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EDITED BY 
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VOLUME LXxl 


JULY TO DECEMBER, 1907 


NEW YORK 
SERE\SCIEN CE PRESS 
1907 


Copyright, 1907 
THE SCIENCE PRESS 


Press OF 
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JULY, 1907 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ? 


By PROFESSOR BURT G. WILDER 


CORNELL UNIVERSITY 


HIS day, one hundred years ago, was born in Switzerland a man- 

child destined to astonish and uplift the world. Christened Jean 

Louis Rodolphe, he was and is known as Louis Agassiz, or simply 
Agassiz, his eminent son being distinguished as Alexander. 

Why is this centennial celebrated here and elsewhere? Rather, by 
such as know what Agassiz was, what he did, and what he tried to do, 
would it be asked, Why is not this day observed in all lands, by all 
classes, yea, even in behalf of animals, plants, the rocks and the very 
elements ? 

For, from a child, Agassiz loved nature and humanity. The one 
he strove to interpret, the other to cheer and enlighten. He was a 
naturalist in the broadest sense, a sense broader than is possible in these 
days. His thirst for knowledge was equaled only by his desire to 
impart it, and his ability to earn money was surpassed only by his 
determination to spend it for the welfare of man and the glory of God. 

More or less complete accounts of Agassiz have been published in 
various books and periodicals. A partial list of these is included. By 
far the best, although lacking many desirable details and restricted by 
the relationship, is the “ Life and Correspondence” by his wife. My 
admiration for this grows with each re-reading. In respect to both 
subject and style it might well be included among the entrance require- 
ments in English. It portrays an eminent scholar, indefatigable col- 
lector and teacher, sincere patriot, staunch friend and fascinating per- 
sonality in a manner so just, so vivid and inspiring that, were it prac- 
ticable, in place of the many spoken observances of this centenary, I 


* Address at the Centenary of Louis Agassiz delivered, at the request of 
President J. G. Schurman, in Barnes Hall, Cornell University, May 28, 1907. 


6 _ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


could wish that the coming Memorial Day might be partly devoted to 
its perusal—out-of-doors—by every man, woman and child.* 

In enumerating the grounds upon which this commemoration might 
be well-nigh cosmic in its scope, so far as possible I shall use the words 
of Agassiz himself or of others fitly representing the several groups. 

The following account of the “ Glacial Theory ” is condensed from 
the address* at the unveiling of the Agassiz tablet in our Memorial 
Chapel, June 17, 1885, by the geologist and paleontologist, Professor 
J.S. Newberry: 

“Tn 1837 the Association of Swiss Naturalists met at Neufchatel, 
and Agassiz then advanced the theory of a general glacial epoch of 
which he may justly be called the author. At first it met with violent 
opposition [Marcou says, p. 108, ‘it was like a pistol-shot fired into 
the midst of the assembly ’], but this only stimulated those who had 
adopted it to greater enthusiasm in their researches. . . . One of the 
motives which led Agassiz to America was his ardent desire to see for 
himself whether the glacial record was the same for the New as for the 
Old World. ... Many years before his death he had the satisfaction of 
knowing that his theory was applicable to the whole northern hemi- 
sphere, and the pleasure of studying a similar record in southern South 
America.” I wish there were time to quote from Mrs. Agassiz’s volume 
(pp. 317-332) the graphic, indeed thrilling, story of his life upon the 
glaciers. He once caused himself to be lowered into a crevasse to the 
depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet, when death would have at- 
tended either the fraying of the rope by sharp edges of ice or the dis- 
lodgement of the huge stalactites between which he had to steer his way. 

Agassiz was a well-informed botanist. His “ Lake Superior” and 
“A Journey in Brazil” deal largely with vegetation; two or three 
smaller papers are botanic, and one of the courses before the Lowell 
Institute was, he told me, upon trees and plants.* A member of the 
administrative staff of our College of Agriculture related to me the fol- 
lowing incident: During Agassiz’s stay here in 1868 he often walked 
about the then very open campus. She and her brother, little children, 
conceived a great admiration for him, called him “our French- 
man,” and used to offer him flowers. On one occasion she was 
about to pluck a red clover upon which a bumblebee had just alighted. 


* The only other comparable biography is the “ Life, Letters and Works ” by 
Marcou, and it will be quoted frequently. Its peculiarities are well stated in 
The Nation for May 7, 1896. In a letter to me, dated March 21, 1896, he ex- 
presses his regret at the inadvertent omission of “some of the best” from the 
enumeration of Agassiz’s pupils and assistants. 

’ As printed in the “ Proceedings in memory of Louis Agassiz and in honor 
of Hiram Sibley,” pp. 11-12. 

*May this be that which was given in 1853 under the title, “ Natural 
History ”? 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 7 


He restrained her, saying gently, “ Do not frighten it away; the bees 
are the friends of the flowers.” * 

Agassiz’s concern for the promotion of agriculture was evinced by 
word and deed upon many occasions.® In 1861 he supervised the draw- 
ings for the “ New Edition ” of Harris’s “ Insects injurious to vegeta- 
tion,” and “rendered assistance by way of suggestion and advice 
throughout ” the publication of the work that was the prototype of 
the later extensive reports and organizations, state and national, in 
the line of é€conomic entomology. The last chapter of “ A Journey 
in Brazil,” published in 1868, was more than half devoted to the agri- 
culture and forestry of that country. 

So deeply interested was Agassiz in the problems involved in the 
improvement of domesticated animals that, at the close of his exhaust- 
ing summer at Penikese, and only three months before his death, he 
wrote me a letter of 1,700-1,800 words devoted mainly to that subject. 
The following sentences are very suggestive: 

We naturalists can not afford the expense necessary for making the investi- 
gations and answering the questions about which farmers universally expect us 
to be prepared to give information. It would cost hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to study the embryology of the horse as I have studied that of the 
snapping-turtle. But turtle eggs can be had for the asking, while every egg and 
every embryo of the higher animals will cost the price of a mare or a cow, and 
so for other species. I do not know one scientific man in the world so placed 
that he could kill one hundred of these animals a year, for a number of succes- 
sive years in order to study their embryology; and yet until this is done we shall 
go on groping in the dark as far as any real improvements in the breeding of 
stock are concerned. 

It is probable that this topic occupied him in his last public effort, 
a lecture on “ The Structural Growth of Domesticated Animals ” before 
the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, only twelve days before 
his death. 

On the twenty-eighth of May, 1874, the birthday of Agassiz next 
following his death, there was held here a Memorial Meeting.” It was 
addressed, among others, by the Hon. John Stanton Gould, then our 
non-resident lecturer on agriculture, who had witnessed interviews be- 
tween Agassiz and farmers seeking information as to animals, crops 
and soils. He said “It was beautiful to see that illustrious man 
impart the needed facts in language perfectly adapted to the intellectual 
and scientific status of the inquirer.” 


*See, also, the relation of a botanist, Professor C. F. Millspaugh, Cornell 
Era, June, 1907, p. 443, and “ Proceedings of the Memorial Meeting of the Cam- 
bridge Historical Society,” May 27, 1907. 

*It is not easy to account for the omission of entries like agriculture and 
farmer from the indexes of the volumes by Marcou and Mrs. Agassiz. 

‘It was for the purpose of raising a sum to be added to the “ Teachers and 
Pupils’ Fund” in support of a scholarship at the Museum. There was raised 
$100, of which about one fourth was given by President White. 


8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


How clearly the situation was recognized by Agassiz himself is 
shown in the following paragraph from the preface to his “ Contribu- 
tions to the Natural History of the United States”: 


There is not here [as in Europe] a class of learned men, distinct from the 
other cultivated members of the community. On the contrary, so general is the 
desire for knowledge, that I expect to see my book read by operatives, by fisher- 
men, by farmers, quite as extensively as by the students in our colleges or by 
the learned professions, and it is but proper that I should endeavor to make 
myself understood by all. 


For the means of carrying on the regular work of the museum, and 
for such special projects as are referred to above, Agassiz depended 
largely upon grants from the state legislature as recommended by the 
board of education. Many of the legislators were farmers or from 
agricultural districts, so that his efforts to improve the quality of domes- 
ticated animals and to check the ravages of insects were both natural 
and politic. 

But it may well be doubted whether even the weighty facts and 
arguments at his disposal would have sufficed without the extraordinary 
influence of his personality and eloquence. This was alluded to by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes® in the sentence, “The hard-featured country 
representatives flocked about him as the fishes gathered to hear Saint 
Antony, as the birds flocked to hear the sermons of Saint Francis.” It 
has been more fully described by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and 
Charles Mellen Tyler.? With the latter’s permission I will quote it in 
advance, nearly verbatim: 


In 1861-2 I was in the Massachusetts Legislature and a member of the 
Committee on Education before which Professor Agassiz appeared to secure the 
annual appropriation for his museum. It was the year of the storming of Fort 
Sumter, of the attack upon a Massachusetts regiment passing through Balti- 
more, and of the first battle of Bull Run. Members of both houses of the Legis- 
lature foresaw a prolonged and bloody conflict, a great demand upon the Treas- 
ury, an increased and burdensome taxation to maintain the forces in the field. 
Our hearts were not high; we cut and slashed all bills of appropriation, and 
scrutinized with microscopic suspicion every bill of either house which looked 
to any increase of expenditure. Our committee anticipated the interview with 
Agassiz with some impatience and in a negative disposition of mind. We had, 
in fact, resolved beforehand not to recommend to the House and Senate the usual 
gift from the State. But when Agassiz appeared before us with his delightful 
accent and bland, persuasive, almost affectionate personal appeal to each of us, 
we wholly forgot the distress of the nation, the probable rejection of our recom- 
mendation by the two houses, and went over to Agassiz, horse, foot and dragoons, 
reported a bill for the usual outlay for his benefit, and to our surprise we 
carried it through. 


® In the letter declining the invitation to attend the unveiling of the Agassiz 
tablet, p. 7 of the “ Proceedings ” mentioned above. 

°The former in the Boston Transcript for April 23, 1907, and the latter in 
the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine for June, 1907, p. 778. 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 9 


Agassiz was born near Lake Neufchatel in the region known as the 
Seeland of Berne. His early home was literally surrounded by lakes, 
rivers and marshes. “ Almost as soon as he was able to move alone he 
took to water like a young duck. All the fishermen became at once 
very fond of the little fellow, and there was a friendly rivalry among 
them to get him into their boats and show him how to catch fish.’’?° 

This friendly relation with the takers of fish was maintained 
throughout his life. Wherever he went he visited the markets and 
ascertained who were the most enterprising and intelligent purveyors. 
From them he gained not merely specimens but information, and to 
them he imparted his own knowledge in appropriate terms. One of his 
closest friends was Captain N. E. Atwood, of Provincetown, Mass., 
whose personal knowledge of marine fish and fisheries was so highly 
estimated by Agassiz that, upon the latter’s suggestion, he was invited 
to give a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute. 

In 1853 he issued a circular asking for collections of fishes from various 
fresh-water systems of the United States. ... To this he had hundreds of an- 
swers, many of them very shrewd and observing... . / A great number and variety 
of collections . . . were forwarded. As to the marine forms, “many a New 
England captain, when he started on a cruise, had on board collecting cans,” fur- 
nished by Agassiz, to be filled... and returned.” (Mrs. Agassiz, pp. 518-519.) 

The participation of women in any memorial of Agassiz is most 
natural. His mother was his most intimate friend and his letters to 
her from America are simply delightful. At the museum his lectures 
were open to women as well as men. He had great sympathy with the 
desire of women for larger and more various fields of study and work, 
and a certain number, including the lbrarian, have always been em- 
ployed as assistants. For eight years (1855-63) he lectured almost 
daily in a school conducted by his wife; and upon her intellectual com- 
panionship and cooperation he became so dependent that he once de- 
clared to me, with signs of deep emotion, “ Without her I could not 
exist.” Never from his lips did I hear a word that might not have 
been spoken in her presence. 

In 1873, of the forty-four teachers admitted by him as pupils at the 
Penikese school, sixteen—more than one third—were women. Coedu- 
cation—then hotly debated and regarded by some as a bugbear—had 
not with him even the dignity of existence as a problem. He declared 
that he had “no hesitation from the start.” His attitude was certainly 
consistent; among the theses defended at his graduation in 1830 one 
was entitled Femina humana mari superior. Are some male members 
of this university concerned lest that phrase become the appropriate 
motto for the College of Arts and Sciences ? 


10 Marcou, I., pp. 7-8. 

1 QOne of these cans arrived at Penikese during the last summer of his life, 
and I well recall the interest, akin to that in a Christmas box, with which 
Agassiz and his assistants and pupils drew forth the contents. 


Lo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Before me are representatives of the African race, members of the 
university in full enjoyment of all its educational advantages. Fitly 
may they unite in honoring the memory of one who so effectively aided 
the establishment of this cosmopolitan institution. For, whatever 
may have been Agassiz’s technical views as to the diversity of origin of 
the so-called human races, and however he may have deprecated amal- 
gamation and the premature conferring of certain political privileges, 
his correspondence with Dr. Samuel G. Howe leaves no doubt as to his 
position upon the fundamental issue: 

The negroes should be equal to other men before the law. . . . They are en- 
titled to their freedom, to the regulation of their own destiny, to the enjoyment 
of their life, of their earnings, of their family circle. . . . It is one of our 
primary obligations to remove every obstacle that may retard their highest de- 
velopment. 

One of Agassiz’s two daughters married Quincy A.,brother to Robert 
Gould Shaw, commander of the “ Fifty-fourth,” the first of the two 
Massachusetts colored regiments in the Civil War. On the eighteenth 
of July, 1863, Colonel Shaw fell at Fort Wagner and was there buried 
with his dusky followers. So far from regretting the circumstances 
of his death or the nature of his last resting-place, the hero’s name has 
been repeated in the second generation. 

By none should the memory of Agassiz be cherished more devoutly 
than by the science teachers of America. I refer here not so much to 
the favored few? who enjoyed his direct instruction whose office is 
so finely drawn in these lines by James Russell Lowell: 

He was a Teacher; why be grieved for him 
Whose living word still stimulates the air? 


In endless file shall loving scholars come, 
The glow of his transmitted touch to share. 


From highest to lowest, every teacher of natural science in this 
country is indebted to Agassiz for improvements in methods, for eleva- 
tion of public respect, and for increase in compensation. 

Upon the point last named Agassiz had cause for entertaining de- 
cided views. For years his regular salary was only $1,500; indeed, not 
until the very end did a gift relieve him entirely from the necessity for 
outside labors which doubtless shortened his days. His last letter to 
me, dated November 25, 1873, contained the following significant sen- 
tence: “If scientific men are ever to be placed on a proper footing of 
independence in this country, it is for the younger to work for it. They 
have a fine opportunity of doing it by pointing out what the older men 
have done on a starving allowance.” On an earlier occasion he declared 


2 Wor example, A. C. Apgar, of Trenton; W. O. Crosby, of Boston; W. K. 
Brooks, of the Johns Hopkins; David S. Jordan, of Stanford; C. 8. Minot and 
W. H. Niles, of Boston; T. B. Stowell, of Potsdam, N. Y.; C. O. Whitman, of 
Chicago, and A. E. Verrill, of Yale. 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ II 


that thereafter he would not give a public lecture for less than $500, in 
order to let those who held the purse-strings appreciate the value of 
such services.1* While he did not hesitate to accept for the museum, 
at a low remuneration, or even with none, the services of young men 
who desired at the same time to learn from him or to enjoy opportuni- 
ties for research, my personal experience with him during four years 
and one summer warrants me in saying that in cases of a different sort 
he was liberal and even generous. 

At the middle of the last century American naturalists were few, 
scattered and little understood. Commonly their vocation was medi- 
cine, and their botanic and zoologic avocations were rather condoned 
than commended. ‘The prevailing notions are embodied in this anec- 
dote: A few years after his arrival in America Agassiz made one of a 
small party of Harvard professors who traversed the White Mountain 
region in a carriage driven by a countryman. ‘Three of them were 
vivacious, restless, and on the lookout for specimens. They would call 
a halt; leap from the vehicle before it stopped; dash over the fields, 
and return with prizes in their boxes, in their hands and pockets, and 
even pinned upon their hats. The fourth, Professor Felton, the brother- 
in-law of Agassiz, sat quietly in his corner reading a favorite Greek 
author. When the bewildered driver could stand it no longer he elicited 
from Felton information which led him to view the behavior of the 
others with compassionate toleration. His interpretation was thus con- 
veyed to the innkeeper at the close of the day: “I drove the queerest 
lot you ever saw. They chattered like monkeys. They wouldn’t keep 
still. They jumped the fences, tore about the fields, and came back 
with their hats covered with bugs. I asked their keeper what ailed 
them; he said they was naturals, and judgin’ from the way they acted 
I should say they was.” 

Before long, however, in and about Cambridge and wherever Agassiz 
remained for any time, he and those inspired by him made the pursuit 
of natural history not only familiar and reputable, but almost fashion- 
able. Yet when this university opened the collecting of specimens was 
so unusual that the following incident is related to me by Winfield 
Scott Merrill, who was here in 1868-9: 

While walking in the country I saw a boy holding a horse, and he told me 
it belonged to a “crazy Dutchman” over in the woods looking for birds’ nests."* 

In an article, “ Louis Agassiz, Teacher,’ his ideas and practise as 
to methods of teaching are considered by me at some length. On the 
present occasion I quote from E. L. Youmans, late editor of the Pop- 
ULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY: 


* This was said to Professor Wyman in my presence, November 17, 1866. 

“This was printed in the Cornell Era of the period, but by some it was 
regarded as a myth. aril UN 3 

*In the June number of the Harvard Graduates’ Magazine. & as LaF “y’ an 


nen 


» 2 ® 
Oh 


12 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Agassiz had a profound interest in popular education, but the soul of that 
interest was for improvement in its methods. In the matter of public instruction 
he was a revolutionist and a propagandist. He warred with current ideas and 
consecrated practises. He condemned in the most emphatic way the wretched 
lesson-learning routine that prevails in the schools. .. . He never wearied in the 
endeavor to propagate more rational opinions, and we can not doubt that the 
seed thus sown will yet ripen into most valuable fruit. He denounced our wordy 
and bookish education as baseless and unreal, and demanded such a change in 
our system of instruction as shall bring the pupils face to face with nature her- 
self, and call out the mind by direct exercise upon phenomena—the facts, laws, 
relations and realities of the world of experience. 

The abundance of this educational fruit is indicated by Liberty H. 
Bailey, an exponent alike of “ nature-study teaching ” and of “ science- 
teaching for science’ sake” 

Agassiz gave us the motto, “Study nature, not books.” He taught the 
study of nature by the natural method. . . . And, although his teaching may 
not have been nature-study, as we understand the term—being given from the 
investigator’s or the specialist’s view-point, and intended primarily for students 
and adults—the present nature-study movement undoubtedly is a proximate 
result of the forces that he set in motion. (‘‘ The Nature-study Idea,” pp. 5, 6, 8.) 

Summer schools and biologic stations are now so common at the 
seashore and by inland waters that those who attend them for instruc- 
tion or research do not always realize their origin with Agassiz, thirty- 
five years ago in the establishment of “ The Anderson School of Natural 
History at Penikese Island.” Its history is given in the report of the 
trustees, and various aspects of it have been presented in the publica- 
tions enumerated in my article, “ Agassiz at Penikese.”*® The first 
session was directed by Agassiz himself, in the last summer of his life; 
the second by his son. “ Although,” to quote Mrs. Agassiz (p. 772), 
“the Penikese school may be said to have died with its master, it lives 
anew in many a seaside laboratory organized upon the same plan.” 

Our proneness to forget the pioneers by whose ideas and labors we 
profit was noted by Agassiz himself in his Humboldt Address (pp. 
5,26)": 

The fertilizing power of a great mind is truly wonderful; but as we travel 
farther from the source, it is hidden from us by the very abundance and pro- 
ductiveness it has caused. 

Particularly should this day be remembered by that apparently 
diminishing number of collegiate teachers who hold that the kingdom 
of scholarship cometh not with observation nor with the assumption of 
millinery. In this country Agassiz wore no decorative ribbon of any 
kind, although he possessed that of the Red Eagle of Prussia and 
that of the French Legion of Honor. Although impressive in aspect 
and dignified in manner, he was extremely simple and unpretending in 
his ways, and did not like to make an appearance different from that of 
ordinary people in his neighborhood. He was of a joyous disposition 


1° American Naturalist, March, | 1898. 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 13 


and upon occasion he could be merry as a child. But for his merri- 
ment time and place must be fitting; Dulce est desipere in loco. He 
upheld the dignity of scholarship, and regarded university property and 
university time as consecrated to the loftiest functions. 

Agassiz has not generally been thought of as a disciplinarian; yet 
a single incident would justify the celebration of this day by those 
who regard the saying, “ Boys will be boys,” as inapplicable beyond 
the secondary school. Early in the summer at Penikese three young 
men committed a breach of decorum which some might consider 
amusing. The next morning Agassiz simply announced that they had 
shown themselves undeserving and would leave the island before noon. 

To the public Agassiz was best known through his lectures before 
the Lowell Institute and elsewhere, and by the “ Methods of Study 
in Natural History.” But an enormous amount of technical work is 
represented by his European publications, by the four volumes of the 
* Contributions to the Natural History of the United States,” and by 
his papers of greater or less length upon many zoologic topics. Marcou 
enumerates 425 titles. Coues thinks’? 
the greatest practical boon he ever conferred upon working naturalists was his 
“ Nomenclator Zoologicus,” with its accompanying index—the veriest drudgery 
imaginable for an author, yet drudgery of a kind that no hack or mere compiler 
could have performed; and only those who have to keep it at their elbows can 
be sufficiently grateful for this instrument. 

But working zoologists, anatomists and chemists are indebted to 
Agassiz for another practical service which probably could not have 
been rendered so efficiently by any other human being, viz., the remis- 
sion, by act of congress, of the tax upon alcohol used for scientific 
purposes. Alcohol is consumed largely in chemical laboratories, and 
it was nearly the only museum preservative in use before the com- 
paratively recent introduction of formal. Representations to con- 
gress were made by Spencer F. Baird and others concerned, but it is 
doubtful if they would have succeeded without the exercise of Agassiz’s 
commingled powers of conviction and persuasion. 

No native scientist did more than Agassiz to establish and main- 
tain the intellectual independence of his adopted country.** Aside from 
his published works, his training of young men, his founding of the 
museum and his provision of means for employment and research that 
might otherwise have been sought abroad, upon at least two occasions 
he urged such cultivation of science in this country as should free 
American naturalists from the necessity of looking up to Europeans 
ac their leaders and guides. 

At the annual meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, 


% Review of “ Marcou” in The Nation, May 7, 1896. 
% Unconsciously I have used here nearly the words of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes in his letter referred to above. 


14 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


May 17, 1848, “he made a most earnest and stirring appeal” in that 
direction. Three years later he made a declaration of sentiment and 
policy, emphatic, specific and self-sacrificing. This shall be given in 
his own words :7® 


Twenty years ago I was present at a meeting of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, held in Cincinnati, where specimens from all 
parts of the west were brought together to be seen by the scientific men of the 
east. ... When one of the members of the association moved that to make the 
best use of these collections they should be sent to Europe to be identified by 
paleontologists and zoologists of the old world, I opposed that motion as ear- 
nestly as I could, stating that it would be an acknowledgment of inferiority on 
the part of America from which we could never rise again. . . . My motion was 
carried, and yet I remained under the imputation, which was loudly expressed 
by some, that I had carried a big job; that my motion had been made in order 
that I might have the benefit of describing those specimens, and thus raise my 
reputation. I resolved then to myself, but never spoke of it before, that I would 
never describe an American fossil, and I have kept my resolve. The progress 
since then has been such that now an American student scouts the idea of send- 
ing a piece of work to a European ordeal. 


Agassiz came to America upon a scientific mission provided for 
by the King of Prussia. He found here unlimited material for re- 
search, the chance of earning by lecturing the means of repaying 
obligations incurred by his European publications, and a cordial wel- 
come alike from naturalists, from society and from the people at 
large. Changed political conditions rendered his return less desirable, 
and he accepted a professorship in the newly-established Lawrence 
Scientific School at Harvard University.2° Ten years later he declined 
a favorable and repeated offer of a chair in the Paris Museum of 
Natural History. When the Civil War broke out “no American 
cared more than he for the preservation of the Union and the institu- 
tions it represented.” Indeed, “he was naturalized in the darkest 
hour of the war, when the final disruption of the country was con- 
fidently prophesied by her enemies. By formally becoming a citizen of 
the United States he desired to attest his personal confidence in the 
stability of her constitution and the justice of her cause.’”*1 

Although the subjects of Agassiz’s studies had commonly to be 
killed, he was not a sportsman. “His passion for Natural History 
never carried him so far as to shoot birds or animals for sport.” The 

” From the report of the meeting of the joint committee on education of 
the Massachusetts Legislature as printed in the Boston Weekly Spectator for 
February 12, 1871. Among other obvious misprints Agassiz is made to say that 
his protest was made “twenty-four” years ago, which would be 1847, whereas 
the first Cincinnati meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 
of Science was in 1851. 

* His first wife died July 27, 1848, and in the spring of 1850 he married 


Miss Elizabeth Cabot Cary, of Boston, who became his “ guardian angel.” 
#1 Mrs. Agassiz, pp. 568, 570. 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 15 


creatures needed were put to death, as were the mortally wounded 
soldiers by old Ambroise Paré, “ doucement et sans cholére.” 

An even more impressive exemplification of the apparently para- 
doxical character of Agassiz was his attitude toward theology. His wri- 
tings contain abundant evidence of his firm belief in the existence of a 
Creator, but he would not discuss dogmas and repelled as impertinent 
the too prevalent American fashion of asking what church a man 
attends. So while criticized as a bigot by some scientists he was de- 
nounced as an infidel by some theologians because he could not reconcile 
the facts of geology with the literal interpretations of Scripture. In 
this regard, with Lord John Russell in politics, Agassiz might have said 
he was “sure he was right because both parties found fault with him.” 
To the “ righteous overmuch ” who may hesitate to unite in this com- 
memoration of one who seemed to make light of Genesis and to pass 
over Adam as if he had never existed, is commended reflection upon 
the following incidents: On the eighth of August, 1873, commenting 
on the death of an assistant, he said, “ My time will come soon, and I 
am ready.” In four short months that time had come. 

On the first of May, 1868, to my remark that I could not under- 
stand why Providence and the community had allowed him to lack 
the means for the complete development of his plans, he replied, “I 
suppose it is all right; had I obtained all I wished it might have 
gratified my ambition too much.” 

At the opening of the Penikese School, July 8, 1873, Agassiz said: 
“JT think we have need of help; I ask you for a moment to pray for 
yourselves.” The incident was commented upon as follows by Henry 
Ward Beecher :?? 

It seems to us that this scene of Agassiz and his pupils with heads bowed 
in silent prayer for the blessing of the God of Nature to be given to that school 
then opened for the study of nature, is a spectacle for some great artist to 
spread out worthily upon canvas, and to be kept alive in the memory of mankind. 
What are coronations, royal pageants, the parade of armies, to a scene like this? 
It heralds the coming of the new heavens and the new earth—the golden age 
when nature and man shall be reconciled, and the conquests of truth shall super- 
sede the conquests of brute force. 

As an American, as a student and teacher of science, and as a mem- 
ber of Cornell University,?* I might, like hundreds of others, take some 
part in this commemoration. But there are special reasons why, when 
possible, I have complied with requests to speak or write of Agassiz, and 
why the invitation to give the present address was accepted with joy and 
with a sense of obligation, notwithstanding its preparation has seriously 


“In the Christian Union, July 15, 1873, p. 51. See also “ The Prayer of 
Agassiz,” by Whittier. 

73 As delivered the address described what Agassiz did for Cornell Univer- 
sity, directly and indirectly; see the Cornell Era for June, 1907, pp. 441-446. 


16 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


interfered with prior plans for purely scientific work. I am one of the 
few survivors of those who were directly associated with Agassiz as 
pupils, assistants or colleagues. He inspired me with interest, with 
admiration, with respect, nay, almost veneration. No shadow ever 
came between us. Whatever benefits he may have conferred upon 
others, I have reason to believe that, outside his family circle, there is 
no one, living or dead, who has such cause for gratitude and affection 
in return for counsel, for encouragement, for opportunity, and even 
for material aid in the form of specimens or information. 

The following statements are based not only upon my vivid recol- 
lections but upon my diaries and upon the letters of Agassiz, all of 
which have been preserved. 


I am unwilling to speak of myself on this occasion, and yet I do not know 
how else I can do justice to one of the most beautiful sides of his character. His 
sympathy for all young students of nature was one of the noblest traits of his 
life. It may truly be said that toward the close of his career there was hardly 
one such in this country who was not under some obligation to him.* 


As of yesterday I recall the first interview, now half a century ago. 
At the age of fifteen (in the middle of the last century a considerably 
less mature epoch than at present) some observations of mine upon 
spiders were brought to the notice of Agassiz by one of his assistants, 
James E. Mills, and led to an invitation to visit him. In my “ Ento- 
mological Diary” he is described as a “ very pleasant, fine-looking gen- 
tleman.” Now I should write, “ The most fascinating and magnificent 
of men.”*> At once I appreciated the saying current in Cambridge 
that in winter one needed an overcoat less while passing his house. 
His commendation of the spider essay led my parents to grant my 
request to prepare for the profession of naturalist. 

That preparation comprised (1) Two more years of Latin and 
Greek to complete the Harvard entrance requirements in those 
languages; (2) additions to the collection of insects that formed the 
nucleus of the collection at Cornell; (3) reading the first two volumes, 
just issued, of Agassiz’s “ Contributions to the Natural History of the 
United States ” (Turtles, and Essay on Classification). This was done 
before breakfast, and such was my conviction of its value that, although 
the text was largely unintelligible at that stage of my progress, I felt 
fortified for the ordinary tasks of the day somewhat as is the religious 
neophyte by his matutinal fasting and prayer. The experience is 
related as a warning rather than as an example, but it illustrates the 
influence unconsciously exerted by Agassiz upon those whom he had 
welcomed to the scientific fold. 

That influence was similarly illustrated while attending his lectures 


* Slightly altered from Agassiz’s address on Humboldt, p. 44. 

*In a letter dated Charleston, 8. C., March 12, 1853 (printed in the Cen- 
tury Magazine for December, 1903, p. 188), Thackeray describes Agassiz as a 
“delightful, bonhommious person, as frank and unpretending as he is learned 
and illustrious.” 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 17 


at Cambridge in my first year. No topic was so vital as the general 
problem of animal life, and no expositor could compare with Agassiz. 
As an outlet for my enthusiasm each discourse was repeated, to the best 
of my ability, for the benefit of my companion”® on the daily four-mile 
walk between Cambridge and our Brookline home. So sure was I that 
all the statements were correct and all the conclusions sound that any 
doubts or criticisms upon the part of my acute and unprejudiced friend 
shocked me as a reprehensible compound of heresy and Jése majesté. 

From the fall of 1866 until, mainly upon his recommendation, my 
connection with Cornell University, I was employed in making prepara- 
tions to illustrate the structure of sharks and rays for his projected 
volume upon those fishes.*7 This work brought me into relations with 
him, more and more close, instructive and delightful. From my 
diaries and letters are selected a few incidents exemplifying phases 
of his nature not generally appreciated. 

Speaking of Darwin, whose doctrines he vehemently opposed, he 
remarked: “‘ Much as we disagree, we are truly friends.” 

With some earlier assistants there had been a serious disagreement 
ending in temporary estrangement ;?* yet when their names were men- 
tioned before him he made no adverse comment. He once showed me 
a letter from one of them asking permission to examine certain speci- 
mens at the museum. Upon my remarking that the presence of that 
man might not be very pleasant for him he replied, almost with reproof, 
“Tt is true that I have built up this museum, but I am only its trustee, 
and if the devil himself wished to study here he should be welcome.” 

His tenderness is shown in the following incident. The artist who 
was drawing the plates for the volume upon sharks and rays above 
mentioned was an elderly German who, uncertain of the term of his 
employment, had left his family in St. Louis. At last, in his loneliness, 
he sent for one of his children, a lad of ten. Supplied with credentials 
of various kinds, the boy reached Cambridge and inquired for “ Herr 
Professor.” It was after dark and Agassiz sorely needed rest after a 
long day at the museum. Yet, instead of summoning a servant, he 
took the child by the hand, walked with him several squares, and deliv- 
ered him safe to the anxious father. 

The summer of 1867 I spent literally at his side in the laboratory 
adjoining his summer home at Nahant. Together we dissected the 
sharks and rays that were brought in by the fishermen. To the para- 
phrase, “ No naturalist is a hero to his laboratory assistant,” he was 


7° James Herbert Morse, Harvard, ’63. 

7 See his report as director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology for 
1867, p. 10. 

* The full merits of the case may never be understood, and this is not the 
place for its discussion; but in the light of my own experience with him, on the 
one hand, and with my pupils and assistants, on the other, I incline toward his 
view of it. 

VOL. LXxI.—2 


18 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


an exception. For me that summer was a scientific idyl. That the 
pleasures of my memory of it are less than perfect is due to my later 
realization of how inadequately I appreciated my privileges and oppor- 
tunities. Three specifications in the general charge of my unworthi- 
ness will serve to set his own tact and delicacy in a clearer light. 

A fisherman brought a hammer-head shark. Although familiar 
with pictures of its rather strange form, I had never seen a specimen, 
and expressed my interest somewhat exuberantly. The man named a 
certain price, and Agassiz paid it. When he had gone, Agassiz said to 
me seriously, but with no shade of rebuke: “ This shark is not so very 
rare, but your outspoken surprise led the. man to ask about twice what 
it was really worth.” After that I would have held my peace in the 
presence of the “ sea-serpent.” 

Agassiz was paying me one dollar per hour, an arrangement con- 
venient for both, especially in the summer. I wished to learn stenog- 
raphy, and studied that early in the day, going to him about nine o’clock. 
One hot July morning I found him grieving over the rapid deteriora- 
tion of some specimens that had been brought in at daybreak. I ex- 
plained the cause of my delay, and added that, but for the necessity of 
earning my living, I would gladly work for him all the time and for 
nothing, in return for what I learned from him. “ Ah,” he said, “I 
hoped you felt so, but I was not sure. Now we are like lovers after the 
important word has been spoken.” Not for all the short-hand systems 
ever devised would I lose the memory of those words and of the look 
that accompanied them. 

In those days (it was forty years ago) it might fairly be said that 
about the brain, zoologists knew little and cared less. No one of my 
teachers had made a special study of either its structure or its func- 
tions.*® That summer, however, Agassiz studied the brains of sharks 
and rays, exposing them by “ whittling” the cartilaginous skulls with 
a jack-knife given him by Longfellow (who, by the way, made a visit 
to the laboratory). He compared the various forms with the only pub- 
lished plate we had (that of Dumeril), and would sit poring over 
them by the hour. Occasionally he would show them to me, and ask 
if I would not like to work at them. (Remember that he was paying 
me out of his own pocket and was entitled to assign all the subjects.) 
No, I had started upon some other parts of the anatomy, and was 
indifferent. That is too mild a term; I must have been a com- 
pound of a mole and a mule. He sighed and gave it up. That I 
then made the mistake of my life I did not perceive until years after- 
ward, too late to repair the loss. Now, by way of atonement, I in- 


* In 1844 and 1845 Agassiz published two short papers upon the brains of 
fishes; in “ A Journey in Brazil,” p. 244, note, he deplores the loss, in a storm, 
of a lot of brain preparations in a cask that had been left on deck. In the last 
but one of the twenty lectures given at Cornell University, he said, “ The brain 
is the organ that determines the rank of animals.” 


WHAT WE OWE TO AGASSIZ 19 


sist that the objective study of the brain should begin in the primary 
school,*° and I look forward—however undeservedly—to the period 
when no other subject need claim my attention. At times, however, I 
speculate as to what part of the nether world is paved with ignored 
advice and neglected opportunities. 

His helpful attitude toward prospective teachers was exhibited in 
the following incidents. After my appointment to Cornell University 
in October, 1867, he arranged for me to give at the Museum a course 
of six “ University Lectures,” and warned me to prepare for them care- 
fully because he should give me a “raking down.” He attended them 
all (at what interruption of his own work I realize better now) and 
discussed them and my methods very frankly with me. 

A year later, while at Ithaca, he attended several of my lectures 
upon physiology, although they broke up his forenoons and the subject 
did not interest him particularly. After one he expressed his approval 
of its simplicity and the absence of hifalutin,** and advised me to 
counteract the effect of lecturing by investigation. Another lecture 
dealt with the structure and functions of the heart, for the illustration 
of which we had excellent charts and models although not, at that time, 
any actual specimens. I believed that I had done very well, and 
accompanied him down the hill toward his hotel in the hope that he 
would say something complimentary. All he said was, “ After lec- 
turing upon a subject I have found it a good plan to go to work and 
study it some more.” Then he began to talk of the glacial scratches 
upon a big rock that we passed. The justice of his criticism was equal 
to the delicacy of its conveyance. 

The work done by me here in 1871-3 upon the brains and embryos 
of domesticated animals has been referred to already as one of the 
indirect benefits conferred by Agassiz upon this university. His satis- 
faction with the results evidently led him to make a most honorable 
overture and invitation. On the seventeenth of November, 1872, he 
wrote a letter beginning: “I wish I could have you permanently in 
Cambridge as professor in connection with the Museum and the Uni- 
versity. The first thing to know is whether such a plan would suit 
you and under what conditions you could accept a proposition, etc.” 
The matter was discussed at more length in letters dated December 
7, 1872, and September 10, 1873. It has never been mentioned before 
by me, but there seems to be no longer reason for reticence. 

The second letter contained also the invitation to be one of the 
instructors at the summer school already mentioned on p. 12. He 


* Upon this point see my papers in Science, December 17, 1897, p. 903, and 
May 26, 1905, p. 814. 

“This, the only approach to slang that I recall from his lips, doubtless 
referred to my introduction of a somewhat far-fetched quotation from Shake- 
speare in an address before the Harvard Natural History Society, reproduced 
in the American Naturalist, Vol. L., p. 421; it was my first and last transgres- 
sion of the kind. 


20 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


wrote: “Among my plans is a course of practical instruction in 
Natural History at the seashore, during the summer months, chiefly 
with the view of preparing teachers to introduce Natural History into 
our schools. . . .” 

In the two cases just mentioned it may be said that the advantage 
was mutual although mine much more than his. But in the following 
instance his words and deeds can bear no other interpretation than 
disinterested willingness to aid another at his own inconvenience. 

In preparing for a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute 
I wished to dissect the limbs of certain rare animals which we could 
neither collect nor afford to buy. On making my wants known to him 
he promptly took a knife, went with me to the museum store-rooms, 
and with his own hands cut an arm and a leg from each of several 
precious specimens. In thanking him I said J had reason to believe 
that the invitation to give the course was due largely to his having 
taken the trouble to commend me to the curator; and that I wished he 
would let me make return by doing some work for him without com- 
pensation. He replied, emphatically, “I could not think of it; it is 
my business to help young men.” 

In Agassiz were combined five qualities, not uncommon singly or 
even by twos and threes, but rarely so completely united or so highly 
developed in one personality, viz., attractiveness, eloquence, strength, 
energy and helpfulness. As distinguished from Napoleon, from Bis- 
marck, from Goethe, and even from Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 
Agassiz was at once fascinating, persuasive, powerful, active and up- 
lifting. Under my personal observation have come but two others 
comparable with him in this most potent combination of great qualities, 
viz., Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks. They were preachers; 
so was he. They based their ministrations upon what they regarded 
as the Word of God; he drew his texts from what, with equal faith, 
he held to be the works of a Divine Creator. They were also alike 
in this; never was voice or hand raised otherwise than for the better- 
ment of mankind. 

On returning from Penikese in the fall of 1873 I went to the mu- 
seum to arrange some specimens, when he came in and reproached me 
for not letting him know I was there. I explained that I knew he 
was tired and ill and that I would not take his time. He replied, 
“ Doctor, you are always kind,” and those last words have been trea- 
sured as a benediction. This coming fifth of September it will be 
thirty-four years since I beheld my teacher, friend and benefactor in 
the flesh, but in my mind’s eye his image will never fade. Take him 
for all in all I ne’er shall look upon his like again. Would that it 
might be justly said of all great men, as I now say of Agassiz: The 
sun shone brighter at his birth, and shadowed when he died. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 21 


NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 


By FRED DELAND 


PITTSBURGH, PA. 


X. Earty AERIAL TELEPHONE CABLES 


ROBABLY John I. Sabin was the first telephone man to use an 
aerial cable. In connecting his line in San Francisco in 1879, 
he did not run his circuits into a cupola, as was then the fashion, but 
employed several lengths of a special cable made by Eugene F. Phillips, 
of Providence. This cable was composed of forty No. 20 soft drawn 
copper wires, double braided with cotton, then double wrapped in 
reverse order with rubber paper, the whole being wound with a cotton 
or jute covering. It cost 20 cents a foot at the factory. It was sus- 
pended by using long canvas slings about two feet apart and attached 
to two heavy iron wires. 
In referring to the growth in overhead circuits, Mr. Phillips stated 
that: 


The natural increase in the number of aerial wires created a demand for 
better insulation and grouping in cables. Hundreds of miles of No. 12 iron wire 
were braided and dipped in suitable compound for this use. The annoyance from 
induction soon made a call for anti-induction cable. This want was supplied by 
a tin-foil cable so called, in which each conductor, after being insulated, was 
enclosed in a strip of this tin-foil. Cotton-covered wires to the extent of 50 or 
100 were cabled together, and after being saturated with paraffine were placed in 
a lead pipe. This style of aerial cable, although quite satisfactory, has to a 
great extent been replaced by the paper-insulation underground cable of the 
present day. 


Aerial cables were in use in New York City late in 1879, and before 
the close of 1880 a total of over 75,000 feet was in use in the city and 
on the Brooklyn Bridge, principally of ten-conductor capacity. In 
September, 1880, C. E. Chinnock told the delegates to the first tele- 
phone convention: 


We have over the East River bridge at the present time, four cables, 3,800 feet 
long, each cable with seven conductors, These cables have taken the place of 
cables that were previously there with the ordinary kerite and gutta-percha 
insulation. In using the cables and talking on one wire, you could hear what- 
ever was said on another wire, and by wrapping each conductor with lead and 
grounding at intervals, all of the escape and all induction were completely 
eliminated. These cables have been in use, two of them for six months, and one 
for nine months, and are now working perfectly. 


In May, 1880, W. D. Sargent used a lead-covered aerial cable to 
connect two exchanges in Philadelphia. This cable was made by 
David Brooks, Jr., son of the inventor of the Brooks cable. It was 


22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


composed of 42 twisted pairs of No. 18 cotton-covered wires, which 
were wrapped together and drawn into a lead pipe one inch in diameter. 
Then a mixture of melted paraffine and rosin was poured into the pipe, 
the whole forming a solid mass on cooling. This cable was about 
600 feet in length and was suspended from three heavy iron wires by 
loops made of No. 14 iron wire. 

At one of the telephone conventions C. N. Fay stated that 
the use of cables for telephone purposes in Chicago began in 1879, when a 50- 
wire Brooks oil-pipe cable, 925 feet long, was placed in the Washington Street 
tunnel under the bed of the Chicago River. The conductors were made of No. 20 
copper wire, insulated with cotton, and drawn through an iron gas-pipe pre- 
viously polished smooth on the inside. The ends of the pipe were elevated, and 
upon each end was placed a reservoir capable of holding three or four gallons 
of paraffine oil. After the pipe was put in place, the cable was drawn through. 
Paraffine oil was then poured into the reservoirs until the pipe was filled from 
end to end and both reservoirs were full, when the caps were screwed on and the 
whole made tight. There was a loss of oil from evaporation and leakage through 
the pipe, requiring a refilling about once in six months. In 1880, a 75-pair 
cable of similar construction, 450 feet long, was placed in the LaSalle Street 
tunnel under the Chicago River; another one being placed in the spring of 1881. 
In 1884, all the oil-pipe cables were in good and satisfactory working condition. 
... The first aerial cable was put up in Chicago in September, 1852, and was a 
50-pair Patterson cable 1,350 feet long. 

Six Brooks oil-pipe cables were in use early in 1880 in Milwaukee. 
Each cable was about five hundred feet in length and composed of fifty 
single conductors, and all were considered “ very satisfactory.” 

It is of historical interest to note that in April, 1843, S. F. B. Morse 
detailed to the Secretary of the Treasury the specifications under which 
forty miles of a four-conductor lead-covered cable would be made. 
Each wire was to be 
once covered with cotton thread, to receive two coatings of shellac varnish; then 
wound with a different colored twine to designate, in case of necessity, any par- 
ticular wire in any part of the course. The four lengths are then laid side by 
side and bound together in a single cord by another winding of cotton twine. 
The conductors thus prepared are ready to be introduced into the lead pipe. 


XI. Forctinc TELEPHONE WIRES UNDERGROUND 


When the underground question first came up, the leading telephone 
companies made it clear to the authorities of the respective municipali- 
ties, that any hesitancy in removing overhead wires and placing them 
underground was not due to an unwillingness to make the additional 
and very large investment necessary, but to contending with obstacles 
that then appeared insurmountable. There was no practical under- 
ground system suitable for telephone distribution in American cities. 
Several experimental systems were being. promoted, but all appeared to 
possess little practical value. One promoter laid a half-mile of his 
pipe underground and then invited a large number of telephone, tele- 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 23 


graph and electric-light men to thoroughly inspect the condition of 
pipes and wires. Following this inspection came a banquet of nine 
courses, at which eight different wines were served to more than a hun- 
dred guests. Referring to proposed drastic legislative action to force 
the wires underground, David Brooks wrote on March 13, 1882: 

I have every reason to believe that the great quantity of poles and wires 
that are now so objectionable in our streets may be dispensed with in the future, 
and while the company is so earnestly engaged in testing this problem of under- 
ground wires, I can see no good result to be obtained by the passage of these 
bills. It will be to their interest to make an underground system whenever it is 
practicable. 

The attitude of the parent Bell company on the underground ques- 
tion is shown in President Forbes’ annual report dated March 18, 
1882, in which he states that 
our experiments in underground cables, while not as successful as we had hoped, 
have given sufficient promise of satisfactory results to warrant us in under- 
taking at considerable expense to test the different methods. With this object, 
we have asked permission to put down cables in Boston, and, as soon as the 
needed consent is obtained, we propose to make careful and thorough practical 
tests of the best systems offered. . . . The cost of replacing an extensive over- 
head system in a large city is so serious that it can not be hastily decided upon; 
yet, if the wires can be laid underground and made to work rightly, at a cost 
which will not be prohibitory, it is hoped that the service will be better than 
now, and the cost of operating less than by overhead wires. 


The first Morse telegraph patent of June 20, 1840, refers to the 
wires being laid underground, and a portion of his first telegraph line 
was buried, but proved inoperative, while on a section built with the 
aid of cattle-horns used to support the line on and insulate it from a 
stone viaduct, good service was secured. But the first American patent 
for underground lines was issued in 1869, and it was the only one 
issued until 1873, when two more were issued. A total of twenty-one 
patents were issued prior to 1880, when, in that year, seventeen were 
issued, and twenty-eight in 1881. Aerial as well as underground con- 
duits, evidently based on the old Graves method of 1858, or the Carter 
of 1875, were also suggested as a remedy for the multiplicity of over- 
head wires, and elaborate systems supported upon iron posts or columns 
erected either on one side of a street or overarching the roadway and 
supporting the wires in the center were made, upon paper, to appear 
very attractive, and earnestly advocated as a practical public improve- 
ment. In fact, the opinion was expressed at the third telephone con- 
vention held at Saratoga Springs, that 
with a light and ornamental aerial cable support the requirements of the public 
could be satistied and the introduction of subterranean wires obviated entirely 
or confined wholly to important trunk routes. ... The Scott elevated wire-way 
system consists of cupolas located upon housetops, separated at any convenient 


distance and connected by a suitable tube, through which wires to the number 
of two or three hundred are drawn and properly connected at the cupolas. The 


24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tube is preferably made of rubber and braided fabric upon a spiral foundation 
of wire, by which the tube retains its circular form. The tube is suspended 
from a supporting wire of sufficient strength to stand the strain of severe wind 
and the weight of accumulated ice and snow. The wires, which may be either 
well insulated or even the ordinary braided or double-wound wire, can be drawn 
in singly or in groups and connections made at the cupolas. The tube, being 
impervious to moisture, the channel inside will remain perfectly dry. Since 
the last report of the committee, it has been introduced on a limited scale in the 
city of Boston and it will soon be extended. 

While no underground system satisfactory to telephone men was 
available in 1880-3, a few wires had been laid underground and some 
experience of an expensive character gained. For instance, the Western 
Union carried out some costly experiments with underground wires in 
New York City during the four years, 1876-80. In 1876, two 4-inch 
iron pipes were laid from the main office to Pier 18, a distance of one 
third of a mile. In each pipe 


was placed a cable of sixty conductors, the wires insulated with gutta-percha, 
and wound separately with a layer of tarred tape, the whole covered with a 
double layer of heavy tape tarred and run through sand to prevent sticking to 


the pipes. 

These cables were connected to the submarine cables running to Jersey 
City. In 1876, a 12-conductor cable about 2,200 feet in length was 
laid between the main office, 195 Broadway, and the branch office on 
Broad Street. Owing to the proximity of steam pipes and the de- 
structive effect of gas on the insulation, these cables were short-lived. 
In 1880, a new 28-conductor cable was laid between the same offices. 
Before the end of 1882, eleven of the conductors were useless. In 
May, 1882, sixty circuits were laid between 195 Broadway and 134 
Pearl Street, only to be abandoned within a year, every circuit having 
failed within seven months. On November 28, 1888, it was stated 
that the result of the Western Union 

experiments during the past twelve years proves that there is no form of under- 
ground cable and conduit which can be depended upon to give more than four or 
five years’ service under the most favorable circumstances. 

In 1878, John P. Barrett, superintendent of the city telegraph 
system, placed the fire-alarm and police signal wires underground for 
a distance of 840 feet on a handsome residence street in Chicago. 
Two-inch iron pipe, the interior of which was heavily coated with tar, 
was laid underground and into this pipe two kerite insulated wires were 
drawn. ‘Ten years later it was stated that these wires had given no 
trouble and were in ‘ practically as good a condition to-day as when so 
placed.’ 

Submarine telegraph cables were in use thirty years before the first 
telephone exchange was opened. Referring to the first one used in this 
country, Henry A. Reed said: 


This cable was of No. 9 iron wire, insulated to the thickness of half an inch 
and was made in 1847 by Stephen Armstrong in Brooklyn, N. Y. It was laid 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE ~— 25 


across the North River at about Fort Lee. It only worked a few days when it 
was dragged out of place by a ship’s anchor. The first iron-armored cable was 
made by S. C. Bishop in 1852, and was used across the North River, above Cold 
Spring. This cable was of No. 14 copper wire with an insulation the size of 
No. 0, protected by jute and armored with iron wire about No. 8. 


Submarine telephone cables were used in 1879 by several companies 
in crossing rivers and bays, notably in Chicago and Milwaukee, and 
Patterson telephone cables were placed in the Washington Street tunnel 
crossing under the Chicago River, in 1879, as previously stated. But 
probably the first telephone cables that formed a part of a regular 
underground system were laid in Pittsburg in 1881, by Henry Metzger. 
Three lead-covered cables were laid on Fifth Avenue between the ex- 
change and a distributing pole, about a thousand feet distant. The 
cables were composed of 50 single conductors of No. 26 copper wire, 
and were placed in a wooden box, 6 x 8 inches, made of one-inch plank, 
that was then filled with asphalt and laid inside the curb below the 
frost line. No manholes were used, but connecting wires were spliced 
with a T-joint. In June, 1882, Mr. Metzger laid eight more Patterson 
cables underground, the longest being 2,200 feet in length, composed 
of No. 18 B. & S. single copper wires. These cables gave good service 
for a number of years. That same year, 1882, the New England Tele- 
phone and Telegraph Company laid two Patterson 50-pair cables in 
Boston, for’ metallic circuit service. The lead-covered cables were 
drawn in iron pipes laid in cement. One cable was 1,200 feet and the 
other 1,485 feet in length; both were composed of No. 22 wire, cotton 
covered. One was laid in Pearl Street in October, the other in 
Franklin Street in November, 1882. 

On May 20, 1882, Professor Chas. R. Cross, in considering the 
various electrical problems involved in the introduction of underground 
telephone cables wrote: 

In the first place it should be remembered that the number of wires in for- 
eign cities is probably not more than one fifth as great as in American cities of 
equal size. Thus in Bruges, Belgium, a city of 50,000 inhabitants, there is but 
one telegraph office, that at the railway station; in Ghent, with 120,000 inhabit- 
ants, there is but one telegraph office; in Antwerp, with its enormous commerce, 
there are but two, one being at the railway station; and in Brussels proper, 
only one office except at the railroad stations. 

In London and Paris almost all messages are sent from the outlying offices 
to the central telegraph office by means of pneumatic tubes, and the telegraphic 
despatches sent from there. From these facts it will be seen that the absolute 
number of underground wires in foreign cities is much less than is popularly 
supposed. Contrast in this respect Boston and suburbs, with 377,000 inhabitants 
and forty-nine telegraph offices, and Brussels and suburbs with 315,000 inhabit- 
ants, and eight or at most ten offices. 

In April, 1882, thirty-eight sections of a lead-encased telephone 
cable were laid underground between the two tracks of the Boston & 
Providence Railroad extending from the depot in Attleboro to West 


26 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Mansfield, a distance of about five miles. The cable was made by 
Eugene F. Phillips in sections of five hundred and thirty feet, and con- 
nected by means of junction boxes, and he gave the readers of the 
Electrical World (March 4, 1899), an interesting account of the man- 
ner in which the cable was laid. In part, Mr. Phillips said: 

In 1882 the American Bell Telephone Company, wishing to make some prac- 
tical experiments on telephonic transmission with underground wires, ordered 
of us a cable to be 5 miles in length, containing twenty-one wires of No. 20 
B. & S. gauge, a majority of which were to be insulated with rubber and the 
balance braided with cotton and paraffined; part of the conductors to be covered 
with tinfoil, and part twisted in pairs for metallic circuit; also a single con- 
ductor of No. 13 B. & S. gauge braided and paraffined. We believe this was 
the first underground experiment made for the American Bell Telephone Com- 
pany, and the laying of this cable was a red letter day for us. The American 
Bell sent an engine and one open-end freight box car, which carried the 5 miles 
of cable we had already made to Attleboro, as well as fifty men for a working 
force. In laying this cable a trench was started by means of pick and shovel, 
but it was soon found the hard roadbed was by no means easy digging. A plow 
was borrowed of one of the farmers and attached to the outrigger from the truck 
of a car, pulled by an engine. As we were unable to hire oxen or horses to plow 
with, this idea was suggested by W. H. Sawyer, and it made a fine specimen of 
plowing, the like of which was probably never before witnessed. When the 
trench was completed, two plows had actually been consumed in the process. 
The cable was placed at the end of the car and paid out into the trench as the 
car moved along, and close behind the plow in the furrow. The filling of the 
trench was also another great conundrum; the gang started with shovels and 
hoes to do this, but it at once became evident that it would be a week’s work 
with the force at command. Again Sawyer’s inventive genius came to the rescue. 
At his suggestion a joist was procured, and one end lashed to the cowcatcher of 
the engine, the other end extending out over the trench on the side where the 
dirt had been thrown. The engine was started, and the entire length of the 
trench and cable was soon covered, much to the pleasure and satisfaction 
of those looking on as well as those responsible for the filling. 


Notwithstanding that prior to 1890 no underground system proved 
satisfactory from a telephone engineer’s point of view, yet the rapidity 
with which the telephone companies responded to the public demand 
that the wires be placed underground is apparent from the fact that 
while the underground movement started in 1881, at the close of 1884 
there were 1,225 miles of wire underground, and ten years after the 
first telephone cables were placed underground, over 70,000 miles of 
wires were in subterranean ducts. To-day over one half of the total 
mileage of telephone circuits in use by Bell subscribers is underground, 
that is, nearly three million miles of copper wire are buried in the earth. 


XII. Tue Errecr oF Evecrric Street LIGHTING ON TELEPHONE 
SERVICE 

While an inability to dispose of the securities of the local com- 

panies retarded the growth in subscribers in many exchanges, in 1883-5, 

other causes were also hindering the expansion of the telephone in- 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 27 


dustry. One cause was the rapid introduction of electric-light circuits, 
so poorly insulated as to sadly interfere with good telephone service 
and necessitating the rearrangement or reconstruction of many tele- 
phone circuits. As already stated, the first street lighting occurred in 
Cleveland in April, 1879, with Brush arc lamps. In San Francisco 
the Western Electric Light Company was organized by G. S. Ladd, and 
on February 6, 1879, was supplying current for private service accord- 
ing to The Bulletin, which said: 

Yesterday the Western Electric Light Company made connection with the Gold 
& Stock Telegraph Company, and now all the electricity used in running their 
stock indicators throughout the city is supplied from the Gramme machines, 
thus doing away with five hundred cups, which heretofore composed their battery. 
It is stated that arc lamps were in service in San Francisco in October, 
1879, the rate then charged being $10 a week when burning from dark 
till midnight. 

It was fortunate for the continued broadening of the telephone 
industry that it got a strong foothold before the parent electric-light 
companies began to devote their energies to belittling each others 
machinery and motives, or to determine whether it was wiser “to 
advocate the use of sixteen small single light are machines, with their 
costly system of conductors, or one sixteen-light are dynamo,” in- 
stead of perfecting the insulation on pole line circuits, even if they 
did not increase the efficiency of their apparatus. Otherwise the elec- 
tric transmission of speech might have had a different growth recorded. 
For the character of the crude and cheap telephone construction preva- 
lent in 1878-80 would not have been tolerated by the public in 1882-3, 
by reason of the number of violent deaths resulting from accidental 
contact with live wires, deplorable accidents that started a rabid agita- 
tion in favor of placing all wires underground. No underground 
system suitable for telephone circuits was then in existence, and had 
one been available, the heavy initial cost of installation would probably 
have deterred many investors from entering the telephone field under 
such unpromising conditions. 

In New York state alone more than a hundred electric-lighting 
companies, having an average authorized capitalization exceeding 
a million dollars each, were incorporated before the close of 1883. 
And as the electric lighting industry was raw and untried, as suitable 
or even satisfactory line insulation had yet to be devised and tested, 
and as competition among electric-light companies in many sections 
was destructively fierce, it is needless to say that the unsafe con- 
struction of the average competing electric-light company was such 
a menace to the satisfactory continuity of telephone service that 
telephone managers were compelled to forego making verbal or writ- 
ten indignant protests, and to devote every moment of time to de 
vising methods and means for protecting their equipment from the 


28 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


destructive effects of stray currents. Even then, imperfect protection 
resulted in the complete or partial destruction of several telephone 
exchanges. Following the destruction of one exchange, Mr. A. 8. Hib- 
bard suggested that in view of the delay in getting large switchboards 
in emergencies, it would be a wise thing in the way of insurance, if a 
number of telephone companies would jointly buy a complete central 
office equipment, to be built and held in convenient storage, with the 
understanding that it should go to the first company whose exchange 
was burned, and that.that company would pay its cost price or replace 
it with new equipment. 

Referring to the introduction of electric-light circuits, Mr. W. J. 
Denver told the members of the Boston Electric Club: 


I remember the first time the are lights were exhibited in my native city, 
and what a tumult was caused at the telephone office. An electric light circuit 
was strung, using the ground for a return and four or five lights were placed 
upon it. Immediately on the starting of the dynamo, up went the lights and 
down went the switchboard drops, and the confusion of tongues consequent upon 
the building of the tower of Babel was as the stillness of death compared to the 
racket on the telephone wires. . . . The remedy was evident; double the light 
circuit, which was done the next day. 

When the electric-light industry started, the electric lighting fra- 
ternity turned to the telegraphers for assistance and advice, just as the 
telephone men did. But the electric-light men also had the advantage 
of the experience gained by telephone men in building local circuits. 
It is written that the first electric-light switching devices were derived 
from the telegraph switch, only enlarged to accommodate the greater 
volume of current. The strap key, the telegraph key and the switch- 
board plug were all utilized in central-station electric lighting, and the 
arc that formed between the terminals following the withdrawal of the 
plugs was usually blown out with the breath, or whipped out with a 
cloth, or extinguished with a handful of sand. 

In other words, the same degree of crudeness was just as strongly 
in evidence in primitive electric-light plants as in the pioneer telephone 
exchanges. And, as one writer stated it in 1882, 
there are electric-light charlatans as well as medical quacks, charlatans totally 
ignorant of the electrical laws, and with no experience in electric lighting. 

One point worthy of note is that the telephone engineer soon found 
that he must not only be able to solve telephone problems, but must 
also be thoroughly conversant with every phase of electric lighting, 
and then of electric power and of electric traction that was in any 
manner likely to have a bearing on or to influence the character of tele- 
phone service. Thus, as the editor of The Electrical World has so 
concisely stated: 


In the telephonic engineering done by Carty and his colleagues there is no par- 
allel whatsoever to be found in any other branch of electrical engineering. 


RAVAR 4. 
oo*“PHEY GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 29 


ie to) Sa 
oe ae g OA 
g.. aU RNS 
ae ox t 
&- i oo Me et at 
‘oa beg 


* ‘inne GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 
By ROBERT ANDERSON 


WASHINGTON, D. C. 


SO-SAN, or Mount Aso, is a living volcano in the heart of the 
island Kiushiu, Japan, whose peaks rise to a height of several 
thousand feet out of a gigantic bowl. This bowl, which is many 
miles across, is an ancient crater surpassing in size all other known 
craters nearer than the moon. Some 5,000 people, grouped in half 
a hundred villages on the old floor, are living to-day, tilling the vol- 
canic soil and trading in this vast crater, round about the base of the 
new and ever-active cone that has risen in it. 

Kiushiu is the most southern of the four main islands in the 
Japanese archipelago. It is about 17,000 square miles in extent and 
is therefore larger than Vancouver Island, or almost equal in area 
to Massachusetts and New Hampshire combined. It is built up of 
very ancient rocks, both sedimentary and igneous, belonging to the 
paleozoic and mesozoic eras, as well as of younger rocks, and upon 
these as a foundation has been erected in more recent times, partly 
during the age of man, a superstructure of volcanic materials which 
now covers many thousand square miles, or about one half the area 
of the island. It contains twenty volcanoes, counting two that are 
just off the coast to the south, of which eight are now active. Among 
them Aso-san is on far the largest scale, though now it is in a decadent 
stage and is surpassed in activity by two or more of the others. Japan 
through all past ages has been a land of extraordinary geological 
activity, possessed of a vital energy which, continuing in force up 
to modern times, has been emphasized by the changes in level of its 
coasts and heralded by its ever-vigorous volcanoes. It is far from 
being a land solely of volcanoes and volcanic formations, as is some- 
times thought, for these assume insignificance when compared with 
the wide areas and great thicknesses of strata that are representative 
of almost every stage of the geological column. But that it is a 
country of great volcanoes there can be no doubt. They have flourished 
ever since the beginning of its geological history and to-day there are 
164 independent volcanic cones, or colonies of related cones, scattered 
through the Japanese islands, including the Kuriles and the Liu Kiu 
chains. Of this number 54 are now actively grumbling and nursing 
their wrath and occasionally losing all control. Fuji-san and Aso-san 
are the kings, although others surpass them in destructive activity. 
The first is famed for the height and regularity of its cone as one 
among the preeminently symmetrical and beautiful volcanoes of the 


30 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


world. The other is almost unknown except among the Japanese, 
although its immense crater is the largest of all that have yet been 
found on this globe. 

The center of Kiushiu is about 600 miles distant from Yokohama 
and Tokio by the ordinary routes of travel, and by far the best way 
to reach Aso-san is from Nagasaki, whence one of two routes may be 
followed—either far around from the peninsula on which Nagasaki is 
situated, a distance of 150 miles by railroad to Kumamoto, a city on 
the west coast of Kiushiu, within 25 miles of the voleano, or most 
of the way by sea, a distance of 75 miles to the same city. 

The pilgrim or traveler who mounts to the walls of the castle of 
Kumamoto and looks eastward over the green and gardened city and 
over the rich plain bordering the bay of Shimabara, off to the moun- 
tains that form the backbone of the island, sees the massive, sacred, 
god-mountain Aso above a long blue chain. A thrill passes through 
him as he sees a white cloud streamer waft horizontally across the grey 
clouds around the summit or, rolling into a ball, float upward lke a 
thistle-down. The white cloud is soon dissipated, but another born 
from the mountain takes its place as soon, and one knows that here 
is a volcano, that the god of the mountain is alive. Hundreds of 
Japanese visit Aso-san every year to pay their homage to the deity that 
the mountain represents, but only rarely has it been visited by 
foreigners.* 

During the spring of 1905 the writer and his brother, Malcolm 
Anderson, and their friend, Kiyoshi Kanai, spent several weeks in the 
vicinity of Aso-san, staying for many days in one of the villages in 
‘the old crater, living in native Japanese fashion and coming in touch 
with the spirit of the people and the natural history of the region. 
The way from the west coast to the mountain lies across the Kumamoto 
plain among little open fields that in the spring are richly colored with 
deep green wheat and yellow mustard, along a broad avenue eighty 
feet wide marshaled by stately cryptomeria trees whose handsome 
bark and foliage remind one of their big cousins—the California 
redwoods. Beyond the village of Seta at the edge of the lowland, 
some 13 miles from Kumamoto, one is led up into the mountains by 
a gentle ascent, the volcano itself being all this time hidden by the 
intervening slopes. But a backward view reveals the lesser volcano 
Kimbo-san rising as an independent cone near the sea, and if the 
day affords one of the clear Japanese skies, which unfortunately are 
only too rare but which are so beautiful when they come, one sees the 


The only mention of Aso and its crater that the writer knows of is in an 
article by the geologist, John Milne, in The Popular Science Review, New Series, 
Vol. IV., No. 16, October, 1880, and in Murray’s ‘Handbook for Japan,’ by 
Chamberlain and Mason.- The former is an English periodical that has long 
since ceased publication. 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 31 


great destructive volcano Unzen-dake springing up to nearly 5,000 
feet on the peninsula of Shimabara over across the gulf. One travels 
to Aso-san as one chooses, either on foot, in a jinrikisha, or in the 
funny little perambulating dry-goods box known as a basha, the Japa- 
nese adaptation of the English stagecoach. We preferred to walk, 
and upon leaving the plain we enjoyed many picturesque miles up the 
cascading stream Shirakawa. For the first night out from Kumamoto we 
stopped at a modest little inn, being driven by a pouring rain to take 
shelter at the hamlet of Tateno, which is perched high up on the side 
of the canyon that the road follows, at an elevation of about 1,200 feet 
above the sea. From there on the canyon of the Shirakawa becomes 
more precipitous in outline, and a short tramp in the early morning 
along the mountain slopes above it brought us to its brink at a point 
where it forked and cut squarely across our path. Here, pillared walls 
formed of roughly columnar lava, through which the stream has cut 
a grand gorge, drop sheer several hundred feet, and the path descends 
a zigzag course to their foot, where the two forks toss into one stream 
over a boulder-strewn bed. Near here a hot saline spring surrounded 
by the hamlet of Tochinoki, where many bathers come, give the first 
evidence of the proximity of the volcanic center. 

Whichever of the two forking streams one follows, one presently 
comes up upon a broad plain that is surrounded by heights on every 
side and that curves around in the form of a great crescent. But, 
instead of ordinary mountains, the outer convex curve of the crescent 
is ringed about with an even-topped wall rising on the average about 
1,500 feet, while the concave side is bordered by a great rugged moun- 
tain mass attaining a height of over 4,000 feet above the plain. The 
configuration of the region is absolutely unique and one is at a loss to 
understand its significance until later on, climbing the mountains and 
gaining expansive views over the whole broad domain of Aso. The 
truth is this: That a vast oval crater basin occupies the region, but 
is divided in two by a range of mountains that has risen across its 
center diametrically. The two portions of the crater thus cut off are 
the two crescent-shaped plains, whose level bottoms are formed by the 
old crater floor, whose outer surrounding walls are its rim, while the 
inner side of each is walled in by the great dividing range. There 
is but one opening in the ramparts hemming in these basins. It is 
where the western end of the central range meets the bounding wall. 
Each of the two halves of the crater is drained by a stream, and these 
small rivers uniting around the base of the central range at this 
western end, flow through the common outlet—the grand gateway 
through which we made our entrance. It is 10 miles across the 
crater from west to east in the diameter occupied by the dividing 
mountain ridge, while from wall to wall from south to north it is 
14 miles. These figures, it must be stated, are only estimates, but a 


32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


number have agreed that they are approximately correct. The oval 
area occupied by this volcanic bowl is thus over 100 square miles, an 
area half as large again as the District of Columbia. 

The crater of Aso is both for size and structure unique among the 
craters of the world. The Hawaiian volcanoes, with which Aso shows 
the most resemblance, are of greater bulk, but their craters, which are 
usually spoken of as the largest in the world, can not compare in 
size with that of Aso. The crater of Haleakala, according to Dana, is 
%14 by 214 miles in dimensions, and covers some 16 square miles. 
It has a greatest depth of 2,500 feet. The Kilauea crater, Dutton 
gives as 314 miles long by 214 miles wide and from 300 to 700 feet 
deep. The crater of Mauna Loa was measured by Alexander as 314 
by 184 miles in dimensions, with an area of 344 square miles. The 
islands of Santorin south of Greece in the Mediterranean preserve the 
remains of a crater 18 miles in circumference, and Pantellaria, between 
Sicily and Africa, one with dimensions of 8 miles by 6. The two 
Italian crater lakes, Bolsena and Bracciano, are of great size; the one 
is oval with a long diameter of 9 and a short diameter of 714 miles, 
and the other is a circle 6 miles wide. The crater of the volcano 
Palandoékan in Armenia is said by Bonney to be 6 miles in width. 
Among the volcanoes of the Canary Islands, Scrope mentions the 
cirque of Teneriffe, which contains a pit 2,000 feet deep and a high 
peak within it, as being 8 miles long by 6 miles wide, and Bonney the 
crater on the island of Palma as 9 miles in diameter. A crater on 
Mauritius is said by Dana to have a longest diameter of 13 miles. 
Among the great volcanoes of Java, according to Scrope, Papandyang 
has a crater with measurements of 15 by 6 miles, and Bromo one with 
diameter of 4 or 5 miles. Crater Lake in Oregon, described by Diller, 
is one of the most perfect. This nearly round pit is 4 or 5 by 6 miles 
in dimensions and has a depth of 4,000 feet. But Aso surpasses them 
all, with a crater equaling 2 or 3 times the combined volumes of the 
three great Hawaiian craters mentioned. 

The journey over the old floor in the midst of such novel surround- 
ings is a unique and pleasing one, but the stupendousness of the scene 
comes over one more strongly when he looks down upon it later from 
above. Our little party chose the southern of the two forks and fol- 
lowed it up for mile after mile along its gentle upper course. The 
distances proved elusive. We looked across the plain to the wall on 
the other side and it was only a little way, but still as we went the goal 
seemed no nearer. The ascent from the point of outlet of the streams 
is at first rather steep. Within about a mile, however, the fork that 
we followed bursts off the level of the crater floor in a picturesque 
waterfall. It is called by the Japanese Aigaeri, or “trout-return,” for 
beyond this the fish can ascend the stream no farther. The view 
upward to the mountains surrounding the plain on all sides is mag- 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 33 


UNCEMENTED MASONRY WALLS, 


Fic.1. THE CASTLE AT KUMAMOTO WITH ITS STRONG, 
The 


BUILT THREE CENTURIES AGO. This style of construction requires a slope to the walls. 
author and his brother ran a race to their top and found it quite possible to scale them. The 
superstructure of the castle was almost destroyed during the Satsuma rebellion in 1877. The 


view of Aso from the single remaining turret is magnificent. 


ASO RANGE. 


Fic. 2. Hor SPRINGS AT YUNATANI NEAR THE WESTERN END OF THE 
There is a small geyser here that spouts out boiling water and red mud. 


VOL, LXXI.—3 


34 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Fic. 3. PANORAMIC VIEW OF THE HIGHEST PORTION OF THE RANGE IN THE CENTER OF 
the highest peak of Aso-san. On the right is Neko-dake. Photo by Malcolm Anderson. 
nificent as one journeys on over the gently rolling surface of the 
basin floor. To the southwest the ring wall, elsewhere comparatively 
level-topped, rises up into mountain peaks that are between 2,500 and 
3,000 feet higher than the level of the plain. ‘To the north and north- 
east run the mountains that form the barrier between the two halves 
of the crater. They make up one massive, rugged ridge whose sum- 
mit is broken by several dominating peaks. It is this range or ridge 
that is named Aso-san. On the summit, but at the foot of the highest 
peaks, at a point about half way from end to end of the Aso ridge, 
is situated the modern active crater from which rose the cloud that 
we saw from Kumamoto. A view of the rising steam puffs is again 
obtained as one comes out into the widening plain above the waterfall. 
And as one goes farther and finally reaches the central and widest 
portion the view of the Aso range, which was at first an endwise one 
and eastward, opens out until one looks to the north upon it broad- 
side. There are three main peaks and many minor ones, the most 
striking of them being Neko-dake at the farther, eastern end. Its 
slopes have the graceful curving outlines characteristic of volcanic 
cones, and its summit is a jagged battlement of monumental lava pin- 
nacles looking somewhat as if they might be the remnants of a shat- 
tered crater. Its eastern flank drops down and ends the range by 
blending with the converging outer walls of the two basins. The 
next nearest peak is Taka-dake, a higher although less distinctive 
summit forming the culmination of the range. It is separated from 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 35 


THE CRATER, looking north across the southern half of the crater. 1n the center is Taka-dake 


Neko-dake by a depression of about 2,500 feet, out of which both 
mountains rise steeply. The ridge almost loses its continuity in this 
depression, so that Neko-dake is left as an isolated pyramid with 
truncated broken summit rising about 2,500 feet out of the highest 
part of the old crater to an elevation of 4,800 above the level of the 
sea. Taka-dake on the west side of the gap has an altitude of 5,600 
feet above the sea, and is about 4,000 feet above the crater floor around 
its base, and some 4,500 feet higher than the point where the two 
streams have their outlet. On the southwest flank of Taka-dake rises 
the half-dome summit of a third peak, Naka-dake, facing the southern 
basin with vertical cliffs of black rock that have the appearance of being 
the cross section of a lava flow. It is from a low point of the range 
west of this summit that the steam cloud issues from the small 
modern crater, whose cone is hidden from the southern basin by an 
outstretched flank of Naka-dake. West of the new crater is another 
low place which divides the highest portion of Aso from the continua- 
tion westward. This gap is about equidistant from the two ends of 
the range. West of it rise subordinate peaks along the ridge, which 
gradually sinks lower until it comes to an end near the outlet of the 
streams. The distance from west to east across the big crater of Aso 
along the line occupied by the central range is about ten miles. But 
following the curving course of the crescent basin it is much farther 
from one side to the other. By the road through the middle of the 
plain the distance is about eighteen miles. Our little party after 


36 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


passing through many hamlets and villages between long rows of small 
houses that line this main thoroughfare, at last, at a distance of twelve 
or thirteen miles from the stream outlet, reached Takamori which 
we had chosen as our goal. This is a prosperous small town with 
several hundred inhabitants, the chief center for the rich agricultural 
district hemmed within the volcanic heights of this southern half 
of the old crater. 

This whole district is one wide expanse of cultivated fields, a mosaic 
of little patches differently planted, unfenced and unbounded, stretching 
freely down the plain in endless kaleidoscopic variety. In the spring- 


Fic. 4. LOOKING SOUTHWEST ACROSS THE FLOOR OF THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE ASO 
CRATER AT A MUCH WORN PORTION OF THE SURROUNDING WALL. The town of Takamori 
shows as a spot of white in the distance on the left. bhoto by Malcolm Anderson. 


time wheat and mustard, growing tall and vigorously, are the domina- 
ting crops, and the rich green of the grain mingled with the brilliant 
vellow of the mustard blossoms spreads a gay succession of tints over 
the wide plain. Here and there a tree, or a cluster or line of trees, 
for the most part dark pines cr phantom bamboo groves, give a 
picturesque irregularity to the vast chess-board, standing like players 
on the light squares or the dark. The villages and groups of farm- 
homesteads with their conically roofed thatches appear as small as ant- 
hill colonies when viewed from above from one of the innumerable 
points of vantage round about, so small are they as compared with the 
breadth and depth and largeness of the scene of which they are a part. 


THE GRHAT JAPANESE VOLCANO_ ASO 37 


On a day in April that dawned cloudless and with a frosty chill the 
writer set out to reach the summit of Neko-dake, the ragged-topped 
mountain at the eastern end of the Aso chain. As I went among the 
little fields and along the hedgerows in the early morning, always 
choosing among many paths one that seemed to lead me eastward, for 
beyond Takamori no well-beaten road continues farther up the plain, I 
met several people setting out also for the day. Each one of them 
looked with wonder at me, a stranger, staring with curiosity but bowing 
courteously in reply to a morning’s greeting. One was a man with 
his faded bluish-grey kimono tucked up above his knees, leaving dis- 
played a considerable expanse of underwear, his calves swaddled in blue- 
canvas walking gaiters above the straw sandals on his feet, and his 
shoulders wrapped in a bright red blanket—a man with the worn brown 
countenance of a country traveler shaded by a sun-darkened straw hat. 
He was a type of wayfarer often seen in the out-of-the-way portions of 
Japan, who, touched by an expanding arc of the great wave of western- 
ization, has adopted a Iudicrous cross between the native and foreign 
dress, a cross that possesses all the characteristics of degeneracy from 
both of the parent stocks. The next man that passed carried on his 
shoulder a short wooden steel-bound mattock or hoe, such as the 
peasants use in cultivating the fields, and another led a bull stout of 
neck and sullen of countenance Jaden with a rough plow and other tools 
for the day’s work. These men were coming from their homes out to 
the particular little patches belonging to them somewhere in the plain. 
It is customary for the peasants to group their houses in small colonies 
and sometimes they go long distances to their work. Still another 
man, who came along the path empty-handed and empty-faced and out 
of work, was evidently quite resigned to the enforced leisure promising 
for that day. As I went farther and the day grew the fields became 
peopled here and there with men and women in small groups heartily 
beginning their task of digging and planting and nursing the ground. 
This is their daily occupation and so they live on peacefully, pay- 
ing no heed to the filmy cloud floating over the crest of the Aso ridge, 
which now disperses before the spring sun only to return, in one form 
or another as a misty veil over the mountain top, a dark smoke, or a 
silvery cumulus cloud standing bright on the blue sky. There is no 
thought of the living force of the volcano. 

The crater floor slopes upward from the outlet toward the east, and 
Takamori is several hundred feet higher than the level of the floor near 
the break in the walls where the streams flow out. It rises still more 
beyond Takamori and breaks from a fairly even plain into undulating 
hillocks which occupy the angle where the outer wall curving in con- 
verges with the Aso range. In this angle I reached the base of Neko- 
dake and the foot of the wall at the same time. The ascent was up a 
grass-grown ridge having an even slope of thirty degrees, but becoming 


38 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


narrow and ragged as it approached the rocky mountain top. At an 
elevation of 4,750 feet by my barometer, just under the brow of the 
summit, I caught a glimpse on approaching of what I took to be a 
lonely wild cherry tree in blossom far up here alone. It proved to be 
a group of bushes with their bare limbs and twigs bearing little balls of 
snow, remnants of the winter. 

From the mountain top a magnificent view opened and led me for 
the first time to a comprehension of the structure of the region. I had 
come from a deep basin on the south of the Aso range and here sud- 
denly was spread out on the north its almost exact counterpart. At 
about 3,000 feet below the peak on which I stood lay this other far- 
reaching plain which seemed to be the continuation of the southern 
one, while round its outer edge it was enclosed by a similar curving 
wall. The grandeur of the scale upon which all the lines in the scene 
were drawn made the outlook a most impressive one, and with the view 
came a sense of the magnitude of the forces that had been at work in 
molding the large details of such a landscape. The sight was such that 
it carried with it at once the appreciation of these two huge bowls as 
parts of a great crater, divided by a high, massive mountain partition. 

This crater is almost circular in appearance. Its rim forms a 
smooth sweeping curve around the whole circumference, broken only 
at the cleft on the west where the streams pass out, and on the east 
where it is joined by the slope of Neko-dake. The summit of this 
outer wall is remarkably even and its inner side precipitous. Although 
it presents rocky precipices at points on its face, its general slope is by 
no means perpendicular, but, being steeper as a rule than ordinary 
mountain slopes, it has a strikingly abrupt appearance. ‘This is espe- 
cially true in the case of the northern basin, where the wall facing the 
south is less gashed by lines of erosion, is more sheer, and has a more 
perfectly preserved even summit than the wall of the southern bowl. 
The latter wall is furrowed by gulches that have eaten back to the sum- 
mit in places and notched the sky-line of the rim. Between these 
gulches sharp ridges run out into the plain, some of them looking more 
like lava flows descending from the wall than like remnants left by 
erosion. Such ridges run out into the northern basin as well, and 
little island-like hills rise in isolated positions from the crater floor. 
This half, though a close counterpart of the other, is more nearly round 
and its walls preserve a more even height. The slope up from the floor 
in both basins is gentle at first at the foot of the walls and then becomes 
steep. The walls are formed of roughly bedded lava flows interstrati- 
fied and intermingled with mixtures of vesicular lava, scoria, pumice 
and volcanic sand. The harder lava layers project with vertical rocky 
faces, while between them softer zones have weathered away into débris 
slopes and produced a rough terraced effect, somewhat similar to that 
in the sides of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The height of the 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 39 


walls above the level of the plain is on the average about 1,500 feet. 
It decreases toward the western side owing to the gradual rise of the 
floor in that direction, but increases at some points, as on the south- 
west and west sides, where mountains break the continuity of the hori- 
zon line. 

From the brink of the wall around the whole circumference of the 
big crater, a wide plateau slopes gently away at an angle of only 
some five to eight degrees. One is apt to think of a crater as a 
pit on the apex of a sharp conical mountain. The crater of Aso has a 
cone, but its slopes are so moderate that one realizes only from a point 
of comprehensive outlook that this vast open bowl lies on the summit of 
a huge mound, which forms an upland of low relief in the center of 
‘Koushiu. 

The outward-sloping surface of this mound, as seen from above, is 
like a plateau, but it is without a single level place. No surface 
could be more wrinkled and still preserve the appearance of an inclined 
plane. It is completely made up of knolls and ridges and knobs, which 
continue off for many miles to the base of high encircling mountains. 
From the summit of Neko-dake these distant mountains are seen to 
surround this upland, much as the walls of the big crater surround its 
floor. The hillocks of the upland are overgrown in the early spring 
with long dry grass, but the cultivated bottoms between shine like 
emeralds, the green of the wheat being deepened here and there by the 
background of black soil upon which it grows. 

From the peaks of the Aso range that divide the two well-populated 
plains long flowing ridges with concave slopes reach down into the floor. 
Between them are steep gorges. These ridges are not dwelt upon nor 
cultivated, probably on account of the lack of water, but like the hills 
of the outer plateau are grown over with rank grass. They contrast 
strongly with the richly tinted sweep of the crater bottoms. Consider- 
able patches of the northern plain are sometimes flooded, and there is a 
legend that the big bowl of Aso was once occupied by a lake until a god 
kicked the hole in the wall to let the water out and leave the ground for 
cultivation. One can not but admire the conception of the ease and 
despatch with which this early piece of reclamation work was carried 
out. 

Nearly all that has been described, and more, can be seen from the 
top of Neko-dake; so much, in fact, that two or three hours spent on 
the summit was all too short a time. The descent was quick down the 
steep slope, but the evening homeward jaunt to Takamori was one of 
many miles. The way led along a muddy black path; at first among 
bare fields, where peasant women had been at work all day gathering up 
corn stalks, loading them on oxen, and sending them home to be 
chopped up to feed the animals; and then among the endless paddy- 
fields of wheat and mustard. Finally ‘home,’ when reached, consisted 


40 POPULAR. SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Fic. 5, THE MODERN MUD-CONE OF ASO-SAN WITH VAPORS ISSUING FROM THE NEW 
CRATER. In the foreground is a temple to the God Aso. 


of a floor, a few bowls of rice, and a bath through which a dozen 
men had been before. 

On another day the three of us set out for the modern crater. A 
walk of a few miles brought us to the village of Yoshida about opposite 
the central portion of the Aso range, whence a feasible way seemed to 
offer up to the low place in the range already noted. It led first over 
the end of a number of low ridges that radiate into the plain from the 
central mountains and then up an easy grassy slope to the top. Here 
we had expected a divide that would enable us to look over into the 
northern basin, but instead we found an expanse of almost level mound- 
strewn country mostly enclosed by the higher portions of the summit 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 41 


and so wide that it intercepted all view. The mounds covering this 
upland were seemingly formed of soft voleanic débris and presented a 
straggling appearance. This summit country sloped upward on the 
east within less than a mile into a low cone some few hundred feet 
high, from which the steam clouds poured forth. Behind it on the 
southeast rose the forbidding-looking crags of Nakadake and on the 
east the flanks of Taka-dake to a much greater altitude. 

At the foot of the cone on the desert-looking slope stood several 
huts and two small temples, one Buddhist and the other Shinto, built 
in honor of the god of Aso for the use of those who climb the moun- 
tain to worship. It is one of the beautiful features of the Japanese 
religion as practised by a great many of the people that it draws them 
out of doors and brings them in touch with nature. Almost every 
mountain is held in reverence, and many days during the course of the 
year are spent by the devout in excursions in the country or up into 
the mountains to pray on the high places. 

It is a gentle ascent of only 200 or 300 feet from the rest house and 
the temples to the summit of the cone, first over a lava stream that 
looks as if it might have flowed but a little while before, then over a 
talus of lava, pumice and cinders, and finally over slippery, grey 
volcanic mud. At the top is the crater, a black, ragged, awful pit, 
roaring and steaming constantly. As one stands on the brink one 
looks down walls of roughly-stratified mud to a depth of 300 or +400 
feet, where two round vents are continually rolling out masses of steam 


Fig 6. LOOKING DOWN INTO THE MODERN CRATER OF .4SO-SAN, showing the 10ugh layers 
of mud in the walls and the bottom of one of the vents. Photo by Malcolm Anderson. 


“9YVP-OFIN JO J1vd St Ia] 9G} UO puB ‘punoisa10j 94} VAOGL 
409} 00OP ‘PAVp-VYABL Sf 1o}We0 oq} UL “JIULEINS OY} UO 19}V1IO MAM 94} WOTF SOSTT pnoyd 10dva ywois VY “AONVY ONIGIAT( AHL 
OL tiO UALVYD OSV CIO FHL AO ATVA NUAHLUON AHL 40 UOOTT THL NO WvaULg THL Wodd LSVAHLAOS ONIMOO'T “LOTS 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTALY 


42 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 43 


and sulphur vapor and reverberating with explosive roars. This 
little crater has an oblong shape and is at a rough estimate 900 feet 
across and 2,000 feet long. Its rim is very uneven, being much 
higher on the north and east than on the other sides. It is divided 
into five compartments or vents, each separated from the other by a 
wall of mud, 100 feet or more high. The two already mentioned are 
the deepest and the only active ones, and occasionally, when the vapor 
column diminishes, one can look to the bottom of the northern vent 
and see the burning sulphur that plasters the lower walls and floor. 
The bottom is a round flat dise of cracked mud looking like the dried 
bottom of a pond, and there is no appearance of a hole or conduit 
descending to greater depths. The other of the two active crater holes 
is deeper and pours forth more steam. Its bottom can not be seen from 
any point upon the rim. ‘The yellow sulphur fumes fill the air and 
become almost unbearable at times when the wind shifts the cloud 
a little towards one. We were able to follow the edge the whole way 
round the crater, a distance of about one and one half miles, but the 
going was difficult on account of the extremely slippery mud that forms 
the outer sides, which slope sharply away from the precipice on the 
interior. This soft, fine mud, both outside and inside the crater, is 
furrowed by rain and given a curious appearance. The other three 
vents, besides the two already mentioned, lie to the south along the 
axis of the crater. They are steep-walled, but not so deep as the other 
ones. ‘They have flat bottoms of cracked mud, though in one the floor 
at the time of our visit was occupied by a shallow pool of water. 

The view from points near the edge of the crater embraces a large 
-part of the northern basin through a gap in the encircling heights on 
the north. But on all the other sides the rolling summit region is 
pretty well enclosed and looks a little as if it might have been at one 
time ages ago the site of a crateral basin much larger than the present 
active one. 

At length the late hour and our extreme thirst after a warm day 
without water on these dry mountains drove us down from the heights. 
At the rest house by the temples we obtained a reviving drink of cold 
spring water, and on the bench where we sat to drink it we left all 
the change in our possession, which was a total of ten coins, amounting 
to nine tenths of a cent. 

During the memory of man the crater on top of the Aso range 
has been active, and successive severe eruptions have again and 
again blown out ashes, cinders and bombs that have darkened the sky 
for many miles around and covered up the fields, have sent streams of 
mud mingled with hot water flooding down the mountain sides and 
over the plain, and caused terrifying noises and shakings of the ground. 
At such times crops and trees have been blighted and killed by the 
falling ash or by the heat and vapors, and the streams have been so 


44 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


filled with débris and poisoned with bitter sulphurous water that the 
fish have died. Some say that the Shirakawa, which means ‘ white 
river, owes its name to the milky color that it has been known to 
assume at such times. Loss of life has been occasioned by these out- 
bursts, but the records do not make it clear to what extent. Reference 
is made in records to fiery rocks sometimes of great size that have 
been blown out, but lava flows do not seem to have assumed importance. 
Explosive eruptions of fine débris, as shown by the mud cone, have 
been predominant during the later history of the voleano. 


Fig. 8. RECENT-LOOKING LAVA WITH SMOOTH FLOW STRUCTURE THAT HAS FLOWED DOWN 
A GULLY HIGH UP ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF NAKA-DAKE. In the distance, far across the great 
crater of Aso, may be faintly seen the horizon line of the outer wall. The whole foreground is 
covered with barren volcanic rock. 


