both phcenix and basilisk alike as
old wives' fables. As to the phcenix, he denies its existence, not
only because Noah took no such bird into the ark, but also be-
cause " birds come from eggs, not from ashes." But the unicorn
he can not resign, nor will he even concede that the unicorn
is a rhinoceros ; he appeals to Job and to Marco Polo to prove
that this animal, as usually conceived, really exists, and says,
" Who would not fear to deny the existence of the unicorn, since
Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises ? " As to the
other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so rationalistic
as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a
whale.

But these germs of a fruitful skepticism grew, and we soon
find Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief
even in the unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros, only that
and nothing more. Still, the main current continued strongly
theological. In 1712 Samuel Bochart published his great work
upon the animals of Holy Scripture. As showing its spirit we
may take the titles of the chapters on the horse :

Chapter VI. Of the Hebrew name of the horse.

Chapter VII. Of the colors of the six horses in Zechariah.

Chapter VIII. Of the horses in Job.

Chapter IX. Of Solomon's horses and of the texts wherein the
writers praise the excellence of horses.

Chapter X. Of the consecrated horses of the sun.

Among the other titles of chapters are such as : Of Balaam's
Ass ; Of the Thousand Philistines slain by Samson with the Jaw-
bone of an Ass ; Of the Golden Calves of Aaron and Jeroboam ;
Of the Bleating, Milk, Wool, External and Internal Parts of Sheep
mentioned in Scripture ; Of Notable Things told regarding Lions
in Scripture ; Of Noah's Dove and of the Dove which appeared at
Christ's Baptism. Mixed up in the book with the principal mass

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 733

drawn from Scripture were many facts and reasonings taken from
investigations by naturalists; but all were carefully permeated
by the theological spirit.*

The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two
thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the six-
teenth century some promising beginnings of a different method
— the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically — the method
which seeks not plausibilities but facts. At that time Edward
Wotton led the way in England and Conrad Gesner on the con-
tinent, by observations widely extended, carefully noted, and
thoughtfully classified.

This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the
formation of societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded
an Academy for the study of Nature at Naples, but theologians,
becoming alarmed, suppressed it, and for nearly one hundred years
there was no new combined effort of that sort until in 1645 began
the meetings in London of what was afterward the Royal Society.
Then came the Academy of Sciences in France, and the Academia
del Cimento in Italy ; others followed in all parts of the world,
and a great new movement was begun.

Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy,
Prince Leopold dei Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy,
was bribed with a cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days
of Urban VIII to Pius IX a similar spirit was there shown. In
France there were frequent ecclesiastical interferences, of which
Buffon's humiliation for stating a simple scientific truth was a
noted example. In England Protestantism was at first hardly
more favorable toward the Royal Society, and the great Dr. South
denounced it in his sermons as irreligious.

Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between
theology and science ; while new investigators had mainly given
up the mediaeval method so dear to the Church, they had very
generally retained the conception of direct creation and of design
throughout creation — a design having as its main purpose the
profit, enjoyment, instruction, and amusement of man.

On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and
science were compromised. Science, while somewhat freed from
its old limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrat-
ing the doctrine of creative design, and always with apparent

* For Franz and Kircher, see Perrier, La Philosophic Zoologique avant Darwin, Paris,
1884, p. 29 ; for Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664, pp. 89-92, 139, 218, etc. ;
for Hottinger, see his Historiae Creationis Examen theologico-philologicum, Heidelberg,
1659, lib. vi, Qusest. Ixxxiii ; for Kirchmaier, see his Disputationes Zoologicae (published
collectively after his death), Jena, 1736 ; for Dannhauer, see his Disputationes Theologicae,
Leipsic, 1707, p 14; for Bochart, see his Hierozoikon, sive De Animalibus Sacrse Scripturae,
Ley den, 1712.

734 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

deference to the Chaldean and other ancient myths and legends
embodied in the Hebrew sacred books.

About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great con-
quest of the scientific over the theologic method. At that time
Francesco Redi published the results of his inquiries into the
doctrine of spontaneous generation. For over two hundred years
the accepted doctrine had been that water, filth, and carrion had
received power from the Creator to generate worms, insects, and
a multitude of the smaller animals. This doctrine had been espe-
cially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the fathers, since
it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and Noah
of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species.
But to this fallacy Redi put an end. By researches which could
not be gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came
from an egg ; each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an
animal created, named, and preserved from " the beginning."

Similar work went on in England, but with a more distinctly
religious tendency. In the same seventeenth century a very
famous and popular English book was that by the naturalist
John Ray, a fellow of the Royal Society, who produced a num-
ber of works on plants, fishes, and birds ; but the most widely
read among all his books was entitled The Wisdom of God mani-
fested in the Works of Creation. Between the years 1691 and 1827
it passed through nearly twenty editions.

Ray argues the goodness and wisdom of God from the adapta-
tion of the animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives
and surroundings.

In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew,
of the Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute
anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design.
Discoursing on " the ends of Providence," he says, " A crane,
which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheas-
ant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or
twenty." He points to the fact that " those of value which lay
few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." He
breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature
are caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful ; that, " if
nettles sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and
cattle " ; that, " if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better
hedge " ; and that, " if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the
thief." " Weasels, kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to
watchfulness ; thistles and moles, to good husbandry ; lice oblige
us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the
moth in our clothes." This very optimistic view, triumphing over
the theological theory of noxious animals and plants as effects of
sin, which prevailed with so much force from St. Augustine to

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 735

Wesley, was developed into nobler form during the century by
various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose
Natural Theology exercised a powerful influence down to recent
times. The same tendency appeared in other countries. Various
philosophers did indeed show weak points in the argument, and
Goethe made sport of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought
of the Creator in foreordaining the co"rk tree to furnish stoppers
for wine-bottles.

Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main
movement culminated in the Bridgewater Treatises. Pursuant to
the will of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the
Royal Society selected eight persons, each to receive a thousand
pounds sterling for writing and publishing a treatise on the
" power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the crea-
tion." Of these, the leading essays in regard to animated Nature
were those of Thomas Chalmers, on The Adaptation of External
Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man ; of Sir
Charles Bell, on The Hand, as evincing Design ; of Roget, Animal
and Vegetable Physiology with reference to Natural Theology;
and of Kirby, on The Habits and Instincts of Animals with refer-
ence to Natural Theology.

Besides these there were treatises by Whewell, Buckland,
Kidd, and Prout. The work was nobly done. It was a marked
advance on all that had appeared before in matter, method, and
spirit. Looking back upon it now we can see that it was pro-
visional, but that it was none the less fruitful in truth. Here we
may well remember Darwin's remark on the stimulating effect of
mistaken theories, as compared with the sterilizing effect of mis-
taken observations : mistaken observations lead men astray, mis-
taken theories suggest true theories.

An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve
the ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished
upon it. Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of
these criticisms has been recently made by one of the most strenu-
ous defenders of orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer
of the faith than the Rev. Prof. Zoeckler says of this great move-
ment to demonstrate creative purpose and design, and of the men
who took part in it, " The earth appeared in their representation
of it like a great clothing shop and soup kitchen, and God as a
glorified rationalistic professor." Such a statement as this is far
from just to the conceptions of such men as Butler, Paley, and
Chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now out-
lived them.*

* For Ray, see the work cited, London, 1827, p. 153. For Grew, see Cosmologia Sacra,
or a Discourse on the Universe, as it is the Creature and Kingdom of God ; chiefly written

736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of
fact on which they reared it became evidently more and more in-
secure.

As far back as the seventeenth century far-sighted theolo-
gians had begun to discern difficulties more serious than any that
had before confronted them. More and more it was seen that the
number of different species was far greater than the world had
hitherto imagined. Greater and greater had become the old diffi-
culty in conceiving that, of these innumerable species, each had
been specially created by the Almighty hand, that each had been
brought before Adam by the Almighty to be named, and that
each, in couples or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into
the ark. But the difficulties thus suggested were as nothing com-
pared to those raised by the distribution of animals.

Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious
thought, and above all in the great mind of St. Augustine. In his
City of God he had stated the difficulty as follows : " But there is
a question about all these kinds of beasts, which are neither
tamed by man, nor spring from the earth like frogs, such as
wolves and others of that sort, ... as to how they could find
their way to the islands after that flood which destroyed every
living thing not preserved in the ark. . . . Some, indeed, might
be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very
near ; but some islands are so remote from continental lands that
it does not seem possible that any creature could reach them by
swimming. It is not an incredible thing, either, that some ani-
mals may have been captured by men and taken with them to
those lands which they intended to inhabit, in order that they
might have the pleasure of hunting, and it can not be denied that
the transfer may have been accomplished through the agency of
angels, commanded or allowed to perform this labor by God."

But this question had now assumed a magnitude of which St.
Augustine never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to
increase this difficulty were the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci, and other great navigators
of the period of discovery. Still more serious became the diffi-
culty as the continent islands of the southern seas were ex-
plored. Every navigator brought home tidings of new species of
animals and of races of men living in parts of the world where

to demonstrate the Truth and Excellency of the Bible, by Dr. Nehemiah Grew, Fellow of
the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society, London, 1701. For Paley and the
Bridgewater Treatises, see the usual editions ; also Lange, History of Rationalism. Goethe's
couplet ran as follows :

" Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenerschopfer, der Gnadig,
Als er den Korkbaum erschuf, gleich auch die Stopfel erfand."
For the quotation from Zoeckler, see his work already cited, vol. ii, pp. 74, 440.

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 737

the theologians, relying on the explicit statement of St. Paul that
the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there
could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological
imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine com-
mand, distributing over the earth the various animals, dropping
the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe,
the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North
America.

It was under the impression made by the beginnings of this
new array of facts established by the earlier voyages of discovery
that in 1667 Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on
The Origin of Animals and the Migrations of Peoples. An acute
author says that this book shows, as no other does, the shock and
strain to which the discovery of America subjected the received
theological scheme of things. The book was issued with the full
and special approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it indi-
cates the possibility that a solution of the whole trouble might be
found in the text, " Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after his kind." Milius goes on to show that the ancient philoso-
phers agree with Moses, and that " the earth and the waters, and
especially the heat of the sun and of the genial sky, together with
that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in the
soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals, and
birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those who
imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals.
But the subject with which Milius especially grapples is the dis-
tribution of animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species
found in America and in remote islands of the ocean — species
entirely unknown in the other continents — and of course he is
especially troubled by the fact that these species existing in those
exceedingly remote parts of the earth do not exist in the neigh-
borhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses that to explain the dis-
tribution of animals is the most difficult part of the problem. If
it be urged that birds could reach America by flying and fishes
by swimming, he asks, " What of the beasts which neither fly nor
swim ? " Yet even as to the birds he asks, " Is there not an in-
finite variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily,
and ' have such a horror of the water, that they would not even
dare trust themselves to fly over a wide river ? " As to fishes, he
says, " They are very averse to wandering from their native
waters," and he shows that there are now reported many species
of American and East Indian fishes entirely unknown on the
other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be explained
by any theory of natural dispersion.

Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dis-
persed over the earth by the direct agency of man for his use or

VOL. XLIV. 65

738 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pleasure lie asks : " Who would like to get different sorts of lions,
bears, tigers, and other ferocious and noxious creatures on board
ship ? who would trust himself with them ? and who would wish
to plant colonies of such creatures in new, desirable lands ? "

His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in
the lands wherein they are found — an opinion which he brings
Moses to support with passages from the two narrations in Gene-
sis which imply generative force in earth and water.

But in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse
for the theological view. To meet the difficulty the eminent
Benedictine, Dom Calmet, in his commentary expressed the belief
that all the species of a genus had originally formed one species,
and he dwelt on this view as one which enabled him to explain
the possibility of gathering all animals into the ark. This idea,
dangerous as it was to the fabric of orthodoxy and involving a
profound separation from the general doctrine of the Church,
seems to have been abroad among thinking men, for we find in
the latter half of the same century even Linnseus incline to con-
sider it. It was, indeed, time that some new theological theory
be evolved; the great Linnseus himself, in spite of his famous
declaration in favor of the fixity of species, had dealt a death
blow to the old theory. In his Systema Naturae, published in the
middle of the eighteenth century, he had enumerated four thou-
sand species of animals, and the difficulties involved in the nam-
ing of each of them by Adam and in bringing them together in the
ark appeared to all thinking men more and more insurmountable.

What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species
went on increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until — as an emi-
nent zoological authority of our own time has declared, "For
every one of the species enumerated by Linnseus, more than fifty
kinds are known to the naturalist of to-day, and the number of
species still unknown doubtless far exceeds the list of those
recorded."

Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon
Scripture by requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous
interventions of the Creator to produce the hundred and sixty
species of land shells found in the little island of Madeira alone,
and fourteen hundred distinct interventions to produce the actual
number of distinct species of a single well-known shell.

Ever more and more difficult, too, became this question of the
geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were
made in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological
view went on increasing. The sloths in South America suggested
painful questions : how could animals so sluggish have got away
from the neighborhood of Mount Ararat so completely and have
traveled so far ?

NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 739

The explorations in Australia and neighboring islands made
matters still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole
realm of animals differing widely from those of other parts of the
earth.

The problem before the strict theologians became, for exam-
ple, how to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in
the ark and be now only found in Australia ; his saltatory powers
are indeed great, but how could he by any series of leaps have
sprung across the intervening mountains, plains, and oceans to
that remote continent; and, if the theory were adopted that at
some period a causeway extended across the vast chasm separat-
ing Australia from the nearest mainland, why did not lions,
tigers, camels, and camelopards force or find their way across it ?

The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the last
century gone to pieces. The wiser theologians waited ; the un-
wise indulged in exhortations to " root out the wicked heart of
unbelief," in denunciation of " science falsely so called/' and in
frantic declarations that "the Bible is true" — by which they
meant that the limited understanding of it which they had hap-
pened to inherit is true.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological
theory of creation — though still preached everywhere as a mat-
ter of form — was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hope-
lessly lost ; such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman
Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the
Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save something from it,
but all to no purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon
honesty, which is the best legacy of the middle ages to Christen-
dom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological thought
— the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler
nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as
the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had
destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center,
and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in mov-
ing the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a
race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Cre-
ator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the
needs and purposes of man. They had developed a system of a
very different sort, and of this we shall speak in the next chapter.*

* For Abraham Milius, see his De Origine Animalium et Migrations Populonlm,
Geneva, 1667 ; also Kosmos, 187*7, H. 1, S. 36 ; for Linnaeus's declaration regarding spe-
cies, see the Phil. Bot., 99, 157 ; for Calmet and Linnaeus, see Zoeckler, vol. ii, p. 237. As
to the enormously increasing numbers of species in zoology and botany, see President D. S.
Jordan, Science Sketches, pp. 176, 177 ; also, for pithy statement, Lamp's Problems of the
Future, chap. vi.

740 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

TRUSTS THEIR OWN CORRECTIVE.

BY GEORGE A. ETCH.

E test of a theory is to predict what will happen. When
the cry was first raised a few years ago against the so-called
trusts, and legislation of one kind and another was proposed, there
were those who declared that if these combinations were left
alone they would prove their own worst enemies. In other
words, there were inherent weaknesses in the trust mode of doing
business which, so far as the public was concerned, took all the
teeth out of it. But the politicians and legislators brushed this
contention aside as so much " rubbish " and " mere theory/' and
proceeded to attempt by statutory enactment what an early pope
had tried by bull — that is, to stay the operation of a natural law.
As to how well they succeeded, the failure of the Government to
enforce the anti-trust law, and the rapid increase of these combi-
nations in the face of popular opposition, constitute a sufficient
answer. In the meantime the prediction, which they so curtly
rejected, is receiving its verification in the developments now
taking place among those great organizations of capital and in-
dustry.

The most effective of these corrective agencies are the unequal
conditions brought about by the union of weak establishments
with strong ones and the certainty of competition. The original
object of the combination was to prevent disastrous competition.
To be sure, the apparent success of some of the chief ones has
dazzled the minds of business men and led to the formation of
others for the sole purpose of realizing larger profits at the ex-
pense of the public. But an examination of the history of most
of them will show that they grew out of bitter contests which
threatened disaster and ruin to those engaged in the industry.
This movement toward consolidation dates in this country from
the close of the civil war. The return of capital to the normal
channels of industry following that led to an overstimulation in
many branches. Up to that time the productive capacity of the
country had not been equal to its capacity of consumption. With
manufacturers it had been a race for possession. But that point
had been passed. Possible production was in excess of possible
consumption, and it became with many a question of divide or
fight. From the point of the manufacturers the preliminary
combinations which followed were open to two serious objec-
tions : They could not be established by contract, because the
common law treated such agreements as against public policy,
while the statute law made it a misdemeanor to enter into them.
Furthermore, where the law was evaded and such agreements

TRUSTS THEIR OWN CORRECTIVE. 741

were entered into, they proved in nearly every case inoperative,
from the fact that there was no power to enforce their conditions.
The consolidation of competing interests or the principle of
" division," therefore, seemed the only thing possible. This was
notably the position of the Michigan salt manufacturers, whose
association was the outgrowth of competition so fierce that many
of them went to the wall. It is likewise true of the whisky trust.
When the United States Government, near the beginning of the
civil war, raised the internal revenue tax on whisky by succes-
sive stages from twenty cents to two dollars per gallon, with a
considerable interval intervening between the several advances,
an extraordinary stimulus was given to the manufacture. Dis-
tilleries without number sprang into existence. The result was
that the output was far beyond the necessities of the market and
it was a ruinous fight for life. In less degree this was the case
with the cordage, cotton-oil, and bagging trusts.

Now, it is evident that combinations so formed stand in an
anomalous position. Made up of both strong and weak establish-
ments, the resulting corporation may be more powerful than some
of its constituent members, but it is far from being equal to its
prosperous ones. It is loaded down with old factories and anti-
quated machinery; it is capitalized at three or four times its
actual value ; and its managers are obliged, if they do what is
expected of them, to support this rubbish, and pay a profit be-
sides. Were these combinations protected in the full control of
their market, and were their products such that the public could
not do without them or find a substitute for them, they might
count on something like success. But capital is always on the
outlook for prizes. It is always ready to make daring ventures
in the hope of large returns. The fact that any one of these com-
binations can make eight or ten per cent on an inflated capital is
clear evidence that the return for legitimate investment might
be much greater. So the independent operator enters the field.
The inevitable war of prices has been delayed a little, but the
delay has permitted the growth of new and powerful organiza-
tions against the old concerns.

This point has been admirably illustrated in the experiences of
the lead trust. It was not long ago that the annual meeting of
the stockholders of that enterprise was held, and in the report of
the president appeared this significant statement : " There has
been, and always will be, competition in each class of goods
manufactured by this company. It does not aim to obtain mo-
nopoly." The facts are, however, that at the beginning of 1892
the trust had control of all the lead-works in this country with
the exception of two small establishments, one in Boston and one
in Philadelphia ; and even these were bound to it by ironclad

742 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

contracts. It was as full a control of an industry as could be
had. Of course, large profits were possible; but capital was
attracted to the field. As a result, new plants were started until
there are at the present time works enough outside the trust to
equal its output. But there is this striking difference between
the trust and the independent manufacturers : the plants of the
trust are capitalized for thirty million dollars ; the independent
plants, equal in capacity, represent an investment of only two
million dollars.

The course of the linseed-oil trust has been analogous. In
1887, when the trust was started, it controlled between sixty and
seventy per cent of the output of that product. As such it had
the manipulation of the market and realized handsome profits,
despite the fact that it had to face the independent crushers and
was hampered by watered capital. But, to do it, it raised the
price of linseed oil so high that the attention of others was drawn
to the industry. The president of the trust in his report for 1891
said : " It is not considered by your board of directors advisable
to publish a detailed statement of the affairs of the company, for
the reason that we find by the experience of the past year that
our statements find their way into the public press. If made in
detail, information is given to our competitors, to the detriment
of this company. There is no doubt whatever that the publicity
given to our last annual statement caused the building of new
works and consequent increase in competition." These independ-
ent crushers, strengthened by the newcomers and unhampered by
weak plants, were able to wrest the market from the trust. Some
months ago the trust sought a conference with its rivals and an
effort was made to come to an understanding. That, however,
has proved a failure, and competition ruled in the linseed-oil
market.

Furthermore, it is impossible to get control of any article in
general demand. Such an attempt may temporarily succeed, but
there are powerful forces which will drag it down sooner or later.
As an English writer says : " It is difficult to conceive of any
body of capitalists being sufficiently powerful to monopolize an
article in general demand and to use their monopoly for any
length of time to the serious hurt of the public. Directly prices
became prohibitive there would be a formidable movement in the
opposite direction and the monopoly would break down."

The fate of the copper syndicate is a striking proof of this.
This scheme consisted in nothing less than forestalling the
market of the whole world in copper for the period of three years.
This the managers attempted to accomplish, and did accomplish
for a time, by buying the output of all the copper mines in the
world for that period by agreeing to pay the mine owners thir-

TRUSTS THEIR OWN CORRECTIVE. 743

teen cents per pound and one half of whatever the syndicate
should be able to get above that. The immediate effect of this
gigantic conspiracy was that the price of copper in the United
States rose from thirteen to sixteen cents per pound. But the syn-
dicate did not take the precaution to buy up all the old scrap cop-
per in the world, nor all the metals that could be substituted in
the arts for copper. Nor did it arrange with those who had been
consuming copper that they should use it in the same quantities
whatever the price. The result was that the syndicate collapsed,
dragging down with it one of the great banking institutions of
France, ruining an untold number of individuals, and driving to
suicide the man who conceived the undertaking.

The same points of weakness are apparent in the other combi-
nations now before the public. Despite the tremendous power of
the sugar trust, it has never been able to control the market for
any length of time, as an examination of the prices of sugar for
the years of its existence will show. The independent refiners
have forced it to reduce its quotations, and later buy their plants
up at a high valuation if it wished to escape competition. No
sooner has that been done, however, than new refineries have been
started, as is the situation at the present time. Obviously there
must be an end to this procedure, even for a corporation with such
resources as the American Sugar Refining Company has. The
same is true of the cordage trust. So strong an opponent of
trusts as the New York Commercial Bulletin said of this at the
time it was at the height of apparent prosperity : " The enormous
profits which the trust is now making can not but lead to the
establishment of additional independent plants. These will be in
as strong a position for successful competition as has been found
to be the case with the independent refiners of sugar. Under
these circumstances the present enormous profits made by the
cordage trust will not continue." The later fate of this same
cordage company is a sad but striking commentary on the weak-
nesses to which such enterprises are open.

It is not contended that these corrective agencies will of them-
selves work the downfall of the trusts. That is an impossibility
under the present industrial conditions. But they will fix a
limit beyond which the trust can not go. Furthermore, they will
hasten the overthrow of all those combinations which seek to
carry along old and worthless plants and to follow discarded pro-
cesses of manufacture and wasteful methods of business. The
trust mode of doing business as a means of getting large capital
and realizing the economies consequent on extensive production
may be a success ; but as a means of practicing extortion upon
the public it is doomed to failure. Natural laws, after all, are
stronger than the contrivances of man.

744 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING.

BY PBOF. JOSEPH LE CONTE.

SOME of the readers of The Popular Science Monthly may re-
member that in November, 1888, I published an article in
which I tried to show the physical impossibility of a true flying
machine — i. e., one which could both lift and propel itself without
the help of a balloon. The article was widely commented upon,
the only objection urged being the threadbare one that more won-
derful things than this have come to pass and will come to pass
again. Since that time, however, a very elaborate series of ex-
periments by Prof. Langley has thrown so much and so new light
on the whole problem of flying, that I am forced to reconsider
and modify somewhat the conclusions then reached. Having
been asked to contribute a paper on the subject of flying to the
World's Congress of Aeronautics, I, a few months ago, reviewed
the whole subject in the light of these new experiments. The
pressure of other duties at that time prevented me from putting
my thoughts in final form, and I laid aside my notes. But I feel
that I owe it to myself, as well as to The Popular Science Month-
ly, that I should again express my views under the changed con-
ditions. This article, therefore, may be regarded as substantially
what I would have given at the World's Congress if I had had
time then to prepare it.

But this time I find it necessary to take up the subject from a
more general point of view than before. My theme now is the
problem of flying, both natural and artificial. I begin, therefore,
with some discussion of the flight of birds.

The bird's wing has two distinct functions, viz., that of a pro-
peller and that of an aeroplane. Both of these functions are per-
formed by the wing in ordinary flight, but in different relative
proportions according to the size of the bird and the extent of its
wings. In insects and in small birds the wings act almost wholly
as propellers. In large birds with great expanse of wings, ex-
cept in rising, they act mainly as an aeroplane. This difference
between small and large birds is fully recognized in my previous
paper, but I did not then appreciate its supreme importance.
Now it is on the properties of an aeroplane that the new light has
been mainly shed, and it is therefore of its function in flight that
I shall have most to say. First, however, a very few words on the
bird's wing as a propeller.

The structure of a bird's wing is a marvel of exquisite con-
trivance— a wonderful combination of lightness, elasticity, and
strength. The hollow quill, the tapering shaft, the vane com-
posed of barbs clinging together by elastic hooks, making thus an

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 745

impermeable yet flexible plane — all this has been often insisted on
by writers on design in Nature. But there are two points not so
often noticed which especially concern us here.

1. Of the two vanes of each feather, the hinder one is much
the broader. This, together with the manner of overlap, causes

FIG. 1. — LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF THE WING PLANE AND CBOSS-SECTION OF THREE FEATH-
ERS, a, shaft ; », •»', vane.

the feathers to rotate and close up into an impervious plane in
the downstroke, and to open and allow the air to pass freely
through in the upstroke, as shown in the figure (Fig. 1). This
structure and arrangement produce the greatest possible effective-
ness of the downstroke and the least possible loss in recovery for
another stroke.

2. The plane of the wing is supported not along the middle,
but along the extreme anterior border, as shown in Fig. 2, which

FIG. 2. — DIAGRAMMATIC CROSS-SECTION OF BIRD'S WING, a, wing bones ; J, plane.

is a diagrammatic cross-section of the wing. The effect of the
down stroke is to tip up the wing behind, as shown in Fig. 3. The
whole force of the stroke, a b, is resolved into two components —
one, a c, sustaining, and the other, 6 c, propelling onward. In
easy flight, therefore, only downward flapping is necessary, al-

FIG. 3. — DIAGRAMMATIC CROSS-SECTION OF BIRD'S WING DURING DOWNSTROKE. o, 5, whole
force ; a, c, part sustaining ; i, c, part propelling.

though in rapid flight doubtless the stroke is also a little back-
ward.

The same admirable adaptation is carried out in every part of
the bird. The whole bird is an exquisitely constructed flying
machine. The smallness of the head, the feet, and the viscera,

746 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the lightness and the strength of the bones, all show that every-
thing is subordinated to this one supreme function. In compar-
ing a bird with an artificial flying machine it is necessary to bear
this in mind.

But it is in the use of the wing as an aeroplane that the most
wonderful feats of bird locomotion consist. If we are ever to
achieve artificial flight it must be by the application of the prin-
ciples underlying these. There are four of these feats of bird
flight which require special notice as bearing on the subject of
artificial flight. These are hovering, poising, soaring, and sailing.

HOVERING. — There is some confusion in the use of this term.
It always refers to a maintenance of a body in one position in the
air ; but this may be done in two ways — either by vigorous flap-
ping of the wings, or else, under certain conditions, with no mo-
tion of the wings at all. This latter, however, I shall call poising,
and confine the term hovering to the former. In this sense hov-
ering is seen in many insects and in the humming bird, and,
among larger birds, in the sparrow hawk (Falco sparverius) and
in the osprey (Pandion halicBtus). In these it is seen that in hov-
ering the body is inclined upward, and the stroke of the wing is
decidedly forward as well as downward. The reason of this is, as
already explained, that downward strokes give onward motion.
But the main thing to be observed in large birds is the violent
struggles necessary to maintain position compared with the ease
of onward flight. This difference furnishes the key to the prop-
erties of an aeroplane, and was, I believe, first explained by
Marey. In maintaining the body in the same position, as in hov-
ering, the air gives way under each stroke of the wing, creating
a downward current, thus greatly diminishing the effectiveness
of the downstroke and increasing the loss in recovery or up-
stroke. In progressive flight, on the contrary, and more and more
as the progress is more rapid, every phase of the downstroke is on
new air. The wing strikes on three feet or six feet or ten feet or
twenty feet of air, according to the velocity of progress, with
every stroke. The air has not time to give way before the wing
passes on to new, unmoved air. But if it is difficult to maintain
one position, as in hovering, it is evidently still more difficult, on
this principle, to raise the body directly upward. This explains
the difficulty experienced by a large bird like the condor in rising,
and yet the ease and grace of progressive flight when well up.
We will see hereafter the great importance of this principle, as
shown by the experiments of Langley.

POISING. — By this term I mean the maintenance of a fixed
position with outstretched, motionless wings. During my boy-
hood I was fond of field sports of all kinds, and therefore a con-
stant and accurate observer of the flight of birds ; and yet, dur-

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 747

ing all that time, I never saw this feat. The reason was, that I
lived in a perfectly flat country. I saw it for the first time when,
at the age of fifteen, in going to college, I moved to a rolling
country. It is best seen in a bare rolling country, like much of
the western portion of the United States. The most perfect
poising I have ever seen done was by the red-tailed hawk (Buieo
montanus), on the bare, rolling lava plains of eastern Oregon.
The conditions absolutely necessary are a rolling country and a
steady breeze. The bird places himself above the brow of a hill
with face to the wind. As long as the wind remains steady the
bird retains his position, with outstretched wing, motionless.

The explanation is as follows : As already said, the bird places
himself facing the wind just above the brow of a hill. The wind
is deflected upward by the slope of the hill. The bird places his
aeroplane (wings and tail) in a plane inclining slightly downward,
but not so much inclined as the slope of the hill, so that the wind
still strikes the under side of the aeroplane. In this position the
force of gravity would carry him downward and forward, while
the wind would carry him upward and backward. The bird skill-
fully adjusts the position of the aeroplane so that these two oppo-
site forces shall exactly balance one another. As long as the wind
remains steady his position is unchanged. If the wind changes
in direction or in velocity, he wiggles himself a little, perhaps
flaps once or twice, until he finds a new position of equilibrium,
and again remains steady. This explanation is, I believe, com-
plete.

SOARING. — It is well known that many large and long winged
birds, such as vultures, hawks, pelicans, etc., will sweep about in
wide circles with motionless, outstretched wings, not only main-
taining their level, but rising in ascending spiral until they disap-
pear from view. I have often watched their easy, graceful motion
for hours, and am quite sure that it is accomplished without any
expenditure of energy at all commensurate with the work of ele-
vation. How is it done ? There is no problem of bird-flight upon
which so much has been written, and so little of any value. Let
us see first what are the necessary conditions.

1. Every careful observer must have noted that the bird slopes
downward along one half of the circle, so as to acquire high ve-
locity, and then rises along the other half to a higher level than
that from which he descended. How can he rise higher ?

2. Every clear thinker must see that this feat is impossible,
and every careful observer must have noted that it is never done
— in still air. For if air is still, even if there were no friction and
no tendency to fall toward the ground, the most that the velocity
acquired by the down slope could do would be to carry the bird
back to the same level again. Therefore, in still air the bird must

748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

descend instead of ascend. A necessary condition, therefore, is
wind ; and, indeed, a soaring bir<J always drifts with the wind.
The spiral is never upright, but always inclined to leeward. In
soaring, the bird slopes downward with the wind, then turns and
rises, facing the wind. How does wind help him ?

3. The feat is physically impossible in an even current of air.
It is strange that this is not seen at once ; and yet excellent
writers have become confused on this point. I confess that until
recently I have been confused myself. It really follows as a ne-
cessary consequence of the last conditions — for an even current is
still air to the bird immersed in it, precisely as the earth is prac-
tically still to us dwelling on it. If a cloud should intervene be-
tween the bird and the earth, it would be impossible for him to
know whether he was in a current or not.

4. Therefore, in order to rise in a spiral without doing work
by napping, there must be differential currents, which the bird
takes advantage of to do the work.

EXPLANATION. — Now, there are such differential air currents.
Wind, like all other currents, increases in velocity from bottom
upward. Experiments show that on a grass meadow the velocity
eight feet above ground is double of that at one foot, and the ve-
locity goes on increasing upward. A gentle breeze on the plain
becomes a furious wind on the mountain-top. Like all other cur-
rents, too, there are differential currents side by side, the velocity
along some stream lines being greater than along others. Also
in air currents, especially, the velocity varies in time — i. e., the
wind blows in puffs. These differential currents, both side by
side and in altitude in time, would be evident at once if we could
see the air. Now, the bird feels these invisible differential cur-
rents, and skillfully uses them to lift himself. In soaring, the
bird slopes downward with the wind, acquiring thus great veloci-
ty, passes into a lower current of less velocity, then turns facing
the wind, and shoots up a slope which carries him higher than
the level of the start, then turns again in a current of still higher
velocity, then descends again along a slope and repeats the same
cycle.

To explain more definitely : Observe (1) that the lines of a bird
are so fine that the front resistance is almost zero. There is prac-
tically only skin friction, which is also small. Observe (2) that
with large aeroplane and rapid motion the fall by gravity is also
very small. This is proved by experiments of Langley, to be
described presently. Therefore, if the differential force of the air
currents through which he circles is precisely equal to the skin
friction plus the downward tendency, the bird will just rise to the
level of the starting point ; if greater, he will rise above that level.
In order to rise, therefore, the differential force of the successive

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 749

currents must be greater than this small amount. As the bird is
immersed in the current, and if he uses the whole available dif-
ferential force in rising, none is left over for progress against the
wind. He therefore drifts with the wind.

I have spoken thus far only of differential currents in altitude,
for these can always be depended upon, but there may be also dif-
ferential currents side by side. These might be utilized in the
same way. The same may be said also of differential currents in
time — i. e., successive puffs or gusts. The bird may take advan-
tage of these. If so, he would slope down with the gust and come
back and rise in the interval.

5. SAILING. — Many large birds fly with alternate ^intervals of
flapping and sailing. But in such cases the bird always loses
either velocity or height during the sail, which it recovers only
by flapping. There is nothing remarkable in this. But some sea
birds which live almost continuously on the wing and usually in
a high wind, acquire an almost incredible expertness in the use of
the wings as an aeroplane, and sometimes go for hours and over
many miles of space without flapping once. The most wonderful
bird in this regard is probably the albatross. On several voyages
from Oregon to San Francisco I have watched these birds with
their long, narrow wings rigidly extended, skimming the surface
of the sea, then rising and wheeling and swooping, and again
skimming, but without moving a feather for hours. I will briefly
describe the phenomenon as I have seen it. The explanation will
be brought out as I proceed.

I will suppose a wind aft, as was the case in most of my obser-
vations. The bird follows the boat, skimming the very surface of
the sea perhaps for several hours ; then, finding that he is losing
ground, wheels about, facing the wind, shoots up to forty or fifty
feet above the sea, then turns again with the wind, swoops down
a steep incline, acquiring great speed both by the high velocity of
the upper stratum and by the descent, then skims the surface
again, and quickly overtakes the boat, to repeat the same evolu-
tion. With head wind these evolutions are more frequent. As
before, he skims the surface behind the boat, but more quickly
begins to lose ground; then rises and then wheels and swoops
downward, leaving the boat ; then, having acquired the necessary
velocity, he again turns and skims the surface in air of small
velocity, and in spite of head wind overtakes the boat, to repeat
the same evolution. For hours these evolutions are repeated, the
wings remaining motionless, with only varying position toward
the wind.

Here, again, the bird takes advantage of the great difference of
velocity between the lower and the upper strata of the air. Doubt-
less, also, with head wind, advantage is taken of eddies in the wake

75°

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the boat. In all cases, if the wind slackens, the bird flaps no-w-
and then. If it stops, he flaps all the time. It can not be done in
still air.

With the wind on the side the evolution must of course be dif-
ferent, but, as I have not watched this case, I will describe it as
given by a writer in Nature (Nature, vol. xliii, p. 223, 1891).

Fig. 4 represents the stern of the boat and the circle of the
bird's path. The arrows show the directions of the motion of the

boat, of the wind, and of the
bird. In the circle the strong
line represents the higher por-
tion of the circular sweeps and
the light line the lower portion,
almost in contact with the wa-
ter's surface. It is seen, then,
that the bird swoops down with
the wind, skims the surface, and
then rises against the wind.
The sweep of the bird is here
represented as a circle, because
the boat is standing still; but
really it is an advancing spi-
ral, following the moving boat.
The explanation here is exactly
the same as in soaring, except

that the differential force of the air currents is utilized in progress
instead of in rising.

One more example : On the ferry boat going across the bay to
San Francisco, with strong wind ahead and a little to the right
(i. e., coming through the Golden Gate), I have several times seen
a gull place himself behind on the left, just opposite the hind
deck, and maintain his position with motionless wings for a half
mile or more — I say motionless with confidence, because he was so
near that I could see his eyes wink.

In this case I feel sure that the motion of the boat created an
eddy in which the air was still or perhaps moving in contrary
direction — i. e., with the boat, and perhaps also a little upward.
If the air currents had been visible, I have no doubt the explana-
tion would have been obvious. What I could not see, the bird
felt and skillfully utilized.

Now, if birds, even the largest and heaviest of them, can thus
play and gambol in the fiercest wind with the greatest ease and
grace, and without serious expenditure of energy, but only by
the skillful use of wings as an aeroplane, why can not we by arti-
ficial means — i. e., by a machine — do the same ? The article before
referred to was written to show why we can not.

Fio. 4. — ARROWS SHOW DIRECTION OF WIND,

OF THE BOAT, AND OF THE CIRCLING BlKD.

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 751

The outline of the argument, the reader will remember, was as
follows :

1. There is a limit to the size and weight of any locomotive
machine, whether natural or artificial. This limit is the result of
the law that while the strength of material and force of all kinds,
whether by muscular contraction or by steam pressure, increase
as the square of the diameter of muscle or of piston, the weight
of the machine varies as the cube of the diameter of all parts.
Thus with increasing size, weight must quickly overtake and pass
beyond strength. This limit varies with the kind of machine.
The limit of an efficient walking machine was probably reached
in the largest land animals of previous geological times. For a
rolling machine like a locomotive engine or a bicycle, where the
weight is supported on wheels, or in a swimming machine where
the weight is supported by water, and where, therefore, in both
cases the whole energy is expended in progression, the limit is
much higher ; and, therefore, a locomotive engine and a whale
may be heavier than any walking animal.

2. The limit of weight of a flying machine is very much lower
than that of either a swimming, rolling, or a walking machine.
The limit of an efficient, manageable flying machine is in fact
reached in the largest birds, such as in the condor among long-
winged and the bustard among short-winged birds, and to our
surprise we find it only about fifty pounds. The condor can barely
lift himself from the ground, although when well up he sails with
ease and grace. There are, indeed, still larger birds, like the os-
trich, but they can not fly. True, their wings are rudimentary, but
they have become so only because these birds have passed beyond
the flying limit.

3. Now, a bird is admirably constructed for economy of force.
Not only is everything sacrificed to the one supreme object of fly-
ing, but the animal machine, using fats and starch for fuel and
getting energy through the mechanism of nerve and muscle, is
admittedly more economical and efficient — i. e., will develop more
force and do more work for the same weight of fuel and machine —
than any artificial machine yet devised. It seems hopeless to sur-
pass it. Therefore, the weight of a machine that will be able to
lift itself in the air can not exceed fifty or a hundred pounds.

4. But it is idle to talk of a flying machine with fuel and en-
gineer and freight being less than many times this limit. There-
fore, a flying machine which is anything more than a toy is im-
possible.

Such is a bare outline of the argument which seemed then —
and to a large extent seems now — irrefutable. But Langley's re-
cent experiments certainly put the question in a new and some-
what more hopeful light ; and renewed reflection on the whole

75 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

subject, in the light of these experiments, has led me to some im-
portant modifications of my previous views. What, then, if any,
are the fallacies in the above argument ? *

1. We have spoken of two functions in the wing, viz., as pro-
peller and aeroplane. These two are of necessity united in the
bird. The bird's wing was not made at once — a special organ
for a special purpose — but by modification of limbs. But there
was only one pair of limbs to spare for the purpose of flying,
and therefore one organ, the wing, was used for both functions.
Now, there is probably a disadvantage in this ; for short wings
with great rapidity and sweep of the stroke are probably the best
propellers, while long wings are undoubtedly the best aeroplanes.
Thus in long- winged birds, like the condor, the ability to rise
quickly and fly rapidly is sacrificed to easy, graceful, long-con-
tinued circling and sailing ; while short- winged birds, like the
turkey and bustard, rise more easily and fly more rapidly, but
never remain long on the wing. There seems little doubt that the
limit of weight in rising is higher in short-winged birds ; and the
great flightless birds were of this kind before they passed beyond
the limit of flight and their wings became rudimentary. Now, it
is needless to say that in artificial flying these two functions may
and will be separated. The propeller will be used wholly for
lifting and onward progress. I suppose, therefore, that the limit
of weight may be raised higher than I have placed it. But if this
were all, I can not think that it could be pushed much, if at all,
beyond one hundred pounds. But this is not all.

2. We have said that the animal body using fats and starch as
fuel, and getting force through the mechanism of nerve and mus-
cle, is more economical — i. e., will generate more force and do
more work with the same weight of fuel and machine — than any
artificial contrivance yet devised or likely to be devised. This is
certainly true ; but there is another important element here con-
cerned, viz., the intensity of the force — i. e., the amount of force
developed and work done in a given time. This depends on tne
rate of combustion of the fuel. Now, there is a strict limit to the
rate of combustion of fuel, and therefore of development of force,
in the animal body. This limit may doubtless be greatly over-
passed in an artificial machine. But be it remembered that this
entails greater weight of fuel and of all parts of the machine en-

* Among these possible fallacies or oversight of my previous article I have not thought
it worth while to mention the difference between the reciprocating motion of a wing and the
steady pressure of a screw propeller such as would probably be used in any artificial ma-
chine ; because I believe that, in the comparison, what is lost in the bird's wing in recovery
for another stroke, is gained in the application of the force in the direction of greates
efficiency.

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 753

gaged in the generation and transmission of force. What we want
more specially is (1) a material stronger in proportion to weight
than bone. This, no doubt, we have in steel tubes.* Here, then, is
a positive gain. But (2) we also want a force more intense than
muscular contraction, which is, I believe, about a hundred to a
hundred and twenty pounds per square inch of cross-section. This
can doubtless be surpassed, but not without increased weight of
containing and transmitting parts. If anything can be gained in
this direction (which is doubtful), against it must be set over the
greater economy of the natural machine. The problem is an ex-
ceedingly complex one, and can be solved only by careful experi-
ments. But let us admit that, by greater strength of material
and greater intensity of force, the limit of weight of machine and
fuel which can be lifted in the air may be pushed to several hun-
dred pounds. This, I am sure, is as far as we can go on this score.

3. But the most important new light is found in the effect of
motion on the sustaining power of an aeroplane, and the greatest
flaw in my previous reasoning is the imperfect recognition of this
principle.

