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APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY

EDITED BY

WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS

VOL. L

NOVEMBER, 1 896, TO APRIL, 1 897

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1897

CoprBiGHT, 1897,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

WILLIAM C. REDFIELD

APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE,,,

MONTHLY. J^^'^'f^.

NOVEMBER, 1896.

THE MORAL STANDARD.

By WILLIAM HENKY HUDSON,

PROFESSOK OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE LN THE LELAlfD STAITFOED JE. IJNIVEESITT.

IN the present paper I purpose to discuss briefly the nature of
the moral standard, strictly so called. The simplest way of
approaching the subject will perhaps be to pass in rapid review
the other principal criteria of conduct, by contrast with which the
essential character of the moral criterion itself will be brought
-into conspicuous relief.

From the stiidy of the world's culture history it becomes clear
that the extra-moral, or what we shall here call the pre-ethical
standards" of conduct, have arisen from three different roots. As
we shall presently see, these roots ultimately run into one, as
looking at the matter from the evolutionary standpoint we should
of course expect ; but inasmuch as the criteria developed by them
are in their later forms sharply marked off from one another, it
will be desirable for the sake of clearness to treat them sepa-
rately. The three principal roots, then, out of which, apart from
the true moral root, the influences governing and directing men's
lives have arisen, are: (1) The theological or religious root; (2)
the social or ceremonial root ; and (3) the legal or political root.
We will examine these one by one :

1. All religions as they pass out of the primitive cult stage of
ancestor-worship originate certain specific rules of conduct, which,
as they consolidate, grow up into a more or less definite code. For
the source and power of such a code we have not far to seek.
Arising at the outset from the personal mandates of the deified
ancestor or chief, the directions concerning action emanating from
this quarter gradually assume a more emphatic, mysterious,

TOL. L. — 1

2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and impressive character, as with the merging of many tribal
deities into a national god, and of various national gods into a
single supreme power, they come to be regarded as the super-
naturally given utterances of the invisible, omniscient, omnipres-
ent, but still manlike governor of the universe. The precept or
direction, therefore, takes the form of a command, and right and
wrong in action are made synonymous with obedience or disobe-
dience to such command. Along with development in definite-
ness and consistency of a code thus made up goes increasing
stress upon the pleasures and pains by enunciation of which the
commands are accompanied. Right action, or obedience to the
will of the divine ruler, is attended by divine approval, and is
fostered by promises of heavenly reward ; wrong action, as dis-
obedience to his will, calls down divine anger and the threat of
penalties in the future life.

"Whatever may be the particular differences separating the
various theological codes of conduct from one another, they thus
reveal striking similarities in sundry important respects. With
greater or less distinctness they all claim supernatural origin;
establish their behests and their interdicts upon the basis of ex-
ternal, ultra-human yet still manlike authority ; and find support
for their declarations in the presentation of consequences lying
outside the natural order. The theological system of conduct of
the low savage tribe and that developed among the nations of the
civilized world of course differ in the character of the acts distin-
guished as good and bad, in the quality of the rewards and pen-
alties offered, in the attitude of mind encouraged, and in other
equally significant ways. Yet they have these points in common :
the commands are supernatural, the sanctions are supernatural,
the code is based upon ultra-rational considerations and backed
by the presentation of ultra-rational results.

That it is the theological code of conduct which, throughout
the Christian ages and down even to our own day, has been al-
most universally accepted as the one possible foundation of mo-
rality, we need not here pause to insist. If the tables of the law
given to Moses on Mount Sinai are not still regarded as the
original source of our knowledge of the distinctions of conduct,
there is still a tacit belief that such knowledge depends upon
supernatural revelation. As by one course or another, therefore,
our commonly held ideas of morality lead us back to the theo-
logical root, it will be well to note the bearings of theological
principles upon the questions with which morality is concerned.
The following points are, I think, specially worthy of attention :

Since the theological code of conduct regards virtue simply as
obedience to divine command, and measures morality by the cor-
respondence of action with the divine will, we are bound to infer

THE MORAL STANDARD. 3

that right and wrong have in themselves no inherent quality, but
are made so simply by the enactment of an external power. The
quality of a line of conduct thus resides not in essentials — the in-
trinsic tendency of an action and its bearings upon life, but in
non-essentials — the accidental fact that it is forbidden or enjoined
by God. For example, Jehovah lays certain restrictions upon the
man and woman in the Garden of Eden ; and disregard of these
restrictions is sin. He commands Abraham to commit a horrible
crime, and because of his readiness to do so he is paraded before
us as the father of the faithful and a model for our own imita-
tion. For a direct statement of the position here indicated, ref-
erence may be made to No. XIII of the thirty-nine articles of the
English Episcopal Church. The unmistakable meaning of this
article is that a good deed, such as the gift of a cup of cold water
to a thirsty wayfarer, has in itself no inherent quality of good-
ness. Performed in a state of grace and from faith in Jesus
Christ, it is well-pleasing to God, but only on that account. Let
the blessing be offered, not out of faith in Christ, but from spon-
taneous sympathy with suffering humanity, and what has official
theology to say to the matter ? " We doubt not that it has the
nature of sin."

Implied in all this of course lies the further fact that morality
looks Godward and not manward. Sin is sin because it is un-
pleasing to God, not because it is injurious to man. How disas-
trous the effects of such a conception as this may be, the history
and literature of Christendom are at hand to show us. If such an
astute thinker as Duns Scotus, insisting on the perfect freedom of
the divine will, could declare that if God had prescribed murder
and theft, murder and theft would not have been sins ; if a high-
minded moralist like Sir Thomas Browne could write, " I give no
alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfill and accom-
plish the will and command of my God," it may be taken for
granted that, in the average of cases, such a view of conduct could
not but be degrading to those entertaining it. Out of this view
sprang the belief, widespread throughout the middle ages and
continuing down to our own day, that a man may clear his con-
science of the burden of wrong acts by making his peace with
God. Given the point of view, and this conception is strictly
logical ; since God is the person offended, and his pardon will
make all right again. Formerly, people endeavored to compound
for the sins of a lifetime by building churches, endowing monas-
teries, or leaving their ill-gotten wealth to the priests. In our own
epoch the old belief lingers on in the orthodox doctrine of peni-
tence and the forgiveness of sin.

Beyond all this, it is of the nature of a theological code of
conduct to get the important and unimportant in action sadly

4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mixed up together, and even to cause tliem occasionally to change
their places. Thus, in our own regime, undue emphasis is habitu-
ally laid upon the ceremonial side of life. Examination of the
Ten Commandments reveals six that are roughly describable as
utilitarian, the remaining four (a large proportion) referring to
religious observance. In common conversation, attendance at
church, and careful regard for other so-called religious d uties are
habitually placed on a level with, or even higher than, the careful
fulfillment of secular requirements. Popular ideas concerning the
Sabbath furnish a striking illustration of the point to which we
now refer.

2. We pass now to the pre-ethical code of conduct arising from
what we here term the social, or, better, the ceremonial root.

Casual consideration might lead one to suppose that cere-
monial factors have played a relatively unimportant part in the
history of civilization. Such a supposition, however, as further
investigation could soon prove, would involve an entire misap-
prehension of the facts of human development. Indeed, strictly
speaking, it is with the ceremonial code that such a discussion as
this ought to begin, since out of it, in the consolidation of social
life, both the regulations that we call religious and the regula-
tions that we call political have been gradually evolved. Cere-
monial government, as Mr. Spencer has shown, is not only the
earliest and most general kind of government, but is also a gov-
ernment which "is ever spontaneously recommencing." More-
over, it has ever had and continues to have, as the facts of daily
existence show us, the largest share in regulating men's lives.

It thus happens that distinctions of right and wrong con-
stantly refer to a standard of convention, all questions of the
tendencies of actions and of their wider relations to life being
consciously or unconsciously left out of account. Like the theo-
logical code, therefore, the ceremonial code habitually passes over
the inherent qualities of actions. Its sanctions are generally ex-
traneous, not essential, and its inevitable trend is to confuse the
really important with the relatively unimportant in conduct,
often with the most unfortunate results. How far the ceremonial
code demands respect, to what point it is mainly useful, and under
what conditions it passes into a tyranny, crushing individuality
and repressing the vital forces of life, are questions which, though
to the last degree important, can not here be considered. What
we have now to do is to notice the wide area over which the
social code operates ; the imperative character of its enactments ;
and the confusion to which it frequently gives rise — a confusion
resulting from the fact that in the conflict of influences by which
we are daily met, the morally right is again and again sacrificed
to the socially correct. The " proper and therefore wrong " of

THE MORAL STANDARD. 5

one of our writers is indeed a piece of merely rhetorical exaggera-
tion, but the distinction between rectitude and propriety — be-
tween the criterion of the moral and the criterion of the social
code — has none the less to be emphasized.

3. In the early stages of social evolution custom tends to
harden into definite precept; hence the third pre-ethical standard
of conduct — the legal or political standard. Guidance by custom
is, as I have above implied, the primordial form of guidance in
the low tribal group; but out of this arise gradually both the
sacred law, or the command of the deified ancestor or chief, and
the secular law, or the command of the living ruler. At the out-
set, indeed, no distinction between sacred and secular is to be
made, the enactment of the chieftain, while he is still alive, pass-
ing insensibly into a religious enactment when, dying, he takes
his place among the tribal gods. But difi'erentiation presently
begins, and it is with the secular side of the matter after such
differentiation that we are now concerned. Law, then, emerges
when the spontaneously evolved customs of a social group are
gathered up and crystallized in the dictates of the strong man or
chieftain, and when vaguely diffused social sentiment thus re-
ceives distinct formulation and powerful personal support.

It is evident that from the legal as from the theological point
of view right and wrong are primarily associated with obedience
and disobedience to external authority. Conformity to the par-
ticular requirements of the established body of laws implies alle-
giance, and allegiance is virtue; while insubordination consti-
tutes the very essence of evil, the element which makes crime
crime. The sanctions of the legal code are, therefore, once again
extraneous sanctions ; its restraints and incentives, penalties and
rewards, imposed from the outside.

Thus, comparing the three principal pre-ethical codes with one
another, we find them characterized by certain important points
of similarity. In each case fortuitous and not necessary conse-
quences of action have been taken as the basis of restraint ; in
each case outside compulsion has furnished the required impulses
and deterrents ; in each case, therefore, the sanctions have been
almost entirely accidental and extraneous, and not to any ade-
quate extent fundamental and essential.

And now we have only to place the moral code alongside of
these pre-ethical codes in order to throw its radical and differen-
tial qualities into immediate and striking relief. For what is the
code of morality strictly so called ? It is the code under which
actions are classified in virtue of their essential natures — that is,
of their necessary bearings upon life. It formally postulates as
the ultimate end of conduct that which, after all, we find implied
in a more or less crude and confused fashi||^n in all ethical sys-

6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

terns whatsoever — well-being ; and it considers conduct in its di-
rect or indirect relation to that end — that is, in the connection of
actions immediately with well-being, or mediately with the con-
ditions prerequisite to its attainment. Its fundamental assump-
tions are therefore at once simple, and, despite all doctririaire theo-
rizing to the contrary, practically though latently universal. We
are alive. This is obviously for all of us the final fact, and no
less obviously every proposed test of life's activities must ulti-
mately be resolved into terms of this unresolvable first principle.
Now, the facts of actual life favor neither the fatuous preconcep-
tions of the optimist nor the equally wild asseverations of the
pessimist. We can not assert, with Malebranche and Leibnitz,
that this is the best of all possible worlds ; or with Hartley, that
"all individuals are actually and always infinitely happy" — a
proposition which, as Mr. Leslie Stephen has well said, sounds like
optimism run mad. But neither, on the other hand, can we ac-
cept the dogma of Chabot, that what we mistakenly call the cos-
mos is really the work of a crazy devil; or follow Schopeuhauer
in his statement that the universe is just as bad as it conceivably
could be without falling to pieces altogether ; or treat seriously
the suggestion of Novalis, that the simultaneous suicide of all
human creatures is the one way of escape from miseries that are
both unbearable and irremediable. Optimism would logically
negative any attempt to tamper with the facts of a world where-
in it has already pertly concluded that whatever is is right ; pes-
simism no less inevitably leads to a like passivity by treating life
in its essence as radically too evil a thing to be susceptible of any
improvement. But life, as I have said, fits the theories of neither
pessimist nor optimist. It is not wholly bad, it is not wholly
good ; it is a thing of mingled yarn, good and ill together, with
immeasurable capacity, in its higher forms especially, for the de-
velopment of one element or the other. Moral conduct I there-
fore conceive to be, in a single phrase, conduct which betters exist-
ence, which adds to its sum total of happiness or decreases its sum
total of pain. Action which makes life as a whole more fully
worth living is as such right action ; action which diminishes its
value is as such wrong. The results upon which morality thus
bases its incentives and restraints are therefore the actual results
involved in the very constitution of things and not consequences
artificially imposed by any external power. We reach in this
way the ultimate conception of the immanent moral law, and for
myself I see no way either of avoiding the resolution of all other
possible criteria of conduct into the criterion thus established, or
of getting behind such a standard in search of a final principle
of a more universal, fundamental, and axiomatic character. Here,
and here alone, it seems to me, we strike bed-rock.

THE MORAL STANDARD. 7

The moral motive, tlieref ore, arises not by contemplation of tlie
gratification given by a certain line of conduct to God, or by rec-
ollection of superimposed pleasures, secular or supernatural, pres-
ent or future ; or by any reference to the social habits or conven-
tions with which the said line of conduct may or may not accord.
Such moral motive has nothing to do with obedience to the re-
vealed will of God, or with the extraneous conceptions of heaven
and hell, or with punishment or reward from earthly rulers, or
with the favor or disfavor of public opinion. It arises from the
vivid ideal representation of the relation between action and life.
The compulsion of morality, therefore, is inner and not outer
compulsion, its authority inner and not outer authority, its re-
straints those arising from the connection of cause and effect, its
sanctions natural, not supernatural, essential and not fortuitous.
The foundations of the moral code thus belong to the very nature
of sentient life itself, and its dictates therefore possess a validity,
a reach, a significance, a sacredness, to which no others can con-
ceivably lay claim.

And here, perhaps, to prevent possibility of misconception,
something should be said about the relation of the moral to the
cosmic process. Briefly, then, I accept in the main the position
adopted by the late Prof. Huxley in his Romanes Lecture on Evo-
lution and Ethics. That there is a fundamental distinction be-
tween the " state of Nature " brought about by uninterrupted cos-
mic forces, and the " state of art," produced with partial success
by the rational power of man, working sometimes with but often
athwart those forces, and that reason and sympathy — the latter
constituting by all odds the most important element in the social
tissue — have brought entirely new dynamic factors into play
upon the arena of life, are propositions from which I see no way
of escape. It can not be too frequently asserted that what we
call the order of Nature is not an ethical order at all — that the
laws of Nature, as such, have nothing to do with morality. The
ethical element begins, I think, faintly to emerge with the rela-
tion of seutiency to those laws, though the establishment of a
moral order depends entirely upon the " artificial " factors intro-
duced by the consciousness of man. It is, of course, true that
these " artificial " factors are themselves products of cosmic pro-
cesses, and that the order out of which they have grown itself im-
poses limitations of the severest, and often the narrowest, kind to
man's intelligent reaction against it.

This is the art which does mend Nature, but
The art itself is Nature.

Nevertheless, for the sake of clearness, the contrast of the
"natural "and the "artificial," of the workings of Nature apart

8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from the interference of man and the workings of Nature plus
such interference — in a word, of the cosmic and the ethical — has
to be insisted on. Nature has achieved certain results, though by
slow, blundering, and (Montesquieu notwithstanding) extrava-
gantly wasteful methods. Her processes, however, with all their,
to us, ruthless cruelty and prodigality, have, in the rough average
of cases, made for what — rather metaphorically, perhaps — Mr.
Spencer has called " fullness of life " ; and such increasing full-
ness of life may therefore be described — to borrow a teleological
phrase, though I do not myself accept the teleological implication
— as the " end " of evolution. And here it is that reason steps in
and seeks, within the limits everlastingly imposed by cosmic condi-
tions, to find means helping to the same great " end " — now a true
rational end — which, while at least as effective as the methods
employed by Nature, shall be no longer characterized by what in
the " acquired dialect of morals " (to use Huxley's phrase) we have
learned to call Nature's indifference and brutality. Man, then,
by reason of his intelligence, has great power of tampering with
the cosmic order ; and how far it is wise to do this and just where
the proper compromises have to be made remain to-day among
the most difficult of the social problems which we have to face,
though in view of the foregoing discussion we may lay it down
as a general principle that the ethical process should be allowed
to interfere with the cosmic process only when the " end " afore-
said may be more adequately, perfectly, and economically secured
thereby. At any rate, we must admit that Goethe was right
when he said that it is man's privilege to " distinguish, elect, and
direct," * and Arnold when he wrote, " Man must begin, know
this, where Nature ends." f

Returning from this digression, we will consider for a moment
the evolution of the moral code as above defined.

When I described the earlier and outward regulative codes of
conduct as pre-ethical codes I did not simply mean that in the
sequence of human affairs they actually came before the moral
code itself. The relationship is closer and more vital than such a
statement would imply. My full meaning is that the pre-ethical
codes have all along combined to establish and maintain the
social conditions, in the absence of which no observations of
cause and effect in conduct could have been made and registered
— in the absence of which, therefore, the moral criterion strictly
so called would never have arisen. As out of the primordial
ceremonial code arose the codes we call religious and political, so
out of these combined has gradually emerged and differentiated
the moral code proper, as with that consolidation of social life to

* Das GoUliche. \ Sonnet : In Harmony with Nature.

THE MORAL STANDARD. 9

which ceremony, law, religion, morality, have all tended, men
have come slowly to understand that in the recognition of con-
duct and consequence as everlastingly united in the category of
cause and effect lies in all questions of action the one valid,
authoritative, and final court of appeal.

" Might till Right is ready," said Matthew Arnold, and in the
civilization of the race the might of the outward authority —
supernatural, political, social — has gone before and has prepared
the way for the right of the inward authority we describe as
moral. Men have been trained to the self- compulsion of the
moral motive by enforced obedience to the external compulsions
of ceremony, religion, law. The strong hand of the earthly des-
pot, only gradually relaxed as the education for freedom went
on ; the binding power of tyrannic custom, following life into the
minutest recesses of its daily routine ; the drastic force of super-
natural pleasures and pains, meted out by a personal but omnis-
cient deity who exacted unquestioning allegiance and punished
every infraction of his commands — all these elements were re-
quired as formative factors in the moral development of man-
kind. The condition of heteronomy must in the nature of things
precede the condition of autonomy, and we only pass from gen-
eral principle to particular illustration when we say that the out-
ward authorities above dealt with were inevitable prerequisites
to the inner authority of morality in the order of the evolution of
human life.

Yet it must be remembered that in an indistinct form the
moral sanction proper very early began to emerge as an influence
in social growth. Natural selection was from the beginning con-
cerned in the picking out and perpetuation of certain qualities —
egoistic and altruistic — making for the welfare and expansion of
society ; and unconsciously at the outset such qualities naturally
came to be registered and emphasized in the ceremonial, religious,
and legal codes. Among moral characteristics thus nurtured in
the primitive stages of political consolidation may be mentioned
loyalty, courage, obedience, without which no successful tribal
warfare could be carried on, together with a rudimentary form of
justice, veracity, and general sympathy, without which the group
could never survive in the face of antagonistic tribes whose social
feelings were more highly evolved. As the struggle for exist-
ence has all along been a struggle among groups as well as among
individuals, a premium was laid from the very start upon what-
ever qualities, altruistic no less than egoistic, would make for
social strength and efficiency. These qualities were early caught
up in the life and feeling of each developing group; an ideal
answering in its larger aspects to the fundamental needs of the
tribe was thrown up ; and the vague encouragement yielded by

VOL. L. 2

10 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

diffused public sentiment was presently backed by the sanctions of
law and religion. But, later, another element little by little comes
into play. With intellectual progress men begin slowly to realize
that certain lines of action make for tribal welfare, and certain
other lines to tribal disadvantage ; that these observed bearings
and results are altogether independent of social custom, the com-
mands of the chief, the utterances of the gods or god ; and that
thus there is a sanction for conduct deeper and more stable than
those currently assigned. Throughout the further evolution of
humanity, and down even to our own time, these observed con-
nections between conduct and its consequences continue, it is true,
to be interpreted mainly through the medium of the earlier
codes — that is to say, even where the natural criterion for con-
duct is dimly perceived, artificial restraints and incentives are
still to the fore. Yet a great gain is none the less achieved, since
if the evolving moral code does not replace the earlier codes, it
more and more comes to constitute a kind of iinal standard, by
correspondence with which the precepts of such earlier codes
may be tested.

We are thus forced to the inference that in the continued evo-
lution of life and thought the ethical criterion of conduct will
detach itself more and more completely from the other criteria
of which we have spoken, and will be more habitually referred
to as the touchstone by which right and wrong in action alone
are to be decided. Especially in view of the rapid spread of sci-
entific habits of thought does it seem likely that such a result
will be brought about ; since the central principle of science — the
principle of natural causation — is precisely that which underlies
the moral code, with its interpretation of conduct and conse-
quence in terms of cause and effect. This does not, of course,
mean that guidance and inspiration from other quarters will not
constantly be sought, or that all impulses that we should here,
strictly speaking, call ultra-moral impulses, will be entirely dis-
regarded. But it does certainly mean that there will be an in-
crease of the already manifest tendency to hold in view the
ethical criterion as the ultimate test of conduct, to interpret
every side of life's activities more constantly in terms of this,
and to insist that in every case of discord between the criterion
of morality on the one side and any other lower criterion what-
soever upon the other, we shall revise our principles and our
practice without hesitation or demurrer, in such way as to bring
them into fundamental harmony with the dictates of the moral
law.

And here a very serious question arises. In tracing back the
radical distinctions of right and wrong to purely naturalistic
sources, do we detract in any way from the authority, the im

THE MORAL STANDARD. ii

perativeness, the peculiar sanctity and importance of the ethical
code ? What, in other words, are the remote emotional tenden-
cies involved in the treatment of conduct from the evolutionary
point of view here assumed ?

I regard this matter as of especial moment on account of the
recent contention of Mr. Balfour (1) that practically " no moral
code can be effective which does not inspire, in those who are
asked to obey it, emotions of reverence ; and (2) that practically
the capacity of any code to excite this or any other elevated emo-
tion can not be wholly independent of the origin from which
those who accept that code suppose it to emanate." * I assent
to both these propositions, while I most distinctly join issue with
the writer in his inference that by the precepts of the naturalistic
moral code the higher emotions, which he rightly holds as fun-
damentally necessary, can not possibly be called forth.

The gradual decline of the older theology will, I am con-
vinced, bring with it no decadence in our feelings of awe, rev-
erence, sacredness, mystery, but simply a transference of these
feelings from the so-called supernatural to the natural — from the
power manifested in miracle to the power revealed in law. And
thus, by a gradual but inevitable process of adjustment, will it
be without possibility of question, when the naturalistic ethics
of the future shall have taken the place of the supernaturalistic
ethics of the past. Of the moral ideal it may thus be said that it
" decomposes but to recompose " with fuller beauty and richer
meaning. Rooted fast and deep in the very constitution and
conditions of life, itself part of the everlasting order of cosmic
growth, written on no tables of stone to be broken or crushed
under foot, graven on no page of human fashioning to be torn
or obliterated or otherwise destroyed, the moral law thus indeed
reveals itself as the eternal law — the utterance and the declara-
tion through the universe itself of that power of which this
throbbing world of life and sense and thought is, after all, but
the garment and partial expression. Over the unshaken founda-
tions of such a faith as we can thus make our own, the tides of
time and change wash and curl in vain. Creeds and specula-
tions, precepts and philosophies, pass away and are forgotten,
but such a faith indeed endureth forever.

That to affiliate ethical principles in this way upon natural
law adds immeasurably to the deep and terrible responsibilities
with which life is coming to confront the modern man, must be
acknowledged. From no other point of view does the high seri-
ousness of conduct, the imperiousness of duty, the strenuousness
of living, become so emphatic ; in no other way are we forced to

* The Foundations of Belief, p. 13.

12 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTH LI'.

so tremendous a realization of all that is meant by the fatal chain
of action and consequence — a chain the links of which, fragile
and delicate and silken as they may seem, are yet woven in the
loom of eternity, and are never to be swept asunder, " Not
heaven itself upon the past hath power." Injustice, dishonesty,
impurity, wrong of every kind, will and must, in the everlasting
order of the world, work out their inevitable results, all our pray-
ers, all our remorse notwithstanding.

. . . There's not a crime
But takes its proper change still out in crime,
When rung upon the counter of the world;

and in the administration of the moral law there is no favoritism,
no bribery, no loophole of escape.

While the deep realities of existence are thus made deeper and
more real, and while the earnestness of conduct and the solemnity
of true thought as well as of right action are thrust into almost
awful relief, we are forced, moreover, to give up, one by one, the
radiant visions of future progress which for thinkers of widely
different schools have touched with the glory of infinite promise
the hard and obstinate facts of life. The ghost of Malthus has
hardly been laid even by Spencerian incantations ; and the splen-
did dream of perfectibility, of the final evanescence of evil — in
which the great evolutionary philosopher once loved to indulge
— is, we must confess it, only a dream after all. The theory of
evolution, as Huxley has said, "encourages no millennial antici-
pations." The rhythm of life means the ultimate undoing of all
that can be done. " Many a planet by many a sun may roll with
the dust of a vanished race"; and the time must come, in the
dim and mysterious future, when our planet shall be one of these
— when, in the striking words of Mr. Leslie Stephen, the earth
shall "become a traveling gravestone, and men and their dreams
shall have vanished forever." Hence, to quote the same thought-
ful writer, " we must be content with hopes sufficient to stimu-
late action," and must believe " in a future harvest sufficiently to
make it worth while to sow, or, in other words, that honest and
unselfish work will leave the world rather better off than we
found it." And when we study life at large from the point of
view here adopted, it may surely be urged that a large basis of
substantial hope is given in place of the fallacious and illusory
hopes that have been snatched away. A universe of law is, after
all, a universe that we can trust. Science teaches us to have con-
fidence in the nature of things; and cause and effect, as Emerson
put it, are indeed the "chancellors of God." How would any
such confidence be possible if the world were actually governed
by caprice, chance, miracle ? It is because we can throw our-

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE. 13

selves boldly back upon law, because we can interpret human
progression, within the limitations by which it must everlastingly
be circumscribed, not as an accident, but as part of a gradual and
orderly unfolding of cosmic processes, that we can still hold fast
to our faith on the one hand, in the permanent significance of
duty ; on the other hand, in the fundamental actuality of human
aspirations. We said just now that we find inspiration to sow
the seeds of action only by reason of our faith in the harvest of
results. Well, science holds out no promise of the visionary har-
vest of a "far-off infinite bliss"; but it gives us definite assur-
rance of what, after all, is of vastly greater consequence to us —
the steadily growing harvests of the years immediately to be.
Little as each more separately can do, that little is thus seen to
be well worth the doing; and the old message comes down the
ages to us with ever-renewed force—" Work while it is yet day,
for the night cometh when no man can work ! "

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE.

By BASHFORD DEAN, '

COLUMBIA UNIVEBSITY.

THE life of the sea has ever had a peculiar interest to people of
every class and calling — the strange and bright-colored fishes,
the sea stars and anemones, the rich forests of seaweeds, the
ghostly and luminous jellyfishes introduce to their observers a
submerged world which bears with it every charm of the unreal
and the unknown. A feeling of awe is not absent in the long,
dusky corridor of an aquarium, as with hushed voices the visitors
are gazing through the bright-colored window^.;, through each
they may see the depths of a miniature ocea'i. Here a common
interest brings together visitors of every clros, and in the chang-
ing crowd are strangely mingled types < i faces — refined, illiter-
ate, scholarly, rustic— all fixed and earnest, absorbed with the
brilliance and variety of the ever-c'anging scenes. Within the
entrance of a gallery a number o^ ^ailors have long stood motion-
less before one of the larger inks, wpaching the undulating
movements of the swimmin^^ .*,y and the feeding of a dull-look-
ing shark, with perhaps none tb'^ less interest that they have
seen these fishes many times bef- j. A few yards away a group
of children are visi+ing the r.:;uarium for the first time; they
stand spellbound, gazing c n-mouthed at the graceful move-
ments of a sea horse ; or if that they have discovered the large
eight-armed cuttlefish w^ a is slowly writhing itself into a less
conspicuous corner of it - <cky den ? And yonder a gray-bearded

14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Russian zoologist — noted enough if one were to give his name — is
taking the opportunity of examining for the first time a clump of
living crinoids.

The aquarium is altogether a modern institution, dating back
scarcely more than a third of a century. Its practicability appears
to have first been prominently brought before the public by an
Englishman, Mr. W. Alford Lloyd, who during the sixties took
an active part in the founding of the aquariums of Paris (that of
the Jardin d' Acclimation), Hamburg, Hanover, and of the Crys-
tal Palace, then the most famous of all. In fact, it was notably due
to his efforts that throughout Europe aquariums became fashion -

The Naples Aquakium.

able, to a degree indeed which caused the great cities to vie with
each other in their prompt efforts to build and equip them. In
those early days the style of the buildings was prevalently grotto-
like. To see the fishes one was to be given the impression of actu.
ally going deep into the sea by descending first into a cavern^
down rock-cut steps to the murmur of trickling (if very artificial)
brooks. These early aquariums, of great interest from the stand-
point of naturalism, were at first exceedingly popular, amply re-
munerating their stockholders when organized by private capital.
Some of these, however, owing in nearly every instance to inju-
dicious management, came later to deteriorate, and after becom-
ing concert halls, or adding- circuslike attractions, have ultimately
failed.

i6 POPULAR SCIENCE] MONTHLY.

At the present day it has become a difficult matter to classify
the various aquariums of Europe, since they present so wide a
range in size, quality, and purpose. Some are destined solely for
the public use and can not be said to be of aid to scientific studies ;
others are devoted almost entirely to the advancement of biologi-
cal research ; and others still vary widely between these extremes,
with an equally wide range in the character of their financial
support. Many of the aquariums of the orthodox biological sta-
tions, however, have been situated in out-of-the-way places, con-
venient for the purposes of the student, but inaccessible to the gen-
eral visitor. These may be admirably arranged and maintained
— among them, for example, the aquarium room of the French
station at Banyuls, on the Mediterranean, near Spain — yet they
can not be strictly regarded as belonging to the class of public
aquariums. For this reason, partly, more than a score of biologi-
cal laboratories might at once be omitted from discussion. On
the other hand, the Stazione Zoologica of Naples, while devoted
to the highest type of research work, must be given the foremost
rank among popular aquariums. And the Amsterdam Aquarium,
holding rank on the popular side probably second to Naples, is
also of value as a purely scientific station, although lower in caste
than the Stazione. So, too, should the Plymouth Biological Labo-
ratory be mentioned as of interest in its well-equipped aquarium.
Together with those that have just been mentioned, the more
strictly popular aquariums of Europe should include those of
Paris, Berlin, and Brighton.

These aquariums are so widely separated from each other that
they have come to differ not a little in the details of their equip-
ment and management. And it is, indeed, only when the visitor
has examined a number of these institutions that he begins to
realize that there is a common principle underlying their gen-
eral construction. Thus, for example, he would find in each the
great darkened corridor, from which on every side, as through
large windows, he may look into the brightly lighted tanks.
Through these he may peer to a distance of twenty feet before
his view is stopped by the rough, rock-cut background ; nor does
the line showing the surface of the water appear against the
glass to destroy his illusion of ocean depth. The cunning builders
have taken pains to have this line higher than the windowlike
opening of the tank, so that the water surface, instead of mar-
ring the effect, in reality aids it, for the eye of the visitor, at
a lower plane than the surface, sees upward but the totally re-
flected images of the forms below. Not that the glass fronts of
the aquaria are exceedingly large — their height is rarely more
than four or five feet in view of the danger of breakage through
water pressure — although the idea of water depth is certainly not

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE.

17

sacrificed on this account, for the concreted bottom of the tank
may be made to slope downward from the base of the glass plate
till the needed depth is reached. Nor does the similarity in the
various aquariums extend only to the corridor to which the gen-
eral visitor is admitted. In their internal arrangements an even
more strikingly similar ground plan is found to prevail. In all
cases the attempt has been made to keep from the mind of the
visitor the idea that water pipes, pumping engines, and blouse-
wearing attendants — none of which withal are oppressively tidy
— are necessary to the well-being of the tanks. And it is for this
reason especially that the region behind the tanks is usually
kept from profane eyes. Dark passageways lead to it, shielded

Amsterdam Aquarium — Service of the Basins.

by hidden doors, and one who enters, coming from the dusky cor-
ridor, is at first blinded with a flood of light. Above him is the
glass roofing of a conservatory, and sunshine is pouring down
upon the rock work of the tanks, thence to be reflected into the
public hall. At his feet extends a concreted pathway ; on either
side are the tanks, or more strictly rock-lined pools, at whose
farther ends can be seen the glass plates through which, in the
corridor, the visitors are gazing. Above and around are serpent-
like pipes, stretching at full length, abruptly coiling as they dip
to the water surface or pass downward below the floor, a con-
fusing maze, bubbling and hissing with steaming water. The
system in the management of the water supply becomes, how-
ever, clearly understood when the mystery of strangeness has
passed away. It has merely to conform to the hygienic law of its

i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

inmates in providing that the water of each pool shall be clean
and well aerated. To attain the former end, the water is con-
stantly drained from the aquaria and replaced by fresh and fil-
tered water ; and to insure proper aeration, the incoming stream
is usually passed into the tank in such a way that it draws down-
ward with it in its current a cloud of air-bubbles — these to sub-
divide finely and to be in part absorbed. In the sea- water basins
the " reservoir system " has been found most efi:ective in securing
the healthf ulness of the water, and is at present in general use.
It has certainly an advantage from the standpoint of economy,
since by its means a given bulk of water may be used and re-used
for months and even years, with better results, indeed, than if a
fresh supply of sea water had been employed, for the latter, it is
claimed, introduces a constant stream of impurities which can
not be removed by filtration. The reservoir system is certainly
an easy one to understand. In the basement or cellar of the
aquarium building is situated a concreted cistern, whose ca-
pacity is ten to fifty times as great as that of the sum of the
sea-water tanks throughout the building. In this cool, dark,
and uniformly temperatured cistern the water seems to have the
power, even in the course of a few days, to purify and "rest," its
sediment settling and its air-drinking power becoming restored.
It is into this cistern, accordingly, that the water drained from all
parts of the building is returned after it has been roughly filtered ;
and it is directly from this cistern again that the water is pumped
upward as the resupply. By this plan of circulation it is usually
arranged that the water of each tank may become changed several
times during the day.

From this review of the general subject we may next pass to
the examination of the various aquariums of Europe.

Naples. — First in importance, as has already been noted,
stands the aquarium at Naples, highest in rank, also, as a station
of marine biological research. Its situation and surroundings
are eminently attractive ; it stands in a public garden on the side
of the gulf, amid fashionable driveways, surrounded by bright-
colored lawns and a wealth of century plants and cactus ; in front
are the outlines of distant Capri and the blue waters of the gulf ;
in full view is Vesuvius. The building itself is like a huge white
palace, conspicuous from nearly every higher j^art of the city.
Its main wing, shown in the foreground in the adjoining picture,
is the older, dating from 1875, when the station was founded by
Prof. Anton Dohrn ; the wing immediately behind it is the newly
built physiological laboratory. The aquarium occupies the base-
ment of the main structure, and is open to the public daily, al-
though to the rest of the building, including the laboratories,
library, and rooms of investigators, strangers are not generally ad-

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE.

19

mitted. The doorway leading to the aquarium is shown in the
illustration ; through it one passes into the main corridor, a long,
dark, concreted room, lighted only through wall-tanks, displaying
admirably the showy fauna of the gulf, to which, indeed, the
aiiuarium is largely indebted for its high rank. Imbedded in the
walls of the sides and of the main partition of the room there are
in all about two dozen large aquaria. In these the water a^ipears
clear and blue ; their background of rough rock work has been

- .iivmii

Amsterdam Aquarium — The Tanks.

so arranged that contrasts of bright lights and deep shadows
throw in clear relief the colors of the marine life. In the first
tank the visitor may find a collection of starfishes and sea ur-
chins, some brilliant in color, clustering on the glass, each with
a dim halo of pale, threadlike feet. In the background will be a
living clump of crinoids, which flower out like a garden of stately
and bright-colored lilies. A neighboring tank will be rich in
dark seaweeds, and in its foreground a group of flying gurnards,
reddish and brightly spotted, are feeling cautiously along the
bottom with the fingerlike rays of their wing-shaped fins. Here,
too, a small school of squid is swimming timidly to and fro like
delicate and quick-moving fishes, and below them will perhaps be

20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a series of huge triton snails and the clustered eggs of cuttlefish.
In another tank a bank of sea anemones exemplifies the large and
gaudy forms common to southern waters — buff, orange, yellow,
and vermilion — and there may be corals in the background, and
a spectral forest of sea fans in white and violet, with a precious
fringe of pink coral flowering out in yellow, starlike polyps.
There may, again, be in a neighboring tank a host of ascidians,
those curiously degenerate vertebrates whose stock could not have
been widely unlike the ancestral stem of the fishes. Delicate,
transparent, solitary forms, like the lanky Ciona, contrast with the
deeply crimson Cy7iihia and the huge and mottled masses of many
compound forms. Swimming about them may be chains of Salpa,
and occasionally a number of Amphioxus, the latter to be seen
only from time to time as they burrow out of the sandy bottom,
flurry about as if in sudden fright, and quickly disappear. Va-
riety is one of the striking characters of the arrangement of
neighboring tanks. In one, brilliant forms outvie the colors of
their neighbors. In another are examples of the closest mimicry
of animals to their surroundings, where the stranger has often
to examine long before in the seemingly empty tank he can deter-
mine on every side the hidden forms. Thus one by one will come
into his view the rays and flounders, whose colors render them
almost indistinguishable from the gravelly bottom ; next he will
see the upturned eyes of the curious stargazer, which lies almost
buried in the sand ; then a series of mottled crustaceans, wedged
about in the rocky background, or an occasional crab which
wanders cautiously about, carrying a protective garden of sea-
weeds on his broad, flattened back. Near by will be odd-looking
pipefishes and the sea horses, poised motionless in mimicry of
the rough stems of the seaweeds. In a larger tank, sea turtles
float sluggishly about, and coiling amid broken earthen jars are
the fierce-looking, snakelike, sharp- jawed murries, to suggest
Roman dinners and the slave-eating experiments of the lordly
Pollio.

The aeration of the aquaria is secured effectively by streams
of air which are forced in at the water surface and subdivided
into bright clouds of minute silvery bubbles. The tanks are
cared for from the rear passageways, and the attendants are rarely
seen, although it is the constant attention in the arrangement and
the restocking of the tanks that has gained the aquarium its
well-earned success. Illustrated catalogues in French, German,
English, and Italian enable the stranger better to appreciate
his visit.

Amsterdam. — The Amsterdam Aquarium is the most recent
of the larger aquariums in Europe, dating from 1880. It was then
opened, under the directorship of Dr. G. F. Westerman, as an ad-

22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

junct of the famous Zoological Society of Amsterdam, Natura
Artis Magistra, The building itself is situated on the broad ave-
nue margining the Zoological Garden, and is decidedly an attract-
ive one, although outwardly as cold and dignified as the typical
municipal building, with its Roman architecture and its central
temple- like structure. Its large size, about a hundred yards in
length, has been of great advantage in the arrangement of the
details of the interior, permitting the decorative use of columns,
arches, and cornices without noticeable sacrifice of space or the
appearance of overcrowding. The main corridor, which the visi-
tor enters after he has ascended a broad white stairway, is wide
and stately, its marble walls and floor diffusing the light entering
from the large glass faces of the aquaria. The corridor is about
fifty yards in length, and the aquaria, twenty in all, are arranged
on either side, the largest measuring about thirty feet. They have
been admirably designed to display their collections of living
forms ; fishes are notably present, and on every hand their move-
ment is incessant, with gleams of color and changes of outline as
they sweep to and fro. The critical observer is particularly im-
pressed with the great number of fishes which have been kept
successfully in a single tank ; among them he recognizes the
prominent forms occurring along the North Sea coasts — turbot
and sole, ling, cod, rays, and flounders— even the herring and
mackerel, to which confinement is usually most fatal. A collec-
tion of fresh-water fishes is not lacking, including a number of
American forms, for which the director has been indebted to Mr.
E. G. Blackford, of New York city — black bass, amia, and catfish
—the latter strongly contrasting in size with their European
cousin in an adjoining tank, the giant Wels of the Danube.
From the extreme end of the aquarium room the visitor passes
into a smaller hall, circular in outline, which contains over a
score of table tanks displaying forms of attractive fresh-water
fishes and salamanders ; it is brightly lighted and pleasingly
decorated with a marble-tiled floor, fringed by palms and ferns.
From this room an entrance leads, on the one hand, into a spa-
cious auditorium, which is made of use in courses of popular
lectures, and, on the other hand, by a few marble steps, into a
well-lighted museum containing in several rooms a collection of
dried or alcoholic preparations of the typical forms of inverte-
brates and lower vertebrates.

The operative portion of the aquarium includes well-lighted
corridors extending on either side of the main hall ; the pathway
along which the visitor passes has been sunken below the walls
of the tanks, whose shelving sides can thus be more conveniently
reached by the attendants. A series of darkened corridors next
lead into the vaulted basement containing the large storage tanks.

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE.

23

The administration of the aquarium appears throughout an espe-
cially painstaking and energetic one, due in no small degree to
the labors of its present director, Dr. C. Kerbert.

Erigiiton Aqiauum — Main Corridor.

Plymouth. — On the Devonshire coast of England the need of
a public aquarium has been supplied by the Marine Biological
Association. In its laboratory building at Plymouth the entire

24

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

basement floor has been devoted to the interests of the general
visitor, and a well-chosen collection representing the Channel
fauna can be studied in its well-arranged tanks. The important
work of the station in connection with the British fisheries, added
to its exceptional advantages in collecting material, gives Plym-
outh an important rank among marine aquariums.

Paris. — At Paris the Aquarium of the Trocadero was in its
day — for it stands among the oldest — regarded as the foremost of
Europe. At present, however, its condition is somewhat degen-
erate, and it is apt, partly on this account, to give the critical
observer an unfavorable if not disappointing impression upon
his first visit. It is ill kept, wet, and untidy ; its tanks are poorly
cared for and very imperfectly stocked ; and the general absence
of attendants has permitted many attempts at diamond writing
on the costly glass plates of the tanks. These defects, however,
do not prevent the visitor from finally recognizing the interest-

Berlin Aquarium — The Three Grottoes.

ing features of the aquarium. Its plan of construction, as in the
earlier designs, is typically grottolike. Its main hall is subter-
ranean, and the tanks appear at the surface amid a thicket of
overhanging bushes, like a ring of natural pools. The public
entrance is cavernous — a descent of rough-hewn rock steps, mar-
gined by clumps of ferns and a small but noisy waterfall. The
main corridor seems particularly dark and cool, none the less so
when the eye comes to note the row of tank outlines and sees in
their bluish water the chilly movements of trout. The corridor is
ring-shaped, its side walls consisting of the faces of large aquaria,
nine in the peripheral margin and two in the central, the latter
separated by an alleyway in the line of the diameter of the ring.
The great height of the tanks is particularly noteworthy ; in some

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IJV EUROPE. 25

the water measures over twelve feet, giving a depth which results
iu an enormous pressure upon the glass fronts of the aquaria.
This dangerous strain, however, has been cleverly counterbal-
anced : instead of attempting to employ a large plate of glass to
resist the water pressure, the designers have prudently broken
the front of the tank into a series of stouter panes, whose outlines
are larger above, smaller below, framed massively by log-shaped
beams of iron. Rockwork has been largely employed as the back-
ground of the aquaria, and the great water depth has favored the
use of delicate strings of vertically growing water plants. At
present the tanks are almost entirely stocked with fresh-water
forms. Adjoining the main corridor has been added a laboratory
devoted to experiments in fish culture. Here the hatching troughs
are arranged in vertical banks to give the cascadelike waterflow
recommended by the earlier culturists.

Berlin. — Like that of the Trocadero, the Berlin Aquarium,
next to be mentioned, ranks among the earliest in Europe, it hav-
ing been opened, under the directorship of Dr. Brehm, in 1869.
From that time onward its success has been remarkable — none
the less so that its foundation and management have been due
to private enterprise, in the form of a stock company. And to its
credit it may safely be said that there has been no other aquarium
in Europe which has appealed to a greater number of people and
has accomplished its object with greater tact or at the cost of
greater efforts.

A visit to the aquarium has come to be one of the interesting
sights of Berlin, and the stranger has but little difficulty in find-
ing its tall, stuccoed, buff-colored building at the corner of one
of the streets crossing Unter den Linden, although he may feel
at first, perhaps, inward qualms at finding the grotto-planned
aquarium, of which he has so often heard, incased by a building
which differs in no way outwardly from its apartment-house-
looking neighbors. He is apt, therefore, to look about him some-
what suspiciously when he discovers that its entrance is strangely
theaterlike : there are the box office, the flight of marble steps, the
walls over-frescoed with mermaids, the lines of posters, to carry
him to its threshold. The serpent gallery is the first to be entered
— a long, iron-arched, well-lighted corridor, with glass- or wire-
fronted cases on either side. This seems to be intended as the
vestibule of the aquarium proper, where the curious visitor can
whet his appetite on the sight of tarantulas, land turtles, and
lizards before he descends into what seems like the mouth of a
huge cavern ; for from here onward the walls are of rough stone-
work, and there are rock-cut steins and darkened stone-arched
passageways to lead the visitor from grotto to grotto as he wan-
ders along, gazing at the aquaria on either side. The grotto

TOL. L. — 3

26 POPJjLAR science MONTHLY.

which is first entered, however, might best be described as a cir-
cular, dome-roofed hall, whose rocky walls are broken by pools
and basins to harbor turtles and crocodiles. Here in the middle
stands the huge aviary, well stocked with bright-colored birds,
and adjoining are the cages of the orang and chimpanzee — non-
aquatic attractions, for which, strangely enough, the aquarium
has always been noted. From this hall a long, dark gallery, whose
walls are pitted with aquaria, leads to a second grotto, domed
above, pitlike below, down which the visitor passes to a lower
series of corridors which twist and turn, descend and rise, but
continue to exhibit aquaria on every side till the exit is reached.
Thus have been passed the geological and basalt grottoes and the
beaver pool, near which a small descending rill has been made of
service for hatching fish eggs. One of the curious features of the
aquarium is the idea of distance which impresses the visitor as he
wanders on and on ; and it is even difficult to convince him that
the corridors, grottoes, and twisting passageways can be contained
within so small a surface area as that of the residence-looking
building he has seen at the corner of the street ; and he can not
fail to wonder at the ingenuity of the architect, not merely in
this regard, but in the arrangement of vistas which occur on
every hand, and in the deftness with which the working-day side
of the aquarium has been concealed.

Such in brief is the general visitor's idea of the Berlin Aquari-
um ; to the adept its internal organization seems even more in-
genious and interesting when it comes to be examined. The tanks
are cared for by means of a labyrinth of concealed passageways ;
the storage reservoir is hidden away below the concrete floor of
the lowest gallery, and most remarkable of all is the use of an
artificial mixture as an economical substitute for sea water. As
long used by Dr. Hermes, the present director, this mixture has
been found of great practical value, and it certainly enables many
fishes to live in spite of the adverse conditions of their confine"
ment for months and even for years. The variety of living forms
which one sees in the various tanks is a striking feature of the
aquarium, and one is strongly impressed with the range in marine
fauna which is thus kept in a district remote from the sea. The
arrangement of the aquaria, it may be further added, is often re-
gional ; there will thus be grouped in one tank the forms of the
North Sea, in another those of the Mediterranean, in a third those
of the Baltic.

Brighton. — A brief description of the Brighton Aquarium
must not be omitted, finally, from the present discussion ; it is cer-
tainly the most typical, if not the largest, of the newer aquariums
of Europe. From the architectural standpoint, moreover, its in-
terior must unquestionably be given a foremost rank. Brighton

PUBLIC AQUARIUMS IN EUROPE. 27

will be remembered as admirably adapted to the needs of a public
aquarium ; its position on the shore of the Channel brings it direct-
ly in contact with rich fishing grounds, while, as a seaside resort,
its closeness to London affords it an unfailing stream of visitors.

The aquarium has been situated in one of the most conspicu-
ous points of the town — the most convenient for aquarial pur-
poses on account of its nearness to the water ; the chain bridge is
close by, and the two most fashionable driveways, the Madeira
Road and the Marine Parade, intersect at its very door posts.

It must be confessed that the exterior of the aquarium is not
prepossessing ; it suggests the roofed-over foundations of a house ;
nor is this appearance bettered by the presence of signs and post-
ers. In fact, one is first led to believe that its success is alto-
gether dependent upon the restaurant and small theater which it
largely advertises. To enter the aquarium the visitor must descend
a long, broad staircase, then pass through an entrance hall and
reading room. The main corridor which he thus reaches extends
directly in front a distance of four hundred feet ; its appearance
is, to say the least, an attractive one ; it might even be called
stately, with its groined arches of brick and terra cotta, and its
aisles and row of central columns ; it suggests, perhaps, the gal-
lery of an early Italian palace in the shape of its columns and in
the height and varied carvings of their capitals. The corridor
shows on either side the large, windowlike fronts of the aquaria.
These, however, do not appear to be especially brightly lighted ;
they number in all over fifty, the largest one a hundred feet in
length, bending around a space in the central part of the hall.
At the present day the stocking of the aquaria is not perhaps as
carefully attended to as in earlier years, when the profits of the
stockholders were doubtless greater. An effort appears to be
made on the part of the management to keep one or two of the
small cetaceans, dolphins and porpoises, in the largest tank ; and
judging from the throng of visitors around the neighboring seals
and sea lions, one may reasonably conclude that these pseudo-in-
habitants of the aquarium are by no means unpopular. In every
season, however, the visitor may find at Brighton an interesting
collection of Channel fauna, especially fishes. The general work-
ing conditions of the aquarium do not appear widely different
from those of Amsterdam.

The Tibetans whom Mr. St. George R. Littledale met in his journey
across their country were men sometimes of strange notions. One of them
asked if it was true that there was a big tree near Calcutta, out of the
branches of which came all the heat of India ; and whether the tele-
scopes of the English party would allow them to see right througli the
mountains.

28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ON THE CRATER OF MOUNT SHASTA.

By Peof. a. S. PACKARD.

AT one o'clock on an August morning in 1877 I found myself on
-^^ the stage bound for Sissons, in Strawberry Valley, a bit of
civilization nestled among the pines and redwoods twenty miles
from the summit of Mount Shasta. The stage road wound through
mountain passes and interminable forests of pines, following up
the Sacramento River, here a torrential stream. A turn in the
road once gave us a magnificent view of the Shasta cone, rising
in a sugar-loaf shape, white as Carrara marble, and seeming to
lift itself out of the forest on the right, though it was fifty miles
distant.

At Sissons both the cone, which rises to an elevation of 14,440
feet above the Pacific, and its crater to the northwestward, which
is about two thousand feet lower, were very distinct. The cone
rises about four thousand feet above the timber line, and we couM
see the rough lava flows and ash fields lying between the summit
and the upper edge of the timber belt.

Throughout the woods on the sides of the volcano bears and
mountain lions abounded ; our driver told me he saw one of the
latter walking by the roadside a month previous. We saw deer
far up in the woods ; antelope range near the summit, and Rocky
Mountain sheep, or bighorn, herd in the less accessible cliffs;
while some time previous one of that rare and very shy mammal,
the Rocky Mountain goat, which inhabits the more inaccessible
ranges above the timber line, had been shot.

The view of the mountain that evening by moonlight was very
fine. A light, silvery- edged cloud rested on the summit, while the
mountain mass below, lighted up by the moonbeams, contrasted
with the vast expanse of dark, somber forests in the foreground.

The next day was not favorable for the ascent, but it passed
quickly. The forest scenes, enlivened by an encampment of In-
dians, in the rear of the inn, the rushing mountain torrents, the
volcanic cones, or Black Buttes, to the northward, with their lavas,
the old moraines, the insect life, all were novel features to an
Eastern eye.

It cleared off at sunset; the clouds disappeared, leaving a thin
veil of fresh snow on Shasta's peak and crater, now bathed in a
ruddy glow, which, as the evening wore on, was replaced by the
silvery light of the full-orbed moon.

The 25th was a glorious day, and in the bracing northerly
breeze we started on our ride of twenty miles to the camping
ground above the timber line. A distance of five or six miles
through forests of magnificent oaks, pines, and redwoods brought

ON THE CRATER OF MOUNT SHASTA. 29

lis to " The Devil's Garden," which, far from heing sulphurous in
tone, is a large terminal moraine stretching eight miles west of
the crater; the sides slope at a high angle, and the surface, like
that of our kames in the Eastern States, is flat and of even width,
being a quarter to half a mile wide. It looked at first like a lava
stream, but the angular blocks of hornblende andesite intermin-
gled with the debris bespoke its glacial origin. On the south of
us ran down from the peak high, steep lateral moraines.

Passing above the limit of oak trees, we ascend above the belt
of pitch pine and silver pines to the region of firs — speaking bo-
tanically, through the belt of Picea aniahilis and then higher up
to P. nohilis and P. contorta, then to a growth of P.flexilis, which
attains an elevation of about ten thousand feet. With these,
though mostly in the lower belts, were associated the characteris-
tic shrubs of California, the Manzanita and Ceanothus, also a yel-
low-flowered, stiff plant like greasewood, which ascends far above
the limit of trees. The silver-leafed P. contorta, near the upper
edge of the timber line, grows from twenty to thirty feet high and
from twelve to sixteen inches in diameter, with a very white bark.
A zone of firs is situated between it and the highest pines. P.
flexilis seems to be only a variety of P. contorta ; it is more or less
procumbent, lying down flat, covering yawning chasms or seams
in the rough lava, so that one can walk upon the trunks and
branches when they bridge the spaces between the angular,
jagged blocks of lavas.

Late in the afternoon we selected a level place near a bank of
snow at an elevation of about nine thousand five hundred feet,
and, gathering a few logs of dead pines, we made a rousing fire,
and at nighfall unrolled our heavy California blankets, sleeping
nearer the stars than I ever had before. It was a clear, cold night ;
the water froze nearly an inch thick, and at 6.15 the next morning,
when we began our ascent of the crater, the thermometer was
25° F.

We rode our horses for an hour until we came to the foot of
the ash cone, and by 8.45 were on the summit of the crater. The
view in the clear atmosphere was indeed a wide one. Far to the
northwest was the Siskiyou range and Pilate's Knob, and to the
west the jagged, saw-toothed, snowy peaks of the Salmon Moun-
tains ; fifty miles southward was the snow-clad solitary Lassens
Peak, twelve thousand feet high ; while Klamath Lakes and the
lava beds, the seat of the late Modoc war, lay to the northeast-
ward.

The scene was a wild one within the great crater, whose nar-
row edge is formed of sharp, jagged peaks and pinnacles. Broad,
almost unbroken snow fields extended from the edge down for a
thousand feet ; at the bottom were two frozen lakes like sheets of

30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

glass. The crater was extinct, no signs of steam or of recent
eruptions meeting tlie eye. We were told that on the summit of
the cone there is a hot-steam vent, the last dying embers of past
volcanic action. Mr. Sissons, while guiding a traveler to the sum-
mit, was once belated and had to spend the night there, and saved
the lives of himself and his companion by lying close to the steam
vent, the steam passing up through the snow. On their descent
they slid down over the snow fields of the summit to the lava beds
below.

The outlet of the crater, or point of overflow at the last erup-
tion, was on the western side, where small masses of black obsid-
ian and white incrustations of lime were observed.

Turning away from this wonderful view, we walked over the
snow and down the loose rocky sides to a rock overlooking the
Whitney Glacier. This ice stream, which stretched uphill past
the crater to its source, is about three miles long, and on the north
side of the mountain, at a point about 13,500 feet high, it heads in
a snow field, or tner-de- glace, which is continuous with the head of
the McCloud Glacier. Toward the top a large mass of lava pro-
jects above the surface of the ice, which is white and very clear
near the top ; but below this point the glacier is much discolored,
more so than any Alpine glacier I have seen. Owing to the steep
and imeven pitch of the rocky bed, the surface of the ice, espe-
cially near the upper end of the glacier " cascades," or breaks into
needles, being rent by numerous crevasses. On each side is a
well-marked lateral moraine, with its steejDest side next to the
overhanging wall of lava; the moraine on the western side be-
gins much lower down. The one on the east side ends in three
ridges of dirt and rock, the two uniting to form the great termi-
nal moraine, and, looking far down the glacial stream, this mo-
raine was seen to pass under the ice, or rather the ice overrode it,
since the glacier was seen here and there to project above it.
Large bowlders or blocks of lava were scattered over it, and its
surface was very uneven, with irregular mounds of debris and
deep pit-holelike hollows or basins between them. The terminal
moraine was overlooked by a small volcano or monticule perhaps
a thousand feet high, with nine or ten crater cones rising from
its sides — a beautiful example, and reminding me, as I remember
them, of the monticules on the flanks of Mount Etna.

At and beyond the end of the present terminal moraine
stretches away in the distance a number of old moraines, naked
and bare as when they were born, forming plains and overlooked
by well-wooded hills. A rapid stream with a white bed runs
from the end of the glacier in a northerly direction into Shasta
Valley, and at night it is not frozen.

On the northeastern side near the end of the glacier are three

ON THE CRATER OF MOUNT SHASTA.

31

well-marked naked old moraines at least two miles in length,
whicli sweep round to the volcano above referred to, and appar-
ently connect with the terminal moraine of a small narrow gla-
cier just east of the Whitney Glacier, and which may formerly
have been an upper eastern branch of it. This, perhaps, is the
Ash Creek Glacier, which lies on the northeast slope of the moun-
tain, while the McCloud Glacier lies farther to the eastward.

The terminal moraines at the end of the Whitney Glacier,
which are not, as in Swiss glaciers, clearly demarked from the
end of the glaciers themselves, but form an exceedingly irregular
and broken field of rocks and debris covering and burying the
ice, with many sinks or basins and " kettles," enabled me to
clearly understand the mode of formation of the " kettles " or
deep holes, at times still filled with water, which are so marked
in Massachusetts, near Salem and Marblehead, and also at the
" Dumplings " on Canonicut Island near Newport, Rhode Island.

In his account of the McCloud Glacier of Mount Shasta in his
entertaining Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, Mr. Clarence
King states that for " at least a mile's width the whole lower zone
is buried under accumulation of morainal matter. Instead of
ending like most Swiss glaciers, this ice wastes chiefly in contact
with the ground, and when considerable caverns are formed the
overlying moraine crushes its way through the rotten roof, mak-
ing the funnels we had seen."

These immense fields of morainal matter overlying and bury-
ing the melting edge of the glacier, here spreading out over the
lower flanks of the mountain, were evident signs of the waning
of the ice, the glacier having long since ceased to advance ; and
it enabled me, as never before, to understand that the peculiar
hills and basins or kettles of the great terminal moraine of south-
ern New England were formed by the irregular melting of the
southern edge of the glacier, when through and under the mass
of ice, perhaps not over from three to five hundred feet thick,
ran subglacial streams and rivers, while here and there, owing to
the uneven melting of the ice, immense masses of gravel and
bowlders had fallen in, the material adjoining being rearranged
into rounded kames, so characteristic of our New England
scenery.

The rocks on the eastern side of the middle portion of the
Whitney Glacier were rounded and polished, as much as such
hard rock could well be, when the glacier was of greater volume
than now. At present the ice has melted away from the sides of
the rock overlooking it. So far as I could see from my point of
view, the surface was not grooved or striated.

That the glacier was in motion was proved by the not infre-
quent distant explosions caused by the rupture of the ice near the

32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

head of the glacier. The general appearance of things indicated
that the glacier was diminishing in size, and Sissons told me that
the surface of the glacier was at least from seventy-five to one
hundred feet lower than at the time of his last visit, four years
previous.

We lunched on the rim of the crater, at 3 P. m. went down to
where we had left our horses, -and after a hard and fatiguing
though glorious ride of four hours reached the hotel ranch.

We found that the crater cone is composed of a reddish lava,
while the mother peak rising far above it is formed of a hard,
bluish trachyte. Its moraines extend for ten to twelve miles
down the western slope, passing beyond the west side of the stage
road north of Sissons, where more or less rounded hillocks of this
bluish trachyte abut on the hills of metamorphic rocks of the
Trinity and Sacramento Mountains.

We also saw as we descended that the large moraine extend-
ing from the cone ending in the " Devil's Garden " is flanked by
two lateral moraines, the median one, or the garden, extending
from the base of the crater cone. What adds to the singularity
and wildness of the scene at the upper end of this " garden,'^ or
rather playground of mountain imps, are the numerous parallel
concentric ridges of lava rock, forming a succession of transverse
terminal moraines, with benches of clear soil between them.
These parallel curved rows of stones and angular gravel mark
the rapid retreat and melting away of the glacier, which, with its
neighbor, extended down on the western slope.

To my disappointment, I found no Alpine fauna or flora on the
summit of the crater, and believe there is none on the main peak.
The vegetation was very scanty where we camped, only grasses
and plants which had straggled up from below, and, so far as I
remember, nothing but lichens occurred on the bare rocks and
moraines above. No Alpine or arctic butterflies or moths occurred,
such as I was familiar with, and which abound on the summits of
the Rocky Mountains. A few spiders, a small centipede {Litlio-
hius), and a few ants' nests were to be seen, and under stones a
bristle-tail {Macliilis), but the only distinctive Alpine insect on
the mountain was a wingless grasshopper (PezoteUix), though
that occurred lower down, in the zone of firs. I saw a common
Pieris butterfly at the top of the crater, but this was like one seen
flying below.

This entire lack of any Alpine plants or animals indicates that
Mount Shasta is too young and isolated a mountain to have been
reached by any waifs from arctic or Alpine sources, and their
absence suggests that the glaciers had at a very recent date
melted away and disappeared from the western side of the
mountain.

ON THE CRATER OF MOUNT SHASTA. 33

But that the whole massif or mountain mass had once been
enshrouded by the ice of a late glacial epoch was proved by the
existence among the farms of Strawberry Valley, some ten miles
in a direct line from the summit, of two well-rounded hills or flat-
tened domes of a supposed metamorphic rock which had evidently
been regularly molded by ice.

This was further proved to our own satisfaction the next day
after our descent, in riding on the stage from Berry vale to Butte-
ville. Directly beyond the hotel is a remarkable terminal mo-
raine evidently derived from the crater, as it is composed of small
bowlders of reddish-brown lava ; these are arranged in transverse,
curved parallel rows on the plain, with clear grass-grown spaces
between them, much as in the larger, higher ones in the " Devil's
Garden " moraine, but the bowlders are very much smaller and
less angular. This point is about twenty-five hundred feet above
the sea, and about fifteen or twenty miles from the summit of the
crater. Hence the ice seems to have extended from the snow
fields of Shasta's summit down upon the plains, where it appar-
ently abutted on the Trinity and Sacramento ranges, which were
probably below the ice belt and not glaciated.

From Butteville the view of Mount Shasta is incomparably
fine — one of the world's great views. Looking from this point,
the cone is in line with the mother peak. The great cone or
mountain mass rises as a unit from a broad, treeless plain dotted
with scattered ranches and pierces the clouds. Above this plain,
as the afternoon waned and the evening shades fell, the zone of
black firs and pines merged into a region of dark purple, becom-
ing more ruddy above, until the last beams of the setting sun
tinged and flushed the snowy summit with an Alpine glow. As
these pink and reddish tints faded away, the dark purple mass
of color rose higher and higher until the darker shades of even-
ing completely enshrouded it, and finally as the darkness fell the
cone lost its height and distinctness.

No one knows when the oil fields of Yenangyaung in Burmah were flj^st
discovered ; but the legend of their origin relates that in January, 1099, a
king of Pagau, attracted by the accounts lie had heard of the marvels of
the region, especially of a wonderful spring of sweet-scented watei'S, visited
the spot. Some of his courtiers who also visited the spring were so en-
tranced by the exquisite odors exhaled from, it that they forgot to return at
night. The king, searching for them the next morning, found them thus
enthralled, to the neglect of the duties they owed him, and in his anger
ordered their immediate execution; while, exercising his miraculous pow-
ers, he changed the sweet odors to the repulsive smell of petroleum. From
this the place came to be known by its present name, which means Stink
ing- water Creek.

VOL. L. — 4

34

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

NOTES ON BHILS, BURMESE, AND BATTAKS.

By Dr. R. W. SHUFELDT.

ABOUT a year ago the distinguished anthropologist of the
-^-^ University of Zurich, Dr. Rudolph Martin, presented the
writer with a small but very valuable collection of photographs
of certain peoples of India and the East Indies. Some of these
are very rare, and, upon searching the ethnological works in the
Government libraries in Washington, I have been unable to find
examples of quite a number of them.

For instance, we have scarcely any literature upon the history
of that truly interesting race of Indian peoples known as the
Bhils. Two of my photographs (Figs. 1 and 3) are devoted to a
Bhil beauty, the one giving her directly en face, and the other
en profile. This is the true scientific method of photographing a
subject of this kind, and it has been my experience among native
races that it can usually be done. It practically very much en-
hances the value of either
picture ; for characters and
objects of dress and orna-
ment, seen upon front view,
can often be only fully ex-
plained by the one taken
upon lateral aspect, and vice
versa.

In this Bhil woman, for
example, the central fasten-
ing of the chain ornament
at the fore end of the hair-
parting is distinctly seen
when we regard her from in
front, whereas the very pe-
culiar perforated, circular
ornament of metal in the
wing of the nose is but part-
ly made out. Taken upon
side view, these conditions
are exactly reversed, and
with a lens of moderate
power one can easily study
in detail the several inter-
esting ornaments with which she has bedecked her head and neck.
Upon profile, too, we can appreciate the nature of her headdress
behind, which is quite out of the question when the subject, in
this case, is seen from in front. This is likewise the only method

Fig. 1. — A Bhil Beauty, India.
Seen upon front view.

BHILS, BUBMESE, AND BATTAKS.

35

by means of whicli we can properly study the features of the indi-
vidual whom we have photographed, and learn something of the
facial angle and similar 'characters. It will be noted that this
Bhil beauty wears as many as half a dozen heavy metal bracelets
upon either wrist, and the
collection of trinkets that
hang over her ears is ex-
tremely curious. Her rather
light attire permits us to
form some opinion as to the
physique of this woman, and
it is not difficult to see that
in such particulars she is re-
markably well proportioned.
She is evidently broad and
deep- chested ; has finely de-
veloped limbs, and a well-
balanced head, upon rather
square shoulders. The form
of her face is nearly circu-
lar, with large mouth and
nose, and the eyes are set far
apart. Her complexion is
dark, and she is somewhat
small in stature. Bhils have
the reputation of being very
active and capable of endur-
ing much fatigue with im-
punity. Twenty years ago, or less perhaj)s, this tribe occupied a
British political agency — the Bhil agency, in central Asia — which
covered an area of some eighty-one hundred and sixty square
miles, and had a population of nearly a quarter of a million of
people. This agency was established in 1825, at which time a
Bhil corps was organized " with a view to utilizing the warlike
instincts of the Bhil tribes. This brave body of men have done
good service, and gradually put down the predatory habits of
their countrymen. The Bhil tribes chiefly inhabit the rocky
ranges of the Vindhya and Satpur^ Mountains, and the banks of
the Narbada and the Tapti. In common with other hill tribes,
the Bhils are supposed to have been aborigines of India, and to
have been driven to their present fastnesses at the time of the
Hindu invasion."

I understand that numerous efforts have been made to break
up their plundering ways by the home Government, and that the
official reports stated in 1869-'70 that " the Bhils of Manpur are
becoming reconciled to the life oi cultivators, though not yet

Fig. 2. — A Biiil Beauty, India. Photographed
en profile. Same subject as shown in Fig. 1.

36

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

willing to take out leases." How this may be at the present date
the writer is not informed.

Dr. Hunter, when Director- General'of Statistics to the Govern-
ment of India, wrote, in reference to the Scythic and non- Aryan
influence in that country, that " proceeding inward to the North-
western Provinces, we find traces of an early Buddhist civilization
having been overturned by rude non- Aryan races. In Bareilly
district, for example, the wild Ahirs from the north, the Bhils
from the south, and the Bhars from the west seem to have ex-
pelled highly developed Aryan communities not long before 1000
A. D." Not a few works upon these Indian tribes have appeared
in England, as well as elsewhere, and doubtless much more re-
mains to be said about these wonderfully interesting people, that
will prove to be of great importance to the science of ethnology.

A very different appearing people from the Bhils are the
natives of Burmah, for in the Burmese we have the characteristics
of the Mongoloid types, possessed in common with all the races of
Indo- China, including those of the tribes of Tibet and the eastern
extremities of the Himalayan range of mountains. As a rule,

they possess a fine physique,
and, as in the case of the Bhils,
they, too, are notoriously ac-
tive and hardy. In complex-
ion they are usually dark,
I but never very decidedly so,
the common shade of the skin
being of a warm, rich brown.
Burmans of the typical stock
have black hair, that is rather
coarse and very abundant,
being straight as in the case
of the Chinese. Some of the
men are pretty well bearded,
more distinctly so, indeed,
than are their not distant
neighbors the natives of Siam.
The word " Burma " or "' Bur-
mah " is derived from their
own name of their race,
which is Mran-ma, being pro-
nounced Ba-ma, in distinct
monosyllabic tone, as their language usually is. In this respect
it resembles the dialects of southern China, while in other par-
ticulars it exhibits evident Tibetan relations. Soft and flexible
almost to a fault, the language of these people is written in letters
of a subcircular form in most cases, and for nearly seven centu-

FiG. 3. — A Burmese Mother and her Child.
From a photograph.

BHILS, BURMESE, AND BATTAKS.

37

ries it has been the medium of recording their very interesting
literature. Its alphabet is said to be of Indian origin, and was
ushered in with the religion of Buddha. Burmese are not behind-
hand in the matter of some manufactures, though they are by no
means up to the better races of India in these particulars. Upon
crudely constructed looms, their women make a cloth of a very
good quality, such as is
worn by the child and its
mother shown in Fig. 3.
Gorgeous silk cloths, made
from Chinese silk,are woven
in other localities, and pat-
terns of flowers are fre-
quently embroidered (see
Fig. 3). They also use nu-
merous fabrics which they
obtain through the medium
of trade with the British,
who have already conquered
a considerable part of the
Empire of Burma. As is
the case with so many other
peoples of the East, the
women are fond of person-
al adornment. They wear
from five to six bracelets
around their wrists, a mul-
tiplicity of necklaces, and
very frequently circular,
worked ear ornaments of silver or gold on the lobes of the ears.
In Fig. 3 the woman is smoking a large cigar. An authority at
my hand says the Burmese are passionately fond of the drama,
" which appears under the various forms of masquerades, puppet
shows, ballet opera, and farces, as well as in the more dignified
character of the regular tragedy. The moral character of the
plays is often of the lowest kind, the utmost license both of
speech and action being allowed on the stage. The scenery is of
a very simple and purely suggestive kind, a single branch of a
tree standing for a forest, and frequently the filling up of the
dialogue is largely left to the ingenuity of the actors, little more
than hints of the plot being contained in many of the librettos.
The popular interest in the dramatic exhibitions is intense, and,
as in Siam, the same piece often drags its slow length along for
days together." Some of the young Burmese women have very
intelligent features, and are far from being unprepossessing. The
young girl shown in Fig. 4 is of this class, and it is seen that she

Fig.

4. — A Young Burmese Beauty.
From a photograph.

38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is endowed with a style of Oriental beauty by no means unattrac-
tive or to be despised. Their despotic king never allows any of
his subjects to quit the country without his permission, and least
of all, women. The British and others living in Burmah have
not always had their eyes closed to the charms of the Burmese
girls, and when they have had children by them they have expe-
rienced difficulties of the most extraordinary nature upon leaving
the land in their attempts to take these and their mothers with
them. Often fabulous fees have had to be paid to effect their
removal. They are remarkably faithful to their masters, being
affectionate, industrious, and extremely domestic. Those having
these habits despise prostitution, for a prostitute among them is
an outcast, while they in their own calling are not dishonored.
In contrast with other parts of the East, the women of Burmah
go about openly, and are not excluded from the sight of the
men. They also have not a little to say in the community, even
being able, with the proof of cruel treatment, to plead in court
for a divorce, and this last, under such circumstances, is usually
obtained without difficulty.

Leaving India now, and passing to the island of Sumatra, I
desire to introduce an entirely different race of people ; these are
the Battaks,* and they are of great interest to the anthropologist
from any point he may choose to consider them. Many books
and descriptions have appeared about the Battaks, dating back
before the middle of the present century. One writer tells us
that it " is not known whether they were settled in Sumatra be-
fore the Hindu period. Their language contains words of San-
skrit origin, and others most readily referred to Javanese, Malay,
Menangkabau, Macassar, Sundanese, Niasese, and Tagal influ-
ence." In 1866, when Prof. Albert S. Bickmore was traveling in
Sumatra, he saw not a little of these people, and he believed then
that the place where their aboriginal civilization sprang up was
very likely on the shores of that famous Sumatran lake, Lake
Toba, and upon the neighboring plateau of Silindong. From this
locality they gradually occupied an extensive domain in the in-
terior, which was extended upon either side to the seacoast.
Eventually, however, the Malays spread along the coast line, and
thus confined the Battaks once more to the interior.

Nearly twenty years later, Webster wrote that they occupied
the country only to the southeast of Achin, the territory in the
middle of which Lake Toba is situated. From all that I can
gather upon the subject at the present time, it would appear that
this curious race, although they are distinctly different from the
typical Malay, these last-named people, together with the Achin

* This word is also spelled " Batah " and " Batta."

BHILS, BURMESE, AND BATTAKS.

39

population, are rapidly absorbing them, Webster, in describing
the Battaks, says : " The average stature of the men is about five
feet four inches ; of the women, four feet eight inches. In gen-
eral build they are rather thickset, with broad shoulders and
fairly muscular limbs. The color of the skin ranges from dark
brown to a yellowish tint, the darkness apparently quite inde-
pendent of climatic influences or distinction of race. The skull is
rather oval than round. In marked contrast to the Malay type
are the large, black, long-shaped eyes, beneath heavy black or

<2*»r»^^

-^y--

Fig. 5. — A Group of Battaks.

dark-brown eyebrows. The cheek bones are somewhat prominent,
but less so than among the Malays."

Neuman, in 1886, reckoned the population of the entire river
basin occupied by the Battaks at fifty thousand, and Van der
Tunk has given us a very good account of their language, and of
the Toba dialect in particular. Battak poetry has been treated by
Mr. C. A. Ophnijen in a very entertaining volume, and in it he
describes " a curious leaf language used by Battak lovers, in
which the name of some leaf or plant is substituted for the word
with which it has greatest phonetic similarity."

The Battaks have invented an alphabetic language of their
own, and the various shaped letters are sometimes quite intricate
and difficult to decipher. Often they write it on narrow strips of
tender bamboo about half a foot long, using for the purpose the

4°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

point of a blunt needle. Their dialects differ but little in degree,
and consequently the unification of their language is quite com-
plete. Many of their superstitions, their myths, and their beliefs
are most interesting, and when one comes to consider their ad-
vancement in certain directions it is certainly very remarkable,
as Bickmore remarks, that " all of them, beyond the territory
under the Dutch Government, are cannibals. Those living on
this plain also feasted on human flesh until the Dutch conquered

Fig. 6. — Battak Girls. From a photograph.

them, and obliged them to give up such fiendish custom. The
Rajah of Sipirok assured the Governor of Padang that he had
eaten human flesh between thirty and forty times, and that he
had never in all his life tasted anything that he relished half
as well. This custom has prevailed among the Battas from time
immemorial."

Marco Polo claims that the Battaks have been cannibals for a
time extending at least as far back as the year 1290 ; and Sir
Stamford Raffles, who was among them in 1820, found some of
their laws to be very severe. For crimes for which we give but

BHILS, BURMESE, AND BATTAKS. 41

light penalties, or a few years in jail, the Battaks cut up their per-
petrators alive, and I dare say ate them afterward ; indeed, cases
are on record where a Battak has been convicted of adultery,
and his discoverers, members of his own tribe, have cut him uj)
alive and then feasted upon his remains. A missionary once told
Prof. Bickmore that he knew of a Battak who "had been guilty
of stealing an article of only very little value according to their
ideas of wealth, yet he was seized, his arms extended at full length
and fastened to a bamboo, a sharpened prop placed under his chin,
so that he could not move his head, and in this condition he was
bound fast to a tree. The knife was then handed to the native
who had lost the article, and he was ordered to step forward and
cut out of the living man what piece he preferred. This he did
promptly ; the rajah took the second choice, and then the people
finished the cold-blooded butchery, and thus their victim died.

" The parts that are esteemed the greatest delicacies are the
palms of the hands, and after them the eyes. As soon as a piece
is cut out it is dipped, still warm and steaming, in sambal, a com-
mon condiment, composed of red or Chili peppers and a few grains
of coarse salt, ground up between two flat stones. Formerly it
appears to have been the custom to broil the human flesh, for Mr.
Marsden states that in December, 1780, a native of Nias, who
stabbed a Batta at Batang Taroh, the river I crossed on the sus-
pension bridge, was seized at six one morning, and, without any
judicial process, was tied to a stake, cut in pieces with the utmost
eagerness while yet alive, and eaten upon the spot, partly broiled,
but mostly raw."

Such are some of the characters and habits of the people shown
in Figs. 5 and 6 accompanying the present article. It will be
seen that the members composing the group shown in Fig. 5 are
but scantily clad, and they are each and all almost completely
devoid of any ornament. The three elder boys wear turbanlike
affairs upon their heads, while the old woman at the right-hand
end of the line in the rear row has a peculiar kind of a headdress
on. I have very carefully studied the faces of these individuals,
and I am free to confess that, judging from their features, they
seem to be capable of committing almost any species of barbarity.

The two girls shown in Fig. 6 are particularly interesting,
especially the one sitting down, whom I understand the Battaks
consider to be a great beauty. The one standing up, with the big
earrings in her ears, has as veritable a face of a savage as I ever
remember having seen anywhere. As in the case with the boys
shown in Fig. 5, these girls likewise wear headdresses, but of
somewhat though not a very different style. They, too, are but
lightly attired, and possess the same set and wicked expression in
their eyes. Yet, and notwithstanding this, and taking into con-

VOL. L. — 6

42 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

sideration what I know of these two Battak girls, I must say I
have not infrequently met with types of negroes, both in the
South as well as in Washington, that possessed features nearly
the counterpart of these Battaks. In this connection we must
remember, however, that the negroes in this country need not
trace back so very far before their arrival at an ancestral stock
that can hardly be considered above suspicion in the matter of
cannibalism, and that, too, without having been the inventors of
an alphabet and a written language to redeem the fact.

THE ABUNDANCE OF ANIMAL LIFE;

By M. ALBEET GAUDKY.

WE find in studying the past epochs of the earth's history
that they have been marked by an abundance of life, even
exceeding any which prevails in the present. Comparing the
existing state with the past, we are struck with the immensity of
the part played by the inferior organisms. Life is everywhere ;
the number of microbes is infinite. Rocks which at first seem to
belong only to the domain of mineralogy are found to appertain
very largely to that of biology. One of the grandest spectacles,
for example, is offered by the travertines of the Mammoth Hot
Springs, in the Rocky Mountain National Park, which Mr. Weed
declares are formed chiefly through the agency of algse, with-
drawing the excess of carbonic acid from the water, and forcing
the precipitation of the limestone. Going from the hot springs
to the geysers, we find deposits of silica which have been formed
in the same way ; and what is called gelatinous silica is largely
vegetable matter. The lower animals are also so numerous in
some places that they contribute to the formation of rocks. Plan-
cus has calculated that three grammes of certain sands of the
Caribbean Sea contain 180,000 shells of foraminifera. M. Schlum-
berger found 116,000 foraminifera shells in a cubic centimetre of
the Atlantic mud which was brought up by the Travailleur expe-
dition. Polyps construct atolls, barrier reefs, and islands ; and
if the bottoms of the oceans were uncovered we should doubtless
see coralline rocks no less extended than the Secondary formation
called the coral rag. It is said that the shells of the Eiheria form
such large beds in the Senegal that they are quarried to be made
into lime, and that on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, near New
Orleans, the Onatliodons form a bed four miles and a half long,
nearly two hundred feet wide, and sixteen feet thick. I have been
informed by M. Sauvage, to whom we owe many important works
on marine animals, that the year's crop of oysters as entered in the

THE ABUNDANCE OF ANIMAL LIFE. 43

statistical tables of tlie Minister of the Marine reaches the prodi-
gious figure of 1,407,390,400. In the same year there were returned
1,262,600 bushels of mussels and 620,000 bushels of other shellfish
than oysters and mussels. The same authority estimates that
2,200,000 lobsters, 16,000,000,000 shrimps and prawns, 1,080,000,000
sardines, and 400,000,000 herrings are consumed in France in a sin-
gle year. The cod, the mackerel, and the fresh fishes would also
represent considerable quantities. The fishermen cf the single
port of Boulogne took 63,000,000 kilogrammes of fish during a
period of nine years. Assuredly the statistics of such other coun-
tries as Great Britain, Norway, and Newfoundland would give
not less considerable figures. These numbers illustrate the rich-
ness of the life that is concealed under the waves of existing seas.

Although the reptiles are much less various in our epoch than
during the Secondary age, they are still numerous in some regions.
According to Alcide d'Orbigny, caymans are numbered by thou-
sands in the province of Moxos. The traveler Leguat, speaking of
the extinct tortoises of the island of Rodriguez in 1708, wrote that
they were seen sometimes in troops of two or three thousand, so
that one could go more than two hundred paces on their backs
without putting his foot on the ground. M. A. Milne-Edwards
found reports in the office of the ministry according to which
thirty thousand tortoises were taken from Rodriguez in a year
and a half to supply Mauritius and Reunion. Venomous serpents
are so common in India that M. Sauvage says that in comparison
with them tigers and panthers are inoffensive beasts. According
to official documents, more than nineteen thousand persons per-
ished in India in one ye r from snake bites.

Warm-blooded animals have especially multiplied in our
epoch. Livingstone met in the country of the Makololos more
than thirty different species of birds ; among them hundreds of
ibis, files of three hundred pelicans, myriads of ducks, many
geese, herons, kalas, crossbills, burgills, spoonbills, and flamingoes,
and an enormous multitude of gulls and cranes. Delegorgue has
also executed paintings showing the abundance of the birds. He
speaks of having seen five hundred or a thousand vultures upon a
single elephant's carcass. Nothing, he says, is more s range to the
hunter than to see rising at his approach, circling in the air, that
mass of feathered creatures which forms a kind of immense mov-
able dais above him. Alcide d'Orbigny, in his travels in Bolivia,
descending the Mamor^, found its banks animated with innumer-
able shore birds. The tantalus, in troops of several thousands,
marched with slow steps upo-i the muddy parts in company with
the red spoonbill or white egret, while the sand banks were cov-
ered with scissorbills and sea swallows, together with many goat-
suckers. In the country of the Chiquitos, D'Orbigny met cardinal

44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and cacique birds which. " possessed the qualities rarely found to-
gether, of melodious song and brilliant plumage. Toucans made
the woods resonant with their sharp accents, which were mingled
with the disagreeable cries of paroquets of numerous species and
of red and yellow aras. . . . The woods resounded with the ca-
denced cries of the penelope and the hoecos ; by means of his cry
at a fixed hour the kamichi serves the Indians instead of a clock."

The abundance of mammals is still more extraordinary than
that of birds. Livingstone speaks of a band of more than ten
thousand euchoris antelopes. Delegorgue says, describing a meet-
ing he had with these animals : " The dust flew and formed thick
clouds in a hundred directions. Sometimes it rose in whirling
columns to the height of one hundred or two hundred feet. . . .
Immediately I perceived the innumerable troops of springboks
which were raising these clouds. . . . The vision astonished me so
that I had to question myself in order to be sure that it was not
a vision. There were bands of from three to ten thousand indi-
viduals each, crossing one another's course at all points at once."
The same traveler speaks also of large herds of gnus and elands ;
and he speaks of bands of a thousand or fifteen hundred buffaloes.

Allen, in his admirable work on the bisons of America, gives
some curious details on the importance their herds once had and
on their extinction. The 2,500,000 bisons that were killed between
1870 and 1875 would represent 50,000,000 in a century.

The solipedes abound in our epoch. Delegorgue saw bands of
four or five hundred quaggas in Africa. Mr. Blanford says that
Dr. Aitchison met a troop of one thousand herniones in Afghanis-
tan. Brehm estimates, following Youatt, that the number of
horses in all Russia is near 20,000,000 head. The rapidity with
which horses left loose multiply in America is well known. Wild
elephants are destined to be annihilated by man, but they are still
numerous in some regions. Speke relates that when he was on
the banks of the Nile, he found himself in the midst of a drove of
several hundred elephants. Delegorgue estimates the number of
elephants which he saw on a space about ten thousand feet in
diameter in the Amazulu country at six hundred.

The rodents have a surprising force of propagation and mul-
tiply with the most astonishing rapidity. In 1863 a Mr. Austin
took some rabbits to Australia for stocking his hunting grounds.
The introduction of them was a disaster. They have so multiplied
that thousands and thousands of acres of land have been ravaged,
and thousands of men ruined. According to a report made three
years ago, there are 20,000,000 rabbits in southern Victoria and
northern Queensland. Brehm relates that 1,500,000 of field mice
{Arvicola arvalis) were destroyed in fifteen days in the canton of
Saverne, and that a factory in Breslau having offered a centime

THE ABUNDANCE OF ANIMAL LIFE. 45

(a quarter of a cent) a dozen for these animals, some peasants de-
livered fourteen hundred of them a day. Charles Martens has
given some curious details concerning the immense troop of lem-
mings (Myodes) in Norway. I was struck with the multitude of
squirrels in the Rocky Mountains. We met them at every step in
passing through the wooded regions. Alcide d'Orbigny relates
that when at Carmen de Moxos. he was nearly suffocated by the
odor of musk in his house. It c^me from the thousands of bats
that hung from the roof during the day. Marine mammals were
also very numerous before they were pursued by man. Buffon
says that in 1704 the crew of an English ship met a school of
more than a thousand morses near Cherry Island, in latitude 75°.

Notwithstanding the number of beings that disappeared in the
various geological epochs, I believe that the sum of the appear-
ances surpassed that of the extinctions till the ead of the Miocene.
I can not assert that there has not been some diminution since
that period ; but we can affirm that a prodigious fecundity pre-
vails at the present time. — Translated for the Popular Science
MontJdy from the Revue des Deux Monde s.

The Cambodian doctors, according to M. Paul d'Enjoy, largely use vege-
table poisons as medicines, and apply them with very great skill ; and they
are often possessors of recipes, the secret of which is carefully kept within
the family. They pretend to be acquainted with the love philter, and sell
at a very high price a colorless oil with which the young men impregnate
their lips in hopes of winning the young women through its magical power.
The Cambodian bonzes have established in the vicinity of their monas-
teries, and the Annamites near their pagodas and under their own direc-
tion, refuges where the sick are taken care of gratuitously. The institu-
tions are sustained by public charity and by the generous gifts of patients.
Many of the wealthy are not ashamed to have themselves taken to these
asylums, hoping that their cure may be made more complete through the
protection of the ministers of God, under whose care they place themselves.

Insect chrysalides seem totally inert, and to the ordinary observer
suggest a mummy rather than anything else. Yet, when occasion arises,
they are able to manifest their vitality and even to be active. M. G. de
Rocquigny Adanson, studying some Saturnias, opened a few of the cocoons,
and having examined the insects, put them in a box in which the place of
their broken silken envelope was supplied by cotton wadding. Three weeks
afterward he found that they had changed position, and, examining them
more closely, that they had thrown out threads and fastened themselves to
the cotton. Madame Elisee Reclus, studying natural history in Switzerland,
had some Vanessas much shaken by the jolts in descending the mountain,
and afterward more shaken on the railway train. Observing them after
they had enjoyed a few hours of quiet at home, she found that they had
changed position, and, having thrown out threads and cross threads, had
fastened themselves firmly to the lid of the box in which they were kept.

46 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SHELLS.

By MAEGARET WENTWOETH LEIGHTON.

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot.
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairly well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design !

Slight, to be crushed with a tap
Of my finger nail on the sand ;
Small, but a work divine ;
Frail, but of force to withstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap
The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock
Here on the Breton strand !

—Tennyson,

AS we watch the little pools of water left among the rocks by
-^^ the retreating tide the pearly luster or the violet or golden
tint of some tiny shell catches our eye. How exquisite its form
and coloring !

Shells have always, from the most ancient times, been greatly
prized. Prehistoric men discovered in the burial caves of Au-
vergne have chaplets of shells which scientific men tell us they
must have traveled long distances to gather. It is only of late
years that their curious little occupants have been interviewed
and some ideas obtained with regard to their characteristics and
mode of living.

All shells with their inhabitants belong to the immense class
known as Mollusca, or soft-footed animals. Shells are divided
into two groups — univalve, those having but one valve, as the
snail, whelks, cowries, etc. ; and bivalve, as the oyster, clam, and
mussel.

If we take the clam as a typical mollusk we shall see that each
little line on the inside or outside of the shell reveals an inter-
esting fact. On the outer surface of each valve are a number of
concentric lines parallel to the edge and growing fainter toward
the hinge part. These are called the lines of growth, and are
made by the mantle. The clam's mantle is quite as useful to him
as are our hands to us, and he uses it for similar purposes. The
mantle surrounds the clam's body inside the shell, its edge pro-

SHELLS.

47

truding and looking like a row of little frills. This edge secretes
carbonate of lime from the water and adds it to the shell all along
the outer edge, forming a new line of growth. Thus, as the clam
increases in size his house grows proportionately, so that it always
exactly fits him. The two halves of the shell are joined by a cu-
rious hinge. In some kinds of shells the hinge is external and in
some internal. It consists of teeth (two or more) with spaces be-
tween on either half. These lock together, and are held by a
strong, elastic muscle. On the inside of the clam shell are two
slight depressions, where the powerful adductor muscles of the
body were fastened.

The clam's body is completely enshrouded in the mantle, ex-
cept for two openings, through one of which the foot can be

Clam Shell. Exterior showing lines of growth ; interior showing muscle scars.

pushed out. The other is for the siphon, or what is commonly
known as the "neck" of the clam. In some respects the clam
may be better off than we are, for he has a little brain in his foot
and also a gland for secreting strong fibers. With this he spins
a byssus by which he can attach himself to whatever he likes.
He does not even have to search for his food, but waits for it to
come to him. He makes a burrow in the mud or sand, attaching
himself to the bottom by the byssus. Then he thrusts his siphon
up through the mud and water until it reaches the surface. The
siphon is made up of two tubes, the water flowing in through one
and out through the other.

When the inflowing current, laden with minute plants and
animals, reaches the gill chamber, some of these are sifted out and
retained for food, while the water and waste matter flow out
through the other tube.

The clam's eggs are carried by the mother on her gills. When
there are fish in the water with them the mother clams discharge
the eggs, which soon hatch, but if there are no fish they carry the
eggs until they decay. The reason of this strange behavior is

48 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

this : When the eggs are set free in the water they soon hatch,
and the little ones swim about until they find some fish to which
to attach themselves. They live for a time on the mucus of the
fish and then drop off, sink to the bottom, and form burrows for
themselves. This curious semiparasitic life is no doubt a rever-
sion to the habit of some ancient ancestor.

The white-shelled clams live in sand, the black-shelled in mud.
Besides living on the seacoast, clams inhabit all United States
fresh waters, and in some New York and Western rivers clams
have been found which contained pearls of great beauty and con-
siderable value. I have never seen anything more exquisite than
the pink pearl lining of some river clam shells.

The razor shell, familiar to all on account of its universal dis-
tribution, belongs to the clam family. It has a powerful foot,
with which it can scoop out a passage through the sand faster
than a man can dig with his spade. One of the clams inhabiting
warm inlets south of Boston is the quahog. The shells have a
finely beaded edge and are partly lined with deep violet. It was
from this that the New England Indians made their purple " wam-
pum" (money), which was considered twice as valuable as the
white "wampum." The old-time spelling of clam, clamp, was
characteristic of one of its chief features, the two halves being
so tightly clamped together.

The oyster, a close relation of the clam, is perhaps the most
useful and valuable member of all the molluscan group to man-
kind. The left half of the shell is generally attached to some
submerged object and is quite hollow, for it is in this half that
the body lies, the upper or right half being almost flat. The oys-
ter readily adapts its shell to surrounding objects, growing about
them in most fantastic ways.

When a grain of sand or any minute particle gets in between
the oyster's mantle and the shell it is very irritating, and causes
a great excretion of matter to take place. This collects around
the nucleus in concentric coats like those of an onion. If the lin-
ing of the shell be mother-of-pearl, these coats of matter which
cover the little grain of sand will also be pearly, and perhaps
form a gem of priceless value. Sometimes one of the oyster's
own eggs lodges between mantle and shell and is transformed
into a wonderful tear of rainbow hues. It is only those shells
having a pearly or nacreous lining which can form these gems.
For hundreds of years pearl fishing has been a lucrative indus-
try. The most renowned fisheries are at Panama, Ceylon, and in
the Red Sea. The pearl oysters are very large, live in from six
to twelve fathoms of water, and are gathered by diving.

Pliny calls the scallops (Pectinidce) butterflies of the sea. They
are very shy and live in the midst of the eel grass, where the

SHELL S . AQ

water is warm. The shells range in color from pure white, through
all shades of yellow, to bright orange, and some are exquisitely
banded and shaded with light and dark brown. The edge of the
mantle is fringed with long and short tentacles, among which are
thirty silver-blue eyes. As they are not as highly organized as
our eyes, Pecten needs a much larger number of them. The scal-
lops, unlike most of the mollusks, can swim through the water

Kazor Shell (^Ensis amerlcana).

by rapidly opening and shutting the valves. Closing them sud-
denly drives out the water in a powerful jet, which by reaction
sends the shell forward. It must be a strange and beautiful sight
to see a flock of these '' butterflies " flying through the blue water
on a fair summer day. Scallops used to be known in Europe as
pilgrim shells, because they were used by the pilgrims of the
middle ages as a badge.

A most remarkable family of shellfish are the piddocks, living
in England, America, and Borneo. They are all borers. The
shells of those which inhabit the English chalk clifl's are snow-
white, to match their home. Some bore in rock, some in the red
chalk, and the most wonderful of all, the East Indian species,
lives in the trunks of dead trees. Their shells are covered with
deep grooves crossing each other and forming a sort of rasp. The
foot, which is covered with a hard dermal armor, is pressed
against the sides and the shell turned about, thus easily scooping
out a cavity in the soft chalk. The piddock continually floods his
burrow with water to wash out the particles of chalk that collect
as he works. The piddock has a little light of its own, so that it
could travel safely about after dark were it necessary. This is a
peculiarity of many of the creatures of the sea, and often on a
summer night in the tropics the water is ablaze with their phos-
phorescence.

Mussels, living in both salt and fresh water, form a large class
of mollusks. Some of them can climb about on the rocks by
throwing out a byssus thread, pulling themselves up, then fasten-
ing another above that, and so on.

The horse mussel is one of the largest, and very interesting on
account of a boarder which it often entertains. A tiny crusta-
cean, the pea crab, lives inside its shell in peace and happiness.
The crab is not a parasite, as it does not live on the mussel itself,
but merely a messmate eating the refuse of its food.

VOL. L. — 6

5°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The Noah's ark is a most oddly shaped shell, and was named
by Linnaeus from its resemblance to that primitive craft. One
ark found in the Mediterranean sometimes contains violet-colored
pearls, and one on our coasts is called the " bloody clam," from its
fiery gills and the crimson fluid in its tissues. Some of the arks
live in submerged clefts of the rocks, and are so busy eating and
growing that before they know it they have grown too large to
get out, and must remain prisoners for the rest of their lives.

The teredo, or ship worm, would hardly seem to belong with
this group of animals, but it is a true bivalve, having a pair of
tiny shells at one end of its wormlike body. It has been a most
terrible pest ever since men began to traverse the ocean, for its
favorite home is the bottom of a wooden ship. It belongs to a
family of borers. Some bore in coral, some in rock, and others
in wood. The baby teredo, when floating about in the water,
comes across a vessel or piece of wood, and immediately begins to
bore into it with the edges of a pair of pallets which it has for
the purpose. As it proceeds, a calcareous lining is formed to the
burrow, which increases in size as the teredo grows. It never
leaves its hole again during life.

One very curious fact connected with the teredo is that the
burrow of one never runs into nor crosses the burrow of another,
even though the wood between is no thicker than a sheet of
paper. These little fellows work very rapidly, as the following
item from Quatrefages will show : A ship was sunk near St.
Sebastian, Spain, and in four months, when it was raised, all the

timbers and planks
were so riddled with
teredo burrows that
they were entirely
worthless.

The most brilliant
and withal attractive
shells in my collec-
tion are from the
West Indies. I call
them sunset shells,
because they look as the sky often does on a beautiful summer
evening. They are somewhat like clam shells in shape, but nar-
rower and flatter, and most delicately finished. Some are flushed
with delicate pink, with rays of pale yellow, others are violet and
white, still others green. All the colors of the rainbow are here
blended and harmonized with the matchless perfection with which
the Great Artist works.

The univalves are more highly developed than the bivalves.
They are called Gasteropods, which means stomach-footed, be-

■fli-

/''■'

Sunset Shell.

SHELLS. 51

cause they have a long foot lying the whole length of the body.
Unlike the bivalves, they have a distinct head, in which the brain
is situated. Often there are tentacles or feelers, as in the snail,
on the ends of which the eyes are placed. Gasferopods have a
wonderful eating apparatus called the odontophore or tooth ribbon.
It is covered with hooked teeth, pointing backward, and is in the
lower side of the mouth, situated about the same as our tongues.
On the upper side of the mouth is a hard plate or jaw, and the
food is ground up by the toothed ribbon against this plate. The

Violet Snail and Egg Float {lanthina fragilis). Copied from the Eiverside Natural His
tory by kind permission of Houghton, Mifliin & Co.

odontophore wears out rapidly, but as the front part is used up it
grows from behind, and these animals are so fortunate as to have
a new set of teeth every little while.

There is only one shell to take the place of two in the bivalves,
so most of the univalves have an operculum. This is a little lid
(either horny or calcareous) on the upper side of the foot which
exactly fits the aperture in the shell. If a Oasteropod wishes for
any reason to be alone and rest for a time, he only has to draw in
his foot, pull to the door, and he is in complete seclusion from all
the world.

The shells of the Gasteropods, like those of the bivalves, are
often covered with a sort of horny membrane or epidermis which
protects them from the eroding power of the water and other ex-
ternal injuries.

At the bottom of the Gasteropod group is a wonderful creature
which we may call a multivalve, as its shell is made up of a num-
ber of plates (usually eight) which look like ancient armor. It is
called the mail shell, or chiton, and is the only example in the
world of a shell composed of more than two parts. It is common
on the Atlantic coast, in some of the bays and inlets south of
Boston, on the Pacific shores, in England, and other places. Chi-
tons sometimes have as many as eight thousand eyes, their backs
being covered with them.

The limpets range in shape from those which are almost flat
to a perfect cone. Some of my prettiest from Sitka are snow-

52

POPULAR SGIENCU MONTHLY.

wliite, and look like little peaked nightcaps. One is tlie cup-and-
saucer limpet, and indeed it miglit easily serve as such, on the
table of some water sprite. It is glistening brown in color and
looks like porcelain. The slipper limpets or boat shells are very-
pretty, being shaped like little rowboats with one seat. The
shallow- water boats are flat-bottomed and thin, while the deep-
water ones are much stouter and round-bottomed. Limpets each
have a particular spot on the rock to which they attach them-
selves, and when they wander off between the tides for their
dinners of seaweed they always return to the same spot. If you
should try to pull a limpet off of his stone you would find it very
hard work, for his strong foot sucks the rock with great force,
and as soon as he felt you pulling or prying he would redouble
his energies to cling to his home and would probably succeed.

A king among shells is the Haliotis, or, as the Spaniards call it,
ahalone. It is found in all collections, and is extensively used
for its pearly lining in the manufacture of buttons, buckles, and
other ornaments. It is sometimes called the ear shell, on account

JVatica heros (1) and egg mass (2), known as "sand-saucer."

of its resemblance to the outline of the human ear. In life the
animal thrusts his tentacles out through the row of holes along
the edge. On the outside the shell is rough, often closely resem-
bling the rocks on which it lives. The animals are eaten in
Europe and by the Chinese in California. While I was living
in San Francisco a Chinaman went out on to the rocks at low
tide to gather some. As he attempted to wrench one from its

SHELLS.

53

Harp Shell (JJafpu ventricosu).

home his hand was caught between shell and rock, and so firmly-
held by the animal that he could not escape the rising tide, and
was drowned.

The pearly lining of the abalone is richly shaded with all colors
of the rainbow, an opalescent green often predominating. The
mother-of-pearl is composed of
undulating layers. The irides-
cence is caused by minute lines
reflecting different spectra.

Some members of the snail
family, with their world-wide
reputation for slowness, have
made amazing progress in the
ascending scale. They have gone
so far as to develep from the
gills, with which they breathed in the water, lungs suitable for
air-breathing, and have come to enjoy the pleasures which a life
on terra firma affords. You can find them in the woods or in
your garden, thrusting out their inquisitive little heads and in-
vestigating everything with their eye-tipped feelers. Some snails,
after trying the experiment of a land life, have decided that on
the whole a water life is preferable, and gone back to live there,
where they have developed gills again, but of a different kind
from the original ones.

There are sea snails, pond and river snails, as well as land
snails. Many of them are carnivorous and can bore into other
shells with their lingual ribbons. The hole usually strikes a
muscle, when the shell gapes open, and his snailship enters and
devours his prey.

Some kinds of snails, especially the land group, can live for a
great length of time without food. A snail was fastened to a card
and put in the British Museum in 1846. Four years afterward a
discoloration appeared on the card, showing that he had been
moving about. He was taken out, immersed in warm water, and
was soon quite lively.

In creeping about, the snails always leave a track of mucus,
which glistens when it is dry. It is in this mucus that they
immure themselves for their long winter's nap, sometimes making
several layers or partitions over the opening to the shell.

In the middle ages snail shells were worn as amulets, protect-
ing the wearer against certain diseases as well as witchcraft.

Prof. J. S. Kingsley says of one North American species {Helix
harpa) : " In motion it is exceedingly graceful, at times poising its
beautiful shell above its body and twirling it around, . . . again
hugging its pretty harp close to its body."

The shells of the common wood snails are quite transparent

54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and pale brown, but some of the land snails have splendid houses.
One in my cabinet is in broad bands of white and brown, lined
with rose color. The violet sea snail is one of the most fascinat-
ing of all the group. Great herds of these bright, purple crea-
tures are sometimes seen on the surface of the ocean feeding upon
3feduscB (jellyfish). Each carries an enormous float, from the
under side of which the eggs hang down. The float is formed

IHeroce7'a lambis, showing prongs made by mantle. Pelican's Foot

{Aporrhaispes pelicani).

by a secretion from the foot and is made up of a great many
little bubbles. When storms occur the floats often become sepa-
rated from the creatures to which they were attached, but the
eggs develop just as well. The violet snail is never found on
shore, except when cast up by violent storms, being a lover of the
high seas.

The largest littoral (shore-inhabiting) univalve on the Massa-
chusetts coast is a common globular snail {Natica heros). It lives
on clams and other bivalves, and is interesting on account of its
curious egg masses, known to the children who gather them on
the beaches as " sand-saucers."

The olive shells are so called from their resemblance to that
fruit. They are all pretty, being curiously marked with difi:erent
shades of brown, but the most striking of the family is the East
Indian harp shell, which is very beautiful, with its longitudinal
ribs, representing the strings of the harp. The animal which
lives in it is exceedingly shy, and if it is captured it draws itself
into the shell as far as possible. The whole of the foot will not
go in, however, and this is quickly drawn across the sharp edge
of the aperture and cut off. If the animal is set free again in its
native element it will redevelop its foot.

The miter shells are varied and brilliant in coloring. Some
of mine are white with orange spots, others brown and purple,
and all showy. They are named from their resemblance to the

SHELLS.

55

bishop's miter, and are found in the Philippine Islands. If an
enemy approaches, their occupants throw out a purple fluid and
escape under cover of the stained water.

Notice in the miter shell how the color spots correspond to
the whorls, in the scallops how the shades and bands follow the
lines of growth. Have you ever thought why this is so ? The
mantle which builds the shell has spots or bands of color scat-
tered through it, and as it works, the impressions of these same
pigment spots are left on the shell. If the pigment cells of the
mantle be yellow, red, or violet, these colors will be left on the
shell and preserved forever.

Another marvelous accomplishment of the mantle is the orna-
mentation of shells with prongs, flutings, etc. We have a good
example of this in the lovely Murex shells. The mantle some-
times works without cessation until the shell is finished, then
turns up, forming the lip (the edge of the aperture). Often it
works for a time, turns up, forming a frill or row of points, and
rests. Then it begins its labors anew, building an addition and
ornamenting it in like manner. Sometimes the mantle turns up
at the end in a number of fingerlike radiations, as in the Ptero-
cera lanibis and curious pelican's foot.

The cowries form an immense group, some species of which
inhabit almost every shore. They are called porcelain shells, on

\

Miirex rarnoRus.

account of their glossy, smooth texture. The little white cowries
are used in some parts of Africa for money and to make girdles
for the high chiefs. A stripe of a different shade from the
body of the shell runs along the back, showing where the edges
of the mantle met. In life it entirely covers the outside of
the shell, \

The helmet shells of warm seas are used for making exquisite
cameos, the best being cut at Rome. The raised figure is chis-

56 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

eled out of the white layer and rests on a colored groundwork,
blue, pale salmon, etc.

A very strange little fellow is RMzocMlus antipatharum. In
his youth he has a well-formed shell, hut as he grows older he
cements about it bits of coral, other shells, and anything which
he finds convenient, until the opening is entirely closed, and he
can communicate with the outer world only by means of his
siphon.

One of the largest shells found on the coasts of the northern
and middle Atlantic States is Scycoiypus canaliculatus. It is
protected from injury by its coat of rough brown fur. The in-
habitant comes ashore to lay her eggs, which are a great curiosity.
There are hundreds of little leaflike sacs which contain the eggs,
all joined together, forming a long chain.

^ons ago the shells had very different forms from those of
to-day, but we have left a few members of the group which ex-
isted in countless millions. The nautilus of the present time is
not a very distant relative of the ammonites, which we find so
marvelously preserved in the Silurian deposit, every line and pen-
ciling absolutely perfect.

Note. — I am greatly indebted to Prof. J. S. Kingsley, who was my teacher of biology at
Tufts College, for his assistance to me when I was studying the shells, and for material in
this sketch taken from his article on Mollusca in the Standard Natural History.

THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN

TEACHING.

By Prof. EDWAKD E. SHAW, Ph. D.,

DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF PEDAGOGY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.

THE recent development of our knowledge of the nervous
mechanism in its relation to the processes of education leads
us to appreciate the great worth of the ideas advanced by two
educators of the last century, Basedow and Heusinger, and also
to see quite clearly the great advantage which will result in the
work of the school from the applications of the truths set forth
by them.

When Basedow said that children were fond of noise and
movement, that they hated to sit still for a long time, that a con-
tinued strain of attention and learning by rote were distasteful to
them, and that only by force could they be trained to such vexa-
tious employments, he apprehended a truth upon which the re-
searches of recent years have given us more specific knowledge ;
and his warning that through the disregard of this principle not
only the health of the pupils is weakened, but also their intellect

THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 57

and natural desire for knowledge, teachers are just becoming
able to heed through the newer knowledge of child life and
development.

Heusinger, a name little known, showed his great insight into
this matter when he urged teachers to change and adapt their
work so as to take advantage of the extreme impulse in children
to be busy ; for Heusinger maintained that, considering the great
power given to this impulse by Nature, a prominent place in the
development of man should be granted to it, and that it is the
duty of teachers to give heed to this impulse in which an effective
means of instruction is afforded. He set up this impulse to activ-
ity as the regulating principle in gaining knowledge, for he as-
serted that not only does it lead to a deeper knowledge of the
thing itself, but also to a greater appreciation of all that is in con-
nection with the thing, and also that it excludes those things
which have no relation to the particular object of thought.

Froebel's apprehension of this truth is shown by his plays and
games.

All these educators apprehended the fact that the most marked
characteristic of the child and the youth is physical activity.
This activity is due to an energy that must be expended through
motor channels. It will perhaps make my contention the clearer
if we consider briefly the young infant and examine the first
manifestations of this energy and what results therefrom in men-
tal development. The activity of a young infant must, I think,
be conceded. Its arms and legs move vigorously. These move-
ments are not determined by itself, are not controlled by itself.
In various ways it often hurts itself by these uncontrolled mo-
tions, and in these movements there is at this period no will.
These movements which all have recognized are impulsive in
their nature — that is, they are set on not by any external stimula-
tion, but by the accumulation of energy in the cells of the nerv-
ous system, and when the cells are filled with nerve force or
energy the discharge of this energy is necessary for the growth
and develoj^ment of the system ; and so the kickings and twist-
ings and strikings and clutchings result. One suggestive point
which may be noted here is the fact that when the cells become
filled with energy they discharge. No demands are made on them
before they are ready to act, for Mother Nature is the babe's wise
teacher.

Closely following the impulsive movements, and indeed ac-
companying them, are what are termed reflex movements, which
differ from impulsive movements in the fact that they are ini-
tiated or started by some external stimulation through some of
the avenues of sense.

All impulsive and reflex movements occur without any pre-
voL. L. — 7

58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

meditation on the part of the child. They do not enter into con-
sciousness during their performance, but are often remembered
after they have been performed. The images left in the memory
after these movements have been executed are a very great factor
in the development of the will, for the voluntary movements
which develop later are based upon these impulsive and reflex
movements.

Beginning somewhat later than the impulsive and reflex move-
ments are the instinctive movements. We may say that the in-
stinctive movements are an advance on the reflex movements, as
they are more complex, they enter somewhat into consciousness,
and there is a purpose in them, though the child does not know at
the time he performs the movement the end that is to be attained.

The first movements of the child are impulsive and reflex, and
no self-consciousness accompanies them. Yet every movement,
whether impulsive or reflex, leaves some slight trace in the devel-
oping brain, and when the movement is hit upon again, and then
again, and still many times again, this trace strengthens and asso-
ciates itself with the particular movement, and there arises in the
dawning consciousness an idea, the elements of which are very
largely motor ; and so numerous motor ideas arise. The three
classes of movements which I have described are involuntary, and
out of all these various involuntary movements spring up motor
ideas. The pleasure or pain necessarily accompanying these gives
rise in consciousness to desire to repeat these movements or to in-
hibit or stop them. Deliberative or voluntary movements are not
possible without motor ideas. Through these motor ideas the
child comes gradually to represent to himself some end to be at-
tained or avoided. To say, then, that the will develops first
through the motor side is warrantable.

I have indicated how motor ideas are involved at the start in
the psychic or mental life, and how it is " ouly after a motion has
taken place that the child acquires any knowledge of its own
motor act." We must not, however, lose sight of the fact that
there is blended or associated with the motor acts sensations com-
ing from the eye and the ear and from other sensory avenues.
Involved in all these motor acts is an extensive part of the cortex
of the brain called the motor centers, because all muscular move-
ments are controlled from these centers. Not only do these motor
centers play a great part in the development of the psychic life
and the rise of the will, but all other parts of the brain come to be
developed in communication with them. Prof. Baldwin has ex-
pressed the idea that it is the motor which holds the sensory
elements together, and Dr. Crichton Browne has said that an
analysis of our ideas reveals to us that we have few if any of
purely sensory characteristics. All our ideas, then, have impor-

THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 59

tant motor elements. Dr. Browne says further that " the muscles
not only by the locomotion which they make possible enormously
widen the field from which our sense impressions are gathered,
but also, by the experience which their own activities involve, ex-
pand our mental resources a thousandfold."

How does this come about ? it will be asked. Let one reach
out his hand in any fashion, and he knows exactly what move-
ment he has made. Does he know because he saw what he did ?
Then let him close his eyes and move his hand in any other
fashion, and he knows just as well what the movement was as if
the act were performed with eyes open. Did he know it because he
had willed to move the hand thus ? Not so. It must be granted
that he willed to do it, and pictured in his mind previously the
movement to be made ; but that was the end of it in one particu-
lar. From that point it disappeared from his consciousness. The
picturing of the movement with the intention to make it was the
last thing he was conscious of so far as the movement is con-
cerned. Because of that willing a discharge was set off from the
motor centers, and the next thing in his consciousness was a per-
ception coming from the sensations which arose from the move-
ment. He then compared that perception with the previous image
of the willed movement. They agreed, and he knew just the
movement he had made.

But it will now be asked, How do sensations arise from the
movement ? Such a question is most pertinent at this point.
Sensations arise from movement because there are distributed
through the muscles, the joints, ligaments, and tendons, even the
skin itself, sensory nerve ends which are affected by the move-
ment and convey to the brain sensations of that movement. Out
of these sensations the mind perceives what has been done. There
is, then, connected with the motor or muscular side an important
sensory side. We may go further than to say it is connected
with the motor side; it is really imbedded in it. This important
sensory side, it will therefore be seen, can not perform its func-
tion and carry information to the brain unless the motor side is
used ; and the more various the employment of the motor side,
the larger the knowledge stored up in the brain from its sensory
counterpart. The motor and the related sensory are developed
hy and ivith each other. The ideas resulting therefrom are
sensory-motor ideas ; and we have at last come to have some
scientific appreciation of the far-reaching importance of these
sensory-motor ideas as a part of the structure of the mind and as a
means of producing fuller as well as higher mental development.

Ideas of time and place and position in their basic and most
important elements are motor. Ideas of form involve more of
motor impressions than of optical impressions. By the use of

6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

the motor side the child's judgments are enormously increased
and are made more accurate. This is necessarily true because
by the use of the motor side his opportunities for comparison and
discrimination are multiplied. He is called upon, for instance, to
form a judgment out of the ideas already in his possession. If
now he stops with this judgment he has no new criteria with
which to judge its correctness. On the other hand, if he can con-
vert this judgment into motor terms a comparison is forthwith
instituted and the judgment undergoes revision.

I have already spoken of the physical activity of youth as a
marked characteristic, and have said that this activity is due to
the discharge of energy into motor channels. It is a significant
fact that the attention of the child can be held for a surprisingly
long time provided he is so employed that this motor energy is ex-
pended in movement. Attention from the first is therefore close-
ly related to the motor side. The reason seems to be that there
are many groups of cells more or less isolated from each other,
but each closely connected with the main branches of the nervous
system. Each group has functions largely peculiar to itself;
when the brain is fully developed these isolated groups of cells
become more closely interrelated by means of filamentary out-
growths, called by some writers pathways of association and by
others dynamic pathways, by which energy is more readily dis-
tributed to various groups. In other words, if I may use a bold
metaphor, short circuits become at last established between the
various centers, so that the energy is not discharged into the
early isolated channels. If, therefore, we wish to hold the child's
attention to any particular line of study, we must at the same
time provide for the expenditure of the energy that is gathered
in the other groups of cells whose connections of interrelation
are not yet built up or established. If we do not provide for this,
the natural discharge of the energy from the overfilled cells of
those other groups swerves the child's attention from what we
have in hand for him. Every mental act, it must be remembered,
involves the complete arc of the sensory and the motor, and in the
child the inherent stress is on the motor. Again I quote from
Prof. Baldwin : " Just in as far as the motor ingredient of a men-
tal content of any kind is large — that is, in so far as the sensory
ingredient is intense — just to this degree also will the direction of
attention be secured, and to this degree also will both the ingre-
dients be intensified by this act of attention. Intensity draws
attention, and attention increases intensity — the law of sensory-
motor association — i. e., every mental state is a complex of sensory
and motor elements, and any influence wMch strengthens the one
tends to strengthen the other also."

I have spoken of how the use of the motor side adds new ave-

THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 6i

nues of perception, of how it increases the number of judgments
and the accuracy of them. It enriches also in content our ideas
of form, of time, of distance, of place, of resistance, etc.

Association, moreover, is very closely related to this side, and
the employment of the motor activities in mental acquirement
aids memory. Prof. Baldwin says very emphatically that associ-
ation has a motor foundation from the first, and that the elements
hold together in memory because they are used together in action,
and as action becomes one, but yet complex, so the mental content
tends to become one, yet complex. He says further : " We have
to-day got beyond the view that memory is a faculty which takes
up content and remembers it. It is, on the contrary, now known
to be a function of the content remembered." In my view this
function of the content depends upon the variety of association
and also upon volition, and both of these are best built up by that
which gives the fullest possible functioning of the nervous mech-
anism during its developing period — namely, the fullest and most
varied use of the motor activities warrantable. This, bear in
mind, means a much more prominent use of these activities than
has yet been made in our schools.

In the act of teaching or learning, old elements are constantly
revived through extrinsic stimulation and volition. But it is,
after all, the motor which sets those processes going that revive
the older mental elements, and it is through the motor that the
older elements have placed beside them images and judgments
containing a greater number of elements than they would other-
wise have had. Thus arises a more varied association. The new
impressions become blended with the old, but at the same time
the new have more elements in them because of the development
of the motor side. Accordingly, the new content is a fuller one —
that is, it has more clews by which its revival may be produced.
For Donaldson, in those two remarkable chapters which close his
recent work. The Growth of the Brain, not only expressly says
that " education consists in modifications of the central nervous
system," but also that " the value of mental images appears also
as dependent on the number and balance of the secondary sensa-
tions which accompany them. The greater the number of these,
the more certain and precise is our thought," and " as the possi-
bility of forming the extra images is curtailed, the conception be-
comes weaker, more special, and less reliable."

The reasons why we attribute such value to paper folding,
drawing, coloring, clay modeling, of late so largely introduced
into courses of study and with such profit both to pupil and to
teacher, must now be very evident. On the same grounds man-
ual training is appreciated to-day, and is winning wider adoption
because of its employment of the motor activities. It may be said.

62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

however, in passing, that the various exercises now laid down in
courses of manual training will all have to be examined in the
light of the scientific methods already employed in studying the
older practices in education, to determine not only what value
these exercises have, but also their sequence, and doubtless to cast
aside considerable that is at present recommended. Thirty-five
years ago object lessons were strongly advocated in this country.
They brought new life and spirit into the schools, and became
widely adopted. But to-day, without object teaching, all that was
then gained by it is secured and much more by Nature study or
science work, that which object teaching has led up to. And
through a similar process of evolution many of the formal exer-
cises of manual training are destined to disappear and to be cor-
related with other kinds of work, so that a broader purpose will
be subserved through the use of the motor side.

The reader will recall the statements already made that atten-
tion is strongest when the motor side is employed, and that asso-
ciation and memory seem more closely related to this side. There
is, however, another ingredient entering into all this which we
have not yet mentioned. It is that with the proper expenditure
of motor energy there arise interest and pleasure — an emotional
condition which of itself materially strengthens memory and
association.

When we call to mind that the child's mental world is largely
an unrelated world, we find another reason for urging a larger
recognition of this principle in our teaching. The child is in an
unrelated world, because he is in the midst of innumerable ob-
jects, manifestations of complex and varied phenomena, the suc-
cession of events and their occurrences simultaneously. The
stimuli which constantly stream in produce very strong sensa-
tions, and innumerable sense judgments are formed more or less
unrelated. One of the most difiicult tasks of the teacher is to
lead the child to relate these judgments, to reject the unessential
and unrelated, and to arrange the ideas growing out of those
judgments in series ; in other words, to introduce coherence and
unity into the child's mental life. But this mental unity can not
be considered apart from the matter of physical growth. The
child's brain at birth weighs about one fourth of what it weighs
at maturity, and the proportionate increase of other tissue in the
body during the period of growth is considerably greater than
the proportionate increase in brain weight. That which helps the
child to gain nervous control will accordingly help greatly in
bringing unity into his mental life, and no other means at the
teacher's command will contribute so much toward what Prof.
Baldwin has so happily styled nervous and mental unity, as a
large employment of motor activity in schoolroom work.

THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 63

If, then, we go into our schools with this idea in mind and ex-
amine the methods of teaching we can not fail to discern what a
disregard there is of this important principle. Better results
would be obtained — incomparably better — could there be a change
in this regard in the methods of the schoolroom.

I do not ask for license, but for orderly activity — educative ac-
tivity. It was in 1797 that Johann Heinrich Gotlieb Heusinger,
Docent in Philosophy and Pedagogics at the University of Jena,
apprehended this important principle, and expressed his surprise
that teachers had not heretofore recognized this impulse of chil-
dren to activity and taken advantage of it in the work of instruc-
tion. It is not the first instance in which the truth of an idea has
been recognized a century after its expression. And it is a source
of much pleasure to me to offer some of my pedagogical worship
at the shrine of Heusinger.

In the different branches of study, then, which pupils pursue
in our schools, and which they try to master in order to acquire
a fair education, there are numerous places and many topics that
admit of the employment of the motor side, if teachers had but
the versatility and inventive talent to make the application. Time
would be economized, broader mental development would be given
to the child, and discipline would take care of itself, for it is un-
directed motor energy that produces so much trouble in the mat-
ter of discipline, and unused motor energy that produces so much
fatigue in pupils during school hours.

In order that this article may not seem to be too largely theo-
retical, and also to show, if possible, more clearly what has al-
ready been set forth, I shall endeavor to point out some appli-
cations of the employment of the motor side in actual school
work. A moment's thought will lead one to see that there are
some studies where the employment of the motor activities is
much more diificult than in others. Perhaps the most difficult of
all subjects is in teaching reading to a class of beginners. In this
particular I got my first suggestion from a visit to a little Dorf
school in Germany. What I saw appealed to me as a simple and
at the same time a remarkable application of the principle I have
tried to give exposition to here. I doubt whether the kind, genial
schoolmaster had ever read Heusinger's essay or had ever heard
his name. I do not think he himself appreciated how scientific,
how in accord with the best knowledge of to-day, the lesson he
gave in reading to the lowest class really was. The spirit of that
little village school, the work and the relations between teacher and
pupils, were most beautiful and ideal. In three visits to Germany
I never saw any other school comparable with it. Instruction by
means of orderly activity, and much of it, were the aim. Activity
was not suppressed ; it was directed and controlled and made to

64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

help powerfully in securing that equipment of knowledge for
which schools are established. The reading lesson I have re-
ferred to was given to the lowest class, with one little boy in it
not yet five, which the master had allowed to enter.

The reader will assent, I have no doubt, when I say that learn-
ing to read makes a severe demand upon the attention, and there
is perhaps no other subject, when we consider the way it is usu-
ally taught, that tires the pupil so quickly, simply because we do
not provide for the employment of the energy that must be dis-
charged into other channels. The act of recognizing and learn-
ing new words uses only a small part of the energy which the
various groups of nerve cells are constantly accumulating in tha
healthy and growing child. Now this gentle, sunny German
schoolmaster, who was every whit a man, focused the attention of
his little class upon the words he wished that day to teach them,
and added interest and delight to the exercise because he made
other demands than those upon the eye and the voice and the ear.
There were five words in the lesson, and the lesson lasted just five
minutes, after which the little class went to a table in another
part of the room and took up number work. The words of the
reading lesson were Hut, Rad, Fisch, Topf, Sichel. The letters
were printed on pieces of cardboard about two inches and a half
square, and these were placed in the shallow trough of the black-
board in the order demanded by the words. Each pupil when
called upon made a vigorous striking gesture as he pointed to
each letter, giving at the same time the sound of the letter.
When he had sounded each letter of the word in this manner he
made another gesture, this time from left to right as if to blend
all the sounds, pronouncing the word as he made the gesture.
Then the little group in concert spelled and pronounced the word
in the same fashion. The next pupil went through the same ex-
ercise with the second word, and so on for each pupil. Sometimes
the master would tip the letters of a word over on to the floor and
direct one of the pupils to pick them up and put them back in
proper order; or he would take the letter cards, mix them up,
and direct a pupil to put them back in the trough in their proper
order.

In the Heusinger School, lately organized to give application
to these principles, this plan of letting children point singly and
then together to the letters of words written on the board has
been used as one way of providing motor activity while teaching
beginners to read. But variety is necessary, and as another way
of securing this the pupil, when he has read his sentence, goes to
the blackboard and writes it, then to the table, picks out the
printed or script letters according as he has been directed, and
forms on a tablet these letters into the sentence, and then takes

THE MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN TEACHING. 65

tliis to the teacher for her approval. If it seems necessary to have
the child write the same sentence several times, the mere matter of
directing him to write the sentence on one board, then to go to
the next board and write it, and then back to the first to write
it a third time, gives him pleasure, enhances his interest, and
strengthens his power to make effort. And thus much orderly-
activity is combined with all reading exercises. I may remark in
passing that during the child's first year at school he is kept in
his seat less than one fourth of the time. The desk, if the matter
is not closely watched, proves a fatal obstacle to the employment
of the child's motor energy, not only in the first year but in the
succeeding years.

Arithmetic is a subject which presents large opportunities for
the employment of the motor activities in teaching it, and the
advocates of manual training ought to have shown us long ago
how nearly the whole of arithmetic can be taught through man-
ual-training exercises. Such a correlation is possible. But those
schools which have stood for manual training from the first, and
which possess to-day magnificent equipments, seem not to have
apprehended that these two subjects of their curriculum can be
made to go hand in hand. Because of their opportunities they
should have worked out for the benefit of the educational world
a method of teaching arithmetic and at the same time manual
training in wood and metals.

But more convenient materials than wood or metal are at our
command for the ordinary schoolroom. Paper and cardboard
admit of tridimensional constructions in great variety, and by the
folding and cutting of paper -all necessary space- forms of two
dimensions are easily made. Then, too, the floor, and even the
conventional blackboard, can be brought into much larger requi-
sition for the drawing of plans and diagrams. Scales and weights,
measures of capacity, and other concrete objects and appliances
can be brought into service. Moreover, buying, measuring, and
selling should have a place. By the use of all these accessories,
in graded exercises throughout the whole course of arithmetic
from the class of beginners to the class completing the study,
large employment can be given to the motor activities. Such
procedure would render the instruction in arithmetic less formal
and more informing, and would incite a greater degree of interest
in pupils.

Inventional geometry is a subject which is regarded by all
who have had experience in teaching it as a most interesting and
educative study.*

The series of problems devised by William George Spencer

* See Popular Science Monthly, January, 1889.

66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

stand pre-eminently above any other series yet published. The
little book exemplifies most thoroughly the principle of appercep-
tion. Its exercises are very carefully graded. The steps are for
the most part just diflficult enough, so that the pupil is able, by
using the ideas he has already gained, and the power he has ac-
quired in gaining those ideas, to solve the next step. The book
is based upon the heuristic or inventive method of teaching, and
is a remarkable example of this. These factors unquestionably
contribute much to the delight which pupils find in this study.
But these factors, valuable as they are, are not sufficient to ac-
count for the command which pupils possess over the knowledge
gained and their power to revive that knowledge and use it, as
well as to find interest in it long after they have passed their
examinations and have laid the study aside. There is another
potent factor assisting these. The exercises call into use a very
important part of the motor side. The pupil is continually busy
with his hands as he brings into requisition ruler, compasses,
pencil, pen, etc. The hands and the eye work in harmonious con-
junction, and thus important motor elements become constituent
parts of the notions and judgments acquired. An augmented
power of perception, and consequently greater stimulation, re-
sults, and because of this the pupil produces forms which would
not be produced if he studied printed diagrams and tried to build
these up in imagination. Accordingly, his judgments of the re-
lations of lines, angles, surfaces, planes, solids, and areas are mul-
tiplied to an enormous extent.

The last application I shall point out is in a branch of study
where the employment of the motor side would be least thought
of, and where it would lessen the burdens of pupils and preclude
the discomfiture of teachers. The branch of study referred to is
that of modern languages. Books are the repositories of knowl-
edge, we have been told, but that is no reason why the pupil should
begin and end his acquirement of a modern language by closely
adhering to the pages of a text-book. I trust the reader will not
misinterpret me. I do not wish to abolish text-books. I would
not, however, by their use hold the child down to one narrow
avenue of acquirement. The printed page is greatly like a photo-
graph— it gives but one point of view. It must, however, be con-
ceded in this connection that there are a few, a very small per-
centage, of those who enter upon the study of a foreign language
that apparently get on easily with acquirement from the printed
page. Most teachers of the languages doubtless belong to this
class, but that is no reason why the method by which they learned
should hold sway. The fact is that a large majority of students
do find this way of acquirement very hard, and many become dis-
couraged and give up effort. I think it will be conceded that the

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 67

principal factor in learning a foreign language is manifold asso-
ciation. The vocabularies in text-books are printed with the
English equivalent after each word. The pupil is required to
learn and recite those vocabularies and then to apply the knowl-
edge in reading and writing sentences. It must be apparent that
this method affords but a narrow ground of association, and diffi-
cult recollection is, of course, inevitable. It has been shown that
when foreign words are printed and are followed by a picture of
the object instead of the equivalent word in the vernacular, mem-
ory is largely aided.

Excellent as is this plan, however, it can not be used in con-
nection with all the parts of speech, but must be confined prin-
cipally to one class of words. When, however, we make use of
the motor side, first creating through this means the idea in the
mind of the pupil and afterward giving, in the foreign tongue, the
expression of this idea without the employment of English as an
intermediary, we are not only taking the most direct way to lead
the pupil to understand and think according to the idiom of the
language he wishes to learn, but we are also economizing mental
effort on his part, because the largest acquirement results from
the effort expended. In a future article I purpose to discuss more
fully this particular topic, and to describe some experiments now
being made for the purpose of developing a method of teaching
German according to this principle.

DOUBLE PERSONALITY.

By Pbop. WILLIAM EOMAINE NEWBOLD.

BEFORE discussing the conception of double personality, it
may be as well briefly to review the conceptions of which I
have so far made use. I have held that the human mind must be
conceived as a complex system of elements which is capable of
greater or less degrees of disruption or disordination without the
total destruction of its component elements. Disordination often
takes place normally while falling asleep; it can be artificially
produced by the use of certain drugs, and, in some persons, by
concentration of attention ; it is also found in some diseases, nota-
bly epilepsy and hysteria. In disordination the dissociated ele-
ments which remain work out their normal results with more
fatal precision than usual ; from this fact spring the phenomena
of suggestibility, trance, and ecstasy, and some forms of hallu-
cination and automatism. Frequently the dissociated elements
recombine in new forms, some of the constituents of the former
consciousness being omitted and new ones appearing ; this gives

68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rise to secondary states of all kinds, such as somnambulisms and
successive modifications of the self.

The very conception of disordination involves the notion that
mind may exist in forms very different from those with which
we are familiar. For the present I shall limit the word " con-
sciousness" to such an orderly system as yours or mine. The
disordinated condition I would describe as "amorphous mind"
— what I mean by that I will try to show a little further on.

In my last paper I discussed three typical cases in which
the elements of personality seemed to have recombined in new
forms, but throughout that discussion I tacitly assumed that
the elements which were peculiar to one system became extinct
upon the formation of another. From our present point of view
this is the most natural assumption, and there was, in those
cases, no evidence to the contrary. But that assumption is not
essential to the theory, and often seems inconsistent with the
facts.

Apparent evidence for the existence of mind in connection
with a body of which the consciousness belonging to that body
has no knowledge is not unusual, and I have given some illustra-
tions of it in my recent papers. But the interpretation of such
phenomena is not easy.

Since our first-hand knowledge of mind is nearly always in
the form of a personal consciousness or self, one is at first inclined
to ascribe such manifestations to a self. But since they are de-
nied by the normal self, it would then be necessary to assume the
existence of a second self in order to account for them, and this
second self is conceived by some as existing beneath the level of
the normal self and as having its own memories, interests, hopes,
and fears, as acquainted with the existence of the upper self,
and as bearing to it a relation sometimes hostile, sometimes be-
nignant.

Of this theory and its congeners I shall have more to say at an-
other time ; for the present I must confine myself to that which I
am developing. According to it the evidence which is sufficient to
establish the existence of a mental event may be and usually is
wholly insufficient to establish that of a personality or self. When
an automatic hand writes a message of which the upper conscious-
ness knows nothing — a point, by the way, very hard to prove — we
have evidence for the existence of a mental event ; but if we
ascribe it to a person of any sort, we are practically adding to it,
without evidence, a multitude of mental events combined in defi-
nite ways.

Yet if a personality is no more than a system of mental states
organized in a certain way, why should not the elements dissoci-
ated from the upper consciousness recombine and form a second-

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 69

ary self which may exist simultaneously with the upper self, and
in a way beneath it as above described ?

There is good reason for thinking that they do, to some ex-
tent— to what extent is a question more easily asked than answered.
In the first place, if the two groups are to be entirely distinct,
there scarcely seems to be enough mental material to go around.
The primary system would be so maimed and the secondary so
incomplete that one could scarcely regard either as a full-fledged
personality. If certain elements are to be simultaneously held in
common by both groups the case would be different, but, so far
as I know, there is no good evidence for this. In the second
place, the will, or sense of effort, which I believe to be the essence
of the self, raises a serious difficulty. We practically know noth-
ing of its nature. The rival theories may be regarded as falling
under two heads — those that make will but a name for the control
exerted by the more complex ideas over the more simple, and
those that make it something absolutely unique in mental life,
and in no respect analogous to the control exerted by ideas,
whether complex or simple. If we adopt the first, it is hard to
believe that the secondary system could attain the degree of com-
plexity necessary to the manifestation of will without destroying
the complexity of the primary ; if we adopt the second, it is as
hard to believe that two of these unique phenomena should appear
in one body. If the secondary system manifested a will of its
own, we should expect to find that the primary had lost it, and
then we would not have two simultaneous selves, but merely suc-
cessive modifications of the original self, as in the cases discussed
in my last paper.

Turning now from the abstract to the concrete, I shall give
some of the facts upon which these conceptions are based. First
I shall take up the case of Prof. Pierre Janet's famous patient
Lucie, and show how he tried to prove in her the existence of sub-
conscious states, and how he apparently succeeded in organizing
them into a sort of dream self which existed only in his presence,
faded away when he departed, and finally vanished when Lucie
recovered her health. Then I shall try to throw a little light
upon the actual character of this " amorphous mind " and the re-
lations which may exist between secondary states and the primary
system.

When Lucie fell into Prof. Janet's hands,* she was about nine-
teen years of age. She was intelligent, quick-witted, hot-tempered,
and had a strong will of her own. She had wholly lost her sensa-

The mcst detailed accounts of Lucie's case are in Prof. Janet's articles in the Re-
vue Fhilosophique, vol. xxii, pp. 577-592 ; vol. xxiii, pp. 449-572. More facts are to be
found in his work V Automatisme Pnychologique and in his other writings.

70 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions of touch, pain and temperature and all those sensations from
the muscles and joints which make one aware of the position of
one's limbs, so that, as she herself said, she " lost her legs in bed."
Her other sensations were normal. She was subject to frightful
hystero-epileptic convulsions which came on every day and lasted
about five hours. During them she seemed delirious and talked
constantly about men hidden behind curtains, but could not make
intelligible what it was that troubled her. Her memory was
good on the whole, but she never recalled anything that happened
during these attacks, nor could she remember ever having had the
sensations which she had lost.

When hypnotized, she was extremely suggestible, performed
posthypnotic suggestions with fatal precision, but never seemed
conscious of what she luas doing. For example, she would carry
her hands above her head in obedience to such a suggestion and
yet stoutly maintain that they were in her lap. The same results
could be got without hypnotizing her by simply distracting her
attention. Some one would engage her in lively conversation
while Prof. Janet whispered a command in her ear ; the command
would be obeyed, but Lucie would profess ignorance both of the
command and of its execution. After a while the mere tone of
command produced the same effect. Lucie would hear all that
Prof. Janet said to her before and after the command, but the
command itself was unheard by her, although invariably obeyed.

The significant feature of these experiments is that commands
not heard by Lucie were obeyed by her body. In like manner,
suggestions given through the sense of touch, which Lucie had
wholly lost, were obeyed. If Prof. Janet clinched her fist, it
would strike out and her face would assume an angry expression ;
if he carried her fingers to her lips, the lips smiled and the fingers
threw kisses. Signals of the most complex kind were obeyed in
the same way. She was told to perform a posthypnotic sugges-
tion when Prof. Janet had clapped his hands twelve times. He
then clapped his hands five times gently and at a distance from
her while she was talking with some one else ; he asked her what
he had been doing and she could not tell him. He clapped his
hands again and asked what that was. A handclap, she said.
After waiting until her attention was again distracted he clapped
them six times more, and the suggestion was obeyed. Lucie
could remember having heard only one of the claps, but all twelve
were in some way counted. He varied this experiment in many
ways, but always with the same result.

Believing, then, that mental states really existed in Lucie's
head, so to speak, of which she knew nothing, Prof. Janet next
endeavored to get them more fully expressed than was possible
in gestures and obedience. Since all talking was done by Lucie,

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 71

lie tried writing, and found, to his delight, that when her anaes-
thetic hand was hidden from her sight by a screen he could get
answers to his questions in writing without Lucie's knowing that
it was writing at all, much less what it said. At first it showed
little or no spontaneity, and unless the content of the writing was
determined by his suggestions it was limited to " Yes," " No," and
" I don't know." He asked for a letter, and it wrote an apologetic
refusal of an invitation ; he asked it to solve little arithmetical
problems, and if they were not very difficult it did so correctly
while Lucie was talking or reading aloud or otherwise occupied.
But there was never a sign of a self-conscious personality in the
narrower sense of the word. The writer did not claim to be
anybody in particular, and volunteered no information about
herself.

One day Prof. Janet undertook to inquire into this point, as
follows : " Do you hear me ? " " No." " But you must, to an-
swer." " Of course." " Then how do you do it ? " "I do not
know." " There must be some one who hears me ? " " Yes."
" Who, then ? " " Some other person than Lucie." " Ah, some
one else. Shall we name her Blanche ? " " Yes, Blanche." But
Lucie abhorred the name Blanche, and when the writing was
shown to her she flew into a rage and tried to tear it up. So the
name was changed. " What will you have ? " asked Prof. Janet.
" No name." " But it will be more convenient." " Very well,
Adrienne." " Well, Adrienne, do you hear me ? " " Yes."

It seems probable that the notion of being a person was first
suggested by Prof. Janet. However that may be, thenceforward
all these automatic phenomena seemed to become crystallized
about the name Adrienne and the voice and touch of Prof. Janet,
and were readily evoked by him but by no one else.

Having thus got access to the secondary system, the next point
was to determine what it comprised. In brief, it was found that
all Lucie had lost, whether spontaneously or by suggestion, Adri-
enne had, and, vice versa, whatever Adrienne got, whether spon-
taneously or by suggestion, Lucie lost.

Lucie had lost her sense of touch, but Adrienne's was perfect.
Suggestions given through the sense of touch were executed, but
made no impression upon Lucie's consciousness ; Adrienne claimed
to experience the corresponding mental states. Prof. Janet
clinched the left fist, and it struck out ; he then asked the right
hand, " What are you doing ? " " I am furious." " With whom ? "

" With F ." " Why ? " "I do not know, but I am angry."

Then he unclasped the fist and put the fingers to the lips — the
lips smile and the fingers throw kisses. " Adrienne, are you still
angry ? " " No, it is gone." " And now ? " "I am in a good
humor." " And Lucie ? " " She knows nothing — she is asleep."

72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Lucie remembered nothing of her hypnotic states and the sug-
gestions given in them, but Adrienne could tell all about both.
Lucie knew nothing about her convulsive attacks. When Adri-
enne was questioned during a convulsion she could only write,
" I am afraid, I am afraid," but afterward she gave an account
of them which was intelligible enough, although a little inco-
herent. " I see a curtain first, and then hidden men, who frighten
me. In the country once, at grandmother's house during the
holidays, two men came ; then in the garden a big curtain, which
they put on the trees and went behind it, which frightened us,
and since then I have always been afraid." Lucie knew she had
had a fright when about seven years old, but never could tell
what it was. Prof. Janet does not say whether he verified this
story or not, but seems to regard it as true.

So of states artificially dissociated from Lucie by suggestion.
Bits of paper were put in Lucie's lap, some of which were marked,
and she was told that she could not see those that were marked.
If Adrienne were asked what was in Lucie's lap, she would de-
scribe those only which Lucie could not see. In this way Adri-
enne was proved capable of distinguishing odd numbers from even
and of performing other simple judgments. Whenever a sug-
gestion was given to Adrienne, it and all that it involved were
withdrawn from Lucie. While Adrienne was writing the num-
bers Lucie could not count, and while Adrienne was writing the
alphabet Lucie " had forgotten it." In such cases as these the fact
might easily escape notice, but wheh the elements thus subtracted
from Lucie's consciousness were such as she would be likely to
miss, she supplied their place by a sort of dream of her own.
Thus, when Adrienne was told to put her arms above her head,
Lucie lost all consciousness of their true position and said they
were in her lap. When Prof. Janet established this fact, it sup-
plied the explanation of an occurrence which had puzzled him
not a little at the time it happened. Adrienne was told to come
to Dr. Povilevitch's house at a certain time, and Lucie's body
came. But Lucie believed herself still to be at home, and mis-
took the furniture for her own, while Adrienne knew perfectly
where she was.

Prof. Janet desired to reverse the relative positions of the two
systems so as to make Adrienne speak and Lucie write, and, find-
ing that his suggestions to this end were unavailing, he put Lucie
into a deep sleep to make her more suggestible. After sleeping a
half hour she awoke, and to his surprise he found that he had
neither Lucie nor Adrienne, but a new personality derived from
the coalescence of both. This personality called herself Adrienne,
but had all Lucie's memories and sensations in addition to those
of Adrienne. She was more vivacious and intelligent than Lucie,

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 73

could not be distracted, and only laughed at Prof. Janet's attempts
to give her suggestions. This new synthesis lasted only about
twenty minutes ; it was followed by a deep sleep of about fifteen
minutes, and then Lucie awoke in her former condition.

At first, as I have said, Adrienne showed little spontaneity,
but as time went on she acquired memories and developed more
character. Once she got angry with Prof. Janet, and for some
time all the tokens that showed her presence — automatic writing,
catalepsy, and suggestibility — disappeared. When she was recon-
ciled they came back again.

Adrienne existed after her first creation about six weeks.
Then Prof. Janet undertook to cure Lucie by suggesting against
her hysterical symptoms; little by little they disappeared, and
with them Adrienne faded out of existence. " At last," says Prof.
Janet, "one day I called upon Adrienne — it was Lucie that re-
plied, laughing a good deal and asking whom I called Adrienne.
A few days later the hypnotic sleep, which had ceased to be inter-
esting, entirely disappeared, and it was found impossible to get
Lucie asleep by any means.''

For eight months Lucie was quite well. Then she had a
relapse and Adrienne reappeared. For five days she remained
evocable and then disappeared for the last time.

Since that time Prof. Janet has verified with many other pa-
tients the conclusions which he reached in the case of Lucie, and
most of them have been confirmed in greater or less degree by
other investigators in France, Austria, England, and America.
But Lucie remains the best illustration of apparently simultane-
ous " double personality " that has yet been described.

We can not be too cautious in trying to picture to ourselves
what the condition of this secondary system which called itself
Adrienne really was, just as we can not be too cautious in trying
to picture to ourselves the minds of the lower animals. It is much
easier to say what Adrienne was not than what she was.

She was not a continuously existing, self-conscious being.
She did not exist, in all probability, before Prof. Janet questioned
the hand about the writer's name. She did not exist after
Prof. Janet had left Lucie. No one but he could evoke Adrienne.
Whenever he came into Lucie's presence a marked change came
over her — she lost her vivacity, appeared subdued, almost timid,
and then Adrienne could be elicited. It would seem that Prof.
Janet was like a great magnet about which these dissociated sub-
conscious elements gathered in a sort of dream self, but in his
absence they again relapsed into their former incoherent con-
dition.

What were they, then ? Can we form any conception of what
this " amorphous mind " is like ?

VOL. L. 8

74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I think we can to some degree and in some cases. In our
own familiar dream life we have precisely those conditions real-
ized which we suppose obtain in the subconscious realm of a
hysteric. Nearly all sensations and most memories and ideas are
withdrawn and the fragments remaining work out their own
bizarre results free from the control of the organized system. We
shall not be far wrong, I think, if we conceive of these subcon-
scious states as a mere aggregation of very incoherent dreams.
They are probably very much more incoherent than most of the
dreams which we remember, although not more so than those
that we forget. Under the guidance of a hypnotic suggestion,
and under some other circumstances into which I can not now
enter, they may become coherent to almost any degree.

There is a good deal of direct evidence for this. Prof. Janet
found that he could sometimes, by awaking Lucie in the midst of
a hallucination which he had suggested to her, get her to recall it,
and she always spoke of it as a dream. Prof. Janet once tried *
some experiments upon a patient whom he had not seen for some
months. To his surprise she did not seem to understand him.
When he asked why, she told him that she was too far away to

understand ; that M. X had sent her a month ago to Algiers,

and he must bring her back before she could understand. This

was found to be true : M. X had told her she was in Algiers,

and had forgotten to remove the suggestion.

Another case will serve both to illustrate this point and also to
introduce the question as to the relation between the primary and
secondary systems. They need not be entirely distinct. Some-
times, as in this next case, the mere existence of the one may
seem to disturb the other in some vague fashion, at other times
scraps or fragments or consequences of either may appear in the
other without their origin being recognized, and in still other
cases the two appear to coalesce sufficiently for the one to recall
the other while yet they remain dynamically distinct.

One of Mr. Gurney's patients f was told to write automatically
while reading aloud. The result was that both reading and writ-
ing were imperfect and confused. He was then hypnotized again
and asked what he had been trying to do. He said, " Trying to
write, * It has left off snowing.'" Then he was asked if he had
been reading, and said : "Reading? No, I haven't been reading.
Something seemed to disturb me; something seemed to move
about in front of me, so that I got back into bed again." " Did
not Mr. Gurney hold a book and make you read aloud ?" "No.
Somebody kept moving about. I did not like the looks of them.

* V Aulomatisme Psychohgiquey second edition, p. 328.

f Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv, p. 319.

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 75

Kept wandering to and fro. Horrible, awful. I thought to myself,
* I'll get into bed.' It looked so savage it quite unnerved me.''
Here the reciprocal interference seems quite clear, and the sub-
conscious state, instead of evolving on the lines laid down by the
suggestion, has been perturbed and developed into a vague dream.

Another good case of interference is given by Prof. Janet : *

" M came to me one evening complaining of sundry troubles,

and after putting her into her second state I talked to her and gave
her some advice, then wakened her without thinking of repeating
the same advice in her waking state. Some days later she wrote
me the following letter : * I can not make out what is the matter
with me. I must be very queer. I understand with difficulty,
and it seems to me that everybody is looking at me, perhaps be-
cause I express myself badly. I feel absolutely nothing, and I let
nearly everything fall, which makes me seem very stupid. I can
not work, and if any one in the house should notice it I should be
the loser. I may be wrong, but I have a dim idea that I ought to
do something. For two days I have tried in every way to discover
what it can be.'" All this annoyance was easily removed by
destroying the subconscious suggestion.

Upon this conception of the interference between the two
states without coalescence and without the formation of a mem-
ory bond, Prof. Janet has based a most interesting and important
theory as to the origin of the hysterical and nervous troubles
which so often follow a severe accident or fright where no actual
injury can be detected. It is well known that such an experience
often becomes a conscious fixed idea, and "haunts" one. But
sometimes where there is no conscious " haunting," and even
where the experience is forgotten, the same results are traceable.
In these cases he believes that the fixed idea exists subconsciously
as a continuous or frequently recurring dream.

Thus, Vel is a young man of twenty-four.f About every

five minutes while awake and often while asleep he expels his
breath violently through the left nostril and the muscles of the
right cheek are contracted. He has had this spasm for eight
years and can not explain why. He thinks it may be connected
with a severe haemorrhage from the nose which he had as a
child. He is easily hypnotized and then affirms most positively
that there is an obstruction in his nose which he must get rid of.
" No matter when he is put to sleep, he makes the same state-
ment; it is probable that this idea has existed more or less clearly
in the patient's mind, and in any case unknown to him, for eight
years. This dream was modified and suppressed very easily in
the somnambulic state."

* Lcs Accidents Meidaux, p. 13*7. •{• Ibid., p. 102.

-je POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" A subconscious dream,* in which the movement of a limb is
represented, tends to some extent to invade the primary con-
sciousness and deprive it of control over that limb. Le

dreams that he is fighting with a thief, and keeps off his assailant
with his right hand ; the thief puts his knee on his left side and

clutches his neck with his hand. Upon awaking, Le has a

hypersBsthetic point on the left side, pressure upon which is suffi-
cient to bring on the complete hallucination of the scene, and has,
further, an anaesthetic spot upon the neck with complete insen-
sibility and almost complete paralysis of the right arm. "Why do
we find these two symptoms ? Because these sensations of pres-
sure on the neck and movement of the arm form, so to speak, part
of the dream, are absorbed by it, and are no longer at the dis-
posal of the self."

Sometimes we meet with cases in which the secondary system
is not subconscious, but blends sufficiently with the primary sys-
tem to be recalled, and at the same time retains its independent
character. The experiences of Dr. Cocke and of Anna Katharina
Emmerich, to which I allude in my paper on Hypnotic States,
Trance, and Ecstasy, are of this type. Similar cases are not infre-
quent in insanity. One of the best accounts from normal life that
I have seen is given by the late Robert Louis Stevenson in a let-
ter to Mr. F. W. H. Myers, dated July 14, 1892 : f

" During an illness at Nice I lay awake a whole night in ex-
treme pain. From the beginning of the evening one part of my
mind became possessed of a notion so grotesque and shapeless that
it may best be described as a form of words. I thought the pain
was, or was connected with, a wisp or coil of some sort ; I knew
not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was, and cared not ;
only I thought if the two ends were brought together the pain
would cease. Now all the time, with aiiother part of my mind,
which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the
absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired sanity,
and was engaged with my other self in perpetual conflict. Myself
had nothing more at heart than to keep from my wife, who was
nursing me, any hint of this ridiculous hallucination ; the other
was bound that she should be told of it and ordered to effect the
cure. I believe it must have been well on in the morning before
the fever (or the other fellow) triumphed, and I called my wife to
my bedside, seized her savagely by the wrist, and looking on her
with a face of fury, cried, ' Why do you not put the two ends
together and put me out of pain ?' "

In another illness, at Sydney, "^Tie other fellow had an explana-

* Op. cit., p. 132.

f Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. ix, p. 9.

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. yj

tion ready for my sufferings, of which I can only say that it had
something to do with the navy, that it was sheer undiluted non-
sense, had neither end nor beginning, and was insusceptible of
being expressed in words. Myself knew this ; yet I gave way, and
my watcher was favored with some reference to the navy. Nor
only that : the other fellow was annoyed — or I was annoyed — on
two inconsistent accounts ; first, because he had failed to make
his meaning comprehensible, and, second, because the nurse dis-
played no interest. Tlie other fellow would have liked to explain
further, but viyself was much hurt at having been got into this
false position, and would be led no further."

Now, when such a disordinated system obtains complete con-
trol of the body, the patient is wholly insane. Not, of course,
that every case of insanity belongs to this type, but that every
case of this type belongs to insanity. The normal consciousness
is then supposed to be wholly extinct, but there is no reason for
believing that it necessarily must be. Take for example a case
observed by the late Dr. Ira Barrows, of Providence, R. I., and
printed by Prof. James.* The patient was a girl of nineteen. I
make only a few extracts from Dr. Barrows's notes.

"September 17, 1860. — Wild with delirium. Tears her hair,
pillowcases, bedclothes, both sheets, night dress, all to pieces.
Her right hand prevents her left hand, by seizing and holding it,
from tearing out her hair, but she tears her clothes with her left
hand and teeth.

" 29t'h. — Complains of great pain in right arm, more and more
intense, when suddenly it falls down by her side. She looks at it
in amazement. Thinks it belongs to some one else ; is positive it
is not hers. . . . She bites it, pounds it, pricks it, and in many
ways seeks to drive it from her. She calls it ' Stump, old
Stump ! '

" January 10, 1862. — When her delirium is at its height, as well
as at all other times, her right hand is rational, asking and answer-
ing questions in writing ; giving directions ; trying to prevent
her tearing her clothes ; when she pulls out her hair, it seizes and
holds her left hand ; when she is asleep, it carries on conversation
the same ; writes poetry ; never sleeps ; acts the part of the nurse
as far as it can ; pulls the bedclothes over the patient, if it can
reach them, while uncovered ; raps on the headboard to awaken
her mother (who always sleeps in the room) if anything occurs,
as spasms, etc."

" Old Stump " made no statements, so far as the account goes,
about its own identity. It always spoke of the patient in the third
person as " Anna," but that is common in changes of personality.

* Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, vol. i, p. 552.

78 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Dr. Barrows himself believed that " Old Stump " possessed more
intelligence and knowledge than the patient ever had, but the
record is not extensive enough to pronounce on that point. It
seems most probable that " Old Stump" expressed what remained
of the patient's sane self, which still existed, although the inco-
herent mass had control of the rest of her body.

In the case of successive personalities, if no memory is re-
tained, each synthesis has to learn of the existence of the others
as of third persons, and may cherish friendly or unfriendly feel-
ings toward them. When memory is retained, if the change is
not very great, the patient often expresses it by saying that he is
" asleep," which is doubtless a phrase borrowed from the hypno-
tizer. According to Prof. Janet,* the more intelligent often say :
"But I am not asleep, it is absurd to say that; only I am changed,
I am queer ; what have you done to me ? " Rose, who has four
or five states, says, " It is always I, but not always the same
thing."

When the change is more extensive, the patient often hesitates
or refuses to claim identity with her own past self. Leonie, an-
other of Prof. Janet's patients, has two other states which can be
evoked successively and which possibly exist simultaneously.
The third, which calls itself Leonore, says of the first : " A good
woman, but pretty stupid ; she is not I " ; while of the second
state — Leontine — she says : " How can you think me like that
madcap ? Happily, I am nothing to her." Leontine several times
wrote letters while Leonie's attention was distracted. One of
these ran as follows : f " My dear good sir : I must tell you that
Leonie really, really makes me suffer a great deal. She can not
sleep, she gives me much trouble ; I shall destroy her ; she makes
me dull, I am also sick and very tired. This is from your most
devoted Leontine." When Leonie discovered these missives she
always destroyed them, so the writer adopted the further plan of
concealing them — with Leonie's own hands, of course — in a pho-
tograph album, into which Leonie never dared look, because it
had once contained the portrait of Dr. Gibert, who used to hyp-
notize her. In short, whenever Leonie fell into a fit of abstrac-
tion, she, or at least her body, was apt to do things which bore
evidence of intelligent purpose and often of wishes very much at
variance with Leonie's.

Subconscious states, which exist at the same time as the upper
consciousness, may cause it many perplexities. Said one patient : J
" ' I can not in the least understand what is going on. For some

* V Automafisme Psychologique, secoDd edition, p. 130. \ Op. cit., p. 321.

X Quoted I'rom Prof. Janet, by Mr. F. W. H. Myers, in the Proceedings of the Society
for Psychical Research, vol. ix, p. 21.

DOUBLE PERSONALITY. 79

time past I have been working in an odd way ; it is no longer I
who am working, but only my hands. They get on pretty well,
but I have no part in what they do. When it is over I do not
recognize my work at all. I see that it is all right ; but I feel
that I am quite incapable of having accomplished it. If any one
said, It is not you who did that ! I would answer, True enough, it
is not I. When I want to sing, it is impossible to me ; yet at other
times I hear my voice singing the song very well. It is certainly
not I who walk ; I feel like a balloon that jumps up and down of
itself. When I want to write I find nothing to say ; my head is
empty, and I must let my hand write what it chooses, and it fi.lls
four pages, and if the stuff is silly I can not help it.' The curious
point is that in this fashion she produces some really good things.
If she makes up a dress or writes a letter, she sometimes shows
real talent, but it is all done in a bizarre way. She looks absorbed
in her work, but yet is unconscious of it ; when she lifts her head
she seems dazed, as if she were coming out of a dream, and
does not recollect what she has been doing. . . . Although she
still has activity, she has no longer the personal consciousness
of this activity, and her acts therefore can no longer be called
voluntary."

I have now briefly analyzed the leading types of what is known
as double or multiple personality. Successive changes of person-
ality are demonstrated facts. That subconscious states of some
sort exist is also exceedingly probable. For the existence of
simultaneous personalities there is also good evidence, and in
some cases I am inclined to admit it. Yet I believe that we can
not be too careful in making use of these conceptions. While the
evidence upon which they are based is stong, it must not be for-
gotten that it is largely selected evidence, that multitudes of cases
remain for which these theories afford no adequate explanation,
and that the metaphysical basis upon which the theory itself rests
is far from finally established. While formulating theories, we
must not become theorists.

Raising bacteria for the general market is an entirely new business
which a large German firm of color manufacturers has recently engaged
in. They advertise that they will deliver, under the name of nitrazin, cul-
tures of bacteria with which to inoculate various leguminous crops, to the
increase of their yield and improvement of their quality. Their stock in-
cludes pure cultivations of nodule organisms suitable to the growth of
seventeen varieties of beans, clover, and other crops of the family men-
tioned. Each bottle is labeled according to the crop for which it is in-
tended, of which the botanical and the German name are given. Sixty-
three cents will procure enough bacteria to inoculate half an acre of
land.

8o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

■ TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES.*

Bt HARKISON ALLEN, M. D.

WE can estimate the popularity of any branch of knowledge
by the interest taken by the public in the lives of the men
who are identified with it. We read with avidity the lightest
details in the careers of military leaders for the glamour which
is attached to war ; but the victories and defeats of students of
Nature pass unregarded.

The mediaeval naturalist was artist and naturalist, or priest
and naturalist. Permit me to quote a passage from Edward
Forbes's Naked-Eyed Medusa : " The genus Sarsia was instituted
by Lesson for a very remarkable Medusa discovered by the emi-
nent naturalist of Norway, whose name it bears ; a philosopher
who, pursuing his researches far away from the world, buried
among the grand solitudes of his magnificent country, where the
pursuit of science is his recreation, and the holy offices of religion
his sacred duty, has nevertheless gained name and fame wher-
ever the study of Nature is followed. The unpretending writings
of this parish priest have become models for the essays of learned
professors in foreign lands, and his discoveries the texts of long
commentaries by experienced physiologists." Father Sars, a
priest and naturalist, appears to have been a representative of the
mediaeval type projected into the nineteenth century. While the
conflict between science and religion is going on, the amenities of
science and religion as exemplified by such a career should be
acknowledged.

I shall sketch briefly the careers of two scientific worthies, one
standing on the threshold of modern times, and the other well
within. I allude to the naturalist and physician in the person of
Sir Thomas Browne, and the naturalist and administrator in that
of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. I shall present their claims as
scientists, for these have been largely ignored.

Sir Thomas Browne was an English provincial physician of the
time of Charles II. He was born in 1605 and died in 1682. We
are informed that modern readers without special preparation can
understand the spirit of this time. But we must acknowledge
Browne is something of a puzzle. It is true we can dip into his
mental life as we can read of an Owen. He is one of us. He
thought and worked as we do. At other times he appears as a
Rosicrucian in his physics — an Aldrovandus in his natural
history.

* An address delivered before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, De-
cember 7, 1894.

TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES.

8i

How pregnant his inquiries ! How trenchant his comments !
A phrase suggests the beginnings of new sciences. His phraseol-
ogy is cumbersome and pedantic, yet in startling ways he will
use poetical expressions in the midst of learned comments that
carry the mind along vistas of the imagination. He was a phy-
sician, and, while giving only his leisure to science and literature,
he became a leading authority in the zoology and botany of Great
Britain. He introduced the word " commensality," now in com-

Thomas Browne.

mon use, to express a state of many living together, as it were, at
the same table. This word is mentioned by Johnson as an ex-
ample of a useful term which if rejected must be supplied by cir-
cumlocution. Browne was a pioneer in the scientific study of
graves and their contents. He appreciated the value of fossils.
He was also a comparative anatomist, and constantly engaged iu
such topics as the anatomy of the horse, the pigeon, the beaver
the badger, the whale. In a note on an autopsy of a spermaceti
whale the following passage occurs : " It contained no less than
sixty feet in length, the head somewhat peculiar, with a large
prominence over the mouth ; teeth only in the lower jaw, received

VOL. L. 9

82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

into fleshy sockets in the upper. The weight of the largest about
two pounds ; no gristly substance in the mouth, commonly called
whalebones ; only two short fins ... on the back ; the eyes but
small." This is a very good note, we think, and written in a
scientific spirit.

He studied animal mechanism, especially the gaits of quadru-
peds and the acts of swimming and floating ; the problems of
right and left handedness ; and the erect figure of man. He tells
us that " tempermental dignotions " can be detected by studying
spots on the finger nails. Physicians even in our own day have
not formulated knowledge on this curious subject. He discovered
the animal soap now called adipocere. " He would have made a
very extraordinary man for the Privy Council," we are told by
his biographer.

A letter of advice to a young physician from Browne gives an
estimate of the reading held to be essential to a medical course
in his day. " Lay your foundation in anatomy." Among authors
he recommends Vesalius, Spigelius, Bartholinus ; and enjoins his
friend to "master Dr. Harvey's piece, the Circulation of the
Blood ; also, to read with care and diligence Sennertus's Insti-
tutes. This done, to see how Institutes are applicable to practice."
It must be remembered that in Browne's day " institutes " in-
cluded physiology. This is all very modern in spirit.

What were the contents of a scientist's mind of the seventeenth
century ? The queries are taken from Sir Thomas's commonplace
book. " Why little lap-dogs have a hole in their heads and often
other little holes out of the place of the sutures ? " " Why a pig's
eyes drop out in roasting rather than other animals ? " " Why a
pig held up by the tail leaves squeaking ? " * " What is the use of
dew claws in dogs ? " " To make trial of this, whether live craw-
fish put into spirits of wine will presently turn red, as though
they had been boiled, and taken out walk about in that color."
Such an experiment reminds us of the famous distich of Peter
Pindar.

Here is another modern touch ! Browne remarks of one of his
writings : " It is done by snatches of time, as medical vacations,
and the fruitless importunity of uroscopy would permit us. And
therefore also, perhaps it hath not found that regular and con-
stant style, those infallible experiments, and those assured deter-
minations, which the subject some time requireth, and might be
expected of others, whose quiet doors and unmolested hours afford
no such distractions." The "importunity of uroscopy" is per-

* Charles Waterton asks, " What is the use of classification, when no one can tell us
why most birds drink, by alteinately sipping and raising the head between the sips, and
others like the pigeon by prolonged immersion of the bill ? "

TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES. 83

haps less " fruitless " than it was in Sir Thomas's time, but physi-
cians who chance to have scientific tastes will repeat the plaint of
envy for those favored ones " whose quiet doors and unmolested
hours afford no distractions."

Browne wrote in addition to scientific work two remarkable
general treatises — the Religio Medici and Christian Morals ; and
indeed on these accounts he has been absolutely appropriated
by the literary critic. It is necessary, as we have said, to secure
a true point of observation in judging of the science of Sir
Thomas Browne so as not to be unfair to him. It is equally
necessary to resist the claim of professional authors that Browne
is simply a man of letters. Mr. Simon Wilkins, in speaking of
the early death of Thomas, the second son of Sir Thomas Browne,
says that if he had not been cut off early, his character and talents
would have secured to him in the profession he had chosen a dis-
tinction not inferior to that his father had attained in the more
quiet paths of philosophy and science. But this is a single voice.
It is likely that many who hear these words will learn for the first
time that Sir Thomas Browne was a savant as well as a literary
man. Because Browne took no interest in the theological and
political controversies of his time, the writer of the biographical
notice in the Encyclopcedia Britannica calls him a psychological
curiosity. Allibone in his Dictionary of Authors does not allude to
his science. In Johnson's celebrated life of Browne (it is strange
that with such lack of sympathy he should have written at all)
occurs this passage in reference to the Hydrotophia or Urn
Burial : " It is indeed like other treatises of antiquity rather for
curiosity than use, for it is of small importance to know which
nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into
the sea, or which gave them to the birds and beasts ; when the
practice of cremation began, or when it was disused ; whether the
bones of different persons were mingled in the same urn ; what
oblations were thrown into the pyre or how the ashes of the body
were distinguished from those of other substances."' We are
properly instructed to bow before the great moralist and thinker,
Samuel Johnson ; but for such an estimate as the above (and it is
by no means an isolated one in which Johnson held all knowledge
of the exact sciences) we can not be alone in confessing to some
impatience !

No more striking figure is met with in modern biography
than that of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. He was the first to
give the learned world knowledge of the mysterious East as ex-
pressed in Java and Sumatra. He, like Sir Thomas Browne, has
been strangely misjudged by the literary critic.

Raffles was born in Jamaica in 1781, but was educated in Eng-

84

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

land. He was the only surviving son of Benjamin Raffles, one of
the oldest captains in the West Indian trade at Port London. His
school education ceased at the early age of fourteen years, when
he was removed from the seminary and placed as extra clerk in
the East India House. He never overcame the deficiencies aris-
ing from imperfect early education. The habit of study which in
after years made him remarkable for his attainments was due to

utilizing the moments
which he described as
" stolen " either before
office hours or after
them in the evening.

In 1805 the Court of
Directors determined
to make an establish-
ment at Penang, a
small island on the west
coast of the Malacca
Peninsula. Raffles was
appointed assistant
secretary to Sir Hugh
Inglis, the representa-
tive of the Court of Di-
rectors in the East In-
dia Board. He was at
this time but twenty-
four years of age. In
1811 — namely, when he
was thirty years of age
— he was appointed by
the directors agent to
the governor-general.
He suggested to the
Indian Government
the conquest of Java,
and after this was accomplished in 1811 he was appointed lieu-
tenant-governor. ■

The Spice Islands, so called because they yielded cloves, nut-
meg, coriander, mace, ginger, pepper, and cinnamon, were so impor-
tant to Europe that their possession was eagerly sought for by the
maritime powers. As condiments the demand for many of the
spices is much less now than formerly was the case. The esteem
in which ginger and pepper especially are yet held is low in com-
parison with that entertained in the period from the fifteenth to
the beginning of the present century. Are the relatively few
dishes into which these spices enter to be regarded as survivals of

Thomas Stamford Rapfles.

TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES. 85

the diet of a Charles V ? Is the art of cooking so far advanced
that we are no longer obliged to cover up taint with aromatics ?
But after answering such questions, and after making allowance
for changes in taste, it is a striking fact that spices should at any
time have entered into questions of state policies.

As an antithesis to an active life Herrick says of a rustic
hero :

Thou never plow'st the ocean's foam

To seek and bring- roug-h pepper home,

Nor to the Eastern Ind dost rove

To bring from thence the scorched clove.

Was not the zest to control spice due to its use, not as a condi-
ment as it is with us, but as a preservative ? Ice appears to have
had a small place in preserving perishable articles. Salt is a
coarse agent and impairs both the flavor and digestibility of food
when used in sufficient quantity to arrest decomposition, and with
the exception of the olive is not applicable to fruits. Spices are
highly antiseptic. Oil of cloves is used by microscopists in pre-
serving sections of tissue. Oil of cinnamon is one of the most
valuable antiseptics in the modern materia medica. Spices in-
crease the preservative power of sugar, an article of luxury in the
middle ages and far out of the reach of the masses. If this view
of the importance of spices be conceded, we can understand their
value as something over and above their use to improve a defect-
ive cuisine, increase flavor, and add variety to diet. We must
also remember that while the attempts to find new routes to
the Spice Islands by sailing west failed, the early voyagers dis-
covered in the American tropics vast tracts of arable land which
were adapted to the growing of many of the spices; they also
succeeded in bringing to the European market new condiments
in capsicum and allspice. Besides this, rapid transportation
places fresh fruit early in the market, and the discoveries of
chemistry have done away with the necessity of resorting to
spices for preservatives, benzoic acid alone supplanting most of
them in the keeping of vegetable products. Thus geographical
and chemical sciences have brought about changes in national
policy.

While no future administrator is likely to repeat the experience
of a Raffles in giving excuse for European control of the Spice
Islands, the role that he played was one but little less in impor-
tance to the East (especially in Java) than that of the Dutch
administrators who preceded and followed him.

Raffles secured Singapore in 1818, and thus transferred to Brit-
ish interests the waters by which the best passage from the Indian
seas to the Pacific Ocean is possible. His opportunity came with
the Napoleonic wars, by which the loss of Holland to the French

86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

threw the Eastern possessions of the Dutch as fruits of conquest
into the hands of the English.*

Raffles encouraged missionary work, and in 1821 endeavored
to suppress slavery in the island of Pulo Nias. The circum-
stances attending this traffic were no less revolting than those
that marked it on the coast of Africa. But the East India Com-
pany was an association of traders, and prudently repressed what-
ever sentiments its members may have held on the subject of
slavery. The Court of Directors disapproved of Raffles's acts, and
went so far as to assert officially that his proceedings were deserv-
ing of their reprehension. He always insisted that it was folly to
assume that the exposure of the evils of the slave-system in any
way affected the Company. However, he came near being dis-
missed from the service, and in a little while after the transfer of
the islands to the Dutch the slave trade was resumed with greater
vigor than ever. I mention this circumstance in order to show
how differently Raffles interpreted his duties from those of a mere
agent of a trading company. He held science, literature, and
practical benevolence as primary motives to action.

But, by the redistribution of lands agreed on at the Congress
of Vienna in 1815, Java ("another India!" cries a despairing
critic) was returned to the Dutch ; and the Raffles administration
(and to a great extent the reforms he established), after a brilliant
term of five years, came to an end.

After his recall from Java, he visited England. The Prince
Regent showed his appreciation as opposed to that of the East
India Company by knighting Raffles, and in a short time there-
after appointing him Lieutenant-Governor of Sumatra.

Any sketch of Raffles would be incomplete that did not include
an account of his domestic life. He married in 1805, but lost his
wife in 1815. He remarried in 1816. Lady Raffles, in 1830, wrote
a life of her husband in the form of a large quarto of exactly
eight hundred and twenty-three pages. f Judged by the stand-
ard of the taste of to-day, such an achievement defeats in great
measure its own object, though it must be said in behalf of the
author that she intended the volume to be a defense of her hus-
band's services, and the records of his private life are subordi-
nated.

* A study of the influences of the Raffles administration over Philadelphia would be
found interesting. The founding of Penang and Singapore gave increased security to our
vessels trading in the China seas. The Raffles and, later on, the Brookes policy tended to
suppress piracy. The large trade of Philadelphia with the East in the early part of this
century, that built up the fortunes of a Girard and a Wagner, has been of incalculable
advantage to Philadelphia.

f Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F. R. S.
London, John Murray, 1830.

TWO SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES. 87

Raffles's domestic life and his zeal for natural history are inex-
tricably mixed. His residence and the yard attached thereto were
a museum and laboratory. " I have thrown politics far away,"
he writes, " and, since I must have nothing more to do with men,
have taken to the wilder but less sophisticated animals of our
woods. Our house is on one side a perfect menagerie ; on another,
a perfect flora ; here, a pile of stones ; there, a collection of sea-
weeds, shells, etc."

When he was in Bencoolen he rose early, and delighted in
driving into villages, inspecting the plantations and encouraging
the industry of the people. At nine the family assembled at
breakfast; afterward he wrote, read; studied natural history,
chemistry, and geology ; superintended the draughtsmen (of
whom he had constantly five or six employed), and always had
his children with him as he went from one pursuit to another. At
four he dined, and seldom alone. After the party had dispersed,
he was fond of walking out with the editor (Lady Raises always
alluded to herself as the editor), and enjoying "the delicious cool-
ness of the night land-wind." " I believe people generally think
I shall remain longer," says he in a letter to a friend, " as they
hardly suppose in such times, and with an increasing family, a
man will be inclined to forego the advantages of the field before
me ; but they know me not. I have seen enough of power and
wealth to know that, however agreeable to the propensities of our
nature, there is more real happiness in domestic quiet and repose,
when blessed with a competence, than all fancied enjoyments of
the great and the rich" (page 497). His oldest son Leopold " has
the spirit of a lion, and is absolutely beautiful." His daughter
Charlotte "is of all creatures the most angelic I have ever beheld."
There are two other younger children, Harry and Ella. But Su-
matra, as indeed all tropical Asia, excepting favored localities
in Java, is fatal to children of European parents. Raffles enter-
tained a scheme of removing his family to a colder climate, but
he lingered too long, and all his children, save the youngest, Ella,
died within one year. From these blows he never recovered.
His health rapidly failed. He asked to be relieved from duty,
and after a foreign service of twenty years he prepared to return
for good to England.

His collections included objects of natural history in every de-
partment, a living tapir and many birds, and upward of two thou-
sand drawings, notes, observations, together with memoirs, vo-
cabularies, dictionaries and grammars of native languages. Just
as he is about to sail, all his collections being carefully stored in
the hold, the vessel, through the carelessness of the steward, takes
fire and everything is lost. How unutterable the dismal sense of
failure that thus often awaits the explorer ! Rafinesque, Wallace,

88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Schweinfurth, all lose the result of years of toil and privation.
Humboldt makes three collections, travels with one, never losing
sight of it, ships the other two, and both through the fortunes of
war are in great part lost. Raffles staggered to his feet after this
crushing blow and obtained a second collection with which he
sailed to England. Upon his arrival he was not idle. He inter-
ested himself in establishing the Zoological Society of London and
became its first president. He founded the Museum Rafflesianium,
which is composed of specimens of natural history from the Ma-
layan Archipelago. He died suddenly in 1826, at the compara-
tively early age of forty-five years.

The career of Raffles is thus briefly outlined. If any one is
interested in the subject and looks it up in the Biographical Dic-
tionary, the encyclopaedias, or in articles on Java, he will find
nothing, or next to nothing, on Raffles^s scientific labors. The in-
teresting chapter in Chambers' Miscellany entitled Sir Stamford
Raffles and the Spice Islands relates almost entirely to his work
as a philanthropist and administrator. Yet his influence on the
subject of topography, botany, zoology, ethnology, and archae-
ology of the East is as great as are his political ideas. He under-
took systematic investigations of Java, Sumatra, and the neigh-
boring islands. He encouraged collections to be made by com-
petent explorers,* instituted special expeditions for collecting
antiquities by which the Hindu influence on the Javanese mythol-
ogy, history, and literature was established. He wrote an elab-
orate history of the island. Some idea of the comprehensive plan
of his labors and of its rich results can be obtained by the esti-
mate of the cargo with which he stored his ship on his departure
for England.

We acknowledge the justness of the tribute to Raffles as ex-

* The Americans who have made impressions in European affairs are naturally very
few. The mind in this connection reverts to Ledyard and Count Rumford among scien-
tists ; to West, Copley, and Leslie among painters. I infer that few Philadelphians recall
that a man trained in their city and a native of Bethlehem, Pa., should be added to the list.
I allude to Dr. Thomas Horsfield, the most prominent of the naturalists encouraged by Raf-
fles in the exploration of the Malayan Islands under his administration. Horsfield was
born in 1*773; he studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was gradu-
ated in 1*708, writing on Rhus Poisoning, which appears as one of the Medical Theses, edited
by Charles Caldwell, Philadelphia, 1805. In no other publication is there to be found so
excellent an account of the properties of the American poison vine and poison oak. Im-
mediately after graduation Horsfield went to Java, where he remained for twenty years in
the service of the East India Company. At the end of this time he was recalled to Lon-
don, where he spent the rest of his life as the curator of the museum of the company in
Leadenhall Street. He was elected a correspondent of the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia in 1826. He was the author of the classical work on Zoological Researches
in Java, a separate volume on the rare plants of Java, as well as a special report on the
anneUds of the same general region. Dr. Horsfield died in 1859.

A BOG'S LAUGH.

89

pressed in the epitaph on a tablet in Westminster Abbey. It
reads as follows : " He was ardently attached to science ; he la-
bored to add to the knowledge and enrich the museums of his
native land.''

■♦»»

A DOG'S LAUGH.

Br M. LE VICOMTE D'ATGLUN.

ALPHONSE KARR has said : " Man is the gayest of animals ;
- much more, he is the only gay one, the only one that
laughs." Toussenel is equally explicit : " Laughter is a charac-
teristic faculty of man." Gratiolet observes that "when man
freely breathes a pure air, fresh and uncontaminated, his mouth
dilates slightly, his upper lip reveals more or less of his upper
front teeth, and the corners of the mouth gracefully elevate them-
selves; the muscles that de-
termine this movement act at
the same time upon his cheeks
and raise them, slightly lift-
ing the outer angles of his
eyes, which become a little
oblique. This movement of
easy respiration is called the
smile; and the smile of the
lips is distinguished in lan-
guage from the smile of the
eyes. The smile of the eyes
is in man, however, consecu-
tive to the service of the
mouth, and does not depend
upon any special muscle. No
mammalian animal has the
smile of the mouth ; but the
smile of the eyes exists in the
carnivorous animals, and, as
it can not depend upon the
buccal smile, its determining cause resides in a small muscle that
acts on the outer angle of the eye. Dogs, it is known, have this
smile of the eyes in a superior degree." * Further, he says : " The
real and simple smile — that is, the movement that lifts the angle
of the mouth — is exclusively peculiar to the human species. There
is nothing like it even in the highest monkeys. Among the car-
nivores, animals of the genera Ursus (bear), Canis (dog), and

Fig. 1. — Fox Terrier Laughing.
From a photograph.

* Gratiolet. De la Physionomie, p. 25.

go POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Hycena have some movements that resemble the smile, but can
not be really compared with it. Below the mammalian animals
there is no longer mobility in the face, and consequently no
longer a possible smile." *

Darwin also admits a sort of smile in dogs,f but regards it as
a simple grimace : " A pleasurable and excitable state of mind,
associated with affection, is exhibited by some dogs in a very
peculiar manner ; namely, by grinning. This was noticed long
ago by Somerville, who says :

•'And with a courtly grin tbe fawning hound
Salutes thee cow'ring, his wide op'uing' nose
Upward he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes
Melt iu soft blandishments and humble joy.

— The Chase, Book I.

Sir W. Scott's famous Scotch greyhound, Maida, had this habit,
and it is common with terriers. I have also seen it in a
Spitz and in a sheep dog. Mr. Riviere, who has particularly
attended to this expression, informs me that it is rarely dis-
played in a perfect manner, but is quite common in a lesser
degree. The upper lip during the act of grinning is retracted as
in snarling, so that the canines are exposed, and the ears are
drawn backwards ; but the general appearance of the animal
clearly shows that anger is not felt. Sir Charles Bell J remarks :
' Dogs, in their expression of fondness, have a slight eversion of
the lips, and grin and sniff amid their gambols in a way that
resembles laughter.' Some persons speak of this grin as a smile,
but if it had been really a smile we should see a similar though
more pronounced movement of the lips and ears when dogs utter
their bark of joy ; but this is not the case, although the bark of
joy often follows a grin."

Notwithstanding my profound respect for the names of Dar-
win and the other authors from whom I have quoted, I take the
liberty of remarking that it is hard to laugh and bark at the same
time, and that some dogs employ laughter to express their joy
while at the same time wagging their tails and exhibiting all the
other signs peculiar to their kind.

We must not push the analysis too far, for fear of going be-
yond the truth. Laughter to everybody is nothing else than a
joyous expression of the face given by the movement of the
mouth. No one certainly would take the trouble to find, in order
to know it, by what muscles it is produced.

* Gratiolet. De la Physionomie, p. 169.

f The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, p. ] 20.

I The Anatomy of Expression, 1844, p. 140.

A DOG'S LAUGH.

91

Now, is not that a good laugh, (j[uite free and affectionate, that
is represented in the picture, Fig, 1, taken from the instantane-
ous photograph of a little fox-terrier bitch in my possession,
which puts on this
expression very
prettily every time
it would manifest
pleasure or a great
joy ? Fig. 2 gives
also the expression
of a dog laughing
all over. It is the
portrait of a collie
bitch. The animal
has a very pleas-
ant physiognomy.
The French lan-
guage has an ex-
pression, ca7vin , for
canine laughter,
which the diction-
aries define by say-
ing that it is pro-
duced by the con-
traction of the ca-
nine muscle, or the
muscle that lifts
the angle of the
lips ; and they give

it as the synonym of sardonic laughter, because it is produced on
only one side of the mouth. Fig. 1 shows that this synonymy is
not always just.

A friend of mine has a terrier which also laughs, and which
has after a few months taught a spaniel, its habitual companion,
to laugh.

This education of one animal by another is not so rare as might
be supposed. I knew a little dog in Havana, a great friend of the
cat of the house, that took from it the habit of moistening its paws
with its tongue and washing its face with them. — Translated for
the Popular Science Monthly f rout La Nature.

¥\Q. i.

-A Collie "Laughing all Ovek."
From a photograph.

There is a good deal of human nature in the reason which General Sir
Thomas Gordon gives in his Persia Revisited as having been assigned by a
mollah of that country for opposing education. " They will read the Koran
for themselves," he said, "' and what will be left for us to do ? "

92 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.

By WALTER JAMES HOFFMAN, M. D.

PRIMITIVE man fills his world with innumerable spirits, both
good and bad, and much of his time is spent in devising
means whereby he may invoke the aid of one class to assist him
in averting the malignant influence of the other. The dread and
wonder excited by the phenomena of the elements, or the dis-
covery of anything abnormal, either animate or inanimate, sug-
gest to his mind the existence and manifestation of deities. As
the burrowing of the mole is observed to cause ridges upon the
turf, so a mythic gigantic mole traverses beneath the earth to
form the mountain range. The storm is caused by a monster bird,
the movements of whose wings produce the winds and whose
voice is heard in the muttering thunder and lightning flash. So,
in everything, he recognizes the presence of some one or more
beings, the pretended explanations of whose functions and exploits
form the basis of his mythology. The emotions with which these
deities are regarded, the dread or reverence in which they are
held, and the impressions resulting therefrom, give rise among
different peoples to various religious beliefs or cults.

Among civilized nations we perceive evidence of an inherent
tendency to regard with partiality anything strange or unusual,
the soil of the mind being prolific in the cultivation of morbid
fancies which, if given serious thought, become diflicult to eradi-
cate.

The survival in America of Old- World customs, beliefs, and
superstitions is naturally to be expected because of the continuity
of the peoples with whom they originated. This is illustrated by
the occurrence of African demonology among the negroes of the
South, of Gallic folklore among the Creoles of Louisiana, of some
vestiges of quaint old English customs and superstitions in New
England, and particularly in the survival of Teutonic folklore
among the descendants of the early German colonists.

It is not surprising, then, at this late day, that the folklore
and superstition of one part of the country may have been trans-
ported into another, and there taken root and become incorporated
as original. No matter how little or how much change may have
occurred in its transmission, or to what extent a new environment
may have influenced it. the nationality of such belief or supersti-
tion may still be ascertained with tolerable certainty, as the col-
lection and classification of such data have been reduced to a
science.

As pertains to the status of the early cults of northern and
western Europe, Germany holds a middle place. Our knowledge

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 93

of the religion and heathen doctrines of the Greeks and Romans
rests upon writings which existed previous to the rise of Chris-
tianity. The Teutonic races forsook their ancestral faith slowly,
the transition lasting from the fourth to the eleventh century.
Christianity was not popular ; the faith was clothed in a new
language, and it aimed at supplanting the time-honored indige-
nous gods, and their worship was an important part of the peo-
ple's traditions, customs, and constitution.*

One of the most conspicuous characteristics of the Teutonic
race is a devout attachment to ancestral customs and beliefs, a
trait which among the less intelligent and truly illiterate becomes
proportionately intensified. It is more than probable that to this
trait may be attributed the preservation of fragments of myths
and folklore, as well as remarkable adherence to old-world formulae
relating to witchcraft and folk medicine, relics of customs and
superstitions which are probably contemporary with the birth of
the human race itself.

We are all familiar with the custom of having eggs served at
Easter breakfast, and also that of children receiving presents of
dyed eggs ; sometimes toy rabbits or hares, made of soft, fluffy
goods and stufl^ed with cotton or sawdust, were also given as
presents. Children were told that the hare laid the eggs, and
nests were prepared for the hare to lay them in. The custom
obtains as well in South Germany. The figure of a hare is placed
among the Easter eggs when given as a present.

The association of the hare with Easter observances was much
more common in former times, and in England it was customary
for the hare to be eaten at such times. Hare-hunting as an Easter
custom began to fall into disuse about the middle of the last cen-
tury.

The use of eggs as a sacred emblem of the renovation of man-
kind after the Flood was held by the Egyptians, and the Jews
adopted it to suit the circumstances of their history as a type of
their departure from the land of Pharaoh. The egg suggests a
resurrection to life of a vital principle which may for an indefinite
period have lain dormant. Hutchinson, in his History of Nor-
thumberland, says :

" It was used in the feast of the Passover as part of the furni-
ture of the table with the Paschal Lamb. The Christians have
certainly used it on this day as retaining the elements of future
life for an emblem of the resurrection. It seems as if the egg was
thus decorated for a religious trophy after the days of mortifica-
tion and abstinence were over and festivity had taken place ; and
as an emblem of the resurrection of life, certified to us by the

* Grimm. Teutonic Mythology.

94 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

resurrection from the regions of death and the grave." * " The
Church of Rome, also, in the time of Pope Paul V, considered eggs
emblematical of the resurrection." f

Germans to this day term April Ostermonat, or Easter month,
an old form of the word dstarmdnoth occurring as early as the
time of Charlemagne. The Old High German name was ostard,
the plural form being retained, as two days were usually kept at
Easter. The association of the hare with eggs is curious, and the
explanation is found in the belief that originally the hare seems
to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara
turned into a quadruped. For this reason the hare, in grateful
recognition of its former quality as a bird and swift messenger of
the Spring Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter
time. X

The practice of nailing a horseshoe against the lintel of a door
is familiar to almost everybody ; and it is thought particularly
efficacious in warding off bad luck if the shoe be one that was
found upon the highway.

Although this custom obtains more extensively among the
negroes, it is not of African origin. I am inclined to believe that
it originated at a time more remote than the superstitions relating
to " thirteen at a table," or " the spilling of salt," both of which
are generally conceded to have originated at or with the Lord's
Supper and consequent events.

The Romans drove nails into the walls of cottages as an anti-
dote against the plague ; for this reason L. Manlius, a. u. c. 390,
was named dictator to drive the nail.* In Jerusalem, a rough
representation of a hand is marked by the natives on the wall of
every house while in building. || The Moors generally, and espe-
cially the Arabs of Kairwan, employ the marks on their houses
as prophylactics, and similar handprints are found in El Baird,
Petra. General Houtum-Schindler, of Teheran, informs me that a
similar custom exists in Persia, as well as in parts of northern India.

That these practices and the later use of the horseshoe origi-
nated with the rite of the Passover is probable. The blood upon
the doorposts and upon the lintel (Exodus, xii, 7) formed, as it
were, an arch, and when the horseshoe was subsequently observed
as resembling, conventionally, a similar arch, it may naturally
have been adopted, and in time become a symbol of luck, or
" safety," to those residing under its protection.

* Quoted by Brand. Observations on Popular Antiquities. London, l%11, pp. 90, 91.
f Ritual of Pope Paul V, for the Use of England, Ireland, and Scotland ; quoted by

Brand, op. cit., p. 91, note.

X Folklore Journal. London, vol. i, 1883, p. 123.

* Lieutenant Condors. Palestine Exploration Fund, January, 1873, p. 16.
II Brand. Antiquities. London, vol. iii, 1882, p. 18.

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 95

Beliefs and superstitions relating to snakes are exceedingly
common. These reptiles, by their graceful and sinuous move-
ments and the terror of their bite, appear at once to command
reverence and awe. The worship of the tree and the serpent was
a cult of aborigines of India, the Turanians ; and evidences of
ophilolatry, or snake worship, appear in other parts of the world.
Kneph, the grand serpent of Egypt, is the father of Hephaes-
tus, the god of metals ; and Hi, the serpent god of Chaldea, the
master of all wisdom, is also guardian of treasures.* In the
mythology of several peoples of the Old World the serpent is asso-
ciated with the guardianship of golden treasures and mines. The
god serpent of Greece, Cadmus, was regarded as the first miner,
and he was, according to Pliny, the first workman in gold.f

Stories are extant of an exchange of form between human be-
ings and snakes, an interesting example of which was at one
time currently reported in South Whitehall, Lehigh County,
Pennsylvania. Further reference to this will be made presently.

A very common belief is to the effect that if one kills the first
snake met with in the spring, no others will be observed during
the remainder of the year. In Swabia, tales are still told of home
snakes which appear to bring good luck, but which must under
no circumstances be killed. These snakes come to the children
and sip milk with them out of their bowls. Tales of this class
were common a score of years ago, and I remember hearing of a
child eating bread and milk from a saucer, while a huge black
snake drank freely from the same dish, but at short intervals the
child would playfully tap its spoon upon the snake's head, saying,
" Du musht me" mok'ka fres'sa," to cause it to drink less milk
and to eat more of the bread.

Occasionally we hear of black snakes found in pastures where
they suckle cows, so that these animals daily resort to certain
localities to secure relief from a painful abundance of milk.

Some of these house and farm snakes wear crowns, and are
then termed king snakes. Such were reported from several local-
ities in Lehigh County, one of which was said to abide in a large
pile of rocks near Macungie. It was seldom, however, that this
golden-crowned serpent was seen ; still, the greater number of resi-
dents thereabout were firm believers in the truth of the report.

As an illustration of the belief in the transformation of human
beings into serpents, I will relate a circumstance said to have
occurred during the first half of the present century. Near Trex-
lertown, Lehigh County, dwelt a farmer named Weiler. His wife
and three daughters had, by some means or other, incurred the

* Jones. Credulities Past and Present. London, 1880, pp. ]2<), I'il.
f Jones. Op. (if., 121.

96 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

enmity of a witch who lived but a short distance away, when the
latter, it is supposed, took her revenge in the following manner :
Whenever visitors came to the Weiler residence, the girls, without
any premonition whatever, would suddenly be changed into
snakes, and after crawling back and forth along the top ridge of
the wainscoting for several minutes they were restored to their
natural form. This curious transformation occurred quite fre-
quently, and the circumstance soon attained widespread notoriety.
About the end of the third month the spell was broken and every-
thing went on as before.

Another popular fallacy is the existence of the hoop snake.
This creature is usually reported as capable of grasping the tip of
its tail with its mouth, and like a hoop running swiftly along
in xjnrsuit of an unwelcome intruder. This snake is believed,
furthermore, to have upon its tail a short, poisonous horn, like a
cock's spur, and that if it should strike any living creature death
would result. The stories concerning this marvelous snake usu-
ally end with the statement that the person pursued barely
escapes, and that the snake strikes a tree instead, causing it to
wither and die.

The rattlesnake, because of its venomous bite, is universally
dreaded, and numerous curious beliefs are current respecting this
reptile, also the use to which various parts may be put, and the
treatment of its bite.

The rattle, if tied to a string and suspended from the neck of
an infant, will serve to prevent convulsions ; if carried by an adult,
it will guard against rheumatism. The oil is employed as a
remedy for deafness ; and the venom, diluted, mixed with bread,
and made into pills, has been administered internally to cure
rheumatism. Another curious superstition, held by young men,
is that if one places a snake's tongue upon the palm of his hand —
beneath the glove — it will cause any girl, regardless of her previ-
ous indifference, to ardently return his passion if he be enabled
but once to take her hand within his own. This resembles to a
certain extent the former use, in Germany, of a dove's tongue,
which was similarly employed ; and furthermore, if one became
aware that the choice of his heart failed to respond to his affec-
tion, he had only to place a dove's tongue within his mouth and
snatch a kiss, when the girl's objection or indifference to him
would instantly vanish.

There are numerous popular methods of treating snake bites,
from the internal use of alcoholic liquors to the external applica-
tion of warm, raw flesh obtained by cutting a live chicken in two.

I ascertained a short time since the secret of alleged success
claimed by various mountain powwows both in Pennsylvania and
in Maryland. The remedy is termed the Meisterumrzel, or " master

P OP ULAR S UPERSTITIONS.

97

root," commonly known as the sanicle, or Sanicula maryJandica.
The roots of the plant are crushed, one part being made into a
poultice and applied to the wound, while the remainder is boiled
in milk, which is freely administered internally.

The following procedure was formerly practiced in northern
Lehigh County, and obtains even at this day in Cumberland
County. The operator recites the following words :

Gott hott alles arshaffa, und alles war gut;
Als du alle°', shlaiig, bisht ferfiucht,
Ferflucht solsht du sal" und dai° gift.

God created everything, and it was good,
Except thou alone, snake, art cursed;
Cursed shalt thou be and thy poison.

The speaker then with the extended index finger makes the
sign of the cross three times over the wound, each time pronounc-
ing the word ising.

In connection with the extraction of serpent venom may be
mentioned the use of the snake stone or mad stone, the latter
without doubt having originally been employed in snake bites.

The earliest notice of stones used in extracting or expelling
poisons occurs about the middle of the thirteenth century, though
the knowledge of them and their use by the superstitions of Asia
Minor appears to antedate that period. They are called bezoar
stones, from the Persian pad-zahr, signifying to expel poison.
This substance is a calculus or concretion found in the intestines
of the wild goat of northern India known as the pazan. Various
other ruminants also possess similar concretions, but the Oriental
variety seems always to have been the more highly prized and en-
tered largely into various therapeutic remedies two centuries ago.

In addition to the fact that the fable of poison-extracting
stones may be traced back to the middle ages, and that they had
been used long anterior to that time in Asia Minor, it is more
than xjrobable that a knowledge of their reputed properties and
possibly specimens were brought back to Europe by crusaders on
their return from the Holy Land.

Several objects found in 18G3 at Florence, on the site of the
old church of the Templars, dedicated to St. Paul, may be briefly
noticed. One of these was a vase and another a medal. Among
other figures upon the vase is one of St. Paul bitten by a serpent,
and the Latin inscription signifying, " In the name of St. Paul,
and by this stone, thou shalt drive out poison." On the other
side is engraved in relief the cross of the temple between a sword
and a serpent. On the medal is represented a dragon with an
Italian -legend signify iDg, "The grace of St. Paul is proof against
any poison."

VOL. L. — 10

98 POPULAR SCIJENCE MONTHLY.

That St. Paul is the one appealed to in the above instances may
be attributed to the fact that he was not affected by the bite of a
serpent when almost instant death was the result expected by his
associates (Acts, xxviii, 3-6).

It would appear that the Old-World custom of employing cal-
culi or stones for the extraction of serpent venom gradually led
to the practice in modern times of applying similar substances to
wounds made by the bite of rabid dogs. These calculi are of a
cretaceous or chalky nature, and anything of a cretaceous charac-
ter may, if dry, possess absorbent properties ; and it is probable
that to this property may be attributed the first employment of
the Oriental bezoar stones as capable of extracting or expelling
poisons.

The prescription for the use of the so-called mad stone is gen-
erally as follows: Place it against the wound until it becomes
saturated with the poison, when it will of its own accord fall off.
Then boil it in milk to remove the poison, and repeat the applica-
tion until the stone refuses to adhere.

A short time since I examined a celebrated North Carolina mad
stone, one that had widespread reputation. This stone was of the
size and form of an ordinary horse-chestnut, white in color, and
consisted of feldspar, a hard mineral usually found in granite.
It possessed no absorbent properties whatever, and its reputed
ability to extract poison or any other liquid was utterly unworthy
of a second thought.

We are all familiar with the frequently circulated reports of
the cures performed by mad stones, reports pretending to emanate
from reputable physicians and others, but when we attempt to
trace the source from which they emanate they are found to be of
questionable authority.

To illustrate the esteem in which these substances are held, I
will only add that in 1879 a mad stone was sold to a druggist in
Texas for two hundred and fifty dollars. The specimen was found
in the stomach of a deer.*

It may be of interest to refer to a famous specimen, known as
the " Lee " stone or penny,f which consisted of a small, heart-
shaped pebble of carnelian or agate, set in a silver coin about
one inch in diameter. The specimen was traditionally asserted
to have been brought from the Holy Land, and it is said to
have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the design of his Talisman.
According to the legend, Robert Bruce wished that after his
death his heart should be carried to the Holy Land by Sir James
Douglas ; and in 1329 the latter, accompanied by Simon Lochart,
of the Lee, proceeded on the mission. In Spain the Scots were

* Journal of Chemistry, Boston, 1879. f Jones. Op. cit., p. 330.

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 99

drawn into a combat with the Moors. Douglas was killed, and
Lochart, who now commanded the party, turned homeward with
Bruce's heart, which was eventually buried in the Abbey of Dun-
fermline. Lochart (changing his name into Lockhart, to com-
memorate the event) had taken prisoner a Moorish chieftain, and
the wife of the prisoner when she bargained for the husband's
ransom, while counting the gold from her purse, let drop this gem,
and appeared so anxious to recover it that Lockhart insisted upon
its being made a part of the ransom. The woman unwillingly
consented, and informed the greedy Scot that its value consisted in
its power of healing cattle, and that it was also a sovereign remedy
against the bite of a mad dog. So great was the popular faith in
this talisman in Scotland that the Lee penny was exempted from
anathema in the clerical war against superstitions after the
Reformation, and the clergy went so far as to extol its virtues, in
which implicit faith was placed until a comparatively recent
period. The mode of using this amulet was to hold it by the
chain, and then plunge it three times in water, and once round —
three dips and a siuell, as the country people expressed it ; the
cattle drinking the water were cured. In the reign of Charles I,
the people of Newcastle being afflicted with the plague, sent for
and obtained the loan of the Lee penny, leaving the sum of six
thousand pounds sterling in its place as a pledge. For this sum
the Laird of Lee, the owner, would not part with it. It is re-
ported also that about the beginning of the last century Lady
Baird, of Saughton Hall, having been bitten by a mad dog, and
exhibiting all the symptoms of hydrophobia, her husband ob-
tained a loan of the amulet, and she having drunk and bathed in
the water in which it was immersed, was cured of her malady.

Many other interesting examples of superstitious practices
might be given, some of which have been handed down from re-
mote antiquity, while others are of comparatively modern date
and probably the result of circumstances and environment. The
use of the staff and rod in divination was known to the ancient
Jews, and Hosea reproached them for adhering to the supersti-
tion. Tacitus mentions this sort of divination as a custom of the
ancient Germans.

We are all aware of the frequency with which the divining
rod is used in the search for water, ores, and hidden treasure ;
and we learn occasionally of certain individuals claiming to pos-
sess the power of curing sickness and healing wounds by the mere
laying-on of hands ; of exorcising evil spirits, and combating the
spells of rival witches ; laying ghosts and giving charms and
amulets, and pretending, in fact, to be able to accomplish almost
anything that may be desired.

Who has not heard of carrying a potato, or a horse-chestnut.

loo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to ward off rlieumatism ; having secreted somewhere about the
person the left hind foot of a graveyard rabbit for luck; or
placing within the purse the dried heart of a bat for success in
gambling ?

Many mothers believe that amber beads possess signal proper-
ties in curing their children of sore eyes, ears, or throat; while
the flannel band to be worn about the neck to cure tonsilitis or an
inflamed throat must be red, as that color corresponds to the
color of the malady. In like manner the carrot is held in esteem
in the cure of jaundice, yellow being the characteristic color of
both. The carrot is suspended in the room occupied by the
sufferer, and as the root shrivels and dries up the affection is
removed. Warts, it is believed, may be removed by rubbing
upon them a piece of meat which is then buried ; as the meat
decays the warts go away. They may also be transferred to
another by rubbing upon th^m a piece of bone, and putting this
upon the spot where found ; whoever picks up the bone will have
the warts transferred to his own hands.

We are all more or less uncomfortably impressed at hearing
unaccountable noises ; many persons dread going upon a journey
or cutting out a garment on Friday. Thus we perceive that the
mere reference to the trifles which are apt to control our actions
brings to our minds such a startling array of superstitions, ob-
served by us in others, or perhaps even entertained by ourselves,
that it becomes impracticable to continue further entering so
prolific a subject at this moment.

I may say, in conclusion, that it is only by exposing such falla-
cies that we can hope for their extinction ; but this is no easy
matter, remembering the axiom that "there is no truth, how-
ever pure and sacre*d, upon which falsehood can not fasten and
ingraft itself therein.''

The birth of a child among the Bondei people of Africa is attended,
according to the account of the Rev. G. Dale, missionary, by many great
perils, for if a single condition regarded as unfavorable occurs, the infant
is strangled at once. Its life is in danger again at the time of teething, for
it may be so incautious as to let its upper teeth protrude first, and if this
is the case it is held unlucky, and will almost certainly be killed. Even
if it is allowed to live it will be in perpetual danger, and any disaster
that happens to its parents v,^ill be attributed to it. If, however, the under
teeth protrude first, the child's moral character is established. The boy can
not, however, enter the house in which the unmarried men sleep till he has
been publicly welcomed. For this ceremony all the boys and girls assem-
ble, and the father brings the child out to show them that the lower teeth
have protruded first. Then every house contribvites Indian corn, and the
children pound and eat it, after which the boy is regarded as one of them.

SCIENCE IN WHEAT-GROWING. loi

SCIENCE IN WHEAT-GROWING.

By M. p. p. DEHfiEAIN.

THE chlorophyll cells and the leaves of the plant may be re-
garded as little laboratories elaborating vegetable matter;
they work upon the carbonic acid, which the enormous quantity of
water they contain enables them to extract from the atmosphere,
reduce it, and form with the residue from its decomposition,
after the elimination of oxygen, sugars and cellulose, straw-
gum, vasculose, and all the ternary matters composed of carbon,
oxygen, and hydrogen ; these cells likewise reduce the nitrates
which are brought to them at the same time with phosphoric
acid, potash, and silica, by the water which constantly traverses
the plant, entering it at the root and being exhaled from the
leaves.

If rain is frequent and the soil well moistened, the cells will
continue their work for a long time; they will elaborate much
vegetable matter, and the plant will grow. But the course is not
the same if rain is scarce and the soil is parsimonious in provid-
ing for the enormous expenditure of water which the wheat makes.
I have found that a leaf of wheat exhales, under one hour of inso-
lation, a weight of water equal to its own. When the earth, in-
sufficiently watered by rain, becomes incapable of supplying this
jjrodigious consumption, desiccation of the organs is produced,
and it is always the oldest leaves which dry up and perish first.
A May rarely passes without one seeing the little leaves fixed at
the base of the stem soft, flabby, and withered. If we submit
them to analysis, we find that they have let escape some nitrogen-
ized matter, phosphoric acid, and potash, which they contained
while they were living, green, and turgescent. It is well to lay
stress upon this death of the leaves, and on the departure of the
materials they contain ; when the leaf dies, one of the small ag-
glomerations of working cells is closed, the quantity of matter
elaborated is then less than if it had continued its task, and as the
closure of these little laboratories is determined by their desicca-
tion, we conclude that the quantity of vegetable matter formed
during dry years is limited, and that the stems are shortened and
there is little straw.

At the moment when desiccation begins the nitrogenized mat-
ter which forms the protoplasm, the living part of the cell, is
metamorphosed, and takes an itinerant property that permits it to
pass through the membranes and migrate toward the new leaves,
carrying with it its usual accompaniment of phosphoric acid and
potash. This transportation of some of the elaborated material
from the lower leaves toward the upper leaves goes on through

102 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the -whole duration of vegetation, and continues at the time of
flowering, which, without doubt, by a mechanism of which we do
not know the method of operation, takes place only when the
quantity of materials elaborated is sufficient to nourish the seeds
which are about to appear.

The wheat begins to head, in our latitude, early in June. On
pressing lightly between the fingers the upper part of the stem,
at the place where it appears a little swollen, we meet a slight
resistance, due to the head, which is entirely formed before it
emerges. It is composed of a stem ; the rhachis, which bears the
flowers, formed of little green leaflets; and the glumes, one of
which terminates, in some varieties, in the long appendage char-
acteristic of bearded wheat. If, at the moment when the head
emerges outside of the stem, we gently lay open the glumes, we
shall discover the essential organs of the flower within. On a
little greenish swelling, the rudiment of the corn, are fixed two
little aigrettes of plumes, slightly divergent. These are the pistils,
the female organs. Around them, fixed at the extremity of fine
peduncles, are the anthers, as yet closed. They contain the pollen,
the yellow fecundating dust. At the moment of maturity the
anthers open and the pollen falls on the little plumes of pistils,
well constructed to hold it. It germinates there, sends out a long
tube — the pollinical branch — into the ovule, to which the plumous
pistils are attached. Fecundation is accomplished, and the corn
is formed.

All these delicate operations, which it is so interesting to fol-
low, take place in the formed flower. When the stamens, emerg-
ing between the glumelles, appear without, or, to use the common
expression, the wheat is in flower, everything is really done. So,
when we try to create hybrids — that is, new varieties— endowed
with qualities wanting in one of the parents, we must take the
anthers from the flowers before the plumes are open and the
anthers have shed their pollen.

The operation exacts much care. When the flower is half
opened, we cut off the anthers it contains and drop in the pollen
of the variety which we have chosen to give the one we operated
upon the qualities which it lacks. One of the most widely dis-
tributed varieties around Paris, the Dattel, was created in this
way by M. H. de Vilmerin by fecundating the pistils of the Eng-
lish Chiddam wheat, which had fine qualities but a short straw,
with the pollen of the Prince Albert wheat. The operation was
perfectly successful ; the straw of the Dattel is thicker and longer
by at least five inches than that of the Chiddam, from which it
is derived. The variety is quite fixed ; it reproduces itself with
well-defined characteristics ; and the experiment has now been of
long enough duration to make it certain that the seed sown is not

SCIENCE IN WHEAT-GROWING. 103

derived from plants reverting to the parental characteristics, as
sometimes happens in imperfectly fixed hybrids.

When flowering takes place in good weather, fecundation
goes on regularly, and the chances increase of obtaining a good
crop. These chances, on the contrary, diminish when the ear-
ing occurs in a rainy time. Probably water gets within the
involucre, and the wet pistils imperfectly retain the pollen
grains, or their germination is irregular, the pollinic branch not
reaching the micropyle, and the ovules not being fecundated;
and the ears bear many sterile flowers in which the corn is not
formed.

The production of the corn, of the seed which assures the
perpetuity of the species, is the ultimate end of the herbaceous
plant ; it is essential that the reserve stores necessary for its de-
velopment be accumulated around the embryo inclosed in this
seed, and that it find everything near by: the starch which it
will liquefy and then transform into cellulose ; the gluten, the ni-
trogenized matter, with which it will form the protoplasm of its
cells. These reserves must be abundant, so that a part of them
may be burned, producing by their slow combustion the heat
which favors these transformations. The whole life of the herba-
ceous plant tends toward this end of accumulating in the seeds
the principles elaborated during its short existence ; and it is pre-
cisely this accumulation in the seed of the gluten and the starch,
both excellent food-stuffs, for which men have cultivated wheat
from the most remote antiquity ; or, if they live in different cli-
mates from ours, sow other corn plants — rice in the extreme
East, maize in America — in order to find in their seeds the associa-
tion of nitrogenized matter and starch which gives the grain
so pronounced an alimentary value that it forms an essential
part of the food of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the
globe.

It is easy to follow the migration of the nitrogenized matter,
phosphorus, and potash from the lower to the upper leaves, and
from these to the end of the stem and the seed. The transporta-
tion of these principles has been studied for more than thirty
years by a distinguished agronomist, Isidore Pierre, professor in
the Faculty of Sciences at Caen. We are less well informed con-
cerning the formation of starch. It can not be seen accumulat-
ing in the leaves of wheat as in those of a large number of other
species, nor are reserves of saccharine matters found in these
leaves. The formation of starch is very late, as it does not take
place till during the last stage of vegetation. It thus happens
that the quantities of starch contained in the grain vary greatly
from one year to another.

The phenomenon of transportation and migration of nitroge-

10+ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nous substances from the leaves and the stem to the grain and the
later production of starch takes place only when the plant con-
serves a considerable quantity of water. If the radiations of a
burning sun strike upon a field of wheat the roots of which find
nothing to drink in a dry soil, the plant dries up, everything stops,
and the last phase of the life of the wheat is abruptly terminated ;
the grains remain empty, and the crop fails.

Persistent rain is no less to be feared. The wheat continues
to grow indefinitely, and the migration of the principles is not
brought about. I witnessed a very curious example of this in
England twenty years ago. I was visiting a farm near London,
where cultivation was assisted by irrigation with sewer water.
The farm was slightly undulating, and the sewer water was car-
ried over the depressions in troughs sustained a few yards above
by wooden supports. One of these troughs, being in bad condi-
tion, let the liquid fall constantly in a fine rain upon several
square yards of a field of wheat. It was July, and, while all
the rest of the field was yellow and ready for the harvest, the
stools thus watered were still green and continuing to grow,
exceeding all their neighbors in height, and giving no signs of
maturity.

A mild temperature and a slightly clouded sky are the favor-
able conditions for a good ripening. When the land has been well
dug, the seeding regular, and the manure judiciously distributed,
all the individual plants in the field will have expanded together,
all will have passed simultaneously through all the phases of their
development, and in the warm hours of the day, when all is mo-
tionless, the surface of the field, the English say, will appear as
horizontal as a table.

There are no great inconveniences in harvesting a little early.
The ripening, if not yet complete, will proceed very well when
the sheaves are stood up against one another into those " shocks "
which are much in use where severe rains are common. On the
other hand, there is much advantage in not leaving the wheat
standing after it has ripened. Every plant that has matured its
seed tends to shed it, and sometimes the seed has powerful organs
of dissemination. This is not the case with wheat ; but, although
it does not fly off to a distance, it escapes from overripe heads,
falls, and is lost. Further, all the organs of plants respire by the
aid of the oxygen of the air consuming some of their principles.
In the seed the combustion chiefly affects the starch, and a crop
which remains standing long diminishes in weight both by the
loss of the seeds that fall and by the slow combustion which con-
tinues as long as desiccation is not produce^. As soon as a field
of wheat is ripe it should, therefore, be harvested, and here is
where the reapers, that have been brought to such great perfec-

EVOLUTION OF INSECT INSTINCT. 105

tion ill America and England, are found to be very useful in
making the farmer independent of the scarcity or the exactions
of laborers. — Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue des Deux Mondes.

■♦ *♦

EVOLUTION OF INSECT INSTINCT.

By M. CH. PEETON.

I WAS a witness in 1887 of a combat between a halictus bee and
its sphoecode parasite, a "cuckoo bee," which took place in the
open air, outside of the nest. The nests of the Halictus mala-
churus (Kirby), which are found excavated in the compact soil of
garden walks, are narrower at the entrance than below, and here
the sentinel bee closes access with its head.

The sphoecode, Sphaicodus hispanicus (Wesmael), twice as
large as its victims, had to enlarge this entrance to effect its pas-
sage. I saw it cut up the sentinel, whose quarters came out with
the digging. Very near, a halictus was assisting a dying sister
whose j)ollen-loaded feet were still moving. She had without
doubt been killed by the sphoecode. Another harvester still sur-
vived, and attacked the parasite, biting its legs and wings. The
bandit, obliged to stop its task frequently, established itself near
the nest and tried to seize the enemy with its sharp mandibles.
The halictus at last threw itself upon him, and the two were
locked in combat. In an instant the halictus was no more.

The sphoecode labored for nearly four hours to open a passage,
and would perhaps have succeeded if I had not judged it prudent
to capture it. It had worked till dark without having advanced
more than an eighth of an inch.

Besides the deductions which other authors have drawn from
the observation of insects under similar conditions to these, I
found a no less important feature toward the study of instinct in
the apparent development at the same time with sociability of a
courage which impels the individual to devotion of itself to the
common cause. The persistent struggle which my halictus main-
tained is, I believe, unexampled in the annals of other Hyme-
noptera than ants, wasps, honeybees, and bumblebees. It was
not a rush of a moment upon the thief, or a struggle in a narrow
corridor where escape was impossible after the fight had begun ;
but it was a foot-to- foot battle that lasted nearly a quarter of an
hour, in the open field, where the halictus could run away at any
moment. The assault was made vigorously, of determined purpose,
the contestants fighting in close embrace, and ended in the death
of one of them.

io6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"We remark that this devotion to the puhlic weal is like society
in its beginning. It is less developed here than among the wasps
and the honeybees. Near the one who died so bravely on the
field of honor, I saw a new halictus alight in front of the enemy
at the first attack to go take care of the dying. Honeybees do
not hesitate when their city is to be defended, and bumblebees,
Hoffer says, often precipitate themselves upon the man who is de-
stroying their nest ; but their civilization, if I may use the word,
is much more advanced than that of the halictus. Courage and
abnegation are therefore not only the appanage of mankind or of
rich societies of honeybees and ants ; they belong to every associ-
ation— to all those, whether beasts or people, who bind their
hearts together in the struggle for existence.

The tenacity of the sphoecodes on the field of battle is not less
" surprising ; it is, so far as I know, the only example of a parasite
issuing from the peaceful j)rogeny of the apiaries that gives
battle for the acquisition of spoil.

Have we here a species of parasite in course of formation ? I
do not know. There is a great distance between the sphcecode
and the halictus. The variation of the genus or species sphoecodes
is very great, it is true; but that of the bumblebees is of the
same order, and there are fossil bumble bees. The hazardous life
of the parasite should teach us reserve concerning the cause of its
variations.

I believe we may observe a nascent parasitism in another
family of Hymenoj^tera. I mean among those insects which hon-
estly gain life for their young most of the time, but which also
do not disdain to rob a neighbor, to play the parasite, and that
not fortuitously, but almost every time an occasion presents itself.
I have found such insects in the spider-killing family of the Pom-
pilidcE:

The pompiledes are those little black wasps, with a somewhat
party-colored abdomen, which may be seen lingering on sunny
talus or walls, with their antennae and wings in febrile vibration.
Those that I have observed in France and Algeria chase spiders.
They pursue them, keeping in touch with the ground like a dog
following game. The manner of attack varies with the species
of the hunters. Nearly all those that I have seen light directly
upon the enemy, which rolls over, and stab it. The spider is gen-
erally put in a safe place on top of a tuft or a stone, while the
pompilus digs a hole in which it deposits the anaesthetized head,
after gluing its egg upon the abdomen. The pompilides are not
all diggers — some choose or prepare the most singular places for
their progeny ; but the general rule is as I have described it.

My observations have been made chiefly upon the Pompilus
viaticus (Latreille) and on the Pompilus rufipes (Vanderlinden).

EVOLUTION OF INSECT INSTINCT. 107

If we throw a spider that has been stung by a fellow- wasp at one
of these, it will nearly always be taken without hesitation, and
will often be stung again. The depositing and the laying of the
egg are done as if by habit ; and I may add that the hunter is not
dainty as to the freshness of his game. I have seen spiders of
eight days' standing accepted, and have repeated the experiment
so often that I can not suppose that the fact is accidental. It is
not a case of one opening a cell to deposit an egg because its own
has been stolen, or of digging into the partitions at the end of its
labors ; but what I relate happens almost regularly whenever oc-
casion offers. It may be said that the insect is obliged to deposit
its egg. Perhaps, but the necessity for ovipositing is singularly
elastic with my pompili, and is associated with the faculty they
have of stealing the game of their neighbor.

A Pompilus viaticus has just drawn its spider into the cell.
It has deposited its egg and stopped up its hole. I offer it a new
spider, killed ; it is not the time for ovipositing, but the victim is
accepted and placed carefully by the side of the nest, the closing
of which is arrested. A new cell is dug out, the booty is drawn
into it, and receives an egg in its turn.

I have often repeated this experiment with Pompilus viaticus
and pedinipes. I broke open the half-closed nest, and unfastened
the egg, and I have several times seen the spider taken up, car-
ried a little farther on, and the ovipositing begun again.

So far I have told of experiments ; now I come to pure ob-
servation. Let us go at the beginning of September into a warm
gravelly quarry. We see many hymenoptera there, but the
pompilides dominate. They have chosen the most agreeable
quarter, the most sunny one in the city. Those which I observed
were the Pompilus rufijjes. They are a colony of crafty fellows,
constantly in motion, ferreting everywhere, sometimes on the
quest for a neighbor's spider, going into the holes which they find
to their taste to drive the proprietors from them. When they
have succeeded in stealing, they bury their spoil, if some other
thief does not interfere, and deposit an egg upon it. These thefts
are often the occasion of lively combats. I chanced to see two
of the largest of the band disputing over a spider. Hunters
and victim rolled like a ball along the gravel for four or five
yards. The contestants, which had not let go, tugged at their
prey like dogs wrangling over a bone. After a few minutes the
beaten one — generally the less corpulent — gave up the struggle.
The species, however, is not parasitic. The spider is in the
beginning the legitimate prey of one of the two, and I have,
besides, seen them hunting and ovipositing honestly in the same
quarry.

Not only in the capture of the prey, but in the choice of the

io8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nest, too, a very great adaptation of instinct to conditions exists
among the pompilides. They turn everything to profit.

Taschenberg * says that the Pogonius nest In the sand. I
have found Pogonius hifasciatus nesting in a hedge at Chatelle-
rault in abandoned snail shells. Some shells contained as many
as three cocoons. This year, at Algiers, I found bulimus contain-
ing cocoons which have not hatched at this writing, but which
strongly resemble the cocoons of my pogonius. If Taschenberg
has not made a mistake, the insect is a digger that does not al-
ways dig. I have long observed a little pompilus at Chatellerault
which I have not been able to identify. I have seen it nesting
almost everywhere — in snail shells, in the rotten mortar of old
walls, and in worm-eaten wood, digging when it had no other
way. One day it even had the audacity, while we were at lunch,
to bring its spider to my sister's hair.

We are therefore, it seems to me, contemplating an eminently
variable instinct, which, joined to the tendencies to parasitism of
which I have just spoken, suggests that a parasitical branch may
be even now detaching itself from the pompilus type.

The pompilides, or some among them, have possibly been
showiDg these tendencies for many centuries. The walks of ih.Q
garden near Algiers are crowded in October with small spiders
which pass the day hidden in holes closed by a stone or a clod.
I have observed that a little Salius knew very well how to open
this retreat, go in, and kill the inmate. Prof. P^rez, in his con-
tributions to the apian fauna of France, has studied the para-
sites of bees in a masterly manner, but he has almost omitted
the study of instinct in the formation of parasitism. I have
no more than suggested the question, but I believe we might
easily give an acceptable answer to it with the help of the pom-
pilides. If we succeed in this, we shall perhaps have answered
the challenge sent out in his Souvenirs by the entomologist of
S^rignan : " Let them show me a species in the course of trans-
formation.''— Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from
the Revue Scientifique.

A CURIOUS experiment is recorded in La Nature by M. F. Crestin, in
which, by the application of a magnet, he extracted a needle from a woman's
hand, in whicb it had been imbedded two months. The hand was placed
upon one of the poles of an electro- magnet, and a current giving an attract-
ive force of three grammes was applied for about two hours at a time.
After nine sittings, or about twenty hours of magnetic action, the needle,
with the point broken oflP, came out and adhered to the magnet, the whole
operation having been performed without pain or loss of blood.

* Die Hymenopfera Deuischland, etc.

''DEAF AND DUMB:' 109

"DEAF AND DUMB.'^

By MABEL ELLEEY ADAMS.

THE average man has no idea of the real meaning of the com-
mon adjective phrase " deaf and dumb." He occasionally
sees a group in some public place conversing by means of sigus
or the manual alphabet, and he says to himself, " Deaf and dumb."
Less often he comes in contact with an orally taught deaf person,
and either talks with him or hears others talk with him, and goes
away and says : " I met a deaf and dumb man to-day and heard
him talk ; it's wonderful, wonderful ! " quite unconscious meantime
that his way of expressing what he saw is also wonderful.

Sometimes this same average man hears that a friend's child
has been born deaf, and if he is a little conservative he says : " Oh,
well, the child can be educated at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum ;
they teach them everything there. Many deaf and dumb peo-
ple are able to make a good living nowadays." If, however,
our average man is fully up to the times, he says : " Oh, the child
can be taught to talk just like other folks ; they have got a way
of teaching the deaf and dumb children to speak and to under-
stand other people by looking at the motions of the lips; so they
get along just about as well as though they could hear."

All this is very crude, no doubt, but it is safe to say that nine
out of every ten people in ordinary life, whom circumstances have
never brought in contact with the deaf, have very much the same
ideas. To be deaf is to be unable to hear, and to be dumb is to be
una,ble to talk. The lack of hearing is remedied by teaching the
child to use his eyes and understand either signs or the motions
of the lips, and the lack of speech is remedied by teaching the
child to use his vocal organs or his hands to make others under-
stand, and behold! the task is accomplished, and he is "just like
other folks." Not one thought is given to language, to the wonder-
ful medium of exchange by means of which the business of life is
carried on, that is supposed to come by Nature, or instinct, or
miracle, but never by teaching. A cultured lad}', a literary woman,
said to me once, after seeing some deaf children and hearing them
go through certain vocal exercises which included every elemen-
tary sound in the English language : " Now, if these children can
make all these sounds correctly, why don't they go right on and
talk ? What hinders them ? " She was a bright woman, and when
a very short explanation had been given her, the reason flashed
upon her, and she said : " Why, what a fool I am ! I see, they've
got something to say, and the mechanical ability to say it, but no
language to say it in," and in that one sentence she expressed the
reason for being of all the institutions and schools for the deaf in

no POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the country. " No language to say it in," that expresses the condi-
tion of a deaf child's mind before he is taught very well, but perhaps
" and no language to think it in " should be added. Let the reader
try for himself and see how much consecutive thought he can ac-
complish without words ; and if, with his mind trained by years
of intelligent thinking, he can do little until the words come, let
him imagine, if he can, the state of a mind cut off from language.

By way of example, let us take the seemingly simple fact of
similarity or likeness between two objects. Your three-year-old
baby says, " I want a woolly baa-lamb like that one," or " Dose
two kitties is dust alike," or " Mamma, you didn't give me the
same as brother" — all expressions of the same idea of likeness.
Now, an ordinary deaf child is eight or nine years old before he
has acquired language enough to express either in speech or writ-
ing what the baby just learning to talk has said so easily — namely,
the idea of similarity. Not but what he knows the things are
similar ; in this case it is simply the language that is wanting.

Language is a growth. A hearing child begins to absorb lan-
guage from the very day of his birth. When he gets to be thirteen
or fourteen months old, sometimes when he is younger, he begins
to give back a word or two of the thousands of words which
have been given to him over and over again every waking hour
since he was born. It must be remembered that words spoken in
a child's hearing are just as much given to him as words spoken
directly to him. From the single words with which a baby begins
he goes on to phrases and sentences, constantly learning to use
more words or to use already familiar words in new ways, until at
seven or eight or nine he is able to talk about common things
just as intelligently as do his father and mother. In other words,
he has learned to talk. His language has grown with his growth,
nourished by the daily gifts of those about him, unconsciously
given and unconsciously received, no doubt, but none the less con-
tributing their share toward the future structure — i. e., the ordi-
nary vocabulary of man.

Now let us see how the deaf child fares during these impres-
sible years while his hearing brother is absorbing so much. He
sees just as much as do the people around him, but it is all unex-
plained. If you were set down suddenly in utterly strange sur-
roundings, you would be dazed until some explanation was made
to you, but the deaf child must go without explanation for years.
Life is one long pantomime to him until he goes to school, and
the pantomime often means one thing to the person who uses it
and another to the person who sees it. While the hearing child
is acquiring the language of home, of play, of the street, of time
and place and weather, of buying and selling, loving and praying,
the deaf child is gaining only crude ideas of all these subjects.

''DEAF AND DUMBr in

Let me illustrate, if I can. Take tlie matter of buying and selling,
for instance. A hearing child wants to go to the store and buy
five cents' worth of candy. Think how much language he uses in
talking about it ! He saj^s : " Mother, I want five cents to go to
the store and buy some candy. Will you give me five cents ?
May I go to the store ? Please let me go. If I am good, may I
go ? " When he gets to the store he says : " I will have one stick
of that, and one stick of that, and a cent's worth of this," etc., and
when he comes out he says : " I bought some candy. I like to
trade at that store. The woman gives good measure " ; and when
asked, " Who sold it to you ? " he says, " Oh, the woman herself."
Now look back, if you please, and observe the amount of language
used in connection with this one very simple transaction. See the
different moods and tenses, and the different constructions intro-
duced. If an uneducated deaf child wanted to go to the store and
buy some candy, he would hold up five fingers to his mother, put
his hand to his mouth to indicate candy, and then make some sign
for store, perhaps a gesture to represent the act of paying ; and
after he had been to the store and bought his candy, he would
go through just the same pantomime to indicate the finished
action as he used to indicate his unaccomplished wish, for he can
not distinguish between time past and time to come by natural
pantomime.

If this illustration seems tedious in its details, it must be par-
doned, for its object is to make the average man see the great gulf
which exists between the deaf child who knows how to buy some
candy and the hearing child who knows how to buy it and talk
about it, to express his desire for it, and to relate the facts con-
cerning the purchase. There is but one bridge for this gulf, the
bridge of language, and all the teachers of the deaf in this or any
other country are at work building this bridge. They differ in
their tools and in their methods of building, but their aim is
always the same. Language, be it spoken or written, is what the
deaf child must have if he is to understand the world about him
as his hearing brother understands it, and all the discussion of
the educators of the deaf to-day is as to how it can best be given
to him.

The builders who have this task to accomplish work in two
ways. Some — and they are among the oldest and the wisest of the
master builders — lay their foundation and make the base of their
structure of a material different from the bridge itself, while
others use but one material from deepest-driven pile to topmost
guard-rail. Each party of workers claims that its structure is the
stronger and furnishes an easier highway whereby the deaf may
pass from the isolation of their wordless state to companionship
with the hearing, speaking world.

112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Is the figure too complicated ? A large number of tlie teach-
ers of the deaf either teach, or allow the children to acquire from
their schoolmates, a language of conventional signs. This lan-
guage has a grammar and construction of its own, and an order
differitig from that of the English language ; it is very comprehen-
sive and flexible, and by means of it deaf children soon begin to
enlarge their mental horizon. They find it tolerably easy to
acquire, too, because many of the simpler signs are almost iden-
tical with the natural signs which they have learned or invented
at home. By means of this sign language these teachers of the
deaf impart ideas to their pupils, and these ideas they put into
English, written English usually, and then spelled English (Eng-
lish spelled by the fingers), teaching the pupils to reproduce the
English. To the children who show an aptitude for it they teach
spoken English as well, and a comprehension of the spoken Eng-
lisli of others, known as lip-reading. The deaf so taught usuaHy
converse among themselves by means of signs, and also use the
sign language with such hearing persons as understand it. With
such as do not understand signs they use the manual alphabet or
writing, unless they are able to use speech intelligibly. The less
intelligent think in signs ; the more intelligent think in either
written or spelled English, and, where they use speech, mentally
translate. The method thus roughly outlined is known as the
combined method. Nearly all the large institutions in the coun-
try use the combined method. The amount of speech, however,
which is " combined " with the signs and written and spelled
English varies greatly in the different States.

Two or three institutions, several day schools, some private
schools, and many private teachers use another method, which
differs radically from the one imperfectly described above. This
method is the oral, or pure oral. Every child who enters an oral
school is taught by speech, supplemented by writing. The sounds
which make up the English language are taught to him — some-
times separately, sometimes in short v»^ords. He is made conscious
of his own voice by feeling the vibration which it produces at the
throat, under the chin, or at the point of the chin. His attention
is called to the mouths of those about him moving in the motions
of articulate speech on the first day of his school life, and, from
that day until the last, he sees his teachers use only, as a method
of communication with each other or the pupils, the English lan-
guage, in either its spoken or written form. An atmosphere of
English is created about him, and, as his vocabulary grows, he
shapes his thoughts by means of words. His range of thought as
he grows older is widened by means of the ordinary studies of the
ordinary schools — stories, geography, history, physiology, biog-
raphy, etc. "What he does not understand is explained to him by

''DEAF AND DUMB:' 113

means of what lie does understand ; simple language is used to
make complex language more clear; but whatever is done is done
by means of language, either spoken or written, so that what he
writes or speaks is his own thought unhindered by mental trans-
lation.

There are cases which both these methods fail to teach, very
moderate successes under both methods, and, besides, some very
brilliant examples of highly educated, cultured, deaf ladies and
gentlemen who have so far mastered the difficulties which beset
them that they are able to take their places in life almost as
though one sense were not lacking. The representatives of this
last class who are personally known to me were all but one edu-
cated by the oral method. This one exception is a very warm
advocate of the oral method, in spite of the fact that he was edu-
cated under the combined system.

The large number of average cases — the deaf people who are
neither brilliant scholars nor apparent failures — are generally ad-
vocates of the system under which they were educated. The com-
bined-method pupil claims that he enjoys life better because he
has his signs by means of which he can take pleasure in the com-
pany of his deaf friends, and the oral-method pupil claims that
with his speech and lip-reading he can accommodate himself to his
environment in the speaking world ; and that, if his speech is not
understood, his written English is just as good as his brother's of
the combined method.

And so it goes. Each thinks his own way the best.

A WRITER iu Blackwood's Magazine, on the philosophy of blunders com-
mitted by persons under examination, assumes that the questions asked by
the examiner are intended t© awaken a recollection or to develop a kind of
process of reasoning in the candidate. If the reasoning fails at any point
or from any cause, a blunder appears in the answer. Some of the blunders
cited by the writer, particularly in the scientific examinations, betray great
confusion of mind, and are hardly accountable except on the supposition
of inexact teaching or too hasty cramming. What did the pupil mean who
answered tbat during summer " the weather is getting gradually warmer,
caused by the rotation of the sun " ; or that one who said that " the Tropic
of Cancer is the meridian which passes round the earth midway between
the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn" ? Various pupils answered ques-
tions about the tides by saying that they were " caused by evaporation,"
"by prevailhig winds," ''by different oceans meeting each other," " by the
undercurrents meeting," " by the waves of the Atlantic pushing the surface
waters westward," or other phrases, all betraying a confused recollection of
some of the words they have read in the text-books, without the most re-
mote conception of their meaning or their relation to the subject. Such
obvious ilhistrations of the faults of defective teaching bear their own
comments.

VOL. L. — n Ik

114 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. REDFIELD.

THE life of William C. Redfield, said Prof. Denison Olmsted,
in a memorial address delivered at tlie time of his death,
" affords an interesting and instructive theme for contemplation
in a threefold point of view — as affording a marked example of
the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, as happily
illustrating the union in the same individual of the man of sci-
ence with the man of business, and as exhibiting a philosopher
whose researches have extended the boundaries of knowledge and
greatly augmented the sum of human happiness/'

Mr. Redfield was born near Middletown, Conn., March 26, 1789,
and died in New York city, February 13, 1857. His father fol-
lowed the seas as a profession from early youth to the time of his
death. His early training was therefore derived from his mother.
He was given such instruction as the common schools afforded.
Having removed to Upper Middletown, now Cromwell, he was
apprenticed to a saddler. He gave all the time he could afford,
which was only a part of his evenings, to study, preferably of
science, having most of the time only the light of the wood fire to
read by. But before he was twenty-one years old " he had ac-
quired no ordinary amount and variety of useful knowledge."
With other young men of the village he formed a debating society,
which was called the " Friendly Association," and which collected
a library. Dr. William Tully having settled in the village, young
Redfield applied to him for the loan of some books, and engaged
his interest. No particular book was asked for, and the cases were
opened for him to choose. He selected Sir Humphry Davy's Ele-
ments of Chemistry.

His mother removed to Ohio during his apprenticeship, and in
1810 he set out to visit her, going, with two companions, on foot.
He regularly took notes of what he observed and experienced in
a tramp through the country of western New York and northern
Ohio, which was then very primitive ; returning in the spring,
again on foot, he took a more southerly route. His notes were
afterward turned to good account in making the sketches of the
railroads he projected. After this journey he engaged in business
in Middletown, following his trade and keeping a small country
store. He assumed the initial C. when he had come of age. In
1827 he removed to New York city.

A violent storm had swept the Eastern States, September 3,
1821, which became memorable as the " Great September Gale."
Shortly after it occurred Mr. Redfield traveled through a part of
the region over which it had passed, and was surprised to observe
that in one part of his route the trees lay with their heads point-

SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. RED FIELD. 115

ing toward the northwest, and in another part in the opposite
direction or toward the southeast, and to learn that while the
wind had been blowing violently from the southeast at Middle-
town, it had been blowing just as violently less than seventy miles
away from the northwest. These facts and his reflections upon
them led him to certain conclusions which business engagements
prevented his developing at the time, but which he published,
fortified by the citation of numerous observations and with illus-
trations drawn from other storms, in an article in the American
Journal of Science for January, 1832, on The Prevailing Storms
of the Atlantic Coast. His conclusions were, in short, that the
storm was a great advancing whirlwind, and that tornadoes gen-
erally revolve on an axis of rotation and move with the main cur-
rents, exhibiting, consequently, retrograde motion on one side of
the axis and progressive motion on the other side. In a subse-
quent article in the same journal he discussed the hurricane of
August, 1831, as illustrating the position that storms and hurri-
canes are gyratory in action, and move with the general current
of the region in which they occur. These views are now in the
main accepted facts in meteorology.

Prof. Olmsted gives, in his memorial address, a very interesting
account of the way the first article came to be published. In it
we have a picture of the man Redfield. " I chanced at this period,^'
he says, " to meet him for the first time on board a steamboat on
the way from New York to New Haven. A stranger accosted me,
and modestly asked leave to make a few inquiries respecting some
observations I had recently published in the American Journal of
Science on the subject of hailstorms. I was soon made sensible
that the humble inquirer was himself a proficient in meteorology.
In the course of the conversation he incidentally brought out his
theory of the laws of our Atlantic gales, at the same time stating
the facts on which his conclusions were founded. This doctrine
was quite new to me, but it impressed me so favorably that I urged
him to communicate it to the world through the medium of the
American Journal of Science. He manifested much diffidence at
appearing as an author before the scientific world, professing to
be only a practical man, little versed in scientific discussions, and
unaccustomed to write for the press. At length, however, he said
he would commit his thoughts to paper and send them to me on
condition that I would revise the manuscript and superintend the
press. Accordingly, I received the first of a long series of articles
on the law of storms and hastened to procure its insertion in the
Journal of Science. Some few of the statements made in the
earliest development of his theory he afterward found reason for
modifying, but the great features of that theory appear there in
bold relief."

ii6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Other articles confirming the position first taken followed,
among them one on the hurricanes and storms of the West Indies
and the coast of the United States, and the uniformity of their
general character, in which the storms of the China Sea were
shown to be similar to those of the West Indies, and the gyrations
in the southern hemisphere to be opposite to those in the north-
ern ; one presenting a general view of the atmosphere and its cur-
rents, and a classification of storm winds, predicating the identity
of whirlwinds and water spouts, and discussing the great aerial
currents ; and articles on tidal movements, climate as connected
with atmospheric and oceanic currents, the Gulf Stream, and polar
currents.

The main features of Mr. Redfield's theory of storms, as stated
by Prof. Olmsted, are :

" That all violent gales or hurricanes are great whirlwinds, in
which the wind blows in circuits around an axis either vertical or
inclined ; that the winds do not move in horizontal circles, but
rather in spirals toward the axis — a descending spiral movement
externally and ascending internally.

"That the direction of revolution is always uniform, being
from right to left or against the sun on the north side of the
equator, and from left to right or with the sun on the south side.

"That the velocity of rotation increases from the margin
toward the center of the storm.

" That the whole body of air subjected to this spiral rotation
is, at the same time, moving forward in a path at a variable rate,
but always with a velocity much less than the velocity of rota-
tion, being at the minimum, hitherto observed, as low as four
miles, and at the maximum forty-three miles, but more com-
monly about thirty miles an hour, while the motion of rotation
may be not less than from one hundred to three hundred miles
per hour.

" That in storms of a particular region, as the gales of the At-
lantic or the typhoons of the China Sea, great uniformity exists
in respect to the path pursued ; those of the Atlantic, for example,
usually issuing from the equatorial regions eastward of the West
India Islands, pursuing at first a course toward the northwest as
far as the latitude of 30°, and then gradually wheeling to the
northeast and following a path nearly parallel to the American
coast, to the east of Newfoundland, until they are lost in mid-
ocean, the entire path when delineated resembling a parabolic
curve whose apex is near the latitude of 30°.

" That their dimensions are sometimes very great, being not
less than one thousand miles in diameter, while their path across
the ocean can sometimes be traced for three thousand miles.

" That the barometer, at any given place, falls with increasing

SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. REBFIELD, 117

rapidity as the center of the whirlwind approaches, but rises at a
corresponding rate after the center has passed by ; and, finally,

" That the phenomena are more uniform in large than in
small storms, and more uniform on the ocean than on the land."

" These laws Mr. Redfield claimed as so many facts inde-
pendent of all hypothesis — as facts deduced from the most rigor-
ous induction, which will ever hold true, whatever views may be
entertained respecting the origin and cause of storms."

Mr. Redfield's conclusions were reached after the collection
and collation of as many records as possible of observations of
the storms investigated, particularly of vessels which had been
caught in them, the independent accounts of one storm having
been one hundred and sixty-four in number; the charting of
them ; and the tabulation of the various data of them.

The next step was the suggestion of the methods by which
vessels might avoid storms or escape them by sailing out of them.

Views like those of Mr. Redfield were reached about the same
time by Dove, but Redfield knew nothing of his work. Colonel
Reid, of the Royal English Engineers, at Barbadoes, who was
also studying the subject, was struck with Redfield's articles, and
entered into correspondence with him, which was continued to
their mutual advantage. Mr. Redfield further speculated on the
causes of storms — a subject which he was not able to solve, and
which is still in large part a mystery.

In 1820 Mr. Redfield became interested in steamboat naviga-
tion, and ultimately associated with enterprises for carrying it on.
The public had become alarmed about boiler explosions, to the
detriment of the passenger traffic. To overcome their objections,
Mr. Redfield devised a system of " safety barges," to be towed
upon the Hudson by steamboats placed at such a distance that
the passengers should be out of reach of the danger of explosions.
These barges, which were in use from 1825 to 1829, attained a
speed of between eight and nine miles an hour, and were in favor
while the terror of explosions continued. But there came a lull
in the explosions, the size and speed of the steamboats were
increased, and conveyance by barges was discontinued, " to the
regret," Mr. Redfield observed in a paper on the subject pub-
lished in the American Journal of Science, " of those who love
quiet enjoyment and whose nerves have not been inured to com-
posure by frequent proximity with the moving power." In the
same article Mr. Redfield undertook to show that the exposure to
fatal accidents on board of steamboats was much less than at-
tended the use of the ordinary means of conveyance by either land
or water, and even than that from lightning. The towing system,
originated by Mr. Redfield, though it lost favor as a means of
conveying passengers, was extensively applied to the conveyance

ii8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

of freight, and is still an increasingly important method of trans-
portation in that department. Mr. Redfield, associated profes-
sionally with the "Steam Navigation Company/' continued to
apply himself to the improvement of the art, devising better
forms of apparatus, seeking for the best methods of regulating
steam navigation, which he did not find in legal enactments, in-
quiring into the causes of boiler explosions and suggesting means
of safety, and calling attention to the value of steam in national
defense.

While railroads were still an experiment in this country —
the Albany and Schenectady Railroad having been completed
only in 1826 — Mr. Redfield, in 1829, published a pamphlet outlin-
ing a project for one system of railroads connecting the Atlantic
with the Mississippi, in which he made useful the knowledge of
the country which he had gained in his walk to Ohio. The route
he indicated was substantially, as far as to the lakes, the one
afterward followed by the New York and Erie Railroad. The
Erie Canal was then popular, and seemed to respond to the
public demand for quick transportation; and so the author set
forth, under nineteen distinct heads, the superiority of railroads
to canals — a principle which was only a theory then, and to which
men had to be won by argument. " He even anticipated,'' Prof.
Olmsted observes, " that after the construction of the proposed
great trunk railway connecting the Hudson and Mississippi,
many lateral railways and canals would be built, which would
bind in one vast network the whole great West to the Atlantic
States. 'This great plateau, says he, will indeed one day be
intersected by thousands of miles of railroad communications;
and so rapid will be the increase of its population and resources
that many persons now living will probably see most or all of it
accomplished.'"

In 1832 Mr. Redfield was associated in the examination of the
country through which the Harlem Railroad runs, with a view
to establishing a road to Albany. He assisted in procuring a
charter for the road, and published a pamphlet concerning it. He
further assisted in the survey of a railroad route from New
Haven to Hartford. He also showed his faith in street railroads,
having as early as 1829 petitioned the Common Council of the
City of New York for permission to lay an experimental track in
Canal Street. At a later period he was a member of the Board
of Directors under whom the Hudson River Railroad was com-
pleted.

While Mr. Redfield's fame rests mainly on his studies in
meteorology, his contributions to geology were likewise impor-
tant. Even as early as his journey to Ohio in 1810 he made geo-
logical observations. He was always much interested in the

SKETCH OF WILLIAM C. RED FIELD. 119

geological papers in the American Association, and took part in
the discussions of them. The phenomena of the drift period and
the signs of glacial action attracted his attention ; but, living in
the heart of the new red sandstone region of Connecticut, his
closest studies were directed to that formation, and the fruits of
them appear in several papers in the American Journal of Sci-
ence. In these papers he described the allied sandstones of New
Jersey as well as those of Connecticut, with their fossils, ripple
marks, and evidences of the fall of raindrops. His son, John H.
Red field, having, in a description of the fossil fishes of the Portland
quarry near Middletown, showed that their structural affinities
pointed to a higher position for the sandstone than had previ-
ously been assigned to it, he continued the study and published
descriptions of several new species of ichthyolites. The last paper
he read before the American Association was on the Geological
Age of the Sandstones of Connecticut and. New Jersey, and the
Contemporaneous Deposits of Virginia and North Carolina. He
proposed for them the name of the Newark group, and showed
that the ichthyolites contained in them pointed unerringly to the
Jurassic group. The collection of fossil fishes which he formed
in the course of this study, with special reference to a monograph
upon them, was regarded by Prof. Olmsted as having been prob-
ably unequaled in this country.

Mr. Redfield was an active member of the American Associa-
tion of Naturalists and Geologists, and was the originator of its
enlargement into the American Association for the Advancement
of Science — " the first," Prof. Olmsted says, " to suggest the idea
of the American Association on its present plan."

Prof. Olmsted gives a list of sixty- two scientific papers in
meteorology, physics of the globe, and geology, on steamboats,
etc., published by Mr. Redfield. Forty-five of these are to be
found in the first fifty volumes of the American Journal of Sci-
ence, and twenty-eight of them are registered in the catalogue of
the Astor Library.

Seeking to determine what attracted insects to flowers — whether the
color, shape, or odor — M, Felix Plateau experimented with single dahlias
trained against the wall. He disguised the flowers in a variety of ways,
covering them all over with variously colored papers, leaving the yellow-
ish centers of tubular flowers, giving different shapes to the papers, cover-
ing with green leaves, and so going through the changes. It seemed all
the same to the insects: they found the flowers and enjoyed themselves
with them in their usual way. M. Plateau concludes that the attrac-
tions of the flowers are not in their form or color, but that the insects
are drawn to them by some other sense than that of sight, probably by
the smell.

120

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

gxlltxjv^s $aWe.

" THE NEW WOMAN'' AND THE
PROBLEMS OF THE DAT.

AS there is a new everj^tbing in
J\. these days, we suppose it was
inevitable that there should be a ''new
woman '' ; though why a new woman
more than a new man it might not
be easy to explain. For our part we
believe but faintly in " new " woman ;
we believe in woman. "We believe in
progress ; we believe that new times
call for new measures ; we believe
that these are new times, and that it
behooves both men and women to
prepare themselves to meet the de-
mands which tbe age is making on
them.

What is really new in the world
is knowledge. We see the practical
outcome of the new knowledge in the
ti*ansformation that has taken place
in the arrangements under which the
life of society to-day is carried on.
With the new knowledge there has
come a vast enlargement of human
power in all directions and a vast de-
velopment of human individuality.
Custom, though still powerful, is no
longer such a ruler of men's lives as
it used to be. Men and women every-
where have been roused, we might
almost say stung, into a sense of
individual existence ; and, looking
round on their changing environ-
ment, they are asking a thousand
questions to which as yet no very
certain answers can be vouchsafed.
Woman is awake because man is
awake ; the keenness of the times
has roused them both ; and from
both we seem to hear the inquiry
made by the jailer at Philippi, when
startled from slumber by the trem-
bling of the earth and the flashing
of a strange light : " What must I
do to be saved ? '' The difference be-

tween the so-called "new woman"
and woman without that qualifica-
tion is that the latter would wish to
be saved with man and the former
apparently without him. The new
variety emphasizes the fact that she
is a woman, and in that capacity is
going to do wonderful things ; where-
as woman without the " i\q\^ " is con-
tent to know herself a woman and to
feel that with her it rests to accom-
plish her equal part in all the best
work of the future.

The great change, as we have said,
is that there is more knowledge in the
world and that the rule of custom is
to a large extent broken. Things
that once had all the authority that
convention and routine could give
them are now open to every one's
criticism. Morality no longer rests
in absolute security upon dogma.
The time has come which Voltaire
predicted would be the end of all
things, when the people have taken
to reasoning. Fortunately, there is
no need to agree with Voltaire ; but
it is necessary to recognize that some-
thing is needed to give wise direction
to the emancipated thought and action
of our time. The dogmatic morality
of the past was in the main sound ; and
the problem of to-day is to secure a
sufficient sanction for whatever rules
of conduct are necessary to the well-
being of individuals and of society.
That much in the way of wise coun-
sel and true inspiration may be
expected from the increased reflec-
tiveness of women we most gladly
recognize ; but we do not feel dis-
posed to call a woman who thus
responds to the needs of the time
a ''new" woman, seeing that for
generations past, and particularly
in times of emergency, women

EDITOR'S TABLE.

121

have more or less fulfilled the same
role.

The two principal questions which
to-day confront society relate to the
future relations of men and women
and the education of the rising gen-
eration. The allegation is freely
made in many quarters that mar-
riage is a failure ; and no doubt fre-
quently it is. None the less, how-
ever, is it the case that no scheme
that has ever been proposed as a sub-
stitute for marriage merits a mo-
ment's consideration. It is easy to
provide theoi*etically for the gratifi-
cation of passion and impulse, but
not so easy by any means to show
how by any union less solemn and
abiding than marriage the higher
natures of men and women can be
duly developed and their lower pro-
pensities kept in check. We do not
look to any new woman for light on
this question ; but we do look to the
best women of to-day, those who to
purity and soundness of instinct add
a trained capacity for independent
and intelligent judgment, to join
with the best men iu indicating the
higher path which the generations
of the future may tread. We may
be sure of this, that the path is one
not of less but of greater self-control,
and that redemption frofti the mis-
eries which attach, in too many cases,
to marriage as it is will be found in
an elevation and purification of the
whole idea of marriage. Not that
the idea has not been held in its
highest purity by many in different
ages ; not that the world has ever
lacked examples of ideal marriage,
but that there has never been a suffi-
ciently wide recognition of its true
nature and possibilities. There is a
gospel on the subject which has to
be preached and, so far as individual
action can do it, enforced— the gos-
pel that the true happiness of a man
and woman united in marriage bonds
consists iu learning, as years go on,

to love and respect one another more
and more, and in aiding and stimu-
lating one another more and more to
right and noble action, each gaining
strength through the other, each find-
ing in the other the means of achiev-
ing a true individual completeness.
The true gospel is that there is
more in marriage than for the most
part poets have sung or romancers
dreamed, and that the failures of
which we hear so much haye been,
in the main, failures to grasp the
true conception of it and to make
a right preparation for the duties
which it in vol ves.

Does not all this mean, it may
be asked, that many are unfit
through defect of character, and oth-
ers through ignorance and general
inferiority of thought and sentiment,
to make the best of marriage ? It cer-
tainly does, and here the no less im-
portant problem of education comes
in. In these days we look too much
to the state to solve our problems for
us. There are some problems which
the state can not solve, and one, we
do not hesitate to say, is the problem
of a true education. The state can
levy taxes and employ agents and
make regulations ; but it can not speak
with the voice of father or mother;
it can not speak confidentially to the
young of their deepest interests. It
can enjoin rules of conduct, but it
can not guide aspiration ; it can not
meet what, in a broad sense, we may
speak of as spiritual needs. If the
rising generation is to be adequately
educated, the best men and women
of the day must come together and
consider how it is to be done — how
the work, of the state is to be supple-
mented by individual endeavor, so
that growth in character may keep
pace with growth in knowledge and
intelligence. There are two main
ways in which, at first sight, it seems
possible this might be done, or at
least more or less hopefully attempt-

122

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ed : first, by an improvement of the
home, and, secondly, by the action
of a higher public opinion on the
schools. We quoted, some months
ago, an eminent French writer of our
own day as saying that it was neces-
sary to put more " soul " in the pub-
lic schools. That is precisely what
they want, as all the best teachers
are fully aware. But you can not
make an appropriation for "soul."
It is not quoted in the catalogues of
school supplies ; it is not among the
prescribed subjects in teachers' ex-
aminations. It is a very real if not a
very tangible thing ; and it is a com-
municable thing. There are those
who have it and can impart it; in
deed, those who have it can hardly
fail to impart it. If there is enough
of it outside the schools, it will leak
in ; and our hope is that the best men
and the best women of the day will
so join forces as to create, especially
around the public schools, an atmos-
phere of higher sentiment that shall
afiPect for good the working of the
state machine, and greatly strength-
en the hands of all who, within the
schools, have set for themselves a
certain standard of spiritual as dis-
tinct from merely intellectual ac-
complishment.

Then as to the home. Here is
where we want women with new
knowledge, but not — we speak with
all due fear and trembling — " new "
women. The " new woman " would
set every one discussing rights ; but
the true woman with adequate knowl-
edge would see what the best women
have always seen, that the home re-
quires a principle of unity and not
a system of scientific frontiers or
an elaborately arranged balance of
power. Home life and home influ-
ence have, we fear, been suffering in
our day through a variety of causes ;
but the home, like marriage, is an
institution which only needs to have
its possibilities developed in order

to stand forth more than justified.
Without entering into the question
as to whether the wisest methods are
being followed to-day in the educa-
tion of women, it is beyond all doubt
that women have gained a vast en-
largement of their intellectual hori-
zon, and that in many cases women
are not only the peers but the supe-
riors of men in the same station in
life as themselves in knowledge and
culture. Such knowledge and cul-
ture can nowhere be better employed
than in the home, where the phys-
ical, mental, and moral development
of children has to be watched over.
The question is, How far will it be
employed in this way, and how far
made a means of mere personal self-
assertion ? The true woman will use
it for the good of others, and, if pos-
sible, will make it available for the
improvement of the home; while
others — the new type — will use it to
make themselves conspicuous in the
world, and, as they vainly fancy, add
glory to the female sex.

The hope of the future lies main-
ly in well-ordered homes — homes in
which children are trained to be just,
reasonable, and humane, in which
they are taught to look with an in-
telligent eye upon the phenomena
alike of Nature and of society, in
which they learn lessons of industry
and self-reliance, of honor, purity,
and self-respect, and are guarded
against the vulgar worship of wealth
and worldly success. It is for the
wise and noble women of our time
to help to make such homes, and it
is for men to see to it that they are
worthy of partnership in so sacred
a cause. It is no time for any silly
rivalry or futile opposition between
men and women, who are as neces-
sary to one another now as at any
previous age in the world's history —
nay, more necessai-y. On the con-
trary, it is a time for earnest counsel
and vigorous co-operation on the part

EDITOR'S TABLE.

123

of all who have the interest of the
present and future generations at
heart ; and the less we hear of the
separate and conflicting claims of
men and women the better. There
is ample scope to-day for the efforts
of all, and if any stand idle in the
vineyard it must be from lack of will,
not from lack of opportunity.

AN ALMOST TOO SUCCESSFUL JOKE.

When a valued contributor and
prominent man of science offered us
for publication recently an article
over his own signature intended to
cast not undeserved ridicule upon
the insatiable craving which so
many have for marvels, and particu-
larly for marvels that seem to pos-
sess the crowning merit (in their
eyes) of casting uncertainty upon the
methods and conclusions of physical
science, we decided to publish it ; and
it appeared in our last number, under
the title of The Sympsychograph.
The result, to speak frankly, has al-
most caused us to doubt the wisdom of
the step. Nothing, we know, was fui'-
ther from the intention of the writer.
Prof. D. S. Jordan, than to hoax or
mislead intelligent readers; and we
need hardly say that no such pur-
pose could possibly have commend-
ed itself to our approval. There is
reason to believe, however, that the
great weight attaching to Prof. Jor-
dan's name threw many persons off
their guard who would otherwise
have scanned the article with suffi-
cient closeness to perceive not only
its lack of scientific coherence, but
the mischievously sportive intent
undei'lying it. To such, we feel like
offering an apology: they read in
good faith, as a serious article, what
was written as a burlesque, and,
doubtless in some cases, puzzled very
unnecessarily over the incoherences
and obscurities which naturally en-
tered largely into its composition.

Many a one doubtless said: "This
does not read like an article by Prof.
Jordan, yet his name is signed to it;
it must be his, and there must be
something in it." "Well, there was
nothing in it except a burlesque ; and
if any of our friends feel that they
were unfairly entrapped into taking
it seriously, we can only express our
sincere regret.

It is worth while, however, for
those who took it seriously to reflect
for a few moments over what it was
that they thus gave credence to. The
statement was that photographs were
produced in absolute darkness; that
in the darkness a photographic plate
became sensitive to thought; and
finally, that the thought of a cat in
the mind could so decompose the
film on a prepared plate as to pro-
duce thereon the image of a cat.
This was a feast of absurdities which
our contributor doubtless supposed,
and which, we must confess, we our-
selves supposed would prove too rich
for all but the most credulous; and
if, on a review of the case, those who
were taken in are led to draw the
inference that a certain independent
exercise of judgment is always in
order, and that no name should be
accepted as sufficient voucher for
stark absurdity, the annoyance to
which the incident has given rise
will not be unmixed with benefit.

If any reader should perchance
ask whether there is anything more
incredible in the alleged perform-
ances of the "Astral Camera Club"
than in what we have learned this
year in regard to the X rays, we an-
swer: Yes, there is, on the surface,
all the difference in the world be-
tween the two cases. In the case of
the X rays. Prof. Rontgen made his
announcement in a carefully worded
memoir addressed to a learned body,
and fully discussed therein the work
done by predecessors in, if not the
same, an adjoining field of research.

124

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In tlie second place, there was a
known cause of the effect produced
in a powerful electric disturbance
of an attenuated gaseous medium.
There was something here which
might very conceivably possess an
action resembling that of light upon
a photographic plate, and, seeing that
ordinary light rays can pass through
vai'ious solids, it was not taxing be-
lief unduly to state that the X rays
could pass through solids imperme-
able to ordinary light. If intelligent
persons will only use the full meas-
ure of their intelligence in discrimi-
nating between authenticated and
unauthenticated announcements, be-
tween consistent and inconsistent
statements, between alleged facts
that have a history behind them,
and appear in some natural order of
development, and others that have
as little previous history and as little
in the way of development as " the
shield that fell from heaven," they
"will be all the better for it. They
will gain in intellectual power, and,
as a result, will be less at the mercy
of the manufacturers of the marvel-
ous. It may be a little difficult to
exercise discrimination to this de-
gree, but who can deny that the
effort to do so would be eminently
beneficial? The late Mr. Bagehot
once wrote an instructive article on
The Emotion of Belief, in which he
showed to how large an extent emo-
tion is responsible for belief. It is so
to altogether too large an extent :
when people believe, they are very
often indulging an emotion instead
of completing an intellectual process.
This emotion is continually demand-
ing nutriment and stimulus; and we
need to be on our guard if we would
not be continually believing simply
for the sake of the pleasure accom-
panying the act.