The greatest eruptions of very recent times were in the winter of 
1873 to 1874, when unusual activity continued during several months 
and ashes covered the ground to a distance of 18 miles; in the winter 
of 1884, when ashes were blown over Kumamoto, making it so dark 
there at a distance of 25 miles that lamps had to be used for three 
days; in 1889, during the year of the Kumamoto earthquake, which 
was the year following the great explosions of Bandai-san in central 
Japan; and lastly in 1894, when the floor of the modern crater was 
somewhat altered. 

The problem of old Mount Aso is a deep one. One can not view 
its gigantic outlines without wondering what forces could have molded 
them, what could have been the steps in the process of formation of this 
huge pit, its level floor, its steep walls, the gentle slopes radiating 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 45 


from its outer rim, and of the rugged mountain bulwark in its center, 
on the swmmit of which the life of the volcano has been preserved in a 
far smaller inner crater. It seems inconceivable that processes alone 
of building-up could have resulted in such forms as those of Aso; and 
in attempting to outline its history one always reverts to some theory 
of destructive action on a very large scale. 

The large crater of Aso may have been formed in either one of 
two ways, by the blowing off and away in some cataclysmic explosion, 
or series of explosions, the whole mass that must once have filled and 
overlain the present cavity, or by the sinking in of this same mass and 
its engulfment in a great void produced by the removal of the material 
that formerly gave support to the earth’s surface at this point. A 
calculation, such as given below, of the mass displaced in either case 
affords an impressive sense of the magnitude of the task that was 
accomplished. The roughly-bedded strata in the walls of the big crater 
seem to dip away on all sides at a low angle, and their slope is probably 
reflected in the gently inclined surface of the outer plateau that forms 
the sides of the Aso cone. From the regularity of these slopes it 
seems likely that they represent the truncated base of an old conical 
mountain that continued upward with the present slope to a culmi- 
nating point high above the center of what is now the crater bowl. It 
is probable that if such a mountain existed its upper portion rose with 
a gradually increasing slope into a peak, but even with a constant slope 
such as now exhibited in the base, its height would have been 7,000 to 
7,500 feet above the sea, or about 6,000 feet higher than the present 
crater floor. 

It is probable that during the early history of the volcano such a 
cone was built up by successive eruptions of lava and fragmental 
material that formed sheets one upon another down the sides and 
became roughly stratified in conformity with the slope of the moun- 
tain; and that before the close of the period of greatest activity of the - 
volcano this cone was beheaded by some disruptive force. Not only 
was the summit removed, but the very heart of the volcano was opened, 
leaving a vast bowl on the site of the old eminence surrounded by the 
truncated lava flows of the outer circle of the mountain’s base. Still 
later, the processes of building up recommencing, a new mountain 
was constructed, this time not over a single center as seems to have 
been the case before, but along the line of the short diameter of the 
former oval mountain, and in this way the present chain of peaks was 
raised. But the voleano was gradually dying down, and reconstruc- 
tion on a grand scale ceased long before the new Aso had reached the 
dimensions of the old, or even effectually obscured, except to casual 
observation, the nature of its basal wreck. 

The volume of the bowl of Aso, not subtracting the space that is 
taken up by the supposedly subsequent range, is at least nine cubic 


46 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Fig. 9. ONE OF THE MOsT ACTIVE VOLCANOES OF JAPAN, KIRISHIMA-YAMA IN SOUTHERN 
From its summit, which is 6,000 feet high, may be seen Aso-san 70 miles away to the north. 


miles. The mass that must once have overlain it, measured as the 
cone formed by the upward projection of the outer slopes, was at least 
28 cubic miles in volume. Thus there must have been removed no 
less than 37 cubic miles, or about five and a half millions of millions of 
cubic feet of volcanic rock, a mass equal to over two and a half moun- 
tains like Vesuvius. 

Furthermore the likelihood that the cone steepened toward its sum- 
mit makes it possible that the old mountain was of greater size than 
estimated. 

If we conceive of such a vast block of the earth’s surface being 
blown up by some terrific explosion within the volcano, it is natural to 
suppose that great irregular deposits of the erupted material would 
be in evidence round the outside of the pit. There are immense areas 
of voleanic débris that have settled after being blown into the air, whole 
hills in places, within a radius of many miles of Aso. But these de- 
posits seem to be regularly bedded and not to exhibit the rough and 
tumble structure that would probably result from their being tumultu- 
ously cast up by such a great explosion, and they do not form a rim 
around the crater rising above the old slopes of the cone. And 
further the walls of the pit seem to be too regular to have been ex- 
plosively broken. 

More acceptable appears the theory that the Aso crater is a sunken 
pit. A voleano of such magnitude must certainly have been under- 
lain at some unknown depth by a large body of molten rock, the source 
of the lava that built up the cone. With all the weight exerted upon 
it by the overlying rocks and the pressure of steam from within, this 
fluid or viscous, intensely-heated mass must have sought violently for 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 47 


KIUSHIU, AS SEEN FROM A DISTANCE. It has been in violent eruption during the last decade. 


escape. Having, probably, found one or more points of discharge far 
below the summit of the cone, it flowed out in such vast quantities 
that it left a cavity large enough to engulf the whole of the un- 
supported mountain mass. The sinking was doubtless aided, and 
lessened in violence, by the partial fusion of the overlying rocks as 
they became more and more depressed, and probably the action took 
place around a common center. When the mountain summit had 
completely disappeared, there was left around about a regular curve 
of unbroken walls bearing witness to the comparative gentleness with 
which the action had been carried out. It is possible to consider 
the central Aso range as part of the old mountain that did not sink or 
become totally engulfed, but it seems more likely that it is a later 
growth. The completed work probably left the whole of the sunken 
mountain melted in a level lake within the great caldron. The 
radiating lava flows described in a later paragraph may help to account 
for the material removed. 

After nearly two weeks spent in and about Aso we left it, setting 
out eastward to continue our march across Kiushiu to the Pacific, on 
the opposite side of the island from our starting point. The less 
precipitous portions of the crater wall are well-watered and clothed 
with beautiful groves of pines and cryptomerias, bamboos, oaks and 
chestnut trees, among. which one finds little meadows and mossy places 
and banks overgrown with rich grass, where thrive an abundance of 
wild violets of various colors and sweet-smelling daphnes. Through 
these woods our road wound up out of the pit at a comparatively low 
and gently-rising portion of the wall, and finally over the crest of the 
rim to the far-sloping outer reaches. Within a few days more we 


48 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


looked back at Aso from the top of Sobo-san, the highest mountain 
in the island, and appreciated more than ever the roundness of the 
crater and its great size, which can be better grasped from such a dis- 
tance than from nearer at hand. The square, high block of Taka-dake 
and the turreted peak of Neko-dake stood impressively out of the huge 
bowl. 

Some miles to the south and east of Aso-san the surface covering 
of voleanic ejectamenta which has filled up and blotted out the ancient 
features of the landscape ceases to be a solid sheet, but lava streams 
continue for great distances beyond, partly burying the old river 
channels that radiate away from the region occupied by Aso-san. Aso 
has evidently been the center of all the volcanic activity of this por- 
tion of Kiushiu, and the source of supply of the erupted material 
mantling the region. The longest of the lava arms follows the Gokase 
river for a distance of over 30 miles beyond the edge of the volcanic 
sheet as far as the sea, or a total distance of 50 miles from the volcano. 
It must have started as a broad stream or as successive streams of lava 
from Aso and have become narrowed into the old canyon of this river. 
The width of the present lava filling of the canyon is on the average 
21% to 3 miles, and the depth amounts certainly to several hundred feet. 

The Gokase-gawa runs to the east coast, and down its canyon we 
took our course after a few more days in the heart of Kiushiu. The 


Fic. 10. OVEKLOOKING FROM THE HILLS THE BEAUTIFUL CITY AND Bay OF KAGOSHIMA IN 
SOUTHERNMOST JAPAN. In the deep bay stands the island volcano Sakura-jima, almost 4,000 
feet high, another of the active volcanoes of Kiushiu. In 1863 this city was bombarded and 
partly burnt by an English admiral and his squadron. Again in 1877 it was set on fire during 
the last days of the Satsuma rebellion, and here at that time the final desperate stand of some 
of the Japanese nobility was made against the principle of Europeanization. 


THE GREAT JAPANESE VOLCANO ASO 49 


scenery was magnificent. High mountains rose on every hand out 
of the fairly wide and level bottom-land within the canyon. But this 
was not the old canyon bottom, it was the upper surface of the lava 
filling. We made this discovery on reaching the middle of the valley, 
where much to our surprise we came upon a tremendous gorge cut 
squarely out of it by the river, which is eating its way down again to 
find its old course. It has already reached a depth of 300 or 400 feet 
through the lava flow and has left a rift vertically walled on either 
side by columns of andesite that give a stately beauty to the cliffs. 
The river rushes down a steep channel, always growing with the addi- 
tion of little tributaries, which tumble in over the parapet from out 
of jungles of greenery that overhang the edge and festoon the rocks 
with drooping purple tassels of wistaria. In its lower course it 
flows more quietly and widens, the rapids become less frequent and the 
canyon loses the intensity of its angles. But still the old lava flow 
continues. From the village of Takeshita, which means “below the 
falls,’ we took a rowboat and glided down the broad stream the rest 
of the way to the sea, away from the wild grandeur of the mountain 
scenery into the midst of the picturesque landscapes of the Japanese 
lowland. 


VOL. LXxI.—4 


50 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


CONTROL OF THE COLORADO RIVER REGAINED 


By CHARLES ALMA BYERS 


LOS ANGELES, CAL. 


HE Colorado River, creator of the much-discussed Salton Sea, has 
at last been captured. Its waters, always of uncertain quantity 
and consequently often threatening, no longer are poured into Salton 
Sink by way of a river-like irrigation ditch, but instead flow peaceably 
into the Gulf of California as in the days before man had tampered 
with it for irrigation purposes. And incidental to the river’s cap- 
ture, Imperial Valley, that new agricultural region rescued by irriga- 
tion from the Colorado Desert, an area lying below the level of the 
sea, and a region that is some day destined to become worth millions 
of dollars, is no longer in danger of being inundated by the murky 
waters of this treacherous “yellow dragon” and consequently wiped 
practically out of existence. 

The going astray of the Colorado River, and the trouble incidental 
thereto, which was described in THE PopuLtar ScIENCE MONTHLY 
some months ago, has occasioned much study and deep concern by 
engineers all over the country, and has attracted the attention of the 
heads of two governments—the United States and Mexico. It has 
created an inland sea in Salton Sink, adjacent to Imperial Valley, 
that covers about 400 square miles, destroyed the works of the New 
Liverpool Salt Company, caused three different removals of several 
miles of the Southern Pacific Railroad, and necessitated the expendi- 
ture of many thousands of dollars towards its control, besides threaten- 
ing to submerge the Imperial Valley, several small cities of con- 
siderable importance and a number of rich mineral deposits. 

The trouble with the Colorado River, it will be recalled, began in 
September, 1904. The California Development Company, promoters 
of the Imperial land colony, needed more water for agricultural 
purposes than their old irrigation ditch was then supplying, and to 
remedy the shortage an incision was made in the banks of the river 
at a point about four miles below the old tapping point, and below 
the international boundary line between the United States and 
Mexico. A flood in the river soon cut this new channel so deep as 
to place the flow beyond control. Gradually this ditch was eroded 
into a river that at times carried the entire flow of the Colorado 
River, sometimes amounting to 40,000 second feet of water, and 
poured it into Salton Sink. 


CONTROL OF THE COLORADO RIVER 5a 


In all, six attempts had been made to capture the runaway river 
before the last and successful one. The first five, however, were 
poorly carried out and practically amounted to nil in the final success. 
The sixth proved better, and for a time it seemed to solve the problem. 
Ii was completed on November 4, 1906, and on the night of December 
7, 1906, during the flood, the river again ate its way through the 
barrier of willow matting, piles, rocks and dirt and once more wended 
its way toward Salton Sink. This dam, called the Hind Dam, in 
honor of the field engineer, Thomas J. Hind, therefore withstood the 
rebellious-inclined Colorado for a period of only thirty-three days. 

The Hind Dam, which, though not a success of itself, aided in the 
final capture, was a conglomerate creation 170 feet wide at the base, 
30 feet across at the top and 35 feet high at the deepest places in 
the break. It was 3,000 feet in length, of which 600 feet was of 
rock construction and 2,400 feet of earth and gravel. Its founda- 
tion consisted of a heavy, strong mat of willow and cable, held in 
place by strong piles, about 1,100 in number and from forty to sixty 
feet in length. The mat was created by the use of 2,200 cords of 
willow, cut by Indians, 40 miles of five-eighths-inch woven steel cable, 
and 10,000 cable clips. It was 100 feet wide and 800 feet in length, 
divided into eighteen sections, and was laid across the river by being 
uncoiled from a barge floated across the stream. 

~ The piles driven into the mat were also made to serve as a sup- 
port for a temporary railroad. From this road carload after carload 
of material was dumped into the gap, in all there being 70,000 tons 
of rock, 40,000 cubic feet of gravel, 40,000 cubic feet of clay, and 
100,000 sacks of sand, besides about 500,000 yards of dirt thrown up 
by teams and dredges. To carry on this work as many as 1,100 men 
and 600 horses and mules, besides several steam dredges, shovels, pile 
drivers and an almost endless string of freight cars, were employed 
at one time. The cost of the work to the Southern Pacific Railway 
Company, which, headed by Engineer Epes Randolph, engineered the 
undertaking, reached an average rate of $10,000 per day for one 
hundred days. 

The break that occurred in the river after this dam was com- 
pleted, in December, was at a part about 2,500 feet below the works, 
and was 1,100 feet wide. Colonel Randolph again assembled his 
forces, placed E. K. Clark, engineer of the Tucson division of the 
Southern Pacific Railroad, in direct charge, and work was recom- 
menced to solve this troublesome problem. Another dam, called the 
Clarke Dam, was built and by it the Colorado River has at last been 
permanently confined to its old channel. 

To build this dam no attempt to follow science was made. The 
Southern Pacific placed their entire road subject to the orders of the 


52 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


engineers, and materials of almost every kind were rushed to the 
break from points far and near as fast as it could be taken care of. 
Piles were driven, a temporary road was constructed across the break, 
and there was almost a continual dumping of rock, gravel and dirt 
into the gap. A carload of material was dumped every seven minutes 
both day and night, and in the short period of thirteen days 100,000 
tons were disposed of, bringing the dam up to water level. Much of 
this material was hauled a distance of 380 miles. 

The Clarke Dam was practically completed February 10, 1906, 
and the river was declared conquered. The dam proper is 1,200 feet 
in length, of which 700 feet is of rock and 500 feet of gravel and 
earth. Work, however, did not cease with the completion of the dam, 
and, since February 10, several miles of earth embankment have been 
built to insure permanent success. This work will continue until 
about sixteen miles of levee is built along the west bank of the river, 
in addition to the two dams with a combined length of 4,200 feet. 
The river, in the vicinity of the breaks, or dams, and near the inter- 
national boundary line, for a distance of about seven miles, flows 
through a throat only 2,160 feet wide, and is considerably higher than 
the territory lying to the west. The levee follows the river for this 
distance, and then swings away to the west towards the Black Buttes, 
leaving the river below this point to follow its own inclinations. 

The California Development Company and the Southern Pacific 
Railroad Company have expended to date upon this work a sum in 
excess of $3,500,000. This is an enormous sum to dump into a river, 
it seems, but since the river is captured and all interests immune from 
further trouble, the two companies feel amply rewarded. 

The United States government has inaugurated steps to place Im- 
perial Valley in charge of the Government Reclamation Service, but 
what the outcome of the move will be is not yet known. In the 
meantime the California Development Company will conutine to 
manage the colony, and will install new head-gates for their irriga- 
tion ditches and otherwise improve the system. The farmers of the 
valley feel secure now for the first time in two years, and Imperial 
Valley promises to become a prospering community. 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 53 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 


ScIENCE AND REALITY 


By M. H. POINCARE 


MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 


5. Contingence and Determinism 


I DO not intend to treat here the question of the contingence of the 

laws of nature, which is evidently insoluble, and on which so 
much has already been written. I only wish to call attention to what 
different meanings have been given to this word, contingence, and how 
advantageous it would be to distinguish them. 

If we look at any particular law, we may be certain in advance 
that it can only be approximative. It is, in fact, deduced from experi- 
mental verifications, and these verifications were and could be only 
approximate. We should always expect that more precise measure- 
ments will oblige us to add new terms to our formulas; this is what 
has happened, for instance, in the case of Marriotte’s law. 

Moreover the statement of any law is necessarily incomplete. This 
enunciation should comprise the enumeration of all the antecedents in 
virtue of which a given consequent can happen. I should first de- 
scribe all the conditions of the experiment to be made and the law 
would then be stated: If all the conditions are fulfilled, the phe- 
nomenon will happen. 

But we shall be sure of not having forgotten any of these condi- 
tions only when we shall have described the state of the entire uni- 
verse at the instant ¢; all the parts of this universe may, in fact, 
exercise an influence more or less great on the phenomenon which must 
happen at the instant ¢ + dt. 

Now it is clear that such a description could not be found in the 
enunciation of the law; besides, if it were made, the law would become 
incapable of application; if one required so many conditions, there 
would be very little chance of their ever being all realized at any 
moment. 

Then as one can never be certain of not having forgotten some 
essential condition, it can not be said: If such and such conditions are 
realized, such a phenomenon will occur; it can only be said: If such 
and such conditions are realized, it is probable that such a phenomenon 
will occur, very nearly. 


54 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Take the law of gravitation, which is the least imperfect of all 
known laws. It enables us to foresee the motions of the planets. 
When I use it, for instance, to calculate the orbit of Saturn, I neglect 
the action of the stars, and in doing so, I am certain of not deceiving 
myself, because I know that these stars are too far away for their 
action to be sensible. 

I announce, then, with a quasi-certitude that the coordinates of 
Saturn at such an hour will be comprised between such and such 
limits. Yet is that certitude absolute? Could there not exist in the 
universe some gigantic mass, much greater than that of all the known 
stars and whose action could make itself felt at great distances? That 
mass might be animated by a colossal velocity, and after having circu- 
jated from all time at such distances that its influence had remained 
hitherto insensible to us, it might come all at once to pass near us. 
Surely it would produce in our solar system enormous perturbations 
that we could not have foreseen. All that can be said is that such 
an event is wholly improbable, and then, instead of saying: Saturn 
will be near such a point of the heavens, we must limit ourselves to 
saying: Saturn will probably be near such a point of the heavens. 
Although this probability may be practically equivalent to certainty, 
it is only a probability. 

For all these reasons, no particular law will ever be more than 
approximate and probable. Scientists have never failed to recognize 
this truth; only they believe, right or wrong, that every law may be 
replaced by another closer and more probable, that this new law will 
itself be only provisional, but that the same movement can continue 
indefinitely, so that science in progressing will possess laws more and 
more probable, that the approximation will end by differing as little 
as you choose from exactitude and the probability from certitude. 

If the scientists who think thus were right, must it still be said 
that the laws of nature are contingent, even though each law, taken in 
particular, may be qualified as contingent? Or must one require, 
before concluding the contingence of the natural laws, that this 
progress have an end, that the scientist finish some day by being 
arrested in his search for a closer and closer approximation and that, 
beyond a certain limit, he thereafter meet in nature only caprice? 

In the conception of which I have just spoken (and which I shall 
call the scientific conception), every law is only a statement, imperfect 
and provisional, but it must one day be replaced by another, a superior 
law, of which it is only a crude image. No place therefore remains 
for the intervention of a free will. 

It seems to me that the kinetic theory of gases will furnish us a 
striking example. 

You know that in this theory all the properties of gases are ex- 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 55 


plained by a simple hypothesis; it is supposed that all the gaseous 
molecules move in every direction with great velocities and that they 
follow rectilineal paths which are disturbed only when one molecule 
passes very near the sides of the vessel or another molecule. The 
effects our crude senses enable us to observe are the mean effects, and 
in these means, the great deviations compensate, or at least it is very 
improbable that they do not compensate; so that the observable phe- 
nomena follow simple laws such as that of Mariotte or of Gay-Lussac. 
But this compensation of deviations is only probable. The molecules 
incessantly change place and in these continual displacements the 
figures they form pass successively through all possible combinations. 
Singly these combinations are very numerous; almost all are in con- 
formity with Mariotte’s law, only a few deviate from it. These also 
will happen, only it would be necessary to wait a long time for them. 
If a gas were observed during a sufficiently long time, it would cer- 
tainly be finally seen to deviate, for a very short time, from Mariotte’s 
law. How long would it be necessary to wait? If it were desired to 
calculate the probable number of years, it would be found that this 
number is so great that to write only the number of places of figures 
employed would still require half a score places of figures. No matter; 
enough that it may be done. 

I do not care to discuss here the value of this theory. It is evident 
that if it be adopted, Mariotte’s law will thereafter appear only as 
contingent, since a day will come when it will not be true. And yet, 
think you the partisans of the kinetic theory are adversaries of deter- 
minism? Far from it; they are the most ultra of mechanists. Their 
molecules follow rigid paths, from which they depart only under the 
influence of forces which vary with the distance, following a perfectly 
determinate law. There remains in their system not the smallest 
place either for freedom, or for an evolutionary factor, properly so- 
called, or for anything whatever that could be called contingence. I 
add, to avoid mistake, that neither is there any evolution of Mariotte’s 
law itself; it ceases to be true after I know not how many centuries; 
but at the end of a fraction of a second it again becomes true and that 
for an incalculable number of centuries. 

And since I have pronounced the word evolution, let us clear away 
another mistake. It is often said: Who knows whether the laws do 
not evolve and whether we shall not one day discover that they were 
not at the Carboniferous epoch what they are to-day? What are we 
to understand by that? What we think we know about the past state 
of our globe, we deduce from its present state. And how is this 
deduction made? It is by means of laws supposed known. The law 
being a relation between the antecedent and the consequent, enables us 
equally well to deduce the consequent from the antecedent, that is, to 


56 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


foresee the future, and to deduce the antecedent from the consequent, 
that is, to conclude from the present to the past. The astronomer who 
knows the present situation of the stars can from it deduce their 
future situation by Newton’s law, and this is what he does when he 
constructs ephemerides; and he can equally deduce from it their past 
situation. The calculations he thus can make can not teach him that 
Newton’s law will cease to be true in the future, since this law is 
precisely his point of departure; not more can they tell him it was 
not true in the past. Still in what concerns the future, his ephem- 
erides can one day be tested and our descendants will perhaps recog- 
nize that they were false. But in what concerns the past, the geo 
logic past which had no witnesses, the results of his calculation, like 
those of all speculations where we seek to deduce the past from the 
present, escape by their very nature every species of test. So that if 
the laws of nature were not the same in the Carboniferous age as at 
the present epoch, we shall never be able to know it, since we can 
know nothing of this age only what we deduce from the hypothesis 
of the permanence of these laws. 

Perhaps it will be said that this hypothesis might lead to contra- 
dictory results and that we shall be obliged to abandon it. Thus, in 
what concerns the origin of life, we may conclude that there have 
always been living beings, since the present world shows us always 
life springing from life; and we may also conclude that there have not 
always been, since the application of the existent laws of physics to the 
present state of our globe teaches us that there was a time when this 
globe was so warm that life on it was impossible. But contradictions 
of this sort can always be removed in two ways; it may be supposed 
that the actual laws of nature are not exactly what we have assumed; 
or else it may be supposed that the laws of nature actually are what 
we have assumed, but that it has not always been so. 

It is evident that the actual laws will never be sufficiently well 
known for us not to be able to adopt the first of these two solutions 
and for us to be constrained to infer the evolution of natural laws. 

On the other hand, suppose such an evolution; assume, if you wish, 
that humanity lasts sufficiently long for this evolution to have wit- 
nesses. The same antecedent shall preduce, for instance, different con- 
sequents at the Carboniferous epoch and at the Quaternary. That 
evidently means that the antecedents are closely alike; if all the cir- 
cumstances were identical, the Carboniferous epoch would be indis- 
tinguishable from the Quaternary. Evidently this is not what is sup- 
posed. What remains is that such antecedent, accompanied by such 
accessory circumstance, produces such consequent; and that the same 
antecedent, accompanied by such other accessory circumstance, pro- 
duces such other consequent. Time does not enter into the affair. 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 57 


The law, such as ill-informed science would have stated it, and 
which would have affirmed that this antecedent always produces this 
consequent, without taking account of the accessory circumstances, this 
law, which was only approximate and probable, must be replaced by 
another law more approximate and more probable, which brings in 
these accessory circumstances. We always come back, therefore, to 
that same process which we have analyzed above, and if humanity 
should discover something of this sort, it would not say that it is the 
laws which have evoluted, but the circumstances which have changed. 

Here, therefore, are several different senses of the word contingence. 
M. LeRoy retains them all and he does not sufficiently distinguish 
them, but he introduces a new one. Experimental laws are only 
approximate, and if some appear to us as exact, it is because we have 
artificially transformed them into what I have above called a principle. 
We have made this transformation freely, and as the caprice which has 
determined us to make it is something eminently contingent, we have 
communicated this contingence to the law itself. It is in this sense 
that we have the right to say that determinism supposes freedom, 
since it is freely that we become determinists. Perhaps it will be 
found that this is to give large scope to nominalism and that the 
introduction of this new sense of the word contingence will not help 
much to solve all those questions which naturally arise and of which 
we have just been speaking. 

I do not at all wish to investigate here the foundations of the 
principle of induction; I know very well that I shall not succeed; it is 
as difficult to justify this principle as to get on without it. I only 
wish to show how scientists apply it and are forced to apply it. 

When the same antecedent recurs, the same consequent must like- 
wise recur; such is the ordinary statement. But reduced to these 
terms this principle could be of no use. For one to be able to say that 
the same antecedent recurred, it would be necessary for the circum- 
stances all to be reproduced, since no one is absolutely indifferent, and 
for them to be exactly reproduced. And, as that will never happen, 
the principle can have no application. 

We should therefore modify the enunciation and say: If an ante- 
cedent A has once produced a consequent B, an antecedent A’, slightly 
different from A, will produce a consequent B’, slightly different from 
B. But how shall we recognize that the antecedents A and A’ are 
“slightly different”? If some one of the circumstances can be ex- 
pressed by a number, and this number has in the two cases values 
very near together, the sense of the phrase “ slightly different ” is rela- 
tively clear; the principle then signifies that the consequent is a 
continuous function of the antecedent. And as a practical rule, we 
reach this conclusion that we have the right to interpolate. This 


58 POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY 


is in fact what scientists do every day, and without interpolation all 
science would be impossible. 

Yet observe one thing. The law sought may be represented by a 
curve. Experiment has taught us certain points of this curve. In 
virtue of the principle we have just stated, we believe these points may 
be connected by a continuous graph. We trace this graph with the 
eye. New experiments will furnish us new points of the curve. If 
these points are outside of the graph traced in advance, we shall have 
to modify our curve, but not to abandon our principle. Through any 
points, however numerous they may be, a continuous curve may always 
be passed. Doubtless, if this curve is too capricious, we shall be 
shocked (and we shall even suspect errors of experiment), but the 
principle will not be directly put at fault. 

Furthermore, among the circumstances of a phenomenon, there are 
some that we regard as negligible, and we shall consider A and A’ as 
slightly different if they differ only by these accessory circumstances. 
For instance, I have ascertained that hydrogen unites with oxygen 
under the influence of the electric spark, and I am certain that these 
two gases will unite anew, although the longitude of Jupiter may have 
changed considerably in the interval. We assume, for instance, that 
the state of distant bodies can have no sensible influence on terrestrial 
phenomena, and that seems in fact requisite, but there are cases where 
the choice of these practically indifferent circumstances admits of 
more arbitrariness or, if you choose, requires more tact. 

One more remark: The principle of induction would be inapplicable 
if there did not exist in nature a great quantity of bodies like one 
another, or almost alike, and if we could not infer, for instance, from 
one bit of phosphorus to another bit of phosphorus. 

If we reflect on these considerations, the problem of determinism 
and of contingence will appear to us in a new light. 

Suppose we were able to embrace the series of all phenomena of the 
universe in the whole sequence of time. We could envisage what 
might be called the sequences, I mean relations between antecedent 
and consequent. I do not wish to speak of constant relations or laws, 
I envisage separately (individually, so to speak) the different sequences 
realized. 

We should then recognize that among these sequences there are 
no two altogether alike. But, if the principle of induction, as we 
have just stated it, is true, there will be those almost alike and that 
can be classed alongside one another. In other words, it is possible 
to make a classification of sequences. 

It is to the possibility and the legitimacy of such a classification 
that determinism, in the end, reduces. This is all that the preceding 
analysis leaves of it. Perhaps under this modest form it will seem 
less appalling to the moralist. 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 59 


It will doubtless be said that this is to come back by a detour to 
M. LeRoy’s conclusion which a moment ago we seemed to reject: we 
are determinists voluntarily. And in fact all classification supposes 
the active intervention of the classifier. I agree that this may be 
maintained, but it seems to me that this detour will not have been 
useless and will have contributed to enlighten us a litle. 


6. Objectivity of Science 

I arrive at the question set by the title of this article: What is the 
objective value of science? And first what should we understand by 
objectivity ? 

What guarantees the objectivity of the world in which we live is 
that this world is common to us with other thinking beings. Through 
the communications that we have with other men, we receive from 
them ready-made reasonings; we know that these reasonings do not 
come from us and at the same time we recognize in them the work of 
reasonable beings like ourselves. And as these reasonings appear to 
fit the world of our sensations, we think we may infer that these rea- 
sonable beings have seen the same thing as we; thus it is we know we 
have not been dreaming. 

Such, therefore, is the first condition of objectivity; what is ob- 
jective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible 
from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about 
by that “ discourse ” which inspires so much distrust in M. LeRoy, we 
are even forced to conclude: no discourse, no objectivity. 

The sensations of others will be for us a world eternally closed. 
We have no means of verifying that the sensation I call red is the 
same as that which my neighbor calls red. 

Suppose that a cherry and a red poppy produce on me the sensa- 
tion A and on him the sensation B and that, on the contrary, a leaf 
produces on me the sensation B and on him the sensation A. It is 
clear we shall never know anything about it; since I shall call red 
the sensation A and green the sensation B, while he will call the first 
green and the second red. In compensation, what we shall be able to 
ascertain is that, for him as for me, the cherry and the red poppy pro- 
duce the same sensation, since he gives the same name to the sensations 
he feels and I do the same. 

Sensations are therefore intransmissible, or rather all that is pure 
quality in them is intransmissible and forever impenetrable. But it 
is not the same with relations between these sensations. 

From this point of view, all that is objective is devoid of all 
quality and is only pure relation. Certes, I shall not go so far as to 
say that objectivity is only pure quantity (this would be to particularize 
too far the nature of the relations in question), but we understand 


60 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


how some one could have been carried away into saying that the world 
is only a differential equation. 

With due reserve regarding this paradoxical roast we must 
nevertheless admit that nothing is objective which is not transmissible, 
and consequently that the relations between the sensations can alone 
have an objective value. 

Perhaps it will be said that the esthetic emotion, which is common 
to all mankind, is proof that the qualities of our sensations are also 
the same for all men and hence are objective. But if we think about 
this, we shall see that the proof is not complete; what is proved is that 
this emotion is aroused in John as in James by the sensations to which 
James and John give the same name or by the corresponding combina- 
tions of these sensations; either because this emotion is associated in 
John with the sensation A, which John calls red, while parallelly it 
is associated in James with the sensation B, which James -calls red; 
or better because this emotion is aroused, not by the qualities them- 
selves of the sensations, but by the harmonious combination of their 
relations of which we undergo the unconscious impression. 

Such a sensation is beautiful, not because it possesses such a quality, 
but because it occupies such a place in the woof of our associations 
of ideas, so that it can not be excited without putting in motion the 
‘receiver’ which is at the other end of the thread and which cerre- 
sponds to the artistic emotion. 

Whether we take the moral, the esthetic or the scientific point of 
view, it is always the same thing. Nothing is objective except what 
is identical for all; now we can only speak of such an identity if a 
comparison is possible, and can be translated into a ‘money of ex- 
change’ capable of transmission from one mind to another. Nothing, 
therefore, will have objective value except what is transmissible by 
‘discourse,’ that is, intelligible. 

But this is only one side of the question. An absolutely disordered 
aggregate could not have objective value since it would be unintelligible, 
but no more can a well-ordered assemblage have it, if it does not 
correspond to sensations really experienced. It seems to me super- 
fluous to recall this condition, and I should not have dreamed of it, 
if it had not lately been maintained that physics is not an experimental 
science. Although this opinion has no chance of being adopted 
either by physicists or by philosophers, it is well to be warned so as 
not to let oneself slip over the declivity which would lead thither. 
Two conditions are therefore to be fulfilled, and if the first separates 
reality? from the dream, the second distinguishes it from the romance. 


21 here use the word real as a synonym of objective; I thus conform to 
common usage; perhaps I am wrong, our dreams are real, but they are not 
objective. 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 61 


Now what is science? I have explained in the preceding article, 
it is before all a classification, a manner of bringing together facts 
which appearances separate, though they were bound together by some 
natural and hidden kinship. Science, in other words, is a system of 
relations. Now we have just said, it is in the relations alone that 
objectivity must be sought; it would be vain to seek it in beings con- 
sidered as isolated from one another. 

To say that science can not have objective value since it teaches 
us only relations, this is to reason backwards, since, precisely, it is 
relations alone which can be regarded as objective. 

External objects, for instance, for which the word object was in- 
vented, are really objects and not fleeting and fugitive appearances, 
because they are not only groups of sensations, but groups cemented 
by a constant bond. It is this bond, and this bond alone, which is 
the object in itself, and this bond is a relation. 

Therefore, when we ask what is the objective value of science, 
that does not mean: Does science teach us the true nature of things? 
but it means: Does it teach us the true relations of things? 

To the first question, no one would hesitate to reply, no; but I 
think we may go farther; not only science can not teach us the nature 
of things; but nothing is capable of teaching it to us and if any 
god knew it, he could not find words to express it. Not only can we 
not divine the response, but if it were given to us, we could understand 
nothing of it; I ask myself even whether we really understand the 
question. 

When, therefore, a scientific theory pretends to teach us what heat 
is, or what is electricity, or life, it is condemned beforehand; all it 
can give us is only a crude image. It is, therefore, provisional and 
crumbling. 

The first question being out of reason, the second remains. Can 
science teach us the true relations of things? What it joins together 
should that be put asunder, what it puts asunder should that be joined 
together ? 

To understand the meaning of this new question, it is needful to 
refer to what was said above on the conditions of objectivity. Have 
these relations an objective value? That means: Are these relations 
the same for all? Will they still be the same for those who shall 
come after us? 

It is clear that they are not the same for the scientist and the 
ignorant person. But that is unimportant, because if the ignorant 
person does not see them all at once, the scientist may succeed in 
making him see them by a series of experiments and reasonings. The 
thing essential is that there are points on which all those acquainted 
with the experiments made can reach accord. 


62 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The question is to know whether this accord will be durable and 
whether it will persist for our successors. It may be asked whether 
the unions that the science of to-day makes will be confirmed by the 
science of to-morrow. To affirm that it will be so we can not invoke 
any a priort reason; but this is a question of fact, and science has 
already lived long enough for us to be able to find out by asking its 
history whether the edifices it builds stand the test of time, or whether 
they are only ephemeral constructions. 

Now what do we see? At the first blush it seems to us that the 
theories last only a day and that ruins upon ruins accumulate. To- 
day the theories are born, to-morrow they are the fashion, the day after 
to-morrow they are classic, the fourth day they are superannuated, 
and the fifth they are forgotten. But if we look more closely, we 
see that what thus succumb are the theories, properly so called, those 
which pretend to teach us what things are. But there is in them 
something which usually survives. If one of them has taught us 
a true relation, this relation is definitively acquired, and it will be 
found again under a new disguise in the other theories which will 
successively come to reign in place of the old. 

Take only a single example: The theory of the undulations of the 
ether taught us that light is a motion; to-day fashion favors the 
electromagnetic theory which teaches us that light is a current. We 
do not consider whether we could reconcile them and say that light 
is a current, and that this current is a motion. As it is probable in 
any case that this motion would not be identical with that which the 
partisans of the old theory presume, we might think ourselves justified 
in saying that this old theory is dethroned. And yet something of 
it remains, since between the hypothetical currents which Maxwell 
supposes there are the same relations as between the hypothetical 
motions that Fresnel supposed. There is, therefore, something which 
remains over and this something is the essential. This it is which 
explains how we see the present physicists pass without any embarrass- 
ment from the language of Fresnel to that of Maxwell. Doubtless 
many connections that were believed well established have been aban- 
doned, but the greatest number remain and it would seem must remain. 

And for these, then, what is the measure of their objectivity? Well, 
it is precisely the same as for our belief in external objects. These 
latter are real in this, that the sensations they make us feel appear 
to us as united to each other by I know not what indestructible cement 
and not by the hazard of a day. In the same way science reveals to 
us between phenomena other bonds finer but not less solid; these are 
threads so slender that they long remained unperceived, but once 
noticed there remains no way of not seeing them; they are therefore not 
less real than those which give their reality to external objects; small 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 63 


matter that they are more recently known since neither can perish 
before the other. 

It may be said, for instance, that the ether is no less real than any 
external body; to say this body exists is to say there is between the 
color of this body, its taste, its smell, an intimate bond, solid and 
persistent; to say the ether exists is to say there is a natural kinship 
between all the optical phenomena, and neither of the two propositions 
has less value than the other. 

And the scientific syntheses have in a sense even more reality than 
those of the ordinary senses, since they embrace more terms and tend 
to absorb in them the partial syntheses. 

It will be said that science is only a classification and that a classi- 
fication can not be true, but convenient. But it is true that it is 
convenient, it is true that it is so not only for me, but for all men; 
it is true that it will remain convenient for our descendants; it is 
true finally that this can not be by chance. 

In sum, the sole objective reality consists in the relations of things 
whence results the universal harmony. Doubtless these relations, this 
harmony, could not be conceived outside of a mind which conceives 
them. But they are nevertheless objective because they are, will 
become, or will remain, common to all thinking beings. 

This will permit us to revert to the question of the rotation of 
the earth which will give us at the same time a chance to make clear 
what precedes by an example. 


%. The Rotation of the Earth 

“. . . Therefore,” have I said in Science and Hypothesis, “ this 
affirmation, the earth turns round, has no meaning . . . or rather 
these two propositions, the earth turns round, and, it is more con- 
venient to suppose that the earth turns round, have one and the same 
meaning.” 

These words have given rise to the strangest interpretations. Some 
have thought they saw in them the rehabilitation of Ptolemy’s system, 
and perhaps the justification of Galileo’s condemnation. 

Those who had read attentively the whole volume could not, how- 
ever, delude themselves. This truth, the earth turns round, was put 
on the same footing as Euclid’s postulate, for example. Was that to 
reject it? But better; in the same language it may very well be said: 
These two propositions, the external world exists, or, it is more con- 
venient to suppose that it exists, have one and the same meaning. 
So the hypothesis of the rotation of the earth would have the same 
degree of certitude as the very existence of external objects. 

But after what we have just explained in the fourth part, we may 
go farther. A physical theory, we have said, is by so much the more 


64 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


true, as it puts in evidence more true relations. In the light of this 
new principle, let us examine the question which occupies us. 

No, there is no absolute space; these two contradictory propositions: 
‘The earth turns round’ and ‘The earth does not turn round’ are, 
therefore, neither of them more true than the other. To affirm one 
while denying the other, in the kinematic sense, would be to admit the 
existence of absolute space. 

But if the one reveals true relations that the other hides from us, 
we can nevertheless regard it as physically more true than the other, 
since it has a richer content. Now in this regard no doubt is possible. 

Behold the apparent diurnal motion of the stars, and the diurnal 
motion of the other heavenly bodies, and besides, the flattening of the 
earth, the rotation of Foucault’s pendulum, the gyration of cyclones, 
the trade-winds, what not else? For the Ptolemaist all these phe- 
nomena have no bond between them; for the Copernican they are 
produced by the one same cause. In saying, the earth turns round, 
I affirm that all these phenomena have an intimate relation, and that 
is true, and that remains true, although there is not and can not be 
absolute space. 

So much for the rotation of the earth upon itself; what shall we say 
of its revolution around the sun? Here again, we have three phe- 
nomena which for the Ptolemaist are absolutely independent and 
which for the Copernican are referred back to the same origin; they 
are the apparent displacements of the planets on the celestial sphere, 
the aberration of the fixed stars, the parallax of these same stars. Is 
it by chance that all the planets admit an inequality whose period is 
a year, and that this period is precisely equal to that of aberration, 
precisely equal besides to that of parallax? To adopt Ptolemy’s system 
is to answer, yes; to adopt that of Copernicus is to answer, no; this is 
to affirm that there is a bond between the three phenomena and that 
also is true although there is no absolute space. 

In Ptolemy’s system, the motions of the heavenly bodies can not 
be explained by the action of central forces, celestial mechanics is 
impossible. The intimate relations that celestial mechanics reveals to 
us between all the celestial phenomena are true relations; to affirm the 
immobility of the earth would be to deny these relations, that would 
be to fool ourselves. 

The truth for which Galileo suffered remains, therefore, the truth, 
although it has not altogether the same meaning as for the vulgar, and 
its true meaning is much more subtle, more profound and more rich. 


8. Science for Its Own Sake 
Not against M. LeRoy do I wish to defend science for its own sake; 
may be this is what he condemns, but this is what he cultivates, since 


THE VALUE OF SCIENCE 65 


he loves and seeks truth and could not live without it. But I have 
some thoughts to express. 

We can not know all facts and it is necessary to choose those which 
are worthy of being known. According to Tolstoi, scientists make 
this choice at random, instead of making it, which would be reasonable, 
with a view to practical applications. On the contrary, scientists think 
that certain facts are more interesting than others, because they com- 
plete an unfinished harmony, or because they make one foresee a great 
number of other facts. If they are wrong, if this hierarchy of facts 
that they implicitly postulate is only an idle illusion, there could be no 
science for its own sake, and consequently there could be no science. 
As for me, I believe they are right, and, for example, I have shown 
above what is the high value of astronomical facts, not because they 
are capable of practical applications, but because they are the most 
instructive of all. 

It is only through science and art that civilization is of value. 
Some have wondered at the formula: science for its own sake; and 
yet it is as good as life for its own sake, if life is only misery; and 
even as happiness for its own sake, if we do not believe that all 
pleasures are of the same quality, if we do not wish to admit that the 
goal of civilization is to furnish alcohol to people who love to drink. 

Every act should have an aim. We must suffer, we must work, we 
must pay for our place at the game, but this is for seeing’s sake; or 
at the very least that others may one day see. 

All that is not thought is pure nothingness; since we can think only 
thought and all the words we use to speak of things can express only 
thoughts, to say there is something other than thought, is therefore an 
affirmation which can have no meaning. 

And yet—strange contradiction for those who believe in time— 
geologic history shows us that life is only a short episode between two 
eternities of death, and that, even in this episode, conscious thought 
has lasted and will last only a moment. Thought is only a gleam 
in the midst of a long night. 

But it is this gleam which is everything. 


voL. LxxxI.—5 


66 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE NEWER HYGIENE? 


By WILFRED H. MANWARING, M.D. 


ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY 


NSTRUCTION in the nature of infectious diseases, especially in 
the means of transmitting these diseases from one person to 
another, is required by law in all our public schools. This law is of 
great value; for it is only through the intelligent cooperation of a 
well-informed public, that hygienic and sanitary measures designed 
to control and stamp out infectious diseases can be successful. A wide 
diffusion of this knowledge will go far to make tuberculosis a thing 
of the past, and diphtheria and small-pox unknown. 

In obedience to the legal requirement, there are taught, in our 
public schools, certain elementary facts regarding the nature of patho- 
genic bacteria, and certain facts regarding the ways in which they are 
transmitted from one person to another. These facts in themselves 
are of inestimable value. But they are insufficient. 

The presence of bacteria within or upon the human body, the 
transmission of disease-germs from the sick to the well, is but one of 
the factors tending to cause disease. To acquire a disease it is neces- 
sary, not only to acquire the germs of that disease, but there usually 
must be a lowering of bodily resistance as well. 

Every fourth person in this room is carrying daily in his throat and 
mouth virulent pneumococci. Yet he does not acquire pneumonia. 
And why? Because there is an efficient defense against this disease in 
the healthy human body. Some day this defense will be lowered 
and pneumonia develop. Most soldiers in the Philippines carry in 
their intestinal canals virulent germs of dysentery; and with no ill 
effects, till intoxication or dietary excesses lower the intestinal resist- 
ance. We daily inhale germs of tuberculosis. Some day, when our 
resistance is low, we acquire the disease. 

A knowledge of the body’s fighting power against bacteria, a knowl- 
edge of the ways in which that power can be increased or decreased by 
hereditary influences and by modes of life, is therefore of hygienic 
importance, and should form part of the curriculum of every public 
school. 

The body fights disease in many ways. It will be sufficient for 
hygienic purposes to teach but three of these ways: the method of 
antitoxines, the method of antiseptics and the method of phagocytosis. 


An address before the Indiana Academy of Science, at Indianapolis, De- 
cember 1, 1906. 


THE NEWER HYGIENE 67 


There are many diseases in which the symptoms are caused, not by 
the bacteria themselves, but by the chemical poisons the bacteria manu- 
facture. Thus, in tetanus, or lock-jaw, the bacteria grow, perhaps 
unnoticed, at the bottom of the Fourth-of-July wound on the hand or 
foot; but the chemical poisons they manufacture, carried by the blood 
to the brain and spinal cord, cause the spasms and convulsions that 
characterize the disease. In diphtheria, the bacteria rarely enter the 
body, but grow in grayish-white masses on the moist surfaces of the 
mouth and throat. The chemical poisons they manufacture, absorbed 
by the tissues, cause the paralysis and heart failure that characterize 
the disease. 

The body has the power of forming substances that neutralize these 
poisons. To these neutralizing substances the name antitoxine has 
been given. 

This fact is of hygienic importance for two reasons. First, because 
it is sometimes possible to assist the body in its efforts to form anti- 
toxines, by introducing into it antitoxines artificially prepared; and, 
seeond, because the body’s power to form these substances is modified 
by mode of life. A horse that has been repeatedly injected with poison 
manufactured by the germs of diphtheria growing on an artificial cul- 
ture medium, develops enormous amounts of diphtheria antitoxine. 
A few drops of its serum will render harmless large quantities of 
diphtheria poison." Overwork, insufficient clothing, improper food, 
alcoholic excesses, lack of sleep, and other factors, so lower the anti- 
toxine-forming power of the human body, as to greatly increase the 
dangers from infection. 

The second way of hygienic importance in which the body fights 
disease is by the formation of chemical substances that, although they 
have no influence on the poisons manufactured by bacteria, have an 
even more important property, that of killing the bacteria themselves. 
The presence of these antiseptic, or bacteria-killing substances in the 
blood and tissue juices is easily shown. One has but to mix bacteria 
with serum, and test, from time to time, by simply cultural methods,? 
whether or not the bacteria are alive. Thus, in one experiment, there 
were mixed with human serum germs of typhoid fever in such numbers 
that every drop of the serum contained 50,000 bacteria. Two minutes 
later, but 20,000 of these were alive; at the end of ten minutes, but 
800; and in twenty-five minutes, they were all dead. 

Not only can serum kill bacteria, but most of the secretions of the 
healthy human body are bacteria-killing as well. Gastric juice, vaginal 
secretion and nasal secretion, kill bacteria in enormous numbers. The 


* Through the use of diphtheria antitoxine in practical medicine the mor- 
tality from diphtheria has been reduced from the 24 per cent. to 40 per cent. it 
was, twenty years ago, to the less than | per cent. it now is, in well-treated cases. 

?See PopuLtaR ScIENCE MONTHLY, Vol. 66, pp. 474—477. 


68 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


hygienic significance of this is evident from the fact that these bac- 
teria-killing substances, also, are modified by modes of life. Dietary 
excesses may so lower the bacteria-killing properties of gastric juice, 
and unsanitary conditions so lessen that of tissue juices, that sus- 
ceptibility to infectious diseases is greatly increased. 

The third way of hygienic importance in which the body fights 
disease is by phagocytosis. In the body there are millions of white 
blood corpuscles, each having the power of independent motion and 
as one of its functions the faculty of eating and destroying disease 
germs. 

It is found that the bacteria-eating power of white corpuscles is 
largely dependent upon certain chemical substances* present in the 
blood and tissue juices. Without these substances, the eating of certain 
pathogenic bacteria does not take place. With them, it is very active. 
It is further found that these chemical substances are influenced by 
modes of life. That they may be increased or decreased under dif- 
ferent hygienic conditions. Phagocytosis, therefore, has also a place 
in popular hygienic knowledge. 

One of the unfortunate results of the spread of knowledge of patho- 
genic microorganisms is the formation of an unreasoning popular fear 
of disease germs. It is thought that a wide understanding of facts 
regarding bodily resistance will tend to replace this unfortunate germ- 
fear by a rational faith in the body’s marvelous powers. That it may 
turn the tide of hygienic endeavor from an exclusive fight against 
bacteria to a combined fight against bacteria and for bodily resistance. 


5 Opsonins. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 69 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION WITH REFERENCE TO THEIR 
APPLICATION TO MAN 


By G. P. WATKINS 


CORNELL UNIVERSITY 


HAT is the importance of natural selection in mankind is a 

question often asked. It is about as often answered without 

analysis. Put in this very general way, it contains, and confuses, 
several different questions. 

It is alleged that the conditions of life are so much improved by 
civilization that the struggle for existence is vanishing. Is that strug- 
gle, then, the only means of selection? And even if the cruder forms 
of selection are coming to be of little importance in man—which is 
doubtless the fact—are there not other kinds of selection still to be 
considered? It is time to analyze selection and determine its species. 
Then, when we know the kinds of selection, we may ask, with specific 
reference to each particular one: What is its importance in the present 
evolution of man? How far is each kind of selection operative in 
civilized society ? 

In our task of classification, let us consider first Darwin’s division. 
By his choice of a name for natural selection, Darwin assigns to nature 
a work analogous to that of the breeder of domestic animals. Natural 
and artificial are therefore two kinds or species of selection. The latter 
species is more definitely named breeder’s selection. Thus we obtain 
a first and provisional classification of the forms of selection as 


NATURAL SELECTION AND BREEDER’S SELECTION 


_ This simple classification is of importance, rather for an under- 
standing of the meaning of the term natural selection, as Darwin 
thought of it, than for our particular purposes. But we need to dwell 
upon it somewhat, and dispose of it, before attempting a more adequate 
analysis. 

The analogy from which the term natural selection is derived sug- 
gests a personification of nature. But natural selection is explicitly 
contrasted with conscious and personal factors.t Nature’s action is 


2 Though requiring such a caveat, Darwin’s use of the term “ natural selec- 
tion” is a just and appropriate development in the meaning of the words. A 
possible wrong first impression is corrected by the most elementary knowledge 
of the subject. Not as much can be said for the proposed alternative, “ survival 
of the fittest.” The “ fittest ”’ can not well be further defined than as the fittest 
to survive. Thus we get back to mere survival. What we need to add to this 


70 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


impersonal and unconscious. It is not choice. Breeder’s selection, 
on the other hand, is consciously directed towards a known and very 
definite end, the chosen “ points.” The action of natural selection is 
no more conscious than is the action of the current of water that 
separates pebbles from sand. ‘This is the first great difference between 
natural selection and breeder’s selection. 

In another respect nature’s agency in selection differs fundamentally 
from that of the breeder. The mode of operation of breeder’s selection 
is positive ; that of natural selection is negative. Natural selection elim- 
inates by death the less well adapted members of a species. The 
better adapted survive and reproduce their kind. It does not matter 
in what respect they are better adapted. Protection from enemies 
is achieved in the case of the porcupine by his quills. The deer is 
saved by fleetness; wild cattle by the herding instinct, and by the 
effective use of horns and hoofs which that makes possible. No 
particular sort of quality is favored by natural selection, but those 
lacking in any respect are cut off. Nature has no plan. The line 
of evolution may take any direction; only, whatever the direction of 
improvement, woe to the hindmost. We have already seen that breed- 
er’s selection is conscious. That means its action is also positive. 
Attention is directed to reproducing and further evolving a favored 
type. The fan-tail pigeon exists because breeder’s sought to develop 
a type with an unusually large number of tail feathers. The fleece 
of the better breeds of sheep has become fine and long because breeders 
sought this particular result. Breeder’s selection positively favors 
certain individuals and types. Natural selection is primarily destruc- 
tive of the inferior. It is negative. Incidentally it allows certain 
better adapted individuals to survive. 

The third difference between natural selection and breeder’s selec- 
tion is that the latter operates directly on propagation, not necessarily 
by death. In “nature,” this is among wild animals, the capacity to 
survive is the whole story. It may in general be assumed that a wild 
animal that survives to maturity, and lives through its prime, will 
reproduce its kind. Though it is the essential point always, propaga- 
tion is not in general the crucial point with lower animals.?, Among 


is the notion of selection. Survival involving gelection is the thing of interest 
to the biologist and sociologist. The word “ fittest ” is often used as if it meant 
“best,” or at any rate most complex and most highly organized. It is particu- 
larly in its application to man that this reading of an ethical connotation into 
the “ survival of the fittest ” is to be deprecated. 

The words “natural selection,’ whatever may have been the force of the 
objection at the introduction of the term, have now quite lost any suggestion 
of purpose and choice. Even the single word selection is coming to be, used 
and understood as a generic term for natural selection, breeder’s selection, 
“social selection”—if there be such a thing—and for any other forms of 
selection. 

* For some it is in part, that is, in sexual selection. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 71 


domestic animals, on the other hand, mere survival is not enough. 
Where the breeder intervenes, propagation becomes the critical point. 
The breeder can use inferior cattle as draft animals. He favors some 
definite type for reproduction, but rejected individuals are not there- 
fore destroyed. They may be put to some other use. Breeder’s selec- 
tion has, as we shall come to see, the character of reproductive selection. 
What Darwin, for the most part, dealt with as natural selection, we 
shall find it better to call lethal selection. 

The root-idea of natural selection, and of selection in general, is 
segregation into classes distinguished by differences as regards con- 
tinued existence of the type. One type is better adapted and survives, 
another is eliminated. Selection means, etymologically, a picking out 
and setting apart.* It is isolation in breeding. One eminent biologist 
and evolutionist, Romanes, would substitute this, as the more general 
term, for natural selection, and would make the latter but a species of 
isolation. If a superior type is to be evolved and preserved, breeding 
must be confined to those possessing in high degree the characteristics 
of that type. The most direct and sure way to isolate the fit and to 
prevent the propagation of unfit types is to kill off the unfit individuals. 
This is just what “nature” does. But there are other ways of attain- 
ing the same goal. 

Darwin never attempted a formal classification of the forms of 
selection. He does name, and treat at length, one other form besides 
natural selection, that is, sexual selection. Other kinds, which are of 
comparatively little importance in subhuman species, he either alto- 
gether fails to distinguish or touches only casually. By his use of the 
term sexual selection, which he contrasts with “ ordinary ”* or natural 
selection, he does imply that the word selection is, by destiny, if not by 
established usage, a generic term, to be qualified by an adjective in 
order to indicate the various species of selection. 


THE Four KINDs OF SELECTION 


We have now come to the distinctive purpose of this essay, that is a 
classification of the forms of selection having general applicability. I 
believe that adequate analysis—of course from the point of view of the 
sociologist, which is at the same time the most general point of view 
—gives us four species of selection, named as follows: 

Lethal selection. 

Sexual selection. 

Reproductive selection. 

Group selection. 

These terms, some of which are already familiar, are now to be defined. 


‘ Selection, by usage, is both the process and the result. And of the parts 
or aspects of the result, it is both negative (elimination) and positive (survival). 
* Cf. “ Descent of Man,” sixth paragraph of Ch. VIII. 


72 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Darwin thought of natural selection chiefly as the elimination of 
individuals by death. This is natural selection in the narrower sense. 
But it is better to avoid possible ambiguity by giving this kind of 
selection its distinctive name and separate treatment. It may appro- 
priately be called lethal, that is death-bearing selection. Lethal selec- 
tion, therefore, operates through the early elimination, or death, of 
relatively ill-adapted individuals. “Early” is here a relative term. 
Death operative by way of lethal selection occur either before physical 
maturity, or soon enough after to affect the amount of reproduction. 
Such death prevents the propagation of “ unfit ” characters. 

Sexual selection depends on the advantage which certain individ- 
uals have over others of the same sex and species in respect of mating, 
and thus of reproduction.* It is due to sexual preferences which favor 
the mating of certain individuals as against others of the same species, 
and so cause more reproduction of certain characters than of others; 
or, in another form, it is due to differences between individuals of the 
same species as regards power forcibly to appropriate mates. ‘The first 
of these may well be called esthetic, and the second combative, sexual 
selection. Failure to mate, not failure to survive, is the mode of 
elimination in sexual selection. The individual must become adapted 
to the phenomena of sex within the species, as well as to outside 
“nature.” “Selection in relation to sex” has an important part in 
Darwin’s theory of organic evolution. 

Among animals it is the relatively passive sex which exercises choice 
in esthetic sexual selection, that is, usually the female. Hence the 
beauty and song of birds are male attributes. In combative sexual 
selection, on the other hand, the competition takes the form chiefly of 
actual fighting between rival members of the active sex. There 
is a difference between this struggle for mates and the “struggle for 
existence.” “ Nature, red in tooth and claw” is poetic license. The 
phrase gives no true notion of the workings of natural selection. The 
poet is apparently licensed to be inaccurate. The struggle for exist- 
ence is chiefly a noiseless, inglorious effort to wrest from the environ- 
ment sufficient food to maintain life. For the rest, some animals 
prey and others are preyed upon. It is only in combative serual 
selection, however, that bloody combat, which implies a degree of 
equality of prowess, is the regular thing. It is significant, likewise, 


° He says, for example, natural selection “ produces its effects by the life or 
death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals.” ‘“ Descent of Man,” 
last paragraph of the section entitled The Male Generally More Modified than 
the Female, Ch. VIII. 

‘These are Darwin’s words, with the significant difference that he says 
“ solely in respect of reproduction.” See “ Descent of Man,” fourth paragraph of 
Ch, VIII. He thus fails to recognize what is called in this article reproductive 
selection, for his sexual selection is clearly a different thing. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 73 


that the comparison of nature to a cock-pit uses phenomena, not of 
natural, but of sexual, selection. 

Reproductive selection depends directly on difference in degree of 
fertility. If any quality is generally associated with a particularly 
high or low degree of fertility, it is at an advantage or disadvantage 
due to this form of selection. Reproductive selection is the case of 
influences bearing directly on propagation, apart from obstacles to 
mating, in a way relatively to diminish or increase the number of off- 
spring from individuals possessing certain characteristics. The idea 
of reproductive selection is not developed by Darwin,’ though it is 
fully in accord with his general theory and supported by his emphasis 
on propagation. It has little applicability to the lower animals, but 
for man it has very great importance. 

Differences in ability to procure mates with resulting differences in 
number of offspring can be distinguished from differential results 
where the opportunity to mate and reproduce is equal. The former is 
sexual selection; the latter is reproductive selection. The two are 
related as pertaining to propagation exclusively, and are contrasted 
with lethal selection in that they do not involve the question of individ- 
ual survival. Reproductive selection is a phenomenon of the diverse 
results of equal opportunities for sexual intercourse. Sexual selection 
is a matter of obstacles to mating, that is to getting opportunities for 
sexual intercourse at all. The former rests on differences between 
individuals as regards degree of reproductivity, granted mating. The 
latter turns on differences in degree of ability to obtain mates. Though 
an element of each form may be present in a particular case of selec- 
tion, the distinction is important, especially in mankind. 

In order that the individual shall be “ selected ” in the fullest sense, 
he must successfully run a threefold gauntlet. He must live to maturity 
and enjoy a long and vigorous prime. In obtaining a mate, or mates, 
he must be as successful as the “ best ” of his fellows. He must also, 
equally with the most favored of his species, possess and exercise the 
power to reproduce his kind and to hand down his characteristics to a 
numerous progeny. If he fails in the first particular, he is eliminated 
by lethal selection. If he fails at the second point, his kind is elimi- 
nated by sexual selection. If he fails in the third respect, his kind is 
eliminated by reproductive selection. In all these three particulars his 
failure need not be absolute, but may be a matter of degree, in which 
case the elimination is gradual. He may survive to maturity, but 
perhaps little beyond that. He may leave offspring that are too few in 
number as compared with those of his fellows. The critical question 


™The name and idea are contributions of Professor Karl Pearson. See his 
essay “ Reproductive Selection ” in his “ Chances of Death and Other Studies in 
Evolution”; also “Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Evolution,” 
III., in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Vol. 188, p. 253. 


74 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


always is: Whose descendants are to represent the future of the 
species? The question is one. But a decision may be rendered at any 
of several different points. 

The three forms of selection so far mentioned apply to individuals. 
Group selection is recognized by Darwin, though not treated separately, 
nor by him distinguished from natural selection. Group selection 
results where a number of individuals act and suffer jointly, whether 
with conscious purpose or not, in matters affecting their success and 
survival in competition with other groups.’ It is selection operating 
groupwise. 

We have distinguished three forms of selection of individuals, over 
against which is now set group selection. It may appear that we 
should make a triple division of group selection, as we have of the 
selection of individuals. It is obvious, however, that the concept of 
sexual selection is entirely inapplicable. A group does not propagate 
its kind by a sexual relation with another group. Reproduction, of 
course asexual, might be predicated of a group. The idea of repro- 
duction, however, as applied to the group, is but an analogy; and where 
so applied, it is of little or no significance for selection. Reproduc- 
tion of its individuals is not reproduction of the group, for the group 
remains the same while its members change, just as does the body 
while its component cells die and are replaced by others. The group 
is thus potentially immortal and does not regularly reproduce itself. 
When a successful group becomes unduly large, it may divide or send 
out a “ daughter colony,” thus, so to speak, propagating itself by fission. 
But this is a question of size, not of differences in degree of natural 
reproductivity on the part of groups. As regards the “ decease” of 
such a selectional group, moreover, it comes either by dissolution, 
that is, by the loosening of its bands and the dropping away of its 
members, or by their physical death. In the former case selection has 
not yet completed its work. In the latter case its work has taken an 
individual form. The ultimate incidence of group selection is always 
on individuals, affecting them either in the duration of their life or in 
their reproduction. But the effect is likely to be compound. From 
which of these two sorts of selection it comes, and how much is from 
one or the other form, are questions which have little importance from 
the point of view of the group. Therefore, if it is possible, it is not 
worth while, to attempt to subdivide group selection into lethal and 
reproductive forms. 

Group selection is logically coordinate with all three of the other 
forms. In practise, however, taking account of its degree of impor- 
tance, as well as of the fact that it is not to be subdivided, we may 


*In the choice of terms, I have preferred to name the kind of selection from 
its characteristic means at the decisive point. But I have not been able con- 
sistently to hold to this terminology in the case of group selection. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 75 


treat it as on the same level with lethal, sexual and reproductive selec- 
tion, constituting a fourth species. 

It is repeating to say that successful reproduction of kind is the 
essential fact in selection. But the importance of the point is great 
enough to bear such a repetition. It is significant that Darwin got his 
idea from the practise of breeders of domestic animals, which is based 
upon the principle of reproductive selection. Lethal selection is more 
radical and more incisive in its methods, but death itself operates as a 
selective agency only through preventing reproduction. Elimination 
by death after the reproductive period is passed is not selectional. It 
merely makes more room for the new generation. Lethal selection 
comes through early death. It is probable that most animals die either 
when very young and immature or else after considerable reproduction. 
Survivorship tables for man exhibit the same general phenomenon, 
that is low mortality at the prime of life. Though we can not know ali 
the possibilities of selection until we distinguish the four modes, they 
are not independent explanatory principles. All are reducible to 
effective propagation of kind, to success in leaving offspring. The fate 
of the individual as such, counts for nothing. For selection, the con- 
tinuation or destruction of the line of descent is the thing. An 
individual is important only as belonging to or representing such a 
line of descent. The “struggle for existence” is only an incident, or 
a method, in selection. Selective propagation is what is essential. 

The classification above presented is made with reference to the 
needs and point of view of the sociologist. One might well doubt 
whether the careful discrimination of reproductive selection, which has 
been attempted, would be at all justified by the little scope of application 
it finds among the lower animals. We know that sexual selection also 
has but limited applicability, and only to higher forms of life. In 
strictness, reproductive selection has been the factor that has, on occa- 
sion, adaptively increased the fertility of a species, no matter how 
low in the scale; while natural selection must have been the means 
of adaptively decreasing such fertility. But this is a minor point. 
Sexual selection seems to be the nearest that nature comes to admitting 
reproductive selection as an important factor. As regards domestic 
animals, also, what the breeder controls is mating rather than strictly 
and directly reproduction. This case well illustrates the difficulty of 
sharply discriminating reproductive selection. In man, however, fer- 
tility is extremely variable, by nature and through artificial means, 
so that we must, in man, take account of sheer natality, apart from 
other selective factors.® It is significant that the point of view of 


®* Perhaps it might be better, for this reason, to use the term “ natal sefec- 
tion” for what has been called “ reproductive selection,’ and reserve the latter 
for general use to cover both sexual and natal forms. But the term “ natal ” 
suggests germinal selection, and the idea of selection at birth or soon after 
would also be brought to mind, which is of course lethal selection. 


76 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the sociologist is, in the matter of selection, more inclusive, and more 
exhaustive of selective possibilities, than that of the biologist. 

In our fourfold classification we have left out the term “ natural 
selection.” For its narrower, specific meaning “ lethal selection” is 
decidedly preferable. Might not the older phrase be used as the generic 
name for all the forms of selection? Usage seems to favor this. 
“ Selection,” without a qualifying adjective, is logically the generic 
term, but is not yet so established as to be unquestionable. Natural 
selection is therefore convenient as a make-shift or substitute general 
term. It is familiar, and all the forms of selection do occur in nature. 
So, despite the implication of Darwin’s practise in relation to sexual 
selection, natural selection might be used roughly for all four classes, 
though with a saving clause against including such a thing as purposive 
breeder’s selection. 

SELECTION APPLIED TO Man 


In the attempt to apply selection to man, clearness of conception 
has often been lost. Two sorts of mistakes have been made. The 
complexity of life in civilized society, as compared with the simplicity 
of nature’s conditions, has invited, on the one hand, to extensions of 
meaning, by which processes have been described as natural selection 
which are not selection at all. In particular, it has been supposed that 
segregation by economic or social success is selection. It is rather 
selective dissociation. This is an important preliminary to selection, 
but the incidence of the latter may as well be unfavorable as favorable 
to the survival of those who rise in the social scale. 

There are, on the other hand, sociologists who deny that natural 
selection, meaning by that lethal selection, is of much significance for 
man. Such are likely to develop and emphasize contrasts between 
natural selection and what they chose to call “ social selection.” This 
is a conception for which the writer finds little use. Social selection 
should mean selection by society, and since society, unlike “ nature,” 
is to some degree conscious and purposive, social selection should mean 
more or less conscious selection by society. Whatever selection there 
is of this sort may still be brought under one of our four forms. But 
there are more, and more important, non-teleological sorts of selection 
resulting from characteristically social processes. And such phenom- 
ena of selection im society are what those who talk of social selection 
have chiefly in mind. These are provided for in our classification, 
though in distinguishing types use has been made rather of the method 
of the selection. To attempt to distinguish forms of selection accord- 
ing to the varieties of selective conditions would give an almost endless 
list, and the differences would not be of explanatory or scientific 
importance. We may speak of military or religious or industrial selec- 
tion if we will, but these are descriptive terms rather than logical 
categories. This fact has not been perceived by those sociologists who, 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 77 


rightly departing from the rough and ready practise which calls almost 
anything natural selection, have wrongly gone on to find about as many 
different forms of selection as there are social institutions and customs.’° 

As regards the scope of selection in general in its application to 
man, we are now prepared to believe that any influence that bears in 
any of the four ways enumerated upon the continuance of lines of 
descent presumably has selective importance. Only on the hypothesis 
of pure chance distribution of effects can any influence known to affect 
propagation be declared to be non-selective. The chances against this 
are infinity to one. No enumeration can cover all possible selective 
agencies. Every habit, custom and institution of man.might well be 
examined with a view to detecting such effects. Selection must have 
tremendous importance in human society. It certainly is a central 
problem, perhaps the fundamental problem and point of departure, 
for a science of society. 

Only the confounding of selection in general with mere lethal 
selection can explain the opinion that selection is inoperative in human 
society. Even so, the opinion is not well-considered, for there is 
much selection by death in civilized man. Lethal selection is not a 
matter of violent death, or death in struggle. The conception of 
natural selection as the result of a “ free fight ”—a bellum omnium 
contra omnes—has no justification in any phase of its application. 
Half the population of many civilized societies, and of course on the 
whole the weaker half, dies before reaching maturity. In the parts 
of the United States for which tolerable registration statistics are to 
be had, at least one third of the deaths are of persons under the age 
of fifteen. This involves lethal selection. 

But lethal selection is not all. The forms and agencies of selec- 
tion multiply as we pass upwards in the organic series. Hence we 
might expect a culmination, as regards manifoldness and complexity, 
in man. It is true that there are fewer births to select from, but 
the selection may come before birth, and in fact comes so always in the 
last analysis. And if there is less selection by death in man, there 
is also less random and indiscriminate destruction of human than of 
lower animal or plant life. The field for the study of selection in 
human society is as great and as complex as that in which the biolo- 
gist works. 

Of lethal selection in its application to man, little more need be 
said. Life-tables and deaths according to age tell the story. Lethal 
selection is not to be dismissed with the statement that men no longer 
habitually attack and kill one another, and in civilized states do not 
die for want of food. Of course selection by the dissolution of the 
weaker constitutions relates chiefly to physical qualities, but its im- 


*” Lapouge, in his “ Les Selections Sociales,” perhaps best illustrates this 
tendency. 


78 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


portance for that is great indeed. Modern improvements in medicine 
and surgery may check the incisiveness of such action of selection. 
But they can only lower, not destroy, the standard set for survival. 
Lethal selection, however, even as regards mere physical qualities, 
amounts to much less for Occidental civilized man than for any 
other species of living thing. But some other species of selection are 
proportionately more important. 

A weightier consideration that might appear to make lethal selec- 
tion of less interest to the sociologist is the fact that it appears hardly 
to touch what is distinctively human in man’s constitution, that is, 
his mental and moral qualities. But such selection does in fact pro- 
mote mental stability, so far as the strain and stress of modern life 
drive men to insanity and death. Alcoholism, too, as is proved by 
the experience of life insurance companies, and by statistics of occu- 
pational mortality, tends to eliminate those who are in this respect 
deficient in self-control. In various ways the ignorant, the imprudent, 
and the vicious, tend to destroy themselves. 

The effects of sexual selection are much more deeply marked in 
the organisms of birds than among mammals. The sexes in civilized 
man, however, show pretty clearly its differentiating influence. The 
greater strength of the male in man is probably due in part to sexual 
rivalry. As regards women, on the other hand, their conventional 
title, the “ fair sex,” is probably due to something more than mere 
chivalry or mere flattery. The pretty girl still marries better or 
earlier than her less “ well-favored” sister. It is to be hoped that 
more important qualities than personal appearance are also favored 
by sexual selection. 

Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of natural 
selection, though he curiously enough grudges recognition of it as a 
factor in the evolution of lower animals, apparently because it involves 
rather highly developed mentality, sees in esthetic sexual selection on 
the part of women the great means to the future progress of the 
human species.‘ With this opinion, the writer can not agree. Mar- 
riage is not so much a result of exclusive and exacting “ elective affini- 
ties ” that the relatively ineligible can not solace themselves with those 
of the other sex who are similarly situated. The approximate equality 
of sex numbers and the institution of monogamy, which forestalls 
monopolizing tendencies, leave no considerable class of persons elimi- 
nated by lack of opportunity to marry. Postponement of marriage 
on this account is probably of some influence, but of no great im- 
portance. Postponement of marriage and abstinence from it—the 
latter amounting to more than one fifth in some regions—are prob- 
ably due to variation in the relative strength of the marital and repro- 


11 See his article, ““ Human Selection,” in the Fortnightly Review, Vol. 54; 
also PopULAR ScIENCE MonrTHLY, Vol. 38. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 79 


ductive tendency more often than to failure to find opportunity to 
marry. Sexual selection is probably still of some importance in man, 
though of problematic influence. 

Reproductive selection is by far the most important of selective 
instrumentalities operating in civilized man. Here, and very re- 
cently, it has first come to great importance. One sixth and more of 
marriages in certain portions of civilized society are infertile. And 
differences in the number of children to a family are still more sig- 
nificant. This absolute or relative infertility must be more or less 
selective in its incidence. Nerve-racking indulgences and ambitions 
suggested or elicited by civilized life seem to create physiological con- 
ditions unfavorable to reproduction. Still more important is the fact 
that, with the increase and spread of physiological knowledge, the size 
of the family is placed under the control of volition, and children are 
no longer a necessary or to be expected result of sexual gratification. 
So the wish not to be bothered with children, with the moral traits 
it implies, leads to elimination. Over-cautiousness and desire to pam- 
per children, on the other hand, resulting in the so-called “ two-child 
system,” bring about, though more slowly, the same result. The over- 
cautious in such matters certainly will not “inherit the earth.” Con- 
scientiousness on account of transmitting physical weaknesses acts in 
the same way. Celibacy as a religious observance has probably taken 
from society some of its gentlest natures.** 

An average of nearly four children to a family is necessary to keep 
up the numbers of a population. For a family to have fewer is likely 
to mean that it will have less representation in the next generation 
than in the present. Such a family is certainly not holding its own 
in a country of increasing population like the United States. Hence 
the plaint of “race suicide,” which is in fact never race suicide, but 
only the self-elimination of a particular section of society. The blood 
of France may become Breton, but it not at all likely that France will 
lose its population. The New England stock, which populated the 
West, is probably now declining in numbers in its old home by defi- 
ciency of natural increase.** But New England is gaining popula- 
tion. There are always relatively and absolutely fertile elements in 
society, as well as the relatively infertile. The significant thing is 
what are their differences as regards mental and moral traits. Is “ race 
suicide ” due more to selfishness or to over-caution? Is high fertility 
due more to improvidence or to the love of children? How far is a 
high standard of life associated with the most desirable mental traits? 


* Galton notices this selectional influence as early as 1869, in his “ Hered- 
itary Genius,” though of course without distinguishing it as reproductive 
selection. 

See articles of R. R. Kuczynski in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 
Vol. XVI. 


80 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Clearly reproductive selection is the most important selective influence 
in present social evolution. 

Men act and suffer jointly. Man is a social animal, and he is 
such through adaptation. Primitive man, like many lower animals, 
associates himself with others for mutual protection and support. 
Hence the strength of tribal attachment and of clannishness. To 
group selection chiefly is to be attributed capacity for cooperation and 
those feelings of regard for others on which morality is based. The 
attachment of mother and child is primeval and of course strongest. 
But the family, created by the presence of the father, is the earliest 
persistent, truly social group. Still more characteristically social is 
the bond of union between grown-up brothers and sisters. Out of 
kinship grouping has grown the broader, though vaguer and less in- 
tense, recognition of fellowship contained in morality. Morality has 
been called the egoism of the group. When developed and refined, 
it is much more than that, but it is based upon the instinct that draws 
men together. 

Group selection is probably at its best in primitive man. Bagehot’s 
classic discussion of the evolution of a coercive social organization is 
an application of group selection. But in modern occidental society 
the process of individualistic atomization has been carried so far as 
to threaten the disintegration even of the family. Large family, clan, 
tribe and village community are gone. There is left little but the 
individual, or the natural family, and the state. What “groups” 
there are between the state and the family are largely mere expres- 
sions of an appetite for association which finds no other and more 
important object upon which to exercise itself. And the state is of 
no importance for group selection. It has become a thing of con- 
trivance and a matter of social psychology. The family is the only 
group left that is of much selectional importance. Of progressive 
national states there are too few, in the face of the many questions 
to be answered, to offer the necessary material. And they inter- 
penetrate by migration in a way to defeat selection groupwise. 

Selective dissociation is so closely related to selection, and so often 
confounded with it, that it requires mention here. There is selective 
dissociation where individuals of more or less similar traits are segre- 
gated from others and put into a special environment of a nature to 
affect their survival.‘* The incidence of the forms of selection varies 
with geographical region and social class. The process of dissocia- 
tion is not directly selection, but only indirectly important as its 
preliminary. 

Economic and social rise has been mentioned as often confused 
with “survival.” Survival it is not, but merely selective dissociation 


“The term “ dissociation” is used by C. C. Closson in articles in the Quar 
terly Journal of Economics, Vols. X. and XI. 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 81 


of those possessing traits making. for success. It probably means se- 
lectional disadvantage, owing to the heavy incidence of reproductive 
selection on “ successful ” families. 

International migration to a new country is another case of select- 
ive dissociation. The American colonists were undoubtedly, on the 
whole, men of superior initiative and independence of character. 
Their coming to America made possible the multiplication of their 
descendants and their kind. Even our present-day immigrants are 
rather superior in point of energy to those of the same economic con- 
dition who remain behind, and they come to an environment present- 
‘ing greater opportunities. 

Urban migration is a notable example of selective dissociation. 
According to the indications of anthropological and other evidence, it 
is the more energetic element that migrates from country to city. 
Under conditions prevailing down into the nineteenth century, cities 
could not maintain their population by natural increase. Migration 
to the city then meant subjection to an unusually severe incidence of 
lethal selection. Our modern sanitary improvements have not yet 
entirely removed the disadvantage of the city as compared with the 
country. 

We have mentioned selection by society as possible, but not a very 
important fact. The execution of criminals and their imprisonment, 
so far as it prevents reproduction, are cases of such selection. In 
crueller ages, with numerous capital crimes and many executions a 
year, this may have been an important mode of selection. Now it 
amounts to little. Perhaps public opinion, also, puts certain mem- 
bers of society under some selective disadvantage. 

Francis Galton has proposed that society deliberately undertake 
the improvement of the human stock.1* He would have certificates of 
fitness issued and suggests the giving of marriage portions to girls of 
superior personal qualities and good family. Such a program of 
“eugenics ” would operate through reproductive selection. It is an 
interesting proposition, if not very practical. Hitherto the method of 
evolution has been essentially negative, that is, primarily the elimina- 
tion of the unfit. Will any human society ever be wise enough posi- 
tively to map out the line which further evolution shall take? The 
definition of what is undesirable is much simpler than the definition 
of what is most desirable. 

In the above brief review of the incidence of selection in man, it 
has been the intention of the writer merely to give examples illus- 
trative and suggestive of the applicability and importance of the dif- 


* POPULAR SCIENCE MonTHLY, Vol. 60, article at page 218. He has also 
brought up the subject before the British Sociological Society. Reports of the 
discussion are printed in recent volumes of the American Journal of Sociology, 
as well as in the society’s Sociological Papers. 


82 POPULAR. SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ferent forms of selection for the study of man and his social evolution. 
An extended treatment of this subject is one of the great desiderata 
of the science of sociology, the half of which will be the theory of 
selection in its application to man. 

A logical and seemingly very forcible objection to the idea that 
selection applies to man is contained in the contention that heredity 
has nothing to do with the higher, which are the distinctively human, 
qualities in human nature. But the common-sense and practical view 
is that even the highest intellectual and moral qualities are to some 
extent inheritable. Men look for family traits not merely in the 
physical features of children. There is certainly a tendency to the 
inheritance of insanity, which shows that mind is subject to heredity. 
It is enough for the purposes of the sociologist if the inheritance of 
the properly human qualities be only statistically true, that is, true 
for the mass, though not true of every individual. In fact, this is 
what we should expect. For a number of reasons variation should be 
at its best in characteristics distinctively human. Biologically viewed, 
man is like a domestic animal and is a dominant species, both of which 
facts imply great variability. There is also approximately unre- 
stricted crossing in mankind. The environment, that is complex civi- 
lized society, demands diverse specialized qualities; so that the external 
conditions favor multilinear evolution. The distinctively human qual- 
ities have been latest acquired and are therefore most subject to varia- 
tion. In man, moreover, as the most socialized of animals, much may 
be left to imitation and education, that is, to “ social heredity.” Hence 
there is less need of a hard and fast physical heredity. 

The fact that the line of least resistance in development is the 
resultant of two sets of forces, internal (variation and heredity) and 
environmental (selection), must not be allowed for an instant to slip 
the mind. The interdependence and delicacy of adjustment between 
these forces increases with the complexity of man’s higher, special 
characteristics. Hence the apparent decrease in the importance of 
heredity. The distinction between what is innate and what is acquired 
often hinges on mere ease of enumeration of cases of apparent pre- 
dominance, or relative independence,. of one or the other factor. Or 
the results are referred to the least easily assumed to be constant 
factor. Such is in practise man’s application of causation. Both 
sorts of factors are always necessarily operative. It must be granted 
that proper inheritance is a necessary precondition to the appearance 
of noble qualities, and this alone concedes the presence and importance 
of heredity. Both internal constitution and modifications from with- 
out are determinants of development and man can no more get along 
without the right sort of heredity now than ever. Complexity and 
lack of fixity in development do not remove from the sphere of hered- 
ity, though they do mean greater possibilities and greater likelihood 


THE FORMS OF SELECTION 83 


of variation. They do also give opportunity for the development of 
a new set of factors in evolution, the socio-psychical. It can not be 
too strongly emphasized, however, that these socio-psychic factors are 
conditioned by their’ foundation in the innate qualities and capacities 
of human nature, that is, in the characters given to men by selection. 

It may be that the power of heredity is limited short of the powers 
of evolution and development. But this does not seem to be true for 
the higher moral qualities, nor for conspicuous intellectual power, 
though it is perhaps well to add the caution that heredity appears to 
be not yet thoroughly established for these qualities. But selection 
itself can make heredity more stable. It would be enough for the 
most utopian sociologist if all human beings could be brought up and 
kept up, by the fixation of heredity, to the present highest level of 
‘intellectual power and moral character. So much progress selection 
may accomplish. Whether it does, depends on the adaptation of 
human institutions to such remote ends. 


The question as to the applicability of natural selection to man 
can not be satisfactorily dealt with as one simple whole. Here as 
elsewhere analysis is the necessary instrument of science. By analysis 
we discover four distinct modes of selection: lethal, sexual, reproduc- 
tive and group selection. We find, also, that these four forms have 
very different sorts of applicability in the explanation of man’s evolu- 
tion, past and present. Especially under present conditions it is re- 
productive selection that most calls for consideration. 

In these days “race suicide ” is a much talked of subject. There is 
plenty of occasion for the discussion. But the fact that attracts 
attention is not rightly called race suicide. Literally interpreted, race 
suicide is an absurdity. The actual fact that is attracting attention 
is a phase of reproductive selection. Its importance can hardly be 
exaggerated. But it can be truly evaluated only as seen in its setting 
as a phase of a form of selection. The fear of race suicide as a matter 
of quantity of population is no more valid or justifiable—it is rather 
far less justifiable—than the contrary and equally unanalytic fear of 
over-population awakened in Malthus and his followers a century ago. 
The question is not so much one of quantity, either by excess or defi- 
ciency, as of quality of reproduction and of population. It is there- 
fore a question of selection.. In this matter of selection in mankind 
it is doubtless true that “ race suicide ”—if the term means the self- 
elimination of certain classes of members of society—now plays the 
most significant part. 


84 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ILLUSTRATIONS OF MEDIEVAL EARTH-SCIENCE 


Dr. CHARLES R. EASTMAN 


HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


C’est vers le Moyen Age énorme et délicat, 
Qwil faudrait que mon ceur en panne naviguat. 
—PAUL VERLAINE. 


VE experimental science dates only from the sixteenth cen- 

tury. ‘The habit of interrogating nature, the application 
throughout all departments of research of the observational and in- 
ductive methods, the thirst for fresh discovery and invention, and the 
irrepressible curiosity that inquires into the innermost recesses of the 
wonderful world we live in, seeking to ascertain its laws and acquire 
mastery over its forces—all these leading characteristics of modern 
science were absent from its medieval prototype. 

In reality, the so-called science of the middle ages is scarcely worthy 
of the name. Infinitely inferior as compared with modern science, it 
was still more crude, more distorted, more fantastic and illusory than 
that of ancient times. Medieval man had no clear-eyed perception 
of the visible world, actuality possessed for him little value, that 
which really is and happens was without special significance in his eyes. 
What the medieval man saw he interpreted as a symbol, what he heard 
he understood as an allegory. Dante himself is our best witness that 
cultivated men of his age esteemed the speculative hfe vastly superior 
to the practical. 

Under the conditions of hopeless barbarism that existed from the 
seventh to the eleventh century there could be no real culture, and 
intellectual activity continued at an extremely low ebb. Religion 
absorbed almost all other occupations of the mind, faith was exalted 
as a sovereign virtue, mere empirical knowledge was disdained and 
rejected. As the Christian religion became the leading subject of 
men’s thought and interest, so the principal business of their lives 
throughout the middle ages was the salvation of their souls. External 
conditions were unpropitious, subjective conditions inhibitory for the 
development of scientific ideas. Hence it was inevitable that learning 
should become decadent, and the proud record of ancient achievement 
forgotten. Indeed, as early as the fourth century of our era, before 
all relics of the old culture had disappeared, Eusebius wrote: 


It is not ignorance which makes us think lightly of science in general, but con- 
tempt for its useless labor, while we turn our souls to better things. 


MEDIEVAL EARTH-SCIENCE 85 


Two centuries later Pope Gregory the Great protested against the 
study of pagan literature, 
because the praise of Christ and the praise of Jove are not compatible in 
one mouth. 

Again in the tenth century, a period of utter stagnation, illumined by 
scarcely a ray from classical antiquity, church dignitaries maintained 
that 

the successors of St. Peter wish for their teachers neither Plato nor Virgil, nor 
Terence, nor any other of the philosophic cattle. 

But with the revival of learning during the next two hundred years 
came a change for the better, and medieval knowledge began to assume 
a more positive character. Its science, still contaminated with the 
errors and superstitions it had received from remote ages, gradually 
became less chaotic, less fantastic and symbolic, less dominated by 
theology, although for a long time after its subjection to scholastic 
influences it remained, so to speak, Aristotelized. That is to say, 
logical analysis was relied upon for ascertaining all manner of truth, 
a complete system being devised toward that end by Raymond Lull. 
The independent searching out and testing of actual facts, the process 
of drawing general conclusions from concrete phenomena, were not 
the methods employed by medieval schoolmen, with the one notable 
exception of Roger Bacon.t It was commonly held that all truth may 
be obtained by the use of reasoning alone; and “ that by analyzing and 
combining the notions which common language brings before us, we 
may learn all that we can know. ‘Thus logic came to include the 
whole of science.” (Whewell.) 

There can be no doubt that the universal reverence for Aristotle’s 
authority, and blind acceptance of other accredited doctrines and 
treatises, greatly retarded scientific progress. All men begin their 
development with a childlike trust in authorities and examples, and as 
science had to be regenerated de novo toward the end of the middle 
ages, it is only natural that its beginnings should appear to us lament- 
ably weak and puerile. Moreover, the system of instruction employed 
by Catholic schoolmen was not conducive to real enlightenment. The 
real difficulty, as has been pointed out, is that “not life and nature 
were the basis of instruction and science, but books. Not the thing 
itself was the object of inquiry, but the word; not experiment disclosed 
the truth, but dialectics.” Authority had greater weight than argu- 
ments, and in the last resort authority depended more upon a master’s 
reputation than on his knowledge. Finally, we must not forget the 
restraint imposed upon medieval philosophy by theology. Religious 
discipline required that the results of human reason should be con- 


*On Baconian contributions to science, see Professor Holden’s interesting 
article in PopuLAR ScIENCE Montutiy for January, 1902 (60: 255). 


86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


formable to church dogmas, and woe to him who dared insinuate that 
whatever was taught by the church was not also the logical outcome 
of human reasoning. 

Thus, freedom of the intellect had to contend not only with formid- 
able difficulties imposed from without, but with no less effective 
hindrances, wrong conceptions and limitations that came from within. 
While these conditions lasted the net result was sterility. In time, 
however, that innate longing to escape the bonds of ignorance, that 
patient and zealous striving after truth which stimulates all lofty en- 
deavor, these impulses gradually became more assertive; and, tri- 
umphant at last, gave rise to our modern critical science. 

It would be impossible to attempt here even a superficial sketch cf 
the remarkable rise and expansion of empirical knowledge that took 
place during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by virtue of 
which Dante’s era merits its appellation of secolo d’oro. The innu- 
merable commentaries that have been devoted to the most striking 
figure of the middle ages attest the difficulty of preparing an adequate 
survey of contemporary knowledge. Remember, too, that the peerless 
poet stands out from the midst of a notable company of erudite laymen 
and clerical scholars. It will be sufficient to recall only such names as 
those of Ser Brunetto Latini, whom Dante expressly calls his ‘ master,’ 
and whose encyclopedic work embraces practically all the science of his 
time; Albertus Magnus, often styled the “ Universal Doctor,” and his 
famous disciple, St. Thomas Aquinas; those brilliant Anglican geniuses. 
Roger Bacon and William of Ockham, forerunners of the modern spirit 
of investigation; and those twain Italian luminaries whose souls were 
fired with the glow of ancient and of the newly revived culture, 
Petrarch and Boccaccio. Still earlier, and entirely independent. of 
Christian influences, the Arabian circle of sciences had gained new 
luster from Averroés, its chief exponent and adornment. 

But. besides these greater lights there shone many of feebler in- 
tensity, yet none the less worthy of grateful esteem, since their combined 
rays helped toward clearness of vision. There was one erudite scholar, 
for instance, who was formerly rated as a mere imitator and plagiarist of 
Albert of Bollstiidt; whereas we now know that the reverse was true, 
in that the master drew largely upon his disciple for materials in 
preparing his huge compendium on natural history. This was Thomas 
of Cantimpré, who wrote during the third and fourth decades of the 
thirteenth century, and whose works were widely read and translated. 
His chief contribution to science was a treatise entitled “ De naturis 
rerum,” which served at once for the source and model of Conrad of 
Megenburg’s “ Buch der Natur,” the earliest of its kind to be written in 
the German vernacular.* 

Conrad, however, considerably amplified the work of his Brabant 


MEDIEVAL EARTH-SCIENCE 87 


predecessor, and is further interesting to us for displaying power of 
original observation. He had also the happy faculty of meditating 
upon his observations, and was by no means averse to offering his own 
explanation of the causes of various phenomena. Accordingly, it has 
seemed worth while to reproduce a passage from this author relating 


ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 


to earthquakes, for the reason that it offers a very fair presentment of 
the status of geological speculation among medieval schoolmen. The 
second illustration has been selected with similar intent from the 
“ Cosmography ” of Ristoro of Arezzo, written in 1282. Dante’s ac- 
quaintance with Ristoro’s work has not been definitely proved, but is 
regarded by competent authorities as highly probable. 