As already stated, this principle was first brought out by
Marey, and was alluded to in my previous paper, but its supreme
importance was not fully appreciated until the experiments of
Langley. In his hands it becomes almost a new principle, and
one which must modify not only our theory of flying, but even
our theory of projectiles. Langley's experiments bring out the un-
expected result that in air a body does not fall the same distance
in a given time whether it falls straight downward from rest or
is affected with horizontal motion — that its motion in the latter
case is not a resultant of distance of downward fall from rest and
horizontal motion. The same is true of all bodies, but the differ-
ence is greatly exaggerated in the case of aeroplanes. Accord-
ing to his experiments, a thin aeroplane of material two thou-
sand times the specific gravity of air, say aluminum, in perfectly
horizontal position and free to fall, would take four times as
much time to fall a certain distance if moving horizontally twenty
feet per second as it would if falling directly downward from
rest. With still greater velocities the time of falling a given dis-
tance is greater and greater, until it may become almost inappre-
ciable. The reason is plain. The aeroplane falling straight down-
ward must press the air out of its way. It takes time to do this.
Now, if it is moving horizontally edge on, before the air can move
appreciably, the plane is already on to new still air. Or, to put it
more definitely, supposing the aeroplane to be one foot square,

* It is probably a mistake to suppose that aluminium or any alloy of that metal is
stronger, weight for weight, than steel.
VOL. XLIV. — 56

754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

then, if falling straight downward, one square foot section of air
must be moved in a given time ; but if moving onward twenty
feet per second, then twenty square feet must be started in mo-
tion in the given time. Thus with increasing velocity the air be-
comes more and more rigid because more and more must be started
in motion in given time, until, if velocity is infinite, the air be-
comes immovably rigid.*

We have spoken thus far of a perfectly horizontal plane mov-
ing edge on, and therefore with no front resistance. But if the
plane be slightly inclined upward in the direction of motion,
then the onward motion would tend to sustain the plane. The
whole air pressure may be resolved into two parts, one resisting
onward progress and one sustaining the plane; and when this
latter is equal to the weight the plane will not fall at all. Now,
as velocity increases, less and less inclination is necessary to get
the requisite sustaining force. But with less inclination comes also
less front resistance. Thus at very high velocity the aeroplane
may be placed nearly horizontal with proportionally small front
resistance and yet sufficient sustaining power. Thus it follows
from this important principle that instead of force increasing as
the square of the velocity attained (or even higher rate), as in a
steamboat, the increase of force with increasing velocity is unex-
pectedly moderate. This, of course, applies only to the aeroplane.
Resistance to the attached machine follows the usual law. But
this is small in comparison with the sustaining power of the aero-
plane. Therefore, once get a flying machine, even one of great
weight, with its aeroplane well up in the air and moving onward,
and there seems to be no physical impossibility of sustaining it
indefinitely and giving it by means of suitable propellers a great
velocity, say of forty to sixty miles per hour.

In the light of this new principle (for such it may be called)
Langley and Maxim have constructed models of flying machines,
and expect eventually to solve the problem of flying. A small
model of a machine which he calls an aerodrone (air-runner) has
been constructed by Langley, and was to have been exhibited at

* A striking illustration of this principle is seen in the extreme rigidity of the jet issu-
ing from the nozzle of a hydraulic pipe. The water is under a pressure of three hundred or
four hundred feet head, and is projected with a velocity which would cut in two a man's
body. If the jet is struck with a crowbar, the bar rebounds as it would from steel. In
penetrating, say, half an inch, the bar encounters an immense quantity of water at once.

It is evident also that the same principle must apply to all bodies moving in the
air, and therefore also to projectiles. There is, then, a kind of truth in the popular
notion that velocity holds up or prevents the fall of a rifle ball — not, indeed, that the ve-
locity itself holds up the ball, as popularly supposed (for it would not do so in a vacuum),
but that the air is more, effective in sustaining a moving body than one falling directly
downward from rest..

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 755

Chicago at the World's Congress of Aeronautics. This model
was fifteen feet long, with two transverse aeroplanes forty feet
from tip to tip. Whether it was so exhibited or not I do not know.
Maxim, it is said, is now constructing a flying machine on a large
scale in London, but has not attempted yet to launch it. In both
of these the aeroplane slightly inclined is the main reliance for
sustaining when once in motion ; so that the whole power of the
engine and propellers is concentrated on rising and progress
through the air.

Now, in the light of these experiments, what may we reason-
ably expect in the near future ?

There are many difficulties in the way of success, which, of
course, these men clearly see and will try to provide for. These
are mainly three, viz. : (1) Difficulty of rising ; (2) stability in
progress ; and (3) safety in alighting. We take these in succession.

1. RISING. — Every word I have said in my previous paper,
only modified as to limit of weight, applies here still and with-
out abatement. It seems to be impossible for any machine, nat-
ural or artificial, of greater weight than at most a few hundred
pounds, to lift itself straight up in the air, or even to maintain
itself in the same place like a hovering bird, by the force of pro-
pellers alone and without the aid of a balloon. Therefore, there
must be some device other than, or in addition to, propellers to
raise the machine in the act of starting. But observe, I said
straight up. Many birds can not rise so. They must rise at very
gentle incline. They must get onward motion before their wings
can get full effect on the air. It is said that the mode of taking
the condor is to build a pen, say, forty to fifty feet in diameter
and six feet high, and put a carcass in the middle of it. The con-
dor alights, but can not again rise at an angle which will take
him over the fence. Many heavy -bodied, short- winged ducks rise
from the water at so small an angle that they must use both feet
and wings for thirty to forty feet in order to get onward motion
enough to give effectiveness to their wings by coming in contact
with larger masses of still air, as already explained. It follows,
therefore, that the flying machine must have some station device
to start it. It may be an elevator, but more probably it will be
machine rollers on a railway. With aeroplane spread and slightly
inclined and propellers directed a little backward, velocity might
be got sufficient to sustain and finally with the help of the pro-
pellers to raise the machine. As far as I can learn, this is the
plan of Maxim.

Viewed in the light of the new principle, there is certainly
nothing impossible in this. But every machine is liable to acci-
dents. It is absolutely necessary that we should be able to stop
and go on again. Suppose in mid-flight anything should go

75 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

wrong and it is necessary to alight, how is the machine to rise
again without the station device ? A locomotive machine that
can not stop anywhere and again resume its journey is an imprac-
ticable one. This, I think, will prove the greatest of all the diffi-
culties.

2. STABILITY IN PROGRESS. — Once fairly up, as already seen,
there is no reason why a moving aeroplane should not sustain a
heavy flying machine indefinitely if nothing disturbs its equilib-
rium. Therefore, once up, we might hope for success in still air,
or even possibly in a perfectly uniform current. But air currents
are extremely variable in time (puffs and gusts) and in space —
i. e., air streams of varying velocities and varying directions.
When we see the frantic evolutions of a badly made kite, or of
any kite if the steadying string breaks, we are warned of the
danger of our aeroplane at high speed and with variable wind,
unless skillfully managed, perhaps by means of several independ-
ent propellers and adjustable aeroplanes. In the bird we have
the last perfection of skill acquired by constant practice and in-
herited through successive generations. Even if the science of
aviation were perfect, the exquisite art necessary to manage such
a machine seems almost hopelessly unattainable.

3. SAFETY IN ALIGHTING. — If the last — i. e., stability in prog-
ress— be attained, I suppose this also may be. In still air, by
checking the velocity by the use of the propellers, the aeroplane
would let down the machine with all the gentleness desirable.
With head wind, also, there is no reason why alighting should
not be successful. With the wind aft, it would be necessary to
turn about and face the wind, as a bird does under similar cir-
cumstances. A parachute, with tubular opening atop, descends
with perfect steadiness.*

4. To all these difficulties we must add the enormous hazard
of a first attempt, the apparent impossibility of approaching suc-
cess gradually, and thus practicing the difficult art of managing
with safety.

CONCLUSION. — Under present lights, therefore, it is no longer
justifiable to say, as I have previously done, that a flying machine
is physically impossible. I therefore retract that expression. But
the engineering difficulties are enormous and possibly insurmount-
able. At the present time the nearest approach to success in aerial
locomotion is still to be found in the French dirigible balloon —
i. e., a balloon propelled and steered by machinery — and for some
time to come the best success may still be looked for in that direc-

* The Chinese have most ingeniously utilized this principle in the construction of little
kites shaped like a bird, with wings and tail. These require no long, steadying tail, because
the wings are made tubular at the tips, and the outrush of the air keeps the kite steady.

NEW LIGHTS ON THE PROBLEM OF FLYING. 757

tion. In fact, the art of managing a true flying machine is so re-
fined and the skill required so great, and in the absence of such
skill the danger of a first attempt is so extreme, that probably
the only way to achieve true flight would be by the use first of a
dirigible balloon, and then gradually to decrease the sustaining
gas and substitute the aeroplane and propeller.

In the distant future, and by means of such gradual ap-
proaches, the engineering difficulties in the way of a true flying
machine may be finally overcome. If so, then we may look for
the greatest success in the direction of the work of Langley and

Maxim.

Addendum, January 23, 1894.

The above article was finished and sent to the publisher some
time in October, 1893. In the January number of the American
Journal of Science Prof. Langley published an account of another
epoch-making series of experiments bearing on this subject. In
his previous series he showed the enormous importance of onward
movement in the sustaining power of an aeroplane. In this he
shows the enormous variation of velocity in air currents from
moment to moment. The whole air is in a violent turmoil from
varying currents. In the above article I have shown that soaring
and sailing are impossible without differential air currents ; but
the amount of difference of velocity of these currents shown by
Prof. Langley was wholly unexpected. These experiments, there-
fere, show that the supply of force from this source available to
the bird or to the flying machine is far greater than previously
supposed. While they do not seriously vitiate any of my conclu-
sions, they certainly place the subject of artificial flight in a still
more hopeful light.

MB. BBTJCE, of the Dundee antarctic whaling fleet, describes the whole of the
district south of 60° south latitude as strewn with icebergs, which become very
numerous south of 62°. On one day the author counted at one time from deck
sixty-five of great size, besides many smaller ones. The highest berg seen from
his vessel, the Balaena, was about two hundred and fifty feet high ; but many
were not more than seventy or eighty feet, the average possibly being about one
hundred and fifty feet high. All these bergs are tabular, or weather-worn varie-
ties of the tabular forms. They become pierced with caves, and these are some-
times connected with funnel holes, through which, as the swell beats up the
caves, immense columns of spray are projected. They may be finely castellated,
pillared, or arched. One was beautifully conical. The base of the bergs was col-
ored pale brown by marine organisms, and other brown streaks were seen be-
yond the water-level. No luminous glow was observed. "Clothed" in mist, they
raise their mighty snow-clad shoulders to a stately height, or shine forth bril-
liantly in the sun. Although they are of the purest white, yet they glow with
color. The crevices exhibit rich cobaltic blue, and everywhere are splashes of
emerald green."

758 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

BY C. F. HODGE, PH.D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY.

WHEN Sir John Lubbock * rotated a paper disk upon which
ants were moving in a given direction and the ants turned
so as to maintain their course, it seemed as if they were endowed
with some mysterious sense or power of direction, like that of a
magnetic needle upon its pivot. When he substituted for the
plain disk a circular hat-box, which, as he thought, must consti-
tute for an ant the entire visible universe, and still the ants turned
as the box was rotated, the fact seemed proved. Ants must have
located within their bodies, and independent of ordinary sensory
impressions from the external world, the power of going in any
direction they wish. This conclusion is far reaching in its conse-
quences. If ants possess such mysterious power, may it not exist
in other, or all, animals ? It must be of the nature of a special
sense. Where, then, is the sense organ ? How should ideas of
animal sensation be modified by it ?

Many writers would have ceased experimenting at this point,
and gone off into chapters of ecstatic hypothesis about this fathom-
less mystery, this unmistakable " sense of direction " developed
to such perfection in so humble a creature. Not so with Lubbock.
When he covered the hat-box, then rotated it, the ants did not
turn, but were turned with the box- ; or when he shifted the posi-
tion of his candles to the opposite side, as he rotated the box, the
ants did not turn. And so their action fell from the realm of ex-
quisite mystery to take its place among such commonplaces as
that of the sailor steering his course by the lighthouse or the
stars, or that of a man guided home by the light of his own camp
fire.

A considerable literature, pro and con, has gathered about
the subject, in which we find frequent use of such expressions as
" direction-sense," " sens de la direction," " sense of orientation,"
"faculte d' orientation," " instinct of location," " magnetic sense,"
" Orientierungssinne," " Gefuhl der Kardinalrichtungen," and
many more. By whatever terms designated, the idea is that ani-
mals possess some special sense, some occult faculty, by which,
without reference to external objects, they are able to guide their
movements aright. This power, it is commonly thought, is not
possessed, .or only in a rudimentary degree, by civilized man, is
more highly developed in savages, and may be found in its per-
fection in certain migratory animals.

* Sir John Lubbock. Ants, Bees, and Wasps. New York, 1882. See pp. 260 ff.

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

759

The literature * is open to the general criticism that the strange
and exceptional is noted, while by far the more important, com-
mon, and usual occurrence rarely appears in print; and thus
queer stories of dogs and cats, horses, mules, birds, insects, and
even men,f who are able to point unerringly north, no matter
how blindfolded or manipulated, come to predominate. Still, as
the methods of animals have come to be studied with scientific

\

Y

FARM-HOUSE

Fig. 1.
Flight of six pigeons, open cage.

accuracy, these notions have been compelled to flit from one form
to another in most lively fashion.

Migratory birds, most careful study has proved, learn their
route from " zone to zone," and follow it solely by means of vision.
" This," Mr. Wallace says, " is now well ascertained." The work
of Sir John Lubbock, of Forel, and the perfectly conclusive ex-
periments of Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, J leave no resting place for

* For a running discussion of the subject, refer to Science, vol. xx, pp. 207, 248, 291,
318, 358.

f Rudski. Ueber ein angeborenes Gefiihl der Kardinalrichtung des Horizonts. Biolo-
gisches Centralblatt, vol. xi, p. 63.

\ Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin, 1887, pp. 113 ff.

760 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the idea among insects ; and developments in anthropology teach
that savages depend solely for directions upon a skillful use of the
external signs of Nature.

All this may be true. It still remains an utter impossibility
that a homing pigeon can return from a distance of over a thou-
sand miles if unaided by some special " sense of direction." Such a
view is rarely held by a practical pigeon fancier. He knows too well
how many birds he loses, even with most careful short-distance
training. He has observed that his birds, until they have learned
the country, generally consume time enough to enable them to
hunt over mile by mile a vast area, and that they can do nothing
in a fog or snowstorm, or if blindfolded or hooded. Twenty years
ago Leonard * wrote as follows : " Some writers, chiefly poets and
romancers, would have us believe that the carrier pigeon finds his
way home from remote places by a kind of instinct ; but this is
not the case. Its flight is guided by sight alone. When let loose
from confinement, it rises to a great height in the air by a series
of constantly enlarging circles until it catches sight of some famil-
iar landmark by which to direct its course."

Had " poets and romancers " continued sole occupants of the
field, the following notes would have served no other than the
private purpose for which they were taken, f As it is, a number
of attempts have recently been made by men of high scientific
attainments to prove theories of " direction-sense " by feats of the
homing pigeon. In general, such attempts are made in line with
one or the other of two assumptions. According to the one, " di-
rection-sense " is ascribed to some mysterious, direct, and imme-
diate perception or sensation of location or direction in space.
More often it is supposed to be a sort of " dead reckoning" which
the organism has become able to keep — that is, the animal has
come to have a feeling, definite or vague, as to how long, how fast,
and which way it has traveled or has been carried. Two papers
may be cited as giving possibly the best expositions of these two
views. The one by Prof. Exner J adduces evidence to prove the
" dead-reckoning " theory ; the other, by Prof. Caustier,* attempts
to establish that of immediate perception. Both agree as to the
organ — viz., the membranous labyrinth, especially the semicircu-
lar canals.

There is nothing impossible about Exner's explanation. All

* E. B. Leonard. Pigeon Voyagers. Harper's Monthly, vol. xlvi, p. 659, 1873.

f My own experiments related to a study of extreme fatigue of the nervous system, and
for this purpose homing pigeons were furnished me by the generosity of Dr. S. Weir Mitch-
ell. It thus became necessary, in order to credit accurately the amount of effort put forth
in any given instance, to observe their habits and methods of flight.

| S. Exner. Das Rathsel der Brief tauben. Wien, 1892.

* E. Caustier. Les Pigeons Voyageurs. Revue de PHypnotisme, July, 1892, p. 10.

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

761

animals, by the processes going on in their bodies, must have
some notion of time. This would give the " how long " element
in the problem. The " how fast " might be given by such an in-

Fig. 2.
^Flight of six pigeons, covered cage.

strument as we find in the otoliths resting on the sensory hairs of
the maculcB acoustics, these hairs bending under the weight more
or less, according to rate of movement. The " which way" could

762 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

easily be indicated by a bending of the sensory hairs of the cristce
acoustical as the liquid in the semicircular canals is thrown this
way or that by angular deviation of line of motion. Experi-
mental test of the theory is impossible, since, after injury of a
single semicircular canal, the birds refuse to fly at all. It must
rest, therefore, upon facts obtained from observation of habits
and methods employed by homing pigeons. If it is true, there
should appear some relation between the flight of a bird home
and the course by which it has been carried to the place of libera-
tion. It should either tend to retrace its course or to follow a
straight line home. However, the writer has not been able to
record a single fact which points in this direction.

Graver objections must be admitted to obtain against the
theory of M. Caustier, tinted as it is by the " electro-magnetic "
romancing of the French hypnotists. He tells us of the bird, en-
dowed with " une nature eminemment electrique," of " I'electricite
de I'air" of " magnetisme terrestre," of " I 'action physiologique du
magnetisme," and the like. This means that pigeons can sense cur-
rents of atmospheric electricity or terrestrial magnetism in such
a manner as to be guided by them ; and this can hardly stand
even as passing theory, while it remains so thoroughly proved
by the experiments of Hermann,* and these have been confirmed
with powerful dynamos in at least two laboratories in this coun-
try, that the magnetic field has not the least physiological influ-
ence (" nicht die geringste Wirkung ") upon the action of any
tissue or sense organ or upon the animal as a whole.

But what say homing pigeons for themselves ?

Of first importance to the study of a homing instinct is the
method which an animal employs to mark or locate its home. On
leaving a new camp for a day's hunt in the Bad Lands, a man
naturally turns about and makes a mental note of prominent
buttes in the vicinity. This butte with three pine trees on top is
just to the left of the gulch where the tents are pitched. " I can
tell it as far as I can see it," and he strikes out. Why may not
other animals adopt a similar method ? Concerning bees, Thomp-
son has observed that, " if the position of a hive be changed, the
bees for the first day take no distant flights till they have thor-
oughly scrutinized every object in its neighborhood." This
would seem to indicate a rational method of procedure.

Upon their arrival in Madison, Wis., from Worcester, Mass.,
the pigeons were kept confined in a large loft which had but one
window, and this happened to be upon the side next another barn
close by, so that it afforded no view of the surrounding country.

* Hermann. Hat das magnetische Feld direkte pbysiologische Wirkung ? Pfliiger's
Archiv, vol. xliii, p. 217, 1888.

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS. 763

This arrangement was accidental at the time, but served very
well a subsequent purpose. Five of the birds were " youngsters/'
and had never been liberated anywhere. On January 30 (1892),
six months after their arrival, I let out these young birds one at
a time, and with my wife to assist, and with spyglass, watch, and
note-book at hand, we studied every act of each of the birds as
long as we could keep them in sight. Since they all adopted pre-
cisely the same method of locating their loft, a description of one
case will suffice.

A black Antwerp, let out at 4 p. M., flew to the ridge of a house
eighty yards to the northwest, and sat for fifteen minutes, turn-
ing first this way, then that ; looking eagerly the whole time ;
neck stretched out and head not still for a moment. This pigeon
happened to alight on the north side of a chimney which came
up through the ridge of the house. Its position was so close to
the chimney that with stretching its neck as far as possible in both
directions a considerable sector of the landscape must have been
hidden from view. A few minutes after it alighted I recorded
the remark, " If it is really in earnest about seeing everything in
the neighborhood, it ought to go around to the other side of that
chimney." Its first move, after fifteen minutes of looking, was a
simple flit around the chimney. Here it stood for five minutes
longer, looking attentively the whole time. It then flew a hundred
yards south to the peak of a higher house, where six minutes more
were given to observation from this new position. It next flew
to a small, low house a hundred yards north. Here it remained
scarcely a minute, whence it flew a hundred yards southeast to
the peak of the highest house in the vicinity, where eight min-
utes more were devoted to observation. It now struck out to the
southwest over a hill and grove and was lost to view until ten
minutes past five, when it alighted on the loft. This flight may
have been for the purpose of exploration and location, it probably
was, in part at least ; but leaving that out of the account, the
bird spent thirty-five minutes doing nothing but look at its sur-
roundings. The others consumed about the same time in the
same way. In this we find the power to return laid in the pains-
taking visual localization of the home spot. One of the old birds,
which escaped by accident, acted in a very different manner.
After a few rapid circles, he flew straight for Madison and was
not seen for three days ; when, failing to find his old home in
Worcester, he returned to the loft.

The next experiments were directed to determining the course
taken by a pigeon in his return flight. The method employed is
essentially the same as that used by Sir John Lubbock with the
ants. The pigeons were taken to a convenient distance and liber-
ated, and tracings of their flight were dotted off upon a chart of

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 3.

Three successive flights of pigeon No. 2.

First flight, May 29.

—• — . — Second w June 5.
, Third " June 2i-

the country. About fifty such tracings were taken, of which a
few of the more instructive are reproduced below.

A few days of freedom were allowed, in order that the birds
might more exactly locate their loft ; then all were again confined

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS. 765

in preparation for the following experiments for nearly four
months.

On May 29th six pigeons were caught at random and carried
in a cage, the top and sides of which were made of open-mesh
wire netting to allow free vision, to the top of a hill about half a
mile southeast of " home/' The birds were liberated singly, and
the course flown by each in returning to loft may be seen by a
glance at Fig. 1. At the same time, six other birds, also taken
without selection, were carried to the same place in a basket
closely wrapped in a heavy black shawl. Tracings of their home-
ward flights are reproduced in Fig. 2.

By comparing the two figures may be seen the influence of
vision upon directness of return flight. In Fig. 1, five of the birds
are seen to start toward home at once ; one, a young bird out of
the loft for the first time, flies in the wrong direction a short dis-
tance, turns sharply about, and alights upon the first house on the
line toward home. Three pigeons fly home without preliminary
circling. Fig. 2 shows not a single direct course. Two begin
circling in the wrong direction. One of these persists in his false
bent to the extent of searching over the whole city of Madison.
In the case of Fig. 1, the birds, most of them, see home very soon
and fly directly to it. Fig. 2 shows more of the method which a
pigeon adopts in covering unknown territory.

By comparing successive tracings of the same bird, may be
seen the effect of education — i. e., improvement in good birds,
failure to improve in poor ones. The first is well shown in Fig.
3, the three different lines representing three successive flights of
pigeon No. 2. As this is a typical case, let us follow its develop-
ment a moment. No. 2 has been carried from the loft in a covered
basket to the hill half a mile distant. Not having any idea as to
which direction he has been taken, he naturally starts out the
wrong way. His first thought, if I may so speak, is to look around
for some familiar object. So at a he turns about and is occupied
with looking over the landscape, while he describes a number of
semicircles back and forth around the place of starting. He evi-
dently sees nothing until his widening circles bring him over a
group of buildings around a farmhouse at Z>. Among these
is a red barn, and close to the loft is a red house. This looks
quite like home, and he swoops down toward it. On closer ex-
amination, however, he fails to discover the familiar barn, the
pigeonholes, and alighting board. After making four circles
low down over and among these buildings, he rises high in the
air again to take another look. All to the south and west are lake
and marsh and woods, with but few farmhouses visible. Toward
the north he sees a cluster of houses — South Madison. He looks
them over in the same way. From c he catches sight of another

766

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Fig. 4.

Three swccessi ve flights o/pigreonJVo. 5.

First flight, May 29.

• • • Second " " 30.

*... Third " June 5.

red barn at d, and goes to inspect it. Failing to find anything
here, he must look farther. He has just come from the west.
To the south and east are nothing but lake and woods again. To
the north lies the densely settled portion of Madison. Possibly

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS. 767

lie sees the red brick courthouse near the State Capitol. He flies
thither, but on reaching the city nothing looks familiar, and he
spends little time in circling over it. He is soon lost to view
at x. His course thus far measures about ten miles; time, a
trifle over eight minutes. He was liberated at four o'clock, and
after being lost at x he was next seen as he swooped down from
the west to settle upon the roof of the loft at 5.10. As it is
almost certain that he flew continuously, this leaves sixty min-
utes unaccounted for, and at a moderate estimate fifty miles of
search-line not drawn upon the chart. Were it possible to fill
this in, how much " sense of direction " should we need to invoke
to account for his finding home ? He has flown certainly eleven
miles, almost as surely sixty, to find a good-sized barn half a
mile away.

The result of education is seen in his subsequent flights. A
week later he flies home from the same hill in less than a minute.
Two weeks later still he flies from the university almost as
straight as though he did have a " sense of direction/* Upon the
question of education, however, we must compare Fig. 3 with
similar tracings of another bird, No. 5, given in Fig. 4. In the
first trial No. 5 (continuous line, Fig. 4) succeeds in reaching home
from the open cage without much difficulty. Liberated from a
boat on Lake Monona for a second trial, he flies wildly (the
broken line seen in Fig. 4). This tracing gives an index to the
harum-scarum character of the bird. Unlike No. 2, which looks
over the likely places carefully and then moves on, No. 5 is care-
less, has no confidence in his ability, and consequently looks the
same ground over and over again (see 1, 2, and 3, Fig. 4). At
a he flies out to the familiar hill, and thence does strike out in
the right direction (6, Fig. 4) and goes close to home (c), but
stupidly fails to recognize it, and flies back to the boat again
for a fresh start. No. 5 shows no improvement with education.
When carried to the hill for a third trial (dotted line, Fig. 4),
he circles for a moment, and then seeing the red barn by the
farmhouse, he starts off the wrong way. This bird, with eleven
others, is subsequently sent away six miles, and he alone of the
twelve fails to return. No doubt there are stupid pigeons as well
as stupid men.

Two points of some little interest from their bearing upon com-
parative psychology may be mentioned in this connection. The
first is the definite reaction to color which the pigeons unques-
tionably gave. Until they had completed their education so far
as to know the landscape pretty well, and had learned that there
are many red houses and barns in the world, a red building was
enough to determine their flight with almost mathematical pre-
cision. The second point is one which the Peckhams have noted

768 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with reference to wasps* — viz., if wasps are taken away from
their nests and liberated over water, they fly toward the nearest
land, although their nest is in the opposite direction. In liberat-
ing the pigeons from the boat this reaction was tested a great
many times and never failed.

The tracings speak too plainly for themselves to require further
comment. If any are able to extract " direction-sense consolation "
out of them, they are entirely welcome to it.

The criticism naturally arises at this point that the pigeons are
not trying to find home at all. They may be flying for pleasure
or exercise. Two things may be said in reply : First, theories of
" direction-sense " have been based upon the air-line course which
a pigeon has been supposed to take, " after getting his bearings,"
from place of liberation to loft. This, as we have seen, comes
only after training. In the second place, after a little observa-
tion, it is easy to distinguish from the sportive cavortings for
pleasure the eager darting flight of search.

If, however, they fail to give evidence of " direction-sense,"
may not such tracings show something of even greater impor-
tance ? All animals, from amoeba to man, spend a good share of
their time searching for something or other. May there not be a
fundamental logic of search as universal as the search itself ?
Naturally, if this is so, those animals whose life depends most
closely upon finding the objects of their search would come to
have the power and the logic of search most highly developed.
We may then ask, What is the path or curve of logical search ?
It could hardly be a straight line, since the effort necessary to
search must have a tendency to cause any animal to search over
nearest ground first, inasmuch as turning or looking around is
easier than moving the body ahead as far as the animal is able to
see or feel ahead. We see this exemplified in the circling of
hawks and the circling of dogs when starting out to cover a field.
It could not be a circle, however, in case of an animal with mem-
ory to avoid covering the same ground twice.

To test the matter experimentally, a number of people kindly
drew for the writer the path each would take to find an object,
the proximity or direction of which is unknown. The object is
supposed to lie upon a uniform field. Types of the curves handed
in are given in Figs. 5 to 8. Undoubtedly the logical curve is the
one submitted by Prof. Story (Fig. 5). It will be recognized to
be a peculiar spiral, the involute of a circle, the characteristic of
which is that the convolutions are always the same distance apart.
This distance will be, of course, twiee the distance at which the
object is visible. The curve given by the majority is drawn in

* Loc. cit., p. 17.

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

769

Fig. 6. This is a shade less ideal. The searcher, supposing him
to be at the center, first looks around as far as he can see, then
goes straight out twice the distance at which the object is visible,
and begins following circles, each one being twice the visible dis-
tance from every other. A number of rectilinear figures were

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Flg'7 .Fig. 8

Fig. 5. Involute of a circle, the figure suggested by Professor Story
as the ideal curve of search.

Fig. 6. Curve of search given by a number of persons.

Figs. 7 and 8. Rectilinear search lines.

The shaded portions in Figs. 5 to 8 represent parts of the field not
visible without looking backioard or deviating from tlie search curve.

Dotted arcs indicate limit of vision. '

received, types of which are reproduced in Figs. 7 and 8. These
are a stage above the fundamentally logical. They clearly belong
to the realm of the practical. We might call them "Yankee"
search curves. They are practical, of course, because it is easier
to follow a straight line than a curve.

A simple experiment was next devised, in which a person

VOL. XLIV. — 57

770

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

actually sets out to find a red tennis ball on a grassy lawn, his
steps being plotted while he is making the search. The ball was
placed in all cases so that it could be seen from a distance of ten
steps and at a uniform distance forty steps from the center stake,

in order that the tracings of
different persons could be com-
pared as to time and length of
course traversed.

No attempt was made to
do more than was necessary
to obtain a suggestion which
might serve to indicate the
logic and method of the pig-
eons. In all only sixteen trac-
ings were taken, and this num-
ber includes one experiment
on a shepherd dog. Of the
whole number, ten conform
more or less closely to Prof.
Story's curve. Three of the
best of these are reproduced
in Fig. 9. Two correspond evi-
dently to the circular type
(Fig. 6). These are given in
Fig. 10, together with the only

one which is in any degree rectangular, the " Yankee " type, and
this was not made by a Yankee at all, but by an Irish boy twelve
years of age. Three of the curves are hardly susceptible of logical
classification.

A point of interest in this connection attaches to the dotted
line in Fig. 9*. This represents the path of L. W., the university
carpenter, a man sixty-five years old, who had worked at his
trade of straight lines and right angles for forty-five years. I
had expected a typical rectangular curve. Instead he gave an
ideal spiral. After finding the ball, however, he volunteered the
following suggestive remark : " After I got started, I thought, if
I was going to do it again, I would go at it on the square. I
started out/' he added, "before I thought." Thus instinctive
logic won the day against forty-five years of special training.

If instinctive, however, this logic should be found almost as
well developed in children as in adults. Accordingly, spicing the
ball with candy or a small coin, several experiments were tried
upon children from three to twelve years of age. In general the
above statement was supported ; but two of the number, aged re-
spectively three and six, failed to show anything like the amount
of search-logic possessed by most of the pigeons or the shepherd

+ Starting point.

U) step circle

Ideal curve.

Path of T. P. H. It. minutes.

u u T.L.B. 7 "

~- « » L.W. 5 "

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

771

dog. One of these, the devious path of a "bright six-year-old Irish
girl, is reproduced in Fig. 12. Lubbock's ants might be pardoned
for smiling should they chance to see this tracing.

The search line of an intelligent dog is given in Fig. 11. His
eyes were covered, but he evidently had a strong impression that
the ball had been thrown in the direction I happened to be fac-
ing. Resemblance between this and tracings of a number of the
pigeons is quite evident.

The bearing of the above upon the problem of search as ex-
hibited by the homing pigeon requires 'no detailed statement. In
a word, the pigeon uses a logic of search which is common to ani-
mals generally, and there is no evidence that he employs any-
thing else. His power of rapid and prolonged flight makes it pos-
sible for him to spin his search lines over vast areas and so carry
them beyond our vision and lift them into the realm of mystery.

In such cases the time consumed furnishes an important check.
Of a large number of birds sent away by rail for longer flights,
not one made the return trip in less time than would have en-
abled him to fly on the involute of a circle from the place of
liberation. This refers to "first flights." The best time made
was twenty-six miles in five hours and nine minutes. Three other

birds liberated at the

same time failed to
return. Letting the
distance to which a
prominent landmark
is visible be three
miles, a fair estimate
for pigeons with some
training and over
broken country, the
least length of an in-
volute of a circle
which would bring a
bird from a distance
of twenty-six miles
to within sight of the '
loft is two hundred
and nineteen miles.
In five hours it is

Fig. 10.

Three search lines, circular and rectangular types,
•+• Starting point. The ball is shown at different
points on , the kO step circle. Fence.

not likely that the pigeon flew less than two hundred and fifty
miles.

One thing which causes the search lines of the pigeons to
swerve from the ideal curve of search upon a uniform field is
that the field in their case is never uniform. A house of any
kind, especially a red building, or, upon the lake, nearness to land,

772 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

furnish elements of greater probability and determine search in
that direction. To obtain an ideal curve for a uniform surface it
would be necessary to liberate the pigeon on a Dakota prairie or
in mid-ocean, where no break in the landscape is visible even
from an altitude of a thousand feet. It is not, however, diffi-
cult to find approximations to the
ideal in the widening circles and
the flights in different directions
to be seen in Figs. 1 to 4.

It may seem to some that in
denying a "sense of direction"
and affirming a logic is like jump-
ing from the frying pan into the

Fig. 11.

Search-line of a shepherd doa. j. r_ • • j. *• J.T. j c. j

+ Starting point. B. Ball °n tlllS POlnt 1S that WG d° find

evidence for search-logic and no

evidence for " direction-sense." And further, in the one case we
explain the phenomena by something fundamental in animal life,
which we do know something about; whereas on "sense-direc-
tion" grounds we are explaining the partially known by the
absolutely unknown.

An instance of quite a different sort from the above stood in
the writer's mind as almost conclusive proof of sense-direction
powers for a number of years. It may be briefly stated as fol-
lows:

A large Maltese tomcat once joined, on his own invitation, an
evening rowing party on one of the Wisconsin lakes. It was a
sultry summer night, as dark as a moonless night can be. Not a
breath of air was stirring. We rowed nearly due north, straight
out toward the middle of the lake, which is something over two
miles wide. For some time Tom purred and made himself gen-
erally agreeable from one end of the boat to the other ; but at
last he grew restless and extremely anxious to get home. He
would climb out to the end of the boat and, stretching his head
toward home, mew almost continuously. We amused ourselves
for some time by turning the boat slowly round and round, first
one way then the other, to see if we could throw Tom off his
bearings ; but all to no effect. Whether right side, left side, bow
or stern, Tom was always on the part of the boat nearest home,
and straining as far as he could in that direction. Fully a mile
from any shore, how could he tell which shore was which ? But
few lights were visible, the lake is thickly wooded, and the cot-
tages stand well back among the trees. Not one in the party
could recognize the lights of our own group of cottages. And no
one but myself and cat had any idea which way to go for home.
For my part, I had kept an eye out for the north star. But what

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS.

773

did Tom do for his bearings ? Could it be that through such
inky darkness he could see enough of the shore to distinguish
anything on it ? This was easily tested. Taking a heavy blanket

o «>

si flflf

PH «5 .

shawl, which was serving as cushion, we wrapped Tom up in a
number of thicknesses of it and one of the party held him in her
lap while the boat was slowly turned around. This was of no use.
On being released Tom started, with never a mistake and without

774 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the slightest hesitation, toward the end of the boat nearest home.
To make doubly sure that vision was impossible, Tom was
wrapped up and gently held flat in the bottom of the boat. This
made no difference. Whether the boat was turned by a single
stroke, as on a pivot, or rowed slowly around in a circle, the result
was always the same. Tom went, without hesitation, invariably
to the end or side of the boat nearest home.

Members of the party were blindfolded and required to guess
whether the boat was turned or allowed to stand still, or was
rowed in a straight line or in a circle ; and it was an even chance
whether they guessed right or wrong. Tom had a far better head
for direction than any of us.

It was suggested that possibly a gentle current of air might be
serving Tom as a direction-constant. This, however, could hardly
have penetrated the shawl, and certainly not when in the bottom
of the boat. Still, might not such a current be conveying odors
imperceptible to man, but not to a cat ? None of our number
could feel the slightest breath of air on our faces, and even with
the moistened finger held above the head, it was impossible to
detect any flow of air. Might not then a wake of odor hanging
in the air over our course serve as the needed direction-constant ?
This could hardly be, since we had rowed about so much that
anything of the sort must have become thoroughly diffused.

Sight, smell, and touch would thus seem to be inadequate to
explain the feat. Hearing still remains. But not a sound from
any shore broke the silence. No town or city was near to furnish
a roar, hum, or series of sounds of any sort. We could hear no
bands of music, nor even the occasional bark of a dog. For min-
utes at a time we could hear absolutely no sound. And yet, may
it not be that Tom heard every note some Tabby was making on
the shore a mile away ? If we were dealing with a sense as deli-
cate as this, further experiment was useless. We had no means
of stopping Tom's ears, and no microphone with which to explore
the darkness for sounds inaudible to our ears.

The above explanation is open to serious objections. The chief
of these, aside from such acuteness of hearing, is the fact that at
no moment during the hour or more we were experimenting with
him did Tom show the least doubt as to his direction. The audi-
tory constant, therefore, must have been uninterrupted, and sup-
posing it to have been the mewing of some cat, or cats, we all
know what the possibilities are. At the time, the writer was
quite convinced to the contrary, but several years afterward an
incident occurred which threw the balance of probability strongly
toward the side of the auditory explanation.

While hunting deer in Montana, I once lay on the top of a hill
watching a doe as she kept guard while her two fawns were feed-

THE METHOD OF HOMING PIGEONS. 775

ing. The three deer were in about the middle of a level grassy
plain fully half a mile from where I lay. I focused my field
glasses on the group, and soon became much interested in the
alertness of the doe. Not for an instant did she show the slightest
relaxation of attention. Generally, under such circumstances, a
deer is seen to sniff the air in every direction, but this time no
air was stirring, and the main feature of the watching was the
constant movement of the long ears. At a slight noise, occasioned
by my change of position, a noise not even noticed by myself, I
was surprised to see the doe start, turn about, and point her ears
in my direction. After a minute's silence, her attention was
attracted elsewhere, and this time I made the lowest possible
" ahem ! " Again both ears and head were directed toward me.
And so in turn for an hour, I tried all manners of slight sounds,
low whistles, snapping the fingers, tapping my rifle stock, scrap-
ing the grass with my foot ; all were followed, with the precision
of the response of a strychnized frog, with the attent turning of
the ears in my direction. The writer at that time was not famil-
iar with any special apparatus for the purpose, and so can give
no exact measure of the sounds employed. I can only say, how-
ever, that they were so slight that, if a deer could hear them half
a mile away over a grassy plain, it might be an easy matter for a
cat to hear a moderately loud " mew " a mile away, over the sur-
face of water on a still night.

It is not rare to find great differences in keenness of sense
among different men. These differences become emphasized by
use, as we find in the sight of the sailor or savage, or in the touch
of the blind. There is every reason why we should expect to find
such differences much more pronounced between different species
of animals. So marked, in fact, do they appear that the tempta-
tion has always been to declare them differences in kind. Before
doing this, we ought to make a beginning, at least, to learn the
possibilities of the senses as they exist in different animals. So
far as the writer has gone in this direction, he is content to con-
clude that they are using the ordinary senses, highly refined, it
may be, by generations of development ; and the every-day logic
which tells man and animal alike that the shortest path between
two points is a straight line.

IN the course of his journeyings in the Pamirs, the Earl of Dunrnore came
upon a beautifully clear sheet of water, ont of which the Yambulak River flows.
It is surrounded on three sides by stupendous cliffs, rising sheer up two thousand
feet from the water's edge, with one huge glacier standing out in bold relief in
the middle of them, "which doubtless," he says, "gave the water the most beau-
tiful emerald hue I ever saw." The altitude of the lake is 15,800 feet, and the
summit of the Yambulak Pass beyond it is 16,530 feet high.

776 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

INCIDENTS OF CAMBODIAN LIFE.

BY ADHEMARD LECLERE.

THE Cambodian woman carries her child a-straddle of her left
hip, with her arm passed round its little body. She rarely
leaves it, except to attend to something in the house or the yard ;
and this custom of carrying the child thus is followed up so con-
stantly that one shoulder of the woman finally becomes higher
than the other. When the mother goes to the rice fields, or to the
village, or so far that this method of carrying it becomes fa-
tiguing, she puts the child into a shawl and carries it on her back.
In the house, the baby sleeps on a mat, on which the mother has
thrown an old sampot (cloth), so as to raise its head a little higher
than the body, or in a shawl hung as a hammock, or in a ham-
mock made of a quartered bamboo, the ends of which are whole.
The child is naked, but when it is cold in the morning it is given
a shawl or a piece of sampot for a covering, and is carefully cov-
ered at night. Boys go naked till they are six, seven, or eight
years old, but after that age they put on a sampot; girls are
dressed when they are four years old. In some parts of the coun-
try the children, otherwise nude, wear a small plate of orna-
mented silver in front. It is also a general custom to hang pieces
of money, ancient or modern, from the neck, and rings of silver
or gold on their arms and ankles. Mothers too poor to give them
jewels tie a piece of cord that has been blessed by a wizard around
their necks. The ears of girls are bored very early, sometimes
even before they can walk, and cotton threads are inserted, to be
replaced in time by gold or silver earrings. The heads of chil-
dren are shaved often — to harden them, the Cambodians say — but
at the age of three or four years a circular tuft is permitted to
grow on the top of the head, and when the hair in this spot has
reached a certain length it is bound and fastened with a pin of
gold, silver, copper, or wood.

Cambodian children, it seems to me, are not as precocious as
European children, favorable as the climate is to them. Thus we
do not find in Cambodia (or in Annam, Tonquin, or Cochin China)
babies beginning to walk in their tenth or ninth month, and I
have never seen any who could speak correctly in their third
year, although in France we have little gentlemen and young
dames who are in their second year already very talkative and
very important personages. The children of the Cambodians are
generally pretty till they are about twelve years old, with more
regular features than they will have afterward ; and it is pleas-
ant to find in them some of the resemblance to their Indian ances-
tors, which has been absorbed with the features of a more numer-

INCIDENTS OF CAMBODIAN LIFE. 777

cms and less gifted race. The children have prodigious memories,
and I have often been surprised at the facility with which, without
giving themselves much trouble, they learn in a few months the
Roman characters and French writing and language. The faculty
of learning foreign languages persists in the adult; the grown
men, our servants, persons living near us, learn enough of our
language to make themselves understood, while we have to take
nearly two years to learn, without study, as much as they. The
children are very intelligent, but I have been assured, and am
disposed to believe it, that their intelligence, if it does not remain
stationary, becomes less active after their fifteenth year. It seems
as if a little darkness came over their minds when their primi-
tively pure features are deformed and they lose their atavistic re-
semblance to their ancestors.

They are docile, obedient, quiet in their sports, and very re-
spectful to their parents. They are never seen presenting any-
thing to their father with one hand, negligently or hurriedly, but
well-brought-up children, observing well the old customs, offer
the object requested with both hands, gracefully bowing. They
do not eat with their father unless he invites them, but with their
mother and her women, in whose charge they are. They do not
sit with their father or on the same level, because it is proper for
children to be always placed below their father. They have like-
wise a great respect for their mother, but it is more intimate than
that for their father, who is also master of the house, and is desig-
nated by a word that means master and prince. Respect for the
mother, while less demonstrative, is more durable ; it continues
in sons and daughters long after their marriage, and with grand
mandarins and in the palace assumes a really touching appearance
of deep veneration. I was told that the king never came into the
presence of his mother without saluting her on his knees, and with-
out offering her the homage which his mandarins offered to him.