We therefore see a good moral as-
sociating itself very closely with Prof.
Jordan's jeu d'esprit; and there is

consequently reason to hope that,
when the returns are all in, the bal-
ance will be on the right side.

FABINQ FADS.

A CORRESPONDENT of The Nation,
writing from Geneva, thus reports in
regai'd to the Third International
Congress of Psychologists lately
held in that city : " The fact that the
papers on 'hypnotism' were less
than in earlier congresses, in pro-
portion to the entire number, and
that there were a bare half dozen on
thought-transference and telepathy,
shows the general tendency of psy-
chology. The hypnotic period is past
even in France. . . . As to telepathy,
I think there is a real decay of in-
terest in the subject, much as this is
to be deplored." We must confess
we do not feel like deploring the de-
cay of interest to which the corre-
spondent alludes. There would not
be such a decay if facts were forth-
coming of a nature and in sufficient
number to sustain the interest. Te-
lepathy is one of those things that
appeal most strongly to popular cre-
dulity. The subject, or rather the
alleged facts, might be studied with-
out injury by a man of scientific
training ; but, handed over to the
multitude, it is well adapted to be-
come the fruitful source of every
kind of intellectual mischief. There
are hundreds of minds to-day that
are perilously near the border land
of insanity, and still more that are
in a most unwholesome fever of un-
rest, simply on account of the oblit-
eration, so far as they are concerned,
of the boundaries of the possible and
impossible. They do not know what
to believe in or what to expect in
the way of incursions from an invis-
ible and intangible world, or what
law of Nature they can safely regard
as irreversible. Can any good come
of this ? We should certainly say

EDITOR'S TABLE.

125

No ; and we are sorry that some peo-
ple of more or less scientific com-
petence, who, as we think, might
be better employed, are devoting
their efforts toward promoting this
general condition of mental unsettle-
ment. It is a comfort to learn that
the assembled psychologists at Ge-
neva were not disposed to give much
countenance to the telepathic Will-
o'-the-wisp.

TEE ABUSE OF FREE LIBB ARIES.

At its recent annual meeting in
Cleveland, the American Library
Association heard some candid criti-
cism from its president, Mr. John
Cotton Dana, Librarian of the Public
Library of Denver. He feared that
his enthusiasm for the free public
library was born more of contagion
than of conviction. In the public
library, he said, you have stored a
few thousand volumes, including, of
course, the best books of all time —
which no one reads — and a generous
percentage of fiction of the cheaper
sort. To this place come in good
proportion the idle and the lazy, and
also the people who can not endure
the burden of a thought, and who
fancy they are improving their
minds, while, in fact, they are simply
letting the cool water of knowledge
trickle through the sieve of an idle
curiosity. The more persistent visit-
ors are largely men who have either
failed in a career, or never had a
career, or do not wish a career.

Mr. Dana charged the free public
library with relieving the idle, the
incompetent, and the indifferent
reader from the necessity — would he
have books — of going to work to
earn them. It checks, he continued,

the serious reader in collecting a
library of his own adapted to the
wants and tastes of himself and his
family. It leads parents to regard
with indifference the general read-
ing of their children, just as the free
public school may lead them to be
indifferent to their formal educa-
tion.

This and much more in the same
strain was loudly applauded by Mr.
Dana's large and representative audi-
ence of librarians. It is evident that
the abuses of free public libraries
have led to much searching of heart
among their chief officers. They are
feeling, as the teachers of the public
schools also feel, that they can not
take the place of the parent who ab-
dicates from one of the primary re-
sponsibilities of parenthood. A child
whose father and mother hand over
its mental and moral culture to the
teacher and the librarian virtually be-
comes an orphan. Neither public
school nor public library can do its
duty toward its pupils and readers
without the hearty and intelligent
co-operation of parents. Mr. Dana's
address was clearly intended to
traverse the easy optimism and self-
gratulatory vein usual in presiden-
tial utterances. His criticisms will
bear fruit in pointing to the abuses
and losses inevitable when the form
of gratuity is impressed upon a com-
fort or a luxury which each should
buy for himself. The form of gra-
tuity is a form only; at great and
increasing cost a service is proffered
which should be rendered, not in
the free public library but in the
home ; or, if a compromise must
be made, then by the free public
library watchfully directed from the
home.

126 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The vivisection question has not yet created nearly as much stir in
America as it has in England, where it has long been a rival of the Deceased
Wife's Sister controversy as a provoker of agitation and rhetorical dis-
charges. It has, however, recently come into view here through an at-
tempt to induce Congress to pass a bill imposing severe restrictions on
vivisection in the District of Columbia. For the reason above stated Eng-
land is our chief source of literature on the subject, and in a little book by
Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson* which comes opportunely to hand, we
have a calm and philosophical examination of the main question at issue.
Each of Sir Benjamin's chapters is a reply to one of nine questions sub-
mitted to him from the Leigh-Brown Trust, which holds an endowment for
a biological institution from which painful experiments are to be excluded,
hence the scope of the book is somewhat limited. The first question pro-
pounded to him is, " In view of the diflPerence of organization between man
and the lower animals, do you consider that painful experiment has played
any indispensable part in the study of medical substances and methods for
the cxu'e of disease ? " He answers this in the negative ; " because," he says,
" if what has seemed to be indispensable had never been thought of, some
other plan equally good would or might have led to the same results."
Yet he holds that every experiment hitherto performed for the prevention
or cure of such a disease as cancer has been justifiable. Hence his com-
plete answer is, briefly, "Experiment may be expedient, it is not indis-
pensable." The second question asks about anaesthesia in particular the
same that the first does about all medical substances. Sir Benjamin
answers with an unqualified negative ; but as he has made a special study
of anajsthetics, having tested so many as twenty-nine, he goes on to give a
brief history of anaesthesia and then to point out some still unfilled wants
in this field. In answering the question, " Do you approve of the instruc-
tion of students by means of experimentalism on living animals ? " he states
that he taught physiology in a medical school for many years without ex-
periments and his classes got on well. Afterward he introduced a few ex-
periments, which were rendered painless, and found that they required so
much time as to crowd out other subjects; that two students rarely saw the
phenomena in the same way ; and that some students were led to give
undue attention to the matters that were illustrated experimentally. He
therefore abandoned the experiments. The eighth question relates to legal
restrictions on vivisection. It appears that there is a license law in Eng-
land similar to what the American vivisection prohibitionists are trying to
have enacted for the District of Columbia. Sir Benjamin condemns it
utterly. He says that "it prevents men of really original mind from
working out valuable original inquiries. Men like William Harvey,
Thomas Willis, John Hunter, or Wilson Philip could never have worked
under it." Further, that most of the objections to it " are minor when com-

* Biological Experimentation. By Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, M. D., P. R. S. Pp. 170, 16mo.
London : George Bell & Sons ; New York : The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 127

pared with the demoralizing and degrading action of the law upon the
noble profession of medicine. This law places the professors of medicine
in the same position as the licensed publican, and for the same reason."
And again, '' it tempts weak men to weak practices ; increases the number
of experimentalists ; makes experiments all but useless, and does not limit
cruelty," There are, however, some restrictions to which Sir Benjamin has
no objection.

Such laws are mainly advocated by the various "humane societies,"
and we turn to documents issued by several such societies to learn their
positions on the question. The Thirtieth Annual Report of The American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of New York, shows that
the efforts of that society in 1895 were restricted to stopping and remedying
maltreatment of horses and other domestic animals. Vivisection is not
mentioned. A letter to its secretary asking the position of the society on
this matter has brought no response. A pamphlet on Work Accomplished
by the Toronto Humane Society during 1887-91 shows that this society
has covered a wider field. It has labored against abuse of beasts of burden,
cruelty in the transportation of live stock, overloading horse cars, improper
horseshoeing, the use of the check-rein and burr-bit, killing insect-eating
birds and robbing their nests, killing birds for women's hats, clipping
horses and docking their tails, cutting dogs' ears and tails, trap-shooting of
pigeons and other birds, matches for cock and dog fighting, bleeding live
calves periodically, plucking live fowls, and dehorning cattle. This society
also protects children. Here, again, is no mention of vivisection. If these
aims are not sufficient for any humane society it might add efforts against
the slaughter of seals and other animals for their furs, robbing eider ducks'
nests of down, killing small game birds which yield insignificant food sup-
plies, caponizing cockerels, gelding horses without anaesthetics, hunting
solely for amusement, especially where the birds or animals are bred for
the purpose, the prolonged process of killing food animals required by the
Hebrew theology, deserting or "losing" cats by families changing their
residences, and confining animals in menageries so that they sicken and
die prematurely. These things, as well as those previously mentioned,
have not, like vivisection, the purpose of increasing knowledge, but cater
only to the appetite, the vanity, the amusement, or the over-exacting con-
venience of men and women. The American Humane Association is one
society that has busied itself with vivisection. It has been taking a census
of opinions from clergymen, authors and editors, educators, and physicians
of over fifteen years' practice — more than two thousand in all — by sending
out statements of four differing views from which a choice could be made.
Its replies from clergymen and authors carry little weight, as presumably
none of these gentlemen ever saw a vivisection ; and those from educators,
excepting what teachers of biology there might be among them, are scarcely
better. Only the physicians can be presumed to know what they were
talking about, and of these there were for vivisection without restriction,
220 ; for vivisection when restricted to useful ends and under careful super-
vision, 513; for vivisection restricted and supervised by law, if it be with-
out pain, 186; for the total prohibition of vivisection, 207; obscure or
evasive, 24; total, 1,150. It thus appears that there is a wholesome differ-
ence of opinion on this subject among mature physicians, but that more of
them favor vivisection as reputable men of science would voluntarily con-

128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

duct it tlian any other of the four views. It is creditable to the reason of
the persons of other occupations consulted that this group is largest in each
class. The hill which is now awaiting the attention of Congress is meddle-
some and impracticable. As shown by Dr. Charles W. Dabney, Jr., As-
sistant Secretary of Agriculture, in a letter to Senator McMillan, it would
seriously hamper the researches of the United States Bureau of Animal
Industry, and it has been condemned, among other societies, by the Ameri-
can Medical Association, the Association of Military Surgeons of the
United States, the National Academy of Sciences (which was founded to
advise the Government on scientific matters), the Association of American
Medical Colleges, the Association of American Physicians, the Medical
Society of the District of Columbia, the Joint Commission of the Scientific
Societies of Washington (and several of these societies separately), and the
American Academy of Medicine. The greatest mischief of such a law is
that it would be used as a precedent for similar laws in the several States,
and, what the vivisection prohibitionists incautiously avow, as an " enter-
ing wedge " to bring in more drastic measures. America is in a fair way
to make vivisection literature of its own.

Our present knowledge of the ice age afFords an admirable example of
reconstructing the past from the present as practiced by geologists. The
process by which this reconstruction is effected, the facts relied upon, and
the reasoning employed in it are given especial prominence in the recent
volume on Ice TFor/c, by Prof. T. G. Bonney* In order to show us what
glaciers are and how they act, the author takes us first to the Alps. He
points out the lines of debris and the occasional large bowlders carried by
the frozen streams, and describes the moraines, giants' kettles, and other
traces left by them. Going down the valleys below their present limits, he
shows how deposits and marks of erosion testifying to their former greater
extent can be identified. Such marks and deposits are found in other
lands hundreds of miles from existing ice streams or any mountains that
seem adequate to send forth glaciers of great extent. An ice sheet stretch-
ing aci'oss a continent must be assumed to account for these phenomena,
and Prof. Bonney next shows us the ice fields of Greenland and the
antarctic lands as evidence that this assumption is warranted. Leaving
existing examples of glacial action, our author draws attention to various
traces of the Glacial Epoch — lake basins, the parallel roads of Glenroy, eskers,
etc. In dealing with phenomena whose meaning is not settled, he has
first set forth the facts and then has given the leading rival interpretations
of these data, pointing out in what particulars each seems to him strong and
in what weak. Traces of ice work are numerous in the British Isles, and
nearly one third of the volume is devoted to descriptions of them. In the
northeast of England there are the Cromer till, contorted drift, and upper
bowlder clays on the Norfolk coast, and similar deposits in Yorkshire, espe-
cially in the vicinity of Flamborough Head. In the northwest the Cum-
brian Mountains and the adjacent lofty fells of the Pennine range ob-
viously have been occupied by glaciers, and the mountainous part of North
Wales affords evidence of similar import. The detached mountainous

♦ Ice Work, Present and Past. By T. G. Bonney. International Scientific Series. Volume 74.
Pp. 295, 12mo. New York ; D. Appleton & Co. Price, 31.50. London : Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner
&Co.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

129

mass of Moel Tryfaen presents an interesting study for the glacialist, and
there is a remarkable inland deposit of sand, shells, and bowlders, quite re-
cently discovered, at Gloppa, near Oswestry. The midland counties also
have their bowlder clays, and deposits extend southward to the neighbor-
hood of London. Four chief sources of streams of bowlders are recog-
nized in Great Britain — Kirkcudbrightshire, the English lake district, Was-
dale Crag, and the Arenig region of North Wales, each of which is briefly
described. Our author next presents the two rival theories as to how
Great Britain received its glacial deposits — one that they were dropped
from ice floes floating over the land v^hile it was temporarily submerged,
the other that they were dragged on to it by an ice sheet moving over it
while it was at or about its present level. After referring briefly to evi-
dence in Scotland and Ireland, Prof. Bonney proceeds to describe ice work
in Europe and other parts of the world. For America he gives only the
limits and the general character of the traces of glacial action, referring to
Dr. G. F. Wright's book in the same series for fuller details. A large
number of his illustrations, however, are from Ameincan sources. The
four remaining chapters are devoted to theoretical questions. Here are
discussed the fall in mean annual temperature required for the Glacial
Epoch, the possible causes of such a climatal change, and whether there
was more than one age of ice. The closing chapter presents some general
principles of interpretation of glacial phenomena.

GENERAL NOTICES.

The author of this suggestiTC and useful
book * admits the deficiency in the teaching
of English, and particularly of composition,
in our schools, to which attention has been
called in a committee report to the Board of
Overseers of Harvard College, and attempts
here, by a thoughtful discussion of the sub-
ject in its theoretical and practical aspects,
to point out the way in which the standard
of scholarship in the vernacular may be im-
proved. The book has grown out of his own
regular work, and its purpose is to state
fully and illustrate clearly the principles that
underlie all practical language culture, to
emphasize the value of such culture — the
education that grows directly out of the use
and study of the vernacular — to present meth-
ods for carrying on the child's instruction in
language-arts in harmony with the underlying
principles, and to discuss grammar and rhet-
oric with reference to their educational value
and their relation to the language-arts. The
results of the best discussions of the subject,
from those of the Roman Quintilian to those

* Teaching the Language - Arts : Speaking,
Beading, Composition. By B. A. Hinsdale. New
York : I». Appleton & Co. (International Educa-
tion Series). Pp. 205, 8vo. Price, $1.

TOL. L. — 12

of Preyer and the American writers, are
brought into the study. The language-arts
are defined, the value of the vernacular as
an educational instrument is estimated, the
condition of the child's mind, his acquisition
in speech, and the origin of his knowledge
are inquired into, and the teaching of the
language- arts in the elementary and lower
grades and in the higher schools is discussed
under the three aspects of the substance of
thought, the form of thought, and literature
as an art. The principles having been thus
established, the subject is considered under
the headings of The Art of Reading, Read-
ing and Mental Cultivation, Requisites for
Reading, Teaching Reading as an Art, Teach-
ing Reading as Thought, Teaching Composi-
tion, Teaching English Literature, the func-
tions severally of English grammar, rhetoric,
and criticism, and Teachers of the Language-
Arts (qualifications, etc.). A bibliography
of twenty-one titles is appended.

In this book * the author considers a sub-
ject which he assumes, correctly as far as we
know, has not hitherto received any system-

* The Evohition of Bird-Song, with Observa-
tione on the Influence of Heredity and Imitation.

I 30

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

atic treatment from ornithologists — Mr. Sim-
eon Pearce Cheney, an American, being the
only one who has published a special work of
any considerable pretensions upon it. Mr.
Witchell first thought of making a scientific
investigation of it in 18S1, while listening to
a nightingale, from observing the repetition of
a particular feature in its strains. After an
interval of some years he became interested
in the song of a thrush, and from the thrush
was led to observe mimicry in other birds.
As his observations were continued, the re-
sults assumed shape and now justify embodi-
ment in a book. First he seeks for the ori-
gin of the voice, and finds it, with Darwin,
in involuntary movements of the muscles —
the excitement of combat being a possible
occasion. The combat cries are serviceable
also for purposes of alarm. A further de-
velopment in the faculty of song is the call-
cry, and from this the transition is not very
great to the simplest songs, which are fixed
and further developed and varied by heredity
and imitation. In the filling out of the plan
thus sketched, a chapter is devoted to no-
ticeable incidents connected with bird-song,
the influence of heredity is discussed, the
causes and effects of variation in bird-song
and the influence of imitation arc inquired
into, and an attempt is made to express the
songs of various birds in musical notation
with transcripts of the music sung by black-
birds, thrushes, and skylarks. The book
covers a field not occupied by any of the nu-
merous bird books now current, except, in
part, by Mr. Cheney's, and will prove an ac-
ceptable complement to them.

The Year-Book of the United States De-
partment of Agriculture for 1895 is the first
volume published in accordance with the law
of 1896 directing the separation in the re-
ports of the executive and business matter
intended for official information and those
papers formerly incorporated in them " spe-
cially suited to interest and instruct the farm-
ers of the country." We are very glad to
find that the editors have sought to make it
" a concise reference book of useful informa-
tion . . . without making it an encyclopaedia
of general information " — " to make a book

By Charles A. Witchell. New York: Macmillan &
Co. ; London : Adam and Charles Black. Pp. 253.
Price, 81.75.

and not a mere Government report." It in-
cludes a general report of the operations of
the department ; the papers, presented in
the form of popular essays rather than of
scientific reports, which are its main reason
for being ; and an appendix, containing a
large amount of miscellaneous matter taken
from the reports of the department and pre-
sented with special regard to the require-
ments of the reader.

In the Nineteenth Report of the Illinois
State Entomologist the first article details a
series of experiments for the destruction of
the chinch bug. A large portion of the re-
mainder of the work treats of the parasitic
and contagious diseases of insects, and de-
tails numerous experiments for the destruc-
tion of the noxious bugs by means of infect-
ing them with some destructive disease. The
last paper deals with the white ant, which
it seems annually does much damage in
Illinois.

The second of the popular writings of
Thomas Paine that has been reprinted from
the complete works edited by Moncure D.
Conway is The Age. of Reason (Putnams,
$1.25). In this form it makes a volume of
two hundred pages, octavo. The new edi-
tion will doubtless enable many persons to
learn that the book is not atheistic, as they
have been told, but deistic; that it is not
blasphemous, but its whole tenor is. There is
one God, and He is too great and good to be
charged with the ignorant and wicked acts
of men that are recorded in the Hebrew
Scriptures.

The Administrative Report of the Thir-
teenth Aniiual Report of the Bureau of Mh-
nohgi/ (1891, 1892) presents a historical re-
view of the development of the plan of the
work of the bureau, which from a seemingly
simple beginning has been found to involve
some highly complex problems, and in which
many lines of investigation have been opened.
Seven publications were issued during the
year. The general account of the work of
the agents of the bureau during the year
covered by the report is followed by a general
summary of the special papers which com-
pose the larger part of the volume. These
papers are : Prehistoric Textile Art in the
United States, by W. H. Holmes ; Stone Art,
by Gerard Fowke ; Aboriginal Remains iu

>S' CIENTIFIG LIT ERA T URE.

131

Verde Valley, Arizona, by Cosmas Mindeleff ;
Omaha Dwellings, Furniture, and Imple-
ments, by J. Owen Dorsey ; Casa Grande
Ruin, by Cosmas Mindeleff ; and Outlines of
Zufii Creation Myths, by Frank Hamilton
Gushing.

The Miscellajieoun Papers by Heinrich
Hertz, in an authorized English translation
by D. E. Jones and G. A. Schott, published
by the Macmillan Company, form the first
volume of the author's collected works, as
edited by Dr. Philipp Lenard. The second
volume is a reprint of his Researches on the
Propagation of Electric Action (already pub-
lished in English as Electric Waves), and the
third volume consists of his Principles of
Mechanics, of which an English translation
is in press. The papers here included repre-
sent chiefly the earlier investigations which
the author carried out before his electrical
researches ; but the last three — the Heidel-
berg lecture on the Relations between Light
and Electricity, an experimental investigation
of the passage of the cathode rays through
thin metallic tubes, and a tribute to Helm-
holtz, are of later dates. Nearly all the pa-
pers are extremely technical. In the intro-
duction Prof. Lenard gives a brief history of
Hertz's career in investigation, with notices
of the occasions on which some of the pa-
pers were composed, illustrated by liberal
extracts from the author's letters to his
parents.

The Report of the Missouri Botanical Gar-
den for 1895, the seventh annual report, is a
favorable one in all respects. The finances
are entirely satisfactory, the receipts from
rentals having been increased by $'7,500 ;
profitable improvements and valuable addi-
tions have been made in the garden ; a larger
number of visitors by one third were record-
ed than in 1894, and they "showed no dis-
position to vandalism " ; the herbarium has
been added to, and now contains 242,162
specimens, valued at $24,216; besides 4,80V
wood specimens and veneers and microscopic
slides of woods ; and the library contains
20,549 volumes and pamphlets. The scien-
tific papers appended to the report include
one by Dr. Trelease on the Juglandacece of
the United States, particularly the hickories,
described with reference to their winter char-
acteristics ; a study of the Agaves of the

United States, by A. Isabel Mulford ; an ac-
count of the ligulate Wolffias — plants of the
Duckweed family — of the United States, by
Charles Henry Thompson ; an address by
President Henry W. Rogers, of NorthAvestern
University, on the Value of a Study of Bot-
any ; and a catalogue of the Sturtevant Pre-
linnaean Library — a gift of early Herbals, Nat-
ural Histories, and Medical Botanies, made
to the institution by Dr. E. Lewis Sturtevant,
of Somh Framingham, Mass.

The Annual Report of the State Geoloffist
of New Jersey for 1894-'95 relates to the
Surface Geology, the Archaean Geology, Ar-
tesian Wells and Water Supply, and Forest-
ry. In surface geology Prof. Salisbury made
a general reconnaissance of the southeastern
parts of the State, and Mr. G. 0. Knapp of
the southwestern ; and the field work on the
surface formations is now done over nearly
all the State. Work was continued over the
Cretaceous and Tertiary formations, the Red
Sandstone formation, and the crystalline
rocks of the Highlands ; and special atten-
tion contmues to be given to artesian wells,
drainage, and natural parks and forest reser-
vations. Of the special papers on these sub-
jects we note that on forestry as being most
timely and full and definite ; and the subject
of forest fires receives in it a very satisfac-
tory discussion.

A pamphlet on Oxides, the first of a series
under the general title. Chemistry at a
Glance, has been prepared by Herbert B.
Tuttle. After some introductory matter on
chemical physics, and a list of elements,
there follows a list of radicals with a graphic
formula for each. About half the pamphlet
is occupied by a list of oxides, giving the
properties and a graphic formula for each,
and there is a similar but shorter list of
compounds that the author groups under the
name "oxate." (The author. New York,
60 cents.)

The contents of the Twentieth Annual
Report of the Department of Geology and
Natural Resources of Indiana for 1895 per-
tain almost wholly to economic geology. The
introductory portion embodies a general re-
view of the natural fuels of the State (coal,
petroleum, and natural gas), its resources
other than fuels, its natural history, the con-
dition of the State Museum — which is under-

132

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

going a scientific classification — and an ac-
count of the ofiice work of the department.
The special reports concern the clays and
clay industries of the coal-bearing counties
by the State Geologist, W. S. Blatchley ; the
carboniferous sandstones of western Indiana,
by T. C. Hopkins ; the whetstone and grind-
stone rocks, by Edward M. Kindle ; and the
crawfishes of Indiana, by W. P. Hay; be-
sides which the reports of the State natural
gas supervisor, the inspector of mines, and
the oil inspector for 1894-95 are given.

Volume XV of the Bulletin of the United
States Fish Commission — the volume for 1895
— consists of ten papers, most of which have
also been issued separately. A notably com-
prehensive study of the habits and develop-
ment of the American lobster, by Prof.
Francis H. Herrick, occupies the first two
hundred and fifty pages of the volume.
Prof. Herrick has devoted to this subject all
the time that he could spare from profes-
sorial duties during the past five years, and
has used each summer the facilities of the
Woods Hole Laboratory. The monograph is
accompanied by over sixty finely drawn and
engraved plates, a number of which are col-
ored. An account of the attempts to accli-'
matize fish and other water animals in the Pa-
cific States is the subject of a paper by Hugh
M. Smith, M. D. Thirty-one species of fish,
the lobster, the Eastern oyster, and the soft
clam are mentioned as subjects of these ex-
periments— the best results being obtained
with shad, bass, carp, and catfish. Shorter
papers deal with salmon investigations in
Idaho, oyster beds of Alabama, the menhaden
fishery, etc.

The Chief Fire Warden of Ifinnesota
has issued his First Annual Report, and the
document gives evidence of able and ener-
getic work on his part during the year 1895.
It contains a copy of the act under which
protection of the forests and prairies of the
State from fire has been organized, a copy of
a warning placard, eighteen thousand copies
of which were printed on cloth and posted in
the districts liable to fires, a list of the town
fire wardens, and statistics of forest and
prairie fires in ] 895. Owing to wet weather
the year affords a much smaller record of
destructive fires than 1894. A valuable and
interesting feature of the report consists in

answers of local wardens to questions as to
the effect of the placards, the sentiment of
their communities as to forest preservation,
and ways in which fires can be prevented
more effectually ; also answers from lumber-
men to a set of questions on present meth-
ods of lumbering. Means for preventing the
starting of fires by sparks from locomotives,
and other topics, are also discussed.

Volume V of the Report of the Iowa
Geological Survey, 1895, is accompanied,
like its immediate predecessor, by reports on
six counties of the State. Each of these
reports describes the geological formations
of the county, and gives the location and
character of its economic deposits. Of the
latter the most valuable are the soil and its
water supply, although this fact is frequently
overlooked, and there are also clays, build-
ing stone, and some coal.

Among recent bulletins of the Univer-
sity of Wisconsin is one on The Problem of
Fconomical Heat, Light, and Power Supply
for Bicilding Blocks, Schoolhouses, Dwell-
ings, etc., by G. A. Gerdtzcn, B. S. From
the engineering standpoint the author dis-
cusses the relative efficiency of electricity,
steam, and gas in furnishing heat, light, and
power, and arrives at a result which favors
gas produced by a combination of retort and
water-gas processes.

We heartily agree with the view of Locke
quoted in the front of the new edition of
Alfred Ayres's Verhal'ist — " If a gentleman
be to study any language, it ought to be
that of his own country." Science and the
mother-tongue have been firm allies in the
conflict against the monopolistic pretensions
of the classics, and each rejoices in the
other's success. If one has anything to say,
The Verbalist will help him to say it in the
most effective way. While the book is
mainly concerned with pointing out errors in
the use of words, it gives also instructions in
punctuation and in the use of the figures of
speech, and there are helpful articles on
British against American usage in both dic-
tion and pronunciation, misplaced words, the
use of Latin phrases, threadbare quotations,
verbiage, etc. In its new edition the book
has nearly fifty per cent more matter than it
had on its first appearance fifteen years ago,
and, although the words treated are arranged

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

133

alphabetically, an index has been added to
insure the ready finding of every bit of in-
formation that the volume contains. (Ap-
pletons, $1.25).

The Wagner Free Institute of Science, of
Philadelphia, issues in Volume IV of its
Transactions a memoir by Dr. Joseph Lcidy
GO. Fossil Vertebrates from the Alachua Clays
of Florida. Dr. Leidy was engaged on this
memoir at the time of his death, and it has
been completed and edited by Frederic A.
Lucas. The specimens on which it is based
are chiefly the bones and teeth of a species
of rhinoceros and of a mastodon. Others
pertain to three species of llama, to two of
hippotherium, to a tapir, another species of
rhinoceros, a mastodon, and a megatherium.

The chief articles in Nos. 4 and 5 of the
Bulletin of the Department of Labor, May
and July, 1896, are chapters iii and iv of
the papers on Industrial Communities, by
W. F. Willoughby, describing respectively
the village of the Coal Mining Company of
Blanzy, France, and that of the Iron and
Steel Works of Friedrich Krupp, Essen,
Germany. No. 4 contains also an article on
the Sweating System, by Henry White, Gen-

eral Secretary of the United Garment Work-
ers of America, in which statistics and ab-
stracts of recent legislation are given. In
No. 5 there is a set of statistics and an
abstract of laws passed since 1885 concern-
ing convict labor, which brings the greater
part of the information in the special report
of the department on this subject, made in
1886, down to date. Both numbers contain
currrent information on a variety of other
matters aifecting labor.

Mr. Oeorge Haven Putnam has brought
out a second edition of his Question of Copy-
right (Putnams, $1.75) — a book that is at
once a valuable manual and a memorial of a
noble struggle for honest dealings with for-
eign authors. The new edition brings the
record of copyright laws in the chief coun-
tries of the world down to March, 1896; it
contains a chapter on the results of the
United States law of 1891, a summary of
lawsuits concerned with the international
provisions of that law, and other new matter.
In a preface to the new edition Mr. Putnam,
while admitting that our law works better
than the friends of international copyright
expected, points out ways in which he be-
lieves it should be modified.

/

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricnltural Experiment Stations. Hatch Ex-
periment Station (Mass.): Bulletins Nos. 40 and 41.
Analyses of Manurial Substances and Licensed
Fertilizers, and on the Use of Tuberculin. — New
Hampshire College : The Tent Caterpillar. — Pur-
due University (Ind): Commercial Fertilizers. —
United States Department (Weather Bureau): Cli-
mate and Crop Service for August, 1896.

Bailey, L. H. The Nursery Book (third edi-
tion) New York and London: The Macmillan
Co. Pp.365. $1.

Bedell, Frederick. The Principles of the Trans-
former. New York and London: The Macmillan
Co. Pp. 416. S3.35.

Brinton, Daniel G. The Myths of the New
World (third edition, revised). Philadelphia:
David McKay. Pp. 360. $2.

Britton, N. L., and Brown, Addison. An Il-
lustrated Flora of the Nortiiern United States,
Canada, and the British Possessions. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 612.

Bulletins, Catalogues, etc. Brigham, A. P.:
Syllabus of a Course of Five Lectures on Physical
Geography for the Cook County Teachers' Insti-
tute held at Chicago University, August 31 to
September 4, 1890. — Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society, August, 18%.— Sixth An-
nual Directory of the Scientific Alliance of New
York, 1896. — Washington Agricultural College and
School of Science, Catalogue for 1896.

Clarke, W. H. Cheerful Philosophy for
Thoughtful Invalids. Reading, Mass.: E. T.
Clarke & Co. Pp. 41. 50 cents.

Cochrane, Robert. The Romance of Industry
and Invention. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Co.
Pp. ~'95. $1.25.

Cohn, Dr. Lassar. Chemistry in Daily Life.
(Translated by M. M. Pattison Muir.) Philadel-
phia: Lippincott & Co. London: Gravel & Co.
Pp. 324. $1.75.

Compayre, Gabriel. The Intellectual and
Moral Development of the Child. Translated by
Mary E. Wilson. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 2!)8. $1.50.

Corrigan, Severinus J. The Constitution and
Functions of Gases. St. Paul: Pioneer-Press Co.
Pp. 159.

Day, William C. The Stone Industry in 1895.
(United States Geological Survey publications.)
Washington : Government Printing Oflice. Pp. 61.

Dresser, Horatio W. The Perfect Whole.
Boston: George H. Ellis. Pp.259. $1.50.

Education, Report of the Commissioner of, for
the Year 1893-'94. Washington: Government
Printing Office. Pp. 1061.

Harley, Lewis R. Three Typical Educational
Systems. Philadelphia: LTniversity of Pennsyl-
vania. Pedagogical Series, Vol. I, No. 1. Pp. [/I.

Hertwig, Oscar. The Biological Problem of
To-day. (Translated by P. Chalmers Mitchell.)
New York: The Macmiflau Co. Pp. 1'18. $1.25.

Jordan, David Starr. Notes on Fishes little
Knov.n or New to Science. (Leland Stanford, Jr.,
Publications.) Pp. test, 43; plates, 23.

134

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Life-Saving Service of the United States. An-
nnal Report of, for Year ending June 30, 1835.
Pp.500.

Mach, Ernst. Popular Scientiflc Lectures.
(The Religion of Scit-nce Library, No. 21.) Chi-
cago: The Open Court Pubiishing Company. Pp.
313. 35 cents.

Oxford, Henry. Modem Optical InPtruments.
New York: Macmillan. London: Whittaker &
Co. Pp. 100. 80 cents.

Reprints. Bolton, H. Carrinjfton: Bad Features
of Periodicals (Address before the Washington
Library Association).— Keen, W. W., M. D. : Gan-
^ene as a Coniplication and Sequel of the Con-
tinued Fevers (Boston Medical and Surgical Jour-
nal, July 2 and 9, 189fi), and The Treatment of
Traumatic Lesions of the Kidney (Annals of Sur-
gery, August, 1886).— Keyes, Charles R.: The
Hcthany Limestone of the Western Interior Coal
Field (American Journal of Science, September,
1896)— Old South Leaflets: No. 07. The Boston
Ebenezer, by Cotton Mather: No. (39. Description
of the New Netherlands, by Adrian Van der
Donck ; No. 71. Columbus's Memorial to Ferdi-
nand and Isabella; No. 73. The Battle of Quebec.

Sizer, Nelson. Uncle Sam's Letters on Phre-
nology. New York: Fowler & Wells. London:
L. N. Fowler & Co. Pp. 145. 50 cents.

Smithsonian Publications. Bendire, Charles:
Life Histories of North American Birds. 111., pp.
518. Goode, George Brown, and Bean, Tarleton H. :
Oceanic Ichthyology. 111., pp. text, 552; plates,
123.— Hodgkins Fund Publications. 1033: Argon,
a New Constituent of the Atmosphere, by Lord
Rayleigh and Prof. William Ramsay, and Methods
for the Determination of Organic Matter in Air,
by David Hendricks Bergey.

Thorpe, T. E. Humphry Davy, Poet and Phi-
losfipher. New York: Macmillan & Co. I»p. 240.

SI 25.

Trowbridge, John. What is Electricity ? (In-
ternational Scientific Seri ^s.) Pp.309. $1.50.

White, Andrew D. Fiat Money Inflation in
France. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 86.
25 cents.

Wise, P. M. A Text -Book for Training Schools
for Nurses, with an Introduction by Dr. Edward
Cowles. New York and London: G.P.Putnam's
Sons. 2 vols. Pp. 230 and 327. Each, $1.23.

"gxvLQvxtutB 0f Jictjetice.

Jfotes froia the American Association. —

The attendance at the Buffalo meeting of
the American Association — three hundred
and thirty — was the smallest in its recent
history. A curve with very marked inden-
tations published in Science shows that the
attendance on the meetings has steadily de-
creased since it reached its maximum iu
1880 to 1884. The curve further shows that
it was very much greater when the associa-
tion met in the larger Eastern cities — Boston,
Montreal, Philadelphia, New York, Washing-
ton, and Brooklyn — though declining in them
too, than in the cities farther west. Among
the resolutions passed by the association
were, one urging upon Congress the desira-
bility of further legislation looking to the
early adoption of the metric system; one
authorizing the construction of authentic
standards of electrical measurement, to be
the property of the association ; a resolu-
tion approving the proposition to create the
office of Director-in-Chief of Scientific Bu-
reaus and Investigations in the Department
of Agriculture, " to be tilled by a broadly
educated and experienced scientific man,
provided that such appointment shall be
made only on the nomination of the National
Academy of Science, the legally constituted
adviser of the Government in matters relat-
ing to science " ; and a protest to Congress

against legislation on vivisection. In this
protest the association declared that experi-
ments on animals " have effected a saving of
many millions of dollars in animal property,
and are the basis of our knowledge of hy-
giene and preventive medicine, and, in part,
of surgery " ; and affirmed that, " while dep-
recating cruelty and needless vivisection ex-
periments in the public schools, this associa-
tion believes that those who are trained to
biological research are the ones who are best
able to decide as to the wisdom and utility of
animal experimentation." A committee was
appointed to consider the matter of institut-
ing a study of the white race in America.
Grants were made of one hundred dollars for
a table at the Biological Laboratory at Wood's
Hole, Mass. ; fifty dollars to Francis E. Phil-
lips for investigations on the properties of
natural gas ; and fiifty dollars to L. A. Bauer
for investigations on terrestrial magnetism
in connection with the magnetic survey of
Maryland. A happy adjustment was sug-
gested, and partly carried out in the case of
one of them, of the relations of the special
societies to the association, under which,
after the formal meeting of the special so-
ciety, the papers contributed by members
shall be held over to be read in the meetings
of the association. The societies, by follow-
ing this plan, may be made to contribute to

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

135

the strength of the association and to the
interest of its meetings.

New Elected Officers of the American
Association. — The following are the officers
elect for the next meeting (Detroit, 1897) of
the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science: Pi-esident: Wolcott Gibbs,
of Newport, R. I. Vice-Presidents : (A) Math-
ematics and Astronomy, W. W. Beman, of
Ann Arbor, Mich. ; (B) Physics, Carl Barns,
of Providence, R. I. ; (C) Chemistry,, W. P.
Mason, of Troy, N. Y. ; (D) Mechanical Sci-
ence and Engineering, John Galbraith, of
Toronto, Canada; (E) Geology and Geogra-
phy, I. C. White, of Morgantown, W. Va. ;
(F) Zoology, G. Brown Goode,* of Washing-
ton, D. C. ; (G) Botany, George F. Atkinson,
of Ithaca, N. Y. ; (H) Anthropology, W J
McGee, of Washington, D. C. ; (I) Social
and Economic Science, Richard T. Colburn,
of Elizabeth, N. J. Permanent Secretary:
F, W. Putnam, of Cambridge, Mass. (office,
Salem, Mass.). General Secretary: Asaph
Ball, Jr., of Ann Arbor, Mich. Secretary of
the Council : D. S. Kellicott, of Columbus,
Ohio. Secretaries of the Sections : (A) Math-
ematics and Astronomy, James McMahon, of
Ithaca, N. Y. ; (B) Physics, Frederick Bedell,
of Ithaca, N. Y. ; (C) Chemistry, P. C. Freer,
of Ann Arbor, Mich. ; (D) Mechanical Science
and Engineering, John J. Flather, of Lafay-
ette, Ind. ; (E) Geology and Geography, C.
H. Smyth, Jr., of Clinton, N. Y. ; (F) Zoolo-
gy, C. C. Nutting, of Iowa City, lov.a ; (G)
Botany, F. C. Nev/combe, of Ann Arbor,
Mich. ; (H) Anthropology, Harlan I. Smith,
of New York, N. Y.; (I) Social and Eco-
nomic Science, Archibald Blue, of Toronto,
Canada. Treasurer: R. S. Woodward, of
New York, N. Y.

The President's Address at the British
Association. — The opening session of the
Liverpool meeting of the British Associa-
tion, September 16th, was witnessed by
about three thousand persons. Sir Douglas
Galton, the retiring president, in introducing
the new president. Sir Joseph Lister, spoke
of the occasion as marking the termination
of his own services to the association which,
as general secretary and finally as presi-

* Died since Lis appointment.

dent, had extended over a quarter of a cen-
tury. The presidency of Sir Joseph Lister,
who is also President of the Royal Society,
offers the first case in which a surgeon has
held this position in the body solely in vir-
tue of his professional attainments. It may
well be so, for those attainments, as Sir
Douglas Galton observed, " have been main-
ly devoted to mitigate suffering, and have
revolutionized the surgeon's art " ; and an
English journal is moved to declare him " one
of the greatest, if not th« greatest, benefac-
tor mankind has ever had." The new presi-
dent's address was devoted to the illustra-
tion of the Interdependence of Science and
the Healing Art, and began with an estima-
tion of the value of the aid the Rontgen
rays may render to the surgeon and physi-
ologist. The fact that this is the jubilee of
anaesthesia in surgery brought that subject
properly forward. Next, the speaker re-
ferred to the researches of Pasteur on fer-
mentation and his disproval of spontaneous
generation as leading up to his own applica-
tion of aseptic surgery, the development and
ultimate method of which he described brief-
ly and with remarkable clearness. The work
of Robert Koch, Pasteur's attenuated virus
and artificial immunity, the centenary of
vaccination and Pasteur's application of the
principle in rabies, Behring and Kitasato's
antitoxic serum and its use in diphtheria,
and Metchnikoff's investigations of the
phagocytes, or white corpuscles, and their
power to counteract infection were presented
as specimens, culled from a wide field, of
what the art of healing has borrowed from
science and contributed to it.

The Sectional Addresses in the British
Association. — In the sectional meetings of
the British Association, Prof. J. J. Thom-
son, in Section A, made The Teaching of
Physics the subject of his presidential ad-
dress ; Dr. Ludwig Mond, in the Section
of Chemistry, reviewed the History of the
Manufacture of Chlorine, with especial ref-
erence to the influence which the progress
of pure science has had upon its develop-
ment and simplification ; Mr. J. E. Marr, of
Cambridge, in Section C, spoke of Strati-
graphical Geology and the effect which the
work done upon the subject has had upon
our knowledge of geology considered as a

136

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

whole ; Prof. E. B. Poulton, in the Section
of Zoology, discussed the difficulties which
arise from both the physical and the bio-
logical points of view in considering the
subject of organic evolution, and inquired
whether the present state of paleontological
and zoological knowledge increases or di-
minishes those difficulties ; Major Leonard
Darwin, of the Royal Geogiaphical Society,
described what has been done for railway
construction in Africa and what remains to
be done if the continent is to be opened up,
and sought to indicate the relation of the
proposed railway routes to the main physical
features of the countries they are to trav-
erse ; Mr. Leonard Courtney, M. P., in the
Section of Economic Science and Statistics,
presented a qualified defense of individualism
as opposed to the principles of collectivism ;
Sir Douglas rox,'in the Section of Mechanics,
sketched the progress that had been accom-
plished in the several departments of civil
and mechanical engineering during the quar-
ter of a century since the association last met
in Liverpool ; Mr. Arthur J. Evans, in the
Section of Anthropology, dealt with the Ori-
gins of Mediterranean and European Civili-
zation, supporting the " Eurafrican " theory
in contradistinction to the Aryan theory ;
Dr. G. H. Scott, in the Botanical Section,
presented an Exposition of the Scope and
Functions of Modem Morphological Botany.

The Tree-Emblem of the Sioux. — la a

paper on The Emblematic Use of the Tree in
the Dacotan Group, read as a vice-presiden-
tial address before the Anthropological Sec-
tion of the American Association, Miss Alice
C. Fletcher, after showing how the religions
of the Indians probably began with the ut-
terances of a seer, which, passing from mouth
to mouth, gradually developed into cere-
monials with their rites, spoke of the thun-
der as the universally accepted manifestation
of Wa-kanda, the mysterious power perme-
ating life. This idea was connected with the
thunder birds, and they lived in cedar trees.
The pole of the cedar tree therefore became
an emblem of the highest value, so that the
ceremonies of the sacred pole were of the
greatest importance. The development of
this idea slowly through many years is a
most interesting part of the story of the Da-
cotans.

Baiafall and the Forms of Leaves. — Ob-
servations made by Stahl at Buitenzorg,
Java, and recorded in his book on Rainfall
and the Forms of Leaves, establish the fact
that the points and indentations of leaves are
elongated and made more slender by the ac-
tion of rain ; that leaves under its influence
tend to assume a vertical position ; that the
nerves are modified into little channels
through which water can flow easily; and
that the arrangement of the down on leaves
and stems contributes to the scattering of
the drops. Other observers, Lundstrom and
Wille, for example, had already pointed out
some of these facts, but Stahl's work pre-
sents new points of view and contains very
instructive details. The morphological pe-
culiarities described are explained by Stahl
as results of the necessity of relieving the
leaves from their load of moisture, of turn-
ing the water to the roots and freeing the
tops of the plants from it, of freeing the
leaves from epiphytic alga?, fungi, and li-
chens, and of drying their surfaces rapidly,
thereby making transpiration more easy.
The distinctive feature of leaves exposed to
seasons of rain is the elongation of their
points, and this form appertains not to trop
ical plants only, but also to those which grow
on the beach and receive the spray from the
sea, to plants on high mountains and elevated
plateaus which are wet by heavy dews, and
to plants of the temperate zones growing
where the precipitation is considerable. New
and interesting observations on this subject
are contained in a work recently published
by Jungner. Some of the most original of
them relate to the influence exercised by the
spray of waterfalls on the plants that grow
in the gorges, below or by the side of the
falls. Plants situated thus are styled in Ger-
man TrdufehpUze7i, or drip-pointed. In the
leaves exposed to the spray, their usual down,
which would tend to retain the moisture for
some time, disappears from the leaves ; and
the grouping of the leaves on the stems is
observed to be favorable to the passing away
of the water. These effects may be produced
experimentally ; and it is possible, in green-
houses, to modify the shape of leaves by ex-
posing them constantly to a fall of water or
to spray. Jungner's experiments all tend to
the support of the modern ideas concerning
adaptation. These conclusions were reviewed

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

137

in papers read at the recent meeting of the
American Association by Prof. D. T. Mc-

Dougal.

Meteorology and Sacrilege. — A recent
debate in the Yolksraad, at Johannesburg,
on the subject of artificial rain-making has
some scientific interest for the psychologist.
The report is as follows : " The debate on the
memorials from Krugersdorp requesting the
Eand to pass an act to prevent charges of dyna-
mite being fired into the clouds for rain was
continued. Mr. A. D. Wohnaraus spoke in
favor of his proposal, and denounced the ac-
tion of certain persons in Johannesburg as
invoking the wrath of God. Mr. Birkenstock
said there was nothing irreligious or sac-
rilegious in these experiments ; they were
purely scientific experiments. The chairman
said it was a monstrous thing to shoot into
the clouds ; it was nothing less than defiance
of the Almighty ; it should be made a crimi-
nal offense. Mr. Labuschagne was of the
opinion that the offenders should be impris-
oned. After a further discussion it was re-
solved, by fifteen to ten votes, to instruct the
Government to draft a law to prevent such
things happening in future, and submit it
this session."

A Cambodian Lesson in Anatomy. — M.

Adhemard Leclere, in his examinations of
Cambodian schools, came upon a retired
scholar-bonze who continued to teach in his
rural retreat. He was giving lessons on
anatomy to six students of a religious vo-
cation, describing the bones of the human
body. He said : " There is a bone in the
tongue, which you do not know of, which
you have never seen, but which nevertheless
exists, for I have seen it. The most surpris-
ing thing about it is that it is isolated, and
not attached to any other bone. It is all
alone." The teacher had given a lesson on
the Pali language the day before, and the
day before that on the world as described in
the sacred books, and also according to what
he had heard from Europeans concerning it.
" He showed me," says M. Leclfere, " on his
blackened tablet, a map of the world which
he had drawn according to the best of his
knowledge. I had some difficulty in recog-
nizing France among all the round marks he
had drawn, for it was larger than India, sur-

rounded by water on all sides, and placed
northwest of the Himalaya Mountains. ' My
map,' he said, ' is not like the map in the
sacred books, but it is true all the same.' I
did not dare tell him, before his pupils, that
it was not like our maps ; so I asked him to
go on with his lecture, and said I was very
glad to be present. The students, each with
his palm-leaf tablet and his iron-pointed
stylus, listened quietly and respectfully, writ-
ing down the names of the bones as he men-
tioned them. ' The bones of the back are
boxed into one another like the bones of a
snake or of a fish ; if there was only one
bone, you would not be able to bend yourself
gracefully, or to bend back, or to round your
back or to turn yourself. At the slightest
shock the bone would break, and you would
not be able to carry anything heavy. If the
bones of the back were imperfectly boxed,
they would not roll upon one another, or else
they would roll too much; and your body
would be too stiff or too supple, and you
would not be able to carry anything heavy.'
While he was speaking thus I was looking
at him. His body was bare ; his long, bald
head was slightly inclined toward his hearers,
and his bright eyes had an expression befit-
ting an old professor seeking to be correctly
understood. He spoke slowly, pronouncing
distinctly, and in dignified language ; and his
six students looked at him attentively, trying
their best to understand all he said."

Wire-Glass. — Some instructive tests of
wire-glass as a protection against fire were
recently made by the Philadelphia Fire
Underwriters' Association. Wire-glass con-
sists of a more or less open meshwork of
wire imbedded in glass plates in such a
manner, it is claimed, that — under conditions
where, unsupported by the wire network,
the glass would speedily be shivered, and of
no use in retarding the fire — the wire-glass
interposes a barrier which, even when heated
to incandescence and then drenched with
cold water, still retains its effectiveness. A
brick test house, about three feet by four
feet, inside measurement, and nine feet
high, was constructed. In one side of this
structure a wire-glass window was fastened
in a wooden frame covered with lock-jointed
tin. In another side a Philadelphia standard
fire door was hung. The upper part of this

138

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

door had a pane of wire-glass, eighteen by
twenty-four inches, set into a wood, metal-
covered frame. The entire roof of the test
house was replaced by a skylight. One side
of this skylight was provided with three
hghts of a quarter-inch ordinary rough
glass ; the other side with three lights of
a quarter-inch wire-glass. In order to make
the test as severe as possible, iron grate bars
were placed in the bottom of the test house,
and openings were left in the wall near the
ground for the purpose of free draught.
The house was filled two thirds full of wood,
liberally treated with coal oil and resin.
In a few moments after the fire was started
the ordinary rough glass began to crack and
fall into the fire. The wire-glass in the fire
door soon became red hot, so that a piece of
paper held against it on the outside was
easily ignited. The three plates of wire-
glass in the skylight, subjected to the entire
heat of the fire, also became red hot, but
retained their position throughout the test.
At the end of thirty minutes water was
thrown on the fire and glass. After the fire
was extinguished the three plates of glass in
the skylight were found to be cracked into
countless pieces, but still adhered together,
forming one sheet. The window-light —
which, as the result showed, was not prop-
erly secured to its frame — was found to be
in the same condition as the skylight, ex-
cepting that a large crack had developed.
Tbe plate of glass in the fire door was
cracked the same as the skylight, but, being
well secured, it did not give way.

Constitniionality of Time Labor Laws.

— The general trend of the decisions of
courts, cited by Mr. S. D. N. North, in his
paper on Factory Legislation in New Eng-
land, concerning laws limiting the hours of
labor, is against their validity. They are
regarded as attempts to limit the constitu-
tional right of freedom of contract. But
some of the decisions are conflicting. The
Illinois Supreme Court has decided that the
effect of a law of this kind would be to de-
prive men of liberty and property. The
Supreme Court of California declared an
eigbt-hour ordinance of the city of Los
Angeles simply an attempt to prevent cer-
tain parties from employing others in a law-
ful business and paying them for their serv-

ices, and a direct infringement of the right
of such persons to make and enforce their
contracts. In Nebraska, an eight-hour law
was held to be unconstitutional, as being
special legislation, and as attempting to pre-
vent persons legally competent from making
their own contracts. In Illinois, an eight-
hour law for women in clothing factories
was declared to be unconstitutional because
it interfered arbitrarily with the right to
buy and sell labor. The mere fact of sex,
the court held, would not justify the enact-
ment of limiting legislation, unless there
may appear "some fair, just, and reasonable
connection between such limitation and the
public health, safety, or welfare proposed to
be secured by it." These facts are used by
Mr. North as an argument against further
attempts to limit the conditions of labor by
legislation, lest the test of constitutionality
should be pushed to the extent of over-
throwing the restrictions we already have
and accept as just.

Indians of the Paragnay Hirer. — An

interesting account is given by an Italian
artist, Cavaliere Guido Bozziani, of two In-
dian tribes dwelling on the Paraguay River,
among whom he spent some time, whose
civilizations are very different. The Chama-
cocos are a people of noble stature and fine
appearance, wearing no clothing "except
rough sandals of peccary skin when on the
tramp and a profusion of feather ornaments
and necklets of reeds, etc., on festive occa-
sions," and excel in feather work, forming
combinations of great beauty with the vari-
ously bright-colored plumage with which
the region supplies them abundantly. They
have, too, the singular taste of making much
use of rattlesnakes' rattles for ornamental
purposes, wearing them with feathers in
diadems, armlets, and leglets, bunching
them into pendants for earrings, and tying
them on axes and clubs. During their
dances they use as rattles small gourds con-
taining stones and belts made of loosely
strung carapaces of tortoises or the hoofs
of stags. Their pottery is all hand-made
and rude. Their weapons and implements
are long-handled stone axes — quite singular
— plain clubs, wooden spears, large bows
for shooting arrows pointed with hard
wood, and small bows with a double string,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

»39

shooting clay bullets, and used for catching
birds. The women make bags of netting,
and hammocks. They have superstitions
about their food, among which is the pro-
hibition of deer flesh to the women, who
have to satisfy themselves with birds and
small game ; and of the eggs of the South
American ostrich to the children. The
Caduveos, Mbaryas, or Guaycuru, are a war-
like and agricultural people, with fixed resi-
dences, and have the art of weaving, excel
in pottery, and execute designs of wonderful
beauty and variety. These qualities are re-
garded by the author as real results of a
logical study of the harmony and aesthetic
combination of lines and figures, and not
of accidental combinations. Ornamental de-
signs are painted on their skins with tlie
juice of a plant producing a blue-black
color, which penetrates the epidermis a little
way, and lasts six or seven days. It is ap-
plied by women, with small sticks, to the
end of which tufts of cotton wool are some-
times tied. The effect of the painting is
often heightened by adding powdered char-
coal to the juice. The people wear their
hair short and well combed and greased ;
file their upper incisor teeth to a point;
practice depilation ; are very cleanly, bath-
ing often ; and wear decorous clothing and
tasteful ornaments.

A Hniaorons Elephant. — In illustration
of the sense of the humorous in elephants,
Meredith Nugent, in Our Animal Friends,
tells a story of an elephant in the Jardin des
Plcmtes, in Paris, that was kept in the same
inclosure with a large hippopotamus, for
whose comfort and amusement a great stone
basin had been constructed and filled with
water. " It was quite early in the morning
— before the hour for admitting the public
to the garden — when I noticed the elephant
walking around on the stone edge of the
basin curiously watching the hippopotamus,
which was completely under water. I felt
quite sure that the elephant was up to some
prank, and I was not mistaken, for just as
soon as the ears of the hippopotamus came
into view the elephant quickly seized one of
them with his trunk and gave it a sudden
pull. The enraged hippopotamus lifted his
ponderous head clear out of the water and
snorted and blew, but every time he rose to

take breath the elephant would recommence
his antics. Around and around the great
quadruped would go, keeping a sharp lookout
for the little ears of the hippopotamus,
which he would instantly seize the moment
they appeared. His evident delight in teas-
ing his huge neighbor was very comical, and
there is no doubt that he thoroughly enjoyed
it. Again, one day the keeper placed some
food for the hippopotamus in the corner of
the inclosure, and at once the animal began
to leave the water to get it ; but the elephant
slowly ambled over to the same corner and,
arriving there first, placed his four feet over
the favorite food in such a way that the
hippopotamus could not get at it, gently
swayed his trunk back and forth, and acted
altogether as though he were there accident-
ally, until the garden was thrown open to the
public, and he went forward to receive the
daily contributions of bread, cake, pie, etc.,
which were always offered him by his hosts
of admirers."

The Future of Wood Engraving. — Not-
withstanding the apparently almost universal
supplanting of the old methods of engraving
by process illustration, Mr. W. Biscombe
Gardner affirms that wood engraving was
never more alive as a fine art or in a higher
state of perfection than it is at the present
period ; " and it is still capable, in the hands
of right, good, earnest workers, of being lifted
to a much higher position." Process may
hold the advantage for work that has to be
done in a rush, and for that in which cheap-
ness rather than quality is sought, but " wood
engraving as a reproductive fine art never can
be touched and never will be touched by
any process yet invented." It is even " far
and away " above any of the higher fine-art
processes " in its marvelous versatility of
technique, which enables the engraver to
translate not only the value but the very in-
dividual touch of each artist from whose
picture he may be engraving. All processes
dependent upon photography are bound to
go wrong in the rendeiiug of values, since
photography has not yet been brought to
such a state of perfection as to master the
difficulties of exact color translation. In
fact, photography is utterly inadequate in
the most simple wash drawings in black and
white." While it is admitted that a peu-and-

140

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ink drawing could hardly be better repro-
duced than by the best process, " nothing
does or ever can compare with the work done
through the sensitive medium of the eye and
hand of man. In fact, I consider wood en-
graving far better than any or all the repro-
ductive arts, as it stands quite alone in its
wonderful adaptability, for any variety of
texture one likes can be produced on the
boxwood block. This can not be said for
either etching, mezzotint, steel, or copper,
each having its own methods, great as the
masters have been who have worked upon
one or the other of these materials. . . . The
crowning advantage enjoyed by wood engrav-
ing, through which it obtains its immense
superiority over all other methods, is that
the engraver is enabled to work in both black
and white line. . . . Nothing is out of the
range of imitation possible to wood engraving.
The differences of textures of flesh, silk,
satin, cloth, wood, steel, glass, the grain of
wood, marble, weather-worn stone, furs and
skins of animals, atmospheric effects, foliage
of all kinds — all these it can represent, and
beyond everything it can render the diifer-
ences between oil and water color, and can
accurately transcribe the old master's work
with all its cracks and blemishes from damp
and shrinkage." The author looks forward
to a great future for wood engraving as a
fine art.

The Mescal Ceremony. — At a recent meet-
ing of the Washington Chemical Society Mr.
Mooney read an interesting paper on The
Mescal Ceremony among the Indians. The
mescal plant is a small variety of cactus na-
tive to the lower Rio Grande region and
about the Pecos River, in eastern New Mex-
ico. Its botanical name is LopJwphora, or
A nhalonium williamsii. It is grayish green,
club-shaped, and without sphies. There is
another mescal plant, the maguey of Arizona,
with which the New Mexico species should
not be confounded. The local Mexican
name for the plant is peyote, a corruption of
the original Aztec name, from which it would
seem that the plant and ceremony were
known as far south as the valley of Mexico
at a period antedating the Spanish conquest.
Several related species are described by
Lumholtz as being used with ceremonial
rites among the tribes of the Sierra Madre.

The dried tops when eaten produce such
marked stimulating and medicinal results
and such agreeable mental effects, without
any injurious reaction, that the tribes of the
region regard the plant as the vegetable in-
carnation of the Deity, and eat it at regular
intervals with solemn religious ceremony of
song, prayer, and ritual. The juice of the
cactus has an intensely bitter taste, due to
an alkaloid pellotine, which is present to the
extent of 075 to 0 89 per cent. This alka-
loid has recently been investigated by Dr. A.
Heffter, of the University of Leipsic. Its
composition is expressed by the following
formula: CisHigNOa. It seems as a thera-
peutic agent to have two distinct actions.
The first effect is narcotic in nature, owing
to a paralysis of the brain; this stage is
shortly followed by a tetanic condition, owing
to the heightened irritability of the spinal
cord. Thus pellotine falls into the pharma-
cological group with morphine. Prof. Jolly,
of the Charite, in Berlin, has made clinical
use of it as a narcotic in doses of 0'04

Esthetics in Engineering. — The address
of Prof. Frank 0. Martin, of the Section of
Engineering of the American Association, on
The Artistic Element in Engineering, was a
plea for consulting beauty as well as utility
in engineering construction. The engineer is
not so bound by the mathematical traditions
of his profession but that he has abundant
opportunities to cultivate the ajsthetical side.
It is not true, as is often supposed at the first
thought, that there is a conflict between the
utilitarian and the artistic. While the mere
application of money will not secure beauty,
that feature may often be obtained without
additional expenditure, or at most with one
that is relatively trifling. As an example in
which beauty had considerable influence in
matters where it seemed little concerned,
Prof. Marvin mentioned an engine room
which had been elegantly fitted up, with the
result that the engine fell under closer and
more minute inspection than it could receive
in the ordinary dark room, and was more
carefully attended to — and that meant more
economy for the owner. Our railroad com-
panies find it advantageous to beautify their
stations and cultivate their embankments.
The engineer may find a wide field in beauti-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

141

fying municipalities and all public works on
which he may be engaged.

An India-Rabber Famiae. — The world's
consumption of India rubber has been in-
creasing so enormously during the past few
years that the time does not seem to be far
distant when the demand will greatly exceed
the supply. The bicycle is of course respon-
sible for a large part of this increase, and, as
the pneumatic tire is becoming more of a ne-
cessity every day for all city vehicles, there
promises to be a still greater demand here-
after. It is stated that only within the last
year has there been any attempt to regulate
the gathering of caoutchouc and to stop the
wanton destruction of the tree, which it
seems is usually cut down, so as to facilitate
the collecting of the sap. This puts an end
to the productiveness of whole districts every
year, and, as it has been found that by prop-

erly made incisions about two pounds of rub-
ber can be gathered from each tree annually,
without in any way interfering with its growth
or life, vigorous attempts are called for, and
it is stated are being made, to regulate the
treatment of the trees. Owing to the danger
of a rubber famine, several chemists in both
France and Germany have been working on
methods for the artificial production of In-
dia rubber, and several new processes have
already been announced. Attention has also
been turned to the balata, a South Ameri-
can tree. This balata rubber, while not
so good for insulation and other purposes
as caoutchouc, is yet specially adapted for
a great many uses, such as machinery belt-
ing, mackintoshes, surgical appliances, etc.,
and British Guiana has developed quite an
export trade in it, the annual quantity
amounting to over three hundred thousand
pounds.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

A RECENT number of the American Med-
ical and Surgical Bulletin contains an article
on the artificial generation of ozone for puri-
fying the air in our public schools. In many
cases the schoolroom air is so stale and de-
pressing that before the children have been
in it half an hour all their brightness and
vim has disappeared, they become listless and
sleepy, and are in the worst possible condi-
tion for study. This alone would be bad
enough, but breathing this vitiated air ren-
ders them more vulnerable to the attacks of
pathogenic germs, some of which are sure
to be present in such a favorable location.
Ozone is markedly germicidal and stimulat-
ing, and the suggestion, although not a new
one, seems worthy of attention.

It has been decided to erect in one of the
squares of Paris a monument to Pasteur, and
to make the enterprise an international one.
Consequently, the people of all countries will
be given an opportunity to participate in the
subscriptions. The Paris committee is under
the presidency of M. J. Bertrand, Perpetual
Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and
has among its honorary members the Presi-
dent of the Republic and his Cabinet, and
about one hundred and sixty prominent men
of the French nation in all walks. A com-

mittee has been formed in the United States,
at Washington, with Dr. D. E. Salmon as
chairman and Dr. A. E. de Schweinitz as sec-
retary, which gladly accepts the privilege of
organizing the subscription and of receiving
and transmitting the funds which are raised.
" We believe it is unnecessary," the commit-
tee says in its circular, " to urge any one to
subscribe. The contributions of Pasteur to
science and to the cause of humanity were so
extraordinary and are so well known and so
thoroughly appreciated in America that our
people only need the opportunity in order to
demonstrate their deep interest." Subscrip-
tion blanks will be supplied by the commit-
tee, and no one who can not give a large
sum need be deterred from giving a small
sum. The committee's address is at the
Cosmos Club, Washington, D. C.

The Biologisches Centralblatt, conducted
by Drs. J. Rosenthal, M. Rees, and E. Seleuka,
and published semimonthly at Leipsic by
Eduard Besald, aims to keep its readers in
current with the progress of the biological
sciences, and to inform the students of sin-
gle branches of what is going on in the other
and related branches. With a view to that
object it presents original communications,
particularly those embodying the results of

H2

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

investigation which are of general interest
outside of the bounds of their several spe-
cialties, and summaries ; comprehensive re-
views of the more important events in the
progress of investigation, weeding out what
is temporary or subsidiary, and presenting
only that which is of lasting value and a
literary record.

Consul Merritt, of Barmen, is autboiity
for the following statements regarding min-
eral wool, or silicate cotton, as it is some-
times called. The wool appears on the mar-
ket in a variety of colors, and is coming to
be used very extensively as a non-conductor
of heat and also as a protection against fire.
It is made by blowing molten rock into a
fibrous woolly state by means of a jet of
steam. The furnace slag or the rock, as the
case may be, is melted in a large cupola,
and as it trickles out at the taphole in a
somewhat sluggish stream it meets a high-
pressure steam jet which blows it into a
woolly, fibrous condition, in which state it
settles in fleecy clouds on the floor, the
heavier wool coming do\vn first, while the
lighter portions are blown farther along by
the force of the steam. The material thus
naturally grades itself.

For an inquiry whether fishes have a
eense of hearing, Herr A. Kreidt experi-
mented upon goldfish — normal, fish poisoned
with strychnine, and fish deprived of their
labyrinths. Sounds were made by eonoi-oua
rods plunged in the aquarium, to which tun-
ing forks or bows wore applied out of the
water. Whistling and the ringing of bells
outside of the water produced no impression
on either of the three classes experimented
upon. But all responded whenever the ap-
paratus within the aquarium was struck with
the production of an audible sound. The
conclusion was drawn that fish do not hear
as in ordinary hearing with the ears, but that
they are sensitive to sonorous waves which
they can perceive through some skin-sense.

A Mr. Chaplin, in introducing a bill in
the English House of Commons, which was
intended to ameliorate the widespread agii-
cultural depression, gave some striking facts
regarding the present unjust methods of tax-
ing land. One instance, of two men living
side by side, each of whom started in life
with $100,000. A invested his money in

various securities, and now has an income of
$2,800 a year. He lives in a house rated at
$'200 a year, and his rates come to about
,$2*2. B invested his capital in a farm, for
which be paid $'75,000, and afterward put
$25,000 in as tenants' capital. His farm is
rated at about $2,585, and his rates amount
to about $335. Another striking case was
that of a factory employing 2,000 hands,
rated for local purposes at $2,000. A farm
of 200 acres in the same parish is assessed
at $2,300, and pays more to the local rates
than the factory. Another case cited was
that of a farm of 265 acres in Essex, where
the rent was only about $76 and the rates

An International Atlas of Clouds has
been published under the direction of a
committee consisting of M. Hildebransson,
of Upsala ; Riggenbach, of Basle ; and Tesse-
renc de Bort, of Paris. It contains fourteen
plates, each including two or three figures,
the several classes of clouds in the classi-
fication adopted being represented by from
one figure for the " fracto-nimbus " to ten
for the cumulus, while some transitional
forms are also delineated. The figures have
been selected from more than three hundred
representations of clouds from all quarters of
the earth. The plates have been approved
by eminent meteorologists, and their accu-
racy is guaranteed. In the text are given the
definitions and ofiicial instructions adopted
by the International Meteorological Commit-
tee at its meeting in Upsala in 1894.

It is proposed to explore the island or
rock of Rockall, which is situated in the
open Atlantic, in 5*7° 36' north latitude,
about two hundred miles west of the Heb-
rides, with no other land nearer. It is
about two hundred and thirty feet in cir-
cumference at the base and sixty feet at
the top, and looks at a distance like a ship
under sail, being whitened by the guano that
has been deposited upon it. It appears to
be the emerged point of an extensive moun-
tainous submarine table land, stretching from
the southwest to the northeast, and giving
rise to a number of dangerous rocks and
reefs in the neighborhood. It offers advan-
tages of great promise as a meteorological
station, situated as it is in the zone of the
most extensive area of cyclones in the north-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

143

em hemisphere, but it is not easy to land
upon when the sea is at all rough. It is but
little visited. It bears a few plants which
have not been collected and studied, and is
the resort of numerous sea birds. The curi-
ous peak is situated at a greater distance
from any mainland than any other isolated
rock of like dimensions in any part of the
world.

Old shoes are not lost by any means.
In this country they are dissected and sub-
jected to a course of manipulations by which
they are converted into a kind of artificial
leather, which is made to look very fine, and
may be elegantly ornamented. In France
they go through a less elaborate transfor-
mation. At the military prison in Montpel-
lier the shoes, the majority of which come
from Spain, are ripped apart ; the nails are
drawn out. The parts are softened in water,
and are then cut up by a machine into vamps
for children's or little girls' shoes. The soles
are likewise utilized. The smallest pieces are
used to make the Louis XIV toes which were
in fashion a few years ago. Pieces a little
larger and thinner are made into the soles of
babies' shoes. The nails of iron are sepa-
rated by means of a magnet from copper
nails, and the latter are sold for a higher
price than the others. The manager of the
prison represents that the returns from this
manufacture nearly equal the cost of the old
shoes.

NOTES.

Hon. David A. Wells's chapters on The
Principles of Taxation, the publication of
which has been unavoidably suspended in
the October and November numbers of the
Monthly, will be renewed in the December
number, and regularly continued thereafter.

The British Association has resolved to
invite the president, vice-presidents, and
officers of the American Association to at-
tend its meeting next year at Toronto as
honorary members ; also to admit all fel-
lows and members of the American Associa-
tion as members of the British Association
on the same terms as old annual members —
namely, on payment of £1 (or $5), without
requiring an admission fee.

In regard to the proper designation of its
vice-presidents, the American Association
directed that that term be used in official
publications in expressing the relation of
the presiding officer of any section to the

association, and the term chairman in ex-
pressing his relation to the section ; and
that the term vice jrrcsident precede the
name of the officer and chairman follow it
when both relations are to be expressed.
When referred to, these officers are to be
termed vice-presidents for, not of, the
sections.

Prof. Wolcott Gibbs, the new President
of the American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, Rumford Professor
and Lecturer on the Application of Science
to the Useful Arts, is the oldest living pro-
fessor in Harvard University, though not
now in active service.

A very satisfactory dressing for wounds,
consisting of bags of straw charcoal, is used
by the Japanese. It fits perfectly to the
wounds, and has considerable absorbing
power and antiseptic properties. The char-
coal is prepared by burning straw in a cov-
ered vessel.

A SHRUB in Madagascar, called the vonim-
perono, bears a seed, the feathery tuft of
which possesses some of the qualities of
silk, and may be found useful in the arts.
The flower and the pod, as pictured m La
Nature, suggest affiliation with the Ascle-
piads ; and the tuft does not contradict the
suggestion. It is a little more than an inch
and a half long ; its fibers have considerable
strength ; and, according to M. Georges Cha-
pin, they form a veritable vegetable silk.
The people of the western coast of Mada-
gascar collect it, and, often without taking
the trouble to remove the seed, make soft
cushions and pillows of it ; and the Hova
ladies use it for stuffing the seats of their
flanzanes or sedan chairs.

Thb term roches moutonnes, used by ge-
ologists to describe a peculiar topographic
appearance resulting from glacial action, is
usually interpreted as meaning resembling a
flock of sheep asleep, and that is the expla-
nation given by M de Lapperent in his ge-
ological treatise. The dictionaries, however,
define moutonne as meaning frizzled like
sheep's wool. The term was first used by
De Saussure in his Voyages dans les Alpes ;
but the passage had escaped recent observa-
tion till Mr. Whymper found it. It reads,
translated, " These contiguous and repeated
roundnesses produce as a whole the effect of
a well-grown fleece, of the wigs which are
called moufo?i7iees." Mr. Grenville A. J. Cole
in Nature cites this passage to justify his
comparison of these shapes to the mammilla-
tions upon an antique wig.

A PAPER read some time ago in the Lin-
nffian Society by Mr. R. Morton Middleton,
recording the observation of Mr. Miltiades
Isigonis of the use of ants by the Greek bar-
ber surgeons of Asia Minor for holding togeth-
er the edges of a cut, brought out the fact that
the same custom exists in Brazil as among

144

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these Greeks. The Eastern barbers hold the
aut — a large-headed Camponotus — in a for-
ceps, when it opens its mandibles wide, and,
being permitted to seize the edges of the
cut, which are held together for the purpose,
its head is cut off as soon as a firm grip is
obtained. A similar practice was observed
in Brazil several years ago by M. Mocquerys,
of Rouen, and is cited by Sir John Lubbock,
but it is not mentioned by either Bates or
Wallace.

Judgment was recently given in an Eng-
lish court, in the suit of an actress against
the Nottingham Theater company for dam-
ages for injuries by falling through a dilapi-
dated stairway, on the evidence of an X-ray
picture of the injured foot.

The third volume of Poggendorff's Bio-
graphical and Literary Dictionary, now in
publication, will contain notices of scientific
men in various fields who lived between 1858
and 1883. A fourth volume will cover the
years from 1883 to 1900. Full lists of con-
tributions to scientific literature will accom-
pany the notices. The dictionary will contain
many names not often heard of, among them
those of Arabian philosophers.

Experiments are in order to protect let-
ters against exposure by the Rontgen rays.
MM. Thayer and Hardtmuth, of Vienna,
bronze the inside of their envelopes or orna-
ment them with designs in bronze. It is
found that the X rays have only a feeble ac-
tion through the bronzed envelopes, while in
those ornamented with bronze pastes only
the spots that are left white are exposed;
and in both cases the written characters are
not revealed in intelligible shape.

In an experiment recently made at an
Austrian wood-pulp factory to determine how
quickly it was possible to make a newspaper
from a tree, three ti-ees were felled in the
presence of a notary and witnesses at 7.35
A. M. The trees were taken to the factory
and cut up into short pieces, which were
stripped of their bark and converted into
mechanical pulp. This was placed in a vat
and mixed with the materials necessary to
form paper, and the first leaf of paper came
out at 9.34 A. M. Some of the sheets were
taken, the notary still watching the proceed-
ings, to a printing office about three miles
away ; and the printed newspaper was issued
at ten o'clock. It thus took two hours and
twenty-five minutes to convert a tree into a
newspaper.

American science has suffered a serious
loss in the death, September 6th, of Dr.
George Brown Goode, Assistant Secietary of
the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Goode was
born at New Albany, Ind., February 13,
1851 ; was interested in natural history from
an early age ; was graduated from Wesleyan
University in 1870 ; and made a collecting

trip to the West Indies in 1872 and 1873.
In the latter year he became connected, on
the invitation of Prof. Baird, with the Smith-
sonian Institution, where he spent the rest of
his life. He performed many special services,
especially in connection with the interests of
fisheries; as director of the Natural History
division in the Philadelphia Centennial Ex-
hibition of 1876; United States Commis-
sioner to the International Fisheries Exhi-
bitions in London and Berlin in 1880 and
1883 ; statistical expert with the Halifax
Fisheries Commission in 1877; representa-
tive of the Smithsonian Institution at the
Chicago Exhibition of 1893; and member
of the Board of Awards at the Atlanta Cot-
ton States Exhibition of 1895. Among his
published reports and works are those on
the Game Fishes of the United States, The
Fishes and Fishing Industries of the United
States, American Fishes and Oceanic Ichthy-
ology, the Plan of Classification for the
World's Columbian Exhibition, and the Mu-
seums of the Future.

Prof. Hubert A. Newton, of Yale Uni-
versity, mathematician, and one of the most
distinguished investigators of meteors and
meteoric showers, died in New Haven, Conn.,
August 12th. A sketch of his life and his
work on the problem of the meteors was
published, with a portrait, in the Popular
Science Monthly for October, 1885 (vol.
xxvii, p. 840). His address as President
of the American Association, at the Buffalo
meeting in 1886, on Meteorites, Meteors, and
Shooting Stars, was published in the Month-
ly for October, 1886 (vol. xxix, p. 733).
Subsequently to these dates. Prof. Newton
continued his studies of meteors by the aid
of stellar photography, with many interesting
and valuable results ; and through his exer-
tions a battery of cameras was placed in
Yale Observatory for more extensive mete-
oric photography. His work in mathematics
was also of the highest order.

We announce with regret the death of
Prof. J. L. Delboeuf, of the University of
Liege, at Bonn, August 13th. Prof. Del-
bo3uf was a student and scientific writer of
more than ordinary power to interest, origi-
nal and genial, and possessing considerable
humor. We have published several articles
and extracts from his writings; among them
are Dwarfs and Giants in tlie twenty-sec-
ond and What may Animals be taught ? in
the twenty-ninth volume of the Monthly ;
and more recently, Observations on the Psy-
chology of Lizards.

Herr Otto Lilienthal, the inventor of
a flying machine with which he had achieved
some small successes, was killed during an
experiment with his apparatus at Rhinow,
near Berlin, August 12th. The machinery
became deranged, and the whole concern fell,
with Herr Lilienthal, to the ground.

HENRY DARWIN ROGERS.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SOIEITCE

MOITTHLY.

DECEMBER, 1896.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION".

By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L.,

CORRESPONDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE TRAJSCE, ETC.

IV. — RELATION OF TAXATION TO THE STATE.

THE next step of importance in this discussion is to recognize
clearly the relation which the exercise or function of taxa-
tion, as it has been defined, sustains to the state.

Origin and Justification of Taxation. — The question at
once suggests itself, " By what right does that entity which we
call the state, whatever may be its concrete form, and whether its
powers are exercised by a single man (Csesar), by a particular
class, or by a majority of citizens, take from the individual that
which hitherto was absolutely his, annul his ownership, and con-
vert the thing of value to its own use ? '^ * How happens it that
the exercise of this right is so absolute that the state requires
the citizen to set apart from the earnings of his labor a certain
sum for its use before he applies any of those earnings to the
support of his family ? f

On this point there has been considerable speculation and phi-
losophizing. It has been assumed that there must be an actual
or implied contract between the state and the citizen, in virtue of
which the state supplied a certain amount of protection to life

* " Titius is to render to Ccesar that which is Caesar's. But when Csesar comes to take
the shock of wheat or the firstling of the flock Titius may well ask, as he gives them up.
Why are they Ca5sar's rather than mine ? What right to them has Caesar and not ray neigh-
bor Maevius?" Tyranny in Taxation. Theodore Bacon. New-Englander, 1867.

\ The probate judiciary of the State of Connecticut has recently held that in the set-
tlement of insolvent estates taxes due prior to the assignment of an assigning debtor should
be regarded as preferred claims, and as such should be paid in full by the trustee.

TOL. L. — 13

146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and property, and for wliicli the citizen in return pays an equiva-
lent in money, merchandise, or personal service. There is, how-
ever, no historical example of any such contract.

Others have sought to refer the origin of this right on the part
of the state to take the property of the citizen to an antecedent
right of might, and have assumed that, as the ruling power,
whether monarch or majority, is physically able to take and apply
to its own use all that the individuals ruled over may call their
own, it is therefore legitimate and morally correct for it to ex-
ercise this right and take such part of its subjects' property as it
may see fit.

A third and more plausible theory is, that as all rights of prop-
erty are conventional and not natural, and without the interven-
tion of the state by its laws could not be enforced nor protected,
and, indeed, could hardly be said to exist ; therefore the state is
the source of all title, and the individual holds only by grant or
sufferance of the state. From these premises it follows that the
state, in compelling contributions from its subjects, or, as is ordi-
narily expressed, in "taxing," is in the position of an absolute
proprietor who takes simply what is his own. This was the the-
ory accepted and practically carried out by all the monarchs of
Europe in the seventeenth century, or about two hundred and
fifty years ago, and defended by the best and most eminent men
of the time, as Bossuet in France and most of the great jurists
of England under Charles I, as was exemplified in the case of
John Hampden, who was prosecuted for refusing to pay an arbi-
trary tax known as "ship money"; and the decision in which, by
the High Court of Exchequer, placed the property of every Eng-
lishman at the disposal of the crown. It was also so clearly ex-
pressed by Louis XIV that his words are worthy of exact citation.
Thus, in a manual which he wrote for the guidance of his heir
and successor, the Dauphin, he says : " I hold the place of God.
•To me belong exclusively the lives and fortunes of my people.
The nation resides entirely in the person of the monarch. Kings
are absolute masters, and may naturally, fully and freely dispose
of all the property possessed by either the clergy or laity, to use
at all times like wise stewards and according to the needs of the
state."

Herbert Spencer refers the growth of revenue, which involves
the right to take it, from the outset, like the growth of political
headship which it accompanies, directly or indirectly, to the re-
sults of war. " The property," he says, " of conquered enemies —
at first goods, cattle, prisoners, and at a later stage land — coming
in larger share to the leading warrior, increases his predominance.
To secure his good will, which it is now important to do, pro-
pitiatory presents and help in labor are next given ; and these.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 147

as his power further grows, become periodic and compulsory,
making him more despotic at the same time that it augments his
kingdom. Continuance of this process increases his ability to en-
force contributions, alike from his original subjects and from
tributaries ; while the necessity for supplies, now to defend his
kingdoms, now to invade adjacent kingdoms, is ever made the
plea for increasing his demands of established kinds and for mak-
ing new ones. Under stress of the alleged needs, portions of their
goods are taken from subjects whenever they are exposed to view
for purpose of exchange. And as the primitive presents of prop-
erty and labor, once voluntary and variable, but becoming com-
pulsory and periodic, are eventually commuted to direct taxes ; so
those portions of the trades goods which were originally given for
permission to trade, and then seized as of right, come eventually
to be transferred into percentages of value paid as tolls and duties.
But to the last as well as at first, and under free governments as
under despotic ones, war continues to be the usual reason for im-
posing new taxes or increasing old ones, at the same time that the
coercive organization, in past times developed by war, continues
to be the means of exacting them." * Mr. Spencer further asserts
that " in the early stages of social evolution nothing answering to
revenue exists." These conclusions of Mr. Spencer seem, how-
ever, to be singularly imperfect, inasmuch as they do not appear
to recognize that there can be such things as voluntary or bene-
ficial taxes, or that society in order to exist would in the course
of time institute taxation, even if there had been no war. He
does, however, recognize that the increasing progress and com-
plexity of civilization, by continually enlarging its sphere and
functions, would continually necessitate an increase of taxation.

All such speculations and theories as to the origin and sphere
of the rights of government in respect to appropriating the
property of its subjects or citizens, although of philosophic
interest, are, however, of no practical importance.! It is only
necessary to recognize that in some form the organization or
entity which we call the state exists for certain definite pur-
poses, even though they be difficult of precise limitation; and
to analyze the situation, as we find it, to obtain a satisfac-

* Abundant illustrations from historical or recent experiences of the successive stages
of such assumed evolution of taxation are given by Mr. Spencer in the chapter On Reve-
nue in his volume on Political Institutions.

f Edmund Burke, the great Irish statesman, is on record as characterizing any dis-
cussion of the abstract right of taxation in place of the actual facts of the situation, as be-
longing to the domain of political metaphysics, " a great Serbonian bog in which armies
whole have sunk," and that it was by fighting for such " a phantom, a quiddity, a theory
that wants not only a substance but even a name," that English statesmen threw away
their American colonies.

148 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tory answer to the question at issue. For the command of a
constant and adequate revenue being beyond dispute abso-
lutely essential to the existence of organized government, the
power to compel or enforce contributions from the people gov-
erned, or, as it is termed, " to tax,'' is inherent in and an incident
of every sovereignty, and rests upon necessity.* The question of
the obtaining of such revenue obviously, therefore, is the question
of first importance in the economy of a state ; the one in com-
parison with which all others are 'subordinate. For without reve-
nue (and a government never has any resources except what it
has obtained from the people), regularly and uniformly obtain-
able, no governmental machinery for the protection of life and
property, through the dispensing of justice and the providing for
the common 'defense, could long be maintained; and in default
thereof production would stop or be reduced to a minimum, accu-
mulations would cease or become speedily exhausted, and civili-
zation would inevitably give place to barbarism and the wilder-
ness. For like reasons also, or as the old-time Latin maxim,
"solus populi suprema lex," concretely expresses it, the state
holds command over the lives and liberties of its citizens equally
as it does over their fortunes. In fact, the sovereignty of a state
consists and exemplifies itself in the power to abridge the liberty
of the individual citizen and to take his property; and the char-
acter of every government is mainly determined by the intent
and purpose for which these two great functions from which all
its force proceeds are exercised.

The Sphere of Taxation. — The sequence of these premises
is no less important, or rather of transcendent importance; for
if the power of taxation is an incident of sovereignty, as it con-
fessedly is, then the right to exercise that poiver must be coextensive
with that of which it is the incident; or, in other words, as the
power of every complete sovereignty over the persons and prop-
erty of its subjects is unlimited, the power, therefore, in every
such sovereignty to compel contributions for the service of the

* " When we ask, What right has the state to infringe upon man's natural freedom ?
we are involved in the difficulty that there are no rights, in the strict sense of the term,
antecedent to the state. All rights that we know anything about are either legal or moral.
The right of the state to govern man can not be derived from law, for law is the creature
of the state. If it i§ a moral right, it must rest on the same basis on which all morality
rests, and this must be either conscience, or divine revelation, or utility. Of course, con-
sent has nothing to do with morality. Conscience, furthermore, will not do as a basis for
the state, for conscience does not enlighten us further than to let us know that we ought to
obey the state if it is right to do so. Revelation, also, answered only so long as a direct and
miraculous connection was believed to exist between human and divine authority. This
leaves nothing but utility as the basis for the moral right of the state to interfere with
man's natural freedom." — Ano7i7/mous.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 149

state, or, as we term it, "to tax," must be unrestricted. "The
power to tax is therefore the strongest and most pervading of all
the powers of government, reaching directly or indirectly to all
classes ^^ (United States Supreme Court; Loan Association vs.
Topeka, 20 Wallace, 655).

The power to tax, said Chief- Justice Marshall, in giving the
opinion of the United States Supreme Court denying the right of
Maryland to tax the Bank of the United States (McCulloch vs.
Maryland, 4 Wheaton, pp. 316-431), "involves the power to de-
stroy, and may be legitimately exercised on the objects to which
it is applicable to the utmost extent to which the Government
may choose to carry it." In the case of Weston vs. the City of
Charleston, the same court, by the same eminent authority, also
held that " if the right to impose a tax exists, it is a rigid which, in
its nature, acknoivledges no limits. It may be carried to any ex-
tent luithin the jurisdiction of the State or corporation which im-
poses it, luhich the will of such State or corporation may prescribe."
And in a more recent case (Loan Association vs. Topeka, 20 Wal-
lace) the court, through the late Justice Miller, again expressed
itself to the same effect as follows : " Given a purpose or object
for which taxation may be lawfully used, and the extent of its
exercise is in its very nature unlimited."

The government of a complete sovereignty can therefore tax
all that it can lay hands on to enforce the tax — men, women, and
children ; all property and business — and the power may be exer-
cised again and again until the subject taxed is exhausted or the
privilege can be no longer exercised. This statement finds abun-
dant illustration in history of people absolutely impoverished by
taxation, and of individuals who have been sold into slavery be-
cause of their inability to pay the taxes that the state or ruling
power had assessed upon them. The popular idea is that such
examples of the extreme exercise of power on the part of the state
to compel contributions have passed into history ; but this is not
the case. In every purely despotic Government there is no limi-
tation on its exercise except such as arises from the inability of
the subject to contribute. The head of the state — shah, czar, or
emperor — decides how much shall be exacted ar\d the time and
manner of exaction ; and not infrequently the amount taken is
only a little short of what it is necessary to leave to the producer
in order to enable him to maintain a mere animal existence.
Thus in Russia the present governmental exaction — under the
name of taxes — from the agricultural peasant is understood to
amount to about forty-five per cent of his annual product or
earnings.

In 1890 the excise taxation of Russia — which is mainly levied
upon distilled spirits and other alcoholic drinks, tobacco, sugar.

150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kerosene, and matches — is reported to have amounted to seventy-
five per cent of the value of the articles taxed. On the other
hand, the Russian customs duties in the same year averaged but
thirty-four per cent of the import value of the foreign goods im-
ported— a circumstance that may find an explanation in the fact
that a large proportion of imports of Russia are in the nature of
machinery or crude materials for industrial use or elaboration,
and apart from this the requirements of the masses in Russia for
foreign products are comparatively small.

In Egypt until quite recently, as has been already shown (see
previous chapter on The Tax Experiences of Egypt), the annual
exactions from its peasantry — the fellahs — under the name of
taxation produced an extremity of want which closely bordered
on starvation.

In Italy, which in ancient times was regarded, as it is in fact
to-day, potentially the richest country in Europe, and although its
present Government can not fairly be characterized as despotic,
its agriculture is burdened with state exactions that are reported
as absorbing from one third to one half of the value of its annual
product. The existing debt of the country, created largely by
enormous military and naval expenditures, entails an annual
interest charge of about $3.75 per head of its population.*

Another disastrous interference with the prosperity of the
state is the system of taxing all business enterprises, after they
have been established three years, at rates which in some cases
swamp the profits. And in addition to such disturbing elements,
there is undoubtedly an all-pervading evasion for a consideration
of all forms of taxation by the functionaries whose business it is

* A national tax on movable (personal) property — the ricchezza mobile — is levied on the
poorest of the Italian people ; and often the bed has to be sold or the saucepans pawned to
pay it.

The gate tax, dazio consumo, best known to English ears as octroi, which has been the
especial object of the Sicilian fury, is a curse to the whole land. Nothing can pass the
gates of any city or town without paying this odious and inquisitorial impost. Strings of
cattle and of carts wait outside from midnight to morning, the poor beasts lying down in
the winter mud and summer dust. Half the life of the country people is consumed in this
senseless, cruel stoppage and struggle at the gates ; a poor old woman can not take an egg
her hen has laid, or a bit of spinning she has done, through the gates without paying for
them The wretched live poultry wait half a day and a whole night cooped up in stifling
crates or hung neck downward in a bunch on a nail ; the oxen and calves are kept without
food three or four days before their passage through the gates, that they may weigh less
when put in the scales.

By this insensate method of taxation all the food taken into the cities and towns is
deteriorated. The prating and interfering officers of hygiene do not attend to this, the
greatest danger of all to health — that is, inflamed and injured animal and fowl carcasses sent
into the markets. The municipalities exact the last centime from their prey ; whole fami-
lies are ruined and disappear through the exactions of their communes, who persist in
squeezing what is already drained dry as a bone. — Fortnightly Review^ 1894-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 151

to collect the revenue. A very general feeling, therefore, natu-
rally prevails that it is a laudable thing to cheat or rather rob the
Government whenever opportunity offers.*

Limitations in the Sphere of Taxation. — Attention is
next asked to the fact that the foregoing propositions respecting
the unlimited power of a state to compel contributions, or to tax,
and which (as shown) have received the sanction of the highest
judicial authorities, are predicated on the assumption of complete
sovereignty on the part of the state. But in a truly free state
such sovereignty does not exist, and the conditions which make it
free necessarily preclude its existence. Thus in every such state
the two great functions which constitute its sovereignty, namely,
the right to interfere with the liberty of the citizen and with his
property, have been called into existence and can be rightfully
exercised for certain purposes only, which admit of precise defi-
nition. In such a state the fundamental and essential purpose of
governvient is not to abridge the liberty of the individual citizen
in respect to his person, or his possession and use of property, but
to increase it ; and this result (overlooked in a great degree by
economists and legislators), as has already been pointed out, can
only be attained by taking a part of the property of the citizen
which the existence of the state has enabled him to acquire, for
the purpose of maintaining instrumentalities for preventing any
encroachment upon his rightful liberty and punishing those who
attempt it. In fact, in every free state there are limitations on
the exercise of the taxing power, growing out of the structure of

* It is enough to see how railways are built by the Government of Italy to form
an idea of the openings aiforded for rascality and fraud in their construction. " They
are not built by contract, but on estimate. A building company estimates that a
certain line will cost a certain sum and receives the job, which is always indeed a ' job.'
The Government guarantees a certain income per kilometre, and the constructor makes the
road as long as possible ; but when the grant (which is made in bonds of the state) for the
amount authorized is exhausted, the constructor coolly tells the ministry that the road must
stop there unless the ministry makes another grant, which is of course done, and the inva-
riable result is that the original estimate is nearly, or quite, or even more than doubled ;
with the consequence that none of the roads, as they are made, ever pay their expenses and
interest on their cost of construction. More than that, they are so burdened with deadheads
that it is estimated that only forty per cent of the passengers they carry pay full fare, the
remaining sixty per cent paying from nothing up to seventy -five per cent of the fare. Depu-
ties and senators travel free everywhere in the kingdom, but as the state pays a block sum
for their privilege, it is not a dead loss, though, as every deputy who travels insists on having
a whole compartment for himself, the road becomes anything but a profitable one. Every
employee of the great systems of Italian railways has the right to make three journeys a
year on each one, where he likes, and with his family, and the consequence is that some of
them ruin themselves taking long railwuy journeys for which they have not the money to
pay the expenses. And they are sixty thousand, with as many more pensioned off who
have the sanie privilege ; and, as all travelers know, the railway fare is the smallest part of
the expense of a journey." — Correspondence New York Evening Po.st, June, 1S9G.

152 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

its government, or because it is free ; or, as Chief- Justice Marsliall
expressed it, "by the implied reservations of individual rights
growing out of the nature of a free government, and the main-
tenance of which is essential to its existence/'

From the first dawn among the Anglo-Saxon race of the idea
of a constitutional or free government, the necessity of establish-
ing an inhibition on the power of government, in respect to the
taking of property, was recognized ; expressed or implied in the
Magjia Charta, and subsequently incorporated in the Federal
Constitution, through its provisions respecting the equality of
taxation, and that private property shall under no circumstances
be taken for public uses without just compensation.

The necessity of a free state may, however, be so great — i. e.,
in the prosecution of war for national defense, or the maintenance
of national existence — as to require that the entire resources of its
people should be at the disposal of the Government, and compel
a resort to taxation, even to the exhaustion of everything — prop-
erty and business — which may be its objective ; and in this sense
— i. e., for the preservation of individual liberty and property —
and in this sense only, is involved any inherent power or right in
taxation to destroy. The nature of the principle involved also
finds illustration in the circumstance that municipal authorities
are warranted, in the case of extensive conflagrations, in abso-
lutely destroying large amounts of property in the shape of build-
ings and their contents, in order to preserve a much larger amount
of like property from destruction. The principle under discussion
would not accordingly justify the use of taxation in time of peace
(as has been exercised by the Federal Government of the United
States) for the primary purpose of destruction, and not for reve-
nue or the preservation of property. Clearly, if this right of taxa-
tion is unlimited, the property of every citizen would be subject to
the absolute disposition and control of the depositary of power in
the state for the time being; and the recognition or nonrecog-
nition of such limitation marks, as before pointed out, more than
any other one thing, the dividing line between a free govern-
ment and a despotism.*

* " The dictum of Chief -Justice Marshall, used by this distinguished jurist in the heat
of argument, has been adopted by many courts as justifying the uncontrolled exercise of
the taxing power. A slight consideration will not justify the dictum. The proposition
that the power to tax is the power to destroy is in opposition to the fundamental principles
of a free government. It asserts the broad doctrine that the power to tax, one of the
legislative powers, is unlimited and arbitrary. It is claimed that there is no such thing as
arbitrary power in this country : that the form of government being republican, those who
exercise the powers of government, whether executive, legislative, or judicial, are clothed
with a trust which is not to be executed in accordance with a mere whim, or in an arbitrary
manner, but according to the purpose of its creation." — Burroughs' s Law of Taxation, IS'ZV.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 153

Probably the most weiglity and concrete judicial opinion on
this subject was that given by the Supreme Court of the United
States in 1874 in the now celebrated case of the Loan Association
vs. Topeka, 20 Wallace, in which the late Justice Miller, with the
substantial concurrence of his associates, indorsed and amplified
the opinion of Chief- Justice Marshall touching the reservation of
individual rights under a free government as follows :

" It must be conceded," he said, " that there are rights in every
free government beyond the control of the state. A government
which recognized no such rights, which held the lives, the liberty,
and the property of its citizens subject at all times to the absolute
disposition and unbounded control of even the most democratic
depositary of power, is after all but a despotism. The theory of
our governments, State and national, is opposed to the deposit of
unlimited power anywhere. The executive, the legislative, and
the judicial branches of these governments are all of limited and
defined powers. There are limitations of such powers which grow
out of the essential nature of all free governments — implied reser-
vations of individual rights, without which the social compact
could not exist, which are respected by all governments entitled
to the name. ... Of all the powers conferred upon the Govern-
ment that of taxation is most liable to abuse. Given a purpose or
object for which taxation may be lawfully used, and the extent
of its exercise is in its very nature unlimited. This power can as
readily be employed against one class of individuals and in favor
of another, so as to ruin the one class and give unlimited wealth
and prosperity to the other, if there are no implied limitations of
the uses for which the power may be exercised. To lay luith one
hand the power of the Government on the property of the citizen,
and with the other hestow it upon favored individuals to aid pri-
vate enterprises and build up private fortunes, is none the less rob-
bery because it is done under the forms of the law and is called
taxation. This is not legislation. It is a decree under legislative
forms." And in the same case the same court declared that " the
whole theory of our governments — State and national — is opposed
to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere."

No one would probably question that if an assemblage of men
reasonably intelligent — though not versed in law, political econ-
omy, or the teachings of social science — were to come together for
the purpose of founding a state de novo, they would, while recog-
nizing at once, and as it were instinctively, the necessity of insur-
ing to the government of such state a revenue adequate to its
support, never even so much as dream for one moment of intrust-
ing to it a power to take the property of any individual member
of such assemblage, except so far as might be absolutely necessary
to carry out and fulfill the purposes for which it was proposed to

154 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

call the state into existence. They would be mentally hlind if
they did not see at once that intrusting to the state a power of
unlimited interference with the citizen's right to property, they
would create not a free government but a despotism.

The question may be here naturally asked. Is there any record
in history of any assemblage of the founders of a state which dis-
cussed this subject, or took definite action in respect to it ? In
answer it may be said that the two most striking assemblages in
history which resulted in the formation of states, and of which
any record is preserved, occurred in connection with the first set-
tlements of New England, and that which resulted in the forma-
tion of the Federal Constitution and the creation of the nationality
of the United States. The assertion would hardly be warranted
that the early plantations of New England were formal assem-
blages gathered together for the avowed purpose of forming a
state. They were, in fact, land companies, and so far as the law
then existing permitted, were incorporated as such. This act of
incorporation, derived from a corporation created by James I of
England in 1606, and known as the Plymouth Company, was in the
first instance and at once used as the basis for forming a political
organization by the members of a land company or plantation.
The necessity of a revenue to defray the expenses of the organiza-
tion or incipient government, and in default of which there would
be no adequate protection to persons and property, or, what is the
same thing, no civilization, was at once recognized ; and probably
the very first act of the assemblage of the members of the company,
after the selection of persons to exercise authority, was to author-
ize the levy of taxes. These taxes were assessed and collected in all
respects as they are now in the great States that have been the
outcome of these feeble plantations, through what may be termed
a process of political evolution. That is, the individual members
of the various communities or their authorized representatives met
in their " General Court," as it was called, made appropriations,
and, in order to pay them, levied what they termed a " rate " or
assessment. This levy was put into the hands of a constable, who
proceeded to enforce or collect the tax, either in the form of work
or commodities or money. There is furthermore no indication
in the records of these early times of any limitation as to the ex-
tent or degree of assessment, and for the very obvious reason that
it never then occurred to any one that the power of taxation could
possibly be used for the destruction of private property or con-
trolling the acquisition and distribution of property — the inven-
tions of a later period. The taxation of those days was necessarily
of the crudest possible character. It fell almost exclusively on
real property, and what was manifestly tangible and visible, for
the very good reason that there was very little of what is now

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 155

called personal property in existence — that is, there were no
credit or paper representatives of property, but everything in the
nature of property existed in the form of land, slaves, houses,
animals, agricultural products, tools, or furniture.

The record of the assemblage (convention) that drafted the
Constitution, which by adoption by the parties (States) thereto
called the United States into existence as a nation, on this subject
of guarding and limiting the taxing power on the part of the
prospective State or Government which they proposed to create,
is comparatively full and complete. The Revolution, which in-
volved the renouncing of all allegiance of the British- American
colonies to the mother country, had its origin in unjust taxation ;
and in the Declaration of Independence this fact was made con-
spicuous among the reasons that were relied on by the colonies to
justify their action in the opinion of mankind. The attempt in
1778 to establish a General Government by the union of all the
colonies under certain conditions, known as Articles of Confedera-
tion, was found after a few years of experience to be wholly lack-
ing in all the elements of strength and stability, through the lack
of any proper adjustment of the power of taxation ; thereby en-
tailing an almost complete inefficiency of sovereignty. Thus,
there was no power in the Congress of the Confederation to raise
money by taxation ; but the Confederation depended for revenue
upon requisitions on the several States, with which the States
might comply or not, as they chose, and with which they gener-
ally did choose not to comply, either promptly or fully, if at all.
Some of the States levied duties on the imports of merchandise
at the expense of their neighbors ; and adjacent ports in different
States competed with each other by arbitrarily varying the rates
on imports, as the Congress of the Confederation had no authority
to regulate commerce, or legislate on this subject for the whole
country.* The result was, as Mr. Madison expressed it, that
" the Federal authority had ceased to be respected abroad, while
at home it had lost all confidence and credit." It was to remedy
this one radical infirmity, more than any other, that the present
Constitution was projected and formed. Other great improve-
ments in the Articles of Confederation were contemplated and
made in the Constitution when it was formed, but the most
important of all was in the regulation of taxation. Hamilton,
who drafted the address to the States inviting them to send dele-

* The author of The Federalist (No. '7) refers to the situation of New York, as com-
pared with that of Connecticut and New Jersey, as affording an example of the opportuni-
ties which some States had under the Confederation of rendering others tributary by a
monopoly of the taxes on imports, and said that New York would neither be willing nor able
to forego the advantage of levying duties on importations, a large part of which must be
necessarily paid by the individuals of the other two States in their capacity of consumers.

156 POP ULAR SCIENCE MONTHL Y.

gates to tlie convention by which it was formed, wrote thus in
The Federalist :

" The power of taxation is the most important of the authori-
ties proposed to be conferred on the Union."

The necessity of conferring adequate power in this particular
upon the new Government which it was proposed to create was
admitted by all ; and yet there was no power which the people were
more determined to guard, so that it could never be arbitrarily or
unjustly exercised. And if it had not been supposed that the pro-.
visions of the new Constitution furnished ample security against
any such action, not one of the States would have assented to its
ratification.

The preamble of the Constitution asserts, almost in the first
instance, that the object of its formation was to "establish jus-
tice," an obvious correlative of which is that there must be equal-
ity, and no discrimination in taxation as respects the same persons
or things. In its first article (second section) it next provided
that "representatives (in Congress) and direct taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States according to their respec-
tive numbers, excluding Indians not taxed." The explanation of
this provision, which now seems singular, is undoubtedly to be
found in the assumption of the framers of the Constitution that
taxation in the future, as it had been in the past, would be mainly
direct in its assessment and incidence; and that wealth was so
equitably distributed in the colonies (as it was at that time), and,
as Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, expressed it, "the number of
people alone " was " the best rate of measuring wealth." And on
such supposition the absolute requirement of a strict apportion-
ment of taxation according to population, with an inherent pen-
alty of loss in congressional representation as the result of evasion,
was undoubtedly regarded as a safeguard against unjust or dis-
criminating taxation.

Next, in section 8, article 1, after empowering Congress " to
lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises," to pay the
debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of
the United States, was added another provision, the like of which
does not find an exact counterpart in any political constitution or
statute of which there is historical record — namely, that "all
duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United
States." This provision is one of the first importance. It would
seem that there could be no doubt that the framers of the Consti-
tution, having specially in view the fact that, under the Articles
of Confederation, the several States endeavored to tax everything
belonging to every other State that came within their territorial
jurisdiction, and that there was no authority on the part of the
then General Government to prevent such action, did not mean

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 157

that tlie entity, called a State, they were about to create, should
have any power of discriminating in respect to the imposition of
duties, imposts, and excises in any degree ; fully recognizing that
the moment a State or government thus discriminates it passes
the line of distinction between a free government and one that is
not free. It is to be further noted that the words " to pay the
debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of
the United States " should also be regarded in the light of a limi-
tation of the purpose for which the taxes, etc. (authorized in the
opening words of the section), may be laid and collected. This
view was taken and strongly presented by Mr. Jefferson in 1791,
shortly after the adoption of the Constitution. He says : " To
lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States
is to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general wel-
fare. For the laying of taxes is the jpoiuer, and the general wel-
fare the purpose, for which the power is to be exercised. They
are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please, but
only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In
like manner they are not to do anything they please to provide for
the general welfare, but are to lay taxes for that purpose." — T.
Jefferson's Works, p. 557.

Finally, there was added by amendment to the Constitution
the following provision, which, although implied in the Magna
Chorfa, had not been previously so explicitly expressed in the
Constitution or statutes of any other State: "Nor shall pirivate
property he taken for public use withoid just compensation." Ob-
viously this provision constitutes another limitation on the power
of Congress in respect to the taking of private property for public
use by taxation or any other method. In a case involving the
bearings of this provision on the taxation of a citizen of New
Jersey, the Supreme Court of that State analyzed and interpreted
its meaning as follows : " A tax upon the person or property of
A, B, and C individually, whether designated by name or in any
other way, which is in excess of an equal apportionment among
the persons or property of the class of persons or kind of prop-
erty subject to this taxation is, to the extent of such excess, the
taking of private property for a public use without compensation.
The process is one of confiscation and not of taxation." — S6 New
Jersey, p. 66, 1872.

It is certain, therefore, that in at least one assemblage for the
purpose of creating a State — namely, the Federal Convention — its
members clearly recognized the incompatibility of the possession
and exercise of an unlimited power of taxation by a State and
the coexistence of a free government.

Eight of Eminent Domain. — Apart from the right of a
State to take private property for its use by taxation, the State

158 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

may also legitimately take such property when the interest of the
public requires it, through what is called the law or right of
eminent domain. The distinction between the power of taxa-
tion and the power of eminent domain is, however, clear and well
defined. An appropriation of property under the right of emi-
nent domain is a forced sale which its owner is compelled to make
for the public good, and for which a pecuniary consideration
equal to the estimated full value of what is taken is due from the
State. And the exaction can not be considered as a tax " unless
similar contributions are made by the public itself, or be exacted
rather by the public will, from such constituent members of the
same community as own the same kind of property." On the
other hand, no pecuniary consideration is paid when money is
demanded under the power of taxation, the benefits which the
taxpayer is assumed to receive being indirect.

An Important Imperfection or Omission in the Federal
Constitution. — Any discussion of the sphere of taxation in the
United States would be incomplete that failed to recognize a
feature, in the way of imperfection or serious omission, in the
Federal Constitution, that hitherto has not attracted the attention
it deserves. All powers inherent in the Constitution of the United
States were derived from the States, and granted by them in their
acts of ratification ; and " the powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively or to the people." — Ariicle X,
Constitutional Amendments.

As has been already pointed out, the convention that framed
the Constitution was especially solicitous and careful to guard
and limit the power of taxation on the part of the new Govern-
ment which it was proposed to create, so that it could never be
arbitrarily or unjustly exercised. They anticipated in action the
aphorism of John Stuart Mill, that " men do not need political
rights in order that they may govern, but in order that they may
not be misgoverned " ; for, as was truly said by Guizot, " a con-
stitution is only a device for turning ordinary mortals into toler-
able monarchs." At the same time, the convention practically
omitted to impose any limit or restriction on the exercise of the
power of appropriating private property on the part of the States ;
or, as Chancellor Kent expressed it in his Commentaries on the
Constitution, they left "to a State the command of all its re-
sources and the unimpaired power of taxing the people and prop-
erty of the State." On this point the only direct provisions of
the Constitution are that neither the Federal nor State govern-
ments shall take private property for public uses — i. e., by taxa-
tion or right of eminent domain — without due compensation ; and
that no State, without the consent of Congress, shall lay any im-

PBINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 159

posts or duties on imports or exports. By repeated decisions of
the United States Supreme Court, another provision has been
substantially ingrafted in the Constitution — to wit, that neither
the Federal Government nor the governments of the States shall
tax any of the instrumentalities or exclusive property of the
other. The result is that, except for possible provisions in the
Constitutions of the several States, their respective legislative
assemblies may regulate, restrict, or appropriate the property of
its citizens to an unlimited extent, and may delegate this sover-
eign power to local municipal corporations created by them. In
short, in virtue of the power of levying unlimited taxes, the power
of the Legislatures of the States that make up the Federal Union
is as absolute as that of the Czar of Russia or the Sultan of Tur-
key. Not only may they take in this form all the property in the
commonwealth, but also the property of its citizens in other
countries. There is no Federal constitutional hindrance to their
taxing, to any amount, real estate in any other State or country
owned by citizens resident within their territorial jurisdiction.
The constitutional provision that private property must be paid
for when taken for public uses mainly refers, in the States, to the
taking of land for highways and other similar acts of necessity
by eminent domain.*

How little the people of the United States recognize the fact
that they are living under a dual form of government, with like
powers to some extent, especially in respect to the exercise of
taxation, finds an illustration in the following incident. The
question was recently put to the writer by a gentleman who had
filled with ability the office of Governor of one of the leading
States of the Federal Union, how it happened that the Federal

* " There is nothing in the Constitution of the State of New York which requires that
taxation shall be general, so as to embrace all taxable persons in the State, or within any
district of the State ; or that it shall be equal, or that it shall be in proportion to the value
of the property of the person taxed, or that it shall not be apportioned according to the
benefit which each taxpayer is supposed to receive from the object on which the tax is ex-
pended."— People ex rel. Griffin vs. Mayer, Jf. N. Y., Jj.19, 1851.

" There is no constitutional limitation upon the legislative power to tax the persons and
property of individuals within the State. The power may be exercised to pay debts con-
tracted before the property-holder comes within the jurisdiction." — PampelJy vs. Village of
Oswego, Ct. of App., 1863, N. Y.

" Unless restrained by provisions of the Federal Constitution, the power of the State as
to the mode, form, and extent of taxation is unlimited when the subjects to which it applies
are within her jurisdiction." — Kirtland vs. Hotchkiss, Connecticut.

" The Legislature can constitutionally impose a tax on all watches, pianos, carriages,
dogs, spirituous liquors, or other chattels without reference to their value. It can impose
an arbitrary tax upon any avocation or business without estimating its volume or value." —
People vs. Equitable Trust Co. of New London, Conn., 1887 ; System of Taxation in tlie
State of New York, prepared by Hon. Julien T. Davis, at request of a committee of the
Legislature, 1888.

i6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Government could impose on him an income tax, and Hs own
State, at the same time, assess him with not only another like in-
come tax, but also with a tax on the property from which his
income was derived ? The idea of a dual government and its
inconveniences, and that the Congress of the Federal Government
had not cared to remedy the latter, had not occurred to the in-
terrogator.

Had the power of the States to take money hy taxation from
their people been limited at the time of the formation of the
Federal Union by constitutional provisions, the injury and dis-
grace of State repudiation might have been wholly avoided, and
much wasteful extravagance checked.

" Within an hour's ride from the city of New York several
towns can be reached that were bankrupted by undertaking * pub-
lic works upon a magnificent scale.' The number of Western
communities that have been ruined from the same cause is count-
less. A very great number of people in the Eastern States, both
poor and of the middle class, have been impoverished by the sud-
den check to the prosperity of these communities. Nor is any
severer tax imposed upon any class than that which is paid by
those who have only their wages to live upon, when they are de-
prived of these by the collapse of municipal credit and the conse-
quent sudden stop to extravagant expenditure. The average cost
of the pensions paid by the United States is ten to twelve dollars a
year to every family in the country, and in many cases the pension
charge alone is equal to half a month's or even to a month's
wages. Not a few of the governments of the earth are now in-
solvent because of excessive expenditures upon public works. In
South America and Australia, extravagant undertakings of this
kind have caused widespread ruin and distress ; and the poor of
several other nations are likely to find out eventually that the
alleviation of temporary distress by governmental expenditure of
capital is like keeping off the cold by burning down the house."
— D. MacO. Means, The Forum, 189 J^.

That the State governments should have bestowed the un-
limited and imperial power of taxation upon city governments,
and given up to their use and control the entire property of the
citizens, is an extraordinary abuse of trust and a renunciation of
the true functions of government. As a result of this policy
these delegated governments have, within a comparatively recent
period, absorbed for alleged public uses a large proportion of the
property of the citizens, to the estimated extent in some instances
of more than one third — that is, the usufruct (right of using and
enjoying) — and the American citizen has to-day no constitutional
or legal remedy. " No such plunder was ever sanctioned or prac-
ticed before in the history of civilized governments. That it has

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 161

been possible in the United States argues the gravest defect in its
political system. That a check is needed of the most absolute
kind is recognized by all thoughtful men. Such check can only
be had from the Legislatures of the States, who can not be too
prompt in correcting the evils resulting from this extraordinary
surrender of their supreme jurisdiction on the vital subject of
taxation. The Legislature holds the public purse, and is false to
its trust as its custodian when it authorizes corporations to put
their hands, unwatched, into this purse and take from it, un-
counted, all that their extravagance and cupidity desire. It is
no apology that city governments are chosen by popular vote. It
is the essence of our government that personal rights are, by our
Constitution, wholly independent of the voting power, and cer-
tainly property should be equally so protected."

The question here naturally arises. How happened it that the
framers of the Constitution and founders of our Government,
while carefully defining and limiting the powers of the Federal
Government in respect to the taking of property through taxa-
tion, omitted to make any like provisions applicable to the States?
An answer is, that it was probably an oversight, favored by the
circumstance that there was no English precedent for suchp ro-
visions. At the time of the Revolution it was, and ever since
has been, the occupation and duty of the British House of Com-
mons to limit and, if considered expedient, resist the pecuniary
demands of the crown, and latterly of its ministers ; and this oc-
cupation and duty were never delegated without restriction to any
subordinate legislative assemblage. It might have been, and
probably was, assumed by the framers of the Federal Constitu-
tion, that the several States in making their Constitutions would
have followed the precedents respecting the rights and duties of
taxation that they (the framers) had established ; and, if the sev-
eral Legislatures of the States had been confined to these rights
and duties, and had never delegated them without restriction to
the complicated, ill-organized, and irresponsible municipal cor-
porations, which in latter days have grown to such portentous
size, little of danger would have followed.* It should, however,
be here noted that remedial action in this matter has recently
been taken by some of the States, by forbidding their counties,
cities, towns, or villages from incurring an indebtedness in excess
of a percentage, varying with their population, of the valuation of
the real estate subject to taxation. Constitutional restrictions on

* In his treatment of this important topic, the author is mainly indebted <o Mr. Manley
Howe, of Boston, who, in a newspaper article published some years ago, seems to have been
the first person to intelligently present the facts in the case and their consequences to the
general public.

VOL. L. — 14

i62 POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

the borrowing power of the State itself, and of the municipalities
within its territorial jurisdiction, have also in some of the States
been adopted.

From the above discussion the following conclusions would
seem to be fully warranted :

The limitation on the exercise of the power of taxation under
a free government necessarily grows out of the source and sole
justification of the power — namely, its necessity ; and the right-
eousness of any specific interference by the state with individual
rights in respect to property (as well as in respect to personal
liberty) may be tested by the question. Is it necessary 9 Not Is it
convenient ? Not Is it suitable ? If the necessity exists, then the
power may be justifiably exercised to a corresponding extent.
But, on the other hand, if the interference transcends that which
is absolutely essential for fulfilling the rightful purposes for
which the state exists, then it loses its sole justification of neces-
sity and becomes tyranny, the definition of which is "despotic
use of power." Further, " if the state, even to promote its neces-
sary and legitimate objects, takes the amount of property to
which it is entitled in such a manner as requires a citizen to pay
more than his just share of the requisite amount — whether it be
great or small — it takes that to which it has no right; it does
what, if done by a citizen in defiance of law, is called robbery ; if
under color of law, is called fraud ; but which in a government
which makes law is simply confiscation and tyranny." And yet,
very strangely, this tyranny has come to be regarded and de-
fended by not a few intelligent persons who claim to understand
the theory and nature of a free and just government as an act of
wisdom and statesmanship, and in the highest degree beneficent
to the citizen whose propeity is confiscated.

Reporting concerning the progress made on the English Philological
Society's New English Dictionary, now in F, Mr. H. Bradley observed that
the F-words include many scientific terms, and some of the oldest English
and Romanic words, besides several onomatopceic words of arbitrary coin-
age. Initial^ has attracted makers of imitative and contemptuous words :
flip, flap, flop ; flish, flash, flush ; flick, flacJc, fliick ; flim-flam, flip-fliap,
etc. Of special words, foist has not the nauseous origin often attributed to
it, but is analogous to the dialectical German fdusten, to get into one's fist.
It occurs first in Dice-Play, of 1532, and means the holding in hand of a
false die, to introduce at any point of the game ; the false die was "foisted
in " ; all the known senses flow from this and parallel those of cog. Fog-
ger in " pettifogger of the law," of about 1550, and in trade a huckster,
peddler, sweater, is probably from the Fuggers, the great merchants of Aiit-
werp in the fifteenth century. The word has passed into many languages.
To fog, to cheat, swindle, is a back formation from fogger.

BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY. 163

THE RELATIONS OF BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND

SOCIOLGY.

By HEEBEET SPENCEE.

FROM time to time proof has come to me that in the United
States there have arisen erroneous conceptions of my views
concerning the connections between the sciences dealing respec-
tively with organic evolution and super-organic evolution. These
misconceptions will, if nothing be said, become established. Hence
it seems needful that I should point out how entirely at variance
with the evidence they are. The following extracts from two
leading American writers on Sociology will sufficiently exemplify
them. Mr. Lester Ward says : —

" The founder of sociology placed it next above biology in the scale of
diminishing generality and inci'easing complexity, and maintained that it
had that science as its natural basis and as the substratum into which its
roots penetrated, Herbert Spencer, although he treated psychology as a
distinct science, and placed it between biology and sociology in his system
of Synthetic Philosophy, made no attempt to affiliate sociology upon psy-
chology, while on the contrary he did exert himself to demonstrate that it
has exceedingly close natural affinities with biology, as was shown in the
third paper. At the close of that paper the fact came clearly forth that
almost the only legitimate comparisons between society and a living organ-
ism were those in which the nervous system was taken as the term of com-
parison. In other words, it was clear even then that the class of attributes
in the individual animal with which those of society could best be com-
pared were its psychic attributes. If we are to have a science of psychology
distinct from biology these attributes belong to that science, and hence it is
really psychology and not biology upon which sociology directly rests."
("Sociology and Psychology." In American Journal of Sociology, vol. i.
No. 5, March, 1896.)

In his recent work, published under the same title as my own.
The Principles of Sociology, Prof. Giddings recognizes the fact
that by me " the principles of sociology are derived from princi-
ples of psychology and of biology " (p. 8). But by his expressed
belief that " the time has come when its principles, accurately
formulated and adequately verified, can be organized into a coher-
ent theory" (p. 17), he tacitly implies that my own theory is not
coherent ; and he proceeds to supply that which he regards as the
needful bond — an ultimate psychological bond. His words are : —
"Accordingly, the sociological postulate can be no other than this,
namely : The original and elementary subjective fact in society is the con-
sciousness of kind. By this term I mean a state of consciousness in which
any being, whether low or high in the scale of life, recognizes another con-
scious being as of like kind with itself." {Ih.)

And then on p. 19, after indicating the external conditions which
prompt social aggregations, he goes on to say : —

164 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

'* But presently, within the aggregation, a consciousness of kind appears
in like individuals and develops into association. Association, in its turn,
begins to react favorably on the pleasures and on the life chances of indi-
viduals."

To deal properly with the several questions thus raised I must
go back to the beginniDg. In my first work^ Social Statics, pub-
lished in 1850, will be found evidence that at the very outset I
regarded the Science of Society as having for its chief datum the
Science of Mind. This was not overtly asserted, for at that time
questions concerning the filiation of the sciences were not enter-
tained by me ; but it was taken for granted as an obvious truth.
All through the work there runs the implication that societies are
determined in their actions and structures by the mental charac-
ters of their units ; and in a closing chapter, entitled " General
Considerations," there is a delineation of the way in which, along
with mental evolution in men, there goes higher social evolution.
Here are some extracts indicating this : —

" So that only by giving us some utterly different mental constitution
could the process of civilization have been altered."

" Dependent as they are upon popular character, established political
systems can not die out until the feeling which uj^holds them dies out."

" So that wild races deficient in the allegiance-producing sentiment can
not enter into a civilized state at all ; but have to be supplanted by others
that can."

''Of course the institutions of any given age exhibit the compromise
made by these contending moral forces at the signing of their last truce."

"The process by which a change of political arrangements is effected,
when the incongruity between them and the jjopular character becomes
sufficient, must be itself in keeping with that character, and must be violent
or peaceful accordingly."

That these conceptions remained unchanged in 1860, when the
prospectus of the Synthetic Philosophy was issued, might be in-
ferred even from the order of the subjects specified in it, which
ran: — Principles of Biology, Principles of Psychology, Principles
of Sociology. But this prospectus contains much more definite
evidence of my persistent belief in the dependence of Sociology
upon Psychology. Of the divisions constituting the Principles
of Psychology the last stands thus : — " VIII. Corollaries. — Consist-
ing in part of a number of derivative principles which form a
necessary introduction to sociology." And then in pursuance of
the thought there expressed, the enumeration of the divisions con-
stituting the Principles of Sociology begins thus : — " Part I. The
Data of Sociology. — A statement of the several sets of factors en-
tering into social phenomena — human ideas and feelings consid-
ered in their necessary order of evolution; surrounding natural
conditions; and those ever complicating conditions to which
•society itself gives origin : " in which statement of data, be it ob-

BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY. 165

served, there is no mention of biological data. Even without
saying more, I should, I think, have furnished adequate disproof
of the erroneous assertions quoted above. ' Bat now let me pass
on from the programme of these works to the works themselves.
The closing division of The Principles of Psycliology, entitled
"Corollaries" (as in the programme), opens with a chapter con-
taining the following passages : —

"Having presently to follow out Evolution under those higher forms
which societies present, the special psychology of Man, considered as the
unit of which societies are composed, must be briefly outlined." . . .

" It is manifest that the ability of men to co-operate in any degree as
members of a society, presupposes certain intellectual faculties and certain
emotions. . . . Hence, in preparation for the study of social evolution, there
have to be dealt with various questions respecting the faculties it brings
into play, and respecting the modes in which these are developed during
continued social life." (§ -177.)

In pursuance of this announcement, there presently follows a
chapter on "Language of the Emotions," which introduces a
chapter entitled " Sociality and Sympathy." The manifest impli-
cation is that recognition of these mental factors must precede
the interpretation of social phenomena. After indicating, as
Prof. Giddings has recently done, the genesis of sociality, which
in certain classes of animals becomes "naturally established as
furthering the preservation of the species/' I have gone on
to say : —

" Sociality having thus commenced, and survival of the fittest tending
ever to maintain and increase it, it will be further strengthened by the
inherited effects of habit. The perception of kindred beings, perpetually
seen, heard, and smelt, icill come to form a predominant part of con-
sciousness— so predominant a part that absence of it will inevitably cause
discomfort." (§ 504.)

Here, it seems to me, there is described in other words, that " con-
sciousness of kind "which Prof. Giddings regards as the "new
datum which has been sought for hitherto without success " (p.
17) ; and that it is regarded by me as the primary datum is shown
by a subsequent sentence running as follows : —

"Among creatures led step by step into gregariousness, there will little
by little be established a pleasure in being together — a pleasure in the con-
sciousness of one another's presence— a i^leasure simpler than, and quite
distinct from, those higher ones which it makes possible."

After proceeding, through a dozen pages, to trace the develop-
ment of sympathy as a result of gregariousness, there comes a
brief statement of —

"The cardinal facts which it has been the aim of this chapter to bring
to view, and which we must carry with us as aids to the interpretation of
emotional development, and to the subsequent intei'pretation of the socio-
logical phenomena accompanying emotional development." (§ 512.)

i66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

And tlien in a subsequent chapter on "Altruistic Sentiments" —
sentiments all liaving their roots in sympathy — there is a delinea-
tion of the ways in which these stand related to social evolution.

We come now to a still larger mass of evidence directly dis-
proving the statement that I have "made no attempt to affiliate
sociology upon psychology." On passing to the Principles of
Sociology itself I have, in setting forth its data, dealt elaborately
with certain further psychological dependencies. After pre-
liminary chapters come three entitled respectively " The Primi-
tive Man — Physical," " The Primitive Man — Emotional," and
"The Primitive Man — Intellectual": a fact which implies full
recognition of the psychological factors. But this is far from
being all. There follows a chapter which begins with the sen-
tence : — " Yet a further preparation for interpreting social phe-
nomena is needful ;" and the preparation thereupon commenced is
an account of " Primitive Ideas." After 30 pages describing the
genesis of these, come seventeen chapters setting forth the result-
ing development of ancestor-worship and the accompanying
superstitions. More than 300 pages are thus occupied ; avowedly
because the conduct of men in society can not be understood
^^ntil the natures of these primitive beliefs and accompanying
emotions are understood. Sentences from the succeeding chapter
on " The Scope of Sociology " run : —

'* And now observe the g'eneral conclusion reached. It is that while the
conduct of the primitive man is in part determined by the feelings with
which he regards men around him ; it is in part determined by the feelings
with which he regards men who have passed away. From these two sets
of feelings, result two all-important sets of social factors. While the fear
of the living becomes the root of the political control, the fear of the dead
becomes the root of religious control." (§ 209.)

In pursuance of these general conclusions there are given in sub-
sequent parts of the work various illustrations of the ways in
which these psychological factors conduce to social evolution —
as in the chapter on " Political Heads " (§§ 477, 482) ; as in the
chapter on " Laws " (§§ 529, 535) ; as in the whole division on " Ec-
clesiastical Institutions " ; and in many less conspicuous places.

How has it been possible for these misconceptions to have
arisen ? is a question that necessarily suggests itself. Among
causes to be considered is the occurrence of two chapters in The
Study of Sociology entitled respectively "Preparation in Biol-
ogy" and "Preparation in Psychology." In the first of these,
along with avowed dissent from certain of M. Comte's sociological
views, there goes applause of him for having "set forth with
comparative definiteness the connection between the science of
life and the science of society " ; and again, concerning his gen-
eral conception, it is said that " among other of its superiorities

BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY. 167

was this recognition of the dependence of sociology upon bipl-
ogy." Moreover a subsequent sentence runs thus : —

"In the first jjlace, all social actions being cletermiDed by the actions
of individuals, and all actions of individuals being- vital actions that con-
form to the laws of life at large, rational interpretation of social actions
implies knowledge of the laws of life."

But though these passages seem to support the interpretation of
my views which I repudiate, yet on looking at the context it will
be seen that this is not so. For, as shown by preceding and suc-
ceeding passages, " the laws of life at large," as here understood,
are laws comprehensive of both bodily life and mental life.
Though, as I have conspicuously shown, I do not, like M. Comte,
merge psychology in biology — though, under its objective aspect,
I regard it as a science clearly marked off, and under its subjec-
tive aspect as a science fundamentally contrasted with all others ;
yet, as every one must do, I admit that the science of mind is de-
pendent on the science of life. For we know nothing whatever
of mind save as exhibited by living bodies. That by " laws of
life at large " I mean laws of bodily life and mental life taken
together, is, indeed, clearly implied by the use of the words " the
actions of individuals," as being dependent on these laws of life ;
since the actions of individuals are all mentally determined. But
there are set forth in the chapter named, certain direct depend-
encies of social phenomena on vital phenomena. It is said that
the sociologist must learn " the laws of modification to which or-
ganized beings in general conform " ; that he must recognize the
effects of use and disuse in causing increase and decrease of bodily
and mental powers ; that he must remember how, as a conse-
quence, human nature "is always adapting itself both directly
and indirectly to its conditions of existence"; and that he must
bear in mind the truth that " every species of creature goes on
multiplying till it reaches the limit at which its mortality from
all causes balances its fertility," so that taking away one cause of
mortality by and by entails intensification of other causes aris-
ing from increased pressure of population. Against this evi-
dence, however, has to be set the evidence contained in the next
chapter, which shows the still more important dependencies of
sociology upon psychology, and ends with the conclusion that
" without preparation in mental science there can be no social
science."

But the small regard paid to all the proofs given at the outset
that the psychic factors of social phenomena are by me consid-
ered the predominant ones, appears to have resulted from think-
ing only of the parallelism I have asserted between certain traits
of individual organisms and certain traits of social organisms.
Prof. Giddings writes : —

i68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" The second form in which the characteristic error of sociological clas-
sifications appears is that of the overworked biological analogy. Mr.
Spencer's essay on ' The Social Organism ' made a lasting impression. At
present the greater part of sociological literature is written in terms of a
biological nomenclature. . . . Sociology will have to discard this classifi-
cation and nomenclature. ... In certain fundamental things social organi-
zation is like vital organization, but in all that justifies Mr. Spencer's own
phrase of ' super-organic evolution ' it is peculiar, and not to be classed with
organisms. Were this not true, sociology would be a mere division of
biology." (Pp. 62-63.)

Most readers will, I think, carry away from these sentences
the impression that I am supposed to have dwelt too much on
this analogy in my sociological interpretations. But any one
who reads through The Principles of Sociology, or even reads the
titles of its chapters, will see that this analogy plays but a rela-
tively inconspicuous part. I must be excused if, to make clear
the way in which I conceive and use the analogy, I go back to
the origin of it. In a chapter of Social Statics entitled " General
Considerations" (pp. 451-3 in the edition of 1850) occur the fol-
lowing passages : —

" Hence we are warranted in considering the body as a commonwealth
of nomads, each of which has independent powers of life, growth, and re-
production; each of which vmites with a number of others to perform some
function needful for supporting itself and all the rest ; and each of which
absorbs its share of nutriment from the blood. And when thus regarded,
the analogy between an individual being and a human society, in which
each man, while helping to subserve some public, want absorbs a portion
of the circulating stock of commodities brought to his door, is palpable
enough.

"A still more remarkable fulfillment of this analogy is to be found in
the fact, that the different kinds of organization which society takes on, in
progressing from its lowest to its highest phase of development, are essen-
tially similar to the different kinds of animal organization. Creatures of
inferior type are little more than aggregations of numerous like parts — are
molded on what Prof. Owen terms the principle of vegetative repetition ;
and in tracing the forms assumed by successive grades above these, we find
a gradual diminution in the nvimber of like parts, and a multiplication of
unlike ones. In the one extreme there are but few functions, and many
similar agents to each function : in the other, there are many functions, and
few similar agents to each function. . . .

" Now just this same coalescence of like parts, and separation of unlike
ones — just this same increasing subdivision of functions — takes place in the
development of society. The earliest social organisms consist almost wholly
of repetitions of one element. Every man is a warrior, hunter, fisherman,
builder, agriculturist, toolmaker. Each portion of the community per.
forms the same duties with every other portion ; much as each portion of
the polyp's body is alike stomach, skin, and lungs. Even the chiefs, in
whom a tendency toward separateness of function first appears, still retain
theii" similarity to the rest in economic respects. The next stage is distin-

BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY. 169

guished by a segreg-ation of these social units into a few distinct classes. . . .
And without further illustration the reader will at once perceive, that from
these inferior types of society up to our own complicated and more perfect
one, the progress has ever been of the same nature."

In pursuance of the analogy it is then shown that in either
case in proportion to the multiplication of unlike parts, severally
taking unlike functions, there is " an increasing mutual depend-
ence " and a consequent individuation (integration) of the whole
organism, animal or social : * the mutual dependence of parts being
represented as that which constitutes the aggregate an organism.

Ten years later, in the essay on " The Social Organism," the
conception here briefly outlined was elaborated. Four analogies
between living bodies and bodies politic were enumerated.

" Commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment in
mass. . . . While at first so simple in structure as to be considered struc-
tureless, they assume, in the course of their growth, a continually-increas-
ing complexity of structure. . . . Thoiigh in their early, undeveloped
states, there exists in them scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their
parts gradually acquire a mutual dependence. . . . The life of a society is
independent of, aiid far more prolonged than, the lives of any of its com-
ponent units." {Essays, Library ed., vol. i, p. 272.)

Neither in Social Statics, nor, I believe, in this essay is there
any assertion that this analogy between animal structures and
social structures is to be taken as the basis for sociological inter-
pretations. In what way the analogy has been regarded by me
was shown at a later date in The Study of Sociology. In that
work it is said : —

" Now if there exists this fundamental kinship, there can be no rational
apprehension of the truths of Sociology until there has been reached a
rational apprehension of the truths of Biology." (P. 334.)

Taken by itself this sentence appears to justify the interpre-
tation given of my view, but the sentences immediately succeed-
ing show that this is not so.

" The services of the two sciences are, indeed, reciprocal. We have but to
glance back at its progress, to see that Biology owes the cardinal idea on
which we have been dwelling, to Sociology; and that having derived from
Sociology this explanation of development, it gives it back to Sociology
greatly increased in definiteness, enriched by countless illustrations, and fit
for extension in new directions."

In pursuance of this assertion it is pointed out that Milne-Edwards
derived " the conception of ' the physiological division of labor ' "
from the generalizations of political-economists. It is then said
that " when carried from Sociology to Biology, this conception

* In passing I may remark that in the alleged progress from uniformity to multiformity,
as well as in the implied processes of differentiation and integration, may be seen the
earliest germ of the thought which eventually developed into the formula of evolution at
large.

VOL. L. — 15

170 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was forth with greatly expanded " ; and further on it is said " that
the truth thus found to be all-embracing in Biology returns to
Sociology ready to be for it, too, an all-embracing truth." Here
it is manifest that the two sciences are regarded as yielding
mutual elucidations ; and if, as the first sentence taken alone may
appear to imply, I regard the analogy as showing that Sociology
must be based on Biology, then, on the strength of the subsequent
sentences, it may just as truly be said that I base Biology upon
Sociology. Clearly, when taken together, these passages show
the thought to be that for distinct understanding of either sci-
ence certain conceptions furnished by the other must be pos-
sessed. It can not be said that each science is based on the other.
Hence the alleged connection must be not a necessary dependence
but an exchange of enlightenments. There is direct proof of this.
The sociological division of labor had been recognized long be-
fore Biology had assumed a scientific form; and "the physio-
logical division of labor," though not thus named, had been long
recognized in living bodies as a co-operation among the various
organs. In either science the conception might gradually have
been elaborated to the full without aid from the other, though
with nothing like the same rapidity and clearness.

Let as pass finally to the exposition of the analogy contained
in Part II of The Principles of Sociology. It is there said that
"between a society and anything else, the only conceivable
resemblance must be one due to paraUelism of iirinciple in the
arrangement of components." (§ 213.) It is shown "how the com-
bined actions of mutually-dependent parts constitute life of the
whole, and how there hence results a parallelism between social
life and animal life." (§ 218.) Mutual dependence of parts being
thus regarded as the essential trait in either case, there is subse-
quently pointed out a fundamental contrast between the modes in
which this mutual dependence is effected in individual bodies and
in bodies politic. § 221 begins —

" Though coherence among its parts is a prerequisite to that co-operation
hy which the life of an individual organism is carried on ; and though the
members of a social oi'gauism, not forming a concrete whole, can not main-
tain co-operation by means of physical influences directly propagated from
part to part; yet they can and do maintain co-operation by another agency.
Not in contact, they nevertheless aflect one another through intervening
spaces, both by emotional language and by the language, oral and written,
of the intellect."

It is argued that mutual dependence of parts requires the convey-
ance of impulses from part to part, and that while " this requisite
is fulfilled in living bodies by molecular waves," " it is fulfilled in
societies by the signs of feelings and thoughts, conveyed from
person to person."

BIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND SOCIOLOGY. 171

Here, tlien, we come to a proof, more conclusive even than that
before given, that social actions are regarded by me as resulting
from mental factors. Though the specialization of functions, or
division of labor, is held to be analogous in living bodies and
social bodies — though, in both cases, co-operation of the mutually-
dependent parts has to be effected by stimuli conveyed from one
to another ; yet it is shown that while in the one case this pre-
requisite is effected by a physical process, it is in the other case
effected by a psychical process. So that beyond the proofs vari-
ously given that the organization of each society is mainly caused
by the mental traits of its units, there is here given the proof that
these mental traits produce their results through certain mental
products — the signs of feelings and thoughts.

And now let me add a not unimportant conclusion brought
into view by this long explanation. In the course of it there has
become manifest to me the essential distinction, which I had not
before observed, between the dependencies of Sociology on Biol-
ogy and the dependencies of Sociology on Psychology. They con-
cern respectively the substance of society and the structure of
society. We may contemplate the social aggregate simply as a
mass of living units, ignoring any arrangement of its parts; or,
tacitly positing the existence of the mass, we may occupy our-
selves exclusively with the arrangement of its parts. Under the
one head we are concerned only with changes of quantity and
quality — increases or decreases of the units in number, and
organic modifications of their natures : changes produced in the
course of generations by subjection of the units to certain condi-
tions of life. For interpreting social phenomena included in this
group, we depend directly upon Biology. Under the other head
we are concerned only with the development of this social aggre-
gate into an organization of mutually-dependent parts perform-
ing different duties — the gradual evolution of structures and cor-
relative functions and formation of a more and more integrated
whole. For interpreting the phenomena included in this far
more conspicuous and important group, we depend directly upon
Psychology. Though the two can not be sharply separated, since
bodily life and mental life are indissolubly united, and exert
reciprocal influences, yet, as being respectively concerned with
social substance and social form, the two are sufficiently con-
trasted.

The editors of the Zoological Record count 366,000 distinct species in the
animal world, of which 230,000 are insects and only 2,500 are mammals.
Next most numerous to the insects are the moUusks, 50,000 species ; crusta-
ceans, 20,000 ; birds, 12,500 ; fishes, 12,000 ; and arachnids, or the spider
family. 10.000 species.

172 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

BOTANIC GARDENS.

By D. T. MACDOUGAL,
assistant pbofessoe of botany in the state university of minnesota.

I.— ORIGIN AND GENERAL ORGANIZATION.

THE term botanic garden is used to designate a limited area of
ground on which is grown a collection of plants of a large
number of species, arranged in a manner that will subserve some
educational, aesthetic, scientific, or economic purpose. At the
present time the utilitarian feature embraces the chief design of
but few gardens, yet it is to the economic purpose that these in-
stitutions owe their origin. It will be interesting in this connec-
tion to note the successive changes of organization by which these
institutions, at first as directly practical as possible, have come to
subserve the most complex and highly scientific uses.

After the discovery of the medical properties of plants, it must
have followed, in course of time, that representatives of the
species to which remedial properties were attributed should be
collected and grown in some place conveniently and readily
accessible as need demanded. The last step did not immediately
follow, however, since, among the conditions which were earlier
supposed to influence the potency of medicinal herbs, the locality in
which grown and the mysteries attending their collection were of
the greatest importance. The first authentic record of the intro-
duction of medicinal plants into cultivated plots of ground dates
no further back than the time of the elder Pliny (23-79 a. d.),
who writes of the garden of Antonius Castor, at Rome, in which
were grown a large number of medicinal plants. This step may
have been taken much earlier by the Greeks, Chinese, or Mexi-
cans, however. Later the Benedictine monks of northern Italy
paid great attention to the growing of remedial herbs, and devoted
an important proportion of the monastery gardens to this purpose.
This practice was also carried beyond the Alps, and in 1020 a
garden was in existence at the monastery of St. Gall, in Switzer-
land, a few kilometres distant from Lake Constance, which con-
tained sixteen plots occupied by medicinal plants. A garden of
this character was founded in 1309, at Salerno, and another in
Venice in 1330. In 1309 the Benedictine monks founded an acad-
emy called " Civitas Hippocratica " at Monte Cassino, in Campania,
which appears to the writer to be among the earliest, if not the
first, school of medicine, and established in connection with it a
" physics garden." Two centuries later, courses of lectures on
the " simples," as the unmixed preparations of herbs were termed,
were given in the greater number of Italian universities, under

BOTANIC GARDENS.

173

tlie title of " lectura simplicium/' by the professors of anatomy
and surgery. It is interesting to note that the laboratory method
of handling the course in " cognitio simplicium" was not intro-
duced until the establishment of the botanic garden at the Uni-
versity of Padua, when, in addition to the lectures, exercises in
the demonstration of remedial plants growing in the garden were
given under the title of " ostencio simplicium."

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the founda-
tion of many gardens in England, France, Germany, Holland, and
Sweden, some of which have had a continuous existence to this
day. The garden of Bologna was founded in 1568 ; Leyden, 1577 ;
Leipsic, 1579; Montpellier, 1596; and Paris in 1597. The last

u

2» HI

lif , ifia as;

- - "* (US

!C|

View of the Laboratory in the Oxford Botanic Garden. Alter a piiotogniph.

named was organized for the purpose of determination of " what
variations were possible in the style of bouquets worn at the royal
courts." Then followed the establishment of the gardens at Gies-
sen in 1605, Strasburg in 1G20, Jena in 1629, Oxford in 1632, Upsala
in 1667, and Chelsea in 1680.

The Oxford garden is the oldest in England, and a curious
feature in its organization is that during its entire term of exist-
ence— two hundred and sixty-four years — it has occupied leased
ground. It owes its existence to the munificence of the Earl of
Danby, who, besides making such alterations in the surface as
to secure it from overflow, erected the wall that still incloses it,
at a cost of five thousand pounds. The portion of the garden

174 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

shown in the view of the Botanical Laboratory exhibits the
formal style of planting which prevailed in earlier times.

The Chelsea garden is situated near the Thames, about two
miles south from Hyde Park. It was formed by the Apotheca-
ries' Guild of London, for the growth of plants for commercial
purposes. Later it was converted to its present use, that of
furnishing material to illustrate lectures in pharmacy and medi-
cine. Surrounded on all sides by brick buildings, and shaded
by smoke and fog, the rectangular plots of officinal plants ex-
hibit very strikingly the deleterious effects of an atmosphere
laden with acids. The would-be visitor to this quaint old place
must arm himself with an admission card obtained from the
Apothecaries' Society, and from the creaking formalities attend-
ant upon the granting of such permission by unaccustomed but
polite officials it may be inferred that the casual sight-seer does
not often find his way into the place.

During the period inclusive of the foundation of the last-named
institutions plants began, however, to be considered from another
point of view — from a strictly scientific standpoint, and as inde-
pendent organisms. While the Aristotelian school studied plants
in a manner closely approaching that of the present time, yet this
beginning of biological science had no logical continuation, and
during many succeeding centuries was completely lost to sight.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century two new forces were
manifest in the development of these institutions. Many of the
wealthier class who had private gardens began to enlarge them
by the addition of species because of their rarity, or because they
were brought from some foreign country, and in many instances
special collections were made chiefly for this purpose alone. Thus
it may be seen that beyond the useful properties of plants, per-
haps the first truly scientific idea of them concerned in a crude
way some of the principles of geographical distribution. This
phase of the subject received an increasing attention, and finally
assumed form and order upon the introduction of the Linn?ean sys-
tem of classification into Germany and that of Jussieu into France.

Before this, however, a still more important development in
the method of study of plants had ensued, as is shown distinctly
in the botanical writings of the latter half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. The all-important fact of the natural affinities of plants
had gradually assumed distinctness — an idea not within the
grasp of any one of the herbalists of the time, whose accumulat-
ing and repeated descriptions of individual species gave rise to
the perception of resemblance and difference in forms, and finally
to the idea of natural relationship. This idea finally became para-
mount : " All the foreign matter introduced into the descriptions
of plants by medical superstition and practical considerations

BOTANIC GARDENS.

175

were seen to be of secondary importance, and were soon thrown
aside in the effort to establish a natural system of classification."
At the time of this " renaissance " of botany the gardens rep-
resented the ideas of geographical distribution and classification

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in addition to the practical aspects of the subject. With the de-
velopment of physiology and morphology the ideas thus brought
into prominence have found expression in the gardens, and the

176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

purposes and usefulness of these institutions have steadily broad-
ened until all the more important phases of the subject are more
or less represented in the greater majority of instances.

In addition to the scientific and practical uses enumerated
above, the botanic garden has become a laboratory for the land-
scape artist, who may dispose of its masses of plants with a feel-
ing regard for their artistic value in outline and color, making a
most effective means of cultivation and gratification of public
taste. In many of the better known gardens, especially those
located in the great cities, this aesthetic feature has become a very
prominent and in manj'' instances the predominant idea.

Only when a botanic garden is equipped with laboratories for
the furtherance of investigation, and sustains an organic relation
to a school or university, may it be said to attain its highest pos-
sibilities of usefulness, in the demonstration of the principles
governing the nature and development of one of the two great
groups of living things. When designed for this purpose the
collection of growing plants should represent as many of the prin-
cipal forms of vegetation as is possible. Since the probable num-
ber of living plants is estimated at half a million, it is obviously
impossible to bring together in any restricted area more than a
fraction of this number. A census of the flora of the section of
Bronx Park in New York, inclusive of about two hundred and
fifty acres, which is to be converted into a botanic garden, showed
that nearly a thousand species of ferns and seed-forming plants
were to be found on that area, only a small number of which were
introduced. Of these thousand species many were represented by
thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of individuals. In
the conversion of the tract into a botanic garden, the gardener
will remove all but a few dozen, or perhaps a few hundreds, of
each species, which will be confined to certain designated limited
areas. In this way he will relieve each species from the compe-
tition of its neighbors, and so far as possible from the ravages of
insects and animals — the most telling factors in the struggle for
existence — and obtain space for the introduction of a large num-
ber of species. If these conditions alone determined the flora of
a region, the number of species which could be grown in a garden
would be determined only by its size and the number of plots it
might contain. It is found, however, that the substratum and
climate offer rigid limitations to an extension of the flora which
may be grown out of doors in any locality. The gardener par-
tially overcomes this limitation by the use of glass houses, where
plants from nearly all parts of the world may be grown in spe-
cially prepared soils, and kept at temperatures resembling those
of the natural habitats of the plants. But under such conditions
it becomes extremely difficult to properly adjust the moisture and

BOTANIC GARDENS. 177

light, and only a comparatively small addition may thus be made
to the flora of a garden. The conditions described above are such
that it has not been found possible to grow in one place more
than fifteen thousand species of the higher plants. It will be
found, moreover, that a large number of the species included are
not able to attain normal stature and appearance, and will thus be
useless in representing the form intended.

In consequence of this limitation of the number it is custom-
ary to supplement the living plants by collections of prepared
specimens of contemporaneous and fossil forms, in order to rep-

The Main Palm House of the Royal Gardens at Kew, with Lake in Foregeound.

resent more completely the vegetation of the globe. The living
as well as the prepared plants are generally so assembled as to
demonstrate the descent and relationship of the different groups,
distribution over climatic and geographic zones, as well as their
principal biological adaptations to the factors to be met in their
native habitats. In addition to this strictly natural method of
treatment it is also customary to illustrate by proper groups the
forms which have become of special interest because of their food-
furnishing, textile-yielding, medicinal, or other economic value.
In order to accomplish these purposes a suitably equipped garden
must contain, besides the necessary facilities for growing plants,
museum buildings arranged for the display of prepared specimens,
and if it designs to afford opportunities for research it must also
be furnished with a library and laboratory facilities.

There are in the world more than two hundred institutions
designed as botanic gardens, a large proportion of which are de-
voted to the cultivation of decorative plants, or subserve the use

178

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

of pleasure parks, while only a small number are organized on
the broader basis of the needs of the branches of botanic science.
Thirty-six of these institutions are located in Germany, twenty-

ViEw OF Main Portion of Tempkrate Hoise of the Royal Gardens at Kew.
In process of repair. After a photograph.

three in Italy, twenty-two in France, thirteen in Austria-Hungary,
twelve in Great Britain and Ireland, and ten in the United States.
One of the most widely known is the Koyal Botanic Garden at
Kew, located on the south bank of the Thames, six miles from
Hyde Park. The beginning of the Kew Gardens may be dated
from the formation of the exotic gardens of Lord Capel in 1759.
After a long series of changes in ownership and purpose, addi-
tions and alterations in plan, the gardens were transferred from a
private possession of the crown to a national institution in 1840,
with Sir William Hooker as the first director. About two hun-
dred and seventy acres are included, of which seventy are planted
as a botanic garden and the remainder as an arboretum and
public park. Besides the large number of well-planned conserva-
tories, greenhouses, museums, and other buildings, it contains a
number of structures which reflect somewhat of the varied his-
tory of the institution. The main palm house is three hundred
and sixty-two feet in length, with a central dome seventy feet in
height (Plate IV), and the temperate house has a total length of
five hundred and eighty feet, covering an area of an acre and a
half of ground. In addition, the garden contains fourteen smaller
glass houses. The herbarium and library, which occupy the old

BOTANIC GARDENS.

179

palace of the King of Hanover, are probably the largest and most
complete in the world. While the research work carried on in
the gardens has been principally taxonomic, by the co-operation
of the twenty-four gardens of which Kew is the organic head,
much of value has been accomplished in the acclimatization of
useful plants. There is also located in the garden the Jodrell
Laboratory, in which some important results in physiology and
morphology have been reached. Its operations, however, are
greatly constrained by lack of suitable endowment.

I quote the following explanatory paragraph from a guide to
the grounds :

" It may be mentioned that Kew is not only a great educa-
tional establishment and pleasure resort, but also the recognized
center of the various botanic gardens throughout the empire.
The part it has played in the introduction of the cinchona into
India, and in fostering various other important industries, is well
known. It may be described as the great botanical clearing
house of the empire. To it a large number of plants are con-
stantly being forwarded from all parts of the world to be named.

The Cumberland Gate, Eotal Gardens at Kew, with Guard on Dutt.
Looking outward. Aftei- a photograph.

for which purpose a staff of botanists is provided, and the collec-
tion of dried plants, or herbarium, as well as the large botanical
library, is unrivaled throughout the world. In the same way the
collection of cultivated plants and trees, both hardy and exotic, is
the most perfect in existence."

i8o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The number of visitors to tlie gardens during the year amounts
to one and a half million, according to newspaper reports. The
gates, six in number, are open from noon until dusk. The ad-
ministration and care of
an establishment of this
character near a great
center of population re-
quire the closest organi-
zation and the most scru-
pulous attention to detail
on the part of the execu-
tive. In this matter tradi-
tion as well as current
testimony speaks of the
rigid manner in which
the numerous necessary
regulations are enforced.
The general plan of the
grounds is shown in Plate
VI.

When organized chief-
ly for research the botanic
garden differs in many
essential features from
the one described above.
From this point of view, and with regard to advantages of geo-
graphical position and botanical possibilities, the garden at Bui-
tenzorg in Java occupies a foremost position. Originally founded
by the Government of Holland in 1817, for the purpose of testing
the economic value of plants indigenous to the colonies of the
East Indies, and for the distribution of seeds, plants, etc., after
the customary manner of such institutions, it has widened its
scope and developed its facilities until almost all branches of
purely scientific and applied botany may be pursued to advan-
tage within it.

The Buitenzorg Garden is situated within a few degrees of the
equator, and by reason of the elevated areas included within its
different divisions furnishes suitable conditions for the growth
in the open air of plants native to latitudes as high as forty or
fifty degrees. The luxuriance of the growth of plants in the
lower tropical area may be imagined when it is stated that the
average temperature is 85° Fahrenheit, and the yearly rainfall
amounts to twelve feet. Of the eleven hundred acres available
for the purposes of the garden, an area of about one hundred
and seventy-three acres is devoted to experiments with cultivated
plants, one hundred and forty-eight to the botanic garden proper.

Plan of Kew Gardens. Explanatory references:
A, principul entrance from Kew Green ; B, tropical
house ; 0, timber Museum No. 3 ; D, water-lily
house; E, palm house; F, temperate house; G,
pagoda ; H, Lion or Kichmoncl Gate ; I, " North "
fjallery; J, lake; K, flajjstafl"; L, Unicorn Gate
(closed) ; M, Museum No. 1 ; N, Cumberland Gate ;
0, rockery ; P, Museum No. 2 ; Q, new range ;
R, succulent house, greenhouse, and ferneries ; S,
Brentford Gate ; T, Ilesworth Gate ; U, Victoria
Gate, for Kew Gardens Station ; V, bamboo gar-
den; W, azalea beds; X, Rhododendron Dell;
Y, ornamental water; Z, Kew Church.

BOTANIC GARDENS. i8i

seventy-five to a mountain garden at an elevation of about seven
thousand feet, and tlie remainder is comprised in a mountain
forest. The laboratories are most excellently equipped for inves-
tigation in forestry, agricultural chemistry, and pharmacology, be-
sides the main divisions of the pure science. In addition to a very
complete library and herbarium, the administration has at its
service a lithographic establishment for the preparation of illus-
trations for its publications. It would be difficult to overestimate
the value of the results accomplished by the various divisions of
this institution, or to predict its future performances. By reason
of its facilities and resources it has become a Mecca for the bota-
nists of the world.

The foundation of a botanic garden in the United States dates
from that of John Bartram in Philadelphia in 1728, which is still
preserved in a modified form. Botany has been given an impor-
tant place in the college curriculum in America scarcely more
than sixty years. In comparatively recent years a few gardens
have come into existence, nearly all of which are still in a state of
rapid development. During this period of flux they have been
able only to afford facilities for general elementary instruction,
and to make possible original work in the classification of native
plants — a line of research which has been carried on more or less
steadily since the earlier settlements were made on this side of
the Atlantic. At the present time a few have begun to offer
opportunities for research in the more important branches of
botanical science. Among these may be mentioned the Missouri
Botanical Garden at St. Louis, connected with the Washington
University, the Botanical Garden and Arnold Arboretum of Har-
vard University, and the Botanic Garden of New York, now in
process of formation and to be connected with Columbia Uni-
versity.

The Botanic Garden of Harvard University was established
in 1805. It has an area of seven acres, on which are cultivated
about seven thousand species of plants, principally native. For
this reason it finds but one greenhouse necessary. The garden
contains the famous herbarium and library in which Asa Gray
accomplished his work on the plants of North America. The main
laboratories and museums are located in the university buildings.
Some very important work on the morphology of the cryptogams
has been published from these laboratories. The Arnold Arbore-
tum of Harvard University is organized entirely independent of
the botanic garden. It includes an area of two hundred and fifty
acres, of which one hundred and sixty are planted with trees and
shrubs. It is furnished with a museum, herbarium, and library,
for the purpose of aiding study and research in forestry and den-
drology. By an arrangement with the city of Boston the arbore-

l82

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

turn is thrown open to the inhabitants of that city as a public
park. The arboretum has nearly completed a description of
all the trees of North America north of Mexico in a series of

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magnificently illustrated quartos, entitled The Silva of North
America.

The foundation of the Missouri Botanic Garden at St. Louis is
due to the munificence of Mr. Henry Shaw, who bequeathed for
that purpose a tract of seven hundred and sixty acres of land and

BOTANIC GARDENS. 183

other property in and near St. Louis. The scope of this institu-
tion may be best illustrated by the following quotation from the
will of its founder : " With a view to having for the use of the
public a botanical garden, easily accessible, which should be for-
ever kept up for the cultivation and propagation of plants, flow-
ers, fruit and forest trees, and other productions of the vegetable
kingdom, and a museum and library connected therewith, and de-
voted to the same and to the science of botany, horticulture, and
allied objects." It is connected with the Washington Univer-
sity, which has a School of Botany also endowed by Mr. Shaw in
1885. The botanic garden occupies an area of forty-seven acres.
The grounds are laid out in such a manner as to be highly at-
tractive, and as many as thirty thousand people have passed the
gates in a single day. Much important work in plant taxonomy
has been accomplished in this institution, and the facilities for
work may be set forth in the following official statement :

" The herbarium is supplemented by a large collection of
woods, including veneer transparencies and slides for the micro-
scope. The library, containing about eight thousand volumes and
ten thousand pamphlets, includes most of the standard periodicals
and proceedings of the learned bodies, a good collection of mor-
phological and physiological works, nearly five hundred carefully
selected botanical volumes published before the period of Lin-
nseus, an unusually large number of monographs of groups of
cryptogams and flowering plants, and the entire manuscript notes
and sketches representing the painstaking work of Engelmann.

" The great variety of living plants represented in the garden
and the large herbarium, including the collections of Bernhardi
and Engelmann, render the garden facilities exceptionally good
for research in systematic botany, in which direction the library
also is exceptionally strong. The living collections and library
also afford unusual opportunity for morphological, anatomical,
and physiological studies, while the plant-house facilities for ex-
perimental work are steadily increasing. The E. Lewis Sturte-
vant Pre-Linnsean Library, in connection with the opportunity
afforded for the cultivation of vegetables and other useful plants,
is favorable also for the study of cultivated plants and the modi-
fications they have undergone."

The New York Botanic Garden is the most recent acquisition
to the list of these institutions in America. Its establishment
was authorized by the Legislature in 1891, but the enabling act
being defective, no steps could be taken in its organization until
1894. To comply with the act of incorporation, a sum of two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars was raised by private sub-
scription, and then the Commissioners of Public Parks of New
York City were authorized to set aside two hundred and fifty

184

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

acres of Bronx Park, and the Board of Estimate and Apportion-
ment was directed to' issue bonds amounting to five hundred
thousand dollars, to be used in the construction of the necessary-
buildings, greenhouses, museums, laboratories, etc.

View of Main Greenhouse in the Missouri Botanic Garden, with Flowering Specimens
OF Agave Mexicana in Foreground. Reproduced by permissiou from the Fifth Annual
Eeport of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 1894:.

BOTANIC GARDENS. 185

The scope of this institution may be best illustrated by the
following extract from the act of incorporation : " To be located
in the city of ISTew York for the purpose of establishing and
maintaining a botanical garden and museum and arboretum
therein, for the collection and culture of plants, iiowers, shrubs,
and trees, the advancement of botanical science and knowledge,
and the prosecution of original research therein and in kindred
subjects, for affording instruction in the same, for the prosecution
and exhibition of ornamental and decorative horticulture and
gardening, and for the entertainment, recreation, and instruction
of the people." The site of the garden embraces an area of such
wide diversities of soil and slope, marsh, meadow, shores, and
granite ridges, that it will afford peculiarly fitting conditions for
the growth of an extensive flora in the open air. As mentioned
above, about one thousand species of plants, nearly all of which
were native, were found on the inclosed area at the time of or-
ganization of the garden. Through a co-operative arrangement
entered into with Columbia University, the herbarium of this in-
stitution, numbering over six hundred thousand specimens, as well
as the library, will be deposited with the garden, and most of the
research and graduate work of the university in botany will be
carried on in the museum building. The plans of the museum
building are such as to offer ample facilities for laboratories in
all the divisions of the subject, while the glass houses promise
to surpass anything in existence at the present time. The condi-
tions of organization are such that a high efficiency for the entire
equipment will be at once attained. The establishment of this
garden marks an important step in the development of botany in
America.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for furthering botanical in-
vestigation that has existed since the beginning of the science
now confronts the American universities in the proposal to estab-
lish a botanic garden and laboratory in the tropics. The real
value of such an institution may be best understood when it is
stated that botany in its present elementary condition, especially
with reference to the physiology and ecology of plants, is based
chiefly on the results of investigations carried on in botanical
gardens and laboratories situated in the northern hemisphere
between the parallels of forty and fifty-five degrees. In the
herbaria it has been possible to study normal specimens of pre-
pared plants from the equator to the poles, and consequently the
systematic relationships are much better known than any other
characteristic. Morphology has shared these advantages to some
extent.

In the study of the physiology, ecology, and other branches of
the science in which living plants are necessary, attention has been

TOL. L. — 16

i86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

necessarily confined to those indigenous to a zone fifteen degrees
in width, extending across one small continent and half way across
another, together with introduced species growing under more or
less abnormal conditions in gardens and conservatories. As the
science progresses it is becoming more and more apparent that
many of the generalizations based upon investigations carried on
under such circumstances are incapable of general application,
and that before a permanent foundation for the science can be
laid, research along all lines must be extended to include the most
highly developed forms, in the primitive habitat of the plant king-
dom, in the tropics. The principles of the relations of plants and
their relations to the animal kingdom may only be attained by
the study of undisturbed communities of plants in the natural
groupings resultant from the struggle for existence. Here are to
be found such rapidity of growth and metabolism that the adapt-
ive" possibilities of the organism reach their highest expression.

The centers of botanical activity in Europe are so far removed
from a tropical flora that only occasionally does a transatlantic
investigator find time and opportunity to extend his researches to
include normal tropical forms. To do this he must vi^-it Buiten-
zorg or some other garden nearly half way round the world.

The center of botanical activity in America has at its very
doors a tropical region (in the West Indies), unsurpassed in every
feature, which may be reached in four or five days from any im-
portant city in the country. The establishment of a laboratory
and garden in any convenient locality would not only be of un-
told value in the general development of botanical science, but it
would place within easy reach of the investigator or graduate stu-
dent in American universities facilities unequaled by that of any
other country.

The European botanist would also find a laboratory in the
American tropics much more easily accessible than those of the
antipodes. The foundation of such an institution would be of
direct benefit to the greater number of active botanists, and would
go far toward making America the scene of the greatest develop-
ment of the biology of one of the two great groups of living organ-
isms.

A FELICITOUS tribute was paid to Darwin at the opening of the English
Church Congress in Shrewsbury, the philosopher's birthplace, by the Bishop
of Lichfield, presiding, who said that "all members of the Church of Christ
owed a great debt of gratitude to Charles Darwin. He had simplified and
interpreted, as a true man of science would be anxious to do, the niethods
which have been pursued by the Great Almighty Creator in his works, and
in so doing he had added to the dignity of the conception which they were
able to form of Him who made us and all the world."

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 187

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL
ARCHITECTURE.*

By ANDEEW D. WHITE,

EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL TJNIVEESITT.

PROF. EDWARD P. EVANS is already well known to the
readers of the Popular Science Monthly as a contributor
of historical and psychological articles especially valuable and
interesting.

His position upon the editorial staff of one of the most im-
portant European journals gives him extraordinary opportunities
to discern events having a real bearing upon contemporary
thought. As a scholar deeply interested in the most important
modern questions, he has for several years past interpreted to
Germany the significance of current American history and liter-
ature, and at the same time he has kept thoughtful Americans
informed regarding various important political and philosophical
developments in the New Germany, and in Europe generally.

This latest of his works is one for which every student of
history, in its largest and best sense, should be grateful to him.
Under the title of Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Archi-
tecture he has thrown a bright light into the evolution of
thought during the middle ages, and at the same time into the
whole course of human development ; and his book is not only
learned but interesting ; so that it will not only prove profitable
to scholars but attractive to the general reader.

Many a ponderous and voluminous work on mediaeval history
and art, requiring months for its study, is really far less valuable
than this little book, which can be read delightfully by the fire-
side during the winter evenings of a single week.

The great majority of thinking Americans who travel abroad
are naturally attracted and impressed by the mediaeval cathe-
drals. Representing the most profound and brilliant phase of
architecture, these great creations attract even those who have
little feeling for art in general. Among all structures reared by
man they take strongest possession of thoughtful minds.

Yet few, even of the most attentive, see in them their full
depth of meaning. Even the most scholarly traveler has been
wont to give up some of the most interesting cathedral problems
in despair. By the side of some sculptured group of heavenly
beauty he sees masses of carving, grotesque, and not infrequently
profane and even obscene. He can not understand why a sculp-

* Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture. By E. P. Evans. With a Bibliog-
raphy and seventy-eight Illustrations. New York: Henry Holt k Co., 1896.

188 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tor who seems to have caught sight of cheruhs and seraphs
should suddenly revel in the creation of devils, imps, and animals,
real and imaginary. The whole seems an incongruous jumble.
This jumble, and much else. Prof. Evans interprets to us, and
shows us how all grew naturally out of human thought and
aspiration.

The key which he furnishes us to these strange problems pre-
sented by mediaeval art is mainly the old dogmatic relation be-
tween Nature and Scripture. In the early Church the science of
Aristotle and his successors was speedily turned into a channel of
which they never dreamed. Scientific truth ceased to be studied
for truth's sake, but was used to ascertain and illustrate the
meanings of the Bible, and to establish the dogmas of the Church.
The book of Nature was held more and more to be the counter-
part, and therefore the interpreter, of the book of Revelation.
The visible creation was held to be a mirror of the spiritual
realm. Hence a new and most extraordinary growth, which,
while it has been supplanted in our time by the blooming forth of
modern science, still shows some lingering blossoms.

Very early in the history of the Church appeared the treatise
known as the Physiologus. In this, various objects in Nature
were made to interpret and to be interpreted by various passages
in Scripture. So successful was this work that there grew out of
it great encyclopaedias of sacred science, and the historical student
still finds in all properly furnished university libraries works of
such vast scope as those of Vincent de Beauvais, Thomas de Can-
timprd, and Gregory Reysch.

Most important among the early sources of this stream of
mediaeval thought was Origen. Early in the third century that
eminent biblical scholar, profound and prolific, laid down a great
doctrine, as follows : " The visible world teaches us concerning the
invisible ; the earth contains images of heavenly things, in order
that by means of these lower objects we may mount up to that
which is above. . . . As God made man in his own image and
after his own likeness, so he created the lower animals after the
likeness of heavenly prototypes." *

The main biblical basis for this great statement was found in
two passages, one from the Old Testament, the other from the
New. The first was the text from Job, as follows: "Ask now
the beasts, and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of the air, and
they shall tell thee." This outburst of poetry, from perhaps the
most profound poem in human history, was taken as a prosaic
statement of truth. The other text was the statement of St.
Paul, that "the invisible things of Him from the creation of

* See Evans's work cited, p. 28.

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 189

the world are clearly seen, being understood by tbe things that
are made/'

The result was that the Physiologus, which interpreted the
sacred significance of the animal kingdom, had a wider circula-
tion than any other book save the Bible, and was translated into
the languages even of the remotest Christian peoples.*

It will appear strange to any one not well acquainted with the
ways of mediaeval thinkers that the animal which had perhaps
the earliest and greatest significance was one which existed
neither in the Bible nor in Nature, but which was evolved by
early Christian thought, brooding over statements which came
from the sun worship of earlier nations and from pagan literature.
This animal was the phoenix; it was made to teach a world of
church doctrine, and was even stamped upon the coin of the first
Christian emperor.

In the twelfth century we have, as an outgrowth of the Physi-
ologus, the Bestiaries. These developed this theological learn-
ing still further, and now it comes in with a full tide. The
sculptures of cathedrals, the paintings on stained glass, the illu-
minations of manuscripts, the embroideries of vestments, are all
filled with phoenixes, unicorns, salamanders, as well as with the
whole range of animals having real existence.

Of animals having real existence, the lion was perhaps most
frequently sculptured, and regarding him the Physiologus is
especially explicit. Among other things it ministers to edifica-
tion as follows : " First, when the lion perceives that the hunters
are pursuing him, he erases his footprints with his tail, so that
he can not be traced to his lair. In like manner our Saviour, the
lion of the tribe of Judah, concealed all traces of his Godhead
when he descended to the earth. Secondly, the lion always sleeps
with his eyes open ; so our Lord slept with his body on the cross,
but awoke at the right hand of the Father. Thirdly, the lioness
brings forth her whelps dead and watches over them, until after
three days, the lion comes and howls over them and brings
them to life by his breath ; so the Almighty Father recalled
to life his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, on the
third day.-*'

Another animal which we constantly find lurking in the sculp-
tured foliage of cathedrals is the lizard. Regarding this the
Physiologus informs us that in its old age it becomes blind,
creeps into some crevice looking eastward, and, beholding the
rising sun, is restored to sight: on this the mediaeval naturalist
advises us : " In like manner, O man, thou who hast on the old
garment, and the eyes of whose heart are obscured, seek the wall

* See Evans, p. 62.

190 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of help, and watch there until the sun of righteousness rises with
healing power and removes thy spiritual blindness."*

Mixed in with real animals come those whose existence is more
doubtful. Great stress was laid upon the unicorn, and John of
Herse, in his pilgrimage to Jerusalem toward the end of the four-
teenth century, declares regarding the river Mara, whose bitter
waters Moses made sweet, that "even now, evil and unclean
beasts poison it after the going down of the sun; but in the
morning, after the powers of darkness have disappeared, the uni-
corn comes from the sea and dips his horn into the stream, and
thereby expels and neutralizes the poison, so that the other ani-
mals can drink of it during the day. This fact, which I describe,
I have seen with my own eyes."

Naturally, among the animals which first attracted the atten-
tion of those who thus expounded the ways of God to man was
the elephant. First, as to its birth, we are told that it takes place
in the water, and that this fact symbolizes baptismal regenera-
tion. Then, too, we are told that the elephant "always sleeps
standing, and leans for support against a tree. The hunters take
advantage of this fact and saw the tree almost asunder, so that
the tree gives way, the elephant falls, and is captured. This evi-
dently symbolizes Adam, whose fall was caused by a tree."

The serpent, of course, comes in for a large share of this kind
of interpretation, and therefore appears most frequently among
the carvings in wood and stone, both within and without the
cathedrals.

As to the lessons thus taught, one of the first is that " when
the serpent has grown old it fasts forty days and forty nights
until its skin shrivels and loosens. Thereupon it squeezes itself
through a narrow crevice in the rocks, and thus casts its skin and
renews its youth. And thou, O son of man, if thou desirest to
put off the old Adam and be regenerated, must pass through the
strait gate and walk in the narrow way which leadeth unto life."

And again: "When the serpent goes to a spring to drink
water, it leaves its venom behind in its den ; so he who would re-
fresh his soul with the waters of eternal life must leave behind
him every sin of his carnal heart." f

Of course, in any such pious treatises the eagle naturally came
in for a considerable share of attention, and we are informed that
" the eagle, when it has grown old and its eyes become dim, flies
upward toward the sun until it has purged away the film from
its eyes; it then descends to the earth, plunges three times into a
spring of jjure water, and thus recovers its sight and renews its
youth " ; so the Christian should " fly aloft on the wings of the

* See work cited, p. 94. f See work cited, p. 114.

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 191

spirit to the sun of righteousness, . . . and then dip himself thrice
in the well-spring of salvation."

Again, one version of the Pliysiologus tells us that the upper
beak of old eagles grows so long that it would prevent them from
eating and cause them to die of hunger did they not break off the
superfluous part of the beak against a stone ; and on this alleged
fact is based the statement that " the rock of salvation is the only-
cure for the growth of carnal-mindedness, and the sole means of
preventing spiritual starvation."

Of marine animals the early Christian philosophers knew
little, but naturally they had heard of the whale, and found im-
portant meanings in him. One of the lessons taught by the whale
is given as follows : " When he is hungry, he opens his wide
mouth seaward and a pleasant odor issues from his maw, so that
other fishes are deceived and swim eagerly toward the place
whence this sweet odor comes. In heedless shoals they enter into'
his extended jaws ; then suddenly the grim gums close and crush
their prey. Thus the devil allures men to their destruction and
closes upon them the barred gates of hell."

The mediseval imagination played curiously about the pelican.
A type of the atonement was found in the supposed fact that the
pelican tears open its breast and feeds its young with its own
blood. New value was given to the pelican by that great thinker,
St. Augustine. Writing upon the passage in the one hundred
^nd second Psalm — " I am become like a pelican in the wilder-
ness " — he says : " The males of these birds are wont to kill their
young by blows of their beaks and then to bewail their death for
the space of three days. At length, however, the female inflicts
a severe wound on herself, and, letting her blood flow over the
dead ones, brings them to life again."

Naturally, this statement, coming from a man so widely ven-
erated, proved a great source of inspiration to the pious writers
and sculptors of the middle ages.

The otter and the crocodile also attracted the attention of these
pious writers, and they developed in good faith the following
statement : " When the crocodile sleeps, it keeps its mouth open ;
but the otter wallows in the mire until it becomes thickly coated
with mud, which dries and hardens and forms a sort of armor,
thus enabling it to run securely into the jaws and down the throat
of the sleeping crocodile, and to kill it by devouring its bowels.
So our Saviour, after having put on flesh, descended into hell and
carried away the souls dwelling therein ; and, as the otter comes
away unharmed irom the belly of the crocodile, so our Lord rose
from the grave on the third day, alive and uninjured." *

* See work cited, pp. 131, 132.

192 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Interesting also is the pious use made of the panther. Of
this beast it is said : " It is the nature of the panther to live in
friendship with all animals except the dragon. . . . When it has
eaten a little it is satisfied and goes to sleep in its lair, and after
three days it awakes and roars with a loud voice, and out of its
mouth proceeds a sweet smell ; then all the beasts of the forest
far and near follow after it," but " this rare scent is offensive only
to the dragon, which hastens to flee as soon as it gets a sniff of
it. In like manner our Lord Jesus Christ arose out of the sleep
of death and drew all nations unto him through his ' sweet
savor.' But this same savor discomfits the dragon, that old
serpent which is the devil." The very curious statement regard-
ing the beaver is perhaps best read in the original, where it is
illustrated by a striking engraving. It serves to show that some
cathedral sculptures usually considered obscene were not so in-
tended.

Of course, the domestic fowls could not escape the notice of
these keen interpreters of theology and science. We may take as
typical the following : " When the cock finds anything, it does not
eat it, but calls the hens together and divides it among them. In
like manner the preacher should distribute among his flock the
kernels of divine truth which he discovers in Holy Writ, picking
them to pieces in order that they may be more readily taken in
and digested." *

Very curious are sundry long and intricate developments of
theory regarding various animals. One of these was evolved out
of the beautiful text, "As the hart panteth after the water-
brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." The Physiologus
tells us that " the hart is the foe of the dragon, which, when it
sees its enemy, runs away and creeps into a cleft of the rocks.
Then the hart goes to the stream, fills himself with water, and
vomits it into the cleft where the dragon is. Having thus
drowned the dragon, the hart tramples it under its feet ; as the
prophet Isaiah predicts that at the coming of Christ a man shall
' go into the clefts of the rocks and into the tops of the ragged
rocks, for fear of the Lord.' Thus our Saviour slew with the
water and blood flowing from his side the great dragon, . . . and
taught us to contend against the hidden designs of the devil."

A comical guasi- scientific profundity is at times mixed up
with these statements. Thus some commentators upon Scripture
declare that " the hart, in killing the dragon, inhales its poison-
ous breath, which produces intense thirst and consequent longing
for the water-brooks."

So, too, regarding the antelope, we are told that " the antelope

* See the curious mediseval poem given at page 162.

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 193

is a wild animal witli two powerful horns, witli whicli it saws
trees asunder and fells them. . . . The two horns are the books
of the Old and New Testaments, with which the believer can
resist the adversary and push him to the ground, and can cut
down all growing sins and vices." Mingled with this statement
are a number of subordinate lessons.

Very curious among these developments of the pious mediae-
val imagination are the barnacle geese, as described in the Bes-
tiaries. It is declared that " they grow on trees by the seaside,
and hang from the boughs by their beaks until they are covered
with feathers and fall like ripe fruit. If they reach the water,
they swim and live ; but if they remain on the dry ground, they
perish," Naturally, this illustration was used with great force to
prove the efficacy of baptism in saving the soul, and Gerard of
Wales made a curious use of it to prove the doctrine of the Im-
maculate Conception.

Very justly and aptly does Prof. Evans call attention to the
fact that some of the dogmas which have long obscured and even
supplanted Christianity, and which are still insisted upon as sub-
stitutes for the Christianity taught by Christ himself, were devised
and handed down to us by the very thinkers who developed these
legends and made this pious use of them.

But another very interesting field is opened by the use of
mediaeval sculpture for satirical purposes. The growth of it in
this direction begins to be especially evident in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, and it culminated about the time of the
Reformation. Monkeys appear as choristers, swine as monks,
asses as priests, sirens as nuns, wolves as the father confessors of
lambs. In one painted window a fox is represented preaching to
a flock of geese from the text, " God is my witness how I long
for you in my bowels." In Ely Cathedral a fox is represented
arrayed as a bishop. Here comes in what has so astounded many
travelers — the apparent obscenity of some of these representa-
tions. Gentlemen who have visited some of the greater cathe-
drals are hardly likely to forget the leer with which the sacristan
sometimes raises the wooden seats of the choir, or points to a bit
of carving in a corbel, which seems the result of the grossest
license. It was really the outgrowth of the same bitter feeling
against the growing corruptions in the Church, which led such
pious preachers as Geyler of Kaisersberg to speak in the plainest
terms against the same evils.

Various writers in these days have found fault with Luther
for the grossness of some of his utterances, but as we note these
earlier representations in art and Christian literature we see that
his diatribes were but a natural evolution out of an earlier Cath-
olic phase of thought.

194 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Among the animals whicli took a leading part in mediseval
sculpture at this period was the fox, and a text of the Physiolo-
gus was widely translated into sculpture. This text ran as fol-
lows : " When the fox is hungry, it lies down in a furrow of the
field and covers itself partly with earth, as though it had been long
dead. Then the ravens and other rapacious birds come to devour
it, when it suddenly leaps up and tears them to pieces. Thus the
devil deceives those who love the corrupt things of this world
and obey the lusts of the flesh, and entices them to their own
destruction." Representations of this scene and others in which
the fox plays a leading part are very common in the later mediae-
val sculpture. In Worcester Cathedral is a carving showing
foxes running in and out of holes, while John the Evangelist
stands near with his gospel in his hand and an eagle at his feet.
Here the foxes are types of the devil, and John the Evangelist the
herald of divine truth. In Canterbury Cathedral are sculptures
representing a fox dressed like a monk and preaching to an as-
sembly of geese.

Very severe at this later period were some of the caricatures
by devout Catholic sculptors upon the begging friars. In the
church of St. Victor at Xanten are carvings in which is repre-
sented a monster with the feet of a pig, the tail of a fox, and the
head of a monk.*

The ass was also used for a similar purpose. Thus, on a col-
umn of St. Peter's Church at Aulnay an ass is represented as
standing on his hind legs and clothed in ecclesiastical costume.
Even in so devout a country as Spain, and in such a theological
center as the Cathedral of Toledo, we find striking examples of
this same satirical spirit ; and at the Cathedral of Burgos are
sculptured satires no less striking, against vice and folly.

More and more frequently throughout Europe we have in
sculpture these figures of foxes preaching to fowls, with other
foxes lying in wait behind the pulpit to catch the congregation ;
of asses wearing rosaries, of donkeys playing upon the lyre, of
pigs playing upon the bagpi]3es, of foxes confessing birds, and of
wolves confessing sheep ; and these appear not only in sculpture,
but in other forms of art. In the collections at Cornell Univer-
sity are some very curious specimens. A very rare missal, ob-
tained by the writer of this article in Germany some years since,
is full of illustrations of this kind.

Very interesting is the final chapter of Prof. Evans's work,
entitled Whimseys of Ecclesiology and Symbology, and among
these the reader will doubtless most rejoice in the extracts from
a paper on Vestiges of the Blessed Trinity in the Material Crea-

* See work cited, p. 224.

ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE.

195

tion, published in the Dublin Review for January, 1893, by the
Rev. John S. Vaughan, who finds traces of this doctrine " * writ-
ten large across the whole face of Nature/ and everywhere sug-
gested by ' such familiar things as rocks, mountains, seas, and
lakes/ "

This reminds us of Mr. Gladstone's famous discovery that the
trident of Neptune, in some occult manner, symbolized the Chris-
tain Trinity ; the trident being, after all, nothing but the most
natural form of fish spear, devised in consequence of the fact that,
owing to the refracting power of water, a single spear head is not
likely to be so useful in catching fish as one with three prongs.

Into the concluding chapter of the work is brought a bird
which greatly exercised the mediseval imagination — the peacock.
A text is cited from the Physiologus to the effect that "when the
peacock wakes suddenly in the night, it cries out as if in distress,
because it dreams that it has lost its beauty, thus typifying the
soul, which in the night of this sinful world is constantly fearing
to lose the good gifts and graces with which God has endowed
it.'' Perhaps one of the most curious typical examples of ultra-
theological reasoning is seen in the pious argument of the Bes-
tiaries that " the tail of the peacock denotes foresight, since the
tail, being behind, is that which is to come ; and foresight is the
faculty of taking heed to that which is to come."

Much light is thrown into mediseval ideas, also, by other
sculptures, especially those representing Satan. This, indeed,
opens a great chapter, and a chapter which was by no means con-
cluded at the Reformation. Undoubtedly a considerable part of
Luther's theology regarding the devil was drawn from this
source. The writer of this article, some years since, staying for
a time at Wittenberg, and being frequently in the great church
where Luther so often preached, noted directly opposite the pul-
pit a sculptured imp emerging from a mass of carving. Nothing
could be more natural than that the great Reformer, wearied
with other themes, should by this and similar sculptures in other
churches be constantly drawn off from his main subject to his
well-known denunciations of Satan and satanic influences.

It should be remembered that in the ages before printing the
cathedral sculptures took, for the people at large, the place of the
printed book. Robert de Luzarches and Erwin von Steinbach,
who built, preceded Faust and Schoeffer, who printed. Victor
Hugo recognized this when he pictured his Quasimodo, the
Hunchback of Notre Dame, as absorbed in the study of the series
of sculptures about the choir of that cathedral. The special
value of Prof. Evans's book lies in the fact that, like Prof.
Crane's book on the Exempla of Archbishop Jacques de Vitry,
it enables the American reader to get really into the thoughts of

196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

his ancestors who worshiped in the cathedrals. For the general
thinker, also, such works are of real use, as revealing more and
more clearly that all progress in thought is the result of an
evolution which is by no means to cease in our time.

Prof. Evans's work is thus valuable, not only to the student of
art and literature, but to every one who wishes to penetrate the
meanings of history in general. The writer of this article, hav-
ing visited and studied nearly every cathedral and church of any
importance from Throndhjem to Palermo, and from Dublin to
Moscow, can vouch for the exactness of the statements made in
this little book ; and it should be added that the learned professor
has attached to it a bibliography which, to any one who wishes
to carry this fascinating subject still further, will prove most
helpful.

♦»»

TWO .SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES.

By J. MAEK BALDWIN,

PEOFESSOK OF PSYCHOLOGY, PErNCETON UNIVERSITY.

THE pursuit of science does not stop in summer, and those
who go abroad for rest or recreation find that science pursues
them. It is a very profitable form of science which is thus prose-
cuted in summer, however, and that in two respects : for, in learn-
ing science in a summer congress, one gets the things which the
best men oftentimes save up for just this or that occasion, and
then again one gets the men thrown in. This latter fact is really
the redeeming feature of a scientific congress. It is appreciated,
too ; and the social side of the congress idea has had such devel-
opment that it is a question whether the fatigue incident to the
attendance upon the social functions does not sometimes enervate
the scientist when he should be mentally most brave and sharp.

The International Congress of Experimental Psychology, of
which I shall first speak, certainly touched the summit of social
privilege, as a citizen in any monarchy would certainly agree,
since certain of the members were given a dinner in Munich — the
seat of the congress — by the reigning house in the person of
Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria, himself a man with a
medical degree and the author of sundry medical monographs.
This, together with the official reception by the city of Munich
and the many other private and collective entertainments, will
make this meeting memorable to those who had the good fortune
to attend it. It was a chance, too, to meet almost every great —
or less great — worker in the various departments of psychology in
Germany.

The organization of an international congress for psychology

TWO SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES. 197

dates back to 1888, wlieii the first assembled in Paris iinder the
presidency of Prof. Th. Ribot, of the College de France. It was
devoted very largely — and that intentionally — to two topics
which were then uppermost in the French psychologists' minds :
hypnotism and telepathy. Very few Germans were there. Of
English-speaking delegates. Prof. Sidgwick, of Cambridge, and
Prof. James, of Harvard, who were the two best men at that time —
as they are yet — interested in both these subjects, were prominent.
The second meeting was in London, in 1892, under the presidency
of Prof. Sidgwick — a large and profitable meeting ; and it is sig-
nificant of the change that had come over the person^iel of the
congress, as well as of the growth of ideas in the interval between
the two meetings, that at this second session the name of the or-
ganization was changed from" Congress of Physiological Psychol-
ogy" to "Congress of Experimental Psychology.'' For at the
London meeting the range of topics was greatly broadened ; both
hypnotism and telepathy took a much less prominent place ; and
all the varied branches of psychological work came in for treat-
ment, especially the purely academic experimental psychology of
the laboratory.

The third session of this congress, held August 6th to 9th in
Munich, showed the same development, and so became the great
unrestricted body that it should be. All departments of psycho-
logical investigation were adequately represented in the five sec-
tions into which it was found necessary to divide the more technical
papers ; while the general sessions, devoted to topics of more uni-
versal interest, were full and most instructive. Indeed, the presi-
dent found it necessary to repeat what the former presiding officer
had said in London, that the word " experimental " in the title of
the body did not describe laboratory work alone, but all investi-
gations into mental things which were conducted by competent
men in accordance with inductive scientific methods. This range
is shown by the titles of the five sections referred to : " Neurology,
the Senses, Psychophysics " ; " Normal " ; " Abnormal " ; " Dreams,
Hypnotism " ; " Comparative and Educational." Consequently,
at the Munich Congress the word " experimental " was dropped
from the official designation of the body.

The work of the general sessions was interesting to a wider
circle than that of the professed psychologists, in several respects.
The president. Prof. Stumpf, of Berlin, discussed the relation of
mind and body in a way which may be profitably read by those
moderately versed in philosophy. His address has since appeared
in full in the Revue Scientifique of Paris, and will also appear in
full in the Proceedings of the congress. Prof. Richet, of Paris,
discussed " Pain " in a way which did not throw much light on the
subject, and his paper has also come out in the Revue Scientifique.

198 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Ebbinghaus presented an interesting new method of testing
the mental capacities of school children, which I have already
outlined in the Nation for September 10th.

President Hall, of Clark University, was to speak in one of the
general meetings, but did not attend. Prof. Preyer, who is known
for his excellent books on the child's mind, presented a general .
treatment of " The Psychology of the Child."

In the sections much exact work was done. It would be im-
possible, in the space I have, even to cite the different papers ; so I
shall have to leave the reader to consult them in the Proceedings.
There were, besides the regular programme, several things of the
nature of ''side shows" which deserve comment. In the first
place, there was an exhibition of apparatus, containing many in-
teresting and some new things, under the charge of Dr. Marbe.
Then the members of the congress were treated to a demonstration
of the Rontgen ray effect which has possibly not yet been sur-
passed anywhere. Led into a dark room, the observer was sta-
tioned .before a prepared screen about two feet square or more,
and behind the screen a boy was gradually passed at the same
time that the Rontgen rays made the screen fluorescent. The
shadow outlines of the internal organs of the boy were clear —
lungs, heart, etc. — and the movements of these organs in regular
rhythm were plainly seen. This exhibition excited great enthu-
siasm among the members of the congress. Another rather sen-
sational " side show " was the exhibition made of an Indian yogi,
who went off into his sleep in a private room for the edification
of some of the psychologists.

The next psychological congress is to meet in Paris in 1900, in
connection with the French Universal Exposition. Prof. Ribot,
who is considered the ofiicial representative of psychology in
France, is again made president, and M. Ch. Richet vice-presi-
dent. M. Pierre Janet will be secretary. The international com-
mittee for the next meeting has four American representatives —
Profs. James, Hall, Titchener, and the present writer. There
seems to be a general feeling that America should have the con-
gress soon ; indeed, the going to Paris for a second session is a
matter of special consideration in view of the coming exposition.

The other congress of which I have promised to write briefly
is that of " Criminal Anthropology " : the fourth, which met in
Geneva in the last week of August. This congress has had about
the same lease of life as that for psychology, the earlier sessions
having been held in Paris, Rome, and Brussels. It aims to be
official, and invitations to take part are sent to the different
Governments. This year quite a remarkable array of govern-
mental appointees were in attendance. It seems that this policy
is somewhat doubtful, from the point of view of science, since

TWO SCIENTIFIC CONGRESSES. 199

the Governments are sometimes disposed to take what represen-
tatives they can get in order to save expense ; and, besides, their
appointees are likely to be men whose interest is rather in the
practical and administrative side of criminology than in the
purely scientific side. I am far from meaning by this to make
any disparaging reference to the Government representatives in
the congress of this summer, but only to say that the general
policy is likely to give the development of the work of the
organization a set in a practical rather than a scientific direc-
tion. This, indeed, already shows itself in the work of the con-
gress. Of course, a congress on administrative criminology —
there has been a congress on " Prison Reform " — would be a
good thing ; but what criminology as a science needs the rather
is the earnest discussion of the fundamental concepts on which
it rests ; especially seeing that the origin of the movement which
issued in the organization of the present congress — and which
gave rise to the phrase "criminal anthropology" — was an ex-
tremely one-sided and in many respects extravagant and unsci-
entific one.

This year's congress did not make much progress in settling
fundamental questions — such as the real definition of criminality
from a psychological point of view, or the classification of crimi-
nal classes, or the nature of moral insanity, all of which are neces-
sary preliminaries to the more practical problems of treatment,
etc. — but spent its time in sharp, sometimes violent, discussions
between the school of criminal anthropologists in Italy, led by
Lombroso and Ferri, and the party of doubters who have as yet
little to offer in its place. Among the more serious and impor-
tant papers I may mention : V. Hamel, L'Anarcliisme ; Dalle-
magne, Degenerescence et criminalite ; Tarde, La Criminalite
jprofessionnelle ; Ballet, Les Persecutes processifs ; ISTaecke, La
Psycliiatrie crimmelle ; Legrain, Consequences sociales de I'al-
coolisme des ascendants ; and Mr. Francis Galton's report on his
" finger-print " method of identification.

The next session of this congress is to be held in the Hague, on
invitation of the Dutch Government, in 1901.

It is in line with the criticism made above — to the effect that
this congress is not sufficiently severe in its devotion to the pure
science of the criminal — to suggest that the psychologists of the
other congress should give more attention to what is called crimi-
nal psycJwlogy. The psychology of abnormal types of mind has
been greatly advanced in recent years, especially in France ; and
this advance has extended to a great many phases of mental de-
fect. But the particular line of defect which criminology has
in view has not been much treated by professed psychologists,
although the first determination of criminology — as to whether

200 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

crime is in its nature really a mental defect at all — is of course a
psychological one. I do not wish to disparage the anthropological
investigations of the Italian school as far as they have been made
with due severity of method — as some of them have not — but,
allowing that much has been done and that much more will be
done by the investigation of the physical side, it still remains
true that the closer approach to the real criminal must be from
the psychological side. Suppose, for example, we should admit
the results of Lombroso, Ferri, and the rest, and say that there
are certain physical " stigmates," or signs, which are found more
often singly or together in law-breakers than in any law-abiding
group of people, still two very important questions would have
to be asked and answered before we should have the first start
toward a real science of the criminal as such. First, What pro-
portion of people who are potential criminals do not become law-
hrealcers ? — and, second, Wliat proportion of the laiv-hreakers are
not crimiiials ? The first question asks us to decide what type of
mind is a potential criminal, or what degree of abnormity, social
obliquity, etc., a man must have to be a criminal. This calls for
a psychological definition of criminality. The second question
takes us in exactly the same direction ; for to ask how many law-
breakers are not criminals is to admit that there are degrees of
abnormal defect which the law takes cognizance of simply be-
cause more appropriate agencies do not. There are men and
women in the jails who ought to be in reformatories, and others
in the reformatories who ought to be in the asylums. This, then,
calls upon us for a psychological determination of the lower limit
of criminality — the limit below which we are dealing with the
insane and the irresponsible — as the former question calls for the
upper limit, that which sets bounds to the class of criminals who
are never caught by the law at all. Both of these are accordingly
psychological questions ; and the main value of the results of the
so-called criminal anthropology, as so far worked up, is to set
these problems clearly in the light, especially the latter one. To
establish moral atavism for one class of men, and degeneracy for
another class, and criminal heredity in this fashion or that, is to
throw these classes out of the really criminal class altogether, as
far as any psychological definition which is now in sight would
seem to indicate.

It is mentioned as a characteristic of Japanese artists that they will not
repeat identical elements. They, in fact, understand the difference between
the meanings of the terms "likewise" and "also," and they will have none
of the latter. Accordingly, of fifty stencils of theirs recently published in
an art work, there is not one which in all respects reproduces another,
although there are many which resemble one another.

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA ''DIGGERSr 201

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA "DIGGERS."

By MABEL L. MILLER.

TWO years ago I began to collect notes bearing on the settle-
ments, manners, and customs of Indian tribes once inhabit-
ing the country along the banks of the Sacramento and Feather
Rivers, from the American River, north to Chico Creek and east-
ward into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These tribes have been
considered the lowest type of California Indians ; but by force of
changed environment the few remaining are giving up their wild
ways and adopting civilization, even Christianity. They have
always been misunderstood and often misjudged: the very name
" Digger," by which these Indians are known, is a misnomer and
a term of reproach, which they have always resented. It is of
uncertain origin. Old settlers say that they did not hear the
name until some time after the year 1841, when it was first used
by an abandoned type of white men in allusion to the Indian
custom of digging camass root for food. Immigrants became
familiar with the name, and the appellation soon spread. With-
out doubt the name originated in the Rocky Mountains ; there
might have been a band or village of the Shoshones, or of some
kindred tribe, that bore a name so closely resembling the word
" digger " as to be easily corrupted into it.

White people scarcely ever pronounce Indian names correctly.
The miners and immigrants of early days spoke of the Nem-Sa-
Win Indians as the Nimshews; the Sulam-Sa-Wins as the Sulam-
shews ; and the Kem-Sa-Wins as the Kimshews. There are min-
ing camps designated after each of these clans or villages, but
named in the miner's dialect. The inappropriate name of " Dig-
ger," therefore, is not a tribal name. No tribal name has ever
been found, although the Ethnological Bureau at Washington
has sent men here to study the language and character of these
Indians ; these men gave them the name of Midu, which they
understood to mean man, but this is not a tribal name.

There is no tribal name, because there is no tribe. One of the
first things that strikes the observer is the fact of the entire sepa-
ration of these Indians into local units or villages, each bearing
its own name and having its own chief. On this point we have
the evidence of General John Bid well, of Chico, who came to
California in the year 1841 ; he has figured largely in the history
of the northern part of the State, and has had large experience
among these Indians. I have also met other old settlers, com-
panions of such men as Kit Carson, Joe Walker, Pegleg Smith,
and Isaac Graham, all men with whom Indian life and experi-
ence and the names of Indian tribes were subjects of constant

VOL L. — 17

202 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mention and use. They do not believe that these Indians had
tribal names, tribal chiefs, or organizations.

These Indians, then, were greatly scattered in villages. Many
of these villages spoke the same language, and in this case the
group might be said to form a tribe. For instance, one dialect
was spoken by the Indians on the east side of the Sacramento Val-
ley, from the American River on the south to Chico Creek on the
north, and eastward to the summit of, or perhaps in some places
beyond the summit of, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, thus cover-
ing a territory of about ninety by fifty miles. From 1840 to 1850
there were from eighty to one hundred villages on that side of
the Sacramento Valley, and an Indian population of seven or
eight thousand. Yet, though the area and population were
large, they had no tribal name, as far as any of the old settlers
could ever learn, nor have I been able to trace one in my own
researches with Indians belonging to that tribe ; I therefore con-
clude that there was an entire absence of any tribal feature other
than language, and that we have here an unconscious, unborn
tribe, possibly on the verge of conscious tribal union.

As for the villages, many of them bore the name of the creek
on or near which they were situated : for example, Nem-Sa-Win
(Nem meaning " good," and Sawin " stream "* ) was the Indian
name for Butte Creek, Sulam-Sa-Win for Chico Creek, and Tem-
Sa-Win and Kem-Sa-Win for other creeks. An Indian village
was situated on each of these streams, and bore the name of the
stream.

The majority of the old Indian villages were inhabited be-
tween the years 1840 and 1860, and probably a few as late as
1865 or 1870. Most of these villages, it will be seen, had a pop-
ulation of from one to four hundred, excepting Coins, which,
according to General Bidwell, had, as late as the year 1845, a
population of a thousand or twelve hundred, and which would
seem to have been a sort of capital city for the Sacramento Valley
Indians. Upon the site of this old rancheria is located the pres-
ent town of Colusa, which took its name from the Colus village.
Many instances of this change of population are to be found
throughout the State of California. Thus in the particular region
above referred to are to be found the towns of Yuba City, Butte
City, and Princeton, all built upon the sites of former rancherias.
The city of Marysville, situated not far from the above-named
towns, is located between two very old Indian villages, and the
town limits even now are impinging upon one of them.

The Indians of this region were dependent upon the streams
for existence, their villages being found only upon the banks of
the Sacramento River and its tributaries. There were good fish-
ing and hunting along these streams while the fertile soil of the

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA '^ BIGGER Sy

203

valley yielded a heavy growth of wild grains, and the oaks here
as elsewhere in California gave their contribution of acorns. It
is of historical interest to note that the younger of the rancherias
are those farthest from the main rivers, for the reason that, as the
white population came in, the Indians retreated to the foothills.
These Indians decreased and disappeared rapidly after the white
people began to crowd them out of their possessions.

A period of fifty years has seen these villages completely de-
populated and almost every trace of them destroyed. Towns and
grain fields cover the spots where they once stood.

We can not imagine or realize what the taking away of their
free life meant to the Indians. It was the one act of ours which
they could understand, and it is
no wonder that a feeling of sus-
picion and hostility arose among
them which has only been over-
come within the last few years.
Because of this suspicion it must
have been impossible a few years
ago to obtain correct informa-
tion bearing on their old life ;
but the feeling, if not forgotten,
is at least fast fading from their
minds, and many Indians can be
found who will talk freely and
sensibly of the days before the
white man came among them.
These tribes were but little in-
clined to war. At the time of
the outbreak with the Modoc
Indians, they exposed their fear
by crowding about the white
people, saying, " That kind bad
Indian/' " Me no that kind," etc.

Although they did commit many desperate and awful deeds, these
were done secretly, never openly and daringly ; they were the
easiest tribe in the State to bring into submission.

The average " Digger " was of medium height and weight; a
few were short and heavy set, but none were tall and thin. They
had low foreheads, flat noses, large ears and mouths, and high
cheek bones. Many of them had almost black complexions, while
others seemed to be sallow or copper- colored. A few had very
thin mustaches, or a few hairs here and there on the chin which
might have been called a beard ; the majority, however, were
smooth faced. Both the men and the iiiahakis, as the women
were called, had very heavy hair ; old age did not thin it or turn

Full-blooded Yotng Indian kkom Feather
KivEB, ABOiT Twenty-seven Years Old.

204

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it gray to any extent. A bald-headed Indian would have been
looked upon as a phenomenon.

I saw two Indians last summer whose ages were given by their
people as one hundred and twenty and one hundred and thirty
years. Old settlers who have known of them for fifty years do
not think the figures are much exaggerated. The wrinkles in
their faces were so deep that the skin fell in folds, and their bodies
seemed to have shrunken to one half their former size. They
were deaf, dumb, blind, bent, and helpless, yet their hair was

barely streaked with gray, and
j so thick that a comb of ordi-
nary size could not be passed
through it.

The manners and customs of
these Indians differed but little
from village to village. During
the summer months they needed
only a shade to protect them
from the hot sun. The wild, free
life in which they reveled at this
time of the year needed only
food, but as winter drew near
they had to build something
which would protect them from
the severe storms. An excava-
tion several feet deep, and vary-
ing in diameter, was made first.
Around the edge of this, willow
poles or small trees were placed
upright in the ground and drawn
together at the top until a cone-
shaped structure was formed.
Bushes and strips of bark were
then woven closely about this;
lastly, dirt was thrown on and
packed solid to the depth of six
or eight inches. Only two open-
ings were left — a round one at
the top for the escape of smoke,
and a square one close to the
ground on the side most shel-
tered from the wind, which was used for a door ; this opening was
made just large enough for the occupants to crawl through. Furs
and strips of matting woven from tule grass were used to sleep
on. A fire was kept burning day and night in the middle of the
"campoodie" [Kahm-Poo-Dij), the Indian name for these houses.

A "Digger" Maiiala from Feather
River, Full-bloodei), and of Finer
Physique than the Average.

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA ^^DIGGERSr

205

They were usually occupied by a large family, and must have
been warm, but close and smoky. In the Sierra Nevada Moun-
tains a heavy fall of snow would change them into white pyra-
mids. A village of two or three dozen campoodies with blue
smoke curling from their tops, and a bright morning sun reflected

Mat of Tule and Cedar-root Bark, formerly used for Beds, Doors, etc.

in thousands of sparkling crystals in the snow about them, made a
scene which I have heard many old settlers speak of as beautiful.

Through the summer the Indians prepared their winters store,
which consisted mainly of dried acorns, used in place of flour or
meal ; berries, grasshoppers, grass seeds, fish, nuts, meats, and roots
of various kinds. The camass {Camassa escuJenta) was the prin-
cipal root ; it grew in abundance all over California, and is still
plentiful in many valleys in the northern part of the State. It is
about the size of the little finger, shaped like a sweet potato, and
with much of the same flavor. A long, hard winter would cause
these Indians to sufi:"er more or less from privation. While in
conversation with an old Indian he said : " Long time ago, 'fore
white man come, big winter come, Indian no have enough to eat,
lots of Indians die ; my mahala, my little boy die."

Mortars, baskets, and flat rocks were their principal utensils
for cooking. The mortars were made from rocks of various sizes,
generally somewhat rounded but never uniform. The deep round
hole in the center was ground with sharp, rough rocks. It was a
slow process and required patience, for it took many days of work
to complete one large mortar. These mortars were not only used
for cooking but also for grinding food, when a round stone pestle
would be required. No household was complete without the large,
flat rock, which was generally stationary, and contained a half
dozen or more round holes, varying in depth and diameter, used
exclusively for grinding, and often surrounded by busy groups of
mahalas.

206

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Their greatest manufacture was that of baskets ; they made
hundreds of them yearly, of all shapes and sizes. The larger ones
were woven from long, slender willows, the smaller from delicate
strips of the willow bark. Some were decorated with beads and
feathers, in others indescribable designs were worked with colored

"Digger" Implements, from the Collection of 1)k. .Iewett, of Martsville.

barks. The baskets that were made for cooking purposes were
water-tight. Meats, soup, and so forth, were boiled in them by
dropping in hot stones, replaced by others as fast as they cooled.
Mortars were also used in this way, as the direct heat of fire was
apt to break them. For frying meat, hot flat rocks were used.
Large cone-shaped baskets were made to transfer household
effects, gather food, and in general to carry. They were bound
on the back, fastened by a belt about the waist and by a band
from the top of the basket around the forehead.

The maliala was invariably the burden-bearer : these great
baskets, loaded with all they could hold, were never strapped to
the back of the man ; he carried only his bow and arrow. Their
method of starting a fire was most skillful. Two round pieces of
hard wood were used, one tapered to a point at one end. These
were rubbed together between the hands until the friction pro-
duced a spark, which, thrown into a heap of fine, dry bark, pro-
duced fire almost instantly. I wondered how it could be done

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA ''DIGGERS:'

207

without burning the hands, so I hired an old Indian to satisfy my
curiosity. He started a fire for me, and it was done so quickly,
easily, and ingeniously that I was still left wondering.

During the warm months these Indians wore little or no
clothing; the men sometimes tied a small girdle around their
hips which was woven from grasses ; of teuer they went entirely
naked. The women were never seen entirely nude. They wore a
short skirt or apron, also woven from grasses, which, separated
on both sides, reached to their knees in front and behind. Chil-
dren of both sexes went naked, but when a girl reached the age
of maturity she put on her grass skirt. Their winter clothing
was made from skins.

Earrings of bone and wood, beads of berries, shell ornaments,
and feathers arranged in many fashions for the head were their
adornments. The bows and arrows used by this tribe differed
very little from those carried by other Indians. The arrowheads
were made mostly from flint, bone, and obsidian, though some
schist was used. There are large ledges of flint and obsidian in
the northern part of the State, and this material was widely dis-
tributed among the different tribes by trade.

Not every Indian could make an arrowhead, for it required a
skillful workman. The process of manufacture was as follows :

" Digger" Implements, from the Collection of Dr. Jewett, of Marysville.

The material for the arrowhead was heated to a certain tempera-
ture, when it was chipped as desired with a spikelike stone im-
plement, which was dipped in cold water, placed quickly upon the
hot flint, and the necessary stroke given. The drop of water
coming in contact with the hot flint and the simultaneous stroke
cut the chip ofi^ about as desired. A rough stone was used to
grind the points and edges into shape. Another weapon was the
spear, which was made of hard wood, often five feet in length,

2o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and tipped, like the arrows, with flint or obsidian. These heads
were from three to nine inches long and from one to four inches
in width. The points of these spears, as also the arrowheads,
were sometimes poisoned by dipping them into liquid made from
a poisonous plant or by the drippings from a putrid deer's liver.
The Indian was a sure shot at close range with his bow and ar-
row. He had many ingenious ways of decoying his game. Some-
times a hunter would disguise himself with the skin and horns of
a deer, and in a stooping position crouch about the alkali spots
where the deer were in the habit of coming to " lick " until he
was close enough to the animal to be sure of his shot, when a
flint-tipped arrow just behind the left shoulder was as sure as any
bullet. A deer, unless frightened, never jumps anything of any
height ; it will walk around a very small log. The Indians dis-
covered this trait, and used it to their advantage. They would
stretch a buckskin line across a trail that deer were frequenting,
and station themselves in ambush at each end. The deer would
walk up to the line, pause to snifi^ at it a moment, then follow it
to the end, and generally to his death.

The white man did not teach the Indian to gamble ; it was
born in him. Men, women, and children were slaves to its fas-
cination. They had all kinds of queer games, in which furs,
beads, and any property, in fact, that they might possess could
be exchanged in a manner that would do credit to white peo-
ple. The men often wagered their malialas against a few furs
or bows and arrows, and in such cases loss or gain would not
seriously affect the commercial standing of the parties in-
volved.

In regard to matters of morality, the general statement may
be made that these Indians did not have any set punishments for
what they regarded as crimes ; the criminal was, however, ostra-
cized by them. Polygamy was practiced to a large extent among
them ; one man often had two or three wives, and a chief some-
times more. Virtue was not held precious by the women, but the
men had regard for it in so far as their own families were con-
cerned. When an Indian had more than one wife he hired each
to watch the other. They had no marriage ceremony ; when an
Indian made up his mind that he wanted a 7nahaJa for his wife,
he went to her home and asked the father for her ; if there was
no objection he was asked to eat with them, after which he had
the right to take his bride away whenever he wanted to. If the
girl opposed her suitor she was given one chance of escape — she
ran a race with him. She was allowed a certain number of feet
the start when the signal was given to run. If she won she was
free, but if he caught her she had to go with him without a
murmur.

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA '^DIGGERSr

209

The following story on tliis point was told to me by a civilized
Indian woman :

Her grandmother was a great belle and had many suitors.
There was one whom she hated but was forced to marry because
he could pay the highest price for her. He was the chief of a
village and had great possessions, but he was middle-aged and
lame, while Napana was young, strong, and beautiful.

He had asked her father and been invited to eat, and, having
turned over the stipulated price, Napana was his. In this case
the price was so large that the bride
was even denied her chance of win-
ning freedom by the accustomed
race. When Captain Lofonso came
to take Napana away she refused to
go and he had to carry her. Before
he reached his home his strength
gave out and he was obliged to stop
for rest.

An Indian woman never had the
right to beg for her freedom, but
she had the privilege of struggling
for it. Napana's strength increased
as she realized her unhappy situa-
tion, and she fought madly for free-
dom ; for if she could escape from
him and get back to her own home
before she had entered his she
would be free, and he would lose
his wife as well as the price paid
for her. Captain Lofonso lacked
the strength to get Napana on his
back again, but he was determined
that she should not get away, for
his lameness would deprive him of
all hope of catching her. Night
came on, and still he held her tight

by both wrists, while her strong jerks and pushes swayed both
bodies back and forth until they sank to the ground exhausted.
Toward morning his strength failed and he fell asleep. As she
felt his hands loosen their hold on her wrists she mustered all her
remaining strength and crawled back toward her home ; but she
never reached it. Just as the sun rose over the mountain above
her home she sank insensible at the threshold. Here Lofonso
found her and bore her back to his home with never an opposing
struggle.

Childbirth was of no inconvenience to the average Indian

Papoose in his Gebei.le made of
TuLE AND Soft Tanned Leather.

210

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

mother ; a few hours after delivery she was attending to her
usual duties, even though it happened to be a walk of many miles.
An acquaintance of mine had employed the same maliala for sev-
eral months to do the washing for her family. It finally became
evident that she was about to become a mother. She had the
washing well started one Monday morning when she said : " Me
feel heap bad, me go home ; me think papoose come." Early the

next morning she came back ; the
baby had been born and she was
ready to finish the washing.

The male child was held in
greater favor than the female;
frequently a child of the latter
sex was destroyed as soon as born.
These Indians, though seem-
ingly strong and vigorous, suc-
cumbed easily to disease; con-
sumption and smallpox were the
most prevalent and fatal diseases;
much of the former was undoubt-
edly caused from their sweat
dance, followed by the cold-water
plunge. This dance was a festive
event. The sweat-house was an
immense cone-shaped structure,
built near water, and much in
the same way as their homes.
All important events were cele-
brated with one of these dances,
and Indians gathered from long
distances to take part in them.
A fire was built in the middle
of the close, smoky house, and
around it the naked, face-and-
body-painted Indians danced. As
the flames darted upward their
enthusiasm increased until they
leaped and shrieked in a frenzy of excitement. They kept this up
until the perspiration poured from their bodies and exhaustion
caused them to drop from the ring, when others would take their
places, and they hurried to the stream to plunge into the ice-cold
water. These dances were also used to cure disease, but more
often caused death. The time for these dances, like the time for
everything else, was reckoned by reference to the moon and by
such natural periodical events as the ripening of various varieties
of berries and the emigration of certain species of birds.

" DiGGEB " Boy of about Ten, from
Featheb Riveb.

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA ''DIGGERSr 211

Once a year one of these sweat dances was followed by a burn-
ing of baskets, at wliich time the baskets that were not needed by
the people of the village were heaped together and set on fire,
the Indians dancing, laughing, and howling while the flames de-
stroyed a good part of their year's work. It was a custom for
which I have not been able to find their reason, " Indian have
good time then," they say, when you inquire into the reason for
this ceremony.

This tribe had their medicine men, whose treatment consisted
in the use of herbs, magnetic motions, and rubbing, the sweat and
cold plunge, and the sucking process — disagreeable enough, one
would say, for the operating healer, when it is explained that he
claimed to suck from the diseased part all malignant disease, and
would spend consecutive hours in this loathsome practice of his
art, spitting out of his mouth the poison drawn from the afflicted
part.

This tribe of Indians were and are still exceedingly supersti-
tious. If anything unusual took place in their village, such as a
number of deaths closely following each other, every Indian
would move camp : or, when one of their number met his death
in some unknown way, they believed that the Bad Spirit was the
cause and they could not leave the place quickly enough.

There is a beautiful fresh-water lake in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains which years ago was a great fishing place for these
Indians. One day a large party had gathered there to camp and
to fish. It was near night when two young Indians fell from
their canoe and were drowned without the others seeing them.
They saw the empty canoe and the disturbed water, and one In-
dian saw a face which he declared to be that of the Bad Spirit.
They fled from the place that night, not even stopping to search
for the bodies of their companions. They have never fished there
since, for they believe that if a drop of water from that lake could
touch them they would die in the same way.

I was much interested in what we must call their religious be-
lief as shown in their burial customs and the manner of mourning
for their dead. Because they were savages shall we call it super-
stitious imagination ? It is certain that they believed in a future
life. They also believed in a Great Spirit as well as a good and
a bad one, and had distinct personal conceptions of their gods.
Thus they worshiped the sun because they believed the Great
Spirit was making what they called the happy hunting ground
there. After an Indian was dead and buried, if you asked his
people where he had gone, they would point to the sun. It was
their heaven. Before the white man came among these Indians
they burned their dead. Whatever a dead man had owned was
destroyed with him, that he might have it when he reached the

212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

happy hunting ground. They believed that the smoke was the
transferring agent between life here and there. When these In-
dians first saw the palefaces, as they called the white men, they
thought them some of their dead returned to them in a new guise,
and one that they by no means liked. After this time they began
to bury their dead, explaining the change of custom by saying:
" Indians go long way ; no more smoke take 'em. Indians have
to carry bow, arrows, skins, eberyting ; take long time, no more
want to come back."

The body was prepared for burial while still warm in the fol-
lowing manner : First, the knees were tied close to the chest and
the head jDressed down between them ; the whole body was then
compressed into as small and as round a form as possible, tied
securely with buckskin string, wrapped in skins, and tied again.
It was then buried in a large, round hole, the face turned upward,
as were also the feet. The possessions were heaped upon the body
and buried with it. After the Indians had begun to own horses
and dogs, these were shot on the graves of their masters and their
bodies left there.

This tribe now prepare their dead and bury them as nearly
like the white people as possible, even neglecting to give them
the accumulated property of this life.

Since obtaining the above information I have made a number
of excavations in their old burial places and find that no particu-
lar position for placing the body could have been observed. The
head sometimes faced the east, but just as often the west, and in
several instances it faced upward and downward. These Indians
did not make mounds, but selected soft soil for their graves. The
bodies were buried from two to three feet deep ; earth and some-
times stones were heaped up until something resembling a mound
was formed. This, however, only depended upon the amount of
work the living were willing to do for the dead.

They had many customs of mourning. The most interesting
one was that adopted by a bereaved wife or mother. The hair
of the mourner would be burned from the head, a sacrifice which
meant as much to her as the laying away of bright colors means
to us, and the ashes mixed with charcoal and pitch. With this
mixture her cheeks, chin, and forehead would be streaked, and
this emblem of mourning would be worn for many weeks. At
the time of burial every Indian was expected to moan or howl,
while many of them would writhe about on the ground and utter
most unearthly shrieks. For a certain number of days after they
had burned or buried their dead, the chief mourners would go to
the grave a half hour before sunrise and, looking toward the spot
wher& the sun was to appear, would express their sorrow in cries
and moans until the golden rays fell about their world, when they

THE SO-CALLED CALIFORNIA ^'DIGGERSr 213

would go back to their homes, calmed and comforted — why, they
alone know, but can not or will not tell. A half hour before sun-
set they repeated the visit, remaining until the sun dropped from
sight, when the expression of their sorrow often rose to wild
screams and shrieks which only exhaustion could calm, for they
found no comfort until the sun rose again.

It is difficult to obtain information on what they believe to
have been their origin. It is the one thing which they seem to
hold sacred and do not care to talk about. One Indian smiled as
he said : " Oh, all same as white man ; Indians think lots of things
'bout that." However, the following traditions were told to me
by one old Indian, and I afterward learned from a civilized In-
dian woman that they were what the majority of these Indians
believe.

The first was that two big mountains, probably Mounts Shasta
and Lassen, got mad one day a long time ago and threw up lots
of dirt, all kinds of wild animals, one big chief, and two mahalas.

The second is best told in the Indian's own language :

"Long time ago, no Indians, no white man, no nothing; all
water, one big lake. Sometimes little mountains, little trees, lit-
tle grass, but no Indians. Lots of deer, lion, bear, wild cat, ebry-
thing like that. Great Spirit come in big canoe, take good deer,
good lion, good wild cat, good bear, make Indians ; then tell these
Indians kill all bad deer, bad lion, bad bear, bad wild cat — they all
bad." There is a shadowy relation here to the Oriental idea of
the transmigration of the soul, which the student of comparative
religions may take for what it is worth.

There is no evidence whatever of any written language among
this people. While there is much of legendary lore among them,
it is entirely traditionary in its character. It is also pervaded to
a great extent with a spirit of mysticism so as to render many of
their legends almost unintelligible. The following tribal legend
is a fair sample of their poetical stories. It is well known among
the members of the tribe, and is related in substantially the same
language by all :

A dead pine tree has stood many years in the deep, clear water
of Homer Lake, which lies at the foot of Mount Keddie, in the
Sierra Nevada Mountains. According to the old Indian tradition,
it turns around once every year, when a great Water Spirit im-
prisoned in its base raises its head to take a look at the world.
The legend says that when the Indians first came to the valley
where the lake is situated they found it one great body of water.
They came in canoes and lived for years on the tops of high
mountains. The Water Spirit had full control and made them no
end of trouble. One day they gathered in a body and made sup-
plication to the Great Spirit, who answered by commanding the

2 14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Water Spirit to fill itself with water and make trip after trip
over the mountains until it had emptied all the water into the
ocean, after which it was imprisoned in the base of the tree, and
the small lake left for its drinking water. It must remain there
until the end of time. Only once each year, in January, is the
spirit allowed to look out from its prison, and woe to the Indian
who is unfortunate enough to be seen by this monster, which pos-
sesses a fascinating power that can not be resisted I The Indian
is drawn down into the prison and devoured.

This is a crude legend, but many Indians still believe in its
truth, and could not be hired to camp near or fish in Homer Lake.

This tribe is fast disappearing. The younger generations have
intermarried to a large extent with other tribes, and in some in-
stances with other races. Their enforced association with a supe-
rior race has also had the usual effect. These conditions, together
with their total disregard of the ordinary rules of health, have
brought about the usual result, and it is doubtful if more than
one hundred and fifty Indians can be found to-day in the Sacra-
mento Valley who are descendants of this once powerful tribe,
and one tenth of this number would easily include those of pure
blood.

In Plumas County, which lies in the mountain district and
affords somewhat different conditions from the valley in the mat-
ter of climate and sparse white population, the proportion of sur-
vivors is very much larger, although the same conditions of
intermarriage, etc., prevail here as well. It is a significant and
perhaps hopeful fact that the population of this mountain region
has been increasing within the last decade. Whether this be
owing to intelligent appropriation of hygienic ideas gained from
association with white people, or to the chance for a slower evo-
lution, or whether it be the expiring flash of the candle in its
socket, remains for further examination. It is apparent that they
have made a successful effort to lift themselves from their low
condition of savagery to a higher plane of civilization, as is in-
stanced by their adopting proper clothing, living in more com-
fortable houses, using civilized food, and properly cooking the
same. They also evince an inclination to Christian worship and
education, but with rare exceptions the Indian seems incapable of
acquiring a complex education. Beading, writing, and spelling
are readily learned by them, and they particularly excel in the
imitative studies, writing and drawing.

Whether on the whole these Indians will become civilized be-
fore the race becomes wholly extinct remains a problem which
time alone will be able to solve.

♦^^

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM. 215

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM.*

By THE Eight Hon. LEONARD COURTNEY, M. P.

BY the beginning of the present reign the study of political
economy in this country had worked itself free from earlier
errors, and it had come to be believed that the secret of social re-
generation lay in the utmost allowance of freedom of action to
every individual of the community, so far at least as that action
affected himself, coupled with the most complete development of
the principle of self-reliance, so as to bring home to every mem-
ber, freed from legal restraint on his liberty of action, the moral
responsibility of self-support and of discharging the duties, pres-
ent and to come, of his special position. Such was the theory
more or less openly expressed by economic thinkers when the
British Association was founded, and the same theory lay at the
base of Jevons's address in 1870. Can we hold it now or must it
be recast ? Since 1870 primary education has practically been
made gratuitous. The legislature had an opportunity for abol-
ishing the mischief of doles, but showed no inclination to make
use of it, and there were even traces of a feeling of favor for the
maintenance of these bequests of the past. The indiscriminate
multiplication of so-called charitable institutions has in no way
been reformed, and there is as great activity as ever in the zeal of
those who would mitigate or relieve the effects of improvidence
without touching improvidence itself. Codes of regulations have
been framed for the supervision of the conduct of special indus-
tries, and their sphere has been extended so as to embrace at no
distant period, if not now, the whole industrial community. The
reformed Poor Law, which was regarded as a great step in the
education of the workman, especially of the agricultural laborer,
in independence, stands again upon its trial, and proposals are at
least in the air for assuring to the aged poor a miniviutn measure
of support without any regard to the circumstances of their past
lives or to the inevitableness of their condition. The suggestions
made by responsible statesmen have indeed been more limited and
cautious, but it will be acknowledged of those, as of the German
system, from which they may be said to be in some measure bor-
rowed, that they involve a great departure from the ideal of indi-
vidual development. Add to this that there is a movement, which
has become practical in many large cities and towns, for the com-
munity itself to engross some forms of industrial activity and to
undertake in respect of them to meet the wants of their inhabitants.

* From the presidential address before Section F, Economic Science and Statistics, of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

2i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

All these developments and more may be summed up as illus-
trations of collectivity — an ideal which has its advocates and pro-
fessors, and which looks in the future for regulated civic and
national monopolies instead of unrestricted freedom of individual
activity and for the supervision and control of those industries
which may remain unabsorbed by state or town. In pursuit of
this last conception there have been put forward not only require-
ments as to hours and conditions of labor, but a demand also for
a living wage or a minimum below which no workman shall be
paid ; and this principle has been already adopted by some muni-
cipalities in respect of their monopolized industries. The state
itself indeed has through the popular branch of the legislature
declared more or less clearly in favor of the same principle in re-
spect of the industries which are conducted in its service. We
have not only to acknowledge the continued slowness of poli-
ticians to adopt and enforce the teaching of economists such as
Jevons contemplated, but also the rise of another school of eco-
nomic thought which competes for and in some measure success-
fully obtains the attention of the makers of laws. We must
therefore inquire whether the failure of former teaching has not
been due to errors in itself rather than to the indocility of those
who have neglected it. The greatest difficulty which the teachers
of the past have to overcome when put upon their self-defense
lies in the suspicion, or more than suspicion, of an occupied mul-
titude that their promises have failed. It is thought of them, if
it is not openly said, that they had the ear of legislators for a
generation, that the course and conduct of successive administra-
tions were governed by their principles ; and yet society, as we
know it, presents much the same features, and the lifting up of
the poor out of the mire is as much as ever a promise of the
future. Some quicker method of introducing a new order is
called for, and any scheme offering an assurance of it is welcomed.
A ready answer can be given to much of the suspicion of failure
that is entertained. That freedom of industrial action which is
the first postulate of the economists has never been secured. The
limitations and restrictions necessarily consequent upon the sys-
tem of land laws established among us are not commonly under-
stood, but although much has been done to liberate agriculture
from their fetters its perfect freedom has not been attained.
There may be free trade in the United Kingdom and free land in
the United States, but the country is yet to be fouud in which
both are realized, and even if both these requisites were attained
the sores of social life would not be removed unless the spirit of
self-reliance were fully developed. And how little has been done
to secure this essential condition of progress! Nay, how much
has been done by law and still more by usage to weaken and de-

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM. ixj

stroy its power ! The economist of the old school may boldly
claim that so far as he has had a free hand his promises have
been realized. There has been a larger population with increased
means of subsistence and diminished necessity of toil, a people
better housed, better fed, better clothed, with fewer relative fail-
ures of self-support ; and if the teaching which has been partially
adopted has brought about so much, everything it promised
would have been secured had it been fully followed.

It will be conceded by the most fearless and thoroughgoing-
advocates of the liberty of individual development that it must
be supported by large measures of co-operative action. The free-
dom and activity of association thus indicated are in no way in-
consistent with the fullest theory of individual responsibility. A
single workman may be powerless to induce his employer to
modify in any particular the terms of his employment, but when
workmen band together they may meet employers as equal pow-
ers. Such liberty of combination is a development and not a
limitation of individual liberty. Another step is taken when the
parties to such an arrangement as has been suggested seek to
make its provisions compulsory on others, be they workmen or
employers, who may enter into similar relations ; and the princi-
ples of former economists would generally prompt them to con-
demn such attempts at compulsion. The Factory Acts were op-
posed in this way, although they rested upon different grounds ;
for, though in their consequences they affected the labor of adults,
they were propounded for the defense of young persons and
children unable to protect themselves or to be the parties to free
contracts. Legislation has, however, been extended to control
directly the employment of fully responsible persons, and this has
been defended by three lines of argument. It is urged that, when
the unchecked liberty of individuals destroys in fact the liberty
of action of larger multitudes, it is in defense of liberty of action
that those individuals are controlled. If a sea wall is necessary
to prevent a large tract from being periodically inundated, it can
not be permitted to the owner of a small patch along the coast to
leave the wall unbuilt along his border, and thus threaten the
lands of his neighbors with inundation. Again, it is urged that
when the overwhelming majority of persons engaged in a par-
ticular industry, employers and employed, are agreed upon the
necessity of certain rules to govern the industry, it is not merely
a convenience, but is a fulfillment of their liberty, to clothe with
the sanction of law the regulations upon which they are agreed.
Lastly, it is submitted that there are individuals in whom the
sense of responsibility is so weak, and whose development of fore-
thought is so hopeless, that it is necessary the law should regu-
late their conduct as it may regulate the conduct of children. The

TOL. L. — 18

2i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

first jjlea appears to be sound in principle, thongli it may often
liave been applied to cases not properly coming within it. As to
the second, the convenience of giving to an all bnt universal cus-
tom the force of law is incontestable, but it is at least doubtful
whether this is sufficient to deprive individuals who deliberately
wish to put themselves outside it of the liberty of doing so. Un-
less their action could be brought within the first line of argu-
ment, sufficient reason for restraint does not appear.

These limitations of individual liberty are familiar to us, and
have obtained a firm hold in our legislation ; but we enter upon
comparatively new ground when we turn to the proposals that an
increasing number of industries should be undertaken and directed
by state or municipality, and that a minimum &Tidi not inadequate
subsistence should be assured to all those engaged in such indus-
tries, if indeed the princii)le be not presently extended outside tho
monopolies so established. The ideas which are clothed in the
jjhrases"the socialization of the instruments of industry" and
" the guarantee of a minimum wage to all workmen " appear to
involve a complete reorganization of society and an absolute
abandonment of the theories of the past. This is not enough to
justify their immediate rejection or their immediate acceptance.
The past has not been so good that we can refuse to look at any
proposals, however strange in appearance, offering a better prom-
ise for the future. It has not been so bad that we must abandon
its methods in despair, as if no change could be for the worse, if
not for the better. No one could now be found to deny the possi-
bility, and few to question the utility, of the socialization of some
services. The post office is in all civilized countries organized as
a national institution, and the complaints that are sometimes
heard as to defects in its administration never extend to a demand
for its abolition. Some of our largest municipalities have under-
taken the supply of water and of gas, or even of electric light, to
the inhabitants, and a movem.ent has begun, which seems likely
to be extended, of undertaking the service of tramways. Demands
have also been made for the municipalization or nationalization
of the telephone service.

New considerations of great difficulty arise when we pass to
the suggestion of the undertaking by local authorities of produc-
tive industries not in the nature of monopolies. In monopolies
direct competition, often competition in any shape, is practically
impossible ; in other industries competition is a general rule ; and
it is by virtue of such competition that the members of the com-
munity do in the long run obtain their wants supplied in the most
economical manner. When commodities are easily carried with-
out serious deterioration, the constantly changing conditions of
production and of transport induce a constant variation in the

INDIVIDUALISM VERSUS COLLECTIVISM. 219

sources of cheapest supply — that is, of supply under conditions of
least toil and effort — and any arrest of this mobility involves a
corresponding setback in the advancement of the economic con-
dition of mankind. It is a necessary consequence of this process
that the local production of special commodities should be sub-
ject to diminution and extinction, and that the labors hitherto
engaged in such local production should become gradually worth-
less. There would be a danger of pressure to do away with in-
vasive competition — action which would be destructive of the
most powerful cause of improvement in the condition of the peo-
ple. The position thus taken may be illustrated by an experience
to which I have elsewhere referred, but so pregnant with sugges-
tion that I need not apologize for recalling it. My native county,
Cornwall, was in my boyhood the scene of widespread activity in
copper and tin mining. There had not been wanting warnings
that the competition of richer deposits in far countries would put
an end to these industries in the county, but the warnings had not
been realized and remained unheeded. In the years that have
since passed they have been gradually and almost completely ful-
filled. The mines were abandoned one by one, and the population
of the county has steadily diminished in every recent census.
What would the experience have been had the mines been a
county or national property worked by county or nation ? Can
one think that the same process would have been maintained had
the collective owner worked the mines directly, and the working-
men looked to county or nation for the continuance of work and
wages ? However much we may contemplate the reconstruction
of an industrial system, it must, if it is to be a living social or-
ganism, be constantly responsive to the ever-changing conditions
of growth ; some parts must wax while others wane, extending
here and contracting there, and manifesting at every moment
those phenomena of vigor and decline which characterize life. In
the development of industry new and easier ways are constantly
being invented of doing old things ; places are being discovered
better suited for old industries than those to which resort had
been made; there is a continuous supersession of the worth of
known processes and of the utility of old forms of work involving
a supersession, or at least a transfer, of the labor hitherto devoted
to them. All these things compel a perpetual shifting of seats of
industry and of the settlements of man, and no organization can
be entertained as practicable which does not lend itself to those
necessities. They are the prerequisites of a diminution of the toil
of humanity. As I have said before, the theory of. individual
liberty, however guarded, afforded a working plan ; society could
and did march under it. The scheme of collective action gives no
such promise of practicability ; it seems to lack the provision of

2 20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the forces which, should bring ahout that movement upon which
growth depends. The economist of the past generation still holds
his ground, and our best hope lies in the fuller acceptance of his
ideas. The economist, however, must feel, if he is to animate
multitudes and inspire legislatures, that he, too, has a religion.
Beneath the calmness of his analysis must be felt the throb of
humanity. Slow in any case must be the secular progress of any
branch of the human family ; but if we take our stand upon facts,
if our eyes are open to distinguish illusions from truth, if we are
animated by the single purpose of subordinating our investiga-
tions and our actions to the lifting up of the standard of living^
we may possess our souls in patience, waiting upon the promise
of the future.

■♦»»

POSSESSION AND MEDIUMSHIP.

By Prof. WILLIAM EOMAINE NEWBOLD.

ALL the phenomena of which I have been treating in my past
-^^^ papers can be grouped under the three conceptions of sug-
gestibility, automatism, and subconscious mental states. Sugges-
tibility, in its narrowest sense, denotes an increased tendencj^ on
the part of certain mental states to work out their own proper
results, without interference from other states, and especially
without interference from that innermost essence of our sense
of self which we call our will. It applies, therefore, primarily
to states existing within the range of the individual's con-
sciousness. The suggestible individual, when he can remember
or describe his condition, usually feels his will or self in abeyance,
and describes himself as the victim of a power which he can not
resist. His body obeys commands which he himself is unwilling
to obey ; ideas and beliefs possess his consciousness which he him-
self is unable to expel, even though he recognizes their absurdity ;
hallucinations of all the senses obtrude themselves upon him, or
portions of his conscious realm are withdrawn from him in a
manner which he can not but ascribe to the workings of some
force foreign to himself. When this sense of opposition is lack-
ing, it is because the suggestion meets with no opposition on the
part of his accredited beliefs and instincts, and thus merely aug-
ments the stream of his normal consciousness without his discov-
ering its extraneous origin.

Suggested hallucinations and ideas do not differ in any respect
from spontaneous hallucinations and automatic ideas, save that
the source of the former is apparent and that of the latter is not.
In the fields of sensation and ideation, therefore, the conceptions
of suggestibility and automatism practically coincide. The case

FOSSUSSION AND MEDIUMSHIP. 221

of motor automatism is somewhat different. Suggested move-
ments are controlled through the agency of ideas, the ideas being
directly suggested and the movements springing from them. But
in automatic movements the patient is not conscious of any ideas
controlling his movements ; they seem to him to spring from some
source outside himself. Some of these movements may plausibly
be ascribed to purely physiological causes ; others seem to require
the assumption of realms of mind dissevered from the normal
consciousness of the patient. If this view be correct, these forms
of automatism also would fall under the conception of suggesti-
bility, for they also would spring from mental states, although
those states would not lie within the range of the patient's con-
sciousness.

We may further conjecture that some of the hallucinations
and automatic ideas, which rush cometlike into the patient's con-
sciousness from nowhere in particular, had, in fact, an actual be-
ing in the subconscious realm before becoming parts of the upper
system ; but, from the nature of the case, it is never possible to
verify the conjecture beyond a peradventure.

The words suggestibility and automatism, then, do not so
much designate distinct classes of phenomena as the same phe-
nomena viewed from slightly different points, while the concep-
tion of the subconscious is an inference based upon the relations
which we know to exist between mental states and certain com-
plex movements of the body. All these phenomena belong to-
gether ; they can not be separated in theory, and they constantly
occur together in practice ; in short, they form a distinct natural
family by themselves.

It is only within the last few years that they have attracted
the attention of professed psychologists, yet we can not suppose
that they never existed before. Even a superficial acquaintance
with the literature of occultism, present and past, is sufficient to
convince one that they have existed from time immemorial, that
they have provided in the past the basis for many of man's most
cherished convictions, precisely as in the present they constitute
the chief content of our modern "spiritualism."

To get the least insight into these phenomena one must at the
outset disabuse one's self of the pseudo- scientific notion that they
are due to the " power of the imagination." It represents a rough
attempt to get at the truth, but, like many another half truth,
does more harm than good. We must clearly grasp the concep-
tion that man's mind is in many respects like his body. Like his
body, it is the scene of constant struggle and rivalry between
competing activities — it might not be far amiss to call them forces
— in the ebb and flow of which his being consists. As disease germs
occasionally succeed in effecting lodgment in his body and flour-

22 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ish, in spite of the agencies that strive to effect their destruction,
so thought germs occasionally take root in his mind, sprout and
grow in spite of all that "he himself* can do to prevent it.
Where are they to be found ? In all that we can see, hear, or
think, everything carries with it some suggestive power. Usually
the trivial suggestions of the environment pass by unnoticed, but
occasionally, under some special circumstances or in some sensitive
temperaments, they take root. A friend of mine told me that he
was talking with his wife one evening of a recent murder, and,
as he talked, his eyes rested on her eyes for a moment longer than
usual. He saw her shrink and turn pale, but paid little attention
to it at the moment. A little later he fancied she still looked
troubled, and tried to comfort her, but she would have none of
it ; she could not allow him to come near her. She kept thinking
of his killing her and was afraid of him. She did not believe it
at all ; she knew how absurd it was as well- as he did, but, she
said, the moment he allowed his gaze to rest on her while speak-
ing of that horrible subject, she saiohrm. killing her, and could
not shake the thought off. It wore off in the course of half an
hour or so. An isolated suggestion of this kind very seldom gets
lodged in a sound mind. The most common source of contagion
is to be found in the beliefs of the community in which one lives.
We are by nature social animals, and our aptness for social life is
largely due to our sensitiveness to the collective suggestions of
the social environment. An individual who proves refractory to
such influences, and evolves along his own lines without reference
to the claims or the standards of his age, soon lands either in
Bedlam or the lockup. All the forces which we vaguely call evo-
lutionary have for ages been impressing this trait upon man, and
consequently we find it a potent factor in the production of au-
tomatisms of all kinds. A suggestible patient often responds to
such impressions almost as mechanically as a mirror, and faith-
fully reflects the opinions and prejudices of his human environ-
ment without feeling his voluntary self to be in the least con-
cerned in it. The cases of Mr. B and of Mr. Le Baron, which

I gave in my August paper, are illustrations in point. Automa-
tisms of this sort are always popularly ascribed to the interven-
tion of some intelligence distinct from that of the patient, but the
further definition of the intelligence varies in dift'erent ages and
countries.

I shall pass over the familiar convulsive epidemics of flagella-
tion, of dancing, of tarantism, the "holy jerks" of the great re-
vival in the Southern States at the opening of this century, the
convulsionaries of Saint-M^dard, etc. All these have been often
described, and I shall assume that my readers are acquainted with
them. I shall, however, take a few cases from various periods of

FOSSUSSIOI^ AND MEDIUMSIIIP. 223

the world's history, described by persons of different convictions
and in each case differently interpreted, and shall try to show the
absolute identity of type in each. The first occurred in France in
1636 in a Roman Catholic community, the second in England a
generation later ; both were ascribed to evil spirits. The third
occurred in China only a few years ago, and was ascribed to the
agency of a native goddess. The fourth and fifth are recent cases,
one from Switzerland and one from British Columbia ; both oc-
curred among Spiritists, and were believed to be due to the spirits
of deceased human beings, although one should note that in the
last case the patient was not himself, for a moment misled as to
the true character of the phenomena. In all, the automatic pro-
cesses manifested themselves, partly by hallucinations of sight
and hearing, partly in compulsory ideas and emotions, and partly
by more or less significant automatic movements. In all there
also appears to be a tendency toward association and systematiza-
tion of the automatic processes with one another, so that what
begins by being a more or less confused medley, in some cases
rising to the point of mania, finally becomes a tolerably coherent
expression of a characteristic personality which in turn repre-
sents the notions entertained by the patient and the community
in which he lives as to what the demon, god, or spirit ought to do
and say. Especially should one note how the automatic pro-
cesses invariably present themselves to the patient as being some-
thing absolutely foreign to himself — a trait which Prof. James
happily hit off in terming such attacks " invasions.''

The story of the " Devils of Loudun" has often been told. In
1631 an epidemic of " possession" broke out among the nuns in a
convent at Loudun, in southern France, and was ascribed by the
sufferers to the machinations of a priest named Urbaia Grandier.
Grandier, by his dissolute life and overbearing conduct, had macle
himself many bitter and powerful enemies, chief among whom
was Mignon, the father confessor of the convent, and there is
good reason for believing that, originally at least, the " epidemic"
was nothing more than a conspiracy devised by Father Mignon
and the Mother Superior for the destruction of Grandier. It was
most successful. Grandier was accused of witchcraft, and, although
he escaped several times through technicalities, he was finally
tried by a tribunal appointed by Cardinal Richelieu, was con-
demned, tortured, and burned.

Shortly after his death one of the priests who were trying to
exorcise the devils from the nuns. Father Surin by name, claimed
to be himself possessed by the devils and has left a vivid account
of his experience. He seems to have been a feeble and credulous
old man, and whatever the origin of the " epidemic " may have
been I am inclined to regard his experience as a genuine invasion

2 24- POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of the normal self by a mass of well co-ordinated ideas suggested
by the shrieks and antics of the possessed. It finds an almost
perfect parallel in the experience of Mr. R. L. Stevenson, which I
narrated in my last paper.

In a letter to a friend, Father Surin says*: "Matters have
come to such a pass that God has permitted, on account of my
sins I suppose, something which has perhaps never before been
seen in the Church. During the exercise of my ministry the devil
passes from the body of the person possessed and, entering into
mine, throws me down, convulses me, visibly passes through me,
keeping possession of me many hours as a demoniac. ... I do
not know how to express to you what then takes place within
me ; and how that spirit unites with mine without depriving me
either of consciousness or of my soul's freedom, yet acting all
the while like another self, and as if I had two souls, of which
the one is deprived of its body and of the use of its organs, and
stands aside looking on the one that has got in. . . . The two
spirits struggle in the same field, that is my body, and the soul
is as it were divided. One part of it is the subject of diabolic
impressions ; another, of the motions which are proper to it, or
which God gives it. ... I feel that the cries which spring from
my lips come equally from these two souls, and I can scarcely
discriminate whether it is joy [allegresse'] that gives rise to them
or the extreme excitement [fureur] that fills me. . . . While my
body rolls on the ground and the ministers of the Church talk to
me as to a devil and heap maledictions upon me, I can not tell you
what joy then fills me, having become a devil, not by rebellion
against God, but by the misfortune which simply but clearly
portrays to me the state to which sin has brought me. . . . My
condition is such that I have few free actions ; when I wish to
speak, my speech is arrested; at mass I am stopped short; at
table I can not raise food to my mouth ; at confession I sud-
denly forget my sins, and I feel the devil come and go within
me as in his own house. ... As soon as I wake he is there, at
my prayers ; he takes away my thought when he pleases, when
my heart begins to open to God he fills it with rage, he puts me
to sleep when I wish to be awake, and openly, by the mouths
of the possessed, he boasts that he is my master."

A parallel case is given by Henry More, the Cambridge
Platonist, in his Appendix (page 58) to the second edition of
Joseph Glanvil's book, " Saducismus Triumphatus, or. Full and
Plain Evidence concerning Witches and Apparitions," London,
1682. It is entitled, "A story of the marvelous condition of one
Robert Churchman of Balsham, some six or seven Miles off from

* Gauthier. Histoire du Somnambulisme, vol. ii, pp. 164 et seq. Italics as there given.

POSSUSSIOjV and MEDIUMSHIP. 225

Cambridge, wlien lie was inveigled in Quakerism, Inow strangely
Tie was possessed by a Spirit that spoke ivithin him, and used his
Organs in despight of him, ivhile he luas in his Fits. And hoiv
he was recovered from his Error, and regained to the Church by
the devotions and diligence of Dr. J. Templar, sfiK Minister of that
place, as it is set doivn in his Letter to a friend, which is as fol-
lows."

Dr. Templar relates that he found the Quakers " very busie in
enticing my people to a compliance with their perswasions in
Religion," and among those influenced was this Robert Church-
man. While Churchman was still in doubt the wife of a Quaker
came to his house to visit his wife, but was refused admittance.
" After some Parley the Quaker's Wife spake unto him in these
words. Thou wilt not believe except thou see a Sign, and thou may-
est see some such. Within a few nights after Robert Churchman
had a violent storm upon the Room where he lay, when it was
very calm in all other parts of the Town, and a "Voice within him,
as he was in bed, spake to him, and bad him. Sing praises, sing
praises, telling him, that he should see the glory of the New
Jerusalem, about which time a glimmering light appeared all
about the Room. Toward the morning the Voice commanded
him to go out of his Bed naked with his Wife and Children.
They all standing upon the Floar, the Spirit making use of his
Tongue, bid them to lye down and put their Mouths in the dust,
which they did accordingly. It likewise commanded him to go
and call his Brother and Sister, that they might see the New
Jerusalem, to whom he went naked about half a Mile." This
lasted three or four hours, during which " the drift of what was
spoken was to perswade him to comply with the Quakers," and
afterward " he came to himself and was able to give a perfect
account of what had befallen him." The spirit returned several
times, but finally, after Dr. Templar had prayed with him daily
for some time, he was left " perfectly free from all molestation.
The Quakers hearing of his condition gave it out, that the Power
of God would come upon him again, and that the wound was but
skinned over by the Priest. Which made me the more importu-
nate with him to keep close to the publick Service of God and to
have nothing to do with them or their Writings. Which direc-
tion he followed till November, 1661, and then perusing one of
their Books, a little after upon the tenth day of that Month, his
troubles returned. A voice within him began to speak to him
after the former manner. . . . The design which he discerned
that it did aim at was to take him off from coming to the Church
(where he had been that day) and from hearing the Word of
God." This continued several days, but he was " very peremp-
tory in his resisting of it. When it began to soUicite him he

VOL. L. — 19

226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

replyed. That lie saw it was a Spirit of delusion, wliicli lie would
not obey. Upon wliich the Spirit denounced a Curse against
him in these words. Go ye cursed into everlasting Fire ! and so
left him with a very great heat in his body. After this, he was
in his own apprehension in a very comfortable condition, and
while he was considering what had happened a Voice within him
spake to him saying. That the Spirit which was before upon him
was a Spirit of delusion, but now the true Spirit of God was
come into him." It then gave him instruction in religious mat-
ters, contradicting what the former voice had said. Several times
it came, and as Robert Churchman still doubted whether it were
a good spirit or no it promised him what sign he would. Upon
that he desired it to turn into brass a certain candlestick.
" Presently there was a very unsavoury smell in the Room, like
that of the Snuff of a Candle newly put out ; but nothing else
was done towards the fulfilling of the Promise. Upon the Lord's
day following, he, being at Church, it came upon him. When
the Chapters were named he turned to them in his Bible, but was
not able to read. When the Psalm was sung, he could not pro-
nounce a syllable. Upon Monday morning his Speech was wholly
taken from him. When I came to him, and asked him how it
was with him, he moved his head towards me but was not able to
speak ; I waited an Hour or two in the Room, hoping that his
Speech might have returned unto him, and that I might have
gained from him some account of his condition. But finding no
alteration, I desired those who were present to joyn with me in
Prayer. As we were Praying, his Body with much violence was
thrown out of Bed, and then with great vehemence he called to
me to hold my Tongue. When Prayer was done, his Tongue was
bound as before, till at last he broke out into these words. Thine
is the Kingdom, Thine is the Kingdom j which he repeated, I
believe, above an hundred times. Sometimes he was forced into
extream laughter, sometimes into singing ; his hands were usually
imployed in beating his Breast. All of us who stood by could
discern unusual heavings in his body. This distemper did con-
tinue towards the morning of the next day, and then the voice
within him signified to him that it would leave him, bidding him
to get upon his knees in order to that end, which he did, and then
presently he had a perfect command of himself. When I came
to him he gave me a sober account of all the passages of the day
before, having a distinct remembrance of what the Spirit forced
him to do, and what was spoken to him by those who stood by.
In particular he told me, he was compelled to give me that dis-
turbance in prayer, which I before mentioned, the Spirit using his
Limbs and Tongue as it pleased, contrary to the inclination of
his own mind." Finally, Robert Churchman was "released from

POSSESSION AND MEDIUMSHIP, 227

all liis trouble" througli the diligent prayers of Dr. Templar,
with the happy result' that both he and his wife and " some others
who were too much byassed with the Principles of the Quakers "
acquired " a perfect dislike of that way."

Demon possession is at the present time common in China, and
a number of curious cases have been collected and published re-
cently by a missionary who has had forty years' experience among
the Chinese.* Most of his narratives are in the third person, but
one is given in the patient's own words. His name was Kwo, and
he is described as a " hardy mountaineer, thirty-eight years of age,
bright and entertaining, with nothing in his appearance which
could be regarded as unhealthy or abnormal." His account is as
follows : f

"Near the close of year before last (1877) I bought a number
of pictures, including one of Wang Mu-niang, the wife of Yu-
hwang [the chief divinity of China]. For the goddess Wang Mu-
niang I selected the most honorable position in the house; the
others I pasted on the walls here and there as ornaments. On the
second day of the first month I proposed worshiping the goddess,
but my wife objected. The next night a spirit came, apparently
in a dream, and said to me : ' I am Wang Mu-niang of Yuin-men
san [the name of a neighboring mountain]. I have taken up my
abode in your house.' It said this repeatedly. I had awakened,
and was conscious of the presence of the spirit. I knew it was a
shie-kwei (evil spirit), and as such I resisted it, and cursed it, say-
ing, ' I will have nothing to do with you.' This my wife heard,
and begged to know what it meant, and I told her. After this all
was quiet and I was not disturbed for some days. About a week
afterward a feeling of uneasiness and restlessness came over me
which I could not control. At night I went to bed as usual, but
grew more and more restless. At last, seized by an irresistible
impulse, I arose from my bed and went straight to a gambler's den
in Kao kia, where I lost at once sixteen thousand cash [sixteen
dollars, a large sum for a peasant Chinaman]. I started for home
and lost my way. But when it grew light I got back to my house.
At that time I was conscious of what I was doing and saying, but
I did things mechanically, and soon forgot what I had said." In
this condition he remained for some days, the prey of irresistible
impulses, which soon took a homicidal turn, and culminated in
maniacal outbursts, alternating with epileptiform attacks. He was
chained in bed, and for five or six days raved wildly. " My friends
were in great distress. They proposed giving me more medicine,
but the demon, speaking through me, replied, * Any amount of

* Demon Possession and Allied Themes. By Rev. John L. Nevius, D. D. Dr. Nevius is
convinced that these phenomena are really produced by demons. f Op. cit., p. 22,

2 28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

medicine will be of no use.' My mother then asked, ' If medicine
is of no use, what shall we do ? ' The demon replied, * Burn in-
cense to me, and submit yourself to me, and all be well/ My
parents promised to do this, and knelt down and worshiped the
demon, begging it to torment me no longer. Thus the matter was
arranged, I all the time remaining in a state of unconsciousness."
After more prayers and worship Kwo recovered consciousness,
and was told what promises had been made in his name. He at
once refused to worship the demon, upon which he was attacked
again. Finally, he consented, and for some time the demon gave
him little trouble, coming only at intervals, and then behaving
very well. It jjromised to heal diseases, but " many diseases were
not under its control, and it seemed as if it could perfectly cure
only such as were inflicted by spirits " — in other words, those that
were due to suggestion and could be relieved in the same way.

In the summer of 1878 a native missionary named Leng heard
of Kwo, and persuaded him to tear down the shrine of the goddess
and become a Christian, assuring him that if he did so he would
be freed from the spirit's power. This he did, and a few days
later his child died, which his wife ascribed to the vengeance of
the goddess. Then the demon returned once more and said : " If
your husband is determined to be a Christian, this is no place for
me. But I wish to tell you that I had nothing to do with the
death of your child." " What do you know of Jesus Christ ? "
they asked. The answer was: "Jesus Christ is the great Lord
over all; and now I am going away, and you will not see me
again." And the demon was as good as his word.

Prof. Forel, of Zurich, has given an account * of a case of this
sort which seems to have puzzled him considerably. The patient,
K. K., was a German, a wagon-maker by trade, had lived in the
United States for some years, and had got interested in "spiritual-
ism." Several times he tried to get the spirits to write by his own
hand without success, but at last the hand started suddenly and
wrote against his will. The writing was followed by automatic
ideas in the form of the inner voice. All the communications
professed to emanate from a spirit who, although unknown to
him, was interested in him, and desired to improve him and pre-
pare him for the life to come. Its commands were usually simple
and reasonable enough. For example, the patient had been an
excessive smoker, but at the spirit's command he gave up smok-
ing entirely, and without especial suffering. Sometimes, however,
the spirit was whimsical and even malicious. It forced him to
smash lamps, break his false teeth, and do other things which
caused him no little annoyance. The spirit always claimed that

* Zeitschrift fiir Hypnotismus, Jahrgang 1894-'95.

POSSESSION AND MEDIUMSHIP. 229

these irrational and disagreeable things were imposed upon liim
to test his obedience or to punish him for his sins. He was en-
tirely unable to resist them. This patient gave himself into cus-
tody at an insane asylum at Burgholzi, in Switzerland, and was
cured by suggestion in one hypnotic sitting.

It is not surprising that phenomena of this kind are common
among spiritists. It would seem that the most favorable condi-
tion for the development of automatism would be a state of
passivity on the part of the patient or " medium/' in which he
simply watches the impulses and thoughts that arise within him
without attempting to repress any of them. Now, this condition
finds its ideal fulfillment in the " developing seance " of the spirit-
ist. A group of credulous folk gather in the dusk or darkness,
and sing invocations to the spirits whom they believe to be hover-
ing above them and watching for an opportunity to " impress "
them. Their sole practical principle is " not to resist the spirits,"
and consequently the least tendency to spontaneous automatism
is fostered and allowed to develop to the utmost. Furthermore,
its development is favored by the complex suggestions of the en-
vironment and by the direct exhortations of believers. I remem-
ber one such "developing seance" which I attended some years
ago, at which a stout woman rose and delivered an " inspirational "
address, purporting to proceed from the spirit of a Methodist
minister who had recently died in the neighborhood. As soon as
it was concluded she fell heavily on the floor in hysterical convul-
sions. Three or four excited women at once ran to her, crying,
" Don't resist, dear," " Let him take possession of you," " He won't
hurt you, don't be afraid," etc., while the victim struggled and
moaned : " Oh, I can't, I can't let him ! Take him away ! " In a few
minutes another woman began to speak in the name of the spirit
supposed to be controlling the first " medium," and immediately
the struggles of the latter ceased. At that time I knew little of
these phenomena, and the incident puzzled me a good deal. I
never supposed, of course, that it was due to spirits, but I did not
see any way of ascribing it to fraud either. With the exception
of myself, all present were ardent " spiritualists," and I had every
reason to believe them sincere in their efforts to reach the other
world. It was not a paid sitting, and most of those present were
personal friends of one another. From my present point of view
it seems intelligible enough, and is quite analogous to that last
described.

But t e best case of this kind that I have yet seen described is
that of Mr. Charles H. Tout, of which he has himself written a
very acute analysis.* He had become interested in these ques-

* Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xi, pp. 309-316.

2 30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions and took part in some sittings at wliicli no professional
mediums were present. Almost from the outset two ladies of the
circle were affected with spasmodic twitchings of the fingers and
arms. " Sometimes these movements were very violent, causing
them to slap and thump the table with such force as to seriously
bruise their fingers and hands. . . . With the exception of these
two ladies, none of the sitters were much affected on these occa-
sions, though at times an almost irresistible impulse came upon
myself to imitate their actions ; but though I occasionally allowed
the impulse, at the suggestion of the other sitters, to have full
play, it never with me took the bit between its teeth and got be-
yond my control. I could always stop at once any movements in
my limbs, or change the attitude of my mind, by an effort of
will." At a later sitting a dream-personality similar to that of
Mr. Stevenson developed itself. " I seemed to have, as it were,
stepped aside, and some other intelligence was now controlling
my organism. I was merely a passive spectator interested in
what was being done. My second self seemed to be a mother
overflowing with feelings of maternal love and solicitude for some
one. The very features of my face seemed to be changing, and I
was distinctly conscious of assuming the look of a fond and de-
voted mother looking down upon her child. I even inwardly
smiled as I thought how ridiculous I must be looking, but I made
no effort to resist the impulse. I now felt I wanted to caress and
console somebody, and the impulse was strong upon me to take
my friend in my arms and soothe and cheer him. I resisted the
impulse for some time, but finally yielded to it. In doing so I
had a distinct feeling of relationship to my friend. After a little
while I began to be myself again." At another time a lady who was
supposed to be sensitive to spirit influences believed that she got
for Mr. Tout a message from the spirit of his father who had died
of bronchitis and pleurisy some twenty years before. The hymn,
" Nearer, my God, to Thee," which had been a favorite with Mr.
Tout's father, had just been sung. With practice Mr. Tout seems
to have become more suggestible. On another occasion, he says,
" I was affected to an unusual degree, experiencing violent twitch-
ings in my limbs, and sensations of painful chilliness that made my
teeth chatter again. I sat, as I always did now, passively waiting
for what might transpire. All sorts of impulses seemed to be
moving me, and I noticed how susceptible I was becoming to the
slightest even half- realized suggestion offered by the course of my
own thoughts or by the chance remarks made by the other sitters.
I presently felt myself being drawn, as it seemed to me, toward
the floor on the left side of my chair. I yielded to the influence
and fell prostrate out of my chair on to the floor with consider-
able force, and, though the others thought I must have hurt

FOSS^SSIOJ^ AND MEDIUMSHIP. 231

myself, I certainly felt no inconvenience from the fall. I lay
groaning for a little while, and then got up and sat in my chair

again.

*' Some one now suggested that we should sing, and this being
done, I immediately became affected by the music, which moved
me in a very extraordinary manner. I fancied myself realizing
the whole scene clearly. In a great cathedral I seemed to be the
presiding priest at the close of a great function pronouncing the
benediction." He then went through several of these dreamlike
states, some of which he describes, and says of them : " In all these
phases or states I seemed to bo two individuals — one my ordinary,
critical, observant self, closely watching what took place in and
around me, the other the character that seemed to be personating
itself through me." Toward the close of the seance the hymn
" Nearer, my God, to Thee " was sung. " Before the first verse
was finished I began to experience strange sensations. ... I
seemed to be far away in space. ... I seemed to bo moving or
rather to be drawn downward, and presently felt that I had
reached this earth again ; but all was strange and fearful and
lonely, and I seemed to be disappointed that I could not attain
the object of this long and lonely journey. ... At this point some
one said, ' It's his father controlling him.' I then seemed to real-
ize who I was and whom I was seeking. I began to be distressed
in my lungs. ... I was in a measure still conscious of my actions,
though not of my surroundings, and I have a clear memory of
seeing myself in the character of my dying father lying in the
bed and the room in which he died. It was a most curious sensa-
tion. I saw his shrunken hands and face and lived again through
his dying moments ; only now I was both myself — in some indis-
tinct sort of way — and my father with his feeling and appearance."