24 modern German edition of the text was published by H. Schulz in 1897. 
The most recent study of Thomas Cantipratanus is by a Dutch author, Dr. W. 
A. Van der Vet, entitled “ Het Bienboée van Thomas van Cantimpré,” 1902. 


88 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ON THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF EARTHQUAKES 
(Extract from Conrad of Megenburg’s “ Buch der Natur,” 1359) 


The fourth and nethermost element is the sphere of earth. Its 
distance from the firmament [of the fixed stars], as determined by 
divers*scientific men, both pagan and Christian, is 309,375 miles. No 
one can impugn the accuracy of this result, depending as it does upon 
laborious calculation and the reduction of very delicate astronomical 
observations. None but unlettered folk contemn such investigations. 
Ignorant persons are unable to comprehend that a geometer may sta- 
tion himself outside the town and accurately determine the height 
of turrets within the town by means of angular measurement. Yet in 
sooth is it possible. By a similar method we ascertain the distance 
from earth to the starry heavens. 

The earth is the only one of the four elements that is favorably 
adapted for man; it is peculiarly his province, as heaven is the habita- 
tion of God and the angels. The earth element alone is innocuous to 
man, the others often injure him. For water drowns, foul air suf- 
focates, and fire consumes him. The earth is by nature cold and dry, 
externally harsh, yet concealing within its bosom full many beauteous 
things, such as precious stones and the noble metals. By a like token, 
many an humble citizen may possess jewels within his heart. The 
earth-realm is very luxuriant, and the only one that brings forth fruit 
in abundance. How many miles it measures in circumference, and 
the extent of its diameter, I have already set forth in another place,* 
and likewise have explained the cause thereof, why it does not fall 
away from its abode in space. As the heart is lodged within the 
mid-portion of the body, so is hell seated at the center of the earth. 
Thus do our reverend masters instruct us.* 

Oft it happens that the earth trembles, causing cities to fall, and 
mountains to crash together. Simple folk know not the reason of this, 
but foolishly believe that the earth is borne up by a mighty fish, which 
carries his tail in his mouth; and the turning or moving about of this 
creature causes the earth to shake. But this isa myth.® Remains for 


*Conrad’s data as to the dimensions of the earth and its distance from the 
several heavens are possibly derived from the same source as Dante’s and 
Brunetto Latini’s, namely, the Elementa Astronomica of Alfraganus, cap. XXi. 
Roger Bacon’s calculation of the earth’s circumference was only one-fourteenth 
smaller than the truth, and Ristoro’s independent reckoning of the latitude of 
Arezzo, in 1282, was in error to the extent of little more than one degree. 

*S. Thomas Aquinas teaches with regard to hell that it is probably situated 
under the earth and that its fire is of the same kind as terrestrial fire, an ignis 
corporeus. (Summa theol., Suppl., Pars iii., Qu. 97.) 

® Probably an echo of ancient Titan myths, though having affinity also with 
the Arabian voyages of Sinbad. The existence of a great sea-monster was a 
very popular legend in the middle ages, the creature being sometimes identified 


MEDIEVAL EARTH-SCIENCE 89 


us to give true relation of this marvel, and to explain the cause of its 
occurrence. Now earthquakes originate in this manner, that within 
subterranean cavities, and especially in the interior recesses of moun- 
tains, vapors are compacted together in such vast quantities, and under 
such tremendous pressure, as to exceed at times all means for restrain- 
ing them. They crowd in all directions against the walls of the in- 
terior caverns, fly from one to another of them, and continue to aug- 
ment in volume until they have surcharged an entire mountain. The 
increase of these vapors is occasioned by the stars, especially by Mars 
and Jupiter. When now the vapors are confined for a long period 
within the subterranean cavities, their pressure becomes so prodigious 
that they burst forth with enormous violence and rend mountains 
asunder. Even when they fail to break completely through the crust 
they are yet able to produce a severe shock. 

There are two kinds of earthquakes. Those of the first sort cause 
a gentle swaying of the ground lke the rolling of a ship at sea. This 
movement is least destructive of fortresses and houses. The reason 
for this is that the vapors upheave the crust in a single supreme effort, 
and thereupon relapse in energy. Disturbances of the second sort are 
those which produce tremblings of the crust by means of a succession 
of sudden shocks, the motion being comparable to that of hand-shaking. 
Their effect upon buildings is most disastrous, solid masonry being 
shattered and hurled down by them. ‘The process involved in this 
class of earthquakes is that one vapor rushes in pursuit of another, 
and drives it violently from side to side. 

That the causes are verily as we have described is supported by 
abundant evidence. First, when a catastrophe is about to happen, pre- 
monitory rumblings are heard that resemble nothing so much as the 
noise of an hundred thousand hissing serpents, stridulating in chorus; 
or again there may be bellowings like unto those of maddened bulls. 
These sounds proceed from the violent agitation of the vapors within the 
interior of the earth, forcing their way through crevices and struggling 
to become liberated. Secondly, the sun shines feebly, or appears 
reddish-hued by day, owing to the heavy pall of smoke that rises from 
the earth’s surface and obscures the view. Thirdly, it is well known 
that immediately after an earthquake the air becomes virulent, so 


as Cetus (the whale), or the Craken of the north, or again merely as a gigantic 
fish. In the bestiary of Philippe de Thaun the incident is given in a few lines 
beginning: 
“ Cetus ceo est mult grant beste, tut tens en mer converse, 
Le sablun de mer prent, sur son dos l’estent.” 


fhe monster reappears under the name of Jascom or Jasconius in the old 
Celtic legend of st. Brandan: 


“ Jascom he is i-cleped, and fondeth nite and dai 
To putte his tail in his mouth, ac for gretnisse he ne mai.” 


go POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


that many people die. The reason for this is that when the vapors 
have been confined for a long time underground they become fetid and 
noxious. The same thing happens in wells that have long remained 
foul and choked up, for when these are again opened for cleansing 
purposes, the first workmen to descend into them are often asphyxiated. 

Many wondrous effects are wrought by earthquakes. Note first 
that the vapors escaping at such times frequently transform men and 
beasts into stone, especially into rock-salt, and this is very liable to 
_ happen in mountainous regions or in the vicinity of salt-mines. This 
lapidifying property of the vapors is due to their enormous condensa- 
tion. So affirm the eminent doctors of science. And I myself have 
heard it reported that high up in the Alps as many as fifty neatherds 
with their beeves were turned to stone in this manner; with them also 
was a dairymaid engaged in drawing milk, and transfixed in that atti- 
tude at the selfsame moment when all were petrified. Note secondly 
that earthquakes are often accompanied by flames and glowing ashes 
which shoot up from below and ignite houses, villages and towns. 
Yet a third accompaniment of earthquakes is the belching up from 
below of vast quantities of sand and dust, sufficient to engulf whole 
cities. 

CONCERNING THE PROCESSES OF MOUNTAIN FoRMATION 
(From Book VI., Chapter 8, of Ristoro d’Arezzo’s “ Composizione del 
Mondo,” 1282) 


And we have ourselves discovered and excavated near the summit 
of an exceedingly high mountain remains of numerous species of fish 
and other creatures, such as various members of the shark tribe, and 
even shells that had retained traces of their original coloration. And 
in the same locality are found also different varieties of sand, gravel, 
water-worn pebbles and boulders scattered about in great profusion, 
apparently deposited by aqueous agency: and this we consider proof 
that the mountain in question was formed by the flood. 

And we have at another time ascended a lofty mountain whose 
summit was composed of a thick stratum of very hard rock, of fer- 
ruginous color, and whose structure was as clearly the work of design 
as a vase is evidence of the potter’s art. A huge castle, almost a citadel 
in fact, rested upon cliffs of this formation, and all the strata out- 
cropping at that altitude reposed upon other beds that had plainly 
been formed by water action. And the proof thereof consists in this, 
namely, that as one examines the strata exposed along the flanks of 
the mountain, one finds in certain places earth commingled with sand, 
at others tufa along with stones rounded by water action, and again 
elsewhere, quantities of fish remains belonging to various species, and 
also numerous other beds of divers kinds; all of which proves that 
this particular mountain, and the others already mentioned, near 


MEDIEVAL EARTH-SCIENCE gI 


whose summits occur fish remains, were formed by the deluge. Yet 
this same catastrophe may very readily have formed other mountains 
which do not contain sand and fish remains, the difference being occa- 
sioned by the nature of sediments existing in particular localities. 
Such, then, is the process of mountain-making. And the reason why 
mountain chains must have been formerly sea-bottom, or deposited in 
marine basins [before their upheaval], is that the volume of fos- 
siliferous and arenaceous sediments is far too considerable to be as- 
cribed to the agency of rivers, or of any other body of water inferior 
to the sea itself... . 

[ The continuation of this passage is devoted to seismic and volcanic 
phenomena, which are discussed more particularly in a subsequent sec- 
tion (Distinzione vii. parte iv.). The author expresses himself upon 
these questions, as well as upon the meaning of fossils, erosive action 
of water in molding land surfaces, scintillation of the stars, etc., in 
eminently scientific manner. His elder contemporaries, Albertus 
Magnus and Vincent of Beauvais, also note the existence and teaching 
of fossil remains. Similar inferences are drawn by Cecco d’Ascoli, 
the ill-fated author of l’Acerba and envious rival of Dante in the latter 
part of the thirteenth and first quarter of the fourteenth century. ] 


g2 POPULAR 
THE PROGRESS OF 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL 


SOCIETY 
THE celebration of the two-hundredth 
anniversary of the birth of Franklin, 
held at Philadelphia last year under the 
auspices of the American Philosophical 
Society, has now been completed by the 


publication of a volume containing a 


full account of the proceedings. These 
proceedings were unusually impressive. 
The Pennsylvania legislature made an 
appropriation of $20,000, and all the 
arrangements were carried out with ad- 
skill the of the 
society. The commemorative addresses 
by Dr. H. H. Furness, President Chas. 
W. Eliot and the Hon. Joseph H. Choate 
are models of thought and expression. 


mirable by officers 


A special session was held to honor 
Franklin’s researches in electricity, 
when addresses were made by Professor 
K. L. Nichols Ernest 
Rutherford. It is not necessary to re- 


peat here all the features of the pro- 


and Professor 


gram, but attention may be called to | 
circumstances which give opportunity 
to reproduce from the volume two in- | 


teresting portraits of Franklin. 


BRINE 
“> LEN 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


SCIENCE 


At the instance of the committee of the 
society, the congress passed an act en- 
abling the secretary of state to have 
to 


two-hundredth anniversary of the birth 


struck a medal commemorate the 
of Franklin, one single impression in 
gold to be presented to the Republic of 
| France and one hundred and fifty copies 
in bronze to be distributed by the presi- 
dent of the United States and the Amer- 


ican Philosophical Society. 


The medal, 
designed by Louis and Augustus St. 
Gaudens, has under the face of Frank- 
lin the words “printer, philosopher, 
scientist, statesman, diplomatist,” while 
on the reverse history writes in the 
presence of Literature, Science and Phi- 
losophy. This medal was presented by 
the secretary of state, the Hon. Elihu 
Root, and accepted by his excellency the 
French Ambassador, M. Jusserand. 
The occasion of the Franklin bicen- 
tenary was taken by Lord Grey to pre- 
sent to the United States a portrait of 
Franklin painted in London in 1759 by 
Benjamin Wilson. This portrait hung 
in Franklin’s house in Philadelphia, 
whence it was taken by Major André 
|} and given by him to the great grand- 


THE FRANKLIN MEDAL. 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


PORTRAIT OF FRANKLIN PAINTED BY BENJAMIN WILSON IN 1759. 


father of Lord Grey. In the letter, 


read by the Hon. Joseph Choate, when | 


the portrait was first shown after its 


return to this country, Lord Grey says: 


written 
1788, to 
* Our 


In a letter from Franklin, 
from Philadelphia, October 23, 
Madame Lavoisier, he says: 
English Enemies, when they 


possession of this city and my home, | 


made a prisoner of my portrait and ear- 


ried it off with them.” 
As your English friend, I desire to 
give my prisoner, after the lapse of 


130 years, his liberty, and shall be ob- 
liged if you will name the officer into 
whose custody you wish me to deliver 
him. If agreeable to you, I should be 


| much pleased if he should find a final 
were in| 


resting place in The White House, but 
I leave this to your judgment. 


POPULAR 


SCIENCE 


MONTHLY 


BRIDGE OVER THE BRONX RIVER, BETWEEN THE NEW YORK FPOTANICAL GARDEN AND 
THE NEW YORK GEOLOGICAL PARK, DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF LINN®US 


THE CELEBRATION OF THE BI- 
CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH 
OF LINNAAUS BY THE NEW 

YORK ACADEMY OF 
SCIENCES 


THE two-hundredth anniversary of 


the birth of Carolus Linneus has 
been celebrated throughout the 
world, notably by the Royal Uni- 
versity of Upsala, where he was 


professor from 1741 to his death in 
1774, and the Royal Swedish Academy 
of Sciences, of which he was the first 
president. Of the many local celebra- 
tions, we may select for mention that 
under the auspices of the New York 
Academy of Sciences, where the ar- 
rangements were more elaborate than 


elsewhere in America. The morning of 


| erection, 


Mr. F. A. Lucas and others. The 
building of the New York Aquarium 
commemorated the centennial of its 
and the collections 


opened for the first time by night. 


were 


Of special interest was the dedication 
to the memory of Linnzus of a bridge 
over the Bronx River on Pelham Park- 
way between the New York Botanical 
Garden and the New York Zoological 
Park. The bronze tablet, presented by 
Dr. N. L. Britton for the New York 
Academy of Sciences, bears these words: 

Linnus, botanist and zoologist, born Ra- 
shult, Sweden, May 23, 1707; died Hammarby, 


Sweden, February 18, 1778. This bridge was 
dedicated by the New York Academy of Sci- 


| ences, May 23, 1907. 


May 23 was devoted to exercises in the | 


American Museum of Natural History, 
the afternoon to exercises at the New 


York Botanical Garden and the New 
York Zoological Park, the evening to 
exercises in the Brooklyn Institute of 
Arts and Sciences and the New York 
Aquarium. At these different scien- 
tific institutions addresses were made 


by Dr. J. A. Allen, Dr. P. A. Rydberg, 


A the 
New York Academy of Sciences by the 


cable message addressed to 


Swedish Academy reads as follows: 


To every Swede, and especially to our so- 
ciety, whose honor it is to count Carl von 
Linné as the greatest ornament of its ranks, it 
is highly gratifying to see that the memory of 
the man whom all the world recognizes as 
Princeps Botanicorum is also held so sacred 
across the Atlantic that the two hundredth 
anniversary of his birth will be celebrated 
there with the same love and reverence as in 
his own country. And we fully appreciate the 
delicate courtesy which has led you to immor- 


THE PROGRESS 


talize his name among you by dedicating to 
him the beautiful bridge which unites your 
Botanical Garden with the Zoological Park. 


THE STATE UNIVERSITIES AND 
THE SYSTEM OF RETIRING 
ALLOWANCES OF THE 
CARNEGIE FOUNDA- 

TION 


In Mr. Carnegie’s original letter giv- 
ing $10,000,000 to establish a fund for 
pensioning professors, denominational 
institutions, on the one hand, and 
state institutions, on the other, were 
excluded. In the act of incorporation, 
however, the question of the state insti- 
tutions was left open, and it was at one 
time reported by the newspapers that 
Mr. Carnegie would add five million 
dollars to the foundation in order that 
they might be included. But it now 
appears that the opposite policy will 
be followed. The documents on the 
subject presented to the trustees have 
been printed as a bulletin of the Car- 
negie Foundation. This bulletin, in ad- 
dition to giving the grounds that have 
been urged for and against the policy 
of granting pensions to professors in 
the state institutions, contains some in- 
teresting data in regard to the develop- 
ment of these institutions. 

The executive committee of the Na- 
tional Association of State Univer- 
sities drew up a statement for the 
trustees in which they urge the follow- 
ing reasons for including these universi- 
ties under the auspices of the fund: 
State universities are not controlled by 
religious denominations; they maintain 
college standards based on the high 
school; they have an assured income 
equal to the productive endowment re- 
quired for private foundations; state 
institutions can not establish a pension 


fund as this might raise the whole | 


question of pensions for state officers; 
the omission of these institutions dis- 
criminates against the professors who 
have served them; the plan would not 
weaken support by the states. Memo- 
randa in favor of granting allowances 


OF SCIENCE 95 


| were also presented by Dr. Maurice 
Hutton, acting president of the Uni- 
versity of Toronto, and by Professor 
Henry T. Eddy, dean of the graduate 
school of the University of Minnesota. 
_ Dr. Henry 8. Pritchett, president of 
‘the foundation, discusses these papers, 
and comes to an adverse conclusion. 
He holds that from the point of view 
of general policy, professors in the state 
institutions should receive retiring 
allowances, but that these should be 
established by the states themselves, as 
the granting of allowances by a private 
‘agency might lessen the sense of re- 
sponsibility of the states for educa- 
tional support. He states that to add 
to the list of accepted institutions all 
state universities would be to complete 
the list of institutions for which the 
foundation can provide an adequate 
retiring system. He holds that the 
award of pensions to a large number 
of representative institutions by the 
foundation will make the plan part of 
the American Educational 
which other institutions 
sarily follow. 

It may be that in this matter the 
trustees of the Carnegie Foundation, 
nearly all of whom are presidents of 
| private institutions, are not entirely 
disinterested. Some of them have 
given occasion for such inference by 
their attitude toward a national uni- 
versity, which Mr. Carnegie at one time 
planned to endow. In the establishment 
of libraries, Mr. Carnegie has not been 
indisposed to 


System, 
will neces- 


cooperate with insti- 
tutions supported by taxation. How- 
ever, it does not follow that in the end 
it would have been to the advantage 
of the state institutions to have been 
placed under the Carnegie Founda- 
tion. There are dangers, as well as 
advantages in centralization and uni- 
formity. It by no means follows that 
compulsory retirement at 
sixty-five, on part salary 
plan. Perhaps the state 
may adopt the German 


the age of 
is the best 
universities 
system, by 


96 POPULAR 
which the appointment of a professor | 
is for life, he being excused from ac- 
tive service when disabled by illness or | 
old age. 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Agassiz was unveiled under the aus- 
pices of the American Association for 
the Advancement of Science with brief 


_addresses by Dr. Charles D. Walcott, 


secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 


SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 


We record with regret the deaths of 
Sir Benjamin Baker, F.R.S., the emi-| 
nent british engineer; of Dr. Alex- | 
ander Buchan, F.R.S., the Scottish | 
meteorologist; of Sir Joseph Fayrer, 
known for his pathological work in 
India, and Dr. Charles Féré, known | 
for his researches in neurology and | 
psychiatry. | 


THE honorary freedom of the City of 
London is to be conferred on Lord 
Lister.—The gold medal of the Lin- | 
nean Society, London, has been awarded | 
to Dr. Melchior Treub, director of the 
Botanical Garden at Buitenzorg. 


A SECOND series of tablets was un-) 
veiled in the Hall of Fame, of New) 
York University, on Memorial Day, | 
May 30. Addresses were made by) 
Governor Hughes, of New York, and) 
Governor Guild, of Massachusetts. 
Among the twelve tablets unveiled was 
one in memory of Maria Mitchell, the 
astronomer, and one in memory of. 


Louis Agassiz. The tablet in honor of 


| elected, as follows: 


tion, and Dr. Edward S. Morse, director 
of the Peabody Institute of Science. 
THE committee of one hundred, ap- 
pointed by the American Association 
the Advancement of Science to 
further the promotion, of national in- 
in health, met in New York 


for 


terest 
City, April 18, and organized by the 
adoption of rules, the election of officers 
and the appointment of an executive 
committee. Professor Irving Fisher, of 
New Haven, presided as the temporary 
chairman and was subsequently elected 
president. Ten vice-presidents were 
President Charles 
W. Eliot, Harvard University; Dr. 
Felix Adler, New York; Dr. William 
H. Welch, Baltimore; Rev. Lyman Ab- 
bott, New York; President James B. 
Angell, University of Michigan; Miss 
Jane Addams, Chicago; Hon. Joseph 
H. Choate, New York; Rt. Rev. John 
Ireland, St. Paul; Hon. Ben. B. Lind- 
sey, Denver; Hon. John D. Long, Bos- 
ton. 


as oa Be 
i Oee WA es © een. C5 
NEO IN Ea 


AUGUST, 1907 


THE PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


By CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT, LL.D., D.Sc. 


JAMES STILLMAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY IN THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 


II. CytromorPHosis. THE CELLULAR CHANGES OF AGE 


Ladies and Gentlemen: I endeavored in my last lecture to picture 
to you, so far as words could suffice to make a picture, something of 
the anatomical condition of old age in man, and to indicate to you 
further that the study merely of those anatomical conditions is not 
enough to enable us to understand the problem we are tackling, but 
that we must in addition extend the scope of our inquiry so that it 
will include animals and plants, for since in all of these living beings 
the change from youth to old age goes on, it follows that we can hardly 
expect an adequate scientific solution of the problem of old age unless 
we base it on broad foundations. By such breadth we shall make our 
conclusion secure, and we shall know that our explanation is not of 
the character of those explanations which I indicated to you in the last 
lecture, which are so-called ‘ medical,’ and are applicable only to man, 
but rather will have in our minds the character of a safe, sound and 
trustworthy biological conclusion. The problem of age is indeed a 
biological problem in its broadest sense, and we can not study, as we 
now know, the problem of age without including in it also the con- 
sideration of the problems of growth and the problems of death. I 
hope to so entice you along in the consideration of the facts, which 
I have to present, as to lead you gently but perceptibly to the con- 
clusion that we can with the microscope now recognize in the living 
parts of the body some of those characteristics which result in old age. 
Old age has for its foundation a condition which we can actually make 
visible to the human eye. As a step towards this conclusion, I desire 
to show you this evening something in regard to the microscopic struc- 
ture of the human body. 


VOL. LXXI.—1 


98 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


We now know that the bodies of all animals and plants are con- 
stituted of minute units so small that they can not be distinguished 
by the naked eye, although they can be readily demonstrated by the 
microscope. These units have long been known to naturalists by the 
name of cells. The discovery of the cellular constitution of living 


Fic. 3. CELLS FROM THE MoutH (ORAL EPITHELIUM) OF THE SALAMANDER, to SLOW the 
phases of cell division or mitosis. 

bodies marks one of the great epochs in science, and every teacher who 

has had occasion to deal in his lectures with the history of the bio- 

logical sciences finds it necessary to dwell upon this great discovery. It 

was first shown to be true of plants, and shortly after likewise of 

animals. The date of the latter discovery was 1839. We owe it to 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 99 


Theodor Schwann, whose name will therefore ever be honored by all 
investigators of vital phenomena. What the atom is to the chemist, 
the cell is to the naturalist. Every cell consists of two essential parts. 
There is an inner central kernel which is known by the technical name 
of nucleus, and a covering mass of living material which is termed the 
protoplasm and constitutes the body of the cell. I will now call for 
the first of our lantern slides to be thrown upon the screen. It presents 
to you pictures of the cells as they are found lining the mouth of 
the European salamander. The two figures at the top illustrate very 
clearly the elements of the cell. The protoplasm forms a mass, offer- 
ing in this view no very distinctive characteristics, and therefore offer- 
ing a somewhat marked contrast with the nucleus which presents in 
its interior a number of granules and threads. Every nucleus consists 
of a membrane by which it is separated from the protoplasm, and three 
internal constituents: First, a network of living material, more or less 
intermingled with which is a second special substance, chromatin, 
which owes its name to the very marked affinity which it displays for 
the various artificial colormg matters which are employed in micro- 
scopical research. The third of the internal nuclear constituents we 
may call the sap, the fluid material which fills out the meshes of the 
network. Later on we shall have occasion to study somewhat more 
carefully the principal variations which nuclei of different kinds may 
present to us, and we shall learn from such study that we may derive 
seme further insight into the rapidity of development and the nature 
of the changes which result in old age. While the picture is upon the 
screen, I wish to call your attention to the other figures which illus- 
trate the process of cell multiplication. As you regard them you wilt 
notice in the succession of illustrations that the nucleus has greatly 
changed its appearance. The substance of the nucleus has gathered 
into separate granules, each of which is termed a chromosome. These 
chromosomes are very conspicuous under the microscope, because they 
absorb artificial stains of many sorts with great avidity and stand out 
therefore conspicuously colored in our microscopic preparations. They 
are much more conspicuous than is the substance of the resting nucleus. 
And this fact, that we can readily distinguish the dividing from the 
resting nucleus under the microscope, we shall take advantage of later 
on, for it offers us a means of investigating the rate of growth in 
various parts of the body. I should like, therefore, to emphasize the 
fact at the present time sufficiently to be sure that it will remain in 
your minds until the later lecture in which we shall make practical 
use of our acquaintance with it. It is unnecessary for our purposes 
tc enter into a detailed description of the complicated processes of cell 
division. But let me point out to you that the end result is that 
where we have one cell we get as the result of division—two; but the 


100 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


two divided cells are smaller than the mother cell and have smaller 
nuclei. They will, however, presently grow up and attain the size of 
their parent. 

Every cell is a unit both anatomically and physiologically. It has 
a certain individuality of its own. In many cases cells are found to 
be isolated or separated completely from one another. But, on the 
other hand, we also find numerous instances in which the living sub- 
stance of one cell is directly continuous with that of another. When 
the cells are thus related, we speak of the union of cells as syncytium. 
Of this I offer you an illustration in the second picture upon the screen, 
which represents the embryonic connective tissue of man. In this you 
can see the prolongations of the protoplasm of a single cell body uniting 
with the similar prolongations from other cell bodies, the cells them- 
selves thus forming, as it were, a continuous network with broad meshes 
between the connecting threads of protoplasm. The spaces or meshes 
are, however, not entirely vacant, but contain fine lines which corre- 
spond to the existence of fibrils, which are characteristic of connective 
tissue and at the stage of development represented in this picture, are 
beginning to appear. It is fibrils of this sort which we find as the 
main elements in the constitution of sinews and tendons, as, for in- 
stance, the tendon of Achilles, at the heel. In a very young body we 
find there are but few fibrils; in the adult body an immense number. 

There is, in fact, as you probably all know, a constant growth of 
cells; and this growth implies also, naturally, their multiplication. 
There has been in each of us an immense number of successive cell 


Fic. 4. EXAMPLE OF A SYNCYTIUM. Embryonic connective tissue from the umbilical cord 
ofa human embryo of about three months, magnified about 400 diameters, ¢, c, cells; /, inter_ 
cellular fibrils. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH Iol 


generations, and at the present time a multiplication of cells is going 
on in every one of us. It never entirely ceases as long as life continues. 
The development of the body, however, does not consist only of the 
growth and multiplication of cells, but also involves changes in the 
very nature of the cells, alterations in their structure. Cells in us are 
of many different sorts, but in early stages of development they are of 
few sorts. Moreover, in the early stages we find the cells all more or 
less alike. They do not differ from one another. Hence comes the 
technical term of differentiation, to designate the modifications which 
cells undergo with advancing age. At first cells are alike; in older 
individuals the cells have become of different sorts, they have been 
differentiated into various classes. This whole phenomenon of cell 


Fic. 5. THREE TRANSVERSE SECTIONS THROUGH A RABBIT EMBRYO OF SEVEN AND ONE 
HALF DAYys, from series 622 of the Harvard Embryological Collection. A, section 247 across the 
anterior part of the germinal area. B, section 260 across the middle region of the germinal 
area. C, section 381, through the posterior part of the germinal area. Magnified 300 diameters. 


change is comprehensively designated by the single word, cytomorphosis, 
which is derived from two Greek words meaning cell and form, respect- 
ively. A correct understanding of the conception cytomorphosis is an 
indispensable preliminary to any comprehension of the phenomena of 


102 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


development of animal or plant structure. I shall endeavor, therefore, 
now to give you some insight into the phenomena of cytomorphosis as 
regarded by the scientific biologist. The first cells which are produced 
are those which form the young embryo. We speak of them, therefore, 
as embryonic cells, or cells of the embryonic type. Our next picture 
illustrates the actual character of such cells as seen with the microscope, 
for it represents a series of sections through the body of a rabbit 
embryo, the development of which has lasted only seven and one half 
days. You will notice at once the simplicity of the structure. There 
are not yet present any of those parts which we can properly designate 
as organs. The cells have been produced by their own multiplication 
and are not yet so numerous but that they could be readily actually 
counted. They are spread out in somewhat definite layers or sheets. 
but beyond that they show no definite arrangement which is likely to 
attract your attention. That which I wish you particularly to observe 
is that in every part of each of these sections the cells appear very much 
alike. The nuclei are all similar in character, and for each of them 
there is more or less protoplasm; but the 
protoplasm in all parts of these young 
rabbits is found to be very similar; and 
indeed if we should pick out one of these 
cells and place it by itself under the micro- 
scope, it would be impossible to tell what 
part of the rabbit embryo it had been 
taken from, so much do all the cells of 
all the parts resemble one another. We 
learn from this picture that the embryonic 
cells are all very much alike, simple in 
character, have relatively large nuclei, and 
only a moderate amount of protoplasm 
for each nucleus to complete the cell. 
Very different is the condition of 
affairs which we find when we turn to 
ASE aril OES a AS the microscopic examination of the adult. 
VERSE SECTION OF THE SPINALCorpd Did time permit it would be possible to 
or 4 HUMAN EMBRYO OF Four MIL- study a succession of stages and show you 
LIMETERS. Harvard Embryological : ee Sees . 
Collection, series 714. The spinal that the condition which we are about to 
cord’ at thisstage isa tubularatrac . study as extsune actually im the aciie 


ture. The figure shows a portion of 
the wall of the tube; the lefthand the result of a gradual progress and that 


boundary of the figure corresponds jn successive stages of the individual we 
to the inner surface of the tube. : . 

can find successive stages of cell change; 
but it will suffice for our immediate purpose to consider the results of 


differentiation as they are shown to us by the study of the cells of 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 103 


the adult. J will have thrown upon the screen for you a succession 
of pictures illustrating various adult structures. The first is, how- 
ever, a section of the embryonic spinal cord in which you can see 
that much of the simple character of the embryonic cells is still kept. 
All parts of the spinal cord, as the picture shows, are very much 
alike, and the nuclei of the cells composing the spinal cord at this 
stage are all essentially similar in appearance. What a contrast this 
forms with our next picture, which shows us an isolated so-called 
motor nerve cell from the adult spinal cord. It owes its name motor 
to the fact that it produces a nerve fiber by which motor impulses 

are conveyed from the 

spinal cord to the mus- 

cles of the body. The 

cell has numerous elon- 

gated branching _ proc- 

esses stretching out in 
various directions, but all 
leading back towards the cen- 
tral body in which the nucleus 
is situated. These are the 
processes which serve to carry 
in the nervous impulses from 
the periphery towards the 
center of the cell, impulses 
which in large part, if not ex- 
clusively, are gathered up from 
other nerve cells which act on 
the motor element. At one 
point there runs out a single 
process of a different char- 
acter. It is the true nerve 
fiber, and forms the axis, as it 
was formerly termed; or axon, 


Fic. 7. COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FIGURE From 8 it is at present more usually 


THE MEMOIR or DEITERS, in which the proof of named. of the nerve fiber as 
the origin of the nerve fibers directly from the : oe : 
nerve cells was first published. Thememoirisone We encounter it In an ordinary 


of the classics of anatomy. It was issued posthu- - i ino 
mously, for the author died young to the great loss ae e This. 7 single thread 
of science. The figure represents a single isolated like prolongation of the nerve 


motor nerve cell from the spinal cord of an ox, ==) Uae in , 
The single unbranched axon Ax, is readily distin- cell 5 likew ape constituted by 


guisbed from the multiple branching dendrites. the living protoplasm and 

serves to carry the impulses 
away from the cell body and transmit them ultimately to the muscle 
fibers which are to be stimulated to contraction. In the embryonic 


104 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


a 


Fic. 8 A LARGE CELL FROM THE SMALL BRAIN (CEREBELLUM) OF A MAN. It is usually 
called a Puikinje’s cell. It was stained black throughout by what is known as the Golgi silver 
method, hence shows nothing of its internal structure. After yon KO6lliker. 


spinal cord none of these processes existed, and the amount of the 
protoplasm in the nerve cell was very much smaller. As develop- 
ment progressed, not only did the protoplasm body grow, but the 
processes gradually grew out. Some of them branched so as to better 
receive and collect the impulses; one of them remained single and 
very much elongated, and acquired a somewhat different structure in 
order to serve to carry the nervous impulses away. ‘The third picture? 
shows us a section through the spinal cord of an adult fish. It has 
been treated by a special stain in order to show how certain elements 
of the spinal cord acquire a modification of their organization by which 
they are adapted to serve as supports for the nervous elements proper. 
They play in the microscopic structure the same supporting role which 
the skeleton performs in the gross anatomy of the body as a whole. 
They do not take an active part in the nervous functions proper. 
None of the appearances which this figure offers for our consideration 
can be recognized in any similar preparation of the embryonic cord. 
Obviously, then, from the embryonic to the adult state in the spinal 
cord there occurs a great differentiation. That which was alike 
in all its parts has been so changed that we can readily see that 
it consists of many different parts. A striking illustration of this 
is afforded by the next picture, which represents one of the large 
nerve cells which occur in the small brain, or cerebellum, that portion 
of the central nervous system which the physiologists have demon- 


* The illustration referred to is not reproduced in the text. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 105 


strated to be particularly concerned in the regulation and coordination 
of movements. These large cells occur only in this portion of the 


ects - > —_ -——_- — - - - : ---y 


bH 


Fig.3. 


Fic. 9 VARIOUS KINDS OF HUMAN NERVE CELLS, AS DESCRIBED IN THE TEXT. 
After Sobotta. 


brain, and, as you see, differ greatly in appearance from the motor cells 
of the type which we were considering a few moments ago. And, again, 


106 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


another picture illustrates yet other peculiarities of the adult nerve 
cells. The upper figures in this plate are taken from cells which have 
been colored uniformly of a very dark hue, in consequence of which 


e = ~ _ os a] 


Fig.4. 


j Fig. ye 


Fic. 10. SECTIONS OF Four SOk1s OF EPITHELIUM, After Sobotta. 


they are rendered so opaque that the nucleus which they really contain 
is hidden from our view. But the deep artificial color makes it easy 
to follow out the form of the cells and the ramifications of their long 
processes. In the middle figures we have cells which have been stained 
by another method which brings out very clearly to the eye the fact 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 107 


that in the protoplasm of the cell there are scattered spots of substanceé 
of a special sort. No such spots can be demonstrated in the elements 
of the young embryonic nerve cells. To some fanciful observers the 
spots, thus microscopically demonstrable in the nerve cells, recall the 
spots which appear on the skin of leopards, and hence they have be- 
stowed upon these minute particles the term tigroid substance. The 
bottom figures represent the kind of nerve cells which occur upon the 
roots of the spinal nerves. It is unnecessary to dwell upon their ap- 
pearance, as the mere inspection of the figures shows at once that they 
differ very much indeed from the other nerve cells we have considered. 
We pass now to another group of structures, the tissues which are 
known by the technical name of epithelia. You can notice immediately 
in the figures from the skin that the appearances are very different 
from those we have encountered in contemplating the cells of the 
nervous system. And you can readily satisfy yourselves by the com- 
parison with the various figures now before you, of the fact that these 
epithelia are unlike one another. The figures represent epithelium, 
respectively, first from the human ureter; second, from the respiratory 
division of the human nose; third, from the human ductus epididymidis, 
and fourth, from the pigment layer of the retina of the cat. We turn 
now to a representation of a section of one of the orbital glands. 
This is very instructive because we see not only that the cells which 
compose the gland have acquired a special character of their own, but 
also that they are not uniform in their appearances. This lack of 
uniformity is due chiefly to the fact that the cells change their appear- 
ance according to their functional state. We can actually see in these 
cells under the microscope the material imbedded in their protoplasmic 


Fic. 11. To SHOW THE ORBITAL GLANDS, A, with the material to form the secretion 
accumulated within the cells. #, after loss of the material through prolonged secretion. 
From R. Heidenhain after Lavdowsky. 


108 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


®odies out of which the secretion, which is to be poured forth by the 
cells, is to be manufactured. So long as that material for the secretion 
is contained in the cells, the cells appear large, and their protoplasmic 
bodies do not readily absorb certain of the staining matters, which the 
microscopist is likely to apply to them. When, however, the accumu- 
lated raw material has been changed into the secretion and discharged 
from the gland, the cell is correspondingly reduced in bulk, and as you 
see in this figure, it then takes up the stain with considerable avidity, 
as does also the nucleus which has likewise become reduced in size. 
These facts are very instructive for us, since they prove conclusively 
that with the microscope we can see at least part of the peculiarities in 
cells which are correlated with their functions. We can actually ob- 
serve that the cells of the salivary glands are able to produce their 
peculiar secretion because they contain a kind of substance which in 
the embryonic cell does not appear at all. There is a visible differen- 
tiation of these salivary cells from the simple stage of the embryonic 
cells. Something similar to this can be recognized in the next of our 
pictures representing a section of the gland properly known as the 
pancreas, but which is sometimes termed the abdominal salivary gland 
for the reason that it somewhat resembles the true salivary. In the 
cells of the pancreas also we can see the material, which is to produce 
the secretion, accumulated in the inner portion of the cell, and when it 
is so accumulated the cell appears enlarged in size and the nucleus is 
driven back towards the outer end of the cell where some unaltered 
protoplasm is also accumulated. When this raw material is turned 


yi 
% 
e 


a 


NS : 


Fig. 12. Two SECTIONS OF THE PANCREATIC GLAND OF A DoG. A, the cells are enlarged 
by the accumulation of material to form the secretion. JB, the cells are shrunk because there 
has been prolonged secretion und part of their substance is lost. From R. Heidenhain. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 109 


over into secretion by a chemical change, it is discharged from the cell, 
the cell loses in volume and in its shrunken state presents a very dif-. 
ferent appearance, as is shown at B in the figure. It is necessary for 
the cells to again elaborate the material for secretion before they can a 
second time become functionally active. Here we have something of 
the secret of the production of the various juices in the body revealed 
to us. Other excellent examples of the differentiated condition of the 
cells are afforded us by the examination of hairs, of which I will show 
you two pictures. ‘The first represents a section through the human 


Fe ire Shae Oe 


Fic. 13. SECTION OF THE HUMAN SKIN, MADE SO THAT THE HAIRS ARE CUT LENGTHWISE. 


skin taken in such a way that the hairs are themselves cut lengthwise 
and you can see not only that each hair consists of various parts, but 
also that the cells in these parts are unlike. The follicles within the 
skin in which the hair is lodged likewise have walls with cells of various 
sorts. It may interest you also to point out in the figure the little 
muscle which runs from each hair to the overlying skin, so disposed 


> » 


that when the muscle contracts the “ particular hair will stand up on 


se te) POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


end.” Still more clearly does the variety of cells which actually exists 
in a hair show in the following picture, which represents a-cross-section 
of a hair, and its follicle, but more highly magnified than were the 
hairs in the previous figure. The adult body consists of numerous 
organs. These are joined together and kept in place by intervening 


<< 

a Wes 
= P25 _ termes reed . 
by 


ee — : = ee “ 


Fic. 14. Cross SECTIUN OF THE ROOT OF A HAIR, 


substance. The organs themselves consist of many separate parts which 
are also joined by a substance which keeps them in place. This sub- 
stance has received the appropriate name of connective tissue. We 
find in the adult that it consists of a considerable number of structures. 
There are cells and fibers of more than one kind, which have been pro- 
duced by the cells themselves. There is more or less substance secreted 
by the cell which helps to give consistency to the tissue. In some cases 
this substance which is secreted by the cells becomes tougher and ac- 
quires a new chemical character. Such is the case, for instance, with 
cartilage. Or, again, you may see a still greater chemical meta- 
morphosis going on in the material secreted by the cells in the case of 
bone, where the substance is made tougher and stronger by the deposit 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


BEE 


of caleareous material... Nothing like cartilage, nothing like bone, exists 
in the early state of the embryo. They represent something different 
and new. The next of our illustrations shows us a muscle fiber of the 
sort which serves for our voluntary motions, which is connected typ- 
ically with some part of the skeleton. These muscle fibers are elon- 
gated structures. Eaeh fiber contains a con- 
tractile substance different from protoplasm, and 
which exists in the form of delicate fibrils which 
run lengthwise in the muscle fibers, and is so 
disposed, further, that a series of fine lines are 
produced across the fiber itself, each line cor- 
responding with a special sort of material dif- 
ferent from the original protoplasm. These 
cross lines give to the voluntary muscle fibers 
a very characteristic appearance, in consequence 
of which they are commonly designated in 
scientific treatises by the term striated. A 
striated muscle fiber is that which is under the 
control of our will. It should perhaps be men- 
tioned that the muscle fibers of the heart are 
also striated, though they differ very much in 
other respects from the true voluntary muscles. Fig 15. PART OF A 


And last of all for this series of demonstrations, MUSCLE FIBER OF THE 
I have chosen a representation of the retina. 
One can see at the top of the figure the peculiar 
cylindrical and developing projections, which 


HUMAN TONGUETO SHOW 
THE CROSS STRIATIONS. 
Two nuclei are included, 
one of which is shown at 
the edge of the fiber, the 


other in surface view. 
In the adult striated 
muscle fibers of mam- 
mals the nuclei are su- 
perficially placed. 


are characteristic of a retina, projections which 
are of especial interest because they represent 
the apparatus by which the rays of light are 
transformed into an actual sensory perception. 
After this has been accomplished, the perception is transmitted into 
the interior substance of the retina, and by the complication of the 
figure you may judge a little of the complication of the arrangements 
by which the transmission through this sensory organ is achieved, until 
the perception is given off to a nerve fiber and carried to the brain. 
There is not time to analyze all I might present to you of our present 
knowledge concerning the structure of the retina. But it will, I think, 
suffice for purposes of illustration to call your attention to the com- 
plicated appearance of the section as a whole and to assure you that 
nothing of the sort exists in the early stage of the embryo. To re- 
capitulate, then, what we have learned from the consideration of these 
pictures, we may say that in place of uniformity we now have diversity. 
It should be added, to make the story complete, that the establishment 
of this diversity has been gradually brought about, and that that which 


112 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


eee Blood vessels. 


Rod, outer seg- 
ment. 

Cone, outer seg- 
ment. 

Cone, inner seg- 
ment. 


Rod, inner seg- 
ment. 


Base of a cone 
fiber. 


Nucleus. 


Nucleus. 


Inner surface ot 
the retina (to- 
ward the light). 


Fibers which f& 
pass into the 2 
optic nerve. 


Blood vessels 
Fic. 16. SECTION OF A HUMAN RETINA, from Stodhr’s Histology, sixth American edition. 
Although the retina is very thin it comprises no less than twelve distinct layers; the outermost 
layer is highly vascular. The pigment layer prevents the escape of light. The rods and cones 
convert the light waves into a sensory impulse, which is transmitted through the remaining 
layers of the retina to the optic nerve. The total structure is extremely complicated. 


we call development is in reality nothing more than the making of 
diversity out of uniformity. It is a process of differentiation. Dif- 
ferentiation is indeed the fundamental phenomenon of life; it is the 
central problem of all biological research, and if we understood fully 
the nature of differentiation and the cause of it, we should have 
probably got far along towards the solution of the final problem of 
the nature of life itself. 

The size of animals deserves a few moments of our time, for it is 
intimately connected with our problem of growth and differentiation. 
Cells do not differ greatly from one another in size. The range of 
their dimensions is very limited. This is particularly true of the cells 
of any given individual animal. Recent careful investigations have 
been made upon the relation of the size of cells to the size of animals, 
and it has been found that animals are not larger, one than another, 
because their cells are larger, but because they have more of them. 
This statement must be understood with certain necessary reservations. 
There are some kinds of animals, like the star-fish, which have very 
small cells; others, like frogs and toads, which have large cells; so 
that a star-fish of the same bulk as a given frog would contain a great 
many more cells. Our statement is true of allied animals. For ex- 
ample, a large frog differs from a small frog, or a large dog from a 
small dog by the number of the cells. An important exception to this 
law is offered for our consideration by the cells of the central nervous 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH Eta 


system, the nerve cells properly so called. This is demonstrated by the 
slide now before us, which shows us corresponding motor nerve cells 
of twelve different animals arranged in the order of their size—the 
elephant, the cow, the horse, man, the pig, the dog, the baboon, the cat, 
the rabbit, the rat, the mouse, and a small bat. You recognize im- 


Bos taurus Egquus caballus 


72.4x56.7.. «GG 7.8 *5G.7 


Homo ~——s Sus scrofa’ Canis familiaris 


675*540  ———-63.4x51.3 66.8*45.4 


toe 


Cynocephalus babuin Felis domestica Lepus cuniculus domesticus 
60.7* 56.3 98.0*%354..0 45x 36.4 


ee 

pc es @ 

Mus ratius albus = Mus musculus albus Atalapha cinerea 
37.8*33.7 36.8x22.9 31.5x28.0 


Fic. 17. Motor NERVE CELLS OF VARIOUS MAMMALS, all from the cervical region of the 
spinal cord. The cells are represented, all uniformly magnified. After Irving Hardesty. 


mediately that there is a proportion between the size of these cells 
and the size of the respective species of animals. To a minor degree, 
but much less markedly, there is a difference in the caliber and length 
of the muscle fibers. But with these exceptions our statement is very 
nearly exactly true, that the difference in size of animals does not in- 
volve a difference in the size of their cells. For the purpose of the 
study of development, which we are to make in these lectures, this uni- 


VOL. LXx!I.—8 


114 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


fermity in the size of cells is a great advantage, and enables us to speak 
in general terms in regard to the growth of cells, and renders it 
superfluous to stop and discuss for each part of the body the size of 
the cells which compose it, or to seek to establish different principles 
for different animals because their cells are not alike in size. 

Now we pass to a totally different aspect of cell development, that 
which is concerned with the degeneration of cells. For we find that, 


Fig. 18, CHANGES IN THE NERVE CELLS WITH AGE. 


after the differentiation has been accomplished, there is a tendency to 
carry the change yet further and to make it so great that it goes 
beyond perfection of structure, so far that the deterioration of the 
cell comes as a consequence. Such cases of differentiation we speak of 
as a degeneration, and it may occur in a very great number of ways. 
Very frequently it comes about that the alteration in the structure of 
the cell goes so far in adapting it to a special function that it is unable 
to maintain itself in good physiological condition, and failing to keep 
up its own nourishment it undergoes a gradual shrinkage which we 
call atrophy. <A very good illustration of this, and a most important 
one, is offered us by the changes which go on in the nerve cells in 
extreme old age. This is beautifully illustrated by the two pictures 
which are now before us, copied from investigations of Professor Hodge, 
of Clark University. The two figures represent human nerve cells 
taken from the root of a spinal nerve. The left-hand figure shows 
these cells as they exist in their full maturity; the right-hand 
figure, as they appear in a person of extreme old age. In the latter 
you will readily notice that the cells have shrunk and no longer fill 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 115 


the spaces allotted to them, the nuclei have become small, and the 
protoplasm has changed its appearance very strikingly because there 
have been deposited in it granules of the pigment which impart to these 
cells an appearance very different from that which they had in their 
maturity when their functional powers were at their maximum. You 
will notice also in other parts of the right-hand figure that the atrophy 
of the cells has led on to their disintegration, that they are breaking 
down, being destroyed, and that the result of their breaking down will 
ultimately be their disappearance. Thus the atrophy of a cell may 
lead to its death. The other two figures’ upon the screen show us the 
brain of the humble bee. On the left is the brain of the bee in the 
condition in which we find it when the bee first emerges from the 
pupa or chrysalis. The cells are then in a fine physiological condition, 
but in a few weeks at most the bee becomes old and in the space which 
belongs to each cell we find only its shrunken and atrophied remnants, 
the nucleus greatly reduced in volume, and an irregular mass of proto- 
plasm shrunk together around it. These cells have likewise under- 
gone an atrophy and are on their way to death. In other cases we 
find that there is a change going on which we call necrobiosis, which 
means that the cells continue to live, but change their chemical organi- 
zation so that their substance passes from a living to a dead state. No 
more perfect illustration of this sort of change can be found than that 
which is afforded by the skin. In the deep layer of the outer skin are 
the living and growing parts, which we all know from experience are 
sensitive. As these multiply some of them move up towards the sur- 
face; and they are continually shoved nearer and nearer the surface by 
the growth of the cells underneath. They finally become exposed at 
the surface by the loss of the superficial cells which preceded them. 
During this migration the protoplasm of each cell, which was alive, is 
changed chemically into a new substance which we call keratin, or in 
common language, horny substance. Ultimately the cell protoplasm 
becomes nothing but horny substance and is absolutely dead. Here 
life and death play together and go hand in hand. Hence the term 
necrobiosis, life and death in one. Another form of degeneration which 
occurs in many cases is of great interest because it seems as if the cells 
were making a last great effort; and their final performance is one 
of enlargement. They become greater in size than before; but there 
will follow a disintegration of these cells also; and they break down 
and are lost. This form of degeneration is termed hypertrophic, and 
represents a third type, as I have stated. In all parts of the body 
degenerative changes are going on, and they represent collectively a 
third phase in the cytomorphic cycle. But there is yet one more phase, 
which is needed to epmeplcte the story. That is pie phase of the 


* The two fous of the bee’s brain are not peeeadive in the text. 


116 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


death and final removal of the cells. The degenerative change always 
results in the death of the cell. In many cases the dead material is 
removed merely by being cast off, as is the case with the skin. All the 
scales which peal off from the outer surface of our body represent little 
scraps or clusters of cells which are entirely dead; and in the interior 
of the body, in the intestinal canal, and in the glands of the stomach, 
we find cells continually dying, dropping off from their place upon the 
walls, and being cast away. Or if we examine the saliva which comes 
from the mouth, we detect that that also is full of cells which have 
died and fallen off from their connection with the body and are thus 
removed. An even more important method of the removal of cells is 
by a chemical process in consequence of which the cells are dissolved 
and disappear before our eyes, very much as marble may disappear 
from sight under the corrosive action of an acid. Indeed, we know 
that all the parts of the body, so far as they are alive, produce within 
themselves a ferment which has a tendency to destroy the living sub- 
stance itself. The production of these destructive agents is going on at 
all times, apparently, in all parts of the body, which are alive. A 
striking illustration of this is offered in the stomach. The digestive 
juice which is produced in the stomach is capable of attacking and 
destroying living substance, and any organic material suitable for food 
which is placed in the stomach will, as we know, be attacked by the 
gastric juices, dissolved to a certain extent by them, and so destroyed. 
Why then does the gastric juice not attack the stomach itself? This is 
but one phase of the problem why the body does not continually 
destroy itself. It has lately been ascertained by some ingenious phys- 
iological investigations that the body not only produces the destructive 
agents, but also antagonists thereto, anti-compounds which tend to 
prevent the activity of the destroying factors. The whole problem is 
one of great interest and importance which calls for very much further 
investigation before we can be said to have arrived at a clear under- 
standing of it. But it helps us much in our conception of cytomor- 
phosis to know that all portions of the body are endowed with this 
faculty of destroying themselves, for it enables us to understand how it 
is possible that after the degeneration of a cell it will be dissolved away. 
It is merely that the agents of solution which are ordinarily held at 
bay are no longer restrained, and they at once do their work. ‘There is 
another, but comparatively rare, mode of cell-destruction. The cells 
break up into separate fragments, which are then dissolved by chemical 
means and disappear, by the method of histolysis above described, or 
else are devoured by the cells, to which reference was made in the 
first lecture, and which are known by the name of phagocytes, and to 
which Metchnikoff has attributed so great an importance. It is un- 
questionable that phagocytes do eat up fragments of cells and of tissues, 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH i | 


and may even attack whole cells. But to me it seems probable that 
their role is entirely secondary. They do not cause the death of cells, 
but they feed presumably only upon cells which are already dead or at 
least dying. Their activity is to be regarded, so far as the problem 
of the death of cells is concerned, not as indicating the cause of death, 
but as a phenomenon for the display of which the death of the cell offers 
an opportunity. The subject of the death and disintegration of cells 
is an exceedingly complex one, and might well occupy our attention for 
a long time. But it is not permissible to depart from the strict theme 
which we have before us, and I will content myself, therefore, with 
throwing upon the screen two tables? which illustrate to us the varia- 
tions in the death of cells and in their modes of removal which are 


71. DEATH OF CELLS 
First. Causes of death. 
A. External to the organism: ; 
(1) Physical (mechanical, chemical, thermal, ete.). 
(2) Parasites. 
B. Changes in intercellular substances (probably primarily due to cells) : 
(1) Hypertrophy. 
(2) Induration. 
(3) Calcification. 
(4) Amyloid degeneration (infiltration) . 
C. Changes inherent in cells: 
Second. Morphological changes of dying cells. 
A. Direct death of cells: 
(1) Atrophy. 
(2) Disintegration and resorption. 
B. Indirect death of cells: 
(1) Neerobiosis (structural change precedes final death). 
(2) Hypertrophic aegeneration (growth and structural change often 
; with nuclear proliferation precede final death). 
Third. Removal of cells. 
A. By mechanical means (sloughing or shedding) 
B. By chemical means (solution). 
C. By phagocytes. 


II. Inprrect DEATH OF CELLS 
A. Necrobiosis. 
(1) Cytoplasmic changes: 
(a) Granulation. 
(6) Hyaline transformation. 
(c) Imbibition. s 
(d) Desiceation. 
(e) Blasmatosis. 
(2) Nuclear changes: 
(a) Karyorhexis. 
(b) Karyolysis. 
B. Hypertrophic degeneration. 
(1) Cytoplasmic: 
(a) Granular. 
(b) Cornifying. 
(c) Hyaline. 
Paraplasmic: 
(a) Fatty. 
(b) Pigmentary. 
(c) Mucoid. 
(d) Colloid, ete. 
(3) Nuclear (increase of chromatin). 


bo 


118 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


known at the present time. These tables are taken from a lecture 
which I delivered in New York a few years ago, which was subse- 
quently published. If any of you should care to make a closer ac- 
quaintance with them they are therefore readily accessible to you. How 
then, from the standpoint of cytomorphosis ought we to look upon old 
age? Cytomorphosis, the succession of cellular changes which goes on 
in the body, is always progressive. It begins with the earliest deveiop- 
ment, continues through youth, is still perpetually occurring at maturity 
and in old age. The rdéle of the last stage of cytomorphosis, that is, of 
death in life, is very important, and its importance has only lately be- 
come clear to us. I doubt very much if the conception is at all 
familiar to the members of this audience. Nevertheless the constant 
death of cells is one of the essential factors of development, and much 
of the progress which our bodies have made during the years we have 
lived, has been conditional upon the death of cells. As we have seen, 
cytomorphosis, when it goes through to the end, involves not only the 
differentiation but the degeneration and death of the parts. There are 
many illustrations of this which I might cite to you as examples of the 
great importance of the destruction of parts. Thus there is in the 
embryo before any spinal coltimn is formed an actual structure which 
is termed the notochord. In the young mammalian embryo this 
structure is clearly present and plays an important part, but in the 
adult it has entirely disappeared, and its disappearance begins very 
early during embryonic life. There are numerous blood vessels which 
we find to occur in the embryo, both those which carry the blood away 
from the heart and those which bring blood to the heart, which during 
the progress of development are entirely destroyed, and disappear for- 
ever. Knowledge of these is to the practical anatomist and surgeon 
often of great importance. Vast numbers of the smaller blood vessels 
which we know commonly by the name of capillaries, exist only for a 
time and are then destroyed. There is in the young frog, while he is 
in the tadpole stage, a kidney-like organ, which on account of its posi- 
tion is called the head-kidney, but it exists only during the young 
stage of the tadpole. There is later produced another kidney which, 
from its position, is called the middle kidney, and which is the only 
renal organ found in the adult, for the head kidney entirely disap- 
pears in these animals long before the adult condition is reached. In 
the mammal there is yet a third kindey. We have during the em- 
bryonic stage of the mammal always a well-developed excretory organ 
which corresponds to the middle or permanent kidney of the frog, yet 
during embryonic life the greater part of this temporary structure is 
entirely destroyed. It is dissolved away and vanishes, leaving only a 
few remnants of comparatively little importance in the adult. The 
new structure, the permanent kidney which we have, takes its place 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 119 


functionally. Large portions of the tissues, which arise in the embryo, 
are destroyed at the time of birth, and take no share in the subsequent 
development of the child. If we follow out with the microscope the 
various changes which go on in the developing body we see revealed to 
us a very large number of cases of death of tissues, followed by their 
removal. Thus the cartilage which exists in the early stages dies and 
is dissolved away, and its place is taken by bone. Those things which 
we know as bony elements of the skeleton in the adult, in the embryo 
exist merely as cartilage, but the cartilage is not converted into bone 
but it is destroyed and its place taken by bone. There is overlying 
the heart of a child at birth a well-developed gland known as the 
thymus. After childhood this undergoes a retrograde development; it 
becomes gradually absorbed and persists only in a rudimentary condi- 
tion. With the loss of the teeth occurring during infancy, you are 
familiar, and know that the first set of teeth are but for a short period, 
and are to be replaced by the permanent set. In very old persons we 
see a great deal of the bony material absorbed, and this absorption of 
the bone is a phenomenon which occurs at almost every period of the 
development. Portions of the epidermis or outer skin are constantly 
shed, as is well known, and the loss of hair and the loss of portions of 
our nails are so familiar to us that we hardly heed them. Of the 
ecnstant destruction of the cells, which are found in the lining of the 
intestine, I have already spoken. At all times in the body there is a 
vast amount of destruction of blood corpuscles going on, a destruction 
which is physiologically indispensable, for the material which the blood 
corpuscles furnish is used in many ways. For instance, the pigment 
which occurs in the hair is supposed to be derived from the chemical 
substances the use of which the body obtains by destroying blood 
corpuscles. One of the most familiar instances of destruction is that 
of the tail of the tadpole. The young frog and the young toad during 
their larval stages live in the water and each of them is furnished 
with a nice tail for swimming purposes. As the time approaches for 
the metamorphosis of the tadpole into the adult, the tail is gradually 
dssolved away. It is not cast off, but it is literally dissolved, resorbed, 
and vanishes ultimately altogether. 

It is evident that such a vast amount of destruction of living cells 
could not be maintained in the body without the body going entirely 
te destruction itself, were there not some device for making good the 
lesses which are thus brought about. We find in fact that there is 
always a reserve of cells kept to make good the loss which it is essential 
should be made good. Some losses apparently do not have to be re- 
paired, but the majority of them must be compensated for, and this 
is done by having in the body a reserve supply of cells which can 
produce new cells of the sort required. This leads us to considera- 
tion of the phenomenon of regeneration and of the repair of parts. 


120 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


These phenomena we can better take up later in our course, when we 
have dealt with the general processes of development and growth. 
From the study of regeneration we shall be able to confirm the explana- 
tion of old age, which I want to lay before you. This confirmation is 
so important that it will be better taken up in a separate lecture, than 
slipped in now when the hour is nearly by. 

Old age, after what I have said, I think you will all recognize as 
merely the advanced and final stage of cytomorphosis. Old age differs 
but little in its cytomorphosis from maturity; maturity differs much 
from infancy; infancy differs very much indeed from the embryo; but 
the embryo differs enormously from the germ in its cytomorphic con- 
stitution. We know that in the early time comes the great change, 
and this fact we shall apply for purposes of interpretation later on. 
Cytomorphosis is then a fundamental notion. It gives us in a general 
law, a comprehensive statement of all the changes which occur in the 
body. None, in fact, are produced at any period in any of us except 
in accordance with this general cytomorphic law. ‘There is, first, the 
undifferentiated stage, then the progressive differentiation; next there 
follows the degenerative change ending in death, and last of all the 
removal of the dead cells. Such we may conveniently designate as the 
fcur essential stages of cytomorphosis. This cytomorphosis is at first 
very rapid; afterwards it becomes slower. ‘That is a significant thing. 
The young change fast; the old change slowly. We shall be able, when 
we get a little farther along in our study, to see that in differentiation 
hes the explanation of a great deal of biological knowledge, lies the 
explanation of our conception of cell structures; and in it also hes not 
only the explanation of the death of cells, but also, as it seems to me— 
and this is one of the points that I shall want particularly to bring 
forward before the close of the course—of general death, that which 
we mean by death in common parlance, when the continuation of the 
life of the individual ceases, and is thereafter bodily impossible. The 
explanation of death is one of the points at which we shall be aiming 
in the subsequent lectures of the course. Now we know that in con- 
nection with age there is always growth. I propose, therefore, in the 
next lecture, to take up the subject of growth. We shall arrive at 
some paradoxical conclusions, for it can be shown by merely statistical! 
reckonings that our notion that man passes through a period of de- 
velopment and a period of decline is misleading, in that in reality we 
begin with a period of extremely rapid decline, and then end life with 
a decline which is very slow and very slight. The period of most 
rapid decline is youth; the period of slowest decline is old age, and 
that this statement is correct I shall hope to prove to you with the 
aid of tables and lantern illustrations at the next lecture. 


THE PLACE OF LINNAUS 121 


THE PLACE OF LINNAUS IN THE UNFOLDING OF 
SCIENCE; HIS VIEWS ON THE CLASS 
MAMMALIA? 


By WILLIAM K. GREGORY 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY AND THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


i order rightly to appraise the value of Karl von Linné’s contribu- 
tions to biological science, it is necessary to bear in mind two very 
axiomatic facts. Our first axiom is that Linneus became a point of 
departure in the history of modern biology only because he was in turn 
the product of the intersection of a great number of important causal 
series, which ramify and intertwine indefinitely and stretch back into 
the remote past of every aspect of life. The second axiom is that every 
new idea, or, for that matter, every new event, is the fertile hybrid 
from the fortuitous crossing of two or more specifically distinct old 
ideas, or events. And in order that we may discern a few of these 
fortuitous crossings and follow a little some of these interminable and 
intricate streams of cause and effect, it may not be inappropriate, in 
connection with the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lin- 
nus, to touch briefly upon a series of seven epochs of thought, from 
Aristotle to Darwin; and further to glance at the principles and facts 
upon which Linneus based his two great contributions to the broader 
knowledge of the class of which man is the dominating member. 

Not to go back indefinitely, we begin with the Aristotelian or 
initial analytic epoch of the fourth century B. c. Aristotle’s theory of 
the genetic relationship of the chain of beings from polyp to man did 
not, of course, materially influence Linneus. The idea of evolution 
which St. Thomas Aquinas, the “ princeps scholasticorum ” understood 
and developed, was not destined to come to its fruition through the 
schoolmen or even in Linneus or Cuvier. But the true relation of 
Aristotle’s thought to that of Ray and Linneus may be exhibited in the 
following well-known citations from “ The Parts of Animals.”? 


Some animals are viviparous, some oviparous, some vermiparous. The 
viviparous are such as man, and the horse, and all those animals which have 
hair; and of the aquatic animals, the whale kind, as the dolphin and cartilag- 


* This article is here published by courtesy of the council of the New York 
Academy of Sciences. It is largely adapted from a forthcoming memoir by the 
writer on the “ History of the Classification of the Mammalia,” prepared under 
the direction of Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn. 

2 Quoted by W. Whewell, “ History of the Inductive Sciences,” 8vo, London, 
1837, Vol. III., pp. 347. 


i22 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


inous fishes [in reference to the viviparity of certain sharks]. (Book I., chap. 
V.) Of quadrupeds which have blood and are viviparous, some are (as to their 
extremities) many-cloven, as the hands and feet of man. For some are many- 
toed, as the lion, the dog, the panther; some are bifid, and have hoofs instead of 
nails, as the sheep, the goat, the elephant, the hippotamus; and some haye 
undivided feet, as the solid hoofed animals, the horse and ass. The swine kind 
share both characters. An allusion to the “ mule footed ” swine, monstrosities 
in which the median digits are fused and terminate in a solid composite hoof. 
(Bood II., chap. V.) 

Ray and later writers probably had this passage in mind when they 
used the descriptive terms “ multifido,’ “ bifido,’ “ solidungula,” 
“ungulata,” ‘“ unguiculata,” “ fissipedes.” Here also attention is 
directed to the feet as exhibiting characteristic differences. 

Animals have also great differences in the teeth both when compared with 
each other and with man. For all quadrupeds which have blood and are vivi- 
parous have teeth. And in the first place some are ambidental*® (having teeth in 
both jaws) ; and some are not so, wanting the front teeth in the upper jaw. 
Some have neither front teeth nor horns, as the camel; some have tusks, as the 
boar; some have not. Some have serrated teeth,® as the lion, the panther, the 
dog; some have the teeth unvaried,® as the horse and the ox; for the animals 
which vary their cutting teeth have all serrated teeth. No animal has both tusks 
and horns; nor has any animal with serrated teeth either of those weapons. The 
greater part have the front teeth cutting, and those within broad (chap. II.). 

This passage evidently directed the attention of later writers to the 
importance of the teeth as a means of distinguishing and hence of 
classifying mammals, and we shall see that Ray and, later, Linnaus 
were quick to avail themselves of the suggestion. 

Although Whewell’ proves that Aristotle was quite unconscious of 
the classification that has been ascribed to him, he also admits that 
“ Aristotle does show, as far as could be done at his time, a perception 
of the need of groups, and of names of groups, in the study of the 
animal kingdom; and thus may justly be held up as the great figure 
in the Prelude to the Formation of Systems which took place in more 
advanced scientific times.” 

Whewell quotes passages that show recognition of the lack of 
generic names to denominate natural groups. Aristotle says that “ Of 
the class of viviparous quadrupeds there are many genera,® but these 
again are without names, except specific names, such as man, lion, stag, 
horse, dog, and the like. Yet there is a genus of animals that have 
manes, as the horse, the ass, the oreus, the ginnus, the innus, and the 
animal which in Syria is called heminus (mule). . . . Wherefore,” he 


3 AudddovrTa, 

4 Xavdddovra. 

5 Kapyapodovra. 

6’ AverdAaakra. 

TOp. cit., III., p. 350. 
8 Bid. 


THE PLACE OF LINNAUS v2 


adds (that is, because we do not possess genera and generic names of 
this kind), “ we must take the species separately and study the nature of 
each.” ‘These passages,” Whewell continues, “afford us sufficient 
ground for placing Aristotle at the head of those naturalists to whom 
the first views of the necessity of a zoological system are due” (op cit., 
p. 352). 

It is not necessary to dwell on the fact that from the time of Aris- 
totle and his classical successors to the close of the middle ages Europe 
thought itself too much preoccupied to pay particular attention to 
natural history; on the one hand with world-wide displacements and 
readjustments of peoples and of institutions, and on the other hand 
with the development of the great body of religious and metaphysical 
doctrines. Even the next epoch requiring our attention, the scholastic 
epoch in the history of science, so far as natural history is concerned, 
is perhaps rather a further interregnum than an epoch, rather an era 
or lapse of uneventful time, than a time of the slow ascension of some 
great illuminative idea. The anthropocentric idea dominated in 
natural history as the geocentric idea dominated in astronomy and 
hence a knowledge of the real or supposed properties of animals, and 
especially of plants, was chiefly cultivated in connection with alchemy, 
magic, materia medica, etc. The medieval imagination, full of mys- 
ticism, eager for the uncanny and fantastic and teeming with images 
of the ubiquitous devils, flourished on the marvelous tales of a “ Sir 
John Mandeville,” and peopled the earth with the monsters which so 
long survived and ramped in the Terre Incognite of world maps. In 
the schools citations from authorities were accepted in lieu of proof, 
and the simple zoology of Aristotle and the scriptures was deeply 
covered by the accretions of learned exegesis. 

However, it must be remembered that scholasticism had reached its 
prime as far back as the thirteenth century, in the system of the 
illustrious St. Thomas Aquinas, and that while the renaissance move- 
ment was discovering new worlds in all directions, scholasticism in 
general (but with some brilliant exceptions) had reached the phylo- 
eerontic stage, and was producing all sorts of bizarre specializations in 
terminology and in dialectic. 

Nevertheless, it can not be doubted that the very excesses of 
scholasticism stimulated the reactive return to experience, which gave 
rise incidentally to biological science. Furthermore, the schoolmen 
perpetuated and aroused interest in Aristotle’s analyses, and gave cur- 
rency to many methods of analysis and description. Among these we 
may cite the dichotomous method of division, which is a forerunner of 
modern classifications, and the logical concepts of genus and species. 
Especially noteworthy was the expansion of classical Latin into a highly 
specialized language of philosophy and science. 


124 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


We now come to the renaissance epoch. Biological science, and 
especially zoology, did not respond fully to the impulse of the renais- 
sance movement until literature, politics, astronomy and geographical 
discovery had made the most signal advances. Hence in Aldrovandi 
(1522-1605) and Gesner (1516-1565) the superstitions and myths of 
the middle ages still linger, while the systematic work of future genera- 
tions is initiated in the extensive, illustrated catalogues and descrip- 
tions of plants and animals. On the philosophical side of zoology, the 
Englishman Wotton, in his “ De Differentiis Animalum” (Paris, 
1552,) “rejected the legendary and fantastic accretions |of medieval 
zoology| and returned to Aristotle and the observation of nature ” 
(Lankester).° One of the contemporaries of Gesner and Wotton was 
the founder of anatomy, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), who boldly 
broke with tradition and declared that the source of knowledge of the 
human body should be not Galen, but the human body itself. 

Near the end of this period, the botanist, Cesalpino (Czsalpinus), 
of Arezzo (1519-1778), himself a celebrated scholastic philosopher, 
but animated also by the new idea of direct observation, published his 
voluminous work “ De Plantis” (1583). In this work the confused 
arrangements of plants of the earlier herbalists are replaced by an 
orderly classification suggested by the brigades of an army, and founded 
upon the number, the position and the figure of the reproductive parts. 
He divided plants into ten great classes, which were again subdivided ; 
to these assemblages he gave monomial names in substantive form. 
Linneus says of him that, “though the first in attempting to form 
natural orders he observed as many as the most successful later writers.” 
(Whewell, op. cit., pp. 282-283.) 

We may venture to suggest as a reason for this precocious develop- 
ment of a natural classification of plants the very multiplicity of kinds 
and the large herbaria and horticultural gardens in existence which 
necessitated some sort of orderly arrangement, and which would assist 
the eager student to recognize related series. We note in contrast the 
delayed progress of the classification of the mammals due to the com- 
parative fewness of known forms, the greater complexity of organiza- 
tion and the difficulties of observation. 

Among those who contributed the data for Linneus’s generaliza- 
tions, no name is more important, at least in the history of vertebrate 
zoology, than that of John Ray. Accordingly, the fourth epoch under 
consideration may be termed the Raian epoch, and culminates with the 
publication in 1693 of Ray’s “ Synopsis Methodica Animalium Quad- 
rupedum et Serpentini Generis,” which is one of the great landmarks 
in the history of classification. Ray’s debt to the past is shown in the 


® Lankester, E. Ray, The History and Scope of Zoology, in “ The Advance- 


ment of Science,’ London, 1890, p. 293. 


THE PLACH OF LINNAUS 125 


facts that his very lucid tabular analyses of the common structural fea- 
tures of animals are arranged dichotomously, that in each division and 
subdivision a single adjective or adjectival phrase indicates the most 
important common feature of the animals in question, and that these 
terms are, as we have seen, in many cases borrowed from Aristotle. 

Ray, like Linneus, gave more attention to plants than to animals, 
and depended upon his colleague, Willughby, for much of the data, 
especially in the fishes. And, like Linneus also, Ray had a superb gift 
of order and a philosophical mind that made him a worthy countryman 
and contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton. 

In his tabular analysis Ray distinctly foreshadows Linneus in the 
following points: 

1. The higher vertebrates are contrasted with the fishes as breathing 
by lungs instead of gills. 

2. The whales are classed with the viviparous animals and expressly 
removed from the fishes, from which they were further distinguished 
by the horizontality of the tail fin. This step, however, was felt to be 
so radical that Ray afterwards constructed a definition which included 
both whales and fishes. 

3. As remarked by Gill, the terrestrial or quadruped mammals are 
bracketed with the aquatic as “Vivipara,”’ and contrasted with the 
“ Ovipara” or “Aves.” “The Vivipara are exactly coextensive with 
Mammalia, but the word vivipara was used as an adjective and not as 
a noun. Linneus did not catch up with this concept till 1758, when 
he advanced beyond it by recognizing the group as a class and giving 
it an apt name.”?° 

4. The double ventricle is noted as characteristic of both Vivipara 
and Ovipara. 

5. In order to associate the “ Manati” and other amphibious mam- 
mals with their terrestrial congeners the term “hairy animals” is 
employed as more comprehensive than quadrupeds. 

Ray further set the standard for Linneus in his concise descriptions 
of European and foreign mammals, especially those described by trav- 
elers in America and in the east. Ray often used the term “species” 
merely as the equivalent of the middle English “ spece,” which survives 
in our word “ spice,” and meant “kind”; it was also equivalent to the 
logical “species (cf. the Greek eid0s) of the schoolmen and is exem- 
plified in Ray and Willughby’s “ Historia Piscium” in such phrases as 
“clarias niloticus Belonii mustele fluviatilis,” “ bagre piscis barbati ac 
aculeati species.” But Ray also used the term species in quite a Lin- 
nwean manner, as in the names Ovis laticauda, Ovis strepsiceros, Ovis 
domestica, etc. In form, at least, this foreshadows the binomial sys- 


»<The Story of a Word—Mammal,”’ PorpunarR ScIENcCE MonrTuty, Vol. 
LXI., September, 1902, pp. 434-438. 


126 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tem of nomenclature and the recognition of the species in general as 
an objective reality and the unit of classification. But the form of 
Ray’s specific definitions seems to imply that the term “species” in 
Ray’s mind was often more a “ differentia,” or specific adjective modify- 
ing the generic concept, than a fully-developed substantive name, and 
Ray did not apparently realize the convenience of applying the binomial 
method of nomenclature universally. Even Linneus at first introduced 
the specific, “ trivial,” or common, name, merely as a marginal index 
.or symbol of the full specific phrase. Ray recognized the considerable 
variability of species but believed also in their separate creation and 
fixity. Ray frequently adverts to the internal characters of animals, 
and even a cursory examination of his book shows that, even by his 
time, a considerable number of observations on the soft parts of 
animals had already accumulated. 

The work of Ray in botany and zoology fully prepared the way for 
Linneus himself, whose epoch may be designated as the Linnean or 
legislative epoch, because in his time methods of description, of classi- 
fication and laws of nomenclature became fully established and settled. 
Linneus inherited from Ray and from the scholastic system, the dogma 
of the separate creation and objective reality of species which became 
developed and strengthened in his hands as a result of his observations. 
His dictum was “ species tot sunt diverse quot diverse forme ab initio 
sunt create.” The resemblance between members of a single species 
were hence held to be due to descent from an original pair, and the 
mutual infertility of species to be the natural penalty of the effort to 
traverse the gaps established from the beginning. 

And now that we have traced briefly the steps leading up to Lin- 
neus, a few words more will summarize the relation of Linnzus to his 
successors. The sixth epoch in the history of zoology extends from the 
latter part of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, 
and may be called the anatomical epoch, because, through the labors of 
Cuvier and his great English pupil and successor, Richard Owen, the 
taxonomic studies of the Linnean school were supplemented by the 
establishment and great development of the sciences of comparative 
anatomy and paleontology. Cuvier’s researches in these sciences further 
extended the dogma of the fixity of species, but Owen, through his 
broader knowledge, gradually gave up the idea and became an evolu- 
tionist, although not a selectionist. The seventh epoch, the Darwinian, 
in which happily we are living, has seen the overthrow of the tradi- 
tional doctrine of the fixity of species, and has initiated the reexamina- 
tion of all cosmical and terrestrial phenomena in the light of the doc- 
trine of evolution. 

Thus the great lawgiver of natural history is seen in his 
proper perspective, inheriting, on the one hand, the language and 


THE PLACE OF LINNAUS 127 


general methods of the past and the doctrine of special creation ; inher- 
iting, on the other hand, the new spirit and contributions of Vesalius, 
Cesalpino, Ray and many others, and building upon this the founda- 
tions of modern botany and zoology. 


In attempting to appraise Linneus’s contributions to the broader 
knowledge of the class of mammals, we must bear in mind what Dr. 
J. A. Allen has well shown, namely, that Linneus was primarily a 
botanist, that his interest in mammals was incidental, his opportuni- 
ties for studying them very limited and his first-hand knowledge of 
extra-European mammals practically nil; and finally that several of his 
ordinal groupings of mammals (e. g., rhinoceros with the rodents) now 
appear highly unnatural and even ludicrous. But there are certain 
considerations which may prevent us from thinking any the less of 
Linneus’s judgment and genius on that account. 

Although Linnzus may have known very little about extra-Euro- 
pean mammals, he had, nevertheless, a fairly good conception of the 
essential features of mammals as a class, as shown by his definition in 
the tenth edition of the “ Systema Nature” (1758). Here in concise 
phrase he states that mammals have a heart with two auricles and two 
ventricles, with hot red blood, that the lungs breathe rhythmically, that 
the jaws are slung as in other vertebrates, but “ covered,” 7. e., with 
flesh, as opposed to the “ naked ” jaws of birds; that the penis is intro- 
mittent, the females viviparous, that they secrete and give milk, that the 
channels of perception are the tongue, nose, eyes, ears and the sense of 
touch; that the integument is provided with hairs, which are sparse in 
tropical and very few in aquatic mammals; that the body is supported 
on four feet, save in the aquatic forms, in which the hind limbs are 
said to be coalesced into a tail (the only erroneous idea in the whole 
definition) . 

Many of these characters had previously been noticed by Ray in his 
description of the hairy quadrupeds; and it is not impossible that Lin- 
neus may have been assisted to the comprehension of the essential 
features of the mammals through his friendship with Bernard de 
Jussieu, who is said by Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire to have induced 
him to include the Cetaceans in the class Mammalia; and possibly he 
owed something to the researches of Klein and Brisson. But Lin- 
nzeus’s own studies in medicine, in Holland, doubtless made him famil- 
jar with the anatomy of at least one mammal, man, and on his journeys 
through the north of Europe he must have observed many mammals 
at close range. 

All this prepared him for the clear recognition and emphasis of 
two facts of far-reaching importance. It was evidently well known 


128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


that the anatomy of mammals was similar in plan, if not in detail, 
to that of man, and we find Descartes, for example, in his “ Discourse 
on Method” (Part V., 1637) advising those who wished to understand 
his theory of the action of the lungs and circulatory system, “to take 
the trouble of getting dissected in their presence the heart of some 
large animal possessed of lungs, for this is throughout sufficiently like 
the human” (ital. mihi). And it was further known that of all 
animals the monkeys are most nearly like man, both externally and 
internally. This was asserted by Aristotle and other classical authors 
but was fully-demonstrated in a carefully prepared and illustrated 
work?! on the anatomy and appearance of animals from the Jardin du 
Roi, by a committee of savants of the French Academy, appointed by 
the Grand Monarch. 
That this work and these important facts came under the notice of 
Linneus on the occasion of his visit to Paris in 1738 is not improbable. 
At any rate, Linneus did not hesitate to follow the logical consequences 
of these facts, namely, that in a strictly zoological classification man 
would be grouped not only in the class mammalia, but even in the same 
ordinal division with the monkeys. Accordingly, in the tenth edition 
of the “ Systema” the earlier name Anthropomorphe is replaced by 
Primates, and the genera Homo, Simia, Lemur, Vespertilio are grouped 
under that order. The Primates were thus regarded as the chiefs of 
the graded hierarchy of terrestrial beings, and consequently, as in 
nearly all subsequent schemes down to the Darwinian epoch, head the 
classified legions of creatures. This allocation of man to the order 
Primates was surely an instance of Linnzus’s genius in surmising the 
true affinities of puzzling organisms, and led the way to the modern 
generalization that man is knit by ties of blood kinship to the Primates, 
and more remotely to the whole organic world. 
The diagnostic definition given by Linnzus of the order Primates 
may be cited because it rests upon the principles and theories which 
guided him in classification and which led to his most successful group- 
ings, as well as to his serious blunders. This definition is as follows: 
Inferior front teeth iv, parallel, laniariform [canine] teeth solitary [7. e., in a 
single pair]. 

Mamme pectoral, one pair. 

The anterior extremities are hands. 

The arms are separated by clavicles, the gait usually on all fours (* incessu 
tetrapodo volgo”). 

They climb trees and pluck the fruits thereof. 

That this definition was insufficient to exclude all extraneous genera 

from this really natural order is evident from the facts: (1) That under 


1“ Mémoires pour servir 4 l’Histoire naturelle des Animaux,” a la Haye, 
1715 (4to, 2 vols.), Redigées par Perrault et Dodart. 


THE PLACE OF LINNAUS 129 


Lemur Linneus included not only all the then known forms now 
recognized as the suborder Lemuroidea, but also the “ Flying Lemur ” 
Galeopithecus, which properly either forms an order by itself with no 
near affinities with the Primates, or is at most a suborder of the 
Cheiroptera. (2) The definition also included the bats (Vespertilio), 
an order more nearly related to the Insectivores than to the Primates. 

Many of the characters selected by Linnezus for his ordinal diagnoses 
were of the “adaptive” or superficial kind which are now known to 
have been most easily modifiable by changes in the external or internal 
environment. The reason for this mistake (a mistake from which few 
naturalists were free even down to our own generation) was that 
Linneus regarded the mode of sustenance of a group as one of its 
most deep-seated attributes, most surely indicative of more or less 
hidden affinities with other groups. For it is well known that Linnzus 
was constantly searching for natural groups, although he did not 
realize that the natural affinity of the members of the larger groups 
was due to descent from common ancestors, just as in the case of mem- 
bers of the same species. An example of his reliance upon sustenance 
is seen in his definition, in the tenth edition of the “ Systema,” of the 
order Fere, the Carnivora of later authors. Here “sustenance by 
Tapine, upon carcasses ravenously snatched ” is evidently felt to be con- 
nected with “front teeth in both jaws: superior vi, all acute,’ with 
“ Janiariform teeth [canines] solitary,’ with “ claws on the feet acute.” 
But one of his dicta in botany was that a character of great systematic 
importance in one group may be very variable in another, consequently 
he did not mention sustenance under Bruta, but contented himself with 
the two characters “front teeth none either above or below” and 
“oait awkward (incessus ineptior).” As this order included the 
elephant, the manatee, the sloth, the great anteater and the scaly 
anteater, it has been justly cited as a grossly unnatural assemblage; 
and the grouping accounted for by Linnzus’s ignorance of the animals 
composing it. But I am more disposed to attribute it first to his habit 
of searching for hidden affinities below the most obvious external differ- 
ences, as when he placed the seals in the order Fere, joined the bats 
with the Primates, the horse and the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros 
with the Rodents, and the pig with the Insectivores (in the order 
Bestie). That Linneus recognized that the ordinal classification of 
the mammals was a difficult problem is shown by the conspicuous 
changes (not always improvements in our eyes) and redistributions 
which he made between the first and “tenth” editions of the 
“Systema ” and further by the fact that Erxleben who revised and ex- 
tended the Systema (1777) abandoned the ordinal divisions entirely and 
merely listed the genera seriatim. The difficulty of the problem in indi- 


VOL. LXxI—9 


130 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


cated by the fact that Cuvier, with far better material and more extensive 
knowledge, was constantly deceived by “adaptive” (or homoplastic) 
resemblances, and that even Professor Cope, who wrote much on homo- 
plastic and convergent evolution, was himself deceived by the similari- 
ties of structure in the Marsupial “ mole,” Notoryctes, and the Cape 
Golden mole (Chrysochloris), an undoubted Insectivore. Further- 
more, that even the most “inexcusable” blunder of Linneus, that 
of placing rhinoceros with the Rodents under the order “ Glires,” 
was due, not to carelessness, but to the fact that the Indian rhinoceros 
has a single pair of close-set cutting incisors in the upper jaw which op- 
pose the elongate incisor-like appressed canines of the lower jaw, and 
thus show a superficial approach to the Rodent dentition. If Linnzus 
had known that Hyraz, which Pallas described as a Rodent (“ Cavia”’), 
had cheek teeth like those of Rhinoceros, he doubtless might have 
felicitated himself upon his supposed astuteness. 

In brief, Linneeus (as fully shown by Whewell’?) from his profound 
and wide botanical knowledge, was acquainted with many natural 
orders and strove constantly to recognize others; he knew that a char- 
acter of great diagnostic and fundamental value in one order may be 
of slight value in another; he knew that even in a natural order some 
of the diagnostic and fundamental characters might be absent in certain 
members otherwise clearly allied to a given series. He knew that a 
natural series is natural because of the totality of its characters, that 
the “ genus makes the character ” and not vice versa—a hard doctrine 
to many of his contemporaries. And when he had arrived at a con- 
ception of any given natural order he selected certain characters as 
diagnostic but not necessarily universal, and constructed professedly 
artificial or only partially natural keys to his “ natural ” orders. 

Thus we may believe that when Linneus turned his attention to 
the classification of animals he followed the same principles. And in 
this application of the principles gained in one subject to the data of 
another, we have a good example of the felicitous union of specifically 
distinct ideas to produce a line of ideas that were new and very 
fertile. 


2 Op. cit., pp. 319-325. 


LEGISLATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 131 


RECENT LEGISLATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 


By ROBERT MARSHALL BROWN 


WORCESTER, MASS. 


HE new River and Harbor Bill is of particular interest in the 
portion pertaining to the Mississippi River. For over twenty 
years leyee construction and maintenance has been the dominant 
feature of the river’s regulation. During nearly half that time a con- 
certed effort has been made to maintain a navigable channel when the 
river is at a low stage. There are indications that the catchword for 
the years to come will have reference to a 14-foot waterway from the 
lakes to the gulf. In the original act* three lines of procedure, one a 
continuation of former projects, the other two in some wise new 
projects, were advocated. Briefly, these are as follows: 

1. An appropriation for the general improvement of the river, for 
the extension of the levee system and for the improvement of naviga- 
tion. This includes the maintenance of a navigable channel of at least 
200 feet in width and 9 feet in depth from Cairo to the Gulf. 

2. An appropriation for the improvement of the river from thé 
mouth of the Ohio River to the mouth of the Missouri River. This 
appropriation is a reduction of the sum appropriated in the last River 
and Harbor Bill. 

3. The appointment of a board to report upon the practicability and 
desirability of constructing a navigable channel 14 feet deep and of 
suitable width from St. Louis to the Gulf, either by improvement of the 
river or by a canal or canals for a part of the route. 

The first of these continues the work under the control of the Mis- 
sissippi River Commission, a board created in 1879. This board has 
defined the law which created them in the following general terms :? 


1. Continuation of surveys; preparation and publication of maps, mainte- 
nance of gauges; the recording, tabulating and publication of gauge readings; 
the taking and recording of discharge measurements at high and low stages of 
the Mississippi River and its tributaries, and other observations. 

2. The building, extension and repair of levees. 

3. The building, maintenance and operation of dredge boats. 

4. The repair and extension of existing works for the improvement of the 
channel, the preservation of harbors, the prevention of cut-offs, and the security 
of levees. 

5. The maintenance of a low-water channel between the Mississippi, Red and 
Atchafalaya Rivers. 


PEs ray Se raimns tout aa ga Ee 
*H. R. 24991. An act making appropriations for the construction, repair 
and preservation of certain public works on rivers and harbors and for other 
purposes. 
?Report of the Mississippi River Commission for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1906, p. 2470. 


132 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Although the history of the confinement of this river covers a period 
of nearly 200 years, no concerted plan for the regulation of the river 
in its extent through the alluvial basin had been attempted. The com- 
mission took up its work at a peculiarly fortunate time. The organiza- 
tion was about completed when, in 1882, a flood of unprecedented size 
overflowed the whole alluvial basin and destroyed most of the levees 
then existing. The slate was clean. No previous work conceived along 
narrow lines blocked the progress of any project which the commission 
might formulate. The land owners and riparian proprietors were dis- 
couraged. Their work in levees was destroyed and burdensome taxes 
for levee construction had profited them little. The allotments of 
money appropriated by the government revived their spirits and re- 
newed efforts were instituted. Levee construction has gone on con- 
tinuously from that time to the present, until to-day a little less than 
75 per cent. of the banks of the river south of Cape Girardeau, Mo. 
is leveed. The recommendations of the commission show that the 
early completion of the system of levees is in their opinion a desidera- 
tum. ‘The levees have been constantly increased in height. This was 
expected. The confinement of waters within narrower and narrower 
limits as the levees increased in length would be evidenced in the 
vertical expansion of the waters. ‘There is no criterion for the height 
of the embankments except the highest known stage of the river. It is 
planned to exceed this stage by from 2 to 4 feet. The difficulties of 
this arrangement may be illustrated by the floods of 1897 and 1903. A 
provisional grade 2 feet above the 1897 flood was adopted; in 1903 the 
flood was in some places 2.5 feet above the 1897 stage and the waters 
would have over-topped the levees had they not been reenforced by 
sand bags. After the 1903 flood a new provisional grade was adopted 
which in some instances is 5 feet above the provisional grade for the 
years before. ‘There always remains the possibility, and it is not a 
remote one, that the highest-known flood may be exceeded in stage. 

That the constructions and vigilance of the men working under this 
commission have been effective, the showing of the Yazoo Basin proves. 
This basin, having an area of about 6,300 square miles, equivalent to 
the combined areas of Connecticut and Rhode Island, has in twenty 
years experienced an increase of over 100 per cent. in its population. 
In 1900, 195,346 people were living in this area. Railroads have been 
built, forests have been removed, lands cultivated, industries of many 
kinds developed and holdings of scarcely a nominal price have become 
farms of considerable value. 

That protection has not always been accorded the dwellers of this 
and other basins is also evident when the records of flood seasons are 
reviewed. In the Yazoo Basin during the high water of 1903, the last 
high water season, one fourth of the basin was under water; one half 
of the city of Greenville inundated ; 60,000 people, or one third of the 


inhabitants of the hasin. driven from their homes and traffic was sie- 


LEGISLATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 133 


pended on the railroads, on the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad 
for twenty days and on the Riverside Division for forty days. There 
was no loss of life or of live stock and most of the movable farm im- 
plements and machinery were saved. For this protection from loss a 
great share of the credit should be given to the Weather Bureau, which 
sent out warnings to the inhabitants of the basin a few days before the 
river reached its highest stage. 