At eleven years for the girls and thirteen years for the boys —
or sometimes thirteen years for the girls and fifteen years for the
boys, but never twelve or fourteen years, for years of even num-
bers are considered unlucky — the ceremony of cutting the hair is
performed ; that is, the shearing of the tuft which we have seen
is tied and fastened with a pin. This ceremony of Brahmanic
origin, a kind of sacrament instituted by Siva, which the Hindus
call Jcesenta, takes place usually in the anniversary month of the
child's birth, on the first day of the decrease of the moon, in the
presence of all the relatives and the friends and clients of the
family. The festivals already mentioned in connection with the
cutting of the hair are repeated in full, but this time it is the turn
of persons of higher importance to perform the ceremony. This
festival is the festival of puberty. From its celebration the child

778 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lets Ms hair grow as lie desires to wear it. The girls cease to
play and laugh with the boys, observe a more strict and graver
walk, and more usually keep to the house.

Betrothals take place, in the presence of both families, one or
two years before the marriage. They consist of a repast partici-
pated in in common by all the connection, and in the proclamation
of the engagement which the two families have made to unite
their children. As the diviners have named the most favorable
day for the betrothal, they also designate the most suitable one
for the celebration of the marriage. This ceremony takes place,
like the former one, in the presence of both the contracting fami-
lies, the kindred, and the neighbors. It includes presents made
by the groom to the parents of the bride, the offer of betel and
areca nuts, the invocation of ancestors, and the chang day or bind-
ing of the wrists, a curious ceremony which all the parents per-
form by attaching cotton threads around the left wrist, in token,
I suppose, of the bonds which will hereafter exist between the
members of the two families. Besides this a present of sam-
pots, silver bars, or money is made by the friends of the groom to
the mother of the bride, in consideration of the care she bestowed
on her daughter in her infancy. This has been improperly, perhaps,
styled the price of the girl ; if not a proof of her purchase by the
groom, it is certainly a relic of the customs of a period when the
woman was bought by the one who married her, and the price
paid to the mother. I say to the mother, not to the father, be-
cause the present is in reality made to her, and not to the head of
the family ; a very important fact, which with others that I shall
adduce attests to the existence in the past of the matriarchate
among the Khmers.

I find traces of this state of society in this fact, that the price
of the " nursing milk," as it is called, is paid to the mother ; and
also in the much more lasting and profound respect had by the
son for his mother, and in the general and uncontested prin-
ciple that the woman put away by her husband has the right to
take her children with her. I might add, too, in support of this
view that it is the custom, always observed, for the father not to
consent to a marriage which the mother opposes, and not to
pledge a child without the consent of its mother ; then there is
the instinctive horror, much more marked than when the father
is the victim, which Cambodians feel at the thought of a child
beating its mother. One of the most conclusive proofs appears in
the word for cousin-german, which when analyzed means brother-
grandmother, or brother by the same grandmother, but never
brother by the same grandfather. This affords an almost incon-
testable trace of an ancient social regime when relationship fol-
lowed the female line.

INCIDENTS OF CAMBODIAN LIFE. 779

The Cambodian woman occupies a dignified position in the
house of her husband. He owes her respect and gives it, and is
not rude or violent in her presence. He can put her away, but
she can also claim a divorce at law. She can go to law without
the consent of her husband, when she must be supported by a
relative, or, if she has none, by a respectable neighbor. If she is
summoned to court, she can oblige her husband to go with her,
under penalty, if he fails to go, of his losing his rights over her ;
and she can leave him without his having any right to complain
or to claim reparation. He can pawn her or sell her as a slave if
she consents, but he can not dispose of himself in such way with-
out her approval. The woman can have but one husband, and
he can not take a second wife or any additional one without the
consent of his first wife. The first wife is called the first wife,
the second the middle wife, and the third the end wife ; those that
follow are concubines. They are all hierarchically subordinated
one to the other, but the great wife, the true wife, is mistress of
the house, and the others are only her followers and servants. If
one of these encroaches upon her prerogatives, she can punish
her; if she seeks to seduce the husband and supplant the first
wife in his heart, she can call her guilty rival before the court
and get judgment against her. The first wives sometimes select
the other wives for their husbands, often choosing such as will be
agreeable companions to themselves ; and women are numerous
who have been able to exert such influence over their husbands
or exercise such power in the house as to prevent the introduction
of any other wives.

Cambodian maidens rarely go astray, and infanticide is abso-
lutely unknown in the country. Mothers are anxious to have
children, and are not afraid of any number of them. A woman
who has no children after several years of marriage is unhappy
over the fact, and her fellow- women sympathize with her for it.

The people are brave, willing to run considerable dangers for
a small reward, and are valiant in action ; but they are supersti-
tious, and believe in ghosts, evil spirits, witches, and witchcraft.
They offer worship to genii and invoke them, good and bad alike,
when they are afraid or in need. It is not rare to find in the cor-
ner of a rice field a little straw mat inclosing a fragment of a
sculptured prayer from some ancient Khmer monument, or sim-
ply an ordinary stone. They believe that the arac dwells in this
stone, give it homage, and burn fragrant sticks before it, which
they plant in a piece of banana stem, or a small basin, or in half
a cocoanut filled with sand. They also render a secret worship to
Ungams derived from the Brahmanic epoch which have been con-
cealed for centuries in the depths of natural grottoes, without
knowing what these stones represent.

780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Khmers believe in unlucky places, which one can not in-
habit or cultivate without exposure to death ; in places haunted
by evil spirits, which one can not visit without perishing ; in
stones or statues which one can not touch without falling sick ;
and places which one can not pass without making an offering.
There are in the province of Kampot a mountain at the foot of
which the Chinese dies who attempts to pass it, and a defile
where it is necessary to alight from one's horse or carriage and
cast an offering of branches upon a cup placed at the fork of two
roads, saying, " I offer thee a parasol." A statue of a woman of
the Brahmanic period stands on a river island in the province of
Sambaur, before which women can not present themselves, but
which men are permitted to caress in order to insure the fidelity
of their wives.

Many women and children wear cords which they buy of the
witches, in order to preserve them from certain maladies ; and
from these sometimes hang little leather cylinders which are
believed to be very effective. In certain provinces of Upper
Cambodia characters are tattooed on the breast as preservatives
against attacks by the tiger and panther, and against snake
bites.

The Cambodians are usually pleasantly disposed, but very re-
vengeful for injuries. Theft is common, but less so than in Cochin
China. Assassination does not excite any great degree of atten-
tion or cause any deep remorse in the murderer. They bear pain
with much courage ; but illness reduces their energy to a very
low degree. Prisoners condemned to death by decapitation march
courageously to punishment, smoking their last cigarette, with-
out bravado and without weakness.

The paddy gathered and deposited in the granary is protected
by a stone for which they have a superstitious regard ; and they
employ the achars, the religious literati of the village, to read
prayers and invocations over the store. — Translated for The Popu-
lar Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

THE latest report of the directors of convict prisons in England gives satisfac-
tory evidence that serious crime is perceptibly diminishing throughout the coun-
try. Thus, during the five years ending in 1859, when the population of England
and Wales was 19,257,000, the sentences to penal servitude numbered 2,589. The
years 1885 to 1889 showed the much lower total of 945 ; the population then
being 27,830,179. Since that period a further decrease has been registered. A
reduction in the number of young convicts has been remarked. Even as late as
1887 it stood at 3'2 per cent of the whole prison population. In 1892 it was 1'2
per cent. These observations agree with the statement that the diminution in
the whole amount of criminality is mainly attributable to a decrease in the num-
ber of young offenders, while the proportion of older delinquents has increased.

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 781

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK.

BY ALFKED K. WALLACE, F. E. S.
ERRATIC BLOCKS AND ICE-SHEETS.— (Continued.')

n.

WE must now consider briefly the distribution of erratics in
North. America, because they present some peculiar fea-
tures and teach us much concerning the possibilities of glacier
motion.

An immense area of the Northeastern States, extending south
to New York, and then westward in an irregular line to Cincin-
nati and St. Louis, is almost wholly covered with a deposit of drift
material, in which rocks of various sizes are imbedded, while
other rocks, often of enormous size, lie upon the surface. These
blocks have been carefully studied by the American geologists,
and they present us with some very interesting facts. Not only
are the distances from which they have been transported very
great, but in very many cases they are found at a greater eleva-
tion than the place from which they must have come. Prof.
G. F. Wright found an enormous accumulation of bowlders on a
sandstone plateau in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. Many of
these bowlders were granite, and must have come either from the
Adirondack Mountains two hundred miles to the north, or from
the Canadian Highlands still farther away. This accumulation
of bowlders was seventy or eighty feet high, and it extended
many miles, descending into a deep valley one thousand feet
below the plateau in a nearly continuous line forming part of the
southern moraine of the great American ice-sheet.

On the Kentucky hills, about twelve miles south of Cincin-
nati, conglomerate bowlders containing pebbles of red jasper can
be traced to a limited outcrop of the same rock in Canada to the
north of Lake Huron, more than six hundred miles distant, and
similar bowlders have been found at intervals over the whole
intervening country. In both these cases the blocks must have
passed over intervening valleys and hills, the latter as high or
nearly as high as the source from whence the rocks were derived.
Even more remarkable are numerous bowlders of Helderberg
limestone on the summit of the Blue Ridge in Pennsylvania,
which must have been brought from ledges at least five hundred
feet lower than the places upon which they now lie. The Blue
Ridge itself shows remarkable signs of glacial abrasion, in a well-
defined shoulder marking the southern limit of the ice (as indi-
cated also by heaps of drift and erratics), so that Mr. Wright

782 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

concludes that several hundred feet of the ridge have been worn
away by the ice.

The crowning example of bowlder transportation is, however,
afforded by the blocks of light gray gneiss discovered by Prof.
Hitchcock on the summit of Mount Washington, over six thou-
sand feet above sea-level, and identified with Bethlehem gneiss,
whose nearest outcrop is in Jefferson, several miles to the north-
west, and three or four thousand feet lower than Mount Wash-
ington.

These varied phenomena of erratic blocks and rock striations,
together with the enormous quantity of bowlder clay and glacial
drift spread over the whole of the Eastern States, terminating
southward in a more or less abrupt line of mounds having all the
characteristics of an enormous moraine, have led American geolo-
gists to certain definite conclusions in which they all practically
agree. It may be well first to give a notion of the enormous
amount of the glacial debris under which a large part of the East-
ern States is buried. In New England these deposits are of less
thickness than farther south, averaging from ten to twenty feet
over the whole area. In Pennsylvania and New York east of the
Alleghanies the deposits are very irregular, often sixty or seventy
feet thick and sometimes more. West of the Alleghanies in New
York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio the thickness is much greater, be-
ing often one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet in the wide
valleys, and forty or fifty feet on many of the uplands. Prof.
Newberry calculates that in Ohio it averages sixty feet deep over
an area of twenty-five thousand square miles.

The direction of the strise and of the traveled bowlders to-
gether with the form of the great terminal moraines show that
there must have been two main centers of outflow for the ice-
sheet, one over Labrador, the other over the Laurentian High-
lands north of Lake Superior. The southern margin of the drift
may be roughly represented by portions of circles drawn from
these two points as centers. The erratics on the summit of
Mount Washington show that the ice-sheet must have been a
mile thick in its neighborhood, and much thicker at the centers
of dispersion, while the masses of drift and erratics on plateaus two
thousand feet high near its southern boundary indicate a great
thickness at the termination. The Laurentian plateau is now about
two thousand feet above the sea-level, but there are numerous in-
dications from buried river channels, filled with drift and far
below the sea, which lead to the conclusion that during the Ice
age the land was much higher. That snow can accumulate to
an enormous extent over land of moderate height when the condi-
tions are favorable for such an accumulation is shown by the
case of Greenland, the greater part of whose surface is a vast

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 783

plateau of ice flowing outward by numerous glaciers into the sea.
The center of this plateau where Dr. Nansen crossed it was over
nine thousand feet above sea-level, and it may be very much
higher farther north. It, therefore, seems probable that the great
American ice-sheet was, at least, as high, and perhaps much
higher, and this would give sufficient slope for the flow to the
southern border. Of course, during the successive stages of the
glaciation there may have been numerous local centers from
which glaciers radiated, and during the passing away of the Ice
Age these local glaciers would have left striae and other indica-
tions of their presence. But so much of the area covered by the
drift — all, in fact, south of the New England mountains and the
Great Lakes — is undulating ground, hill, valley, and plateau of
moderate height, that here all the phenomena seem to be due
to the great confluent ice-sheet during the various phases of its
advance and its passing away.

Sir Henry Howorth, in his very instructive work already
quoted, denies the existence and even the possibility of such ice-
sheets as those here indicated as having occurred in North Amer-
ica and Europe. He maintains that ice of the requisite thickness
could not exist, as it would be crushed or liquefied by its own
weight ; and further, that if it existed it could not possibly move
over hundreds of miles of generally level country, passing over
hills and valleys and carrying with it, either on its surface or in
its lower strata, the enormous quantity of bowlders, gravel, and
clay which we find everywhere overlying the present surface of
the ground. No doubt the difficulty does seem an enormous one,
but I think that it can be shown to be not so great as it seems ;
and it is certainly by no means so insuperable as that of the apoc-
ryphal floods, or " waves of translation " as they have been called,
to which he imputes the phenomena. He asks us to believe in one
or more gigantic waves sweeping over Eastern North America,
carrying bowlders to the summit of Mount Washington, nearly
six thousand feet high, scattering others over an area which is
roughly one thousand miles from east to west and six hundred
from north to south, and in its course producing those wonderful
strise, grooves, and furrows in the rocks photographed in the
American reports, and the enormous extent of smooth and
rounded rock surfaces that is found over this wide area. Besides
these there are two other phenomena absolutely inconsistent with
a diluvial agency. One is the enormous deposits of fine compact
clay bearing rounded and scratched stones thickly scattered
through it, utterly unlike any deposit produced by water, which
would necessarily leave the stones hundreds of miles behind the
place to which the fine mud would be carried. The other is the
existence of well-defined heaps, mounds, and ridges of gravel and

784 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bowlders, forming the terminal moraine of the ice-sheet. This is
exactly similar in general form and structure to the moraines left
by the old Alpine or North British glaciers, and if the former
could have been produced by a flood so could the latter. But the
American terminal moraine runs across the country almost irre-
spective of its contour, and is often as well marked on plateaus as
in valleys and on the intermediate slopes. Moreover, this moraine
often lies on the southern slope of the hills draining toward the
Mississippi Valley ; and we are asked to believe that a flood vast
enough to carry gravel and rocks for hundreds of miles to such a
position, left them all stranded on a slope down which it must
have been rushing with increased velocity and without hindrance
toward the Gulf of Mexico ! So far as I know, Sir Henry Ho-
worth is absolutely alone among living writers in his diluvial
theories, and I only give this brief statement of their over-
whelming impossibilities because his book is so interesting, and
his assertions that his theory explains all the facts are so con-
fident and so often repeated that they are likely to confuse the
judgment of readers who have not paid special attention to the
subject.

Returning to the main question, of the possibility of glaciers
or ice-sheets moving over long distances of generally level ground
with intervening hills and valleys, there is an important piece of
evidence, the bearing of which appears to have been overlooked
by objectors. The former existence of the great Rhone glacier
carrying erratics to the slopes of the Jura from beyond Geneva
on the southwest to Soleure on the northeast, is universally ad-
mitted. This glacier passed out of the gorge between the Dent
du Midi and the Dent de Morcles, and a little below St. Maurice
enters on the alluvial plain which extends to the lake. From this
point to Geneva, a distance of about sixty miles, may be consid-
ered a level plain, the descent into the lake being balanced by the
ascent out of it. Yet it is admitted that the glacier did move
over this distance, since erratics which can be traced to their
source on the left of the valley below Martigny are found near
that city. But the main part of the glacier curved round to the
right across the Lake of Neufchatel, and extended at least as far
as Soleure, a distance of about ninety miles. To do this it must
have ascended five or six hundred feet to the country around
Fribourg, and before reaching Soleure must have passed over a
hill three or four hundred feet higher. Yet on the flanks of the
Jura above Soleure there are erratics which have been carried on
the surface of the glacier from the east side of the valley below
Martigny, and close to Soleure itself there are remains of a ter-
minal subglacial moraine of compact bowlder clay. Sir Charles
Lyell describes this as —

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 785

&n unstratified mass of clay or mud, through which a variety of angular and
rubbed stones were scattered, and a marked proportion of the whole were pol-
ished and scratched, and the clay rendered so compact, as if by the incumbent
pressure of a great mass of ice, that it has been found necessary to blow it up
with gunpowder in making railway cuttings through part of it. A marble rock,
of the age of our Portland stone, on which this old moraine rests has its surface
polished like a looking-glass, displaying beautiful sections of fossil shells, while
occasionally, besides finer striae, there are deeper rectilinear grooves, agreeing in
direction with the course in which the extinct glacier moved according to the
theory of M. Guyot before explained.*

It is evident that, to have produced such effects as are here de-
scribed, the glacier must have extended much beyond Soleure,
.and have been very thick even there. It thus proves to demon-
stration that a glacier can travel for a hundred miles over a gen-
erally level country, that it can pass over hills and valleys, and
that, even near its termination, it can groove, and grind, and pol-
ish rocks, and deposit large masses of hard bowlder clay. And
.all this was done by a single glacier issuing from a comparatively
narrow valley, and then spreading out over an area many times
greater than that of its whole previous course. In this case it is
clear that such a vast mass of ice, constituting a veritable ice-
sheet on a small scale, could not have derived its motion solely
from the push given to it by the parent glacier at St. Maurice.
Neither could gravitation derived from the slope of the ground
have affected it, for it passed mostly over level ground or up
.slopes, and its termination at Soleure is actually nearly two hun-
dred feet higher than its starting point at the mouth of the val-
ley below St. Moritz ! There remains as a cause of motion only
the slope of the upper surface of the glacier, the ice slowly flow-
ing downward, and, by means of its tenacity and its viscosity on
.a large scale, dragging its lower portion still more slowly over
the uneven or upward sloping surface. This mode of motion will
be discussed later when dealing with the origin of lake-basins.

No doubt at this epoch of maximum glaciation the ice-sheet
extended over the whole country between the Bernese Alps and
the Jura, and the downward flow of the lateral glaciers along the
valley of the Sarine, Aare, and other rivers flowing toward So-
leure greatly assisted the general onward motion. But the fact
remains, and it can not be too strongly insisted on, that here we
have a veritable ice-sheet moving over hill and valley, carrying
on its surface quantities of erratic blocks, rounding, striating, and
polishing the rocks over which it passed, and with the material
thus crushed and ground away forming great deposits of bowlder
clay, much of which still remains, although enormous quantities

* The Antiquity of Man, fourth edition, p. 349.
VOL. XLIV. — 58

786 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

must have been carried away by the rivers to the lowlands of
Europe and to the sea. The fact is therefore demonstrated, and
is implicitly admitted by the most conservative of glacialists,
that in this case an ice-sheet has moved onward over a hilly pla-
teau for nearly a hundred miles, even when its terminal moraine
is at a higher level than its exit from the mountain valley where
it had its origin.

It will now be well briefly to sketch the distribution of erratic
blocks in Great Britain, and the conclusions to be drawn from
them as to the former existence of an ice-sheet under which the
greater part of our islands was buried.

Every mountain group north of the Bristol Channel was a
center from which, in the earlier and later phases of the Ice age,,
glaciers radiated ; but many facts prove that during its maximum
development these separate glacier systems became confluent, and
formed extensive ice-sheets which overflowed into the Atlantic
Ocean on the west, and spread far over the English lowlands on
the east and south. This is indicated partly by the great height
at which glacial striee are found, reaching to twenty-five hundred
feet in the Lake District and in Ireland, somewhat higher in
North Wales, and in Scotland to nearly thirty-five hundred feet ;
but also by the extraordinary distribution of erratic blocks,,
many of which can be traced to localities whence they could only
have been brought across the sea. The direction of the glacial
striae and of the smoothed side of ice-worn rocks also indicate that
the shallow seas were all filled up by ice. The Outer Hebrides,
for example, are all ice-ground from the southeast and east,
showing that the deep channel of the Minch was filled up,,
and that the Scotch ice-sheet flowed completely over the islands.
On all sides of Ireland, except the southern coast, the ice flowed
outward, but on the northeast the flow was diverted southward,
and on the extreme north, westward, by the pressure of the over-
flowing ice-sheet of Scotland which here encountered it. In like
manner, the ice-marks on the east coast of Ireland and the west
coast of Wales are diverted southward by the mutual pressure of
their ice-sheets, which, together with that of the west of Scotland,
filled up St. George's Channel. That such was the case is further
proved by the fact that the Isle of Man is ice-ground in a general
direction from north to south, and to the summit of its loftiest
mountains, which rise to a height of over two thousand feet.
This could only have been done by an ice-sheet flowing over it,
and this view is further supported by some most remarkable
facts in the dispersal of local erratics. These are always found to
the south of the places where they occur in situ, never to the
north ; and, what is still more noteworthy, they are often found

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 787

far above the native rock. Thus, bowlders of the peculiar Fox-
dale granite are found about fourteen hundred feet higher than
the highest point where there is an outcrop of this rock.

The Scotch ice-sheet flowed outward on all sides, but on the
east it was met by the southward extension of the great Scandi-
navian ice-sheet. On the extreme north the meeting of these two
ice-sheets resulted in a flow to the northwest which glaciated the
Orkney Islands, while the Shetlands, much farther north, received
the full impact of the Scandinavian ice alone, and are therefore
glaciated from the northeast. The dividing line of the Scotch and
Scandinavian ice-sheets was in the North Sea, not far from the
east coast of Scotland ; but farther south, at Flamborough Head
and Holderness, the latter impinged on our coast, bringing with
it enormous quantities of Scandinavian rocks. Many years ago
Prof. Sedgwick described the cliffs of bowlder clay at Holderness
as containing " an incredible number of smooth round blocks of
granite, gneiss, greenstone, mica slate, etc., resembling none of the
rocks of England, but resembling specimens derived from various
parts of the great Scandinavian chain." These are mixed, how-
ever, with a number of British rocks from the north and west, in-
dicating the meeting ground of the two conflicting ice-sheets.
Similar blocks occur all along the coast as far as the cliffs of Cro-
mer in Norfolk. Across the peninsula of Flamborough about two
miles west of the lighthouse there is a moraine ridge contain-
ing a few Scandinavian bowlders, but mainly composed of British
rocks. These latter consist of numerous carboniferous rocks
from the north and northwest, together with many of Shap granite
— a peculiar rock found only on Shap Fell in the eastern side of
the Lake District, together with a few of Galloway granite.
These facts, it will be seen, add further confirmation to the theory
of great confluent ice-sheets indicated by the ice-markings upon
the various groups of mountains, while it is hopelessly impos-
sible to explain them on any theory of local glaciers, even with
the aid of submergence and of floating ice.

The study of our British erratics has been assiduously pursued
for many years past by a committee of the British Association ;
and by means of a map showing the chief facts collected up to this
date, kindly furnished me by Mr. Percy F. Kendal, secretary of
the committee, I am able to give a brief sketch of the more im-
portant of the phenomena, and their bearing on the extent and
motion of the British ice-sheet. The general reader may be in-
formed that great numbers of rocks are so local and so character-
istic, often being confined to a very limited district or to a single
mountain, that the origin of a considerable portion of the errat-
ics can be ascertained with the greatest certainty.

Taking first the Shap granite, which has already been men-

788 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tioned as occurring at Flamborough Head, we find that it has been
carried northward as far as the Solway Frith, and eastward to the
Eden Valley in great quantity and over a wide area. Thence
can be traced a line of bowlders of this rock over the high plateau
of Stainmoor into the valley of the Tees, and onward round the
coast by Scarborough to Holderness, while a branch descends
southward along the valley of the Ouse to York. Coming back
to its source on Shap Fell, a train of bowlders of the same rock
has been traced southward in a curving line, passing the east side
of Morecambe Bay near Lancaster, and thence sparingly south-
eastward to near Whalley. Along the same line are found bowl-
ders of peculiar granites from Eskdale and Buttermere, marking
the line of junction of the northern ice-sheet with that which filled
up the Irish Sea and pressed inward between the glaciers of Cum-
berland and North Wales. This is indicated by the fact that
south of this line are scattered immense quantities of erratics,
both from the southwest of Scotland and the Lake District,
spreading over the whole of the low country as far as Bridgnorth
and Wolverhampton, and eastward to the Derbyshire highlands.
These same erratics are found round the north coasts of Wales
and part of Anglesea, showing how the iceflows divided on either
side of the mountain mass of North Wales.

The center of the great glacier sheet of North Wales appears
to have been over the Arenig Mountains, whence erratics of a
peculiar volcanic rock have been traced to the north and east,
mingling with the last-described group ; while a distinct train of
these Welsh erratics stretches southeastward to the country west
of Birmingham.

In the Isle of Man are found many erratics from Galloway and
a few from the Lake District. But the most remarkable are those
of a very peculiar rock found only on Ailsa Craig, a small island
in the Frith of Clyde, and a single bowlder of a peculiar pitchstone
found only in the Isle of Arran. The Ailsa Craig rock has also
been found at Moel Tryfaen, on the west side of Snowdon, and
more recently at Killiney, County Dublin, on the seashore.*

The case of the bowlders in the Isle of Man, which have been
carried nearly eight hundred feet above their source, has already
been mentioned, but there are many other examples of this phe-
nomenon in our islands ; and as they are of great importance in
regard to the general theory of glacial motion a few of them may
be noted here. So early as 1818 Mr. Weaver described a granite
block on the top of Cronebane, a slate hill in Ireland, and several
hundred feet higher than any place where similar granite was to
be found in situ ; and he also noticed several deposits of limestone

* Nature, vol. xlvii, p. 464.

THE ICE AGE AND ITS WORK. 789

gravel in places from three to four hundred feet higher than the
beds of limestone rock which are from two to ten miles off. Debris
of red sandstone is also found much higher than the parent rock.
Bowlders of Shap granite, Mr. Kendal tells us, have passed over
Stainmoor by tens of thousands, and in doing so have been carried
about two hundred feet above their source ; and the curious Per-
mian rock, " Brockram," has been carried in the same direction no
less than a thousand feet higher than its highest point of origin.*
In Scandinavia there are still more striking examples, erratic
blocks having been found at an elevation of forty-five hun-
dred feet which could not possibly have come from any place
higher than eighteen hundred feet, f We thus find clear and
absolute demonstration of glacier ice moving up-hill and drag-
ging with it rocks from lower levels to elevations varying from
two hundred to twenty-seven hundred feet above their origin.
In Switzerland we have proof of the same general fact in the
terminal moraine of the northern branch of the Rhone glacier
being about two hundred feet higher than the Lake of Geneva,
with very much higher intervening ground. As it is universally
admitted that the glacier of the Rhone did extend to beyond
Soleure, all the a priori objections to the various cases of rocks
carried much higher than their origin, in America, the British
Isles, and Scandinavia, fall to the ground. We must either deny
the existence of the ice-sheet in the great Swiss valley, and
find some other means of accounting for the traveled blocks on
the Jura between Geneva and Soleure, or admit that the lower
strata of a great glacier can travel up-hill and over hill and valley,
and that the ice-sheets of the British Isles, of Scandinavia, and of
North America merely exhibit the very same characteristics as
those of Switzerland, but sometimes on a larger scale. We may
not be yet able to explain fully how it thus moves, or what slope
of the upper surface is required in order that the bottom of the
ice may move up a given ascent, but the fact of such motion can
not any longer be denied.

The facts thus established render it more easy for us to accept
one of the latest conclusions of British glacialists. A great sub-
mergence of a large portion of the British Isles during the Glacial
period, or in the interval between successive phases of the Glacial
period, has long been accepted by geologists, and maps have been
often published showing the small group of islands to which
our country was then reduced, the supposed subsidence being
about fourteen hundred feet. The evidence for this is the oc-
currence, at a few spots, of glacial gravels containing marine

* Wright's Man and the Glacial Period, p. 1 54.

•j- James Geikie's Great Ice Age, second edition, p. 404.

79o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shells in tolerable abundance, the most celebrated being at Moel
Tryfaen, on the west side of Snowdon, at a height of more than
thirteen hundred feet. Shell-bearing drifts have also been found
near Macclesfield at a height of over eleven hundred feet, and to
the east of Manchester at between five and six hundred feet eleva-
tion. Others have since been found on Gloppa, a hill near Os-
westry. The fact that the shell-bearing gravels of Moel Tryfaen
are nearly forty feet thick shows that, if they are due to sub-
mergence, the land must have remained stationary at that level
for a considerable period of time, and there would probably be other
stationary periods at lower levels. Yet nowhere in the valleys or
on the hill slopes of Wales, or the Lake District, or in the English
lowlands are there any of the old beaches or sea cliffs, ormarine de-
posits of any kind, that must have been formed during such a sub-
sidence and which can hardly have been everywhere cleared away
by subsequent glaciation. Another difficulty is that the shells of
these drifts are such as could not have lived together on one spot,
some being northern species, others southern, some frequenting
sandy others muddy bottoms, some which live only below tidal
water while others are shore species. And, lastly, they are very
fragmentary, only a small percentage of entire shells being found.
In consequence of these various difficulties it was suggested by
the late Mr. Belt that the great Irish Sea ice-sheet had carried up
a portion of the sea-bottom imbedded in its substance, perhaps
containing deposits of shells of various periods and thus explain-
ing the intermixture of species as well as their fragmentary con-
dition. The fact that bowlders and pebbles from Scotland, Ailsa
Craig, and Cumberland have been found in the Moel Tryfaen beds
almost amounts to a proof that they were so uplifted ; and a recent
search has shown that in the other localities where marine shells
have been found in drift at great elevations similar foreign rocks
occur, rendering it almost certain that the same ice-sheets which
have distributed foreign erratics so widely over our country, and
which in doing so must have passed over the sea-bottom, have in
a few cases carried with them a portion of that sea-bottom, and
deposited it with the erratics in the places where both are now
found. A full discussion of this point, with replies to various ob-
jections, by Mr. P. F. Kendal, will be found in the volume already
quoted ; and he has recently adduced a fresh argument against
" the great submergence " in the fact that, if it ever occurred, our
lowlands must for a long time have formed the bottom of a sea
two hundred fathoms deep, yet not a single shell characteristic of
that depth has yet been discovered in the drift.* The cumulative

* Wright's Man and the Glacial Period, pp. 167-175. Also Geological Magazine, No-
vember, 1892, pp. 491-500.

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 791

evidence against the submergence is now almost, if not quite, con-
clusive.

In the brief outline now given of the facts of glacial geology
bearing upon the former existence, the thickness, extent, and mo-
tion of ice-sheets, it has only been possible to treat the subject
very broadly, omitting all those details and minor difficulties
which can not be discussed within the limits of a popular article.
My object has been to explain the nature and amount of the con-
verging evidence demonstrating the existence of enormous ice-
sheets in the Northern hemisphere, to serve as a basis for the dis-
cussion of the glacial origin of lake-basins, which will form the
subject of another article. — Fortnightly Review.

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE.

BY WALTER LODIAN.

IT is one hundred years ago (the 22d of March, 1792) since a
young man named Claude Chappe presented himself at the
bar of the Legislative Assembly. He carried there a secret vocabu-
lary composed of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine
words, represented by some numbers, and destined to be trans-
mitted by a system of visual telegraphy by means of a machine
carrying the signals from station to station.

The examination of the machine was promptly confided to a
committee, which reported in favor of its adoption, and a little
after, the Convention voted the funds necessary to the establish-
ment of a trial line.

It is this memorable event — the origin of the most marvelous
discovery of our times — which the telegraphic people have re-
cently feted as solemnly as possible.

On this occasion it has appeared to us useful as well as interest-
ing to retrace the history of telegraphy in France, to note briefly
the successive stages and the perfecting of the telegraphs which
have transformed the world.

Some essays in telegraphy were made in modern times, notably
at the end of the seventeenth century, by Dr. Hooke, an English
physician, who made service of an apparatus consisting of some
characters of a sufficient size for being perceived at a distance,
each one corresponding to a letter of the alphabet.

Under the reign of the fourteenth Bourbon clique, a savant
(G. Amontons), who became later on member of the Academy of
Sciences, took up the study of the problem of aerial telegraphy.
Highly interesting was the result thereof. Fontenelle, the litera-

792

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rian, has recounted these experiences. This was, according to
him, a very ingenious thing, permitting to make known all that
which one would at a great distance, in little time — for example,
from Paris to Rome in three or four hours — and this even with-

THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC APPARATUS.

out the news being given out in all the space between the two
cities. This preparation, so paradoxical and so chimeric in ap-
pearance, was executed in a little stretch of country, once in pres-
ence of monseigneur and once in presence of madame. The secret
consisted in disposing, in several consecutive posts, some young
men who, by some long-view telescopes, having perceived cer-

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 793

tain signals of the preceding post, transmitted them to the follow-
ing, and always thus in succession, and these different signals
were so many letters of an alphabet of which they had not the
cipher then at Paris and at Rome. The greatest distance seeable
by the telescopes made the distance between the posts, of which
the number was to be the least that was possible, and, as the sec-
ond post made some signals to the third, as soon as they were seen
made at the first, the news was found carried to Rome in almost
as little time as it needed for making the signals at Paris.

The government of Louis XV did not occupy themselves with
what it considered a mere plaything, and the inventor, discour-
aged, renounced his project. Thus was relinquished, some two
hundred years ago, a project in telegraphy which was about as
rapid, if not rapider, than the slow-coach message from Rome to
Paris of the present day, which
actually takes half a dozen hours
or so for the delivery from domi-
cile to domicile.

In 1788 Dupuis experimented
in turn with an alphabetic tele-
graph, and Linguet, on his side,
was also thus occupied about the
same epoch.

The idea was, therefore, so to
say, in the air when appeared
Claude Chappe, to whom the en-
tire globe is indebted in reality
for the invention of the telegraph.
This is one of the events the most
memorable in the history of hu-
manity.

Claude Chappe was born at
Brulon (department Sarthe) in
1763. His father gave him a class-
ical instruction of the most' approved kind. The studies of
Claude, commenced at the college of Joyeuse, at Rouen, were ter-
minated at" the seminary of La Fleche ; as to his four brothers,
they were placed in an establishment a trifle away from this lat-
ter town, and this has caused the supposition to some of his
biographers that Claude Chappe had conceived the idea of his
telegraph in order to be able to communicate with his brothers.
It is to-day demonstrated that this is nothing but a legend.

Chappe studied the sciences from his early youth. Physical
science specially attracted him, and he published at the age of
twenty years some very remarkable researches.

We have said that he submitted to the Legislative Assembly,

CHAPPE.

794

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the 22d of March, 1792, his invention. He read his petition him-
self, submitting "a discovery which he thought useful to the
public welfare," and presenting a facile means of communi-
cating rapidly at great distances all that which might be the
object of a correspondence. He could from them transmit the
recital of a fact at night as well as at day over a space of forty

AERIAL TELEGRAPHY, 1793.

miles in less than forty-six minutes, and in a manner almost as
rapid at a distance very much greater.

The Assembly accepted the tender of the machine, sent the
petition to the examination of the Committee of Public Instruc-
tion, and admitted Chappe to the honors of the sitting.

Unfortunately for him, the commissioners could not attend
any experiment; the ignorant populace destroyed the machine
which he had constructed at Belleville. The unlucky inventor
had, therefore, to demand aid and protection, with indemnity for
the necessary repairs.

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 795

The Convention, which had succeeded to the Legislative Assem-
bly in the meanwhile, resent the petition to the committee, but it
was not until the 1st of April, 1793, that the deputy Romme
mounted to the tribune for there to give reading of an admirable
report, of which the following is a little excerpt, describing briefly
the invention :

" The citizen Chappe offers an ingenious means of writing in
the air by displaying some characters very trifling in number,
simple as the straight lines of which they are composed, very dis-
tinct between them, of a rapid execution, and sensible at great
distances. To this first part of his procedure he uses a stenog-
raphy used in the diplomatic correspondences. We have made
some objections to him ; he has foreseen them, and has responded
victoriously. He removes all the difficulties which may present
themselves on the land over which is directed his line of corre-
spondence ; a sole case resists his means : this is that of a very
thick fog which comes over the north, in the aqueous countries,
and in winter; but outside this very rare case (which resists
equally all the processes known) they will have recourse momen-
tarily to the ordinary means. The intermediary agents employed
in the procedures of the citizen Chappe can not in any manner
betray the secret of his correspondence, because the stenographic
value of the signals will be unknown to them. Two verbal pro-
cesses of the municipality of the Sarthe attest the success of this
procedure in an essay which the author has made for them, and
permitting the author to advance with some assurance that with
his procedure, the dispatch which reported the news of the taking
of Bruxelles had been transmitted to the Convention and trans-
lated in twenty-five minutes."

[That was, note, a hundred years ago. Bruxelles is six hours
by express from Paris. The speed of transmitting over the aerial
telegraph of then was much quicker than by the electric tele-
graph of to-day, for at present it takes much longer than half an
hour — generally an hour — to remit an ordinary telegram from an
office in the Belgian capital to a domicile in Paris.]

In the same sitting the National Convention rendered a decree
authorizing the trials, and naming three commissaries — Lakanal,
Daunou, and Arbogast. A violent opposition was soon mani-
fested, but Lakanal sustained Chappe with all his authority, and
the inventor could construct a veritable telegraphic line of thirty-
five kilometres, starting from the lake St.-Fargeau, at Mdnilmon-
tant.

Finally, on the 12th of July, 1793, took place the definite trials,
which were for Chappe a veritable triumph. He received the
title of engineer-telegraphist, with the appointments attributed
to lieutenants of artillery.

796

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The telegraph was thus finally officially founded.

But on the 23d of January, 1805, the unfortunate Claude
Chappe, tortured by a cancer in the ear, committed suicide by
throwing himself in the pits of the hotel des teldgraphes, rue de
Grenelle-Saint-Germain 103. He was aged only forty-two years.

A MILITARY POST, 1794.

A stone which is still in the court of the hotel, near the central
post, bears this simple inscription : " To CLAUDE CHAPPE."

In 1844 the aerial network had in France a stretch of five
thousand kilometres, and comprised five hundred and thirty-four
stations. It was henceforth not to increase, because the first
trials of the electric telegraph were taking place in Albion, and
had created an immense sensation.

An order of the 23d of November, 1844, opened an extraordi-

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 797

nary credit of two hundred and forty thousand francs for mak-
ing experiments. The works commenced promptly on the railroad
of Paris to Rouen, and on the 18th of May, 1845, the first dis-
patches by the electric telegraph took place.

The first telegraphic apparatus used was the patent of Foy-
Bre'guet. On the 20th of November, 1850, a law was made per-
mitting private persons to send dispatches over the wires (the
state hitherto was the only party using it) after rigorous investiga-
tion of their identity. The tariff was established at three francs
per dispatch of one to twenty words ; over, twelve centimes per
myriametre. On the 31st of December, 1851, was inaugurated
the submarine cable from Calais to Dover.

The number of dispatches in 1851 was 9,014. The length of
the telegraphic lines in operation attained at December 31, 1851,
2,133 kilometres.

In 1854 was created the general direction of telegraphic lines.
The writing apparatus of Morse substituted the fugitive signals
of the Foy-Brdguet system, and the telegraphic system went from
7,175 kilometres to 9,244 kilometres of lines.

The year 1860 was signaled by an important fact. A condi-
tional agreement was concluded with Mr. Hughes, professor of
physics at New York, the celebrated inventor of the printing ap-
paratus, which was definitely adopted in 1861 by the French.

The decree of the 13th of August, 1864, lowered from one franc
to fifty centimes the tariff on dispatches simply circulating in
Paris. The happy consequences of this liberal measure surpassed
the most optimistic prophecies. They resulted in the following
figures, comment on which is superfluous. Number of dispatches
in January, 1864, 577 ; in December, 1864, 11,250.

The year 1865 was marked by one of the most considerable
•events in telegraphy — the reunion at Paris of the first interna-
tional telegraphic conference, due to the initiative of France.

Two years later the first pneumatic line appeared in Paris.
With the advent of the third republic, and up to within the last
years, prodigious developments have been made in telegraphy.

Military telegraphy, or optical telegraphy with the aid of the
sun, has also advanced. A description of these apparatus would
run into too much space. It will suffice to state that two teleg-
raphists are necessary for managing an optical apparatus. One
reads the signals aloud as he perceives them, the other writes
them down. There are two classes of instruments, telescopic and
" campaign."

Here are the last statistics of the telegraphic bureau in France
for one year: Number of inland telegrams, 26,084,742; interna-
tional, 5,318,265 ; total, 31,403,007.

Development of the telegraphic system : Overhead lines, 86,440

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 799

kilometres of line, 264,980 of wire ; ordinary subterranean lines,
1,719 line, 15,168 of wire; long-distance subterranean, 4,524 line,
30,237 wire ; submarine, 6,004 line ; private lines, 3,293 line, 6,512
wire; railroad telegraphs, 12,588 line, 106,653 wire. At end of
1890 the overhead lines alone had in all France covered some
115,000 kilometres.

Telegraphic bureaus in France, about 9,000. They use 12,750
Morse instruments, 993 Hughes, 25 Wheatstone, 58 Baudot, 1,155
Cadran, 1 Meyer, 951 diverse ; total, 15,932.

The poste central (as it is locally termed) and the telegraphic
service of Paris has an exceptional importance, which is easily
explained. Paris, head and heart of France, is, in effect, the cen-
ter from whence all radiates and where all converges. It is at the
central post of telegraphs of Paris (rue de Grenelle 103) where
are managed all the telegraphic dispatches exchanged between
Paris and the departments or abroad, as well as a great number
of those which the different towns exchange between themselves.
The poste central is exclusively a bureau of transmissions; no
dispatch is disposed there directly, and it does not distribute any
directly. The service is performed by about five hundred men
and four hundred women. The approximate daily average of
the number of telegrams expedited by the poste central is 36,250,
and by all the bureaus of France 67,187.

One can conceive that a personal staff so numerous must be
installed in some vast and specially furnished rooms. Two new
halls have been constructed quite recently and opened for busi-
ness. Their installation leaves something to be desired ; the light
penetrates there badly at night ; they are illuminated by electrici-
ty. One of these halls is occupied by the men telegraphists, the
other by the lady operators. The 362 apparati of diverse nature in
service at the poste central are grouped in each one of these halls,
following a methodical order based on the regional classification.

It is known that the apparati of the system Baudot are the
most frequently used in telegraphy. They serve the cities of
Marseilles, Havre, Lille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lyon, Brest, Caen,
Clermont-Ferrand, and Nantes. They permit several employe's to
work at two, four, and even at six on the same wire, thanks to
the ingenious application of the division of time realized by M.
Baudot, engineer of the administration.

Two brigades share the service with the men, same as with the
females, an alternating service which leaves them a little liberty.
The employees (mark, the word with two final e's is feminine)
while at work are all dressed in black blouses to preserve their
dresses from the oil stains liable to result from close contact
with the apparatus. They are allowed to do, when their post is
free, a little work in crocheting or in tapestry.