Mr. Tout then shows in detail that these dreams — for they are
no more — sprang from the suggestions which were given him by
his friends and from autosuggestions furnished by his own mind.
For example, the journey through space sprang from a ghost
story which he had once read, told from a ghost's point of view,
and describing the return of a restless spirit to earth. He then
adds : " I know myself and my susceptibility, even under normal
conditions, to suggestion in all sorts of forms, not necessarily
verbal, so well that no alternative remains to me but to believe
that what I did was due simply to everyday suggestion in one
form and another. Building and peopling chateaux en Espagne
was a favorite occupation of mine in my earlier days, and this
long-practiced faculty is doubtless a potent factor in all my char-
acterizations, and doubtless also in those of many another full-
fledged ' medium.'" With this sane and rational conclusion all
sensible folk will agree.

232 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

IDIOTS SAVANTS.

Bt FKEDEEICK PETERSON, M.D.,

CHIEF OF CLINIC, DEPAETMENT OF NEEVOrS AND MENTAL DISEASES, VAUDERBILT CLINIC,
COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS AND SUEGEONS.

THE term idiots savants is applied to all such idiots, imbeciles,
or feeble-minded as exhibit special aptitudes of one kind or
another, always out of proportion to their intellectual develop-
ment in other directions, and often remarkable as compared with
similar accomplishments or faculties in normal individuals.

There are many cases of the kind recorded in literature, and it
Is not at all uncommon to hear of idiots in our newspapers and
museums who are exhibited as musical prodigies, "calculating
boys," and the like. Beyond the fact of the existence of such
curiosities, and the record of their deeds, there has been little or
nothing written in explanation of these jjhenomena. The psy-
chology of the condition is exceedingly obscure, and even were
the physiological processes which underlie special aptitudes un-
derstood, there would still remain the mystery of the manifesta-
tion of particular talents or faculties in minds otherwise blank or
defective. It is the aim of this brief paper rather to present the
nature of the facts which we have to consider, and to indicate
lines of study that might be pursued with advantage, than to add
any material knowledge to the psychology or £etiology of the con-
dition.

In the first place, then, let us inquire concerning the kinds of
aptitudes which may be developed to an unusual degree in men-
tally deficient individuals. The aptitudes may be summarized as
follows :

Arithmetical faculty, musical faculty, special memories, imi-
tative faculty, modeling faculty, delineative faculty, faculty for
painting, aptitude for games (draughts, etc.), aptitude for buf-
foonery.

This is not a classification, but merely an arrangement for
examination of the instances cited under each heading. Some of
these captions really include others. Thus, special memories
would cover usually the musical faculty. The imitative faculty
should include possibly the repetition of musical airs and compo-
sitions, drawings and paintings from objects, as well as imitations
of gestures and actions. Arithmetical faculty is a qualification
which perhaps encompasses too much, since this aptitude in the
mentally defective is generally restricted to calculation only.
The term " musical faculty " also is to be understood in a limited
sense, since the musical prodigies of this description rarely ex-
hibit more than a phenomenal memory for musical compositions.

IDIOTS SAVANTS. 233

Under tlie lieacling of aptitude for buffoonery, I have thought
proper to place such defectives as evince a talent for wit and
humor of a low order, as is instanced in some of the historical
court fools and buffoons.

After this short preface regarding the nature of the cases it is
proposed to include in a description of idiots savants, examples of
each kind will be cited under the appropriate caption.

Arithmetical Faculty. — Precocity and an extraordinary
power of the faculty of mental arithmetic have been frequently
noted in idiots.

Dr. Plowe described an idiot with little use of language, yet
with astonishing power of reckoning. If one's ag© were told him,
he would give the number of minutes one had lived in a very
short time.

Guggenbuehl observed an imbecile at Salzburg who would
solve the most difficult problems in mental arithmetic with in-
credible rapidity. At one time the attempt was made to induce
him to become a teacher of arithmetic, but as he could not under-
stand his solutions of problems it was found impossible for him
to explain them to others.

Atkinson noted an idiot woman with arithmetical faculty in
excess whose only delight was to be occupied with questions of
number.

Ireland mentions a boy at Earlswood with the arithmetical
faculty. He could add and multiply three figures by three figures
with lightning rapidity.

In a valuable study of Arithmetical Prodigies in the American
Journal of Psychology (April, 1891), E. W. Scripture has collected
thirteen examples of this aptitude. Six of these (Ampere, Gauss,
Archbishop Whately, George Bidder, Safford, and Wallis) were
men of eminence or genius who exhibited extraordinary precocity
or aptitude in mathematics. The remaining seven cases are prop-
erly classified under the heading of this paper.

Tom Fuller, born in 1710, known as the Virginia calculator,
was a native African, never knew how to read or write, but had
phenomenal powers in arithmetic. Asked how many seconds in
a year and a half, he responded in two minutes, 47,304,000. Asked
how many seconds a man had lived who was 70 years 17 days 12
hours old, he answered in a minute and a half, 2,210,500,800.

Jedediah Buxton, an Englishman, born in 1702, was excessively
stupid as a child, never learned to write his own name, had not
even common intelligence in the ordinary matters of life, and
whose mind never reached a development beyond that of a boy
of ten years, was a marvelous mathematician.

Zerah Colburn, born in Vermont in 1804, was exhibited from
the age of six as a mathematical prodigy. He was a backward

2 34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

child and never able to exercise even ordinary intelligence in other
directions or to learn mucli of anything. He had supernumerary
digits on both hands and feet, and was a degenerate.

Vito Mangiamele, son of a Sicilian shepherd, born in 1827, was
exhibited as a calculating boy, but was otherwise dull and ig-
norant.

Dase, a German, born in 1824, extremely stupid and dull in
other directions, never able to master a word of any language
but his own, was a mathematical genius. As an instance of his
power, he multiplied correctly, in fifty- four seconds, 79,532,853 by
93,758,479.

Grandmange, a Frenchman, born without legs or arms in
1836, was another example of a mathematical prodigy.

Mondeux, a Frenchman, son of a woodcutter, born in 1826,
possessed an extraordinary arithmetical faculty, although he
could neither read, nor write, nor cipher. He could not remem-
ber a name or address. He solved this problem in a few seconds :
How many quarts of water in a fountain from which a group
of people draw as follows: The first person takes one hundred
quarts and one thirteenth of the remainder ; the second, two hun-
dred quarts and one thirteenth of the remainder ; the third, three
hundred quarts and one thirteenth of the remainder; and so on
until the fountain was emptied ?

Dr. Heim cites the instance of a woman of very limited intelli-
gence and deficient in language, who could give the number of
minutes a person had lived as soon as the age was told her.

There are other examples in literature of mathematical apti-
tude in individuals otherwise defective, but these will sufiice to
illustrate the character of the cases under consideration. When
we remember the deficiency of idiots in general as regards even
the simplest kinds of calculations — such as counting, addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division — the contrast of powers
in the exceptional instances mentioned becomes even more as-
tonishing.

We may deduce from a study of such cases several facts which
are noteworthy. First, the mathematical aptitude in idiocy is
never of a high order. The faculty consists entirely of excessive
powers in mental arithmetic — in simple calculation, which is a
better term to apply to it. Secondly, it is instinctive and con-
genital. It is observed only in the congenital variety of idiots,
imbeciles, and degenerates ; and on careful examination we shall
find anatomical and physiological as well as psychological stig-
mata of degeneration in such cases. Thirdly, much of the faculty
is due to the increased power of visualization — to great develop-
ment of certain parts of the sight centers. Most of us, in mental
arithmetic, compute by means of visual images. We, who have

IDIOTS SAVANTS. 235

been educated to cipher, see tlie figures before us in computation.
Individuals who have been made to employ objects — such as the
fingers, grain, pebbles, or the abacus — visualize these objects in
their mental arithmetic. Indeed, the derivation of the word
calculation recalls the ancient use of pebbles in reckoning. A
psychological analysis of the mental operations required in cal-
culation is a difficult problem, the solution of which is very de-
sirable. Scripture, in his study of arithmetical prodigies, con-
cluded that the faculty of mental arithmetic, as exhibited in his
illustrative cases, depended upon — 1. Accurate memory for a
sufficient length of time. 2. Velocity of memory. 3. Firmness
with which long series of arithmetical associations cling together.
4. Mathematical inclination. 5. Visualization.

It will be noted that the fourth, the mathematical aptitude, is
the obscure factor, which the author did not attempt to explain,
and that the other four points are merely the means of expression
of the mathematical inclination.

Musical Faculty. — The susceptibility of all classes of idiots to
rhythmical sounds or noises has been frequently commented upon
by various authors. Music is the most sensual and the least intel-
lectual of the arts. A musical aptitude in certain idiots is there-
fore not so astonishing in some respects as the possession of the
arithmetical faculty.

One of the most noted examples of idiots savants of this class
was Blind Tom, a pure negro, born in Georgia, in 1849. Born
blind, he showed intelligence only in regard to sound. He learned
to repeat words early, though the words had no meaning to him.
He could repeat whole conversations, but entirely without com-
prehension. His own spontaneous language was never much
more than inarticulate sounds. He could imitate any sound
about him. He could recite with ease anything heard in Greek,
Latin, French, or German. It was a species of echolalia. He
could play on the piano from memory any piece of music, no
matter how intricate, after hearing it but once. He would imi-
tate, note for note, the improvisations of another. He is said to
have retained as many as five thousand musical compositions in
his memory.

Seguin describes (Idiocy, page 405) a blind male idiot with a
remarkable talent for piano-playing, with this same power of
repeating anything after a single hearing.

Helat {La Folie lucicle) tells of a congenitally blind female
idiot with great musical talent. Her voice was correct, and when
once she had heard a piece she knew the words and the music.
This phenomenon excited so much attention that G^raldy, Liszt,
and Meyerbeer visited her.

Dr. Paris (Lancet, February 11, 1888) records the case of an

236 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

idiot, aged fifteen, -unable to pronounce a single word, incapable
of receiving the most elementary education, able to hum correctly
and gracefully a large number of airs, and who did so every day,
always the same and always in the same order, without variation.
While the family was fond of singing, the idiot had never heard
any one sing except the father and mother.

A young woman whom I examined not long ago is an idiot of
low grade, without ability to converse or care for herself, yet
presenting a marvelous memory for music, reproducing, both by
singing and on the piano, numerous musical compositions. Some
intricate instrumental pieces she renders accurately with her
voice in a high falsetto key. Several of her sisters are musicians.

Dagonet {Traiie des maladies mentales) cites the case of an
idiot girl who began to speak at the age of nine years, but was
possessed of a very small vocabulary, and was ignorant of notes.
She had a remarkable aptitude for music, and could repeat upon
the piano compositions heard for the first time. She was the
daughter of distinguished musicians.

Morel {Etudes cliniques) records the history of an idiot boy
who, becoming possessed of a drum, made such rapid progress in
its use in three or four attempts at playing that he was made
drummer in the orchestra at the asylum where he lived. His
father and grandfather had been drummers in the army, and a
normal brother had always had the desire to follow the same
pursuit.

In this class of idiots savants also it is to be noted that the
idiocy is congenital. We observe, too, that the musical faculty,
although well developed in contrast to the general intellectual
paucity, is not of a high order. It consists of a remarkable audi-
tory memory, together with the power of expression, by means of
the vocal musculature or fingers, of the musical memories stored
up in the brain. There is no spontaneous musical expression, no
power of invention. An interesting feature is the evident heredi-
tary character of the talent. In some of the instances cited the
imitation of sounds heard is not restricted to music, but includes
sounds of every kind.

Special Memories. — Winslow records the case of a man who
remembered the day of burial of every person who had died in
the parish for thirty-five years, and who could repeat with perfect
accuracy the names and ages of the deceased and of the mourners
at the funeral. He was a profound idiot, and could not reply in-
telligibly to a single question beyond this, nor be trusted even to
feed himself.

Morel cites the instance of an idiot who was unable to count
twenty, yet could name all the saints of the calendar and the days
of their respective /e/es.

IDIOTS SAVANTS. 237

In some of tlie books on tliese defectives is mentioned an idiot
"with a wonderful memory for English history. When supplied
with the slightest cue, he recounted in measured tones whole
passages of it.

Falret noted an imbecile who could give immediately the days
of birth and death and the principal events in the life of any
celebrated personage mentioned to him.

Such instances of elaboration of special memories where all
other faculties are in abeyance might be multiplied. The cases
above mentioned were, no doubt all of them, examples of extraor-
dinary development of the auditory tracts and centers. There are
other cases in whicn the visual memories are disproportionately
developed, as in idiots with unusual memory for places or faces.*
These patients, too, are congenital defectives.

Imitative Faculty. — Under this caption should probably be
included some of those cited under other headings, for the repeti-
tion of sounds heard, or the delineation of things seen, or the
copying of actions all partake of the nature of imitation. Imita-
tion is an instinct in defectives as it is in normal persons. Some-
times it manifests itself in simple forms, such as echolalia or
echokinesis ; occasionally it is exhibited in a manner so remark-
able as to constitute a true talent. An instance imparted to me
by a friend is in point. It is that of a young man, congenitally
imbecile, but with an astonishing power of imitation of sounds.
The multiform notes and noises of birds and voices of every do-
mestic animal, even the peculiar sounds of sawing and chopping
wood, the creaking of wagons, and the like, are so perfectly
reproduced by him that he is in demand as a partaker in social
entertainments.

The Modeling, Delineative, and Painting Faculties. —
Examples of idiots savants with talents bespeaking disproportion-
ate development of the visual centers, together with the power of
reproduction by modeling, drawing, or painting, are occasionally
to be met with.

Ireland, in his work on idiocy, describes two cases — one with
an aptitude for drawing and wood-carving, and another with a
talent for the designing and construction of buildings.

There was a noted idiot at the Earlswood Asylum who made a
perfect model of a ship — a vessel ready for the sea — with every
block and rope in order, said to be a marvelous specimen of naval
architecture. It took him four years to construct it. He was
able to speak but a few words, and these imperfectly, and could
not follow the meaning of sentences nor write; but he learned

* Thus Drobisch cites the case of an idiot boy whose visualization was so great that he
could repeat word for word a page, even if in Latin, after a single reading.

238 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to copy drawings, whicli "were so excellent and curious as to be
preserved in tlie palace. He liad seen neither sea nor river nor
ship, and had only a representation of a vessel in the middle of
his handkerchief as a guide.

Sollier describes an imbecile girl of six years, unable to read
or write or understand anything, yet gifted with the power to
draw anything she saw. She copied perfectly all the letters of
the alphabet without knowing their names or signification. She
reproduced thus objects and also scenes of which she was witness,
though she comprehended nothing about them.

Gottfried Mind was an imbecile who died in 1814. He was so
skillful in the drawing and painting of cats that he achieved dis-
tinction and became known as the cat's Raphael. Many examples
of his work are to be seen in European art galleries.

Aptitude for Games. — Seguin cites the case of an idiot with
extraordinary ability to play draughts, and there are one or two
other instances of a similar kind on record. It is probable that
such talent depends upon an unusual power of visualization, by
which the necessary positions and moves are foreseen.

Aptitude for Buffoonery. — It is not uncommon to meet
among idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded cases with an aptitude
for drollery, and for witty or humorous remarks and actions.
Not infrequently it amounts to a true talent, and thus justifies
including them among the idiots savants. At the present day the
sayings and pranks of this class of defectives are seldom heard
outside of institutions for their care, but there was a time in his-
tory when the quips and antics of the fools took the place of our
comic papers of to-day. The dramas of Shakespeare have kept
alive our knowledge of the fools of his day, for there are more
than thirty of them who flaunt their weaknesses, folly, wisdom,
and license through his plays. He depicts both natural and arti-
ficial fools, for these were the two classes of buffoons employed to
amuse mediaeval society. The origin of the custom, in England
at least, seems to have been in the legal disposition of the persons
and estates of idiots. They were given into the custody of the
nobility and gentry, who profited sometimes by their estates, and,
clothing them in the familiar livery, made them the butt of ridi-
cule and practical jokes for the amusement of themselves and
their guests and retainers. It is instructive and interesting to
read in this connection Doran's History of Court Fools and Ar-
nim's Nest of Ninnies. The latter book in particular throws
light upon the nature of the custom of keeping domestic fools,
and incidentally illuminates the civilization of the time. Here is
Arnim's description of a court fool in the palace of the King of
Scotland. He was a fat fool, a trifle over three feet high, two
yards in circumference, at the age of forty years :

IDIOTS SAVANTS. 239

His head was small, his hayre long on the same;

One ear was bigger than the other farre;
His forehead full, his eyes shined like a flame,

His nose flat, and his beard small, yet grew square;
His lips but little, and his wit was lesse.
But wide of mouth, few teeth, I must confesse.

His middle thick, as I have said before ;

Indifferent thighs and knees, but very short ;
His legs be square, a foot long and no more ;

Whose very presence made the king much sport.
And a pearl spoone he still wore in his cap.
To eat his meate he loved, and got by hap.

A pretty little foot, but a big hand.

On which he ever wore rings rich and good.

Backward well made as any in that land.
Though thick; and he did come of gentle blood.

But of his wisdom ye shall quickly heare

How this fat fool was made on everywhere.

This court fool could say bright things on occasion, but his
main use to the ladies and lords of the palace was to serve as
victim to practical jokes, cruel, coarse, and vulgar enough to be
appreciated perhaps in the Bowery.

Any quick-witted imbecile or feeble-minded individual in those
days had no difl&culty in securing a good livelihood, and some-
times even prosperity and fame. Under such conditions it became
common for normal individuals to adopt the calling of the jester
or buffoon, and these were known as artificial fools.

Conclusions. — The aptitudes of various kinds described above
as not infrequently encountered in idiots are all of rather low
order. They are never found in any but the congenitally defect-
ive, who usually present the stigmata of degeneration. They
consist chiefly of great powers of memory, visual or auditory, and
of facility in imitation. There is no spontaneous invention. The
idiots sava7its are mere copyists in music, modeling, designing, or
painting ; yet at the same time their talents stand out in strong
contrast to their general feeble-mindedness. As a rule, the apti-
tudes are precociously developed, and are frequently lost before
reaching adult life. The physical basis of such talents must be a
precocious perfection of the cerebral organization in certain areas,
together with a true hyperplasia of tissue in such regions and a
tendency to early degeneration. There must be an increased
number of cellular elements and sensori-motor combinations and
associations in definite parts of the brain. Cases have been de-
scribed in cerebral pathology of misplaced aggregations of such
tissues in the brain under the name of heterotopia of gray matter,
and it is possible that some sucli unequal distribution of the

240 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

structures underlying psycliological processes will be found to
account for the presence of the extraordinary talents of idiots
savants. It is questionable whether Heinecken, the " child of
Ltibeck/' should be included among any of the cases described
here. He died too soon (at the age of four years) for the fact of
mental weakness of any kind to be established ; but his precocity
made him the wonder of his time (1731-'25). He knew the chief
incidents of the Pentateuch at the age of one year, had mastered
all of sacred history at two years, and was intimately acquainted
with modern and profane history and geography, and spoke
French and Latin, besides his native tongue, at the age of three.
Surely such precocity as this must have been due to extraordi-
nary aggregations of gray matter in parts of the brain of a truly
abnormal character.

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES.

By ISEAEL C. KUSSELL,
professor of aeology in the ukiveksity of michigan.

MANY geologists have watched the action of volcanoes in
eruption, and have gazed into their craters when in a state
of mild activity. One of the most striking of the phenomena
revealed at such times is that great volumes of steam are given
off from the molten lava which rises in the craters. This steam
either escapes quietly, as in the case of the Hawaiian volcanoes,
or with explosive violence, as in erux)tions of the Vesuvian type.
It is now conceded by probably all students of volcanoes that the
proximate cause of the violent explosions accompanying many
volcanic eruptions is the sudden escape of highly heated steam.
Most modern theories advanced to account for volcanic phenom-
ena are based on the assumption that steam is the propelling force
which causes the lava to rise from deeply seated sources and to be
extruded at the surface. Steam contained in the molten lava is
thought by Shaler and others to cause the molten rock to rise and
overflow, in much the same way that carbonic acid generated in
dough causes it to expand, or as the carbonic acid in ale makes it
overflow when the cork of a bottle in which it is contained is with-
drawn. In these theories, heat is considered as the prime souroe
of energy, and that, given the heat, steam will be generated which
will force the lava to the surface.

I do not wish to criticise the theories that have been advanced,
or even to attempt to review them, but simply to change the point
of view from which volcanoes have commonly been studied, in
the hope that the phenomena observed will group themselves in
another and perhaps more instructive way. Current theories are

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES. 241

tased largely on what is seen when one looks down into the throat
of a volcano in a state of mild activity ; let us supplement such a
view by endeavoring to form a concej)tion of the conditions that
exist far below the surface.

In many instances volcanoes are known to be situated on lines
of fracture in the earth's crust. In all volcanoes it is evident that
there is a passageway or conduit, leading from an intensely heated
region within the earth, to the surface. These conduits must be
several thousand feet in depth. Indeed, it is not unreasonable to
assume that they may have a depth of several miles or possibly
tens of miles. What one sees, therefore, in looking into a crater
of an active volcano is the summit of a column of molten rock,
the bottom of which is tens of thousands of feet below.

Judd has compared the mild activity of Stromboli to the boil-
ing of mush in a tall vessel, the heat being applied at the bottom.
Steam is generated in the mush, and, rising through it in bub-
bles, elevates the surface. When the bubbles of steam burst,
portions of the viscid material are blown into the air. Such an
analogy is certainly sustained by what is seen at the summit of a
column of molten lava when we look into the crater of a volcano.

In seeking for information concerning the conditions that exist
far below the surface, when a volcano is giving off steam at the
top, we may obtain a few facts to guide us by studying the ruins
of extinct volcanoes and the nature of igneous intrusions as laid
bare by erosion.

Volcanic necks tell something of the conditions that exist
within a volcanic mountain. In more deeply eroded volcanic dis-
tricts one finds dikes and intruded sheets. These are connected,
in reference to mode of origin, with Plutonic plugs, laccolites, and
what I have termed subtuberant mountains.* These various
forms taken by intruded rocks and surface extrusions, as I have
attempted to show in the article just referred to, belong in a
single genetically connected series. A break in the earth's crust
which reaches a region of great heat may be injected with plastic
rock and form a dike ; if the fracture terminates above in a re-
gion of horizontally stratified beds, the magma rising through it
may expand widely, at the same time lifting a broad cover to a
comparatively small height — that is, form an intruded sheet ; or
be more restricted in its expansion, according to its degree of
fusion, depth below the surface, and possibly other causes, and
raise a cover of less diameter to a greater height — that is, form
a laccolite ; or, if a great volume of plastic material is intruded,
give origin to a subtuberant mountain. Should the fissure reach

* On the Nature of Igneous Intrusions. In The Journal of Geology, Chicago, vol. iv,
1896, pp. 177-194.

VOL. L. — 20

242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the earth's surface, molten material may be forced througli it and
a volcanic eruption initiated. In brief, variations in one process
may lead to tlie formation of dikes, sheets, laccolites, and other
forms of intrusion, and to volcanic eruptions. Possibly all these
results might follow from the opening of a single fissure.

In all the instances enumerated the magma may be the same,
so also the source of the heat and the origin of the pressure which
forces the molten rock into the earth's crust, or causes it to be dis-
charged at the surface.

Returning to the hypothesis that steam is the mainspring of
volcanic phenomena, it will be conceded, I think, by most observ-
ers that steam contained in a magma can not be called upon to
account for its rise in a deeply seated fissure so as to form a dike,
or, when the conditions are varied, give origin to laccolites, etc.
Not only are the rocks composing such intrusions, the densest of
igneous rocks, but they are without steam cavities. Besides the
filling of a fissure with plastic or fluid rock, and still more strik-
ingly in the production of other varieties of intrusions, a bulk of
matter, measured in some instances by cubic miles, is forced in
among the solid rocks of the earth's crust. There is thus a bodily
transfer of matter, frequently for long distances, from one place
to another deep within the earth's crust and against an enormous
pressure. All these facts are adverse to the conception that bodies
of liquid or plastic rock are moved by the expansive force of the
steam contained in them. The energy expended in producing igne-
ous intrusions is in numerous instances so far in excess of that
manifest in any explosive volcanic eruption that has been record-
ed— not excepting Cosequina, Sumbawa, or Krakatoa, but rather
combining them all and more in one — that it becomes of a differ-
ent order of magnitude, and a different origin is to be suspected.

In the case of subterranean injections, it is evident that the
source of the lieat which renders the rocks plastic, and the source
of the pressure which forces the plastic material into fissures, etc.,
are distinct and should be separately considered.

The heat manifest in both subterranean and surface igneous
phenomena, as is well known, has been variously accounted for,
but I do not wish to consider this problem at present. The con-
sensus of opinion, however, seems to be that the heat referred to
is mainly and essentially the internal heat of the earth — i. e., the
residual heat of a cooling globe. It is conceded also that the mat-
ter composing the earth at a depth of a few miles below the sur-
face is so highly heated that it would become plastic or even highly
fluid if the pressure under which it exists were removed. The best
conception we can frame of the general physical condition of the
earth is, that it consists of a more or less spherical mass, which is
highly heated and in a potentially plastic condition within, and

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES. 243

that inclosing this inner sphere is a comparatively thin shell of
solid rocks — the passage from the hot and potentially plastic in-
terior to the cold and rigid outer shell being gradual, one merging
with the other by insensible gradations.

The crust of the earth rests on the sphere of plastic material
within and exerts a pressure upon it. Contraction of the pro-
gressively cooling crust also causes pressure to be exerted on the
inner sphere. If the pressure of the crust on the material it in-
closes were equal at all points, the inner mass, except for the effect
of rotation, would be a perfect sphere. Variations in the pressure
of the crust at different localities might result from several causes,
such as unequal cooling in the crust itself, the transfer of material
from the inner sphere into or to the surface of the crust, the shift-
ing of material from one locality to another on the earth's surface,
etc. Of these disturbing conditions I am inclined, provisionally
at least, to ascribe the greatest potency to the effects of erosion,
transportation, and sedimentation on the earth's surface, thus
lightening certain areas and loading others.

If we conceive of the earth as a sphere without rotation, it is
evident, from our present point of view, that it would remain a
sphere only so long as the pressure of the crust on the material
within was equal at all points. Local variations in the pressure
of the crust would deform the inner sphere and result in a change
in he shape of the earth. It is not to the general problems of
isostasy, as formulated by Dutton, that I wish to direct attention,
however, but rather to the results that might be expected to fol-
low should the crust of the earth be broken.

A fracture in the earth'^i crust would establish a line of weak-
ness, which, so far as the reaction of the crust on the interior is
concerned, would be equivalent to a local relief of pressure.
Should a fissure reach the highly heated interior, the rocks in its
vicinity would become plastic and be pressed into the opening,
and tend to widen it both by pressure and by the fusing of its
walls. As the magma from a deep source rose in the fissure, the
resistance to be overcome would be less and less, thus insuring
greater plasticity, and, if it gained the surface, establishing condi-
tions commonly recognized in volcanic eruptions.

Should the plastic rock fail to reach the surface, but cool in
the fracture, a dike would be the result. If the fracture termi-
nated above in a region of horizontal stratified rocks, lateral ex-
pansion of the magma rising in it might occur, and intruded sheets,
laccolite, etc., be formed.

As to the origin of fractures we have but few facts to guide
us. It is well known from the study of faults, dikes and volcanoes,
that breaks, at least in the superficial portion of the earth's crust,
have been of common occurrence. Whether any of these breaks

244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have extended througli what we term the earth's crust is un-
known, but the fact that fissures have in numerous instances be-
come filled with fused rocks is evidence that the breaks referred
to are sometimes of sufficient depth to reach regions of intense
heat, and many facts seem to favor the idea that this highly heated
region is' the potentially plastic interior of the earth.

The principle that areas vfhich become weighted by the shifting
of material on the earth's surface subside, while unloaded areas
rise, has been advocated by several American geologists, and is
now common property. It has frequently been asked, however,
why an area that is being unloaded should cease to rise so long as
erosion continues, and becomes stable or even undergoes a reverse
movement ; and why an area that is having material added to it
should cease to sink and be re-elevated.

In reference to the first of these questions the nature of igne-
ous intrusions seems to furnish an answer. If the rise of a region
of denudation is due to an injection of plastic material beneath it,
in response to the resulting relief of pressure, the reservoir of
highly heated rock forced from below into the cooler rocks above
or a protuberance on the surface of the inner sphere will cool, and
consequently become more and more rigid. When the intruded
rock becomes solid, the portion of the earth's crust lightened by
erosion will be increased in weight by material added from below.
For the reason that the intruded magma tends to fuse the rocks
with which it comes 'in contact, it will be welded to them as
cooling progresses, and when solidification occurs the crust may
have greater strength than before the intrusion. Each of these
changes would tend to check the upward movement. Dikes and
other forms of injections thus tend to strengthen the rocks into
which they are forced in much the same way that fractures in the
earth's crust are healed and the strata strengthened by the depo-
sition of quartz and other minerals in them so as to form veins.
In the case of subterranean injections the cooling of the reservoir
of molten rock will be accompanied by contraction, which would
cause a subsidence of the surface.

Stating the ideas that I have just attempted to convey more
briefly, we should expect that the rise of a denuded area from the
effect of internal pressure causing an influx of plastic material
beneath it would be checked by the cooling and hardening of the
injected material, and a reverse movement or subsidence of the
surface initiated as the injected material contracted on cooling.

I am well aware that in these suggestions we are dealing with
a single portion of a complex machine and that other results than
those considered may follow. That the sole cause of the rise of
an eroded area is not the injection of a molten magma beneath is
apparent from the fact that such an injection would cause a rise

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES. 245

in temperature in the rocks above, and thus by expanding them,
increase their upward tendency. The subsequent cooling of these
heated and possibly metamorphosed rocks would also tend to re-
newed subsidence of the surface. In other words, subterranean
intrusions are accompanied by an abnormal rise of the isogeo-
therms and their loss of heat by a return to normal conditions.

In progressively loaded areas, as has been pointed out by
Reade, Shaler, and others, there is a blanketing of the earth's heat
and a rise of the isogeotherms ; the accompanying expansion of
the rocks tends to check subsidence and limit accumulation. The
processes of erosion, transportation, and sedimentation in special
areas are thus limited by conditions within the earth. Erosion
favors elevation until the plastic material transferred to the region
beneath the lightened area cools and hardens. A decrease in ele-
vation due to contraction then ensues, and is accompanied by a
decrease in erosion, which comes to an end when the land is re-
duced to base level. Loading favors sedimentation by causing
subsidence until the thickened sediments become heated and by
reason of their expansion elevate the surface to or above base
level. There is a mutual interaction beneath the earth's crust
also, since, if only one region of erosion and one of sedimentation
are considered, the checking of elevation in a region of erosion by
the cooling and hardening of injected magma beneath will give
greater resistance to the flow of i3lastic material from beneath the
region of sedimentation.

Deep erosion of subtuberant mountains should reveal a central
area of igneous rock surrounded by a belt of metamorphosed
rocks which on its outer border, in case the injection occurred in
ordinary sedimentary strata, should pass into unaltered sand-
stone, shale, etc. In such an instance a radial section should re-
veal a gradation from igneous rock through metamorphosed rocks
to unaltered sedimentary beds. The breadth of the central core
of igneous rock would vary with the size of the intrusion, and,
down to a certain limit at least, with the depth of the plane of
erosion. One or more generations of dikes might occur in either
the central area or in metamorphosed or sedimentary rocks sur-
rounding it. Great intrusions if deeply eroded would thus pre-
sent the conditions sometimes cited as examples of "regional
metamorphism." Some of the features observed in the crystal-
line region of Canada seem to illustrate the surface features that
would be found if a great subtuberant uplift should be pared
away by erosion.

The fact that a large majority of volcanoes are situated near
the sea has led to the supposition that sea water gaining access to
highly heated rocks is the chief if not the essential cause of vol-
canic eruptions. The hypothesis, however, that the sea is the

246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

source of the water wliich, converted into steam, takes sucli a con-
spicuous part in volcanic eruption is open to several objections.

In almost all land areas the rocks below tlie surface are satu-
rated with water, the source of which is mainly rain. Excepting
that the pressure of the sea on its floor tends to force water into
the rocks beneath, there does not seem any good reason for con-
cluding that the earth's crust where covered by the sea is more
highly charged with water than the portions beneath land areas.

Another argument for the presence of sea water in volcanoes
is that after eruption the country about a volcano is sometimes
whitened for many miles with salt, and also that some of the
vapors arising from volcanic vents are such as might be expected
to occur if the substances contained in sea water were sufficiently
heated. It is to be remembered, however, that large bodies of
salt derived in some instances from the evaporation of sea water
occur among stratified rocks, and also that many sedimentary de-
posits are saturated with saline water. It thus becomes evident
that communication between the conduit of a volcano and the sea
is not the only means by which saline water can come in contact
with molten rocks.

It is well known that volcanoes as a rule are located near the
borders of continents, or on the floor of the sea. This fact is more
in harmony, however, with the idea proposed by Dana, that the
margins of continents are determined by the location of weak
belts in the earth's crust, along which maximum movement takes
place, than that the presence of surface water bodies is essential
to the existence of volcanoes. In support of this conclusion it
may be pointed out that volcanoes of recent date occur in the
Great Basin, hundreds of miles distant from the Pacific. The
Great Basin is a region of faults, and as much a belt of weak-
ness in the earth's crust as if it had chanced to be situated near
the sea.

Owing to the increase of pressure with depth, it is evident that
cavities in rocks in which any considerable bodies of water can be
stored must become less and less frequent as the distance below
the surface increases. As has been shown by Van Hise, at a depth
in excess of about thirty thousand feet what may be termed ap-
preciable cavities can not exist. Rocks under pressure become
compact, so that deeply seated rocks must be less porous than
similar material near the surface. These considerations lead to
the conclusion that water- charged portions of the earth's crust are
superficial. Hence the water given off by volcanoes in the form
of steam, and probably also the gases produced by the dissocia-
tion of the elements composing water and the vaporization of the
various salts it contains, must reach volcanic conduits in their
upper portions. These considerations add strength to the conclu-

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES. 247

sion advanced on a previous page, that the primary force which
causes lava to rise in the conduit of a volcano is not steam pres-
sure.

How molten lava hecomes charged with water can only be
conjectured. It is well known that many liquids, especially when
highly heated and under heavy pressure, will absorb gases. In a
similar way we may conceive that liquid or plastic rock, on coming
in contact with water, will absorb the steam produced.

When molten lava rising in the conduit of a volcano passes
through water-charged rocks and nears the surface, pressure is
relieved and the occluded steam escapes. This escape is either
quiet or explosive, dependent on the nature of the magma in
which the steam is dissolved. If the magma is highly fluid, as in
the case of many basic lavas when extruded, the steam escapes
quietly ; but if the magma is viscous, as is the usual condition of
acid lavas when erupted, violent explosions are apt to occur. The
quantity of steam absorbed also influences the fusibility of a
magma. Apparently the larger the quantity of occluded steam,
the more liquid the molten rock becomes. Greater freedom may
thus be afi^orded for the passage of a magma in the upper por-
tion of the conduit through which it rises than obtains at lower
levels. Something of the intermittent character of volcanic
eruptions may depend on this cause. Probably, also, the quantity
of water present in a magma has an influence on the nature of the
minerals formed as it cools. For this reason one would expect
differences to appear in the mineralogical composition of rocks
formed from magma that have cooled near the surface, and those
that failed to reach the water- charged portion of the earth's crust.

The intimate connection between subterranean injections and
volcanoes leads to the suggestion that the domes above intruded
magmas may become fractured and give origin to volcanoes which
would be supplied by local reservoirs. Something like " craters
of elevation " may be thus formed.

If two or more cisterns of molten rock should be formed in
the earth's crust near each other, or at different levels near the
same radius of the earth, and fractures formed above them which
would admit of the escape of their material to the surface, the
striking phenomena of two adjacent volcanoes erupting inde-
pendently of each other might result. Such an occurrence is ren-
dered more probable by the fact that reservoirs beneath sub-
tuberant mountains are supplied through fissures from below,
which might become closed, thus isolating bodies of injected ma-
terial in the earth's crust. Even if the feeding fissures were not
closed, the large cisterns of fused rock to which they lead might
discharge some of their material without immediately atlecting
the plastic central mass of the earth, which in these sugges-

248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions is considered tlie primary source from wliich injections are
derived.

It lias been thought by some who have speculated on the
condition of the earth's interior that isolated reservoirs of fused
rock exist in the generally cool earth's crust, due to unequal cool-
ing ; another origin for such lakes of lava may be postulated if
we consider them as injected magmas not yet cooled.

A mental picture of the probable occurrences that give origin
to subterranean intrusions and volcanoes, and account for many
observed phenomena in this connection, may be sketched in out-
line as follows :

The earth is hot and potentially plastic within, and cold and
rigid at the surface. Unequal cooling and the shifting of material
on the surface are disturbing conditions that tend to change the
shape of the plastic interior, and to crumple and break the crust.
If a fissure forms in the lower surface of the crust, the poten-
tially plastic material beneath will become plastic on account of
the removal of resistance to pressure, and be forced into the break,
and a dike be formed. Under certain conditions the plastic ma-
terial rising in a fissure may expand between layers of stratified
rock so as to form laccolites, subtuberant mountains, etc.

If a break extends entirely through the crust, molten material
forced into it may reach the surface. As the molten lava rises in
such a break, it passes through rocks that are more and more
highly water-charged, the water is vaporized, or perhaps its ele-
ments are dissociated, and the vapors and gases formed are ab-
sorbed by the fluid rock. As the lava comes to the surface the
steam and gases absorbed under great pressure escape and furnish
some of the most striking phenomena of volcanic eruptions. Loss
of heat as a magma nears the surface also favors the escape of
occluded gases.

In this view of the nature of volcanoes it is evident that an
arrest of pressure on the reservoirs from which they draw their
lavas would stop their action. If a fissure extends through the
earth's crust to the potentially plastic interior, it is difiicult to see
how an outflow of molten material would be checked unless the
conduit should become closed. Under the vast pressure that
exists at a depth of several miles it is impossible to comprehend
how fissures can exist, but the plastic material beneath is under
pressure of a similar order of magnitude, tending to force it out
through any opening that may be formed. A near balance be-
tween the pressure tending to close a fissure and the pressure on
the magma below tending to maintain a communication with the
surface may therefore be conceived to exist ; when the balance is
in favor of extrusion volcanic eruptions follow, and when the
reverse is the case the conduits become closed.

IGNEOUS INTRUSIONS AND VOLCANOES. 249

The evidence fiirnislied by dikes and other intrusions, as "well
as by volcanoes, points to the conclusion that the magmas sup-
plied to them are derived from deeply seated sources, but the fact
that the material forming intrusions and the products of vol-
canoes differ widely among themselves has been cited as evidence
that they could not have been derived from a common reservoir.
This objection is based on the assumption that the highly heated
material forming the earth's interior is homogeneous. It has
been argued that, if the material within the surface shell was not
homogeneous — excepting so far as density increases with pressure
or is influenced by the increase of heat with depth — an adjustment
would be established by the flow of matter from one locality to
another. In reply, it may be said, however, that this conclusion
is inconsistent with the idea of a solid but potentially plastic inner
sphere. From the point of view assumed in this essay, it appears
that what may be termed a local flow of the matter comprising
the earth's interior would not occur unless there was a local relief
or a local increase of pressure. The idea that the earth as a whole
is a rigid body is in harmony with the conclusions of emiUent
physicists and astronomers, while the assumption of local plas-
ticity due to local relief of pressure is consistent with the observed
movements of elevation and depression familiar to geologists.

Returning to the consideration of the passage of the conduit
of a volcano through the water- charged portion of the earth's
crust, some of the phenomena displayed by dormant volcanoes
may perhaps be explained. If the lava in the conduit of a vol-
cano cools and hardens below the water-charged zone, the life of
the volcano to which the conduit leads may be considered as
ended. If the cooling takes place at the surface or within the
water-charged layer, steam will continue to be generated below
the obstruction, and, if means for its gradual escape are not fur-
nished, will ultimately lead to an explosion which may blow away
a volcanic mountain. In such an occurrence the main explosion
would probably be preceded by a breaking of the rocks and pos-
sibly subterranean explosions which would bring temporary relief
of pressure. The behavior of many dormant volcanoes and the
earthquakes that frequently accompany a renewal of their activ-
ity might thus be explained.

When igneous intrusions enter the water-charged portion of
the earth's crust but do not reach the surface, steam is also gen-
erated, and may assist such intruded magmas in opening passages
for themselves and in elevating the domes that are raised above
them. When an intruded magma' meets a large body of subter-
ranean water a violent explosion must result, which, when near
the surface, would blow away the dome above, leaving a depres-
sion of the type of Coon Butte, Arizona, or Lonar Lake, India.

250 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The suggestions offered in this paper are in harmony with the
conclusion that many of the phenomena accomj)anying volcanic
eruptions are due to the escape of steam occluded in molten lava,
but are opposed to the hypothesis that the rise of lavas from
deeply seated sources is due to the same cause. The source of
the heat and the source of the pressure manifest when a magma
rises through a volcanic conduit are considered to be distinct,
and in the main of different origin.

NATURAL HISTORY IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOLS

OF FRANCE.

By fanny BIGNON.

DURING the last few years instruction in our primary schools
has been undergoing an interesting evolution. The authori-
ties have broken away from superannuated traditions, and have
arranged courses of a wholly new character. There are no more
long analyses, endless conjugations, and dictations of catchwords.
While language, according to the tyrant of words and syllables,
may be a loser by this change, I wish to show that science, and
especially natural history, is a gainer.

The natural sciences have indeed had a place in the primary
schools, and, in order to get his certificate of graduation, a child
of eleven years was obliged to make a compilation on some such
subject as the following :

1. Breathing. What happens to the air in the lungs ? A part
of this air combines ivitli the heat of the blood. Results. (This
topic was given at Brest in 1893.)

2. Digestion. Absorption of foods. Stomachic digestion. In-
testinal digestion. (Herault, 1893.)

3. What is an insect ? Transformations of insects. (Haute-
Garonne, 1894.)

4. A flower. Its composition. The role of pollen. Describe
the ovary. (Herault, 1893.)

5. The characteristics of lime. Its function in the soil. Means
used to furnish lime to soils which lack it. (Meuse, 1893.)

From these examples it will be seen that all branches of natu-
ral history are touched upon, but i^hysiology is treated more fully.
We will not stop to criticise the method of putting the questions,
and possibly some of the inaccuracies of statement may be laid to
typographical errors. They are taken from a work by Messrs.
Barreau and Bouchet, the former a supervisor at Paris, the latter
a college principal.

But let us consider the methods used to give to our children

NATURAL HISTORY IN FRENCH SCHOOLS. 251

the extensive knowledge which is expected of them. They listen
to lessons which the teacher imbibes ordinarily from a text-book
designed for the special purpose of preparing candidates for the
graduating examinations. In this new kind of Bible from which
the teacher refreshes himself each day, physiology, zoology, bot-
any, and geology are methodically arranged by layers or slices, of
which a dose of four layers (irrespective of the thickness of the
layer) must be absorbed per month. The scholar has a text-book
which is a resume of the teacher's, filled with indigestible prose,
crowded with scientific terms, where classification follows classifi-
cation. After learning so many Greek and Latin derivatives, will
there be time to observe the dentition of an animal, to analyze a
flower, or compare stones? No; the natural- history collections
of our schools remain under lock and key ; the teachers forget to
use them, and the scholars to look at them. But the text-book
must be learned. Does the teacher make his own drawings ?
Usually he contents himself with the more or less exact illustra-
tions of the text-book. How could he possibly find time iov draw-
ing, when in one lesson he must describe the whole human skele-
ton and define rachitis, caries, ankylosis, dislocations, fractures,
and sprains, and in another give pell-mell the characteristics of
the Clienopodiacecz, Polygonacece, Euphorbiacece^, Urticacece, Lau-
rinece, JuglandacecE, Cupuliferm, Salicinem, Betulacec2; and Pla-
tanec2, !

Picture to yourself an audience of youthful Parisians who, for
the most part, have never seen hemp except in cloth, or oak ex-
cept in a chair or table, a prey to this discriminating instruction !
Some of them go to sleep or lose themselves in reveries where
natural historj^- has no j^art ; others refresh themselves with candy
under their desk tops. And this is the best thing they could do.
Just as insects, when placed in a deadly atmosphere, resist as-
phyxia by closing their stigmata and ceasing to breathe, so our
children escape the harmful effects of our instruction by closing
their eyes and ears. The result is threefold : On leaving the pri-
mary school they know nothing about natural history, but some-
times think they know considerable; secondly, this ill-directed
study not only has not developed their habits of observation and
their judgment, but has accustomed them to speak inaccurately
and carelessly of things of which they have no knowledge ; and,
thirdly, most of these little savants hold science in great contempt.

Is this what the reformers in education expect ? We do not
believe it, and we think that they may rightly hope for something
better if the instruction be given by the only method which is in
harmony with the subject : that of observation and experimenta-
tion. Collections must be made not only of curiosities but of
common things ; there must be a garden where the seed may grow

252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and the flowers bloom ; and there must be a collection of the com-
mon stones and rocks.

The teacher should prepare for his lesson by observation of
the specimens which he is to show ; the children should examine,
describe, compare, and classify. They should not consider in one
lesson all the af)etalous families, but should learn to know the
gilliflower, the violet, the blossom of the oak, all which they may
gather for themselves. They may perhaps be ignorant of dis-
eases of the bone and the operations they require, but they will
know the furnishings of a cat's mouth and the peculiarities of
the rabbit's, and what distinguishes them both from ours. At the
end of the year they will have a very small burden of natural his-
tory, but they will have acquired good habits of mind, their intel-
lectual faculties will be developed, and, what is even more impor-
tant, they will love science and will have a taste for learning.
The habit of observation will be exercised out of school hours,
and even after they have graduated they will experience an in-
creased pleasure in their walks which will react upon their phys-
ical and moral health. — Translated from the Bulletin de la Societe
Zoologique de France, tome 20.

-♦■♦-•-

THE BORDER LAND OF TRAMPDOM.

By C. W. noble.

LAST summer it was my fortune to spend the vacation on a
unique trip through Michigan. My chum and I went down
to Berrien Springs to try our hand selling books, but a week of
this kind of life sufficed to show us that the rapid road to fortune
did not lie here, as the advertisements would lead us to believe,
and we abandoned books, bag, and baggage and joined the great
army of men "on the road." Our outfit was very simple. We
bought a coil of steel wire, a pair of pliers, and a wooden frame
to bend the wire over to make tidy-holders. This was our means
of support. Besides this we had a small satchel containing an
extra shirt apiece, two clean collars, and other things which we
might otherwise find necessary to buy on the way. When we
traveled we commonly shipped our goods by freight to some
point about a week in advance on our route and then made our
way there as best we could, supporting ourselves en route by sell-
ing our tidy-holders. On these occasions we varied our costumes
somewhat. We buttoned our clean collars to our collar buttons
in the back of our shirts so that they hung down our backs under
our vests, and carried them there until we needed them, when we
made a change. We also wore overalls, which served to keep our

THE BORDER LAND OF TRAMPDOM. 253

clothes clean wliile traveling and were worn underneatli while
selling goods. These tricks are common property among road-
sters, being the outcome of stern necessity. We soon learned
that if a person looked as though he needed to sell his goods it
was very hard to do so, but if he looked as though he was simply
doing it for the pleasure of the thing it was very easy. By try-
ing successively various ways of selling we soon became experts
and could sell at nearly every house we tried.

Probably there exists nowhere a stranger medley of people
than the inhabitants of that indefinite place known as "on the
road." Their numbers are constantly lessened by desertion and
as constantly augmented by fresh arrivals. As far as I could
learn by personal inquiry, there are two classes of reasons which
throw these persons on the road — one a subjective one, restlessness,
and the other an objective one, misfortune.

As for the proportion between the two, my opinion would not
carry much weight, as I was with these people only one summer,
and hardly learned any more than that the proportion varies
greatly. At the time I did not make any classified study of each
person, although I learned as well as possible from personal con-
versation the causes of their condition. The cases which I can
recollect now seem to be about evenly divided between those who
go on the road from choice and those who do so from necessity.
I have reason to believe, however, that this is not the normal
proportion, those who had to travel being more numerous than
usual. Whenever I found veterans I found them complaining of
the great number of recruits. As one tramp expressed it, " It^s
gittin' so a respectable 'boe [hoboe] can't get a hand out any-
where no more. This whole d country is on the bum."

I. Tlie class ivho are on the road from preference is by far the
more complicated. Perhaps I could describe it better by dividing
it into two subheads — the tramp and the roadster proper. With
each of these two classes we had about equal experience. At dif-
ferent periods we could be classed with each ; we traveled, ate, and
slept with them and were received into their number. I will dis-
cuss them separately.

(a) Tramps. — The first characteristic that strikes me as I re-
call my experience with them is their indefiniteness. Josiah
Flynt, in his articles on tramps, has taken only the elite of the
" profesh " — the tramp whose habits are born and bred into him
and can hardly ever be entirely overcome. Besides these there
is another class, last summer more numerous than the regular
tramp, who would be placed on the border land of trampdom. They
are traveling merely for the time being, and for the time being
are no less distinctly tramps. They are men thrown out of work,
who go on the road at first perhaps to find work. They get in

254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

witli tlie tramps, like their life, and travel with them. Some of
them seem to be actuated by a genuine desire to see the country,
others by a simple love of adventure and change. This latter
class are liable to degenerate into real tramps, but the former are
pretty sure to get tired of the hard life and settle down again.
They never regard themselves as tramps, and if they beg do so
feeling that they lower themselves by it. As a rule they much
prefer to work in paj^ment of their meals, or even take two or three
days' work and then pay for what they eat until their money is
exhausted. They are uniformly recruited from the working
population of cities, men under thirty years of age, who though
without education have a desire to see the world and have been
emploj^ed in a situation where they have come in contact with
ex-roadsters. Under favorable conditions they would develop into
such a type as the average "prominent citizen" of our small
towns. They possess energy, skill, and intelligence, but lack woe-
fully in opportunity.

The tramp temporarily on the road from a love of adventure
can scarcely be distinguished from the dyed-in-the-wool hoboe.
He is in most cases recruited from the same city population, yet
all classes of society are represented. One night we were coming
home from Cadillac to Grand Rapids in a freight car with thirty-
three others, and the question of what to do when we arrived at
the Rapids was being discussed.

The day before several of the " lads " had been " pulled " at the
Rapids for "bumming the freights," and the news was by tliis
time known to all knights of the road for several hundred miles.
Plans for evading the " cops " were discussed, and the question of
the legal aspect of the case came up. To my surprise, one of the
toughest of the lot dropped his tramp dialect and gave a very
good discussion of the case. We began to question him, and
when he found that we too had seen college days he began to cite
cases, quote State laws from several different States, and, in short,
gave a regular lawyer's brief. He afterward told us that he had
graduated from a law school in New York city.

Tramps as a class are young men. I do not know what be-
comes of them when they are old or whether they ever get old,
and, as far as I could discover, they do not know either. Their
happy-go-lucky method of living leads them to give very little
thought to the future, but the fact still remains that an old man
can not live as they do. They uniformly travel by night and
sleep by day. It is no uncommon sight to see fifteen or twenty of
these lusty fellows asleep in the shade of some watering tank, and
if you would take the pains to climb up the ladder and into the
tank you would probably find a little room over the water occu-
X)ied by four or five more. They are not so universally drunken

THE BOEDER LAND OF TRAMPDOM. 255^

as the temperance advocates would have us suppose. One time
when we were traveling by freight two of the lads brought on a
bottle of whisky, and one of them offered it to several of us suc-
cessively. Nobody would drink with him and he became abusive.
The boys took his bottle away from him and threw it overboard,
and compelled him to sit quiet until he fell asleep. But, on the
other hand, their private morals are abominable. They seem to
have no idea of personal purity whatever. I knew of one instance
of a woman tramp who was supported by several male tramps
with whom she traveled.

If you ask a tramp where he is going, he will probably answer
vaguely, "Oh, down South, I guess," or "Out West," or some
other equally indefinite place. If you urge him still further he
may mention some State, but that will be as much as he can tell.
They are like Wandering Jews, traveling because they can not stop.
I saw only one place where any large number of tramps make a
point of meeting, and that is the fruit region around St. Joseph.
We picked berries there for a while during the season. Tramps
swarmed there, together with large numbers of working people
from Chicago and a number of ignorant foreign women from no-
body knows where. They picked for two and a half cents a quart and
boarded themselves — that is, slept on the ground and boiled stolen
potatoes in a tomato can. At the little village of Stevensville,
the center of the district, dance booths were erected, beer sold at
three cents, and each night was made hideous by the squeaking
of the fiddles and the drunken songs of the dancers. Finally, a
murder occurred, and in desperation the farmers drove the whole
gang away with shotguns. I learned from those who had been
there that in the hop fields of New York and Wisconsin similar
scenes occur. Many go direct from the berries to the hops.

(6) The roadster proper is distinguished from the tramp by
having a "graft," or in other terms a visible means of support.
The graft consists of any method at all to gain money aside from
begging or chance jobs. For instance, our tidy-holders were "an
out-of-sight good graft." We found one tramp who sold a kind
of soap made by himself, which he guaranteed to take out any
spot whatever. It really did so, but the spot was pretty sure to
reappear the next day. I knew another who sold soap which looked
like Castile. A week after it was bought it dried up into half its
original size and became absolutely worthless. Another had made
a sore on his arm with acid, and begged by showing this sore and
telling some pitiful tale. As for such means of exciting sympathy
their name is legion.

I found that there are several firms throughout the country
who make it a business to supply grafts to tramps. For example,
there are publishing houses where the professional beggar may

256 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

obtain printed cards which will be of great assistance to him.
The one-legged man will find a selection of most heart-rending
poetry under titles such as The Woodman's Lament or The Rail-
road Boy's Appeal. The lame, the halt, and the blind are all pro-
vided with cards at so much per hundred. Another firm will
make a specialty of so-called high-class novelties, and will issue a
Mammoth Catalogue, probably advertised with a picture of a cat.
Here you will find listed pewter spoons at twenty-five cents per
dozen, tied with pink ribbon in half-dozen lots, and each spoon
labeled sterling silver and done up separately in white tissue
paper. Spectacles may be bought for two dollars and a quarter
per dozen for the man who " just found a pair of gold-bowed spec-
tacles down the road, and if they fit you, you may have them for
two dollars, as I have no use for them." Not all grafts, however,
are dishonest. The sale of pencils, paper, and in fact any article
sold by tramps, would come under this definition.

There is also a large number of persons in this class whose
employment is not at first sight apparent. Professional gamblers
and book-makers are obliged by the nature of their employment
to be on the move constantly. When in luck they spend their
money lavishly, yet in case of pinch they take to the freight with-
out a grumble. We traveled quite a distance with two such
characters. They were dressed in immaculate linen, tailor-made
suits, and derbies, and looked entirely out of place. In this class
there belong a number of people who are not tramps in any sense
of the word. The chronic book agent is an example. They fol-
low the occupation because they have something in their charac-
ter which will not allow them to remain quiet. Most women on
the road might be classed among these — indeed, i)ermanent can-
vassers are more often women than men.

The women on the road seem to be much more irreclaimable
than the men. They have less true politeness, less sense of honor,
and if dishonest are much more subtle. In a religious commu-
nity they are invariably religious, and have uniformly been
abandoned by their husbands and have six children dependent on
their efi;orts. Male agents, as a rule, will be fair with each other
and have a strong esprit de corps, but for the female agent every-
thing is fish that comes into her net.

There are several trades whose members seem condemned to
be perpetually on the road. Printers and hotel cooks are a case
to the point. We traveled with a hotel cook for a couple of weeks
who is a good example of his class. He had at different times been
a brakeman, a school teacher, an expert accountant, a bookkeeper,
a sailor, an agent, a basket-maker, and a cook. If necessity de-
manded, he could be anything else on short notice, as we soon
found out. It seemed impossible for him to settle down. When

THE BORDER LAND OF TRAMPDOM. 257

lie traveled lie always spoke to the cook In some hotel at meal
times and received a good meal gratis, a favor which he would
repay some time if chance offered.

The greater part of this class perform no economic function
whatever. Printers do not travel of necessity, but simply because
it has become a custom with their trade. Agents of various
sorts, of course, do perform a function, yet their work could be
done as well if left to the retail stores. They make more profit on
their goods than does the average retailer.

All of these classes have one thing in common — a roving dispo-
sition— and are divided by the possession or lack of other quali-
ties. If the character we are discussing has the tramp instinct, but
lacks both in mental ability and moral stamina, he will be a mere
tramp ; grant him some degree of mental ability, and he takes up
a graft. If we give him a moral stamina without mental ability,
we have the man temporarily tramping to see the country, while
if we give him both intelligence and moral fiber he becomes a can-
vasser or roadster proper.

II. The class ivho travel from necessity is one of the most in-
teresting spectacles in the border land of trampdom. Here we
see the real tramp in the process of formation. When a young
unmarried laborer is thrown out of employment and finds none
where he is, he generally stays until his money is exhausted and
then goes on the road in search of work. His case is genuine, but
he is brought into disrepute because all tramps pretend to belong
to this class. If he finds work within a short time, his experience
will not result very badly for him, but if he is forced to remain a
tramp for a month or so he is quite likely to lose his independ-
ence and join the ranks for good. In any case it is easier for him
to take to the road in event of another lack of employment, and
each time he does so he is more liable to become a permanent
tramp.

It is surprising how large a number of men have belonged to
this class at one period or another. Many laboring men when
traveling prefer to go by freight in order to save expense. They
do not think it a disgrace at all. Indeed, they rather regard
ability to make one's way rapidly over the country without ex-
pense as an important part of their education, and the more I
know of the vicissitudes in the lives of our workingmen, the more
I am inclined to agree with them.

In dealing with the tramp question we must consider the dis-
tinctions just noted. The man who travels simply because he
wants to, wastes his energy and ought to be suppressed, both for
his own good and the good of society in general. But with the
man who travels because he has to things are very different. He
must travel. It is a critical time in his life. Forces are acting on

TOL. L. — 21

258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

him which, tend to weaken his self-reliance, his honesty, and his
self-respect, and bring him to the level of the common tramp. If
he is given an opportunity of earning his living as a man and is
treated like a man, chances are in his favor, but if he is forced to
accept charity like a tramp he is very likely to become a tramp. I
believe the establishment of municipal wood yards, run on the plan
of those now found in many cities, to be the proper solution of the
tramp problem. In these a meal or a night's lodging is given in
payment for two or three hours' wood cutting. Then the co- oper-
ation of the citizens must be enlisted. They must cease entirely
all private charity of this sort and send tramps to the wood yard.
In this manner tramp life will lose the attraction of an easy,
worthless existence. The wood yard will become abhorrent to the
genuine tramp, but will be welcomed by those who are really
forced on to the road by lack of work. The tramp who finds him-
self in this manner paying his way will in some measure regain
his self-respect and will stand a better chance of being reclaimed.

♦»»

SKETCH OF HENRY DARWIN ROGERS.

THE family of which the " Rogers brothers " were conspicuous
members furnishes a striking instance of the concurrence of
consanguinity and affinity of genius and mental tendencies, and
its history afiiords a marked confirmation of the doctrine of hered-
itary genius. Instances of sons inheriting the mental qualities
and capabilities from their fathers, and of brothers achieving
distinction in allied or different lines of effort, are common enough
and may be cited by the dozen, but very few can be found where
so many members of the family became eminent at the same time
and in fields so close to one another. In this family we have the
father and four sons, all able teachers, and all becoming distin-
guished as geologists or chemists, and all — the brothers at least —
gaining their fame on so nearly the same fields that they were
able to co-operate with one another in experiments and in the
preparation of papers. Doubtless the occupation of their father,
which made him the academic as well as the parental teacher of
the elder brothers, had much to do with shaping their tastes and
giving direction to their studies, while the youngest, we learn,
was taught under their direction. The relations of this quintet
and of their work are admirably set forth in the late Dr. Ruschen-
berger's memorial sketch, which is our chief source of informa-
tion concerning all of them.

Sketches have already been given of Prof. William B. Rogers,
the second of the four brothers, in the ninth volume of the Popu-

SKETCH OF HENRY DARWIN ROGERS. 259

lar Science Monthly, of James Blytlie Rogers, the eldest of them,
in the June number, and of Robert Empie Rogers, the fourth, in
October, 1896.

Henry Darwin Rogers, the third of the brothers, was born
in Philadelphia, August 1, 1808, and died near Glasgow, Scotland,
May 29, 18G6. His middle name was given him in honor of Eras-
mus Darwin, of whose poem, The Botanic Garden, his father was
a great admirer. He was educated at Baltimore and at Williams-
burg, Va., where his father was Professor of Natural Philosophy
and Mathematics in William and Mary College from 1819 till
1828, the year of his death. The first notice we find of Henry's
early work is the mention in Dr. Ruschenberger's sketch of a school
set up by him and his brother William in the suburbs of Balti-
more. In January, 1830, when he was not yet twenty-two years
old, he was elected Professor of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy
in Dickinson College. During the year in which he held the pro-
fessorship he edited a monthly scientific magazine. The Messenger
of Useful Knowledge, to which his brother contributed a series of
short articles on the Formation of Dew, and in which educational,
literary, and political articles and selections from foreign journals
were also published. He resigned his professorship at the end of
the year, and in 1831 went with Robert Dale Owen to England,
where, with aid afforded him by his brother William, he studied
chemistry in the laboratory of Dr. Edward Turner, and attended
other scientific lectures in London, including those of De la Beche
on geology. He returned to Philadelphia in the summer of
1833, and in the ensuing winter delivered a course of lectures on
geology in the hall of the Franklin Institute. He was made a
member of this society, on the nomination of Alexander Dallas
Bache, in January, 1834; was a member of its Board of Man-
agers from 1838 till 1843 ; and resigned his membership in it in
March, 1848.

Having received the degree of Master of Arts from the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania in 1834, he was elected Professor of Geol-
ogy and Mineralogy in that institution in 1835. This chair he
held — giving regular instruction — till 1846, when he resigned.
One of the fruits of his labors there was the small publication, A
Guide to a Course of Lectures on Geology, delivered in the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania.

In 1835 Mr. Rogers was appointed by the Legislature of that
State to make a geological and mineralogical survey of New
Jersey. He published a small preliminary report of the progress
of his work in 1836, and in 1840 a larger report, with maps,
entitled Description of the Geology of the State of New Jersey.
The report of 1836 gave the first descriptive section that was
made of the cretaceous formation of that State, and the first pub-

26o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lished results of systematic field studies of a system which has
since been elaborately investigated by other geologists.

The Geological Society of Pennsylvania, though its career was
only brief — 1833 to 1836 — lived long enough and was vigorous
enough to secure the institution by the Legislature in 1836 of a
geological survey of that State. On the organization of the sur-
vey. Prof. Rogers was appointed geologist, with James Curtis
Booth and John F. Frazer assistant geologists, and Robert E.
Rogers, the fourth of the " Rogers brothers," chemist. Six annual
reports of the progress of this survey were made to the Legisla-
ture from 1846 to 1852, when it was suspended through the failure
of the two houses to make an appropriation for its further prose-
cution. For the next ten years — 1842 to 1851 — Prof. Rogers was
employed by various coal companies as an expert. During this
period — in 1846 — he established his residence in Boston. In 1855
the preparation of a final report of the Pennsylvania Geological
Survey was committed to him, on condition that he should re-
ceive sixteen thousand dollars, should furnish the State one
thousand copies of the book, and should own the copyright of it.
In order to command the best work possible with the amount
appropriated by the State, he had the printing and engraving of
the book done in Edinburgh, more cheaply and quickly than they
could be afforded in like style in the United States, and removed
there in order to supervise them. The report, which embodies the
results of eighteen years of labor, brought the author fame and
applause, but pecuniary loss instead of profit ; for the cost of it
exceeded the appropriation by many thousand dollars. The book,
in two quarto volumes, contains 1682 pages, is illustrated by 778
woodcuts and diagrams in the text, 69 plates, and 18 folded sheets
of sections, and was published by W. Blackwood & Sons (Lon-
don and Edinburgh), and J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia,
in 1858. The highest commendation was given to this work by
Prof. Rogers's successor on the geological survey, who said that,
on the reading of the special memoirs at the end of the second
volume, there could be " no sentiment but one of admiration for
the breadth of his views and the clearness, force, and elegance of
his delineations. No geological paper has ever appeared excelling
in every good quality his memoir on coal."

In a report of the proceedings of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, of which Prof. Rogers was a member, dated
May 28, 1867, these words appear : " His first systematic geo-
logical labor was that of conducting the survey of the State of
New Jersey. . . . While thus engaged, a similar survey of the
great State of Pennsylvania was provided for by the Legisla-
ture, and placed under his direction. . . . During the early prog-
ress of this work he produced in conjunction with his brother.

SKETCH OF HENRY DARWIN ROGERS. 261

William B. Rogers, the well-known memoir, On the Physical
Structure of the Appalachian Chain, unfolding certain dynamical
laws which have regulated the elevation of mountain chains.
About the same time (1842) he published an elaborate paper on
the origin of the Appalachian coal strata, bituminous and anthra-
cite, containing much original observation and important specu-
lative views, his brother pursuing a parallel system of investiga-
tion in Virginia, where the formations are identical with those
of Pennsylvania. The result of the labor of these two brothers,
carried on for ten years together, was the grand discovery of the
structural unity of central North America, between the Appa-
lachian chain and the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes, and the
Delta inclusive, a fact of such importance that it must serve in
future as a guide to all general researches, since it is not reason-
able to suppose that so large a portion of the earth's surface
should have been formed in any other than the normal mode. . . .
Prof. Rogers was one of the founders and an early president of
the American Association of Geologists, which after an active
and most useful career expanded into the American Association
for the Advancement of Science.

"Although chiefly devoted to geological research, he paid
much attention to those sciences of which geology is the extended
application — natural history, climatology, and physical geog-
raphy."

His work was appreciated abroad as well as at home. He
received the degree of LL. D. from Trinity College, Dublin ; was
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (London), and of the Royal
Society of Edinburgh, and of many other important societies.
He was also for two years the President of the Philosophical
Society of Glasgow. He became one of the conductors of the
Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, and was associated with
Sir William and A. K. Johnston in the publication of maps of
physical geography and geology, particularly of a geological map
of the United States and a chart of the arctic regions in their
Physical Atlas.

The anniversary address of the President of the Geological
Society (London), in a notice of Prof. Rogers, contains the fol-
lowing estimate of his work as a geologist :

" While employed upon his great survey he had contributed
to the Proceedings of this society a paper entitled Some Facts in
the Geology of the Central and West Portions of North America.
In this address he dwelt especially on those great features
which he had elaborated in his survey, the disturbance of the
Palaeozoic rocks of the Appalachian chain, ' a stupendous undula-
tion or wavelike pulsation, the strata being elevated into perma-
nent anticlinal and synclinal flexures, remarkable for their wave-

202

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

like parallelism and for their steady declining gradation of
curvature when they are compared in any east and west section
across the corrugated zone/ To the westward of the Appalachian
chain, where this structure is conspicuous, he pointed out that
* the crust waves flatten out, recede from each other, and vanish
into general horizontality/ Coupled with these leading features
he remarked that the total thickness of the coal measures steadily
diminishes from some three thousand feet thick in Pennsylvania
to fifteen hundred feet in the Illinois basin, and to not more than
one thousand feet in the basins of Ohio and Missouri ; and simi-
larly the number of workable seams of coal diminishes from
twenty-five on the Schuylkill to probably seven in Indiana and
Illinois, and but three or four in Iowa and Missouri. And when
we add to this the clearly established facts of the increasing
amounts of sea deposits simultaneously with the decrease of land-
derived materials eastward and the diminishing effects of meta-
morphoses in the same direction, from the fully bituminous coals
of the Western States to the hard anthracites of the most disturbed
region, it must be conceded that Prof. Rogers contributed a noble
quota to the unraveling of some of the grandest phenomena
which geologists have been called upon to investigate."

In the autumn of 1857 Prof. Rogers was appointed Regius
Professor of Natural History in the University of Glasgow, which
position he held until his death. A Glasgow paper thus describes
his inaugural lecture :

" The hall was densely crowded and the lecture of the learned
gentleman was listened to throughout with the most decorous
attention, broken only at intervals when some passage of surpass-
ing beauty evoked the spontaneous applause of the alumni. To
great scientific attainments Prof. Rogers unites great popular
ability. His intellectual faculties are admirably balanced. It
would be difficult indeed to say whether the analytic or synthetic
faculty is the stronger, so delicate is the poise of power. ... It
would be doing injustice to Prof. Rogers to attempt so much as
an outline of the lecture delivered yesterday ; suffice it to say that,
as far as any lecture could be so, it was an exhaustive synopsis of
the wide field of scientific research embraced under his professori-
ate. The grouping of the varied branches of the general subject
was executed with the utmost precision and comjjleteness. The
marvels of Nature that were met at every turning in the path of
investigation were brought most happily before the imagination
of the neophytes of science, while the great practical results of
the study of natural history were never once lost sight of, even in
presence of its most gorgeous visions."

Prof. Rogers returned with his family to the United States on
a visit in the summer of 1865. He went back to Scotland alone in

SKETCH OF HENRY DARWIN ROGERS. 263

the following April, in order to resume his teaching of the sum-
mer classes of medical students in zoology. In May, word was
received by his family that he was ill. Mrs. Rogers, with two of
Prof. Rogers's brothers, took the first steamer to go to him, but
when they reached Liverpool they learned that he had died sev-
eral days before, of erysipelas.

The following notices of Prof. Rogers appeared in Philadelphia
papers shortly after his death :

" It is difficult and perhaps impossible in the compass of a notice
like the present to convey an adequate notion of the general at-
tainments of Prof. Rogers, or of his peculiar views in geological
science. As a geologist he might be termed a paroxysmist, al-
though he preferred to give full weight to the operation of those
ordinary causes which are gradually and silently working to
bring about the changes everywhere recorded on the surface of
the earth. But he believed that many of the more marked cos-
mical phenomena could not be sufficiently explained without a
resort to the doctrine of catastrophes, and he deliberately though
modestly announced his opinion in these respects. His acquire-
ments in all departments of physics were considerable, to which
he added the accomplishment of a large acquaintance with our
own literature and that of other countries. Accustomed to con-
sider closely the important social and ethical questions which
engage the attention of enlightened men, he brought to their
examination an accuracy and breadth of observation derived from
his habits of scientific investigation.

" Prof. Rogers was a member of many learned societies both
in Europe and America, and his scientific brethren will amply
honor his memory. We may add that, though representing
America in a foreign university for many years, his patriotism
was fervent, and he was able to defend and maintain the cause of
the Union at all times and under all circumstances."

Another paper said :

" As a lecturer Prof. Rogers's excellences will long live in the
recollections of his Philadelphia auditors. His calm, impressive
tone, thoroughly well sustained and occasionally rising with the
swell of his subject to a high pitch of eloquence, his quiet, gentle-
manly bearing, his thorough mastery of and deep interest in his
subjects never failed to kindle even in the most indifferent listen-
ers at least a temporary glow responsive to the feeling of his own
breast. He has passed away, and left a name not soon to be for-
gotten by the cultivators of science, and a place among his friends
and associates that can not without great difficulty be supplied."

" Of him whom we have lost," says the minute of the Ameri-
can Academy of Arts and Sciences, " suffice it to record here in
simplest and briefest phrase that he was a most accomplished

264 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

investigator, a graceful and persuasive teacher, and fascinating
companion ; that to rare powers and attainments he added a lively
sympathy in all the interests of humanity, and a courageous devo-
tion to whatever he deemed just and true."

Besides the reports and books already named and the period-
icals he conducted. Prof. Rogers was the author of thirty-seven
papers in scientific serial and other publications, he and William
B. Rogers of eight, and he and Martin H. Boy^ of one paper.

He was chosen a member of the American Philosophical Soci-
ety, and a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila-
delphia in 1835. He was elected an honorary member of the
Boston Society of Natural History in 1842, and participated in
discussions at its meetings nearly every year from 1845 till 1858,
speaking usually on geological facts or theories.

Other societies besides those already mentioned of which Prof.
Rogers was a member were the Geological Society of London, the
Royal Geographical Society, and the Anthropological Society of
London.

M. Albeet Gaudry, in a review of the course of development of ani-
mate nature through the geological ages, remarks on a curious analogy
between the changes experienced by fishes in the Secondary age and those
which modern warships are passing through. As soon as the thought of
armoring vessels took efPect, sti'onger projectiles were devised, in order to
penetrate the armor. Then the armor had to be strengthened, and just as
rapidly as the plates were made thicker, more enormous projectiles were
cast; so that the race has culminated in the construction of vessels so heavy
that they are almost unmanageable, and thought is turning again toward
light, swift boats. With the Secondary fishes, too, offensive arms and de-
fensive armor were developed pace by pace. The teeth were modified till
they could crush through the hard cuirasses of the ganoids, and the Second-
ary beds are characterized by marine animals thus furnished. Powerful
grinding teeth are found in the bony and the cartilaginous fishes, and even
in many of the massive reptiles of the Trias. The fishes, exposed to ene-
mies whose instruments of offense matched their defensive armor, were
obliged to seek safety in flight. Their vertebral column became more solid,
so as to furnish a strong support to their spinal muscles, and their tails
were shortened and broadened so as to become instruments of energetic
locomotion. When this transformation was completed, the carnivorous
fishes had no more use for crushing teeth, and they have almost disap-
peared ; no more marine reptiles with teeth like paving stones are found in
the Tertiary beds or in modern times ; and fishes with large teeth working
like millstones are rare in comparison to those which have thin cutting
teeth ; and power resides in agility to reach the goal or escape the danger.
Existing fishes are marked by an activity that was unknown in the ancient
oceans, and justify the observation of Moquen Tandon. that "the agitation
and inconstancy of the sea seem to have impressed themselves on the be-
ings which live in its waves, in the suppleness, rapidity, and vivacity of
their movements."

COBRESP ONDENCE.

265

(EjOXXZSXS 0 UtlCUCJC.

THE MORAL OF THE " SYMPSYCHO-
GRAPH."

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : I was both surprised and humiliated
to find on my return from Bering Sea, a few
days ago, a large correspondence from per-
sons who had taken the " Sympsychograph "
seriously. I had not the slightest idea that
any one capable of " reading bound books "
would be deceived by the meaningless phrases
in that bit of burlesque. I intended it as a
piece of gentle satire on the '' wizards " and
" impressionists " who follow in the wake of
scientific work which attracts attention, and
who pour their vagaries into the long ears of
the daily newspaper.

The important element of one's belief
arises from the way in which that belief is
formed. No one was capable of understand-
ing my story who did not at once see the in-
congruity of it. One might as well believe
in Mahatmas and Odic forces as in cathode
radiation or evolution if he does not have
any clear ideas or a clear conception of the
basis on which generalizations rest. One
writer speaks of the article in question as a
hoax upon an innocent public ; but a public
which has swallowed the alleged experiments
of luglis Rogers and other impressionists as
scientific truth, and does not see any differ-
ence between the methods of these persons
and the methods of Rontgen and Helmholtz,
is not an innocent public. A vast amount of
suffering In our society arises from the fact
that men are ready to follow any notion in
medicine, in politics, or in social reform, no
matter how absurd, if it contains an element
of mystery, or if it proposes to make life
a little easier for men incapable of clear
thinking.

I had a serious moral in thC' fable, and
this, at the risk of trying to explain a joke,
I shall give.

The methods ascribed to the "Astral
Camera Club " are those which never have
yielded and never can yield any results to
science. Scientific investigators are not
" wizards," their discoveries are not pre-
saged by uncanny feelings nor green dark-
ness, nor is there anything " occult " about
their ways of working. They are simply
men of unusual persistence and steady com-
mon sense. Everything easy was found out
long ago, and additions to knowledge can
only come from mastery of past achieve-
ments and mathematical accuracy in the
registration of small details. The progress
of science is not marked by surprises and
contradictions. The result of scientific in-
quiry comes as a surprise only to those igno-

rant of the steps in investigation which leads
up to it.

The discovery that the peculiar rays
called " X " by Rontgen could be made to
cast shadows on a sensitized plate does not
imply that thought can be photographed.
One might sooner expect to photograph the
songs of birds than " the cat's idea of man."

The great power which exact knowledge
gives adds nothing to the pi-obability of the
mythology of our own or other times. The
" power of mind over matter " is not a form
of hysterics. It depends on exact knowl-
edge of the nature of material things. It
is no occult influence showing itself in neu-
rotic " adepts " by uncanny lights, under
" astral " conditions. It is greatest by day-
light, with sane men, with whom science is
simply enlightened " common sense."

David Starr Jordan.
Palo Alto, Cal., October 10, 1896.

SHALL VIVISECTION BE RESTRICTED ?

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : In his interesting and valuable con-
tribution to the literature of vivisection, in
the October number of your periodical. Prof.
Hodge makes one or two statements which
are decidedly erroneous, and which I beg
you will permit me to correct. Quoting
from an article of my own on the same sub-
ject, published over twelve years ago in Lip-
pincott's, he states that " a recent writer has
actually cited mortality statistics to prove
the futility of vivisection." This deduction
is wholly incorrect. The very book from
which he quotes, again and again affirms the
use of vivisection. Exaggerated claims of
potency, such as were rife when this article
was written, some fourteen years ago, may
certainly be challenged, without being care-
lessly translated into affirmation of "futil-
ity " ; just as one may believe in experiments
regarding aerial navigation without looking
forward to lunar voyages.

With the gratuitous imputation of "un-
fairness " in the selection of statistics I am
more seriously concerned, for no charge
more vitally affects the character of scien-
tific work. Prof. Hodge admits, as he is
forced to do, that " the figures do show that
in England, since 1850, certain organic dis-
eases have been on the increase, despite the
slight advance in our knowledge of them."
Well, that also is my own conclusion. Such
facts as these " afford the strongest possible
argument for the side of research." Again
I agree with your learned contributor, al-
though I should give the word " research "

266

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a wider meaning than he intends. But there
was " unfairness " in the selection of diseases ;
"almost without exception these maladies
lie very deep in the hereditary tendencies of
the race." Well, I suppose death itself may
be said to " lie very deep in our hereditary
tendencies " ; but, except in some such ex-
ceedingly broad sense, I certainly question
the accuracy of his assertion. In my tables
(see Lippincott's, August, 1884) only fifteen
different classes of organic diseases were
tabulated, and among them were apoplexy,
aneurism, diabetes, insanity, paralysis, can-
cer, diseases of the heart, the brain, the kid-
neys, and the liver. From these causes only
result the deaths of two thirds of the Eng-
lish race over the age of twenty years ; and,
as a rule, fatality increases with advancing
age. Are these maladies "almost without
exception " caused by " hereditary tenden-
cies"? When the Archbishop of Canter-
bury, in the fullness of years, falls dead from
apoplexy, is it because " defectives leave
enfeebled progeny " ? I certainly differ
with your learned contributor on this point.
There was no unfairness whatever in con-
centrating attention upon organic diseases,
provided it was distinctly admitted — as it
was in the same article — that "during later
years there has been a diminished mortality
in England from the lesser prevalence of
zymotic diseases," which nobody in 1884
was pretending to " cure."

One point more. Admitting the justifi-
cation of vivisection joer sc, are we compelled
to adopt the further evident conclusion of
Prof. Hodge that it should be free to pro-
ceed to any lengths whatever, as in Conti-
nental Europe ? Because certain forms of
vivisection are justifiable, are all? It is at
this point we part company. He is a brave
man who can announce in these days a new
theological dogma, that " God clearly gives
to man every sanction to cause any amount
of physical pain which he may find expedient
to unravel his laws." Certainly that is a
dogma of the highest import ; everything is
justifiable; its far-reaching consequences
touch humanity itself. With that doctrine
I thoroughly disagree, upheld though it be
by so eminent a teacher as Prof. Hodge.
Permit me rather to range myself with one
whose work for science entitles him to even
greater respect. On the wall of my library
hangs a printed statement of views concern-
ing this very subject, from which allow me
to quote. " Within certain limitations, we
regard vivisection to be so justified by util-
ity as to be legitimate, expedient, and right.
Beyond those boundaries it is cruel, mon-
strous, and wrong. Experimentation . . .
we consider justifiable when employed to de-
termine the action of new remedies ; for
tests of suspected poisons, for the study of
new methods of surgical procedure or in the
search for the causation of disease. ... On
the other hand, we regard as cruel and
wrong the infliction of torment upon animals

in the search for physiological facts which
have no conceivable relation to the treatment
of human diseases ; or experiments that
seem to be made only for the purpose of
gratifying a heartless curiosity. . . . The
practice, whether in public or in private,
should be restricted by law to certain defi-
nite objects, and surrounded by every pos-
sible safeguard against license and abuse."

That statement, sir, is signed by Herbert
Spencer. With every word of it I agree.

Albert Leffingwell, M. D.
HAJffiLTON Club, Brooklyn, October 15, 1896.

INTERPRETATIONS OF MALTHU-
SIANISM.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : I have been a reader of your peri-
odical since 1873, and naturally during that
time I have occasionally met with statements
by some of its contributors that I felt were
open to criticism — opinions that I thought a
little weak. But never through all those
years have I met with such a reckless mis-
representation as is contained in Helen Zim-
mern's first paper, in the September num-
ber, on Enrico Ferri on Homicide. In a sen-
tence, about the middle of page 682, she
says, " Infanticide, elevated to a custom and
a method in Malthusianism." Such a state-
ment would be unworthy a correspondent of
a decent newspaper ; but, that any contributor
to the Popular Science Monthly should, what-
ever his personal intolerance of the population
question, have the temerity to hazard such a
false presentment of the theory (axiom I would
call it) laid down by the Rev. Mr. Mai thus,
and the remedy he suggested, is, to say the
least, hardly complimentary to the presuma-
ble information or intelligence of its readers.

The difference in the ratio of increase of
population and that of subsistence, which
Mr. Malthus, rightly or wrongly, submitted
as being a fundamental law, and the remedy,
wisely or unwisely, he suggested of deferred
marriages, are all that can be laid to his
charge. Surely these are not sufficient
grounds to justify the accusation against
him of advocating "infanticide"! It re-
minds one of the old trick of many of the
clergy, associating immorality with atheism.

Certainly, there is now a numerous and
rapidly growing class, recognizing the irrevo-
cable nature of the law of population, but, at
the same time, the impracticability of Mr.
Malthus's remedy, who adopt and recommend
preventive means. Yet, how even such can
be accused of " infanticide " any more con-
sistently than others who practice absl'mence
(which is just one method of prevention) it is
difficult to perceive.

I feel that this is no occasion for ventilat-
ing my own particular views on the population
question or Malthusianism ; still, I have al-
ways been surprised at observing the avoid-
ance of the subject manifested on the part

EDITOR'S TABLE.

267

of many men of high standing who yet rec-
ognize and accept its truths. It is this sort
of neglect or cowardice, I think, which em-
boldens some minds to gratify their resent-
ment of opinions or views they have a senti-
mental repugnance to by indulging in the sly
thrust; trusting to the perhaps unpopular
nature of the matter for their immunity from
consequences.

I can not conceive Helen Zimmern being
as ignorant of Malthus's writings as the words
I quote from her paper would imply ; and I
am very unwilling to suppose she would will-
fully misrepresent.

Respectfully, Arthur F. Palmer.

152 Ckawpord Road, Cleveland, Ohio,

September 80, 1896.

NATIVE AMERICAN POTTERY.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

Sir : Of course the name " Alaska " is a
slip of the pen with Madame Le Plongeon in

the September Popular Science Monthly, what-
ever other locality the distinguished writer
may have had in mind. The only pottery to be
seen in Alaska is exceedingly rude, perhaps
the worst in the world. The Athapascans
of the interior boil food in baskets and
boxes, with hot stones. The Tlingit (Kolos-
chan) of the coast have no pottery, using
boxes of alder and other woods for vessels.
The Aleuts have no pottery and no substi-
tutes therefor, except such dishes as they
make from driftwood. But the Eskimo
tribes about Bristol Bay do mix up mud with
hair and blood to form their lamps and grease
bowls. Excepting this rude ware, there was
no pottery made by the Pacific coast tribes
between the Santa Barbara Islands, Lower
California, and the Eskimo of Bristol Bay.
Thirty-five of the families or stocks of Indi-
ans north of Mexico are not known to have
ever practiced making pottery.

Otis T. Mason.
Washington, D. C, September 7, 1896.

gcXitor^s SaMje.

A THEOLOGICAL VIEW OF EVOLUTION.

ON more than one occasion lately
we have had to note the grow-
ing liberality of theological thought
in relation to scientific questions;
and we now have before us another
striking example of the same tend-
ency in an address delivered at the
recent Church Congress in England
by Archdeacon Wilson, of Manches-
ter, on The Bearing of the Theory
of Evolution on Christian Doctrine.
Thoughtless critics sometimes en-
deavor to cast ridicule upon the clergy
for troubling themselves with discus-
sions of this kind. Then" idea is that
theologians should expound and de-
velop their doctrines in entire inde-
pendence of, if not indifference to,
what the scientific world may be do-
ing, and that the scientific workers
should equally ignore theology. We
can not accept such a view. The
human mind is not built in thought-
tight compartments, if we may use
the expression. Every thought hon-

estly entertained claims the privilege
of traveling everywhere, and asks
for illustration and confirmation
wherever it goes. If the scientific
man is a religious man he will want
to blend his science with his religion,
and the religious man will want to
know that the doctrines to which he
adheres are not contradicted by any
portion of his acquired knowledge.
If the leaders of religious thought
were to withdraw from all interest
in the teachings of science, the infer-
ence would certainly be drawn that
they were conscious of a hopeless an-
tagonism between the principles of
science and the doctrines of religion.
They would seem to present to the
world the alternative: "Science or
Religion ; choose which you will, you
can not have both."

Far better is the attitude of those
who, believing in both, believing that
men have need of religion, and that
they can not deny the authority of
science, strive to see what measure of

268

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

agreement there is between the teach-
ings of one and the other. Such is
the position of the Archdeacon of
Manchester. In examining the the-
ory of evolution he sees, in the first
place, that it is no way inconsistent
with theism ; and, in the second, that
it throws no difficulty hi the way of
recognizing the personality of the
Divine Being that theologians were
not already aware of and familiar
with in connection with their own
special studies. That problem would
subsist even if no theory of evolution
had ever been formulated. To quote
the speaker's words: "No cell of a
body could interpret the personality
of the whole ; and similarly we could
not grasp the personality of God and
his love and Fatherhood when we
were thinking of all Nature as the ex-
pression of his will." As regards the
creation of man, the archdeacon does
not consider that there is any conflict
between the theory of evolution and
any essential Christian doctrine. " It
was no part," he said, " of the doc-
trine of the Church — it was a com-
paratively modern theory of the
naturalists, rashly accepted by the
theologians of two centuries ago —
that man was a special and underived
species. He could imagine no sub-
limer conception of the nature or the
dignity of man than that which saw
all Nature as the self-manifestation
of God rising into self- consciousness
in man. Christian doctrine could
adopt the evolutionary view of the
creation of man; it was pledged to
no other."

Passing to the doctrine of the Fall
of Man, the speaker acknowledged
that, in the light of evolution, the
generally received view required con-
siderable readjustment. We quote
again : "Man fell, according to sci-
ence, when he first became conscious
of the conflict of freedom and con-
science. Now, this conflict of free-
dom and conscience was precisely

what was related as ' The Fall ' sub
specie historic^. It told of the fall
of a creatvire from unconscious ig-
norance to conscious guilt, express-
ing itself in hiding from the presence
of God. But this fall from innocence
was in another sense a rise to a higher
grade of being. It was in this sense
that the theory of evokition taught
us to interpret the story of the Fall.
It gave a deeper meaning to the truth
that sin was lawlessness." Closely
connected with the doctrine of the
Fall is the doctrine of Atonement,
and that, too, the speaker stated,
must undergo modification and ac-
cept a broader basis. Such is the
evident meaning of the following
passage : " The theory of evolution
is, indeed, fatal to certain quasi-
mythological doctrines of the Atone-
ment which once prevailed, but it is
in harmony with their spirit. It has
become impossible to regard redemp-
tion as an afterthought, as a plan
devised by a resourceful Creator, in
Miltonic fashion, to meet an emer-
gency. It has become impossible to
the evolutionist to retain what was
once the ordinary view of the super-
natural as an interference with the
natural, as an interposition from an-
other sphere. Such dualism is re-
pugnant to him. All progress being
the result of struggle and sacrifice,
the Atonement is God's identification
of himself with the human race in
that ceaseless struggle, manifested
specially in the supreme sacrifice of
the sinless Christ, but also in all
human life lived in the spirit of
Christ. This identification is the
Atonement, the reconciliation, and
in it the evolutionist, not less than
the theologian, finds new hope and
power, a release from sin, a real
forgiveness and redemption." The
speaker did not profess to be able to
see his way through all the difficul-
ties of his subject, but he made the
broad statement that

"thought is

EDITOR'S TABLE.

269

beino;' transformed by scientific metb-
od, and along with thought theology
must change in form on some such
lines as these." The following re-
marks on the subject of sin recall
very strongly the views of Mr. Her-
bert Spencer : " It seems plain that
if sin is a ti'ansgression and goodness
the fulfillment of the law of man's
higher nature, the consequences of
sin and of goodness are not arbitrary
nor external ; they are in ourselves.
They are the being what we have
become, the sinking to the lower or
the rising to the higher."

It seems to us that in this ad-
dress—even in the few extracts we
have made — there is much food for
reflection. We may each form our
own estimate of the success with
which the author has applied him-
self to the task of reconciling the
scientific philosophy of the age with
Christian doctrine ; but it seems
clear to us that the efi^ort to give at
once a rational basis and interpreta-
tion to the accepted teachings of re-
ligion and a religious character to
the principles of science is in every
way commendable. There is not
too much science in the world to-
day, nor is there too much religion ;
and it can neither do the religionist
any harm to know that the doc-
trines in which he places faith may
be regarded as part of the rational
interpretation of the universe, nor
the scientist to know that the intel-
lectual aspect of his theories is not
all — that they have their moral and
spiritual implications to which he
would do well to take heed. The
final aim of all intellectual effort
should be the wise government of
human life; and science does not
properly fulfill its function, does not
do justice to its own mission in the
world, unless it endeavors to moral-
ize its message to mankind. There
has been too great a willingness, if
we may say so, on the part of scien-

tific investigators to fling broadcast
crude theoretical conclusions, with-
out any care as to how they may be
cori'elated with the general body of
human beliefs and sentiments. Sci-
ence, under this treatment, loses
much of the charm with which it
ought to be invested, and arouses
a certain instinctive repugnance
against itself and its professors in
the popular mind. Hard-headed
and ambitious men, on the other
hand, see in it an excellent road to
money-making, and nothing more.
Properly presented to the world, it
might, as Wordsworth says of duty,
wear " the Godhead's most benignant
grace " ; and it is to the credit of the
theologians that many of them are
endeavoring so to present it. The
Archdeacon of Manchester is not far
wrong when he says that " the needs
of the human heart are much the
same as they were four thousand
years ago." A recent writer who,
though chiefly known as the author
of fantastic tales, is understood to be
a strong man of science in certain
lines — Mr. H. G. Wells — would car-
ry this statement much further back
than four thousand years.* At any
rate, there is such a thing as the hu-
man heart, and it wants a word now
and then. It may be impossible per-
haps for science, as science, to speak
the word ; but it should at least wel-
come every alliance which, while
leaving it due freedom of action, may
help to bring it a little nearer to the
instinctive needs and higher moral
sentiments and aspirations of hu-
manity.

INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE.

It was a, favorite dream of the
early political economists that the
expansion of international trade
would gradually unify the world,

* See an article in the October Fortnightly
Review — Evolution an Artificial Process.

270

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

that it would so educate the nations
in the peaceful ai'ts that, at no dis-
tant day, they would resolve to learn
war no more, so that Astraea, if she
were so minded, might return to the
plains of earth and find nothing to
remind her of the conflicts and
bloodshed which, according to the
poets, had caused her to take her
flight. If things could have gone
just as the early economists wished
and hoped, something like this might
have come, or be about to come, to
pass. They thought that commerce
was going to shake off its shackles,
that trade was going to be free, and
that the mutual benefits which it
would bestow would, year by year,
strengthen the feeling of fi^endship
between nation and nation. They
did not foresee such a revival of the
prejudice-breeding protectionist sys-
tem as our eyes have witnessed, or
the greed for colonial acquisitions
which it has introduced into the
world. They magnified unduly the
role which reason was going to play
in the atfairs of men, and made in-
adequate allowance for the meas-
ureless floods of popular ignorance
which popular education would dis-
engage and set into activity. Still,
their dream was no discredit to them,
and one of these days, after a greater
lapse of time than they counted on,
it may come true.

But what trade has not yet ac-
complished, and does not, as things
are at present, seem in the way of
accomplishing, another force is si-
lently laboring to achieve. That
force is science. It is cosmopolitan
by nature ; something more than
the world even is its parish. We
all remember the story of Goethe,
who, when the Revolution of July,
1830, broke out in France, and was
creating commotion and trepidation
more or less throughout Evirope,
was so absorbed in thinking of the
conti'oversy between Cvivier and

GeofProy de Saint-HilaLre over the
theory of development, which had
become acute just at the same time,
that he completely mystified a friend
who had come to see him by talking
with the greatest excitement about
the intellectual crisis when the friend
was thinking of the political one.
It seemed to Goethe an enormous
descent to come down from the level
of a great scientific and philosoph-
cal problem to a mere question as to
the precise form of monarchical gov-
ernment which was to prevail in a
certain country. To him the pro-
tagonists on the world's theater were
not the Polignacs, the Periers, or the
Metternichs of the hour, but the
leaders of thought and the represent-
atives of science. Goethe has been
accused of lack of patriotism ; but
we may put it to his credit that he
was free from those sentiments of
rancor toward foreigners which con-
stitute so large a portion of the pa-
triotism of the majority. In his
predominant interest in large intel-
lectual questions he was a type of
the better mind of the future, and
pointed forward to the time when
science would become a missionary
of peace and concord to the jarring
nations.

Two generations have passed
since then, and science has made ad-
vances which, could he have lived
to witness them, would have filled
the great German with gratification
and delight. That it is sensibly
drawing the nations together there
is no doubt. Scientific workers in
every field of reseai'ch are stretch-
ing out, across seas and continents,
hands of friendship and help to
their fellow-workers in other lands.
Literatures are national, broadly
speaking, but science is necessarily
international. There is but one set
of natural laws for the universe ;
and, broadly speaking again, the
method of science is one. It fol-

EDITOR'S TABLE.

271

lows that all who, the world over,
are engaged in scientific work form
but one army, one band, and move
forward under one banner. This
fact has been recognized by the for-
mation of many international asso-
ciations for the prosecution of difi'er-
ent branches of scientific work. The
physiologists, the psychologists, the
criminologists, and several other
sections of the great scientific corps
have in this way organized for mu-
tual assistance ; and it only remains
to form one general international
organization which shall in a man-
ner preside over all the scattered
provinces of science, and by its ex-
istence and activity give evidence to
the world that science is one and
that humanity should be one. We
are glad to know that this important
object is in a fair way of accomplish-
ment. Next year the British and
American Associations for the Ad-
vancement of Science will meet
within about two hundred miles of
one another, the one at Toronto and
the other at Detroit; and it is ex-
pected that not only will the two
associations contrive to meet and
fraternize, but that steps will be
taken toward establishing some bond
of union between the two, and so
preparing the way for a wider inter-
national organization. The scheme,
it is further expected, will be fol-
lowed up two years later when the
British and French Associations will
meet within about thirty miles of
one another, one at Dover and the
other at Boulogne ; and if so a world
meeting may possibly be arranged
for the year 1900, Let science flour-
ish, and let its influence over the
nations increase ! It means love of
truth; it means reasonableness and
equity ; and if these things be in us
and abound, there can not be much
room for international hatred.

COMPLETION OF THE SYNTHETIC
PHILOSOPHY.

The publication of the conclud-
ing volume of Mr. Herbert Spencer's
Synthetic Philosophy is an event of
no small moment in the history of
modern thought. No other doctrine
of this or of any recent century has
revealed so much in regard to the
way in which organisms and institu-
tions have come to be what they are
as the evolutionary or synthetic phi-
losophy has. Long before its great
expounder had completed his pres-
entation of it in the four fields of
life, thought, society, and conduct, it
had turned violent opposition into
eager acceptance, and was being ap-
plied in countless researches, and was
assumed as the only admissible
standpoint for interpreting the past
and predicting the future. The con-
cluding division of his system deals
with Industrial Institutions, and has
been eagerly awaited with the ex-
pectation that it would throw needed
light upon the industrial ferment of
the times. This expectation it amply
fulfills. Mr. Spencer's plan for a se-
ries of ten volumes in which the prin-
ciples of evolution should be set forth
with sufficient illustrative evidence
was first issued in 1860. To do this
work as he determined that it should
be done was an immense undertaking,
and he was further hampered at first
by insufiicient means, and through-
out by seriously impaired health.
That he has surmounted every ob-
stacle and reached his goal may well
inspire wonder, and notable too is
the fact that his exposition has been
completed substantially as proposed.
Notwithstanding the progress of
knowledge during the past third of a
century, and notwithstanding, more-
over, the widening of Mr. Spencer's
own horizon, the plan that seemed
good to the man of forty has proved
acceptable to his riper self at seven-
ty-six. Mr. Spencer is to be heartily

272 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

congratulated upon the completion
of his task, but more fortunate than

he is the world that has received the
benefit of his labors.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The trees, the author of this book * says, may be justly numbered among
our best friends. But we need to know them better. " It is not enough to
be able to distinguish an ash from a hickory or a fir from a spruce ; it is
more important by far that we should become acquainted with the form
and character of the leaves, the fruit, and the bark, and thus acquii-e a fuller
knowledge of the way the tree lives. To hnoiv a tree is to become familiar
with the purpose and condition of its life. This is revealed in no small
measure by the leaves. The needle of the pine enables the tree to with-
stand a hurricane on a mountain top, yet its slender figure is perfectly
adapted to the task of gathering light and air for the tree's life. The broad-
leaved buttonwood would fall before the gale which the pine successfully
weathers. Not less plainly does the diversity of character in a leaf reveal
the diversity of the tree itself. No two leaves are exactly alike ; no two
trees are exactly alike." Although, as he admits, it is not possible to por-
tray all the beauty of a leaf with a pencil, the author has endeavored in
this attractive volume to repi-esent in outline the most characteristic fea-
tures of the leaves of American trees, supplementing his pictures with such
descriptions of them, and the trees to which they belong, with their habitat,
as has seemed appropriate. Endeavoring to di'aw the leaves exactly as he
found them, his two hundred and odd sketches were all taken from Nature,
and only sixty of these from pressed specimens which were obtained at the
Harvard Botanic Garden. "Yet I have found the world of truth and
beauty, as far as leaves are concerned, so limitless that types and rules
seemed valuable only as guide-boards are on a strange path." The botan-
ical names are given, first from Gray's Field, Forest, and Garden Botany ;
second, in conformity with a recent system of nomenclature instituted by
Prof. C. S. Sargent. An introduction is contributed by Prof. L. H. Bailey.
The sketches begin with a chapter on The Leaf as a Builder, in which
the leading features of the endless variety in the forms of leaves are briefly
described and illustrated, and the functions of the leaf in the tree's life are
explained. The leaves as they are singly brought up are classified as sim-
ple alternate, simple opposite, and then as with or without teeth and their
edges divided or not divided, compound alternate and compound opposite,
and evergreen leaves. Of the genera that are portrayed are the magnolias,
tulip tree and sassafras, witch-hazel, sorrel tree, elms, birches, alder, wil-
lows, poplars, hawthorns, oaks, dogwood, burning bush, maples, ailantus
and locusts, sumach, walnuts, hickories, ash-leaved maple and ashes, horse-
chestnuts and buckeyes, pines, spruces, hemlock, fir, larch, and arbor vitae.
An intelligible plan for leaf identification occupies one page. A systemat-

* Familiar Trees and their Leaves. Described and illustrated by F. ScHuyler Mathews. Pp. 320,
12mo. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $1.75.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 273

ical index of the trees of the eastern United States gives the common names
and the botanical names according to Gray and Sargent, with the family
to which each tree belongs.

This book* is not a description of scenery nor an account of Alpine ad-
ventures, but an inquiry into the agencies that have made Switzerland,
what it is. Its scenery, the author says, " is so greatly due to geological
causes that it is impossible to discuss the present configuration of the sur-
face without some reference to its history in bygone times. I do not, how-
ever, propose to deal with geology further than is necessary for my present
pm'pose." He defines that purpose by remarking that during his holidays
in the Alps " my attention was from tlie first directed to the interesting
problems presented by the physical geography of the country. I longed
to know what forces had raised the mountains, hollowed out the lakes, and
directed the rivers. During all my holidays these questions have occupied
my thoughts, and I have read much of what has been written about them."
While the book, notwithstanding its somewhat clumsy construction, will
be an acceptable one to every reflecting reader, it will be most welcome to
one who is interested in geology. He need not be a geologist, nor much
versed in that science, for the author has supplied a very good elementary
geological introduction to the work, in which those geological points that
have immediate application to the matter in hand are sufficiently explained.
But he must want to know why such and such features are so, for that is
what the book undertakes to tell. With such a mind, every student and
tourist will find the book pleasant and profitable. First is given the geo-
logical introduction, with especial reference, of course, to Switzerland.
Then the origin of mountains is discussed, and the general peculiarities
of the mountains of Switzerland are noticed. The phenomena caused by
the accumulation and action of ice and snow are considered, the former
extension of glaciers, the origin and formation of valleys, the action of
rivers, their directions, the character and origin of the lakes, and the influ-
ence of the strata upon scenery. Pursuing the study more in detail, atten-
tion is directed to the Jura, the central plain, the outer Alps, the central
massives, the Lake of Geneva, the massive of Mont Blanc, the Valois, the
Bernese Oberland, the upper Aar, Zurich and Glarus, the Rhine, the Reuss,
the Ticino, and the Engadine, closing with a general summary of the geo-
logical history of Switzerland. A list of works and memoirs referred to
is given in the appendix. The work is accompanied with more than one
hundred and fifty suitable illustrations and an excellent map.

It is idle to speculate as to whether Herbart could have done the work
in education that Locke or Pestalozzi did, but certain it is that, having the
work of the older men to stand upon, he accomplished what they could not
do, Hei'bart's service it was to unite into one system the grand isolated
principles established by the pioneers of modern education. The volume
before usf presents Herbart's ideas as set forth in seven of his essays, two

* The Scenery of Switzerland and the CauBes to which it is Due. By the Right Hon. Sir John Lub-
bock. Pp. 371, 12mo. New York and London : The Macmillau Company. Price, $1.50.

+ Herbart's A B C of Sense-Perception and Minor Pedagogical Works. Translated, with Intro-
duction, Notes, and Commentary, by William J. Eckoff. International Education Series, vol. xxsvi.
Pp. 288, l2mo. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Price, $1.50.
VOL. L. — 22

274

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of which discuss Pestalozzi's theories, and in his book, whose title is trans-
lated as Pestalozzi's Idea of an A B C of Sense-Perception investigated and
scientifically carried out as a Cycle of Preliminary Exercise in the Apper-
ception of Forms. In one of the essays he sets forth the insufficiency of
empiricism in pedagogy, and draws an instructive parallel between tact
and character; in another he insists that success in moral as well as in
intellectual education depends on the proper psychologic grading of the
training conferred. In still another he advocates many-sidedness in schools
wbile at the same time showing the impossibility of satisfying all the " fad-
dists," and follows this by demanding as much free time for the pupil as
can be secured by economy of the working hours. His conception of
pedagogy as a whole is laid down in the essay On the Esthetic Presenta-
tion of the Universe as the Chief Office of Education. As to what consti-
tutes presentation of the universe, his own words are " experience, human
converse, and instruction taken all together." Conceding that the object
of learning is doing, we must know what is right in order to do what is
right, and besides this there must be the desire to do right. Knowledge
and sympathy, then, are the two ends of the Herbartian pedagogy. In his
discussion and extension of Pestalozzi's A B C of Sense-Perception, Herbart
affirms that the cultivation of sense-perception falls within the sphere of
mathematics, and that mathematical exercises afford the best means of
holding the attention of the pupil. In discussing the exposition of mathe-
matics for educative purposes, he declares that nothing seems to lie so
nearly at the center of mathematics as trigonometry. Angles, then, should
be the first subject for mathematical exercises. A section of seventy-seven
pages is devoted to a plan of progressive exercises on triangles, or trigo-
nometry. In a concluding chapter the value of a knowledge of triangles
in the study of geography is pointed out, and the transition from the
triangular form to the variety of forms in Nature and art is committed to
the drawing-master. Wherever in the volume criticisms and expositions
of Pestalozzi's work appear, it will be seen that Herbart does not seek to
supplant Pestalozzi, but rather to supplement him. In the opinion of the
translator, the American school system has had the benefit of Pestalozzian-
ism, and is now ready for the further advance to be had from Herbartian-
ism — in fact, has already entered upon this advance, although, he says,
many teachers are guided by Hei'bart's ideas who never heard of him.

GENEEAL NOTICES.

The rapid march of civilization during
the past fifty years has left behind many of
the old economic and political ideas. The
new crop which has sprung up is not, as was
perhaps to be expected, of uniform good-
ness ; and many of them, born of demagogy
and ignorance, are positively bad. Ill-consid-
ered legislation and mistaken notions of trade
and finance have brought about conditions en-
tailing much hardship on the poorer classes ;
and popular discontent, true to its paternal-
governmeut fetich, and constantly stimulated
by that persevering animal, the social agitator,

is loudly clamoring for " new laws." The
most striking political fact during this period
has been the growth of the democratic idea,
and it is not perhaps surprising that this
should be blamed for much of the difficulty.
Mr. Leahy's book. Democracy and Liberty*
is a study of the growth of democratic
tendencies, the effect which this growth has
had on the treatment of the various eco-
nomic and political questions, its dangers, ad-

* Democracy and Liberty. By William Ed-
ward Hartpole Lecky. New York and London :
Longmans, Green & Co. 2 vols., 12mo. Price, $5.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

275

vantages, and probable future, and a com-
parison of it with other forms of government,
more especially parliamentary government
with restricted suffrage. It is quite impos-
sible in the space allowed a single review to
give any adequate notion of the very wide
field which is covered by these two volumes.
The work opens with a consideration of Eng-
lish representative government in the eight-
eenth century, which, with a few modifica-
tions, seems to be Mr. Lecky's idea of the
best form of polity. The growth of Rous-
seau's doctrines in France and England and a
brief study of the French democracy are fol-
lowed by about seventy pages on " American
Democracy," which, while somewhat tinc-
tured by the pi-overbial English ingenuous-
ness regarding tales about the wild doings
over here, point out the most pronounced
of our political faults and weaknesses. Mr.
Lecky sums up as follows: "American de-
mocracy appears to me to carry with it at
least as much of warning as of encourage-
ment, especially when we remember the
singularly favorable circumstances under
which the experiment has been tried and the
impossibility of reproducing those conditions
at home." Legislative changes in England,
the Irish land question, and the various at-
tempts to legahze attacks on property, suc-
cessful and otherwise, are discussed in the
second chapter. The influence of democracy
on individual liberty is shown to be not uni-
formly favorable, and attention is especially
called to the great danger of systems of class
legislation, such as the income tax. Aristoc-
racies and upper chambers are given con-
siderable space, including an extended sur-
vey of the history of the English House of
Lords. The changes which the growth of
democracy has brought about in interna-
tional politics are noted at some length, as is
also its effect on religious liberty, Sunday
legislation, and marriage laws. In comment-
ing on socialism and labor questions, Mr.
Lecky says : " But the proposed changes
which conflict with the fundamental laws
and elements of human nature can never in
the long run succeed. . . . The essential
difference of men in aptitudes, capacities,
and character are things that never can be
changed, and all schemes and policies that
ignore them are doomed to ultimate failure."
The changes which have taken place in the

position and education of women are consid-
ered in the last chapter. Mr. Lecky thinks
that, owing to their special interests, it is
impossible to deny their claim to represen-
tation, and that if their demand for the suf-
frage prove growing and persistent, they will
eventually obtain it. As is natural, most of
the questions are considered mainly with ref-
erence to their bearing on the English polity ;
but they are questions common to all modem
civilized societies, and Mr. Lecky's views,
while not perhaps always tenable, are always
deserving of attention.

Most of those who have tried it will re-
member that the study of psychology, aided
by the ordinary text-books and carried on
after the usual methods of the class room,
was about the driest and in many ways the
least agreeable of their school-day experiences.
Indeed, the study was such uphill work, and
had so little that was enticing about it, that
the subject was usually put off until the lat-
ter part of the school or college course, when
it was expected that the more mature minds,
especially if backed by a fondness for the
science, would be able to struggle through
its puzzling abstractions. The book before
us * is an attempt to place this study on a
better footing. After teaching the subject
for a number of years, the author became
convinced that there are no such serious
difficulties in its pursuit as has been sup-
posed. He found that it can be made at-
tractive, and that, when suitably presented,
pupils of average intelligence have little
trouble in grasping the essentials of the sci-
ence. His book is the outcome of this teach-
ing experience, and embodies the plan which
the author foimd most successful in arousing
the interest and reaching the understanding
of the learner. This plan consists simply in
an abundant use of familiar illustrations,
with so much of anecdote and of the appli-
cation of principles as will serve to hold the
attention and give the mind of the pupil
something tangible to work upon. The illus-
trative matter is drawn from a great variety
of sources, and, as a rule, is very apt.

Mr. Halleck presents his subject from
both the introspective and the physiological

* Psychology and Pgychic Culture. By Reu-
ben Poet Halleck. New York : American Book
Company. Pp. 368. 12mo. Price, $1.25.

276

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

side, and does not make the mistake of pin-
ning his faith exclusively to one while sneer-
ing at the other. He begins by describing
*' the nervous mechanism at the disposal of
the mind," for he regards an elementary
knowledge of the action of brain and nerves
as a necessary groundwork for the pupil's
images of mental action. He then takes
up the faculties of mind in succession —
consciousness, presentation, representation,
imagination, thought, emotion, and will. The
several ideas that he sets forth under each
subject are contained in distinct paragraphs,
each with its own heading.

The scope of the book includes applied
as well as pure science. The consideration
of each of the faculties above mentioned is
followed by a chapter or part of a chapter
on the cultivation of that faculty. " Laws
are of little use," Mr. Halleck believes, " un-
less they are applied ; hence these chapters
are of the utmost importance to all who have
not passed the plastic age." He aims not
only to show his pupils how the mind acts,
but to aid them in making their own minds
act more efficiently. The volume is indexed,
and the chapter on the nervous system is
illustrated with several well-executed wood-
cuts.

There can hardly be a volume in the
Library of Useful Stories that will touch
everyday life more closely than The Story of
a Piece of Coal does.* In telling this story
the author has so mingled scientific, tech-
nological, and general information about a
familiar substance as to produce a remarka-
bly readable little book — one that is instruc-
tive without being oppressively learned. He
begins with an outline of what has been
learned about the formation of coal from
plants, and then tells how the coal beds lie
among other rocks and what sort of animal
remains are found between them. In the
next chapter he shows the relationship be-
tween peat, lignite, bituminous and anthra-
cite coals, graphite, and the diamond. Pass-
ing to the industrial side of his subject, Mr.
Martin describes the coal mine and its dan-
gers, the making of gas, and the preparation

* The Story of a Piece of Coal. By Edward A.
Martin, F. G. S. Pp. 168, 16mo. London : George
Newnes, Ltd. Price, \s. New York : D. Apple-
on & Co. Price, 40 cents.

of those many valuable products derived
from what was formerly the waste of the
gas works. The derivatives of petroleum,
which is closely related to coal, are also
dealt with. How long the coal supply of the
world is likely to last is a question that has
been anxiously asked, and we find some in-
teresting computations of the time in a chap-
ter describing the distribution of the de-
posits. The closing chapter is devoted to
the coal-tar colors, which were briefly re-
ferred to earlier in the volume. The thirty-
eight illustrations show many of the plants
and animals of the coal formations, and
some of the structures and apparatus used
in mining and gas-making.

President Jordan, of Leland Stanford
Junior University, has collected into a vol-
ume * seventeen addresses relating to higher
education which were delivered at college
commencements and on other occasions. Sev-
eral of them have already appeared in print in
this magazine and other periodicals. In his
address to the class of 1895 of Stanford
University, which gives the title to the vol-
ume. President Jordan declares emphatically
in favor of individual education. " A misfit
education," he says, " is no education at all."
A training that enables each man to give
play to his strength is the best safeguard
against the seeming predominance of the
weak and ignorant in democracies. Among
the subjects whose broad aspects are pre-
sented in one or another of these addresses
are The Nation's Need of Men, The Higher
Education of Women, The Training of the
Physician, and The Practical Education. We
find in these pages stimulating and luminous
thoughts following each other in rapid suc-
cession. Thus in one place Dr. Jordan says,
after giving words of encouragement to the
poor student : " It is not poverty that helps a
man. ... It is the effort by which he throws
ofE the yoke of poverty that enlarges the
powers." In another place he warns against
mistaking the " cant of investigation " for
the true thing. As to a young man's chance
for a career, he affirms : " If he can do well
something which needs doing, his place in
the world will always be ready for him." To

* The Care and Culture of Men. By David
Starr Jordan. Pp. 268, 12mo. San Francisco :
The Whitaker & Ray Co. $1.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

277

any teacher or student who has native vigor
to be aroused, the volume can hardly fail to
be an inspiration.

Mr. BrowTi's book* is a revision of his
practical taxidermy, published some years
ago, plus the results of his work at the Lei-
cester Museum, which includes " new meth-
ods, most of which are absolutely novel and
at present confined to the Leicester Mu-
seum." Although many of the processes
are somewhat difficult, the aim has been to
so arrange the work as to make its practical
application by the learner as simple as pos-
sible. The introduction treats of the origin
and progress of taxidermy, and the founder
of taxidermy certainly Pleistocene in age,
is shown to have been the man who first ap-
propriated an animal's hide as clothing, the
wearing of skins necessitating some sort of
preparation, which may be fairly called taxi-
dermy. The tools and methods used in taxi-
dermy and modeling and the collection of
specimens occupy the first four chapters.
Then follow special chapters, one on mam-
mals, one on birds, and one on reptiles. The
remaining three chapters deal with modeling
and artistic mounting. A number of excel-
lent illustrations and a bibliography of the
subject add value to the volume.

A magazine entitled Public Libraries, de-
voted to library management and news, was
started in May with M. E. Ahern as editor
and a strong list of contributing editors. It
is to be issued monthly for ten months of
the year from the Chicago office of the
Library Bureau ($1 a year). Part of the
first draft of a Library Primer, to be issued
by the American Library Association, is
printed in the first number for criticism and
suggestions. Other features are news of
libraries, library schools, and librarians;
notes on reference books for library work ;
and practical hints.

Prof. McMaster^s special qualifications,
both as a historian and a writer, make his
With the Fathers (Appletons, $1.50) not only
very i-eadable but exceedingly insti'uctive.
The volume consists of a series of studies in
the history of the United States, all of which

* Artistic and Scientific Taxidermy and Model-
ing. By Montague Brown. Pp. 452, 8vo. New
York : Macmillan & Co. London : A. & C. Black
Price, $6.50.

have appeared separately in the magazines.
The topics treated are The Monroe Doctrine,
The Third -Term Tradition, The PoUtical
Depravity of the Fathers, The Riotous Career
of the Know-Nothings, The Framers and the
Framing of the Constitution, Washington's
Inauguration, A Century of Constitutional
Interpretation, A Century's Struggle for Sil-
ver, Is Sound Finance possible under Popu-
lar Government ? Franklin in France, How
the British left New York, The Struggle
for Territory, and Four Centuries of Prog-
ress.

Betrachtungen eines in Deut%chland rei-
senden Deutschen (Reflections of a German
traveling in Germany), by P. D. Fkcher, is
a small book but full. It presents in a suc-
cession of brief, terse essays outline descrip-
tions of the various attractions which Ger-
many offers to the traveler and student
These accounts are given under the headings
of " How we travel in Germany," " What we
can see in Germany " (scenery, people, in-
dustries, cities, estates, universities, authors,
etc.), ''Economical, Moral, and Social Con-
ditions." (Published by Julius Springer,
Berlin.)

The thirty-first number of the Standard
Teachers' Library contains the Questions and
Answers in Drawing given at the uniform
examinations of the State of New York since
June, 1892 (Bardeen, 50 cents). The large
number of sketches to be copied with va-
rious modifications that are presented in
these questions forms a notable feature of
the book. The regulations concerning teach-
ers' certificates in force August 1, 1896, are
prefixed to the volume.

Prof. F. Berger claims as an element of
superiority of his French Method (1896)
over its rivals most in vogue that it takes up
the verbs and the grammar at the beginning,
mtroducing the pupil at once to the construc-
tion and phrasing of the language, as well
as to the use of individual words. It does
not, however, make the grammar predomi-
nant or teach it in a mechanical way like the
old systems that lie unlamented in their
graves, but, taking up the idea that inspired
the systems that followed these, weaves it in
with the life of the language as the pupil
learns to use it in informal exercises or the
informal turning of well-chosen and familiar

278

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

phrases. The book is not large, and will
not carry the pupil very far ; but, as far as
he goes with it, he will be on a solid founda-
tion, and will know what he has learned.
(The Author, New York.)

Owis and Cavalry, by Major E. S. May,
R. A. (Roberts, $1.25), may serve as a text-
book for military schools or find a place in
the library of any one who has an interest in
military affairs. Much of the matter that it
contains has been given by the author in lec-
tures at the famous English military school
at Woolwich, but little, if any, of it is too
technical to be appreciated by the civilian.
The work is mainly devoted to the employ-
ment of horse artillery, and especially its
cooperation with cavalry. The teachings of
the book are illustrated by many details of
historic battles, some of which are accom-
panied by maps, and there are sketches of
the careers of noted European artillery offi-
cers, with portraits of several. In a closing
chapter, on machine guns, the author cau-
tions his readers not to expect from any
mechanical contrivance what can be accom-
plished only by courage and skill.

The thirty-eighth volume of the Interna-
tional Education Series is a description of
Tlie School System of Ontario, prepared by
the Hon. George W. Ross, Minister of Edu-
cation for the province (Appletons, $1.50).
It includes the general organization of the
system, the regulations in regard to school
premises, the training and qualifications
of teachers, inspection, religious instruction,
text-books, libraries, and the special rules
concerning high schools and the provincial
university. The book is far from being a
mere compilation of laws. Thus, in the
chapter on the general organization, the pol-
icy of having an educational system under
the control of a political head is freely dis-
cussed, and in various cases the purpose of
a regulation or the way in which it has
proved to operate is given. Criticisms that
have been made upon some features of the
system are stated and answered. Since Ro-
man Catholics are more numerous than
Protestants in some localities in Ontario and
in most parts of the adjoining province of
Quebec, denominational schools are a part
of the system. The first chapter and the
last are historical, describing the rise and

growth of Ontario's schools. The volume
is offered to educators in the United States
in the belief that they will be aided by a
study of the plan for popular education that
has been worked out by a people of similar
origin with ourselves, but who have had a
different history.

The Fifteenth Annual Report of the
United States Geological Survey covers a year
following one of reduced appropriations. In
the preceding year field work was almost
stopped, and the energies of the force were
devoted to preparing accumulated material
for permanent record or publication. The
advanced condition of ofiice work thus ob-
tained and an increase of funds made it
possible to prosecute a large amount of field
work in the year 1893-'94, nearly all of
which was tributary to the preparation of
the geologic atlas of the United States. The
reports of the director and the chiefs of di-
visions are accompanied by six papers : On
the geology of common roads, by Nathaniel
S. Shaler ; the Potomac formation, by Lester
F. Ward ; the geology of the San Francisco
peninsula, by Andrew C. Lawson ; the Mar-
quette iron-bearing district, by Charles R.
Van Hise and William S. Bayley ; granitic
rocks in the Piedmont plateau, by G. H.
Williams ; and central Maryland granites, by
C. R. Keyes. At the close of the year cov-
ered by this volume Major J. W. Powell re-
tired from the direction of the national geo-
logic work which he had carried on for a
quarter of a century.

It is an unflattering illustration of the
tone of our civilization that President Eliot
should have felt called upon to argue seri-
ously in his address at Chautauqua last sum-
mer and in the Atlantic Monthly that war is
not desirable. The unreasoning outburst of
indignation against Great Britain which we
have witnessed during the past year does not
speak well for the American balance of
mind. These facts make peculiarly timely
the publication by the Putnams in their
Questions of the Day Series of Atnerica and
Europe: A Study of International Relations,
which contains three papers bearing directly
upon these points by three eminent American
publicists. In the first of these papers. The
United States and Great Britain, Mr. David
A. Wells shows — to our shame that it should

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

279

be thought necessary ! — that we ought not to
hate England, and why ; in the second — The
Monroe Doctrine — Mr. Edward J. Phelps
explains precisely what that doctrine is, and
how it does not justify the vaporing which
has recently filled our atmosphere ; and in
the third — Arbitration in International Dis-
putes— Mr. Carl Schurz makes a powerful
plea in favor of that principle which Presi-
dent Eliot makes the first among the five
great American contributions to civilization.

The Home and School Atlas, by A. E.
Frye, is intended as a reference book for
both the student and the general reader.
Its extension maps are well engraved and
seem accurate. The relief maps, of which
there is a full set, give one an unusually
clear notion of topography. The differences
in temperature, wind, rainfall, and agricul-
tural products between various sections in
the United States are also illustrated by
means of maps. A useful pronouncing gaz-
etteer and a list of " statistics of the world "
add value to the volume. (Ginn, $1.15.)

The Oswego Method of Teaching Geog-
raphy is the title of a little teachers' man-
ual by A. W. Farnham. The method seems
to consist in the main of suggestions to the
teacher for interesting the children and ex-
pedients for making clear the chief ele-
mentary diSiculties of the subject. Most of
them seem such as any bright teacher would
think of, and some are calculated rather to
hinder than aid her work, as when, for in-
stance, she is directed to explain the mean-
ing of " down " by the phrase " in a de-
scending direction," or " between " by " in
the intermediate space of." The book, at
the best, seems not a very necessary one.
(Bardeen, 50 cents.)

A new edition of Bardeen's Common-
School Law is at hand. The book is a valu-
able one for reference, the frequent reissues
keeping it up to date. For this last edi-
tion the book has been entirely rewritten,
some changes being made in the arrange-
ment, and a new chapter on rules and regula-
tions has been added. (Bardeen, $1.)

PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Cornell
University Station: Suggestions for the Planting
of Shrubbery.— Delaware College Station: Milk
Sampling.— Illinois University Station: Varieties
of Apples.— Iowa College Station: Lamb Feed-
ing; Steer and Heifer Beef, II; Old Process vs.
New Process Linseed Meal ; Notes on Injuri-
ous Insects: Fresh Cow vs. Stripper Butter.—
Massachusetts College Station: The Crambidse of
North America.— New Jersey Stations: The Per-
nicious or San Jose Scale.— United States Depart-
ment: Number and Value of Farm Animals of
the United States and Animal Products, and the
Principal Household Insects of the United States.

Angling. (The Out-of-Door Library.) New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 305. f 1.50.

Annuaire de rUniversitg Laval (Year-Book of
Laval University), 1896-97. Quebec: Augustin
Cote & Co. Pp. 192. •

Bailey, L. H. The Survival of the Unlike.
New York and London: Macmillan & Co. Pp.
515. $2.

Blnet, Alfred. Alterations of Personality.
Translated by H. G. Baldwin, with Notes and a
Preface by J. Mark Baldwin. New York : D.
Appleton & Co. Pp. 356. $1.50.

BSdiker (President of the Imperial Assurance
Office, Berlin). Le Comte de Chambrun et le
Musee Social. Paris: Chamerot & Renouard.
Pp. 16.

Bulletins, Catalogues, etc. American Chem-
ical Society Directory of 1S96.— Michigan Mining
School Catalogue, l894-'96.— Philadelphia Acad-
emy of Natural Sciences, Journal of. Second
series, Vol. X, Part IV, 1896, and Proceedings, Part
II, April to August —Philadelphia Board of Edu-
cation, Annual Report for 1895.— Railways, Sta-
tistics in the United States, 1895 Interstate
Commerce Commis.sion. — Scientific Alliance, The
Sixth Annual Directory, 1^96.- Smithsonian In-
stitution Publications: New Species of North

American Coleoptera of the Family Scarabasidae;
Observations on the Development and Migration
of the Urticating Organs of Sea Nettles. Cnidaria;
List of the Lepidoptera collected in East Africa,
1894.— United States Department of Labor, No.
6, September, 1896.

Cairns, T. A. A Manual of Qualitative Chem-
ical Analysis. Third edition, revised and en-
larged by Elwyn Waller. New York: Henry
Holt & Co. Pp. 417.

Climatological Association of America. Trans-
actions of, for the Year 1896. Pp. 293.

Conway, Moncure D. The Writings of Thomas
Paine, Vol. IV. New York and London: G. P.
Putnam's Sons. Pp. 521. $2.50.

Crockett, C. W. Elements of Plane and
Spherical Trigonometry. New York: American
Book Company. Pp., text, 152; tables, 103.
$1.25.

Dana, Mrs. W. 8. Plants and their Children.
New York: American Book Company. Pp. 265.
65 cents.

Education, Report of the Commissioner of,
1893-'94. Pp. 2290.

Field Flowers. Eugene Field Monument
Souvenir. Chicago: A. L. Swift & Co. $1.

Gerhprd, William P. Theatre Fires and Pan-
ics: their Cause and Prevention. New York:
John Wiley & Sons. London: Chapman & Hall.
Pp. 175.

Halleck, R. P. The Education of the Central
Nervous System. New York and London: Mac-
millan & Co. Pp. 258. $1.

Hertwig, Richard. General Principles of Zo-
ologv. Translated by G. W. Field. New York:
Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 226.

Hirsch, Dr. William. Genius and Degenera-
tion. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 330.
$3.50.

28o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

Howell, William H., M. D. An American
Test-Book of Physiology. Philadelphia: W. B.
Saunders. Pp. 1052. $6.

Jackson, D. C. and Jackson, J. P. Alternat-
ing Currents and Alternating Current Machinery.
New York and London : Macmillan & Co. Pp. 729.
$3.50.

Johonnot, James. Principles and Practice of
Teaching. Revised by Sarah Evans Johonnot.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 334. $1.50.

Jordan, D. 8., and Evermann, B. W. The
Fishes of North and Middle America. Bulletin
No. 47 of the United States National Museum.
Pp. 1240.

Lefevre, Arthur. Number and its Algebra.
Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Pp. 230. $1.25.

Loeffelholz, Carl Freiherr von Colberg. Die
Drehungen der Eudkruste in geologischen Zeit-
raumen (Rotation of the Earth's Cru!>t in Geo-
logical Periods). A New Geologico-Astronomical
Theory. Second edition, revised and enlarged.
Munich. Pp. 247.

Marbut, C. F. The Physical Features of Mis-
souri. Missouri Geological Survey. Pp. 109.

Martin, H. N. The Human Body. Seventh
and revised edition. New York : Henry Holt &
Co. Pp. 685.

Mathews, William. Nugae Litterariae. Bos-
ton: Roberts Brothers. Pp. 344. %\ 50.

Michigan State Board of Agriculture. Thirty-
fourth Annual Report of the Secretary. July 1,
1894, to June .30, 1895. Pp. 900.

Mohr, Charles. The Timber Pines of the
Southern United States; and Roth, Filibert. A
Discussion of the Structure of their Wood.
United States Department of Agriculture, Divi-
sion of Forestry. Pp. 143.

National Academy of Sciences. Vol. VIT.
First Memoir on the Bombycine Moths, 1895.
Pp., text, 284; plates, 58.

Nichols, E. L., and Franklin, W. 8. The Ele-
ments of Physics. Vol. 11. Electricity and Mag-
netism. New York and London : Macmillan &
Co. Pp. 272. $1.50,

Old South Leaflets. No. 74. Hamilton's Ke-
port on the Coinage. Pp. 32.

Parry, C. H. H. The Evolution of the Art, of
Music. (International Scientific Series.) New
York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 342. $1.75.

Physical Chemistry, The Journal of. Vol. I,
No. 1. Published at Cornell University, Ithaca,
N. Y. Pp. 68. Per annum, $2.50.

Pierce, E. Dana. Problems in Elementary
Phjsics. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp.
194.

Reprints. Education and Patho-Social Studies.
From Report of the Commissioner of Education,
1893-'e4 and 1889-'90.— Mills, Wesley A.: Psychic
Development of Young Animals. Part II. The
Cat. Part III. The Mongrel Dog. Part IV. The
Dog and the Cat Compared. — Transactions of the
Royal Society of Canada. Second Series. ]895-'96.
— Searcy, J. T., M. D.: Insanity in the South.
Bulletin American Academy of Medicine. Vol. II,
No 9.— The Monitor's Address. Alabama Med-
ical and Surgical Age. June, 18P6 — Intoxication
and Insanity. Journiil of the American Medical
Association. September 36, 1896. — Ward, Lester
F. The Mechanics of Society (American Jour-
nal of Sociology, September, 1896).

Todd, James E. The Formation of the Quater-
nary Deposits of Missouri (Missouri Geological
Survey). Pp. 100.

Torch, The. Vol. I, No. 1 (monthly). The
Torch Publishing Company, Memphis, Tenn.
Pp. 104. 15 cents. $1.50.

Tzidlkovsky, C. Ballon dirigeable en Fer
(Steerable Iron Balloon). Carrying 200 Men and
being 210 Metres Long. Plates and Description
in Russian and French. Kazan, Russia.

Washingtcn Philosophical Society, Bulletin of.
Vol. Xn, 1892-'94. Pp. 567.

Woglom, G. T. Parakites. New York and
London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 88 $1.75.

Youmans, William J. Pioneers of Science in
America. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp.

508. $4.

xvLQwxtuis jcrf ^cietxcje.

Mental OTcrstraln in Edncation. — In a

recent address before the British Medical
Association, under the above title, Dr. G. E.
Shuttleworth called attention to some of the
harmful results caused by the undiscrimi-
nating educational methods of the public
schools. He says : " With some so-called
educationalists, I fear the idea still lingers
that it " (education) " consists of cramming
a mind with as much of as many subjects as
possible. ... A smattering of philology,
however, will serve to show that the word
' education ' means not putting in, but draw-
ing out, and, bearing in mind the physio-
logical interdependence of bodily and mental
development, we may say that true education
consists in processes of training which will
produce in a given individual the most favor-

able evolution possible of all the faculties
both of body and mind. A rational educa-
tional system will of course recognize the
fact that all children are not cast in the
same mold; that there are inherent, often
inherited, differences in each pupil's powers,
and that, to obtain the best results, instruc-
tion must be adapted to idiosyncrasies and
proportioned' to varying capacities. . . . From
the medical standpoint we shall reply in the
affirmative to the query of Plato: 'Is not
that the best education which gives to the
mind and to the body all the force, all the
beauty, and all the perfection of which they
are capable ? ' Overpressure in education
may in brief be described as a neglect of the
principles just set forth — a neglect which
can not fail to lead to mental overstrain.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

281

Thus a cast-iron code, imposing for each year
of age a definite standard of acquirement,
heedless of the varying capacities of chil-
dren, could not fail to produce it. A dis-
regard of physical conditions underlying
mental evolution, and of critical epochs of
development (especially in the female sex),
affecting capacity for exertion, is another
efficient cause, and the undue excitation of
the unstable nerve cells of a child of neu-
rotic heredity, to such a pitch of activity as
might be harmless in a normal child, will, in
the case of the former, be apt to constitute
overstraiu. Overpressure, indeed, is not an
absolute quantity, but has to be estimated in
relation to the personal factor in each case.
It may, therefore, be defined in terms of
educational work as that amount which in a
given case is likely to produce excessive
strain of the physical or mental system, or
both. ... It has been well remarked that
puberty with girls is a period of profound
nervous and neuro-psychological import. . . .
Many a weak woman could, if she only knew,
trace back her weakness to an overstrain at
this period of life. There is too often a
tendency to subject to serious and exhaust-
ing study girls of from twelve to fifteen years
of age just at the epoch when they should
have the minimum of schoolroom work and
the maximum of outdoor exercise and recre-
ation. ... In these three points, then — (1)
excessive hours of study, especially during
spurts of growth and development, (2) de-
ficiency of systematic outdoor exercise and
recreation, and (3) disregard of physiological
fimctions differentiating the capacity for
work at certain times of girls as compared
with boys — I think the high-school system
needs amendment."

Effects of Labor Legislation. — The sig-
nificance and tendencies of labor legislation
are well summed up by Mr. S. N. D. North in
his essay on Factory Legislation in New
England, when he says that the whole sub-
ject has, in recent years, "shown the un-
happy signs of a degeneration into a mere
trial of strength between the employing
classes and the organized trades-unionism of
the operative classes. It has become the
popular method of exploiting the assumed
antagonism between capital and labor " ; and
the one certain result of the system as now

pursued must necessarily be a constant in-
crease in the intensity of that antagonism.
There are also other dangers in such legis-
lation, which the author only refers to.
" The public at large has no apprehension
of the present tendencies of this legislation.
The lawmakers who pass these laws seem to
have no well formed conception of their
true scope, function, effects, and limitations.
There is apparent no realization anywhere
of the fact that they have profoundly modi-
fied not only the conditions of manufactur-
ing, but the whole relationship between the
State and the citizen engaged in business
under its laws. There is underlying them a
new doctrine of paternalism more extreme
and more excessive than has shown itself in
any other phase of democratic government ;
and the ultimate consequences of its indefi-
nite development are beyond the reach of
human ken." A. West Virginia court has
described them as laws which " assume that
every employer is a knave and every em-
ployed man an imbecile. . . . There has never
been any intelligent and comprehensive
study by or in behalf of the State into the
practical and economic effects of these laws ;
and there exists no exact knowledge on the
part of those who make them whether they
have not already been carried so far as to
defeat the objects they are intended to pro-
mote."

The Plagne of the Mongoose. — The mon-
goose {fferpestes ichneumon) was introduced
into the West Indies several years ago as a
remedy against the gray rats. It made way
with the rats, partly, but not entirely, and
still keeps them from multiplying, but has
itself become a greater pest. It has nearly
exterminated poultry and birds from the
islands, is very destructive of turtles' eggs,
and is a terror to young pigs, lambs, and
kids; it devours all sorts of fruits, sugar
cane, fish, wild game, lizards, snakes, crabs,
and even extends its depredations to the pro-
visions in the house. One or two species
which the farmers valued as vermin-killers
have been exterminated by them; conse-
quently ticks are flourishing and increasing
fast. The mongooses are exceedingly pro-
lific, bringing forth five or six young at a
litter — sometimes ten or twelve — and six or
eight litters a year. They live in the hoi-

282

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

lows of trees and in old walls. They are very
active and very intelligent, but their intelli-
gence and activity seem to work always to
the harm of the farmers and housekeepers.
A merchant observed a venerable old mon-
goose in his warehouse, and set a trap for it.
He put a hen's egg in a position to be well
Been as bait, and under it concealed a spring
trap, right in the animal's road. The mon-
goose burrowed under the trap, threw it out
of gear, and managed so that the egg rolled
down to him. Yet some mongooses are
taken in traps, but not one in twenty of
them are females. The females are too busy
taking care of their families to be running
round ; and it is supposed that the males in
their depredations, besides satisfying their
own wants, provide for those of their mates
at home.

The Sympsychograph. — The Rev^ie Scien-
tijique concludes a summary of Prof. Jordan's
remarkable account of the sympsychograph
in the September number of the Monthly
with the remarks: "All this is very ingen-
iously constructed — text and photograph —
and falls in no way short in logic and rea-
soning of the habitual lucubrations of the
spirits : it is quite as plausible as a hundred
stories that have been told to us in all seri-
ousness. The only difference is that Mr.
Jordan has been amusing himself, and his
whole account is pure invention. The ' as-
tral cat' exists only in his imagination, as
the .'astral body' of the spirits is also un-
doubtedly imaginary ; but Mr. Jordan knows
this, while the spiritualists do not recognize
it. As a satire the story is very amusing ;
but it is certain that some persons will take
it seriously, and this will be not the least
amusing thing about it."

The Fascination of Cycling. — In the ef-
fort to account for the absorbing and endur-
ing pleasure of bicycling, which induces men
and women to spin for hours every day over
the same roads, with no apparent diminution
of their enjoyment, M. Ph. Tissier adduces
associations of ideas corresponding with the
frequent and quick changes of attitude to
which the wheelman is subject. There is a
limit, however, to these changes of position,
and it is not so far off but that they will bo-
come tiresome long before the bicyclist be-

comes in fact tired of wheeling. M. Ch. du
Pasquier, in the Revue Scienfiftgue, looks for
the origin of the bicyclist's delight in the
pleasure of motion, augmented by the rider's
sense of control and mastery of the instru-
ment and of himself. The experiments of
Fere have proved that motion introduces
very real effects into our organisms. It
gives a kind of new force, and increases the
effect of an excitant, in proportions bearing
an approximate relation to its rapidity. This
force-giving action explains many other
things not otherwise accounted for — such as
the pleasure of riding rapidly in a carriage,
of getting up into a high place, and the de-
light we take in games of strength and skill,
in agile exercises, wrestling, racing, combats,
etc. The activity begotten of the exercise
operates as a further stimulant ; and so the
rider goes on, with the breezes fanning his
cheeks, his whole organization, as Gratiolet
observes, " singing in various tones a hymn
of satisfaction and joy," till he is in danger
of exhaustion before he realizes that he is
becoming tired. In this last condition lies the
great danger of excessive cycling, which can
not be too carefully guarded against. M. du
Pasquier finds a serious defect in cycling in
its monotonous character. It is far excelled,
in his opinion, in variety of motions and ten-
sions by horseback riding, tennis, and fenc-
ing, which, besides bringing all the muscles
of the body into play, enforce the participa-
tion of the mind — of attention, judgment, and
decision. The movement in cycling is stu-
pidly regulated by the mechanism, which
permits no further extension or flexion of the
limbs or the body ; the motions are all alike
in infinite repetitions, at least so long as the
" spin " endures. It follows that the mental
action can not be very elastic and the mental
images will not be lively or varied. The im-
pressions the cyclist receives are correspond-
ingly monotonous. Those thoughts can not
produce anything of value which are occu-
pied with the road that has been passed over,
with the miles that are yet to be covered, and
the time when the rider will get to his desti-
nation ; which are intent on keeping the rec-
ord he has made, or upon creating a new one.
Fere's remark bears upon this point that " the
effect of systematized excitation on a small
number of ideas is always bad," and that it
I is not healthy for the mind to be inactive in

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

283

other directions than that on which it is most
intently bent. So much for " excess " in
bicycling ; for devotion to the machine for it-
self ; for " scorching." But of moderate use
of the machine, of its employment as an aid
to other exercises and recreations, MM. Tissier
and Du Pasquier would probably have, cer-
tainly ought to have, quite other views.

Cement as a Fire-proof Covering. — Mr.

J. S. Dobie has recently published the results
of a number of tests showing the effect of
heat on cements. Tests were made upon
pure briquettes and briquettes made up of
sand and cement in various proportions.
The briquettes were heated in a small assay
furnace. The first thing noticed on removal
from the furnace was a loss of weight, and
the pure cement briquettes almost invariably
showed extensive cracks. The loss in weight
is due to the driving out of the water of crys-
tallization, hardened cement consisting of
hydrated crystals of aluminum and calcium
silicate. After removal from the furnace,
the briquettes were subjected to various
tests, and in every case where the water of
crystallization had been approximately all
driven off the briquettes were unable to
resist any load whatever. A high tempera-
ture was not necessary to destroy the strength
of the cement. The lowest heat which could
be generated by the furnace, considerably
below red heat, was found to be as destruc-
tive as the highest temperature. The con-
clusions arrived at by Mr. Dobie were: 1.
That while there is no doubt that a covering
of Portland cement concrete will afford some
protection to a metal column or girder, still
there appears to be no doubt that the con-
crete itself will be ruined by the action of
the fire, and will have to be removed as soon
as the fire is subdued. 2. The concrete
covering, if heated, will not stand the action
of water. In a case of fire, when the hose is
turned on, the water strikes the cement cover-
ing, probably red hot, and immediately cracks
it off, leaving the ironwork bare. 3. In cal-
culating for the design of the columns and
girders, and especially for floors, no allow-
ance should be made for the strength of the
concrete, and the cement covering should
be considered as so much extra load on the
system. 4. That in a fireproof building
floors should never be constructed of slabs

of cement forming short spans or arches
from girder to girder, without any support,
and that these experiments indicate that the
value of concrete as a fire-protecting ma-
terial has been greatly overestimated, and
that disastrous results may follow, from con-
fidence in a building protected with such
material.

Chinese Medicine. — The medicine of the
Chinese is described by M. Paul d'Enjoy as
being more serious, more widely extended,
and further removed from superstitious prac-
tices than that of the other cognate peoples
of the far East. The doctors concoct and
sell their remedies, as well as prescribe them,
provide themselves with luxurious shops, and
use all the tricks of the trade to make their
parcels attractive. Many of their remedies
are administered in large, badly tasting pills,
only slightly mollified in their flavor by lic-
orice. These pills are inclosed in capsules
of wax as large as pigeons' eggs, which pre-
serve the compound from contact with the
air, and are broken when the remedy is taken.
Special preparations are sent out from the
large shops of the principal commercial cen-
ters. Among the most popular of the spe-
cialties are the little brick-red cholera pills,
composed of mangosteen bark and various
tropical essences, such as santal, eaglewood,
and calumba. Ih^Dcmnhuy'is a medicinal
oil which produces excellent efl:ects in head-
aches, and generally incases of brain weariness
of every kind. It is rubbed on the temples,
and is inhaled by strong breathing, after
having been rubbed upon the nostrils. Relief
is obtained through the cold which its evapo-
ration quickly produces. The basis of the
preparation is camphor ; and, as a whole, its
effect may be compared to that of the head-
ache pencils familiar in our drug stores.
Chinese medicine is chiefly based on plants,
and is taught in books which are often very
ancient. In his practice the doctor strictly
follows the methods of the master by whom
he has been taught. With a very grave
face, his eyes protected by large spectacles
of thick glass, the old physician feels the
pulse of his patient, and never fails to make
him show his tongue. Next he examines
his eyes, and asks a series of questions, the
answers to which will help him out in his
diagnosis. Then he writes his prescription

284

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on a sheet of rice paper and hands it to his
pupil, who proceeds to compound it. Gen-
erally the prescription is made from the di-
rections in some book, which are simply
referred to by name or number. The pupil
goes to the book for the directions. The
seeds, hei-bs, leaves, and stems, the essences
of which are to be combined to form the
remedy, are generally weighed out or meas-
ured, and given to the patients with direc-
tions to boil them at home with a prescribed
quantity of drinking water to a measure
which is exactly indicated : " Put all these
plants into an earthenware pot with a large
glass of water and boil them over a bright
fire down to a teacupful ; then strain care-
fully and drink hot." The remedies are all
taken in bed, and rest, or sleep, if possible,
is recommended The potions as adminis-
tered have very powerful effects.

Talismansi — The word talisman — a cor-
rupted Arabic term, which has come to us
through the Moors and Prance — means prop-
erly a figure or thing endowed with magical
powers, which enables its possessor to sum-
mon supernatural beings to his aid, whether
to defend him in a hard strait or to realize
some great wish. The existence of such
things is an Arab belief probably older than
Mohammedanism, and has for its origin a
profound Semitic belief in created beings of
a much higher class than man, who might,
under certain persuasion or compulsion, be
induced to give him the aid of their loftier
prerogatives. The superstition of talismans
Las been made familiar by the Arabian
Kights, is probably as wide as the world, and
lingers still, even among the cultivated classes
of Europe, to an extraordinary extent. It is
doubtful " if there is a dynasty in the West
which does not possess some article — usually
a jewel or a sword — which the vulgar believe
to be its ' luck ' or source of fortune, and
which the owners themselves, while theoret-
ically rejecting the belief as nonsense, would
be vexed to the very heart to lose. . . . The
relation of the picture, usually the founder's
portrait, and the sword to the founders of
the house has, indeed, passed into literature,
and is one of the few bits of supernatural
machinery which do not excite the ridicule of
modern readers." Seeking its mental origin,
a writer in the London Spectator finds that

it is utterly opposed to the spirit of all the
greater creeds, which, except perhaps Hin-
duism, make fortune dependent on conduct
or the favor of the Almighty, or both.
" There is, no doubt, in Hinduism a lurking
idea, to which a profound student of the
East like Sir Alfred Lyall attributes great
importance, that any inanimate thing which
is exceedingly odd or separate must be in
some sense divine. The notion is that Na-
ture produces only the usual, and that every-
thing unusual must be the product of special
interference from the creating power, and
therefore possess some portion of the divine
spirit, or at least some influence emanat-
ing from an unusual source." This does not
account, however, for the prevalence of the
idea in Europe and among people of a skep-
tical turn. There is nothing like the notion
of consecration connected with the talisman —
it may even be supposed to have come from
the devil — nor is there anything in the idea
akin to astrology. The writer we have cited
suggests that the origin sought for may lie in
men's " lingering belief in Destiny as a force
apart from Providence, a power having its
origin, not in design, but in the very nature
of things. ... If a man thus believing that
Destiny pursues him for good or evil once ad-
mits the idea, however irrational, that an in-
animate substance is connected with his des-
tiny, the substance becomes the ' talisman '
of which we have been speaking, and he can
not endure either to lose it or to see it in-
jured. His brain may reject the superstition
with utter scorn, he may even be angry with
himself for giving it five minutes' attention,
but an inner faith in it — if we may so dese-
crate the word ' faith ' — as strong as the faith
of some men in omens, forbids him to disre-
gard the ' talisman.' The faith again would,
of course, like the faith in omens, be greatly
strengthened by accidental coincidences, but
it survives the want of them, and sometimes,
we suspect, the occurrence of events entirely
at variance with the secret belief."

Science-Teaching in Secondary Schools,

— The summaries of a series of conferences
concerning teaching in secondary schools
held in 1893 under the direction of the Na-
tional Council of Education, and published
in the last report of the United States Com-
missioner of that department, contain valu-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

285

able suggestions on the teaching of mathe-
matics and the sciences. The conferences
consisted each of ten members, selected on
account of their scholarship and experience,
and discussed the questions submitted to
them with much thoroughness. The confer-
ence on mathematics recommends that the
course in arithmetic be at once abridged by
omitting the subjects which perplex and ex-
haust the pupil without contributing valuably
to his mental discipline, and enriched by a
greater number of exercises in simple calcu-
lation and in the solution of concrete prob-
lems ; that instruction in concrete geometry,
with numerous exercises, be given in connec-
tion with drawing ; and that in demonstrative
geometry, as well as in all mathematical teach-
ing, great stress be laid on accuracy of state-
ment and elegance of form, as well as on clear
and rigorous reasoning. In physics, chemis-
try, and astronomy the conference urges that
the study of simple natural phenomena be
introduced into elementary schools, and that
at least one period a day from the first year
of the primary school should be given to
such study ; emphasizes the necessity of a
large proportion of laboratory wcrk in the
study of physics and chemistry, and advocates
the keeping of laboi-atory note-books by the
pupils, and the use of such note-books as
part of the test for admission to college.
More work, it is held, is required of the
teacher to give good instruction in the sci-
ences than to give good instruction in mathe-
matics or the languages. The conference on
natural history advises that the study of bot-
any and zoology be introduced into the pri-
mary school course, and be pursued stead-
ily, with not less than two periods a week,
throughout the whole course below the high
school. In the early lessons no text-book
should be used, but the study should be con-
stantly associated with the study of literature,
language, and drawing. Physiology should
be postponed till the later years of the high
school, and in the high school some branch
of natural history proper should be pursued
every day throughout at least one year. The
value of laboratory work and of the cultiva-
tion of exact, elegant expression in descrip-
tion is again insisted upon. The most novel
suggestions are given in connection with the
teaching of geography, of which the confer-
ence takes a far more comprehensive view

than the usual one, and which it evidently
regards as including the whole physical en-
vironment of man, and as requiring a knowl-
edge of many of the elementary facts of the
other subjects. Meteorology may be taught
as an observational study in the earliest years
of the grammar school.

Hereditary Crime. — An interesting in-
vestigation is reported by Prof. Pellmann, of
Bonn University (Germany). He has made
a special study of hereditary drunkenness,
which, in the case of a certain Frau Ada
Jurke, he followed through several genera-
tions. She was born in 1740, and was a
drunkard, tramp, and thief for the last forty
years of her life, which ended in 1800. Her
descendants numbered 834, of whom 709
have been traced in local records from youth
to death. Of the 709, 106 were born out of
wedlock. There were 142 beggars and 64
more who lived upon charity. Of the women,
181 led disi'eputable lives. There were in
this family 76 convicts, 7 of whom were sen-
tenced for murder. Prof. Pellmann says
that in seventy- five years this one family
rolled up a bill in the almshouses, trial courts,
prisons, and correctional institutions of $1,-
250,000. With such a record before it, the
state seems justified in adopting measures
for preventing the breeding of such char-
acters.

The Newspaper and Periodical Indastry.

— A recent article in the Hartford Times
gives some interesting semi-statistical figures
regarding the newspaper industry in the
United States. It estimates that there are
about 2,100 daily and over 1,100 weekly
newspapers and periodicals published in the
United States, besides the hundreds of month-
ly magazines, reviews, and trade journals. " It
is probably a low estimate to say that there
are 100,000 men and women occupied in
their production. Adding to these figures
the people employed in the various printing
establishments and publishing houses, we
should have a total of about 250,000, and
including those dependent on them, probably
more than a million of the population who
are thus supported. Nearly every newspaper
has one or more presses, costing thousands
of dollars each ; $50,000,000 would not
begin to pay for the printing presses now

286

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in operation in the United States. We are
within bounds in estimating the daily issues
of the newspapers in the United States at
more than 20,000,000 copies. If the pub-
lishers receive on the average as much as five
dollars per year for their circulation from
each subscriber or patron, we have more
than $100,000,000 paid in from that source.
Giving the weeklies an average of only 2,000,
and we have nearly 25,000,000 subscribers
to them, and at the average price of one dol-

lar there is $25,000,000 more. We should
think the total receipts from sales and sub-
scriptions over rather than under $150,000,-
000. Now we come to the matter of adver-
tising, which is probably nearly twice the
amount paid in subscriptions — nearer $300,-
000,000 than $200,000,000. If it is only
$250,000,000, we have an aggregate of
$400,000,000 passing over the counters of
the newspaper ofifices of the country each
year."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Gelatin has the curious property of
becoming insoluble and stiff when exposed
to formic aldehyde, while it resists the ac-
tion of water, acids, and alkalies. In this
stiffened condition it is like celluloid with-
out being inflammable. Advantage is taken
of this property in making statuettes and
trifles of the carver's art. To make these
objects, gelatin, having stood overnight in
water, is melted in the marine bath, then
mixed with formic aldehyde, and poured
into molds of plaster, clay, or metal, cooled,
and, when taken out of the mold, dipped in
a concentrated solution of formic aldehyde,
or, if large, painted with it. The transpar-
ency of the gelatin is remedied by adding,
previous to molding, a little zinc white in
water and alcohol, with which, if it is de-
sired, coloring substances may be incorpo-
rated.

Twenty or more industries are enumer-
ated in the report of a committee appointed
by the British Home Secretary to inquire
into the subject as "dangerous trades."
Each of them has its special risk, ranging
from discomfort that ultimately works harm
to immediate peril. In the manufacture of
India rubber the constant and all-pervading
presence of naphtha, in which all the mate-
rial has to be dissolved, is an effective agent
of mischief. Still, no special illness is known
to be produced by the fumes of naphtha,
but, besides being unpleasant, they tend to
undermine the constitution. The bisulphide-
of-carbon process for vulcanizing India rub-
ber is more positively dangerous, and some-
times, according to the report, leads to in-
sanity. Other dangerous trades mentioned
are that of "dry cleaning," in which fire

and the inhalation of volatile spirits are ele-
ments of peril ; working in bronze, which
induces skin disease and slow poisoning of
the system ; mica-dusting, at which a boy
seldom continues more than six weeks ; and
the manufacture and use of inflammable
paints.

In order to determine whether calm sea
air contains appreciable quantities of salt,
M. E. Chaix, of Geneva, visiting the island
of Jersey, drew air in quantities of one
thousand litres at a time and stirred it in a
solution of nitrate of silver. The solution
was not made turbid in any of the experi-
ments. The air, therefore, held no salt.
Hence it seems certain that all the salt that
may be floating in the atmosphere is that
derived from the spray blown in by the
winds and held temporarily in mechanical
suspension. It does not volatilize in the air,
and never becomes a real constituent of it.
Persons going to the seaside " for the sake
of the salt air " would therefore do well to
avoid the calm, quiet places, and seek those
which are more or less windy.

Believing that the current estimates of
the velocity of flight of pigeons were not
founded on sufiiciently accurate data, Mr.
G. B. Keene adopted the plan of having the
birds released at a given distance away and
a given moment, and observing the time of
their arrival at their home. He found that,
while some birds could maintain a speed of
about 1,170 yards a minute, the speed of the
majority, or 73 per cent of those observed,
was between about 860 and 1,170 yards a
minute. The highest speed observed by
him of young pigeons was about 1,362 yards
a minute. M. Felix Rodenbach, who has

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

287

also made careful observations, believes in
the possibility of pigeons flying 72 miles an
hour. Observation shows that they fly per-
ceptibly faster than the best express trains.
Their speed, in M. Rodenbach's view, is even
much greater than it appears ; for they can
not fly in a straight line as the express train
runs, but are obliged to make zigzags and
detours, as they meet or are turned by vary-
ing currents in the air.

The Gas Exposition to be held in Madi-
son Square Garden during the two weeks
beginning January 25, 1897, will be the first
affair of the kind attempted in this country,
although such displays are a regular feature
of the year's entertainments in some Euro-
pean countries. The exhibition will be man-
aged by a board of directors composed of
men well kno\vn in the commercial and finan-
cial world — many of them connected with
gas enterprises, and some distinguished in
science and public life — assisted by an ex-
ecutive committee. It is represented that a
large and increasing interest is being taken
in the project by men and firms whose co-
operation is desired, and who might be
counted upon to become exhibitors. It would
be impossible to name all or even a consid-
erable fraction of the features which could
find an appropriate place in such an exhibi-
tion. Great improvements are being made
in the use of gas for light and fuel and the
appliances, and these will, of course, be
shown.

Mr. Amos W. Butler, the well-known
ornithologist, gives, in his address as retiring
President of the Indiana Academy of Sci-
ences, an interesting and valuable contribu-
tion to our knowledge of contemporary evo-
lution. The address, published by the Acad-
emy, treats of " a century of changes in the
aspects of Nature " in Indiana. The disap-
pearance of the great forests, the extinction
of the Indian and the large mammals, have
been accompanied by corresponding changes
among the smaller animals. Especially nota-
ble has been the loss of the hosts of passen-
ger pigeons. In the days of Wilson and
Audubon the sky was literally dark with
these. Now the species is but a memory, so
far as Indiana is concerned. The future will
record changes as the past has done. " But
at no time in the future wiU the changes in

the aspects of Nature be so noticeable, so in-
comprehensible, because of their vastness, as
have those of the century just closing."

Following the protest which some time
ago appeared against the illustrations of im-
possible icebergs comes one against impos-
sible volcanoes. Mr. Oliver C. Farrington
writes to Science, sending a reproduction of a
school geography's picture of Popocatepetl,
and by the side of it an outline of the actual
mountain. The difference is quite startling.
The slope of Popocatepetl was found by Mr.
Farrington to be never more than 30°, while
the picture represents a snow-capped peak
with a slope of from 40° to 50^ " A tall
cross, such as no traveler in Mexico ever
saw, and luxuriant palms, such as never grow
at the altitude from which Popocatepetl can
be seen," furnish a fitting foreground.

NOTES.

The experiment of planting and raising
Eastern oysters in the waters of Los Angeles
County, California, was tried in 1892, when
three hundred pounds of spat or seed oysters
were planted at Alamitos Bay, near Long
Beach Park, and at the mouth oJf New River.
At the end of 1894 the oysters of this plan-
tation were as large as those of the same age
raised in the East. The oyster ground em-
braced the whole of Anamitos and Anaheim
Bays. The outlook for the industry was
hopeful, and no starfish or carnivorous shell-
fish had been detected among the beds. Mrs.
M. Burton Williamson, who has published an
account of this plantation in the Annual of
the Historical Society, suggests that the ship-
ment of Eastern oysters may also result in
planting the fry of other shellfish from the
East in the bay. Mya aremiria and Urosal-
pinz cinerea are now propagated in San Fran-
cisco Bay from seed brought with Eastern
oysters.

Topazes are found in the tin-bearing al-
luvions of the river Tjenderiang in the king-
dom of Perak, Malacca, absolutely colorless
and perfectly transparent, measuring from
one centimetre to three centimetres and a
half. Sometimes they are rolled, when their
faces are dull, but the number of intact
crystals is large enough to justify the sup-
position that their original site is not far
away.

The recent conference held in London,
for considering the question of forming an
international catalogue of scientific litera-
ture, should have very important results.
Men of science recognize, as Prof. Mach, of
Germany, said, no distinction of race or
nationality, and they were glad, he added, to

288

P OP JJLAR SCIENCE MONTHL Y.

co-operate with Englishmen in a work in
which all men of science were interested.
The cataloguing of general scientific work,
as it at present stands, is not at all satis-
factory, and the adoption of a general sys-
tem, by the scientists of all countries, which
seems likely to follow the conference, will
undoubtedly be a long step in advance.

The excessive cost of the rare earths used
in the composition of the Welsbach and other
incandescent gas mantles has led to the for-
mulation of a process by which the residues
of the old mantles can be reduced, separated,
and used again repeatedly in new mantles.
The process consists in reducing the mantles
with ten times their weight of bisulphate of
sodium, taking up the product in water, and
adding excess of oxalate of ammonia to re-
dissolve oxalates of thorium and zirconium,
while the oxalates of cerium, lanthanium,
erbium, and yttrium remain insoluble. The
hquor is then filtered, the undissolved oxa-
lates remaining on the filter. The residue is
then treated with concentrated hydrochloric
acid to obtain the oxalates of thqrium and
zirconium.

The supposition that by comparing nu-
merous elements in different myths, and thus
discovering that many are identical, a com-
mon origin is proved, was treated as a fal-
lacy by Dr. Brinton in a paper read before
the American Association. The method in
question. Dr. Brinton held, does not take
into account the essential unity of the human
mind, wherever it may be, and the laws that
govern its activity. Because of the tendency
of the mind, everywhere and in all condi-
tions, to act in the same manner, we find
myths of similar character in all parts of the
world. They may therefore be very similar,
and yet very diverse in origin.

A SERIES of fifteen terminal moraines was
described by Mr. F. B. Taylor, in a paper
read in the American Association, as lying
between Cincinnati and the Straits of Macki-
naw.

The cultivation of flowers for export and
for the perfumery factories at Grasse is an
important industry on the Riviera. It is offi-
cially estimated that the value of flowers an-
nually exported from Nice, Cannes, Beaulien,
and Mentone is six hundred thousand dollars.

Prof. Josiah Dwight Whitney, of Har-
vard University, one of the most eminent of
• American geologists, died at Lake Sunapee,
N. H., August 19th, in his seventy- seventh
year. He was born in Northampton, Mass. ;
was graduated at Yale in 1839, and, after
spending about twenty years in various geo-
logical surveys, was appointed Professor of
Geology at Harvard in 1864. His geological
work began in service as assistant geologist
in New Hampshire, subsequent to his gradu-
ation, after which he traveled and studied in

Europe. In 184'7 he engaged, in connection
with John W. Foster, in the Government
survey of the Lake Superior region, the pub-
lished result of which, Foster and Whitney's
Report, was a famous book in its day and
long the chief authority. He next spent two
years in the examination of the mining and
mineral resources of the States east of the
Mississippi, and published The Metallic
Wealth of the United States in 1854. He
next became State Chemist and professor in
the State University of Iowa ; made a geo-
logical survey of that State ; surveyed the
lead region of the upper Missouri, in con-
nection with the official surveys of Wisconsin
and Illinois; and from 1860 till 1874 con-
ducted the topographical, geological, and
natural-history survey of California, publish-
ing the results in more than six volumes.
He translated the Use of the Blowpipe of
Berzelius, published a Yosemite Guidebook,
and contributed much to scientific and other
periodicals. Mount Whitney was named
after him. He was a brother to William
Dwight Whitney, the philologist.

Among the results of the measurements
of the velocity of rotation of the planets by
the spectroscopic method reported by Prof.
J. E. Keeler to the British Association is the
observation that the inside of Saturn's ring
moves more quickly than the outside, and
consequently that the constituents of the
ring do not obey Kepler's third law. These
constituents are therefore not solid particles,
a fact which has been previously established
by other methods.

Mr. William Crawford Winlock, assist-
ant in charge of the office of the Smith-
sonian Institution, died at Bay Head, N. J.,
September 20th, in his thirty- seventh year.
He was a son of Prof. Joseph Winlock, first
Director of the Harvard Observatory and
Superintendent of the American Ephemeris
and Nautical Almanac, and inherited a fond-
ness for astronomy from him. He was ap-
pointed curator of international exchanges
and afterward assistant in charge of the office
of the Smithsonian Institution ; prepared the
Annual Reports on the Progress of Astronomy
from 1885 to 1892; contributed articles on
astronomy to various periodicals ; and repre-
sented the Secretary of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution at various scientific meetings, includ-
ing the centennial anniversary of the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society.

Dr. H. Newell Martin, ex-Professor of
Biology in Johns Hopkins University, died
in Burley, England, October 29th, in the
forty-ninth year of his age. He was born in
Ncwry, Ireland ; was a fellow of Christ Col-
lege, Cambridge, where he received the de-
gree of A. B. in 1879, and that of A. M. in
1877; and was appointed to the professor-
ship in Johns Hopkins on the recommenda-
tion of Prof. Huxley. He retired from that
position in 1893 on account of ill health.

GEORGE BROWN GOODE.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MOI^THLY.

JANTJAHY, 1897.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION".

By DAVID A. "VVELLS, LL.D., D.C.L.,

COERESPONDANT DE l'iNSTITOT DE FEAlfCE, ETC.

V. — LIMITATION AS RESPECTS INSTRUMENTALITIES BY WHICH
TAXATION IN A CIVILIZED STATE EFFECTS ITS PURPOSE.

ATTENTION is next asked to the instrumentality by which
-^^ taxation subserves the necessities of the state and enables it
to effect the purposes for which it was instituted. The designa-
tion of this instrumentality is " revenue," as is indicated in the
phrase " tariff (or taxation) for revenue." But the term " rev-
enue " is abstract and most indefinite, and as popularly used con-
veys little meaning other than a receipt of something pi value.
In rude or incipient forms of government, where tribute or taxes
were payable in cattle, skins, cocoanuts, salt, grain, and the like,
the term might be fairly interpreted as an income of property in
general. But in a highly civilized state such a meaning is inad-
missible. The government of such a state obviously could not
defray its varied expenses by payments with various articles of
property, even though their value may be unquestioned — as, for
example, its executive with fish, fresh or salt ; its legislators with
distilled or fermented liquors ; its judges with boots and shoes ;
its soldiers and sailors with cotton or corn ; and its clerks with
agricultural implements — even though the producers of all these
forms of wealth or property may be most willing to give them in
discharge of their tax obligations.* In such a state revenue has

* In ancient times cattle were regarded among nations of a considerable degree of civ-
ilization as standards of value, and obligations to government in the nature of taxes were
payable therein. As recent, moreover, as 1758 taxes in Virginia and Maryland were pay-
VOL. L, — 23

290 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and can have, therefore, but one meaning — namely, money j be-
cause money is the indispensable and practically the only means
of defraying the expenses of the state and efficiently administering
its government ; and taxation is the process by which the state
obtains money from its citizens, who in turn obtain (as before
pointed out — see Chapter III) it in exchange for some product of
their labor or for some direct personal service. In short, money
is an expedient that finds its sole justification in its adaptation to
a special purpose.

At the same time it is important to bear in mind that the
raising or procurement of money with the view or purpose of
accumulating wealth is not a legitimate function or object of
civil government.

This point, which, stated and regarded as an abstract proposi-
tion, may seem to the reader as a matter of interest but of little
practical importance, finds a very interesting and most instruc-
tive exemplification in the recent attempt to govern South Africa
by means of a chartered company — "The South African Com-
pany." The attempt failed by the confusing on the part of the
company of two things which are absolutely irreconcilable and
ought never to be associated — namely, the prerogative of govern-
ing men on the one hand and the desire of making money on the
other. This the company in question attempted to do by taxing
the inhabitants of the territory embraced in its charter for the
purpose of making dividends for shareholders, who as a rule did
not live in the country, but mainly in England. The result has
been a thoroughly vicious and intolerable form of government,
one which "has operated to deaden the sense of responsibility
among the rulers, who are here to-day but are gone to-morrow,
and answerable to nobody but the company."

Now, if these premises are correct — and it is difficult to see
how they can be disproved — it would seem to follow that to seek
to make taxation, which is a fit contrivance only for raising rev-
enue, an instrument for effecting some ulterior purpose, be it
never so just and legitimate, to seek to use it for the attainment
of any other advantage than the obvious one of raising money, is
to lose sight of a fundamental principle of every free government
and to forbid all expectation of recognizing any other basis for
the exercise of this great sovereign power of the state than expe-
diency, which in turn will depend upon the actions, passions, and

able in tobacco ; and in Massachusetts, Indian corn, musket balls, dried peas, cattle, and
beaver skins were made legal tender for the payment of taxes until the early years of the
eighteenth century. Ultimately, and in all cases as civilization advanced, such media for
the payment of taxes, or the discharge of other forms of indebtedness, have been found to
result in terrible currency confusion and to be wholly impracticable.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 291

prejudices of legislators, who may not be tlie same in any two
successive legislative assemblies.

Such a perversion of principle, furthermore, reaches its cli-
max of absurdity in practice when its immediate beneficiaries
claim to be the only proper persons by whom the incidence and
amount of taxation can be intelligently determined — a claim that
is practically equivalent to the assumption that privilege should
take precedence of rights in the theory of government.* And
yet there have been but very few of the revenue enactments in re-
cent years of the Federal Government of the United States that
have not only indorsed the rightfulness and desirability of such
claims, but have made them the basis of most important legis-
lation.

As this subject has hitherto received but little attention from
legislators and the legal profession in the United States, the fol-
lowing citations from recognized American authorities are most
pertinent in this connection :

" A burden laid not for the purpose of producing revenue, but
in order to accomplish some ulterior object which the General
Government lacks the power otherwise to accomplish, comes
under no definition of the word " tax " which is recognized in
public law. It demands no contributions for the service of the
state ; it adds and is expected to add nothing to the public reve-
nue. It annihilates that upon which it is levied, and it differs
from confiscation only in this : that confiscation seizes something
of value and appropriates it to the needs of the Government, thus
making it useful, while this seizes it for the purpose of destruc-
tion."— Cooley, Law of Taxation, p. 75.

" One grievous invasion of property — and of course ultimately
of labor, from whose accumulations all property grows — is by
Government itself, in the shape of taxation for objects not neces-
sary for the common defense and general welfare. Men have a
right not only to be well governed, but to be cheaply governed —
as cheaply as is consistent with the due maintenance of that
security for which society was formed and government instituted.
This, the sole legitimate end and object of law, is never to be lost
sight of — security to men in the free enjoyment and development

* In popular discussions of tariff revisions in the United States such a claim has r ctu-
ally been advanced by the representatives of interests in whose behalf certain imposts had
been specially enacted, and which were not for purposes of collecting but rather for the
prevention of revenue.

" It is not claimed that this statute [McKinley Tariff Act], any more than any other hu-
man ordinance, was perfect in its details, nor thp,t all its rates of assessment of duties should
have been maintained, but the modifications suggested by time and experience should have
been left to the friends of the measure." — Letter of the Hon. L. P. Morton, acccplivg nomi-
nation for the office of Governor of New York, October 9, 1S94-

292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of their capacities for happiness — security : nothing less, "but
nothing more/' — Sharswood, Legal Ethics.

" To the extent that the mass of our citizens are inordinately
burdened beyond any useful public purpose and for the benefit of
a favored few, the Government, under pretext of an exercise of
its taxing power, enters gratuitously into partnership with these
favorites, to their advantage and to the misery of a vast majority
of our people." — Message of Grover Cleveland, President of the
United States, December, 1888.

Taxation for Revenue only. "What does it mean ? — It
is essential to the completeness of this discussion to call attention
at this point to the circumstance that a full recognition and rigid
adherence in practice by a Government to the principles of taxa-
tion above shown to be fundamental, will not interfere with or
impair the efficiency of its administration. The raising of reve-
nue (money) by taxation is one thing; the determination of how
the revenue collected shall be used or expended is quite another
thing ; and the danger line to the liberties of the people is crossed
when these two functions are confounded. The exercise of the
first, as already pointed out, is subject to limitations growing out
of the conditions essential to the existence of a free Government.
The determination of the second rests primarily in the legislative
department of such Government, and is subject to no legal limita-
tions in the United States other than what flows from the oft-re-
peated dicta and decisions of its highest judicial authorities, that
money taken out of the pockets of the people by taxation can not
be used (expended) for any other than a public purpose ; but
what constitutes a public purpose is so indefinite that one emi-
nent jurist, especially versed in the subject, has declared that
"there is no such thing as drawing a clear line of distinction
between purposes of a public and those of a private nature." *

If a state, therefore, in the plenitude of the wisdom of its legis-
lators, desires to interfere with the operation of the laws of trade,
domestic or foreign, control the preferences of its citizens in
respect to production or consumption, repress one form of indus-
try and stimulate another, and discourage even to prohibition the
indulgence of such tastes and passions as it may judge to be det-
rimental to itself or the individual, it may legitimately exercise
functions entirely different from that exercised in raising revenue
and governed by entirely different principles. The right to regu-
late trade and commerce and the power of police are entirely
independent of the right to raise revenue.

If the state, in providing itself with what it regards as neces-
sary revenue, levies its taxes in such a manner that no citizen is

* Cooley, Law of Taxation, p. 70.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 293

required to pay more or allowed to pay less than his just propor-
tion, then there is no tyranny in taxation, even if the methods
employed, without any such intent, may incidentally promote
private interests and sumptuary purposes. But if, on the other
hand, a just and equitable method of taxation will not promote
these purposes, and, as usually the case, the state resorts to meth-
ods that are not just, not equitable, and imposes upon some citi-
zens an undue share of the general public burden, then to that
extent taxation becomes tyrannical, and can not be justified ex-
cept upon the assumption that there is no limitation on the right
of a state to interfere with individual rights to property ; which is
the same thing as asserting that the state in question is not " free,"
but is a " despotism." In short, the proposition would seem to be
clear that the state can not, without violating that simple princi-
ple of justice which prescribes equality in taxation, use its taxing
power for effecting any other purpose whatever except to raise
money.*

The principle here involved may be further illustrated by refer-
ence to a curious chapter of railroad experience. Some years ago
the managers of one of the great railroads of the United States
appropriated a part of its receipts from the carriage of freight and
passengers to the support of an opera house and a corps of ballet
dancers. Extraordinary as was this procedure, there was no ques-
tion that the directors, who were trustees for the stockholders,
had the right to determine how the earnings of the road should
be applied, so long as the stockholders failed to restrain them or
prevent their continuance in office ; and as they did not, no legal
action or restraint of their singular use of the receipts of the
property was attempted. But if these same directors had decided
not to take money directly from the aggregate earnings of the
railroad for the furtherance of their peculiar views, but that in
addition to certain rates for transportation all passengers and
freight should pay a special sum (tax) for the support of the
opera house, the state would have undoubtedly and properly
intervened and forbidden its collection, on the ground that the
railroad was not chartered (called into existence) for any such
purpose, and that the attempt to use any power other than what
was granted or contemplated in its charter was illegal and un-
warranted.

Again, if the legislative department of the state decides that

* A legal writer of eminence (Justice Cooley) has recently contended that this is not a
correct view, for the reason that it is one which finds no " countenance in the pi-actice of
our Government, or indeed that of any other." But if this contention is valid, then it may
be pleaded with equal effect for the justification and continuance of every practice which
old-time views and long usage have tolerated, but which a higher civilization or a broader
culture demands shall be abrogated.

294 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it would be expedient to establish or stimulate the manufacture of
certain commodities, no one under a free government would ven-
ture openly to justify such, action, except on the ground that
public welfare would be thereby promoted, although practically
such justification in the United States has long since ceased to be
other than a pretense and a cover for the promotion of private
interests. Suppose, for example, that the manufacture of the
commodity which it is proposed to stimulate is tin plate, and it is
decided that the desired result can be best attained by giving the
domestic manufacturer the difference between what his product
will sell for in a free market and what he can make it for — say
fifteen million dollars per annum — it would seem to be only sim-
ple justice that the state should fairly and honestly pay the sum
representing this difference, and raise the money,* not by a tax on
the consumers of the product artificially maintained, who are no
more interested in the matter than all other citizens, but by a levy
upon the community at large, in the same equitable manner as it
raises money to defray its other expenses. In short, if any indus-
try can not live without state aid, and it is for the public welfare
that it should live, let the state directly subsidize it, and not main-
tain it by allowing private interest arbitrarily to exercise the
great sovereign power of taxation, f

* A written public statement made by a Senator of the United States (George F. Hoar),
in 1892, that an assertion by the National Democratic party of the United States in its
presidential platform of that year that " the Federal Government has no constitutional
power to enforce and collect tariff duties except for the purpose of revenue only," was
equivalent to an unveiling of an opinion that " the American people alone, of all civilized
nations, have no power to do anything for the encouragement of their own industries," dis-
played an amount of ignorance and misconception of the powers and objects of the Gov-
ernment he served which, to say the least, was discreditable to its author.

f " Granting that it is expedient for the Government to spend money in the maintenance
or the promotion of the iron manufacture, for example, it must be expedient also that the
public should know the exact amount which it costs annually, just as it is expedient that
the public should know exactly how much the army and navy costs, or how much the an-
nual improvement of rivers and harbors costs. No view, however broad, of the provmce of
government can furnish an excuse for concealing the expense of any great national under-
taking. . . . But there is no trace of this expenditure in the national accounts. . . . Next,
it must be said that any fund of large amount, raised and distributed in this way, must of
necessity prove a corruption fund. By this I do not mean a fund distributed in bribes to
individuals or organizations, but a fund the existence of which must be constantly present
to the mind of the lazy, the improvident, or incompetent, as something to fall back on if
the worst come to the worst. Suppose the national appropriations for the purpose of pro-
tecting manufacturing industry were made in the ordinary way by a distinct vote of Con-
gress ; were made, for instance, as the appropriations for the promotion of the carrying
trade — the steamship subsidies, as they are called — are made in the shape of an annual
maximum sum. Suppose this sum were paid over to the corporations or individuals en-
gaged in each manufacture on their giving proof that they were carrying on a hona-fide
business. . Suppose that to each were given as much as would meet the loss, as shown by
his books, incurred by him in competing with foreigners in the home markets. . . . The

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 295

This was the idea of Alexander Hamilton, who in the early-
days of the republic favored state interference with the pursuits
of the people to a large extent, as the best method by which do-
mestic manufacturing should be stimulated by the state. This
idea, however, found no more favor with the parties specially
interested at that time than it would at present ; inasmuch as a
brief practical experience would so soon demonstrate the small-
ness of the revenue necessary to be raised by honest taxation for
the direct maintenance of an industry by the state, in comparison
with the amount raised, for the most part by inequitable and un-
just taxation for the support of that form of interference by the
state with production which goes under the name of " protection,"
as to make any long toleration of the latter policy by a free peo-
ple exceedingly unlikely.

Generic Difference between the "Taxing" and "Po-
lice" Powers op the State. — Attention is next asked to the
generic difference between the "taxing" and "police" powers of
the state (to which a brief reference has been made already), and
to the incongruities and governmental abuses that inevitably
result from a lack of full recognition of this fact. The object of
the taxing power is to raise money to defray the expenditures of
the state, and proof and argument seem conclusive that it can not
be legitimately used for anything else. By the power of police is
understood the internal' regulation of the affairs of the state in
the interest of good order. The idea, therefore, of resorting to
taxation for the purpose of protecting individuals against their
own foolishness, enforcing morality, preventing social evils, or as
an instrumentality for the punishment of crime, is to pervert an
agency from the one sole purpose for which it can rightfully exist
to another less fit and not warranted by necessity, and presupposes
an entire misconception of the principles of a free government ;
and all perversions of this power are certain to entail evils greater
than the abuses which it is devised to remedy. If the prosecution
of any trade or occupation, or the manufacture and use of any
product constitutes an evil of sufficient magnitude to call for ad-
verse legislation, let the state proceed against it directly, coura-
geously, and with determination. To impose taxes upon an evil
in any degree short of its prohibition is in effect to recognize and
license this evil. To demand a portion of the gains of a person
practicing fraud, may be an effectual method for putting an end
to his knavery by making his practices unprofitable ; but it would
be, all the same, a very poor way for a state to adopt as a means

political objections to the protective system can not be made so clear as by inquiring how
the plan of distributing the money directly by the public Treasury would work." — E. L.
GoDKiN, Problems of Modern Democracy.

296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for suppressing fraud. If absolute prohibition is tbe object, then
sucb. result should be attained through the police force of the
state, and through its legislative enactments making the act,
powers, or products which it is desired to suppress, misdemeanors
or felonies. The manufacture and sale of spirituous liquors, in
common with all other branches of business, is a legitimate sub-
ject for taxation, but there is a broad distinction — indeed, nothing
in common — between taxing this business for revenue and in
levying taxes with a view of preventing the business from being
transacted at all, and so preventing revenue.

Again, if the above analysis of the origin, justification, and
limitations of the power of taxation is correct, it would seem evi-
dent that to seek to make the occasion for the exercise of the
power other than necessity, and the object anything else than the
raising of money for meeting the expenditures of a government
economically administered, is to strike a blow at not only good
government, but also at free government. It is also a flat denial
of the authoritative statement of the United States Supreme
Court that "there are rights in every free government beyond
the control of the state," and that the theory of our Government,
State and national, admits of no place for the deposit of unlim-
ited power. For the deliberate recognition and indorsement of
the right on the part of the state to disregard these limitations in
a single instance, is equivalent to a denial that there are any such,
and certainly in this one department makes the Government
despotic rather than free. Once recognize the principle of in-
equitable taxation, and no one can foresee how far it may be
carried.

If it is contended, as it is, that the use of the power of taxation
for purposes other than the collection of revenue finds justifica-
tion in the fact that " the law-maker must look far enough be-
yond the general purpose to satisfy himself how any proposed
levy is likely to affect the general good," a sufficient answer to
such contention would seem to be that the general good is always
best subserved by doing what is exactly right, and not what is
expedient.

There is no question that the Federal Government of the
United States, under its peculiar organization, is excluded from
all responsibility for the internal order or morality of the States
that make up the Union, and under such circumstances it follows
that where Congress assumes that the consumption or use of cer-
tain commodities is prejudicial to the interests of the people (as
it has done, as will hereafter be shown), and attempts, when pro-
viding means for the support of the Federal administration, to
embody such assumptions, with a view of prohibitions or re-
straints, in measures of revenue, it is also enacting sumptuary

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 297

laws* and imposing taxes, not in accordance witli any rule of
equity, but by reason of some arbitrary and sentimental notions
of how a citizen ought to live, dress, eat, and drink. In the case
of the several States of the Union, whose power of taxation is
practically unlimited, such action is in the nature of oppression ;
but in the case of the Federal Government, whose powers of tax-
ation are carefully limited by its Constitution, it is clearly an act
of usurpation. In further elucidation of this matter, it is inter-
esting to note, that probably no example can be found in history
in which an attempt has been made to continue the raising of
revenue with the regulation of popular consumption, that has not
resulted in failure as respects the attainment of both objects.

One of the most notable perversions of the correct principles
of taxation for the purpose of affecting the popular consumption
of a commodity, has been the comparatively recent attempt of the
Federal Congress (act of August, L886) to prevent the use of one of
the great discoveries of the age — namely, the manufacture of artifi-
cial butter, which, when properly prepared, is a most valuable and
perfectly healthful addition to the food resources of the people.
The practical results of this attempt are exceedingly curious and
ought to be in the highest degree instructive. The burden of the
tax — two cents per pound and special taxes on manufacturers,
wholesale and retail dealers — which was intended to be prohibi-
tory, has not been sufficient to accomplish the object of its levy ;
for the annual production, sale, and consumption of oleomar-
garine in the United States have continually increased (from 34,-
325,000 pounds in 1888, to 48,304,000 in 1892, and 69,622,000 in
1894). The Federal courts having decided that it is merchantable,
the States may to a certain extent also regulate its sale, but can
not prevent its importation. The Federal Government further-
more derives a considerable revenue from its domestic manu-
facture and sale ($1,409,211 in 1895); and also exports an annual
large and increasing quantity for the consumption and use of for-
eign countries (127,193,000 pounds in 1894) ; and clearly, if such
production and sale are fraudulent and wrong, the Government
has become a partner in such fraud and wrong and in effect
licenses them.

It is also an interesting fact that this idea of resorting to tax-
ation for the primary purpose of enforcing morality and prevent-
ing social wrong is a comparatively modern idea, and finds its
chief exemplification in the United States.

* " Sumptuary : Relating to expense. Laws or regulations which restrain or limit the
expenses of citizens in apparel, food, furniture, etc. Sumptuary laws are abridgments of
liberty and of very difficult execution. They can be justified only on the ground of extreme
necessity." — Wcbster^s Dictionary.

298 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The lesson of all history is to the effect that, save in the case
of war or invasion, nations have rarely or never lost a freedom
once possessed, except through the tolerance (born of indifference)
of a succession of gradual and insidious perversions and weaken-
ing of those fundamental principles which must be maintained
unimpaired to make popular liberty possible. And it is alike
startling and discouraging to note how rapidly, in recent years,
the United States, as a political entity, has been traveling in this
direction.

Theory of the Power of Taxation originally enter-
tained BY the American People. — The idea of using the power
of taxation for other purposes than that of obtaining revenue for
defraying the necessary expenditure of the Government, was one
hostile at the outset to all the beliefs and habits of thought of the
American people; was totally incongruous with the social and
political system which they instituted and expected, and was re-
luctantly admitted under the idea that the industries of a new
country might need some temporary stimulus and assistance at
the outset.* The party (old Whig) that in subsequent years
specially advocated the policy protection to domestic industries,
always also admitted that the Federal Government had no origi-
nal right to exercise the power of taxation except for revenue,
but it claimed that taxes on imports might and should be so
adjusted as to afford protection for our infant industries. And
in this they were joined by some members of the other great
national party — the Democratic — who argued in favor of what
was called "incidental" protection, or the protection which inevi-
tably results in a greater or less degree from the imposition of
duties without any such premeditated purpose.

Theory and Practice of Later Days. — But it was not un-
til after the termination of the war in 1865 that anybody in the
United States ventured to openly maintain or defend the proposi-
tion that protection was other than the incidental, and not the
main object of the exercise of the taxing power, although this
perversion of principle was tacitly recognized by the imposition
and continuance of taxes which had for their intent, or resulted
in a prevention of the raising of revenue.

Illustrative Examples of the Practical Perversion of
the Theory and Principles op Taxation. — One of the most
instructive examples of this kind was afforded by the imposition
of a tax in 1809 of five cents a pound on the importation of crude
or unmanufactured copper ; which proved so prohibitive that in

* The doctrine of Hamilton was that while the pajTneut of bounties for the encourage-
ment of new industrial undertakings was justiBable, their " continuance on manufactures
long established was most questionable." — Report on Manufacturer, 1791.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 299

one year (1878) revenue to the extent of only five cents, accruing
from the importation of only one pound of copper, was collected.
The legislators who enacted the law productive of such a result
might have pleaded in justification that revenue was their in-
tent ; * but when a brief experience had proved that the taxing
power had been used to prevent the raising of revenue by the
state, and for a different purpose, it was evident that a continu-
ance of the policy (and the tax was long retained) was in effect a
justification and an indorsement of it. To complete the illustra-
tion, it should be further pointed out that the result of this per-
version of the taxing power was to enable the owners of copper
mines in the United States, especially certain ones of unprece-
dented richness — formerly the property of the United States, but
sold for a mere song — to extort for a period of years from the
people of the whole country the sum of five cents for every pound
of copper they consumed, but from which exaction (aggregating
millions) the people of other countries, who consumed the large
surplus product of American copper exported, were exempt, as
the tax laws of all countries have no extra-territorial jurisdiction.
During the discussion and defense of this tariff enacted in 1890,
however, all pretense and evasion were discarded, and the posi-
tion openly taken that the Government could rightfully levy
taxes, not for the purpose of raising revenue, and not to subserve
any necessity of the state, and under the name of protection
delegate to private or corporate interests the right to collect and
appropriate them.

It has been contended by authorities worthy of all respect (the
late George Ticknor Curtis, for example) that there is no per-
version of the taxing power in the levy of duties on imports by
the Federal Government for purposes other than revenue, for the
reason that " duties are not taxes, but assessments, in the nature
of tribute imposed on merchandise imported from other coun-
tries," and that " when the Government levies duties on foreign
products," under the provision of the Constitution that " Congress
shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and
excises," " it dues not exercise or pretend to exercise its taxing
power."

In answer to this it is to be said, first, that the application of dif-
ferent names to one and the same act does not alter the nature of
the act ; second, that usage and authorities among all nations and at
all times are in unison in regarding such terms as imposts, duties,
excises, customs, tolls, gabbele, talliage, tribute, and the like, when

* The United States Supreme Court has held that the judicial power can not inquire into
the intentions of Congress in imposing a tax ; and that, if injustice is done, the only remedy
is an appeal to the legislative power that has inflicted it.

300 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

used in respect to the fiscal functions of a government, as expres-
sive simply of different methods of effecting one and the same
object — namely, the compelling of contributions from persons,
property, or business for the use or support of the state. The con-
tention, then, thus far is simply a quibble as to the meaning of
words. Third, the authority given to Congress by the Constitution
" to lay and collect * imposts,' in connection with taxes, duties, and
excises," does not warrant the assumption that any of these acts
of levying and collection are to be by methods that are not
primarily for the purpose of raising revenue (money) for the
service of the state, or are antagonistic to the structure of a free
government. Following the precedents before noted, a meas-
ure known as the' Anti-option Bill has been introduced and
found favor in Congress, which is nothing more nor less than
an attempt to make people dealing in certain staple agricul-
tural commodities honest by the exercise of the taxing power ;
a measure devised for effecting indirectly that which it would be
unconstitutional to do directly — namely, to prevent trading in
cotton, grain, hops, meats, etc., for future delivery, by first assum-
ing that all such sales are " immoral, unnatural, unjust, and iu ju-
rious," and then attempting to put an end to them, not by the
exercise of the police power of the several States, but by licensing
and taxing them by the Federal Government under pretense of
collecting revenue, when by the very terms of the bill no taxes
productive of revenue are likely to accrue from its provisions.
It is difficult to see why, if this extraordinary measure is made
law and obligatory on all citizens, the policy of restraint involved
should not be made also applicable to the buying and selling of
all articles other than cotton and cereals — as cloth, stoves, boots
and shoes, securities — and even personal service ; and why, if it is
right to extinguish one trade or calling hy taxing it, every other
may not be uprooted and extinguished in the same way.*

* As pertinent and most instructive on this subject attention is asked to the following
extract from a speech of Hon. Edward D. White (then a Senator of the United States from
Louisiana, and now a judge of the United States Supreme Court), in the course of a debate
in the Senate in July, 1892, on the so-called Anti-option Bill: "No power as to imposts
was reserved in the States by the Federal Constitution. All the lawful powers of govern-
ment which could be exercised in that particular passed into the life and being of the
Federal Government by the lodgment in that Government of the power to levy imposts. In
my judgment, if complaint is made of impost taxes by the Federal Government, levied not
for the purpose of revenue, but for protection or prohibition, the complaint is not that the
Federal Government violates the Constitution or the limitations of the Constitution, be-
cause as to that all authority is granted by the Constitution. When I say this I mean no
limitation by the Constitution by express provision of the Constitution. The complaint of
undue or prohibitory external imposts is not that the Constitution has been violated.

" No, but that there has been a violation of the great fundamental and elementary prin-
ciple of all government, which underlies all constitutions, which affect this Government and

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 301

Another proposition wliicTi has received the indorsement of
high judicial authority in the United States * is to employ Federal
taxation for the crushing out of State lotteries, with the absurd
accompaniment of no revenue (taxes) ; for if the desired object is
attained, the payment of taxes and the, procurement of revenue
will be prevented. It seems clear, also, that if such a measure
was once adopted it would constitute a precedent and authority
for the destruction by the Federal Government, through the exer-
cise of the taxing power, of nearly every faculty or power now
belonging to and exercised by the several States; and that houses
of prostitution, gambling and liquor saloons, opium "joints," and
other haunts of vice now under the control and supervision of the
police powers of the States might be regulated or suppressed by
Federal taxation, as well as lotteries, f

every other government, and which would afEect the most unlimited government in the
world. These principles are that government is created with limitations flowing from the
nature of its being, which teach that no government shall use its power for the benefit of
the few to the detriment of the many. Therefore, all the arguments which have been
made on the subject of the abuse of the impost power in the Federal Government are argu-
ments addressing themselves not to the limit of delegation under the Constitution as to im-
posts, but to the ^ ant of power arising from the very nature of government itself. The
usurpation of power by Congress, not vested by the Constitution in Congress, is uncon-
stitutional."

The point here at issue was also clearly recognized by President Cleveland, in his mes-
sage in 188G, announcing his signature to a bill (above noticed) for taxing oleomargarine,
where the real intent of taxation was popularly assumed to be prohibitive of production
and sale and not revenue. " It has been urged," he said, " as an objection to this measure
that while purporting to be legislation for revenue, its real purpose is to destroy, by the use
of the taxing power, one industry of our people for the protection and benefit of another.
If entitled to indulge in such a suspicion as a basis of ofiicial action in this case, and if en-
tirely satisfied that the consequences indicated would ensue, I should doubtless feel con-
strained to interpose executive dissent." In other words, the President took the bill as it
came to him as ostensibly a revenue measure, and in the exercise of his executive preroga-
tive passed upon it as such, but at the same time he was careful to say in this message that
if that bill had not presented that aspect to him, he would have been constrained to exer-
cise the executive veto.

In the course of the debate to which reference has been made, Mr. White, in response
to a question as to what he would as a Senator consider his duty in respect to a bill pro-
posed to Congress for enactment which, while undoubtedly productive of revenue, was in-
tended for some other purpose, made answer as follows : " I would have two questions to
ask myself : Is this a bill raising revenue ? That is the first question. If I determine
that question in the affirmative, the lamp of my duty might lead my mind toward support-
ing that bill, but it could not carry me to that point unless another question were also an-
swered : Is it an honest exercise of the taxing power, or is it a dishonest scheme to raise
revenue and accomplish another purpose? If my mind, in the exercise of my duty heie,
found that either of these things existed, then, although it was a bill raising revenue, I
would not vote for a dishonest bill raising revenue."

* Judge Cooley, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1892.

f " Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are in the exclusive prov-
ince of the States." — United States Supreme Court, Gibbom vs. Ogden, 9 Wheaton, i, 199.

302 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It should also be remembered that lotteries, if they exist at all
in the United States, must do so under the authority of State
laws ; that Congress can not take from a lottery company the
charter which a State Legislature has granted ; or make the issue
of its tickets illegal, or punish as a crime the action of the man-
agers by whom the business of a lottery is carried on ; and further,
that any legislation to make lotteries illegal should inferentially
pertain to the State ; first, because no jurisdiction has been given
under the Constitution to Congress, except by remote inference to
interfere with this matter ; and, second, because there is no doubt
that there was a complete unanimity of opinion among its f ramers
that lotteries were legitimate and unobjectionable instrumentali-
ties of society, inasmuch as at the time the Constitution was
framed they were authorized by the States and extensively em-
ployed throughout the country for the founding of schools and
colleges, the erection of hospitals, and the construction of roads,
bridges, and ferries. On the other hand, it does not admit of con-
tention that under the exclusive power vested by the Constitu-
tion in the Federal Government to "establish post offices and
jjost roads," the use of the mails for the transmission of lottery
tickets and correspondence may be legitimately inhibited, or that
the general business of lotteries may not be rightfully made sub-
ject to Federal taxation for the sole purpose of revenue. When
the Provincial Legislature of Canada recently decided to suppress
lotteries in the Dominion, the measures which it instituted for so
doing were not made contingent in any way upon the power of
taxation, but by the imposition of heavy fines and penalties, not
only on those engaged in the business, but also upon those having
lottery tickets in their possession.

During the early years of the late war, taxes were imposed on
the circulation of the State banks, "manifestly with a view to
raise revenue and inform the authorities of the amount of paper
money in circulation, and for no other purpose." But in 1865
these taxes were greatly increased, not for revenue, but with the
admitted intent of destroying all banking institutions chartered
by the States, leaving only similar institutions chartered by the
Federal Government in existence. The result sought was fully
attained, and the constitutionality of the legislation by which it
was achieved was subsequently affirmed by the United States Su-
preme Court, which in the case of Veazie vs. Fenno (8 Wall., p. 552)
nevertheless held that " the States possessed the power to grant
charters to State banks," that " the power was incident to sover-
eignty, and that there was no limitation in the Federal Constitu-
tion" of such power. But in delivering the opinion of the court,
the Chief Justice (Chase) declined to enter upon an inquiry
whether the tax imposed on the State banks was so excessive as

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

303

to divulge tlie legislative intention to prohibit banking on tbeir
part, but lie argued elaborately that for another and stronger rea-
son the tax could be constitutionally imposed because it was a tax
levied for a lawful purpose, which lawful purpose was to restrain
a State from interfering with the Federal control of the currency
and the right of the national Government to emit bills of credit,
and it was upon that point that the decision of the Supreme Court
was in fact rendered.

The point of interest in this decision, however, is not the right
of the Federal Government to regulate, especially under the origi-
nal admitted necessity for the exercise of war powers, the cur-
rency of the country, but whether, having regard to the limita-
tions on the exercise of the taxing power growing out of the
nature of a constitutional government, the Federal authorities
were justified in employing it as an instrumentality not to collect
revenue but to prevent revenue, and when the desired end could
be effectually achieved by other and unobjectionable methods;
and on this point the court, following a well-established precedent
of avoiding as far as possible all conflict between the judicial and
legislative powers of the Federal Government, avoided any direct
expression of opinion. As the case now stands, and as Congress
has refused to discontinue the tax, it must be regarded as equiva-
lent to an assertion that the Federal Government has the consti-
tutional right to exercise the taxing power not for revenue and
not by reason of any necessity that can justify it.*

During the recent discussion of the silver problem, an eminent
American writer on economic questions recommended that a

* Concerning the legitimacy and constitutionality of this procedure, a minority of the
Finance Committee of the United States Senate, in a report in May, 1892, on a proposition
to repeal this tax, expressed themselves as follows : Prior acts imposing taxes of one or two
per cent on the notes of State banks, imposed for revenue purposes, the committee regard
' as entirely justifiable; but in respect to the ten-per-cent tax, which neither produced nor was
intended to produce revenue, the committee say :

"This is flagrantly obnoxious in its manifest perversion of the taxing power conferred
upon Congress by the Constitution. . . . We think also that a reasonable construction of
the taxing power clause in the Constitution, to wit, 'the Congress shall have the power to
lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises to pay the debts and provide for the com-
mon defense and general welfare of the United States,' would mean that Congress shall pay
the public debt, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare with the
money arising from such taxation, and not that Congress shall have the power to discharge
these public duties by the mere framing of a statute without any revenue resulting there-
from. Surely it would be an absurdity for the Constitution to say that Congress shall have
the power to discharge the debt of the United States by the mere framing of a statute or
the wording of a law. The payment of money or the transfer of things of value is the only
way by which a debt can be paid. Therefore the enacting of a law in the name and under
the pretense of revenue which is intended to raise no revenue in fact, but which has another
and entirely different object, is a gross and fraudulent perversion of the taxing power con-
ferred by the Constitution."

304 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Federal tax should be imposed on silver, varying from month to
month according to the changes in its market price as bullion,
with a view of establishing and maintaining a parity of value
between gold and silver, with, of course, a total disregard of the
sole object and justification of taxation — namely, revenue.

But the most curious illustration of the extent to which an
entire misconception of the nature and functions of taxation has
obtained favor in the United States is to be found in a pamphlet
entitled Rational Principles of Taxation,* recently published by a
Professor of Political Economy in the University of Pennsyl-
vania, and included among the authorized publications of the
university. In this the author advocates the levying of taxes by
the national Government for the purpose of effecting " stability
in prices"; and on the assumption that a large and increasing
percentage of the national wealth is consumed in the expenses
of the retail distribution of commodities, proposes to remedy
the evil by imposing a discriminating tax on retail dealers so
heavy as to crush out all such whose business and profits in a
given time do not exceed a certain amount to be prescribed by
statute. Among the anticipated advantages enumerated by the
author of the adoption of such a scheme would be the saviiig of
rent " on one half the stores " of cities and a great reduction of
rent on the other half. " There would be little need of advertis-
ing ; . . . the stocks of goods carried by the whole trade would be
greatly reduced, from which there would be great saving of
capital." But "perhaps the greatest saving of all would arise
from the reduction of the force of salesmen and in the cost of
delivering goods." And finally, carried away apparently by a
beatific vision of the glories of such a tax millennium, the pro-
fessor exclaims, " Think of all the elements of economy in con-
junction, and an idea can be formed of the amount of taxes that
could be levied on retail dealers without putting the public to
any inconvenience ! " f and " would not the unnecessary capital
now absorbed in business be fully sufficient to furnish us with
pure water, lovely parks, fine-art galleries," etc. ?

Prospective Evils op the Perversion op the Taxing
Power. — In view of such experiences and propositions, the ques-
tions are most pertinent : How much further is such a perversion
of the taxing power to be carried ? And is not the entire re-
cent experience of the nation in this respect in the direction of

* Rational Principles of Taxation. By Simon N. Patten, Professor of Political Economy,
University of Pennsylvania, 1890.

f Obviously the author of this scheme supposed that the retail dealers of this country
are such bimple-minded people that they will cheerfully pay their proposed heavy taxes
out of their capital, and not transfer them, through increased prices of their goods, to
their consuming purchasers.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN SOCIAL REFORM. 305

s'upx)lanting a " free " by a " paternal " government, which last in
turn finds its highest expression in the enactment of sumptuary
laws for the control by government of the private life of its
citizens ? All despotic power is alike in its nature ; and, once in-
dulged in, the results are always the same. Once let it be fully
accepted as a legitimate feature of public policy that the great
public power of taxation may be intrusted to individual hands
for private purposes and the power of life and death will be
promptly seized to make the former effective. Once confer upon
government the power of dealing out wealth, and the day is not
far distant when its recipients will control the Government, and
by the use of money elect their magistrates and legislators to
perpetuate this policy.

Had the framers of the Federal Constitution even so much as
dreamed that the Government to be established under it would
ever practically refuse to acknowledge any limitations on its
right to interfere with the property of its citizens, would use the
taxing power with undisguised intent for promoting private
rather than public purposes, and would levy taxes to prevent the
payment of taxes, the Constitution itself would never have been
called into existence, and the great American Republic would never
have had a history.*

♦»»

AN OBJECT LESSON IN SOCIAL REFORM.
Bt franklin smith.

''VrO error is more prevalent among intelligent and well-read
-L> people than that the social philosophy of Herbert Spencer
has little or no practical application to the modern problems of
social reform. So deep-rooted is this error that the ablest religious
journal in the United States, which gives much attention to these
problems, once advised him to throw it away. Because he does
not favor recourse to the state for purposes outside of the main-
tenance of justice, it could not conceive that his social philosophy
provided in a more effective way for the solution of social prob-
lems. By an account of a homely instance of the application of
this philosophy, I purpose to show how practical it is in the ordi-
nary as well as extraordinary affairs of life — how it has no rival
in the important and beneficent work of bettering the condition
of mankind. The instance to which I refer is the method adopted

* The economic student and writer (and indeed almost the only one) who has discussed
this subject in the English language with originality and cogency that is most potent for
conviction, is Mr. Theodore Bacon, of Rochester, N. Y., in an article contributed to the
New-Englander in 1867, and to which the author acknowledges his indebtedness both in
respect to ideas and language.

TOL. L. — 24

3o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the city of Rocliester, N. Y., to provide side paths along the

country roads for bicyclists.

I.

In the early part of the present year the newspapers of the city
made the surprising announcement one morning that there had
just passed the State Legislature and been placed in the hands of
the Governor for approval a bill to tax all bicyclists in Monroe
County one dollar each, the fund thus raised to be devoted to
the construction of side paths. I say surprising advisedly. Al-
though it was afterward learned that seven or eight thousand
bicyclists out of the twenty thousand in the county had signed
petitions for the bill, scarcely any public mention of it had been
made, and no public discussion of it had taken place. The
newspapers went so far as to charge that it had been " sneaked "
through the Legislature. While the charge was false, it illus-
trates for the thousandth time how important legislation may be
had without the knowledge of the community it affects.

Besides an indiscriminate imposition of the tax on all bicyclists,
whether living in the city or country, or whether they would have
occasion or not to use the paths, the bill called into existence the
customary political machinery to execute it. There were to be
five side-path commissioners, appointed by the Board of Super-
visors, and to serve five years. They were to determine the paths
to be built, to decide how they should be built, to let contracts,
and to issue orders on the county treasurer, the collector of the
tax, for the payment of work. The most odious feature of the
bill was the provision that the tax " should be a lien on the cycle
taxed " ; that in case of nonpayment the collector should " proceed
to enforce said tax by seizing the cycle" and " selling the same at
public auction to the highest bidder " ; that the proceeds of such
sale should be applied toward the payment of the tax and the
incidental expenses, including the two-dollar fee to the collector.

In the heated discussion that followed the publication of these
provisions, the usual arguments in favor of such legislation were
brought forward. The most comprehensive as well as the most
familiar was the "general-welfare" argument. This was the
fine product of a clerical mind unable to appreciate the full sig-
nificance of the golden rule and the commandment against
covetousness. The argument of a distinguished physician, equally
destitute of a keen appreciation of the rights of those bicyclists
that might never have time to take an excursion into the country,
was that " this plan is the only feasible solution of an extremely
difficult problem." He said that it was " the outcome of careful
consideration by the older and conservative wheelmen of the city,
and not the scheme of the road riders, so called." He went to the
extent of claiming most erroneously that " the opponents of the

AN OBJECT LESSON IN SOCIAL REFORM. 307

bill admit tliat the raising of such a fund by voluntary subscrip-
tion would be impracticable, and only through legislative action,
authorizing the construction of such paths along our common
highways by a small annual tax, can this much-needed public im-
provement be consummated."

A curious feature of the discussion, one common to the argu-
ments of the most enlightened as well as the most ignorant that
took part in it, was the amazing exhibition of selfishness, and
of indifference to the rights of others. " The millennium is too far
ahead," wrote another defender of the bill, impatient with the
delay involved in voluntary enterprise, and convinced of the
perfect propriety of coercing the bicyclists that did not care to
contribute. " Only a few of the present generation of riders will
be able to enjoy the full benefits of that network of good roads
promised when that time comes. Our largest interest is in the
present. We are selfish enough to want a few of the good things
now that are sure to come in abundance hereafter." Then, to
show how just the tax was, since it was levied on bicyclists
only, and how glad they would be to pay it, since all were taxed
alike, he added : " We only ask those interested to contribute
their mite. Every wheelman will be willing to pay his tax if he
knows that his neighbor, who is a wheelman, will do the same.
When a rider tells me he is against the bill because he is pay-
ing for something he does not use, I know that it is the one
dollar, not the man, that is kicking. Every rider will use the
best path, whether it be a side path or a road. This is human
nature." Alluding, finally, to the people willing to avail them-
selves of what he was pleased to call, with infinite scorn, " the
free-lunch way of going through life," he said : " Could we get
the free-lunchers to pay a dollar if they were not forced to ?
No ; but they will use the paths just the same, and kick if they
are not kept in good repair."

How often have these arguments been made to do duty for all
sorts of schemes to promote " the general welfare " ! How force-
ful and admirable they appear to the excellent persons that frame
them ! In the first place, the tax was such a little one ; no one
could be too poor to pay it. In the second place, people would be
so delighted to pay compulsorily what they would not pay volun-
tarily ! In the third place, "could anything be more commendable
than the suppression of " the free-lunch way of going through
life," and the forcing of these odious " kickers " to pay for the
paths they would be glad to have at other people's expense ? Only
one thing could be more commendable, and that is for those good
people that want something done for their own benefit to pay for
it themselves ; only one thing could be more odious, and that is
for these same people to get a law enacted to compel others to help

3o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

them pay for it. The philanthropists that advocated the bill could
not see that they, in reality, were the " free-lunchers " ; for they
were not so much interested in the encouragement of generosity as
they were to profit from it after it had been encouraged. It was
not " the kickers " that needed reformation — it was the reformers
themselves.

What such excellent persons need most is not more knowledge,
as many reformers suppose, but, as Mr. Spencer has often pointed
out, a livelier imagination and keener sympathies. Had the
training of these faculties been more perfect, the proposed tax
would have called to mind the hundreds, if not thousands, of
poor owners of bicycles that had been forced to practice the most
rigid economy to buy them — the shop girls, the mechanics and
laborers, the servant girls and messenger boys, and the impover-
ished invalids advised to take exercise to restore health shattered
by long hours in shops or stores. There would have been the
feeling that to these unfortunates a dollar was a considerable
sum, and that if it could not be paid, as the bill required, the cost
and annoyance of the legal proceedings authorized for its collec-
tion would be a serious hardship. The possible sufferings of un-
fortunate delinquents, rather than the advantage of paths and the
suppression of " free-lunchers," would have filled the mirror of
consciousness. With feelings stirred by pictures of injustice and
suffering, not unworthy of the best days of a feudal despot, the
benevolent advocates of the bill would have opposed it with
even greater energy and skill than they defended it.

Another curious fact brought out was the ignorance of many
of the petitioners as to the true character of the bill. Until the
objections to it had been set forth in the newspapers, they did not
realize what they had petitioned for. Even then it was impos-
sible for some intelligent persons to comprehend that the bill was
an outrage. I remember talking with two or three lawyers about
it. Both from a legal and moral point of view they thought it
an excellent measure. Another professional man, one of the
brightest I ever knew, pronounced it the most just and practica-
ble that could be proposed. But in spite of these perverted opin-
ions, the discussion evoked such indignation and opposition that
the bill was rejected by the mayor and common council, whose
approval was required to make it law.

II.

Now that the bill had been defeated in accordance with the
social philosophy of Mr. Spencer, what, in accordance with that
philosophy, was the next thing to be done ? Was the construction
of side paths to be opposed altogether ? Were bicyclists to be de-
prived of this means of pleasure and rapid communication between

AN OBJECT LESSON IN SOCIAL REFORM. 309

the city and country ? If the view taken of Mr. Spencer's social
philosophy by the journal mentioned had been correct, these two
questions would have to be answered in the negative. Nothing
would have remained for the bicyclists to do but to get along as
best they could with the bad roads and shoestring paths that
fringe them.

Happily, however, the view in question was incorrect. Mr.
Spencer's social philosophy enjoins the importance of taking
advantage of every improvement, whatever it be, that will pro-
mote human welfare. That bicycle paths are an improvement
of this kind needs no argument. As already intimated, they
facilitate communication ; they encourage people that live in the
city to visit the country, acquaint themselves with its charms,
and take the exercise that the preservation of health requires.
But Mr. Spencer's social philosophy teaches that the improve-
ment shall be undertaken voluntarily by those alone that desire
it. Not only shall they undertake it themselves, but they shall
seek to persuade others to join with them. What Mr. Spencer's
philosophy forbids is that they shall ever resort to the argument
of coercion to secure the aid of others.

Hardly had the bill been defeated before its opponents began
work in accordance with this salutary principle of social reform.
Through their efforts there sprang into existence, as in physical
evolution, the social organs required to meet the new social
wants. Voluntary associations were formed in different parts of
the city to collect money from those that wished to give, and use
it in the construction of paths. But the first step was not encour-
aging; it was decidedly discouraging. The meeting called to
form the first Side-path Association was not attended by more
than six or eight persons. But they were interested in the cause,
and they were determined to do what they could to further it.
They organized, elected a president, a vice president, a secretary,
and a treasurer, collected a small sum from those present, and
decided to go to work at once. The discussion that took place
disclosed the conviction that it was inadvisable to wait until
a larger fund had been collected. A previous experience was
a warning against it. A bicycle organization in the city had
collected six hundred dollars for paths, but, instead of beginning
work at once with this sum, it waited to raise more money, and
while waiting the money already in hand went for other pur-
poses. Another reason for immediate action was the belief that
as soon as bicyclists saw that the new association " meant busi-
ness " they would contribute. Each foot of path constructed
would be convincing evidence of the sincerity and enterprise of
the association and of the value of the work undertaken. It was
not long before money enough came in for a mile of path. Soon,

310 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

too, two otlier associations were organized and began work in the
same way.

The supreme merit of voluntary effort, as every careful stu-
dent of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy knows, is the powerful
stimulus it exerts both upon the generous emotions and upon the
intellectual powers. People brought together by their interest in
a common cause not only feel friendly toward one another, but by
their desire to interest others in the same cause they are moved to
be friendly with them. Most marked was the growth of this feel-
ing among the bicyclists of the city and country after the defeat
of the tax bill. It was often mentioned and commented upon.
As a result of the desire to promote a common cause, contribu-
tions came in freely. They were not limited to the dollar fixed by
the tax bill. There were several sums ranging from twenty-five
to one hundred dollars. Nor did they come from bicyclists alone.
People that never rode a wheel gave. Nor were contributions
confined to money ; they included cinders, ashes, and gravel for
the paths and team work from farmers.

The invention of ways and means was quite as marked as the
moral effect. Had the tax bill been passed, the bicyclists would
have been just as indifferent to this subject as they would have
been to one another. But the necessity of raising money by vol-
untary effort stimulated them to the discovery of the most effect-
ive ways. The women riders held a lawn festival, and raised
some money ; they gave an entertainment in a public hall and
raised more. A newspaper was induced to undertake the collec-
tion of a fund. It was so successful that it obtained more than a
thousand dollars. At the suggestion of a physician much inter-
ested va bicycle riding as a healthful exercise, a callithumpian
parade was held in the driving park. Although the admission
was only twenty-five cents, nearly twenty-five hundred dollars
more were obtained. The result of the various methods for rais-
ing money was over five thousand dollars.

The best part of the defeat of the tax bill was the deliverance
from politics and politicians. Here, too, was another application
of the social philosophy of Mr. Spencer. How often has he shown
that a more cumbersome, ineffective, and wasteful way of doing
business could not be devised ! Had the wit of man set about to
invent something to dissipate energy, to stir up contention, and to
produce the least satisfactory results, it could have hit upon
nothing better adapted to this end than the tax bill. There would
have been the intriguing for the appointment of the side-path
comm-issioners ; the scheming to get contracts for the construction
of the paths ; the pulling and hauling to have them constructed in
some particular locality first ; and, finally, the certainty that they
would not have been built in the best and most economical way.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN SOCIAL REFORM. 311

But in place of this mass of politics, inseparable from the state
conduct of business, there was the natural selection of the most
reputable and fit men to take charge of the work. One of them
was an engineer of long experience in municipal works. Another
was a contractor of more than usual character and ability. Still
another was a banker, who was made treasurer, and who person-
ally inspected the work before it was paid for. Still another was
a man of wealth and leisure, who was glad to devote himself thus
to the welfare of his fellows. All the other gentlemen that had
anything to do with the work were likewise men of standing in
the community. All served without pay.

The result of the selection of such men was the construction of
the largest possible number of miles of path with the smallest
possible expenditure. They exercised care in the purchase and
use of material. They knew that they had but a limited sum of
money to spend, and they aimed to make it go as far as they could
and to build as good paths as they could. They avoided expen-
sive experiments. They made sure, before going ahead, that the
plan they had adopted was the best. How well they succeeded is
shown by the fact that no fault has been found with their work.
As the various paths were completed, the bicyclists of the city
were invited to join in what was called an " opening." From five
hundred to two thousand would meet at the entrance of the path
and ride over it. In every instance they expressed satisfaction
with what had been done. It had been estimated, while the tax
bill was under discussion, that the paths would cost ten cents a
running foot. By the plan thought to be so chimerical the cost
was reduced to from two to four cents a running foot.

III.

What was done in this instance, where it was believed indis-
pensable to summon the aid of the state, can be done in all
instances. No practical problem of social reform has been or can
be suggested that can not be solved by voluntary effort. To
appeal to the state to solve it is to appeal to force, to resort to
feudal methods. It is, moreover, to assume that I know better
than my neighbors what will make them happy — that I have the
right to compel them to make that use of their money that will
add to my pleasure rather than to theirs. By the pursuit of this
absurd policy, modern reformers, forgetting that they are follow-
ing in the footsteps of the old French despots, imagine that they
are hastening the millennium. What they are hastening is only
a revolt against their suppression of freedom. They are building
up a despotism of democracy certain to become just as hateful
and intolerable as the despotism of autocracy.

312 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

BOTANIC GARDENS.

By D. T. MACDOUGAL,
assistant pkofessob of botany in the state university of minnesota.

n.— TUBINGEN AND ITS BOTANISTS.

THE botanic garden connected with the old Wurtemherg Uni-
versity at Tubingen is worthy of special notice, because of
its history and its importance as a center of research in the biol-
ogy of plants at the present time.

The university with which it is connected was endowed more
than four hundred years ago by the reigning house of Wiirtem-
berg, and during the entire period of its existence it has enjoyed
the exclusive patronage of the grand ducal and later the royal
family, as it is the only higher institution of learning within the
kingdom. Set as it is among a hardy and virile people, it has
been the scene of many notable mental victories over tradition
and superstition. It has always held a position in the forefront
of human advancement, and its splendid achievements mark
epochs in human thought. Here have originated great schools or
methods of thought in the different branches of human knowl-
edge. Bauer in philosophy and von Mohl in botany have each
forwarded research in his respective line in a manner that can
not be measured or easily estimated.

The subject of botany in this institution received its first
attention from the side of medical science. With the introduc-
tion of the laboratory method of instruction, actual demonstra-
tions of plants were used to supplement the lectures. To meet
the need of material of living plants the garden was founded in
due time, and it has at successive periods represented quite accu-
rately the development and extension of botanical science, — a de-
velopment to which the botanists of Tiibingen have largely con-
tributed. The subject of botany here has always been in the
hands of workers of the first rank, who each in turn have mate-
rially advanced the frontiers of knowledge of the biology of plant
life, for a period extending over three and a half centuries.

The first lectures on plants, dealing with their medical proper-
ties, were given at the university by Leonard Fuchs, from 1535
until his death in 1566, although it was not until a century later
(1662) that the garden was founded. Fuchs occupied a promi-
nent position in the history of ancient botany, since he made the
first attempt to establish a system of terminology, and further-
more he was the first to base descriptions of species upon facts
obtained from an actual examination of the plants themselves.
In his Historia Stirpium about five hundred species are figured

BOTANIC GARDENS.

313

and described, and the woodcuts in this quaint old herbal are of
value even at this time. It is to be borne in mind, however, that
Fuchs had formed no idea of the natural relationships of plants.
The species given in the herbal are arranged in alphabetical
order. It seems almost inconceivable at the present day, yet the
descriptions of plants made by botanists in the period preceding
Braunfels (1530) and Fuchs were not taken from nature, but were
borrowed from still earlier writers, and supplemented by addi-
tions drawn purely from fancy and colored by the superstition
of the time.

The establishment of the garden in 1663 was purely for the
purpose of conserving medicinal plants, and only such species
were cultivated as could be
grown in the open air. The art
of growing plants in artificially
heated glass houses was not un-
derstood at that time. The gar-
den occupied a plot of ground
lying on the banks of the Neckar
in what is now the heart of the
city of Tiibingen, where it re-
mained until 1805, when it was
removed to its present position.

The lectures in botany in the
university took on a new dignity
when a separate chair was de-
voted to the subject by the ap-
pointment of Rudolph Jacob
Camerarius as extraordinary
professor and director of the bo-
tanic garden in 1688. He was
afterward promoted and re-
mained at the university until
his death, in 1728. Camerarius
made a most notable addition to
botanical science by the actual

experimental demonstration of the principal facts in the pollina-
tion of plants (1691 to 1694). Sachs says in his history of botany :
" Camerarius had observed that a female mulberry tree once bore
fruit, though no male tree {amentaceis fiorihus) was in the neigh-
borhood, but that the berries contained only abortive and empty
seeds, which he compared to the addled eggs of a bird. His at-
tention was aroused, and he made his first experiment on another
dioecious plant {Mercurialis annua). He took, in the end of May,
two female specimens of the wild plant (they were usually called
male, but he knew them to be female) and set them in pots apart

VOL. L. 25

Simon Schwendener, Professor of Botany
and Director of the Botanic Garden,
1878. After a photograph by T. Bar-
zuck, Berlin.

314

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

from others. The plants throve, and the fruit was abundant and
filled out, but when half ripe they began to dry up, and not one

produced perfect seeds. His com-
munication on this subject is
dated December 28, 1691." The
importance of his discovery was
not recognized at the time, and
his conclusions were accepted in
a figurative sense only. Not until
the end of the following century
was his experimental evidence
used as a basis for further re-
searches by Kolreuter. Linnseus,
to whom great credit is given by
many writers for his share in the
development of the theory of the
sexuality of plants, ignored the
facts disclosed by Camerarius,
and arrived at identical conclu-
sions in a purely deductive man-
ner, arguing from the necessities
of the case.

After the demise of Camera-
rius he was succeeded by his son
Alexander. Later the lectures on
the subjects of botany and chem-
istry were given by one professor.
After a short interregnum the subject was once more in the hands
of a master spirit in the person of Joseph Gaertner, who was
called to the chair of botany in 1760. Gaertner remained at Tubin-
gen eight years, going to St. Petersburg to accept the chair of
botany in 1768. He returned to Calwe in 1770, and published
shortly afterward his De Fructihus et Seminibus Plantarum,
which may be truly termed an epoch-making work. The study
of fruits and seeds had languished for more than a century, and
Gaertner came to it with a mind singularly free from prejudice.
He was aware of the real value of fruits for the arrangement of
plants in a natural system, but he did not attempt to found a
system on such material alone. Having at hand a most extensive
collection of plants from around the world, which he studied with
a persistence that brought him nearly to blindness, his book is an
inexhaustible mine of facts and a guide to the morphology of
fruits and seeds. His collection of material and microscope are
still preserved in the botanical museum.

The lectures in botany at the university were placed in the
hands of Friedrich von Kielmeyer as professor of natural phi-

WiLHELM Pfeffer, Professor of Botany and
Director of the Botanic Institute, 1878-
1887. After a photograph by W. Hor-
nung, Tubingen.

BOTANIC GARDENS.

315

losophy in 1805. At this time the garden was removed to its pres-
ent location, on the banks of the Ammer, in the northwestern part
of the city, and shortly cold and warm houses for plants and a
residence for the university gardener were erected. Kielmeyer
was succeeded by Schubler in 1817, and he in turn by Hugo von
Mohl in 1835.

It would be difficult to overestimate the value of the work
accomplished by von Mohl during the thirty-seven years (1835 to
1872) in which he was professor of botany at Tiibingen. This
period does not include the entire time of his activity in this
place, however. In 1836 the faculty of medicine offered a prize
for an essay on the nature of tendrils and climbing plants, and a
thesis by von Mohl, who was then a student, won the prize. This
academic essay, written at the age of twenty-two, remained the
clearest presentation of the subject until it was taken up by the
elder Darwin in 1865. During the half century in which he was

Hebmann Vochting (sitting, facing front) and. <..r-Lii' 'if Worliera in Botanic Institute in
Summer of 1896 ; Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden since 1887.
After a photograph.

a leading figure in the botanical world, he used a purely inductive
method of research, and by a long series of many-times repeated
observations established manifold phenomena and facts which he
welded into a coherent mass by a logic so relentless that he was
incapable of being led astray into fanciful theories and dazzling
speculations. Such a method enabled him to take a prominent
part in the destruction of the chimerical teaching of the nature

3i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

philosophy, especially in regard to the doctrine of the metamor-
phosis of plants. Furthermore, he succeeded in establishing the
principles of anatomy so clearly that a rational system of mor-
phology became possible for the first time. So important and
basal were his demonstrations concerning the real nature of the
primordial utricle that by many botanists he is said to have dis-
covered protoplasm (1846). Von Mohl, with Schlechtendal, estab-
lished the Botanisclie Zeitu7ig in 1842. The list of his works in-
cludes ninety titles, embracing subjects in every department of
the science. During his administration at Tubingen the garden
was enlarged by three additions, to its present dimensions, occu-
pying an irregular tract of land on both banks of the Ammer ;
important additions were made to the glass houses in the garden,
and the institute building was erected in 1846, Perhaps no greater
tribute can be paid to von Mohl's broad conception of the scope
and needs of botany than the fact that this institute building
erected fifty years ago, remains practically unaltered to the pres-
ent day, and is still found fairly available for the purposes of
modern investigation.

Upon the death of von Mohl, in 1873, he was succeeded by
Hofmeister, who died after having held the post but five years.
Hofmeister had perhaps accomplished his more important results
before his stay at Tubingen. Like von Mohl, he used an induc-
tive method of investigation, and he as well made enormous con-
tributions to the material facts upon which many of our present
generalizations in morphology rest. The results of the investi-
gations published in his Vergleichende Untersuchungen in 1849
remain to-day superior to anything achieved in descriptive botany.
To Hofmeister must be ascribed, among other important embryo-
logical results, the discovery of the alternation of generations in
plants, and by the use of his phylogenetic mode of study the ideas
concerning natural affinities of the groups of cryptogams and
phanerogams underwent an almost total alteration. His estab-
lishment of the genetic relationship of these great subdivisions
resulted in the overthrow of the prevailing belief in the con-
stancy of species.

Prof. Simon Schwendener succeeded Hofmeister as director of
the institute and garden in 1877. He, as well as his two successors,
are still in the midst of active work, and it is by no means easy to
forecast the final value of the results of their investigations upon
the development of the subject. Schwendener has made very
important contributions to the biology of lichens, phyllotaxis,
besides a long series of contributions of the first rank in the do-
main of morphology and physiology. Among these his Mechan-
ische Princip in der Bau der Monocotylen is of the greatest im-
portance. Schwendener remained but a year at Tubingen, going

BOTANIC GARDENS.

317

thence to the University of Berlin, where he vigorously continues
his researches. In consequence of his short stay but little of his
work was accomplished at Tubingen.

The direction of the institute and garden was assumed by Prof.
Wilhelm Pfeifer in 1878, who remained in the place nine years.
The splendid results accomplished by himself and students dur-
ing that time are published in a set of two volumes entitled JJn-
tersuchungen aus den botanische Institut zu Tubingen. The work
dealt with the principal problems of physiology in growth, tur-
gescence, secretion, movements, respiration, and nutrition. In
1887 Pfeffer removed to Leipsic. Both before and after his stay

View of Palm Houses, Work Eooms, and Herf.auiim, in Arxr.Mx. After a pliotolitho-
graph in " Die unter der Regierung seiner Majestat des Konigs Karl an der Universitat
Tubingen errichteten und erweiterten Institut der naturwissensehaftlichen und der medi-
zinischen Fakultilt," 1889. By permission.

at Tubingen he made most important contributions to the science,
especially with regard to the physical and chemical properties of
plant tissues, notably in osmosis and turgidity, and also in the
transformations of energy within the organism. His laboratories
and lecture room are thronged with students from all over the
world, many of whom are Americans.

The present director of the institute and garden, Prof. Her-
mann Vochting, succeeded Pfeffer in 1887. Prof. Vochting may
be said to be to some extent a representative of the modern ideal-
istic school with which Braun, his old teacher, was identified.
His work, however, resembles that of the idealists only so far as
to exhibit the immense value of comprehensive discussions of the
results of careful inductive inquiry, not only in the establishment

318

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of individual facts, but in the employment of these facts in their
relations to the most general notions and their capabilities for the
foundation of new and more comprehensive theories — a method of
investigation productive of the highest results in all departments
of biological science. One of the conclusions reached in this man-
ner, which asserts the " polarity " of the plant cell, is at present
beyond the general level of the subject. Polarity will doubtless
be recognized as one of the most important physiological proper-
ties of protoplasm when the advance of the subject makes its ap-
preciation possible. The researches of Vochting have dealt prin-

TiiE Botanic Institute, View from Wilhelmstbasse.
After a photolitliograpli, by pemiissiou.

cipally with the physiology of movement and what might briefly
be termed physiological morphology.

The garden is located in the northeastern part of Tiibingen in
western Wiirtemberg, It lies at an elevation of about one thou-
sand feet, on the plateau encircled by the Schwarzwald, in latitude
48° 30' north. Near it are hills covered with forests of pine, which
rise two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet above it, while to
the southward, twenty miles away, the Swabian Alps reach to a
height of twenty-five hundred feet, in consequence of which the
night temperature falls far below that of the day. A low win-
ter temperature of —30° C, and a summer limit of 25° to 28° C,
help to make a climate which resembles that of southern Michigan
in many respects. The area inclosed amounts to about two and
six tenths hectares of nearly level land on both sides of the banks
of the Ammer, a small tributary to the Neckar. The grounds are
planted in the system of Eichler, modified, however, to meet the

BOTANIC GARDENS. 319

ecological and aesthetic requirements. A small portion is devoted
to aquatic plants, a second to an arboretum, another to an experi-
mental plot inclosed and accessible only to workers. In the entire
garden the instinctive ability of the naturalist is shown in the
selection of natural conditions for the specimens of the various
flora represented, and the alpinum may be regarded as a triumph
in the art of artificial culture.

The alpinum is laid out in the northwestern part of the garden
on a rectangular plot of ground one hundred and ninety feet in
length and nine feet in width, near a stone wall seven feet high
and parallel to its length. On this plot are piled the rocks and
soil necessary for the culture of plants, in an uneven ridge, which
in one place is six feet in height. The materials used were princi-
pally the native stalactite limestone and gravelly soil and granite
from the Black Forest, forty miles distant. The limestone is
peculiarly suitable for the lower Alpine plants and lithophytes,
furnishing, as it does, innumerable cavities for the reception of
soil and secure foothold for plants which cling directly to the
rock. It has been found that the species from the higher Euro-
pean Alps refused to grow on such rock, and hence the granite
was procured for the section devoted to this group. The entire
structure is in many respects an admirable imitation of an east-to-
west mountain ridge. The northern side affords many shaded
crevices, and more or less shade to the whole is given by a num-
ber of small trees near by.

The most difficult problems which have confronted the gar-
dener in the construction and management of the alpinum have
been those connected with the water supply. The water content
of such rocky soils is of course extremely small and needs almost
constant replenishment. In Nature this is done by water from
the melting snows above. Here it has been accomplished by a
system of branching pipes with many openings below and above
the surface, and a flow is allowed during the greater part of the
day. The drainage is carried away by cement conduits, and in
one place forms an Alpine lake eight feet in length and five feet
in width, which furnishes in its waters and on the overhanging
cliffs admirable conditions for a very rich flora. Near the lake
are growing several specimens of Edelweiss, which here becomes
somewhat longer stemmed than on its native cliffs, or in the
Alpine gardens where it is cultivated to satisfy the thirst of the
tourist for mementoes of " hazardous " ascents.

Many of the Alpine plants are quite intolerant of lime salts
and grow best on the granite rocks, but the water supply used
here is taken directly from the city system and is very richly
charged with these substances, and as a consequence the cul-
ture of some of the plants of the higher slopes is impos-

320

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sible. This difficulty might only be overcome at some cost by
a system of tanks for the storage of rain water, which would
furnish exactly the natural conditions for a large number of
species.

It is somewhat surprising to learn that in this area of about
two thousand square feet more than twelve hundred species
are successfully cultivated, almost all of which are perennials.
In some places three or even four kinds are grown on a square
foot of actual surface — a striking example of a form of inten-
sive cultivation. It must not be supposed, however, that none
but Alpine species are grown. A glance at the labels will show

'f^'-'.l ^'^;rj

CoKNKK OF Lecture Hall ; View fbom Garden. After a photograph.

that many are at home far southward in the temperate zone. It
is interesting to note that all of the North American species of
Cypripedium are grown here successfully. As a matter of fact
the alpinum offers a wider range of conditions than any other
method of cultivation, and in some form similar to that described
might offer suitable conditions of growth for species fairly repre-
sentative of the flora of a region extending across twenty degrees
of latitude.

The glass houses are of the usual form, and include a palm
house two hundred feet in length, to which are attached work-
rooms and the herbarium building. The immediate supervision
of the cultural department of the garden is in the hands of the
head gardener, who is provided with a commodious dwelling and
office building near the arboretum. He has under his direction a

BOTANIC GARDENS. 321

force of men varying from eight to fifteen with the requirements
of the season.

The institute is an oblong brick structure, one hundred and
seventy feet in length by sixty-five in width, standing in the
southeastern corner of the grounds. This building is two-storied
in part, the second story being devoted to the use of the director
and his family. The first floor accommodates the director's
ofiices, private laboratory, and experimental rooms, dark rooms,
laboratories for physiology and morphology, the lecture room,
and a museum containing the Gaertner collection.

The laboratories are supplied with a set of physiological appa-
ratus embracing the standard forms, a large number of which
were originally designed to facilitate researches undertaken here
in the last twenty years. The museum contains the von Mohl
collection of microscopes, which represents the development of
this instrument from the time of Joseph Gaertner to that of Hof-
meister, more than one hundred years. The Gaertner museum
contains the carpological collections of Joseph Gaertner, on which
his work De Fructibus, etc., was based, in the labeled bottles as
prepared by him. For greater safety these bottles were inclosed
in larger bottles and labeled by von Mohl, and the thoughtful ob-
server looks forward to the time when a third casing of glass
will be added to protect the prized handwriting of von Mohl. In
this museum are also to be found the dried specimens of hybrids
and seeds, drawings, manuscripts, and published works of Karl
Friedrich Gaertner, and a large number of preparations for the
microscope made by von Mohl and Hof meister. The commodious
lecture room is provided with all necessary appliances for suc-
cessful demonstrations — charts, prepared specimens, wood and
paper models, etc.

The investigator who comes here to undertake the solution of
some problem in botany meets a body of congenial workers whose
earnest enthusiasm is quickly contagious. He is furnished with
ample space in well-lighted rooms and any necessary apparatus.
If it is necessary to construct temporary apparatus to carry for-
ward his experiments, a stock of material is at hand and he may
have the intelligent assistance of the " Hausmeister," who has had
a score of years of experience in such work in this institute. If
the problem requires the application of delicate or complex ma-
chinery, he may call to his assistance Herr Eugen Albrecht —
" Universitats-mechaniker " — whose skill in designing effective
apparatus for use in the physiology of plants and animals is
known round the world. The library of the institute and that of
the director contain a large number of works of the more promi-
nent botanical authors, and a blank form properly filled will bring
to his desk almost anything bearing upon his work from the

322

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

library of the university, containing two hundred thousand vol-
umes, in an hour or two. Outside the laboratories lies a garden
stocked with an immense variety of well-grown plants represent-
ing great diversities of form and habitat, and presenting suitable
material for the solution of a number of the more important open
questions in the subject. Stretching away on every hand is the
rich flora of the limestone hills, crested by coniferous forests.
The subalpine vegetation of the Swabian Alps may also be
reached by an excursion of a few kilometres.

The forests, lying within half an hour's walk of the garden,
embrace examples of the royal, communal, and private systems

Gkoup of MicBoscoPE.s FROM THE VON MoiiL CoLLEoxioN. The Upright wooden staud on
the right was used by Gaertuer. The modern form on the left belonged to Hofiiieister.
The remaining stands were designed or used by von Mohl. Aftsr a photograph.

of management, and afford splendid opportunities for study in
dendrology.

The most valuable part of the worker's experience, with such
ample facilities at hand, however, is that which comes from the
advice, encouragement, and suggestions of the director. Con-
stantly engaged in the most laborious research for more than a
quarter of a century, he has a vivid and sympathetic appreciation
of the difficulties which beset the investigator, and his keen in-
sight into the physiology of plant life leads him quickly to the
solution of the problem in hand. His time and patience are
unstintingly given to any who may have the slightest claim
upon them, and the many times repeated assertion that the Ger-
man professor gives a minor portion of his time only to liis
students is certainly ungrounded here. The writer is not ac-
quainted with any American laboratory for botany in which the
professor in charge devotes a greater proportion of his time to
the student. In earlier times the Tubingen professors carried

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 323

this devotion to the interests of the student to such a degree that
it amounted to a fault, and published their own researches under
the names of their students. This generous, unselfish, and high-
minded attitude is an inheritance in the Botanic Institute at
Tubingen, and is characteristic of the people among whom it is
situated.

♦«♦•

OUR PRESENT KNOWLEDGE OF THE ANTARCTIC

REGIONS.

By Prof. ANGELO HEILPEIN.

IT can safely be said that we to-day know less about the antarc-
tic regions than of any other portion of the earth's surface.
We speak vaguely of an antarctic continent stretching across the
southern pole, and some have even gone so far as to locate its
boundaries, and to give an estimate of its superficial area. This
has been placed almost anywhere between four and six millions
of square miles — therefore larger than, or nearly twice the size of,
the semi-continent of Europe. But no one is in possession of the
facts which would prove the existence of such a continent, al-
though it is by no means unlikely that it exists ; and if it does,
we know practically nothing of the possibilities of its flora or
fauna. Up to the beginning of the past year perhaps the most
striking definition that could be given of so-called Antarctica was
that it was a region whose land area was entirely destitute of a
flora and of a strictly terrestrial fauna. Not a vestige of moss,
not a shred of lichen had up to that time been discovered ; not an
animal, excepting aquatic birds, had been found to give life to
the few patches of open country that had been seen, or to the ice
that almost everywhere covered it. The observations of the Nor-
wegians Kristensen and Borchgrevink, made in the early part of
1895, to an extent modify this dreary conception, for at least one
form of cryptogamous vegetation has been found within the
Antarctic Circle — on Possession Island and on the opposite Vic-
toria Land, near Cape Adare.

If we bar out the work of the past three years (1893-'95) it can
be said that nearly all the knowledge that we possess of this
Antarctica dates from a period a half century back and more — to
the period of the researches of Bellany, Biscoe, Dumont d'Urville,
Wilkes, and Sir James Clark Ross, and to no explorer are we in-
debted for more information than to the last-named. These inves-
tigators have determined the existence of certain patches of land,
in most cases defined by prominent mountain swellings, which
appear here and there behind a great barrier or wall of ice, to
which the name of " Antarctic Barrier " has generally been given.

324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Such land areas — perhaps not in all cases positively demonstrated
to be distinct from sea ice — are Victoria Land (due south of New
Zealand), Wilkes Land (not improbably a series of island eleva-
tions opposite Australia, and known under the various names of
Addlie Land, Clarie Land, Sabrina Land, etc.), and Graham Land
(somewhat east of south of the extremity of South America). The
most extended piece of coast or land line is that which has been
traced southward in Victoria Land by Ross from about the seven-
tieth to the seventy-ninth parallel of latitude, or over about six
hundred geographical miles. It is only here, and in Graham
Land (with the adjoining parts of Palmer Land, Louis Philippe
Land, Joinville Island, Alexander Land), that our knowledge
becomes at all definite.

Ross found the whole eastern coast front of Victoria to be
paralleled by one or more mountain ridges of very considerable
elevation, and bearing upon themselves a large number of clearly
defined volcanic cones. Mount Melbourne, seemingly the highest
point (with an elevation of nearly fifteen thousand feet), is de-
scribed as having a prodigious summit crater. Mount Erebus
(12,400 feet), the most southerly of all active volcanoes, was in
violent eruption at the time of Ross's visit (January, 1841) ; a
little to the east of it (in approximately latitude 78° 30' south) is
the extinct cone of " Terror," 10,900 feet. Beyond Mount Terror
the Parry Mountains, also of very considerable elevation, and
which continue to be the most southerly piece of land area that
has ever been sighted, follow the generally southern trend to at
least the seventy-ninth parallel of latitude, and not impossibly for
a long piece beyond.

Geographers who define the contours of the presumed antarctic
continent usually deflect its course eastward beyond Mount Ter-
ror so as to make it conform to the east-and-west ice barrier which
barred Ross's passage farther southward ; but it is significant that
Ross says, " If there be land to the southward [of the barrier], it
must be very remote, or of much less elevation than any other
part of the coast we have seen, or it would have appeared above
the barrier." This statement becomes of special importance, be-
cause elsewhere the land was clearly defined by its mountains at
distances of ninety, one hundred and thirty, and even one hun-
dred and fifty miles.

The region explored by Ross has only once been visited since
— by Kristensen and Borchgrevink and their associates of the
Antarctic. The Antarctic succeeded in following the route of
Ross to about the seventy-fourth parallel of latitude, when, with
open water still to the south, a return was made, owing to an ab-
sence of whale supply. Few facts of any consequence were added
by this journey, the most important being, perhaps, the discovery

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 325

of shreds of lichen on Possession Island and on the mainland of
Cape Adare opposite, this being the first landing on what may
properly be designated mainland. Borchgrevink confirms in al-
most every particular the observations of Ross, and from the two
accounts we learn that Victoria Land is a region of lofty moun-
tains, largely and perhaps almost entirely of a volcanic nature,
and almost entirely buried within a mantle of snow and ice. The
covering of snow and ice is not sufficiently massive to obliterate
the relief of the land — differing in this respect from the interior
of Greenland — and the contours of valley and mountain are well
and clearly retained. Giant glaciers descend toward and into the
sea, terminating in vertical cliffs of ice of one hundred, one hun-
dred and fifty, and two hundred feet in height. A vast ice barrier
of vertical cliffs, whether of glacial formation or otherwise, and
retaining a nearly uniform elevation of one hundred and fifty to
two hundred and fifty feet — with a reduction at one point to nearly
eighty feet (or less) — defines a considerable part of the north and
south coast line ; beyond the seventy-eighth parallel of latitude
this ice barrier trends eastward for at least three hundred miles,
but it is not known that any approximate coast line lies back
of it with a similar trend.

Westward of the one hundred and seventieth parallel of east
longitude, and situated close upon the Antarctic Circle — now to the
south of it, then to the north — and forming, as it were, a continu-
ation of Victoria Land through some seventy degrees of longitude,
are a number of designated land patches (such as Clarie Land,
Ad^lie Land, Sabrina Land), which, with the uniting ice-cliff bar-
riers, constitute the coast line of the antarctic continent of
Wilkes — sometimes also known as Wilkes Land. How much of
this continuous frontage of some two thousand miles is really
land no one knows. The mountain undulations mark some parts
as being indisputably such ; yet a reasonable doubt may be enter-
tained regarding some of the presumed land masses of Wilkes,
and it is known that one of his mountain chains was sailed over
by Ross in the region of the Bellany Islands. ' A reference like-
wise to the admirable illustration of Clarie Land in D'Urville's
monumental work on The South Polar Regions makes one suspi-
cious as to the true nature of this cote, and forces one to inquire
if it is not merely a portion of the great Antarctic Barrier.

Still farther west lie Kemp Land (probably island) and Enderby
Land or Island, and finally, almost due south of the South Amer-
ican continent, the complex of Graham and Palmer Lands, with
Terre Louis Philippe, Isle Joinville, and the more recently dis-
covered or named King Oscar II Land, which was traced in 1893
by Larsen to nearly the sixty-ninth parallel of latitude, he him-
self attaining G8° 10'. This series of lands, which are closely con-

326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tiguous with the South Shetland Islands, is also loftily mountain-
ous, ranging to perhaps nine thousand feet, and with volcanic
cones as a dominant feature. Lying east of King Oscar II Land,
which is seemingly only a portion of Graham Land, are a number
of small islands, some of which, as Christensen and Lindenberg,
were volcanoes in active eruption at the time of Larsen's visit.
This tract of archipelago lying south of the American continent
is much less snow-bound than the region about Victoria Land,
large areas of bare rock being exposed both on the islands and on
the mainland, especially the volcanic slopes. Not improbably the
heat of the volcanic cones has much to do with keeping an ex-
posed surface, although it can hardly be supposed that this expos-
ure is entirely due to this cause.

The geographical and geological study of the region under
consideration resolves itself into four or more lines of inquiry :
1. Have we a continent in Antarctica ? 2. What is the nature
of the ice covering ? 3. Of what construction are the rock
masses ? 4. Has Antarctica ever been united with any of the
major divisions of the earth's surface which we recognize as
continents ?

The first inquiry hardly recognizes a positive answer as yet.
Wilkes was certain that in the land masses seen by him, or
thought to have been seen, we had the positive marks of a vast
united continent ; Ross, although he had seen more continuous
coast line than any other investigator, was exceedingly doubtful
on this point, and considered the evidence insufficient for positive
determination ; Murray, the distinguished geographer of the
Challenger Expedition, has gone even beyond Wilkes, and con-
structed the contours of what appears to him to be true Antarc-
tica, the outlines of which are in the map on the next page. These
may be approximately correct or not — a matter about as difficult
to disprove as to prove — but it is certain that the materials upon
which this construction is based are hardly sufficient to warrant
the mapping. Yet it is almost positive that a vast land area —
perhaps two, three, or more of them — underlies the capping of
snow or ice ; but whether it is entitled to the designation of con-
tinent remains to be demonstrated by future exploration. Ross
strongly emphasizes the doubt as to whether all the eminences or
appearances reported to be land are really such, and he himself
admits — cautious observer though he was — to having been de-
ceived on more than one occasion. Murray, again, warns us that
much of the ice barrier described by Wilkes is not the true barrier
(which is presumed to be the boundary to a not distantly lying
terra firma), but merely the cemented pack. It is a significant
fact that none of the explorers refer to a distant elevated ice cap,
such as everywhere bounds the horizon of the observer looking

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS.

327

into Greenland, or to a monntain chain which is far removed from
what is assumed to be the continental border.

The ablest discussion of the physical and geographical rela-
tions of Antarctica is furnished by the late Dr. Petermann in the
MittlieiliLngen of 1863. He there argues strongly in favor of at
least a partially open South Polar Sea, whose position is located
central to the great ice masses which radiate out from it, and in

Sketch Map of the Antarctic Tract, giving the more Important Points that have

BEEN NAMED BY ISAVIGATOKS.

seasons of disruption — the months of November to April,, the
southern summer — press northward as the great Antarctic Bar-
rier, the circle of pack ice which at varying latitudes has been the
bar to passage of the different exploring expeditions. The special
reasons advanced for this construction of the antarctic region are
essentially two : (1) The comparatively low summer temperature
of the south as compared with that of the arctic regions, an indi-
cation of oceanic rather than of continental conditions ; and (2)
the irregularity or instability of the pack ice, the front varying in

328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

position (in a north- and-soutli displacement) by hundreds of miles.
Thus, in approximately the meridian in which, in 1823, Weddell
reached the surprisingly high latitude of 74° 15' south, the famous
navigator Cook, nearly half a century earlier, was stopped in lati-
tude 60° ; and in 1855 Captain Grant found himself confronted by
the impenetrable flat-topped barrier, three hundred to five hun-
dred ( ?) feet in height, in latitude 56° 50'— 40° west longitude. Both
of the arguments here stated have their force, but in how far they
prove their case future exploration or penetration alone can show.
lee movements similar to those of the south take place in the
arctic regions, and they are largely determined by the winds and
currents which sweep over or govern a virtually open sea ; but it
should be noted that the ice pack of the north is very different
from what is commonly designated the " barrier " of the south,
with its stupendous wall precipices of one hundred and fifty to
three hundred (or five hundred ?) feet elevation ; such fronts in
the arctic regions belong exclusively to isolated icebergs or to
the terminal faces of ice sheets (glaciers) which debouch into the
sea and terminate at no great distance from the mainland. The
bounding ice walls of the northern face of Melville Bay are ex-
amples of this kind. The main pack, or that which blocks navi-
gation in the north, is a surface, regular or irregular, which rises
but little above the level of the sea, except where it is tossed up
into shingles and hummocks, or into those irregular eminences
which have been by some identified with the so-called " palseo-
crystic " ice. On the other hand, a counterpart of the southern
barriers is to be found in the land terminations of some of the
giant glaciers of the interior, whose " Chinese walls " have been
so graphically described in the explorations of Grinnell and Grant
Lands (Greely).

It is unfortunate that the term "Antarctic Barrier" should
ever have come into use, as it has been made to cover a variety of
structures, and has led to confusion in the interpretation of the
special features which it designates. There is no question, as
Murray has pointed out, that much of the so-called "barrier" of
Wilkes is merely ordinary pack ice — some of it, indeed, in the
brash or broken condition ; therefore, considerable allowance
must be made in the acceptance of that assumed girdle which is
supposed to define a continent. A point that probably favors the
(Petermannian) view of partially oceanic conditions within the
ice is the presence of strong northwardly trending currents, which
have been observed by both earlier and later explorers. Thus, at
his farthest southing, in 1894-95, in latitude 74° 10', Captain Kris-
tensen, of the Antarctic, met with such currents trending al-
most due northward opposite Victoria Land, and the question
naturally suggests itself. Is this a direct current, or one that is

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 329

deflected northward after taking a westerly course along the edge
of the southern barrier of Ross ?

Of the arguments that have been advanced in favor of consid-
ering Antarctica as a vast continent buried deep beneath its cov-
ering of snow and ice, the most plausible are those which re-
late to the construction and form of the oceanic bottom within
the region of the southern ice and the character of the ice itself.
More explicitly stated, they are : (1) The shallowing of the sea
toward the so-called antarctic tract — an approach to the borders
of a continent — and the occurrence of what are stated to be sub-
continental or terrigenous deposits, conditions that are well em-
phasized by Murray; and (2) the heavy massing of ice, which
could seemingly not be other than of glacial origin. Ross found
the depth of water opposite the barrier which stopped his farthest
passage southward reduced to two hundred and fifty and one hun-
dred and fifty fathoms, so that manifestly there was here a true
shallow ; somewhat similar results were obtained at a few other
points along the barrier front. But it can be pertinently asked.
In what special way would the approaches to an archipelago dif-
fer from those of a continent ? With this special evidence of
shallowing before him, Ross still believed in the probability of
non-continental conditions, and he was in a measure justified in
his belief by the fact that at many other points not far from
the front of the barrier the lead indicated depths of from four
thousand to six thousand feet, and even more.

The massiveness of the ice is in a condition which, so far as
it is known to us, belongs exclusively to glacial formation ; i. e.,
none but land ice is known to assume this form. The evidence
which it offers, therefore, favors the notion of the existence of
large terrestrial areas or gathering basins. Yet it is by no means
impossible, or even improbable, that with the low summer tem-
peratures which prevail in the antarctic tracts and the continu-
ousness of fogs and clouds, the surface of the sea might of itself,
through ages of precipitation and of comparatively little melt-
ing, build itself up in mountains of ice, hundreds or even thou-
sands of feet in thickness. This view has, indeed, been held by
some physicists, and no facts that are accessible to us are really
incompatible with it. The uniformity of the table surface of the
ice, which appears to be uninterrupted in places for hundreds of
miles, combined with the fact that it only occasionally shows an
undulating or rising surface back of it to mark out a land relief,
is in itself a suspicious circumstance. This is very different
from what we find in Greenland, the largest area of positive gla-
ciation with which we are acquainted, and which certainly car-
ries with it the constructional type of a continent. Whether
seen from the east, south, west, or northwest, the relief line is

VOL. L. — 26

330 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

plain and continuous, and over the greater part of it, in clear
weather, the great dome of receding ice- cap is well visible. And
yet from this ice accumulation hundreds of glaciers are given
off whose terminal or sea walls are of much the same height as
the greater part of the Antarctic Barrier. Naturally, it can he
assumed that Antarctica is much less mountainous than Green-
land— may, in fact, be a gently rising or almost flat plain — and
that the great length of its glaciers, which marks off a termina-
tion possibly a hundred miles or more distant from the actual
border of the land, is that which prevents the land contours
themselves from being seen. But are there just grounds for a con-
tention of this kind ?

The distinctiveness pf the antarctic climate as compared with
the arctic is found in the relations of both the summer and the
winter temperatures. The high summer heat of the north, which
in the few months of its existence has the energy to develop
that lovely carpeting of grass and flowers which gives to the low-
lying lands even to the eighty-second parallel of latitude a charm
equal to that of the upland meadows of Switzerland, is in a
measure wanting in the south; in its place frequent cold and
dreary fogs navigate the atmosphere, and render dreary and des-
olate a region that extends far into what may be properly desig-
nated the habitable zone. The fields of poppies, anemones, saxi-
frages, and mountain pinks, of dwarf birches and willows, are re-
placed by interminable snow and ice, with only Here and there
bare patches of rock to give assurance that something underlies
the snow covering. Man's habitations in the northern hemi-
sphere extend to the seventy- eighth parallel of latitude, and for-
merly extended to the eighty-second; in the southern hemisphere
they find their limit in Fuegia, in the fifty-fifth parallel, fully three
hundred and fifty miles nearer to the equator than where, as in
the Shetland Islands, ladies in lawn dresses disport in the game of
tennis. And still seven hundred miles farther from the equator,
in Siberia, Nordenskjold found forests of pine rising with trunks
seventy to one hundred feet in height. Yet it must not be sup-
posed that there are not, as is perhaps commonly assumed, gleams
of warm sunshine in this inhospitable south ; indeed, we have yet
to learn to what extent the far south is warm or cold. Thus, Cap-
tain Kristensen, the gallant commander of the Antarctic, who
made the first landing on what is assumed to be the mainland
of Antarctica, asserts that on January 5, 1895, when nearly on the
sixty-eighth parallel of latitude, " the sun at noon gave so much
heat that I took my coat off, and the crew were lying basking in
the sunshine on the forecastle '' (Transactions of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society of Australasia, Victorian Branch, March, 1896,
page 87) ; and Biscoe, writing on the IGth of January, 1831 (on

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 331

approximately tlie sixtieth to the sixty-third parallel of latitude),
states that " the temperature of the water was 34°, of the air iu
the shade 45°, iu the sun 77°, with a corresponding general
warmth to the feelings of the crew." The highest reading of the
thermometer for the month of January was noted by Kristensen
to be 40° F., and the lowest, 27°; fifty-three years earlier (1842)
Ross found for the same month 39° and 27'5°, with a mean of
32°, thus indicating an equality almost without fluctuation.

The fact that the high south has not yet been penetrated in
the winter months leaves us in uncertainty as to the winter tem-
peratures that may prevail there ; but some indications of this
temperature are to be found in the records which have been ob-
tained in the circumantarctic tract. Ross registered the absolute
minimum, for the year 1.S42, in the Falkland Islands to be only
19*2° ( — 5'7° R.) ; but still more significant is the reading of the
minimum thermometer which was left by Foster in 1829 on
Deception Island, and recovered by Captain W. H. Smiley (as
reported by Wilkes) in 1842, or after an interval of thirteen years.
The registry was found to be —5° F. (— 16*45° R.). It is true that
Deception Island lies well without the Antarctic Circle, and that
its insular condition must measurablv reduce the rigors of a win-
ter climate ; but even these conditions permit us to form some
just estimate of what " lies beyond," and of making some interest-
ing comparisons with corresponding localities (so far as latitude
is concerned) in the north. Thus, at Fort Reliance, in North
America, the mercury descends to —70° F,, and at Jakutsk, in
Siberia, nearly one degree nearer to the equator, to —75°; and,
if we are to fully believe the registry at Verkhojansk, for the
winter of 1893, the unprecedentedly low temperature of —90° was
reached. But one need not make comparisons with these espe-
cially cold localities, as it is well known that at the sites of the
principal commercial cities of the world the mercury at times
descends to from —5° to —15° (New York and Philadelphia, 186G,
1895). On January 23, 1823, the mercury in Berlin descended to
—31° F., and in Paris, on January 25, 1795, to —21°. It is per-
haps just to conclude from these and other facts that the extreme
winter climate of the Austral Ocean, on or about latitude 63°
south, is no more severe than that of southern France, and hardly
more so than that of northern Italy. And while it is doubtless
true that a considerably lower marking of the thermometer
would be found in the much more extreme regions of the south,
or nearer to the pole, it is practically certain that nothing com-
parable to the cold of the opposite face of the globe exists.

In summing up the various facts that have been noted, it may
be admitted that they argue rather against than in favor of con-
tinental conditions, but they are by no means sufficient to make a

332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

demonstration ; indeed, the fact that such a large mass of appar-
ently continuous ice exists circumpolarly speaks against the
conclusion, and it is probably the one most significant circum-
stance which has led to favor the view of continentality. It must
be observed, however, that the continuousness of the so-called
antarctic continent rests upon somewhat insecure and far from
confirmatory evidence. The open sea (with only three ice islands
visible from the mast) that confronted Weddell at the seventy-
fourth degree of latitude speaks volumes in its, own behalf, and
is evidence of a kind which is rather strengthened than other-
wise— as proving the insularity of the ice — by the subsequent
findings of Biscoe, D'Urville, Ross, and Grant, who found it im-
possible to penetrate to within eight hundred or a thousand miles
of the position reached by Weddell.

In the same year with Weddell, Captain Benjamin Morrell, Jr.,
sailing from New York, reached in Weddell's track (March 14th),
latitude 70° 14' south, and he also describes the sea as being " en-
tirely free of field ice," and stated that " there were not more than
a dozen ice islands in sight. At the same time the temperature
both of the air and the water was at least thirteen degrees higher
(more mild) than we had ever found it between the parallels of
sixty aad sixty-two south. We were now in latitude 70° 14' south,
and the temperature of the air was 47°, and that of the water
44°."* Morrell significantly adds, " I have several times passed
within the Antarctic Circle, on different meridians, and have
uniformly found the temperature both of the air and the water
to become more and more mild the farther I advanced beyond
the sixty-fifth degree of south latitude"; and further: "I regret
extremely that circumstances would not permit me to proceed
farther south, when I was in latitude 70° 14' south, on Friday,
the 14th day of March, 1823, as I should then have been able,
without the least doubt, to penetrate as far as the eighty-fifth de-
gree of south latitude " {op. cit., page 67).