Another line of work in charge of the commission is the maintenance 
of a navigable highway from Cairo to the Gulf. The specifications de- 
mand a channel of at least 200 feet in width and 9 feet in depth. To 
meet this demand, a number of dredges have been constructed, and as 
fast as the river falls in stage and approaches a 9-foot depth dredging 
operations are inaugurated. It has been proved that, unless the river 
falls to an abnormally low stage, it is altogether within the power of 
the dredging parties to maintain the required size of channel. Not- 
withstanding this surety and this success, the traffic of the river has 
declined in volume during the last thirty years. This decline may be 
due to a number of causes. The greater length of the waterway over 
the railway between the same ports resulting from the meandering of 
the river, and the greater speed attainable in rail traffic make the time 
by rail to the time by water from St. Louis to New Orleans as 1 to 10. 
A second disadvantage of the water route lies in its uncertainty. Dur- 
ing high water stages navigation is difficult. At times the boats are 
ordered to go at slow speed lest the wash increase the caving of the 
levees. There is also an uncertainty concerning the location of the low- 
water channel. Even with the success of the dredging operations the 
channels are often difficult and hard to run. A third cause which is 
emphasized by the loss of time and the uncertainty of the passage is 
the constantly decreasing difference between the tariffs by rail and by 
water. A fourth cause lies in the active part which railroad companies 
have taken in the competition. 

A liberal appropriation is made for the continuance of the work of 
the parties under the direction of the River Commission. While different 
judgments concerning the efficiency of their work prevail, the opinion 
is a general one that this work ought to be prosecuted until a more 
obvious means of benefiting the people of the alluvial basin and at 
the same time serving the needs of the inhabitants of the valley can 
be devised. 

The second point in the River and Harbor Bill was an appropriation 
of $250,000 for the stretch of river between the mouth of the Missouri 
and the mouth of the Ohio. The Senate amendment to this portion of 
the bill was a complete renovation with an appropriation of $650,000. 
It was later understood, however, that the Senate conferees had yielded 
to the argument of the House conferees and would allow the amendment 
to be stricken from the bill. During the four seasons just past this 
stretch of river has had an appropriation of $650,000 annually. In 


134 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


1897, the appropriation was $673,000; in 1903, $758,000. The debate 
upon this reduction was long and brought out some interesting state- 
ments. The reasons for this reduction may be summed up as follows: 

1. There has been a continual falling off in the traffic along this 
stretch of river. While the projected 8-foot channel has to a large 
degree been maintained, at no time has the improvement of this portion 
of the river been reflected in the traffic. Altogether there has been 
spent on this portion $12,000,000, and the traffic last year was only 
about 440,000 tons. This tonnage of traffic does not include ferriage, 
which is little affected by river improvements. 

This loss of traffic was explained by the citation of conditions which 
are similar in the Kansas-St. Louis stretch of the Missouri River. 
When the boats began to get the business between these two cities, the 
railroads paralleling the river organized a determined opposition. The 
roads acted concertedly and reduced the tariff rates along this stretch 
of river to one third the former scheduled rates. They were reported 
to have gone even further. They went out and under-bid the boats. 
Gradually the stock in the boat lines passed from the hands of the 
promoters, and competition ceased. The old schedule of railroad rates 
was then resumed. It is also suspected that the rebate system until 
recently in vogue between large shippers of freight and the railroad 
companies acted against the river traffic. Along the Cairo-St. Louis 
stretch of the river, the building of boats ceased in 1893, and a constant 
reduction of the fleet has gone on since that date. 


To Memphis To New Orleans | To St. Louis 
From ee oe ea 
A B Cc A B Cc A Cc 
Clarkesdale 76.7 | $1.25 | $0.56. | 878:9 |. $2.25 | $0.72) 390-1 | S12) 
Friars Point* 70.1 1.00 45 | 385.5 1.00 .45 | 383.5] .90 
Cleveland 113.6 2.00 .62 | 342.0 — —- |—-)]) — 
Rosedale* 114.0 | 4253 4b 1846 _ - — | — 


* On Mississippi River. 

A, distance in miles; B, cotton per bale; C, first-class merchandise per 
100 pounds. 

It is claimed, however, in rebuttal that it is immaterial whether the 
tonnage is actually floated on the river or not. The means of cheap 
transportation is gained if the riverway is open to traffic. Two illus- 
trations of this follow. It is about the same distance from St. Louis 
to three Mississippi towns, Greenville on the Mississippi River, Green- 
wood on the Yazoo River and Winona, inland. The freight rates by 
rail to these towns are, to Greenville, $0.90 per one hundred pounds, 
to Greenwood, $0.96, and to Winona, $1.14. In other words, the im- 
provement of the river from St. Louis to Greenville and to Greenwood 
has accomplished the ends desired, even though the transportation has 
to a large extent been by rail. A still clearer case is made out in the 
preceding table.* 


LEGISLATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 135 


2. The engineers have not agreed concerning the works along this 
stretch of river. They have been at “loggerheads.” Furthermore 
they could not spend the annual appropriation of $650,000. At the 
end of the fiscal year in 1905 it was reported that there was a balance 
on hand of $915,000. 

3. The proposition of a deep waterway (14 feet) from Chicago to 
New Orleans via this stretch of river affected the appropriation. If 
this 14-foot waterway is attempted it seems to be the feeling that the 
depth in some portions, if not all, of this stretch of river between St. 
Louis and Cairo would have to be obtained by a lateral canal. It was 
not prudent to allot money for permanent improvements as long as a 
change of policy was imminent. I¢ is claimed that the reduction of 
the appropriation is not hostile to this portion of the river nor to the 
proposed 14-foot waterway. It is a temporary halting of work in order 
to await the development of other projects and to give the engineers 
time to study the problems further in the hope of a closer approach to 
unity of recommendation. 

The third section of the River and Harbor Bill pertaining to the 
Mississippi River had reference to very extensive improvements of the 
river and had for its main clause the consideration of a 14-foot 
waterway from St. Louis to the Gulf. The realization of such a water- 
way with the completion of the project, already instituted, of a 14- 
foot waterway from Chicago to St. Louis will give a deep waterway 
from the sea to the Great Lakes. There is little opposition to such 
an undertaking. It is generally admitted that a highway of this nature 
would prove of great value to the country as a whole. The immediate 
need of this waterway arises from the fact that the products of the 
valley have outstripped the carrying capacity of the railroads. It has 
been admitted by railroad men that there is no promise of greater trans- 
portation facilities, and that the construction of new lines, of new cars 
and engines, can not keep pace with the increasing output of mills, 
plains, forests and mines. The only relief to this congestion seems to 
lie in the Mississippi River. The regulation of this stream up to the 
present day has not been of such a nature as to greatly benefit the 
producers and give them a highway for their output. 

While it is generally conceded that all this is true, the proposition 
for the regulation of the river has been accompanied by plans of se 
visionary a nature that many people have withdrawn for a season their 
support or have cast their lines in opposition. This section of the 
River and Harbor Bill carried with it no feature to which objection 
should be taken. It plans for a thorough inspection of the problem of 
a deep waterway by a competent committee. This committee is directed 
to report to congress on the feasibility of such a waterway. Its duty 
is one of investigation, not of operation. We may expect a careful 
consideration of all the problems pertaining to a deep waterway and 
such recommendations as they see fit to make. There is in the specifica- 


136 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tions drawn up for this committee a clause which requires them to 
report upon the possibility of using locks and dams similar to those in 
use on the Ohio; in other words, to ascertain whether the canalization 
project is feasible for the Mississippi River. It is this project of 
canalization which has aroused opposition. Some of the proposers of 
this plan of improvement, and they were probably the instigators of 
this section of the bill, have advocated canalization as the only means of 
obtaining the requisite depth of channel. It is but just to assume that 
the business men of the valley, and especially the St. Louis contingent, 
have a definite and well-considered plan for gaining a deeper waterway. 
At the same time it is unfortunate that their desires should have been 
introduced to the general public as an undertaking of stupendous magni- 
tude and a work which the public would be forced to promote. An 
extravagant speech in congress which pictured the bounds of a canaliza- 
tion plant as “two granite walls, 200 feet high and 2,000 miles long ” 
in comparison with which the Chinese wall “7 feet high and only about 
450 miles long ” is diminutive, was probably no more excessive than the 
terms by which the speaker may have been informed of the project. 

The canalization of a river is not a new method of benefiting the 
navigable quality of a river. Many streams in Europe, as the Elbe, 
Seine and the Main, and some streams in this country, portions of the 
Ohio, for example, have been regulated successfully by this method. 
The canalization of a stream turns the river into a series of steps; 
passage from one step to the next higher or lower is made through a 
lock, and the height of water is sustained by a dam across the main 
channel of the river. The stream-flow is thus blocked and navigation is 
as easy up-stream as down. ‘The best arrangement of dam and lock is 
possible when an island divides the stream into a main channel and a 
chute. If the dam or weir is located in the main channel and the lock 
in the secondary channel, high-water stages are not as likely to impair 
the locks. The weir, however, must be made movable so as not to 
oppose the flood force. This, in brief, is the process of canalization. 
While the projectors of this plan for the Mississippi River have not 
definitely stated what type of canalization plant they advocate, there are 
certain features which above others must enter into the consideration of 
every project of a serious nature. A few of the most salient of the 
characteristics I desire to mention, and, without taking issue with the 
promoters of canalization, to point out, here and there, the probable 
effects of these on canalization works. 

The discharge of the river is enormous. The potent factors in river 
discharges are the precipitation of rain over its basin and the porosity 
of the soil of the basin. The Mississippi River system drains about one 
third of the United States. The annual discharge of the river is greater 
than the combined annual discharges of the Po, Danube and the Rhone. 
This body of water fluctuates in its flow from a flood stage in the spring 


De NU Re ae a oe) Rey SRI US G1) By cere TIT. =~ ok So ae OS Fee ee eee 


LEGISLATION ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER 137 


these stages is commonly 50 feet. Any works in the river must be 
strong enough to withstand the enormous body of water of the flood 
stage. The locks in the chutes or side channels within the highwater 
levees will be inundated. The movement of the water must cause 
scour; and weirs, locks and abutments leading thereto would be threat- 
ened with imminent destruction. 

The ratio of sediment carried by the river to the stream discharge is 
large. Much of this sediment is rolled along the bed of the river in 
waves transverse to the direction of stream flow. It is estimated that 
the total amount of sediment yielded to the Gulf yearly is a little over 
400,000,000 tons. Enormous quantities of sediment find a temporary 
lodging place during the low-water season along the bed of the river. 
It is because of this sediment that the present dredging project is ex- 
tant. It is admitted by the enthusiasts for canalization that the sedi- 
ment would be injurious to a canal plant. They offer as a remedy the 
removal of the sediment by catchment basins before the navigable 
portions of the river are reached, or the removal of the sediment from 
the tributaries by some similar process, or the retention of the 400,000,- 
000 tons of sediment “in the townships where it belongs.” Any one 
of the remedies mentioned means a task as great if not greater than the 
original project. Catchment basins are easily constructed in small 
streams, but to suggest such a thing for large streams with a variable 
flow, the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers for example, is to gamble 
with success. The retention of the sediment” in the townships where 
it belongs” is visionary. Some of the sediment comes from the caving 
banks of the river itself. This could not be eliminated. Furthermore, 
if the stream is deprived of much of its sediment, the power which 
ordinarily is expended in carrying its load can then be spent in further 
scour of its banks. Thus, to some degree, the deprivation of sediment 
will work to the harm of the protective levees. 

A flood often falls rapidly in stage. During a sudden drop, the 
waters dump quantities of detritus along the bed. If we deny that 
during flood stages the sediment can be removed from the tributary 
streams, we must have fear for the effect of the sudden falls in river 
stage. Because of the resistance offered by any construction in the 
flooded stream, sand would tend to accumulate about such works. It 
is subsequent to these sudden falls that the dredging corps has to 
exert its utmost power in order to maintain the nine-foot depth of 
the dredging project. The removal of the sand from the wiers and 
locks would not necessarily last throughout the low-water season. 
Oftentimes secondary rises of the river occur which move the sand 
waves down-stream and obscure the trace of any previous work in 
dredging. Canalization, furthermore, would not make unnecessary 
the dredging plant. It is likely that as large a plant would be re- 
quired. Dredging is carried on in the canalized rivers of Europe. 

The river is long and tortuous. It has a width varying from one- 


138 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


half mile to a mile. The distance from Cairo to the sea is about 600 
miles; there are over 1,700 miles of river in this distance. A meander 
of the river adds from twelve to twenty-five miles to the length of the 
river, with but a mile or two of gain in distance towards the sea. The 
current of the river is directed alternately against the banks of the 
stream. Scour and caving result and sediment is added to the river. 
The change of locality of the river current thus engendered must be 
stopped in order to make the expensive canalization works other than 
temporary constructions. To stop this scour, dirt levees and brush 
revetments will not suffice. It means more solid walls on both sides 
of a very long river. It means an enormous appropriation and years 
of labor. The width of the river will add to the item of expense. A 
thoughtful person would deliberate and weigh carefully all the factors 
bearing upon the problem before advocating such an expenditure as 
this plan contemplates, even if he were absolutely sure of the ultimate 
success of it; and success in this canalization project, from our present 
knowledge, is not so to be rated. 

It is comforting to know that procedure in this enterprise is to be 
slow, and that there will be time and money for a detailed study of the 
problem, and an opportunity for a thorough consideration of the 
report of the investigating committee before the country is harnessed 
to any definite system of regulation. There may be a call for haste 
as far as the immediate needs of the people of the valley are concerned. 
However, whatever system is inaugurated can only be begun to-day, 
will take years for the fulfillment and should endure for a long time. 
We have the assurance, furthermore, of a thorough agitation of the 
whole inland waterway question. In compliance with the request of 
numerous commercial organizations of the Mississippi Valley, the 
President has appointed an Inland Waterways Commission. This com- 
mission is directed to investigate the problems of inland waterways 
and to report with recommendations upon the problems relating thereto. 

There is in the present River and Harbor Bill, in the portion rela- 
ting to the Mississippi River, and in the appointment by the President 
a promise that the United States has instituted a more comprehensive 
plan than has up to this time been possible. Much of the debate on 
the River and Harbor Bill had back of it the sectional spirit, the 
demands of a locality upon its representative in congress. There is 
room for a larger view of river regulation than the satisfying of con- 
stituents; and the new Inland Waterways Commission can gain for us 
no greater boon than to infuse the states with the spirit of coopera- 
tion in place of that of rivalry. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE 139 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 


By FRED DELAND 
PITTSBURGH, PA 


XIII. THE PARENT BELL COMPANIES 


T will be recalled that in the circular announcement sent out early in 
May, 1877, the essential text of which was reproduced in Chapter 
IV., the owners of the Bell patents style themselves ‘the proprietors 
of the telephone.’ These ‘ proprietors’ in the beginning were Alex- 
ander Graham Bell, of Boston; Gardiner Greene Hubbard, of Cam- 
bridge, and Thomas Sanders, of Haverhill, each of whom held a one 
third interest. Then these gentlemen arranged to secure the services 
of Thomas A. Watson, who as a young mechanician and electrician in 
the Williams’ shop had assisted in many of the early experiments, had 
made some of the early telegraph and telephone apparatus, and was 
familiar with Graham Bell’s hopes and plans concerning the trans- 
mission of speech. In return for devoting all his time to the promo- 
tion of telephone interests, Mr. Watson received in lieu of cash pay- 
ments a one tenth interest in the Bell patents. This reimbursement 
for services to be rendered had little tangible value at that time, but 
three years later could easily have been sold for more than a hundred 
thousand dollars. Under this arrangement Bell, Hubbard and Sanders 
each held a three tenths interest and Watson held one tenth. 

The appearance of that first telephone circular combined with the 
appointment of active special agents, working on a liberal commission 
basis, gradually created a demand for telephones for use on private 
lines and for experimental purposes, and it soon became evident that 
quite a sum of money would have to be expended in manufacturing 
and delivering these instruments. But so little faith had capitalists 
in the future of the telephone, that it is said that Mr. Hubbard found 
it very difficult to raise sufficient funds to float the telephone. Thus, 
with a view to simplifying the conditions under which the necessary 
funds could be secured and the interests of the proprietors protected, on 
July 9, 1877, Mr. Hubbard was made trustee of the patents and em- 
powered to exploit them for the best interests of all concerned. In 
turn he formed an association or partnership arrangement, “for the 
purpose of manufacturing and introducing said telephones into gen- 
eral use throughout the United States.” This association was com- 
posed of only seven members during its entire life, and its affairs were 
managed in behalf of these seven beneficiaries by officials of their selec- 


140 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tion. The title of the organization was the Bell Telephone Associa- 
tion; it was not incorporated and had no capital stock, but on August 
1, 1877, beneficiary certificates were issued as follows: 


Gardiner ‘Greene “Hubbards speciosa cere cite 1,387 shares. 
Gertrude Hubbard (Mr. H.’s daughter) ............... OOM aes 
Charles Eustis Hubbard (Mr. H.’s brother) ........... 10 rt 
Alexander Graham iBellsenia! o scueacise siete cies eke 10 Ey 
Mabel Hubbard (Mas) eAcsG.) Beltre nee cece cieiin ie 1,497 of 
Thomas ‘Sanders: eye. vicre cic soko ie see erie oe Clowes sestotens oliseee 1,497 = 
THOMAS: FAS AWViALS ON vx asters cance aero eaters aus eneleloraine ieeowe uote 499 ce 
Total: src ieveyc a vl rotobe oes ele wheter ate is Sie ake ue eeeke otal 5,000 shares. 


The active career of the association dates from August 1; Mr. Hub- 
bard served as trustee, Mr. Sanders as treasurer, Mr. Watson as elec- 
trician, and an office was opened in room 13 in the Sears building in 
Boston. 

Two days after the patents and property had been assigned to 
Mr. Hubbard as trustee, that is on Wednesday, July 11, 1877, Graham 
Bell and Mabel Hubbard were united in marriage at the home of her 
parents in Cambridge, and his wedding gift to his beautiful bride was 
his entire three tenths interest in the telephone patents. Thus it was 
to Mrs. Bell that the certificates of the association and the shares of 
the parent company’s stock were issued when those incorporated bodies 
were organized and when they gave stock certificates in exchange for 
certificates previously issued. 

Shortly after the wedding the bridal couple left for England and a 
tour on the Continent and did not return to this country until August, 
1878. In London on October 31, 1877, Graham Bell delivered his 
often-quoted lecture before the Society of Telegraph Engineers, in 
which he detailed the researches made by himself and many others in 
the effort to solve the problem of telephonic transmission of sounds 
and speech, beginning with those of Dr. Page in 1837. 

From the date of his departure to England, Graham Bell was in no 
way connected with the exploiting or the financing or the management 
of the telephone in the United States. He was the consulting elec- 
trician of the early companies, and earnestly strove to solve the tech- 
nical problems brought to his notice. But while he held very liberal 
views on the question of local organization, he did not believe in cheap 
construction, nor in the use of temporary expedients that could only 
bring the system into disrepute and hamper and delay the introduction 
of good telephone service. 

As already stated, following the organization of the Bell Telephone 
Association, the exploitation of the telephone was systematically pushed 
throughout the United States. This involved far greater labor and 
outlay than would now seem necessary to introduce so valuable a public 
utility. For the openly expressed skepticism of capital had to be over- 
come, the groundwork of a new industry had to be laid, plans for the 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 141 


granting of territorial rights under equitable conditions had to be 
formulated, methods had to be devised for the establishment of central 
telephone exchanges, then equitable conditions planned for connecting 
neighboring exchanges with toll lines, and, finally, the invention of 
accessory telephone equipment and its economical manufacture and 
reasonable marketing. To-day there are many who believe they can 
tell far better how to plan these things than the parent Bell is now 
doing. But in the pioneer days there was no wealth in the treasury 
or in prospect, and there were none who were competent to advise intel- 
ligently on technical telephone questions, or to share practical telephone 
experience, while there were many very intelligent men who did not 
hesitate to discourage the movement in every way; for they could not 
perceive how speech transmission could have any commercial value. 
Yet, notwithstanding all these discouraging conditions, a careful study 
of the plans under which licenses were granted for operating exchanges 
and for toll lines interconnecting exchanges, shows a far-sighted con- 
ception of the ultimate growth and interrelation of exchanges that 
wins heartiest admiration. 

Mr. Hubbard made many visits to various cities and endeavored to 
interest capital in the new invention, and he loaned telephones to men 
of influence in the hope that daily use would lead them to perceive the 
future value of the invention. But scarcely one of the men, who 
should have foreseen the growth of the telephone industry and who 
might have assisted in establishing it under favorable conditions, gave 
him any encouragement. So he was compelled to turn to men who 
had little money, but much energy combined with a strong faith in their 
own abilities to succeed. Thus, as a rule, it was men of this type, rather 
than the financier, who helped to lay the foundations of exchange tele- 
phone service in many localities. 

In the beginning the parent company had seriously considered the 
advisability of forming a second organization to build, equip and 
operate telephone exchanges in all our cities. Though this plan was 
strongly advocated by men whose faith in the greatness of Alexander 
Graham Bell’s invention and in the ultimate success of the telephone 
had never faltered, four good and sufficient reasons soon showed how 
impracticable it would be to carry the plan through on a satisfac- 
tory basis: 

First. The more the plan was analyzed the greater appeared the 
actual cash investment that would be required to establish exchanges in 
all the cities in the United States, until the total amount that would be 
required aggregated more than a hundred millions, a sum almost 
fabulous in 1877, yet actually necessary if this new and untried in- 
dustry was to be properly built up. 

Second. For one company to undertake to build exchanges in all 


142 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the cities in the United States, and interconnect the same with toll 
lines, would necessarily involve much delay in building, and compel 
many communities to wait several years before receiving telephone 
service. 

Third. The absence on the part of capitalists of faith in the in- 
trinsic value of this incomparable invention precluded the possibility 
of financing any large telephone exchange system embracing the prin- 
cipal cities in one state only, to say nothing of a proposition of such 
magnitude as to include the leading cities throughout the country. 

Fourth. Local interest supported by local investments was abso- 
lutely essential to insure even the small growth that was then consid- 
ered satisfactory. 

How great this lack of faith was, and how often Alexander Graham 
Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Thomas Sanders and their early 
associates met with rebuffs when inviting capital to join with them in 
promoting the establishment of telephone exchanges in 1877, and how 
widely capitalists were misled into believing that the telephone had 
“no commercial value,’ by the very men who should have been the first 
to grasp the possibilities in so revolutionizing an invention, may be 
shown in two quotations. 

In November, 1876, after Sir William Thomson’s glowing descrip- 
tion of the successful telephone experiments at the Centennial had 
aroused the interest of scientists everywhere, a prominent electrician, 
who later claimed to have invented the telephone, wrote to his attorney 
on November 1, 1877: 


As to Bell’s talking telegraph, it only creates interest in scientific circles, and 
as a scientific toy it is beautiful, but of no commercial value. We can already 
do more with a wire in a given time than by talking, so its commercial value 
will be limited. 


And the editor of Engineering, of London, then the leading engi- 
neering publication of the world, in calling attention to ‘the extreme 
simplicity of receiver and transmitter,’ stated in the issue of December 
12, 1876, that the instruments were 


so simple indeed that were it not for the high authority of Sir William Thom- 
son, one might be pardoned at entertaining some doubts of their capability of 
producing such marvelous results. 


Only those familiar with the situation can realize how great and 
how unreasoning was this lack of faith on the part, not only of capital, 
but of scientists, mechanicians, merchants. But here is an excerpt 
from an editorial written at the close of 1883, by a journalist thor- 
oughly conversant with the telephone situation from the beginning: 


The issuance of Bell’s patent, on March 7, 1876, attracted little or no attention 
in the telegraphic world. The inventor was practically unknown in electrical 
circles, and his invention was looked upon, if indeed any notice at all was taken 
of it, as utterly valueless. In fact, we believe that not a single person could 
have been found, however well versed in telegraphy or electricity, who would 
have given a hundred dollars for the patent within three months after its issue. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 143 


. . . We very much doubt if it could now be purchased for $25,000,000. It is 
probably by far the most valuable single patent which has ever been issued. 


During the winter of 1876 and the spring of 1877, there appeared 
in the daily papers a number of references to Graham Bell’s statements 
concerning the general use of the telephone, the central telephone ex- 
change system, aerial and underground cables, the long-distance service, 
etc. Lack of space prevents the citation of all, but the general tenor 
of his remarks are shown in the following excerpts. 

The Boston Sunday Herald, of October 22, 1876, declared that 


the future possibilities of the telephone can scarcely be overestimated. The 
economic and other advantages thus opened to the contemplation of the thought- 
ful are too self-evident to be descanted upon. 


On February 13, 1877, the Boston Globe in reporting Graham Bell’s 

lecture before the Essex Institute, at Salem, said: 
We have the pleasure of presenting to our readers this morning, the first des- 
patch ever sent to a newspaper by the newly invented telephone. . . . Professor 
Bell closed his lecture by briefly stating the practical uses to which he was con- 
fident the telephone could be applied. 

On Wednesday evening, April 25, 1877, Graham Bell delivered a 
lecture in Huntington Hall, Lowell, and the next day’s Lowell Citizen 
contained a report of the lecture reading in part as follows: 

At about half-past nine o’clock Prof. Bell spoke of the possibilities of the 
future regarding the telephone. He predicted that private houses would be 
connected with stores and offices and shops, and orders for the day’s dinner as 
well as important business of every kind could be transmitted without leaving 
the room. In the future merchants would be enabled to order goods from New 
York, Boston or other cities by word of mouth, instead of telegraphing or taking 
a long journey. 

That the editor of the Citizen was impressed with Alexander Gra- 
ham Bell’s enthusiastic presentation of his subject, and realized that 
this uplifting faith in the future of his invention must be based on an 
accurate knowledge of what it might accomplish once its function was 
fully comprehended, is evident in the leading editorial. And this 
editorial is remarkable in that it is the first of all editorial references 
to ‘a central telephone office, and the first of all favorable comments 
on the probable success of exchange telephone service. In part the 
editorial reads: 


Professor Bell believes that in the near future a central telephone office 
will be established in all our cities, with which the police, the fire department, 
most business houses and many private residences will have connections. When 
this is done any person having the connection can call the police, report a fire, 
order a dinner or chat with a neighbor without leaving the room. 


Graham Bell also lectured in New Haven on April 27, in Man- 
chester on May 8, in Springfield on May 12, and then he went to New 
York and delivered three lectures in Chickering Hall. The third 
lecture was delivered on Saturday evening, May 19, 1877. Therein he 
referred to the convenience that long-distance service between Boston 
and New York would be to the business man, touched upon the use of 


144 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the telephone booth not then devised, and upon the value of the central 
exchange as a public convenience, stating as one illustration: 


It is a rainy morning, and Mrs. Smith does not want to get wet. She calls on 
the central office to connect her with Mr. Jones, the butcher. It is done. So 
with offices and houses, or workshops, and many other places. 


Reports of other lectures could be cited, but a sufficient number 
have been shown to illustrate how clear was Graham Bell’s conception 
of the usefulness and economical advantages of telephone exchange 
systems and long-distance telephone service before either one existed. 
And by reason of his cheery optimism and his logical, convincing argu- 
ments that the establishment of telephone exchanges in every city 
would necessarily follow, and that telephone service would become an 
indispensable feature in business and social life, his associates gained 
greater courage to push the exploitation of the telephone. 

After considering the several plans presented for the future con- 
duct and expansion of the new business, it was decided to adopt the 
plan of interesting local capital and cooperation in the establishing of 
local exchanges and to issue to these local organizations short-term 
licenses covering a period of only five or ten years. With this end in 
view agents were appointed to solicit customers in given territory on a 
commission basis ranging from 25 to 50 per cent. 

Where the intention was to construct and operate a local plant the 
exclusive right to operate under all Bell patents was granted with the 
proviso that the parent company, if it so desired, could purchase the 
property of the local company at cost, or at an appraised valuation at 
the expiration of the license. Then it was arranged that the tele- 
phones should never be sold during the life of the patent, but leased, 
the technical title of ownership being reserved to avoid legal com- 
plications, and also to secure territorial rights in the event of default 
of payment of the agreed royalties by the local companies. Thus the 
parent Bell company never granted to any operating company any right 
or interest in its patents nor the right to manufacture or sell telephones. 

Within a year this method of locally introducing the telephone met 
with a cordial reception on the part of many with a speculative bent of 
mind, if not by permanent investors, and thereafter it became a com- 
paratively easy task to interest local capital in local exchanges having 
a license covering a period of only five or possibly ten years. The 
royalty required of the local licensee, amounting to $7 a year for each 
instrument, was not in the beginning considered exorbitant by local 
owners familiar with the heavy yet legitimate payments necessary in 
protecting the licensees from infringing competition, for necessary sub- 
sidiary patents, as well as for experiments, the patent risk, and the 
endless litigation. And when the hard times of 1884 came, and again 
in 1885, the parent company made many concessions and introduced 
a sliding scale of rentals that materially lessened these royalty payments. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 145 


Even from the first it was perceived that a long-term license would 
not be equitable to both parties, owing to the new conditions that were 
arising and would necessarily continue to arise from month to month. 
With growth and development would come a broadening experience of 
great value to both operating and parent company, and a lessening of 
timidity on the part of capital. It was this fear on the part of 
investors that rendered necessary the issuance of separate licenses for 
neighboring cities or adjoining territory, or for towns widely separated. 
Yet it was obvious that the near future was certain to bring changed 
conditions that would strongly emphasize the necessity for merging 
several exchanges or even all lines and exchanges within a state under 
one management and governed by one policy. 

Thus it came about that during the four years, 1878-81, local tele- 
phone exchanges were established in many towns by individuals or 
small companies, on the understanding that the local owners were to 
furnish all the capital required to properly start and develop the in- 
dustry, while, in return, the parent company would supply the tele- 
phones as fast as required, and would protect and defend the exclusive 
rights to operate under the Bell patents. 

Early in 1877, Mr. Frederic A. Gower was appointed ‘ general agent 
for the Bell telephone’ for all of New England. He assisted Graham 
Bell in a number of lectures, delivered a number of lectures, and 
visited nearly all the larger cities in his territory in the effort to secure 
local capital and cooperation in establishing telephone exchanges. 
Then he tendered his resignation to take effect on January 1, 1878, in 
order that he might spend much time in introducing the telephone 
in European cities. Thus, to take up and systematically continue the 
work that Mr. Gower had been so actively engaged in, a second organi- 
zation was formed that may properly be referred to as a subparent 
company, as it enjoyed equal rights with the first company within a 
limited territory. 

This second company was incorporated on February 12, 1878, under 
the general laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with an 
authorized capitalization of $200,000, all of which was issued in 
return for $50,000 in cash and for certain patent rights and other 
privileges valued at $150,000. Exclusive rights ‘ to use, license others 
to use, and to manufacture telephones in the New England States,’ 
were granted to it, and during its brief existence it endeavored to 
thoroughly develop its allotted territory. It secured the right to erect 
poles and wires in a number of cities and aided in the organization of 
a number of local telephone companies. Though named the New 
England Telephone Company it was never in any way related to the 
later and now well-known New England Telephone & Telegraph Com- 
pany of Boston. 


VoL. LxxI—10 


146 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The stockholders in the New England Telephone Company were 
practically the same persons who composed the membership of the 
original parent company, the Bell Telephone Association. The 
officials were: President, Gardiner Greene Hubbard; treasurer, Thomas 
Sanders; general agent, George L. Bradley; clerk, Thomas B. Bailey. 
Incidentally it is worthy of note that since its organization Mr. Bailey 
has been the purchasing agent of the American Bell Telephone Com- 
pany. On July 27, 1878, Mr. Hubbard resigned the presidency and 
Mr. Sanders was elected in Mr. Hubbard’s place, while Mr. Bradley 
succeeded Mr. Sanders as treasurer. Until February 15, 1879, the 
New England Company occupied room 43 in the Sears building in 
Boston, when it moved to room 52 Mutual Life Insurance building. 

Meanwhile Mr. Hubbard found it difficult to borrow the funds 
necessary to carry on operations outside of New England. Friendly 
bankers had loaned generous amounts, but when further advancements 
became imperatively necessary, they asked for a more tangible form of 
collateral than certificates issued by an unincorporated association, and 
it was suggested that the stock certificates of a conservatively incor- 
porated and wisely managed company might be acceptable as security, 
if offered at a low valuation. So, on July 30, 1878, the second of the 
parent companies was incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts to 
transact a general telephone business in all of the United States outside 
of the New England States. It was capitalized at $450,000, and 
that amount of stock was issued in return for a cash payment of 
$50,000 and all the rights and privileges held by its predecessor, the 
Bell Telephone Association. Its officials were: Trustee, Gardiner 
Greene Hubbard; treasurer, Thomas Sanders; electrician, Graham 
Bell, and superintendent, Thomas A. Watson. At first its headquarters 
were at the Williams factory, 109 Court Street, Boston, but in August, 
shortly after its organization, it moved to New York City and occupied 
rooms at 66 and 68 Reade Street. It bore the name: Bell Telephone 
Company. 

The interest awakened in the development of the telephone industry 
through the activity of these three organizations and their agents 
created a volume of business, the character of which necessitated the 
formation of a broader organization, and resulted in the birth of the 
third parent company, the National Bell Telephone Company, as 
detailed in Chapter V. The company was organized on March 10, 
and its charter issued on March 13, 1879. It was formed through 
ihe amalgamation of the New England and the Bell Telephone Com- 
panies, and succeeded to all the property and patent rights and privi- 
leges of both these companies. The new company was capitalized at 
$850,000, and this amount of stock was issued in return for telephone 
exchange and manufacturing property representing a cash investment 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 147 


of $306,900, for $6,500 cash in treasury, and for all the stock of the 
Bell Telephone Company, $450,000, and of the New England Company, 
$200,000, valued at $536,600. Within five months after its organiza- 
tion, the headquarters of the National Company was moved from Reade 
Street, New York, to 95 Milk Street, Boston. 

Under the wise and liberal guidance of President William H. 
Forbes, the practical progressive policy of the National developed a 
volume of business so large and of so varied a character as to make clear 
the need of a still broader parent organization able ultimately to assist 
in carrying the financial burdens of any or all of its operating com- 
panies, and to extend substantial encouragement for extended develop- 
ment. Then the successful outcome of the bitter contest with its 
competitive opponent, the Western Union Telegraph interests with 
a total of seven thousand established telegraph offices, had drawn to the 
National company the thoughtful interest of capital seeking productive 
fields for investment, and soon investors began to overrun the tele- 
phone field. 

Thus, after a very strenuous life of fifteen months, the National 
was absorbed by the fourth of the parent companies, the American Bell 
Telephone Company. This fourth organization was granted a special 
‘charter by the commonwealth of Massachusetts, on March 19, 1880, 
which was shghtly amended as of May 21, 1883, in so far as it relates 
to the holding of stock in the operating companies. The American 
company desired to have an authorized capitalization of $15,000,000, 
but the legislature limited the amount to $10,000,000. 

At a special meeting of the stockholders of the National Bell Tele- 
phone Company, held on Monday evening, March 29, 1880, it was 
voted unanimously to sell all the property of the company to the 
American and to transfer the same as of May 1, in return for payment 
in the form of six shares of the capital stock of the American Bell for 
each share of the National. This was a reasonable price to pay, as 
shares of the National had sold as high as $960, according to a state- 
ment in the Boston Herald, though the par value was only $100, while 
the last sale of 500 shares had brought $600 a share in December, 1879. 

Two days later the National stockholders received a printed notifica- 
tion reading in part: 


The American Bell Telephone Company has been organized with a capital of 
$7,350,000, divided into 73,500 shares of $100 each. This new company has 
voted to purchase all the property and assets of the National Bell Telephone 
Company for the sum of $6,500,000, payable in stock at par (65,000 shares) 
and to offer tne remaining 8,500 ($850,000) at par to the stockholders of the 
National Bell Telephone Company as of date of April 1, 1880. 


Of the 65,000 shares transferred to the National Company in return 
for all its property, patents, etc., 51,000 shares, or $5,100,000 were dis- 
tributed among the national stockholders according to their respective 


148 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


holdings ; 1,145 shares were used to take up the convertible notes issued ; 
1,500 shares were sold by the trustees in open market for $332,935.75, 
and 1,050 shares were held by the trustees to use in liquidating future 
claims. 

The new company occupied offices at 95 Milk Street, Boston, and 
at the first meeting the following officers and directors were elected: 


W. H. Forbes, President. T. A. Watson, General Inspector. 
T. N. Vail, General Manager. A. Graham Bell, ( Consulting 
W. R. Driver, Treasurer. Francis Blake, | Electricians. 


O. E. Madden, Superintendent of Agencies. J. P. Davis, Engineer. 


DIRECTORS 
William H. Forbes. Francis Blake, Jr. Alexander Cochrane. 
Charles 8. Bradley. Richard 8. Fay. George L. Bradley. 
Gardiner Greene Hubbard. William G. Saltonstall. C. P. Bowditch. 
Thomas Sanders. Charles Eustis Hubbard. 


The successful launching of the American Bell Telephone Company, 
notwithstanding that the three earlier companies had never paid a 
dividend, was a splendid tribute to the intelligent persistence dis- 
played by the pioneer advocates in promoting so serviceable a public 
utility, as well as to their executive and financial ability. And the 
magnitude of the task of merging all these interests into one compre- 
hensive organization may be more clearly realized in the brief state- 
ment that in its consummation there were involved about five million 
dollars in cash, and a million in property and patents. In 1880, six 
millions was a sum relatively many times greater to financiers, when 
million-dollar corporations were more scarce, than at the present time, 
when a hundred millions may be a fair and a necessary capitalization. 

In his annual report for the first fiscal year, ending February 28, 
1881, President Forbes of the parent company said: 


After two years passed in a struggle for existence, and a third largely devoted 
to the settlement of disputes inherited from that contest, the owners of the tele- 
phone patents, at the beginning of their fourth year, for the first time find them- 
selves free from all serious complications, with nothing to prevent the company 
from directing its whole working force to the development of the business, and 
with a well-defined policy for its future operations, which seems to be working 
well in all parts of the country... . 

A large amount of work has been done in the electrical and experimental 
department, both in examining new inventions and testing telephones and ap- 
paratus, and in studying the question of overhead and underground cables, and 
the improvement of telephones and lines, for both short and long-distance service. 
This work is expensive, but it is of the first importance to our company, and 
must be continued. 

Much of the electrical and legal work of these first years of the company, 
and, indeed, some of our expenses incurred in studying and classifying the busi- 
ness, are substantially for the establishment of the property, and might be 
charged to construction and capitalized, but the directors have preferred the 
more conservative policy of charging everything to operating which could reason- 
ably be put there, although the result upon the books appears less favorable, in 
consequence, than the business prospects might warrant us in exhibiting. 


Fal> nee 
va als LF, 


a, Bix K | . is 
me Sg hin BALSAM PEAKS uy 
r° # ae ~ SY 
ta Sry -S 
“a a oy 


THE BALSAM PEAKS—THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN 
APPALACHIANS 


By SPENCER TROTTER 


SWARTHMORE COLLEGE 


An APPRECIATION 


ROM a field near the upper end of the town you could see three 
mountain peaks, two near together and one farther to the west, 
that stood out sharply against the cool, yellow evening sky, less defined 
when bathed in the shimmering bluish haze of diffuse sunlight or when 
brushed by the trailing vapors of passing clouds, but at all times fas- 
cinating in their lofty isolation and in the invitation which they held 
to adventure and to explore. These were the Plott Balsams. Away 
to the southeast, beyond Deep Gap on the farther side of Lickstone, 
we knew of a trail that followed the crest-line of the Divide, higher and 
higher until it reached the summit of the Richland Balsam, second 
only to Mount Mitchell in the galaxy of the Southern Appalachian 
peaks. Down the main street of the town one’s eye went beyond the 
narrowing vista of houses, miles away to the blue uplift of Crabtree 
Bald. To whatever point of the compass you might look there were 
mountains, but the Balsams held the loadstone that drew us to their 
summits. Some persons there were who declared that they could detect 
a trace of balsamic fragrance when the wind was westerly, wafted from 
the high peaks six miles away. JI, for one, could never reach this 
exalted state of sense or of imagination, whichever it might be. No 
man, however, is a competent judge of the condition of another’s sen- 
sorium. It is enough if he follow his own nose and its teachings. 
One Sunday in mid-June we essayed the Enos Plott Balsam by the 
trail that a horse could follow to the summit. As we turned the corner 
of a street, where the town fell away into the valley of the Richland, 
a Carolina wren was proclaiming the joy of life in no uncertain voice. 
This I remember, and also that the air was crystal clear and flooded 
with sunlight. Our way led for some miles along a road that followed 
the stream through the farming land of the valley, past an occasional 
house and barn and the patch of tobacco that was grown for home 
consumption. <A ‘neighborhood’ road branched off from the main- 
traveled highway, and this we followed until it ended in the woods at 
a fence on the other side of which the trail began. Here we plucked 
some sprigs of the wild indigo (Baptisia), a plant with yellow, pea-like 


150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


blossoms, and each of us decorated his horse’s head as a sure remedy 
against the tormenting flies. 

T never think of this fence and its old gate through which we passed, 
with the narrow trail starting abruptly up the steep slope of the wooded 
mountain side, without vaguely picturing the wicket-gate through 
which Christian went at the outset of his journey. If ever there was 
a land of promise surely it must be at the farther end of that toilsome 
trail with glimpses of the Delectable Mountains here and there on the 
more open stretches of its upper levels. 

For long the beasts scrambled upwards, stopping to breathe where 
the steepness was broken by some irregularity. We held on bravely to 
the manes, leaning well forward, and pressed our legs close as we 
scraped by the trees that beset the trail. It was a long ridge that the 
trail followed, the land on either side falling away quite sharply. 
Higher up the woods became more open, with little undergrowth and 
long vistas among the trees. The bloom-covered bushes of the flaming 
azalea (Azalea lutea) were scattered far and near, glowing spots of 
color in the sunlit spaces of the woods, and the crisp leaves of the galax 
(Galax aphylla), shining bronze and green, spread in thick patches 
along the way. The woods on this midway portion of the mountain 
were for the greater part made up of oak and chestnut. Lower down, 
near the foot of the mountain and in the deep, moist coves between the 
ridges, the tree life was more varied and the primeval forest more 
luxuriant and jungle-like in character. There the buckeye (4sculus) 
and the tulip tree (Liriodendron)—the yellow poplar of the lumber- 
men—grew to truly magnificent proportions, and many other Caro- 
linian forms prevailed. 

In the dry, open woods on Huckleberry Knob, a wild turkey sud- 
denly started up before us and ran swiftly down the slope. It was a 
bit of the primitive wilderness life and gave a fine touch to our adven- 
ture. Huckleberry Knob is one of the three Balsam peaks that we had 
so often gazed at from the town; the lower one of the two that appeared 
close together. It was, in reality, but a hump on the southern shoulder 
of the main Balsam, the summit of which we now for the first time in 
our ascent caught a glimpse of through an opening in the woods, tower- 
ing far away to the right—a stark peak with a bristling mane of fir 
forest. We were still among the oaks and chestnuts on Huckleberry 
Knob, some distance below the fir zone, but even at this altitude the air 
had a cool, autumnal snap and I was glad to have a thick jacket which 
had been uncomfortably warm in the valley. The hardest part of the 
climb was over, so White told us, and the horses had a comparatively 
easy time following the trail, which now led for some distance along 
the upper edge of a steep slope. The soil was a rich black mold of 
considerable depth that made a precarious footing, especially on the 


THE BALSAM PEAKS 151 


steeper parts where a horse would now and then slip badly. Scattered 
droves of half-wild hogs were rooting in the earth in the woods below 
us; lean, dark-colored fellows with long legs that bespoke a life of 
activity. 

The oaks and chestnuts became straggling and scrubby; there was 
more sunlight through the woods, with an occasional glimpse of a dis- 
tant mountain; sky-lines across gulfs of hazy blue. It was here that 
we saw the first evergreens—a few scattered trees along the upper edge 
of the deciduous zone. The tannin-smelling woods of oak and chestnut 
presently ceased altogether and we passed into a boreal forest, the trail 
winding through dense clumps of spire-topped firs and spruces, inter- 
spersed with open, grassy parks. One could not help breathing deeply 
in this rarer air, redolent with the aromatic fragrance of balsam that re- 
called long-forgotten Christmastides. I should not have been surprised 
if the paint and varnish smell of new toys had greeted me on these 
Balsam heights. Dainty bluets (Houstonia) of the northern spring 
made bright patches on the green moss, and here and there the Clin- 
tonia borealis reared its wand of yellowish-green flowers above the 
broad, glaucous leaves. We had left summer on the lower slopes; it 
was spring on these mountain tops; we had left Carolina in the valley, 
with its passion flowers and its wild indigo; it was Canada that we 
found above the six-thousand-foot line. 

There was an impressive stillness about these evergreen solitudes 
that heightened the feeling of remoteness and isolation. Nor was bird 
hfe at all conspicuous, only the occasional chip of a Carolina junco. 
The tinkle of a bell sounded pleasingly when some mules met us on the 
trail, one with a bell fastened about its neck. White and Chalfant 
began talking of the fine pastures on these high slopes, where stock, 
from farms in the valley, is turned out to range at will. The animals 
are often more than half-wild in their freedom, and this is especially 
the case with the young cattle and hogs that are born there and that 
frequently reach maturity before seeing a man. 

The trail presently led us into one of these alpine pastures—a broad, 
open meadow on the rounded shoulder of the mountain, falling away 
on either side into the fringe of evergreens. Here the juneberry 
(Amelanchier) was growing, with its red fruit clusters, and the moun- 
tain holly (Ilex monticola), and here and there a gray bowlder out- 
cropped above the rich grass turf, and here and there a scattering clump 
of spruce and fir. Some distance off a number of young cattle were 
grazing, and farther down the slope some sheep and horses watched us 
with mingled distrust and curiosity. It was like riding along the roof 
of the world to traverse this sky-land meadow, lifted up like some 
enchanted country. 

From this meadow our way led up the western flank of the peak 


152 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


through the groves of mountain rose bay—the Catawba rhododendron 
(R. Catawbiense)—that grows only on the highest summits of this 
mountain land. On the summit of Lickstone Bald we later found it 
a shrub scarcely three feet in height, but on the Plott Balsams it 
was arborescent—a tree twenty feet high—and we rode the rest of the 
way under bowers of lilac and rose bloom. What I had read and 
heard of the scenery of Himalayan slopes was visibly present—the 
gorgeous blossoms of rhododendron jungles and the dark forests of fir 
bathed in the azure light of the upper world. Nowhere on this con- 
tinent can one find a nearer approach to Himalayan vegetation, and I 
would fain add scenery—save for the absence of that snowy range that 
towers above the tree-line zone. The fir tree of these Carolina moun- 
tain tops is Fraser’s balsam fir (Abies Frasert), a distinct species, 
though closely allied to the common fir of northern evergreen forests. 
The same resin blisters are found on the trunk and limbs as in the 
northern species, and it is the exudation from these that fills the air 
with balsamic fragrance. The woodsmen of this region call the fir 
a “she balsam” in contradistinction to the spruces, which are called 
“he balsams” and on which no resin-filled blisters are found . 

Plott Balsam is a more decided peak than any of the surrounding 
mountain summits. It falls away steeply on all sides from a level 
space on the top scarcely larger than the flat roof of some tall build- 
ing. This gives one the impression of great upliftedness—of standing 
on the pinnacle of an exceeding high mountain and beholding the 
kingdoms of the world. The timber had been felled on the very sum- 
mit, presumably to give a lookout, and we had a superb view of the 
valley of the Richland more than three thousand feet below. In every 
direction mountain masses lay before us—range beyond range—like a 
vast relief map. ‘To the north, on the farthest verge of the horizon, 
loomed indistinctly the range of the Great Smoky. ‘Toward the east 
and south the eye swept from Pisgah along a quadrant bounded by 
the hazy uplift of the Blue Ridge more than thirty miles away. It 
was not this vista of mountains, however, that impressed me most. 
It was the vastness of the sky with its cloud pageant. Here was the 
birthplace of the cumuli. Wisps of vapor, formed in the uprising cur- 
rents on some high mountain top, streamed off in the wind like a 
banner, grew and grew, rolled into a fleecy mass, waxing greater, until 
the stately pile of the cumulus floated on with its fellows—a Pheacian 
fleet that would vanish in the sunset on some distant horizon. 

The cumuli breed the thunderstorms that gather over these moun- 
tains in the early afternoons of summer. During the latter part of 
June and through July “thunder heads ” would be hovering over the 
western ridges, casting their deep shadows on the slopes and the 
valley. Downpours of rain were frequent and one soon got accustomed 


THE BALSAM PEAKS 153 


to a drenching. There is a certain feeling in being overtaken by these 
mountain rain-storms that lifts one above the mere petty annoyance of 
wetness. It savors of primitive things and is probably a reversion to 
remote ancestral ways of life. On one occasion Lucasta and I, with 
two piebald mares and a “hound dog,” made the ascent of the Plott 
Balsam. It was a lowering morning and did not promise much in 
the way of views, but a wedding anniversary was to be kept in cloud- 
land—as near as possible to the place where such blissful states are 
said to have their origin. Beyond Huckleberry Knob we found our- 
selves in a driving mist and heard the rumble of thunder in the ravines 
on either side. We missed the trail above the alpine pasture and, 
tying the horses in the firs, blazed our way up the peak. The air was 
clear of mist on the summit; the cloud was beneath us and we looked 
out on its gray vapors as one might look upon the sea from an island 
shore. A rift suddenly disclosed a bit of the valley—a fleeting 
glimpse, for the dull mass as quickly rolled together again. We con- 
gratulated ourselves on the day. You may behold the expanse of land 
and sky many times from these outlooks, but rarely does it chance that 
one sees the earth through a cloud rift. The peak of Plott Balsam 
was above the cloud; when we returned to the horses it was to find them 
still in the same bewildering mist. We shared some biscuits with the 
companionable hound, the horses munching their measure of grain, 
and all the while the cloud drenched us and the dripping firs distilled 
a fragrance that entered into the soul. There was a fine sense of being 
a part of the primitive life of things—of the mountain, and the 
weather, and the vegetation—enough of the aboriginal man and woman 
in us to find joy in such surroundings. 

The rain that had swept the slopes below the alpine meadow had 
made the trail so slippery that walking was preferable to riding, espe- 
cially where the horses had to slide down the steeper parts. There 
had been a heavy thunder-storm in the valley and all the while we 
were in the cloud itself and above it, seeing no lightning at all from 
our elevation. 

Lickstone Bald is a very different summit from the Plott Balsam. 
It begins as a long upward-trending ridge from Deep Gap, through dry 
open woods until it reaches a deciduous timber-line above which it is 
treeless—no evergreens and no arborescent rhododendrons. One gets 
the impression of riding along the ridge pole of an immensely high- 
roof, so narrow is the crest-line and so steep the side slopes. The trail 
ends abruptly on the brow of a sharp declivity that falls away to the 
lower slopes for several thousand feet. 'These lower slopes about Lick- 
stone are covered with a magnificent forest of oak, chestnut, magnolia 
(Magnolia Fraseri and M. acuminata), tulip or yellow poplar, buckeye, 
sourwood, and many other varieties. The showy flower-clusters of the 


154 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


scurwood (Ozxydendrum) are visited by great numbers of wild bees and 
sourwood honey has a reputation that is not confined to the locality. 
I have some pleasing memories of mountain breakfasts sweetened with 
this dainty product of the wildwood. Eating wild honey, lke drinking 
goldenrod tea, or devouring handfuls of wild berries, or partaking of 
any natural harvest, gives a fine edge to the business of eating, at 
least to the imaginative side of it. 

On the trail between Deep Gap and the Allen Branch, and not 
far from the mica mines on the western side of Lickstone, stood the 
cabin of Arnold Guyot’s old guide, Wid Medford. Guyot spent much 
time in these parts, surveying and studying the various mountain 
groups. A peak of the Great Smoky Mountain bears his name, and 
the United States Geological Survey has memorialized the work of this 
pioneer in geographical science by naming one of its topographical 
sheets “ Mount Guyot.” We took refuge one afternoon under Med- 
ford’s porch during a thunder shower and the old man talked about 
Guyot, chuckling with great glee over the wrath and discomfiture of 
the near-sighted professor when on a certain occasion he had blundered 
into a yellow-jacket’s nest. From the old fellow’s yarn I gathered 
that he had purposely led the unsuspecting geographer into the trap, 
by way of a joke; and the memory of it was still very green. If only 
I had heard this story of Medford’s when as a boy I struggled with a 
Guyot’s School Geography, how I should have envied the guide and the 
yellow-jackets. 

Southward from Deep Gap a trail leads up to the crest of the 
Divide—the water-parting of streams that flow west into the Tuck- 
asegee Branch of the Little Tennessee, and east into the west fork 
of Pigeon River. The trail follows along the summit for many miles, 
through a dense forest of balsam fir and close to the precipitous eastern 
side, from which one has an overlook of the Pigeon Valley three 
thousand feet below. A spongy carpet of bog moss (sphagnum) gives 
a truly Canadian touch to the fir forest of the Divide. To look down 
from these boreal heights on a valley where sorghum is growing, where 
cardinals are whistling, and passion flowers are blooming, lends another 
point of view to one’s ideas of geography. ‘The trail goes steeply up 
from Deep Gap to the top of Cold Spring Mountain, where Magee and 
I ate our lunch, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank crystal water 
from the spring. Beyond Double Spring Gap the crest-line of the 
Divide gradually rises to the summit of the Richland Balsam, six 
thousand, five hundred and forty feet above the sea-level. There is 
a glorious view of peaks and ridges from this Balsam top, with the great 
dome of Mount Mitchell (6,711 feet) rising above the Black Mountain 
group, but I did not get the same sense of upliftedness as I did on 
either of its lesser neighbors—the Plott Balsam and Lickstone Bald. 


THE BALSAM PEAKS 155 


This I think is because so many high ridges are in the immediate 
vicinity and there is no near view of a valley. 

Between Double Spring Gap and the Richland we fell in with a 
“moonshine” scout, armed with a long-barreled gun, who told us he 
had been watching for a bear. Our presence had evidently been 
heralded by some one sent ahead from a cabin on the side of Lickstone 
where we had stopped early in the forenoon to inquire the way. The 
man was quite affable when he found out who Magee was and that we 
were on a harmless tramp, looking for plants and mountains. He 
went with us to the summit of the Richland, pointed out many interest- 
ing landmarks, and offered to take us to his home to spend the night. 
I gave him a “ poke” of fine-cut tobacco, which he said was too soft 
for him, but that his little boy would be glad to have it. Thus I 
unwittingly encouraged a vicious habit in one of tender years. Every 
one uses tobacco in these mountains, the women taking it in the form 
known as “ dipping ”—a stick, one end of which is moistened and 
dipped in snuff, held between the gums and cheek. On our way back 
we met another man carrying a heavy sack on his shoulder ; undoubtedly 
corn destined for some secluded spot where the alchemy of a crude still 
would transmute it into golden “ moonshine.” 

An almost obliterated trail leads from the Richland Balsam, by a 
fir-crowned ridge to Caney Fork Bald, the treeless top of which is a 
grazing range. We saw it first against the glow of a western sky, the 
pasture slopes of its dome-like crown bathed in cool shadows. Scat- 
tered groups of cattle, sheep and horses gave a truly pastoral touch to 
the scene. There is something fascinating in these remote mountain 
pastures with their vast reach of sky, and girt about as they are by a 
world of forest-clad ridges. They are the park-lands of the Southern 
Appalachians. 

The Balsam peaks, with their glorious alpine meadows, their boreal 
forests and rhododendrons, and the sylvan wealth of their lower slopes, 
lie in the very heart of the region which the government of the United 
States now has under consideration to purchase and set aside as a 
national forest reserve. Apart from the wisdom of thus preserving a 
vast tract of forest land and conserving the water-supply of many 
important rivers, there is, in this idea of an Appalachian National 
Park, an appeal to the esthetic side as well—to that love of wild, un- 
disturbed nature and of mountain scenery that seems to be a natural 
instinct in large numbers of our people. John Muir has sounded this 
note in his delightful book on the national parks of our western country. 
The Southern Appalachians have likewise a charm of their own. To 
wander over these mountain meadows and balsam-covered peaks is to 
enrich one’s life and store the mind with fragrant memories. 


156 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE RE-AWAKENING OF THE PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE 


By RICHARD COLE NEWTON, M.D. 


le the recollection of men not yet old, such a thing as physical 

education was scarcely thought of in America. About fifty years 
ago Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: “JI am satisfied that such a 
set of black-coated, stiff-jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth 
as we can boast in our Atlantic cities, never before sprang from loins 
of Anglo-Saxon lineage. ... Anything is better than this white- 
blooded degeneration to which we all tend.” 

This condition of things had not, however, been reached without 
some concerted efforts to prevent it. In 1826 Harvard had started the 
first American college gymnasium in one of its dining-halls, and later 
in the same season, a number of gymnastic machines were put up on 
the playground known as the Delta. Gymnastic grounds were estab- 
lished at Yale the same year, and at Williams, Amherst and Brown 
in the year following. Competent instructors, however, were not to be 
had and no one knew how to produce them, so the movement was 
abandoned in five years time. 

About thirty years afterward under the management of Professor 
Hitchcock, compulsory gymnastics were instituted at Amherst with 
very happy results. Within twenty years about fifty other institutions 
of learning had followed Amherst’s lead; and now at Yale, Columbia, 
Princeton, Oberlin, the University of Pennsylvania and the University 
of Wisconsin gymnastic exercises are compulsory for all students for at 
least a part of the college course. The excellent results of the pre- 
scribed drills and exercises at Annapolis and West Point have, no 
doubt, contributed to the growing conviction that proper bodily develop- 
ment should be a part of every educational system. The students in 
many schools, as we shall see later, have taken their own physical 
education in hand. The present passion for athletic sports seems well- 
nigh universal and has gained such headway that it is evident that it 
must be taken very seriously. Over $1,000,000 are annually spent on 
college athletics in the United States, an increase of five-fold in the 
past ten or twelve years, and some young men, at least, unquestionably 
go to college for the specific purpose of playing upon the university 
teams. The stroke oar of the university crew, is by many, perhaps a 
majority, of his classmates held in higher honor than the valedictorian. 
Even as some of the youth of Hellas preferred the laurel crown, won in 


RE-AWAKENING OF PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE 157 


the Olympian games, to the prizes offered for the greatest achievements 
in poetry or art. 

Eighty years ago there was not a college gymnasium in the United 
States, to-day a college without a gymnasium is unknown. Eighty 
years ago gymnastic instructors were not to be had and no one in 
America knew how to produce them. Now there are a number of 
normal and training schools turning out physical instructors and yet 
the demand keeps so far ahead of the supply that such teachers are 
paid, when engaged, about twice as much as the teachers in other 
branches, and, as for the colleges, gentlemen of liberal culture, gradu- 
ates in the arts and in medicine, are glad to accept positions as direc- 
tors of the gymnasia and of the physical training. 

In two hundred cities of the United States there were three years 
ago vacation schools, and schools of like character were projected in 
Buenos Ayres and Amsterdam. Similar schools are also in operation 
in London. ‘These schools are chiefly for the teaching of manual train- 
ing, games and deportment, and employed in New York City 1,400 
teachers in 1903. In St. Louis a practise was instituted of taking the 
older boys in the vacation schools to see the principal base-ball games 
played in the city, as a means of enhancing their interest in manly 
sport. 

As the result of a questionnaire, Dr. McCurdy, of the Springfield 
Training School, found that out of 555 cities in the United States, 
from which he got replies, 128, or 23 per cent., employ special physical 
training teachers (102 men and 189 women). Practically all the 
schools in the 555 cities had playgrounds. Of 427 schools not employ- 
ing special physical training teachers, 190 used some special system 
of physical training. Of the high schools of the 128 cities employing 
physical training teachers, 113, or 88 per cent., have football teams, 
and in 386 other cities, 319, or 83 per cent., have football teams, while 
half as many of the grammar schools in both classes had football teams. 
In 36 per cent. of the cities where special physical training teachers are 
not employed, and in 68 per cent. of those where such teachers are 
employed, there are in addition special athletic instructors, or 
“ coaches,” for the most part under the direction of the students them- 
selves. It is a commentary on the courage of American boys that 
there were more football teams than baseball, basket-ball or track teams 
in these 514 cities. The large majority of the school superintendents 
approves of competitive athletics in the high schools. Dr. McCurdy 
speaking of the need of gymnastic exercises for the girls says, “ ade- 
quate and satisfactory teaching will be absolutely necessary for both 
sexes in the near future.” 

Dr. Luther Halsey Gulick, director of physical training in the New 


158 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


York City public schools, has just submitted a statement in regard 
to the athletic clubs formed among the male scholars in the schools. 
These clubs are maintained by the boys themselves with the aid of 
the teachers and some outside friends. President Roosevelt is honorary 
vice-president of their athletic league and other distinguished men are 
serving as its officers. Especial stress is laid in the statement upon the 
devotion of the teachers, of whom 411 did volunteer service during the 
past year in helping the boys. with their athletics after school hours. 
Had they been paid for this work at the same rate which they are 
paid for their regular duties, they would have received in the aggregate 
$120,000, a very handsome contribution to the cause of school athletics ; 
especially when it is remembered that many teachers require the hours 
after school for post-graduate and other work necessary for their own 
professional advancement. 

Two hundred and twenty-four schools in Greater New York reported 
on athletics last year, of which 83 had regular organizations and 165 
had available grounds for practise. The students pay dues into the 
athletic treasury at an average rate of twenty-eight cents per term, and 
21,873 of them took part in the athletic sports during the year. Dr. 
Gulick has under him a supervisor of physical instruction in each 
borough and a total of fifty or sixty teachers in this branch of public 
instruction. The work has been admirably organized. Similar organi- 
zations have been started and have made excellent progress in Phila- 
delphia, Boston, Chicago, and other cities. Emissaries from various 
foreign governments have visited the physical training schools of New 
York to study their methods. Two or three delegations have been 
here from Japan. The director of physical training in the schools of 
the City of Mexico has recently visited New York on his tour around 
the world to inspect the various systems of physical instruction now in 
use, and upon his recommendation three men and three women will be 
sent to New York to receive the technical training requisite to fit them 
to teach physical education in the City of Mexico. One such teacher 
(a woman) has already gone from New York to work in the City of 
Mexico. 

The United States government is now sending the director of phys- 
ical training at West Point to visit England, Germany, France, Italy, 
Austria and Sweden for the purpose of thoroughly studying the systems 


*The great interest which Japan has always taken in matters of physical 
education showed itself in 1876 by the visit which her vice-minister of education 
paid to Amherst College under orders from his government to study and report 
upon the system of physical instruction in use there. This was followed by a 
request from the Japanese government that an instructor be sent from Amherst 
to introduce Dr. Hitchcock’s system into the government schools in Japan. The 
request was complied with to the great satisfaction of the Japanese. 


RE-AWAKENING OF PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE 159 


of physical training practised in the armies of those countries. The 
Greek government has recently requested the authorities of Harvard 
University to send information regarding American gymnasia that will 
aid in constructing and equipping the gymnasium at Athens. 

The Sunday Schools have also begun organizing athletic leagues. 
In 1904, twenty-five Sunday Schools in the borough of Brooklyn organ- 
ized an athletic league which had a membership of fifty schools in a 
few months. Notices now appear in the daily papers of athletic meet- 
ings, including wrestling and similar sports, by church societies. While 
this might be regarded in the light of an effort to fight the devil with 
his own weapons by providing some sports that will really attract men 
and boys to the church society meetings, nevertheless it is due in part 
at least, to the widespread demand for physical education; a phase of 
modern life long since utilized by the Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciations. Of late years, however, the increased demand for this kind 
of teaching has taxed the resources of the associations heavily, and the 
work is constantly growing, as the following figures will show: The 
attendance at the Young Men’s Christian Association gymnasia in this 
country has increased from about 50,000 ten years ago to 154,000 in 
1906, or over three-fold. All the extension work, so called, which is 
the teaching of physical exercises in schools, colleges, churches, clubs, 
etc., by Christian Association men, has been developed in the past 
decade, whereas, “the shop work,” namely, teaching the industrial 
classes right habits of living, has been taken up within the past three 
years, and 271 leaders are engaged in work of this kind. 

Ten years ago, eight per cent. of the Young Men’s Christian Asso- 
ciation directors had received technical preparation as physical instruc- 
tors. To-day, thirty-nine per cent. have received.such preparation. 
So in the Young Women’s Christian Association physical instruction 
has become an important feature. There are at present over 80 asso- 
ciations, out of 138 reporting, giving such instruction, whereas six- 
teen years ago there were only two. Of a total membership of 68,803 
women, there were in 1905 11,153, or 16 per cent., enrolled in the 
physical training classes, as against 9,001, or 13 per cent., enrolled in 
the Bible study classes. 

That other countries feel the working of the same leayen, the fol- 
lowing incident testifies: Not very long ago, the Pope consented to act 
as patron of the athletic societies of Italy, and invited them to give 
exhibitions in the courts of the Vatican. This innovation met with 
great opposition from the members of the papal court. His Holiness, 
however, was not to be dissuaded from his purpose, saying to the pro- 
testing cardinals, “Come and see these brave boys, you will be reju- 
venated by fifty years, and they will gain from it in the health of their 
bodies, and above all in that of their souls.” Accordingly, races, trials 
of strength and gymnastic contests were held in the great courts and 


160 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


gardens of the papal palace, the contestants receiving over two hundred 
gold and silver medals from the Pope, who had caused temporary 
thrones to be erected for himself and his court from which they wit- 
nessed the sports. Even in the island of Porto Rico athletic contests 
are superseding cock-fighting as a national amusement. 

Not only, however, is there an unwonted activity in physical educa- 
tion, but the subject of personal and general hygiene never before 
received one half the attention that it does at this moment. The city 
of Philadelphia alone spends more resources and employs more agents 
in the interests of public health to-day than did the whole English- 
speaking world a century ago. Not only has the movement to give 
every child, rich and poor alike, a good physical education become quite 
general, but steps are also taken to guard his health from contagion and 
from every injurious influence during his school life. 

The first international congress on school hygiene was held in 
Nuremberg in 1904 and has been followed “ by increased literary activ- 
ity in nearly every country.” ‘The second is called to meet in London 
in August, 1907. King Edward will be the patron of the congress, 
and Sir Lauder Brunton its president. Steps are being taken to inter- 
est the entire civilized world in the effort “to promote by continued 
activity, in any way the cause of health and knowledge in education.” 
Medical inspection of schools was introduced in Boston in 1890; in 
Philadelphia in 1892; in Chicago in 1896; and in New York in 1897. 
In Brussels special school physicians were first appointed in 1874. Now 
dentists and oculists have been appointed to the schools, and instruc- 
tion in hygiene is given in eighty-five per cent. of them. Similar meas- 
ures have been inaugurated in nearly every capital of Europe, and in 
the high school of Brookline, Massachusetts. The Russian Society for 
the Preservation of the Public Health has recently arranged a program 
for the investigation of the hygienic condition of the schools, and prob- 
ably in every city of any size in America and many country places as 
well, medical inspection of schools is now a regular practise. 

The great educational value of play, as such, has at last begun to 
be recognized. A German commission some few years ago visited the 
English public schools under instructions to study the influence of the 
games and sports carried on there upon the physical and intellectual 
development of the students. Their report was such that steps were 
immediately taken to introduce athletic sports and games into the 
German schools. An annual of four or five hundred pages entirely 
devoted to play is now published in that country, where, in fact, most 
of the pedagogic movements of the past century have originated, and 
after careful investigation, the play ground movement was systemat- 
ically undertaken there; and there is now in some German cities a law 
requiring that each school shall provide a minimum play space for each 


RE-AWAKENING OF PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE 161 


pupil, which in Munich, for example, must be at least twenty-five 
square feet in area. In Berlin, there is a forty-acre play ground in- 
tended solely for small children. Play conferences are being held 
annually in the larger German cities and thousands of teachers are 
being taught to play games with the children. 

France, on the other hand, has manifested much less interest in 
play. The games played by the children are mostly of a trivial nature, 
and there seems to be no literature on the subject. The superior 
morale of the German army, as evinced in the Franco-Prussian War, 
was the natural consequence of the better educational methods of the 
Germans. As the Duke of Wellington asserted that the battle of 
Waterloo was won on the football fields of Eton and Rugby, so one 
might say that the patriotic ardor of Jahn, who taught the Prussian 
soldiery gymnastic exercises from patriotic motives, bore fruit in the 
victory of Sedan. Yet in France, a strong attempt was made a few 
years ago to popularize athletic sports. Prizes were offered by various 
corporations and municipalities for excellence in various contests, in 
which thousands of the people, mostly I believe employees of the fac- 
tories and shops, took a more or less conspicuous part. 

In England, the home of manly sport, one finds many municipali- 
ties owning their football and cricket fields, just as they own a town 
hall, and many of the working men and boys spend their half holidays 
playing games. The public schools in that country are admirably sup- 
plied with playgrounds, and cricket and football are compulsory in 
these schools for all the scholars physically qualified to play, and, 
furthermore, the teachers are required to play with the pupils; and 
now in London the authorities declare their intention to have a play- 
ground within a quarter of a mile of every home. 

In the United States there is an effort being made to replan our 
cities so as to make adequate provision for play for young and old. 
Our playgrounds are now absurdly inadequate. Until 1899, a section 
of New York City, containing 500,000 inhabitants, had no open space 
whatever for play. The movement toward bettering this condition of 
things is so vigorous and so general, thanks to the efforts of such phil- 
anthropists as Jacob Riis, and the results of what has already been 
accomplished in New York are so gratifying, that great and continued 
improvement may be confidently expected. The city now sets aside, 
we are told in the report of the United States Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, $300,000 each year for the purchase of playgrounds, and $1,000,- 
000 a year for small parks. Unfortunately it will take $100,000,000 
to buy enough land to provide the 630,000 children now in the city 
with room enough to play in. 

Chicago has over 73 acres of playgrounds; Philadelphia 110 acres; 
Brooklyn 40, and Boston, the most intellectual city in the country, has 


VoL. Lxx1.—11 


162 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the largest area of playgrounds, nearly 200 acres. In each of the new 
playgrounds of New York, which were opened in seven of the smaller 
parks in 1903, there were gymnastic and kindergarten. instructors in 
charge. These are for children under fifteen; Chicago has five or six 
such playgrounds, and ten more were to be opened in 1903. The new 
municipal playground, in Seward Park in New York, is probably the 
best in the world. It cost the city $2,500,000. ‘There are from two 
to three thousand children playing there most of the time when the 
schools are not in session, and at 7 P. M. from 6,000 to 7,000 are there, 
practically every day. A philanthropist has offered to spend $4,000,000 
in laying out and equipping a playground, bathing pavilion and beach 
on Staten Island, and providing a steamboat to take a large number, 
probably a thousand, poor children from New York to the beach and 
back every day. So long ago as 1902 there were ten roof gardens pro- 
vided in New York City, at each of which the average daily attendance 
was 2,000. ‘There were besides twenty play centers and seven recrea- 
tion piers. Swimming-baths were also provided and fifty swimming 
teachers. In Glasgow were the first municipal playgrounds, and be it 
observed in passing, this was one of the first cities in the world to adopt 
municipal ownership of public utilities. 

As playgrounds are gradually being established all over the civi- 
lized world, so opportunities for proper personal cleanliness are grad- 
ually being provided for the humblest citizen. In Munich a public 
bath house has just been opened. A gift to the city from a private 
citizen. It cost $500,000, twice as much as the complete gymnasium 
at Yale. Public baths have been opened in London and other foreign 
cities. In Boston, of the American cities, probably the best bathing 
facilities are provided for the common people. It is estimated that 
each inhabitant of the city may enjoy five baths a year, whereas in the 
densely crowded districts of New York, Baltimore and Chicago, the 
Department of Labor found only two to three per cent. of the houses 
suppled with baths in 1894. Now, however, in Seward Park in New 
York, and presumably in the other new parks, excellent public baths 
are provided in addition to a number of floating baths. 

There has been a strange awakening in the Empire of China in 
these latter days; we can scarcely believe the reports that China is now 
turning to the light, and that the conservatism of centuries is at last 
yielding to the influence of modern ideas. But it is so. And one of 
the best evidences of real advance toward the liberation of man from 
the moral and physical bondage of generations is that an imperial edict 
exhorts “parents to refrain from binding their daughters’ feet,” and 
declares that men who wish to hold office must not have wives or 


RE-AWAKENING OF PHYSICAL CONSCIENCE _ 163 


daughters whose feet are bound. At Peking a newspaper* for women 
has been established, edited by a Chinese woman; one of its objects is 
the teaching of hygiene. Another recent imperial edict forbids the 
smoking of opium in China. 

The present world-wide agitation against child labor is another sug- 
gestive fact which points toward a physical millenium. Child labor 
laws have been very generally enacted. In New Zealand all employed 
women and children have been placed under strict legal protection. 
The strictest child labor law in the world probably has been enacted in 
that country. 

In the new Japan, physical excellence is part of their religion; it 
is demanded by Bushido, their moral code, and by patriotism. The 
feeble of body among the Samurai will not marry. Dr. Griffis informs 
us in “The Mikado’s Empire,” that by means of physical reconstruc- 
tion of the whole people, through improved hygienic and preventive 
measures against disease and wounds, Japan in 1904 has become a new 
nation. As compared with their status in 1870, they have been raised 
to the fifth power. At the same time, the soldiers have increased 
remarkably in stature, while the recruits in the English army have 
deteriorated in physique, owing presumably to intemperance and vicious 
living. 

The Turners’ societies in America are constantly growing in num- 
bers and influence. Their first normal school of gymnastics was organ- 
ized in 1861. Over sixty per cent. of their members enlisted in the 
Union armies, and the financial resources of the gymnastic societies 
and of the female auxiliaries were taxed to the utmost in aiding the 
families of their members who were in the army and in caring for 
the widows and orphans of those who had been killed. Every member 
of a turnverein is required to become a naturalized citizen of the United 
States. As Ling in Sweden and Jahn in Prussia organized their gym- 
nastic societies from motives of patriotism, so, as we have just seen, 
the Turners in the United States were organized. At present they 
have 237 unions with about 40,000 members, and stand for all that is 
best in government, education, morals and good citizenship. The basis 
of their work is a sound physical education. 

The growing interest in humaniculture can not truthfully be said 
to be due to a passing fashion. On the contrary, it is a part of a 
mighty movement, and like other great movements in human evolu- 
tion, it is worthy of serious study. Not simply in its more obvious 
relations, but in its bearing upon other movements and other influences 
in human progress. As man is now advancing, in self discipline, in 


2 The circulation of journals devoted to health and hygiene has increased in 
this country until one of the best known is said to issue 300,000 copies each 
month. 


164 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


charity, and in civic virtue, in short, as he is passing out of the age of 
individualism into that of fraternalism, evidence is abundant on every 
side that the body beautiful, the visible expression of a strong and lofty 
soul, shall no longer be neglected and its care and development left to 
chance or ignorance. Physical education and civic virtue, which is 
but an active demonstration of the love of one’s fellows, are advancing 
with equal step. Charity, patience and courage are the attributes of 
the well-trained and vigorous physique, and these traits of character 
are daily becoming more common. 

Instances similar to those appearing in this paper probably might 
be multiplied indefinitely, yet enough have been cited, it seems to me, 
to prove the contention that in nearly every quarter of the earth, pagan 
and Christian alike, are to be perceived unmistakable signs of the 
approach of a general “ physical renaissance such as the world has only 
seen twice, or perhaps thrice, and which preceded the most brilliant 
periods in the intellectual history of mankind.” In spite of the lamen- 
tations which we so often hear of the sordidness and vulgarity of modern 
life, of the brazen display of wealth and the venality of public men, 
there are not wanting many signs that the tide is setting in toward a 
higher and a nobler manhood and a purer, simpler and more wholesome 
life, and not the least of these signs is the evidence just cited, gathered 
from many different sources, that the physical conscience is again, 
after slumbering for 2,000 years, awaking and asserting itself, and will 
rule the world again as it did in ancient Greece. 

If the coming man will listen to its voice it will lead him into a 
civilization that will surpass that of Greece by as much as the present 
age surpasses that of Pericles in the “solid progress of the sciences and 
their application to the useful arts.” 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 165 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS? 


By FRANCIS GALTON, F.R.S. 
LONDON 


HE request so honorable to myself, to be the Herbert Spencer 
lecturer of this year, aroused a multitude of vivid recollections. 
Spencer’s strong personality, his complete devotion to a self-imposed 
and life-long task, together with rare gleams of tenderness visible 
amidst a wilderness of abstract thought, have left a unique impression 
on my mind that years fail to weaken. 

I do not propose to speak of his writings; they have been fully com- 
mented on elsewhere, but I desire to acknowledge my personal debt to 
him, which is large. It lies in what I gained through his readiness to 
discuss any ideas I happened to be full of at the time, with quick sym- 
pathy and keen criticism. It was his custom for many afternoons to 
spend an hour or two of rest in the old smoking room of the Atheneum 
Club, strolling into an adjoining compartment for a game of billiards 
when the table was free. Day after day on those afternoons I enjoyed 
brief talks with him, which were often of exceptional interest to myself. 
All that kind of comfort and pleasure has long ago passed from me. 
Among the many things of which age deprives us, I regret few more 
than the loss of contemporaries. When I was young I felt diffident in 
the presence of my seniors, partly owing to a sense that the ideas of 
the young can not be in complete sympathy with those of the old. 
Now that I myself am old it seems to me that my much younger friends 
keenly perceive the same difference, and I lose much of that outspoken 
criticism which is an invaluable help to all who investigate. 


History of Eugenics 

It must have surprised you as it did myself to find the new word 
“ Eugenics ” in the title both of the Boyle lecture, delivered in Oxford 
about a fortnight ago, and of this. It was an accident, not a deliberate 
concurrence, and I accept it as a happy omen. The field of eugenics 
is so wide that there is no need for myself, the second lecturer, to 
plant my feet in the footsteps of the first; on the contrary, it gives 
freedom by absolving me from saying much that had to be said in one 
way or another. I fully concur in the views so ably presented by my 
friend and co-adjutor Professor Karl Pearson, and am glad to be 
dispensed from further allusion to subjects that formed a large portion 


* The Herbert Spencer lecture delivered at Oxford University on June 5, 1907. 


‘ 


166 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of his lecture, on which he is a far better guide and an infinitely higher 
authority than myself. 

In giving the following sketch of the history of eugenics I am 
obliged to be egotistical, because I kindled the feeble flame that 
struggled doubtfully for a time until it caught hold of adjacent stores 
of suitable material, and became a brisk fire, burning freely by itself, 
and again because I have had much to do with its progress quite 
recently. 

The word “eugenics” was coined and used by me in my book 
“Human Faculty,’ published as long ago as 1883, which has long 
been out of print; it is, however, soon to be re-published in a cheap 
form. In it I emphasized the essential brotherhood of mankind, 
heredity being to my mind a very real thing; also the belief that we 
are born to act, and not to wait for help like able-bodied idlers, whin- 
ing for doles. Individuals appear to me as finite detachments from 
an infinite ocean of being, temporarily endowed with executive powers. 
This is the only answer I can give to myself in reply to the perpetually 
recurring questions of “ Why? whence? and whither?” ‘The imme- 
diate “whither?” does not seem wholly dark, as some little informa- 
tion may be gleaned concerning the direction in which nature, so far 
as we know of it, is now moving. Namely, towards the evolution of 
mind, body and character in increasing energy and co-adaptation. 

I have often wondered that the poem of Hyperion, by Keats—that 
magnificent torso of an incompleted work—has not been placed in the 
very forefront of past speculations on evolution. Keats is so thorough 
that he makes the very divinities to be its product. The earliest gods 
such as Ccelus, born out of Chaos, are vague entities, they engender 
Saturn, Oceanus, Hyperion, and the Titan brood, who superseded them. 
These in their turn are ousted from dominion by their own issue, the 
Olympian Gods. A notable advance occurs at each successive stage in 
the quality of the divinities. When Hyperion, newly terrified by 
signs of impending overthrow, lies prostrate on the earth “ his ancient 
mother, for some comfort yet,” the voice of Ccelus from the universal 
space, thus “ whispered low and solemn in his ear . . . yet do thou 
strive for thou art capable . .. my life is but the life of winds and 
tides, no more than winds and tides can I prevail, but thou canst.” I 
have quoted only disjointed fragments of this wonderful poem, enough 
to serve as a reminder to those who know it, but will add ten con- 
secutive lines from the speech of the fallen Oceanus to his comrades, 
which give a summary of evolution as here described: 


As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far 

Than Chaos and black Darkness, though once chiefs, 
And as we show beyond that Heaven and Earth 

In form and shape compact and beautiful, 

In Will, in action free, companionship, 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 167 


And thousand other signs of purer life; 
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads 

A power more strong in beauty, born of us 
And fated to excel us, as we pass 

In glory that old Darkness. 

He ends with “this is the truth, and let it be your balm.” The 
poem is a noble conception, founded on the crude cosmogony of the 
ancient Greeks. 

The ideas have long held my fancy that we men may be the chief, 
and perhaps the only executives on earth. That we are detached on 
active service with, it may be only illusory, powers of free-will. Also 
that we are in some way accountable for our success or failure to 
further certain obscure ends, to be guessed as best we can. That 
though our instructions are obscure they are sufficiently clear to justify 
our interference with the pitiless course of nature, whenever it seems 
possible to attain the goal towards which it moves, by gentler and 
kindlier ways. I expressed these views as forcibly as I then could in 
the above-mentioned book, with especial reference to improving the 
racial qualities of mankind, in which the truest piety seems to me to 
reside in taking action, and not in submissive acquiescence to the 
routine of nature. It was thought impious at one time to attach 
lightning conductors to churches, as showing a want of trust in the 
tutelary care of the deity to whom they were dedicated; now I think 
most persons would be inclined to apply some contemptuous epithet to 
such as obstinately refused, on those grounds, to erect them. 

The direct pursuit of studies in eugenics, as to what could prac- 
tically be done, and the amount of change in racial qualities that could 
reasonably be anticipated, did not at first attract investigators. The 
idea of effecting an improvement in that direction was too much in 
advance of the march of popular imagination, so I had to wait. In the 
meantime I occupied myself with collateral problems, more especially 
with that of dealing measurably with faculties that are variously dis- 
tributed in a large population. The results were published in my 
“ Natural Inheritance” in 1889, and I shall have occasion to utilize 
some of them later on, in this very lecture. The publication of that 
book proved to be more timely than the former. The methods were 
greatly elaborated by Professor Karl Pearson, and applied by him to 
biometry. Professor Weldon of this university, whose untimely death 
is widely deplored, aided powerfully. A new science was thus created 
primarily on behalf of biometry, but equally applicable to eugenics, 
because their provinces overlap. 

The publication of Biometrika, in which I took little more than 
a nominal part, appeared in 1901. 

Being myself appointed Huxley lecturer before the Anthropological 
Institute in 1901 I took for my title “The Possible Improvement of 


168 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the Human Breed under the Existing Conditions of Law and Senti- 
ment” (Nature, November 1, 1901, Report of the Smithsonian Insti- 
tution, Washington, for the same year). 

The next and a very important step towards eugenics was made by 
Professor Karl Pearson in his Huxley lecture of 1903 entitled “The 
Laws of Inheritance in Man” (Biometrika, Vol III.). It contains a 
most valuable compendium of work achieved and of objects in view; 
also the following passage (p. 159), which is preceded by forcible rea- 
sons for his conclusions: 


We are ceasing as a nation to breed intelligence as we did fifty to a hundred 
years ago. The mentally better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at 
the same rate as it did of old; the less able, and the less energetic are more 
fertile than the better stocks. No scheme of wider or more thorough education 
will bring up, in the scale of intelligence, hereditary weakness to the level of 
hereditary strength. The only remedy, if one be possible at all, is to alter the 
relative fertility of the good and the bad stocks in the community. 


Again in 1904, having been asked by the newly-formed Sociological 
Society to contribute a memoir, I did so on “ Eugenics, its Definition, 
Aim and Scope.” This was followed up in 1905 by three memoirs, 
“ Restrictions in Marriage,” “Studies in National Eugenics” and 
“ BHugenics as a Factor in Religion,” which were published in the 
memoirs of that society with comments thereon by more than twenty 
different authorities (Sociological Papers, published for the Socio- 
logical Society (Macmillan), Vols. I. and II.). The subject of 
eugenics being thus formally launched, and the time appearing ripe, I 
offered a small endowment to the University of London to found a 
research fellowship on its behalf. The offer was cordially accepted, 
so eugenics gained the recognition of its importance by the University 
of London, and a home for its study in University College. Mr. 
Edgar Schuster, of this university, became research fellow in 1905, 
and I am much indebted to his care in nurturing the young undertaking 
and for the memoirs he has contributed, part of which must remain 
for a short time longer unpublished. 

When the date for Mr. Schuster’s retirement approached, it was 
advisable to utilize the experience so far gained in reorganizing the 
office. Professor Pearson and myself, in consultation with the au- 
thorities of the University of London, elaborated a scheme at the be- 
ginning of this year, which is a decided advance, and shows every sign 
of vitality and endurance. Mr. David Heron, a mathematical scholar 
of St. Andrews, is now a research fellow; Miss Ethel Elderton, who 
has done excellent and expert work from the beginning, is deservedly 
raised to the position of research scholar; and the partial services of a 
trained computer have been secured. An event of the highest im- 
portance to the future of the office is that Professor Karl Pearson has 
undertaken, at my urgent request, that general supervision of its work 
which advancing age and infirmities preclude me from giving. He 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 169 


will, I trust, treat it much as an annexe to his adjacent biometric 
laboratory, for many studies in eugenics might, with equal propriety, 
be carried on in either of them, and the same methods of precise 
analysis which are due to the mathematical skill and untiring energy 
of Professor Pearson are used in both. The office now bears the name 
of the Eugenics Laboratory, and its temporary home is in 88 Gower 
Street. The phrase “national eugenics” is defined as “the study of 
agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial 
qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” 

The laboratory has already begun to publish memoirs on its own 
account, and I now rest satisfied in the belief that, with a fair share 
of good luck, this young institution will prosper and grow into an 
important center of research. 


Application of Theories of Probability to Eugenics. 

Eugenics seeks for quantitative results. It is not contented with 
such vague words as “ much” or “little,” but endeavors to determine 
“how much” or “ how little” in precise and trustworthy figures. A 
simple example will show the importance of this. Let us suppose a 
class of persons, called A, who are afflicted with some form and some 
specified degree of degeneracy, as inferred from personal observations, 
and from family history, and let class B consist of the offspring of A. 
We already know only too well that when the grade of A is very low, 
that of the average B will be below par and mischievous to the com- 
munity, but how mischievous will it probably be? This question is of 
a familiar kind, easily to be answered when a sufficiency of facts have 
been collected. But a second question arises, What will be the trust- 
worthiness of the forecast derived from averages when it is applied to 
individuals? This is a kind of question that is not familiar, and 
rarely taken into account, although it too could be answered easily as 
follows: The average mischief done by each B individual to the com- 
munity may for brevity be called M: the mischiefs done by the several 
individuals differ more or less from M by amounts whose average may 
be called D. In other words D is the average amount of the individual 
deviations from M. D thus becomes the measure of untrustworthiness. 
The smaller D is, the more precise the forecast, and the stronger the 
justification for taking such drastic measures against the propagation 
of class B as would be consonant to the feelings if the forecast were 
known to be infallible. On the other hand, a large D signifies a cor- 
responding degree of uncertainty, and a risk that might be faced 
without reproach through a sentiment akin to that expressed in the 
maxim “It is better that many guilty should escape than that one 
innocent person should suffer.” But that is not the sentiment by which 
natural selection is guided, and it is dangerous to yield far to it. 


170 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


There can be no doubt that a thorough investigation of the kind 
described, even if confined to a single grade and to a single form of 
degeneracy, would be a serious undertaking. Masses of trustworthy 
material must be collected, usually with great difficulty, and be after- 
wards treated with skill and labor by methods that few at present are 
competent to employ. An extended investigation into the good or evil 
done to the state by the offspring of many different classes of persons, 
some of civic value, others the reverse, implies a huge volume of work 
sufficient to occupy eugenics laboratories for an indefinite time. 


a 


Object Lessons in the Methods of Biometry. 

I propose now to speak of those fundamental principles of the laws 
of probability that are chiefly concerned in the newer methods of 
biometry, and consequently of eugenics. Most persons of ordinary 
education seem to know nothing about them, not even understanding 
their technical terms, much less appreciating the cogency of their re- 
sults. This popular ignorance so obstructs the path of eugenics that I 
venture to tax your attention by proposing a method of partly dispelling 
it. Let me first say that no one can be more conscious than myself of 
the large amount of study that is required to qualify a man to deal 
adequately with the mathematical methods of biometry, or that any 
man can hope for much success in that direction unless he is possessed 
of appropriate faculties and a strong brain. On the other hand, I 
hold an opinion, likely at first sight to scandalize biometricians and 
which I must justify, that the fundamental ideas on which abstruse 
problems of probability are based admit of being so presented to any 
intelligent person as to be grasped by him, even though he be quite 
ignorant of mathematics. The conditions of doing so are that the 
lessons shall be as far as possible “object lessons,” in which real ob- 
jects shall be handled as in the kindergarten system, and simple opera- 
tions performed and not only talked about. I am anxious to make my- 
self so far understood that some teachers of science may be induced ta 
elaborate the course that I present now only in outline. It seems to me 
suitably divisible into a course of five lessons of one hour each, which 
would be sufficient to introduce the learner into a new world of ideas, 
extraordinarily wide in their application. A proper notion of what is 
meant by correlation requires some knowledge of the principal features 
of variation, and will be the goal towards which the lessons lead. 