A CENTURY OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE. 801

On some great tables are installed the apparatus with all their
accessories ; each employee has allotted to her a space about
ninety by ninety centimetres. Before each one there is a bar with
three spikes, where they have to place separately the dispatches
for abroad, the province, and Paris. In the middle of the hall is
a bureau for the direction of the dispatches ; two factors are at-
tached to each section, one for unspiking the dispatches and car-
rying them to the direction, the other for distributing the dis-
patches on the posts. There is furthermore an elevator near the
direction for mounting or descending the telegrams, because the
men's hall, situated above, possesses all the wires connecting with
the great cities of France as well as to abroad.

The basement is assuredly one of the most interesting parts of
the poster-central. There are found some vaulted cellars devoted
to the nine thousand elements of piles in service ; in other places
one will see some dynamo-electric machines, refilling pumps, etc.
This is certainly not one of the least interesting features, that of
seeing steam engines become the auxiliaries of telegraphy.

These machines work, on one part, the compressing pumps
destined to run the Hughes apparatus and the dynamo-electric
machines necessary for the production of the electric light. They
work equally a dynamo-electric apparatus (an auto-regulator),
which an agent of the central post, P. Picard, has had the ingen-
ious idea to invent for replacing the piles.

Between them, the French writers, K. Fichot and H. Meyer,
have managed to produce a fairly creditable account on the occa-
sion and descriptively historical of the centenary of the founda-
tion in France of the telegraph. The Parisians have celebrated
the event, and while so feting the centennial of the aerial tele-
graph they were almost at the same time, in a way, celebrat-
ing the golden jubilee of the introduction into Gaul of the elec-
tric telegraph, which was established at Paris just close on fifty
years ago.

The interesting and curious paper of the Gaulois literarians
above named will not be noticed in the French technical press
(or, at least, it is not believed it will be) ; therefore an advanced
translation is forwarded for the edification of English-speaking
readers. In this rendering the purity of the original has been
faithfully preserved as much as possible, even unto preserving
some of the idiomatic peculiarities of expression of the vernacular.

It will be seen that the present summary is moderately com-
plete,— detailing the introduction of the telegraph, some rather
surprising comparisons ; then the advent and progress and a few
statistics of the present-day electric telegraph, description of the
Paris great central bureau, etc.

VOL. XMT. 59

8o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOP-
MENT.

BY WILLIAM W. BILLS.ON.

npHE evidences are abundant that primitive man had no con-
-L ception of ownership as distinguished from or as subsisting
independently of possession. He recognized, no doubt, that one
in possession of an object had a right to defend and maintain his
advantageous position. If, however, the possession were lost,
whether by accident, violence, or theft, the result, in the primi-
tive judgment, was the permanent extinguishment of all relation
between the object possessed and its former possessor, unless there
was an immediate reseizure ; somewhat as now one's claim upon
wild animals, birds, or bees in his possession is forever lost by
their escape, unless saved by prompt pursuit and immediate re-
capture. Even after the establishment of courts and the rein-
statement of dispossessed persons by their authority, the relief was
afforded, not upon any theory of subsisting ownership in the per-
son dispossessed, but by way of redress for the personal griev-
ance which he was perceived to have suffered — as now, even in the
acknowledged absence of proprietary rights, we justify a person
in recovering an eligible position in a street or other public place
from which he has been rudely crowded by another. The legal
protection of property is, historically considered, a mere exten-
sion of the protection afforded by law to the person, every wrong
having been originally thought of as in the nature of a personal
injustice only. The conception of ownership, instead of being
the cause or historical basis of remedies for the recovery of pos-
session, is in fact the tardy outgrowth of impressions produced
upon the mind by the habitual application of those remedies as a
mode of relief against injuries long regarded as purely personal.

It might be supposed that if men were ever unacquainted with
the idea of ownership apart from possession it must have been
in such prehistoric ages as now scarcely to admit of verification.
On the contrary, no circumstance in history, perhaps, has been
more prolific of legal doctrine. No finer instance can be found of
that strange gift of immortality, by virtue of which the crudest
of barbaric notions may live, eternal in their effects, in the pol-
ished doctrines of the most refined systems of law; no more
instructive example of the evolution of the most abstruse legal
refinements from the simplest germs of thought ; no more im-
pressive exhibition of the enormous inherent difficulties of legal
progress, which arise from the fact that the advanced ideas of
later generations, can from the nature of the case, take effect
only through an adaptation of the rude and intractable forms and

A CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 803

proceedings inherited from a remote past. As we proceed along
these lines of observation we shall incidentally fall in with inter-
esting evidence that much of the legal complexity which we are
wont to ascribe to the dark and crooked casuistry of lawyers is
in the nature of an inevitable survival of customs, methods, and
institutions born of the excusable mental incapacity of our fore-
most fathers.

So plentiful in the history of our own land are the materials
for a short study of this peculiarity of early thought and its
sequences that recourse will be here had to these alone, although
the subject is susceptible of similar though perhaps less striking
illustration from the land law of the Romans, and indeed to some
extent from almost any system of law, with reference to either
real or personal property.

Lawyers of a later day have experienced no little difficulty in
appreciating that Britton, St. Germain, and others of our earliest
legal writers spoke advisedly when they denned a freehold inter-
est in land (which bore to our early law the relation occupied in
modern law by the word ownership) as meaning the "possession
of the soil." Yet the accuracy of this definition at the date of its
origin finds the most ample and varied attestation in our authen-
tic legal history. The word " owner " was unknown to our early
land law. That one who wrongfully dispossessed another of his
land, succeeded to the estate or interest in the land, was one of
the most deeply rooted doctrines of the common law from the
time when the idea of an estate in lands was first conceived. The
dispossessor acquired that which he could sell and transfer, and
that which upon his death would descend to his heirs. On the
other hand, the person dispossessed had nothing left which any
one could buy or which in the event of his death his heirs could
inherit. It was almost the middle of the present century before
in England this ceased to be the law. The natural effect of this
doctrine, as the reader will no doubt be prepared to believe, was
to make the law of dispossession one of the most interesting and
prolific branches of our earlier jurisprudence. It became directly
and indirectly the subject matter of a surprisingly large propor-
tion of judicial decisions, and of a correspondingly large part of
the early legal commentaries, and, of course, continued to be ex-
pounded and developed in its detailed applications long after the
disappearance of the mental and social conditions that gave it
birth. Among the common-law applications of the rule were the
following :

A wrongful usurper of the possession was considered to take
in every case the entire title, or, in legal parlance, the fee, even
though he disclaimed an intention to take more than a life estate,
for it was said that he could not qualify his own wrong. If ap-

804 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

pin-tenant to the land seized there were easements or rights of
enjoyment over other adjacent lands, the intruder by his posses-
sion of the principal estate became legally entitled to enjoy such
easements. The estate of the person dispossessed was in the lan-
guage of the law " turned into a right." This " right," although
untransferable to any one else, could be released to the intruder,
and by such release the estate of the intruder, which was tortious
or wrongful, became rightful. But, although words of inherit-
ance were generally necessary to convey more than an estate for
life, no such words were necessary in a release to a dispossessor,
since the fee or entire estate was already in him, though wrong-
fully. For the same reason a release to the intruder for a year,
or even for a day, was as good as though to him and his heirs for-
ever, since the fee, or entire title, which he already had, though
wrongfully, could not, it was said, be curtailed by a deed without
entry — that is, without a transfer of the possession. And upon
the ground that the estate was already in the intruder, an instru-
ment executed to him by the person ousted, although it purported
to give and grant the described premises, was held to operate
only as a confirmation of the estate already vested in the usurper.
So, while the intruder was in possession, no action could be main-
tained against him for trespass, or for the value of crops har-
vested by him, or for other similar profits ; nor could such actions
be maintained even after the rightful claimant had recovered
possession, except by recourse to a legal fiction (invented to avert
such injustice), by which for such purposes a temporarily dispos-
sessed person was, after recovery, construed to have been con-
tinuously in possession.

The right to dispose of lands by will was first introduced in
the reign of Henry VIII by a statute which declared that " all
persons having any manors, lands, or tenements may give and
dispose of them by last will." In construing this statute, it was
held, in harmony with the foregoing doctrines of the common
law, that only those persons had lands who were in possession
of them, and that dispossessed persons, therefore, had nothing
upon which a will could operate. Such was the law in Eng-
land until changed by statute in 1838. Such also had been
the recognized law before the statute of Henry VIII in those
counties where by local custom the power to will had previously
existed.

But, although a person by being ejected from his lands lost all
his estate in them, he was not without rights of redress. If he
acted promptly he was entitled to recover his lost ground, and,
until prohibited by the statute of Richard III, he might enlist
and employ whatever forces were necessary for that purpose.
The time within which this right of personal recovery, or, as it

A CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 805

was called in the law, right of entry, could be exercised was at
first very short.

In the time of Bracton (thirteenth century) it was only four
days, that being deemed sufficient time within which to arouse
the neighbors and organize an invading force. The right was
afterward recognized as continuing a year and a day. Still later
it might be exercised during the lifetime of the intruder. Origi-
nally entry could be made only as against the intruder personally,
not against one claiming under him. Afterward it could be made
against the intruder's first successor, then against his second suc-
cessor, still later against others still more remote, etc. It was
about the time of Lord Bacon before a re-entry could be made
after the lands, by death of the intruder, had passed into the pos-
session of his heir. It was the wrongful character of the in-
truder's estate that was supposed to justify re-entry, and it was
deemed inadmissible to treat the estate as wrongful in the hands
of the heir, upon whom it had been cast by operation of law
without any wrongdoing on his part.

The legal effect of a re-entry was to reinvest the ousted per-
son with his lost estate. Originally it was no doubt necessary for
him to eject the wrongdoer and resume complete control. It was
soon perceived that where two persons were upon the same piece
of ground, each claiming possession, he should be deemed to have
the possession who had the right to it, and this principle was
variously applied with salutary effects. The law was still further
mitigated by considering that the effects of re-entry were attained
and the estate of the intruder divested by even a temporary en-
trance of the ousted person upon the land under a claim of right,
provided such entry was repeated at least once a year, thus keep-
ing up publicly a continual claim to the land. And it came to be
deemed sufficient as an entry if, when the ousted person could not
go upon the land for fear of violence, he went as near to it as he
safely could and publicly claimed it in the presence of witnesses.
By these acts of re-entry and continual claim the person dispos-
sessed could revive and keep alive his estate in the land, so as to
have a conveyable and inheritable interest, although the intruder
still remained in the actual possession; for, by construction of
law, the entry and continual claim were treated as amounting to
a recovery of the possession. The law also came to be so relaxed
that where one, by the same intruder, was dispossessed of sev-
eral tracts of land in one county, a re-entry upon one, in the
name of all, was treated as a good entry upon all.

It is not surprising that under these circumstances there were
few branches of our early law which experienced a more luxuriant
growth than those that related to rights of entry, to descents that
took away rights of entry, and to the making of continual claim.

8o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

If re-entry was not made within the time limited by law, the
right to make it became derelict and was extinct ; but there still
remained the right of recovery by action at law. These actions
and their procedure, and the amount of proof exacted, varied ac-
cording to the length of time the intruder had remained in pos-
session, whether and how many times the possession had been
sold or transferred by or under the intruder, and so forth. Into
their details it would be unprofitable to go. One who had simply
a right to recover lands by action was not only destitute of any-
thing transmissible to his heirs or to a purchaser, but had nothing
which could be reached by an act of attainder. It is a noteworthy
fact in this connection that our common law has never provided,
either as to real or personal property, any form of action for liti-
gating title or right of property independently of possession— a
curious circumstance, unmistakably attesting that our legal reme-
dies took form before the conception of property as distinct from
possession had received practical recognition in our law.

It was, however, indirectly through its bearing upon modes of
conveyance that the primitive view of property right made its
deepest impression upon our law. It is manifest that when men
dealt in possession only, there could not be two opinions as to the
mode of effecting a sale or transfer of it. The only conceivable
way was for the purchaser to take the seller's place as actual cus-
todian ; hence the universal prevalence in early societies of this
mode of conveyance. Even when the theory was well advanced
that the possessor of an object had an interest or estate in it, or a
title to it, such interests were regarded as inherent in the posses-
sion and as inseparable from it, and therefore as passing with
it and as being otherwise intransmissible. How, then, could such
rights be transferred except by the manual delivery of the object ?
Even though there were a deed or a written or oral contract, its
only function was to evidence an intent to abandon the possession
in favor of another, and it was still only through the assumption
of the actual possession by such other that he succeeded to the
advantages resigned by the maker of the deed.

It is possible, but not certain, that during the later Anglo-
Saxon period of our history this mode of conveyance had already
been outgrown, and that property was then transferred by deed
or charter alone, perhaps by reason of contact with Roman civili-
zation. Be this as it may, the original mode of conveyance was,
as a feature of the feudal law, so effectually resumed or continued
upon the advent of the Normans that, except by means of judicial
proceedings, real or feigned, the common law of England has
never provided any other mode of directly transferring the entire
estate in land than the solemn and public delivery of possession
in the presence of the assembled neighbors, known in legal phrase

A CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 807

as the " livery of seisin," the word " livery " meaning delivery, and
the word " seisin " meaning possession.

Although from a comparatively early day delivery was, from
evidential considerations, usually accompanied by a deed, no writ-
ing was necessary until so made by the statute of Charles II ; and
the livery of seisin, though gradually simplified and softened into
a symbolic ceremony, was indispensable to a common-law trans-
fer of complete title until abolished by the statute of Victoria.

As already pointed out, this exclusive mode of conveyance was
the natural result of the failure of early society to recognize any
estate in lands which did not rest upon subsisting possession.

There are occasions upon which the possessor of lands desires
to at once invest another with an estate in them which shall not
commence in enjoyment or possession until a future day, as by
now conveying A an estate in lands to take effect in possession
when he shall become of age or marry, or upon the death of his
father.

The tendency to create such future estates, representing as it
does a natural desire which has always operated with more or less
force since the idea of estates in land first obtained, has at times
been greatly stimulated by English social and political conditions.
Nor have such estates ever been deemed objectionable from the
standpoint of public policy. It will be observed, however, that
they are hard to reconcile with the doctrine that there can be no
estate without possession, and hence no transfer of estate without
transfer of possession. If, for example, in the case above sup-
posed, possession were withheld from A, he would, in the light of
that doctrine, fail to acquire any estate wh tever. If, on the
other hand, possession were immediately delivered, he would get
a present estate rather than a future. To what extent, then, was
it possible to create future estates consistently with the ancient
notion that without possession there could be no estate ? This
apparently simple question proved to be of almost incredible dif-
ficulty. Centuries of forensic discussion and adjudication were
required for such a solution of it as the interests of society seemed
to require. The answer, when complete, constituted the bulk
of the marvelously complex law of remainders and executory
devises.

So great was the social pressure in favor of future estates that
there were doubtless points at which the reasoning was somewhat
strained in order to overcome the almost insuperable resistance of
the old notions respecting possession — slight deflections from the
true line of logic being one of the indispensable agencies for
adapting early law to the exigencies of later society. Yet the in-
tention was to recognize future estates only so far as they were
compatible with the established doctrine that an estate unsup-

8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ported by possession was impossible ; and the question of com-
patibility was so closely reasoned through all its possible ramifi-
cations that there are few minor topics in any science that have
elicited a more searching analysis, or which present a greater
mass of subtle distinctions.

Of the body of abstruse rules thus evolved, it will be impos-
sible within the limits of this paper to convey any adequate con-
ception. It may be explained, however, that the door through
which future estates were admitted into our law was the theory
that the perpetual right of enjoyment implied from possession
was an entire estate, which, by words used at the time of delivery,
could, in point of time, be carved up into a number of fractions,
to be successively enjoyed by different persons ; and that as all
these persons combined took only one entire estate, a single de-
livery would suffice for all, the taker of the first fraction being
construed to receive the possession on behalf of all. Thus if de-
livery of land to A were accompanied by declaration or deed to
the effect that A should have it for a term of years, then B for
his life, the remainder of the estate after B's death to go to C and
his heirs forever, these future estates to B and C were deemed
valid, because B and C were regarded as in on the possession de-
livered to A.

This theory was countenanced only upon the ground that the
total of the several fractional estates, thus created by a single act,
was precisely equivalent to the one perpetual and uninterrupted
right of enjoyment, which could be conferred upon one person by
a single delivery. Any proposed future estate which could not
be justified by a strict application of this theory was legally im-
possible. Hence, if by the terms of the delivery, or by reason of
any subsequent contingency, the several fractions were not, or
ceased to be, the exact equivalent of one entire estate, the future
estates either never arose, or forthwith collapsed. There could,
therefore, be no future estate, unless supported by a prior and
present estate created by the same act ; and each fractional estate
must be such as to take effect in possession immediately upon the
determination of the next preceding estate ; otherwise lib was void,
and necessarily involved all succeeding estates in the ruin.

This stringent limitation arose into great importance, and
indeed became the source of a large part of the law of future
estates, when at a later day, upon grounds unnecessary and per-
haps difficult to reproduce, it was held permissible to create future
estates, doubtful or contingent as to the time when, or persons in
whom, they should vest. Thus delivery might be made to A for
his life, then to go for life to B's eldest soq (not yet born), then
forever to C and his heirs. Here it was a matter of contingency
when, if ever, B would have a son. If A died before the birth of

A CHAPTER ON LEGAL DEVELOPMENT. 809

such a son, all the subsequent estates collapsed, because, upon the
ground already noticed, there could be no intermission, however
short, between the successive estates. So, in the case supposed, it
was possible for A, at any time, by his own act in voluntarily sur-
rendering his own life estate, to destroy the future estates sup-
ported by it.

The great injustice and confusion of titles which flowed from
this feature of the law finally led to the device of designating in
cases of contingent future estates, trustees, in whom it was pro-
vided the estate should vest for the time being, in the event of
the determination of a prior estate, before the contingency had
happened, upon which the next succeeding estate was to take
effect.

It was the livery of seisin which also set in motion and gave
direction to that curiously complicated succession of ideas and
legal devices which, during a period of more than four hundred
years, made up the eventful and withal romantic history of uses,
or, as they are now called, trusts — a history which at one time or
another has had vital points of contact with nearly all the legal,
political, religious, and domestic relations of life. That which
made the use the nondescript but marvelously popular and mer-
curial thing that for centuries it was, was the tenacity with which
the common-law courts adhered to their doctrine that, because the
livery of seisin was not made to the beneficiary of a use, he took
nothing which could be regarded as property, or which could be
charged with the burdens or liabilities of property ; that in fact
" he had no more to do with the land than the merest stranger in
the world " ; while at the same time his every claim of control
over the land was regularly enforced by courts of equity. Again,
to the entanglement of the common law of possessions with the
equitable law of uses, which was brought about in the middle of
the sixteenth century through certain expressions in the statute
of uses, and which gave rise to such obscure questions as the
character of the seisin which was necessary under the statute to
feed or serve uses, are directly traceable the most subtle distinc-
tions of the law of springing and shifting uses and powers, words
which, though the unprofessional reader may not fully under-
stand, he may safely assume to stand, together with remainders,
for all that was and is most abstruse and intricate in our law.

So it was the livery of seisin which, either directly, or indirectly
through the law of uses, gave color and form to all the methods
of conveyance, which through common-law devices or statutory
provision were by strangely circuitous methods gradually sub-
stituted for it in the transfer of lands. The impossibility of com-
pressing into this paper an adequate review of the developments
which our subject underwent in connection with uses and convey-

8io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ancing makes it necessary to reserve that interesting chain of
events for future consideration.

That the early law took no cognizance of ownership apart from
possession was strikingly exhibited in the view which it took of
inheritances. The estate of a possessor in lands was palpably ter-
minated by his death. Yet his heir acquired no estate in the lands
except by entering into the possession. If the heir died before
entry, the lands went, not to his heir, but to the next heir of the
ancestor who died in possession. In like manner, though one had
received a deed of lands, yet if he died before entering into posses-
sion, he was deemed not to have acquired any estate, and conse-
quently left nothing which his heirs could inherit, or of which his
widow could have dower. And so it was, although he had actu-
ally entered into the possession under a deed, unless he had been
publicly invested by the ceremony of livery of seisin.

It was among the miscellaneous corollaries of the livery of
seisin that it was impossible for a landlord to sell his interest in
the land without the concurrence of his tenant. The tenant be-
ing in possession, the landlord could only make livery of seisin to
the purchaser by arranging with the tenant to temporarily retire,
so that he, the landlord, could take the possession and deliver it,
after which the tenant would resume possession under the new
owner. In this and a variety of other ways the livery of seisin
entered into the law of attornment.

We have remaining space only for casual reference to some
of the processes, in addition to those already mentioned, by which
the old notions and customs, which have been our theme, were
gradually displaced or assimilated by modern legal conceptions.
The idea of possession was gradually enlarged, so that one who
had been in the actual possession was deemed to continue in it
until it was seized by another, even though the property were in
fact vacant.

Delivery, which at first must be made on the land, was after-
ward permitted to be made in presence of the neighbors at any
place in sight of the land, and later at public places even more
remote ; and delivery of one tract might be made for several
tracts in the same county ; but in none of these cases did the
estate pass until, in pursuance of such constructive deliveries,
possession had been actually taken. So it became the custom to
substitute a symbolic for an actual delivery, as by delivering a
turf from the land or a key of the house. And so there came a
time when, if one had bought and paid for land from another,
who then refused to make livery of seisin, courts of equity would
specifically enforce the agreement by compelling the delivery.

The celebrated statute of uses, 27 Henry VIII, opened up the
way for conveyances without delivery. Into these newly opened

THE BEAVER EATER. 811

channels the conveyancing of the kingdom largely flowed, and
the livery of seisin dropped into comparative desuetude. By
later statutes, principally of the present reign, the ceremony and
many of its related rules have been finally abolished. It was
never practiced to any considerable extent in this country, which
was not colonized until after the statute of uses.

Although the idea that there could be no estate in land with-
out possession was so inextricably interwoven with the doctrines
of the common law that escape from its meshes was impossible
except by resort to legislation, the popular conceptions upon the
subject, being comparatively unhampered, underwent necessa-
rily a much more rapid change, so that in the popular sense or
judgment interests in land, independently of the possession, ex-
isted centuries before it was possible for them to receive legal
recognition. Finally, even to the most technical of lawyers, the
old view came to seem like scarcely more than a legal fiction. In
its direct applications it has now almost disappeared from our
law. Its effects are simply ineffaceable. The time will never be
when the legal doctrines of the English-speaking race will not
still present numberless peculiarities of structure inherited from
this prolific old juristic root.

THE BEAVER EATER.

BY HORACE T. MARTIN, F. Z. S., ETC.

A VOCABULARY of the Chippeway Indians in J. Long's
-"- Voyages and Travels (1791) conveys a slight knowledge of
the fur trader's vernacular of just a century ago. The records
offer many attractions to the naturalist, acquainting him with the
curious Indian names for animals, together with their English
equivalents, and exhibiting the original forms of many words
familiar now only in a modified or corrupted state. In this vo-
cabulary the Indian word quickwaliay is translated "beaver
eater," and neither of the terms being current to-day in natural
history, they suggest a field for investigation.

To discover the truths which are the foundation of most
fables is a task both useful and interesting, and the curious facts
which underlie the fabulous history of the animal about to re-
ceive our consideration illustrate this rule in an extreme degree.
If a bad name be sufficient excuse for hanging a dog, what should
be the fate of that animal whose evil names outnumber his
digits ? Probably no animal has ever possessed a longer list of
synonyms, and none could possibly possess worse. The first
written accounts of our subject date back to Olaus Magnus

812

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

(1562). He attributed to it most disgusting habits and applied
the supposed appropriate name of gulo — a "glutton." Judging
the animal by its external appearances, it was classed with the
UrsidcB, or bear family; and its gluttony made it at once con-
spicuous in comparison with its less voracious relatives. That
the " glutton " is grossly carnivorous is a fact, but the stories of
its insatiable appetite, and its reputed habits of gorging till dis-
tended like a balloon, and the consequent method of obtaining
relief, are purely fabulous.

With the discovery of America a magnificent field was opened
to adventurers, and " travelers' tales " found extraordinary inspi-
ration. In 1663 Pierre Bouchet, the Governor of Three Rivers,
in New France, described an animal " smaller than a fox, that
climbs up trees ; it is called ' child of the devil/ " and rapidly fol-
lowing this account came the most astounding stories. Not so
repulsive but quite as improbable accomplishments were freely

C-

-4i ^te^^tes^

^oC-n <fc V X^br> °^vf\n < *£&

^^

* y IVH

x^ W^

K^
/ /?

/'' ^ ^ '^>x/°/

./-^>^>€-r

o

V

The shaded portion shows the distribution of the beaver eater, while the lines mark

the northern and southern limits of the beaver.

recounted. The animal, it was said, killed the moose and caribou,
and was more than a match for bear or wolf ; but as for the timid
beaver, the appellation " beaver eater " significantly suggests the
fate of this defenseless rodent. It is important to remember that
during almost the entire period in which these fables were so cur-
rent the object of the chase was beaver pelts. Giant monopolies

THE BEAVER EATER.

813

controlled the traffic and inspired relentless war upon the inno-
cent owners of these integuments. In olden times the hapless
beaver was hunted for his castoreum pouches, which, Pliny says,
the creature would bite off and leave to the hunter as a ransom

%

for its life ; but no compromise was possible when its coat was
demanded in midwinter. Thus every beaver was the counter-
part or token of value for some article of use or ornament,

A SIMPLE FORM OF THE " DEADFALL."

brought from France to quicken the cunning and perseverance
of the trapper, who would naturally exaggerate his losses, although
the slaughter of beavers each fall and spring by the ever- watch-
ful " beaver eater " must have been very appreciable. It is also
worth noting that the distribution of the destroyer completely
overlaid that of the destroyed, and that where the beaver has
been exterminated the " beaver eater " has soon disappeared. The
explanation of the other romances lies in the fact that the gour-
mand having already well earned unenviable notoriety, had the
sins of the cougar, the lynx, the badger, and the fisher visited
upon him, and many feats impossible otherwise to understand
are thus accounted for.

The Indians called it ommeethatsees and okeecoohaivgeiv, as
well as quickwaliay ; and corruptions from these have given us
the English forms queequeliatch, quiquihatch, quiquehatch, quicke-
liatch, and quickhatch ; also the French quincajou, corvajou, cor-
cqjue, cartajou, carcayou, karkajou, and carcajou, to one or other
of which forms we find references in nearly all early American
writings. The trials endured by the luckless hunter, whose track
was once discovered by this monster, are frequently recounted.
Day after day would the hunter visit his traps, only to find the
ruinous work of his four-footed enemy, who, not satisfied with
robbing the occasional prize, would often, simply for the morsel
of bait, completely destroy scores of traps. Hence arose the

8 H THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stories of the impossibility of trapping the fiend. No deadfall,
snare, or spring gun ever injured this " evil one/' and it does not
require a vivid imagination to trace the growth of fiction, when
we consider the impulsive coureur de bois, after the toil of setting
his chain of traps and visiting them with the result above re-
ferred to, allowing himself to believe that he was verily beset by
a devil, and at the camp fire, or, better still, as the honored
guest of some credulous settler, unfolding and enlarging upon
his experiences. These stories, however, become comprehensible
when we remember that the track through the deep snow, beaten
by the snowshoes of the hunter on his rounds, formed an inviting
highway along which the short-limbed quadruped could freely
travel, while it soon learned that a journey of a few miles meant
the picking up of a substantial meal which some kind friend had
carefully placed in sheltered nooks as if regardful of its wants ;
for the traps of those days were mostly modifications of the
"deadfall," and required but limited strength and cunning to
circumvent.

The creature has always been comparatively scarce, although
its habitat is large; hence the stories are widespread and the
scientific study of its reputed habits difficult. That the pelt is
rather an uncommon article of commerce does not necessarily
imply that it is of great value, although we find numerous exag-
gerations associated with this feature. It is stated in reports
from the East that the skin was formerly held in such high
repute that the angels permitted this fur alone to appear on their
celestial robes, and Eastern merchants are said to have allowed
an equivalent of forty or fifty dollars per skin ; yet we find no
market during the past one hundred and fifty years has ever
quoted the pelt at more than one fourth of these figures, and to-
day's quotations place five dollars as the maximum value. The
demand, being as limited as the supply, accounts for this, for the
skins are not more plentiful than those of the silver fox, which
easily fetch one hundred dollars. The fabulous values seem to
have reference to albino varieties, which must ever have been ex-
cessively rare ; and though there is much beauty in the normal
coloring of rich sable brown, with the paler bands along the
flanks, the utility of the pelt is restricted, owing chiefly to the
coarseness of the hair; and the size— only one fourth that of
the black bear skin — is of a decided mediocrity, filling but few
wants.

Admitting that sufficient knowledge of the animal has now
been acquired to place it in its true systematic order, it is found
to have no connection whatever with the bears, nor does there
appear to be any affinity with the evil spirits ; while the Anglo-
Saxon name, implying associations with the wolf, is equally in-

THE BEAVER EATER.

815

correct, and this chimerical " child of the devil " becomes a re-
spectable member of the weasel family and its largest terrestrial
representative, known now to scientists as Gulo luscus, and pop-
ularly as the " wolverene " or " glutton."

If the wolverene does not hibernate, but spends his winter
searching the woods for mere sustenance, the musteline propen-
sity for blood is, no doubt, the impulse which makes it the great
destroyer. Who has caught the weasel sleeping ? Trappers say
the martens run all day as well as all night ; and these traits are

THE QUICKHATCH, OK WOLVERENE.

quite pronounced in the glutton, while, also, the well-known
strength, pluck, and endurance of the weasels belong naturally
to it.

The early name of " beaver eater " would therefore appear to
be much more appropriate than either of the terms now generally
used, for it has been shown that " glutton " is quite a misnomer,
and the other synonym, equally incorrect, has the additional dis-
advantage of uncertain orthography — each of the following forms
being countenanced by good authority : wolf erin, wolferine, wolf-
erene, wolvering, wolverin, wolverine, wolveren, wolverene, wol-
verenne, and woolverene.

8i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ON NEW ENGLAND AND THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI
BASIN IN THE GLACIAL PERIOD.*

BY PROF. JAMES D. DANA.

SINCE the publication, in this Journal, of Prof. G. F. Wright's
paper on the Unity of the Glacial Epoch, nearly a year
since,f this subject has been much discussed in the scientific
journals of the country, and with some interesting developments
besides those within the purpose of the writers.

1. It has been shown that there are good working geologists
on each side of the question.

2. It has been made manifest that the advocates of unity are
mainly the geologists that have investigated Eastern glacial
regions in the country, and especially New England, while the
advocates of two Glacial epochs are chiefly those whose glacial
studies have been in more western regions.

The writer, who has thus far taken no part in the recent dis-
cussion, here states that he has found in his geological explora-
tions, which have been extensive over New England, the State of
Maine excepted, no facts that require for their explanation an
appeal to two Glacial epochs, and none that has even suggested
the idea.

3. The presentation of arguments on the side of unity has
been moderate in tone and free from dogmatism. Among geolo-
gists on the other side, great confidence in the obvious facts has
given occasion to expressions almost of accomplished triumph for
the two-epoch theory.

4. Among the prominent glacial investigators, one has been on
both sides of the question. Having studied glacial phenomena
long and faithfully in New England, Warren Upham explained
the facts which he had observed on the theory of one advancing
and retreating glacier, and found evidence of its terminal moraine
and another halt moraine in the islands south of New England
and on part of the adjoining mainland. But after some years of
study in Minnesota and the neighboring States and over the region
northward through Manitoba, he adopted the theory of two
Glacial epochs. Returning again to New England and revising
the facts there presented, he was led back to his former opinion,
as he has announced in his recent papers. Since no geologist in
America is better acquainted with the facts on the two sides, or
more faithful and earnest in glacial investigation, these changes
in his conclusions have special interest.

* From the American Journal of Science, vol. xlvi, November, 1893.
f Vol. xliv, p. 351.

THE GLACIAL PERIOD EAST AND WEST. 817

5. As the above review of facts makes manifest, the division
among geologists on the question, and the differences in intensity
of opinion, are to a large extent geographical.

The cause of this sectional divergence in views deserves con-
sideration. The writer has come to the conclusion that the cause
is largely meteorological : that the geological differences in opinion
are a consequence not only of differences in observed facts in the
West as compared with those of the East, but back of these, in
meteorological differences in the two regions during the Glacial
period.

At the present time the glaciated areas of eastern and central
North America differ widely in hygrometric conditions. For
New England and three fourths of the State of New York the
mean annual precipitation, according to Schott's maps, varies
from thirty-eight to forty-two inches — abroad coast region, nearly
half the breadth of New England, excepted over which it amounts
in some parts to fifty inches ; while for Wisconsin it varies from
thirty-two to thirty-eight inches, and for the larger part of Minne-
sota, from twenty to thirty-two inches. North of New England,
in British America east of Hudson Bay, the annual precipitation
is from thirty-two to twenty inches; but to the west of this
region, over Manitoba and beyond, it is twenty to ten inches.

Here is a large present difference between the eastern and west-
ern regions, affecting snowfalls as well as rainfalls.

Now, in the Glacial period, this eastern region would not only
have had the same great advantage as now of proximity to the
Atlantic Ocean, but also that of greater height than now. The
evidence appears to be conclusive that along the Atlantic side of
the continent from southern New England northward, as well as
on the Pacific side, the continent stood much above its present
level, and that the elevation was the culmination of that which
was in progress during the closing part of the Tertiary era — as
urged by Prof. Upham. However much the surface of the great
medial valley of the continent was raised, it can not be reason-
ably questioned that the border mountain regions experienced the
greater amount of elevation. Hence, with the mountain condens-
ers on the east so much increased in altitude and extent, the dif-
ferences between the eastern and interior regions as to precipita-
tion would have been greatly augmented, to the advantage of the
eastern region.

Further, the Glacial period was probably a time of greater pre-
cipitation than now, as well as of greater cold. Some have said,
of greater precipitation, and not of greater cold ; but the former
of these two statements has general acceptance. If the surface
waters of the Atlantic basin were warmer than now — owing to a
rise of land along a belt from southeast to northwest through

VOL. XLIV. — 60

8i8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Iceland as part of the general rise on the American and Euro-
pean sides — this would account for greater precipitation on the
borders of the ocean, and especially over its western border, the
American.

But leaving this source of increased precipitation out of con-
sideration, it is plain that in the Glacial period the difference in
amount of precipitation over the high eastern border made into a
lofty ice plateau by the accumulation of snow and ice, and over
the broad medial belt from Wisconsin and Minnesota northwest-
ward, should have been much greater than it is now. Moreover,
this central valley of North America would have had something
of the existing disadvantage of a relatively warm summer tem-
perature. At the present time, in July, a mean temperature of 70°
Fahr. extends beyond the latitude of Lake Winnipeg even to 56°
north, and this is 10° in latitude, or nearly seven hundred miles,
farther north than the position of the same heat line over New
England.

The advantages for ice-making of eastern over central North
America were, therefore, very great, both as regards temperature
and precipitation. When the conditions over the interior were
sufficient to produce a small annual gain of ice, those over New
England would have been making a very large annual gain. A
small gain continued for many scores of centuries would make
finally a great thickness of ice. But with the conditions over the
interior near the critical point, a small unfavorable meteorological
change, if long continued, might carry off the ice for scores or
hundreds of miles from a southern limit, with proportionate floods
from the melting, while the eastern border was all the time gain-
ing in ice, or was making only a short retreat.

The actual facts correspond with these views. The distance
in the upper Mississippi basin between the farthest southern limit
of the ice and the line of the great moraine, or that of the so-
called " second Glacial epoch," is over five hundred miles ; but to
the eastward it narrows through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and New Jersey ; and in New England a corresponding moraine
interval can not be certainly made out, and nothing exists that
could not be better explained by reference to short retreats in a
single glacier.

I leave the subjects here for the consideration of geologists of
the East and West. The cause appealed to explains at least why
the geologists of the East and West are divided on the subject ;
and also why the grand display of terminal and retreat mo-
raines characterizing the West produces there the stronger opin-
ions and the stronger expressions of opinions; and why also a
complete survey of the facts will probably lead to a general
agreement in favor of a single Glacial epoch only.

THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 819

THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL.*

BY HEKBEKT SPENCER.

AMONG the various penalties entailed by ill-health, a not
infrequent one is the inability to pay the last honors to a
valued friend ; and sometimes another is the undue postponement
of such tribute to his memory as remains possible. Of both these
evils I have just had experience.

It was, I think, in 1852 that Prof. Tyndall gave at the Royal
Institution the lecture by which he won his spurs : proving, as he
then did, to Faraday himself, that he had been wrong in denying
diamagnetic polarity. I was present at that lecture ; and when
introduced to him very shortly after it, there commenced one of
those friendships which enter into the fabric of life and leave
their marks. Though both had pronounced opinions about most
things, and though neither had much reticence, the forty years
which have elapsed since we first met witnessed no interruption
of our cordial relations. Indeed, during recent years of invalid
life suffered by both of us, the warmth of nature characteristic of
him has had increased opportunity for manifesting itself. A
letter from him, dated November 25th, inquiring my impressions
concerning the climate of this place (St. Leonards), raised the
hope that something more than intercourse by correspondence
would follow ; but before I received a response to my reply there
came the news of the sad catastrophe.

I need not dwell on the more conspicuous of Prof. Tyndall's
intellectual traits, for these are familiar to multitudes of readers.
His copiousness of illustration, his closeness of reasoning, and his
lucidity of statement, have been sufficiently emphasized by others.
Here I will remark only on certain powers of thought, not quite
so obvious, which have had much to do with his successes. Of
these the chief is " the scientific use of the imagination." He has
himself insisted upon the need for this, and his own career exem-
plifies it. There prevail, almost universally, very erroneous ideas
concerning the nature of imagination. Superstitious peoples,
whose folklore is full of tales of fairies and the like, are said to
be imaginative; while nobody ascribes imagination to the in-
ventor of a new machine. Were this conception of imagination
the true one, it would imply that, whereas children and savages
are largely endowed with it, and whereas it is displayed in a high
degree by poets of the first order, it is deficient in those having
intermediate types of mind. But, as rightly conceived, imagina-
tion is the power of mental representation, and is measured by

* Reprinted by permission from McClure's Magazine.

8zo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the vividness and truth of this representation. So conceived, it is
seen to distinguish not poets only, but men of science; for in
them, too, " imagination bodies forth the forms [and actions] of
things unknown." It does this in an equal, and sometimes even
in a higher degree; for, strange as the assertion will seem to
most, it is nevertheless true that the mathematician who discloses
to us some previously unknown order of space-relations, does so
by a greater effort of imagination than is implied by any poetic
creation. The difference lies in the fact that, whereas the imagi-
nation of the poet is exercised upon objects of human interest and
his ideas glow with emotion, the imagination of the mathema-
tician is exercised upon things utterly remote from human in-
terest, and which excite no emotion : the contrasted appreciations
of their respective powers being due to the circumstance that
whereas people at large can follow, to a greater or less extent, the
imaginations of the poet, the imaginations of the mathematician
lie in a field inaccessible to them, and practically non-existent.

This constructive imagination (for we are not concerned with
mere reminiscent imagination), here resulting in the creations of
the poet and there in the discoveries of the man of science, is the
highest of human faculties. With this faculty Prof. Tyndall was
largely endowed. In common with successful investigators in
general, he displayed it in forming true conceptions of physical
processes previously misinterpreted or uninterpreted ; and, again,
in conceiving modes by which the actual relations of the phe-
nomena could be demonstrated ; and, again, in devising fit appli-
ances to this end. But to a much greater extent than usual, he
displayed constructive imagination in other fields. He was an
excellent expositor ; and good exposition implies much construct-
ive imagination. A pre-requisite is the forming of true ideas of
the mental states of those who are to be taught ; and a further
pre-requisite is the imagining of methods by which, beginning
with conceptions they possess, there may be built up in their
minds the conceptions they do not possess. Of constructive
imagination as displayed in this sphere, men at large appear to
be almost devoid; as witness the absurd systems of teaching
which in past times, and in large measure at present, have stupe-
fied, and still stupefy, children by presenting abstract ideas before
they have any concrete ideas from which they can be drawn.
Whether as lecturer or writer, Prof. Tyndall carefully avoided
this vicious practice.

In one further way was his constructive imagination exem-
plified. When at Queenwood College he not only took care to set
forth truths in such ways and in such order that the comprehen-
sion of them developed naturally in the minds of those he taught
—he did more : he practiced those minds themselves in construct-

THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 821

ive imagination. He so presented his problems as to exercise
their powers of investigation. He did not, like most teachers,
make his pupils mere passive recipients, but made them active
explorers.

As these facts imply, Prof. Tyndall's thoughts were not limited
to physics and allied sciences, but passed into psychology ; and
though this was not one of his topics, it was a subject of interest
to him. Led as he was to make excursions into the science of
mind, he was led also into that indeterminate region through which
this science passes into the science of being ; if we can call that a
science of which the issue is nescience. He was much more con-
scious than physicists usually are that every physical inquiry,
pursued to the end, brings us down to metaphysics, and leaves us
face to face with an insoluble problem. Sundry propositions
which physicists include as lying within their domain do not be-
long to physics at all, but are concerned with our cognitions of
matter and force : a fact clearly shown by the controversy at pres-
ent going on about the fundamentals of dynamics. But in him
the consciousness that there here exists a door which, though
open, science can not pass through, if not always present, was
ever ready to emerge. Not improbably his early familiarity
with theological questions given him by the controversy between
Catholicism and Protestantism, which occupied his mind much
during youth, may have had to do with this. But whatever its
cause, the fact, as proved by various spoken and written words,
was a belief that the known is surrounded by an unknown, which
he recognized as something more than a negation. Men of science
may be divided into two classes, of which the one, well exemplified
in Faraday, keeping their science and their religion absolutely
separate, are untroubled by any incongruities between them ; and
the other of which, occupying themselves exclusively with the
facts of science, never ask what implications they have. Be it
trilobite or be it double-star, their thought about it is much like
the thought of Peter Bell about the primrose. Tyndall did not
belong to either class; and of the last I have heard him speak
with implied scorn.

Being thus not simply a specialist but in considerable measure
a generalist, willingly giving some attention to the organic sci-
ences, if not largely acquainted with them, and awake to " the
humanities," if not in the collegiate sense, yet in a wider sense —
Tyndall was an interesting companion ; beneficially interesting to
those with brains in a normal state, but to me injuriously interest-
ing, as being too exciting. Twice I had experience of this. When,
after an injury received while bathing in a Swiss mountain-
stream, he was laid up for some time, and, on getting back to
England, remained at Folkestone, I went down to spend a few days

822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with him. " Do you believe in matter ? " was a question which
he propounded just as we were about to bid one another good-
night after a day's continuous talking. Ever since a nervous
breakdown in 1855, over my second book, talking has told upon
me just as much as working, and has had to be kept within nar-
row limits ; so that persistence in this kind of thing was out of
the question, and I had to abridge my stay. Once more the like
happened when, after the meeting of the British Association at
Liverpool, we adjourned to the Lakes. Gossip, which may be
carried on without much intellectual tax, formed but a small ele-
ment in our conversation. There was almost unceasing discussion
as we rambled along the shore of Windermere, or walked up to
Rydal Mount (leaving our names in the visitors' book), or as we
were being rowed along Grasmere, or when climbing Loughrigg
on our way back. Tyndall's intellectual vivacity gave me no
rest, and after two utterly sleepless nights I had to fly.