Not much weight can be attached to the latter part of this
statement, as it is well the experience of polar navigators how
suddenly the presumably "open seas" close up; yet it would be
nothing short of an assumption to place a barrier where it has in
fact not been seen to exist. The circumstance that navigators
who have followed Morrell found impenetrable barriers north of
Weddell's and Morrell's positions is no evidence of what lies
southward of them, and so far as anything that we now know of to
the contrary. King George IV Sea may extend quite to or even
across the pole. Both Weddell and Morrell experienced winds
from the south in this water; the former, writing on the 18th of

* Morrell. A Narrative of Four Vojages to the South Sea, 1832, p. 66,

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 333

February, remarks : "Not a particle of ice of any description was
to be seen, the evening was mild and serene, and our situation
might have been envied had it not been for the reflection that
probably we should have obstacles to contend with in our passage
through the ice northward." As regards the various eminences
which have at different times been designated "land" (such as
Kemp Land, Enderby Land, etc.), and which have so often been
United together to form a continuous land mass, there is every
reason to believe that many of them are merely islands, and even
islands of inconsiderable extent. Thus, it is certain that if the
positions assumed by Morrell and Biscoe for their respective
vessels are true, then Biscoe must have sailed over a portion of
what was subsequently designated Enderby Land (Enderby Is-
land), The deceptive forms of ice have by nearly all polar navi-
gators been at one time or another taken for rising land surface,
a condition which makes doubtful the references to many of the
"land "masses that have been made known to us. It is by no
means unreasonable to assume, with Petermann, that Antarctica
may yet prove to be a disjointed association of land and ice
masses, j^urely archipelagic in form ; in this sense, Victoria Land,
which is to-day the most extensive tract known, may be merely a
correspondent of the insular form of New Zealand.

The only important addition to our knowledge of true Antarc-
tica that has been made since Ross's voyage belongs to the close
of the year 1893, when Larsen penetrated, in the region of the
Graham Land complex, to latitude 68° 10' south, and brought
back with him a " departure " in the geological concept of the
region under consideration. The finding of Tertiary fossils
{Cytlierea, Natica, etc.) on Seymour Island (Cape Seymour) is
the opening vista in an investigation which has heretofore been
considered closed, and at once affords, to use a business term, a
basis for consideration. Not less significant is the finding at the
same locality of an abundance of tree remains (conifers, Arau-
caria ?). These fragments at least show that some part of Ant-
arctica was of the same kind of construction as the continents
generally, and their special fades immediately suggests a South
American relationship. Previous to 1893 the only rocks known
from the ice-bound region of the far south were granites, gneisses,
(and related schists), the strictly eruptive and trappean rocks, and
certain red sandstones (Piner's Island — Triassic ?) from a very
limited area. Most (and perhaps nearly all) of the higher moun-
tains are distinctly of a volcanic nature, and many of them bear
huge craters on their summits. Ross found Erebus in eruption
at the time of his visit (1841), and Larsen found the mountains of
Christensen and Lindenberg Islands similarly active in 1893-'94.
Kristensen and Borchgrevink, who sailed over a portion of Ross's

334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

course in lS94-'95, attaining off Victoria Land, with clear water
ahead of them, latitude 74° south, confirm in almost every detail
the observations of their predecessor, adding some additional
facts regarding the large glaciers which descend from the heights
of the Sabine Mountains. They were the first to set foot on the
mainland (or main island) of Antarctica, and to them science also
owes the first discovery within this realm of a rock-covering
vegetation (lichens ? — on Possession Island and Cape Adare).

In its relation to other continents there is reason to believe
that Antarctica, whether as a continent or in fragmented parts,
had a definite connection with one or more of the land masses
lying to the north, and the suspicion can hardly be avoided that
such connection was, if with nothing else, with at least New Zea-
land (and through it with Australia) and Patagonia. In the frag-
mented parts of Graham Land archipelago and the outlying South
Orkney and South Georgian Islands, we seem to have the bond of
connection with the South American main ; or, more specifically,
a line of curvature of the great Andean chain, which, in its
broken parts, can still be traced far beyond its present continental
termination. If this concept is a true one, it places before us a
parallel to the Andean curvature in the northern part of the
South American continent, where the mountain system is deflect-
ed off into the broken mass of the Lesser Antilles ; to the Aleu-
tian flexure of the Cordilleran system of North America ; and to
the " Apennine- Atlas " and " Carpathian-Balkan^' flexures of the
Alpine mountains, the nature of which has been so clearly stated
by Suess. In fact, it is hardly possible that any very extensive
meridional or latitudinal mountain chain could have been forced
up through contractional force without some such deflection
heing represented in one or more parts of its course ; and where
these deflections are found they are almost certain to be areas of
breakage. The disruption of the Andean system is still (or has
until recently been) taking place, as is evidenced in a portion of
the Chilian archipelago.

When we look for the evidence of connection such as has been
indicated, we find it in the fossils of Cape Seymour, already re-
ferred to, in a part of the living fauna of the continents of the
southern hemisphere, and in the vestiges of a past life which
these continents reveal. Thus, among land animals whose history
favors this view, are the South American ostriches, whose close
and only immediate allies are the ostriches and other large ratite
birds of the African and Australian regions. The union of these
birds in the southern continents, whatever may have been the
exact place of their origination, gives evidence of migration, and
this migration in the case of non- flying birds could only have
taken place along united land areas. It may be assumed, and has

THE ANTARCTIC REGIONS. 335

been assumed, that these large and seemingly closely related birds
may have been independently developed in the regions which
they now occupy ; but in view of certain facts presented by other
groups of animals, especially the quadrupeds, it is probably safer
to assume that their origin was a common one, and that they were
distributed over a land surface which had union with South
America, Africa, and Australia, or New Zealand. Such a uniting
land mass was not improbably ancient Antarctica.

Much more positive evidence bearing upon the question under
consideration is afforded by the composition of the South Ameri-
can Tertiary mammalian fauna. Up to and inclusive of the
Miocene period this fauna was a distinctively South American one,
or at least not North American. The hoofed animals represent-
ing various orders {Toxodontia, etc.) were of a type at that time
almost unknown in the north ; there were no true artiodactyls or
perissodactyls, and no insectivores, cheiropters, creodonts, or car-
nivores. The essentials of the fauna were recruited from the
orders of edentates, marsupials, and rodents ; the first named
have specifically South American types, as the sloths and arma-
dillos, while the last named, also specifically South American,
lacked the more common northern forms, such as the hares, rats,
squirrels, marmots, and beavers. The middle Tertiary fauna thus
gives evidence of the isolation of this portion of the continental
tract, and leans to the probability that the fauna then and there
existing was derived from a southern source. It is only in the later
or Pliocene period that we have an introduction of the northern
types of quadrupeds, such as the true carnivores, deer, horses,
mastodons, etc. Whether or not the region where this southern
South American fauna originated was the region of South Amer-
ica itself, or another land mass that was at one time united with
it, is not made clear by the evidence of the faunal elements that
have been noted ; but significant in this connection, as has been
pointed out by Prof. W. B. Scott, is the relationship of the
Miocene marsupials, which incorporate within themselves a num-
ber of distinctively Australian types, a condition that has been
properly emphasized by the investigator last mentioned as giving
strong evidence of a former union between the two main south-
ern continents.

In explanation of the anomaly, assuming a connection between
South America and Australia, that none of the South American
mammalian types reached Australia, Prof. Scott suggests an early
connection between the latter region and Antarctica (and through
it with South America, thus permitting of a broad dispersion of
the marsupialian types), and then a final severance before the
appearance of the placental form of quadrupeds. Whether this
explanation will ultimately prove to be the correct one or not,

336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. ■

the geological construction of the region makes it very probable
that a disruption of the Austral tract took place before that of
the South American.

Prof. Scott, in a review of the relationship of the southern
land masses (Science, February 28, 1896), thus states his position :
*' In conclusion, it may be observed that the facts of paleontology
may best be explained on the assumption that the antarctic land
mass has at one time or another been connected with Africa,
Australia, and South America, which formerly radiated from the
south pole as North America and Eurasia now do from the
north pole. While this seems a highly probable assumption,
much remains to be done before the history of the southern conti-
nents is as well known as that of the northern ones, and in par-
ticular many questions must remain open until the Tertiary mam-
mals of Africa and Australia shall have been recovered."

This evidence from paleontology may thus be taken to strongly
supplement that which comes from the side of pure geology —
evidence indicating a much further extension southward of the
South American continent, and of a former union between it and
a past and still partially existing Antarctica.

♦«»

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMPTIVES.

By WILLIAM L. EDSSELL, M. D.

TEN or twelve years ago even the most advanced physicians
were not agreed that consumption belonged to the com-
municable diseases, and practically none took any steps to pre-
vent its spread from the sick to the well. In fact, there were
not a few who denied that it was ever contracted in this way.
Heredity, physical conformation, atmospheric and soil conditions
were regarded as the important factors, and all efforts were di-
rected to the study and control of these. To-day there is an entire
change of position. Communicability stands first in importance,
and there are few who deny that it is the essential factor in the
perpetuation of the disease. The most strenuous efforts now
being made against its ravages are based on the belief that the
greatest menace to the well is the presence of the sick.

Tuberculosis — of which, as will be explained more fully below,
consumption is a variety — now appears at the head of the list of
contagious diseases published weekly by the New York Board of
Health, and means have been taken to have all cases in the city
reported and instructed. Circulars containing directions for pre-
venting contagion by disinfection of sputa have been placed in
the hands of physicians for distribution, and many, if not all.

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMPTIVES. 337

reported cases are visited and instructed by tlie health officers.
When an apartment has been vacated by a consumptive the fol-
lowing notice is posted :

NOTICE.

Consumption is a communicable disease. This apartment has been
occupied by a consumptive, and may have thus become infected. It must
not be occupied by persons other than those residing here until an order
from the Board of Health, directing that it be cleaned and renovated, has
been complied with.

Name of occupant

Floor No St

This notice must not be removed until the order of the Board of Health
has been complied with.

The directions for cleaning and renovating require that calci-
mined or whitewashed walls and ceilings be washed with a solu-
tion of washing soda (one half pound to three gallons of water),
and then calcimined or whitewashed afresh ; that papered walls
and ceilings be washed with the same solution and repapered ;
and that the woodwork be similarly washed and then repainted.
Cleansing and renovating are aimed at rather than disinfection.
These measures can be taken as an example of the method of
dealing with tubercular lung disease in every large city, and, in
fact, throughout nearly the whole country.

The reason for this new departure is to be found in the round-
ing out of the evidence of the contagious nature of consumption,
by the discovery of the living agent whose presence and growth
constitute the very essence of the disease, and the transfer of
which from the sick to the well causes its spread. This is the
microscopic, rod-shaped, vegetable organism named the tubercle
bacillus. It was discovered by Dr. Koch, of Berlin, in 1882, and
much of the mystery which had previously shrouded the disease
was thereupon cleared up ; for, although consumption is a dis-
ease which has been recognized during the whole period covered
by history, no adequate explanation of its nature was offered
until recent times. Previous to this century, it was thought that
the destruction of the lungs was due to simple inflammation and
ulceration. Then Laennec, a French physician, who invented the
stethoscope, set forth the view that the small, pearl-like bodies
with which the lungs were found studded constituted the sole
cause. He called these bodies tubercles, and thus the disease
came to be spoken of as tuberculosis.

Laennec's view was not accepted without opposition, and,
until Koch's discovery set the matter at rest, many claimed that
there were two or more kinds of consumption. In 18G7, Villemin,
also a Frenchman, demonstrated the possibility of producing the
disease in certain animals by inoculating them with tuberculous

338 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

material. It was found by others, however, that the same animals
became tubercular if inoculated with apparently innocent mate-
rial, or simply if an open sore were kept on them. The matter
was thus still unsettled. The pathologists now came to the sup-
port 'of the contagionists by the discovery that the development
and extension of the disease in contiguous cells and tissues and
along the small vessels could only be explained by the presence
of a contagious element. When, therefore, Koch demonstrated
that the tubercles themselves were but the work of living organ-
isms which had been introduced from without, a flood of light
was thrown on the subject which cleared up all disputed points.
He showed that not only was the diseased tissue crowded with
these organisms, but that they were being constantly discharged
in the sputum ; that they could be cultivated in colonies free
from all other germs outside the body; and that the pure cul-
tures introduced into healthy animals caused them to become dis-
eased, the bacilli being again found in their dead bodies. It may
then be accepted as a settled fact that consumption is invariably
produced by the introduction into the lungs from without the
body of vegetable organisms, which, finding lodgment, multiply
and eventually cause the destructive changes by which the death
of the individual is accomplished. When it is remembered that
consumptives have been expectorating countless millions of these
organisms for ages, and that the cattle whose milk and flesh are
used for food are not exempt from tuberculosis, no mystery need
surround the source of any particular case. The mystery is rather
that any of us escape. Nor could we, were it not that certain
conditions, happily not always fulfilled, are necessary before the
germs gain a foothold in the body.

It may strike some as extraordinary that while the contagious-
ness of the fevers, of cholera, and syphilis was established beyond
question before disease germs were discovered, sufiiciently con-
vincing evidence was not also at hand in the case of such a prev-
alent disease as consumption. The popular conception of c n-
tagion and contagious disease has been derived from the behavior
of such a disease as smallpox. It prevails often as an epidemic.
Its onset is sudden and accompanied by pronounced symptoms.
It runs a short and sharp course, and results iu speedy death or
recovery. A large proportion of those exposed are attacked, and
the exposure may have been very brief. The case is entirely dif-
ferent with tuberculosis. Epidemics are almost unknown. The
beginning of the disease is usually obscure and insidious ; the
course may extend over months and even many years, the indi-
vidual being perhaps not seemingly very ill during much of the
time. The majority of those exposed seem to have escaped, and
of those attacked comparatively few are known to have been in

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMPTIVES. 339

especially close relations with the sick. It will thus he seen that
in the one case the evidence is nearly always clear, cumulative,
and convincing, in the other it is usually confusing and some-
times contradictory. In former times, when controversies on the
subject were frequent in the medical profession, equally good ob-
servers often came to diametrically opposite conclusions. It must
not be supposed, however, that knowledge of the bacillus as a
causative agent is the only ground for belief in the contagious-
ness of consumption. If this were the case, the matter could
hardly be regarded as settled, for malarial fevers are known to be
produced by a micro-organism, but are not contagious. There
has seldom or never been a time when a conviction that consump-
tion was contagious did not prevail to some extent, and few physi-
cians of much experience have failed to see one or more cases
which could only be satisfactorily accounted for on this ground.
It has even occasionally happened that in certain localities this
theory of its nature has gained such widespread credence as to
lead to definite action. This was the case in Italy during the
period from 1787 to 1848, when vigorous measures were taken to
stamp out the disease, and a special hospital for consumptives
was established at Olivuzza. At Naples the bedding of consump-
tives was burned, and their vacated apartments were completely
renovated before being used again. In fact, the unfortunate suf-
ferers were often shunned, and whole families were driven to
want. It is said, however, that this method of dealing with the
disease made no impression on the death-rate, and it was therefore
abandoned.

Some of the recorded instances of the communicability of tu-
berculosis are, especially with our added knowledge of the bacil-
lus, quite striking. Among these may be mentioned the iuDcula-
tion experiments of Villemin, already referred to. Before this,
however, Laennec, who became eventually a victim to the disease,
believed that he had inoculated his own finger by means of a saw
while he was making a post-mor em examination of the dead
body of a consumptive. A tuberculous nodule developed at the
seat of the wound. Morgagni, too, at a still earlier period, showed
by his writings that he realized the danger of inoculation in this
way. Calves which have sucked cows suffering from pearl dis-
ease or tuberculosis are frequently found to be affected with the
same disease. Dr. Jacobi has recorded an instance of a dog con-
tracting tuberculosis by licking the sputa of his diseased master
as he followed him about the garden. Acute or hasty consump-
tion has prevailed in almost epidemic form among young recruits
in crowded barracks in England, and the inmates of certain con-
vents have beea almost exterminated by the same disease. In a
convent in Louisville nine of the nuns developed consumption

340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"witliin four months of the introduction of the first case, and four
of them died. No new cases occurred after the remaining sick
had been removed. In 1787 an inmate of a convent in Bilbao,
Spain, died of consumption, and, as was customary then, the bed-
ding and furniture were destroyed and the room thoroughly
cleaned before it was again occupied. Two months later the new
occupant of the room was attacked by the disease and afterward
died. The same cleaning and destruction of furniture followed,
but the next occupant succumbed within a year. It was then dis-
covered that certain cords which might have been the means of
conveying the disease had been allowed to remain in the room.
These were now removed, the same precautions taken as before,
and no other case had appeared at the end of five years. A few
years ago the British Medical Association made an attempt to in-
vestigate the subject, and a circular letter of inquiry concerning
cases of contraction by contagion was sent to each member. Re-
ports of three hundred and twenty-one instances were received,
two hundred and twenty-three of which related to husbands or
wives who were thought to have contracted the disease the one
from the other. It is worthy of note that many observers of long
experience had seen but one or two instances, and some had not
seen any.

The following observations relate to instances in which there
have been more than one husband or wife, and embrace all such
that have been recorded :

1. Thirteen instances in which a consumptive man had married
more than one healthy wife. There were in all thirty-one wives,
of whom twenty-seven contracted the disease, four remaining per-
fectly well.

2. Three instances of a wife becoming infected from her hus-
band, and a second husband from her.

3. Two instances of women dying of consumption, after each
had lost two husbands by the same disease.

4. Ten instances of husbands contracting the disease from their
first wives, and their second wives in turn frcm them.

5. One instance in which a man had become infected from a
diseased wife, his second wife from him, and a second husband
from her.

The marriage relation furnishes conditions exceptionally fa-
vorable to contagion, and it is not surprising that so many of the
recorded instances relate to contraction of the disease from hus-
band or wife. And yet it can hardly be claimed that most of
those who lose husband or wife by consumption contract the dis-
ease. Of G,167 patients who had been treated at the Brompton
Hospital in 18G3, but 239 were widowed. Of these, however, 106
had lost husband or wife by consumption. Dr. Cotton, of Eug-

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMPTIVES. 341

land, found that only eleven of one thousand cases wliich lie in-
vestigated had lost husband or wife by the disease, and our own
Dr. Flint states that there were but five such instances in 670
cases observed by him.

Previous to the discovery of the bacillus, such observations as
those last mentioned led many to doubt that consumption was
communicable at all. It may be well, then, to consider a few
other facts pointing to the same conclusion, as they are important
in arriving at correct views on the whole matter. Chief among
them may be mentioned the experience of the Brompton and Vic-
toria Park Hospitals of London, where consumptives have been
treated for many years. It is well to recall at the same time that
special precautions against contagion have not been taken until
recently. It was stated in 1882 that of sixty or seventy physi-
cians employed at these hospitals during twenty years, but five
had been attacked by consumption, of whom two died. The rec-
ord of the large number of nurses emyjloyed during the same
period, and whose relations with the sick were more intimate
than those of the doctors, was still better ; there were but two
cases, and one of these was doubtful. One of the physicians to
these hospitals. Dr. Williams, says that though he has been
watching for twenty years he has not yet met with a case in
which alleged contagion could be sustained, after close investiga-
tion. He adds that while the disease may be contracted in this
way, the circumstances must be extremely favorable. At the
Vienna General Hospital, where 2,736 deaths from consumption
occurred in three years, not a physician or nurse was known to
have contracted the disease. Nearly every one has known of
relatives or friends who have lived in the most intimate relations
with consumptives for long periods and have suffered no injury
whatever.

Now, it does not follow from these observations that we are
mistaken in assuming that consumption is communicable. "We
shall see in a moment that there is a good reason for exceptional
instances. It is quite possible, though, that in our enthusiastic
zeal to deal with it and stamp it out on this basis other important
considerations are being neglected. Destruction of clothing and
renovation of rooms seem to have been pretty thoroughly prac-
ticed in Naples and other places a hundred years ago without
making any impression on the death-rate. Improvements in gen-
eral sanitary conditions at Naples, however, have in these later
times had a marked effect. It is, to be sure, highly important to
destroy or disinfect sputa, and to discourage in general the per-
nicious practice of expectorating. The sputum is the very foun-
tain-head from which the army of bacilli is re-enforced. This does
not necessarily imply, however, that the concentration of our

342 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

efforts on tlie destruction of the bacilli is the only, or even the
best, way of exterminating the disease. Few diseases prevail so
generally throughout the world as tuberculosis. No zone is ex-
empt from its ravages, and it has prevailed from the earliest times.
Its victims constitute seventeen per cent of all deaths, and nearly
five thousand succumbed to it in New York city in 1894. It affects
also the lower animals, especially the cow, which is so important
a source of food supply. Many persons are fatally affected by it
long before they are obliged to leave their occupations, or even to
consult a physician. The methods which have proved so success-
ful with the acute infectious diseases can hardly be applied effec-
tually with such a disease as this, and the attempt to deal with it
solely on this line may even prove mischievous sometimes by fos-
tering a belief that exemption can be secured simply by shunning
the sick. Should such a view prevail generally, unnecessarily
severe and even cruel measures would sometimes be adopted by
the timid and ignorant. Not long ago a writer proposed that all
cases be segregated and quarantined in a valley in New Mexico,
where climatic conditions were favorable to recovery. Govern-
ment aid being given the impecunious, and a leading New York
daily commented favorably on the proposition.

The importance, then, of correct views on this subject can
scarcely be overestimated. We have seen that, though the dis-
ease is undoubtedly communicable, it does not prove so under all
circumstances. It is a question if any one of sound heredity and
good health has ever developed it simply from living with a con-
sumptive in ordinarily good hygienic surroundings. It is gener-
ally admitted that predisposing conditions can always be found.
The germs of this disease can not obtain a foothold until the
resistive powers of the tissues have been reduced. There must
be not only the seed but the soil. This impaired power of resist-
ance may be the result of heredity, and this influence in the
causation of disease is seldom shown to better advantage than in
the history of consumption. There have been instances in which
a single case introduced into a long and sound ancestry has viti-
ated the stock forever. How unfortunate that such matters are
so little considered in marrying and giving in marriage ! It is
not that the disease is inherited, but the vulnerable tissues, the
feeble resistive powers, render the offspring an easy prey to the
ubiquitous bacillus. This weakness often shows itself by a tend-
ency to become ill from slight causes, a sickliness, not by any
means to be confounded with merely a lack of robustness or
strength. One organ or part of the body, frequently the mucous
membrane, is usually more prone to become affected, and the
beginning of the disease can often be traced to an attack of some
slight ailment. Not only the children of consumptive parents

CONSUMPTION AND CONSUMPTIVES. 343

may show these characteristics, but also those of parents gener-
ally enfeebled, or whose ages are widely separated, or who are
closely related by blood, or of a mother who has previously borne
a number in quick succession. Even when heredity is sound, tlie
same condition is sometimes induced by coddling, by improper
feeding, by attacks of acute disease, or by want and distress. In
growing children, a bad carriage of body may act injuriously by
contracting and deforming the chest. The stooped position which
boys sometimes assume in bicycle-riding should be discouraged
for this reason.

Before the period of bacteriological research conditions thought
to bear a causative relation to consumption were eagerly studied.
Some of these thought to be important, it can now be seen, were
principally operative by affording favorable circumstances for
contagion, or were themselves symptoms of disease already pres-
ent. They still teach useful lessons, however, and deserve more
attention than is at present given them. We all know now the
reason why bad air was for so long regarded as a cause of the dis-
ease, but it still remains the fact, nevertheless. Imperfect food
supply was also assigned a place among the causes, but second to
an imperfect supply of pure air. Well-fed factory operatives who
work in close rooms are much more prone to the disease than
poorly fed laborers who work outdoors. A French laborer moved
to Paris with his wife and three sons from the country, where they
had worked outdoors. The father and two of the sons soon died
of tuberculosis ; the mother and remaining son returned to the
country and survived. This illustrates the well-known fact that
the mortality increases with the density of population, being great-
est in large cities and in barracks, prisons, and factories. Sixty-
seven per cent of the deaths among the Guards in the English
army are due to it. The death-rate in prisons increases steadily
with the years of confinement, and diminishes as ventilation is
improved. Inadequate nutrition because of insufficient food sup-
ply or of indigestion, which in turn may be the result of improper
or poorly prepared food, undoubtedly predisposes to the disease.
The same may be said of exhausting discharges or hsemorrhages,
of childbearing, of enervating habits or practices, and of depress-
ing emotions, all of which tend to reduce the resistive power of
the body. Considerable importance has been attached to damp
soil, and it would seem justly so. Dr. Buchanan, of England,
found that the drainage of such soil always reduced the death-
rate among the inhabitants of the region. Dr. Bowditch, of Bos-
ton, says that three fourths of 201 cases investigated by him lived
in houses built on damp soil. He observed also that the death-
rate was lowered by draining. He mentions several specific in-
stances, among them the following: A and B married sisters.

344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

No tuberculosis liad ever been known in any of the families, ex-
cept perhaps in the case of one grandmother, who had marks of
former abscesses in her neck. A and his wife lived on dry soil.
They had nine children, all of whom remained healthy. The
house of B, on the other hand, was on damp soil. His wife and
six of his eleven children died of consumption, and one of the sur-
vivors was ill with the disease when the observations were made.
The importance of these predisposing conditions can only be
realized by knowing that the large majority of consumptives have
never lived with others similarly affected. The disease is in these
cases a result of a combination of circumstances into which direct
known exposure has not entered. Nor can immunity be secured
by shunning the sick. In fact, nothing further is required to
protect those of sound health and heredity, who are obliged to
associate with consumptives, than scrupulous cleanliness and an
abundant supply of fresh air and sunshine. If, in addition, the
sputum and everything soiled by it are destroyed and disinfected,
the sick become harmless to all. The human body has within it
the capacity of preventing the lodgment and growth of the tuber-
cle bacillus. This capacity is only overcome as a result of heredi-
tary or acquired influences. It is against these that the efforts of
every one can and ought to be directed.

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE.

A FLOATING DISINFECTING PLANT.

By M. E. ward.

THE necessity of thorough precautionary quarantine methods
is generally accepted. The adoption and adaptation of
methods and apparatus to keep pace with the knowledge that
scientific research has placed at command is a matter that directly
concerns the public and the departments of public health. That
ceaseless watchfulness should be maintained, that trained dili-
gence combined with high scientific skill should be a means to
attain efficiency, that appliances in use should combine simplicity
with efficiency, that in their operation delay of all kinds should
be avoided, and that the individual should receive consideration
and every comfort and convenience enlightened civilization can
provide, are axiomatic facts.

Our great seaports and ports of entry are the centers most ex-
posed to contagion and infection. Disease germs from the civ-
ilized and uncivilized parts of the world tend to drift there, car-
ried by an ever-moving stream of emigration and traffic. The
larger the center, the greater the number that pass through it to

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE.

345

gain access to other parts of the country, carrying with them
whatever of good or ill they may bring. Their baggage and
clothing, if from infected ports, can carry the seeds of disease
and afford favorable conditions for the reproduction of germ life.

The port of New York, with its magnificent harbor and im-
mense marine commerce, is one of the centers that requires in-
tense, concentrated vigilance to protect the city itself and the
country at large. One of its great dangers is that of disease
brought by incoming vessels.

The health officer of the port of New York has charge of the
health of all of those on incoming
vessels. The headquarters of the
boarding station is situated at the
Narrows, on the Staten Island shore.
Side by side are the grim fort and the
health officer's headquarters — the one
an arm of the nation, the other a de-
partment of the State ; both there to
guard and protect the safety of the
country. Detention at quarantine
has been a precautionary measure,
the disinfecting process slow and
laborious.

Disinfection is the destruction of
germ life. The penetrative quality
of the means is a most important
factor. Access to the seeds of dis-
ease, destruction of germ life, and
the removal of conditions favorable
to the reproduction of germ life are
necessary to effect thorough disin-
fection. The destruction of the germ

to be effected without the destruction of property or unnecessary
inconvenience or delay is the problem.

The means in use consists of a steam disinfecting chamber
(two hundred and thirty degrees of heat is destructive to germ
life) ; bichloride of mercury used in solution of 1 to 1,000 or 1 to
1,200 ; sulphur fumes, which last have but little penetrative
quality ; and sea-water and salt-water soap for bathing purposes,
to be used when necessary. It has been found expedient to com-
bine these means and construct apparatus to enable the process of
disinfection to be carried out rapidly and thoroughly.

The floating disinfecting plant system now contains all that
is needed to effect a thorough and complete disinfection. The
people detained are submitted to a rapid and efiicacious process
of cleansing and disinfection, their clothing being treated simul-

VOL L. — 27

Hot and Cold Water Sopplt Cocks.

346

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

taneously, and their privacy considered even when under strict
supervision. The officers in charge can direct and control all
operations from the central part of the vessel, and, being provided

with separate toilet and
disinfecting facilities,
can return to their
quarters or gain access
to any part of the ves-
sel without danger of
conveying infection
and without delay.
Fitted with the com-
bined apparatus, a boat
containing the plant
can be run alongside
the suspected vessel,
which can then be thor-
oughly cleansed, disin-
fected, and fumigated,
the passengers and crew
bathed, their clothing
subjected to steam ster-
ilization, and returned
to them uninjured, and
all baggage and bed-
ding treated to a com-
plete disinfection. The crew and attendants have their comfort
and health cared for separately.

Under the direction of A. H. Doty, M. D., health officer of the
port of New York, the old side-wheeler Ripple has been re-
modeled. She looks new from end to end, and under the name
of James W. Wadsworth presents a very trim, businesslike ap-
pearance. Inside she is arranged to economize every available
inch of space, and is finished in such a manner that no germs of
disease can be left to lurk undestroyed.

The Wadsworth has a twofold duty to perform: the bath-
ing and disinfection of passengers, crew, and baggage; and the
cleansing, disinfection, and fumigation of their vessel.

The passengers and crew and their effects are transferred to
the disinfecting boat for treatment, and their vessel is thoroughly
disinfected before they are permitted to return to it.

To effect this work with rapidity, there are several separate
processes, each with its own set of apparatus, conveniently lo-
cated. Each or all can be operated from the central part of the
vessel, where the officer in charge of the disinfecting processes is
stationed.

Door of Disinfecting Chambbb closed.

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE.

3+7

The plant contaius a disinfecting chamber; bichloride tanks,
with separate pumps and hose system ; soda tank and hose sys-
tem ; salt-water pump and connections for the baths ; sulphur
furnace with air pumps and reservoir ; and a central office, con-
taining indicators and the controlling apparatus of the entire dis-
infecting system.

The boat is fitted with two immense fresh- water tanks ; and
the officer in charge can supply the baths with hot or cold, fresh
or salt water at his discretion.

Outside, huge pipes, extra tanks to contain solutions, and con-
veniently situated cocks are visible. The railings have all been
rearranged, to facilitate the handling of passengers.

The boat is practically divided into three sections: the after
part of the vessel, which is devoted to the care, disinfection, and
handling of passengers ; forward, the crew's quarters ; and the
central part of the vessel, containing the boiler, engines, pumps,
and furnaces, and the room where the operations are controlled,
and a separate set of
disinfecting and toilet
apparatus for the use
of the officers in
charge.

The disinfecting
chamber is situated in
the center of the aft-
er part of the vessel.
Surrounding it are
the reception rooms,
disrobing rooms, bath
rooms, and dressing
rooms.

In a process of this
kind it is necessary to
take every precaution
against the spreading
of disease. This is
provided for in the
finish of the boat,
which ofi^ers no rest-
ing place for disease
germs to accumulate.

All parts of the boat where the disinfecting processes take place
are lined with sheet iron, finished with white enamel. The floors
are of sheet lead, each furnished with a separate outlet pipe.
Each room has a separate floor, which does not directly communi-
cate with adjoining rooms ; and the lead floors are protected with

DiSCHAEGING EnD OF DISINFECTING ChAMBEE.

348

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rubber mats, which can be treated without injury to a washing
down with bichloride solution. The benches and other fixed fur-
niture are set away from the walls to facilitate cleansing, and.

Car receiving Packages before being run into Disinfecting Chamber.

together with their fittings, are finished in white enamel, afford-
ing free surfaces, readily cleansed and disinfected.

The two bath rooms — an illustration of one of which is shown
— are provided with showers and extra flexible hose connection
for hosing down. The baths and the temperature of the water
used are regulated in the central office; and the hot and cold
levers are so arranged that the cold water always precedes the
hot, thus preventing a sudden or too great rise of temperature in
the flow of water when distributed by the showers.

The passengers are assembled for disinfection aft, on the upper
deck. From there they descend to the reception room, which is
situated over the stern. Opening from the reception room, on

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE.

349

either hand, are the entrances to the disrobing rooms. Entering
one of these, the passenger to be disinfected removes all clothing,
which is then made into a bundle, checked, and tossed through a
convenient opening into the receiving car of the disinfecting
chamber. The passenger proceeds through a door opposite to
the one by which he entered to the bath room ; from there again,
through another exit, to the dressing room, where the bundle of
clothing awaits him, disinfected.

Thoroughly cleansed and disinfected, the passenger emerges
clothed to proceed to the upper deck, to which there is a conven-
ient staircase situated outside the dressing-room door. In a sepa-
rate railed portion of the upper deck the passengers collect, and
from there are returned to their vessel.

The entrance to the room into which the receiving end of the

-f***.

•I

One of the Bath Rooms.

disinfecting chamber opens is between the entrances to^the two
disrobing rooms.

The room into which the receiving end of the disinfecting
chamber opens is finished in iron, enamel, and lead, as are all the
other rooms. Overhead is a hatch in the upper deck, through
which such large bundles as bedding, etc., can be lowered into the

35°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

receiving car. The car of the disinfecting chamber is run out or
into this room on rails. These rails are movable, and can be taken
up and replaced at will. In operating the disinfecting chamber
these rails are placed in position, the door of the disinfecting
chamber opened, and the car or crate run out. Into this car the
bundles of clothing are tossed from the disrobing rooms, which

BicHLOEiDE Tank.

are situated on either side. From the deck above the bedding
and other large objects to be disinfected are lowered into the car
through the hatch. The car is then run into the disinfecting
chamber, the door closed, and the process of disinfection com-
mences. The door of the disinfecting chamber requires special
mention. It is made of steel, protected by asbestos-magnesia cov-
ering, and is swung into place from a crane and secured by turn-
buckles against a rubber gasket, effecting a perfect seal. The
door is so hung that one man can handle and swing it even in a
seaway, which is obviously a great advantage.

The disinfection of bedding, clothing, etc., is accomplished by
means of steam sterilization. The penetrative quality of the
means must be rendered effective.

The disinfecting chamber is a huge steel room or chest, and in
it the clothing, etc., are treated. A vacuum is created in the
chamber and live steam introduced and exhausted until every part
of the contents of the car has attained the desired degree of heat.

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE.

351

Tlie bundles into whicli the clothing, etc., are rolled are
securely fastened before being tossed into the receiving car, and
remain there undisturbed, each numbered, to effect rapid identifi-
cation.

The rapidity and thoroughness of this disinfection depend on
the vacuum-system process.

The air is drawn from the disinfecting chamber, and as the
vacuum increases the air is withdrawn from the interstices of the
fabrics to be disinfected.

Advantage is now taken of the fact that a rise in the tempera-
ture takes place rapidly in a vacuum. To effect the rise in tem-
perature, to attain the necessary degree of heat, live, dry, super-
heated steam is admitted to the interior of the disinfecting
chamber. This steam contains in reality little more water than
the air that was withdrawn, being in a finely divided state at the
high temperature at which it is introduced into the vacuum. The

SuLPHUB Supply Pipes.

temperature is easily maintained, there being no air to convey
away the heat ; and the steam penetrates to every interstice of
clothing or fabric.

After a proper temperature has been maintained for a suffi-
cient length of time, cool air is admitted to the chamber and ex-
hausted alternately, until the temperature is sufficiently lowered,
when the clothing, etc., is removed and distributed.

The car is discharged at the opposite end of the chamber from
which it entered. The huge steel chest of the disinfecting cham-

352

POPULAB. SCIENCPJ MONTHLY.

ber is double jacketed, and protected by asbestos-magnesia cov-
ering. The operations of the chamber are controlled by means
of a Foster valve.

The interior of the disinfecting chamber has fixed rails for
the car to run upon, and is also fitted with a shield to protect
the contents of the car from damage by condensed moisture.
All water formed on the roof of the chamber drops from the

shield into a receiving
pan, and can be drawn
off from there by a sepa-
rate connection. The
clothing treated is not
injured in any way.

The discharging end
of the car opens into the
room where the health
officer controls the dis-
infecting system. This
end is fitted with a door
similar to the one al-
ready described. In op-
erating the chamber, one
door is closed first, and
steam admitted to the
jacket, and as much air
expelled by expansion as
possible before the sec-
ond door is closed. Then
the air is exhausted and
the vacuum process ef-
fects a thorough disin-
fection.

The vacuum is pro-
duced by the siphon pro-
cess : steam under high
pressure is driven across
the end of a tube leading into the interior of the disinfecting
chamber. This tube is fitted with valves and cocks. The jacket
of the disinfecting chamber is fitted with separate valves and
cocks, and the temperature can be raised, if desired, without
admitting steam to the interior of the disinfecting chamber.

The Wadsworth has but one boiler, but that is large for the
size of the boat. It supplies steam power to work the entire dis-
infecting system, as well as the power to run the boat's engines.
The top of the dome of the boiler is fitted with a pipe leading to
an extra dome ; this is the reservoir that supplies the super-

SuLPiiuR Furnace.

DISINFECTION AT QUARANTINE. 353

heated steam for the disinfecting chamber. The engines supply-
power to all the different pumping systems in the vessel; and
fitted as the Wadsworth is with such powerful and complete
pumps and hose system, she can be used as a fire boat should
occasion require.

There are pumps for hot water, for cold water, for sea water,
for bichloride solution, and for soda solution. The salt-water
pump is made of composite metal. Ball-nozzle hose are used.

The sulphur furnace has four pans, each large enough to con-
tain a couple of pails of sulphur. The sulphur fumes are col-
lected and retained in a tank above the furnace, and drawn off as
needed by a rotary fan, to be distributed through a huge system
of supply pipes. About four pounds of sulphur to one thousand
feet of cubic space is used. After the sulphur dioxide is forced
through the pipe system, the sulphur can be cut off and fresh
air forced through the same pipe system.

In disinfecting a vessel the soda solution is used to remove
grease and render accessible surfaces in constant use, which are
then washed down with the bichloride solution, which is followed
by a thorough rinsing of sea water.

The crew's quarters of the Wadsworth have a separate fresh-
water tank and separate bathing and toilet facilities. Cedar is
the wood used throughout the forecastle, which is finished so that
whitewash can be readily applied. All parts of the vessel that
carry the disinfectant plant are finished so that they can be thor-
oughly hosed down without danger of the waste being carried to
the bilge. The ventilation is as nearly perfect as possible ; all the
rooms and quarters have plenty of light and air.

The clothing can be treated in a very few minutes, and the
rest of the process is both rapid and efficacious. The boat is in
commission, and the tests have all proved satisfactory.

Now that such progress has been made in the right direction,
we shall expect to see our local health departments equipped with
something similar, that is at once compact and capable of cleans-
ing and disinfecting either a room or a district at short notice.

One of the oldest French almanacs, described by M. Gaston Tissandier
in La Nature, is Le Kalendrier des Bergiers, or Shepherds' Calendar, printed
at Lyons in 1504. It contains many curious tilings, among them a calendar
of feast days, which are calculated by counting on the fingers and joints.
This is followed by some astronomical information, and then by articles —
most of them curiously illustrated — on the tree and branches of the vices,
the pains of hell, the book of the salvation of the soul, the " nathomie " of
the human body, tlie art of " fleubothomie" of the veins, the astrology of
shepherds, the sayings of birds, the judgments of " phigonomie," how to
know the planet under which a child is born, etc.

354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY.

Br ANNA TOLMAN SMITH.

THE average American negro presents a puzzling contradic-
tion in Ms educational progress. As rule lie masters the
elements of reading with ease ; but as a rule also the developed
language, the expressive medium of subtle relations and of com-
plex experiences, defies his efforts. It is true that even the un-
tutored roll off abstruse terms and involved phrases with peculiar
unction, but this is a case of " words, words," that rather proves
than disproves my meaning. I have in mind not sound as such,
but sound as " an echo of sense."

The phenomenon which I have mentioned had so often been
brought to my notice that I put myself at last to find out the
explanation. This could only be done by examining a particular
case. Circumstances determined the selection, with the result, of
course, that there are conditions to be weighed in the balance.
On the whole, however, the case, I believe, is typical. The sub-
ject of my experiment is very nearly a full negro, if family tradi-
tion and family features may be trusted. No trace of white blood
is discernible in either parent, and their ancestors known to them
for two generations back were negroes like themselves. On the
father's side, tradition says, there was an Indian grandfather
three removes from the present generation, but the Indian ele-
ment has been lost in the transmittal, unless possibly it survives
in a slight modification of the African hue. The man is of a dark
coffee color, stout built, strong, sluggish, and extremely faithful,
as is shown by the fact that he has retained the same place
eighteen years. The mother is slightly darker in color than her
husband, and of tall, supple figure ; her mind is active, her move-
ments are quick ; she rules and guides her household by virtue of
a superiority that all instinctively recognize. As a girl she was
trained to domestic service by a painstaking mistress, while the
father passed his youth as an ordinary field hand. Three pre-
natal conditions are typified in the name which these parents
with due ceremony bestowed upon their son — Isaiah Asbury Bell.
The family name is theirs only by virtue of a previous condition
of servitude to planter Bell ; Methodism accounts for the second
name, and pious reverence for a book which neither of them can
read, and perhaps a certain pleasure in euphonious sounds, for the
first. The latter inference is confirmed by the names given their
three daughters — Triphenie, Romana, and Albertina. This sensi-
tiveness to sound I note as a family trait, because it may prove to
have sopie bearing upon the boy's personal equation. Isaiah is a
young edition of his father, equally sluggish, awkward, and obsti-

A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 355

nate. At the time of my experiments lie was sixteen years old,
and had been regularly at school since his tenth year — that is, for .
five years — and irregularly from his seventh to his tenth inclu-
sive. He could read the Third Reader in a monotonous, stum-
bling way, perform simple operations in arithmetic quite rapidly,
and write an excellent hand. As he was in my service, I thought
it my duty to keep up his education, and, undismayed by many
futile efforts with his predecessors in the place, I began daily
reading exercises with him. Of necessity, the Third Reader does
not interest a boy of sixteen, and, interest being the essential spur
to acquisition, I tried the newspaper. Every day I selected some
local occurrence which excited his mind, and by talking it over
with him and explaining the new words endeavored to give him
the mastery of the printed account. By this means the limita-
tions of his vocabulary were soon apparent. It stopped with the
names of familiar objects or of actions possible to himself. Out-
side of that range he never caught at new words as white chil-
dren do, nor did they excite his curiosity even when the context
was interesting. To illustrate : Here is a short list of words,
no one of which conveyed any meaning to his mind — testify,
drought, witness, apparent, fulfill. These all occurred in an ac-
count of the Knox fire, a local event which excited him greatly.
We read the matter several times in slightly different forms, and
I dwelt upon each of the strange words, giving familiar illus-
trations of their uses, but the very interest that he felt in the
event about which we were reading seemed to interfere with his
grasping these particulars. I think his mind never got beyond
the general impression that the fire and the ruin as he saw it
were described in the paper. His mental state, as it was revealed
to me through his reading, might be described as unanalyzed
content. Eager to get the true measure of his verbal power, I
applied the familiar test of instantaneous associations with a
given list of words. I submit the best results that I obtained
after repeated experiments with varied lists :

CONCRETE TERMS.

Associated Ideas. Words. Associated Ideas.

Pole North. Vase Blue.

Book Black. Hat White.

Pencil Lead. Horse Brown.

Paper Reading. Bear Grizzly.

Fire Place. Processiou. .. .Street.

I had great difficulty in finding abstract terms which excited
any response, but finally secured the following :

356

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Words.

Associated Ideas.

Strength Man's.

Memory His.

Sorrow His.

Time Piece.

Courage. . Dog.

Words. Associated Ideas.

Anger John (the

name of a comrade).

Fear Not.

Disobedience.

Love He.

Kindness.

These experiments continued for some time. Meanwhile, va-
cation days having ended, Isaiah returned to school. Unfortu-
nately, the boy had been kept grinding at the elements when flex-
ibility and susceptibility had long passed their zenith. He had at
last, however, arrived at the dignity of geography, which lent mo-
mentary zest to his flagging spirits. To encourage the new zeal, I
talked over the subject with him at night. A lesson on the races
of men seemed to impress him more than usual. When I asked
him to repeat the five races whose names and traits he had learned
in the morning ; he recalled all but the Malay. I finally told him
the forgotten name, when he instantly responded, " Oh, yes, the
malaria race ! " I repeated the name several times without com-
ment, but he failed to notice the distinction. The very next even-
ing a little white girl of ten years, who had also just entered the
fifth grade, was telling me the same lesson, and she, like Isaiah,
had forgotten the name of one race, the Mongolian. After the
omission had been supplied, I turned to her mother and told the
story of Isaiah's slip. Quick as a flash and with evident amuse-
ment the child exclaimed, " Oh, he mistook a disease for a peo-
ple ! " The inference is plain : the one had groups of appercep-
tions in her mind that were entirely wanting to the other.

That I may not fail to give the positive side of Isaiah's lin-
guistic attainment, I present here a specimen of his original com-
position. It is an account of a feature in a well-known game
which, so far as I can ascertain, was introduced by colored boys :

" The first boy who I new to play prisoners-base was Charles
H. Dorsey And the way you play it is to have equal number on
each side of the street and one has to show a lead if he get cought
he has to hold out his bans. And if he falls he will say broken
bones."

The statement, it will be seen, comprises fifty-five words be-
sides a proper name. Of these, all but four are monosyllables.
A peculiar phrasing not unlike that common among deaf-mutes
has resulted from the boy's inability to master the subtleties of
connecting particles.

The facts here presented are not, in themselves alone, either
novel or significant. The question which they raise is, however,
fundamental. Are they the sign of inherent deficiency or are
they the outcome simply of external conditions ? In dealing

A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 357

with Isaiah I recognized that he had come rather late to the ele-
ments ; this happens also with many white boys, and is by no
means an insuperable obstacle to future progress. The circum-
stance really facilitated my study, as it gave me mental states
more positive and well defined than those of younger children.
Evidently the problem before me resolved itself into two con-
ditions : the mind of the boy — his environment. The estimates of
mind, reading, writing, etc., which formal education employs were
evidently not applicable to this individual upon whom the school
had left so slight an impress. While I was revolving the matter
a new mode of testing his mental powers was suggested. I
chanced one evening to be arranging some sets of small color
cards in Isaiah's presence. It was evening, the light was dim,
and I had difficulty in distinguishing the slightly different tints
of the French blues and greens. Whenever I hesitated the boy,
who was watching the work with undisguised interest, would in-
stantly pick out the right card. As it was in a range of sesthetic
tints which I was certain had had no part in his customary sur-
roundings, I inferred that he had been through color exercises in
school. Inquiry proved that I was mistaken ; color perception
and color distinction were natural powers improved simply by
the observation of familiar things. Here too I discovered that
a network of associations had arisen, the very condition whose
absence had made advance in reading so difficult. His color
associations were with natural objects, chiefly fruits and birds —
for example, red with an apple, the inside of a melon, a robin's
breast ; blue with the sky and the jay, yellow with a lemon, and so
on. Flowers he seldom mentioned. The reason is obvious. He
had a gourmand's taste, and was already quite an experienced
hunter. Associations ended with the primitive colors, his ready
recognition of shades and hues being a mere matter of immediate
perception.

A possible mode of applying the hint thus obtained was sug-
gested by the memory tests described by Prof. Munsterberg in
the Psychological Review for January, 1894. The material em-
ployed (i. e., colored squares, three and a half centimetres) was
easily secured and was of precisely the kind to excite distinct per-
ceptions in Isaiah's mind. Beyond the arrangement of the cards
there was, however, no likeness between my experiments and those
of Prof. Munsterberg alluded to. The series employed by me
were shorter than his, consisting each of ten cards instead of
twenty, arranged either for simultaneous or for successive pres-
entation. My subject went through no preliminary training,
and no time limit was set for his observation. He was at liberty
to look at a series till he thought he knew it, when he proceeded
to arrange a duplicate set of the cards in the same order from

358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

memory. He had no idea of my purpose but regarded the exer-
cise as a game, a notion which I encouraged by now and then
pitting myself against him. Simple as the exercise appears, it
afforded a clearer view of Isaiah's mind than speech could pos-
sibly have done. Here, at the stage of simple sensation and within
the psychic circle that it evolves, he was all alert and responsive.
It is difficult for me to convey a clear idea of his awakened activi-
ties ; I can only sum up what he did in dry statistics, which are
meaningless aside from comparison. I should add, with reference
to the experiments, that in the absence of apparatus for signaling
our expedient was as follows :

At the word noiv from Isaiah the series presented was covered
and the duplicate set of cards placed before him. An assistant,
watch in hand, marked the time passed both in examining and
placing the cards. I did not caution Isaiah against the use of
mnemonic devices, for I judged that he knew none, his range of
associations being extremely limited. The experiments were
made from twice to three times a week for about five weeks. In
three instances, the same series was repeated twice in succession,
in every other case a series was presented but once. The sum-
mary of results is as follows : Simultaneous presentation, eight-
een series, ten colors each ; average time for learning each color,
five and three fourths seconds (or fifty-seven and a half seconds per
series) ; average time for placing each color, nine and two thirds
seconds, or one minute and thirty- six seconds per series ; percent-
age of errors, 36"6. Successive presentations of ten series, ten
colors each ; average time for observing each color, five and three
fifths seconds ; average time for placing each color, nine and three
fourths seconds ; percentage of errors, twenty-nine.

I made occasional essays with aural series — i. e,, reading the
names of the colors arranged until Isaiah was ready to replace
them. Of these I preserved only the following record : Four
aural series, ten colors each ; average time for learning each color,
five and five sevenths seconds; average time for placing each
color, six seconds ; percentage of errors, fifty.

The experiments having proceeded thus far, I entered upon an
educative series. By this means the time for learning a series
was reduced to half a minute, and for placing the same, to forty-
five seconds, while the percentage of errors fell to sixteen.

In arranging the series the boy's action was slow, and he
seemed able to begin indiscrimately at either end or in the
middle. Apparently he recalled the colors partly by name ; this,
however, helped him little, as he did not know the names of shades
and neutral tints. I tried having him count, as a means of in-
hibiting the names when he was examining the cards, but I
thought this helped rather than hindered, as the name attached

A STUDY IN RACE PSYCHOLOGY. 359

itself to the number that fell to it ; in other words, here his mind
instantly formed new associations. It would be absurd to com-
pare the results of these experiments with those of Prof. Munster-
berg already alluded to. The latter were performed upon adult
subjects who were in training for the work, thoroughly possessed
of its purposes, and supplied with instruments of precision for
signaling, record, etc. Nevertheless, one can hardly fail to note
that while the average time required by Isaiah for learning a
series was from two to three times that allowed the trained
students, his percentage of errors was on the whole less than their
average. To realize exactly what the results indicate, one should
try to see how many colors of a series he can replace after view-
ing them less than a minute.

I have given here a record of memory tests that were pursued
systematically for a short time. Circumstances soon changed,
and I was only able to make an occasional experiment with more
complicated material ; but one point was established to my satis-
faction— namely, that Isaiah was endowed with the germs of
mental life, perception, association, and memory. The question
remained why these were not active in that most important of all
school exercises — reading. The answer is to be found partly in
the negroes' quick response to sense impressions. All persons
familiar with their habits have noticed this susceptibility, but I
believe Mr. R. Meade Bache is the first to bring it to proof in the
laboratory.

The results of his experiments, presented in the Psychological
Review of September, point very clearly to the conclusion that
the negro race is superior to the white in automatic power. Here,
I believe, we have the key to Isaiah's success in reproducing an
impression received through the senses, and also, in general, to
the ease with which children of his race go through the elementary
process of learning to read. Speech is a power that comes to most
of us unconsciously, and the first stages of reading require little
more than the visual recognition of signs that stand for familiar
things. But, this stage passed, every word is a generalization,
back of which lie traditions, customs, experiences, sentiments, and
ideas, which are the heritage of a race. They are the stuff of the
mind transmitted from generation to generation through the myr-
iad channels of family, of social, of school, of church, and of business
life. It is obvious that to a race wanting in our own experiences
a large part of our vocabulary must be meaningless. Analogous
experiences, of course, give insight into a foreign tongue, but here
the colored child is at a peculiar disadvantage. The traditions of
African savagery, even if they had reached him, offer no likeness
to the history of the Anglo-Saxon. Slavery was a state with laws
and customs and ceremonies bearing certain resemblances to our

360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

own, but the negro who has passed through this state to the free-
dom of American citizenship is, as it were, a man without ances-
tral history. Instead of cherishing his past and trying to impress
its memories and ideals upon his children, he seeks rather to de-
stroy them. He reacts against his past and inhibits it. On the
other hand, he has not yet become sufficiently possessed of our
civilization to impart its mother-lore to his children. The absence
of social restraints, either in the form of crude superstitions or of
complex sentiments and ideals, explains perhaps the frequent
outbursts of ferocious passions on the part of negroes ; the same
condition insures also a primitive state of Nature in their chil-
dren. Scientific research affords proof of the fundamental unity
of mind, but it gives no less decisive proof of differences due to
ancestry and training. The negro child is psychologically differ-
ent from the white child. In automatic power he is superior, but
in the power of abstraction, of judgment, and analysis he is de-
cidedly inferior. This fact must be recognized in the school train-
ing. In purpose and in liberal provision the education of the
negro should be the same as that of white children. In detail and
method it should be adjusted to the racial plane on which he
stands.

But to return to Isaiah. Vacation having ended, he was sent
back to school to resume the rehearsal of lessons that conveyed no
meaning to his mind. Fortunately, he made a venture for him-
self and secured the drummer's place in a band ; this occupied all
his spare time and afforded an outlet for his automatism, with a
pecuniary advantage besides. At the end of the year my persua-
sions added to his strong personal desire prevailed, and he was
allowed to quit vain repetitions and go to work. His place in the
industrial world is a humble one, for, in spite of the fact that his
parents have been willing to give him much more than the aver-
age time at school, he has not been raised above the rank of
unskilled laborers. This it seems to me is unpardonable. A
youth in whom perception, memory, and simple judgment are
active might, I am confident, in ten years have been raised a little
higher in the scale of independent being. If he had been at
Hampton or Tuskegee, the result would have been different, for
in these he would have been educated through experiences, social
and industrial. In the public schools within his reach he must
drill over the elements, to the arrest of development, or go for-
ward to abstract thought of which his mind was incapable. I
have dwelt upon a particular case because it is a psychological
type. It confirms what the laboratory indicates — namely, if races
are to be developed by formal education, its processes must be
conformed to their conditions, not vice versa.

THE POPULAR ESTHETICS OF COLOR. 361

THE POPULAR ESTHETICS OF COLOR.

By JOSEPPI JASTROW, Ph.D.,

professor of psychology in the university of wisconsin.

THE liuman race, like most large groups in ISTature, presents
a considerable variety amid a still more fundamental simi-
larity. It is evident that, if only we measure finely enough, no
two specimens, however simple, are precisely alike ; and in pro-
ceeding from the simple to the complex the opportunity for varia-
tion and diversity rapidly increases ; and yet amid all this diver-
sity of individuals there is much that is common, typical, and
similar. In mental processes, with which we are here primarily
concerned, it seems fair to expect that, given the same premises
and a fairly simple problem, similar conclusions will be reached
by different individuals, owing to the similarity of the logical
processes involved. But we know very well that when these pro-
cesses are complex, and particularly when the emotions and
interests of men are involved under substantially similar circum-
stances, very diverse conclusions may be reached, until, in ex-
tremely complex questions and in those in which personal interests
are dominant, we find tot homines tot sententice.

Of all varieties of human judgment, the ones generally con-
sidered as least subject to rule and most open to caprice are
those commonly referred to as questions of taste. These ques-
tions of taste refer partly to our individual and peculiar likes and
dislikes, and partly to our more strictly aesthetic preferences and
aversions. Esthetic judgments, however, are subject to the in-
fluences of heredity and environment, of education, of general
mental development, and the like. We speak of certain pref-
erences as childish, as savage, as Philistine, as uneducated, as
national, as local, as a fashion or a fad. In some directions it is
possible to gather an aesthetic census and determine in a statisti-
cal way the distribution of particular likes and dislikes, and to
attempt to gain from such material some suggestions of the un-
derlying laws in obedience to which certain sense-perceptions are
judged to be more or less pleasure-giving than others. The
aesthetic relations and proportions of simple geometrical figures
and lines have been studied by this method, and it is very readily
applied, as is to be attempted in the present paper, to the study
of the nature and distribution of color preferences.

The material for the present study was collected in connection
with the Psychological Laboratory of the World's Columbian
Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. The public was invited to
record its color preferences by means of a placard, which was

VOL. L. 28

362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

displayed in a well-lighted corner of the laboratory, bearing the
inscription shown on page 363.

This method of voting was made possible by having on hand
a constant supply of small cards, each bearing a number from
1 to 25, and arranged in numerical order in small boxes or
trays. Of such boxes there were two sets, one containing square
and the other oblong cards. By means of these devices the sliape
of each card dropped into the ballot box indicated the sex of the
voter ; the printed number on its face indicated the voter's favorite
color ; the letter ivritten on its back, his preferred combination of
colors ; the number written on its back, his age ; and the fact that
all this information was recorded on one card established the
relation between the preferred single color and the preferred com-
bination of colors.

The colors thus displayed were those bearing these names in
the series of colored papers prepared by the Prang Educational
Company, and to Mr. Prang my obligations are due for very ma-
terial assistance in this investigation. I am also indebted to Dr.
Herbert Nichols and Mrs. M. D. Hicks for the selection and
arrangement of the colors and the permission to use the color
scheme prepared by them for the study of color preferences. In
such a study only a small and somewhat arbitrarily selected
range of colors can be conveniently presented, and it is likely
that the results may be to some extent influenced by the particu-
lar colors among which a choice was requested. Regarding the
nature of the colors here presented, it may be noted that the
twenty-four single colors fall into two groups of twelve each, the
second group forming respectively the lighter shades (in the same
order) of the colors in the first group. Each group of twelve
colors is composed of the six " primary " or " normal " shades of
the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and of six inter-
mediate or transitional colors — red orange, orange yellow, etc. In
the color combinations no transitional colors are used, and, so far
as is possible in twenty-four combinations, a wide range of group-
ing and combination is presented.

The material thus gathered, about four thousand five hundred
records in all, may be considered from a variety of points of view,
and may be made to furnish interesting information regarding
the range and distribution of average color preferences. We shall
consider first the preferences for the single colors and for color
combinations as they occur in the general average, and then
ascertain how far these preferences are modified by difiierences in
sex and in age.*

* During the two months or more during which the public was invited to vote its color
preferences 4,556 cards were dropped into the box, 2,746 (about three fifths) by men and

THE POPULAR ESTHETICS OF COLOR.

363

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364 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Our first interest lies in determining what colors are the gen-
eral favorites. The first place is held by hlue, which is selected
as the most pleasing color by slightly more than one quarter of
all the voters ; and the second place, though not a good second,
by red, which is chosen by somewhat less than half as many as
choose blue. In the next group of most pleasing colors are found
ligJiter hlue, hlue violet, red violet, lighter red (or pink) violet, and
" no choice," while the five least favorite colors are orange and its
shadings toward red and yellow. In order to illustrate the sig-
nificance of this result it may be noted that the four colors, hlue,
red, lighter hlue, and hlue violet, constitute just about half the en-
tire preferences ; or, again, if we divide the number of records into
four approximately equal parts, hhie would constitute the first
quarter ; red, lighter hlue, and hlue violet the second quarter ; red
violet, lighter red, violet, "no choice," green, and yellow the third
quarter ; and the remaining fifteen colors would constitute the
last quarter of the color preferences.

It will be remembered that the colors presented for selection
were divisible into two groups, the one group composed of the
lighter shades of the colors of the other group. On comparing
the preferences between the two groups it appears unmistakably
that the darlier colors are decidedly preferred. Of every seven
persons five choose among the darker colors and only two among
the lighter. An equally unmistakable tendency is the preference
for the primary colors — i. e., red, orange, yellow, etc. — as opposed
to the transitional ones — i. e., red orange, orange yellow, etc. ; this
preference is nearly as marked as that of the dark above the
lighter shades. This seems to indicate that colors more distinctly
corresponding to familiar shades and names are apt to be chosen
as opposed to those that are less typical and familiar. All these
results appear so clearly and strikingly that they may be re-
garded as possessing considerable general validity.

We may now consider the color preferences of the two sexes.
The differences between the male and female preferences are con-

1,810 (about two fifths) by women. Of these, only 3,043 (1,864 men and 1,1*79 women)
indicated both the preferences for the combination of colors as well as for the single color,
and only 2,594 (1,548 men and 1,046 women) recorded their ages. These numbers are
suggestive, as indicating that, of all those sufficiently interested to stop and select a color,
only Jiff y-seven per cent were careful to follow the entire directions, while just about two
thirds did as requested, except that they did not record the age. In all these respects the
women are no more nor no less accurate ihan the men.

The ages of the voters cover a wide range, from six to seventy years. The age best
represented occurs at about twenty-two years. One half of all the voters are between
nineteen years and six months and thirty-five years of age, and two thirds of them would be
between seventeen and thirty-nine years old. The age distribution of the men and women
presents no significant difCeiences.

THE POPULAR AESTHETICS OF COLOR. 365

siderable. While hlue is pre-eminently and overwhelmingly the
masculine favorite, it is by no means so general a feminine favor-
ite. The favorite woman's color, standing at the head of the
female list, is red. Roughly speaking, of every thirty masculine
votes, ten would be for hlue and three for red ; while of every thirty
feminine votes, /owr would be for hlue and^ive for red. Red and
blue are thus much more nearly equally popular among women
than among men. Other relatively marked masculine prefer-
ences are for the colors related to blue (blue violet and violet),
and other feminine preferences are for lighter red (or pink), and,
to a less extent, for green and yellow. Further, men confine their
selections to relatively fewer colors than do women ; and finally,
while all men and women alike are much more apt to choose a
normal than a transitional color and a darker than a lighter
shade, yet the tendency to do so (about the same in the former
direction) is markedly different in the latter respect ; of a dozen
men, ten would choose among the darker colors and only two
among the lighter for the most pleasing color ; while of a dozen
women, seven would choose among the darker and five among the
lighter shades. This feminine fondness for the lighter and dain-
tier shades appears also in other respects, to be noted presently.

Passing next to the discussion of the preferences among the
combinations of colors enumerated above, the first noteworthy
result is that no combination of colors occupies the position of a
decided favorite as did blue among the single colors ; but that
preferences for the several combinations vary gradually froin the
most to the least favorite. The two most frequently (and about
equally) preferred combinations are red with violet and red with
hlue, which are somewhat similar in effect (the violet being very
dark in appearance) ; more than one fifth of all the persons con-
tributing to the results choose one or the other of these com-
binations. The third in the list is hlue with violet. The three
most favorite combinations are those composed of the three
colors, red, violet, and hlue. The next position on the list is taken
by those who are unable to decide upon any one combination as
their favorite, and it should be noted that this group is nearly
twice as large in the selection of the combination as it is in the
selection of a single color. Then follow lighter red with lighter
green, red luith green, lighter red with lighter hlue, and red ivith
lighter green. Some one of the above eight cojor combinations
was chosen by tliree out of every five persons who recorded a
preference, the remaining t'lvo fifths of the preferences being dis-
tributed very widely and rather uniformly among the remaining
seventeen colors. The combinations most generally avoided are
orange ivith green, orange with violet, lighter orange ivith lighter
hlue.

366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Before leaving this division of the subject one further con-
clusion may be indicated. This relates to the relative frequency
of the several colors in the color combinations. Such a compari-
son is possible only for the normal or primary colors and their
lighter shades, and is further hampered by the fact that the several
colors are not equally offered for selection in the color combina-
tions. A method of comparison making allowance for these points
yields the conclusion that, on the whole, the same colors are pre-
ferred and avoided in both the single colors and the color com-
binations. While the order of preference is measurably the same,
we find no such decided favorites as is blue among the single col-
ors, but that the several colors are much more uniformly repre-
sented. Red and blue and violet and lighter red are near the
head of both lists, and orange and lighter orange at the foot of
both. The most striking exception is lighter green, which is very
rarely chosen as a single favorite color, but appears frequently
in the color combinations. It may also be observed that on the
whole the lighter shades of the colors appear relatively more
frequently in the color combinations than in the single color
preferences, and that this is particularly the case for the women.

The results of the comparison of color preferences for those
of various ages are somewhat meager. This is probably due to
the wide distribution of age here represented. It is probable that
the characteristics peculiar to certain ages could be best deter-
mined by recording the preferences of large groups of persons of
nearly the same age — a form of investigation that is particularly
desirable among children, in whom changes of taste are going on
more rapidly than in older persons. For the purposes of com-
parison the ages were divided into five groups, the number of
records in each group being approximately the same. The groups
thus formed are for the youngest, eighteen years and below ; the
next, nineteen to twenty-four years ; the third, twenty-five to
thirty years ; the fourth, thirty-one to forty years; and the oldest,
forty- one years and above. The most noteworthy characteristic
of the color preferences of these groups is their general similarity ;
but there are four indications which are sufficiently marked to be
probably free from chance. These are, that blue is least selected
by the youngest group, about equally by the three middle groups,
and decidedly preferred by the oldest ; that violet is gradually
avoided as age increases ; that those who make most use of the
" no choice " column are between twenty-five and thirty years of
age ; and that lighter red is particularly preferred by those below
eighteen years of age. It is equally difficult to detect any marked
differences between the sexes respecting their color preferences at
different ages, but it is perhaps not accidental that in these re-
sults the liking for pinh {lighter red) is confined to young girls,

THE POPULAR AESTHETICS OF COLOR. 367

and does not appear among boys, and that lighter violet is more
distinctly preferred by the older women than by the older men.

The method of collecting these preferences, it will be recalled,
enables one to know the combinational color preferences of the
individuals who choose a given color as their favorite. It is
thus possible to study the correlation that may exist between the
choice of a single color and the choice of a color combination. It
will not be worth while to do this except for those colors that are
chosen by a relatively large number of individuals. Taking, for
example, those who choose blue as their favorite color, we find
what combination of colors these " blue-choosers " were most
prone to select, and so on for those who chose red, lighter blue,
blue violet, red violet, lighter red, violet, and green. The first
marked result of such a comparison is to show that the favorite
color is extremely apt to reappear in the combination of colors.
The evidence for this may be given in some detail. If we repre-
sent by 1 the proportionate choice of a combination having the
color blue in it in the general records, we find that the number
expressing how many of the "blue-choosers" would also choose
a combination in which blue occurred would be 2"17, or more than
twice as many as the general average. So for red it would be
1*87, for lighter blue 3'98, for lighter red 3"83, for violet 2"85, and
for green 4"44 ; or on an average 3*18, which means that a person
who has chosen any one of the above colors as his favorite color
is more than three times as likely to choose a combination in
which that same color appears as is the average chooser. It also
appears that the men obey this tendency slightly more than the
women.*

Having found characteristic differences between the single
color preferences of the sexes, we are prepared to find them as
well in the preferences for color combinations. On the whole, the
order of preference of the combinations of colors for the men and
for the women is very much alike ; and when they difi:er it is fre-
quently doubtful, especially when the combination of colors is
rarely selected, whether such differences are accidental or not.
Of the masculine preferences those which seem most decided

* Several other "correlation" conclusions maybe drawn, of which the following are
the most interesting : It appears that the men who are rather exceptional and choose a
color which is a common feminine favorite, and the women who select a typical masculine
color, are more apt than the more conforming choosers to retain this color in their color-
combination preferences ; it also appears that the tendency to retain this favorite color is
limited to the same shade of color and does not apply to a different shade of the same
color, and it further appears that those who select a favorite color which is selected by a
relatively large number of persons are more alike in their combination preferences — i. e.,
they confine their selections to a more limited range of color combinations than those
whose preferred color is not a popular favorite.

368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are for the red with blue combination and tlie blue ivitk violet,
there being five men to one woman choosing the former, and tJiree
men to one woman choosing the latter ; while the most marked
feminine preferences are for the lighter red with lighter green,
red ivith green, and red with lighter green, there being nearly /otir
times as many women as men choosing the former, tunce as many
the second, and tivo and a half times as many the last of these
three. We observe in these differences the reappearance of the
masculine preference for hlue and its related colors, and the
feminine preference for red, and also the feminine preference
for the lighter colors. The liking for combinations of red with
green in their various shades seems also a particularly feminine
fondness.*

In reviewing these results of this popular census of color
preferences, it is apparent that while in some directions the con-
clusions seem clear, suggestive, and interesting, in others their
interpretation and value are at present doubtful or defective. It
must, however, be borne in mind that these returns have been
gathered among the general public and by only one of several
methods ; their full significance can hardly appear before special
studies shall have been made of the influences upon color prefer-
ences of age and nationality, of education and special artistic
endowment, of conventionality and association, and of the many
other factors that contribute to the complexity of even the sim-
plest aesthetic judgments. For the present, the results are pre-
sented as merely an initial contribution to the statistical study of
the popular aesthetics of color.

An interesting case of mimicry is described by Mr. Charles A. Witchell
as shown in his brother's Dandie Dinmont terrier, which was in the com-
pany of a fine mastiff for a short time when young. " The little dog was
somewhat awed by the great beast, which could easily have made a meal of
him; but he was evidently very proud to be allowed to accompany her for
a ramble in the country." In a short time he began to try to reproduce
her baying, which was much lower in pitch than his bark, and made very
great efforts to accomiDlish it, which he finally did very successfully. " He
raised his head and uttered a great bark, about an octave in pitch below his
usual tone. All his breath was exhausted by the effort, and he immediately
coughed, as though his larynx had been strained." Mr. Mitchell also ob-
serves that when one of the fish in his aquarium gaped, any other one near
would be tolerably certain to gape soon afterward.

* It is possible to calculate for the men and women separately the tendency to select
given colors in the color combinations (irrespective of the colors with which the given color
may be combined). Such a comparison yields the conclusion that the colors relatively
better represented in the combinations of color than in the single colors are, for the men,
blue and violet ; and for the women, lighter red, lighter yellow, and green.

EVOLUTION OF THE CARRIER PIGEON. 369

EVOLUTION OF THE CARRIER PIGEON.

By M. G. EENAUD.

THE exhibition at tlie Trocadero and the dispatches of pigeons
recently made at sea have attracted public attention to what
may be called columbophilism. They have, moreover, revealed
the existence of many flourishing societies that display their
activity in the training of hundreds of thousands of pigeons. It
is worth while to inquire into the motives which have provoked
this enthusiasm concerning these birds.

Messenger pigeons are certainly of great service in time of war
as means of communication between different parts of the army
and the country when the telegraph lines have been broken. But
this does not account for the great extension which has taken
place in the last few years in pigeon-training. Belgium, for ex-
ample, has as many pigeons as all the other European countries
put together. Bat in selecting and training the best varieties of
pigeons the Belgians have not been actuated solely by considera-
tions of national defense. Their interest in their favorite sport is
largely determined by the excitement of gaming, and their Sun-
day pigeon matches are occasions of much betting. Very few
persons think now of utilizing the pigeons for purposes of daily
life. They have the telephone, telegraph, and mail ; why should
they go back to so primitive a method of correspondence ? Hence
an excuse is devised for relegating the pigeon to the category of
luxuries. We hope to show that it is something more important.
We believe that relations of every kind would gain much in con-
venience if the pigeon was employed concurrently with the most
improved means of correspondence. This useful messenger might
in many cases supplement or even take the place of the post and
telegraph. The most elaborate system of telegraph lines can only
serve places of a certain degree of importance, and they are not
built to effect connections the use of which is not constant or
profitable enough to justify the expense of constructing and main-
taining theni.

Most valuable use has been made of carrier pigeons in the
past. The ancient civilized empires of Asia included many per-
haps relatively well settled regions infested by robbers and exten-
sive deserts through which well-armed caravans passed but incon-
veniently and where the most secure means of communication was
by means of these birds. The Greeks borrowed the use of pigeons
from these nations, and an Eginetan athlete sent home the news
of his victory at Olympia by means of one of them. The Romans
had a system of optical telegraphy and supplemented it by pigeons.
The use of this aerial post became more and more general toward

VOL. L.— 29

370 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the end of tlie empire. In the middle ages the news of the capture
of Damietta by St. Louis was announced to the Sultan by this
means. At a later date pigeons rendered important services in
sieges like those of Haarlem and Leyden. The pigeons of St. Mark
have been taken care of since the thirteenth century in recogni-
tion of the services which they rendered to the republic during
the siege of Candia by Dandolo. During the continental blockade
the financiers of the continent kept up communications with their
London correspondents by pigeons. After normal national life
was restored to Europe and as the improvement of communica-
tions went on, the service of the pigeon post was neglected till
the siege of Paris in 1870 called it to life again. But the fisher-
men of Boulogne, Dieppe, and Saint-Malo still send pigeons for-
ward in advance of their boats as they are returning home, with
reports of what their catch has been.

The birds that stock our pigeon houses are of the Belgian
breed, which has been developed by centuries of selection from
the rock pigeon. This breed difi'ers much from its wild ancestors
in habits and instincts. The carrier pigeon is not quite so large
as the ring pigeon, but has a more expressive head, more elegant
form, and a more brilliant and more varied plumage. The train-
ing of the young pigeons begins when they are three or four
months old. They are let loose at gradually increasing distance,
all in one direction, from the pigeon houses. At six months of
age one should be able to return from a distance of two hundred
miles at a speed of fifty miles an hour. At the end of the second
year it should come back from distances of more than three hun-
dred miles, and of the third year from six hundred miles. Pigeons
return more rapidly from places lying in the direction in which
they have been trained. Training in one direction has some advan-
tages and several disadvantages in practice ; but as the trainer of
to-day is not seeking useful results, but simply to beat in the races,
he adopts the method best adapted to his purpose. As the races at
the same city always take place over the same course, why take the
trouble to give the birds a various training ? Under the stimulus
of the races and through the training for them, a great improve-
ment has been efi^ected in the quality and powers of i3igeons.

Two interesting questions present themselves concerning the
length of time during which the pigeon can recollect the place of
his home and the distance from which he is able to find his way
back to it. Some birds have found their way home after five
years' absence ; and it is generally considered that good birds can
be depended upon for six months. Pigeons have returned from
Vienna and from Rome to Brussels, and others, sold to be carried
away to America, have made their way back to their original
owner in Belgium.

EVOLUTION OF THE CARRIER PIGEON. 371

When pigeons were to be sent back and forth, it has been
usual to keep two sets, with their respective homes at either end
of the course ; and when they have reached their home, to carry
them back to the places from which they are to be dispatched.
An ingenious process has been devised to overcome this difficulty
and cause the birds to fly with equal certainty in both directions.
Pigeons, for example, whose home is in Paris are confined for sev-
eral days at St. Denis, and fed there at a stated hour every day
with some favorite food which is not given them at their real
home. They become in the course of time familiar with their
new home and its choice dishes. When set at liberty, they start
off at once for Paris, without forgetting the good things they en-
joyed at St. Denis. When they are to be sent back, they are
made to fast a little while, and are then let loose at about feeding
time at St. Denis. They go thither, and, when they have their
own way, time their going so as to be there at the exact moment
of feeding. Birds have thus been taught to fly back and forth
regularly between places thirty miles apart.

When a carrier pigeon is set at liberty at a distance from its
home, it rises in the air, describing a spiral, higher and still
higher, then takes a start. In about a quarter of an hour it will
be seen again directly above the point at which it was freed. It
starts thence anew, and takes the right direction without hesita-
tion. Compare this quickness of decision with the embarrassment
experienced in a strange region by an intelligent man who has
read up about the country and is fortified with all the knowledge
concerning it that science can give him !

The sense that guides the pigeon in its direct return to its
home is as much a mystery as it ever was. It is not sight, for the
bird at its highest flight can not command the vision of a single
familiar object or place. Theories of electric currents have been
imagined and other methods of analyzing and explaining the in-
stinct have been devised, but they are all alike conjectural and
insufficient. But while we do not know the cause or the method
of the faculty, we have it in our power to modify and direct it in
a certain degree. To the wild pigeon, which goes far in search of
food, the power to find its way back to its nest is a necessary con-
dition to its existence. The domestic pigeon does not have to go
long journeys for food, but its return home is nevertheless deter-
mined by this question. The best fliers are those which are least
competent to pick up anything to eat on the road. The sense of
orientation — the homing sense — has been cultivated and bred in
them at the expense of other faculties which have become less
useful to them. While very poorly armed to contend with the
conditions of a wild state, the carrier pigeon is perfectly equipped
for its present conditions of existence and for the services that

372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

are demanded of it. Its faculties have been developed and spe-
cialized in the direction sought by the breeder. Man does not
create in selecting; he exerts no immediate influence on the pro-
duction of variability. He contents himself with exposing organ-
ized beings, for a special purpose, to new conditions of existence.
Nature then acts on the organization and causes it to vary. Man
chooses the variations which Nature furnishes and accumulates
them. This is the principle, the application of which has given
us races of pigeons with very diff^erent aptitudes. For example,
French and Belgian breeders select with a view to success in the
races, and often specialize the instinct of their pigeons. Birds
from the same stock will, for instance, be trained for generation
after generation to the east- to- west direction ; and if we take a
pigeon without being acquainted with the special aptitude of its
ascendants, and try to train it to the north-to- south direction, we
shall probably meet with mishaps. In England, where much fog
prevails, the breeders keep only the birds that can fly through a
misty atmosphere. The English breeds have consequently a
capacity for finding their way in weather which would often baffle
the pigeons of other countries. For like reasons pigeons raised in
Sweden and Norway are able to return to their homes in the face
of snow, which often puts the instinct of French pigeons to fault.
The training of pigeons at sea requires special aptitudes, which a
rational breeding will develop by selection.

We read in books on pigeon culture that the carrier pigeon is
hardly ever white. The reason for this is very simple : pigeons
on their journey are selected by birds of prey, which most readily
pick out those of conspicuous colors ; consequently these birds
disappear without having opportunity to found a stock. This
observation does not apply so much to the common pigeon, which,
never straying far from habitations, is less frequently struck by
the hawk. So pigeons flying near the ground are certain to fall
sooner or later under the shot of the hunter, and usually leave
very few descendants. This circumstance, independent of our
will, often intervenes to play an important part in the transfor-
mation of a domestic species.

Selection permits us to adapt our races to any sort of service.
We might, for example, create a stock of birds that would retain
the recollection of their home for a very long period ; we might
develop the aptitude for traveling back and forth. We have
sometimes asked ourselves what limit could be fixed to the utiliza-
tion of the carrier pigeon. To fix a limit would be to deny the
principle of transformability of species, which is a law of evolution.
Our races are continuously undergoing modification, and are con-
sequently capable of indefinite improvement. Instead of looking
for limits to the employment of the pigeon, we should point out

SPIDERS AND THEIR WAYS.

373

some practical object to the trainers, and tell them simply we
want birds that will come back in all weathers, in every season,
and from all points in the horizon. Our demand would be
promptly fulfilled. The bird is very prolific, and the task of the
trainer is further facilitated by the fact that pigeon-matings are
for life, unless the couples are forcibly separated ; and it is there-
fore possible, without difficulty, to keep many varieties distinct
in the same pigeon house. — Translated aiid abridged for the Popu-
lar Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

SPIDERS AND THEIR WAYS.

By MAEGAKET WENTWOETH LEIGHTON.

Spider,
At my window spinning',
Weaving circles wider, wider,
From the deft beginning;

Running
Eings and spokes, until you
Build your silken death-trap cunning —
Shall I catch you — kill you ?

Sprawling,
Nimble, shrewd as Circe;
Death's your only aim and calling,
Why should you have mercy ?

Strike thee ?
Not for rapine willful :
Man himself is too much like thee.
Only not so skillful.

— George Horton's Songs of the Loivhj.

'^KTOT so skillful, and doubtless never will be, for to-day a
-L^ spider's thread is used in the telescope because man has
been unable to manufacture one so fine and delicate.

Whenever I look at the marvelous web of the great black-and-
gold garden spider I remember that pretty story of the way in
which the group of spiders received its name of Arachnidos. In
the olden times there was a lovely maiden named Arachne, who
could weave and embroider with such deftness that the nymphs
all gathered to watch her. They whispered to each other that
she must have been taught by Minerva herself, who was the god-
dess of Wisdom. Arachne overheard them, and, denying their
accusation, challenged Minerva to a trial of skill. Minerva ac-
cepted the challenge, and when the webs were woven Arachne's
was wonderfully beautiful, but Minerva's far surpassed it.

374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Arachne was in despair and hung herself, whereupon Minerva's
chagrin was so great that she transformed her into a spider, and
her descendants preserve much of her skill.

We are apt to think of spiders as insects, but really they are
only distantly related to insects, their first cousins being scor-
pions and king crabs. The spider's body consists of two parts.

It has four pairs of legs, a pair of palpi,
^.^^^i^'^^^^l and a pair of mandibles. The legs are

^ jointed, and on the last joint there are
y - -^^ ^i.t'^^c^'' three claws. The palpi are used as feel-
^Z,'*'^^'*^' ers and to hold the food. The breath-

ing apparatus of the spider is a combi-
Spider's Claw, enlarged. nation of luugs and gills. _ It has glands

containing poison which lie partly in the
head and partly in the basal joint of the mandibles. There is a
tiny opening in the claw on the mandible, out of which the poison
flows when the spider captures its prey. It has eight eyes. The
spiders are classified largely by the difiierent arrangements and
grouping of the eyes. Some have them in one or more clusters,
some in rows, and others scattered about. They appear to be able
to see as well by night as by day. Near the end of the body are
the spinnerets — two, three, or four pairs — out of which the silk
comes for weaving the webs, nests, and ^^^ cocoons.

Usually the female spider is much larger and stronger than
the male. One naturalist thus graphically describes their wedded
life : " Their honeymoon is of short duration, and is terminated
by the bride's banqueting on the bridegroom. Doubtless she
evinces taste and discrimination in her appreciation of a ' nice
young man.'"

Spiders, like lobsters and other crustaceans, have the power of
reproducing certain parts if they happen to meet with an injury,
as legs, palpi, and spinnerets.

We find as marked differences in habits, tastes, and characters
among spiders as among human beings. Some kinds prefer al-
ways living in houses or cellars, not seeming to care for any fresh
air or out-of-door exercise. Mr. Jesse tells of two spiders that
lived for thirteen years in opposite corners of a drawer which
was used for soap and candles. Others delight in making bur-
rows in the earth, in dwelling under stones or behind the loose
bark on trees, and others live under water. Many never leave
their webs, but patiently wait, hoping some insect will become
entangled in the snares they have set. Others dash about and
seize upon every luckless insect that crosses their path. The most
adventurous of all are those that sail out into the world on one of
their own little threads. Darwin tells of encountering thousands
of them many leagues from land when he was taking his famous

SPIDERS AND THEIR WAYS.

i7S

voyage in the Beagle. He says : " The little aeronaut, as soon as
it arrived on board, was very active, running about, sometimes
letting itself fall, then reascending the same thread. It could run
with facility on the surface of the water."

In the bright autumn weather, if we observe closely, we may
sometimes see some of our own small spiders ascend to the tops
of trees, fences, and other high objects, rise on their toes, turn
the spinners upward, throw out a quantity of silk, and sail away.
They can be seen plentifully any fine day in October or Novem-
ber, before the cold weather, on Boston Common. They grasp
the silken thread with their feet and seem to be enjoying them-
selves as much as the birds and butterflies.

Many instances are recorded of music-loving spiders, perhaps
the most interesting being that related by Beethoven's biographer,
who says : " A spider weaving its skillful though delicate trap for
its daily dinner worked industriously in the corner of the ceiling
until Beethoven began to play. Beethoven, who at that time had
not thousands hanging on
his baton, was rather
pleased and attached to
this listener, which most
practically proved the
value it attached to the
performance by risking
its life in coming nearer
the enchanted instrument.
And ill was it rewarded.
The mother one day, per-
ceiving the ugly animal,
seized and killed it. But
the boy Beethoven was so
put out and so miserable
at losing his strange audi-
tor that he burst into tears
and, seizing his violin,
smashed it against the
floor, shivering it into a
thousand pieces."

Many kinds build their
webs and cocoons in exposed places and take no pains to conceal
them, while others cover theirs with tiny pebbles and bits of
earth for protection. Some kinds of spiders abandon their Qgg
cocoon as soon as it is finished, while others carry it about with
them until the babies appear. One mother allowed herself to be
torn to pieces rather than leave her cocoon.

We might compare the spiders' different modes of getting

Epeira diadema suspended by its Thread.

376

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

about to those of tlie birds. The hunting spiders leap and hop,
the house spiders generally run forward, other kinds run back-
ward and sideways with equal facility, and some, as we have seen,
float about in the air. The most marvelous of the spiders' gifts
is the silk-spinning. The spinnerets or spinners are little organs
at the hind end of the body. Each has a number of very minute
holes in it. Out of these the silk flows in a liquid form, but as

Snare of Long-bodied Garden Spider, Tetragnaiha extensa.

soon as the air strikes it it hardens into a thread. The strands
from the difi;erent holes all unite and form what we know as the
spider's thread. There are great differences in the kinds of webs
and nests which different spiders make. One of the most inter-
esting is the web of the great black-and-gold garden spider.
First she spins several lines all joined in the center like the spokes
of a wheel, and attached to stems or leaves of plants at the outer
edges. When the rays are finished she begins at the middle to

SPIBEIiS AND THEIR WAYS. 377

make the spiral part. It is fascinating to watch her, as she crosses
each spoke, stop and pat down the silk once or twice, then pull it
to see if it is well secured before passing to the next one. When
the web is finished, she makes a zigzag ladder of white silk, run-
ning from the bottom outer edge to the center. When she hangs
in the middle of her web, as she does much of the time, the lad-
der helps to conceal her. The web is made of two kinds of silk —
one smooth, the other covered with an adhesive liquid. When
the insects are caught, their legs and wings are soon covered with
the sticky juice, so that it is impossible for them to escape. The
spider, knowing it would not be convenient to become entangled
herself, spins one long, smooth thread from the center to the out-
side, which she uses m traveling to and fro.

The common house spider is wonderfully sagacious. Once in
a while a large insect is caught in her web. She wants to take it
up to her inner retreat to devour, and it is too heavy for her to
carry. What is she to do ? First she bites its leg, injecting some
of her poison, which stupefies it. Next she throws some addi-
tional threads about it and ascends to the top, pulling the thread
as hard as she can. When she has rested for a little time, she
winds more threads about her victim and pulls again, each time
attaching the threads at the top. In this way she finally succeeds
in hoisting her feast into her house, though the process may last
several days.

Who would think that our predecessors in the art of curling
the hair were spiders ? One species has been provided by Nature
with a sort of little curling comb called the calimistra. It is on
the hind legs and consists of two rows of parallel spines. The
web, which she makes of bluish- white silk, is unusually pretty,
as each thread is gracefully curled by drawing it between the
spines.

Thoreau calls the little gossamer webs which we see spread
over the grass on a dewy morning the napkins of the fairies.
Even Chaucer, who wrote five hundred years ago, mentions them
as a great curiosity to the people of his time. He says :

As sore wondren som on cause of ihonder,
On ebb and flood, on gossamer and on mist,
And on all thing, 'til that the cause is wist.

A hundred and fifty years ago a Frenchman, M. Le Bon, made
some stockings, purses, and gloves from spiders' silk. The Ber-
muda ladies use the thread of Nephila for sewing, and Queen
Victoria was presented by the Empress of Brazil with a dress
made of spiders' silk.

Spiders molt several times, each time appearing in a different
color. We should hardly expect to find very brilliant or showy

378 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

colors among tliem, yet some of them are gorgeous in tlie ex-
treme. A little crab spider that built a house in my garden was
the brightest lemon-yellow all over, and shone like a jewel amid
the dark green of the surrounding foliage.

One of the English spiders has a black head and thorax, with
an orange-red body, on which are six black spots, each ringed
with white ; another has a green coat with brilliant red and yel-
low striped trousers, for all the world like a king's jester. One
dainty lady is clad in violet and white, a flaunting miss in black
and flame-color, and her sister in cherry and brown.

Some of the Tliomisidce, are the exact colors of certain flowers,
in the centers of which they sit all day, watching for the insects
that come to get honey.

Two of the spiders' worst enemies are mud wasps and ichneu-
mon flies. In searching recently for spiders beneath the clap-
boards on the south side of the house, I came across one of those
curious structures which the mud wasp builds. I broke it open,
and out tumbled a quantity of small spiders. The wasp's store-
house was in three compartments, and all together contained
forty-nine spiders, all of the same kind and about the same size,
in a torpid condition. The wasp had laid an Qgg in each of these
spiders. She does not kill the spider, but merely stupefies it, so
that when her egg hatches the larva may feed upon the luckless
spider.

If one be a student of Nature he will perhaps have noticed a
spider rush away and hide in her crack without any apparent rea-
son. The moment before she had been enjoying the bright sun-
shine, and the student wonders why she ran away. The spider's
perceptions are so keen that she knows long before he does that
the sky will soon be overcast and torrents of rain descend or a
cold wind begin to blow. If she stayed out she might soon be
benumbed and unable to run into her house.

The water spiders are covered with hairs which shed the
water, so that they never get wet. The little house under the
water in which they live and raise their families is as snug and
dry inside as yours and mine.

No spiders are more interesting than the trapdoor spiders and
their first cousins the tarantulas. The former live in Europe and
California. First, they make a burrow in the ground and then
build the door. The California ones make their door of mud and
sticks. It fits into the tube as a cork does into a bottle. The
covers built by the European species are mere little lids, but they
are always built so as to resemble the surrounding surface. One
kind shows her sagacity by building a sort of double door, by
which she can escape should an enemy storm her fort. At the
surface is the usual door, and a few inches below this another.

SPIDERS AND THEIR WAYS.

379

When tlie spider hears an enemy investigating her burrow, she
runs below the second door and pushes it up, so that the marauder
will think he has happened upon an empty nest, the second door
forming the bottom of it. The babies are born in the tubes, and
remain with their mother until they are able to make nests for
themselves.

These spiders spend the days in their burrows, but at night
they all flock out to enjoy themselves. They fasten open their
doors and make little webs over the grass. Many night- wander-
ing beetles are caught, and then comes the banquet, which con-
sists of the softer parts of the beetles. In the morning the closest
observer could not find a trace of the preceding night's revelry, so
carefully have the spiders cleared away all webs, beetle legs, and
wing covers.

One group of spiders is called Lycosa, which means wolf
spider. Perhaps they were named from the similarity of their
habits to those of the wolf, being like him wandering and pre-
daceous.

One of these is the tarantula, a great hairy fellow who inhab-
its warm countries. The species received its name from the Ital-
ian city of Tarentum,
where they have been
found in large num-
bers. There is a curi-
ous superstition con-
nected with the ta-
rantula's bite. If a
person was bitten it
was thought nothing
could save his life but
the playing of some
lively dancing tunes.
When he heard these
he was supposed to be
unable to resist the
temptation to dance.

Thus he grew very warm, and the perspiration came out in great
beads all over him, each bead filled with poison. After he had
danced as long as he possibly could, the poison had all escaped
from his system. The tarantulas feed on small birds as well as
insects. Indeed, one of the great southern species is called the
bird-catching spider.

In India, where all animals are treated with consideration and
even reverence, the little children often keep these spiders for
pets. They tie a cord round a spider and lead it about, feeding it
with worms and insects. Mother Lycosa always carries her egg

Lycosa tarantula.

38o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cocoons out with her on her hunting expeditions, attached to the
spinnerets.

Last summer I kept a garden spider for three weeks under
a tumbler, and had the pleasure of watching her building her
house of snowy silk, with its three entrances, and raising a large
family of children. She soon learned to take flies from my
hand and drink water from a leaf which I gave her fresh every
day. After a time she seemed to languish and droop, so I set
her free in the garden once more.

If you wish to live and thrive,
Let a spider run alive,

says the old Kentish proverb.

PETROLEUM, ASPHALT, AND BITUMEN.*

By M. a. JACCAED.

PETROLEUM, asphalt, and bitumen may be regarded as so
related to one another, so like in origin and properties, as
to be callable of being considered in the same treatise ; and we
may, therefore, speak properly now of one, now of the other. The
oldest known form of natural hydrocarbon was the bitumen
which rose to the surface of the Dead Sea, called from that cir-
cumstance the Asphaltum Lake. Tradition says that it used to
appear on the surface in considerable masses, and was collected
by the Arabs and exported to Egypt, where it was used in em-
balming, and for a few purposes in the arts. The ancients were
also acquainted with the liquid form of bitumen, petroleum.
Herodotus speaks of the mineral oil of Zante ; and other Greek
authors mention the springs of Agrigentum, the product of which
was burned in lamps, and was known as Sicilian oil. The fire
worshipers of Persia erected temples over the burning springs.

Of the use of these substances in the middle ages, and later,
we chiefly know that the petroleum springs of Pechelbronn, in
the sixteenth century, spontaneously furnished mineral oil in
such quantities that the peasants around used it to feed their
lamps and grease their carriage wheels. The virtues of the min-
eral springs of the Jura Mountains were made known in 1712 by
a Greek doctor, who pronounced them a treasure that had been
unknown from the beginning of the world. Since then new
sources have been discovered in all parts of the world, and the

* Froin Le Petrole, le Bitiime et I'Asphalte. Par A. Jaccard, Professeur de Geologie h,
I'Academie de Neufchatel. Paris: Felix Alcan, 1895.

PETROLEUM, ASPHALT, AND BITUMEN. 381

uses and applications of petroleum have been immensely and won-
derfully extended. The discovery of the American beds of petro-
leum and the application of industrial processes of distillation to
them have been the beginning of a new industry, and of largely
extended researches in all countries. Leopold von Buch (1801), who
seems to have been the first to discuss the origin of the natural
hydrocarbons scientifically, supposed that they were of animal
origin. Violet d'Aoust, in 1814, believed them to be of the same
origin as the rocks with which they were associated, native erup-
tive products, the resultants of causes still unknown ; and repeated
this opinion ten years later. Puvis thought, in 183G, that bitu-
men penetrated the rocks, according to their porosity, after their
formation. Rozet, in 1836, thought that the bitumen of Pyri-
mont was sublimed from the depths of the globe through a crack
that marked the direction of the formation, and was condensed in
the porous rocks. Millet, in 1840, thought the same bitumen was
derived from the decomposition of accumulations of vegetable
matter, and ran down through the rocks. Itier, in 1839, supposed
that the bitumens of the Jura were derived from the adjacent
bituminous schists, which were full of vegetable fossils. Dau-
brde, in 1850, believed that the mode of their formation was simi-
lar to that of coal, but admitted the possibility of their having
been derived from mineral synthesis. These views and the the-
ory of volcanic origin have been reiterated in various modified
shapes by other authors. M. Lartet published, in 18GG, a valu-
able study of the geological relations of the bituminous deposits
of the region of the Dead Sea.

When the mineral oils of the United States had become a
prominent subject of attention, Mr. Leo Lesquereux made an
elaborate discussion of them in the form of a letter to Liebig, in
1865, in which he gave his reasons for supposing that they were
the products of the decomposition of marine plants. Dr. Sterry
Hunt about the same time concluded, from an examination of the
petroleum beds of Kentucky, that the oil, or the organic sub-
stances from which it was produced, were deposited in the strata
where the oil is found contemporaneously with the formation of
the rock. Mr. Orton, after a thorough study of the petroleum of
the Trenton limestone of Ohio, published his conclusion in 1884,
that it was of organic origin — derived from the decomposition of
vegetable and animal matter. The supply could not be renewed,
and was therefore not inexhaustible. It was probably produced
at the ordinary temperature and not by distillation.

Some authors, assuming that these hydrocarbons are derived
from the decomposition of organic matter, have tried to imagine
the manner of the process, and to distinguish between it and ordi-
nary or putrefactive decomposition.

382 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It is apparent that nothing more than the value of a hypoth-
esis can be attached to these speculations. Nothing indicating
sublimation has been observed where the theory supposes it to
have taken place ; the operation of a natural chemical distilla-
tion is not proved by any evidence of such a process having any-
where taken place. The opinions of MM. Daubree, Lartet, and
Coquand, in favor of a chemical origin, being based upon studies
of the formations themselves, are regarded as being of more sub-
stantial value. These authors, however, are judged to have erred
in confounding the original formation of the substances with
their appearance where they are found — which, in the view of the
author, are two very different affairs.

A bituminous limestone of the Val de Travers, Switzerland, is
formed almost wholly of shells, echini, and similar fossils, held
together by a calcareous cement. Some of these fossils are only
casts, the shell having been absorbed, while the interior, other-
wise empty, is partly filled with a viscous bitumen, the quantity
of which is proportioned to the size of the shell. In the smaller
brachiopods there is only enough to color the inclosing rock a
chocolate brown ; in the larger ones it forms a lump which is
softened by warming. The bituminous limestone of Auvernier
is marked by infinitely numerous little cavities, such as are seen
in tufas, which are made visible by the presence of a brown sub-
stance, the residue of a volatilized bitumen. It also contains casts
or impressions of fossilized shells, and in these again are deposits
of brown or blackish substance — the organic matter of the mol-
lusk, transformed into bitumen. The cavernous or breccialike
rock of Bevais, a few miles south of Auvernier, contains what we
might perhaps call glutinous inclusions — cavities corresponding
with the internal part of the fossils, colored brown with organic
matter. There are also real nockets of viscous bitumen, which
liquefy under a slight increase of temperature. A closer exami-
nation of the cavity shows that it is the result of the destruction
of an astrsean polyp. Of the association of petroleum and fossils
in the United States, an observation has been recorded by M.
Daubree of petroleum occupying the cavities of fossils — ortho-
ceratites, brachiopods, and corals, as well as porous parts of the
rock — in some of the beds of the Ohio Valley ; and a statements
by MM. Fuchs and Launay, that " a remarkable characteristic of
the Canadian oil is the profusion of remains of mollusks and
crustaceans, with some traces of marine vegetation, which it
contains. This is one of the most serious facts on which an
organic origin is attributed to petroleum."

Of the occurrence of these hydrocarbons, including also natu-
ral gas, a review of all the theories and evidences leads us to the
conclusion that stratified deposits of asphalt, bitumen, and petro-

PETROLEUM, ASPHALT, AND BITUMEN. 383

leum are found in the different countries of the globe, often asso-
ciated with salt, gypsum, sulphate of iron, and mineral springs.
A considerable number of these deposits are asphaltic or petro-
leum-bearing basins, of greater or less richness, the working of
which requires the boring of wells, or the excavation of galleries
permitting a tolerably exact determination of the manner of oc-
currence of the substances. Nowhere do the works furnish any
evidence of the existence of reservoirs or cavities comparable to
the caverns of mountainous regions ; but everywhere the hydro-
carbons are in the state of impregnation or mixture with the
rocks in which the workings are made. When they exist in a
viscous or solid condition, there is reason for presuming that this
state or manner of being is due to particular phenomena of con-
centration operating at the moment of deposition or after it. The
existence of veins or of eruptive beds, ancient or recent, is no-
where established in a certain and indisputable way, but it may
be that fissures existing in the rocks have been filled, either from
above or laterally, by a posterior displacement.

In attempting to account for the origin of the hydrocarbons, a
distinction may be made between two states in which they pre-
sent themselves, whether on the surface or in the depths of the
soil. The initial state, or that of formation, is represented in the
stratified beds, where a series of superposed layers is presented.
The substance exists, impregnating the rock, and, more rarely, in
viscous or solid bituminous masses. The second state, that of
alteration or transformation, is met in the beds which have been
modified by dislocations, posterior to the solidification of the mat-
ters which were deposited in a movable or plastic state. To these
dislocations may be attributed the natural petroleum wells which
have been known from antiquity, as well as the flows of vis-
cous bitumen which in some regions become solid on exposure to
the air.

The slow distillation of marine bodies may be likened, to a cer-
tain extent, to the processes of conservation of fossil wood in the
bottoms of marshes, peat bogs, etc., under the mud. But while
the absence of air is suflicient to assure the preservation of these,
the presence of an entirely impermeable envelope is necessary to
prevent complete decomposition into volatile gases such as takes
place with all animals simply buried under water.

The presence or existence of natural springs of petroleum in
the vicinity of mountainous regions is explained, not by disloca-
tions of the ground, but by the fact that the formation of the re-
liefs is anterior to that of the mineral oil. Instead of regarding
these springs as available as guides in researches, they should be
regarded as signs of the approaching exhaustion of the arenaceous
strata impregnated with oil ; these reservoirs not being suscep-

384 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tible, like those of our springs, of being refilled, as the springs are
kept full of water by the penetration from the surface.

If, then, we put aside the eruptive process as not well founded,
it follows that the search for petroleum should be made with ac-
count taken of the conditions of formation of the sedimentary-
beds, of the extension of the basins in which they are deposited,
and of the formations over them.

While the natural hydrocarbons are indisputably found in the
sedimentary beds, from the most ancient to those which are still
in process of formation, it is nevertheless certain that so far they
are most extensive and most generally distributed in the Tertiary
formations — excepting always the Silurian and Devonian deposits
of North America, which were formed under geophysical conditions
which have not yet been recognized in other regions where forma-
tions of the same age exist.

In a general way, the signs of the existence of solid, liquid, or
gaseous hydrocarbons, exhibited by mud volcanoes, disengage-
ments of natural gas, etc., authorize the presumption of beds near
the surface, so that it is useless in such cases to anticipate a favor-
able result from deep borings.

All the facts noted by students of the natural hydrocarbons
may be explained without difficulty under the hypothesis of the
organic origin of the natural hydrocarbons, which becomes a com-
plete system, the value of which imposes itself upon every one
seeking the solution of the question. All is easy of conception if
we suppose a simultaneous precipitation of mineral matters and
organic substances derived from the decomposition of animals and
plants, when these are found in suitable conditions of the medium
and of their own being at the moment they are buried. But all
becomes obscure and inexplicable under the hypothesis that these
substances are formed in the depths of the globe under the influ-
ence of a high temperature and considerable pressure.

Captain F. E. Younghusband is a scientific explorer of much experience
in the mountain regions and high plateaus of Central Asia, who has ob-
served the men as well as the topographical features and natural history of
those regions. He declares in his latest book that while the traveler sees in
his journeys every step of the ladder of human progress, from men who are
little more than beasts of burden to the statesmen, men of science, and men
of lettere of the first rank in the most civilized countries of the world, he
has " not been impressed with any great mental superiority of the niost
highly developed races of Europe over lower races with whom I have been
brought in contact. In mere brain power and intellectual capacity there
seems no great difference between the civilized European and the rough
hill tribesmen of the Himalayas; and in regard to the Chinaman, I should
even say that the advantage lay on his side."

A CURIOUS CANADIAN IRON MINE. 385

A CURIOUS CANADIAN IRON MINE.

By J. T. DONALD, M. A.

THE province of Quebec in the Dominion of Canada is some-
times known as Frencli Canada, because of the rights and
privileges granted the inhabitants of French origin when Canada
passed into the possession of the English crown, and because the
majority of the inhabitants are of French ancestry and speak the
French language. Time has flown, but in many parts of Quebec
language and customs have remained stationary. To-day the stu-
dent of language or of folklore or of ballads finds large portions
of French Canada what old France was a century or more ago ;
and just as the student of the French language can hear spoken
to-day the French tongue as it was spoken a century ago in old
France, so the traveler who visits the historic district of Three
Rivers may turn back the hand of time, as it were, and see to-day
the mining of iron ore, and until recently the smelting also, car-
ried on exactly as in the Old World decades ago.

At Three Rivers, not far from midway between the cities of
Montreal and Quebec, the St. Maurice flows from the north into the
St. Lawrence. The lower portion of the valley of the St. Maurice is
historic ground in the annals of iron-smelting on this continent.
The immense deposits of bog ore of this district were objects of
attention during the French regime, and as far back as 1668 official
examinations of these deposits were made by order of the Gov-
ernment of France. The erection of a furnace was begun by a
private company under very favorable arrangements with Louis
XV of France in 1737, but it seems that the French Government
obtained control of the work, and in 1752 the St. Maurice furnace
was blown in, and the old stone stack with Walloon hearth bear-
ing the date 1752 and the insignia of France, the fleur-de-lis,
still stands to dispute with that of Principio, in Maryland, the
right to be considered the oldest in America. This quaint old
furnace was in use until as late as the summer of 1883. It is
worthy of note, too, that in 1775, during the American invasion
of Canada, one of the lessees of this old furnace aided the Ameri-
cans and actually cast shot and shell to be used by them against
the city of Quebec.

The manufacture of iron is still carried on in this district. A
few miles from the old St. Maurice furnace one finds at Radnor
the well-equipped modern water-jacket forty- to fifty-ton furnace,
the property of the Canada Iron Furnace Company, producing a
very superior grade of charcoal iron. This touch of the modern
world seems almost out of place in a region in which old France
lives again, but, as we proceed still farther up the St. Maurice Val-

TOL. L.— 30

386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

ley, the curtain is once more drawn, as it were, over the modern
world.

At Lac h la Tortue, twenty-one miles from Three Rivers, we
are again in the dim past. We can stand upon the shore of this
lake and see a sight that might have been the o-iginal for an
illustration of iron-ore gathering in Scandinavia one hundred
years ago.

This Lac k la Tortue (Turtle Lake) is our curious Canadian
iron mine. It is a body of water about four miles long by a
mile and a quarter in average width, occupying the center of a
large area of swampy land. The surrounding land is largely com-
posed of sand formed by the wearing down of the Archaean rocks
by glacial action.

It is well known that decaying vegetable matter yields acids
that dissolve the oxide of iron. Evidences of this solvent action
of vegetable acids on iron are frequently seen in pieces of slate.
The slate is colored by iron, but frequently white or light- colored
spots occur. These are points where a leaf or a fragment of bark
has been deposited with the fine mud in which form the slate was
deposited. The leaf or bark has decayed, the vegetable acids thus
formed have dissolved the iron oxide to which the color of the slate
was due, and of course a white or colorless patch is formed.

In the sandy area around Lac a la Tortue we find the most
favorable conditions for the action of vegetable acids on iron
oxide. The sandy land produces a rank vegetation, and its decay
furnishes abundance of organic acids. These acids are in solution
in the drainage waters, which on their way to the lake percolate
through the sand. They thus come into contact with the iron
oxide in the finely divided materials, dissolve it, and carry it along
to the lake. Here a new chemical action comes into play. The
solution of iron in vegetable acid (in which the iron is in what the
chemist calls the form of a protosalt) is oxidized by the action of
the air on the surface of the lake into a persalt, which is insoluble,
and appears on the surface in patches that display the peculiar
iridescence characteristic of petroleum floating on water. Indeed,
not infrequently these films of peroxide of iron are incorrectly
attributed to petroleum. These films become heavy by addition
of new particles, they sink through the water, and in this manner,
in time, a large amount of the iron ore is deposited on the lake bot-
tom. It must not be supposed that the ore is deposited as a fine
mud or sediment. On the contrary, in this lake ore, as it is called,
we have an excellent illustration of what is known as concretion-
ary action — that is, the tendency of matter when in a fine state of
division to aggregate its particles into masses about some central
nucleus, which may be a fragment of sunken wood, a grain of
sand, or indeed a preformed small mass of itself. Precipitated in

A CURIOUS CANADIAN IRON 311 NE, 387

water, as our lake ore is, it of course has great freedom of move-
ment, and we therefore find it in flat concretions, more or less
porous and circular in outline ; the general appearance amply
justifying the term " cake ore," which is locally applied. These
concretions vary much in size, some of them being no larger than
mustard seeds, others eight or ten or more inches in diameter.
Frequently the larger cakes are joined together and form masses
looking not unlike batches of a certain kind of bun commonly
exposed in the shop window of every confectioner, and made by
coiling a strip of dough round and round a piece of itself.

The ore is not found over the whole lake bottom ; it occurs
along the whole margin, and also well out from shore where
streams enter the lake, the distance of the ore deposit from shore
depending, of course, upon the volume of water carried by the
streams and the velocity with which it enters the lake. Certain
strips of ore occur at a considerable distance from the shore and
in as much as sixteen feet of water. These deep-water, mid-lake
deposits denote probably the courses of former streams which are
now nonexistent, owing to some change of level.

Not only is this lake an iron mine, it is more; it is something
like the widow's cruse of oil of which we read in Holy Writ — the
supply is being constantly renewed. Vast amounts of iron still
exist in the surrounding sands. Vegetable acids are formed
from the decay of each year's vegetation, and each year the drain-
age carries into the lake and deposits there a large amount of
iron. This is no mere theory : one can actually see the deposition
of the ore along the margin, and, moreover, it is found in actual
working ; if a certain spot be worked out, it will in a few years
again yield ore in paying quantity.

Lake ores are abundant in northern Europe,* but, so far as
the writer's knowledge extends, Lac a la Tortue and a neighbor-
ing lake are the only instances of the kind in North America.
The ore is extracted from our lake mine by hand and by power.
The shallow margin is divided into sections and allotted to suit-
able parties who may desire to work them and who are paid at a
specified rate per ton of ore raised. Two men generally work in
company. Their implements are a shovel, a strong circular
sieve, and a rough hand barrow. When work is to be begun the
workmen remove shoes and stockings and use their feet in search-
ing for ore which lies imbedded in the soft sand, nothing coarser
than sand, except ore cakes, being found in the lake. Guided by
their feet, the workmen put down their shovels and bring to the
surface a quantity of ore and sand which they throw into their
circular sieve. This is then held below the surface of the water

* Very interesting details concerning the ores are found in Percy's Metallurgy.

388 POPULAR SGIJENCE MONTHLY.

and made to rotate to and fro until the soft sand is waslied away
from the ore, which is then thrown on a scow provided for the
purpose or carried to shore. When a sufficient quantity has been
collected it is carted to the railway near at hand and loaded
on cars. >

From the deeper parts of the lake the ore is raised by means of
a steam dredge. The captain of the dredge moves over the lake,
and, putting down a pole and working it about on the bottom,
can easily learn where there is a body of ore suitable for dredg-
ing. The dredge is then moved to the desired spot and work is
begun. The ore and sand are brought up in buckets on an end-
less chain and thrown into a long, revolving screen, adjusted and
inclined so as to deliver it upon scows moored to the dredge. In
its course down the screen the mixture of ore and mud is acted
upon by water which is thrown upon it with considerable force.

By this means the mud and sand are washed out of the screen
and the clean ore is deposited on the scows. These are towed by
a steamer to the landing at the head of the lake, and the ore is
transferred to cars to be conveyed to the furnace, ten miles
distant.

The plant on the lake consists of the dredge, a number of
scows, and a small tug, the latter being used in moving the dredge
from place to place, in towing the scows, and in carrying supplies,
for the crew live on the dredge from Sunday night until Satur-
day night, and work overtime, in order that a year's supply of
ore may be raised during the summer.

The ore obtained from this lake is essentially a brown hema-
tite— that is, hydrated peroxide of iron, with which is associated
more or less organic matter. The writer has made numerous
analyses of the ore, and the following is that of a sample repre-
senting a large quantity :

Ferric oxide TO '04

Manganic oxide 1 • 78

Alumina 2-20

Lime -32

Magnesia -27

Phosphoric anhydride • 76

Sulphuric anhydride -23

Silica 7-84

Loss on ignition 16 • 84

100-28

This lake ore, mixed with carefully selected bog ore from the
adjacent district and with a certain percentage of magiietic ore, is
smelted with charcoal in the Canada Iron Furnace Company's
furnace at Radnor, and produces a charcoal iron (brand " C. I. F.'')
far superior to the iron from the Lake Superior charcoal furnaces.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS. 389

It brings a liigli price, and is largely used in the manufacture of
mill rolls and car wheels. Indeed, its superior qualities are so
marked that it is used by various manufacturers in the United
States in cases where great strength combined with wearing and,
in the higher grades, chilling quality is of first importance.

As an evidence of the splendid quality of this iron the writer
gives the following extract from a letter written a short time ago
by a leading American manufacturer, viz. :

"Desiring to make a casting which should combine great
strength with a tough wearing surface, we have lately been ex-
perimenting with the Canada Iron Furnace Company's metal, and
by using it we have raised the transverse strength of our test
bars from 2,300 and 2,500 to from 3,900 to 4,000, the test being
with one-inch-square bars twelve inches long. We have never
been able to accomplish any such results with any other iron we
have used, and in addition to this greatly increased strength we
find an added toughness which makes the casting work almost
like a piece of steel."

■♦ » »

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS.

By Dr. WILLIAM HIESCH.

OUR knowledge of the physiology of the human body has been
so much enriched by pathological facts that we may truly
say that some branches of it would, as far as we can see, have re-
mained forever closed books if the effects of disease had not been
observed. So it is with psychology in its turn. Since mental
disease has been systematically studied, the science of the mind
has undergone a veritable revolution. Having laid down its con-
ceptions and having learned that psychical processes, like all other
phenomena of Nature, are subject to definite law, psychology has
made an effort to determine the law of the mental processes of
genius and to frame a definition of genius that should take into
account facts which are now scientifically established. Many at-
tempts have been made to determine what genius is, from which
various conclusions have resulted, but those inquirers who have
sought to penetrate to its psychological laws and to explain its
phenomena upon recognized psychological principles have been
obliged at last to acknowledge that they had to do with the most
diverse psychological conditions which have been promiscuously
labeled as genius. The question whether the popular word gen-
ius can be used as a scientific term can be decided only by a psy-
chological analysis of those poets, painters, virtuosos, scholars,
statesmen, and generals who have been generally recognized as
geniuses. Famous poets, observant of their own inward condi-

390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tions, have often said that their works were composed as in a
dream, unknown to themselves ; that instead of being deliberately
constructed, their ideas have, as it were, flown to them.

Involuntary thought is frequently described by the poets as
unconscious. That can not be accurate, for " unconscious
thought^' is a contradictory phrase. Not even a dream can be
said to be unconscious, whether it be purely ideal like most
dreams, or produce action as in sleepwalking. In such a state
self-consciousness alone is suspended, not consciousness itself.
Fancy stands halfway between dreaming and active intellectual
function. The latter depends directly on the will, while in the
former the will is in total abeyance. All men are subject to fall
under the influence of fancy. In ordinary men it makes day-
dreams, which everybody recognizes to be opposed to purposive
thought. All that fancy produces depends on former impressions
of sense. It is powerless to create anything new ; its products
are mere combinations in memory of the residua of former im-
pressions. They may be unlikely enough, and in that sense it
may be true that its products are "original"; but this does not
conflict with the facts alleged. It is this creative and somewhat
independent power of fancy which lends to the work of art its
character of originality, and hence it is that many inquirers have
found in that the essence of genius.

The psychological analysis of famous poets will show that the
intellectual function is no whit less important a factor of poetic
genius than fancy itself, although the latter is the one immediately
employed in the act of composition. We have seen that creative
fancy works with the material which former impressions of sense
have left behind as their remains or residua. The more compre-
hensive the knowledge of the poet, therefore, and the more he is
in condition to assimilate and compact the impressions the world
conveys to him, and the sounder and truer his judgments of per-
sons and situations, and the more methodical his thought and
the better his memory, by so much the more will his fancy dis-
play luxuriance, and so much more various will be his creations.
Another psychical phenomenon, besides fancy and intellectual
function, surprises us in famous poets — to wit, a refinement of the
feelings, heart, and moods. We often find these qualities devel-
oped in great poets to a point we can scarcely imagine. Another
trait remarkable in famous poets is an instinctive and invincible
impulse to express the ideas and feelings within them. In conse-
quence of this impulse, the work of genius is not a voluntary labor,
but the "involuntary product of a psychical need. It is not a
hankering after applause and success, nor a regard for his other
interests, which induces the man of genius to perform his task.
It is solely a passion to give shape and form to the idea that ex-

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS. 391

ists in his fancy. The true poet does not versify because he would,
but because he must. The comparison of traits applied to a con-
siderable number of typical " men of genius " leads to the conclu-
sion that the word does not express any one psychological concept,
and that nobody has succeeded in giving a pregnant definition of
the quality or is likely to do so. As insanity is equally indefinable,
and it is impossible to draw a sharp line between mental sanity
and mental derangement, it may seem useless to attempt to com-
pare two such indefinite quantities ; still, the comparison may
possibly enrich our knowledge and lead us toward a recognition
of the truth.

It is no newfangled notion that genius and insanity are con-
nected. It has been reiterated from Plato down. The chief con-
dition of mental sanity is a well-proportioned development of the
different psychical factors. But as in the development of the
different mental faculties, so also in their proportion to one an-
other, a certain latitude of health is to be allowed. In one man
fancy is preponderant ; in another, consecutive thought ; while a
third may have particularly strong feelings as his characteristic.
Yet we have no reason to say that these minds transgress the
border of health. It is the difference in the relation of the differ-
ent psychical elements that makes the diversity of men's charac-
ters. Now, we know that there are no two characters in the world
that are precisely alike. It follows that there is no norm for
these relations. The higher the grade of development of the
genius and of the individual, the more prominent will differences
of psychical factors become, and a correspondingly greater lati-
tude of health must be allowed.

A comparison is instituted between the different symptoms of
exaggerated proportions in development which have been discov-
ered in great men, and an endeavor to ascertain the distinctions
between these and symptoms of insanity. Among these symptoms
are hallucinations, to which the soundest of men have been found
more or less subject, over-exuberance of fancy, and self-abandon-
ment in the restless strife for some idea,l goal. In great artists
and scholars, on the one hand, and in the insane on the other,
there is a great, irresistible impulse which fills them to overflow-
ing and makes them forget all personal considerations. But while
in the former the restless compulsion to create, the hot aspiration
is the kernel of the highest and noblest perfection of man, in the
latter there is a morbid impulse which is usually directed to the
silliest things. Formerly such a state was called a monomania,
since this irresistible impulse seemed to be the only pathological
symptom ; but careful observation has shown that there is always
a more general psychical malady, usually the consequence of
arrested development. It is perfectly astonishing with what te-

392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nacity and untiring persistence such, patients go to work. Those
patients exhibit the same phenomena who may be termed invent-
ors and Utopians. They not seldom sacrifice their means and bring
themselves and their families to ruin by their unconquerable desire
of making inventions and discoveries. They are fully convinced,
in their folly, of the epoch-making importance of their improve-
ments, and all pains are lost to cause them to desist from their
ridiculous performances. In contrast with students, in whom the
turning point of their mental action lies in the understanding, in
artists moods and feelings are often the starting point of their
productions. Hence we find that in them this part of the mental
organ has not infrequently an enormous development. As with
the other psychical characters, so likewise here we find that the
high refinement of a single factor — always, however, in just pro-
portion to the total action of the organ — produces outward phe-
nomena having some similarity with those states which are due
to disturbed inward equilibrium, and which we often have occa-
sion to observe in the insane.

No doubt, poets and artists, as well as scholars, often exhibit
an outward appearance of self-absorption and of indifference to
their surroundings. This is common to them with many of the
insane. But how disparate are the causes underlying these
phenomena ! With the weak-minded it is the want of power to
concentrate the attention which renders them uninterested and
indifferent to the outward world ; but with poets and scholars it
is, on the contrary, the high degree of that power which brings
about similar phenomena. As we know, the centrifugal condi-
tion which we term attention not only extends its power to the
organ of sense whose action is emphasized, but it must also be
able to order off all the rest of the impressions of sense. The
great thinker appears uninterested in surrounding things because
his whole attention is directed to the well-ordered sequence of his
logical thoughts, to which end, with fullest consciousness, the
outward impressions are ordered off. The weak-minded man is
present at a performance. The sounds of the words of the orator
ring in his ears, but the slightest outward or inward impression
suffices to make his attention wander. His thoughts ramble.
They are everywhere and nowhere. The mentally gifted man,
on the contrary, constantly has his mind on the matter in hand.
If he wishes to concentrate his thoughts upon an outward
object, nothing that takes place is able to escape him. Neither
the psychologist nor the psychiatrist ought to be content to
observe behavior superficially, but must trace out the motive
of it in order to draw any inference from it. The most ab-
surd conduct sometimes has reasons consistent with health,
while conduct which would not surprise a layman at all may

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENIUS, 393

be regarded by a psycliiatrist as a well-recognized symptom of
insanity.

A further explanation of many peculiarities of men of genius
is to be sought in their relations to the society in which they live.
A man with a reputation for high talents, distinguished from his
youth for his superiority and genius, always has his circle of
admirers with its proportion of flatterers. If he had the misfor-
tune to be a precocious child, he will have been accustomed from
his earliest youth to the idea that his genius is far above ordinary
men and above the rules that apply to those men. If such a man
is, in later years, attacked by a competent critic upon this or that
point, or if schools and parties are formed unfavorable to his
method, whether in art or in science, he will, of course, react
otherwi ;e than a man would do who was accustomed to opposi-
tion of every description. He will, perhaps, regard his just critic
as a personal enemy ; he will complain that he is misunderstood
by his contemjDoraries, and his passion may go so far that the
public at large and superficial observers among psychiatrists may
consider him to be the victim of a delusion of persecution.

Peculiar inclinations and other mental idiosyncrasies of men
of genius can mostly be very readily explained. Everybody
accustomed psychologically to study and dissect those whom he
meets, so far as opportunity is afforded, is familiar with the
remark that each individual of the human race has his peculiari-
ties, more or less odd, his " weaknesses."*^ The ordinary man, if
he has the least breeding, has been accustomed from his youth
up to hold in check one inclination or another which violates
the usages of society, or even perhaps of good morals. He has
learned to attend sufficiently to his own conduct not to allow
habits to take root which might appear unusual or be disagree-
able to others. But the man of genius is far too much governed
by his inward processes, his fancy, and his work to pay attention
to trifling details of manner. He therefore appears what he
really is, while the average man would not do this. Conse-
quently, chance peculiarities and special inclinations appear in
the former more than in the latter.

Thus it is that the behavior of great men is not to be meas-
ured by the same standard as that of others, that we have to take
account of the motives of their actions, and that the psychical
conditions must be kept in view if we are to draw any trust-
worthy inferences from their behavior. Those mighty natures
must be judged from their own organization, and not from, the
Philistine point of view of the so-called average man.

As a further proof of the aflBnity of genius to insanity, it has
been alleged that a great number of eminent men have actually
had attacks of insanity. But the question is not whether there

394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

have been great men who were insane, but whether the propor-
tion of those who have at some period of their lives been attacked
by insanity of diJfferent types has been markedly greater or less
among famous personages than among the general run of man-
kind. In order to decide this, we should be in a condition to state
with exactitude what the percentage of insane among the total
population was at a given period of history, how many men of
genius there were at that time, and how many of these were
insane. Such researches must be repeated at different times of
history ; then, if they were irreproachably exact and sufficient, it
would be possible that some sound conclusion might be reached.

There has also been an attempt to trace a connection between
genius and insanity through facts of heredity. In spite of some
valuable works in this department, it must be admitted that the
observations hitherto adduced are still far from sufficient to have
any scientific value. The fact that in several families of eminent
men insanity has occurred in no wise justifies us in drawing any
conclusion. In order to do that, we must, as in the former case,
be in a condition to establish statistical comparisons which shall
be absolutely exact between the proportionate occurrence of in-
sanity in the families of men of genius and those of ordinary
men. Every disinterested observer must be struck with contra-
dictions and the inadequacy of the investigations that have been
made in this field.

It is true that between famous men — the so-called geniuses —
and the insane many resemblances may be traced. Nevertheless,
they are, as we have seen, mere resemblances, not real affinities.
Just as every symptom of mental disease has its analogue in
health, so has it also an analogue in genius. But, owing to the
entire mental action being higher than in average men, the states
analogous to morbid symptoms here come out more markedly.
Genius resembles insanity as gold resembles brass. The similarity
is merely in the appearance. When we go deeper into the facts
we find the two states so widely disparate that we are not justi-
fied in saying that they are allied ; still less, with Moreau, that
genius is a morbid condition.

Finally, let the fact be considered that most of the great men,
both of art and of science, were misunderstood by their contem-
poraries, and were only appreciated after they were dead. In
recognition of this truth, Goethe pronounces that a genius is in
touch with his century only by virtue of his defects, only in so
far as he shares the weaknesses of his times. The genius of the
truly great man outstrips, with its great wing strokes, the rest of
the flock. Those who can not keep up with him can not compre-
hend him. They are puzzled at first, and finally set him down as
a fool. In short, they confound genius and insanity.

AFFECTIONS AND JEALOUSIES OF LIZARDS. 395
AFFECTIONS AND JEALOUSIES OF LIZARDS.

By M. J. DELBOEUF.

WHILE the possession of articulate language marks man as
distinct from other animals, it seems certain to me that he
and they are formed upon the same pattern so far as relates to
sensations and feelings. This will hardly be contested as to sen-
sations. Animals that have no eyes have of course no sensations
of sight such as clear-seeing ones possess, and we have not the
highly developed sense of direction of birds of passage and carrier
pigeons ; but these may be cultivated, and we are told that the
American Indians have the sense of direction in an astonishing
degree and can track their enemy as a dog does a hare. We
have, it is true, some difficulty in conceiving the nature of the
dog's power of scent, and it is possible that ants and bees have
other senses than those we have ; but these differences, marked as
they may be, are at the bottom quantitative and not qualitative.
Perhaps a slight modification of some part or another of the sen-
sorial apparatus would give us sensations now strange to us.

Of the feelings, we find in all the higher animals those of love,
friendship, hatred, anger, devotion, courage, suspicion, jealousy,
cunning, fear, rancor, and pity. Some hens show a marked predi-
lection for their chickens. The contrary also appears. There are
stepmothers among hens, dogs, and cats. There are also feelings
devious as to their object. The child adores its doll ; a dog may
be attached to a stick.

These various feelings are manifest also in the lower animals,
as my continuous observations on my captive lizards, concern-
ing which I have published several articles, have tended to prove.

My first two lizards had been captured, one in the Spanish
Pyrenees and the other at Tarn, in France ; wherefore I called
them the Spanish and the French lizards, but afterward gave them
the names of Pedro and Pierre. I was surprised on the very first
day that I occupied myself with their education to observe the
absolute contrariety of their characters and dispositions. Pierre,
won over at once by the honeyed dainties I offered him, soon
became accustomed to let himself be handled without trying to
bite or run away, and to hide himself in my clothes, prefer-
ring the back, where it was warmer. Pedro, wild and untam-
able, if one tried to catch him, withdrew into a corner, and then
stretching his paws in front of him, his eye glistening and his
mouth wide open, hissing, springing at the hand that came near
him, and, if he bit it, holding firmly and causing the blood to
flow, revealed a resolution that even impressed the young men
in my laboratory.

396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I made a cage for the lizards of iron wire, open above, and, hav-
ing a large room in my country house into which the sun shone
all day on three sides, I put them in it. Pierre soon learned to
leave his cage, to climb up to the windows by some rags I had
hung to them, and passed from one to another, following the sun.
In the evening he returned to the cage. Pedro, more stupid, tried
vainly to get out of his prison, and, when I put him on the ledge
of a window in the sun, let himself be overtaken by the shade,
persisted for hours in efforts to get through the glass, and finally
went to sleei^ where he had been left. Pierre, always in motion
and investigating, discovered an old mattress in the room that
had a hole in the cover, and took a liking to the hole. The mat-
tress was put where it could not be reached except over a bridge
of cords connecting it with the cage. Pierre, always expert,
learned very soon to pass over this bridge to his hiding place.
Pedro never could understand what the cords were good for, and
his love of comfort never carried him to the point of finding the
luxurious mattress. More recently Pierre, when at Lidge, found
a hole in the lining of a thick portiere curtain, of which he be-
came acquainted with the most minute folds and turns, and when
he is there there is no means of getting him away.

The physiognomies of the two correspond with their charac-
ters. Pierre's eye is black, mild, intelligent, and scrutinizing. In
Pedro's, the pupil, surrounded with a golden yellow circle, reflects
distrust, hostility, and ferocity. It took six months to tame
Pedro, and it was quite two years before he ceased to show his
fierce temper when I came upon him too abruptly.

Pierre and Pedro lived on the best of terms with one another.
At Li(5ge they slept side by side, often interlocked. Pedro was
fond of following Pierre in his wanderings and escapades. One
day Pierre was lost. He had got out of my desk, had gone down
several steps of the stairway, and had slipped in under the carpet,
where he was casually found about three weeks afterward. Dur-
ing the whole time of his disappearance Pedro refused all food,
and had no relish for insects and earthworms, till Pierre was re-
stored to him. Seeing him so melancholy, I made an appeal to all
my friends in the south of France to get me a new companion for
him. M. H. Dineur, an engineer of Prades, sent me a lizard, Oc-
tober 1, 1891, three months after Pierre had been found. From
that day on a great change was noticed. I had not learned the sex
of my animals, but I observed now that they were both males,
while the new one was a female. Pedro conceived a great an-
tipathy for Pierre, which became more evident every day. Be-
tween the pursuits and bitings he suffered from Pedro, Pierre led
a martyr's life till I was obliged to make a separate cage for him,
and when Pierre was let out for an airing Pedro had to be shut up.

AFFECTIONS AND JEALOUSIES OF LIZARDS. 397

Both, however, became very familiar with me, but Pedro more
than Pierre. They would run to me, when I called them, from
one end of the room to the other ; but I had to hold out a meal
worm for bait to bring Pierre, while Pedro would come when my
hands were empty. This was not because he was stupid, for when
he saw that I had no worm, and I drew back, he would follow me
like a dog, and would climb upon me when I stretched out my leg.

M. Dineur sent me the next year several lizards at different
times, all of which were received with an ill grace. Among them
was a much larger one than Pedro, which he disliked along with
the others. One day this lizard took Pedro up and gave him a good
shaking, after which Pedro was very cautious in his annoyances,
and would run away the instant the other turned toward him.

One lizard was respected by Pedro. It had been sent me from
Algeria by M. Forel, of Zurich, of a species we had not been able
to identify — a tree liver, small but even fiercer than Pedro, and
quite untamable. After devouring one fine specimen and half
eating another, it became a marked terror to all the other mem-
bers df the collection. Only one of my lizards was fond of gentles ;
the others spit them out as soon as they had tasted them. As we
may say of a company of men, " So many heads, so many minds,"
so we might say, with a little variation, of my pets, " So many
lizards, so many dispositions."

Several of my lizards have died ; Pedro, a few months ago, of
a disease that first affected the eyes, after having been with me
five years. Pierre is still living with me, but has long had a
tumor on his leg, has lost his tail once by my fault and twice by
his own, and no longer likes honey, but shakes his head with an
air of disgust when it is put upon his nose — a fact that shows that
the taste of lizards, too, may change with the years.

As to the longevity of lizards : I do not think I am much mis-
taken when I suppose that they may live twenty or thirty years,
or even longer. As they advance in years the plates of the head,
smooth when they are young, show wrinkles and cavities which
become more marked and numerous. Those with me have not
grown much, and though I weighed them often — usually about
once a month — the results were too irregular to permit of any con-
clusions being drawn from them. The weight of the larger lizards
varied to the extent of thirty grammes, according as they were
well or sparingly fed. Pierre now weighs one hundred and six
grammes, another one one hundred and twenty-eight grammes,
and another thirty-eight grammes — weights which are evidently
proportional to the cubes of their lengths ; but, according to my
figures, they have not gained any in five years. I conclude from
this that many years must have passed before the larger ones at-
tained the weight they have.

398 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The bifid extremity of their tongues, soft and always moist, is
most probably an organ delicate to touch and probably to taste.
They never cease to project it forward on to all the things within
their reach, and although accustomed to meal worms, they begin
generally by feeling them — at least the first one — in this way be-
fore taking them. The whip-tails { Uromastix) do the same, and
when set down in the grass test all the flowers with their tongue.
I should observe further that these animals did not hibernate
with me, and that they were as lively and active in winter as in
summer. The same may be said of two jerboas which I kept in
captivity for three years and a half. Hibernation, therefore, does
not seem to be a iDhysiological necessity, but to be rather a natu-
ral effect of the cold, like the depression of the thermometer. The
lizards were very fond of keeping themselves in front of the
registers.

I now come to a trait which on reflection ai)pears to me to be
characteristic in the highest degree. Jealousy is a feeling not
less natural to animals than to us. The males compete in
strength, beauty, or talent to conquer the females. Beasts of
prey, from spiders to lions and eagles, enforce respect of their
hunting grounds. All defend their bed, their burrow, or their
nest ; and probably, too, herbivorous animals living in herds do
not permit other herds to trespass upon their pastures. The jeal-
ousy of the dog is well known ; if he is left alone, he will eat the
part of the cat, and even rob the pigs of their messes. I have
kept two jerboas for three years, all very familiar. Every even-
ing we give each of them an almond, which they come and take
out of the hand, and even ask for. But hardly has one received
hers than, without paying any more attention to us, the other
pursues her, takes it away from her, and a struggle ensues — a
struggle which is otherwise courteous. The same play is acted
when dandelions are given to them ; hardly has one detached a
leaf when the other tries to snatch it from her.

My lizards did not vary from the general rule. The best worm
was always the one that a comrade had. If it was long, we might
witness such a steeplechase as is seen sometimes in poultry yards.

Pedro was jealous of my preference and caresses. When he
was on my sleeve, I could keep him for hours motionless by pass-
ing my hand lightly along his body ; but if I took Pierre or an-
other lizard up, his rage broke out at once, and he would jump
upon him with his mouth menacingly wide open. If, however,
I chose the large lizard, he gradually drew back, as if regret-
fully, without leaving me. Now, what good do caresses do to a
lizard ? Dogs and cats, they tell us, are delighted with them. But
these animals, when they were young, were caressed by their
mothers, who licked, bit, and amused them, and it is not strange

AFFECTIONS AND JEALOUSIES OF LIZARDS. 399

that they should find in our cajolery a kind of recollection
of motherly tenderness. They play together, embrace one an-
other, and press against one another. The man who plays with
them is like a companion of a little more respectable species, and
that is all. In menageries, monkeys, bears, lions, tigers, and
hyenas indulge in caresses to the point that some animals seek
them and provoke them. But lizards, with their scaly skin, un-
accustomed to embracing, feeling, and licking, hatched in the
sun ! My Pedro therefore presented a deviation of the feeling of
jealousy. We not rarely see parrots that like to be stroked on the
neck or the head. I once accustomed a vulture in the zoological
garden of Ghent to pass his head out between the bars of his cage
in order to have it held and caressed. My friend Prof. Gilki-
net tamed a wild rabbit till it became as familiar as a dog, and
learned to like the hand that stroked it. All these creatures have
known the pleasures of the nest and of maternal contact. But
again, a lizard ? I suppose that when cuddled between my hand-
kerchief and my hand, it felt in that kind of moist and easy cav-
ity a renewal of the pleasure of the days when it was free, and
had a secure refuge in the shelter of the leaves against a burning
sun. On the other hand, when another lizard comes, it displays
envy or anger as if it were threatened with dislodgment. Is it
that ? It alone can tell what is passing in its darkened psychic
sensibility, for man can not penetrate the animal mind. But could
he penetrate the human soul if he had not language ; can he
penetrate the soul of one whose language he is not acquainted
with ? If we met a savage in the midst of a virgin forest, should
we be better able to divine his intentions than we should those of
an alligator ?

Does it not result from these observations that, aside from the
faculty of abstract, artificial, and conventional language, which
seems up to this time to be the exclusive appanage of man, there
is no clearly marked difference in general feelings between man
and his lower brethren ? Or rather, as I have ventured to say on
another occasion, I ask if there may not appear in each animal
species from time to time scamps, individuals inclined to rapine
and murder, like my lizard Ben Youssouf, or simple, uneasy crea-
tures like Pedro ?

Furthermore, these minute observations, which may seem puer-
ile in the eyes of many, help to establish the psychological tran-
sition from man to animals placed much lower in the zoological
scale than lizards. In this aspect, they may be considered an
humble contribution in support of transformism. — Translated for
the Popular Science Montlily from the Revue Scientifique.

♦«»

400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE.

THE United States has had no more assiduous working natu-
ralist than Dr. G. Brown Goode ; and few if any of them
have contributed as much as he to the development and increase
of the resources of our country. He was also one of the world's
greatest museum administrators, and an anthropologist of most
comprehensive views.

George Brown Goode was born in ISTew Albany, Indiana,
February 13, 1851, and died in Washington, D. C, September 6,
1896. While he was still a boy his parents removed to the State
of New York. He cultivated the taste for natural history, which
he manifested early, and it found food and encouragement in
the Reports of the Smithsonian Institution, which formed part of
the family librarj^, and which he was accustomed to read. As
a student in Wesleyan University, whence he was graduated in
1870, he was marked by his predilection for natural-history
studies and the interest he took in museum methods. After
graduation he entered Harvard University as a graduate student,
and enjoyed the teaching of Agassiz. On the erection of Orange
Judd Hall at Wesleyan University, he was invited by the faculty
of that institution to arrange the collections in natural history.
He performed the work with a skill and discrimination that
marked him as specially adapted for it, and had, no doubt, great
influence in deciding his future career. His first contribution to
scientific literature was a note published in the American Natu-
ralist in 1871, recording the occurrence of the billfish in fresh
water in the Connecticut River ; and his first paper exhibiting
range of investigation and power to collate facts was one show-
ing that snakes do actually receive their young within themselves
by swallowing them, on the appearance of danger, to let them out
again when the danger is jDast. For the purpose of this inquiry
he sought evidence through an advertisement in the American
Agriculturist, asking for the communication of observations on
the subject. He had become interested in the work of the United
States Fish Commission, and meeting Prof. Baird at the meeting
of the American Association in Portland, Me., in 1873, was invited
by him to become a member of its staff. In that capacity he was
for several years a member of the commission's summer parties.
He also became connected with the National Museum as assistant
curator, and served it for a time without other compensation than
duplicate specimens, and these he turned over at once to the
museum in Orange Judd Hall. He was named in a short time
assistant director of the museum, and in 1887 assistant secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution in charge of the National Museum,

SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GO ODE. 401

the position which he still held at the time of his death. On the
death of Prof. Baird, he became for a short time Commissioner of
Fish and Fisheries. This appointment. Science observed at the
time, " meets at once the requirements of an exacting office and
the exceptional provision of the law creating it. Prof. Goode is
intimately acquainted with the methods of Commissioner Baird,
whose scientific zeal and knowledge he shared, and his experience
and attainments in practical fish culture and in the science of
ichthyology made him first among those whose qualifications the
President has been called upon to consider." The law, however,
gave no salary for this office, and during the few months Dr.
Goode held it he performed the duties of two offices for the pay
of one. In time the law was amended, the office of Fish Com-
missioner was made independent of the National Museum, and
Dr. Goode was relieved by the appointment of Marshall Mc-
Donald to it.

Most of Prof. Goode's contributions to science were made
during his connection with the National Museum, and for infor-
mation concerning them we are largely indebted to the admirable
summaries published by Dr. Marcus Benjamin and Mr. Theodore
Gill in Science. In 1876 he published in the Bulletin of the
United States Museum a Catalogue of the Fishes of the Bermu-
das, and the Classification of the Collection to illustrate the Ani-
mal Resources of the United States ; which latter work was ex-
panded three years afterward into the Catalogue of the Collection
to illustrate the Animal Resources and the Fisheries of the
United States, a volume nearly three times as large, prepared
with reference to the Smithsonian exhibit in the Centennial. He
published numerous monographs, many of them in collaboration
with Dr. Tarleton Bean, chiefly descriptive of new species of
fishes, and some dealing with special groups, of which perhaps
the most important was that on the menhaden, first published in
the Report of the Fish Commission, and afterward as a separate
work. In connection with the tenth census, of 1880, Dr. Goode
had charge of the work relating to fish and fisheries ; and of the
five sections of the seven large quarto volumes comprising the
report on that subject he himself mainly prepared Section I, on
the Natural History of Aquatic Animals. It covered more than
nine hundred pages of text, and was illus rated by two hundred
and seventy-seven plates. " This book was intended to reflect
as exhaustive an investigation of the subject as possible. The
scheme drawn up by Dr. Goode embraced the natural history of
marine products; accounts of the fishing grounds, the fisher-
men and fishing towns, apparatus and modes of capture ; prepara-
tion, care, and manufacture of fishing products ; and economy of
the fisheries. For the purposes of the studies necessary to its

TOL. L. 31

402 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

preparation, tlie coast, lakes, etc., of the country were mapped off
into twenty-four districts, each of which was assigned to a field
assistant. "This work," says Mr. Gill, "was by far the most
complete survey of the economical fishes of the country that had
ever appeared, and has since been the most prized. It led to
another." This other was American Fishes ; a Popular Treatise
upon the Game and Food Fishes of North America, with Especial
Reference to Habits and Modes of Capture. This volume was
prepared, the author said in his prologue, for " the use of the
angler, the lover of Nature, and the general reader." It was not
intended for naturalists, and the technicalities of zoological de-
scription were therefore avoided. Prof. Goode's plan, in selecting
from the seventeen hundred and fifty species of fish indigenous
to our waters those to be described in the book, was to include
every North American fish which was likely to be of interest to
the general reader, either on account of its genuineness or its
economical uses. The physical features of each fish were de-
scribed, its range and season were marked, its habits in regard to
feeding, migration, and breeding were delineated, and something
was told about the method of capturing it and its value as food ;
but it contained " no discussions of rods, reels, lines, hooks, and
flies, and no instructions concerning camping out, excursions,
routes, guides, and hotels." Mingled with these facts were infor-
mation about the different names of fishes in different places,
exciting fishing adventures, and excursions into the literature of
the ubject.

In the meantime Dr. Goode had (1879-1881) prepared the text
for a work on the game fishes of the United States, intended to
accompany twenty large folio colored plates by S. A. Kilbourne.
The collections made by the Fish Commission and the steamers
Blake, Albatross, and Fish Hawk were carefully studied by Dr.
Goode and Dr. Bean, and the fruits of their labor were put forth
in a book in two volumes, with one hundred and twenty-three
plates, on Oceanic Ichthyology, a Treatise on the Pelagic and
Deep-sea Fishes of the World, which came from the press only
about two weeks before Dr. Goode's death. In 1880 Dr. Goode
published the story of The First Decade of the United States Fish
Commission : its Plan of Work and Accomplished Results, Scien-
tific and Economical. The same subject was presented in a paper
read before the American Association at its Boston meeting, 1880,
the aim of which was declared to be to show, in a general way,
what the commission had done, was doing, and expected to do —
" its purposes, methods, and results." In 1881 he published Epochs
in the History of Fish Culture, and in 1882 an encyclopaedic ar-
ticle on The Fisheries of the World. He was author of the article
on Pisciculture in the Encyclopsedia Britannica, an admirable

SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GOODE, 403

presentation, in four pages, of tlie necessity of special measures
for preserving fish and preventing their destruction, and of put-
ting into practice the art of breeding them, with the history of the
art and its present condition, in which the part taken by the
United States in the fish-cultural enterprises is fully set forth. He
had almost completed an elaborate memoir on the distribution of
abyssalian fishes, in which he recognized for them a number of
different faunal areas — a thing which no previous student of them
had done. He had been engaged for some time previous to his
death in the preparation of a Half-Century Book of the Smith-
sonian Institution which he had projected. He contemplated a
complete Bibliography of Ichthyology, to include the names of all
genera and species published as new, and had collected the mate-
rials for it. In this department he completed as part of a series
of Bibliographies of American Naturalists, those of Spencer F.
Baird (1883) and of Cbarles Gdrard (1891), and one not yet pub-
lished, but printed, of Philip Lutley Sclater, Secretary of the Zoo-
logical Society of London and a distinguished ornithologist. A
sketch of the life and work of this naturalist, published in Science
for September 4, 1896, is, so far as at present appears, his last j^ub-
lished article. Other articles, only partly showing the broader
range of Dr. Goode's interests, are his two addresses before the
Biological Society of Washington, in 1886 and 1887, on The Be-
ginnings of Natural History in America, in which his " diligence
in the collection of data and skill in presenting them are well
exemplified " ; a paper on The Origin of the National Scientific and
Educational Institutions of the United States, contributed to the
American Historical Association in 1890, in which a connected
view is given of the growth of such institutions from their begin-
ning in the attempt of Mr. Boyle, Bishop Wilkins, and others, to
establish in the colony of Connecticut a society for promoting
knowledge ; a paper on Museum History and Museums of His-
tory, read before the American Historical Association, in which
is included a statement of the author's ideas of what a museum
should contain, what purposes it should be intended to serve, and
how it should be arranged and managed ; and an address before
the American Philosophical Society on the one hundredth anni-
versary of the death of Benjamin Franklin, on that great Ameri-
can's Literary Labors, in which he showed that Franklin never
wrote for literary fame, but only for the good he might do by
disseminating his thoughts and suggestions. Prof. Goode's con-
tributions to ichthyology, in the Reports of the Fish Commission,
Harper's Weekly said in 1887, " are not all of a purely scientific,
but for a large part of a practical character. The most thorough
and exhaustive researches ever made by any one about a special
fish is that on the menhaden, due to Prof. Goode, and is a model

404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of clearness, of industry displayed in collecting the facts, and of
practical usefulness. Material furnished by liim for the study of
the swordfish is of equal value. In connection with Captain
Collins, R. E. Earl, and A. Howard Clark, a life history of the
mackerel was prepared, which remains to-day one of the com-
pletest of treatises on one of the most valuable of American fishes.
Prof. Goode's notes on the life history of the eel have settled all
questions in regard to the peculiar habits of this fish."

It was Dr. Goode's lot, by virtue of his skill in museum organ-
ization, to bear a prominent part in the arrangement and installa-
tion of the exhibits of the United States in the various inter-
national and general exhibitions which were held during his
active career. He was thus associated with the Smithsonian
exhibits at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876 ; at
the Fisheries Exhibitions in Berlin in 1880 and London in 1883 ;
at New Orleans, Cinscinnati, and Louisville ; at the Chicago Co-
lumbian Exhibition in 1893 ; at the Columbian Historical Exhi-
bition in Madrid, Spain, in 1892-'93 ; and at the Atlanta Cotton
States Exhibition. In recognition of his services at the Madrid
Exhibition he received the Order of Isabella the Catholic, with
the grade of commander.

Next to being a zoologist and particularly an ichthyologist,
Dr. Goode was perhaps most eminently an anthropologist. Mr.
Gill observes that his catalogues embraced the outlines of a sys-
tem of anthropological science; and Prof. Otis T. Mason, in a
sketch of him in the American Anthropologist, says that in his
system of museum classification he insisted that all the sciences
of every kind are essentially anthropological. The earth was to
be regarded as man's abode, and was studied by him as such, both
in its astronomical relations and its geological aspects. In the
same way physiographic studies were regarded by him " as lead-
ing up to a knowledge of the earth's surface, as ministering to
life, and especially to the health and happiness of man " ; and
meteorological apparatus and phenomena, geographical explora-
tions and voyages, technographic resources, physics, mechanics,
chemistry, botany, zoology, etc., were all regarded by him pre-
dominantly as they bore upon man's life and welfare. " Beyond
the material resources of the earth and the forces by which they
are regulated and shaped lay in Dr. Goode's scheme the special
human industries devoted to the exploration of the earth, the
elaboration of materials, the transportation and exchange of pro-
ductions, and their utilization as well as their enjoyments. From
the foregoing studies Dr. Goode's comprehensive plan led up to
the social relations of mankind in their material manifestations,
then to the intellectual co-operations of mankind as manifested in
the arts, sciences, and philosophies, terminating with education.

SKETCH OF GEORGE BROWN GO ODE. 405

reform, and climaxes of human achievement. This great an-
thropological syllabus of all knowledge Dr. Goode used as the
modulus of his own thoughts and a plan by which he arranged
his books, his pictures, his clippings from newspapers, useful
facts' gathered here and there, and everything of a material nature
which he desired to preserve."

He was interested in botany and versed in it, making the study
of the flowers one of the attractions of his excursions ; an earnest
student of all matters pertaining to American history, a delver in
genealogy from his boyhood, author of a work on his family his-
tory, and one of the editors of the Wesleyan University Alumni
Record ; one of the founders of the American Historical Associa-
tion and a member of the Southern Historical Society ; was inter-
ested in patriotic societies, and an ofiQcer of those of the Sons of
the Revolution and Colonial Wars. He was a founder of several
scientific societies in Washington and a member of others in this
country ; was a past president of the Philosophical Society and
the Biological Society of Washington ; was elected a member of
the National Academy of Sciences in 1888 ; had been chosen in
the American Association to be vice-president for the Section of
Zoology at its meeting of 1897 ; and was a member of the Zoologi-
cal Society of London.

Great as were Dr. Goode's scientific attainments and achieve-
ments, his friends and biographers are most emphatic in their
testimonials to his personal attractiveness. Prof. S. P. Langley,
whose associate he was in the Smithsonian Institution for many
years, says, in the memorial he contributed to Science : " I have
never known a more perfectly true, sincere, and loyal character
than Dr. Goode's ; or a man who with a better judgment of other
men or greater ability in molding their purposes to his own,
used these powers to such uniformly disinterested ends, so that he
could maintain the discipline of a great establishment like the
National Museum, while retaining the personal affection of every
subordinate. . . . His historical powers in grouping incidents and
events were akin to genius. His genealogical writings showed
wide and accurate research, while his literary faculty displayed
itself with singular charm in some of his minor writings. But
how futile these words seem to be in describing a man of whom
perhaps the best, after all, to be said is that he was not only
trusted but beloved by all with an affection that men rarely win
from one another ! "

Mr. Gill says: "His disposition was a bright and sunny
one, and he ingratiated himself in the affections of his friends
in a marked degree. . . . But in spite of his gentleness, firm-
ness and vigor in action became manifest when occasion called
for them."

4o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Prof. Mason says : " It would be difficult to find among those
who are professional anthropologists a man who had a more ex-
alted idea of what this science ought to be. ... In addition to
this comprehensive and appreciative view of anthropology, Dr.
Goode was among the foremost scholars in the line of his own
studies, and the bibliography of his works fills many pages of
manuscript. He was, in addition to this, a good man, with a
gentle, affectionate spirit, a lovely family life, a patriotic heart,
and a singular devotion to the interest of the public. He never
lost sight of the fact that Mr. Smithson's bequest was not only for
the ' increase of knowledge ' to glorify discovery, but for the ' dif-
fusion of knowledge ' to bless all mankind."

The memorial resolutions of the Biological Section of the New
York Academy of Sciences, after referring fittingly to his scien-
tific work, add that " those of us who had the good fortune to
know Prof. Goode personally recall his genial interest in the work
of others, his true scientific spirit. We have thus lost one of our
ablest fellow- workers and one of the truest and best of men."

The interest in schools of all grades in the South, from the common
school to the university, is represented by President Julius D. Dreher, of
Roanoke College, in a pai^er read before the American Social Science Asso-
ciation, as steadily growing. "The increase in the enrollment of eager
pupils in public schools is a proof of that activ^e interest. An additional
proof is found in the fact that colleges and seminaries are attended by an
increasing number of young men and women who practice self-denial or
profit by the sacrifices of anxious parents, in order that their higher educa-
tional advantages may be enjoyed." Even the tendency to multiply higher
institutions of learning is still further evidence of this general interest.
Notwithstanding all that has been said, it must not be forgotten that under
many adverse circumstances the Southern people have done a tremendous
work since the war in providing schools for the masses and in building
and strengthening institutions of higher education. They might have
been wiser in their plans and more judicious in some respects in spending
their money, but no people ever projected educational institutions in the
midst of more inauspicious surroundings, and that, too, with the conscious-
ness that a race, recently in slavery and hence able to contribute almost
nothing in taxes, was to share equally with themselves in the schools sup-
ported at public expense. What has been done against so many odds may
be regarded as the sure promise of greater advance in the future.

A STRANGE tale of a shepherd dog caring for a cat is told by a corre-
spondent of La Nature. The cat was neglected, and the dog perceived that
it was suffering from hunger. He was accustomed to go to a neighboring
house where he was usually given delicacies from the table. One day the
people of the house, answering a sound at the door, found the dog waiting
there with the cat firmly settled on his back. Food was given the cat, and
its escort rested while it ate. For three days the dog brought the cat thus ;
then the cat came afoot, but the dog was always with it.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

407

%(ixXox's "^iiUt.

ANXIOUS ORTHODOXY.
"TTTE are all familiar witli the
VV troubles of the hen that, having
hatched duck's eggs, sees with dismay
her foster progeny betaking them-
selves to the water. Very similar, it
seems to us, is the distress of mind
which ecclesiastical authorities now
and then display over the evident
determination of the modern world
to betake itself to the truths of sci-
ence rather than to the dogmas of
theology. From the ecclesiastical
point of view the latter constitute
terra firma ; the former are nothing
but a heaving sea of uncertainty — a
treacherous element which threatens
to ingulf all who trust themselves
to it.

A conspicuous exhibition of this
state of mind is furnished by an ar-
ticle in the Chiu'ch Standard of Phil-
adelphia from the pen of the Right
Eeverend Hugh Miller Thompson,
D.D., LL.D., Episcopal Bishop of
Mississippi. "The scientists," it ap-
pears from Bishop Thompson's ar-
ticle, have been professing that, in
certain cases of hopeless disease, a
period should mercifully be put at
once to life and to suffering. This
is perfectly terrible. It is true Bishop
Thompson does not tell us who the
scientists are who have made this in-
human proposition ; but that is all
the better, as the odium can thus be
spread evenly over all of them.
Neither does he give the exact terms
of the proposition ; and that again
is all the better, as it enables him to
expand and vary it at will — to give
us such versions of it, for example,
as the following : '' When a man's
father becomes toothless and child-
ish, the son will lovingly give him
the happy dispatch, and enter on

possession of his estates. When the
mother becomes feeble and old, the
loving daughter, with her own gentle
hands, will drop into the spoon and
carry to the lips that kissed her baby
face the precious dose that will put
the dear old soul out of the way of
troubling her longer." In a word,
the right reverend bishop has a good
time of it banging away at " the sci-
entists" through a four-column ar-
ticle made up almost wholly of just
such inconsequent verbiage as we
have quoted.

The broad fact which writers of
this class all seek to ignore is that
it is precisely since science began
to be a power in the world that
there has been the most notable
improvement in the manners and
morals of mankind. The bishop
tells us that, " if man be a develop-
ment from the primeval slime, an
improved oyster or ape," he fails to
see " where there is any room to talk
about the sacredness of human life."
It seems to us that, far more impor-
tant than talking about the sacred-
ness of human life, is it to treat hu-
man life as sacred ; and if the bishop
will pretend that there is any com-
parison between the practice of the
present day in this respect and that,
say, of the eighteenth, seventeenth,
and sixteenth centuries, not to go
further back, we shall be very much
surprised. What science, or, in other
words, the progress of knowledge,
does is to give the human mind
scope and verge for the exercise of
its faculties ; and it is this enlarged
intellectual activity which leads to
the improvement of life in general.
If it is impossible to-day to read any
history of past ages without shud-
dering at the butcheries and cruelties

4o8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

which form so large a part of the
record, it is not because those ages
were not in possession of a well-es-
tablished and firmly believed theol-
ogy; it is not because any modern
scientific views had arisen to weaken
the sense of the sacredness of hu-
man life. It was simply and pure-
ly because a very inferior degree of
sacredness — all theoretical reasons
to the contrary notwithstanding —
was in reality attached to human
life. Men's minds had not then been
expanded and enlarged, nor had
their sympathies been quickened, as
they have been since knowledge be-
gan to grow by leaps and bounds.
Certain theological doctrines, more-
over, which then universally pre-
vailed, had a direct tendency to
deaden sympathy and pervert all
natural standards of right and
wrong ; we refer especially to that
conception of hell which was the
fundamental motive of all persecu-
tions for heresy and witchcraft. The
sum of human misery which must
be attributed to this one cause baf-
fles calculation. On the other hand,
no fact in history is more over-
whelmingly attested than that an in-
crease in humanity has accompanied,
and continues to accompany, a re-
laxation of the rigors of theological
belief.

In that whimsical book, The
Green Carnation, there is a parson
introduced who, on the word science
being mentioned, immediately re-
marks, " Indeed, I have no opinion
of science." Our bishop, however,
is not content with having " no opin-
ion of science " ; he goes further and
has " no opinion," or, to be more ac-
curate, a shockingly bad opinion, of
Nature. Let us listen to this episco-
pal teacher : " There is nothing sa-
cred in Nature. Certainly she treats
life with very scant reverence, be it
vegetable or animal. Nature's forces
ruthlessly trample out and trample

down life in all its forms. She is
the bloodiest-handed of all murder-
ers. She ravens in beak and claw."
A little while ago it was Prof. James
who was describing Nature as a har-
lot; to-day the Bishop of Mississippi
finds that the most appropriate epi-
thet he can bestow on it is "the
bloodiest-handed of all mvirderers."
What says Matthew Arnold ?

" And patiently exact.
This universal God,
Alike to any act.

Proceeds at any nod,
And quietly declaims the curses of himself."

The Harvard professor curses in
the interest of his pessimism; the di-
vine, in the interest of his theology ;
and neither seems in the least alive
to the humor of the situation.
While they curse, the sun shines and
the wind blows, the great processes
of Nature go on, and the drama of
human destiny develops itself just
as if there was no such thing in the
world as a pessimistic professor or a
damnatory divine. Nature does not
ask any one to admire or belaud her.
She has given, or the power behind
her has given, to countless tribes a
share in what we call life. She
guarantees nothing save the perma-
nence of law ; but she has set in
operation certain principles of devel-
opment which, in the case of man,
have carried him, under favoring
circumstances, to a high degree of
eminence over the rest of the cre-
ation. Man thus finds himself pos-
sessed of self-consciousness and the
power of adapting means to ends, of
reading the secrets of Nature, and
greatly increasing his resources for
happiness and progress. At what
point in man's evolution from " the
primeval slime " which the bishop
so dislikes to think about — though
the scriptural " dust " would only re-
quire a little moistening to make a
fair article of slime — at what point,
we say, of man's evolution the social

EDITOR'S TABLE.

409

instincts began to emerge it is not
necessary to determine. It is enough
to know that they did emerge, and
that, haviiig emerged, they became
capable of doing as miich for his
moral and emotional nature as the
recognition of law, which also
emerged at a given moment, was ca-
pable of doing for his intellectual
nature. To-day, in moral and intel-
lectual man — in other words, in the
higher types of the human race — the
world begins to have a worthy ten-
ant and master, one in whose eyes
a " splendid purpose " may be read —
the purpose of governing wisely and
justly and mercifully the heritage
into possession' of which he has
come.

The practical question then is just
this : whether because the bishop's
theology is not enjoying quite as
much prestige as it did of old, and
because the emancipated human
spirit is seeking knowledge every-
where, even in regard to matters
which the bishop thinks ought to
be accepted as authoritatively settled,
there is any reason to apprehend that
the bonds of society and of the fam-
ily are going to be loosed, that the
humane instincts, which for genera-
tions have been gaining in strength,
are going to fall into decay, and that
man, under the influence of scientific
teachings, is destined to become a
mere cunning compound of cruelty
and self-indulgence. Well, for our
part, we don't believe it ; there is
nothing in past history to render
such a result probable, everything to
render it improbable. What the most
distant future may have in store for
our race, we know not ; but of this
we feel persuaded, that the future
which lies immediately before us
will be an era of greater justice, of
greater humanity, and at the same
time of greater intellectual liberty,
than any the world has yet seen. All
the signs point that way.

"GROWING illiteracy:'

Where ? Why, here, in these
United States, and in that most fa-
vored portion of them which sends
its youths to Eastern colleges and
universities. But who talks of "grow-
ing illiteracy " ?— surely some very ill-
informed individual who does not
know what splendid work our public
schools are doing. By no means;
but we may as well, without further
ado, explain the matter.

For a good while past the colleges
and universities of the country have
been finding it harder and harder to
put up with the very inferior prepa-
ration, particularly as regards knowl-
edge of the English language, of the
youths who go up from the second-
aiy schools for matriculation. Har-
vard is in open rebellion against the
annoyance; and a committee of the
Overseers lately made the suggestion
that it would be a good thing to print
the papers of these ill-taught youths,
and give the names of the schools
from which they had come. At this
the principals of a number of the
leading schools took alarm ; and it
was in the protest which they pub-
lished that the ominous words we
have quoted appeared. '"While we
regret," they say, " the growing il-
literacy of American boys, we can
not feel that the schools should be
held solely responsible for the evils,
which are chiefly due to the absence
of literary interest and of literary
standards in the community." In
other words, there is a growing illit-
eracy among boys, because, broadly
speaking, illiteracy has taken pos-
session of the country. The parents
of the boys — who themselves had
the benefit of public -school train-
ing— have, for the most part, no lit-
erary interests and recognize no lit-
ei*ary standards. These high-school
principals ought to know whereof
they affirm; we do not know who

410

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would be in a position to gauge tlie
acquirements of American boys, and
the domestic influences which have
guided their development, if not
they.

If the universities, by bringing
pressure to bear on the secondary
schools, can do anything to remedy
this state of things they certainly
should do it. If the principals are
right, however, the outlook is not
hopeful. Our own impression is that
they are right, and that there is
throughout the country a growing-
indifference to correct speech and a
growing lack of appreciation of the
higher uses to which language can
be put. The testimony of the princi-
pals is enforced by that of a Western
teacher, who writes to The Nation to
explain the peculiar difficulties under
which the schools labor as regards
the teaching of English. The pupils,
he says, have, out of school, been
studying English for fifteen or six-
teen years before they reach the high
school. " They suppose themselves to
be entirely competent, their habits
of expression are fixed, and no two
of them are alike. ... The home,
the very cheap newspaper, the street,
have furnished them with their com-
mon speech; and, although the first
may sometimes be all that can be de-
sired, very often the balance of power
belongs to the others. . . . Under
favorable circumstances the teacher
of composition is allowed forty-five
minutes a day, for three years, in
which, besides teaching something
of the history of literature, he is to
counteract influences that have fif-
teen years the start of him, and fif-
teen times as great present oppor-
tunity. The only remarkable thing
is that, under such circumstances, he
accomplishes anything at all."

The important thing is to have a
right understanding of the situation,
and the remarks we have just quoted
are very much to the point. Large

masses of people are apt to be rebel-
lious in matters of grammar, and, in
general, indifferent to established
laws of speech. Language which
they use for everyday purposes is, in
their opinion, "good enough" if it
serves those purposes. It is the coin
of thought, and so long as it passes
current they are satisfied, however
clipped or debased it may be. There
are no great literary monuments in
the background, as it were, of the
national consciousness which tend
to keep language to a classic form.
There is nothing, for example, which
exercises at all the same influence
upon us as a people as the Homeric
poems and the works of the great
dramatists — but particularly the Ho-
meric poems — did upon the ancient
Greeks. Even if we had any works
which stood in something like the
same relation to our national life,
the printing press has made it un-
necessary for us to enrich or burden
(as we may consider it) our memories
with any portions of such literature.
When books were scarce, people had
to make books of their minds, but in
these days of public libraries no such
drudgery as that is necessary; we
want our minds for other things.

How powerless the public school
is to hold the nation together in the
matter of speech is proved by noth-
ing more than by the fact that an
ever-i ncreasin g number of no vels and
tales of domestic production are
written in "dialect." Occasionally
we witness learned and most aca-
demic discussions as to whether a
particular writer has got the " dia-
lect " of a particular region in per-
fect shape. Poets of considerable
note have labored to give currency
to very degraded forms of speech.
Children are encouraged to slur their
words by having the conversation of
other children who do likewise served
up to them in story books. Public-
school teachers themselves in many

EDITOR'S TABLE.

411

cases give evidence in their speech
that all the scholastic training to
which they have been subjected has
not sufl&ced to counterbalance the in-
fluence of their everyday surround-
ings : they will recite a rule of gram-
mar and violate it in the same breath.
Now, we do not belong to the
school of those who think that the ulti-
mate appeal in all questions of lan-
guage must be to the usage of the past,
and who contend for the standard
forms of speech as a man might for
"the faith once delivered to the
saints. " We agree rather with a great
historian and admirable writer, Sir
Francis Palgrave, who says that few
have done so much harra to literature
as " the martinets of language " ; add-
ing that " whenever the era arrives
in which artificial rules for style or
language are accurately laid down
and painfully obeyed, then literature
is approaching her climacteric." We
agree, too, with the more ancient
author of The Art of Poetry, who
says in effect that happy experiments
in enriching a language, at one time
with words recovered from antiquity
and at another with new and ex-
pressive words struggling for recog-
nition, are always in order. It is
one thing, however, to do as Pal-
grave advises, and set the expression
of thought and feeling above the
mere observation of artificial rules;
it is another to disregard all rules
through simple indolence and lack
of idealism — lack of respect for the
vehicle of thought. It is one thing
to do as Horace advises and strive to
strengthen and enrich the speech we
use, and another to throw the door
open to every vulgar 'invention and
conceit of the hour.

We can not better define the evil
with which we have to contend than
by describing it (in words just used)
as a total "lack of idealism" in the
use of language. Considering that ar-
ticulate and significant speech forms

the great line of distinction between
man and the brutes, considering the
infinite riches of thovight and feel-
ing, the treasures of experience, the
varied presentments of human life
that are stored up in language, it
would not seem excessive if some-
thing of reverence toward language
considered as an exalted power and
prerogative of the human mind were
imparted to the young and made
through education a common pos-
session of all normal human beings
in a civilized state. That, however,
would appear to be, in any broad
sense, past hoping for. But what
the many pass by with indiflFerence,
if not contempt, the few may if they
like appropriate. The question which
some at least ought to consider is
whether there are not great and solid
advantages connected with an accu-
rate knowledge and practical mas-
tery of the English language. Of
course, we believe very strongly that
there are, and it would not be diffi-
cult to discuss these advantages at
length under the three heads of in-
tellectual, moral, and aesthetic. Accu-
racy and precision of speech means,
or at least tends strongly toward, accu-
racy and precision of thought. Many
persons have but little distinct con-
sciousness of the words they use, and
to try to hold them to any precise
meaning is hopeless. The way to
remedy such defect of thought is
thi'ough careful and strenuous drill
in the verbal expression of thought —
such drill as language studies prop-
erly conducted will bestow — aided by
scientific drill in the observation of
facts. To what extent mental dis-
honesty is favored by vagueness and
indefiniteness of speech it is almost
needless to observe. Taking finally
the aesthetic view, if any value is set
upon distinction of mind, upon purity
of taste, upon sensibility to the har-
monies of which language is capable,
and sympathy with all the nobler

412

POPULAR SCIENC±: MONTHLY.

phases of human thought and emo-
tion which hterature records, how
are these to he secured and developed
save through a cai'eful cultivation of
the language sense ?

It might not be impossible, we
think, through a proper setting forth
of this aspect of the case, if not to
stem the rising tide of illiteracy, to
engage the interests and the senti-
ments of a respectable minority in
favor of such a study of the English

language and its literature as should
confer the benefits we have men-
tioned. The word culture has been
much abused, but it has a meaning
with which we can not dispense;
and, as an instrument of culture — of
genuine emancipation and elevation
of mind — there is no line of study
which we can place before that
which raises a mind fairly to the
level of a great language and a great
literature.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The query that Prof. Trotchridge takes as the title of his recent book is
one of the most difficult to give a direct answer to that have been pro-
pounded to modern science.* The answer given in this volume presents
electricity to the adult reader from a much different point of view than was
afforded by the treatise of his school or college days — say, ten to thirty
years ago. Our author has designed his book to give a popular presenta-
tion of Maxwell's theory of the electro-magnetic origin of light and heat,
for he holds that by studying the transformations of energy involved in
this theory we can obtain the best idea of what electricity is. The plan of
the volume is to treat in successive chapters the leading phases of the sub-
ject as illustrated by important processes or pieces of apparatus. In the
short chapter on measurements in electricity he shows that gravitation is
used to measure all our electrical manifestations, and then passes to a dis-
cussion of the nature of gravitation itself. In dealing with magnetism he
quotes the expressions of Franklin and his contemporary, Prof. Winthrop,
on this subject, and some of Count Rumfoi'd's views on the transformation
of energy — a subject that bears a fundamental relation to the modern
science of electricity. Passing to later times, he shows that it is to con-
siderations of the nature of the surrounding medium that we owe the chief
advances in our knowledge of magnetism. His account of the dynamo
machine begins with a comparison of Faraday's galvanometer with one of
the present day. This is followed by a description of the construction of a
simple piece of apparatus by means of which the essential features of the
dynamo can be explained. Subjects of other chapters are : Alternating
Currents, Transmission of Power by Electricity, The Leyden Jar, Step-up
Transformers, The Electro-magnetic Theory of Light and the Ether, The X
Rays, and The Sun. The book is popular but not elementary. The treat-
ment is everywhere philosophical, though by this we are far from meaning

* What is Electricity ? By Jolin Trowbridge, S. D. International Scientific Series, vol. Isxv.
New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 315, 12mo. Price, $1.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 413

metaphysical. Technological applications appear only by way of illustra-
tion. The volume contains some fifty diagrams and a frontispiece plate.

For an elementary and thoroughly popular account of electrical phe-
nomena the reader should go to the Library of Useful Stories. We feel
safe in saying that every electrical contrivance known to the general pub-
lic is described and explained in the little book by Mr, Munro* The
chapters on applications of electricity are preceded by accounts of the ap-
paratus and processes employed in the sevei-al modes of generating the
electric force. Throughout the volume is enough of history and anecdote
to justify the title of " Story," and enough of fundamental principles to
base an intelligent acquaintance with the phenomena of this branch of
science upon. Where the history of discoveries and inventions is being
told, the reader should remember that the author is English, and has a full
share of the amusing insular notion that everything worth mentioning was
done first by an Englishman. In the matter of terminology the book has
been edited so as to make it conform to American usage ; some changes
have been made in the cuts also, and new matter has been added to the
same end. There are a hundred illustrations and an adequate index.

It is a little startling to see a renowned chemist described in the title of
a biography as " Poet and Philosopher. " t Davy, however, was certainly
occupied with " natural philosophy," and the designation of poet is far from
misapplied. The pleasing character of the Century Science Series is ad-
mirably maintained by the attractive life-history of him that Dr. Thorpe
has prepared. Of the talents that characterized Davy's adult life the first
to be manifested in his boyhood was his poetic faculty. His best school
exercises, we are told, were his translations into English verse, and he was
often called upon by his schoolmates to write valentines and similar effu-
sions for them. Later it was undoubtedly the vivid' imagery and sympa-
thetic mode of expression derived from this faculty which made his popular
lectures the salvation of the Royal Institution before that establishment
had his brilliant discoveries to lean upon. Our author evidently has as-
sumed that his readers wish to know about Davy's scientific career, and
this thread runs unbroken throughout the volume. At the same time the
human side of the man is shown in references to his fondness for angling,
his devotion to his mother, his friendship with Coleridge, Maria Edgeworth,
and other persons of intellect, the incidents of his marriage, and the charac-
teristics of his disposition. Davy's last important discovery, the principle
of the miner's safety lamp, as well as his first, the anaesthetic property of
laughing gas, have a practical value that easily commands popular ajjpre-
ciation, while his isolation of the metals of the alkalies, his demonstration
of the elementary character of chlorine, and his researches on iodine give
him a permanently high rank among chemists. Dr. Thorpe has relied
largely upon the memoirs of Dr. Paris and of Dr. John Davy, brother of
Sir Humphry, carefully weighing one against the other where they dis-
agree, and he has had much other material in the form of letters, journals,

* The Story of Electricity. By John Miiiiro. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 187, 16mo.
Price, 40 cents.

t Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher. By T. E. Thorpe, LL. D., F. R. S. New York : The
MacmiUan Company. Pp. 240, 12mo. Price, $1.35.

414

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and memoirs of contemporaries, records of societies, pamphlets of the
time, etc.

At the age when the child comes under the care of the teacher some of
his mental faculties are already well advanced on the path of development.
One must go back of this age in order to get a full understanding of the
way in which his mind unfolds. Prof. Compayre goes back to the mo-
ment of birth,* and even quotes inferences of several observers as to the
psychology of jjrenatal existence. There is a good deal of physiology in
the chapter on the newborn child and in that on movements, the first
forms of activity. From the pains that the author takes with fundamental
considerations one would almost think he was a German instead of a
Frenchman. He sums up the history of the child's motions as " irresistible,
blind, fatal impulses at the start; then, little by little, conscious desires,
thoughtless, but lit up by an intellectual representation, by the idea of an
end to be attained; finally, will and efforts." The statement of the child's
muscular needs given in this book ought to convince any reader of the
cruelty of enforcing the command to "sit still" upon young children.
Prof. Compayre next considers the development of sight, showing that the
child is half blind at birth, and only gradually gains the full use of his
eyes. The author (or translator) is rather too literal in interpreting photo-
phobia as " fear " of light, and the same inaccuracy is observable in other
writers on this subject. The newborn child has no real fear of light; the
proper term is intolerance of light. The other senses are also rudimentary
at birth, that of touch being best developed. In discussing the emotions
our author affirms that the pleasures early exceed the pains in the child's
experience. The natural modes of expressing the feelings can be readily
observed in children, who do not restrain such manifestations. Prof.
Compayre finds the first evidences of memory in the nursling's recognition
of familiar faces. The acquirement of language, which itself depends upon
a certain development of the memory, he I'egards as greatly quickening
the fui-ther growth of this faculty. The imagination, consciousness, at-
tention, and association of ideas are described in the two remaining chap-
ters of this volume. The concluding part of the work will deal with
reasoning, learning to talk, the development of the moral sense, and related
topics.

GENERAL NOTICES.

This book will be the first complete illus-
trated botany published in this country.f Its
aim is to represent and describe every spe-
cies, from the ferns upward, mentioned as dis-
tinct by botanists and growing wild within the
area adopted. It is intended, also, to com-

* The Intellectual and Moral Development of
the Child. Part I. By Gabriel Compayre. Inter-
national Education Series, vol. xxxv. New York:
D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 298, 12mo. Price, $1.50.

t An IlluBtrated Flora of the Northern United
States and Canada and the British Possessions.
By Nathaniel Lord Britton, Ph. D., and Hon. Ad-
dison Brown. In 3 vols. Vol. I. New York :
Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp. 612. Price, $6.

plete the work within such moderate limits
of size and cost as shall make it accessible
to the public generally, so that it may serve
as an independent handbook of our Northern
flora, and as a work of general reference, or
as an adjunct and supplement to the manuals
of systematic botany in current use. The
utility of a completely illustrated manual,
both to the botanist and to the non-expert,
is apparent. The most minute and accurate
description may leave a doubt which the
comparison of pictures of the species will
solve. Persons who are not familiar with
botanical terms and the methods of botan-

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

415

ical analysis may find in the illustrations a
ready means for the identification of the
plants that grow around them, and through
the accompanying descriptions they will at
the same time acquire a familiarity with bo-
tanical language. The enterprise of prepar-
ing this work was projected by Judge Brown,
who is President of the Torrey Botanical
Club, and has been diligently prosecuted for
six years under the supervision of Dr. Brit-
ton, and, as to the text, mainly by him ; while
the work in all its parts has been carefully
revised by both authors. The latest ma-
tured results of botanical studies, hei'e and
in Europe, have been availed of for the
work, so as to bring it fully abreast of the
knowledge and scientific conceptions of the
time, and make it answer present needs.
The area treated of has been so liberally
defined as practically to include the entire
flora of the northern portion of the Great
Plains. Most of the arctic plants are also
included, for there are only a few of them
which may not be found within the limits
prescribed for the work. The figures are
all from original drawings for this book,
either from fresh plants or from herbarium
specimens. All have been first drawn of
natural size from medium-sized specimens
and afterward reduced to a proportion which
is indicated. Hence they do not suffer from
the use of a magnifier, but are rather im-
proved by it. The systematic arrangement
has been revised so as to correspond as
nearly as may be with the order of nature
as now understood — as an order of evolution
from the more simple to the more complex —
and the sequence of families adopted by
Engler and Prantl has been closely followed.
The nomenclature is according to the code
devised by the Paris Botanical Congress in
186*7, as modified by the rules adopted by
the Botanical Club of the American Associ-
ation. English names are given as far as
possible, but, in the confusion that exists in
respect to these, great exercise of judgment
in selection has been called for.

In the Social Forces in German Litera-
ture* Dr. Kuno Francke, of Harvard Uni-
versity, attempts to define what seem to him

* Social Forces in German Literature. By
Kimo Francke, Ph. D. New York : Henry Holt
& Co. Pp. 556. Price, $2 net.

the essential features of German literature
from the point of view of the student of
civilization rather than fi'om that of the
linguistic scholar or literary critic. By his
studies and various influences he has been
led to look at the substance rather than the
form of literature, to see in it primarily the
working of popular forces, to consider it
chiefly as an expression of national culture.
His effort is to'supply what seems to be a
decided need of tf book which, based upon
an original study of the sources, should give
a coherent account of the great intellectual
movements of German life as expressed in
literature, and point out the mutual relation
of action and reaction between these move-
ments and social and political conditions.
To his view all literary development is de-
termined by the incessant conflict between
the tendency toward personal freedom and
the tendency toward collective organization.
The subject is considered under this view in
connection with the period of the migrations,
from the fifth to the ninth century; with
the growth of mediteval hierarchy and feu-
dalism, the height of chivalric culture, the
rise of the middle classes, the era of the
Reformation, and the several epochs since,
whose characteristics have been reflected in
literary development ; the whole constituting
an admirable and instructive study of this
phase of the history of civilization.

A very useful little book on How to Feed
Children * has recently come to us from Mrs.
Louise E. Hogan. The framework for the
book consisted of a number of magazine ar-
ticles that have appeared during the last two
years in various journals. The author's aim
has been to offer in a practical form a few
suggestions concerning the application of the
principles of dietetics to feeding in the nur-
sery and throughout the period of childhood.
All the material can of course be found in
technical manuals in a much more extended
form, and there is no claim of originality ;
but an attempt has been made to select the
most important and general rules, and to
present and apply them in a simple and
practical way. While the close relations be-
tween physiology and dietetics are generally

* How to Feed Children. By Louise E. Hogan.
Pp. 236, l2mo. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott
Co. Price, $1.

4i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

recognized, very little account is usually
taken of them in cooking, and the worst re-
sults from their non-observance naturally
occur among children whose digestive tract
is less able to deal with unsuitable material.
The first six chapters deal with the proper
food for infants, and its preparation. Laxa-
tive foods are given a chapter. Nursery diet,
fat in food, diet in illness, and diet for school
children are all chapters of special interest.
There are about twenty pages of receipts, as
well as a good index, appended.

An Inductive Matiual of the Straight
Line and the Circle, by William J. Meyers,
has arisen through the difficulty which the
author has found in dealing with his own
classes in geometry by the ordmary method,
which is a purely deductive one. He be-
lieves that the inductive method will yield
as extensive and exact a knowledge in the
same length of time, a much greater readi-
ness in the application of the knowledge ob-
tained, and a more thorough " training of
the imagination, invention, and judgment."
Instead of a series of written proofs to
memorize, such as, for instance, the sum of
the three angles of a triangle is equal to two
right angles, the student takes the triangle,
and, with suggestions from the teacher where
necessary, works out the various relations be-
tween its sides and angles for himself. The
method seems a great improvement on that
usually adopted. (The author, Fort Collins,
Col.) '

Nature Study, by W. S. Jackman, was
written, says the author, for the purpose of
aiding the elementary teacher in imparting
this very important branch of knowledge to
the younger pupils. The close relation be-
tween Nature study and the other subjects in
the common-school course, and a few of the
more general and essential facts and laws of
natural science, are chiefly dwelt on. The
book is accompanied by a series of charts,
bound separately, which present " a con-
spectus of selected work in Nature study for
each month of the entire year." (The author,
Chicago, 85 cents.)

The second series of Life Histories of
North American Birds — Special Bulletin
No. 3 of the United States National Museum
— by Charles Bendire, relates to the parrots,
cuckoos, anis, trogons, kingfishers, wood-

peckers, goatsuckers, etc. ; swifts, hum-
mingbirds, cotingas, tyrant flycatchers, larks,
crows, jays, magpies, starlings, blackbirds,
orioles, and grackles ; while the former se-
ries (Bulletin No. 1) included the gallina-
ceous birds, pigeons, doves, and birds of
prey. The descriptions have especial refer-
ence to the breeding habits and eggs of the
birds, and are based on the collections in the
museum. The classification of the Ameri-
can Ornithologists' Union has been followed.
The seven plates contain more than two
hundred representations of eggs, reproduced
by chromolithography from original water-
color drawings. We are informed that the
oological collection of the museum has been
increased by the acquisition by gift of the
collection of seven thousand specimens of
Dr. William L. Ralph, of Utica, N. Y. We
hope the collections of all the ornithologists
will be completed soon, and that the rest of
the eggs may be allowed to become birds.
The very first sentence of the first descrip-
tion in this book tells a story that should
make all collectors pause. It is that the
range of the bird in question — the only rep-
resentative of its family in the United States
— is yearly becoming more and more re-
stricted.

The Sixteenth Report of the United States
Geological Survey, the first issued under the
direction of Mr. Charles D. Walcott, appears
in four large, handsome volumes. From the
report of the director in the first volume we
learn that he has not made any radical
changes in either the policy or personnel of
the survey. Such modifications as have been
made are intended to bring his bureau more
in touch with some of the economic and
educational interests of the country. They
include improving the quality of the topo-
graphic maps and marking the subdivision
lines and the township and section cor-
ners on those of States containing public
lands ; placing the entire topographic force
within the classified civil service ; obtain-
ing authority from Congress to print and
sell topographic maps with text for edu-
cational purposes ; enlarging the Divisions
of Hydrography and of Mineral Resources ;
and the making of reconnaissance surveys
of regions supposed to contain impoi'tant
economic resources, in order to obtain in-

S CIENTIFIC LIT ERA T URE.

417

formation which, under the ordinary plan
of awaiting a complete survey of the re-
gion, would be delayed for years. Follow-
ing this report are papers on The Dinosaurs
of North America, by 0. C. Marsh ; Glacier
Biy and its Glaciers, by H. F. Reid ; Some
Analogies in the Lower Cretaceous of Eu-
rope and America, by L. F. Ward ; Struc-
tural Details in the Green Mountain Region
and in Eastern New York, by T. N. Dale ;
and one of three hundred pages on Princi-
ples of Pre-Cambrian North American Geol-
ogy, by C. R. Van Hise. All of these are
adequately illustrated, that of Prof. Marsh
having eighty-five plates. The second vol-
ume is devoted to papers of an economic
character, an account of the Geology and
Mining Industries of the Cripple Creek Dis-
trict, Colorado, having first place. The gen-
eral geology of the district is set forth
by Whitman Cross in considerable detail.
The plan followed involves giving the char-
acter of the various rock formations, the
evidences of action by the ancient Cripple
Creek volcano, and descriptions of the rocks
forming each of the hills in the camp and
vicinity. R. A. F. Penrose, Jr., describes the
mining geology of the district, telling what
ores are met with, how they occur, and the
way in which they were deposited. He also
gives detailed descriptions of the ore depos-
its of the various hills and gulches, and fre-
quently describes the veins followed by indi-
vidual mines. Prof. N. S. Shaler contributes
a paper on the Geology of the Road-building
Stones of Massachusetts, giving the results
of tests made on a considerable variety of
stones, with some discussion of the value of
the different kinds under various practical
conditions. The Economic Geology of the
Mercur Mining District, Utah, is treated by
J. E. Spurr. There are two monographs
bearing on irrigation : The Public Lands and
their Water Supply, by Frederick H. Newell,
and Water Resources of a Portion of the
Great Plains, by Robert Hay. The former
of these papers tells the character of the re-
maining public lands and in what States they
are located, and gives the available sources
of water in each State. The latter gives the
results of an investigation on a strip of coun-
try lying along the eastern boundary of Colo-
rado, this district being chosen as typical of
the Great Plains region. The volume is
VOL. L. — 32

adequately illustrated with maps, diagrams,
photogi'aphic views, etc. The report on the
Mineral Resources of the United States, with
which the name of David T. Day has been
for many years identified, appears for 1894
in a new form. It constitutes the third and
fourth of the royal octavo volumes of the
general Repoi't of the Survey. Mr. Day has
utilized the greatly increased space allowed
him by producing a much more valuable
work in his field than ever before. Iron is
the first of the minerals to be considered,
and in addition to the statistics for the
United States there is an account of the
production of iron ores in various parts of
the world, by John Birkinbine, and a state-
ment of the operations of the iron and steel
industries in all countries, by James M.
Swank. Other metals are treated by various
specialists or by the editor. The second of
Mr. Day's volumes is devoted to non-metallic
products. Here the account of coal produc-
tion, by Edward P. Parker, has first place.
The manufacture of coke and the production
of petroleum and natural gas are presented
by Joseph D. Weeks. William C. Day tells
of the year's operations in the stone indus-
try, Heinrich Ries contributes an account of
the technology of the clay industry, while
minor products are treated by various hands.
The first appearance of monazite in these
reports is made the occasion for a historical
and chemical account of the substance by
H. B. C. Nitze. This is the mineral used
in making incandescent mantles for gas-
burners.

The idea that it is well to become ac-
quainted with the beings that they are to do
their professional work upon has now taken
firm hold upon the teachers of this country.
They are absorbing the many books on the
psychology of children that are offered to
them and demanding other treatises on spe-
cial topics not yet fully or clearly dealt with.
A volume that undertakes the inconspicuous
but fundamental task of supplying facts from
which the characteristics of children may be
learned is the collection of Child Observa-
tions made by students of the State Normal
School at Worcester, Mass., and edited by
Miss Ellen M. HasMl (Heath, $1.50). The
twelve hundred examples of children's do-
ings here presented are purposely confined

4i8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to Imitation and Allied Activities. The de-
sign of the book is fully explained in an in-
troduction contributed by Mr. E. H. Russell,
principal of the normal school. " The rec-
ords," he says, " make no scientific preten-
sions whatever. They are printed in response
to many requests and with the hope of awak-
ening or quickening interest in children sim-
ply as children, not as pupils or as ' material'
for psychological or anthropological study."
Mr. Russell calls attention to the evidence in
these observations of the interest with which
children repeat their imitative acts, this in-
terest being sustained by their vivid fancy.
Their spontaneous activity — muscular and
mental — is another notable characteristic
that he mentions. He also gives a caution
against too much seeking for uniformity in
children. A second volume, embracing an-
other class of these observations, will be
forthcoming if the demand should appear to
warrant it.

The recent political campaign was re-
markably productive of books which have
more than an ephemeral interest. Among
these is TJie Monetary and Banking JProb-
lem, by Logan G. McPherson (Appletons,
$1), consisting of three articles contributed
to this magazine early in 1896, with addi-
tional chapters on bimetallism and on the
standard of value. Mr. McPherson main-
tains that, while gold and silver were suit-
able for money in past conditions of the
world's trade, they are very crude instru-
ments for our present commerce. The use
of both together is made impracticable by
natural laws unless one is subsidiary to the
other. They are being steadily superseded
by paper representatives of value, and the
author looks forward to the adoption of a
new unit which shall be not a specified
weight of metal but a quantity of human
effort. The reasons for the position taken
by him are clearly stated, and the problem
which still confronts the United States in
spite of the verdict of the recent election is
discussed practically and understandingly.

Believers in the gold standard will regard
as pertinent to the times the new edition of
Fiat Money Inflation in France, by Andreiu
D. White (Appletons, paper, 25 cents), which
was one of the books of the recent campaign.
Doubtless many persons will devote some of

their leisure this winter to a further study of
monetary questions, and to them this bit of
history can not fail to be instructive. The
present issue contains an extract from Ma-
caulay on effects of cheap coinage, and an
introduction showing the resemblance of the
scheme tried by France to that proposed for
the United States.

The volume of Proceedings of the Indiana
Academy of Sciences just issued contains
about three hundred pages and a number of
plates. Among the more notable articles
are Call's Revision of the Parvus Group of
Unionidce, Everman and Scovell's Fishes of
the Missouri River Basin, and Investigations
concerning the Redfish. The notable fea-
ture of the Biological Survey Reports is the
series of reports on Turkey Lake. This,' the
largest inland lake of Indiana, has been
chosen as the seat of the Indiana University
Biological Station. The lake is being studied
as a unit of environment with the variation
of its inhabitants. The scope of the report
as indicated by the titles is about as follows :
Report on the physical features ; hydro-
graphic map, with contours for every ten feet
of depth ; temperatures ; the inhabitants, by
Eigenmann, Ridgley, Kellicott, Birge, Hay,
Call, Atkinson, Roddick, and Chamberlain ;
methods of studying variation, by Eigen-
mann ; and the variation of Etheostoma ca-
prodes, by Moenkhaus.

The instructor who has had for several
years a large class of beginners in organic
chemistry knows how much of his time is
required to initiate his neophytes into the
new kind of laboratory work that they are
taking up. He will not need to be told the
value of a book that could give the necessary
directions clearly, briefly, and without the
omission of any essential caution or quali-
fication. Such a book Dr. Ludwig Qatter-
mann aimed to produce in his Practical
Methods of Organic Chemistry, and with so
much success that a translation into English
has seemed warranted (Macmillan, $1.60).
Dr. Gattermann describes first such general
operations as crystallization, simple distilla-
tion, distillation with steam, etc., not omit-
ting the drying and cleaning of vessels. In
this general part are included qualitative
tests and the quantitative determination of
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and the

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

419

halogens. Passing to special preparations,
the author gives directions for thirteen reac-
tions in the aliphatic series, forty-two in the
aromatic, and one example each with a sub-
stance in the pyridine and quinoline series.
Directions for preparing a few inorganic re-
agents are also given. The attention of the
student is called to the significance of each
reaction described, so that his knowledge
shall be something more than empirical.
The volume is illustrated with eighty-two
cuts of apparatus.

" I sometimes wonder whuther it's bein'
good thet makes some folks infidils, er
whuther it's bein' infidils thet makes some
folks so good," remarks one of the characters
in The Reason Wky^ and in the association of
these ideas strikes the keynote of the story.
In bis preface the author, Ernest E. Russell^
says, " There was a time when such a story as
I have tried to write would have helped me,"
and in an unquestionably genuine desire to
help others he makes his story a vehicle for
the reasons that lead many thoughtful men
and women to reject the Christian religion.

These reasons are quite fully stated, chapters
and parts of chapters being devoted to the
inherent probability or improbability of the
Scriptures, the action of early councils of the
Church in forming the canon and the creeds,
the Arian " heresy," the Nestorian " heresy,"
the return to Augustine in the Reforma-
tion, miracles, possession by evil spirits, and
kindred topics. Several minor matters are
touched upon in passing, such as the bene-
ficial influence of industry, the wreck of hap-
piness likely to follow the marriage of per-
sons having opposite religious beliefs when
one has the proselyting spirit, the rightful-
ness of doing to a human being what we re-
gard as an act of mercy to a brute, namely,
shortening the suffering that precedes death,
etc. The thread of story is sufficient to give
coherence to the book, while the characters,
who are country people of a generation ago
and educated young persons of rural origin,
are excellently portrayed. Thoughtful per-
sons who have drifted away from early re-
ligious teaching will enjoy and profit by Tlie
Reason Why. (The author, 13 Astor Place,
New York.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Colleges and Experiment Stations.
New Hampshire College: The Army Worm. — New
York Station: Effects of Drought upon Milk Pro-
duction; Feeding Experiments with Laying Hens;
Report of Analysis of Commercial Fertilizers for
the Spring of 1806; The Real Value of "Natural
plant Fooa." — United States Department: Washed
Soils: how to Prevent and Reclaim them; The
Peach-Tree Borer; The Principal Household In-
sects of the United States. — Climate and Crop
Service, Reports for September and October, 1896.

Archer, William. Fridtiof Nansen, 1861-1893.
New York: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 402.

Beal, W. J. Grasses of North America. Vol.
II. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 106. $5.

Boas, Franz. Songs of the Kivakintl Indians.
Pp. 9 (quarto).

Bolles, Albert S. The Elements of Commer-
cial Law. New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 344.

Bryce, James. The American Commonwealth
(abridged edition for the use of colleges and high
schools*). New York: The Macmillan Co. Pp.
547. $1.75.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Proceedings, etc. Bos-
ton Society of Natural History: Proceedings of;
Some Facts in regard to the Distribution o] Cer-
tain Mammals in New England and Northern
New York: A New Occurrence of Carboniferous
Fossils in the Narragansett Basin ; On the Frac-
ture System of Joints; An Important Addition to
the F'auna of Massachusetts; The Jura of Texas;
The Beach Mouse of Muskeget Island; Condi-
tions and Effects of the Expulsion of Gases from
the Earth; On the Larvae of the Higher Bombyces;
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, May, lsy6.—
International Arbitration, Report of the Second
Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference
on. — Smithsonian Institution: Notes on the Vam-
pire Bat.— T-square Club of Philadelphia: Nine-

teenth Annual Report, Season 1893-''96 — United
States Commission of Fish and Fisheries: Re-
port upon Salmon; Investigations in the Head
Waters of the Columbia River in Idaho, and
Notes upon Fishes observed in that State. — United
States Geological Survey: Some Analogies in the
Lower Cretaceous of Europe and America. —United
States National Museum: Proceedings of; De-
scription of a New Species of Bat of the genus
Olossoij/iaga. — Washburn, F. L.: The Eastern
Oyster on the Oregon Coast (a preliminary report
to the State Fish and Game Commissioner).

Cambridge Natural History, The. Edited by
S. F. Harmer and A. E. Shipley. Vol. II. Flat-
worms and Mesozoa, by F. W. Gamble; Nemer-
tines, by Miss L. Sheldon; Threadworms and
Sagitta, by A. E. Shipley; Rotifers, by Marcus
Hartog; Polychaet Worms, by W. Blaxland Ben-
ham; Earthworms and Leeches, by F. E. Bed-
dard; Gephyrea and Phoronis, by A. E. Shipley.
Polyzoa, by S. F. Hanner. New York: The Mac-
millan Co. Pp. 560. $3.50.

Hawley, Thomas D. Infallible Logic. A Vis-
ible and Automatic System of Reasoning. Lan-
sing, Mich.: Robert Smith Printing Co. Pp. 659.

Holden, Edward S. Mountain Observations
in America and Em-ope. (Smithsonian Miscella-
neous Collections, 1035 ) Pp. 77.

Hunting. (The Out-of-door Library.) New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Pp.327. $1.50.

Keller, I. First Year in German. New York:
American Book Co. Pp 290.

Labor, Tenth Annual Report of the Commis-
sioner of, 1894. Pp. 1909.

Leary, Luke. The Flirt to Death. New York:
J. S. Ogilvie. Pp. 128.

Lewis, H. Edwin. The Philosophy of Sex.
Burlington, Vt. : The Vermont Medical Publlsh-
mg Co. Pp. 51. 35 cents.

420

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Marvin, C. F. Kite Esperimeirts at the
Weather Bureau. Weather Bulletin No. 110.

Merriam, Florence A. A Birding on a Broncho.
New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Pp. 226.
$1.25.

Moore, K. C. The Mental Development of
a Child. (Itlonograph Supplement to the Psycho-
logical Review.) New York: The MacmUlan Co.
Pp. 150.

Morse, Edward S. On the So-called Bow-
pullers of Antiquity. Pp. 25. Author: Salem,
Mass.

Present Problems. Vol. I. Nos. 7, 8, 9, and
10. A Free Coinage Catechism; Silas Balsam's
Letter on Law; Repudiation and Honor; Petro-
leum V. Nasby on Silver ; and Free Coinage and
the Farmer. New York: Present Problems Pub-
lishing Co.

Railroad, The, in Education. By A. Hogg.
Louisville: J. P. Morton & Co. Pp. 128.

Ramsay, William. The Gases of the Atmos-
phere. New York: The Macmillan Co. Pp. 240.
$2.00.

Reprints. Becker, George F. : Schistosity and
Slaty Cleavage (from United States Geological
Survey Report) ; The Witwatersrand and the Re-
volt of the Uitlanders (from National Geographic
Magazine, November, 1896).— Boas, Franz: The
Decorative Art of the Indians of the North Pacific
Coast (Science, July 24, 1896).— Hodge, F. W.:

Pueblo Indian Clans (American Anthropologist,
October, 1896).— Keen, W. W.: Three Cases of
Plastic Nasal Surgery (Therapeutic Gazette, July,
1896); The Surgical Treatment of Intracranial
Tumors (University Medical Magazine, March,
1896).— Keyes, C. R.: Orotaxis: a Method of Geo-
logic Correlation (American Geologist, Novem-
ber, 1896). — Rotzell: Use and Disuse (Hahneman-
nian Monthly, November, 1896).— Shufeldt, R. W.:
The Cormorant Rookeries of the Lofoten Islands
(The Auk, October, 1896).— Stuver, E.: The Rela-
tion of the Physician to Social, Educational, and
Moral Questions (Colorado State Medical Society,
June, 1896).— Teit, James.: A Rock Painting of
the Thompson River Indians, British Columbia
(Bulletin American Museum of Natural History,
vol. viii), — Thomas, H. M., and Keen, W. W.: A
Successful Case of Removal of a Large Brain
Tumor from the Left Frontal Region (American
Journal of the Medical Sciences, November, 1896).

Sarg, J. F. A New Dairy Industry. Kemps-
ville, Va. : Black Forest Farm. Pp. 162.

Shinn, Charles Howard. The Story of the
Mine. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton&Co.

273. $1.50.

Taylor, Henry Osborn. Ancient Ideals. Two
vols. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp.
Pp. 461 and 430.

Thompson, Edward P. ROntgen Rays and
Phenomena of the Anode and Cathode. New
York: D. VanNostrand Co. Pp.100. $1.50.

"gXiiQnxtnXs of ^txtwtt.

Edncation and Industrial Prosperity. —

For several years past there has been a
growing appreciation of the close relation
between the general educational system of a
country and its industrial prosperity. The
striking advance in the latter respect which
has occurred in Germany, and the perfection
of her universities and mechanical schools,,
have formed a valuable object lesson, which,
although surprisingly slow in doing its work,
seems at last to have awakened English
scientists and economists to the pressing
need for action. For a number of years
large sums have been spent annually in pro-
viding technical schools in England, but they
have apparently had little effect in helping
her to retain the commercial supremacy
of which she had for so many years been
the possessor. Mr. William's book, " Made
in Germany," seems to have started the dis-
cussion anew, and Prof. William Ramsay has
recently published an article, apparently sug-
gested by Dr. Ostwald's letter in the Times
(describing the methods of instruction in
physics and chemistry in German univer-
sities), in which he attempts to locate the
cause of the failure of the English school

system. In Prof. Ramsay's opinion, it is the
English university which is at fault, and
more especially its examination system. He
says : " In Germany, as shown by Prof. Ost-
wald, little importance is attached to exam-
inations. The student, after spending a year
and a half or two years in mastering the
general aspects of his subject, proceeds to
carry out some research. . . . During all
this time he is not pestered with having to
prepare for periodical examinations, requir-
ing the rapid assimilation of a sufficient
number of facts to enable him to pass. Even
at the end of his career the examination is
considered of secondary importance. . . .
The result of this freedom from mental
worry is that the student is able to imbibe
that spirit of love of knowledge for its own
sake, and that enthusiasm for its advance-
ment, which lie at the base of all true prog-
ress in science. From among such students
the German manufacturers are drawn. . . .
In England we have no such incentive to a
university career. . . . The aim of most of
our students is a degree, and the degree is
awarded on the results of frequent examina-
tions." This latter state of mind can obvious-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCF.

421

ly have but one result in the great majority
of cases, namely, that of making the knowl-
edge gained simply the means of obtaining a
degree, and not an end in itself — a something
to be used and then thrown aside and forgot-
ten. The absolute inability of most students
to make any practical application of their col-
lege learning, or to see the connection and in-
terdependence between its various branches,
is a clear indication of the light in which they
regard it. The same conditions which pre-
vail in the English schools are even more pro-
nounced in the United States, and while Prof.
Ramsay's causa vera is only part of the story,
his article as well as Dr. Ostwald's letter de-
serves the thoughtful attention of our edu-
cators and economists, for, while we have no
commercial supremacy to lose, we have, what
is perhaps more important, one to gain.

Prospective Railway Routes in Africa. —

In describing, before the Geographical Sec-
tion of the British Association, the probable
railroad routes in Africa, Major Leonard
Darwin, president of the section, mentioned
the routes up the Nile and into parts of the
central Soudan as among the most important.
In the Nile route, the river itself would afford
a large part of the medium of communica-
tion ; but the region of the cataracts, covering
several hundred miles, would have to be
spanned by a railway connecting the lower
river with Berber. Above Berber is a navi-
gable waterway at high Nile for fourteen
hundred miles to the Fels rapids, besides be-
tween four hundred and six hundred miles
on the Blue Nile and the Bahr-el-Gazal.
There is, perhaps, only one other place in
Africa where an equal expenditure would
open up such a large tract of country as be-
tween Suakim and Berber. Two routes for
railways from the coast to the Victoria Ny-
anza have been proposed, one running through
the British and the other through the Ger-
man sphere of influence. The German route
would be the shorter of the two ; but there
is some reason to think that the British line
will open up more country east of the lake
which will be suitable for prolonged residence
by white men. A line from the south end of
Lake Tanganyika to the northern end of Lake
Nyassa and thence to the coast would open
up a vast extent of territory, and would, espe-
cially if eventually connected with the Vic-

toria Nyanza, be more valuable than any
other line in Africa in putting an end to the
slave trade. On the west coast, the Congo
points to the most important line of commu-
nication. After a hundred and fifty miles
of navigable waterway we come to two hun-
dred miles of rapids, along which a hundred
and seventeen miles of rails are already laid.
Then, on entering Stanley Pool there are, ac-
cording to the Belgian estimates, seven thou-
sand miles of waterway. If all the repre-
sentations are correct, there is no place in all
Africa where two hundred miles of railway
may be expected to produce such marked
results. Another region of great promise is
that of the Niger, but the political conditions
of th^ country — it lying on the border land
between the Mohammedan and the pagan
tribes — make the early execution of railways
somewhat problematical. Formidable moun-
tain ranges being few, the chief impediments
to railway construction in Africa are the
drifting sands, wide tracts of rocky country,
the dampness of the forest causing rapid
decay of material, and the deadly nature of
the climate.

Tlie Evolution of Aseptic Surgery.— A

part of the presidential address of Sir Joseph
Lister at the British Association was devoted
to the story of the development of the au-
thor's system of aseptic treatment of wounds.
It began with the publication of the results
of Pasteur's researches on fermentation, by
which it was proved that putrefaction was
not produced by any chemical action of the
atmosphere, but by germs. Sir Joseph then
sought for some substance that would pre-
vent the development of germs in the bodily
tissues without harming the tissues them-
selves, and found it in carbolic acid. Diluted
with water, this substance when applied
quickly transferred itself to the tissues and
attacked the germs. In cases to which the
watery solution was not adapted, or where it
was too irritating, a solution in some organic
substance, not parting with the carboUc acid
so readily, was found to be bland and unirri-
tating, and sei-ved as a reliable store of the
antiseptic. While continuing his experi-
ments in confirmation of Pasteur's theory,
Sir Joseph found that blood drawn with
antiseptic precautions into sterilized vessels
might remain free from microbes for an in-

422

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

definite time, even wlien exposed to the ac-
cess of air or with ordinary water added to
it. He even found that if very putrid blood
was largely diluted with sterilized water, so
as to diffuse its microbes widely and wash
them clean of their acrid products, a drop of
such dilution added to pure blood might leave
it unchanged for days at the temperature of
the body, although a trace of the septic liquid
undiluted caused intense putrefaction within
twenty-four hours. Hence he was led to
conclude that it was the grosser forms of
septic mischief, rather than microbes in the
attenuated condition in which they exist in
the atmosphere, that were to be dreaded in
surgical practice. He hinted to the London
Medical Congress in 1881 that it might turn
out possible to disregard the atmospheric
dust altogether, but did not venture to prac-
tice upon the hint till 1890, when he brought
forward, at the Berlin Congress, what he
believed to be absolute demonstration of the
harmlessness of atmospheric dust in surgical
operations. " This conclusion has been justi-
fied by subsequent experience. The irritation
of the wound by antiseptic irrigation and
washing may therefore now be avoided, and
Nature left quite undisturbed to carry out
her best methods of repair, while the surgeon
may conduct his operations as simply as in
former days, provided always that, deeply
impressed with the tremendous importance
of his object, and inspiring the same convic-
tion in all his assistants, he vigilantly main-
tains from first to last, with a care that, once
learned, becomes instinctive, but for the want
of which nothing else can compensate, the
use of the simple means which will suffice to
exclude from the wound the coarser forms
of septio impurity."

The Iron Age in Aboriginal Art. — Prof.
0. T. Mason has been led, from his studies of
aboriginal art, to attach great importance to
the influence on the native American mind
of the iron age, which he defines in the
American Anthropologist as " the conserva-
tive folk age, the middle age as distin-
guished from the Renaissance, which re-
placed the old in progressive Europe." It is
almost impossible. Prof. Mason says, for one
looking over a collection of Americana, " to
decide positively whether he is regarding the
unadulterated Western hemisphere, or me-

diaeval Europe, or native Africa, or some
happy combination of these. In the New
World during four centuries, as in the Old
World, the activities, the whole life, of the
native people were partly such as belong to
a common humanity, such as arise through
a partnership and co-operation between any
group of human beings and their environ-
ment, and such as came to them from for-
eign lands living in the iron age of Europe.
. . . There is hardly a tribe on this conti-
nent that has never heard of iron ; there are
tribes of Americans that preserve only a
vestige of native life. Even the archaeolo-
gist is often in doubt regarding buried speci-
mens. Shell heaps, mounds, caves, and
cemeteries often hide iron-made products
among the goodly stuff, exciting a reason-
able doubt concerning the probable author-
ship of the works themselves."

Value of Horseless Vehicles.— In a paper
in the British Association, Mr. A. R. Sennett
traced the history of mechanical locomotion
from the sixteenth century, when horseless
vehicles were run by means of springs,
touched upon the automotors of succeeding
centuries, cited the instance of a light wind-
propelled vehicle which made the journey
between Bristol and London in the early
part of this century, and led up to the self-
propelled vehicles of the present day. He
pointed out that horseless locomotion on the
European continent was looked upon more
from the point of view of sport than of
adaptation to transport in commercial and
industrial operations. The author predicated,
however, that we should enter upon the sub-
ject in a far more serious manner. Notwith-
standing the immense mileage of railroads
in England (and in the United States, too,
we may add), a considerable proportion of
the mileage of good common roads is repre-
sented by roads connecting towns situated
at a considerable distance from railway sta-
tions. Such towns and outlying stations
could be far more efficiently served by judi-
ciously organized systems of horseless road
locomotives than ever could be done by the
most elaborate system of light railways.
Whether we took the case of the heavy and
slow haulage of the farmer and the team
owner, or the light and rapid deUvery re-
quired by the tradesman, we should find that

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

423

economy is upon the side of mechanical pro-
pulsion. Horseless vehicles were believed to
compare favorably in point of cost and de-
preciation with horse vehicles.

The Work of Physical Chemistry. — Prof.
William A. Noyes, as Vice-President for the
Chemical Section of the American Associa-
tion, opened his section with a very interest-
ing and suggestive review and forecast of
the achievements of physical chemistry.
Though the progress of this branch seems
slow in comparison with what we may
conceive as ultimately possible, notable ad-
vance has been made through the efforts
of the numerous investigators who have
been industriously working in it. Light has
been cast upon many problems, and it is
now possible to predict phenomena of which
the operator could formerly have knowledge
only by experiment. The older methods
have given place to mathematical determina-
tions, and new regions of investigation have
been opened to chemists. We have still be-
fore us, however, the vast task of learning
how to save and utilize the immense propor-
tion of the power — far exceeding that which
is saved — which now goes to waste in all
our operations. To make good as large a
part as possible of that which Is now lost
should be the object of future work in phys-
ical chemistry.

A Woman among African Cannibals. —

Miss Kingsley, who returned to England in
the fall of 1895, after a journey of nearly a
year in the Cameroons, collecting fishes, re-
lates stories of thrilling adventures, particu-
larly among the Fangwe cannibals living
between the Ogowe and Rembwe Rivers.
These people are always at war with one an-
other, and are one of the few tribes in Africa
that eat their own dead. As her little band
of three Fangwe "elephant men" and four
Djuma men approached each Fangwe town,
it was found to be in a state of defense, and
the leader of the band invariably fell into
some trap which the inhabitants had laid
outside the town for the enemy. At almost
every town the Fangwe stopped the expedi-
tion and wanted to eat the Fangwe elephant
men, who were of a hostile section. Miss
Kingsley had guaranteed the elephant men
safety, and sometimes by persuasion, some-

times by threats of punishment, and some-
times by a little present, they were saved.
Not one burial place was found in the coun-
try, but pieces of human bodies are kept in
most of the native mud huts just as civilized
people keep eatables in their larders. The
Adjumas, on the other hand, bury their dead
in the forest. Miss Kingsley climbed the
Cameroons Peak, 13, 700 feet high. At an
altitude near 10,000 feet, she came across
the great crater. There are about seventy
craters in the Cameroons Mountains, and
from the largest of these the peak shoots
up almost perpendicularly on the sea side ;
hence it has to be reached from the other
side. Inland from the Cameroons the Rum-
bi Mountains are inhabited up to about 7,000
feet, and Miss Kingsley found shelter in na-
tive huts. In the higher ascent she had to
sleep on the ground in the open air, and was
frequently drenched by the heavy rains, but
suffered no injury to health thereby. In the
canoe journey up the Ogowe, the craft was
upset and its occupants thrown into the
water nearly a dozen times. Miss Kingsley
had several narrow escapes, and was saved
more than once by clutching the rocks in
the rapids and holding on to them till the
natives righted the canoe.

Drifting Fruits. — For nearly three hun-
dred years a curious fruit has been found
drifting along the coasts of the West Indies,
concerning the origin and nature of which
nothing could be determined. It was first
noticed, described, and pictured by Clusius
in the Exoticorum libri decern in 1605. The
next reference to it was by Johannes Jonston,
in his Latin history of trees and fruits, in
1662. It was noticed again in 1680, and
thence down to 1764, after which it does not
seem to have been mentioned till 1884, when
Mr. D. Morris collected specimens of it near
Kingston, Jamaica ; and in 1887 a specimen
was picked up on the shore of Bigborough
Bay, in the south of England. In ^March,
1889, it was identified by Mr. J. H. Hart,
Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens at
Trinidad, as the fruit of Sacoglottis ama-
zonica, or, locally, cojon de burro, a tree
very rare in Trinidad, but more abundant in
the delta of the Amazon. From one or both
of these localities, says Mr. Morris, who de-
scribes the fruit and gives its history in Na-

424

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ture. " The fruits are carried by the waters
of the Gulf Stream into the Caribbean Sea,
and either thrown ashore on the West Indian
Islands or carried still farther, as in the
case of many other similar fruits, across the
North Atlantic and cast on the shores of
western Europe." Of these other similar
fruits, Mr. Morris mentions the Laodicea of
the Seychelles — known as coco de mer —
which was first found floating ; the " sea
apples " or " sea cocoanut " — fruits of the
Bursa palm — which drift in the West Indian
seas ; the large brown beans of the Cocoon,
or Entada scandens, which are cast ashore in
various parts of the world ; and a specimen
of Ccesalpinia bonduc.

An Experinieut iu Irrigation. — The re-
sults of experiments in irrigation of garden
crops are given by Prof. Byron D. Halsted
in the report of the Botanical Department
of the New Jersey Agricultural Experi-
ment Station. The water was applied in the
latter part of the season, and therefore only
to the later crops ; to the second crop of
golden wax bean, and to pepper, turnips,
egg plant, and celery. The yield of beans
from similar plots was as 17 pounds and 1
ounce not irrigated to 45 pounds irrigated ;
of peppers, 'JIV fruits to 1,277 fruits. The
peppers from the unirrigated belt, moreover,
filled only six and a half peach baskets, with
a total weight of 80 pounds, while those
from the irrigated belt filled eleven and a
quarter like baskets, with a total weight of
147 pounds. Further, the irrigated peppers
were plumper and better colored and of far
superior quality and brought much more in
the market. In the plants themselves the
leaves of the unirrigated belts looked wilted
and limp, while those of the irrigated plants
stood up fresh and strong. Irrigation pro-
longed the season of fruitage and the frosts
caught the plants still blooming and bearing
fruits in all stages of growth. With egg
plants and tomatoes the experiments were
made too late for the most satisfactory re-
sults. Those crops want midsummer rather
than autumn irrigation. Irrigation of tur-
nips caused vigorous growth of the plants,
but increased the tendency to club. Better
effects may be expected iu land free from
the club-root fungus. The crop of celery was
increased iu the irrigated rows to two and a

half times that upon the rows not receiv-
ing the water. In marketable product, in
pounds, the difference was three to one, and
in marketable value about eight to one in
favor of irrigation.

Significance of Morpliological Botany. —

The problem of morphological botany was
characterized by Dr. D. H. Scott, of Kew
Gardens, in his sectional address at the Brit-
ish Association, as a purely histological one,
and perfectly distinct from any of the ques-
tions with which physiology has to do. Yet
there is a close relation between these two
branches of biology, at any rate to thoge who
maintain the Darwinian position, for from that
point of view we see that all the characters
which the morphologist has to compare are, or
have been, adaptive. Hence, it is impossible
for the morphologist to ignore the functions
of those organs of which he is studying the
homologies. There is no essential difference
between adaptive and morphological charac-
ters, but the physiologist is interested in the
question how organs work ; the morphologist
asks, What is their history ? The origin of
the great groups of plants is perhaps an in-
soluble problem, but all that can be directly
observed or experimented upon is the occur-
rence of variations. Such investigations can
but throw a side light on the historical ques-
tion of the origin of the existing orders of
living things, and the morphologist must use
other methods of research. In judging of
the affinities of fossil plants vegetative char-
acters must be made use of, and especially
characters drawn from anatomical structure.
In many specimens the anatomical features
are the only ones known, and in cases where
the reproductive structures have been discov-
ered the conclusions drawn from anatomical
characters have been confirmed. The study
of fossil botany is thus likely to call atten-
tion to points of structure formerly passed
over. Anatomical characters are being made
use of in the classification of the higher
plants, and thus an effort is being made to
place the classification on a broader basis.
They are undeniably adaptive, but it is a
mistake to suppose that they are necessarily
the expression of recent adaptations ; on the
contrary, there are examples of marked pe-
culiarities which have become the property
of large groups of plants. A given anatomi-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

425

cal character may be of a high degree of
constancy in one group, while extremely va-
riable in another ; and characters are often
most constant when most adaptive.

Hornbooks. — Hornbooks — those leaflets
containing the alphabet, the a-b-abs, a text
for exorcism, the Lord's Prayer, and the
Roman numerals, framed and covered with
transparent horn as with a glass — with which
the first lessons in reading were administered
to our ancestors, have disappeared so entirely
that they are hardly known except to an-
tiquaries, yet they were common in England
down to the time of George II, and were
introduced into America in the seventeenth
century. Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, who has
written their history, says that the preserva-
tion of many of those which have come down
to us is due to the tricks of little boys, who
dropped the hateful things through cracks
in the floor or wainscoting, to be brought to
light again when the house was pulled down.
The earliest hornbook known to be left,
which is assigned to the middle of the six-
teenth century, was found behind the pan-
eling of a farmhouse. A hornbook called
the Middleton was discovered in 1828 in the
thatch of an old cottage. As spelling books
came more and more into use, hornbooks
became obsolete; and when they were no
longer in demand it is said that a million and
a half were destroyed in one warehouse.
They could, however, be found in use in the
country villages down into the present cen-
tury ; and there may be people still living
who took their first lessons from them, and
had scholastic chastisement administered
with the backs of them. As they became
scarce, specimens of them rose in value ; and
while the usual price of them had been a
penny, three halfpence, or twopence, a fa-
mous copy — the Bateman Hornbook — was
sold at auction for three hundred and twenty-
five dollars. This book was three inches and
three quarters high and two inches and seven
eighths wide, with a handle an inch long, and
was covered, except the handle, with leather.
The alphabet was preceded by the Cross, and
this was the case with most of the horn-
books. Hence the phrase, " criss-cross row."
The back was stamped with a figure of
Charles I, bareheaded and in armor, on
horseback. At the top corner and facing

the king was a large celestial crown, issuing
from a cloud above his head, and in the other
corner an angel's face and wings. The book
bore other marks of less interest. Some of
the hornbooks were costly. Queen Eliza-
beth gave one of silver filigree to Lord
Chancellor Egerton, and others were made
of ivory and bone. Finally, we come to the
gingerbread hornbook, which seems once to
have been a common baker's dainty. Of it
Prior wrote :

To Master John the English Maid
A Hornbook gives of gingerbread ;
And that the Child may learn the better
As he can name, he eats the Letter.

Hornbooks may be seen portrayed in pic-
tures by the German and Dutch masters, as
in Rembrandt's " Christ Blessing Little Chil-
dren " and the works of Jan Steen and Van
Ostade.

Value of " Useless " Research. — The re-
port of the British Association's committee
on the establishment of a national phys-
ical laboratory, after referring to what is
done and what can be done for promoting
research by the universities and schools and
other existing institutions, specifies partic-
ular types of investigation which are outside
the range of effort possible for such institu-
tions or for an individual — such as observa-
tions of natural phenomena, the study of
which must be protracted through periods
longer than the average duration of human
life ; testing and verification of physical in-
struments and preservation of standards ; and
the systematic and accurate determination of
physical constants and numerical data which
may be useful for scientific or industrial pur-
poses. In the discussion of this report.
Prof. Fitzgerald opposed divorcing the uni-
versities from research, but hoped they would
teach the usefulness of " useless " research,
while investigations of commercial impor-
tance should be relegated to a national lab-
oratory. Prof. Kohlrausch, of the Physical
Training Institute (the Reichsanstalt) at Ber-
lin, showed how completely that institution
was answering the purposes for which it was
founded, as illustrated in the great develop-
ment of the technical glass industry, partic-
ularly of thermometer-making ; the improve-
ment of photometers and standards for
measuring light ; and researches in apparatus

426

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

for measuring furnace temperatures. Scien-
tific discovery, he declared, wiiether costly
or cheap, is, in its results, beyond price,
for you never know whether the abstract dis-
covery will not lead to inventions of great
industrial importance. He could point to
quite small physical discoveries which later
received great technical applications. When
Huygens investigated the singular double
refraction of calcareous spar, no one sup-
posed that so small a point in physics would
have a commercial value over the whole
world in the sugar industry and in brewing.

Agricultural Depression. — A recent edi-
torial in Garden and Forest, under the above
title, deserves the careful attention of the
farmer. It is based on an address delivered
by Prof. Bailey before a horticultural school
in this State. Prof. Bailey protested, in the
first place, against the prevalent idea that
the farmer is suffering more than other mem-
bers of the community. He is suffering
from the general stagnation of business, and
is no worse oif than his neighbor. There is
no special road to renewed prosperity for the
farmer unless the condition of the whole coun-
try is improved, and any legislation designed to
aid farmers as a class would be not only in-
effective but pernicious. The farms of New
York State average from three thousand to
five thousand dollars in value, and with this
capital invested prudent farmers are able to
support their families, while it is doubtful if
the same amount of capital invested in busi-
ness would average as much. Prof. Bailey
added that under the homestead act great
areas of free and railroad lands were taken
possession of by numbers of immigrants who
rushed into the West to make homes for
themselves. The area of cultivated land in-
creased at a much more rapid rate than the
population grew, and a surplus of breadstuffs
soon caused depressed prices. Since the
greater part of our arable lands are now
occupied, the population is growing more
rapidly than the area of cultivated land is
€xpandmg, so that we may look for the time
in the near future when the demand for food
will, in some measure, equal the supply, and
then the stringency will cease and the farmer
may expect a greater reward for his labor ;
and not only this, but we may expect a great
advance in agricultural and horticultural

science and practice in the next few years.
" Phosphates from rock and potash from the
Stassfurt mines are already cheap, and even
now it is announced that German investiga-
tors are on the eve of perfecting processes
for drawing upon the vast stores of nitrogen
iu the air, so as to make that most expensive
element of plant food as cheap as the others.
Prof. Nobbe, of Saxony, the distinguished
plant physiologist, claims that he has pro-
duced on a commercial scale pure cultures of
the different bacteria which are efficient in
affixing the free nitrogen of the air in a
form available for plant food, and has them
for sale in small glass bottles. It is claimed
that the soil can be inoculated with these
organisms for the modest sum of one dollar
and twenty-five cents an acre. Of course, it
may be premature to place much confidence
in this new method of securing fertility, but
it has long been considered probable, and is
of enough importance to have been made the
subject of several papers read before the
Royal Agricultural Society of England."

Exploration of Spitzbergen.— The ex-
ploring expedition of Sir Martin Conway and
Mr. Trevor-Battye to Spitzbergen had among
its members a geologist, a naturalist, and an
artist — three factors to the production of as
complete a picture as possible of what they
saw. The object of the journey was to pene-
trate into the interior of the island, of which
the coast was already fairly well known. The
spectacle as they entered one of the western
fiords was described by Sir Martin Conway
in the British Association as having been
extraordinarily brilliant. " They thought
Spitzbergen must be in heaven." They had
anticipated, from what had been written of
the country, that they would have to cross
either glaciers or a snow sheet, and had
therefore provided themselves with Nansen
sledges. But as they proceeded it proved that
their journey was to be over broken stones
and bogs. On the first day, when they had
journeyed half a mile, they found that their
path lay between a slope on the right and
cliffs on the left, while every four or five
hundred yards there was a deep gully with
practically vertical sides. These gullies were
filled with rotten snow. On the first day
they covered about three miles, and their
progress through the island was a repetition

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

427

of that experience. They had gone too early.
If they had started at the end of August in-
stead of the end of June, the snow would
have been melted, and they would have made
better headway. Eventually they got some
distance inland, and then they turned south-
east in the direction of Advent Bay. On
their way they found a peak near them,
which they climbed. The rock was rotten,
there were large holes through it, and the
whole seemed to tremble with the weight of
a single man. On reaching the top they
found that the white plains they had seen
on landing consisted of a number of plateaus,
and that valleys of much greater extent lay
between. Descending, they entered a large
valley which was enveloped in cloud, and for
five or six hours were passing, sometimes
up to their knees, sometimes up to their
waists, through some exceedingly soft slush.
In time they reached the foot of a very
remarkable glacier which afforded some
valuable observations on the nature of
glacier advance. Returning from Advent
Bay the way they came, they next made a
journey eastward across the island. They
encountered the same conditions till they
came to a wall of ice, which proved to be
the side of a glacier. Crossing this the next
day, they reached the sea, thus completing
the passage across the island. The main
geographical point to be noticed in connec-
tion with their journey was that while both
in the north and the south of the island
there was a complete ice sheet, the central
region consisted of a great bog — " a mere
pudding of ice and stones."

Evolntion of the Bicycle. — "At the end

of the seventeenth century, in 1693," says
M. Baudry de Saunier, who is quoted by M.
Gaston Tissandier in Tm Nature, " Ozanam,
a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences,
spoke of a mechanical vehicle in the posses-
sion of a friend of his, a doctor in La Rochelle.
A servant, mounted behind, made it go, rest-
ing on two pieces of wood which communi-
cated with two wheels working the axle."
In 1796, M. de Sivrae, realizing that the
simplest construction was the most efficient,
devised a machine of three wooden parts — a
solid beam and two wheels. The beam was
furnished in front and back with two forks,
between the branches of which the wheels

turned ; to these were added a seat and a
cushion. This vehicle was called the celeri-
fere, or carry-fast (Latin, celer, fast, and
ferre, to bear). In 1818, M. le Baron de
Drais de Sauerbon, farmer and engineer,
modified the celeriffere by cutting the front
away from the beam on which the rider was
supported, and reattaching it with a pivot,
which permitted it to be turned to the right
or the left. Henceforth it was not necessary,
as it had been before, to knock the front
wheel of the machine with the hand to the
right or left, whenever the rider wished to
turn it, but the wheel itself became a readily
acting rudder. Baron Drais rejoiced much
in the contemplation of his carriage, and
giving it his name, called* it the Braisienne,
or Draisian, and ordered his servant to ex-
hibit it and display its methods of working
before the sightseers in the Tivoli Garden.
The servant proved awkward at the business,
and only succeeded in giving himself many
knocks and having the children run and
shout after him. Discouraged and annoyed
by the caricatures of his experiment which
were published. Baron Drais went to live in
a convent at Carlsruhe, where he died in
1851. The English modified his idea, and,
substituting iron for wood, which had the
faults of swelling and shrinking and crack-
ing, made of the Draisian the pedestrian-
horse, or hobby-horse, which was much in
vogue for a considerable time. None of these
machines were really ridden ; they were simply
contrivances to expedite walking. They were
propelled by kicking, and the riders seldom
let both their feet leave the ground at once,
or, if they did, only for a very short time ; but
with their aid every step became considerably
more than a pace, and the ground was got
over much more rapidly.

American Women's Art. — Artistic wood
carving, according to Mr. Benn Pitman, se-
cured its first distinct recognition as woman's
work in 18'72, when examples of carved fur-
niture, doors, and baseboards executed by
women of the author's family were shown
at an exhibition in Cincinnati. Much inter-
est was aroused by the display, and a general
desire was created in other women to do
similar work. In 1873 a practical art de-
partment was established in connection with
the Art Academy, to which Mr. Pitman and

428

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

his daughter gave their services gratuitously^ '
The experiment was regarded with great in-
terest, and more than sixty ladies, "repre-
senting the culture and intelligence of the
city," began practical designing and carv-
ing. The class grew and numbered one hun-
dred and even more for years. Ninety-five
per cent of the pupils were women. Etch-
ing and hammered metal work were soon
added to the studies, and china painting was
taken up in 1875. In the fall of that year
a considerable sum of money was raised by
gift and the sale of beautiful examples of
china painting, which went to the fund for
the erection of the Woman's Pavilion of the
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. More
than one hundred specimens of china paint-
ing were included in the Cincinnati school
exhibit at Philadelphia. No woman's product,
distinctively American, has perhaps attained
such repute as the Rockwood pottery of Cin-
cinnati. " Its celebrity is due to varied
causes. Excellence in material, form, firing,
and glaze are points of superiority necessary
to success, but that which has mainly con-
tributed to its renown is unquestionably its
realistic style of decoration," which " appeals
to a newly awakened intelligence which ap
predates original, careful, and truthful stud-
ies from Nature."

An Ethnological Storehonse. — An " eth-
nological storehouse " is urged by Prof. W. J.
Flinders Petrie as necessary by reason of the
impossibility of preserving more than a small
portion of the material for anthropology in
the very limited area of London or town
museums. This leaves only two alternatives
— the destruction of material which can never
be replaced, illustrative of modern races now
fast disappearing, and ancient races as re-
vealed by excavation ; or the storing of such
materials accessible in a locality and a man-
ner which shall yield the greatest possible
storage space for a given expenditure. Such
a repertory might be solely anthropological,
including an example of every variety of ob-
ject of human work of all ages, or it might
be extended to zoology, mineralogy, and
geology. The least to be expected from such
a place would be to store the surplus objects
which can not find place in existing museums.
Its greatest development, however, would be
to form a systematic collection of man's

work, ancient and modern, reserving to ex-
isting museums such objects as illustrate the
subject best to the general public, and such
as need the protection due to their market
value; and these could be properly i-epre-
sented in the repository collection by photo-
graphs. If fully developed, such a repository
would become a center for study and higher
scientific education. The author proposed a
site of five hundred acres within easy reach
of London, on which buildings could be
erected as needed. The features in favor of
the project and against it were discussed in
the British Association, and some substitute
propositions were offered ; but Prof. Petrie
pronounced the last mere palliatives, which
did not touch the broad view.

Insect Enemies of the Grape. — An inter-
esting article by C. L. Marlatt on the Princi-
pal Enemies of the Grape has recently ap-
peared in the Year Book of the United States
Department of Agriculture. The rapid
growth of the vine industry in this country
and the increasing cultivation of the less
vigorous European grapes have combined to
make the above subject one of considerable
commercial importance. Nearly two hundred
different insects have already been listed as
occurring on the vine in this country ; few of
these, however, are very serious enemies,
being either of rare occurrence or seldom
numerous. The principal enemies of the
grape-grower are the grape phylloxera, the
grapevine fidia, both chiefly destructive to
the roots ; the cane borer, destructive par-
ticularly to the young shoots ; the leaf
hopper, the flea beetle, rose chafer with its
allies, and leaf folder, together with hawk
moths and cut worms, and the grape-berry
moth, the principal fruit pest. The extent
of the loss that frequently results from the
ravages of these insects is something enor-
mous. The phylloxera, when at its worst,
had destroyed in France seme 2,500,000
acres of vineyards, representing an annual
loss in wine products of the value of $150,-
000,000, and the French Government had
expended up to 1895 in phylloxera work
over $4,500,000, and remitted taxes to the
amount of $3,000,000 more. The leaf de-
foliators, as the rose chafer and flea beetle,
frequently destroy or vastly injure the crops
over large disti'icts, and the little leaf hop-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

429

per, though rarely preventing a partial crop,
is so uniformly present and widely distrib-
uted as to probably levy a heavier tribute on
the grape in this country than any other
insect. These insects are, however, all
amenable to treatment, and the loss may be
very considerably limited if the proper

methods of control are followed out. Mr.
Marlatt gives a description of the above
insects, with illustrations of the various
stages of each, and finally the remedies, and
methods of employing them which have
been found most efficient in combating each
pest.

MINOR PAEAGRAPHS.

The winter courses of Saturday evening
lectures (1896-97) at Columbia University, in
co-operation with the American Museum of
Natural History, began in December with a
course on the Mountain Ranges of Western
North America. The course for January
will be upon Anthropology and Ethnology,
and will include lectures on The Oldest
Signs of Man in America, by Dr. D. G.
Brinton ; The Native Industrial Arts of the
Indians of the United States, by Prof. Otis
T. Mason ; Art of the North American In-
dians, by Dr. Franz Boas ; The Organization
of the Family, by Livingston Ferrand ; and
Some Peculiar Peoples of Southern France,
by Dr. William Z. Ripley. In February four
lectures on Alcohol and Alcoholic Beverages
will be given by Mr. C. E. Pellew. The
lectui-es in March will consist of botanical
studies — Among the Lower Fungi and The
Haunts and Habits of Ferns, by Prof. Lucien
M. Underwood ; and Edible and Poisonous
Mushrooms and Medicinal Plants, by Prof.
Smith Ely Jelliffe. The lectures will be illus-
trated. Tickets of admission may be ob-
tained without charge by application to the
secretary of Columbia University.

M. Berthelot observed, in his address at
the opening of the International Congi'css of
Chemists, that the progress of mankind has
heretofore been accounted for by historians
as the combined effects of inner evolution of
ideas and the external and empirical inter-
vention of fortuitous events reacting upon
the collective passions, feelings, and interests
of men. However such views may have
been justified to a certain extent by the
study of the past, they fail to account for
what results now from the ever-increasing
influence of science, or deliberate reflection
and reason as determined by the observation
of facts and experimentation. In evidence
of this view, M. Berthelot cites the changes

that have taken place in Europe in the last
half century in consequence of the increased
facilities of communication, as by railroads,
the telegraph, and the telephone. These
changes are the rational result of facts and
laws discovered in scientific laboratories.

The liability to error in even the best-
made thermometers, is well known, and the
numerous cheaply made affairs with which
the market is flooded are almost worthless
on this account. Dr. T. L. Phipson calls at-
tention in the Chemical News to the dangers
which may result from the use of inaccurate
thermometers in the sick-room, and gives the
following instance as an illustration : " A
patient, eighty years of age, suffering from
bronchitis, did not cough or suffer from
prostration when the thermometer registered
from 68° to 70° F., but fell into an alarming
state of prostration when it rose to 72° or
73°. Now, many thermometers, both mer-
curial and spirit, which I have examined of
recent years have shown errors of 4° or 5°
F., and sometimes even more, and it is hence
very essential that all such instruments used
for taking the temperature of sick-rooms
should be carefully compared from time to
time with a standard instrument of knowa
accuracy."

It is reported in Nature that letters have
been received from Prof. Sollas which show
that, so far as the main object of the coral-
reef boring expedition is concerned, the ef-
fort has been an almost complete failure.
They reached Funafuti safely, set up the ap-
paratus, and a bore hole was carried down to
a depth of about sixty-five feet, when further
progress was stopped by the drills running
into a material like quicksand, which choked
the bore hole. Very little solid coral rock
was pierced. Another boring was attempted,
with the same result, at seventy-two feet.
The material struck was a kind of quicksand

43°

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

containing " bowlders of coral." As fast as
the sand was got out fresh material poured
in, and the water pumped down the tube
with a view of cleaning it actually flowed out
into the surrounding bed. So far as the reef
was pierced, it proved to be not solid coral,
but more like a vast coarse sponge of coral,
with wide interstices either empty or sand
filled.

SiGNOR LuiGi Palmieri, the famous Ital-
ian meteorologist, who died September 10th,
was especially renowned for his observations
of the volcanic phenomena of Mount Vesu-
vius, where he was director of the observa-
tory for forty-two years. He was born at
Faicchio, Italy, in ISO*?, and was Professor
of Mathematics successively at Salerno, Cam-
pobasso, and Avelino, and afterward Pro-
fessor of Physics at the Normal School and
in the University of Naples. He was ap-
pointed to the Observatory of Mount Vesu-
vius, where he spent the remainder of his
life, in 1854. He invented some extremely
delicate instruments in the course of his re-
searches— a bifilar electrometer, used in the
study of atmospheric electricity ; a pluviom-
eter ; and a seismometer for the detection
and measurement of ground vibrations.
With the last instrument he was able to
detect extremely slight movements of the
gi'ound and to predict the eruptions of the
volcano. During the eruption of 1872, while
every one else fled as far from the mountain
as he could, he stayed at his post and wrote
a description of every phase of the phe-
nomena.

The death was announced in September,
1896, of M. Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau,
a French physicist, eminently distinguished
for his experimental determinations of the
velocity of light. He was born in 1819, the
son of a distinguished physician, and, having
an independent fortune, was able to devote
himself mainly to science. He communi-
cated the results of his experiments in nu-
merous memoirs to the Academy of Sciences
and to the Annales de physique et chimie.
Many of these were very important. He re-
ceived in 1856 the grand prize of one hun-
dred thousand francs awarded by the Acad-
emy of Sciences. One of the most interesting
of his discoveries was that of the means of
determining by means of the alteration of the

wave-lengths as revealed through the spec-
troscope the direction and velocity of mo-
tion of bodies advancing or receding along
the line of vision, a method which has been
much used by astronomers in late years with
very fruitful results.

Dr. Harley pointed out, in the British
Association, that an understanding of the
fast-dying system in Australia of conveying
ideas by horizontal straight lines might afford
a clew to the better interpretation of the an-
cient Irish oghams, as these two systems are
identical in form and to a certain extent in
modes of arrangement. The Gilas of cen-
tral Asia had also the same linear forms of
writing, the same grouping of the characters,
and a distinctly columnar arrangement. The
author thought that the Australian aborigines
had advanced one stage beyond the ancient
Irish, inasmuch as they possessed two dis-
tinctly different kinds of line characters —
small and large — analogous to our capital
letters, and also adopted the plan of empha-
sizing the small characters by turning them
into a kind of Italics. All the natives did
not write alike.

In view of the anticipated exhaustion of
the quarries of lithographic stone at Solen-
hofen, Bavaria, the use of aluminum as a
substitute in engraving has been suggested,^
and the'Gei'man journal, Neue&te Erfindungen
und Erfahrimgen, enumerates the qualities
that may render that metal suitable for the
purpose. The Natianal Druggist, of St.
Louis, points out, however, that there are
lithographic quarries in Tennessee which can
furnish immense quantities of stone fully
equal, for purposes of engraving, to the best
Solenhofen.

M. Felix Tisserand, Director of the Ob-
servatory at Paris and professor in the sci-
entific faculty, whose death has been recently
announced, was one of the most famous
French astronomers and the author of impor-
tant works. He was born in 1845, and ob-
tained the degree of Doctor in Science in
1869. In 1875 he was appointed by Le Ver-
rier Director of the Observatory at Toulouse,,
and was also Professor of Rational Mechan-
ics there. He became astronomer adjunct
at the Paris Observatory in 1878, Professor
of Astronomy in 1883, and Director of tlie
Observatory in 1892. In his works he treats

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

431

of the most complex and arduous astronom-
ical questions. He was a member of the
commission to observe the great solar eclipse
of 1868 and the transits of Venus of 1874
and 1882. His most considerable book was
the Traile de Mecanique Celeste, which was
published in 1890, and has become an au-
thority on the subject. His other principal
books are the Lunar Tables ; a treatise on
the Movement of the Planets around the
Sun, according to Weber's Electrodynamic
Law ; a work on Shooting Stars ; Observa-
tions of the Sun Spots at Toulouse in 1874
and 18*75 ; and a collection of Exercises on
the Infinitesimal Calculus.

Bacteriologists, says Sir Joseph Lister,
are now universally agreed that, although
various other conditions are necessary to the
production of an attack of cholera than the
mere presence of Koch's comma bacillus or
vibrio, yet it is the essential substance of the
disease ; and it is by the aid of the diagno-
sis which its presence in any case of true
cholera enables the bacteriologist to make
that threatened invasions of this awful dis-
ease have of late years been so successfully
repelled from Enghsh shores. " If bacteri-
ology had done nothing more for us than
this, it might well have earned our grati-
tude."

NOTES.

The observation made by Mr. Alfred
Springer five years ago that the acoustical
properties of aluminum are approximate to
those of wood, has been verified by continued
experiments with sound-boards of that metal,
and the author exhibited in the American
Association several aluminum violins, to-
gether with a device, called a bass bar, by
means of which the quality of the tone pro-
duced by the instrument can be controlled.

According to President T. Kirk, of the
Wellington (New Zealand) Philosophical So-
ciety, the chief agents, next to man, in the
destruction of native species of plants in the
colony, whereby the way is cleared for in-
troduced species, are sheep, rabbits, and the
black rat. These animals have almost laid
several districts bare, leaving only the sturdi-
est and most persistent growers. Introduced
plants — silenes, whiteweed, docks and sorrels,
chess, and velvet grass — have nearly driven
out the original littoral vegetation in some
places. Even more destructive are the rav-
ages caused by the parasites which these
strangers bring with them. While the first
catalogue of naturalized plants in New Zea- I

land, published in 1855, comprised forty-four
species, the present number is put by Mr.
Kirk at three hundred and four, and by
others at three hundred and eighty-two.

The ruins of Tepoztlan are regarded by
Mr. H. Saville as especially important be-
cause they are the only American ruins to
which a definite date can be attached. The
sign of Ahuizotl, the immediate predecessor
of Montezuma, is engraved on one of two
slabs in the walls, and on the other the date,
ten Tochtli, which corresponds to 1502.

Dr. H. C. Hovey called attention in the
Amei-ican Association to certain old monu-
ments in colonial graveyards, particularly at
Byfield and Newbury, Mass., and also to
some milestones and stones in the founda-
tions of old houses, which were carved in a
style very unlike that of Puritan monuments.
The symbols on them are pagan rather than
Christian, and include disks, vfhovXs, fleur-de-
lis, phallic signs, and a design representing
the sun-gods' bride with a sunburst over it.
It may be suggested as a solution of the
enigma they present that the maker of them
had seen figures of the kind somewhere, or
pictures of them, and copied them in the de-
sire to offer something new and striking.

In one of his papers on the history of
Niagara Falls, read in the American Asso-
ciation, Mr. G. K. Gilbert presented evidence
of a former outlet of Lake Algonkin drain-
ing the upper lakes, heading at Kirkfield,
Ontario, and following the Trent River to
Lake Ontario, which belonged to an earlier
date than the outlet through Lake Nipissing
and the Ottawa River. There appear, there-
fore, to have been two periods after the
origin of the Niagara River in which it was
an outlet for the Erie basin only, and did
not carry the waters of the upper lakes.

The making of the Mammoth Cave is
attributed by the Rev. H. C. Hovey, D. D.,
in a paper read before the American Asso-
ciation, wholly to the solvent action of water
upon the limestone. No earthquake dis-
turbance or pot-hole action in the deep
parts of the cave can be considered as hav-
ing had any important effect upon the exca-
vation.

" What is the bark ? " is asked in a pa-
per read before the American Association by
C. R. Barnes, who calls attention to the vary-
ing use made of the term bark by different
botanists. The Germans use Borke and
Rinde to denote respectively the external
tissue of the root or stem which dries up,
and the entire mass of tissue outside the
cambium. In this they are followed by the
English ; and the American usage, except as
modified by foreign influence, assigns the
name bark to the entire mass of tissue out-
side the cambium. In this use we are fol-
lowed by the French. The author advocated

432

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the use of the word bark in this sense, and
of cortex to designate certain parts of the
bark, indicated by a preceding adjective.

roRMALDEHYDE is Commended by E. A.
de Schweinitz as possessing many good points
as a disinfectant. Anthrax, tetanus, etc., are
destroyed by it. It is a good deodorizer, for
which use only very small quantities are re-
quired, which may be applied by spraying.
It is a good preventive of decomposition.
The sharp odor it leaves, the length of time
necessary to remove which constitutes the
chief objection to its use, can be counter-
acted by spraying with ammonia.

An experimental race was recently made
in a French office between a skillful type-
writer and an expert penman, the test being
the number of times a phrase of eight words
could be reproduced in five minutes. The
typewriter scored thirty-seven and the pen-
man twenty-three.

From experiments on four coal-tar colors
— methyl orange, coralline yellow, saffroline,
and magenta — H. A. Weber has found that
no one of these affects both peptic and pan-
creatic digestion, but that each affects se-
riously one form or the other. In the dis-
cussion of this paper in the American Asso-
ciation it was held that too much importance
was attached to such experiments, for the
quantities of the substance in question used
in food stuffs are extremely small.

It has been discovered by Surgeon-Major
Bruce that the tsetse fly — the terror of equa-
torial and South African colonists, on account
of the deadly effect of its sting on cattle — is
itself innocuous, and is fatal to animals only
when it introduces a flagellated infusorian or
haematozoon into the blood of its victims.

The Botanical Society of America, at its
recent annual meeting at Buffalo, elected
Prof. John M. Coulter as its next president,
and Charles R. Barnes, of the University of
Wisconsin, secretary. President C. E. Bessey
was appointed to confer with a committee of
the National Educational Association regard-
ing the unification of requirements in botany
for entrance to colleges. The address of re-
tiring President Trelease was on Botanical
Opportunity.

Prof. Benjamin Apthorp Gould, one of
the most eminent of American and of the
world's astronomers, died at his home in
Cambridge, Mass., November 26th, from the
effects of a fall downstairs. He was seventy-
two years old. An excellent sketch of his
life and the work which made him famous
and increased the glory of American science
was given by Erving Winslow, with a por-
trait, in the Popular Science Monthly for
March, 1882. An account of his great work
at the observatory of Cordoba, Argentine
Republic, given by Prof. W. A. Rogers in
1886, showed that he had then made two

catalogues of stars — one a general catalogue
extending to the south pole, containing
34,000 stars, and a catalogue of zone stars,
numbering 73,000 ; the two catalogues rep-
resenting about 250,000 observations, a large
part of the work on which was done by
Prof. Gould personally. The whole number
of stars in the two Cordoba catalogues was
nearly three times as great as in any cata-
logue that had been till that time con-
structed. The results of these observations
and those of the meteorological observations
instituted by Prof. Gould at places in all
parts of the Argentine Republic are em-
bodied in several large quarto volumes pub-
lished in sumptuous style by the Government
of that country.

Sir Ferdinand ton Mijller, colonial
botanist of Victoria, who died in Melbourne,
October 9th, was born in Rostock in 1825,
wns educated at Kiel, and emigrated to Aus-
tralia in the hope of improving his health.
Having established his residence in Mel-
bourne, he became an indefatigable botanist
and explorer. He was a member of several
scientific expeditions in central and western
Australia, traversed much hitherto unknown
country, and made important collections.
He acted as an adviser to the Government in
matters of exploration, and took great inter-
est in the opening up of New Guinea to sci-
ence and commerce and in antarctic research.
He became director of the Melbourne Botanic
Garden in 1852, and when removed from
that post in 1873 to give way to a practical
gardener he was appointed colonial botanist.
He made elaborate studies of the Australian
flora, and when he found that he was not
able, on account of his remoteness from the
great libraries and collections of Europe, to
make the best of his material, he sent it to
Mr. Bentham, to be used in the preparation
of the Flora AustraUensis. His researches
lay in the direction of descriptive and applied
rather than morphological botany. He was
a fellow of the Royal Society, and received
one of its royal medals in 1863. He was a
knight of the C. M. G., was made a baron by
the King of Wiirtemberg, and received deco-
rations of some kind from nearly every civil-
ized government — of which he was proud.

In a paper on the sailing flight of birds,
read in the British Association, Mr. G. H.
Ryan pointed out that the support of a bird
indefinitely in the air without flapping its
wings is apparently contrary to the law of
the conservation of energy, and must be due
to either upward air currents, variation of
wind velocity with altitude, variation of
wind velocity with time, or the presence of
vortices in the air. In the discussion of
these theories, each of which was considered,
the author expressed the opinion that birds
in flight are often carried up by a side gust of
wind, and that this is one of the causes of the
phenomena presented by the sailing bird.

MAEIA MITCHELL.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

FEBRTTARY, 1897.

HERBERT SPENCER: THE MAN AND HIS WORK.

By WILLIAM HENEY HUDSON,

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

IN a famous passage in his autobiography, Edward Gibbon has
told us of the mingled emotions with which, on a memorable
night in June, 1787, he penned the last lines of the last page of
his History, and thus closed the undertaking of many laborious
years. In a somewhat similar, though at once more dignified
and more touching strain, Mr. Spencer, in the preface to his re-
cently published third volume of the Principles of Sociology,
has set on record his feelings on reviewing his finished life-work
— a work beside which even the vast enterprise of Gibbon sinks
into insignficance : " Doubtless in earlier years some exultation
would have resulted ; but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and
now my chief pleasure is in my emancipation. Still, there is
satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, discouragements, and
shattered health have not prevented me from fulfilling the pur-
pose of my life."

The Synthetic Philosophy, then, is to-day an accomplished
fact. When Mr. Spencer first entered upon his work, he esti-
mated that it would commit him to at least twenty years of reg-
ular and persistent toil, allowing two years to each of the ten
stout volumes called for by his plan. Reckoning from the pub-
lication of the initial installment of First Principles in October,
1860, it has actually occupied just thirty-six years. Commenced
with little encouragement from the cultured world, and even
against the more cautious judgment of immediate advisers, at a
time when its author was already broken down in health, with
uncertain financial outlook and narrowly limited working powers,

TOL. L,— 33

434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it lias been pushed slowly and painfully toward completion in the
face of difficulties that might well have seemed not merely stu-
pendous but insuperable. Only those who have closely watched
the progress of the undertaking — perhaps even only those who
have been privileged to step behind the curtain and learn at first
hand the conditions under which the work has been done — can
really be in a position to appreciate the man's high courage,
steady perseverance, and single-hearted devotion to a cherished
ideal. Obstacles of many kinds he had foreseen from the outset,
but these were as little in comparison with the unlooked-for im-
pediments which he was presumably to find blocking his way.
For a time the practical support yielded him by the reading pub-
lic was so slight that he seriously contemplated the abandonment
of his labors altogether. After this interruptions occurred with
increasing frequency in various unexpected ways. He was forced
to pause in the methodical unfolding of his plan, to explain, re-
state, clear up misconceptions, and reply to criticisms. His ener-
gies were on several occasions drawn off into other, though in
most cases directly subsidiary, lines of work. The supervision of
the compilation of the Descriptive Sociology, itself an enormous
task ; the writing for the International Scientific Series of his
Study of Sociology ; the publication of a number of timely essays
(such as those making up The Man versus the State), rendered
necessary, as Mr. Spencer felt, by the conditions and tendencies of
public affairs — all these things, valuable as we know them to be,
none the less delayed the prosecution of the larger design. And,
worse than all, his physical powers, as the years went on, in spite
of temporary fluctuations and improvements, continued, upon the
whole, steadily to decline. He had reckoned, in starting, on a
regular working day of three hours. The calculation, moderate
as it appeared to be, was presently proved altogether extravagant.
Only by the most careful husbanding of his energies has sus-
tained labor been possible to him at all. Absolute inaction has
often been forced upon him as the sole means of recuperating his
overtaxed strength, while through many a lengthy period of sleep-
lessness and prostration the dictation of a paragraph or two each
morning has represented the extreme reach of his productive
capacity. That under such circumstances as these the majestic
edifice which he had designed should have continued to rise, stone
by stone, is itself a fact not easily paralleled in the history of phi-
losophy or letters ; nor is it wonderful that, till within a short
time since, most of us should have regarded the ultimate crown-
ing of the structure as almost, if not quite, an impossibility.
Two years ago, in a biographical sketch of Mr. Spencer, I wrote
skeptically of such a consummation, adding, however, as a word
of encouragement, that from a man of his extraordinary reso-

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 435

lution and perseverance mucli might still be looked for. And
now the event has justified my half-doubtful prediction, and
the Synthetic Philosophy has been rounded off to a completed
whole.

Of the importance of this finished work as a fact in the intel-
lectual annals of the nineteenth century much might, of course,
be said. That it is in itself the largest, most comprehensive, and
most ambitious plan conceived and wrought out by any single
thinker of our time is obvious to all ; nor will it be less obvious
to those who concern themselves in any way with the progress of
thought that, measured alike by the constructive genius mani-
fested in, and the far-reaching influence exerted by it, the Syn-
thetic Philosophy towers superbly above all other philosophic
achievements of the age. There is no field of mental activity
that Mr. Spencer has not to some extent made his own ; no line
of inquiry in which his power has not been felt. Even those
who differ the most radically from him are at the same time
compelled to define their positions in relation to his arguments
and conclusions, while his speculations constitute a common
point of departure for the most curiously divergent develop-
ments of thought. To write the history of opinion in regard
to his work would indeed be scarcely less than to write the his-
tory of biology, psychology, sociology, ethics, and political theory
during the past thirty years. But it would be trite and there-
fore needless to dwell here on all these facts. It will be more
to the point to seize the occasion offered by the closing of the
Synthetic series to speak a little of the career and personality
of the philosopher, and to outline in the broadest possible way
some of the underlying principles of his organized system of
thought.

The chief matters of importance in Herbert Spencer's exter-
nally uneventful life are by this time sufficiently well known to
demand no more than the briefest recapitulation. Born in Derby,
England, on the 27th of April, 1820, he came of a stock in which
intellectual integrity, fearlessness, and independence were strongly
pronounced characteristics. His father was by profession a
teacher, holding views, however, of the aims and methods of edu-
cation greatly in advance of the average scholastic theories of
his time. It has been commonly said that it was owing largely
to the child's precarious health that he was permitted to grow
into boyhood without being subjected to the mental cramming
and coercion then so much in vogue. The truth of the matter,
however, is that he was not particularly delicate in early years,
and that his father's wiser course of procedure was simply the
result of experience, and of a dread of overtaxing the immature
mind by the ordinary forcing system, to which he was totally

436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

opposed.* Young Spencer was kept at lioine till he was just
fourteen, thus reaping the advantage of his father's personal
training and attention, and breathing an intellectual atmosphere
unusually clear and stimulating. He was then placed in charge
of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, at that time perpetual
curate of the parish of Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath. With
this relative, who, it should be said, though an Episcopal clergy-
man, was a vigorous thinker and an energetic social reformer, he
spent three years, making little of Greek Testament and Latin
grammar, but manifesting extraordinary originality in the math-
ematical and mechanical studies to which a portion of his atten-
tion was devoted.

The design at this period entertained by Thomas Spencer, him-
self an academic honors man and to a certain extent an advocate
of classical culture, of sending Herbert to Cambridge, was gradu-
ally relinquished as impracticable, and Spencer thus adds another
to the long list of English leaders of thought who owe nothing
directly to one or other of the great institutions of learning. On
leaving Hinton the lad returned to his father's house, where he
spent what was, to outward seeming, an idle and profitless year.
Then, after a brief experiment in teaching, he made his real start
in life in a profession to which the bias of his interests and the line
of his studies alike pointed — that of the civil engineer. This was
in the autumn of 1837. It was then the early days of the railroad
excitement, and for a time the career he had chosen continued to
offer a promising field. But presently the tide of activity ebbed
gradually away, and after eight or ten years of intermittent work
Spencer finally abandoned a calling in which he now saw little
chance of substantial success, and thus at twenty- six found him-
self but slightly advanced toward a definite settlement in life.

Meanwhile, the expansion of his thought had already begun.
At the age of twenty, while engaged on the Birmingham and
Gloucester Railway, he had read Lyell's Principles of Geology,
and had espoused what was then known as the Development
Hypothesis; accepting the Lamarckian view (combated by
Lyell) so far as to believe in the evolution of species, but reject-
ing all the great Frenchman's theories save that of the adapta-
tion of the organism to its environment by the inheritance of
acquired characters. His first piece of philosophical reasoning
had also seen the light. In 1842 he had contributed to a paper
called The Nonconformist a series of letters, subsequently revised
and reissued in pamphlet form, on The Proper Sphere of Govern-

* In this and a few other matters I am able, through the kindness of Mr. Spencer him-
self, to correct not only some current misapprehensions, but also several errors of detail in
the biographical chapter in my Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK.

437

ment. In this early discussion of a question on whicli he was to
have so much to say by and by, Spencer is to be found already
vigorously insisting on "the limitation of state action to the
maintenance of equitable relations among citizens."

After spending some time at home in what must have been a
condition of great uncertainty, Spencer presently removed to
London, where he secured an appointment on The Examiner
newspaper, of which in 1848 he became subeditor. This position
he held till 1853. In the meantime, in the intervals of compara-
tive leisure afforded by the routine of his olEce work, he had
written his first important book. Social Statics, published in 1850,
Shortly after this he began his connection with the Westminster
Review, to the pages of which, during the course of the next few
years, he contributed a number of essays, valuable in themselves,
and now particularly interesting as marking the development
and consolidation of many of the fundamental elements of his
later thought. In 1855 appeared a large volume on The Prin-
ciples of Psychology (afterward incorporated into his more ex-
tended treatise on the same subject in the regular system) ; and
in this book (be it remarked, four years before the publication of
The Origin of Species) the problems of mind were throughout
approached and discussed from the evolutionary point of view.
It is probably due to the fact that Mr. Spencer had in this way
pushed so far ahead of the most advanced thinkers of his genera-
tion that the Psychology, though respectfully received, attracted
no widespread attention, and was certainly not regarded, even by
specialists, as we regard it to-day, as a work of epoch-making
character.

Almost simultaneously with the publication of this volume,
and mainly as the direct result of overexertion in the writing of it,
came Mr. Spencer's serious nervous breakdown, which for eight-
een months incapacitated him for work altogether, and finally left
him in that condition of semi-invalidism to which allusion has al-
ready been made. When, on partial restoration to health, he re-
turned to his dropped undertakings, his first concern was to finish
the essay on Progress, in which he expounded in det dl that con-
ception of evolution as a universal process which he had already
reached in the Psychology. A year later (1858), he published a
long defense of the Nebular Hypothesis ; and it was during the
preparation of this article that the scheme of the Synthetic Phi-
losophy took shape in his mind. Hitherto, he had dealt with the
phenomena of life and society in a fragmentary manner ; now he
realized the possibility of taking the doctrine of evolution as the
basis of a system of thought, and of thus unifying knowledge
by the afiiliation of its various branches upon the ultimate laws
underlying them all. The prospectus of the proposed enterprise

438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

was drawn up in 1859, and distributed in the March of the fol-
lowing year.