To most persons variability implies something indefinite and 
capricious. They require to be taught that it, like Proteus in the 
old fable, can be seized, securely bound, and utilized; that it can be 
defined and measured. It was disregarded by the old methods of 
statistics, that concerned themselves solely with averages. The average 
amount of various measurable faculties or events in a multitude of 


| OF THE HERBER / 
Gs O-01.© 0.0 [0 6&0 O00 
fic1. Random Arrangement _|Fic2. Orderl Arrangement 


Ore 
° 0 00808000000, 
Size of Median Variale independent of the number in Array 


TOO TTT | 32° 6} 08}! 
_ _ Vartates Yariates Deviates 
Distribution oct Variates and Deviates as lines 


een Be tat ons gee ge ae 
S€ve if 
from the Mean ‘ef |------- 


fic 7. 


~ Polygon of 
Frequency 
biygon into the other 


Be orhen ne 
of Aand B 


» Arrays of 


172 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


persons was determined by simple methods, the individual variations 
being left out of account as too difficult to deal with. A population 
was treated by the old methods as a structureless atom, but the newer 
methods treat it as a compound unit. It will be a considerable in- 
tellectual gain to an otherwise educated person, to fully understand 
the way in which this can be done, and this and such like matters 
the proposed course of lessons is intended to make clear. It can not 
be expected that in the few available minutes more than an outline can 
be given here of what is intended to be conveyed in perhaps thirty-fold 
as much time with the aid of profuse illustrations by objects and 
diagrams. At the risk of being wearisome, it is, however, necessary to 
offer the following syllabus of what is proposed, for an outline of what 
teachers might fill in. 

The object of the first lesson would be to explain and illustrate 
variability of size, weight, number, etc., by exhibiting samples of speci- 
mens that had been marshalled at random (Fig. 1), or arrayed in order 
of their magnitude (Fig. 2). Thus when variations of length were 
considered, objects of suitable size, such as chestnuts, acorns, hazel- 
nuts, stones of wall fruit, might be arrayed as beads on a string. It 
will be shown that an “array” of variates of any kind falls into a 
continuous series. That each variate differs little from its neighbors 
about the middles of the arrays, but that such differences increase 
rapidly towards their extremities. Abundant illustration would be 
required, and much handling of specimens. 

Arrays of variates of the same class strung together, differing con- 
siderably in the number of the objects they each contain, would be 
laid side by side and their middle-most variates or “ medians ” (Fig. 3) 
would be compared. It would be shown that as a rule the medians 
become very similar to one another when the numbers in the arrays 
are large. It must then be dogmatically explained that double ac- 
curacy usually accompanies a four-fold number, a treble accuracy a 
nine-fold number, and so on. 

(This concludes the first lesson, during which the words and 
significations of variability, variate array, and median will have been 
learned.) 

The second lesson is intended to give more precision to the idea of 
an array. The variates in any one of these strung loosely on a cord, 
should be disposed at equal distances apart in front of an equal number 
of compartments, like horses in the front of a row of stalls (Fig. 4), 
and their tops joined. There will always be one more side to the row 
of stalls than there are objects, otherwise a side of one of the extreme 
stalls would be wanting. Thus there are two ways of indicating the 
portion of a particular variate, either by its serial number as “ first,” 
“second,” “ third,” or so on, or by degrees like those of a thermometer. 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 173 


In the latter case the sides of the stalls serve as degrees, counting the 
first of them as 0°, making one more graduation than the number of 
objects, as should be. The difference between these two methods has to 
be made clear, and that while the serial position of the median object 
is always the same in any two arrays whatever be the number of vari- 
ates, the serial positions of their subdivisions can not be the same, the 
ignored half interval at either end varying in width according to the 
number of variates, and becoming considerable when that number is 
small. 

Lines of proportionate length will then be used drawn on a black- 
board, and the limits of the array will be also drawn, at a half interval 
from either end. The base is then to be divided centesimally. 

Next join the tops of the lines with a smooth curve, and wipe out 
everything except the curve, the limit at either side, and the cen- 
testimally divided base (Fig. 5). This figure forms a scheme of dis- 
tribution of variates. Explain clearly that its shape is independent of 
the number of variates, so long as they are sufficiently numerous to 
secure statistical constancy. 

Show numerous schemes of variates of different kinds, and remark 
on the prevalent family likeness between the bounding curves. (Words 
and meanings learnt—schemes of distribution, centesimal graduation 
of base.) 

The third lesson passes from variates, measured upwards from ~ 
the base, to deviates measured upwards or downwards from the median, 
and treated as positive or negative values accordingly (Fig. 6). 

Draw a scheme of variates on the blackboard, and show that it con- 
sists of two parts; the median which represents a constant, and the 
curve which represents the variations from it. Draw a horizontal 
line from limit to limit, through the top of the median, to serve as axis 
to the curve. Divide the axis centesimally, and wipe out everything 
except curve, axis and limits. This forms a scheme of distribution of 
deviates. Draw ordinates from the axis to the curve at the twenty- 
fifth and seventy-fifth divisions. These are the “ quartile” deviates. 

At this stage the genesis of the theoretical normal curve might be 
briefly explained and the generality of its application; also some of its 
beautiful properties of reproduction. Many of the diagrams already 
shown would be again employed to show the prevalence of approxi- 
mately normal distributions. Exceptions of strongly marked skew 
curves would be exhibited and their genesis briefly explained. 

It will then be explained that while the ordinate at any specified 
centesimal division in two normal curves measures their relative 
variability, the quartile is commonly employed as the unit of variability 
under the almost grotesque name of “ probable error,” which is intended 
to signify that the length of any deviate in the system is as likely as 


174 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


not to exceed or to fall short of it. This, by construction, is the case 
of either quartile. 

(New words and meanings—scheme of distribution of deviates, 
axis, normal, skew, quartile and probable error.) 


In the fourth lesson it has to be explained that the curve of normal 
distribution is not the direct result of calculation, neither does the 
formula that expresses it lend itself so freely to further calculation, 
as that of frequency. Their shapes differ; the first is an ogive, the 
second (Fig. 7) is bell-shaped. In the curve of freqency the deriva- 
tions are reckoned from the mean of all the variates, and not from the 
median. Mean and median are the same in normal curves, but may 
differ much in others. Either curve can be transformed into the other, 
as is best exemplified by using a polygon (Fig. 8) instead of the curve, 
consisting of a series of rectangles differing in height by the same 
amounts, but having widths respectively representative of the fre- 
quencies of 1, 3, 3,1. (This is one of those known as a binomial series, 
whose genesis might be briefly explained.) If these rectangles are 
arrayed in order of their widths, side by side, they become the 
equivalents of the ogival curve of distribution. Now if each of these 
latter rectangles be slid parallel to itself up to either limit, their bases 
will overlap and they become equivalent to the bell-shaped curve of 
frequency with its base vertical. 

The curve of frequency contains no easily perceived unit of vari- 
ability like the quartile of the curve of distribution. It is therefore 
not suited for and was not used as a first illustration, but the formula 
that expresses it is by far the more suitable of the two for calculation. 
Its unit of variability is what is called the “standard deviation,” 
whose genesis will admit of illustration. How the calculations are 
made for finding its value is beyond the reach of the present lessons. 
The calculated ordinates of the normal curve must be accepted by the 
learner much as the time of day by his watch, though he be ignorant 
of the principles of its construction. Much more beyond his reach 
are the formule used to express quasi-normal and skew curves. They 
require a previous knowledge of rather advanced mathematics. 

(New words and ideas—curve of frequency, standard deviation, 
mean, binomial series. ) 

The fifth and last lesson deals with the measurement of correlation, 
that is, with the closeness of the relation between any two systems 
whose variations are due partly to causes common to both, and partly 
to causes special to each. It applies to nearly every social relation, as 
to environment and health, social position and fertility, the kinship of 
parent to child, of uncle to nephew, ete. It may be mechanically 
illustrated by the movements of two pulleys with weights attached, 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 175 


suspended from a cord held by one of the hands of three different 
persons, 1, 2, and 3. No. 2 holds the middle of the cord, one half of 
which then passes round one of the pulleys up to the hand of No. 1; 
the other half similarly round the other pulley up to the hand of No. 
3. The hands of Nos. 1, 2 and 3 move up and down quite inde- 
pendently, but as the movements of both weights are simultaneously 
controlled in part by No. 2, they become “ correlated.” 

The formation of a table of correlations on paper ruled in squares, 
is easily explained on the blackboard (Fig. 9). The pairs of correlated 
values A and B have to be expressed in units of their respective 
variabilities. ‘They are then sorted into the squares of the paper,— 
vertically according to the magnitudes of A, horizontally according to 
those of B—, and the mean of each partial array of B values, cor- 
responding to each grade of A, has to be determined. It is found 
theoretically that where variability is normal, the means of B lie prac- 
tically in a straight line on the face of the table, and observation shows 
they do so in most other cases. It follows that the average deviation 
of a B value bears a constant ratio to the deviation of the corresponding 
A value. This ratio is called the “index of correlation,’ and is ex- 
pressed by a single figure. For example: if the thigh-bones of many 
persons deviate “ very much ” from the usual length of the thigh-bones 
of their race, the average of the lengths of the corresponding arm- 
bones will differ “ much,” but not “ very much,” from the usual length 
of arm-bones, and the ratio between this “ very much” and “ much” is 
constant and in the same direction, whatever be the numerical value 
attached to the word “ very much.” Lastly, the trustworthiness of the 
index of correlation, when applied to individual cases, is readily cal- 
culable. When the closeness of correlation is absolute, it is expressed 
by the number 1:0, and by 0-0, when the correlation is nil. 

(New words and ideas—correlation and index of correlation.) 


This concludes what I have to say on these suggested object 
lessons. It will have been tedious to follow in its necessarily much 
compressed form but will serve, I trust, to convey its main purpose of 
showing that a very brief course of lessons, copiously illustrated by 
diagrams and objects to handle, would give an acceptable introduction 
to the newer methods employed in biometry and in eugenics. Further, 
that when read leisurely by experts in its printed form, it would give 
quite sufficient guidance for elaborating details. 


Influence of Collective Truths upon Individual Conduct. 
We have thus far been concerned with probability, determined by 
methods that take cognizance of variations, and yield exact results, 
thereby affording a solid foundation for action. But the stage on which 


176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


human action takes place is a superstructure into which emotion enters, 
we are guided on it less by certainty and by probability than by 
assurance to a greater or lesser degree. The word assurance is de- 
rived from sure, which itself is an abbreviation of secure, that is, of 
se- cura, or without misgiving. It is a contented attitude of mind 
largely dependent on custom, prejudice, or other unreasonable influences 
which reformers have to overcome, and some of which they are apt to 
utilize on their own behalf. Human nature is such that we rarely 
find our way by the pure light of reason, but while peering through 
spectacles furnished with colored and distorting glasses. 

Locke seems to confound certainty with assurance in his forcible 
description of the way in which men are guided in their daily affairs 
(“ Human Understanding,” IV., 14, par. 1): 

Man would be at a great loss if he had nothing to direct him but what has 
the certainty of true knowledge. For that being very short and scanty, he would 
be often utterly in the dark, and in most of the actions of his life, perfectly at a 
stand, had he nothing to guide him in the absence of clear and certain knowl- 
edge. He that will not eat till he has demonstration that it will nourish him, 
he that will not stir till he infallibly knows the business he goes about will suc- 
ceed, will have little else to do but to sit still and perish. 

A society may be considered as a highly complex organism, with a 
consciousness of its own, caring only for itself, establishing regulations 
and customs for its collective advantage, and creating a code of opinions 
to subserve that end. It is hard to over-rate its power over the 
individual in regard to any obvious particular on which it emphatically 
insists. I trust in some future time that one of those particulars will 
be the practise of eugenics. Otherwise the influence of collective truths 
on individual conduct is deplorably weak, as expressed by the lines: 


For others’ follies teach us not, 
Nor much their wisdom teaches, 

But chief of solid worth is what 
Our own experience preaches. 

Professor Westermark, among many other remarks in which I fully 
concur, has aptly stated (Sociological Papers, published for the Socio- 
logical Society. Macmillan, 1906, Vol. II., p. 24), with reference to 
one obstacle which prevents individuals from perceiving the importance 
of eugenics, “ the prevalent opinion that almost anybody is good enough 
to marry is chiefly due to the fact that in this case, cause and effect, 
marriage and the feebleness of the offspring, are so distant from each 
other that the near-sighted eye does not distinctly perceive the con- 
nection between them.” (The Italics are mine.) 

The enlightenment of individuals is a necessary preamble to prac- 
tical eugenics, but social opinion is the tyrant by whose praise or 
blame the principles of eugenics may be expected hereafter to influence 
individual conduct. Public opinion may, however, be easily directed 
into different channels by opportune pressure. A common conviction 


PROBABILITY, THE FOUNDATION OF EUGENICS 177 


that change in the established order of some particular codes of con- 
duct would be impossible, because of the shock that the idea of doing 
so gives to our present ideas, bears some resemblance to the convic- 
tion of lovers that their present sentiments will endure for ever. Con- 
viction, which is that very assurance of which mention has just been 
made, is proved by reiterated experience to be a highly fallacious guide. 
Love is notoriously fickle in despite of the fervent and genuine 
protestations of lovers, and so is public opinion. I gave a list of ex- 
traordinary variations of the latter in respect to restrictions it enforced 
on the freedom of marriage, at various times and places (Sociological 
Papers, quoted above). Much could be added to that list, but I will 
not now discuss the effects of public opinion on such a serious question. 
I will take a much smaller instance which occurred before the time 
to which the recollections of most persons can now reach, but which 
I myself recall vividly. It is the simple matter of hair on the face 
of male adults. When I was young, it was an unpardonable offence 
for any English person other than a cavalry officer, or perhaps some 
one of high social rank, to wear a moustache. Foreigners did so and 
were tolerated, otherwise the assumption of a moustache was in popular 
opinion worse than wicked, for it was atrociously bad style. Then 
came the Crimean War and the winter of Balaclava, during which it 
was cruel to compel the infantry to shave themselves every morning. 
So their beards began to grow, and this broke a long established custom. 
On the return of the army to England the fashion of beards spread 
among the laity, but stopped short of the clergy. These, however, soon 
began to show dissatisfaction, they said the beard was a sign of manh- 
ness that ought not to be suppressed and so forth; and at length the 
moment arrived. A distinguished clergyman, happily still living, 
“bearded” his bishop on a critical occasion. The bishop yielded with- 
out protest, and forthwith hair began to sprout in a thousand pulpits 
where it had never appeared before within the memory of man. 

It would be no small shock to public sentiment if our athletes in 
running public races were to strip themselves stark naked, yet that 
custom was rather suddenly introduced into Greece. Plato says (Re- 
public V., par. 452, Jowett’s translation) : 


Not long ago the Greeks were of the opinion, which is still generally re- 
ceived among the barbarians, that the sight of a naked man was ridiculous and 
improper, and when first the Cretans and the Lacedemonians introduced naked 
exercises, the wits of that day might have ridiculed them... . 


Thucydides (I. 6) also refers to the same change as occurring 
“ quite lately.” 

Public opinion is commonly far in advance of private morality, 
because society as a whole keenly appreciates acts that tend to its ad- 
vantage, and condemns those that do not. It applauds acts of heroism 


VOL, LXXI.—12 


178 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


that perhaps not one of the applauders would be disposed to emulate. 
It is instructive to observe cases in which the benevolence of public 
opinion has outstripped that of the law—which, for example, takes no 
notice of such acts as are enshrined in the parable of the good Samari- 
tan. A man on his journey was robbed, wounded, and left by the 
wayside. A priest and a Levite successively pass by and take no heed 
of him. A Samaritan follows, takes pity, binds his wounds, and bears 
him to a place of safety. Public opinion keenly condemns the priest 
and the Levite, and praises the Samaritan, but our criminal law is in- 
different to such acts. It is most severe on misadventure due to the 
neglect of a definite duty, but careless about those due to absence of 
common philanthropy. Its callousness in this respect is painfully 
shown in the following quotations (Kenny, “ Outhnes of Criminal 
Law,” 1902, p. 121, per Hawkins in Reg. v. Paine, Times, February 25, 
1880) : 

If I saw a man who was not under my charge, taking up a tumbler of 
poison, I should not be guilty of any crime py not stopping him. I am under 
no legal obligation to protect a stranger. 

That is probably what the priest and the Levite of the parable said 
to themselves. 

A still more emphatic example is in the “Digest of Criminal Law,” 
by Justice Sir James Stephen, 1887, p. 154. Reg. v. Smith, 2 C. and 
P., 449: 


A sees B drowning and is able ts help him by holding out his hand. A ab- 
stains from doing so in order that B may be drowned, and B is drowned. A has 
committed no offence. 


It appears, from a footnote, that this case has been discussed in a 
striking manner by Lord Macaulay in his notes on the Indian Penal 
Code, which I have not yet been able to consult. 

Enough has been written elsewhere by myself and others to show 
that whenever public opinion is strongly roused it will lead to action, 
however contradictory it may be to previous custom and sentiment. 
Considering that public opinion is guided by the sense of what best 
serves the interests of society as a whole, it is reasonable to expect that 
it will be strongly exerted in favor of eugenics when a sufficiency of 
evidence shall have been collected to make the truths on which it rests 
plain to all. That moment has not yet arrived. Enough is already 
known to those who have studied the question to leave no doubt in 
their minds about the general results, but not enough is quantitatively 
known to justify legislation or other action except in extreme cases. 
Continued studies will be required for some time to come, and the 
pace must not be hurried. When the desired fullness of information 
shall have been acquired, then, and not till then, will be the fit moment 
to proclaim a “ Jehad,” or Holy War against customs and prejudices 
that impair the physical and moral qualities of our race. 


SOME LITTLE KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 179 


SOME LITTLE-KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 


By PROFEssOR HERDMAN F. CLELAND 


WILLIAMS COLLEGE 


“9 7 HILE the inhabitants of the United States were suffering from 

the heat of an unusual summer, the members of the International 
Geological Congress were making a study of the geology of the plateau 
region of Mexico and were enjoying the delightful climate of that 
country. Few regions of the world are more fascinating; the combina- 
tion of vast volcanic peaks, broad arid plains, with their curious desert 
flora and a brilliant tropical sky, leaves an impression never to be for- 
gotten. 

It was in the midst of such interesting surroundings that during 
August, September and October, 1906, the International Congress of 
Geologists met, and, as a member, the writer had an opportunity to 
visit several of the Mexican volcanoes under especially favorable cir- 
cumstances. In the first place, the guides to the various volcanoes were 
trained geologists of the Mexican Geological Survey, who had previously 
made a study of the regions to which they conducted the party. More- 
over, the personnel of the visitors embraced geologists from Europe and 
America, who had investigated volcanoes in many parts of the world, 
and consequently, by way of comparison, were able to add a great deal 
of interesting information. 

If you will look at a map of Mexico, you will notice that the names 
Volcano Colima, Nevado de Toluca and Valle de Santiago form the 
vertices of an obtuse triangle west of the City of Mexico. With these 
three points we will concern ourselves. 


VoLcano COLIMA 

Volcano Colima, the most recently active volcano in Mexico, whose 
cloud-crowned summit can be seen for many miles along the Pacific 
coast, is situated almost due west of Mexico city and about fifty miles 
from the Pacific Ocean. It can be reached without much difficulty 
from the village of Zapotlan by a horseback journey of ten hours. On 
the ride one winds along the sharp divides which separate deep ravines, 
around the high Nevado, and finally reaches the foot of the cone from 
which the climb on foot must begin. 

A more beautifully symmetrical volcanic cone than that of Colima, 
as viewed from the north, can hardly be imagined; the only feature 
breaking the symmetry being a secondary cone which arises from the 
northeast slope. The beauty of the cone is enhanced by the great clouds 


180 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of steam which, continually arising from the crater, either envelop 
the summit or, blown by the wind, stretch out into long white clouds. 


Fic. 1. SECONDARY CONE AND LAVA FLOW OF 1869. 


Fic. 2. VOLCANO COLIMA WITH SECONDAKY CONE, 


The altitude of the principal cone is a little less than 12,600 feet above 


sea-level, while the top of the secondary cone is 780 feet lower. 


SOME LITTLE KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 181 


The Lava Flow of 1869.—One of the chief difficulties in ascending 
Colima from the north side is the necessity of crossing the rough lava 
flow which was poured out from the secondary cone in 1869. The north 
side of this flow is very precipitous, as its highest point rises consid- 
erably above that of the central portion of the flow, thus forming a kind 
of wall on the north side. A more rapid cooling of the outer edge of 


Fic. 3. THE NEVADO OF COLIMa. 


the molten lava stream than that of the center formed this wall. Asa 
result the sides hardened rapidly and consequently have an _alti- 
tude about equal to that of the stream at its greatest height. The cen- 
tral portion, remaining hot for a longer time, flowed on after the lava 
had ceased to flow from the cone, and thus lowered its surface. In 
August, 1869, a month after the principal eruption, the lava is said to 
have flowed a little more than nine feet per day. The surface of this 
lava is as scoriaceous, irregular and crumbly (aa), as one can well 
imagine, but does not differ greatly from the mal pais seen in other 
parts of Mexico. Because of this character, one is obliged to walk with 
the greatest care, stepping over or descending: into fissures, climbing up 
or over irregular masses of scoriz. Indeed, the roughness of the lava 
hurts the hands and tears the shoes, and its treacherous character com- 
pels one to be on the alert at all times, which makes the work very 
exhausting. 


Secondary Cone-—The secondary cone is composed of a compact 
though somewhat vesicular andesite with a steep slope. From this 
cone, as has been said, lava poured forth in 1869. There is no crater 


in the cone, although the summit is broken by three parallel fissures. 


182 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


This fissuring may have been the result of shrinkage by cooling or it 
may have been due to a sinking of the lava in the cone. It seems prob- 
able that the secondary cone was formed as follows: Previous to the 
eruption of 1869, the pressure from 
below fissured the main cone. 
Through this fissure the lava welled 
up, flowing away as a lava stream. 
The stiffer and cooler lava, which 
was later forced up, failed to flow, 
and hardened to form the mound. 

The Main Cone.—The ascent of 
the main cone is difficult because of 
the insecure footing afforded by 
the rolling ash and cinders and the 
steepness of the lava wherever it 
outcrops, as well as because of the 
altitude. The slope of the cone is 
between 35 and 39 degrees, although 
from a distance it appears to be 
much greater. 

The Crater—The rim of the 
crater is entire with the exception of 
a depression through which a lava 


stream flowed in 1885 and again in 
1903. The view into the crater 


Fic. 4. CRATER COLIMA, SEPTEMBER. 1906. 


from the higher portions of its rim 
is very impressive, even awe-inspiring. The slope on the outside of the 
rim is that of the voleano, but the inside drops precipitously to the bot- 
tom of the crater, a depth of more than 100 feet in many places. On 
account of the great quantities of steam which are continually rising, 


S 
AG 
< op 
ss NJ 
>= AN 
An \ Ay 
Se ™~ — o*” 
“ see 
= > of %, \ 
= “N oe = Ne 
= < y 
@ 
= et reo one oe zy Se 
te Wii ~ \ 


Fic. 5. Cross SECTION. SHOWING THE RELATIONS OF THE SECONDARY 10 THE MAIN CONE, 
it is only when an occasional gust of wind partially lifts the steam that 
one can get a glimpse of the floor of the crater. Descent into the crater 
by way of the breach in the side is comparatively easy and is attended 
with less danger than the view from the rim prophesied. The floor is 
covered with scoriaceous lava equaling, if not exceeding, in ruggedness 
that of the lava flow at the foot of the volcano. Steam with a tem- 


SOME LITTLE KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 183 


perature of about 130 degrees Fahrenheit and sulphur dioxide are 
issuing from numerous fumaroles, some of which are lined with sulphur 
crystals. The crater is comparatively small, having a diameter of little 
over half a mile. 

Recent Eruptions—In 1877, 1884 and 1885 minor eruptions oc- 
curred. The last eruption of the voleano commenced in the month of 
February, 1903, and practically ceased in May of the same year. Since 
that time the only evidences of activity are the fumaroles from which 
issue large quantities of steam and other gases. During this eruption 


Fic. 6. FLANK OF TOLUCA. 


(1903) a lava stream flowed down the slope of the volcano in a north- 
west direction, but barely reached the foot of the volcano (see diagram), 
where it dammed a small stream, thus forming a shallow pond. 

The accompanying diagrammatic cross-section of the volcano shows 
the relations of the secondary cone to the main cone, the position of the 
lava flow of 1869, the edge of this flow (a), the rim of the old crater 
(b), the lava flow of 1903, and the position and relative heights of 
Colima and the Nevado of Colima (which may have been the remnant 
of the rim of a great volcano long since destroyed). In the construc- 
tion of this diagram, no attempt was made to draw the distances or 
heights to scale, but to bring out the salient points as clearly as possible. 


VoLcAno TOLUCA 
In the midst of the valley of Toluca, the Nevado of Toluca (Xinan- 
tecatl) towers almost 6,000 feet above the level of the plain and 14,833 


184 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Fig. 7. BARRANCA SHOWING STRATIFIED TUFF AND FOSSIL SOIL. 


feet above the sea. It is called the Nevado, because usually its 
summit is white with snow. This volcano is isolated, being sur- 
rounded at some distance by volcanoes which have formed by the 
accumulation of their ash and lava an almost enclosed basin. It is one 
of the few high volcanoes of the world that can be ascended with ease, 
since it is possible to make the journey to and into the crater on horse- 
back in four or five hours. Because of the ease with which it may be 
climbed the ascent has been made by a number of persons, the first of 
whom was the great geographer and traveler Humboldt, who reached the 
crater in 1803. 

General Description—Voleano Toluca is underlaid by calcareous 
rocks of Cretaceous age. The great mass of the volcano is composed 
of many layers of ash of varying degrees of thickness which conform 
quite closely to the slope. These layers of ash were apparently formed 
partly by the ash which rained down during the eruptions and partly 
by that which was carried down by streamlets and to a considerable ex- 
tent in sheets during heavy rains. The accompanying photograph shows 
the stratified character of the slope and also a stratum of fossil soil, 
which in several of the “ barrancas ” or dry ravines is seen to be of con- 
siderable thickness. From this evidence it is fair to conclude that the 
last eruptions were preceded by a long period of inactivity, during which 
a large quantity of organic material was mixed with the weathered ash. 
Toluca has not been in eruption within historic times and at present 
there are no signs of activity, even secondary effects, such as fumaroles 
of steam and sulphur dioxide, being absent. 


SOME LITTLE KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 185 


To watch the change in vegetation from the plain to the summit of 
the mountain is a constant pleasure. On the dry plain cactus and other 
desert plants are common, but on the flanks of the mountain pines begin 
and many bright-colored flowers. These, as one continues the ascent, 
become shorter and more stunted, until in the crater the flower blossoms 
an inch or thereabouts from the ground instead of one or two feet from 
the ground, as is the case lower down. On the highest portions of the 
rim vegetation is almost lacking. 

The Crater.—The crater of the volcano is somewhat elliptical in 
form, being a little more than a mile in its longest diameter and about 
a third of a mile in its shortest. The crater rim is complete on all 
sides, but is low on the side through which entrance is made. In 
the bottom of the crater and 1,000 feet below the highest portion of the 
rim are two beautifully clear lakes, the larger of which is almost one 
fifth of a mile in diameter and has a maximum depth of thirty feet. 
These two lakes are separated by a dome of compact andesite of con- 
siderable height (see illustration). This dome is of especial interest, 
because of its bearings upon the origin of the Mt. Pelée spike. There 
seems to be little doubt, as T. Flores points out, that it is composed 
of the lava which was forced up and out of the vent after the last 
eruption and which now closes it and stands above the floor of the 
crater. 

Comparison with Mt. Pelée—lIt was suggested by Dr. E. O. Hovey 
that the Pelée plug was formed in-this way also, 7. e., that instead of 
a solid mass of lava being pushed up bodily, as Heilprin believed, very 


186 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


stiff lava, being forced from the vent after the last eruption, hardened 
into a high mound. In the case of Pelée the shape of the mound was 
modified by a splitting off of the lava along vertical planes, which pro- 
duced the unique “ spike” of that volcano. 

Age.—A comparison of this voleano with others in Mexico has led 
Ordonez to state that it probably made its appearance during Phocene 


ee 


times. 
CinDER CONES OF VALLE DE SANTIAGO 

Cinder cones a few hundred feet in height are common objects in 
the central voleanic plateau of Mexico. Many of these may be seen in 
the basin in which the City of Mexico is situated, where the lower flanks 
of the higher voleanoes meet the plain. Near Toluca excellent examples 
occur. Because of the smallness of these cones as compared with the 
volcanoes near whose base they rise they are likely to be overlooked on 


Fic. 9. CRATER LAKE AND CINDER CONE, VALLE DE SANTIAGO, MEXICO. 


account of the overshadowing effect of the former. This is not true of 
the group of cinder cones, situated near the city Valle de Santiago, 
which are scattered about the valley some distance from the higher 
volcanoes, and which are, consequently, very conspicuous, their sym- 
metrical truncated cones being the most marked features of the land- 
Ss ape. 

This group of eleven craters occupies an area roughly circular in 
outline, one diameter of which is about six miles. Because of the 
fact that the valley of Santiago is a dry plain, the presence of lakes 
of pure water in four of the craters is unexpected. The clear blue 


SOME LITTLE KNOWN MEXICAN VOLCANOES 187 


water of the lakes with their settings of green cultivated fields which 
cover the inner slopes of the craters are most beautiful objects. 

The existence of these lakes is due to the fact that their bottoms are 
below the levels of underground water. All these crater lakes are at 
practically the same level, a condition which is due to the fact that the 
voleanic material in which they rest and of which the plain is com- 
posed is extremely porous, which permits the free circulation of the 
water. The craters of the majority of the cones were partially filled 
with lava which poured out quietly after the explosions which formed 
them had ceased. In some cases they were filled until their bottoms 
were above the level of underground water and are consequently dry; 
in others there was either no subsequent outpouring of lava or the 
quantity was very limited, in which case the cavity remained below the 
level of underground water and a lake resulted. The diameter of the 
craters vary in size from that of Solis (1,500 feet)—which was appar- 
ently produced by the sinking of the crust—to the largest, which is 
more than a mile in diameter. The craters are not all perfect ; some are 
entire, while others are broken by one or two subsequent craters of 
explosion. In one of these breeched craters three small cones rise from 
the bottom, the material of which is apparently being used in the city 
for constructional purposes. 

The plain upon which the craters rest is underlaid by one or more 
strata of basaltic lava which evidently flowed from the neighboring 
mountains and which may be seen near the water level of the lakes and 
in rayines which have been deeply cut by streams. Since neither this 
stratum nor the strata of basaltic lava are disturbed by being domed up 
or bent to any extent, it seems safe to conclude that the explosions 
forming the craters must have been near the surface and very local, 
otherwise the strata overlying the plain at that place would have been 
more or less bent. 

The cones are made up in some cases of voleanic ash of various 
degrees of fineness, in others of volcanic breccia. The slopes are those 
which are normally made by such materials. 


Because of the fact that craters of explosion in other parts of 
Mexico—Puebla, Mexico City, here in Valle de Santiago, and else- 
where in the republic—arise from a plain or a more or less enclosed 
basin which is full of water at a comparatively shallow depth, Ordonez 
suggests that superficial water may have had a share in the production 
of the explosions. 

Such are a few of the points of interest on the volcanic plateau 
of Mexico, a region which, interesting because of its scenery and 
climate, fascinating because of its romantic history, is to the geologist 
a volume which when studied will explain many points that are now 
a matter of speculation. 


188 POPULAR 


THE PROGRESS OF 


DOES THE SPEED OF LIGHT IN 
SPACE DEPEND UPON ITS 
WAVE-LENGTH? 

WHEN a beam of light comes through 
a prism of glass or a raindrop it is 
dispersed into a band of vivid colors, 
each denoting a particular wave-length. | 
Though all these wave-lengths travel | 
together in the air they part company | 
in the glass or the water because there | 
they no longer possess the same speed. 
The long waves, which produce the sen- 
sation of red, travel faster than the} 

short, or violet waves. 

Whether all wave-lengths really do 
travel with the same speed in air has 
not always been a matter of a single 
opinion. Lorenz and Ketteler both 
have found that the index of refraction 
for air differs by some seven parts in a 
million according to which end of the | 
spectrum is employed.. This means a 
proportionate difference in the speed of | 
light in air for the long and for the 
short waves. More than a quarter of | 
a century ago Young and Forbes, using 
Fizeaw’s method, seemed to find that 
the speed of the blue waves in air was 
1.8 per cent. greater than that of the 
red ones. This result was threshed 
over by Lord Rayleigh, who pointed out 
serious objections to accepting their 
results. When 
mining the speed of light, he paid espe- 
cial attention to this question. When 
white light and red light were com- 
pared not the slightest trace of differ- | 
ence in their speeds could be detected. | 
We may, therefore, rest assured that | 
all waves of the visible spectrum travel 


Michelson was deter- | 


with practically the same speed in air. 
Now 


cially in that vast vacuum, interstellar 


how is it in a vacuum, espe- 


space? If we begin by limiting our 


observations to our own solar system, 


‘ then 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


SCIENCE 


it has been noticed that when one of its 
satellites goes behind Jupiter its color 
is just the same as when it emerges. 
Suppose that Young and Forbes were 
right and that the blue rays do travel 
faster than the red rays. Then when 
the satellite is behind the planet so that 
it can send no more light to the earth, 
the train of waves which it emitted 
before its eclipse, still pursues its jour- 
ney toward us. If the blue waves out- 
run the red waves, it will be the latter 
which give us our last glimpse of the 
satellite. At disappearance it should 
appear red. Similarly upon 
emergence the blue should be the first 
waves to reach the eye, but no such 
difference of color upon eclipse and 
emergence is seen. Hence we may con- 
elude that all waves of the visible spec- 
trum travel in space with the same 
speed. It is, however, well to bear in 
mind that the universe is larger than 
the solar system and that the visible 
spectrum by no means includes all 
known radiation. 

In 1859 Uriah A. Borden deposited 
with the Franklin Institute of Phila- 
delphia one thousand dollars to be 
awarded as a premium to “any resi- 
dent of North America who shall de- 
termine by experiment whether all rays 
of light, and other physical rays, are 
or are not transmitted with the same 
velocity.” This problem was restated 
the thus: 
“Whether or not all rays in the spec- 
trum known at the time the offer was 
made, namely, March 23, 1859, and 


by board of managers 


comprised between the lowest frequency 
known thermal rays in the infra-red, 
and the highest frequency known rays 
in the ultra-violet . . . travel through 
free space with the same velocity.” 


Dr. Paul R. Heyl, of the Central 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


189 


High School of Philadelphia, has solved | image. A comparison of the two cycles 


one part of this problem. He has 
shown that the ultra-violet waves and 
the waves of the visible spectrum travel 
with the same velocity. For this the 
Franklin Institute has awarded to him 
one thousand dollars of the accumu- 
lated fund. There has been no lack of 
applications for the premium, but no 
portion of it has ever before been 


awarded. The investigating committee, | 


consisting of Mr. Hugo Bilgram, me- 
chanical engineer; Professor A. W. 
Goodspeed, of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, and Dr. G. F. Stradling, of 
the Northeast Manual Training High 
School of Philadelphia, were unanimous 
in their favorable opinion. 

The star Algol, or 8 Persei, is a spec- 
troscopie binary, that is, a study of its 
light shows that part of the time the 
star is approaching the earth and part 
of the time receding from it. More- 
over, every 69 hours it grows less 
bright, only to regain its rank as a star 
of the second magnitude after the lapse 
of about 7 hours. The simplest ex- 
planation of these erratic performances 
is that there are two bodies, one lumin- 
ous, the other opaque, revolving around 
The dim- 
ming of brightness occurs when the 


their common center of mass. 


opaque body gets between the earth and 
the luminous body. Their diameters, 
orbital velocities and masses have been 
calculated and also the distance their 
centers are apart. 

The remoteness of Algol—it takes 
light 30 years to come thence to the 
earth—as well as its change of bright- 
ness caused it to be selected by Dr. 


Hey! for his investigation. 
method was this. 
of the change of brightness of the star 
by photographing it at intervals in 
ultra-violet light produced by a trans- 
parent diffraction grating. The varia- 
tion as judged by the eye was already 
known. If the ultra-violet waves travel 
faster than those belonging to the vis- 
ible spectrum there would be a shifting 


of the time of least brightness of the 


In brief his | 
He obtained records | 


of change however shows that there 
can not be a greater difference between 
the speed of the ultra-violet light and 
that of the visible spectrum of more 
than one part in 250,000. 

There seems to have been no previous 
determination of the speed of ultra- 
violet waves in a vacuum. Dr. Heyl’s 
result, in substance that the two kinds 
of waves do not differ in speed by more 


_than 1 km. per second, is of high value. 


To be sure it has been assumed for a 
long time that no such difference exist- 
ed, but an experimental proof is a very 
different thing from mere extrapolation. 

The work was conducted with the 
8-inch equatorial of the Central High 
School and extended over a period of 
two years. The times when the varia- 
tion of Algol occurred at a suitable 
time of day and under appropriate 
conditions of the sky were rare. 

As yet there seems to be no experi- 
mental demonstration that the infra- 
red rays and those of the visible spec- 
trum travel in space with the same 
speed. As far back as 1842 Wrede be- 
lieved he had shown that the two speeds 
were different, but his work was subject 
The method of Dr. Heyl does 
not lend itself to the settlement of this 
second part of the problem, since the 
infra-red rays have little effect upon a 
photographic plate. 


to error. 


Let us hope that 
some physicist may devise an appro- 
priate method and thus remove this gap 
in our knowledge of the velocity of 
radiation—incidentally 


obtaining an- 


other portion of the Boyden premium. 


THE DUKE OF ARGYLE 

THE autobiography and memoirs of 
the late Duke of Argyle, edited by his 
wife, have lately been published in two 
large volumes. Perhaps most men of 
science, on being asked offhand for an 
estimate of the duke, would reply that 
he dilettante, with 
more enthusiasm than knowledge. In a 


was an amiable 


way, this is correct enough; but given 


ROR LAT 


190 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Yeorge Douglas, Ox L uke of. lrgy ll me RG 
ISOS 


qualification, it does him a 


He 


his life, an earnest, sincere and indus- 


without 


great injustice. was, throughout 


trious man, much interested in the ad- 
vancement of his fellows and the eculti- 


vation of his own mind. 


an enormous estate, and taking a most 


prominent part in the politics of his 


time, he bore on his shoulders as great 
a burden as a man might care to lift, 
without taking time and energy for sci- 


entific work. It is impossible to say 


what he might have done, had he de- 


voted himself mainly to some single 


branch of science or literature, but one 


may readily believe that it would in no 


Inheriting 


wise have equalled his actual achieve- 
He 


was not a genius, in the ordinary ac- 


ment as a versatile man of affairs. 


ceptation of the term; but he was one 
of those thoroughly useful citizens who 
serve to hold together the diverse ele- 
ments of human society. In this sense, 


he was a duke in fact as well as in 
name, and an aristocracy so typified is 
not without a certain justification even 
from our democratic point of view. 

Many naturalists are familiar—and 
some no less tired than familiar—with 
the 


semi-metaphysical questions relating to 


duke’s controversial writings on 


evolution. Fewer, we imagine, know 


THE PROGRESS 


how enthusiastically he watched the 
birds and other living things on his 
estate, and how graphically and accu- 
rately he could describe them. The 
following, taken from a letter to Lord 
Litford, should endear him to every 


ornithologist: ‘“‘Anent the dipper, I 
need not say how I agree with you in 
loving them. I have three salmon 
streams in my estates which they 
haunt. I never allow one to be shot. 


We have many pairs, but they never 
AS 
propensities, I have had ocular demon- 


seem to increase much. to their 
stration that they eat fish, and that 
greedily. Twice I have seen a dipper 
with a fish in his bill—one was a trout 
or salmon fry, the other was a small 
flounder. This was in the seaport of 
The 
flounder was, of course, a small one, 


the river Aray below my house. 


but it was as broad as the white waist- 
coat of its devourer. I had a good 
glass, and saw the dipper emerge with 
the little flounder in his bill. He then 
took it to a large boulder stone near the 
bank, and began beating it to death 
against the stone. Twice it slipped off 
into the stream, and each time it was 
firmly pursued and brought back to the 
block! 


seem to have a way of doubling and 


All aquatic piscivorous birds 


folding up the flat fishes they catch so | 


as to get them down, but I did not see 
the feat performed in the present case.” 

The following good story is told in 
another part of the same letter: “I 
bought two ‘civette’ (small owls) in 
Rome, and took them in a cage with 
me home. We travelled with Gladstone. 
He was immensely captivated by the 
brilliant yellow eyes of the birds. 
fastened them Gladstone’s brown 
eyes with a fixed stare, and he took it 
into his head to try if he could stare 
them out of countenance. 


on 


He continued 
to joke all the way from Rome to near 
Perugia, and at last the owls gave it 


up and looked away. He seemed as | 
delighted as if he had won a great 


Parliamentary triumph.” This is dated 


1896. His first letter on birds, so far 


They 


OF SCIENCE 191 
as the biography shows, was written in 
1837—and the interest did not flag in 
the long interval. 


SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 
WE record with regret the deaths of 
Professor Alfred Newton, F.R.S., who 
held the chair of zoology and compara- 
tive anatomy at Cambridge; of Dr. 
Edward John Routh, F.R.S., the mathe- 
matician, of the University of Cam- 


bridge; of Dr. Maxwell Tylden Masters, 
| 
_F.R.S., the English botanist and horti- 


of Dr. Alexander Stewart 


Herschel, F.R.S., honorary professor of 


eulturist ; 


physics at the Durham College of Sci- 
ence; of Sir Dietrich Brandis, F.R.S., 
of the of 
India; of Professor Kuno Fischer, pro- 
fessor of philosophy at Heidelberg; 
Henry G. Hanks, at one time state 


inspector general forests 


of 


geologist of California, and of Mrs. 
Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz, who in 
1850 married Louis Agassiz, with whose 
work she was intimately associated, and 
whose life she wrote. 

Tue council of the British Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Science 
has nominated Mr. Francis Darwin, 
F.R.S., foreign secretary to the Royal 
Society, author of important papers on 
physiological botany and of the * Life 
and Letters of Charles Darwin,’ to be 
president of the meeting next year, 
when, for the fourth time, the associa- 
tion will in Dublin.—M. 
Lapparent, professor of mineralogy and 


assemble de 
geology at Paris, has been elected per- 
manent secretary of the Paris Academy 
in to the late 
M. Berthelot—On the occasion of the 


of Sciences succession 
celebration of the bicentenary of the 
birth the 
medal of the Royal Swedish Academy 


of Linneus, Linnean gold 
was awarded to Sir Joseph Hooker.— 
A portrait of President Eliot by Mr. 
John P. Sargent has been unveiled in 
the Harvard Union. 

Dr. E. H. SELLARDS, for three years 
geologist and zoologist to the Florida 
University, has been appointed state 
geologist of Florida by Governor Brow- 


192 POPULAR 
ard.—Dr. E, A. Ruddiman, professor | 
of materia medica and pharmacy at. 
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, has_ 
been appointed chief food ana drug in- | 
spector of the Department of Agricul- 
ture.—Dr. Frederick L. Dunlap, in- 
structor in the University of Michigan, 
has been appointed associate chemist 
in the Bureau of Chemistry, and will 
be a member of the board of food and | 
drug inspection. 


AN Italian Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, proposed at 
Milan last year, has now taken form. 
The first meeting will be held at Parma 
in September next, when it is hoped 


SCIENCE 


MONTHLY 


that the sister associations of Europe 
and America will send delegates. 


Mrs. RUSSELL SacE has given the 
sum of $300,000 to found what will be 
known as the Russell Sage Institute of 
Pathology as an adjunct to the City 
Hospital on Blackwell’s Island.—Dr. 
Lawrence F. Flick, director of the 
Phipps Institute, Philadelphia, and 
chairman of the committee on the In- 


_ternational Congress of Tuberculosis, 


which is to be held in Washington in 
the fall of 1908, announces that he has 
received $35,000 in subscriptions to a 
fund of $100,000 which he is raising 
to meet the necessary expenses. 


ip os 3) 
Pe EwreAR 8 CRWNe 
MEO NE Aa 


SEPTEMBER, 1907 


THE PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


By CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT, LL.D., D.Sc. 


JAMES STILLMAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY IN THE 
HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 


Ill. THe Rate or GrowTH 


Ladies and Gentlemen: In the first of the lectures, I described those 
grosser characteristics of old age, which we ourselves can readily dis- 
tinguish, or which an anatomical study of the body reveals to us. In 
the second lecture I spoke of the microscopic alterations which occur 
in the body as it changes from youth to old age. But besides the 
changes, which we have already reviewed, there are those others, very 
conspicuous and somewhat known to us all, which we gather together 
under the comprehensive term of growth. It is growth which I shall 
ask you to study with me this evening, and I shall hope, by the aid 
of our study, to reinforce in your minds the conclusion which I have 
already indicated, that the early period of life is a period of rapid 
decline, and that the late period of life is one of slow decline. 

In order to study growth accurately, it is desirable, of course, to 
measure it, but since we are concerned with the general problem of 
growth, we wish no partial measure, such as that of the height alone 
would be. And indeed, if we take any such partial measure, how 
could we compare different forms with one another? The height of a 
horse is not comparable to that of a man; the height of a caterpillar 
is not comparable to that of any vertebrate. Naturally, therefore, we 
take to measuring the weight, which represents the total mass of the 
living body, and enables us at least with some degree of accuracy to 
compare animals of different sorts with one another. Now in studying 
this question of the increase of weight in animals, as their age in- 
creases, it is obviously desirable to eliminate from our experiments all 
disturbing factors which might affect the rate of growth or cause it 
to assume irregularities which are not inherent either in the organiza- 

VOL. LXXxI.—13. 


194 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tion of the animal or in the changes age produces. The animals which 
belong to the vertebrate sub-kingdom, of which we ourselves are mem- 
bers, can be grouped in two large divisions according to the natural 
temperature of their bodies. The lower vertebrates, the fishes, frogs 
and their kin, are animals’ which depend for their body temperature 
more or less on the medium in which they live. The other division 
of vertebrate animals, which includes all the higher forms, are so 
organized that they have within certain limits the power of regulating 
their own body temperature. Now it is easily to be observed—and 
any one who has made observations upon the growth of animals can 
confirm this—that animals otherwise alike will grow at different speeds 
at different temperatures. 
There are animals, like the 
frogs and _ salamanders, 
which will live at a very 
considerable range of tem- 
perature and thrive, ap- 
parently. No ultimate in- 
jury is done to them by a 
change of their bodily tem- 
perature. Here we have a 
picture of four young tad- 
poles, all of which are ex- 
actly three days old. The 
first of these has been kept 
at a temperature not much 
above freezing. The fourth, 
at a temperature of about 
24 degrees centigrade; the 


other two at temperatures 
Fic. 19. Four TADPOLES OF THE EUROPEAN FROG 


Rana fusca. After Oskar Hertwig. The four animals between. They are all de- 


are all of the same age (three days) and raised fromthe gcendants from the same 
same batch of eggs, but have been kept at different tem- 
ie batch of frogs’ eggs, and 


D fe 


peratures. 
A at 11.5° Centigrade, B at 15.0° Centigrade. you can see readily that 
C ** 20.0° : D ‘* 24.0° : : 


the first one is_ still 
essentially nothing but an egg. The second one, which has had a 
little higher temperature, already shows some traces of organization, 
and those familiar with the development of these animals can see in 
the markings upon the surface the first indications of the differentia- 
tion of the nervous system. ‘The third has been kept at a considerably 
warmer temperature, and is now obviously a young tadpole; here are 
the eyes, the rudimentary gills, the tail, ete. While the fourth tadpole, 
which was maintained at the best temperature for the growth of 
these animals, has advanced enormously in its development. Obviously, 
should we make experiments upon animals of this class it would be 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 195 


necessary to keep them at a uniform temperature, if we wished to 
study their rate of development, and that is, for very practical reasons, 
extremely difficult and unsatisfactory. Far better it has seemed for 
our study of growth to turn to those animals which regulate their own 
temperature. This, accordingly, I have done, and the animal chosen 
for these studies was the guinea-pig, a creature which offers for such 
investigations certain definite advantages. It is easily kept; it is apt 
to remain, with proper care, in good health. Its food is obtainable at 


ee as ey (Ss es OS 


=f Setar 


a 
fia ea 


inn 
(ScumESMeEp coe 
ee re 0 
pees ee ee ol i ales 
JS eee eee ee 
Bam cere aisle 
ee er 
a a ca 
iderT PT 


COP VU ee ey Key algae fea 


Fic. 20. CURVES SHOWING THE GROWTH OF BosTON SCHOOL CHILDREN IN HEIGHT 
AND WEIGHT. After H. P. Bowditch. 


- all seasons of the year, in great abundance, and at small expense. . The 
animals themselves being of moderate size do not, of course, require 
such extraordinary amounts of food as the large animals, should we 
experiment with them. Accordingly with guinea-pigs I began making, 
years ago, a long series of records, taking from day to day, later from 
week to week, and then, as the animals grew older, month by month, 
the weight of recorded individuals. There was thus obtained a body 
of statistics which rendered it possible to form some idea of the rapidity 
of growth of this species of mammal. 

Now in regard to the rapidity of growth, it is necessary that we 
form clearer notions than perhaps you started out with when you came 
into the hall this evening. I will ask for the next of our pictures 
on the screen, where we shall see illustrated to us older methods of 


196 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


recording the progressive growth of animals. This is a chart taken 
from the records of my friend, Dr. Henry P. Bowditch, showing the 
growth of school children in Boston. Here we have, in the lower part 
of the figure, the two curves of growth in weight. The upper curve 
is the weight of boys. We can follow it back through the succession 
of years down to the age of five and one half years, when the records 
begin. The child weighs, as you see, a little over forty pounds at that 
time. When the boy reaches the age of eighteen and one half years, he 
approaches the adult size, and weighs well over 130 pounds. Here then 
we see growth represented to us in the old way, the progressive in- 
crease of the animal as it goes along through the succession of years. 
Now this is a way which records the actual facts satisfactorily. It 
shows the progressive changes of weight as they really occur; but it 
does not give us a correct impression of the rate of growth. Concern- 
ing the rate of growth, some more definite notion must be established in 
our minds before we can be said to have an adequate conception of 
the meaning of that term. It is from the study of the statistics of 
the guinea-pigs, and of other animals, which I have since had an 
opportunity of experimenting with, that we get indeed a clearer insight 
as to what the rate of growth really is and really means. 

I should lke to pause a moment to say that when I first published 
a paper upon the subject of growth, it, fortunately for me, interested 
the late Dr. Benjamin Gould. The experiments which I had made and 
recorded in that first publication came to a sudden end, owing to a 
disaster for which I myself was personally not responsible, by which 
practically my entire stock of animals was suddenly destroyed. Dr. 
Gould, after consulting with me, proposed that I should have further 
aid from the National Academy of Sciences, and through his inter- 
vention I obtained a grant from the Bache fund of the academy. That 
liberal grant enabled me to continue these researches, and this is the 
first comprehensive presentation of my results which I have attempted. 
In this and the subsequent lectures, I hope that enough of what is new 
in scientific conclusions may appear to make those to whose generosity 
I am indebted feel that it has been worthily applied. I can not let 
such an occasion as this pass by without expressing publicly my 
gratitude to Dr. Gould for his encouragement and support at a time 
when I most keenly appreciated it. 

If animals grow, that which grows is of course the actual substance 
of the animal. Now we might say that given so much substance there 
should be equal speed of growth, and we should expect, possibly, to 
find that the speed would be more or less constant. I can perhaps 
illustrate my meaning more clearly, and briefly render it distinct in 
your minds, by saying that if the rate of growth, as I conceive it, should 
remain constant, it would take an animal at every age just the same 
length of time to add ten per cent. to its weight; it would not be a 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 197 


question whether a baby grew an ounce in a certain length of time, 
and a boy a pound in the same time, for the pound might not be 
the same percentage of advance to the boy that the ounce would be to 
the baby. In reality with an advance of an ounce the baby might be 
growing faster than the older boy with the addition of the pound. 

In the next slide which we are to have thrown upon the screen 
we have my method of measuring rate of growth illustrated graphically. 
There is here a curve which represents the rate of growth of 
male guinea-pigs. The figures at the bottom indicate the age of the 
animals in days. When guinea-pigs are born, they are very far ad- 
vanced in development, and the act of birth seems to be a physiological 


- 


ao 


0 
258i M 23 29 3538 45 60 75 $0 105 120 135 150 165 180 195 210daye 241 


Fic. 21. CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT OF 
MALE GUINEA PIGs. 


shock from which the organism suffers, and there is a lessening of the 
power of growth immediately after birth. But in two or three days 
the young are fully recovered, and after that restoration they can add 
over five per cent. to their weight in a single day. But by the time 
they are 17 days old, as represented by this line, they can add 
only four per cent., and by the time they are 24 days old, less than 
two per cent.; at 45 barely over one per cent.; at 70 still over one 
per cent.; at 90 less; at 160 less; and towards the end the curve con- 
tinues dropping off, coming gradually nearer and nearer to zero, to 
which it closely approximates at the age of 240 days. In about a year, 
the guinea-pig attains nearly its full size. You notice that this curve 
is somewhat irregular. Such is very apt to be the result from statistics 
when the number of observations is not very large. It means simply 
that there was not a sufficiently large number of animals measured to 
give an absolutely even and regular set of averages. But the general 
course of the curve is very instructive. In the earlier condition of the 
young guinea-pig there is a rapid decline; in the later, a slow decline. 


198 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The change from rapid to slow decline is not sudden, but gradual, as 
you see by the general character of this curve. 

In the next slide we can see immediately that what I have asserted 
as true of the male is equally true of the female, although the values 


Ao 


SS SS] 
—— Say 
Se a es 
SSS See ea 
Ses SS ae 
Se a 
ESS Sa 


lA 
X= 


hn 
A i em 


Sell i7 23 29 35 165 180 195 2i0daya Pry 


Fic. 22, CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT OF 
FEMALE GUINEA-PIGS. 


which we have differ slightly in the two sexes, and there are accidental 
but not significant variations in this curve as in the first. Here also 
we observe at once an early period of rapid decline in which the rate 
of growth is going down and down—a period of slight decline in which, 
to be sure, it is going down still, but with diminished rapidity. 

There is another method by which we can represent this change 


Perncod 3 4+ 5 6 7 8 9 10 Il 12 13 14 15 16 I7 18 19 20 21 22 23 2425 


Fig. 23. CURVE SHOWING THE LENGTH OF TIME REQUIRED TO MAKE EACH SUCCESSIVE 
INCKEASE OF 10 PER CENT. IN WEIGHT BY MALE GUINEA-PIGS., 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 199 


in the rate of growth which will perhaps help to illustrate it; and in 
the next of our pictures we see this other form of representation before 
us. This vertical line represents the length of time which it takes a 

young male guinea-pig to add ten per cent. to its weight the first time. 
Here the third time—the fourth—the fifth—and you see as it 1s grow- 
ing older and older it takes the animal longer and longer to add ten 
per cent. to its weight. Finally we get to the nineteenth addition, and 
we see that the period is very long indeed. How long that period is 
we can judge by the figures here upon the left, which ate the 
length of the days. From the base line to this one marked “ten” is a 
period of ten days, and you see from the time the guinea- pig has added 
to its weight ten per cent. for the nineteenth time it does it so slowly 
that it requires ten days and more; for the twenty-first time, nearly 
twenty; for the twenty-second time, nearly forty. Here where the 
number of observations becomes small, the curve grows very irregular. 
Thus we demonstrate that as the animal grows older it takes longer 
and longer to add ten per cent. to its weight. In the other sex, as the 
next slide shows, the same phenomena can be clearly demonstrated ; 
here are the periods as before, lengthening out, as you see, at first; 
then becoming very long indeed. In the following slide I have another 


| 
Se 
ot ee 
a 
we 


a Se 
heer TTT 


Jett 3 45678 9 10 I 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 


70 


60 


50 


30 


20 


Fic. 24. CURVE SHOWING THE LENGTH OF TIME REQUIRED TO MAKE EacH SUCCESSIVE 
= INCREASE OF 10 PER CENT. IN WEIGHT BY FEMALE GUINEA-PIGS. 


200 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


form of representation of this same phenomenon as it occurs in the 
human subject. Here is a diagram of growth, which represents, as 
accurately as I could determine it, the curve complete for man from 
the date of birth up to the age of forty years. It has been calculated 
by a simple mathematical process where these ten-per-cent. increments 
fall, and from each point in this curve where there has been such an 
increment, a vertical line has been drawn, as you see here. These lines 
are very close together at the start. One ten per cent. after another 
follows in a short interval of time, but gradually the time, as indicated 
by the space between two of these vertical lines, increases, and when the 
individual is three years old, you can see there has been a very great 


qin 
7 


Fic. 25. CURVE SHOWING THE GROWTH OF MAN FROM BIRTH TO MATURITY, With vertical 
lines added to mark the duration of the periods, for each 10 per cent. addition to the weight. 


lengthening out of the period which is necessary for it to add ten per 
cent. to its weight. Then it comes at the age of twelve to a period of 
slightly more rapid growth, a fluctuation which is characteristic of 
man, but does not appear in the majority of animals. After that 
comes very rapidly the enormous lengthening of the period; and I have 
not added the last ten per cent. because the curve here at the top, you 
see, is not very regular, and it could not be calculated with certainty. 
Our diagram is merely another form of graphic representation of the 
fact that the older we are the longer it takes us to grow a definite 
proportional amount. 

The next slide carries us into another part of our study, away from 
the mammals which we have thus far considered, into the class of 
birds. The growth of chickens is represented here. Now a chicken is 
born in a less matured state than a guinea-pig, and has a good deal 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 201 | 


ee ee 
at 


(| Percertiage Sncvements Oech, Males 
LL 


HN 
wIM 


i HAVEN 


dT — 


6376 13 Ho i 6 7 90 106 \sidayd 342 


Fic. 26. CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT 
BY MALE CHICKENS. 


higher efficiency of growth at first. In a chicken, as in a guinea-pig, 
birth is a disturbing factor, and growth immediately after the hatching 
of the chicken is a little impeded, but the chick quickly recovers and, 
as we see, the first time when the rate can be distinctly measured we get 
a nine-per-cent. addition to the weight in a single day. In a chicken 
as in the guinea-pig, the rate gradually diminishes. The change from 
the rapid decline at first to the later slower decline is more gradual; the 
curve is more distinctly marked in the chicken as a round curve. There 
is not in the bird so marked a separation of the preliminary rapid de- 
cline and the later slower decline as we find in the guinea-pig. The 
curve again is very irregular because I had only a very limited number 
of observations upon the weight of chicks. The other sex, as the next 
slide will show, presents similar phenomena, though the female chickens 
do not grow quite as fast as their brothers. Here we notice an increase 


Pence phage Incuwments Cluck Semales 


0326 131822203330 46 56 66 7° 90 106 130 97 days 342 


Fic. 27. CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT 
BY FEMALE CHICKENS. 


202 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of almost, but not quite nine per cent., rapidly falling down so that 
after the chick is two months old it never adds as much as three per 
cent. to its weight. It loses in the first two months from a capacity to 
add nine per cent., down to a capacity of adding less than three. It 
loses in two months two thirds of its total power of growth, for from 
nine to zero is divisible into two parts, of which the first, from nine 
down to three, would be two thirds, and the second, from three to zero, 
would be one third. Here then we learn that two thirds of the decline 
which occurs in the life of a chick takes place in two months, and for the 
rest of the life of the bird there is a decline of one third. That, you 
must acknowledge, is an extraordinary and most impressive difference. 
If it be true that the more rapid growth depends upon the youth of the 
individual,—its small distance in time from its procreation, then we 
may perhaps, by turning to other animals which are born in a more 
immature state, get some further insight into these changes; and that 
I have attempted to do by my observations upon the development of 
rabbits. Rabbits, as you know, are born in an exceedingly immature 
state. They are blind, they are naked, they are almost incapable of 
definite movements, quite incapable of locomotion, and are hardly more 
than little imperfect creatures lying in the nest and dependent utterly 
upon the care of the mother, quite unable to do anything for them- 
selves except take the milk which is their nourishment. They are in- 
deed animals born in a much less advanced stage than are the guinea- 
pigs. Upon the screen we see this interesting result demonstrated to 
us, that a male rabbit, the fourth day after its birth, is able to add over 
seventeen per cent. to its weight in one day. From that the curve 
drops down, as you see, with amazing rapidity, so that here at an age 
of twenty-three days the rabbit is no longer able to add nearly eighteen 
per cent. daily, but only a little over six. At the end of two months 
from its birth, the growth power of the rabbit has dropped to less than 
two per cent., and at two months and a half it has dropped to one. The 
drop in two and a half months has been from nearly eighteen per cent. 
down to one per cent., and the rest of the loss of one per cent. is 
extended over the remaining growing period of the rabbit. Could we 
have a more definite and certain demonstration of the fact that the 
decline is most rapid in the young, most slow in the old? It is not 
in this case any more than in the others the one sex that demonstrates 
this fact, for in the female we find exactly the same phenomena, as the 
next slide will show. The irregularities are not significant. The 
strange dip at thirty-eight days, for instance, corresponds to an illness 
of some of the rabbits which were measured, but they rapidly recovered 
from it and grew up to be fine, nice rabbits. If instead of measuring 
half a dozen rabbits, we had measured two hundred or five hundred, 
these irregularities would certainly have disappeared. The females in 
the case of the rabbits, as in the case of the guinea-pigs, are not able 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 203 


03 8 131823283338 = 55 72 «106 180days ag 


Fic. 28. CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT 
BY MALE RABBITS. 


to grow quite so fast at first. We see here sixteen instead of over seven- 
teen per cent. as the initial value, but the general character of the drop 
is the same, enormously rapid at first and very slow afterwards. All 
of our cases, then, show the same fundamental phenomena appearing 
with different values. 

Now in regard to man, we do not possess any such adequate series 
of statistics of growth as is desirable. We have many records of the 
weight of babies, by which I mean children from the date of birth up 
to one year of age. We have also very numerous records of school 
children, which will extend perhaps from five and one half up to say 
seventeen, eighteen or even nineteen years. There are records of boys 


204 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


1g 4 

17 

16 

15 

e | Peccentage Ircnuments Pablbty 
itl Females 

13 


= 
a 
\ 


03 8 1318232833V 55 80 106 180 darya 27 
38 F 


oO 


Fic. 29. CURVE SHOWING THE DAILY PERCENTAGE INCREMENTS IN WEIGHT 
BY FEMALE RABBITS. 


at universities, and a still more limited number of weighings of girls 
at colleges. But all these statistics piled together do not give us one 
comprehensive set of data including all ages. This is very much to be 
regretted, and it would be an important addition to our scientific knowl- 
edge could statistics of the growth of man be gathered with due precau- 
tions. It would fill one of the gaps in our knowledge which is lament- 
able. We have, however, some rough, imperfect data which for our 
present purposes it seems to me are adequate, and the results of the 
study of these will be shown by the next series of pictures. 

But let us pause for a moment to consider this singular table. It 
shows in this column the number of days which it takes for each species 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 205 


TABLE! 


100 Parts Mother’s Milk Contain 
Days Needed to 


Species Double Weight ee oe ae ; Phosphoric 
o ACl 
Man 180 1.6 0.2 0.0328 0.0473 
Horse 60 2.0 0.4 0.124 0.131 
Cow 47 3.5 0.7 0.160 0.197 
Goat 19 4.3 0.8 0.210 0.322 
Sheep 10 6.5 0.9 0.272 0.412 
Cat $ 7.0 1.0 — —_ 
Dog 8 1633 123 0.453 0.493 
Rabbit ii 10 4 2.4 0.8914 0.9967 


of animal indicated at the left to double its weight after birth. A 
man requires 180 days to double his weight; a horse, 60; a cow, 47; 
a goat, 19; a pig, 18; a sheep, 10; a cat, 914; a dog, 8; a rabbit, 6 (or 
possibly 7 days). Now here are analyses of the milk. The main 
point of interest is to be found in the figures in this column, which 
represent the amount of albuminoid, or proteid material contained in 
the milk. You will observe that for man the proportion is lowest, 1.6 
per hundred parts; the horse has a little more—2; cattle—3.5; 
and so the values run. In other words, it is obvious that the less the 
proteid in the milk, the longer does the species require to double its 
weight. This looks at first sight as if there were a relation between 
the composition of the milk and the period of growth of the animal; 
but you know very well that if you take the milk of a cow, which is 
very much richer in proteid material, and feed it to a baby, a human 
baby, that baby does not grow at the same rate as the young cow, but 
grows at the human rate. It is obvious, therefore, that it is somewhat 
more complicated than a mere question of food supply. We have in 
fact one of the beautiful illustrations of the teleological mechanism of 
the body. These various species have their characteristic rates of growth, 
and by an exquisite adaptation, the composition of the mother’s milk 
has become such that it supplies the young of the species each with the 
proper quantum of proteid material which is needed for the rate of 
growth that the young offspring is capable of. It is a beautiful adjust- 
ment, but there is not a causal relation between proteid matter and this 
rate of growth. It is an example of correlation, not of causation. 

We pass now to the next of our slides, which carries us over into 
the study of our own species. It is not possible at the present time to 
represent in any form of curve which I have seen the daily percentages 
of increment for man covering the whole period of growth. In order 
to get the results together, I have confined myself here to the repre- 
sentation of the yearly percentages. Now from the age of zero to the 
age of one year, you see according to this table a child is able to in- 
crease its weight 200 per cent. But from the beginning of the first to 


1 After Abderhalden, Zeitschrift fiir Physiologische Chemie, Band XXVL., 
p- 497. 


206 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


EARS ld?) Soa IS eT ee Ge ION 2 1S) IS) IS) 1G 17% ibe ISON ely terres cAwes 


Fie. 30. 


= 
YEARS | 2 3.4 8) 6 °7 08.09) iO tis 12 43 14 15° 16" We ts eoecieee mes ok 


Fig. 31. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 207 


the end of the second year, only 20 per cent., and thereafter it fluctuates 
in the neighborhood of 10 per cent. a year until the age of 13. At 14 
or 15 there is a fluctuation, an increase, and then the decline goes on 
again and slowly we see the growth power fading out. Authors are not 
agreed as to the exact statistical value, and so I will ask to have thrown 
upon the screen another curve, also representing the percentage increase 
of boys, and based chiefly upon English tables. For these data I] am 
indebted to my friend Professor Donaldson, of the Wistar Institute in 
Philadelphia. He finds in these records an increment of a little more 
than 200 in the first year, but the drop comes during the second year 
and is startling in its enormous extent and is contrasted with the later 
less decline. The phenomena may well arouse our attention and con- 
vince us that we are approaching a most important scientific question, 
the question of why the drop comes in this way. In the case of girls, 
as the next of our slides will show, we can prove the same phenomena 
with slightly different values. Girls, like the females of other species, 
grow a little less forcibly, so to speak, than boys. They do not quite 


200% 


100% 


| 
} 
YEARS t 525 Se 4 eo Ome ncee A NO. Ma AS 4: IS 16 17 IBIS) 20.2 2es ves 


attain a 200 per cent. value for the first year, but they too drop in a 
similar manner to the boys to about 30 per cent., and away down 
towards 10 per cent. in the third year. Then comes the long slow 
gradual decline up to the period of twenty-three. Professor Donaldson, 
as our next slide will demonstrate to us, has prepared curves from the 
English figures for girls also. They come up nearer to the 200 per 


208 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


cent. than in Miihlmann’s table, but drop well below 30 per cent. in the 
second year, and down to 20 per cent. in the fourth. Then occurs the 
slight increase of growth in the period of twelve, thirteen, fourteen 
years, and next the final stage of decline. In the four cases the 
human rate curve is similar. The great fall takes place at the 
beginning, the slow fall towards the end. Professor Thoma has 
thought he could get somewhat more accurate results by putting boys 


200% 


100%, | 


4. 536 §7 8 “9 “Olen Ne 13) 4s ie) Viz, aie) 19) cOu lb eemes 
FIG. 33. 


and girls together, and he has made a calculation, as shown now upon 
the screen, of a curve in which the two sexes are combined. His figures 
again differ somewhat from those we have considered, but you meet in 
this curve also the same general phenomena. There is an enormous 
percentage of growth during the first year; an enormous drop during 
the second; then the slow decline; the moderate fluctuation upward; 
and then the last slow disappearance of growth. In every instance, 
therefore, we have an absolute demonstration, it seems to me, of the 
strange phenomenon. Paradoxical it will sound, whenever it is first 
stated to any one, that the period of youth is the period of most rapid 
decline; that the period of old age is that in which decline is slowest. 
We shall learn in the next lecture that this double phenomenon fur- 
nishes us a clue to further investigations, and leads to certain new 
inquiries, which enable us to gain some further insight into the essential 
nature of the phenomena of age. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 209 


150% 


100% 


| a | | = 
Hsitisee eetesoa er it Si is oe 
2p se Ai SUG) eT) a6 dS 


io ow Ze IS 4s IS eal6ieie SIR IS) 20 MVelieecen eae 245 wes 


= 


FIG. 34. 


This completes the series of curves which I had prepared to present 
to you to show the rate of growth in animals from their birth only, but 
of course there has been also a growth of the animals which preceded 
their birth, and that now must briefly be considered. 

The mere inspection of developing embryos of known ages gives us 
some idea of the rate of growth. With the aid of the lantern I will 
ask you to look with me at some pictures of the developing chick and 
developing rabbit. Let us begin with the chick. 


* During the lectures a series of lantern slides were projected upon the 
screen, made from photographs of mounted specimens of chicken embryos, which 
showed very clearly the progress of development in the chick during the very 
early stages. The first figure illustrated a chick of 18 hours’ incubation. The 
embryo had been skimmed off from the surface of the egg, hardened, colored 
artificially and mounted in the manner of the ordinary microscopical prepara- 
tion in Canada balsam. At this age the naked eye can just distinguish a line, 
which indicates the position of the axis of the embryo. The unaided eye can 
recognize nothing more. In the second picture the head and neck of the embryo 
were easily distinguishable, and a few of the earliest primitive segments. The 
third slide showed a stage of a day and a half. The spinal cord and brain were 
distinctly differentiated, and numerous so-called “ blood islands ” scattered about, 

VOL. LXx1.—l4. 


210 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


We have first an embryo of twenty hours of incubation; following 
it one of one day. You can observe just a little line of structure indi- 
cated and showing where the longitudinal axis is to be situated. By 
the second day the chick has distinctly a head and a little heart, and 
- those who are expert can differentiate with a microscope the axis of the 
body, the beginning of the formation of the intestine and of the mus- 
cles. At the end of the first day there was lttle more than a mere 
gathering of cells, but during the twenty-four hours of the second day 
the gathering has changed from a mere streak upon the surface of the 
yolk to a well-formed individual, with recognizable parts and several 
times the volume it had when one day old. The next figure illustrates 
the alteration which occurs during, approximately, the third day. It 
is obvious that the embryo has again made an enormous increase in 
volume. The eye has developed, the heart has become large, the tail 
is projecting, the dorsal curve of the future neck is distinguishable. 
We pass next to the fourth day. Is it not a strange looking beast, with 
its wing here and leg there, a little tail at this point; an enormous eye, 
almost monstrous in proportion; and, finally, here a bit of the brain. 
After five days we have a chick the brain of which is swelling, causing 
the head to be of so queer a shape that, with the eye, which seems out 
of all proportion to the rest of the body, it imparts an uncanny look 
to the embryo. The wing is shaping itself somewhat, and the ends of 
the leg, we can see, will, by expansion, form a foot. Finally, the chick 
after seven and after eight days is figured. In the short interval of 
only six days the chick grows from the size represented by Fig. 2 to 
that shown in the last figure upon the plate. It is an enormous in- 
crease. Suppose a chick after it was born were to grow at such a rate 
as that! The eight-day embryo is thirty or forty times as big as it 
was eight days before. It would seem marvelous to us if a chick 
after it was hatched should become in eight days thirty times as large 
and heavy as when it first came out from the egg. It is perhaps advis- 
able to let you follow the growth of the chick a little farther, and 
accordingly I present another picture which shows an embryo of 
about ten days. The little marks upon the surface of these embryos 
indicate the commencing formation of the feathers. A comparison of 
the series of figures proves that the development is taking place with 
marvelous speed. We need only to look at these stages, comparing them 
with one another, to realize that the progress of the embryo in size and 
development occurs with a rapidity which is never to be found in later 
stages. 

The history of embryonic rabbits declares with equal emphasis that 
the earliest development is extremely rapid. I wish now to show you 


The final slide of the series showed a chick of three and one half days. It has 
not seemed necessary to reproduce these figures with the present text, as they 
merely duplicate, on a larger scale and with more detail, the pictures which have 
been included. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 211 


Fic. 35. TEN STAGES OF THE DEVELOPING CHICK, after Franz Keibel. All the figures are 
magnified four diameters. In No.1 only the parts indicated in the vertical axis of the figure 
correspond to embryonic structures proper. 


No. 1. Incubated 20 hrs. No. 6. Incubated 3 days, 16 hrs. 
No. 2. “ 24 hrs. No. 7. - 4days, 8 hrs, 
No. 3. fs 2 days. No. 8. és 5days, 1 hr. 
No. 4. fp 2 days, 19 hrs. No. 9. we 7 days, 4 hrs. 
No. 5. as 2 days, 22 hrs. No. 10. Ny 8days, 1 hr. 


a series of pictures to illustrate in the same manner the progressive 
development of the rabbit. Numbers one to five of the figures upon 
the screen represent what is known as the germinal area, in the center 


212 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of which the actual embryo is gradually formed. In No. 1 merely the 
axis is indicated, in front of and alongside of which the parts of the 
embryo are to arise, as is suggested by Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5. These stages 
cover the seventh and eighth days. Nos. 6 to 14 figure actual embryos, 
No. 6 of nine and a half, No. 14 of fifteen days. No. 6 is singularly 
twisted into a spiral form, the reason for which is still undiscovered. 
No. 9 shows the condition at eleven days—notice the limbs, a leg in 
front and a leg behind, each only a small mound as yet upon the sur- 


Fic. 36. A CHICK REMOVED FROM AN EGG, WHICH HAD BEEN INCUBATED 10 DAYS AND 
2 Hours. Magnified four diameters. Atter Keibel. 


face of the body; the distinct eye, the protuberance caused by the heart. 
Nos. 11 and 12 show the embryonic shape at twelve and a half and at 
thirteen days—there has been a great increase of size with accompany- 
ing modifications of form. The next pair, Nos. 13 and 14, present us 
embryos of fourteen and fifteen days, respectively, and you see that 
the growth is very marked indeed, and the change of form obvious; 
the creature is now changing from the embryonic type into something 
resembling a rabbit. Other pictures could readily be added, but, though 
two weeks must still elapse before the animal will be ready to enter 
the world, it is not necessary for my present purpose to include this 
period in our survey. We need only contemplate, it seems to me, the 
series of drawings in Fig. 37 to realize that the early embryonic growth 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 213 


of the rabbit, like the embryonic growth of the chick, proceeds with a 
speed which is never paralleled by the growth during later stages. 


Fic. 37. FOURTEEN STAGES OF THE DEVELOPING RABBIT, after Minot’s and Taylor’s ‘‘ Nor- 
mal Plates.’ All the figures are magnified four diameters. Nos. 2to5 are irregular as to age, 
but show successive stages of development. The early development is extremely variable and 
the observations do not yet suffice to determine the average typical condition for each day 
under nine. 


No. 1. Embryo of 7% days. No. 8. Embryo of 10"days. 
No. se 84 se No. 9, “ 11 ‘ec 
No. fe 844 No. 10. 72 BU ies 


No. 5. ‘a rie ld No. 12. sf 13 = 
No. a 9h * No. 13. “ 14 <= 


le 
24 
oe 
No. 4. J 8 “f No. 11. = IDOE te 
5 
6. 
No. 7. if 10 A No. 14. As 15 a 


214 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Now I had a considerable number of rabbit embryos preserved in 
alcohol, and though it was not very accurate to weigh them as alcoholic 
specimens, in order to determine their true weight, yet I resolved to do 
so as it was the best means at my disposal at the time. The result of 
that weighing was very interesting to me, because it showed that in 
the period of nine to fifteen days the rabbit had, on an average, added 
704 per cent. to their weight daily; but in the period of from fifteen 
to twenty days, the addition is very much less than this, only 212 per 
cent. But these rabbits at ten days have already had a considerable 
period of development behind them, and as we have discovered that the 
younger the animal the more rapid its growth, we are safe, it seems 
t» me—since we have learned that from the tenth to the fifteenth day 
there is a daily increase of over 700 per cent.—in assuming that in yet 
younger rabbits an increase of a thousand per cent. per day actually 
occurs. That is not so extraordinary an assumption, for bacteria are 
known to divide every half hour, and if the little bacterium divides and 
grows up to full size in half an hour, and then divides again, it means 
that within a half hour one bacterium has become two, and has in- 
creased, obviously, 100 per cent.; and if those two again divide as before, 
we should have four bacteria at the end of an hour—an increase of 400 
per cent., and at the end of another half hour, of 800 per cent., and 
so on ever in geometrical progression. We learn, then, that bacteria 
may in a few hours add 1,000 per cent. to their original weight, and 
it is not by any means an exorbitant demand upon our credulity to 
accept the conclusion that in their early stages, rabbits and other mam- 
mals and birds are capable of growing at least 1,000 per cent. a day. 
If this be true, and it doubtless is true, we can adopt it as a convenient 
basis for comparison. As we learned from the rate curves, which were 
projected upon the screen earlier during the hour, the male rabbit gains 
in one day immediately after birth nearly eighteen per cent.—seven- 
teen and four tenths per cent.—and the female rabbit gains nearly 
seventeen per cent. Now we can estimate the loss very simply by 
deducting this rate, which is the capacity of the animal to grow per- 
sisting at birth, from its original capacity, which we assume to have 
been 1,000 per cent. per day. And if we do that the result is obvious. 
Over 98 per cent. of the original growth power of the rabbit or of the 
chick has been lost at the time of birth or hatching, respectively, and 
the same thing is equally true of man. We start out at birth certainly 
with less than two per cent. of the original growth power with which 
we were endowed. Over 98 per cent. of the loss is accomplished before 
birth—less than two per cent. after birth. That, I think is a rather 
unexpected conclusion, certainly not one which, until I began to study 
the subject more carefully, I in the least expected; and even now when 
I have become more familiar with it, it still fills me with astonishment, 
it is so different from the conception of the process of development as 
we commonly hold it, from our conclusions based on our acquaintance 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 215 


with the growth and progress of the individuals about us. We over- 
look the fact that the progress which each individual makes is the result 
of accumulation. It is as if money was put into the savings-bank; it 
grows and becomes larger, but the rate of interest does not alter. So 
too with us; we see there is an accumulation of this wealth of organi- 
zation which gives us our mature power. But as that accumulation 
goes on, our body seems to become, 
as it were, tired. We may com- 
pare it to a man building a wall. 
He begins at first with great en- 
ergy, full of vigor; the wall goes 
up rapidly; and as the labor con- 
tinues fatigue comes into play. 
Moreover, the wall grows higher, 
and it takes more effort and time 
to carry the material up to the 
top of the wall, and to continue to 
raise its height, and so, as the wall 
grows higher and higher, it grows 
more slowly and ever more slowly, 
because the obstacles to be over- 
come have increased with the very 
height of the wall itself. So it 
seems with the increase of the or- 
ganism; with the increase of our 
development, the obstacles to our 
growth increase. How that is I 
shall hope to explain to you a little 
more clearly in the next lecture. 
We have one more slide, which 
I would like to show you. It 
indicates the rate of growth in 
man before birth as far as it 
can be indicated without better 
knowledge. The time intervals 
in the diagram correspond to 
the so-called lunar months—the 
ten lunar months of prenatal 
life. Of our early development we know very little so far as statistics 
are concerned, but from the third month onward we have some records. 
It is found that from the third to the fourth month the increase is 600 
per cent. Just contrast that with 200 per cent. added in one year 
after birth; 600 per cent. in one month against 200 per cent. in one 
year. From the fourth to the fifth month it is scarcely over 200 per 
cent. It then becomes only a little more than 100. In the’ seventh 
month, less than 100; and finally in the ninth and tenth months, it 


216 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


becomes very small indeed, less than 20, so that during the prenatal 
life of man, as we have seen in the prenatal life of the rabbit and of 
the chick, the decline in the power of growth is going on steadily all 
the time. 

I shall use the few remaining moments to report to you yet another 
bit of evidence of the originally enormous power of growth. It has 
been estimated that the germ of the mammal, with which the develop- 
ment commences, has a weight of 0.6 milligram; another estimate 
which I have found is of 0.3 milligram.* Perhaps I can give you some 
idea of what this value means by telling you that if the weight of the 
original germ of a mammal is assumed to be 0.6 milligram, we could, 
according to the laws of the United States, send 50,000 such germs 
by letter postage for two cents. It would take 50,000 germs to make 
the weight of one letter. That perhaps will give you some impression 
of the extreme minuteness of the primitive germ. In the human 
species at the end of even a single month it is no longer merely a germ, 
but a young human being, very immature, of course, in its development, 
but already very much larger. JI doubt—even after all that I have said 
this evening about the startling figures of growth for the earlier 
stages,—I doubt if you are prepared for the fact that the growth of the 
germ up to the end of the first month represents an increase of over 
a million per cent. How much over a million per cent. we can not 
calculate accurately, because we do not know accurately the weight of 
the original germ, but an increase of a million per cent. is not above 
the true value. Contrast that with anything which occurs in the later 
periods. What a vast change has happened! What an immense loss 
has taken place! The rate of this loss is evidently diminishing. The 
Icss occurs with great rapidity in the young—less rapidity the older we 
become. I attempted to convince you in the first and second lectures 
that that which we called the condition of old age, is merely the culmi- 
nation of changes which have been going on from the first stage of 
the germ up to the adult, the old man or woman. All through the life 
these changes continue. The result is senility. But if, as the phe- 
nomena of growth indicate to us so clearly, it be true that the decline 
is most rapid at first, then we must expect from the study of the very 
young stages to find a more favorable occasion for analysis of the 
factors which bring about the loss in the power of growth and change 
as the final result of which we encounter the senile organism. Not 
from the study of the old, therefore, but from the study of the very 
young, of the young embryo, and of the germ, are we to expect insight 
into the complicated questions which we have begun to consider together. 
I shall hope in the next lecture to prove to you that the supposition 
which has guided my own observations is correct, and to be able to 
show you that we do actually, from the study of the developing embryo, 
glean some revelations of the cause of old age. 


= These estimates refer to the placental mammals only. 


SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 217 


A SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 


Jy Proressor T. D. A. COCKERELL anp PRrROFEssoR F. B. R. HELLEMS 


UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO 


en scientific man of any period, if he will examine the work of 

his predecessors, may be comforted or discouraged, according to 
his point of view. It is in the highest degree encouraging to note 
the steady and rapid progress of science during the last two hundred 
years and more. It is flattering to the vanity of us moderns to realize 
that we stand on the very apex of the pyramid of knowledge which 
the human race has erected at the cost of so much toil, and can look 
down with indulgent contempt on the comparative ignorance of earlier 
generations. How stupid they were! How little they knew !—but we 
—well, there really never has been anything so superior. There is, 
however, an ancient story about a monkey which climbed a pole and 
for every three feet he climbed he slipped down two. Was the animal, 
after all, certainly a monkey? Is there no similarity between his 
progress and that of the human race? If the science of the past reads 
to us to-day like a comedy of errors, is it perfectly certain that our 
productions will not so appear to that hateful body of supercilious 
critics, our posterity? On second thought, there may be in the his- 
tory of human learning as much cause for modesty as for exultation. 
As a tangible case in point we present a summary of the early history 
of the cochineal and allied dye-producing insects, and more particu- 
larly of a forgotten pamphlet by one Frederic Friedel, whereby he 
earned the degree of doctor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, 
in 1701. For his time, Friedel was a man of unusual wisdom, filled 
with the true spirit of science, so much so that he was not afraid to 
tilt against the greatest of biological authorities then living, and, in so 
doing, came out with a flying pennant. Yet, in the light of modern 
knowledge, it appears that he corrected the blunders of Leeuwenhoek 
only to make somewhat lesser ones of his own; not, however, through 
lack of care or lack of sense, but from the unavoidable imperfection 
of his knowledge. 

From very early times, it was customary to utilize the coloring mat- 
ter obtainable from certain small round objects to be found on various 
species of oaks in the region of the Mediterranean. Dioscorides and 
other authors report their occurrence in Galatia, Armenia, Cicilia, 
Spain, Portugal and Sardinia: in later times they have been known 
in the south of France, Crete and Syria; while the north of Africa 
has furnished a less valuable kind. To Theophrastus they were known 


218 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


2.0.3 ee 
Inclyto Philofophorum Lipfienfium 


Ordine confentiente., - 
DISSERTATIONEM PHYSICAM 


H, LQ. 
Addi k,- Mart. Anno i7ot. 
Placido Eruditorum Examini publice fubjiciet 
PRESES 


M.CHRISTOPH. FRIDERICUS 
Ridter/ Lipfienfis, 
RESPONDENTE 


ERIDERICO Sriebdel/ ScaudizaeCiz. Mifn.. 
~ Med. Cult. 


Pl PS 15 
Excudebat CHRISTOPH, FLEISCHERUS. 


as the xoxxos gouxos, While in later times the name Kermés, from 
the Arabic, came into general use. 

For many centuries the nature of the Kermes remained uncertain. 
To all appearances it was a berry, and the opinion that it was of 
purely vegetable origin prevailed. However, it appears that Quin- 
queran de Beaujeu, as early as 1551, published a book on the pro- 
ductions of Provence, entitled De Jlaudibus Gallo-Provincie, in 
which he clearly indicated that the Kermes was an insect, and de- 
scribed its transformations. ‘The supposed berries, says he, are the 
mothers, who presently have families of innumerable very minute 
worms. ‘These latter locate upon the twigs at various points, increase 
in size, and at length look no longer like animals, but peas. 

Planchon, to whom we are indebted for the reference to Quin- 
queran, goes on to remark that it is curious that after these observa- 
tions had been published, many intelligent writers showed hopeless 
confusion upon the subject. In particular, it had been observed that 
from the Kermes sometimes issued small four-winged insects not un- 
like those coming from the oak-apples or galls. Hence it was con- 
cluded that the Kermes must be a sort of plant gall, wholly made up of 


SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 219 


vegetable tissue, but nourishing an insect. We know now, of course, 
that the four-winged insects were merely parasites of the Kermes, 
which lived as minute maggots within its body, destroying it and 
finally issuing as adult flies. 

With the discovery of Mexico, things took on a new turn. Fran- 
cisco Hernandez and others reported that on the tuna, or prickly 
pear, of that country there grew a new sort of coccus, which was much 
to be preferred to the one found upon the oak, or to the scarlet grain 
found upon the roots of plants in Poland. 

This new coccus, which came to be known as the cochinilla, or 
cochineal, was largely imported into Europe; and eventually the cacti 
were brought over, and grown in Algeria, Madeira, etc., so that the 
dye-material could be produced nearer the market. With the impetus 
thus given to the study of coccus—or, as we should now say, the 
Coccidee—the question as to the true nature of the material pressed 
anew for settlement. According to the “ Encyclopedia Britannica,” 
the idea that the cochineal was the seed or fruit of a plant was prev- 
alent as late as 1725, but Martin Lister, in 1672, indicated its rela- 
tion to the insects. In 1703, it is stated, Leeuwenhoek discovered its 
true nature by the aid of the microscope, “but not unnaturally sup- 
posed it to be allied to the ladybird.” 

This statement of the case, however, is not quite exact. We have 
before us a little pamphlet published as early as March, 1701, the 
precise date, according to a penciled figure, being the fourteenth of 
that month. This work is a thesis for the degree of doctor of phi- 
losophy, presented to the University of Leipzig by Frederic Friedel, 
and is entitled Dissertatio Physica de Cochinilla. In it, the whole 
question of the nature of the cochineal is fully discussed, with copious 
references to previous authors and many original observations. 

The work consists of six chapters; the first on the name of the 
cochineal ; the second on its habitat and the plants infested, with some 
interesting information on the different kinds of cacti; the third on 
various opinions concerning the nature of the cochineal; the fourth 
giving the details of the author’s views as to its nature; the fifth on its 
culture and the methods of collecting it; and the last on its different 
varieties and its uses. The whole treatise is, of course, in Latin, but 
we give a free translation of the parts with which we are particularly 
concerned, abbreviating here and there. 

After giving a general summary of the hitherto recorded observa- 
tions and opinions, Dr. Friedel proceeds: 

Therefore, this insect is a Coleopteron [beetle], so to speak sheath-winged, 
or in a word, belonging to the family of lesser scarabs, which we recognize by 


the almost round body, flat below and convex above, not less than by a reddish 
and golden color, sprinkled with some black spots. 


He then proceeds to set forth the names for the ladybird in dif- 


220 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ferent languages, bringing out the fact that these creatures are dedi- 


cated to Our Lady, the Virgin Mary, or in other cases to God, for 

reasons not explained. In France they are called God’s horses, 

Chevaux de Dieu, in England ladybirds or cowladies, and so forth. 
To these familiar ladybirds, 


such exact resemblance is borne by the little animals which produce the coch- 
ineal, that one egg could scarcely be more like another, if only you except the 
size, in which the American beetle is observed to surpass ours, and the color, 
which is not vividly red or scarlet or yellow in the foreign species, but dull and 
brownish, with the spots red, the latter larger than those on our beetles. 


The modern entomologist begins to wonder what all this has to do with 


SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 221 


the cochineal, which is by no means a beetle, though truly an insect, 
but the author proceeds: 


Moreover, these statements that I have made about the form and appearance 
of this beetle, that they may not be accounted the mere offspring of my brain, 
can all be easily verified by actual examination; for dry specimens, complete, 
generally, however, with the head and feet torn off, are found mixed with the 
cochineal; or at least, as happens more commonly, elytra are brought out along 
with the cochineal grains. I myself have found several points concerning these 
little animals, complete or intact “for the most part, which exactly agreed with 
those just described, so that all occasion for doubting the truthfulness of the 
facts has been removed. 


With this description, aided by an excellent figure given in the one 
plate which ornaments the pamphlet, we are able without difficulty to 
explain the mystery. The American beetle is the Chilocorus cacti, a 
genuine ladybird, which does indeed live upon the tuna among the 
cochineal insects, feeding upon them. When the latter are gathered, 
the beetles are often carried with them, and Friedel, examining the 
dried grains, naturally found the specimens he describes. In 1701 
not much was known about the classification of insects, and it never 
occurred to him that a creature like the cochineal, which we now know 
to have a sucking mouth, could not be related to a beetle. 