I do not think that on these occasions, or on any other occasion,
politics formed one of our topics. Whether this abstention re-
sulted by accident or whether from perception that we should
disagree, I can not say — possibly the last. Our respective leanings
may be in part inferred from our respective attitudes toward
Carlyle. To me, profoundly averse to autocracy, Carlyle's polit-
ical doctrines had ever been repugnant. Much as I did, and still
do, admire his marvelous style and the vigor, if not the truth, of
his thought — so much so that I always enjoy any writing of his,
however much I disagree with it — intercourse with him soon
proved impracticable. Twice or thrice, in 1851-'52, 1 was taken
to see him by Mr. G. H. Lewes ; but I soon found that the alter-
natives were — listening in silence to his dogmas, sometimes ab-
surd, or getting into a hot argument with him, which ended in our
glaring at one another ; and as I did not like either alternative I
ceased to go. With Tyndall, however, the case seems to have been
different — possibly because of greater tolerance of his political
creed and his advocacy of personal government. The rule of the
strong hand was not, I fancy, as repellent to Tyndall as to me ;
and, indeed, I suspect that, had occasion offered, he would not
have been reluctant to exercise such rule himself. Though his
sympathies were such as made him anxious for others' welfare,
they did not take the direction of anxiety for others' freedom as the
means to their welfare ; and hence he was, I suppose, not in pro-
nounced antagonism with Carlyle on these matters. But divergent
as our beliefs and sentiments were in earlier days, there has been
in recent days mutual approximation. A conversation with him,
some years since, made it manifest that personal experience had
greatly shaken the faith he previously had in public administra-
tions, and made him look with more favor on the view of State-

THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 823

functions held by me. On the other hand, my faith in free insti-
tutions, originally strong (though always joined with the belief
that the maintenance and success of them is a question of popular
character), has in these later years been greatly decreased by the
conviction that the fit character is not possessed by any people,
nor is likely to be possessed for ages to come. A nation of which
the legislators vote as they are bid, and of which the workers sur-
render their rights of selling their labor as they please, has neither
the ideas nor the sentiments needed for the maintenance of liberty.
Lacking them, we are on the way back to the rule of the strong
hand in the shape of the bureaucratic despotism of a socialist or-
ganization, and then of the military despotism which must follow
it ; if, indeed, some social crash does not bring this last upon us
more quickly. Had we recently compared notes, I fancy that
Tyndall and I should have found ourselves differing but little in
our views concerning the proximate social state, if not of the ulti-
mate social state.

In the sketch he has recently given of our late friend, who was
one of the small group known as the x Club, Prof. Huxley has
given some account of that body. Further particulars may not
unfitly be added ; one of which may come better from me than
from him. The impression that the club exercised influence in
the scientific world (not wholly without basis, I think) was nat-
urally produced by such knowledge as there eventually arose of
its composition. For it contained four presidents of the British
Association, three presidents of the Royal Society, and among its
members who had not filled these highest posts there were presi-
dents of the College of Surgeons, of the Mathematical Society, and
of the Chemical Society. Out of the nine I was the only one who
was fellow of no society, and had presided over nothing. I speak
in the past tense, for, unhappily, the number of members is re-
duced to five, who are now scattered, and of these only three are
in good health. For years past the difficulties in the way of meet-
ing have been growing greater, and the club is practically dead.
But the detail of most interest which Prof. Huxley has not
given, concerns a certain supplementary meeting which, for many
years, took place after the close of our session. This lasted from
October in each year to June in the next, and toward the close of
June we had a gathering in the country to which the married
members brought their wives ; raising the number on some occa-
sions to fifteen. Our programme was to leave town early on Sat-
urday afternoon, in time for a ramble or a boating excursion be-
fore dinner ; to have on the Sunday a picnic in some picturesque
place adjacent to our temporary quarters ; and, after dinner that
evening, for some to return to town, while those with less pressing
engagements remained until the Monday morning. Two of our

824 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

picnics were held under Burnham Beeches, one or more on St.
George's Hill, Weybridge, and another in Windsor Forest. As
our spirits in those days had not been subdued by years, and as
we had the added pleasure of ladies' society, these gatherings were
extremely enjoyable. If Tyndall did not add to the life of our
party by his wit he did by his hilarity. But my special motive
for naming these rural meetings of the x is that I may mention a
fact which, to not a few, will be surprising and perhaps instruct-
ive. We sometimes carried with us to our picnic a volume of
verse, which was duly utilized after the repast. On one occasion,
while we reclined under the trees of Windsor Forest, Huxley read
to us Tennyson's " CEnone," and on another occasion we listened
to Tyndall's reading of Mrs. Browning's poem, " Lady Geraldine's
Courtship." The vast majority of people suppose that science and
poetry are antagonistic. Here is a fact which may perhaps cause
some of them to revise their opinions.

From the impressions of Tyndall which these facts indirectly
yield, let me return to impressions more directly yielded. Though
it is scarcely needful to say anything about his sincerity, yet it
can not properly be passed over, since it was a leading trait in his
nature. It has been conspicuous to all, alike in his acts and his
words. The Belfast address to the British Association exhibited
his entire thought on questions which most men of science pass
over from prudential considerations. But in him there was no
spirit of compromise. It never occurred to him to ask what it was
politic to say, but simply to ask what was true. The like has of
late years been shown in his utterances concerning political mat-
ters— shown, it may be, with too great an outspokenness. This
outspokenness was displayed, also, in private, and sometimes per-
haps too much displayed ; but every one must have the defects of
his qualities, and where absolute sincerity exists, it is certain now
and then to cause an expression of a feeling or opinion not ade-
quately restrained. But the contrast in genuineness between him
and the average citizen was very conspicuous. In a community
of Tyndalls (to make a wild supposition) there would be none of
that flabbiness characterizing current thought and action — no
throwing overboard of principles elaborated by painful experience
in the past, and adoption of a hand-to-mouth policy unguided by
any principle. He was not the kind of man who would have voted
for a bill or a clause which he secretly believed would be injurious,
out of what is euphemistically called " party loyalty," or would
have endeavored to bribe each section of the electorate by ad cap-
tandum measures, or would have hesitated to protect life and prop-
erty for fear of losing votes. What he saw right to do he would
have done, regardless of proximate consequences.

The ordinary tests of generosity are very defective. As rightly

THE LATE PROFESSOR TYNDALL. 825

measured, generosity is great in proportion to the amount of self-
denial entailed ; and where ample means are possessed large gifts
often entail no self-denial. Far more self-denial may be involved
in the performance, on another's behalf, of some act which re-
quires time and labor. In addition to generosity under its ordi-
nary form, which Prof. Tyndall displayed in unusual degree, he
displayed it under a less common form. He was ready to take
much trouble to help friends. I have had personal experience of
this. Though he had always in hand some investigation of great
interest to him, and though, as I have heard him say, when he
had bent his mind to a subject he could not with any facility
break off and resume it again, yet, when I have sought his sci-
entific aid — information or critical opinion — I never found the
slightest reluctance to give me his undivided attention. Much
more markedly, however, was this kind of generosity shown in
another direction. Many men, while they are eager for appreci-
ation, manifest little or no appreciation of others, and still less go
out of their way to express it. With Tyndall it was not thus : he
was eager to recognize achievement. Notably in the case of Fara-
day, and less notably, though still conspicuously, in many cases, he
has bestowed much labor and sacrificed many weeks in setting
forth others' merits. It was evidently a pleasure to him to dilate
on the claims of fellow- workers.

But there was a derivative form of this generosity calling for
still greater eulogy. He was not content with expressing appre-
ciation of those whose merits were recognized, but he spent energy
unsparingly in drawing public attention to those whose merits
were unrecognized ; and time after time, in championing the
causes of such, he was regardless of the antagonisms he aroused
and the evils he brought on himself. This chivalrous defense of
the neglected and the ill-used has been, I think, by few, if any, so
often repeated. I have myself more than once benefited by his
determination, quite spontaneously shown, that justice should be
done in the apportionment of credit ; and I have with admiration
watched like actions of his in other cases — cases in which no con-
sideration of nationality or of creed interfered in the least with
his insistance on equitable distribution of honors.

In thus undertaking to fight for those who were unfairly dealt
with, he displayed in another direction that very conspicuous trait
which, as displayed in his Alpine feats, has made him to many
persons chiefly known — I mean courage, passing very often into
daring. And here let me, in closing this sketch, indicate certain
mischiefs which this trait brought upon him. Courage grows by
success. The demonstrated ability to deal with dangers produces
readiness to meet more dangers, and is self-justifying where the
muscular power and the nerve habitually prove adequate. But the

826 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

resulting habit of mind is apt to influence conduct in other spheres,
where muscular power and nerve are of no avail — is apt to cause
the daring of dangers which are not to be met by strength of limb
or by skill. Nature, as externally presented in precipices, ice-
slopes, and crevasses, may be dared by one adequately endowed ;
but Nature, as internally presented in the form of physical con-
stitution, may not be thus dared with impunity. Prompted by
high motives, Tyndall tended too much to disregard the protests
of his body. Over-application in Germany caused at one time
absolute sleeplessness for, I think he told me, more than a week ;
and this, with kindred transgressions, brought on that insomnia
by which his after-life was troubled, and by which his powers of
work were diminished ; for, as I have heard him say, a sound
night's sleep was followed by marked exaltation of faculty. And
then, in later life, came the daring which, by its results, brought
his active career to a close. He conscientiously desired to fulfill
an engagement to lecture at the Royal Institution, and was not to
be deterred by fear of consequences. He gave the lecture, not-
withstanding the protest which for days before his system had
been making. The result was a serious illness, threatening, as he
thought at one time, a fatal result ; and, notwithstanding a year's
furlough for the recovery of health, he was eventually obliged to
resign his position. But for this defiance of Nature there might
have been many more years of scientific exploration, pleasurable
to himself and beneficial to others ; and he might have escaped
that invalid life which for a long time past he had to bear.

In his case, however, the penalties of invalid life had great
mitigations — mitigations such as fall to the lot of but few. It is
conceivable that the physical discomforts and mental weariness
which ill-health brings may be almost compensated, if not even
quite compensated, by the pleasurable emotions caused by unflag-
ging attentions and sympathetic companionship. If this ever
happens, it happened in his case. All who have known the house-
hold during these years of nursing are aware of the unmeasured
kindness he has received without ceasing. I. happen to have had
special evidence of this devotion on the one side and gratitude on
the other, which I do not think I am called upon to keep to my-
self, but rather to do the contrary. In a letter I received from
him some half-dozen years ago, referring, among other things, to
Mrs. Tyndall's self-sacrificing care of him, he wrote : " She has
raised my ideal of the possibilities of human nature."

THE ORIGIN OF ART. 827

THE ORIGIN OF ART.

BY M. LAZAK POPOFF.

WE are accustomed to say that Egypt is the cradle of the
arts ; yet archaeologists have demonstrated that the earliest
works of art are of epochs far anterior to the ancient Egyptian
civilizations. According to these authors, these works were con-
temporaneous with the presence of the reindeer in the south of
France, and of a time when the mammoth had not yet disappeared,
and when man, ignorant of the metals, made all his instruments
of stone, wood, and bone. In reality, the first works of art, par-
ticularly the first efforts at drawing, date from prehistoric times.
In France they are found in caverns by the side of the fossil re-
mains of animals now extinct, like the mammoth, or which have
abandoned those regions, like the reindeer, in the shape of draw-
ings engraved with flint points as decorations of articles of rein-
deer horn, such as dagger handles and clubs. Drawings have
also been observed on tablets of stone, horn, or ivory derived from
mammoth's teeth.

"We do not intend to dwell on the rudimentary, merely outline
drawings, of which these ornaments consist. We invite special
attention to more perfect and more characteristic works, in which,
as Carl Vogt remarks, the spirit of observation and imitation of
Nature, especially of living Nature, is remarkably manifest. The
figure of the mammoth attracts our notice at once. A drawing
found in the cavern of La Magdelaine, in the Dordogne, engraved
on a tablet of mammoth bone, is marked by the strikingly clumsy
attitude of the unwieldy body of the animal, by its long hair, the
form of its lofty skull with concave front, and its enormous re-
curved tusks. All these features, characteristic of this extinct type
of pachyderm, have been reproduced by the designer with a really
artistic accuracy. The mammoth was already rare in Europe
when this primitive artist lived ; and that, perhaps, is the reason
why only two among the numerous drawings found in the caverns
of France are of that animal.* The second of these drawings, which
was found in La Lozere, is a mammoth's head sculptured on a club.
, The figures of the chamois, the bear, and the ox occur more
frequently ; but those of the reindeer are most numerous. Some
are engraved on plates of bone, others as ornaments of various
articles. Sometimes groups of animals are represented ; or, on
the other hand, only parts of them are given, and we see simply
the head, or the head and bust.

* Similar decorations in outline have been found in Belgian caverns, and are referred by
Dupont to the age of the mammoth.

828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The large majority of these drawings are no better executed
than those which school children make on walls. The figures of
the reindeer, however, are superior, by the remarkable care with
which the characteristic lines of the animal are traced, and also,
in rare specimens, by the addition of shadows. The drawings of
the chamois, the bear, and the ox are likewise often strikingly
exact and of real value.

Besides these drawings of mammals, several representations of
fishes, exact but very uniform, have been found in caverns in
France. As a whole, as Broca remarks, all these relics of primi-
tive art demonstrate that the men of this prehistoric period care-
fully observed the forms and attitudes of animals, and were capa-
ble of representing them exactly and elegantly, attesting a real
artistic sense.

No such skill has been observed with reference to the repre-
sentation of the human figure ; and designs in which it appears are
extremely rare. Of two of them, one represents a man naked,
armed with a club, and surrounded by animals ; and the second, a
fishing scene, in which a man is lancing a harpoon at some marine
animal — a fish, according to Broca ; a whale, according to others.
In this piece we are most interested in the man. The drawing,
as a whole, is puerile and deformed, and the proportions are sur-
prisingly violated. The specimen is not an exception, for the
examination of all the drawings of this kind proves that the men
of those times, while very skillful in the representation of ani-
mals, especially of those which were important to them, were very
poor delineators of the human figure.

Another not less characteristic point is the complete absence of
drawings of plants. No representation of a tree, or bush, or even
of a flower is found, unless we regard as of that character the
three little rosettes engraved on a handle of reindeer horn, which
some authors think is the figure of a composite flower. Such un-
doubted exclusiveness on the part of the inhabitants of the caves
was evidently not accidental, for chance explains nothing ; and we
can not admit, with Carl Vogt, that primitive drawing originated
in a general tendency of man to the imitation of living Nature.
We think the object of these artistic productions was of a quite
different character, and that they were originally designed, not for
ornament or for pure and simple imitation of Nature, but to secure
an instrument for use in the struggle with Nature.

We remark, first, that there is nothing to prove that the men
of that epoch were mentally superior to modern savages ; and, if
we observe these, we shall ascertain that their drawings have
usually a very different significance from what they have among
civilized peoples, and nothing in common with decoration and
sesthetics in general. Numerous facts prove that human thought

THE ORIGIN OF ART. 829

in the lower stages of its development distinguishes poorly be-
tween subjective representations and objective results, and that
both give rise to the same ideas. For instance, a savage seeing
one of his family in a dream can not imagine that the image is in-
dependent of the organic substance of the personage in question ;
and he will see the same relation between the two as between a
body and its image reflected from the surface of the water. Thus
the Basutos think that if the shadow of a man is projected upon
the water the crocodiles will obtain possession of the man. A
similar identification may be pushed to the point that some tribes
are known which use the same word to designate the soul, the
image, and the shadow. This is the essential fact to be taken into
consideration in order to regard primitive design in its real mean-
ing, and to restore the conditions of the medium in which it origi-
nated. If we suppose such a material relation between the image
and the object as there is between the shadow and the object, it
becomes evident that the savage should deport himself in the same
way toward the image, the shadow, and the object. From his
point of view the image and the object it represents are in close
relation, and in acting upon the one he would be acting in the
same way upon the other. By virtue of this way of thinking the
savage is convinced that harm done to the image passes to the
object, or that in acting upon the copy we attack the original.

Proofs are numerous to demonstrate the importance which
savages attribute to this mode of action on the original. Waitz
tells, following Denghame, that it was dangerous in a certain
tribe of West Africa to paint the portraits of natives, because they
were afraid that a part of their soul would pass, by some necro-
mancy, into the image. Sir John Lubbock notices the fear of
their portrait entertained by savages — and the more like the por-
trait, the greater the danger to the original was supposed to be.
Dr. Kane got rid of the Indians one day when they were making
themselves troublesome to him by beginning to paint their por-
traits. Catlin relates an incident, at the same time sad and comic,
of his drawing the profile of a chief named Matochiga, when the
Indians around him seemed all at once very much moved. " Why
did you not draw the other half of his face ? " they asked ; " Mato-
chiga was never ashamed to look a white man in the face." Mato-
chiga did not appear to have taken offense till then, when one of
the Indians came up to him and, laughing, said, " The English-
man knows very well that you are only half a man, and he has
only drawn half of your face because the other is worth nothing."
A fatal quarrel followed this expression, and Matochiga was killed
by a bullet which struck him on the side of the face that had not
been drawn.

Charlevoix says that the Illinois and other Indian tribes made

830 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

little figures representing persons whose lives they wished to cur-
tail, and stabbed them in the place of the heart. A custom still
exists in Borneo of making a figure in wax of an enemy whom
one desires to bewitch and melting it before the fire. They say
that the person designated will waste away as his image disap-
pears. Peruvian sorcerers proceed in the same way, except that
their figures are made of rags. In the East Indies, according to
Dubois, they knead with hair or bits of skin, earth collected in
some muddy place, of which they make a figure, on the breast of
which they write the name of an enemy ; then stab the figure
with needles, or otherwise mutilate it — always in the belief that
similar injuries will be inflicted upon the person represented.

Vestiges of this primitive superstition are furthermore found
among civilized peoples ; for, as Grimm relates, Jews were accused,
in the eleventh century, in Europe, of having slain Bishop Eber-
gard by the aid of witchcraft of this kind. These Jews had each
a figure of wax representing the bishop, had bribed a priest to
baptize it, and had then thrown it in the fire. The wax had
hardly melted when the bishop was struck with mortal illness.

The famous adventurer Jacob, chief of the Pastoureaux, who
lived in the thirteenth century, believed seriously, as he says in
his Demonology, that the devil taught men the art of making
images of wax and clay, the destruction of which involved the
death of the persons whom they represented. In the time of
Catherine de Medicis it was a custom to make such figurines of
wax and to melt them over a slow fire, or stab them with needles,
in order to make their enemies suffer. The operation was called
envoutement (or spell-binding).

We shall not be done unless we cite all the facts that prove
that in the mind of the primitive man it is enough to possess
any object — a piece of a coat, hair, a bit of a nail — that has be-
longed to a person to have power to act on him and do him harm.
Faith in the efficiency of this means is so strong among backward
peoples that persons who have any reason to suspect others hide
their clothes in order that no part of them may be stolen. Others,
when they cut their hair or nails, put the cut parts on the roof of
their house or bury them. So peasants in some countries do with
extracted teeth. We add, to complete our picture, that writing is
regarded by the savage as endowed with the same magic force as
drawing — a fact we may easily comprehend if we recollect that
picture-writing preceded writing with letters or any conventional
signs, and is still practiced among some savage tribes. In these
picture-writings the subjection of a man or an animal to bad luck
is indicated by an arrow drawn from the mouth to the heart. A
sign of that kind is supposed to be equivalent to a real taking
possession of the animal or the person represented.

THE ORIGIN OF ART. 831

It is doubtful whether we could give more evident proofs of
the entirely special significance attributed by the savage to draw-
ing, regarded by him as an instrument of power over another.
While the examples we have cited relate particularly to man, it
is logical to assume that the same process — that is, the figurative
representation of animals — plays a like part in the struggle of the
savage against his natural enemies. There exist other facts that
confirm this hypothesis.

According to. Mr. Tanner, the North American Indians, to
assure success in their hunts, made rude drawings of the animals
they pursue, with arrows sticking through the place of the heart,
believing that they will by this means obtain power to cause the
game they seek to fall into their hands. The Australians, accord-
ing to an observer quoted by Tylor, make a figure of the kangaroo
of grass in order to become the masters of the real kangaroos in
the bush. When an Algonkin Indian wanted to slay an animal,
he made a grass figure of it and hung it up in his lodge. Then,
having named it several times, he shot an arrow at the image. If
he hit it, it was a sign that he would kill the animal on the
morrow.

In the same way, if the hunter, after he had touched the
wand of a wizard with his arrow, strikes the track of an animal
with the same arrow, the animal will be stopped in its flight and
held till the hunter can catch up with it. The same result, ac-
cording to the aborigines, can be easily secured by drawing the
figure of the animal on a piece of wood, and praying to the image
for success in the hunt.

Here, then, we have, in substance, the origin of the part
played by drawing. An Indian song expresses this part admi-
rably in the words, " My picture makes a god of me," and it is
really doubtful whether faith in the powerful significance of the
art of drawing as an instrument by the aid of which primitive
man could obtain a supernatural power over his enemy or his
game could be more powerfully expressed.

If we now consider the works of the cave men in the light of
these facts, we shall recognize that the object that inspired them
had really few points in common with the sense of beauty or the
tendency to imitation ; and it is clear that if there existed in the
mind of primitive man a material relation between a being and
its shadow or its image, that man would believe that the same
relation was preserved between that being and its image trans-
ferred to any object. The purpose sought was to possess one's
self of the shadow of the desired object, and the only way of do-
ing that was to fix the silhouette of the shadow on some article.
This, in our opinion, was the primary purpose of drawing, and
consequently of painting.

832 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is noteworthy that all works of this kind appertaining to
the embryonal period of the arts of design display the want of
proportionality, the absence of symmetry characteristic of sil-
houettes of shadows. The uniform impression given by these
drawings is that they refer, not to the objects themselves, but to
their shadows. It is likewise interesting to remark that some
contemporaneous savages — some Australians, for example — are
still incapable of grasping the meaning of the most perfectly
faithful images, while they readily understand a rude, ill-propor-
tioned drawing. Thus, to give them the idea of a man, he must
be drawn with a greatly enlarged head — a detail, the spirit of
which is paralleled upon a drawing found in a cavern in France,
and representing a fisherman. He has a very small body, but
his hand, armed with an enormous harpoon, is the hand of a giant.

In his struggle with surrounding Nature — a struggle of which
it is almost impossible for us to conceive an exact idea — the first
need of primitive man was to possess some means of giving him
confidence in victory. In going to the hunt he took with him, as
the North American Indian does, and as do under another form
some of the gamblers in our most civilized circles, the fetich that
was to assure his success — that is, the image of the animal he
wanted to kill. In engraving on the handle of his dagger the
likeness of a reindeer or other animal, he was not thinking of
decorating his weapon, but only of bringing some magic power to
bear upon his prey ; and it was precisely faith in that mysteri-
ous force, by giving him boldness, energy, and security of move-
ment, that would procure him success. Confidence acts thus in
everything.

Like the irodern savage, the man of the caves believed that
the greater the resemblance between the animal and its likeness,
the greater was the chance of acting on the animal. Hence the
care taken in the pictured reproduction of animals particularly
sought for, and against which his struggle was the most earnest ;
hence those perfect drawings of the reindeer, that magnificent
game of our ancestors. Very different are the characteristics
of the drawings of human forms. To account for these differ-
ences, it must be considered that all the archaeological data rela-
tive to the epoch of the reindeer are unanimous in attesting that
the man of that age was of a peaceful character.

While, then, we are justified in believing that the men of the
caverns very rarely raised their hands against one another, it is
none the less certain that they led a bitter and truceless struggle
against animals. They therefore rarely had occasion to practice
the drawing of the human figure ; whence the great imperfections
of the figures of that kind as compared with the figures of
animals.

SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 833

It may be remarked, with reference to plant forms, that the
boreal flora of that epoch, not being at all menacing, could fur-
nish little food for superstition, and no drawings of plants are
found in the caves.

On the whole, the condition of the art of design with primi-
tive man appears to be in complete harmony with the meaning
we have attributed to design itself — it being regarded as inspired
by the belief in the existence of a material relation between a
being and its image, and in the possibility of acting on the object
by means of the picture.

Consequently, the principle of painting is not to be found in a
natural tendency of primitive man to the artificial imitation of
living Nature, but seems to be derived from the wish to subject
that Nature to its wants and to subdue it.

By progressive improvements, the art of drawing has gradu-
ally lost its primitive significance and original meaning till it has
become what it is now. It does not differ, however, much from
what it was originally ; for, while primitive man fancied he could
reach the living being in its image, it is still life that living man
seeks to-day in works of art. — Translated for The Popular Sci-
ence Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ.

"TOURING colonial times in America, and even down into the
-*-/ present century, science advanced over a much obstructed
path. Not having then attained to its present power and esteem,
there were but few of its votaries whose whole time and best
energies it could command. The explorations by which the ani-
mals, plants, and minerals of the vast Western continent were
made known to science were accomplished in large part by nat-
uralists who either followed some other vocation as a means of
livelihood, or were mainly occupied by some other career to
which they felt more strongly bound. Franklin was a printer
and later a statesman, being an electrician only at odd times;
John Bartram was a farmer ; Mitchell, Hosack, and Barton were
physicians ; while Muhlenberg and the subject of this article were
clergymen.

LEWIS DAVID VON SCHWEINITZ was born, February 13, 1780,
at Bethlehem, Pa., then a Moravian Church settlement which had
been founded by his family in 1741. His father, Baron Hans
Christian Alexander von Schweinitz, came from an ancient and
distinguished family residing on the ancestral estate called Leubla,
in the present limits of Saxony. That he was a man of stable

TOL. XLIT. — 61

834 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

character may be inferred from the fact that he performed the
responsible duties of a treasurer general for the Moravian Church
in America. The mother of Lewis was Dorothea Elizabeth,
daughter of Baron (afterward Bishop) John de Watteville, and
Benigna, daughter of Lewis Nicholas, Count Zinzendorf. It was
to Zinzendorf and Watteville that the renewal and resuscitation
of the ancient church of the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian
Brethren, in the eighteenth century was mainly due. In 1722
two families of the Brethren crossed the frontier of -Moravia by
night and made their way to the estate of Count Zinzendorf in
Saxony. Here they were joined by others, and in a few years
the town of Herrnhut was built by the colonists. Zinzendorf
took an interest in this settlement from the start, became a
bishop in the church, and devoted his life to its service. The
efforts of the Brethren were early turned toward foreign missions,
and it was in furtherance of mission work that Zinzendorf and
Watteville came to America and founded the first Moravian
settlements in this country.

Being so closely connected with the re-founders of an ancient
denomination, the parents of Lewis naturally looked forward to
his becoming an able promoter of the interests of their church.
He was their eldest son, of a decidedly intellectual temperament
and an enthusiastic disposition, and when in early boyhood he
developed the habit of addressing short speeches and little ser-
mons to the family circle, his future seemed to be definitely
marked out.

When a little more than seven years old, Lewis was placed
in the academy of the Moravian community at Nazareth Hall,
where he remained eleven years. Young Lewis received his first
impulse toward scientific study when on a visit to this school
with his grandfather, Bishop de Watteville, before he entered it
as a pupil. Seeing a specimen of the Lichen digitatus lying on a
table, the child examined it with interest, and was told its name
and something about its physiology. From that moment he was
wont to date his interest in the vegetable kingdom. After enter-
ing the school he received some instruction in the elements of
botany. A partial flora of Nazareth and vicinity, made while he
was at this institution, which remained among his manuscripts at
his death, is evidence that this study took immediate hold upon
the mind of the youth. During his school days his powers of
language and his vein of satirical humor were occasionally mani-
fested in poetical effusions. While still a pupil and not yet eight-
een years of age he assisted in teaching some of the younger
classes. Lewis had three brothers, none of whom ever turned to
scientific pursuits, and two sisters.

In 1798 Haas von Schweinitz was called to Germany and took

SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 835

his family with him. Lewis was removed from the Nazareth
seminary and after the family reached Germany was entered as
a student in the theological institution at Niesky, in what was
then known as the province of Lusatia, in Silesia. Here he made
the acquaintance of Prof. J. B. de Albertini, who became his fast
friend and his fellow-worker in "botanical investigations. After
completing his course as a student he became a teacher in the
academy. His leisure at Niesky was occupied in the pursuit of
his favorite science, in general reading and study, and in writing
for the literary journals of the time. In his Memoir of von
Schweinitz, read before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila-
delphia, Walter R. Johnson says of his literary activity at this
time : " Scarcely any important topic in the wide field of science
escaped his notice, and especially did the constitution and man-
agement of the affairs of his social and religious fraternity call
forth from his pen many able and spirited articles."

The first published botanical work of von Schweinitz appeared
in 1805, when he was twenty-five years of age. From the begin-
ning of his residence at Niesky he had given especial attention to
the fungi, previously little studied. The association with Alber-
tini had continued and the discoveries of the two friends in this
field had been so many as to warrant the publication of a volume
of about four hundred pages on the fungi of Lusatia embodying
the results of their united efforts. It was written in Latin, as
was still the custom for scientific works in Europe, and the
twelve plates, containing figures of ninety-three new species, with
which it was illustrated, were drawn and engraved by von
Schweinitz's own hands. In this work the authors creditably re-
frained from the then too common practice of giving new names
to the already known plants included in their descriptions.
They were convinced that natural history had been grievously
burdened by the accumulation and confusion of synonyms, many
of which promoted no other purpose than an unworthy ambition.

Soon after this Mr. von Schweinitz began to preach, and in
1807 was called to the Moravian settlement at Gnadenberg, not
far from Niesky. " Considered as literary performances/' says
Johnson, in the memoir already cited, " his sermons were charac-
terized by the utmost simplicity, both in style and delivery, and
were addressed more to the heart than to the head. His dis-
courses were invariably practical, not argumentative — experi-
mental, not speculative/' It was now the time of Napoleon's
continental wars, and troops were quartered at Gnadenberg.
The inhabitants found the presence of the soldiery irksome, but
the happy disposition and winning deportment of the young pas-
tor had much influence in preventing collisions. The next year
he was invited to Gnadau, in Saxony, where he remained four

836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

years, performing the duties of his clerical office and teaching the
boys of the community who were destined for learned professions.

In 1812 Mr. von Schweinitz, being then thirty-two years of
age, was appointed general agent of the Moravian Church in the
southern United States. Before starting for this country he mar-
ried, at Niesky, Louiza Amelia Le Doux, who belonged to a
French family residing at Stettin. The continental system of
Napoleon rendering direct communication with the United States
extremely hazardous, Mr. von Schweinitz and his wife were com-
pelled to go through Denmark to Sweden and embark there. The
trouble of making this roundabout journey was, as it chanced,
not without its compensation. The travelers were obliged to
make a stay of some length at Kiel, in Holstein, during which
von Schweinitz formed an enjoyable acquaintance with several of
the professors in the university there. His attainments, more-
over, so impressed the authorities of this seat of learning that
they conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Phi-
losophy. When, at length, the voyage was begun the United
States had declared war with England and the sea swarmed with
privateers. The passage abounded with thrilling adventures and
providential escapes. While still in European waters the vessel
fell in with a French privateer and narrowly avoided capture by
taking refuge under the guns of a Danish fort. A fierce cannon-
ade between the Danes and the Frenchman followed, many of the
balls passing over and through the ship. Later it was actually
captured by a British frigate, but escaped in the darkness and fog
of a stormy night. Much tempestuous weather was met with,
and the climax came in a terrible storm which dismasted the
vessel. Nevertheless, it finally entered port in safety, being the
only one of fifteen or twenty American vessels sailing from
Sweden on the same day that ever reached America.

The principal church settlement of the district to which von
Schweinitz had been assigned was at Salem, N. C., and there he
took up his residence. Although not a native of North Carolina,
he had a strong predilection for that State, having often heard
his father and grandfather speak of their visits to its early settle-
ments. His official duties were very arduous. He was a member
of the Governing Board of the Moravian Churches in North Caro-
lina, a trustee of the Salem Female Academy, the administrator
of the very large landed estates owned by the church in the State,
and he frequently preached in Salem and other places. Yet he
found time to continue his botanical researches, which he could
now carry on in a dominion, scientifically speaking, all his own.
On one of his exploring trips he discovered among the Sauraton
Mountains, in Stokes County, a most beautiful waterfall, which
still bears his name. Among his scientific correspondents at

SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 837

this time were Dr. Reichenbach, of Dresden; Kunze, of Leip-
sic ; Major Le Conte, United States Army ; Blumenbach, of
Gottingen ; Elliott, of South Carolina ; Schwaegrichen, of Leip-
sic ; and Hooker, of England. The first fruit of his botanical
work in the South was a synopsis of the fungi of North Caro-
lina, written in Latin, which was given to the world in 1818
through the Society of Naturalists at Leipsic, under the editorial
care of Dr. D. F. Schwaegrichen. Among the one thousand
three hundred and seventy-three species described in this synop-
sis, there are three hundred and fifteen that were new to science.
In the same year his duties required him to attend a synod of his
religious brethren at Herrnhut. On his way he visited England,
France, and Holland, and established correspondences which
were of great value to him after he returned to America and be-
gan the formation of a regular herbarium. In 1821 von Schwei-
nitz published at Raleigh, N. C., a pamphlet containing descrip-
tions of seventy-six species of Hepaticaz, (liverworts), among
them being nine discovered by him. In the same year he con-
tributed to the American Journal of Science, then in its fifth vol-
ume, a Monograph on the Genus Viola, in which five new species
were described. This was a valuable paper, and was often cited
by European botanists. In it he made the interesting state-
ment that among the thirty species of violets then known in
America there was not one exactly like any of the twenty Eu-
ropean species.

During his residence at Salem, von Schweinitz had been
offered the presidency of the University of North Carolina. The
acceptance of this honorable position would have necessitated
giving up his service in the Moravian Church, and so, feeling that
the Brethren had the best claim upon his energies, he declined it.
At the beginning of the year 1822 he removed to Pennsylvania,
and took up his residence in his native village of Bethlehem.
Here he undertook the charge of the Moravian girls' seminary at
that place, and the secular office of general agent for the Brethren
was retained. His botanical studies were not suffered to languish.
" The beautiful slopes and valleys about Bethlehem and Naza-
reth/' says Johnson, " the romantic banks of the Delaware, and
the precipitous rocks of the Lehigh, all yielded up to him a trib-
ute of their hitherto unexplored treasures. The high estimation
set upon his works by men of science had procured his election
as an honorary member in several societies devoted to natural
history, both in Europe and America. His correspondence in-
creased, and the formation of his herbarium advanced with great
rapidity." About this time Major Long's expedition to the sources
of the St. Peter's River, in the Northwest Territory, returned. It
had been arranged that the plants collected on this trip by Thomas

838 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Say should be described by Nuttall. The work was begun by
this naturalist, but he was obliged to go to Europe, and was pre-
vented from returning in season to do any more. The plants were
accordingly put in the hands of von Schweinitz, who described
them most acceptably.

Toward the end of 1823 the then well-known botanist com-
municated to the Lyceum of Natural History (now the Academy
of Natural Sciences), of New York, a key or analytical table for
determining the American species of Carex — the largest genus
of the sedges. This production, though small in bulk, could
result only from ample knowledge and exact discrimination. In
1824 the American Journal of Science published a short paper
by him on the rarer plants of Easton, Pa. There was another
synod at Herrnhut this year which it was necessary for him to
attend, and, having a Monograph of the North American Carices
about completed, he put the manuscript, together with a large
collection of specimens, into the hands of Dr. Torrey, in order
that the monograph might be communicated to the Lyceum of
Natural History in his absence. He gave full liberty for mak-
ing any additions or alterations warranted by Dr. Torrey 's later
discoveries. When he found, on returning, that his editor had
made important additions to the number of species described, von
Schweinitz, with characteristic conscientiousness, requested that
the paper should be published as their joint production, saying
that " the judicious and elaborate amendments he has proposed,
and the mass of new and valuable matter he has added, entitle
Dr. Torrey to a participation in the authorship of the work."
The whole number of species described was one hundred and thir-
teen, of which six were new. This and the analytical table of the
Carices were both printed in the first volume of the Annals of
the Lyceum. In his absence a paper in which he described fifteen
new American species of SphcericR, one of the largest genera of
fungi, was communicated to the Academy of Natural Sciences of
Philadelphia, and appeared in vol. v of its Journal.

Von Schweinitz was absent till near the end of 1825. After
his return he resumed his labors as general agent for the Breth-
ren ; the charge of the school, however, had been given up some
time before. The great work to which he now devoted his atten-
tion was a Synopsis of North American Fungi. He had intended
this for publication in one of the European journals, but was in-
duced to present it, in 1831, to the American Philosophical So-
ciety of Philadelphia. In this work three thousand and ninety-
eight species, belonging to two hundred and forty-six genera,
were described, of which twelve hundred and three species and
seven genera had been discovered by the author. If to these dis-
coveries we add those made by von Schweinitz in other orders of

SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 839

plants, we have a total of nearly fourteen hundred new species
added to botanic science by the talents and industry of a single
observer. The whole number of species known at his death was
estimated at sixty thousand.

Until he was about fifty years of age his health had been ex-
cellent. But the various and increasing cares of his official posi-
tion finally had their effect. The sedentary work involved in
writing a dissertation on the affairs of his community, which pre-
vented for a time his usual out-of-door exercise, was the immedi-
ate cause of a severe cough and other alarming symptoms of de-
cline. His spirits, which had been uniformly cheerful, became
depressed. A journey to the West to establish a branch commu-
nity of the United Brethren in Indiana was temporarily beneficial,
but his system was undermined and the progress of disease could
not be stayed. On February 8, 1834, came the end of what his
memoirist calls " a life of various, constant, and unobtrusive use-
fulness."

A widow and four sons survived him. All the sons entered
the Moravian ministry. The eldest, Emil Adolphus de Schwei-
nitz, was born in Salem, N. C., in 1816. He filled various ecclesi-
astical offices in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, was made a
bishop in 1874, and died in 1879. The second son, Robert, was
born in Salem, in 1819. He has filled various charges and was for
many years President of the Executive Board of the American
Moravian Church. Since his retirement from the active ministry
he has been general treasurer of the Church and of its Foreign
Mission Department. The third son, Edmund Alexander, was
born in Bethlehem in 1825, and died there in 1887. He also
became a bishop, and was the author of several books on the his-
tory and polity of the Unitas Fratrum. In 1856 he established a
weekly journal for the Moravians in America, which he edited
for ten years. Bernard, the youngest son, was born at Bethlehem,
in 1828, and died at the age of twenty-six years, being at the time
in charge of a church on Staten Island. During the latter years
of the father's life he used de in place of von in his name, and the
sons have always used the new form.

Von Schweinitz was of high stature, erect carriage, and robust
habit. The portrait accompanying this sketch is a copy of a
miniature painted some years before his death, and consequently
represents him in the prime of life. He had an unusually ami-
able and attractive disposition, which made him a general favorite
with high and low. His conversational powers were of a high
order, and contributed much to an ease of intercourse which was
an important factor of his usefulness. Humor, anecdote, and
repartee were always at his command, while the varied and excit-
ing scenes through which he had passed and the prominent per-

840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sonages with whom he had come in contact furnished him an in-
exhaustible fund of interesting reminiscences. Strange to say,
considering his German extraction, he was devoid of any appre-
ciation for music. He spoke and wrote in English, German,
French, and Latin, and was also acquainted with Greek.

A notable feature of his scientific work was its systematic
character. Evidence of this is furnished by the synoptical tables
attached to his several monographs, and by the fact that the ana-
lytical table of the Carices was one of his productions. The
cryptogams had for him an attraction that they do not have for
many. We owe most of our knowledge of this series of plants to
German, Danish, and Swedish investigators. Knowledge that
may not be read by him who runs but must be delved for, as is
the case with that relating to the fungi and their near allies,
seems to have an especial attraction for Northern minds.

Among his well-deserved honors was the naming after him of
Schweinitzia odorata (sweet pinesap), by Stephen Elliott. This
is a small plant, found from Maryland southward, and bears a
spike of flesh-colored flowers which exhale the odor of violets.

A general characterization of the botanist's work can not be
given better than in the following words of Walter R. Johnson :

" When we consider the extreme difficulty of the particular
departments of botany to which Mr. Schweinitz devoted his chief
attention, the prodigious number of facts which he has accumu-
lated, the vast amount of minute and delicate investigation de-
manded by the nature of the objects of his study, the labor of
preparing for the press the materials which he had brought to-
gether ; when we recollect that, with the exception of Dr. Muhlen-
burg, of Lancaster, no American botanist had ventured far upon
this wide and unexplored dominion of Nature, and when we re-
member that this science was his relaxation, not his profession —
his occasional pursuit, not his daily duty — we are forcibly struck
with the high order of his talents for the pursuit of physical sci-
ence, and can not but regret that more of his time and energies
could not have been devoted to this favorite ocupation."

Von Schweinitz bequeathed his collection of plants to the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. It comprised
twenty-three thousand species of phanerogams and many thousand
cryptogams. A large portion of the specimens were from the
most remote parts of the world, having been obtained by exchange
with American and European explorers. They included the
" Baldwin collection " from Florida, Brazil, and La Plata, which
von Schweinitz had bought, and in which he had found three
thousand species not before in his herbarium. The examination
and arrangement of these plants had been one of his last scientific
labors.

CORRESP ONDENCE.

841

CORRESPONDENCE.

CLOSE OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD.
Editor Popular Science Monthly ;

GKOLOGISTS who are only slightly versed
in astronomy are apt to make a serious mis-
take on this subject. The latest which has
fallen under my notice is by Prestwich. in
the article entitled The Position of Geology,
in the February number of this periodical, page
541. He says: "The last of these astro-
nomical periods was calculated to have com-
menced two hundred and fifty thousand years
and to have ended eighty thousand years ago.
These numbers have become stereotyped as
those of the beginning and the end of the
Glacial period."

A slight acquaintance with this subject
ought to prevent mistakes such as the above.
They are stereotyped only to those who give
little or no heed to the actual dates and as
little to a universal law of Nature touching
the cumulative effects of constantly acting
forces. These effects were clearly set forth
by Prof. Le Conte some years ago in treat-
ing of this general subject. The day of the
summer solstice is not the day of greatest
heat or the middle of the hot season ; nor is
the day of the winter solstice in the middle
of the cold season. The maximum in the
two cases occurs about six weeks after those
dates respectively, an amount about equal
to one fourth of the whole time from one ex-
treme to the other. These are elementary
truths, and whoever omits them in this dis-
cussion repeats the old story of "playing
Hamlet with Hamlet left out."

The following is a brief statement of the
essential points in the case: Two hundred
and fifty thousand years ago * the eccentrici-
ty of the earth's orbit was very nearly what
it is now, and consequently the climate of
these two distant periods, so far as it may
depend on the eccentricity, was not very
different. The eccentricity had been less,
but was then increasing, and had so been for
ten thousand years. It continued to increase
for about fifty thousand years longer, becom-
ing then nearly three times its present value.
Then for another like period it diminished
till it became about once and a half its pres-
ent value. Then again for a second time it
increased for about fifty thousand years, be-
coming about two and a half times the origi-
nal value. This was one hundred thousand
years ago. The decline again commenced,
and eighty thousand years ago the eccentricity
was more than double its present value. It is
therefore evident — is plain as an axiom —
that the Glacial period did not end then and

* J3ee American Journal of Science, August, 1880.

there. The eccentricity continued to be
greater than it is now for twenty thousand
years more. And for this long period of one
hundred and ninety thousand years the eccen-
tricity, on the average, was more than twice
what it is now. Those who disregard these
facts have not fully grasped the question.
It would better accord with truth to say that
sixty thousand years ago the Glacial period
was making ready " to go out of business."