The history of the man from this time on is almost entirely
merged in the history of his work ; the dates of importance for
the outside world being those marked by the publication of Iho
various portions and volumes of the promised series. Of Mr.
Spencer himself, through all this long period during which the
rare qualities of his genius have been more and more fully recog-
nized, and the power of his thought has shown a steady growth,
the public at large has known less perhaps than of any of his
notable contemporaries. He has lived, rather by necessity than
by choice, a very quiet and secluded life, saving all his available
strength for the task he had set himself to accomplish; while,
hating as he does the nauseating personalities of modern jour-
nalism, he has not only never courted notoriety, but has firmly
resisted attempts frequently made to thrust notoriety upon
him. This does not mean, and must not be taken to imply, that
there is anything in him of the ascetic or recluse. He is by
nature what Johnson described as a thoroughly " clubable " man
enjoying so far as health would permit the menus propos of
the dinner table, and social intercourse with congenial spirits.
Himself a delightful conversationist and capital story-teller,
fond of his joke, and with a ready laugh for the good sayings of
others, he certainly does not remind those who are privileged t o
know him well of the dry, abstracted, unemotional philos pher
of vulgar tradition, though doubtless a stranger would pronounce
him cold and reserved. Before his nervous trouble assumed its
more serious form a few years since, he took much pleasure in
fishing, quoits, and especially billiards, and was a regular ha-
hitue of the Athenaeum Club. But for a long time past these and
similar amusements have been out of the question, and, being a
rather impatient reader of general literature, he has derived his
greatest solace from music, of which he has always been passion-
ately fond. Without intruding, as I have no wish to do, upon the
sanctities of private life, I feel that I am justified in saying this
much, and in adding that in my own familiar relations with Mr.
Spencer there is nothing that has impressed me more strongly
than his lofty idea of rectitude, his fine sense of justice, and the
transparency and charming simplicity of his character. Kind
and considerate to those about him, despite the strain of insomnia
and constant ill health, if he makes large demands upon the
rationality and integrity of others, as he undoubtedly does, he
claims no more from them than for his own part he is always
ready to give. His standard of individual conduct is an extreme-
ly high one, but, unlike many theorists, he applies it to his own
life as severely as he does to the lives of other people.

HERBERT SPENCER AND BIS WORK. 439

But it is time, turning from the man to his work, to proceed
to the exposition of some of the fundamental principles of the
Spencerian system of philosophy.

It is important, in the first place, to make clear the meaning
which Mr. Spencer attaches to the word philosophy, as this will
define for us the scope and purpose of his undertaking. By phi-
losophy, then, to begin with a negative statement of his position,
he does not understand an effort to solve the ultimate problem of
the universe. He recognizes two categories — the Unknowable
and the Knowable ; and to the former of these, the proper domain
of religion, he relegates all those final questions concerning Abso-
lute Being, and the why and wherefore of the cosmos, which have
largely absorbed the attention of the metaphysicians — questions
which, owing to the conditions under which all our thinking has
to be done, lie forever beyond the scope of human intelligence.
The true subject-matter of philosophy, therefore, is not the prob-
lem of absolute cause and end, but of secondary causes and ends
— not noumenal and unconditioned existence, but the manifesta-
tions of the noumenal in and through the co' ditioned and phe-
nomenal. What, then, do we demand from philosophy ? Not an
explanation of the universe in terms of Being as distinguished
from Appearance; but a complete co-ordination or systematic
organization of those cosmical laws by which we symbolize the
processes of the universe, and the interrelations of the various
phenomena of which the universe, as revealed to us, is actually
composed.* The old antithesis between common knowledge and
what we call science, on the one hand, and philosophy on the
other, forthwith disappears. They are not essentially unlike;
their differences are differences of degree in generality and uni-
fication. "As each widest generalization of science comprehends
and consolidates the narrower generalizations of its own division,
so the generalizations of philosophy comprehend and consolidate
the widest generalizations of science." Philosophy is thus pre-
sented as " the final product of that process which begins with a
.mere colligation of crude observations, goes on establishing
propositions that are broader and more separated from particular
cases, and ends in universal propositions. Or, to bring the defini-
tion to its simplest and clearest form : knowledge of the lowest
'kmdi {■A ununified knowledge; science is partially unified knowl-
edge ; philosophy is completely unified knowledge." f

Now, if philosophy is to undertake this complete unification of

* Here, and in a few other places in' this brief outline, I have not scrupled to make use
of the very phrases that I have employed in the more extended treatment of the same sub-
ject in my Introduction to the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer.

f First Principles, § 3*7.

440 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

knowledge, it must establish some ultimate proposition whicli in-
cludes and consolidates all the results of experience. It would
obviously be infeasible in the space now at our disposal to follow
Mr. Spencer step by step in the long and subtle argument by
which this ultimate proposition is reached. We must content
ourselves with the merest statement of results. Assuming, then,
as we must ever continue to assume (for otherwise all thought
would be impossible), that in the manifestations of the Unknow-
able in and through the phenomenal universe, congruities and
incongruities exist and are cognizable by us, Mr. Spencer shows
that in the last analysis all classes of likeness and unlikeness
merge in one great difference — the difference between object and
subject. " The profoundest distinction among the manifestations
of the Unknowable," to quote his own words, " we recognize by
grouping them into self and not-self" * His postulates, therefore,
are " an Unknowable Power ; the existence of knowable likenesses
and differences among the manifestations of that Power ; and a
resulting segregation of those manifestations into those of subject
and object." f From these postulates philosophy has to proceed
to the achievement of its purpose as above set forth.

Pushing the argument through a consideration of space, time,
matter, motion, force, the indestructibility of matter, and the con-
tinuity of force, Mr. Spencer at length reaches his ultimate dictum
— the persistence of force ; a dictum which possesses the highest
kind of axiomatic certitude for two reasons: it constitutes the
required foundation for all other general truths, and it remains
stable and unresolvable — the one inexpugnable yet inexplicable
element of consciousness. Force is thus, for Mr. Spencer, the ulti-
mate conception, and the persistence of force furnishes the uni-
versal criterion of his system of thought. Of such persistence
of force under the forms of matter and motion, all phenomena are
necessary results. Eliminate this conception, and consciousness
collapses. "The sole truth which transcends experience by under-
lying it, is thus the Persistence of Force. This being the basis of
experience must be the basis of any scientific organization of ex-
periences. To this an ultimate analysis brings us down, and on
this a rational synthesis must build up." X

The first deduction drawn from this ultimate universal truth
is that of the persistence of relations among forces — otherwise,
the uniformity of law ; whence we pass to the necessary corol-
laries, the doctrines of the transformation and equivalence of
forces, and of the rhythm of motion. Both these principles are
shown to hold good throughout the whole range of phenomena,
from the physical and chemical to the psychical and social. These

* First Principles, § 44. f Ibid., § 45, X Ibid , § 62.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 441

truths, then, have the character of universality which constitutes
them parts of philosophy, properly so called. " They are truths
which unify concrete phenomena belonging to all divisions of
Nature, and so must be components of that complete coherent
conception of things which Philosophy seeks." * But none the less
they are truths of the analytical order, and " no number of ana-
lytical truths will make up that synthesis of thought which alone
can be an interpretation of the synthesis of things." f The prob-
lem now before us will be set in clearer light if we remember the
relation, already stated, between the partially unified knowledge
which we call science, and the completely unified knowledge
which is the aim of philosophy. The various sciences advance
from the resolution of their phenomena into the actions of certain
factors, to the larger question — how from such combined actions
result the given phenomena in all their complexity ? They thus
arrive at special syntheses. But such syntheses, even up to the
most general, are more or less independent of one another. The
business of philosophy, as now defined, is therefore to establish a
universal synthesis comprehending and consolidating such special
syntheses. "Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion
continuous, and force persistent — having seen that forces are
everywhere undergoing transformation, and that motion, always
following the line of least resistance, is invariably rhythmic, it
remains to discover the similarly invariable formula expressing
the combined consequences of the actions thus separately formu-
lated." X

It is from this point that Mr. Spencer proceeds to reduce to
systematic and comprehensive expression the laws of that con-
tinuous redistribution of matter and motion which is going on
throughout the universe in general and in detail. All sensible
existences, and the aggregates which they compose, have their
history, and this history covers the entire period between their
emergence from the imperceptible and their final disappearance
again into the imperceptible. The redistribution of matter and
motion which brings about this passage from the imperceptible,
through the various stages of the perceptible, and back to the
imperceptible, comprises two antagonistic processes: one char-
acterized by the integration of matter and the dissipation of
motion ; the other by the absorption of motion and the disinte-
gration of matter. The former produces consolidation and defi-
niteness; the latter, diffusion and incoherence. These two uni-
versal antagonistic processes are evolution and dissolution. The
entire universe is in a state of continual change, and it is in
terms of these processes that all changes, small or great, inor-

* First Principles, § 89. f Ibid., § 90. % Ibid., § 92.

442 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ganic, organic, pliysical, vital, psydiioal, social, liave to be inter-
preted.

In order to deprive the law of evolution, hereupon formulated,
of any merely empirical character, Mr. Spencer shows at length
that there are all-pervading principles underlying the all-per-
vading process. But of this reduction of inductive results to the
deductive form we shall find it more convenient to speak pres-
ently when we come to deal with the general method of the
Spencerian philosophy. Our immediate concern is to understand
a little more clearly what we mean by evolution.*

We have already stated the matter in a broad and general
way. Dissolution is disintegration ; evolution is integration.
But this definition takes note only of the primary element in the
evolutionary process. Evolution means always an integration of
matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, or, in other words,
increasing coherence to definiteness ; but it commonly implies
much more than this. We must recognize the secondary changes
by which this primary change is habitually complicated before
the formula of evolution can be set down as complete.

These secondary changes are indeed the most conspicuous char-
acteristics of the evolutionary process ; and it is not surprising,
therefore, that it was from these that Mr. Spencer started, that it
was with these that he remained for a long time preoccupied,
that it was these which he first defined in philosophic terminol-
ogy. A simple plan for us to adopt in the present exposition will
be to follow him very rapidly along the line of investigation by
which the full law of evolution was gradually reached.

Approaching, as he did, the general problem of things by way
of ethical and sociological inquiries, Mr. Spencer found himself
confronted at the outset by the special fact of the development of
man individually and in society — that is, with the fact of prog-
ress. What, then, is progress ? This was the specific question to

* It is, of course, a necessary corollary from the doctrine of the rhythm of motion that
the processes of evolution and dissolution are continually in conflict, locally and generally :
and in no theory of the evolution of things — whether we consider individual existences, or
aggregates of such, or the total aggregate that we call the cosmos — is it possible, therefore,
to leave the process of dissolution out of the account. Individuals die, organisms disinte-
grate, societies collapse, races and civilizations are extinguished ; while we are bound to
acknowledge that for our earth itself, and the system of which it forms a part, and the
uuiverse in its entirety, the hour of dissolution must at length be sounded — the disinte-
grating force must finally begia to undo the work of eons upon eons of slow and gi'adual
integration. In the life and death of a gnat we find a tiny symbol of the pulsations that
produce the rise and decay of worlds. But in our own system and on our planet, however
certain the ultimate course of things may seem to be, the process of evolution has long
predominated, and still predominates, over the process of dissolution ; and it is upon the
former process, therefore, that we fix attention, though the rhythm of motion and the flux
of existence reveal themselves wherever we look.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 443

"whicli, for a number of years, "he was slowly feeling his way to an
answer. In liis earliest publication — the Letters on the Proper
Sphere of Government — there was already implied the belief that
societies are not manufactured, but grow; and it was from the
side of natural law, therefore, that this question of progress was
at once approached. It was in the pages of Social Statics that he
elaborated his first reply. There, borrowing from Coleridge the
theory that Coleridge in turn had derived from German specula-
tion— that life is " a tendency toward individuation " — he under-
took to show that it is in the fulfillment of this tendency that all
progress will be found to consist. Individuation, then, was the
master-principle of his thought. But, examined closely, this tend-
ency toward individuation resolves itself into two closely related
processes : one making for more and more sharply defined sepa-
rateness ; the other for increasing unity of organization. Uni-
versal specialization, with resulting development of complexity,
represents one side of the movement we call progress ; increasing
interdependence among the specialized parts of the organism rep-
resents the other.

Progress, therefore — or, to substitute the proper word, evolu-
tion— was already recognized by Mr. Spencer as a double-sided
process, comprising diii'erentiation, with consequent growth in
complexity, and integration, with consequent growth in unifica-
tion. But though this second-named element — unification — was
never entirely lost sight of by him, and is given clear statement,
for example, in the essays on The Philosophy of Style and The
Genesis of Science, it was upon the former element — differentia-
tion— that for a time his attention was fixed. Taking this prin-
ciple by itself, and detaching it from all other considerations, he
attempted, in his essay on Progress : its Law and Cause, to ex-
pand it into a complete theory of universal evolution. In this he
was helped by von Baer's law, with which he had become ac-
quainted in 1852 — " that the series of changes gone through dur-
ing the development of a seed into a tree, or an ovum into an
animal, constitute an advance from homogeneity of structure to
heterogeneity of structure." Overlooking the principle of inte-
gration, Mr. Spencer announces this generalization as his text.
" We propose," he writes, in the early part of his essay, " to show
that this law of organic progress is the law of all progress." In
other words, evolution is made to consist wholly in the increase
of complexity — in the transformation of the homogeneous into
the heterogeneous by successive differentiations.

Satisfied that he had now reached not only a law of evolution,
but also ilie law of evolution, Mr. Spencer, when he began work
on the Synthetic Philosophy, proceeded to elaborate his thesis in
the first edition of First Principles. Further thought, however.

444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

convinced him that he had fallen into error — that the transforma-
tion of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous does not sum up
the whole of evolution, but only the most conspicuous part of the
secondary redistribution of matter and motion constituting it.
Many changes in the direction of increasing heterogeneity — e. g.,
the rise of a cancer in the individual organism, or of a revolution
in the state — obviously tend not to evolution, but to dissolution.
When, then, does increase in complexity mean evolution ? The
answer to this question, found in a return to the principle of in-
tegration, is, when increase of complexity is accompanied by
more and more complete interdependence among the specialized
parts — by increase in organic unification. Evolution, therefore,
may be roughly defined as change toward multiformity in unity,
brought about by the rise of unlikenesses (differentiation) and the
concentration of the unlike parts, through mutual dependence,
into an organized whole (integration) ; or, to phrase the doctrine
philosophically in Mr. Spencer's world-famous formula, as "an
integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion ;
during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent
homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during
which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."

But with the formulation of this all-pervading process, we
reach only the starting-point of a fresh investigation. Philoso-
phy— the complete unification of knowledge — demands the re-
statement of the law of evolution in deductive form. Such being
the transformations manifested by all classes of concrete phe-
nomena, we ask. Why this continuous metamorphosis ? We must
seek the rationale of the universal changes inductively set forth,
must undertake to interpret them as necessary consequences of
some deeper law.

Incidentally we may notice here the firm, logical consistency
of the Spencerian system. While it presents us with a history of
the knowable universe in empirical generalizations, it also affil-
iates these all-embracing generalizations upon ultimate principles,
derives them from its final dictum, and thus furnishes a rational
history of the knowable universe as well. Undertaking, there-
fore, the task of presenting the phenomena of evolution in syn-
thetic order, Mr. Spencer arrives at the law of the instability of
any finite homogeneous aggregate owing to the unequal exposure
of its parts to incident forces, and proceeds to show, first, that
" every mass, or part of a mass, on which a force falls subdivides
and differentiates that force, which thereupon proceeds to work a
variety of changes "; and, secondly, that the process of segrega-
tion, " tending ever to separate unlike units and to bring together
like units," serves constantly " to sharpen or make definite differ-
entiations otherwise caused." Finally, these laws — the instability

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 445

of the homogeneous, the multiplication of effects, and segrega-
tion— are exhibited as corollaries from the ultimate law, as inevi-
table results of the persistence of force under its forms of matter
and motion. In this way the circle of induction and deduction is
made complete.

In this connection it will be interesting to say something about
the course of thought by which Mr. Spencer was gradually led to
the fundamental principles above summarized. I am fortunate
in having before me as I write a letter in which he was kind
enough to outline for me the important stages in his progress
toward the great doctrines of the synthetic philosophy.* If, in
following his account and in occasionally reproducing, as I shall
venture to do, his own words, I am forced to touch again upon
points already brought out, this will scarcely be deemed ground
for regret, since the slight repetition involved will serve perhaps
to throw the whole subject into clearer relief.

The simple nucleus of his philosophic system first made its
appearance in Social Statics, where, in the chapter entitled Gen-
eral Considerations, mention is made of the biological truth that
low types of animals are composed of many like parts not mutu-
ally dependent, while higher animals are composed of parts that
are unlike and are mutually dependent. This, he writes, " was an
induction which I had reached in the course of biological studies—
mainly, I fancy, while attending Professor Owen's lectures on the
Vertebrate Skeleton." With this was joined the statement that
the same is true of societies, " which begin with many like parts
not mutually dependent and end with many like parts that are
mutually dependent." This also was an induction. " And then
in the joining of these came the induction that the individual
organism and the social organism followed this law." Thus the
radical conception of the entire system took shape before Mr,
Spencer had become acquainted with von Baer's law, which, as we
have seen, did not occur till two years later. This law, though
applying to the unfolding of the individual only, had none the
less its use. In furnishing the expression " from homogeneity to
heterogeneity," it presented a more convenient intellectual imple-
ment. " By its brevity and its applicability to all orders of phe-
nomena, it served for thinking much better than the preceding
generalization, which contained the same essential thought." The
essays which followed Social Statics were marked by the estab-
lishment of various separate inductions in which other groups of

* In this letter Mr. Spencer called my attention to the fact that certain paragraphs in
my Introduction (chapter ili, ^ ii) would, taken by themselves, be likely to leave the reader
with a mistaken impression of the philosophic method pursued by him. For this reason I
am glad to have the opportunity of returning to the matter here.

446 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

phenomena were "bronght under this large principle, while in the
first edition of the Psychology not only was this same principle
shown to comprehend mental phenomena., but there was also rec-
ognized the primary law of evolution — integration and increase of
definiteness. What followed may best be given in Mr. Spencer's
own words: "Then it was that there suddenly arose in me the
conception that the law which I had separately recognized in
various groups of phenomena was a universal law applying to
the whole Cosmos : the many small inductions were merged in
the large inductions. And only after this largest induction had
been formed did there arise the question — Why ? Only then did
I see that the universal cause for the universal transformations
was the multiplication of effects, and that they might be deduced
from the law of the multiplication of effects. The same thing
happened at later stages. The generalization which immediately
preceded the publication of the essay on Progress : its Law and
Cause — the instability of the homogeneous — was also an induc-
tion. So was the direction of motion, and the rhythm of motion.
Then haviDg arrived at these derivative causes of the universal
transformation, it presently dawned upon me (in consequence of
the recent promulgation of the doctrine of the conservation of
force) that all these derivative causes were sequences from that
universal cause. The question had, I believe, arisen. Why these
several derivative laws ? and that came as the answer. Only
then did there arise the idea of developing the whole of the uni-
versal transformation from the persistence of force. So you see
the process began by being inductive and ended by being deduc-
tive ; and this is the peculiarity of the method followed. On the
one hand, I was never content with any truth remaining in the
inductive form. On the other hand, I was never content with
allowing a deductive interpretation to go unverified by reference
to the facts."

It remains for us now, so far as space will permit, to pass in
rapid review a few of the most salient features of the evolution-
ary philosophy thus wrought into a firmly knit, logical whole — a
philosophy which, as a science of the sciences resting upon uni-
versal law, is properly called Synthetic*

To the exposition and elaboration in their broadest aspects of
the all- comprehensive truths above epitomized, Mr. Spencer de-
votes the initial volume of his series — First Principles. Such a
presentation of arguments and results constitutes what he defines

* Readers who desire to know something of Mr. Spencer's reasons for the selection of
the term Synthetic Philosophy as the general title of his system will find a good deal of in-
formation in Mr. John Fiske's extremely interesting life of Edward Livingston Youmans.
See especially pages 233, 290, and 291.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 447

as General Philosophy. The nine following volumes of the sys-
tem are devoted to Special Philosophy — that is, to the task of
carrying these universal truths, as an organon, forward into the
particular phenomena which form the subject-matter of biology,
psychology, sociology, and ethics, and of interpreting such par-
ticular phenomena by them.

Strictly speaking, of course, at the very opening of this serial
undertaking a large gap remains unfilled, since the application of
the fundamental principles already established should first of all
be made to inorganic Nature. But this great division is passed
over entirely, "partly," to quote the words of the prospectus,
" because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive ; and j^artly
because the interpretation of organic Nature after the proposed
method is of more immediate importance." We thus enter at
once, in The Principles of Biology, the field of organic life ; the
purpose of the two volumes composing this work being, as stated
in the preface, "to set forth the general truths of biology as illus-
trative of and as interpreted by the laws of evolution." Due
notice should be taken of the phrase here employed — " the general
truths of biology." To write a detailed and exhaustive treatise
on the subject was manifestly no part of Mr. Spencer's plan,
which called only for such a co-ordination and synthesis of funda-
mental principles as, expressed in terms of the universal laws of
the redistribution of matter and motion, and finally affiliated
upon the ultimate truth, the persistence of force, would present in
broadest outline the science of life.

From the historical point of view no part of this masterly
work is of greater interest than the closing division of the first
volume, in which Mr. Spencer, after dismissing the special-crea-
tion theory of things as untenable, displays at length the a 'priori
and a posteriori evidences of organic evolution. To appreciate
the full significance of his arguments, it is necessary to remember
that at the time when the chapters containing them were written,
the doctrine of development was currently regarded, even by the
large body of naturalists, as a more or less fantastic hypothesis.
But while thus presenting the case for evolution in its inductive
and deductive aspects, Mr. Spencer did much more than this. He
showed that the processes observable in the world of organic life
are but phases of the universal cosmical processes formulated in
First Principles ; and that thus the deepest laws of morphological
and physiological development are, deductively viewed, necessary
corollaries from the doctrines already established. Even the Dar-
winian principle of natural selection (or, as Mr. Spencer called
it, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence) is ex-
hibited as falling into its place as a single manifestation of a far
wider law — the law of equilibration.

448 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

As here developed in its biological aspects, this law of equili-
bration * deserves the closest attention. Life is defined by Mr.
Spencer as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to
external relations " ; and he shows that the degree of life varies
as the correspondence varies between organism and environment ;
the highest point being reached where the correspondence ex-
hibits a maximum of complexity, rapidity, and length. Lack of
correspondence — that is, inability on the part of an organism to
balance external actions by internal actions — means death ; abso-
lutely perfect adjustment, on the other hand, would be absolutely
perfect life. Now, equilibration, biologically considered, expresses
the tendency on the part of an organism to adapt itself to its en-
vironment, the environment itself being, it must be remembered,
in a state of constant change ; and such equilibration is direct
where the organism responds immediately to the demands of its
surroundings, and indirect where variations which are in the line
of greater correspondence are gathered up and transmitted to fol-
lowing generations. Under the one head, it is manifest, we formu-
late the doctrine of use and disuse; under the other, the doctrine
of natural selection. Nor is this all. Followed through its wider
sweep of meaning, the law of equilibration is found to throw a
flood of fresh light on the vexed question of population. Indi-
viduation and genesis are in necessary antagonism ; and while
" excess of fertility has itself rendered the process of civilization
inevitable," the process of civilization must in turn " inevitably
diminish fertility, and at last destroy its excess." \ Gradual ap-
proach will thus be made toward an equilibrium "between the
number of new individuals produced and the number which sur-
vive and propagate." %

From The Principles of Biology we pass to The Principles of
Psychology, the massive superstructure of which is firmly reared
on the general foundations already laid. Life at large is the
genus ; what we distinguish as bodily life and mental life respect-
ively are species ; and though if, after the ordinary fashion, we
insist on contemplating only the extreme forms of the two, it
would appear that the hardest line of demarcation is to be drawn
between them, such line necessarily vanishes the moment the
evolutionary point of view is assumed. Acceptance of this point
of view, furthermore, enables us to realize that mind can be un-
derstood only in the light of its evolution. " If creatures of the

* The general law'is worked out in full in First Principles (Part II, chapter xxii). The
question is there raised, Can the changes constituting evolution go on without limit? And
the answer is. No. " The changes go on until there is reached an equilibrium between the
forces which all parts of the aggregate are exposed to, and the forces these parts oppose
to them."

f Principles of Biology, § 376. % It»id-> § ^V?.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 449

most elevated kinds have reached those highly integrated, very-
definite, and extremely heterogeneous organizations they possess,
through modifications upon modifications accumulated during an
immeasurable past — if the developed nervous systems of such
creatures have gained their complex structures and functions
little by little ; then, necessarily, the involved forms of conscious-
ness which are the correlatives of these complex structures and
functions must have arisen by degrees. And as it is impossible
truly to comprehend the organization of the body in general, or
of the nervous system in particular, without tracing its successive
stages of complication ; so it must be impossible to comprehend
mental organization without similarly tracing its stages." *

As in The Principles of Biology the general truths of life were
interpreted through the fundamental laws of evolution, so, there-
fore, in The Principles of Psychology the general facts and prob-
lems of mind are elucidated in the same way. The work opens
with a consideration of data and inductions, and then— given the
psychical shock which Mr. Spencer distinguishes as the primordial
and unresolvable element, or ultimate unit, of consciousness —
proceeds to trace the evolution of intelligence, stage by stage,
through reflex action, instinct, memory, reason, the feelings, and
the will. This progress is then exhibited as part of evolution at
large ; the phenomena belonging to the intellectual, as contradis-
tinguished from the emotional life, are examined in detail ; and
the ultimate question of the relation between thought and things
— between subject and object — is raised and dealt with. Finally,
a number of extremely suggestive chapters are devoted to corol-
laries concerning the expression of feeling, sociality and sym-
pathy, egoistic, ego-altruistic, and altruistic sentiments, and the
evolution of sesthetic activities and gratifications — all these
matters being of great importance in the synthetic system as
developing that special part of human psychology upon which
sociology and ethics must rely for their foundations.

With the way thus prepared, Mr. Spencer enters upon what,
quantitatively considered, represents by far the largest portion of
his undertaking — the application of the laws of evolution to
the phenomena of society. The Principles of Sociology as actu-
ally completed exhibit the only important departure of the author
from the prospectus issued thirty-six years ago ; for the volume
in which linguistic, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic progress
was to have been traced out, is left unwritten. Sundry of the
more momentous questions connected with these phases of human
development, however, are touched upon in other parts of the
system, and the hiatus is, therefore, by no means a serious one.

* Principles of Psychology, § 129.
VOL. L — 34

450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

On the other hand, the remaining divisions of the work have, in
the writing, undergone unlooked-for expansion ; the three bulky
volumes now before us containing, in addition to nearly six
hundred pages setting forth data and inductions, elaborate
treatises on domestic, ceremonial, political, ecclesiastical, profes-
sional, and industrial institutions, their genesis, growth, charac-
teristics, significance, and probable future developments.

Of the direct bearings of these volumes upon the urgent prob-
lems of modern social life, this is, unfortunately, not the place to
speak ; though we may note in passing that here, as elsewhere,
the Spencerian philosophy reveals its eminently practical quali-
ties. No matter to what profound depths its arguments may
take us, its doctrines relate themselves at every point with vital
issues, and thus, in Lord Bacon's phrase, come home to men's
business and bosoms. We feel, in following its speculations, that,
remote and labyrinthine as these must necessarily sometimes seem
to be, we are never, after all, very far away from the broad high-
way of human affairs. But if we must not now dwell upon this
particular point, still less must we allow ourselves, in connection
with it, to be drawn off into any discussion of Mr. Spencer's indi-
vidualism.* We must confine ourselves to the merest statement
of the purpose of the Sociology, taken as a whole.

Such purpose is, of course, in a word, the interpretation of the
phenomena of social growth and organization, from the simplest
to the most intricate, in terms of universal evolution. Societies
are organisms — evolving aggregates ; and their progress is clearly
marked by even greater and greater multiformity in unity — that
is, by gradual advance from the comparative homogeneity, indefi-
niteness, and incoherence of the simple tribe, to the constantly
increasing heterogeneity, definiteness, and coherence of the civil-
ized nation. To work out this continuous process of integration
and differentiation along the great lines of social structure and
function ; to make clear that the transformations everywhere
going on, from the minutest change in a tribal group to the far-
reaching metamorphoses of modern civilization, are at bottom
exemplifications of the ultimate laws of evolution ; and to show
that the complex play of forces in the superorganic, no less than
in the organic, world tends inevitably toward equilibration ; in
such a general consensus of results, then, the various detailed
portions of the Sociology all merge ; in such a consensus the fun-

* I may perhaps be allowed to refer the reader who is interested in this special matter
to the chapter on The Spencerian Sociology in my Introduction. I there endeavored to
show that Mr. Spencer's political views grow naturally out of the body of his thought, and
constitute an essential part of his general doctrine of evolution. The subject is a vast one
for brief treatment, and I was, therefore, the more gratified when Mr. Spencer expressed
entire satisfaction with my analysis of his arguments and conclusions.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 451

damental connecting link is to be found between the work in its
totality and the other divisions of the Synthetic Philosophy.

One large aspect of universal evolution remains to be con-
sidered before the organization of knowledge demanded by phi-
losophy can be taken as complete ; and this aspect — of such
importance as to lead Mr. Spencer to describe all other parts of
his work as subsidiary to its interpretation * — we at length reach
in the concluding two volumes of the series comprising The
Principles of Ethics. To the student of the earlier divisions of
the Spencerian system the point of view adopted in the elucida-
tion of the facts and problems of conduct will appear a matter
of course. Ethics necessarily depends upon the simpler sciences,
and generalizations furnished by these must be accepted as data
for the systematization of the principles of right living. More-
over, conduct at large, including those portions of it which form
the subject-matter of morality, can be fully understood only
when regarded as one phase of evolving life. This conception of
things will now seem so natural as to call for nothing beyond the
baldest statement.

In his work of reconstructing ethical theory along the lines
thus indicated, and in harmony with the fundamental doctrines
of his philosophy, Mr. Spencer takes a great and most important
step in advance of the results reached by the various schools of
scientific moralists in the past. His system is, of course, hedo-
nistic or utilitarian — that is, the final criterion and ultimate end
of conduct is for him happiness, pleasure, or well-being. But he
was naturally discontent with the merely empirical conclusions
in which the older utilitarians had been willing to rest. They
had not pushed beyond the inductive stage of inquiry ; and their
generalizations, however interesting and valuable they might be,
were merely generalizations after all — statements founded simply
upon accumulated observations of results. But, though every
science begins with such observations and generalizations, it has
no claim to be considered a developed science until the principle
of causation is fully recognized and inductive results are set
forth in deductive form. It is the scientific presentation of
ethical principles, in this strict sense of the word scientific, that
Mr. Spencer has, therefore, undertaken. He has sought to con-
vert the laws of conduct from truths of the empirical into truths
of the rational order. As he wrote in his letter to Mill : f " I con-
ceive it to be the business of moral science to deduce from the
laws of life and the conditions of existence what kinds of action
necessarily tend to produce happiness and what kinds to produce

* See original preface to The Data of Ethics (18*79).
•)■ Repriuted in The Principles of Ethics, § 21.

452 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

iinhappiness. Having done this, its deductions are to be recog-
nized as laws of conduct, and are to be conformed to, irrespective
of a direct estimation of happiness or misery."

If it is asked toward what general conclusions regarding the
moral prospects of the race the Spencerian ethics may be said to
point, the broadest answer will be found in the statement of the
universal law, already frequently referred to — the law of equili-
bration. We bring with us into life instincts and impulses
which we derive from our long line of animal and barbarous
ancestry: our natures are very imperfectly adjusted to the de-
mands of social life. But the influences of advancing civilization
have throughout human evolution been gradually molding char-
acter into more and more complete harmony with the sum-total
of the conditions under which we live. Hence we may anticipate
a time, far distant though it must needs be, when the internal
forces which we know as feelings will be in fairly perfect balance
with the external forces which they encounter; when, in other
words, the nature of man will have become fully adapted to the
associated state. Mr. Spencer has, indeed, within recent years
spoken less optimistically about this consummation than he did
when, in Social Statics, he asserted the evanescence of evil. But
he still looks forward to an " approximately complete adjust-
ment " * of constitution to conditions as the goal of moral evolu-
tion, toward which we are actually, if slowly, moving.

And now, even in so slight a sketch as this, we can not leave
the synthetic system without broaching one last issue of the pro-
foundest importance. What are the bearings of the Spencerian
philosophy upon the ultimate questions of religion ?

We have seen that on the very threshold of his undertaking
Mr. Spencer cleared the way for constructive effort by defining
philosophy as knowledge of the highest generality, and thus
asserting its limitations within the sphere of the phenomenal.
Ontological speculations are thus abandoned, and our concern is
not with the absolute, the unconditioned, the infinite, but with
the relative, the conditioned, the finite. We have seen, further-
more, that in the application of the universal laws of evolution to
the various phenomena of the sciences we have to seek the final
interpretation of even the highest manifestations of psychical life
in terms of matter, motion, force. To what general conclusions
do we thus seem to stand committed ? Surely, it may be urged,
there is but one inference possible. Our philosophy is a philoso-
phy of materialism pure and simple.

Such an inference, however, though often loudly proclaimed
by the ignorant and the perverse, is one that the careful student,

* The Principles of Ethics, § 244.

HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 453

recalling the many luminous passages in which Mr. Spencer has
stated and restated his position, will of necessity refuse to in-
dorse. So frequently, indeed, has our author repudiated, not by
phrases only, but by arguments, the charges made against him on
this popular count, that repetition of them must be taken to imply
either oversight, or misconception, or deliberate attempt to force
upon him, for polemical purposes, opinions which he has consist-
ently disowned and even vigorously opposed. How, then, we
may ask, turning directly to his own writings, does the case
really stand ?

Briefly thus. The chemist can not explain the ultimate nature
of matter, nor the physicist the ultimate nature of motion, nor the
psychologist the ultimate nature of mind. Matter, motion, mind
are but symbols, expressing for us the manifestations of an un-
known power, and, pushed to the utmost limits of simplification,
the symbols remain symbols still. The question at issue between
spiritualists and materialists, therefore, viewed from the Spen-
cerian standpoint, resolves itself into a question of these symbols,
and any answer that can conceivably be given leaves us as com-
pletely outside the reality as we were at first. Spirit and matter
must thus be regarded simply as signs of the ultimate existence
which underlies both ; and though we may lean to the spiritualis-
tic rather than to the materialistic side — though of the two it may
seem " easier to translate so-called matter into so-called spirit than
to translate so-called spirit into so-called matter (which latter is
indeed wholly impossible " * ), yet we must remember that no such
translation will carry us beyond our symbols into a knowledge of
that for which they stand.

Manifestly, then, the absolute and unconditioned existence
which transcends human intelligence and in which the subject,
object, spirit, matter of our finite consciousness merge and are
united, is not for Mr. Spencer mere zero — a negation of thought.
It is a positive fact of the profoundest certitude ; or rather let us
say it is the final fact sustaining all others — the fact which science
finds at the back of its widest generalizations and beneath its
deepest truths. And this final fact of science, this ultimate datum
of consciousness, upon which all knowledge depends, this cause of
all causes in the universe as it is revealed to us, is the permanent
foundation of all religion as well. Here the ancient foes meet in
complete reconciliation. Science must necessarily end in the
mystery with which religion begins. " That which persists un-
changing in quantity but ever changing in form," under the sen-
sible appearances "which the universe presents to us," is an
" unknown and unknowable power which we are obliged to recog-

* The Principles of Psychology, § 63.

454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

nize as without limit in space and without beginning or end in
time/' and this noumenal power of philosophy, of which all phe-
nomena are but manifestations, is the God of religion — " the
infinite and eternal energy from which all things proceed."

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

{Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Pn. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOE OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTUREB IN
ANTHROPO-GEOGEAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

I.— LANGUAGE, NATIONALITY, AND RACE.

THE historian of The Norman Conquest of England was very
fond of contrasting the east and the west of Europe. He
maintained that the political unrest which underlies the Eastern
question was due to the utter lack of physical assimilation among
the people of the Balkan states ; that, in other words, nationality
had no foundation in race. This was undoubtedly true to some
extent ; and yet even in the west, the formation of these boasted
nationalities is so recent that it accords but slightly with the
lines of physical descent. A slight scratch of the skin of neigh-
bors suffices to reveal radical differences of blood, so that the west
is merely a step in advance of the east after all. It is a trite ob-
servation that all over Europe population has been laid down in
different strata more or less horizontal. In the east of Europe
this stratification is recent and distinct. West of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire the primitive layers have become metamor-
phosed, to borrow a geological term, by the fusing heat of nation-
ality and the pressure of civilization. The population of the east
of Europe structurally is as different from that of the west to
the naked eye as, to complete our simile, sandstone is from gran-
ite ; nevertheless, despite their apparent homogeneity on analysis
we may still read the history of these western nations by the aid
of natural science from the purely physical characteristics of their
people alone. >

To the ordinary observer a uniform layer of population is
spread over the continent as waters cover the earth. In reality,
while apparently at rest, this great body of men reveals itself to-
day in constant motion internally. Currents and counter-cur-
rents sweep hither and thither, some rising and others falling,
with now and then a quiet pool or eddy where alone population is
really in a quiescent state. These movements are not transient ;
they have been going on for centuries, determined by the eco-
nomic character and the geography of the continent. They are

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 455

shifting suddenly now with modern industrial life, but they have
persisted until the present through generations. Proof of this
antiquity we have ; where Nature has isolated little pools since,
of population, we may still find men with an unbroken ancestral
lineage reaching back to a time when the climate, the flora and
fauna of Europe were far different from those which prevail to-
day. This may be shown, not by historical documents, for these
men antedate all written history, but by physical traits which are
older than institutions and outlast them all as well.

This varied population, as we see it to-day, is in its racial com-
position the effect of a long train of circumstances, historical
upon the surface, social it may be in part, but at bottom also geo-
graphical. From these effects, and from the migrations even now
going on, we may seek out the causes — many of which have hith-
erto been neglected by students of institutions — which have been
operative for centuries, and which have gone on in spite of
political events or else have indirectly given rise to them. Prog-
ress in social life has not been cataclysmic ; it has not taken
place by kangaroo-leaps of political or social reforms on paper;
but it has gone on slowly, painfully perhaps, and almost imper-
ceptibly, by the constant pressure of slight but fixed causes. Our
problem is to examine certain of these fundamental mainsprings
of movement, especially the influence of the physical environ-
ment ; and to do it by means of the calipers, the measuring tape,
and the color scale. Science proceeds best from the known pres-
ent to the remote past, in anthropology as in geology or astron-
omy. The study of living men should precede that of the dead.
This shall be our method. Fixing our attention upon the present
population, we shall then be prepared to interpret the physical
migrations and to some extent the social movements which have
been going on for generations in the past.

Let us at the outset avoid the error of confusing community
of language with identity of race. Nationality may often follow
linguistic boundaries, but race bears no necessary relation what-
ever to them. Two essentials of political unity are bound up in
identity of language — namely, the necessity of a free interchange
of ideas by means of a common mental circulating medium ; and,
secondly, the possession of a fund of common traditions in his-
tory or literature. The first is largely a practical consideration ;
the second forms the subtle essence of nationality itself. For
these reasons we shall find language corresponding with political
affiliations far more often than with ethnic boundaries.* Politics

*A full discussion of this point is offered in Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthropologie,
Paris, 1862, p. 264. Vide also Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. v, p. 212 ; and
Mittheilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft, Wien, Supp. I, p. viii.

456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

may indeed become a factor in tlie physical sense, especially wlien
re-enforced by language. It can not be denied that assimilation
in blood often depends upon identity of speech, or that political
frontiers sometimes coincide with a racial differentiation of popu-
lation. The canton of Schaffhausen lies north of the Rhine, a
deep inset into the grand duchy of Baden, yet its people, though
isolated from their Swiss countrymen across the river, are in-
tensely patriotic. In race as in political affairs they are distinctly
divided from their immediate German neighbors. Mentally hold-
ing to the Swiss people, they have unconsciously generated a
physical individuality akin to them as well. Thus it is possible
that a sense of nationality once aroused may become an active
factor through selection in the anthropological sense. Neverthe-
less, this phenomenon requires more time than most political his-
tory has at its disposition, so that in the main our proposition
remains true. Despite the political hatred of the French for the
German, no appreciable effect in a physical sense has yet resulted,
nor will it until the lapse of generations.

Consideration of our linguistic map of the southwest of Europe
will serve to illustrate some of the potent political influences
which make for community of language without thereby indicat-
ing any influence of race. The Iberian Peninsula, now divided
between two nationalities, the Spanish and the Portuguese, is, as
we shall subsequently show, in the main homogeneous racially —
more so, in fact, than any other equally large area of Europe. The
only exception is in the case of the Basques, whom we must con-
sider by themselves. This physically uniform population, exclu-
sive of the Basque, makes use to-day of three distinct languages,
all Romance or Latin in their origin, to be sure, but so far differ-
entiated from one another as to be mutually unintelligible. It is
said, for example, that the Castilian peasant can more readily
understand Italian than the dialect of his neighbor and compa-
triot, the Catalan. The gap between the Portuguese and the Cas-
tilian or true Spanish is less deep and wide, perhaps ; but the two
are still very distinct and radically different from the language
spoken in the eastern provinces of Spain. The Catalan speech is,
as the related tints upon our map imply, only a sub-variety of
the Provencal or southern French language. The people of the
Balearic Islands speaking this Catalan tongue differ from the
French in language but little more than do the Corsicans.*

* For the Basque language boundary, vide Revue d' Anthropologic, Paris, series 1, iv,
p. 1. The Catalan boundary in France is mapped in Revue mensuelle de rEcole d'Au-
thropologiej Paris, vol. i, p. 143 ; Encyelopajdia Britannica, vol. xxii, p. 850, gives details
for Spain. The dialect boundary of the Langue d'Oc is traced geographically in Revue
mensuelle, etc., i, p. 219 ; vide also Bulletin de la Sociote d' Anthropologic, 18V9, p. 68.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

457

At first glance all this seems to belie our assertion that unity
of language is often a historical product of political causes. For
it may justly be objected that the Portuguese type of language,
although in general limited by the political boundary along
the east, has crossed th6 northern frontier and now prevails
throughout the Spanish province of Galicia; or again, that the
French-Spanish political frontier has been powerless to restrain
the advance, far toward the Strait of Gibraltar, of the Catalan
speech, closely allied as we have said to the dialects of Provence

DlAL£CT3 ^^^^^^«^.
LANJGVAGE3 ^-^^^MMmmwam^

BASgvE Place NAMES!

ALONE, . . . . '

bAspvE Place mames

AND 6PEECtl . .

in southern France ; that not even the slight line of demarcation
between these last two lies along the Pyrenean political bound-
ary, but considerably to the north of it, so that Catalan is to-day
spoken over nearly a whole department in France ; and, lastly,
that the Basque language, utterly removed from any affiliation
with all the rest, lies neither on one side nor the other of this
same Pyrenean frontier, but extends down both slopes of the
mountain range, an insert into both national domains of France
and Spain. These objections are, however, the very basis of our
contention that language and nationality often stand in a definite
relation to one another : for, if we examine the history of Spain

458

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and Portugal, we shall discover that historical causes alone have
determined this curious linguistic distribution.

The three great languages in the Iberian Peninsula— Castilian
or Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan — correspond respectively to
the three political agencies which drove out the Moorish invaders
from the ninth century onward from three different directions
and from distinct geographical centers. The mountains of Ga-
licia, in the extreme northwest, served as the nucleus of the
resistant power which afterward merged itself in the Portuguese

^ K.YMR1C

^^m

Keltic Place HAHts

AND iPEtCH

^ Keltic Place names alone

□

Tevtonic Village

names althovoh
many keltic . .

NAMES OF NATVR.AL
FEATUR.E5 .

f GAELIC 5PEECHBVT
TEVTONIC PLACE
NAMES

monarchy. Castile in the central north was the asylum of the
refugees, expelled from the south by the Saracens, who afterward
reasserted themselves in force under the leadership of the kings
of Castile. Aragon in the northeast, whose people were mainly of
Catalan speech, which they had derived from the south of France,
during their temporary forced sojourn in that country while the
Moors were in active control of Spain, was a base of supplies for
the third organized opposition to the invaders. Each of these
political units, as it reconquered territory from the Moors, im-

^

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 459

posed its official speech upon the people, where it remains to-day.
Were the present Spanish nation old enough and sufficiently uni-
fied ; were the component parts of it more firmly knitted together
by education, modern means of transport, and economic interests ;
this disunity of speech might disappear. Unfortunately, the
character of the Iberian Peninsula is such — arid, infertile, and
sparsely populated in the interior — that these languages socially
and commercially turn their backs to one another. Of necessity,
they do this also along the frontier between Spain and Portugal.
The eyes of each community are directed not toward Madrid, but
toward the sea ; for there on the fertile littoral alone, is there
the economic possibility of a population sufficiently dense for uni-
fication. Thus the divergence of language is truly the expression
of natural causes working through political ones, which promise
to perpetuate the differences for some time. As for the Basques,
they have been politically independent both of the French and
the Spaniards until within a few years, and have been enabled to
preserve their unique speech largely for this reason. But now
that their political autonomy has begun to disappear, the official
Spanish is pressing the Basque language so forcibly that it seems
to be everywhere on the retreat.

We have seen that community of language is often imposed
as a result of political unity. But it is, after all, rather a by-
product, so that it often fails even here to indicate nationality.
Its irresponsibility in respect both of nationality and of race is
clearly indicated by the present linguistic status of the British
Isles.* As our map shows, the Keltic language is now spoken in
the remote and mountainous portions of Wales, Scotland, and Ire-
land, as well as across the English Channel in French Brittany.
Are we to infer from this that in these several places we have to
do with vestiges of a so-called Keltic race which possesses any
physical traits in common ? Far from it ! For, although in a
few places racial differences occur somewhere near the linguistic
frontiers, as in Wales and Brittany, they are all the more mis-
leading elsewhere for that reason. Within the narrow confines
of this spoken Keltic language are to be found populations char-
acterized by all the extremes of the races of Europe. The dark-
haired, round-faced Breton peasant speaking the Kymric branch
of the Keltic tongue is, as we shall hope to demonstrate, physic-
ally as far removed from the Welshman who uses the same lan-
guage, as from the tall and blue-ej^ed Norman neighbor in France

* For exact details and maps of the spoken languages, vide Ravenstein in Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society, London, vol. slii, p. 579, for Great Britain. The limits in
France are mapped in Memoires de la Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, series i, iii, pp. 147 seq.
The place names are mapped in Canon Taylor's Names and Places. Also Bull. Soc, 1878,
p. 236.

46o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

who knows nothing of a Keltic speech at all. The Welshman in
turn is physically allied to the Irish and distinct from many of
the Gaelic-speaking Scotch, although these last two speak even
the same subtype of the Keltic language. Such racial affinity
as obtains between certain of these people is in utter defiance of
the bonds of speech. The Breton should be more at home among
his own folk in the high Alps in respect of race, even although
he could hold no converse with the Swiss people in their own
tongue.

If these examples be not enough, turn to other parts of
Europe. The Walloons and the Flemish, component parts of the
Belgian nation, are indeed quite distinct in race and in language
alike.* It is only an accident. For if we turn to Switzerland,
seeking for physical differences along the boundary of the
French- and German-speaking cantons, they are not to be found, f
In northern Italy to-day there are considerable communities still
bearing the German speech and customs, evidence of the Teu-
tonic invasions of historic times. These people have become so
completely absorbed that they are not distinguishable physically
from their Italian neighbors. There are indeed spots in Italy
where German racial traits survive, but they are quite remote
from these islets of Teutonic language. J

Nor in eastern Europe is the picture less confusing. The Bul-
garian language, spoken by people so outlandish to Europeans
that they gave the word " bogie " to our nurses wherewith to
frighten children, went first. Now it is the Roumanian speech
which, in its turn, is disappearing before the Slavic tongue.*
Magyar, the language of the Hungarians, spreading toward the
east, displaced by German, which is forcing its way in from the
northwest, is also on the move. Beneath all this hurry-skurry of
speech the racial lines remain as fixed as ever. Language, in
short, as a great philologist has put it, " is not a test of race. It
is a test of social contact." Waves of language have swept over
Europe, leaving its racial foundations as undisturbed as are the

* Annales de Demographie, iv, p. 224 ; or more fully, with maps by the author, in
Publications of the American Statistical Association, v, p. 28.

f The French and German portions of Switzerland are shown in Forschungen zur
Deutschen Landes- und Volkskunde, viii, No. 5, 1894; and Rundschau fiir Geographic
und Statistik, xiii, p. 337, appendix map.

:{; Map in Petermann's Geographische Mittheilungen, 18'7'7, plate 17; w'rfe also Globus,
Ixvi, p. 165 ; and Journal of the Anthropological Institute, ii, p. 108.

* Revue de Geographic, xxxvii, p. 321. Perhaps the best compilation of references to
ethnological maps extant, bringing them down to 1885, is given by Dr. Andree in Mittheil-
ungen des Vereins fiir Erdkunde zu Leipzig, 1885, pp. 173 seq. ; less fully to 1879 in Archiv
fiir Anthropologic, xi, p. 454. The editor confesses that nearly all of them are indeed not
ethnological, but merely " speech " maps.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF ECROPE. 461

sands of the sea during a storm. The linguistic status of the
British Isles, above described, shows us one of these waves — the
Keltic^which is, to put it somewhat flippantly, now upon its last
lap on the shores of the western ocean.

We may discover how slippery speech is upon men's tongues
in yet another way — namely, by observing it actually on the move
in a physically quiescent population, leaving a trail behind to
mark its passage. Language becomes truly sedentary when a dis-
tinctive name is given by men to a place of settlement ; it may be
a clearing in the virgin wilderness or a renaming of a village
after a clearing away by conquest of the former possessors. In
either case the result is the same. The name, be it Slavic, Keltic,
or other, tends to remain as a permanent witness that a people
speaking such a tongue once passed that way. A place name of
this kind may and often does outlive the spoken language in that
locality. It remains as a monument to mark the former confines
of the speech, since it can no more migrate than can the houses
and barns within the town. Of course, newcomers may adapt the
old name to the peculiar pronunciation of their own tongue, but
the savor of antiquity gives it a persistent power which is very
great. For this reason we find that after every migration of a
spoken language there follows a trail of such place names to indi-
cate a former condition. Our maps, both of the British Isles and
of Spain, show this phenomenon very clearly. In the one case the
Keltic speech has receded before the Teutonic influence, leaving
a belt of its peculiar village names behind. In the other the
Basque place names, far outside the present limits of the spoken
Basque, indicate no less clearly that the speech is on the move
toward the north, where no such intermediate zone exists.

Then, after the village names have been replaced by the new-
comers, or else become so far mutilated as to lose their identity,
there still linger the names of rivers, mountains, bays, headlands,
and other natural features of the country. Hallowed by folklore
or superstition, their outlandish sounds only serve the more to in-
sure them against disturbance. All over England such names are
not uncommon, pointing to a remote past when the Keltic speech
was omnipresent. Nay, more, not only from all over the British
Isles, but from a large area of the mainland of Europe as well,
comes testimony of this kind to a former wide expansion of this
Keltic language. Such geographical names represent the third
and final stage of the erosion of language prior to its utter disap-
pearance. Nevertheless, as we shall show, the physical features
of men outlive even these, so inherent and deep rooted have they
become. It is indeed true, as Rhys, himself a linguist, has aptly
put it, that " skulls are harder than consonants, and races lurk
behind when languages slip away."

462 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

It appears that language rests even more lightly upon men
than do traditions and folk customs. We find that it disap-
pears first, under pressure, leaving these others along with phys-
ical traits perhaps as sole survivors. There are several reasons
for this mobility. One is that languages rarely coalesce.* They
may borrow and mutilate, but they seldom mix if very distinct
in type. The superior, or perhaps official, language simply
crowds the other out by force. Organization in this case counts
for more than numbers. In this way the language of the Isle de
France has prevailed over the whole country despite its once lim-
ited area, because it had an aggressive dynasty behind it. Lan-
guage, moreover, requires for its maintenance unanimous consent
and not mere majority rule ; for, so soon as the majority changes
its speech, the minority must acquiesce. Not so with folk tales
or fireside customs. People cling to these all the more pertina-
ciously as they become rare. And still less so with physical
traits of race. Many of these last are not apparent to the eye.
They are sometimes unsuspected until they have well-nigh disap-
peared. Men mingle their blood freely. They intermarry, and
a mixed type results. Thus racially organization avails nothing
against the force of numbers. In linguistic affairs nothing
succeeds like success; but in anthropology impetus counts for
nothing.

This does not mean that we are justified to measure race by
the geographical distribution of arts or customs, for they also
migrate in complete independence of physical traits. With the
Keltic language spread the use of polished stone implements and
possibly the custom of incineration, but this did not entail a new
race of men. At times a change of culture appears, accompanied
by a new physical type, as when bronze was introduced into
Britain, or when the European races brought the use of iron to
America. Of course, contact is always implied in such migration,
although a few stragglers may readily have been the cause of the
spread of the custom. This may not be true in respect to the
migration of religions, or in any similar case where determined
opposition has to be overcome and where conquest means substi-
tution ; but in simple arts of immediate obvious application,
copying takes place naturally. The art spreads in direct propor-
tion to its immediate value to the people concerned. No mission-
aries are needed to introduce firearms among the aborigines.
The art speedily outruns race. Moreover, cultures like languages
seldom mix as men do. Parts may be accepted here and there,
but complete amalgamation seldom results. The main effect of

* Vide interesting discussion of this point in detail in A. H. Keane, Ethnology, pp.
198 seq.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 463

the contact of two distinct cultures is to produce stratification.
The common people become the conservators of the old ; the
upper classes hold to the new. It is a case of folklore and super-
stition versus progressive ideas. Here, as in respect of language,
arts and customs become reliable as a test of race only when
found fixed in the soil or in some other way prevented from mi-
gration.

Furthermore, let us not attach too much importance to the
statements of historical and classical writers in their accounts of
migrations and of conquests. We should beware of the travelers'
tales of the ancients. Pliny describes a people of Africa with no
heads and with eyes and mouth in the breast — a statement which
to the anthropologist appears to be open to the suspicion of exag-
geration. Even when conquest has undoubtedly taken place, it
does not imply a change of physical type in the region affected.
We are dealing with great masses of men near the soil to whom
it matters little whether the emperor be Macedonian, Roman, or
Turk. Till comparatively recent times the peasantry of Europe
were as little affected by changes of dynasty as the Chinese people
have been touched by the recent war in the East. To them per-
sonally, victory or defeat meant little except a change of tax-
gatherers.

In this connection it should be borne in mind that conquest
often affected but a small area of each country — namely, its rich-
est and most populous portions. The foreigner seldom pene-
trated the outlying districts. He went, as did the Spaniards in
South America, where gold was gathered in the great cities.
France, as we know, was affected very unevenly by the Roman
conquest. It was not the portion nearest to Rome, but the rich-
est though remote one, which yielded to the Roman rule to the
greatest extent. At all events, the Roman colonists in Gaul and
Brittany have disappeared, to leave no trace. The Vandals in
Africa have left no sign — neither hide nor hair, in a literal sense
— nor is there evidence of the long English rule in Aquitaine.
The Burgundian kingdom was changed merely in respect to its
rulers ; and spots in Italy like Benevento, ruled by the Lombards
for five hundred years, are to-day precisely like all the region
round about them.

The truth is that migrations or conquests to be physically
effective must be domestic and not military. Colonization must
take place by wholesale, and it must include men, women, and
children. The Roman conquests seldom proceeded thus, in sharp
contrast to the people of the East, who migrated in hordes, colo-
nizing incidentally on the way. England was not affected by her
Roman invasion, nor until the Teutons came by thousands. In
anthropology as in jurisprudence, possession is nine points of

464 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the law. Everything is on the side, physically speaking, of the
native. He has been acclimated, developing peculiarities proper
to his surroundings. He is free from the costly work of trans-
porting helpless women and children. The immense majority of
his fellows are like him in habits, tastes, and circumstances. The
invader, if he remains at all, dilutes his blood by half as soon as
he marries', and settles, with the prospect that it will be quartered
in the next generation. He can not exterminate the vanquished
as savages do, even if he would. Nay, more, it is not to his ad-
vantage to do so, for labor is too valuable to sacrifice in that way.
Self-interest triumphs over race hatred. He may kill off a score
or two of the leading men and call it exterminating a tribe, as
the great anthropologist Broca put it, but the probability is that
all the women and most of the men remain. In the subsequent
process of acclimatization, moreover, his ranks are decimated.
He struggles against the combined distrust of most of his neigh-
bors as well as with the migratory instinct which brought him
there in the first place. If he excels in intelligence, he may con-
tinue to rule, but his line is doomed to extinction unless kept
alive by constant re-enforcements. It has been well said that the
greatest obstacle to the spread of man is man. One of the objects
of our study will be to show, as Dr. Collignon aflirms, that " when
a race is well seated in a region, fixed to the soil by agriculture,
acclimatized by natural selection, and sufiiciently dense, it opposes
an enormous resistance to absorption by newcomers, whoever
they may be."

Population being thus persistent by reason of its indestructi-
bility, a peculiar province of our study will be to show the rela-
tion which has arisen between the geography of a country and
the character of its people. Historians have not failed in the
past to point out the ways in which the migrations and conquests
of nations have been determined by mountain chains and rivers.
They have too often been content merely to show that the imme-
diate direction of the movement has been dependent upon topo-
graphical features. We endeavor to go a step further in indicat-
ing the manner in which the ethnic character of the population
has been determined by its environment, entirely apart from
political or historical events as such, and as a result of social
forces which are still at work. Thus we shall show that the
physical character of the population often changes at the line
which divides the hills from the plains. The national boundary
may run along the crest of the mountain chain, while the ethnic
lines skirt its base where the economic character of the country
changes. In other cases, the racial may be equally far from the
political boundary, since the river bed may delimit the state, while
the racial divisions follow the watershed.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 465

Modern political boundaries will, therefore, avail us but little ;
tbey are entirely a superficial product ; for, as we insist, nation-
ality bears no constant or necessary relation whatever to race. It
is an artificial result of political causes to a great extent. From
the moment an individual is born into the world, he finds himself
exposed to a series of concentric influences which swing in upon
him with overwhelming force. The ties of family lie nearest:
the bonds and prejudices of caste follow close upon ; then comes
the circle of party affiliations and of religious denomination.
Language encompasses all these about. The element of nation-
ality lying outside of them all is as largely the result of historical
and social causes as any of the others, with the sole exception of
family perhaps. Race may conceivably cut across all these lines
at right angles. It underlies them all. It is, so to speak, the raw
material from which each of these social patterns is made up. It
may become an agent to determine their intensity and motive,
as the nature of the fiber determines the desigil woven in the
stuff. It may proceed in utter independence. Race harmonizes,
at all events, less with the bounds of nationality than with any
other — certainly less so than with those either of social caste or
religious affiliation. That nearly a half of France, while peopled
by ardent patriots, is as purely Teutonic racially as the half of
Germany itself is a sufficient example of the truth of our asser-
tion. The best illustration of the greater force of religious preju-
dices to give rise to a distinct physical type is afforded by the
Jews. Social ostracism, based upon differences of belief in great
measure, has sufficed to keep them truer to a single racial stand-
ard, perhaps, than any other people of Europe. Another example
of religious isolation, re-enforced by geograj)hical seclusion, may
be seen among the followers of the mediaeval reformer, Juan Val-
d^s. Persecuted for generations, driven high up into the Alps of
northwestern Italy, these people show to- day a notable difference
in physical type from all their neighbors.*

Political geography is, for all these reasons, entirely distinct
from racial and social geography, as well in its princiiDles as in its
results. Many years ago a course was delivered before this Lowell
Institute by M. Guyot, the great geographer, subsequently pub-
lished under the cai)tion The Earth and Man. It created a pro-
found sensation at the time, as it pointed out the intimate rela-
tion which exists between geography and history ; but it was of
necessity extremely vague, and its results were in the main unsat-
isfactory. Its value lay mainly in its novel point of view. Since
this time a completely new science dealing with man has arisen,

* Archivio per I'Antropologia, xx, pp. 61 ei seq. ; also R. Livi, Anthropometria militaire.
p. 135.

VOL. L, — 35

466 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

capable of as great precision as any of tlie other natural sciences.
It has humanized geography, so to speak, even as M. Guyot did in
his time and generation ; and it has enriched history and sociology
in a new and unexpected way.

Historians have of late shown a distinct tendency toward a
fuller appreciation of the importance of physical environment in
human affairs.* The movement is probably at one with the
newer conceptions of the pre-potency of social over political fac-
tors in the making of history. At all events, geography and his-
tory have been drawing nearer to one another under the distin-
guished leadership of the authors of The American Common-
wealth, and of The Norman Conquest of England in the Old
World. • In America our own Justin Winsor has contributed man-
fully to the same end. We have now to bring still other elements
— anthropology and sociology — into touch with these other two,
to form a combination possessed of singular suggestiveness. It
affords at once a means for the quantitative measurement of
racial migrations and social movements ; and it yields a living
picture of the population — the raw material — in and through
which all history must of necessity work. Studing men as merely
physical types of the higher animals, we are able to trace their
movements as we do those of the lower species ; we may correlate
these results with the physical geography and the economic char-
acter of the environment ; and then, at last, superpose the social
phenomena in their geographical distribution. We attempt to
discover relations either of cause and effect, or at least of paral-
lelism and similarity due to a common cause which lies back
of them all — perhaps in human nature itself. Anthropology,
geography, sociology, correlated and combined, such is the effect.

Our study thus overlaps several fields of investigation which
have stood quite remote from one another in the past ; yet it
draws its material from each, and then returns it again endowed
with a new and living significance. Some one has rightly said
that many great advances in human knowledge have been due
to those who effected new combinations of ideas by bringing to-
gether results from widely separated sciences. Helmholtz stands
as a great modern example, physiologist, mathematician, natural
philosopher. Goethe, Spencer, and many more could be cited as
well in defense of the same proposition. Science advances by the
revelation of new relationships between things. In the present
case the hope of perhaps striking a spark, by knocking these
divers sciences together, has induced men to collect materials,
often in ignorance of the exact use to which they might be

* For a full discussion of this topic, reference may be made to a paper by the author in
he Political Science Quarterly, vol. x, p. 636.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 467

ultimately put. To show the results which have already been
achieved is the task to which we have to address ourselves.

The observations upon which our conclusions for Europe are to
rest, cover some ten or more million individuals, the larger frac-
tion being school children, a goodly proportion, however, consist-
ing of conscripts taken from the soil directly to the recruiting
commissions of the various European armies. The labor involved
in merely collecting, to say nothing of tabulating, this mass of
material is almost superhuman ; and we can not too highly praise
the scientific zeal which has made possible our comfortable work
of comparing this accumulated data. As an example of the dif-
ficulties which have been encountered, let me quote from a per-
sonal letter from Dr. Ammon, one of the pioneers in this work,
who measured thousands of recruits in the Black Forest of Ger-
many. *' One naturally," he writes, " is reluctant to undertake a
four or six weeks' trip with the commission in winter, with snow
a metre deep, living in the meanest inns in the little hamlets, and
moving about every two to five days. The ofiicial inspectors must
not be retarded in their work, as the Ministry of War attaches
that condition to their permission to view the recruits. Many of
those rejected for service are dismissed by the surgeons at a glance,
but I must make measurements on all alike. Only when the doc-
tor stops to make an auscultation or to test the vision do I have a
moment's respite. They are sent to my room from the medical
inspector at the rate of two hundred in three hours, sometimes
two hundred and forty ; and on all these men I must make many
measurements, while rendering instant decision upon the color of
the hair and eyes. The mental effort involved in forming so
many separate judgments in such quick succession often brings
me near fainting at the close of the session.'^

Of course, where observations are privately made, to obtain the
consent of the owner of the characteristics is the main obstacle to
be overcome. To make the subject understand what is wanted is
impossible, for it would involve a full discussion of the Keltic
question or of the origin of the Aryans, which, after the first one
hundred cases, becomes tiresome. The color of the hair and eyes,
of course, may be noted in passing, and observers may station
themselves on crowded thoroughfares and easily collect a large
mass of material. I have myself found profit and entertainment
on the Fall River boats in running up some columns from my
unsuspecting fellow-passengers. But to make head measurements
is another matter. Dr. Beddoe adopted an ingenious device
which I will describe in his own words : " Whenever a likely
little squad of natives was encountered the two archseologists got
up a dispute about the relative size and shape of their own heads.

468 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

■wliich I was called in to settle with the calipers. The iinsuspect-
ing Irishmen usually entered keenly into the debate, and before
the little drama had been finished, were eagerly betting on the
sizes of their own heads, and begging to have their wagers deter-
mined in the same manner."

The figures gathered in this way from the schools and the
armies have a peculiar value. They represent all classes of the
population, but more especially the peasantry in all the nooks and
corners of Europe wherever the long arm of the Polizei Staat
reaches. The upper classes are less fully represented oftentimes,
since they attend private schools or are better able to evade the
military service by money payment or by educational test. This
simplifies the matter, since it is the proletariat which alone
clearly reflects the influence of race or of environment. They are
the ones we wish to study. In this sense the observations upon
these populations may aid the sociologist or the historian ; for the
greatest obstacle, heretofore, to the prosecution of the half -written
history of the common people has been the lack of proper raw
materials. There is a mine of information here which has barely
been opened to view on the surface.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L.,

COEKE8PONDANT DE l'iNSTITUT DE TEAKCE, ETC,

VI. — THE SPHERE OF TAXATION PECULIAR TO THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

THE United States presents the curious anomaly of a great
nation existing under two systems, or dual forms of govern-
ment ; each having a sphere of action peculiar to itself, and both
exercising the general functions of government, namely: the
executive, the legislative, and the judicial. These two are the
Federal or national Government, existing in virtue of an agree-
ment of union entered into originally by thirteen separate and
independent States, and known as the Federal Constitution ; and
next, a system of State or divisional governments, existing in vir-
tue of certain original powers retained by the independent and
sovereign parties to the above agreement, and not delegated by
them, in entering the Federal Union, to any other or higher
sovereignty. At the same time a concession of power to tax or
compel contributions from persons, property, and business by
each of these two forms of government, in order to defray their
necessary expenditures, was obviously essential to their existence
and continuance, and was so recognized from the first inception

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 469

of any compact of union. But how to divide this power — the
badge and symbol of sovereignty — between two distinct sov-
ereignties of the same nation, namely, the Federal Congress and
the Legislatures of the several States, and impose limitations in
both cases on the exercise of a function so vast in its sweep and
so imperative in its action, was one of the most difficult prob-
lems that confronted the framers of the Federal Constitution,
and one without precedent in the world's history. The problem
occasioned much discussion, and was really left unsettled — a gen-
eral power being given to the national legislature, or Congress,
" to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises," with the
limitation that " all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform
throughout the United States " ; that " no capitation or other
direct tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census " ; that
" no State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any im-
posts or duties on imports or exports," and that no tax or duty
shall under any circumstances be laid on articles exported from
any State. Under such a loose and indefinite condition of things,
a conflict of laws and of jurisdictions was inevitable, giving rise
to controversies whose determination was really vital to the
integrity and efficiency of the Federal Constitution. But hap-
pily, owing to the firmness and wisdom of the national tribunal
(United States Supreme Court) before which these questions
have been brought for adjudication, most of the difficulties
which once seemed so formidable have been overcome, and are
now mainly interesting as matters of history.

One of the earliest and most celebrated of these controversies
culminated, as it were, in a case or suit known as McCulloch vs.
Maryland, which came before the Supreme Court of the United
States and was decided in 1819, under the following circum-
stances : Congress in 1815 chartered a national (United States)
bank, which as a legitimate and authorized feature of its organ-
ization established branches in the States, with power to issue
circulating notes. This measure proved unpopular in many of
the States, and attempts were made by them to resist the various
operations of this banking institution within their territory.
Foremost among these was the State of Maryland, which, through
an enactment of its Legislature, required every bank doing busi-
ness in the State, and not chartered by the State, either to pay a
stamp duty on every note issued, or pay a tax of $1,500 in gross
per annum, and in addition imposed certain penalties on all the
officers of a bank violating the law, and upon every person who
had any agency in circulating such notes. Contemporaneously,
also, the State of Ohio imposed an annual tax of $50,000 upon
the branch bank of the United States established in that State.

The validity of the Maryland statute having been affirmed

470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

by the Court of Appeals, the highest court of law in that State,
and an action having been brought for the enforcement of a
penalty against an official of the Maryland branch (United
States) bank for a violation of the State law, the defendant — one
McCuUoch, the cashier of the said branch bank — thereupon
brought the case (as involving an interpretation of the Federal
Constitution) by writ of error before the United States Supreme
Court.

A little reflection will abundantly satisfy the reader that the
question involved in this procedure was of the greatest impor-
tance, inasmuch as it necessitated certain rational and funda-
mental conclusions that had not previously been authoritatively
reached and popularly accepted, respecting the nature and power
of the Federal Government ; and a definite interpretation of the
letter and spirit of certain features of the Federal Constitution
which, as the action of the States before noticed demonstrated,
had, to say the least, been heretofore regarded as ambiguous. So
that, whatever might be the decision of the court, the conse-
quences were certain to be most momentous. Thus, if the right
of a State to tax — which practically involved the right to destroy
the instrumentalities of the Federal Government, was denied,
then such Government rested on sure foundations. If, on the
other hand, to quote the language of the court, " the right of the
State to tax the means emyjloyed by the General Government be
conceded, the declaration that the Constitution and laws made in
pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land is an
empty and unmeaning declaration," and the United States, in the
sense of a nation, would practically cease to exist. Taking also
into account the increase in the number of States that would
have to harmonize if anything was accomplished in a new con-
stitutional convention, and the number of new antagonizing ele-
ments on the part of the several States that had arisen — the vexing
question of the future tolerance and extension of slavery, which
finally eventuated in civil war, the power of Congress to create
banking corporations, and the right of the Legislatures of the
States to subject them to taxation, and the like — and it is very
doubtful whether any new Federal Constitution could have been
established. As a matter of fact, the Federal Government and
the union of the States came nearer disruption and dissolution in
1819 than when, forty- two years subsequently, Fort Sumter was
fired upon and the flag of the Union forcibly hauled down — which
latter events are generally regarded as constituting the leading
features of the constitutional history of the United States. And
this situation was so well recognized by Chief-Justice Marshall
(to whom the nation is indebted for its preservation to a greater
degree than has been generally recognized) as to draw from him

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 471

the remark, preliminary to announcing the decision of the court,
that " no tribunal could approach such a question as was involved
without a deep sense of its importance and of the awful responsi-
bility involved in the decision/' *

The decision of the court was unanimous that "the States
have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, bur-
den, or in any manner control the operation of the constitutional
laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers
vested in the General Government ; and that the law passed by
the Legislature of Maryland imposing a tax on the Bank of the
United States is unconstitutional and void."

" If we apply,'' said the Chief Justice, " the principle for which
the State of Maryland contends to the Constitution generally, we
shall find it capable of changing totally the character of that
instrument. We shall find it capable of arresting all the measures
of the Government, and of prostrating it at the foot of the States.
The American people have declared their Constitution and the
laws made in pursuance thereof to be supreme ; but this principle
would transfer the supremacy, in fact, to the States. If the States
may tax one instrument employed by the Government in the exe-
cution of its powers, they may tax any and every other instru-
ment. They may tax the mail ; they may tax patent rights ; they
may tax the papers of the custom house; they may tax judicial
process ; they may tax all the means employed by the Govern-
ment, to an excess which would defeat all the ends of government.
This was not intended by the American people. They did not
design to make their Government dependent on the States."

The court, however, held that its decision did not deprive " the
States of any resources which they originally possessed. It does
not extend to a tax paid by the real property of the bank, in com-
mon with the other real property within the State, nor to a tax
imposed on the interest which the citizens of Maryland may hold
in this institution, in common with other property of the same
description throughout the State. But this is a tax on the opera-
tion of the bank, and is consequently a tax on the operation of an
instrument employed by the Government of the Union to carry its
powers into execution. Such a tax must be unconstitutional." f

* " No more impressive words are to be found in any English or American adjudication
than those uttered by Chief-Justice Marshall as a preamble to the judgment in this most
interesting and important case." — Francis Hillard, The Law of Taxation.

\ The following additional extracts from the decision of the court in this celebrated
case will help to a further elucidation of its involved subject-matters :

" In the case now to be determined," said the Chief Justice, " the defendant, a sovereign
State, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the Legislature of the Union ; and the
plaintiff, on his part, contests the validity of an act which has been passed by the Legis-
lature of that State. The Constitution of our country, in its most interesting and vital

472 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The successful counsel in this case were Daniel Webster and
"William Pinkney, and in the course of his decision the Chief
Justice complimented the counsel on both sides as maintaining
the affirmative and negative with a splendor of eloquence and a
strength of argument seldom, if ever, surpassed.

It may also be added that no decision of the United States Su-
preme Court, or of any other court in the United States, has since
impugned the correctness of the principle upon which the case
of McCulloch vs. Maryland was decided. A brief notice, how-
ever, of subsequent judicial proceedings is interesting and neces-
sary to complete the history of this celebrated case.

Thus, the Legislature of Ohio having, as before stated, imposed
an annual tax of $50,000 upon the branch of the Bank of the
United States established in that State before the decision in the
McCulloch case, the State officers, even after the decision, pro-
ceeded to levy and collect the tax. Thereupon the case was again
brought before the United States Supreme Court on an applica-
tion for injunction, and was reargued, with reliance upon the
point that the bank was a mere private corporation, whose chief
object was individual trade or profit. The court, however, at
once reaffirmed its former judgment, and held that the bank was
a public corporation, created for national purposes, and an instru-
ment for carrying into effect the national powers. At the same
time the opinion of the court in the McCulloch case, that its
decision "did net deprive a State of any resources it originally
possessed," remained unaffected.

Subsequently a case came before the United States Supreme
Court (Weston vs. the City of Charleston, S. C.) in which the
question involved was the right of a State to tax stock issued for
loans made to the United States, whether on the stock, eo nomine
or included in the aggregate of the tax-payers' property to be
valued at what it was worth. The court, by Chief-Justice Mar-
parts, is to be considered ; the conflicting powers of the Government of the Union and of
its members are to be discussed ; and an opinion given whicli may essentially influence the
great operations of the Government. No tribunal can approach such a question without a
deep sense of its importance and of the awful responsibility involved in its decision. But
it must be decided peacefully, or remain a source of hostile legislation ; perhaps of hostility
of a still more serious nature ; and if it is to be so decided, by this tribunal alone can the
decision be made. On the Supreme Court of the United States has the Constitution of our
country devolved this important duty. The sovereignty of a State extends to everything
which exists by its own authority, or is introduced by its permission ; but it does not extend
to those means which are employed by Congress to carry into execution powers conferred
on that body by the people of the United States. We think it demonstrable that it does
not. These powers are not given by the people of a single State. They are given by the
people of the United States to a Government whose laws, made in pursuance of the Consti-
tution, are declared to be supreme. Consequently, the people of a single State can not con-
fer a sovereignty which will extend over them."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 473

shall, lield " that a tax on stock of the United States, held by an in-
dividual citizen of a State, is a tax on the power to borrow money
on the credit of the United States, and can not be levied on the
authority of a State consistently with the Constitution," and, fur-
ther, " that if the right to impose a tax exists, it is a right which,
in its nature, acknowledges no limits. It may be carried to any
extent within the jurisdiction of the State or corporation which
imposes it, which the will of such State or corporation may pre-
scribe. Can anything," continued the Chief Justice, "be more
dangerous or more injurious than the admission of a principle
which authorizes every State and every corporation in the Union
which possesses the right of taxation to burden the exercise of
this (borrowing) power at their discretion ? " A tax on the stock
or bonds of a State is therefore a tax on the borrowing power of
such State.

The court further held that a tax of this description was a tax
upon contracts,* using the following language : " Congress has
power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. The
stock it issues is evidence of a debt created by the exercise of this
power. The tax in question is a tax upon the contract subsisting
between the Government and the individual. It bears directly
upon the contract. While subsisting and in full force, the power
operates upon the contract the instant it is framed, and must im-
ply a right to affect that contract. If the States and corporations
throughout the Union possess the power to tax a contract for the
loan of money, what shall arrest the principle in its application
to every other contract ? What measure can Government adopt
which will not be exposed to its influence ? The right to tax the
contract to any extent, when made, must operate upon the power
to borrow before it is exercised, and have a sensible influence

* What interpretation the Supreme Court puts upon the word " contract" as found in
that clause of the Constitution of the United States which provides " that no State shall
pass any law impairing the obligations of contracts," is made clear by the following language
employed by Chief-Justice Marshall in giving the opinion of the court in the celebrated
case of the Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward : " The term contract must be
understood as intended to guard against a power of at least doubtful utility, the abuse
of which had been extensively felt, and to restrain the Legislature in future from violating
the right to property ; that anterior to the formation of the Constitution a course of legis-
lation had prevailed in many if not all of the States which weakened the confidence of man
in man, and embarrassed all transactions between individuals, by dispensing with a faithful
performance of engagements. To correct this mischief by restraining the power which
produced it, the State Legislatures were forbidden ' to pass any law impairing the obliga-
tions of contracts ' — that is, of contracts respecting property, under which some individual
could claim a right to something beneficial to himself ; and that, since the clause in the
Constitution must in construction receive some limitation, it may be confined, and ought to
be confined, to cases of this description — to cases within the mischief it was intended to
remedy."

474 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on the contract. The extent of this influence depends on the will
of a distinct government. To any extent, however inconsiderable,
it is a burden on the operations of government. It may be carried
to an extent which shall arrest them entirely."

As a sequence to these decisions of the United States Supreme
Court, not only has the general principle that no State of the
Federal Union can impose any tax upon any agency of the
Federal Government — as its mails, its buildings, its lands, its
ships, its money, and the like — come to be universally recognized
as in the nature of an unquestionable law of the land, but the
question of the application of the principle in respect to many
cases to which some latitude of opinion was legitimate, has been
specially and definitely determined. Thus, for example, it has
been established, that a State can not impose license taxes upon
persons passing through or coming into it merely for a tempo-
rary purpose, especially if connected with interstate commerce ;
a State, furthermore, can not enact any law or establish any
regulation affecting interstate commerce, inasmuch as the same
would be an unauthorized interference with the power given
to Congress on the subject. Interstate commerce also can not be
taxed at all by a State statute, even though the same amount of
tax should be laid on commerce which is carried on solely within
the State; and the negotiation of sales of goods, which are in
another State, for the purpose of introducing them into the State
into which said negotiation is made, has been held to be inter-
state commerce. A tax levied by the State of Michigan of one
cent and a half a ton on iron ores, if taken out of the State for
smelting, while exempt if smelted within the State, was held by
the United States Supreme Court to be a tax on commerce and
therefore void.

A State statute which levies a tax upon the gross receipts of
railroads for the carriage of freights and passengers into, out of,
or through a State has been held to be a tax upon commerce be-
tween the States, and therefore void. Under the provision of the
Federal Constitution that "no State shall, without the consent of
Congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except
what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection
laws," some difficulty has been experienced in indicating with
sufficient accuracy for practical purposes, the point of time at
which articles brought into the country from abroad cease to be
regarded as imports in the sense of constitutional protection, and
become liable to State taxation. But it has been held by the
United States Supreme Court that where the importer has so
acted upon the thing imported that it has become incorporated
and mixed up with the mass of property in the country, it has
lost its distinctive character as an import, and become subject to

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 475

the taxing power of the State ; but while remaining the property
of the importer, in his warehouse, in the original form or package
in which it was imported, a tax upon it is too plainly a duty upon
imports to escape the prohibition in the Constitution. The de-
ductions from a contrary rule would be manifestly as follows :
" No goods would be imported if none could be sold. The same
power that imposes a light duty can impose one that amounts to
prohibition. A dutj^ on imports is a tax on the article, which is
paid by the consumer. The great importing States would thus
levy a tax on the nonimporting States," as was done under articles
of the Confederation prior to the adoption of the Federal Con-
stitution. " This would necessarily produce countervailing meas-
ures.'^

In the case of Brown vs. Maryland, where the latter State,
for revenue purposes, required a merchant to take a license and
pay fifty dollars before he should be allowed to sell a package
of imported goods, the court (by Chief-Justice Marshall) held that
this tax, though indirect inform (i. e., a license on the person of
the importer), was in fact equivalent to a duty on imports, and
therefore illegal ; and that the right to import carried with it the
right to sell.*

This decision has been carefully recognized by the authorities
of the several States in dealing with imported liquors under local
license acts. "' Under its police powers there is no constitutional
restraint on a State prohibiting the retail and internal traffic in
ardent spirits. But a State is at the same time bound to receive
and permit the sale by the importer of any article of merchandise
which Congress authorizes to be imported, but it is not bound to
abstain from the passage of laws which it deems proper to guard
the health or morals of its citizens, although the effect of such
laws may be to discourage importation, and diminish the profits
of the importer and the revenue of the General Government.'' —
Burroughs, On Taxation.

Limitations of the Taxing Power of the Federal Gov-
ernment.— If the States can not tax the agencies or instrumen-

* As an extension of the history of this case the following futile criticism of a former
chairman of the Board of Assessors of the City of Boston (report for 1871) is pertinent :
" There is certainly a broad distinction between the prohibition of the right to sell an im-
ported article and the right to tax the same as property. The decision of the United States
Court was to the effect that the State could not enact a law that would prevent the sale of
such property, and did not touch the question of the right to tax. In a recent decision of
the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (Dunbar vs. Boston, 101 Mass., SlY), where
the question was raised that the Commonwealth could not tax a stock of liquors, the sale of
which, by her laws, she had declared illegal, the court sustained the tax, upon the ground
that the case did not show that the goods could not be legally sold. As the law stood at
the time the decision was given, but one class of the plaintiff's stock of intoxicating Hquors
could legally be sold ; and that was his importations in the original packages.''''

476 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

talities by which the Federal Government performs its functions,
it would seem clearly to follow that for like reasons the Federal
Government can not tax State instrumentalities or agencies.

That such reciprocal limitations are natural and necessary, and
exist by implication, not only in the Constitution of the United
States, but also in the very structure of the Federal Union, must
be evident, when one reflects that otherwise the Federal Govern-
ment on the one hand, and the governments of the States on the
other, might impose taxation to an extent that would cripple, if
not wholly defeat, the operations of the two authorities, each
within its respective and proper sphere of action. Or, in other
words, if the Federal and the State governments had each unre-
stricted power to tax, or, what is equivalent, " the power to de-
stroy,'^ they might, and as experience proves they probably would,
effectually destroy efficient government in both cases, and the ne-
cessity and validity of such reciprocal limitations have been recog-
nized and enforced by the courts of the United States whenever this
question has been brought before them for adjudication. Thus, in
the case of Day vs. Buffington, United States Circuit Court, Mas-
sachusetts District, it was held that the salary of a State official,
in this particular instance a judge of probate, could not be legally
subjected to assessment for an income tax, under the laws of the
United States authorizing the assessment and collection of inter-
nal revenue ; and Congress, some years since, acting under the
advice of the United States Supreme Court, repealed so much of
an internal revenue act as previously required the affixing of
stamps to State processes, warrants, commissions, etc. In the case
of Warren vs. Paul, 22 Ind., 279, the court used the following lan-
guage: "The Federal Government may tax the Governor of a
State or the clerk of a State court and his transactions as an indi-
vidual, but not as a State officer. This must be so, or the State
may be annihilated at the pleasure of the Federal Government.
The Federal Government may, perhaps, take by taxation most of
the property in a State if exigencies require, but it has not a right
by direct or indirect means to annihilate the functions of the
State government."

In a recent debate in the United States Senate on a proposition
to appropriate public money for the purpose of establishing and
maintaining higher institutions of learning in the District of
Columbia than were offered by its common schools, a leading
Senator (John Sherman), others concurring, is reported as ex-
pressing himself as follows :

" I concur entirely in the opinion expressed by the Senator
from Rhode Island (Mr. Aldrich) that we have no right to use the
public money to establish business high schools. It is the duty
of every community to give the children who are growing up a

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 477

good common- school education, whicli covers a pretty wide range
now, according to the general ideas of our people, and there the
duty should stop. Money for this purpose should be contributed
by private persons. We do our duty when we furnish a fair,
common-school education to the children that are growing up
among us " — i. e., in the District of Columbia — " and that is all
we ought to contribute."

Can Congress authorize the States to tax National In-
strumentalities ? — In the popular discussions which have oc-
curred in recent years in reference to the taxing of United States
securities, the position has been not infrequently taken that it
would have been just and expedient on the part of Congress, at the
time of the creation of the present national debt, to have allowed
the separate States to tax the evidences of such debt (i. e., the
bonds) in the possession of their citizens, subject to a limitation
that the same should not be taxed at any different rate than other
" moneyed capital.'^ A full consideration of the whole subject will,
however, suggest a doubt whether Congress possesses the power
to grant any such authorization, inasmuch as to have done so
would have been equivalent to authorizing the States to do an
act which in itself is unconstitutional — a thing which it is self-
evident that Congress can not do. Thus " the potver to tax," says
Chief-Justice Marshall, in giving the opinion of the Supreme
Court denying the right of Maryland to tax the Bank of the
United States, " involves the power to destroy " ; and in the case
of Weston vs. The City of Charleston, the same court, by the same
eminent authority, held further, as before shown, "that if the right
to impose a tax exists, it is a right ivhich in its nature acTcnoiul-
edges no limits." For Congress, therefore, to have authorized the
States to tax " national agencies " would have been equivalent to
authorizing the exercise of a right to destroy ; which right, the
Supreme Court has held, can not, from its nature, when once
existing, be limited.

Alienation of the Taxing Power. — The application of the
decision by the United States Supreme Court in the celebrated
Dartmouth College case, has resulted in the general acceptance
of the legal principle that a charter of incorporation by a State is
a contract between the State and the incorporators ; and if such
charter contains a clause exempting the incorporators entirely
from taxation, or for a definite period, a subsequent Legislature
can not repeal the clause of exemption. Within a recent period
the interest involved in this question has become so great, and
the power of wealthy corporations who claim the benefit of this
principle is so extensive, that it is desirable to briefly call atten-
tion to views of dissenting legal authorities and dissenting State
courts.

478 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" It is claimed that tlie power of taxation Is one of the sover-
eign powers of the State necessary to its continued existence, and
that it was never contemplated, when the people through their
Constitutions delegated to their representatives in Legislature as-
sembled the power to make laws for the good of the people of the
State, that this grant of legislative power carried with it the right
to barter away with private corporations one of the essential pre-
rogatives of the Government, the very life-blood of the State." *

How one of the States of the Union — Connecticut — has recent-
ly thrown away valuable public franchises is thus graphically
described by one of the leading and authoritative newspapers of
New England — i. e., the Springfield Republican. We have here
the astonishing fact that over seventy per cent of the stock cap-
ital of twenty-six monopoly electric or " trolley " companies oper-
ated in that State has been issued for something other than money,
(cash) paid in, and hence may be said to represent nothing but
what is popularly characterized as " water." The bonded debt of
these roads amounts to 68,690,100, or over three times the amount
of their cash stock— i. e., $2,671,240. This bonded debt, standing
in comparison with a total stock issue, strikingly illustrates what
has taken place : first, a gratuitous grant or franchise ; second, an
issue of bonds thereon to build the roads ; third, a share capital,
the product of the printing press, and representing no value what-
ever except as an instrumentality for obtaining extra profits and
exceptional legislation through its distribution.

" This watered capitalization will iu time, of course, pass into
innocent hands, and the ' rights ' of the monopolies in the matter
of charges will all be gauged by the yearly revenue in its relation
to this totality of nominal capital. The stock waterers will have
sold their water at handsome figures and made off, and the pur-
chasers of the water must henceforward, of course, be considered
legitimate investors whose holdings are entitled to full considera-
tion ; and only until monopoly charges sufiice to pay eight and
ten per cent on all capital, watered or otherwise, will it be safe
for any community to demand a reduction of charges without
bringing upon itself the charge of being favorable to anarchy and
confiscation.

"The people of Connecticut are preparing the way to pay
handsomely for their electric transportation. The penalty of
present neglect to guard and restrict closely the capitalization of
these monopolies will fall in ugly force upon this and future gen-
erations; and when the time is ripe for municipal or State as-
sumption of the monopolies, as may some time happen, the people

* Burroughs On Taxation, from which authority the writer is mainly indebted in his
presentation of this important subject.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 479

will have the pleasure, no doubt, of paying more than face value
for the water now so freely allowed to issue."

On this subject the late Chief-Justice Taney expressed his
views as follows, in a case that came up before the United States
Supreme Court in 1853 : " The powers of sovereignty confided to
the legislative body of a State are undoubtedly a trust committed
to them to be executed to the best of their judgment for the pub-
lic good ; and no one Legislature can by its own act disarm its
successors of any of its powers or rights of sovereignty confided
by the people to the legislative body, unless they are authorized
to do so by the Constitution under which they are elected. They
can not, therefore, by contract, deprive a future Legislature of the
power of imposing any tax it may deem necessary for the public
service, or of exercising any other act of sovereignty confided to
the legislative body, unless the power to make such contract is
conferred upon them by the Constitution of the State. And in
every controversy on this subject the question must depend on
the Constitution of the State, and the extent of the power thereby
conferred on the legislative body."

The subject again came up before the United States Supreme
Court in 1869, 1871, and 1872, when the question at each time was
treated as res adjudicata (definitely settled). In the first of these
instances Justice Miller thus expressed his views : " We do not
believe that any legislative body, sitting under a State Constitu-
tion of the usual character, has a right to sell, to give, or bar-
gain away forever the taxing power of the State. This is a power
which, in modern political societies, is absolutely necessary to the
continued existence of every such society. While under such
forms of government the ancient chiefs or heads of the Govern-
ment might carry it on by revenues owned by them personally
and by the exaction of personal service from their subjects, no
civilized Government has ever existed that did not rely upon
taxation in some form for the continuance of that existence. To
hold, then, that any one of the annual Legislatures can, by con-
tract, deprive the State forever of the power of taxation is to hold
that they can destroy the Government they are appointed to
serve, and that their action in that regard is strictly lawful. The
result of such a principle, under the growing tendency to special
and partial legislation, would be to exempt the rich from taxa-
tion and cast all the burden of the support of government on
those who are too poor or too honest to purchase such immunity."

Like dissenting views have also found expression in various
State courts. Chief-Justice Beasley, of New Jersey, for example,
in commenting on the proposition that a charter of incorporation
is a contract, says : " The entire contract on the part of a State,
implied in such cases, is the supposed legislative agreement not

+80 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

to alter or recall the privilege granted. No other stipulation on
the part of the State was ever suggested to exist, and it was the
imagined existence of such stipulation alone which converted
what else, in all its essential qualities as well as in its form, was
an act of legislation, into a contract on the part of the community
with the corporators. Without such stipulation, having an obli-
gatory force, I am wholly unable to conceive the ground of dif-
ference between the charter of a corporation and any other act of
legislation. If a statute lay no obligation on the State to do or
refrain from doing a particular thing or one or more particular
things, such an enactment seems to me to be a pure act of legis-
lation, and in no sense a contract." " A law which seeks to de-
prive the Legislature of the power to tax must be so clear, explicit,
and determinative that there can be neither doubt nor controversy
about its terms, or the consideration which rendes it binding.
Every presumption will be made against its surrender, as the
power was committed by the people to the Government to be exer-
cised, and not to be alienated." (47 Missouri, 158.)

And Justice Cooley (one of the justices of the Supreme Court
of Michigan), in reviewing the action of the United States Su-
preme Court, says : " It is not very clear that this court has ever at
any time expressly declared the right of a State to grant away the
sovereign power of taxation." A court in Pennsylvania has also
said : " Revenue is as essential to government as food to individ-
uals ; to sell it is to commit suicide." (30 Pennsylvania Statutes, 9.)

Turning to English jurisprudence, we have an opinion of
Edmund Burke that the charter of the East India Company, in
virtue of which great authority was exercised, " was a charter to
establish monopoly and create power," and not entitled to the
protection of the various charters of English liberty.

So long, however, as the decision of the United States Supreme
Court in the Dartmouth College case is not reversed by the same
court, the above and many other like expressions of opinion on
the part of judges and men learned in the law and in constitu-
tional history have nothing of practical significance.

The study of the customs and religious views of the Kekchi Indians of
Guatemala, by Dr. C. Sapper, has uncovered a curious mixture of pagan
and Christian ideas. The people are nominally attached to the Roman
Catholic Church, yet they will not worship in a church out of their own
distx'ict because they believe the god of that church can not understand
them. So, when they go away from home, they give up all religious exer-
cises. On first crossing a mountain pass the Indians put a stone at the foot
of the cross which is usually erected there, often offering flowers and in-
cense, and sometimes dancing before it besides ; but if there be no cross at
the pass, the Kekchi Indian prays and brings offerings to the heathen god.

INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS. 481

INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS.

By IIOEATIO HALE.

IT is a notable fact that the Indian tribes of northeastern
America, belonging to the Iroquoian and Algonquian fami-
lies, who at the first coming of the white colonists occupied the
eastern portions of what are now the United States and Canada,
and who are often styled savages, had two inventions or usages
which are ordinarily deemed the special concomitants of an
advanced civilization. These were a monetary currency and the
use of a form of script for conveying intelligence and recording
facts. These customs or inventions were connected with one
medium, but it is probable that the inventions themselves belong
to widely different periods.

In a paper which was read before the British Association for
the Advancement of Science at Montreal in August, 1884, and was
published in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1886, I
produced the evidence which seemed to me to show that the shell
money of North America was derived from the ancient tortoise-
shell money of China. This shell money preceded the metallic
coins, commonly known as cash, which are circular disks of cop-
per perforated in the center, and usually strung on a string.
These came into use more than two thousand years before the
Christian era. The shell money which preceded the copper cash
has been traced eastwardly, through the Pelew Islands and the
Micronesian groups of the North Pacific, to the coasts of Cali-
fornia and Oregon, where it is in use among the Indians to this
day, and whence it has apparently made its way across the conti-
nent to the eastern coast. As was then remarked, " The fact that
the Indians of the west coast of America received their monetary
system from eastern Asia or from the Pacific islands could not in
itself be regarded as affording evidence that America was first
peopled from that direction, just as the fact that the coinage of
Bactria was derived from Greece would not indicate that the
Bactrian population was of Grecian origin. All that we could
infer would be some early intercourse, such as recent experience
warrants us in supposing. A Chinese junk or a large Micronesian
prao, drifting to the Californian coast some three or four thou-
sand years ago, would suflBciently explain the introduction of an
art so easily learned as that of making and using perforated shell
disks for money."

There is good evidence, from the disclosures of the ancient
mounds, to show that shell beads were largely used by the Indi-
ans of former ages as ornaments, and perhaps as valued treasures.
But there seems no clear proof that they were employed for mne-

YOL. L. 36

482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

monic purposes until a comparatively recent date. My late dis-
tinguished friend Sir Daniel Wilson had indeed inferred this use
of them in former times. In his Prehistoric Man (page 77 of the
third edition) he tells us that " in the Grave Creek Mound, shell
beads, such as constitute the wampum of forest tribes, amounted
to between three and four thousand ; and it seems singularly con-
sistent with the partial civilization of the ancient mound builders
to assume that in such deposits we have the relics of sepulchral
records which constituted the scroll of fame of the illustrious
dead, or copies of the national archives deposited with the great
sachem to whose wisdom or prowess the safety of his people had
been due." This inference seemed to me natural and reasonable ;
but more recent studies have induced me to question it. Many
fragments of ancient cloth have been found in the mounds. The
wampum belt was a woven structure of peculiar firmness, having
a strong warp, with a duplicate woof, on which the beads were
strongly attached. That no fragment of such a record has been
found in our ancient mounds is surprising, if such numbers of
them were buried as this presumption would lead us to suppose.
Moreover, it is doubtful if the true wampum bead of the modern
belt was in general use in prehistoric times. The shell beads of
those times, if small, are of oval or ovoid shape, and, if large, are
thick circular disks, resembling modern button molds, or still
larger. The beads in modern belts are, as is well known, oblong
tubes, about the fourth of an inch in length, shaped like pieces of
a tobacco pipe cut off square at the ends. They are well suited to
be woven together in a belt, but are otherwise not adapted either
for ornament or for use as money. Mr. Holmes, in his valuable
paper on Art in Shell of the Ancient Americans, published in the
Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, remarks that
"it is not known positively that beads of this particular shape
were employed in pre-Columbian times; but it is certainly one
of the earliest historical forms, and one which has been manufac-
tured extensively by the Indians as well as by the whites. They
may be found both in very old and in very recent graves, and
have always formed an important part of the stock of the Indian
trader."

The conclusion to which. I have been led by these and other
evidences is that the use of wampum for conveying messages and
preserving records was one of the improvements which accompa-
nied the formation of the Iroquois confederation, and was most
probably due to the genius of Hiawatha. Like all his other
reforms, it merely brought into clear and useful shape a tendency
toward which his people had been advancing. We can not doubt
that in dealings between different native tribes there would have
been frequent interchange of presents ; and no presents would be

INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS. 483

more likely or more acceptable than strings of the valued wam-
pum. To weave a number of these strings together in a belt,
inscribed with a mark indicative of its purpose, would be a nat-
ural idea. But the custom resulting from this idea had in it, as
Mr. Holmes well observes, " a germ of great promise, one which
must in time have become a powerful agent in the evolution of
art and learning. It was a nucleus about which all the elements
of culture could arrange themselves." Unfortunately, the advent
of the white settlers, bringing with them the seeds of inevitable
war and disease, blighted these prospects. It is interesting to
consider what might have been the fruits of the principles of peace
and progress planted by the Iroquois reformer and his coadjutors
if time had been allowed for their display. There is no good rea-
son for doubting that the figures on the wampum records, which
had already, when the whites arrived, passed beyond the stage of
mere picture writing, might have developed into a phonetic sys-
tem, as we know had been the case with the Mexican script at the
time of the conquest ; and we have reason to believe that the
Mayan script was undergoing the same evolution. The Mexican
civilization, such as it was, had shocking features, which do not
allow us to regret its destruction. The Mayan, however, was
much less offensive ; and as for the Kechuas, or Peruvians, the
striking facts set forth by Sir Clement Markham in his recent
history of Peru, showing that the oppressive exactions of the
Spanish conquerors had in a little over three centuries reduced
the native population from eleven millions to less than one mil-
lion, would seem to establish the truth of the assertion which has
been made by Carli, Draper, and other writers, that the Sj^anish
conquest destroyed a superior civilization, to replace it by a form
decidedly inferior.

It is a well-known fact that the tradition of the Iroquois
people ascribes the invention, not of wampum itself, but of the
wampum "belt" or record, to Hiawatha. His name, Hayim-
watha, means "The Maker of the Wampum Belt," being derived
from ayuniva (wampum belt) and an old verb, hatha — now,
according to Father Cuoq, rarely used — signifying "to make."
When I first heard the tradition — being then of opinion that the
wampum belt was an ancient Indian construction, dating back
to the times of the mound builders — I formed and expressed the
conclusion that the tradition had, like many such legends, grown
out of the name. Later inquiries, however, have led me to believe
that this conclusion was too hastily formed, and that the name,
which may be briefly rendered " the wampum-belt maker," was
one of those titles which were not infrequently given by the
Iroquois to a member of the tribe to commemorate some notable
achievement which he had effected. Its date would then, as has

484 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been said, be that of the formation of the Iroquois confederacy.
This date was fixed by the estimates severally made at different
times by my friend the Hon. L. H. Morgan and myself, in ac-
cordance with the testimony of the leading Iroquois chiefs, at
about the middle of the fifteenth century, or, more precisely,
about the year 1459. Other investigators, whose views are en-
titled to respectful consideration, including the Rev. Dr. Beau-
champ and Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt, have been inclined to place the
formation of the league at a later time. But their conclusions
differ considerably, and fail to account for many important facts.
I am therefore compelled to adhere to my original estimate. I
fully accept Mr. Hewitt's identification of the "Trudamani" or
" Toudamani," of whom Jacques Cartier heard from the Hurons
in 1535, with the well-known " Tsonnontowanen " of later writers.
These " great mountain people," or Senecas, were the most power-
ful of the Iroquois nations, and their name was commonly used
by the Hurons or Wyandots from ancient times as the general
name of all the Iroquois confederates. This we learn from the
little book entitled Origin and Traditional History of the Wyan-
dots, published at Toronto in 1870 by Peter Dooyentate Clarke,
a half-breed Wyandot, and giving much important information
concerning the traditions of his people. He speaks particularly
of the war which occurred " in the first quarter of the sixteenth
century," between the Hurons and the Senecas (or Iroquois), who
had previously lived on friendly terms, though in separate vil-
lages, on the St. Lawrence River, near what is now Montreal, but
was then the site of the Huron capital town of Hochelaga. The
result was that the Hurons, later in the same century, broke up
their villages near Montreal, and journeyed westward, and after-
ward northward, until they reached Lake Huron. Meanwhile
the warfare between the two leading branches of the Huron-
Iroquois stock continued through the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. All this is simply historical, and accords in the main
with the narratives of the French explorers, from Cartier to
Champlain and Charlevoix, and with the traditions of both
branches of the Huron-Iroquois family.

Between the year 1459 and that of Cartier's arrival at Hoche-
laga, in 1535, there was ample time for the Hurons to become
familiar with the new art of making wampum belts. In fact, we
learn from Cartier's narrative that they were then proficient in
it. When he kidnapped Donnaconna, the chief of Stadacon^
(now Quebec), to carry him to France, the terrified people, in the
hope of redeeming him, presented to the captain no less than
twenty-four " collars of porcelain," or wampum belts, which, the
writer tells us, " is the greatest treasure they have in the world,
for they prize it above gold and silver."

INDIAN WAMPUM RECORDS. 485

Another inquiry of interest relates to the time when wampum
ceased to be made by the Indians. That the records are retained to
this day among certain tribes is well known, though their use is
slowly dying out. But the beads themselves are no longer made
by the Indians. As regards the time when their manufacture
ceased, very vague and some very erroneous ideas have prevailed.
It is well known that for more than a century — in fact, for the
greater part of two centuries — the wampum beads have been
made by the whites for use in commerce with the Indians ; and
an opinion has grown up that this has been the case ever since
the first arrival of the white colonists, and that most of the wam-
pum records held by the Indian tribes have been woven from these
modern machine-made beads. Mr. Holmes, however, gives the
historical evidence which shows that this opinion has originated
in error. He quotes Thomas Morton, of Massachusetts, who in
1630, writing of the New England Indians, tells us that " they
have a kind of beads instead of money, to buy withal such things
as they do want, which they call tvampumpeak ; and it is of two
sorts ; the one is white and the other is a violet color. These are
made with the shells of fish. The white with them is as silver is
with us, the other as our gold ; and for these they buy and sell, not
only among themselves, but even with us. These beads are cur-
rent in all parts of New England, from one end of the coast to
the other ; and although some have endeavored by example to
have the like made of the same kind of shells, yet none has ever
as yet attained to any perfection in the composure of them, but
the salvages have found a great difference to be in the one and the
other, and have known the counterfeit beads from those of their
own making, and do slight them." Nearly a century later the
Carolina surveyor, Lawson, writing in 1714 of the same money,
speaks of it as " all made of shells which are found on the coast
of Carolina, which are very large and hard, so that they are very
difficult to cut. Some English smiths/' he adds, " have tried to
drill this sort of shell money, and thereby thought to get an ad-
vantage, but it proved so hard that nothing could be gained."
The introduction of the machine drill could not, in fact, have
made much difference in this respect, as each bead must still be
fashioned separately by a white workman, whose time was much
more valuable than that of an Indian. That which finally gave
the English beads an advantage was not the superiority or the
cheapness of their workmanship, but the destruction of the Indian
workmen. The quarter of a century which followed the publi-
cation of Lawson's book, from 1714 to 1740, saw the extermination
of most of the Carolina tribes, and a great decline in the numbers
of the Northern Indians from the effects of war and pestilence. It
was during this period that the wampum-making industry seems

486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to have ceased among them, and the use of machine-made beads to
have become universal. The wampum belts continued for a cen-
tury longer to be made from these beads by the Indian women,
but the difference between the belts of the two periods is apparent
at a glance. The hand-made beads in the earlier belts are of va-
rious sizes, some being twice as large as others, while the machine-
made beads, of which the more recent belts are composed, are all
of uniform size. Such belts can still be procured from the civil-
ized and mostly half-breed Iroquois of the province of Quebec,
with any devices that may be desired. They differ from the
genuine Indian belts precisely as a counterfeit denarius differs
from a genuine Roman coin.

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS.

By MAEY SHELDON BARNES.

IN the Santa Clara Valley, near the southern end of San Fran-
cisco Bay, some five miles south of Stanford University,
there stands a fine old deserted abode, formerly a well-known
station on the road from the Santa Clara Mission to San Fran-
cisco. Its owner, Don Secundini Robles, was of the pure old Cas-
tilian stock, and he and his wife. Donna Maria, were lord and
lady for all the region round, and their house the center for all
the gay rodeos and fandangos of the valley. Now the house is a
ruin, Don Secundini dead, and Donna Maria, in poverty and alone,
lives in the village of Mountain View. But their name passes on
to fame among the Stanford students in connection with the
Robles Rancheria, a large, low-lying mound of earth some quarter
of a mile away from the old house, with that mysterious reputa-
tion attaching to it that always hovers around an Indian mound.
It has indeed an artificial look, rising in the midst of the other-
wise level valley ; and the boys of the vicinity assured us that
there were plenty of skeletons in it. The man who owned it said
that when he first began to plow in that field he turned up human
bones, and added, " You may guess I was scared." Indian mortars
and pestles from this same heap were found in the possession of
various neighbors, and the site altogether seemed promising for
exploration. So, with the permission of the owner, and with such
direction as could be given by a historian with an amateur interest
in archseology, some Stanford students began to explore the site.

The survey of one of our civil engineers gave us the plot of
the mound shown in Fig. 1 : a length of four hundred and seventy
feet, a width of three hundred and twenty feet, an area of some
two acres, and a height of about ten feet in the highest parts. Its

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS. 487

size was notable, and at once made us suspect that this mound
had not been built up purposely, but had rather accumulated
through the debris and the burials of some generations of Indian
life and death. All our excavations bore out this idea, thus tak-
ing the structure rather out of the category of mounds into that
of middens.

The excavations made from time to time resulted in the dis-
covery of some thirty skeletons of both sexes and of all ages.

Fig,

many of them undisturbed and often accompanied by various
objects of use or ornament. Each cross on Fig. 1 shows the spot
from which a skeleton was taken ; the arrows indicate the point
of the compass toward which the face was turned. The varia-
tions in this latter respect furnish negative evidence that the
inhabitants of Robles Rancheria had no fixed superstition in con-
nection with the heavenly bodies. It will be seen that there is

488

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

hardly any trace of regularity in the interments further than
this : the bodies were buried singly and, roughly speaking, in an

irregular double circle
about the center of the
ranch eria ; they were
also buried without
previous mutilation or
separation, each skele-
ton being complete.
This is again a piece of
negative evidence go-
ing to prove that can-
nibalism was not prac-
ticed within the tribe ;
nor in our excavations
were any human bones
found broken for mar-
row, or in any situa-
tion indicating that
they formed a part of
the food supply for
the Robles Rancheria.
Layers of ashes and bits
of charcoal were found
irregularly throughout
every excavation made
for a skeleton, but
since they were also
found throughout the
length of a trench run
toward the center of the mound, we concluded that they had no
special connection with the burial, although it must be added
that a few skeletons showed traces of partial burning.

The posture of the buried Indians is shown by Fig. 2, from a
photograph taken before the skeleton was removed. This pos-
ture is common among our North American Indians, and results
apparently from the attempt to compress the body into the
smallest possible space for burial. Each skeleton excavated
showed traces of this posture, except the irregular group to the
southwest of the mound, where the bones were found in a very
confused state, and where one large and complete skeleton was
found interred at full length on its back. No traces of any cov-
ering for the body were discovered. Among the skeletons re-
moved one of exceptional interest was very carefully taken out
by Mr. Edward Hughes. It was the skeleton of a very old Indian,
whose vertebrae had grown together so as to cause a terrible de-

Fr

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS.

489

formity. Fig. 3, from a photograph of this skeleton mounted,
shows the attitude in which its owner was compelled to live for
many years. This ossification had also partially extended to
other parts of the body : he could not move his ribs in breathing,
he could not lift his head. Another interesting discovery noted by
Mr. Hughes was the fact that one of his arms had been broken
and most skillfully reset. As Mr. Hughes remarked, the finding
of this skeleton, interred, as it had been, carefully, with a fine
mortar, two or three bone
implements, and an aba-
lone shell, tells us that the
former inhabitants of the
Robles Rancheria had ad-
vanced far enough in civ-
ilization to care for the
old and decrepit members
of their little society. This
one at least must have
been practically helpless
long before his death.

The objects interred
with the skeletons are
made of stone, shell, and
bone ; of stone implements
the mortar and pestle are
the most common ; in fact,
they are surprisingly com-
mon, indicating the pos-
session of a great number
within the same tribe.
They are of the stone
found in the immediate
neighborhood, with one
exception, and are of all
grades of finish, as seen
in Fig. 4, which shows us
all varieties, from the rude
bowlder, in which two or
more slight concavities
have begun to be worn,
to the finished mortar,
smooth within and with-
out. The most finished mortar of all found was a small one used
for grinding paint, shown in Fig. 5. The series of this implement
taken from this rancheria furnishes a beautiful illustration of
the evolution of what is perhaps the most primitive of human

Fig. 3.

490

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

utensils, the mill. In Fig. 5, i, the three pestles show a similar
evolution, from the longish pebble to the right, to the purposely
shaped large and symmetrical one to the left.

The absence among the stone implements of arrow and spear
heads puzzled us greatly, since these objects are very generally

Fig. 4.

found up and down the coast. Only two decided flint arrow points
were found in all our work, and these were two broken points of
the black obsidian of Napa County, some distance north of the
bay, evidently an imported product (Fig. 5, h). But on stating
our difficulty to Mr. Horatio Rust, of Pasadena, who has made a
lifelong study of archaeology, especially in California, he in-
formed us that the Indians of this part of the country used
wooden points, hardened by iire, for their arrows and spears;
these, of course, have perished, and certain it is that in all our
valley we do not find these characteristic stone implements. We
found, however, in the course of our excavation, many sharp-
edged bits of rough flint which may have been used in very
primitive work as knives or scrapers ; and we did not fail to find
those mysterious objects known as " charm stones," since Mr.
Yates's careful study has revealed their nature. According to
Mr. Yates, who relies on the testimony of old Indians, these stones
were a part of the " medicine " of the California tribes, and used
in various combinations to bring rain, success in hunting, or in
war.* We found no other objects of superstition, unless the

* Charm Stones, the So-called " Plummets " or " Sinkers " of California. By Dr. Lorenzo
Gordin Yates. Santa Barbara, California, 1890. Bulletin No. 2 of Santa Barbara Society
of Natural History.

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFOBNIANS.

491

ornament seen in the upper riglit-hand corner of d' in Fig. 5 be
such. This was a bit of human breastbone, pierced in the center,
and suggested at once the idea that it might have been worn as a
fetich, or possibly was merely a war trophy — the breastbone of
mine enemy.

Bone and shell seem to have furnished the chief material for
the tools and ornaments of the inhabitants of this old village.
The most common bone implements found were those shown in
Fig. 5, g, finely pointed and polished from the ulna of a deer's leg.
Here, again, as in the mortar and pestle, we find a very early and
a very valuable artificial form reached by easy transition from a
natural object which was somewhat adapted to the uses aimed at,
and which was probably first employed without any endeavor to
adapt it artificially. We judged, as a matter of course, that these
sharp bone points were used for tipping spears, as they are well
adapted to such a purpose ; but all the traditions of the neighbor-
hood insist that they were used for ornaments, and that with
bunches of bright feathers, attached by strings of sinew, they
were stuck into the hair. One bone needle was found, but the
small size of this implement and its easy destructibility make it

Fig. 5.

surprising that even one was discovered. One of our most unique
finds was a set of bone whistles shown at a, Fig. 5. They were
made from the long leg bones of some waterfowl, and are evi-
dently intended to furnish a variety of sounds, if we may judge
from their varied length and the different positions of their holes.

492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

A passage from Frank Marryatt is interesting in this connection.
He says of the Santa Cruz Indians :

" Of an evening they made a great disturbance by indulging
in what they intended for a dance ; this consisted in crowding
together in uncouth attitudes, and stamping on the ground to the
accompaniment of primitive whistles, of which each man held
one in his mouth, while the women howled and shrieked in
chorus." *

With the same skeleton in whose possession were found these
primitive pipes of Pan, the saw-toothed bone shown at c, Fig. 5,
was found. It suggests a saw, but may have been a tally bone,
on which count could be kept of years or moons ; this use is per-
haps indicated by the fact that the notches are only part way
along the edge of the bone, and that notched shell, which they
also knew how to make, would have been more effective as a saw.
A sort of romantic atmosphere seems to surround this especial
skeleton, who may have been some sort of primitive historian and
musician, furnishing music and keeping the records of the tribe,
singing the story of each year as each notch recalled it.

The articles in shell taken from this mound are all of two
sorts — shell ornaments or shell money ; both are shown at d, cV ,
and e, in Fig. 5. The shell ornaments are made from the brilliant
abalone shell, which is still used to adorn the dooryards of good
Californians. The ornaments are either round or oblong disks,
pierced at one side for stringing, and all notched very exactly and
evenly around the edge — perhaps, as Mr. Hughes suggested, in
imitation of the heart shell, of which we found one specimen,
shown in d' , Fig. 5, next to one of the disk ornaments. The money
is like the shell money found all over California, and consists of
perforated squares of shell or of small whole shells pierced from
end to end, shown at e. In this case property and ornament seem
to have had a close connection, as perhaps they always have.
Aside from the skeletons and the artificial objects found in the
Robles Rancheria, we came across many food remains which
also tell their story. Bones of deer, elk, raccoon, bones of salmon,
and several sorts of waterfowl, countless crabs' claws, mussel,
oyster, periwinkle shells in abundance, grouped specially with
little beds of ashes, told of good hunting and fireside feasts to
follow, in which meat was not lacking to go with the rude bread
made from the acorns and seeds ground in the mortars.

Before concluding our work on the Robles Rancheria, we paid
a visit to Donna Maria Secundini Robles, and asked her what she
knew of this old heap. She is nearly eighty, but remembers well,

* Frank Marryatt. Mountains and Mole-hills, or Recollections of a Burnt Diary, chap, v,
p. 83. New York, 1855.

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS.

493

and almost seems to live in, the happy days before the Gringos
came. This was her story : When she came as a girl to live on
the Robles Ranch, there were three Indian rancherias within a
mile of her home, one marked by the mound, and two others not
far from the present
station of Castro ; but
the Indians who lived
on the mound had al-
ready deserted it, for
when the Mission Fa-
thers came to Santa
Clara, the allegiance
of the Indians was
soon divided : some
welcomed the new
life and the new faith,
and learned to pray
and to hoe corn, to
string rosaries, and to I'^io. 6.

weave tule sombre-
ros ; while others still chose " the winds of freedom," and thought
that acorns, clams, and fetiches would do very well for them.
Among those who chose to be wild heathen still were the Indians
of the Robles Rancheria ; so they left their immemorial village
site and went off down the San Joaquin Valley to Tulare, and
were never seen again.

This story is confirmed by the fact that in our excavations we
found no trace of any trade with whites — no glass beads, no bit of
iron ; this is noteworthy, since nearly all the known sites of old
rancherias in California yield European beads in greater or less
plenty. We had, therefore, by great good luck, been excavating
a really prehistoric rancheria untouched by any foreign influence.
On showing the various objects we had found to Donna Maria,
she recognized their use at a glance, with the exception of the
charm stones, which puzzled her ; she confirmed, however, the
statements which we had heard before as to the use of the sharp-
pointed bones as hair ornaments. The manners and customs of
these Indians were probably much the same as of those who
went on living at the two neighboring rancherias, and with the
latter Donna Maria was well acquainted, for, as she said, she had
" danced with them often when a girl."

Piecing together our finds and the story of Donna Maria, the
life of the Robles Rancheria reconstructs itself as follows : A
little Indian village lies half hidden in great oak groves near San
Francisco Bay, close by a spring oozing up under shady willows ;
an irregular circle of huts made of poles covered with rushes and

494 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

branches shelters its population rather from sun than cold. In
the middle of each tepee smolders a little fire, kindled by twirl-
ing a stick quickly about in a piece of rotten wood. The inhab-
itants eat bread made from white- oak acorns, from buckeye and
laurel nuts, and, best of all, from manzanita berries. From these
same nuts and berries they make pinole, a veritable mush, of
which the early Spanish explorers constantly speak. They take
the bitterness out of the acorns and nuts by soaking them long in
water and then allowing them to dry in the sun, spread out on
tule mats ; then they grind them in their big stone mortars. To
the mush and bread they add clams, fish, ducks, deer, and small
game ; they season their food with salt made from a certain root,
and sweeten it by the addition of little sugar cakes, which they
buy from the tribes of the mountains, who make them from the
sap of some tree. Then there are thimbleberries, chokeweed
berries, and in their season the madrona berry ; and the tarweed
grain made a pleasant variety in their mush and bread. After a
feast of clams, tarweed mush, and thimbleberries, they lie about
their fires and smoke coyote tobacco from wooden pipes, or dance
to the music of their rude bone whistles.

Their dress is a simple apron or short skirt of buckskin, tule,
or rabbit skin, with fringes and feathers for adornment, and
longer for women ; but their ornaments are their chief glory —
bracelets, earrings, and necklaces of abalone shells, long, bone
bodkins in their thick hair, to which were attached brilliant
feathers ; and Donna Maria's vivid pantomime shows us how
their feathers dance above them as they dance, while their aba-
lone pendants shake about their wrists and necks.

Their weapons are bows, arrows, and spears made of wood, and
pointed with bone or flint, bound to a wooden shaft by rawhide,
or the tough, sinewy fibers of a shrub which grows up in the
mountains.

They made no pottery, but all their grinding, cooking, and
carrying was done in stone or basketry ; of the latter Donna
Maria gave us for the museum a beautiful ancient specimen from
one of these very rancherias. It is made of split roots woven so
close as to be water-tight, and ornamented by a simple and even
classic pattern. Often these baskets were patterned with lines
and groups of little feathers, and then they were precious indeed.

When an Indian died, he was wrapped up in a blanket obtained
from the missions, and buried in the rancheria itself, but not
under the tepee. Before he was buried, the other Indians came
and gave gifts and mourned.

A kindly, inoffensive tribe, they lived by hunting, fishing, and
the natural nuts and grains of their environment. They ground
their food and cooked it, loved music and personal adornment.

SOME PRIMITIVE CALIFORNIANS.

495

held together in their village as a social unit, with a limited
commerce. The range of trade indicated by the excavations
and confirmed by Donna Maria reveals a narrow world, with a
diameter of not much more than twenty miles. The two broken
arrowheads from Napa and one broken basaltic lava mortar,
whose material must have come from far to the northward, are
unique importations to be explained by accident rather than by
regular trade, since the other mortars are all made of bowlders
easily found in the vicinity, and since, as I have said, the broken
arrow points are unique. The hill tribes eastward essentially
bounded their world. Tradition and evidence alike show them
to be a spur of population entering the valley from the south-

FiG. 7.

ward. Contact with the more warlike and better equipped
northern tribes would either have destroyed them or developed
their own culture to a higher status of defense.

This low status of defense, the fact that their implements are
so similar to the natural objects which suggest them, the low type
of skull (Fig. 7), all go to show that the Indian of the Santa Clara
Valley was one of the most primitive types known to ethnology
within the historic era. The early fathers and voyagers have left
a good deal of observation in regard to him, but all this observa-
tion is more or less vitiated by the fact that it was made after the
contact of Spaniard and Indian had already begun its work. For
this reason the evidence of the Robles Rancheria is especially
valuable, since it apparently antedates this influence entirely and
shows us primitive man in one of his most primitive seats. Noth-
ing possessed or made by the men of the Robles Rancheria indi-

496 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cates that they had ever lived in any other vicinity, or knew any
other materials than the bones and stones and shells of their own
valley and its encircling hills. Shut off from communication
almost as completely as if they had lived on an island, they seem
to have lived and died undisturbed from some great antiquity, if
we may judge from the height of the mound, which, as a debris
heap, could only have accumulated slowly. Who knows but that
here in the Santa Clara Valley is one of the seats where man first
invented a stone mill, first loved the glitter and shine of a lovely
shell, first raised his eyes and felt that he was different !

HOW PLANTS AND ANIMALS SPEND THE WINTER.

By W. S. BLATCHLEY,

STATE GEOLOGIST OF INDIANA.

ONE of the greatest problems which each of the living forms
about us has had to solve during the years of its existence
on earth is how best to perpetuate its kind during that cold sea-
son which once each year, in our temperate zone, is bound to
come. Many are the solutions to this problem. Each form of
life has, as it were, solved it best to suit its own peculiar case, and
to the earnest student of Nature there is nothing more interest-
ing than to pry into these solutions and note how varied, strange,
and wonderful they are.

To fully appreciate some of the facts mentioned below it must
be borne in mind that there is no such thing as "spontaneous
generation" of life. Every cell is the offspring of a pre-existing
cell. Nothing but a living thing can produce a living thing.
Hence every weed that next season will spring up and provoke
the farmer's ire, and every insect which will then make life
almost intolerable for man or beast, exists throughout the winter
in some form.

If we begin with some of the lowly plants, such as the fresh-
water algse, or so-called " frog- spittle" of the ponds, and many
of the rusts and fungi which are so injurious to crops, we find
that they form in autumn "resting spores." These are very
small and globular, one-celled bodies, having a much thicker
coat and denser protoplasm or contents than are found in the
spores often produced in summer by the same plants, and which
are destined for immediate growth. The power of life within
these winter resting spores is proof against the severest attacks
of frost, and they lie snugly ensconced in the mud at the bottom
of pond or stream, or buried beneath the leaves in some sheltered
nook, until the south winds of March or April furnish the key to

PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 497

unlock tlie castle of the ice king. Then the spirit of growth
within each spore begins to assert itself once more, and, burst-
ing the walls, the contents soon produce the parent or summer
form of the plant with which we are most familiar. Thus the
spores which next season will produce the grape mildew and the
red rust of wheat are now in existence, the former within the
substance of the fallen grape leaf, the latter within the stubble
or about the roots of last season's wheat plants.

If the grape leaves should be carefully gathered and burned,
and the stubble destroyed in like manner, not only would the
next season's crop of these two parasitic plant pests be wonder-
fully lessened, but many injurious insects would at the same
time be destroyed.

Higher in the scale of plant life we find the flowering an-
nuals bending all their energies during the summer to produce
that peculiar form, the " seed," which is only a little plant boxed
up to successfully withstand the rigors of winter. The great
sunflower, that grows into a giant in a single season and defies
the summer sun and storm, falls an easy victim to the frosts of
autumn. It, however, prepares the way for many successors in
the ripened seeds, each one of which, under favorable conditions,
will germinate, grow, reproduce its kind, and thus complete
another cycle in the realm of vegetable life. The prospective
life and activity of a whole field of next summer's waving corn
may be considered as stored up in a few pecks of comparatively
lifeless seed corn safely housed in the granary. Within its two
protective coats and surrounded by a large store of food, in the
form of seed leaf or nucleus, to be used when growth begins
again, each little plantlet lives and survives the coldest blasts of
King Boreas and his cohorts.

Note, too, the buds and underground stems which will furnish
the beginning of next season's growth of our biennial and peren-
nial plants. See how they are protected by heavy overcoats in
the form of bud scales. Oftentimes, too, as in the hickory and
" balm of Gilead " trees, these scales have a coat of resin or gum
on the outside to render them waterproof; and some, as those
of the pawpaw, are even fur-lined, or rather fur-covered, with a
coating of soft black hairs. Were these protective scales not
present, the tender shoots within them, which will furnish the
nucleus of next season's foliage, would be seared and withered
by the first frost as quickly as though touched with a red-
hot iron.

The above are some of the many ways in which our plants,

in the course of ages and many changes of environment, have

solved the problem of surviving the cold of winter. Moreover,

they always prepare for this cold in time, the resting spores and
VOL. L.— 37

498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seeds being ripened and the bud scales formed over the tender
tips of the branches long before the first severe frost appears.

Let us now glance at those higher forms of life called animals
— "higher," because they are absolutely dependent upon plants
for their food — and see how they pass away their time while their
food-producers, the plants, are resting.

Beginning with the earthworms and their kindred, we find
that at the approach of winter they burrow deep down where the
icy breath of the frost never reaches, and there they live during
the cold season a life of comparative quiet. That they are ex-
ceedingly sensitive to warmth, however, may be proved by the
fact that when a warm rain comes some night in February or
March, thawing out the crust of the earth, the next morning
reveals the mouths of hundreds of the pits or burrows of these
primitive tillers of the soil in our dooryard, each surrounded by
a little pile of pellets, the castings of the active artisans of the pit
during the night before.

If we will get up before dawn on such a morning we can find
the worms crawling actively about over the surface of the
ground, but when the first signs of day appear they seek once
more their protective burrows, and only an occasional belated in-
dividual serves as a breakfast for the early birds.

The eyes of these lowly creatures are not visible, and consist
of single special cells scattered among the epidermal cells of the
skin, and connected by means of a sensory nerve fiber with a
little bunch of nervous matter in the body. Such a simple visual
apparatus serves them only in distinguishing light from dark-
ness, but this to them is most important knowledge, as it enables
them to avoid the surface of the earth by day, when their worst
enemies, the birds, are in active search for them.

The fresh- water mussels and snails and the crayfish burrow
deep into the mud and silt at the bottom of ponds and streams
where they lie motionless during the winter. The land snails, in
late autumn, crawl beneath logs, and, burrowing deep into the
soft mold, they withdraw far into their shells. Then each one
forms with a mucous secretion two thin, transparent membranes,
one across the opening of the shell and one a little farther within,
thus making the interior of the shell perfectly air-tight. There
for five or six months he sleeps free from the pangs of hunger
and the blasts of winter, and when the balmy breezes of spring
blow up from the south he breaks down and devours the protect-
ing membranes and goes forth with his home on his back to seek
fresh leaves for food and to find for himself a mate.

Next in the scale come the insects, which comprise four fifths
of all existing animals, and each one of the mighty horde seen in
summer has passed the winter in some form. One must look for

PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 499

tliem in strange places and under many disguises, for they can
not migrate, as do the majority of the birds, nor can they live
an active life while the source of their food supply, the plants,
are inactive.

The majority of those insects which next May or June will be
found feeding on the buds or leaves of our trees, or crawling
wormlike over the grass of our lawns, or burrowing beneath the
roots of our garden plants, are represented in the winter by the
eggs alone. These eggs are deposited in autumn by the mother
insect, on or near the object destined to furnish the young, or
larvae, their food. Each egg corresponds to a seed of one of our
annual plants, being, like it, but a form of life so fashioned and
fitted as to withstand for a long period intense cold; the mother
insect, like the summer form of the plant, succumbing to the first-
severe frost.

Thus myriads of the eggs of grasshoppers are in the early
autumn deposited in the ground, in compact masses of forty to
sixty each. About mid-April they begin to hatch, and the
sprightly little insects, devoid of wings, but otherwise like their
parents, are seen on every hand.

A comparatively small number of insects pass the winter in
the larval or active stage of the young. Of these, perhaps the
best known is the brown "woolly worm" or "hedgehog cater-
pillar," as it is familiarly called. It is thickly covered with stiff
black hairs on each end, and with reddish hairs on the middle of
the body. These hairs appear. to be evenly and closely shorn, so
as to give the animal a velvety look ; and as they have a certain
degree of elasticity, and the caterpillar curls up at the slightest
touch, it generally manages to slip away when taken into the
hand. Beneath loose bark, boards, rails, and stones, this cater-
pillar may be found in midwinter, coiled up and apparently life-
less. On the first bright, sunny days of spring it may be seen
crawling rapidly over the ground, seeking the earliest vegetation
which will furnish it a literal " breakfast." In April or May the
chrysalis, surrounded by a loose cocoon formed of the hairs of
the body interwoven with coarse silk, may be found in situations
similar to those in which the larva passed the winter. From this,
the perfect insect, the Isabella tiger moth, emerges about the last
of June. It is a medium-sized moth, dull orange in color, with
three rows of small black spots on the body, and some scattered
spots of the same color on the wings.

By breaking open rotten logs one can find in midwinter the
grubs or larvae of many of the wood-boring beetles, and, beneath
logs and stones near the margins of ponds and brooks, hordes of
the maggots or larvae of certain kinds of flies may often be found
huddled together in great masses. The larvae of a few butterflies

500 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

also live over winter beneath chips or bunches of leaves near the
roots of their food plant, or in webs of their own construction,
which are woven on the stems close to the buds whose expanding
leaves will furnish them their first meal in spring.

Many insects pass the winter in the quiescent or pupal stage ;
a state exceedingly well fitted for hibernating, requiring, as it
does, no food, and giving plenty of time for the marvelous
changes which are then undergone. Some of these pupse are in-
closed in dense silken cocoons, which are bound to the twigs of
the plants upon which the larvae feed, and thus they swing se-
curely in their silken hammock through all the storms of winter.
Perhaps the most common of these is that of the brown Cecropian
moth, the large oval cocoon of which is a conspicuous object in
winter on the twigs of our common shade and fruit trees. Many
other pupae may be found beneath logs or on the under side of
bark, and usually have the chrysalis surrounded by a thin cover-
ing of hairs, which are rather loosely arranged. A number pass
the cold season in the earth with no protective covering what-
ever. Among these is a large brown chrysalis with a long
tongue-case bent over so as to resemble the handle of a jug.
Every farm boy has plowed or spaded it up in the spring, and it
is but the pupa of a large moth, the larva of which is the great
green worm with a "horn on its tail," so common on tomato
plants in the late summer.

Each of the winter forms of insects above mentioned can with-
stand long and severe cold weather — in fact, may be frozen solid
for weeks and retain life and vigor, both of which are shown
when warm weather and food appear again. Indeed, it is not an
unusually cold winter, but one of successive thawings and freez-
ings, which is most destructive to insect life. A mild winter
encourages the growth of mold which attacks the hibernating
larvae and pupae as soon as, from excess of rain or humidity, they
become sickly ; and it also permits the continued activity of in-
sectivorous mammals and birds. Thus, moles, shrews, and field
mice, instead of burying themselves deeply in the ground, run
about freely during an open winter, and destroy enormous num-
bers of pupae; while such birds as the woodpeckers, titmice, and
chickadees are constantly on the alert, and searching in every
crevice and cranny of fence and bark of tree for the hiber-
nating larvae.

Of the creeping, wingless creatures which can ever be found
beneath rocks, rails, chunks, and especially beneath those old
decaying logs which are half buried in the rich vegetable mold,
the myriapods, or "thousand-legs," deserve more than passing
notice. They are typical examples of that great branch of the
animal kingdom known as artliropods, which comprises all in-

PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 501

sects and crustaceans. Each arthropod has the body composed
of rings placed end to end and bearing jointed appendages, and
in the myriapods each ring and its appendages can be plainly
seen, whereas in the higher forms of the branch many of the rings
are so combined as to be very difficult to make out.

Full forty kinds of myriapods occur in any area comprising
one hundred square miles in the eastern United States. About
twenty-five of them go by the general name of " thousand-legs,"
as each has from forty to fifty- five cylindrical rings in the body,
and two pairs of legs to each ring. The other fifteen belong to
the " centiped " group, the body consisting of about sixteen flat-
tened segments, or rings, each bearing a single pair of legs.
When disturbed, the "thousand-legs" always coils up and re-
mains motionless, shamming death, or "playing 'possum," as it is
popularly put, as a means of defense ; while the centiped scam-
pers hurriedly away and endeavors to hide beneath leaf, chip, or
other protecting object. All those found in the Northern States
are perfectly harmless, the true centiped, whose bite is reputed
much more venomous than it really is, only being found in the
South. True, some of the centiped group can pinch rather
sharply with their beetle-like jaws, and one, our largest and most
common species, a brownish-red fellow about three inches long
and without eyes, can even draw blood if its jaws happen to
strike a tender place. When handled, it always tries to bite, per-
haps out of revenge for the abominably long Latin name given it
by its describer. In fact, the name is longer than the animal
itself — Scolo-po-cryp-tops sex-spi-no-sa being its cognomen in
full. With such a handle attached to it, who can blame it for
attempting to bite ? Yet to the scientist up on his Latin each
part of the above name bears a definite and tangible meaning.
All the myriapods found in the woods and fields feed upon
decaying vegetation, such as leaves, stems of weeds, and rotten
wood, and in winter three or four species can usually be found
within or beneath every decaying log or stump. One species
with very long legs is often found in damp houses or in cellars.
It is sometimes called the " wall-sweeper," on account of its rapid,
ungainly gait, and is even reputed to prey upon cockroaches and
other household pests.

Spiders, which do not undergo such changes as do most of
the common, six-footed insects, winter either as eggs or in the
mature form. The members of the "sedentary" or web-spin-
ning group, as a rule, form nests in late autumn, in each of
which are deposited from fifty to eighty eggs, which survive
the winter and hatch in the spring, as soon as the food supply
of gnats, flies, and mosquitoes appears. The different forms of
spiders' nests are very interesting objects of study. Some are

502 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

those close-spun, flat, button- shaped objects, about half an inch
in diameter, which are so common in winter on the under side
of bark, chunks, and flat rocks. Others are balloon-shaped and
attached to weeds. "Within the latter the young spiders often
hatch in early winter, make their first meal off their empty egg
cases, and then live together in hunger and harmony until the
south winds blow again, when they emerge and scatter far and
wide in search of sustenance.

The "wandering" spiders never spin webs, but run actively
about and pounce upon their prey with a tiger-like spring. Six
or eight of the larger species of this group winter in the mature
form beneath logs and chunks, being often frozen solid during
cold weather, but thawing out as healthy as ever when the tem-
perature rises. Retiring beneath the loose-fitting bark of hickory
or maple trees, a number of the smaller tube- weaving spiders con-
struct about themselves a protecting web of many layers of the
finest silk. Within this snug retreat they lie from November
until April — a handsome, small, black fellow, with green jaws
and two orange spots on his abdomen, being the most common
species found motionless within this seeming shroud of silk on a
day in midwinter.

In any Northern State as many as four hundred different
kinds of the six-footed or true insects, in the winged or adult
stage, may be taken in winter by any one who is so disposed, and
knows where to search for them. Among the Orthoptera there
are a half dozen or more grasshoppers which, when full grown,
are less than half an inch in length, gray or blackish in color,
and with the hard upper crust of the thorax extending the full
length of the body and covering the wings. They are called
"grouse grasshoppers," and daring cold weather they hide be-
neath the loose bark of logs, or beneath the bottom rails of the
old Virginia worm fences. From these retreats every warm,
sunny day tempts them forth in numbers. On such occasions
the earth seems to swarm with them, as they leap before the
intruder, their hard bodies striking the dead leaves with a
sound similar to that produced by falling hail. The common
field cricket belongs also to the Orthojytera, and the young of
various sizes winter under rails and logs, bidding defiance to
Jack Frost from within a little burrow or pit beneath the pro-
tecting shelter.

The true bugs, or Hemiptera, hibernate in similar places;
squash bugs, chinch bugs, " stink " bugs, and others being easily
found in numbers beneath loose bark or hidden between the root
leaves of mullein and other plants.

Nearly three hundred species of Coleoptera, or beetles, occupy
similar positions. Almost any rotten log or stump when broken

PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 503

open discloses a half dozen or more " horn " or " bess beetles " —
great, shining, clumsy, black fellows with a curved horn on the
head. They are often utilized as horses by country children, the
horn furnishing an inviting projection to which may be fastened,
by a thread or cord, chips and pieces of bark to be dragged about
by the strong and never lagging beast of burden. When tired of
"playing horse" they can make of the insect an instrument of
music, for, when held by the body, it emits a creaking, hissing
noise, produced by rubbing the abdomen up and down against
the inside of the hard, horny wing covers. This beetle passes its
entire life in cavities in the rotten wood on which it feeds, and
when it wishes a larger or more commodious home it has only to
eat the more.

The handsome and beneficial lady beetles winter beneath
fallen leaves or between and beneath the root leaves of the mul-
lein and the thistle. Our most common species, the thirteen-
spotted lady beetle, is gregarious, collecting together by thou-
sands on the approach of cold weather, and Ij'ing huddled up like
sheep until a "breath of spring" gives them the signal to dis-
perse. Snout beetles galore can be found beneath piles of weeds
near streams and the borders of ponds or beneath chunks and
logs in sandy places. All are injurious, and the farmer by burn-
ing their hibernating places in winter can cause their destruction
in numbers. Rove beetles, ground beetles, and many others live
deep down in the vegetable mold beneath old logs, where they
are, no doubt, as secure from the breath of the ice king as if they
had followed the swallow to the tropics.

Of the Dipfera, or flies, but few forms winter in the perfect
state, yet the myriads of house flies and their kin, which next
summer will distract the busy housewife, are represented in
winter by a few isolated individuals which creep forth occasion-
ally from crevice or cranny and greet us with a friendly buzz.

In midwinter one may also often see in the air swarms of
small, gnatlike insects. They belong to this order, and live be-
neath the bark of freshly fallen beech and other logs. On warm,
sunny days they go forth in numbers for a sort of rhythmical
courtship; their movements while in the air being peculiar in
that they usually rise and fall in the same vertical line — flitting
up and down in a dreamy, dancing sort of motion.

Among the dozen or more butterflies and moths which winter
in the perfect state the most common and the most handsome is
the " Camberwell Beauty " or " Mourning Cloak," a large butter-
fly whose wings are a rich purplish brown above, duller beneath,
and broadly margined with a yellowish band. It is often found
in winter beneath chunks which are raised a short distance above
the ground or in the crevices of old snags and fence rails. It is

504. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

then apparently lifeless, with the antennae resting close along the
back, above which the wings are folded. But one or two warm
days are necessary to restore it to activity, and I have seen it on
the wing as early as the 2d of March, hovering over the open
flowers of the little snow trilliuna.

All the species of ants survive the winter as mature forms,
either in their nests in the ground or in huddled groups in half-
rotten logs and stumps, while here and there beneath logs a soli-
tary queen bumblebee, bald hornet, or yellow jacket is found —
the sole representatives of their races.

Thus insects survive the winter in many ways and in many
places, some as eggs, others as larvse, still others as pupae, and a
large number as adults — all being able to withstand severe cold
and yet retain vitality sufficient to recover, live, grow, and re-
plenish the earth with their progeny when the halcyon days of
spring appear once more.

In the scale of animal life the vertebrates or backboned ani-
mals succeed the insects. Beginning with the fishes, we find that
in late autumn they mostly seek some deep pool in pond or stream
at the bottom of which the water does not freeze. Here the her-
bivorous forms eke out a precarious existence by feeding upon
the innumerable diatoms and other small plants which are always
to be found in water, while the carnivorous prey upon the her-
bivorous, and so maintain the struggle for existence. The moving
to these deeper channels and pools in autumn and the scattering
in the spring of the assembly which has gathered there consti-
tute the so-called migration of fishes, which is far from being so
extensive and methodical as that practiced by the migratory
birds.

Many of the smaller species of fishes, upon leaving these win-
ter resorts, ascend small, clear brooks in large numbers for the
purpose of depositing their eggs, as, when hatched in such a place,
the young will be comparatively free from the attacks of the
larger carnivorous forms. Among the lowest vertebrates often
found in numbers in early spring in these meadow rills and
brooks is the lamprey, or " lamper eel," as it is sometimes called.
It has a slender, eel-like body, of a uniform leaden or blackish
color, and with seven purse-shaped gill openings on each side.
The mouth is fitted for sucking rather than biting, and with it
they attach themselves to the bodies of fishes and feed on their
flesh, which they scrape off with their rasplike teeth. Later in
the season they disappear from these smaller streams, probably
returning in midsummer to deeper water. Thoreau, who studied
their habits closely, says of them : " They are rarely, seen on their
way down stream, and it is thought by fishermen that they never
return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of

PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN WINTER. 505

trees fgr an indefinite period ; a tragic feature to tlie scenery of
the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare's
description of the sea floor/'

A few of the fishes, as the mnd minnow and smaller catfishes,
together with most frogs, turtles, and salamanders, on the ap-
proach of winter, burrow into the mud at the bottom of the
streams and ponds, or beneath logs near their margins. There
they live without moving about and with all the vital processes
in a partially dormant condition, thus needing little if any food.

The box tortoise or " dry-land terrapin," the common toad, and
some salamanders burrow into the dry earth, usually going deep
enough to escape the frost, while snakes seek some crevice in the
rocks or hole in the ground where they coil themselves together,
oftentimes in vast numbers, and prepare for their winter's sleep.
If the winter be an " open " one this hibernation is sometimes in-
terrupted, and the animal issues forth from its retreat on a warm,
sunny day, thinking, no doubt, that spring has come again.

Thus the writer has, on one occasion, seen a soft-shelled turtle
moving gracefully over the bottom of a stream on a day in late
December, and has in mid-January captured snakes and sala-
manders from beneath a pile of driftwood where they had taken
temporary refuge.

With frogs especially this hibernation is not a perfect one,
and there is a doubt if in a mild winter some species hibernate at
all. For example, the little cricket frog or " peeper " has been
seen many times in midwinter alongside the banks of flowing
streams, and during the open winter of 1888-'89 numerous speci-
mens of leopard and green frogs were seen on different occasions
in December and January, while on February 18th they, together
with the peepers, were in full chorus.

Of our mammals, a few of the rodents or gnawers, as the
ground-hogs, gophers, and chipmunks, hibernate in burrows deep
enough to escape the cold, and either feed on a stored supply of
food, or, like the snakes and crayfish, do not feed at all.

Others, as the rabbits, field mice, and squirrels, are more or less
active and forage freely on whatever they can find, eating many
things which in summer they would spurn with scorn. To this
class belongs that intelligent but injurious animal the musquash
or muskrat. Those which inhabit the rivers and larger streams
live in burrows dug deep beneath the banks, but those inhabiting
sluggish streams and ponds usually construct a conical winter
house about three feet in diameter and from two to three feet in
height. These houses are made of coarse grasses, rushes, branches
of shrubs, and small pieces of driftwood, closely cemented to-
gether with stiff, clayey mud. The top of the house usually pro-
jects two feet or more above the water, and when sun-dried is so

5o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

strong as to easily sustain the weight of a man. The walls are
generally about six inches in thickness and are very difficult to
pull to pieces. Within is a single circular chamber with a shelf
or floor of mud, sticks, leaves, and grass, ingeniously supported
on coarse sticks stuck endwise into the mud after the manner of
piles. In the center of this floor is an opening, from which six
or eight diverging paths lead to the open water without, so that
the little artisan has many avenues of escape in case of danger.
These houses are often repaired and used for several winters in
succession, but are vacated on the approach of spring. During
the summer the muskrat is, in the main, a herbivorous animal,
but in the winter necessity develops its carnivorous propensities
and it feeds then mainly upon the mussels and crayfish which it
can dig from the bottom of the pond or stream in which its house
is built.

The bats pass the winter in caves, the attics of houses and
barns, or in hollow trees, hanging downward by their hind claws,
eating nothing and moving not. All the carnivora, or flesh-eaters,
as the mink, skunk, opossum, fox, and wolf, are in winter active
and voracious, needing much food to supply the necessary animal
heat of the body. Hence they are then much more bold than in
summer, and the hen yard or sheep pen of the farmer is too fre-
quently called upon to supply this extra demand.

But of all our animals it seems to us the birds have solved the
winter problem .best. Possessing an enduring power of flight and
a knowledge of a southern sunny sky, beneath which food is
plentiful, they alone of the living forms about us have little fear
of the coming of the frost. True, forty or more species remain in
each of the Northern States during the cold season,' but they are
hardy birds which feed mainly on seeds, as the snow bird and
song sparrow ; on flesh, as the hawks and crows ; or on burrow-
ing insects, as the nuthatches and woodpeckers. And no winter
day is too dull and dreary, no sky too leaden and cheerless, no
north wind too harsh and biting for them to be on the lookout
for food.

Such are some of the solutions to the problem of life in winter
which the plants and animals about us have worked out; such
some of the forms which they undergo, the places which they
inhabit.

To the thinking mind a knowledge of these solutions but be-
gets other and greater problems, such as how can a living thing
be frozen solid for weeks and yet retain vitality enough to fully
recover ? How can a warm-blooded animal sleep for months
without partaking of food or drink ? And, greater than either.
What is that which we call life ?

I hold in my hand two objects, similar in size, color, organs.

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. 507

everytliing — twins from the same mother in all outward respects.
One pulsates and throbs with that which we call " life/' It pos-
sesses heat, bodily motion, animal power. The other is cold, mo-
tionless, pulseless, throbless — a thing of clay. What is that " life "
which the one possesses and the other lacks ? Ah, there's the
rub ! With the wisest of men we can only answer, " Quien
sabe f " (Who knows ?)

»«» ■

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM.

By Prof. WILLIAM EOMAINE NEWBOLD.

THROUGHOUT this series of papers I have confined myself
closely to one theory of interjDretation, and I have done so
because the theory which I adopted stands nearest to those of
current science. To leave the subject in this shape, however,
would be an injustice both to my readers and myself. The phe-
nomena the reality of which I have acknowledged constitute but
a part of those which are regarded by competent observers as ac-
tually entering into the question ; and the solution which I have
proposed is not only with difficulty capable of reconciliation with
these other phenomena, but is itself based upon a metaphysical
theory which is far from demonstration. It seems, therefore, no
more than fair that I should, before concluding my series, give
my readers a somewhat broader outlook upon the various aspects
of the problem than I have yet done. A complete survey of all
theories that have been proposed to account for the whole or a
part of the facts can not, of course, be given in a magazine article,
even if I were competent to the task, which I do not profess
to be. But some account of the manner in which the phenomena
of suggestibility and automatism are related to the broader field
of the supernormal, and of the possible points of view from which
the whole field may be surveyed, seems to me essential.

There is no need of my again recounting the salient features
of suggestibility, automatism, and secondary states. Let me turn
at once to the material which I have hitherto excluded — the realm
of the supernormal.

It is with some hesitation that I have resolved to introduce
any discussion of these topics in the pages of the Popular Science
Monthly. The inquiry into the supernormal is as yet in its in-
fancy : its methods are still crude, and its results are under dis-
cussion. None of these results have as yet won the right to a
place among the scientific truths which may be regarded as
known. They are still the personal opinions of a small group of
students, and although I account myself one of the group, I do
not make the mistake of identifying my personal opinions with

5o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ascertained fact. Still, the relation between these phenomena and
those of automatism in particular is so close that no student of
the one group can ignore the other.

Alleged supernormal phenomena may be regarded as belonging
to two classes — psychical and physical. The latter class embraces
all alleged interferences with the known laws of the physical
world. They may be dismissed from consideration here, not
merely because they are not relevant, but because nearly every
case so far reported has dissolved into fraud or malobservation
upon closer examination, and the few which remain intact can
not, in consequence, be regarded as proving anything.

By psychical phenomena I mean mental occurrences which
either give true indications of events unknown to the percipient,
or seem in some way to coincide with and suggest such events,
ov, in the case of impulses, seem to betray a knowledge of fact
which was not possessed by the subject of the experience. These,
again, may be subdivided into several groups. In the telepathic
group the circumstances are such as to suggest a species of men-
tal induction, one mind reflecting the thoughts of another. Thus
a friend of mine was walking down a country road near German-
town, Pa., on a hot summer's day. Suddenly he found himself
thinking, " Where can I find a doctor, where can I find a doctor ?"
He laughed at the absurdity — as if he wanted one — but, to be sure,

if he did, where could one be found ? Dr. Y was dead, and

the only other he knew of was Dr. Z , at Jenkintown. A few

moments later he reached a crossroad, along which a man and
boy were driving rapidly. As they met my friend, the man
reined in the horse, leaned out, and said, " Can you tell me, sir,
where I can find the nearest doctor ? "

Nine times in the course of my own life I have had what is
called a "presentiment." Eight times I wrote it down at once
before learning whether it was true or false, and the ninth time I
spoke of it. Three of these were false, one was partly true and
partly false, one was not verified, but probably false. All these
related to subjects much in my thoughts, and were probably sug-
gested by circumstances. Four were true, of which one might
have been suggested by circumstances. The other three were not
only true and not apparently suggested by circumstances, but
were among the most agitating experiences of my life. One
drove me, in spite of the resistance of my reason, to take a jour-
ney which seemed the act of a lunatic, and proved the wisest
thing I could do. Another impelled me to write a letter to a per-
son three hundred and fifty miles away, to whom I had written
a few hours before, but who happened to be in great trouble at
the moment I felt the impulse. The third gave me absolute as-
surance that the very thing was about to happen which I believed

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. 509

to be of all things most impossible. I do not, of course, quote
these few experiences as proving the existence of telepathy, but
merely as illustrating what I mean by "apparently telepathic
phenomena."

The vast majority of apparently supernormal phenomena are
susceptible of a telepathic explanation, but in a few cases one is
driven to other conceptions. Sometimes knowledge is shown of
events not known to any one, and at other times a percipient will
seem to " see " things at a distance, or to become aware of events
remote in time.

These phenomena are ascribed to " clairvoyance," " precogni-
tion," and " retrocognition." They are much less common than
those of the telepathic type, and the evidence for them is by no
means as good.

Occasionally the information thus got professes to come from
the spirit of some person deceased, and sometimes the claim seems
plausible. Thus I once got from an automatic writer in Boston
what purported to be messages from several of my deceased rela-
tives, one of them being an aunt who died in my childhood,
twenty-one years ago. Among the messages was an allusion to
" Carson the Dr." This meant nothing to me at the time, but
upon making inquiries I learned that an old doctor named Cor-
son had attended my aunt during her last illness for about two
weeks while she was at our house, although he was not her regu-
lar physician. She was afterward removed to a hospital in New
York, and died there. The doctor has long been dead. I do not
quote this to prove that the spirit of my aunt was really there,
which I think very questionable, but to show how plausible these
automatic utterances sometimes are. Probably my parents were
the only persons living who knew that Dr. Corson attended my
aunt for two weeks in 1875, and they have never seen the
automatist.

Now, psychic phenomena nearly always occur in automatic
form. Ungrounded emotions, inner or outer voices, apparitions,
automatic writing and speech, irrational impulses — all these pro-
vide the garb for the appearance of knowledge for which we can
not account. Hence it is impossible to study automatism without
taking these alleged phenomena into consideration at some stage
of the inquiry, even if they are considered only to be rejected.

There are three practicable methods of viewing the facts of
suggestibility, automatism, and secondary states. In the first
place, we may adopt the conception which underlies most of our
modern thought, and regard mind as essentially a function of
matter— that is, of the brain. We will then naturally look to
physiology only for our explanation of these facts. Or we may
hold to the purely psychological point of view, and endeavor to

510 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

explain tlie phenomena by reference to psychological principles
only. Or, finally, we may adopt the time-honored doctrine which
regards mind and brain as two distinct entities, between which
constant interaction is going on. We may then invoke both
principles in our theories.

The first of these doctrines is commonly known as materialism,
but as that word has been so much abused I shall use the phrase
" theory of dependence." It has its root in the obvious fact that
sensations and emotions are caused by physical and physiological
processes. Recent physiological research has tended to establish
this doctrine more firmly, to extend its scope and to determine
the character of the relation. There is much evidence to show
that thought, reason, and will are also dependent upon the brain
for their very existence; that all mental states are especially
connected with the cortex of the brain; that even some very
complicated movements, to the performance of which we usually
suppose consciousness to be essential, can be performed by lower,
presumably unconscious, centers. All this tends to exalt our idea
of the brain's capacities and to diminish the importance ascribed
to mind. Moreover, careful psychological work has shown that
many of what are termed mental laws are most easily explained
as representing physical processes, and the sharp antithesis which
we draw between the laws of mind and those of matter is in part
at least illusory. The law of association is believed to be capable
of interpretation in terms of the transmission of nervous im-
pulses through the cortex, the laws of volition in their simpler
forms point to a direct discharge of energy developed in connec-
tion with some substantive mental state into the subcortical
mechanism and thence to the muscles, the law of attention sug-
gests some species of coalescence of all the activities going on at
one time in the cortex into a definite system. Even telepathy,
which is regarded with so much suspicion by orthodox jjsycholo-
gists, is parallel to the phenomena of induction.

The more special lines of work, therefore, both in physiology
and psychology, tend to converge upon the same conclusion to
which we are already predisposed by the general drift of the
intellectual movement initiated by Gasseudi, Hobbes, Descartes,
Galileo, and Newton — that it is to matter we must look for our
knowledge of Nature, that material processes are independent
and self-sufficient, that mind is merely a brain product, which
waxes and wanes with the flow and ebb of physical activities
within the cortex.

The attempts that have been made to explain some or all of
the phenomena of suggestibility and automatism by reference to
physical changes are almost innumerable, and scarcely any con-
ceivable attribute of the brain or its functions has not been

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. 511

seized upon by somebody. One refers hypnotic states to exces-
sive blood supply, another to diminished blood supply, another to
accumulation of waste products in the blood, another to inhibi-
tion of the association paths, another to inhibition of the frontal
region, another to inhibition of one hemisphere, another to inhibi-
tion of the entire cortex, and so on. There may be an element of
truth in some of these theories, but it is certain that no one is
suflScient to account for all the facts, even if the alleged super-
normal facts be excluded as non-proved.

In fact, we know very little indeed about the brain processes
which are immediately related to consciousness, and consequently
many psychologists are reluctant to resort to them for explana-
tions of what goes on in consciousness. They prefer to limit the
inquiry to the facts and laws of mind and to formulate the phe-
nomena of suggestibility and automatism in mental terms alone.
It is not possible for me to analyze these theories here, as each
presupposes a knowledge of the particular psychological point of
view from which it is conceived. The ideas of inhibition of atten-
tion, interference with association, inhibition of will, influence of
imagination and expectation, figure largely in all these theories.
That which I have been developing in these pages belongs to this
type, but is distinguished by its free use of conceptions derived
from the theory of dependence. Assuming that consciousness
depends upon and indicates the existence of physical processes,
that these physical processes have the attributes of other physical
forces, that they in some way coalesce and interact in the brain
cortex, I borrowed these physical conceptions and applied them
directly to those mental phenomena which we regard as depend-
ent upon the physical. Thus, if the simultaneous grasping of
several mental facts indicates a coalescence of their physical bases,
and vice versa, then inability to become conscious of any mental
fact the physical basis of which we have reason to believe exists
would indicate that its physical basis had failed to coalesce with
the others. In such cases I described the mental fact as itself
"cut off from" or "dissociated from" the other mental states,
although, manifestly, mental states, which do not themselves
occupy space, can not be spatially cut off from or separated from
anything whatever. The phenomena of suggestibility I ascribed
to the removal through this dissociation of the checks and coun-
terchecks exerted by mental states upon one another, thus allow-
ing suggested sensations and ideas to work out their results more
freely than usual.

Analogous conceptions have been worked out by other writers
without explicit reference to the physical basis of consciousness.
Thus, Dr. Hans Schmidkunz, in a bulky and learned but badly
written book {Psychologie der Suggestion, Munich, 1892), makes

512 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

free use of the conception of consciousness as a co-ordination of
forces capable of occasional disruption, although he seems to have
been led to that notion by the Herbartian psychology. Professors
Janet and Binet also teach analogous doctrines without reference
to the brain processes, and Prof. William James seems at times to
hold a similar position.

In sharp antithesis to the theory of dependence stands the
theory of independence. According to this doctrine, mind and
matter are essentially distinct in nature, and are capable of inde-
pendent existence, although in fact sometimes closely related.
Many mental states, as sensations, are caused by physical processes,
and, vice versa, many physical processes, as some bodily move-
ments, are caused by mental states; but this relation of action
and interaction is purely accidental, and can be dissolved without
the destruction of either mind or matter. This theory has been
stated in many forms, and is involved more or less implicitly in
many philosophies. In one form or another it has been the domi-
nant theory in every epoch of human thought, it lies at the foun-
dation of most religions, and is to-day accepted by the mass of
men ; yet in the scientific world it has fallen into such disfavor
that in many circles it is almost as disgraceful to avow belief in
it as in witchcraft or ghosts.

The chief argument usually alleged in justification of this at-
titude is that the theory of independence violates the law of con-
servation of energy, which is justly regarded as one of the great-
est scientific generalizations of this century. That law requires
that in all the manifold flux of physical phenomena certain defi-
nite and quantitative relations should exist between the amount
of work done and the amount of energy expended, thus binding all
physical processes into a closed series. To admit mental phenom-
ena into that series as a mode into which physical energy might
be transformed would, it is claimed, break the law — first, because
the new elements are non-physical, and it is inconceivable that
the non-physical should affect the physical ; and, second, because
mental states can not be measured, and therefore can not consti-
tute an equivalent of anything.

This a 'priori objection does not seem to me to possess much
force. The argument from inconceivability has been urged
against every new conception introduced into science ; it was
never more weighty then when hurled against the bold specula-
tors who claimed that the earth was round and that the antip-
odes nevertheless did not fall off. That a thought should cause
the disintegration of a molecule is intrinsically neither more nor
less inconceivable than that a disturbance in an imponderable
entity like ether should shatter an oak tree. What is inconceiv-
able to one generation becomes the commonplace of the next.

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. 513

What the objectors really mean is that such a relation is incom-
prehensible, which it certainly is, but so also are all natural phe-
nomena when reduced to their lowest terms.

The argument from equivalence is of greater weight, but is
not conclusive. Mental states, it is true, have never yet been
measured, nor are they likely to be ; but we have no right to
assume that quantitative relations are the only relations of which
the law of conservation of energy can take cognizance. As quan-
tity is an essential attribute of matter, so is quality an essential
attribute of mind, and we may discover that, mutatis mutandis,
the law of equivalence holds — that every given quantity and kind
of energy expended in the cortex has its fixed equivalent in a
given quality of consciousness, that is, in some definite kind of
sensation, thought, or emotion, and vice versa.

It should be observed that the argument from the law of con-
servation of energy overthrows both the theory of independence
and that of dependence, and we are reduced to the contemplation
of the relation of mind and matter as an inscrutable mystery — a
mystery which some philosophers try thinly to veil, by invoking
the good offices of a third unknown substance of which both
matter and mind are supposed to be attributes. This is the so-
called doctrine of monism.

I have thought it necessary to go into this argument to some
degree because without some such explanation my readers may
wonder why 1 regard the theory of independence as entitled to
any hearing whatever. Yet I think that the disrepute into which
it has fallen is not due to any imaginary conflict with the law
of conservation of energy. It is in part due to the general drift
of our age, which for nearly four hundred years has set away
from the supranaturalistic conceptions of the middle ages toward
naturalism, and has consequently left the doctrine of independ-
ence, which was universal throughout the middle ages, high and
dry on the sands. It is for the most part, however, due to the
direct evidence, of which I have above spoken, for the dependence
of mind upon the body.

It is not my purpose to attempt to prove or to disprove either
of these theories, but before proceeding to interpretations of au-
tomatism which may be based upon the latter, I may point out
that the evidence is not so wholly one-sided as is commonly sup-
posed. The clinical facts by no means warrant the assumption
that mental degeneration necessarily keeps pace with brain de-
struction. Cases are frequently reported in which patients survive
severe and permanent injuries to the brain with relatively slight
mental impairment. Some of the phenomena of normal psychol-
ogy, as the consciousness of self, attention, and will, are as easily
interpreted from the one as from the other point of view ; and in

VOL. I..— 38

514 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the supernormal field the facts already reported, should they be
substantiated by further inquiry, would go far toward showing
that consciousness is an entity governed by laws and possessed
of powers incapable of expression in material conceptions.

I do not myself regard the theory of independence as proved,
but I think we have enough evidence for it to destroy in any
candid mind that considers it that absolute incredulity as to
its possibility which at present characterizes the average man
of science.

Now, if it were proved true, what explanations can it provide
for the phenomena of suggestibility and automatism ?

The simplest way of looking at the facts is to ascribe them to
a partial separation of mind and body. This notion is based upon
the fact that the memory of the secondary state is so often lost.
The mind may be supposed to be asleep while another person
plays upon the sensitive machine which it has just been using.
When memory is retained, we may suppose that consciousness,
upon being reunited to its body, reads off, as it were, the traces
left in the brain by what was going on in its absence. This is
the notion which the very word automatism connotes, and it has
been held more or less clearly by many writers. It accounts
very well for most of the facts of hypnotic states, for the simpler
forms of post- hypnotic suggestion, and is especially suggested by
hysterical losses of sensation and movement, and by successive
personalities. The same fundamental conception may be inter-
preted in accordance with the theory of dependence by ascribing
all these phenomena to brain processes of too lotv a degree of in-
tensity to awaken consciousness.

But this notion breaks down when applied to the more ad-
vanced stages of motor automatism, as fully developed automatic
writing, to simultaneous personalities, to the more advanced forms
of post-hypnotic suggestion, to trance and ecstasy. In all these
cases we have as good evidence for the existence of consciousness
as we ever have, save that the consciousness which we infer does
not become a part of some recognized person's memories. Conse-
quently we must admit either that organized matter, or some
tertium quid which is neither mind nor matter, is capable of pro-
ducing the effects which we ascribe to consciousness, or else that
there sometimes exists in connection with a given body a con-
sciousness distinct from that known to us.

The first of these alternatives would practically bring us back
to the theory of dependence. The second, the doctrine of a tertium
quid, is found in many writers, although there is no agreement as
to the characteristics of the third entity. This notion is indeed
descended from the ancient distinction between body, soul, and
spirit. The tertium quid is usually conceived as a semimaterial

THE INTERPRETATIONS OF AUTOMATISM. ^15

entity, akin in its nature to the physical substratum of light and
electricity. The doctrine of the "astral body" belongs to this
type. Or, the third entity may be conceived as akin to conscious-
ness in its essential nature, although capable of separation from
it. It may, for example, be identified with the life of sensation
and sensuous desires which common sense discriminates from the
" more spiritual " elements of thought, reason, and will.

If the third alternative be adopted, we must regard the prin-
ciple which lies at the foundation of such phenomena as purely
mental. The oldest form of this theory is the doctrine of posses-
sion, which ascribes all automatism to the agency of some adven-
titious mind, as that of a demon or spirit, entering into the body
of the patient and assuming control, to the total or partial exclu-
sion of its rightful owner.

In modern times the doctrine has assumed the form of "du-
plex personality." This theory maintains that in every man
there are two minds, one known to us and one usually unknown.*
To the latter are ascribed all the phenomena of suggestibility and
automatism, sometimes also telepathy, clairvoyance, and the like,
and even the power of moving furniture, of objectifying and
" materializing " its ideas, and of performing the other tricks which
" mediums " ascribe to spirits.

A similar theory has been developed by Mr. F. W. H. Myers
in a series of papers in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychi-
cal Research. Mr. Myers avoids the words soul, spirit, and the
like in stating his theory, on account of their crude associations,
but I shall in this popular sketch make use of these familiar
words, even at the risk of misrepresenting him a little.

Mr. Myers agrees with the other representatives of the soul
theory in acknowledging the existence of a spiritual entity of
some sort, although he does not define it or attempt to fix its re-
lation to matter. Its essence is consciousness ; but — and this is
the point characteristic of the theory — the consciousness of which
my soul consists is not identical with what I call my conscious-
ness. Every soul is the basis or ground of existence of many
wholly distinct consciousnesses of which the consciousness I call
mine is but one. It is not even the most important of them, al-
though it also is not the least important. It has been evolved by
a process of selection out of an infinity of possible elements solely
on the ground of utility. Its function is the preservation of the
body ; those mental elements which were found most directly to

* Some writers who hold to the doctrine of dependence have embraced a similar view,
and regard the two minds as produced by the right and the left hemispheres of the brain
respectively, and other duplex theories have been stated from the purely psychological
point of view.

5i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

subserve that end have been discriminated from the others under
the stress of natural selection and organized into a conscious sys-
tem. The others have either been forced out, as their places were
needed by more important elements, or have never got in, because
they could not compete with the others in point of utility.

Among those which have been forced out, their functions
being relegated to the nervous mechanism, are the powers of vol-
untarily controlling the involuntary muscles, the processes of
secretion, absorption, assimilation, excretion. In many persons
all vivid imagery has in like manner been lost. Among those
which have never been received into the normal consciousness
are those which we vaguely term genius, and also telepathy,
clairvoyance, and probably an infinity of other modes of cogniz-
ing reality.

For all this infinite wealth of thought and experience which
Mr. Myers believes to exist outside the narrow bounds of the
upper consciousness he proposes the term " subliminal states."
They embrace every type of consciousness known to us, from the
most filmy and incoherent of dreams to the most sublime flights
of genius, and many more of which we have never framed a con-
ception. Sometimes they flow along in distinct streams, each
with its own memory and desires ; at others they blend into more
complex wholes.

In the curious phenomena which I have been studying, and in
many more which I have not taken into consideration, Mr. Myers
believes we have manifestations of one or more of these hidden
streams. In all forms of automatism the subliminal material is
forced into the upper consciousness much as a stream of lava is
forced through the earth's crust. The material itself may be non-
sense or a revelation, but the mechanism is in all cases the same.
In sleep, dream, hypnosis, trance, and ecstasy we see a temporary
subsidence of the upper consciousness and the upheaval of a sub-
liminal stratum.

We need not suppose that our selves are always to consist
of this conglomerate of disorganized material. We may believe
that in some future life harmony will succeed discord ; all the
scattered portions of our psychical selves will be reunited into a
new and higher synthesis — a self more rich in memories, more
alive to its environment, more strong in action than any we can
now imagine.

Of all the theories developed from the ]wint of view of the
doctrine of independence, Mr. Myers's is the most comprehensive
in its scope, is kept in most constant touch with what the author
regards as the facts, and displays the greatest philosophic insight ;
but its very comprehensiveness may well make us hesitate. We
must make theories — they are the very eyes of the student — but

ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN IN COLLEGES. 517

we must be slow in adopting them. The inquiry into the super-
normal has but just begun, the support of the great body of
scholars has not by any means been won, and the fundamental
facts are still in question. The first need is more observation and
more experiment. The theories framed by Mr. Myers and others
will serve as guides in the inquiry, and in future, as facts ac-
cumulate, what there is in them of value will become manifest.

■»»»

TENDENCIES IN ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN IN
COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.*

By SOPHIA FOSTER RICHAKDSOISI.

FROM correspondence with the leading colleges and universi-
ties which educate women, I find that they have very gener-
ally introduced, or are preparing to introduce as far as possible,
physical training and athletic sports.

I find, too, from this correspondence that if I describe the con-
ditions at Vassar, where I am most familiar with them, I shall
describe the general tendencies in athletics for women.

From the beginning Vassar has required practice in the gym-
nasium and an hour of outdoor exercise daily from every student
throughout her course. A riding school was provided and a
bowling alley, and the lake furnished boating of a mild type.
There was not sufficient interest in riding to maintain the school,
and after a few years it was given up. The bowling alley atro-
phied and fell off as a member of the body academic. The hour
of outdoor exercise has been very generally spent in walking.
The result of this daily practice is that members of the upper
classes can walk, so that when the Professor of English at one
time introduced the delightful custom of annually inviting fifteen
or twenty seniors to accompany him on an autumnal tramp of
from ten to twenty miles through the highlands of the Hudson,
the invitation was always accepted with enthusiasm and the walk
greatly enjoyed.

About twenty years ago, when I was a freshman, seven or
eight baseball clubs suddenly came into being, spontaneously as
it seemed, but I think they owed their existence to a few quiet
suggestions from a resident physician, wise beyond her genera-
tion. The public, so far as it knew of our playing, was shocked,
but in our retired grounds, and protected from observation even
in these grounds by sheltering trees, we continued to play in spite
of a censorious public. One day a student, while running be-

* A paper presented to the Association of Collegiate Alumnte, October 31, 1896.

5i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tween the bases, fell, with an injured leg. We attended her to the
infirmary, with the foreboding that this accident would end our
play of baseball. Not so. Dr. Webster said that the public would
doubtless condemn the game as too violent, but that if the student
had hurt herself while dancing the public would not condemn
dancing to extinction. Singular point was given to her remark a
few days later, when a student did fall while dancing and broke
her leg. After this we played with the feeling somewhat light-
ened that we were enjoying delightful but contraband pleasure.
The interest in baseball did not increase ; clubs were not formed
by incoming classes. I think there was too much pressure against
it from disapproving mothers. However, those of us who had
learned the value of vigorous play succeeded in keeping alive
enough interest in the game to support two clubs until our senior
year. This year saw the advent of tennis at college.

Knowing as I do that I owe to the regularity of college life
and to vigorous play an excellent health record since graduation,
it is difficult for me to conceive the point of view of those, if there
be such, who disapprove of athletics for girls.

Tennis, being more conventional than baseball, at once gained,
and has steadily maintained, a hold upon the students. A tennis
association was organized, many courts were prepared, and an
annual tournament, in competition for the college championship,
was instituted.

The primitive calisthenics of the gymnasium have long since
given place to scientific physical training, and a modern gym-
nasium has been built.

About seven years ago, through the generosity of Mr. Rocke-
feller, facilities were provided for flooding the lake. The skating
season was thereby extended from a precarious duration of a week
or two, contingent on the snowfall, to a reasonably certain period
of six or eight weeks. As soon as these conditions were estab-
lished, large numbers of students learned to skate. I think prob-
ably two thirds of the college now enjoy this sport.

A few years ago athletic games were introduced in connection
with the work of the gymnasium. The students were taught
battle-ball and basket-ball in the gymnasium, golf links were
prepared and golf clubs procured. Battle-ball was discarded, as
it did not prove a good game for outdoors. Golf, I believe, was
voted uninteresting, and accordingly neglected, and I learn that
it has not yet found favor with any of the colleges. It is thought
that as golf becomes better known throughout the country, and
students learn it before coming to college, they will play more a,t
college.

Basket-ball has been enthusiastically received with us, as with
all the colleges. Each class has a team and substitutes, and inter-

ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN^ IN COLLEGES. 519

class contests are held. An athletic association has been organ-
ized by the students, and an annual field day has been observed,
when there have been contests in field and track athletics.

If there be those who assume that physical excellence is the
attribute of the so-called " new woman," and therefore unwoman-
ly, we can only reply that the idea that women should have the
same physical training as men is no newer than Plato's Republic,
wherein the Greek sage insists that the women should have the
same physical training as the men, that the race might be con-
tinued in the highest perfection of mental and physical vigor.
Little is told us of the education of girls in Greece ; but this we
know — that Spartan girls were subjected to a course of training
differing from their brothers only in being less severe. They had
their own exercise grounds, in which they learned to leap, run,
cast the javelin, throw the discus, play ball, wrestle, dance, and
sing. The result of this fine physical training was not only
health and strength, but beauty; for it is a well-attested fact
that the daughters of Sparta were handsomer and more attractive
than the more delicately nurtured Athenians. In Aristophanes,
Lampito, a Spartan woman, excites the jealous admiration of the
Athenian women because of her beauty. When some one said to
Gorgo, the wife of Leonidas, "You Spartans are the only women
who rule men," she proudly replied, " Because we are the only
women who bring forth men."

In behalf of the introduction of games as supplementary to
the work of the gymnasium, I will quote Miss Hill, of the
Wellesley Gymnasium : " Four years ago I began to give my
services to the college in organized ' sports and pastimes ' in
connection with the department, feeling that we were giving in
America too much attention to artificial exercises and too little to
the development of the play instinct, which is the natural means
of recreation. I believe in gymnastics for girls for their cor-
rective value and as an antidote to the faulty postures we take so
much, the efi:ects of wrong clothing, etc., lack of knowledge how
to breathe, run, walk, to climb and leap for practical purposes
and self-preservation in accident. But I think we use them too
much. We waste time and strength in not accomplishing the
direct results of gymnastics, and fail to obtain the nerve stimulus
that comes from natural play. If games and sports are organ-
ized and directed to a certain extent by the director of physical
training, often, of course, the gymnastic and corrective value
can be got out of a sport, and the fun, too."

Matthew Arnold, in his work on Higher Schools and Universi-
ties in Germany, says, in describing the exercise ground of a Ger-
man school finely equipped for gymnastics, " Nothing, however,
will make an ex-schoolboy of one of the great English schools

520 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

regard the gymnastics of a foreign school without a slight feeling
of wonder and compassion, so much more animating and interest-
ing do the games of his remembrance seem to him/'

Statistics regarding the benefits that students have derived
from athletic games are frequently asked for. These are difficult
to state in the form of records. Nevertheless, the advantages are
very real and very evident. A graduate of the University of
California writes me, " Athletics proper, as distinguished from
physical culture, are enormously important for girls — more so
than for boys, for it brings out a side of their nature cramped
from childhood." She says that, from her own experience, she
knows that "there is nothing like the hard-played game to bring
out powers of the body that the routine work can not touch. Still
more, the mental and moral effect is wonderful. There is a zest,
a freedom, a whole-souled sincerity of effort, a flinging aside of
every consideration of how she is looking, or whether she is do-
ing the proper thing, that goes right to the root of some of the
most inveterate evils of feminine adolescence. The effect on our
basket-ball girls has been perceptible in a single year ; all their
attitudes toward life have taken on a healthier and heartier tone."
She adds that this is heartily the belief of the director of the
gymnasium of the University of California.

The tendency of athletic games to dispel morbid conditions is,
I think, too well known to require comment. One can not watch
a game of basket-ball without observing the will-power, nerve-
control, and general self-government which the rules of the game
to prevent all rough play, and the necessity of quick decision and
instant decided action, cultivate.

The match games give outdoor entertainment to the whole
body of students, thoroughly diverting, and of the most health-
ful kind, free from all the unwholesome influences which more or
less attend dramatics.

As a less direct result of the growing interest in athletics we
may notice the increased stature of women, and a corrected
aesthetic judgment which now pronounces the normal form the
most beautiful.

A dinner was recently given at Vassar by one of the students,
at which the guest qualification was the habitual wearing of
broad-soled shoes. The hostess is a disciple of Matthew Arnold,
who can not enjoy " sweetness and light " without a disposition to
" make them prevail."

Many students ride the bicycle in all the colleges. So many
papers have appeared in current literature setting forth the ad-
vantages of bicycling that little remains to be said on the subject.
A note appeared in a September journal to the effect that at the
annual sanitary conference at Newcastle, England, Dr. Turner

ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN IN COLLEGES. 521

declared that cycling in England had raised the average health
of women — and this of English women. It preaches more effect-
ively the gospel of recreation, fun and fresh air, and of hygienic
dressing, than could countless lectures of eminent physicians.

There is a problem which men have failed to solve and which
confronts us — the problem of making general the habit and love
of outdoor athletic sports. In spite of the interest awakened
throughout the country in baseball, football, rowing, and track
athletics, in spite of American successes in the international con-
tests in Greece, it is yet true that American men are not, as a
class, habitually athletic or physically vigorous.

So with our students : notwithstanding the interest that has
been awakened in athletics among them, there are yet many
whose outdoor exercise still consists in an hour's walk, which,
allowing the mind to dwell on the last subject read, does but
meager service as a form of physical recreation.

In this connection the question has arisen whether we shall
endeavor to stimulate general interest in athletic games by inter-
collegiate contests. The Western colleges seem inclined to an-
swer this question in the affirmative. Chicago has played with
Northwestern ; there has recently been a very interesting game
between the University of California and Leland Stanford Uni-
versity, and other Western colleges are anticipating future com-
petitions with neighboring institutions. On the other hand, the
Eastern colleges unite in disapproving of intercollegiate contests.
Among other reasons it is thought that the strain on the players
would be too great ; that the tendency would be to narrow rather
than to increase the number of players by raising the standard of
excellence of the play and discouraging the less expert players ;
also that the interclass contests afford all the advantages of
intercollegiate games without the objectionable features of the
latter.

In considering athletics for women we must reckon with the
American's national characteristic of immoderation when fired by
interest in any new thing. It will be necessary to restrain the
enthusiastic few from excess while endeavoring to stimulate the
indifferent many to active interest. The end to be desired is, of
course, symmetrical development, not the training of athletes.

For the best solution of the problem to which I have referred
I think we must look for help to the secondary schools, in the
hope that physical training and instruction in hygiene may begin
with them.

The freshman comes to college utterly ignorant of the funda-
mental laws of hygiene. It is exceptional when the physical ex-
amination does not reveal marked defects of the nature of weak
backs, poor chests, round shoulders, and ansemia. She is un-

522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

skilled and unpracticed in any athletic exercise, even in that of
walking. After she has been in college a few weeks she will tell
yon, with great pride, that she has walked to town, a distance of
two miles ! Every claim upon her time at college, social as well
as intellectual, outranks in importance the claims of exercise, and
this duty yields to pressure from any other. If she were trained
to rank study and play of the right kind as of equal importance
to her mental development, the conscientiousness with which she
devotes herself to study would secure her faithful attention to
recreation.

It is encouraging to see that already some schools are setting
the example of reform in this direction. One school at Indian-
apolis has introduced scientific physical training under a skilled
director, and has placed this training on exactly the same footing
as the intellectual exercises of the school. Besides gymnastics,
daily outdoor exercise of two hours duration is required of each
student.

In another school, in Connecticut, in the care of an English
principal, there is no two-by-two daily promenade. Groups of
not less than three girls are allowed, within certain bounds, to
take a walk of from four to eight miles. In the hour and a half
which they are required to spend in vigorous exercise out of
doors, they play tennis, cricket, and basket-ball, occasionally hav-
ing matches with other schools. In the winter physical training
in the gymnasium is prescribed in connection with the winter
sports of coasting and skating. A "high-stand" prize is offered,
for which no girl is qualified to compete without a good athletic
record for the year.

Of special importance to the student is the relation of athletics
to the hygiene of the brain. Physicians say that if a muscle is
once overtaxed or a nerve overstrained, they never regain their
original tone and power ; and yet I think that in America little
care is taken to prevent such injury to the brain. We summarily
dispose of its welfare with the classical platitude, "Mens sana m
sano cor pore."

What is indicated by the fact that the college " valedictorian "
of the past so many times sank into obscurity after his com-
mencement oration, while his classmate, not overzealous in study
and reasonably interested in athletics, subsequently rose to dis-
tinction at the bar or in the pulpit ? — by the fact that the graduate
student frequently fails to fulfill undergraduate promise and to
go from strength to strength in mental achievement ? — by the fact
that the country youth with meager opportunities, fresh from sim-
ple rural life, so frequently outstrips classmates who have known
all the advantages which our best schools can afford ? What is
indicated by these conditions but that the students of our schools

ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN IN COLLEGES. 523

and colleges work in ignorance of the needs of the brain for its
steadily strengthening development ?

I was much interested to see in the October issue of the Popu-
lar Science Monthly a paper by Prof. Kraepelin, of Heidelberg,
bearing on this point. His paper reports the result of experi-
ments in " measuring the mental capacity of individuals." The
measure is afforded by determining the number of small similar
problems resolved by the subject in a given time — such, for exam-
ple, as the continuous addition of a column of numbers. " Other
means of measuring the capacity of a subject are afforded by the
ease with which he is diverted from his task, or his susceptibility
to disturbing influences from without and within ; his elasticity,
or the readiness with which he recovers from the effects of fatigue
or diversion; and the way he is affected by taking food, physical
exercise, and the time he has for sleep."

The experiment in addition, as made upon young men, showed
that their facility 171 addition fell off at the beginning of the sec-
ond hour. Experiments made by Prof. Burgerstein, of Vienna,
showed that a quarter of an hour of simple ivorh is enough to de-
velop the first signs of fatigue in a twelve-year-old pupil.

Prof. Kraepelin claims that when fatigue "has once gained
the upper hand, a speedy and unintermitted decline of efficiency
ensues. The time when this shall take place depends on the de-
gree of capacity already reached, the personal peculiarity, and
casual influences."

It appears from these experiments that the mental vigor of
most men is usually maintained at a certain height for the long-
est time in the forenoon. The rapidity with which one of the
persons experimented upon could perform his tasks in addition
sank about a third after a night journey by railway with insuffi-
cient sleep. Another experimenter could detect the effects of
keeping himself awake all night in a gradual decrease in vigor
lasting through four days.

The paper concludes as follows :

" When, now, we look back at the conditions we have discov-
ered that control mental vigor, we conclude that our children are
exposed by the extent and arrangement of study work in the
schools to great perils for their mental and physical development.
The questions that press upon us in this matter are of such im-
portance that we all have reason to give them our full, undivided
attention. We are only at the beginning of a real hygiene of
mental labor, but the results we have obtained in this research,
fully indicating the nature and operation of the dangers, point
with equal clearness to the character of the preventive and reme-
dial measures which should be sought and applied."

The president of one of our great universities has been quoted

524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as advising the following division of a student's day : Eight
hours for sleep, ten for work, two for exercise, three for meals,
and one for incidentals. Whether this is an authentic quota-
tion or not, it describes with fair accuracy the practice of the
average college girl, excepting that she rarely takes more than
one hour of exercise. Her conscience is most approving when
she spends all the time there is, apart from other definite engage-
ments, with her books. Now, in the light of Prof. Kraepelin's
experiments, if not in that of our own observation, what happens
as the result of this protracted poring over books ? Either in-
jury is done to the brain through overexertion, or the brain pro-
tects itself by inattention and the student wastes precious time
and depletes to no purpose her all too small store of vitality.

Prof. Kraepelin lays great stress on the importance of sleep as
a compensation for all effects of mental fatigue, and all will agree
with him in this. But he claims that " it is fundamentally false
to regard physical effort as in any way a suitable preparation for
mental labor. Protracted experiments pursued under my direc-
tion have given the result that a simple walk of from one to two
hours diminishes the mental capacity in adults at least as much
as about an hour's work in addition." How can we reconcile
this with our own experience or with the testimony of students ?
Only a few days ago a student told me with enthusiasm of the
ease and rapidity with which her evening tasks were accom-
plished after an afternoon during which she had walked two
miles to town, had there taken a bicycle lesson of an hour, and
then walked back to college, this being more than double her
usual amount of exercise. Can there be any question as to which
is the better preparation for a day of mental labor — nine hours of
sleep and three hours of vigorous exercise in the open air, or
twelve hours of sleep and no exercise ? Of course, time should be
allowed after vigorous physical exercise for the relaxation and
rest of the muscles before using the brain, but the time required
for this is not long.

It seems to me that the practice and experience of the English
offer convincing testimony against Prof. Kraepelin's opinion on
this point. An American student can not compete with the Eng-
lish student in respect to the amount of work done in a given
time ; nor, I am told, can the German student. The habits of
Germans and Americans conform, and differ from the English in
respect to long hours of work and short hours of exercise.

The English students have apparently learned that the brain
does its best work when allowed long periods of leisure. They
make strenuous efforts to reduce their hours of study to a mini-
mum. They work on an average six hours a day. Students have
taken honors at Cambridge with a smaller average of study

ATHLETICS FOR WOMEN IN COLLEGES. 525

hours. I was told that Darwin achieved the work of his life by
devoting three hours a day to his science. The dons at Newn-
ham constantly urge the students to reduce their hours of work,
claiming that the best results have been attained at the univer-
sity by those who spent the least time in study.

The English students' power of concentration is remarkable.
They respect perfectly the study hours of their friends, and will
tolerate no interruption of their own. The English excel when
tried by two of Prof. Kraepelin's tests of mental capacity : amount
of work done in a given time and power of concentration.

Wherein lies their advantage ? They will tell us that their
strong and necessary ally is vigorous outdoor sport.

The English girl has, of course, known from childhood the
habit of outdoor life. At college she plays hockey or hand polo,
cricket, fives, and the games with which we are more familiar, for
at least two hours a day, and oftener for a longer time. Two
hours is a minimum of time spent in exercise. At frequent inter-
vals, usually at the end of each week, she seeks recreation from
past and preparation for future effort by spending many hours
in the open air, in boating on the river it may be, or in taking a
tramp of thirty miles or so. During vacations she not infre-
quently makes walking tours of longer or shorter duration.

If an English girl finds that her mind is inactive and unre-
ceptive, she recognizes this as an indication that it needs recrea-
tion. She drops her books and puts her brain in fit condition for
study by some vigorous play. Under like conditions, the Ameri-
can student, not recognizing Nature's signal, mentally scourges
herself for dullness, and urges her jaded mind on to overexertion.
I once heard an English girl assert that she could daivdle all day,
but could not study for more than two hours at a time.

A senior at Vassar, who had been honored by her classmates
with several appointments entailing strenuous editorial and ex-
ecutive duties, once said to me that she was grateful to the extra
work for showing her in how short a time her regular work could
be done. Having learned this lesson, she observed with surprise
the time spent by her classmates over their tasks.

Every American who studies at Cambridge adopts the methods
of work of her English friends, and ever afterward looks with
compassion on the mistakes of her countrywomen.

The power of concentration of mind can not be exercised at
will by those unaccustomed to practice it, but it can certainly be
cultivated through training, and the earlier the training is begun
the better. One school is known to me which has worked effect-
ively in this direction by restricting the time spent in prepara-
tion of tasks, and by requiring a sufficient amount of outdoor play
to keep the brain fresh and active.

526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In conclusion, we claim that the average American college
girl, in comparison with her English cousin, expends by her
methods of study a maximum of effort with a minimum of result;
that, by way of reform, she should limit the hours of daily mental
labor, as the workmen's hours of daily manual labor are limited,
in order that during some periods of each day she may know
perfect relaxation and freedom from pressing duties; that ath-
letic games, instead of being for her a foe to scholarship, as
the faculties of men's colleges seem inclined to regard them,
may, by the exercise of good judgment in their use, be made
an effective agent to build up the physique, and thus to keep the
brain in condition for vigorous effort.

THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF W. D. GUNNING.

By W. II. LAREABEE.

TTTHILE the applause and lasting fame which those win who
» » make great scientific discoveries, or embody their observa-
tions in monumental books, are worthily bestowed, those also serve
mankind and deserve to be well remembered who labor to make
knowledge accessible to the whole people, and to lift the average
of intelligence by writing books in plain language, by giving
instruction, and by investing their teaching with the charms of
their personal magnetism and warm eloquence. Of this latter
class William D, Gunninci was a conspicuous example. Few in
the United States have labored more earnestly, with stricter
singleness of purpose, or more successfully than he to interest the
general public and make them acquainted with the latest results
of true science,

Mr. Gunning was born in Bloomingburg, Fayette County,
Ohio, July 38, 1828, and died in Greeley, Col., March 8, 1888. His
family was of Scotch- Irish origin, but his direct ancestry is traced
no further back than to Armagh, Ireland, whence his grandfather,
William Gunning, emigrated in 1703 to Oswego County, N. Y., his
father, Andrew Gunning, being then a child. The family removed
to Bloomingburg in 1815. All that is told of the boy's early edu-
cation is that he was taught at the log schoolhouse of his district
by a young woman of the neighborhood. He showed an inquir-
ing disposition and a tendency to bookish ways ; and busied him-
self, it is said, with the stones and shells from the brookside near
the house, and would ask to be told stories of them. When about
fourteen years old he was apprenticed to Robert McLaughlin, his
sister's husband, and was taught a trade. He always had a book
on the bench by his side.

THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF W. D. GUNNING. 527

He developed a taste f(3r discussion very early. He used to
relate that it was a great treat to liim, when a boy, to listen on
Monday mornings to the remarks of the people of the neigh-
borhood concerning the sermons of the Presbyterian minister
of Bloomingburg. This minister was the Rev. William Dickey,
who christened him, and after whom his second name was given

William Dickey Gunning.

him. He had a great respect for him personally and as a
preacher. But it is recorded of young Gunning that he refused
to join the church, because he wished "to do his own thinking."
He had a strong bent for theological studies, and would have
dearly loved the office of pulpit teacher, but would not endure
the restraints put upon thought by the theological schools, and

528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would never give up the privilege of honestly expressing liis
opinion. He declined several invitations to deliver addresses at
Oberlin College, because his views were opposed to the beliefs
held in that institution. But he finally consented to deliver
the alumni address in 1879. He was never controversial, but sim-
ply and earnestly sought the truth. He entered Oberlin College
about 1850, and was graduated from the literary department in
1854. Very soon after entering college he became a student of
mark, and one of the few who, Mr. W. G. M. Stone, of Denver,
a fellow-student in his last year, says, were " head and shoul-
ders above their fellows, and himself second to none." The
College Record of Deceased Alumni says of him that " when in
college he was an enthusiastic cultivator of oratory and of a fine
literary style. He had a marvelous command of words, a most
fertile imagination, and was a skillful artist with crayon and
chalk, so that his lectures were often enchanting as a dream. In
his scientific facts he was accurate, but these were always
subordinated to his philosophizing. He was an ardent devo-
tee of the evolution theory. In religion he was of the liberal
school."

After graduation he went to Natchez, Miss., where he had two
brothers in business ; taught in an academy ; and studied law
a year. His social relations there were all pleasant ; but the in-
dependent Oberlin man, who in his boyhood had systematically
aided fugitive slaves in escaping, could not make himself at home
in the very center of the slaveholding region. Returning to
Ohio, he exerted himself in behalf of the election of Mr. Chase,
the Free-Soil candidate for Governor ; and afterward engaged in
geological work in Illinois, of which he kept no personal record.
He took a course of comparative anatomy in New York, some
time previous to 1862, but in what school or college is unknown,
though he often bore testimony to the value of the instruction he
received there.

Prof. Gunning's continuous career as a scientific author and
lecturer began in 1862, and his earliest known publication was a
paper on the Age of the Human Race, based on the discovery of
relics of man in the caves of France, which was published in the
Nevada (California) Journal. In the same year he was married
and removed to Massachusetts ; and about this time he began
lecturing in and around Boston. He spent the summers, between
the lecture seasons of several years, in physical and biological
studies at Falmouth, Gay Head, Nantucket, Portland Harbor, and
Eastport, a part of the time under the direction of Agassiz. Ge-
ology was the principal subject of his lectures, but as they went
on they "expanded till they covered a variety of subjects relating
to life, evolution, American antiquities, and social theories. His

THE SCIENTIFIC WORK OF W. D. GUNNING. 529

prime object in all Ms lectures was to elevate and enlarge the
mental vision. He sought to present the truth as his studies had
shown it to him in a manner to awaken the interest of his audience
and make them informed upon the subject. He sunk himself in
his theme, kept the question of money profit farthest from his
thoughts, and was never known to relinquish a course because it
did not pay. It would be impracticable to enumerate here the
several subjects of these lectures or speak of the places in the
East and West where they were delivered. The whole country
knew him through them. They were given first chiefly in the East-
ern States, then Chicago and the Northwest became the principal
field, and in the later years of the author's life the Pacific and
Southern States. They were delivered in public halls, before
lyceums, in colleges, in the field, in churches, before Young Men's
Christian Associations, and were nearly everywhere listened to
with absorbed attention, and well received even by those whose
views were very different from his, and were commended by the
public, by scholars, and by men of science. Sometimes they met
with opposition and hostile criticism, as at Brooklyn, N. Y., and
at Keene, N. H., where the Young Men's Christian Association
took pains to resolve that it would not be held responsible for his
views. Darwinism had not yet ceased to be a novelty and a shock
to theologians, and there were not wanting men who were ready to
use any pretext for attacking him on this ground. He was never
at a loss for a sufficient answer to these attacks, and simply relied
on facts for the vindication of his position. The accounts given
by the hearers of his lectures all speak of wonderful power in
them — descriptive and persuasive.

He soon came into demand as a contributor to periodicals, and
through the columns of such journals as The Congregationalist,
Christian Union, Theodore Tilton's Golden Age, Lippincott's
Magazine, etc., his articles reached tens of thousands of readers.
While addressing common intelligence he would never trifle with
his subject or " make a toy of science," and declined offers for
papers on the " science-made-easy " plan. His x^urpose and the
thought that animated him were well expressed in the preface
to his Life History of our Planet — published in Chicago in 1876,
Avith illustrations by Mrs. Mary Gunning, in the observation that
teaching the facts of a science is not teaching the science ; that
" facts do not enlarge the mind unless they are fertilized by prin-
ciples," and that he sought to conduct his reader " through method
to results."

Visiting Europe in 1866, after the death of the first Mrs. Gun-
ning, he made a pedestrian tour through Yorkshire; was a guest
on geological excursions of Sir Thomas Crosley in Halifax ; was
entertained by Prof. Robert Harley; lectured at Huddersfield

VOL. L. — 39

530 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and Brigliouse, in England ; then passing to the Continent, studied
the Alps and their glaciers.

Being invited by Prof. E. L. Youmans to contribute to the
first volume of the Popular Science Monthly, he wrote for
it, after a special study on the spot, the article on The Past
and Future of Niagara. This was followed by two other
papers — Have Plants a Pedigree ? and Progression and Retro-
gression.

As side incidents of Prof. Gunning's career, we may mention
an experiment at orange cultivation in Florida, which, proving
unprofitable, lasted but a short time ; and services he rendered as
a mining expert in the Western Territories.

As his religious views developed they became more and more
radical. The independence of thought which he showed in youth
when the subject of joining the church was mentioned was never
relaxed ; neither did the fervor of his religious feeling diminish.
He appears through his whole career as a devout believer in the
Creator and the spiritual life. He was much interested in the phe-
nomena of spiritualism and impressed by them, wrote much upon
the subject, and corresponded sympathetically with spiritualists.
He was a member of the Free Religious Association and a valued
contributor to The Index when Mr. Abbott and Mr. Underwood
were its editors, and afterward to The Open Court, and a paper
written by him in 1889 is believed to embody the earliest scientific
treatment of the phenomena of that category. In 1887 he deliv-
ered a course of Sunday lectures to the Unitarian Society of
Keokuk, Iowa. The military body of the city made him their
chaplain. An Ethical Society was organized there, of which he
served as pastor till January, 1888, when he removed to Greeley,
Colorado, hoping to find relief there from frequently recurring
attacks of bronchitis. He made an engagement with a Unitarian
Society in Greeley, but two addresses — A Study of the Book of
Job, and The Whirling Flag, Dante's Inferno — were all he was
able to make in fulfillment of it. His health had long been deli-
cate. A friend had warned him, in connection with his lectures
in Cincinnati, in the winter of 188G, that he was " mad " to continue
his labors in the existing condition of his health and in such
weather. Yet he stopped, on his way from Keokuk to Greeley —
only two months before he succumbed to his disease — to deliver a
course of lectures in Quincy, 111., which proved as acceptable as
any of the long series. Of Prof. Gunning's amiable personal
qualities all his friends speak in terms of warm enthusiasm. He
was conscious, self-reliant, and tranquil to the last.

THE ANIMATE WORLD A UNITY. 531

THE ANIMATE WORLD A UNITY.

By M. ALBEET GAUDEY. -

THE aspect of paleontology has greatly changed since the time
of Cuvier, when species were supposed to be fixed, and the
curious monsters whose remains were unearthed from time to time
were believed to be unchangeable, isolated entities. Now it is
shown that fossil species are not thus independent, but are simply
phases of development of types which are carrying on their evo-
lution through the immensity of the ages. A plan has ruled in
the vast and magnificent history of this evolution, and I purpose
to tell what I believe I have discovered of it. I can not conceal
that in the present state of science such an essay will be very im-
perfect. When I Avas traveling in the East I found the horizons
in the morning veiled by the bluish mist which the poets are
so fond of, and tried to discover the silhouettes of the beautiful
marble mountains through them. So, in the morning of our
paleontological science, we look upon the distances of life vaguely
sketched, and try to distinguish a few lines of the plan that rules
it. We discern but little, but that little is enough to charm us,
as a glimpse of sunshine charms in a dark landscape.

It seems to me, further, that besides its philosophical interest,
the inquiry into the plan of creation is of importance in practical
geology. Up to this time the determination of the age of the
earth has been empirical. It will become rational as soon as we
are in possession of the plan of creation. Geologists will recog-
nize that one of the best means of fixing the age of a formation
is to know the stage of development of the fossils it contains.

The world of life is a grand unity, of which we can follow the
development as we do that of an individual. When we follow
the course of the immensity of geological times, we meet succes-
sive changes, and our mind goes on from surprise to surprise.
Each epoch has its own physiognomy, and each phase of each
epoch offers some variation ; the days of the world follow one
another and are not alike. Yet manifest as are the differences,
they are not radical. Paleontology has not discovered any new
branching or any new class or subclass.

From the primary ages, animated nature has had general traits
of resemblance with existing nature. Sponges and polyps were
already forming colonies, echinoderms were divided into five parts,
insects were provided with three pairs of legs, arachnids had four,
and myriapods had a multitude. M. Bernard Renault found in a
coal bed an ostracode, the body of which is entirely preserved.
A study of it made by M. Charles Brongniart showed the same
details of organization as in our days. Numerous brachiopods

532 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

belonged to genera wliicli exist in our seas — such as Lingula,
Rhynclionella, and Terebratula. Besides fishes of special types,
"we find some with tendencies toward those of to-day. Prof. Vail-
lant, examining a Permian genus which I had described under
the name of MegopleuTon, thought it was so nearly like some liv-
ing ceratodes of Australia that he proposed to describe it under
the same generic name. The Primary reptiles, although very
different from those of our epoch, have many characters of re-
semblance to them. For example, having occasion to study in
detail the reptiles of the Permian, I was very much struck by
seeing that their heads had the same bones, both above and
below, as in the existing animals. MM. Marcellin, Boule, and
Glangeaud, comparing the paws of a reptile of the same forma-
tion with those of a common varanus, remarked their extreme
similitude.

When we come to the Secondary formations, we find many
invertebrate animals related to living genera. Most of the ver-
tebrate animals are easily distinguished from present genera,
though usually not because they present any unknown special
features, but because they combine characteristics that are now
distributed among distinct classes. M. Seeley has recently de-
scribed Triassic quadrupeds from Africa which diminish the dis-
tance between the reptiles and the mammals ; the icthyosaurus,
which is cited as one of the most extraordinary fossils, recalls the
fish in its vertebrae, the massive mammals in its fore flippers, and
the reptiles in its other characteristics. Although the pterodac-
tyl certainly belongs to the class of reptiles, its manner of flying
is like that of flying mammals. The iguanodon is a reptile with
its hinder limbs forerunners of those of birds. On the other
hand, the archseopteryx is a bird with reptilian recollections.
The Secondary fossils, which have surprised paleontologists so
much by their singular features, in reality establish connections
among animated beings instead of disclosing gaps.

In the Tertiary epoch the existing genera — rhinoceros, tapir,
boar, gazelle, elephant, hyena, cat, bear, etc. — appear each in its
turn. We find species, as well as genera, so near living forms
that it is difficult not to suppose their near relationship.

Finally, the species of Quaternary times are for the most part
identical with those of to-day, or so little different that they may
be considered simply as races. It is impossible to mark a bound-
ary between beings that existed before us and those that live
with us.

It must therefore be recognized that the fossil world is not
distinct from the existing world; there is only a single world,
which has continued from the most ancient ages till our days. It
can be studied as if it were an individual ; in the same way as we

THE ANIMATE WORLD A UNITY. 533

follow the development of an individual through its different
ages, we follow the development of the animate world through
the phases of its existence that we call the geological ages.

When an old man feels the weight of years, he realizes indeed
that his youth has departed from him ; but at what moment did
he pass from infancy to youth, and then to maturity and old age ?
He does not know ; the phases of his life have unfolded them-
selves gradually. Things have gone in the same way for all
beings. The world has not to-day the physiognomy it once had,
but no one can say in what instant it passed from its Primary
condition to its Secondary, and from that to its Tertiary, and then
to its Quaternary and present. The change of beings has been
slow and gradual.

The development of man — that is, of the individual himself —
in which the marvels of the animate world are summarized, pre-
sents the following phases : 1. Multiplication of constituent parts
— that is, numerous points of ossification appear which will be-
come separate bones. 2. Differentiation of parts. As the parts
multiply, they differentiate themselves ; thus points of ossifica-
tion similar in the beginning take on differences as they proceed ;
one becomes the humerus, another the radius, another the orbital
bone, etc. 3. Growth of parts. At the same time that they mul-
tiply and differentiate themselves they are growing. 4. Progress
of activity. Besides material progress, there is progress of a high-
er order — from the passive existence within his mother's womb
till the individual reaches active life and manifests an energy of
his own. 5. Progress of sensibility. Sensibility increases at the
same time with activity, and sometimes determines it. 6. Prog-
ress of intelligence. Finally, intelligence appears. Last come, it
also goes away last with sensibility, and will console the old man
in the enfeeblement of his other faculties.

The history of the animate world, considered in the aggregate
of geological times, is very similar to the history of a man in
his brief life. We may study in succession the multiplication of
beings on the surface of the globe ; their differentiation ; their
growth ; the progress of activity; the progress of sensibility ; and
the progress of intelligence. — Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes.

The report of the British Association's committee on seismological ob-
servations recommends that, since it has been proved that any important
earthquake is felt all over the globe, ari'angements should be inade for the
record and study of these movements. Such records might prove as impor-
tant as those of, for instance, terrestrial magnetism ; and just as we have
magnetic observatories in all parts of the world, so should there be seismo-
logical observatories.

534 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

CONDEMNATION OF CRIMINALS NOT PUNISHMENT.*

By EDWARD F. BRUSH, M. D.

WHEN studying a subject closely, we often discover that a
simple word influences for right or wrong the whole matter,
just as change of a note makes a different tune, or alters entirely
the tone of the song. As Roget says : "A misapplied or misappre-
hended term is sufficient to give rise to fierce and interminable
disputes ; a misnomer has turned the tide of popular opinion ; a
verbal sophism has decided a party question ; an artful watch-
word thrown among combustible material has kindled a flame of
deadly warfare and changed the destiny of an empire." The word
"punishment,'' as commonly used and understood judicially,
should be eliminated from the tribunals that have to deal with
that part of society that is known as the criminal class. Some
one has said that jurists recognize only two terms in criminal law,
"offense" and " punishment." The simplest and earliest defini-
tion of punishment is "to afflict with pain," and whenever the
word is used it carries with it the idea or notion of consequent
suffering. "There is undoubtedly a moral element in words;
words are not neutral in the great conflict between good and
evil, nor are there wanting, I suppose, in any language words
that are the mournful record of the strange wickednesses which
the genius of man, so fertile in evil, has invented." To the stu-
dent of history does not the word punishment bring before the
mind the cruel atrocities and horrible inflictions of the middle
ages, with their gibbets, chains, racks, hot pincers, thumbscrews,
and other hellish devices ? It is a strange perversity of the hu-
man mind that many, very many words have deteriorated in their
meaning ; the word retaliation nowadays is never used to ex-
press a return of benefits, but always the paying of wrongs by
wrongs ; animosity, which was originally a very harmless word,
is now used only to denote enmity and hate. I can recall no
word that has taken the opposite course in our language, and the
word punishment has now come by downward evolution from
its original use to denote a spirit of vengeance, with its hatred,
malice, and retribution, in the degraded sense of that word.
Trench truthfully says : "There are often in words, contemplated
singly, stores of passion as well as of historic truth ; they are liv-
ing powers, and quite as often and effectually embody facts of
history or conviction of the moral common sense as of the imagi-
nation or passion of man ; even as, so far as that moral sense may

* Presidential address delivered before the Society of Medical Jurisprudence at its
annual meeting, held January 13, 1896.

CONDEMNATION OF CBIMINALS. 535

be perverted, they will bear witness and keep a record of that
perversion." The Pilgrims fled from England to escape the pun-
ishment of persecution, and soon they were themselves persecut-
ing with dire punishment those whom they called witches, and
also those who disagreed with them. Is it any wonder, therefore,
that the Constitution of the United States should be marred by
conferring the right to punish ? When the truth of the axiom
laid down by M. Ferri, in 1889, that " all men are responsible be-
fore society, but society has no right to punish, it has only the
right to protect itself," is recognized as it surely will be, the in-
strument on which our liberties are built will not confer this
pain- inflicting power, and the distinction between judgment and
punishment will be clearly understood. That wise, wrinkled, and
homely face of our martyred President masked a soul whose ap-
preciation of the unchristian and debasing efi:ect of public anger
and vengeance was expressed when he uttered the immortal words,
"Malice toward none, charity for all." To realize how the old
ideas of punishment with its remorseless vindictiveness still pos-
sess the people, we have only to consider poor, trembling, unfortu-
nate, irresponsible Guiteau, shambling his weary way from the
court to the jail, when a human fiend, saturated with the bar-
barous notions of penalty and the spirit of vengeance inherited
from past ages, fired at the helpless, unconvicted prisoner, and the
awful echo of public exultation which followed his outrageous
attempt. But this whole painful episode simply indicated a bitter
spirit that will continue to dominate the people as long as the no-
tion prevails that our courts of justice are to mete out retribution.
Abolish the notion that society has the right to inflict pain, then
the voice of the people calling for execution will be hushed.
Eliminate from our courts the spirit of vengeance, and from the
dire and sad necessity of taking human life remove the idea of
punishment, implore God's pity alike on the executor and the
executed, and human society will be kinder, better, and safer.
When the idea of punishment is abolished, then the emotional
attitude toward the criminal will disappear. None of the other
dreadful, morbid conditions exhibited in the human being appear
to elicit the kind of feeling we see very often demonstrated toward
the very lowest murderer. When our courts of justice recognize
that their functions are not to avenge, but to cure society of its
diseased members, and that the treatment must be scientific, effec-
tual, and humane, then the sentiments exhibited toward the crim-
inal will be the same that we display toward the person afflicted
with smallpox, typhoid fever, and the like. As organized society
we have the right to protect ourselves both against the unfortu-
nate criminal and the unfortunate person afflicted with a conta-
gious disease, but this right should not be deemed the right to

536 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

punish ; no matter how grievous the methods we may adopt to
prevent crime or other evils, we ought not to regard them in that
light. It is very difficult to eliminate from the injured individual
a feeling of anger and a desire for revenge, but our organized
courts of j\istice should not by any word even appear to entertain
or to strengthen such motives.

In the amputation of any portion of the body on account of
gangrene or other morbid condition, there is no idea of punish-
ment. The surgeons who are assembled in consultation to decide
upon the treatment of the diseased member do not consider
whether the morbid state is the result of transgression, but the
simple question for them to decide is, " Will the other parts of
the body be better if the diseased portion is removed ?" All men
of a scientific turn of mind who have made a study of criminal
anthropology are fast approaching the physician's position re-
garding such questions. Every criminal is more or less a dis-
eased portion of the body politic : some can be saved, some must
be removed, and some must be destroyed, but the notion of punish-
ment should not complicate the judgment in deciding what dis-
position is to be made in either case. The insane were formerly
regarded with feelings of hatred and vindictiveness, but to-day
this is only a shameful recollection. With the advance in the
study of criminology and the more merciful era of humanitarian-
ism that must follow, the like sentiments toward the criminal will
be eliminated from our courts of justice. Prof. Austin Flint, the
distinguished President of the New York State Medical Associa-
tion, in his annual address to the association said, "Scientific
progress will lead us finally to abandon the ancient idea of pun-
ishment of crime and substitute for it treatment and correction."
Quetelet writes, " Every society has the criminals that it deserves."

There are very few persons who are not possessed by an intense
desire to kill when they are suddenly confronted by a snake. Most
of us have a hereditary prejudice against snakes, and can hardly
talk about them without a shudder. Somewhat the same spirit
possesses us when we hear of a murder : we are at once seized with
a vengeful desire to hear of the murderer's capture and execution ;
but, as when, like reasonable human beings, we study the snake
family, we find that there are differences among them, and some
have qualities in consideration of which they might be spared, so
with murderers — they are not all the same. The Hannigan trial
is fresh in our memories; the motive that caused this man to
commit a crime was the result of the very conditions which con-
stitute our normal society ; it was the deep sense of injured chas-
tity, violated vows, a ruined life, broken home ties ; this was
made plain ; the public demanded his release. Under the intense
feeling engendered in society as to whether this man was to be

CONDEMNATION OF CRIMINALS. 537

punished or not punished, the fact was lost to sight that he had
disobeyed our social rules in not waiting for the courts to deal
with the criminal whose life he took.

There are, roughly speaking, three elements in human society.
The largest is always the standard, and is modified in character
according to the conditions of the times. Of the two other ele-
ments that do not harmonize with this, the first is what is known
as the criminal class. This is sometimes made up of a compara-
tively large number of individuals, and is in reality composed of
members of the human race who are lagging behind in the ad-
vanced march of civilization. The other conflicting element is
comparatively meager in numbers, and is characterized by its
members being always in advance of the main body. They are
variously called reformers, cranks, or heretics. Many of these
two less numerous groups are often brought up to answer for
their acts, and the ultimate aim of all judicial processes concern-
ing them should be to make them members of the larger body.
Where this is unattainable, the incorrigible should be either
destroyed or removed permanently from the society with which
they are in conflict. The whole history of criminology up to date
indicates positively that punishment does not reclaim, and we
must banish from criminal law all idea of vengeance as involved
in the term. When we look at it as an isolated fact, the position
of a judge trying to impose the exact punishment to fit the crime
and weighing what he is pleased to call mitigating circumstances,
in order to lessen the measure of wrath prescribed for some unfor-
tunates who often as much need treatment as some of our insane,
we must at once be conscious that there is something wrong in
our judicial system. This idea has been deemed sufiiciently ludi-
crous to form one of the telling points in a comic opera.

One of the principal elements impelling the criminal to crime
is his desire to punish his enemy, for it can not be denied that
a large number of murders are committed from this motive.
Should the law that we term majestic proceed with the same
motive toward the criminal ? It will always appear to be so
while we continue to speak of it in the language now used. If the
spirit of anger and revenge could be entirely eliminated from the
death penalty, and every idea of punishment meted out to an
individual was removed from the judgment, only the absolute
safety of society being made the reason for taking the human life
judicially, executions would become exceedingly rare. It must be
plain that the question for us to decide to-day is. Are we, who
belong to the predominating class of society, bettered by our acts
toward those who are not in harmony with the methods and
motives that have made society what it is, and keep it in the
position it now occupies; or are we debasing ourselves by our

538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

method of dealing out punishment, as such, and thus keeping
alive the spirit of vengeance ?

What a ghastly, ludicrous state of affairs it must be, to see
the murderer condemned to die, and awaiting in his cell the
arrival of the fatal day, assured by his spiritual advisers that he
has been pardoned by his Maker, and that the gentle Saviour is
"waiting to receive him in eternity, and still not have a ray of
hope that the measure of the penalty, judicially pronounced, will
be diminished ! It would seem reasonable that a man who has
been pardoned by his Creator should be pardoned by his fellows,
and he surely should be if punishment was the only design. If,
however, competent men have decided that his life is a menace to
human society, then the questions of punishment and forgiveness
are not to be considered. Even the great physician, Galen, seven-
teen hundred years ago wrote, "The evildoer is one whom we
must destroy, not punish," repeating very nearly the words of
Aristotle that when a criminal is a criminal by nature he ought
to be destroyed, not in revenge, but for the same reason that
scorpions and vipers are destroyed. Seneca advocated the same
axiom. Let us, therefore, eliminate from our laws, which are or
ought to be of benefit to humanity, all idea or notion of punish-
ment ; for, while our codes continue to present it, the whole aim
and object of our common law, as it relates to the criminal, can
not but point to the single fact of an effort to inflict pain on a
human being. We try a man in order to ascertain if he must be
punished, and the other higher, broader, and more noble function
of the court, namely, to protect the majority of law-abiding citi-
zens, is lost sight of by the larger proportion of the human race.
The simple term justice or condemnation will convey the idea
that the good of society is the consideration of the court, while
the term punishment conveys the idea that the individual alone
is the factor, and we can not blame the criminal, as long as it
remains on our statute-books, for imagining that the whole force
of our courts is to cause him bodily pain.

While studying the songs of birds, Mr. Charles A. Witchell soon found
that young birds acquire first the call cries and alarm notes of their respect-
ive species ; that in each species these notes are much less liable to vary
than are the sougs; and that in different species iihysically allied they are
more alike than are the songs of those species. Another interesting feature
was the prominent occuri'ence of a particular cry in the species; its repe-
tition in a less marked form in one or two allied birds, in which another
cry might be the most pronounced ; and the utterance of this second cry by
some other allied birds, which had not the first-mentioned note. These
facts are commended by the author to naturalists as bearing on the ques-
tion of a common ancestry of species.

PLURAL STATES OF BEING. 539

PLURAL STATES OF BEING.*

By ALFKED BINET.

THE variations of personality found in diseased subjects take
on a great number of forms, of which, the phenomenon re-
sembling the presence of two or more personalities in the same
individual — or " multiple personality " — is the subject of our
present special study. It is common in hysteria, and the hys-
terical cases are those which have been most adequately in-
vestigated. These cases are often described as cases of som-
nambulism. In popular usage somnambulism is the state of
those who rise in the night and perform automatic and even
intelligent acts without waking. They dress themselves, perhaps,
resume their day's work, solve a problem to which they had
vainly sought the solution before, then return to bed and to sleep
again; the next morning they have no memory of having been
up in the night. Indeed, they are often much surprised to see a
piece of work now finished which had been unfinished the even-
ing before. Or they walk on the roof or perform some other
equally startling feat. Authors are not as yet entirely agreed
upon the nature of this sleep-walking, but the general tendency of
the day is to admit that it covers a mass of irregular phenomena
which resemble one another in appearance only, being really
quite distinct in nature. In these phenomena we may see an
example of double personality. These noctambulists are two per-
sons. The person who rises in the night is entirely distinct from
the one who is awake during the day, since the latter has no
knowledge or memory of anything that has happened during the
night. But it is not possible to make an adequate analysis of
this state ; the elements are too obscure.

Another form of natural somnambulism is " daytime " som-
nambulism, or vigilambulism, and concerns hysterical patients
who possess, besides their normal and regular life, another psy-
chological existence or second state, so to speak, of which they
retain no memory in their normal condition. The peculiar char-
acteristic of this second state is that it constitutes a complete
psychological existence ; the subject lives the everyday life, his
mind is alive to all ideas and perceptions, and he is not delirious.
Uninformed persons would never know that the subject is in a
state of somnambulism.

The best examples that can be cited of the somnambulism that

* From Alterations of Personality. By Alfred Binet. Translated by Helen Green Bald-
win, witli Notes and a Preface by J. Mark Baldwin. (International Scientific Series.) In
press of D, Appleton & Co.

540 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we have just defined are found in observations, now old, made by
Azam, Dufay, and other physicians. These observations are to-
day well known and trite. They have been published and ana-
lyzed in a number of medical journals, and even in some literary
ones.

The state of somnambulism is artificially induced in hypno-
tism, which may be brought about in a large variety of ways, in
all of which there are reasons for supposing the psychological
causes play the larger part. When one now comes to define som-
nambulism from the psychological point of view he sees at once
that it constitutes a new mode of mental existence. The old mes-
merists were quite right when they described it as a second per-
sonality.

Two fundamental elements constitute personality — memory
and character. In the latter respect, as to character, induced
somnambulism is not perhaps always clearly distinguishable
from the waking state. It frequently happens that the somnam-
bulist does not relinquish the character that he had before he
was put to sleep. The reasons are manifold. This does not, how-
ever, hold for the second element of personality — memory. It has
long been said that memory supplies the chief sign by which the
new state may be distinguished from the normal state. The som-
nambulist shows, in fact, a curious modification in the range of
his memory; the same regular phenomena of amnesia may be
produced in him as occur in the spontaneous variations of per-
sonality.

Two propositions sum up the principal modifications of
memory which accompany induced hypnotic somnambulism ;
first, the subject recalls during his waking state none of the
events which happened during somnambulism ; and second, on
the other hand, when put in the somnambulistic state he may
remember not only the previous somnambulistic states, but also
events belonging to his waking state. It follows that memory
attains its maximum extent in somnambulism, since it then
embraces two psychological existences at once, as the normal
memory never does. It may even be remarked that the somnam-
bulist, when he endeavors to recollect certain particulars, has
better memory than the same person awake. Gurney has shown,
moreover, from studies of hysterical patients, that somnambu-
listic states may persist in the waking life; that the somnambu-
listic ego, the second condition, is not always completely effaced
when the waking state returns, but survives, coexists with normal
thought, and gives rise to complex phenomena of division of con-
sciousness.

A second form of the phenomenon of double personality is the
coexistence of the two egos, which is presented in two cases. The

PLURAL STATJbJS OF BEING. 541

first is liysterical insensibility. If a part of a person's body is in-
sensible, lie is not aware of what happens to it ; and, on the other
hand, the nervous centers in relation with this insensible region
may continue to act, as is the case in hysteria. The result is that
certain actions, more often simple, but sometimes very compli-
cated, can be performed subconsciously by a hysterical patient ;
further, these actions may have a psychical nature, and show
intellectual processes distinct from those of the subject, thus
constituting a second ego, which coexists with the first.

A second condition that may occasion the division of con-
sciousness is the concentration of attention on a single thing. The
result of this state of concentration is that the mind is absorbed
to the exclusion of other things, and to such a degree insensible
that the way is opened for automatic actions ; and these actions,
becoming more complicated, as in the preceding case, may assume
a psychical nature and establish intelligences of a parasitic kind,
existing side by side with the normal personality, which is not
aware of them.

The real nature of hysterical anaesthesia has long been misap-
prehended, and it has been compared to common ansBsthesia from
organic causes, as, for example, from the interruption of the
afferent nerve tracts. This way of considering it should be com-
pletely abandoned, for we now know that hysterical anaesthesia
is not a real local insensibility, but an insensibility due to uncon-
sciousness, to mental disintegration ; in short, it is psychical in-
sensibility, arising simply because the personality of the patient
is impaired, or even entirely divided.

The existence of unconscious phenomena in the case of hys-
terical patients need not astonish us, for each one of us may, if
we watch ourselves with sufficient care, detect in ourselves a
series of automatic actions, performed involuntarily and uncon-
sciously. To walk, to sit down, to turn the page of a book — these
are actions which we perform without thinking of them. But it
is difficult to study unconscious activity in a normal man, for this
activity shows itself chiefly in routine, in formed habits, kept go-
ing by repetition : in general, it does little new. Sometimes it
seems to judge and reason, but these are old judgments and
reasons which it repeats. At all events, it seldom acquires any
considerable development, and almost never, one might say,
amounts to the dignity of an independent personality. The con-
ditions of study are much more favorable when we apply our-
selves to hysterical subjects.

Among these unconscious phenomena are those known as
movements of repetition, and these are often provoked by sugges-
tion— as when an order or suggestion is given to a person awake
or in a somnambulistic state to imitate all movements that are

542 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

performed before him, or to continue indefinitely tlie regular
movement that is imparted to a part of his body. It is supposed,
for the explanation of this phenomenon, that the continuation of
a movement may occur, either from obedience or merely because
an image has been conjured up in the mind of the patient, this
image being the source of the movements. An aneesthetic hand is
made to write a letter; the movement of this hand stimulates
somewhere in the mind of the unconscious subject the motor im-
ages ; these images are not inhibited by anything ; they spend
themselves in action, and the movement is repeated. This in-
volves no obedience ; it is a much more simple and elementary
psychological phenomenon. These explanations may possibly
both hold good, each for different persons and for different con-
ditions of experiments.

The same effects as in anaesthesia may be produced in the
state of distraction. Attention — an effort of the mind and of the
entire organism which increases the intensity of certain states of
consciousness — if brought to bear on a perception, makes it more
swift, more exact, more detailed. This adaptation of all the avail-
able force of the organism converging in a single event, which
may be a sensation, an image, a sentiment, etc., produces a tem-
porary state of monoideism. It is accompanied by distraction.
One can not pay attention to certain things without being dis-
tracted from others. The likeness of distraction and anaesthesia
has been mentioned. A hysterical patient whose arm is insen-
sible finds himself in very nearly the same state of mind as if
he never thought of his arm, or if he were indifferent to it, or as
if he had concentrated the power of his attention on other things.
So we may try experiment with it : we may concentrate this hys-
terical patient's attention on a certain point and examine the
special effects of the division of consciousness produced by dis-
traction. The ease with which the attention of these patients can
be distracted is almost incredible. Profiting by the state pro-
duced, one has only to approach from behind and pronounce some
words in a low voice to place himself in relation with the uncon-
scious person. The sentence is not heard by the principal per-
sonality, whose mind is elsewhere, but the unconscious person
hears it and acts upon it. The identity of the secondary ego con-
stituted during anaesthesia or distraction with the somnambulistic
ego has been established in experiments by M. Paul Janet.

While the two consciousnesses are separate from a certain
point of view, they may be reunited from another point of view
and may retain both relations. The phenomena are very compli-
cated and very interesting for psychology. The relations of two
consciousnesses may take two distinct forms — those of antagonism
and those of united action. When they are in collaboration we

PLURAL STATES OF BEING. 543

have the two fundamental facts of the representation of the move-
ment before it is performed and the perception of the movement
as it is performed, or the model and the copy states of conscious-
ness. These are illustrated in a remarkable way in automatic
handwriting or the performance of graphic movements which are
unknown to the principal consciousness and in a great variety of
other movements which are brought about in the secondary con-
sciousness by sensations, ideas, and states of all kinds which may
occur in the principal consciousness. A curious manifestation of
this reunion of consciousnesses is that of suggestions from uncon-
scious indications, as when the infliction of a certain number of
pricks on an unconscious member gives rise to a suggestion of the
number, or when the pressure of a coin or other design suggests
a rude reproduction of the design more exact in detail than is
made when the organism is in the normal condition. The connec-
tions of these consciousnesses are in fact capable of producing
hallucinations of all the senses, fixed ideas, and emotional effects.

Among experiments cited in which the person is induced to
perform unconscious movements is that of the exploring pendulum
described by Chevreul, the oscillations of which depend on psy-
chological movements in the mind of the performer of the experi-
ment, it registering the unconscious movements of the hand and
making them perceptible by increasing them. Automatic hand-
writing is a psychological action of a similar nature, but a little
more delicate and more complex.

What are called unconscious movements of healthy subjects
and the various reactions of the secondary personalities of hys-
terical patients are really identical, but differ in extent, in exter-
nal circumstance, or in degree of development ; and healthy
subjects may present special conditions of mind that tend to
bring on mental disintegration, as when attention is divided
among a great many subjects or when it is intensely concentrated
on one thing and distracted as to all others ; but the unconscious-
ness thus produced does not reach the degree of development at-
tained in hysterical persons and is not as brilliant. It will not
spontaneously write letters and confessions, but is still something
positively existing.

Recent researches have thrown new light upon phenomena of
spiritism, or so-called " spiritualism," by showing that these phe-
nomena are due largely to mental disaggregation or division.
There is no essential difference between the experiments described
upon hysterical patients and the more spontaneous experiments
that the spiritists practice upon themselves. The principal dif-
ferences lie in the minor, or, one might almost say, anecdotal con-
ditions— i. e., in the medium, the terms employed, or the imagined
explanations.

544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

SKETCH OF MARIA MITCHELL.

THE list of the great inscribed ou the Boston Public Library-
bears the name of one American woman — Maria Mitchell.
While other names of women equally worthy to be recorded there
may easily occur to all of us, the validity of Miss Mitchell's title
to be thus remembered will not be doubted.

Maria Mitchell was born on the island of Nantucket, Au-
gust 1, 1818, and died in Lynn, Mass., June 28, 1889. Her-parents
belonged to the Society of Friends, of the colony who settled in
Nantucket when that island belonged to New York ; the father a
school teacher and afterward cashier of a bank, indulgent to his
children, fond of animals and kind to them, and cultivating a
well-developed taste for experimental astronomy. He was also
fond of beauty and of enjoyable things, and, as the rules of the so-
ciety would not allow him to wear bright colors, he indulged his
taste for them by buying red-covered copies of books, painting
the framework of his telescope bright red, spreading a gay carpet
on the floor, papering his sitting room with pink rose designs, and
displaying the polarization of light. The mother was a woman
of strong character, clear- headed and demonstrative. Books were
abundant, in the house and at the library. Mr. Mitchell from his
early youth was an enthusiastic student of astronomy. The even-
ings when pleasant, Mrs. Phoebe M. Kendall says in her biogra-
phy, " were spent in observing the heavens, and to the children,
accustomed to seeing such observations going on, the important
study in the world seemed to be astronomy. One by one, as they
became old enough, they were drafted into the service of count-
ing seconds by the chronometer during the observations. Some
of them took an interest in the thing itself, and others considered
it rather stupid work ; but they all took in so much of this atmos-
phere that, if any one had asked a little child of this family,
* Who was the greatest man that ever lived ? ' the answer would
have come promptly, ' Herschel.' " Maria very early learned to
use the sextant. On the occasion of the annular eclipse of the
sun of 1831 — central at Nantucket — when she was twelve years
old, she held the chronometer, counting the seconds, while her
father observed the eclipse. This event was called up in her
diary, March 16, 1885, when she wrote, mentioning it, that now,
" fifty-four years later, I counted seconds for a class of students at
Vassar ; it was the same eclipse, but the sun was only about half
covered. Both days were perfectly clear and cold." At sixteen
she became an assistant teacher in the school of Mr. Cyrus
Peirce, where she had been a pupil ; afterward opened a private
school ; and then became, for twenty years, librarian of the Nan-

SKETCH OF MARIA MITCHELL. 545

tucket Atbeneeum. In the library she found Dr. Bowditcb's
translation of La Place's Mecaniqiie celeste and Gauss's Theoria
Motus, in Latin, and read them. She also read voraciously on
all subjects ; and, as librarian, saw that the boys and girls got
good books, while she skillfully kept the unwholesome ones out
of their sight. While enjoying in her home all advantages for the
cultivation of her scientific tastes. Miss Mitchell took her part in
all the household work, knew how everything was to be done, and
did what she did thoroughly. On one occasion, when the " help"
had gone, she took charge, and made a record of how she spent
the day. It was late in October. She arose at six, having been
half asleep only for some hours, fearing she might not be up in
time to get breakfast. " It was but half light, and I made a hasty
toilet. I made a fire very quickly, prepared the coffee, baked the
Graham bread, toasted white bread, trimmed the solar lamp, and
made another fire in the dining room before seven o'clock. ... I
really found an hour too long for all this, and when I rang the
bell at seven for breakfast, I had been waiting fifteen minutes for
the clock to strike. I went to the Athenaeum at 9.30, and, hav-
ing decided that I would take the Newark and Cambridge places
of the comet and work them up, did so, getting to the three equa-
tions before I went home to dinner at 12.30. I omitted the correc-
tions for parallax and aberration, not intending to get more than
a rough approximation. I find to my sorrow that they do not
agree with those from my own observations. I shall look them
over again next week. At noon I ran around and did several
errands, dined, and was back again at my post by 1.30. Then I
looked over my morning's work — I can find no mistake. I have
worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know
very little now in the matter. I saw, in looking over Cooper, ele-
ments of a comet of -1825 which resemble what I get out for this
from my own observations, but I can not rely upon my own. I
saw also to-day in Monthly Notices a plan for measuring the light
of stars by degrees of illumination — an idea which occurred to me
long ago, but which I have not practiced." The next day she got
breakfast again, and varied her astronomical computation with
tatting, reading in Humboldt's Cosmos for rest when she was
tired ; and in the evening, it being stormy and no observing,
made a loaf of bread, worked at tatting and gave a lesson in it,
and completed sixteen hours of steady work.

The discovery of a comet by Miss Mitchell, which first made
her known to the world as an astronomer, is thus described in
Mrs. Kendall's Life, Letters, and Journals : " Miss Mitchell spent
every clear evening on the housetop 'sweeping' the heavens. No
matter how many guests there might be in the parlor. Miss
Mitchell would slip out, don her regimentals, as she called them,

VOL. L. — 4rO

5+6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and, lantern in hand, mount to the roof. On the evening of Octo-
ber 1, 1847, there was a party of invited guests at the Mitchell
home. As usual, Maria slipped out, ran up to the telescope, and
soon returned and told her father that she thought she saw a
comet. Mr. Mitchell hurried upstairs, stationed himself at the
telescope, and, as soon as he looked at the object pointed out by
his daughter, declared it to be a comet. Miss Mitchell, with her
usual caution, advised him to say nothing about it until they had
observed it long enough to be tolerably sure. But Mr. Mitchell
immediately wrote to Prof. Bond, of Cambridge, announcing the
discovery. On account of stormy weather, the mails did not leave
Nantucket until October 3d." The comet was seen by Father de
Vico at Rome, October 3d, and word of it was immediately sent
to Prof. Schumacher at Altoona ; by Mr. W. R. Dawes in Kent,
England, October 7th ; and by Madame Riimker at Hamburg,
October 11th. The priority of Miss Mitchell's discovery was gen-
erally acknowledged. The King of Denmark had offered a gold
medal to the first discoverer of a telescopic comet, but, dying, was
succeeded by a king not so much interested in astronomy. Miss
Mitchell, moreover, failed in securing priority of registry of the
discovery, according to the terms laid down in the king's offer — a
thing that was impossible in those days before the Atlantic tele-
graph. Her claim was taken up and pressed by Edward Everett,
and referred by the king to Prof. Schumacher, who reported in
favor of granting the medal to her. A few months after this, in
1848, Miss Mitchell was unanimously elected an honorary mem-
ber of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, being the
first and only woman ever admitted to that society. She after-
ward became a member of the American Institute and of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. Of the
meeting of this body in Boston in 1855, she wrote : " It is really
amusing to find one's self lionized in a city where one has visited
quietly for years. . . . For a few days science reigns supreme —
we are feted and complimented to the top of our heart, and
although complimenters and complimented must feel that it is
only a sort of theatrical performance for a few days and over,
one does enjoy acting the part of greatness for a while ! " In
1849 Miss Mitchell, on the invitation of the late Admiral Davis,
undertook the computations, for the Nautical Almanac, of the ta-
bles of the planet Venus — a work which she carried on, in addition
to other duties, for nineteen years. In the same jear she was
employed by Prof. Bache, of the United States Coast Survey, in
the work of an astronomical party at Mount Independence, Maine.
In 1854 she records her "sweeping" of the heavens — a kind
of work she really enjoyed, though her back soon became tired
before the cold chilled her ; in March, seeing two nebulae in Leo

SKETCH OF MARIA MITCHELL. 547

witli which she was not familiar and which repaid her for her
time; and on September 18th, observing the two nebulae in Ursa
Major, which she had known " for many a year," but which to
her surprise now appeared to be three. " The bright part of this
object was clearly the old nebula, but what was the appendage ?
Had the nebula suddenly changed ? Was it a comet, or was it
merely a very fine night ? Father decided at once for the comet ;
I hesitated, with my usual cowardice, and forbade his giving it a
notice in the newspaper." Flying clouds prevented more satis-
factory observations that evening and the next two, but "on the
2l8t came a circular, and behold Mr. Van Arsdale had seen it on
the 13th, but had not been sure of it until the 15th on account
of the clouds. I was too well pleased with having really made
the discovery to care because I was not the first. Let the Dutch-
man have the reward of his sturdier frame and steadier nerves! "
She consoled herself, further, by reflecting that the 13th was
cloudy, and that she had evaded the task of making the computa-
tions, which she would have had to do to call the discovery hers.
She seems, however, to have tried her hand at the computations,
and was despondent because she had to renounce her own obser-
vations as too rough for use. " The best that can be said of my
life so far is that it has been industrious, and the best that can be
said of me is that I have not pretended to be what I was not."

The diary for 1857 tells of an extensive tour through the
South, the many striking incidents of which are recorded with
keen humor, and the first journey in Europe, in which Miss
Mitchell took her almanac work with her.

On this her first visit to Europe, in 1857-'58, Miss Mitchell took
letters from eminent scientific men in the United States to dis-
tinguished astronomers and mathematicians, and other persons,
abroad. She was cordially received, and the astronomers opened
their observatories to her and entertained her at their homes. To
mention the names of all the notable persons whose acquaintance
she thus made would be like making a list of the men of the time
distinguished in science, literature, and art. Her observations,
very freely given in her private journal but always kindly, con-
tain much about the instruments and furnishings of the scientific
establishments and the methods of carrying on the work. She
found Mr. Airy, at Greenwich, not favorable to the multiplication
of observatories ; and to his remark that he would gladly destro}*-
one half of the meridian instruments of the world by way of
reform, she replied that her reform movement would be to bring
together the astronomers who had no instruments and the instru-
ments which had no astronomers. At Greenwich she met Herr
Struve, the famous astronomer of Pulkova, visiting England on
a scientific mission — " a magnificent-looking fellow, very large

548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and ■well proportioned ; his great head is covered with white hair,
his features are regular and handsome. When he is introduced
to any one he thrusts both hands into the pockets of his panta-
loons, and bows " ; and he told her that it was not necessary for
her to present her letters — he knew her without.

With the Airys she went to Cambridge and visited Whewell,
of whom — "An Englishman is proud, a Cambridge man is the
proudest of Englishmen, and Dr. Whewell the proudest of Cam-
bridge men.^' He was very severe, even to discourtesy, on Ameri-
cans, and imperious in manner ; and escorted Miss Mitchell to
church wearing " a long gown reaching nearly to his feet, of rich
scarlet, and adorned with flowing ribbons," which did not match
the robe but were nearly crimson. At Cambridge she met Mr.
Adams, the English calculator of the place of Neptune, and Prof.
Sedgwick, then an old man of seventy-four. She was cordially
entertained by Sir John and Lady Herschel ; visited Le Verrier
at his home in Paris ; and at Rome was called upon by Father
Secchi, and was admitted to the observatory where Mrs. Somer-
ville and the daughter of Sir John Herschel had been refused ;
that observatory for which the Papal Government furnishes nice
machinery to keep the telescope accurately up with the motion
of the earth on its axis ; " the same motion for declaring whose
existence Galileo suffered ; the two hundred years have done
their work." At Florence she called on Mrs. Somerville, who,
though seventy-seven years old, looked twenty years younger
and came tripping into the room, speaking at once with all the
vivacity of a young person, was interested in every new improve-
ment, as much at home in the drawing room as in science, and
asked many questions in regard to the progress of science in
America. At Berlin she saw Humboldt, who was much obliged
to her for calling to see him, talked intelligently to her about
current affairs in the United States, told her the latest news from
home, and showed her Clinton, N. Y., on the map when she did
not know where it was.

A few months after the death of Mrs. Mitchell, in 1861, the
family removed to Lynn, Mass., where Miss Mitchell had bought
property, to which she transferred her observatory, and where
she remained until she was called, in 1865, to be Professor of
Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Vassar College.
This involved a change of occupation, and one that would, to a
certain extent, divert her attention from what had been her life-
work of observing. " But she was so much interested in the
movement for the higher education of women, an interest which
deepened as her work went on, that she gave up in a measure her
scientific life, and threw herself heart and soul into this work."
She further, in the course of time, gave up her work on the Nau-

SKETCH OF MARIA MITCHELL. 549

tical Almauac, in order to devote lierself more exclusively to this.
In October, 1888, we fiad this entry in her diary : " Resolved, in
case of my outliving father and being in good health, to give my
efforts to the intellectual culture of women, without regard to
salary ; if possible, connect myself with liberal Christian institu-
tions— believing, as I do, that happiness and growth in this life
are best promoted by them, and that what is good in this life is
good in any life." She had her own views about the way teach-
ing should be done, and did not hesitate to express them. Thus :
"Our faculty meetings always try me in this respect; we do
things that other colleges have done before. We wait and ask
for precedent. If the earth had waited for a precedent, it would
never have turned on its axis ! " She thought teachers were in-
clined to talk too much ; that to read a book, to think it over, and
to write out notes, was a useful exercise ; that " the greatest ob-
ject in educating is to give the right habit of study ; . . . not too
much mechanical apparatus, let the imagination have some play;
a cube may be shown by a model, but let the drawing upon the
blackboard represent the cube, and, if possible, let Nature be the
blackboard ; spread your triangles upon land and sky ; . . . a small
apparatus well used does wonders. ... I find a helping hand lifts
the girl as crutches do ; she learns to like the help which is not
Belf-help." The relation between herself and her pupils is de-
scribed as having been very cordial and intimate, and she re-
marked to one of her classes entering upon its study for the last
year, " We are women studying together." According to her own
description of her teaching, her beginning class used a small
portable equatorial, which stood out of doors from seven o'clock in
the morning till nine o'clock in the evening. They were expected
to determine the rotation of the sun upon its axis by watching
the spots; "the same for the planet Jupiter." They determined
the revolution of Titan by watching its motions, the retrograde
and direct motion of the planets among the stars, the position of
the sun with reference to its setting in winter and summer, and
the phases of Venus. "All their book learning in astronomy
should be mathematical. The astronomy which is not mathe-
matical, in what is so ludicrously called ' geography of the heav-
ens,' is not astronomy at all." The senior girls in practical astron-
omy were taught separately : to obtain the time for the college by
the meridian passage of stars ; to find a planet at any hour of the
day; to make drawings of what they see, and to determine posi-
tions of planets and satellites; to determine differences of right
ascension ; to know the satellites of Saturn by their physiognomy,
as if they were persons ; and they sometimes measured diameters.
She held the marking system in contempt, would not drill, and
could not drive.

550 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Miss Mitchell began to observe the various colors of the stars
in 1853, but nothing in her remarks concerning the phenomenon
indicates that she had any anticipation of the explanations which
later astronomers have offered for it. Her appreciation of it was
largely aesthetic, but, as Mr. Bishof) had found the blue stars gen-
erally small, she thought we might assume " that the blue stars
are faint ones, and probably distant ones. But as not all faint
stars or distant ones are blue, it shows that there is a real differ-
ence. . . . From age to age the colors of some of the prominent
stars have certainly changed. This would seem more likely to
be from change of place than of physical constitution. Nothing
comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the
immense activity of the universe. ' All change, no loss, 'tis revo-
lution all.'" Then she was led to remark that all observations of
this kind are peculiarly adapted to women. " Indeed, all astro-
nomical observing seems to be so fitted. The training of a girl fits
her for delicate work. The touch of her fingers upon the delicate
screws of an astronomical instrument might become wonderfully
accurate in results ; a woman's eyes are trained to nicety of color.
. . . Then comes in the girl's habit of patient and quiet work,
peculiarly fitted to routine observations. The girl who can stitch
from morning to night would find two or three hours in the
observatory a relief."

The chief scientific incident recorded of Miss Mitchell's second
European tour (1873) is her visit to the observatory at Pulkova,
where the second Struve — Otto — was director. Her Russian jour-
nal contains some keen comparative observations concerning
civilization and education in Russia and the United States, not
always to the advantage of the United States.

In 1859 Miss Mitchell was presented by the republic of San
Marino with the bronze medal of merit, with the ribbon and let-
ters patent signed by the two captains regent. In August, 1869,
she went with several of her Vassar students to Burlington, Iowa,
to observe the total eclipse of the sun, and published a popular
article on the subject in the magazine Hours at Home. Her
scientific record of the observation was published in Prof. Coffin's
report. In 1878 she went to Denver to observe the eclipse. Her
observing party of five ladies besides herself had their special
places at the three telescopes as counters or as artists, and made
the observations in silence. " Great," she says, " is the self-denial
of those who follow science. Those who look through telescopes
at the time of a total eclipse are martyrs ; they severely deny
themselves. The persons who can say that they have seen a total
eclipse of the sun are those who rely upon their eyes. My aids,
who touched no glasses, had a season of rare enjoyment."

In June, 1881, while going to Providence in a steamboat, she

SKETCH OF AIARIA MITCHELL. 551

caught her first view of a new comet from the stateroom window-
She at once hurried back to Ponghkeepsie to make her observa-
tions. An apple tree was in the way, and she had it cut down.
Then a mist arose, and the observation had to be postponed. On
account of the incident of the tree, the girls called her George
Washington.

During her later years at Vassar, Miss Mitchell endeavored to
raise a fund to endow the chair of astronomy. The fund was
completed after her death, amounting to fifty thousand dollars,
and is known as the Maria Mitchell Endowment Fund. It was
her custom every year, in the week before commencement, to gi\e
her students a " dome party " — a breakfast — in the observatory,
and these were most enjoyable occasions to all.

Miss Mitchell was chairman of the Standing Committee on
Woman's Work in Science of the American Association for the
Advancement of Women, and was for several years president of
the association. "Some of her students did their first work for
women's organizations in gathering statistics and filling out
blanks which she distributed among them." She believed in the
woman suffrage movement, but took no prominent part in it.
She was the first woman elected to membership in the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston. She was chosen in 1859
a member of the American Philosophical Society ; was for many
years a member of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science ; was connected with the New England Women's
Club and with Sorosis ; and received degrees from Rutgers Fe.
male College, Hanover College, and Columbia College. She con-
tributed a paper on Mary Somerville to the Atlantic Monthly in
18G0; articles, mostly on observations of Jupiter and Saturn, to
the American Journal of Science ; a few popular science papers
in Hours at Home ; and an article on The Herschels was printed
in The Century just after her death. She also read a few lectures
to small societies and to one or two girls' schools, " but she never
allowed such outside work to interfere with her duties at "Vassar
College." She resigned her position in Vassar College, on ac-
count of growing infirmity, in January, 1888, after having, as
she boasted, earned a salary, without any intermission, for more
than fifty years. The trustees made her professor emeritus,
and offered her a home in the observatory, but she preferred
to spend the few remaining months of her life with her family
in Lynn.

It is partly a result of Miss Mitchell's work that woman
astronomers are now no longer regarded as something remark-
able.

SS2

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

gdltor^B %\xbU.

POLITICS AND MORALS.

IN many States of the Union the
school laws provide for compul-
sory education in what is called
"temperance." How far the educa-
tion supplied under this head some-
times is from being based on strict
scientific principles was well shown
some time ago by an able contrib-
utor to this magazine. It is a ques-
tion, however, whether if even the
instruction in "temperance" was all
it ought to be from a scientific point
of view, it is as much needed as other
instruction for which no legal pro-
vision is made; we mean especially
instruction in the everyday duties of
citizenship.

According to prevalent ideas in
this country, a people is free when it
has adopted a popular form of gov-
ernment, and done away with every-
thing having the appearance or
savor of monarchy or aristocracy.
Thus the Venezuelans are to be con-
.sidered a free people because their
government is, in form, republican ;
and the inhabitants of British Guiana
not free, or at least not so free, because
they are connected with the mon-
archy of Great Britain. In the early
stages of the Venezuelan difficulty
we heard not a little about the Amer-
ican system of government and
American political ideas as opposed
to the European system and Euro-
pean ideas. In the imagination of
many, Venezuela stood for freedom
and England for tyranny ; and the
interests of civilization were held to
demand that the free power should
be strengthened and the power rep-
i-esentative of tyranny checked. To
be sure, there was a country to the
north of us, also connected with the
British Empire, in which a reason-

able degree of freedom seemed to
exist. Still, that was not the right
way of being free ; the right way
was to have your government re-
publican in name as well as in es-
sence, and above all to enjoy the
vicissitudes of periodical elections
for the chief magistracy. This
Venezuela had done, and therefore
Venezuela was a true home of or-
thodox freedom.

Happily, the Venezuelan diffi-
culty is a difficulty no more as be-
tween the United States and Eng-
land; but the underlying political
ideas which tended to embitter feel-
ing, and did so dangerously embitter
it, on this side are deserving of
study. Why has the overthrow of
autocratic government provoked so
much popular enthusiasm from the
days of Harmodius and Aristogeiton
down to our own times ? Because
the autocrat has been conceived of
— and often rightly — as a man who
used his power for his own selfish
ends. The tyrant of popular imagi-
nation is a man who takes the taxes
of the poor to spend upon his luxu-
ries and vices; and the tyrant in his-
tory has not infrequently filled pre-
cisely this unworthy role. The
advantage, then, to be gained from
dethroning tyrants is that the power
and resources of government then
become available for the uses of the
state. A viituous tyrant would be
one who used all his power in an
unselfish manner for the benefit of
his subjects ; but when in the course
of events even the virtuous tyrant
becomes an impossibility, what is to
be done with the power he formerly
exercised ? It passes over to the
people ; now what is going to be
done with it ? Here we come to the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

553

true crux and crisis of modern re-
publican institutions. Strictly speak-
ing, the power that has been wrested
from the moDarch ought to be ap-
plied, as a good monarch would ap-
ply it, to the benefit of the state as a
whole ; but how is it really applied ?
Here it is, as we conceive, that
there is room for a teaching, to
speak plainly, of far greater value
and importance than that which the
law prescribes in the interest of
''temperance" ; the teaching, to wit,
that political jjower can be as niuch
abused, and in multitudes of cases
is as much abused, by the individ-
ual citizen as by any autocrat that
ever lived. What can the autocrat
do worse than use the power which
he has grasped, or which has de-
scended to him, for personal pur-
poses instead of for public purposes ?
It is true he uses a great deal of
power, and thus is in the w^ay of
doing a great deal of harm ; but in
essence he does no worse than the
citizen who sells his vote or makes
any use of it other than that which
consideration of the public good
would prescribe. The individual
citizen wields but a fractional part of
the i)ower of the autocrat ; but the
part he wields does not belong to
him as his personal property ; and,
if he uses it as such, he is simply a
tyrant on a small scale, or, say, a
fractional tyrant instead of an inte-
gral one. He is doing with his little
bit of power just what the other man
did with his vast and concentrated
power. In fact, he is doing worse,
because if he abuses his vote and in-
fluence he abuses all he possesses,
whereas no autocrat was ever yet so
bad that part of his power was not
exercised for the public good. Tibe-
rius and Nero were execrable men,
but many of their public acts were
directed to the good of the state.
The idea, therefore, which it is im-
portant to get into the mind of the

young is that ihe irresponsible voter
is a tyrant : he is diverting to private
purposes a measure of political power
which only belongs to him for pub-
lic purposes.

Then, just as in "temperance"
education the evils of intemperance
are vividly set forth — with many a
livelj' excursus on the evils of even
the most moderate use of stimulants
— so it would be perfectly proper to
exhibit in detail the baseness of a
system of politics in which private
interest takes the place of public duty.
The case is more urgent by far, in
our opinion, than the case for "tem-
perance" instruction for this reason,
that there is already a vast body of
sentiment in the country favorable
to temperance and even to total ab-
stinence; whereas there can not be
said to be any vast body of sentiment
favorable to pure, honest, and disin-
terested politics. Every man occu-
pying an important political posi-
tion knows the kind of solicitations
he receives for all sorts of things
possible and impossible. He knows
how often he is assured that unless
certain offices, contracts, etc., are
disposed of in a certain way there is
no earthly chance of his party suc-
ceeding in the next contest in con-
gressional district so-and-so. Every
such man knows also that it is not
only from the ignorant and socially
inferior that such communications
proceed — that, on the contrary, men
of substance and reputation are their
autliors in perhaps the majority of
cases. The assumption may be said
to be almost universal that a man's
vote is his own, and that in casting
it he has nothing to consider but his
own interest. That it is disgraceful
to withdraw support from a party in
which a man professes to have con-
fidence and give it to one in which
he professes to have no confidence,
simply because some petty contract
job or office is not disposed of to his

554

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

liking, does not seem, broadly speak-
ing, to be in anybody's thoughts.
The politicians ignore it entirely in
all their calculations. Side by side,
therefore, with the pictures drawn
in the " temperance " lesson of the
reeling, brawling inebriate, it would
be well, we tliink, to place a picture
of the citizen who, boasting that he
belongs to a free State, yet holds his
vote in fee for some trumpery office,
and openly threatens to betray causes
on which at times he grows eloquent
if his private demands are not met.
It is not always for himself person-
ally that the free and enlightened
elector wants an office. It may be
for his brother, his father-in-law, his
nephew, or his business partner; but
whatever it is that he wants, or for
whomsoever he wants it, he makes
no scruple about using his franchise
and such political influence as he
possesses in order to compass his
ends. Often the demands that are
made are flagrantly unjust; some-
times they involve wasteful expendi-
ture of public money; but none the
less are they pressed by men who
exult, as we have said, in the free-
dom of our institutions, and look
with mingled pity and contempt
upon communities that are content
to dwell under the baneful shadow
of some monarchical form of govern-
ment. A splendid text-book could
be made for the instruction of Ameri-
can youth if some prominent states-
man would make a selection from
his correspondence with olBce-seek-
ers and wire-pullers, with tariff-
mongei'S and contract jobbers. We
say this matter is more pressing —
far more pressing — than instruction
in temperance, for the reason that if
the youth leaves school unwarned
and unfortified against the abuses of
politics, he will almost at once find
himself in an atmosphere in which
conscience in regard to such matters
is wholly ignored; he will be caught

in the wheel work of the political
machine and will become, while yet
a youth, a political machinist him-
self.

The question as to how a low tone
of political morality acts upon the
general morals of the community is
one on which we can not enter to-
day. What we wish to insist on is
that there is a crying need for ex-
plaining to the youth of the country
not so much the technical details of
our system of government— though
every boy and girl leaving school
should have correct general ideas on
that subject — as the true principles
which should govern political action
here and everywhere, and the par-
ticular abuses, dangers, and diseases
to which our own political system
is exposed. Above all, the simple
principle should be inculcated that
political power can never be properly
regarded as a private possession.

THE RACIAL OEOGBAPHT OF EUROPE.

It may savor of undue presump-
tion to assert that the English lan-
guage is the proper medium through
which the anthropological history of
Europe should first find expression.
At first it would seem that the con-
tinental nations were most compe-
tent to unravel their own past his-
tory. This is indeed true, so far as
each by itself is concerned. But when
the task of combining them into a
continental whole arises, the tables
are turned. In no other department
of science has political jealousy and
hatred worked to greater harm than
in anthropology; for Euroi>e is di-
vided into two armed camps — one
led by the French, the other domi-
nated by German influence. Their
methods of work, their terminology,
their conclusions, are all conflicting.
Each claims priority, and each has
a racial history of Europe which is
suited to its own pui^pose. Hence

EDITOR'S TABLE.

555

the necessity that the delicate and
judicial work of combining the truth
which is revealed to each and of
rejecting' that which is false, should
fall to those who lie beyond the
reach of national prejudice. Writers
in England — Beddoe and Isaac Taylor
— have so far been most successful
in this comprehensive work. It is
now essayed for a third time in the
series of papers upon the Racial Ge-
ography of Europe, which begins in
this number. The Monroe doctrine
forbids that we should intermeddle
in European politics. The effect of
this political neutrality should be to
keep our hands free and our minds
clear in science. In itself it furnishes
a justification for our foreign intru-
sion into the European field.

During the civil war, while the
first great investigation upon liWng
men was being prosecuted upon
nearly a million recruits in our
armies, the United States held a
proud place of leadership in that
branch of the science of anthropol-
ogy which deals with our own race
in the life. This tremendous task
exhausted all our energies at the
outset; attention was directed to the
American aborigines, and the white
man was forgotten. This is one of
several reasons competent to explain
the popular ignorance and scientific
neglect among us of a very live
subject. To the average American
reader, the word anthropology, if it
conveys any meaning at all, con-
jures up visions of Indians, Hotten-
tots. Fijians, and other savages, or
perhaps of museums and curiosities,
of Peruvian and Egj-ptian mummies,
cave-dwellers, and the like — so far
have primitive ethnology and arche-
ology dominated the science.

Another reason why we in Amer-
ica have passed by this line of in-
quiry is because the conditions here
have not invited research. Our own
population is so recent, so artificial,

such a hodge podge of all civilized
peoples, that science stands aghast
at the problem of finding order in
such chaos, lu Europe all is, or
was until recently, quite different;
so that even now, after the railroad
and the factory have disturbed the
racial peace of the continent, the
remnants of law and order still re-
main.

A special feature of this series of pa-
pers will consist of the majjs and por-
traits with which the articles will be
amply provided. Every portrait will
be accompanied by precise data, ob-
tained from measurements on the liv-
ing subject. The leading experts all
over iplurope, among them Drs. Am-
mon in Baden, Beddoe in England,
Collignon in France, Livi in Italy,
Janko in Hungary, Kollmann in
Switzerland, Ranke in Bavaria, and
others, have kindly aided in this
work; so that a large collection of
racial i)ortraits of permanent value
will be presented. With these will
be combined all the anthropological
maps of value already published, as
well as many entirely new ones.
Each of these has been especially
prepared for this purpose, indicating
the exact distribution of each type
of man or physical race trait, showu
in portrait and described in text.
By this means it is hoped that the
interests of true science may be sub-
served; and that at the same time a
necessarily technical subject may be
rendered comprehensible and inter-
esting to the general reader.

In the first paper of the series,
printed in this number, the relation
of language to race and nationali-
ty, with the changes it undergoes
through the distribution of popula-
tion and the influence of environ-
ment, are considered. The next pa-
per will deal with the shape of the
head as an ethnic characteristic ; the
third with the color of the hair and
eyes— that is to say, with the distri-

556

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

bution of blondes and bi'unettes ;
and the fourth the stature. Then
the association of these into three
race types — the Teutonic, the Al-
pine, and the Mediterranean — will
follow. France, Germany, the Brit-
ish Isles may then be taken up, each
by itself, with consideration of spe-
cial topics, such as the Basques, the
Etruscans, living- representatives of
the Cro-Magnon race, and the like.
Thus the way will be prepared for
the still broader questions concern-
ing the ultimate origin of the three
races above named, with their rela-
tion to the negro and the people of
Asia. The intention of the whole
series will be to give a living picture
of the people of Europe, and to ana-
lyze it for the benefit of the student
of history and sociology.

SCIENCE AND HUMANITY.

We noticed last month the anxiety
of a high ecclesiastical dignitary lest
the world tinder the guidance of the
modern scientiiic thoixght should be
given over completely to cruelty and
selfishness; and our attention has
since been drawn to an article in a
Toronto educational journal which
seems to be in some measure inspired
by a similar apprehension. We say
'•in some measure" only, for the
writer is in evident sympathy with
the work of science as a whole, and
is chiefly concerned with the moral
evils which he thinks will ensue
from the scientific practice of vivi-
section.

The question as to the value of
vivisection for the advancement of
scientific theory is a large one, upon
which we ax^e not prepared to enter.
Suffice it to say for the present that,
while some diversity of opinion ex-
ists on the subject, the great majority
of teachers and experimenters in bi-
ology and physiology believe that it
affords most important aid in the

prosecution and illustration of their
studies. That the practice is liable
to abuse in careless or indifferent
hands may be readily admitted, but
it must be said at the same time
that the feeling of the scientific
world in general is as strongly op-
posed to any needless infliction of
suffering on the lower animals as
that of the unscientific world can
be. It is recognized that the prac-
tice should only be resorted to in a
guarded manner, for definite ends,
and should be accompanied by what-
ever alleviations of pain it is possi-
ble to introduce. No condemnation
could be too strong for any purpose-
less cruelty at the expense of sentient
creatures, or any profession of in-
difference to the pains which they
are necessarily compelled to undergo.
The great safeguard of the scientific
world against such misuse of the
power we possess over tlie dumb crea-
tion lies in the fact that the one pro-
fessed and never-forgotten purpose of
the practice now in question is the
mitigation and prevention of human
suffering. If the question were
asked whether, on the whole, the
animal creation had gained or lost
by the advance of scientific thought,
there could be little doubt about the
answer. It is since science became
a prominent occupation of men's
minds that qualms of conscience
have begun to be felt about some
forms of sport in which animal life
is sacrificed, and that measures have
been taken to secure merciful treat-
ment for animals in course of trans-
portation, and for the prevention of
various forms of cruelty and neglect
through which animals suffered at
the hands of man. That much re-
mains to be done in these directions
is undoubted, but we may be sure of
this, that the more animals become
the subject of scientific study and
treatment, the better on the whole
will be their lot. It may be that

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

557

the need for vivisection will in time
wholly pass away, the truths which
it is adapted to teach having in the
main heen acquired. There will
then remain as the result of tempo-
rary suffering a body of knowledge
available for the prevention of suffer-
ing, not only in the human race, but
among the lower animals as well.
What may be called the metaphysics
of the subject is difficult to deal
with, and we can not follow our
Toronto contemporary on that
ground. In a practical matter like
this we feel that it is safer and better

to trust the instincts of humane
men; and among those who have
approved of a limited and careful
use of vivisection are to be found
many whose humanity and sensibil-
ity no one would doubt. Science
and humanity go hand in hand for
the simj)le reason that science is
human. In matters of this kind we
are therefore disposed to trust the
scientific spirit as being essentially a
spirit of mercy and benevolence, a
minister of good to mankind, and
not to mankind only, but to the
lower tribes of life as well.