Yet, aware that scoffers exist, the author is constrained to proceed: 


Howbeit, if this evidence of mine should not find full credence, look you! 
here is Paulus Ammannius, who in his handbook to Materia Medica reports 
that he also found such a little animal intact; and if perhaps he is not sufficient 
authority either, take Leeuwenhoek and Tyson, of whom the former depicts little 
insects of this type, found by him likewise, and the latter even gives an engraving 
on copper of a cochineal scarab, and when you have compared the figures, you 
will agree that it is as closely similar as possible to-mine. In the appended 
plate, I offer one of those that I happened to find, along with our nettle beetle 
[that is, the European ladybird, Adalia bipunctata], because the difference, as 
well as the resemblance between them, will thus better meet the eye. I willingly 
omit the references to other authors, such as Blanchard (Schauplatz der Raupen) 
and Dale (Pharmacology), for the two just mentioned, Leeuwenhoek and Tyson, 
are for me equivalent to all. 


Friedel then proceeds to combat an opinion, which he attributes to 
Leeuwenhoek and an anonymous Spaniard mentioned in the English 
Transactions (of the Royal Society) No. 193, to the effect that the 
cochineal is a portion of the adult American ladybird—the Chilocorus 
cacti. 


For it is disproved oy ocular examination, that the lower belly of this beetle, 
if it shall have been stripped of its legs and head, and finally of its elytra and 
wings, as indicated by Leeuwenhoek, exactly resembles the cochineal. Rather, 
the form of these hinder parts of the insect differs as much as possible from the 
little body of the cochineal; seeing that in the first place, in size it generally 
very greatly surpasses the lower belly of the beetle, as I have found in more 


222 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


than one case when I have removed from the intact beetles found among the 
cochineal the parts just mentioned; and in the second place, I have noticed this 
marked discrepancy, the abdomen of the beetle is never marked by more than 
six or at the most seven distinct rings, but the number of these in every grain 
of cochineal generally runs as high as 12, as can be seen with the naked eye, 
or more distinctly with the aid of the microscope, especially if the insect has 
been softened in water. Furthermore, a third difference will be noticed at the 
same time—you will certainly observe the anterior half of the cochineal to be 
furnished with some little swellings, beneath which lurk the feet of the insect 
which are going to appear, and which the engraver has tried to show in the cut. 
On the other hand, that the hinder parts of the beetles are always entirely 
devoid of these swellings an examination places beyond limits of doubt. Add 
to all these the fourth circumstance that the abdomen of the beetle does not 
produce any purple color, and for that reason could little serve the purpose for 
which this ware is imported from such distant shores. Although I subjected 
certain of these trunks of the lower belly to different treatments, I never was 
able to see even a tiny point of the desired color in them, while conversely, any 
tiny cochineal will discharge the color in sufficient abundance and at once. 
And finally, I have never been able to find in the belly of the beetle a single little 
grain or egg, although I sought most zealously; whereas such are found in 
great abundance in any cochineal which is broken up after having been suffi- 
ciently macerated. 


What an excellent argument! It is proven beyond doubt that the 
cochineal is no part of the ladybird, notwithstanding the assertions of 
the most eminent authority then living. We have no fault to find 
with particulars given, except that the little prominences on the coch- 
ineal, where the legs were hereafter expected to appear, were in reality 
the bases of the minute legs of that insect. 

Returning now to the constructive argument, the author gives his 
conclusion that the cochineal must be derived from the aforesaid 
beetles, and yet is not any part of them. The simple explanation is 
that the cochineal, when mature, transforms into a beetle, and in doing 
so utterly loses the power of staining, and hence is no longer to be 
termed a cochineal. Now this loss of color at maturity is paralleled by 
other phenomena already recorded. In the case of the dye-coccus of 
the oak, the Kermes, so long as the little berries are full of little 
worms or animals, they are rich in the colored juice. After a while, 
when the little worms [the larve of the Kermes, in reality] are called 
by the heat of the sun from their sacs [that is, the bodies of their moth- 
ers| they can be destroyed by the pressure of the hand, and forced into 
a mass which is appropriately termed vermillion. Otherwise, before 
the exclusion of the worms, the dried berries will equally preserve the 
desired color. It is just the same in the coccus polonicus [Margarodes 
polonicus of modern entomologists], which is said to cling to the roots 
of several herbs. These little bodies at a stated time turn into little 
winged insects, as is stated by several authors, including Martin Bern- 
hard in his description of the Royal Garden of Varsovie. As soon as 


SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 223 


these insects [probably males of the Margarodes| fly away, they are 
manifestly deprived of all color, and not only this, but the cortex 
which is left retains nothing of the precious coloration. 

So, says Friedel, since in all these different sorts of coccus the red 
color disappears in the last stage, when the creature is transformed 
into a fly or some other little animal, it is easy to understand why 
the beetles produced from the cochineal show no red pigment. The 
point is important, because it is necessary that the cochineal should be 
collected in time, before its last transformation, and while it is still 
swollen with the juice. 

The analogy is here not very convincing, since the Kermes does 
not turn into a single insect, but produces a multitude of “ worms,” 
as Friedel clearly states. It seemed sufficient to him, however, and 
he never got a glimpse of the true fact that the cochineal insects do 
indeed turn into the beetles, in the same manner that the lamb may be 
said, under suitable circumstances, to be transformed into the lion. 

Assuming that the cochineal was the pupa of the beetle, it re- 
mained to fortify this conclusion by still other arguments. In the 
first place, Herrera and Laetus had given some slight account of the 
development of the cochineal, from actual observation. From this it 
might be gathered that there was at first a minute or mite-like insect, 
which developed into the cochineal-grain. This accords very well, so 
far as it goes, with what was to be expected according to the theory. 
“That grain is covered on the outside by a certain thin tunic, which 
contains shut up within it the little animal, which is soon to be trans- 
formed into a beetle *—this is, however, an inference of Friedel’s, not 
of Herrera’s. 

“But,” says Friedel, “for a more beautiful illustration of my 
hypothesis, I thought I might describe the transformation of the 
European ladybird, which is certainly sufficiently allied to the Ameri- 
can to permit accurate deductions to be drawn from it.” So he went 
first to the book on insects by John Goedart “that very illustrious 
painter of Middleton,” a work which several years back Martin Lister 
had published in a new and revised edition. In this work, p. 274, it 
appeared that first from little blackish eggs deposited in a sort of 
circle on the leaves of the Ribes [currant or gooseberry], there sprang, 
© from the nurturing of the summer air,” little animals, which immedi- 
ately after hatching could scarcely move, until after an interval of 
several days they learned to creep a little, and finally to run about 
freely. ‘These insects were subsequently. observed to shed their skins, 
like serpents, as they increased in size, and this was done four distinct 
times, and last they obtained the final red skin, variegated with black 
spots. To these statements the author added that as often as these 
beetles stripped themselves of their skins, they fixed their feet firmly 
in the place they occupied, and crept out, leaving the empty skin in its 


224 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


natural form, so that at the first glance you would swear the little 
animal was still standing there. 

“Now,” says Friedel, “ As I read this, it can scarcely be told how 
saddened I was, for the hope I had previously conceived was falling 
into ruin.” The account of Goedart did not really seem to confirm 
the hypothesis about the cochineal, for there was no description of any 
stage that really corresponded to the grain. Friedel was about to 
change his opinion in toto, when he “had another seasonable sugges- 
tion from the most excellent Dr. Lang, to whose most faithful train- 
ing I owe almost everything in the course of my medical studies.” For 
as Dr. Lang was the first to suggest to Friedel the theory about the 
nature of the cochineal which formed the subject of this thesis, so he 
now came to the rescue with facts and experiments concerning the 
German ladybird “ depicted as in life with an elegant brush in colors, 
and most accurately noted from day to day,” all of which, in the year 
just passed, Friedel was permitted to observe and confirm with his own 
eyes. 


Sure enough, in the month of June, on the upturned leaf of the greater 
nettle, are seen very tiny egglets of a saffron color, adhering firmly. As may 
be seen in our illustration, letter g, from these, a little later, are spontaneously 
hatched blackish oblong little worms, below the size of a flea, but equipped with 
six feet on the anterior part of the little body, see letter h. These little insects 
are sluggish for some time after their birth, and scarcely move from their place; 
until, after the lapse of several days, they acquire the necessary strength, and 
running hither and thither, gather food, so far as we can see, from dew. [They 
feed on aphides, but Friedel neither observed this, nor considered the fact that 
mere dew was rather unsustaining!] After about three or four weeks have 
elapsed, they reach a size such as is indicated under letter i. At this time, they 
are elegantly ornamented on the sides with several yellowish spots, and their 
color, dark before, is changed to an ashen hue, especially along the middle of 
the back. Now this fleet-footed worm prepares itself for a metamorphosis, wan- 
dering more tardily at first, soon hardly at all; and then, affixing itself by its 
tail to a leaf, is wrinkled up as shown under letter k. By degrees the covering 
drops off to the rear, and it passes into the pupula or nymph, of which the 
anterior and posterior aspects are shown under letters 1 and m. The insect, even 
in this state, still lives, as may be learned from its movement when touched. 
It remains thus until the tenth and not rarely the twelfth day, when the covering 
is broken, and there comes forth, the skin being left motionless, a beetle, which 
at first is rather weak, and whitish, but changing in a few hours to yellow or 
red, the black spots coming into view on the elytra. 


This is really an excellent account of the ladybird, excepting only 
the error as to its food, and from these observations Friedel felt en- 
couraged to believe that he had put the finishing touches on his theory 
of the cochineal; for was not the ladybird pupa just like it? “ But,” 
says he, “if perchance this should still seem doubtful, here is a 
further observation to confirm it. When a friend, addicted to trade, 
gave me at one time a large enough heap of cochineal to examine, I 


SCIENTIFIC COMEDY OF ERRORS 225 


found mixed with it several worms, not yet altogether changed into. 
pup, of a color which from ashen was becoming purple, and which 
when immersed for a while in water, assumed the form seen in the 
engraving under the letter C. Hence there came to me the suspicion 
that under this form appeared the worm of the cochineal before giving 
itself to rest; for that it certainly belongs to this family, I am per- 
suaded by the purple color which it discharges into the water in 
which it is immersed, just like the cochineal itself. For when all the 
eggs of these insects are not hatched in one precise day it at least be- 
comes probable that neither are all these worms in one moment trans- 
formed into pups», or the beetles simultaneously creep forth from 
these. So, without doubt, when the harvest of pupe is at hand, 
several of these worms, which have not yet reached the pupa state, and 
also several adult beetles, are shaken off at the same time from the 
tuna. Consequently, we usually find them all mixed, in more or less 
abundance, with the best cochineal.” The worms thus found may be 
the true larve of the ladybeetle, or in other cases, the larvee of certain 
two-winged flies of the family Syrphide, which also prey upon the 
cochineal. ‘The presence of the flies is especially indicated by another 
observation of Friedel’s—that he found even a few cup-shaped objects, 
in which were occasionally seen some small grains of cochineal. Here, 
he thought, were actually the skins left empty after the exit of the 
beetles; but on further reflection he abandoned the idea, as they really 
were not large enough to hold the beetle. The grains found in them 
were very minute, and were doubtless only cochineal larve which had 
wandered in by accident; and finally, some of these cups still con- 
tained, not a beetle, but a single fly. These were, we may now rest 
assured, the puparia of a predatory Dipterous insect, either a Syrphid 
or a species of Leucopis. 

By the time of Linneus, some fifty years later, it was clearly 
known that the cochineal had nothing to do with the beetles, but 
belonged to the Hemiptera. Even then, however, it seemed fated to 
be a source of error and misunderstanding. When Linnezus was pre- 
paring his great “ Systema Nature,” a friend of his, Daniel Rolander, 
resident in the West Indies, sent him what he supposed to be unusually 
fine specimens of the cochineal alive on a piece of cactus. Linnzus 
naturally used these in making his description of the Coccus casti, and 
until 1899 nobody seems to have suspected that they were not the real 
cochineal. However, Rolander sent some at the same time to DeGeer, 
who figured them, and from the account he gives, and indeed also from 
that of Linnzus, it is evident that the Coccus cacti L. is no cochineal, 
but a species of a quite different subfamily, which, curiously, has never 
been found by any entomologist since it was discovered by Rolander. 


VOL. LXx1.—15. 


226 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 


By FRED DELAND 


PITTSBURGH, PA. 
XIV. TELEPHONIC AND FINANCIAL ConpDITIONS, 1880-1883. 


#K OLLOWING are the Bell statistics for the four years, 1880-1883: 
On March 1, 1880, there were 138 Bell telephone exchanges, in 
operation or about to open, while a year later the number had increased 
to 408, a net gain of 270 exchanges, or of nearly 200 per cent. Though 
only three years had elapsed since the first of these pioneer exchanges 
was opened, on March 1, 1881, 66 exchanges were interconnected by 
toll lines, Boston had toll communications to seventy-five cities and 
towns, the total number of places for which licenses to build exchanges 
had been granted was 1,523, and thirty-two contracts had been given 
to build connecting toll lines. But, these 408 exchanges supplied tele- 
phone service to only 47,880 subscribers located in 463 cities, towns 
and villages, or an average of only 117 subscribers to each exchange. 
At the close of the year 1881, the number of Bell exchanges had 
increased to 592, with a total of 70,525 subscribers, located in 1,593 
cities, towns and villages, while the average number of subscribers per 
exchange had increased from 117 to 120. 

On December 31, 1882, there were 1,070 Bell exchanges in opera- 
tion, a net gain of 478 for the year, or of 81 per cent. This growth 
represented an average increase of two new exchanges for nearly every 
working day in the year. Yet the total number of subscribers was 
only 97,728, or an average allotment to each exchange of only 91, that 
is, 29 less subscribers than the average of the previous year. The 
handiwork of the speculative builder of small exchanges, grasping for 
quick profits, is here indelibly imprinted on the records. In the 
large exchanges the high flat rate limited the growth to the wealthy 
in the resident districts and to the larger business houses and pro- 
fessional offices where telephonic communication was an absolute neces- 
sity. This seems a reasonable conclusion to draw from a growth of 
only 38 per cent. in subscribers and of 81 per cent. in exchanges. 

And the record for 1883 is of the same delusive character. On 
December 31, there were 1,325 Bell exchanges in operation in 46 
states and territories, supplying service to 123,625 subscribers, and 
giving employment to 4,762 persons. In other words, there was an 
average of nearly four employees to each exchange, though the aver- 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 227 


age number of subscribers connected was only 93. And as there were 
many exchanges having more than 300 subscribers, it is obvious that 
many others had less than 30, and thus were being operated and main- 
tained at a continuing loss. 

What were the financial conditions of the country during these 
four years, 1880-1883? What was the character of the sentiment 
prevailing among investors that enabled such anomalous conditions 
to continue? 

The year 1880, notwithstanding that a presidential election occurred, 
proved to be an admirable period for the promotion of industrial as 
well as speculative enterprises, and telephone projects of every char- 
acter appeared to meet a hearty welcome at the hands of the investing 
public. To the older licensees, enriched by the wisdom gained in a 
whole year’s experience, it soon became evident that many of the new 
exchanges were being built and operated only for speculative purposes 
by local promoters, in anticipation of profitable consolidations, rather 
than as a permanent investment for local capital. For the question of 
equitable rates yielding a fair return on a legitimate investment, or 
the unpleasant results in lowering the character of the service by giv- 
ing unlimited calls at an unprofitable rate, thus loading the lines with 
gossip and frivolous conversation, to the detriment of rapid, legitimate 
service, did not concern the speculator. Where the older licensees 
endeavored to warn local investors against accepting the speculator’s 
statements without substantial proof, the latter felt justified in agi- 
tating a public denunciation of what he termed the extortionate 
rates of the older licensees. The natural result was that the specu- 
lative exchanges had a big list of subscribers at unprofitable rates, 
until consolidation brought a new management that proposed to take 
care of the shareholders first and then give the best service possible to 
the subscribers. This meant an increase in rates to an amount that 
would insure a fair return on the investment; and then fully one half 
the subscribers who had been reaping the advantage of unprofitable 
rates promptly displayed their gratitude by giving up the service 
rather than pay the increased price. 

On January 21, 1881, many of the telephone companies in the 
east suffered from the most destructive sleet storm that had visited that 
section in a long period. So great was the weight of the sleet frozen 
on the wires attached to roof-fixtures that in numerous cases the roofs 
were wrecked and walls were damaged. Miles of the pole lines went 
down, and in the main thoroughfares of the larger cities telephone 
wires were inseparably entangled with telegraph and electric light 
circuits. By reason of modern methods of construction, a disaster 
of such a character could not now occur, though greater losses have 
occurred in several sleet-storms. But this was the first serious wreck 


228 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 


of the kind that the new telephone industry had had to face, and its 
disastrous outcome was exceedingly discouraging. The immediate loss 
to the New York company was nearly $100,000, while the indirect 
loss in delaying extensions and improvements and in diverting invest- 
ment from the treasuries of the injured companies was very large. 

The only remarkable change in financial circles occurring in 1881 
was the flurry in the stock market that followed the assassination of 
President Garfield on July 2, 1881. To the far-sighted financier that 
“agitation approaching a panic” may have indicated the beginning 
of the general depression that gradually overspread the country and 
proved most severe in 1885. 

On July 14, 1881, the New York Tribune editorially asserted that 


the agitation that cavsed the flurry was utterly without foundation and that 
the proportion of business done upon a cash basis is larger than ever, and the 
proportion of business done without borrowing, on the capital of the firms en- 
gaged, is larger than ever. ... Nor has there ever been a time when the earn- 
ings of the people were on the whole as large as they are now. Wages are good, 
while prices are relatively low. 


But from the telephone speculator’s point of view, the ill effect of 
that July flurry was more than offset, so far as the investing public 
was concerned, by the admirably wise and now famous telephone de- 
cision rendered by Judge Lowell on June 27, 1881, in the suit begun 
on June 22, 1880, in the Eaton-Spencer case. In part that opinion 
read as follows: 


If the Bell patent were for a mere arrangement, or combination of old 
devices, to produce a somewhat better result in a known art, then, no doubt, a 
person who substituted a new element not known at the date of the patent might 
escape the charge of infringement. But Bell discovered a new art—that of 
transmitting speech by electricity—and has a right to hold the broadest claim 
for it which can be permitted in any case; not to the abstract ~ight of sending 
sounds by telegraph, without any regard to means, but to all means and proc- 
esses which he has both invented and claimed. . . . The claim is not so broad 
as the invention... . An apparatus made by Reis, of Germany, in 1860, and 
described in several publications before 1876, is relied on to limit the scope of 
Bell’s invention. Reis appears to have been a man of learning and ingenuity. 
He used a membrane and electrodes for transmitting sounds, and his apparatus 
was well known to curious inquirers. The regret of all its admirers was, that 
articulate speech could not be sent and received by it.... A century of Reis 
would never have produced a speaking telephone by mere improvement in con- 
struction. 


President Arthur proved a worthy successor to the lamented Gar- 
field, and his strong and conservative policy appeared to win the 
confidence of the people, many of whom had been led to expect a more 
radical and less safe administration. Thus the year 1882 opened 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 229 


auspiciously for all speculative interests. But in February came the 
notorious break in Richmond and Danville, from 219 to 130, that 
flurried the stock market and increased the general uneasiness con- 
cerning all investments. Nevertheless, the total volume of business 
transacted throughout the country during the year was very large, no 
less than $350,000,000 being expended in new railroad construction. 
The general financial and commercial conditions that prevailed 
during 1883 may be summed up as follows: There were 9,184 failures 
with aggregate liabilities of $172,874,000, as against 4,735 failures 
in 1880 with aggregate liabilities of only $65,752,000. Not only was 
there a large decrease in the total volume of trade, making retrench- 
ment in nearly every line of industry an imperative necessity, but a 
general distrust of the integrity of all stocks and all bonds prevailed, 
with a consequent enormous decline in the market values of many 
securities, including even those of the new telephone consolidations. 
An eminent financial writer in referring to the speculative fever that 
had raged during the previous two years, 1881-1882, declared that: 


Our whole people became wild upon the subject of railroad construction, be- 
lieving that two or three dollars could easily be made for every dollar put up, 
either by the success of their ventures or by the sale of their securities. In this 
delusion the capitalist and the adventurer shared alike. 


Nevertheless, notwithstanding these discouraging conditions, or the 
gloomy outlook for the coming year, or the nine thousand failures 
in other lines of business, or the low market value of the stock of 
certain large licensee companies organized to absorb the handiwork 
of the speculator as portrayed in numerous small and unprofitable ex- 
changes, the art of establishing new telephone exchanges, especially in 
small towns and villages, progressed even more actively in 1883 than 
ever before. So many investors believed that it was only necessary 
to establish any kind of an exchange in any kind of a village, no matter 
how small or how unprofitable the rates might prove, to secure profits 
of three for one, that the editor of an electrical journal wrote: “ No 
fable concerning the telephone is too gross to receive credence; no 
prediction of its future can be wild enough to provoke a smile.” And 
the daily papers fed this delusion by constantly referring to millions 
of dollars alleged to have been made in the telephone business, although 
the parent company had paid no cash dividends prior to January, 1881, 
all of which statements many readers accepted as applying solely to 
exchanges established in small villages, just as three years earlier 
many investors believed that large profits would be derived from 
building small branch railroads. And had it not been for the many 
investments made by farmers in railroad securities, in the aggregate 
amounting to several millions of dollars, from which no return was 
secured in many cases, it is quite probable that the farming community 


230 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


would have developed a rural system of telephone service contempo- 
raneously with its early growth in towns and villages. 

Again, the infringing telephone companies, and they were numer- 
ous, while their promoters were strong in political and financial 
influence in the ’80’s, circulated the most absurd statements concerning 
the millions that had been made in the consolidating of Bell operating 
companies, and the manipulation of telephone stocks. One state- 
ment read: “It is within limits to say that the entire property, rights 
and franchises of the Bell company and its licensees could be duplicated 
for one twenty-fifth of the stock capital invested.” Yet it is interest- 
ing to note that during the three years, 1881-1883, in New York 
state alone, one hundred and twenty-five infringing telephone com- 
panies were organized and capitalized at an aggregate of two hundred 
and twenty-five millions of dollars, a capitalization authorized by one 
state only, and three times greater than the combined capital stock 
of all the Bell companies in all the states of the union, including that 
of the parent company. 

Very fortunately for the investing public, few of these infringing 
companies ever got fairly under way, even when the highest officials 
in state and nation appeared to do all in their power to aid in filching 
rewards honestly won and meritoriously bestowed. Moreover, it has 
been stated that many of these infringing claims were offered to the 
parent Bell company for small sums or large sums, depending upon 
how gloomy or how roseate the outlook was. A comical phase of these 
infringing competitive schemes was the certainty with which state- 
ments would appear in printed circulars, that the telephone was first 
exhibited to the public at the Centennial Exposition in 1876, and the 
first telephone line was constructed in Boston in 1877. The fact that 
they thus admitted that Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone was the 
first telephone did not appeal even to their sense of humor. 

Even the announcement on January 24, 1883, of Judge Gray’s 
decision on final hearing in the Dolbear case, and of Judge Lowell’s 
decision the following August, did not appear to discourage investment 
in the securities of infringing companies, while both decisions served 
to stimulate the building of small exchanges by speculative promoters 
and the rapid consolidation of these non-paying properties into over- 
capitalized organizations. 

Judge Gray’s opinion in part was: 


The opinion in Spencer’s case clearly points out that “ Bell discovered a 
new art—that of transmitting speech by electricity—and has the right to hold 
the broadest claim for it which can be permitted in any case.” ... The evidence 
in this case clearly shows that Bell discovered that articulate sounds could be 
transmitted by undulatory vibrations of electricity, and invented the art or 
process of transmitting such sounds by means of such vibrations. If that art 
or process is (as the witnesses called by the defendant say it is) the only way 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE. 231 


by which speech can be transmitted by electricity, that fact does not lessen the 
merit of his invention, or the protection which the law will give to it.... 
Whatever name may be given to the property, or the manifestation, of the elec- 
tricity in the defendant’s receiver, the facts remain that they avail themselves 
of Bell’s discovery that undulatory vibrations of electricity can intelligibly and 
accurately transmit articulate speech, as well as of the process which Bell in- 
vented, and by which he reduced his discovery to practical use; that they also 
copy the mode and apparatus by which he creates and transmits the undulatory 
electrical vibrations, corresponding to those ‘of the air. 


On August 25, 1883, the opinion of Judge Lowell on final hearing 
was delivered in part as follows: 


I decided in American Bell Telephone Co. v. Spencer, 8 Fed. Rep. 509, that 
Reis had not described a telephone which anticipated Bell’s invention. The same 
point has since been decided in the same way in England. United Telephone Co. 
v. Harrison, 21 Ch. D. 720. It is admitted in the present case that the Reis 
instrument, if used as he intended to use it, can never serve as a speaking tele- 
phone, because the current of electricity is constantly broken; and it is essential 
for the transmission of speech that the current should not be broken. The de- 
fendant (Dolbear) now testifies that the Reis instrument can be made to trans- 
mit speech, under some circumstances, if operated in the way which Bell has 
shown to be necessary. In 1877, he several times expressed the opinion that 
Bell made the invention, and that Reis did not make it. The experiment made in 
the presence of counsel, which was intended to prove the correctness of the de- 
fendant’s present opinion, was an utter failure... . At the former hearing in 
this case before Mr. Justice Gray and me, we decided that the defendant (Dol- 
bear), whatever the merits of his telephone may be, employs in it a part, at 
least, of Bell’s process. No additional evidence has been given at the final hear- 
ing, unless a further explanation of that already given may be called additional; 
and I remain of the opinion expressed by the presiding justice at that time. 


Telephone men were not alone in their realization that self-preser- 
vation lay in concentration. For financiers were beginning to per- 
ceive the wisdom in the original plan of one great company, to also 
realize how dependent the future growth and development of the 
industry was on a centralized policy, and to foresee that the product 
of unity in purpose, in method, in management, would be serviceable 
to users and profitable to investors. It was already evident that 
telephone service had come to stay, that it was an important aid in 
the transaction of business in every line of industry, and that it was 
certain to have a revolutionizing effect on many phases of industrial, 
commercial, professional and social life. 

In its annual report for the fiscal year ending February 28, 1883, 
the parent Bell company said: 


From the local companies throughout the country the reports are encour- 
aging. Most of them are now earning and paying dividends, and extending their 
business with energy. An important feature has been the consolidation of local 
telephone interests into large companies, covering many counties, and even in 
several instances the whole or the greater part of entire states. This policy has 


232 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


been assented to so far as its adoption seemed in the interest of convenient and 
economical management, but it should not be encouraged to an extent that 
would leave these companies entirely in the ownership of persons who are not 
residents in the territory where the business is carried on. It has always been 
our policy to keep local capital and influence interested in the business as far 
as possible, and to this course may probably be attributed a good part of the 
success which has attended the development of the business. 


A year later the parent company reiterated the foregoing con- 
clusions concerning care in consolidating companies and added: 
In spite of the prevailing opinion that the development of the telephone substan- 
tially under one control is against public interest, we believe that an intelligent 
examination of this question would demonstrate that this is not true and that 


in no other way could the desired results be obtained and the difficulties be 
surmounted so rapidly and so well as by the present one. 


Like the previous year, 1883 was a year of mergers; and when this 
two-year period closed, the number of Bell companies had been reduced, 
through absorption or consolidation, from several hundred to less 
than one hundred, and the parent company was gradually getting into 
a position where it could strongly influence the policy that should 
prevail. 

In some states practically all the exchanges were absorbed by one 
strong company; in other states three or four companies aided in 
bringing about the consolidation, and then divided the territory. For 
instance, in the summer of 1882 the daily papers told how: 

New York and Philadelphia capitalists are visiting various sections of Penn- 
sylvania with a view to consolidate all local telephone companies between New 


York and Pittsburgh into one general organization, with main offices in New 
York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. 


While the promoters failed in consummating so big an undertaking, 
their efforts paved the way for consolidations more limited in scope. 
In Massachusetts a combination known as the Lowell syndicate was 
quite successful in consolidating many exchanges, some of which will 
be more fully referred to in a following chapter. 

Referring to the numerous consolidations of small local licensee 
companies into new organizations chartered to work on broader plans, 
the parent Bell company in its annual report for 1883 stated that: 


the tendency towards consolidation of telephone companies noticed in our last 
report has continued and is for the most part in the interest of economical and 
convenient handling of the business. .. . As methods are devised for making 
the telephone commercially useful over long lines, the advantages of this cen- 
tralization of management will be still more apparent, as well as the importance 
to the public of having the business done in large territories under one re- 
sponsible head, with far-reaching connections throughout the whole country. 
To make this service of the highest value io the people will be complicated 
enough under one control. Were it in the hands of many competing companies, 
the confusion resulting would be very serious, as the value of the telephone will 
be largely measured by its capacity to give prompt connection with all parts 
of the country. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 233 


The parent company also held that the securities issued by its 
operating companies ought to represent legitimate values, not specu- 
lative or estimated values based on what the plant might earn in the 
future; that the intrinsic value of the telephone securities should be 
made clearly apparent to investors, and that the established integrity 
of the investment should be maintained by providing ample sinking- 
funds and reserves to cover every contingency. Its expressed policy 
was: 


to encourage payment of dividends by local companies with a view to getting 
local influence and capital interested in telephones, but it never encouraged the 
payment of dividends except when earned. 


Such conservative methods were not in accord with the sentiments 
of speculators who preferred to experiment with the credulity of 
thoughtless investors, so long as such experiments yielded rich profits. 
The people believed the newspaper stories about the fabulous profits 
small telephone exchanges were deriving from limited investments. 
Then why destroy such honest beliefs by presenting cold facts? Con- 
solidation of exchanges was a good thing; it meant large profits for the 
promoters. 

When these local exchanges were transferred to the management 
of the new organization, it was quickly perceived that many sub- 
scribers were receiving service at rates involving constant loss to the 
company, as already stated. An increase in rates naturally followed, 
which, in turn, resulted in some of these low-rate subscribers discon- 
tinuing the use of the service. Sometimes from 25 to 50 per cent. of 
the subscribers to these consolidated exchanges would drop out, and 
the loss in the income anticipated from these subscribers upset many 
plans. For most of these new organizations, in expectation of being 
able to readily dispose of the new securities, had proceeded to recon- 
struct the old plants absorbed with a view to giving a higher class of 
service and of promptly and properly handling a large increase in the 
number of subscribers. 'To meet the indebtedness thus incurred it was 
necessary either to sell shares of stock at a price considerably lower 
than the authorized price, or else to settle the indebtedness with the 
funds set aside for dividend payments, and in lieu of cash payments 
to shareholders to issue stock dividends. Again, this inability to 
raise the funds necessary to make needed extensions and improvements 
and to keep pace with the growing demands of the public, meant that 
for an indefinite period the gross earnings must provide for all con- 
struction and reconstruction, as well as for the operating and main- 
tenance charges. In other words, in 1883-1886, until improved 
financial conditions permitted the sale of telephone securities at rea- 
sonable prices, growth and progress were necessarily limited within 
narrow lines that yielded sure returns to the holders of stock certifi- 
cates. 


234 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 


By NELLIE COMINS WHITAKER, 


SALEM, MASS. 


N a paper, ‘Alumna’s Children,’ published in this magazine in 
May, 1904, the wish was expressed that some one might determine 
how far ‘ the way in which our girls go to school’ governs their health 
in later life. This article is an attempt to consider that question. 
To any one familiar with all that has been written on the health of 
American women the subject must seem exhausted in one sense at least. 
As one reads the different monographs giving the cause of woman’s 
physical weakness, each writer dwelling upon some one condition which 
is of itself entirely sufficient in his opinion to overthrow her health, 
one can but think of the man who committed five murders and was con- 
demned to be put to death five times. Yet perhaps there is a word 
more to be said. A large proportion of the papers have discussed 
college students or adult women and almost every serious consideration 
of the health of the schoolgirl has been by a physician and necessarily 
from his point of view. A girl is more fully and more normally known 
to her mother and her teacher than to her doctor; they observe all 
the influences of her life as he can seldom do. For some reasons a 
wise mother would seem to be the one best fitted to speak on this 
matter; she should know more intimately than any one else the nature 
of her daughter. But the mother is limited to the conditions that have 
operated in her own family. ‘The daughter’s teacher learns the per- 
sonality of the individual girl with a thoroughness second only to that 
of the mother and she knows just as intimately scores of other girls 
who have grown up under vastly different conditions, so that she is 
able to draw general conclusions as the mother of one or two can not do. 
I have not come upon any full discussion of the health of our girls 
from the teacher’s point of view; it is this that I shall try to present. 
The delicacy of our American women, noted abroad and admitted 
at home, is coming to be a tremendously vital question. The condition 
apparently is peculiar to no class and it appears in the second genera- 
tion of other nationalities immigrating here. Lack of fecundity is only 
one of its indications. Does it not seem to you that most of the women 
whom you know confess that they are ‘not very strong’? Nervous 
exhaustion and what the newspaper advertisements call ‘ womanly 
weaknesses’ are the most common ailments, but there seems to be in 
women far more often than in men a lack of general vitality, an 
inability to resist disease. 


THE HHALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 2K 


This state of affairs is generally admitted, but there is no evidence 
that it was nature’s original plan. On the contrary, there is reason 
to believe that the woman was meant to be quite as strong as the man; 
nature has ordained the hardest tasks for her, and has given her a 
wonderful equipment for them. Among primitive races the woman 
is fully the equal of the man in strength, his superior in endurance. 
Superior in endurance in certain respects she remains even under 
modern conditions, as dentists and surgeons bear testimony. But where 
has gone the vigor that she requires to meet the demands that life 
_ makes of her? Is it the schools and the teachers that are responsible 
for its loss? 

I was moved anew to thought on the subject by seeing last June 
the Ivy-day procession of a woman’s college and the next week the 
graduating exercises of a large high school. The college girls looked 
notably robust, sunburned as to cheeks and arms and hair, but attractive 
for their evident health. They seeemed far above the average Ameri- 
can women in their physical vigor and did not lead one to believe that 
a college education makes invalids. The girls in the high-school class 
—the man beside me, himself the father of one of them, expressed their 
appearance adequately though bluntly when he said, “ Those girls are 
a puny-looking lot.” The characterization was true of that class; is 
it true of the average high-school girl? Consider the question for your- 
self as you see in June the graduates of your local high school. And 
those before you are the fittest who have survived; they are very few 
in number compared with those who have dropped by the way. 

Ten years ago I read an unforgettable paper written by a high- 
school senior. She was a brilliant student who, maintaining the highest 
rank in her class, had done the preparation for Radcliffe, but had given 
up any hope of a college course because she was completely broken in 
health. Her essay was a scathing arraignment of our public-school 
course ; I have been trying ever since to determine how far it was just. 

Discussion of the health of the students in women’s colleges is 
always a popular subject ; has due attention been given to the physical 
condition of the young girls in the public schools? The public schools 
are of course immeasurably more important than the colleges. From 
the beginning of our national life great sacrifices have been made for 
the maintenance of our schools, sacrifices are still being made. They 
are expensive in money; in most of our towns no other appropriation 
is so large as that for education. They are also costly in the men and 
women that they use up, the teachers that they suck dry of health and 
strength and throw aside. The teachers seem to think that the work 
is worth their sacrifice; the tax-payers give ungrudgingly for their 
children. But if the physical vigor of the children or of a part of the 
children is one of the expenses of the public-school system, then popular 
education is costing too much. 


236 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The school system is a manufacturing plant and as such its effi- 
ciency is properly judged by its output—that is, its graduates. These 
are subject to physical examination as properly as to mental examina- 
tion. ‘The boys in the last years of the high school seem encouragingly 
robust. They usually take a little lower rank in their classes than do 
the girls, but, as they would themselves express it, they do their work 
“well enough’ and when their lessons are done they have supplies of 
unexpended energy. In athletics they show considerable endurance 
and many boys partly support themselves by working in shops and 
offices outside of school hours. In their own homes they prove active, 
hungry and without excess of nerves. 

The condition of the average girl is manifestly different. She 
appears to the casual observer anemic, flat-chested, round-shouldered 
and out of symmetry, and a member of her family knows that she is 
fickle of appetite, regularly subject to headaches, nervous and irri- 
table. Some of the girls are frivolous, devoted to ‘society’ and to 
trashy novels; the average is conscientious about her work and almost 
morbidly painstaking. She worries over every lesson until it is pre- 
pared as well as she can do it, probably after that because it is not done 
as well as some one else could do it. Her study—and her worry— 
exhaust her and any other work is a burden. At best she needs complete 
rest after graduation; at worst she joins, perhaps for life, the ranks 
of the women who are not strong. A large number of pupils leave the 
high-school before completing their course. More boys than girls drop 
out, it is true, but the boys go to earn a living or because they have not 
met the requirements of the school. The girl very often goes by her 
physician’s advice. 

If we consult a doctor for an ailing high-school girl he makes a 
diagnosis and a prescription almost at sight—“ over-study ; take her out 
of school.” Often he does not find it necessary to inquire about any 
other habits of hers except her habit of study. But is her going to 
school the chief factor in the girl’s breaking down? If so, things were 
better managed in the days of our grandmothers when no girl had 
much public schooling after she was fourteen years old. 

If a girl breaks down under a course of study on which a boy 
thrives does it indicate that she has less mental power? We dislike to 
admit it and the experience of our teachers does not in general indi- 
cate it. Why should we attribute the widely different result to the one 
thing that is exactly alike for both sexes? Brother and sister come into 
the world with the same mental and physical heritage. The girl in- 
herits tendencies of body and mind from her father quite as much as 
from her mother. The boy and the girl have the same food and the 
same course of study. At the high-school age the development of heart 
and lung and brain is at about the same stage in both sexes; the girl 
is a little nearer to her adult weight and height. What circumstances 


THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 237 


of their lives have been different for them? When do they begin to 
show differences in themselves? From a very early age there have been 
certain differences—in clothes, in occupation and in recreation, but 
these have manifestly been superficial and insufficient to account for 
the contrast. Very little difference appears between the sexes until 
they are nearly through the grammar school. Then a great change 
comes to the girl. “ My daughter has become a woman” is the phrase 
which our grandmothers used to describe the epoch; and far as the 
callow, fourteen-year-old maiden seems from womanhood, the term is 
the exact expression of a vital truth. 

It is at this very beginning of woman-life that especial attention is 
needed. We know that the boy who is overworked before he gets his 
growth is always an undersized man; just as surely a girl who is over- 
worked physically or mentally during her period of puberty is always 
an undeveloped woman. And mental overwork is fully as injurious 
as physical overwork. 

To speak plainly, the maturing girl must have blood and vitality 
to perfect the organs essential to her complete being and to establish 
regularly the periodic function characteristic of her sex. She must do 
these things at the time appointed. If she must choose between 
developing mind or body let her by all means choose nourishment for 
her physical growth. The mental expansion can come later, but the 
physical perfecting has no second chance. If there is lack of develop- 
ment or unbalanced development at this time she is pretty sure to endure 
suffering for the best part of her life. From careful investigation of 
the physical condition of a large number of girls it has been found 
that from “65 to 70 per cent. enter the higher institutions of learn- 
ing and business with menstrual suffering of some sort.” In some occu- 
pations the rate of suffering is as high as 91 per cent. 

And the girl may be called upon to bear other sorrows harder than 
pain for a woman to endure. The injury from arrested development 
may not appear at once, though flat chest and narrow hips may suggest 
it; but when life demands of the woman that she do a woman’s work 
she is unequal to it and is broken down in her attempt. Dame Nature, 
herself the representative mother, has her own idea of the function of 
women in the scheme of things. When they are fulfilling her purposes 
she gives them marvelous protection, but woe to those who try to stand 
against her! 

Just as soon, then, as signs of change appear in the girl she should 
have especial care. To quote from Dr. Engelmann, “She should have 
personal talk and explanation from a woman who has learned the mean- 
ing of wifehood and maternity.” To supplement from President Hall, 
“The quality of motherhood has nowhere a more crucial test than in 
meeting the needs of this epoch.” In general the girl should have at 
this time no mental or nervous strain to divert nourishment from her 


238 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


physical development. At best, if she is strong, does her work without 
worry and “ normalizes her lunar month” promptly, she may stay in 
school without much danger provided she take her two days of rest 
periodically. JI am inclined to believe that this is in all cases worth 
while until the end of the high-school course, although it is always 
impracticable to make general rules. A number of women who consider 
themselves perfectly well so far as sex weakness is concerned have told 
me that they believe their health due to their year of complete rest at 
puberty and that they did not find the need of monthly rest after the 
first years. 

I am coming to be convinced, somewhat against my wish, that there 
are many cases when the girl ought to be taken out of school entirely 
for some months or for a year at the period of puberty. This course 
is supremely worth while if she shows irregularity of function or 
decreasing vitality, and it is at this time that there is profit in such 
an especial vacation. 

I do not speak with ill-considered lightness of taking the girl out 
of school for a year. It is a serious matter to her at a time when she 
is likely to take all her life too seriously and when she should feel as 
free as possible from annoyance. She is naturally disturbed at leaving 
her class, especially if she is likely thereby to lose a grade. It is 
worth while to take considerable pains to minimize her distress. If she 
enjoys a pleasant visit out of town until the term is well under way, 
then returns to private lessons with her mother or some other wise 
teacher, lessons determined in time and length by her physical con- 
dition, she may endure her enforced vacation from public school without 
much fretting. The anxieties of this period ought to be borne for her 
as far as possible; that she should become anxious about her own health 
would defeat the very end in view. She can be assured that days out 
of school now are pretty sure to remove the necessity of days or weeks 
or months out of school later in her course. Similarly two days out 
of school every month the first year that she is in the high school in 
order that she may not suffer are really much better worth while than 
two days out of school the last of the course because she is not able to 
be present. These days of rest are not in the least incompatible with 
good work in school; a girl so cared for may be expected to accom- 
plish more in a year than she who has no such restraint. Mothers 
protest again and again that such a custom is entirely incompatible 
with modern school demands, but I have never known a teacher to say 
that it was not quite practicable, and I have seen school work done under 
this régime to the entire satisfaction of all concerned. It is perhaps 
worth while to record here the questions of one grammar-school teacher 
—“ Why will not mothers tell me when the critical period begins for 
their daughters? Many times I can determine for myself, but in general 
I could make things so much easier for the girls if I could only know 
when they need especial indulgence.” 


THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 239 


No, the objection to periodical rest does not come from the teacher 
nor primarily from the mother, but from the girl herself. Yet if our 
thoughtful mothers could be convinced that “ the health of a girl for her 
whole life depends upon her normalizing the lunar month,” to employ 
a phrase of President Hall’s that I have quoted before, they would 
bring about the best order of things. But most mothers honestly believe 
that no great care is necessary. They expect their daughters to get 
along about as well as they did and they suppose that about so much 
pain is necessary for women. Mothers could hardly escape being con- 
vinced of the great responsibility that is upon them at this time if all 
the evidence that exists on the subject could be brought to their at- 
tention. 

It is undoubtedly true that each month in a woman’s life is a con- 
tinuous wave with a regularly recurring succession of phases and this 
continuity of change makes an ingenious argument that a woman does 
not need especial rest at any particular time of the month. But my 
own observation would have convinced me that it is supremely worth 
while to guard an adolescent girl from nervous strain during the days 
when the wave of her vitality is at its lowest point even if physicians 
and educators had not spoken so strongly in favor of the custom. 
Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, in the monograph which she wrote to show 
that there is nothing in the physical nature of the adult woman to 
incapacitate her periodically for work, says nevertheless, “In adoles- 
cence and during the first years that the reproductive wave of nutrition 
is being formed mental work exacted in excess of the capacity of the 
individual may seriously derange the nutrition”; and elsewhere in the 
same paper she says, “It is curious to note how the effects of misery 
and the effects of luxury during the childhood of a girl are found so 
often to result in an identical mode of stunting during adolescence.” 

Much that has been written on the subject of puberty in girls has 
been printed only in medical and educational journals. Perhaps some 
women of delicacy may say that the discussion of such a matter is 
properly confined to medical journals. To a certain extent this is un- 
doubtedly true; the trouble is that the average mother does not have 
easy access to those files. Therefore it seems worth while to quote at 
some length in this paper. 

The idea that a girl needs especial care at her time of maturing is 
not a new fad of educators. In the time of Hippocrates it was noted 
that the period of puberty was very critical for the development of the 
nervous system. The rites enjoined by Moses provided for the care of 
the girl at this crisis and a similar provision appears in the code of 
Zoroaster. Savage nations to-day prescribe and protect by their super- 
stitions definite observances for the woman at every period of her sex- 
life from the beginning to the end. ‘The women of the North Amer- 
ican Indians, always regarded chiefly in reference to their utility, 


240 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


nevertheless have assured to them by custom from three to five days 
every month so long as the monthly law rules them. 

With the present increased attention to the study of preventive 
medicine, students of gynecology have come to believe that the diseases 
of women are in good part due to their “ignorance of functional 
hygiene.” In 1901 Doctor Engelmann gave as his president’s address 
at the annual meeting of the American Gynecological Society a paper, 
“The American Girl of To-day,” which entirely covers this subject from 
the physician’s point of view. In brief his opinion as there expressed 
is: “Adolescence is the most important period of a woman’s life, the 
period during which the foundations of future health are laid. It is 
in this period of school, the beginning of social life, the period of learn- 
ing in trades that the nervous energies of the female are most fully 
engaged and her activity is concentrated on the brain to the detriment 
of other functions, above all the developing sexual function, the central 
and most important and at that time the most easily disturbed.” 

Dr. Wylie has expressed his opinion that “the American horse re- 
ceives on the average better treatment than the young women of 
America from the time of early girlhood until the age of development 
is passed.” 

President Clark and Professor Tyler have studied systems of educa- 
tion with especial reference to the physical development of children. In 
his book ‘ Adolescence,’ President Hall devotes a long chapter to the 
subject of ‘ Periodicity.’ He is himself convinced that the health of 
a woman for her whole life is determined in her days of adolescence, 
and he cites so many witnesses, ancient and modern, learned and 
savage, that the most unbelieving reader can but be convinced while 
she reads. 

Professor Tyler, as a student of biology and education, has consid- 
ered what bearing the laws of growth have upon the proper arrange- 
ment of courses of study. In his lectures on ‘The Physical Basis of 
Education’ given last winter in Boston before the Twentieth Century 
Club he said, concerning the development of girls during their school 
years, “ At the critical period of puberty almost every organ in the 
girl’s body is affected. [The girl’s] pubertal period is much more 
likely to be stormy than the boy’s and her rate of morbidity is consid- 
erably higher. Her future health and happiness, if not her life, de- 
pend upon the successful completion of the metamorphosis.” 

A valuable addition to our knowledge of schoolgirls has been made 
by Dr. Helen Kennedy. She collected statistics of the habits and the 
health of girls from a large city high school; her article includes her 
questions and the answers of the students, so that we may draw our 
own conclusions. We note that while nearly all the girls report them- 
selves as growing no worse during their high-school course, 97 out of 
the 125 say that they suffer to a greater or less degree. All Dr. Ken- 


THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 241 


nedy’s results are interesting and full of suggestion, and much light 
upon the health of our women would come from further investigations 
along these lines. From her data and that of others, it is to be noted 
that most girls between sixteen and twenty suffer more or less; and 
that alike for students and working girls the percentage of sufferers 
increases during that time. 

My belief that most girls have the foundation of their suffering 
laid before they are sixteen may be unwarranted, but I have found no 
data that contradict it. Quoting again from Professor Tyler, “The 
critical period in a girls life is evidently the years between ten and 
fifteen, earlier than most of us think. Most of our care and thought 
is devoted to locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen.” 
And once more, in the phrase of Dr. Engelmann, “the younger the 
girl, the nearer the period of puberty, the more impressionable the 
system, the more susceptible to influence for good or evil and most 
harm is wrought in the first year of functional life.” I quote much 
from Dr. Engelmann, but where can I find better authority, especially 
in this particular phase of gynecology ? 


I have given a large part of my discussion of the health of our girls 
to a consideration of the demands of sex at adolescence, but perhaps 
this extent in treatment is not disproportionate to its importance in 
their lives. When a girl is safely guided “through the breakers of 
puberty ” we have some reason to expect for her life-long vigor and the 
power to do. But she needs also through the rest of her school days 
intelligent direction in other respects. It sometimes seems to the 
teacher that she does not get quite as much as she needs. 

The teacher is expected to see all that goes on in the schoolroom;, 
in addition to this she does see evidences of a great many things that 
go on outside the schoolroom, things which, though they largely affect 


the results of her work, she has little power to modify. The personal > 


habits of a girl determine to a great extent what she is able to gain 
from her course of study. If it is important that her nourishment be 
directed at all times to the most immediate needs of her body, surely it 
is no less important that there should be sufficient nourishment to 
satisfy these needs. 

Every girl knows that this sufficiency of nourishment is impossible 
unless she assimilates plenty of food, but she does not always make her 
knowledge evident in her habits. Very often the high-school teacher 
is asked to excuse from the session, on account of headache, some girl 
who admits when questioned that she has eaten no breakfast that 
morning. It is possible for the teacher to point out to the girl the 
folly of starting a locomotive for a day’s run without providing fuel, 
but the girl must have some pressure brought to bear upon her at home 
if she is to take sufficient time for her meals. Insufficient breakfast is 

VOL. LXxI.—16. 


242 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


often due to late rising; if the girl has not time enough to dress and to 
eat, it is not the dressing that is hurried. 

With the usual five-hour high-school session the girl needs at recess 
a proper luncheon. If the school has a lunch counter where only suit- 
able food is provided, then it is well, but in case the luncheon comes 
from home the teacher often wonders whether the mothers are accessory 
to the mince and lemon pies and the fruit cakes that make the daughters 
unfit for study. At the end of the long session the girl comes home 
with little appetite or power of digestion. In a working-man’s family 
dinner was served more than an hour before, and the plateful of food 
that has been kept warm for the daughter is hardly palatable; prob- 
ably she makes her meal chiefly out of the dessert. It is tremendously 
worth while for the mother to preside personally at this meal of her 
daughter and always to have tempting, nourishing and easily digestible 
food ready for her when she comes home from school. 

The blame for a high-school girl’s dyspepsia is often attributed to 
the one-session system; and under that system a bad order of things 
is easy, aS we have seen. On the other hand, with one session very 
much better conditions are possible than with two if the best use is 
made of the time out of school. It ought to be possible for the greater 
part of the pupils to work under better conditions at home than in 
most schoolrooms; and when they are in school until four there is 
little time for being out of doors in the sunlight during most of the 
school year. 

The girl who is insufficiently nourished craves abnormal things and 
eats sweets and sours in unsuitable proportions. With all these sins 
against her digestion much of her food is not assimilated. Very often 
the waste is not properly eliminated; the girl does not realize that this 
condition is a menace to her health and so her whole system is poisoned. 
Constipation is a disease and the cause of many others; it is entirely 
incompatible with perfect health or good work in school. 

At least one strong article has been written—by a physician—to 
maintain that women’s mode of dress is a sufficient cause of all their 
physical distress. Undoubtedly it has been responsible for great injury, 
though present conditions are much improved, so far as tight or long 
clothing is concerned. We appreciate, however, that women are still 
handicapped when we see how their ordinary clothing hampers them 
in gymnastic work. Just at present school girls expose themselves to 
the cold in a way unsuitable to this climate. Even in winter they go 
to school bareheaded, in lingerie waists with light undergarments, cot- 
ton hose and low shoes. The toughening process is valuable to a cer- 
tain extent, but such exposure as this means an expensive strain upon 
vitality. School girls are notably careless of wet clothing and wet feet. 
Mothers have difficulty in persuading them to overshoes and rain-coats, 
and teachers find them unwilling to go home when skirts and stockings 


THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 243 


are wet through. To sit in wet clothing is dangerous even for an adult 
woman. 

This paper is intended to deal especially with those elements of a 
girl’s life that are detrimental to her health, yet are usually overlooked. 
It is hardly necessary to include much discussion of the need of sleep. 
Every one understands that a girl needs about nine hours of sleep in 
pure air. At present there is a general enthusiasm among young people 
for outdoor air. If they do not take sufficient sleep it is not because 
they do not know the need of it. 

The recreation of a girl ought to do something toward her re- 
creation, not leave her more exhausted than all her work. But those 
who have studied the physical development of the girl tell us that the 
excitement and nervous strain of society and late hours are much more 
exhausting than hard study for a young girl. This does not mean that 
she should give all her time to her lessons, only that her amusement be 
something less wearing than study. She ought to have good times, 
she is the better for parties if they are limited to reasonable hours and 
to suitable companions. One element of a high-school girl’s life which 
is seldom mentioned, but is often noted by her teacher, is the detriment 
that comes to her from social intercourse with those who are a few years 
older than she, especially with older men. Ifa girl spends one or two 
evenings a week in the cultivation of such friendships as these and reads 
a romantic novel every week it is to slight profit that she spends the 
rest of her time “over her books.” It is pretty nearly impossible for 
her to concentrate her mind on her work. 

It is a very common criticism that there is too much social life in 
the school itself. It is admitted, at least in this country, that children 
need some amusements. Jf other social distractions could be omitted 
what could give a school girl more harmless pleasure than the class 
dances and parties, under the direction of a teacher-chaperone, parties 
that include only people of her own age and experience and that close 
at a proper hour? 

A girl’s real re-creation is her out-of-door sports and she should 
receive every encouragement to those that she most enjoys. The imple- 
ments of such sports—golf-sticks, tennis racquets, boats and skates— 
are better investments for parents’ money than even pretty clothes, if 
there must be a choice of expenditures. Housework is one of the best 
possible forms of exercise if done in well-ventilated rooms; it might be 
profitably taught by mothers under the name of physical culture. 

Music study is, I believe, hardly to be classed as a recreation, even 
though it happens that the pupil enjoys it so much that it does not 
appear a burden. It is mental work requiring close attention, memory 
and some eye strain. It makes about the same demands as an extra 
course in school, and if it seems best for the girl to continue much 
piano-prictise during the term, she should take five years for her high- 


244 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


school course. {ften a collapse in school that seems inexplicable to 
the teachers is due to a pupil’s adding an hour or two a day of piano- 
practise to an already full school course. It is worth while for the girl 
to take music lessons during the summer if she is within reach of 
piano and teacher ; the discipline and regularity are a good thing during 
these weeks of complete freedom. 

Many pupils suffer from eye-strain; every possible care should be 
taken at home to minimize this, both for the sake of the eyes and for 
the direct influence upon the mind and temperament. Study before 
breakfast is very likely to aggravate eye-strain; if there must be early 
study the pupil should bathe her eyes in cool water and take some food, 
that the congestion of the eyes may be relieved. A proper light lessens 
the fatigue of the eyes. By day the student should not face the window 
and at night her lamp should have an opaque shade. Often the change 
from a white to a dark-green shade relieves long-continued pain in 
the eyes. 

Reference has been made to a girl’s spending time “ over her books,” 
and the phrase is sometimes especially accurate. Instructors of college 
freshmen complain that boys and girls go through preparatory school 
without having learned how to study. The teachers may be responsible 
for a part of this, but there are some conditions that the most devoted 
teacher can not govern. She can regulate a pupil’s work in school, but 
when much of the study must be done at home the home must help in 
establishing good habits of work. A student needs a well-lighted work- 
room reasonably free from interruption. It is not necessary that the 
window have an extended outlook; a girl is likely to establish herself 
for her afternoon’s study where she can get a wide view of the street. 
With a little attention the daughter of the house may be helped by her 
surroundings at home to a concentration upon the work at hand that 
will lessen marvelously the hours that she must spend with her books 
and give her more time for recreation. 

Elements internal and external, elements physical and mental, have 
been treated together in this discussion and inevitably so, for they are 
almost indistinguishably interwoven in the life of the girl. How much 
her health of body depends upon her health of mind no one can venture 
to say. One feminine characteristic becomes especially evident in the 
adolescent maiden which has considerable influence upon her health. 
This is the narrowness of mind that causes her to give undue impor- 
tance to really minor elements of her life. She comes to believe that 
there are only two or three things in the world that are really impor- 
tant; if she is an only child she may decide that there is only one. 
It is undoubtedly desirable that a girl stand well in her class and wear 
attractive gowns, but there are other things just as essential. When 
she sees that it is worth while to hold fast to “a taste for simple pleas- 
ures ” and to promote the happiness of her family and community, and 


THE HHALTH OF AMERICAN GIRLS 245 


supremely worth while to make herself an able woman physically, she 
is well on the way to the attainment of a poise of mind essential to her 
health and to her breadth of thought. Much of her narrowness may 
be eliminated by the public school and that very effective education 
which a child’s companions supply. But there are certain chambers of 
a maiden’s mind especially suitable for her mother’s furnishing; in the 
most intimate relations of a girl’s life she must naturally find her 
direction at home. 

And is not this the conclusion of the whole matter? Undoubtedly 
the girl does need “the complementary wisdom of school and home,” 
and sometimes when every precaution is taken at home the school work 
may be too hard for the girl at some particular time. In this case the 
parents must lay the matter before the teachers; in some way the work 
must be lessened, so that a growing girl does not come through each 
week exhausted. But in most cases it is found that it is not the work 
that exhausts. 

The American girl needs the public school. She needs it for its 
democratic influence, really a powerful element in the mutual under- 
standing between women, which alone can solve the “ servant problem ” ; 
she needs the acquaintance with boys of her own age which banishes 
sentimentality; she needs the broadening influence of men-teachers. 
Tt does not seem on the whole that there are many points in which the 
school can do more for the girl than it is doing; it is not in general 
conditions that she needs more consideration. For it is true that “ the 
teacher has to deal with the average; the parent must accommodate the 
particular,” and that “it is to the parent that the child must look for 
his (and her) individual protection and care.” 

In brief, as soon as a girl comes to manifest her difference of sex, 
she needs especial and intelligent protection at home to free her from 
strain mental and physical. And when her health and future fulness 
of life are thus established, they must be guarded by continued oversight 
of her food and clothing and exercise and recreation and sleep. Her 
mental and nervous strength must be conserved by guiding her into 
orderly ways of thought in the personal and intimate matters that obvi- 
ously do not belong to the public school. When these elements of her 
life are properly administered at home the American girl can in or- 
dinary cases complete the course of study in the public schools without 
injury to her health. 

The articles to which especial reference has been made are: 

“Rest during Menstruation”: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi. 

“The American Girl of To-day ”: Dr. George J. Engelmann. 

Article in New York World: Dr. W. Gill Wylie. 

“ Adolescence”: President G. Stanley Hall. 

“ Effect of High-school Work on Girls during Adolescence”: Dr. 
Helen Kennedy. 


246 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


SOME ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 


By PROFESSOR FREDERICK E. BOLTON 


STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA 


aA be economical of one’s powers makes for efficiency ; to be prodigal, 
makes for inefficiency. To be efficient in life is the highest ethics. 
To be inefficient because of prodigality is to be immoral. 

It will be observed that in this discussion I follow the Aristotelian 
conception of ethics as a practical science, rather than as a theoretical 
science. The object of the discussion is to consider certain modes of 
mental life, to evaluate them, and to offer a few guiding suggestions 
for the proper conduct of life. 

Professor Paulsen has compared this view of ethics with the science 
of medicine, which he says, “instructs us to solve the problems of 
corporeal life, to the end that the body may perform all its functions 
in a healthy manner during its natural existence; while ethics, basing 
itself on the knowledge of human nature in general, especially of its 
spiritual and social side, aims to solve all the problems of life so that 
it may reach its fullest, most beautiful and most perfect development. 
We might, therefore,” he concludes, “ call ethics universal dietetics, to 
which medicine, and all the other technologies, like pedagogy, politics, 
etc., are related as special parts, or as auxiliary sciences.” (“ A System 
of Ethics,” p. 2.) The purpose of ethics, then, is “to determine the 
end of life, or the highest good, and to point out the way or the 
means of realizing it.” 

This much by way of definition is given preliminary to my discus- 
sion of mental economy as a phase of ethics, in order to justify my 
treatment when I seem to digress from the immediate consideration of 
right and wrong and to discuss questions which might properly be also 
catalogued under pedagogy or mental hygiene. 

All will agree that no life is most nobly lived unless it has secured 
the complete unfoldment of the richest inheritances bequeathed by 
ancestry ; unless it has appropriated environment in such a way as to 
secure the limits of individual advancement; unless it has rendered 
the utmost possible service to society. To fail in these particulars is 
to be prodigal and uneconomical. ‘To be uneconomical is to be un- 
ethical. The world is full of work to be done, problems to be solved, 
which are of proportions never before assumed. 'To meet these duties 
and responsibilities requires the highest products of intellectual eyolu- 
tion, keen and broad sympathies, and vigorous, sustained will-impulses. 

To live completely and ethically, every one should accomplish more 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 247 


than his parents. This means not only that he should secure more 
tangible results, but that he should develop and expend more force than 
his ancestors. Each one stands on the shoulders of the past and may 
utilize all the accumulations of the past. In order to accomplish more 
than our forefathers, it is absolutely necessary, however, to husband our 
forces. But with the increase of potentialities, we must also reckon 
with the fact of the manifold additional ways inviting and exciting to 
depletion of powers. As an illustration, let us note the excessive stimu- 
lation to which the eye is subjected. In our present civilization we 
have come to depend more and more upon vision. The strain upon the 
eye in gaining knowledge of the objective realities about us has been 
increased a thousandfold by modern modes of travel. In addition, we 
must use the eye to interpret language symbols about myriads of things 
inaccessible to personal inspection. Primitive man had only a narrow 
range of things to see, and those usually at some distance. Hence he 
knew not of eye strain resulting from the microscopic scrutiny of a vast 
kaleidoscopic scene. Formerly man could deliberate in seeing the few 
things within his range. But now he becomes a globe-trotter, com- 
pacting into a few weeks the view of scores of nations, vast expanses of 
country, the collections of ages, and the unceasing activities of the 
heterogeneous throng. 

In a week’s jaunt and doing a world’s fair, present-day man sees 
more and hears more, than was possible in a whole lifetime, a century 
ago. Besides these activities the eye is made to do duty in reading the 
twenty-four-page daily, the forty-eight-page Sunday edition, in scan- 
ning a half-dozen weeklies, going through a cartload of magazines, 
to say nothing of all the latest books which one is supposed to read. 

The ear is equally assailed with the ceaseless hum of voices, door 
bells, telephone calls, whir of the trolley, the shriek and clang of the 
locomotive, the maddening grind of the sleeping car or the twin-screw 
steamer (upon which we take our vacation rest!), the deafening roar of 
the factory, the clatter of galloping hoofs and rattle of wheels over 
paved streets. Even at night we must be assailed, business must not 
stand still, goods must be sent by return mail, limited trains must 
outdo lightning specials. Even on Sundays we are not permitted 
to listen to restful sermons—they must be such as to give rise to 
glaring head-lines, and the music is often of ear-splitting pitch. 

The first and foremost great law of mental dietetics that should be 
impressed early and often is that one long ago stated by Juvenal, viz, 
mens sana in corpore sano. Every parent and every teacher should 
understand that the first business of the child is to become a good 
animal; childhood years should be largely vegetative. His primal in- 
heritance is physical. To have big lungs, firm muscles, elastic step, 
ruddy cheeks and scintillating, unspectacled eyes, and every sense alert, 
at the close of youth are priceless possessions with which a knowledge 


248 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of algebraic formule and a few dates in history are not to be com- 
pared. For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world of 
knowledge and have not physical power to use it? 

Not only is a sound body an absolutely necessary correlate of a 
sound mind, but mental processes themselves are incomplete without 
muscular accompaniments. How vague would be our ideas of walk- 
ing, talking, writing, painting, molding and chiseling without the 
muscular accompaniments. You can not even think hard of a word 
without involuntarily moving the muscles. Try it sometime by open- 
ing the mouth and thinking the word bobbin, bubble, ete. So-called 
‘mind reading,’ table turning, the planchette, all illustrate the same 
fact. 

Again, the body possesses all the gateways to the soul through 
which all knowledge of the outside world must come. Close the eyes, 
stop the ears, and deaden all the other sense-organs and the child is 
mindless—an idiot. Finally, no message can issue from the mind, 
nothing of its workings can be revealed and no control of the world 
forces be secured, save through the medium of physical organs—the 
muscles. 

Consequently, to secure the highest mental efficiency we must give 
due consideration to bodily culture. Any education which disregards 
this is a failure. Every student should have sufficient food, adequate 
sleep, proper exercise, abundant recreation and in every way seek to 
promote bodily vigor. 

The Socratic doctrine of innate ideas has been responsible for many 
pedagogical sins. Socrates taught that the business of teaching was to 
draw out these inborn ideas. The middle-age ascetics went so far as 
to assert that spiritual development could be best furthered by bodily 
torture. Consequently, in order to elevate the mind they strove to 
devise tortures to crucify the flesh. We read of their fasting, eating 
inappropriate foods, going barefooted and otherwise scantily clad in 
the dead of winter, wearing hair shirts with the hair inside; bathing in 
ice-cold springs in winter, sitting on sharp nails, assuming unnatural 
and extremely uncomfortable postures for months at a time, binding 
the body with ligatures, loading the body with weights, living in filth, 
going without sleep and working all day and all night, ete. Simeon 
Stylites is said to have lived for forty years chained on the top of a 
high pillar and Macarius slept for months in a marsh, exposing his 
naked body to the stings of venomous flies, in the misguided notion 
that the greater the bodily penance the more exalted the spirit be- 
came. In fact they tried to devise every possible means of excruciating 
torture of body in the attempt to exalt mind. To this pernicious doc- 
trine of the relation between body and mind can be traced much of 
the long intellectual night of the middle ages. To it are directly 
traceable the beliefs in witchcraft, demonophobia, sorcery and the 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 249 


superstition that insane people were possessed of evil spirits. Pro- 
fessor Monroe (“ History of Education,” p. 248) says, “the virtue of 
the monk was often measured by his ingenuity in devising new and 
fantastic methods of mortifying the flesh—all these forms of dis- 
cipline were for the sake of spiritual growth, the moral betterment of 
the penitent: all these, as the very significance of the word asceticism 
indicates, reveal the dominant conception of education which prevailed 
throughout this long period,—the idea of discipline of the physical 
nature for the sake of growth in moral and spiritual power.” So 
long as the body was considered gross and evil and a mean tenement 
of clay from which the spirit should strive as soon as possible to escape, 
it was but natural that bodily care, and much less culture, should be 
considered unworthy objects of education. 

Sleep as a factor in student life does not receive adequate considera- 
tion from many students. The student who does not take regular and 
sufficient sleep is pilfering his own bank account. There is absolutely 
no substitute for it, and when once lost, restitution can not be made 
even by a nap in the class-room. Nervous tissues exhausted by a day’s 
activities can only be restored by sleep. Dr. Hall says that no child 
should be allowed to go to school without having had nine hours of 
sleep and a good breakfast. This would not be a bad rule to guide 
student life. Parties, athletic jaunts, examination crams, and even 
working for one’s living, which cause students to remain awake beyond 
the midnight hour, transgress all laws of mental and physical hygiene. 
There is doubtless no cause so frequently producing nervous breakdown 
as loss of sleep. Several former students who were pale and anemic 
while here have returned after a hard year’s teaching experience with 
ruddy complexion, increased weight and all the appearances of vigor- 
ous health. I have inquired concerning the change and have been 
answered, “I guess it is because I get enough sleep now.” 

The student who goes to college to become a hermit, not touching 
elbows with his college mates and developing no interests through 
hearing music, attending lectures on varied subjects, seeing nothing of 
the great busy world about him, misses a vital factor of college life. 
His procedure is uneconomical and therefore unethical, for when he 
emerges from the college halls into the busy, bustling world, he will 
find himself behind the procession. Because he has not seen the larger 
world while acquiring his book knowledge, he perceives no relation and 
often feels that the world is somehow out of joint because it does not 
conform to his bookish ways. To become efficient he must begin again 
and study the world about him. He must gain its view-point, adjust 
himself to it; he must now try to gain friendships which should have 
been established in college. All this is a wasteful, selfish process. 

On the other hand, some students need to be cautioned when they 
make the opposite and equally grave error of saying that “ My asso- 


250 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ciates teach me more than my books and class work.” Possibly they do, 
but it is not the fault of the books nor of the classes, nor any compli- 
ment to*the associates. He says, “I study men, not books.” This is 
sound, if rightly interpreted, but he should know that there are some 
men besides freshmen well worth knowing. Some of them can only 
be known by going to their books. He should learn to study indi- 
viduals as well as masses, the world’s teachers as well as his own 
classmates; he should look up as well as around. The college course 
is certainly a failure if it has not given the student lasting acquaint- 
anceships with a few superior students, some great men on its faculties, 
and many of the world’s intellectual élite, who can only be known 
through the pages of history and the great literatures of all ages. 
Great ideals which become guiding stars of one’s destiny should be 
clearly glimpsed. The great laws of science should have banished 
superstition forever from his mind and given him a new interpretation 
of universal development and history. Finally a clear conception of 
philosophical principles should act as a great balance wheel enabling 
him to interpret life and all its manifold activities. It is through 
books and master minds that the student should get meaning for all 
his varied observations and activities. To regard books and class work 
as inferior and something to be endured is to miss the whole point of 
a college education. Colleges are founded and maintained for the 
specific purpose of furnishing books and teachers, and all class work, 
once selected, should have the right of way. Student programs should 
not be so overloaded but that all the accessories may be duly em- 
phasized. Recreation as well as work should become a part of one’s 
religion. The gospel of relaxation needs evangelists as well as the 
gospel of work. 

It is important for the student to understand early the force and 
value of habit. Much time is lost by every one of us because our 
early training did not render automatic all those activities that we 
have to perform constantly and in the same way. Purely mechanical 
work can be controlled more economically by lower nervous centers than 
by higher. In childhood and youth the nervous system is plastic, a 
prime condition for memorizing and fixing habits. Among the habits 
that should become ingrained during this period are those of correct 
bodily postures and activities, correct speech, the multiplication table, 
spelling, writing, those involved in learning to speak foreign lan- 
guages, etc. Most habits are controlled by the spinal cord, which is 
early developed. Hence we should form habits early, so that the 
brain may be relieved later of mechanical work and be concerned with 
higher operations. As Dr. Balliet has observed, “ At first a child 
uses his brain in walking, later he can walk from habit and walks 
therefore with his spinal cord. As first we spell with painful con- 
sciousness, later we spell familiar words of our vocabulary with little 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 251 


or no consciousness. Children ought to be trained to write and spell 
mainly with the spinal cord, and use all their brain power in thinking 
the thoughts to be expressed. We do many things with the spinal cord 
to relieve the brain. We walk with the spinal cord, we write and 
spell with the cord; I suppose we knit and gossip with the spinal cord ; 
indeed we may sing and pray, not with our hearts, nor with our brains, 
but with the upper part of our spinal cords. We tip our hats to each 
other, not with our brains, but mainly with our spinal cords; when 
we meet people whom we do not wish to see, we often shake hands 
_ mechanically with our spinal cords—hence we speak of a ‘ cordial 
welcome.’ ” 

Not only do these elementary physical activities become automatic, 
but also processes of judging and reasoning must become largely 
mechanical before becoming serviceable. One’s thinking is largely 
specialized and judgment outside of the well-beaten track of thinking 
is not very valuable. The lawyer’s opinion concerning disease is slowly 
formed and unreliable; the doctor’s judgment about legal matters 
likewise is valueless. The expert in a given line is one who has studied 
widely and who can form instantaneous judgments because of the 
habitual consideration of the data. Difficult studies pursued through 
a long time until mastery is complete become as simple as the alphabet. 
Mathematicians become so familiar with the calculus that they read 
it for recreation when fatigued with other work. The lawyer can 
instantly cite scores of cases and precedents for which the tyro would 
have required hours to summon to the foreground of consciousness. 
Hence, when knowledge is to become usable it must be pondered long 
and every detail absolutely appropriated. To arrange work in such a 
way as to sustain interest through variety and at the same time dwell 
upon it until thoroughly comprehended and appropriated is high 
teaching art. The demands for variety frequently allure to new 
fields before assimilation has been effected. 

Even the will is much more a matter of habit than we usually think. 
It is too often regarded as a sort of psychological ghost which pursues 
us about, compelling us to do certain things and prohibiting us from 
doing certain other things. Every one is supposed by the popular mind 
to have at birth a will of unchangeable quality and quantity. This is 
absolutely incorrect. The child has impulses but is practically will- 
less. His will must grow and develop like any other powers. We use 
the will when we perform actions which we control. When we lack 
control, either muscular or mental, we lack will, or possess a diseased 
will. When a child can pick up a pin, thread a needle, tie a knot, walk 
without tottering, run, talk plainly, etc., he manifests definite mental 
and muscular control and therefore manifests voluntary power. 

Now these activities were only possible after long practise and the 
development of definite habits of activity. As Dr. Royce says, “ Our 


252 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


minds become full of impulses, of tendencies to action, of passions, 
and of concerns for what we take to be our welfare. All these im- 
pulses or concerns get woven by the laws of habit into systems of ruling 
motives which express themselves in our regular fashions of conduct. 
The whole of our inner life viewed in this aspect appears as the pur- 
posive side of our consciousness, or as the will, in the wider sense.” 
We even need to put new interpretation upon the meaning of the 
freedom of will. Freedom means power of choice, power of desire, but 
not necessarily power of execution. The life-long habits of every 
individual chain him down to certain types of action and it often takes 
long practise to break up fixed customs and habits of activities. This 
has its sad side and also its advantageous side. Were it not that we 
willed with all previous acts of willing, and were it not true that all 
our habits hold us to certain types of action, it would be impossible 
to predict what the individual might do on a given occasion. When 
we analyze the meaning of character, we find that it implies nothing 
more or less than the accumulated tendencies toward action in par- 
ticular directions. The man who has habitually acted in a righteous 
direction has built up tendencies toward righteousness. On the other 
hand, one who has sown a generous supply of wild oats in youth is sure 
to reap in old age an abundant harvest of viciousness. It could not 
be otherwise. We are enjoined in the Scriptures that ‘ whatsoever a 
man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ A prose-poet has stated that 
“we sow a thought and reap an act; we sow an act and reap a habit; 
sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny.” 
Professor Fullerton says that the old interpretation of absolute freedom 
would make this a melancholy world. In such a world of freedom no 
man could count upon himself and no man could persuade his neighbor. 
We should be powerless to lead one another into evil, but we should 
be also powerless to influence one another for good. It would be a law- 
less world with each man cut off from the great whole and given a 
lawless little world all to himself. He said, “To-morrow I am to 
face nearly one hundred students in logic. It is a new class. I know 
little about its members, save that they are students. I have assumed 
that they will act as students usually do and that I shall escape with 
my life. If they are endowed with free will in the old interpretation, 
what might I expect? What does free will care for the terror of the 
dean’s office, the long green table, and the committee of discipline? 
Is it disinterested in logic and does it have a personal respect for me? 
The picture is a harrowing one and I drop the curtain upon it.” 
Hence, from a pedagogical point of view, how important to fortify 
the child by habits against that which is undesirable in conduct by 
developing in him impulses and tendencies through experience in right 
conduct. Right conduct in children there must be if we expect right 
conduct in adult years. The man who has to reflect to keep his hands 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 253 


from his neighbor’s pocket does not possess honesty of a very high 
type. It is only the one who possesses no impulse to pick his neigh- 
bor’s pocket and who does possess an instinct of abhorrence against 
such an act that is really honest. The one who is tempted evinces 
disease of will. 

Independence of thinking is‘a rare but thoroughly economical 
mode of activity. Many people are so unused to thinking for them- 
selves that they would be frightened at the appearance in conscious- 
ness of a thought really their own. It has been said that “animals 
think not at all and some men a little.” Most of the thinking of the 
world is carried on by a few individuals. The rest of the world are 
mere echoists. This is a terribly wasteful process, and sinful. If 
more people were independent thinkers there would not be a yearly 
output of millions of barrels of patent medicines, the main ingredients 
of which are alcoholic preservatives. Soothing syrups with opiates are 
fed to children because they are said to cry for them. The children 
are quieted, oftentimes so effectually as to be stupid through life. 
“ Harmless vegetable remedies ” is a magical phrase. Perhaps this is 
why so many take extract of hops and barley, spirits of corn, nicotine 
and opium! 

Because of lack of independence of thought, superstitions have 
always hindered the world’s progress. Even to-day the number 13 
is so ominous that you can not get a room number 13 at a hotel, 
can scarcely have 13 at table. Friday is still considered so unlucky 
that steamship companies hesitate to make sailing dates on Friday. 
Farmers still plant their potatoes in the moon, and men carry potatoes 
in their pockets to cure rheumatism. Only a few days ago I saw a 
man in this city who had a rattlesnake’s tail in his hatband to ward 
off rheumatism. Clairvoyants and fortune-tellers apparently find 
plenty of dupes, if we are to judge by the wealth of their advertising. 
Thus on every hand we find ample evidence that people are sinning 
and being sinned against simply because of slothfulness in thinking. 

In ancient times and in the middle ages the scholars shut them- 
selves away from the world, quiet as it was, in order to avoid the dis- 
tractions against thinking. While they erred in not recognizing that 
the senses are the source of all knowledge, were they not wise in 
recognizing that to think effectively demands solitude? 

I wonder if there is not much in modern student life that militates 
against the deepest thinking. With the multiplication of student 
activities, of themselves in no way secondary to any others in im- 
portance, have not the opportunities for sequestered contemplation de- 
creased? With football, baseball, basketball, tennis, rowing, skating, 
the literary society, the dramatic club, the freshman banquet, the 
sophomore cotillion, the junior prom, the senior hop, numberless fra- 
ternity, sorority, and various other house parties, the various church, 


254 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


social and other engagements, besides the loafing hour, the theater, con- 
cert, special lectures galore, the newspapers and magazines to scan, the 
letters to write home and other places, applications for schools to 
make, etc., one might well exclaim, “ And when do they find time to 
study?” 

Many students take on altogether too many activities. In my own 
observation I have known several students who arrested their develop- 
ment badly by getting too many irons in the fire. A student’s popu- 
larity is not infrequently the cause of his intellectual arrest. By 
attempting debates, athletics, dramatics, study and society, all at the 
same time, his energies are dissipated, his growth stunted, while his 
plodding companion by everlastingly keeping at a few things finally 
becomes a master and frequently astonishes even himself as well as 
his acquaintances. Even short courses with too much variety, except 
for inspiration, are uneconomical, because they do not lay permanent 
foundations. ‘Too many open lecture courses provided by faculties may 
easily be distracting and a source of dissipation. The student must 
learn to say no to the siren’s voice which continually beckons him on 
to new fields. 

I sometimes feel that there ought to be some course labeled 
“ thinking ” in which the individual should be isolated from everybody 
long enough to really empty his mind of all ideas which are merely 
echoes, and then to discern what are really his own. With all the dis- 
traction of congested social life, the time may come when it would be 
a blessing for the state to imprison a few great men each year and 
allow them only pen, ink and papér. It may have been a fortunate 
thing for the world that John Bunyan languished in prison until his 
thoughts had had time to germinate and come to full fruition. 
Possibly the blind Milton, shut away from the distractions of visual 
stimuli, may have looked within and discovered thoughts struggling 
for expression, but stifled with ephemeral ideas of sense perception. 

While we are rightly emphasizing group activities as an aid in de- 
veloping altruism, I wonder whether students do not sometimes misin- 
terpret its meaning. Self-activity is fundamental in the process of 
acquisition of knowledge. No knowledge is of much value that is 
not made one’s own personal possession. This means more than the 
recital of words and formule gained from books and companions. In 
their desire to be helpful I sometimes see students in groups, even 
sitting on the stairways when the crowds are passing, believing they 
are studying together. When one hears the bits of gossip interspersed 
between the formule, the declensions and historical dates one wonders 
where the calm reflection, deep concentration, analysis, comparison, 
doubt, contemplation, deliberation, complete abstraction, enter in. 

An oyersocial room-mate who persists in retailing the gossip of the 
day during the hour set apart for study is an uneconomical acquisition. 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 255 


Psychology has thoroughly demonstrated that we can consciously 
attend economically to only one set of ideas at a time. Even much 
note taking in class is an uneconomical distraction. The faithful but 
misguided student frequently attempts to take down every word 
uttered. He deceives himself, for what he hopes to carry under his 
arm he should have in his head. No wonder that sometimes the less 
scrupulous one who cuts classes and borrows notes instead of writing 
them fares about as well. 

In student life it is important to thoroughly master a task as 
speedily as possible. To skim over a lesson and leave it without 
mastery is wasteful. The process may be repeated a dozen times in 
this way and then be only half learned. Hence, “ whatsoever thou 
findest to do, do it with all thy mind and with all thy heart and with all 
thy strength.” In mastering things for keeps two attitudes are neces- 
sary—interest and attention. Attention is the mother of memory; in- 
terest is the mother of attention. Hence, if you would secure memory, 
you must capture the mother and the grandmother. It is the business 
of us all to be interested in what we do, and it is unethical to regard 
our work as drudgery. I sometimes say to students, you never will 
be great successes as teachers until your work has come to occupy all 
your waking moments and even your hours of sleep. It must be your 
life. If you wish to know what you are interested in just catch your- 
selves suddenly occasionally, when you have no prescribed task, to see 
what you are thinking about. Those great dominating, insistent ideas 
indicate your real interests. : 

May I say a word on the ethics of cramming for examinations? 
The method is a delusion and a snare. Ideas are not grasped, asso- 
ciations are not made, brain tracks are not made permanent, and even 
though the student might pass an examination on such possessions, like 
the notes of an insolvent bank they are found to be worthless trash 
when put to real use. Instead of wisdom more to be prized than fine 
gold, such a process may leave one with only bogus certificates. Make 
your mental acquisitions absolutely your own while going over the 
subject day by day, take ten hours of sleep before every examination 
day, and the results need not be feared. In trying to make possessions 
most permanent and most economically I give frequently the follow- 
ing recipe: Study your lesson as if you expected to teach it. When 
you can teach it to some one else you possess it. Frequently actually 
try to teach your lesson. If your room-mate will not submit, inflict 
it upon an imaginary pupil. Some one said, “I do not lecture to 
instruct others, but to clear up my own ideas.” 

Although young shoulders should not become bowed down by an 
overweening sense of responsibility, yet it is sinful not to impress the 
young with the importance of the morning of life. The old adage 


256 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


that it is never too late to mend should be replaced by the one that 
it is ever too late to become what one might have been, if an oppor- 
tunity has been allowed to slip. 

Students should early recognize the importance of making the most 
of the morning of life. Biologists have come to recognize the economic 
value of the period of infancy. The period of infancy is the period 
of plasticity, the period when the individual can be molded and modi- 
fied; in other words, educated. The longer the period of infancy, the 
higher the degree of educability. The newly-hatched chick has a short 
period of infancy. On emerging from the egg, it can perform almost 
all the activities which it will ever be able to perform. It has very 
little to learn, very little possibility of learning and very little time 
in which to learn. The young dog has more to learn, a longer period 
in which to learn it and larger possibilities of acquiring new activities. 
The human being has the longest period of infancy. By infancy I do 
not mean alone the period when the child is in the cradle. Biologically 
it includes all the period of life from birth to maturity. It is the 
period of plasticity, the period of educability. After this period, the 
possibilities of education grow less and less. Perchance there are 
freshmen who may peruse this. I desire to give you a few words of 
comfort. You may be frequently derided by the learned sophomores 
who call you “ greenies ” or “ freshies.” Take comfort and regard the 
appellation “ freshmen” as a mark of honor rather than derision. To 
be fresh or to be green means that you are still growing. All should 
wish to be green and to grow as long as possible. May you live to a 
green old age. Even the sophomores are all right. Woodrow Wilson 
said, “A sophomore is one in whom the sap is rising but it has not 
yet reached his head. He will eventually mature.” 

Professor James says that one seldom gets an entirely new idea into 
his head after thirty. After that period one may erect a splendid 
structure upon the foundation already laid. But if any subsequent 
structure is to be reared the proper foundation must have been laid 
before that time. For “outside of their own business,” says James, 
“the ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically 
the only ideas they shall have in all their lives.” We can not get any- 
thing new, for disinterested curiosity is past, instincts have died out, 
bonds of association have become fixed, “ mental grooves and channels 
set, the power of assimilation gone.” Hardly even is a foreign language 
learned after twenty spoken without a foreign accent. “In most of us, 
by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never 
soften again.” The most possible should be made of early life, for, 
although it is a fact that the number of cells in a given brain is com- 
plete at birth, yet mental exercise must determine the number that 
becomes fully developed. Moreover, the period for development lies 
largely between birth and maturity. It is the period when nerve 


ETHICAL ASPECTS OF MENTAL ECONOMY 257 


matter is plastic and when growth and replacement exceed disintegra- 
tion. 

Brain workers do their best between the ages of twenty-five and 
forty-five before that they are preparing for work, after that their 
work, no matter how extensive, is largely routine. Lawyers and physi- 
cians do much of their practise after forty, but the learning was ac- 
complished before forty or forty-five. Successful merchants lay the 
foundations for wealth and success in youth and middle life. The 
great men that we know are all old men; but the foundations for 
their greatness were laid when they were young. Philosophers have 
founded and announced their systems in youth and early manhood; 
divines and religious teachers have originated their creeds and have 
been most effective as preachers in early manhood. 

Statesmen have projected their greatest acts of legislation, diplo- 
macy and reform in early life. In the morning of life scientists have 
wrought out their data and practically formulated their theories; gen- 
erals and admirals have gained their greatest victories; lawyers have 
paved the way for leadership at the bar, physicians have laid the ground- 
work for their greatest discoveries, poets and artists and musicians 
have planned and in many instances executed their greatest master- 
pieces. 

You, young men and women of the colleges and high schools, are 
picked individuals. A process of selection and sifting going on for 
many years in your own lives, and for generations in your ancestors, 
determined who should go to college. The state endows its universi- 
ties to enable its intellectual élite to secure the development which 
their native worth makes possible. The function of the school and 
the university is not to create brains, but to mature them. The school 
is like a problem in multiplication in which the student is the multi- 
plicand and the institution the multiplier, and, as in mathematics, if 
we have significant figures for our multiplicand the result is significant, 
but if we have ciphers for the multiplicand the result must be zero. 

Your efficiency in life depends largely upon your physical and 
mental health and your habits of work, rest and recreation. To con- 
serve your inborn potentialities and to multiply your talents is not 
only a high privilege but your greatest immediate duty. To fail is to 
be morally culpable, to succeed betokens true wisdom and virtue. No 
worthier object of contemplation can occupy your mind than the So- 
cratic admonition, “ Know thyself.” 


VoL. LxXxI.—17. 


258 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE CHINAMAN AND THE FOREIGN DEVILS 


By CHARLES BRADFORD HUDSON 


' DETROIT, MICHIGAN 


Wea ancient examination halls at Peking have been transformed 

into a military school. ‘To the western mind there is nothing 
startling in the item, nor significance beyond the fact that it suggests 
that China is at last rousing from her centuries of complacent intro- 
spection and retrospection, and purposes to learn something which the 
rest of the world has found useful. A mere change in the curriculum of 
certain Chinese students, it would seem, of less interest to mankind 
in general than if Oxford should suddenly abandon the study of divinity 
or the humanities. But to the Chinaman it means more. It is a 
change of greater moment, more revolutionary than would be the over- 
throw of the Manchu Dynasty. Indeed, a dynastic change would be 
comparatively an insignificant and commonplace event. In the four- 
teen hundred years since the course of studies was prescribed by which 
the Chinese student fits himself to enter the aristocratic order of the 
literati, and thereby to become eligible to government office, the celestial 
empire has undergone a full score of revolutions, each one of which has 
resulted in the establishment of a new royal line. But during that 
period, which has witnessed the birth, decadence and death of christian 
empires, the requirements of Chinese scholarship have been unchanged. 
Until to-day, the student who presented himself at the triennial exami- 
nation at Peking as a candidate for the highest degree attainable, the 
“Chin Shi,’ or ‘ Enrolled Scholar,’ has been questioned on precisely the 
same subjects, tested by the same literary standard in his essays, as his 
predecessor of the sixth century; and has prepared himself for the 
ordeal by the study of classics that were hoary before the christian era 
began. ‘The change has come. Philosophy must yield a place to the 
art of war. Its import to China, the most ancient, the most conserva- 
tive, the most peace-loving nation on earth, is beyond our power to 
estimate. Its portent to the world at large is hardly to be conceived ; 
tc be conjectured, however, on a review of some of the features of the 
rough schooling by which this placid people has been educated to its 
needs. 

It is many years since the powers began prodding the Yellow 
Dragon, with bayonets and otherwise, in the determination to awaken 
him from his lethargy; but it is only of late that they have begun to 
ask, with a faint quaver of trepidation, ‘ Suppose he should rouse . . 


THE CHINAMAN AND THE FOREIGN DEVILS 259 


what then?’® The question has even provoked some slight symptoms 
of hysteria, expressed here and there, when the monster has shown signs 
of life in response to the systematic and persistent annoyance, in shrill 
clamors about the ‘ Yellow Peril,’ with chilly sensations at the recol- 
lection of the hordes of Jenghiz Khan. ‘The ery has been taken up, 
echoed, and having served its purpose as an interesting bogie for the 
newspaper-reading public, has been scoffed down; but there has re- 
mained more or less speculation, not unaccompanied by misgivings, as 
tc whether the dragon had not been better left asleep. The fact has 
been taken into consideration rather abruptly and quite seriously that 
he represents 400,000,000 people, capable of truculent forms of venge- 
ance on occasion, and animated by a national feeling of a definite and 
positive kind. These reflections might properly be productive of 
uneasiness did we not reassure ourselves with the self-satisfying as- 
sumption of the mental, moral and physical superiority of the Indo- 
European race, and the conviction that it is our destiny to inherit the 
earth. We indulge in a comparison of ourselves with the Mongolian 
in a way which leaves him relatively far down in the human scale, and 
have taken it for granted, hastily perhaps, that he can not rise. Ex- 
perience has shown in the past that he was averse to fighting, and that 
he could be expected to submit, with no resistance much more forceful 
than a protest, to whatever imposition or exaction any bullying occi- 
dental nation might see fit to make. As a consequence, the dealings 
of the christian nations with China have constituted a long series of 
outrages upon that country and of offenses to decency, at the catalogue 
of which it is difficult to say whether one should be more astounded at 
the Chinaman’s endurance, or humiliated by the shamelessness of the 
white man’s oppression. We have fairly won our title of “ foreign 
devils.” We bear it with composure, with a good-humored scorn or, 
at most, with a mild resentment that the Chinaman can be so un- 
reasonable as to give us the designation. But however we accept the 
term it is quite certain that he applies it with earnest sincerity, and 
that it is an expression of a hatred and contempt for the foreigner 
almost universal throughout the empire. 