If we allow only thirty thousand years for
the undoing of the effects of the one hundred
and ninety thousand — and the allowance is
certainly moderate — the close of the Glacial
period was only thirty thousand years ago,
and that date is comparatively recent when
counting geological time. It appears, then,
that there is no irreconcilable difference be-
tween those geologists who reject Croll's
theory by reason of the alleged remoteness
of the Glacial period and those who think
there " may be something " in that theory.
And the more especially is this the case
since the recent discovery of the old outlet
of the upper lakes through Lake Nipissing
and the Ottawa River and the relatively late
period when the waters of all the upper lakes
began to flow to the sea by way of the
Niagara. R. W. McFARLAND.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, February, 1894.

DOG PSYCHOLOGY.

Editor Papular Science Monthly ;

DEAR SIR : I was greatly interested hi Mr.
Monteith's article on " The Psychology of the
Dog," in the February number, and desire to
supplement his paper with some observations
of a dog of my own. The animal was a pug
— not full-blooded, but with a cross of some
other kind ; yet he had all the characteristic
markings of that breed, and his general ap-
pearance was the same, except that his nose
was a trifle longer and not so stubby.

"Gyp" was intelligent to a remarkable
degree, and from some of his actions I firmly
believe that he not only understood what was
said to him, but he was capable also of con-
tinuous thought, and could reach conclusions.
That he understood many words, and could
distinguish between them, I am satisfied.

His mistress taught him that when some
candy was placed before him, of which he
was very fond, if she said, "That's Demo-
crat," he must not touch it, but when the
word " Republican " was uttered he at once
ate it.

When "Gyp" was thirsty he would go
into the kitchen and sit patiently at the sink
waiting for a drink ; but if, after waiting for

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a reasonable length of time, no one came to
supply his wants he would utter a sharp, im-
patient bark.

His happiest moments were when his
master would ask him if he wanted to go out
walking, and he would express himself very
forcibly and unmistakably in the affirmative,
and would, if asked at such a time, go to
each member of the family, stand upon his
hind legs, and give them each a kiss ; or, if
his master said to him, " Roll over, if you
want to go walking," he would at once lie
down and roll completely over.

But his reasoning or thinking powers
were more clearly manifested in connection
with a rubber ball with which he played,
and which he would leave in various nooks
and corners. When asked, " Where is your
ball ? " he would, if it was not in plain sight,
bend his head down and stand for a moment
as if in deep thought, and then proceed at
once to get it, sometimes making a quick
dive under the lounge, or in a bedroom, un-
der the bed, or behind the curtains that
separated the dining from the sitting room,
always returning with it, and would look up
into one's face, his very countenance intelli-
gent with the answer, " Here it is."

His master generally putting him to bed
at night, he usually lay upon the lounge,
waiting for the time; and, after the fires
had been replenished and the clock wound,
he would get down and be ready to go. He
invariably waited until the winding of the
clock before preparing to start.

In an evil hour " Gyp " strayed away
from home one day, and came back a badly
used-up dog. He had evidently been at-
tacked by some larger dog or dogs, and after
lingering for nearly two weeks he died from
the effects of the bites.

During this time he seemed really more
like a " human being" than a brute. He was

most patient and grateful for all the kind
offices and helpfulness of his master and
mistress, and heroically submitted to have
his wounds washed and medicated, and, al-
though at times scarcely able to walk, he
insisted on being where his friends were, or
where he could see them.

J. ANDREW BOYD.
ASHLEY, LUZERNE COUNTY, PA.

THE "BLUE LAWS" A MYTH.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

"THE early Puritans of New England,
who enacted the most ferocious of blue-laws,
who would not let a man step over a stone in
his path, or kiss — not his neighbor's but his
own — wife on a seventh day," etc.

The above is a quotation from the very
first page of an article, in the last number of
The Popular Science Monthly, entitled Abol-
ish All Prohibitive Liquor Laws, by Appleton
Morgan. Now, these mythical blue laws
never had any existence ; no law forbidding
a man to kiss his wife on the seventh day
was ever on the statute-books of any New
England colony. Prof. Johnston's History
of Connecticut, in the American Common-
wealths Series, or Palfrey's History of New
England, will show the origin of this absurd
myth. A glance at Blue Laws, and the Rev.
Samuel Peters, in either Appletons' or John-
son's Cyclopaedia will perhaps be enough for
the ordinary reader.

Such careless misstatements naturally
cause the reader to question the accuracy of
the entire article. As you say in your edi-
torial comments on the " young moon "
error, " writers, and particularly writers on
scientific subjects, are under obligations to
know what they are talking about."

CHARLES E. DAVIS.
WASHINGTON, February 20, 1894.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

THE UNEMPLOYED.

"TTTHEN a condition of things super-
VV venes in which a considerable
percentage of the population is cut off
from the means of support by lack of
work, we need not hesitate to say that
something is wrong. We are not much
in the habit of attributing purpose to
Nature ; but the language of teleology is
sometimes convenient, and we shall per-
haps not be misunderstood if we say
that the apparently enforced idleness

of thousands of men, with all the poverty
and distress thence resulting, can not be
part of Nature's plan, or at least can not
illustrate the normal working of natural
law. Nature, we know, is severe in her
methods, and recks little of human life
when she sets her forces of fire and
flood, of storm and earthquake in mo-
tion. There is nothing analogous to
these catastrophes in the social phe-
nomena before us to-day. What we see
is not the sudden extinction of human

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

lives by uncontrollable physical forces,
but the prolonged misery of human be-
ings through lack of adaptation to their
circumstances or through the existence
of artificial conditions of purely human
production. To our mind the question
of the hour presents itself in this shape :
Why is there so terrible an amount of
maladjustment in social relations to-
day? Why are such multitudes sofa-
tally out of harmony with the conditions
of life ? The symptoms, as we interpret
them, all point to man's tinkering with
natural laws in a futile effort to amend
them, or with the shameful object of
benefiting the few at the cost of the
many. We wish briefly to indicate one
or two of the ways in which, as it seems
to us, social misery is caused.

It is recognized the world over that
republican institutions are the definitive
form of government for civilized coun-
tries ; but when our forefathers strug-
gled for liberty they probably had little
idea of the form which popular govern-
ment would in these latter days assume.
They did not foresee the unrest that
would be introduced into every section
of the country through the desire to share
in the emoluments which government
has the power to bestow. They did not
foresee the creation of a class of pro-
fessional politicians who, reaping pecu-
niary rewards themselves for their po-
litical services (so called), would be em-
powered to dangle minor rewards before
the eyes of scores of others by way of
securing support for themselves. They
did not foresee the greedy passions and
the aversion to steady employment
which all this would arouse, or the
numbers of half-employed and unem-
ployed men whom it would throw upon
the community to live more or less the
life of adventurers. They did not fore-
see the paralysis that would overtake
both law and legislation through the
balancing of selfish interests, or the
deadness to large views of policy which
the constant study of all political ques-
tions from a local standpoint would en-

tail. While curbing the power and cur-
tailing the privileges of a territorial
aristocracy, they had no prevision of a
moneyed class which, allying itself with
the dominant party in the state, would
wield a power more dangerous to na-
tional welfare than any aristocracy had
ever done. We, however, see that all
these things have come to pass, for we
live in the midst of them and feel the
burden of them every day. The remedy
lies not in any reversion to outworn
institutions — though diseased common-
wealths have many times taken refuge
in tyranny — but in the sedulous cultiva-
tion of a higher sense of citizenship.
How is that going to be done? some
one will ask. Do you believe in it
yourself? we rejoin. Do you believe
that the average sense of citizenship,
or, to express it otherwise, the average
sense of duty to the state, is low ; and,
if so, are you personally willing to eet a
higher example and courageously and
strenuously uphold a higher doctrine?
If so, you need not ask how the thing is
going to be done, for you see the way
yourself. If not, we do not wonder
at your skepticism as to that being pos-
sible which you are personally unwill-
ing to undertake. There are a hundred
ways in which higher views of citizen-
ship might be inculcated. The country
is fairly riddled and honeycombed and
worm-eaten with secret societies, the
object of each being to confer special
advantages on its members, the object
of none being to raise the political and
moral tone of the whole country. Could
not some of the leaders of these move
in the matter? Then there are schools,
public and private, where ample oppor-
tunity exists for forming the minds of
the young aright on this most important
subject. Then there is the pulpit, which
might be an enormous engine for good
if rightly used.

The question just now, however, is
how the dislocations which are caus-
ing so much misery have been brought
about, rather than what specific meas-

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ures are necessary to mend them. If
we see whence our trouble has come,
we shall not be at any serious loss as to
remedies. The faults of our political
system, or rather the vices which attend
its practical working, are closely con-
nected, in our opinion, with a defective
system of popular education. The pub-
lic-school system is a gigantic creation
of law. It did not grow any more than
the tariff; it was made, and made under
the influence of arbitrary conceptions as
to what a school system for the whole
people should be. Being made for the
whole people, special adaptations could
not be thought of. Consequently, the
work it does is like mill work, and all
who come out of it show one uniform
pattern. There is no cultivation of in-
dividuality, and, broadly speaking, all
ideal elements are banished from the
education imparted. The result is that
the one really dominant trait in the
swarms of youths sent out year after
year from the public schools is a con-
suming desire to make money, and
to make it in the easiest way possible.
What the state has done is not so much
to educate in any worthy sense, as to
increase the keenness of competition by
promoting an unnatural uniformity of
tastes and aims. And, as the universal
ambition is not only to make money but
to make it fast and easily, it is not sur-
prising that those who do not see how
they are going to do this by honest
means betake themselves to means that
are not honest. It would be an inter-
esting and instructive thing to know
how many school - bred young men
are at this moment engaged in va-
rious forms of " fake " business. What
these individuals learned at school was
that education was chiefly useful as a
means of making money, and now they
are trying to turn their education to
such account as they find possible.

If habits of industry were taught in
the schools, that alone would be a great
gain ; but in general it is not so. The
idle have ample opportunity to idle, and

even those who have no natural pro-
pensity that way are more or less habit-
uated to idleness, owing to the simple
fact that the teachers are not able to
keep their classes fully occupied. That
much moral harm is thus wrought to
thousands of boys we have no doubt
whatever. Then education is not vaF-
ued, simply because it is apparently so
cheap; and this again has a vulgariz-
ing and demoralizing effect. Education
ought to be valued, and, if it is not, it
will be lacking in the moral virtue
which it ought to possess. It may fur-
ther be asked whether the drill of
school renders those who are subjected
to it more resourceful or less resource-
ful. Is there not a danger lest a habit
be formed of looking for direction and
not exercising individual powers of
thought and will ? We have no wish to
dogmatize on such a question, but the
conclusion to us is irresistible that the
public- school system, as a whole, is a vast
attack on the individuality of the rising
generation, and that by destroying nat-
ural dissimilarities between the units of
the population, and thus making com-
petition fiercer, it throws a great num-
ber out of adjustment to their environ-
ment, either as destitute of employment
or as in a manner compelled to some
more or less criminal means of making
a living.

It is a most unpopular thing, we are
aware, to hint at the possibility of
" over-education,'' but might we venture
to suggest that there may be, and is in a
multitude of cases, misplaced or super-
fluous education ? A man not only does
not need a university degree to enable
him to drive a street car, but the pos-
session of a university training is not
likely to sweeten for him that particular
kind of toil. We hold it to be entirely
possible to supersaturate a community
with university "advantages"; money
liberally, vigorously, and unwisely ap-
plied will do it.

We fully believe that other elements
than those we have indicated enter into

EDITOR'S TABLE.

845

the problem of the unemployed. It is
probably true, as hinted by Herbert
Spencer in the address delivered by him
in this city in the year 1882, that the
pace set by the stronger and more com-
petent members of the community is
faster than the weaker ones can keep
up with. " In the country of the blind
the one-eyed man is king," and many of
the "failures" of a civilized society
might be brilliant successes in a society
of a more primitive cast. So far as an
unrestrained use by the strong of their
superior abilities in competition for
wealth and all that it represents may
be an evil— and that it is an evil Mr.
Spencer has again suggested in the last
volume of his Principles of Sociology —
we can only hope to check it by pro-
moting the growth of higher moral and
social sentiments. This will, in any
case, take time ; bat meantime we
should earnestly and sedulously consider
in what directions and to what extent
we are interfering with the operation of
those natural laws the tendency of
which is to produce a condition of
social equilibrium. We need to open
our eyes to the mischief we have done
by a crude political philosophy, by
unwise legislation, by indiscreet phi-
lanthropy, by the application of untried
abstract ideas to the regulation of social
questions. We need to awaken to a
sense of the extreme liability of the hu-
man intellect to go astray when it at-
tempts constructive work of any kind.
That things have gone wrong we have
the proof before our eyes, and where is
the chief blame to be laid if not on our
own short-sighted views and meddle-
some policies ?

It happened that just as we had
finished the above article the Fort-
nightly Review for February was placed
in our hands. The first article in the
number is one by Herbert Spencer upon
the late Prof. Tyndall ; the second is by
Goldwin Smith, and bears the title of
Oxford Revisited. From the first, which

will be found entire elsewhere in this
number, we extract the following pass-
age: "A conversation with him [Tyndall]
some years since made it manifest that
personal experience had greatly shaken
his faith in public administrations, and
made him look with more favor on the
view of state functions held by me. On
the other hand, my faith in free institu-
tions, originally strong (though always
joined with the belief that the mainte-
nance and success of them is a question
of national character), has in these later
years been greatly decreased by the
conviction that the fit character is not
possessed by any people, nor is likely to
be possessed for ages to come."

From the second article we take the
following: "It may be said without
reference to university extension or to
any educational movement in particu-
lar, and it is to be hoped without in-
curring the charge of illiberality or ob-
scurantism that people will have present-
ly to consider the economical as well as
the intellectual effects of pressing on
everybody what is called high educa-
tion. The good founder of Cornell
University once confided to a friend his
hope that the day would come when
there would be five thousand students
in his institution. His friend replied
that if that day did come the institution,
instead of being a blessing, would be in
danger of being a curse, since there
would not be a market for any thing like
such a number of graduates, and the
residue would be without suitable work,
unhappy, discontented, and probably
dangerous to the commonwealth."

Whether we agree with these senti-
ments or not, let us ponder them. Of
both writers it may be said that they
are men of strong practical instincts.

WET BENEFICENCE SHOULD NOT BE
ENFORCED.

IN a criticism of Mr. Spencer's Prin-
ciples of Ethics in the January number
of Mind, Prof. S. Alexander asks a ques-
tion which, it seems to us, admits of an

846

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

easy answer. Referring to the position
taken by Mr. Spencer that justice should,
but that beneficence should not, be en-
forced, he asks why this should be, if
the warrant for beneficence equally with
that for justice lies, as Mr. Spencer
seems to admit, in the public good. The
answer we conceive is this : that while
beneficence, wisely practiced, is a pub-
lic benefit, the enforcing of it would
not be a public benefit, inasmuch, as it
would tend to kill the sentiment itself.
If, for example, the moment a beneficent
action became possible for us some
power should seize us and force us to a
performance of the action, we can hard-
ly imagine any other result than that
the very instinct of beneficence would
die out. Another answer is that where-
as justice is essentially of the nature of
non-interference, beneficence is essen-
tially of the nature of interference.
The motto of the one is " Hands off! "
For the other we would have to coin
the motto " Hands on ! " Now, the
difference between establishing in gov-
ernment the principle of " Hands off! "
and establishing that of " Hands on ! "
is obvious. The former is not only
workable, but is the necessary condition
of all free individual effort ; the latter is
unworkable in any consistent manner,
from its absolutely indefinite and un-
limited character. If beneficence is to
be enforced, where are we to begin and
where can we possibly end? Again,
imagine the effect on weak individuals of
knowing that beneficence toward them
will be enforced. What interest have
they henceforth in ceasing to be weak ?
Finally, beneficence administered by the
state is not beneficence in the true
sense, and can have none of the effects
of true beneficence; for the state can
only properly take what it has a right
to take and give what it has a right to
give, and the beneficiaries in the case
supposed would be quick to draw the
inference that they were getting no
more than their due. Thus would the
limits of justice be obscured and social

stability endangered. On many grounds,
therefore, we think the distinction Mr.
Spencer draws a sound one.

POINTS IN LIBBABT MANAGEMENT.

THE report of the Library Commit-
tee of the Public Library of Cleveland,
Ohio, for the year ended August 31st
last, has come into our hands. Two re-
marks made in it have arrested our at-
tention. One is to the effect that "it
is a singular and deplorable fact that, of
all the money so lavishly expended by
the many rich men and women of Cleve-
land in various benevolent and charita-
ble enterprises, not one cent has ever
been given either toward the erection of
a library building or to help to support
the library." Elsewhere it is stated that
" our library has never had the use of
any money except such as came by taxa-
tion."

Well, whether or not there is any-
thing " deplorable " in this, we can not
say that we find the fact at all " singu-
lar." Taxation and benevolence are two
things that do not naturally mingle. The
Cleveland Public Library seems to have
been in operation since 1869, and it has
doubtless come to be looked upon as
a department of the city government.
Had taxation not been resorted to for
the formation of a library, there is no
knowing what private beneficence might
not have done ere this. When the State
takes up a function, it is a kind of hint
to private enterprise to drop it. Why
should a private individual subsidize a
tax supported library any more than a
tax-supported post office ?

The other remark above referred to
is that " the plan of permitting free ac-
cess of patrons to the shelves, adopted
some time since with some misgivings,
continues to give increased satisfaction
to those using the library. . . . Not
only," the report continues, "has this
new method given great satisfaction to
those desiring and drawing books from
the library, but it has also enabled us to

LITERARY NOTICES.

847

issue more books with very much less
labor and expense than under the old
conservative system which previously
prevailed. Nor has this free access to
the shelves resulted in loss of books or
damage to the same." This statement
is very satisfactory. Many of the re-
strictions which surround public insti-
tutions and which hamper the work of
government are general rules adopted
to meet very limited evils. Instead of
meeting the limited evil and overcom-
ing it by watchfulness and such special
measures as may be called for, a general
rule is adopted which operates as a bur-
den on a large number of persons for
whom no such rule is necessary. Such
is the stupid instinct of governments
always and everywhere, we might al-
most say ; and it is also one of the chief
ways in which government is rendered
expensive, as the authorities of the Cleve-
land Public Library seem to have found
out. "We congratulate them on having
made a useful discovery, and we trust
that their experience will lead other
similar institutions into the right path.

One little observation before we leave
this topic. In the list of newspapers
and periodicals on file in the reading
room of the library we notice but one
in the French language, and that is —
what? The Revue des Deux Mondes,
or the Nouvelle Eevue, or the Revue
Bleue, or even the Oourrier des Etats-
Unis ? No, but the Mode de Paris. All
that French periodical and newspaper
literature contributes to this tax-sup-
ported institution is a fashion paper.
May we suggest that, if a German one is
wanted, Modenwclt is not bad in its way.
Let literature flourish !

LITERARY NOTICES.

GENETIC PHILOSOPHY. By DAVID JAYNE
HILL. New York : Macmillan & Co.
Price, $1.75.

THE author of this work undertakes to
treat the principal problems of philosophy
by a method which, though he does not as-

sert it to be entirely new, he does not believe
has been systematically carried out by any
previous writer. He applies to his method
the term " genetic," and he explains that it
" consists in referring every fact to its place
in the series to which it belongs." Such a
method, of course, is essentially the method
of science, and what we recognize in the
work before us is not so much any original-
ity of method as a skillful and interesting
application of a well known method to a
number of interesting and important philo-
sophical questions. There is nothing, for
example, very original in the following dec-
laration of principles, but it is well ex-
pressed : " Being, as apprehended by our in-
telligence, is found to possess continuity, and
all facts are the aspects of a process. When,
therefore, facts are translated into thought,
they must not be sundered and isolated,
floated off from their attachments and treat-
ed as independent entities. The continuity
which connects them as real must also con-
nect them as ideal. In other words, they
must be genetically regarded, or considered
as aspects of a continuous process to which
they must be referred."

Among existing philosophical schools
that to which President Hill most inclines is
evidently the evolutionist as represented by
Herbert Spencer. He criticises the latter,
however, for placing the Unknowable in the
forefront of his system, and then afterward
hustling it out of court as " deserving of no
consideration from the minds of adults."
We can hardly admit this to be a correct
account of Mr. Spencer's procedure, but the
point is not one that admits of discussion in
this place. He says, again, that to Mr. Spen-
cer "the universe is like a great music box
which can play but one tune." How many
tunes, one might ask, does a strictly " ge-
netic " philosophy provide for ? Any limita-
tion in this respect must come from the
recognition of necessary sequence, and such
recognition is as much a feature of our au-
thor's mode of thought as of Herbert Spen-
cer's.

On the subject of the Genesis of Matter,
which constitutes the first chapter (following
the Introduction) of Mr. Hill's book, we are
not told anything new, or rather we are not
told anything at all; what we are told re-
lates entirely to the supposed constitution of

848

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

matter, a somewhat different thing. What
the author has to say, however, he says well,
and the whole chapter constitutes an inter-
esting exposition of modern views in regard
to the material universe. It is a mistake to
say, as he does on page 48, that " it was
Bode's law which led Leverrier and Adams
to assign a position to an unknown planet
from the anomalous movements of Uranus."
Bode's law simply assigns approximately the
distance from the sun and from one another
of the planets of our system, but says noth-
ing as to the position in its orbit which a
given planet shall occupy at a given time ;
and in searching for the undiscovered planet
its position in its orbit and not its distance
from the sun was the point to be determined.
The chapter is concluded with a verse from
Omar Khayam :

" Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes,

Or any searcher know by mortal mind ?
Veil after veil will lift — but there must be
Veil after veil behind."

So far, therefore, as the genesis of matter is
concerned, the Persian poet of nearly a
thousand years ago expresses the thought of
the " genetic " philosopher of to-day.

In Chapter II, on The Genesis of Life,
the author frankly and fully accepts the
doctrine of evolution. " At present," he
says, page 63, " there is probably no biolo-
gist of importance who does not accept or-
ganic evolution as a real process of Nature,
although there are various degrees of con-
viction as to the sufficiency of the explana-
tion of the causes which have been opera-
tive in the natural history of descent." As
between the conflicting views of Weisman
and Spencer, Mr. Hill rather inclines to the
side of Spencer, but we do not judge that he
speaks as a biologist, or that he has mastered
all the arguments on either side of the ques-
tion ; at the same time the discussion, con-
sidering the limits within which it is con-
fined, is ably done and will be useful to the
general reader. Under the head of The Gen-
esis of Consciousness, again, we have an in-
teresting review of modern speculation re-
specting the conditions of consciousness, but
no really distinctive view as to its origin.
The author states his conclusion to be that
" while psychic elements are manifested to
us directly only through consciousness, they
exist as its preconditions ; and, therefore,

are not to be denied existence beyond the
sphere of consciousness." Goethe had said
as much in his celebrated aphorism that Na-
ture " sleeps in the stone, dreams in the ani-
mal, and wakes in man." Schopenhauer
too, makes Will, which is decidedly a psy-
chic element, pervade the whole universe.
" Unless every analogy of Nature is vio-
lated," observes the author, " what we call
the ' soul ' had its being long before it came
to consciousness " ; and holding this view it
is not to be wondered at that he looks with
decided favor on the doctrine of metemp-
sychosis.

The remaining chapters of the book deal
with the Genesis of Feeling, of Thought, of
Will, of Art, of Morality, of Religion, and of
Science. All are characterized by liberality
of thought and are interesting in a high de-
gree. There is excellent matter in all these
chapters, particularly in those on Will, Mo-
rality, and Religion. The author denies that
pleasure is Nature's end, asserting that it is
merely Nature's means toward higher ends,
a view which we think has much to com-
mend it. On the subject of the connection
or relation between (physical) energy and
will he takes up much the same position as
Schopenhauer. " By what right," he asks,
" is the objective series elevated to the dig-
nity of a causative order and the subjective
series regarded as inconsequential ? " As
regards the development of morality, he
seems to accept Herbert Spencer's analysis
as far as it goes, but finds it too abstract, too
merely schematic, if we may use the expres-
sion. His own statement of the matter is
that " the evolution of morality is the grad-
ual formation of a moral consciousness
through the perception of what is due in the
relations of social life." Sin he defines as
" the persistence upon the human plane
of tendencies which belong to the animal
plane, and which should therefore have been
subjected to the law of reason. From the
moral point of view," he adds, " to be car-
nally-minded is death." In the chapter on
the Genesis of Religion the author holds
that, while Mr. Spencer's theory which as-
signs the origin of all religion to ancestor
worship will explain much in the way of
religious ceremonial the world over, it will not
explain everything, and particularly will not
explain the origin of the religious sentiment.

LITERARY NOTICES.

849

" The order and progress of the world,"
President Hill maintains, " the ideals which
press upon us for realization — these are the
secure foundations of religious faith. The
unity of the world, the immanent rationality
of its processes, the beneficence of law, the
imperative authority of duty — these are the
corner stones of religious life and hope." His
own definition of religion, however, is " belief
in a superhuman being or beings regarded
as objects of worship " ; and the question is
how, without some such hypothesis as Mr.
Spencer's, or without a primitive supernatural
revelation — a conception which the author
puts aside as totally insufficient and having
only a verbal meaning — to explain the origin
of such belief. That question we do not
consider he has solved. In concluding this
notice we leave many interesting points un-
touched ; but we wish to say that the book
as a whole has great merits ; it is perspicu-
ous and scholarly in style, vigorous in thought,
candid in tone, excellent in matter, and alto-
gether a very creditable addition to American
philosophical literature.

A THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT AND HEREDITY.
By HENRY B. ORR, Ph. D., Professor at
the Tulane University of Louisiana.
New York and London : Macmillan &
Co., 1893. Pp. ix + 255. Price, $1.50.

THE author states in his preface that he
believes that by a critical review of the
facts of biology in the light of the great
conclusions derived from the allied sciences
of physics and psychology we may obtain
a view of the great phenomena of life that
shall bring into harmony a more extensive
range of facts, and explain intelligibly rela-
tions that have hitherto been hidden.

He sums up a scheme of the course of
development by premising a primitive mass
of protoplasm which acquires nervous co-
ordinations that influence its activity and
growth : as it divides and redivides, it adds
continually new co-ordinations to those al-
ready acquired, and by repetition the process
of growth and development has the charac-
ter of reflex action. As the same forces act
on each generation, and form a series of
stimuli that are similar for each generation, so
each generation repeats in its life the course
of development followed by all its ancestors.
These different phases of one process con-
VOL. XLIV. — 62

stitute his explanation of growth, develop-
ment, and inheritance. According to this,
in our own development we must recognize
ourselves and our actions as the result of a
definite, accurate activity of creative force.

The author sees what is the last analysis
of such a theory of development and life,
that our ideas of free will and moral respon-
sibility are paradoxical : but we do not see
on what grounds he believes such a para-
dox is capable of satisfactory solution, even
though we are all convinced that we have a
certain degree of freedom of will. Would
it not be better to abandon the idea of free
will and hold that will is the expression of
hereditary tendencies modified by environ-
ment— a theory that, at present, the author
strongly inclines to ?

Prof. Orr's book is interesting, and is a
satisfactory explanation of the evolutionary
theory of development and heredity.

LECTURES AND ESSAYS ON FEVERS AND DIPH-
THERIA, 1849 to 1879. By Sir WILLIAM
JENNER, Bart., G. C. B., M. D. Lond.,
andF. R. C. P., D. C. L. Oxon., LL. D. Can-
tab, and Edin., F. R. S., etc. New York :
Macmillan & Co., 1893. Pp. xii + 3 to
581. Price, $4.

THIS volume is a collection of papers
that the author published between 1849 and
1879 in various medical journals of Great
Britain.

The first essay, on the identity or non-iden-
tity of typhoid and typhus fevers, is dated
1849-'50, and is founded on a statistical
analysis of a series of cases observed dur-
ing two years at the London Fever Hos-
pital.

The second essay is devoted to proving
that the causes of typhus, of typhoid, and of
relapsing fever are separate and distinct, a
fact by no means currently accepted in 1849.
This topic is further elucidated in the third
essay.

The fourth essay, on the acute specific
diseases, formed the Gulstonian Lectures of
1853.

The second section of the volume con-
sists of three clinical lectures, two on diph-
theria and one on croup and diseases that
resemble it.

All these essays demonstrate the careful
and critical observation displayed by the au-
thor in his clinical work, and the volume

850

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

forms a useful contribution to the history
of medical progress in the nineteenth cen-
tury.

A TEXT-BOOK OF PHYSIOLOGY. By M. FOS-
TER, M. A., M. D., LL. D., F. R. S., etc.
Sixth edition. Part I, comprising Book
I. Blood ; The Tissues of Movement ;
The Vascular Mechanism. New York
and London : Macmillan & Co., 1893.
Pp. 387. Price, $2.60.

THE popularity of this text-book is evi-
denced by the fact that a few months after
the final part of the fifth edition was pub-
lished the author presents the first part of
the sixth edition. We find but few changes
in the present volume except in the chapter
on the vascular mechanism, in which descrip-
tions have been introduced of the membrane
manometer of Hiirthle, of Stolnikow's meth-
od for determining the quantity of blood
ejected by the ventricle, and of the cardi-
ometer of Roy and Adami. In a number of
sections the text has been rearranged, but
with no additions that are of signal impor-
tance.

ESSAYS BY THOMAS H. HUXLEY. Vol. I.
METHOD AND RESULTS. Pp. 430. 1893.
Vol. II. DARWINIANA. Pp. 475. 1893.
Vol. III. SCIENCE AND EDUCATION. Pp.
451. 1894. New York : D. Appleton &
Co. Price, $1.25 each.

THESE are the first volumes of a series in-
tended to include the collected essays of Mr.
Huxley. The first contains a brief but char-
acteristic autobiography, and nine essays that
were published between 1866 and 1890. The
author states that while they are neither free
from repetitions nor, perhaps, deficiencies,
yet as far as their substance goes he finds
nothing to alter in them. This, we opine, is
rather an evidence of the soundness of his
opinions than of failure to make progress in
wisdom during the last quarter of a century.

The essays include that on the advisable-
ness of improving natural knowledge, that
on the progress of science, on the physical
basis of life, on Descartes's discourse touch-
ing the method of using one's reason rightly
and of seeking scientific truth, on the hy-
pothesis that animals are automata, on ad-
ministrative nihilism, on the natural inequal-
ity of men, on natural and political rights,
and on government.

The second volume contains essays on

the ancient doctrine of evolution, rehabili-
tated and placed upon a sound scientific
foundation, since and in consequence of the
publication of the Origin of Species. These
essays meet the criticisms imposed upon Mr.
Darwin's great work, and sum it up and in-
dicate its enduring influence on the course
of scientific thought. The volume includes
three essays — on Charles Darwin, on the Dar-
win memorial, and an obituary of Darwin —
that record the impressions left by that
scientist on his friend for thirty years, the
author of this volume.

The third volume contains seventeen es-
says that were published between 1854 and
1887, all of which refer to the value of sci-
ence in education.

Some of these essays have appeared in
pages of the Monthly, but the many admirers
of Prof. Huxley will be glad to welcome this
permanent collection of his writings that have
done so much to advance the scientific spirit
of our age.

JESUS AND MODERN LIFE. By M. J. SAVAGE.
With an Introduction by Prof. CRAWFORD
H. TOY. Boston : George H. Ellis. Pp.
229.

IN this work the author has sought to
find out, so far as is to-day possible, the ac-
tual beliefs and teachings of Jesus. Then,
having, as he has supposed, had this teach-
ing, he has considered it as relating to the
preceding thought of the world, and special-
ly of his own people. After that he has
tried to find out how much of this teaching
is vital to-day, and how it bears on the
problems, religious and other, with which
we must deal. " Only in some such way as
this," he assumes, " can we really find out
to what extent and in what sense Jesus is a
present leader and inspiration."

THE NEW BIBLE AND ITS NEW USES. By
JOSEPH HENRY CROOKE. Boston : George
H.. Ellis. Pp.286.

IN this book the Bible is considered hi
the light of the modern or " higher " criti-
cism, by which, the author holds, the theo-
ries of our fathers respecting its origin,
growth, and character have been swept
aside. As a result, "we see with greater
clearness the impulse and purpose which pro-
duced these writings. We understand the

LITERARY NOTICES.

851

human conditions which gave them birth,
the limitations as well as the nobility of the
authors who penned them. We appreciate
the greatness of their varying messages, but
we also trace the burning lines of error and
passion which mar these pages. There is
truth enough to make them grandly human ;
there is superstition enough to prove them
no more than human."

A HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF THE MODERN
DOGS (SPORTING DIVISION) OF GREAT BRIT-
AIN AND IRELAND. By RAWDON B. LEE.
London : Horace Cox. Pp. 584, with
Twenty-six Plates.

THE author has attempted in this book to
summarize the progress and describe the va-
rieties of the sporting dogs as they are at
present known and appreciated in the British
Isles. Without losing any of the early his-
tory, his wish has been to introduce matter
bringing the subject up to date ; both so far
as the work of dogs in the field is concerned,
and in viewing them as companions, and
when winning, or attempting to win, prizes
in the show ring. After this method full
accounts are given of twenty-nine varieties
or " sports " of dogs, with historical informa-
tion, anecdotes, gossip of the market and the
kennels, discussion of values, the points by
which the kinds are distinguished, and quali-
ties ; constituting the book of great value to
all who are interested in breeding, using, or
admiring dogs. Of the illustrations, only two
— those of the greyhound and of the Kerry
beagles — are actually portraits. The others,
though originally drawn from living exam-
ples, are rather typical specimens of the
various breeds they represent.

OBJECT LESSONS AND How TO GIVE THEM.
By GEORGE RICKS. First Series. For
Primary Schools. Pp. 202. Second
Series. For Intermediate and Grammar
Schools. Pp. 214. Boston : D. C. Heath
& Co. Price, 90 cents each.

THE primary purpose of lessons in com-
mon objects and natural phenomena, the
author believes, is to cultivate the senses, to
train the habits of attention, intelligent ob-
servation, and accurate comparison, and so
lead up to the higher processes of the mind
— reason and judgment. The natural course
of the teacher would seem to be to gather
up into something like order and to perfect

what has so far been imperfectly accom-
plished by the child, and to evolve from this
as a basis a systematic course of training ;
and the teacher who would best succeed
should take childhood's method of imbibing
knowledge and adapt it to her own use.
The child, as Spencer says, should not be
told or shown, but taught how to observe.
The lessons in the first series are intended
to be short, simple, pleasing, and attractive,
and relate to objects of sense, common arti-
cles, and the simpler qualities. Those of
the second series relate to the common prop-
erties of solids, liquids, and gases, in that
order, and to those matters which demand
closer observation and exercise of the rea-
soning faculties. They are suggestive rather
than exhaustive.

SUICIDE AND INSANITY : A PHYSIOLOGICAL AND
SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY. By S. A. K. STRA-
HAN, M. D., Barrister-atLaw, etc. Lon-
don: Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., 1898.
Price, $1.75.

THE author states that he has endeavored
to trace modern suicide to its source, to show
how large a percentage of what is really
avoidable is deliberately propagated, and how
closely it is related to those other abnormal
conditions met with in all civilized commu-
nities. The cause of suicide is cultivation,
and it is propagated by the intermarriage of
the insane, the epileptic, and the criminal.

Suicides are divided into two major
classes — rational or quasi suicide and irra-
tional or true suicide. The former class is
further subdivided into, first, those who de-
stroy their life for gain, consisting of reli-
gious devotees, of those who die to follow
friends, of those who die to gain notoriety,
and of those who die that others may gain.
Second, those who commit the suicidal act
that they may escape some real and impend-
ing evil that is considered more terrible than
death.

Irrational suicides are divided into three
groups : First, that in which there is mental
aberration ; second, that in which the act
depends upon an irresistible impulse and in
which there is no mental aberration ; third,
that in which a certain predisposition makes
it possible for a slight shock, trial, or irrita-
tion to awaken the unnatural impulse.

As statistics show that suicide is on the

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

increase among all civilized peoples, whether
their racial predisposition be great or small,
and as racial proclivity remains fixed, the
author concludes that all, or nearly all, the
increase must be the outcome of the acquired
or pathological character.

The influences of race, of climate and sea-
son, of religion, and of sex and age are con-
sidered as factors in causing suicide.

In regard to the stand taken by the law
in reference to suicide, the author says that
he does not believe that pronouncing suicide a
crime has ever stayed the hand of a single
individual bent on self-destruction, and the
law has never been able to punish the crimi-
nal in a single instance, nor can it hope to.
There are only two logical courses open to
those who would reform this legislative ab-
surdity. One is to sweep away all legislation
upon the subject so far as it relates to the
individual himself, no longer consider suicide
a crime, and ignore attempts thereat. The
other is to enact that all attempts at suicide,
whether successful or not, be in themselves
conclusive evidence of dangerous insanity.
The author, agreeing with the Sophists, Sto-
ics, Epicureans, and Platonists, believes that
the first of these two is the more just and
sensible course.

The author considers the theological, nat-
uralistic, sociological, and moral objections to
suicide, and concludes with old Dr. Donne
that " self -homicide is not so naturally sin
that it may never be otherwise."

The author has presented a very interest-
ing and unbiased study of a topic that is en-
gaging more and more attention, for it is not
one of the least of the charges against mod-
ern society that its organization is such that
men and women are unwilling to continue as
associates thereof.

THE TECHNIQUE OP POST-MORTEM EXAMINA-
TION. By LTTDTIG HEKTOEN, M. D., Pa-
thologist to the Cook County Hospital,
Chicago. Chicago: The W. T. Keener
Company, 1894. Price, $1.75.

THE author is to be congratulated on this
little work that is a concise exposition of the
various matters connected with the perform-
ance of post-mortem examinations. He has
not endeavored to enter into a systematic
and minute consideration of the pathological
changes in the organs, but rather he has

made it his aim to give such general and
comprehensive information as is needed by
the examiner.

As no State in the Union has prescribed
regulations to guide and direct the practi-
tioner in the method of making necropsies
in medico- legal cases, it is believed that the
systematic procedure detailed in this book
will make it useful to all practitioners of
medicine likely to be called upon to perform
such duty.

The work is admirably printed and illus-
trated, and is one of the best books on this
topic with which we are acquainted.

MYTHS OF GREECE AND ROME. By H. A.
GUERBER. New York : American Book
Company. Pp. 428. Price, $1.50.

STUDENTS of literature and art will find a
most attractive handbook in this volume.

While it does not take the place of a dic-
tionary of reference, where every dryad may
be traced to her favored tree by the classical
scholar, it includes all the more important
myths celebrated in song, sculpture, or paint-
ing.

The illustrations alone comprise seventy-
one reproductions of famous works of art.
The text is bright and interesting, and in
conclusion an analysis of myths is given, the
philological interpretation receiving the pref-
erence. The work is also generously fur-
nished with aids to the reader, containing a
classical map and genealogical chart as well
as glossary and index.

WILLIAM KITCHEN PARKER, F. R. S. A. BIO-
GRAPHICAL SKETCH. By his Son, T. JEF-
FERY PARKER. London and New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 145. Price, $1.50.

ALTHOUGH naturalists generally are im-
pelled to their life work by an ardent love of
Nature, it is rare to find among them in early
youth such glowing enthusiasm as that ex-
hibited by William Kitchen Parker.

The son of an English farmer, only a
scanty education had been afforded him when
he began, as a lad, his loving study of bird
and flower in his father's field. Apprenticed
at the age of fifteen to a druggist, he read
physiology while compounding sheep oint-
ment, and rose at four o'clock in the morn,
ing to have three hours' botanizing in the
woods. In two summers he had collected

LITERARY NOTICES.

853

and preserved five hundred species of plants,
and laid the foundation for a thorough ac-
quaintance with botany. He was next placed
with a country surgeon, and here undertook
by himself the study of comparative anatomy,
dissecting animals and birds, and executing
drawings of marvelous exactness and beauty.
It may well be credited that at fifty years of
age he had produced more original work than
any other English anatomist. His zest for
knowledge and keen enjoyment of Nature
never waned. At sixty-five he writes : " The
sight of the wild flowers, the settling of a
speckled, metallic feathered starling close to
me, and the song of the lark made weariness
a trifle ; . . . the joy of research has been the
wine of my life." A characteristic portrait
is the frontispiece to the memoir, and a list
of published works is given at the close, these
being mainly upon the foraminif era, the verte-
brate skeleton, and skull.

HANDBOOK OF PUBLIC HEALTH AND DEMOG-
RAPHY. By E. F. WILLOUGHBY, M. D.
London and New York : Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 495. Price, $1.50.

THIS volume constitutes the third edition,
enlarged and revised, of a former work, the
Principles of Hygiene, by the same author.

The subject is treated in four main divi-
sions— health of the man, health of the house,
health of the city, and health of the people.
In addition to these there are chapters on
demography, meteorology, and sanitary law.

Much space is given to the section on
dietetics, where somewhat of the changes in-
volved in nutrition are explained according
to the experiments of Pettenkof er and Yoigt.
The prevalent error is noted of confounding
oxidation with metabolic processes in the
body. The value of a food depends upon
the ease with which it digests, splits up, and
combines in the organism, not upon the con-
stituents per se.

Common snares are also pointed out in
the food that does not nourish, the filter
that is worse than useless, the barometer
which measures nothing, the disinfection
that does not disinfect, and the statistics
that prove a trap for the unwary. But the
effort of the book is mostly constructive,
and there is much in it that is valuable for
the student of statistics and the householder.
The unfortunate schoolgirl may, if it falls

into her hands, drop it with righteous scorn.
The chapter on school hygiene is disfigured
by a thrust at feminine ability and the
threadbare plea that woman's health suffers
in the educative process. The author, illogi-
cal enough, gives the best possible reply to
this in his dissertation on exercise, where he
informs us that most of the ailments of
women would be prevented if girls strength-
ened their muscles as their brothers do !

The Child, Physically and Mentally, is
considered by Bertha Meyer in a small pam-
phlet translated from the German by Friede-
rike Salomon and published by the M. L.
Holbrook Co. A similar work was written
by the author thirteen years ago, and this
is intended as a supplement, embodying the
more recent teaching of hygienic science.
It is curious to note that it contains only two
pages of suggestion for the mother who de-
sires to rear her child in the natural way.
This is certainly not all that should be said
on the subject in a country where infant
mortality is exceptionally high. An appen-
dix is needed to justify the aim and title of
the brochure.

The Arithmetic of Magnetism and Elec-
tricity, by John T. Morrow and Thorburn
Reid, a little handbook of 145 pages, con-
sists of the statement and explanation of
those facts and laws of electricity and mag-
netism which are especially connected with
their practical and commercial aspects. It
contains among other matters chapters on
General Laws of Electric Circuits ; Batteries,
Primary and Secondary ; Direct-current Dy-
namos and Motors ; Alternating current Dyna-
mos, Motors, and Transformers ; Lighting
and Power, and The Application of Electri-
cal Laws to Electrical Railways ; with some
useful tables. (It is published by the Bubier
Publishing Company, of Lynn., Mass., at $1.)
A System of Analysis of Milk and Milk
Products, containing results of the latest re-
searches, is given us by Leffmann and Beam.
Most of the earlier processes have been
superseded or at least greatly modified in
the past few years by the large amount of
original work done, more especially under
the supervision of the Society of Public
Analysts. The book is intended not only
for professional chemists, but also for prac-
tical dairymen, and to such it ought to prove

854

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a great aid. It contains an appendix con-
sisting of useful tables for calculating total
solids, etc. (It is published by P. Blakiston,
Son & Co., Philadelphia. Pp. 89. Price,
$1.)