^cijcntltic gltcvaturje.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

Early in 1895 the reading and thinking world was given something
like a galvanic shock by the appearance of Nordau's book on Degeneration.
It represented much of the genius of the later nineteenth century — genius
that has produced many of the most widely admired works of art and
literature — as being a variety of wholesale derangement that was develop-
ing in a considerable part of the race. Such a diagnosis could hardly pass
unchallenged. The magazinists hastened to answer Nordau. An anony-
mous English writer put forth a volume controverting his position, and a
fellow-countryman of Nordau, Dr. William Hirsch^ has so modified a work
that he had under way as to make it also a reply.* Dr. Hirsch's book is
first an examination, in the light of the latest advances made in neurology,
of the much debated question. How closely is genius related to insanity ?
After briefly defining the limits of insanity he examines the psychology of
genius and then compares the diseased with the supernormal mind. He
holds that —

Genius in different departments is referable to the most diverse psychical conditions.
Psychical faculties and characters which in one case constitute the essence of genius, in
another case are inconsistent with the action of genius. In short, definite psychical char-
acters common to all genius are not to be found. One would seek in vain any common
psychological explanation of the greatness of a Paganini and a Bismarck, of a Mozart and a
Napoleon.

While he refrains from fitting a definition to either genius or insanity,
he does not hesitate to compare the two. He takes up the chief symp-
toms which other authors have found in both men of genius and the
insane. Among these are hallucinations, melancholy, the lively fancy of

* Genius and Degeneration, By Dr. William Hirech.
8vo. Price, $3.50.

New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 333,

5 58 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the litterateur and the lying of the imbecile, and the fact that some great
men have actually had attacks of insanity. Yet he deems all these to be
mere resemblances, not real affinities. Great men are not to be measured
by the same standard as ordinary beings, and the reason why they are
often deemed insane by those around them is because their superior powers
are not understood. Taking up the subject of degeneration, he discusses
the views of Morel, Xrafft-Bbing, and Lombroso as to the characteristics
of degenerates, and concludes that " in consequence of its common cause in
all cases — namely, mental instability, discord of the mental faculties — the
cases always have something to characterize them, and they give to the
competent observer no occasion to confound them with great, fiilly devel-
oped, and harmonious minds." In his chapter on Secular Hysteria, Dr.
Hirsch first comes in conflict with Nordau. He flatly contradicts the asser-
tion of the latter that neurasthenia and hysteria are epidemic as they have
never been in former centuries and are vitiating the literature, art, and
culture of the time. He says :

Had Nordau in bis sharp critique of existing conditions in the fields of society, litera-
ture, and art made no pretension to any other standpoint than that of the aasthetician and
art critic, his work, in spite of its many ecctntricities and falsities, would undeniably not
have been without service, for he lays the scourge that is their due upon many a folly and
absurdity of our time. But when he wraps himself in the solemn garb of science and,
assimiing the position of a psychiatrist, hurls the ban of degeneracy and hysteria upon
everything that does not meet his approval, he can only be called a psychiatric dilettante.

He regards as Nordau's chief error the drawing of psychiatric conclu-
sions from his purely subjective criticism of works of art, without regard to
the purpose of the artist or author. In order to make his meaning clear he
takes Richard Wagner as an example, and gives quite an extended analysis
of his compositions, maintaining that they give no such evidence of degen-
eracy as Nordau alleges. In reading Dr. Hirsch's pages one can not help
being impressed with his fairness. He never fails to admit what he can
agree with in his opponent's position. At the same time he is a good fighter,
and his blows fall thick and heavily upon those things that he undertakes
to combat.

Although prepared chiefly for certain professional and business men,
the little book on Theater Fires, recently published by Mr. Gerhard, deals
with a matter which often becomes of wide and painful interest.* From
the statistical pages, with which the author introduces his subject, we learn
that before 1878 flve hundred and sixteen theaters had been completely
destroyed by fire. Theaters are in most danger from fire when they are
new and their apparatus may not be in perfect working order, and again
when forty to fifty years old and much of the aj)paratus has become worn
out. The causes of theater fires are many and various, but most of them
arise, naturally, on the stage or in the dressing rooms. Panics in theaters
also have a number of causes besides the actual appearance of fire. One
may be started by a false alarm, by an alarm of fire in the neighborhood,
by the unannounced darkening of the house, by the plunging of a fright-
ened horse on the stage, etc. As measures for preventing outbreaks of fire

* Theater Fires and Panics. By William Paul Gerhard. New York : John Wiley »fc Sons. Pp.
175, 15mo. Price, gl.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 559

Mr. Gerhard recommends the isolation of the building' so far as practicable,
fii-eproof coustruclion, using brick and terra cotta in preference to stone
and avoiding exposed ironwork, the use of incandescent electric lights,
proper storing of scenery, removal of rubbish, etc. If a fire does start, the
building should be so divided as to localize it. The stage should be sepa-
rated from the auditorium by a tire wall. The proscenium opening should
be fitted with a fire-resisting curtain, closing as nearly as possible hermet-
ically. There should be as few other openings in this wall as possible, and
all of them kept closed by fire doors. The safety of the spectators and stage
people can be best provided for by having adequate exits. All other devices
Mr. Gerhard ranks as subordinate. The exits, he says, should be arranged
so as to widen as they approach the outside of the building. There should
be no stinting of exits for the occupants of the galleries, who have often
been suffocated in large numbers by the rising smoke and hot gases of com-
bustion. Many other measures for preventing or restricting the damage
done by fires are named by Mr. Gerhai^d, and he describes with consider-
able detail what he deems the best appliances for putting out theater fires
before they have gained much headway. The volume is made up of three
papers prepax-ed for difi'erent occasions, hence there are some repetitions in
it. This not very serious fault doubtless could have been wholly or largely
removed by a moderate amount of editing. A list of books and magazine
articles on theater construction and protection is appended. Every theater-
goer should read the volume, so that he may know when he is in a safe
house, and should never again allow the most seductive bill to tempt him
into a death-trap.

It is a strong presumptive recommendation of Mr. Parri/s Evolution of
the Art of Music* that it was nine years in preparation. The examination
of the book reveals throughout evidences of the thorough study and care-
ful work implied by that term of years, and of efi'ort to go to the bottom of
the subject. The author seems to have found a firm basis for his deductions,
and expresses them clearly and distinctly, without any of the hazy uncertain-
ty and vague indefiniteness that mark the majority of attempts to analyze
music and make them far from satisfactory. The origin of music is found
in natural or spontaneous vocal expressions of feeling and sensibility, such
as are common to all sentient beings. Man has developed and extended
them and formulated them according to his stage of culture, and the purpose
in this book is to point out how and by what steps he has done this and
brought musical expression to its present high condition. These utterances
pass within the range of art when they take any definite form, just as
speech begins when vague signals of sound give place to words. When
these musical figures become definite enough to be remembered, scales are
formed, or series of notes which stand in some recognizable relation to one
another in respect of pitch. The connection of music, or vocal, with danc-
ing or muscular expression of feeling gives rise to rhythm, and we have
all the elements of the art. The scales, ancient and modern, and of various
races, are described and analyzed. A step higher than the primitive frag-
ments of tune and rhythm of savage music — the fij-st stages of musical
development — is folk music, in which an appearance of orderliness and

* The Evolution of the Art of Music. By C. Hubert Parry. New York : D. Appleton & Co. (In-
ternational Scientific Series.) Pp. 3i2. Price, 81.75.

560

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

completeness is given; and we have the folk music of various tribes and
nations, described and illustrated with specimens, in its different degrees
of development. Next, the religious aspect of music is referred to, and the
beginning of harmony is discussed in connection with the appearance of
Christian church music. The era of pure choral music succeeding this is
followed by the rise of secular music, with the history of opera swaying to
and fro in the struggle between the musical and dramatic elements for pre-
dominance. Instrumental music is next studied in its early and middle
stage; the sonata; and finally the modern developments, with all their
varieties of style and form. In these discussions the typical works of each
age. form, and style are described and analyzed, the work done by the com-
posers who have made epochs in the progress of the art or established new
forms is examined into, and each point is illustrated by the introduction of
scores. Wagner is the latest master who has left a distinct mark in the
growth of music, and the nature and effect of the most characteristic fea-
tures of his compositions are inquired into in what seems to us a truly
judicial spirit.

GENERAL NOTICES,

Chemistry in Daily Life * embodies the
substance of a course of lectures delivered by
Dr. Lassar- Cohn, Professor of Chemistry in
the University of Konigsberg, to a society
in that town modeled after the celebrated
Humboldt Academy of Berlin. The book is
written in a popular style, and covers a very
■wide and important field. It is really a tech-
nological handbook of what is perhaps best
described as household chemistry The sub-
jects treated are necessarily extremely vari-
ous, and, except from the side of their im-
portance in th« affairs of everyday life, are
not in many instances very closely connected.
The Physics and Chemistry of Breathmg,
Argon, Composition of Fats, Tetravalency
of the Atom of Carbon, Vaseline, and In-
candescent Gaslights are some few of the
special headings in the first two chapters,
and will perhaps serve to indicate the great
variety of topics treated. Perhaps the most
important chapters are the first five, which
deal chiefly with the chemistry of physiol-
ogy. Tanning and bleaching are given a
chapter. Oil painting, modern -explosives,
glass manufacture, photography, and metal-
lurgy are other subjects receiving special
attention. The work is necessarily more or
less superficial, but it contains much infor-

* Cbemietry in Daily Life. By Dr. Lassar-
Cohn. Translated by M. M. Pattison Muir. Phila-
delpbia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Pp. ^U, 12mo.
Pxice, SL75.

mation of importance to the ordinary house-
holder. The translation seems to have been
very well done.

The importance which proper nursing is
known to have in therapeutics has led of
late years to systematic courses in this sub-
ject, both at general hospitals and in special
schools. These courses have made special
text-books a necessity. Dr. Wise's work * is
the latest handbook of this sort to reach us.
As the author says, the chief difficulty in a
text-book of nursing is to strike a happy me-
dium between a medical and a high-school
text-book — to avoid extreme technicality on
the one hand and a too superficial treatment
on the other. Dr. Wise seems to have ac-
complished this. The first volume, with the
exception of the last four chapters, which
give some general instructions for the prep-
aration and care of the sickroom, is de-
voted to a statement of the simpler facts of
anatomy, physiology, hygiene, and sanitation
which have a bearing on nursing. It is the
second volume which is the real text-book.
Methods of applying local remedies and
bandaging are fii-st taken up. The treat-
ment of fractures, dislocations, inflammar
tion, and haemorrhage are next considered.
Emergency work, artificial respiration, con-

* A Test-Book for Training Schools for
Nurses. By P. M. W^ise, M.D. 2 vols. New
York : G. P. Putnam's Sons, Pp. 347 and 327,
12ino. Price, $1.33 each.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

561

vulsions, coma, wounds, and burns are dis-
cussed in detail. Nervous diseases and in-
sanity receive considerable attention. Bath-
ing, massage, the administration of medicine
and food, children's diseases, signs of death,
and care of the dead bring us to the last
four chapters, which treat of pregnancy,
childbirth, and gynaecological nursing in gen-
eral. The work is intended as a text book,
for use in a school or hospital, and should
be supplemented by clinical study.

In the preparation of his Slory of the
Earth, Dr. HeUprin * has sought to present
briefly, forcibly, and in a more popular form
than in most books of a similar nature, the
general facts of geology. Avoiding the re-
capitulation of numberless details with which
authors are easily tempted to burden a work
on this science, and making his account nar-
rative rather than adopting an analytical
method, he has endeavored to make the book
comprehensive enough to meet the needs of
the average student, and enlist the attention
of readers who would pass by a difficult
technical work and would yet not be satisfied
with an ordinary elementary one. He has
made it a model of compactness, simplicity,
lucidity, and readableness, touching upon
all essential points, and dwelling on them
long enough to make them understood, yet
without tiring the reader. The illustrations
are numerous, all photogaphs from the
things themselves, largely American, and
represent clearly what it is intended to show.
First, the rocks are described as a whole ;
then " what a mountain teaches " is told ;
the operative forces in geology are present-
ed— snow and glaciers, underground waters,
the forces in the earth's interior, volcanoes
and earthquakes, and corals and their island
products; three chapters are given to the
description of fossils ; the physiognomy of
the land surface is delineated ; and the more
useful metals and minerals, building stones,
soils and fertilizers, and some of the com-
moner rock-forming minerals and minerals
occurring in rocks are described.

The great interest which Prof. Weis-
mann's theories regarding the problems of
heredity have excited has led to the transla-

* The Earth and its Story. By Angelo Heil-
prin. Boston, New York, and Chicago : Silver,
Burdett & Co. Pp. 267, with SLsty-four Plates.
VOL. L,— 41

tion of a work by Dr. Oscar Hertwig, The
Biological Problem of To day* which was
published last year in Germany. The book
is practically a criticism of Weismannism,
Dr. Weismann being the most prominent
upholder of what is called the Praeformation
theory. The main question at issue is a pure-
ly biological and very technical one — namely,
the process by which organic development is
carried on. The Prajformationists believe
that the future organism exists in the germ,
with its various parts differentiated, but of
course so extremely minute as to render any
physical appreciation of this fact quite im-
possible. The upholders of what is called
Epigenesis, on the other hand, insist that in
the beginning there is no such differentia-
tion, but that the original germinating mass
is practically homogeneous, and the subse-
quent specialization is " impressed " on dif-
ferent portions of similar material. Dr.
Hertwig's book consists of a statement of
his reasons for believing in epigenesis. Most
of them are based on data gained during in-
vestigations of cell structure and growth,
and by means of experiments on the lower
forms of organized matter. Dr. Hertwig's
name is associated with many of the most
important advances in our knowledge of cells
and embryology, and his views on the ques-
tion in di>pute are of the utmost value. In
his introduction the translator has given a
brief general statement of the early stages
in the development of the vertebrate, which
is intended as a help for readers not familiar
with the subject of embryology.

We have just received a third edition of
Dr. Brinton's MijtJis of the New World. The
first edition, which appeared so long ago
as 1868, has been somewhat superseded by
later publications, and, while many of the
recent contributions to the subject are not
considered by Dr. Brinton to be as satisfac-
tory as the work of the earlier writers,
many of the opinions put forward in the
original work as theories have now been ac-
cepted by most students of mythology, and
require a restatement in more emphatic
form. In its original edition the work was
intended more for the thoughtful general

* The Biological Problem of To-Day. By-
Prof. Dr. Oscar Hertwig. New York : The Mac-
millan Co. Pp. liS, 18mo. Price, $1.25.

562

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

reader than for the antiquary, and this idea
has been kept in mind during the revision.
There is a useful bibliograpliy appended.
(Philadelphia: David McKay, $2.)

The Coming Ice Age, by C. A. M. Taher,
is an attempt to show the manner in which
an ice age is being brought about, and is an
extension, the author says, of a treatise pub-
lished in 1894 on The Cause of Warm and
Frigid Zones. The author's notion seems to
be that ocean currents, in conjunction with
winds and slight modifications in coast line,
are sufficient to bring about the great changes
in climate necessary to produce a glacial
epoch in present temperate regions. The
author sums up as follows : " Consequently,
there seems to be no method yet devised
through Nature's mode of action that can
carry sufficient heat into the antarctic lati-
tudes to melt the ice sheets from the south-
ern continent, or even arrest their growth,
while the Cape Horn channel maintains its
present width and depth. Therefore the in-
crease of glaciers and icebergs will slowly
continue until a glacial epoch is perfected."

The Transactio7is of the Kansas Academy
of Science for the years 1893-'94 has just
come to hand. The volume begins with an
article by the retiring president, entitled
" Small Things," in which he calls attention
to the great importance in scientific investi-
gation of apparently trivial details. There
are a number of mathematical papers, among
which may be mentioned The Inverse of
Conies and Conchoids from the Center, and
Harmonic Forms. A long and well-illustrated
account of Kansas Mosses is the most im-
portant paper in the botanical section. Mr.
Robert Hay contributes a paper on the Eco-
nomic Geology of the River Counties of
Kansas, to which is appended an exhaustive
bibliography.

Modern Optical Instruments, by Henry
Orford, is intended apparently as an elemen-
tary text-book of practical optics. The con-
struction and properties of the human eye
are described in the earlier pages, as are
also some of the commoner aberrations and
defects to which our eyes are subject. The
following chapters, which deal with the the-
ory and practice of ophthalmoscopic exami-
nation, with the various forms of spectacles
and the principles governing their use and

selection, the stereoscope, the optical lan-
tern, and the spectroscope, contain a very
good elementary consideration of these va-
rious subjects. (Macmillan, 80 cents.)

Special Method in Natural Science is the
title of No. 4 of a series of special methods
in the common-school studies. It is intended
to give the teacher " a general view of the
problem of science-teaching." As in most
books of this class, many of the suggestions
seem trivial and unnecessary. Some of the
hints, however, are good, and very possibly
the others may be useful to that large class
of teachers who are such through "circum-
stances," and not because of any special
training or ability which they have for teach-
ing. (Public School Publishing Company,
Washington, 111., 50 cents.)

An extended work on Oceanic Ichthyol-
ogy, by the late Dr. George Brown Goode
and Dr. Tarleion H. Bean, has been issued
by the Smithsonian Institution. It consists
of technical descriptions of all forms of
fishes found in the seas of the world, accom-
panied by an atlas of 123 plates bearing 417
figures. The text forms a volume of 553
quarto pages and contains many new facts.
This treatise appears at a time when no
deep-sea explorations are in progress, and
the final ichthyological results of all past ex-
peditions have been published. The authors
have aimed to assemble in it all existing sci-
entific data concerning oceanic fishes, and it
is not likely to be superseded as an authority
for many years. Its preparation was carried
on in great part amid the pressure of offi-
cial duties. It was first ready for printing
in 1885, was revised and rewritten in 1888
and in 1891, and again in 1894 as it was
going through the press, these- changes be-
ing made necessary by successive publica-
tions of new material. For the senior author,
whose death occurred within the same month
in which it was issued, this is a truly monu-
mental work.

The Tenth Annual Report of the Commis-
sioner of Labor, for 1894, makes a thick oc-
tavo volume and another about half as thick.
It is devoted to strikes and lockouts, cover-
ing those occurring in the United States
from January, 1887, to June, 1894, and
forming a continuation of the Third Annual
Report. For each disturbance there are

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

563

pven the occupation and number of the
workers concerned, locality, cause or object,
duration, whether successful or not, losses
to employers and employees, etc. The main
table of strikes is arranged by States, years,
and industries, and occupies over 1200
pages of the first volume. The lockouts are
presented in a table of 108 pages. The sec-
ond volume contains summary tables in
which the same information is presented
from various aspects. From the commis-
sioner's analysis of the tables, it appears
that, of the 10,487 strikes occurring in the
seven years and a half, 43 5 2 per cent were
successful, 10*19 per cent partly successful,
and 46-'28 per cent failed. Of the lockouts —
four or five hundred in all — 48'87 per cent
were successful, 10'15 per cent partly so, and
40-44 per cent failed. For the whole period
of thirteen years and a half covered by the
Third and Tenth Reports together, the loss
to employees from strikes was, in round
numbers, $164,000,000 ; from lockouts,
$27,000,000. The losses to employers from
the same causes were $83,000,000 and $12,-
000,000 respectively.

The Pedagogical Series of papers issued
by the University of Pennsylvania has for
its first number an account of Three Ti/pical
Educational Systems, by Lewis R. Harley,
Ph. D. This consists of outlines of the
public-school systems of Massachusetts, New
York, and Michigan. While often referring
to the origin of certain features, Dr. Harley
has not undertaken to give a history of
school administration in these three States,
but rather to represent it as it exists.

The memoir on the discovery of Argon
with which Lord Rayleigh and Prof. William
Ramsay won the Hodgkins-Fund prize has
been issued as one of the Smithsonian Con-
tributions to Knowledge. This remarkable
discovery has been widely described in both
technical and popular journals, and a revised
version of the memoir has been published in
the Philosophical Transactions. The paper
is here presented in the form in which it was
submitted to the committee.

The Peabody Museum at Cambridge has
begun a series of quarto publications with a
memoir on Prehistoric Ruins of Copan, Hon-
duras, being a preliminary report of the ex-
plorations made by the museum from 1891

to 1895. This report has been compiled by
George B. Gordon from his field notes and
those of Marshall H. Saville and John G.
Owens, who at different times have carried
on the explorations under the direction of
the museum. It is intended to give only a
general description of the ruins and a sum-
mary of the work of the several expeditions.
It will be followed by special papers on the
discoveries made. The museum has had the
co-operation of Alfred P. Maudslay, the Eng-
lish explorer of Central America, and has
adopted the names, letters, and numbers
with which he has designated various por-
tions of the ruins and some prominent
sculptures, while for new features the letters
and figures have been continued in sequence.
The memoir is illustrated with a plan of the
ruins and a considerable number of plates
and figures representing stelaj, altars, and
other pieces of sculpture. The explorations
were made possible by the contributions of
subscribers, whose names appear in the re-'
port.

It is a serious warning that is put into
story form in Cursed before Birth, by J. H.
Tilden, M. D. (the author, Denver) — a warn-
ing to women who shirk the cares of mother-
hood, to girls who think it is a benefit to be
noticed by old and wealthy men, and to
young men on whose shoulders rests the
guardianship of a home. It is a warning
also to those rapacious miscreants who im-
agine that they can prey upon the virtue of
their communities without coming to a day
of reckoning. Dr. Tilden writes with much
earnestness, and there are many who should
heed his admonition.

An elementary book under the title Uncle
Sam^s Letters on Phrenology, originally pub-
lished in 1842, has been reprinted recently
(Fowler & Wells Company, paper, 50 cents).
The letters are written in a familiar style,
with considerable pleasantry, and contain
many illustrative anecdotes and allusions to
public men and affairs of fifty years ago.

On account of the important position oc-
cupied by the alternating current trans-
former in systems of distribution for light
and power. Prof. Frederick Bedell, of Cor-
nell University, has been led to prepare a
treatise on The Rrinciples of the Trans-
former. " Ten years ago," the author re-

564

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

marks in his preface, " the transformer was
born, and in one decade it has attained its
maturity. During its development it has
been the subject of much investigation and
study and has been carefully considered from
every standpoint, so that complete novelty
of treatment is now scarcely looked for — in
fact, would not be desirable. There is a de-
mand, however, for a united and logical ex-
position of the principles involved. To this
end the writer has turned his efforts and
contributes the following pages." The sub-
ject has been kept within well-defined lim-
it,s. Thus, while systems of distribution are
briefly reviewed as bearing directly upon the
principles of the apparatus, the subjects of
fuel and boilers and of central-station opera-
tion have been excluded as irrelevant. The
theory of the alternator is given in brief.
The author has taken especial pains to make
his book tend toward uniformity rather
than diversity in notation. The C. G. S.
system has been used for expressing mag-
netic quantities for the reason that interna-
tional agi'eement as to names for magnetic
units has not yet been secured. In eluci-
dating the principles set forth, two hundred
and fifty diagrams and other cuts are used,
and the volume is adequately indexed.

The School Algebra., by Emerson E.
White (American Book Company, $1), has
among its distinctive features the early in-
troduction of the equation, the application
of arithmetical approaches to algebraic pro-
cesses and principles, and the immediate ap-
plication of facts and principles in simple
exercises. Processes that do not appear
generally in school algebras are the multi-
plication and division of polynomials by
detached coefficients ; a general method of
factoring trinomials ; the solution of quad-
ratic equations by factoi-ing; and in the
closing chapters a simple treatment of un-
determined coefficients, determinants, and
curve tracing.

The Romance of Induxtry and Invention,
consisting of articles selected by Robert
Cochrane from the pages of Chambers's
Journal, with additions, is a nice book for
Scotch and English readers, but we fail to
see why it should come to America (Lip-
pincott, $1.26). One would suppose from
reading it that the biography of the English-

man Wedgwood was the whole history of
the pottery industry ; that America has no
cotton mills, but only serves with India and
Egypt to furnish raw material to England ;
that only the gold fields in British posses-
sions are worth more than a mere allusion,
while Ericsson's Monitor with its revolving
turret never existed. On the other hand, it
does appear that the chief inventors of sew-
ing machines were Americans ; more credit
is given to Morse for the telegraph and Field
for the Atlantic cable than is usual in Brit-
ish popular writings ; while Bell and Edison
can not be hidden in any account of their in-
ventions ; and there is actually a distinct ad-
mission that " from the time of their last
war with us down to within a quarter of a
century ago our Yankee neighbors generally
seemed to be a little ahead of this country
in maritime matters."

A graphic lesson in The Effects of Ero-
sion, due to forest destruction, is afforded in
a chart recently issued by the United States
Department of Agriculture. It bears three
colored pictures showing respectively How
the Farm is Lost, How the Farm is Regained,
and How the Farm is Retained, each accom-
panied by a few lines of explanation and
counsel.

In August, 1896, the first number of The
Hypnotic Magazine appeared (Psychic Pub-
lishing Company, Chicago, $2.50 a year). It
is edited by Sydmy Flower and is devoted to
" an iuvestigation of the science of hypno-
tism, its uses and abuses, and its therapeutic
possibilities." Among the articles in the first
number is a report by Herbert A. Parkyn,
M. D., of cases treated in the daily clinic
conducted by him in Chicago. Other con-
tributors are Charles G. Davis, M. D., W. L.
Stevenson, M. D., and W. X, Sudduth, M. D.
The contributors, although showing the con-
fidence of enthusiasts, succeed in avoiding
the extravagances that sometimes make hyp-
notism ridiculous, while the tone of the In-
troduction and other editorial expressions is
modest and enlightened.

Visible Speech is a system of speech
notation which uses symbols designed to
suggest the proper positions of the vocal
organs. It has been presented to the public
by its author. Prof Alexander Melville Bill,
in books adapted to a variety of needs. One

S CIENTIFIC LITER A TUBE.

565

now before us, English Visible Speech in
Twelve Lessons (Volta Bureau, Washington,
50 cents), is intended as a first book for the
use of children, foreigners, and the deaf in
learning to read English. Each lesson is
accompanied by cuts showing the positions
of the vocal organs denoted by the new
symbols introduced in that lesson, and by a
page of directions for the teacher. There is
also a table of vowels occurring in foreign
languages. The first few readujg exercises
•are adapted to children — most of the others
to adults.

Under the title Cheerful Philosophy for
Thoughtful Invalids, a little book of forty
pages has been published by William H.
Clarke, which is well calculated to aid those
bodily afflicted in rendering their lives " less
burdensome to themselves and more useful
to others." While it is religious in tone it
is not sanctimonious, and the practical appli-
cation of its encouraging counsel is shown in
several anecdotes (E. T. Clarke & Co., Read-
ing, Mass., 50 cents).

According to the Report of the United
States Life-Saving Service, the number of
disasters within the scope of the service dur-
ing the year lS94-'95 exceeded that of any

previous year by seventy-nine. This large
excess was in part due to the extension of
the service, but chiefly to the conditions of
weather which prevailed. The proportion
of loss of life and likewise of property was
smaller than in any year but one since the
general extension of the service on the sea
and lake coasts. The general superintendent
still finds it necessary to urge upon Congress
a more liberal and discnminating scale of
payment for district superintendents and
surfmen.

The somewhat ambiguous title of The
Nursery Book denotes a guide to the multi-
plication of plants by Prof. L. H. Bailey, the
third edition of which appears in The Gar-
dencraft Series (Macmillan, $1). While there
is a short chapter devoted to methods of
sowing seeds, the book is mainly occupied
with grafting, cutting, and similar processes.
A special feature is the alphabetical Nursery
List, telling how every plant generally known
to gardeners is propagated. There are also
a glossary and an index. The descriptions
are illustrated with one hundred and fifty-two
cuts. For this edition, the author says, " the
entire volume has been thoroughly ransacked
and renovated."

PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Delaware
Collejje Station: The Increase of the San Jos6
Scale in Delaware during 1896. — Michigan State
College: latteniug Lambs; Ffediug Corn Smut;
Pig Feeding. — New York Station: Strawberries;
Milk, Fat, and Cheese Yield. — Ohio State Univer-
eity: The College of Agriculture and Domeetic
Science. — United States Department: Bibliogra-
phy of the More Important Contributions to
American Economic Entomology; Proceedings of
the Eighth Annual Meeting of ttie Association of
Economic Entomologists; A BacttiTial Disease of
the Tomato, Eggplant, and Irish Potato.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Proceedings, etc. Field
Columbian Museum: Annual Report of the Direct-
or.—Health, Rhode Island State Board of: Sev-
enteenth Annual Report.— Iowa State University:
Bulletin from the Laboratories of Natural History,
Vol. IV, No. 1. — Labor, Bulletin of Department
of, November, 1896.— Minnesota Botanical Stud-
ies: Bulletin No. 9.— Philadelphia Academy ot
Natural Sciences. Pp. 515-i:63 — Peabody Educa-
tion Fund: Proceedings of Trustees at Thirty -fifth
Meeting — Purdue Socitty: Proceedings of, 18.>6.
— Smithsonian Institution: Annual Report of the
Board of Regents of, to July, 1894.— Culin, Stew-
art: Mancala, the National Game of Africa. — Gray,
Thomas: Smilhsonian Physical Tables.— Mason,
O. T.: Primitive Travel and Transportation. — Mc-
Guire, J. D.: A Study of Primitive Methods of
Drilling.— Satoh, A. : The Wooden Statue of
Baron II Kamou-no-Kami Naosuke, Picmeer
Diplomat of Japan.— True, F. W. : A Revision of
theAmerican Moles.— Wilson, Thomas: TheSwas-
tica. — Texas Academy of Science: Are we Con-
8ciou9 Automata ? — Lnited States Army: Annual

Report of the Chief of Engineers, 1896.— United
States Fish Commission: Description of a Kew
Species of Shad from Alabama; A Check List of
the Fish and Fishlike Vertebrates of North and
Middle America. — United States National Mu-
seum: Description of a New Genus and Four
New Species of Crabs from the West Indies; Pre-
liminary Diagnoses of New Mammals from the
Mexican Border of the Unit ^d States.

Education, Report of the Commissioner of,
1894-'95. Vol. I. Pp. 1152.

Farman, D. Auto-cars. New York: Macmil-
lan & Co. Pp. 249. $1.50.

Hutchinson, H. N. Prehistoric Man and Beast.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp.298. $3.

Keasbey, L. M. The Nicaragua Canal and the
Monroe Doctrine. New York: G. P. Putuame.
Pp. 6-21.

Kelly, Mrs. M. A. B. Short Stories of our Shy
Neighbors. New York: American Book Co. Pp.
214. 50 cents.

Keyes, Charles Rollin. Bibliography of Mis-
souri Geology. Pp. 533.

Kipling, Rudyard. The Seven Seas. New
York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 200. §1.50.

Labor, Twelfth Annual Report of the Connec-
ticut Bureau of. Pp. 315.

Lanessan, J. L. de. Principes de colonisation
(Bibliotheque Scientifique Iniernationale). Paris:
Felix Alcan. Pp. 283. (5 francs.

Library of the World's Best Literature (45
vols.). Vols. I and II. Edited by Churlea Dud-
ley Warner. Now York: The Interuatioiial Soci-
ety. Pp. each, 481.

566

POPULAR SCIE^^CE MONTHLY.

Loomis, Eben J. An Eclipse Party in Africa.
(Illuetrated.) Boston: Roberts Bros. Pp. 218.
g4.50.

Loew, Oscar. The Energy of Living Proto-
plasm. London: Keegan Paul, Trench, Triibner
& Co. Pp. 115.

Mattbews, Charles Thompson. The Story of
Architecture. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 4G8. $3.

New York State Board of Charities, Annual
Report of, for 1805. Pp. 541.

Niewenglowski, G.H. La Photographie et la
Photochimie (Bibliotbeqiie Scientifique Interna-
tionale). Paris: Felix Alcan. Pp. 2»i. 6 francs.

Perkins, Charles A. Outlines of Electricity
and Magnetism. New York.: Henry Holt & Co.
Pp. 277. $1.10.

Photographic Annual for 1897. New York:
The Sco\ull & Adams Co. Pp. 270.

Poulton, Edward B. Charles Darwin and the
Theory of Natural Selection. New York: The
Macmillan Co. Pp. 224. $1.25.

Putnam, George Haven. Books and their
Makers during the Middle Ages. New York: G.
P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. 538. $2.50.

Reprints. Mills. Wesley: Psychic Develop-
ment of Young Animals. Part V (Transactions of
the Royal Society of Canada).— Smith, Hfrlan I.:
Certain Shamanistic Ceremonies among the 0.iib-
was (American Antiquarian, September. 18f^6).—
Trelease, William: Botanical Opportunity (Botan-
ical Gazette, vol. xxii).— Ward, Lester F.: The
Purpose of Sociology (American Joiunal of Soci-
ology, November, ]«96).

Richardson and Pierce. The National Elec-
trical Code. Chicago: 510 Royal Building.
Charles A. Hewitt. Pp. 222.

Ruedebusch, Emil F. The Old and the New
Ideal. Mayville, Wis.: The Author. Pp. 347.
50 cents.

Shinn, Charles Howard. The Story of the
Mine. New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 272.

$1.50.

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Sociol-
ogy. Vol. III. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Pp. 645. $2.

Waldo, Prank. Elementary Meteorology.
New York: American Book Co. Pp.373. $1.50.

Wright, G. F. The Ice Age in North America.
(Fourth edition.) New York: D. Appleton & Co.
Pp.648. $5.

XilQWltuXs jcrt .^jcIjcujc^.

American Man in the Ice Age. — Very im-
portant evidence has been found during tlie
past year of the existence of man in North
America during the Ice age, or at least the
latter part of it. The two chief items, com-
ing from different parts of the country and
established by the evidence of different ob-
servers working independently, are of suffi-
cient force to make the conclusion exceeding-
ly probable. First, we have the discovery by
Mr. Volk, reported to the American Associa-
tion by Prof. Wright and enlarged upon by
Prof. Putnam, of argillite implements in the
undisturbed glacial gravel near Trenton.
The excavations, carried on during two years
by Mr. Volk, in such a manner and through
such formations that mistake was practically
impossible, revealed a disturbed upper layer
of sand and gravel, in which were imple-
ments of flint and argillite, and beneath this
an undisturbed layer, compact and distinctly
stratified, in which only implements of argil-
lite were found. The opinion, reached by
Prof. Wright and Prof. H. Carvill Lewis fif-
teen years ago, assigning this formation to
" a period when the land stood one hundred
and fifty feet below its present level, and
when the cold waters from the melting gla-
cier bore ice rafts which dropped their bowl-

ders," is confirmed by Prof. Salisbury in his
last New Jersey Geological Report, who holds
that "it seems certain that the formation
(Jamesburg) was produced during the sub-
mergence of the area which it covers," and
that it has been only slightly eroded, contra-
ry to the view of Prof. Chamberlin that
the glacial deposit was an older one than
this, and has suffered great erosions. The
fact that only argillite implements were found
in the lower stratum, while both flint and
argillite are found in the layers above, con-
tradicts the theory that they drifted down
through cracks, root holes, etc., for in such
drifting there could have been no selection
of one kind of implements and exclusion of
the other kind. The second piece of evi-
dence was presented by Prof. E. W. Claypole,
who described the finding of neolithic axes
in digging a well in the blue till, twenty feet
below the surface, at New London, Huron
County, Ohio. The account of the workman
who found the implements, given in full, de-
scribing the formations through which he
passed in the digging, and confirmed by
Prof. Claypole's personal inspection of the
premises, is so distinct as apparently to
leave no room for doubt. The circumstan-
tial evidence sustaining his testimony is of

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

567

the most convincing character. The pas-
sage from the yellow till into the blue till,
and the occurrence of occasional strata of
gravel, are characteristic of the glacial de
posits of northern Ohio ; and the axe had
been subjected to oxidizing agencies charac-
teristic of the deeply covered strata of that
immediate vicinity. The Trenton discovery
is interpreted as showing that there was a
clearly marked succession of human occu-
pancy in the Delaware Valley, in which, from
the sole use of argillite implements, a tran-
sition occurred to the use of flint and jas-
per in later times; while in the Ohio dis-
covery the conditions were such as appar-
ently to exclude every supposition but that
of the contemporaneous age of the imple-
ment with the formatiom in which it was
found.

Nature Study in the Chieago Schools. — A

plan for systematic outdoor or field work iu
connection with Nature study, to be carried
on by the pupils of the public schools of
Chicago, has been reported by a committee
of sixty teachers which was appointed m
May, 1896, by the Chicago Institute of Educa-
tion. The features of the plan may perhaps
be best understood by indicating the duties
of the subcommittees which the general
committee has instituted to care for its vari-
ous special features. First is the executive
committee, the purpose of which is to devise
ways and means for carrying the whole into
effect and to second the efforts and work of
the other subcommittees. A committee on
maps will prepare maps of the environs of
Chicago to assist the pupils and teachers in
a systematic study of the country at a con-
venient distance around the city ; these maps
to comprise large maps, each including only
one of the most conspicuous geographo-geo-
logic features, and smaller maps showing de-
tails— the location of the specific features of
interest. The maps already made by Prof.
T. C. Chamberlin, and kindly offered by him,
will be used as the basis of this work. A
committee on syllabi is to prepare printed
outlines and suggestions which will intelli-
gently and economically direct pupils and
teachers in their consideration of the dif-
ferent areas and subjects chosen for study.
The syllabus should not be compiled infor-
mation, but should simply suggest the prob-

lems that are furnished for study by each
area and indicate lines and methods of in-
vestigation. A fourth committee will look
in the libraries after the books that may be
useful to the pupils engaged in Nature study
and available for their use. A committee on
instruction and school exhibits will make
themselves acquainted with the work of Na-
ture study in the schools and with the teach-
ers engaged in it, and make monthly reports
to the committee of sixty of what is actually
being accomplished, and will establish at
some suitable place a permanent exhibit il-
lustrating the character of the work. A
committee of public information will see
that all these things are made known and
kept in mind. A committee on transporta-
tion will try to interest the railroads, etc., in
the scheme, and to secure convenient facili-
ties and privileges for the tranfportation of
pupils and parties going out to fields of Na-
ture study. Arrangements will be made for
frequent trips of small numbers rather than
for larger excursions at longer intervals,
which might give the affair too much the
air of a picnic. Hence it is suggested that
only the pupils of one or two rooms be sent
out at a time, under the immediate super-
vision of their teachers. A committee on
finance and a conference committee are also
instituted for the purpose indicated by their
titles. It is anticipated by the committee of
sixty that, when once under way, this plan
will be expanded to include every depart-
ment of school work.

Spitzhergen Explored. — The principal
geographical work of the Conway expedition
to Spitzbergen was the first crossing of the
island, from Advent Bay to Agardh Bay.
The country traversed was mapped, its geol-
ogy was examined, and collections were made
of its plants and animals. Afterward the
whole expedition sailed northward to the
Seven Islands, and through Kinlopen Strait
and across Olga Strait to near King Charles
Island. An attempt to complete the cir-
cumnavigation of Spitzbergen was blocked
by ice. The highest peak in the island was
ascended. The land animals observed were
the bear, arctic fox, and reindeer, of which
the last are abundant. Birds are individu.
ally numerous, but of few species. All the
twenty- five recorded species were observed,

568

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

except the snowy owl, and one unrecorded
species was seen. The flora is remarkably
uniform, and the influence of height has less
effect upon it than situation and season.
The species found on the mountain summits
in the middle of the summer were the same
as those observed on the coast at the begin-
ning of spring. As the season advanced,
the species first found in flower on the low-
lands and in sheltered valleys were succeeded
by another set ; but at any time it was only
necessary to seek exposed and barren posi-
tions, or to climb above the snow line, to
find the first flora still in flower. Spitz-
bergen offered better opportunities for geo-
logical than for zoological or botanical re-
search. One of the main temptations it
offers the geologist is a magnificent oppor-
tunity for the study of glacial action; for
there, says Mr. J. W. Gregory, of the expe-
dition, we may see marine and land ice
working side by side. The inland glaciers
are very different from those of Switzerland,
especially in having no neve fields. All the
snow that falls on the collecting ground at
the head of the glacier turns to ice on the
spot. Cases of the formation of typical
bowlder clay by land ice were easily found ;
so, likewise, were instances of the uplift of
material through ice. The glaciation of
Spitzbergen was solely due to a local ice
action. No evidence was found of a great
polar ice cap.

Care of the Lawn. — An interesting little
article in Garden and Forest on lawn and
grass infesting insects contains some valu-
able information for the suburban house-
holder. Land cultivated in one kind of
crop for many years successively tends to
attract all the different kinds of insects that
feed upon it. In some localities where
onions were grown in times past with ex-
cellent results the onion maggots now make
it impossible to raise a crop. In many parts
of New York State wheat culture had to be
abandoned for a time because of the rav-
ages of the Hessian fly. Farmers have long
known that after land has been in pasture
for a few years, or has been mowed, the
grass "runs out." They accept this fact,
and act upon it without much questioning
as to just what this running out consists of.
In many cases it is simply because the land

has become so thoroughly infested with
grass-feeding insects that the roots are no
longer able to support a gi'owth. Insects
are not confined to farms or farm lands ;
they occur wherever plants are grown in
cities and villages, and are troublesome in
the back yard, in the kitchen garden, to the
shade trees, and even to the little patch of
lawn in front of the house. The more ex-
tensive the lawn and, in a general way, the
better kept it is, the more attractive it is to in-
sects. Insects of almost all orders are found
in grass lands, and, as there are few grass
plots in which there is not also some clover,
insects infesting this plant are also more or
less abundant. It is always a matter of in-
terest to determine what is causing the in-
jury, but, after all, the important question
is, What can we do to check it? On lawns,
where the object is to keep the grass as long
a time as possible, one of the simplest meas-
ures is frequent cutting and rolHng. This
has a tendency to drive off the lepldopterous
insects that may be among the grass, and
to prevent the laying of eggs. The grass
should be always kept well fed ; but no
barnyard manure should be used : all insects
do very much better in a soil containing
much vegetable matter, and are least at
home where mineral fertilizers are constant-
ly used. Lawns should be fed almost en-
tirely with mineral fertihzers, nitrate of soda
being used to furnish the necessary nitrogen,
and kainit or muriate to furnish the potash.
The fertilizer should be applied just before
a rain. Where land is badly infested and
there is poultry about, it is a good plan to
dig up the sod and turn the chickens in for
a few days. They will, if the soil is turned
over two or three times, pretty thoroughly
dispose of the bugs. A kerosene emulsion
is fatal to the insects and does not injure
the plant roots.

The Advantage of Elective Courses. —

The Hon. T. W. Higginson, referiing in the
recollections of his life which he is now
publishing in the Atlantic Monthly to the
time when he was secretary of the College
Natural History Society at Harvard, observes
that " in looking back on the various reports
written by me for its meetings, it is interest-
ing to see that this wholly voluntary work
had a freshness and vigor beyond any which

FRAGMEXTS OF SCIENCE.

569

I can now trace in any of the ' themes ' of
which Prof. Channing thought so well. There
is no greater mark of the progress of the
university than the expansion of the electives
to include the natural sciences. .My own
omnivoroupness in study was so great that I
did not suffer much from our restricted cur-
riculum ; but there were young men in my
time who would have graduated in these
later days with highest honors in some de-
partment of physics or biology, but who
were then at the very foot of the class, and
lost for life the advantage of early training
in the studies they loved. Akin to this mod-
ern gain and equally unquestionable is the
advantage now enjoyed in the way of original
research. Every year young men of my ac-
quaintance come to me for consultation about
some thesis they are preparing in history or
literature, and they little know the envy with
which they inspire their adviser; that they
should be spared from the old routine to in-
vestigate anything for themselves seems such
a happiness."

Forests and Riyer Flow. — Mr. C. C.

Vermeule observes, in a report of the State
Geological Survey on Forestry in New Jersey,
that in estimating the relation of forests to
the flow of rivers we should not consider the
points of extremely high and extremely low
water, but should look for the beneficial
effects in the stages which prevail during the
months of an ordinary dry period. " The
soil and subsoil of a watershed," he says,
" hold a large amount of water, which is fed
out as drainage, in the form of springs and
seepage, to the stream during dry periods.
It is a matter of common observation that
at such times rivers continue to flow when
the rainfall is much less than the evapora-
tion, and indeed for long periods when there
is no rainfall at all. Anything which tends
to increase the amount of water which is
held in the ground, and to regulate its dis-
charge into the streams, tends to give a
larger flow, and to shorten the periods of
very low water in the streams during
droughts, and with this increased capacity
of the ground to absorb rain come also less
frequent floods. Humus in the forest forms
a great sponge, and of itself holds a large
amount of water, while it and the inequali-
ties caused by tree roots, etc., tend to pre-

vent the water flowing over the surface, and
the roots of the trees provide channels by
which the water percolates into the subsoil
readily. In this way the forest will easily
absorb a larger amount of water than open
lands. A high state of cultivation also has
a tendency to increase the capacity of the
ground to absorb water, because of constant
loosening of the surface and the facilities
provided for ready drainage. In this way
cultivation, like forests, tends to render
floods less frequent, but the effect of the
drainage of the soil is that the ground water
absorbed is fed out more rapidly to the
streams during the early months of a dry
period than is the case in forests ; conse-
quently the ground water is sooner exhausted
and the duration of the low stages of the
rivers during protracted droughts is thereby
lengthened. Barren watersheds offer lesa
capacity for absorption of rainfall. There is
no humus or other matter on the surface to
retain the rain, and the ground becomes hard
and resists free percolation."

Long-Jived Seeds. — M. Casimir de Can-
dolle said, in an account in the British As-
sociation of experiments dealing with latent
life in seeds, that seeds retain their germi-
nating faculty for very long periods of time
if kept dry and protected from all external
influences which would produce changes in
their physiological condition. The question
as to what is their physiological condition
during the period of rest is an interesting
one. It is possible to conceive them as ab-
sorbing oxygen or as giving off carbonic di-
oxide. If the latter process takes place, the
carbon must be supplied from the tissues of
the seed itself. In that case would the seed-
lings produced from these seeds be normal ?
The author had raised perfect seedlings from
seeds known to have been kept more than a
hundred years. A remarkable instance of
the length of time seeds may be preserved
was afforded where, on clearing away heaps
of rubbish which had been undisturbed for
a long time in a silver mine m Greece, the
ground over which the heap had lain became
in a short time covered with a mass of
plants, of which the seeds from which they
sprang could not have been thei'e less than
fifteen hundred years. An Irish agricultur-
ist in the audience said that certain fields

570

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in Ireland, which had long lain undisturbed,
when plowed, produced an extraordinary
crop of corn poppies. He thought that the
physical texture of the soil would probably
account for the long period during which the
seed must have lain dormant. It seemed
that in hard, closely packed soil seeds could
remain in the resting state, but that they
would assume their vital condition as soon
as the soil was loosened. Another gen-
tleman said that this power of seeds to
genninate after a dormant period threw
light on the glacial theory, since the seeds
might possibly have remained buried in the
quiescent state and then have germinated
after the flow of ice had reached farther
south.

Uses of Sawdnst. — The most usual and
extensive use of sawdust is probably as an
absorbent on floors and in spit-boxes, but it
has found many other economical applica-
tions. Compressed with pitch or with its
own intrinsic resin if it be very resinous, it
forms excellent kindling blocks ; it may be
burned as a fuel in specially prepared fire-
places. Fuel blocks are made by compress-
ing it with various substances. An artificial
hard wood is mentioned as formed in this
way. At some factories it is distilled for
purposes of lighting and the ammoniacal by-
products. Oxalic acid is made from it by
the process of Capitaine and Herlings. It
forms a valuable litter for stables, and has
fertilizing qualities of its own. Eggs are
preserved by being carefully packed in it.
With albumin, liquid paste, alum, bichro-
mate of potash, or molasses it makes excel-
lent briquettes ; w ith cement, lime, or gyp-
sum, a material for constructions ; and with
slaked lime, an excellent mortar. Mixed
half and half with sand and clay, a material
for partition walls and ceilings is formed.
Sawdust is, therefore, a very useful mate-
rial.

First Uses of Gunpowder. — The inven-
tion of gunpowder is shown by Mr. Oscar
Guttmann, in his book on the Manufacture
of Explosives, to have been most probably
an evolution. The Greek fire of naphtha,
mentioned by early European and Arabian
writers, ie believed to have been a composi-

tion containing niter, sulphur, and charcoal.
Marcus Grgecus, who wrote in the tenth
century, gives a composition for charging
rockets and crackers closely approaching
that of modem blasting powder. This re-
ceipt is quoted by Albertus Magnus, and
another one, not so clear, is given by Roger
Bacon. None of these writers, however,
speak of the use of such substances in any
way like the firing of projectiles from guns ;
on the contrary, they all describe crackers
and bombs or maroons, and say that these
were discharged into towns from ballistae or
catapults or mangonels for the purpose of
setting fire to them. Mr. Guttmann has
found, however, in the Wardrobe Accounts
of King Edward III of England, an entry
between a. d. 1845 and 1349 giving credit
to one Thomas of Roldeston for the king's
work for his guns, for nine hundred and
twelve pounds of saltpeter and eight hun-
dred and eighty-six pounds of live sulphur.
This seems to confirm the tradition that
guns were used by the English at the battle
of Crecy in 1346. Mr. Guttmann decides
that Berthold Schwartz invented this use of
gunpowder about 1313; if so, Schwartz
must have been very young at the time, or
else have lived to a very great age, for the
date of his death is given as 1384.

French Mnshrooms. — Mushroom - grow-
ing in France is a matter of ancient history,
and the variety of mushrooms is infinite.
The industry originated in a peculiar way.
When the French began to make beds for
their melons they noticed that large numbers
of mushrooms would suddenly appear on the
little mounds. They proved as profitable as
the melons, but a crop could not be depended
on. A number of investigators went to work
to discover methods by which a fairly certain
and regular crop could be obtained. They have
partially succeeded, and the result is an in-
dustry very profitable to all concerned, and a
consumption of mushrooms in France which
is now something enormous. The mush-
room loves a cool, damp place, and light has
a decided effect upon its color, sunlight turn-
ing the surface to a reddish brown. It is
for these reasons that it is usually cultivated
in caves. In the department of the Seine
there are over three thousand of these sub-
terranean truck gardens, most of them de-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

571

serted stone quarries. The people who cul-
tivate them are said to practically live un-
derground, and are called champignonistes.
The beds are made as follows : A dry and
clean place near the mouth of the cave is
selected. The spot is covered with manure,
which is allowed to lie undisturbed for sev-
eral days. The manure is then thoroughly
worked over, all foreign matter being re-
moved, and then beaten and pressed down
into shape. After about a week the process
is repeated and the beds are watered. At
the end of another week the surface will be
brown and fermentation very active. At
this stage the first turning must be repeated,
when the mass is again allowed to rest three
days. It should then be soft to the touch,
but leave no moisture upon the hand. The
temperature requires to be carefully watched,
and the first heat of fermentation must be
allowed to pass off before the blanc or spawn
is sown. After the spawn is planted the
beds are covered with a thin layer of prepared
earth called goptage, kept well watered, and
in about forty days the mushrooms will ap-
pear. A bed will with proper attention pro-
duce a continuous crop for three months.
The seed, spawn, semence, or blanc (myceli-
um) is usually supplied by the market gar-
deners from old melon beds. It is sold in
the shape of a brick or cake, which, if
placed in a dry, airy place, preserves its vi-
tality for several years. The annual crop of
mushrooms in France is valued at about two
million dollars.

Caviare in Rnssia. — In Russia fish plays
a very important part in the economy of life.
On fast days, of which there are so many, it
is an indispensable article for the whole na-
tion, and on other days many of the people,
who are too poor to buy meat, depend on
fish as their only animal food. Russia's
numerous rivers and extensive coast line
make fish a cheap and common food there.
The most valuable products obtained from
fish in Russia are cod-liver oil and caviare ;
the latter coming mainly from the sturgeon.
The United States consul at St. Petersburg
is given as authority for the following de-
scription of the preparation of caviare : The
roe is taken out of the fish, and the egg bags
in which it is inclosed are removed by rub-
bing the mass on a sieve; the eggs pass

through the meshes, while the skin does not.
When fish are in the first stage of decom-
position, the egg skins get so soft that they
can be readily separated from the roe, and
from these the low grades of caviare are
made. The caviare is next placed in brine.
The difference between the so-called fresh
caviare and the ordinary material put up for
keeping or export consists ifl the longer or
shorter time it is allowed to remain in the
brine, and also on the strength of the latter.
Immediately after the eggs have been rubbed
through the sieve, they are put through the
brine, and as soon as they are deprived of the
superfluous salt, are placed in tin jars or
cans and small wooden kegs, and the so-
called fresh caviare, which is high priced, is
ready for market. The cheaper kind is cured
in the brine and then put into linen bags and
pressed. This is called pressed caviare.
During ten months of 1 S95 Russia exported
4,658,448 pounds of pressed and 613,904
pounds of fresh caviare.

Venomous Fishes. — In many seas, espe-
cially those of the tropics, are found fish
provided with a poison apparatus, which con-
sists usually of a spine or spines more or less
erectile in character, and connected with a
poison gland. Prof. James D. Brunton gives an
interesting account of two of these fishes, the
Trachinis draco and Scorpoena scropha. They
are only poisonous as a serpent is poisonous
— i. e., by wounding ; their flesh is good and
wholesome. Although the fish differ widely
in appearance, yet the poison produces the
same effect. The Trachinis draco is a hand-
some fish, not unlike a trout in general
appearance. Upon each of its gill covers is
situated the spine, connected with its poison
gland through a duct formed by the com-
bination of a groove in the spine and a very
thin membrane, which covers the latter
almost to its point. When the spine enters
a resisting body, the membrane is pushed
back, allowing the poisonous secretion free
access to the wound. The gland is small,
with nucleated colorless cells secreting a
transparent fluid. The Scorpoena, on the
other hand, is an unattractive-looking fish,
squat of body and having a large, misshapen
head. It may attain a large size, and is
called by the French fishermen "/e diable."
The special organ in this fish is connected

572

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

with the first three rays of the dorsal fin,
the duct being formed as in Trachinis. There
is also a spine on each gill cover connected
with a poison gland. The effect of a wound
from either of these fish is quite a serious-
matter. At the moment of puncture only
the sharp prick is felt. In a few minutes,
however, the part commences to burn and
itch, and then becomes acutely painful.
These pains increase in violence and extent.
Then a feeling of suffocation is felt, and
pain over the heart. From this time com-
mence those cries of anguish which can al-
ways be recognized as caused by the acutest
torture and fear. The dies are continu-
ous, and beads of sweat stand on the brow.
Flashes of light pass before the eyes, and
the pulse is found to beat intermittently.
Finally, delirium and convulsions supervene,
which may pass on to collapse and death, or
may, after lasting for many hours, gradually
subside, leaving a malaise which is very diffi-
cult to get rid of. The point of puncture soon
shows the results of intense irritation, and
may eventually become gangrenous and ne-
cessitate amputation. The treatment is prac-
tically the same as that for a snake bite.
The poison approaches that of the serpent in
character, being alkaloidal, very quickly de-
composed, and intensely rapid in action. It
is secreted in larger quantities at the spawn-
ing season, and is most active in the male
fish. On coasts where these fish abound it
frequently happens that bathers are poisoned
by stepping on one of them, the Trachinii
being especially fond of concealing them-
selves just under the sand in shallow water.
It would be of interest to know whether Dr.
Calmette's snake-bite antitoxin is also effi-
cient against the venom of these fishes.

Baku. — A very interesting account of
Baku, the great petroleum center in Russia
on the Caspian Sea, is given by W. F. Hume.
Its growth, it seems, has been almost West-
ern in rapidity. What was an insignificant
town of fourteen hundred inhabitants thirty
years ago, is now a flourishing city of over
one hundred thousand souls whose popula-
tion is still rapidly increasing. Two causes
have combined to bring about this rapid
growth : First, its magnificent harbor, and,
secondly and chiefly, its proximity to the
main area of naphtha supply, which already

rivals that of America in productiveness.
Several attempts were made to start refiner-
ies in this district, the first by the brothers
Doubinnin in 1823, but until 1859, when M.
Kokareff founded the Baku Petroleum Com-
pany, none of them were successful. In 1865
the first refinery was established in Baku itself,
and so rapidly did the industry develop, that in
IBYS the town was in danger of becoming en-
tirely absorbed by the distilleries that rose on
every hand, while the black, dense, and acrid
smoke from the naphtha-fed furnaces poi-
soned the atmosphere. The nuisance be-
came such a serious one that the whole in-
dustry was moved outside the town (by an
edict of the Government, which is Russian).
How intolerable it had become, may be in-
ferred from the fa«t that the sole firmg ma-
terial for the furnaces was the refuse oil, and
no smoke-consuming appliances were em-
ployed ; not only the buildings but the whole
surface of the ground became coated with a
thick layer of soot, while the roads were al-
most impassable, owing to pools and ponds of
oil. The city received the name, Tchornoia
Gorod (black town), which still clings to it.
Through the use of a smoke-consuming de-
vice the present factory district is quite free
from soot, and is hence called the white
town. Baku is a commercial center, but
most undesirable for residential purposes.
It is subject to heavy dust storms, rainless-
ness, intense heat, and there is an almost
entire absence of vegetation and fresh water.
The only garden is the so-called Alexander
II, maintained at great expense, the shrubs
and trees being planted in imported soil.
The spot of chief interest about the town is
the plateau of Balachani-Sabountchi, situ-
ated about eight miles to the northeast of
Baku. Here are located the great petroleum
wells. Viewed from a distance the tall, closely
set, truncated towers erected over the wells
look almost like a pine forest. These pyra-
mids consist of a wooden boarded frame-
work, and are easily removable when the
bore becomes exhausted. The Baku district
is so saturated with naphtha oils that there
is an ever-present danger of serious fires
through the ignition of the hydrocarbon
gases, which escape not only from the bores
but through every fissure and cleft in the
soil, and, although every possible precaution
is taken, many disastrous fires have occurred.

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

573

A feature of considerable interest is tlie
ancient temple of Zoroaster, which for
twenty-five hundred years was the sacred
resort for pilgrimage of the Guebers or fire-
worshipers of Asia. Although, owing to its
importance as a commercial center, Baku at
present almost monopolizes the petroleum
industry in southern Russia, it is but one of
many important oil fields in this district.

Life in the Coldest Conntry. — The cold-
est region of the globe, that of Werkojank
in Siberia, where the lowest temperature of
— 90° F. has been obseryed, and the mean
of January is —48° F., is inhabited by about
ten thousand five hundred persons of the
Jakut and Lamut races. In a large part of
the region, according to the representations
of Mr. Sergius Koyalik in the Bulletin of the
Geographical Society of Irkutsk, the air is so
dry and winds are so rare that the intensity
of the cold is not fully realized. Farther
east there are sometimes terrible storms.

In the summer time the temperature some-
times rises to 86° F. in the shade, while it
freezes at night. The latter part of this
season is often marked by copious rains and
extensive inundations. Vegetation is scanty.
There are no trees, only meadows. The peo-
ple hunt fur-bearing animals, fish, and raise
cattle and reindeers. It requires about eight
cows to support a family, four being milked
in the summer and two in the winter. The
cattle are fed hay in the winter, and are al-
lowed to go out occasionally when it is not
too cold, their teats being carefully covered
up with felt. Milk is the principal food, oc-
casionally supplemented with hares, which
are quite abundant. The houses are of wood,
covered with clay, and consist of one room,
in which the people and their animals live
together. The wealthier classes are better
provided with lodging and food. The peo-
ple are very hospitable, but excessively punc-
tilious concerning points of honor, such as
the place at table.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

The great work described by M. P. De-
moutzey in reforestation and the stemming
of mountain torrents in France has been fit-
tingly eulogized by M. Deherain. Not more
than a quarter of the work contemplated has
been accomplished ; but that which has been
done proves what may be done, and that the
solution of the difficult problem has sub-
stantially been reached. The needed work is
not long or very expensive ; it is only to
assist Nature by easy and simple devices,
and keep at it. When this is done, thirty
or forty years will be long enough to pro-
duce great changes in the conditions and ap-
pearance of a devastated and torrent-rent
region. M. Demoutzey's book is illustrated
with plates and photographic views showing
the character of the work accomplished.

Originally the area of natural gas in
Indiana, according to the last report of W.
S. Blatchley, State Geologist, embraced part
or all of seventeen counties lying northeast of
the center of the State, and comprised about
five thousand square miles. On account of
the encroachment of salt water and petroleum
this area has become gradually reduced, until
to- day the main gas field includes an ap-

proximate area of twenty-five hundred square
miles. This, however, it is claimed, is larger
than has ever been possessed by any other
State in the Union. The average initial or rock
pressure of the entire field in 1889 was three
hundred and twenty-five pounds to the square
inch. To-day, according to careful measure-
ments, it is two hundred and thirty pounds
to the square inch over the main field. Hence
it is not doubted that the supply is dimin-
ishing, and that, as there can be no increase
of it, the pressure will decrease more rapidly
in the future than it has done in the past.
The diminution in pressure is most notice-
able in cities like Indianapolis and Richmond,
which receive their supply through pipe lines,
and less so in the cities that lie wholly with-
in the field.

The library of the distinguished chemist
August von Kekule, of the University of
Bonn, lately deceased, is in the hands of
Gustav Fock, Magazingasse 4, Leipzig, for
sale. Seldom has a collection of such value
been put on the market. It was made with
rare zeal and most intelligent judgment ex-
ercised through many years, and is so com-
plete that hardly any work of scientific

574

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

character and standing or scientific journal
is missing from it. It contains about eight-
een thousand volumes, dissertations, pam-
phlets, etc., most of which are bound. Among
the treasures of the library are complete
sets from the beginning up to 1895 or 1896
of twenty -five of the most important scien-
tific (particularly chemical) periodicals —
German, French, Italian, English, and
American — and series of from fifteen to
twenty-five years of six others ; and a rich
collection of alchemistic books published in
former centuries. It seems to us very im-
portant that this collection should be kept
in its integrity ; indeed, it might be regarded
as a scientific misfortune if it should be scat-
tered ; and it is to be hoped that some
learned institution or library, or some bene-
factor of such, may find the way clear to
buy it as a whole.

The researches of M. King concerning
the retention of moisture in the soil, while
they confirm the view that good cultivation
offers an impediment to evaporation, show
that bad harrowing and incomplete stirring
of the soil have a different effect. A har-
rowing which simply scratches the ground
without covering it with loose earth in-
creases evaporation instead of diminishing
it. So a dressing of the soil which extends
to less than three centimetres in depth offers
but a slight impediment to the escape of
water. But a thin coating of dry earth (two
centimetres) suffices to reduce the evapora-
tion considerably, and a stirring of the soil
from five to seven centimetres in depth will
cause the moisture in arable land to be re-
tained. The influence of manures was also
studied. They isolate the surface, expose it
to complete desiccation, and cause suffering
to the crops, particularly in dry weather. The
manure in another season becomes mixed
with the soil, and the inverse effect is ob-
served. The superficial layers gain moisture.

It appears from the studies of H. L.
Russell and John Weinziel of the bacterial
flora of American Cheddar cheese at the
various phases of the ripening process, re-
ported upon at the American Association,
that for the first ten days the number of
microbes diminishes from that contained in
the milk. Soon an enormous development
of organisms of the lactic-acid group be-

gins, while the digesting and gas-producing
bacteria gradually decrease. A period of
decline succeeds this stage, and continues
throughout the life of the cheese until, in the
course of a year or two, it is almost sterile.
The physical changes that mark the cur-
ing of the cheese begin to appear at the
same time with the marked development of
lactic-acid bacteria. The authors hold that
these facts can not be reconciled with the
theory that the digesting bacteria are the
active agents in the curing.

One of the curious animal stories pub-
lished in the London Spectator is of a dog
belonging to an Oxford University man,
which, being excluded from the college at
night according to the rules, is kept at a
house some distance off. Every morning it
comes of its own accord to the owner's
rooms, and is accompanied in its morning
walk by a Cochin-China hen and a kitten
belonging to the man with whom the dog is
left during the night. The hen and kitten,
not being permitted to enter, always leave
the dog at the college (Balliol) gates. An-
other story in the same number of the Spec-
tator relates to a canary bird whose seed
trough was always found empty, though
kept well supplied. One morning, observing
that the bird appeared much excited and
was singing lustily, its master looked and
saw a mouse slowly climb down the cord,
get through the bars of the cage, and, reach-
ing the seed trough, eat the food with great
relish, while the bird continued to sing.
Finally, a cat caught the mouse, and the
canary was never known to sing again.

An odd controversy has been going on
between the Roman Catholic Journal, Volks-
zeitunff, of Cologne, and the Abbe Kiinzle, of
Feldberg, in Tyrol, concerning the authen-
ticity of an alleged signature of the devil.
The Volkszeihmg denies the authenticity, and
insists that it is not possible to procure an
authentic signature of his Satanic Majesty.
The abbe declares, on his side, that the
devil Vitru appeared in October, 1883, in
the lodge room of a Masonic lodge, where
were several eminent men, including M.
Crispi, and announced that a young woman
named Sophia Sapho, who was present, would
on the following September give birth to a
daughter, who would be the grandmother of

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

575

the Antichrist. He even condescended to
sign a minute, which was drawn upon the
spot, attaching to it the title Sanctus Demon
Fritnarms PrcBses — which may mean " Holy
Devil, First President " — with his signature,
consisting of various symbolical signs,
among which were a cock, a fork, etc.
The Volkszeitung declares that it is super-
stition to believe in the authenticity of the
signature, although it credits the possibility
of compacts between the devil and the
wicked. Pere Kiinzle believes that it is
consistent with sound doctrine to hold that
the signature is that of the Prince of Evil.
This is the point of controversy ; and the
scientific may look on, though not troubled
about the matter.

NOTES.

M. Emile Riviere has discovered and ex-
plored for a length of one hundred and twen-
ty-seven metres a prehistoric grotto in the
department of Dordogne, France, the walls
of which are covered with designs cut in the
rock. As some of the figures pass under sta-
lagmites, a great age is predicated for them.

M. Olszewski, having failed to liquefy
helium, calculates that its boiling point is
below —264° C, or at least 20" below that
of hydrogen. Were the temperature of ebul-
lition calculated as a function of the density,
it would be much higher, the density of he-
lium being double that of hydrogen. Both
helium and argon have boiling points much
lower than was supposed — a fact which may
be accounted for by the monatomic structure
of the two substances.

A NUMBER of neolithic axes were described
in the American Association by Prof. E. W.
Claypole, which were found at New London,
Huron County, Ohio, by an intelligent work-
man while digging a well in the blue clay at
twenty feet below the surface. The features
of the formation were those characteristic of
the glacial deposits of northern Ohio. Here-
tofore, numerous flying reT>orts of the dis-
covery of implements in the glacial till have
been made, but this. Prof. Wright says, is
the first instance where the evidence has
seemed in itself altogether convincing and
satisfactory.

Bearing in mind that an estimated aver-
age length of pupilage is frequently made an
important consideration in arranging some of
the points of school management. Prof. C.
M. W^oodward undertook to deduce, from the
comparison of the school statistics of several
cities, the average age at which pupils with-
draw from the public schools to engage in
the active duties of life, or to enter private
schools. He could get full statistics only

from St. Louis, Chicago, and Boston. In
these cities the average age of withdrawal is,
severally, 13-3, 14-5, and 15-9 years.

M. LoEWY, a fully trained astronomer
who has made his reputation along many
lines of research, and who has for many
years belonged to the staff of that institu-
tion, has been selected by the French Gov-
ernment to succeed M. Tisserand as Director
of the French Observatory.

Recent researches by Prof. J. A. Hennig
indicate that pure metals have their electric-
al conductivity immensely increased by in-
tense cold, while alloys experience in the
same circumstances a comparatively small
increase, not more than ten per cent. Prof.
Hennig lays great stress on the value of
these facts, as a means of testing the purity
of a metal, almost rivaling the spectro-
scope in delicacy.

It is said that the German Government
has recently sent Prof. Koch and Dr. Koh-
lenstock, both bacteriological experts, to the
Cape to inquire into the plague of rinder-
pest, and to report what measures are best
to prevent its spreading to the German
Southwest African colonies.

At a meeting held at St George's Hos-
pital (Loni^on) early in December, it was re-
solved " That the present year, being the
centenary of the first successful vaccination,
is an appropriate time to inaugurate a work
of national utility in honor of Edward Jen-
ner." A second resolution to the following
effect was passed : " That a subscription be
set on foot with the view of founding some
institution of a nature to be hereafter deter-
mined in connection with the British Insti-
tute of Preventive Medicine, to be distin-
guished by Jenner's name."

The forest department in India is now
paying its way handsomely and more, the
profits having been going up steadily since
1875. While for the five years ending with
that they stood at eleven lakhs, the profits
for the five years ending in 1895 were fifty-
three lakhs, or just short of five times as
much.

Miss M. Peacock has published a paper
in the magazine Folk Lore on executed
criminals and folk medicine, in which are
collected instances of belief in the medical
effects of the touch of the body of an exe-
cuted criminal.

An account of a number of remarkable
cases of psychical or hypnotic phenomena
which have fallen under his own observation,
or have been investigated by the Society for
Psychical Research, has been prepared by
Dr. R. Osgood Mason, of this city, and is to
be published by Henry Holt & Co., under the
title of Telepathy and Subliminal Research.
It will illustrate a theory held by the author
and some other investigators of a principle

576

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

pervading all the phenomena in question of
a second self, to which the name subliminal
(under the threshold) has been given, that
acts and perceives in manners entirely un-
known to our ordinary everyday conscious-
ness.

The French colony of New Caledonia is
troubled by the depredations of deer, which
midtiply with marvelous rapidity and invade
the plantations, where they do great mis-
chief, even climbing up into the granaries.
A curious feature of the trouble is that the
deer are not native, but are the offsprmg of
a present made to the colony by the Queen
of England. The R(vue Scientifique draws
from this fact a lesson that it is well to be
cautious concerning the gifts of animals we
may bestow upon other countries, and not
make them without advice from experts con-
cerning the conditions and contingencies.
Kabbits in Australia, the mongoose in Ja-
maica, and the New Caledonian deer afford
instances in which such gifts, made with the
best intentions, have resulted disastrously.
It is said that the farmers of the State of
Maine have also suffered from the incursions
of deer since restrictions were placed upon
the hunting of them.

Women are gradually working their way
into the German universities, where a few
have been admitted, not as of right, but as
of favor. Five ladies have up to this time
taken the doctor's degree at Heidelberg.
One of them, an American, made so brilliant
a success that she was at once offered an
appointment at the German zoological sta-
tion near Naples.

The curious fact is noted by Mr. C. C.
Vermeule, in his forest studies of New
Jersey, that less disposition to destroy and
waste the forests is shown by the native
population than by the immigrants from
countries where the control and management
of the forests are, on the whole, superior to
our modern methods.

The gypsies — those of Hungary, at least
— are not all wanderers. Of 274,940 repre-
sentatives of that race enumerated in 1893,
243,432 were described as sedentary, 20,406
as semi-sedentary, and only 8,938 as nomads,
while 2,164 were soldiers or prisoners. All
of them profess one of the various forms of
Christianity of the people among whom they
dwell, and only 82,405 are still able to talk
gypsy dialects. Seventeen thousand of them
are musicians.

Prof. Emil Du Bois-Reymond, of the
University of Berlin, one of the most famous
and many sided German men of science, died,
December 26th, aged seventy-eight, having
been professor at Berlin since 1865. He had
been suffering for several months from gen-
eral debility, but his death, when it came,
was sudden, though not unexpected. He
was one of the earliest and most vigorous

champions of the doctrine that biological
phenomena are governed by physical and
chemical laws, and ranked alongside of Tyn-
dall and Huxley as a lecturer and popularizer
of the natural sciences. Several of his ablest
addresses have been published in the Month-
ly, including the Seven World Problems and
The Limits of Our Knowledge of Nature —
perhaps the two most famous of all. A
sketch of his life and work to that time was
published, with a portrait, in the Popular
Science Monthly (vol. xiii) for July, 1878.

We have learned of the death of the
Hon. Horatio Hale, of Clinton, Ontario, one
of our most distinguished anthropologists,
particularly in the study of aboriginal lan-
guages, but have received no details of the
event. He was the author of several valu-
able articles in the Monthly.

Dr. Henry Tremen, formerly Director of
the Botanic Garden at Peradenyia, Ceylon,
who died October 10th, in his fifty- third
year, wa.s author of the Flora of the County
of Middlesex, England, and, in conjunction
with Prof. Bentley, of a standard work on
Medical Botany ; and had prepared a com-
plete Flora of Ceylon, of which three parts
have appeared.

August Trecul, who recently died in his
seventy-sixth year, a distinguished plant
anatomist and author of important tech-
nical studies in his specialty, spent three
years in Texas, collecting material for the
Paris Museum, and studying the textile
plants used by the Indians.

Captain John Gregory Boorke, of the
United States Cavalry, who died June 8th, be-
sides being a gallant soldier, was an ethnolo-
gist of much repute. He had done much
work in connection with the Bureau of
Ethnology, and spent five years from 1886
in Washington compiling the ethnographic
notes he had collected during his service in
the West, and pursuing collateral studies.
His most famous work was on the Snake
Dance of the Moquis of Arizona, which at-
tracted great attention all over the world
and brought into prominence a branch of
anthropology which had been relatively lit-
tle studied. He was also author of works
on the Medicine-men of the Apaches, and
Scatalogic Rites of All Nations.

Hugo Gylden, Astronomer of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences and Director
of the Observatory of Stockholm, who died
November 9th, ranked with M. Tisserand
as one of the most illustrious mathematical
astronomers on the European continent. He
was the son of Prof. Gylden, of the Uni-
versity of Helsingfors, where he was born in
1841. He was best known by the work
which he had carried on since the death of
Leverrier on the general theory of perturba-
tions, and by his great treatise on the abso
lute orbits of the eight principal planets.

I;-

&

JOHN CHRISTOPHEK GUNDLACH.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.

MARCH, 1897.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

{Lowell Institute Lectures^ 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. EIPLEY, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ; LECTURER IN
ANTHROPO-GEOGEAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

II.— THE SHAPE OF THE HEAD AS A RACIAL TRAIT.

THE shape of the human head — by which we mean the general
proportions of length, breadth, and height, irrespective of
the "bumps" of the phrenologist — is one of the best available
tests of race known. Its value is, at the same time, but imperfectly
appreciated beyond the inner circle of professional anthropology.
Yet it is so simple a phenomenon, both in principle and in prac-
tical application, that it may readily be of use to the traveler and
the not too superficial observer of men. To be sure, widespread
and constant peculiarities of head form are less noticeable in
America, because of the extreme variability of our population,
compounded as it is of all the races of Europe ; but in the Old
World the observant traveler may with a little attention often
detect the racial affinity of a people by this means.

The form of the head is for all racial purposes best measured
by what is technically known as the cephalic index. This is sim-
ply the breadth of the head above the ears expressed in percent-
age of its length from forehead to back. Assuming that this
length is 100, the width is expressed as a fraction of it. As the
head becomes pro*portionately broader — that is, more fully round-
ed, viewed from the top down — this cephalic index increases.
When it rises above 80, the head is called brachycephalic ; when
it falls below 75, the term dolichocephalic is applied to it. In-

VOL. L. 42

578

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

dexes between 75 and 80 are characterized as mesocephalic. The
two skulls in our illustrations, viewed from above, show how
marked the differences in these proportions may be. In very rare
instances the index may run in individuals as low as 62, and it
has been observed as high as 103 — that is to say, the head being
broader than it is long. In our study, which is not of individuals,
but of racial groups, the limits of variation are of course much

DoLiCHo - cephalic:
Index 70

BRACflY - CEPHALIC

Index 57

^fter
Tlcun,

JJfterTlaTiKe

less. We shall seldom find heads in any considerable numbers
exceeding the limits roughly indicated by the two crania in our
illustrations.*

A factor which is of great assistance in the rapid identifica-
tion of racial types is the correlation between the proportions of
the head and the form of the face. In the majority of cases, par-
ticularly in Europe, a relatively broad head is accompanied by a
rounded face, in which the breadth back of the cheek bones is

* Our data are drawn in the main not from the relative proportions of each type of head
occurring within a given area, but from general averages made up by including all head
forms alike. The more scieutific method would be to give the relative proportions of each
type of head ; but that is impossible witli the present data. It is a comforting circum-
stance, however, that the results drawn from the average approximate closely enough to
those obtained in the other way for all general purposes. Oftentimes, for lack of data, it
is impossible to employ the more scientific method for detailed analysis. Anthropologists-
distinguish between the relative proportions of the head measured over all the soft tissues,,
giving the cephalic index, and those taken from the skull divested of all its fleshy parts, in
which latter case the relation of length to breadth is expressed by the so-called cranial
index. Experience has shown that the cephalic generally exceeds the cranial index by twa
units, more or less. In other words, the living head is relatively broader than the cranium
by about three per cent. This would fix our extreme indices on the living head at about
1'i and 89 for averages.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 579

considerable as compared with tlie height from forehead to chin.
Anthropologists make use of this relation to measure the so-
called facial index ; but a lack of uniformity in the mode of tak-
ing measurements has so far prevented extended observations fit
for exact comparison. It is sufficient for our purposes to adopt
the rule, long head, oval face; short head and round face. Our
six types on the next page, arranged in an ascending series of
cephalic indices from 65 to 94, make clearly manifest this relation
between the head and face. In proportion as the heads become
broader back of the temples, the face appears relatively shorter.
The correspondence is not exact, as, for example, in the case of the
brachy cephalic type from Piedmont in Italy, where the face is
rather long for the breadth of the head. This is probably a
case of individual variation, perhaps due to racial intermixture.
Only a few examples of widespread disharmonism, as it is
called, between head and face are known. The Greenland Es-
kimos resemble the Lapp shown in our portrait in squareness of
face, notwithstanding the fact, illustrated in the world map on
page 582, that they are almost the longest- headed race known.
In Europe, where disharmonism is very infrequent among the
living populations, its prevalence in the prehistoric Cro-Magnon
race, will afford us a means of identification of this type wherever
it persists to-day. At times disharmonism arises in mixed types
the product of a cross between a broad and a long headed race,
wherein the one element contributes the head form while the other
persists rather in the facial proportions. Such combinations are
apt to occur among the Swiss, lying as they do at the ethnic cross-
roads of the continent.

An important point to be noted in this connection is that this
shape of the head seems to bear no direct relation to intellectual
power or intelligence. Posterior development of the cranium does
not imply a corresponding backwardness in culture. The broad-
headed races of the earth may not as a whole be quite as deficient
in civilization as some of the long heads, notably the Australians
and Melanesians. On the other hand, the Chinese are conspicu-
ously long-headed, surrounded by the barbarian brachycephalic
Mongol hordes ; and the Eskimos in many respects surpass the
Indians in culture. Dozens of similar contrasts might be given.
Europe offers the best refutation of the statement that the pro-
portions of the head mean anything intellectually. The English,
as our map of Europe will show, are distinctly long-headed.
Measurements on the students at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology are fairly typical for the Anglo-Saxon peoples. Out
of a total of 486 men, four were characterized at one extreme by an
index below 70 ; the upper limit was marked by four men with an
index of 87. The series of heads culminated at an index of 77,

5So

POPULAR SCJENCE MONTHLY.

Basel, Teutonic Type.
Ceplialic Index, 64.

possessed by 72 stu-
dents. This figure
is near the aver-
age for the British
Isles ; and likewise,
it should be added,
for Hottentots and
the wild men of Bor-
neo, as our world
map shows. Com-
parisons have been
instituted in parts
of Europe between
the professional and
uncultured classes
in the same cona-

tions of the head, therefore, we are
measuring merely race, and not in-
telligence in any sense. How fortu-
nate this circumstance is for our
purposes will appear in due time.

Equally unimportant to the an-
thropologist is the absolute size of
the head. It is grievous to contem-
plate the waste of energy when, dur-
ing our civil war, over one million
soldiers had their heads measured
in respect of this absolute size, in
view of the fact that to-day anthro-
pologists deny any considerable sig-
nificance attaching to this charac-
teristic. Popularly,
a large head with
beetling eyebrows
suffices to establish
a man's intellectual
credit; but, like all
other credit, it is
entirely dependent
upon what lies on
deposit elsewhere.
Neither size nor
weight of the brain
seems to be of im-
portance. The long,
narrow heads, as a
rule, have a smaller

Berber, Tunis.
Cephalic Index, 72.

munity. The differences in head
form are as apt to fall one way as
another, depending upon the degree
of racial purity which exists in each
class.* In our study of the propor-

* Dr. Livi finds that in northern Italy the pro-
fessional classes are longer-headed than the peas-
ants ; in the south the opposite rule prevails. The
explanation is that in each case the upper classes
are nearer a mean type for the country, as a re-
sult of greater mobility and ethnic intermixture.
This topic is dis(?ussed by the author in Publica-
tions of the American Statistical Association, vol
V, p. 38 seq.

I O n U T A

MiTu^T v" Ttatv.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

581

capacity than those in which the
breadth is considerable ; but the ex-
ceptions are so common that they
disprove the rule. Among the ear-
liest men whose remains have been
found in Europe, there was no ap-
preciable difference from the present
living populations. In many cases
these prehistoric men even surpassed
the present population in the size of
the head. The peasant and the phi-
losopher can not be distinguished in
this respect. For the same reason the
striking difference between the sexes,
the head of the man being consid-
erably larger than
that of the wom-
an, means nothing
more than avoirdu-
pois ; or rather it
seems merely to be
correlated with the
taller stature and
more massive frame
of the human male.
Turning to the
world map * on the
next page, show-
ing the geographi-
cal distribution of
the several types

Lapp, Scandinavia.
Cephalic Index, 94.

of head form
which we have
described, the
first fact which
impresses it-
self is of the
violent con-
trasts in the
eastern hemi-
sphere be-
tween Europe-
Asia, and the
two southern
continents Af-

PiEDMiiNT, Northern Italy.
Cephalic Index, 91.

rica and Aus-
tralia. Our
two double portraits on pages 584 and
585 of the broad-headed, round-faced
Asiatic and of the dolichocephalic,
long-faced negro will serve as exam-

* This map is constructed primarily from data
on living men, sufficient in amount to eliminate the
effect of chance. Among a host of other authori-
ties special mention should be made of Drs. Boas,
on North America ; 86ren Hansen and Bessels, on
the Eskimos ; von den Stein en, Ten Kate, and Mar-
tin, on South America ; Collignon, Berenger-Feraud,
Deniker, and Laloy, on Africa ; Sommier and Man-
tegazza, on northein, Chantre and Ujfalvy, on west-
ern Asia ; Risley, on India ; Lubbers, Ten Kate,

Ravat?ian Tvrot.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 583

pies of these extremes. In profile the posterior development of
the negro skull should be compared with the bullet- shaped head
of the Asiatic. It will appear that differences in length are as
remarkable as in the breadth. The line of division of head forms
passes east and west just south of the great continental backbone
extending from the Alps to the Himalayas. Thus the primitive
natives of India, the black men of the hill tribes, who are quite
distinct from the Hindu invaders, form part of this southern long-
headed group. The three southern centers of long-headedness
may once have been part of a single continent which occupied
the basin of the Indian Ocean. From the peculiar geographical
localization about this latter center of the lemurs, a species allied
to the monkeys, together with certain other mammals, some natu-
ralists have advocated the theory that such a continent once united
Africa and Australia.* To this hypothetical land mass they have
assigned the name Lemuria. It would be idle to discuss the
theory in this place. Whether such a continent ever existed or
not, the present geographical distribution of long-headedness
points to a common derivation of the African, the Melanesian,
and the Dravidian peoples of India. The phenomena of skin
color and of hair only serve to strengthen the hypothesis.

The extremes in head form here presented between the north
and the south of the eastern hemisphere constitute the mainstay
of the theory that in these places we find the two primary ele-
ments of the human species. Other racial traits only help to
confirm the deduction. The most sudden anthropo- geographical
transition in the world is afforded by the Himalaya mountain
ranges. Happily, we possess pretty detailed information for parts
of this region, especially the Pamir. This " roof of the world " is
of peculiar interest to us as the land to which Max Miiller sought
to trace the Aryan invaders of Europe by a study of the lan-
guages of that continent. It is clearly proved that this greatest
mountain system in the world is at the same time the dividing
line between the extreme types of mankind. It is really the

and Maurel, on Indonesia and the western Pacific. For special details vide Balz, on Japan ;
Man, on the Audamans ; and others. For Africa and Australia the results are certain but
scattered through a number of less extended investigations. Then there is the more general
work of Weisbach, Broca, Pruner Bey, and others. All these have been checked or sup-
plemented by the large collections of observations on the cranium. A complete bibliog-
raphy, as detailed as the one provided for Europe, will be pu):)lished in due tipje. It will
never cease to be a matter of regret that observers like Paulitschke, Elirenreich, Hart-
mann, Fritsch, Finsch, the Sarasin brothers, Stanley, and others, offer no material for work
of this kind. For the location of tribes we have used Gerland's Atlas fiir Volkerkunde.
It is to be hoped that Dr. Boas's map for North America, now ready for publication, may
not long be delayed.

* Ernst Haeckel, in his Anthropogenic, gives an interesting map with a restoration of this
continent as a center of dispersion for mammals.

584

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

human equator of the earth. Such is as it should be ; for while
the greatest extremes of environment are offered between the
steaming plains of the Ganges and the frigid deserts and steppes
of the north, at the same time direct intercourse between the two
regions has been rendered well-nigh impossible by the height of
the mountain chain itself. In each region a peculiar type has de-
veloped without interference from the other. At either end of
the Himalayas proper, where the geographical barriers become
less formidable, and especially wherever we touch the sea, the
extreme sharpness of the human contrasts fails. The Chinese
manifest a tendency toward an intermediate type of head form.

Negbo Type, Central Africa. Cephalic Index, V0±.

Japan shows it even more clearly. From China south the Asi-
atic broad-headedness becomes gradually attenuated among the
Malays, until it either runs abruptly up against the Melanesian
dolichocephalic group or else vanishes among the islanders of the
Pacific. Evidence that in thus extending to the southeast the
Malays have dispossessed or absorbed a more primitive popula-
tion is afforded by the remnants of the negritos. These black
people still exist in some purity in the inaccessible uplands of the
large islands in Malaysia.

Compared with the extreme forms presented in the Old World,
the Americas appear to be quite homogeneous and at the same
time intermediate in type, especially if we except the Eskimo;
for in the western hemisphere among the true Indians the ex-
treme variations of head form are comprised between the cephalic
indices of 85 in British Columbia and Peru, and of 76 on the
southeast coast of Brazil. Probably nine tenths of the native

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

585

tribes of America have average indices between 79 and 83. Many-
American peoples among whom customs of cranial deformation
prevail are able artificially to raise their indices to 90 or even 95 ;
but such monstrosities should be excluded for the present, since
we are studying normal types of man alone. Translated into
words, this means that the American Indians should all be classi-
fied together as, in a sense, a secondary race.

With them we may place the great group of men which in-
habits the islands of the Pacific. These people manifest even
clearer than do the American Indians that they are an intermedi-
ate type. They are, however, more unstable as a race, especially

Kalmuck Gikl, Western Asia. Cephalic Index, 86.

lacking homogeneity. They seem to be compounded of the Asi-
atic and Melanesian primary racial elements in varying propor-
tions. It is the most discouraging place in the world to measure
types of head, because of their extreme variability. We shall
have occasion shortly to compare certain of their characteristics
other than the head form with those of the people of Europe.
This we shall do in the attempt to discover whether these last
are also a secondary race, or whether they are entitled to a differ-
ent place in the human species. We shall then see that one can
not study Europe quite by itself without gaining thereby an en-
tirely false idea of its human history.

Before proceeding to discuss the place which Europe occupies
in our racial series, it may be interesting to point out certain
curious parallelisms between the geographical localization of the
several types of head form and the natural distribution of the

586 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

flora and fauna of the earth. Where, as in Africa and Australia,
there is marked individuality in the lower forms of life, there
is also to be found an extreme type of the human species.
Where, on the other hand, realms, like the Oriental one which
covers southeastern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, have drawn
upon the north and the south alike for both their flora and fauna,
several types of man have also immigrated and crossed with one
another. Often the dividing lines between distinct realms for
varieties of man, animal, and plant coincide quite exactly. The
Sahara Desert, once a sea, and not the present Mediterranean, as
we shall show, divides the true negro from the European, as it
does the Ethiopian zoological and botanical realm from its neigh-
bor. Thus the Berber of Tunis, on page 580, is properly placed in
our series of European types. The Andes, the Rocky Mountains,
and the Himalayas, divide types of all forms of life alike, in-
cluding man. Even that remarkable line which Alfred Russel
Wallace so vividly describes in Island Life, which divides the
truly insular fauna and flora from those of the continent of Asia,
is duplicated among men near by. The sharp division line for
plants and animals between Bali and Lombok we have shown
upon the map. It is but a short distance farther east, between
Timor and Flores, where we suddenly pass from the broad-headed,
straight-haired Asiatic Malay to the long-headed and frizzled
Melanesian savage — to the group which includes the Papuans of
New Guinea and the Australian.*

Following out this study of man in his natural migrations just
as we study the lower animals, it can be shown that the differences
in geographical localization between the human and other forms
of life are merely of degree. The whole matter is reducible at
bottom to terms of physical geography, producing areas of char-
acterization. Where great changes in the environment occur,
where oceans or mountain chains divide, or where river systems
unite geographical areas, we discover corresponding effects upon
the distribution of human as of other animal types. This is not
because the environment has directly generated those peculiari-
ties in each instance ; certainly no such result can be shown in
respect of the head form. It is because the several varieties of
man or other mammals have been able to preserve their individu-
ality through geographical isolation from intermixture, or contra-
riwise, as the case may be, have merged it in a conglomerate whole
compounded of all immigrant types alike. In this sense man in
his physical constitution is almost as much a creature of environ-
ment as the lower orders of life. Even in Europe he has not yet

* A good ethnological map of this region is given in Fr. Ratzel's History of Mankind, i,
p. 144.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 587

wholly cast off the leading strings of physical circumstance, as it
is our purpose ultimately to show.

By this time it will have been observed that the differences in
respect of the head form become strongly noticeable only when
we compare the extremes of our racial series ; in other words,
that while the minor gradations may be real to the calipers and
tape, they are not striking at first glance to the eye. As a matter
of fact, it is the modesty of this physical trait — not forcing itself
conspicuously upon the observer's notice as do differences in the
color of the skin, the facial features, or the bodily stature — which
forms the main basis of its claim to priority as a test of race. Were
the head form as strikingly prominent as these other physical
traits, it would tend to fall a prey to the modifying factor of arti-
ficial selection : that is to say, it would speedily become part and
parcel among a people of a general ideal, either of racial beauty
or of economic fitness, so that the selective choice thereby in-
duced would soon modify the operation of purely natural causes.
However strenuously the biologists may deny validity to this ele-
ment of artificial selection among the lower animals, it certainly
plays a large part in influencing sexual choice among primitive
men and more subtly among us in civilization. Just as soon as a
social group recognizes the possession of certain physical traits
peculiar to itself — that is, as soon as it evolves what Prof, Gid-
dings has aptly termed a " consciousness of kind " — its constant
ondeavor thenceforth is to afford the fullest expression to that
ideal. Thus the nobility in Japan are as much lighter in weight
and more slender in build than their lower classes as the Teutonic
nobility of Great Britain is above the British average. The
Japanese aristocracy in consequence might soon come to consider
its bodily peculiarities as a sign of high birth. That it would
thereafter love, choose, and marry — unconsciously perhaps, but
no less effectively — in conformity with that idea is beyond per-
adventure.

Is there any doubt that where, as in our own Southern States,
two races are socially divided from one another, the superior
would do all in his power to eliminate any traces of physical
similarity to the menial negroes ? Might not the Roman nose,
light hair and eyes, and all those prominent traits which distin-
guished the master from the slave, play an important part in con-
stituting an ideal of beauty which would become highly effective
in the course of time ? So uncultured a people as the natives of
Australia are pleased to term the Europeans, in derision, " toma-
hawk-noses," regarding our primary facial trait as absurd in
its make-up. Even among them the "consciousness of kind"
€an not be denied as an important factor to be dealt with in the
theory of the formation of races.

588 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Such an artificial selection is peculiarly liable to play havoc
with facial features, for which reason these latter are rendered
quite unreliable for purposes of racial identification. And yet,
because they are entirely superficial, they are first noted by the
traveler and used as a basis of classification. A case in point is
offered by the eastern Eskimos, who possess in marked degree not
only the almond eye, so characteristic of the Mongolian peoples,
but also the broad face, high cheek bones, and other features
common among the people of Asia. Yet, notwithstanding this
superficial resemblance, inspection of our world map of the head
form shows that they stand at the farthest remove from the Asi-
atic type. They are even longer-headed than most of the African
negroes. Equally erroneous is it to assume, because the Asiatic
physiognomy is quite common among all the aborigines of the
Americas, even to the tip of Cape Horn, that this constitutes a
powerful argument for a derivation of the American Indian from
the Asiatic stock. We shall have occasion to point out from time
to time the occurrence of local facial types in various parts of
Europe. On the principle we have indicated above, these are
highly interesting as indications of a local sense of individuality,
but they mean but little, so far as racial origin and derivation
are concerned.

Happily for us, racial differences in head form are too slight to
suggest any such social selection as has been suggested ; moreover,
they are generally concealed by the headdress, which assumes
prominence in proportion as we return toward barbarism. Obvi-
ously, a Psyche knot or savage peruke suffices to conceal all slight
natural differences of this kind ; so that Nature is left free to
follow her own bent without interference from man. The color
of skin peculiar to a people may be heightened readily by the use
of a little pigment. Such practices are not infrequent. To mod-
ify the shape of the cranium itself, even supposing any peculiarity
were detected, is quite a different matter. It is far easier to rest
content with a modification of the headdress, which may be ren-
dered socially distinctive by the application of infinite pains and
expense. It is well known that in many parts of the world the
head is artificially deformed by compression during infancy.
This was notably the case in the Americas. Such practices have
obtained and prevail to-day in parts of Europe. For example,
the people about Toulouse in the Pyrenees are accustomed to
distort the head by the application of bandages during the form-
ative period of life. This deformation * is sometimes so extreme

* For a- full account of such deformation, ukle L'Anthropologie, Paris, vol. iv, p. 11,
seq. The illustrations of such deformation, of the processes employed, and of the effect
upon the brain development, are worthy of note.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 589

as to equal the Flathead Indian monstrosities which have been so
often described. Fortunately, these barbarous customs are rare
among the civilized peoples which it is our province to discuss.
Their absence, however, can not be ascribed to inability to modify
the shape of the head ; rather does it seem to be due to the lack
of appreciation that any racial differences exist, which may be
exaggerated for social effect or racial distinction.

Another equally important guarantee that the head form is
primarily the expression of racial differences alone, lies in its im-
munity from all disturbance from physical environment. As will
be shown subsequently, the color of the hair and eyes, and stature
especially, are open to modification by local circumstances ; so
that racial peculiarities are often obscured or entirely reversed
by them. On the other hand, the general proportions of the head
seem to be uninfluenced either by climate, by food supply or
economic status, or by habits of life ; so that they stand as the
clearest exponents which we possess of the permanent hereditary
differences within the human species.* Ranke, of Munich, with
Virchow, the leader of anthropological science in Germany, has
long advocated a theory that there is some natural relation be-
tween broad-headedness and a mountainous habitat. He was
led to this view by the remarkable Alpine localization, which we
shall speedily point out, of the brachycephalic race of Europe.
Our map of the world, with other culminations of this type in
the Himalayan plateau of Asia, in the Rocky Mountains, and the
Andes, may seem to corroborate this view. Nevertheless, all at-
tempts to trace any connection in detail between the head form
and the habitat have utterly failed. For this reason we need not
stop to refute it by citing volumes of evidence to the contrary, as
we might, t Our explanation for this peculiar geographical phe-
nomenon, which ascribes it to a racial selective process alone, is
fully competent to account for the fact. The environment is still
a factor for us of great moment, but its action is merely indirect.
In the present state of our knowledge, then, we seem to be justi-
fied in ruling out environment once and for all as a direct modi-
fier of the shape of the head.

Having disposed of both artificial selection and environment
as possible modifiers of the head form, nothing remains to be
eliminated except the element of chance variation. This last is

* For a curiously old-fashioned statement of the exact opposite of this view, see A. H.
Keane's Ethnology, recently published by Macmillan, pp. 43 and IVY. There is one custom
which is effective. The peoples who use hard cradles or wooden pillows for infants' use
are undoubtedly modified in head form by it. This is a disturbing factor in the Americas,
and to some extent in parts of Europe.

f This theory is best stated in J. Ranke, Beitrage zur physisehen Anthropologie der
Bayern, Part I, chap, ii, p, 75 seq.

590 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

readily counterbalanced by taking so many observations that the
fluctuations above and below the mean neutralize one another.
Variation due to chance alone is no more liable to occur in the
head than in any other part of the body. Rigid scientific meth-
ods are the only safeguard for providing against errors due to it.
It is this necessity of making the basis of observation so broad
that all error due to chance may be eliminated, which constitutes
the main argument for the study of heads in the life rather than
of skulls; for the limit to the number of measurements is deter-
mined by the perseverance and ingenuity of the observer alone,
and not by the size of the museum collection or of the burial
place. It should be added that our portraits have been especially
chosen with a view to the elimination of chance. They will
always, so far as possible, represent types and not individuals, in
the desire to have them stand as illustrations and not merely
pictures. This is a principle which is lamentably neglected in
many books on anthropology ; to lose sight of it is to prostitute
science in the interest of popularity.

The most conspicuous feature of our map of cephalic index for
western Europe * is that here within a limited area all the ex-
tremes of head form known to the human race are crowded to-
gether. In other words, the so-called white race of Europe is not
physically a uniformly intermediate type in the proportions of
the head between the brachycephaiic Asiatics and the long-head-
ed negroes of Africa. A few years ago it was believed that this
was true. More recently, detailed research has revealed hitherto
unsuspected limits of variation. In the high Alps of northwest-
ern Italy are communes with an average index of 89, an extreme of
round-headedness not equaled anywhere else in the world save in
the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor. A typical Italian from
this district, chosen for me by Dr. Livi, of Rome, from among
three regiments of recruits, is shown on page 581. In profile the
back of the head is even less developed than that of the Kal-
muck girl in our illustration. This type of head prevails all
through the Alps, quite irrespective of political frontiers. These
superficial boundaries are indicated in white lines upon the
map to show their independence of racial limits. There is no
essential difference in head form between the Bavarians and

* Complete technical details liy the author as to the mode of construction, with full
references for each portion of the continent, will be found in L' Anthropologic, Paris, vol. vii,
pp. 513 8eq. Since the above map was drawn, certain minor changes have been made, in
conformity with suggestions received from Eui-opean experts. They all appear in the map
in L' Anthropologic to which reference is here made ; most of them were so unimportant
for present purposes that this map was left unchanged. The only serious modification
would be to make Silesia much darker, as I believe it to be less Teutonized than this map
indicates.

CEPHALIC INDEX

The deep shades indicate broad and rela-
tively short heads — the Keito- Slavic stock

Figurei indic3i.e the
breaujth of living heads
in percentage of the
total length

WZRilnt.

592 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the Italian Piedmontese, or between the French Savoyards and
Tyrolese.

From what has been said, it will appear that these Alpine
populations in purity exceed any known tribes of central Asia in
the breadth of their heads. Yet within three hundred miles, as
the crow flies, in the island of Corsica, are communes with an
average cephalic index of 73. These mountaineers of inland Cor-
sica are thus as long-headed as any tribe of Australians, the wood
Veddahs of Ceylon, or any African negroes of which we have ex-
tended observations. A little way farther to the north there are
other populations in Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia which
are almost as widely different from the Alpine peoples in the pro-
portions of the head as are the Corsicans. An example of extreme
individual variation downward is shown in our illustrated Teu-
tonic type, which has a lower index than any recorded for the
longest-headed primitive races known. Nor is this all. Pass to
northern Scandinavia, and we find among the Lapps again, one
of the broadest-headed peoples of the earth, of a type shown in
our series of portraits.

So remarkably sudden are these transitions that one is tempted
at first to regard them as the result of chance. Further examina-
tion is needed to show that it must be due to law. Proof of this
is offered by the map itself ; for it indicates a uniform gradation
of head form from several specific centers of distribution outward.
Consider Italy, for example, where over three hundred thousand
individuals, from every little hamlet, have been measured in de-
tail. The transition from north to south is perfectly consistent.
The people of the extreme south are like the Tunisian shown in
our portrait ; while at the knee of Italy, halfway up, the mean
type in our series of illustrations stands between the two geo-
graphical extremes in its proper place. So it is all over the con-
tinent. Each detailed research is a check on its neighbor. There
is no escape from the conclusion that we have to do with law.

Two distinct races of man, measured by the head form alone,
are to be found within the confines of this little continent. One
occupies the heart of western Europe as an outpost of the great
racial type which covers all Asia and most of eastern Europe as
well. The other, to which we as Anglo-Saxons owe allegiance,
seems to hang upon the outskirts of Europe, intrenched in purity
in the islands and peninsulas alone. Northern Africa, as we have
already observed, is to be classed with these. Furthermore, this
long-headed type appears to be aggregated about two distinct
centers of distribution— in the north and south respectively. In
the next paper we shall show that these two centers of long-
headedness are again divided from one another in respect of both
color of hair and eyes and stature. From the final combination

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 593

of all these bodily characteristics we discover that in reality in
Europe we have to do with three physical types and not two.
Thus we reject at once that old classification in our geographies
of all the peoples of Europe under a single title of the white,
the Indo- Germanic, or Aryan race. Europe, instead of being a
monotonous entity, is a most variegated patchwork of physical
types. Each has a history of its own, to be worked out from a
study of the living men. Upon the combination of these racial
types in varying proportions one with another the superstructure
of nationality has been raised.

Among other points illustrated by our map of Europe is the
phenomenon paralleled in general zoology, that the extreme or
pure type is generally to be found in regions of marked geograph-
ical individuality. Such areas of characterization occur, for ex-
ample, in the Alpine valleys, in Corsica and Sardinia, somewhat
less so in Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia. The British Isles, par-
ticularly Ireland, at least until the full development of the art
of navigation, afforded also a good example of a similar area of
characterization. Europe has always been remarkable among
continents by reason of its "much-divided" geography. From
Strabo to Montesquieu political geographers have called attention
to the advantage which this subdivision has afforded to man.
They have pointed to the smooth outlines of the African conti-
nent, for example, to its structural monotony, and to the lack of
geographical protection enjoyed by its social and political groups.
The principle which they invoked appears to hold true in respect
of race as well as of politics. Africa is as uniform racially as
Europe is heterogeneous.

Pure types physically are always to be found outside the great
geographical meeting places. The latter, such as the garden of
France, the valleys of the Po, the Rhine, and the Danube, have
always been areas of conflict. Competition, the opposite of isola-
tion, in these places is the rule, so that progress which depends
upon the stress of rivalry has followed as a matter of course.
There are places where too much of this healthy competition has
completely broken the mould of nationality, as in Sicily, so ably
pictured by the late Mr. Freeman. It is only within certain lim-
its that struggle and conflict make for an advance forward or
upward. Ethnically, however, this implies a variety of physical
types in contact, from which by natural selection the one best
fitted for survival may persist. This means ultimately the ex-
tinction of extreme types and the supersession of them by medi-
ocrity. In other words, applying these principles to the present
case, it implies the blending of the long and the narrow heads
and the substitution of one of medium breadth. The same causes,
then, which conduce socially and politically to progress have as

VOL. L. 43

594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

an ethnic result mediocrity of type. The individuality of the
Bingle man is merged in that of the social group. In fine, con-
trast of race is swallowed up in nationality. This process has as
yet only begun in western Europe. In the so-called upper classes
it has proceeded far, as we shall see. We shall, in due course of
time, have to trace social forces now at work which insure its
further prosecution not only among the leaders of the people, but
among the masses as well. The process will be completed in that
far-distant day when the conception of common humanity shall
replace the narrower one of nationality ; then there will be per-
haps not two varieties of head form in Europe, but a great com-
mon mean covering the whole continent. The turning of swords
into plowshares will contribute greatly to this end. Modern in-
dustrial life with its incident migrations of population does more
to upset racial purity than a hundred military campaigns or con-
quests. Did it not at the same time invoke commercial rivalries
and build up national barriers against intercourse, we might hope
to see this amalgamation completed in a conceivable time.

EXPERIMENTS ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL,

MADE UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE

COMMITTEE OF FIFTY.

By C. F. HODGE, Pn. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOK OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLABK UNIVEESITY.

THE following is Dr. J. S. Billings's statement on behalf of
the committee : " This paper contains an account of some
research work which has been done for the Committee of Fifty for
the Investigation of the Liquor Problem, and it is to be regarded
as merely a preliminary report to be considered in the final con-
clusions which may be reached in the future by the Committee of
Fifty itself."

On my own part I desire to express to the Committee of Fifty
my deep sense of appreciation for the support which has made the
following researches possible. To the members of the Subcom-
mittee on Physiology, Drs. Bowditch, Billings, Chittenden, and
Welch, my especial thanks are due for hearty and sustained
interest and prompt assistance at every turn of the investigation.
Under their stimulus and guidance it has been throughout the
keenest pleasure to work, even upon a problem so beset with preju-
dices that the slightest contamination of the atmosphere of pure
science, in which such work, if ever effectual, must be done,
would have rendered even the will to undertake it impossible.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL. 595

The general point of view may be indicated in a few words.
For centuries opinion has been divided on the subject, and the
human experiment has been repeated, generation after genera-
tion, by individuals and on a national scale. But man is the
most highly complex, most variable, most adaptable of animals,
and the human problem has proved itself too complicated for
scientific interpretation. Some men fail with alcohol, others fail
as completely without it, and the same is true of success. Even
"statistics relating to inebriety are too confusing," we find ad-
mitted in the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.*

Some may contend that the alcohol problem does not depend
upon the science of physiology for its solution ; but rather upon
the moral, religious, or political functions of society. It should
be remembered, however, that physiology is a broad science,
whose ultimate aim is no less than to discover the laws and
conditions under which may be developed the highest possible
typo of man. By the intimate correlations between body and
mind, and under the recent outgrowths of the mother science into
modern psychology and neurology, physiology would cover the
whole man, body, mind, and soul. And it would have not only a
healthy soul and a sound mind in a sound body, but the most
perfect soul, mind, and body which can be developed under phys-
ical conditions. Thus problems touching human welfare, even
questions of ethics and social science, must ever draw important
factors for their solutions from this science which is fundamental
to the conditions and processes of life itself.

Extreme difficulty in solving such complicated equations is in
part accountable for our lack of definite knowledge. But even
this, it seems to me, does not constitute the most serious hin-
drance to the progress of science. In this country our greatest
obstacle consists in a deficient notion as to what constitutes a
scientific answer to a question. We are far too prone to say we
"know" a thing is "true," when we lack sufficient evidence to
convince an unprejudiced person of the fact. We mean simply
that we " think," or we " guess," or we have a strong " prejudice "
that such and such is the fact. Affirmation and prejudice are
promptly met by contra-affirmation and prejudice, and with peo-
ple who are satisfied with this sori of procedure scientific advance
is at a standstill. We are too slow to realize that all progress in
knowledge depends upon accumulation of wholly impartial evi-
dence. Lacking this, no amount of legislating and voting and
vociferating, can lay a smallest gravel corn of truth in the road-
bed of human progress. As Bacon said so long ago, concerning
the man who loses sight of this distinction and clothes his own

* Kinney, C. Spencer, M. D. The Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, 1896, p. 223.

596 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

beliefs with tlie reality of fact, " He shall exchange things for
words, reason for insanity, the world for a fable, and shall be
unable to interpret."

To meet difficulties connected with the intricacies and com-
plexities of the problem, the method of physiology is clearly to
reduce the equations to their simplest possible terms. By study-
ing the physiology of alcohol in a number of simpler organisms,
sufiBcient light may be thrown on the human experiment to ren-
der its interpretation possible. A unicellular organism is mil-
lions times less complicated than a human body ; still, fundamental
activities, nutrition, excretion, growth, reproduction, appear simi-
lar in both. So, too, the lower animals are proportionally simpler
and also approach man physiologically more closely for purposes
of comparison. Their conditions of life, too, can be made far
more nearly comparable than it would be possible to either find
or procure with men. With man, even after death, the micro-
scopical study of the tissues to demonstrate the influence of alco-
hol upon them is so complicated by conditions of disease and
post-mortem changes that no wholly trustworthy evidence is
obtainable.* On the other hand, animals may be killed in known
conditions of health, and their tissues immediately prepared for
examination ; and in this way results have already been obtained
by Berkley,! Dehio, X Stewart,* and others, which have materially
assisted in the interpretation of uncertain findings in human
material.

Such a series of experiments should clearly be made on a
number of different organisms, both plants and animals, in order
that our basis for comparison and judgment may be sufificiently
broad to enable us to distinguish between the constant and gen-
eral effects of alcohol from those which are accidental or excep-
tional. And observations should be continued long enough to
bring out clearly any more remote effects, especially those relating
to heredity, of great importance, and about which much has been
said but practically nothing is known.

It is intended in the following to outline the results of three
series of experiments. Although necessarily incomplete in many
ways, they may serve to demonstrate methods of research, and to
show some of the possibilities of further work.

I. Experiments upon the Growth of Yeast. — The yeast
plant, when sown in a nutrient solution, discloses an almost

* Berkley, H. J. The Effects of Alcohol on the Central Nervous System. Quarterly
Journal of Inebriety, 1896, p. 109.

f Ibid. Studies on the Lesions produced by the Action of Certain Poisons on the
Cortical Nerve Cell. I. Alcohol. Brain, 1895, p. 473.

X Dehio, H. Centralblatt fiir Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatric, 1895.

* Stewart, C. C. Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1896.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

597

incredible power of growth and reproduction. This growth is
wholly controlled by external conditions and by the composition
of the nutrient medium. Probably no form of life approaches in
power of rapid reproduction these minutest plants, the bacteria
and yeasts, and none are probably more delicately responsive to
varying conditions of life.

Yeast is able to grow until, by decomposition of sugar, its
medium comes to contain fourteen per cent * of common alcohol.
At this point, no matter how much sugar and other nutriment
remains, further growth is impossible.

Now, of especial interest to the physiology of nutrition, and
the influence upon it of waste products generally, is the question,

»2 00

lOOO -

8 00 -

6 00

4 00 -

2 00 -

0^ NORMAL,
/(ooo i. ALCOHOL,

y

-*t

Houf?s

growth of yeast..
Fig. 1.

What effect have very minute quantities of alcohol on the growth
of yeast ?

Fig. 1 represents to the eye, in the diagram to the left, the four
possible kinds of action in the four lines diverging from the point
marked " 0 per cent." If no slowing effect is present until the
poison limit, fourteen per cent, is reached, the line marked
"normal" should be continued out until directly over a point
corresponding to fourteen per cent strength of solution, and then
should drop perpendicularly to the zero point of growth on the
base line. As a matter of fact, Fliigge states that growth is
slowed with twelve per cent and stopped at fourteen per cent.
If this be true, instead of dropping vertically, it would fall a
little obliquely from twelve per cent to fourteen per cent. This

* Fliigge, C. Die Mikroorganismen. Leipsic, 1886, p. 482.

598

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would mean that up to a very liigh limit of concentration alcohol
is absolutely harmless, that at a certain point it becomes suddenly
toxic, and that slight increase beyond this concentration worked
very rapidly to bring growth to a standstill.

A second possibility would be represented by a straight line,
"Z," dotted line, falling uniformly from zero per cent to fourteen

r

4 Hours
I Count,'

22
41

Of^ 2061

ALCOHOL.

%oX^

69"

28 45 51 72

III IV V VI

GROWTH OF^ YEAST.

Fig. 2.— G. C, curve of a jrenmctrical progression increasing at the rate of yeast growth in the
normal cultures for tlie first twenty-four hours. The numbers at the right indicate the
number of torulcz found in a cubic millimetre of the difTcrcnt cultures.

per cent. This would indicate that the effect of the presence of
alcohol in the culture medium upon yeast growth was a purely
mechanical effect, a matter of friction, a clogging of the molecules,
as it were. This would signify, the less alcohol the better, but
that a small quantity has a comparatively slight effect, and that
probably no harm is done in the way of changing the chemical
reactions concerned in the growth processes of the yeast plant.

A third possibility, represented by dotted line "Y" in the
figure, is in line with an idea not infrequently carried into prac-
tice, viz., that a little alcohol increases, " stimulates," activity, a
larger quantity interferes with it. If this were found to be the
case, the important matter to determine would be at what point
of concentration alcohol ceases to be beneficial.

The heavy line, " M," represents the fourth possibility, viz.,
that minute amounts of alcohol have relatively a much greater
retarding effect upon the growth of yeast than larger amounts.
The line is plotted from the results of a series of experiments,
of which a different expression is given in the diagram to the right
in the figure. One thousandth of one per cent is seen to cause

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL, 599

a considerable retardation of growth, over half as much as ten
times the amount in one hundredth of one per cent, and about
one fifth as much as the retardation caused by one hundred times
as much alcohol, one tenth of one per cent. That is to say, we
find a truly j)hysiological curve, of practically the same form as
that obtained from the fatigue of a muscle fiber or a nerve
cell. This is not so remarkable, since in all such experiments
we are touching, in final analysis, the vital activities of living
cells, and in muscle or nerve one of the prime factors in causa-
tion of fatigue is accumulation of the waste products of active
metabolism.

In the right-hand diagram in Fig. 1 and in Fig. 2 the same fact
is expressed as a race — a competitive effort — in which the culture
containing no alcohol is seen to win, the others falling behind.
In general, retardation of growth is directly proportional to
amount of alcohol. This is the unmistakable result of the entire
series of experiments, fifteen in number. In Fig. 2, however, it
may be noted that the cultures containing one per cent have
grown somewhat better than those of 01 and O'Ol per cent. This
is clearly due to difiiculties in uniformly " seeding" the cultures,
and when these were overcome perfectly consistent results, as
seen in Fig. }, were obtained.*

Too great caution can not be used in interpreting the above
results. While the physiology of the yeast cell and that of the
cells of the human body may be at ground similar, in certain par-
ticulars they may be widely different. The yeast cell has not the
power to oxidize alcohol. The cells of the body, or some of them
at least, are most certainly able to bring about this reaction.
Furthermore, if we had experimented with Mycoderma aceti — the
normal food of which alcohol seems to be — we should have doubt-
less obtained a diametrically opposite result.

On the other hand, ethyl alcohol is found in minute qua.ntities
in the fresh tissues of man and animals where no alcohol has been
given as a constant normal constituent. It has been distilled off
from the brain, muscle, and liver, f Whether it exists as a food
in process of transformation or as a waste product, as in case of
the yeast cell ; whether it is a waste product from the activity of

* S. cerevuice, obtained in pure culture from Fleischmann's compressed yeast, was used
throughout these experiments. The chief difficulty encountered consisted in breaking
up the large clusters, composed of hundreds of torulae, so as to get a uniform seeding sus-
pension. This was finally done by churning the culture from which it was desired to seed
with a wad of sterilized absorbent cotton. The liquid squeezed out of the cotton contained
only single torulae. The seeding was always done from fresh stock solution — i, e., it was
free from alcohol.

f Kajewski. Pfliiger's Archiv, Bd. ii, S. 122. Hoppe-Seyler. Handbuch der cheraischen
Analyse, Berlin, 1893, S. 40 and 41.

6oo

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

some cells and a food for others, it is impossible to say. While
these questions remain open, it might be safe to assume, that if a
food, the tissues are possibly, in conditions of health, able to pro-
duce all they need of it. If it is mainly a waste product, they
should not be burdened with any more of it than necessary.

II. Experiments upon Kittens were broken in upon and
complicated by accidents and disease to such an extent that we
shall pass them by with a brief mention.

During April of 1895 four kittens were obtained,* the two
males, which we will call 1 and 2, from the same litter ; the two

1 895

.male:

.FEMALE...,

GROWTH OF KITTENS.

Fig. 3.

2,4,6,6^, NORMAL.
1. 3, ALCOHOLIC.

females, 3 and 4, from an unrelated litter. The males were born
April 2d ; the females, March 18th.

From April 23d to 29th they were weighed daily and studied
as to health, liveliness, and general comparability. All four
purred and played normally, but it was evident that 1 and 3 were
considerably more vigorous and active. Both 3 and 4 had sore
eyes — a rather serious indication of poor nutrition. Nevertheless,
these were the most nearly comparable two pairs of kittens avail-
able at the time. Some doubts were entertained, but it was
thought possible to bring 2 and 4 up to a comparable health level.
Accordingly, allowing this much handicap to alcohol, it was de-
cided to take the vigorous pair (1 and 3) for alcohol, and keep 2
and 4 for normal controls.

Alcohol, chemically pure, \ was now given, beginning with a
dose of 1'3 gramme per kilogramme of body weight April 29th.

* Given by their respective owners with full knowledge as to the experiment to which
they were to be submitted. f Tested by evaporation at room temperature.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

601

This dose caused scarcely appreciable intoxication, and was accord-
ingly increased,* At about two grammes per kilogramme ligbt
intoxication with tendency to drowsiness became manifest. The
dose was still further increased until May 7th to 0th, when it had
reached 3"6 grammes per kilogramme. This produced character-
istic symj^toms of intoxication — restlessness, incoordination of
muscles, which began with weakness and paralysis of the hind
legs and worked forward. Sleep followed in from twenty to
twenty-five minutes, and lasted from two to three hours. It
was deep and quiet, but both kittens could be awakened without
difficulty.

During this time both purring and playfulness had been rap-
idly disappearing from the lives of the alcoholic kittens, and by
May 9th both had become obliterated, and both kittens were pic-
tures of demure and forlorn sadness. May 10th the alcoholics had
severe colds, with discharge of mucus from the eyes and nose.
Alcohol was discontinued until recovery could be effected, but
this proved impossible. Severe catarrh of the nasal passages
with conjunctivitis set in, the catarrh proving incurable and be-
coming chronic.

The chief value of the experiment thus far is to be found in the
possession of control normal animals. None of these had been

Fig. 4. — Kittens, November 27, 1895 : 3, alcohol-diseased ; 4, normal.

similarly affected. In fact, both 2 and 4 had improved greatly
under good treatment and healthful conditions. It seems thus
safe to conclude that alcohol, as administered, caused a sudden and
general breakdown in the two kittens ; but, while seen thus clearly

* It was first attempted to have the kittens take the alcohol mixed with warm milk.
On their refusal to be thus imposed upon, it was given, diluted to twenty and thirty per
cent, by stomach pump, always after meals, the normals being given an equal amount of
water in the same manner.
VOL, L — 44

6o2

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as a cause at the beginning, there is no way of determining
how long it continued to act. Hence, from this point on, the ex-
periment becomes mainly a history of disease. Practically it is
an equation in which we do not know whether there are one or
two unknown quantities, hence absolutely unamenable to solution.
In Fig. 3 is graphically expressed the relations of growth for
the four kittens above described, and also for several other normal
kittens of about the same ages that I happened to have at the
time. It is seen that the alcoholic- diseased animals are dwarfed
in growth to sixty-three per cent and thirty-nine per cent re-
spectively as compared with their normal controls (see also Fig.
4). Some might be inclined to find in this evidence of the " stunt-
ing" influence of alcohol when given to growing animals which
Bevan Lewis* alludes to as "a well-known fact." This I was

strongly inclined to do at
first, but we are not war-
ranted in doing so from the
evidence in hand. In the
autumn one of my normal
kittens (not one of the four)
contracted catarrh, and her
growth was interrupted for
a time in a similar way.
Hence we are obliged to
leave this important point
entirely in abeyance for
the present.

On the side of their psy-
chological development the
falling out of purring and play are matters of the most serious
import. Soon after beginning alcohol my notes abound in such
expressions as the following : " 1 and 3 dosing, 2, 4, 0 (another kit-
ten), all playing actively" (see Fig. 5). Along with this all the
instincts characteristic of healthy kittens, care of coat, cleanli-
ness, etc., were almost wholly annulled. Fear of dogs, hunting
and game instincts, were completely lost. This psychic collapse,
developing so suddenly as it did, would seem to be directly at-
tributable to the influence of alcohol. At any rate, nothing of
the sort approaching it in either kind or degree was manifested
in the normal kittens during any of their periods of disease. It
will be wise to bear these points in mind until further confirma-
tion and further analysis of the experiment with kittens are pos-
sible. Among the animals thus far experimented with the cat
seems to be by far the most sensitive to the influence of alcohol.

Fig. 5. — Alci>liol-diseased kittens, 1 and 3, June 4,
1895: characteristic attitude. When the photo-
graph was taken, 5 p. m., all the normal kittens
were playing actively.

* W. Bevan Lewis. A Text-Book of Mental Diseases. London, 1889, p. 306.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 603

From subsequent details of tlie experiment, a highly sensa-
tional story might be manufactured, but that could have abso-
lutely no scientific value. We must eschew all such temptations,
and never allow the thought to be dimmed that Science has a mis-
sion to perform in the world as great as the universe and as
sacred as truth. She is in duty bound to yield all benefits of
doubt ; and she commits moral and intellectual suicide, falling
to the level of the common " insanity " described by Lord Bacon,
when she insists upon a single iota not supported by " evidence."

[7*0 he continued.'\

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION.

By DAVID A. WELLS, LL.D., D.C.L.,

CORRESPONDANT DE L'iNSTITCT DE FRANCE, ETC.

VII.— RULES OR MAXIMS ESSENTIAL TO AN ADMINISTRATION OF
RIGHTFUL TAXATION UNDER A CONSTITUTIONAL OR FREE
GOVERNMENT.

A PRESENTATION and discussion of the rules or maxims
of administration which are in conformity with the forego-
ing exposition and discussion of the origin and sphere of taxa-
tion, and the limitations on the exercise of this great power which
are essential to the existence and continuance of a constitutional
and free government, are next in order for the proper develop-
ment and understanding of the general subject under considera-
tion. Under such a government — one happily characterized and
defined by President Lincoln as " of the people, by the people,
and for the people" — the following rules or maxims governing
the administration of its lawful taxation would seem to be almost
in the nature of economic axioms :

First. No tax sJioidd he imposed hy a state or government ex-
cept by the consent of the people from, luhom it is to be collected,
given either directly or by their authorized representatives in Con-
gress, Legislature, or Parliament assembled.

Second. All taxes or enforced contributions levied by the state
in virtue of its sovereignty should be solely {singly) and exclusively
for public purposes.

Third. The sphere of taxation should be limited to persons,
property, and business exclusively within the territorial jurisdic-
tion of the taxing power.

Fourth. Taxes shoidd be reasonable, regidar, and not arbi-
trary as respects method, time, and place of assessment and pay-
ment, and, above all, proportional.

Fifth. Taxation shoidd not be employed as an agency or for

6o4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the purpose of enforcing morality, or as an instrumentality for
correction or punishment.

Sixth. No tax should he levied the character and extent of
which offer, as human nature is generally constituted, a greater
inducement to the taxpayer to evade rather than pay.

With a view of determining whether the above six proposi-
tions are so far fundamental and indisputable as to warrant their
characterization as " economic axioms/' attention is next asked to
the following summary of reasons, or evidence to that effect,
which may be separately adduced in respect to each one of them,
commencing with the first — that no tax shoidd be imposed by a
state or government except by the consent of the people from whom
it is to be collected, given either directly or by their authorized rep-
resentatives in Congress, Legislature, or Parliament assembled.
"The right is then wedded to the power, and representation and
taxation become correlative." {Miller, Justice S. F., on the Con-
stitution.)

It requires no great amount of thought to see that the princi-
ple involved in this proposition is not only an essential feature of
every just system of taxation, but also the primary and essential
condition of the existence of every system of free or popular
government. If this is not at once apparent," the following brief
historical retrospect ought to make it so :

The first great effort recorded in English history for its recog-
nition and establishment as a fundamental principle of govern-
ment was made by the English barons in 1215, in their notable
struggle with King John, and resulted in the incorporation in the
Great Charter (Magna Charta) of England of a provision which
substantially forbade the king from imposing any taxes, except by
permission of the General Council of the nation, duly summoned
under writs regularly issued.* And it is interesting to note, as
showing the broad spirit of generous patriotism that animated
these rough old barons in their contest with King John, that they
stipulated in the Magna Charta that they extorted from him that
every limitation imposed in it for their protection upon the feudal
rights of the king should be also imposed upon their rights as
mesne lords (i. e., lords superior in the second degree) in favor of
the undertenants who held of them.

In the many confirmations of the Great Charter in the ensu-
ing reigns of Henry III and Edward I, its vital clauses as to

* The exact language of the charter was: "No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our
kingdom unless by the general course of the nation, except for ransoming our person [i. e.,
the king], making our eldest son a knight, and once for marrying our eldest daughter ;
and for these there shall be taken a reasonable aid" ; the barons in turn agreeing that " we
will not for the future grant to any one that he may take aid of his own free tenants,"
. other than the aids above stated.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 605

taxation and the National Council were, however, invariably and
intentionally omitted ; and the latter king so reasserted the taxing
power of the crown as to alarm the nation and occasion a revolu-
tion (Barons' War, 1297), which for many subsequent years pre-
vented any like assumption on the part of Edward's successors.
Under the reign of Charles I the authority to levy and collect
taxes in England was, however, again claimed— as it was in all
the other European states — to be vested exclusively in the king;
and on the trial of John Hampden, in 1636, for his refusal to pay
a tax known as " ship money," arbitrarily levied by the king for
the maintenance of a naval force, this was the position taken by
the crown lawyers representing the prosecution and accepted as
valid by the judges in their verdict, the attprney general using
in his plea language almost identical with that employed by
Louis XIV, before cited, in defining his prerogative. (See Popu-
lar Science Monthly, No. 2, page 146, December, 1896.)

But when absolutism in government was overthrown in Eng-
land in 1653, and a constitutional government established, no one
principle was recognized as more fundamental than that the ex-
ecutive could levy no taxes except such as had been granted by
the people taxed, through their representatives ; and one of the
very first statutes enacted by Parliament in 1689, under the reign
of William and Mary, and accepted by the crown, was that
all levying of money for the crown by pretense of prerogative
should be hereafter and forever illegal ; and next, in the latter
third of the next century (1770), the unqualified affirmation and
defense of the principle that those who pay the taxes should con-
trol the levying of them became the primary cause of the Amer-
ican Revolution, and eventuated in calling the United States into
existence. And hence, by reason of such experiences, it has be-
come a part of the common law of all English-speaking people
that the taxing power inherent in the state is vested exclusively
in the legislative department of its government.

Second. All taxes or enforced contributions levied by a state in
virtue of its sovereignty should be solely {singly) and exclusively
for public purposes.

Another and perhaps a more popular way of expressing this
principle would be, to jDut it in the form of an affirmation, namely :
All taxes that the people pay, the government should receive.

All recognized authorities, judicial and economic, are agreed
in regarding the above proposition as in the light of a political
axiom from which there can be no rational dissent. From a great
number of confirmatory and illustrative legal opinions and deci-
sions the following are especially worthy of attention :

" No State government, nor that of the United States, nor any
other authority professing a regard for the rights of the people.

6o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is at liberty to take money out of their pockets for any other than
a public purpose. "Whenever it can be discovered that a tax is
levied for something which properly can not be called such, it
may be successfully resisted by all the measures that the law
allows in courts of justice/' — Miller, Justice S. F., Lectures on the
Constitution of the United States, p. 2Jf2,

" We have established, we think beyond cavil, that there can
be no lawful tax which is not laid for a public purpose." — Loan
Association vs. Topeka, United States Supreme Court, 20 Wallace,
p. 66J^.

" Taxation, by the very meaning of the term, implies the rais-
ing of money for public uses, and excludes the raising of it for
private objects and purposes." — Mien vs. Inhabitants of Jay, 60
Maine (per Appleton, C. J.).

" Taxation is allowable only for public purposes. The name
(taxation) is not rightfully applied with reference to objects of a
private nature, such as a bridge, manufactory, or foundry owned
by individuals. An act of the Legislature authorizing a levy for
a mere private purpose, or for a purpose which, though public,
is one in which the people from which it is exacted have no inter-
est, would not be a laiu, but a judicial sentence." — Hillard, Law
of Taxation, 1875.

What are public purposes 9 This question is an embarrassing
one, and in attempting to answer it there is opportunity for much
latitude of opinion. In the first place, the ordinary or dictionary
definition of the term " public," as forming a part of the above
question, is certainly infelicitous and ambiguous — namely, " per-
taining to a nation, state, or community ; extending to the whole
people" (Webster). Thus, for example, under a purely despotic
form of government any exaction of contributions (taxes) from
the people, and expenditures resulting therefrom, which the heads
of the state may decree, be it for the expenses of a harem, the
amusement or dignity of royalty, the reward or pensions of court
favorites, or the maintenance of a military force for the subjugat-
ing of the people, would be held to be for a public purpose, and
any subject that should undertake to contravene this assumption
would be amenable to punishment and perhaps to the charge of
treason.

On the other hand, under all popular or constitutional govern-
ments it would not probably be disputed, that taxation should
have but one object and taxes but one destination — namely, to
supply the expenses necessitated by those services which, accord-
ing to established usage, it is the business of government to pro-
vide, and in conlradistinction to those which private inclination,
interest, or liberality will supply whenever a necessity or demand
for such action becomes sufficiently manifest. Any form of levy.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 607

'herefore, under such a government upon the person or property
jf its citizens that does not conform to these conditions is not for
a public purpose and is not entitled to be called taxation.

The following further amplification of these propositions by
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has probably also the
unqualified indorsement of all judicial authorities in the United
States :

" The incidental advantage to the public, or the State, which
results from the promotion of private interests and the prosperity
of private enterprise or business, does not justify their aid by the
use of public money raised by taxation, or for which taxation
may become necessary. It is the essential character of the direct
object of the expenditure which must determine its validity as
justifying a tax, and not the magnitude of the interest to be
affected, nor the degree to which the general advantage of the
community, and thus the public welfare, may be ultimately bene-
fited by their promotion. Tlie principle of this distinction is fun-
daweiital. It underlies all government that is based upon reason
rather than upon force." — Lowell vs. Boston, 111 Mass., 1^5 Jf..

" It has become a favorite maxim that it is the duty of govern-
ment to promote the happiness of the people. The phrase may
be interpreted so as to mean well, but it is a very inaccurate and
unhappy one. It is the inalienable right of men to pursue their
own happiness, each man under such restraint of law as will leave
every other man equally free to do the same. The happiness of
the people is the happiness of the individuals who compose the
mass. Speaking now with reference to those objects only which
human laws can reach and influence, he is the happy man who
sees his condition in life constantly and gradually, though it may
be slowly, improving. Let government keep its hands off, do
nothing in the way of creating the subject-matter of speculation,
and things naturally fall into this channel." — Sharswood, Legal
Ethics.

The distinction between a public and a private purpose in re-
spect to taxation, however, is often a matter of great difficulty
and embarrassment ; and one eminent jurist and writer on taxa-
tion (Cooley) has indeed declared that " there is no such thing as
drawing a clear line of distinction between purposes of a public
and those of a private nature." But the question at issue has
been so often made the subject of definition and illustration by
the highest courts of the United States — speaking through jurists
of the highest conceded ability — that, although complete unison
of opinion does not now and probably never will exist as to
whether certain particular purposes, as expenditures by the State
for bounties, facilitating transportation, education, charities,
amusements, celebrations, and the like, are within the requirements

6o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to make tliein public. Tlie sphere for disagreement has, however,
within recent years greatly narrowed. One of the most clear and
comprehensive of illustrations on this topic, given by the Supreme
Court of Michigan (People vs. Township, 20 Michigan, 452),
through Justice Thomas M. Cooley, was as follows :

In respect to " certain things of absolute necessity to civilized society,"
the State is precluded either by express constitutional provisions or by neces-
sary implications, from providing for at all, and which are thus left v^holly
to the fostering care of private enterprise and private liberality. We con-
cede, for instance, that religion is essential, and that without it we should
degenerate to barbarism and brutality; yet we prohibit the State from bur
dening the citizen with its support, and we content ourselves with recog-
nizing and protecting its observance on similar grounds. Certain profes-
sions and occupations in life are also essential, but we have no authority to
employ the public money to induce persons to enter them. The necessity
may be pressing and to supply it may be in a certain sense to accomplish
a public purpose, but it is not a purpose for which the power of taxation
may be employed. The public necessity for an educated, skillful physician
in some particular locality may be great and pressing, yet, if the people
should be taxed to hire one to locate there, the common voice would ex-
claim that the public moneys were being devoted to a i^rivate purpose.
The opening of a new street in a city or village may be of trifling impor-
tance as compared with the location within it of some new business or
manufacture ; but while the right to pay out the public funds for the one
would be unquestionable, the other by common consent is classified as a
private interest which the public can aid as individuals, if they see fit,
while they are not permitted to employ the machinery of government to
that end. Indeed, the opening of a new street in the outskirts of a city is
generally very much more a matter of private interest than of public con-
cern ; yet, even in a case where the public authorities did not regard the
street as of sufficient importance to induce their taking the necessary action
to secure it, it would not be doubted that the moment they should consent
to so accept it as a gift, the street would at once become a public object and
purpose upon which the public funds might be expended with no more re
straints upon the action of the authorities in that particular thau if it were
the most prominent and essential thoroughfare in the city.

By common consent, also, a large portion of the most urgent needs of
society are relegated exclusively to the law of demand and supply. It is
tliis in its natural operation and without the interference of the Govern-
ment that gives us the proper proportion to tillers of the soil, artisans,
manufacturers, merchants, and professional men, and that determines when
and where they shall give to society the benefit of their particular services.
However great the need in the direction of any particular calling, the in-
terference of Government is not tolerated, because, though it might be sup
plying a public want, it is considered as invading the domain that belongs
exclusively to private inclination and enterprise. V/e perceive, therefore,
that the term '^^ public jJurj^ose,''^ as employed to denote the objects for which
taxes may be levied, has no relation to the urgency of the public need or to
the extent of the public benefit which is to follow. It is, on the other
hand, merely a term of classification to distiyxguish the objects for which,

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 609

according to settled usage, the Government is to provide, from those which,
by the liJce usage, are left to private inclination, interest, or liberality.

Under a constitutional and representative form of government
the determination of what constitutes a public purpose in respect
to taxation rests primarily in the legislative department of such
government ; but legislative determination on this subject is not
absolutely conclusive, for the question ultimately is one of law.
If this was not so, a Legislature would possess unlimited power
to make anything lawful which it might call taxation, which
would be equivalent to an unlimited power to plunder the citizen.

In every case in which the Leg-islature shall have clearly exceeded its
authority in this regard, and levied a tax for a purpose not public, it is com-
petent for any one, who in person or properly is affected by the tax, to ap-
peal to the courts for protection. — Cooley, Laiv of Taxation, p. 55.

Brief references to certain other court cases, in which the
validity of this claim that certain taxes, or acts involving the im-
position of taxes, were for public purposes, was the question at
issue, will also help to an understanding of the subject.

In 1872 the city of Boston was authorized by the Legislature
of Massachusetts to issue bonds to the amount of $20,000,000,
the proceeds to be loaned to persons whose property had been
destroyed by a recent great fire. The Supreme Court of Massa-
chusetts held that, although such " a promotion of the interests of
individuals might result incidentally in the advancement of the
public welfare," the measure was, "in its essential character, a
private and not a public object," and therefore unconstitutional.
(Lowell vs. Boston, 111 Mass.)

A similar statute enacted by the Legislature of South Carolina
in aid of sufferers by a fire in Charleston was also declared by the
Supreme Court of that State as unconstitutional. (Feldman & Co.
vs. City of Charleston, S. C, 57.)

In 1870 the town of Jay, in Maine, voted to loan $10,000 to a
firm of manufacturers, on condition that they would move their
works to the town and establish and maintain them there for ten
years. This vote, although ratified by an act of the Legislature,
the Supreme Court of the State declared void. (Allen vs. Jay, 60
Maine, 124.)

In connection with this case the Legislature of the State of
Maine officially put the following question to the justices of its
Supreme Court : " Has the Legislature authority under the Con-
stitution to pass laws enabling towns by gifts of money to assist
individuals or corporations to establish or carry on manufactur-
ing of various kinds within or without the limits of said towns ? "
The question was answered in the negative. The court used the
following language: "There is nothing of a public nature any

TOL. L. — 45

6io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

more entitling the manufacturer to public gifts than the sailor,
the mechanic, the lumberman, or the farmer. Our Government
is based on an equality of rights. The State can not rightfully
discriminate among occupations ; for a discrimination in favor of
one branch of industry is a discrimination adverse to all other
branches. The State is equally bound to protect all, giving no
undue advantage or special or exclusive preference to any. Tax-
ation in aid of private enterprise is to load the tables of the few
with bounty that the many may partake of the crumbs that fall
therefrom."

In 1875 the Legislature of Kansas authorized townships to
issue bonds for the purpose of raising money to be applied for
the relief of such farmers within their limits as had been deprived,
by a failure of crops, of seed with which to plant for a new sea-
son. This authorization was held by the court (Justice Brewer)
to be unconstitutional, on the ground that the use of public
moneys for the accommodation of a certain class was not a public
purpose — "not for the benefit of the indigent, but of those who
have fields to till and stocks to care for " — and that if the prin-
ciple involved is once recognized, it may be invoked with equal
propriety in aid of other or all classes. (State vs. Osawkee, 14
Kansas, 488.)

In the State of New York its Court of Appeals has held void
an act of the Legislature authorizing a village to take stock in a
manufacturing corporation, and to issue bonds to raise the money
to pay for such subscription, and to levy taxes for the payment of
the principal and interest on said bonds. (Weismer vs. Douglas,
64 N. Y., 91.) In a similar case (Sweet vs. Hurlbert, 51 Barber)
Justice James expressed himself as follows :

If this can be done, it is legal robbery ; less respectable than highway
I'obbery in this, that the perpetrator of the latter assumes tlie danger and
infamy of the act, where this act has the shield of legislative irresponsi-
bility.

In Cole vs. La Grange (113 U. S.), the case turned on an act
of the Legislature of Missouri authorizing the city of La Grange,
whenever two thirds of the resident taxpayers signified their ap-
proval at a special election, to levy a tax not exceeding two per
cent per annum on the assessed value of the real and personal -
property in the city, to pay for a donation or subscription to the
stock of a manufacturing company. The court held the act void ;
the opinion, written by Mr. Justice Gray, embodying the following
language :

The general grant of legislative power in the Constitution of the State
does not enable the Legislature, in the exercise either of the right of emi-
nent domain or of the right of taxation, to authorize counties, cities, or
towns to contract, for private objects, debts which must be paid by taxes.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 611

It can not, therefore, authorize them to issue bonds to assist merchants or
manufacturers, whether natural persons or corporations, in their private
business. These limits of the legislative power are now too firmly estab-
lished by judicial decisions to requii*e extended argument upon the subject.

In Burlirgton vs. Beasley (94 U. S., 310), however, taxation in
aid of a public gristmill, the tolls of which the Legislature would
have a right to regulate, was sustained ; the construction of such
a mill in a new country being probably a public necessity, and not
possible without public aid.

But perhaps the most weighty opinion on this question is that
of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the Loan Asso-
ciation vs. Topeka, 20 Wall, G55 (before referred to on page 153,
vol. L., Popular Science Monthly). In 1872 the Legislature of
Kansas passed an act authorizing cities and counties to issue
bonds for the purpose of encouraging the establishment of manu-
factures and other like enterprises ; and under this act the city
of Topeka created and issued its bonds, to the extent of $100,000,
and gave the same " as a donation," a majority of voters approv-
ing, to an iron-bridge company, as a consideration for establish-
ing and operating their shops within the limits of the city. The
interest coupons first due on these bonds were promptly paid by
the city out of a fund raised by taxation for that purpose, but
subsequently, when the second coupons became due, and the bonds
had passed out of the possession of the bridge company by hona
fide sale to a loan association, the city meanly repudiated its obli-
gations, on the ground that the Legislature of Kansas had no
authority under the Constitution of the State to authorize the
issue of bonds, the interest and principal of which were to be paid
from the proceeds of taxes, for any such purpose as the encour-
agement of manufacturing enterprises. Legal proceedings to en-
force payment were thereupon commenced by the bondholders in
the United States Circuit Court, and judgment having been there
given for the city, the case was appealed to the United States Su-
preme Court, where with only one dissenting voice (Judge Clif-
ford) the judgment of the lower court was affirmed.

The following extracts from the opinion of the court, given
by Justice Miller, will forever stand as embodying economic and
legal principles of the highest importance :

" Beyond a cavil there can be no lawful tax which is not laid
for a public purpose, ... It may not be easy to draw the line in
all cases so as to decide what is a public purpose in this sense and
what is not. But in the case before us, in which towns are author-
ized to contribute aid by way of taxation to any class of manufac-
tures, there is no difficulty in holding that this is not such a public
purpose as we have been considering. If it be said that a benefit
results to the local public of a town by establishing manufac-

6i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

tures, the same may be said of any other business or pursuit
wliicli employs capital or labor. The merchant, the mechanic,
the innkeeper, the banker, the builder, the steamboat owner, are
equally promoters of the public good, and equally deserving the
aid of the citizens by forced contributions. No line can be drawn
in favor of the manufacturer which would not open the public
treasury to the importunities of two thirds of the business men
of the city or town." *

Twelve years later a similar case was decided by the same
United States Court in the same way. Under the authority of a
State law, the city of Parkersburg, Virginia, had issued bonds in
aid of a private enterprise. The court decided these bonds to be
void for the reasons set forth in Loan Association vs. Topeka. The
decision was rested wholly upon the decision in the earlier case,
and there was no dissent from it, although one justice (Clifford)
had dissented in the Topeka case. Justice Blatchford, in rendering
the opinion, said : " Taxation to pay the bonds in question is not
taxation for a public object. It is taxation which takes the

* Here, then, we have from the Supreme Court of the United States a decision, as
recent as October, 18'74, defining the limitation of the power of taxation growing out of
''the essential nature of a free government" ; and if under such natural limitation there is
no power, as the court decided, in a State government (irrespective of anything to the con-
trary in the Constitution of such State) to levy taxes for the support or encouragement of
manufacturers, it is difficult to see under what rule or authority the Federal Government
can levy taxes like those now imposed, which, from the circumstance that they yield year
after year little or no revenue to the national Treasury, are manifestly levied and main-
tained for other than public purposes.

Whether, if a case involving the validity of tariff taxes like those above specified could
be brought before the United States Supreme Court, it would apply the same rule of prin-
ciple to the Federal that it has to a State government, in respect to the limitation of the
sphere of taxation, may be regarded as an open question. An opportunity for avoiding a
decision on this subject might be found in the assumption that there was no evidence
before the court that any particular tariff act was passed by Congress for any other than
revenue purposes, and that the court could not take cognizance of a subsequent change in
circumstances growing out of changes in the conditions of prices and supply and demand.
And in this connection it is curious to note that in the first tariff enactments of the Federal
Congress, which embodied the principle of protection, the preambles of the act openly
stated and recognized the objects aimed at, viz., " the support of the Government, and the
encouragement and protection of manufactures" ; while in later years the latter clause,
relative to manufactures, has been shrewdly omitted from the tariff act preambles —
possibly from a suspicion that there was a constitutional question covered up in this
matter of protective duties which some day would not be found able to stand judicial
examination.

But until the contrary is proved, the opinions and judgment of the Supreme Court of
the United States, as given in the Topeka case, would seem to admit of no other construc-
tion than that taxation for any other purpose than revenue, or taxation for protection, or in
aid of private interests engaged in manufacturing, is beyond the province of the legislative
power of either our national or State governments, and when imposed — to use the exact
language of the court — " Is none the less robbery because it is done under the forms of law
and is called taxation."

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 613

private property of one person for the private use of another
person."

Particular care has also been taken by the Courts to close the
door against the possibility of making taxation subservient to any
private purpose by incorporating it with some public purpose :

Public aid to private pui^poses can not be secured by yoking them to a
public purpose. And where the public and private jpurposes are attempted
to be aided by a single concession, the latter vitiate rather than the former
uphold the grant. The entire purpose— or, if there are several, and no rule
of apportionment as to the application of the proceeds — then all the pur-
poses must be public. — Opinion of Justice Brewer, 23 Kansas, 745.

The cases in which the above conclusions have been appar-
ently antagonized before the courts of the United States have
been numerous, and have related mainly to the right of the
Legislatures of the several States to levy taxes for purposes in
respect to which the paramount object — i. e., for public or private
good — was not clearly evident ; as for the construction of rail-
roads, the drainage of land, the promotion of sanitary measures,
the payment of bounties in aid of educational or charitable insti-
tutions whose property is owned by and whose policy is directed
by private individuals, religious sects, or corporations, and not by
the State, and the like.

The question whether taxation by which aid was aiforded by
towns or counties to the building of railroads was for a public
purpose, has been especially brought to the attention of the
courts. State and Federal, in repeated instances ; and, although
the preponderance of opinion has been in the afiQrmative when
legislative authority has been previously granted, yet the deci-
sion of the courts has rarely been unanimous, and in some cases
has been adverse. Thus, in People vs. Township (20 Michigan,
452), an act of the Legislature of Michigan authorizing townships
to pledge their credit to aid in the construction of a railroad from
the city of Detroit to a suburban village was held void in a
remarkably able opinion by Justice Cooley. Again, in Whiting
vs. Sheboygan (25 Wisconsin, 157), an act of the Legislature of
Wisconsin authorizing the county of Fond du Lac to levy a tax,
the proceeds of which were to be given to aid the building of a
railroad from the city of Fond du Lac to the city of Ripon, was
also held by the court to be void.

The argument in favor of the unconstitutionality or wrong-
fulness of the application of the proceeds of the taxation of the
people by States or municipalities for aiding the construction of
railroads has been, that they are built by corporations organized
mainly for the purpose of gain ; that they are under the control
of such corporations rather than that of the State ; and that the
taxes in question went to swell the profits of individuals, and did

6i4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

not result in good to the State or benefit to the public except in a
remote collateral way.

On the other hand, it has been urged that roads, canals,
bridges, navigable streams, and all other highways, have in all
times been matters of public concern ; that such channels of
travel and of the carrying business have always been established,
improved, and regulated by the State ; and that a railroad had
not lost this character because constructed by individual enter-
prise, aggregated into a corporation.

In rendering an opinion in the celebrated Loan Association vs.
Topeka case, the court took up the question whether the grants
of public money or credit which have been made by counties and
municipalities in the United States in aid of railroad construc-
tion were not by parity of reasoning equally unconstitutional as
similar grants for establishing or encouraging manufactures have
been held to be ; and remarked that in all such cases, which have
been numerous before the courts in every State in the Union,
" the decision has turned upon the question whether the taxation
by which the aid was afforded to the building of railroads was
for a public purpose. Those of the judges who came to the con-
clusion that it was, held the law for that purpose valid. Those
who could not reach that conclusion held them void. And it is
safe to say that no court has held debts created in aid of railroad
companies, by counties or towns, valid on any other ground than
that the purpose for which the tax was levied was a public use, a
purpose or object which it was the right and the duty of the State
governments to assist by money raised from the people by taxa-
tion." But, continues the judge, " Of the disastrous consequences
which have followed its recognition by the courts, and ivhich were
predicted when it was first established, there can be no doubt."

It is interesting to note in this connection that since the deci-
sion in this case many States of the Union have been forced to pro-
hibit loans in aid of the construction of railroads and like enter-
prises in the revision of their Constitutionss.

When the purpose of taxation is evidently to primarily pro-
mote the interests of individuals — i. e., to establish a manufac-
tory, a brick company, a hotel, and the like — the courts whose
province it is to decide whether the purpose is public or private
will as a rule undoubtedly declare it void.

A noted and the almost solitary instance in which the above
proposition and precedents have been clearly antagonized by a
judicial decision is to be found in a case in Louisiana, where an
act of the State Legislature authorizing a municipal subscription
to the stock of a company incorporated to build a theater was held
valid, on the ground that " it would contribute to the wealth and
embellishment of the city, afford a place of relaxation and amuse-

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 615

ment, and would tend to correct and enlighten the morals of the
citizens." (First Municipality vs. New Orleans Theater Com-
pany, 2 Rob., Louisiana, 209.)

The Bounty Case op 1891. — A review of this department of
the application of taxation would be incomplete that failed to
notice a legal contention before the Supreme Court of the United
States in 1891, respecting the constitutionality of the tariff act of
1890, which was questioned on several grounds ; one of them be-
ing a provision requiring the payment of bounties to every pro-
ducer of sugar of certain saccharine strength * from beet, sorghum,
sugar cane, or maple sap, grown or produced within the United
States. Under this provision of the tariff enactment of 1890, the
citizen of Connecticut was taxed for the benefit of the farmer of
Nebraska or California, and the farmer of New York for the ben-
efit of the Louisiana planter ; the farmer who raised wheat and
corn at ten or twelve dollars an acre was taxed for the benefit of
a farmer in a distant State who raised sugar cane or sugar beets
at fifty or a hundred dollars an acre. There was, moreover, but
little doubt that the inclusion of sugar, made from maple sap, in the
bounty provision, was not originally contemplated by the origi-
nators and promoters of the act ; inasmuch as the manufacture of
such sugar is one of the most profitable industries of the coun-
try, and as a rule readily calls for a fancy or artificial price ; but
was included in the act, while under consideration by Congress,
for the reason that its enactment into law would otherwise have
been difficult or impossible. Another interesting and anomalous
feature of this case was that it originated in an attempt to ob-
tain the bounty after the enactment (law) offering it was repealed,
on the ground that the claimants planted cane in expectation
of the continuance of the bounty, and would suffer loss if they
did not get it. The question of the validity of the entire tariff
act, by reason of the unconstitutionality of the bounty provision
contained in it, having been raised, the attorney general of the
United States antagonized such assumption before the court as
follows :

First, that under the clause of the Federal Constitution (sec-
tion 8 of Article I) which empowers Congress to levy taxes, duties,
etc., " to pay the debts and provide for the general welfare " of
the United States, Congress has the power to expend taxes for
anything which, in its judgment, is "for the general welfare."
Second, that the judicial decisions of the State courts, to the effect
that taxation, to be lawful, must be for public purposes, have no
application to this controversy, inasmuch as they were all of them

* Two cents per pound on sugar testing not less than 90" by the polariscope, and one
and three fourths cents per pound on sugar testing less than 90°, but not less than 80°.

6i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

cases of municipal taxation, whicli must be for public municipal
purposes ; and that it is obvious that the establishment of a par-
ticular industry in one place, by a bonus to specified private indi-
viduals, is a very different object for taxation than the encourage-
ment by the national Government of a widespread industry in
many quarters of the Union for national purposes, with a view of
diversifying the industries of the country and making it inde-
pendent of other countries for its necessities.'' {Speech of United
States Attorney- General Miller.) Third, that the assumption
that " public purposes " in respect to taxation by Congress means
something different than the same phrase when applied to State
taxation is sustained by instances in which Congress has author-
ized the expenditure of public moneys for bounties or relief to
people in this and other countries ; some forty cases of this char-
acter being cited, in which relief in the form of money or supplies
was given to sufferers by fire, grasshoppers, overflow of the Mis-
sissippi, yellow fever, earthquakes (one in Venezuela, South
America), and for defraying the expense of transporting food to
Ireland, France, and Germany. To these instances may perhaps
be added the "codfish bounty," which was practically a drawback
upon the duty on imported salt used for preserving fish.

In rejoinder it was contended: First, that if Congress has
power to expend taxes for anything which in its judgment is
" for the general welfare," then there is practically no limitation
whatever upon its constitutional power to raise and appropriate
taxes ; and that its power to treat the public purse as its own,
and give away the proceeds of taxation is as unlimited as is the
cupidity of congressional lobbyists. It was also ingeniously
pointed out that the position of the attorney general was equiva-
lent to saying that when a tax is levied by a State for a given
purpose it is not for public use, but when levied by the national
Government for the same or a like purpose it is for public use.
Again, such an assumption of unlimited power on the part of
Congress directly antagonizes the opinions of Chief-Justice Mar-
shall (see page 149, vol. L, Popular Science Monthly) and also the
declaration, made in special reference to the taxing power by the
United States Supreme Court through Mr. Justice Miller in the
Topeka case (page 153, ditto), " That the theory of our governments,
State and national, is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power
anywhere." Justice Story (on the Constitution, section 990) also
asks and answers the precise question at issue : " Has Congress
a right to raise and appropriate the public money to any and to
every purpose according to their will and pleasure ? They cer-
tainly have not." The same jurist, in his lectures on the Consti-
tution, thus further amplified his ideas on this subject, and evi-
dently thought that he had in the following brief paragraphs

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 617

brought the argument in support of the "unlimited" theory
to a reductio ad ahsurdum :

"A power to lay taxes for the common defense and general
■welfare of the United States is not in common sense a general
power." It is " a power exclusively given to raise revenue, and it
can constitutionally be applied to no other purpose. The appli-
cation for other purposes is an abuse of the power ; and in fact,
however it may be in form disguised, is a premeditated usurpa-
tion of authority." A grant under the Constitution to Congress
" to do any act they pleased which ought to be for the good of the
Union . . . would reduce the whole instrument to a single phase,
that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be
for the good of the United States ; and as they would be the sole
judges of good or evil, it would also be a power to do whatever
evil they pleased" (1 Story, Constitution, section 926).

Second, to the assumption that the decisions of the State courts
in respect to the limitations of the power of taxation do not apply
to this controversy, it was replied that the relation of the State
courts to their State Constitutions is substantially the same as that
existing between the Federal Supreme Court and Congress ; that
the State decisions (which have not been, as was claimed, " all cases
of municipal taxation") frequently treat such legislatio*n, inde-
pendently of Constitutions, as being in violation of natural right,
and that there are limitations imposed upon legislative, power
by reason of "general principles" has been recognized by the
United States Supreme Court (Bartemeyer vs. Iowa, 12 Wallace).
It would further seem that natural rights must be the same,
whether against legislation by Congress or by the Legislature of
a State. If a State can not levy and expend taxes for other than
public purposes, it may be presumed, a fortiori, that the national
Government can not, "for the former can do anything which the
Constitution (and natural right) do not forbid ; while the latter
can do nothing which the Constitution does not fii^t sanction."
The Federal Government has "no right to raise money by taxa-
tion for a thousand things for which the State may impose taxes
and collect them of the fjeople" (Miller, Justice, Lectures on the
Constitution).

Third, in respect to the instances cited, in which Congress has
expended moneys for bounties, or relief of private interests, in
this and other countries, it was replied that they were all matters
of national charity ; were never subjected to judicial scrutiny, or
even seriously challenged in debate ; were never for large amounts,
and did not contemplate any special levy of taxes, but were from
funds already in the Treasury. It was also claimed that this was
the first case in which the constitutionality of a congressional
bounty, whether direct or indirect, for " protection," has ever been

6i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

before the United States Supreme Court for discussion. And
pertinent to the case it should be further noted, that when it
was proposed in the Convention that framed the Federal Con-
stitution to incorporate in it a provision for bestowing "re-
wards " for " the promotion of agriculture," the proposition was
rejected.

The facts about the bounty for codfisheries are, that it was
given under the first revenue laws (levying duties) of the United
States in 1793, and was intended to offset bounties and other
measures adopted by England, as was believed, for the purpose
of destroying the fisheries, not only of the United States, but also
of France. Its enactment was strenuously resisted at the time,
on constitutional grounds, and especially by as good a consti-
tutional authority as Madison, who held that the enactment of
a bounty was beyond the power of Congress (4 Elliot's Debates,
Philadelphia edition, 1875, 525, 52G). Its legality was never judi-
cially examined, and the act expired by its own limitation in
seven years. Subsequent acts expressing limitation were passed
of the same character from time to time ; and since their final
expiration, many j'^ears ago, it is claimed that no Congress, until
the Fifty-ninth, 1890, has asserted its right to levy taxation em-
bodying the bounty principle.

The court, in giving an opinion affirming the constitutionality
of the tariff act of 1890, evaded the question of the constitution-
ality of its bounty provision, on the ground that the invalidity
of one part of a revenue act does not invalidate the whole act;
and when that principle was settled, the objections to the act
based on separate clauses really disappeared.*

The disbursement of the money voted by Congress for the
payment of the sugar bounties having been withheld by the
Comptroller of the United States Treasury on the ground that
the appropriation was unconstitutional, the court held that if
Congress made promises and thereby induced people to incur
expenses which they would not otherwise have incurred, and
has then appropriated the money to indemnify the parties, the
payment can not be stopped by an administrative officer on the
ground of the unconstitutionality of the primary bounty enact-
ment.

A question of interest in connection with this case, which may
naturally suggest itself, especially to those not learned in the
law, is. How happens it that repeated acts of expenditure of money
raised by taxation for admittedly private purposes have been

* One of the best reviews of this celebrated case, one to which the writer has been
greatly indebted, is to be found in an article contributed to and published in the Harvard
Law Review for February, 1892, by Charles B. Chamberlain, Esq., of Boston.

PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 619

authorized by Congress, without any challenge before the proper
courts of their constitutionality ? The answer is to be found in
the legal fact that "the question of the constitutionality of a
law can never be presented and determined abstractly. It must
always be raised by somebody whose person or property is
affected by the execution of the statute the validity of which he
impugns.* Until the opportunity for raising and the individual
who can raise the question of constitutionality present them-
selves, there can be no presumption from the existence of such
legislation upon the statutebook."

Iq Maine, a law which for more than half a century — almost
as long as the State has existed — had been enforced, and repro-
duced in each revision of the statutes, was declared unconstitu-
tional so soon as challenged ; the chief justice meeting the reason
for such acquiescence by saying that " the judicial opinion and
the public sense were not so much awakened to the principle un-
derlying this then as now." (Brief of Smith and Clarke, averring
the unconstitutionality of the tariff act of 1800.) *

The nature, definition, and limitations of the service for public
purposes, which a free representative government can render or
perform by the expenditure of moneys raised by taxation having
been once ascertained and enunciated by the supreme judicial
authority of the State (as would seem to have been done in the
United States), the instant, thereafter, that taxation essays to be-
come anything but taxation — i. e,, for an unquestionable public
purpose ; the instant that it is made an instrumentality for effect-
ing any results other than such as are directly necessary or bene-
ficial to the whole public, that instant it becomes inequitable and
antagonistic to the very idea of a just government ; and the citi-
zen whose person or property is thereby affected has at least a
moral right to demand protection and redress.

\^To be continued.^

According to Mr. Meredith Nugent, in Our Animal Friends, elephants
like fun. Two little elephants at Bridgeport, he says, take evident pleasvu^e
in the tasks that are set them. Even in the stable, when no trainer was
about, one of them " would stand on its head just as it was used to do in
the circus, and the other would look anxiously on until its own turn came
to stand on its head and be admired by its companion."

* " It is by facts and instances that the people are taught their Constitutions and their
laws. Constitutions are framed ; laws established ; institutions built up ; the processes of
society go on, until at length, by some opposing, some competing, some contending forces
of the State, an individual is brought into the point of collision, and the clouds surcharged
with the great force of the public welfare burst over his head.'' — Speech of Mr. Evartsfor
the Defense, tn the Impeachment of Preident Johnson,

620 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

"CONFESSIONS" OF A NORMAL-SCHOOL TEACHER.

Br MARY HALL LEONAED.

IN this age of frank subjective expression wlien we are taken
into the confidence of so many interesting personalities, when
authors write their " reminiscences" or recall their "literary pas-
sions," when men of business recount the stej^s by which they
climbed the ladder of success, and when even the public-school
teachers have found a welcome for their "confessions" in the
literary magazines, it seems good to me also, having been a nor-
mal- school teacher from the first (that is, having spent most of
the years since, a girl in my teens, I graduated at a State normal
school, in teaching in similar institutions of different sections of
the country), to set forth in order a few of the things that are
surely believed by the members of our craft.

It is currently reported that we normal-school people are not
an erudite class ; that there are many things in the philosophies
of heaven and earth that are not included in the horizon of
our mental vision. Indeed, we have heard this so many times
that it begins to seem like a "chestnut" to our indurated ears.
Brethren of the college and out of the college, when next you
feel moved to characterize our mental status, please tell us some-
thing new.

As to the charge itself we have no desire to enter into contro-
versy regarding it. We have a high respect for knowledge, espe-
cially of the real kind. We prefer this to the sort possessed by a
certain fabled princess of one of Henry James's novels, who had
been told all the facts in the universe, but had never in her life
perceived anything. For this latter kind of "knowledge" we
are not perhaps so greedy as some, while recognizing that " infor-
mation " also has its value and uses.

But we confess, jointly and severally, to a measure of truth in
the indictment. There are halls in the temple of knowledge where
the feet of some of us have never trod ; there are shrines at which
some of us have never worshiped. Friend Critic, forgive us if we
sometimes question whether you yourself have tasted of every
"apple" that grows upon the tree of knowledge, unless by proxy
as it were, after the manner of the fabled princess aforesaid.

We are inclined to the belief that native ability and persistent
effort have more to do with the acquisition of mental power than
the question of what seat of learning one studies in. Much that
a student thinks he learns while acquiring a so-called " educa-
tion" is only "skin-deep," and has little appreciable effect upon
the after-efforts of life. But if a mind of good ability has learned
how to study, and has a strong desire for improvement and is ex-

''COJVFBSSIOJVS'' OF A TEACHER. 621

pending its energies upon wortliy subjects of thouglit, it is diffi-
cult to see how the results of a given period of study — whether
two, four, or ten years, or a whole lifetime — could be very unequal
in the total sum, whether these years be passed in the normal
school, or in the college, or in one's own well-furnished library,
or in a pioneer's cabin with only a few " best " books that are
pored over and pondered till they become part of one's very life.
Not that the results would be alike in the several cases. Far from
it. But all disabilities have their compensations ; and perhaps
the total gain for a like amount of effort may not vary so much
as is sometimes supposed.

For my own school education — to make a more personal " con-
fession " — I had a desire for the seminary course that some of my
young friends entered upon (it was before the days of the multi-
plication of women's colleges) ; but, in reviewing the results of
school life after the lapse of years, I see no reason to blame the
dispensation of Providence, which, by making me one of a large
family of children, caused the financial straitness that sent me
to a normal school instead. The normal school taught me how to
study and deepened the desire for study that I already possessed.
Even if the school had done nothing else, it would have deserved
my lasting gratitude.

But it did other things for me. It opened before me a definite
line of work worthy of my best endeavors. It gave me a practi-
cal touch with some of the phases of school work and saved me
from some of the crudities and mistakes that hamper a young
teacher's efforts. It did not save me from all such mistakes. It
has been truly said, " No matter what the training, every teacher
needs experience." But I am sure that the normal school gave me
some aids to my work as a teacher that I should not have been
likely to receive in any other kind of school.

There is one view of the relation of normal- school graduates
to the teaching profession that may be illustrated by the follow-
ing incident: A young lady, after graduating at a high school,
took the classical or four years' course at a Now England normal
school, and afterward taught successfully for twelve years in the
high schools of Massachusetts. Then came family changes, fol-
lowed by a period of enforced rest. When she was able to resume
her profession she first took a year of special study in a private
institution of high reputation, without remaining long enough,
however, to receive the diploma of the " college."

She then proposed to enroll herself in the leading teachers'
agencies as a candidate for a high- school position. But she was
met with the statement : " It is not easy for a teacher to obtain a
high-school engagement unless she is a college graduate. Let us
advise you to turn your attention to school supervision, or to the

622 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

kindergarten, or to some form of work connected witli tlie lower
grades of schools."

"But," said the teacher, "I do not feel ready for those other
lines of work. My teaching has always been in high schools, and
this is what I can do best."

"We do not doubt," was the reply, "that you can do better
teaching in high schools than most of those who apply. Never-
theless, we have to cater to the demand."

" But there are a great many normal-school graduates in the
high schools, to my certain knowledge."

" Oh, yes; the normal-school graduates who are in that work
do not lose their positions. But women's colleges are in the mind
of the public now, and an application for a high-school teacher
usually specifies that one of their graduates is wanted."

Without pausing to suggest that the conceded fact that the
normal -school graduates retain their high-&chool positions argued
something regarding their ability to fill them, the teacher con-
tinued : " I should think the training and experience that I have
had ought certainly to count for as much as the college course."

" Yes. It is really worth much more ; but it is the name that
is chiefly desired. School men are not satisfied with knowing
that a teacher has had a collegiate training. They want the full
college degree. The other day we recommended a young lady

who has just graduated from College, ranking second in her

class. The superintendent, after making a note of the fact, re-
marked, * How finely that will sound in my report to the school
board and in the advertisements of the school ! ' "

We are conscious of no acerbity or envious cravings on ac-
count of the academic degrees and honors of the universities.
We appreciate that a real value attaches to such marks of recog-
nized attainment when honestly bestowed, and held with no exag-
gerated sense of their importance. So also the titles of nobility,
heraldic insignia, and military decorations of the Old World are
of value, unless they have become divorced from the sentiments
which gave them birth.

But, as self-respecting Americans, we do not wish to feel our-
selves dependent upon such factitious means for success in life.
Nor do we feel so. We call to mind that the greatest American
of this half century was "graduated" from school life after a few
months' study in a backwoods school. When he came to the
highest position of responsibility ever held by a citizen of the
United States, it was said by a distinguished college president,
" Lincoln may have good sense, but he will need some one to write
his messages for him." Yet the two great classic prose utterances
of the war period are Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and
his Gettysburg address.

''CONFESSIONS'' OF A TEACHER. 623

As we mingle freely and on equal terms with our friends
and kinsfolk and acquaintance who are among the Ph. D.'s and
LL.D.'s and D. D.'s of scholarly fame, and also with the younger
sisterhood of educated women who are wearing recent college
honors, we are sensible of no feeling of abashed inferiority, as
though in the presence of things too high for us ; nor do the
attainments of these scholars, which we appreciate and greatly
rejoice in, seem to dwarf in any degree the apparently equally
valuable powers of many another friend whose mental acquire-
ments have been gained in some widely different course of train-
ing in the great university of American life.

But there is something in the experience of that high- school
teacher with the agencies which raises a query as to the relations
of the high schools to the educational status of the modern age.
If there is one point that seems fully proved by the educational
progress of the last half century it is that kindergarten and pri-
mary-school teachers need professional training for their work.
The time was, and not so very long ago, when it was thought
that any one with a common-school education could teach little
children. But it seems a far cry back to that position to-day.

Is it, then, true that the high school is the only part of our
public-school system in which the teacher does not need to be a
student of pedagogical science, to be in sympathetic and intelli-
gent touch with modern school methods, and to have gained a
degree of tried skill through supervised schoolroom experience
before being placed in full charge of schoolroom work ? This
would indeed be passing strange. One would suppose that the
high-school teacher must need for his equipment an intelligent
understanding of the methods and plans of the lower schools
from the kindergarten up, with some added study of the special
needs of high schools — a more comprehensive rather than a shorter
course of professional training. If not, then will some one tell
us why not ?

The question is not whether the high- school teacher should
have a broad and thorough scholarship. That "goes without say-
ing." And if it be said that the best place to gain this scholar-
ship is within the walls of a good college, we of the normal school
have no desire to challenge the assertion. But, given all that
scholarship, all that native ability can do, the idea that high-
school teachers have less need than primary teachers to profes-
sionalize their work is a baseless assumption which is certain to
be undermined sooner or later by the tide of educational progress.
It is not hard to predict that the near future will require of the
would-be high-school teacher as much of scholarship as the col-
lege gives, and as much professional equipment as is given by the
normal schools in their best and longest courses.

624 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

As to how and in what kind of schools this double equipment
can best be given — ah! that is another question, beyond the limits
of this paper to discuss, and, like all questions that deal with
expedients, hard to settle — differing minds will always prefer dif-
fering expedients for the same end.

Will the professional training be included in the college cur-
riculum ? Has any college yet provided for it ? I mean, not sim-
ply by a course of lectures on Herbartian Philosophy, but also
by a close and vital study of all the conditions of public-school
work. It is a healthy sign of the times that the colleges are
addressing themselves to pedagogical questions. The combined
efforts of all the institutions of learning will be none too effect-
ive for the work of public education. But all real aid to public
schools must be given in the spirit of those who would build up
rather than pull down, who can distinguish in the work of others
a right ideal in the midst of the crowding obstacles that prevent
the full realization of that ideal, and who do not hold themselves
aloof from personal labor as mutual helpers and learners with
other earnest and open-minded thinkers who are already carrying
the burdens of the work.

Can the normal schools give this double preparation for high-
school work, providing the requisite scholarship as well as the
practical and professional training ? If it be true that they have
not heretofore done so, perhaps the importance of the work they
have been doing for the elementary schools offers a partial expla-
nation. But it would be a matter of public interest if education-
ists should really inquire and find out how nearly the best normal
schools in their four years' courses reach the standard of the col-
leges in scholastic attainments, and also how much difficulty there
would be in superadding to these courses whatever they may now
lack of such attainments. It would certainly seem to be feasible
for a State system of public instruction to prepare at least some
of the teachers needed for all grades of its own work. To dele-
gate the work for the higher grades entirely to private institu-
tions which have no practical relations with the lower-grade
work, would be to establish a break in the public-school system
that it would be hard to justify.

But here again the experience of that high-school teacher
raises a question. It would almost seem that in the minds of the
managers of the agencies such a breach is known to exist ; that
while the lower schools belong to the masses of the people, the
high school is supposed to be intended primarily as a feeder for
the colleges, so that to introduce any other than a collegiate ele-
ment into its teaching force suggests a " poaching upon the col-
lege preserves." There is more than a suspicion abroad that the
high schools do stand in just this position of uncertainty, whether

'' COJVFIJS SIGNS'' OF A TEACHER. 625

their work is chiefly that of a college preparatory school, or
whether they are also the head and crown of the school system in
which the child of the people finds his best school preparation for
whatever career his future may hold. To sustain this double
responsibility is more than the high school can do, unless per-
chance the colleges and the elementary schools can be so brought
into harmony — by the modification of one or the other or both —
that fitting for college and for general American citizenship shall
become one and the same thing.

That the high- school course ought to lead to the door of the
college was the unanimous verdict of the able committee whose
Report on Secondary Schools has become so famous. But if this
be interpreted as meaning that the colleges alone can set the pace
for high-school instruction, or if the influence of that report
should be to separate the high school from the lower schools,
both in its aim and the personnel of its teaching force, then,
indeed, it is certain that time must bring a reaction. There can
be no fundamental reason for an explicit change of policy in the
public-school work at the end of the ninth grade.

Since the high schools must sustain such intimate relations
with colleges and lower schools, with public and private institu-
tions, it would seem to be the necessary policy of their managers
to keep them in fullest touch with both of the leading schools of
current educational thought. And here we come face to face
with what is perhaps the bottom fact in the situation. It must
be confessed that in the educational world there are two types of
thinking and thinkers, neither of them confined in its affiliations
to the college or to the elementary schools, yet each having its
own peculiar relations both with the one and with the other.
The one type represents time-honored ideals, it may be of scholar-
ship and culture, or it may be of practical forms and methods —
ideals which experience has wrought out, and which are therefore
held to be worthy of acceptance. The other type seeks to build
up an improved system of education according to principles that
are held to be fundamental ; and, believing that " new wine must
be put into new bottles," it does not scruple to turn aside, if occa-
sion arises, from the standards of the past.

Nor is this true of education alone. It is the same in politics,
in religion, in literature, and in every form of art. The tradi-
tional or conventional ideals coexist side by side with a newer
philosophy, which seems antagonistic until a later view unites
them both in its larger perspective.

In the educational world within two or three years these types
in a measure seem to have focused themselves in two famous
documents, the report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary
Schools, and the later report of the Committee of Fifteen — or, as

TOL. L, — 46

62 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is sometimes said, the Committee of Five, since it is the report of
one third of the committee — on the Correlation of Primary Stud-
ies, that has become most noted. Though these are ostensibly on
different subjects, the report on secondary schools could not fail
to take into account the previous school training, nor could the
primary work be reported without a long look forward.

Both reports aim at progressive effort for the improvement of
the lower schools, and are valuable contributions to the educa-
tional literature of the age. The specific suggestions of the two
apparently differ less than the guiding principles that seem to
have moved the committees. For, consciously or unconsciously,
the one seems to have the eye fixed upon certain established ideals
of culture and scholarship which are held as the standards for the
colleges, and hence, it is assumed, must be the goal of effort for
the lower schools. In the other report we seem to hear the note
of a different philosophy — a reaching forward toward all the pos-
sible activities of the child's future. Yet in this also there is an
ideal which beckons onward ; but it is not found in traditional
types. It is based on the complex needs of our great American
life — to prepare the child to understand and to meet those needs
and to direct the forces of the future.

If it be said that the collegiate standards are shaped according
to the same ideal, the answer must be : Perhaps so ; yet the
American people will not accept their standards at second hand,
or as established for them by a single class in the community. In
determining their own educational needs, the great middle class
of the people is also in the jury box. The schools that are " for
the people " must be planned in a good degree " by the people,"
instead of following wholly the lead of the highly educated few.

There is a time-honored maxim of the universities that educa-
tional influences proceed from the top downward. But, like all
epigrams, it is a brilliant half-truth. There is no " top " to edu-
cation, or if there be it is higher than all human standards, reach-
ing into the very heavens. And this is a ladder over which the
angels must pass both ways, ascending and descending upon it.
The way must be kept open, and the touch must be free all along
the line. There must be no dividing gap where either type of
thought can say to the other, " Thus far shalt thou go and no
farther." Especially in the high school should there be the
largest welcome to good influences from either side. Then the
one that can show the largest sympathy and most intelligent
understanding of the whole problem will have the greatest influ-
ence in the final shaping of affairs.

Yet even as I write a growing doubt arises. Is there really
any such conflict in the forces that move educational affairs as
we sometimes think ? Or, if there be, is it wholly to be depre-

''CONFESSIONS'' OF A TEACHER. 627

cated? We know that friction of opinion is the pioneer's axe that
clears the path for progress. And whichever side of a question
we may find ourselves upon, we should not forget that " the strong
opposition is the balancewheel of all parliaments," in the educa-
tional as well as the civic world.

But is there really a gap in our educational system ? The
"bloody chasm" that a few years ago divided two great sections
of our country seems to have been chiefly an abstract entity after
all. Whenever individuals met in human relations they usually
forgot that it had ever yawned between them. We seem to see a
multitude of teachers ranged in two great ranks. Bat their hands
are constantly reaching out toward each other in friendly aid,
and there is therefore no gap between them, scarcely a dividing
line. Collegiate schools are studying the problems of childhood,
and normal and public school teachers have no intention to rest
satisfied with feeble results in the first of their trinity of aims —
knowledge, power, and skill. The faces of the teachers may be
turned toward different parts of the horizon ; but when we lift
our eyes upward we are looking into the same boundless sphere
of truth and of life, whose mysteries we are all trying to discover
and interpret.

But in a personal " confession " one should not wander into
mazes of rhetoric and philosophy. Coming back to my personal
bearings, I am strongly reminded of an American gentleman who
took an extended tour in Europe. After some months of travel,
being a good Christian as well as a tourist, he wrote home to
America: "I have discovered that there are just two religious
denominations, the prayer-book denomination and that of the
l>ra,Yer-nieeting. The more I see of each, the more I recognize
that I have a genuine sympathy with both. I can worship with
pleasure and with profit in 'churches' and in 'chapels.' But
when it comes to Christian work I feel that, however it may be
with others, I myself can find my best field for endeavor in the
prayer-meeting denomination."

It is with a feeling akin to his that I write : I have much
fellow-feeling with both " denominations " of educational thought ;
yet I do not regret that the circumstances of my life have fixed
my lines of work more especially with the " denomination " that
is in closest touch with the masses of the American people.

His object being- the systematic exploration of the Franz-Josef Archi-
pelago and the unknown seas adjacent, Mr. Harmsworth, it is announced,
intends to keep an expedition in the arctic regions till a complete map can
be made of all accessible parts of the still undiscovered north polar world.
The Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition is spending- its third winter in the
arctic regions, and will make another advance in the coming season.

628 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE MALARIAL PARASITE AND OTHER
PATHOGENIC PROTOZOA.*

By GEOEGE M. STERNBERG, M. D., LL. D.,

SURGEON GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY.

GENTLEMEN : My presidential address last year had for its
subject The Practical Results of Bacteriological Researches,
and at its conclusion I showed you upon the screen photomicro-
graphs of the principal pathogenic bacteria, including the micro-
coccus of pneumonia ; the micrococci concerned in the production
of boils, abscesses, wound infection, puerperal fever, erysipelas,
etc. ; the bacilli of tuberculosis, of diphtheria, of typhoid fever,
of glanders, of anthrax, of influenza, of tetanus, of leprosy ; the
spirillum of relapsing fever, the spirillum of Asiatic cholera, and
various other pathogenic bacteria. These micro-organisms are
now generally recognized as belonging to the vegetable kingdom,
and as a specialist in this department of scientific investigation
your president may perhaps be considered a botanist in a small
way. But the Biological Society includes among its members
many distinguished specialists in that branch of natural history
which relates to the animal kingdom, and I think it due to the
zoologists to show that the botanists have no monopoly of mis-
chief-making micro-organisms. In speaking of the pathogenic
protozoa I shall devote special attention to the htematozoon which
is now recognized as the specific cause of the malarial fevers ; and
in consideration of the importance of this blood parasite from a
sanitary point of view, as well as of the interest which attaches
to it from a biological standpoint, I shall occupy a little time in
giving you an account of its discovery and the grounds upon
which it is accepted by well-informed pathologists as the specific
infectious agent in the class of fevers referred to.

The malarial parasite was discovered in 1880 by Laveran, a
surgeon in the French army, at that time stationed in Algeria,
but now a professor in the military school at Val de Grace.

In my work on Malaria and Malarial Diseases, published in
1884, 1 refer to Laveran's alleged discovery as follows :

" According to this observer, there are found in the blood of
patients attacked with malarial fever pigmented parasitic ele-
ments which present themselves under three principal aspects.
This parasite is said to be a kind of animalcule which exists at
first in an encysted state. In the blood these organisms present
themselves as motionless, cylindrical, curved bodies, which are

* Presidential Address delivered before the Biological Society of Washington, December
5, 1S96.

THE MALARIAL PARASITE. 629

pointed and transparent and Tiave a pigment spot; also as spher-
ical bodies, about the diameter of a red blood-corpuscle, showing
active movements and containing in their interior numerous pig-
ment granules. The movements of these bodies are due to the
action of elongated filaments attached to their circumference —
flagella. A third form in which these parasites present them-
selves in the blood is as motionless, spherical, or irregular- shaped
bodies containing dark-red, rounded pigment grains. These bod-
ies have no nucleus, and do not stain with carmine; they appear
to be the ultimate stage of development of the above.

" The blood also contains free pigment granules, pigmented
leucocytes, and vacuolated red corpuscles which contain pigment
granules.

" These parasitic elements have only been found in the blood
of persons sick with malarial fever, and they disappear when
quinine is administered.

" They are of the same nature as the pigmented bodies which
exist in great numbers in the vessels and organs of patients dead
with pernicious fever, which have been described as melanotic
leucocytes. Laveran, at the time his report was published, had
found these bodies in one hundred and eighty out of one hun-
dred and ninety-two persons examined in Algeria and in Tunis
who were affected with various symptoms of malarial poi-
soning.

" The presence of the parasite described by Laveran in the
blood of persons suffering from malarial diseases is confirmed by
Richard, who has studied the subject at Philippeville, France,
where malarial diseases abound. This author has invariably
found the parasite of Laveran in the blood of malarial- fever
patients, and has never seen it in the blood of persons suffer-
ing from other diseases. He finds that its special habitat in the
blood is the red corpuscles, in which it develops and which it
leaves when it has reached maturity. During the attack of fever
many blood globules are seen which possess a small, perfectly
round spot. Otherwise they preserve their normal appearance ;
they are simply, so to speak, stung {piques). Beside these glob-
ules are others in which the evolution of the microbe is more ad-
vanced. The clear spot is larger and is surrounded by fine black
granules. The surrounding haemoglobin forms a ring which de-
creases as the parasite augments in volume. After a time only
a narrow, colorless zone remains at the margin. This corresponds
with the body No. 2 of Laveran, ' having about the dimensions of
a red corpuscle and inclosing an elegant collarette of black gran-
ules.' This collarette is the microbe which has arrived at its per-
fect state, and which is provided with one or several slender pro-
longations, measuring twenty-five micromillimetres or more in

630 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

length. Richard has several times seen the fully developed para-
site emerge from its ' shell ' — the remnant of the invaded red cor-
puscle— to which it may remain attached, and which can only be
seen with great difficulty. Sometimes only the motile filaments
penetrate the envelope in which the body of the parasite remains
inclosed. In both cases the filament is seen to undergo active
movements, and when its extremity is caught in the fibrinous
reticulum the body itself oscillates. This movement may last for
an hour. Usually, however, no movement is observed, and the
corpuscles containing very small parasites never move. The in-
fected corpuscles become disorganized, the pigmentary collarette
is broken down, and a grayish mass inclosing some black gran-
ules remains. The pigment granules when set free are rapidly
picked up by the leucocytes; the melaniferous leucocytes are
therefore epiphenomena."

Commenting upon the observations of Laveran and Richard, I
say, in the work just referred to:

" We can not doubt that a true account has been given of what
the observers believe they have seen. But there is a wide field for
doubt as to the deductions made from the various observations
recorded; for in microscopical studies of the blood made with
high powers there is a great liability to error and to misinterpre-
tation of what is seen. We may question, for example, whether
the belief of Laveran and Richard that the appearances noted by
them are due to parasitic invasion of the blood-corpuscles is well
founded, without calling in question the accuracy of their obser-
vations."

At the time this was written pathologists generally were not
disposed to attach much importance to the alleged discovery of
Laveran, and this was especially true in Germany and in those
countries in which physicians were in the habit of awaiting the
verdict of German bacteriologists before accepting anew "disease
germ." One reason for this failure to give proper consideration
to the discovery of Laveran was the fact that there was a rival in
the field. A year before the publication of Laveran's paper, giv-
ing an account of his observations, the distinguished German
pathologist Klebs, in association with the prominent Italian phy-
sician Tommasi-Crudeli, had announced the discovery of a bacil-
lus which they believed to be the cause of the malarial fevers,
and which they named Bacillus malaricB. Their experimental in-
vestigation was made in Rome with material obtained from the
malarious marshes in the vicinity of that city.

The evidence offered in the original memoir of Klebs and
Tommasi-Crudeli in favor of the view that the bacillus de-
scribed by them is the cause of malarial fevers in man, is
derived from experiments made upon rabbits, in which culture

THE MALARIAL PARASITE. 631

fluids containing the bacillus in question, and wasliings from ma-
larious soils, were injected subcutaneously.

In my work on Malaria and Malarial Diseases, already referred
to (published in 1884), I say :

" The importance of this alleged discovery induced the National
Board of Health, soon after the publication of the first report pub-
lished by Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli, to undertake control ex-
periments in a recognized malarial locality in this country. The
writer, who had established a laboratory in New Orleans for the
purpose of studying the micro-organisms present in the atmos-
phere of that city, was therefore instructed to repeat the experi-
ments of Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli, and during the autumn of
1880 devoted a considerable portion of his time to this investiga-
tion. The results obtained were not favorable to the view that
the fever produced in rabbits by the injection beneath their skin
of infusions of swamp mud, etc., was a truly malarial fever ; and,
for reasons stated, the conclusion was reached that the evidence
offered by Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli in their first report, which
alone had been published at this time, was unsatisfactory. (The
full report of these investigations is given in Supplement No. 14,
National Board of Health Bulletin, published in Washington,
D. C, July 23, 1881.)"

Referring to subsequent observations, I remark :

" Since the publication of the report above referred to the
belief that the Bacillus malarice, is the true cause of malarial
fevers has received considerable support from observations made
in Rome, under the direction of Tommasi-Crudeli, by Marchia-
fava, Cuboni, Peroncito, Ceri, and others.

" We do not feel prepared to estimate the value of this evi-
dence in detail, but will, in a general way, give our reasons for
considering it in a spirit of scientific skepticism, and for demand-
ing substantial confirmation from other parts of the world where
malarial fevers prevail, and especially in our own country, where
malaria is so well known by its effects, and where the Bacilhis
nialarice. should be easily found if it is constantly present in the
blood during the cold stage of intermittents, as has been claimed
by some of the Roman observers. . . .

" The writer's observations lead him to be very cautious in
accepting evidence relating to the discovery of organisms in the
blood, when these are few in number and require diligent search
for their demonstration; for the possibilities of accidental con-
tamination or of mistake in observation are very great. . . .

" The writer has many times examined carefully the blood of
malarial-fever patients with a one-eighteenth-inch oil-immersion
objective (of Zeiss), and has not been successful in finding either
rods or spores. But few of these examinations have, however,

632 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been made during the chill, and the blood has not been drawn
directly from the spleen ; these observations are therefore to be
considered as incomplete, and, if opportunity offers, will be sup-
plemented by more extended microscopical researches."

Notwithstanding this adverse criticism, based upon an experi-
mental research made for the purpose of confirming the alleged
discovery, if it should prove to have a scientific foundation, the
Bacillus malaricB was pretty generally regarded by physicians in
this country and in England as being the veritable cause of
malarial fevers, and for several years it was frequently mentioned
in medical journals and even in standard text-books of medicine
as one of the demonstrated disease germs. But truth is mighty,
and in the end must prevail. To-day no one speaks of the Bacil-
lus malaricB of Klebs and Tommasi-Crudeli except to refer to it as
one of the pseudo- discoveries, which for a time passed current,
like a counterfeit coin, but which was detected and thrown aside
when subjected to approved scientific tests.

The first confirmation in this country of Laveran's discovery
of amoeboid parasites in the blood of malarial-fever cases was
made by the present writer in the pathological laboratory of the
Johns Hopkins Hospital in March, 1886. In May, 1885, I had vis-
ited Rome as a delegate to the International Sanitary Conference
convened in that city under the auspices of the Italian Govern-
ment, and while there I visited the Santo Spirito Hospital for the
purpose of witnessing a demonstration, by Drs. Marchiafava and
Celli, of that city, of the presence of the Plasmodium malaricB in
the blood of persons suffering from intermittent fever. Blood
was drawn from the finger during the febrile attack and from
individuals to whom quinine had not been administered. The
demonstration was entirely satisfactory, and no doubt was left in
my mind that I saw living parasitic micro-organisms in the inte-
rior of red blood-corpuscles obtained from the circulation of ma-
larial-fever patients. The motions were quite slow, and were
manifested by a gradual change of outline rather than by visible
movement. After a period of amoeboid activity of greater or less
duration, the body again assumed an oval or spherical form and
remained quiescent for a time. While in this form it was easily
recognized, as the spherical shape caused the light passing through
it to be refracted and gave the impression of a body having a dark
contour and a central vacuole ; but when it was flattened out and
undergoing amoeboid changes in form, it was necessary to focus
very carefully and to have a good illumination in order to see it.
The objective used was a Zeiss's one-twelfth-inch homogeneous
oil immersion.

The changes in form which a single plasmodium, included in
a red blood-corpuscle, was observed by Marchiafava and Celli to

THE MALARIAL PARASITE.

633

undergo within a period of twenty minutes I shall show yon upon
the screen at the close of my address (see Fig. 1).

The confirmation of Laveran's discovery, as already stated, was
first made by Richard in a communication to the French Academy
of Sciences (February 20, 1882), then by Marchiafava and Celli

«

ez.

!7.

13.

0.

ts.

es

sa.

Si.

1

gt.

Fig. 1. — Figures 1 to 22 represent the changes in form ■n;iiich a single pkismodium, included
in a i-ed blood-corpuscle, was observed to undergo within a period of twenty minutes.
Figures 23 to 27, 29, and 80 show other forms assumed by plasmodia, some with and some
without pigment. Figure 28 shows a miotionless plasmodium emerging irom a red blood-
corpuscle ; the blood was taken after the paroxysm of fever and administration of quinine.
(_Marchiafava and Celli.)

(1883), and subsequently by Councilman and by Osier in this
country, by Golgi in Italy, by Manson of England, and by many
other competent microscopists in nearly all parts of the world
where malarial diseases prevail.

The intracorpuscular development of the plasmodium has

VOL. L. — 47

634

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

been traced by Golgi and others, and results in the formation of
a number of bodies arranged in the form of a rosette, with a mass
of pigment granules at the center (see Fig. 2). The growth of
the Plasmodium seems to be at the expense of the haemoglobin of

\

9 ®e^

10

Fig. 2. — Intraoorpuscular Pevelopment of the Parasite of Tertian Intermittent
Fever : 1, 2, young hyaline forms ; 3, 4, more advanced pigmented forms ; 5, fully grown
parasite ; 6, 7, 8, 9, segmentation and production of free spores (10).

the infected red blood- corpuscle, and the pigment granules are
probably to be regarded as an excrementitious product. The seg-
ments of the rosette, which represents the final stage of intra-
corpuscular development, are finally set free by a breaking down
of the remains of the corpuscle, and are supposed to correspond
with the elementary body which invaded the corpuscle in the first
instance. The periodicity of this class of fevers is believed to
depend upon the fact that a certain time is required for the intra-
corpuscular development of the plasmodium, and that successive
crops of these elementary bodies are set free at regular intervals.
We have also in the blood of malarial-fever patients certain pig-
mented bodies which are believed to represent different stages in
the development of the same parasite, or of a nearly related par-
asite, which is concerned in the aetiology of a different type of
malarial fever. The form most frequently encountered is associ-
ated with the so-called "sestivo- autumnal" malarial fevers which
prevail in the vicinity of Rome and elsewhere. The bodies char-
acteristic of this type of fever are crescentic in form and contain
black pigment granules, usually centrally located (see Fig. 3).
These crescentic bodies are not usually found in the blood of per-
sons suffering from intermittent fever of the tertian or quartan
type. Golgi, who has made very extended studies of the blood
of malarial patients, asserts that each intermittent paroxysm is
associated with the segmentation of a group of intracorpuscular
organisms — that is to say, that the paroxysm corresponds with the

THE MALARIAL PARASITE.

635

ripening of a generation of the parasites. He also concludes from
his observations that the number of parasites shown to be present
by a microscopical examination of the blood corresponds, in a
general way, with the severity of the attack. These observations
have been confirmed by Osier, Antolisei, and others. Golgi has
noted differences between the Plasmodium as found in the tertian
type of intermittent and that found in quartan fevers ; and these
differences are sufficiently marked to enable him to determine the
type of fever by a blood examination. These observations have
been confirmed by numerous competent pathologists in various
parts of the world. When a daily paroxysm occurs, according to
Golgi, this is due to the alternate development of two groups of
quartan parasites. He has not been able to demonstrate a special
parasite of quotidian fevers having a cycle of intracorpuscular
development lasting twenty-four hours.

The differences between the evolution of the tertian and quar-
tan parasite are summarized as follows by Laveran, from the data
given by Golgi :

The tertian parasite completes its evolution in two days, the
quartan in three days.

The amoeboid movements of the tertian parasite are much
more active than those of the quartan.

Fig. 3. — Crescentic and Flagellate Forms Chaeacteeistic of " ^stivo-Autuitnal "

Malaeial Fevees.

The tertian parasites cause a rapid decoloration of the red
blood- corpuscles invaded by them, while the corpuscles retain
their characteristic color when invaded by the quartan parasite
up to the time that they are almost destroyed as a result of its
intracorpuscular development.

636 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the quartan type the red blood- corpuscles containing the
parasite have a tendency to become smaller than normal corpus-
cles ; in the tertian type they are usually larger.

In the tertian the protoplasm of the parasites is very trans-
parent ; in the quartan it is less so, and the outlines are better
defined.

In the quartan the pigment is seen in the form of grains or
rods of greater size than in the tertian.

Finally, the principal difference is found in the segmentation
of the intracorpuscular elements. The number of spores result-
ing from segmentation is greater in the tertian parasite — usually
more than twice as many.

That these parasitic protozoa are in truth the cause of the
forms of malarial fever with which they are found to be asso-
ciated can scarcely be doubted, in view of the facts that this asso-
ciation is a constant phenomenon, that the infected blood- cor-
puscles are destroyed by the parasite, that a rapid loss of red
corpuscles is one of the most marked results of malarial infection,
and that the parasites disappear when quinine is administered in
suitable doses, thus accounting for the specific action of this drug.
Finally, it has been shown by inoculation experiments that when
blood containing the plasmodium is drawn from the circulation
of a malarial-fever patient and injected beneath the skin of a
healthy person there is a reproduction of the parasite in the blood
of the inoculated individual, and, after a certain period .of in-
cubation, typical malarial paroxysms occur. Successful inocula-
tion experiments have been made by Marchiafava and Celli, by
Gualdi and Antolisei, by Bein, by Bacelli, by Di Mattel, and
others.

The life-history of the malarial parasite outside of the bodies
of infected individuals has not been traced. Thus far attempts to
cultivate it in artificial media have failed. Nor has the presence
of the Plasmodium been demonstrated in water or mud taken
from the marshy localities which are recognized as the source of
malarial fevers, and which we therefore believe to be the normal
habitat of this mischievous micro-organism. The facts relating
to the seasonal and regional occurrence of malarial fevers sustain
the view that they are caused by living organisms, the external
development of which depends upon conditions relating to tem-
perature, moisture, vegetable growth and decay. But among the
vast number of micro-organisms of an infinite variety of species
found in localities which are recognized as malarious, the little
specks of protoplasm which — with a first-class oil- immersion ob-
jective, and by careful manipulation of the light — we recognize
as parasitic invaders of human blood-corpuscles could scarcely be
detected, and could not be differentiated from other sjoorelike

THE MALARIAL PARASITE. 637

bodies in the absence of methods for obtaining each species sepa-
rately, in pure cultures.

Thayer and Hewetson, in their admirable monograph on the
Malarial Fevers of Baltimore (1895), in which they give an ac-
count of six hundred and sixteen cases observed by themselves,
have summarized their observations relating to the parasite as
follows :

" We have distinguished three varieties of the malarial par-
asite :

"1. T]ie tertian parasite.

" 2. The quartan parasite.

" 3. Tlie cestivo- autumnal parasite.

" (1) The tertian parasite requires about forty-eight hours to
accomplish its complete development, and is associated with
relatively regular tertian paroxysms, lasting on an average be-
tween ten and twelve hours, associated, almost always, with the
three classical stages — chill, fever, and sweating. Frequently, in-
fection with two groups of tertian organisms gives rise to quo-
tidian paroxysms ; rarely, infection by multiple groups of organ-
isms gives rise to more irregular, subcontinuous fevers.

" (2) The quartan parasite is an organism requiring about
seventy-two hours for its complete development. It is rare in
this climate, and is associated with a fever showing regular
quartan paroxysms, similar in nature to those associated with
the tertian organism. Infection by two groups of the parasite
causes a double quartan fever (paroxysms on two days, intermis-
sion on the third). Infection with three groups of the parasite
is associated with daily paroxysms.

" (3) The cestivo-autumnal parasite passes through a cycle of
development, the exact length of which has not as yet been de-
termined ; it probably varies greatly, from twenty- four hours or
under to forty-eight hours or more> But few stages of develop-
ment of the parasite are found, ordinarily, in the peripheral circu-
lation, the main seat of infection being, apparently, in the spleen,
bone marrow, and other internal organs. Infection with this
organism is associated with fevers varying greatly in their mani-
festations. There may be quotidian or tertian intermittent fever,
or, more commonly, more or less continuous fever with irregular
remissions. The individual paroxysms last, on an average, about
twenty hours. The irregularities in temperature depend, prob-
ably, upon variations in the length of the cycle of development
of the parasite, or upon infection with multiple groups of or-
ganisms.

" We have not been able to separate two distinct varieties of
the sestivo-autumnal parasite, though we feel that more investi-
gation is needed upon the subject.

638 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

" The cases of malaria in the spring and early summer are of
the milder, more regularly intermittent varieties (tertian and
quartan fever), the severe aestivo-autumnal infections beginning
to appear only in the later summer, and reaching their maximum
in September."

Manson has recently suggested that the mosquito is an inter-
mediate host for the malarial plasmodium. We have an analogy
for this in the part played by the mosquito in withdrawing em-
bryo filarise {Filaria sanguinis liominis) from the blood of in-
fected individuals and returning them to the stagnant pools fre-
quented by the insect. Manson says, in discussing this hypothesis
in his Gulstonian Lectures (1896) :

" We can readily understand how the mosquito-bred Plasmo-
dium may be swallowed by a man in water, as so many disease
germs are, and we can readily understand how it may be inhaled
in dust. Mosquito-haunted pools dry up. The plasmodia in the
larvae and those that have been scattered about in the water, find-
ing themselves stranded by the drought, and so placed in a con-
dition unfavorable for development, pass into a resting stage, just
as they do when by quinine or other means man is rendered tem-
porarily unsuited for their active life. They may, probably do,
become encysted, as so many of the protozoa do in similar circum-
stances. The dried sediment of the pool, blown about by winds
and currents of air, is inhaled by man, and so the plasmodium
may find its way back again to the host from whom its ancestors
had, perhaps, started generations back."

This theory appears plausible, but we find it difiicult to believe
that man is essential for the completion of the life cycle of the
Plasmodium, for the most concentrated and deadly malarial ema-
nations may be given off from marshy places which are far re-
moved from the haunts of men. It may be, however, that the
mosquito is an essential factor in the development of the plas-
modium, and that man, instead of being a necessary intermediate
host, only serves occasionally, and in a certain sense accidentally,
as such. Perhaps other mammals or birds may serve the same
purpose. It has frequently occurred to the writer that the ma-
larial Plasmodium, like other amoeboid protozoa, may find its nor-
mal habitat, external to the bodies of its insect or animal hosts,
upon the stems and leaves of water plants, rather than in the
water itself. The fact that malarial fevers do not prevail in the
vicinity of swamps when the marsh vegetation is submerged by
high water is in favor of this view ; as is also its apparent need
of plenty of oxygen, which we infer from its active multiplication
in the blood and its parasitic invasion of the red blood-corpuscles.
Possibly the mosquito is an intermediate host for the Plas-
modium malaricB on a larger scale than Manson suggests. The

THE MALARIAL PARASITE. 639

natural food of this insect is the juices of plants, and, no doubt, a
vast majority of them never have a chance to fill themselves with
the rich red fluid from their human victims which they are so
eager to substitute for their normal diet when opportunity offers.
If, as we have suggested, the Plasmodium abounds upon the stems
and foliage of herbaceous plants in marshy localities, the mosquito
would be very likely to pick it up in following its everyday
method of gaining a livelihood.

Parasitic protozoa, closely resembling the malarial parasite,
have been found in the blood of birds and of reptiles, and possibly
one or more species of lower animals may serve as an " interme-
diate host" for the hsematozoon under consideration. Laveran
has given a drawing, in his work on Paludism, of a parasite found
in the blood of the lark, which is evidently of the same family.
The fact that a parasite may develop in the blood, or elsewhere,
in one or more species of animals without giving rise to any evi-
dent symptoms of disease can not be taken as evidence that it is not
pathogenic for man, or for some other animal. On the contrary,
we have numerous instances which show that animals may have
a natural or acquired immunity to the pathogenic action of para-
sitic micro-organisms which are deadly for other animals of the
same or different species.

Texas fever, an infectious disease of cattle which prevails as
an endemic disease in certain regions in the southern portion of
the United States, has been shown, by the researches of Theobald
Smith and other bacteriologists belonging to the Agricultural
Department, to be due to a blood parasite belonging to the pro-
tozoa {Pyrosoma higeminum of Smith). In this disease the tick
has been shown to be the intermediate host of the parasite. The
ticks which fall from infected animals give birth to a numerous
progeny in the pastures frequented by them, and these young
ticks attach themselves to other animals which subsequently feed
in the same pastures and transmit to them the fatal infection.

The tsetse fly disease of Africa has recently been shown by the
researches of Bruce to be due to a flagellate infusorium which is
found in the blood of infected animals. This disease is fatal to
the ox, the horse, the dog, the sheep, and the ass, but not to the
indigenous wild animals in the region infested by the tsetse fly.
The researches of Bruce indicate that the fly acts as a carrier of
the parasite from diseased to healthy animals. He has shown by
experiment that after feeding on the blood of an infected animal
the tsetse fly can communicate the disease to a healthy animal by
its bite. After a short period of incubation the htematozoa appear
in the blood concurrently with the development of fever, and fol-
lowed by rapidly progressive anaemia, dropsy, and death.

The so-called " surra disease,'^ which prevails in certain por-

640 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

tions of India, is believed to be due to a similar parasitic protozoan
(Trypanosma Evansi). According to Lingard, this infusorium
exists as an innocuous parasite in the blood of rats in India. It
is not pathogenic, or only feebly so, for the native ox of India,
but gives rise to a fatal infectious disease in horses, dogs, and
camels.

Another pathogenic micro-organism belonging to the protozoa
is the Amoeba coli, which is found in great numbers in the large
intestine in cases of tropical dysentery and also in liver abscess
secondary to this disease.

The rapid progress of our knowledge of the bacteria has been
due to the fact that satisfactory methods (staining) have been
devised for detecting these minute micro-organisms in the blood
and tissues of infected individuals and for cultivating them in
artificial media. Unfortunately, these methods have only a limited
utility when applied to investigations relating to the protozoa.
The bacterial cell has considerable stability, owing to its cellulose
envelope (cell wall), and it is readily stained by the aniline dyes.
The protozoa, on the contrary, very readily undergo disintegra-
tion, and the more fluid protoplasm of these unicellular organisms
is not so easy to demonstrate by the usual staining reagents. It
has also been found very difficult, and in many cases quite impos-
sible, to obtain pure cultures in artificial media. Again, the recog-
nition of protozoa in the blood of infected animals by means of
the microscope requires special skill in making preparations, in
the management of the light, etc., and expert knowledge of the
normal elements of the blood and of the changes they undergo as
a result of various methods of preparation. This is illustrated
by the fact that many persons, more or less familiar with the use
of the microscope, have failed to discover the malarial parasite in
blood which undoubtedly contained it, while others have evi-
dently mistaken vacuoles in normal blood- corpuscles for the Plas-
modium, the crenated red corpuscles for pigmented cells, and
deformed corpuscles for malarial crescents.

Notwithstanding the painstaking researches which have been
made during the past few years for the purpose of determining
the nature of certain bodies which may be demonstrated by spe-
cial staining methods in the cells of carcinomatous tumors, we are
still uncertain as to the nature and ^etiological import of these
bodies. Some investigators believe them to be protozoa, and from
their location infer that they are the specific ^etiological agents in
the development of malignant growths of this character. But, so
far as we are informed, this view has not as yet received any
very substantial support, and has not been accepted by the lead-
ing pathologists of the world.

The presence of amoeboid micro-organisms in the contents of

THE MALARIAL PARASITE, 641

the pustules of variola and in vaccine lymph lias been reported
by several investigators: Guarnieri (1892), Monti (1894), Plana
and Galli-Valerio (1894), L. Pfeiifer (1894), Clarke (1895), von
Sicherer (1895), E. Pfeift'er (1895). Guarnieri in 1892 published a
paper in which he claimed to have cultivated the amoeboid micro-
organism found by him in vaccine lymph by successive inocula-
tions in the cornea of rabbits. E. Pfeiffer has since (1895) con-
firmed this observation, and has seen the parasite undergoing
amoeboid movements and in progress of multiplication by spon-
taneous fission. During the past two years investigations relating
to the aetiology of vaccinia and variola have been made at the
Army Medical Museum in Washington, by Major Walter Reed,
surgeon United States Army. These investigations show that in
vaccinated monkeys and in children an amoeboid parasite makes
its appearance in the blood on the sixth or seventh day after vac-
cination, and may be found during a period of from five to seven
days, when it disappears. Reed has found the same parasite in
the blood of patients with variola and in his own blood after an
accidental vaccination in the finger. The parasites are not nu-
merous. They are less than a third the diameter of a red blood-
corpuscle, and may be observed to undergo amoeboid movements
in a drop of blood, properly mounted for microscopical examina-
tion, during a period of twenty-four hours or more. These amoe-
boid bodies, like the malarial parasite, would be easily overlooked
by one not an expert in blood examinations.

The presence of a ciliated amoeboid micro-organism in the mu-
cous secretion coughed up by children suffering from whooping-
cough has recently been reported by Deichler and confirmed by
Kourlow. This may prove to be the cause of the disease, but
further researches will, of course, have to be made before this can
be determined. In view of the extended investigations made dur-
ing the past few years by competent bacteriologists, it seems prob-
able that in most of those infectious diseases in which the specific
infectious agent has not yet been discovered it belongs to some
other class of micro-organisms than the bacteria ; and it seems
not improbable that some of them at least will prove to be due
to infection by "germs" belonging to the class to which your
attention has been invited in the present address — viz., the patho-
genic protozoa.

M. Henri de Kerville describes fifteen yew trees in Normandy which
are supposed to be a thousand years old and more ; a number of oaks from
three hundred to nine hundred years old ; cedar trees from a hundred to a
hundred and fifty; a hawthorn, two hundred; a pear tree, more than a
hundred ; a holly tree, a hundred or a hundred and fifty ; and an American
tulip tree, a hundred or a hundred and twenty years old.

VOL. L. — 48

642 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH.*

By DAVID STARR JORDAN,

PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

WITHIN the last few years three notable assaults have been
made on the integrity of science. Two of these have come
from the hostile camp of mediteval metaphysics, another from the
very front of the army of science itself. Salisbury, Balfour, and
Haeckel agree in this, that "belief" may rest on foundations un-
known to "knowledge," and that the conclusions of science may
be subject to additions and revisions in accordance with the
demands of " belief." To some considerations suggested in part
by Balfour's Foundations of Belief and Haeckel's Confession of
Faith of a Man of Science I invite your attention to-day.

The growing complexity of civilized life demands with each
age broader and more exact knowledge as to the material sur-
roundings and greater precision in our recognition of the invis-
ible forces or tendencies about us. We are in the hands of the
Fates, and the greater our activities the more evident become
these limiting conditions. The secret of power with man is to
know its limitations. To this end we need constantly new acces-
sions of truth as to the universe and better definition of the truths
which are old. Such knowledge, tested and placed in order, we
call science. Science is the gathered wisdom of the race. Only a
part of it can be grasped by any one man. Each must enter into
the work of others. Science is the flower of the altruism of the
ages, by which nothing that lives " liveth for itself alone," The
recognition of facts and laws is the province of science. We only
know whit lies about us from our own experience and that of
others, this experience of others being translated into terms of
our own experience and more or less perfectly blended with it.
We can find the meaning of phenomena only from our reasoning
based on these experiences. All knowledge we can attain or hope
to attain must, in so far as it is knowledge at all, be stated in
terms of human experience. The laws of Nature are not the
products of science. They are the human glimpses of that which
is the " law before all time."

Thus human experience is the foundation of all knowledge.
Even innate ideas, if such ideas exist, are derived in some way
from knowledge possessed by our ancestors, as innate impulses to
action are related to ancestral needs for action.

But is human experience the basis also of belief as it is of
knowledge ?

* President's address, California Science Association meeting, Oakland, December, 1895.

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 643

One of the questions of the day is this : Is " to believe " more
than " to know " ? Shall a sane man extend belief in directions
where he has no knowledge and in lines outside the reach of his
power to act ? Can belief soar in space not traversable by " or-
ganized common sense"? If such distinction is made between
" knowing " and " believing/' which of the two has precedence
as a guide for action ? Is belief to be tested by science ? Or
is science useful only wher^ belief is indifferent to the subject-
matter ? If belief is subordinate to t^ie tests of science, to be
accepted or rejected in the degree of its accord with human
experience, then it is simply an annex to science, a footnote to
human experience, and the authority of the latter is supreme. If,
however, truth comes to us from sources outside of human expe-
rience, it must come in some pure form, free from human errors.
As such it must claim the first place. In this event the progress
of science will be always on a lower plane than the progress of
belief.

In a recent address before the British Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, the Marquis of Salisbury made in brief this
contention : The central thought of modern science is evolution,
the change from the simple to the complex. This implies not
only the fundamental unity of all life, but the fundamental unity
of all matter and perhaps of all force as well. In spite of the claims
of scientific men, even the fact of organic evolution is far from
demonstration ; while of inorganic evolution, the development of
the chemical elements, science can tell us nothing. Wherefore
the marquis, in view of the failure of science to keep up with the
progress of belief, grows jocose and patronizing. His advice to
his scientific associates might be stated in the words of Thackeray,
that " we should think small beer of ourselves and pass around
the bottle."

More recently another English statesman, Mr. Arthur J. Bal-
four, has discussed the Foundations of Belief. He has shown
that the methods of science can not give us absolute truth. Its
methods are " of the earth, earthy." Its claim of trust in the
infallibility of its own processes has no higher authority than the
claim of infallibility made at times by religious organizations.
For as only the senses and the reason can be appealed to in sup-
port of the claims of the senses and the reason, the argument of
science is of necessity reasoning in a circle. Science can give us
no ground solid enough to bear the weight of belief. Belief must
exist, and it may therefore rest on the innate needs of man and
the philosophy which is built on these needs in accordance with
the authority which the human soul finds suflBcient.

Balfour calls attention to the fact that human experience is
not in its essence objective. It consists only of varying phases

644 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

of consciousness. These phases of consciousness at best only-
point toward truth. They are not truth itself. They vary with
the varying nerve cells of each individual creature on whom
phases of consciousness are impressed, and again with the changes
in the cells themselves. The tricks of the senses are well known
in psychology, as is also the failure of the senses as to material
outside their usual range. Life is at best "in a dimly lighted
room/' and all the objects about us are in their essence quite dif-
ferent from what they seem. This essence is unknown and un-
knowable. We are well aware that we have no power to recog-
nize all phases of reality. The electric condition of an object
may be as real as its color or its temperature, and yet none of our
senses respond to it. Our eyes give but an octave of the vibra-
tions we call light, and our ears are dull to all but a narrow
range in pitch of sound.

Likewise is reason to be discredited. The commonest things
become unknown or impossible when viewed " in the critical
light of philosophy." Balfour shows that the simple affirmation,
" the sun gives light," loses all its meaning and possibility when
taken out of the category of human experience and discussed in
terms of philosophy. In like manner can any simple fact be
thrown into the category of myths and dreams. A man can be
led by the methods of metaphj^sics to doubt the existence of him-
self or of any object about him. For instance, take the dis-
cussion of " John's John " and of " Thomas's John," as given by
Dr. Holmes. Is the real John the John as he appears to John
himself ? Or is he real only in the form in which Thomas re-
gards him, or as he looks to Richard and Henry, whose interest in
him is progressively less ? All we know of the external universe
is through the impressions made directly or indirectly on our
nervous systems and through recorded impressions made on the
systems of others ; and a part of this external universe v/e our-
selves are. All that we know of ourselves is that which is ex-
ternal to ourselves. Thus with all this, each man forms in his
mind a universe of his own. " My mind to me a kingdom is,"
and this kingdom in all its parts is somewhat different from any
other mental kingdom. It is continually changing. It was made
but once, and will never be duplicated. When my vital processes
cease, this kingdom will vanish " like the baseless fabric of a
vision, leaving not a wreck behind." Our mind is the " stuff that
dreams are made of " — and our bodies — what are they ? Physic-
ally each man is an alliance of animals, each one of a single cell,
each cell with its processes of life, growth, death, and reproduc-
tion, each one with its own " cell-soul" which presides over these
processes. In the alliance of these cells, forming tissues and
organs, we have the phenomena of mutual helpt and mutual de-

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 645

pendence. In man we find the phenomena of animal life on a
larger and more differentiated scale, but the fact of self grows
faint as our study is continued. What is this vital force, and
what have we to do with it ; and is it, after all, more than another
name for the movement of molecules ? And of what are our cells
composed ? Carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, we know by
name, but what are these in essence, and how are they different
one from another ? Does matter really exist ? Mathematicians
have claimed that all relations of ponderable matter and force
might exist if the atoms of matter were not realities, but simply
relations. Each of these atoms possessed of attraction or weight
may be a vortex ring or eddy in the ether, the ultimate units of
which have vibration but not attraction. If, therefore, the body
of man be an alliance of millions of animal cells, each cell formed
of millions of eddies in an inconceivable and impossible ether ; if
all things around us are recognized only by their effect on the
most unstable part of this unstable structure, then again " let us
think small beer of ourselves and pass around the bottle."

Each fact or law must be expressed in terms of human experi-
ence, if it is expressed or made intelligible at all. To such terms,
the word reality applies, and beyond such reality we have never
gone. Apparently beyond it we can not go, at least in the only
life we have ever known. Balfour's plea for " philosophic doubt "
of the reality of the subject-matter of science is simply a rhetor-
ical trick of describing the known in terms of the unknown. By
the same process we may call a fishwife an " abracadabra " or an
" icosahedron," and by the same process we can build out of the
commonest materials "an occult science" or a new theosophy.
The measure of a man is the basis of human knowledge, and
whatever can not be brought to this measure is no part of knowl-
edge. In converse fashion Balfour speaks of the unknown in
terms of the known ; of the infinite in terms of human experi-
ence. This gives to his positive foundations of belief an appear-
ance of reality as fallacious as the unreality he assigns to the
foundations of science. This appearance of reality is the base cf
Haeckel's sneer at conventional religion as belief in a " gaseous
vertebrate."

It is perfectly easy for science to distinguish between subjective
and objective nerve conditions. It can separate those produced by
subjective nervous derangements, or by conditions already passed,
from those which are contemporary impressions of external
things. It is perfectly easy for common sense to do the same.
To be able to do so is the essence of sanity. The test of sanity is
its livableness, for insanity is death. The borderland of spirit
of which we hear so often of late, the land in which subjective
and objective creations jostle each other, is the borderland of

646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

death.. Tlie continued existence of animals and men is based on
the adequacy of their sensations and the veracity of their actions.
The existence of any creature is, in general, proof of the sanity
of its ancestry, or at least of the sanity of those who controlled
the actions of its ancestors.

This veracity is gauged by the degree of coincidence of sub-
jective impressions and objective truth. "Whoever makes a fool's
paradise or a fool's hell of the world about him is not allowed to
live in it. This fact in all its bearings must stand as a proof that
the universe is outside of man and not within him. In this ob-
jective universe which lies outside ourselves we find " the cease-
less flow of force and the rational intelligence that pervades it."
No part of it can be fully understood by us, but in it we find no
chance movement, " no variableness nor shadow of turning."
That such a universe exists seems to demand some intelligence
capable of understanding it, of stating its properties in terms of
absolute truth as distinguished from those of human experience.
Only an Infinite Being can be conceived as doing this, hence such
knowledge must enter into our conception of the Infinite Being,
whatever may be our theology in other respects. For to know
an object or phenomenon in its fullness, " all in all," " we should
know what God is and man is."

It is therefore no reproach to human science that it deals with
human relations, not with absolute truths. " The ultimate truths
of science," Dr. Schurman has said, "rest on the same basis as the
ultimate truths of philosophy" — that is, on a basis that trans-
cends human experience. This is true, for science has no "ulti-
mate truths." There are none known to man. "The perfect
truth," says Lessing, " is but for Thee alone." With ultimate
truths human philosophy tries in some fashion to deal. To look
at the universe in some degree through the eyes of God is the
aim of philosophy. In its aim it is most noble. Its efforts are a
source of strength in the conduct of human life. But its conclu-
sions are not truth. They range from the puerile to the incom-
prehensible, and only science — that is, "common sense" — can dis-
tinguish the two. For this reason just in proportion as philosophy
is successful it is unfit as a basis of human action. Human
knowledge and action have limitations. The chief of these is
that whatever can not be stated in terms of human experience is
unintelligible to man. Whatever can not be thought can not be
lived.

Philosophy has its recognized methods of procedure. These
are laid down in the mechanism of the human brain itself. Sci-
ence has found these methods untrustworthy as a means of reach-
ing objective truth. The final test of scientific truth is this : Can
we make it work ? Can we trust our life to it ? This test the

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 647

conclusions of philosopliy can not meet. In so far as they do so
they are conclusions of science. As science advances in any field
philosophy is driven away from it. The fact has been often
noted that every great conclusion of science has been anticipated
by philosophy, in most cases by the philosophy of the Greeks.
But every conclusion science has shown to be false has been like-
wise anticipated. The Greeks taught the theory of development
centuries before Darwin. But if Darwin's studies in life varia-
tion had led to any other result whatsoever, he would have been
equally anticipated by the Greeks. In other words, every con-
ceivable guess as to the origin and meaning of familiar phe-
nomena has been exhausted by philosophy. Some of these
guesses contain elements of truth. Which of these have such
elements it is the business of Science to find out. Philosophy has
no means of doing so. A truth not yet shown to be true is in sci-
ence not a truth. It has no more validity than any other gen-
eralization not shown to be false. Helmholtz tells us that phi-
losophy deals with such " scldechtes Stoff" such bad subject-
matter, that it can give no trustworthy conclusions. Science
alone can give the test of human life. The essence of this test is
experiment.

The tests of philosophy are mainly these: Is the conception
plausible ? Has it logical continuity ? Is it satisfying to the
human heart ? And in this connection the figurative word " heart "
is best left undefined. In other words, its sources and its tests are
alike subjective — intellectual or emotional. If we take from phi-
losophy the " heart " element, the personal equation, it becomes
logic or mathematics. Mathematics is metaphysics working
through methods of precision. It is a most valuable instrument
for the study of the relations and ramifications of knowledge, but
it can give no addition to knowledge itself. Dr. William James
defines metaphysics as " the persistent attempt to think clearly."
This definition is good so far as it goes, but to think clearly is a
function of science also. Metaphysics is rather the " attempt to
think clearly" in fields where exact data are unattained or un-
attainable. In so far as philosophy is simply clear thinking it is
a most valuable agency for testing the deductions of science.
But, while it can reject false conclusions, it can add no new matter
of its own.

For example, the claim is made in the name of evolutionary
philosophy that all matter is one in essence, therefore all the
chemical elements, some seventy in number, must be the same in
substance. In this case all must be derived from the same primi-
tive stuff, and the hypothetical basis of all ponderable matter has
been called protyl. As a working theory this is most ingenious.
But is it science ? Is it worthy of belief ? Certainly Science

648 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

knows nothing as yet of tlie identity of these elements. In a
general way Science is finding out that the processes of Nature
are more complex than man supposed, while the elements on
which these processes rest, matter and force, are more simple.
How far can this generalization go ? To every test human ex-
perience has devised each chemical element remains the same, its
atoms unchangeable as well as indestructible. Therefore, to
speak of them as forms of one substance is to go beyond knowl-
edge. Science does not teach this. But to philosophy this offers
no difficulty. It is still plausible to suppose that by some com-
bination of primitive units these variant atoms are formed. Such
an idea would have logical continuity, and, as we are becoming
used to the notions of primal unity, we find such an idea satisfy-
ing to our consciousness. If this is true, somewhere, somehow,
lead will be resolved into its primal elements, and these elements
may be united in the form of gold. Then will the dream of the
alchemist become fact. But Science must make this objection :
" Not until then." Such transmutation is as yet no part of knowl-
edge. We certainly do not know that lead can be changed into
that which is transmutable into gold. We do not know it, I say ;
but may we believe it ? Is the foundation of belief less secure
than that of knowledge ? Can we trust Philosophy to tell us
what to believe while we must look to Science to tell us what we
know ?

This brings us to the question of definitions. If knowledge
and belief are of like rank, both must rest on science, and the re-
sults of philosophy must come to science only as hints or sugges-
tions as to lines of research.

If knowledge implies stability and belief does not, the relation
of the two is also clear. In that case belief would be a word of
light meaning, expressive of whim or of the balance of opinion.
Such weight as it has would be drawn from its association with
prejudice. Belief would then be the pretense of knowledge as
compared with knowledge itself. Among its paths life can not
march with courage and effectiveness. It is not for such beliefs
as this that the martyrs have lived or died. Their inspiration
was the positive belief of science or the negative belief of the
falsity of the ideas that tyranny or superstition had forced upon
them.

To avoid a discussion foreign to my purpose, I wish, if possi-
ble, to separate the word belief — as used in this jjaper — from the
word religion. The essence of belief is the categorical statement
of propositions. These may be built into a creed, which word is
the Latin synonym of belief.

Religion implies rather a condition of the mind and heart — an
attitude, not a formula. Faith, hope, charity do not rest on logic

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 649

or observation. Religion implies a reverent attitude toward tlie
universe and its forces, a kindly feeling toward one's fellow mor-
tals and immortals. " Pure religion and undefiled " has never
formulated a "creed," has never claimed for itself orthodoxy. It
has no stated ritual and no recognized cult of priests. Much that
passes conventionally as religious belief among men has no such
quality or value. It is simple the debris of our grandfathers' sci-
ence. While religion and belief become entangled in the human
mind, so as not to be easily separable, the one is not necessarily a
product of the other. In the higher sense no man can follow or
inherit the religion of another. His religion, if he has any, is his
own. Only forms can be transferred, realities never; for reali-
ties in life are the product of individual thought and action.

As the third of these efforts to discredit science I have placed
Prof. Haeckel's recent address. The Confession of Faith of a Man
of Science. This remarkable work is an eloquent plea for the ac-
ceptance of the philosophic doctrine of monism as the fundamen-
tal basis of science. This doctrine once adopted, we have the basis
for large deductions, which forestall the slow conclusions of sci-
ence; for monism brings the necessity for the belief in certain
scientific hypotheses resting as yet on no foundations in human
experience, incapable as yet of scientific verification, but which
are a necessary part of the monistic creed. The primal conception
of monism is, first, "that there lives one spirit in all things, and
that the whole cognizable world is constituted and has been de-
veloped in accordance with one common fundamental law." This
involves the essential oneness of all things, matter and force, ob-
ject and spirit. Nature and God. This philosophical conception of
monism and pantheism can not be made intelligible to us, because
it can be stated in no terms of human experience. But it has
certain necessary derivatives, according to Haeckel, and these are
intelligible, because their subject-matter is available for scientific
experiment.

First among these postulates, called by Haeckel "Articles of
Faith," comes "the essential unity of organic and inorganic
Nature, the former having been evolved from the latter only at
a relatively recent period." This involves the " spontaneous gen-
eration " of life from inorganic matter. It also resolves " the vital
force," or the force which appears in connection with protoplas-
mic structures, into properties shown by certain carbon com-
pounds under certain conditions. Life is thus, in a sense, an
emanation of carbon, " the true maker of life," according to
Haeckel "being the tetraedral carbon molecule."

This "Article of Faith" implies also the unity of the chemical
elements, each of which is a product of the evolution of the pri-
mal unit of matter. Force and matter are likewise one, because

650 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

neither appears except in the presence of the other. The inherit-
ance of acquired characters is also made a corollary of monistic
belief.

Now, all these hypotheses are possibly true, but none of them
are as yet conclusions of science. They meet the conditions re-
quired by philosophy. They are plausible. They have the merit
of logical continuity, and, excepting to those persons biased by
early subjection to contrary notions, they satisfy the " human
heart." There should be no natural repugnance to monism or to
pantheism, difficult as it is to associate the idea of truth and reality
with either or with the opposite of either. Speaking for myself,
I feel no repugnance to them. Thoy lend themselves to poetry ;
they appeal to the human heart. In Haeckel's own words, re-
ferring to something else, "such hereditary articles of faith take
root all the more firmly, the further they are removed from the
rational knowledge of Nature and enveloped in the mysterious
mantle of mythological poesy." The present resistance to them
may in time be turned into superstitious reverence for them ; for,
of all the philosophic doctrines brought down as lightning from
heaven for the guidance of plodding man, these seem most attract-
ive, and least likely to conflict with the conclusions of science.

But can we give them belief ? Let us pass by the doctrine of
monism, with which science can not concern itself. What of the
corollaries ? Spontaneous generation, for example, has been the
basis of many experiments. Like the transmutation of metals,
it seems reasonable to philosophy. The one idea has been the
Will-o'-the-wisp of biology as the other has of chemistry. We
know absolutely nothing of how, if ever, non-life becomes life.
So far as we know, generation from first to last has been one
unbroken series — "all life from life." We have no reason to be-
lieve that spontaneous generation exists under any conditions we
have ever known. We have likewise reason to believe that if it
exists at all we have no way of recognizing it. The organisms
we know have all had a long history. Even the smallest shows
traces of a long ancestry, a long process of natural selection, and
of many concessions to environments. We know of no life that
does not show such concessions. We know no creature that does
not show homologies with all other living beings whatsoever. So
far as this fact goes, it tends to show that all life is one. If this
is true, spontaneous generation, whatever it may be, is not one of
the ever-present phenomena of life.

If life does now appear without living parentage, if organisms
fresh from the mint of creation now appear from inorganic matter,
they are so simple that we can not know them. They are so small
that we can not find them. They would be made, we may sup-
pose, each of a small number of molecules. If there is truth in

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 651

tlie calculations of Lord Kelvin and others, that a molecule is
as small in a drop of water as a marble in comparison with the
earth, then we may not look for these creatures. If we can not
find them, we do not know that they exist. If we do not Tcnoiu
that they exist, shall we " believe " that they do ? Is it not better,
as Emerson suggests, that we should not " pretend to know and
believe what we do not really know and believe'' ?

It may be that the existence of life in a world once lifeless
renders spontaneous generation a " logical necessity." But the
" logical necessity " exists in our minds, not in Nature. Science
knows no " logical necessity," for the simple reason that we are
never able to compass all the possibilities in any given case.

If we are to apply philosophic tests to the theories of reincar-
nation, we may find them equally eligible as articles of belief.
They are plausible, to some minds at least; they have logical
continuity. They are satisfying to the human heart, at least this
is claimed by their advocates. Their chief fault is that they can
be brought to no test of science and have no basis in inductive
knowledge. In other words, their only reality is that of the
vapors of dreamland. If plausibility and acceptability serve as
sufficient foundations for belief, then belief itself is a frail and
transient thiug, no more worthy of respect than prejudice, from
which indeed it could not be distinguished. Some such idea as
this seems to be present in the mind of Mr. Gladstone. In a
recent article, quoting in part the language of the honest Bishop
Butler, he ascribes to certain doctrines "a degree of credibility
sufficient for purposes of religion, and even a high degree of
probability." In other words, religion, which deals with human
hopes and fears, has less need of certainty than science, which is
ultimately concerned with human action.

Haeckel makes the same distinction clearly enough. He uses
the term " belief " for " hypotheses or conjectures of more or less
probability " by which " the gaps empirical investigation must
leave in science are filled up. . . . These," he says, " we can not
indeed for a time establish on a secure basis, and yet we may make
use of them in the way of explaining phenomena, in so far as they
are not inconsistent with the rational knowledge of Nature. Such
rational hypotheses," he says, "are scientific articles of faith."
It is not clear, however, that so large a name as faith need be
taken for working hypotheses confessedly uncertain or transient.
The word " make-believe," used by Huxley in some such connec-
tion, might well be applied to hypothetical " articles of faith,"
until given a basis by scientific induction. But it seems to me
that it is not necessary for the man of science to say " I believe,"
in addition to " I know." He should put off the livery of science
when he enters the service of the Delphian oracles.

652 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

That all the doctrines above mentioned are necessarily included
in monism may perhaps be doubted. Monism would still flourish
were all these theories disproved. For human philosophies have
wonderful recuperative power. Their basis is in the structure of
the brain itself, and external phenomena are only accessory to
them.

If monism is purely a philosophic conception, it can have no
necessary axioms or corollaries, except such as are involved in its
definition. These could not be scientific in their character, be-
cause they could in no way come into relation with the realities
of human life. If, however, monism be a generalization resting
in part on human experience, then it must be tested by the meth-
ods of science. Until it is so tested, however plausible it may be,
it has no workable value. There is no gain in giving it belief, or
in calling it truth. Still less should we stultify ourselves by
pinning our faith to its postulates as to the matters yet to be
decided by experiment, and to be settled by human experience
only. Haeckel says, for example : " The inheritance of characters
acquired during the life of the individual is an indispensable
axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution. . . . Those who with
Weismann and Galton deny this entirely exclude thereby the
possibility of any formative influence of the outer world upon
organic form." Here we may ask. Who knows that there is any
such formative influence ? What do we know of this or any
other subject beyond what in our investigations we find to be
true ? When was monism a subject of special revelation, and
with what credentials does it come, that one of the greatest con-
troversies in modern science should be settled by the simple word ?
" Ro77ia loouta est ; causa finita est" is a dictum no longer heeded
by science.

The great bulk of the arguments in favor of the heredity of
acquired characters, as well as most of those in favor of the
opposed dogma, the unchanged continuity of the germ-plasm, are
based on some supposed logical necessity of philosophy. All such
arguments are valueless in the light of fact. Desmarest's sugges-
tion to the contending advocates of Neptunism and Plutonism
was, " Go and see." When they had seen the action of water and
the action of heat, the contest was over, for argument and con-
tention had vanished in the face of fact. To believe without
foundation is to discredit knowledge. Such ** Confessions of
Faith " on Haeckel's part lead one to doubt whether in his zeal
for belief he has even known what it is to know. In fact, if we
may trust his critics, much of HaeckeFs scientific work is vitiated
by this mixture of "believe" and "make-believe." The same
confusion is shown in this remarkable passage which President
White quotes from John Henry Newman : " Scripture says that

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 653

the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and science that the
earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How can we
del ermine which of these opposite statements is the very truth
till we know what motion is ? If our idea of motion is but an
accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true
and both are true; neither true philosophically; both true for
certain practical purposes in the system in which they are re-
spectively found."

Again, if we are to allow the revision of the generalizations of
science by the addition of acceptable but unverified doctrines, we
must allow the right of similar revision by rejection. Mr. Wallace,
for example, would be justified in adding to the certainties of
organic evolution his idea of the special creation of the mind of
man. The old notion of the separate existence of the Ego, which
plays on the nerve cells of the brain as a musician on the keys of
a piano, would still linger in psychology. The astral body would
hover on the verge of physiology, and a strong plea would go up
for the reality of Santa Claus.

I have a scientific friend who finds it necessary to exclude by
force, from his biological beliefs, all that is unpleasant in the
theories of evolution. And he has the same right to do this that
Prof. Haeckel has to insist that any scientific beliefs, for which
science has yet no warrant, are a necessary part of the orthodoxy
of science.

For Haeckel is not content to speak for himself, asking toler-
ance by tolerance toward others. His belief is no idiosyncrasy of
his own. He speaks for all. Every honest, intelligent, coura-
geous scientific man, he tells us, so far as he is truthful, compe-
tent, and brave, shares the same belief. His confession of faith is
nothing if not orthodox. He says :

" This monistic confession has the greater claim to an unpre-
judiced consideration in that it is shared, I am firmly convinced,
by at least nine tenths of the men of science now living ; indeed,!
believe, by all men of science in whom the following four condi-
tions are realized : (1) Sufficient acquaintance with the various
departments of natural science, and in particular with the modern
doctrine of evolution; (2) sufScient acuteness and clearness of
judgment to draw by induction and deduction the necessary
logical consequences that flow from such empirical knowledge;
(3) sufficient moral courage to maintain the monistic knowledge,
so gained, against the attacks of hostile dualistic and pluralistic
systems; and (4) sufficient strength of mind to free himself by
sound, independent reasoning from dominant religious prejudices,
and especially from those irrational dogmas which have been
firmly lodged in our minds from earliest youth as indisputable
revelations."

654 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Against such assumption we must protest. I have nothing
against the doctrines save that they are not yet true. In them-
selves, as I have said, they are attractive. One may naturally
feel a hopeful interest in wide-reaching theories which seem pos-
sible, but are still unproved or unworkable. This is, however, not
"belief." It is rather open-mindedness, open to negative evidence
as well as to the positive.

As science goes wherever the facts lead, so science must stop
where the facts stop. It can not add to its methods the running
high jump, nor place the divining rod with the microscope, cru-
cible, and calculus among its instruments of precision. Beyond
the range of scientific knowledge extend the working and the
unworkable hypotheses. Beyond the confines of these extends the
universe of the mind, the boundless realm which is the abode of
philosophy. None should better realize those distinctions than
men of science.

[7'o be continued.]

A YEAR OF THE X RAYS.

By D. W. HEKING,
peoressob of physics, new york university.

THE incredulity which greeted the first reports of Prof. Ront-
gen's famous discovery gave place, upon their confirmation,
to a delirium of enthusiasm, experimentation, and expectation.
So startling and so novel were the facts reported by the discov-
erer that no prediction seemed too wild, no penetration into the
unknown either impossible or improbable. The condition of
mind actually prevailing at that time with a large number of
persons is admirably shown by President Jordan's amusing arti-
cle on the Sympsychograph in the Popular Science Monthly for
September, 1896.

Prof. Rontgen reported his investigations in a paper before
the Physico-Medical Society of Wurzburg, in December, 1895.
The account of his paper was transmitted to America in a few
brief statements, January 7, 189G, the full report not arriving
until some weeks later. Popular interest was focused upon the
fact that the X rays, as its discoverer provisionally named the
mysterious agency, would reveal a bony skeleton within its case
of fleshy tissue, and the famous picture of a hand in which the
bones thus stood revealed was soon to be found in every city of
Europe and America. The realism of this weird picture simply
fascinated all who beheld it. Attempts were made to repeat and
extend the original experiments wherever there was any sem-
blance of apparatus suited to the purpose. An electric poten-

A YEAR OF THE X RAYS. 655

tial high enough to give a spark of seA'^eral inches in air, and a
vacuum tube in which the spark was to be discharged, seemed to
be requisites, and wherever these were obtainable the experi-
ments were attempted. ' Poor facilities led to efforts to dispense
with good ones, the prevailing meagerness of equipment becom-
ing thereby a means all the earlier of deciding the limitations for
successful operation. Of course, the excitemeut quieted when the
novelty wore off, but investigations in this new field must con-
tinue for a long time.

The pure physics of the subject was, naturally, the side which
most appealed to scientific professors. How was the strange
agent to be set to work, and how did it work ? Was it light, or
was it electricity ? Was it material, or ethereal ? Was it due to
the cathode or to the anode terminal of the vacuum tube ? The
year's work upon these questions leaves them answered only par-
tially and unsatisfactorily. Very little indeed has been added
to the facts brought out by Dr. Rontgen in the first instance.
The Physical Society of London, in its abstracts of physical papers
from foreign sources, classes all work with the Rontgen rays un-
der the head of " Light," but upon very scant grounds. Numerous
experiments have been made to test the character of these mysteri-
ous activities by the accepted criteria of light — namely, reflection,
refraction, interference, and polarization — all results being nega-
tive, or so slight and uncertain as to leave them still open to ques-
tion, and to make the name "X rays" not only the most common
one by which they are mentioned, but the one best suited to ex-
press our knowledge — or ignorance — of their nature. Several at-
tempts have been made to determine a length for them, supposing
them to be waves, resulting in a supposed upper limit of length
not greater than one hundredth that of violet light, and probably
not greater than one three-hundredth. In the first few months of
the furore of experimentation and discussion scarcely a result was
announced by one observer that was not controverted by another ;
yet out of this very contradictoriness came a rational conclusion
that at all events the rays are not homogeneous, but differ among
themselves in their properties, as do the constituent raj^s of
ordinary heterogeneous light. This would account for their non-
interference. Of refraction there is as yet no evidence, nor, so
far as known, is there any possibility of bringing the rays to a
focus and thus producing an image of any object by means of
them. All that can be done in that way as yet, as at first, is to
obtain a shadow of varying intensity by reason of the various
penetrability of different objects or portions of one object; and
so the pictures thus produced are called by various names, as
skiagraphs, radiographs. X-ray pictures, etc. — all chosen to avoid
the idea that they are real light- pictures or photographs. Since

656 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

these shadows are produced by straigiit rays from a small sur-
face, they are usually as large as the object itself, or larger. Many
experiments were made to determine the source from which the
rays proceed before it was learned definitely that they emanate
from the surface upon which the cathode rays first impinge — a
fact that was announced almost simultaneously by several ex-
perimenters. It is one of the important points that have been
determined, and even this was distinctly intimated by Prof. Ront-
gen in the twelfth section of his original paper.

In intensity they vary inversely as the square of the distance
from their source.

They electrify some bodies positively and some negatively,
and whatever charge a body may already have they reduce or
change it to the charge which they would independently give to
the body. Their penetrating power depends upon the length of
time they act.

Thus, gradually, these and many additional isolated facts
have been established, and no doubt enough data will be accumu-
lated eventually to permit generalization into laws ; but that stage
has not yet been reached.

Four theories have been suggested :

1. " They are ether waves, like ordinary light, but of exceed-
ingly brief period, therefore ultra ultra-violet."

2. " They are streams of material particles.'*

3. " They are vortices of the intermolecular ether, forced from
the cathode when the gas pressure is sufficiently low. Rectilinear
propagation, absence of reflection, etc., follow from the properties
of vortices."

4. " They are variations of stress in the dielectric surrounding
the vacuum tubes."

Each of these theories is entitled to the Scotch verdict " Not
proven," though the preponderance of opinion is on the side of
the first. Still, it can not yet be said to be more than opinion.

Of the hundreds of papers that have been written during the
year, the greater number have had reference to some special fea-
ture of manipulation, or detail of action of the rays, so that more
has been learned of how to work with them than of their essen-
tial character. This has led naturally to improved apparatus.

It is well to keep in mind that the X rays do not make objects
visible by their direct action, as light does. They do make cer-
tain substances self-luminous, causing them to emit a soft light
of a grayish-blue or yellow or green color, depending on the
nature of the substance, but this color is ordinary light, and
not, at least to any considerable extent, the X rays. This lumi-
nosity, called fluorescence, is also excited in many substances by
the ultra-violet or colorless portion of light, but the X rays are

A YEAR OF THE X RAYS. 657

especially strong in producing it. The substance employed by
Dr, Rontgen was barium platino- cyanide, which is expensive.
Experiment soon showed that other substances were more effi-
cient as well as cheaper, hundreds having been tested under the
rays for this effect. The best are tungstate of calcium, tungstate
of zinc, barium platino- cyanide, and potassium platino-cyanide,
the first named being at present the most common, though the
last named has been a favorite with English experimenters. A
screen of cardboard covered with a layer of fine crystals of either
of these substances and exposed to the rays in a dark room, imme-
diately lights up under their action, and a body impervious to the
rays, when placed before the screen, is seen upon it as a shadow.
If this screen is the front end of a light-proof box, into the other
end of which the eyes can look while all light is excluded, we then
have the fluoroscope, by which examinations can be made in a
lighted room. Probably few X rays pass through and beyond
the fluoroscopic screen. The effect of radiant energy upon a
body is determined not by the rays that pass through it, but by
those that are absorbed by it. It is difficult, therefore, to under-
stand how the light which the blind have been said to see on
peering into a fluoroscope can be really due to X rays.

The invention and improvement of the fluoroscope constitute
an important part of the progress that has been made. The effect
of the rays on photographic plates is heightened by similar means.
The sensitive plate to be exposed to the rays is itself carefully in-
closed in a wrapper so as to shut out every trace of light. If, be-
fore thus wrapping up the plate, a fluoroscopic screen is placed
with its surface of crystals directly in contact with the photo-
graphic film, then where the rays penetrate to this crystalline
surface it becomes luminous, and the light immediately affects
the sensitive plate except in those spots where the object inter-
cepts the X rays, and where consequently they do not cause
fluorescence of the screen. This device has greatly reduced the
time needed to obtain a photographic impression. Fig. 1 is an
illustration of such action. A photographic plate was partly
covered by such a screen, and the hand was placed partly over
the screen and partly over the plate not covered by the screen.
An exposure of twelve seconds was more than sufficient to pro-
duce a strong picture of the interior of the hand, under the
screen, the flesh almost disappearing from view, while the effect
upon the other portion of the plate (the dark part) is much less
pronounced. The line of demarcation is very sharp.

Also photographic plates or films have been adapted to this
particular use by preparing them so as to absorb the energy of
the rays. X-ray plates are now used of which the mode of prep-
aration is of course the manufacturer's secret, but which are

VOL. L. 49

A YEAR OF THE X RAYS. 659

coated with a very tliick film apparently impregnated with some
substance that fluoresces under the X rays. The time of expos-
ure of such plates is less than with ordinary ones, though not
much less than is required for a quick plate covered by the fluo-
rescent screen, but the latter will not give the detail and differen-
tiation of parts which are unequally penetrable by the rays that
can be got from the X-ray plates.

The rays also affect sensitive paper, especially bromide paper,
and now so-called X-ray paper is in use requiring even briefer
exposures than plates. The picture on such paper is a negative —
that is, shadows are light and parts affected by the rays are dark.
Fig. 2 is an example of a picture taken on such paper, the objects
being such as were greatly in vogue for the early pictures — a
purse, a pincushion, etc. In the early efforts such a picture re-

FiG. 2. — An Early Picture Kepeated. Ex^wsure, two and a half seconds.

quired fully twenty minutes' exposure to the rays ; the example
here was produced in two and a half seconds, or about one five-
hundredth part of the former time. The writer has obtained a
perfectly distinct picture of the same kind by a single fluorescent
flash in the tube. That is practically instantaneous.

Fig. 3 shows the principal changes in style of tubes that have
been approved. Nos. (1), (2), and (3) are forms that were to be
found in most collections of Crookes's tubes in physical labora-
tories when the X rays were first made known. No. (1) was one
of the earliest to give satisfactory results ; then (2) was found to
be preferable, and this " pear shape " was recommended as the
most suitable form. Almost at the same time No. (3) was found
to be particularly efficient. In this the cathode rays converge
from a concave terminal upon a platinum plate used as an anode,
such plate becoming the source of Rontgen rays proper. This

66o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

form was immediately developed into what was called a " focus
tube/' in which a similar concave focusing cathode was employed,
and a platinum plate inclined at forty-five degrees to the axis of
the cathode rays was inserted between the two electrodes of the
tube to receive the impact of the cathode rays as in No. (4). A
plate so placed is called an anticathode. This idea was carried
still further to produce the double-focus tube shown in No. (5),
which is especially suited to oscillatory discharges from the elec-
trodes, and therefore adapted to use with alternating current
apparatus, especially Tesla coils. In this form of tube the anti-

£.

I..

•2
Tig. 3.

-Typical Forms of Crookes's Tubes.

cathode consists of a wedge-shaped piece of platinum midway
between the ends of the tube. If this platinum terminal be con-
nected with the positive pole and both end electrodes with the
negative pole, this tube is very efficient with a Ruhmkorff coil
giving unidirectional discharges. For any tube there is a critical
degree of vacuum as well as electric potential, with which it is
most efficient. Tubes can be made suitable for a coil giving a
spark of not more than an inch, but they are not very energetic.
Since the vacuum rises with continued use of a tube, some forms —
e. g.. No, (5) — have a small side tube communicating with the main
bulb and containing caustic potash or other substance which
volatilizes on being heated, so that its vapor will reduce the

A YEAR OF THE X BAYS. 661

vacuum. These are called adjustable vacuum tubes, and afford
a means of controlling the requisite sparking gap of the coil
within certain limits. Nos. (4) and (5) are now almost the only-
styles of tubes that meet with favor.

Three types of apparatus have been employed in exciting the
X rays. All are necessarily such as are capable of producing a
high electric potential, and all were in use prior to Dr. Rontgen's
discovery. They are the Ruhmkorff induction coil, the plate in-
fluence machine (either the Wimshurst or the Topler-Holtz),
and the Tesla coil. The only development in these machines has
been in some instances the improvement of their quality and en-
largement of their capacity — without, however, introducing any
novelty in the type of the apparatus, unless we except making
the condenser of the induction coil adjustable in capacity. The
most suitable rate of interruption of the primary current for each
coil and tube may best be found by trial. Where a continuous
current is supplied from a commercial circuit of a hundred and
ten volts or more a rotating segmental wheel as interrupter with
a rheostat in circuit is of advantage, but many experimenters get
as good results by using a storage battery of six to ten cells, with
an ordinary hammer break in the coil. The Ruhmkorff coil is
used to give a unidirectional discharge in the Crookes's tube. In-
fluence machines having several rotating plates act in the same
way, and with excellent effect. Tesla coils are employed to give
exceedingly rapid discharges to and fro in the tube, which re-
quire, therefore, two terminals that can both act as cathodes. It
can not be said that either of these three forms is per se the best.
With proper accessories one will give as good results as another,
but the ordinary induction coil with suitable single-focus tube is
the most generally practicable.

Fig. 4 shows an outfit of apparatus for X-ray use. It consists,
in this instance, of a variable rheostat connected to one main of a
hundred-and-ten-volt continuous current ; in series with this is,
next, a rotary interrupter, which is also driven by a current from
the same main circuit ; then comes an ammeter, then a pole
changer or reverser, which connects back to the other main and
forward to the primary of the large Ruhmkorff coil. This coil
has in its base a condenser which is united with an additional
adjustable condenser. There are, further, a double- focus tube,
fluoroscope, and screen.

The most obvious suggestion of usefulness for the new agent
was in surgery. It was so easy to discover any foreign substance
in portions of the body, or to perceive the nature of any bony
malformation, that it was hoped that surgery had received a valu-
able assistant in these rays. From time to time reports of suc-
cessful operations based upon such revelations have been made.

662

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but the early expectations were exaggerated. Methods of making
examinations by these means have been so far simplified as to re-
quire no highly specialized knowledge for this purpose, and one
would expect that hospitals, at all events, would be provided with
an X-ray outfit if there is any advantage in it. Replies from a
large number of prominent hospitals in six of the leading cities
of America, which were asked concerning their employment of
the X rays, showed that, of those replying, one third have such
outfits; about one fifth have none, but expect to have one soon;
and nearly half of those without such equipment have had exam-
inations made for them. All that have used the rays testify to

Fig, 4. — An X-Kav Outfit.

their helpfulness, some of the physicians being enthusiastic over
the method. Enough is told to show that the X ray is already an
important aid to diagnosis, and, unless the future experience of
the hospitals should be quite disappointing, such apparatus will
soon be thought an indispensable feature of their equipment.
The interior of the trunk, as well as of the limbs, has been success-
fully shown, the fluoroscopic revelation being immediate, while
for photographic reproduction exposures of varying lengths of
time are needed. The hand is the easiest member, requiring from
five to thirty seconds, while the trunk requires half an hour or
more. In general, it may be said that for pictures showing dis-
tinctions of structure, the time now required is from one hun-
dredth to one fiftieth of that necessary at first. Pictures thus
taken are being supplied to schools for the use of classes in anat-
omy and physiology.

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 663

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS OF THE
HARVARD. MUSEUM.

By MAECIA E. HALE.

THE Ware Collection of glass flower models in the Univer-
sity Museum of Cambridge is now so widely known and
appreciated that a written introduction to it seems at first super-
fluous. Still, the fact remains that the interest and curiosity felt
in regard to the history of the collection increase in proportion
to its increasing fame.

Among the vast number of people who visit the exhibition
rooms of the botanical department of the museum there must be
few who do not feel on leaving that a revelation has been dis-
closed to them. The savant finds the rendering of the minutest
details of vegetable organism almost inconceivably accurate,
while the general public can hardly fail to derive from the
beauty of these models an awakening interest in the mysteries of
plant life.

Before considering the scope of the collection it might be well
to examine the nature of the models themselves.

To the casual observer it seems almost incredible that these
sprays of leaf and blossom — these magnified details of flower
and fruit, true to Nature not only in form and color but also
in texture — that these models before us should be made of
glass. Not even the daintiest productions of the Venetian and
Bohemian glass workers have prepared us for the delicacy and
pliability which we find here, and it seems hardly necessary to
state that the process employed in making these models is in no
sense that of ordinary glass blowing. From the simpler methods
of making window glass and bottles to the artistic fashioning of
such work as this is a wide step, and it may be interesting to
sketch incidentally a brief outline of the history of glass making.

The origin of this art, unlike that of pottery, seems to have
spread from a single center, instead of having been discovered by
different nations independently. The early history of the art is
shrouded in the dim mists of tradition, but the ancients seem to
agree in giving the credit of the invention to the Phoenicians.

The story is too well known to need repetition of the party of
Phoenician merchants who, having kindled a fire on the banks of
the river Belus, proceeded to cook their dinner in pots supported
by blocks of niter (carbonate of soda) supplied from their stores,
in place of the stones which this sandy region did not furnish.
Under the heat of the flames the fusion of the alkali with the
sand produced glass. Thus far tradition. The earliest known
specimens of glass, however, are Egyptian, and there may be

664 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

seen in the British Museum a small lion's head of blue-green
glass found at Thebes, which is probably the oldest specimen
extant.

Under the Egyptians the art developed in all its details. They
knew how to melt, color, and carve it.

The Greeks, too, used it, and many beautiful medallions were
made from it by them. By far the greatest number of specimens
of ancient glass preserved to us are Roman, and many quaint
cups, vases, and images in both public and private collections
attest the skill of the Roman glass workers. Pliny gives many
curious details in regard to the glass making of his time, and
mentions the invention of mirrors. He also speaks of the manu-
facture of glass in Italy from " a sort of sand found on the banks
of the river Volturno," and adds that the same process is used in
Gaul and in Spain.

Many of the Gallo-Roman cemeteries have yielded treasures
of cups, necklaces, and tear bottles, iridescent fragments in which
the metallic reds, blues and greens, still keep their original splen-
dor. For many centuries it was supposed that the secret of this
prismatic luster was lost, but modern glass workers have suc-
ceeded in reproducing or at least in approximating it.

One might dwell at length on the gradual development and
perfection of this wonderful art were it not that space forbids
and that its course has been traced by abler pens. Let us, then,
touch only on the Venetian fabrications, which seem to have had
their origin somewhere toward the fifth century, when the Vene-
tian population, hunted and persecuted by barbarous tribes,
sought refuge in the seclusion of the lagoons. Here in unmo-
lested peace they pursued their work, into whose mysteries they
had been initiated perhaps by the Egyptians or the Phoenicians,
and to which their own skill and artistic sense lent much. It was
not until the middle of the thirteenth century that the city regula-
tions, fearful of accidents from fire, compelled the glass makers
of the Rialto to establish themselves on the island of Murano, at a
safe distance from the homes of men. Since that time the name
of this little island has been closely associated with the produc-
tion of exquisite objects which seem to embody in their fragile
forms the transparent clearness or opalescent tints of the waters
of the Adriatic.

Strange stories have come down to us of the vigilance with
which Venice guarded the secrets of her delicate handicraft.
Throughout the intricately woven, many-colored web of her his-
tory runs the thread of her glass-makers' chronicle, like the
gleaming lines of gold which intermingle on some fantastic Vene-
tian goblet.

In the thirteenth century a fresh impetus was given to the

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 665

art by the Venetian traveler Marco Polo, who brought home re-
ports of the demand among Eastern nations for imitation gems,
especially pearls, and these were consequently made in vast quan-
tities for exportation.

Not all her jealous care, however, could prevent the art of
Venice from spreading to other countries. The makers of these
flower models of the Ware Collection claim that their ancestors
brought from Venice to Bohemia the secrets of their craft. Be
this as it may, Bohemia was the next country to manufacture
glass, and the Bohemians introduced a new decorative system,
that of engraving glass. To this succeeded the art of glass cut-
ting and of luster making as well as that of painting glass.

Germany, France, and Belgium were not slow to follow Bohe-
mia, and in each country new processes and new decorative ideas
were developed. Thus the manufacture of glass spread through-
out the civilized world.

To come down to the personal history of the artists in ques-
tion, Leopold Blaschka was born in 1822, in Aicha, a village of
northern Bohemia. His father, Joseph Blaschka, was not only
a skilled glass worker, but was also an able mechanic and
electrician.

After his early education in the grammar school of his native
town, Leopold Blaschka was placed in the studio of the painter
Eisner, with whom he studied for some time. At the same time
he acquired from his father a thorough knowledge of the gold-
smith's trade, becoming expert in the cutting and setting of gems
and in gold and silver work — a knowledge which he put" to a
practical use in the manufacture of fancy articles for exportation.

From childhood, however, he had felt an abgorbing interest in
natural history, and when in the interest of his business he made
a voyage in a sailing vessel to America in 1854, he found ample
opportunity during a calm at sea to make many studies and
drawings of marine invertebrates. On his return he began what
proved to be his life work — the modeling of plants and animals in
glass.

Some of these earlier models came under the notice of the
botanist Prince Camille de Rohan, for whom Blaschka made a
collection of about sixty orchids in glass. These were first exhib-
ited in Prince de Rohan's palace in Prague in 1862. They after-
ward came into the possession of the museum at Li^ge, where
they, were unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1863.

Certain annoying circumstances connected with one of these
earlier collections, together with the fate of the Li^ge models,
gave Blaschka a distaste for this branch of his work, which he
abandoned forthwith, devoting himself exclusively to the manu-
facture of animal models.

VOL. L. — 50

666 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In this work he was assisted by his only son, Rudolf, who was
born in 1857, and who became, in 1870, his father's associate in
his work. He was the only apprentice whom the elder man initi-
ated into the mysteries of his art — the only person, therefore,
since the death of Leopold Blaschka, in 1895, who possesses the
secret of these marvelous productions. Both father and son were
diligent and careful students of zoology, and their accurately
rendered models met with a ready sale for museums throughout
the world, the most complete of these collections being perhaps
that which was purchased by the Harvard Museum of Compara-
tive Zoology.

In 1885 the privilege of constructing for its own use the cen-
tral portion of the University Museum at Cambridge was offered
to the Botanical Department by Mr. Alexander Agassiz, who
has carried so far toward completion his father's plans for a
Museum of Comparative Zoology. Through the advice and co-
operation of Mr. Agassiz, and through the untiring zeal and
energy of Prof. George L. Goodale, who succeeded Dr. Asa Gray
in the Fisher Professorship of Natural History, the large sum
necessary for the construction of the building was obtained by
subscription, the result being a most satisfactory structure which
furnished ample space for laboratories and for exhibition rooms
in which to display illustrations of all the chief types of plants.
It was now necessary to provide these illustrations, and no means
hitherto employed seemed wholly adequate to the desired end.

Flowers in all known states of preservation are apt to lose
both color and character, and to become unsightly as well as un-
interesting. Even if accurately represented by colored drawings,
something is still wanting, as they must fail in expressing at
least one of the dimensions of space. Gelatin seemed too perish-
able a substance to be used, papier-macJie was hardly desirable,
and the idea of wax models was altogether distasteful. It was a
happy inspiration of Prof. Goodale's when one day studying the
beautiful glass models in the Zoological Museum which led to the
solution of the problem. If these marvels of the sea could be
copied in glass with such beauty and fidelity, why should not the
same medium be employed for the models of flowers ?

Acting promptly upon this suggestion, the next step to be
taken was a journey to Dresden for the purpose of making the
proposition to the artists. At first Dr. Goodale's trouble seemed
likely to prove useless, for he found the Blaschkas most unwill-
ing to abandon the making of animal models, which occupied all
their time, and for which there was an unfailing demand.

Up to this time. Prof. Goodale had never seen any glass flowers
made by the Blaschkas, and it was during this first visit to their
home at Hosterwitz, near Dresden, that his attention was drawn

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 667

to a vase of orchids, apparently freshly cut, but whose freshness
proved to be perennial, since they were the work of the elder
Blaschka, who had made them for his wife some twenty years
before this date! During all these years the flowers had stood
uninjured from exposure to the air and dust of the room, though
without even the protection of a glass shade. Here was a con-
vincing argument in favor of glass models for the Harvard
Museum.