There has been evidence enough of this hostility to make it seem 
worth the while to inquire what its basis may be, but the question is 
seldom raised. When raised it is usually answered by a vague refer- 
ence to the Chinaman’s “ ignorance,” to his fanatic antipathy to chris- 
tianity, his opposition to progress or his national egotism. To the 
first of these it may be rejoined that he is not ignorant, in the sense, 
at least, of being unlettered or unintelligent; for in no other country 
in the world is learning more wide-spread or more highly honored, no 
country has a greater literature, and few races are distinguished by 
keener intellect that the Chinese. Their learning is not ours, and 
judged by our standards their educational system is absurd; but it is 


260 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the one avenue to political preferment or social eminence, and no 
village is too small or obscure to have its school, no boy too humble 
to be eligible to its advantages. If their studies are confined to the 
ancient classics, as were those of the European scholar not many gen- 
erations ago, the defect is in part compensated by the absolute thor- 
oughness required to enable a candidate to pass the examinations; and 
whatever the practical value of the learning, the mental discipline is 
of the most severe. It has produced a race of students; has developed 
an intellectual capacity which, when a young Chinaman enters a 
western university, makes him the peer of the best of his white fellows. 

It is true that the Chinese are ignorant of the outside world and 
its arts, and their ignorance is only surpassed by their indifference; but 
their hostility to them is not traditional. In medieval times there was 
a considerable and friendly intercourse with the nations of the west, 
and christian envoys, priests and traders were welcomed, with what- 
ever knowledge or commodities they could bring. From the seventh 
to the tenth century the Nestorian Church made many converts, and 
later the Dominican and Franciscan Orders established missions with- 
out opposition. In the fourteenth century Catholic churches were so 
numerous that the Papal See made China an archbishopric under John 
of Monte Corvino. For that remote period commerce with Europe 
was important, and flourished until overland communication was cut 
off by the rise of Islam, leaving China for two hundred years forgotten 
of the world. 

The attitude of the Chinese toward systems of faith other than 
their own has never been one of antagonism. In the first century an 
envoy sent out by the emperor to bring back the religion of the west 
returned with Buddhism, which was accepted as superior to the in- 
digenous form of belief, and has now a more numerous following than 
either Taoism or the philosophy of Confucius. Twelve hundred years 
later the Venetian travelers, the Polos, were sent as emissaries from 
Kublai Khan to the Pope with the request for instructors in christianity. 
So far as religious belief is concerned the Chinaman is as tolerant to- 
day as he was then. He has no enmity for christianity per se, and 
objects to it only because he fancies its purpose and effect are to 
alienate the Chinese convert—to make him, in his sympathies, a 
“foreign devil.” This suspicion is sufficient to rouse his hostility and 
provoke his violence. He hates the christian because he is a foreigner; 
not the foreigner because he is a christian. He is far too well-balanced 
and temperate to be a religious fanatic, and is possibly more liberal in 
his views of questions of faith and worship than are we. Taoism, 
the boundaries of the empire, side by side with the agnosticism and 
atheism of the Confucianists, and there is no record of religious wars 
or persecution, no history of an inquisition, no massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew, no ostracisms because of faith or the want of it. The 


THE CHINAMAN AND THE FOREIGN DEVILS 261 


Chinaman believes with moderation, and the gods he has bear lightly 
upon him. The coolie propitiates his Joss, but when the wooden god 
fails to respond in a satisfactory manner the devotee does not scruple 
to maltreat him. Recently the great viceroy, Yuan Shih Kai, ordered 
certain temples in Taotingfu to be cleared of their idols to make room 
for police stations, and the images were thrown into the river. To 
the worshipers it was a joke on the gods. “They are having their 
first bath!” said one, and the crowd laughed with sacrilegious glee. 
This is not the stuff of which the religious fanatic is made. 

The opinion that the hatred of the foreigners arises from opposi- 
tion to progress is based upon better grounds. The Chinaman has 
opposed it, has resisted it with an inertia as of the everlasting hills, 
but from his point of view he has been justified. One phase of western 
progress is the development and use of labor-saving appliances: but 
the introduction of such machinery into a Chinese community means 
calamity. Their economic conditions are adjusted with delicacy so 
great that it is only by incessant toil that the laborer can earn enough 
to keep himself and his family from starvation, and the foreign con- 
trivance which will accomplish fifty men’s work in one day may entail 
famine upon forty-nine and their dependants. From their standpoint 
the argument against machinery is forcible. We have excluded the 
Chinese coolie from this country merely because he is able to do more 
work and better work, and is willing to do it for less pay, than our 
white laborers, though the danger of starvation to the class with which 
the Chinese workman competed was not immediate, but extremely re- 
mote. There seems to be a suggestion in this that possibly the China- 
man is entitled to object, on his part, to the presence of the foreigner 
and his machinery. His right to the recognition of his objection is, 
of course, not to be considered by any power, because he is not yet strong 
enough to enforce it. There are indications that some day he may be. 

But even the question of domestic policy does not suffice to account 
for the intense hostility which the alien has met everywhere in China, 
manifested in repeated uprisings and the infuriate cruelty of mobs, 
and which is too universal and obstinate to be attributable to mere 
prejudice. The Chinaman is wholly rational—rational enough to per- 
ceive, after due deliberation, the benefits to accrue from the adoption 
of those products of western inventiveness which do not threaten his 
livelihood, as may be inferred from the existence of modern arsenals 
in full operation, from the rapidity with which railroad and telegraphic 
communication is being established throughout the realm, and from 
the evident purpose to learn more of the arts, peaceful and other, which 
have been developed in Europe and America. It is to be assumed that 
a people gifted with much good sense and a sobriety of mind beyond the 
ordinary will not cherish a race-hatred so deep-seated, persistent and 
uncompromising without good and ample reason. ‘The reason in this 


262 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


instance is not far to seek. Simply stated, it lies in the circumstance 
that they have found in their intercourse with white men that the 
white man is a scoundrel. Other races have learned the same lesson 
through experience disastrous just in proportion to the value of their 
territory or property in the eyes of the rapacious Caucasian, and that 
China has thus far escaped complete dismemberment is due solely to 
the mutual jealousy of the powers which have long had that ambition 
and design. Her losses of domain have not been great, but she has 
been made to suffer, nevertheless, as no other civilized nation since the 
wreck of the empire of the Incas by Spain. Her first contact with 
Europeans in modern times began early in the sixteenth century, and 
from the beginning it was of a nature to fully warrant the sentiment 
with which she still regards them. Successively, the French, Portuguese, 
Spaniards and Dutch descended upon her coasts, ravaged and destroyed 
towns, and massacred their inhabitants. The Portuguese captured 
Ningpo, and held it until the populace, enraged by their acts of cruelty 
and oppression, rose and drove them out with heavy loss of men and 
ships. Later, they seized and fortified the peninsula of Macao, and 
after repeated efforts to expel them the Chinese government granted 
the privilege of occupation, conditional upon the payment of 500 taels 
annual ground-rent. In the treaty it was specifically stipulated that 
China should retain sovereignty over the territory. This treaty, how- 
ever, was so manipulated by the Portuguese translator that according 
to the text of the copy which went to Lisbon all rights over Macao were 
ceded to Portugal, China being allowed merely to maintain a consulate. 
When at length the fraud became known at Peking the imperial gov- 
ernment protested, but was forced, in order to avoid a war with the 
invader, to formally cede the peninsula, which remains Portuguese terri- 
tory. The Crown of Portugal draws a small revenue from farming 
out the right to operate establishments for playing fan-tan, a game 
prohibited by the laws of China. 

In 1854 Macao became the seat of the infamous coolie traffic, which 
for a quarter of a century paled the worst horrors of African slavery. 
This trade was originated by the English to supply cheap labor to the 
colonists of British Guiana. In the early years of the enterprise the 
coolies were induced to emigrate on legitimate contract for seven years’ 
service at the rate of something over four dollars a month, with food, 
clothing and shelter provided by the planters. After the independence 
of Peru she entered the traffic to secure workmen for her mines and for 
the guano pits of the Chincha Islands, and Cuba followed her example 
to provide for her plantations. As the demand for the coolies increased 
the means employed in procuring them became more and more un- 
scrupulous. Labor agents infested the Chinese ports, the natives were 
decoyed by fraudulent representations, systematic kidnapping was in- 
augurated, armed junks were employed to raid the coasts for captives, 


THE CHINAMAN AND THE FOREIGN DEVILS — 263 


and prisoners were purchased outright from the leaders of factions 
engaged in internecine wars. Depots were established at Macao where 
the victims were herded under heavy guard until sufficient numbers 
were obtained for a cargo, when they were crowded into transports and 
shipped under conditions of misery, filth and brutality which surpassed 
in atrocity those of the “ middle passage.” Arriving at their destina- 
tion, they were sold like cattle to the highest bidders, to enter a servi- 
tude which differed from slavery only in being for a limited period, 
and in the fact that their masters, having no interest in them as prop- 
erty of value, were concerned only to work them under the lash to the 
extent of their endurance. Those were fortunate whose fate did not 
land them in the Chincha Islands. Here they were forced to toil 
under treatment so inhuman that of the four thousand wretches im- 
ported from the beginning of the traffic until 1860 not one survived. 
Those who did not die from the effects of cruelty and exhaustion com- 
mitted suicide. 

The efforts of China to induce the powers to suppress the trade were 
of course unavailing. There was money in it. But when at length 
the scandal became intolerable some perfunctory measures were taken 
by those nations not financially interested, to end, or at least to modify, 
the worst of its features, and in about ten years they succeeded in 
making regulations, in concert with the Chinese government, which 
rendered it unprofitable. But China had gained additional experience 
of the “foreign devils.” 

It would be unfair to Portugal to cite her case alone. She is not 
unique, and far from conspicuous, among those who have proceeded on 
the assumption that China has no rights which any able-bodied nation 
is bound to respect. There has been a want of harmony in other 
matters, but not in this. The helplessness of their victim has made the 
same appeal to all, and they have responded in a course of brow-beat- 
ing and bleeding with a unanimity of impulse that is astonishing. The 
respectable Dutch were early in the game. In 1622, under no pretext 
of war, nor with better excuse than might ease the conscience of a pirate, 
they seized the Pescadore Islands, impressed the native inhabitants at 
the point of the bayonet and compelled them to build fortifications. 
From this stronghold they ravaged the coast and the Island of Formosa, 
pillaging and slaying, but, finding it unremunerative, finally wearied 
and withdrew. ‘The French were less direct in their aggressions and 
began their spoliation, not in China proper, but in the Kingdom of 
Annam, where a party of adventurers had gained a foothold in the 
latter part of the eighteenth century by aiding in the restoration of the 
deposed Annamese king, Gia Long. In 1859 the murder of a number 
of missionaries led to the invasion of Annam by the French and the 
seizure of several provinces. Later, the existence of mineral wealth 
in Tongking, an ancient dependancy of China, was reported by French 


264 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


explorers, and it was at once found necessary to despatch an expedition 
into that country for the ostensible purpose of suppressing disorders 
caused by bands of disorganized followers of the Tai-ping rebels. Dur- 
ing the operations of the expeditionary force it came into collision with 
the Chinese troops by which some of the towns were partly garrisoned, 
and at the end of the war France found the circumstance to be worth 
$15,000,000, which she compelled China to pay, in addition to the 
cession of Tongking, which is now a French province. But in 1882, 
before the hostilities had begun, and while the French minister was at 
Peking negotiating a settlement of matters connected with Tongking, 
certain French warships quietly dropped anchor in the harbor of 
Foochow. Their coming had no appearance of menace, and the Chinese 
were without suspicion that the visit was otherwise than friendly. The 
fleet lay for several weeks, and its officers had exchanged the usual 
courtesies with the authorities of the port; but suddenly, without the 
slightest warning, the ships opened fire upon the imperial arsenal, 
sank the Chinese gunboats at their anchorage before they could be 
got under way, and continued the bombardment until the destruction 
was complete. The action was wholly unexpected, unprovoked by any 
act of hostility on the part of China, and though the relations of the 
two countries were strained, diplomatic intercourse had not been in- 
terrupted. 

A more petty instance of outrage, but one quite as characteristic 
of the methods pursued by the nations, occurred in 1860, when the 
foreign legations were established at Peking. ‘The Chinese government 
leased to the French minister for residence at a nominal rental the un- 
occupied palace of one of the princes. The gentleman moved in, payed 
his rent for two years, then claimed ownership and declined to make 
further remuneration. 

The recent acquisition of territory by three great powers is a matter 
of familiar history. It was accomplished, on the part of Great Britain 
and Germany, by the use of a formula which has proved in the last 
fcrty years to be highly efficacious in extorting valuables from China 
in a civilized manner and with an appearance of respectability, and 
has been employed many times. The formula is simple in its nature; 
equally so in its application. A power demands a concession, usually 
of some desirable area of harbor frontage, and China, helpless to resist, 
has no sooner yielded than she has the diplomatic corps about her ears 
in a frenzy at the disturbance of the “balance of power.” Each diplomat 
waves a claim for indemnity, and China, thoroughly cowed by long 
experience, must restore the balance by further cession of property, or 
by the payment of an equivalent in gold. Thus, at the end of the 
Chinese-Japanese war, the victor restrained by concert of Russia, 
France and Germany from holding Manchuria as the fruit of conquest, 
had hardly evacuated Port Arthur before the place was occupied by the 


THE CHINAMAN AND THE FOREIGN DEVILS “(265 


forces of the Czar, and with reiterated assurances of a perfectly. honor- 
able purpose to presently withdraw, they commenced the absorption of 
the 400,000 square miles which Japan had been forced to relinquish. 
At once Germany and England discovered that the “ balance of power ” 
had been deranged to a degree that required the cession of Kiao-chau 
to the one, and of Wei-hai-wei to the other. The balance of power! 
Unhappy China! 

But all these injuries, inflicted upon the most inoffensive race of 
people on earth, accompanied as they have been by every form of 
diplomatic bullying, coercion and insult, and not infrequently by 
armed invasion, sink into inconsequence in comparison with the super- 
lative infamy of the opium trade forced upon her by Great Britain. 
For centuries the production and use of the drug had been prohibited 
in the empire and punished with the utmost severity; but in 1773 the 
British East India Company, which had the monopoly of the article in 
India, smuggled a small shipment into the province of Kwang Tung. 
The profits of the enterprise proved to be great, and by the end of the 
century, notwithstanding the endeavors of the Chinese authorities to 
suppress it, the illicit trade had grown to important proportions. The 
government at Peking placed heavy penalties upon the importation, 
but through bribery and intimidation of the customs officials the traffic 
rapidly increased, and regular lines of swift, heavily armed schooners 
and junks set the laws at defiance. On the expiration of the charter 
of the East India Company in 1834 the opium monopoly fell into the 
hands of the British government, which took up the business with 
energy and protected it with the guns of a powerful fleet. Under these 
auspices the smuggling continued with practical impunity until at 
last, thoroughly alarmed at the rapid growth of the vice which was 
fastening itself upon his subjects in spite of the penalties of trans- 
portation or death for its indulgence, the Emperor ordered one of his 
most vigorous officers, Commissioner Lin, to stop the trade at what- 
ever cost. In 1839 this officer seized and destroyed at Canton an amount 
of opium worth $9,000,000, and exacted from the dealers, Chinese and 
foreign, pledges that they would not resume the traffic. But by. this 
time Great Britain was deriving an annual revenue of over seven 
million dollars from the smuggling, and outraged by the high-handed 
action of the Chinese government in venturing to enforce its own laws, 
promptly sent a military force to demand reparation. ‘The war was 
disastrous to China, and she was whipped into a treaty of “ amity and 
commerce,” compelled to cede Hong Kong to the British, and to pay 
$23,000,000 indemnity. The warning was ample, and the imperial 
officials dared offer no further hindrance to the admission of the “ for- 
eign devil’s dirt.” Even this condition of affairs was unsatisfactory to 
England, however, for the trade was still illicit, the goods contraband, 
and she was placed, by the unreasonable laws of China, in the position 


266 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ofasmuggler. ‘The situation was not to be borne by any self-respecting 
nation, and she determined to amend it. The seizure, by Chinese 
officials, of the “ Arrow,” an opium schooner owned and manned by 
natives, but illegally flying the British flag, afforded the desired pretext, 
and in 1857 Great Britain again declared war. She was joined by the 
French, and at the end of the campaign, in 1860, China was forced 
to legalize the opium trade and pay an indemnity of $11,000,000. 

In all the annals of the crimes of nations there is no parallel with 
this one. In the seventy years since the British East India Company 
made its first venture with a ship load of the drug, the use of it has 
spread with appalling rapidity, and its victims are numbered by mil- 
lions. It has made its deadly inroad upon every social class, bearing 
destruction of mind and body. China has protested, pled and fought 
in vain. Asa last resort the Emperor wrote a personal letter to Queen 
Victoria, begging her benevolent aid in suppressing a trade so disastrous 
te his people, and offering any concession in return. The letter was 
unanswered, the appeal ignored. 

So, we are known to the heathen yellow man as “ foreign devils,” 
and the examination halls at Peking have been transformed into a 
military school! 


POE AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 267 


POE AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 
By FREDERIC DREW BOND 


ee career of Edgar Allan Poe was a puzzle to his contemporaries 
and has been a puzzle to students of his life ever since. Though 
the mythology with which Griswold and others helped to embellish the 
poet’s biography has been cleared away, the correct summing up of his 
life seems still far off, and in seeking to find the principle of unity in 
that strange personality we can but confess ourselves baffled and per- 
plexed. Yet, in estimating Poe’s character, one portion of his work 
may be pointed out on which too little attention has been bestowed. 
Crude as Poe’s philosophic speculations sometimes were, yet foremost 
among them he entertained, in its broad outlines, that idea of the 
changes and development of the world which goes, nowadays, by the 
name of the theory of evolution. To show in what way a recognition 
of this fact would affect our estimate of him will not be attempted in 
this paper. It is here proposed simply to exhibit Poe’s views on this 
matter and to point out his place in the list of evolutionary thinkers. 
The history of the idea of evolution has been studied by Professor 
Sully? by H. F. Osborn? and by Edward Clodd,* but none of them 
mentions Poe’s name in connection with the subject. To “ Eureka,” 
the epitome of his thought on this matter, Poe himself attributed the 
highest value, but his biographers have shown scarcely an inkling of 
its importance in judging its author. Griswold in his “ Memoir of 
Poe ’’* remarks on the resemblance of “ Eureka” to the once famous 
anonymous work “The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation,” 
and Professor Irving Stringham, of the University of California, has a 
critique on the work inserted in Woodberry’s “Life of Poe’® and 
also in Woodberry and Stedman’s edition of Poe’s works. The only 
article of value, however, on the subject that the present writer knows 
of is an essay referred to by Mr. Ingram in his “ Life of Poe”? by 
Wm. Hand Browne, entitled “ Poe’s Eureka and Some Recent Scien- 
tific Speculations,” which appeared in The New Eclectic Magazine in 


*“ Encyclopedia Britannica,” Art. “ Evolution,” Part II., Vol. VIII., p. 351. 

2“ From the Greeks to Darwin.” 

°* Pioneers of Evolution.” 

‘Page xliii. 

° Pages 286-301. 

* Vol. IX., pp. 301-312. 

‘Vol. IL., pp. 148, 296. Notice also the first paragraph in the introduction 
to Vol. XVI. of the Viriginia edition of Poe’s works edited by Jas. A. Harrison. 


268 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


1868. It appears to have produced no permanent impression. Poe 
seems to have put certain of his ideas before scientific men during his 
lifetime, but received no encouragement. Commenting on a letter 
from the present writer on “ Eureka,” published in the Times Book 
Review, of Philadelphia, Mr. Henry Newton Ivor of that city wrote, 
under date August 21, 1901, to that periodical: 

My father, who knew the poet during his connection with William Burton, 
often told me that Poe had met with rebuffs from scientific men to whom he 
undertook to explain his belief in the development of things. 

To get to the starting point of Poe’s speculations we should per- 
haps, go back to his youth, when we find him under the double influence 
of the eighteenth-century French philosophers and of Coleridge and 
Schlegel. But how far these two streams of thought colored Poe’s 
philosophy is not easy to say. Most of his speculations seem deter- 
mined by the facts of contemporary science and his own intellectual 
activity. Not till his later years do we find any extensive expression 
of his views. “The Colloquy of Monos and Una,’’® “ The Island of the 
Fay,”*°, and “ Mesmeric Revelation ”** are some of the pieces in which 
he appears as a speculative thinker. But not till 1847, two years 
before his death, does he appear to have tried to form a definite system 
for himself. Early that year his dearly-loved wife died and her death 
seems to have impelled his mind towards attempting to unravel “the 
riddle of the universe.” Throughout the fall and winter of that year 
he elaborated his thoughts,’* and on February 3, 1848, an abstract of 
his speculations was delivered as a lecture at the Society Library of 
New York.** Shortly afterwards it was published by Putnam under 
the title “ Eureka.” 

Nothing better exhibits the intense belief of Poe at the time in 
the truth of his theories than the account given by Mr. George Putnam 
of their strange interview in regard to the publication of the work. 
According to this account, a gentleman one day entered the publisher’s 
office in a nervous and excited manner and requested his attention to a 
matter of the greatest importance. 


* The evidence for these statements is largely based on inferences from the 
contents and citations of Poe’s works, taken in connection with their dates of 
composition. A fragment of direct evidence in regard to the eighteenth-century 
writers may be found in Ingram, Vol. I., p. 52. The great influence of Coleridge 
on Poe is admitted on all hands. Cf. Woodberry’s “ Life,” pp. 91-93. 

® Published ia 1841. 

** Published in 1841. 

* Published in 1844. 

* See the interesting account, derived from Mrs. Clemm, in Didier’s “ Life.” 

* For contemporary newspaper notices of tne lecture see Woodberry and 
Stedman’s edition of Poe’s works, Vol. IX., pp. 312-315. ‘All [the papers] 
praised it,” says Poe in a letter to a correspondent, “—as far as I have yet seen 
—and all absurdly misrepresented it.” Ingram, Vol. II., p. 140. He excepts 
partially an article in the “ Express,” Virginia edition, Vol. I., p. 277 


POE AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 269 


Seated at my desk, says Mr. Putnam, and looking at me a full minute 
with his “ glittering eye,” he at length said, “I am Mr. Poe.” I was “all ear,” 
of course, and sincerely interested. It was the author of “The Raven ” and of 
“The Gold Bug.” “I hardly know,” said the poet, after a pause, “how to begin 
what I have to say. It is a matter of profound importance.” After another 
pause, the poet seeming to be in a tremor of excitement, he at length went on 
to say that the publication he had to propose was of momentous interest. New- 
ton’s discovery of gravitation was a mere incident compared with the discoveries 
revealed in this book. It would at once command such unusual and intense 
interest that the publisher might give up all other enterprises, and make this 
one book the business of his lifetime. An edition of fifty thousand copies might 
be sufficient to begin with, but it would be but a small beginning. No other 
scientific event in the history of the world approached in importance the orig- 
inal developments of the book. All this and more, not in irony or jest, but in 
intense earnest—for he held me with his eye like the Ancient Mariner. I was 
really impressed, but not overcome. Promising a decision on Monday (it was 
late Saturday), the poet had to rest so long in uncertainty, upon the extent of 
the edition, partly reconciled by a small loan meanwhile. We did venture, not 
upon fifty thousand, but five hundred.“ 


This account, which was written twenty years after the events it 
relates, seems more or less colored; it exhibits, however, sufficiently 
well, the value attached by Poe to his work. 

At the opening of “ Eureka” Poe thus states his purpose: 

I design to speak of the Physical, Metaphysical and Mathematical—of the 
material and spiritual universe,—of its Essence, its Origin, its Creation, its 
Present Condition and its Destiny. I shall be so rash, moreover, as to challenge 
the conclusions, and thus, in effect, to question the sagacity, of many of the 
greatest and most justly reverenced of men.” 

Following this, comes a satire on the exclusive use of either the 
deductive or inductive methods in the search for truth, purporting to 
be written by a student of our logic, a thousand years hence.** The 
skit is clever and is not wanting in some telling hits, but it is out of 
place and has probably caused many a reader to put down the whole 
essay. Then after some acute criticisms of a few metaphysical terms, 
such as “ Infinity” and a “ First Cause,”!* Poe proceeds to his main 
theme. “In the beginning,’ from “his spirit or from nihility,” “ by 
dint of his volition,” God created a single material particle in a condi- 
tion of the utmost possible unity and simplicity.*® “The assumption 
of absolute unity in the primordial particle includes that of infinite 
divisibility. Let us conceive the particle, then, to be only not totally 
exhausted by diffusion into space. From the one particle, as a center, 


4 Putnam’s Magazine, October, 1869. Quoted by Ingram, Vol. II., p. 145. 

* Both Ingram (Vol. II., p. 144) and Woodberry (p. 285) are of this 
opinion. 

16“ Works,’ Vol. IX., p. 5. 

Works, edited by Steadman and Woodberry, “ Eureka,” Vol. IX., pp. 7-18. 
This edition of Poe’s works is referred to throughout the references in the 
present article. 

* Ibid., pp. : 0-24. 

” Pages 26, 27. 


270 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


let us suppose to be radiated spherically—in all directions—to im- 
measurable but still definite distances in the previously vacant space—a 
certain inexpressibly great yet limited number of unimaginably yet 
not infinitely minute atoms.”*° Differences of size and form taken 
conjointly cause differences of kind among these atoms.** 

The natural tendency of these subdivisions of matter is towards 
the unity whence they sprang. On the fulfilment of the radiation, the 
diffusive energy being withdrawn, to avert this tendency, and the con- 
sequent absolute coalition of the atoms, repulsion makes its appear- 
ance.** These two principles, attraction and repulsion, being the “ sole 
properties through which we perceive the universe,” “we are fully 
justified in assuming that matter exists only as attraction and repul- 
sion—that attraction and repulsion are matter, there being no con- 
ceivable case in which we may not employ the term “ Matter,” and the 
terms “ Attraction” and “ Repulsion,” taken together, as equivalent, and 
therefore convertible, expressions in logic.”** The nature of repulsion 
Poe refuses to attempt to determine, but he states it to be identical with 
electricity. To it we should probably refer the various physical ap- 
pearances of lght, heat and magnetism, and still more so the phe- 
nomena of vitality, consciousness and thought. Attraction is the ma- 
terial, repulsion the spiritual principle of the universe.2* As Poe 
declares that both together constitute matter, he thus states a sort of 
crude monism. 

Since the diffused matter was radiated in a generally equable man- 
ner, we may conceive it as arranged in concentric spherical strata about 
its origin. This at once leads us to the explanation of the mode in 
which attraction acts—the reason, that is, why gravitation varies in- 
versely as the square of the distance between the attracting masses. 
For, since the surfaces of spheres vary as the square of their radii, the 
number of atoms in each concentric spherical stratum is proportional to 
the square of that stratum’s distance from the center. But as the 
number of atoms in any stratum is the measure of the force that 
emitted that stratum, that force itself is directly proportional to the 
square of its stratum’s distance from the center. Now, on the ful- 
filment of the diffusion, the modus operandi of the attractive force 
is, of course, the converse of that of the diffusive; in other words, each 
particle of matter seeks its original condition of unity by attracting 
its fellow-atoms with a force inversely proportional to the square of 
the distances between them.*® 

7 <* Kureka,” p. 28. 

1'Pages 29, 30. 

= Pages 31-33. 

* “ Eureka,” pp. 34, 35. 

* Page 34. 

»* Eureka,” pp. 35-66. In a MS. note, referring to the diffusion, Poe says: 
“Here describe the process as one instantaneous flash.” (Page 52.) 


POE AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 271 


Matter being thus distributed, attraction causes it to aggregate in 
nebulous patches, which proceed to undergo a development similar to 
that described in Laplace’s “ Nebular Hypothesis.” Our solar system, 
beginning in the form of a nebula, assumed a spherical shape and, 
as its constituent atoms sought its center, began to revolve. As the 
velocity of the revolution increased, the “centrifugal force” got the 
better of the centripetal, and a ring of matter was detached from the 
nebula’s equator; this ring finally condensed into the planet Neptune. 
Shrinking in size, the nebula, in lke manner gave birth to the other 
planets, including the earth, and finally arrived at the size in which 
we now know it as the sun. Similarly, during their condensation, 
several of the planets threw off satellites.?® 

In the following paragraphs Poe sums up the cosmic development 
and gives an account of the changes on the earth’s surface: 


In speaking, not long ago, of the repulsive or electrical influence, I 
remarked that “the important phenomena of vitality, consciousness and 
thought, whether we observe them generally or in detail, seem to proceed at 
least in the ratio of the heterogeneous.” I mentioned, too, that I would recur 
to the suggestion; and this is the proper point at which to do so. Looking at 
the matter, first, in detail, we perceive that not merely the manifestation of 
vitality, but its importance, consequences, and elevation of character, keep pace 
very closely with the heterogeneity or complexity of the animal structure. 
Looking at the question, now, in its generality, and referring to the first move- 
ments of the atoms towards mass-constitution, we find that heterogeneousness, 
brought about directly through condensation is proportional with it forever. 
We thus reach the proposition that the importance of the development of the 
terrestrial vitality proceeds equably with the terrestrial condensation. 

Now, this is in accordance with what we know of the succession of animals 
on the Earth. As it has proceeded in its condensation, superior and still su- 
perior races have appeared. Is it impossible that the successive geological 
revolutions which have attended, at least, if not immediately caused, these suc- 
cessive elevations of vitallic character—is it impossible that these revolutions 
have themselves been produced by the successive planetary discharges from the 
sun; in other words, by the successive variations in the solar influence on the 
Earth? Were this idea tenable, we should not be unwarranted in the fancy 
that the discharge of yet a new planet, interior to Mercury, may give rise to a 
new modification of the terrestrial surface—a modification from which may 
spring a race both materially and spiritually superior to man.” 


The statement of Poe in this passage, that “ heterogeneousness, 
brought about directly through condensation, is proportional with it 
forever,’ appears to contain the germ of Herbert Spencer’s developed 
formula: “ Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homo- 
geneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity through continuous dif- 
ferentiations and integrations.”28 Noteworthy, also, is Poe’s statement 
of the correlation between mental development and physical organiza- 
tion. 

* Pages 66 et seq. 
7“ Fureka,” pp. 80, 81. 


* This is the form in the 1862 edition of “ First Principles.” In the later 
editions the formula reads: “ Evolution is an integration of matter and concom- 


272 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The most interesting point about the whole passage, however, is 
probably that connected with Poe’s ideas on the origin of animal 
organisms. Is he here stating the true theory of the descent of each 
from lower forms? Or, is his view a revival of that held by several 
Greek philosophers and in modern times by Duret and Oken, of the 
direct production of species by natural causes??® In Poe’s tale “Some 
Words with a Mummy,” published in 1845, the resuscitated Egyptian 
replies to a query concerning the creation, thus: 

During my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy as 
that the universe (or this world, if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at 
all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely hinted, by a 
man of many speculations, concerning the origin of the human race, and by this 
individual the very word Adam (or Red Earth), which you make use of, was 
employed. He employed it, however, in a generical sense, with reference to the 
spontaneous germination from rank soil (just as a thousand of the lower genera 
of creatures are germinated)—the spontaneous germination, I say, of five vast 
hordes of men, simultaneously upspringing in five distinct and nearly equal 


divisions of the globe.” 

How far this is jest and how far earnest is hard to say. 

Of the mental development of man, Poe does not speak in 
“ Bureka.” From passages elsewhere (chiefly in “ Marginalia”) he 
seeems to have thought humanity had progressed along religious, sci- 
entific and esthetic lines, but pessimistic remarks of an opposite char- 
acter are not wanting in his writings. 

The only passage elsewhere which alludes to the subject is con- 
tained in a letter, written shortly after the publication of “ Eureka ” 
to the editor of the “ Literary World” in answer to some strictures 
a correspondent had made on the work. It reads as follows: 

“The third misrepresentation lies in a foot-note, where the critic 
says: ‘ Further than this, Mr. Poe’s claim that he can account for the 
existence of all organic beings—man included—merely from those 
principles on which the origin and present appearance of suns and 


itant dissipation of emotion: 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.” “ First Principles,” 
p. 334. There seems to be considerable correspondence between Poe’s “ condensa- 
tion” and Spencer’s “ integration.” 

* The following extract from Oken deserves to be cited as showing how, in 
any event, Poe’s views were as reasonable as those propounded by one regarded 
as a forerunner of Darwin: “ Man also is the offspring of some warm and gentle 
seashore, and probably rose in India, where the first peaks appeared above the 
waters. A certain mingling of water, of blood warmth, and of atmosphere, must 
have conjoined for his production, and this may have happened only once and 
at one spot.” Quoted by H. F. Osborn, in his work “ From the Greeks to Dar- 
win,’ p. 127. Among the Greeks who propounded the hypothesis of the direct 


natural production of organisms from the elements were Thales, Anaxagoras 
and Empedocles. 


eey Works,” Vol. 1157p. SOL: 


POE AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 273 


worlds are explained, must be set down as mere bald assertion, with- 
out a particle of evidence. In other words, we should term it arrant 
fudge.’ The perversion at this point is involved in a wilful misap- 
plication of the word ‘ principles.’ I say ‘ wilful,’ because at page 63 
I am particularly careful to distinguish between the principles proper, 
Attraction and Repulsion, and those merely resultant subprinciples 
which control the universe in detail. To these subprinciples, swayed 
by the immediate spiritual influence of Deity, I leave, without 
examination, all that which the student of theology so roundly asserts 
T account for on the principles which account for the constitution of 
suns, etc.”*! This passage, it is plain, is as indecisive as the text of 
the essay. On the other hand, one with Poe’s wide knowledge can 
hardly, it would seem, have lacked knowledge of Lamarck’s theories, 
nor was he ignorant of the then recent work, “ The Vestiges,” though 
he had not then actually read it (in a letter to Geo. E. Isbell, he in- 
quires how far “ Eureka” is at one with the “ Vestiges’*?). But 
Poe’s interest does not seem to have centered on what would be now 
termed the biological side of the matter. 

Having described the development of the universe, Poe, in passages 
whose sweep and power remind one of Tennyson’s “ Vastness,” pro- 
ceeds to set before us its present condition and immensity.** Then, 
finally, he pictures the inevitable dissolution of it all, when stars and 
planets will at length lapse into the substance of one central orb. Here 
attraction will finally predominate over repulsion, complete unity obtain, 
and matter without attraction and repulsion will again sink “ into that 
Material Nihility from which alone we can conceive it to have been 
evoked, to have been created, by the Volition of God.’’** The out- 
come of the whole process Poe sums up in the following words, in 
which he restates the old doctrine of the universe as being in a state 
of perpetual flux: ; 

On the universal agglomeration and dissolution, we can readily conceive 
that a new and perhaps totally different series of conditions may ensue; another 
creation and radiation, returning into itself, another action and reaction of the 
Divine Will. Guiding our imagination by that omniprevalent law of laws, the 
law of periodicity, are we not, indeed, more than justified in entertaining a 
belief—let us say, rather, in indulging a hope—that the processes we have here 
ventured to contemplate will be renewed forever and forever and forever; a 


novel universe swelling into existence, and then subsiding into nothingness, at 
every throb of the Heart Divine? * 


For, in this everlasting metamorphosis, every “ creature ”—to use 
Poe’s term—both those we call living, and those to which we deny the 


3 Griswold, p. xliv. 

2 Virginia edition, Vol. I., pp. 277, 278. 
<< Hureka,” pp. 81 et seq. 

% “ Hureka,” pp. 115-133. 

 “ Hureka,” pp. 133, 134. 

VoL. LXx1.—18. 


274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


name, because we do not perceive the vital operations, are all, in a 
measure, possessed of life and consciousness. ‘The cosmos is, as it were, 
composed of cycles of minds within cycles, the less within the greater, 
and all within the Divine Spirit, unto which all things, on their dis- 
solution, return.*® 

From the preceding sketch, it will be evident that, in its important 
features, “ Eureka” is a prevision of the modern doctrine of evolu- 
tion. In the statements that the universe is in a perpetual flux, that it 
is now evolving and will in the future dissolve, that it has developed 
from a condition of homogeneity, and that our own system sprang from 
a nebula, Poe is in accord with the Spencerian philosophy and very 
probably with the actual facts; while in the assertions that the earth 
has, during successive geological ages, produced a higher and higher 
organic life characterized by: an ascending development of mind, hand 
in hand with an increasing complexity of the physical organization, he 
is stating what are now known to be simple scientific facts. Errone- 
ous, of course, the details of his conceptions very frequently are ;*7 but 
this is common to him with the pioneers of every great idea. Only in 
the course of time does the germ of truth they discover attain its full 
growth and reveal its true character. To criticize “ Eureka” from a 
contemporary standpoint would be as beside the mark as to treat the 
“ Naturphilosophie ” of Schelling or of Hegel in the same way.** ° It 
was a remark of John P. Kennedy, Poe’s old friend, that the latter 
“wrote like an old Greek philosopher” and any one who reads the 
fragments of the Greek thinkers before Aristotle can easily verify for 
himself the truth and aptness of the statement. The merits of Poe, 
in common, more or less, with the other pre-Spencerian evolutionists le 
in how far and how truly his genius enabled him to divine the mode 
of development of the universe. 

Owing to the causes pointed out at the beginning of this paper, it 
is improbable that “ Eureka” had any influence in preparing the way 
for the reception of evolutionary ideas, a little later; at the most such 
influence must have been of the slightest, for though this work was early 
translated into foreign languages, the failure to find fitting recognition 
of its true character, and the general obscurity in which it has lain, 
seem to preclude any such likelihood. Its interest lies in the light it 
throws on its author and in the honorable place to which it assigns 
him in that long line of thinkers from Thales to Darwin. 


* Tbid., pp. 1384 ad fin. lib. 

“Tt may be added that ‘Eureka’ contains some implicit contradictions 
also, due apparently, to an advance in the author’s thought. 

* Nor is it any exaggeration to say that Spencer’s “ First Principles” is 
far from immune from heavy critical attacks (as witness J. Ward’s “ Naturalism 
and Agnosticism”) and that it is literally true that the scientific eminence of 
Spencer’s work over “ Eureka” lies more in its form than in its contents. 


MARS. AS SEEN IN LOWELL REFRACTOR 275 


MARS AS SEEN IN THE LOWELL REFRACTOR. 
By G. R. AGASSIZ 


Aes writer has lately enjoyed the great privilege, as Professor 
Lowell’s guest, of observing Mars through nearly one presenta- 
tion,! in the great 24-inch refractor. 

Few people have had the opportunity of observing Mars at Flag- 
staff, and there is much scepticism afloat concerning the character of the 
markings of the planet, more especially as regards the double canals. 
So the writer proposes to give a short account of what can be seen, 
in the Lowell refractor, in one presentation, by any one of good eye- 
sight, who is somewhat familar with the use of a telescope. The writer 
also wishes to give a description of the methods employed in observing, 
and the reasons for using them. He will also give a few reasons, 
which appear to him conclusive, to show that the double canals are 
actual phenomena, and not the result of diffractive effects in the 
telescope. 

Few astronomers appear to realize how exceptionally excellent the 
seeing is in the clear dry air of Flagstaff, on a quiet night. It is so 
good, in fact, that a comparative novice appears to be able to see the 
planet more distinctly in one presentation there than Schiaparelli, at 
Milan, ever did. 

During the time of the writer’s observations, the diameter of Mars 
increased from 12” to 18”. The eyepiece used in observing was 
usually a 25 mm. orthoscopic, Zeiss, which gives a remarkably large 
flat field. This gives, on the 24-inch refractor, a power of 393. So 
that the apparent size of the disk of Mars was about 2.6 times the 
diameter of the Moon, as seen by the naked eye, at the beginning of 
the writer’s observations, and 3.9 times at the end.? This is amply 
large enough to distinguish a vast amount of detail, when the seeing 
is sufficiently good to disclose it. Sometimes, when the seeing was 
unusually good, an eyepiece of 20 mm. would be tried, giving a power 
of about 490; but this was rarely used to advantage. When the seeing 
required a less power than the 25 mm., the planet could not be ob- 
served satisfactorily. 

A circular disk was fitted over the eyepiece, containing an assort- 
ment of orange-yellow, and neutral-tinted glasses; any one of these 
could, at will, be revolved in front of the eyepiece. These glasses 
serve in a marked degree to bring out the contrasts on the planet. 
-1¥From April 28toJune2,1907.—™S 

? With this power Mars appears about 5.2 times the diameter of the moon, 
at opposition in 1907. 


276 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


How little effect chromatic aberration plays in the observation of 
planetary detail may be judged from the fact that all the observers 
at Flagstaff preferred a neutral-tinted glass to a monochromatic one. 

The action of a shade in bringing out detail appears to be some- 
what as follows: In viewing a point of light through a telescope of 
a given aperture, the first minimum of the curve of diffraction, or the 
middle of the first dark ring, will always be at a given distance from the 
point of light, but the spurious disk will fade away, out of sight, be- 
fore it reaches the minimum; and the fainter the point of light, the 
smaller the spurious disk. As the point of lght approaches invisi- 
bility in the telescope, the spurious disk approaches zero. Now sup- 
pose we consider the light bordering a dark line on Mars as made up of 
numberless points of light. These points of light are excessively faint, 
compared with points of light on the sun, or with the light from a 
star. Their spurious disks are therefore extremely small, so that very 
little light spills over on to the dark markings; and that is the reason 
we are able to make out such fine detail on the planet. Now, although 
small, the spurious disks of these numberless points do diffuse some 
light on the fine dark markings. By using a shade, we decrease the 
light from these points, and thus reduce the size of their spurious 
disks. Therefore less light falls on the dark markings, and the sharp- 
ness of their edges is increased. 

Jt is further found at Flagstaff that diaphragming the aperture in- 
creases the seeing. Langley, in his article on soaring birds, has shown 
that there are constant small changes of velocity “ within the wind.” 
Now these pulsations must cause waves of rarefaction and condensation, 
which may be represented as an irregular wave curve, sweeping past 
the objective. This will cause the planet to swing in the field of the 
telescope, as the rays are refracted by a layer of denser or rarer air. 
Now it is evident that the smaller the aperture of the objective, the 
less variation of the curve will there be in front of the objective at 
any given instant, or the more homogeneous the air in the path of the 
rays entering the eye at any given moment. So that, though a smaller 
objective will not diminish the swinging of the planet in the field, it 
will diminish the blurring within the planet, and help bring out the 
detail. Thus, the smaller the objective, the better the seeing, other 
things being equal. In practise the best results were obtained with 
a 12-inch diaphragm, as below this the loss of light and of effects due 
to increasing the size of the spurious disk began to be more powerful 
factors than the advantages gained from better seeing. 

So importantly essential are the shaded glass, and the diminution 
of the aperture to the study of Martian detail at Flagstaff, that 
without these aids it would be excessively difficult to make out any 
of the fine detail on the planet. 

It is a mistake to suppose that an observer who has a very keen 
sight for a small star will necessarily be a good observer of planetary 


MARS AS SHEN IN LOWELL REFRACTOR 270 


detail. Indeed it often seems to be the reverse; as if an eye, sensitive 
to light, were not as acute for form. Now it is well known that no 
two objects can be separated by the human eye that do not fall on 
more than one cone in the fovea, or central pit of the retina. So may 
it not be that an eye, very sensitive to light, has unusually large cones 
in the fovea, while one acute for form has small ones? 

There seems to be a great reluctance to accept the finer markings 
on Mars as established facts, and their objective reality has been 
questioned by all kinds of doubts and theories by all sorts of men. It 
might be well if some people, who explain away the markings on the 
supposition that they are optical illusions, would take the trouble to 
follow up their theories, see where they lead to, and work out what the 
appearance of the markings would be if due to the causes they suggest. 

A Professor Douglass, of Arizona, has lately suggested that the canals 
are nothing but the black rays that can be seen radiating from a 
black spot, on a hght ground, when looked at with a small screen 
placed in front of the pupil of the eye, so that the light enters only 
around the edges. According to Professor Douglass, the black oases 
are the only real things in the canal system, while the canals themselves 
have no tangible existence, and are nothing more than these black 
rays issuing from the dark spots. 

In the first place, no eyepieces, constructed on any such principles 
as Professor Douglass uses to see these rays, are known at Flagstaff. 
Furthermore, the oases are more difficult objects to see than the 
canals. The latter are often visible when the former are not. It 
would seem that even Professor Douglass should find it hard to admit 
that, at such times, the canals are visible radiations from invisible 
spots. 

But let us see what the canals would look like if actually due to 
this cause. These radiations are due to irregularities in the crystal- 
line lens, and are constant for an adult, but vary with each individual. 
So that any one, looking at the planet, would see an exactly similar set 
of radiations issuing from each oasis. The planet would be covered 
with a quantity of black spots, all with similar radiations, and all 
absolutely independent of each other. For no two radiations from 
different spots would ever, except by the rarest chance, run into each 
other to form a straight unbroken line, connecting the two spots. The 
radiations would also be entirely different for each individual. As one 
of the most striking features of Martian detail is the manner in which 
the canals connect and interlace the oases, further comment seems un- 
necessary. 

It has also been suggested that the so-called canals may not be lines at 
all, but merely a disconnected string of broken markings, a sort of 
irregular dotted line. 

A series of observations at Flagstaff, conducted by several individ- 
uals, has shown that the eye is extremely sensitive toa break in a line. 


278 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


A series of lines, .8 mm. wide, was viewed from a distance of 17 feet. 
Each line was made up of 10 mm. sections, separated by small inter- 
vals that were the same between the sections of each line, but differed 
for every line. It was found that a line, whose sections were .5 mm. 
apart, was visible as a discontinuous line. A line with the sections 
.25 mm. apart appeared continuous. 

With the power usually used at Flagstaff, the first figures would 
correspond on the planet at opposition to a line five and a half miles 
wide® visible as a discontinuous line, if the sections were eight miles 
apart. That the Martian markings should be composed of a series of 
dotted lines, separated by intervals never greater than eight miles, 
would seem far more wonderful than the canals themselves. 

There is a wide-spread feeling that the double canals are due to 
diffractive effects in the telescope. The writer wishes to state, at 
some length, why it appears to him that.this can not be the case. 

The writer has made many experiments, with various telescopes, on 
dark lines on a light field viewed by reflected light. In no case has he 
been able to detect diffractive effects that in any way resemble the double 
canals of Mars, as seen in the Lowell refractor, while, on the other 
hand, parallel lines, close together, bear a striking similarity to the 
double canals. 

In dealing with this subject, it is surprising to find how litle is 
really known of diffractive effects caused by a dark line on a light 
field. This is the gist of the whole matter, and is a very different 
thing from the well-known effects of diffraction obtained when viewing 
a point, or a line, of light on a dark field. 

In viewing a luminous point on a dark field through a given tele- 
scope the distance of the rings of diffraction from the center of the 


: Q : cr 
spurious disk may be easily found from the formula ¢== —, where 
= 


¢ is the angle measured from the objective to the focus; ¢-is a con- 
stant for each maximum or minimum; A is a wave-length, and r is 
the radius of the objective. Now the second maximum, or the radius 
of the first bright ring, measures about 0”.31 in the Lowell refractor. 
If we extend this point to form a line, the ring will be transformed into 


* Various observers have experimented at Flagstaff at different times with 
wires stretched against the sky, viewed at ever increasing distances. The dis- 
tances at which a wire was distinctly visible varied with different individuals, 
and corresponded to an angular width for the wire varying from .69” to .93”. 
Looking at Mars at opposition, with a power of 400, these angles would corre- 
spond on Mars to widths of from 0.31 to 0.42. miles. Making all possible allow- 
ance for loss of light, ete., in the telescope, it seems probable that, under favor- 
able circumstances, a line less than a mile wide could be detected on the planet. 
By comparison with the finest micrometer threads, some of the single canals 
are estimated to be as much as 35 miles wide. The width of the various double 
canals, which remains constant for each canal, is estimated to range from 2° 
to 5° on the planet. This is found, by various terrestrial experiments at Flag- 
staff, to be far wider than lines that can be easily separated by the eye. 


MARS AS SHEEN IN LOWELL REFRACTOR 279 


two lines, one on each side of the source of light, at a distance of 0”.31 
from it, and, since the second maximum has but .017 the intensity of 
the first, the outlying lines will be but .017 of the brilliancy of the 
central one. 

On Mars we have to consider dark lines on a light field, and litle 
seems to be known of their diffractive effects. There is a disposition 
to assume that we are here dealing with an inverted diffraction curve. 
Personally, it seems to the writer that there is no similarity between a 
bright line, whose light waves produce diffractive effects, and a dark line 
that emits no light waves. But let us assume that, somehow, the dark 
line on a light field will produce the same diffractive effects as 
a light line on a dark field. Then, were the double canals due 
to this diffraction, they would appear as follows on the planet, 
when seen in the Lowell refractor. Hach and every canal would ap- 
pear triple, the outer lines would always be separated by 0”.31 from 
their primary, and be .017 less distinguishable than it. Furthermore, 
there would be a dark ring around every oasis. No triple canal has 
ever been observed on Mars, nor has any ring ever been seen around an 
oasis. 

The distance from the first minimum to the second maximum on 
the diffraction curve measures about ”.08 in the Lowell refractor. Now 
if the double canals were dark bands of a width of ”.16, then the 
points of light on the planet, at such a distance from the band that 
their first minima fell on its edge, would cast the light of their second 
maxima in the center of these bands, and these maxima, from the 
points on each side of any band, would overlap. 

It is conceivable that such an effect might look something like a 
double canal, were it not for the fact that the diffracted light from 
all the other neighboring points of hght would swamp and drown any 
such illusion. Supposing, however, that the double canals were really 
such dark bands, illuminated in their centers by the second maxima 
of the fringing light, then the double canals would always appear very 
nearly 0”.16 apart, which would correspond to about 1°.5 on the planet, 
when its diameter was 12”. But as the planet approached, since the 
distances apart of the maxima and minima in the focus of the teles- 
cope remain constant, the widths of the bands would no longer fit them, 
and the effect would be lost. Thus it follows that these bands of 
uniform width could never appear double, except at one given distance 
of the planet. 

There are certain rules that the double canals should observe if 
they were due to diffraction, but they follow none of these. They 
should (since the size of the rings of diffraction remain constant 
through a given aperture) appear nearer together, in degrees on the 
planet, as Mars approaches; instead of which they remain the same 
size. They should (as diffractive effects vary in size inversely as the 
radius of the objeciive), as the objective is diaphragmed down, appear 


280 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


farther apart; but in fact diaphragming has no effect on their width. 
Not only should all the canals appear double, but they should all seem 
the same width. Less than one eighth of the canals have ever been 
seen to be double; and the double canals vary from each other in 
width, ranging from 2° to 5°. 

In drawing A: 1 (the Euphrates) appears much wider than 2 (the 
Astaboras), while 3 (the Protonilus) is narrower than either; 4 (the 


Vexillum), which is a double canal, the writer was unable to resolve, 
but he could never have classed it with 5 (the Astrusapes). This last 
appeared as a sharp dark pencil mark, as, indeed, do all the single 
canals, when the seeing is really good. The double canals then come 
out like the lines of a railway track seen from a half-distant hill. 

If the double canals are really due to diffractive effects, how is it 
that only those are able to distinguish them whose eyesight is suffi- 
ciently good to obtain an exceptional view of the planet? Should 
not any one who can see the single canals be able to see them double? 


MARS AS SHEN IN LOWELL REFRACTOR 281 


However, these remarks are probably quite useless. No one of good 
eyesight, who has seen Mars at Flagstaff, on a night when the seeing 
s really good, needs any arguments to convince him that what he sees 
is real. And no one who has made up his mind beforehand, without 
seeing them, that the double canals are due to diffraction, is likely 
to be influenced by these words. 

It would seem almost unnecessary to state that no one for a moment 
supposes that the lines that one sees are actual streams of water. 
They are thought to be broad stretches of vegetation, dependent on 
channels of water running through them. So would the valley of the 
Nile appear to a distant observer, who would distinguish the dark 
fertile valley against the sands of the desert, long before he could 
see the river itself. 

During the writer’s visit to Flagstaff, he saw 77 canals, 20 oases, 
and 11 double canals,* all of which, with one exception, could he 
readily identified on some one of Lowell’s maps, though it was some- 
times necessary to consult a map of an earlier date than the opposition 
cf 1905, to find them. Each of the drawings is the accumulated result 
of some 15 or 20 minutes at the telescope, so that no one of them 
represents everything seen in a single night. 

It must not be imagined that any drawing represents what the 
observer sees the moment he looks through the telescope. Instants 
of exceptional seeing flash out, here and there, at different spots on the 
planet. It is not till the same phenomena repeat themselves in the 
same way, in the same place, a great number of times, that the ob- 
server learns to trust these impressions. One has to keep one’s mind 
constantly at the highest pitch to catch and retain what the eye sees. 

It is like looking at a Swiss landscape from a high Alp, with the 
summer clouds sweeping about one. Now the mist rolls away, reveal- 
ing a bit of the valley, and shuts in again in a moment; while in some 
other spot the clouds break away, and disclose a jagged summit, or a 
portion of a shining glacier. 

Any one who has been fortunate enough to have had a really good 
view of the lineal markings on Mars is bound to be much impressed 
by their artificial appearance. So that, unless he has an inborn 
prejudice against the idea, any theory that accounts for the canals as 
the effort of intelligent beings to accomplish some definite object will 
not appear fanciful. 

Lowell’s theory that we have here evidence that the inhabitants of 


Tr 


*There are known at present 436 canals, of which 51 are double, and 186 
oases. These are never all seen at one opposition, not only because of the dif- 
ferent tilts of the planet, but also because neighboring canals alternate in appear- 
ing and disappearing at different oppositions. Accepting Lowell’s theory that 
the canals are areas of vegetation bordering artificial channels for irrigation, 
this could be accounted for by the fact that when the canals do not appear, the 
land is lying fallow. 


282 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Mars are struggling to preserve their existence by a planet-wide sys- 
tem of irrigation seems to be gaining ground; although he has had 
to contend against something of the same opposition that confronted 
Copernicus, Bruno and Galileo, and for very much the same reasons. 
The human mind resents anything that tends to belittle it, or its sur- 
roundings, and will not tolerate the idea of a rival. 

It would seem, in all fairness, that a theory that fits all the ob- 
served facts as beautifully as Lowell’s does deserves something better 
than disdainful disrespect, even from the most conservative. It is 
certainly far better than any theories and objections that do not meet 
the facts at all. As yet no other theory has been suggested that in 
any way accounts for the Martian markings. Until one is evolved 
that accounts for the facts better, Lowell’s theory should be accepted, 
by the most sceptical, as the only working hypothesis yet devised. 

A very noteworthy achievement in the recent study of Mars is the 
series of remarkable photographs of the planet, taken by Mr. Lamp- 
land at Flagstaff. Already he has succeeded in photographing many 
of the canals, and at the date of this writing’ he has just photographed 
the Gihon double. 

It seems as if, with the methods at present available, we probably 
shall not greatly increase our present knowledge of the planet. Even 
photography will probably be useful chiefly as a means of convincing 
the sceptical. But who can tell what the future may have in store? 
What astronomer of the early nineteenth century would have dreamed 
ef the possibility of detecting. the composition of the stars, or deter- 
mining their velocity in the line of sight? Some day a new method 
may increase our knowledge of Mars, as much as the discovery of the 
spectroscope opened up the heavens. 

To most people “the proper study of mankind is man.” But to 
those of us to whom the fact that we believe we have detected evi- 
dence of intelligent life in another planet seems of absorbing interest, 
Mars appears by far the most fascinating object in the heavens. 


S July, 1907. 


THE PROGRESS OF 


THE PROGRESS 


HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 


THE nineteenth century is distin- 
guished for the advance of science and | 
the spread of democracy, and science 
is dominant as its applications have 
supplied the economic conditions that 
make democracy possible—general edu- 
cation, relative leisure and compara- 
tively broad interests for a majority 
of the people. We may consequently 
regard it as probable that the greatest 
men of the century were its scientific | 
leaders, and that they will ultimately 
be held in higher honor than the au- 
thors or artists, than the statesmen or 
soldiers. The doctrines of the con- 
servation of energy and of organic evo- 
lution are the two greatest generaliza- 
tions of modern science. Each has 
had its historical development both 
before and after, but is primarily asso- 
ciated with the one great name. We 
may believe that in the future every- 
thing connected with the life and work 
of Helmholtz or of Darwin will be of 
the deepest interest, and it is fortu- 
nate that the biographies that have 
been published are so adequate. “The 
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,” 
by his son, Dr. Francis Darwin, with 
the supplementary volumes of letters 
give a sympathetic and vital reflection 
of the noble and simple man and of his 
performance. The biography of Her- 
mann von Helmholtz by Professor Leo 
Kénigsberger makes a more mechan- 
ical impression, but it gives a correct 
and useful account of the vast range 
of work accomplished by Helmholtz, 
and those facts of his private life that 
can be related objectively. 

This biography published in 1902 
and 1903 has been abridged and trans- 
lated into English by Lady Welby, 
with a preface by Lord Kelvin, and is. 


, berg 


SCIENCE 283 


OF SCIENCE 


now published by the Clarendon Press 
of Oxford. Of the eight portrait 
plates in the original, three are repro- 
duced in the translation. In the two 
portraits by Lenbach the features are 
idealized. The bust by 
Hildebrand, made in 1891, is not given 
in the English volume, but more truly 
represents Helmholtz as he appeared 
during his visit to America toward the 
end of his life. 

The paper on the conservation of 
energy, printed separately in 1847, 
after having been rejected by the lead- 
ing German physical journal, may have 
been technically anticipated by Mayer 
and Joule, but it is the cornerstone of 
modern physical science. When this 
paper was published, Helmholtz was 
an army surgeon at Potsdam, his 
father, who was a teacher of classical 
languages, not being able to afford the 
cost of a university education. 
Thanks to von Humboldt, he was re- 
leased from the army to _ become 
teacher of anatomy in the Berlin 
Academy of Arts. During his whole 
life, Helmholtz was deeply interested 
in the plastic arts, in music and in 
literature, thus demonstrating that 
there is no incompatibility between 
science and the fine arts. Of equal 
significance is his constant concern 
with philosophy. 

Helmholtz became professor of physi- 
ology at Kénigsberg in 1849; he re- 
moved to Bonn in 1855 and to Heidel- 
in 1858, remaining there for 
thirteen years. During this period 
he measured the velocity of the nervous 
impulse and prepared his great works 
on vision and on hearing, of which the 
ophthalmoscope was a_ by-product. 
Helmholtz’s primary interests were al- 
ways in mathematical physies, and he 


somewhat 


284 POPULAE 


SCIENCE 


MONTHLY 


HERMANN HELMHOLTZ AT THE AGE OF TWENTY-SEVEN. 
in 1848, a year after the publication of the paper on the conservation of energy. 


the 
he 


consequently .welcomed a call to 


ehair of physics in Berlin. Later 
organized and became the first presi- 
of the 


tional laboratory of physics and tech- 


dent * Reichsanstalt,’ a na- 


nology. During these years, he made 


his great contributions to thermody- 
namics and electromagnetism, and with 


his pupils, Hertz, Lenard and others, 


gave to mathematical physics its 
dominant position among the sciences. 
All the while Helmholtz gave con- 


From a daguerreotype taken 


tinually public addresses and popular 
lectures, and was engaged in commis- 
of all The 
quantity of his work are as remark- 


sions kinds. range and 


able as its epoch-making character. 


LINNEAN CELEBRATIONS 
SWEDEN 


Ar the beginning of the eighteenth 


IN 


century the military power of Sweden, 


so long a leading foree in European 


polities, had been erushed, the people 


THE PROGRESS OF 


HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY. 
Adolf Hildebrand in 1891. 


had sunk into apathy broken only by 
intrigue and disorder, the nation was 
oi no account. Then the son of a poor 
country priest, endowed merely with 
the divine love of nature and of knowl- 
edge, fought his way through school 
and university, and by constant obser- 
vation and diligent study of subjects 
to which men of 
the world then paid much attention, 


neither scholars nor 


won a place among the great ones of 


SCIENCH 285 


A bust made by 


the earth. 
youthful 

thither science 
from all Europe, and then sent them 


Installed at Upsala, the 
first attracted 
men of 


Linneus 
students and 
through the whole world as gleaners 
of further knowledge and ambassadors 
of his country’s new-found fame. Never 
since has Sweden relapsed from the 
high place thus won for her among 
nations in the wider world of scientific 
thought. 


286 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


MEDAL IN HONOR OF THE BICENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF LINNZUS, STRUCK BY THE 
SWEDISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. The first copy was awarded Sir Joseph Hooker, who cele- 


brated his ninetieth birthday on June 30. 


At the beginning of the twentieth 
century we have seen Sweden appar- 
ently losing prestige by the secession 
of Norway from the union; and, while 
we have admired the statesmanship 
that could accommodate itself with 
dignity to such a severance without 
the horrors of a brothers’ war, we have 
seen a people mistrustful of its rulers, 
fearful of its neighbors, and bitter in 
its own heart. But in this celebra- 
tion of the most eminent among her 
sons we may perceive at least one sign 
that Sweden is recognizing her true 
greatness. If she did not fully grasp 
it before, the homage of the world will 
have forced on her the truth of the 
Linnean motto—Famam extendere fac- 
tis. Deeds, no longer of arms, but of 
honest labor in the ever-widening field 
of science. Sweden has received a 
blow; but the blow has aroused her. 
She stands up; she throws off the gar- 
ment of slumber; she takes in her hand 
with renewed vigor the weapons of 
the future. Around the shrine of 
Linneus all classes gathered together, 
and during those three bright days in 
a year of rain, as one paced the streets 
of Upsala and of Stockholm, beyond 
the celebration of the past, behind the 
feasts that weleomed spring, one be- 
held the renascence of a nation. 


How appropriate were the words of 
Viktor Rydberg’s beautiful Cantata as 
they sounded through the cathedral of 
Upsala during the impressive promo- 
tion of the doctors! 


« And yet, if we have fallen down in doubt, 

And by the way ye mourn and ponder gravely, 

Lift up the banner! flame it out 

Once more, and bear it through the desert 
bravely ! 

Care not, though ye perceive with piercing eye 

A thousand suns from heaven's archway show- 
ering! 

Care not, though ’neath the scythe of Time de- 
vouring, 

Like golden seed the starry harvests lie! 

All noble thoughts, all love that leads you on, 

All beauteous dreams, Time never can see 
wasting; 

These are a harvest garnered from his tasting, 

’ Tis to Eternity that they belong. 

Advance Mankind! Be blithe, be of good 
cheer; 

Since in your breasts ye bear the eternal 
here!” 


What deep meaning too may one 
not see in the beautiful medal issued 
by the Royal Swedish Academy of 
Science! Here is the nature that the 
Swedes love so profoundly: the moun- 
tains in which are buried vast deposits 
of ore and fertilizing minerals, the 
woods and fields still unexhausted of 
their wealth, the waters with hidden 
incalculable energy. In their .midst 
observes and ponders the naturalist 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 287 
who himself did so much to bring ,a solution of copper nitrate, similarly 
these natural treasures to the hands| treated in every respect except in its 
and homes of his countrymen, type of} not having been in contact with ema- 


the thinkers who to-day are piercing 
further secrets and unlocking fresh 
stores. And there, in a clear sky, rises 
the sun. 


RADIUM EMANATION AND THE 
TRANSMUTATION OF THE 
ELEMENTS 


Sm Wrrram Ramsay has printed | 


in Nature, for July 18, a letter, en- 


titled “ Radium Emanation,’ which is | 
interviews | 


the basis of the alleged 
which have been published in the news- 
papers. The author states that a full 
account of his researches will shortly 
be communicated to the Chemical So- 
ciety. 
attention to 


the fact that with Mr. 


Soddy he had shown in 1903 that the | 


spontaneous change of the emanation 
from radium results in the formation 
of helium; this observation has been 
confirmed by others. 
detected in the gases evolved contin- 
uously from a solution of thorium 
nitrate. When the emanation is in 
contact with and dissolved in water, 
the inert gas which is produced by its 
change consists mainly of neon; only 
a trace of helium could be detected. 
Sir William now states that when 
a saturated solution of copper sul- 
phate is substituted for water, no 
helium is produced; the main product 
is argon, possibly containing a trace 
of neon, for some of the stronger of its 
lines appeared to be present. The 


residue, after removal of the copper | 


from this solution, showed the spectra 
of sodium and of calcium; 
lithium line was also observed, but 
was very faint. This last observation 
has been made four times, in two cases 
with copper sulphate, and in two with 
copper nitrate; all possible precau- 
tions were taken; and similar residues 
from lead nitrate and from water gave 
no indication of the presence of 
lithium; nor was lithium detected in 


In his brief statement he calls. 


Helium was once | 


the red _ 


nation. 

| According to the author these re- 
| sults appear to indicate the following 
line of thought: From its inactivity it 
is probable that radium emanation be- 


longs to the helium series of elements. 
During its spontaneous change, it 
|parts with a _ relatively enormous 


amount of energy. The direction in 
_which that energy is expended may be 
modified by circumstances. If the 
emanation is alone, or in contact with 
hydrogen and oxygen gases, a portion 
is “decomposed” or “ disintegrated” 
by the energy given off by the rest. 
The gaseous substance produced is in 
this case helium. If, however, the 
distribution of the energy is modified 
by the presence of water, that portion 
of the emanation which is “ decom- 
posed” yields neon; if in presence of 
copper sulphate, argon. Similarly the 
copper, acted upon by the emanation, 
is “degraded ” to the first member of 
its group, namely, lithium; it is im- 
possible to prove that sodium or potas- 
/sium are formed, seeing that they are 
_ constituents of the glass vessel in which 
|the solution is contained; but from 
analogy with the “decomposition- 
products ” of the emanation, they may 
also be products of the “ degradation ” 
of copper. 


| SCIENTIFIC ITEMS. 


WE record with regret the deaths of 
Professor Angelo Heilprin, the eminent 
naturalist and explorer, professor of 
paleontology and geology in the Phila- 
delphia Academy of Natural Sciences 
and lecturer in physical geography at 
Yale University; of Dr. William L. 
Ralph, curator of the Section of Bird’s 
Eggs, in the U. S. National Museum; 
of Sir William Henry Broadbent, 
F.R.S., a leading London physician; 
_of Dr. August Dupré, F.R.S., chemical 
_adviser to the explosive department of 
the Home Office of the British govern- 


288 POPULAR 
ment, and of Dr. Heinrich Kreutz, 
associate professor of astronomy at 


Kiel and editor of the Astronomische 
Nachrichten. 

THE tercentenary of the death of 
Ulisse Aldrovandi, the celebrated nat- 
uralist, was celebrated at Bologna, 
from June 11 to 13, in the presence 
of numerous delegates from foreign 
countries. A memorial tablet was un- 
veiled, while a medal and several vol- 
umes compiled for the occasion were 
presented to the delegates. 

Tue Norwegian Storting has voted 
the sum of 40,000 Kroner to Mr. 
Roald Amundsen in recognition of his 
services to science in traversing the 
northwest passage and relocating the 


magnetic North Pole——Dr. Otto Zach- 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


arias, director of the Biological Sta- 
tion at Plon, and Dr. C. G. Schillings, 
the African traveler, have been given 
the title of professor by the German 
government.—Professor W. F. M. Goss, 
dean of the Schools of Engineering and 
director of the Engineering Labora- 
tory of Purdue University, has ac- 
cepted the position of dean of the Col- 
lege of Engineering in the University 
of Illinois. 


THE Royal Society of Medicine, com- 
posed by a union of medical societies 
in London, has received a royal char- 
ter. The society begins with a mem- 
bership of 4,000 and an income of 
$40,000. Sir William Church has 
been elected the first president of the 
society. 


THE 
POPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY 


OCTOBER, 1907 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 


By L. P. GRATACAP, 


AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 


HE study of islands, whether the attention of the visitor is directed 

to their structure or their inhabitants, yields a peculiar pleasure. 

They are quite definite and unique units. They reveal interesting 

relations with neighboring continents, of which they so often are 

merely separated fragments, and they afford texts for suggestive and 
fascinating speculations as to past geographical conditions. 

In their life no less than in their mineral features,. they. exhibit 
to the naturalist, familiar with the interpretation of forms, biological 
affinities with distant or near-by lands, and thereby shed side-lights, 
frequently instructive, upon the migrations of plants and animals. 
And they are, or have been, in themselves experimental stations, where 
the theories of specific change or specific origin may find partial en- 
dorsement or helpful refutation. 

Long before Wallace wrote his “Island Life,” they had attracted 
observers, and the unity with, or the diversity from, adjoining islands 
or contiguous mainlands, of their flora and fauna furnished abundant 
proofs of their ancient separation or their recent union with both. 

An island, too, has its limits so irrevocably fixed, becomes, from its 
isolation, such a definite tract, that its study has the economical value 
of concentration and persistency. And this advantage obviously 
reaches phenomenal value, the more remote the island is from any 
other, because then its peculiarities teach the naturalist lessons in the 
origin of living species, or supply the geologist with new types of ter- 
restrial architecture. 

It was long ago pointed out that 
if we visit the great islands of the globe, we find that they present anomalies in 


their animal productions, for while some exactly resemble the nearest continents, 
others are widely different. Thus the quadrupeds, birds and insects of Borneo 


VOL. LXxI. — 19. 


290 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


correspond very closely to those of the Asiatic continent, while those of Mada- 
gascar are extremely unlike the African forms, although the distance from the 
continent is less in the latter case than in the former. And if we compare the 
three great islands, Sumatra, Borneo and Celebes, lying, as it were, side by side, 
in the same ocean—we find that the former two, although farthest apart, have 
almost. identical productions, while the latter two, though closer together, are 
more unlike than Britain and Japan, situated in different oceans and separated 
by the largest of the great continents (Wallace). 


These unexpected results warranted the inference that the con- 
trasted areas, despite their nearness to each other, had, for long periods, 
been severed, and that those, on the other hand, which were widely 
sundered had been at some time, in some way, united by intermediate 
connecting land surfaces. 

Iceland is an island of most respectable proportions—a little 
larger than Ireland; it occupies a position on the earth’s surface 
especially interesting from its arctic relations, it furnishes sensational 
contrasts by reason of the union, within its limits, of the opposed 
empires of frost and fire; its plant hfe has European affinities; its 
insect life is restricted, but also European; its bird hfe has a European 
expression, but pertains also to the circumpolar distribution of identical 
birds in both hemispheres; its geological history is recent and startling, 
and its scenery strange and magnificent. It is, therefore, not sur- 
prising that it attracts scientific and adventuresome visitors, though 
it seems to the writer that these would naturally increase if, at least 
in America, this island received some sort of popular elucidation. 
Such is the purpose of this article. 

Besides the especial wonders of its bold and frowning cliffs, its 
ice-buried mountains and its foaming and tempestuous rivers, Iceland 
for centuries has been the home of romance. Baring Gould was 
perhaps the first modern English writer who appreciated and adequately 
described the bewildering impressions made by Iceland upon a visitor, 
though he failed to see its most marvelous aspects, and he pays his 
tribute of praise very well indeed. It was our own Bayard Taylor 
who, somewhat later, on the pages of the New York Tribune, remarked, 


not that there is no interest in Iceland itself. On the contrary, une handful of 
old Seandinavians there preserve for the scholars of our day a philological and 
historical interest, such as no equal number of men have ever achieved in the 
annals of the world. A thousand years ago they cut loose from Europe and 
carried the most virile elements of its past almost out of reach of later changes. 
But Iceland is so remote from us, in an intellectual as well as a material sense, 
that any satisfactory knowledge of it requires a special appropriation of time 
and study. 


The easier and more common way to Iceland, the one taken by the 
writer, is by the United Steamship Co.’s steamers (the Danish mail 
line), which leave Copenhagen, at frequent intervals during the sum- 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 291 


mer, stop at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, and then variously steam 
northward to Thorshayn on the Faroe Islands, and thence to Reykjavik, 
the capital of Iceland at its southwestern headland, or turn to the 
eastern coast of Iceland at once, and circuitously, landing at the settle- 
ments and towns in the fiord valleys, circumnavigate it, finally dis- 
embarking the traveler at Reykjavik. 

It was in the latter way that the writer determined to gain some 
insight into the coastal features of Iceland before he made a short but 
instructive dash into the interior, from Reykjavik, using for that 
purpose the indispensable Iceland pony. This is that most con- 
scientious, affectionate and captivating little beast, whose docility and 
plability—when knowingly handled—have made him the Icelander’s 
constant companion, his only available substitute for the trolley and 
the railroad. 

The omniscient Cooke has not been unmindful of the prospects of 
profit from the chance tourist drawn to the fabled shores of Iceland, 
and has already provided excursion tickets from New York to Iceland 
with accompanying arrangements for the equipment and conduct of 
parties into the interior. In this way the soi-disant explorer may 
most conveniently form his plans for this unusual outing. Less de- 
pendent and more ambitious men arrange with leading guides at 
Reykjavik for the despatch of men and horses and provisions to the 
east coast from Reykjavik. They meet these expeditions at some of 
the settlements, and traverse the island from east to west, fording the 
rivers, hunting over the moors, fishing in the lakes and streams, pos- 
sibly skirting the huge icefields, and reaching Reykjavik in time for 
the returning steamers in September. A third and most important 
group of visitors are professional men, who also take out considerable 
equipment, in which clinometers, barometers, thermometers, hammers 
and collecting boxes and bags replace the gun and rod. 

Amongst the latter has been Professor Thorold Thoroddsen, of 
the University of Copenhagen, who for thirty years has made a 
laborious inspection of the natural features of Iceland, visiting under 
circumstances of danger and extreme discomfort, its most inaccessible 
localities, and Professor K. Keilhack, the German naturalist, whose 
articles both in geology and in natural history have aided greatly in the 
scientific. interpretation of this domain of wonders, while Professor 
Slater, of the British Museum, has only recently contributed, in his 
admirable account of the birds of Iceland, the garnered results of his 
travel and observation to the growing library of Icelandica. In this 
connection I should mention the capital “ Flora Icelandica,” of Stefan 
Stefansson, which has recently appeared, and wherein the botany of 
Iceland receives an extended and systematic treatment. 

The approach to Iceland was made in an impervious and haunting 


292 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


fog which later became confounded with, and imperfectly dissipated 
by, torrents of rain. It was a disappointing reception, and all the 
more vexatious because at Faskrudsfiord, the first stopping-place, 
occasional raisings of the curtain gave spectral glimpses of vast 
snowy peaks accumulated in unseen grandeur behind the rolling folds 
of the mist. It was in a measure a compensation for their obscuration 
that plentiful showers seamed the steep canon walls of the inlet with 
plunging silver cataracts. These developed with instantaneous 
rapidity, leaping down over the basaltic cliffs in innumerable threads. 

A word descriptive of the physical configuration of Iceland will 
make more clear the outline and incidents of the trip about the 
island. Iceland has in general a subelliptical shape with its longer 
axis lying northeast and southwest. This approximate form is extended 
into a sort of lateral excrescence or finger-formed expansion at the 
northwest margin, in a deeply dissected peninsula, which lies between 
the Breitfiord and the bay of Hunafloi (see map). 

The island is fringed on its eastern, northern and western shores 
by a continuous succession of inlets, bays, fiord-like arms, which often 
subdivide and branch at their heads into smaller crevices and com- 
municate with lowlands or valleys leading back into the hills and the 
interior. The southern shore offers a considerable contrast to this 
fimbriation of its other coasts, and while it is assumed by 'Thoroddsen 
that the southern shore was at one time indented by similar inlets, 
to-day it presents an entire outline which represents broad margins 
of sand, flows of mud and detrital deposits, scored by glacial streams, 
and punctuated by lakes or lagoons, in other words, a fiorded area 
blocked and filled up by later blankets, and upthrown banks and 
plugs of sand from the sea, or by the fluviatile washings from the 
higher country, and the past deluges of sediments from the melting 
glaciers. 

The trip about the island is made up of entrances into these fiords, 
and of skirting the coast, which presents a series of superb pictures, 
while the occasional stops permit transient glimpses of the life and 
industry of the people. Our company, on the staunch little craft 
Vesta, conducted on its devious ways by the bluff and able seaman, 
Captain Braun, was one of diversified elements and entertaining con- 
trasts. <A little group of French wanderers (among them, the daughter 
of the great student of hypnotism, Dr. Charcot, and Professor 
Gourdon, geologist of the French Antarctic Expedition) imparted a 
continental elegance to our homely equipage, the Englishmen and one 
most amiable and companionable Scotchman, furnished the necessary 
insular sobriety and steadiness, a versatile and courteous German 
trader aided us at all points with explanations and directions, two 
English ladies revealed unexpected liveliness and powers of amusing 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 293 


comment, and a lovely Jcelandic maiden, returning to her home, after 
a three years’ absence in Denmark, provided a becoming touch of sweet- 
ness and roguish charm. The crew and officers were obliging and con- 
siderate, and some interesting Danes and Icelandic students completed 
our passenger list, which, however, expanded into unmanageable propor- 
tions, as from place to place, on our approach to Reykjavik, new 
applicants for berths and table-room made their appearance. 

I have hinted at our unsatisfactory reception at Faskrudsfiord. 
In a measure this disappointment was forgotten in the sense of sudden 
novelty the surprising pictures before us aroused. The cloud-draped 
mysteries of the Faroe Islands had awakened expectations certainly, 
but, to the writer, at least, the scene unfolded as the steamer ap- 
proached the shores of Iceland, and entered the first deep incision in 
its rocky sides, was of an unrecalled strangeness and incomparable 
with anything he had seen before. 

It was at four o'clock on the afternoon of August 3 that we 
came in sight of Iceland after passing, many miles before, a low 
rocky island engulfed in the swinging curtains of the fog, and 
though the picture was veiled in mist it excited expectation. The 
island hid itself from the first vulgar stare of curiosity and drew around 
it its protecting veils of cloud. First indefinite outlines appeared, one 
range or hill behind the other, with ill-defined and evanescent open- 
ings, then steep bold profiles of dipping beds—the lava flows, appar- 
ently successive and gently elevated in mass—and then the coast came 
more distinctly in view with a green veil of vegetation covering but 
scantily the broad deep and long talus of débris and disintegrating 
stone, upon which long threads of falling water in silver lines were 
easily discerned, even to their moving particles. 

On, with the palisades, perhaps 1,000 to 1,500 feet in height, re- 
vealed and then hidden in alternate intervals, in the drifting mist and 
hurtling rain. Finally, we turned into Faskrudsfiord, and slowly 
steaming up over the quiet water we saw on either side the high 
‘skrees * gushing with water; long sinuous lines of water, often where 
they fell over short escarpments forming brief waterfalls, and else- 
where broken successional cataracts, until the cliff-sides were fairly 
fringed and embroidered with argent lace, a really wonderful picture. 

At the very head of the bay rose more lofty mountains, one be- 
hind another, in solemn vagueness, dashed with broad snow patches, 
intermittently seen, and always streaked with streams. These fugitive 
glimpses were tantalizing enough. ‘They were also only partial. The 
curtains of fog, moving fretfully over the landscape, suggested, as we 
watched their grudging revelations, many concealed peaks. 

On the north shore was a settlement of some sixty houses, with a 
hospital of the French government for French fishermen and sailors, 


294 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


and another of the Catholic church. We had seen farther out, 
towards the sea, little farms with small enclosures framed in stone 
walls, or with turf walls, consisting of grass fields. The cemetery, 
near at hand, was a quaint silent bleak spot on the edge of the water, 
with a fence round it, and bristling with wooden crosses. Some small 
houses were covered with sod and had green roofs. It was all singularly 
new and exhilarating. The storm refused to lift nor did the rain 
desist. It came down in deluges, and the streams leaped more im- 
petuously, and the cataracts became swollen and vociferous, until a 
murmurous roar arose from the shores around us. The fog hung low 
on the mountain-sides, and, as if from their drenched edges, streams 
poured over the sheer slopes. 

Then out to sea over rolling surges and tilting swells. The 
palisades of rock continued, with higher peaks at intervals, and then 
we entered Eskifiord, where the renowned. Iceland spar is obtained, 
those pellucid cakes of carbonate of lime, from which the optician 
adroitly cuts the Nicol prisms for microscopes, which again in the 
hands of the lithologist reveal the structure and the composition of 
rocks. I went ashore at night in a pelting rain, and after some miser- 
able wandering over the shore path, by the little huts and houses, 
through plentiful pools of water, entered a comfortable ware room 
where the precious material, weighed in small cleavage rhombs, could 
be secured. Eighty cents was paid for one of these specimens. New 
quarries are reported from the south side of the island. 

This beautifully clear’ phase of the carbonate of lime forcibly 
recalled analogous developments in the palisades—the trap formation 
—of New Jersey at home. Iceland, indeed, throughout most of its 
northern section is a vast basaltic terrain, a land built up of igneous 
effusions exuded from opening crevices in the earth’s crust in viscous 
semi-slaggy flows, and piled upon each other, possibly beneath the 
surface of the sea. Elevation succeeded, and these accumulations rose 
gently, with only unimportant dislocations upward. They were built 
upon a submarine spur, probably extending interruptedly from Norway 
with a southern arm towards Scotland, the whole hidden chain sur- 
rounding a deep northern area which, at some time, when its now 
submerged barriers were exposed, may have formed a landlocked ocean, 
framed indeed on its southern margin by a dry north sea. 

The igneous material involved in this construction of Iceland, 
though analogous to the New Jersey palisades, began its constructive 
work much later in geological time. The New Jersey palisades date 
from the Jura-triassic period, those of Iceland are referred to the 
middle, at the earliest, of the Tertiary age, though continuously since 
that time through preglacial, glacial and postglacial time, up to the 
present era, voleanic outbursts and new accessions, whether of lava 


A TRIP’ AROUND ICELAND 295 


NORDFIORD. Skirt of fog on mountain. 


or ashes, have increased its size. - But, inthe sequence of igneous 
additions, the character of the rocks has changed, and differs stri- 
kingly from the original basement basaltic flows. Thus have the fires 
of earth raised a monument above the tides of the Atlantic. 

No sooner had this architectural wonder been raised by Pluto, than 
Neptune and Jupiter Pluvius conceived its destruction, and their 
machinations for its overthrow were inconsiderately helped by their 
subterranean brother. Earthquakes have doubtless altered and reduced 
its size, detaching or sinking broad patches or morsels of its periphery. 
We can imagine, to continue our simile, that Pluto, groaning and 
agitated over the envious assaults of the upper gods, helped to 
knock out some of the underpinning of his own creation. 

But in their process of reduction the air deities have made Iceland 
most attractive, wonderfully picturesque; they have cut out its deep 
fiords, furrowed its cliffs, dug grottoes in its stony walls, put pinnacles 
and minarets along its sky-lines; they have led valleys, green with 
pasture and splashed with the color of flowers, down to its wave-strewn 
lips; they have dropped island pearls around its coasts; they have 


296 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


CUPOLA-TOPPED MOUNTAIN IN SEYDISFIORD. 


planted sapphire brooches upon its bosom in the great interior lakes, 
and spread over its shoulders the braided tresses of a hundred rivers; 
they have covered its mountains with diamond shields, and in their 
ruthless attack converted mountainous elevation into ranks of serried 
hills repeating the ruby pallors of the midnight sun. 

Again we left Eskifiord and in our exit reviewed, as before, the 
steep rocky walls of the fiord, the dipping stratification, the streaming 
rills. Minareted summits like low parapets fenced the tops of the 
palisades. We passed a whale fishery with an eviscerated and skinned 
carcass on the dock before it, and then out over rolling waves with 
mist and rain, and later entered our third fiord—Nordfiord. The 
stormy weather was slowly succumbing to more favorable influences, 
and when at last the vapors rolled up into clouds we found ourselves 
in a deep strait between lofty walls of rock shooting out of sweeping 
slopes and undulating upland, which seemed in that northern sunlight, 
and beneath those frowning sentinels, so desolate, their austerity 
emphasized by a few isolated farms. One could imagine the wintry 
terrors of those lonely homes. 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 297 


TURF-COVERED HOUSE AT SEYDISFIORD. 


The streams were still running and the terraced weathering of the 
rocks was well shown. Towards the ocean a range of high peaks was 
seen, which formed the southern boundary of another fiord, twinned 
with the one we were in, and far back beyond the head of the fiord rose 
immense backs of mountains, spotted with snow. We passed again 
out to sea upon a rolling swell, into splendid clear water, and skirted 
the superb front of receding basaltic steps, each one of which was a 
separate flow, and where as many stages as twenty or forty were 
counted in their structure, showing bold stepped profiles. 

At the summits of these amazing walls, erosion and weathering 
seemed to have worked with greater activity, forming deep alcoves, 
sweeping recesses, and then cirques were seen between the lofty divi- 
sional massifs. Water-ways or shallow fiords divided this remarkable 
face of rock into component fractions, and as the last one appeared— 
sentinel to the beautiful Seydisfiord—green slopes encircled its formid- 
able precipices holding lonely farms, and a spouting waterfall sprang 
outward from its riven side. We were at Seydisfiord. 

The village of Seydisfiord was perhaps the first which breathed a 


298 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


PONIES AT SEYDISFIORD. 


very real air of comfort. It had a hospitable look. A pleasant post- 
office, a well-furnished apothecary shop—in which minerals and 
curiosities mingled with drugs and extracts—a candy store, a village 
hotel, and trailing groups of pretty children and young girls were not 
wanting to impress the senses with an unusual impression of creature 
and home blessings. 

The important human aggregates in Iceland are along its shores. 
The population of the interior forms minute hamlets, or is strung 
out into attenuated lines of farms, many miles apart. The shore 
settlements meet the outside world, the wear and tear of life is greater, 
and exchange of material in business ways more active. Here educa- 
tion and culture extend themselves more quickly, and world-ideas re- 
ceive acceptance and circulation. The farmers struggle with the 
drudgery of harvesting the hay, breeding and raising sheep and cows, 
making butter and repairing and making implements and _ houses. 
They become a conservative and backward element, and miss the 
reaction with foreign ships and visitors, and the political spirit is 
with them more dormant and inactive. In the shore-villages, adven- 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 299 


FALLS ON THE FIORDURAU ON SEYDISFIORD. 


ture, accidents, money-making and dissipation help the movement of 
life, the attrition is more constant between men, and they emerge more 
quickly from immature and limiting prepossessions. The farmer is 
resourceful, brave and wise in his arts, but it seems certain that in- 
formation and direction would increase his earnings and widen his 
activity. Banks and means of loaning money have appeared in Ice- 
land, and with them come enterprise, risks and speculation, and at- 
tendant amelioration of conditions, with new outlooks and ambitions. 
The village of Seydisfiord wanders attractively around the head of 
the bay, which receives the rushing waters of the Fiordurau (the river 
of the fiord), and our alert tourists assembled, early on the morning of 
our arrival, a group of ponies—fat and vigorous, with charming heads 


and exuberant manes—for an excursion up the valley of this river. 
The objective motive was a series of waterfalls, one behind the other, 
which were to be seen up the valley. These falls were the physical 
symptoms of the recession of the stream itself, as it wore its way 
backward. The rocks about them were much sculptured and worn, and 
effered an entertaining geological riddle as to whether the lower falls 


300 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


FALLS ON THE FIORDURAU, SEYDISFIORD. 


might not overtake the higher ones, or whether the series represented 
the scattered parts of a former fall of a height equal to the added 
heights of each. In the former case, the process would bring about in 
centuries of time a resultant lofty fall, and in the latter case their 
separation would probably widen as the river at the upper falls wore 
its way backward more and more rapidly, and left in its retreat its 
lagging lower companions. 

Some of us rejected the assistance of the ponies, and walked. We 
made our way over an evil road, from which we wandered promiscuously 
in search of the tempting flowers, observing among them the rare 
Pinguicula which looks so like a spurred violet, and which we had taken 
in Newfoundland. And we ran to and fro avariciously picking up 
Habenaria, Salix (the dwarf willow), Betula, Rumex, Plantago, 
Armeria, Polygonum, Gentiana, Ranunculus, Geranium, Parnassia, 
Potentilla, Epilobium, Papaver, Dryas, Pyrola and many others almost 
forgetting the falls. 

Falls (foss) are common objects in Iceland. They have a strong 
family resemblance, except the Gullfoss which is unique; but then the 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 301 


VIEW GOING OUT OF SEYDISFIORD. 


family has a high type of teauty. The wall character of the land, the 
prevalence of great snow fields, and the deluging rains furnish the 
two elements for first-class waterfalls, and they are excellent. As we 
scrambled from one to another on the Fiordurau, they improved in 
looks, and only the restraining finger of time prevented us from cha- 
sing the river to its last cranny of refuge. The view back over the 
fiord and its fringe of houses was one of great beauty. 

Certainly the water present in the landscape was not confined to 
the river. It generously covered everything. Nothing could have 
been more opulent than the morasses and upland bogs we waded 
through, driven to the stress of a short cut by the far away summons 
of the steamer’s whistle. Of course, we reached the steamer an hour 
before she stirred from the dock, with shoes that would have put a 
Broadway bootblack into a mania of imprecations. We left Seydis- 
fiord regretfully, and here we bade good-bye to the courteous young 
Dane who will superintend the submarine cable now laid between 
Scotland—by way of the Shetland and Faroe islands—and Iceland. 

Again out to sea, and again the panorama of sloping and beetling 


302 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


palisades, of broad embrasures and galleries, dug out by weathering 
agencies, with the clear aqua-marine waters rolling languidly over 
jagged barriers of basalt. Vopnafiord seemed flat. It was our next 
stopping place. The French ladies declared it looked lke Brittany 
and perhaps it did. They ought to know. It was a low shore, rocky, 
with green uplands and farms, and many threatening reefs. On again 
in fog with a coast intermittently seen to the left, and at night we 
passed into the arctic circle, and, as the day dawned over the magic 
sea, the air became brilliantly: clear, the sky serene and cloudless, the 
waves docile and appeased. 