A collection of Bulls and Blunders, com-
piled by Marshall Brown (Griggs, $1), has
recently been issued. It is a large and
amusing collection, and besides being amus-
ing it is instructive, for where the blunder
consists in a faulty arrangement of words, the
way to correct it is pointed out.

Under the title, The Monism, of Man,
David Allyn Gorton, M.. D., has put forth a
mingled mass of scientific facts and super-
natural speculations (Putnam, $2). The
book is a hard one to describe. It is not a
descriptive treatise on the subject indicated
by its title, for it does not even tell any-
where what the " monism of man " is. It can
not be called a disputation, for it does not
attempt to prove anything in particular. It
is rather a pleasant, extended essay, in which
a man versed in a scientific profession and
well read in classic literature and religious
lore has set down some things that he knows
and others that he believes, together with
many quotations from favorite authors, and
his own reflections upon the material thus
brought together.

From the University of far-away Tasma-
nia comes, by way of an English printing
office, an essay on Utility of Quaternions in
Physics, written by A. McAulay, in competi-
tion for a prize offered by the University of
Cambridge (Macmillan, $1.60). In a long
and free-spoken preface the author states
that the physical applications of quaternions
are sadly neglected at Cambridge, in spite of
Prof. Tait's powerful advocacy. He ranks
himself as a disciple of Prof. Tait in promot-
ing the study of this branch of mathemat-
ics, but feels compelled to differ from his mas-
ter on certain points, some of which he sets
forth in his preface. The divisions of phys-
ics to which he applies quaternions in this
essay are elastic solids, electricity and mag-
netism, hydrodynamics, and the vortex atom
theory. At the risk of being deemed a mis-
directed enthusiast he hopes for a "time
when quaternions will appear in every phys-
ical text-book that assumes the knowledge of
(say) elementary plane trigonometry."

In the JElem ents of Life Insurance, the

author, Miles M. Daioson, has sought to give
the reader a comprehensive and accurate
conception of life insurance, without bur-
dening his mind with needless technical
terms ; to write what will be most useful to
beginners and so as to be intelligible to the
general public mind. Besides the analysis
of rates and reserves, the scope of the book
covers the subject of contracts ; their con-
struction, application, nature, and legal
effect. Insurance is denned as the equali-
zation of fortune. By its provisions, a large
number of men arrange to lose small sums
in order that none of them may lose a great
sum in a specified way. Thus it is the alli-
ance of prudent men against misfortune.
The book is published by the Independent
Printing and Publishing Company, Chicago,
at the price of two dollars.

The Outlines of Embryology of the Eye
— the Cartwright Prize Essay for 1893 — by
Dr. Ward A. Holden, is the product of a
study carried on at the New York Ophthal-
mic and Auric Institute, and is based upon
the examination of a great number of speci-
mens of eyes of chicks and pigs. Endeavor-
ing to give a clear and comprehensive de-
scription of the development of the organ,
the author has deemed it best to present first
a brief and purely schematic sketch of the
processes which take place, explaining them
with diagrams, and next to give an accurate
histological description of the various parts
of the eye in their successive phases of de-
velopment, illustrating these descriptions
with careful drawings from actual prepara-
tions. (Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Price, Y5 cents.)

Under the title Manual of Linguistics a
great amount of material on the phonology
of English and other languages has been
brought together by John Clark, a master in
the High School of Dundee (Putnam, $2).
After an introductory chapter on the culture
and original home of the Aryans, the sound
relations in the Indo-European languages are
considered at some length. From this sub-
ject the author passes to various modifica-
tions of vowels and consonants, such as as-
similation, shortening, lengthening, prothe-
sis, epenthesis, contraction, labialism, dental-
ism, rhotacism, reduplication, etc. The near-
ly related topics ablaut and accent are next
considered. The operation of Grimm's law

LITERARY NOTICES.

855

is then set forth, and the volume ends with
two chapters on sound relations in Anglo-
Saxon and in middle and modern English.
The several laws and processes set forth in
the volume are abundantly exemplified by
illustrative words.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Adams, E. Herbert, M. D., Toronto. The
Prevention of Tuberculosis in Ontario. Pp. 7.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins,
etc. Connecticut: Fat in Milk, etc. Pp. 11.—
Michigan: Eighty New Strawberries. Pp. 15. —
Analytical Papers, etc. Pp. 52. — Mississippi ;
Insecticides, etc. By H. E. Weed. Pp. 24. -New
York: Strawberries. Pp. 24. — University of Illi-
nois : Grapes, Test of Varieties. Pp. 24. — Or-
ange Rust in Raspberries and Blackberries. Pp.
48 —Nebraska: The Russian Thistle. Pp. 10,
with Plates. — North Dakota: Weather and Crop
Service. Pp. 40, with Map.

American Book Company, New York, etc.
The School Calendar for 1894.

Angell, George T. Autobiographical Sketches
and Personal Recollections. Boston: American
Humane Educational Society. Pp. 37. 10 cents.

Archaeologist, The. Monthly. November, 1893.
Waterloo, Ind. A. F. Berlin, Allentown, Pa.,
Editor. Pp. 32. $1 a year.

Atkinson, George F. Study of the Biology of
Ferns by the Collodion Method. New York :
Macmillan & Co. Pp. 134. $2.

Audubon Monument Committee, New York
Academy of Sciences. Report.

Baker. Charles. Deal Gently with the Erring
(song). Words by Julia A. Carney. New York:

F. W. Helminck. Pp. 3. 20 cents.

Ball, Sir Robert. The Story of the Sun. New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 376, with 11
Plates. $5.

Bean, Carleton H. A New Blennioid Fish from
California. Pp. 3.

Besant's, Mrs. Annie, Mission to the Hindus.
Madras. Pp. 21. One anna.

Bok, Edward W. The Young Man in Busi-
ness. Philadelphia: Curtis Publishing Company.
Pp. 23. 10 cents.

Bonham, John M. Secularism. New York:

G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 396. $1.75.

Briggs, Franklin H. Boys as they are Made,
and How to Remake them. Syracuse, N. Y.:
C. W. Bardeen. Pp. 24. 25 cents.

Brigham, Albert P., Colgate University. Phys-
ical Geography as related to our History and
Life. Pp.21.

Bumpus, Herman C. A Laboratory Course of
Invertebrate Zoology. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. Pp. 157.

Cajoli, Florian. A History of Mathematics.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 422. $3.

Curry, Hon. J. L. M. Address on Education
to the Georgia Legislature. Atlanta, Ga. : Frank-
lin Publishing House. Pp. 21.

Delaplaine, Blanche L. Some Things that
Children should Know. Chicago : C. H. Kerr &
Co. Pp. 15. 5 cents.

Employer and Employed. Quarterly. Janu-
ary, 1894. Boston : G. H. Ellis. Pp. 20. 10
cents. 40 cents a year.

Foster, Michael, and others, Editors. The
Journal of Physiology, vol. xv, No. 5. Cambridge
Engraving Company, England. Pp. 48. 3 shil-
lings.

Gamble, Eliza Burt. The Evolution of Wom-
an. New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 356.
$1.50.

Geographical Clubs, The, of Philadelphia.
Charter, By-laws, and List of Members. Pp. 20.

Glazebrook, R. T. Heat : An Elementary
Text-book. New York : Macmillan & Co. Pp.
230. $1.

Goldsmith, E., Philadelphia. A Tempered
Steel Meteorite. Pp. 2, with Plates.

Graphite as a Lubricant. Joseph Dixon Cru-
cible Company, Jersey City, N. J. Pp. 6.

Hertz, Dr. Heinrich. Electric Waves, etc.
Authorized English Translation by D. E. Jones.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 279. $2.50.

Hickson, Sydney J. The Fauna of the Deep
Sea. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp.169. $1.

Hudson, Thomson Jay. The Law of Psychic
Phenomena. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Pp.
409. $1.50.

Huxley, T. H. Science and Hebrew Tradition.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 372. $1.25.

Interstate Commerce Commission. Income
Account of Railways in the United States, 1892-
'93. Washington : Government Printing Office.
Pp.52.

Iowa, Annals of. A Historical Quarterly.
Des Moines: Historical Department of Iowa.
Pp. 80. 25 cents. $1 a year.

Iowa State University. Bulletins from the
Laboratories of Natural History. Iowa City. Pp.
124, with Plates. 50 cents.

Irelan, William, Jr., State Mineralogist, Cali-
fornia State Mining Bureau. Eleventh Annual
Report. Sacramento. Pp. 612, with Maps and
Plates.

Kershaw, J. Martine, M. D. The Nervous
Symptoms of Delirium Tremens and the Alcohol
Habit. St. Louis. Pp. 4.

Langley, S. P. Report, as Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 70.— The Internal
Work of the Mind. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution. Pp. 23, with Plates.

Latimer, Elizabeth W. Russia and Turkey in
the Nineteenth Century. Chicago: A. C. McClurg
&Co. Pp.413. $2.50.

Lockyer, J. Norman. The Dawn of Astrono-
my. New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 432. $5.

Locy, W. A., Lake Forest, 111. The Deriva-
tion of the Pineal Eye. Pp. 12.

Lubin, David, Sacramento, Oal. "A Novel
Proposition " for the More Equitable Distribu-
tion of Wealth. Pp. 64. Free.

McDonald, Marshall, United States Commis-
sioner of Fish and Fisheries. Report, 1889 to
1891. Pp. 664, with Plates.

Macfarlane. Alexander, University of Texas,
Austin. On the Definitions of the Trigometric
Functions. Boston: J. S. Cushing & Co. Pp. 49.

McKeever, C. Constantine, General Secretary.
Scheme to abolish Poverty. Pp. 62. 25 cents.

Marcotte, Charles. Governments and Poli-
ticians, Ancient and Modern. Chicago: The Au-
thor. Pp. 478. $2.

Means, James. The Problem of Manflight.
Boston: W. B. Clarke & Co. Pp.20. 10 cents.

Mercer, H. C. Trenton and Somme Gravel
Specimens compared with Quarry Refuse. Pp. 18.

Mills, William H. John Wesley an Evolution-
ist. Pp. 20.

Mills, Simeon. Readings from the Book of
Nature. Chicago: C. H. Kerr & Co. Pp. 131.

Minnesota Botanical Studies. Minneapolis.
Geological and Natural History Survey. Cooney
MacMillan, State Botanist. Pp. 36, with Three
Plates.

Mflller, Max. The Science of Thought. Chi-
cago: Open Court Publishing Company. Pp. 28.
25 cents.

Museo Nacional de Rio Janeiro. Archives.
Vol. viii. Pp. 219, with Plates.

856

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

New York State Reformatory, Elmira. The
Monthly Summary, December, 1893. Pp. 16.

Paine, Thomas. The Writings of, collected
and edited by M. D. Conway. New York: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 445. $2.50.

Preston, E. D. The Constant of Aberration
(latitude, Hawaiian Islands). Washington: Coast
and Geodetic Survey. Pp. 12.

Prosser, Charles S. The Devonian Section of
Central New York along the Unadilla River.
New York State Geological Survey. Pp. 35.

Putnam, F. W., Cambridge, Mass. The Pea-
body Museum of American Archaeology and Eth-
nology. Report. Pp. 10.

Rafter, George W., and Baker, M. N. Sewage
Disposal in the United States. New York: D.
Van Nostrand & Co. Pp. 598.

Reemelin, Charles. The Earth and Mankind
as International Totality. Pp. 14.

Remsen, D. S. Primary Elections. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 121. 75 cents.

Ribot. The Diseases of Personality. Chi-
cago: Open Court Publishing Company. Pp.
157. 25 cents.

Robertson, Charles. Flowers and Insects, etc.
Sixteen Papers. Pp. 7 to 32 each.

Robin?, The, Life Guard or Safety Fender for
Electric and Cable Cars. Philadelphia. Pp. 14.

Robinson, D. W., M. D. Dakota for Health
Seekers. Pierre, 8. D. Pp. 21.

Shufeldt, R. W. On the Taxonomy of the
Swifts and Humming Birds. Pp. 7.

Skidraore, S. T., Philadelphia. An Evolution
of Play.

Skinner, W. E. The Wizard's Manual. New
York: W. S. Trigg. Pp. 122. 25 cents.

Social Science, Journal of, January, 1894. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 124.

Southard, W. F. The Modern Eye. San
Francisco. Pp. 32.

Spalding, V. M. Guide to the Study of Com-
mon Plants. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Pp.
246. 85 cents.

State Library Bulletin (New York). Summary
of State Legislation, 1893. Pp. 156. 20 cents.

United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Methods and Results as illustrated at the Colum-
bian Exposition. Pp. 56. — Units of Electrical
Measure. Pp. 4. Washington: Government
Printing Office.

United States National Museum. Myriapods
from Loanda, Africa. By O. F. Cook. Pp. 6.—
New Species of Blind Snakes from Congo (pp.
2); Japanese Quails (pp. 5); Reptiles and Batra-
chians from East Afric (pp. 32). By Leonhard
Stejneger.— North American Land, Fresh-water,
and Marine Shells. By R. E. C. Stearns. Pp.
12.— Natural History of Aldabra, Assumption,
and Glorioso Islands, Indian Ocean. By Dr. W.
L. Abbott. Pp. 6. — The Proper Generic name of
the Tunnies. By Theodore Gill. Pp. 2.— New
Species of Mouse from Central America. Pp. 2.
— The Relationship of Taylor's Mouse. Pp. 2. By
Frederick W. True. — New Gepthlypis from
Brownsville, Texas. By Robert Ridgway. Pp. 2.

Vickerman, Charles. Woolen Spinning. New
York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 352. $1.75.

Walnut Lodge Hospital, Hartford, Conn. An-
nual Report. T. D. Crothers, M. D., President.
Pp. 14.

Ward, Lester F., Washington, D. C. Status of
the Mind Problem. Pp. 181.— Political Ethics of
Herbert Spencer. Philadelphia: American Acad-
emy of Political and Social Sciences. Pp. 40.

Weisbach, Dr. Julius, and Hermann, Prof.
Gustav. The Mechanics of Hoisting Machinery.
New York: Macmillan & Co. Pp. 332. $3.75.

White, Emerson E. School Management.
American Book Company. Pp. 320. $1.

White's New Course in Art Instruction. Man-
ual for the Fifth Year. American Book Company.
Pp. 112. 50 cents.

Wiley, Harvey W. Principles and Practice
of Agricultural Analysis. Monthly. No. 1. Eas-
ton, Pa. : Chemical Publishing Company. Pp. 48,
with Plates. 25 cents.

Williams, George H. The Distribution of
Ancient Volcanic Rocks along the Eastern Bor-
der of North America. Chicago: University
Press. Pp. 31.

Wood, Henry. The Political Economy of
Natural Law. Boston: Lee & Shepard. Pp.
305. $1.25.

Woodhull, John L. First Course in Science.
Vol. I. Book of Experiments. Pp. 78. 50 cents.
Vol. II. Text-book. Pp. 133. 65 cents.

Wright, General Marcus J. Great Command-
ers. General Scott. New York: D. Appleton &
Co. Pp.349. $1.50.

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

Spencer-smashing at Washington. — At

a meeting of the Washington Society for
Philosophical Inquiry held January 23, 1894,
the Rev. Dr. Momerie, of London, read a
paper on Agnosticism, consisting chiefly of
a criticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer and a de-
fense of the current dualistic conception of
the soul as the thinking personality or ego
considered as distinct from and independent
of the body. The paper was discussed by
Dr. W. T. Harris and Mr. Lester F. Ward.
Mr. Ward's remarks were as follows : " While
Dr. Momerie was reading his able paper I
could not help thinking to what a remark-
able degree the views of Herbert Spencer
have become the object of philosophical dis-
cussion and public attack. To judge from
the opposition to him in all directions one
would suppose that his entire system of phi-
losophy was unsound and worthless. No
book, no philosophic essay, no form of dis-
cussipn of any question is complete that
does not score him at some point. This so-
ciety since its organization a year ago has
been engaged in an almost uninterrupted
onslaught upon his doctrines. Dr. E. L.
Youmans, who, when living, was the great
American disciple of Spencer, used to char-
acterize those who even at that date had be-
gun to inveigh against him by the name of
' Spencer-smashers,' and since his death the
business of Spencer-smashing has continued
to increase ; but, strange as it may seem,
notwithstanding all this opposition the great
philosopher will not down. I am not my-
self innocent of the charge of Spencer-
smashing, and I thought these remarks

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

857

would come with a better grace from the
fact that I have just published what will
probably be considered a somewhat severe
criticism of Herbert Spencer's Political Eth-
ics. But I am not unmindful of the aston-
ishing power that he has become in the
thought of the world, which renders any
utterance of his wherein he is wrong so
potent for evil. I recently asked a student
of Oxford, here for a few days on his winter
vacation, how Spencer was regarded at Ox-
ford, and he told me that although his name
was rarely spoken and then only in a whis-
per, as if, on Pope's theory of vice in gen-
eral, its very utterance might lead to closer
acquaintance, nevertheless Spencer was the
unseen but overshadowing presence that
surrounded the university and which it was
considered necessary perpetually to guard
against and drive back. I am not finding
fault with the widespread opposition to
Spencer. Nothing could be worse than to
set up a high priest of opinion and bow
down to authority. But I have often been
amused to see how simple a matter it is
supposed to be to refute his doctrines and
overthrow his system. And I am disposed
to attribute the solidity of his system, and
the wonderful resistance which it offers to
this perpetual bombardment, to the high
degree in which it rests upon the firm foun-
dations of truth. I am myself disposed to
follow him with little deviation all the way
until he reaches deductive sociology and
ethics, and I leave him here only because I
believe that, owing to unfortunate early po-
litical preconceptions, he has himself left
the clear path which his entire system logic-
ally requires him to follow. But I did not
rise either to approve or disapprove Spen-
cer's philosophy, but simply to draw atten-
tion to the kind of man the world has to
deal with when it ventures to antagonize his
achievements. He fills no chair in any great
university, he bears no title from the Eng-
lish crown, he holds no high post of public
honor, he boasts no classical scholarship, he
speaks no language but his mother tongue,
and yet, by a complete mastery of that
tongue, and by the sheer power of vigorous
and organized thought applied to an 'en-
cyclopedic ' acquaintance with all that is
worth knowing in the world, he has forced
his way into every department of human

thought and action. He has invaded sci-
ence, art, philosophy, literature, morals, and
religion in a way and with an authority
that have commanded respect and attention,
until to-day the eyes of the whole thinking
world are centered upon him. I did' not
know but that Americans were alone in ren-
dering him this unintended homage, but I
have learned to-day that it is also the habit
of his own countrymen."

The Land of Kashmir. — Giving an ac-
count of his Karakorum expedition, Mr. W. M.
Conway said that the actual Kashmir was
widely different from the land full of all ma-
terial delights and scenes of idyllic beauty
which poets had described. It might, in
truth, be described as a " crumpled Sahara,"
with rocks and precipitous slopes, stony,
naked, devoid of moisture or of shade, a
grilling, hopeless, impassable wilderness. The
only relief to its absolute desert were the
patches of artificial irrigation. In this in-
hospitable region there were great masses of
mountains covered with snow, from which
sometimes streams issued which created oases
here and there of singular fertility. In them
alone was any population to be found. The
starting point of the expedition was Gilgit —
now an important military outpost, but a few
years ago unknown to British travelers.
Gilgit is about five thousand feet above sea
level and affords an exaggerated example of
the climate of these regions. It was almost
rainless during the months of May and June
and the earlier part of July. He had just
received a letter from a British officer sta-
tioned at Gilgit who gave him a vivid account
of a terrible flood which occurred on July 7th
and in the course of five days wrought a posi-
tive geological revolution. All the bridges
and piers were destroyed, and the engineers
had to extemporize a bridge with a span of
three hundred and forty-six feet. From this
cheerless region he emerged into a land of
glaciers and traversed the great Hispar, Bal-
toro, and Biafro glaciers. These great snow-
fields resembled — though planned on a much
vaster scale — those of the Alps. Besides the
snowfields there were great areas of moraine —
inhospitable deserts covered with large masses
of broken stone. There sprang up from them
mountain peaks ranging from twenty thou-
sand to twenty-eight thousand feet. In the

858

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Karakorums there were about half a dozen
peaks over twenty-four thousand feet. He
had himself climbed one of twenty-three
thousand feet. These mountains were very
different from the Alps, and were mostly in
the form of gigantic towers of incredible
sharpness — a form in marked opposition to
the rounded masses which were the preva-
lent form of the European mountains.

Distribution of Birds. — The question of
the distribution of birds was cited by Canon
Tristram, President of the Biological Section
of the British Association, as a sphere in
which the field naturalist can work to great
advantage in studying the operation of isola-
tion in the differentiation of species. Taking
as typical examples the Sandwich Islands,
thousands of miles from the nearest continent,
and the Canaries, within sight of the African
coast : in the one we may study the expiring
relics of an avifauna completely differenti-
ated by isolation ; in the other we have op-
portunity of tracing the incipient stages of
the same process. In the Sandwich Islands
there is hardly a passerine bird in the in-
digenous fauna that can be referred to any
genus known elsewhere ; and it is now recog-
nized that almost every island of the group
possesses one or more representatives of each
of these peculiar genera. That each of the
islands of this group, however small, should
possess a flora specifically distinct suggests
thoughts of the vast periods occupied in
their differentiation. In the Canary Islands
the process of differentiation is only partially
accomplished. Yet there is hardly a resi-
dent species which is not more or less modi-
fied, and this modification is still further
advanced in the westernmost species than
in those nearest to Africa. We have here
the effect of changed conditions of life in
four hundred years. What might they not
have been in four hundred centuries ? The
avifauna of the Comoro Islands, to take
another insular group, seems to stand mid-
way in the differentiating process between
those of the Canaries and the Sandwich Is-
lands. The little Christmas Island, an iso-
lated rock two hundred miles south of Java,
only twelve miles in length, has been shown
by Mr. Lister to produce distinct and pecul-
iar forms of every class of life, vegetable
and animal. Though the species are few in

number, yet every mammal and land bird is
endemic. In the year 1857— '58 the speaker
spent many months in the Algerian Sahara,
and noticed the remarkable variations in dif-
ferent groups, according to elevation from
the sea and the difference of soil and vegeta-
tion. The Origin of Species had not then
appeared ; but on his return his attention
was called to the communication of Darwin
and Wallace to the Linnsean Society on the
tendencies of species to form varieties, and
on the perpetuation of varieties and species
by means of natural selection. He then
wrote, citing these variations as supplying
illustrations of Darwin's and Wallace's the-
ory, but suggesting that, instead of the
blending of forms being caused by the two
races commingling, rather while the general-
ized forms remain in the center of distribu-
tion, we find the more decidedly distinct spe-
cies at the extremes of the range, caused not
by interbreeding, but by differentiation.

Common Sense on the Labor Question.

— The clear light of pure common sense is
thrown upon some of the features of the
labor agitation in the comments of the Lon-
don Times upon a conference recently held
at Westminster Abbey to consider the trou-
bles in the collieries. The friends of the
agitators, it hints, might profitably occupy
themselves with trying to get some clear idea
of the problems they are so eager to attack.
" It would be useful if they would employ
their leisure in framing a definition of a liv-
ing wage a little more precise and intelligible
than any they have yet vouchsafed. When
they have settled what is a living wage for a
miner, perhaps they will try to determine
what is a fair day's work, or otherwise will
kindly explain where the living wage is to
come from in the event of the day's work
not being worth it. They would also add
greatly to their usefulness and avoid some
rather ridiculous declamation if they would
master the elementary truths that what are
called economic laws are not perverted eth-
ical maxims invented by unchristian econo-
mists, but simply generalizations of every-
day phenomena. People had been buying
in the cheapest market for thousands of
years before English economists drew out in
formal propositions the consequences of that
universal tendency." Before men stand up

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

859

to denounce these laws or " doctrines," as
they are oddly called, " they ought to under-
stand what they mean, and might even be
expected to show that they are never guilty
of the unchristian practice of buying in the
cheapest market, and so in their degree keep-
ing down wages. Political economy, if these
vehement controversialists could only see it,
is nothing but common sense and common
observation thrown into a methodical and
systematized arrangement. If a man has
the materials, he need not trouble himself
very much about the system. Let the people
who demand a living wage in the name of
Christianity just begin with an exact inquisi-
tion into their own conduct and its conse-
quences. Are they in the habit of paying
two guineas for a hat when they can get one
as good for thirty shillings ? Do they ever
knowingly give forty shillings for a ton of
coals when they can get coals as good for
thirty-five ? Of course they do not. Nobody
does, but the execrated law of supply and
demand is nothing in the world except the
working out in the gross of the general habit
of getting the best value for one's money.
Every one who imagines that he sees a way
to get rid of this unchristian law ought to
try his panacea on a small scale with his
own income. When he is perfectly certain
that he uses nothing without being sure that
everybody employed in making it has had a
living wage, he will be in a better position
for lecturing coal-owners. He will also have
begun to see that industrial problems can
not be settled by invocation of undefined
Christian principles."

Tbe Highest Meteorological Station in
the Worldt — The highest meteorological sta-
tion in the world, before a still higher one
was established on El Misti, 19,200 feet, was
the Charchani station of the Arequipa Ob-
servatory, Peru, a branch of the Harvard
College Observatory situated on Charchani
Mountain, just below the permanent snow
line. As described by Prof. A. Lawrence
Rotch, it stands at an elevation of 16,650
feet above the sea, near the brink of a pla-
teau, 3,400 feet below the summit of the
mountain. From this brink a precipice
drops several hundred feet. Near the louvred
shelter in which the instruments are kept a
stone hut has been erected, where the person

who ascends the mountain to care for the in-
struments can spend the night, if necessary.
The ascent of 8,600 feet from the observa-
tory can be made by mule in about eight
hours. Though it is intended to have one
of the assistants visit the station each four
weeks, regular ascents have not been prac-
ticable; consequently, during the year the
station has been occupied, only portions of
ten months' records have been obtained, and
unforeseen stoppages of the self-recording
instruments have further reduced the num-
ber of complete records to eight. The dis-
tance in an air line from the station to the
observatory is about eleven miles, and such
is the transparency of the air that on a large
white disk, which has been placed on the
edge of the plateau, a black spot, one inch in
diameter, can be seen with the thirteeu-inch
telescope at the observatory. It has not yet
been possible to place instruments on the top
of the mountain, though that would be de-
sirable. Two attempts have been made,
unsuccessfully, to ascend to that point. The
comparatively high temperature and small
snowfall on the high mountains of Peru offer
opportunities for the establishment of loftier
meteorological stations than are afforded by
any other country, and the establishment of
such a summit station by the Harvard Ob-
servatory is the crowning of its remarkable
series of stations, extending from Mollendo,
on the Pacific coast, along the railroad which
crosses the desert of La Joye (4,140 feet),
reaching the divide at Vincocaya (14,360
feet), and descending the watershed to Puno,
on Lake Titicaca (12,540 feet). Another
series, differing little in horizontal distance
but relatively greatly separated vertically,
for which the observatory at Arequipa and
the station on El Misti already furnish steps,
would make it possible to obtain data of the
greatest value for the study of meteorology.

Anthropology at the University of Michi-
gan.— The first work in anthropology at the
University of Michigan was begun in the
second semester of the college year 1891-'92,
with a course in museum laboratory work in
American archaeology, under the direction of
Prof. F. W. Kelsey. The course was at-
tended by two students. Provision was
made for the exhibition of the collections in
the possession of the institution, and soon

86o

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

bad to be added to. It was then found that
the university had a much more valuable
collection than wag at first supposed.
Among its most interesting and instructive
features were a typical lot of about forty
neolithic implements from Denmark; stone
and pottery specimens illustrating the archae-
ology of Michigan; potsherds and pottery
vessels from the islands at the mouth of the
Amazon ; ancient Peruvian vessels from An-
con and Pacasmayo; pottery vessels from
the East Indies ; skulls, including some of
the perforated crania described by Henry
Gillman, so mounted that they may be ex-
amined on all sides and measured without
handling ; stone hammers or mauls from the
ancient copper pits at Isle Royale, Mich. ;
the De Pue collection of implements from
the surface of the immediate neighborhood
of the university ; and casts from the Smith-
sonian collections, with descriptions. Sev-
eral prehistoric village sites have been dis-
covered near Ann Arbor, which, it is hoped,
may soon be thoroughly examined. A sur-
vey has been made of one of the prehistoric
" garden beds " at Kalamazoo. As yet the
' work of the museum has been chiefly con-
fined to archseology, but it is expected that,
as the department develops, other phases of
anthropological science will be studied.

The Conditions of Rain-making.— The

conditions of successful rain-making, as de-
fined by Prof. A. Macfarlane, of the Uni-
versity of Texas, in the light of Mr. John
Aitken's experiments on fogs and dust — not
in a small portion of the atmosphere cut off
from the rest by means of an air-tight re-
ceiver, but on a large scale in the unbounded
atmosphere — are : " If the air operated on is
at a temperature higher than its temperature
of saturation, it must be cooled down to that
temperature. Further, when the moisture
condenses it gives out latent heat, which
tends to arrest the process ; this latent heat
must be removed. It is not, as some rain-
makers have imagined, ' Pull a trigger ; Na-
ture will do the rest.' The only trigger-
pulling which experiments warrant as possi-
ble consists in supplying the necessary fine
dust for nuclei, so that condensation may
take place without delay when the air is
cooled to its temperature of saturation ; or
in supplying fine dust from such a substance

as common salt, which has a chemical affin-
ity for water and may be able to accelerate
slightly the falling of a shower. Suppose
we take a cubic mile of the air upon which
Dyrenfurth operated on the night of Friday,
November 25, 1892. The record at the
weather office in San Antonio, at 8 P.M., gave
the temperature of the air as 72° Fahr., and
the dew point as 61° Fahr. To cool down
a cubic mile of that air to the dew point
would require the abstraction of as much
heat as would raise eighty thousand tons of
water from the freezing point to the boiling
point. To cool it down another eleven de-
grees would require as much more heat to
be abstracted. The amount of water set
free would be twenty thousand tons, which,
spread over a square mile, would give about
1*4 pound per square foot, or y^TT of an
inch of rainfall. The amount of latent heat
set free by the condensation of that amount
of water would raise one hundred thousand
tons of water from the freezing point to the
boiling point ; and it would be necessary to
absorb this heat in order that the rain-mak-
ing might go on. I have supposed the cu-
bic mile of air to be kept constant ; if the
air operated on is constantly changing, the
task becomes one of infinitely greater diffi-
culty." It is hardly necessary to say that
Prof. Macfarlane considers the professional
rain-makers, the proceedings and pretensions
of eight of whom he reviews in his paper, as
"no better than the medicine men of the
Indians."

Anomalies in Weight. — The anomalies in
weight at different points on the surface of
the earth, which have been recognized for a
considerable time, have been attributed to
corresponding anomalies in the figure of the
earth ; to the insufficiency of the formulas
for reduction to sea-level; to the unequal
distribution of masses ; or to inexact obser-
vation. A study of the subject by the
French commander Defforges, which in-
cluded forty-one observations at twenty-five
stations of different latitudes and elevations,
shows that weight is distributed very un-
equally over the globe ; that Clairaut's law,
true as a whole, is nearly always marked by
notable anomalies ; that weight, on the shores
of different seas, presents feeble anomalies,
constant, and consequently characteristic, on

POPULAR MISCELLANY.

861

the same shore ; that a considerable excess
of weight prevails in islands ; that the rule
is inverse on the continents, and the defi-
ciency seems to increase in proportion to the
altitude and the distance from the sea ; that
anomalies in weight, positive in Spitzbergen,
Scotland, and Corsica, become negative in
continental France and Algeria ; that conti-
nental anomalifes increase with the altitude
and the distance from the sea ; that anoma-
lies in weight can not be attributed to anoma-
lies in the shape of the earth, and the ex-
planation of the irregularities must be asked
of geology ; and that these results are con-
firmed by comparing Anglo-Indian and
French measurements.

Relations of Floras and Geological For-
mations.— It is generally recognized that
certain floras and certain geological forma-
tions go together ; and the plants are spoken
of as characteristic of the formation. One
of the best recognized of these characteristic
floras is that of the pine barrens of New
Jersey, which was observed several years ago
to extend northward into Staten Island and
Long Island. In these places the flora grow-
ing upon the cretaceous and that growing
upon the drift are so distinct that the fact
could hardly fail to attract the attention
even of the superficial observer. More re-
cently many characteristic species of this
pine-barren flora have been recognized as
growing in southern Rhode Island, on Block
Island, near New Bedford, Mass., on Martha's
Vineyard, and Nantucket, and even as far
north as Canada. The question arises, How
did it spread to the places in New England
where it is now found? It is a southern
flora, and is characteristically American. Its
course of migration was from the south,
either by way of the mainland through New
York and Connecticut, or else across the salt
water from Long Island. The subject has
been studied in the light of the geology and
topography by Mr. Arthur Hollick, who con-
cludes that there was during a considerable
period of time a continuous strip of land, ex-
cept for the river outlets, " all the way from
New Jersey to Massachusetts, separated from
the mainland by a body of water occupying
the trough scooped out by the glacier, which,
in its present depressed and widened con-
dition, we now call Long Island Sound, but

which was then a fresh-water lake or broad
river." Afterward the land underwent oscil-
lations in level, in the course of which the
glacial moraine was eaten away in places by
the sea, and the present series of islands and
shoals was formed.

Morals and the Nervous System. — One

case of agreement between the practical
wisdom of the Bible and the results arrived
at by modern science was recently made the
basis of a sermon by Rev. G. R. Dodson, of
Alameda, Cal. Mr. Dodson described the
passage of a current of nervous energy
through some portion of the nervous system
as being a part of every action of thinking
or willing. When we think about doing
something, for instance, there is a compara-
tively faint excitation of the nervous system ;
a stronger impulse causes the act to be done.
Thought and feeling are thus actions which
do not get beyond the limits of our own
bodies. " How this re-enforces," says Mr.
Dodson, " the teaching of Jesus, that not the
overt act alone constitutes the crime, but
that the sin is committed when the desire is
cherished in the heart ! Indeed, the desire
is the action incomplete, restrained within
the limits of the body. In I John, iii, 15, it
is said, 'He that hateth his brother is a
murderer.' This is physiologically true;
hate is murder on the way. Lust is adultery
begun." Another important relation be-
tween morals and the nervous system is that
repetition makes any action easier. The
nerve currents meet with considerable re-
sistance at first, but, by repeatedly going
over the same paths, they " hew out " and
"widen" the ways, so to speak, until they
become lines of small resistance and the ac-
tions become easy. From the close connec-
tion between thinking about an action and
directing the body in the performance of it,
there comes a surprising result. To be ever
thinking of doing anything is to be always
beginning to do it. The continual use of
the nervous system in thinking of some evil
deed is really practicing the deed itself — is
making more pervious to the nerve currents
the nerve paths which would be used in the
performance of the action. Thus it is that
some time, when off guard, the temptation
(the physiological stimulus) comes, a surplus
of nervous energy is discharged along these

862

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lines of least resistance, and the deed is
done. In this way many young people, who
were supposed to be the models of moral
perfection, have, to their own surprise as
well as that of their friends, suddenly fallen.
In such cases the evil desire, which had be-
fore been kept within the limits of the body,
is simply continued and completed in the
outward world. With what force come to
us the words, "Blessed are the pure in
heart " ! and, again, " Whatsoever things
are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and of
good report, whatever is praiseworthy and
virtuous, think on these things." Physiologi-
cal psychology gives the strongest emphasis
to these old moral precepts. Nerve paths
used constantly in true thinking and noble
sentiment become the lines of least resist-
ance, while those for ignoble thought and
feeling become like unused, neglected roads
— difficult to travel. It thus becomes con-
stitutionally easy to live nobly, and organic-
ally difficult to do wrong. In the second
place, when evil thoughts are aroused they
are at once automatically negatived (inhib-
ited) by good impulses, and without any ac-
tion of the will there is an instinctive recoil
from the evil suggestion.

Bacteriology and Public Health. — In

connection with the relation between bac-
teriology and public health, Prof. Frankland
referred, in the discussion in the British As-
sociation, to investigations by himself and
others on the purification of drinking waters
by subsidence, nitration, and precipitation.
He pointed out that great misconception pre-
vailed as to the real value of water analyses,
the object of which was to show whether a
water was liable to become a source of dan-
ger at any time, and not whether it was ac-
tually dangerous at a particular moment.
Recent methods had, however, made it pos-
sible to detect the special bacteria of typhoid
and cholera when present in a drinking
water. Contrary to the common belief, bac-
teria could retain their vitality in ordinary
water for weeks, while the spores were not
destroyed for months ; but different species
varied in this respect. Sewage was best
treated by intermittent nitration through
soil. This process removed the bacteria
more rapidly and completely than it removed
dissolved organic matter. Later investiga-

tions had confirmed the early observations
of Downes and Blount on the susceptibility
of bacteria to the action of light, and it ap-
peared that the well-known disinfecting
power of the sun's rays was due to the fact
that they actually destroyed bacteria and
their spores, the rate of destruction depend-
ing on the nature of the organism and the
condition in which it was placed.

Coal Dust and Explosions. — In a paper
on Explosions in Coal Mines, Prof. H. B.
Dixon said that the statement that explo-
sions do not travel through damp parts of a
mine has been confirmed, and that it is
practicable to localize and isolate explosions
by always keeping certain sections of the
mine damp. Recent experiments by Mr.
Hall and by an Austrian committee agree
with some earlier experiments in showing
that different coal dusts vary enormously in
their degree of inflammability, and that mix-
tures of some dusts with air are violently
explosive if ignited by means of a large
flame. The great variation in the properties
of coal dusts probably accounts for the dif-
ference between the reports from different
districts. Whether it is true that coal dust
and air alone are explosive, or that the pres-
ence of small quantities of fire damp is es-
sential, must be shown by further investiga-
tions on the nature of the dust from differ-
ent mines, the degree of danger attaching to
the use of different explosives, and the effi-
ciency of various methods of laying the dust
in mines.

Education and " Short Cats to Utopia."

— The question whether the general education
of the masses is on the whole a good thing
is under discussion in the English papers.
A writer in one of them attributes to it
" that wonderful readiness to believe in
short cuts to Utopia" which is one of the
marked and unmistakable features of our
day. The Spectator disputes this, and cites
the evidence of history as being all the other
way. " The most desperate attempt ever
made to realize heaven on earth by a short
cut was made by the followers of John of
Leyden, who were for the most part as de-
void of what is now called education as the
beasts of the field. There never was such a
dream of the short cut to Utopia as was

NOTES.

863

dreamed at the beginning of the French
Revolution ; and the agents of that revolu-
tion were for the most part peasants and
artisans entirely innocent of book learning,
who, even in Paris, were accustomed to have
their wild newspapers read to them ; ... it
was before her people were educated that
Prussia conceded the agrarian law on which
her state has ever since been organized, and
which her people certainly regarded as their
short cut to happiness. On the other hand,
the effect of John Knox's system of educa-
tion in Scotland has been to make the coun-
try north of the Tweed for two hundred
years singularly averse to social dreams ;
while the Prussians, educated for seventy
years — two clear generations — have been the
gravest and most sensible and self-sacrificing
people of the continent. We question if,
even in England, the people are half as
dreamy as they were in 1830, when they
were profoundly ignorant, or if the French
working class, socialist as it is, is half as
confident of Utopia as it was forty-five years
ago. The American school system, which
extends everywhere, has produced a race
whose special characteristic is sense so hard
that they bear the most provoking evidence
of the tendency of wealth to accumulate in
few hands without interfering, and shoot
down the uneducated foreigners who form
the strength of their anarchist party with
a decision which, at all events, is far re-
moved from dreaminess."

NOTES.

AN interesting study is published by J.
Walter Fewkes of the legend of the destruc-
tion of the Tusayan pueblo of Awatobi cur-
rent among the Hopi Indians, and of his
researches on the site of the pueblo for the
illustration and verification of the story. The
destruction was effected by the Hopis about
the beginning of the eighteenth century. The
investigation was carried on in connection
with the Hemenney Southwestern Archaeo-
logical Expedition.

VERTICAL writing, which was described
and illustrated in the November Popular Sci-
ence Monthly, has already gained a foothold
in Canada, and is attracting considerable at-
tention in the United States. The Educa-
tional Review (St. John, N. B.) states that
Mr. A. F. Newlands, supervisor of penman-
ship in the public schools of Kingston, On-
tario, introduced it into the schools of that

town a year ago. It is also taught and fa-
vored in many schools of Montreal and To-
ronto. It has been given the preference in
the public-school system of Nova Scotia,
having entirely displaced sloping writing in
Halifax. It is also taught in the Halifax
Ladies' College. Among the librarians of
the United States it is no new thing, having
been adopted several years ago by many of
them for writing catalogue cards on account
of its superior legibility.

DARWIN appears, from a communication
in Nature by Mr. Kumusagu Minakata, to
have been anticipated more than a thousand
years in announcing the theory of the adap-
tation of the color of animals to that of their
surroundings, by Twang-Ching-Shih, a Chi-
nese philosopher of the ninth century, who,
having described the habits of the trap-door
spider (or " tumbling defender ") and ob-
served that the lid of its nest is colored like
the ground, adds : " In general, birds and
animals necessarily conceal forms and shad-
ows by their assimilation with various ob-
jects. Consequently, a snake's color is simi-
lar to that of the ground, the hare in the
imperator grass is unavoidably overlooked,
and the hawk's hue agrees with that of the
trees."

AN ingenious device has been contrived
by Dr. A. Cancani, of Italy, for registering
the precise time when an earthquake shock
occurs. The seismograph is so arranged as
to take an instantaneous photograph of the
face of a chronometer at the instant of the
shock. An adjustment of levers and bat-
teries and magnet is thrown into gear by the
shock, so that an incandescent electric lamp
is lighted automatically for about a quarter
of a second, while the image of the clock
is established upon the photographic plate.

AN investigation has been made by H. M.
Bernard of the comparative morphology of
spiders, the results of which he hopes shortly
to have ready for publication. These results,
he represents, "go far to establish that classi-
fication which ranks the arachnids as an in-
dependent group of the tracheate arthropods,
as distinguished from that which would de-
duce them from the specialized crustacean
Limulm through the specialized arachnid
Scorpio"

THE disappearance is reported of the
voles or field mice which infested the farms
of Scotland a year or two ago to such an ex-
tent that the evil they wrought and threat-
ened became a serious economical problem.
They were first observed a few years before
1890 ; multiplied rapidly till the summer of

1892, when they began to decrease, and
ceased to be formidable in the summer of

1893. On some farms the normal numbers
remain, but on others hardly one is to be
seen. The disappearance appears to be gen-
eral over the whole country. Various causes

864

THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have been suggested for their vanishing,
among the chief of which the farmers and
shepherds name the work of such natural
enemies as the owl, kestrel, rook, blackhead
gull, buzzard, stoat, and weasel — animals
which foolish man is industriously trying to
exterminate.

ACCORDING to Meehan's Monthly, the large
majority of plants are scentless, and proba-
bly not one tenth of the hundred thousand
flowering plants known to botanists are
odorous. Of the fifty known species of the
mignonette family, only the one so highly
prized in our gardens is fragrant, and only
about a dozen of the one hundred species of
violet are scented. In many large genera
the scentless varieties are as one hundred to
one, and sweet-smelling varieties are com-
paratively rare among our wild flowers.