After much consideration on the part of the Blaschkas, they
consented to undertake, on their own terms, the preparation of a
certain number of models.

In consenting to this, Leopold Blaschka was strongly influ-
enced by his wish to afford his son further opportunities for
carrying on his studies in botany, a science to which he had
given much attention ; another potent factor in gaining his con-
sent being the kindly sentiment he had cherished "for America
since his early voyage to that country.

Feeling that he had accomplished the first and most important
step in his mission. Prof. Goodale returned to America, and in the
autumn of 1887 the first consignment of flower models reached
him — shattered to fragments in the New York Custom House,
whose inspectors had done their work " not wisely but too well ! "
The fragments were, however, sufiicient to show the quality of
the models, and to inspire much enthusiasm.

Among the first to appreciate the excellence of the models,
both from an artistic and a scientific point of view, were the two
ladies who later became known as the donors of the collection. At
first, by their own wish, their names were not connected with the
enterprise, which afterward took the form in which the public
now recognizes and honors the collection — that of a beautiful and
lasting memorial to a graduate of Harvard University, the late
Dr. Charles Eliot Ware, of the class of 1834. Each successive step
toward the accomplishment of this purpose has been attended by
the happiest results, and no element has been wanting to give
completeness to the collection.

The second consignment of models arrived, passed safely
through the perils of the custom house, and proved satisfactory
in every way.

The undertaking hitherto had been a personal experiment of
Dr. Goodale's, and he has had from its very inception the entire
charge of it. Under the new conditions new contracts became
necessary, the final one of which, executed at the consular of-
fice in Dresden in 1890, engaged all the time of the two Blasch-
kas, thus securing a fixed number of models to be sent in two
consignments each year, until the collection is completed. The
time necessary for this completion is at present uncertain, owing

668 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the death of Leopold Blaschka in July, 1895, since the work
now falls wholly on his surviving son.

One of the questions asked most often is whether there is no
one besides Rudolf Blaschka who can make these models, or who
can at least assist him in making them.

When the nature of the work is investigated, it becomes evi-
dent that the only answer to this question is a negative one. This
is due, not so much to the existence of any one secret connected
with the production of the flowers, as to the fact that they are
the result of the keenest artistic perceptions, and of absolute
scientific accuracy, combined with a wonderful delicacy of manip-
ulation, and also with infinite patience! That the family pos-
sesses certain technical secrets is not to be denied ; and not only
these hereditary secrets, but many new devices of the art have
been called into requisition by these two wonder-workers in
whose hands the brittle substance has assumed a plastic char-
acter. It is not glass hloivmg but glass Tnodeling which has pro-
duced these marvelous imitations of Nature. Glass of all degrees
of fusibility has been used in their composition, and the colors
have been subjected to many experiments : some are imparted to
the glass while fused, some while cooling, and some are applied
afterward. All the pigments used are mineral colors, as an
attempt to supplement these with aniline tints failed utterly.

During the lifetime of the elder Blaschka, the father and son
were inseparable in their Work ; no one step, however slight, was
taken by the one without first consulting the other. They worked
at the same table, and Prof. Goodale, who alone has been privi-
leged to see the process, confesses himself even more puzzled by
their rapidity and skill after seeing the work than before !

The highest degree of excellence, too, has been attained in the
use of cements and in the method of securing the models to the
tablets ; the reproduction of the widely different textures of leaf
and petal is a marvel by itself, and such perfection can have been
reached only by infinitely painstaking experiment and study. All
these matters, as may readily be seen, are not easily acquired or
imparted, and for these reasons the collection seems likely to
remain, as it is at present, absolutely unique. The artists have
been given every opportunity and advantage in the way of plants
for study. A photograph of their pleasant home in Hosterwitz
shows a large but unpretending house, surrounded by a garden in
which American plants are grown. The Blaschkas have had the
benefit, too, of the Royal Gardens at Pilnitz, the summer home of
the court of Saxony, which is situated on the Elbe within a mile
of Dresden.

The Blaschka house contains two studios, in which the models
of the Ware Collection are exhibited to a number of invited guests

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 669

before each consignment is sent to this country. The method of
packing is in itself interesting, so carefully are these fragile treas-
ures prepared for their long journey. Each model is secured to
its tablet by means of fine wire, then the tablet is fitted into its
pasteboard box ; under every curve of stem and tendril, support-
ing each leaf and petal, wherever there is space for it between
tablet and model, are soft folds of tissue paper. More of the same
paper, lightly crushed, fills the box to the brim, the cover is fas-
tened on, and the boxes are then placed in a strong wooden case,
which is in turn embaled in straw and finally enveloped in coarse
sacking. It may readily be imagined that the task of unpacking
is an equally delicate one, and it is a proof of the skill with which
both processes are accomplished that so few of the flowers have
suffered in either.

Rudolf Blaschka has made two visits to America in search of
subjects for models — the first in 1893, when he made a journey to
Jamaica in order to study subtropical plants, as well as one to
Arizona and California, returning by way of Colorado and the
nearer Western States. These journeys yielded rich results in
the way of sketches and studies, which were for the most part
rapid pencil drawings made from the living plant, with only
slight washes or crayon touches of color, BJaschka's minute mem-
oranda furnishing all further necessary detail.

The second trip to America was made in the summer of 1895,
and from this expedition Rudolf Blaschka was recalled by the
sad news of his father's death.

The original plan of the collection had been to represent only
the flora of North and South America, as it had seemed doubtful
if the services of the two artists could be secured for a longer
time than would be necessary for this. After beginning to make
models of flowers, however, the Blaschkas had found their old
work of making marine animals, which must be duplicated, ex-
tremely distasteful, and had signified their willingness to devote
themselves wholly to the new enterprise, which they evidently
wished to be considered their monumental work.

From the very beginning of the undertaking, both father and
son have acted from the highest principles and with perfect integ-
rity, and the relations on both sides have been of a most cordial
and pleasant nature.

All subsequent ofi'ers, no matter how advantageous they might
appear to be, have been steadfastly declined by them ; and that the
contract has been fulfilled, not in the letter alone, has been ably
proved by the evident fact that the flower models have, if pos-
sible, shown greater excellence in the later than in the earlier
instances.

So greatly has the proposed scope of the original scheme been

670 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

enlarged, that it now seems probable that five or six years' time
will see illustrated by this collection all the great types of plant
life throughout the world, all except eight of these types being
represented among the plants native to North or South America.
Already more than one hundred orders are represented, and here
it must be clearly understood that no attempt has been made to
show every species of plant. This would indeed be an impossi-
bility ! Not more than six or seven species of an order are given,
but the collection thus illustrates a large proportion of the gen-
era. Certain tablets, prepared for demonstration, exhibit a larger
number of details than others ; sometimes several species of a
genus are shown, in order to emphasize the more or less strongly
marked variation of certain characteristics, but in general the aim
has been to show the typical species of different genera.

The three exhibition rooms are so arranged as to illustrate
plant life in all its relations, from a biological point of view. The
models are displayed in admirably constructed cases of plate glass
and bear labels giving the names of the plants as well as other
details in regard to them, thus offering every opportunity for
study. The first room or hall, which one enters from the stair-
case, is intended to show plants in the following relations :

1. In relation to soil, water, air, heat, light, electricity, and
gravitation.

2. In relation to insects and other animals by which plants
are benefited.

3. In relation to insects and other animals by which plants
are injured.

4. The relation of plants of the past to plants of the present
time.

Here are also seen the plants used as forage.

The room on the left of this hall represents the Department
of Economic Botany, Here we find illustrated plants in their
relation to man — i. e., the plants used for shelter, clothing, and
food ; then those used for drugs, dyes, etc. ; and here also are the
plants of historic interest.

In the third and largest room the lower floor is devoted to
flowering plants (by far the greater proportion of the collection),
while the balcony contains the illustrations of cryptogams. In
regard to the quality of the work, it is hardly possible to speak
too highly. The mastery of color alone is marvelous, but when
we appreciate the fact that tl: e most minute detail of the tiniest
flower, even to the starlike hairs on the sepal of a calyx, will bear
the scrutiny of a microscope, words fail us in which to express
our admiration for the creative power of these artists. The closer
the study the more extraordinary seems the fact that the material
employed for these models is glass ! As in Nature no two flowers

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS, 671

or leaves of a single plant are exactly the same, so in the glass
reproduction every infinitesimal variation is rendered with a
fidelity which is almost painful. A distinguished local botanist
has made a test of this accuracy by selecting at random a num-
ber of specimens from various orders and submitting them to the
lens. In one of these examples, that of Aralia spinosa, L., he
counted nearly eight thousand buds and flowers, some of the
former so small as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye,
while every flower was yet found to be complete even to the
number of petals and stamens. The same exactness is shown in
the large compound leaf of this plant, even in the under surfaces,
which are hidden from the eye of the observer by being turned
toward the cardboard on which it rests. The result, as may be
imagined, is simply unequaled, and one hardly knows whether
to give the greater credit to the genius which inspired such
work, or to the conscience and patience which have made its
execution possible. Let us linger before one or two of the ob-
ject lessons taught in the economic room. One of the most com-
plete studies is that of the Indian corn {Zea mays). Here we find,
first, the glass model, a stalk of corn from two to three feet in
length, showing the long, wavy-margined leaves, the tasseled
flowers, and the developed ear in its infolding wrappings of husk
and with its delicate plume of " silk." The magnified details in
this instance give a single flower, a stamen, and a single grain of
maize in its development from the flower. On a shelf above the
models, but still in the same case, are displayed dried ears of ripe
corn of all sizes and varieties, from the tiny pop corn to the largest
and most highly cultivated product of the market garden.

Next these are arranged glass jars containing the articles of
commerce prepared from corn : here are corn meal, hominy, bran
and cattle feed, corn oil and oil cake, starch in all its forms, climax
sugar, anhydrous sugar and caramel, American and British gum,
dextrin, mucilage, and whisky.

A beautiful specimen is that of the nutmeg {Myristicafragrans),
one spray of which gives the amber-tinted flowers in their small,
axillary clusters, while another branch shows the ripened fruit.
There is also in glass a thin section or slice, showing the nut in
its surrounding aril which forms the mace of commerce, and the
enveloping husk outside this again.

A number of small, open boxes hold various kinds of nutmegs,
some from India, some from Java, and there is even a wooden nut-
meg to complete the collection !

The exhibit which seems to awaken perhaps the most popular
interest (at least among the children, who visit the museum in
throngs) is that of the chocolate tree [Theohroma cacao). The
beautiful glass reproduction is interesting enough in itself, as

6/2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

it shows the way in which, the flowers and fruit grow from the
old wood instead of from the young twigs. From a section of
woody trunk or branch, perhaps two inches in diameter, spring
the delicate pinkish flowers on their threadlike crimson pedicels.
They grow in clusters of three to six, and the effect of these little
galaxies of pale stars against the dark background of bark is
very charming. The model shows, too, a spray of the glossy
green leaves, and one of the ripened orange-colored fruits. Pho-
tographs beside it give an excellent idea of the growth of the
plant in Central America and Jamaica, and accompanying the
prepared products are printed slips containing the desired infor-
mation— as, for instance, that " chocolate consists of the roasted
seeds of the cacao freed from their shells," or that " cocoa is made
from the roasted seeds freed not only from the shells but from
the excess of oil." Here, in the glass jars, are many varieties of
the cocoa seeds and of chocolate pods preserved in alcohol. Here,
too, we find both raw and roasted cocoa from Trinidad and Cara-
cas, from Santo Domingo and from Ceylon, from Surinam and
from Bahia. Among the finished products are cocoa shells and
breakfast cocoa, chocolate of all grades, and cocoa butter.

This slender stalk of blue-flowered flax seems a fragile wand
to wield such widespread power until we study its manifold prod-
ucts and comprehend its range. Contributions have come from
all lands, from Friesland to China, and we see them in all stages
of manufacture. With the model of the cotton plant are some
seed capsules from one of the Southern States ; and here we find a
set of the standard types of cotton arranged in boxes and pre-
sented by the Classification Committee of the New York Cotton
Exchange.

In the larger room the flowers are arranged in close accordance
with the accepted synopsis of orders. Of course, in following this
method of classifying the models, little attention could be paid to
the juxtaposition of colors, yet at the same time one is impressed
by the admirable harmony of these kaleidoscopic tints.

This harmony may be in a measure due to the large propor-
tion of white flowers, as well as to the perfection of color and tex-
ture shown in the foliage.

The shades of red rank next the white flowers in number, then
come the yellows, and last of all the blues, with their gradations
of purple, lilac, and lavender. The distribution of color seems to
bear no relation to the conditions of climate or of soil, though we
find that certain species grown in the German garden of the
Blaschkas have deviated slightly from the colors which the same
flowers wear in our own fields and forests; the Mayflower
{Epigcea), for instance, seems paler and less vigorous and the wild
geranium of a more intense shade than with us ; but we may be

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 673

sure that the models are absolutely true to the subjects furnished
for them, wherever they were grown.

It is interesting to make a study of several species of a single
order, noting at the same time the typical characteristics and the
variations of detail. Take, for instance, one of the most common
and easily recognized orders — that of the Malvacem. Here we
have no less than eight species, representing six genera. They
are : Hibiscus clypeatus, Hibiscus palustris, Spheralcea acerifolia,
Sida carpinifolia, Sida napcea, Nuttallia malvcpflora, Anoda Dil-
leniana, and Malva miniata.

All these species show the distinguishing characteristics of the
family — the translucent texture of the petals, with their clearly
marked veinings ; the delicate tints of the corolla, varying from
white to deep rose-purple, or, as in the case of the Sidas, to a
tawny, crimson-throated orange. All have certain enlarged de-
tails in which we again easily recognize the distinguishing fea-
tures of the order — the column of stamens, the peculiarly shaped
anther (in the example of Hibiscus palustris shown in two stages
of its development, while an immature anther of H. moscheutos is
given), the style with its capitate stigmas, and also both longi-
tudinal and cross sections of the ovary showing the arrangement
of the ovules in their cells.

In Spheralcea acerifolia the inflated, heart-shaped anther is
speckled with pale red like a bird's egg, and here we have also a
pollen grain magnified one thousand times. Among the details
of the Nuttallia is a sepal with its stellate hairs and a single one
of these hairs enlarged two hundredfold and looking like a tiny
snow crystal. Probably none of the models illustrate better the
value of these magnified details, in studying the more recon-
dite orders, than those of the EupliorbiacecB, where the inflores-
cence owes its beauty to a highly colored involucre, while the
flower proper is reduced to a single organ. So in Jatropha offici-
nalis the brilliant, flame-colored involucre attracts the eye, while
the insignificant flower is represented by a solitary stamen or
pistil. The three- celled ovary, the three styles each with its two-
cleft stigma, may here be carefully studied without recourse to
the aid of the lens. Especially delicate is the little Euphorbia
montaria, gray as if with the dust of the California deserts it
comes from. A detail of the inflorescence shows the inner side of
the involucral bract to which the sterile flowers or stamens are
attached.

Still another plant of the same order is most baffling to the
student, from the arrangement of the pale pink flowers on the
margins of what appear to be flat, cactuslike leaves, but which
are in reality the rudimentary branches of this curious growth ;
this is the Xylophylla Boezlii.

VOL. L. 51

674 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

One might spend weeks over the exquisite Compositm, whose
examples are incomparable. Here, again, the aid given by the
enlarged details is incalculable, and it is delightful to be able to
study the infinite variations of the multitudinous florets without
the microscope. Let us note the difference of detail shown in
three species of a single genus. Here are the three Encelias
— farinosa, canescens, and eriocephala respectively — California
plants with what might be described as starry, yellow flowers, all
much alike in the careless eye of the amateur botanist. Each of
the three species shows in detail a single floret enlarged from ten
to twenty times, and also one of the surrounding ray flowers. In
studying these we begin to find in what respects the flowers do
not resemble each other.

E. canescens shows the receptacle and a chaff scale, varying in
form from that of E. farinosa, a scale of the involucre with its
silvery hairs and the fruit magnified ten times.

In the third species (E. eriocephala) the color as well as the
form of the floret differs from those of the first-named species —
the yellow, tubular floret with its protruding pistil deepening
to a warm brown, thus giving to the crowded head of flowers the
appearance of a dark, velvety disk amid t-:e surrounding rays of
a brilliant yellow.

The foliage, too, of the three species shows a marked distinc-
tion in coloring, that of E. canescens being of a rich warm green^
which in E. farinosa changes to a glaucous blue-green, while in
E. eriocephala both stem and leaves assume a downy texture.

The Asters and Erigerojis are wonderfully perfect, from the
young buds showing only the involucral scales or the tips of the
closed ray flowers, to the matured flowers in which the discoid
florets are fully opened, while the rose or purple rays curve inward
as they fade.

Such plants as Bromelia pinguin and Ananassa sativa, to-
gether with the CactacecE, demonstrate the impossibility of ren-
dering these plants satisfactorily through any other medium than
the glass used here. The heavy flowers of the Opuntias and the
Cereus, their fleshy stalks and spiny leaves, are too substantial to
be satisfactorily preserved either in alcohol or by drying. In the
glass model we seem to see the living plant.

The barbed leaves of the Bromelia keep their free outward
curve as if to defend from trespassers the strong, club-shaped
spike from which spring in spiral ranks the pink-purple flowers,
each in turn protected by a flower sheath tipped with fierce scar-
let. The whole plant has a martial aspect — it is a warrior, and a
dried specimen of it would fail to give any idea of its true char-
acter.

The Orchids might be dwelt on at great length did space per-

THE BLASCHKA FLOWER MODELS. 675

mit, but here, again, all are so exquisite that it is difficult to
make a choice. Equally fine are the golden butterfly-plant from
Trinidad, the spiderlike, black-barred Brassias, the beautiful
blue and white CatMeya crispa with its crimped edges, and the
lustrous rose-tinted CaUleya amethystina.

New beauties appear at every step. Convolvidi and starry
Ipomeas fling their light garlands across their cardboard tablets,
as if feeling for some trellis to wind about ; the pimpernel opens
its little red weather-glass of a flower ; the dainty sundew catches
the light in its tiny diamonds ; the Venus's flytrap shows the
unwary victim caught in its fatal leaves.

In the gallery overhead are the cryptogams — plants whose na-
ture renders them difiicult subjects for illustration. The utmost
care has been exercised here in selecting the types which will
prove of the greatest use, and there will probably be added from
time to time the examples most needed. It is intended to present
the lower forms of plant life in a well-chosen series of types from
motile protoplasm, fungi, and algse, through mosses, club mosses,
and liverworts to ferns. These models are quite as wonderful in
their way as those of the flowering plants, if less interesting to
the general public. Among the ferns an Adiantum shows in its
magnified details the entire process of reproduction, from the tiny
spores to the young fern with developed rootlet and frond.

No written description of these models can give an adequate
idea of the immense service rendered to science by them ; to ap-
preciate this it is necessary to study the collection in all its length
and breadth.

Considered in the light of a memorial, we need only say it is
worthy of the earnest life it commemorates. The bronze tablet
on the wall, beautiful in its simplicity, bears the following in-
scription :

MDCCCXIV MDCCCLXXXVII

IN MEMORIAM

CAROLI ELIOT WARE

MEDICI

HUJUS UNIVERSITATIS ALUMNI

HASCE IMAGINES

DONAYERUNT

CONJCX ET FILIA SUPERSTITES

RURA FLORES AMICUS EX ANIMO COLTIT

VALDEQUE DILEXIT

Marvelous stories are told, according- to Mr. St. George B. Littledale,
by the natives of Keria, near Khotan. of the gold and precious stones they
dig up from the ruins of cities huried in the sands. Tliey make regular
expeditions into the desert to recover the lost treasures, and come back
telling of foi'tified cities guarded by ancient men in quaint Chinese cos-
tumes, speaking an unknown tongue.

676

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

THE CLIFF-DWELLER'S SANDAL.

A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE TECHNOLOGY.

By OTIS T. MASON.

ONE of the commonest elements in any picture of modern
Latin America is the cargador, or porter. Upon his back
may be seen water, merchandise of every sort, in curious recep-
tacles, supported and held in place by a strap across his forehead

or across his breast. His
dress also is the quaintest
mixture, partly old, part-
ly new, of the primitive
aboriginal and of the later
European cut and stuffs.
But at present we are
concerned with his feet
and their gear. Under-
neath is a sole of hide,
harness leather or sole
leather as the case may
be, cut in the form of the
foot and having a hole
through the front and
gashes through the mar-
gin just beneath the
ankle. About the foot is
the lacing, consisting of
a narrow strap knotted
at one end, drawn up
through the hole in front
between the first and the
second toe, then carried
over the back of the foot
through a side gash,
where it makes a half

Chasque Kunneb between Chililaya and Pdno,
Peru, wearinr Single Toe String. (Wiener,
Perou ei Holivie, Paris, 1880, p. 593.)

hitch, then backward
over the heel to the oth-
er gash, making another
half hitch, thence over the instep, where it is tied into itself to
complete the round. There is another style in which the toe
string is omitted, a cross lacing over the top of the foot and above
the heel like that on a west coast baby frame, holding the sole to
the foot. There are many varieties of these types, as may be
seen in Wiener's Perou et Bolivie, pages 676-681.

THE CLIFF-DWELLER'S SANDAL. 677

The geographical and chronological distribution of the sandal
first named is most suggestive. So far as the National Museum
collections teach, this form occurs throughout the Japanese area,
but nowhere in Korea or China. By climate it is debarred from
Manchuria, Mongolia, and all Siberia, and it is not seen in Tibet.

But both the Japanese type of sandal and the divided mitten-
like sock occur again in Kashmir and countries westward and
southward. Thence this sandal is found in southern Asia, and
has walked all about the Mediterranean for thousands of years.
It was the footgear of the Melanochroic Caucasian from very
early times. The Mohammedans have scattered it here and there
in Africa and thence wore it into Spain. The Latin peoples that
conquered middle and South America introduced there for the
first time in the history of the Western world this sandal with
the single toe string.

Before that there were in America fur boots in arctic areas,
buckskin moccasins down to the borders of the arid region, and
thence southward the foot was protected by a sandal, not of raw-
hide, for there was none in existence, but of fiber in various kinds
of plaiting, and kept on the foot by lacing all round the border
and by toe strings and toe loops inclosing toes No. 2 and 3.
Fortunately, the meager collections from the cliff dwellings in
the United States National Museum are abundantly supplemented
by the materials in Cambridge and in the University of Pennsyl-
vania. Through the courtesy of Prof. Putnam and Mr. Stewart
Culin I am able to say that the ancient sandal of Arizona and
New Mexico never had the single toe string between toes No. 1
and 2. The old types were either of rawhide slashed about the
margin, or of fiber with loops about the margin, or of fiber with
strip or loop inclosing toes 2 and 3. The examples shown in the
plate are from the cliff dwellings of Arizona. Fig. 1 is in the
basketry stitch of northern California, " twined work " on a warp
of yucca twine in two layers ; the weft of Apocymim is treated
precisely like that of the Ute, Apache, California, and some
mound-builder fabrics, by twining two filaments about the warp
strands. Decorations are inserted by varying the color and the
overlapping of the warp. The lacing is better shown in the next
example.

Fig. 2 is of Yucca angustifolia fronds not shredded, but plaited
diagonally in the manner most widely spread over the Western
world. The lacing consists of toe loop, heel loop, and string.
The last named commences on the instep and is looped about the
toe loop, the heel loop on the right, over the instep and about the
heel loop on the left, back to the starting point and knotted.

Fig. 3 is of coarser yucca fiber shredded somewhat, and plaited
more coarsely than Fig. 2. The lacing is on the same plan as in

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 679

Fig. 2, but the knots are all at the toe loop, and the entire lacing
is in one piece.

Fig. 4 is quite different from the other three, and is practically-
woven on four coarse warp strands, by wickerwork, the thick
ends of the leaves being left on top and shredded to form a soft
bed for the foot. The toe loop is as in Fig. 2. Many sandals of
eastern Asia are woven on the same plan, the long ends of the
warp being left underneath next to the ground.

-♦♦♦-

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA.

By CLARKE DOOLEY.

W"AS India rubber known to the ancients ? Early writers do
not mention it. We need not necessarily conclude, how-
ever, that the primitive peoples established on the shores of the
Mediterranean were ignorant of the existence of this substance.
The game of tennis is one of great antiquity, Herodotus attrib-
uting its invention to the Lydians. It is believed they got it
from Egypt, which may have received it from Ethiopia. It is
known that India-rubber trees are found in Abyssinia to-day.
Hence it is reasonable to suppose they were indigenous there in
earlier times, and that the inhabitants knew how to prepare re-
silient balls from their milky product. The Chinese have laid
claim to the discovery of rubber, but have so far been unable to
prove that they were the first to employ it. Modern Europe had
no knowledge of it until the discovery of America. The Span-
iards were much surprised to find the Indians playing tennis with
balls made of a strange substance which excited their attention,
as mentioned by Fernandez de Oviedo at the beginning of the six-
teenth century.

This remarkable substance is obtained from the milky juice of
certain trees and different varieties of climbers. South America
is the principal source of supply — Brazil, of the many states pro-
ducing it, leading in quantity and quality, and having in its great
forests sufficient to meet twice the wants of the world. The best
is Para (fine, medium, and sernamby), from the great basin of the
Amazon, where more than eighty thousand seringueiros (gath-
erers) are engaged in the dry season in collecting gum. White
Para, " virgin sheets," a new variety in three grades, comes from
Matto Grosso. Since its importance first began to be felt, this
gum has exerted an increasing influence upon the spread of civili-
zation, especially along the Amazon and Orinoco and their tribu-
taries and the great streams which pour out from the interior of
the Dark Continent. Para, formerly an insignificant village, has

68 o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

grown to be a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, with mod-
ern features, and Manaos, up the river, is fast following it. India
rubber is the mainstay of the northern Brazilian states, Bolivia,
and eastern Peru. Brazil has a great advantage in its immense
waterway ; ocean-going steamers run twelve hundred miles up
the Amazon, whereas every African river except the Congo has a
bar at its mouth and cataracts not far distant from the coast line.
It is, besides ivory, about the only commodity produced in the
interior of a tropical country that will bear the expense of trans-
portation, often on the heads of natives along tangled man-paths,
to the seaboard. So in many places it has been the basis of first
commerce. The principal trees in South America are the Mani-
liot Glaziovii, the Ficus gameleira, and varieties of the Castilloa,
the Hevea, and the Hancoriiia. " The production of Par?i rubber,'^
says the Scientific American, December 5, 189G, "increased from
8,243,000 pounds in 1865, to 15,144,000 in 1875, 29,310,000 in 1885,
and 46,363,000 pounds in 1895; the great advance in the decade
between 1885 and 1895 being the direct result of the increased
demand produced by the tire-makers. Last year 37,456,000 pounds
were delivered to manufacturers in the United States, against
31,062,000 pounds in 1894 and 35,583,000 pounds in 1893. The
highest price paid in this country last year for fine Para rubber
was eighty-one cents and a half in November." The United States
has been from the first the largest consumer, and an American
syndicate, it is said, is now seeking capital to develop ten million
acres in the Orinoco Valley, chiefly with a view to profits from
the great virgin rubber forests known to exist there.

Enormous supplies are stored up in Africa and her adjacent
islands, where a variety of Ficus and great climbing shrubs, the
Landolphia and Valiea, produce it. Stanley alludes to great
numbers of these climbers entwining the trees, so as to make
passage exceedingly troublesome. Attempts to force the price to
unreasonable limits are therefore not likely to meet with perma-
nent success, and we may banish fears of approaching exhaustion.
The gum fully thrives, seemingly, nowhere but in the tropics.
" It is the one jungle product which society finds indispensable,"
said The Spectator recently, and, further : " Everybody knows that
in the last five years the use of pneumatic tires for cycles and
solid rubber tires for horse- vehicles has enormously increased our
consumption of this article ; but, quite apart from that more obvi-
ous fact, India rubber is daily being introduced more and more
into all sorts of machinery. Highly competent judges say that
if the output could be doubled within a year, so many applica-
tions would instantly arise that the price would not fall appre-
ciably." The negroes have no regard for the climbers, and cut
them down in order to extract the utmost possible amount of sap.

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 681

As a result of this practice collectors have to go farther and far-
ther inland for a supply, so that it often does not pay to transport
it to the coast. There is a vast need of better management in
collecting and curing the gum, as the African product is of lower
grade and brings less than many other sorts in the London mar-
ket. It seems a certain source of wealth, and is easy of cultiva-
tion, so proper steps are almost sure to be taken for its encourage-
ment by the nations engaged in civilizing the continent. TraflBc
in India rubber is one great incentive for the building of the
Congo Railroad.

Asia was the second country to furnish Europe with India
rubber. The supply has of late years decreased in importance in
consequence of the destruction of the trees. American varieties
have been introduced with some success by the Indian Govern-
ment. The principal native trees are the Urceola elastica, the
Ficus elastica (the well-known window plant) and a species of
fig, the Ficus religiosa, which is one of the most beautiful trees
in the world. Its branches bend down, take root, and form new
trunks. The great fig of Narbuddah has three hundred and fifty
large and three thousand medium-sized stems, thus constituting
in itself a veritable forest. The principal rubbers from India are
the Assam and Rangoon. India rubber is also obtained in Oce-
ania, notably in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, but very little comes
from Australia. It was formerly thought that the rubber tree
only grew in moist ground, under tropical suns, but explorers
have found them in hard soils on high plateaus. A beginning is
being made with cultivation of the trees. The Indian Govern-
ment has a nursery of Para trees in Assam extending over two
hundred square miles, and has shown that they may be produc-
tively raised from foreign seed with little care. The cultivation
is also attracting attention in Central America and Mexico. Ac-
cording to estimates, it is very profitable. The long waiting of
fifteen to twenty years, however, till the tree attains its full vigor,
is apt to make individual capital cautious.

France was the cradle of the rubber industry, and French re-
searches permitted the anticipation of many applications of the
substance afterward carried out by the English and Americans.
La Condamine, who was with the expedition sent to the equator
by the French Academy, found the novel article at Quito, where
it was known as caoutchouc (from cahucliu of the Mai'nas In-
dians), and sent the first accurate knowledge of it to Europe in
1736. The natives called it Jiheve (hence hevea). The Omaguas
made water bottles of it, provided with a cannula, which were pre-
sented to guests before the repast. They were primitive syringes,
and gave the name to the tree in some localities. Herissant and
Macquer, in France, soon attracted attention to the gum by their

TOL. L. — 62

682 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

investigationri. Some confusion prevailing in regard to tlie ex-
pression " India rubber," what follows may justify the English
name of the substance : In 1765 Aublet announced his discovery
of the tree in French Guiana. In 1773 Magellan, descendant
of the great navigator {Le Caoaiichouc et la GuUa-Percha, E.
Chapel), proposed caoutchouc, or " resine elastique de Cayenne,"
as a substitute for bread crumb in erasing pencil marks. It was
known in France as ^^eaw de negre. In England, where the dis-
covery was attributed to the celebrated Priestley, who only propa-
gated a foreign idea, designers soon came to call the article " In-
dian rubber." It was not known as a product of Asia until 1798.
Hence the thought of the time probably connected it with its
South American habitat and thus with its Indian gatherers. The
appearance of the little cube in the shops about 1775 was the be-
ginning of the great part now played by India rubber in the arts,
sciences, and industry. In 1780 Berniard, a Frenchman, experi-
mented in a line with Hdrissant and Macquer, and found oil of
turpentine to be the best solvent. He also succeeded in impart-
ing various colors to the gum.

By 1791 syringes, sounds, bougies (1779), and elastic bands had
been made of caoutchouc. The manufacture of impermeable tis-
sues had been tried in France in 1791 by Besson. The idea was
borrowed from the Indians, from whom the early Spaniards had
learned to gum their hempen cloaks, which when thus treated
were impervious to rain, but degenerated in the sun. Hancock and
Mackintosh, in England, were the first to make waterproof gar-
ments, later than 1818, the rubber cloth being used as lining (E.
Chapel). Hancock devised important processes for treating rub-
ber, and in 1838 invented ink erasers ; but it remained for Mack-
intosh alone, by employing benzene as a solvent, to produce, in
1823, the first successful garments, which at once came into great
favor, in spite of their disagreeable odor. At present, three
tissues are made: "simple tissues" (having one rubber face),
"double-faced tissues" (rubber on both sides), and "double tis-
sues " (two stuffs with one rubber coating between). " Mackin-
tosh " is " double tissue," and the method of manufacturing it is
substantially the same as at first, only machinery is used. In the
calender machine the fabric is spread with rubber solution, is
drawn by a roller under a scraper to remove excess, and passes
upon a steam table, where the solvent evaporates, leaving a thin
pellicle of rubber on the stuff, which thoroughly dries in passing
around a drum and is wound upon a mandrel. It may then be
taken to the front of the machine and the process repeated. Ten
coats are sometimes applied. The product must afterward be
vulcanized, to render it less sensitive to heat and cold.

Many do not understand how much we owe to vulcanization

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 683

and to the American, Charles Goodyear, its real discoverer, who
indefatigably pursued it many years through prosperity and want,
encouragement and discouragement, now with friends around him,
and, again, lying in a debtor's prison. La Condamine found In-
dia-rubber boots among the South American Indians in 1736. Up
to 1820 the seringueiros had sent rubber to European markets in
the form of "pears," or bottles, and rude shoes. They were
termed " shoemakers " in consequence, but the appellation has
fallen into disuse. The gum did not begin to be known in the
United States until 1820. Three years later, five hundred pairs of
Brazilian shoes of direct importation had been sold in Boston.
Between 1845 and 1850, flat balls, " biscuits," as at present, began
to be sent. Rubber threads, making elastic suspenders, garters,
etc., possible, were first made, in 1830, in France, and speedily
became an important manufacture. About this time the child's
ball was doing more to popularize the novelty than anything else.
Soon after, the manufacture of rubber became so important in
New England that from 1834 to 1836 new factories rose on all
sides. But the popularity of, the new substance declined when it
was found that rubber lost its elasticity at low temperatures and
was deteriorated and stuck together at high ones. Then, when
many factories in America had closed, and English and French
manufacturers were menaced with ruin, Goodyear succeeded in
producing rubber unalterable by cold or ordinary heat or sol-
vents, and some of his dark-yellcw shoes and bands of perfect
elasticity m^t with a glad reception in Europe in 1841. In 1839,
Nathaniel Hayward, an American, had patented a process for
powdering the sheets of rubber with sulphur. The discovery
was simultaneously made in Germany by Dr. Luedersdorf. But
neither thought of applying heat. Goodyear, who had been ex-
perimenting with India rubber for four years, bought Hayward's
patent, and after long investigation accidentally found, in 1839,
that heat caused the sulphur and rubber to combine so as to
change the nature of the latter. He afterward conceived the
idea of plunging the rubber into a bath of sulphur. The process
is called " vulcanization." Goodyear's experiments also laid the
basis of hard-rubber manufacture. Hancock, in England, scraped
the new article, and was led to make and patent the same dis-
covery in 1843, while Goodyear, through negligence, did not ob-
tain a patent until 1844. Alexander Parkes patented a process in
1846, when molding was invented by Hancock, in which rubber is
vulcanized almost instantly by dipping in a mixture of chloride
of sulphur and sulphide of carbon ; so we now have three pro-
cesses: "The Goodyear" by steam (improperly), " the Hancock"
in the sulphur bath, and "the Parkes" or dipping. They are all
reliable and inexpensive. No important discoveries to change the

684 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

method of treatment liave been made since Goodyear, who died
in 1860.

The problem of regenerating vulcanized waste (old shoes, etc.)
has not yet been satisfactorily solved, no means having been found
to remove the sulphur completely, and to restore to the gum its
original properties ; yet there is an increasing tendency to use
partly reclaimed rubber and foreign mixtures. From 1881 to 1883
the waste followed the rise in the price of the gum, and this
led to the use of imitations made from linseed oil (first announced
about 1846), from arachis, and from colza oil, and they still con-
tinue to be considerably employed in the fabrication of cheap
articles.

Pure India rubber is whitish. It is rarely used, the vulcanized
being preferred. Crude rubber is often mixed with pieces of bark,
stone, clay, etc. The lumps are softened in hot water, cut into
slices, generally by hand, and passed through washing rollers to
remove foreign substances. When dried, they are ready for mix-
ing with sulphur, etc., or for the "masticating machine," which
kneads the stuff into a solid mass. The machine gets very hot
and has to be cooled with water. The gum is then heated, molded,
and cut into sheets by a rapidly moving knife. Balls, etc., which
are made of these sheets, have to be cemented. It was not until
about 1850 that manufacturers of " balloons " (hollow articles)
began to make the endless variety of playthings with which the
child of the present is familiar. India rubber grinding stones
are made of the waste by an admixture of glass, pumice stone, or
emery. Kamptulicon, of English origin, invented about 1843, is
a mixture of rubber and pulverized cork applied to coarse cloth
and covered with several layers of linseed oil. It is now largely
superseded by linoleum (Walton's patent, 1860). Imitation leather
and ivory (the latter not with complete success), hevenoide (for
billiard balls, piano keys, etc.), baleinite, plastite (for gun ram-
mers, canes, whip handles, etc.), and similar products are also
made; even sponges. Stamps were made early in the history of
India rubber, and by an American, James Peck, in 1862. They
were ruined by the ink, and had to be abandoned until inks with
an aniline base came, when they were able to supplant almost all
their rivals. Hard-rubber dental plates are said to have been the
invention of Dr. Evans, an American dentist in Paris, in 1854.
He made several pieces for Goodyear's use in 1855. The latter
showed them to Dr. Putnam in this country, who, with the assist-
ance of a chemist and Goodyear, finally succeeded in making an
article which has now obtained a high degree of perfection.
Street-paving has been tried with success in London and Han-
over. It deadens the rolling of vehicles, but the cost bids fair to
prevent its general introduction. India-rubber horseshoes, an

IXDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 685

American paiteiit, are announced, for special use on asphalt pave-
ments.

It is impossible to mention all the uses to which India rubber
is applied, and reference can only be made, in concluding, to two
more, very important ones. It is at present finding increasing
favor in tires for vehicles, the solid kind being most frequent,
though occasionally pneumatic-tired equipages are seen. Han-
cock claims to have made the solid kind for her Majesty in 1846.
The recent tire of American invention with wires running
through it is thought, in this country, to be the best, as double
the quantity of rubber of better quality is used, which secures
greater elasticity, and vastly cheaper, from better rim- construc-
tion and because worn spots may be cut out and renewed. The
bicycle industry, it is estimated, is turning out, in 1896, in the
United States alone, six hundred thousand bicycles and one
million and a half pairs of pneumatic tires, which will require
about one thousand tons of rubber. The output in England is
about the same, that country and the United States producing
seventy- five per cent of the wheels manufactured. A writer on
this subject (Hawthorne Hill) recently said that probably not
more than four per cent of the output of rubber is used in the
bicycle trade.

The discovery of gutta-percha, which seems to unite all the
advantages of India rubber, excepting elasticity, without its dis-
advantages, has sometimes been attributed to the traveler Trades-
cant, who brought it to England, where it was known as mazer-
wood. It was neglected and soon forgotten. To an Englishman,
Dr. Montgomery, is due the merit of having brought the impor-
tance of the new article to the attention of the world of science
and industry. Hearing of it at Singapore, in 1822, he procured
specimens from the natives, who collected it in the neighboring
forests, and formed it chiefly into axe handles by malaxation in
boiling water. He found it differed materially from elastic gum.
Having proved that it retained the shape on cooling, imparted to
it in boiling water, v/hile recovering its hardness and primitive
tenacitj^. Dr. Montgomery thought such a substance could serve
better than rubber for certain instruments of surgery, and com-
municated his views to the Medical Board of Calcutta in 1843,
which warmly indorsed the idea. Ho also sent specimens and a
study of the product to the London Society of Arts, and received
from it a gold medal in recognition of his important discovery.
According to Dr. Giitzlaff, the celebrated missionary, gutta-percha
was known in China long before it appeared in Europe, though
certainly not gathered there.

Gutta-percha, like India rubber, is obtained from the juices of
certain trees and climbers. The best is produced by a tree, the

686 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Isonandra gutta, of the order SapotacecB, which formerly abounded
at Singapore and in all Malaysia, but which now tends to disap-
pear under the ravages committed by gatherers. Gutta, in Malay,
signifies gum or lime; perclia signifies scrap. Incisions are made
in the bark, as on rubber trees, and the liquor flows of perfect
whiteness, darkening at contact of air. Coagulation takes place
spontaneously in a short time. Like rubber, the liquid forms a
film on top. This cream is removed, kneaded into a large lump
and plumped into boiling water. Under the action of a high tem-
perature it softens and forms the cake usually found in commerce.
Other trees in Malaysia and Farther India, in Cambodia and
Cochin China, produce good gutta. In Hindustan different
grades are mixed by the natives. Chinese merchants, in their
depots, mix and manipulate to give a good superficial appearance
to the product, as the price is constantly advancing. As the
gatherers also do not scruple to add vegetable debris, earth, or
sand, it has become difficult to secure a pure article. An inferior
quality is obtained from trees and climbers in Africa and Mada-
gascar, and, with the development of those countries, more may
be expected. For the present, the same ravaging system of gath-
ering seems bound to prevail in these countries as that which the
now indispensable gutta-percha and India-rubber growths are
suffering in other countries. The valuable discovery of enor-
mous supplies of gutta trees in the vast forests of Guiana
was made about 1860. As might be expected, the rich flora of
Brazil furnishes many varieties of the tree ; one of which, the
Mimusops elata, exudes a white liquid of an agreeable flavor,
which is often used with tea or coffee. Other countries to be
mentioned are Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Australia. (For the
botany of India rubber and gutta-percha, the reader is referred
to E. Chapel's comprehensive work, Le Caoutchouc et la Gutta-
percha.) Some growths produce caoutchouc gutteux, a substance
of inferior quality, having the character of gutta-percha and
India rubber.

The largest quantities of gutta-percha come from the Sunda
Islands, Cochin China, Cambodia, and Hindustan. At first it
was exported exclusively from Singapore, but now some ship-
ments are made direct from the above-mentioned regions, from
the island of Celebes and the Philippines; some going to the
United States and the ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, but
the greatest portion to England.

The different varieties in European markets are designated
after their place of origin, the best being the Macassar, Java,
Sumatra, Borneo, etc. The gutta-percha of the Orient is of vari-
ous colors. The best grades are white or grayish, slightly rose-
tinted, and generally contain very little foreign substance; in-

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 687

ferior grades are dark and mixed with impurities. The former
are tenacious, the latter often very friable. Macassar and Sara-
wak, the finest grades of gutta, are light-brown verging on yellow,
while Balata is rose-brown.

On being refined and drawn thin, gutta-percha is translucent ;
drawn very thin, it is transparent ; but placed on a white surface,
it is rose or gray. At ordinary temperatures it is supple, flexible,
and very tenacious and extensible, so that it may be drawn to
three times its length, when it retains almost all of the extension.
If a dent be made with the finger nail, a trace will remain. It
softens above 50° C. and becomes adhesive above 100° C. Two
pieces may be permanently joined by applying a hot iron to the
surfaces and using light pressure. It is a bad conductor of heat
and electricity, but may be electrified by friction ; so it is some-
times employed for the disks of electric machines. Exposed to
the air, it undergoes, at length, a great change, losing its fibrous
structure and becoming granular and friable ; more quickly in
hot countries. This is a result of the action of oxygen under the
influence of light. It is insoluble in water, softens in boiling
water and steam ; resists alkalies, hydrofluoric acid (being used
for a receptacle for this acid), and ordinary dilute acids, but, when
strong, they attack it.

The property of gutta-percha of greatest value to mankind is
its dielectric or nonconducting property. This is not lessened by
atmospheric conditions, nor is it destroyed by plunging under
water or -burying in the ground or subjection to other deteriorat-
ing influences. Hence its fitness for cables, telephone wires, etc.
Its power of insulation decreases as the temperature increases.
Sea water is a medium in which gutta-percha undergoes no alter-
ation, and the enormous pressure at great depths exerts a favor-
able action on it by closing up accidental splits. Wrappings are
put upon electric cables to protect the insulation from abrasion
and the attacks of marine animals, as well as to strengthen the
cable. Gutta insulation is preferred for telegraphy, telephony,
bell service, etc. ; rubber insulation for lighting and power, as
intense currents are liable to lead to accidents by fusion of gutta
insulation. What the world owes to gutta-percha may be most
easily illustrated by more than one hundred and thirty-nine thou-
sand miles of ocean cables, not to speak of the myriads of wires
on land, under it, and in buildings for every conceivable purpose.

As soon as this valuable substance became known, industrial
enterprise at once sought to make use of it. From the year 1844
the new product received numerous applications and gave rise to
many patents. It was used for making stoppers, glues, and wires ;
then shoes, surgical instruments, and clothing. The most fortu-
nate application was as coating for telegraph cables (patents to

688 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

W. H. Barlow and Theodore Forster, April 27, 1848, and to E. W.
Siemens, April 23, 1850). Efforts had been made to solve the prob-
lem of submarine telegraphy for some years. The Count de Mon-
cel, in his Traite de TeUgraphie Eledrique, gives to Mr. Wheat-
stone, London, the palm as its inventor, but all do not agree in
this. The first mention (The Atlantic Telegraph, W. H. Russell)
■we are able to find of a current being transmitted a distance
under water refers to Sir W. O'Shaughnessy, Superintendent of
Electric Telegraphs in India, who hauled an insulated wire across
the Hoogly, at Calcutta, and produced electric phenomena on the
other side of the river, in 1839. Wheatstone, who is said to have
been thinking of binding England and the Continent in electric
connection as early as 1837, laid a plan before the House of Com-
mons in 18-10 for a cable between Dover and Calais. He seems to
have had no definite idea of the kind of insulator to be employed,
and, as the insulating quality of gutta-percha was not yet known,
his project was not carried out. Morse, in 1812, had succeeded in
telegraphing with a copper cable in New York harbor from Castle
Garden to Governor's Island, and said, in a letter to the Secretary
of the Treasury in 1813, that electric communication " may with
certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean." Three years
later Ezra Cornell had successfully employed a cable insulated
with rubber in the Hudson at Fort Lee ; and in 1846 Colonel Colt,
the patentee of the revolver, and Mr. Robinson, of New York, laid
a wire across the river from New York to Brooklyn and from
Long Island to Coney Island. So this great fact of instantaneous
exchange of intelligence with nations bej^ond seas was in a prom-
ising embryonic stage. Yet a satisfactory insulation still was
wanting. Then, at the very time when science was earnestly seek-
ing to find a suitable insulating material, Montgomery was study-
ing the properties and supply of gutta-jjercha. The late distin-
guished German inventor, E. W. Siemens, recognized the superior
insulating power of this substance in 1846, and constructed the
first subterranean line in Germany in 1847. Thence to the sub-
marine cable was but a step.

It is now interesting to Americans to note that S. T. Arm-
strong, of New York (The Story of the Telegraph, by Briggs and
Maverick ; The Telegraph Manual, by Schaffner), who had been
invited to England in 1847 to inspect the products of the new in-
dustry, estcxblished this industry the same year in Brooklyn (as
the president of a company), and made highly favorable experi-
ments across the Hudson in the autumn in 1848. He was so san-
guine of the success of gutta-percha insulation that he offered in
The Journal of Commerce, the same year, to lay a line across the
Atlantic for $3,500,000. (We have been careful to allude to this,
as there is usually no reference to Armstrong's experiments in

INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 689

works upon the subject.) Nor was it until January 10, 1849, some
months later, that Walker, one of the first savants that busied them-
selves with electricity, and who first experimented with the rail-
way block- system, successfully telegraphed in the harbor of Folke-
stone on what is generally considered the first submarine cable.
It was a gutta-covered cable extending from a boat two miles to
the shore. The favorable results at Folkestone encouraged John
W. Brett, who is known in England as the father of submarine
telegraphy, to construct the first long line from Dover to Calais,
with the encouragement of the French Government, in 1850,
when the successful application of gutta-percha to real submarine
telegraphy was demonstrated and Wheatstone's hopes were com-
pletely realized. Brett labored with great energy for the success
of long-distance submarine communication, and his faith and ad-
vice, as well as capital, were of the very greatest value to Field
and his fellow-promoters of the first Atlantic cables. In 1851 the
fire-hose at the exposition in London was of this substance, and
on the last voyage in search of Franklin a light and portable
gutta-percha boat did good service, showing that the material
was suitable for the sheathing of boats. Advantageous use was
also made of it in making molds for reproducing delicate impres-
sions in the galvanoplastic process. But, except in telegraphy and
galvanoplasty, its employment soon diminished. Shoes of gutta-
percha softened before the fire and stuck ; clothing made of it in
turn fell into ill favor. Vulcanizing and mixing with rubber
were thought of, but still satisfactory products were not obtained.
They were hard and were soon abandoned.

The failure of gutta-percha for some purposes is owing to its
greater suppleness at a slightly elevated temperature. It may be
vulcanized by adding sulphur and heating to 135° to 150° C, but
this process, owing to inconvenient results obtained, is now very
rarely employed. Its resistance to acids led to its being put to
use for vessels and tubes in factories of chemical products and
laboratories, while medical science, as seemed promised at its
coming, has found in it a valuable auxiliary.

The gutta-percha of commerce contains impurities — wood,
earth, sand, etc. — which must be eliminated. It may be dissolved
in sulphide of carbon or benzene. Then decant and allow to
evaporate. A cheaper and preferred method is by mechanical
means. The cakes are cut into chips, which are plunged into a
hot- water vat and stirred by an agitator ; the heavy substances
go to the bottom, the gutta and wood remaining on top. A series
of rasps removes the wood, and the gutta is taken and dried. The
process is often accomplished by still other machinery for remov-
ing the foreign substances, care being taken to squeeze out all
the air bubbles. The gutta is now pure, but may be mixed witl^

^OL. L. 53

690 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other substances to harden it or diminish the price. Caoutchouc
gutteux is sometimes added to make it more supple, and a certain
degree of elasticity may be imparted to it by adding India rubber
of good quality. With the perfect machinery now employed it is
made into sheets of almost any desired thickness. Many articles
are molded and the seams are finished with a hot iron. Cords
and tubes are made by a machine employed for similar articles in
the manufacture of India rubber, and which is on the principle of
one used in making macaroni. Belting is made for use in moist
air or where acid vapors are given off. Such belts have less resist-
ance than those made of rubber or leather, and are only used for
small powers. According to Meyer's Lexikon, there is a trans-
parent gutta-percha varnish which can be used for covering
documents. It does not change the paper ; the document is per-
fectly protected against water, acids, and alkalies ; and the writ-
ing can not be erased. Gutta-percha is also used in dentistry.

At the International Congress of Electricity at Paris, in 1881,
the alarm was sounded in regard to the decreasing supply of this
substance, and England, France, and Holland caused investiga-
tions to be made with a view to gutta-percha planting, but they
do not seem to have led, as yet, to any specially practical results.
Land of volcanic origin has been observed to be favorable, and
heat and light and constant humidity the conditions essential for
-the growth of the tree. There are vast regions in Cochin China
and Cambodia where, it is said, the Isonandra could be grown
at slight expense ; while all Malaysia, and probably other regions
where it grows native, would be found to lend themselves to the
same purpose. As the tree requires thirty years to reach matu-
rity, little can be expected from private enterprise, and national aid
should be extended. Meanwhile, the increasing demands of sub-
marine telegraphy, etc., and the ruthlessness of gatherers are mak-
ing it scarcer, and manufacturers must speculate with very variable
prices.

In his presidential address before the Royal Geographical Society Sir
Clements R. Markham cites the execution of the Periyar Canal, in the
Madras Presidency, India, as a most striking example of the power of man
to alter permanently the physical geography of a region. The Periyar
flows northward between the ridges of the western Ghauts Mountains,
breaks through them, and reaches the coast on the western side, in a region
abundantly supplied with water, while Madura, on the east side, is an arid
plain, constantly parched. The canal has been completed, with a tunnel
through the mountains, and the river has been turned to the western side,
making the effectual irrigation of Madura practicable. As opposetl to the
too many instances in which man has injured the countries some of who? e
geographical conditions he has changed, we have one here in which by
careful calculations and high engineering skill he has conferred great and
lasting benefit upon a region.

SKETCH OF JOHN GUNDLACH. 691

SKETCH OF JOHN GUNDLACH.

Br JUAN VILAKO, M. D., A. M., Ph. D.,

PROFESSOR OF NATURAL HISTORY, HAVANA UNIVERSITY.

THE words by which Sir William Jardine characterized Alex-
ander Wilson may be equally well applied, with a slight
change, to Gundlach, the Cuban naturalist. He "was the first
who truly studied the birds of Cuba in their natural abodes from
real observation ; and his work will always remain an ever- to-be-
admired testimony of enthusiasm and perseverance." Gundlach
studied with equal completeness all the land and river fauna of
Cuba and that of the sea, except the fishes, on which Poey was
engaged.

John Christopher Gundlach was born July 17, 1810, at the
University of Marburg, Hesse Cassel, where his father, Dr. John
Gundlach, was Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.
When the father died he left his five children a good name and a
noble example ; and the mother received a pension.

These resources, however, were not sufficient for so numerous
a family. Great sacrifices were necessary if so many children
were to be fittingly educated. The young students were com-
pelled to devote their leisure moments to work, instead of the
exercises of pleasure and recreation which were the privilege of
their fellows. Henry became a doctor of medicine ; Conrad, a
Protestant minister ; William, a guardian of the forests ; and
John accustomed himself, to use his own words, to "accept des-
tiny in whatever shape it might present itself," and to do much
while he spent little. He was in his ninth year when his elder
brother returned from Cassel with a ready and practical knowl-
edge of taxidermy. He used to watch the brother's work, closely
and quietly following all the processes of his preparations. The
boy was an industrious collector of insects all the while ; and in
the study and classification of his collections enjoyed the counsel
and assistance of naturalists, who were glad to give him their
encouragement. Those fruitful collecting excursions were the
pastime of his youth. About this time the young man suffered
a serious disaster from the accidental discharge of a shotgun, by
which his nose was shattered, and he was permanently deprived
of the sense of smell. The misfortune, however, had one com-
forting compensation, in that the student was thereby enabled to
deal with subjects in extreme stages of decomposition as easily as
if they had been entirely fresh. He gained an extensive reputa-
tion as a taxidermist, a practical demonstration of which was the
fact that a captain residing in Marburg intrusted him with the
preparation and mounting of his valuable collection of birds.

692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Gundlach's mother soiight vainly to guide his steps through
the mazes of theological studies ; and although he at one time, in
deference to her wishes, began a course, he was not destined to
comjjlete it. Dr. Maurice Herold, Professor of Zoology, offered
him employment in the university as conservator and preparator
— a position in which he had advantageous opportunities for
prosecuting the embryological work in insects which he had
undertaken. Enjoying as the son of a professor the privilege of
gratuitous instruction, he was enabled, while assisting Dr. Herold
and serving as his substitute, to take three successive courses in
zoology. He obtained, in 1837, the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
and Master of the Liberal Arts ; while he had also been elected to
the Society of Natural History of Cassel.

Gundlach was invited by Dr. Julius Hill, a Dutch physician,
to visit Surinam, where a company had been organized for mak-
ing collections ; and by the Cuban, Carlos Booth, who had com-
pleted his studies at London and Cassel, to go with him to Cuba.
He accepted the latter invitation, and, sailing from Hamburg
early in November, 1838, landed at Havana, January 5, 1839.

He at once made a favorable impression in Cuba. He might
have speculated in the results of his researches, but refused to do
so, giving as the reason, when asked by the writer of this sketch,
" Booth having incorporated me into his family, I had no expenses
and could send these objects gratuitously to Cassel.'*

The venerable Simdn de Cardenas wrote of him at the time
that " of a modesty equaled by none, he ever ignores the price of
his works. Tolerant with all, he never criticises. He only knows
how to give good advice. His amiable character is invariably
the same. . . . That science fills his soul and heart is a fact that
needs no demonstration. The impetuosity of violent passions is
something entirely unknown to his nature, and for him there is
nothing in the world but study and friendship."

Juan Clemente Zenea, in his Revista Habanera (1861), spoke
of Gundlach's zeal and devotion to science, his modesty and un-
selfishness, in terms of the highest eulogy, saying, among other
things : " For the last twenty years our richest planters have been
disputing among themselves for the right and pleasure of giving
him hospitality and attending to his needs, which are few, and
he only cares for the study of science. . . . He is a naturalist as
others are soldiers. . . . He is entirely unconscious of his distinc-
tion. He unassumingly communicates his vast knowledge to
whoever may feel inclined to hear him, like a prophet inspired
by a superior will."

He established himself with Booth at Cardenas, in 1841. Dur-
ing one of his excursions he shot a hummingbird, which he
found to be of a new species and designated it after Mrs. Booth,

SKETCH OF JOHN OUNDLACH. 693

Up to tliat moment lie had never collected for himself. He now-
decided, on the suggestion imparted to him by the study of that
rare specimen, to form a Cuban collection. Removing, in 1846,
to the "Refugio" farm, one mile from Cardenas, he deposited
there his collections, which had acquired great value, and freely
exhibited them to the numerous visitors who were attracted to
the spot. Six weeks of the year 1850 were spent at San Juan de
los Perros, on the coast of Cardenas, in collecting vertebrates,
articulates, and mollusks, while the fishes were left to Poey.

At this period Gundlach formed a number of valuable scien-
tific acquaintances and friendships. Senor Bias du Bouchet, as-
sessor of Cardenas, made several visits to the Refugio, and a close
association was formed between the two. Going to reside in
Havana, thirteen years after his arrival in Cuba, Gundlach for
the first time met Felipe Poey, whom Dr. Manuel Presas styles
the true inaugurator of the new era of Cuban science, and whom
he had before known only by correspondence. The greeting be-
tween the two was a warm one — " Animod pars" (Part of my
soul), exclaimed Gundlach; " Dimidia mem" (Half of mine), re-
sponded Poey — and was the beginning of an intimacy which was
cordial and lasting. In Havana he found, too, Juan Lembeye,
the ornithologist, author of a little treatise on the birds of the
island of Cuba,* whom he had known since 1846 ; Ramon Forns,
Principal of the " Santa Teresa " School, another ornithologist ;
Antonio Fabre, Francisco A. Sanvalle, and Dr. Manuel Gandul ;
and a very pleasant circle of naturalists was formed for profit-
able intercourse. Very fruitful expeditions were made in 1855 to
the mountain called the Pan of Guajaibdn ; and the encourage-
ment of this success was an important factor in the development
of a plan for exploring the Island of Pines. Dr. NicoMs Gu-
tierez, Patricio Paz, and Poey found the means to carry out the
idea, it being agreed that they should pay all the expenses and
share with Gundlach the scientific harvest. The riches thus ac-
quired stimulated desire, and the project of a new expedition to
the east of Cuba was formed, with a view to the collection of mol-
lusks, and particularly of the Helix imperator.

Gundlach started on his journey alone in June, 1856, and
prosecuted it with an earnestness that nothing could dampen,
and a determination that overcame every obstacle of bad roads,
dense thickets and foliage, mountain ranges, the burning heat of
the day and the cold of the night, tropical showers, high, waters,
and mud up to the neck, with all the hardships they could inflict

* A continuation of, or rather a supplement to, the Physical, Political, and Natural
History of the Island of Cuba, published by Ramou de la Sagra, in which the part allotted
to ornithology is edited by Alcides d'Orbigny.

694 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

npon him. He went overland from Havana to Cien^ga de Zapata
(Zapata Swamp), tlience to Caimanera and Cienfuegos. In Sep-
tember lie passed through Trinidad, San Juan de Letran, Giiinia
de Soto, Araca with its great marsh, and other places, all of
which were closely and attentively examined.

On the 22d of February of the following year he started from
Casilda toward Manzanillo, thence to Bayamo, where he was en-
tertained with true Cuban hospitality. Drawn by an irresistible
desire to acquire more specimens of a very interesting mammal
known locally as tejon, called almiqui by Poey and his suc-
cessors, and scientifically named Solenodon cubanus (Peters), he
traversed the Sierra Maestra. Another mammal, the Jutia an-
dardz {Capromys melmiurus, Poey), of which he had obtained
specimens from Dr. Yero, also attracted him thither. Besides
having specimens of these species, he desired to trace them to
their homes and follow them to their burrows, but his success
was prevented by natural obstacles which he could not over-
come. With the Yero brothers he went to Guisa, where he
found in one of the caverns the interesting bat MonopJiyllus
Redmanni, and many specimens of mollusks. Reaching Santi-
ago de Cuba in December, 1857, he closely investigated its vi-
cinity. He revisited Cabo de Cruz in April, 1858, in search of
the tropical bird Phaetlion flavirostrus — called in Quhsi rdbijun-
co, from the two median rectrices that gracefully prolong its tail
— which disappears from the place in the latter part of August
or beginning of September and returns in February, and ob-
tained very good specimens of it. In June of the same year he
visited Caimanera, in the harbor of Guant^namo, for mollusks.
At Zateras, in 1859, he met the botanist Charles Wright, of Con-
necticut, who had already collected a number of plants for Har-
vard University and had returned for new finds. The two ex-
plored in company, mutually aiding each other ; and Wright ac-
quired snails and insects and bird skins for the Smithsonian In-
stitution, in return for which Gundlach had seeds and specimens
of plants to send to Havana. He returned to Santiago de Cuba ;
visited Baracoa in May, where he went to the "Marianna" es-
tate to see the famous branching palm ; ascended the mountain
called Yunque de Baracoa (Baracoa Anvil), where he discovered
a number of insects and new species of mollusks ; and went on
by way of Gibara to Nuevitas, whence he passed to Puerto Prin-
cipe, and finally arrived in Havana in August, 1859, three years
and three months after his departure on the expedition.

Established again in the Cuban capital, Gundlach occupied
himself with the systematic compilation of his collections. He
described and published three new species of birds ; sent the
reptiles to Dr. Peters, of Berlin, for classification, and the land

SKETCH OF JOHN QUNDLACH. 695

and river mollusks — which he had already himself partly named
— to Dr. Pfeiffer, of Hesse Cassel ; while he reserved the insects
for German and North American specialists.

After other journeys to Vuelta Abajo, Gundlach decided to
gather all his collections under one roof. He furnished for that
purpose a room on the upper floor of the infirmary of the sugar
estate "Fermina" (Bemba), where the valuable Cuban Museum
of Natural History was installed during the holy week of 1864.*
There all the zoological species, especially birds, were represented
by specimens of both sexes, young and old, their eggs and nests,
with cases of albinism and melanism and anomalous features,
especially of the bill. In 1866 Gundlach prepared — arranging and
packing — the specimens for the Cuban exhibit in the Paris Expo-
sition of 1867. The exhibit included a collection of land and
river mollusks, a Cuban herbarium, and a collection, no less valu-
able, of woods and textile plants ; geological and mineralogical
collections ; sections of fossils ; and other specimens of the prod-
ucts of the island. In it the collection of the Academy of Sciences
of Havana was added to Gundlach's own.

The breaking out of the Cuban insurrection in 1868 made the
continued exploration of the island impracticable, and Gundlach
turned his eyes to Porto Rico. He visited that island in 1873, and
traversed, investigated, and studied to great advantage the sur-
roundings of Mayagiiez, Aguadilla, Qaebradillas, Arecibo, Gua-
nica, Utuado, and Lares. The six months work done here did
not, however, satisfy him, and he returned in 1875, when he also
explored Jayuya, Vegabaja, and Bayamon. Receiving news of the
burning by the rebels of some estates near the " Fermina " sugar
plantation, he at once abandoned everything to go to the rescue
of the museum, his only treasure.

In 1884 he started anew in the direction of Santiago de Cuba
and Guantanamo in search of certain birds and butterflies. Al-
though he did not find the immediate object of his quest, his
labor was rewarded by the acquisition of other specimens which
speedily found their way to the university, the Institute of
Havana, and other scientific centers. He returned in 1885, hav-
ing with him, among other trophies of his enterprise, several
good specimens of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a species which,
thanks to the careless destructiveness of hunters, is becoming
quite rare, and of the Papilio Gundlachianus. " Every trip to the
mouth of the Aguadores River," he wrote to the author of this

* The Gundlach Cuban Museum is certainly worthy of special attention. A more detailed
account of the treasures it contains is in preparation. The collections are now deposited in
a private hall of the Institute de Segunda Ensenanza of Havana. In April, 1890, it held
4,135 species.

696 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sketcli, " had to he begun at lialf past five in tlie morning. It
was there that the Papilio Gundlachianus flew. I had to walk
two leagues, stand three hours, and then walk back two leagues
more. The heat was unbearable.'' This Painlio is highly val-
ued by students of Lepidoptera, and the specimens command a
high price. It is not so large as the Papilio antimachus of Sierra
Leone, but it enjoys the distinction of being the prettiest butterfly
in America. A goodly number of swifts and large swallows were
also in the collection. Gundlach made other journeys to the
eastern province in 1885 and 1887, always collecting, always active
and untiring, as if his seventy-six years, in spite of the arduous
nature of his enterprises, had dealt lightly with him.

Plis unrivaled Cuban Museum established in the Havana In-
stitute, still claimed and received his attention to the last moment
of his working life. A hearty octogenarian, he continued to de-
vote himself, as with his old-time energy, to improving it as far
as possible. Assisted by kind friends, he went up daily to his
place of work, first assiduously laboring and then recreating him-
self with his only treasure. Finally, in 189G, the end came. He
was taken from the institute to his deathbed.

Gundlach's researches in Cuban fauna are so numerous that
it would be extremely diflicult to record them all in a brief sum-
mary. He first published Contributions to Cuban Ornithology,
1854—1857. Then followed, in quick succession, Index gejierum
ColeopteruTYi, 1854 ; Ilolluscorum species Novcr, 1858 ; A Synoptic
Conspectus of all the Birds observed in Cuba, published in the
Journcd fiir Ornithologie, 1861 ; A Review and Catalogue of the
Cuban Birds, 1865; A Review and Catalogue of the Cuban Rep-
tiles, 1867; New Contributions to Caban Ornithology, in the
Journal fiir Ornithologie, 1871, 1872, 1874, 1875 ; Contribution to
Cuban Ornithology, 1871, 1876 ; Contribution to the Ornithology
of Porto Rico, 1874 ; Contribution to Cuban Mammalogy, 1877,
1878 ; Notes on the Fauna of Porto Rico, 1878 ; New Contribu-
tions to the Ornithology of Porto Rico, 1878 ; Contributions to
Cuban Herpetology, 1880 ; Contributions to Cuban Entomology,
1881; Land and River Mollusks, 1883; Sea Mollusks, 1883; be-
sides descriptions of new species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and
insects, published in journals, organs of learned societies, etc.
Gundlach was also distinguished by his skill, grace, and delicacy
as a taxidermist, the wonderful patience with which he performed
every branch of that work, and the gift of genius by which he
was able to give a startlingly natural pose to the sf^ecimens he
mounted.

The list of honors which Gundlach received from institutions
and learned societies is a long one. In 1853 he was made a corre-
sponding member of the Natural History Society of Montreal,

SKETCH OF JOHN OUNDLACH. 697

and in May of the same year was honored in like manner by the
Natural History Society of Weterau. In 18G1 the Academy of
Sciences of Havana signified the high esteem in which it held him
by conferring on him the title of Member of Merit. In January,
1864, he was made a corresponding member of the Entomological
Society of Philadelphia ; in July of the same year an honorary
member of the Society of Naturalists of Berlin ; and in the fol-
lowing year a member of the scientific department of the Matan-
zas Lyceum, and a member of the Sociedad Economiica de Amigos
del Pais of Havana. In 1807 he was elected a corresponding
member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
In 1872 the distinction was conferred upon him of election to
membership in the Spanish Society of Natural History, Madrid.
In 1878 the Farmers' Circle of the Island of Cuba {Circido de
Hacendados) made him a Member of Merit.

Besides his untiring devotion to science, which has been evi-
dent in nearly every line of this sketch, Gundlach was distin-
guished by unafiiected modesty and plainness and a charming
geniality in his companionship. Simon de Cardenas says, in the
tribute from which we have already quoted : " He sympathizes
with all persons he sees, and when one has had an hour with him
it is a pain to part from him. He is an entertaining converser,
no matter what the subject may be. He can soar in the heights
of science, talk of history, literature, and philosophy, or engage
in the private, intimate, and affectionate conversation of the fam-
ily circle. If we were required to point out among his many vir-
tues others equally conspicuous, we should certainly mention his
honesty and disinterestedness." Juan Clemente Zena said that
"in speaking of him we must needs pay him homage or not men-
tion him at all. Plis face is like a transparent crystal, in which
all moral perfections are reflected."

In their investigations of the electrical and magnetic properties of matter
at very low temperatures, Profs. Dewar and Fleming have, according to a
summary given in the London Times, completed an examination of the
electrical conductivity of many pure metals, notably bismuth and mercury,
and shown that their electrical resistance vanishes as the temperature ap-
proaches the absolute zero; also that at very low temperatures the electrical
resistance of bismuth may be increased many hundred times by transverse
magnetism. They have analyzed the effect of low temperature on magnets,
and studied the magnetic qualities of iron and steel at the temperature of
liquid air. They have measured the magnetic permeability of liquid oxy-
gen and its dielectric constant, and shown that this complies with Maxwell's
law. They have proved that liquid oxygen is extremely magnetizable,
■while its insulating and dielectric powers give it a unique position among
known liquids and salts.

698

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

® 0r r jesp^o xiHitutt.

RACE PSYCHOLOGY.

Editor Popular Science Monthly :

SIR: The article entitled A Study in Race
Psychology, published in the January
number of the Popular Science Monthly, has
called forth several letters which show that
the particular case there presented is far
from being an isolated one. It is interest-
ing to note also that the question of educa-
tional adaptation raised by the article is
working in many minds, and has prompted
experiments in many quarters. Before re-
ferring to these I would note that objection
has been taken in one instance to discussions
based upon a single case. It is in order to
apply here the doctrine of Le Play, who be-
lieved that to understand society it is neces-
sary to know its unit, the family. This,
however, he declared did not necessitate the
study of all families, but simply of typical
families. Now, the unit of the school is the
pupil, and to know the problem of the school
it is necessary to study its typical unit. The
study in question was a tentative experiment
of this kind.

But to return to the correspondence. City
and country are about equally represented
in it, with the higher measure of apprecia-
tion for the study and its purport in the
former. It would seem, indeed, that the
problem presented is one well recognized in
cities with large colored populations. The
question raised in almost every case is how
to adapt the dav school to individuals or to
a class of whom Isaiah is the type. I should
answer that possibly the school is not the
place in which the adaptation can be made.
The school must treat the child primarily as
part of a social whole. This is one of the
chief benefits that it renders the community.
It accustoms the young to act in concert and
in obedience to a general law. On the other
hand, it must approach the child also as an
individual, but for obvious reasons it ad-
dresses itself to an average or normal indi-
vidual. This is the underlying principle of
grading which in some form or other obtains
in schools of every order. Experience has
shown, however, that society suffers if even
a few individuals below the normal fail of
development. In several foreign cities, not-
ably Berlin and London, this has been as
clearly recognized as the need of guarding

against general illiteracy, and special schools
for dull or abnormal children have been
established at public expense. There are
peculiar difficulties in the way of sifting out
the colored population of a city like Wash-
ington, for example, on any such plan. Nor
can we hope at present for a system of con-
tinuation schools such as is provided in Ger-
many and Switzerland by which American
youth, white or black, who leave school with
the barest knowledge of the elements, might
have their intellectual training prolonged,
while at the same time they should be ini-
tiated into some art or trade. The only
feasible plan at present is to supplement the
school by auxiliary agencies, private or
church. It is interesting to note that this
is an expedient which is being attempted by
leading colored men in the interests of the
poorer and most backward of their race.
Two notable efforts of this kind have been
reported to me from Washington. One of
these is of the nature of a veritable " settle-
ment " in a forlorn purlieu of the city, the
other is an industrial school in connection
with a leading colored church. These efforts,
however, are directed chiefly to girls, and
they emphasize anew the extreme difficulty
of adapting any agency of the kind to the
needs of colored boys. The discussion of
such adaptation has been promoted by the
ai'ticle in question. Inadequate as are these
isolated experiments, they are the only re-
source while we wait the slow increase of
pressure which, like the military and indus-
trial stress of European countries, will yet
force us to make larger provision and more
varied adjustments for the education of the
masses.

From the study of one hundred thousand
school children of England Dr. Francis War-
ner is led to the conclusion that about fifteen
in a thousand require particular training,
and he urges that the expense of teaching
this proportion in a special classroom and by
special methods would be an efficient means
of lessening crime, pauperism, and social fail-
ure. Discounting all hereditary differences
between the black and the white races, the
argument is nevertheless peculiarly applica-
ble to the lower class of blacks on account
of their well known social and family disa-
bilities. Anna Tolman Smith.
Washington, JarMary 25, 1897.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

699

%UXox's "^iXUt.

AID FOR THE 8TA TE EDUCA TIONAL
MACHINE.

MORE than once have we hinted
in these columns that the
only thing which can render State
education successful, and enable it to
accomplish the ends which a system
of education ought to accomplish, is
the earnest co-operation of the more
intelligent portion of the public.
The ti'ouble is that the public do not
in general see the matter in this
light. They not unnaturally think
that one of the advantages of State
education is that all responsibility
in connection with the matter is
taken off their shoulders. When
the government of a country estab-
lishes a postal service the individual
citizen does not feel called upon to
devote his time or his ingenuity to
the task of perfecting it. Of course,
if he is a reformer born, and his
thoughts happen to run in that di-
rection, be will favor the Post-OflBce
Department from time to time with
suggestions which may or may not
be of value ; but in general the feel-
ing is that such volunteer assistance
is not needed. Somewhat similai' —
very similar indeed — is the feeling
which the average citizen entertains
in regard to the educational system
of his State. It is something he need
not interfere with : he pays his taxes,
and he has a right to have his chil-
dren educated ; and there the matter
ends.

What the average citizen must
wake up to some day is the percep-
tion that there the matter must not
end. It is one thing to ask the State
to arrange for the conveyance of
letters or parcels ; it is quite another
to intrust it with the education of
youth. For the former purpose a

few business arrangements, such as
are within the compass of ordinary
practical intelligence, fully sulnce ;
for the latter something more is
wanted than any government, as
such, has it in its power to supply.
What, for example, is education with-
out an ideal ? Can the State supply
an ideal ? Individual teachers— the
more conscientious ones — may have
their ideals ; but do they derive these
from their contact with or relations
to the State ? Or is their position as
State employees precisely the thing
which makes it hard for them to have
or maintain ideals ?

Let us, however, make it quite
clear what we mean when we speak
of the importance of an ideal in edu-
cation, and of the utter incomplete-
ness of education without an ideal.
By an ideal we simply mean a con-
ception of life worthy of a moral and
rational being — such a conception of
life as shall develop and strengthen,
not weaken and wither, his or her
moral and intellectual powers. The
first lesson which should be taught
to the child is the lesson of its actual,
and yet more its potential, worth.
" If," says the heathen philosopher
Epictetus, " a man should be able to
assent to this doctrine as he ought,
that we are all sprung from God, I
suppose that he would never have
any ignoble or mean thoughts about
himself." Now, education without
an ideal is an education in which a
child is never taught to think nobly
of himself, and in which, by inevi-
table consequence, he is almost pre-
cluded from having any noble
thoughts about anybody or anything.
It is consequently an education with-
out any large or worthy aim, an
education in which the child is

700

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

treated simply as a piece of meclian-
ism which has to be put in order for
certain definite and servile ends.
The idea which dominates State edu-
cation is the idea of the struggle for
life, human being pitted against
human being in the scramble for
material goods. We do not blame
the State for this, for we do not hold
it to be capable of organizing educa-
tion on any higher plane. It can
keep an intellectual machine shop,
but it can not in any systematic
manner provide for the higher needs
of growing souls. It may go so far
as to enunciate bald moral pi-ecepts ;
but it can not pronounce the master
words which speak to the conscience
and dominate the life.

So, as we have said, when the
citizen pays his taxes and packs his
children off to the public school, all
is not done. If the citizen thinks
the education of his children has
been sufficiently provided for, there
is a large chance that he will before
very long be rudely awakened to a
sense of his error. He will find that
character is something the proper
formation of which demands more
care and pains than either he or the
public school had thought of bestow-
ing, and that for want of the neces-
sary attention in this direction his
children are showing a serious lack
of any power of self guidance or
self-control. Thousands of parents
are to-day precisely in this position,
with children on their hands to
whose moral cultivation no proper
attention has been paid either at
school or at home, and who conse-
quently show alarming signs of
making shipwreck of life. The par-
ents thought — so far as they thought
about it at all — that the schools
would see to the matter, and the
schools threw back the responsibil-
ity on the parents : between the two
stools the children have come to the
ground. What parents should be

made to understand once for all is
that if they leave the moral interests
of their children wholly in the hands
of the public school, those interests
will not and can not be adequately
provided for. Teachers may indi-
vidually do their best, but the public
school as an institution can not
strike the note that is necessary for
complete education. It can not
strike the note that Epictetus struck
in the sentence above quoted; and
yet, as we have said, unless the child
can be taught self reverence, he will
never learn to reverence anything,
and his whole life, aimless in any
noble sense, will drift among the
shoals of circumstance.

Deeply interested as we are in
this view of the question, it was with
great pleasure that we read a few
weeks ago a letter in The Nation
from Mrs. Elizabeth Burt Gamble,
President of the Detroit Educational
Union, describing what had been
done in that city toward supplement-
ing the work and influence of the
schools by the concerted efforts of
the mothers of the pupils. The prob-
lem, as Mrs. Gamble expresses it, is
to carry more of the home into the
school and more of the school into
the home. The plan of action was
to invite the mothers of each school
district, " regardless of creed, color,
nationality, or environment," to
meet periodically — once a month —
for the discussion of " topics best
suited to aid in the proper develop-
ment of the child." The co-opera-
tion of the teachers of each district
was invoked, and the meetings were
as a rule held in the school house
after the regular school work for the
day was over. Each district league
conducted its proceedings in view of
the needs and peculiarities of the
I)articular neighborhood, but the
central union prepared a syllabus of
work for general use. In this sylla-
bus were suggested such topics as the

EDITOR'S TABLE.

701

following: "Proper food and clotli-
ing for children; care of the body,
cleanliness, the way to prevent the
formation of injurious habits; the
rights of children ; proper reading in
the home; how to teach the children
self-control and to have a proper re-
gard for the rights of others ; the du-
ties of true citizenship ; and various
other subjects to be taken up by the
mothers in the home."

Now, nothing could be better than
this, except that we do not see why
the movement should have been con-
fined to the mothers. Why were the
fathers not thought worthy to take
a share in the good work ? Mrs.
Gamble states that in Detroit the
movement has received a check.
" At the very outset it was observed."
so she tells us, " that petty jealousies
and a fear of the growing influence
of women would make it difficult for
the work to continue." We do not
see why there should be any dread
of the growing influence of women
so long as the latter are working
judiciously toward good ends. We
can imagine, however, that an ex-
clusively feminine movement might
perhaps be conducted upon lines or
might become committed to posi-
tions that would excite not wholly
unreasonable opposition. Zeal for
reform is a noble thing, but to be
successful it requires to be tempered
by tact and a sense for the practica-
ble. The matter is not one in which
women solely are interested, and if
the best results are to be achieved
there must be a co-operation of the
sexes. If the ideas of men lag be-
hind those of women in some par-
ticulars, compensation may be found
in the assistance which the former
are able to lend in carrying certain
limited reforms into actual practice
and so preparing the way for further
advance.

Mrs. Gamble raises a serious ques-
tion when she asks, " Has society

reached that stage where such re-
sults (those, namely, contemplated
by the Educational Union) are de-
sired ? " There is, unfortunately,
room to doubt whether some parents
really desire the best training for
their children. A parent, for exam-
ple, who has no worthy ideal in life
would not care to have his child in-
doctrinated with the idea that world-
ly success is not everything. Such
teaching is looked upon as harmless
in the pulpit; but many parents, if
we are not mistaken, would be dis-
posed to object if their children were
taught anything like this at school.
It is very desirable that we should
know just where as a community we
stand in regard to this matter. If
all parents do not desire the best
moral teaching for their children,
all the greater need is there for an
educative campaign that shall em-
brace parents as well as children.
Certain it is that the children have a
right to the best teaching — the most
rational, the most humane, the most
inspiring teaching — that can be given
them, and no effort should be spared
that could in any way tend to put
the instruction given in our public
schools on a right level or to supple-
ment it by suitable home influence.
The subject is one upon which too
much public attention can not be
concentrated, and we are glad to find
from Mrs. Gamble's letter that she
and her fellow-woi'kers have no in-
tention, despite some discourage-
ments, to intermit their efforts. It is
satisfactory to think that whatever
may be done with right motives in
the direction indicated must have
some good effect. To interest even
one mother or one father in what —
using the words not quite in their
usual sense, but in a sense more im-
portant than the usual one— may be
called the higher education of their
children is so far a gain; but to in-
terest, as by proper measures might

702

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

easily be done, hundreds and thou-
sands of parents throughout the
country would be to initiate perhaps
the most important reform move-
ment that our century has witnessed.

A CRITIC CRITICISED.

A FEW months ago there ap-
peared in France a French transla-
tion of Mr. Balfour's work on The
Foundations of Belief, with an in-
troduction by the well known editor
of the Revue des Deux Mondes, M.
Ferdinand Brunetiere. In this in-
troduction M. Brunetiere took occa-
sion to repeat many of the arguments
already used by him in his article of
a year or so ago on The Bankruptcy
of Science. He was greatly pleased
to think that Mr. Balfour had shown
that science could not lay claim to
any greater certainty than theology,
and he quoted with much satisfac-
tion Mr. Benjamin Kidd's disparage-
ments of the reasoning faculty and
exaltation of the irrational or supra-
rational as the source of everything
good and excellent in human society
and in the history of the race. It is
a little wonderful that men of the
general intelligence of M. Brunetiere
and Mr. Kidd do not recognize the
futility of such intellectual exerci-
tations as those in which they in-
dulge; but the former of these gen-
tlemen can at least see how his atti-
tude strikes a common-sense observer
in a very sprightly article published
in La Nouvelle Revue of the 15th of
January last.

The writer, M. Gustave Tery, be-
gins by ohserving that M. Brunetiere
only a few years ago was one of the
most severely scientific writers of the
time. In physical science he was an
evolutionist and in literary criticism
as rigid and inflexible as Sarah Battle
over her game of whist. One fine
day he turned round on evolution,
and shortly afterward he declared

war on science. Now there is no
knowing where to find him. He is
here, there, and everywhere, show-
ing different colors at different an-
gles, and taking pi'ide in nothing so
much as an infinite flexibility of
mind and conviction. His present
condition seems traceable in the main
to an interview he had a couple of
years ago with the Pope, who showed
him all the kingdoms of the world in
a moment of time, and, if he did not
convert him outright to Catholic or-
thodoxy, filled him with a holy zeal
for persuading the world that science
is the one thing least worthy of trust.
In pursuance of this mission he has
charged science with having under-
taken to "explain the universe" and
with having egregiously and shame-
fully failed to do so. But, as M.
Tery says in the article before us:
" What savant ever claimed to ex-
plain Nature in the ontological sense
— that is to say, to reveal the nature
of Being ? All that science under-
takes is to connect phenomena with
one another, to relate them to their
causes and formulate their laws."
If, he further observes, M. Brune-
tiere will only make this elementary
distinction, he will not be so scandal-
ized as he appears to be at the reply
attributed to Laplace when some one
— the pious Napoleon Bonaparte, was
it not ? — asked him what place God
occupied in his speculations. The
reply was that he did not need that
hypothesis, by which he meant that
a speculation as to a first cause had
no place in a series of inquiries re-
lating to secondary causes.

One of the amiable remarks of
M. Brunetiere apropos of reason is
that while it is easy enough to see
the ruins it has wrought, it is by no
means so easy to see what it has con-
structed. This in face of the fact
that day by day all the solid and en-
during work in the world is done by
the aid of reason and in accordance

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE,

703

with, its rules. Do we employ luna-
tics as architects, as engineers, as
analysts ? Do we ask them to plead
cases in court, to write books of sci-
ence, to manage business affairs ?
Or, passing over lunatics, do we seek
out persons of confessedly mean in-
telligence for these purposes ? Is
not all work good precisely in pro-
portion to the amount of correct and
rational thought that is embodied in
it ? If a bridge breaks down, or a
house collapses, or a ship is lost at
sea, or a railway disaster happens, or
a fire sweeps through a town, or an
epidemic gains headway, do we ever
say that an excess of reason was
chargeable with the calamity ? Or
do we, as we investigate the causes,
say that here or here there was some
defect of knowledge, thought, atten-
tion, vigilance, common sense — some
defect of reason, in short ? The
question does not call for an answer,
seeing that every one knows that
what we need to get into human af-
fairs is more and more reason, more
and more intelligence, more and
more of the spirit of science. But if,
M. Tery says, we are in spite of
everything to trust to the irrational
or Mr. Kidd's supra-rational, who is

to interpret it for us ? There are
many brands of the irrational, and
doubtless just as many of the supra-
rational. Who is to pick out the
particular one that suits our circum-
stances and needs ? Surely, reason
is not to be called upon to decide in
what direction we are to forsake its
guidance and what precise species
of unreason we are to surrender our-
selves to. We should be able to look
to the gentlemen who tell us how
unsafe a guide reason is; but there
is nothing they so pointedly decline
to do as to give us any practical help
whatever. The conclusion of the
matter seems to be that of all the
fads of the present day the weakest
and silliest is that which prompts
men otherwise intelligent to dispar-
age reason and its realized outcome,
science. A fitting punishment, were
it possible, would be to confine such
persons for a certain period to an ex-
clusive diet of the irrational and the
supra-rational. If their wits sur-
vived the ordeal, they would return
to ordinary conditions with a de-
vouter thankfulness for the gift of
reason, and for all the works of rea-
son, than they probably ever experi-
enced in their lives before.

^titxxXiiit %i\txKinxt.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The completion of Herbert Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy * is the most
noteworthy recent event in the field of scientific literature. More than
forty years have elapsed since Mr. Spencer enunciated the doctrine of evo-
lution in the first edition of the Principles of Psychology, preceding by
several years the great work of Darwin on the Origin of Species. Nearly
thirty-seven years have gone by since the plan of the Synthetic Philosophy
was definitely formulated, soon followed by the publication of First Prin-
ciples. The accomplishment of the Herculean task then outlined is hardly
less marvelous than was its projection at a time when, as Mr. Spencer ex-

*The Principles of Sociology, vol. iii. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co.,
1897. Pp. 645.

704 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

plains in the preface to the present volume, his circumstances of health and
fortune were most discouraging.

Though approaching the completion of his seventy-seventh year, neither
Mr. Spencer's age nor his long struggle with infirmity has dimmed the
vigor of his thought or the lucidity of his diction. The closing chapters of
the present volume exhibit the strength of a mind unimpaired and of a
conviction undaunted by the apparent drift of events in a direction con-
trary to that in which he sees the salvation of society. No pessimistic
reflections have obliterated his early vision of an ideal man in a relatively
perfect social state. " Long studies," he athrms at the conclusion of his
work, "... have not caused me to recede from the belief expressed nearly
fifty years ago that ' the ultimate man will be one vv'hose private require-
ments coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in
spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the func-
tions of a social unit.' "

The volume now before us includes the discussion of Ecclesiastical, Pro-
fessional, and Industrial Institutions. The consideration of the two latter
topics, not contemplated at the outset, has displaced the general survey of
progress which was to have completed the Principles of Sociology. The
finished structure is not marred; the change has enhanced the practical
value of the work. In this adaptation to the requirements of added expe-
rience and maturer reflection the Synthetic Philosophy is seen to be itself
a product of evolution, a vital expression of progressive thought, rather
than a mechanically constructed system. That its final form is so near to
the original plan is a remarkable testimony to the profound scientific pre-
science of the author.

The first two sections of the present volume have already received notice
in these pages. The concluding section, on Industrial Institutions, is the
latest product of Mr. Spencer's thought, and treats of the problems now
ujipermost in the minds of men. The discussion, therefore, has more than
a merely theoretical value. It presents the mature judgment of the great-
est thinker of our time on questions of immediate i^ractical import. It
therefore challenges the thoughtful attention of all to whom the perfection
of individual character and of the societary forms best adajited to assure
the progress of the race is a matter of supreme interest.

Reviewing the different stages of industrial progress, Mr. Spencer op-
timistically concludes that advancement has been more rapid in the cen-
tury now closing than in all the past of man's career upon the earth — a
conclusion seemingly justified by the facts which he skillfully marehals in
its support. This progress has been characterized by an increasing speciali-
zation of functions and division of labor, thus illustrating the universal
law of evolution. The chief incentives to early industrial effort grew out
of the steady increase of population, the militant structure of society, and
the love of ornament common to primitive peoples. Further industrial
progress, however, is seen to be dependent on the decline of the military
spirit. Peace alone answers the conditions requisite to continuous effort,
Ijromotes econom3% and encourages better methods. Hostilities between
tribes and nations prevent free interchange and competition, and so favor
adulteration in materials and the survival of inefficient methods. " Thus in
all ways increase of population by its actions and reactions develops a social
organism which becomes more heterogeneous as it becomes larger, while

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 705

the immediate cause for the improvement in quantity and quality of pro-
ductions is competition."

Mr. Spencer regards the development of a sound and convenient medium
of exchange as a condition essential to that integration of industries which
has everywhere accompanied the differentiation of industrial functions.
The idea that each local community must be autonomous and self-support-
ing, peculiar to early societies and in harmony with their prevailing mili-
tancy, must give way as production increases and the means of distribution
are developed. These advances are dependent on an acceptable medium of
exchange. " With a good monetary system the resistance to exchange
disappears; relative values of things can be measured; current prices can
be recognized; and thus arises competition, with all the cheapenings,
stimulations, and improvements resulting from it." A debased currency
tends to limit exchanges to the community which employs it; witness the
innumerable disastrous experiments with irredeemable paper money. " A
developed and differentiated currency furthers production and raises the
rate of distribution," thus aiding in the integration of society. Mr. Spencer's
conclusions confirm the teachings of political economists, and will commend
themselves to all who believe in sound and progressive financial methods.

All these processes of industrial evolution tend to raise man out of the
static independence of the savage state into that higher realm of interde-
pendence and mutual service which is his noble prerogative as a social
being. By them labor is organized and regulated. Its early regulation
implies either actual or potential coercion, at first effected by combined re-
ligious, governmental, and industrial control. These functions are gradu-
ally differentiated as social evolution proceeds. Emancipation from coercion
is conditioned upon the higher development of character in the worker.
Patriarchal regulation, communal regulation, and slavery were necessary
steps in industrial progress, leading to the modern system of free labor
under contract.

The place of the craft-guilds in industrial evolution is treated most sug-
gestively. Their universal prevalence, their normal development in a
militant society as substitutes for the original family groups, their impor-
tant bearing on the evolution of the political franchise, are admirably ex-
pounded. It is shown, however, that the "free man" of the industrial
guild was free only in a qualified sense. He was subject to many restric-
tions imposed both by the guild and by the government of the countiy.
The modern trade union, while not a lineal descendant of the craft-guild, is
the product of similar social conditions, and is akin to it in nature; militant
in its structure and often tyrannical in its oppression of the individvial
worker. The fruitlessness of the attempt to benefit the worker by artificial
efforts to raise the rate of wages is clearly shown. Natural law is stronger
than artificial regulations. "Protected industries do not prosper." Yet
Mr. Spencer recognizes the fact that trade organizations are natural to the
passing stage of social evolution, and may have beneficial functions under
existing conditions. Employers are more ready to raise wages when trade
is fiourishing than they would be without the menace of combined labor.
They treat the laborer with more respect. They are led to study the con-
venience of the men, and look after their health and comfort. The disci-
pline of the organization also helps to prepare the men for the higher
social and industrial conditions which will probably arise.

VOL. L.— 54

7o6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The economic utility of the various modes of compounding capital ex-
emplified in our modern industrial life is clearly recognized by Mr. Spen-
cer. By the use of these methods stagnant capital has almost disappeared.
Liberty of combination is asserted, subject to due responsibility of the indi-
vidual shareholder. No sympathy is expressed with the prevalent indis-
criminate denunciation of corporations and trusts. Possibly Mr. Spencer
does not fully realize the extent to which such combinations may become a
menace to the liberty of the small tradesman, the purity of legislation, and
the just requirements of public service. He doubtless thinks that such
evils would be self-corrective, as in the case of the various " bubble enter-
prises " which have been fostered under capitalistic auspices. He sees the
utility of such combinations in promoting serviceable industrial enterprises,
and affirms their superiority to state action in the advancement of the
common weal.

The greatest interest of the reader will, probably center in the closing
chapters on co-operation, socialism, and the probable trend of industrial
evolution in the near future. Mr. Spencer's general attitude toward these
questions is well known; but he has never stated his convictions more
lucidly nor with equal calmness and poise of judgment. Nor has he be-
fore presented so clearly the ripe fruit of his own mature reflection as to
the ideal relation of the laborer to the product of his industry.

"Social life in its entirety is carried on by co-operation," Mr. Spencer
declares. The earliest modes of conscious industrial co-operation are
closely allied to similar united action for militant purposes. All modes of
industrial alliance which are enforced by the state must partake strongly
of the militant spirit, inhibit individual freedom, and restrain true progress
along normal lines of social evolution.

The word "co-operation" is now commonly used in a restricted sense to
distinguish a special form of social and industrial life. In those methods
of adjusting the interests of capital and labor generally known fs "profit-
sharing," Mr. Spencer sees some advantages joined with serious defects.
He regards them as unnecessarily complicated, difficult of comprehension
by employees, and therefore not likely to prove ultimately satisfactory to
them. They are based on the system of wage-labor, and this is defective
in that it does not proportion the reward of services to their quality and
amount. "So long as the worker remains a wage-earner the marks of
status do not wholly disappear. For so many hours daily he makes over
his faculties to a master. . . . He is temporarily in the position of a slave,
and his overlooker stands in the position of a slave-driver." An ideal sys-
tem will assure rewards proportionate to activities and a direct interest of
the worker in the enterprise which he is developing. Socialism, whether-
voluntary or compulsory, violates the first of these conditions, tends to un-
dermine family life, and is essentially militant in its social ideal. "People
who, in their corporative capacity, abolish the natural relation between
merits and benefits, will presently be abolished themselves."

All co-operative enterprises involving wage-service imply the defects in-
herent in the wage system, and can only pai'tially remedy its inequities. A
self-governing body of workers paid according to the piece-work system,
and sharing profits or losses in a like ratio, constitutes the ideal of future
industrial evolution. The practicability of such a system depends wholly
on character: " The best industrial institutions are possible only with the

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

707

best men." Such an ideal adjustment can not become speedily prevalent;
but a few successful efforts " might be the germs of a s|)reading organiza-
tion. Admission to them would be the goal of working-class ambition.
They would tend continually to absorb the superior, leaving outside the in-
ferior to work as wage-earners; and the first would slowly grow at the ex-
pense of the last. Obviously, too, the growth would become increasingly
rapid; since the master-and-workman type could not withstand competi-
tion with- this co-operative type, so much more productive and costing so
much less in superintendence."

For the present, Mr. Spencer sees the rhythmic principle exemplified in
all evolutionary processes carrying us inevitably toward a regime of so-
cialistic experimentation. Militantism is reviving in Europe and America.
Equality is the ideal of the modern statesman, economist, and politician,
rather than liberty. "There is small objection to coei-cion if all are equally
coerced." This process can only be arrested by a great spread of co-opera-
tive production, which is not probable. Nations may perish, civilizations
may decay, under this downward tendency. How long it will last and
what will ultimately check it we can not now foresee. The processes of
evolution will go on, however, gradually ultimating in that complete adap-
tation of human nature to the social state which is its ideal end and aim.
This end will be proximated and preceded by a federation of nations where-
by wars will be prevented and "the rebarbarization which is continually
undoing civilization " will come to an end. Peace is the essential condition
to that equilibrium between inner faculties and outer requirements, between
man and society, which will constitute the final stage of human evolution.
By a faith in eternal principles as constant and exalted as that of the reli-
gious saint, Mr. Spencer sees beyond the reversion implied in present down-
ward tendencies the vision of man finally triumphant over false theories
and the delusions of ignorance, at last completely fulfilling the demands of
his higher nature in the organization of a society which may well be
likened to the kingdom of heaven foretold by the founder of Christianity.
May we not hope that the treaty of arbitration between Great Britain and
the United States will constitute an initial step in the direction of this better
day ?

GENERAL NOTICES.

We have received a couple of attractive-
ly got up books, one on A7igling and one on
Huniivg^^ whicb are apparently the first two
of a new series, to be called the " Out-of-door
Library." The books are made up of short
papers by different writers, all of which have
appeared in Scribner's Magazine. The sto-
ries are for the most part accounts of trips
to special regions famed for some particular
game. The first chapter in Angling is a
discourse on fly fishing. The Land of the
Winanische is the account of a fishing trip
to Lake St. John and its surroundings, where,

* The Out-of-door Library. Angling, pp. 305,
$150. Hunting, pp. 3^7, $1.50. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.

it seems, the winanische or ouinaniche is
localized. Nepigon River fishing, striped
and black sea bass, and tarpon fishing in
Florida are accounts of similar excursions.
A chapter on American game fishes, and
finally one on Izaak Walton, which describes
his home and fishing grounds in Dovedale,
complete the volume on angling. Hunting
contains eight chapters. The first one, en-
titled Hunting American Big Game, is an
account of the game conditions in Wyoming
some fifteen or twenty years ago. Camping
and Hunting in the Shoshone gives a general
desciiption of the Rocky Mountain scenery in
this district, and describes exciting incidents
from a number of hunting trips which the

7o8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

author, W. S. Rainsford, has made to this re-
gion. A few pages are next given to climb-
ing for white goats. Sport in an Untouched
American Wilderness describes the region
east of the State of Maine, between the
Atlantic Ocean on the south and the Gulf
of St. Lawrence on the north. A Kangaroo
Hunt recounts several hunting excursions in
the Australian bush. The Last of the Buf-
falo is a brief historical sketch of this now
almost extinct animal, winding up with the
description of a Montana buffalo hunt of
the days when this game was still plentiful.
At St. Mary's and Hunting Musk Ox with the
Dog-Ribs complete the volume. Both books
are well illustrated, and, while not particu-
larly scientific or instructive, some of the de-
scriptions are interesting simply as stories,
and all of them will hold the attention of the
sportsman.

Prof. L. H. Bailey has made a collection
of his addresses to horticultural societies and
similar essays, all bearing upon the process
of evolution as observed in domestic plants.*
Having had the plan for such a collection in
mind for some time, he has been treating
from time to time subjects which would to-
gether make up a somewhat systematic whole.
He has grouped his papers as essays touching
the fact and philosophy of evolution, those
expounding the fact and causes of variation,
and those tracing the evolution of particular
types of plants. The last of these divisions
is the most popular and practical, and there-
fore the most interesting to the horticulturist
who is not a biologist. In one of these he
discusses the question, Whence came the cul-
tivated strawberry ? or rather. Whence came
the pine, its ancestor ? Of the three pos-
sible origins — a hybrid, a direct development
of the Chilian strawberry, or a modified form
of our big wild strawberry — his examination
leads him to decide on the second. In a
similar manner he discusses the development
of American plums, grapes, and carnations ;
of the petunia and the garden tomato. Much
interesting horticultural history is used as
evidence in these discussions. The opening
essays of the volume are addressed more
especially to the biologist. "It is only in

* The Survival of the Unlike. By L. H. Bailey.
New York : The Macuiillan Co. Pp. 515, 12mo.
Price $2.

the first two essays," he says, "that I have
ventured to state any general convictions re-
specting the bolder problems of organic evo-
lution ; but I count these of much less merit
than the statement" of many plain and sim-
ple facts of observation and experiment which
are made in the humbler essays. If the au-
thor has been fortunate enough t.o make any
contribution to positive science in these pages,
it is probably that associated with the vexed
question of bud variation, which is chiefly
presented in the third essay ; but even this
is novel only in its treatment." The first
two essays deal with the survival of the un-
like and the transmission of acquired char-
acters. Prof. Bailey holds that unlikenesses
are the greatest facts in the organic creation ;
that they survive because they are unlike, and
thereby enter fields of least competition. He
believes that acquired characters useful to
the species tend to be perpetuated, and the
more surely the longer the transforming en-
vironments are present. Intermediate in
character as in position between the former
and latter groups of essays are those dealing
with the fact and with the causes of varia-
tion. In one of these he combats the idea
that improvement in the quality of fruits is
always at the expense of some other desir-
able quality of the plant. In others he dis-
cusses the distribution of cultivated varieties
with reference to climatal and geographical
conditions, the longevity of varieties, the re-
lation of seed-bearing to cultivation, and simi-
lar topics.

Problems in Elementary Physics, by P!.
Dana Pierce, is the title of a little volume
intended to be used as an auxiliary to the
ordinary text-book or laboratory manual on
physics. It consists of a series of selected
problems for illustrating and also for testing
the student's knowledge of the general phys-
ical laws. The introductory sections review
the portions of arithmetic most needed in
physical computations. A good working
knowledge of algebra and plane geometry is
assumed. A separate chapter is given to
simple applications of the graphic method.
(Holt, 60 cents.)

A seventh and revised edition of Dr.
Newell Martinis useful handbook of physi-
ology, The Human Body, has come to hand.
A considerable amount of new matter has

5 GIENTIFIC LIT ERA TUBE.

709

been added, especially in connection with the
physiology of the cardiac and general vascu-
lar nerves and of the brain. As Dr. Martin
says, " Physiology has not finished its course,"
and while this volume contains all the more
important facts at present known about the
working of our bodies, it also makes it plain
that very much is yet to be discovered.
(Holt, $2.20.)

The first and most needed reform in
methods of instruction called for in the educa-
tional revival begun by Horace Mann was the
substitution of something better for text-
book memorizing. Objects were chosen in-
stead of words, and " things before words "
became the motto. James Johonnofs Prin-
ciples and Practice of Teaching, in the Inter-
national Education Series, of which a new
edition lies before us, was a potent factor in
bringing about the above reform. He advo-
cated the new education as based on the meth-
ods of Pestalozzi. The work of revision for
the present volume has been done by Sarah
Evans Johonnot. In a few instances the
phraseology has been modernized, and a brief
sketch of the pioneer work in manual train-
ing has been added, to show Mr. Johonnot's
influence and close connection with the ear-
liest experiments in this country. (Apple-
tons, $1.50.)

The thirty-fourth annual Report of the
Michigan State Board of Agricidture, as do
all these reports, contains a large amount of
interesting information, which is, however,
as is also usually the case, so presented as to
be rather difiicult of access. There are nine
hundred pages, and the topics range from
the " management of swamps " to " climbing
cutworms" and "five-banded bees." The
volume contains a portrait and sketch of T.
T. Lyon, Superintendent of the Michigan Ex-
periment Station.

The Transactions of the American Clima-
tological Association for 1896 have just
reached us. Among the papers of special
interest may be mentioned: Some of the Dif-
ficulties of Climato-therapy, by J. B. Walker ;
A Plea for Moderation in our Statements re-
garding the Contagiousness of Pulmonary
Consumption, by V. Y. Bowditch ; The Cli-
mate of Arizona, by M. A. Rodgers ; The
Sanitarium or Closed Treatment in Phthisis,
by E. 0. Otis ; and A Study of Highly Min-

eralized Thermal Waters in the Treatment
of Disease, by H. H. Schroeder. The object
of the association is thus stated in its con-
stitution : " The study of climatology and
hydrology, and of diseases of the respiratory
and circulatory organs."

General Principles of Zoohgy, by R. Hert-
irig (translated by George W. Field), com-
prises the first or general part of the author's
Lehrbuch der Zoologie. When the latter vol-
ume first appeared there was no intention of a
separate publication of the general part ; but
it is now thought that a l)ook simply cover-
ing the " larger generalizations of the sub-
ject" will be of service and within the reach
of many who would not purchase the larger
work. The contents are well deicribed by
the title ; it is a manual of zoology ; there
are paragraph headings in larger type, and
the general arrangement of the text is such
as to facilitate its use as a text-book, if de-
sired. (Holt, $1.60.)

The Elements of Physics, of Profs. Edward
L. Nichols and William 8. Franklin (Mac-
millan, $1.50), has been prepared with a view
to producing a text-book which shall corre-
spond with the increasing strength of the
mathematical teaching in university classes.
While some text-books assume that the stu-
dent's mathematical knowledge does not
reach to the calculus, and others presume so
much upon the mathematical training that
they are unreadable for nearly all under-
graduates, this one is intended for those who
possess an elementary knowledge of the cal-
culus. It is planned to be used in connec-
tion with illustrated lectures. It meets all
difficulties, simplifying them as much as pos-
sible, but not evading them. The first vol-
ume, on mechanics and heat, has already
been published. The present volume, the
second, concerns electricity and magnetism,
and a third volume is to follow.

The second title of Mr. William Mat-
thews's Nugce Litterarice (or Literary Trifles)
— Brief Essays on Literary, Social, and other
Themes — well describes the character of the
book. It is a collection, without special ar-
rangement, of paragraphs and short essays
on all kinds of subjects — ever bright and
pungent and consequently interesting, always
containing at least one good thought, often
witty and more frequently suggestive, and

y

710

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

good to take up at any time of the day and
to read steadily or in five to fifteen minute
intervals. Six of the papera first appeared
in the North American Review (Roberts
Brothers, $1.50).

The second volume of The Cambridge
Natural History (Macmillan, $3.50) contains
a connected and comprehensive history of
the flatworms and mesozoa, nemertines,
threadworms and sagitta, rotifers, polychaet
worms, earthworms and leeches, gephyrea
and phoronis,. and polyzoa. These various
subdivisions are dealt with by special stu-
dents and zoologists. The chapters on poly-
chaet worms, gephyrea and phoronis, and
polyzoa are particularly acceptable as bring-
ing together much information that has here-
tofore been locked up in special memoirs.
In the chapter on rotifera, Prof. Hartog pre-
pents for the first time his views on the zoo-
logical affinities of the group. He says : " I
have been induced to take a view of the
structure of the rotifers that brings it into
close relationship with the lower platyhel-
minthes and with the more primitive larva of
the nemertines termed pilidium." He there-
fore changes the orientation of the rotifer,
and places it, like the cuttlefish, mouth down-
ward. For anterior and posterior he substi-
tutes oral and apical ; for dorsal and venti-al
he uses anterior and posterior. As in the
volume on insecta, the name of the author of
the first chapter only stands conspicuously
on the cover. The volume and the whole
series, in fact, is in a way so encyclopedic in
its character that it seems as much out of
place to have an author's name on the cover
as it would be to see a single author's name
on an encyclopicdia. The volume is an indis-
pensable adjunct to the library of a natural-
ist. The beautiful illustrations, the matter,
well up to the latest researches on the sub-
ject, and the fact that specialists in each de-
partment have contributed to its material,
bringing in their own original work, make
the series unique and invaluable.

The United States Weather Bureau has
issued a folio pamphlet on Surface Currents
of the Great La/;f.s, deduced from the courses
taken by floating bottles put into the waters
of the lakes in 1892, 1893, and 1894. Of
the five thousand bottles set afloat by the
Bureau, six hundred and seventy two had

been recovered up to the preparation of this
report. The text is accompanied by a chart
of each lake, showing the courses taken by
the bottles each season, and the movements
of the waters which these courses indicate.

The Report of the Commissioner of Edu-
cation for the Year 1893-94 makes two vol-
umes of the familiar form containing over
a thousand pages each. The usual statistics
are accompanied by a large number of essays
on educational topics. The reports of the
" Committee of Fifteen " on training of teach-
ers, on correlation of studies, and on city
school systems, which have aroused wide-
spread interest, are here printed ; Rev. A. D.
Mayo contributes a history of public schools
during the colonial and revolutionary period;".
A digest of school laws in the several States
and of sanitary laws affecting schools occu-
pies about three hundred pages. Other fea-
tures are A Preliminary List of American
Learned and Educational Societies, giving
the officers, objects, and publications of each,
and Some Recent Educational Bibliographies.
There was an increase of over four hundred
thousand pupils in the public schools of the
country during the year, against an average
of less than three hundred thousand for the
preceding ten years.

A useful contribution to the current dis-
cussion of the money question is afforded in
No. 74 of the Old South Leaflets, Hamilton's
Report an the Coinage. All the important
phases of the currency problem are dis-
cussed calmly and thoroughly in this mas-
terly report of the first Secrefciry of the
Treasury, and it is highly instructive to see
how an able financier, unatfected by any of
the prejudices of the present day, looked at
matters that are now in hot dispute. The
report makes a pamphlet of thirty-two pages.
(Directors of the Old South Work, Boston,
5 cents a copy, $3 a hundred.)

Describing his book, Tite Perfect Whole
(Ellis, $1.50), in its preface, Horatio W.
Dresser says : " Thus, broadly defined, the
purpose of this book is threefold — psycho-
logical, metaphysical, and practical. As a
psychological analysis, it is especially con-
cerned with the higher or spiritual nature of
man. As a philosophical discussion, it aims
to develop a generally sound view of reality by
a consideration of materialism, agnosticism,

S CIENTIFIC LIT ERA TUBE.

711

and mysticism in the light of their shortcom-
ings when compared with the demands both
of reason and the spiritual sense. It points
out many important distinctions essential to
a just view of life, and indicates the dangers
of pantheism and of all one-sided conceptions
of the universe. In its practical aspect it
urges the same need of breadth and discrim-
ination which it finds essential to a sound
doctrine of reality. It is an urgent appeal
to life, a plea for the realization of ethics
and the application of spiritual law in every
moment of existence." Mr. Dresser is also
author of a book entitled The Power of
Silence.

The fourth volume, completing the edi-
tion of Thi Writings of Thcmas Paine,
which Moncure Daniel Conway has collected
and edited, is almost wholly devoted to
Paine's religious writings. -About half of it
is occupied by The Age of Reason, to which
we called attention when it was issued sepa-
rately. This is followed by several essays
arguing against the reality of divine inspira-
tion in the Bible, and in support of a simple

Deism and a pure morality. To appendixes
are relegated a number of shorter writings —
autobiographical, political, and technological
— including a few pieces of verse and his
will. In closing his labors on the history
and the writings of Thomas Paine, whom he
calls " the Great Commoner of mankind,"
Mr. Conway says : " Personally I place a
very high value on Paine's writings in them-
selves, and not simply for their prophetic
genius, their humane spirit, and their vigoi-
ous style. While his type of Deism is not
to me satisfactory, his religious spirit at
times attains sublime heights \ and while his
republican formulas are at times impaired
by his eagerness to adapt thera to existing
conditions, I do not find any writer at all,
not even the most modern, who has equally
worked out a scheme for harmonizing the
inevitable rule of the majority with indi-
vidual freedom and rights." As to the his-
torical value of Paine's political writings
Mr. Conway adds, " He was literally the only
man who came out with the whole truth, re-
gardless of persons." (Putnams, $2.50 a
volume.)

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletinp,
Reports, etc. Cornell University: Suggeetions for
the Planting of Shrubbery, and Second Report
upon Extension Work in Horticulture. By L. H.
Bailey. Pp. 32, each; Green Fruit Worms. By
M. V. Slingerland Pp. 20.— Hatch Station, Mas-
Sfcliusetts Agricultural College : Analyses and
New Laws on Fertilizers. Pp. 32. — New York,
Nos. 109-111: Strawberries, Milk-fat, and Cheese
Yield; and Variety Tests with Blackberries, Dew-
berries, and Raspberries. Pp. 64. — Ohio : The
Sugar Beet; Purdue University, Dietary Studies.
By W. K. Stone and others. Pp. 82 ; The Udder
of the Cow. Pp. 24.— United States Department
of Agriculture: Insects affecting the Cotton Crop.
B.y L. O. Howard. Pp. .^6 ; Proceedings of the
Eighth Annual Meeting of the Association of Eco-
nomic Entomologists. Pp. 100.— United States
National Museum: Index to Proceedings. Vol.
XVII. 1895. Pp. 50.

Anderson, Robert E. The Story of Extinct
Civilizations of the East. New York: D. Apple-
ton & Co. Pp. 213. 40 cents.

Bailey, Prof. L. H. Instructions for taking
Phrenological Observations. Pp. 4.

Barnes, Charles Reid. Analytic Keys to the
Genera and Species of North American Mosses.
(Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin.) Pp.

100. $1.

Brard, H. C. G., and Day, W. C. German Sci-
entific Reading, with Notes and Vocabulary. New
York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp. 209.

Brown, Frederick J. The Northward Move-
ment of the Colored Population. Baltimore :
Cashing & Co. Pp. 50. 25 cents.

Bulletins, Catalogues, Proceedings, etc. Amer-
ican Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Novem-
ler, 1890. Pp. 1(10, with plates.— Department of
Labor, January, 1&97, AVashiDgton. Pp. 107.— Fort

Wayne College of Medicine, Indiana, 1886-97. Pp.
31.— JewLsh Training School of Chicago, I89.'i-'y6.
Pp. 53.— Michigan Mining School, Houghton, 1894-
'96. Pp. 2S4. — New Hampshire College of Agricul-
ture and the Mechanic Arts, Durham, pp. 82, and
Announcement of the Third Annual Dairy School.
Pp. 4-University of the State of New York, Thir-
ty-fourth Convocation. Pp. 270.— University of
Pennsylvania, Towne Scientific School. Pp. 94.—
University of Rochpster, 1896-'97. Pp 112.— Bos-
ton Society of Natural History : Memorial of
Thomas Tracy Bouve. Pp, 24.

Campbell, Helen. Household Economics. New
York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sous. Pp.
286.

Dabney, Charles W., Jr. A National Depart-
ment of Science. Pp. 13.

Goode, G. Brown. BiblioCTaphy of the Pub-
lished Writings of Philip Sutiey Sclater. United
States Natioual Museum. Pp. 134.

Gould, George M., and Pyle, Walter L.
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. Phila-
delphia : W. B. Saunders. ^Subscription.) Pp.
9G8. $6.

Imperial University, Japan. Journal of the
College of Science. Pp. 118, with plates.

Iowa, The, Ornithologist. Quarterly. Octo-
ber. 1890. Salem, la.: Iowa Ornithological Asso-
ciation. Pp. 12. 40 cents a year.

Macleod, Henry Dunning. The History of
Economics. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
London: Bliss, Sands & Co. Pp.600.

Matthews, Charles P., and Shearer, John.
Problems and Questions in Physics. New YorK
and London: Macmillan. Pp.217. $1.60.

Morrison, W. Douglas. Juvenile Offenders.
New York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 317. $1.50.

712

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Newman, K. El Kambio del Kompozition ke
experimenta el agua de " El Salto " durante el
Imbierno (The Change of Composition which is
Undergone by the Water of "El Salto" during
the Winter). Santiago de Chile. Pp.14. LaUni-
flkazion de las Medidas (Unification of Measures).
Valparaiso : Karlos Badezon. Pp. 61.

Penn, William. Plan for the Peace of Europe.
(Old South Leaflets.) Boston. Pp. 20.

Reports. Harvard College Astronomical Ob-
servatory: Fifty-first Annual Report of the Di-
rector, E. C. Pickering, for 1896. Pp. 13 ; Mis-
cellaneous Papers (List of Titles), 1888-'fl5. Pp.
15 ; Observations made at the Blue Hill Meteoro-
logical Observatory in 189.5. By A. Lawrence
Rotch. Pp. 80 ; Discussion of Cloud Observa-
tions at Blue Hill. By H. Helm Clayton. Pp.
230, with sev.^nteen plates — Observations of the
New England Weather Service in 1895. By J.
Warren Smith. Pp. 36. — Coast and Geodetic Sur-
vey, United States, i vols. Pp. 166 and 615, with
charts. — Commissioner of Education, United
States. Pp. 1164 —Commissioner of Fish and
fisheries. United States, 1893. Pp. 484; 1894.
Pp. 718.— National Museum, United States. 1894.
Pp. IOjjO.— (Geological Survey of Alabama (Report
on the Valley Regions, Paleozoic Strata). By
Henry McCalley, Assistant Geologist.— Board of
Education, City of Uuluth. Pp. 98, with plates. —
Peabody Museum of American Archajology and
Ethnology, 1895-'C6. Pp. 111.— S. P. Langley,
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896.
Pp. 77.— Interstate Commerce Commission (In-
come of RaUways, 189C), preliminary.

Reprints. Dolbear, Prof. A. E. : Mechanical
Conceptions of Electrical Phenomena (Journal
Franklin Institute). Pp. 28.— Evermann, Barton
W. : Description of a New Species of Shad. Pp.
8 ; Do. and Smith, H. M. : The Whitefisbes of
North America. Pp. 40, with plates ; Do. and
Kendall, W. C. : Annotated List of Fishes known
from the State of Vermont. Pp. 21; Do. and Cox,

A. O. : Fishes of the Missouri River Basin. Pp.
104 ; all from Report of Fish Commission.— Fitz,
G. W. : A Study ot Respiratory Movements. Pp.
16, with plates.— Jordan, D. S., and Evermann,

B. W. : A Check List of Fishes and Fishlike Ver-
tebrates of North and Middle America. United

States Fish Commission. Pp. 364. Luquer, L.
McL., and Reiss, Heinrich: The " Augen " Gneiss
Area, Pegmatite Veins, and Diorite Dikes at Bed-
ford, N. Y. Pp. 22, with plates —MacMillan,
Conway: On the Formation of Circular Muslieag in
Tamarack Swamps. Pp. 8, with plates.— Meams,
Edgar A.: Ornithological Vocabulary of theMoki
Indians. Pp. 12, with plate. — New Mammals from
the Mexican Boundary Line. Pp. 4.— Ries, Hein-
rich : The Pottery Industry of the United States.
— Robertson, Charles : Flowers and Insects. Two
papers. Pp. 12 and 30.— Russell, Israel C. Two
Essays on Igneous Intrusions. Pp. 50. — Scudder,
Samuel H.: List of Exotic Orthoptera. Pp. 16. —
Ward, Lester F : Social Genesis. Pp. 15. — W^ood,
Casey A. : The Wearing of Veils, and its Effects
on the Eyesight. Pp. I.

Sandemann, George. Problems of Biology.
New York: The Macmillan Company. London:
Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., limited. Pp. 213. $2.

Silberstein, Solomon J. The Disclosures of
the Universal Mysteries. New York : Philip
Cowen, 213, 215 East Forty-fourth Street. Pj).

298. $2.

Stisted, Georgiana M. The True Life of Cap-
tain Sir Richartl F. Burton. New York: D. Ap-
pleton&Co. London: H.S.Nichols. Pp.419. $2.

United States National Museum Reprints.
Ashmead, William N.: Descriptions of New Cy-
nopidous Galls and Gall Nuts. Pp. 24. — Bean,
Tarleton H., and Barton, A. : Fishes collected at
Bering and Copper Islands. Pp. 14 ; Do. in
Kamcnatka and Japan, etc. Pp. 12, with plate.
— Dall, W. H. : Mollusks collected by the Mexican
Boundary Commission, l892-'94. Pp. 42, with
plate.— Giippy, R. J. L., and Dall, W. H. : De-
scriptions of Tertiary Fossils from the Antillean
Region. Pp. 24, with plate. — Stanton, Timothy
W. : On the Genus Remondia, Gabb (Cretaceous
Bivalve Mollusks). Pp. 4, with plate. —Stiles,
Ch. W.: A Revision of the Adult Tapeworms of
Hares and Rabbits. Pp. 84.— Uhler, Philip R. :
Summary of the Hemiptera of Japan. Pp. 42. —
Wilson, Thomas : The Swastica, the Earliest
Known Symbol, and itsMigrations, with Observa-
tions on the Migrations of Certain Industries in
Historic Times. Pp. 2.^6.

ragmcixts at ^titxitt.

The Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory.

— The Davy-Faraday Research Laboratory,
established and equipped by Dr. Ludwig
Mond, and presented by him to the British
nation, was opened by the Prince of Wales,
December 22d. From a review of the history
of the idea of founding the institution, given
by Dr. Mond in his presentation address, we
learn that a movement was set on foot fifty
years ago, under the auspices of Prince
Albert, to establish an institute for the pur-
suit of pure chemistry, where practical and
systematic instruction could be given to
students, and a place provided where origi-
nal research could be conducted by fully
qualified investigators. At first it was pro-
posed to attach this institute to the Royal

Institution ; but this plan had to be aban-
doned, on account of the inadequacy of the
Royal Institution to provide accommodations
for the scheme. The teaching part of the
plan was, however, provided for a few years
afterward by the foundation of the Royal Col-
lege of Chemistry, which under the direction
of Hofmann soon became one of the most
successful institutions of that science in the
world, while the provision of a place for
original research still had to wait. Even be-
fore he knew of these facts. Dr. Mond had
determined to found in London a laboratory
of research in purely scientific chemistry and
in physical chemistry — whence the greatest
results in the knowledge of the real nature
of things might be expected — and had be-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

713

come convinced that such a laboratory would
derive the greatest advantage if it could be
associated with the Royal Institution. He
had therefore improved an opportunity that
offered to procure a suitable property im-
mediately adjoining the Royal Institution
and prepare it, in cooperation with suitable
advisers, for its special work. As it stood,
he believed that it would compare favorably
with any other laboratory in or out of Eng-
land, in the completeness of its appliances,
and was unique of its kind, being the only
public laboratory in the world solely devoted
to research in pure science. The laboratory
contains : On the basement, rooms for thermo-
chemical, for pyrochemical research, and for
electrical work, a battery of twenty-six ac-
cumulators, constant temperature vaults,
and boiler rooms and storerooms ; on the
ground floor, rooms for research in organic
and in inorganic chemistry, a fireproof room
for experiments in sealed tubes, a balance
room, and entrance hall and cloak room ; on
the first floor, the honorary secretary's room,
a large double library connected with the
library of the Royal Institution; on the
second floor, a museum of apparatus ; on the
third floor, seven rooms for research in
physical chemistry ; on the fourth floor,
rooms for organic and for inorganic prepa-
rations, a photographic room, and four
rooms for research in physical chemistry;
and on the roof an asphalted flat, with table,
gas, and water. All the floors are connected
by a hydraulic passenger lift. Dr. Mond has
further furnished the laboratory with an
endowment of £100,000, or $500,000— £38,-
000 sunk in the building and its equipment,
and £62,000 for the endowment proper ; and
he has intrusted it to the Royal Institution,
so as to insure its being open to men and
women of all schools and of all views on
scientific questions. Lord Rayleigh and Prof.
Dewar have been appointed the present
directors. The qualification for admittance
to the privileges of the laboratory is to have
already done original scientific work, or to be
judged by the Laboratory Committee quali-
fied to undertake original scientific research
in pure or physical chemistry ; but no per-
son shall be excluded on account of na-
tionality or sex. Admission to all the privi-
leges is free, with responsibility for damage
done.

Characteristics of Reformatory Prison-
ers.— The Twentieth Yearbook of the New
York State Reformatory supplements the
usual items of the formal report with some
observations on the anthropometric charac-
teristics of the inmates of the institution,
which, while they are far from exhaustive,
may cast considerable light upon the condi-
tion of the persons who find their way to
such places. Exercise in the gymnasium
was prescribed to the men of more marked
physical defects, and general muscular in-
crement in volume and power resulted from
it. Comparing the five hundred and twenty-
nine men of the reformatory with Amherst
College students of nearly corresponding age,
the reformatory man appears to be below the
Amherst student's average ten pounds in
weight, three inches and three tenths in
height, fifty-six cubic inches in lung capaci-
ty, thirty pounds in strength of chest, thirty-
two pounds in strength of back, and two dips
in strength of arms, but reaches him in
strength of legs. He is within one pound in
weight and falls short an inch and seven
tenths of the Wellesley College girl in height,
and is only a little stronger than she in lung
capacity and strength of chest, while he is
superior in strength of back and legs. A
large percentage of the heads are marked
and scarred, as the result of street brawls
and conflicts with the police, although the
men's first explanation generally is a fall.
Defects in the eyes are pretended in a
large proportion of cases, but many of
them are real. If near-sightedness, etc., are
so much the result of civilization, school
pressure, and close study as many physi-
cians suppose, the class of men found in
this institution should be practically ex-
empt from it. "But the opposite are the
exact conditions found." The physical
make-up of the adolescent criminal appears
to be reflected " as well in his visual organs
as in other portions of his body, and the
predisposition to eye trouble is inaugurated
at both. The environment, personal habits,
and mode of living only serve to act as ex-
citing causes upon an already predisposed
organism." Many of the prisoners in the
reformatory are possessed of a defective in-
hibitory power or control, rendering it diffi-
cult and distasteful for them to apply them-
selves continuously to any one trade or

714

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

calling. As boys, they are truants or shirks ;
and later on they constitute the class of men
never able to retain a situation for any length
of time. Others become thieves, to be able
to indulge their propensities for dissipation.
Within the last few years there has been a
marked increase in the number of those com-
mitted whose nervous and mental condition
is unsatisfactory.

The Grass Garden of the Department
of Agricnltnre. — In the grass garden of the
United States Department of Agriculture
double beds, or plats, are arranged on each
side of the greater length for the growth of
native plants to be allowed to come into
flower. Inside of these bands is a narrow
range of plats in which are grown various
fodder plants — clovers, vetches, lupines, etc.
— which do not belong to the grass family.
Extending lengthwise through the center is
a series of larger beds in which are culti-
vated those grasses that are known or sup-
posed to be good formers of turf. An op-
portunity is afforded by such an arrangement
for the comparison of one kind of grass or
forage plant with another, and for noting
their relative merits for special purposes.
In it may be grown, too, for the use and in-
formation of the botanist, the grasses of all
countries, arranged according to their natural
tribes and subdivisions. Opportunities for
study and experiment may thus be given the
botanist and the economist such as can be
got in no other way. Native plants should
always have a prominent position here, in
order that we may become familiar with
them, and because they may exhibit under
cultivation qualities of usefulness which can
not be detected in them in their native sta-
tions. Mr. F. Lawson Scribner, Agrostolo-
gist of the United States Department of
Agriculture, says, in the Yearbook of that
department, that " we have better grasses
and a greater variety of them native to our
soil than we can ever get from Europe, and
it will not be necessary to grow them ten or
twenty years or more in order that they may
be acclimated. . . . There are sixty native
species of clovers found in the United States ;
there are more than sixty kinds of blue
grass — distinct botanical species ; there are
twenty or more good grazing grasses related
to the buffalo grass ; there are fourscore or

more of native lupines and twoscore vetches
which have yet to be tried in our agricul-
ture ; and then there are broom grasses, and
meadow grasses, and pasture grasses, and
hay grasses, almost numberless, suitable to
every kind of soil and rock formation and
climate. And of all this wealth of kinds,
the natural heritage of our country, hardly
more than a dozen have been brought into
cultivation."

Oral Schools for the Deaf and Damb. —

The first oral schools for the deaf and dumb
were established in 1867, when the sign sys-
tem of instruction had been in full sway for
fifty years, and they had to dispute for prog-
ress with a method which seemed firmly es-
tablished. In 1868, 38 out of the 304 deaf
pupils in the New England States, or a little
more than 12 per cent of the whole number,
Avere taught in oral schools. The Horace Mann
School was established in Boston the next
year, and since then the percentage has
steadily increased till, toward the end of
1893, 351 out of a total of 524 pupils, or
67 per cent, were found exclusively in oral
schools. Outside of the New England States,
besides the special schools in which it is
exclusively used, the oral method has been
admitted into many of the other schools, and
both systems are taught in them — a fact
which is expressed by the words " combined
system." Statistics of the use of the oral
method in the whole United States show
very clearly that the oral method is extend-
ing with great rapinity. Prof. A. Graham
Bell, in the address from which we quote
these facts, adduces as an argument for the
excellence of the oral system that the little
schools in which it is taught, springing up
by private enterprise, are able to compete
successfully with the State sign schools un-
til the latter introduce the oral system and
become "combined" schools, while the little
schools still live. In Germany the oral
method has encroached upon the sign meth-
od till that has given way to a combined
system. At the International Convention of
Teachers of the Deaf, held in Milan in 1880,
all the delegates from continental Europe
voted for the preference of the pure oral
method, while all the votes cast against the
resolution were those of an Englishman and
three Americans. This decision has been

FRAGMENTS OF SCIFNCE.

715

accepted as final by all subsequent conven-
tions. In 1881-'82, 81 per cent of the 280
schools for the deaf on the Continent of Eu-
rope were pure oral schools, 4 per cent were
sign schools, and 15 per cent pursued a
combined system. Prof. Bell traces the ori-
gin of his invention of the telephone to his
observation of the ability of the pupils in the
Horace Mann School to understand what was
said to them by reading the movements of
the lips. He was finally convinced of the
fact, and was led to study the subject ; then
to devise machines and contrivances to help
the children, the ultimate outcome of which
was the telephone.

" Geological Myths." — As " geological
myths," Prof. B. K. Emerson, in his chair-
man's address before the Geological Section
of the American Association, characterized
" the Chimjera, or the poetry of Petroleum ;
the Niobe, or the tragic side of calcareous
tufa ; Lot's wife, or the indirect religious
effects of cliff erosion ; and Noah's flood, or
the possibilities of the cyclone and the
earthquake wave working in harmony." Re-
garding a myth as meaning " a history,
treasured and hallowed in the literary and
religious archives of an ancient folk, of
some startling or impressive event that, in
the stimulating environment of poetry and
personification, has completed a long evolu-
tion which disguises entirely its original,"
the author sought the origin of these stories
in traits of the natural features with which
they were associated. The Chimera was de-
scribed by the Greek poets as a monster
having the tail of a dragon, the body of a
goat, and the head of a lion, or the three
heads of lion, goat, and serpent, vomiting
fire and ravaging the mountains of Lycia.
By comparing the references in various
authors with the observations of Admiral
Beaufort at the end of the last century,
the examination of the spot by Spratt and
Forbes in 1842, and the accounts of other
modern travelers, the origin of the fable is
traced to a mountain called the Yanardagh,
formerly Chimera (both names meaning
burning mountain), from a crevice of which
issues a stream of burning gas. The Greek
word xoM^^P" means goat. Hence the origin
of the basis of the myth, the goat's body, to
which, it really vomiting flames, imagination

added the heads and the tail. Niobe, who
wept herself into a stone over the death of
her twelve children slain and petrified, is,
as the American scholar Van Lennep has
shown, a prehistoric statue of a woman, cut
in the rock of Mount Sipylus, in Lydia, over
which the water trickles from the rocks
above. Below the figure lie in the talus
rocks fallen from the cliffs, out of which
imagination may construct the children
turned to stone. The name Niobe is asso-
ciated in sound with Greek words signifying
the pouring of water and the falling of snow.
Lot's wife is representative of a common
phenomenon of the salt ridge of Kushum
Usdum, or Sodom, on the Dead Sea, where
one pillar is formed out of the mass as its
predecessor is eaten away. The story of the
Flood may well stand as a graphic descrip-
tion of the combined action of a cyclone and
an earthquake with tidal wave, affecting the
region of the Persian Gulf.

The Circulation in Plants. — The discus-
sion in the Botanical Section of the British
Association on the circulation of water in
plants was participated in by Francis Dar-
win, Prof. Marshall Ward, Prof. Fitzgerald,
and Dr. Joly, of Dublin. Mr. Darwin con-
sidered the path of the ascending current in
trees and the force that produces the ascent
of the water. Attention was called to the
necessity of a complete study of the minute
structure of wood in relation to the modern
theories. Prof. Vines referred to an ac-
count he had published of a number of
experiments on the suction force of branches.
He had been under the impression that the
results obtained were independent of the
action of atmospheric pressure — that they
were solely indications of tensile stress ex-
erted by the transpiring branch upon the
water in the apparatus ; but now he had
reason to believe that they were, as a mat-
ter of fact, affected by the atmospheric
pressure. Hence these results are not differ-
ent in kind from those of other observers,
but are compatible with them. The obser-
vations brought out the two important facts
that a high suction force can be developed
by branches which have been deprived of
their leaves, and that this suction force is
not dependent on the life of the branch.
Prof. Vines then proceeded to give an ac-

7i6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

count of subsequent observations made with
dead hazel branches (pea sticks), which had
been found to develop considerable suction
force, amounting in one case to nineteen
inches and a half of mercury with a stick
eighteen inches long. He concluded by ex-
pressing the opinion that in recent attempts
to explain the mechanism of the transpira-
tion current, the part played by the " imbi-
bition " of the cell walls had been underesti-
mated, and urged that what is especially
requisite for a further advance is a more
complete investigation of the properties of a
dead stick.

Chinese Cheap Money. — The Chinese, as
all the world may know, have cheap money,
their standard of value being a copper coin
about the size of a quarter of a dollar, with a
square hole in the middle by which it may be
strung, which is commonly called cash — in
Chinese, tsien. They are strung by hundreds,
with a knot to mark each hundred, and when
large sums are to be used, strings enough to
make out the amount are hung upon the
shoulders of the carrier. Mr. Carles, a trav-
eler in Korea, relates that he had to hire a
special pony on one of his excursions to carry
his cash, and that at one time he met two
ponies carrying twenty-four thousand cash,
or thirty dollars, to pay the workmen at a
certain mine. The Chinese money-tellers be-
come very expert in counting these cash and
detecting false ones, for even these copper
pieces, representing as little value as money
can be made to do, are falsified. Emblems
manufactured out of iron or of sand and
gluten are often put upon the strings in place
of the real bronze coin ; in fact, a certain
number of these spurious pieces are nearly
always found. They are detected and sepa-
rated from the genuine by boiling the pile or
string. The sand and gluten cash are dis-
solved, and the iron are exposed. The ac-
countant weighs what is left ; or, if the sum
represents millions, he boils a few thousand
and makes an average from the result which
he applies to the whole.

The Smoke Nuisance.— A recent English
inquiry into the smoke nuisance and the pos-
sibility of its abatement is noticed in Indus-
tries and Iron. The commission's report
contains much interesting information, and

sums up as follows : In presenting their re-
port the committee express their conviction
that in the great majority of cases the black
smoke thrown into the air during the com-
bustion of coal is preventable, either by hand
or mechanical firing, and without great cost
to the consumer. Often the prevention of
smoke is accompanied with saving of ex-
pense, in that an increase of heat is devel-
oped by a more perfect combustion of the
fuel ; and where live fire bars are adopted —
that is, where the bars have an automatic
reciprocating motion — an inferior and
cheaper quality of coal can be used, and
thus a further saving of expense effected.
The consumption of fuel was found to be
lower in boilers fired by machine than in
those fired by hand. In short, they say a
manufacturing district may be free from
manufacturing smoke — at least from the
steam boilers, with which alone the commit-
tee have concerned themselves — and they
give ample information as to the means by
which it may be so freed. As the discharge
of black smoke from factory chimneys was
made a criminal offense in England by the
Public Health Act of 1875, all that is neces-
sary now to abate the nuisance is a call by
public opinion for the application of the law.

The Earliest Animal Life. — The president
of the Geological Section of the British Asso-
ciation, J. E. Marr, opened his presidential
address, on stratigraphical geology, with a
reference to the points in geological history
of which we are ignorant. Specially promi-
nent among these is that of the animal life
of the earth during the vast length of time
previous to the Cambrian period. The ex-
traordinary complexity of the earliest known
Cambrian fauna has long been a matter of
surprise, and the recent discoveries in con-
nection with the Ofcnelltis fauna do not di-
minish the feeling. We may look forward
with confidence to the discovery of many
faunas older than those of which we now
possess certain knowledge, but until these
are discovered the paleontological record
must be acknowledged to be in a remarkably
incomplete condition. Valuable work has re-
cently been done in proving the existence of
important groups of stratified rocks depos-
ited previously to the beds containing the
earliest known Cambrian fossils. With our

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

717

present views, however, we can hardly sup-
pose that organisms acquired hard parts at
a very early period of their existence, and
fauna after fauna may have occupied the
globe and disappeared, leaving no trace of
their having lived. In such case we are not
likely ever to obtain from fossils definite
knowledge of the character of the earliest
faunas ; and the biologist must not look to
the geologist for direct information concern-
ing the dawn of life upon the earth. The
importance of detailed work may be inferred
from a consideration of the great increase of
our knowledge of the Permo- Carboniferous
faunas as the result of recent labors in re-
mote regions. It is specially desirable that
the ancient faunas and floras of tropical
regions should be more fully made known,
as a study of these will probably throw con-
siderable light upon the influence of climate
on the geographical distribution of organisms
in past times.

A Lobster's Motions.— The adult lobster,
as appears from Dr. F. H. Herrick's study in
the Bulletin of the United States Fish Com-
mission, lives and feeds exclusively upon the
sea bottom, which it never leaves of its own
accord in any considerable degree. In trav-
eling over the bottom in search of its prey,
the lobster walks nimbly upon the tips of its
slender legs. The large claws are extended
in front of the head, a position which offers
the least resistance to the water, while the
two hinder pairs of walking legs, which end
in hard, spurlike joints, serve as picks to
steady the movements of the animal. In
thus getting about, it has the constant aid of
the delicate swimmerets, attached vertically
to the under surface of the " tail," each of
which consists of a short stalk and two very
flexible blades. By the movements of the
swimmerets the lobster is impelled slowly
forward without the aid of the walking legs.
The branches of the swimming feet are
garnished with long, chitinous seke or hairs,
to which the eggs of the female are attached.
When taken out of the water the lobster
can only crawl in its vain attempts to walk,
owing to the heavy body and claws, which
the slender walking legs are unable to sus-
tain. In exploring its feeding grounds, where
an enemy is likely to be encountered, the
legs which carrv the long claws ai'e extended

forward in front of the head or carried some-
what obliquely, their tips resting on the
bottom, and the long, sensitive " feelers "
are waved constantly back and forth to give
warning of any foe or other objects which
the eye may fail to detect. These are ex-
clusively organs of touch. If the anticipated
enemy makes his appearance, or if the ani-
mal is surprised, as when it is suddenly
touched with the blade of an oar or cor-
nered, it will immediately strike an attitude
of defense. It now raises itself on the tips
of its walking legs, lifts its powerful claws
over the head after the manner of a boxer,
and strikes with one of its claws at the
offending object, trying to crush it or tear
it to pieces. By far the most powerful or-
gan of locomotion in the lobster is the tail,
by the flexion of which it can scull itself
through the water with astonishing rapidity.
The lobster, though less active and keen-
witted than the higher crabs, can not be
regarded as a sluggish animal in any sense.
In the water its movements are graceful ; it
is wary, resourceful, pugnacious, capable of
defending itself against enemies which are
often larger than itself, and, if the occasion
requires it, of running about with the great-
est agility and speed. When a lobster is
surprised it seems to disappear with a single
leap or bound, as a locust or grasshopper
might do. It never, however, rises more
than a few inches or at least a few feet
above the bottom, and it is evident that
swimming at the surface would be impos-
sible, on account of the great weight of the
body.

Jack Rabbits. — The jack rabbits, which
occur almost everywhere in the Great Plains
and desert regions of the United States, are
so called — also "jackass hares " and "jacks,"
" narrow-gauge mules," and " small mules "
— from the resemblance of their large ears
to those of the jackass. They may be seen
abroad. Dr. T. S. Palmer says in his account
of them, at almost any hour of the day.
Living as they do on the open plain, where
they are compelled to rely for safety on
quickness of hearing and on speed, their
ears and hind legs are developed to an ex-
traordinary degree. This gives them a some-
what grotesque appearance, but in reality
few animals are more graceful than they as

718

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

they bound along when once thoroughly
alarmed. A closer acquaintance with their
habits will reveal many points of interest,
and will arouse admiration for the way in
which they seem to overcome every adverse
condition of life. Unlike the cotton-tails or
the common rabbit of Europe, these hares
do not live in burrow?, but make " forms "
under bushes or in patches of weeds, where
they find protection from the weather and
bring foi'th their young. Where there are
no bushes they seek the protection of any
object that can shield them from the sun —
even the shadows of the telegraph poles
along the railroads. Extremes of climate
do not appear to affect them. They feed on
the bark and leaves of shrubs and on herb-
age. They live on the grasses of the plains,
the bark of willows, greasewood, cactus,
shrubs which other animals seldom touch.
Sometimes it is hard to see where they can
get food enough ; but lack of water and of
green herbage serves only to reduce their
numbers, and rarely causes their complete
absence from any region. Among the
greasewood on the alkali flat northwest of
Great Salt Lake and on the cactus- covered
deserts of Arizona the jack rabbits are al-
most as fat and sleek as when feeding in
the alfalfa patches and vineyards of south-
ern California. If necessary, they can travel
long distances for food ; but, as they seldom
drink, scarcity of water causes them little
inconvenience, and the juicy cactus pads
or ordinary desert heibage furnish all the
moisture necessary to slake their thirst.
They are very destructive to gardens and
orchards, and, as they multiply rapidly, they
often become great pests, and would be in
danger of overrunning the country if not
kept down. Where new land is cultivated
or irrigated they seem to swarm in from the
surrounding country, and flourish where
civilized conditions prevail. The damage
done by them in Tulare County, California,
in a single year has been estimated at six
hundred thousand dollars, and a single coun-
ty in Idaho has spent more than thirty
thousand dollars in bounties on them. For-
tunately, they can be used for coursing, for
their skins, and for food. As they outrun
all but the swiftest hounds, coursing for
them is rare sport. The consumption of
them for food amounts to about six hundred

thousand a year, and is gradually increasing.
Under the energetic measures that have been
taken against them their numbers are gradu-
ally diminishing.

AYomen in Business. — A London trades
paper has extracted from an official report
on bankruptcy the fact that comparatively
few failures occur among women engaged in
business. This, says the Spectator, remark-
ing upon the subject, we would expect to be
told ; " and in this case, at any rate, the sta-
tistics correspond with the general impres-
sion of the world, that women in business
are more careful than men — less liable to
run into excess and to ruin themselves by too
adventurous a spirit." Another fact paral-
lel with this, but which has not found its way
into the statistical reports, may be accepted
as generally if not universally true, that
women in business do not accumulate large
fortunes. It follows, from the same reason,
that enterprises that bring great returns also
almost necessarily involve great risks ; and
avoidance of the risk carries with it avoid-
ance of the accompanying chance of making
a fortune. " To put the matter in a nutshell,
a woman conducts her business on the car-
dinal principle of making as few losses as
possible ; a rain, on the cardinal principle of
making as many profits as possible."

W. F. Aiusworth. — W. F. Ainsworth, who
died in London, November 2'7th, in his nine-
tieth year, was a veteran in science, the
recollection of whom may have passed from
the minds of most of the present generation.
He took a surgeon's degree at Edinburgh in
1827, and, having gone to the School of
Mines in Paris, made a vacation walking tour
in the Pyrenees and volcanic districts of
Auvergne. He afterward started and con-
ducted the Edinburgh Journal of Natural
and Geographical Science ; walked to Lon-
don in a geological study of the country,
and became a member of the Royal Geo-
graphical Society. In 1831 he made a study
of the cholera, was appointed surgeon to a
cholera hospital in London, and was sent,
when the disease broke out in Ireland, to the
affected towns and districts. Results of these
experiences and attendant adventures were
many papers published on cholera, and a
monograph, in 1834, on the Caves of Bally-

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

719

bunnion, wbich is described as "a remark-
able production in respect of its date and
the subsequent development of geology."
In 1833 he was appointed surgeon and ge-
ologist to the Euphrates Expedition under
Chesney ; and, after returning from this was
placed in charge of another expedition, sent
out by the Royal Geographical and the Prop-
agation of Christian Knowledge Societies, to
the Christians in Chaldea. Two books made
known the scientific and other observations
he made in these expeditions, to be followed,
in 1844, by a geographical and descriptive
account of the expedition of Cyrus and the

retreat of the Ten Thousand with which
Xenophon made the world acquainted. He
returned to England in 1841 ; conducted the
SyroEgyptian Society; labored for the adop-
tion of the route to India via the Euphrates
and Tigris Valleys ; was founder and honorary
treasurer of the West London Hospital ; and
published new geographical books. A bibli-
ography of his contributions to knowledge,
the AthentEum says, " would itself fill a
volume." He was a corresponding member
of the Geographical Society of Paris, the
German Oriental Society, and the Moldavian
Natural History Society.

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

General Francis A. Walker, President
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy, died very suddenly of apoplexy, January
5th. He was a man of great versatility, filled
many important public positions, and con-
tributed much to knowledge through the re-
sults of his economical studies. He was born
in 1840 ; was graduated from Amherst Col-
lege in 1860 ; adopted the profession of law ;
went into the war and rose to be a brigadier-
general ; after the war began to teach ; did
editorial work on the Springfield Republican ;
was appointed chief of the National Bureau
of Statistics in 1869. As superintendent of
the ninth and tenth censuses he made great
improvements in methods. From 18T3 to
1881 he was Professor of Political Economy
and History in the Sheffield Scientific School,
while he also lectured at Johns Hopkins and
Harvard Universities. In 1881 he became
President of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He was also chief of the Bu-
reau of Awards at the Centennial Exhibition ;
a United States Commissioner to the Inter-
national Monetary Conference at Paris in
1878 ; President of the American Statistical
Association in 1882 ; and President of the
American Economic Association in 1886.
He was author of a large number of books
and papers, chiefly on economical subjects,
which are much consulted.

The Tsimpshian Indians, living around
Port Simpson, British Columbia, were de-
scribed by Prof. B. Adler in the British
Association as being the most intelligent,
progressive, and best-built natives he had

seen in any country. Of the various customs
of these and the other tribes of the region,
the author described the potlatch as a solemn
ceremony whereby on a chieftain's death his
successor, who curiously is the late chief's
eldest sister's eldest son, is invested with the
chieftaincy in the presence of the whole tribe,
taking the late chief's flute as a sacred sym-
bol of office. The Indians were represented
as having a marvelous adaptability to song,
eloquent speaking, and building. The Tsimp-
shians were the most wonderful linguists the
author had ever met, and their facility for
acquiring other languages than their own
was almost an instinct. Their own language
is very complete, well inflected, and aided
by auxiliaries.

The Royal Society medals for 1896 were
distributed as follows : The Copley medal to
Carl Gegenbauer, Professor of Anatomy in
Heidelberg, in recognition of his pi-e-emi-
nence in the science of comparative anatomy
or animal morphology; the Royal medals,
one to Sir Archibald Geikie as the most dis-
tinguished British geologist, the other to
Prof. C. V. Boys, who has given to phys-
ical research a method of measuring minute
forces far exceeding in exactness any hith-
erto used ; the Rumford medal to Prof.
Philipp Leonard and Prof. W. C. Rontgen ;
the Davy medal to Prof. Henri Moissan ; and
the Darwin medal to Prof. Giovanni Battista
Grassi.

The first indications of gold in Nova
Scotia were observed, according to Sir James
Grant's paper in the British Association, in

720

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I860, and new discoveries were made in 1862,
giving additional stimulus to the industry.
In 1865, by the utilization of appliances for
removing gold from low grades of ore, the
mines became extremely lucrative. The aver-
age yield per ton for thirty-three years was
thirteen dollars, and it was estimated in
1895 that Nova Scotia had produced gold to
the value of $11,500,000. In the province
of Quebec, gold was fiist discovered in 1847.
Prof. Hardman made an examination in that
province in 1895, when, after running a tun-
nel six hundred feet long, he struck the bed
of an old river, and in three weeks removed
enough gold to pay the entire expense of his
operations. There was, consequently, fever-
ish excitement in the province.

NOTES.

Mr. W. Baxter, Jr., writing in Cassier's
Magazine, gives the total amount of capital
invested in electric lighting in the United
States as $500,(100,000, and the number of
plants, public and private, as more than 10,-
000. About 500,000 motors are in use, and
they are valued at $100,000,000. The elec-
trical apparatus used in mining is estimated
to be worth $100,000,000. The value of the
electric elevator industry is supposed to be
about $15,000,000. The electric railways
are believed to represent a capital of more
than $700,000,000, and the aggregate of
capital invested in electric railways and light-
ing, exclusive of the value of the establish-
ments that manufacture the machinery and
apparatus, is about $1,500,000,000.

A NEW railway between the Russian Asi-
atic towns of Nertchinsk and Vladivostock,
crossing Manchuria to imite the two branches
of the Trans-Siberian Railway, is to be con-
structed with French capital and by French
engineers, under the control and with the
guarantee of the Russian Government — to
be, nevertheless, a Chinese line, administered
by Chinese.

A Swiss society of popular traditions has
been formed at Zurich for the collection of
anthropological and ethnological notes rela-
tive to the several cantons, documents on
the manners, dwellings, costumes, festivals,
working tools, musical instruments, industrial
arts, family celebrations, religious solemni-
ties, weather lore, popular literature, games,
names of places and persons, and other items
in folklore. A special review will be pub-
lished, to embody the results of the inquiries
made under the society's auspices.

Mr. H. Harries has shown, in the Royal
Meteorological Society, that hail and thun-
derstorms are not, as has been supposed, ex-
tremely rare in the arctic regions. He has

examined one hundred logs of vessels which
have visited those quarters, and seventy-five
of them gave records of hail having been
encountered at some time or other. Thun-
derstorms were not so frequently mentioned
as hail, but they were observed in seven
months out of the twelve, most frequently
in August.

Leo Brenner, of the Manora Observatory,
Tstria, has acknowledged a gift of $1,650
from Miss Catherine W. Bruce, of New York,
for the use of the observatory and addi-
tions to its equipment. Herr Brenner is en-
gaged in the study of Mars, and reports the
discovery of several interesting features, in-
cluding twenty new canals, "very broad, and
consequently probably double," and a new
"oasis" or '"lake."

An American locomotive works is in course
of erection at Nijni Novgorod, Russia, to
have capacity for turning out one hundred
and fifty locomotives a year, and employ
about one thousand men.

Proof regarded by him as abundantly
satisfactory has been collected by Mr. N. T.
Bonner, of Cincinnati, from study of Pom-
peiian boilers, that the principle of the water-
tube boiler was fully understood and appre-
ciated by the people of Pompeii two thousand
years ago. The Pompeiian boilers, being
used principally for heating water and wine,
the shells and covers were only such as would
offer a slight resistance to the escape of the
steam.

Formalin, a solution ^f formic aldehyde,
has been recommended to the London Ento-
mological Society as a preventive of mold.
An object once sprayed with it never be-
comes moldy afterward. It is much used
in the color industry, and is therefore pro-
duced on a large scale.

Besides the common early belief in spirits
of the forest, sea, and mountain usually
needing propitiation, Mr. Henry Ling Roth
finds among the natives of Sarawak and Brit-
ish North Borneo a conception of a well-dis-
posed beneficent Petara. A system of omens
exists for the regulation of life, and with it
is combined a sort of worship of the birds
with whose movements the omens are asso-
ciated. The medicine men or medicine wom-
en pretend to extract disease in the form of
bits of stick or stones, and rags are hung on
bushes by the roadside to turn away or carry
off disease. Cairns are built up by passers-
by, each adding a stone, and tabu prevails,
as in the Pacific Islands.

Messrs. Petermann and Graftian, of the
Belgian Academy of Sciences, find that hoar-
frost is peculiarly rich in nitrogenous com-
pounds, and therefore plays an important
part in increasing nitrogenous matter in the
forest and in purifying the air.

STEPHEN J. PERRY.

APPLETONS'

POPULAR SCIENCE

MONTHLY.

APRIL, 1897.

HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BEST
RAISE ITS REVENUES?

By DAVID A. WELLS,

BX-tTNlTED STATES SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF REVENTTE, ETC.

THE President of tlie United States, in one of his recent speeches,
was reported as saying : " I can imagine nothing more im-
portant than a revenue system that will provide money enough to
run the Government. We have 7}ot had enough money to run
this Government for the past three years, under a false system of
political economy. So the question is, How shall we raise that
money 9 Do you want to raise it by direct taxation, by taxing the
property and lands or the incomes and wages of the people 9
\Gries of ' No.''\ Well, then, the other way to raise it is by tax-
ing the products that come here from Europe in competition with
American products."

Assuming the above authoritative utterance as in the nature
of a text from which deductions are both warranted and desirable
for the purpose of popular instruction, the following points ought
to commend themselves at the outset to the American people for
consideration : First. Notwithstanding the great and urgent ne-
cessity of currency reform, the need of providing a speedy, cer-
tain, adequate, and proper revenue for the Federal Government is
of immediate importance. Second. No nation exists, or ever has
existed, which has such great resources and facilities for obtain-
ing an ample and certain revenue with so little of friction and
annoyance to its people and with such a minimum of expense.
The amount of our national debt is not alarming, and ought not
to be a source of anxiety. As a matter of fact, the United States,
notwithstanding its present fiscal disturbance, is in a better finau-

TOL. L. — 55

722 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

cial condition than any of the other great nations of the world,
with the exception of Great Britain and Germany. The United
States, Great Britain, and Germany are the only governments
that within the last twenty years have notably reduced their
national debts ; all the other nations have notably increased their
indebtedness — France, Russia, and Italy taking the greatest rela-
tive lead. In every instance the recent increase in the indebted-
ness of nations is mainly referable to prospective war expenditure,
a contingency from which the United States ought to be entirely
exempt ; for it is as certain as anything in the future can be, that
the United States will never enter into war with any foreign
country unless unnecessarily provoked. But this is not the opin-
ion of military men, who as a rule rarely look beyond their pro-
fession, and of others who desire war with anybody and on any
account by reason of prospective personal agrandizement, or in-
creased opportunities for money gain that war would briug to
them, conjointly with increased fiscal burdens upon the masses of
the people. From March, 1885, the beginning of Mr. Cleveland's
first administration, to March, 1889, the public debt was reduced
$341,448,449.20, while Mr. Harrison's administration paid off $236,-
527,660.10. Circumstances, however, for which the second admin-
istration of Mr. Cleveland was not responsible, namely, the ad-
vocacy of the so-called " silver policy," which impaired national
credit, and a Federal Congress which authorized great and un-
necessary expenditures, have caused an increase in the bonded or
interest-bearing public debt during the three years from 1894 to
1897 of $262,000,000. But this, in view of the resources of the
nation, is not a matter for national disquietude ; more especially
when it is remembered that the uncovered demand (non-redeem-
able) debt of the nation was at the same time greatly lessened by
the accumulation of redeemable instrumentalities in the national
Treasury.

Third. Notwithstanding such favoring fiscal conditions, the
Federal Government is now and has been for some time past in
default of sufficient revenue to defray its current expenditures.
For the fiscal year 1890, with an average rate of taxation of $4.74
per capita, its revenues were $105,344,000 in excess of expendi-
tures. In 1895, with an increase in population over 1890 of about
8,000,000 and an average per capita rate of taxation of $6.21, the
receipts of national revenue fell short of defraying national ex-
penditures to the extent of $42,805,000.

Fourth. Taxes levied for protection — i. e., for the purpose of
reducing imports or narrowing the basis on which customs taxes
are levied — can not be rightfully regarded as taxes for revenue.
No one will deny that to get revenue from customs we must have
imports of dutiable goods. And yet, while admitting this as a

sow TO RAISE REVENUE. 723

general principle, the majority of tlie men who appear before the
" Ways and Means " Committee of Congress generally ask for
prohibitory duties on the importation cf articles that compete
with their own products. To the extent that protection is made
absolute, to just that extent the customs revenue will be de-
stroyed.* Taxes levied on the importation of commodities that
the country does not produce accrue entirely to the benefit of the
national Treasury. Taxes levied on the importation of commodi-
ties which compete with domestic products are paid by the people,
but benefit the Treasury to a very limited extent or not at all. For
example, when in 1869 a tax of five cents per pound was imposed
on the import of crude or unmanufactured copper, the customs
revenue that accrued to the Government in one year (1879) was
only five cents; but the taxes levied on the American people
through the increase in the price of domestic copper, and effected
mainly through the agency of a gigantic monopoly, aggregated
millions during the same period.

One almost insuperable obstacle in the way of formulating and
instituting a correct system of revenue which pertains to the Fed-
eral Government of the United States, does not find a parallel in
the administration of the government of' any other country in
which its people are allowed to participate. As a rule, in such
other countries political antagonisms, however bitter they may
be on the part of legislators, do not embrace or extend to the busi-
ness of raising the revenues which are considered essential for the
support of the state, although no system of revenue has ever been
devised, or probably ever can be, that will not to a greater or less
degree be made the subject of popular complaint. In this con-
nection the methods adopted as the result of long experience by
the British Parliament for raising revenue and authorizing ex-
penditure in anticipation of the necessities of each succeeding
year, are most pertinent, and substantially as follows:

The British fiscal year commences on the 1st of April. In the
course of the preceding six months the estimates of expenditures
for the ensuing year are prepared with great detail by the heads
of the different departments of the Government and submitted to
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who corresponds to the United

* " Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, who for years has been most earnest in advocating prohibitory
duties on wool, when recently confronted with the fact that his policy would lead to the
loss of revenue, said : ' Why should you want any ? ' When the laugh that followed had
subsided, he explained that he meant why should we want any revenue from wool, adding
that there were many other commodities from which revenue could be derived. He did not
stop to consider that the producers of those other articles wanted duties that would shut
out foreign competition as badly as he desired it in his own interest. Moreover, his was a
particularly flagrant case, as he represented a commodity of which the country produces
only about half as much as we consume."

724 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

States Secretary of the Treasury. This official, who is always a
member of Parliament, after giving the subject careful study and
deliberation, communicates the result to the full Cabinet ; and then,
with its concurrence, which is regarded as an assumption of re-
sponsibility on the part of the existing Government, makes what
is called a " Budget " speech in the House of Commons, giving his
estimates of the prospective receipts of revenue for the ensuing
year, and proposing such changes both in respect to revenue and
expenditure as the Government may think advisable. The House
of Commons next, and at an early day, resolving itself into a Com-
mittee of the Whole under the name of " The Ways and Means,"
discusses generally the proposed estimates and changes, and at a
subsequent period, resolving itself into what is called " The Com-
mittee of Supply," decides what services shall be undertaken. In
this committee the Secretary of State for War and the First Lord
of the Admiralty generally move the adoption of the estimates
for the army and navy which the Government has submitted,
and preface their motions with a statement of the general condi-
tion of their respective departments. The conclusions arrived
at in committee, are next reported to the House of Commons,
and embodied in a bill known as the " Inland Revenue and Cus-
toms Bill ; " which, after passing both Houses of Parliament and
receiving the " royal assent," becomes the act regulating the col-
lection of revenues for the ensuing fiscal year. Most of the Brit-
ish taxes are levied under the authority of permanent acts. Some,
however, as the duty on tea and the income tax, are only granted
for limited periods. Certain expenditures, also, are sanctioned by
legislation once and for all, and are not revoted every year ; such
as the interest on the public debt, the " dotation " of the Crown,
the salaries of the judges, ambassadors, and other high officials,
pensions, and compensations to which the public faith has been
pledged. Should any unforeseen demands for large expenditures
arise subsequent to the passage of the general revenue bill, sup-
plementary estimates are presented to Parliament by the ministry.
This, however, only happens when the deficiency is large. When
the deficiency is small — as, for example, if the war office finds it
necessary to incur certain expenditures in its branch of the serv-
ice not provided for in the general estimates and bill — it must
apply to the Treasury, stating the circumstances, for leave to
meet the expenditures by drawing on any surplus that may accrue
in other departments of the Government, with the exception that
the navy appropriation can not be applied to meet army expendi-
tures, and vice versa. Such permissions, if granted, are only
temporary. They are reported to Parliament at the earliest op-
portunity, and a vote sanctioning its proceedings is asked by the
Treasury. When any tax or duty is changed by act of Parlia-

JTOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 725

ment^ the Treasury authorizes the Inland Revenno and Customs
officials to levy the modified rates in a manner that seems to them
most expedient.

Any surplus of income over expenditure for any year is de-
voted to the diminution of the public debt, but so carefully and
■with such system is the business of collecting and of its expending
revenue conducted by the British Government, that except under
very unusual conditions, the two accounts, separately aggregating
at present about $450,000,000 per annum, balance each other with
almost marvelous closeness. Thus, for the fiscal year 1893-'94,
a period of great fiscal disturbance and trade depression, the
revenue collected and expended was within one half of one per
cent, in a total of $450,000,000, of the budget estimate, while the
amount of revenue paid out to meet expenditures was about
one quarter of one per cent less than the estimates; the whole
constituting a most striking testimonial, first, of the solidity of
the British financial system, and, secondly, of the great sagacity
and experience of the able permanent officials on whom the finan-
cial administration of the greatest empire and government of the
world mainly depends.

Recognizing also that a rigorous supervision of the govern-
mental estimates and warrant for expenditures by the House of
Commons is not possible under the circumstances of parliament-
ary life, an audit department of the civil service has been created,
whose business it is to examine the accounts and vouchers of the
expenditures in every branch of the public service ; and in addi-
tion to this, the House of Commons at every session appoints a
public accounts committee of its members, consisting of experi-
enced business men, whose duty is to supervise the work of the
audit department. Under such a system extravagance, not to
speak of peculations, in respect to the public funds is impossible ;
and general recognition of this fact goes far to explain why
the House, irrespective of any political differences of its mem-
bers, readily grants the sums of money asked by the existing
ministry.

There is another feature of the parliamentary government of
Great Britain which is well worthy of serious attention on the
part of the American public and its representative law makers ;
and that is, that by a standing order of the House of Commons
no member of the House, unless he is charged with the adminis-
tration of a department, and therefore with the duty of framing
the fiscal estimates of such department, can, however eminent,
influential, and capable he may be, on his own authority propose
in Parliament to grant any sum of public money, however small,
to any object, however deserving. The theory of this is, that the
Government, which is the ministry in power, is entirely responsi-

72 6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

ble for all public expenditures involving taxation during tlie term
that it is in office ; and that to permit private members or political
opponents to propose expenditure of the public moneys would not
only transfer responsibility from those .who ought to bear it, but
would lead to great financial disorder and vast and inexpedient
expenditures. The greaL mass of the civil servants of the British
Government are also strictly excluded from seats in Parliament,
and until recently were debarred from voting for members; the
reason for such provisions being that those who have personal
interest in taxation because they have imj)rovable property or
incomes from taxes, ought to have no voice, direct or indirect, in
the imposition of taxes, on the same principle that judges are
considered disqualified for trying cases in which they may have
or are presumed to have any personal interest. On the other
I hand, in the Federal Congress, where lavish and unexpected
' grants of public money are constantly made on motions of
! members not connected with any finance committee, and acting
avowedly in behalf of private or local, rather than public, inter-
i ests ; and where the authorization of expenditures is divided
among a number of committees so that no group of men is
responsible for the aggregate appropriations ; it is obviously not
; within the power of the executive department of the Government
'■' to present and adhere to any previously well-considered scheme
of annual taxation and expenditure, or what in most other coun-
tries is known as an annual budget.

The following record of recent experiences, which probably
could not happen in the legislature of any other civilized country,
strikingly illustrates the senseless and costly way in which the
fiscal policy of the United States is not infrequently determined.
During a comparatively recent fiscal debate in the United States
Senate, a Senator advocated certain proposed appropriations of
the public money, which were opposed on the ground that they
were in the nature of extravagances, by saying that they could
not be grievous to the people, " since they would not amount to
more than three cents per day per capita." But three cents per
day would amount to nearly eleven dollars per head per annum,
or over fifty-five dollars for every family of five persons, and
there are millions of men and millions of families in the United
States whose income is not a dollar a day. Again, how many of
the American people are aware that a bill proposing to grant
pensions to seventy thousand ex-slaves, on the ground that they
were chiefly instrumental in developing the wealth of the country,
is reported to be now pending in the United States Senate ? Such
a bill, if once passed, would establish the principle of pensions for
civil service, and by swelling the existing pension list to an inor-
dinate amount would almost justify the assumption, that the

BOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 727

main object of a government by the people is the payment of
pensions rather than the protection of life and property.

The Prospective Revenue Requirements op the Federal
Government. — The aggregate revenues of the Government for
the fiscal year 1897-'98 are estimated, on the basis of existing laws,
by the Secretary of the Treasury (Report on the State of the
Finances, 1896). at $431,327,000; and the estimates of appropria-
tions, exclusive of sinking fund, required for the same period, are
$460,916,000 ; leaving a prospective national deficit of revenue for
the next fiscal year of $45,719,000. The total appropriations of
the two sessions of the past (fifty-fourth) Congress aggregate
$1,043,437,019. Under such circumstances a provision for an
annual revenue of more than $500,000,000 is therefore most
expedient, and the question at issue of first importance is. How
can this sum be raised with the greatest certainty, regularity,
and minimum cost to the Government, and with the least
inconvenience and friction on the part of the people who will
have to provide it ? For the Government never has any money
— by which alone the expenses of the state can be defrayed —
except what the people — citizens or subjects — give or concede to
it by voluntary or involuntary action ; while the people, as a
whole and in turn, never have any to give except what comes
to them as a result of their work, or from an exchange of the prod-
ucts of their work. And such being the case, we are confronted
with a homely truth, generally overlooked by writers and legis-
lators on taxation, that what the Government really wants of its
people, when it calls upon them for taxes, is work, and that the
methods of taxation are only methods for collecting and using
the products of work. Furthermore, it ought also to be borne in
mind that for every dollar the Government at present expends,
the average American citizen must work for at least half a day,
or furnish a value equivalent for such an amount of work.*

Another matter of almost equal importance for consideration
in this connection is the desirability of initiating an adequate
revenue system for the national Government, the elements of
which shall be rendered in a high degree permanent, by exemp-
tion from influences contiogent on changes in the political admin-
istration, and on temporary commercial and industrial conditions
of the country. In fact, it would be diflBcult to name an influence
more certain to be conducive to national prosperity than the reali-
zation of such an agency.

* " Taxation means work, of the head, or the hand, or of the machine, or all combined.
And the method of taxation is only a method of distributing the products of work. It is
measured, when in the process of distribution, in terms of money, but the money itself
stands for work, or is derived from work." — The Industrial Progress of tJie Nation, Edward
Atkinson ; ■ G. P. Putnam & Sons, New York, 1890.

728 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

To obtain a clear understanding of these subjects, tbe most
rational, and indeed tlie only correct way, is to take up and sub-
mit to analysis the most available sources of national revenue,
commencing with those that are beyond question the most im-
portant. But, preliminary to so doing, attention should be given
to the fact that in all civilized nations at the present time the
production and consumption of spirits, fermented liquors, and
tobacco are recognized as the most legitimate and productive
sources from which revenue can be obtained with the minimum
of expenes and industrial disturbance. The factors determina-
tive of the productiveness and continued increase of revenue
from these sources are mainly two — namely, continued increase
of population and continued or increasing ability on the part of
the masses to consume. These factors are more influential at
the present time in the United States than in any other nation.
We are increasing in population in a greater annual ratio than
any other country. Our ability to consume, owing to the rapid
accumulation and distribution of wealth among the masses, is far
greater than that of any other nation. Commercial disturbances
and business depressions, which are potent in all other countries
in reducing the consumption of luxuries, appear to have com-
paratively little effect in the United States, and are not of long
continuance.

Thus, of the commodities in general use in the United States,
the two that have not notably declined in consumption during
the almost universal depression of industry in recent years are
fermented liquors and manufactured tobacco, more especially in
the form of cigarettes.

The single source from which the largest amount of revenue
is collected by the Federal Government js distilled spirits, and
the experience of the United States in respect to it, although ex-
ceedingly curious and interesting, has been but little instructive
to either the people or their legislators. From the first imposition
of taxes on this commodity under the present revenue system in
1862, unwarranted sentiment, rather than intelligence and regard
for the fiscal interest, of the nation, have characterized its treat-
ment. There has been, in the first instance, a comparatively small
number of people — 132,871 voting for prohibition in 1895 out of
an aggregate of 13,790,572 other voters— who take the position
that it is the moral duty of the state to absolutely prevent the
manufacture, sale, or use of all alcoholic liquors ; a result not
possible of attainment except through a radical change in human
nature. The results of experience under this head may be briefly
summed up as follows : In small communities, where there is a
general union of sentiment in favor of extreme temperance, a high
degree of prohibition may be temporarily brought about. But,

BOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 729

on the other hand, the evidence of the only reliable data available,
namely, the tabulated returns of the Internal Revenue Depart-
ment, which takes cognizance of every gallon of distilled spirits —
other than illicit products — manufactured and sold for consump-
tion in the United States, indisputably show, that for the whole
country the efforts of the extreme temperance advocates have
never exerted any general influence in restraining their manufac-
ture and use ; and that, eliminating the temporary influence of
hard times and business depressions, the average annual increase in
the production and inferential consumption of such spirits, is at a
rate equal to or in excess of the average annual increase of popu-
lation. Thus, during the decade from 1880 to 1889 the aggregate
increase in the population of the country and its consumption of
tax-paid spirits was nearly concurrent; but from 1888 to 1893
the increase in the production and per capita consumption of
spirits was in a ratio much greater than any concurrent increase
of population ; the whole culminating for the fiscal year 1893 in a
tax-paid product of 99,145, 000 gallons, and an average yer capita
consumption of 1*48 gallons, as compared with a per capita of
1-25 in 1889.

Secondly. We have a general sentiment among both people and
legislators, that distilled spirits and alcoholic preparations gen-
erally are commodities that can advantageously be made subject
to any degree of taxation. If under a given rate the revenue in-
creases, an increase in the rate is held to be desirable ; if the
revenue falls off, the decrease is attributed to decreased consump-
tion, whereby any loss of revenue is correspondingly compensated
by moral advantages. But there is in the enactment of any and
every tax a certain rate which, if exceeded, invariably impairs the
maximum possible revenue obtainable from it ; and any govern-
ment that disregards what may be termed the line of wise ex- j
pediency in fixing such rates, invariably cheats itself and promotes
popular immorality. One would think that the experience of the
United States had been sufiBciently instructive in this matter. But
such is not the case. The class of people whom the proverb says
" go to the school of experience " have all been there and have
paid "high tuition"; they have also exemplified the remainder
of the proverb as expressed by Franklin, to wit, that the number
of scholars that learn anything in such school " is small, for it is
true that we may give advice but can not give conduct." Under
such circumstances the following brief notice of some of the
lessons that have been taught in this school may be profitable.
Thus during the fiscal year 1868, with a tax of two dollars per
proof gallon on distilled spirits, the Internal Revenue Bureau in
full operation and an annual consumption of the country of at least
60,000,000 gollons, the Government was only able to collect a tax

730 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

on less than 7,000,000 gallons, leaving to the credit of corruption
from the sale of the balance of concurrent annual product, at
market rates, of from $80,000,000 to $100,000,000. But with a re-
duction of the tax to fifty cents per proof gallon the annual reve-
nue, including all taxes on the process of manufacture and sales,
increased the first year to $45,000,000, and the second to $55,-
606,000.

By the Act of August 28, 1894, the rate of tax on distilled spirits,
which had been in force for fifteen years and was working satis-
factorily, was prospectively advanced from ninety cents to a dol-
lar and ten cents per proof gallon. Note the result. For the first
six months of 1894 the average monthly revenue which accrued
from the lesser tax was about $8,000,000. Then the prospective
profits from the increase of the tax were anticipated to such an ex-
tent by speculators, that the revenue increased during the month
of July and for the first twenty-seven days of August to $19,064,000
and $31,470,000 respectively, representing an aggregate gift to the
speculative interest of about $24,000,000. The increased rate of tax
having become operative, the revenue for the month of Septem-
ber declined to the comparatively small sum of $510,696. Stated
generally, the total receipts from the direct tax of ninety cents per
proof gallon during the fiscal year 1893 was $89,231,000 ; for 1894,
with increased rate for part of the year, it was $79,862,000 ; for
1895, $74,741,000 ; for 1896, $75,327,897. That a considerable part
of this recent decline has been due to a contemporaneous depres-
sion of the business of the country is beyond question ; but what
is to be inferred from the following official statement as to the
manner in which the decreased production of spirits in the United
States distributed itself during the year 1895 : decrease in the
production of alcohol, neutral or cologne spirits, 16,065,000 gal-
lons; increase in the production of Bourbon whisky, rye and
miscellaneous liquors, 6,924,773 gallons ? These figures do not in-
clude illicit production, which is certainly verj^ considerable ; and
one effect of the increase of tax in stimulating this business may
be inferred from the fact that the number of illicit stills seized
and destroyed increased from 1,016 in 1894 to 1,874 in 1895.

Another point of interest in connection with the increase of
the rate of taxation on distilled spirits in 1894, and to a certain
extent contingent on such increase, is, that the business of manu-
facturing whisky has been so stimulated, with a resulting over-
production, that the average market price of this commodity, ex-
clusive of taxes, has been reported as below the cost of manu-
facture, and in accordance with this view of the situation nearly
all the large distillers of the country have united in suspending
operations.

Under a former rate of duty of ten per cent on the importation

JIOW TO RAISE REVE:SUE. 731

of diamonds, $100,000 on duties representing a value of $1,000,000
was reported as collected at the single port of New York. With
an increase of duty to twenty-five per cent, little or no revenue is
derived from that source.

The best and most reliable data for estimating the maxi-
mum revenue resulting from the taxation of distilled spirits is
to be found in the experience of the Internal Revenue Department
for the fiscal years from 1887 to 1893 inclusive. During these
years, under a uniform and stable rate of taxation, a good and
efficient administration of the law, and a fairly prosperous con-
dition of the country, the average increase in revenue was nearly
$5,000,000 ($4,910,000) per annum ; the whole culminating in the
fiscal year 1893 in a revenue of $89,231,000. In a report made by
the writer to the Secretary of the Treasury in July, 1893, the
sequel of any increase in the then existing rate of tax (uinety
cents), which was at that time to some extent advocated, was fore-
shadowed in the following language : " It will favor a recurrence
of the disgraceful and disastrous results that characterized the
period of experimental taxation in the years immediately suc-
ceeding the termination of the war. Certain it is also that an
anticipation of participation in an increase of the tax would lead
to such a production of spirits as to postpone for one or two years
any increase in revenue to the Government." It is needless to
say that every prediction thus made has been fully verified, and,
encouraged by such success, the following anticipations may be
warranted : If our legislators in Congress assembled, agreeing
to limit all consideration of the subject to the one point of rev-
enue, will reduce the present rate of tax per proof gallon of dis-
tilled spirits from $1.10 (about 825 per cent) to the former rate of
ninety cents (G90 per cent), with no exemptions, and the industry
of the country again become fairly prosperous, the average 'per
capita consumption of 1892 and 1893 may be fairly taken as the
basis of future estimates from the greatest and most reliable
single source of national revenue. Or, in other words, an annual
revenue, under such conditions, approximating one hundred mil-
lions may be anticipated in 1899, with a certain regular increase
contingent on a normal increase in population of from three to
four millions additional per annum.

The Alcohol Exemption Proposition. — A brief notice of a
proposition to essentially impair the revenue from distilled spirits
by exempting alcohol used in comparatively few manufacturing
industries and in the preparation of "medicinal and other like
compounds " from taxation is here pertinent. The history of this
movement constitutes an extraordinary feature in American
fiscal experience, and in brief is as follows : When " an act to re-
duce taxation, to provide revenue for the Government, and for

732 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

other purposes " (passed August 28, 1894) was under consideration
by the United States Senate, and pending a proposition to in-
crease the revenue by increasing a tax of about G80 per cent on the
average prime cost of distilled spirits to a rate of nearly 825 per
cent, a Senator, apparently utterly oblivious that the subject
involved had years before been thoroughly considered by the
United States Treasury Department and declared to be imprac-
ticable, submitted a motion permitting the use of alcohol in the
arts, or in medicinal or other like compounds, without the pay-
ment of any internal revenue tax. The motion in question, after
a very brief consideration, was accepted and incorporated in the
laws of the United States. The result was that the Secretary
of the Treasury reported that in default of any appropriation to
defray the expenses of administering the act, and an unsuccessful
attempt to frame regulations which would protect the Govern-
ment, the Treasury Department was constrained to abandon the
effort and await further action by Congress. It was also esti-
mated that the expense to the Government of attempting to ad-
minister the act would probably be not less than one million
dollars per annum; that the loss of revenue contingent on its
enforcement would be about ten million dollars yearly, and that
the loss of revenue from an increased opportunity for illicit and
fraudulent practice would also be very considerable.

Under such circumstances Congress, in 1895, repealed the act of
exemption, but subsequently a strenuous effort has been made to
re-enact it. The main argument adduced in its favor is that the
present cost of alcohol would be largely reduced, whereby certain
industries which use it as a raw material would be greatly bene-
fited. That such a result would be in accordance with a general
economic principle can not be disputed, and, such being the case,
the question is pertinent. Why limit the exemption to the one
material, alcohol ? Why not equally grant exemption to manu-
facturers who use wool, coal, the various ores and metals, crude
tobacco and the like, as raw materials ?

As already pointed out, the taxation of distilled spirits consti-
tutes the largest single source of national revenue, and as such,
its consideration by legislators, more especially in view of the
present fiscal necessities of the Government, ought to be strictly
limited to the one point of ascertaining its greatest availability
for revenue. The existing tax of 800 per cent on proof spirits and
more than 1,200 per cent on its derivative, alcohol, constitutes a
temptation to evade payments which human nature as ordinarily
constituted can not withstand. Illicit distillation is admitted to
be on the increase in the country, and American ingenuity has
been active in facilitating it. It is now proposed to further
increase temptation by offering an approximate profit of two

B^OW TO RAISE REVENUE. 733

dollars for every gallon of alcohol tliat can evade taxation. The
annual loss of revenue consequent upon the proposed exemption
of alcohol will not be less than $10,000,000 and probably more,
all of which, under present revenue necessities, will have to be
made good by an equivalent increase of taxation on other com-
modities.

The circumstance that some of the countries of Europe, espe-
cially Great Britain, allow alcohol mixed exclusively with naphtha
(methyl), and in very large stipulated quantities, to be exempt
from taxation, but the use of which, from the nauseous smell
and taste thereby imparted, is exceedingly limited, has no bear-
ing on the situation in the United States. In Europe the
procese of methylation is conducted under the close supervision
of revenue officials, as it must be in the United States. In the
former countries the number of grain distilleries, with bonded
warehouses attached, where the process must be mainly con-
ducted, is comparatively small. In the United States it is com-
paratively large; the number operated in the single State of
North Carolina in 1895 being largely in excess of the number in
the whole of Great Britain. If, in addition to the number of in-
spectors and gangers required at the distilleries for an honest ad-
ministration of the exemption, the number of druggists who use
alcohol in medicinal preparations (which has been officially esti-
mated as at least 32,000) and manufacturers of patent medi-
cines are taken into account, the problem confronting the admin-
istration of the Internal Revenue Department of the Government
might be well characterized as " appalling." In short, if the exact
truth in respect to this proposed modification of the taxes on dis-
tilled spirits were known, it would probably appear that the
people most interested in securing this exemption are the patent-
medicine manufacturers, who see a great extension of their busi-
ness in manufacturing cheap intoxicants without the compulsory
use of methyl, under the name of medicinal preparations, and
selling them by the bottle from the apothecary's shelf, rather
than from the bars of hotels and restaurants. And this assump-
tion finds much of confirmation in the circumstance that in re-
spect to the applications filed in the Treasury for rebates, or
damages for the non- execution of the exemption law, which are
very considerable, estimated at from $10,000,000 to $19,000,000, the
Internal Revenue reports that a large proportion of the claimants
are manufacturers of patent medicines, and also to some extent
the manufacturers of " mince pies " and candy. Recent investi-
gations instituted and reported by the Massachusetts State Board
of Health also show that many of the most noted patent medi-
cines, especially the so-called "blood purifiers," "nerve tonics,"
and other remedies of like character, contain very large per-

734 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

centages of alcohol by volume — not infrequently from seventeen
to twenty-six per cent — which probably accounts in a high degree
for their great popularity, and for the wonderful curative results
contingent on their use. Country druggists also report a special
demand and consumption of these medicinal preparations in towns
that have voted " no license," and in which a sentiment in favor
of total abstinence predominates.*

Again, if the legislative department of the state decides that
it would be expedient to establish or stimulate the manufacture
of certain commodities, no one under a free Government would
venture openly to justify such action, except on the ground that
public welfare would be thereby promoted. Suppose, with this
purpose in view, it is decided to stimulate the manufacturers of a
comparatively few articles by exempting them from certain forms
of taxation, would it not be expedient, and the part of a wise fiscal
policy, that the state, by proper rules and investigation, should
ascertain the rightful amount that would accrue to each claimant
from such exemption, and then raise the money to pay it in the
same manner as it raises money to defray its other expenses, and
not allow private interests to exercise the great sovereign power
of taxation by practically determining what the state shall levy
and what the people in general shall pay ?

Fermented Liquors. — The internal revenue tax on fermented
liquors (beer) has been practically uniform since its first authori-
zation in 1863, nominally one dollar per barrel of thirty-one gal-
lons. As, however, a deduction of seven and a half per cent is
allowed to brewers on the purchase of stamps, which is assumed
to represent the difference between the theoretical barrel unit of
thirty-one gallons and the quantity contained in the commercial or
trade supply barrel, which, owing to redriving of hoops and re-
pitching, averages from twenty-eight to twenty- eight and a half
gallons, the net tax is, accordingly, ninety- two and a half cents,
which is made payable in stamps, one of which, " denoting the
amount of the tax, shall be affixed upon the spigot hole or tap (of
which there shall be but one) in such a way that the stamp shall
be destroyed upon the withdrawal of the liquor from the barrel
or other receptacle." There is also a special tax, in the nature of
a license on brewers, which yielded the Government — in 1896,
$163,779 — relatively a small matter. A tax of one dollar per thirty-
one gallons is equivalent to 3'225 cents per gallon. On a basis of
$5.25 per barrel, the price at which beer of good quality could
recently be bought in quantity, or at wholesale, in the city of
New York or vicinity, the present tax is about twenty per cent

* For more specific information on this subject, reference is made to an official bulletin
of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts lor March 14, 1896.

HOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 735

ad valorem. One barrel of thirty-one gallons equals 248 pints or
496 half pints. The present tax on this basis is, therefore, one
fifth of a cent per half pint, or per glass as usually sold in saloons
for five cents ; or two fifths of a cent per pint.

In recent years some of the large industrial establishments of
the country have made a practice of furnishing their employees
■with beer of a good quality at a price but little in excess of the
cost of production. In such cases the beer is sold by weight, a
pint being regarded as equal to a pound, and a pound as equal
to two glasses such as are usually sold in the saloons. From
twenty-six to thirty tickets, each representing one pound of beer,
are usually sold for one dollar, which makes the average cost to
the local consumers of from one and two thirds to one and three
fourths cents for a full glass or half pound of beer, and which
charge is represented by those competent to express an opinion
as sufficient to cover the wholesale price and entire cost of distri-
bution— labor, ice, rent, and light — and leave a fair profit.

The points of interest worthy of special attention in connection
with this subject are as follows :

1. The regular and great increase in the quantity of fermented
liquors annually made subject to internal revenue taxation — i. e.,
from 62,205,375 gallons in 1863 to 1,110,609,000 in 1896 ; an increase
in popular consumption very far in excess of the rate of increase
in the population of the country — i. e., from 1"86 gallon per head
in 1863 to about sixteen gallons in 1896, the latter representing
an average consumption of about 100,000 barrels daily.

2. The concurrent regular increase in revenue from this source
has been from 61,558,000 in 1863 to $33,784,255 in 1896.

3. As large and costly plants are essential for the manufacture
of fermented liquors on a large scale and at the lowest cost, illicit
production is thereby rendered difficult, if not impossible ; and
whatever of fraud upon the revenue exists in this business is
undoubtedly due to the non-use or non- cancellation of the stamps
which represent prepayment as a condition of sale and con-
sumption.

4. The variations in the product of fermented liquors which
the Government has been able to annually subject to taxation
since 1863 have been inconsiderable and in remarkable contrast to
those occurring in the case of distilled spirits. The average in-
crease in the receipts of internal revenue from this source for the
ten years from 1883 to 1892 was about $1,617,000 per annum ; the
per capita consumption during the same period increasing from
10'25 gallons to 15'05 gallons. Comparing 1894 with 1893, there
was a remarkable decrease in revenue in the former year of
$1,134,195. Comparing 1895 with 1894, there was a recuperation
in receipts to the extent of $225,829 ; which augmentation in 1896 —

736

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

a year of continued great depression in the industry of the coun-
try— rose to the large figure of $2,143,617. That this latter ratio
of annual increase under the present rate of tax is likely to in-
definitely continue is almost demonstrated by the fact that the
popularity of fermented or "malt" liquors as beverages among
the American people is unquestionably increasing ; and also that
large, seemingly, as is their present average per capita consump-
tion— namely, sixteen gallons — the present per capita consump-
tion of the people of several other nationalities is much greater —
that of the United Kingdom being estimated at thirty gallons ; of
England and Wales, thirty-six ; of Belgium, thirty-two ; of the
whole of the German Empire, thirty-three ; of Bavaria, sixty- two.

An important fact pertinent to the prospective consumption
of beer and its permanent value as a source of national revenue
is, that the cost of the materials used in its manufacture has
decreased in comparatively recent years, in the United States,
Great Britain, and probably in other countries characterized by
its large consumption, to the extent of at least forty per cent ; *
and the advantage from this change which has accrued to British
brewers was stated by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer,
in May, 1895, to have been upward of £2^000,000 ($10,000,000) per
annum.

From this decline in prices, and consequent reduction in the
cost of production, the consumer has not been permitted to gain
any advantage, the retail price of beer remaining substantially
what it was.

All the resulting gains have been intercepted by those con-
nected with the trade, and how well they have fared, some sta-
tistics recently given by the British Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and which are probably equally applicable to the United States,
sufficiently show. " In 1884-'85," he said, " the number of assess-
ments to income tax from brewers was 2,44G, and the whole of
their profits assessed amounted to £6,316,000. Ten years later
the number of brewers assessed for income tax was 2,274 — show-

* In the United States the decrease in this branch of prices has been much greater, as
shown by the following table of comparative prices in IS?? and 1897 :

Sugar (brown) lb-
Rice, Carolina lb.

Hops (import price) lb.

Barley (import price) bush.

Oats bush.

Maize bush.

Molasses (prime) gal.

1877.

Cents.

9

5

6

5

61

5

76

2

44

0

60

0

54-0

1897.

Cents.
2-81
4-0
22-0
37-8
21-0
28-5
24-0

Decrease,
per cent.

70'
38'
57'
50'
52'
52'
55'

sow TO RAISE REVENUE. 737

ing that the smaller brewers were being more and more absorbed
by the great concerns — while the amount of assessed profits was
£10,177,000, showing an increase of sixty per cent in the profits of
the brewing trade during those ten years/'

If it is desirable at the present time for the Federal Govern-
ment to increase its annual revenue by additional taxation, it is
certain that such a result can not be attained more certainly and
with so little of expense, effort, or industrial friction, as by a
moderate increase of the tax on fermented liquors. The existing
tax (twenty per cent ad valorem) is lower than upon almost any
other industrial product entering largely into domestic consump-
tion— spirits paying, for example, eight hundred and forty per
cent ; tobacco, one hundred and nine ; wool, manufactured, fifty-
six; iron and steel, forty-eight; breadstuffs, twenty-five; glass,
fifty-two, and the like. The business of brewing malt liquors is
acknowledged to be one of the most successful of domestic indus-
tries, and financial participation in it has in recent years been so
attractive to foreign capitalists that it is generally believed that
the ownership of a large proportion of the brewing business in
the United States has passed into their hands. It is also reason-
ably certain that in the distribution of industrial products for
consumption there is no branch of business that returns a larger
profit on the labor and capital employed than the retailing of
malt liquors ; a small retail store often supporting a large family,
besides paying high Federal and State licenses. The data already
submitted, which are believed to be reliable, show that beer can
be retailed at a profit for one and three quarter cents per glass of
a half pint, on which the present tax is one fifth of a cent, yield-
ing a present revenue of about $34,000,000 ($33,784,000) per annum.
An increase of the present rate of tax — i. e., from one dollar to
two dollars per barrel of thirty-one gallons, or from one fifth to
two fifths of a cent to a half- pint glass — might be reasonably ex-
pected to at once yield at least $30,000,000 additional per annum,
bringing up the present annual revenue from this source to $64,-
000,000, with a prospective annual increase of $3,000,000 ; and this
without increasing the cost of his beer to the individual consumer
or materially diminishing the profits of the brewer or the whole-
sale or retail dealer.

It remains to briefly notice the reasons that have been popu-
larly urged against any increase in the taxation of fermented
liquors. It is said that the brewers already pay a fair share of
the expenses of the Government, and " to make them pay more
looks like a discrimination against a particular industry." But
as the case now stands, the discrimination in respect to taxation
is not adverse to the brewing interest but greatly in its favor ;
and the proposed increase in rate would impose a smaller burden,

TOL. L. — 56

738 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

as has been above shown, than is borne by many other domestic
industrial products. Again, it is said that " beer is the poor man's
bread/' and therefore it ought not to be taxed. But if beer is ex-
empted from making a fair contribution to the revenue necessi-
ties of the state, the deficiency ■will be made good by increased
taxes on other commodities of general popular consumption, the
ultimate incidence of which, if indirect, as they are likely to
be, will fall heaviest on the consumer who, by reason of his
poverty, is forced to buy in small quantities. The most potent
source of opposition, however, to an increased tax on beer is
undoubtedly to be found in the popular assumption that "no
political party will commit itself to an additional tax of a dol-
lar a barrel on beer, because it is feared that it would involve
the loss of too many votes. It somehow happens that beer has
a great many friends, and, whether correctly or not, it is appre-
hended that doubling the tax on it would be resented by a large
number of voters." And if partisan politics is to become the
essential feature of the revenue system of every popular form of
government, as the experience of the United States and of France
seems to indicate it will be, nothing further need be said on this
subject.

Tobacco. — The present consumption of tobacco in all its forms
by the people of the United States will probably average about
four pounds per head per annum. The aggregate quantity which
the Internal Revenue took cognizance of for taxation in 1896 was
266,215,736 pounds, a gain of 18,136,846 pounds over the aggregate
for 1894. The number of cigars and cheroots subjected to taxa-
tion preliminary to consumption in 1896, was over four billions
(4,237,755,943), an increase over the number assessed in the pre-
ceding fiscal year of 73,983,503. As a basis for estimating the
revenue prospectively available from this source, the comparative
per capita consumption of tobacco in other countries is especially
worthy of attention in this connection. For the United King-
dom the amount for 1891, oflBcially reported, was 1*61 pound;
France (estimated). If pound ; for the population of the city of
Paris, 3y pounds ; Germany, 4^ pounds ; Belgium and Holland,
3^ pounds. The annual consumption of tobacco in the United
States is therefore certainly much greater than in most other
countries, and is equaled in not more than one or two. This
result may be referred to several agencies : to the greater cheap-
ness of the taxed commodity ; to greater ability on the part of
the masses to consume it, and to a larger use of tobacco for chew-
ing,* the quantity manufactured for this purpose in 1895 being

* In France the sales of tobacco in 1885 were returned at 700,000 kilogrammes for
"cliewing" and at 16,400,000 for smoking.

HOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 739

returned at 181,494,000 pounds, as compared with 83,346,000 manu-
factured for smoking.

From 1863 (when the tax was first imposed on this commodity)
to 1869 the variations in the annual internal revenue receipts from
tobacco (always in the way of increase) were very great and, as
it were, spasmodic, and were due mainly to frequent changes in
the rate of tax on the different forms of tobacco. During this
same period occurred one of the most remarkable illustrations to
be found in fiscal history of the influence of a tax reduction in
increasing the consumption of a comparatively cheap commodity
in general use. Thus, in 1866, with a uniform tax of ten dollars
per thousand on cigars, only 347,443,894 were returned by manu-
facturers for taxation, while in 1869, under a uniform tax of five
dollars per thousand, 991,335,934 were returned, or nearly three
times the quantity.

From ] 870 to 1882 the ratio of annual increase in the taxed
product of domestic tobacco was greater on the average than the
corresponding ratio of increase in the population of the country ;
and in the latter year the annual internal revenue collected from
this source attained the large and unprecedented aggregate of
$47,391,989.

In 1883 the rates of tax on all forms of domestic tobacco and
the special taxes on dealers and manufacturers of the same were
reduced fully fifty per cent. This reduction of tax caused an im-
mediate reduction of revenue, comparing the receipts of 1883 with
those of 1884, the first full year of reduced rates, to the extent of
$21,329,589. In 1886 the tax on cigars was further reduced fifty
per cent, and in 1890 the taxes on snuff, chewing and smoking
tobacco, twenty-five per cent. At this latter date all special taxes
relating to tobacco — i. e., licenses to manufacturers, dealers, etc. —
were also entirely repealed. The annual reduction in revenue in
consequence of these last abatements, comparing the receipts for
1890 with those for 1892, was near $3,000,000, notwithstanding an
increase in population during the same period of 2,897,750. The
internal revenue from tobacco for the fiscal year 1896 was $30,-
711,629, an increase of $1,006,721 over the receipts for 1895, and
a decrease of $3,277,372 as compared with the receipts of 1890.
Had the taxes on tobacco existing in 1882 been allowed to remain
unchanged, the annual revenue from this source (the increase of
population being taken into account) for the fiscal year 1897 would
probably have approximated $70,000,000.

The United States internal revenue taxes on tobacco are
smaller than those imposed by any other country that seeks to
make this commodity a leading source of revenue. In the year
1895 they amounted to about forty cents per capita. The duties
collected on imports of tobacco for 1895 were $14,916,000, and

740 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the total customs and internal revenue yielded by tobacco during
the fiscal year 1895 was about $44,000,000, or sixty-eight cents per
capita.

In the United Kingdom the taxes on tobacco, mainly on im-
ports and through the customs, are about $1.30 per capita, and
yield an annual revenue of about $50,000,000.

In France the taxes on tobacco are reported at $1.71 per
capita, yielding an annual revenue of about $65,000,000. In other
European countries the per capita taxes on tobacco are reported
as follows: Austria, $1.31 ; Germany, $1.30; Italy, 94 cents ; Hun-
gary, 79 cents.

"Were the same ratio of taxation on tobacco as exists to-day in
the United Kingdom established in the United States, the annual
revenue accruing to the Federal Treasury at the present time
would be in excess of $90,000,000. If the rates existing in France
were adopted, the annual revenue from this source would be $126,-
000,000.

Whatever may have been the considerations that prompted in
recent years the abatement of this important source of national
revenue in the United States, it is certain that they were not
based on any sound financial policy, or on any lesson of past
experience in respect to the best methods of raising revenue.
Taxes on tobacco are taxes on a typical luxury. Their payment
is not obligatory, as are the taxes on the essentials of living, on
any citizen, but are in the nature of a voluntary assessment on
the part of the consumer, on whom the entire burden of the tax
ultimately rests, and which payments may be properly regarded
as representing his surplus income. They are not obstructive to
the development of any other industrial product, and there is no
evidence that the highest rate ever assessed under the internal
revenue has ever been productive of general discontent on the
part of the masses of the American people.

The popular argument that a low rate of tax should be im-
posed on tobacco, because the burden of it falls mainly and dis-
proportionately upon the poorer classes, has no foundation in fact.
If the exact facts could be known, it would probably be found
that by far the greater portion of the tax is paid by the well-
to-do part of the community, who consume the high grades of
tobacco. Again, the revenues of the Federal Government are
almost exclusively derived from taxes on commodities which are
paid by their consumers ; and when any deficiency of needed rev-
enue is occasioned by the reduction or entire abatement of the
taxes on any one commodity or class of commodities, the defi-
ciency must be made good by new or increased taxes on other
commodities, the consumption of which is often more essential to
the poorer classes than the article exempted. Thus, for exam-

HOW TO RAISE RL VENUE. 741

pie, the consumer of any class can better afford to pay taxes on
his tobacco — in the form of chewing, snuff, smoking, cigars, and
cheroots — than he can on foods, fabrics, and the raw materials of
his industry. Another point generally overlooked in this discus-
sion, is that when a tax which is direct, as is the tax on tobacco
and spirits, is shifted to a supplementary tax which is indirect,
the consumer may feel certain that his burden of tax will be aug-
mented very considerably, often io the extent of twenty-five and
even fifty per cent, by payment of profits to merchants and other
middle men.

Stamps as Sources of Revenue. — The instrumentality of
stamps as a means of obtaining revenue, although attended with
less friction and expense than almost any other methods, and
which was advantageously incorporated in the war system of
taxation, can hardly be said to have had a place in recent years in
the internal revenue system of the Federal Government ; the
stamps used in connection with the taxation of distilled spirits,
fermented liquors, and tobacco — which are peculiar to the United
States and not in use for like purposes in any other country —
being rather in the nature of instrumentalities for facilitating the
collection of taxes than independent sources of revenue. In fact,
the only strictly revenue-producing stamp tax now existing is
the tax of two cents per pack on playing-cards, the receipts from
which declined from $382,403 in 1895 (the first year of its imposi-
tion) to $259,853 in 1896 — a result that certainly warrants the
modified application of an old proverb that, "under a free gov-
ernment, the rulers may propose taxes, but the people will dis-
pose of them."

Under the fiscal system of the British Government (United
Kingdom) the revenue which P4,ccrued in 1893-'94: from stamps
was £12,799,000 ($62,244,000). The sources from which this ag-
gregate of stamp revenue was obtained are numerous and of a
character that are not in the main applicable to the fiscal sys-
tem and Government of the United States, and for the most part
are classified as follows : Probate duties ; legacy duties ; duties on
estates, real and personal ; succession duties ; capital duties on
companies ; receipts ; records ; patent medicines ; marine insur-
ances, etc.* In fact, it is said that you can do nothing of any con-
sequence in Great Britain without a stamp of some kind.

A system of taxation through the instrumentality of stamps
can, however, be devised and made a permanent feature of the

* Under the British system foreign bonds, whether issued by a state, a municipal body,
a corporation, or a company, are chargeable with stamp duty if made or issued in the United
Kingdom ; or if offered for» subscription and given or delivered to a subscriber in the United
Kingdom, though originally issued abroad ; or if assigned, transferred, or in any manner
negotiated in the United Kingdom, provided the interest is payable in that country.

742 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

internal revenue of the United States, whicli, in respect to facil-
ity, economy of administration,* and productiveness of revenues,
ought to have much to commend itself. A system formulated by
discarding, if thought expedient, all stamp taxes on drafts, checks,
promissory notes, receipts, releases, matches, etc., as vexatious
rather than valuable, and making their fixation and cancellation
obligatory on every deed, mortgage, or certificate of stock at the
time of their transfer of ownership, by sale or otherwise, at the
rate of fifty cents per every thousand dollars of their face value,
and every fractional part thereof, would be highly productive of
revenue and have much otherwise to recommend it. A man that
sells or transfers a farm or mortgage, or a certificate of stock,
for $10,000, would not think a stamp of five dollars very burden-
some. In its applicability to the purchase and sale of real estate
it would have the characteristics of a land tax, the incidence of
which, although always and necessarily equitable, proportionate,
and free from anything like discrimination, would be the light-
est on lands uncultivated or devoted to agriculture, and heaviest
on lands at the great centers of population and trade, for the pur-
chase of which its surface must be, as it were, always covered
with gold, f It probably would not be agreeable to speculators
in stocks, to the creators of fictitious " trusts," or to the directors
of swindling railroad, mine, and other like organizations, who, if
not benefited in respect of their profits, might be to some extent
as to their morals. Such a tax, moreover, would be as readily
and economically collected as that of the postage stamp, and, like
the latter, would have to be paid for before using. How much
revenue would annually accrue to the national Treasury from such
a system of taxation through stamps is not easy to estimate, but
undoubtedly it would be very considerable. In the way of infor-
mation helping to form an opinion on this subject the listing of
stocks and bonds on the New York Stock Exchange during the
year 1896, exclusively to replace old securities, is reported as
amounting to nearly $1,175,000,000. During the recent years of
business depression an average yearly sale of 56,000,000 shares of
stock in New York city is reported; but during what are re-

* The cost to the Government in 1868 of revenue stamps for checks, drafts, receipts,
and other like instruments, was twelve and a half cents per thousand. The cost of col-
lecting the entire receipts of the internal revenue in 1894 was 2"'70 per cent.

f " A million dollars and half a million more were recently paid for five lots on Broad-
way, New York, opposite Bowling Green. This was the value of the land alone, as the old
buildings it bore were at once to be torn down. A year or two ago the corner of Liberty
Street and Nassau, measuring seventy-nine feet along the one and one hundred and twelve
along the other, and about one hundred feet in depth, brought $1,250,000, and this, again,
for the sake of the land alone." — Places in New York, Mrs. Van Rensselaer, Century
Magazine.

HOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 743

garded as prosperous times the yearly aggregate of sales not
infrequently exceeds 100,000,000 shares.

Petroleum and its Derivatives. — Another source of revenue
readily and largely available to the Federal Government, which
since 1868 has almost entirely escaped attention, is petroleum and
its derivatives. The present annual production of these com-
modities is probably about 54,000,000 barrels, and of this product
the present annual domestic consumption is estimated at 28,000,-
000 barrels of forty-two gallons each, or 1,176,000,000 gallons. Of the
balance of product, in either a crude or refined state, 931,785,000
gallons were exported in 1896, and therefore exempt from taxation.
A tax of two cents per gallon, or eighty-four cents per barrel, on
domestic consumption, which could be as readily collected through
the agency of stamps as the taxes on distilled spirits, fermented
liquors, and tobacco, might yield an approximate annual revenue
of $24,000,000. An interesting circumstance in this connection,
and one strikingly illustrative of the remarkable change in the
industrial and fiscal relations of this product in the last thirty
years, is to be found in the fact that when refined petroleum was
previously taxed by the Government the rate was fifteen cents
per gallon in 1866 and ten cents in 1867 ; the amount brought to
charge during the latter year being 24,999,000 gallons, as compared
with over 1,000,000,000 gallons accessible at the present time.

Inasmuch as the Federal revenue, customs and internal, is de-
rived on principle almost entirely from the taxation of commodi-
ties of common and popular consumption, especially from distilled
spirits, fermented liquors, tobacco, and sugar, there is no good
reason why, if a present additional and prospective increase of
revenue is needed, a commodity properly belonging to the natural
resources of the country, and which has proved a source of im-
mense wealth to those concerned in its distribution, should not
also contribute to the expenses of its Government, more especially
when fully one half of the domestic product, by reason of its
being exported, would not be subject to any form of taxation.
That a tax of two cents per gallon would probably be entirely
transferred by an additional price to the consumer is almost cer-
tain ; and yet that there would be no necessity for such action
would seem to be proved by the circumstance, that in recent
years the market price of refined petroleum for considerable pe-
riods has varied more than the proposed rate of tax without
any recognized restriction of supply on the part of the trust that
controls its product.

Tea and Coffee as Sources of National Revenues.— The
policy of making the consumption of tea and coffee sources of
national revenue through customs taxation on the imports of these
commodities has much to recommend it. The present annual con-

744 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

sumption of tea in the United States is about 94,000,000 pounds,
and of coffee about 600,000,000 pounds ; the importation of these
two commodities in 1895 having been, however, considerably
greater — namely, of tea, 97,168,866 pounds, and of coffee, 655,-
564,000 pounds. A levy of three cents a pound on tea and three
cents a pound on coffee would yield a present annual revenue in
excess of $20,000,000, and represent an ad-valorem rate of about
twenty per cent on both commodities — rates that would probably
not interfere with their popular consumption in the least degree.
If sugar, a commodity of more indispensible popular use, is re-
garded as not overburdened by a tax of forty per cent ad valorem,
tea and coffee could easily stand a like duty. This would make
the tax on each article six cents a pound, with an accruing reve-
nue at the present rate of consumption of more than $40,000,000
per annum. Under the revenue system existing in 1870, coffee
was taxed five cents a pound and tea twenty five cents, and the
aggregate revenue from both commodities was $22,881,000. The
arguments in opposition to imposing a duty on imports of tea
and coffee are, mainly, two : First, that it is inexpedient to an-
tagonize a free breakfast table; second, that customs taxes
ought not to be imposed on the imports of comrnodities not pro-
duced in the United States.

Now the popular phrase " a free breakfast table " is a mere
sentimental expression, and in relation to fiscal matters an ab-
surdity, even if its authorship be attributed to as high author-
ity as Mr. Gladstone. A free breakfast table, in the sense of the
complete exemption of all its constituents from taxation, is ut-
terly impossible in a civilized country where taxation is essen-
tial to the support of a government; and the only place where
an approximate result could be attained would be some tropical
isle where a native obtains his breakfast by pulling a banana
from a tree, extracting a yam from the ground, or catching some-
thing which the sea supplies gratuitouslj'-. Think of the nature
of a statute which, in order to meet the requirements of a free
breakfast table in the United States, would exempt from taxation
everything generally used in connection therewith — china, crock-
ery, earthenware, glass, hardware, fish, flesh, cereals, fruits, and
vegetables — and make the same subject to taxation to meet the
requirements for revenue when otherwise utilized. The second
antagonizing argument is equally unwarranted and absurd. Cus-
toms taxes on the importation of articles not produced in this
country are the only taxes on imports in respect to which the peo-
ple can have an assurance that, apart from the small cost of as-
sessing and collecting, the Government will certainly receive all
that they pay; and any man who argues to the contrary does
not know what he is talking about, or has the idea that taxes on

HOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 745

imports should be levied, not merely for revenue and tlie sup-
port of the state, but also in furtherance of some individual
interests.

Sugar. — Next in importance to the domestic consumption of
distilled spirits as an easily available source of national revenue
is the consumption of imported sugars. In the twenty-four
years from 1867 to 1890, when imported sugars paid duties, the
lowest sum received in any one year was $31,000,000 (in 1872),
and the highest $58,000,000 (in 1887). After 1885 to 1890 inclusive
at least $50,000,000 annually could be counted upon from this
one item of imports, and the duty, estimated on an ad-valorem
basis, varied from sixty-two to seventy-eight per cent, according
to the fluctuations in the price of sugar. Such a long average de-
gree of taxation made but little change in the consumption of the
country, distributed itself very evenly over the whole population,
and averaged less than seventy cents per capita of a population
ranging from fifty to sixty millions. After April, 1891, duties on
sugars were abolished, except half a cent a pound on sugar above
No. 16 (continued with a view of protecting the refining interests
of the United States), on confectionery, and small discriminating
duties on sugars coming from countries which are believed to pay
a bounty on exported sugars. The results of this extraordinary
policy, which has been not inaptly characterized as one of the
most disgraceful pieces of fiscal legislation ever perpetrated in a
free country, was that the duty on imported sugars, which
amounted to over $50,000,000 in 1891, ran down to $176,795 in 1892,
and $163,956 in 1894. The Government, moreover, with a prac-
tical repeal of all duties on raw sugars, began the disbursement
of money for bounties on domestic sugar, which amounted in
round numbers since 1892 to about $35,000,000. Increased impor-
tations brought up the revenue from sugar to $15,599,342 in 1895,
and $29,897,000 in 1896, the latter representing an import of 3,666,-
842,395 pounds, which, if subjected to a duty of one cent per
pound, would have yielded a revenue of $36,666,000.

With the absolute necessity for increased revenue to meet
increased expenditures, there is no good reason why the duties
on the import of sugars should not be so adjusted as to insure a
permanent annual revenue of at least $50,000,000, which amount,
with a consuming population smaller by at least ten millions,
was exceeded in 1885. During the month of January, 1897, the
import price of sugar was two cents per pound for cane and one
and nine tenths for beet. If on this basis of import prices the
average rate of duty under the present tariff — namely, forty per
cent — were levied, only four fifths of a cent a pound duty would
be collected.

A question of importance which next presents itself, and about

746 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

whicli there is a great difference of opinion, is, the form in which
the duty on the imports of sugar shall be assessed — specific or
ad valorem ? To help to the formation of a correct opinion on
this subject, attention is asked to the following exhibit of the na-
ture and practical workings of these two forms of taxation. The
ad valorem system, proportions duties to the worth of the goods
at the place of shipment at so much per cent of their market
value. Its chief merit is its justice and equity. It adjusts itself
automatically to differences of valuation or of commercial quali-
ties, so that the tax collected from the consumer varies in propor-
tion to his ability to pay — at least so far as this may be deter-
mined by his ability to buy goods of greater or less cost.

The chief demerit commonly ascribed to it is the temptation
which it is said to offer to fraudulent undervaluation. Since
the duty to be paid depends upon the foreign value, if this can
be made to appear less than it really is, some part of the tax is
evaded, and the cost of the goods to the importer diminished.
The difficulty of evading a customs revenue under a good and
intelligent administration through undervaluation is illustrated
by the circumstance that, in order to secure a saving of as much
as six per cent on the landed cost of goods, the dishonest importer
in the case of a forty-per-cent duty would have to swear an under-
valuation of more than twenty per cent. On the other hand, the
great advantage of a simple specific duty is the care and certainty
with which it may be applied. If, for instance, the duty upon a
class of textile fabrics should be fixed at forty cents a pound, includ-
ing all accessories involved in packing, the weight of the contents
of a case would show, by simple multiplication, the exact amount
of duty to be paid. No expensive process of examination need be
entered upon. Disputes can hardly arise, and false swearing is
out of the question. Such duties have been found most useful
when imposed upon simple articles not produced in widely vary-
ing grades of greatly differing commercial values.

The injustice and inexpediency of specific duties are, that they
bear so much less heavily upon the high-priced than upon the
low-priced qualities of goods, that the poorer classes of the com-
munity are taxed at a much higher rate than the richer. Neither
do they adjust themselves to ups and downs of market values ;
and a rate of duty reasonable enough when enacted is often trans-
formed by a fall of price into an onerous and prohibitory tax
restricting imports and diminishing revenue. It is not, therefore,
surprising that the attempt had been made to unite, if possible,
the certainty and inevitableness of the specific system with the
justice and equity of the ad-valorem principle. Two methods of
combination of specific and ad-valorem rates have therefore here-
tofore been adopted.

HOW TO RAISE REVENUE. 747

Viewed from the standpoint of equity and expediency, tlie
proposition to assess all the varieties of imported sugars at one
and the same rate of duty is something extraordinary. The
United States, for the attainment of its fullest material develop-
ment as a nation, must have foreign commerce. It desires to
attract all nations to its markets ; and, except when it is itself
made the subject of discrimination, it must, for the attainment
of this end, admit to equal privileges the people of all nations
desiring commercial intercourse. Were the proposition soberly
made to discriminate specially and by name, in our commercial
laws, against any one, two, or more unoffending nations, the pro-
ponent would be speedily hooted into silence. But the proposi-
tion to assess raw sugars at one rate embodies this very thing.
Thus, to illustrate, the sugars produced in countries of low civili-
zation, like Brazil, Central America, the East Indies, and the like,
constifMte the hulk of the sugar product of the luorld, and are low
in grade and price, and necessarily so because these countries
lack intelligence and capital. Such sugars are, however, capable
of purification without difficulty, and afford the largest basis in
so doing for the profitable employment of domestic labor and
capital. The producers, furthermore, must sell them in our
markets if they in return are to buy any of the products of our
skill and machinery, for they have little or nothing else to buy
with. Such raw sugars naturally command the lowest prices in
the world's markets. On the other hand, the raw sugars pro-
duced in Cuba and Demerara are much further advanced in
manufacture, and are largely known as "centrifugals," from
having been subjected to a purely mechanical (rotary) process
of refining. Such raw sugars command the highest prices, and
are worth on the average at least fifty per cent more than the
sugar products of countries of a low civilization. A uniform
duty on all raw sugars of one cent per pound would, therefore,
be equivalent to an ad-valorem tax, or tax on market value, of
about fifty per cent on the cheaper grades, and about twenty-five
per cent on the highest grades ; or, in other words, if the Gov-
ernment, under a uniform rate of one cent, were to collect its
(customs) taxes in kind on sugar, it would take one half the
importations of low-grade sugars, while only one fourth of the
importation of high grades would be taken for the same purpose.
All the machinery of the Government is now adapted to the ad-
valorem system of taxing sugars, and in the opinion of the
Treasury officials it can be and is honestly administered.

It is difficult to see why, with an impending deficiency of
national revenue, sugar grown in the Hawaiian Islands, and the
importation of which into the United States in 1895 exceeded
280,000,000 pounds, should be admitted free of duty. Is it not

748 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

clear that sncTi an exemption constitutes another and indirect
form of taxation incumbent on the American people ?

What the National Revenue was in 1896, and what

MIGHT BE anticipated IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE FROM CER-
TAIN Modifications op the Existing Tax System, — The reve-
nues of the Government from all sources — exclusive of the postal
service, in which the receipts and expenditures closely balance —
for the fiscal year 1896 were $326,976,200, of which $146,762,864
accrued from internal-revenue taxes, and $160,021,751 from
customs.

Contingent on the modifications of the internal- revenue sys-
tem above proposed, the annual receipts from this department,
considered in reference to the special sources pertaining to it,
would, without much doubt, be approximately as follows :

FroTYi distilled spirits, provided there is no exemption of any
part of its product from taxation for any purpose, $100,000,000:
a result more likely to be attained if the present ratio of tax,
$1.10 per proof gallon, be reduced to its former rate of ninety
cents.

From fermented liquors, with an increased tax to the extent
of $1 per barrel, $60,000,000.

From tobacco, on the assumption that political and popular
sentiment will not permit any increase of rates, $35,000,000 ;
although, if a fiscal policy in furtherance of the best interests of
the Government were alone considered, the annual accruing rev-
enue from this source would be at least double.

From petroleum and its derivatives, $24,000,000.

From stamps, $30,000,000, which can be readily increased to
$50,000,000.

From tea and coffee, under a twenty-per-cent duty, $20,000,000 ;
under a duty of forty per cent, $40,000,000.

From sugar, such a rate of duty on its import as will insure
an annual revenue of at least $50,000,000.

Total, $319,000,000, leaving a deficit, on an estimated annual
expenditure of $500,000,000, of $189,000,000. To meet this re-
quirement, the entire revenue from customs, other than from the
imports of sugar (already considered), and incidental revenues to
the extent of $15,000,000, are available.

Doubtless, to many the proposal to increase the existing num-
ber of special sources of national revenue, with modifications of
existing rates, will seem inexpedient and unnecessary; but, with
a constant tendency to increase national expenditures, it is only a
question of time when such changes will have to be made ; and
the future record of the new administration and the new Con-
gress, for good or for ill, will be largely determined by the man-
ner they answer this question: Shall money be saved by new

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 749

economies or provided by new and increased taxes ? And if the
latter policy is favored, its advocates will do well to remember,
that any taxes that tend to obstruct the export of the surplus
products of the country will not long be tolerated.*

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH.f

By DAVID STARR JORDAN,

PEESIDEKT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOB UNIVEKSITT.

\_ConcIuded.'\

THE primal motive of science is to regulate the conduct of life.
This is in a sense its ultimate end, for it is the first and the
last function of the senses and the intellect. If science has any
message to man, it is expressed in these words of Huxley : "There
can be no alleviation of the sufferings of mankind except in ab-
solute veracity of thought and action and a resolute facing of the
world as it is, with all the garment of make-believe thrown off."

" Still, men and nations reap as they have strewn." The
history of human thought is filled with the rise of philosophic
doctrines, laws, and generalizations not drawn from human ex-
perience and not sanctioned by science. The attempt to use these
ideas as a basis of human action has been one of the most fruitful
sources of human misery. It is true that wrong information may
sometimes become the basis of right action, as falsehood may
secure obedience to a natural law which might otherwise be vio-
lated. But in the long run men and nations pay dearly for every
illusion they cherish. For every sick man healed at Denver or
Lourdes, ten well men will be made sick. Faith cures and patent
medicines feed on the same victims. For every Schlatter who
is worshiped as a saint, some equally harmless lunatic will be
burned as a witch.

And now a word as to the positive side of scientific belief.

* Touching the question of national revenue and its present yearly deficiency, the fol-
lowing opinion, expressed by the late Secretary of the Treasury, in his annual report on the
finances of the country for 1896, has an important bearing on this problem, and ought not
to fail of popular consideration : " Hereafter," he says, " it will not be possible to sacrifice
revenue to protection without seriously embarrassing the fiscal affairs of the Govern-
ment by depriving it of an income sufficient to defray its necessary expenditures. If the
usual proportion of this income is hereafter to be derived from taxes on imported goods, the
protective theory must be abandoned as the basis of our legislation upon the subject, and a
well-considered and consistent revenue system must be substituted in its place ; and, in my
opinion, this can be done without material injury to any trade or industry now existing in
this country,"

•j- President's address, California Science Association meeting, Oakland, December, 1895.

750 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

I was walking not long ago in the garden with a little girl, to
whom I told James Whitcomb Riley's story of the " goblins that
get you if you don't watch out " — a story supposed to be peculiarly
attractive to children. " But there isn't any such thing as a gob-
lin," said the practical little girl, " and there isn't ever going to
be any such thing." Mindful of the arguments of Berkeley and
Balfour, I said to her in the spirit of philosophic doubt, " Maybe
there isn't any such thing as anything, Barbara ? " " Yes, there
is," she said, " such a thing as anything," and she looked about
her for unquestioned reality ; " there is such a thing as anything ;
there is such a thing as a squash."

And in this conclusion of the little girl the reality of the ob-
jective world, the integrity of science, and the sanity of man are
alike bound up. And for its evidence, if we are not confined to
Balfour's arguments in a circle, we may look to the facts of or-
ganic evolution, of which the existence of man is a part.

Each living being is a link in a continuous chain of life, going
back in the past to the unknown beginnings of life. Into this
chain of life, as far as we know. Death has never entered, because
only in life has the ancestor the power of casting off the germ
cells by which life is continued. Each individual is in a sense
the guardian of the life-chain in which it forms a link. Each
link is tested as to its fitness to the conditions external to itself in
which it carries on its functions. Those creatures unadapted to
the environment, whatever it may be, are destroyed, as well as
those not adaptable ; and this environment by which each is tested
is the objective universe. It is not the world as man knows it.
It is not the world as the creature may imagine it. It is the
world as it is.

Nature has no pardon for ignorance or illusions. She is no
respecter of persons. Her laws and her penalties consider only
what is, and have no dealings with semblances. By this expe-
rience we come to know what reality is, that there is an exter-
nal world to the demands of which our senses, our reason, our
powers of action are all concessions. The safety of each chain
of life is proportioned to the adaptation of its links to these
conditions. This adaptation is in its essence obedience. The
obedience of any creature is conditioned on its response in action
to sensations or knowledge. Sense perception and intellect alike
stand as advisers to its power of choice. The power of choice
involves the need to choose right. For wrong choice leads to
death. Death ends the chain of which the creature is a link,
and the life of the world is continued by those whose choice has
not been fatal. That " the sins of the fathers are visited on the
children " is, in the long run, the expression of Infinite Mercy,
" the goodness and severity of God." Severity of condition and

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 751

stress of competition are met in life by the survival of those ade-
quate to meet these conditions. Thus " in creatures sore bestead
by the environment " when instinct and impulse fail, reason rises
to insure safety. At last with the civilized man reason comes to
be a chief element in guiding the choice of life.

With greater power to know and hence to choose safely,
greater complexity of conditions become possible, and the multi-
farious demands of modern civilization finds some at least who
can meet them fairly well. To such the stores of human wisdom
must be open. To others right choice in new conditions is pos-
sible only through following the footsteps of others. The multi-
tudes of civilized men, like the multitudes of animals, are saved
to life by the i stinct of conventionality. The instinct to follow
those whose footsteps are secure is one of the most useful of all
impulses to action. In the same connection we must recognize
authority as a most important source of knowledge to the indi-
vidual. But its value is proportioned to the ability of the indi-
vidual to use the tests wisdom must apply to the credentials of
authority. But instinct, appetite, impulse, conventionality, and
respect for authority all point backward. They are the outcome
of past conditions. " New occasions bring new duties." New
facts and laws must be learned if men are to remain adequate to
the life which their own institutions, their self-realization, and
their mutual help have brought upon them. To the wise and
obedient the most complex life brings no special strain nor dis-
comfort. It is as easy to do great things as small, if one knows
how. But to the ignorant, weak, and perverse, the growth of
civilization becomes an engine of destruction. The freedom of
self-realization involves the freedom of self-perdition. Hence
appears the often discussed relation of " Progress and Poverty "
in social development. Hence it comes that civilization, of which
the essence is mutual help or altruism, under changing conditions
seems to become one vast instrument for the killing of fools.

In the specialization of life, conditions are constantly chang-
ing. Every age is an age of transition, and transition brings
unrest because it impairs the value of conventionality. With the
lowest forms of life there is no safety save in absolute obedience
to the laws of the world around them. This obedience becomes
automatic and hereditary because the disobedient leave no chain
of descent to |maintain their disobedience. All instincts, appe-
tites, impulses to action, even many conditions of the nature of
illusions, point toward such obedience. Whether we regard these
phenomena as variations selected because useful, or as inherited
habits, their relation is the same. They survive as guarantees of
future obedience because they have brought obedience in the past.
And so with the most enlightened man, the same necessity for

752 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

obedience exists, and the instincts, appetites, and impulses of the
lower animals remain in him, or disappear only as reason is ade-
quate to take their place. And in any case there is no alleviation
for the woes of life, " save the absolute veracity of action ; the
resolute facing of the world as it is."

The intense practicality of all this must be recognized. The
truths of science are approximate, not absolute. They must be
stated in terms of human consciousness, and they can never be
dissevered from possible human action. Knowledge which can
only accumulate without being woven into conduct has never
been a boon to its possessor. As food must be formed into tissue,
so must perception go over into action. In the lower forms, we
have the devices, chiefly automatic, by which sensation trans-
mitted to the sensorium reappears as motion. In like manner
we find in man, besides these reflex transfers, and the reflex con-
nections formed by habit, that science becomes changed to art
and knowledge to power. Power and effectiveness are condi-
tioned on accuracy. Every failure in the sense organ, every form
of deterioration of the nerves, shows itself in reduction of power.
Reduced effectiveness shows itself through the processes of natu-
ral selection, as reduction is safety in life. Thus the degeneration
of the nervous gystem through excesses, through precocious ac-
tivity, or through the effect of stimulants shows itself in untrust-
worthy perceptions, in uncontrolled muscles, and in the lack of
security in life. Incidentally all these are recorded by fall in
social standing. With the reduction of the accuracy of recog-
nition of reality the person ceases to hold his place as a man
among men.

Similar failure comes with any cause impairing the recogni-
tion of the reality of external things. The sober mind is neces-
sary to safety in life. In general all civilized men are well born.
They come of good stock. For the lineage of perversity, insanity,
and even stupidity is never a long one. The perverse, insane, and
the stupid live through the tolerance of others. They can not
maintain themselves, and, in spite of charity and the sense of
conventionality, the mortality caused by the fool-killer is some-
thing enormous. It is an essential element in race progress. It
grows with increased civilization, because of increasing com-
plexity of condition. It is the chief compensating influence for
the life-saving which has been made possible for scientific re-
search. As Prof. H. H. Powers has said, " There is in civilization
not a single vice that race progress can spare.'* " The fool-killer,"
Dr. Bailey tells us, "the fool-curer, and the fool-preventer are
alike servants of the living God."

The recent " recrudescence of superstition " — a striking accom-
paniment of an age of science — is in a sense dependent on science.

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 753

Science has made it possible. The traditions of science are so
diffused among the people at large that fools find it safe to defy
them. Those who take dreams for realities ; those whose memory-
impressions and motor dreams are uncontrolled through defective
will ; those who mistake subjective sensations produced by disease
or disorder for objective conditions — all these are sooner or later
dropped from existence, taking with them the whole line of their
possible successors. The condition of mind which is favorable to
mysticism, superstition, and revery is unfavorable to life, and the
continuance of such conditions leads to death. On the billboard
across the street I saw just now the advertisement of a lecture on
the "ethical value of living in two worlds at once." Whoever
thus lives in two worlds is certain soon to prove inadequate for
either.

If all men sought healing from the blessed handkerchief of
the lunatic, or from contact with old bones or old clothes ; if all
physicians used "revealed remedies," or the remedies Nature finds
for each disease; if all business were conducted by faith; if all
supposed " natural rights " of man were made the basis of legisla-
tion ; if all the protean phases of that which Zangwill has cleverly
called the " higher foolishness " were worked out in action — the
insecurity of these beliefs would speedily appear-. Not only civ-
ilization but civilized man himself would vanish from the earth.
The safe shelter of the cave and hollow tree would be the cradle
of the "new man" and the "new woman." The long and bloody
road of progress through fool-killing would for centuries be trav-
ersed again. The fool lives in society only by sufferance of the
sane ; the weak, by the altruism of the strong. That is strong
which endures. Might does not make right, but that which is
right will justify itself by becoming might. What we call social
virtues are the elements of race stability.

In the ordinary affairs of life it may be as safe to believe in
mahatmas and magic, in cobolds and norns, as to have the vague
notions of microbes and molecules, atoms and protoplasm, which
form part of the mental equipment of the average modern man.
But the difference appears when the knowledge is to be turned
into action. Microbes and molecules become more real the more
nearly one comes to deal with them. If one learns to use them
they become as real as rocks or dollars and as capable of influ-
encing human welfare. But those conceptions which are fig-
ments of ignorance and insanity become less real as we try to
deal with them, and the action based on them is not safe nor
effective.

So clearly is knowledge linked to action that in general among
animals and men when action is not possible sensation is absent
or not trustworthy. Objects too small to be touched are invisible

VOL L. — 57

754 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to the eye. Objects beyond our reach, as the stars or the clouds,
are not truthfully pictured. Accuracy of perception grows less
as distance increases. The unfamiliar lends itself readily to illu-
sions ; the familiar is recognized chiefly by breaks in continuity.
The real forces of Nature are hidden by their grandeur, by their
immortality. Men see the form of the surface, but not the
mighty tides that move beneath it. Again, the senses are less
acute than the mechanism of sense organs would make possible.
This is shown through occasional cases of hyperaesthesia or ultra
sensitiveness. This occurs in abnormal individuals or in unusual
conditions. It occurs normally in creatures whose lives in some
sense depend on it. Thus some of the most remarkable exhibi-
tions of "mind reading" may be paralleled by retriever dogs
whose reason for existence is found in the hyperaesthesia of the
sense of smell. Hypersesthesia of any of the senses would be to
most animals a source of confusion and danger rather than of
safety.

Man's high development of the brain in large degree takes the
place of acuteness of special senses. It is part of the function of
the will to keep down the senses ; and in his perception of exter-
nal relations he is aided by the devices of science, which may be
taken up or laid down at will. By means of instruments of pre-
cision any of the senses may be aided to an enormous degree, and
at the same time the personal equation or individual source of
error is largely eliminated. The use of instruments of precision
is the special characteristic of the advance of science. No instru-
ment of precision can give us the ultimate essence of any part of
the universe. No scientific experiment can do away with the
measure of human experience as the basis of intelligibility. At
the same time we can throw large illumination into " the dimly
lighted room " in which, according to Balfour, the phenomena of
consciousness take place. By the simple process of photography,
for example, we may reproduce the objects of our environment.
That such pictures do express phases of reality admits of no
doubt, for in the photographic camera all personal equation is
eliminated. As to form of outline and reflection of light, the
" sun paints true," and the paintings thus made by means of the
action of nonliving matter produce on our senses impressions co-
inciding with those of the outside world itself.

How do we know this is true ? Because belief in it adds to
the safety of life. We can trust our lives to it. If it were an
illusion it would kill, because action based on illusion leads to
death.

One can trust his life, for example, to the message sent on a
telegraph wire. All who travel by rail do this daily. One can
trust his life to the reading of a thermometer. The chemist's

THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 755

tests will select for us foods among poisons. We may trust tliese
tests absolutely. We may safely and sometimes wisely take
poisons into our bodies if we know what we are doing. By the
advice of a physician, trusting in the weigher's instruments of
precision, poisons may do no harm. One grain of strychnine
may be an aid to vital processes ; a dozen may mean instant ces-
sation of these processes. The balance advises us as to all this.
All these instruments of precision belong to science. These are
examples taken from thousands of the methods of organized com-
mon sense. By means of common sense, organized and unorgan-
ized, all creatures that can move are enabled to move safely. The
security of human life in its relations to environment is a suffi-
cient answer to the "philosophic doubt" of Berkeley and Balfour
as to the existence of external Nature ; for if all phenomena were
within the mind, no one of them could be more dangerous than
another. A dream of murder is no more dangerous than a dream
of an afternoon pink tea, so long as its action is confined to the
limits of the dream; but the relation of life to environment is
inseparable and inexorable. Cause and effect are perfectly
linked. This is a world of absolute verity, and its demand is
absolute obedience. Life without concessions of conditions is the
philosopher's dream.

What we know as pain is the necessary signal of warning of
bad results, of bad relations. Without pain life conditioned by
environment would be impossible. We need such stimulus to
veracity. Those dangers which are painless are the hardest
to avoid ; the diseases which are painless are the most difficult to
cure. Misery in general is only Nature's protest against personal
degradation. The way out of misery is the way into life.

In this relation must science recognize the value of ideals ?
The ideal in the mind tends always to go over into, action. The
noble ideal discloses itself in a noble life. It is part of the wisdom
of each generation, its science as well as its religion, to form the
ideals of the rest. History is written in these ideals before it is
come to the stage of life. An ideal is not a dream ; a dream is
fleeting. An ideal has the urill behind it. The persistence of a
lofty ideal is the central axis of the life worth living.

An old parable of the conduct of life shows man in a light
skiff in a tortuous channel beset with rocks, borne by a falling
current to an unknown sea. He is kept awake by the needs of
his situation. As his boat bumps against the rocks he must bestir
himself. If this contact were not painful he would not heed it.
If it were not hurtful he would not need to heed it. Had he no
power to act, he could not heed it if he would. But with sensa-
tion, will, freedom to act, narrow though the limits of freedom be,
his safety rests in some degree in his own hands. That he has

756 POPULAR SCI^JS^CE MONTHLY,

secured safety thus far is shown by his continued existence. He
may choose his course for himself — not an easy thing to do, unless
he scans most carefully the nature of the rocks and waves and
his control of the boat itself. He may follow the course of others
with some degree of the safety they have attained. He may fol-
low his own impulses, in man's case inherited from those who
found them safe guides to action. But in new conditions neither
conventionality nor impulse nor desire will suffice. He must
know what is about him in order that he may know what he is
doing. He must know what he is doing in order to do anything
effectively. Ignorant action is more dangerous than no action at
all. The " sealed orders " under which live the lower animals and
our "brother organisms the plants" are in a measure inadequate
for man. With the power of movement and the " knowledge of
good and evil," he has no choice but to accept the conditions. He
must shape his own life. He must make his ideals into actuality.
And thus it comes that there is " no alleviation for the sufferings
of man except through absolute veracity of thought and action,
and the resolute facing of the world as it is." For wisdom is only
knowing what should be done next, and virtue is doing it. And
thus it comes that it is well for man " not to pretend to know or
to believe what he really does not know or believe " ; for there is
no safety in life, either for ourselves or others, if we guide our
conduct by any influence less wise or potent than that developed
from the co-ordination of human wisdom. We may play at phi-
losophy, if we have pleasure in doing so. We may find intellec-
tual strength through exercise of the mind even on its own prod-
ucts. But we must guide our lives by science. The appetites,
impulses, passions, illusions, if you choose, which have proved
safe in the past development of life, science would not destroy.
But they must be subordinate to the will and intellect. And this
subordination of the lower to the higher motives in life is the
culmination of evolution, as it has been the ideal of those whose
strivings for better relations of man to man and of man to Nature
have been worthy of the name of religion.

The will is the soul of man in action. The intellect is its
guide. If the life of man is hemmed in by the Fates, the human
will is one of the Fates, and must take its place by the side of the
rest of them. The man who can will is a factor in the universe.

As knowledge is in its essence only a guide to action, and as
knowledge, being human, can be approximate only — not reality
but a movement toward reality — we are brought to the oft- quoted
words of Lessing :

" It is not the truth in man's possession that makes the worth
of the man. Possession makes him selfish, lazy, proud. Not
through possession, but through long striving, comes the ever-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 757

growing strength. If God should hold in his right hand all truth
and in his left hand only the ceaseless struggle to reach after
truth, and he should say to me. Choose ; I would fall in humble-
ness before his left hand and say:

" ' Father, give ; the perfect truth is but for thee alone.' "

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.

(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. KIPLEY, Pii. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN
ANTHEOPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.

T

IIL— BLONDES AND BRUNETTES.

^HE color of the skin has been from the earliest times regarded
as a primary means of racial identification. The ancient
Egyptians were accustomed to distinguish the races known to
them by this means both upon their monuments and in their
inscriptions. Notwithstanding this long acquaintance, the phe-
nomenon of pigmentation remains to-day among the least under-
stood departments of physical anthropology. One point alone
seems to have been definitely proved : however marked the con-
trasts in color between the several varieties of the human species
may be, there is no corresponding difference in anatomical struc-
ture discoverable.

Pigmentation arises from the deposition of coloring matter in
a special series of cells, which lie just between the translucent
outer skin or epidermis and the inner or true skin known as the
cutis. It was long supposed that these pigment cells were
peculiar to the dark-skinned races; but investigation has shown
that the structure in all types is identical. The differences in
color are due, not to the presence or absence of the cells them-
selves, but to variations in the amount of pigment therein de-
posited. In this respect, therefore, the negro differs physiologic-
ally, rather than anatomically, from the European or the Asiatic.
Yet this trait, although superficial so to speak, is exceedingly
persistent, even through considerable racial intermixture. The
familiar legal test in our Southern States in the ante-beUimi days
for the determination of the legal status of octoroons was to look
for the bit of color at the base of the finger nails. Under the
transparent outer skin in this place the telltale pigmentation
would remain, despite a long- continued infusion of white blood.

In respect of the color of the skin, we may roughly divide the
human species into four groups indicated upon our world map.

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THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 759

The jet or coal black color is not very widespread. It occurs in
a narrow and more or less broken belt across Africa just south
of the Sahara Desert, with a few scattering bits farther south on
the same continent. Another center of dissemination of this
characteristic, although widely separated from it, occurs in the
islands southeast of New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean, in the dis-
trict which is known from this dark color of its populations as
Melanesia. Next succeeding this type in depth of color is the
main body of negroes, of Australians, and of the aborigines of
India. This second or brownish group in the above-named order
shades off from deep chocolate through coffee-color down to olive
and light or reddish brown. The American Indians fall within
this class, because, while reddish in tinge, the skin has a strong
brown undertone. In the Americas we find the color quite vari-
able, ranging all the way from the dark Peruvians and the Mexi-
cans to the aborigines north of the United States. The Poly-
nesians are allied to this second group, characterized by a red-
brown skin. A third class, in which the skin is of a yellow
shade, covers most of Asia, the northern third of Africa, and
Brazil, including a number of widely scattered peoples such as
the Lapps, the Eskimos, the Hottentots and Bushmen of South
Africa, together with most of the people of Malaysia. Among
these the skin varies from a dull leather color, through a golden
or buff to a muddy white. In all cases the shading is in no wise
continuous or regular. Africa contains all three types of color
from the black Dinkas to the yellow Hottentots. In Asia and
the Americas all tints obtain except the jet black. There are all
grades of transitional shading. Variations within the same tribe
are not inconsiderable, so that no really sharp line of demarca-
tion anywhere occurs.

The fourth color group which we have to study in this paper
is alone highly concentrated in the geographical sense. It forms
the so-called white race, although many of its members are almost
brown and often yellow in skin color. As we shall show, its real
determinant characteristic is, paradoxically, not primarily the skin
but the pigmentation of the hair and eyes. Nevertheless, so far as
it may be used in classification, the very light shades of skin are re-
stricted to Europe, including perhaps part of modern Africa north
of the Sahat'H, which geologically belongs to the northern conti-
nent. There is a narrow belt of rather light-skinned peoples run-
ning off to the southeast into Asia, including the Persians and
some high- caste Hindus. This offshoot vanishes in the Ganges
Valley in the prevailing dark skin of the aboriginal inhabitants
of India. The only entirely isolated bit of very light skin else-
where occurs among the Ainos in northern Japan ; but these peo-
ple are so few in number and so abnormal in other respects that

j6o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

we are warranted in dismissing them from further consideration
in this place.

Anthropologists have endeavored for a long time to find the
cause of these differences in the color of the skin.* Some have
asserted that they were the direct effects of heat ; but our map
shows that the American stock, for example, is in no wise affected
by it. A consideration of all the races of the earth in general
shows no correspondence whatever of the color of the skin with
the isothermal lines. The Chinese are the same color at Singa-
pore as at Pekin and at Kamchatka. Failing in this explanation,
scientists have endeavored to connect pigmentation of the skin
with humidity, or with heat and humidity combined ; but in
Africa, as we saw, the only really black negroes are in the dry
region near the Sahara Desert, while the Congo basin, one of the
most humid regions on the globe, is distinctly lighter in tint.
Others have attempted to prove that this color, again, might be
due to the influence of the tropical sun, or perhaps to oxygenation
taking place under the stimulation of exposure to solar rays. This
has at first sight a measure of probability, since the color which
appears in tanning or freckles is not to be distinguished physio-
logically from the pigment which forms in the main body of the
skin of the darker races. The objection to this hypothesis is that
the covered portions of the body are equally dark with the ex-
posed ones, and that certain groups of men whose lives are pecul-
iarly sedentary, such as the Jews, who have spent much of their
time for centuries within doors, are distinctly darker than other
races whose occupations keep them continually in the open air.
This holds true whether in the tropics or in the northern part of
Europe. This local coloration in tanning, moreover, due to the
direct influence of the sun is not hereditary, as far as we can
determine. Sailors' children are not darker than those of the
merchant, even after generations of men have followed the same
profession. Each of these theories seems to fail as a sole explana-
tion. The best working hypothesis is, nevertheless, that this col-
oration is due to the combined influences of a great number of
factors of environment working through physiolof^ical processes,
none of which can be isolated from the others. One point is cer-
tain, whatever the cause may be — that this characteristic has been
very slowly acquired, and has to-day become exceedingly persist-
ent in the several races.

Study of the color of the skin alone has nothing further to
interest us in this inquiry than the very general conclusions we
have just outlined. We are compelled to turn to an allied charac-

* Th. Waitz: Anthropologie der Naturvolker, vol. i, p. 55 seq., contains some interesting
remarks on this subject.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

761

teristic — namely, the pigmentation of tlie hair and eyes — for more
specific results. There are three reasons which compel us to take
this action. In the first place, the coloration of the hair and eyes
appears to be less directly open to disturbance from environmental
influences than is the skin, and variations in shading may be at
the same time more easily and delicately measured. Secondly,
the color or, if you please, the absence of color, in the hair and
eyes is more truly peculiar to the European race than is the light-
ness of its skin. There are many peoples in Europe who are
darker skinned than certain tribes in Asia or the Americas ; but
there is none in which blondness of hair and eyes occurs to any
considerable degree. It is in the flaxen hair and blue eye that
the peculiarly European type comes to its fullest physical ex-
pression. This at once reveals the third inducement for us to
focus our study upon these apparently subordinate traits, Eu-
rope alone of all the continents is divided against itself. We
find blondness in all degrees of intensity scattered among a host
of much darker types. A peculiar advantage is herein made
manifest. Nowhere else in the world are two such distinct vari-
eties of man in such intimate contact with one another. From the
precise determination of their geographical distribution we may
gain an insight into many interesting racial events in the past.^

The first general interest in the pigmentation of the hair and
eyes in Europe dates from 1865, although Dr. Beddoe began nearly
ten years earlier to collect data from all over the continent. His
untiring perseverance led him to take upward of one hundred
thousand personal observations in twenty-five years. During our
own civil war about a million recruits were examined in this
respect, many of them being immigrants from all parts of Europe.
The extent of the work which has been done since these first
beginnings is indicated by the following approximate table :

Numher of Observations.

School children.

Adults.

Gernianv

6,Y58,000
608,000
497,000

2,304,000

Italy

299 000

Belgium

France

225,000 ±

Switzerland

British Isles :

General

Austria

53,000

Criminals, etc

12,000

[Jnited States

1,000,000

Remainder of Europe

50,000 ±

10,167,000

1,639,000

It thus appears that the material is ample in amount. The
great difficulty in its interpretation lies in the diversity of the
systems which have been adopted by different observers. It is
not easy to give an adequate conception of the confusion which

762

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

prevails. Here are a few of the obstacles to be encountered. As
the table indicates, the countries north of the Alps have been
mainly studied through their school children. In the Latin half

Relative Prequency

OF

BRUNEI JRAITS.

zo -25 per cent

of Europe adults alone are included. Secondly, it is a matter of
common observation that flaxen hair and blue eyes are character-
istic of childhood. As it has been proved that from ten to twenty
per cent of such blond children at maturity develop darker hair

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 763

or eyes, the fallacy of direct comparison between the north and
south of Europe again becomes apparent. In the third place, it is
not easy to correct for the personal equation of different observ-
ers. A seeming brunette in Norway appears as quite blond in
Italy because there is no fixed standard by which to judge. The
natural impulse is to compare the individual with the general
population round about. The precision of measurements upon
the head is nowise attainable.

There are two principal modes of determining the pigmenta-
tion of a given population. One is to discover the proportion of
so-called pure brunette types — that is to say, the percentage of in-
dividuals possessed of hotli dark eyes and hair. The other system
is to study brunette traits without regard to their association in
the same individual. This latter method is no respecter of persons.
The population as a whole, and not the individual, is the unit.
North of the Alps they have mapped the pigmentation in the
main by types ; in France, Norway, Italy, and the British Isles
they have chosen to work by dissociated traits. Here again is a
stumbling-block in the way of comparisons. The absolute fig-
ures for the same population gathered in these two ways will be
widely different. Thus in Italy, while only about a quarter of the
people are pure brunette types, nearly half of all the eyes and hair
in the country are dark. That is to say, a large proportion of
brunette traits are to-day found scattered broadcast without asso-
ciation one with another. In Europe, as a whole, upward of one
half of the population is of a mixed type in this respect. Iq
America the equilibrium is still further disturbed. Nor should
we expect it to be otherwise. Intermixture, migration, the influ-
ences of environment, and chance variation have been long at
work in Europe. The result has been to reduce the pure types,
either of blonde or brunette, to an absolute minority. Fortu-
nately for us, in despair at the prospect of reducing such variant
systems to a common base, the results obtained all point in the
same direction whichever mode of study is employed. In those
populations where there is the greatest frequency of pure dark
types there also is generally to be found the largest proportion of
brunette traits lying about loose, so to speak. And where there
are the highest percentages of these unattached traits, there is also
the greatest prevalence of purely neutral tints, which are neither
to be classed as blond or brunette. So that, as we have said, in
whichever way the pigmentation is studied, the results in general
are parallel, certainly at least so far as the deductions in this
paper are concerned. Our map is indeed constructed in conform-
ity with this assumption.*

* Dr. Livi, in his atlas to the superb Anthropometria Militare, has shown the parallel-
ism very clearly in Charts VI to IX, inclusive. The method employed in reducing the

764 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

By reason of the difficulties above mentioned, our map is in-
tended to convey an idea of the relative brunetteness of the vari-
ous parts of Europe by means of the shading rather than by con-
crete percentages. It is, in fact, impossible to reduce all the
results to a common base for exact comparison. What we have
done is to patch together the maps for each country, adopting a
scheme of tinting for each which shall represent, as nearly as may
be, its relation to the rest. In the scale at the left the shades on
the same horizontal line are supposed to represent approximately
equal degrees of pigmentation. The arrangement of the colors in
separate groups, it will be observed, corresponds to national sys-
tems of measurement. Thus the five tints used in Germanic coun-
tries and the six in Italy are separately grouped, and are each
distinct from those used for the coloration of France. It will be
observed that these separate national groups often overlap at each
end. This arrangement indicates, for example, that the darkest
part of Scandinavia contains about as many brunette traits as the
lightest portion of Germany, and that they are both lighter than
any part of Scotland ; or that the fourth zone of brunetteness in
Germany contains about as high a proportion of dark traits as
the lightest part of France, and that they are both about as dark
areas as the middle zone in England. As the diagram shows,
central France is characterized by a grade of brunetteness some-
what intermediate between the south of Austria and northern
Italy. In other words, the increase of pigmentation toward the
south is somewhat more gradual there than in the eastern Alps.
To summarize the whole system, equally dark tints along the
same horizontal line in the diagram indicate that in the areas

widely differing systems to a common base, so that comparisons may properly be drawn, is
simple. In many areas along the border line of systems the same population has been
studied from each side. Thus, in the Tyrol, Tappeiner (Zeit. fiir Ethnologic, xii, p. 269) has
studied adults, so that his results may be correlated with those of Livi in Italy (Anthropo-
metria Militare, Rome, 1896). At the same time Schimmer has studied the children (Mitt,
der anth. Ges. in Wien, Supp., 1884), so that his data from the same people may bind them
to the German- Austrian populations, Weisbach, from adults in Austria, also works near
by (Mitt, der anth. Ges. Wien, xxv, p. 73). Dr. Beddoe, ,in his monumental work, The
Races of Britain, with results of personal observation from all over Europe, gives data for
international comparison, showing, for example, that southern England equals Alsace, and
that Zurich equals London (p. 73, seq.). In another place he gives opportunity for compari-
son with the French system (Bull, de la Soc. d'Anth., Paris, 1882, p. 146 ; and Revue
d'Anthopologie, Series III, iv, p. 513). Topinard (Elements, pp. 338,339), from the same
observations, has shown that Normandy, Vienna, and Cornwall are about equally pigmented,
and that the Walloons and the Bretons are about alike in this respect. Knowing from
Yandekindere, Virchow (Archiv fiir Anth., xvi, p. 275), and Schimmer how the Walloons
are related to the rest of central Europe, the way is clear. For Spain we have the merest
hint from study of the eyes alone (Archiv fiir Anthropologic, xxii, p. 431). Weisbach
(Zeitschrift fiir Ethnalogie, Supplement, 1884) gives data for southeast Europe. In due
time the further details of preparation for the map will be published.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 765

thus equally shaded there are about the same proportions of traits
or types, as the case may be, which are entitled to be called bru-
nette.

In a rough way, the extremes in the distribution of the blond
and brunette varieties within the population of Europe are as fol-
lows. At the northern limit we find that about one third of the
people are pure blondes, characterized by light hair and blue
eyes ; about one tenth are pure brunettes ; the remainder, over
one half, being mixed with a tendency to blondness. On the
other hand, in the south of Italy the pure blondes have almost
entirely disappeared. About one half the population are pure
brunettes, with deep brown or black hair, and eyes of a corre-
sponding shade ; and the other half is mixed, with a tendency to
brunetteness.* The half-and-half line seems to lie about where
it ought, not far from the Alps. Yet it does not follow the paral-
lels of latitude. A circle, described with Copenhagen as a center,
sweeping around near Vienna, across the middle of Switzerland,
thence up through the British Isles, might serve roughly to indi-
cate such a boundary. North of it blondness prevails, although
always with an appreciable percentage of pure brunettes. South
of it brunetteness finally dominates quite exclusively. It should
not fail of 'note that toward the east there is a slight though con-
stant increase of brunetteness along the same degrees of lati-
tude and that the western portion of the British Isles is a north-
ern outpost of the brunette type.

Thus we see at a glance that there is a gradual though con-
stant increase in the proportion of dark eyes and hair from north
to south. There are none of those sharp contrasts which ap-
peared upon our map showing the distribution of the long and
broad heads in Europe. On that map the extremes were sepa-
rated by only half a continent in either direction from the Alps ;
whereas in this case the change from dark to light covers the
whole extent of the continent. It is as if a blending wash had
been spread over the map of head form, toning down all its
sharp racial division lines. Some cause other than race has evi-
dently exerted an influence upon all types of men alike, tending
to obliterate their physical differences. It is not a question of
Celt, Slav, or Teuton. It lies deeper than these. The Czechs in
Bohemia are as much darker than the Poles to the north of
them, both being Slavic ; as the Bavarians exceed the Prussians

* For Scotland, vide Report of 1883 of the Anthropometric Committee of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science, p 10. Norway is examined in Revue d' An-
thropologic, Series HI, vol. iv, p. 293. For Italy, Dr. R. Livi (Anthropometria Militare, Atlas,
Plates 6 and 7). Sdll farther south Dr. Collignon has studied Tunis in Etude sur I'Ethno-
graphie de la Tunisie, Paris, 1887. See also Revue d' Anthropologic, Series III, vol. iii, p.
3 seq.

766

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

in the same respect, although, the last two are both Germans. It
would be unwarranted to maintain that any direct relation of cli-
mate to pigmentation has been proved. The facts point, never-
theless, strongly in that direction. We do not know in precisely
what way the pigmental processes are affected. Probably other
environmental factors are equally important with climate. To
that point we shall return in a few pages. We may rest assured
at this writing that our map for Europe corroborates in a general
way testimony drawn from other parts of the earth that some
relation between the two exists.

It seems to be true that brunetteness holds its own more per-
sistently over the whole of Europe than the lighter characteris-
tics. Probably one reason why this appears to be so is because
the dark traits are more striking, and hence are more apt to be
observed. Yet, after making all due allowance for this fact, the
relative persistency, or perhaps we might say penetrativeness, of
the brunette traits seems to be indicated. Our map shows that,
while in Scandinavia seldom less than one quarter of all the eyes
and hair are dark, in the south the blond traits often fall be-
low ten per cent of the total. Thus in Sardinia there are only
about three per cent of all the eyes and hair which are light.
The same point is shown with added force if we study the distri-
bution of the pure blond or brunette types, and not of these
traits independently. In the blondest part of Germany there are
seldom less than seven per cent of pure brunette children. Among
adults this would probably not represent less than fifteen per cent
of pure brunettes, to say the least. As our table shows, in Scot-
land direct observations on adults indicate nearly a quarter of the
•population to be pure brunettes. On the other hand, the pure
blondes become a negligible quantity long before we reach the

Percentage of-

PURE BRUNETTES.

PURE BLONDES.

Children.

Adults.

Children.

Adults.

North Germany

7-11
12-15
15-25

'26
23

22
23

27
27
31

18

26
49
57
96

33-44

25-32
18-24

11
20

Middle Germany

South Germany

Scotland

50

Ireland

48

Wales

34

Belgium

England

40

Switzerland

36

Austria

18

Italy

3

Sardinia

0-5

Croatia ■

Greece

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 767

bottom of the table at the south. Thus, among two thousand and
fifty natives of Tunis in North Africa, true Europeans as we must
repeat, Dr. Collignon found that, while blond hair or eyes were
noticeable at times, in no single case was a pure blonde with both
light hair and eyes to be discovered. Similarly, in Sardinia, less
than one per cent of the population was found by Dr. Livi to be
of this pure blond type. The interest and significance of this
undoubted fact lie in its bearing upon the theory, propounded
by Dr. Brinton, that northern Africa was the center of dispersion
of the blond invaders of Europe, who introduced a large meas-
ure of its culture. The same thesis is upheld in the latest compre-
hensive work in anthropology : I refer to Keane's Ethnology. We
shall return to this theory at a later time. It is sufficient here to
notice how completely this blond type vanishes among the popu-
lations of the south of Europe and northern Africa to-day. Such
blondes do occur. Each one in so dark a general population as
here prevails is a host itself in the observer's mind. The true
status is revealed only when we consider men by hundreds or
even thousands.

Thus far we have been mainly concerned with the pigmenta-
tion of the hair and eyes as a result of climatic or other environ-
mental influences. Let us now consider the racial aspect of the
question. Is there anything in our map which might lead us to
suspect that certain of these gradations of pigmentation are due
to purely hereditary causes ? In other words, do the long heads
and the short heads differ from one another in respect of the
color of the hair and eyes, as well as in cephalic index ? In'the
preceding paper we took occasion to point out in a general way
the remarkable localization of the round-headed element of the
European population in the Alps. The great central highland
seemed indeed to constitute a veritable focus of this peculiar
])hysical type. In this way it divided two similar centers of long-
headedness — Teutonic in the north, Mediterranean in the south —
one from another. This geographical characterization of the
broad-headed variety entitled it, in our opinion, to be called the
Alpine type, in distinction from the two others above mentioned.
It will now be our purpose to inquire whether or not the physical
traits of pigmentation stand in any definite and permanent rela-
tion to the three types of head form we have thus separated from
one another in the geographical sense.

Many peculiarities in our color map point to the persistence of
racial differences despite considerable similarity of environment.
Thus the Walloons in the southeastern half of Belgium, with a
strip of population down along the Franco-German frontier, are
certainly darker than the people all about. Among these Wal-

768 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

loons brunette traits are upward of a third more frequent than
among the Flemish in northern Belgium. This is especially
marked by the prevalence of dark hair in the hilly country south
of Brussels. The British Isles offer another example of local differ-
ences in this respect which can not be ascribed to environment.
Wales and Ireland, Cornwall and part of Scotland are appreciably
brunette, as compared with other regions near by. The contrast
between Normandy and Brittany in France is of even greater value
to us in this connection. Dark hair is more than twice as com-
mon in the Breton cantons as it is along the English Channel in
Normandy. These differences can not be due to the Gulf Stream
mildness of the western climate or to the physical environment in
any other way. If we may judge from our scanty data for Spain,
another racial break occurs here as well, which seems to justify
the statement that " beyond the Pyrenees begins Africa." In the
other direction, among the Hungarians, we begin to scent an
Asiatic influence in the dark population of the southeast of
Europe.

Perhaps the most conspicuous example of the racial fixity of
this trait of pigmentation is offered by the Jews. They have pre-
served their Semitic brunetteness through all adversities. Socially
ostracized and isolated, they have kept this coloration despite all
migrations and changes of climate. In Germany to-day forty-two
per cent of them are pure brunettes in a population containing
only fourteen per cent of the dark type on the average. They are
thus darker by thirty per cent than their Gentile neighbors. As
one goes south this difference tends to disappear. In Austria
they are less than ten per cent darker than the general popula-
tion ; and finally in the extreme south they are even lighter than
the populations about them. This is especially true of the red-
haired type common in the East. To discover such differences
requires minute examination. The reward has been to prove
that pigmentation in spite of climate is indeed a fixed racial char-
acteristic among the people of Europe. We are therefore encour-
aged to hope that great racial groups of population may still
yield us evidence of their relationship or lack of it in this respect,
as well as in the head form.

It will be necessary, before considering this matter further, for
us to turn aside for a moment to study the population of central
Europe a little more in detail than we have thus far been able to
do. We shall attempt to prove a point of great significance. The
broad-headed type not only forms the bulk of the present popu-
lation of the Alpine highlands. This was established in the pre-
ceding paper. We have now to prove that it at the same time is
clearly the oldest or most primitive element among the inhab-
itants of this region ; that it lies so near the soil that the racial

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

769

character of the population of the Alps varies in direct relation
with the physical geography of the country.

The Austrian Tyrol is one of the most favored spots in Europe
for the study of the order and succession of the long and the
broad heads respectively. It is the geographical center of the
continent. It holds strategically the great highway of communi-
cation— the Brenner Pass — between the north and the south of Eu-
rope. As our map shows, it is also the crest of the great European

^/^VARIA

Da-ta. in Mitt. Anlh.Ges. Wien

WIV, I&94-.P.85

12.000 3K-OUl_S

HEAD FORM

IN THE-

AUSTRIAN Tyrol

Dark. Shades Indicate Broad-
Headed POPULATIONS-

watershed. From it flow the Inn River and the Drave into the
Danube, thence to the Baltic Sea on the east ; the Adige is an
affluent of the Po, running due south to the Adriatic; and on the
west the branches of the Rhine carry its waters into the Atlantic.
Each of these great river systems has marked a line of human
immigration and has directed racial movement to this spot. By
the Danube the Slavs have come, and by Innsbruck, over the
Brenner, the Teutons have passed across into the valley of the
Adige and thence directly into the plain of Italy. Back over the
same route have flowed many phases of Mediterranean culture into
the north from the time of the Phoenicians to the present. The
Tyrol, for these reasons, is the one spot in Europe in which racial

TOL.