IT was observed by the late Mr. Wollas-
ton that most insects inhabiting the Atlantic
islands are either strongly winged or incapable
of flight. The explanation of the phenom-
enon is found in the fact that insects exposed
to gales are very liable to be blown out to
sea. Hence it is almost equally to their ad-
vantage either to be gifted with strong
enough powers of flight to be able to make
their way back when they have been blown
away, or never to fly at all, and thus escape
the risk of being blown away.

OBITUARY NOTES.

PROF. HEINRICH R. HERTZ, of the Univer-
sity of Bonn, who won fame by his demon-
stration of the intimate connection of light
and electricity, died at Bonn, on New- Year's
day, of blood poisoning induced by a chronic
disease of the nose. He was born at Ham-
burg on the 22d of February, 1857 ; entered
the Engineering School in 1875 ; afterward
devoted himself to physics, studying in Mu-
nich and Berlin ; became an assistant to
Helmholtz in 1875 ; settled in Kiel in 1883
as a privat decent in theoretical physics ; was
appeinted in 1885 Professor of Physics in the
technical Hofschule in Carlsruhe; and in
1885 succeeded Clausius as Professor of
Physics at Bonn. The apparatus with which
he made his famous demonstration was shown
at the F-lectrotechnic Exhibition at Ham-
burg, where it attracted much attention, par-
ticularly from men of science. His own ac-
count of his demonstration of the identity of
light and electricity was published in vol-
ume xxxviii of The Popular Science Month-
ly, December, 1890. We hope, at some fu-
ture time, to publish a biographical sketch
and portrait of him.

THE distinguished Belgian zoologist, Prof.
Pierre Joseph van Beneden, of the Univer-
sity of Louvain, died in that city, January
8th, in the eighty-fifth year of his age. His
first scientific position was that of keeper of

the Natural History Collections at Louvain.
In 1835 he was made an assistant professor
at the University of Ghent, and in the same
year professor in the Catholic University of
Louvain. He was author of a large number
of zoological and biological papers, particu-
larly on parasites, worms, etc. ; joint author
with Du Mortier of the Natural History of
the Fresh-water Polyzoa, and with Paul Ger-
vaise of the Zoologie Medicale ; and author
of Recherches sur le Faune littorale de Bel-
gique, and of the book on Animal Parasites
and Messmates in the International Scientific
Series. He had artistic skill, and contributed
illustrations to his works.

PROF. ARTHUR MILNES MARSHALL, of
Owens College, Manchester, was killed, De-
cember 31, 1893, by a fall on the peak of
Scafell, Cumberlandshire, England. He was
born in 1852 ; entered St. John's College,
Cambridge, in 1871, where he was one of the
earliest students in the school of biology,
and whence he was graduated on completing
the course ; entered upon the study of medi-
cine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in 1876 ;
and was appointed Professor of Zoology in
Owens College in 1879. He was author of a
series of papers on the Cranial Nerves, on
the Pennatulidae, and on the Nervous System
of Antedon, and of works on Vertebrate Em-
bryology, the Frog, and Practical Zoology ;
was secretary and afterward chairman of the
board of studies of Victoria University ; was
a Fellow of the Royal Society ; and was an
active worker in the university extension
movement. He had ascended the mountain
with a party on the day of his death, and
was standing at a point higher than the oth-
ers, when a rock fell, carrying him with it.

THE eminent zoologist and paleontologist,
Dr. Paul Henri Fischer, who died in Paris,
November 29, 1893, was born in Paris in
1835 ; became Demonstrator of Paleontology
in the Museum of Natural History of Paris
in 1861 ; and rose to be assistant naturalist
there. From 1856 he edited the Journal
de Conchyliologie in collaboration with M.
Crosse. He studied very successfully the
marine animals of the coast of France and
their geographical and bathymetric distri-
bution. He and the Marquis de Folin, ex-
amining the Fosse du Cap Breton in the
Gulf of Gascony, discovered a large number
of forms previously unknown, some of which
resembled fossil forms. With M. Delesse he
made researches on the submarine sediments
of the French shores. He took part in the
expeditions of the Travailleur and the Tal-
isman. His works, books, pamphlets, and
memoirs include three hundred titles.

THE death, at Kiel, in November, 1893, is
reported of Baron von Bulow, founder of the
Bothkamp Observatory, the first observato-
ry in Germany devoted to astro-physical re-
searches.

INDEX.

ARTICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAGE

Aber, William M. Pestalozzianism in America. (Misc.) 566

Air, Fresh, for Legislators. (Misc.) 424

Alaskan Climate, The. (Misc.) 138

Alcoholism, Legal Preventives of. J. Bergeron 391

Alger, Abby L. The Creation : A Penobscot Indian Myth 195

Alp, The First Climbing of an. (Misc.) 142

Aluminum, The Past and Future of. J. Fleury 397

American, North and South, Aboriginal Names. M. V. Moore 81

Ancestors and Gods, Cheating. (Misc.) 718

Ancient Mexican and Hopi Dances. (Misc.) 143

Anderson, Melville B. Sketch of David Starr Jordan. (With Portrait). . . . 546

Animal and Artificial Mechanism. (Misc.) 714

" Life, Diversity of Forms and Conditions of. (Misc.) 423

" Life in the Death Valley Region. (Misc.) 137

Animals, Industries of.* F. Houssay 694

" the Eyes of, Variety in. (Misc.) 284

Antarctic Regions, Aspects of the. (Misc.) 572

Anthropology at the University of Michigan. (Misc.) 859

Arbitration, International. (Editor's Table) 412

Arctic Rivers. (Misc.) 716

Art, The Earliest Historical. (Misc.) 425

14 The Origin of. L. Popoff 827

Ashley, Charles S. The Relation of Evolution to Political Economy 458

Assessments, Special, The Theory of. (Misc.) 428

Athletics and Scholarship. (Misc.) 282

Australia, The Scrnb Lands of. (Misc.) 426

Bacteriology in Chemistry. (Misc.) 716

" and the Public Health. (Misc.) 862

Baldwin, J. Mark. The Origin of Right-handedness 606

Bananas, Where, grow.* J. E. Humphrey 486

Barber, Amherst W. The European Law of Torture 648

Beaver Eater, The.* H. T. Martin 811

Beneficence, Why, should not be enforced. (Editor's Table) 845

Bergeron, J. Legal Preventives of Alcoholism 391

Billson, William W. An Illustrative Chapter on Legal Development 802

Biological Laboratory, a Marine, Notes from.* W. S. Windle 449

Biology, Logical Method in. F. Cramer 372

VOL. XLIV. — 63

866

INDEX.

PAGE

Birds' Eggs, Protection of. (Misc.) 713

" Judgments of Men. Cunisset-Carnot 110

Birds, Taxability of. (Corr.) P. F. Schofield 409

" Distribution of. (Misc.) 858

" Blue Laws," The, a Myth. (Corr.) 0. E. Davis 842

Books noticed 126, 270, 413, 555, 701, 847

Abbe, Cleveland. The Mechanics of the
Earth's Atmosphere, 134.

American Association for the Study and
Cure of Inebriety. The Disease of Ine-
briety from Alcohol, Opium, and other
Narcotic Drugs, 130.

Arnold, Matthew. Sohrab and Rnstum,
562.

Arnold. First and Second Latin Book and
Practical Grammar, 708.

—Practical Introduction to Latin Prose
Composition, 708.

Bailey, M. A. American Mental Arithme-
tic, 135.

Bandelier, A. F. The Gilded Man and other
Pictures of the Spanish Occupancy of
America, 417.

Bastian, Ad. Ideale Welten in Wort und
Bild, 704.

Bianchi, A. G. Romance of a Born Crimi-
nal, 555.

Bishop, Cortlandt F. History of Elections
in the United States, 420.

Boland, Mary A. A Handbook of Invalid
Cooking, 128.

Bolton, H. Carrington. A Select Bibliog-
raphy of Chemistry, 419.

Book of the Fair, The, 708.

Brinton, Daniel G. The Pursuit of Happi-
ness, 132.

Brown, Marshall. Bulls and Blunders, 854.

Browne, A. J. Jukes. Geology, 271.

Burnham, Lieutenant W. P. Three Roads
to a Commission in the United States
Army, 135.

Campbell, H. J., M. D. Text-book of Ele-
mentary Biology, 706.

Church, A. J. Stories from the Greek Come-
dians, 418.

Clark, John. Manual of Linguistics, 854.

Clerk, Agnes M. A Popular History of
Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century,
560.

Cleveland, The Duchess of. The True
Story of Caspar Hauser, from Official
Documents, 563.

Conklin, Benjamin G. Practical Lessons in
Language, 134.

Cooke, C. J. Bowen. British Locomotives,
706.

Coppee, Henry. General Thomas, 702.

Corroyer, Edouard. Gothic Architecture,
415.

Cox, Frank P. Continuous-current Dy-
namos and Motors, 702.

Crooke, Joseph Henry. The New Bible
and its New Uses, 850.

Dawson, Miles M. Elements of Life Insur-
ance, 854.

Dodel, Arnold. Moses or Darwin ? 274.

Duffy, Terence. From Darkness to Light,
419.

Dunscomb, S. Whitney, Jr. Bankruptcy,
133.

Ebers, Georg. The Story of My Life from
Childhood to Manhood, 556.

Ecob, Helen Gilbert. The Well-dressed
Woman, 564.

Edwords, Clarence C. Camp Fires of a
Naturalist, 560.

Eiloart, Arnold. A Guide to Stereochemis-
try, 274.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The American
Scholar, 562.

Everett, Charles Carroll. The Gospel of
Paul, 708.

Ewald, C. A. The Diseases of the Stomach,
132.

Foreman Pattern-maker, A. The Princi-
ples of Fitting, 563.

Foster, M. A Text-book of Physiology,
Book I, 850.

Gadd, W. Lawrence. Soap Manufacture,
131.

Geikie, Archibald. Text-book of Geology,
558.

Oilman, Nicholas Paine. Socialism and the
American Spirit, 560.

Gorton, David Allyn. The Monism of
Man, 854.

Gould, George M., M. D. The Meaning and
the Method of Life, 559.

Greene, C. A., M. D. Build Well : the Basis
of Individual, Home, and National Eleva-
tion, 557.

Greene, Francis Vinton. General Greene,
271.

Gnerber, H. A. Myths of Greece and
Rome, 852.

Harkness, James, and Frank Morley.
Treatise on the Theory of Functions,
564.

Harper, William R., and Clarence F. Cas-
tle. Exercises in Greek Prose Composi-
tion, 563.

— Inductive Greek Primer, 708.

— and F. J. Miller, editors. ^Eneid and
Bucolics of Vergil, 709.

— and James Wallace, editors. Xeno-
phon's Anabasis, 709.

Hayes, M. Horace. The Points of the

Horse, 417.
Heinzen, Karl. The Rights of Women and

the Sexual Relations, 275.

INDEX.

867

Books noticed:

Hektoen, Ludvig, M. D. The Technique
of Post-mortem Examination, 852.

Hill, David J. Genetic Philosophy, 847.

Holden, Ward A., M. D. The Outlines of
Embryology of the Eye, 854.

Houston, Edwin J. Outlines of Forestry, 705.

Howard, B. Douglas. Life with Trans-Si-
berian Savages, 420.

Howells, W. D., and others. The Niagara
Book, 562.

Hnlme, F. Edward. The Birth and Devel-
opment of Ornament, 273.

Huxley, Thomas H. Essays, Vols. I, II,
and III, 850.

Jackson, S. Commercial Arithmetic, 135.

Jenkins, Oliver P. Primary Lesson in
Human Physiology, 276.

— Advanced Lessons in Human Physiology,
2T6.

Jenner, William. Lectures and Essays on
Fever and Diphtheria, 849.

Johns Hopkins University. Studies in the
Biological Laboratory. Volume V, No.
2,134.

Johnston, W. J. Elementary Treatise on
Analytical Geometry, 420.

Jones, George William. Logarithmic Ta-
bles, 709.

Juglar, Clement. A Brief History of Pan-
ics, 133.

Kemp, James F. The Ore Deposits of the
United States, 560.

Kirk, HyJand C. The Kevolt of the Brutes,
562.

Kirkpatrick, E. A. Inductive Psychology,
563.

Lachlan, R. Elementary Treatise on Mod-
ern Pure Geometry, 275.

Laurie, S. S. John Amos Comenius, 135.

Lecky, W. E. H. A History of Ireland in
the Eighteenth Century, 271.

Lee, Eawdon B. A History and Descrip-
tion of the Modern Dogs (Sporting Divi-
sion) of Great Britain and Ireland, 851.

Leffmann and Beam. A System of Analysis
of Milk and Milk Products, 853.

Lesquereux, Leo. The Flora of the Da-
kota Group, 277.

Letters from Queensland, 274.

Lewis, B. B. The Cosmic Ether and its
Problems, 419.

Lord, John. Two German Giants: Freder-
ick the Great and Bismarck, 703.

Love, A. E. H. Treatise on the Mathe-
matical Theory of Elasticity, 565.

McAulay, A. Utility of Quaternions in
Physics, 854.

Mcllvaine, Charles. The Deadly and Minor
Poisons of Toadstools, 419.

McKendrick, John Gray, M. D., and Wil-
liam Snodgrass, M. B. The Physiology of
the Senses, 272.

Maginnis, Arthur J. The Atlantic Ferry,
421.

Martin, Horace T. Castorologia, or the His-
tory and Traditions of the Canadian
Beaver. 563.

Mayer, I. H., M. D. Domestic Economy,
705.

Merrill, F. J. H. The Salt and Gypsum
Industries of New York, 418.

Meyer, Bertha. The Child, Physically and
Mentally, 853.

Miers, H. A., and R. Crosskey. The Soil in
Relation to Health, 129,

Migula, Dr. W. An Introduction to Prac-
tical Bacteriology for Physicians, Chem-
ists, and Students, 129.

Milne, William J. Standard Arithmetic,
275.

Minnesota Geological and Natural History
Survey. Twentieth Annual Report, 134.

Missouri Botanical Garden. Fourth An-
nual Report, 130.

Mitchell, Clifford, M. D. A Clinical Study
of Diseases of the Kidney, 129.

Mivart, St. George. American Types of
Animal Life, 703.

Morrow, John T., and Thorburn Reid. The
Arithmetic of Magnetism and Electrici-
ty, 853.

Murphy, Joseph John. Natural Selection
and Spiritual Freedom, 561.

Newell, Jane H. Reader in Botany. Part
II, 276.

Newhall, Charles S. The Shrubs of North-
eastern America, 127.

Newton, Alfred, and Hans Gadow. A Dic-
tionary of Birds, 559.

Nisbet, John. British Forest Trees and
their Sylvicultural Characteristics and
Treatment, 272.

Orr, Henry B. A Theory of Development
and Heredity, 849.

Orum, Julia A. The Orum System of Voice
Education, 276.

Owen, Francis Browning. Columbian and
other Poems, 136.

Parker, T. Jeffery. William Kitchen Par-
ker, F.R. A. S., 852.

Poore, George Vivian, M. D. Essays on
Rural Hygiene, 558.

Raymond, George Lansing. The Genesis
of Art Form, 415.

Ricks, George. Object Lessons and How
to give them, 851.

Riggs, Stephen Return. A Dakota Eng-
lish Dictionary, 277.

Ripley, William Zebrina. The Financial
History of Virginia, 133.

Rockwell, Julius Ensign. Shorthand In-
struction and Practice, 564.

Rorer, Mrs. S. T., Editor. Household
News, 131.

Roscoe, Henry, and Joseph Lunt. Ir or-
ganic Chemistry for Beginners, 705.

Russell, J. W. Elementary Treatise on
Pure Geometry, 275.

868

INDEX.

Books noticed :

Sabine, Wallace Clement. Student's Man-
ual of a Laboratory Course in Physical
Measurements, 276.

Savage, M. J. Jesus and Modern Life,
850.

Scudder, Samuel Hubbard. Brief Guide to
the Commoner Butterflies of the North-
ern United States and Canada, 270.

—The Life of a Butterfly, 270.

Shakspere, William. The Merchant of
Venice, 274.

Sherwood, Sidney. The History and Theory
of Money, 270.

Shipley, Authur E. ZoOlogy of the Inverte-
brata. 415.

Siemens, Werner von, Personal Recollec-
tions of, 416.

Smith, Henry. Religion of the Brain, 275.

Smithsonian Meteorological Tables, 420.

Society for Psychical Research, Proceed-
ings, Part XXIV, 564.

Stebbins, Genevieve. Dynamic Breathing
and Harmonic Gymnastics, 704.

Stoddard, William O. On the C Id Frontier,
707.

Strahan, S. A. K., M. D. Suicide and In-
sanity, 851.

Sturgis, Russell, and others. Homes in City
and Country, 127.

Sunderland, J. T., D. D. The Bible: its
Origin, Growth, and Character, 556.

Sweet, Henry. Manual of Current Short-
hand, 276.

Swinton, William. School History of the
United States, 562.

Taylor, D. W. Resistance of Ships and

Screw Propulsion, 563.
Tebb, William. The Recrudescence of
Leprosy and its Causation, 701.

Thorpe, T. E., and others. A Dictionary
of Applied Chemistry, 273.

Todhunter, Isaac. History of the Theory
of Elasticity, 707.

Tucker, Benjamin R. Instead of a Book,
275.

United States Commissioner of Education.
Report for 1889-'80, 277.

—Commissioner of Labor. Annual Report
for 1891, 126.

—Geological Survey. Eleventh Annual Re-
port, 419.

Van Rensselaer, Mrs. Schuyler. Art Out of
Doors, 562.

Waldo, Frank. Modern Meteorology, 414.

Ward, Lester F. The Psychic Factors of
Civilization, 413.

Watts, Francis. Introductory Manual for
Sugar Growers, 1?4.

Whitfleld, Robert Parr. Gasteropoda and
Cephalopoda of the Raritan Clays and
Greensand Marls in New Jersey, 277.

Wiechmann, F. G. Lecture Notes on Theo-
retical Chemistry, 273.

Williams, C. M. A Review of the Systems
of Ethics founded on the Theory of Evo-
lution, 706.

Williams., Samuel G. The History of Mod-
ern Education, 134.

Willoughby, E. F., M. D. Handbook of
Public Health and Demography, 853.

Wilson, Daniel. Science Stories, 135.

Wilson, Woodrow. Division and Reunion,
133.

Woods, Henry. Elementary Paleontology
for Geological Students, 703.

Wright, Mark R. Heat, 420.
Ziwet, Alexander. An Elementary Treatise
on Theoretical Mechanics, 708.

Boutwell, George S. The Pestalozzian System 55

Boyd, J. Andrew. Dog Psychology. (Corr.) 841

Boyer, Jacques. The Founder of the First Scientific Journal 690

Brandicourt, V. Mathematical Curiosities of the Sixteenth Century 106

Browne, James Crichton. Biology and Ethics 671

Calumet, The, in the Champlain Valley.* G. H. Perkins 238

Cambodian Life, Incidents of.* A. Leclere 776

Carpenter, Frank G. Uncle Sam's Life Savers.* 346

Carroll, Dr. Alfred L. (Misc.) 717

Charcot, Jean Martin, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 693

Chemistry, Ancient Beginnings of. (Misc.) 140

Children, The Scientific Method with. H. L. Clapp 57

Chinese Letter Shops. (Misc.) 713

Choke Damp, Oxygen as a Remedy for. (Misc.) 715

Cinnamon, The Eoyal, of Tonkin. (Misc.) 429

Circassian Slave, The, in Turkish Harems. E. B. Dietrick 481

Clapp, Henry Lincoln. The Scientific Method with Children 57

Clays, Composition of. (Misc.) 430

INDEX. 869

PAGE

Colored Audition. (Corr.) B. Phillips 267

Colors, Indian Basket. (Misc.) 139

Columbus, The Glory of. (Misc.) 283

Cotton Manufacturing, Adaptability of the South to. (Misc.) 140

Coupin, Henri. The "Wandering Jew at the Salpetri^re.* 525

Cramer, Frank. Logical Method in Biology 372

Creation, From, to Evolution. A. D. White 433, 721

" The : A Penobscot Indian Myth. A. L. Alger 195

Criminal Woman. H. Zimmern 218

Critic Criticised, A. (Corr.). D. G. Thompson 26(5

Crocodiles, Alligators, and the Heloderm. (Misc.) 423

Cunisset-Carnot. Birds' Judgments of Men 110

Dairy Industry, Advances in the. (Misc.) 281

Dana, James D. On New England and the Upper Mississippi Basin in the

Glacial Period 81 6

Davis, Charles E. The "Blue Laws" a Myth. (Corr.) ..842

Deaf Children, Speech for. L. E. Warren 363

Diet, Vegetable. W. Paget 94

Dietrick, Mrs. Ellen Battelle. The Circassian Slave in Turkish Harems 481

Dobson, W. A. Modern War Vessels of the United States Navy * 164

Dyes, Action of Light on. (Misc.) 568

Earth, How Old is the ? W. Upham 153

" The Shape of the, from a Pendulum. J. H. Gore 531

Earthquake Phenomena, Investigation of. (Misc.) 716

Education, A Scheme of. (Misc.) 573

" and " Short Cuts to Eutopia." (Misc.) 862

Heredity in Relation to. W. Mills 472

Spencer's, in English Training Colleges. (Misc.) 136

" The Place of Geology in. (Misc.) 572

Egyptian Drawings, The Pose of. (Misc.) 283

Electric Eels, Playing with. (Misc.) 285

Electricity at the World's Fair.* C. M. Lungren 39

Emotions and Infection. Oh. Fe're' 342

Ericsson, John, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 112

Ethics and the Struggle for Existence. L. Stephen 224

" Biology and. J. C. Browne 671

" Evolution and. T. H. Huxley 18, 178

" Evolutionary. E. Mathews 192

" The, of Tribal Society. E. P. Evans 289

Evans, E. P. The Ethics of Tribal Society 289

Explosions, Coal-dust and. (Misc.) 862

Fere", Ch. Emotions and Infection 342

Finger Marks. (Misc.) 572

Fish Commission, the United States, Work of. (Misc.) 428

" Culture in America and Europe. (Misc.) 286

Floury, J. The Past and Future of Aluminum 397

Fluorine, Isolation of. (Misc.) . 715

8 70 INDEX.

PAGE

Flying Machine, [Requisites of a. CMisc.) 424

" The Problem of, New Lights on.* J. Le Conte 744

Folklore, Pennsylvania. (Misc.) 137

Forests, Sanitary and Climatic Influence of. (Misc.) 426

Fruit Industry, The, in California.* C. H. Shinn 200

Geographical Exploration, The Future of. (Misc.) 718

Geological Society of America. (Misc.) 710

Formations, Relations of Floras and. (Misc.) 861

Geology, The Position of. J. Prestwich 537

" The World's Congress on. (Misc.) 278

Glacial Period, On New England and the Upper Mississippi Basin in the. J.

D. Dana 816

Glacial Period, Subdivisions or Unity of the. (Misc.) 279

" " Close of the. (Corr.) R. W. McFarland 841

Gore, J. H. The Shape of the Earth from a Pendulum 531

Government, Efficient, The Conditions of. (Editor's Table) 697

Graham, Douglas. Action of Massage upon the Muscles 677

Greenleaf, James L. Window Lights and their Value 354

Hale, Horatio. Sketch of Sir Daniel Wilson. (With Portrait) 256

Hallopeau, L. A., and A. Poisson. The Essays of Jean Rey 247

Handwriting, Vertical, An Argument for.* J. V. Witherbee . 86

Harvard, Expenses at. (Misc.) 142

Harvard Observatory, The. (Misc.) 711

Heating and Ventilation of Electric-lighted Buildings. (Misc.) 427

Herrick, Francis H. Nature at Sea * 69

Hickson, Sidney J. Physical Conditions of the Deep Sea * 461

Himalayan Landscape, A. (Misc.) 430

Hodge, C. F. The Method of Homing Pigeons * 758

Houssay, Fr6d6ric. Industries of Animals * 594

Humphrey, James E. Where Bananas Grow * 486

Huxley, Thomas H. Evolution and Ethics 18, 178

" " Professor Tyndall 637

Huxley, Prof., and the Late Sir Andrew Clark. (Misc.) 567

" Professor, Evolution in. St. G. Mivart 319

Hypnotism in Remedial Treatment. (Misc.) 282

Ice Age, The, and its Work. A. R. Wallace 681, 781

Indians, The Biloxi. (Misc.) 285

Inductoscripts. (Misc.) 422

Jamaica, The Blue Mountains of. (Misc.) 569

Jordan. David Starr. The Story of Bob * 145

Jordan, David Starr. Sketch of. (With Portrait.) M. B. Anderson 546

Kashmir, The Land of. (Misc.) 857

Kirk wood, Daniel. Laplace's Plan for Perpetual Moonlight 36

Labor Question, Common Sense on the. (Misc.) 858

Lectere, Adhemard. Incidents of Cambodian Life * 776

INDEX. 871

PAGE

Le Conte, Joseph. New Lights on the Problem of Flying * 744

Legal Development, An Illustrative Chapter on. W. "W. Billson 802

Le Plongeon, Mrs. A. D. Customs and Superstitions of the Mayas * 661

Library, The World's Fair Model. (Misc.) 280

Life Savers, Uncle Sam's.* F. G. Carpenter 346

Littlehales, G. W. How the Sea is Sounded 334

Lodian, "Walter. A Century of the Telegraph in France* 791

Loomis, Lafayette C. Eecent Railroad Disasters 314

Lunar Craters, Characteristics of. (Misc.) 7 429

Lungren, Charles M. Electricity at the World's Fair * 39

Macdonell, Miss Blanche L. Superstitions of the French Canadians 520

McFarland, R. W. Close of the Glacial Period. (Oorr.) 841

Man, Fossil.* J. G. Rothermel 616

" The Earliest. (Misc.) 285

Martin, Horace T. The Beaver Eater.* 811

Massage, Action of, upon the Muscles. D. Graham 677

Mathematical Curiosities of the Sixteenth Century. V. Brandicourt 106

Mathews, Robert. Evolutionary Ethics 192

Mayas, Customs and Superstitions of the.* A. D. Le Plongeon 661

Meteorological Station, The Highest, in the World. (Misc.) 859

Mills, Wesley. Heredity in Relation to Education 472

Mineral Resources of Missouri. (Misc.) 573

Mivart, St. George. Evolution in Professor Huxley 319

Molecules, Worlds and. (Misc.) 427

Monteith, John. The Psychology of a Dog 514

Moon of Romance, The. (Editor's Table) 700

Moonlight, Perpetual,. Laplace's Plan for. D. Kirkwood 36

Moore, M. V. North and South American Aboriginal Names 81

Morals and the Nervous System. (Miec.) 861

Morgan, Appleton. Abolish all Prohibitive Liquor Laws 677

Moser, E. S. Immaterial Science 84

Nature at Sea.* F. H. Herrick 69

" Co-operation in. (Misc.) 284

Navy, the United States, Modern War Vessels of.* W. A. Dobson 164

Negro Education, Prospects of. (Misc.) 574

Nicholson, Joseph S. State Interference in Social Affairs 196

Night Hawks and Whip-poor-wills.* R. W. Shufeldt 308

Obituary Notes. Daniel Oolladon, Henry J. Philpott 288

Traugott Friedrich Ktitzing, Alexander Strauch, Herman

August Hagen 432

Frank Bolles, Samuel Lockwood, Robert Bentley, T. W.

Kennard, Marin H. Jansen 720

Heinrich R. Hertz, Pierre Joseph van Beneden, Arthur

Milnes Marshall, Paul Henri Fischer, Baron von Bulow. 864

Oil Films, Thickness of. (Misc.) 281

Organism, the Living, Concurrence of Parts in. (Misc.) 570

Originality, Conventionalism and. (Misc.) 138

Oyster Supply, The Conservation of our.* R. F. Walsh 1

872 INDEX.

PAGE

Paget, Walb. Vegetable Diet 94

Parks, Public, in Massachusetts. (Misc.) 425

Patton, J. Harris. Origin of the Mississippi Valley Rainfall 102

Perkins, G. H. The Calumet in the Ohamplain Valley.* 238

Pestalozzian System, The. G. S. Boutwell 55

Pestalozzianism in America. (Misc.) W. M. Aber 566

Phillips, Barnet. Colored Audition. (Corr.) 267

Phillips Prize Essay Fund, The. (Misc.) 715

Physics, A Year's Work in. (Misc.) 571

Pigeons, Homing, The Method of.* C. F. Hodge 758

Poisson, Alb., and L. A. Hallopeau. The Essays of Jean Key 247

Polar Basin, The. (Misc.) 571

Political Economy, The Relation of Evolution to. C. S. Ashley 458

" Science at the Brooklyn Institute. (Misc.) 422

Popoff, Lazar. The Origin of Art 827

Population, Tendencies of. (Misc.) 714

Prestwich, Joseph. The Position of Geology 537

Proctor, R. A., The Grave of. (Misc.) 422

Prohibitive Liquor Laws, Abolish All. A. Morgan 577

Proof, Guesses and. (Misc.) 568

Psychology, The, of a Dog. J. Monteith 514

" Dog. (Corr.) J. A. Boyd 841

Public Opinion. (Editor's Table) 410

Railroad Disasters, Recent. L. C. Loomis 314

Rainfall, the Mississippi Valley, Origin of. J. H. Patton 102

Rain-making, The Conditions of. (Misc.) 860

Reclus, Elisee, and Ms Opinions. (With Portrait.) H. Zimmern 402

Reform, A Possible. (Editor's Table) 698

Rey, Jean, The Essays of. L. A. Hallopeau and A. Poisson 247

Rich, George A. Trusts their own Corrective 740

Right-handedness, The Origin of. J. M. Baldwin 606

Rothermel, John G. Fossil Man.* 616

Russian Village, The. (Misc.) 712

Schofield, P. F. Tainability of Birds. (Corr.) 409

School Books, American, Accuracy of. (Misc.) 141

Schools, German. (Misc.) 141

Schweinitz, L. D. von. Sketch of. (With Portrait) 833

Science and Civilization. (Editor's Table) 267

" at the Columbian Exposition. (Editor's Table) 123

" Immaterial. E. S. Moser 84

" Immaterial. (Corr.) J. H. Stoller 409

Scientific Journal, the First, The Founder of. J. Boyer 690

Scientist, A, but not a Philosopher. (Editor's Table) 269

Scorpions, Habits of. (Misc.) 569

Sea, How the, is Sounded.* G. W. Littlehales 334

" the Deep, Physical Conditions of.* S. J. Hickson 461

Shinn, Charles H. The Fruit Industry in California.* 200

Shufeldt, R. W. Night-hawks and Whip-poor-wills.*. . . .308

INDEX. 873

PAGE

Social Affairs, State Interference in. S. Nicholson 196

" Problems, The Bearing of the Doctrine of Evolution on. (Editor's Table) 121

South, Invention and Industry at the. B. H. Wise 379

Speeds, Various. (Misc.) 714

Spencer, Herbert. The Late Professor Tyndall 81 9

Spencer-smashing at Washington. (Misc.) 856

Stephen, Leslie. Ethics and the Struggle for Existence 224

Stoller, James H. (Oorr.) Immaterial Science 409

Story, Tiie, of Bob.* D. S. Jordan 145

Superstitions of the French Canadians. B. S. Macdonell 520

Tacoma, Mount. (Misc.) 717

Taxes, Inheritance. (Misc.) 286

Telegraph in France, A Century of the.* W. Lodian 791

Thompson, Daniel Greenleaf. A Critic Criticised. (Corr.) 266

Torture, The European Law of. A. W. Barber 648

Trepanning, Prehistoric. (Misc.) 566

Tropical Forest, Characteristics of the. (Misc.) 139

Trusts, their own Corrective. G. A. Rich 740

Tyndall and his American Visit. E. A. Youmans 502

" Professor. T. H. Huxley 637

" Prof., The Late. (Editor's Table) 552

" Professor, The Late. H. Spencer 819

Unemployed, The. (Editor's Table) 842

Cpham, Warren. How Old is the Earth ? 153

Vegetarian Pedestrians. (Misc.) 281

Vegetation, Tree-top. (Misc.) 282

Wallace, Alfred R. The Ice Age and its Work 681, 781

Walsh, Robert F. The Conservation of our Oyster Supply.* 1

Wandering Jew, The, at the Salpetriere.* H. Coupin 525

Warren, Lillie Eginton. Speech for Deaf Children 363

Weight, Anomalies in. (Misc.) 860

White, Andrew Dickson, From Creation to Evolution 433, 721

Wilson, Sir Daniel, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) H. Hale 256

Windle, William S. Notes from a Marine Biological Laboratory.* 449

Window Lights and their Value. J. L. Greenleaf 354

Wise, Barton H. Invention and Industry at the Sonth . 379

Witherbee, Joseph V. An Argument for Vertical Handwriting.* 86

Women in Postal and Railway Service. (Misc.) 712

Youmans, Miss E. A. Tyndall and his American Visit 502

Zimmern, Helen. Criminal Woman 218

" Elisee Reclns and his Opinions. (With Portrait) 402

Zoological Garden, The, of Philadelphia. (Misc.) 142

KND OF VOL. XLIV.

•

[Ptiblic library,]

VOL. XLIV.l ESTABLISHED BXj^»a«KL.j£0UMANS. [No. 5

\ > ^Sr?-f T^ ~T

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1894.
EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOU MANS.

CONTENTS. PAGE

I. Abolish all Prohibitive Liquor Laws. By APPLETON MORGAN. . 577

II. Industries of Animals. By FREDERIC HOUSSAY. (Illustrated.) . 594

III. The Origin of Right-handedness. By Prof. J. MARK BALDWIN. 606

IV. Fossil Man. By JOHN G. ROTHERMEL. (Illustrated.) 616

V. Professor Tyndall. By Prof. THOMAS H. HUXLEY 637

VI. The European Law of Torture. By AMHERST W. BARBER 648

VII. Customs and Superstitions of the Mayas. By Mrs. A. D. LE

PLONGEOX. (Illustrated.) 661

VIII. Biology and Ethics. By Sir JAMES C. BROWNE, M. D., F. R. S . 671

IX. The Action of Massage upon the Muscles. By D. GRAHAM, M. D. 677

X. The Ice Age and its Work. I. By A. R, WALLACE, F. R. S . . . 681

XL The Founder of the First Scientific Journal. By M. J. BOYER. . 690

XII. Sketch of Jean Martin Charcot. (With Portrait.) 693

XIII. Editor's Table : The Conditions of Efficient Government. — A Possible Reform.

— The Moon of Romance "" •

XIV. Literary Notices 701

XV. Popular Miscellany 710

XVI. Notes.. 719

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET.
SINGLE NUMBER. 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.

COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post-Office at New York, and admitted for transmission through the mails at second-class rates.

HEALTHY FLESH

is a storehouse of latent vital strength
which comes to the rescue in time of
need. Losing flesh shows that there
is a demand made for vital energy.
Something is wrong.

Scott's

the Cream of Cod-liver Oil and Hypo-
phosphites, gives the system the nour-
ishment it requires, and thus restores a
normal condition. Thin, angular women
need it. Physicians, the world over, en-
dorse it.

Coughs and Colds,

Throat and Lung Troubles, Blood Diseases and Emaciation-
all give -way to Scott's Emulsion.

Don't be Deceived by Substitutes!

Prepared by SCOTT & BOWNE, Chemists, New-York City. Druggists sell it.

LETTERS FROM THE WORLD'S GREATEST PIANISTS,
VON BULOW. D'ALBERT.

They BOTH DECLARE the J^ N A BE the BEST pianos in America-

VON BULOW'S LETTER,

AFTER

CONCERT TOUR, 1890.

To WM. KNABE, Esq., Baltimore.

Dear Sir : My renewed and by more use-
under aggravating 'circuinstaw.es, as bad health
and tiresome traveling— enlarged experience of
your Pianos this (second awl la*t transatlantic)
season has throughout confirmed myself in the
opinion I expressed last year, viz. : That sound
and touch of the Knabe Pianos are more sympa-
thetic to my ears and hands than sound and
touch of any other Pianos in the United States.
As I met with frequent op fxirt unities of estab-
lishing comparisons bet tee-en the Knabe Pimos
and Instruments of rivaiizing or would-rivaliz-
ing producers, I dare now add that I declare
ther» the absolutely best in America. With sin-
cere regards,

Yours truly,

DR. HANS VON BULOW.
Hamburg, 27<A May, 1890.

EUGEN D'ALBERT'S LETTER

WM. KNABE 4 CO.

(Translated from the German.)

During my sojoirn he;e 1 had frequent
opportunities to make myself acquainted with
the Knabe Pianos, and from fullest conviction
I declare (htm to be the best Instruments of
America. Sfiould I return lure for artistic pur-
pcsef— which may be the case veiy soon— I shall
most certainly u?e the pianos of tliif celebrated
make. I (,ire this testimonial with pleasure,
voluntarily, and entirely unsolicited for by the
house of Knabe.

EUGEN D'ALBERT.

New York, May 16, 1890.

GRAND, UPRIGHT

PIANOS

A XI) SQUARE.

BALTIMOEE, 22-24 W. Baltimore St. NEW YORK, 148 Fifth Ave.

WASBJNGTON, 817 Pennsylvania Avenue.

STEEL PENS,

PRIZE WINNERS AT PARIS,

RECEIVED THE AWARD AT THE

CHICAGO.

When you need a first-class Pen,
ASK FOR GILLOTT'S.

FORTY-NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE

NEW YORK LIFE INS. Co.

Office: 346 & 348 Broadway, New York, U.S.A.
ORGANIZED 1845.

A Purely Mutual Company having no Capital Stock. All Profits to Policy Holders.

JANUARY i, 1894.

ASSETS.

Real Estate, including n Office Buildings and 85 pieces of property

purchased under foreclosure .......................................... $13,139,049 93

Stocks and Bonds owned (market value) ................................. 89,992,636 45

Bonds and Mortgages ...................................................... 25,805,235 20

Loans secured by collaterals (market value of Securities held as col-

lateral, $3,349,425 67) .................................................... 2,428,966 67

Premium Loans on existing Policies (the reserve on these Policies,

included in Liabilities, amounts to over $8,000,000) .................. 3,757,68i 71

Cash in Office and in Banks and Trust Companies ..................... 7,012,468 93

Interest and Rents due and accrued ...................................... 1,455,908 02

Net Amount of uncollected and deferred Premiums .................... 5,108,83430

TOTAL ASSETS ......................... ..... $148,700, 781 21

LIABILITIES.

Reserve on outstanding Policies, at Actuaries' 4 per cent as per Cer-
tificate of New York State Insurance Department, including Ad-
ditional Reserve on Annuities and Accumulation Policies volun-
tarily set aside by the Company ..... . ............................... $129,862,448 oo

Losses awaiting proof or payment ....................................... ',330,854 37

Matured Endowments due and unpaid (claims not presented) ........ 122,007 ?6

Annuities due and unpaid (claims not presented) ...................... 22,770 02

Unpaid Dividends due Policy-holders ................................... 134, 533 64

Premiums paid in advance ................................................ 134-554 82

Trust Deposit, held for account of beneficiaries under terms of Policies 67,982 42

Total Liabilities ..................................... $131,675,151 03

Net Surplus per Certificate of Insurance Department ...... $17,025,630 18

INCOME.

Premium Receipts ......................................................... $27,488,657 44

Interest, Rents, etc ....................................................... 6,374,989 51

Total .................................................. ^8o6"6~

DISBURSEMENTS.

Death Claims paid ........................................................... $8,440,093 46

Endowments matured and discounted, paid .............................. 1,083,445 95

Annuities paid ............................................................... 1,407,256 95

Dividends paid ............................................................... 1,744,391 78

Paid for Purchased Policies ................................................ 2,359,062 13

Installment paid on Trust Deposit ......................................... 4,200 oo

Total amount paid to Policy-holders ................... $15.038,450 27

Commissions, Brokerages, and Payments to Agents ..................... 4,579,88089

Agency Expenses ............................................................ 1,079,342 28

Physicians' Fees, Advertising, and Rent .................................. 883,167 96

Salaries to Officers and Employees ........................................ 765,469 32

Law and Office Expenses, Stationery and Printing, Traveling and other

Expenses ....................................... . .......................... 761,117 52

Taxes in the State of New York and other States ....................... 317,296 97

Total Disbursements ................................. $23,424,725 21

INSURANCE ACCOUNT. NO AMOUNT.

New Policies issued in 1893 (Declined, 10,395, $28,569,757) ............... 85,568 * $223. 848. 991 oo

In Force December 31, 1892 ........................... ..................... 224,008 $689,248,629 oo

In Force December 31, 1893 ............................................... 261,992 779.156.678 oo

Gain in 1893 .......................................... 37,984 $89,908,049 OO

* Not including policies revived, paid-ups, or reversionary additions.

JOHN A. McCALL, President.

HENRY TUCK, Vice-President. C. C. WHITNEY, Secretary.

A. H. WELCH, Second Vice-President. T M BANTA Cashier.

2' %• S,E^KJ^Si Third Vice-President. j. A.' BROWN! Auditor.

H r ' K?£f?v™™arS- D- P- KINGSLEY, Superintendent of Agencies.

C N IONES ''Associate A. HUNTINGTON, M. D., Medical Director.

F' W FRANKLAND ("Actuaries. S. H. CARNEY, M. D., Associate Medical Director.

EDWARD N. GIBBS' Treasurer M' L- KING, M. D., Assistant Medical Director.

H. S. THOMPSON, Comptroller.' O. H. ROGERS, M. D., Assistant Medical Director.

TRUSTEES.

WILLIAM H. APPLETON, JOHN CLAFLIN, WM. H. HORNBLOWKR, AUGUSTUS G. PAINE, OSCAR S. STRAUS,

V-.YV ?A';"WIN> CHA8. 8. FAIRCHILD. WALTER H. LEWIS, GFORCK W. I'KRKINS. WM. L. STRONG,

,, - !" AM V |!0"T"» El -W ARD N. GIBBS. \Vi>OIU;rRY LAM;i>(>\, KDMUND D. RANDOLPH, HENRY TUCK,

WILLIAM * BUCKLEY, WILLIAM R. GRACE, HENRY C. MORTIMER, HIRAM R. BTEELE, A. H. WELCH.

'

*>.'

d if ta

2.-T1

.

i.— No person shail be allowed more than one
/olume at a time, except in ilie case of works of
fiction in several volumes, when three wi,l be
iken and returned together.
'wo WEEKS is the time allowed
ping books out, excepting those
ed " SEVEN DAY BOOK," which
be kept but one week; the fine
each case being two cents for
very day a book is kept beyond
ie time. Persons owing fines
;>rfeit the use of the Library till
'they are paid.

3.— All losses of books, or
,injurits to them, must bt made
feood by ihe person liable, to
.the satisfaction of the Library
(Committee.

4. - Hooks may be drawn for
ise in the Reading Room. 10 be
turned after such use, and the
laity for failure duly to return
i slinll be the same as that pre-
in Rule id above, for the]
; of' a book one week over the
me.

rs finding a book torn, marked,
lor in any way defaced, are required to repoit the
matter at once to the Librarian ; o'hsrwise they
will be held responsible for the ddi.icge done.

bed

Acme Library Card Pocket

Under Pat. Sept. 26, '76, " Ref. InHex File.'1

Made b/ LIBRARY BUREAU

146 Franklin St., Boston

Keep Your Card In This Pocktt