-58

770 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

competition has come to a focus. The population is exceedingly
mixed. I have seen men of the purest Italian type speaking the
German tongue ; and at Botzen blond Teutons who made use of
good Italian. Despite this circumstance of racial intermixture,
there are within the Tyrol at the same time a number of areas of
isolation which possess very marked individuality. We thus
have the sharpest contrasts between mixed and pure populations.
The Oetztal Alps, in the very center of the country, are as inac-
cessible as any part of Europe. So rugged is this latter district
that the dialects differ from valley to valley, and the customs and
social institutions as well.

Turning now to the anthropological map of this region, based
upon a measurement of over twelve thousand skulls, it will be
found that in nearly every case the broad heads become numer-
ous in direct proportion to the increase in altitude. In other
words, the broad open valleys leading out toward the great river
systems of Europe are relatively dolichocephalic ; while the side
branches in the Oetztal Alps, isolated from foreign influences,
show a marked preponderance of round-headedness. Thus in the
Stanzerthal and the valley of the Schnals, indicated upon our map
by the solid black tint, are two of the broadest-headed spots in
the world. Over seventy per cent of all the heads measured
from these two districts had indices above 85. These both lie,
it will be observed, well off the main line of travel, either by the
Inn Valley or over the Brenner. At their outlets they contain
many heads of medium breadth, but these become less frequent
as we penetrate the highlands. Like them are nearly all the side
valleys in this part of the Alps. So closely, indeed, does this
physical trait follow the topography that Ranke of Munich, as
we have already said, has endeavored to connect the broad-head-
edness and altitude as cause and effect. For us the true explana-
tion of this phenomenon is entirely racial. It is a product of
genuine social selection. The two great branches of narrow-
headedness, the blond Teuton at the north and the Mediterranean
at the south with dark eyes and hair, have invaded the Alps all
the way from France to the Balkan states. At the time of their
coming a broad-headed population, as it would appear, occupied
the whole mountain chain. The result is that to-day its main
peculiarity has become attenuated exactly in proportion to the
degree to which it has been exposed to racial intermixture with
the newcomers.

Here is an example, then, of purely human stratification. The
Alpine type has been overlaid by the newcomers, or else has been
gradually driven up and back into the areas of isolation. Those
who remained along the great routes of travel have been swamped
in a flood of foreign intermixture. The only exceptions to the

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 771

rule we have observed of a primitive broad- headed layer of popu-
lation isolated in the uplands are offered by the two valleys of
the Ziller in the northeast and of the Isel and Kalserthals just
across the main chain of the Alps by Linz. In these places the
converse of our proposition is true, since, as one ascends the valleys
the broad heads become less frequent. No explanation for this has
been offered ; but I have a suspicion that it points to still a third
layer of population. The Slavic peoples immigrating within the
historic period are all very broad-headed. It is not impossible
that this racial element which has overlaid the Teutons in parts
of eastern Europe may have followed them into these valleys.
Certain it is that Slavic skulls begin to occur in this region. It
may have happened in this way : When the long-headed Teutons
came, they drove the primitive Alpine population into the side
valleys. Then, when the Slavs followed the Teutons, these latter
types drifted up and back as well, merging with the original
broad-headed stock to produce an intermediate type of head form.
This would obviously be less broad than the new Slavic type in
relative purity along the main channels of immigration.

The evidence from the Tyrol that in this part of the Alps the
broad heads lie nearest the soil is sustained by similar testimony
from the other end of the same mountain chain. Dr. Bedot has
studied in some detail the population of the Valais — the valley of
the upper Rhone in western Switzerland.* Here precisely as in
the Tyrol the side valleys are distinctly broader-headed than that
of the Rhone. Wherever the foreigner has come he has lowered
the cephalic index. Thus, for example, in the open valley of the
Rhone the average index is but 82, while in the Gorge du Trient,
leading over toward Chamounix, it rises 87. Few of the villages
investigated are as isolated to-day as those in the Oetztal valleys
of the Tyrol ; but in proportion as they lie off the main track the
index rises appreciably. The evidence is indubitable that the
broad-headed type is the oldest and most primitive all through
the Alps.

The fact which we have just indicated — namely, that the racial
type of the population of the Alpine areas changes with the char-
acter of the country — will now serve us as a foothold for another
advance in our argument. By it we shall hope to prove that while
the Alpine racial type is intermediate in the pigmentation of the
hair and eyes between the Teutonic populations on the north and
the Mediterranean at the south, at the same time this phys-
ical trait is open to profound modification by the direct influences
of environment. We shall hope to prove directly what we have
already inferred from consideration of our general map of Europe ;

* Bull. Soc d'Anth., Paris, Series IV, vol. vi, p. 48fi neq.

772 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

namely, that certain factors, either climate, economic status, or
habits of life, are competent to produce appreciable changes in
the color of the hair and eyes.

Since, at this point, we are venturing forth upon an uncharted
sea, it behooves us to stop a moment and examine what store of
argument we have on hand. Two theses we hope to have proved
respecting those portions of central Europe which are character-
ized by the broad-headed Alpine type of population. The first is
that this racial element being the most ancient, becomes relatively
more frequent in the areas of isolation, where natural conditions
have been least disturbed by immigrants. In the byways, the
primitive inhabitant ; in the highways, the marauding intruder !
This principle is as old as the hills. It is certainly true of lan-
guages and customs, why not likewise of race ? We shall be able
to establish its verity for all parts of Europe in due time. It
forms the groundwork of our socio-geographical theory. The
second thesis, no less important, is that this primitive Alpine
type of population normally tends to be darker in hair and eyes
than the blue-eyed, flaxen-haired, and long-headed Teutonic peo-
ples on the north ; and that, on the other hand, by its grayish
hazel eyes and brownish hair, this broad-headed type is to be dis-
tinguished from its more thoroughly brunette neighbor at the
south. The geographical evidence afforded by our map of Europe
all gives tenability to this view that the Alpine type is interme-
diate in the color of hair and eyes. It will serve as proof provision-
ally at least. In the next paper we shall discuss the matter of the
association of separate traits into racial types from another point
of view. We shall run up against some contradictory evidence,
to be sure, but satisfactory disposition may be made of this when
it appears. In the meantime we assume it to be geographically,
if not indeed as yet anthropologically, proved beyond question.

What deduction is to be made from these two theses we have
just outlined ? The third side of our logical triangle seems to be
fixed. If the areas of isolation are essentially Alpine by race,
and if this ethnic type be truly intermediate in pigmentation,
the byways, nooks, and corners of central Europe ought normally
to be more brunette than the highways and open places all along
the northern Teutonic border. Contrariwise, toward the south
the indigenous undisturbed Alpine populations ought to be lighter
than the heterogeneous ones, infused with Mediterranean brunette
blood, if we may use the term. Since mountainous areas are less
exposed to racial contagion by virtue of their infertility and un-
attractiveness as well as by their inaccessibility or remoteness
from dense centers of population, we may express our logical in-
ference in another way. Where the Teutonic and the Alpine
racial types are in contact geographically the population of

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE,

77Z

mountainous or isolated areas ought normally to contain more
brunettes than the people of the plains and river valleys, since
blond traits have had lesser chance of immigration. The opposite

E>RUNET TYPE

IN THE

Black Forest

Per Cent - ^ ^^

11-15 W-

16-20

Lake of
Constance

^^Z-^^^AND

774

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

rule would obtain south of the Alps. If this relation does not
hold, there must obviously be something environmentally the
matter. Let us examine the facts.

The Black Forest in southwestern Germany affords us a good
opportunity for the comparison of relatively pure and mixed

Pure Blond Teutonic Type. Cephalic Index, 75.

populations. This mountainous, heavily wooded district, shown
in our map, lies close by the upper courses of the two principal
rivers of Europe, which have both formed great channels of racial
migration. The Rhine encircles it on the west and south, and an
important affluent of the same river bounds it on the east ; for
the Neckar drains the fertile plains of Wurtemberg, or Swabia,
which lie about Stuttgart. This capital city, it should be ob-
served, lies not far from the point of that blond Teutonic wedge
which, we have already shown, penetrates central Europe from
the north. Finally, the Danube, not shown upon the map, takes
its source in the southeastern part of the Forest, and has there-
fore opened up still another route of racial immigration from this
quarter.

There is every evidence that here in the Black Forest is a
mountainous area of isolation containing a people which is dis-
tinctly Alpine in type of head form as compared with the mixed
populations of the fertile plains and valleys round about it. For
example, the cephalic index in Wolfach in its center is above
86, three units and more above the average for the Rhine Val-

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.

77S

\qj communes.* This difference is almost appreciable to the eye ;
it may be approximately shown by the three portraits in our text.
The first one represents a pure Teutonic blond type with the rela-
tively narrow head and long face characteristic of the race of
northern Europe. The second is the average type found in Baden,
probably about half Teutonic and half Alpine by race. The
breadth of the head compared with its length as well as the round-
ness of the face appear to be well marked. It should be added
that it was characterized by brown hair and blue eyes. The third
portrait, unfortunately not of a native of the most retired upland
of the Forest, is nevertheless fairly typical of the extreme breadth
of head form which there prevails. In this particular case the
face is rather long for the breadth of the head, a combination not
uncommon in southern Germany. For reasons given in the pre-
ceding paper, this facial feature may be regarded as less impor-
tant than the proportions of the cranium itself. Judged by this
latter standard, there is every indication that the Black Forest

Mixed Badex Type. Cephalic Index, 83.

contains the broad-headed Alpine type in comparative purity.
Dr. Ammon, of Baden, has very kindly placed his unpublished data
at my disposition. These have been suitably mapped \ by com-

* Dr. Otto Ammon, in Sammlung gemeinverstandlicher wissenschaftliche Vortrage,
neue Folge, Series V, Heft 101.

f Certain statistical liberties have been taken with this map. For instance, it has been
assumed that in the long and narrow administrative districts, extending from the Rhine

776

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

munes, proving that in so far as Baden itself is concerned there
is no doubt about the increased broad-headedness as one pene-
trates the innermost recesses of the Schwarzwald.

For Wlirtemberg and the Neckar Valley we have no modern
researches upon living men to offer as evidence. In place of it
we possess results obtained upward of thirty years ago from a
study of the crania of modern populations.* At that time von

Holder discovered th.e existence of
two distinct types of head form in
the population of Swabia, and he
found them severally clustering
about the two " areas " outlined
upon the map. In the northern one,
lying just outside the old Roman
wall which cut diagonally across
the map from the southeast not far
from Stuttgart, he found traces of
a long-headed population, deemed
by him typical of the barbarians of
Germany. Within the " Limes Rc-
manus" were mixed populations in-
fused with Roman characteristics,
but pointing to an isolated center of
broad-headedness. This is shown
by the " Alpine area." It will be
observed at once that these results
for Wlirtemberg and Baden are a check upon one another, despite
the fact that the two researches were made over thirty years
apart — one upon skulls, the other upon living men. That in this
Black Forest area of isolation we have to do with an island of the
Alpine type is also rendered more probable by the relative short-
ness of its people. Our next paper will deal with bodily stature as
an ethnic trait. We may here anticipate enough to assert that a
tall stature is one of the most constant characteristics of the Teu-
tonic type. The Alpine race is distinctly shorter. Therefore this
third physical trait helps to confirm us in our deduction.

Ali'i^e TvrE. Ccpliiilic Index, 87±.

clear across to the eastern frontier of Baden, the eastern or upland half was as much
broader-headed than the western Rhine half as separate districts lying along the east were
above others along the Rhine. In such cases the technical averages have been split up
into two others conforming in general with the averages for those districts which really
follow the topographical features of the country.

* Dr. von Holder, in Archiv fiir Anthropologic, vol. ii, p. 50. The indicated " Alpine "
and " Teutonic Areas " are mapped from his enumeration of the communes in which he
asserted the several types to be most prevalent. As such the results can not be more than
roughly approximate. That they accord so fully with the data for Baden gives hope that
the true conditions are represented.

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. j-jj

Probability is rendered certainty by corroborative evidence
from a large part of Europe that the Alpine type for some reason
always takes to the woods and hills when in competition with the
Teutonic race. We shall be able to show it in detail for France,
Germany, Austria, and elsewhere, as we have already done for
the Tyrol. Just across the Rhine in the Vosges it is true, and in
Belgium it determines the division line of Walloons from Flem-
ings. We may accept the law as proved beyond reasonable doubt.

This population of the inner Black Forest being Alp'ine, ought
racially to be dark in the color of the hair and eyes. Neverthe-
less, the evidence all goes to show that, instead of being darker, it
really manifests a distinct tendency toward blondness. Here,
again, we are able to draw proof from two separate sources which
serve as a check upon one another. The ground tints upon our
map represent the percentage of pure blondes among the school
children, as gathered in the great census conducted by Virchow.
They show that a considerable part of the " Alpine area," meas-
uring the head form, contains an abormal number of blond chil-
dren. For example, forty-two hundred children in this Alpine
area comprised but fifteen per cent of blond types, as compared
with an average of nearly twenty-five per cent in the Rhine and
Neckar Valleys. For Baden, however, the blondness of the upland
interior region does not appear upon this map. Fortunately,
we possess detailed results for this side of even greater value,
since Dr. Ammon has studied the adult population. He asserts
that there is a regularly increasing blondness toward the center
of the Forest.* Why did this not appear among the thousands
of school children in Baden studied by Virchow ? To venture a
rash hypothesis, may it not have been because the influences of
environment had not had time to produce their efi^ects so strongly
in childhood, and that they appeared in accentuated form at a
later period of life ? Before we proceed to discuss the exact cause
of this surprising reversal of racial characteristics, let us con-
sider one other example of a similar character.

Some years ago Dr. Stucler conducted a great investigation
upon the color of the hair and eyes of some ninety-four thousand
school children in the canton of Berne, in Switzerland.! As a re-
sult he discovered another one of these confusing phenomena of
racial improbabilities. It appeared that here also there was an
appreciable tendency toward blondness in the high Alps, racial
tendencies to the contrary notwithstanding. Topographically,

* For example, Wolfaeh, in the southern part of the " Alpine area," with the broadest
heads in Baden, contains thirty-one per cent of blondes among adults. Ammon, op. cit. In
this commune sixty-four per cent of the cephalic indices were above 85.

\ Mittheilungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Bern, 1880, Heft 979, p. 54 scq.

11^

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the canton of Berne extends over three regions quite distinct in
character. A middle strip along the valley of the Aar as far as
the city of Berne consists of an elevated, not infertile table-land,
with a rolling, hilly surface. This becomes gradually more rug-
ged, until it terminates in the high mountains of the Bernese
Oberland south of Interlaken. Here in this chain we have the
most elevated portion of Switzerland ; and, we may add, one of
the most unpropitious for agriculture or industry. The peasants
hereabouts must live upon the tourist or not at all. The north-

Blond Type
Bernel

ern third of Berne covers the Jura Mountains, quite high, but of
such geological formation that the soil yields not ungraciously to
agriculture. Thus from the economic point of view we may di-
vide the canton into two parts, setting aside the southern third —
the Oberland — as decidedly inferior to the rest. The people of
this region in the ante-tourist era could not but be unfavorably
affected by their material environment.

Our map shows that this economic contrast is duplicated in
the anthropological sense by a considerable increase of blondness
within the Oberland, which becomes more marked as the fast-
nesses of the mountains are approached. North of the city of
Berne there are from seven to eleven per cent of pure blondes ; in

THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 779

the Oberland sometimes upward of three times as many. Is it
possible that this blondness in the mountains may be due to race ?
If so, it must be Teutonic. Our map of Europe shows that Switz-
erland is cut in halves at just this point by an intrusive strip of
northern blondness. Dr. Studer explained it on the assumption
that this blondness migrating to the south along the Rhine, and
then up the Aar, had heaped itself up, so to speak, against this
great geographical barrier. This supposition might be tenable were
not the evidence of the head form for all Europe flatly opposed to
it. There is nothing to show that the law of segregation of the
Alpine type in the areas of isolation does not hold here as in the
Tyrol, in western Switzerland, and the Black Forest. Central
Switzerland was historically overrun by the Helvetians, who
have been identified as Teutonic by race. The Rhsetians were the
more primitive Alpine type. Every principle of human nature
and ethnology opposes the supposition that these conquering Hel-
vetians would be content to leave the darker Rhsetians in full
possession of the fertile plain of the Aar while they betook them-
selves to the barren valleys of the Oberland. Everywhere else in
Europe the rule is, " To the conqueror belong the plains, to the
vanquished the hills." The blondness of the Oberland must there-
fore be regarded as racially anomalous. Another explanation for
it must be found in the influence of environment.

Our final example, tending to prove that in mountainous areas
of isolation some cause is at work which tends to disturb racial
equilibrium in the color of the hair and eyes, is drawn from Dr.
Livi's monumental treatise on the anthropology of Italy. In
entire independence of my own inferences, he arrived at an iden-
tical conclusion that blondness somehow is favored by a moun-
tainous environment. From a study of three hundred thousand
recruits he found that fourteen out of the sixteen compartimenti
into which Italy is divided conformed to this law. There was
generally from four to five per cent more blondness above the
four-hundred-metre line of elevation than below it.* The true
significance of these figures is greater than at first appears, for we
have again to consider the contrasts in the light of racial proba-
bility. In northern Italy the mountains ought to be lighter than
the plains, because the Alps are here as elsewhere a stronghold of
a racial type relatively blond as compared with the Mediterranean

* Anthropometria Militare, p. 63 seq. A review of this work is given by the author in
Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. v, pp. 38 and 101 seq. This
law is showu by study of provinces also. There are sixty-nine of these available for com-
parison. Twelve of these contain no mountains ; thirty-two show manifestly greater blond-
ness in both hair and eyes ; fifteen show it partially ; in two, mountain and plain are equal ;
and in the remaming seven the law is reversed. Several of these latter are explainable
by local disturbances.

78o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

brunettes. Environment and race here join hands to produce
greater blondness in the mountains. It is in the south of Italy
that the two work in opposition, and here we turn for test of our
law. In the south the mountains should contain the Mediterra-
nean brunette type in relatively undisturbed purity, for the north-
ern blondes are more frequent in the attractive districts open to
immigration. Even here in many cases this racial probability is
reversed or equalized by some cause which works in oi^position
to race, so that we find comfort at every turn.

The law which we have sought to prove is not radically new.
Many years ago Waitz asserted that mountaineers tended to be
lighter in color of skin than the people of -the plains,* educing
some interesting evidence to that effect from the study of primi-
tive peoples. He held that the true cause lay in the modifying
influences of climate. Much of the data which we have here col-
lected does not prove this. In fact, climatic changes can not be
related to some of the variations in blondness which have been
outlined. It seems as if some other factor had been at work. Dr.
Livi ascribes the blondness of mountain peoples rather to the
unfavorable economic environment, to the poor food, unsanitary
dwellings, and general poverty of such populations. This ex-
planation fits neatly into our social theory : for we assert that the
population of mountains is relatively pure because there is no in-
centive for immigration of other types. Thus a pure population
implies poverty of environment — a poverty which may stand in
direct relation to the lack of pigmentation. It is yet too early to
assert that this is the main cause. For the present it will suffice
to have proved that appreciable differences in pigmentation exist,
leaving the cause for future discussion. Much interesting mate-
rial drawn from comparisons of urban with rural populations
may help to throw light upon it. Our main purpose here has
been to prove that pigmentation is a trait which is affected by
environment. If, as we hope to have shown, the shape of the
head is not open to such modification, we shall know where to
turn when conflict of evidence arises. We shall pin our faith to
that characteristic which pursues the even tenor of its racial way,
unmoved by outward circumstances.

Commenting on the possibilities foi'eshadowed l>y the opening' of the
Niagara water power and foreseeing the extension of the principle to
other cataracts, the London Spectator suggests that we shall perhaps ask
in the future not ''Has the country got coal;"' but "Has it got water-
falls ? "

* Anthropologie der Naturvolker, vol. i, p. 49 &eq.

REVERSIO±\S IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 781
REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE.

By FKANKLIN SMITH.
PART FIRST.

IF the law of reversion holds true of physical life, it holds
equally true of industrial life. Under its operation is revived
the career of institutions as indicative of conditions long passed
away as any deformity that may once have saved from extinction
a race of brutes. However useful in the elevation of man from
degradation and savagery, they contributed, after the completion
of their purpose, no further service than one of evil. To many
social reformers, the legislation in revival of the old trade and
professional corporations, whose noble achievements fill one of
the lighter pages of history, seems important and beneficent. But
an error more alluring and dangerous was never current. Such
legislation will not, as Herbert Spencer has often shown, further
human welfare. On the contrary, it will undo the work of civili-
zation, and renew the ravages of barbarism.

When feudal corporations came into the world, there was
an excuse for them. It was to prepare the way for modern in-
dustrial civilization. They found Europe in a state of anarchy.
Every man's hand was against his neighbor's. War was almost
the universal occupation. The men not engaged in robbery and
slaughter were the menials — the serfs and slaves. It was in the
midst of this disorder and carnage that the feudal corporations
were born. The natural and spontaneous product of the times,
and not of the wisdom of some philanthropist or statesman, they
met the most urgent of needs — peace and security. " The working-
men's corporation and the commercial guild," says Pigeonneau,
" were, first of all, an instrument of defense, a kind of mutual
assurance against the violence, the exactions, or the negligence of
the seignior and his representatives." * For these most unfortu-
nate people, there was no police, no armed force for protection, no
public security of any kind. They were plundered and murdered
with impunity. For them there were no schools, no charities, no
social organizations. Even religious privileges were denied them.
Under the stress of threatened extermination, as well as the loss
of all the blessings of life, the industrial classes, the most con-
temptible of human creatures, came together in powerful organ-
izations for mutual aid and protection. " Individuals," says

* Histoire du Commerce de France. Par H. Pigeonnean, vol. i, j). 111. See Palgrave,
Dictionary of Political Economy. Corporations, l)y Prof. .J. K. Ingram, vol. i, p. 429.

782 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Boehmert, " engaged in the same profession formed associations
for the protection of their person, their families, and their prop-
erty ; for the creation of an internal moral and economic police,
and particularly to punish associates who, by cheating in the
quality of their products, could injure the reputation of the
whole city ; to watch over the completion of a regular apprentice-
ship, and to exercise a moral censorship over apprentices and
journeymen ; to take care of the widows, the orphans, the aged,
and the infirm among them ; to join together in the parish and
to have masses said over the dead ; to furnish a contingent of
arquebusiers to the troops of the city, and, in general, to satisfy
all social wants." *

Even when Etienne Boyleau, the famous provost of Paris
under St. Louis and the author of the still more famous Livre des
Metiers, gave these corporations a legal status, there was still an
excuse. He was a warrior, with a warrior's love of discipline and
system ; he was a magistrate, with a magistrate's hatred of all
kinds of lawlessness and dishonesty ; he was a tax reformer, with
tax reformer's eye to new sources of revenue for the impoverished
treasury of a crusading monarch. " He re-established discipline
in commerce, and in the arts and trades," says a writer in the
Biographie Universelle, " in the collection of the royal taxes with-
in his jurisdiction, and fixed those of the seigniorial courts in-
cluded in his provostship; he moderated and fixed the imposts
that were raised arbitrarily, under the provost farmers, on com-
merce and merchandise ; he arranged all the traders and all the
artisans in difi^erent bodies and communities under the title of
brotherhoods ; it was he that gave these corporations their first
status for disciplinary purposes, and established the rules for the
encouragement of honesty and commerce." \ But there is reason
to believe that the chief purposes of this feudal reformer were
police and fiscal. " The kings," says Depping, " made successful
use of the corporations for the collections of imposts, then very
imperfectly done. When the artisans and traders were formed
into a body, it sufficed to summon the head men and to charge
them with the collection of the taille for each trade. ... It be-
came easier to designate the persons that should keep watch
during the night, a forced labor that displeased the Parisians
very much, and from which they sought as much as possible to
escape." J

It is an inevitable tendency of all organizations, whatever be
their purpose, be it political or industrial, to consolidate and

* Dictionnaire general de la Politique. Par M. Maurice Block. See Corporations, by
V. Boehmert, vol. i, p. 537. f Vol. v, p. 436.

X Rfeglemens sur les Arts et Metiers de Paris. Avec Notes et une Introduction. Par
G.-B. Depping, p. Ixxxiv. See also Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy, pp. 430, 431.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 783

strengthen their power.* As long as the corporations of the arts
and trades remained voluntary organizations, meeting wants that
could be provided for in no other way, they played an important
and indispensable part in the machinery of feudal society. It
was in the interest of order and industry that they established
monopolies, collected fees and dues, and sold privileges. With
the money thus obtained, they protected life and property, pro-
moted trade and commerce by the construction and maintenance
of land and river routes,f and provided for the social wants of
their members. But when they fell into the hands of the Govern-
ment they were doomed. The vicious traits inherent in all organ-
izations received a new impulse under the protection of the law,
and eventually converted them into an intolerable evil. " Each
corporation," says Depping, after telling how the interests of
the public were ignored, " had in view only the personal advan-
tage of the masters of the trade. The result was long apprentice-
ships, . . . heavy fines imposed on the apprentices, efforts to
exclude from the markets of Paris the unauthorized traders and
artisans, special privileges demanded by the industries devoted
to the production of luxuries, restriction put upon emulation
and competition, and finally a mechanical uniformity in manu-
facture." X

Even in the time of Philippe le Bel these evils were recognized,
and an effort was made by that prince to remedy them. Many of
the privileges of the corporations were abolished, the most nota-
ble being the permission granted to the Parisians to bake their
own bread.* But the poison of monopoly had entered too deeply
into the industrial system of the age to be eradicated so easily.
The constant effort of the monopolists was to increase their mo-
nopoly ; the constant effort of the Government was to exploit it —
to convert it into a gold mine for the tax gatherers and an asylum
for the office seekers. Enormous initiation fees were charged. In
Paris they reached the incredible sum of a thousand livres ; in
the lesser cities they were five hundred. || It became impossible
in some places in Germany to gain admission to the corporations
except through marriage with the daughter or the widow of a
master.^ The terms of apprenticeship and journeymanship were
prolonged beyond all rational limit. The French coopers had to
serve seven years, and the hatmakers ten years. If a man served
an apprenticeship in Rouen and moved to Paris, he had to serve
another. I) Tests of fitness for admission, like the production of a

* See the striking example given by Depping, p. xxxii. f Pigeonneau, vol. i, p. 117.
\ Reglemens sur les Arts et Metiers, p. Ixxxiii. * Ibid., Ixxxiv.

I Boehmert. Block's Dictionnaire general de la Politique, vol. i, p. 538.
^ Palgrave. Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. i, p. 4.S1.
() Blanqui. History of Political Economy, p. 185.

ySji POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

masterpiece, made under rules that either hampered or destroyed
all skill and originality, were rigorously applied. To draw the
cords of monopoly still more tightly, rites and ceremonies were
invented, the aid and protection of saints invoked, and emblems,
banners, badges, and distinctive costumes to mark off each art
and trade designed and adoi3ted.

The moral havoc wrought by these monopolies was greater
even than the industrial havoc. It crushed all feelings of justice
and humanity, making its victims more grasping and cruel than
Shylock ; it led them to the practice of every trick and decejjtion
of a Newgate sharper to evade the laws; it stirred up a con-
tention that rivaled the quarrels of the Guelphs and Ghibel-
lines. Apprentices became no better than serfs and slaves. They
were not merely pitilessly fined and brutally punished ; they were
often left in ignorance of the craft that they had purchased the
right to learn. In that frightful social and moral revulsion fol-
lowing the long and devastating wars of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, the corporations became more determined than
ever to maintain their industrial aristocracy and monopoly.
They refused to admit any trade less ancient and honorable
than their own, to the rights and privileges of the law ; they
soiled themselves by contact with no person of illegitimate birth ;
and in their savage and relentless pursuit of persons engaged in
unauthorized traffic they invaded the homes of contraband work-
men, confiscating both their tools and the hidden products of
their toil, leaving them and their families destitute and starving.*
To such absurd lengths was the creation of corporations carried
for the production of new taxes and new places for court favor-
ites that occupations like the teaching of dancing, the selling of
flowers, and the catching of birds were organized, and homo-
geneous occupations like the hatmakers' and carpenters' were di-
vided and subdivided beyond the comprehension of the modern
mind. But despite the ingenuity of lawyers and the vigilance of
armies of inspectors, the lines of demarcation could not be drawn
so sharply as to avoid conflicts of interests. The makers of felt
hats quarreled with the makers of cotton hats. The spinners
who had purchased the right to use hemp quarreled with those
that had purchased the right to use flax. The shoemakers fought
with the cobblers that reproduced more than two thirds of an old
shoe. The cutlers that made the handles of knives fought with
those that made the blades. The relations of the makers of
wooden porringers and the makers of wooden spoons were equally
belligerent. Blanqui says that in the middle of the seventeenth
century the annual cost of litigation over these inevitable inva-

* Boehmcrt. Block's Dictionnaire general de la Politique, vol. i, pp. 53*7, 538.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 785

sions of industrial territory amounted in Paris alone to more than
live hundred thousand francs ; that the money wasted upon the
suits of comparatively small corporations amounted to twenty-
five thousand. "From St. Louis to Louis XIV," he says further
in a striking summary of the fate that befell them, " there was
not a sovereign who did not impose restrictions, taxes, and new
regulations upon them ; the courts overpowered them with judg-
ment and fines without diminishing their ardor or calming their
hatreds." * Founded to establish order and to fulfill a mission of
mercy, they degenerated into engines of oppression, confusion,
and degradation, giving birth, in a word, to all the evils of a
society in a state of dissolution.

Such anarchy, which prevailed in England as well as in
France, though in a less degree, could not be permitted to last.
It would in time have wrecked society morally and industrially.
Although ruinously delayed, relief came at last through the
labors of thinkers, statesmen, and revolutionists, but especially
through the ameliorations of the long peace that followed the
devastating and demoralizing wars of Napoleon. Adam Smith
was among the first to come to the rescue. The whole of his
great work was a potent protest against monopoly in all forms.
He pointed out that "the exclusive privileges of corporations,
statutes of apprenticeship, and those which restrain in particular
employments the competition of a smaller number than would
otherwise go into them " were " encroachments upon natural lib-
erty.'' t But it was more than fifty years before the laws that he
inveighed against so powerfully were finally repealed. In France
also the thinkers led the way. " Let complete liberty of com-
merce be maintained," said Quesnay. " When the interest of the
individual is exactly the same as the general interest," said Gour-
nay, "the best thing to do is to leave every man to do as he
likes." X Applying these principles to the corporations, Turgot
proclaimed that " the right to work is the sacred and inalienable
property of the poor man." Again he said, " All sound princi-
ples were violated by the accepted doctrine that it was a royal
right that the prince might sell and subjects might buy." * But
the work of industrial emancipation that he tried in vain to do —
a work that might have saved his country from the horrors of the
Revolution — was among the first and most beneficent achieve-
ments of that frightful convulsion. The Wealth of Nations early

* Blanqui. History of Political Economy, pp. 183, 184.

\ Palgrave. Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. i, p. 430. See whole of Part IL
chapter x, Wealth of Nations, Piogers's edition.

\ Lowell. Eve of the French Pievolution, pp. 234, 235.

* Palgrave. Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. i, p. 43 1

VOL. L. — 59

736 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

made its way into Germany, and soon k-avened the views of her
economists and statesmen. From 1808-'10, when the Stein-Har-
denberg legislation was enacted, down to the Re"volution of 1848,
when a change of policy began, the rulers of that war-infested
land conferred upon labor their most precious gift and its most
precious boon — the right to work. But with the destruction of
the tranquillity that closed the first half of the century came the
inevitable reversions to political and industrial despotism. "The
principles that they recommended for adoption," says Boehmert,
referring to the results of the Berlin conference of the Govern-
ment with the workingmen, afterward crystallized into legisla-
tion, " were worthy of the worst epochs of the middle ages." *
It was not until twenty years later, under the regime of the Con-
federation, that this legislation was wiped out, and industrial
liberty again established. Since then, however, the Franco-
Prussian War has occurred. The result was the same as in
1793 and 1848. Freedom has fallen into discredit, and is in dan-
ger of eclipse. " There has of late," says Prof. Ingram, " been
a feeling in France and Germany that, with the abolition of the
restrictions enforced hj the corporations, there was a real loss of
moral and social as well as economic benefits. In Prussia several
efforts have been made to restore them to a free basis ; and it is
understood that further steps of the same kind are likely to be
taken by the German Governments, whose object is thus to estab-
lish a sort of police of the industrial world, and solve a part of
the great problem of the organization of labor." f As though
despotism could, in times of peace and honest toil, solve any
problem but the loss of liberty and the ruin of civilization !

* Block's Dictionnaire general de la Politique, vol. i, p. 539.

•)■ Palgrave. Dictionary of Political Economy, vol. i, p. 43. Since this was written the
publication of Mr. Spencer's third volume of Principles of Sociology, page 595, acquaints
me with the existence of " a recent measure for establishing compulsoi^ guilds of artisans,
a manifest reversion." Even Mr. Lecky, whose views have very little in common with those
of Mr. Spencer's social philosophy, has recognized this tendency to revert to feudal despot-
ism. Referring to the ideal of labor leaders, he says, " The industrial organization to which
they aspire approaches far more nearly to that of the middle ages or of the Tudors than
the ideal of JefEerson and Cobden." (Democracy and Liberty, vol. i, p. 258.) Again he
says (vol. ii, p. 441) : " A considerable workingmen's party on the Continent, but especially
in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, desires ' obligatory syndicates,' or, in other words,
corporations for carrying on particular trades, to which all who practice those trades must
necessarily belong. It is a system curiously like the guilds and other trade organizations
and monopolies that flourished in the middle ages. In Austria a very remarkable law,
enacted in 1883, established compulsory guilds, including all employei's and workmen, for
the smaller industries, with power of regulating apprenticeships. ... In 1893 a working-
men's congress, held at Bienne, in Switzerland, unanimously voted for obligatory corpora-
tions; a revision of the Constitution was prepared which would have made it po.-sible to
establish such corporations and suppress free labor, but it was defeated by a small majority
on a referendum vote."

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. -jZ-j

II.

Since Boyleau impressed the corporations into the police and
fiscal service of a military despotism, thus converting agencies of
order, industry, and humanity into engines of greed and oppres-
sion, the conditions of society and the thoughts and feelings of
enlightened races have been revolutionized. A state of anarchy
no longer exists. War has ceased to be the chief occupation of
men. Their ambition is not to murder and plunder their fellows.
Devoted to the arts of peace, they have come more and more to
exhibit the manners and sentiments of civilized life. There is
therefore no occasion for the institutions that feudal confusion
and anarchy made needful. A powerful police organization re-
strains the robbers and murderers. An elaborate system of
courts investigates crimes, both great and small, settles disputes
between the contentious, and seeks to maintain the rights of the
simple and weak against the cunning and strong. Asylums, hos-
pitals, refuges, homes, and charitable societies without number
provide for the sick, the aged, the destitute. Education in all the
fields of human knowledge, fitting men and women for every
position in life, can be had in the universities, colleges, acade-
mies, technical schools, and public schools, both primary and sec-
ondary, that cover the land. Social and religious organizations
minister to every conceivable social and religious need. No ob-
loquy is attached to any honest pursuit. Character and ability
have come more and more to be the test of social worth. The
great men of the world are not the warriors ; they are the cap-
tains of industry, the discoverers in science, the thinkers, the
scholars, the artists, the philanthropists, the statesmen.

Yet it is proposed to introduce into a society like this — one
based not upon war, but upon peace and industry — the institu-
tions that finished their proper work centuries ago ; * that sur-
vived, in consequence of their alliance with the state, their use-
fulness so long that they became a curse to man and an obstruction
to social and industrial progress. Not only is it proposed, but, as
already intimated, steps have actually been taken, to convert the
plumbers, the undertakers, the barbers, the horseshoers, the opti-
cians, the dentists, the druggists, the stationary engineers, and
other trades and professions into close organizations like those
that once covered Europe, f Legislation has been had in several

* Pigeonneau, vol. i, p. 1 Y6.

\ Since this was put in type my attention has been called to a New York State law,
enacted last year, for the regulation of " public accountants," who may be regarded simply
as glorified bookkeepers. It provides that any person " over twenty-one years of age and
of good moral character," who shall have passed a prescribed examination, shall " be styled
and known as a certified public accountant." It forbids any other person to " assume such

788 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

States to give them rights and privileges as violative of the prin-
ciple of equal freedom and as hostile to the interests of society
and civilization as those that Boy lean conferred upon the corpo-
rations of Paris. Under the specious plea of protecting the in-
terests of the public and of self- improvement, both morally and
intellectually — a plea that Boyleau himself did not forget to
make * — there is in progress a movement to extend these rights
and privileges to the members of the same trades and professions
in other States. Unless it is checked, an achievement that has not
yet been undertaken, we shall have fastened upon us before we
are aware of it the same intolerable industrial and professional
tyranny that contributed so powerfully to the French Revolu-
tion ; for the rules and regulations are becoming so numerous
and despotic, particularly those that have emanated from the
plumbing trade, that individual liberty, in all that pertains to
that business at least, is practically denied. They rival in mi-
nuteness and vexatiousness anything that Boyleau produced. For
the judgment and will of the person most interested in the perfec-
tion of a piece of work are substituted the judgment and will of
the person least interested.

If organization, whether industrial or political or social, in-
volves a loss of liberty, it also involves, as the story of the
French corporations shows, a more serious loss of truth and
honor. It does not lead simply to cruel intolerance ; it leads to
the grossest hypocrisy. Were the slightest value to be attached
to the pleas and apologies of the modern corporations, there
would be no possible escape from the conviction that they are
animated by the loftiest motives. Their ambition is not limited
to self -improvement and deliverance from an obloquy and con-
title, or use the abbreviation C. P. A., or any other words, letters, or figures to indicate that
the person using the same is such certified public accountant." Very curiously so intelli-
gent a journal as the Commercial and Financial Chronicle (February 13, ISQ'?) regards such
absurd and obsolete legislation as " very important," believing evidently that it will do much
to insure a correct audit of corporation accounts. Yet it is clear-headed enough to see
" that even under the best of conditions accountants' examinations are subject to certain
limitations," and " such examinations by no means provide a remedy for all the ills of cor-
porate management."

* " Because," says Boyleau, in the introduction to the Livre des Metiers, " we have
seen in Paris in our time much jocularity and unbridled lust which is becoming corrupt,
and likewise the nonsense of the young and ignorant among the young foreigners and
those of the city who neither have nor practice any trade, because they had sold to stran-
gers no things so good or so loyal as they should be." After mentioning the courts of
jurisdiction he has established, Boyleau continues: "This we have done for the profit of
all, including the poor and the strangers who come to Paris to buy commodities ; that
the commodities may be so loyal that they will not be deceived by there being some de-
fect ; and to punish those who shall receive dishonest gain or, through lack of sense, ask
it and take it contrary to God, to law, and to reason." — Manqui, History of Political
J^conomi/, p. 180.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 789

tempt hardly less profound and humiliating than that visited upon
the honest toil of feudal times ; it includes the noble role of phi-
lanthropist and benefactor. " The principal object of this bill,"
says the note appended to a measure to regulate the practice of
optometry in the State of New York, but really to restrict the
sale of spectacles to opticians, " is to protect the public against
incompetent and designing persons who may in the future at-
tempt to traffic upon postulate skill in adapting glasses to the
sight 1 " * " To the end that public health and our loved ones "
may " be more adequately protected," and " to the elevation of
our profession" and the suppression of "the impostors in our
business," the undertakers of Indiana, with more tenderness than
the opticians, due perhaps to the nature of their calling, ask for
the enactment of a bill to create a " State Board of Funeral Direct-
ors," and to prescribe certain requirements to the trade. When
the barbers of the State of New York met in Syracuse last No-
vember to frame a similar measure, they, too, felt moved to pro-
claim the purity of their motives. " We have been hampered and
humiliated for years," they said, " by incompetent people working
at our profession." Among these obnoxious persons are "the
drunken barbers," the workmen graduated from so-called barber
colleges "in the remarkably short time of eight weeks," and,
finally, the laborers and mechanics engaged in other occupations
during the day that shave and cut hair in the evening, using
" one towel on six persons," and charging the demoralizing price
of five and ten cents for their dangerous services. " Innumerable
people," they add, referring to this alarming peril, " have been
inoculated with vile skin diseases, which, in many cases, have
baffled the skill of physicians ; and we claim," they assert, with
the firmness of true philanthropists, animated by a noble princi-
ple, "that the public should be protected from these impostors." f
But the most edifying exhibition of disinterested benevolence
is to be found in the pleas and apologies of the master plumbers
— the strongest of these modern corporations and the happy pos-
sessors of the largest rights and privileges under the law.J It

* The Optical Journal, vol. ii, No. 10, p. 393.

f The National Barber, December 31, 1896.

X As proof of this statement the following extract from the report of the Sanitary Com-
mittee at Philadelphia, 1895, may be given: " We have recited the utter lack of sanitary
laws as we found at the time of our organization. Now note the change. The necessary
preliminaries performed, immediately throughout the entire country the master plumbers'
association, by various honorable, just, and enlightened efforts, exerted, too, under the most
trying conditions of ridicule, sarcasm, ignorance, and narrow-mindedness, formulated and
caused to be adopted regulating laws, now generally termed ' plumbing laws,' or ' rules and
regulations of plumbing and drainage.' To such an extent did our labors ramify that, at
this writing, there is no city or town, and hardly a hamlet, which is not in a greater or less
degree controlled and benefited by our labors." — Proceedings, p. 42.

790 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

would not be possible for one "unfamiliar with tbeir history to
imagine that any labor could ever have been in a more despicable
condition. " I have served a sufficient time/' said an official es-
sayist * at the Detroit convention of master plumbers, " when the
plumber was regarded as somewhat of a scavenger." f How shock-
ingly degraded was the condition of these honest toilers is made
still more vivid by the powerful picture of another essayist. " At
that time," he said, alluding to the same distressing period, " the
term * master plumber ' was a misnomer ; he was a slave — slave
to the tyranny of established business customs, slave to the reck-
less, demoralizing practices of dealers, slave to an embittered and
hostile public sentiment, slave to the meanest drudgery and sacri-
fices of the trade, slave to his own weakness and submission." J
After speaking of the convention as composed of men " gathered
together with no thought of pecuniary reward, to enhance the
common welfare of man, to present and discuss the best means of
preventing the ravages of disease with its resulting misery and
woe," he declared, with rhythmic eloquence on another occasion,
that " their profession has made them philanthropists, and their
love of mankind has made them benefactors." * The jjower that
wrought this miracle is the organization and legislation that
have weeded out "the so-called master plumbers who do not
understand their business," who, in consequence "jeopardize the
health of the public," and who, through ignorance as to how
plumbing should be done, " figure and take work at prices which
can not be met by those who are skilled and desire to do good
work." II

Here we come in contact with the true spirit that animates
every modern trade and professional corporation. Without ex-
ception, they are struggling, like the old feudal corporations, to
limit competition and to secure a monopoly of labor and trade.
The plumbers may find much pleasure in calling themselves
"philanthropists" and "benefactors"; they may strive labori-
ously to lift themselves to the plane of "professional sanitarians,"
ranking, to use the fine phrases of an official essayist, with " God's
nobleman, the honest physician "; "^ but their real object, however
concealed under the alluring garb of rhetoric and sentiment, is
to get the largest amount of money for the smallest amount of

* The National Convention of the Master Plumbers has a Committee on Essays, which
makes up a list of subjects and selects the best essays on them to be read before the con-
vention. The views set forth in these essays, which are published in the regular reports of
the proceedings, may therefore be regarded as " official."

I Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 167.

X Proceedings, Cincinnati, 1891, p. 129.

* Proceedings, Denver, 1890, p. 86.

II Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 38. ^ Ibid., p. 95.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE, 791

work.* One of their number has been honest and frank enough
to confess as much. " It is true," said Mr. John L. E. Firmin, of
San Francisco, an official essayist at the Philadelphia convention,
" that the prime moving cause of our organization was the better-
ment of our condition in dollars and cents." f However bald and
brutal we may think such an impeachment of a noble purpose
to " enhance the welfare of man " without " thought of pecuniary
reward," it is the exact truth ; and for a complete justification of
every letter and syllable, no one need go beyond the ofl&cial state-
ments of the plumbers themselves. The annual reports of the
proceedings of the National Conventions of the Master Plumbers'
Association of the United States show that in spite of the exalted
virtue they have assumed, they have not scorned the selfish policy
and despotic practices of feudal times. By proposing the restric-
tion of apprenticeship, by making more onerous the requirements
for admission to their associations, by driving from the field they
have seized upon the unauthorized persons called in to do their
work, by striving to obtain a monopoly of the retail trade in
plumbing supplies, they have exhibited all the traits that made
the feudal corporations so odious and intolerable, and finally
brought them to complete and merited ruin.

That they are not without some conception of the rights of the
individual, that they realize the " irrepressible conflict " between
their conduct and the principles of the institutions under which
they live, there is ample evidence. When the journeymen
I)lumbers of Omaha struck for an advance in wages, the master
plumbers of the city discovered a keen enough appreciation of
these rights and principles. " Resolved," said one of their reso-
lutions in condemnation of the strikers, " that the members of
the Omaha Master Plumbers' Association feel that their business
interests are being unnecessarily and unwarrantably interfered
with by the Journeymen's Union of this city, in that said organi-

* Besides the proofs of this statement in the text, the following may be given : A mem-
ber of the New York Board of Horseshoers told me that one of the objeets of their law was
to increase the price for shoeing a horse all round from one dollar, charged by the poor
horseshoers, to one dollar and a half and two dollars. " Ultimately," said the President of
the New York Optical Society, in his address at Syracuse, June 2, 1896, published in the
Optical Journal, vol. ii. No. 4, p. 124, " we should . . . endeavor to establish uniform
prices for certain articles which are recognized as staples in our business. Great differ-
ences in our charges shatter public confidence in their legitimacy." Speaking of the bene-
fits that should follow the enactment of a law to protect the barbers, the National Barber
of April 30, 1896, says: "The better class of barbers would reap benefit, hetter prices would
prevail^ and the barber would then be classed with other professional men." Alluding to
the barbers of Illinois, who demand protection also, a writer in the National Barber of
December 31, 1896, says: "They are tired of seeing people buying their own razors, and
will try to put a stop to such a one-sided practice if they can."

f Proceedings, Philadelphia, 1895, p. 90.

792 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

zation, by its rules and acts, denies to the master plumbers the
right, as business men, to direct and manage their business affairs
according to their own ideas." * How great a difference it makes
whose ox is gored is disclosed again in the reply to the demand of
the jobbing houses of Salt Lake City that the master plumbers
of the town should, under the famous Baltimore resolutions,!
restricting the sale of plumbing supplies to master plumbers
only, purchase of them alone, "We hold the right," they said,
with the true American spirit, "to buy where we can buy the
best." X The same view as to the rights of labor are to be found
in the official essay that Mr. Edward Hayward, of Brooklyn, read
before the Milwaukee convention. " Such claim," he said, refer-
ring to the claim that " organized labor has rights superior to
those of the craftsman or laborer standing alone on his own
merits, and supporting the dignity of his manhood," " could never
have rooted well and can never flourish long in the atmosphere
of a people possessing equal rights and capable of maintain-
ing them. It would not," he added, in a tone of mild admonition,

* Proceedings, Pittsburg, 1889, p. 55.

f These resolutions were first adopted at Baltimore, June 26, 1884, and reaffirmed and
amended at subsequent conventions. The essential part of the original resolutions is as
follows : " Whereas, the manufacturers and wholesale dealers in plumbing material per-
sist in selling to consumers, to our injury and detriment, placing us toward our customers
in the light of extortionists, causing endless trouble ; and whereas, the system of protecting
us from this wrong, which draws in its wake other wrongs, is ineffective, it is absolutely
necessary to perfect such a system by united action that will remove these evils from
which we have suffered for years ; therefore be it resolved, that the members of this asso-
ciation confine the purchase of plumbing material to manufacturers and wholesale dealers
who sell goods to master plumbers only, as defined in these resolutions." The term master
plumber was defined in the following resolution adopted at Washington in 1892 and amend-
ed at Philadelphia in 1895 : " Resolved, that it is the sense of this convention that in the
future the interpretation of the term ' master plumber,' as set forth in the above resolutions
to entitle him to purchase plumbing material, be construed to mean a master plumber who
has an established place of business and represents the industry of plumbing, and who has
qualified under State or local enactments regulating plumbing and plumbers, where such
exist ; or, where no license is required, an individual or firm with an established place of
business and representing the industry of plumbing." The following important additions
were made at the Philadelphia convention : " Resolved, that the members of this associa-
tion should not sell plumbing material to consumers when they do not furnish the labor for
putting the material in. Resolved, that the supply houses doing a plumbing supply busi-
ness and contracting for plumbing work shall be considered unjust competitors." The fol-
lowing are at present exempt from the operation of these resolutions : The United States
Government, State, county, and city institutions. Sailors' Snug Harbor, railroad, gas, water,
and electric light companies only for such goods as are necessary for their respective lines of
business.

X Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 68. See also p. 161, Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893,
where the essayist says : '* When rules governing a household, the laws of a State, or of a
trade associate alike, are oppressive, they become inoperative by a general disregard of
them. The inability of the governing power to enforce them is seen, and contempt for it
follows."

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 793

" be wise, therefore, for a master plumbers' association, now free,
to commit itself to sucli a dogma, or become a party to practices
that would deprive any fellow-workingman of bis natural means
of obtaining a living." * Neither Adam Smith nor Turgot could
have said anything better.

But poor human nature, even of the variety vouchsafed to
master plumbers after they have been transformed by organiza-
tion and legislation into " philanthropists " and " benefactors," is
not able to live up to these vigorous assertions of the principle of
personal liberty. The yearning it feels for "the fleshpots of
Egypt " is too strong to be overcome by unselfish thoughts and
sentiments. Blinded morally as well as industrially by its
anxious pursuit of " betterment in dollars and cents," it denies to
others the rights that it arrogates to itself. Like the old feudal
corporations, it would make membership of its benevolent organ-
izations as difficult as possible. " The St. Louis association," said
the president of the Milwaukee convention, " has adopted a new
constitution, making it a necessary requisite for membership that
a candidate must have served five years' apprenticeship and three
years a journeyman plumber. This qualification for member-
ship," he added apologetically, "may be a little advanced for
some localities, but I believe that the line ought to be drawn be-
tween practical and impractical men." f Indeed, it ought ; but
that is not the object of this restriction ; otherwise the work of
drawing lines between practical and impractical men would be
left entirely to the person that employs them. The object is to
make the plumber's business as exclusive as possible, and thus to
restrict competition. " It is an undoubted fact," says a report on
apprenticeship to the Cleveland convention, which discloses this
ignoble purpose, " that many of the evils arising from the present
ruinous competition in the plumbing business are due almost
entirely to the great number of young men who have partially
served an apprenticeship at the trade." X But when an organiza-
tion is once started upon the path of proscription, the steps to the
most shameless exhibitions of the spirit of greed and intolerance
are soon and easily taken. The Master Plumbers' Association of
the United States is no exception. At the Cleveland convention,
the Wisconsin delegation proposed that the number of appren-
tices should be restricted to one for every three journeymen and
fraction thereof, and that the plumbers of the United States with-
draw their "' moral and financial support from all plumbing trade
schools, as we think they tend to increase the ranks of the master
plumbers." * Reflect upon the significance of such extraordinary

* Proceedings, Milwaukee, 1893, p. 162. f Ibid., p. 71.

X Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 130. * Ibid., p. 77.

VOL. L. — 60

794 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

words. They are a condemnation of technical education. Never
were the feudal corporations guilty of anything more retrogres-
sive, or more subversive of their own interests or the interests of
the public.

It is but just to say that as yet the master plumbers have not
established an apprenticeship or a journey manship despotism.
But that they are not lacking in the spirit that leads to both is
manifest from their efforts to control the retail trade, which have
been more persistent and systematic, and therefore more suc-
cessful. Ever since the National Association was organized, they
have striven to put a stop to the traffic between jobbers and con-
sumers. So twisted have become the moral perceptions of the
master plumber that deprivation of the profits from this traffic
appears hardly less reprehensible than a fraud. "The jobbing
houses," says the report of the vice-president of the Minnesota As-
sociation to the Detroit convention, calling attention to this spe-
cies of crime, " are selling material to general contractors and
owners of buildings, and hiring a plumber by the day to do the
work, thus doing the boss plumber out of the profit that right-
fully belongs to him." * Because of such a perversion of the
ethics of trade, the natural fruit of organization and monopoly,
it has almost ceased to be possible for corporations and the owers
of large buildings, not to speak of the smaller and less influential
victims of the " philanthropists " and " benefactors," either to do
any part of their own plumbing or to get from a dealer the sup-
plies needed for the work.f The definition of a plumber has been
so narrowed that it does not apply to plumbers in the employ of
either of these classes ; and the definition of plumbing materials
has been so broadened that it includes everything that a plumber
handles. " I believe," said a New York delegate to the Cleveland
convention, setting forth the view that has generally been adopt-
ed, "that everything that we handle is plumbing goods. I be-
lieve the meter, and the pump, and the range, and everything in
a specification called for in the plumbing line, and which we have
to handle, is plumbing goods." J To such refinements has the
lexicography of the plumbing trade been carried that a distinc-
tion has been drawn between plumbing goods that can and those
that can not be sold to a shipbuilder, without the intervention of

* Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 67.

f In 1894 Mr. Oakes A. Ames and other large property owners attempted to get the
following reasonable amendment made to the Massachusetts plumbing law : " Any person
may, by himself, or his usual employees, without obtaining a plumber's license," as pro-
vided by the law, " do any proper plumbing work upon his own premises, and in doing such
work shall not be restricted to the use of plumbing materials that can not be purchased in
open market." But the amendment, which was denounced by so enlightened a journal as
the Boston Herald, was defeated. % Proceedings, Cleveland, 1 896, p. 89.

REVERSIONS IN MODERN INDUSTRIAL LIFE. 795

the master plumber as middleman. To the former belong all
supplies used in constructive or repair work in a shipyard, and
to the latter all supplies used in constructive or repair work out-
side of a shipyard, and not requiring the special skill of the ship-
builder.*

But the arrogance of this modern trade corporation does not
end here. Not content with denying to an American citizen the
right to buy gas fixtures, or galvanized iron pipe, or bath tubs,
or kitchen boilers from whomever he pleases; nor with telling
him that he must not use wooden washtubs in his laundry, and
that he must have at least one bathroom for every ten persons in
his family ; f nor with prescribing a code for the construction of
his plumbing as minute and tyranaical as any that Boyleau ever
dreamed of; nor with proposing a government inspection and
approval of the plans of architects, especially with regard to
light and ventilation ; X the master plumbers have sought to
bring under their wise and benevolent jurisdiction the manage-
ment of the business affairs of the government of cities, counties,
States, and even of the nation. A California law provides that
in the specifications for any State building, those relating to the
plumbing must, to use their own jargon, be "segregated," and
submitted directly to the plumbers for estimates.* The dignity
of this noble organization of "professional sanitarians," which
is coming to rival that of the feudal corporations, forbids the
acceptance of a subcontract. " Master plumbers," said the presi-
dent of the Texas association, after describing an attempt made
in San Antonio to force upon the county commissioners the ob-
servance of the same absurd and tyrannical rule, " should never
be second fiddlers to any contractor." |1 The ordinances of San
Francisco and other cities provide that no one but a regularly
licensed plumber shall touch the sewers, thus compelling the pay-
ment of plumber's wages for the work of a laborer. Two years
ago, the Master Plumbers' Association of Illinois passed a reso-
lution that the United States Government should be denied the
right to buy plumbing supplies from the jobbers.'^ Is it any
wonder that the Sanitary Committee urged in a report to the
Philadelphia convention that "upon every favorable oppor-
tunity," the plumbers should "endeavor to disabuse the public
of the idea that our legislative duties are selfish " ? ^ Is the idea
altogether fanciful ?

I have already mentioned how the feudal corporations took

* Proceedings, Cleveland, 1896, p. 141. f Plumbing Code of Rochester, N. Y.

X Proceedings, Philadelpliia, 1895, p. 45. * Ibid., 1895, p. 80.
II Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 79. ^ Proceedings, Pliiladelpliia, 1895, p. 54.

0 Ibid., 1895, p. 43.

796 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

one of the most effective steps of organization and monopoly to
retain power, namely, the selection of patron saints, the adoption
of rites and ceremonies, and the use of banners, badges, and dis-
tinctive costumes. Most curiously, master plumbers have not
neglected to propose a like step to safeguard their rights and
privileges. " We would urge upon the Executive Committee,"
said Mr. James Ryan, the vice-president of the District of Co-
lumbia Association, " to make some recommendation that a ritual
be adopted. . . . We would also recommend a suitable badge or
emblem be adopted for all local associations, making it a univer-
sal badge throughout the country." * I have still to learn, how-
ever, that they have chosen a fitting patron saint. Is it because
they have not heard of Cagliostro ?

[7*0 be continued.^

EXPERIMENTS ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL,

MADE UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE

COMMITTEE OF FIFTY.

By C. F. HODGE, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PEOFESSOK OF PHYSIOLOGY, CLAEK UNIVERSITY.

II.

IT may be well to call to mind the title of this paper, which
is exijeriments upon the physiological influence of alcohol.
We purpose to adhere closely to " experiments " and to " physi-
ology." Dogs could be killed in a few minutes, or a few days
or months, by sufficiently large doses of alcohol. While such
experiments might have some interest to toxicology or pathol-
ogy, they could not have much for physiology, because in such
violent procedures the abnormal must greatly overshadow the
normal functions of the animal.

April 27, 1805, I obtained two pairs of cocker-spaniel puppies :
the males, brothers from the same litter; the females, sisters
from a not- closely related litter, f All four happened to have

* Proceedings, Detroit, 1894, p. 72.

f The dogs were obtained from Mr. C. G. Browning, of Vrorcester, to whom I am under
great obligations for assistance and advice as to kennel management. Tipsy and Topsy
were bred by him. Nig and Bum he kindly obtained for me from the Swiss Mountain Ken-
nels at Germantown, Pa., bred by Mrs. Smyth. Considerable expense was involved in get-
ting such good stock, but a number of considerations seemed to render it advisable. In no
other way could such uniformity and comparabihty have been attained. The heredity of
mongrels could not have been traced, in case anything of interest should crop out in that
important, field. In this connection I wish to express my thanks to both Mrs. Smyth and
Mr. Browning for valuable aid already received, and for their cordial assurances of help in
future, should later developments require it. Another consideration, which weighed some-

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

797

been born February 22, 1895. They were as nearly alike as it was
possible to get them. The males are black, the females red.

It will save time and confusion if we christen them at this
point, and use their respective names in our subsequent descrip-
tions. The sisters were named " Topsy " and " Tipsy," the males
"Nig" and "Bum." The names are sufficiently suggestive to

Bum.

Tipsy. >,ig.

Fig. 6.— November 27, 1895.

Topsy.

enable the reader to carry easily in mind which ones are given
the alcohol and which are normal.

April 29th, they weighed as follows :

Tipsy 2,102 grammes.

Topsy 2,150 "

Bum ,

NiK.

2,1'?9 grammes.
1,556 "

For about two weeks the four were studied with reference to
deciding which pair to treat with alcohol. Of the sisters. Tipsy
was considerably the more active and playful ; of the brothers,
ISTig was the livelier. Bum, at the time, is noted as being a little
"shy and quiet." Otherwise he appeared considerably superior
in health, vigor, and " points." Nig's already deficient growth —
since dwarfing is one of the important points about which the
experiment turns — finally decided the matter, viz., to give the
alcohol to Tipsy and Bum.

what with me, was that in the resident part of the city I could hardly expect to have a
kennel of mongrel curs tolerated for the necessary length of time. Intelligence, too, was a
prime consideration. For this, as well as for good disposition, these dogs could leave noth-
ing to be desired. In selecting this breed I feel that the choice was made more wisely or
more fortunately than I knew.

798

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

The administration of alcoliol was begun May 12th, six cubic
centimetres of chemically pure alcohol, diluted to forty per cent
with water and mixed with their breakfast, being given to Tipsy
and Bum. No appreciable effect was produced. Accordingly, the

18 95

1 89 S

Fig. 7. — Growth o¥ the Dogs.

dose was increased daily until May 24th, when they received
twenty-five cubic centimetres apiece. This caused rather pro-
nounced intoxication, but nothing approaching stupor. Both
dogs appeared next morning as bright and playful as ever.

My intention at this time was to run the experiment along the
line of light daily intoxication, but, with Dr. Billings's concur-
rence, what seemed to be a better physiological limit was adopt-
ed.* It was decided to give as large doses as possible, short
of producing noticeable symptoms of intoxication. Accordingly,
the amount was reduced to fifteen cubic centimetres, which was
increased to twenty cubic centimetres by June 10th, and thereafter,
as the dogs grew, up to thirty-five cubic centimetres apiece by the

* For the suggestion as to the proper physiological limit, I am happy to acknowledge
my indebtedness to Mrs. Hodge. At the time when Tipsy and Bum were first intoxicated,
the only time they have been intoxicated, Mrs. Hodge not only suggested the physiological
limit, but went to considerable pains of argument to turn me from my avowed purpose of
" getting the greatest physiological (V) effect in the shortest time." This has been a prime
defect of similar work in the past, and whatever of value may attach to the present re-
search I consider as mainly due to this suggestion.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

799

following January. As seen from tlie chart, Fig. 7, they have
practically attained their growth at this time. During the fol-
lowing year it was possible to increase the dose only five cubic
centimetres — to the amount given at present. February '-^l, 1897,
Bum's weight was 9,950 and Tipsy's 10,060 grammes. It thus
appears that the physiological limit for a non-intoxicant dose
of alcohol in the case of our dogs is about four cubic centimetres
per kilogramme.

It is readily seen that this amount is equivalent for a man
weighing seventy kilogrammes to two hundred and eighty cubic
centimetres daily and taken at a single dose. This is ten ounces,
whereas the physiological limit for man is usually stated as two
ounces. This, of course, refers to absolute alcohol, and corre-
sponds to nearly three times the amount of moderately strong
whisky. It may be contended that this is too much or too little,
but it still seems to me that no better rule could have been fol-

Bum.

Tipsy.
Fig. 8.— April, 1896.

Nig.

lowed in the matter. While it may not be the golden physi-
ological mean, it would seem to be safely within the physio-
logical extreme, as the perfect general health of the dogs has
shown.

As to details of feeding, each dog receives, in a separate dish

8oo

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

equal quantities of solid food and milk at six o'clock in the even-
ing. The alcohol is thoroughly mixed with this meal. In the
morning, each is given half a Spratt biscuit. This forms the

staple diet, but is gen-
P erously fortified with

good meat, both raw
and cooked, and plen-
ty of good gnawing
bones.

A large, sunny
yard, kept clean; a
good, dry kennel, and
good kennel hygiene,
including frequent
disinfection ; clean,
cool water, three
times a day in hot
weather ; dry beds
with plenty of clean
straw and sawdust ;
careful and regular
attention to para-
sites, both internal
and external — all these things have conspired to render the experi-
ment thus far physiologically ideal.

The dogs were weighed, always before their breakfast, at first
daily ; later, every week. Their respective lines in Fig. 7 tell the
story of their growth at a glance. Until nine months of age.
Bum remains heavier than Nig. Topsy is evidently destined to
be a much smaller dog than her sister. February 31, 1807, they
weighed as follows :

Bum.

Nig.
Fig. 9.— October, 1896.

Nig 10,520 grammes.

Bum 9,950 "

Topsy II 10,630 grammes.

Tipsy 10,060

Both the alcoholics are thus seen to be a little lighter than their
controls, 5'4 per cert. This does give a small margin in favor
of the normal animals, but it is doubtful whether four puppies
would be found to grow under normal conditions more uniformly
and come out more evenly at the end of two years. It would
certainly be straining a point to claim any "stunting" effect of
alcohol administered as above described.

For the general setting of the experiment, it only remains for
me to add that, barring the accidental death of Topsy, and a
trifling exception in Bum^s case, the health of all the dogs has
been perfect from the beginning of the experiment up to the pres-
ent. Tipsy and Bum have not always eaten all that was offered

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL. 801

them, possibly because so much quieter than the normals, but
practically none of the dogs has " missed a meal."

Again, by a substantial favor on the part of Mr. Browning, I
was able to obtain Topsy II, also Tipsy's sister, from the same
litter. While Topsy II has thus had a somewhat different life
for a time, in form and weight she makes a much more compar-
able match for Tipsy — so that, hard as it seemed at the time,
" Little " Topsy's death has undoubtedly resulted in a fairer set-
ting for the experiment.

So much, then, for the side of purely physical growth, and
there is in it little consolation for those who are wont to recite
the " stunting " and the disease-inducing effects of alcoholic indul-
gence. But we are engaged in a search for truth, and not for
consolation.

Still another line of physical evidence remains to be ex-
amined, which bears closely upon the deepest psychic functions
of animal life.

What is the sexual and reproductive history of our ani-
mals ?

Sexual periods are indicated upon the chart, and stars occur-
ring in Topsy's and Tipsy's curves of growth signify whelping, the
number of stars corresponding with the number of whelps. From
the chart we may read that Tipsy failed to conceive at the first
season, while Topsy conceived normally. Mr. Browning has
investigated the matter for me both in his own and other ken-
nels, and is able to state that

failure under these conditions ^P^''^^^^piii''iiL.^"-Wi
is rare, probably not occurring W ^l^^'^ X

in ten per cent of the cases.
Controlled as the experiment is,
this may indicate a tendency in
alcoholic animals toward steril-
ity. But, reading further along
in the chart, we are forced to
yield all benefits of this doubt
when we find Tipsy bringing
into the world no less than seven .. ia t- n f^i ,. icqp

iiG. 10. — iipsy, October, 1896.

puppies. Since completing this

draft of the chart, Topsy II has whelped for the first time, Octo-
ber 27th, giving birth to five, and Tipsy has whelped a second
time, giving birth again to seven.

Comparing the puppies of the first litters, Tipsy's weighed
together 1,470 grammes, averaging 210, and Topsy's 1,080, averag-
ing 216 grammes. Topsy also had the smallest puppy born — 120
grammes — Tipsy's smallest weighing 190. Tipsy has also the
honor of owning the largest puppy born, 265 grammes, Topsy's

8o2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

largest weighiDg 260. The last one of Tipsy's whelps was born
dead ; all of Topsy's were born alive.

Both Demme * for man, by comparing normal with alcoholic
families among the Swiss, and Mairet and Combemale f in experi-
ments upon dogs, have attempted to
prove that deformity, degeneration,
involving especially the brain, and
a number of abnormities of a nerv-
ous character may be caused by
chronic alcoholism of the parents.
We have also Morel's X account, so
often quoted, of degeneration in an
alcoholic family to idiocy and ex-
tinction in the fourth generation.

With these things in mind, it is
of interest to note that two of Tipsy's
puppies were hare- lipped on both
sides, a serious deformity of the face.
All of Topsy's puppies were normal-
FiG. 11.— Topsy, October, 1896. ly developed. TMs might be inter-
preted as confirmation of the above
authors. However, practically all the value of such complicated
experiments depends on repetition and upon adequate controls.
The smallest puppy of Topsy II presented the same abnormity in
exaggerated degree.

From the first litters each mother has thus to her credit four
healthy living puppies, and Tipsy's are in no wise inferior. In
Tipsy's second litter, February 1, 1897, three were deformed, two
were born dead, and the remaining two proved to be nonviable.
This may indicate a progressive deterioration, but any interpre-
tation of it had better be delayed until more evidence is obtained.
It is sufficient to indicate that results are likely to increase in
definiteness as the experiment proceeds.

At the suggestion of Dr. Billings, a confirmatory experiment
was undertaken in which, instead of chemically pure alcohol, the
ordinary beverages — whisky, wine, and beer — were administered.
The experiment was begun with three female puppies from the
same litter, half sisters to Tipsy and Topsy, obtained from Mr.
Browning. These were named Frisky (whisky), Winnie (wine),
and Berry (beer). It was first attempted to get them to take
their respective drinks as beverages, to develop in them a liking

* Demme. Ueber den Einfluss des Alcohols auf den Organismus des Kindes. Stuttgart,
1891.

f Mairet et Combemale. Influence degenerative de I'Aleool sur la Descendance. Compt.
rend., cxi, 667, 1888.

X Morel. Traite des Degenerescences de I'Espece humaine. Paris, 1857, p. 125.

TBE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

803

similar to that sometimes found in man, so that it might not be
necessary to give the liquors with their food. About two weeks
were lost in this attempt during the first part of April. They
practically refused to take enough to make the experiment worth
trying. Accordingly, the doses were given, as with the others,
mixed with their food at night.

The amount necessary to give in order to make the experiment
at all comparable with the others, as to amount of alcohol, was
such as to make their meals very wet and bulky. Curves of their
growths are included with that of the others in Fig. 7. They
are seen to grow well from April to June, Berry falling consid-
erably behind. They then came down with eczema, Berry having
it worst, Winnie somewhat lighter. Frisky not quite so bad as
either. I do not feel warranted in attributing this to either the
liquors employed or to kennel management, for no trace of the
disease had made its appearance before or with any of the other
dogs. It certainly could not be considered an alcohol effect, for
the largest dose of beer, 125 grammes, that Berry could take con-
tained no more than 5'5 grammes of alcohol (the beer contained

Tipsy.

Topsy II.

Fig. 12.— October, 1896.

4'3 per cent). I am strongly inclined to think that both the
eczema and the scrawny growth of all three puppies is to be
attributed mainly to their sloppy food — i. e., a water effect. A
number of books on the care of dogs caution strongly against
making the food of puppies " sloppy," danger of causing eczema

8o4

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

being one of the chief grounds. On the whole. Frisky and Winnie
are seen to have grown a trifle faster than Tipsy, which would
indicate the absence of deleterious ingredients in the wine and

Frisky.

Winnie.

Fig. 13.— October, 1896.

Berry.

whisky. They were bright, promising puppies to begin with,
but they have grown into a sorry-looking lot, as is witnessed by
Fig. 13.

After all, the only true physiological expression of the value
of an animal's or a man's life is the total amount of energy de-
veloped and utilized during its continuance ; and while, in order
to attain to a proper relation to the energy material around it, it
becomes necessary for the animal to develop a certain mechanism
of this or that size and form, and with such and such parts, still
as little energy as possible is wasted in forming the machine. An
animal dead, in the chemical composition of its body, contains
but a small fraction of the energy which it is able to utilize dur-
ing its lifetime, and even the greater part of this is contained in
the food from which its body was formed. This fraction, possi-
bly one one-thousandth, whatever it may be, would give us the
first adequate expression ever obtained of the relative values of
human anatomy to human physiology, of the physical body and
the life work.

Thus, in our purely physical and anatomical analysis of the
experiment so far, we have studied only this small fraction of
the whole life story even of a dog. In going on to the side of

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

805

function, the psycliic-volitional side of life, we are at once met
by the difficulty of lacking terms and measures with which to
express in verbal descriptions but a small fraction of the truth.

This has been my reason for supplementing descrij^tions with
as many photographs as possible. And if the reader will study
closely the expression of each face through the whole series,
especially if he be somewhat familiar with dogs' faces, he will
get the best idea that I am able to give by any expression within
my power of the difference between the alcoholic and normal dogs
in just this important respect, the vigor, the " life," the " go " that
is in them. Look at the faces in Figs. 6, 8, and 14, and in all
the rest, and come to any conclusion you can or wish. It will
not be possible for me to say anything which shall change it.

It was not until alcohol had been given for nearly two months,
early in July, that it became quite noticeable that Tipsy and
Bum were a little quieter than the others. This became gradually
more marked. By September they were rather often caught nap-
ping in the shade, while Topsy and Nig were playing actively.
They had developed also a cringing, trembling timidity, for which

'"'^J

Uum.

Tipsy. Nig.

Fig. 14.— October, 1896.

Topsy II.

nothing either in my treatment of them or in their relations to
the other dogs could possibly account. Whipping was most care-
fully avoided from the first, a spat from the open hand being my
limit of severity. If a switch was used, it was to strike the ground
or the fence and not the dog. Practically they have received
nothing but assuring caresses at my hand, and still this unac-

8o6

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

countable fear, this cringing and trembling like a Chinese cul-
prit before his executioner. (See Figs. 15, 16, and 17.*)

Some may contend that the dogs were not comparable in the
first place. This, of course, is possible, but I do not feel that in
this respect the experiment could have been improved upon. The

Fig. 15. — Bum, November, 1895.

presumption is, in fact, very strong against any such interpreta-
tion of the facts.

I can conceive of no other interpretation than the evident one,
viz., that we have to do here with one of the physiological causes

* For want of space we are obliged to omit the two figures with which it was intended
these should be compared. They represent Nig and Topsy sidewise, standing naturally,
and with no signs of fear.

A word may not be amiss at just this point as to my method of obtaining the photo-
graphs. Mr. C. C. Stewart manipulated the camera, while I controlled the dogs, in procur-
ing the negatives for Figs. (5 and 8. All the rest I took myself, most of them alone, a
few with Mrs. Hodge's help. It was recognized from the first that all the dogs must be
treated exactly alike, and the rule was laid down at the beginning that, no matter how
badly they behaved, no spatting, not even a sharp word, should be indulged in while they
were on the photographing stand. The whole procedure was given the character of a
frolic, in which, when they " sat still and looked pretty," bits of meat or biscuit were
given to all alike, and no punishment or reproof was administered on any account. I may
have failed unconsciously, but, if I did, it was with the irrepressibles, Topsy and Nig, and
not with Tipsy or Bum.

Furthermore, nothing of the nature of " intoxication effect " was possible in any of the
photographs. As stated above, the dogs were given their alcohol at evening, and then not in
doses sufficient to produce intoxication, and the pictures were taken about noon. And,
further, for several of the pictures, notably 6, 8, 14, and 15), alcohol was purposely omitted
the night before.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

807

or conditions of fear. There may, of course, be many others.
Magnan * obtained precisely similar results with his alcoholic
dog, much more extreme, because he gave much larger doses.
The literature of human insanity makes fear a characteristic
psychosis in alcoholic insanity, f and delirium tremens is probably
the most terrible fear psychosis known. Even with the amounts
of alcohol given. Bum has shown several mild paroxysms of fear,
with some evidence also of hallucinations.

I am unable, therefore, to escape the conviction that our
experiment has a meaning as deep as the psychology of fear
itself. As to how deep that is, we may hope to learn something
in studies that are now being prosecuted. J

As to temper and disposition, neither the breed nor the indi-
vidual dogs can leave anything to be desired. Aside from their
timidity, I can not recall that either Bum or Tipsy were ever
even " impolite " toward me. They have never shown the least

Fig. 16.— Tipsy, November, 1895.

bit of resentment or snappishness. Not so much can be said for
either of the Topsys or for Nig. But they are much more cheer-
ful. The tone of sadness, the same as is noted in Magnan's dog.

* Magnan, V. On Alcoholism. London : Greenfield, 1876, p. 18 ff.

f Mobius, P. J. Nervenkrankheiten. Leipzig, 1893, p. 74 ff.

X G. Stanley Hall. Children's Fears. American Journal of Psychology, viii. No. 2.

8o8

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

so well shown in many of the pictures, is characteristic for Tipsy
and Bum. It can be lightened up at times so as hardly to be
recognized, but still it is the prevailing tone.

Neither of the pair, however, even yet lacks spirit, when it
comes to maintaining their rights in the kennel ; and for months
after their characteristic timidity was noticed both Tipsy and
Bum were larger and stronger than their mates, and held the bal-
ance of power.

Jealousy, amounting almost to frenzy, has been a striking
feature in both the Topsys. They both showed great distress,
especially when I petted Tipsy. Nig has something of the same
kind strongly developed, but is too noble to show any spite
toward the other dog. However, if he is around and I stoop to
pat Bum on the head. Nig generally manages to get his head
there in time to catch the pat. So I am obliged to use both hands,
and Bum has never given evidence of the least jealousy even

20o

Fia. 17. — Daily Activity.

under Nig's provoking interference. Nor has Tipsy ever evinced
a trace of the emotion.

The development of intelligence is a wide field in which it will
be possible to touch but a few points.

At first I had intended to test this by ability to learn tricks.
The idea was abandoned for two reasons. First, it would absorb
too much of my time ; and, second, after reading Mr. Russell's *
paper on child study, I decided that it was just the thing not to
do. By that method we might have learned trick psychology
when the thing of real value for us is the spontaneous, uninter-
fered-with psychic growth of a dog.

Some few things had to be taught, such as coming at call and
whistle and individual names, and retrieving was taught for a
special purpose to be mentioned later. In addition to this, lit-

* E. Harlow Russell. The Study of Children at the State Normal, Worcester, Mass.,
Pedagogical Seminary, ii, p. 343.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL. 809

tie trick specialties began to crop out during the first summer.
Tipsy, always the lithest and quickest, became expert in jumping
and catching on the fly. Bum, all of his own accord, took to sit-
ting up and " begging." Little Topsy would sit up and " speak."
Nig did not develop any specialty, and never really discovered his
mission in life until he was taught to " fetch." As to the learning
itself. Bum and Tipsy were about as quick and much more docile
than Topsy and Nig.

It was stated above that during the second month after admin-
istration of alcohol spontaneous activity of both Tipsy and Bum
became noticeably impaired. This gradually and steadily in-
creased until, last spring, it seemed to me from daily observation
that the alcoholics were not much more than half as active as the
normals. How to secure an objective expression of this fact pre-
sented some difficulties at first. To put them in large recording
cages, such as we use in the laboratory to study the daily activity
of rats and mice, would clearly be an imposition on a dog's good
nature, and would possibly suppress his activity in proportion to
his intelligence. To watch four dogs during the twenty-four
hours would require four observers, and their presence would be
a disturbing factor.

Pedometers were thought of, but none could be found suitably
constructed for use with the dogs. Finally, Waterbury watches
were obtained and, by removing the hair springs, weighting the
balance wheels unequally, and by proper adjustment of buffing
pins so that the balance wheel could move just far enough to re-
lease the escapement, a watch resulted which ran only when
shaken. After a month of preliminary trials an adjustment was
attained so delicate that the watch could hardly be jarred so
slightly as not to release the escapement one tooth, and the two
could be shaken, violently or gently, and in any position for an
hour at a time (fastened firmly together) without showing a vari-
ation of more than two seconds on reading the hands.*

The watches are now placed in stout leather pockets in spe-
cially constructed collars and the dogs allowed to wear them.
The results are graphically expressed in Fig. 17. The watches
were read every evening at exactly six o'clock, and the reading
plotted so that the angles in the lines for each dog correspond to
the number of minutes the dog has ticked his watch during the
twenty-four hours. The chart explains itself. Bum is seen to
develop seventy-one per cent of Nig's activity, and Tipsy only
fifty- seven per cent of Topsy 's.

The watches, of course, give us only the total quantity of

* For valuable assistance in accomplishing this adjustment I wish to express my thanks
to Mr. Albert P. Willis, Fellow in Physics, Clark University.
VOL. L. — 61

8io

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

spontaneous daily movement of each dog with no indication as
to its quality. Something to give a qualitative expression of
strength, ability, and resistance to fatigue was devised, which
consisted in a series of competitive tests at retrieving a ball.

ALCOHOL TO BUM 35 G. DAILY

NO ALCOHOL GIVEN

<iO

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

1

1

"v.

/

^--

1

~~^

\

^

■— -

/

r/

\

1

1

/ /

\

\.

/

/

h
i""^"^

V

\

\

./

//

/ /

\
\

V

f

1
1

\

\

X

/

.X

'^^^»

-

^ - '

1

\

^
y
y

\

V

/

\

\

>

.^

•

'^..

\

A

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/

^>.

./

» _^

--'

.^^

^ ^,

r

N

•

*

•***'

.

/ .

*

,^

17 18 17 20
NIG RETRIEVES

- ATTEMPTS

BUM RETHIEVES..

•' ATTEMPTS --

21

Zi. 2.3 14- A5 26 27 26 29 30

Fig. 18. — Curve of Efficiency (Competitive). In a difficult competitive test calling for
endurance, sustained attention, etc., the alcoholic falls much lower relatively than in
ordinary daily activity, Bum attaining to only thirty-two per cent of Nig's efficiency.

The balls were thrown in rapid succession across the university
gj mnasium, one hundred feet, and a record was kept of the dogs
that started for it and of the one that succeeded in bringing it
back. One hundred balls constituted a test, and to throw them
consumed about fifty minutes.

In the first series, consisting of 1,400 balls thrown on succes-
sive days, January, 1896, the normal dogs retrieved 923, the alco-
holics 478. This gives the alcoholics an efiiciency of only 51 "9
per cent as compared with the normals. Bum's ability in this
series as compared with Nig's is only thirty-two per cent.* (See
Fig. 18.) It was also noted that Bum and Tipsy were much
more easily fatigued than the normals.

A second series, of 1,000 balls, November, 1896, in which Bum
and Nig were tested, gave similar results. The various elements

* The results from Topsy and Tipsy were not comparable, on account of Topsy's condi-
,tion at the time.

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF ALCOHOL.

811

of the experiment are plotted in Fig. 19. The heavy lines, N and
B, above the zero level express the relative efficiency of Nig and
Bum, and indicate the number of balls retrieved by each dog.
The light lines, n and h, express the number of times each dog
attempted to get the ball. Nig's line of achievement is seen to
run much closer to his line of attempt than in the case of Bum.
Fatigue is expressed below the zero line, and is derived from the
number of times each dog lay down to rest. Nig shows fifteen
per cent of Bum's fatigue. Expressed in other words, Bum lies
down to rest 67 times to Nig's once.

It is clear that we must advance beyond the usual anatomical
standards of comparison into the field of function, if we are to
arrive at any definite settlement of physiological questions. Effi-
ciency, ability to do work, must be the ultimate appeal. While
nothing is further from my thought than to claim for the forego-
ing experiments sufficient comprehensiveness to even approximate
to a solution of this important problem, still, as stated at the out-
set, their results may serve to hint at the possibilities of future
work. The experiments are still in progress, their continuance
being assured for one more year by the Committee of Fifty. It
is to be hoped that they can be carried on much longer, to yield,
at least, the complete life story of the original four dogs. The
present opportunity should also be
utilized to study the next generation
in a similar way, if there should ap-
pear marked signs of degeneration.
Results are certain to increase in
definiteness and value as the experi-
ment is prolonged out of all propor-
tion to additional cost.

On the side of physiological ac-
tivity, while a number of other forms
should be studied, and experiments
need repetition to guard against
individual variations, the results
obtained — retardation in growth of
yeast, and depression of activity in
kittens and dogs — cast a suggestive
light on the human experiment. The
spontaneous desire and the will well-
ing up within a vigorous organism to be and to do something
worth the while seems to me the highest thing in life. Hence
knowledge concerning physiological conditions which favor elabo-
ration of this quintessence of existence possesses a human value
beyond computation or expression,

Helmholtz has said, in describing his methods of work, that

Chart of Bail Tests.

812 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

slight indulgence in alcoholic drinks dispelled instantly his best
ideas. Prof. Gaule once told the writer, as an experiment during
the strain of his " Staatsexamen," that he suddenly stopped his
wine and beer, and was surprised to find how much better he
could work. An eminent professor in Leipsic once said that the
German students could do " twice the amount of work " (" konnten
zweimal so viel leisten") if they would let their beer alone. Dr.
August Smith * has found that moderate nonintoxicant doses of
alcohol (forty to eighty cubic centimetres daily) lowered psychic
ability to memorize as much as seventy per cent. Leixner f ob-
serves " class der Alcohol den Menschen geistig so herunterhringt,
dass er scldiesslich nichts meJir kann, ivie ijolitisieren." Possibly
the trouble with a good deal of our politics in this country.

But we must be careful about drawing too sweeping conclu-
sions. A man "in the habit" may be unable to do anything
without his usual stimulant. This fact must be recognized.
And if, according to the theories of some, acquired characters may
descend to the offspring, " inherited" habit may also require con-
sideration. At any rate, we must cease to expect that problems
which have baffled human solution for generations can be settled
in a day or a year. They can be sanely solved only by the accu-
mulation of wholly impartial evidence, sufficient in amount to

determine conviction.

Truly to me

There seems to be

A kinship close

Wherever flows

Life's activity.

LIFE ON THE PLANETS.

Br M. J. JANSSEN. t

/~| TAVING shown how all astronomical discovery, concluding
^ J — L -with spectrum analysis, points to a similarity of constitu-
tion in the earth and the heavenly bodies, M. Janssen continues :)
All this whole forms a single family, the members of which
have a common genesis and have been formed with the destiny of
becoming worlds like ours. Their movements around the central
star which enchains them by its powerful attraction are subject
to the same laws, and that star, by virtue of its high temperature
and the immense reserves of force it contains, sheds upon them

* August Smith. Die Alcoholfrage. Tiibingen, 1895.
f Leixner. Laien-Predigten fiir das deutsche Haus. Berlin, 1894.
X From his remarks at the annual meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, October
24, 1896.

LIFE ON THE PLANETS. 813

those influences and radiations which go to place upon their sur-
face the generative elements of life. Yet while these stars present
so strict analogies in formation and nature, they do not by any
means indicate the same degree of advancement in what may be
called geological or rather planetary evolution, or that which
tends to the appearance and development of life on their surface.
Here the conditions of mass, of distance from the sun, and doubt-
less other circumstances still unknown, come in to order the
epoch and the extent of these developments ; but we can affirm,
without going beyond the inductions permitted by the condition
of science, that if life has not yet been established directly on the
surface of any of the planets, we have very strong reasons for as-
suming its existence on some of them. We may regard this con-
clusion as gained from the long labors of antiquity and modern
discoveries.

We say that, while the problem has not been directly re-
solved by the eyes, it has been worked out by an aggregate of
facts, analogies, and rigorous deductions that leave no room for
doubt. This is the mature and perfect fruit of science. It is the
view of intelligence, as certain an authority and of even a higher
and nobler order than the senses. I say further that what we
know of the unity of the chemical composition of the matter of
the sun, the stars, and the nebulae permits us to make new induc-
tions respecting the part performed by the bodies which are on
the earth the most important factors of the phenomena of life.
It is thus infinitely probable that hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
carbon, and especially water, which on the earth are the indis-
pensable constituents of vegetable and animal life, fill a like
office not only in the planets of our system, but throughout the
universe.

Water in particular, by virtue of its chemical functions and
the properties with which it is endowed in the solid, liquid, and
gaseous states — properties which are so admirably fit for the ac-
complishment of physiological processes — is a unique substance,
and the search through the whole series of chemical compounds
for any body that can take its place has been in vain. The dis-
covery of the spectrum of the vapor of water permits us to deduce
and assert its presence in the atmospheres of the planets and in
those of a whole class of stars as well. Drawing from these
results the fact of the presence of hydrogen, one of the generative
gases of water, in nearly all the stars, we are justified in supposing
an extreme diffusion of that important element from the point
of view of the unity of the phenomena which control the produc-
tion and maintenance of life.

Thus, the more science advances, the more is that great law
confirmed and established of unity in the material elements, in

8 14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

the compounds formed of those elements, and in the constitution
of the stars and the parts they perform in the grand whole.

Are we authorized now to assume from this a unity of forms
that life may put on not only in the sister planets to ours, but
also in the other systems of worlds scattered through the skies ?
May we especially push our inductions still further and higher,
conclude from such material unity upon a mental and moral
unity, and say that, as there is only one physics and one chemistry
in the universe, there are also only one logic, one geometry, and
one moral, and that the beautiful, the good, and the true are iden-
tical and of the universal order everywhere ?

Science, embracing in its results only immediate and demon-
strated facts, does not warrant us in going so far as this, but with
the truths it unfolds to us seems to invite us toward it.

There were brilliant minds in antiquity, which upon bases
otherwise restricted conceived and proclaimed verities concerning
the world and the universe which the most modern science has
only been able to confirm.

Let us, then, respect these cheerful speculations. If they are
still only of things preconceived, who can affirm that science will
not make them real to us to-morrow ? By establishing the laws
and harmonies of the material world, astronomy prepares us for
the conquest of truths of a still higher order.

We can say then plainly that the subjection of natural forces
and the reign of man over Nature are only the first fruits of sci-
ence. It prepares other fruits for its votary of a higher and more
precious order. By the beauty of the studies to which it invites
him, by the grandeur of the horizons which it opens out to him,
and the sublimity of the spectacle it gives him of the laws and
harmonies of the universe, it promises to win him away from his
present preoccupations, which are perhaps too exclusively posi-
tive, and will restore to him under a new form and in an incom-
parable grandeur that taste for elevated poetry, that enthusiasm
for the beautiful, and that reverence for the ideal which are
among the most imperious needs of the human soul and which it
never abandons without peril. — Translated for the Popular Science
Monthly from the Revue Scientifique.

It is suggested by a correspondent of Nature as a possible advantage of
the want of symmeti^y in the ari-angement of the branches of trees, that the
want of synchronism of movement in consequence of it may help prevent
their being overturned in times of high wind. He speaks of having watched
the branches of a large plane tree during a high gale, when "it seemed
incredible that the tree could stand, but for the fact that while one large
limb was swaying one way, another would be swaying the opposite way,
and so on, all plunging and bending anyhow, with no two in harmony."

SPENCER AND DARWIN. 815

SPENCER AND DARWIN.

By GEANT ALLEN.

IT is a familiar observation witli people wlio have reached mid-
dle age that their chronological conception of their own time
is often far more defective than their chronological conception of
written history in which they have not themselves participated.
Men of our own generation may remember exactly the relative
dates of Pharsalia and Philippi ; they may be clearly aware of
just how Raphael stood in time to Perugino or to Titian ; they
may know precisely how long Napoleon, Byron, and Talleyrand
survived the Restoration. But about the events of their own life-
time they are always asking themselves, " In what year did Lord
Beaconsfield die ? " " How long did the Prince Imperial go on
living after Sedan ? " " Was Carlyle still among us when Mr.
Gladstone was denouncing the Bulgarian atrocities ? " — and so
forth perpetually. Even the sequence of events in one^s own life
often similarly deceives one. We forget whether Tom went to
Australia before or after Lucy's marriage ; whether we had or
had not made McFarlane's acquaintance at the time when King-
ston was engaged in painting his first Academy picture. We
remember events, but not their order. Daily facts of life, crowd-
ing in upon us too thickly for due note, defy all accurate chrono-
logical organization. We recall them disconnectedly ; the occur-
rences impress themselves more or less upon our brains, but their
infinite concatenation with all other circumstances escapes us.
Hence we are often more surprised at learning a little later how
events really stood to one another in our own time than at any-
thing which comes to us from unremembered periods.

Especially is this the case with slow organic or psychological
movements — movements which grow unseen, and gain but grad-
ual recognition. Cataclysmal events — the D^chdance of the Sec-
ond Empire, the Italians in Rome, the assassination of the Czar —
often fix themselves by their very vividness and unexpectedness
on the memory, with their date and relations ineffaceably at-
tached. But where we have to deal with the growth of opinion,
most peojDle fall into serious mental errors of chronology. Either
they believe a movement began when they themselves first hap-
pened to hear of it ; or else they date it from the appearance of
some startling and much- discussed publication.

Mr. Edward Clodd's new volume. Pioneers of Evolution, brings
this truth into strong relief. In this interesting and careful work
Mr. Clodd has been at the pains to investigate thoroughly the
part borne in the evolutionary revolution, both by the early pre-
cursors— Buffon, Lamarck, Laplace, and others — and by the three

8i6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

chief actors in the final triumphal stage of the theory, Darwin,
Spencer, and Huxley. His analysis is marked by a conspicuous
desire for fairness all round : he has honestly endeavored to
assign to each of these three great thinkers his own true share —
no more, no less — in the genesis of the modern evolutionary con-
cept. Yet, though the book contains, strictly speaking, little on
this head that was not already implicitly within the reach of spe-
cial students of the evolution of evolutionism, it will probably
prove a great surprise to that large section of the reading public
which habitually confines the idea of evolution to organic devel-
opment alone, and which still believes that Darwin " invented "
the theory of descent with modification. To all such people — and
they include the mass of the averagely well-read — Mr. Clodd's
revelation will come with all the charm of a sudden surprise. He
has been enabled through the kindness of Mr. Herbert Spencer to
give fuller and more authoritative details of the fundamental
facts than have yet been published; and he shows more fully
perhaps than any one else has hitherto done the central impor-
tance of Mr. Spencer's position in the evolutionary advance.

May I begin with a passage which I quoted from one of Mr.
Spencer's own early works no less than eleven years since, in my
little monograph on Charles Darwin ? It occurs in an essay on
The Development Hypothesis, in that long-defunct paper, the
Leader. (The Italics are in the original.)

" Even could the supporters of the development hypothesis
merely show that the origination of species by the process of
modification is conceivable, they would be in a better position
than their opponents. But they can do much more than this.
They can show that the process of modification has effected, and
is effecting, great changes in all organisms, subject to modify-
ing influences. . . . They can show that any existing species —
animal or vegetable — when placed under conditions different
from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain
changes of structure fitting it for the new conditions. They can
show that in successive generations these changes continue, until
ultimately the new conditions become the natural ones. They
can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and
in the several races of men, these changes have uniformly taken
place. They can show that the degrees of difference, so produced,
are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of
species are in other cases founded. They can show that it is a
matter of dispute whether some of those modified forms are vari-
eties or modified species. They can show too that the changes
daily taking place in ourselves — the facility that attends long
practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases
— the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, or intellectual.

SPENCER AND DARWIN. 817

according to the use made of it, are all explicable on this same
principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic
Nature there is at work a modifying influence of the kind they
assign as the cause of these specific differences, an influence
which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the circum-
stances demand it, produce marked changes ; an influence which,
to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and
under the great varieties of conditions which geological records
imply, any amount of change/'

Now, by most readers at the present day, this passage would
undoubtedly be at once set down as " Darwinian." But when was
it written ? " Would you be surprised to learn " that it was pub-
lished by Herbert Spencer in the Leader newspaper no less than
seven years before the appearance of The Origin of Species ?
The essay which contains it was first printed in 1853 ; The Origin
of Species was published in 1859. As I have already remarked in
my Charles Darwin, " This admirable passage . . . contains ex-
plicitly almost every idea that ordinary people, not specially
biological in their interests, now associate with the name of Dar-
win. That is to say, it contains, in a very philosophical and
abstract form, the theory of descent with modification, luithout
the distinctive Darwinian adjunct of natural selection, or survival
of the fittest." To put it briefly, most people at the present day,
now that evolutionism has practically triumphed, now that the
evolutionary method is being applied to almost every form of
scientific subject-matter, go doubly wrong as to the origin of that
method. In the first place, they attribute mainly or exclusively
to Darwin ideas which were current long before Darwin wrote ;
in the second place, they also attribute to Darwin ideas which
were promulgated, in some cases before, and in other cases after
Darwin, by independent thinkers who accepted his theories as
part only of their own systems. Mr. Spencer has been by far the
greatest sufferer from this curious human habit of finding an
ostensible figurehead for every great movement, and then attach-
ing everything in the movement to that figurehead alone — Luther
for the Protestant Reformation, Rousseau or Robespierre for the
French Revolution, Pusey for the Anglo- Catholic revival, and
so forth. I am glad that Mr. Clodd has undertaken definitely to
combat this doubly erroneous view, and that his book has allowed
me the opportunity of adding my mite to this question of as-
cription.

At the same time, I should like to premise that I write this
article in a spirit of the profoundest loyalty to Darwin's memory
and opinions. No man could have a deeper respect than I have
for the character and the life work of that great man of science.
But loyalty, as I understand the term, consists in giving your

TOL. L. — 62

8i8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

hero credit for wliat he really was and what he really did; it
does not consist in attributing to him the work actually done by
others, while suppressing the very facts which form his chief
claim to the gratitude and consideration of posterity. Now there
is one invaluable piece of work which Darwin really did do, and
do effectively — he discovered and proved to the hilt the theory of
natural selection, as a cause, and probably the chief cause, both of
the diversity of species and of their adaptation to the environ-
ment. And there are two important pieces of work which Dar-
win did not do, but with which he is generally credited — he did
not originate the idea of descent with modilScation in plants and
animals ; and he did not originate the general idea of evolution,
as a cosmical process. These last two ideas come to us from else-
where. That of descent with modification we derive from Eras-
mus Darwin, Lamarck, and others, following in the footsteps of
still earlier vague guessers. That of evolution as a pervading
cosmical process we derive from Herbert Spencer, and I venture
to say from Herbert Spencer alone. Even the word is Mr.
Spencer's ; before his time, it was never used, I believe, in that
particular sense ; and after him, it was seldom employed by Dar-
win, who used it (when he used it at all) in reference to Mr.
Spencer's general concepts. So, too, the phrases, " survival of the
fittest/' " adaptation to the environment," and others, due entirely
to Mr. Spencer, are regarded as a rule by the averagely well-read
man as purely " Darwinian." It seems to me, therefore, that to
do justice to Mr. Spencer in this matter is also incidentally to do
justice to Darwin. For in this place, Darwin, with his inflexible
sense of equity, his perfect generosity, his admirable self-eff'ace-
ment, would have been the last man to put forward a claim to
what belonged of right to others ; and in the second place, with
his cautious, experimental English mind, he would never have
desired to have his name associated with many of Mr. Spencer's
most brilliant and powerful a priori achievements.

Nevertheless, before the appearance of Mr. Clodd's book, there
were, I believe, but two works extant which endeavored to put
this question in its true light, and even there mainly as regarded
the theory of natural selection. One of those two books was Mr.
Samuel Butler's Evolution Old and New ; the other, if I may ven-
ture to mention it, was my own small volume on Charles Darwin.
But Mr. Butler, both in the work I have just named, and still
more in Luck or Cunning, while doing full justice to the pre-
cursors and contemporaries of Darwin, has suffered himself to be
.carried away by a most singular preconception as to Charles Dar-
win himself, and has represented that most modest and self-effac-
ing of savants as deliberately endeavoring to filch for himself
the discoveries and achievements of biologists who went before

SPENCER AND DARWIN. 8)9

him. Mr. Butler's "books, therefore, though useful as antidotes in
the hands of those who understood the facts, could only mislead
and puzzle outsiders. Nevertheless, they did actually do this
piece of good service: they brought out in strong relief the true
nature of Charles Darwin's magnificent life work, as consisting
entirely in the establishment of the principle of natural selection
— a principle which made the previously discredited notion of
descent with modification immediately commend itself to the
whole biological world of his time, and more particularly to the
younger generation. As to my own little book on Charles Dar-
win, if I dare to allude to it here, though it also insisted (from
the opposite and sympathetic standpoint) upon this same cardinal
fact, and likewise dwelt to a somewhat less degree upon the cen-
tral importance of Mr. Spencer's position, it was published only
in a popular series, and did not perhaps reach the eyes of those
who mostly required to have these facts impressed upon them. I
rejoice, therefore, that Mr. Clodd should have reopened this seri-
ous question, and especially that the discussion to which his work
is likely to give rise may result in putting Mr. Spencer's true
place in the evolutionary movement before the eyes of his con-
temporaries while he is still among us to be gratified by a recog-
nition too long withheld him.

The needful rectification of public opinion on this subject, it
seems to me, embraces two points. In the first place, as regards
organic evolution, Darwin was not in any sense the orginator of
the idea ; he was anticipated by his own grandfather, by Lamarck,
by Herbert Spencer (at least so far as priority of publication is
concerned), and by several others. In the second place, as regards
evolution in general, the idea was not Darwin's at all; it was
entirely and solely Herbert Spencer's. Each of these two points
I shall treat briefly but separately.

Everybody now knows that the idea of organic evolution —
the conception that plants and animals were not miraculously
created, but developed by natural causes from a common original
— was far older than Charles or even than Erasmus Darwin. In
a certain vague way it was anticipated by several early philoso-
phers, and somewhat more definitely, though still nebulously, by
Lucretius. In modern times, however, it first took a regularly
scientific shape with Erasmus Darwin. Most people believed that
the theory never progressed beyond that somewhat amorphous
stage up to the time when Charles Darwin published The Origin
of Species. This is a serious mistake. The concept, once set on
foot, grew rapidly in definiteness and in fullness of scientific basis
up to the moment of Charles Darwin's cardinal discovery. With
Erasmus Darwin, it was little more than a brilliant though preg-
nant apergu ; with Lamarck, it became a powerfully supported

820 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

scientific concept; in Herbert Spencer's hands, it grew to be a
probable and rational theory, based upon a serious array of con-
firmatory facts, and fulfilling all the conditions of a sound work-
ing hypothesis. If the reader will turn once more to Mr. Spen-
cer's pronouncement, published seven years before The Origin of
Species, he will see that there Mr. Spencer has brought together
almost all the chief arguments which still weigh in favor of the the-
ory of descent and modification. Mr. Clodd has collected a large
number of passages from Mr. Spencer's early works — especially
passages from scattered articles prior to the first public hint of
Darwin's idea — which amply prove Mr. Spencer's claim to rank
as an entirely independent author of the doctrine of organic evo-
lution. The fact is, before Darwin's book appeared, the argument
from variation, the arguments from plants and animals under
domestication, the argument from embryology, the argument
from geographical distribution, the argument from distribution
in geological time, had all of them been brought forward, and
some of them had been treated with great skill and efi:ect, by Mr.
Spencer. Indeed, it was above all von Baer's law of embryologi-
cal development which led Mr. Spencer both to his first clear
conception of the method of biological evolution, and to his first
incomplete conception of evolution in general as fundamentally
a progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

Why, then, if so many minds had already grasped the doc-
trine of descent with modification, did Darwin's immortal treatise
produce so immediate and noteworthy a mental revolution ?
Why did the world which turned a deaf ear to Lamarck, and
even to Spencer, listen gladly to Charles Darwin ? Clearly,
because Darwin had something new and important to add to the
concept ; and that " something new " was the theory of natural
selection. This was Darwin's real contribution to the world's
thought. He arrived at it at first as a stray apergu ; he followed
it up, with Darwinian patience, with astonishing wealth of knowl-
edge and instance, with single-hearted devotion to the particular
subject, through the whole of his life ; and he left it at the end as
nearly certain as such a thesis can ever be made by human intelli-
gence. The weak point in the hypothesis of organic evolution,
before Darwin, was the difficulty of understanding the nature and
cause of adaptation to the environment. That weak point, when
supplemented by theological preconception, made many or most
biologists hesitate to accept the nascent theory, in Lamarck's and
Spencer's presentment. It is true, minds like Lamarck's and
Spencer's could never for a moment, on the other hand, have
accepted the crude and unthinkable dogma of separate creation ;
but the mass of biologists, incapable of high philosophic reason-
ing, held their judgment suspended, and waited for some other

SFUJVC£JB AND DARWIN. 821

explanation of tlie origin of species. Darwin's discovery con-
verted them en hloc. It was easy to understand, by means of the
clew he afforded, not merely that organisms had been naturally
evolved from simple primitive forms, but also lioiv and icliy they
had been so evolved. Darwin's great work, then, consisted in
this — that he made credible a theory which most people before
him had thought incredible ; that he discovered a tenable modus
operandi for what had before been rather believed or surmised
than definitely imagined.

I do not mean to say that Darwin did no more than this. He
supplied the great key of natural selection ; but he also added
much in other ways to the doctrine, especially in the direction of
piling up facts and meeting objections. His work had thus a
double value. On the one hand, it is not probable that the gen-
eral biological public would have been converted to evolutionism
half so quickly if it had not been for the enormous mass of con-
firmatory evidence adduced by Darwin. In the second place, even
those who, like Spencer, were already evolutionists — evolutionists
in fiber, incapable of taking any supernaturalist view of the uni-
verse in which they lived — gladly availed themselves of Darwin's
discovery of natural selection, as an explanation of one important
set of features in organic evolution, thitherto most imperfectly
and inadequately explained. Or, let us put it another way.
From the point of view of contribution to thought, it is natural
selection that forms Darwin's great glory. But from the point
of view of mere effective persuasion, it is the weight of evidence
he brought up in favor of the older principle of descent with
modification that told and still tells with the average mind.
Hence it has happened, and perhaps will always happen, that
Darwin has received more credit for that part of his theory
which was not of his own invention than for that part of which
he can justly claim the almost exclusive glory. Almost, I say,
because the modifying adverb is demanded by justice to Mr.
Alfred Russel Wallace, whose partial coincidence with Darwin
in the discovery of natural selection now needs no advertisement.

As thinker, then, it is on natural selection as a vera causa
of specialization and adaptation among plants and animals that
Darwin most securely rests his claim to celebrity. As prophet
and apostle, on the other hand, it must be frankly admitted that
he ranks first as a preacher of organic — but only of organic —
evolution. In this respect, his importance, in England especially,
can hardly be overrated. For it is a peculiarity of the practical
English mind that it is more moved by a vast array of evidence,
a serried mass of cumulative instances, than by any possible
cogency of logical reasoning. Darwin's own mind was in this
way intensely English. He piled up fact after fact, added case

82 2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

to case, till men whom no power of abstract argument could
convince were convinced by pure force of successive witnesses.
They were borne down by numbers. Your ordinary English-
man, indeed, is never quite satisfied by Euclid's demonstration
that in a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is
equal to the sum of the squares on the two opposite sides; he
honestly believes it when he sees it tried a hundred and twenty
times by careful measurement, and still more when he finds that
engineering works which take it for granted as a basis succeed in
paying a satisfactory dividend. Proof that in the nature of tri-
angles this truth is involved he does not regard ; experimental
verification, or what seems to be such, in a few concrete cases,
amply satisfies him. Hence it came about that a world which
would have listened coldly to Herbert Spencer's a priori reason-
ings or splendid generalizations was converted at once when
Darwin brought up with inexhaustible patience and extraordi-
nary keenness of insight his profound array of confirmatory facts
about bees and cuckoos, about the fertilization of orchids and the
movements of tendrils.

Nobody has better summarized than Mr. Clodd the exact point
which evolutionary theory had reached as regards plants and ani-
mals before the publication of The Origin of Species. Whoever
wishes to learn just how much was surmised by the predecessors
of Darwin, and just how much Darwin added to their ideas, can
not do better than consult his luminous exposition.

Once, indeed, no less than seven years before the publication of
The Origin of Species, Mr. Spencer even trembled for a moment
on the verge of the actual discovery of natural selection. This
was in the essay on population in the Westminster Review in
1852. The passage at full is too long to extract ; but I will quote
the last words of it. " All mankind subject themselves more or
less to the discipline described ; they either may or may not ad-
vance under it ; but in the nature of things only those who do
advance under it eventually survive. For, necessarily, families
and races whom this increasing difficulty of getting a living
which excess of fertility entails does not stimulate to improve-
ments in production . . . are on the high road to extinction ; and
must ultimately be supplanted by those "\vhom the pressure does
so stimulate. . . . And here, indeed, it will be seen that prema-
ture death, under all its forms, and from all its causes, can not
fail to work in the same direction. For as those prematurely
carried off must, in the average of cases, be those in whom the
power of self-preservation is the least, it unavoidably follows that
those left behind to continue the race must be those in whom the
power of self-preservation is the greatest, must be the select of
their generation." Now, this is the doctrine of natural selection,

SPENCER AND DARWIN. 823

or, as Mr. Spencer himself afterward called it, survival of the
fittest. Only, it is limited to the human race ; and it is not
recognized as an efficient cause of specific differentiation. As
Mr. Spencer himself remarks, the passage "shows how near one
may be to a great generalization without seeiDg it." Moreover,
Mr. Spencer here overlooks the important factor of spontaneous
variation, which forms the corner-stone of Darwin's discovery,
and which was also clearly perceived by Mr. Wallace. In short,
in Mr. Spencer's own words, the paragraph " contains merely a
passing recognition of the selective process, and indicates no sus-
picion of the enormous range of its effects, or of the conditions
under which a large part of its effects are produced."

It is thus obvious not only that Mr. Spencer was a believer in
organic evolution long before the publication of Darwin's first
utterance on the subject, but also that he almost succeeded, like
Wallace, Wells, and Patrick Matthews, in anticipating the dis-
covery of natural selection.

But, besides the misconception about Mr. Spencer's relation to
Darwin as regards organic evolution, there remains the far deeper
and more fatal misconception about his relation to Darwin as
regards evolution in general, viewed as a cosmical process. Most
people imagine, I gather, that Mr. Spencer is a philosopher who
has put into a higher and more abstract form Darwin's discov-
eries and theories. In short, they regard him as a disciple of
Darwin. And this brings me to the second of the two rectifi-
cations of public opinion which I promised above to attempt.
Nothing could be more absurdly untrue than to regard Mr.
Spencer as in any way or in either department a disciple of
Darwin's. In the first place, as regards organic evolution, he was
an avowed evolutionist long before the publication of Darwin's
first hint on the subject. He continued an evolutionist, in the
main on the same lines, after Darwin had brought out The Origin
of Species and its ancillary volumes. He adopted, it is true, the
theory of natural selection, as did every other evolutionist of his
time (except Mr. Samuel Butler), but he adopted it merely as one
among the factors of organic evolution, and, while valuing it
highly, he nevwr attributed to it the same almost exclusive impor-
tance as did Darwin himself — certainly not the same quite exclu-
sive importance as has since been attached to it by the doctrinaire
school of Neo-Darwinians, who employ it as the sole key which
unlocks, in their opinion, all the problems of biology. On the
contrary, he has always steadily maintained the existence and
importance of other factors in organic evolution, and has com-
bated with extraordinary vigor and acuteness the essentially
Neo-Darwinian views of Weismann which make natural selection
alone into the deus ex machina of organic development.

824 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

In the second place — and this is the more important point — as
regards evolution at large, Mr. Spencer is not in the remotest
degree beholden for the origin of his ideas to Darwin. So far as
those ideas are not quite original with him — and no human idea
is ever wholly original — they are derived from the direct line of
Kant, Laplace, and the English geologists. For many years pre-
vious to Mr. Spencer's philosophic activity the progress of human
thought had been gradually leading up to the point where a
cosmic evolutionism such as Mr. Spencer's became almost of
necessity the next forward step. But to say this is not to detract
in any way from Mr. Spencer's greatness ; rather the other way ;
for it needed a man of cosmic intellect and of cosmic learning to
make the advance which had thus become inevitable. The mo-
ment had arrived, and waited for the thinker ; Mr. Spencer was
the thinker who came close upon the moment. The situation is
this : Kant and Laplace had suggested that suns and stars might
have grown and assumed their existing distribution and move-
ments by the action of purely natural laws without the need for
direct creative or systematizing effort from without. The geolo-
gists had suggested that the crust of the earth might have
assumed its existing stratification and sculpture through the
agency of causes at present in action. Erasmus Darwin and
Lamarck had suggested that plants and animals might have been
developed and specialized from a common original by the direct
action of the environment, aided in part by their own volition,
where such existed. But all these thinkers, great and able in
their day, had addressed themselves — as Charles Darwin later
addressed himself — to one set of phenomena alone ; had regarded
the process which they pointed out, in isolation only. It re-
mained for a man of commanding intellect and vast grasp of
generalizing faculty to build up and unify these scattered evo-
lutionary guesses into a single consistent concept of evolution.
Herbert Spencer was that man. He gave us both the concept
and the name by which we habitually know it. The words
" theory of evolution " occur already, seven years before Darwin,
in the Leader essay.

This point, again, Mr. Clodd has excellently elaborated.
" Contact with many sorts and conditions of men," he says,
" brings home the need of ceaselessly dinning into their ears
the fact that Darwin's theory deals only with the evolution of
plants and animals from a common ancestry. It is not concerned
with the origin of life itself, nor with those conditions preceding
life which are covered by the general term, inorganic evolution.
Therefore it forms but a very small part of the general theory of
the origin of the earth and other bodies, ' as the sand by the sea-
shore innumerable,' that fill the infinite spaces." It is evolution

SPENCER AND DARWIN. 825

in general, iDoth the concept and the word, that we owe to Mr.
Spencer; and Mr. Clodd's book brings into strong relief the actual
relations existing in this respect between Herbert Spencer himself
and his predecessors or contemporaries.

The genesis of th'=' idea in his own mind Mr. Spencer has illus-
trated by a series of extracts from his original volume of Essays,
published previously to The Origin of Species, and therefore
necessarily independent of any Darwinian impulse. The series
of extracts thus selected he has permitted Mr. Clodd to print
entire, and with them the abstract supplied to Prof. Youmans.
These summaries I will not still further summarize ; it must suf-
fice here to note, for the benefit of those who have never consid-
ered dates in this matter, that the chronology of the subject is
roughly as follows : In 1859 (almost 1860, for it was in the end of
November) Darwin brought out The Origin of Species. Before
that period Mr. Spencer had published (among others) the follow-
ing distinctly evolutionary works : In 1850, Social Statics, in
which the idea of human evolution was clearly foreshadowed ; in
1852, an article in the Leader on The Development Hypothesis
(from which I have quoted a passage already), where the evolu-
tion of species of plants and animals was definitely set forth ; in
1854, an article in the British Quarterly Review, on The Genesis
of Science, where intellectual evolution was distinctly mapped
out; in 1855, The Principles of Psychology (first form), where
mental evolution is fully formulated, and the development of
animals from a common origin implied at every step; in 1857, an
article in the Westminster Review, on Progress, its Law and
Cause, where the conception of evolution at large was finally
attained (though not quite in the full form which it afterward
assumed). From all of these, but especially the last, grew up the
idea of the System of Synthetic Philosophy, the first programme
of which was drawn up in January, 1858, nearly two years before
the appearance of The Origin of Species. Thus so far is it from
being true that Mr. Spencer is a disciple of Darwin that he had
actually arrived at the idea of organic evolution and of evolution
in general, including cosmic evolution, planetary evolution, geo-
logical evolution, organic evolution, human evolution, psycho-
logical evolution, sociological evolution, and linguistic evolution,
before Darwin had published one word upon the subject.

To some people, in saying all this, I may seem to be trying to
belittle Darwin. Not at all. You do not belittle a great man by
giving him full credit for what he did, and none for what he did
not do. You do not belittle Virgil by showing that he was not the
powerful magician the middle ages thought him ; nor do you be-
little Bacon by proving that he did not write Othello and Hamlet.
Nobody has a greater respect for Bacon, I believe, than Dr. Abbott ;

826 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

but Dr. Abbott does not think respect for Bacon compels him to
father Macbeth and Julius Caesar upon the author of the Novum
Organum. Nobody has a greater respect for Darwin than I have ;
but I do not think that that respect compels me to credit Darwin
with having originated the ideas due to Lamarck and to Herbert
Spencer. Nay, more ; I have so deep a respect for the work Dar-
win actually performed that I consider it quite imnecessary to
filch from others in order to enrich him. He can well do without
such disloyal friends. Indeed, it is Mr. Samuel Butler's peculiar
belief that Darwin did so attempt to filch on his own account. I
can not agree with Mr. Butler that the honestest and most candid
of our biological thinkers ever made any such endeavor himself ;
nor can I believe one honors him by making it for him.

If I were to sum up the positions of these two great thinkers,
Darwin and Spencer, the experimentalist and the generalizer, the
observer and the philosopher, in a single paragraph each, I should
be tempted to do it in somewhat the following fashion :

Darwin came at a moment when human thought was trem-
bling on the verge of a new flight toward undiscovered regions.
Kant and Laplace and Murchison and Lyell had already applied
the evolutionary idea to the genesis of suns and systems, of
continents and mountains. Lamarck had already suggested the
notton that similar conceptions might be equally applied to the
genesis of plant and animal species. But, as I have put it else-
where, what was needed was a solution of the difficulty of adapta-
tion which should help the lame dog of Lamarckiah evolutionism
over the organic stile, so leaving the mind free to apply the evo-
lutionary method to psychology, and to what Mr. Spencer has well
called the supraorganic sciences. For that office Darwin pre-
sented himself at the exact right moment — a deeply learned and
well-equipped biological scholar, a minute specialist as compared
with Spencer, a broad generalist as compared with the botanists,
entomologists, and ornithologists of his time. He filled the gap.
As regards thinkers, he gave them a key which helped them to
understand organic evolution ; as regards the world at large, he
supplied them with a codex which convinced them at once of its
historical truth.

Herbert Spencer is a philosopher of a wider range. All knowl-
edge is his province. A believer in organic evolution before Dar-
win published his epoch-making work, he accepted at once Dar-
win's useful idea, and incorporated it as a minor part in its fitting
place in his own system. But that system itself, alike in its con-
ception and its inception, was both independent of and anterior
to Darwin's first pronouncement. It certainly covered a vast
world of thought which Darwin never even attempted to enter.
To Herbert Spencer, Darwin was even as Kant, Laplace, and Lyell

ANTS AS THE QUESTS OF PLANTS. 827

— a laborer in tlie special field wlio produced results which fell at
once into their proper order in his wider synthesis. As sculptors,
they carved out shapely stones, from which he, as architect, built
his majestic fabric. The total philosophic concept of evolution
as a cosmical process — one and continuous, from nebula to man,
from star to soul, from atom to society — we owe to Herbert Spen-
cer himself, and to him alone, using as material the final results
of innumerable preceding workers and thinkers. — Fortnigliily Re-
view.

ANTS AS THE GUESTS OF PLANTS.

By Prof. M. HEIM.

THE relations of ants with aphides and other insects have been
studied by several authors, and constitute a field of inter-
esting observation. The best known are those with the aphides
and the cochineals, from which ants derive a food of honeydew.
Where these do not abound, certain hemipterous insects take their
place. Thus the caterpillar of the Lyccena is said to bear on its
latter abdominal segments three or four pairs of projecting pim-
ples with a central opening whence little drops of a special liquid
exude under the caresses of Formica fusca. It is believed, further,
that ants assist these insects in their molting by helping them
get rid of their old skin. It seems to be established that ants
jjrotect some insects injurious to vegetation against the attacks
of their enemies ; in some cases, however, it is probable that they
often take juice-sucking insects from young and tender parts to
other, older parts of the plant, where they will do less harm, and
thus in a measure protect the plant. Ants have been observed
thus transporting aphides.

All insects producing nectar may be regarded, as a whole, as
ambulatory nectaries. They are more powerful causes of attrac-
tion to ants than the extrafloral nectaries. Scattering themselves
nearly all over the surface of the plant, they determine the com-
ing and going of the ants, which indirectly protect the whole
jjlant. Yet the damage done by the " ambulatory nectaries,"
which extract the nutritive juices from the plants and cause
deformities in their organs, can hardly be said to be compensated
by the incidental and uncertain protection which the ants may
afford them in other respects.

The ants which are really protective to plants are not those
which obtain their food (indirectly for the most part through the
aphides) from the vegetable kingdom, but those which are really
carnivorous. These are numerous in temperate climates, and
their usefulness to agriculture and sylviculture is incontestable.

828 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Thus the field ant is a great insect destroyer. A nest of this spe-
cies is capable of destroying as many as twenty-eight caterpillars
and grasshoppers a minute, or sixteen hundred an hour; and
such a colony is at work day and night during the pleasant sea-
son. In the arid plains of America the beneficent work of ants is
revealed in the isles of verdure around their hills.

There are plants hospitable to ants, which furnish them shel-
ter and often food, within the cavities of w^hich the instincts of
the ants prompt them to take their abode. This is the case with
several ferns, among them the Polypodium nedariferum, the ster-
ile fronds of which bear nectaries on their lower face, and are,
moreover, of a shape favorable to sheltering the insect.

Some palm trees, whose young shoots are very tender and
insufiiciently defended by their only half-hardened thorns, fur-
nish shelter to ants and receive protection from them : the Cala-
mus, in its spathe; some species of Dcemonorops, in a sort of
galleries on the surface of the stem, formed by the intercrossing
of the incurved thorns with which the stalk is invested. In this
case the sheltering organ forms only a part of the walls of the
cavity inhabited by the ants ; but in the large majority of cases
the cavity is entirely formed by the organs of the plant.

From the examination of a large number of cases of sheltering
trees frequented by ants, we draw the conclusion that the bio-
logical relations between plants and these insects were primi-
tively as simple as possible, being those of plants devoured and
insects devouring. Such are the real relations of the harvesting
ants and the leaf-cutting ants with the plants which they ravage.
It is, however, important to observe that the plants harvested
from by ants do not suffer without drawing a kind of advan-
tage from the harvesting. Numerous seeds are sacrificed ; but a
large number, escaping the voracity of the ants, are scattered by
them and owe them for a veritable assistance in the struggle for
existence with rival species.

In the complete industry of ants they do not content them-
selves with the simple harvesting of vegetable products, but de-
vote themselves to agriculture; and the plants cultivated by
them are, by means of the care they receive from them, favored
in their struggle with rival species in the same way as the cereals
cultivated by man, which have no longer to contend with indige-
nous species. Numerous ants content themselves with sweet,
liquid substances, as honey and nectar. Primitively, they had to
satisfy themselves with gathering the honey scattered over the
surface of the leaves; then their suction, localized at special
points on the leaves, may perhaps have determined the formation
of extrafloral nectaries. These are susceptible of rendering the
plants two sorts of services. Ants attracted by them to the sur-

ANTS AS THE GUESTS OF PLANTS. 829

face of tlie plant protect it against the attacks of leaf-eaters; and,
further, the extranuptial nectaries divert the ants from the repro-
ductive organs, where they might, in some flowers, rob winged
insects, aids to fertilization, of the nectar, without themselves
aiding in the pollination.

The protection of the floral nectaries may, however, perhaps
he assured by other arrangements still more efficacious and more
economical to the plants. The plant, becoming myrmecophobic
and protecting its floral nectaries against ants, achieves an econ-
omy of nutritive forces. Chevaux defrise, gliding surfaces, bent
peduncles, and viscous hairs are the principal defensive provisions
against ants.

The sweet extract of aphides, cochineals, and some other in-
sects may be likened to a real animal honey. Hence the origin
of the pastoral customs of ants, the establishment of under-
ground and open-air stables, and the effective protection of
aphides against their enemies, with the real injurious action of
ants to a number of plants.

The instinct of ants leads them to lodge themselves in cavities
capable of offering them shelter. Such cavities will be more ad-
vantageous to them as they are within reach of the food they
seek. Thus, a nectariferous plant visited by ants will soon be-
come a host-plant to them, if it offers a cavity suitable for their
accommodation. Such is also the case with a plant not nectar-
iferous, but inhabited by insects that can supply ants with an
animal nectar. Ants will then devote themselves to the rearing
of those insects in the hospitable cavity. In some cases also, the
plant, finding a real advantage in the presence of ants on its sur-
face, differentiates food bodies adapted to furnish them a more
abundant nourishment.

The services rendered to plants by ants are of various kinds.
In numerous cases ants effectually protect the host-plant against
the attacks of parasitical insects or the teeth of herbivorous ani-
mals ; in host-plants with cavities converted into stables ants may
attenuate the damage committed by aphides or cochineal insects
by removing them from the young organs when their presence
would be injurious to a point where it is more compatible with
the life of the plant. There is established a kind of symbiosis of
these — the ants protecting their cattle which furnish them food,
and diminishing the damage occasioned by the herds to the plant
on which they feed. Sometimes, but rarely, the refuse material
accumulated by the ants in the sheltering organs of the plant
seems capable of furnishing it with nutritious matter ; but this
has yet to be proved in most cases.

The irritation produced by the ants upon the sheltering organ
may, by determining a more or less notable increase of that organ.

830 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

aid the host-plant in the struggle which it has to sustain, either
against rival species or against physical agents.

The prime origin of the host-organ is really variable, accord-
ing to the types considered. Sometimes ants take advantage of
cavities wholly or incompletely closed which are a part of the
morphological plan of the plant, and the function of which can
only be mechanical, such as hollow internodes ; sometimes they
convert into ants' nests organs that serve to protect plants against
herbivorous animals — thorns ; or against physical agencies —
reservoirs of water.

In other cases the parasitical origin of the host-organ does not
seem doubtful. In some types it may be contrived by the ants in
view of their wants — perforation of the wall, formation of galler-
ies ; in other cases primarily abnormal dispositions determined
by the presence of ants in the host-organs seem to become,
through heredity and selection, normal organs; ants then find
host-organs all ready to receive them, without their having to
perform any labors preliminary to putting them to use. Disposi-
tions favorable to ants are therefore of multiple origin, varying
according to the case.

The biological relations between plants and ants come thus,
by insensible degrees, to affect the complex characteristics of life
in common, to reciprocal advantage — symbiosis.

If we examine the phenomena of the world with the eyes of the
ancient naturalist we shall not fail to "admire greatly the various
means employed by Nature to reach its ends. Regarding the re-
lations of ants and plants with reference to the reason for the
existence of biological peculiarities, we shall not be able to appre-
ciate too much the providence which gives ants access to nour-
ishing plants, and furnishes some plants with guests capable of
giving them protection in exchange for some small services.

Does it not seem as if each species was created for the destruc-
tion of some other one, and that the life of so many individuals
of opposing tendencies should ultimately result in the destruction
of all that is living on the surface of the globe ? Yet strangely
from the struggle itself is born accord ; the antagonism of beings
culminates in symbiosis, instability in equilibrium, death in life.
Chaos engenders order. The resultant of these extensive contests,
although most usually not appreciable to the eye not forewarned,
may be summarized in the word harmony. Perfect accord is
established between beings that have nothing in common, pre-
cisely in consequence of the diversity of their wants ; for in
this accord none of the concordants has an interest in despoiling
its associate.

By this the law of progress is certainly confirmed as to what
concerns general life. Aside from the sufferings and the death of

THE LANGUAGE OF CRIME. 831

individuals, evolution tends to establish among "beings primarily
rivals — a modus rivendi which insures the free expansion of their
species — an expansion progressive, but which will eventually find
its limits in the new struggle which species, triumphant through
their union, will have to sustain against adjacent species.

What horizons does the study of ants open to the mind of the
naturalist ! The scrutiny of their relations with plants is suiii-
cient to procure for the investigators who devote their efforts to
it the most lively enjoyment which the naturalist's mind can ask
for. Those who have succeeded in raising this little corner of
the veil of Nature should be ever grateful to the ants for it. —
Ti'anslated for the Popular Science Montlily from the Revue Sci-
entifique.

THE LANGUAGE OF CRIME.

By a. F. B. CEOFTON.

THE language of criminals — the argot of Paris, the " patter " of
London — has been carefully investigated by numerous writers,
with very variant results.

Its origin is difficult to explain. Criminals, say many authors,
have found it necessary to adopt a technical language for their
own protection, that they may be able to converse in public with-
out being understood. " They have been forced to do this, and
have made a language as sinister and as vile as themselves."
This theory can not be admitted. Certainly the argot is sinister
and vile and thoroughly representative of the class that uses it,
but further than this we can not go.

The theory that the use of this dialect is of any assistance to
the criminal is inadmissible. Most policemen and all prison offi-
cers know this slang, sometimes better than the thieves. To speak
it in the hearing of a detective is to invite arrest ; to speak it in
the presence of the general public would arouse suspicion and
attract attention — two things which are especially to be avoided.
Why, then, does it exist ? Dr. Laurent, of the Sant(j prison in
Paris, has given an explanation which has at least nothing to
contradict it : The persons engaged in every trade form a species
of dialect or technical phraseology which is spoken and understood
only by themselves. Criminals, who practice a trade as old as any,
have gradually acquired a language more adapted to their wants,
more in keeping with their ideas and thoughts. Miserable, heart-
less, engaged in a perpetual struggle against morality, law, and
decency, they have acquired a language of debased words and
cynical metaphors, a language of abbreviated expressions and
obscene synonyms.

832 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

Many authors have found it analogous to the elementary lan-
guage of primitive peoples, and the frequent onomatopes give
some apparent solidity to this theory. The describing of a sub-
ject by one of its attributes is characteristic of all early races and
even to-day of children. The child who describes a dog as a
" bow-wow " is following a primitive instinct. The infant may
call a train a " poo-poo," an onomatopoetic expression for its puff-
ing ; the thief calls a train a rattler. The analogy is not complete
but suggestive. Its very incompleteness illustrates exactly the
objection to the theory stated above. The child creates, but the
thief adapts. The slang of the criminal is not a creation of a
primitive language ; it is the attempt to reduce a matured lan-
guage to an elementary stage. It is a destructive and not a crea-
tive process.

Notwithstanding the able arguments of the theorists referred
to, the observer can not but remark the very serious difficulties
that arise when we attempt to consider the argot of the thief as a
primitive language, tongues " which are always serious, never
ironical, never mirthful, never seeking to sully the object of the
thought, simple in their metaphor, abundant in grammatical
forms." Every language has a syntax peculiar to itself, but in the
patois of the criminal no attempt is made of changing anything
but the lexicon. It bears the same resemblance to the parent
language that a pile of cogwheels does to a watch. They are not
a watch, but neither are they a new machine. Thus we must
regard the argot only as a dialect in which debased terms replace
the words of the parent tongue, in which the innate laziness of
the criminal has effaced all words of any length and has simpli-
fied the pronunciation wherever the correct form requires any-
thing but an elementary combination of sounds.

Let us examine some of these transformations and synonyms.

The general tendency of the criminal to reduce the abstract to
the concrete, to denote the substantive by one of its attributes, is
shown very clearly in his synecdochical phraseology. Thus a
purse is a leather ; a street car is a short, comparing its length
with a railroad car; a handkerchief is a tvipe; and a pair of
shoes a pair of kicks.

Again, some of the terms appear to be purely arbitrary, and,
were it not that the creative power is absent in criminals as in
women, I should not hesitate to state it as a fact. But it seems
wiser to conclude merely that the origin of these terms has become
obscured. To suppose that they were created would be in too
distinct contradiction to all obtainable evidence, indirect though
it may be. Such expressions are to kip, meaning to sleep ; to
spiel, to make a speech; jerve, a waistcoat pocket; thimble, a
watch ; to do a lam, meaning to run.

THE LANGUAGE OF CRIME. 833

Some of tlie expressions are very descriptive. To run from a
police officer is to do a hotfoot. A person who is always listening
to other people's conversation is called a rubher-neck. The word
push, meaning a crowd, is occasionally seen in the newspapers.
To be arrested is to be pinched; to be convicted is to fall. To
refuse a person's appeal is to give him the marble heart. Such
expressions require no explanation.

There is a disposition among all uneducated people to use a
single verb both in a transitive and an intransitive sense. The verb
" to learn " is used very commonly for " to teach." " To set " is
used for " to sit/' and " lay " for " lie." In the argot the same rule
applies. The verbs to kill and to die are both expressed by the
one term " to croak," and the grim humor of the class appears in
the word croaker, which means doctor. The argot has no syntax ; in
the verbs there is scarcely any distinction of tense. ' The present
tense is used for the imperfect and for the past. " I win a dol-
lar " may mean I am winning a dollar, but it is equally probable
that it means I won a dollar or I have won a dollar. There seems
to be an effort to eliminate everything possible from the lan-
guage, to reduce its vocabulary to the minimum. It is a natural
endeavor for a listless and enervated people. In some cases there
may be an attempt to use the past form of the verb, but the forma-
tion is very apt to be incorrect, although regular. Thus the gro-
tesque terms used by children as " bringed," " catched," and even
strange plurals and comparatives as " foots " and " worser," are
very commonly found.

This dialect has, as we have been shown, mutilated the mother
tongue ; it has also borrowed liberally from other languages, but
without method or etymology. Criminals are not grammarians.
Neither are they linguists, and at first sight it would seem strange
that they should import words from other countries. We will
find, however, that in any prison the percentage of inmates of
foreign -birth will be large; in America it is about fifteen per
cent. A foreign expression which seems apt or an improvement
on the one in present use is rapidly diffused through the prison.
In cases where it is especially descriptive it may become perma-
nent, but its life is usually short. The argot of the crime class
changes materially every two or three years. It is ephemeral, as
shifting as its users. Victor Hugo exaggerates only slightly
when he says, " The argot changes more in ten years than the
language does in ten centuries."

This mutability is common to all languages, but recognized
tongues change more slowly — in a generation, not in a year.
Words are born, live, and die as we do. They have their
youth, their virility, their old age, and their second childhood.
They have a reason, there is an element of reflection which

TOL. L. 63

834 POPULAR SCIENCE M0N1HLY.

precedes their introduction, while in the argot the birth of a
new word is a chance. Thus in the last three years there
have been three different words for watch — super, thimhle, and
yellow and white — each of which was, in its turn, the only
term used.

Every writer on the subject has noticed that the argot is very
rich in expressions to denote certain common actions. This is a
peculiarity shared by all primitive languages, the only difference
being in the selection of the common acts. Thus in Sanskrit
there are nearly one hundred roots which exj^ress the idea of
killing or wounding, without counting secondary derivations.
Some of these roots are embodied in our language to-day. In
the dialect of the thieves there are nearly one hundred expressions
to signify theft. It was necessary for the pickpocket to describe
the various pockets in a man's clothing and in a woman's dress.
The average man does not often need to specify a particular
pocket ; when he does, he lays his hand on it to assist the poverty
of his language ; the thief has a separate name for each separate
pocket.

It is a curious and instructive study, full of interest to the
metaphysician, the philosopher, or the scientist.

But in spite of this richness in synonyms, which is in itself a
very marked sign of degeneracy, for the tendency of a language
is to eliminate its synonyms, giving to each a different shade of
meaning, the argot is a poor language. It has not a single ex-
pression for abstract emotion ; to attempt to render a philosophic
thought, a moral emotion, a synthetic or esthetic idea into the
dialect of the thief would be like attempting to translate " elec-
tricity " or " steam engine " into Latin. It is impossible, because
the words do not exist. They are not needed. The criminal has
no more conception of abstract emotion than a blind man has of
color.

A fact which does seem to ally the argot to a primitive lan-
guage is its ability to form additional words from its own re-
sources, a power of self-development which we find in the old
Anglo-Saxon and especially in the German of to-day. This trait
is the more striking, as it seems in direct contradiction to the im-
potence of the English language in this respect. The English has
little formative power ; it relies on the Greek and Latin languages
for the extension of its vocabulary.

Dr. Laurent states, in his work on the French criminal, that
some authors have claimed that the slang of the criminal was a
kind of international language for thieves, a Volapiik of crime.
It is unfortunate that the names of these authors were not given.
Were it not for the reputation of the learned doctor it might be
suspected that he was creating men of straw that he might forth-

SKETCH OF STEPHEN J. PERRY. 835

■with demolish them. The claim is almost too ahsurd to discuss.
Even in different parts of the same country the dialect of the
local criminals will differ very materially, while in all cases it
would be totally incomprehensible to a foreign thief.

SKETCH OF STEPHEN J. PERRY.

THE Roman Catholic priesthood of the present century bears
upon its rolls the names of several men who have distin-
guished themselves in scientific research ; among them are those
of two who were eminent in the study of solar physics. One of
these was Father Secchi, of Rome ; the other was Father Perry,
S. J., who for several years maintained the position of Stony-
hurst College and Observatory as a leading institution in the in-
vestigation of the sun spots, the aurora borealis, electric and mag-
netic currents, and the phenomena associated or supposed to be
associated with them.

Stephen Joseph Perry was born in London, August 23, 1833,
and died on the steamer Comus, of the British Eclipse Observing
Expedition, near Demerara, December 27, 1889. He was taught at
Gifford Hall School, and trained for the priesthood of the Roman
Catholic Church in the colleges at Douai and Rome. Returning
to England, he became, in November, 1853, in accordance with a
resolution which he had formed while in Rome, a member of the
Society of Jesus, British Province. At the end of the second year
of his novitiate he went to France. Returning to the seminary
of Stonyhurst, at Blackburn, England, he began a course of phi-
losophy, but, showing a marked predilection for mathematics, his
studies were, with the advice and consent of his superiors in the
order, turned especially in that direction. He took a high rank
in mathematical honors at the University of London, attended
lectures by De Morgan, and completed his mathematical studies
in Paris. He was then appointed Professor of Mathematics and
Director of the Observatory in Stonyhurst ; taught a class there
for one year ; took a course in divinity at St. Bueno's College,
North Wales ; was ordained priest in 1866 ; and two years after-
ward resumed his professorship and the direction of the observa-
tory at Stonyhurst, where he spent the whole of the rest of his life
except when absent upon some scientific expedition.

The observatory at Stonyhurst, where good work in meteoro-
logical and magnetic observation had already been done, was
chosen as one of the first-class English meteorological stations
in 18G7. With the new instruments that were acquired from
time to time, giving the observatory an excellent equipment.
Father Perry strove to make the station one of the most efficient.

836 POPULAR SCIEXCE MONTHLY.

particularly in tlie study of solar physics. " His first communi-
cation to the Royal Astronomical Society," says Nature, upon
whose obituary notice of Father Perry we rely for most of our
material, " indicates the policy he pursued — to undertake no work
which was a mere duplication of that done at other places." It
appears, from a summary of his solar work during the ten preced-
ing years, given at a lecture at the Royal Institution in May, 1889,
that it was carried on by means of drawings and spectroscopic
observations. " For the drawings an image of the sun ten inches
and a half in diameter was projected on a sheet of drawing-paper
affixed to a sketch board carried by the telescope, and all mark-
ings on the sun traced. The drawing finished, the chromosphere
and prominences were examined with the spectroscope. About
two hundred and fifty drawings were made every year from 1880.
The results of these observations were published annually in a
neat little volume, and in various publications." Regular ob-
servations of Jupiter's satellites and of comets were also made,
and spectroscopic observations of comets and stars. In the
year 1888, for instance, the chromosphere was completely exam-
ined on eighty-four days and partly on three other days. The
Rev. Aloysius L. Cortie, S. J., in his biography of Father Perry
(London, Catholic Truth Society), describes the work at Stony-
hurst as having included the daily drawing of the sun when pos-
sible, the measurement of the depth of the chromosphere, the
heights of prominences, and observations of sun-spot spectra — a
programme which was faithfully adhered to up to the time of
Father Perry's death. The drawings of the sun spots, as they ap-
peared in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, repro-
ductions of two of which are given in Father Cortie's book, show
how much can be effected by means of the pencil. The main ob-
ject of making these drawings, which are of great importance
and supplement the solar photographs, was to throw light upon
the theories of the mode of formation of spots, and to find, if pos-
sible, the clew to the connection between terrestrial magnetism
and solar activity.

Father Perry's industry and strict attention to his work of
observation are further attested in his contributions to Nature
and other journals. In Nature, the only journal of which we
have complete files at hand, we find from one to three communi-
cations each in twenty-three of the forty volumes which were
published previous to his death, recording phenomena of weather,
magnetism, the aurora borealis, meteors, the sun, and earthquakes.
The first volume, for instance, has a communication describing
the cyclone of January 13, 1870, as it prevailed at Stonyhurst. In
the third volume are letters speaking of his having missed on
some observation a particular faint yellow line in the chromo-

SKETCH OF STEPHEN J. PERRY. 837

sphere, on tlie November meteors, and describing minutely the
successive phenomena of the earthquake of March 17, 1871. A
communication in the second volume sets forth a method of mag-
netic surveys of limited districts in which investigators might
employ themselves during their vacations, and which he had prac-
ticed satisfactorily during two successive vacations. These were
probably the survey of the west of France, made in 1868 in com-
pany with Father Sidgreaves, and that of the east of France,
made in 1869. A detailed account of such a survey made by him
in Belgium one autumnal season was communicated to the Royal
Society, with the magnetic elements of twenty stations and the
secular variation. Other studies on this subject are recorded ;
one comparing the curves as shown by the photographs in terres-
trial magnetism at Stony hurst and Vienna, which was spoken of
as remarkable in that the curves offered a striking illustration
of the simultaneous action of the disturbing forces of two mag-
nets many miles apart ; and observations by him and Prof.
Balfour Stewart on the regular fluctuations of declination at
Stonyhurst and Kew, of which the authors remarked that " such
fluctuations almost always occur as couplets or groups of coup-
lets— a. couplet meaning first a descent and then an ascent, or the
reverse " ; and the paper offered an explanation of the phenomena.
A communication on the magnetic storm of October, 1872, calls
attention to the importance of observations of such manifesta-
tions, in view of the coincidences discovered between them and
other important natural phenomena.

In an address delivered in 1872 or 1873 to the Liverpool Poly-
technic Society, after explaining what was known of terrestrial
magnetism and remarking upon the observed coincidence of mag-
netic disturbances with the passing of earth currents, " their never-
failing appearance at all auroral displays, their simultaneous
appearance at places the most remote from each other, and their
agreement in various periodic features with outbursts of sun
spots," were spoken of as most powerful aids to the solution of the
problems connected with them ; and he suggested that it was not
unreasonable " to expect that some light may be thrown upon the
question, if we examine with careful attention the not impossible
connection of magnetic storms with solar outbreaks, or with vol-
canic eruptions and violent earthquakes, with the variations of the
wind, or even with the showers of fallen meteors." Further, he
asked, if the connection supposed by certain students between the
period of solar spots and the relative position of the planets can
be maintained, " if the solar disturbances are in any way due to
the combined action of the planets, and these again are found to
be coincident with the great perturbations of terrestrial magnet-
ism, shall we not be inclined to attribute a wider range to the

838 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

magnetic force than is in general assigned to it ? May not that
which has long been allowed to rank among the most extensively-
diffused of Nature's agents find a home in each individual mem-
ber of the solar system, causing them to act and react upon each
other as well by their magnetic energy as by the force of gravity ?
The perfect solution of such a problem would well repay many a
year of persevering observation and of assiduous study, and well
will those be rewarded by whose labor the general cause of terres-
trial magnetism ceases to be one of the unsolved mysteries of
cosmical physics."

In connection with the eclipse of December 22, 1870, Father
Perry was made chief of the expedition to watch the phenomenon
at Cadiz, Spain. Unfavorable weather prevailing during most of
the time of the sojourn of the party at the station, the observers
were spread out as much as possible, in hopes of not failing alto-
gether, and the results justified expectations. The clouds were
not so thick as to cut off all the observations, and some fairly
good views were obtained.

For the observation of the transit of Venus of 1874 Father
Perry offered his services for the expedition to Kerguelen Island,
and was appointed chief of the observing party, to be stationed
at Christmas Harbor. Importance was attached to this expedi-
tion in British scientific circles aside from its astronomical pur-
poses, because this lonely " island of desolation," as Father Perry
afterward called it, had been but little explored, and not much
was known of the region in which it was situated ; and a natu-
ral history party was sent out with the transit company by the
Royal Society to investigate the botany, etc., of the island. The
imdertaking to go on this voyage was a serious adventure with
Father Perry, and illustrates as much as anything else, perhaps,
his self-sacrificing devotion to his favorite science. He was
peculiarly sensitive to suffering from seasickness, and was not
spared on this, one of the longest and roughest voyages the ocean
affords ; and his sufferings on this occasion. Nature says, " were
so fearful that every one wondered that he cared to venture on
even the most promising trip." His patience in suffering "helped
to win for him the esteem of the officers with whom he came in
contact. Not one word of his discomfort is to be found in any of
the journals kept by him." He was guided, as he expressed it,
by a determination " that no consideration should make us flinch
where the astronomical interests of the expedition were at stake."
In addition to the work of the expedition, he took magnetic
observations at the Cape of Good Hope, Kerguelen, Bombay,
Aden, Port Said, Malta, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Florence, and
Moncalieri, and lectured on the transit of Venus at the Cape and
Bombay, and, on his return, at the Royal Institution. He also

SKETCH OF STEPHEN J. PERRY. 839

communicated a paper on the subject to the British Association
of 1875, illustrating his remarks by diagrams of the sun and the
planet as seen from various stations, and was attentively listened
to. The Americans had anticipated his party and taken the posi-
tion they had intended to occupy, but they found a better one ;
and the three British detachments and the Americans co-oper-
ated, making four stations on the island. The weather was finer
than they had anticipated from the accounts of the climate of
Kerguelen, and from his station they were able to get observa-
tions of the internal and external contacts at egress. He was
also a member of the observing party of the transit of Venus of
1882, in Madagascar, which was selected as one of the ingress
stations. In 1886 he observed the eclipse of August 29th, at Car-
riacou, a small island to the north of Grenada ; and in 1887 the
eclipse of August 19th, in Russia.

In November, 1889, he sailed for the Isles de Salut to witness
the solar eclipse of December 22d, and died soon after the observa-
tion. According to the account given of these, his last days, by
Father Strickland, S. J., in The Tablet, he suffered much during
the voyage from seasickness, and was in rather an exhausted con-
dition when he reached the island. He nevertheless, intent upon
his work, went ashore at once to inspect the proposed point of
observation and introduce himself to the authorities. He was
advised and urged to continue to live on the vessel (the Comus),
going ashore only in the day. Father Strickland expressed the
belief that if he had done this "his life would not have been
sacrificed to the one anxious desire to do everything for the best
for the success of the work confided to him." He preferred,
however, to abide in the hospital, and said nothing of the illness
which he felt. The road from the hospital to the observatory
was steep and difiicult, but he traversed it on foot four times a
day. He complained the Friday before the eclipse of sickness,
but worked till nearly three o'clock in the morning ; lay down in
a hammock in the tent to get a little rest where he was ; was up
again before six o'clock to take the position of the sun at rising ;
and superintended at half past seven a careful and successful
rehearsal of the operations and duties that were to be performed
in the observation of the eclipse the next morning. " Every one
was surprised at Father Perry's exactitude in contributing to
carry out his own orders, and his courage in facing fatigue. His
readiness to sacrifice himself and his own convenience in order
to save trouble to others endeared him to all who worked with
him, and challenged their utmost efforts to secure success for
their work in spite of the oppressive climate and surroundings."
About noon on Saturday he was found much exhausted by a
ship's officer who visited him, but was again at his post in the

840 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

observatory at three o'clock, where an important photograph was
secured. In the evening he went to the ship for dinner, but was
only able to lie on one side, and took some chlorodyne. He then
persisted in going ashore and to his own quarters to sleep, in a
violent rain. He passed a bad night, and was very ill on the
following morning, the time of the eclipse, and permitted himself
to be assisted over the half mile to the observatory, but would
not be carried in a stretcher. Though very much exhausted
when he reached the observatory, "as the important moment
approached he seemed to rally, and during the minutes of the
eclipse seemed to be himself again, and showed no signs of illness
or exhaustion. There were two photographic instruments in use
— one, an old one, which had often been in use before ; the other
was the special corona graphic instrument prepared for the occa-
sion, of which Father Perry himself took charge. He was so
alert and self-possessed during the eclipse that his friends about
him hoped he was not so ill, but he gave way immediately after,
and with much difficulty reached his quarters in the hospital."
On Sunday night the critical nature of his disease, dysentery,
became evident. On Wednesday he was better, and the ship set
sail for Demerara. Friday afternoon his mind began to wander,
and in an hour and twenty minutes afterward he died. Before
he quite lost consciousness " he thought himself again engaged
in * the supreme moment of the scientific mission which had so
long filled his thoughts,' and ' began to give his orders as during
the short moments of the eclipse.' "

Steps were taken a few months after Father Perry's death to
establish a memorial of him, to consist of a new fifteen-inch tele-
scope, which, with the house in which it stood, should be called
the Father Perry Memorial, the works done with which should
be published under his name.

A THEORY of "partial impact" is suggested by Prof. A. W. Bickerton,
of the New Zealand University, to explain the sudden appearance and
rapid disappearance of "new stars." Recognizing the fact that enormous
masses of incandescent matter can not cool in a few weeks, the author
observes, as quoted in Nature: "A typical new star is probably a thousand
times as bi'ight as our sun ; it appears suddenly and disappears in a year.
. . . The formation of such a body is difficult to explain on any theory
except that of impact, but to explain its disappearance is more difficult still.
It is estimated that it will take the sun ten million years to lose half of its
luster. Think of a sun a thousand times as bright cooling in a year! The
idea is absurd." But if we accept Mr. Lockyer's theory that some stars are
not coherent bodies like our sun, but masses of meteorites which in the
case of new stars and variables collide with one another, the difficulty is
much less. We have no longer an enormous mass all aglow, but numerous
scattered masses, vastly smaller, and capable of rapid cooling.

EDITOR'S TABLE.

841

%iiiUx's Saljlc.

SAFEGUARDS OF NATIONAL
PROSPEEITY.

THEEE are two very sharply con-
trasted views of the conditions
on wlaich national prosperity de-
pends, and we do not know how
they can be better desci'ibed than by
naming them the scientific and the
unscientific view, respectively. The
scientific view of this and of every
subject takes its start from Nature
and the operation of natural law.
The unscientific view takes its start
from the idea of human interven-
tion. The one finds the basis of all
prosperity in the fruitful application
of labor ; the other thinks that noth-
ing can be done well without inces-
sant watchfulness to control and fre-
quently to counteract the operation
of natural forces and processes. Ac-
cording to the latter view, men and
nations have to be guided, protected,
and nursed into prosperity; accord-
ing to the foi'mer, man is an animal
who icants to be prosperous, and
who has wit enough to attain his
desires if he is only sufficiently let
alone. So far as this country is con-
cerned, no one can deny that what
we have called the scientific view is
sustained by facts, at least to this
extent that, undeniably, the years
when the most rapid advances were
made in wealth and general prosper-
ity were precisely those in which in-
dustry was least protected, and the
principles of paternalism in govern-
ment least developed.

An important characteristic of the
scientific view is that it makes for
national unity and for good will
among men; while a most unfortu-
nate characteristic of the other is that
it tends to separate class from class
and man from man in the most in-

vidious manner. There is no one
scheme by which the whole of a na-
tion can be "protected." Protection
is necessarily a piecemeal business,
and what is accorded to one class be-
comes a pretext for similar or equiva-
lent privileges to another class. In
this way each class is led to watch
with jealousy what is done for every
other, in order to see that it is not
left out in the distribution of state
favors. The land is thus filled with
countless law-made causes of rivalry
and contention, and the minds of men
grow small through the study of nar-
row and selfish interests, instead of
being enlarged by the thought of one
great onward movement in which,
under the regime of liberty, all would
participate.

Every protectionist system is dom-
inated by the sentiments of fear and
enmity — fear of and enmity toward
those against whom protection is
sought. That such sentiments are
at war with and tend to depress and
weaken the more generous instincts
of a community who can doubt ?
When party orators talk of the '' pau-
per labor " of the Old World, is it
with any accent of sympathy for the
hard lot of the alleged pauper labor-
ers ? Is it not always with a fierce
accent of contempt for the laborers
and hatred toward the countries to
which they belong ? We can truly
say that we have no recollection of
ever having seen or heard the term
employed except with a distinct im-
plication of contempt and hostility.
Why is our country even to-day,
when arbitration treaties are under
discussion, so prone to anger and bit-
terness toward foreign countries, but
particularly toward Great Britain, if
not that protective policies steadily

842

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

and powerfully keep alive such sen-
timents in the hearts of the people ?
We are not at this moment discuss-
ing this question from an economic
point of view. It would be quite pos-
sible to grant, from the latter stand-
point, that what is called commercial
protection is a national necessity;
and yet to admit and lament the fact
that the moral result of such a pol-
icy was most unfavorable to the na-
tional character, and, above all, un-
favorable to those broad, liberal, and
humane sentiments which ought to
characterize a nation which habitu-
ally regards itself as leading the van
of civilization.

An illustration of the pettiness to
which what we have called the un-
scientific view of the means by which
national prosperity is promoted nat-
urally leads is found in the recent
legislation which imposes an educa-
tional test upon foreigners wishing
to make this country their home.
The immigrant, if over sixteen years
of age, must be able to read and after-
ward write from twenty to twenty-
five words of the Constitution of the
United States; otherwise he is sent
back to the country whence he came.
The individual may be physically
sound, and may be a capable and pa-
tient worker, prepared, even with the
drawback of illiteracy, to take his
chiinces in this new land; but he is
refused admission. Why ? The main
reason, as we believe, is that the
throwing of such difficulties in the
way of the foreigner is in line with
the sentiments which, as a people, we
have been carefully nourishing for a
long time past. It is a phase of " pro-
tection.'' But surely do we need to be
protected from foreigners who come
here to do the hard work of the coun-
try ? Is it not in our power to teach
them respect for the law, if they need
such teaching ? And migbt it not be
expected that tbe ''free air" of this
continent and the free play of Amer-

ican institutions would do something
for their intellectual and political
development ? In times past, when
our own illiteracy showed a larger
percentage than it does to-day, and
our whole population was much
smaller, we admitted illiterate immi-
grants by the thousand without ques-
tion and gave them a hearty welcome.
To-day, when the volume of immi-
gration is much less than it used to
be, and when our own educational
level is alleged to have materially
risen, we must turn back the able-
bodied foreigner unless he can show
that he has been to school. In those
days we made no question about our
ability to absorb the vast hordes that
presented themselves, and we did it.
Today, when our population is much
larger and the number of strangers
arriving much smaller, we impose a
scholastic test.

Looking at the law as a proposed
safeguard of national prosperity, We
must say it has a most fatuous ap-
pearance. The ability to read and
write shows that the individual has
so far been cared for by others, but
affords little evidence as to his own
intelligence or character. A great
many vicious and socially dangerous
persons are to be found among the
educated, so called, while among the
wholly uneducated are large num-
bers of faithful and honest workers.
It would be interesting, but perhaps
a little disquieting, to know just how
many persons in this country who
could write out, if necessary, the
whole Constitution of the United
States are supporting themselves by
more or less predatory modes of life;
and it would be further interesting
to know what propoi'tion of their
dupes they find among those who
can read and write, and what among
the wholly uneducated. The fact is
that " education '' throws open to the
vicious means of fraud they would
not otherwise have possessed, and

EDITOR'S TABLE.

843

brings anofher class within the reach
of dangers from which they would
otherwise have stood entirelj' aloof.
The man who can neither read nor
write generally has a feeling of his
own weakness, and is thrown back on
his natural shrewdness and knowl-
edge of things for self -protection,
while a little school education,
though of the shallowest kind, often
puffs up its possessor to an amazing
sense of self-sufficiency.

No one, we trust, will misunder-
stand the drift or purpose of these
remarks. We wish in the first place
to expi*ess our disapproval of the il-
liberal policy which would shut the
door of this vast country, with its
immense resources, in the face of a
healthy, able-bodied immigi'ant, sim-
ply because he has not learned to
read and write; and in the second
place, to emphasize the position we
have so often taken, that the mere
ability to read and write is no safe-
guard whatever of character, no
guarantee of the course in life which
the individual will afterward pursue.
There is in it the potentiality of fur-
ther growth in knowledge, but there
is also the potentiality of a life of
scheming, of a life of sensuality, of a
life of lawlessness. For one who can
read there are useful books and pa-
pers to be had with very little trouble ;
but there are pernicious ones to be
had with even less. The problem to-
day is far less what to do with our
illiterates than what to do with a
considerable body of our literates,
applying that term to all who can
read and write ; and to pretend that
the welfare of the state is threatened
if an almost imperceptible percent-
age of illiterate foreigners is added
yearly to our seventy millions of
population is hardly less than hypo-
critical.

The true safeguards of national
prosperity have little to do with legis-
lation of this character. They lie

in respect for law, in a sense of jus-
tice between man and man, in a sense
of responsibility on the part of those
who through wealth possess power
and social influence. They lie also
in the faithfulness of public officers
in the discharge of their duties, and
in the recognition by every citizen of
the truth that his actions count in
the general sum of influences by
which the fortunes of the state are
molded for good or for evil. They
lie, we need hardly say, in the right
discharge by parents of their duties
toward their children, and in the
general soundness and purity of fam-
ily life. They lie, finally, in a lib-
eral, humane, and righteous public
opinion, by which public policy is
guided into right channels, and the
evils which sj^ring from diseased
parts of the body politic are kept in
check. These are the things we need
to be concerned about, and which we
must be concerned about if the na-
tion is to prosper. Then, sooner or
later, we must come to that regime
of liberty which gives free scope to
the activities and better sentiments
of all. We must come to a belief
that a vast amount of our intermed-
dling with the laws of supply and
demand and the natural tendencies
of things has been vain and hurtful.
Until we reach this point our na-
tional prosperity will be on a more
or less precarious basis, and our na-
tional character will not attain its
best development.

A NATIONAL DEPARTMENT OF
SCIENCE.

The proposal has been seriously
made in the columns of our con-
temporary Science that all the dif-
ferent scientific bureaus under the
Government at Washington should
be gathered into one great depart-
ment of science under a ministerial
head. The proposition is professedly

844

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

made in the interest of economy and
efficiency. It is alleged that several
of the bureaus now duplicate one
another's work, partly through sheer
want of system and partly thi'ough
not knowing what one another are
doing. The writer, Dr. Charles W.
Dabney, Jr., thinks it is amazing
that the Government has accom-
plished so much excellent scientific
work through the agency of so un-
scientific an organization. The rem-
edy he prescribes is " a general co-
ordination of the scientific work of
the Government " ; but just what
would be the effect of such a co-ordi-
nation he does not describe further
than to hint tliat it would save
money.

On the other hand, a writer in the
same journal, who signs '" Washing-
tonian," does not believe in Dr. Dab-
ney's scheme at all. He inclines
to the opinion that " consolidation
would diminish results, impair effi-
ciency, and do away to some degree
with individual responsibility." He
thinks that, as things are at present,
practical objects are better kept in
view and more effectually pursued
than they would be under a depart-
ment that had the whole field of sci-
entific investigation for its prov-
ince. " The chemical laboratories,"
says Washingtonian, " being con-
solidated, the chief chemist would be
a greater man than any of his col-
leagues. No director of a bureau
could control his own chemical work.
With demands for particular jobs
from several bureaus on hand it
would be wholly uncertain when
any of them would be finished.
Complaints would be met by play-
ing off one against another. Re-
sponsibility, and to a large extent
efficiency, would be lost."

In this dispute we are disposed to
hold with Washingtonian. A gen-
eral department of science would in
our opinion be altogether too vague

in its objects, and too little governed
by a sense of the practical, to render
satisfactory service to the public. It
would be almost impossible to pre-
vent it from wandering off into
purely theoretical work and into all
the fads of specialist research, and
in a very few years taking up a
position and assuming a character
never contemplated when it was es-
tablished. We hold, moreover, that
it would be quite woi'th while to move
the previous question: whether, al-
ready, the Government does not en-
gage in various lines of scientific
activity which might perfectly well
be left to private effort. Govern-
ment work has this peculiarity, that
it is never done; just as "infant in-
dustries" have the peculiarity, of
never outgrowing the tariff bottle.
If a geological survey is undertaken,
it must go on ad infinitum. If a
private company had a piece of land
which they wanted surveyed geo-
logically or otherwise, and employed
certain persons judged to be compe-
tent to take the work in hand, they
would expect them to finish it, and
that within a reasonable time. They
would not expect them to camp ever-
lastingly on the ground, and never
hint at any finality to their alleged
labors. With Government work it
is different; it goes on for its own
sake, or for the sake of the salai'ies
connected with it ; and the rustic
voter who expects to see it some day
completed will have an experience
like that of the more ancient rustic,
who stood by the river side expect-
ing to see the stream run itself dry.

What we want, of course, far
more than a national department of
science, is an intelligent and honest
Congress, ovit of which can be formed
intelligent and honest committees
capable of criticising the work of
government, and intent on reduc-
ing it within the limits indicated by
considerations of public utility. It

EDITOR'S TABLE.

845

ests with the people to say when we
shall have such a Congress. It is all
a question, as we lately pointed out,
of disinterestedness in the exercise
of the franchise. Whenever the
time comes that the people as a
whole, or a pi'eponderant majority
of the people, desire good and honest
government, and are willing to take
a little trouble to secure it, many
things will be possible of which at
present we can only dream.

MR. WELLS ON METHODS OF FEDERAL
TAX A TION.

It is one of the most serious evils
of the methods of political discussion
current among us that petty, local,
and temporary considerations are
given predominance, and graver,
broader views, looking to the gen-
eral public welfare and to ultimate
results, are very little regarded.

We have a government, accord-
ing to the well-worn phrase, of the
people, for the people, by the people ;
but what " the people " do not always
see is, that the government which
they actually call into being is not a
government of the people as a ivhole,
for the people as a icliole, and by the
people as a whole, but a government
in which rival interests, class and
sectional, more or less check, thwart,
haggle with, and corrupt one another,
and in which the real interests of the
community as a whole are too often
lost sight of. The standing difficulty
under our system is how to get im-
portant interests duly attended to,
how to get great questions adequate-
ly discussed. Matters of minor im-
portance, particularly such as may
become the subject of a ''deal," can
always secure attention ; but, when
the wider and more lasting inter-
ests of the nation are concerned,
our legislative bodies show only too
plainly that these are not the mat-
ters they care to deal with. The

truth is they are not, speaking broad-
ly, the matters they were elected to
deal with, each constituent body
having regard mainly, in choosing
its representative, to local and spe-
cial interests, not to those of the
country as a whole.

The article which we publish in
this number from our valued con-
tributor, the Hon. David A. Wells,
entitled How can the Federal Gov-
ernment best raise its Revenues ?
furnishes an admirable example of
the manner in which great questions
of public policy should be approached
and treated.

Mr. Wells indicates what might
be done if our statesmen would only
deal with the question of taxation
disinterestedly, casting aside the mis-
chievous prejudice engendered by
partisan rivalries and squabbles, and
solely with a view to the public good.
He points out that some of his sug-
gestions would involve going counter
to certain popular prejudices, but he
makes it clear that these prejudices
have nothing to do with the public
good except to thwart and obstruct it.
His appeal is to the reason and pa-
triotism of Congress and of the
country at large, and it will so far
help, we have no doubt, to raise the
tone of political discussion. To this
end we cite his article as an example
of earnest and thoughtful argument
— the kind of argument that is too
seldom addressed to popular audi-
ences and too seldom heard in our
legislative bodies.

The question of protection and
free trade is very slightly if at all
touched upon in Mr. Wells's article.
But we can not refrain from saying
that, in our oiDinion, this great nation
can never be right with itself or with
the world so long as the protection
sentiment rules the thought of the
people. To say that the way to make
ourselves prosperous is to shut out the
products of the rest of the world, even

846

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

when ofPered to us at the most advan-
tageous prices, is on the face of it an
absurdity. The fundamental idea of
trade, whether domestic or foreign,
is that you get an article that is of
more value to you than the thing
you part with ; and how a nation can
benefit itself by greatly restricting
the number of its profitable ex-
changes is something that no unso-
phisticated mind can understand.
Add to this the bitterness of feel-
ing toward foreign nations and the
consequent littleness of mind which
the protective system breeds ; add to
it also the political demoralization
which tarifi' arrangements always
involve, the corrupt relations they
tend to create between the party in

power and the privileged interests,
and the coDclusion will be inevita-
ble that the system in question can
not be a permanent policy for a self-
I'especting nation.

There are other questions press-
ing forward in our national affairs
which need to be treated with sole
regard to the welfare of the nation
as a whole, and with views looking
to the future rather than being con-
fined to selfish interests and the
emergencies of the present. What-
ever may be said of the validity of
Mr. Wells's arguments, his breadth
of view and his method of presenting
them may well be commended to all
whose work it may be to deal with
these subjects.

^tltutxtit Titcvatixvje.

SPECIAL BOOKS.

The object of the Ancient Ideals ol Mr. Henry Osborn Taylor* is to
present a new historical survey of the mental and spiritual growth of man-
kind in the light of the recent progress of historical research and the modi-
fications of opinion that have been occasioned thereby. The attempt is
made to treat human development from the point of view of the ideals of
the different races as these ideals disclose themselves in the art and litera-
ture, in the philosophy and religion, and in the conduct and political for-
tunes of each race. The author has endeavored to preserve a unity of plan
in setting forth the i^art taken by each race in the histoi-y, to make clear
the nature of the contribution made by each to the stages of growth at-
tained before the Christian era, and to indicate in what respects their con-
tributions became permanent elements of humanity and thus elements of
its further possibilities — possibilities which he believes find in Christianity
the perfect conditions for their final realization. The life of the peoples, if
we comprehend the author's thought correctly, is a striving after ideals,
which are never quite reached directly by the strivers ; and " the complete
story of human progress is the story of ideal conception and of endeavor,
and the unfailing realization of ideals in the growth of human beings with
ideals uplifted and enlarged." This makes the narrative of the enlarge-
ment and upraising of human life ; it is a history of the growth of hu-
man personality; of the age-long development of the characters of men
and women. Accordingly, we have in this book the story of the life and

* Ancient Ideals : A Stndy of Intellectual and Spiritual Growth from Early Timeg to the Estab-
lishment of Christianity. By Henry Osborn Taylor. New Tork : G. P. Putnam's Sons. In two vol-
umes, 8vo. Price, $5.50.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 847

works of eacli of the greater ancient nations looking toward sometliing it
could not quite attain ; taken up and carried on by some other people,
which still fell short of the yet higher aim set before it, and so on. " Egyp-
tian thought was characterized by crass confusion," analyzed nothing, had
no clearness or consistency or power to discriminate and classify. Its
ethics consequently remained unsystematized precept, and, " with all the
picturesque elaborateness of a future life, no thought of spiritual immor-
tality was reached." All its art and literature and religion, as we have
them, point to this conclusion. In Babylonia the earliest Sumerian and
Accadiau peoples were subdued by the stroiiger but less cultivated Semite?,
who acquired their civilization and built upon it one distinguished by the
strength and practical intelligence of its toil, which was sustained for
twenty centuries. Then came the Assyrians, whose ideal was power and
who created nothing. The Chinese had a mighty power of industry, with
docility to national government, and the faculty of ethical formulation
which produced their classics and their distinctive modes of thought. The
Aryans of India possessed qualities of mind and spirit out of the reach of
all these peoples, with a turn to philosophic thought, and were able to pro-
duce the Vedas, the Brahmanic philosophy, and its reaction. Buddhism.
Those of Iran developed the ideas of a dual warfare between good and evil,
with the final triumph of the good and of life over death, with the "grand
and spiritual " conception of the supreme Lord of Good revealing himself to
his prophet. The Greeks sought logical consistency, the highest beauty in
things physical and mental, to make the most of life in its manifold aspects,
and to get the most out of it. The Romans consolidated and exalted the
family and the state, built uj) institutions, systematized the law, and con-
structed enduring public works, but originated little. The Hebrews held
the conception of God, " one living personal, righteous, immediate in his
governance of the world he made ; and the supplementing thought of man
created in his image, bound to obey his will and imitate his ways. The
development and the greatening of the Hebrew personality was to lie in
the enlargement of the thought of God, and in the endeavor to conform
human conduct to his will and ways ever more largely kno^vn." Finally
came Christianity, including and setting forth the highest and farthest
possibilities of life ; affording scope for the inclusion of all qualities and
capacities of mankind, and for the development of the whole man in the
service of God ; predicating veritable relations between God and man ; and
touching and ordering all things in man's daily life.

All the world admires an adventurous spirit, and no one to-day holds a
higher place in the world's esteem on this account than Fridtiof Nan sen.
The personality of this young man of thirty-five, who has already accom-
plished tbe only crossing of Greenland by a Eui'opean and has at one
leap advanced the farthest north point of arctic explorers by nearly three
degrees, could not fail to be of deep interest, and the interest increases the
more one knows of him. A fittingly picturesque account of his life and
labors has been brought out in a handsome volume by the Messrs. Long-
mans.* His biographers show us clearly that Nansen has always had

* Fridtiof Nansen, 1861-1893. By W. C. BrOgger and Nordahl Rolfsen. Translated by William
Archer. London, New York, and Bombay : Longmans, Green «fc Co. Pp. 402, 8vo. Price, $4.

84-8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

most strongly developed the Norseman's wild delight in conquering diffi-
culties. As a hoy he struggled with cold and ice and with other hoys
hardy like himself. He spent his money for tools and chemicals when
he was expected to yield to the seductions of toys and gingerbread, A
hard problem was his delight, whether it was mathematics, the mechanism
of a sewing machine, or how to make the longest leap on snowshoes
and he never rested till he got to the bottom of it. Then he threw all
thought of it to the winds and attacked another. After he had devel-
oped a decided taste for science and chosen zoology for his specialty,
almost his first training in descriptive research was gained in a sealing
voyage undertaken by the advice of Prof. Collet. In the seal hunting
and bear hunting on the ice he acquired training for his famous feats of
exploration and his first decided bent in that direction. After his return
he studied first at the Bergen Museum and then at the Zoological Station
at Naples. There are several contributions in the volume by other hands
than those of the principal authors. One of these, by Gustav Retzius,
tells what Nansen has done as a biologist, showing that he has j)erformed
good service in sevei'al directions. The account of the Greenland expe-
dition is prefaced by two chaptei'S giving a general description of the coun-
try and of the great ice age which, one may say, still persists there. The
authors tell us how he made known his plan to Nordenskiold, Rink, and
others, how earnestly he answered all objections, and, after making careful
preparations, set out on his dangerous undertaking and brought it to a suc-
cessful issue. Nansen's home must be an eagle's nest, and his wife a fitting
mate to the intrepid explorer, if we are to trust the glimpse of her given
by one of the authors, Nordahl Rolfsen. He describes humorously a visit
to Mrs. Nansen for the purpose of interviewing her about her husband at
the time the rumor was current that Nansen had reached the pole. The
interviewer found her gay and severe by turns, but uncommunicative
through it all. " Like a figure from the Sagas," he describes her, pi^oud,
high-strung, and as strong in her way as her husband. A special historical
value is given to the book by the sketch of arctic expeditions from the
earliest times, contributed by Aksel Arstal, and the chapter by Prof. H.
Mohn summarizing the contributions of Norwegian seamen to arctic geog-
raphy. A geological description of the New Siberia Islands is contributed
by the Baron Edwai^d von Toll. The remaining chapters are devoted to
Nansen's plan of his polar expedition, his preparations, and his start.
With the main features of these matters the world is now well acquainted,
but the details have an absorbing interest, especially when told with the
vim and color of our northern authors. The volume is illustrated with
many portraits of Nansen, his family and companions, and many views of
scenes connected with his doings. There are also three folded maps of
northern regions.

The questions which have been raised by the experimental investiga-
tion of automatic movements, recently carried on in France and England,
are among the most interesting with which contemporary science has to
deal. In this sphere, as in so many others, the naive belief in the essential
simplicity and reasonableness of Nature, which in the scientist is the coun-
terpart of the child's faith in the native goodness of grown folk, has suf-
fered a shock. Although at present we can scarcely do more than say that

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. 849

the relation of the human consciousness to the apparently intelligent, pur-
posive movements which the body executes is by no means as simple as
we thought, any attempt to discuss the problem from the empirical point
of view will be welcomed. With the exception of Mr. F. W. H. Myers's
papers and reviews, in the publications of the Society for Psychical Ee-
search, and of the series by Prof. W. R. Newbold, which recently appeared
in this magazine, no discussion of the matter at all commensurate with its
importance has appeared, and Mrs. Baldwin's translation of M. Binefs
book * will therefore be doubly welcome.

M. Binet adopts the conception of double personality — that is, coexistent
personalities — and makes use of it consistently for the explanation of all
forms of motor autoaiatisra, from the most rudimentary twitchings of an
anaesthetic hand to the fully developed automatic script which manifests
memories, emotions, and desires unknown to the primary self. All alike,
he holds, evince the existence of a " little consciousness by the side of a
greater — a small luminous point by the side of a great focus of light." The
precise character of the secondary consciousness he does not try to deter-
mine for all cases, recognizing that it probably varies indefinitely ; and he
agrees with Pierre Janet, as against Myers, in regaixling it as essentially a
pathological phenomenon. On the whole, he avoids the pitfall of regard-
ing evidence for the existence of dissociated states as in the same sense
and to the same degree evidence for the existence of a fully equipped
secondary self, but in one curious passage (p. 210) he seems fairly to fall
into it.

Especially interesting are Chapters VI to VIII, in which M. Binet tries
to determine the relation of the subconscious field to the upper self. The
evidence which he has collected — the greater part of it, indeed, being based
upon tracings taken by himself of the movements of an anassthetic hand
under varying conditions — is of the highest importance, and bears directly
upon the relation of the margin to the focus in the normal consciousness.
Chapter VIII, on Ideas of Subconscious Origin, gives a brief account of the
brilliant series of experiments by which M. Binet proved that in some pa-
tients touch stimuli which were not felt by the patient gave rise neverthe-
less to visual hallucinations representing to some degree the object touched,
and in one case at least (page 213) extraordinary subconscious hyperses-
thesia seems demonstrated.

M. Binet does not treat of the cognate questions involved in the phe-
nomena of normal suggestibility, trance, ecstasy, and hallucination, nor
does he endeavor to develop psychological principles of universal appli-
cation. In conclusion, he points out how unsatisfactory the common no-
tions of association, of unconscious cerebration, and of personality become
when viewed in the light of these facts, but, with that exception, he does not
show the bearing of the latter upon the more profound problems of mind
and brain. Perhaps he feels that the time has not yet come for that ; but
he marshals the facts with discretion, and if his coaceptions are not always
as clear as they might be, there are few of us who would wish to cast the
first stone at him.

* Alterations of Personality. By Alfred Binet. Translated by Helen Green Baldwin, with Notes
and an Introduction by J. Mark Baldwin. New York : D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 356, 12mo. Price,
S1.50.

VOL. L. — 64 ■

850

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

GENERAL NOTICES.

Mr. R. P. HallecVs recent book was not
written for scientists, and scientists as such
will find notliing in it.* The author under-
takes merely to make a practical application
of the results which others have attained by
patient investigation. His book is written
for teachers and parents, and every teacher
or parent who reads it from an educational
standpoint will be amply repaid. The au-
thor aims to emphasize the facts that a
large element in education consists in the
physical modification of brain and nerve
cells ; that these cells are more easily modi-
fied at one age than at another; that the
effects of wrong training or lack of training
can never be eliminated in later life; that
every person, in order to live a full life, must
have all his senses and the corresponding
brain-cells developed in his youth. The first
chapters give a summary of our present
knowledge of the nervous system and the
changes that have been found to occur as
results of growth, fatigue, and training.
Then follow discussions of the effect of en-
vironment on training, and on development
as related to age. Various definite sugges-
tions are given for training the different
senses in the classroom, both by immediate
objects and by the formation of memory
images. The chapter, How Shakespeare's
Senses M'ere Trained, is interesting and in-
tensely practical. The great value of motor
training is clearly demonstrated ; and the
final plea for the early symmetrical develop-
ment of all the senses as a preparation for
fuller, more joyous life in later years is an-
other expression of the present hope for a
brighter future in education. Our scientific
knowledge of the facts in the case, the
changes in brain-cells which are correlated
with education, how these vary under differ-
ent conditions, and how far they may be
varied by training, is meager enough as yet ;
and many scientists would have hesitated to
construct such a book on the basis of our
present knowledge, while recognizing the
far-reaching importance of the invesliga-

* The Education of the Central Nervous Sys-
tem. By Reuben Post Halleclj. New York : The
Macmillau Co. Pp. 258, 12mo. Price, $1.

tions which are now going on. Owing to
the widespread interest in these questions,
we expect in the near future numerous con-
tributions to pedagogy from experimental
and physiological psychology. Scores of
books similar in scope will doubtless be
written, more complete and more valuable
to the teacher. Meanwhile we already know
far more than we practice, and thousands of
children will be indebted to this book for a
broader, deeper, and more sensible education.

A text book of physiology for medical
schools has been prepared by ten collabora-
tors under the editorship of W. If. Howell,
Professor of Physiology in the Johns Hop-
kins University.* The physiology of the
muscles is treated by Prof. Warren P. Lom-
bard; secretion, digestion, the blood, and
some allied topics, by Prof. Howell ; the cir-
culation, by Profs. John G. Curtis and W.
T. Porter ; respiration and animal heat, by
Prof. Edward T. Reichert ; the central nerv-
ous system, by Prof. Henry H. Donaldson ;
vision, by Prof. Henry P. Bowditch ; the other
special senses and the voice, by Prof. Henry
Sewall; reproduction, by Prof. Frederic S.
Lee ; and the chemistry of the animal body,
by Prof. Graham Lusk. The preparation of
such a work by collaboration is unusual, and
the editor names as advantages of this method
that it enables each author to base his ac-
count upon a comprehensive knowledge of
the part of the subject assigned to him, and
that the student gains by it the points of
view of a number of teachers, especially
where the various topics overlap. Refer-
ences to literature are given, and some of the
authors have used them so freely as to afford
fairly complete bibliographies of their re-
spective subjects.

The purpose of Mr. Woglomh ParakiteR f
is to place before the public the result of the

* An Ameiican Text-Book of Physiology. Ed-
ited by William H. Howell, Ph. U., M. D. Fully
illustrated. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders. Pp.
lOSy, royal 8vo. Subscription price, cloth, $6 ;
sheep or half morocco, $7.

t Parakiies. By George Totten Woglom.
New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons. Pp. SI, 4to.
Illust.ated. Price, Sl.'iS.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

8si

investigations and of tlie practical experience
of the writer in the construction of tailleSvS
kites — parakites is the awkward, half-Greeli,
half-English name he gives them — and in the
perfection of methods for flying them in vari-
ous conditions of the atmosphere. Mr. Wog-
lom is a business man well occupied, and has
given attention to the making and flying of
kites only as an avocation and recreation,
without laying any claim to be a student in
the scientific bearings of the subject, or in
aerodynamics. Nevertheless, he never for-
gets the possibilities of a scientific outcome
from experiments with kites, and keeps them
well in the mind of his reader. His treatise
opens with a view of Oriental kite-flying, its
history, so far as it is recorded, from its use
in Malaysia a thousand years before the
Christian era, and the possible religious sig-
nificance of its origin — to carry prayers to
the divinities above. Descriptions of Japa-
nese, Chinese, Javanese, and other Oriental
patterns follow; then the author's experi-
ments in kite making and flying, in photo-
graphing from kites, etc., are given, and the
principles of the construction and manage-
ment of kites as embodied in Oriental forms
and discovered in the author's own expeii-
ence are recorded, and the possible scientific
applications are glanced at. The whole
forms an interesting and instructive treatise.

The main object of Mr. Holden's paper
on mountain observatories * is to study the
conditions suitable for astronomical work at
high levels, while meteorological and physio-
logical conditions enter into consideration in
a subordinate degree. The author's studies
bearing on the subject began during the
summer of 1873 in the mountains of central
Colorado. His observations were repeated
at intervals till he was called to Mount Ham
ilton in 1888, where he has had opportunities
to compare the conditions with those at nearly
every observatory in the United States and
with stations in other countries. His pur-
pose in this paper is to collect and study the
many scattered notices of the conditions of
good vision at mountain stations all over the
globe. We have thus notices or descrip-
tions of the experiment at Teneriffe, and of

* Mountain Observatories in America and
Europe. By Edward S. Holden. Wasliington:
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 77, 8vo, with Plates.

the observatories at Nice, Mont Blanc, Ben
Nevis, the Santis, the Sonnblick, Arequipa,
El Misti, and many others abroad, and of the
mountain observatories in the United States
— illustrated by many photographic repro-
ductions— concluding with a few remarks on
scientific ballooning and kite - flying, from
which Mr. Holden expects even greater re-
sults, at least in meteorology, than from
mountain-top observation. A copious bibli-
ography of the subject is given.

Plants and their Children, by Mrs. Wil-
liam Starr Dana (American Book Company,
65 cents), is a child's reading book, de-
signed, while it entertains and instructs, to
create an interest in children in botany. It
consists of a series of easy lessons or read-
ings on the wonders of plant life written in
such a manner as to make them entertaining
as stories. The various forms and curious
features of familiar plants and trees, includ-
ing their roots and stems, buds and leaves,
fruits, seeds, and flowers, are thus described.
The book is so arranged as to correspond
both with the course of the school year and
the seasons of development of plant growth.

The Division of Forestry of the United
States Department of Agriculture has done
a creditable service in issuing its bulletin on
The Timber Fines of the Southern United
States. This publication consists of separate
chapters by Dr. Charles Mohr, on the spe-
cies known as the long-leaf, Cuban, short-
leaf, loblolly, and spruce pines, together
with a brief description of the wood of these
five pines, by Filibert Roth. The distribu-
tion and botanical characters of each species
are given, the products obtained from it,
conditions necessary to its growth, its ene-
mies, and the forest management required
by it. The information under each of these
heads is full and practical. In an introduc-
tion, B. E. Fernow, chief of the Division of
Forestry, calls attention ro the facts that
the Southern States abound in those sandy
soils which afford suSicient sustenance for
the pines but are practically useless for any-
thing else, and that the forest wealth of this
section is being seriously impaired by waste-
ful methods of cutting timber, by the re-
peated conflagrations that follow the lumber-
ing, and by the operations of the turpentine
gatherers. Contrary to a common belief,

852

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

however, the tests made by the Division
show that timber that has been bled for its
resin is as strong as unbled, if of the same
weight. Some attempt has been made to
perform the difficult task of estimating the
remaining resources of the Southern pine
forests, and no pains have been spared to im-
press upon the owners of timber lands and
the operators of mills a knowledge of the
treatment required to preserve the value of
their investments. The volume is illustrated
with many plates and cuts.

Fifty of the biographical sketches that
have appeared in this magazine have been
revised by the editor and issued in a volume
under the title Pioneers of Science in America
Appletons, $4). As the title denotes, the book
includes only Americans, and is devoted to
the earliest of these who were prominent in
the field of science. In revising and com-
pleting each of the sketches Dr. Youmans
has had the aid of some descendant or pupil
of the subject in all cases but a few of the
earliest. Some of the accounts have been
much extended for the book. That of Ben-
jamin Franklin, which opens the volume, is
entirely new, and is the first systematic ac-
count of what Franklin did in science. That
of S. F. B. Morse also has not appeared in
the Monthly. Among those that have been
largely rewritten are the sketches of Silli-
man, Torrey, Henry, Coffin, and Agassiz.
New portraits have been substituted for a
few made in the early days of the magazine
that were not uniform in style with the rest.
Steel portraits accompany the articles on
Franklin and Morse, and there is a heliotype
of W. B. Rogers. The latest subject in-
cluded in the volume is David Dale Owen,
who was born in 180*7.

A handy little book embodying Tlie Ele-
ments of Commercial Laiu has been pre-
pared by Albert 8. Belles, lecturer on law in
the University of Pennsylvania (Holt, $1).
Under twenty heads, such as Parties, Assent,
Seller and Buyer, Partnership, Negotiable
Paper, Insurance, Shipping, Deeds and
Leases, and Corporations, it gives systemat-
ically and briefly the substance of what the
business man needs to know in order to se.
cure contracts that can be enforced, if neces-
sary, in the courts, and to avoid improperly
jeopai'dizing his own interests. The volume

is indexed, and the topics treated in the sev-
eral numbered paragraphs of each chapter
are given at the head of the chapter.

A first memoir on The Bomhycine Moths
of Ai7ierica North of Mexico, by Prof. A l-
pheus S. Packard, has been issued by the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences. It is devoted to
the Notodontidce, and includes descriptions of
the insects in their larval, pupal, and adult
forms, with notes on their habits, food plants,
geographical distribution, etc. This is the
first installment of what Prof. Packard in-
tends to be a general account, systematic and
developmental, of our North American bom-
bycine moths. He has aimed to describe
these moths in the light of Weismann's sug-
gestive and stimulating Studies in the Theo-
ries of Descent (1882), being convinced that
additional knowledge of their ontogeny will
lead to a comprehension of the phylogeny of
the higher Lepidoptera in general. From the
facts connected with the transformations of
the bombyces, also, he believes much may
be learned with reference to the transmis-
sion of acquired characters. The monograph
is accompanied by forty-nine plates, many of
them colored, and ten maps showing the
distribution of genera. There are also about
ninety figures in the test.

Part IV, Vol. X, Second Series, of the
Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences
is devoted to papers on the crania, imple-
ments, and other objects found by Mr.
Clarence B. Moore in certain mounds in
Florida. In the first paper, Harrison Allen,
M. D., describes five crania from mounds on
the St. Johns River,' comparing them with
crania from other parts of North America.
In three papers which follow this Mr. Moore
describes a large number of implements of
stone, earthenware, and bone, and some of
shell and copper. The papers are accom-
panied by thirty-eight plates and many fig-
ures showing the crania and other objects of
full size.

The first part of a comprehensive work
by David Starr Jordan and Barton Warren
Evermann on The Fishes of North and Mid-
dle America has been issued as Bulletin No.
47 of the United States National Museum,
It is a descriptive catalogue of the species of
fishlike vertebrates found in the waters of
North America, being in a sense a revision

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE.

853

of Jordan and Gilbert's Synopsis of the
Fishes of North America, but with the text
entirely rewritten and eoveriug a greater
geographical range than the Synopsis. By
the extension of range, which brings in the
faunas of Mexico, Central America, and the
West Indies, the number of species included
has been more than doubled. The fact to
which the authors call attention, that over
a hundred species have been added to the
list within the time taken for printing the
present volume, shows that there is still work
to be done in the same field. The classifi-
cation and sequence of groups adopted for
this catalogue is essentially that of Dr.
Theodore Gill, freely modified to suit the
present purposes of the authors. In the
arrangement of the families and genera they
have endeavored to avoid unnatural associa-
tions and incoherent groups, even at the
risk of what may seem an excessive subdi-
vision. Among the forms commonly called
fishes the authors recognize three classes —
Leptocardii, Marsipobranchii, and Pisces.
The present part of the work extends to
twelve hundred and forty octavo pages, and
contains descriptions of sixteen hundred and
twenty-seven species, of which four are Lep-
tocardii and eleven are Marsipobranchii.
An atlas is to accompany the work when
completed.

Mr. James Bryce has prepared an abridged
edition in one volume of his able and popular
work on The American Commonwealth in or-
der to make the book more available for the
unexpected demand that has arisen for it as
a text-book in American colleges and high
schools (Macmillan, $1.75). The abridg-
ment is divided into three parts, dealing re-
spectively with the National Government,
the State Governments, and Political Meth-
ods. In selecting the parts of the original
work to be used in the single volume the au-
thor has been aided by Jesse Macy, Profess-
or of Political Science in Iowa College. The
Constitution of the United States is ap-
pended, and the volume contains lists of the
Presidents, the States, and important events,
together with a full and carefully made in-
dex.

The method of Cairnsh Manual of
Quantitative Chemical Analysis, which has
now reached a third edition, is, by explain

ing some of the more serious obstacles to
successful analysis, to teach thoughtfulness
and caution, and, by giving very explicit di-
rections in the earlier part of the course, to
induce habits of precision and enable the
student to proceed without fuither leading.
The important changes that have been made
in the practice of analytical chemistry since
1880, when the book was first published,
has rendered a thorough revision necessary,
and this has been given to it by Dr. Elwyn
Waller. The editor has aimed to give de-
scriptions and directions for such methods
as are generally pursued in most analytical
laboratories, with brief references to the
theory of other methods, that the student
may have presented to him one or two plans
of procedure which find acceptance to-day,
and at the same time suggestions of other
plans which may lead to modifications of
our present methods. Radical changes hav-
ing been made in the science and practice of
quantitative proximate analysis since the
death of the author, ail the chapters relating
to that subject have been cut out, leaving
only what was always the chief feature of
his work, namely, mineral analysis. Both the
author and the editor have been instructors
in analysis at the Columbia School of Mines.
(Holt, $2.)

An addition to the number of journals
representing the science of chemistry in this
country has been made by the establishment
of Tlie Journal of Physical Chemistry at
Cornell University. It is to be issued month-
ly, except in July, August, and September,
under the editorship of Profs. Wilder D..
Bancroft and Joseph E. Trevor. The first
number contains papers on Irreversible Cells,
by A. E. Taylor ; Chemistry and its Laws, by
F. Wald ; and a second paper on Ternary
Mixtures, by Wilder D. Bancroft. There are
also several book notices and a department
of reviews, conducted by a board of six
reviewers, in which are given critical digests
of recently published papers bearing on
physical chemistry. (The Editors, Ithaca,
N. Y., $2.50 a year.)

The treatise on The Magnetic Circuit in
Theory and Practice, by Dr. H. du Bois,
which has been translated by Dr. Atkinson
(Longmans, $4), is designed to be a system-
atic and critical account, from the physical

854

POPULAR SCIENCE MOM ELY.

point of view, of the more important de-
velopments in its field. Electro technology,
which in the last decade has exerted an im-
portant action on tho.se branches of physics
which form its base, " seems at present,"
says the author, " to have entered on a
phase of quieter development; and from the
scientific point of view the time appears
suitable to survey the position, critically to
investigate results of very unequal value,
often hastily brought to light amid the
bustle of practical work, and to blend the
older as well as the more recent results into
one consistent exposition." He has not in-
cluded much historical matter except in the
seventh chapter, where he gives the history
of the analogy between the magnetic circuit
and various other kinds of circuits. The
first five chapters of the work are devoted to
Theory, and the last six to Applications. In
stating the theory of the magnetic circuit, a

knowledge of the results of inve?tigation3
into ferro-magnetic induction is assumed. In
Chapters III and IV the outlines of the the-
ory of "rigid " magnets on the one hand and
of absolutely " soft " cores on the other are
summarized, the mode of treatment being
similar to that of Maxwell. The topics fall-
ing within the second part of the book —
magnetic circuits of dynamos or electro-
motors and of various kinds of electro-
magnets and transformers, the experimental
determination of field intensity, magnetiza-
tion, induction, etc. — are treated more from
the point of view of applied physics. Wher-
ever the more important results of allied
branches of mathematical or experimental
physics are assumed to be known, the author
has referred lo the original passages in ac-
cessible text-books. There are also many
references to original papers in which details
may be further studied.

PUBLICATIONS EECEIVED.

Agricultural Experiment Stations. Bulletins,
Reports, etc. New Jersey : Tuberculosis in Cat-
tle and its Relation to Human Consumption. By
Julius Nelson. Pp. 24 ; Fertilizer Analyses, etc.
Pp. 7(5. — United States Department of Agriculture:
Insects Injurious to Stored Grain. By P. H. Chit-
tenden. Pp. 240; Orasses and Forage Plants of
the Dakotas. By Thomas A. Williams. Pp. 47;
Studies of American Grasses. By various anthers.
Pp. 43 ; Insects affecting Domestic Animals. By
Herbert Osborn. Pp. ZWl.

American Forestry Association. Proceedings.
Vol. XI. Pp. 6&-133."

Chicago Academy of Sciences. Thirty-ninth
Annual Eeport. 1890. Pp. 00.

Crosby, W. E. Our Little Book for Little
Folks. American Book Company. Pp. 1C6. jO

ceuts.

Davenport, Charles Benedict. Experimental
Morphology. Part VI. New York: The Mac-
millan Compnny. Pp.28. $2.00.

Dnluth News Tribune. Duluth, Minn. A Vast
Empire and its Metropolis. Pp. 100, with plates
and maps.

Euroclydon, The. A Journal of Economic,
Social, and Jloral Science. J. T. McColgan. Ed-
itor. Monthly. Nashville, Tenn. P^. B2. 10
cents; ^1 a year.

Expositor. The. A Theological Magazine.
Vol. I, No. 1. February, 1897. American edi-
tion. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. Pp. 104.
25 cents; $3 a year.

Felts, Walter W. Natural Law in the Busi-
ness World. New York : The Author, 112 Fifth
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Jordan, David Starr, and others. Observations
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Kealing, H. T., Editor. The African Meth-
odist Episcopal Church (Quarterly Review. Pp.
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Mach, Ernst. Contributions to the Analysis
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Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company. P*p.
208. %\.

Mason, R Osgood. Telepathy and the Sub-
liminal Self (Hypnotism, Automatism, Dreams,
Phantoms). New York: Henry Holt & Co. Pp.
343.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boa-
ton. Annual Catalogue, lS96-'97. Pp. 307.

Matae, Rudolph, M. D., Tulane University,
Louisiana. The Surgical Peculiarities of the
American Negro. Pp. 130. — Fracture of the
Zygomatic Arch. Pp. 19.

Mercer, Henry C. Researches upon the An-
tiquity of Man in the Delaware Valley and the
p]astern United States. Boston: Giun & Co.
Pp. 178.

New York Academv of Sciences : Transactions.
Vol. XV. 18y.V90. Pp. 366, with plates. -Third
Annual Reception, March 26, 1896. Catalogue of
Exhibits. Pp. 48.

Normal, Tbe Philomath. Vol. I. No 1. Jan-
uary, Ifi97. Edmoud, Oklahoma, Normal School.
Moiithly. Pp. 28. 25 cents a year.

Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.
Important Biological Publications. Pp. 12.

Philosophical Society of Washington. Bulle-
tin, Vol. Xll, 1892-1894. Pp. 567, with plates.

Polyglott, The. A Pocket Review for Students
and Amateurs of Modem Languages. Philadel-
phia : Fernand & Britton Company, Betz Build-
ing.

Reprints. Baldwin, J. Mark: Princeton Con-
tributions to Psychology. Pp. 40.— Bangs, L.
Bolton, M. U.: The Treatment of Syphilis. Pp.
14.— Brirtou, George H.: Evidence of the Former
Extension of Glacial Action on the West Coast of
Greenland and in Labrador and Baffin Land. Pp.
P.— Bessey, Prof. C. E.: The Metric Systpm in
Botany. Pp. 2. — Boas, Franz: Traditions of the
Ts'ets' dtit. Pp 12. The Limitations of the
Comparative Method in Anthropology. Pp. 60 —
Britrham, Albert Perry: Gl'icial Flood Deposits in
Chenaneo Valley. Pp. 12, with })late — Dellen-
baugh, F. S.: Death Masks in Ancient Americnn
Pottery. Pp. 6.— lugraham, Charles Wilson,
M. D.: Successful Treatment of Pulmonary Tu-
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FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

'55

with Special Reference to the Value of Heat. Pp.
16; Serum Therapy in Pulmonary Tuberculosis,
etc. Pp. 7; Cocaine PoiBouing, with Report of a
case. Pp. 6.— Kunz, George t<. : The Production
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gar A. : Preliminary Diagnosis ot Certain Mam-
mals from the Mexican Border. Pp. 4. — Onter-
bridge, A. E, Jr. : The Future of American Indus-
tries. Pp.12. — Peck, John Hudson: The Renspe-
Jaer Polytechnic Institute. Pp. .35.— Russell, Israel
C. : The Intluecce of Debris on the Flow of Gla-
ciers. Pp. 10.— Townsend, C. H.: Description of
a Closing Tow-net for Submarine Use at all Depths.
Pp 8, with plates.— Wilbur, Cressy L., M. D.:
How the Establishment of a Permanent Census
Bureau will improve the Vital Statistics of the
United Slates. Pp. 8.

Rogers, William Barton. Life and Letters.
Edited by his Wife. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin
& Co. In tv,o volumes. Pp. 427 and 451.

Romanes, George John. Essays. Edited by
C. Lloyd Morgan. New York and London:
Longmans, Green & Co. Pp.253.

Russell, Israel C. Glaciers of North America.
Boston: Giun & Co. Pp. 210. $1.90.

Sands, Manie. The Oppof ites of the Universe.
Third part. Theological and Nomological Op-
posites. New York: Peter Eckler. Pp.87.

Smithsonian (Miscellaneous Collections).
Clarke, Frank Wigglesworth: A Recalculation of
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with 21 plates. — De Varigny, Henry: Air and Life.
Pp. 09. — Phillips, P. Lee: Virginia Cartogi-aphy.
Pp. 8-T. — Russell, F. A. R. : The Atmosphere in
Relation to Human Life and Death. Pp. 148.^
Du Clans, E. (Smithsonian Contributions to
Knowledge.) Atmospheric Actinometry and the
Actinic Constitution of the Atmosphere. Pp. 48.

Tarr, Ralph S. Elementary Geology. Nev?
York: The Macmillan Company. Pp.499. $1.40.

Townsend, C. N. Condition of Seal Life on
the Rookeries of the Pribylof Islands, 1803-1895.
United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries.
Pp. 154, with map and plates.

Wciebach, Dr. Julius, and Hermann, Prof. Gns-
tav. The Mechanics of Pumping Machinery.
New York: The Macmillan Company. Pp. 300.
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^vaumjcnts of ^citxxtt.

The Library of Prof. Da Bois-Reymond.

— The library of the late Prof. Emil Du Bois-
Reymond, a coUtction of extraordinaiily high
value, is for sale by Gustav Fock, Neumarkt
40 and Magazingasse 4, Leipzig, Saxony. It
comprises more than fourteen thousand vol-
umes and pamphlets, nearly all the books
being bound, while the smaller writings are
mostly arranged in collecting boxes, partly
alphabetically and partly systematically. It
contains sets, more or less .complete, of about
forty-five scientific journals and transactions
of societies of all scientific countries and
nearly every scientific work that has been
written on physiology, physics, and philos-
ophy. Almost every volume bears Prof.
Du Bois-Reymond's own signature; and a
very large number of the books, especially of
his own works, are enriched by additions,
memoranda, notices, appendices, and re-
marks in his own handwriting — of unique
value. Prof. Du Bois Raymond's heirs de-
sire that the library be kept unseparated;
and, to promote this object, will give prefer-
ence to bidders who will guarantee preserva-
tion as a whole. In the case of duplicates
reasonable arrangements will be made for
the repurchase by Herr Fock of such vol-
umes in that category as may not be wanted.
The library, valued at 30,000 marks, or
$7,500, is offered for 22,000 marks, or

$5,500. Cable messages regarding the pur-
chase may be sent to the cable address,
"Buchfock," Leipzig; " Du Bois," if the
proposition is to purchase the complete set
on the terms offered ; " Reymond," if a cata-
logue is wanted before giving a decision.

Tides of the Bay of Fnndy The real

character and height of the famous tides of
the Bay of Fundy, as given by Prof. W. M.
Davis in Science, from the Canadian Geologi-
cal reports, are as follows : " From the mouth
of the bay, forty eight miles wide and from
seventy to one hundred and ten fathoms deep,
the bottom rises at the rate of four feet a
mile over a distance of about one hundred
and forty-five miles to the head. On the
coasts adjacent to the mouth the spring tides
vary from twelve to eighteen feet. Within
the bay the spring and neap tides are as fol-
lows : Digby Keck, 22-18 ; St. John, 2*7-23 ;
Petitcodac River, 46-36 ; Cumberland Basin,
44-35 ; Noel River in Cobequid Bay, 53-31 ;
the last named being the greatest tidal oscil-
lation in any part of the bay. The flood tide
rises about twenty feet above mean sea level ;
the ebb falls the same amount below, leav-
ing the branch bays empty or nearly so. The
tidal bore is seen in Maccan River, entering
Cumberland Basin, but is stronger in Petit-
codac River, entering Shepody Bay, At the

856

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

head of this river, by Monctin twenty miles
from the bay head, the bore is seen to best
advantage ; it rushes in ' as a foaming break-
er, five or six feet high, with a velocity of five
or six miles an hour.' The spring and neap
tides have forty-five and thirty-eight feet
range. The ebb tide runs like a mill race ;
the water rapidly sinking, and the river is
reduced to a small meandering stream. It
so remains about two hours, when the rush-
ing waters of the bore are heard again, and
the river is soon filled with their sweeping
flood."

Necessities of Geoiogical Time. — One of

the questions considered by Prof. E. B. Poul-
ton, in his presidential address before the
Geological Section of the British Associa-
tion, related to the length of time required
for the development of animal life on the
earth to its present condition — " whether the
present state of paleontological and zoological
knowledge increases or diminishes the weight
of the opinion of Dartvin, Huxley, and 'Spen-
cer, that the time during which the geolo-
gists concluded that the fossiliferous rocks
had been formed was utterly insufficient for
organic evolution." The arguments of the
physicists, derived from the supposed effect
of tidal action upon the length of the day,
and from the estimated length of the time
occupied by the earth in cooling from an
assumed temperature to its present condition,
are shown to have been proved invalid as
bases for calculatmg the probable age of the
earth as a life-bearing body. The argument
derived from the supposed life of the sun
has not yet been ruled out, and that gives a
maximum of five hundred million years.
The computation of the time required for
depositing the geological strata gives a mini-
mum of seventy-three million and a maximum
of six hundred and eighty million years —
possibly four hundred million years. The
author's inquiry as to how much of the
whole scheme of organic evolution has been
worked out in the time during which the fos-
siliferous rocks were formed does not deal
with the time required for the origin of life
or for the development of the lowest beings
with which we are acquainted from the first
formed beings, of which we know nothing ;
but only with so much of the process of
evolution as we can infer from the structure

of living and fossil forms. The comparison
is made from a study of the evolution of the
phyla. All available evidence points to the
extreme slowness of progressive evolutionary
changes in the cojlenterate phyla, although
the protozoa are even more conservative.
When we consider further on the five ccelen-
terate phyla that occur fossil, we shall find
that the progressive changes were slower,
and indeed hardly appreciable in the echi-
.noderms and gephyrea, as compared with
the mollusca, appendiculata, and vertebrata.
Within these latter phyla we have evidence
for the evolution of higher groups, present-
ing a more or less marked advance in organi-
zation. As a whole, the comparison is quite
enough to necessitate a very large increase
in the time estimated by the geologist. We
can hardly escape the conclusion that, for
the development of the arthropod branches
from a common chetopodlike ancestor and
for the further development of the classes
of each branch, a period many times the
length of the fossiliferous series is required.
The evolution of the ancestor of each of the
higher animal phyla probably occupied as
long a period as that required for the evolu-
tion which subsequently occurred within the
phylum. But the consideration of the higher
phyla which occur fossil, except the verte-
brata, leads to the irresistible conclusion that
the whole period in which the fossiliferous
rocks were laid down must be multiplied
several times for this later history alone.
The period thus obtained requires to be again
increased and perhaps doubled for the ear-
lier history.

The New Zealand Alps.— The " Alps " of
the Southern Island of New Zealand are de-
scribed by Mr. Fitz-Gerald as being more like
the Pyrenees than the Swiss Alps in struc-
ture, in that they are a single range rather
than constituted of parallel folds. The high-
est peak, Aorangi, or Mount Cook, is 12,349
feet high, but not many of the others rise
above 10,000 feet. The snow line is, how-
ever, 2,000 feet lower than in Switzerland,
and the glaciers descend much neaier to the
sea level, the great Tasman Glacier coming
down to about 2,350 feet, several to 1,200
■feet, and the Fox Glacier to 700 feat. Nearly
twice as much snow falls upon some of their
slopes as at corresponding positions on the

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

857

Alps. The peaks and glaciers are in many
respects harder to climb than those of Switzer-
land. Besides serious deficiencies in roads and
accommodations, and the absence of guides
so complete that the explorer has to bring his
own with him from Europe, they are actually
more dangerous than peaks of corresponding
elevation in Switzerland, the rock being very
incoherent and slippery. Mr. Fitz-Gerald had
many narrow escapes, the most serious acci-
dent being caused by the unexpected fall of
a great block of stone. He ascended four
peaks — Mount Tasman, 11, 4*75 feet; Mount
Sefton, 10,350 feet; Mount Haidinger, 10,-
054 feet ; and Mount Sealy, 8,631 feet — and
crossed three new glacier passes. One of
these, to which the author's name has been
given, is practicable and valuable, in that it
makes possible direct communication between
the eastern and western coasts, where none
had been before except by sea.

Bees as Weapons of War. — History re-
cords two instances, according to Mr. Whiteley
Stokes in the London Athenasum, in which
bees have been used in warfare as weapons
against besieging forces. The first is related
by Appian, of the siege of Themiscyra in
Pontus, by Lucullus in his war against Mith-
ridates. Turrets were brought up, mounds
were built, and huge mines were made by
the Eomans. The people of Themiscyra
dug open these mines from above, and
through the holes cast down upon the work-
men bears and other wild animals, and hives
or swarms of bees. The second instance is
recorded in an Irish manuscript in the Biblio-
theque royale, at Brussels, and tells how the
Danes and Norwegians attacked Chester,
which was defended by the Saxons and some
Gallic auxiliaries. The Danes were worsted
by a stratagem ; but the Norwegians, shel-
tered by hurdles, tried to pierce the walls
of the town — when, " what the Saxons and
the Gaeidhil who were among them did,
was to throw down large rocks, by which
they broke down the hurdles over their
heads. What the others did to check this
was to place large posts under the hurdles.
What the Saxons did next was to put all
the beer and water of the town into the
caldrons of the town, to boil them and
spill them down upon those who were under
the hurdles, so that their skins were peeled

off. The remedy which the Lochlans applied
to this was to place hides outside on the hur-
dles. What the Saxons did next was to
throw down all the beehives in the town
upon the besiegers, which prevented them
from moving their hands or legs, from the
number of bees which stung them. They
afterward desisted and left the city."

Artistic Decoration. — Two theories of
decoration were recognized by Walter Crane
in a recent lecture : the organic, in which
the decoration is an essential and integral
part of the structure ; and the inorganic, in
which it is considered merely as so much
superadded or surface ornament. With the
development of Gothic architecture, sculp-
ture, as indeed decoration of all kinds, be-
came more and more important. It was
strictly organic, being used to emphasize
structural necessities. The sculpture of the
Doric temple was also organic, though on a
different principle. In the course of social
and architectural evolution we have become
more mixed and composite in our architec-
tural styles. With complexity of life, com-
plexity of form has increased, with the result
that modern buildings have lost to a great
extent that impressiveness which was due to
simplicity and the organic relation between
structure and decoration. Decoration may
be considered from three points of view:
from that of public sentiment and national
characters and ideals, as the expression of
the design, object, and purpose of particular
buildings ; from the technical point of view
of methods and materials ; and with regard
to adaptation to climatic conditions. The
decoration of buildings should be the highest
form of art, as it was in the middle ages.
The history and legends of localities should
be carefully preserved in and identified with
buildings. Churches have from time imme-
morial been the recipients of untold treas-
ures of art and craftsmanship, and still
seem to afford the largest field for the de-
signer ; but there is another sort of public
buildings of ever-increasing importance —
the school, in which permanent mural deco-
ration might fill an important part in stimu-
lating the imagination and forming the
mind. In decoration attention should be
centered upon some leading and distinctive
feature. If sculpture is the method, inter-

858

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

est should be centered upon it. We can
not go outside our own times. If we do not
cave for beauty and harmony in our public
buildings, if we are entirely absorbed in
seeking our individual prosperity and are
oblivious of the social bond, we are not
likely to get noble buildings and impressive
decorations.

Labor's Share of Profit, — The purpose
of a paper by Mr. S. N. D. North, on Some
Fallacies of Industrial Statistics, is to point
out the false uses that are made of these
statistics and the " grotesquely erroneous "
deductions that are based upon them. A
study of them without thorough considera-
tion of the relations of the various factors of
which they are composed necessarily leads to
wrong conclusions, and even when these ele-
ments are duly regarded, disturbances and
variations are constantly interfering, and
"fallibility lurks everywhere." Thus, the
value given by the census of 1890 of $9,370,-
107,624 for the annual products of manufac-
ture in the United States is a fictitious total,
represei\ting a vast conglomeration of dupli-
cations and reduplications of the finished
products of one industry which become the
raw materials of the next in the ascending
industrial scale, and is about double the real
value. There is no way, the author con-
tends, of measuring, with any approximation
to accuracy, what are the relative shares of
labor and of capital from the results of their
joint operation, as revealed in the census re-
turns. The most essential factor for such a
calculation — the prime value of all the raw
materials in their first crude form — is miss-
ing. We do know, however, that the total
return of wages by the eleventh census is
more than fifty per cent of the aggregate
amount added to the value of raw materials.
Out of its less than half, moreover, capital
has to pay its expenses, and this very seri-
ously reduces its share, while it further has
to suffer the loss by wear and tear. The re-
turn on capital invested in manufacturing en-
terprise and on the labor and brains required
to manage and direct that enterprise is no
larger than, if it is indeed as large as, the
return upon the same amount of capital in
mercantile and other commercial occupations.
Rightly compiled and analyzed, the statistics
show that labor gets the lion's share of the net

product of industry ; reduced to percentages,
a share of not less than eighty per cent on the
direct return in the form of wages paid to the
operative class. Save in rare and exceptional
cases, the share which the workingman re-
ceives is, as a broad general rule applicable
to present business conditions, all that the
industry can stand without driving the capital
that operates it into some other and more
lucrative channel.

Congratulations to Prof. Tonng.— A re-
markable observation was made by Prof.
C. A. Young during the solar eclipse of 1870.
The dark lines of the solar spectrum are
really luminous, and appear dark only by
contrast with the much blighter vapors that
lie back of those vapors of which they are
the signs. At one moment of the eclipse —
lasting only a second or two — these brighter
vapors on the edge of the sun's disk are hid-
den, while the less luminous ones giving the
dark lines are still in view. During that in-
stant these usually dark lines should appear
bright. During the eclipse of 1870 Prof.
Young caught this happy moment, and saw
this reversed, "flash" spectrum of bright
lines. " All at once," he says, " as suddenly
as a bursting rocket shoots out its stars, the
whole field of view was filled with bright
lines more numerous than one could count.
The duration of the bright lines was only
about two seconds, and the layer of vapors
must have been under a thousand miles in
thickness." At total eclipses since 1870 ob-
servations have been made going to confirm
Prof. Young's views in a general way, but in
none of them was a permanent record ob-
tained till the eclipse of August, 1890, at
Novaya Zemlya, when Mr. Shackelton, seiz-
ing the right moment, secured a photograph
of the phenomenon. It consists of a very
narrow spectrum of bright lines, which are
Indeed the Fraunhofer lines reversed just
as Prof. Young had described them. " The
congratulations of astronomers," says the
London Times, " are due to Prof. Young on
this complete, though late, confirmation of
his observation of 1870, and of his views,
speaking broadly, of solar absorption founded
upon it." It is a curious circumstance that
only three days before this eclipse Prof.
Lockyer wrote to Nature that " to my mind
the reversing layer is dead and buried already,

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

859

but may the Fates be propitious on the 9th
and enable us to place a wreath on its tomb ! "
" The Fates," the London Times observes,
" were indeed propitious in furnishing a
funeral wreath, which, however, it would
seem, must be placed upon the tomb of Prof.
Lockyer's own theory."

At the Top of the Andes.— An attempt
was made in December and January last by
Mr. Edward Fitzgerald, a native of New York,
and the Swiss guide Zurbriggen, to ascend
Mount Aconcagua, supposed to be the high-
est peak of the Andes. They started on the
25th of December, and at the height of
21,000 feet found the card of Gussfeldt, the
German explorer, in a tin box. The climb-
ers were obliged to descend into the valley,
but beginning a second attempt, December
30th, reached a height of 22,500 feet Janu-
ary 2d. On a third attempt the two reached
the arete, 23,000 feet, January 14th. Mr.
Fitzgerald had to turn back, but Zurbriggen
continued on and reached the summit, the
height of which has been variously esti-
mated at from 22,422 to 23,910 feet. This
competes with the height of Sir Martin Con-
way's ascent of Pioneer Peak in the Hima-
layas, which is also about 28,000 feet, in
being the loftiest mountain ascent yet made.
The previous highest ascent in recent years
was that of Mr. Mummery and Mr. Hastings
of 21,000 feet, on Nanga-Parbat, Himalayas.
Mr. Fitzgerald has recently made an explora-
tion of what are called the New Zealand
Alps, and has published a book on the sub-
ject.

The Ideal of a Frieze. — Discussing Gre-
cian architecture, Mr. H. 0. Taylor observes,
in his Ancient Ideals, that a frieze, on ac-
count of its shape, is adapted to represent
a continuous matter. It can not well have a
center toward which the rest tends, or even
a center of supreme interest to which all the
rest is accessory. It must rather, to vary
the threatening monotony of its long line,
show rising and falling waves of interest —
quiet here to rest the spectator, vivid action
there to excite his interest, and through all a
rhythm of movement and a harmony of com-
position excluding everything which by dis-
proportionate interest or size might detract
from what precedes and follows. The Par-

thenon frieze effects this rise and fall of in-
terest by the succession of groups taking
part in the Panathenfca procession which
forms its subject. We see stately maidens
moving quietly, eager horses and their riders,
magistrates and onlookers, till our eye finally
rests with the seated gods. No one could
see the whole frieze at once, but successive
portions of it, as he walked beneath it.
Hence it was fitting that the whole frieze
should not present the same moment of
time, but give the idea of a procession
making ready, starting, and in motion — a
plan which readily affords a rise and fall of
interest. Some of the youths are not yet
mounted ; ahead of them are others on
horses starting at slow pace, preceded by yet
others in rapid gallop. Waves of rhythm
appear in the rise and fall of the horses'
limbs and bodies, while their heads, and still
more the heads of the riders, remain more
nearly on a line. This last conformity to
the shape of a frieze gives a general tone of
control and order to the squadron, and ex-
cludes all fear of the eager horses mastering
their riders.

A Slavic Deity and St. Ellas.— Peron,
the thunder god, was an important divinity in
the calendar of the Slavs of a thousand years
ago and is a conspicuous figure in their folk-
lore. An idol erected in his honor at Kiev
about A. D. 980 had a silver head, a golden
beard, and a wooden body. He was also
commemorated in a famous idol at Novgo-
rod. His name has been incorporated into
a great many names of places, as is shown
in a list compiled by M. N. Barsov. He was
worshiped with human sacrifices. In 988
the Czar Vladimir, having been converted to
Christianity, ordered all the figures of Peron
to be pulled down, scourged, dragged at the
tails of wild horses, mutilated, and thrown
into the rivers or burned ; yet his name
abode among the people in many widespread
legends, in which he figures as master of the
thunder and the storms. As Christian and
Hebrew saints were introduced to take the
place of the heathen heroes, he became con-
founded with Elias, who is described in the
Bible as having also a sort of command of
the air and its phenomena. Elias was the
first saint accepted by the Russian Christians,
and was invoked to heal wounds caused by

86o

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

firearms. As the Slavic Peron and the Scan-
dinavian Thor traverse the sky during storms
in chariots drawn by two horses or two
bucks, and as Elijah ascended to heaven in
the midst of lightnings and thunders in a
chariot drawn by two horses, the Russian,
Servian, and Bulgarian peasants hear in the
thunder the rolling of Elias's chariot wheels
and imagine him chastising God's enemies
with thunderbolts. A solemn festival to
Elias is held in Russia at the season when
droughts usually occur, in which the saint is
invoked to let the rain fall. There were at
Novgorod in the middle ages two churches,
one dedicated to Elias humid and the other
to Elias dry, to which processions marched
according to the kind of weather that was
■wanted. Other ceremonies of devotion to
Elias as the saint of the storm, and legends
giving him the attributes of their old thun-
der god and associating him with meteoro-
logical phenomena characteristic of the Slav-
ic countries, are described by M. Henri Gali-
ment in the Revue deV Ecole (P Anihropologle,
all going to illustrate how hard it is to eradi-
cate the ideas and customs of their olden
times from the minds of the people, and how
the old persists in living by the side of the
new ; and teaching that when two forms
of religion are standing in rivalry with one
another, the younger, even with the aid of
the secular arm, can never supplant the
older except by making concessions to it.

Asiatic and African Explorations in 1896.

— The long list of geographical explorations
accomplished during 1896, some of the most
important features of which have already
been mentioned in the Monthly, includes the
exploration of a large region pertaining to
the upper Yang-tseKiang River, Chinese
Empire, by M. Bonin, a French officer in Ton-
kin, who visited countries not previously
traversed by Europeans, and has been able
to make important corrections in the map of
the Yang-tse-Kiang and its tributaries. Dr.
Sven Hedin, in exploring the Takla Makan, a
continuation of the Desert of Gobi, has found
the ruins of two of the towns said to be part-
ly buried in the desert, and has made inter-
esting investigations on the past and present
hydrography of the Lob Nor region. M. D.
Elements, sent out by the Siberian Geograph-
ical Society to the Khengai Mountains of

northwest Mongolia, found a great glacier on
the western slope of the mountain, and every-
where signs of former volcanic activity, A
Russian expedition has been exploring the
course of the Amu Daria, with a view to as-
certaining if it would be possible to divert its
waters by means of a canal into the Caspian
Sea. The exploration of Asia Minor, pre-
dominantly archseological, has been continued
by young men of the University of Oxford.

Antiquity of Writing. — It is observed by
Dr. Biihler, in his book on Indian Palasogra-
phy, that a very remote period is indicated
for the beginning of writing by the fact that
in a Jain text of about 300 b. c. its origin is
forgotten and its invention attributed to the
creator Brahma. Indian imitations of Greek
drachmas prove that the Greek alphabet was
employed in northwestern India before the
time of Alexander the Great. Knowledge of
the art of writing is established for the ear-
liest Vedic period by one of the great works ;
and the grammarian Panini, who is assigned
to the fourth century, mentions Greek writ-
ing and the words signifying writer. The
evidence of the canonical books of Ceylon
indicates that the knowledge of writing was
pre-Buddhistic ; and passages in the Jataka
and in the Maha Vagga prove the existence,
at the time of their composition, of writing
schools and of a wooden slate, such as is still
used in Indian elementary schools. Writing,
as a subject of elementary instruction, is also
mentioned in an inscription of the second
century before Christ. The palasographical
evidence of the Asoka inscription clearly
shows that writing was no recent invention
in the third century before Christ ; for most
of the letters have several, often very diver-
gent, forms, sometimes nine or ten.

Tlie St. Lawrence Drainage System. —

The drainage system of the St. Lawrence
River is characterized by Mr. G. K. Gilbert,
in his paper on Niagara Falls and their His-
tory, as of exceptional character, in that it
has no such continuous slope from the pri-
mary rill through the brook and succeeding
tributaries and the river itself to the sea as
mark the drainage systems of most other re-
gions ; but " the district is composed mainly
of a group of great basins, like hollows, in
each of which the surface slopes toward some

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

861

central point, and not toward the mouth of
the river. Each basin is filled with water to
the lowest point of its rim, and each of the
lakes thus formed is a storage reservoir re-
ceiving a group of streams from the sur-
rounding country, and pouring an even dis-
charge over its rim to one of its neighbors."
The Niagara River is thus, from one point of
view, a strait connecting the two inland seas
of Erie and Ontario occupying two of these
basins ; from another point of view it is a
part of the St. Lawrence River — the part
connecting the two expansions. "Viewed
either way, it departs so widely from the or-
dinary or normal river that its name is almost
misleading." Further, "a normal river re-
ceives most of its water directly from rain
or melting snow and varies with the season,
swelling to a flood in time of storm or at the
spring snow melting, and dwindling to rela-
tive insignificance in time of drought. The
water of Niagara comes only remotely from
storm and thaw. The floods of the tribu-
taries are stored by the lakes, to whose
broad surface they add but a thin layer. The
volume of Niagara depends only on the height
of Lake Erie at Buffalo, and from season to
season this height varies but little. On rare
occasions a westerly gale will crowd the lake
water toward its eastern end, and the river
will grow large. On still rarer occasions a
winter storm will so pile up or jam the lake
ice at the entrance to the river as to make a
dam, and for a day or two the river will lose
most of its water." The wastings of soil
and gravel that are usually carried along by
the streams in their course are carried by the
tributaries of the St. Lawrence system only
to the lakes, where they settle to the bottom.
Hence, " Niagara is ever clear. Sometimes,
when a storm lashes the shores of Erie, a
little sand is washed to the head of the river
and carried down stream ; sometimes a little
mud is washed into the river by the small
creeks that reach its banks. Thus Niagara
is not absolutely devoid of load, but its bur-
den is so minute that it is hard to detect."

Himalayan Tea Porters. — Darjeeling tea,
said Mr. George W. Christison, in a lecture
before the British Society of Arts, is all car-
ried by the hardy hill-men up the steep
mountain roads to the nearest railway station
on the way to market. It is no unusual day's

work for a coolie to carry a tea chest, weigh-
ing from one hundred and ten to one hun-
dred and thirty pounds, a distance of five
or six miles, making at the same time an
ascent of from twenty-five hundred to thirty-
five hundred feet in sheer vertical eleva-
tion. There can be no deception about a
task like that, and we can not but have an
admiration for the powers of endurance of
those who perform such a feat. Of course,
these people are trained to load-carrying and
mountain-climbing from their very infancy,
and hence the peculiar set of muscular facul-
ties required for them are fully developed,
if not actually called into existence at the
cost of others — so much so that walking on
a level, after a few miles, becomes positively
painful to them. In the prosecution of their
own trade, or in domestic affairs, they fre-
quently undertake long, arduous journeys
over ridges and along and across hot valleys,
varying many thousands of feet in eleva-
tion, occupying many days, carrying heavy
loads of from one hundred and fifty to two
hundred pounds, and over and in addition
to their food and bedding most cheerfully
lighting a fire, cooking and eating their
scanty meal, and going to sleep by the way-
side. There is a story still current of a
Bhootean in old times having carried a grand
piano up the hill to Darjeeling, a distance of
fifty miles forward, and involving a rise of
more than five thousand feet in elevation by
the old road. These hill tribes are a hardy
people, capable of performing marvelous
journeys without partaking of food, or on
the most meager fare.

Progress in Botanical Stndy. — In con-
nection with the history of the Botanical
Gazette, Prof. C. E. Bessy has given in a
paper on the Evolution of a Botanical Jour-
nal, read at the University of Nebraska and
published in the American Naturalist, a view
of the growth of interest in botany in the
United States. The Gazette was started in
November, 1875, by Prof. John M. Coulter,
of Hanover College, Indiana, as the Botan-
ical Bulletin, a monthly publication of four
pages. Its name was changed in the second
year to the Botanical Gazette. Its editorial
force was increased from time to time, it
went through several enlargements, and im-
provements were made in it ; in ten years it

862

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY,

had won an established position. The twen-
tieth volume, instead of 52 pages of short,
mostly local notes, had 568 pages of struc-
tural, physiological, ecological, systematic,
and paleontological matter. Now a further
enlargement has been found necessary,
under which the numbers will average 65
pages each, and the magazine becomes one
of the publications of the University of Chi-
cago, with a still further increased editorial
force, to which it is contemplated to add one
or more European botanists. The magazine,
Prof. Bessy says, " has grown and developed
as the science of botany has grown and de-
veloped in this country. When we look over

the earlier volumes -with surprise at the little
notes which fill the pages, we must not for-
get that American botany had not then gen-
erally risen above such conti-ibutions. It is
true that we had a few masters in the sci-
ence, but these masters wrote little for gen-
eral readers, and their technically systematic
contributions were mostly published in the
proceedings of learned societies. The one
thing which stands out to-day in sharp con-
trast with the botany of two decades ago is
the very great increase in the number of
masters in the science who are making lib-
eral contributions from many different de-
partments."

MINOR PARAGRAPHS.

Alfred Nobel, the inventor of the appli-
cation of dynamite as an explosive, left a be-
quest for the institution of five equal prizes,
to be awarded yearly to the persons who
shall have made the most important discov-
eries or inventions in the domains respective-
ly of physics, chemistry, and physiology or
medicine ; who shall have produced the most
important work, in the ideal sense, in the do-
main of letters ; and to the person who shall
have exerted the greatest or the best action
for the fraternity of peoples, for the suppres-
sion or diminution of permanent armies, and
for the formation or spreading of peace con-
gresses. The literary prize is to be awarded
by the Swedish Academy, and the prize for
the promotion of peace by a committee of
the Norwegian Storthmg. It is the testator's
expressed wish that no consideration of na-
tionality may enter into any of the awards.
The prizes are supposed to be worth sixty
thousand dollars each.

A NEW flying machine, similar in principle
to that of Lilienthal, has been devised by
Herr Arthur Stenzel, of Altona, Germany.
It has parabolic wings in imitation of birds'
wings, is driven by the power of compressed
carbonic acid, and has been made to " go "
when attached for safety to a guiding cable.
With a force of one horse power it has ad-
vanced three metres at each beating of the
wings, of which there are one and three
tenths per second. With a horse power and
a half the machine may tfe made to fly free
from the cable. The wings are remarkably

elastic, and the inventor thinks that this is
one of the factors of his success. They are
made of unsoldered steel tubes and bamboo,
and are covered with a specially prepared
India-rubber cloth. The apparatus is di-
rected by a rudder which is not unlike a
bird's tail. As yet no passengers have been
carried on the machine.

A SUM of ten thousand francs was be-
queathed a few years ago by M. Edouard
Mailly, of the Royal Academy of Belgium,
as the foundation of a prize to be awarded to
a Belgian who has contributed most to the
progress of astronomy or to the spread of the
taste for it and knowledge of it. The prize
" Mailly " has been fixed at one thousand
francs, to be awarded every four years. The
Belgian Academy in December, 1896, made
the first award of the prize, and bestowed it,
most worthily, on the editorial committee of
our contemporary, Cid et Ttrre.

The oldest known measurement of the
height of clouds is asserted by M. Schreiber,
of the Belgian Astronomical Society, to be
the work of the two Jesuits Riccioli and
Grimaldi, near Bologna, in 1644. They used
the trigonometrical method, with two stations,
which is still preferred, and which Kamtz, in
his treatise on meteorology, calls Riccioli's
method. They found 3,222 metres as the
altitude of a bright white cloud ; Riccioli re-
lates that another Jesuit, of Metz, who meas-
ured a large number of clouds, told him that
none of them was more than 7,400 metres
above the earth. He speaks of another

FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE.

86.3

method, proposed by Simon Stevin, of meas-
uring by means of the shadow. For thunder
clouds the time between the ligiitning and
the report was calcidated. Riccioli also men-
tions the luminous clouds seen late at night,
which have again begun to attract attention
within a few years past.

The two expeditions, one French and one
American, which are at work unearthing an-
tiquities in Babylonia have, it is stated in
the London Daily News, recently made some
valuable " finds." The first and most nota-
ble result of the excavations is that the his-
tory of the Babylonian people as recorded in
cuneiform writings on tablets is carried back
at least twenty-two hundred and fifty years
further than it had yet been known. In
other words, there is now abundant written
evidence that the Babylonian people existed
and were civilized enough to be able to write
at least seven thousand years b. c.

The British consul at Funchal is author-
ity for the following regarding banana culti-
vation in Madeira. There are two varieties
generally grown, the dwarf banana {Musa
Cavendishii, of the order Scitaminece) and the
silver banana. The latter is much the more
delicate in flavor and only about half the size
of the dwarf variety, but is seldom exported,
as the total quantity grown in the island is
scarcely sufiicient to supply the home con-
sumption; but if this variety of the fruit
were generally known it would be in greater
demand, as it has so much better an appear-
ance and is more delicate in flavor than the
dwarf variety that those who have once eaten
it seldom use the latter except for cooking
purposes. The greater part of the bananas
are grown on the south side of the island.
The season lasts practically the whole year,
but the fruit is in its greatest perfection
from July to December.

The archaeological map of Ohio of the
Archaeological and Historical Society of that
State,_ although only about one third com-
plete, has already upon it twenty-one hun-
dred marks, representing between fifty-five
hundred and fifty-six hundred remains.
Some interesting facts, Dr. Brinton says in
Science, have been brought to light in the
surveys : that the mounds, earthworks, vil-
lage sites, etc., generally followed the
streams ; that in the Scioto Valley there are

very few stone monuments, but that in the
Muskingum Valley, along the Ohio River,
and in Brush Creek Valley, Adams County,
stone monuments predominate over those of
earth. Seven counties in the State have
yielded nine hundred and eighteen monu-
ments. The counties in northeastern Ohio
average five or six mounds or village sites
each. It is estimated that the number of
recorded monuments may reach eight thou-
sand.

A COMPARATIVE Tcvicw of the composi-
tion of a number of American kaolins makes
it evident that the wide difference in the
proportions of clay and silica in them ren-
ders it imperatively necessary that the va-
riations be taken into account in the selec-
tion of materials for the manufacture of
ware ; and that the United States is not
wanting in an abundance of material for
making porcelain equal to the best foreign
production. The kaolin used in the Royal
Berlin Factory at Charlottenburg is taken as
the standard of comparison. One of the
purest kaolins is found in Indiana, and clays
of similar quality exist at Hockessen, Dela-
ware; Northampton County, Pennsylvania;
and Middlesex County, New Jersey.

The wood of the jarrah, or Eucalyptus
margmata, of southern Australia, is said to
be very valuable for use where wood is to be
brought into contact with soil and water.
A tree fifty years old may furnish logs two
feet in diameter at the base. The wood is
red, takes a good polish, and is easily
worked. Another eucalyptus, the karri, or
Eucalyphts diversicolor, producing market-
able timber in from thirty to forty years, has
a red wood, hard and heavy, tough and not
easily dressed, and is adapted to bridge floor-
ing, planking, and beams. It is largely used
in London for street pavements, as its sur-
face is not easily rendered slippery.

An interesting investigation has been un-
dertaken by the British Marine Biological
Association of the exact nature of the sea
bottoms at Plymouth, with the groupings of
the fish and their food animals upon them.
It has been recognized for some time that
the localities frequented by many marine
species are very definite and extremely lim-
ited in extent, and that the nature of the
sea bottom and the creatures that live there

864

POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

exhibit as much variety as we are accustomed
to find on land. Detailed charts will be
made to show the variations that take place
from point to point. Such investigations of
the kind as have been made heretofore
have had regard chiefly to the fishes, while
comparatively little attention has been paid
to the other features.

NOTES.

A CORRECTION.

To the Editor.

Dear Sir : I beg leave to call your atten-
tion to a mistake in my article on The Mala-
rial Parasite, which I regret to say must
have been in the original manuscript and
which escaped me when reading the proof.
On page 685, thirteenth line from the top,
the word " quartan " should have been " ter-
tian." It is evident that when a daily par-
oxysm occurs this is due to the alternate de-
velopment of two groups of tertian parasites,
in which the cycle of development is forty-
eight hours, and net to two groups of quar-
tan parasites, the cycle of development of
which would be seventy-two hours.
Very truly yours,

George M. Sternberg.

The summer lectures in botany of the
Torrey Botanical Club and the College of
Pharmacy of the City of New York will be
given at the college, 115 West 65th Street,
in two weekly courses : the first, on the Gen-
eral Morphology of Plants, Fridays, at 4 p. m.,
by W. Arthur Bastedo, beginning March
26th and closing June 11th ; and the sec-
ond course, on the Summary of Cryptogamic
Botany, with practical work on the micro-
scope, Thursday evenings, by Dr. Smith Elv
Jelliffe, March 25th to June 10th. The
prices of tickets are $5 to the first course
and $10 to the second course. The eight
Saturday excursions (stormy Saturdays ex-
cepted) will begin April 24th. Tickets for
either course may be obtained now at the
college.

The American trout — "rainbow trout"
as the French call it — is found by M. Hugues
Oltramare to be of very much more rapid
growth than either the European lake or
river species, and thei-efore presumably a
more profitable kind to raise. The fry of the
species of the same age are very readily dis-
tinguished by the superior size of the Amer-
icans. The latter are also more active, more
constantly in motion, and eat more.

The results of experiments made some
time ago by Dr. Losener on the effect of the
conditions of burial on the microbes and
germs of disease are reassuring. Infected
carcasses were buried under conditions like
those of ordinary burials. The duration of

the vitality of the pathogenic organisms was
various, but all were dead within a year ex-
cept the anthrax bacilli, which retained their
full complement of virulence during the whole
period. None of the organisms either, ex-
cept those of anthrax, found their way to the
adjacent soil and water ; but so admirable a
barrier is provided by the soil that the earth
close beneath the bottom of the hole con-
taining the infected carcass was in every case
found quite devoid of pathogenic germs.
Experiments made in Massachusetts with
sewage have shown that filtration through
soil is effective to purify from bacteria.

Three deposits of volcanic ash in Ne-
braska are described by Prof. Rollin D. Salis-
bury in Science: at Ingham, Edison, and
Orleans. At all these places several more
or less associated exposures of the ash ap-
pear ; and in all the cases it is found in the
side or near the head of a canonhke ravine.
It varies in color from white to yellow cream
or light gray, and in grain from the grade
of coarse sand to that of white flour. In
some places the bed is more than twenty
feet thick. Such ash has been found in
other places in Nebraska, and it has already
become an important article of commerce,
under the name of pumice.

Prof. Max Wolf has continued with suc-
cess the method, which he began in 1861, of
discovering new minor planets by the small
shift of their images, due to orbital motion,
on a photographic plate exposed behind a
large portrait lens. Since 1890, Prof. Wolf
has discovered fifty-six new planets, of which
thirteen were found in 1896. The whole
number of small planets which have been
calculated is now four hundred and twenty-
two.

A new breed of fowl has been system-
atically created in France by a M. Gourgaud
— dwarfs of the breed called there Gatinais,
or giltinais bantams. Associating with a
gatinais hen an ordinary white double-
crested bantam cock with blue toes, M.
Gourgaud obtained a nest of half-dwarf
chickens having single crests and double
crests, and some blue and others rosy toes.
He then went to work to eliminate the double
crests and blue toes, directing the associa-
tion of pairs to that ideal, and approaching
it more nearly with each successive genera-
tion. In 1895 he had obtained a fixed
dwarf breed, with rosy toes and single
crests.

The primitive relations between Europe
and the East Mediterranean countries were a
prominent subject of discussion in the An-
thropological Section of the British Associa-
tion. The sectional presidential address of
Mr. Arthur J. Evans related to it, and pa-
pers bearing upon it were read by Dr. Mon-
telius. Prof. Petrie, Mr. J. L. Mjres, and
others.

INDEX TO VOLUME L.

TOL. L. — 65

I J^ D E X.

AETICLES MARKED WITH AN ASTERISK ARE ILLUSTRATED.

PAOB

Aboriginal Art, Iron Age in. (Frag.) 423

Adams, Mabel EUery. " Deaf and Dumb " 109

Esthetics in Engineering. (Frag.) 140

African Cannibals, A Woman among. (Frag.) 423

Agricultural Depression. (Frag.) 426

Aiglun, Vicomte D'. A Dog's Laugh * 89

Alcohol, The Physiology of.* C. F. Hodge 594, 79

Allen, Grant. Spencer and Darwin 815

Allen, Harrison, M. D. Two Scientific Worthies * 80

American Association, New Elected Officers of the. (Frag.) 135

" " Notes from the. (Frag.) 134

Andes, At the Top of the. (Frag.) 859

Animal Life, Earliest. (Frag.) 716

'' " The Abundance of. A . Gaudry 42

Animate World, The, a Unity. A. Gaudry 531

Antarctic Regions, Our Present Knowledge of the.* A. Heilpriu 323

Ants as the Guests of Plants. M. Heim 827

Aquariums, Public, in Europe.* B. Dean 13

Asiatic and African Explorations in 1896. (Frag.) 860

Athletics for Women, Tendencies in, in Colleges and Universities.

S. F. Richardson 517

Automatism, The Interpretations of. W. R. Newbold 507

Baku. (Frag.) 572

Baldwin, J. Mark. Two Scientific Congresses 196

Barnes, Mary Sheldon. Some Primitive Californians * 486

Bees as Weapons of War. (Frag.) 857

Bhils, Burmese, and Battaks, Notes on.* R. W. Shufeldt 34

Bicycle, Evolution of the. (Frag.) 427

Bignon, Fanny. Natural History in the Primary Schools of France . 250

Binet, Alfred. Plural States of Being 539

Biology, Psychology, and Sociology, The Relations of. H. Spencer. . 163

Blatchley, W. S. How Plants and Animals spend the Winter 496

Books Noticed 126, 272, 412, 557, 703, 846

Academy of Natural Sciences of Pbilaclel- American Society for the Prevention of
pliia. Journal, Vol. X, Part IV, 853. Cruelty to Animals. Thirtieth Annual

American Climatological Association. Report, I5i7.
Transactions for 1896, 709. Angling, 707.

53730

866

INDEX.

Books Noticed :

Ayres, Alfred. The Verbalist, 132.
Bailey, L. H. The Niireery BooIj, 565.
— The Survival of the Unlike, 7C8.
Bardeen, C. W. Common School Law,

279.
Bedell, Frederick. The Principles of the

Transformer, 563.
Bell, Alexander Melville. English Visible

Speech in Twelve Lessons, 564.
Bendire, Charles. Life Histories of North

American Birds, 416.
Berger, F. French Method, 277.
Binet, A. Alterations of Personality, 849.
Bolles, A. 8. Elements of Commercial Law,

852.
Bonney, T. G. Ice Work, Present and

Past, 128.
Brinton, Daniel G. Myths of the New

World, 581.
Britten, Nathaniel Lord, and Addison
Brovsm. An Illustrated Flora of the
Northern United States and Canada, 414.
BrOgger, W. C, and N. Eolfsen. Fridtiof

Nansen, 847.
Brown, Montague. Artistic and Scientific

Taxidermy and Modeling, 277.
Caims's Manual of Quantitative Chemical

Analysis, 853.
Cambridge Natural History, Vol. II, 710.
Clarke, William H. Cheerful Philosophy

for Thoughtful Invalids, 565.
Cochrane, Robert, ediior. The Romance of

Industry and Invention, 564.
Commissioner of Labor. Tenth Annual Re-
port, 562.
Compayre, Gabriel. The Intellectual and

Moral Development of the Child, 414.
Dana, Mrs. W. S. Plants and their Chil-
dren, 851.
Dresser, Horatio W. The Perfect Whole,

710.
Du Bois, H. The Magnetic Circuit in Theory

and Practice, 853.
Effects, The, of Erosion, 564.
Famham, A. W. The Oswego Method of

Teaching Geography, 279.
Fischer, P. D. Betrachtungen eines in

Deutschland reisenden Deutschen, 277.
Francke, Kuno. Social Forces in German

Literature, 415.
Frye, A. E. The Home and School Atlas,

279.
Gattermann, Ludwig. Practical Methods of

Organic Chemistry, 418.
Gerdtzen, G. A. The Problem of Econom-
ical Heat, Light, and Power Supply, 132.
Gerhard, William Paul. Theater Fires and

Panics, 558.
Goode, George Brown, and Tarleton H.

Bean. Oceanic Ichthyology, 5G2.
Gordon, George B., and others. Prehistoric

Ruins of Copan. Honduras, 563.
Hamilton, A. Report on the Coinage, 710.
Halleck, Reuben P. Psychology and Psy-
chic Culture, 275.

Halleck, Reuben P. The Education of the

Central Nervous System, 850.
Harley, Lewis R. Three Typical Educa-
tional Systems, 563.
Haskell, Ellen M. Child Observations, 417.
HeOprin, Angelo. The Earth and its Story,

561.
Herbart's A B C of Sense-Perception, 273.
Hertwig, Oscar. The Biological Problem of

To-day, 561.
Hertwig, R. General Principles of ZoOlogy,

709.
Hertz, Heinrich. Miscellaneous Papers, 131.
Hinsdale, B. A. Teaching the Language-
Arts, 129.
Hirsch, William. Genius and Degenera-
tion, 557.
Hogan, Louise E. How to Feed Children,

415.
Holden, E. S. Mountain Observatories in

America and Europe, 851.
Howell, W. H., and others. American

Text-book of Physiology, 850.
Hunting, 707.

Hypnotic Magazine, The, 564.
Illinois State Entomologist, Nineteenth An-
nual Report, 130.
Indiana Academy of Sciences, Proceedings,

418.
Indiana Department of Geology and Natural
Resources. Twentieth Annual Report,
131.
Iowa Geological Survey. Report. Vol. V,

132.
Jackman, W. S. Nature Study, 416.
Johonnot, James. Principles and Practice

of Teaching, 709.
Jordan, David Starr. The Care and Culture

of Men, 276.
— and B. W. Evermann. Fishes of North

and Middle America, 853.
Journal of Physical Chemistry, 853.
Kansas Academy of Science. Transactions,

1893-'94, 562.
Lassar-Cohn. Chemistry in Daily Life, 560.
Lecky, William E. H. Democracy and

Liberty, 274.
Leidy, Joseph. Fossil Vertebrates from the

Alachua Clays of Florida, 133.
Lewis, H. E. PhUosophy of Sex, 853.
Lubbock, John. The Scenery of Switzer-
land, 278.
Martin, Edward A. The Story of a Piece of

Coal, 276.
Martin, H. Newell. The Human Body, 708
Mathews, F. Schuyler. Familiar Trees

and their Leaves, 272.
Matthews, William. Nugse Litterariae, 709.
May, E. S. Guns and Cavalry, 278.
McMaster, John Bach. With the Fathers,

277.
McPherson, Logan G. The Monetary and

Banking Problem, 418.
Meyers, William J. An Inductive Manual
of the Straight Line and the Circle, 416.

INDEX.

867

Books Noticed : page

Michigan State Board of Agriculture. Thir- Surface Currents of the Great Lakes, 710.

ty-fourth Annual Report, 709. Taber, C. A. M. The Coming Ice Age, 563.

Minnesota Chief Fire Warden's First An- Taylor, H. O. Ancient Ideals, 846.

nual Report, 132. Tilden, J. H. Cursed before Birth, 563.

Missouri Botanical Garden. Report for Thorpe, T. E. Humphry Davy, Poet and

1895, 131. Philosopher, 413.

Mohr, Charles. Timber Pines of the Toronto Humane Society, Work accom-

Southern United States, 851. plished by the, during 1887-'91, 127.

Munro, John. The Story of Electricity, 413. Trowbridge, John. What is Electricity ? 412.

New Jersey State Geologist. Annual Re- Tuttle, Herbert B. Oxides, 131.

port for 1894-'95, 131. Uncle Sam's Letters on Phrenology, 663.

Nichol8,"Edward L., and William S. Frank- United States Bureau of Ethnology. Thlr-

lin. Elements of Physics, 709. teenth Annual Report, 130.

Orford, Henry. Modern Optical Instru- — Commissioner of Education. Report for

ments, 563. 1893-'94, 710.

Packard, A. S. Bombycine Moths of — Department of Agriculture. Year-book

America, 853. for 1895, 180.

Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason, 130. — Department of Labor. Bulletin, Nos. 4
— Writings, Vol. IV, 711. and 5, 133.

Parry, C. Hubert. Evolution of the Art of — Fish Commission. Bulletin,Vol. XV, 132.

Music, 559. — Geological Survey. Fifteenth Annual Re-
Pierce, E. Dana. Problems In Elementary port, 278.

Physics, 708. Sixteenth Report, 416.

Public Libraries, 277. — Life-saving Service. Report for 1894-'9.5,
Putnam, George Haven. The Question of 565.

Copyright, 133. Wells, David A., and others. America and
Questions and Answers in Drawing, 277. Europe, 278.

Rayleigh, Lord, and William Ramsay. Ar- White, Andrew D. Fiat Money Inflation

gon, 563. in France, 418.

Richardson, Sir Benjamin Ward. Biologi- White, Emerson E. School Algebra, 564.

cal Experimentation, 126. Wise, P. M. A Text-book for Training
Ross, George W. The School System of Schools for Nurses, 560.

Ontario, 278. Witchell, Charles A. The Evolution of
Russell, Ernest E. The Reason Why, 419. Bird-Song, 129.

Special Method in Natural Science, 562. Woglom, G. T. Parakites, 851.

Spencer, Herbert. The Principles of Soci- Youmans, W. J., editor. Pioneers of Sci-

ology, Vol. Ill, 703. ence in America, 852.

Botanic Gardens. D. T. Macdoiigal 172, 312

Botanical Study, Progress in. (Frag.) 861

Botany, Morphological Significance of. (Frag.) 424

British Association, President's Address at the. (Frag.) 135

" " Sectional Addresses in the. (Frag.) 135

Brush, Edward F., M. D. Condemnation of Criminals not Punish-
ment 534

California " Diggers," The So-called.* M. L. Miller 201

Californians, Some Primitive.* M. S. Barnes 486

Cambodian Lesson in Anatomy. (Frag.) 137

Caviare in Russia. (Frag.) 571

Ceremony, Mescal. (Frag.) 140

Chemistry, Physical, Work of. (Frag.) 423

Chinese Cheap Money. (Frag.) 716

" Medicine. (Frag.) 283

CliflP-Dweller's Sandal, The.* O. T. Mason 676

Coldest Country, Life in the. (Frag.) 573

Color, The Popular Esthetics of. J. Jastrow 361

Consumption and Consumptives. W. L. Russell 336

Courtney, Leonard. Individualism versus Collectivism 215

868 INDEX.

PAGE

Crater of Mount Shasta, On the. A. S. Packard 28

Criminals, Condemnation of, not Punishment. E. F. Brush 534

Critic Criticised, A. (Table) 702

Crofton, A. F. B. The Language of Crime 831

Cycling, Fascination of. (Frag.) 282

Davy -Faraday Research Laboratory. (Fi'ag.) 712

" Deaf and Dumb." M. E. Adams 109

" " " Oral Schools for the. (Frag.) 714

Dean, Bashford. Public Aquariums in Europe * 13

Decoration, Artistic. (Frag.) 857

Deherain, P. P. Science in Wheat-Growing 101

Delboeuf, J. Affections and Jealousies of Lizards 395

Dog's Laugh, A.* Vicomte d'Aiglun 89

Donald, J. T. A Curious Canadian Iron Mine 385

Dooley, Clarke. India Rubber and Gutta-percha 679

Education and Industrial Prosperity. (Frag.) 420

" Mental Overstrain in. (Frag.) 280

Educational Machine, The State, Aid for. (Table) 699

Elective Courses, Advantage of. (Frag.) 568

Elephant, Humorous. (Frag.) 139

Ethnological Storehouse. (Frag.) 428

Evolution, A Theological View of. (Table) 267

Fads, Fading. (Table) 124

Fire-proof Covering, Cement as a. (Frag.) 283

Fishes, Venomous. (Frag.) 571

Flower Models, The Blaschka, of the Harvard Museum. M. E. Hale. 663

Forests and River Flow. (Frag.) 569

Frieze, Ideal of a. (Frag.) 859

Fruits, Drifting. (Frag.) 423

Gaudry, Albert. The Abundance of Animal Life 42

" " The Animate World a Unity 531

Genius, The Psychology of. W. Hirsch 389

Geological Myths. (Frag.) 715

" Time, Necessities of. (Frag.) 856

Goode, George Brown, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 400

Grass Garden of the Department of Agriculture. (Frag.) 714

Gundlach, John Christopher, Sketch of. (With Portrait.) J. Vilaro. 691
Gunning, W. D., The Scientific Work of. (With Portrait.) W. H.

Larrabee 526

Gunpowder, First Uses of. (Frag.) 570

Hale, Horatio. Indian Wampum Records 481

Hale, Marcia E. The Blaschka Flower Models of the Harvard Mu-
seum 663

Heilprin, Angelo. Our Present Knowledge of the Antarctic Regions * 323

Heira, M. Ants as the Guests of Plants 827

INDEX. 869

PAGE

Hereditary Crime. (Frag.) 285

Hering, D. W. A Year of the X Rays* 654

Himalayan Tea Porters. (Frag.) 861

Hirsch, William. The Psychology of Genius 389

Hodge, C. F. The Physiology of Alcohol 594, 796

Hoffman, Walter James, M. D, Popular Superstitions 92

Hornbooks. (Frag.) 425

Horseless Vehicles, Value of. (Frag.) 422

Hudson, William Henry. Herbert Spencer: the Man and his Work. 433

" " The Moral Standard 1

Idiots Savants. F. Peterson 232

*' Illiteracy, Growing." (Table) 409

Indian Wampum Records. H. Hale 481

Indians of the Paraguay River. (Frag.) 138

India Rubber and Gutta-percha. C. Dooley 679

" " Famine. (Frag.) 141

Individualism versus Collectivism. L. Courtney 215

Industrial Life, Modern, Reversions in, F, Smith 781

Insect Enemies of the Grape, (Frag.) 428

" Instinct, Evolution of. C Perton 105

Iron Mine, A Curious Canadian. J, T. Donald 385

Irrigation, Experiment in. (Frag.) 424

Jaccard, A. Petroleum, Asphalt, and Bitumen 380

Jack Rabbits. (Frag.) 717

Janssen, Jules. Life on the Planets 812

Jastrow, Joseph. The Popular Esthetics of Color 361

Joke, An almost too Successful. (Table) 123

Jordan, David Starr. The Moral of the "Sympsychograph." (Corr.) 265

The Stability of Truth 642, 749

u

Labor Laws, Time, Constitutionality of. (Frag.) 138

" Legislation, Effects of. (Frag.) 281

Labor's Share of Profit, (Frag.) 858

Language, The, of Crime. A. F. B. Crofton 831

Larrabee, W. H. The Scientific Work of W. D. Gunning. (With

Portrait) 526

Lawn, Care of the. (Frag.) 568

Leffingwell, Albert. Shall Vivisection be Restricted? (Corr.) 265

Leighton, Margaret Wentworth. Shells * 46

" " " Spiders and their Ways * 373

Leonard, Mary Hall. " Confessions " of a Normal-School Teacher. . . 620

Libraries, Free, The Abuse of. (Table) 125

Lizards, Affections and Jealousies of. J. Delboeuf 395

Lobster's Motions, (Frag.) 717

Macdougal, D. T. Botanic Gardens * 172, 312

Malarial Parasite, The, and other Pathogenic Protozoa.* G. M. Stern-
berg 628

870 INDEX.

PAGE

Malthusianism, Interpretations of. (Corr.) A. F. Palmer 266

Man, American, in the Ice Age. (Frag.) 566

Mason, Otis T. Native American Pottery. (Corr.) 267

The Cliff-Dweller's Sandal 676

Meteorology and Sacrilege. (Frag. ) 137

Miller, Mabel L. The So-called California " Diggers " * 201

Mitchell, Maria, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 544

Mongoose, The Plague of the. (Frag.) 281

Moral Standard, The. W.H.Hudson 1

Motor Activities, The Employment of the, in Teaching. E. R.

Shaw 66

Mushrooms, French. (Misc.) 570

Natural History in the Primary Schools of France. F. Bignon 250

Nature Study in the Chicago Schools. (Frag.) 567

Newbold, William Romaine. Double Personality 67

" " " Possession and Mediumship 220

" " " The Interpretations of Automatism . . . 507

Newspaper and Periodical Industry. (Frag.) 285

New Zealand Alps. (Fi-ag.) 856

Noble, C. W. The Borderland of Trampdom 252

Normal-School Teacher, " Confessions " of a. M. H. Leonard 620

Obituary Notes. George Brown Goode, Hubert A. Newton, J. L. Del- 14

boeuf, Otto liilienthal 144

Josiah Dwight Whitney, William Crawford Winlock, H. Newell

Martin 288

Luigi Palmieri, Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau, Felix Tisserand,

Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Ferdinand von Miiller 430

Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Horatio Hale, Henry Tremen, August

Trecul, John Gregory Bourke, Hugo Gylden 576

W. F. Ainsworth 718

Orthodoxy, Anxious. (Table) . 407

Packard, A. S. On the Crater of Mount Shasta 28

Palmer, Arthur F. Interpretations of Malthusianism. (Corr.) 266

Personality, Double. W. R. Newbold 67

Perry, Stephen J., Sketch of. (With Portrait) 835

Perton, Charles. Evolution of Insect Instinct 105

Peterson, Frederick, M. D. Idiots Savants 232

Petroleum, Asphalt, and Bitumen. A. Jaccard 380

Philosophy, the Synthetic, Completion of. (Table) 271

Pigeon, the Carrier, Evolution of the. G. Renaud 369

Planets, Life on the. J. Janssen 812

Plants, Circulation in. (Frag.) 715

Plural States of Being. A. Binet 539

Politics and Morals. (Table) 552

Possession and Mediumship. W. R. Newbold 220

Pottery, Native American. (Corr.) O. T. Mason 267

Prospective Railway Routes in Africa. (Frag.) 421

INDEX. 871

PAGE

Quarantine, Disinfection at.* M. E. Ward 344

Race Psychology. (Corr.) A.T.Smith 698

" A Study in. A.T.Smith 354

Eacial Geography, The, of Europe.* W. Z. Ripley 454, 577, 757

" " " (Table) 554

Rainfall and Forms of Leaves. (Frag.) 136

Redfleld, William C, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 114

Reformatory Prisoners, Characteristics of. (Frag.) 713

Renaud, G. Evolution of the Carrier Pigeon 369

Research, " Useless," Value of. (Frag.) 425

Revenues, How can the Federal Government best raise its ? D. A.

Wells 721

Reymond, Prof. Du Bois-, Library of. (Frag.) 855

Richardson, Sophia Foster. Tendencies in Athletics for Women in

Colleges and Universities 517

Ripley, William Z. The Racial Geography of Europe* 454, 577, 757

Rogers, Henry Darwin, Sketch of. (With Portrait) 258

Russell, Isi'ael C. Igneous Intrusions and Volcanoes 240

Russell, William L., M. D. Consumption and Consumptives 336

Safeguards of National Prosperity. (Table) 841

St. Lawrence Drainage System. (Frag.) 860

Sawdust, Uses of. (Frag.) 570

Science and Humanity. (Table) 556

" A National Department of. (Table) 843

" International. (Table) 269

" Teaching in Secondary Schools. (Frag.) 284

Scientific Congresses, Two. J. M. Baldwin 196

" Worthies, Two.* H. Allen 80

Seeds, Long-lived. (Frag.) 569

Shells.* M. W. Leighton 46

Shaw, Edward R, The Employment of the Motor Activities in Teach-
ing 56

Shufeldt, R. W. Notes on Bhils, Burmese, and Battaks * 34

Sioux, Tree Emblem of the. (Frag.) 136

Slavic Deity and St. Elias. (Frag.) 859

Smith, Anna Tolman. A Study in Race Psychology 354

" '* " Race Psychology. (Corr.) 698

" Franklin. An Object Lesson in Social Reform 305

" " Reversions in Modern Industrial Life 781

Smoke Nuisance. (Frag.) 716

Social Reform, An Object Lesson in. F. Smith 305

Spencer, Herbert. The Relations of Biology, Psychology, and Soci-
ology 163

Spencer, Herbert : the Man and his Work. W. H. Hudson 433

Spencer and Darwin. G. Allen 815

Spiders and their Ways.* M. W. Leighton 373

Spitzbergen, Exploration of. (Frag.) 426

" Explored. (Frag.) 567

872 INDEX.

PA(JB

Stability of Truth, The. D. S. Jordan 642, 749

Sternberg-, George M., M. D. The Malarial Parasites and other Patho-
genic Protozoa * 628

Superstitions, Popular. W. J. Hoffman 92

Surg-ery, Aseptic, Evolution of. (Frag. ) 421

Symbolism, Animal, in Ecclesiastical Architecture. A. D, White . . . 187

" Sy mpsychograph, " (Frag.) 282

The Moral of the. (Corr.) D. S. Jordan 265

Talisman. (Frag.) 284

Taxation, Principles of. D. A. Wells 145, 289, 468, 603

Tides of the Bay of Fundy. (Frag.) 855

Trampdom, The Borderland of. C. W. Noble 252

Vilaro, Juan. Sketch of John Christopher Gundlach. (With Por-
trait) 691

Vivisection, Shall it be Restricted? (Corr.) A. Leffingwell 265

Volcanoes, Igneous Intrusions and. J. C. Russell 240

Ward, M. E. Disinfection at Quarantine * 344

Wells, David A, How can the Federal Government best raise its

Revenues ? 721

" " Principles of Taxation 145, 289, 468, 603

Wells, Mr., on Methods of National Taxation. (Table) 845

Wheat-Growing, Science in. P. P. Deheraiu 101

White, Andrew Dickson. Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Archi-
tecture 187

Winter, How Plants and Animals spend the. W. S. Blatchley 496

Wire-Glass. (Frag.) '. 137

" Woman, The New," and the Problems of the Day. (;Table) 120

Women in Business. (Frag.) 718

Women's Art, American. (Frag.) 427

Wood Engraving, Future of. (Frag.) 139

Writing, Antiquity of. (Frag.) 860

X Rays, A Year of the.* D. W. Hering 654

Young, Prof., Congratulations to. (Frag.) 858

THE END.

MBL WHOI I.IBKAKY

H lANB J