We were far away from the shore. It was the northern edge of 
Nord Thingeyar Sysla with remote lines of elevation and long hori- 
zontal lines like some topographic section. We crossed the broad Axar- 
fiord, on a sea blazing with light, and approached the islands of 
Minareyjar dancing in mirage, and soon passed Red Hook, carmine 
with iron secretions oozing from its jointed rocks, and along an old 
raised beach with enormous moorlands behind it, which a sporting vice- 
admiral of England declared were full of patridge (ryper), and which 
had a most inviting wild remote loneliness expressed in them. 


(To be continued) 


THE EYES OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 303 


THE SACRIFICE OF THE EYES OF SCHOOL. CHILDREN 


THe Human EYE EVOLVED FoR Distant VISION 


By ProFessoR WALTER D. SCOTT 


NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 


N the evolution of the animal organism the sense of touch has 
served the purpose of informing the individual of objects with 
which it came in contact. The sense of taste likewise gave informa- 
tion concerning objects upon contact, but of a more specialized form. 
The sense of smell and that of hearing gave knowledge of objects in 
the vicinity and in certain instances of objects in the distance. The 
sense of sight seems to have been preeminently the sense by means 
of which the individual was enabled to adjust himself to objects at a 
distance. The enemy to the leeward might approach noiselessly and 
so could not be smelt or heard. When knowledge of the approach was 
revealed by the sense of touch it was too late for escape. The preserva- 
tion of the individual and of the species thus depended upon the 
ability to see the enemy in the distance. Inasmuch as the function 
of the eyes has been to perceive objects at a distance rather than at 
close range, we are not at all surprised to find that the eyes are well 
adapted for distant vision, but poorly constructed for close work. 
When our eyes are at perfect rest, when all the muscles which 
control them are relaxed, they are then adjusted for distant vision. 
When, on the other hand, the ciliary muscles and the muscles which 
move the eyeballs are at a maximum of contraction, then and then 
only are the eyes adjusted for close vision. Such a structure was 
admirably adapted to the needs of the primitive organism. The eyes 
were the sentinels which must always be on guard and when employed 
in the appropriate way there was no strain. It was of course essen- 
tial that the individual should be able at times to see objects close at 
hand. This could be accomplished by means of contractions of 
delicate muscles, and as soon as the contractions were relieved the 
eyes were again adjusted for the more important duty of distant vision. 
The strain upon the eyes is in adjusting for objects closer than 
at about four feet, but for all greater distances there is a minimum 
of strain. Hence we may speak of all objects as being distant which 
are removed as much as four feet. With this definition of the term 
distant it is evident that distant vision was the most common form 
of vision for all our ancestors, from the most primitive forms of life 


304 FOPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


to the most highly civilized races, till the last few centuries. With 
the invention of writing and then with the invention of the printing- 
press a new element was introduced, and one evidently not provided 
for by the process of evolution. The human eye which had been 
evolved for distant vision is being forced to perform a new part, one 
for which it had not been evolved, and for which it is poorly adapted. 
The difficulty is being daily augmented. The invention of printing: 
presses has been followed by an increasing number of books, magazines 
and daily papers. The rural population has given place to the urban. 
The long days of manual labor have given way to the eight-hour sys- 
tem with abundant time for reading. Labor-saving devices of all 
sorts have added to our sedentary habits. All things seem to be con- 
spiring to make us use our eyes more and more for the very thing 
for which they are the most poorly adapted. It requires no prophet 
to foresee that such a perversion in the use of an organ will surely result 
in a great sacrifice of energy, if not of health and of general efficiency. 


The Amount of Light required for Reading 

The eye has thus far been spoken of as though it consisted merely 
of delicate muscles, when in reality these are not the most significant 
part of it. In thinking of the eye we should never disregard the 
eye-muscles, but primarily the eye is a live camera consisting of a lens, 
dark box and sensitive plate. The retina in the back part of the eye- 
ball is the sensitive plate and is the most vital part of the eye. It is 
effected by every ray of hight falling upon it. Fortunately it responds 
to a weak light and still is not injured by a moderately strong one. 
In speaking of the quantity of lhght it is well to have a standard. 
For this purpose the most convenient standard is the amount of light 
cast by a standard candle upon any point in the horizontal direction 
one foot from the candle. A light of twice this intensity is spoken 
of as a two-candle power, a light ten times the first is of course a ten- 
candle power. The light cast by a candle upon a printed page at a 
distance of one foot is sufficient for legibility at the normal reading 
distance. If the light is less than this the retina is not adequately 
stimulated and the reading is accomplished only after a strain more or 
less intense. If the light falling upon the page exceeds ten-candle 
power the stimulation of the retina is so great that it is displeasing 
to some people and is condemned by our best authorities as injurious 
to the retina. All are agreed that less than a single candle-power is 
injurious for reading, and during the present state of our knowledge 
it is at least safe to avoid an illumination of more than ten-candle 
power. 

The iris may be blue, brown or gray and is that which determines 
the color of our eyes. It is an adjustable shutter which reflexly regu- 
lates the amount of light which enters the eye. In the presence of a 


THE EYES OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 305 


bright light the iris diaphragm contracts, reducing the size of the 
pupil and cutting out much of the light which would otherwise enter 
the eye. In the presence of a dull light the pupil enlarges, allowing 
a great amount of the lght, such as that falling upon a book, to enter 
the eye and to stimulate the retina. The iris is a wonderful device, 
but can not in diverse illuminations perfectly equalize the amount of 
light entering the eye. The pupil expands inversely as the square 
root of the illumination. Thus if the actual illumination of the book 
increases ten-fold, the amount of light falling upon the retina is in- 
creased but little over three-fold. Even a twenty-five candle light sends 
but five-fold as much light into the eye as a single candle-power. A 
single candle-power seems sufficient and ten-candle power is not too 
much. ‘This ability of the retina and of the iris to deal successfully 
with lights of such different intensities is a most useful and necessary 
characteristic. Unfortunately, however, the actual diversities of in- 
tensities of lights used for reading are far beyond any for which the 
eye can adapt itself. 


Variations in the Amount of Daylight 


We are in the habit of thinking of the light received from the sky— 
the daylight—as almost a fixed quantity during the hours from 9 in 
the morning till about 4 in the afternoon. The darkness’ preceding 
a storm and the occasional dark days are of course not forgotten, but, 
in general, daylight for the hours mentioned is thought of as at least 
fairly constant. ‘To test this point observations were made at 9 A.M., 
12:30 p.m., and 4:30 p.m., daily for five and one half days a week for 
22 months. These tests were made in the Chicago laboratory of the 
American Luxfer Prism Co., and under direction of Professor Olin 
H. Basquin, of the Department of Physics of Northwestern University. 
Inasmuch as the amount of sunshine and general illumination in 
Chicago is almost exactly the average for the United States, these 
results may be regarded as typical for the whole country with the 
exception of such dark cities as Seattle or such light ones as Phcenix. 
Measurements were made of the amount of light coming through a 
square foot of clear glass placed horizontally in the roof of the observa- 
tion building. The illuminometer was placed so far below the opening 
in the ceiling that the direct rays of the sun could never reach any 
part of the recording apparatus. The light thus measured was diffuse 
daylight received from the zenith of the sky. Taking the average 
illumination for the 22 months at 12:30 as the standard, it was found 
that the illumination at 9 A.M. was but 67 per cent. as great as that 
of mid-day. Again the illumination at 4:30 p.m. was but 27 per 
cent. as great as that at 12:30. Expressed in other terms, we see that 
the available light at 4:30 is approximately but one fourth that of 
noon and the light at 9 o’clock but two thirds that of noon. These 

VOL. LxxI.—20. 


306 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


figures are the average for the school days of 22 months in one city, 
and although observations for a longer period and in other cities might 
change the results somewhat, it is safe to assume that our figures are 
not far from the actual conditions in a majority of our school rooms 
in the United States. In general a room which is barely adequately 
lighted at 12:30 will be 33 per cent. under-illuminated at 9 o'clock, 
and at 4 o’clock its illumination will be but 27 per cent. of the neces- 
sary amount. 

Our difficulties are further complicated by the fact that the varia- 
tions in illumination of daylight are as great between the months of 
the school year as between the hours of the school day. The illumina- 
tion is best in the months of June, July, August and September. Then 
follows in order May, April, March, October, February, November, 
January and lastly December. Comparing the illumination of the 
four bright months (June, July, August and September) with the 
four dark months (November, December, January and February) we 
find that for the 22 months observed the illumination of the dark 
months is but 28 per cent. of that of the bright ones. This figure is 
found by averaging the three daily readings for each day for all the 
months concerned. December, the darkest month has but 18 per 
cent. as great illumination as June, the brightest month. 

When to these variations as between months or seasons we add the 
variations between mid-day and morning and evening, the results are 
most astounding. The light at noonday in June averages almost 
ten-fold as much as that at 9 A.M. in December. If it is injurious to 
read with a light less than one or more than ten-candle power, a school- 
room that furnishes this maximum in June will be reduced to the 
minimum in December mornings and evenings on average days. Such 
deviations in the external source of light put most restricting condi- 
tions upon school architecture. How have we met the conditions and 
how might we construct our schoolrooms to meet the situation satis- 
factorily ? 

Rules for Lighting a Schoolroom 

In our climate it is almost impossible to over-light a school room 
if the two following conditions are observed: (1) Never allow the 
direct rays of the sun to fall upon any surface within the field of 
vision of any pupil. (2) Avoid all glossy or shiny surfaces which 
reflect the light directly into the eyes of the pupils. A dead white 
surface is not injurious, while a darker surface may be shiny and hence 
injurious. 

For securing adequate light the following rules are important: 
(1) The window space should be as much as one fifth of the total floor 
space, and the height of the window two thirds of the width of the 
room. (2) The walls, ceiling, woodwork, furniture, ete., should be 
a color which reflects a large amount of well-diffused light. Perhaps 


THE EYES OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 307 


the best colors for this purpose, in the order of their efficiency, are 
white, light yellow, light gray, ight green, light blue and light pink. 
(3) The schoolroom should be narrow and the windows facing an 
unobstructed area, so that from any seat in the room a large amount 
of sky is visible. (4) The windows should be provided with white 
Holland screens, or others of a similar sort, which obstruct the direct 
rays of the sun, but which, when drawn down, emit into the room a 
maximum of diffused light. (5) There should be at hand light 
colored curtains which may be used to cover up all blackboards as 
soon as the darker parts of the room are inadequately lighted. 

It is apparent to all that the construction of our school rooms has 
not conformed to these five simple rules. There are many rooms in 
which the window space is one fifth of the floor space, but certainly 
not a majority of all schoolrooms in America. The second rule, con- 
cerning the reflecting surfaces within the schoolroom, is broken by the 
extensive surfaces of black-boards and by the dingy color of the walls. 
Walls soon fade and become dirty and need frequent attention to keep 
their reflecting power approximately at its maximum. The third 
tule is broken by constructing rooms so large that they will accom- 
modate fifty pupils, and by placing school buildings too close to ad- 
joining buildings. The fourth rule is broken by the use of opaque 
shades which, when drawn to escape the brilliancy of the sun, leave 
the room darker than it would otherwise be on a dark and cloudy day. 
Because of this fact the schoolrooms with a southern exposure are per- 
haps our most poorly lighted rooms. The fifth rule, concerning the 
use of white screens for the black-boards, is never observed and to many 
may seem insignificant. The justification of the rule is found in the 
following facts. 

Dark Corners in Schoolrooms 

The ordinary school room has the light from one side. The five 
rows of desks are so arranged that one row is next to the windows and 
the last row next to the black-board on the side of the room opposite 
the windows. It is well known that the desks next to the black-board 
and farthest from the windows receive less ight than the desks next 
the windows. ‘That the difference between the first and fifth rows is 
great enough to occasion any alarm seems not to have been suspected. 
In the ordinary schoolroom the light reflected from the pupil’s book 
on the first row is eight times as great as the light reflected from the 
book of the pupil who is so unfortunate as to sit in the row next to 
the black-board. The decrease of the light as the distance from the 
window increases is different in each room. The law of the square of 
the distance is not even approximately correct but it is safe to say that 
in the great majority of school rooms in the United States the row 
of desks next to the windows has many-fold more light than the rows 
next to the black-boards. Professor Basquin and I tested school rooms 


308 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


having windows on but one side. In these rooms the variation be- 
tween the first and fifth rows was from seven-fold to ten-fold. By 
the introduction of screens over the black-boards in the same rooms, 
the light at the darkest seat was increased as much as 50 per cent. 
That an increase of 50 per cent. in the light in the dark corners of 
our school rooms is important is apparent to all. Furthermore, this 
result can be secured with little or no cost. Most schools possess 
white screens, light-colored advertising maps, charts printed on white 
paper, etc. ‘They may be used to cover the black-boards and when thus 
used they will reflect the ight to the very parts of the rooms which 
need it most. 

Because of the lack of attention which is paid to the light actually 
present in the schoolroom, and because of the great difficulty in 
adjusting our windows and shades to the varying intensities of the 
external source of light, it is not surprising that we should find in our 
schoolrooms conditions of hight so bad that during many hours and 
days the reading of ordinary printed matter without undue strain 
upon the eyes is impossible. 


Unwise Demands made upon the Eyes of Young Children 

Until within a very few decades reading was taught by a slow and 
cumbrous method. The effort of reading was so great that few chil- 
dren enjoyed the reading of a book until after they had completed the 
third school year. Interesting books for children were few in number 
and not available for the vast majority of them. To-day this is all 
changed. Our methods of teaching reading are so improved that be- 
fore the child has been in school a full year he begins to read books 
at home for his own pleasure. Our printing presses are teeming with 
children’s books. Andrew Carnegie, or rather the movement which 
he so ably supports, has filled city and country with free books avail- 
able for even the youngest. During the last twelve months I have 
tested the eyes of some 700 children. I have asked of each child an 
estimate of the number of books read in the preceding 12 months. 
One room of 31 pupils for the 12 months preceding the middle of the 
second school year, gave the following figures. The average number 
of books read by each pupil was 22. Some had read but few, while 
others had read many more than 22. One half of the pupils had read 
20 books or more. It should be observed that this record of the num- 
ber of books covers the period from the middle of the first school 
year to the middle of the second school year. After the second school 
year many pupils read regularly a book a week. In several of the 
grade rooms tested, the pupils of the room read on the average as many 
as 50 books a year. In the first three years after reaching the legal 
school age not a few pupils in our best city schools read 100 books. 
This figure is certainly far above the average, but there is a tendency 


THE EYES OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 309 


to increase the number of books read during these first three years of 
school. We should but deprecate the tendency and do all we can to 
stop it. During these three years the pupils are growing faster than 
during the following years. At this time there is a decrease in the 
nervous energy of the child. In recent studies of the order of develop- 
ment of motor adjustments and coordinations, it has been found that 
the individual first acquires control over the larger muscles and later 
over the finer ones. The normal activity of the child exercises mainly 
the larger muscles. The plays of children give the widest scope to 
the exercises of such muscles. The coarser movements are most pre- 
dominant while the finer adjustments and the use of the smaller 
muscles are of secondary importance. 

By our improved forms of modern education all this is changed. 
We put the six-year-old child to the task of reading and writing. 
These acts involve the use of the smaller muscles of the organism 
and are dependent upon more exact control of these muscles than any 
other act the individual is ever likely to be called upon to execute 
in later life. If an adult is out of practise in the use of the pen, 
a single hour’s work is sufficient to exhaust the hand. The extreme 
exertion which the child puts forth to guide the pen or to follow 
line upon line with the eyes is so far in excess of the amount of 
energy required by an adult that we are not in a position to appre- 
ciate the severity of the child’s task. Children upon entering school 
have better control of movements involving the whole arm and the 
wrist than of those involving the wrist and fingers. The muscular 
control of the eyes is adequate for all free movements of the eyes, but 
not sufficient to warrant the finer adjustments of continuous reading. 
The loss of nervous energy, necessitated by reading and writing, at 
the ages of from five to eight years is an unwarranted drain upon the 
health of the child. At this age the child needs free and vigorous 
movements rather than the constrained and finer ones required in 
reading and writing. Ata later age the control over the finer muscles 
is adequate for the task, but in this age of rush we are crowding our 
little ones and inverting the order of nature. Furthermore, the tissues 
of the globes of the eyes are still soft and the strain of the ciliary 
and other eye muscles is likely to cause short-sightedness by increas- 
ing the anterior-posterior axis of the eyeballs. If the child’s eyes 
do thus lengthen under the excessive strain, the eyes are not only 
weakened for vision, but they become diseased organs. 

We have thus far attempted to establish the following four propo- 
sitions. (1) The human eye was evolved for distant vision and 
the perversion incident to reading and writing would lead us to ex- 
pect some great injury to the organism. (2) Although the eye may 
easily adjust itself to a light changing from one- to ten-candle power, 
the diversities of daylight during the hours of the school day and 


310 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the months of the school year are so great that the minimum and 
maximum extremes are frequently exceeded. (3) The necessary rules 
for lighting buildings are not adhered to, thus placing an unneces- 
sary strain upon the eyes of all attempting to read and write. (4) 
There is a growing tendency to use the eyes at a period of life which 
is in every way ill fitted to the task. If these four propositions 
have been established, and if the pessimistic forebodings are justified, 
then investigations of the eyes should discover a general destruction 
of the eyes of civilized countries and an increasing number of eyes 
injured during the age of from 6 to 9. 


Investigating the Eyes of School Children. 


Systematic investigations of eyes upon a wide scale were not begun 
till 1865. At that date Dr. Herman Cohn commenced his investiga- 
tions of the eyes of school children in Breslau. After having ex- 
amined ten thousand children, he summarized his results as follows: 

Short-sightedness hardly exists in the village schools: the number of cases 
increases steadily with the increasing demands which the schools make upon the 
eyes, and reaches the highest point in the gymnasia. 

The number of short-sighted scholars rises regularly from the lowest to the 
highest classes in all institutions. 

The average degree of myopia increases from class to class, that is, the 
short-sighted become more so. 


The circular of information of the United States Bureau of Infor- 
mation, No. 6, 1881, in speaking of the many investigations which 
had been made in this and other countries said: 

All, without a single exception, prove beyond a doubt that near-sightedness, 
beginning, perhaps, at nothing in the lower classes in the school and first year 
of school life, steadily increases from class to class in the school until in the 
highest grades or in the last years of school attendance it has actually devel- 
oped itself in as many as 60 or 70 per cent. of all the pupils. 


In all these tests children were not regarded as near-sighted unless 
their visual acuity in one or both eyes was but two thirds of normal 
vision or less. Think of the significance of these statements which 
are entirely authoritative. Pupils entering our schools come to us 
with good eyes, but if they stay with us till the end of the course, 
60 to 70 per cent. of them will leave us with but two thirds normal 
visual acuity or less. Most of this loss of vision is caused directly 
by the strain put upon the eyes in reading, writing and drawing. 


The Sacrifices caused by Premature Strain 


The picture drawn by the investigators during the two decades 
following 1865 was dark indeed. The only ray of hope was found 
in the fact that the destruction of the eyes did not begin during the 
first few years of school, so that pupils dropping out before the eighth 


THE EYES OF SCHOOL CHILDREN ZEt 


or tenth year would probably escape with good eyes. Thus Cohn found® 
that in the case of pupils 814 years old there were but 5 per cent., 
myopic, while of the pupils remaining the full 14 years, 63.6 per 
cent. were myopic. Investigations of the pupils of other cities of 
Germany resulted in similar findings. Investigations in America 
were not so numerous as those in Germany, but in general the results 
were the same until recent years. 

Investigations carried on in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1891, 
showed that in the second and third grades from 50 to 60 per cent. of 
the pupils possessed less than normal visual acuity. Investigations 
upon over 3,700 pupils of the Chicago public schools, in 1899, showed 
that the maximum of defective eyes was reached with pupils 9 years 
old. No one seems to have remarked upon this change in the grade 
at which the maximum destruction of the eyes is found. In fact the 
results seemed to have been looked upon as rather accidental and of 
no special significance. 

Some months ago I asked myself these two questions. Is the max- 
imum destruction of the eyes of the school children reached earlier 
than formerly? Secondly, if such is the case, what is the cause of it? 
In attempting to answer these questions I have tried to learn what 
recent investigators have found concerning eyes, and I have attempted 
personally to examine the eyes of children in schools which were 
significant. The data which I have secured lead me to conclude that 
the excessive destruction of the eyes begins several years earlier than 
was formerly the case in America, and earlier than is still the 
case in Germany and other foreign countries. As to the cause of the 
early injury of the eyes the results of my investigations are most 
significant. The highest per cent. of defective visual acuity I have thus 
far discovered was found in a room in which the pupils had been in 
school but 1% years. This is the room referred to above in which the 
average number of books read by each pupil during the preceding 12 
months was 22. It may not surprise you when I tell you that 84 
per cent. of these little innocents had defective vision. The school- 
room in which they were seated was unusually well provided with 
windows and had a south exposure. Unfortunately their teacher 
preferred a rather dimly-lighted room and made generous use of opaque 
shades with which the windows were provided. The light by which 
the pupils read in school was in most cases certainly better than the 
light which they had for their reading of books at home. Some of 
these children in their childish ignorance took books to bed with 
them, and upon awakening in the morning read before breakfast. It 
is probable that in most cases the children at home read during the 
evening twilight till it was too dark to tell one word from. another. 
Then they would retire to some dark corner of a dimly lighted room 
and continue the reading till supper time or bed time. Young chil- 


312 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


dren have no regard for their eyes and parents are not likely to inter- 
fere with them as long as they are quiet. 

My query as to the cause of the early destruction of the eyes is 
being answered by my investigations. It seems to be simply because 
our infants are reading more books than formerly, both in and out of 
school. In Germany the instruction during the first few years of 
school life is largely oral and at home the children do not read so 
much as our children. Furthermore, our children are to-day much 
better taught than three decades ago, and they read much more than 
formerly during the tender years of from 6 to 9. 

The pessimistic forebodings expressed in the first part of this 
article are more than justified by the figures just presented. The 
eyes of our school children are being destroyed, and worse than that, 
the destruction is now taking place at the age of from 7 to 9 years, 
which makes the matter so serious that we should bestir ourselves to 
lessen the evil as far as possible. In the palmy days of Greece the 
Athenian boy was not taught to read till he was ten years old. By 
our modern improved: form of education we injure the eyes of our 
children so that one half of them have defective vision before the age 
at which the Greek boy learned his alphabet. 

The gravity of the situation is so great that I venture to offer in 
conclusion the following suggestions: 

1. We should recognize the fact that human eyes are ill adapted 
for reading, writing and drawing for a long period at a time. 

2. We should recognize the fact that the normal daily deviation of 
daylight is so great that any method of adjusting the windows shades 
from. mere habit is inadequate. 

3. In constructing school houses the window space should be as 
large as that described above. 

4, The interior walls and ceilings should be light. 

5. The amount of sky visible from each seat should be large. 

6. The windows should be provided with white Holland screens 
or their equivalents. 

7. Every schoolroom should be provided with light shades and they 
should be placed over the blackboards as soon as there are dark corners 
in the room. 

8. School children’s eyes should be tested annually and parents 
notified that an oculist should be employed in the case of all defective 
eyes. 

9. Children should not be taught even the elements of reading or 
writing during the first year of school. For the ordinary reading and 
writing should be substituted more oral instruction in language, num- 
ber work, nature study, history, singing, physical training, play and 
other forms of training suited to the needs of the pupil. 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 313 


NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 


By FRED DELAND 


PITTSBURGH, PA. 


XV. FINANCIAL AND TELEPHONIC CONDITIONS IN 1884 


i 1884 the farmers in the United States harvested crops of wheat, 

corn and oats greater than in any previous year, while the amount 
of cotton raised by southern planters had been only slightly exceeded 
in two previous years. It should have been a good year for legitimate 
enterprises; but it proved an unfortunate period for many. ‘The 
average export value of wheat was 20 cents a bushel less than the 
previous year, while the yearly range in the price of wheat in the 
Chicago market was 96 cents in February and 6914 cents in December. 
In 1883 wheat had ranged from 90 to 113; in 1882 from 91 to 140 and 
in 1881 from 95 to 143 cents a bushel. Thus the aggregate value of 
the wheat exported in 1884 was forty-six millions of dollars less than 
in 1882. 

In January, 1884, came the suspension of the banking house of 
a well-known financier and also of the business of a leading broker. 
Following these failures a dreary dullness pervaded financial circles 
while a dread expectancy of further monetary troubles prevailed in all 
lines of industry, limiting outputs to the minimum required to meet 
immediate demands. Then came the eventful month of May, bringing 
to light the notorious wrecking of the Marine Bank, the failure of 
Grant & Ward, the suspension of several very prominent banking and 
brokerage firms and of many small ones. 

As a result of the financial failures occurring on two days only, 
May 14 and 15, the market value of good securities depreciated over 
$240,000,000, a slump having a far-reaching effect many times greater 
than a depreciation of like amount would now have. Eleven national 
banks and more than a hundred private banks and banking concerns 
suspended payment during the year, while the total number of failures 
throughout the United States during 1884 was 10,968, with aggregate 
liabilities of $226,343,427. That is, nearly eleven thousand business 
houses were unable to meet monetary obligations in full, while more 
than ten times that number probably failed to attain to any measure 
of success ; in other words, either went out of business for lack of funds 
to continue or because the future gave no promise of success. Then 
the net earnings of all railroads fell off about 9 per cent., while the 


314 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


construction of new railroad lines practically ceased, less than one fifth 
the amount being expended for this purpose in 1884, that was expended 
in 1882. The bank clearances, which had exceeded forty billions of 
dollars in 1883, fell to twenty-four billions in 1884, and, as a dis- 
tressing industrial depression prevailed in several foreign countries, 
there was only a slight export demand for our products. 

Quite naturally all these grave disturbances in financial, industrial 
and commercial circles seriously affected the growth of the telephone 
industry. Thousands of subscribers were compelled to dispense with 
the telephone through inability to pay for its use, or by reason of the 
closing of places of business, while hundreds who had expected to 
subscribe were compelled to postpone the adoption of this serviceable 
utility. Nevertheless, nearly all the larger exchanges reported a 
moderate growth, and the net gain in subscribers reported by all the 
Bell companies was 11,222 for the year, making a net increase of 9 
per cent., a remarkable growth considering the times and conditions. 
The gross earnings of all the licensee companies in 1884 exceeded 
$9,500,000, or 18 per cent. on a total capitalization of $53,000,000, not 
including the capitalization of the parent company, which was 
$9,602,000. 

On January 1, 1884, there were 1,325 Bell exchanges in operation. 
During the year 1884 there were 61 new Bell exchanges opened, which, 
added to the 1,325 exchanges in operation, should have made a total 
of 1,386 when the year closed. But of 133 small exchanges, “ kitten 
exchanges,” as they were called, that had been absorbed in the con- 
solidation of local companies, 63 were converted by the new owners 
into toll stations, while 70 were closed for the time being, owing to 
an almost total lack of support. Thus there were only 1,253 exchanges 
in operation on December 31, 1884, or 72 less than a year previous. 
Referring to these exchanges, the parent company stated in its annual 
report: 


As a rule, all the larger exchanges have had a steady growth, and there seems 
no reason to doubt that this will continue for some time to come. On the other 
hand, there is a pause in building exchanges in small places, and some 78 of 
those already started have been for the present given up, while 61 new ones 
have been established. The establishment of these systems in small towns was 
probably pushed too rapidly, in view of the stagnation of general business which 
followed. Many of these now abandoned will be restored upon a revival of 
business, and others can be put into operation under a system which is being 
worked out for small exchanges without a central office, and which, if as suc- 
cessful as we hope, will carry the telephone into a large number of towns and 
villages where it is now impossible to place them upon a paying basis. 


In this connection it is interesting to compare the foregoing sta- 
tistics with the following tabulated statement showing the average 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 315 


number of subscribers connected with Bell exchanges during the past 
twenty-five years, and to note the steady increase in growth that is 
recorded during the past ten years. In 1882, the average number of 
subscribers connected with Bell exchanges was only 91; in 1906, it was 
558, an increase of more than sixfold. This compilation is based 
on the statistics presented in the annual reports of the parent company, 
as of December 31 of each year: 


Year Exchanges | Subscribers Average Yearly Gain 
1906 4,889 2,727,289 558 64 
1905 4,532 2,241,367 494 53 
1904 4,080 1,799,633 441 33 
1903 3,740 1,525,167 408 29 
1902 3,375 1,277,983 379 39 
1901 3,005 1,020, 647 340 51 
1900 2,775 800,880 289 28 
1899 2,426 632,946 261 3 
1898 2,134 465,180 218 22 
1897 1,962 384, 230 196 15 
1896 7 325, 244 181 6 
1895 1,613 281,695 175 6 
1894 1,439 243,432 169 iL 
1893 1,409 237,186 168 ai 
1892 1,351 232,140 172 5 
1891 1,297 216,017 167 3 
1890 1,241 202,931 164 13 
1889 1,228 185,003 151 uf 
1888 1,194 171,454 144 11 
1887 IRD 158,712 133 9 
1886 1,180 147,068 124 7 
1885 1,175 137,750 117 9 
1884 1,253 134, 847 108 15 
1883 1,325 123,625 93 2 
1882 1,070 97,728 91 


In 1884, some of the Bell licensee companies gladly furnished 
periodical reports to the parent company giving detailed explanations 
as to the method of operation and maintenance, the number of sub- 
sceribers, calls per subscriber, etc. Other licensee companies objected 
to any and all parental supervision, and especially to furnishing the 
monthly reports from which data of a uniform character could be 
compiled. Then, as many licensees were not under the direct man- 
agement of the parent company, failure to prepare and transmit the 
desired reports could only be deplored. Again, some of the newer 
companies that had been established on a speculative rather than an 
investment basis objected to the proposed adoption of uniform methods 
of operation, maintenance and construction, although the economy 
and advantages in standardization in methods and practise, as well as 
in construction and equipment, were clearly apparent to the unbiased 
mind. Nevertheless, the parent company did succeed in securing many 
statistics that are now invaluable in illustrating the progressive growth 


316 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of the telephone movement ; and in its annual report for the year 1883 
stated that: 


With the acquirement of large interests in our licensed companies comes the 
necessity of more oversight of the business, and, as far as it can be obtained 
without absolute ownership, an exact comparison of results. The organization 
of the company should be shaped to meet these requirements, and with proper 
watchfulness and effort on our part, we may expect steady growth and improve- 
ment in the character of our business in all its branches. 


The same difficulty in gathering statistics was experienced by the 
respective secretaries of the National Telephone Exchange Association, 
and by the committee allotted the work of gathering statistics. At 
the meeting held at the Continental Hotel, in Philadelphia, in Sep- 
tember, 1884, Mr. W. D. Sargent, chairman of the committee on ex- 
change statistics, presented a comprehensive report of great value, and 
representing an enormous amount of individual work, covering the 
number of exchanges, of subscribers, circuits, methods, wages, ete. 
Yet of the 906 exchanges belonging to members of the association, he 
was only able to secure reports from 210. Single exchanges formed 
the basis of 200 of these reports and included 30,421 subscribers, or an 
average of 152 subscribers to each exchange. But 79 of the 200 
reported less than 50 subscribers; 49 reported between 50 and 100; 
31 between 100 and 200; 14 between 200 and 300, and 10 between 
300 and 400. 

The editor of the Electrical World, in referring to the financial 
conditions prevailing during 1884, wrote: 


Our country, equally with the other parts of the civilized world, has passed 
through a crisis of depression and distress. Commerce has languished, the busy 
hum of factories has ceased; costly machinery has rusted in idleness; banks 
have succumbed to the drain upon their reserves; mines have been shut down, 
and toilers by the hundreds of thousands have sought in vain for employment 
at the merest pittance. But amidst all these signs of dull times, and while suf- 
fering a natural sympathetic restriction, electrical industries of all kinds have 
prospered in the main and grown apace. ... In January, when reports were 
current of a proposed deal between the Bell and Drawbaugh interests, the price 
of Bell stock was about 200. Then as the year and the hearing of evidence in 
behalf of Drawbaugh, in Pennsylvania, progressed, the price fell, until in May, 
at the time of the panic in Wall Street, it reached 150. That was the turning- 
point, and it rose gradually until Judge Wallace handed down his decision, 
when it jumped from 195 to 265. 


Referring to the financial condition of the ]ocal companies at the 


close of 1884, the parent Bell company, in its annual report to its 
fourteen hundred stockholders, said: 


Nearly all our licensed companies are in good condition, and many of them 
continue to pay regular dividends in spite of the general dullness. It has not, 
however, been a year when new enterprises of any kind could be easily pro- 


THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 317 


moted, and in common with other industries, the telephone companies have 
found it difficult to sell stocks or bonds for their construction purposes. It has 
been probably as much due to this as to the lessening of the demand for tele- 
phone service that our output of instruments has decreased. Most of the com- 
panies have met chis condition of things by applying their net earnings in part, 
and in some cases wholly, to their new construction. The result of this con- 
servative policy, although temporarily disappointing to stockholders, has been 
to materially increase the intrinsic value and earning capacity of the properties, 
and in view of the importance of an early occupation of the field while numerous 
infringing claimants were striving to gain a foothold, we have no doubt the 
policy was tne right one. How far it should be continued under the more favor- 
able conditions that now prevail is to be carefully considered by each company. 


On December 5, 1884, Judge Wallace delivered his opinion in the 
Drawbaugh case. In part it reads: 


Concededly bell was an original inventor of the telephone, the principle of 
which with the essential means for its application, are described in his first 
patent, and of the improved apparatus described in his second patent... . 
Mr. Cross, an expert, caused apparatus to be made in conformity to the descrip- 
tion and to drawings as shown in Figure 7 of the patent, which proved itself to 
be an operative, practical telephone. Probably the date of his (Bell’s) inceptive 
invention might be carried back to July, 1875, but irrespective of the time of 
the invention, the justice of his claim to be an original inventor of the telephone 
must remain unchallenged. It was through him also that the telephone was 
made known to the scientific public, and thence introduced into commercial 
use... . From 1867, to July, 1873, Drawbaugh was intimately connected with 
persons composing the Drawbaugh Manufacturing Company, which was engaged 
in manufacturing devices under Drawbaugh’s patents. He was a stockholder 
and the master mechanic of the company. Among the officers and stockholders 
were many men of capital and enterprise. There came a time when the man- 
agers of the company wanted Drawbaugh to suggest new devices for the com- 
pany to manufacture. He never suggested the telephone nor attempted to 
induce the managers of that company to investigate or exhibit his talking 
machine. A number of the managers and employees of this concern testify that 
they never heard of the existence of the talking machine during the life of the 
company. Without attempting to refer to other testimony to the same general 
effect, what has already been referred to, shows that if Drawbaugh had seriously 
desired to bring his talking machine into public notice and secure the fruits of 
his invention, he had ample opportunity to do so... . Without regard to other 
features of the case, it is sufficient to say that the defense is not established so 
as to remove a fair doubt of its truth, and such doubt is fatal. 


318 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


LINNE AND THE LOVE FOR NATURE. 


By EDWARD K. PUTNAM 


DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 


PRING, always the delight of the lover and of the poet the world 
over, becomes more and more so the farther we go into the north. 
Nowhere are the spring songs so full of feeling as in Scandinavia. 
When the northern winter, over-dark and over-long, is past; when re- 
turning light and warmth inspire sleeping nature with new life; 
when the blue anemone, close to the fast-retreating snow, looks up into 
the cheering sun; when the birch puts on its delicate fresh green; when 
the thrush pours into the fragrant air its love-song, then, as Linné puts 
it, “love seizes even the plants,” and the spirit of spring awakens the 
heart of man into a new joy. It was when this Swedish spring was 
at its best that the blomsterkung (king of flowers), Carl von Linné, 
was born, and in the romantic north, where fancy is still free to roam, 
it is natural that the good people should imagine some bond between 
the season and the child. And surely the May child, who in his cradle 
stopped crying when a flower was placed in his hand, grew up to be a 
lover of the flowers and of all nature. 

This love for nature, which marked the whole life of Linné, was 
inherited; and he was brought up among the flowers in the garden of 
Stenbrohult, his father’s Smaland parsonage. The flowers were his 
playthings and their names almost the first words on his lps. Once 
when hardly four years old he followed his father to a lovely ang, or 
flower-covered meadow, and overheard him telling his friends the 
name and properties of each of the plants. After that, he never ceased 
to ask his father for the name of each plant he met. Once, when re- 
buked for forgetting and asking again in the childish way, he made up 
his mind to put his whole energy on keeping in memory all that he was 
told, for he did not wish to miss hearing about the things that were 
dearest to him. 

Linné never forgot the race of peasants and priests from which he 
rose, nor did he forget the humble flowers of Stenbrohult. Years after- 
ward when at the height of fame, he visited his early home and wrote 
in his notes, “'To the flowers, my childhood’s play-brothers of Sten- 
brohult on the banks of Moékeln, now I bade farewell,” and then he 
goes on to call the plants and the weeds by name. 


‘An address delivered at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, on the 
oceasion of the celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Carl 
von Linné (Carolus Linneus). 


LINNE AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 319 


When the boy came to go to school he cared less for his books than 
for his flowers. Instead of allowing himself to be put through the 
educational mill of the times he preferred to roam over the fields and, 
when there came time for reading, to devour the books that would tell 
him more about his friends, the plants. He thought his teachers un- 
feeling and rude, and they thought him stupid. His father and mother, 
who wanted him to become a pastor, were discouraged and came near 
making him a cobbler. But the boy was not stupid, nor lazy, nor worth- 
less. All the while, his powers of accurate observation were growing 
and he was storing up the knowledge that would be useful to him in 
the life that he was to lead. In time his powers came to be recognized 
and Dr. Rothman, one of his tutors at the school at Wexi6, more sympa- 
thetic than the others, assured the father that of all the scholars study- 
ing in Wexi6 there was no one that gave as much hope as Carl. Thus 
the way was opened for him to devote himself to the study of natural 
science and of medicine, instead of theology, but not until after long 
family discussions. Once the boy heard his father say, “ What one 
has inclination for, that will he have success in” (Det man har lust 
for, det har man lycka till). The boy asked him if it was really so, 
for if it was, he could not have success as a pastor, for which he had 
no inclination. The father suggested how costly his chosen scientific 
studies would be. The boy replied, “If the proverb has any ground, 
God will provide the offering. If I have success as I have inclination, 
so ways-out will not fail me.” The father, with tearful eyes, gave his 
consent: “ Then may God grant you success. I shall not force you into 
that for which you have not inclination.” And so the boy set out for 
the University of Lund, where he won the life-long friendship of 
Stobeus. Here, and later at the University of Upsala, he read all the 
books he could find on botany and studied the plants of the gardens as 
well as of the fields and woods. His knowledge of plants was so unusual 
that Celsius, who came upon him by chance in the Botanical Garden at 
Upsala, took him home, and interested himself in the scientific advance- 
ment of the student. At the universities Linné put his serious energy 
on the sciences for which he was fitted, but never did the book learning 
nor the passion for acquiring knowledge cool his inborn love for the 
flowers. 

If a childhood and youth like Linné’s suggests a spring morning, 
so the passing from that youth into the fullness of life is like the 
passing into a sunshiny day, a day so beautiful that it never loses the 
color and the freshness of the dawn. Few lives have been more 
crowded than Linné’s. He had time to study not only his beloved 
botany, but all the natural sciences, even assaying, and to earn his 
living as a physician. He had time to go on collecting trips through- 
out Sweden and parts of Europe; time to identify, name and classify 


320 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


thousands of plants, insects and animals; time to write ten score scien- 
tific books and treatises; time to direct hundreds of students who 
gathered at Upsala from near and far to be guided by the new organizer 
of science; and yet in all that busy life he never was too busy to let 
his true feelings come out, never too busy to love the sunshine and 
birds and flowers. The wonderful hold he had on his students and 
followers shows his never-slacking enthusiasm, and even to-day this is 
felt by reading his travels and his scientific addresses and papers, or 
by following his life, so admirably recounted by Fries. He trained 
himself to see and note whatever was essential and to express this in 
as few words and as directly as possible, and yet it seems natural for 
him to pass from scientific description to poetic prose full of the 
beautiful Northern imagery, which is so rich in the Swedish language. 
Indeed there is so much of the imaginative in his writing that the 
Swedes, as Levertin has done, like to name him with their poets. 

He starts on his scientific trips with a bird-like delight in the out- 
doors much like that of the old ballads: 


Hit befel on Whitsontide, 
Erly in a May mornyng, 
The son vp feyre can shyne, 
And the briddis mery can syng. 


“This is a mery mornyng,” seid Litull John. 
“Be hym that dyed on tre; 
A more mery man then I am one 
Lyves not in Christianté.” (Robin Hood and the Monk.) 


fs this very different from the spirit of Linné when he set out from 
Upsala to study the plants and the rocks and the people of Lapland? 


I journeyed from Upsala town the 12th of May, 1732, which was a Friday, 
11 o’clock A.M., when I was 25 years old, all but twelve hours. Now began all 
the ground to delight and smile, now comes beautiful Flora and sleeps with 


Phebus. 
Omnia vere vigent et veris tempore florent 


Et totus fervet Veneris dulcedine mundus. 


Now stood the winter rye quarter of an ell tall, and the grain had newly shown 
a blade. The birch began now to burst forth, and all leafy trees to show their 
leaves, except the elm and aspen. . . . The lark sang to us the whole way, 
quivering in the air. 


Ecce suum tirile, tirile, suum tirile tractat. 


The sky was clear and warm, the west wind cooled with a pleasant breeze, and 
a dark hue trom the west began to cover the sky. . . . The woods began to in- 
crease more and more, the sweet lark which ere now had delighted our ears, 
deserted us, but yet another one meets us in the woods with as great a compli- 
ment, namely the thrush, Turdus minor, who, when she on the highest fir-top 
plays to her dearest, also lets us joy therein. Yes, she tunes in so high with 
her varied notes that she often overmasters the nightingale, the master of song. 


LINNE AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 321 


As he goes on and the season advances he notes that “no place in 
Sweden is pleasanter to travel through in the summer” than the woods 
of pine, fir and “ overflooding” (ofverflédig) birch. He says that 
although summer may be shorter here than anywhere else in the world, 
nowhere is it pleasanter, and he holds the midnight sun as not the least 
of nature’s miracles. On midsummer day he gives praise for the 
beauty of summer and of spring, and for the air, the water, the green 
plants and the song of birds. 

On this Lapland journey, Linné became fascinated with the little 
creeping pink-and-white twin-flower, calling it by his own name, and it 
has ever since been known as the linnea (Linnea borealis Gronovius), 
and even when found in the cool shades of the Adirondacks or on the 
pine-clad slopes of the Sierras it seems to carry with it some of the 
dreamy cheerfulness of the Northern midsummer. 

When he gets up into the mountains, he revels in the freedom of 
the bracing mountain air and rejoices to find the flowers more numerous 
and more beautiful than he expected, and when he climbs Vallivare 
there is so much that is new he imagines himself in a new world. He 
goes through a cold driving snow-storm as he crosses over the fjall 
into Norway and looks down on the landscape below: 


When we at last came down what pleasure did I not find for my tired body? 
I came then out from a cold and frozen fjill down into a warm and seething 
valley (I sat me down to eat wild strawberries [smultron]) ; for snow and ice 
I saw green plants standing in their sweetest bloom (such high grass had I never 
seen in any place); for violent weather a striking scent from Trifolio florente 
[flowering clover] and other plants. . . . I was able to cool myself with cow- 
milk and refresh myself with food, also to sit in a chair. 


Perhaps only those who have feasted on the wild strawberries 
(smultron) of Scandinavia can appreciate how that little naive touch 
makes the whole scene full of life. From a purely scientific point of 
view it might have done to have told us that as he reached a certain 
altitude on his descent he found certain flowers in bloom and the fruit 
of certain plants already ripe. But personally I am glad to have my 
mouth, like his, water over those smultron. 

And I feel sure that he had the smultron still in mind when years 
afterward he rejoiced at bidding a disciple God-speed on a journey to 
Lapland, sending with him greetings to the Lapland fjalls and flowers, 
and assuring him that the trip will give him memories that will be 
a life-long pleasure. The joy of the fjill comes on him again in the 
same way as Wordsworth’s heart, filled with pleasant memories of his 
chance walk by the shore of Ullswater, “ dances with the daffodils.” 

Even more noteworthy than in his travels are the expressions of his 
sympathetic love for nature in his scientific papers and treatises. In 

VOL. LXxI.—2]. 


322 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


his “ Delicie Nature ” he classifies the plants by comparing their fami- 
lies to a great commonwealth, saying of the grass: 
The grass, in its simple driikt [costume] makes up here the peasant class; 


it is the most numerous and contributes the most, it takes care of itself the 
best, although it is daily tramped upon and vexed. 


To one with such a true, sympathetic and enthusiastic love for 
nature, life must needs be full of meaning. There is a saying in 
Swedish, “Som man ropar i skogen, far man svar” (As one calls 
into the woods so is he answered). lLinné called into the woods with 
a voice of love, and in like tones all nature answered. He took delight 
in coming upon the creeping twin-flower trailing through the pine- 
woods, in listening to the little chaffinch (bofink) with a great butterfly 
in his mouth calling home his children to dinner. He marveled at the 
endurance of the Lapps in going over mountains and with a human 
sympathy entered into their fresh, free life. He enjoyed watching 
the young men and women of Skane dance about the midsumer may- 
pole. Fcr him everything is worth observing and noting. With so 
many things to see, to think about and to love, his life is one of sun- 
shine, and he is full of thankfulness for having been permitted to know 
and enjoy so much. ‘Truly to such a human heart, as to Wordsworth, 


the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 


Linné is not like the swine which “ become fat: on acorns, but not once 
look up at the tree from which the fruit fell, much less think upon 
him who established the tree so splendidly.” He says of himself: 

I sought after God’s footsteps over nature’s plain and perceived in every 


one, even in those I could scarcely discern, an unending wisdom and power, an 
impenetrable completeness. 


And again after declaring that God’s wisdom is shown in the smallest 
creature as well as in the elephant and is as worthy of wonder, he 
repeats a favorite phrase of his: 

Great are the works of the Lord, and the one who takes heed of them he 


has joy therein (Store iro Herrans verk, och den som upp& dem aktar, han 
hafver lust deraf). 


To appreciate fully Linné’s love for nature we must remember that 
he began life early in the eighteenth century, in the very midst of the 
classical age of European life and letters. It was an age in which 
emphasis was placed upon the conventional, the formal, an age in which 
feeling and enthusiasm were restrained, an age of the court and the city, 
rather than of the country and nature. In the romantic movement, 
which meant a breaking away from artificial classicism, one of the most 
important features was the “return to nature.” In the beginning of 


LINNE AND THE LOVE OF NATURE 323 


the eighteenth century no poet thought of writing about the birds and 
flowers, or if he did, of using anything but stilted and conventional 
phrases. In such an age, long before Burns and Wordsworth, before 
even Rousseau, Linné leaves the conventional city for the garden, the 
ing, the barrskog, the fjall; he is bold enough to neglect the conven- 
tionalized nightingale in his joy over the thrush; he ignores the con- 
ventional rules and models of writing, and in his own simple and direct 
way sets down truthfully the things he has seen with his own eyes 
and felt with his own heart; he leads the way not only for a more scien- 
tific study of nature, but also for a more poetic love for nature. With 
the eighteenth-century world sleeping through a musicless night, 
Linné’s enthusiastic love for nature, so joyously and continuously ex- 
pressed, must have come like the dawn song of birds calling to awake. 
And it is not unreasonable to suppose that through his writings and 
through the hundreds of students who were held at Upsala by his 
powerful magnetism, something of his inspiring love for nature should 
have been spread through Europe and all the world and have helped 
in leading men back to the great outdoors. 

To some it may seem curious that Linné looked upon flowers and 
nature, at the same time from the scientific and the poetic points of 
view. We have, of course, plenty of amateurs who have a love for 
nature without a true knowledge, and we have scientists who see only 
the material object under their microscope and who feel or love nothing. 
But the examples of such scientists as Linné and Agassiz and many 
more show us that a scientist need not be fossilized, nor a mere instru- 
ment for dissecting, recording and classifying. A little of the poetic 
feeling, a little of the love and enthusiasm of Linné need not interfere 
with the worth of scientific work. 

With the love for nature developed more, and, perhaps with the 
scientific attitude developed somewhat less, we have the naturalists, 
men like Gilbert White, Thoreau, Burroughs and Muir. These are the 
men who with loving and appreciative eyes observe what is near at 
hand. ‘Their value lies in that they see clearly, accurately and with a 
true sympathy, and in that they let us share in their joy over nature. 
Reading their writings is like walking through the fields and woods. 
Ii opens our eyes and ears, it opens our hearts and souls, and makes us 
feel with David Starr Jordan: “ Nowhere is the sky so blue, the grass 
so green, the sunshine so bright, the shade so welcome, as right here, 
now, to-day.” Welcome indeed are the words and example of every 
observer who can help us see and enjoy for ourselves our own sky and 
grass and sunshine. Linné does this, and therefore is to be placed with 
the naturalists. 

With the emotional, imaginative side of the love for nature still 
more developed, but with the same close observation and appreciation of 


324 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


truth and reality, we have the poets, the nature poets of a high class, 
for we are not now concerned with the clever versifiers, the bookish imi- 
tators, nor with those who see nature and life morbidly or fantastically, 
through false and distorted glasses. The true poets, like Homer, or 
Shakspere, or Tennyson, see nature as truthfully as the scientists, 
they seize upon what is significant for their purpose, they base their 
imagination upon what is real and vital; they are like Wordsworth’s 
skylark, singing up into the sky but keeping heart and eye on the nest 
upon the ground, 

Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam— 

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. 
These poets are not the ones to make the nightingale and skylark sing 
in America, nor to be accused by Ruskin of pathetic fallacy in making 
their words express emotions which they know to be false. They are 
the ones who have a sincere insight into life and nature and express 
their true thought and feelings in all the imaginative beauty of their 
art. ‘Linné was like a true poet in that he was capable of poetic 
imagination and beautiful expression, perhaps the chief difference being 
that with him this was incidental, with the poet supreme. 

Like the scientists, Linné saw nature accurately; like the natural- 
ists, he saw it sympathetically; lke the poets, he saw it beautifully; 
like all of them, he saw it truthfully. Further still, like the prophets 
and seers, he saw the significance of things in the universe, he looked 
through what Carlyle calls the “ show of things ” into the things them- 
selves, he penetrated into Goethe’s “ open secret.” 

The more we walk with Linné in the gardens, the dings, the fjalls 
of his beloved Sweden, the more we shall appreciate how his inborn love 
for nature, showing itself in so many ways, was a vital part of his life, 
and the more we shall share in his joy in the works of creation. His 
love for nature leaves with us a memory, like that of a glorious morn- 
ing, a sunshiny day, a calm and peaceful evening. Such a love for 
nature takes us out from the pent-up city and shows us, as it did 
Keats, how sweet it is 


to look into the fair 
And open face of heaven. 


Such a love for nature fills our hearts with sunshine and joy, and, as 
it did for Linné, he who loved the little twin-flower, it opens our eyes 
to the truth and to the beauty of nature and of life. 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY = 325 


EARLY MOVEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES FOR A 
NATIONAL OBSERVATORY 


By CHARLES OSCAR PAULLIN, 


WASHINGTON, D. C. 


|S aoa G the first half of the nineteenth century, the federal govern- 
ment was exceedingly penurious in its encouragement of knowl- 
edge and learning. Many members of congress believed that appro- 
priations for this purpose were unconstitutional. Those members who 
were imbued with the theory of states-rights saw in the establishment 
of scientific bureaus an undue extension of the powers of the central 
government. Moreover, the interests of parties, classes and individuals 
were involved in these questions; and as a result the cause of knowledge 
suffered. Culture and education were less widely diffused than at the 
present time, and the people therefore were generally indifferent to 
the national encouragement of science. Even work of great practical 
value, such as the survey of the coast, the preparation of a nautical 
almanac and the study of winds and weather was regarded by many 
as unnecessary. ‘The inland states were disinclined to vote money for 
these purposes, since it would chiefly benefit the seaboard. A few 
progressive men, the choice spirits of their time, however, early ad- 
vocated the establishment of a national astronomical observatory. 

For many years various projects for a national institution devoted 
to the study of astronomy were formed. Thomas Jefferson, as an 
amateur, made astronomical observations; and at one time had a plan 
for a national observatory. Some of the leading professors of Bowdoin 
College and citizens of Brunswick, Maine, early memorialized congress 
to establish an observatory in their town. Writing in 1824, H. C. 
Knight favored the establishment of a “ National Observatory, whose 
top, with a sublimer intent than that of ancient Babel, should look into 
the sky; with complete astronomical apparatus, and resident professors, 
and salaries so liberal as to induce the most elevated intellects to devote 
their entire energies, during life, in tracing the marches and counter- 
marches of the planets, and deciphering the golden hieroglyphics of 
heaven. Now Rittenhouse is above the stars, let Doctor Bowditch sit 
up in the top-tower, and be the first Herschel of America.” When, in 
the thirties of the last century, the founding of a naval academy was 
being discussed, it was proposed to connect with it an astronomical ob- 
servatory, whose professors should constitute a “board of longitude.” 


326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Many other isolated suggestions and proposals for an observatory might 
be mentioned. 

There were four general movements for a national observatory. 
Each of these extended over a considerable period of time, and each 
was originated and chiefly promoted by a single man—by F. R. Hassler, 
William Lambert, John Quincy Adams and James M. Gilliss. The 
Hassler movement is connected with the founding of the Coast Survey, 
and the Lambert movement with the establishment in the United States 
of a first meridian. The movement of Adams formed a part of his 
plan for the promotion by the federal government of science, learning 
and public improvements. The undertakings of Gilliss on behalf of 
an observatory grew out of his actual experience as an astronomical 
observer in a little building on Capitol Hill in Washington. Each of 
these movements will be briefly considered. 

In 1807 President Jefferson obtained a law providing for the survey 
of the coasts of the United States. This was the initial legislation in 
the establishment of the United States Coast Survey. F. R. Hassler 
was selected by Jefferson and his secretary of the treasury, Albert 
Gallatin, to undertake the preliminary work. Hassler was a Swiss 
refugee, and at one time was connected with a trigonometrical survey of 
his native land. Jn 1807 he was appointed a professor of mathematics 
at the Military Academy at West Point. He was one of the most dis- 
tinguished of the early mathematicians and surveyors of the United 
States. Between 1807 and 1816, Hassler gave much attention to the 
preliminaries for the survey of the coast. He drew up a plan of opera- 
tions. This provided for two astronomical observatories. They were 
to form the fixed points to which the survey was to be referred. They 
were to be used in determining time and longitude. Hassler, however, 
had in mind not merely the needs of the Coast Survey, but the ad- 
vancement of scientific knowledge as well. The two observatories, he 
said, “will be permanent scientific establishments.” He wished to 
locate one of them in Maine, and the other in lower Louisiana—that 
is, as far apart as possible. “ Still, various considerations might occa- 
sion and favor the desire of placing one of these observatories in the 
city of Washington, as observatories are placed in the principal capitals 
of Europe, as a national object, a scientific ornament and a means of 
nourishing an interest for science in general.” Here should be de- 
posited the standards of weights and measures, and the chronometers 
and library of the Coast Survey. Hassler drew up a plan for the con- 
struction of an observatory at Washington, and he chose a location for 
it, “a part of the hill north of the Capitol.” 

From August, 1811, until October, 1815, Hassler was in England 
and on the continent, where he was sent to procure the necessary 
apparatus for the survey of the coast. The war of 1812 retarded and 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY = 327 


interrupted his work. He succeeded, however, in obtaining a most 
superior collection of instruments and books. Among the instruments 
for the observatories were two five-foot transits of improved construc- 
tion, made by Edward Troughton, of well-known contemporary fame; 
and two astronomical clocks, manufactured by “ William Hardy from 
Scotland, residing in London, and who is eminent for various valuable 
inventions in the line of clock work and chronometer making, and for 
the very superior execution of all his works.” Hardy had constructed 
similar clocks for the observatories of Greenwich and Glasgow. Hassler 
also purchased some books for his observatories. In 1816 his astronom- 
ical plans received the endorsement of President Madison and Secre- 
tary of the Treasury Dallas. 

Under the direction of Hassler the field-work of the survey of the 
coast was begun in the summer of 1816, but it was suddenly brought 
to a close by the repeal in the spring of 1818 of a part of the act of 
1807 authorizing the survey. The astronomical observatories had not 
yet been established. Hassler was still of the opinion that at least one 
of them was indispensable. When congress in 1832 revived the act 
of 1807, it concluded that an astronomical observatory was not neces- 
sary for the survey of the coast. The act of 1832 contained a provision 
that nothing in this act nor in that of 1807 “shall be construed to 
authorize the construction or maintenance of a permanent astronomical 
observatory.” The establishment of an observatory had now become 
a favorite project of John Quincy Adams, and the democrats during 
his administration had especially opposed and ridiculed it. They were 
determined not to leave a loop-hole in the legislation for the Coast 
Survey, by means of which Adams might be able to gratify his long- 
cherished desire. The law of 1832 gave a quietus to Hassler’s plan of 
attaching an observatory to the Coast Survey. 

The second general movement for an astronomical institution under 
federal control was that of William Lambert, at one time a resident of 
Virginia and later of the District of Columbia. Lambert’s movement 
began with his attempts to obtain legislation providing for the estab- 
lishment of a prime meridian of the United States for the reckoning 
of longitudes. He believed that Washington in laying out the seat of 
government had designed that the center of the Capitol should mark 
the first meridian of this country. Lambert brought the subject to 
the attention of congress by a memorial to the house, dated City of 
Washington, December 15, 1809. He declared that the establishment 
of a first meridian was worthy of the consideration and patronage of 
the national legislature, since a further dependence upon Great Britain 
and other foreign nations would thereby be entirely removed; and he 
submitted a series of astronomical and mathematical papers dealing 
with the subject. One of these was an abstract of calculations made 


328 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


by himself with a view to ascertaining the longitude of the Capitol. 
His figures were based upon an occultation of the star Alcyone, one 
of the Pleiades, by the moon, which was observed near the President’s 
house on October 20, 1804. Lambert succeeded in deriving the 
capitol’s approximate longitude. On March 28, 1810, a committee of 
the house to which Lambert’s memorial had been referred recommended 
the passage of a law authorizing the president to cause the longitude 
of Washington west of Greenwich to be ascertained with the greatest 
possible degree of accuracy, and empowering him to procure for this 
purpose the necessary astronomical instruments. The movement to 
establish a first meridian impressed the members of congress favorably, 
since it seemed to involve a declaration of astronomical independence 
from Great Britain. A native republican meridian was to be substi- 
tuted for an alien monarchical one. 

On January 21, 1811, the house referred Lambert’s documents to a 
second committee, which a month later asked to be discharged. Appar- 
ently, it felt itself unequal to the solution of the astronomical problems 
involved in the learned formule of the memorialist. For an expert 
opinion the house now rather oddly turned to James Monroe, Madison’s 
secretary of state. After keeping the papers more than a year, Monroe 
on July 3, 1812, made a report in which he confessed his ignorance of 
the scientific aspects of the subject. He had no hesitation, however, in 
declaring that a first meridian should be established at Washington. 
This, he said, should be done with the greatest mathematical precision 
by means of a long series of observations with astronomical instruments. 
An “ observatory would be of essential utility. It is only in such an 
institution, to be founded by the public, that all the necessary imple- 
ments are likely to be collected together, that systematic observations 
can be made for any great length of time, and that the public can be 
made secure of the result of the labors of scientific men. In favor 
of such an institution it is sufficient to remark, that every nation which 
has established a first meridian within its own limits has established 
also an observatory. We know that there is one at London, at Paris, 
at Cadiz, and elsewhere.” 

Monroe’s letter together with Lambert’s documents were referred 
to a committee of the house, to which Dr. Samuel Mitchill, of New 
York, was chairman and John C. Calhoun a member. On January 20, 
1813, this committee made a report, which was accompanied by a bill 
“ authorizing the establishment of an Astronomical Observatory.” The 
bill provided for the erection of an astronomical observatory on public 
ground within the city of Washington, and for the procuring of proper 
telescopes, instruments and furniture for the same. The president was 
to direct the construction of the building, and was to prescribe rules 
for the government of the new institution. He was to appoint, subject 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY = 329 


to the confirmation of the senate, a “ person of competent learning and 
skill, to be called the National Astronomer,” who was to have charge 
of the observatory. The bill was never voted upon. The war with 
England at this time occupied the attention of congress to the exclusion 
of less pressing matters. Moreover, Lambert, who was diligent in pro- 
moting his project, was not in Washington for the larger part of the 
years 1813 and 1814. 

From 1815 to 1824, Lambert pursued his hobby with the assiduity 
of an enthusiast. Finally his perseverance was rewarded by the passage 
of a joint resolution of congress on March 3, 1821, directing the presi- 
dent to cause the work of ascertaining the longitude of the Capitol to 
be undertaken. On April 10, President Monroe ordered Lambert to 
make the necessary “ observations by lunar occultations of fixed stars, 
solar eclipses, or any other approved method adapted to ascertaining the 
longitude of the Capitol.” In order to have his whole time for his 
new task, Lambert resigned a clerkship in the War Department. He 
had, however, no positive assurance that he would be paid for his 
astronomical work. 

Lambert now established a temporary observatory. From the War 
Department he obtained the loan of some of the instruments which 
Hassler had procured in Europe for the Coast Survey. Among those 
that he obtained were a transit instrument, a circle of reflection, an 
astronomical clock and a chronometer. Rooms for their use and safe- 
keeping were assigned in the south wing of the Capitol. To be near 
his work, Lambert moved to the vicinity of the Capitol. He employed 
William Elliot, then well known in Washington as a teacher of mathe- 
matics, as an observer. In order to make accurate transit observations, 
he established near the Capitol a north-and-south line, by means of 
concentric circles. Its direction from the transit instrument in the 
south wing was ascertained with great exactness. ‘The time-pieces were 
carefully tested and rated. 

Lambert made frequent observations during the summer of 1821. 
From these he deduced new values for the latitude and longitude of 
the Capitol. On November 8, he made an elaborate report of his 
work to the president. He also made two supplemental reports, one 
in March, 1822, and the other in December, 1823. In his report of 
1821 he called the attention of the government to the need of a per- 
manent astronomical observatory, in order to ascertain with accuracy 
the right ascension, declination, latitude and longitude of the moon, 
planets and stars, and to compute a nautical almanac. The movement 
of Lambert for a national observatory seems to have come to an end 
in 1824. The transit instrument may have been occasionally used on 
Capitol Hill subsequent to this time. John Quincy Adams has the 
following entry in his diary for November 19, 1825: “ Roberdeau, 


330 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Colonel, came at eleven, I walked with him to W. Elliott’s on Capitol 
Hill, where, with a small transit instrument, they observed the passage 
of the sun over the meridian. Conversation about the erection of an 
observatory.” 

The beginning of the movement of John Quincy Adams for a 
national observatory may be dated with the foregoing entry in his 
diary. The study of astronomy was for many years a favorite avoca- 
tion of this illustrious statesman. He often observed and recorded 
the phenomena of the heavens. He read the works of Newton, Schu- 
bert, Lalande, Biot and Lacroix. A report of Adams respecting the 
establishment of a national observatory has been pronounced by a 
competent judge “ well worthy the perusal of every lover of the exalted 
science of astronomy, both for the richness of its information and the 
beauty of its eloquence.” In 1823 he offered to give a thousand dollars 
towards the establishment of an observatory at Harvard University. 
Writing in 1838. he said that the “ observation of the sun, moon and 
stars has been for a great portion of my life a pleasure of gratified 
curiosity, of ever-returning wonder, and of reverence for the Creator 
and mover of these unnumbered worlds.” In 1843, notwithstanding 
his advanced age and the poor accommodations for traveling, he 
accepted the invitation of the Cincinnati Astronomical Society to lay 
the corner-stone of their new observatory. His oration on this occasion 
has been called an “ outline of the history of astronomy.” Such was his 
interest in this science, and in its advancement through public means, 
that the founding of a national observatory became one of the cherished 
projects of his later life. 

In his first annual message to congress, dated December 6, 1825, 
President Adams recommended the establishment of an astronomical 
observatory, either as a part of a national university or as a separate 
institution ; and also the providing for the “ support of an astronomer, 
to be in constant attendance of observation upon the phenomena of the 
heavens, and for the periodical publication of his observations.” Re 
specting the failure of the United States to do its part in the advan- 
cing of astronomical science, Adams wrote with his accustomed candor 
and vigor: “It is with no feeling of pride as an American, that the 
remark may be made, that, on the comparatively small territorial sur- 
face of Europe, there are existing upward of one hundred and thirty of 
these light-houses of the skies, while throughout the American hemi- 
sphere there is not one. If we reflect for a moment upon the discoveries, 
which in the last four centuries have been made in the physical con- 
stitution of the universe by means of these buildings and of observers 
stationed in them, shall we doubt of their usefulness to every nation ? 
And while scarcely a year passes over our heads without bringing some 
new astronomical discovery to light, which we must fain receive at 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY — 331 


second-hand from Europe, are we not cutting ourselves off from the 
means of returning light for light, while we have neither observatory 
nor observer upon one half of the globe, and the earth revolves in per- 
petual darkness to our unsearching eyes?” 

As a result of this recommendation a bill was introduced into the 
house, establishing an observatory in the District of Columbia and 
authorizing the appointment of an astronomer, two assistant astrono- 
mers and two assistants. A committee of the house made a long and 
favorable report on the subject. The bill was not voted upon. 

Adams’s recommendation for an observatory formed a part of his 
policy of nationalism, paternalism and internal improvements. In his 
first annual message he had also recommended the founding of a 
national university and of a naval academy, the establishment of a 
uniform system of weights and measures, and liberal expenditures for 
roads and canals. This progressive and enlightened policy did not 
command the support of congress, and its bold announcement early in 
his administration strengthened the hands of his opponents. His 
plan for a national observatory they represented as impracticable, and 
even chimerical. His rhetorical phrase, “ light-houses of the skies,” was 
circulated as an illustration of the fancies of his mind, and was used 
to cast reproach upon his astronomical project. Recognizing the 
futility of urging the construction of an observatory, Adams did not 
after the first year of his presidency bring it again to the attention 
of congress during his term in the White House. For several years 
he discovered no opportunity for furthering his pet measure. 

In December, 1835, President Jackson announced the bequest of a 
considerable sum of money by James Smithson, of London, for the pur- 
pose of founding in Washington an institution “ for the increase and 
diffusion of knowledge among men.” In the house the message of the 
president and accompanying papers on this subject were referred to a 
committee of which Adams was chairman. He thus became intimately 
connected with the work of obtaining possession of the Smithson funds 
and later of deciding on their disposition and application. For more. 
than ten years he was chairman of committees of the house on the 
Smithson bequest. Not until 1838, when all the requirements of the 
law had been complied with, did the United States obtain possession 
of the money. Our success in this particular was first made known in 
Washington in June, 1838. Adams lost no time in calling upon Presi- 
dent Van Buren, and in explaining his views respecting the application 
of the income to be derived from the fund. On this subject he 
had probably made up his mind soon after the bequest was announced 
in 1835. He says that he suggested to Van Buren the “ establishment 
of an astronomical observatory, with a salary for an astronomer and 
assistant, for nightly observations and periodical publications; annual 


332 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


o 


courses of lectures upon the natural, moral and political sciences. 
Above all no jobbing, no sinecure, no monkish stalls for lazy idlers.” 

Adams improved every opportunity for furthering his plan. In 
October, 1838, he wrote a long letter to the secretary of state ardently 
advocating the erection of an observatory from the Smithson fund. He 
estimated that for the founding of the institution two hundred and 
ten thousand dollars would be necessary. This he shortly raised to 
three hundred thousand dollars. In January, 1839, he presented his 
views on the subject in a resolution which he reported to the house. 
In 1839 he obtained from Rev. George B. Airy, the astronomer royal: 
of Great Britain, a detailed statement respecting the expenditures of 
the Greenwich observatory. In each of the years 1839, 1840, 1842 and 
1844, as the chairman of the committee of the house on the Smithson 
fund, he introduced a bill providing for an astronomical observatory. 
In the report which accompanied the bill of 1840, Adams, with a dis- 
play of much learning, and some rhetoric, briefly recounted the history 
of astronomy, beginning with the first chapter of Genesis and ending 
with the founding of the observatory of Pulkowa near St. Petersburg 
in 1839. 

The more ardently Adams advocated his favorite measure the less 
likelihood it had of meeting the approval of congress. Respecting the 
proper application of the income arising from the fund, the senate 
differed from the house. It wished to found one or more schools of 
learning and to encourage education, and it would not listen to Adams’s 
proposal for a national observatory. On this latter point Adams’s 
democratic opponents in congress were determined not to yield. The 
law of August 10, 1846, which provided for the application of the 
income of the Smithson fund, therefore, while it followed the general 
lines laid down by Adams, contained no provision for an astronomical 
observatory. 

The fourth general movement for a national observatory is that 
with which the name of Lieutenant James M. Gilliss is connected. The 
scientific achievements of Gilliss are more remarkable than those of any 
other officer of our navy. He was wont to attribute his first impulses 
along scientific lines to a rather insignificant incident in his career. 
When he first came to Washington on duty as a midshipman, he heard 
the officers of the navy stigmatized as incompetent to conduct a scien- 
tific enterprise. He at once resolved to disprove the charge in his own 
person. In 1833 he obtained leave to prosecute a course of studies 
at the University of Virginia. Excessive application soon so impaired 
his health that he was compelled to give up his work before he had been 
a year in residence. In 1835 he resumed his studies at Paris and 
pursued them for six months. 

In 1830 the Navy Department established in Washington the 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY —§ 333 


Depot of Charts and Instruments. It was given charge of the unused 
charts and instruments of the navy. It distributed these necessary 
articles to the naval ships. It repaired and rated the chronometers. 
For the latter purpose simple meridian observations were necessary. 
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, who was made superintendent of the 
depot in 1833, removed it to Capitol Hill. Here he erected a small 
observatory, 14 feet long, 13 feet wide, and 10 feet high. He in- 
stalled in it one of the five-foot transit instruments, which Hassler 
had procured for the Coast Survey. 

In 1836 Gilliss was detailed to duty at the Depot of Charts and 
Instruments. He shortly began to make astronomical observations in 
addition to those necessary for the rating of the chronometers. In the 
winter of 1837-8 he observed certain culminations of the moon 
and stars. In August, 1838, the Wilkes exploring expedition sailed 
from the United States on its famous voyage to the Pacific and 
Antarctic seas. Wilkes suggested to the secretary of the navy that in 
determining the longitude of the various stations of his expedition, 
observations made in the United States would be of the greatest 
value. Accordingly, Secretary of the Navy Paulding issued instruc- 
tions to Gilliss to observe, during the absence of the exploring expedi- 
tion, culminations of the moon and stars, eclipses of the moon, sun 
and Jupiter’s satellites, falling stars, and any striking astronomical 
phenomena. He was to make also meteorological and magnetic obser- 
vations. 

Gilliss immediately made thorough preparations for his new work. 
He procured a 42-inch achromatic telescope mounted parallactically, 
a variation transit, an 8-inch dip circle, and a sidereal chronometer. 
He imported several new meteorological and magnetic instruments, 
to accommodate which he erected a small frame building fifty feet 
south of the observatory on Capitol Hill. Three or four additional 
passed midshipmen were attached to the depot to assist in its new work. 
This began in September, 1838, and did not end until June, 1842. 
All the astronomical observations, with the exception of those for two 
days in May, 1841, when Gilliss was sick, and a part of those for two 
other days, were made personally by Gilliss. The average time of his 
daily employment throughout the period was twelve hours, and he 
was often on his feet twenty hours out of twenty-four. The number 
of transits recorded exceeded ten thousand, and embraced those of the 
moon, planets, and about eleven hundred stars. The average number 
of lunar culminations observed was one hundred and ten, and of lunar 
occultations about twenty. The meteorological and magnetic observa- 
tions were made bi-hourly day and night. All these observations were 
reduced by Gilliss, and were published by the government in 1845 and 
1846 in two octavo volumes containing more than thirteen hundred 


334 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


pages. These volumes were highly commended by the astronomers 
of Europe as well as those in America. They stand as a lasting 
monument to the great energy, indefatigable industry, scientific ardor, 
and consummate skill as an observer, of this young naval lieutenant. 

The difficulties under which Gilliss performed his scientific work 
were exceedingly great. His many routine duties as superintendent of 
the Depot of Charts and Instruments had to be attended to daily. His 
transit instrument was defective. The little building used as an ob- 
servatory was most inadequate. The observing slits originally ex- 
tended to within three feet of the ridge-pole on each side, thus pre- 
cluding all observations between 26° and 53° north declination, a 
region which actually includes a part of the moon’s path. This 
defect was partly remedied by extending the aperture some five and 
a half degrees on the southern side, the utmost that the strength of 
the building permitted. One seventh of the standard stars of the 
Nautical Almanac still remained hidden from view. At the age of 
twenty-seven, Gilliss began his work without the aid or counsel of fel- 
low scientists. Indeed, there were but few practical astronomers in 
the United States whom he might have consulted had he been ac- 
quainted with them. Not until 1840 did he obtain adyice and as- 
sistance. He then received valuable counsel from the astronomers 
Richard Sheepshanks and Sears C. Walker. Gilliss says that he 
commenced his observations “ with but little experience in the manipu- 
lation of fixed instruments; without a book relating to the subject in 
any manner, except Pearson’s Introduction and Vince’s Astronomy.” 
He had never seen a volume of the annals of any of the European ob- 
servatories. 

Dr. B. A. Gould, a most competent judge, says that it was Lieu- 
tenant James M. Gilliss, “ who first in all the land conducted a work- 
ing observatory, he who first gave his whole time to practical astro- 
nomical work, he who first published a volume of observations, first 
prepared a catalogue of stars, and planned and carried into effect the 
construction of a working observatory as contrasted with one intended 
chiefly for purposes of instruction.” The last clause has reference 
to Gilliss’s work of planning and constructing the Naval Observatory. 
In 1841 he obtained authority to import a meridian circle for his 
little establishment on Capitol Hill, in Washington. Since his narrow 
quarters here afforded no room for the new instrument, he availed 
himself of the opportunity to urge the construction of a permanent 
observatory. Gilliss says that as the observations which he began in 
1838 progressed, the “unsuitableness of the building, the defects of 
the transit instrument, the want of space to erect a permanent circle, 
and the absolute necessity of rebuilding the observatory in use, became 
each day more urgent.” At his earnest request the commissioners of 


UNITED STATES NATIONAL OBSERVATORY — 335 


the navy on November 30, 1841, recommended to the secretary of the 
navy the erection of a permanent depot for the charts and instruments 
belonging to the navy. They estimated the cost of site and buildings 
at $50,000. In his annual report to the president, dated December 
4, 1841, the secretary of the navy approved the recommendation of 
the commissioners. From President Tyler the proposal for a new 
depot or observatory passed to congress, and especially to the house 
committee on naval affairs. 

One of the principal members of this committee was Francis 
Mallory, a Whig representative from Virginia. On March 15, 1842, 
Mallory reported to the house a bill which provided for the construc- 
tion of a depot of charts and instruments at a cost of $25,000. A 
report which accompanied the bill set forth the inadequacy of the ac- 
commodations on Capitol Hill, and the need of extending the work 
and usefulness of the old depot. According to Mallory the existing 
observatory was so frail that twice during the winter of 1841-1842 its 
doors had been blown off and the instruments had been left exposed to 
the weather. He proposed that the new depot should have increased ac- 
commodations for the study of hydrography, astronomy, magnetism 
and meteorology. In respect to astronomy, he sad, that “not only 
has the navy failed to contribute to the common stock from which all 
our navigators borrow, but our country has never yet published an 
observation of a celestial body, which bore the impress ‘by author- 
ity’”; and that until Gilliss began his work in 1838, no continuous 
astronomical observations had been made under the direction of the 
government. 

An account of the movement in congress has been left us by Gilliss: 


Much delay occurred with the Naval Committees in congress. The Hon. 
Francis Mallory, to whom it was referred by the House committee, espoused the 
cause warmly, but the majority kept aloof from the depot (although so near) 
until the entire winter passed away. Finally, on the 15th March, 1842, I suc- 
ceeded in persuading the only member of the committee to visit the observatory 
who was skeptical, and on that very day a unanimous report and bill were pre- 
sented to the House of Representatives. Believing the chances of success would 
be greater if a bill could be passed by the Senate, by the advice of Mr. Mallory, 
I waited on the Naval Committee of the Senate, but my entreaties for a personal 
inspection of our wants were put off from time to time. The question was prob- 
ably decided by an astronomical event. 

At a meeting of the National Institute, at which the Hon. William C. Pres- 
ton was present, I gave notice of having found Encke’s comet with the 31% feet 
achromatic, the comet being then near its perihelion. A few days subsequently 
I made what was intended to be a last visit to the chairman of the Senate com- 
mittee, and found Mr. Preston with him. As soon as I began the conversation 
about the little observatory, Mr. Preston inquired whether I had not given the 
notice of the comet at the institute, and immediately volunteered, ‘I will do all 
I can to help you.’ Within a week a bill was passed by the Senate. 


336 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


It is hardly necessary to trace its progress in the House. A majority was 
known to be favorable, but its number on the calendar, and the opposition of 
one or two members, were likely to prevent action upon it; and that it did re- 
ceive the sanction of the House of Representatives at the last hour of the session 
of 1841-42, the navy is indebted to the untiring exertions of Dr. Mallory. 


Unquestionably, Gilliss is right in giving Mallory much credit for 
the passage of the bill. No one, however, played a more prominent 
part than Gilliss himself, whether in initiating the movement for the 
new depot or in lining up its supporters in congress. Moreover, his 
signal success at the little observatory on Capitol Hill must have dis- 
posed many members to favor the measure. Other influences were 
working in the same direction. John Quincy Adams’s agitation bore 
fruit for Gilliss. For several years public sentiment in behalf of a 
national observatory had been increasing. Observatories were being 
established at several of the leading schools in the United States: in 
1838, at Western Reserve College, by Elias Loomis; in 1839, at Har- 
vard College, by W. C. Bond; in 1840, at the Philadelphia High 
School, by Sears C. Walker and E. O. Kendall; and in 1841, at the 
Military Academy, by W. H. C. Bartlett. 

The act of August 31, 1842, provided for the construction of a 
depot of charts and instruments, or the United States Naval Ob- 
servatory, as the new institution came to be called. The new build- 
ings were appropriately constructed under the direction of Gillis. 
When they were completed in October, 1844, he turned them over to 
Lieutenant Matthew F. Maury, who was the first superintendent of 
the Naval Observatory. The success of Gilliss’s efforts shortly brought 
to an end all other attempts to found a national observatory. John 
Quincy Adams finally accepted the Naval Observatory as a substitute 
for his more ambitious establishment. In April, 1846, he said that he 
was “delighted that an astronomical observatory—not perhaps so 
great as it should have been—had been smuggled into the number of 
the institutions of the country, under the mask of a small depot for 
charts.” 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 337 


ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE ENGINEERING 
SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR 
THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE? 


By SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, Sc.D., F.R.S., 


PAST PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTION OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERS 


T would be impossible for any assembly of engineers to meet in 
annual gathering at the present time without some reference 
to the severe loss which the profession has so recently sustained by 
the death of Sir Benjamin Baker. Born in 1840, he had attained 
while still a comparatively young man to a position in the front rank 
of constructive engineers. His contributions to science cover a con- 
siderable range, but were chiefly concerned with the strength of ma- 
terials, into which he made valuable investigations, and with engi- 
neering structures generally. His name will doubtless be chiefly asso- 
ciated with the building of great bridges, to the theory of which he 
contributed an important memoir entitled “A Theoretical Investi- 
gation into the Most Advantageous System of Constructing Bridges 
of Great Span.” In this work he set forth the theory of the cantilever 
bridge. Upon the plan there laid down he built the Forth Bridge, 
besides many other large bridges in various parts of the world. With 
that memorable structure, completed in 1890, his name will ever be 
associated ; but he will be remembered henceforth also as the engineer 
who was responsible for the great dam across the Nile at Assouan, a 
work which promises to have an influence for all time upon the for- 
tunes of Egypt and upon the prosperity of its population. Sir Benja- 
min Baker was, moreover, closely associated with the internal railways 
of London, both in the early days of the Metropolitan Railway and in 
the later developments of the deep-level tubes. He was elected a 
fellow of the Royal Society in 1890, became president of the Institu- 
tion of Civil Engineers in 1895, and was a member of council of the 
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, besides being an active member 
of the Royal Institution and of the British Association. He was also 
a member of the council of the Royal Society at the time of his death. 
He enjoyed many honorary distinctions, including degrees con- 
ferred by the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. In 1890 
there was conferred upon him the title of K.C.M.G., and in 1902 
that of K.C.B. 
* Leicester, 1907. The address concluded with a section on the education 


of engineers. 
VOL, LXXI.—22. 


338 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


He had but just returned from Egypt, whither he had gone in 
connection with the project for raising the height of the Assouan dam, 
so as to increase its storage to more than double the present volume, 
when he died very suddenly on May 19, in his sixty-seventh year. 


The Development of Engineering and its Foundation on Science 

We live in an age when the development of the material resources 
of civilization is progressing in a ratio without parallel. Interna- 
tional commerce spreads apace. Ocean transport is demanding greater 
facilities. Steamships of vaster size and swifter speed than any here- 
tofore in use are being built every year. Not only are railways extend- 
ing in all outlying parts of the world, but at home, where the territory 
is already everywhere intersected with lines, larger and heavier loco- 
motives are being used, and longer runs without stopping are being 
made by our express trains. The horsed cars on our tramways are 
now being mostly superseded by larger cars, electrically propelled and 
traveling with greatly increased speeds. For the handling of the ever- 
increasing passenger traffic in our great cities electric propulsion has 
shown itself a necessity of the time; witness the electric railways in 
Liverpool and the network of electrically worked tube railways through- 
out London. In ten years the manufacture of automobile carriages of 
all sorts has sprung up into a great industry. Every year sees a greater 
demand for the raw materials and products, out of which the manu- 
facturer will in turn produce the articles demanded by our complex 
modern life. We live and work in larger buildings; we make more 
use of mechanical appliances; we travel more, and our traveling is 
more expeditious than formerly; and not we alone but all the progres- 
sive nations. The world uses more steel, more copper, more aluminium, 
more paper; therefore requires more coal, more petroleum, more tim- 
ber, more ores, more machinery for the getting and working of them, 
more trains and steamships for their transport. It requires machines 
that will work faster or more cheaply than the old ones to meet the 
increasing demands of manufacture; new fabrics; new dyes; even new 
foods; new and more powerful means of illumination; new methods of 
speaking to the ends of the earth. 

We must not delude ourselves with imagining that the happiness 
and welfare of mankind depend only on its material advancement; or 
that moral, intellectual and spiritual forces are not in the ultimate 
resort of greater moment. But if the inquiry be propounded what it 
is that has made possible this amazing material progress, there is but 
one answer that can be given—science. Chemistry, physics, mechanics, 
mathematics, it is these that have given to man the possibility of 
organizing this tremendous development. And the great profession 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 339 


which has been most potent in applying these branches of science to 
wield the energies of nature and direct them to the service of man has 
been that of the engineer. Without the engineer how little of all this 
activity could there have been; and without mathematics, mechanics, 
physics and chemistry, where were the engineer? 

If looking over this England of Edward the Seventh we try to put 
ourselves back into the England of Edward the Sixth—or for that 
matter of any pre-Victorian monarch—we must admit that the dif- 
ferences to be found in the social and industrial conditions around us 
are due not in any appreciable degree to any changes in politics, philos- 
ophy, religion, or law, but to science and its applications. If we look 
abroad, and contrast the Germany of Wilhelm the Second with the 
Germany of Charles the Fifth, we shall come to the like conclusion. 
So also in Italy, in Switzerland, in every one indeed of the progressive 
nations. And it is precisely in the stagnant nations, such as Spain, 
or Servia, where the cultivation of science has scarcely begun, that the 
social conditions remain in the backward state of the middle ages. 


Interaction of Abstract Science and its Applications 

In engineering, above all other branches of human effort, we are 
able to trace the close interaction between abstract science and its prac- 
tical applications. Often as the connection between pure science and 
its applications has been emphasized in addresses upon engineering, the 
emphasis has almost always been laid upon the influence of the abstract 
upon the concrete. We are all familiar with the doctrine that the 
progress of science ought to be an end in itself, that scientific research 
ought to be pursued without regard to its immediate applications, that 
the importance of a discovery must not be measured by its apparent 
utility at the moment. We are assured that research in pure science 
is bound to work itself out in due time into technical applications of 
utility, and that the pioneer ought not to pause in his quest to work out 
potential industrial developments. We are invited to consider the 
example of the immortal Faraday, who deliberately abstained from 
busying himself with marketable inventions arising out of his discoy- 
eries, excusing himself on the ground that he had no time to spare for 
money-making. It is equally true, and equally to the point, that Fara- 
day, when he had established a new fact or a new physical relation, 
ceased from busying himself with it and pronounced that it was now 
ready to be handed over to the mathematicians. But, admitting all 
these commonplaces as to the value of abstract science in itself and 
for its own sake, admitting also the proposition that sooner or later 
the practical applications are bound to follow on upon the discovery, 
it yet remains true that in this thing the temperament of the discoverer 


340 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


counts for something. There are scientific investigators who can not 
pursue their work if troubled by the question of ulterior applications ; 
there are others no less truly scientific who simply can not work with- 
out the definiteness of aim that is given by a practical problem await- 
ing solution. There are Willanses as well as Regnaults; there are 
Whitworths as well as Poissons. The world needs both types of in- 
vestigator; and it needs, too, yet another type of pioneer, namely, the 
man who, making no claim to original discovery, by patient applica- 
tion and intelligent skill turns to industrial fruitfulness the results 
already attained in abstract discovery. 

There is, however, another aspect of the relation between pure and 
applied science, the significance of which has not been hitherto so much 
emphasized, but yet is none the less real—the reaction upon science 
and upon scientific discovery of the industrial applications. For while 
pure science breeds useful inventions, it is none the less true that the 
industrial development of useful inventions fosters the progress of 
pure science. No one who is conversant with the history, for example, 
of optics can doubt that the invention of the telescope and the desire 
to perfect it were the principal factors in the outburst of optical science 
which we associate with the names of Newton, Huygens and Euler. 
The practical application, which we know was in the minds of each of 
these men, must surely have been the impelling motive that caused 
them to concentrate on abstract optics their great and exceptional 
powers of thought. It was in the quest—the hopeless quest—of the 
philosophers’ stone and the elixir of life that the foundations of the 
science of chemistry were laid. The invention of the art of photog- 
raphy has given immense assistance to sciences as widely apart as 
meteorology, ethnology, astronomy, zoology and spectroscopy. Of the 
laws of heat men were profoundly ignorant until the invention of the 
steam engine compelled scientific investigation; and the new science 
of thermodynamics was born. Had there been no industrial develop- 
ment of the steam engine, is it at all likely that the world would ever 
have been enriched with the scientific researches of Rankine, Joule, 
Regnault, Hirn or James Thomson? The magnet had been known 
for centuries, yet the study of it was utterly neglected until the appli- 
cation of it in the mariners’ compass gave the incentive for research. 

The history of electric telegraphy furnishes a very striking example 
of this reflex influence of industrial applications. The discovery of the 
electric current by Volta and the investigation of its properties appear 
to have been stimulated by the medical properties attributed in the pre- 
ceding fifty years to electric discharges. But, once the current had been 
discovered, a new incentive arose in the dim possibility it suggested of 
transmitting signals to a distance. This was certainly a possibility, even 
when only the chemical effects of the current had yet been found out. 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 341 


Not, however, until the magnetic effects of the current had been dis- 
covered and investigated did telegraphy assume commercial shape at 
the hands of Cooke and Wheatstone in England and of Morse and Vail 
in America. Let us admit freely that these men were inventors rather 
than discoverers: exploiters of research rather than pioneers. They 
built upon the foundations laid by Volta, Oersted, Sturgeon, Henry 
and a host of less famous workers. But no sooner had the telegraph 
become of industrial importance, with telegraph lines erected on land 
and submarine cables laid in the sea, than fresh investigations were 
found necessary ; new and delicate instruments must be devised; means 
of accurate measurement heretofore undreamed of must be found; 
standards for the comparison of electrical quantities must be created ; 
and the laws governing the operations of electrical systems and appa- 
ratus must be investigated and formulated in appropriate mathematical 
expressions. And so, perforce, as the inevitable consequence of the 
growth of the telegraph industry, and mainly at the hands of those 
interested in submarine telegraphy, there came about the system of 
electrical and electromagnetic units, based on the early magnetic work 
of Gauss and Weber, developed further by Lord Kelvin, by Bright and 
Clark, and last but not least by Clerk Maxwell. Had there been no 
telegraph industry to force electrical measurement and electrical the- 
ory to the front, where would Clerk Maxwell’s work have been? He 
would probably have given his unique powers to the study of optics or 
geometry ; his electromagnetic theory of light would never have leaped 
into his brain; he would never have propounded the existence of elec- 
tric waves in the ether. And then we should never have had the far- 
reaching investigations of Heinrich Hertz; nor would the British 
Association at Oxford in 1894 have witnessed the demonstration of 
wireless telegraphy by Sir Oliver Lodge. A remark of Lord Rayleigh’s 
may here be recalled, that the invention of the telephone had probably 
done more than anything else to make electricians understand the 
principle of self-induction. 

In considering this reflex influence of the industrial applications 
upon the progress of pure science it is of some significance to note that 
for the most part this influence is entirely helpful. There may be 
sporadic cases where industrial conditions tend temporarily to check 
progress by imposing persistence of a particular type of machine or 
appliance; but the general trend is always to help to new develop- 
ments. The reaction aids the action; the law that is true enough in 
inorganic conservative systems, that reaction opposes the action, ceases 
here to be applicable, as indeed it ceases to be applicable in a vast num- 
ber of organic phenomena. It is the very instability thereby intro- 
duced which is the essential of progress. The growing organism acts 
on its environment, and the change in the environment reacts on the 


342 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


organism—not in such a way as to oppose the growth, but so as to pro- 
mote it. So is it with the development of pure science and its prac- 
tical applications. 

In further illustration of this principle one might refer to the 
immense effect which the engineering use of steel has had upon the 
study of the chemistry of the alloys. And the study of the alloys has 
in turn led to the recent development of metallography. It would 
even seem that through the study of the intimate structure of metals, 
prompted by the needs of engineers, we are within measurable distance 
of arriving at a knowledge of the secret of crystallogenesis. Every- 
thing points to the probability of a very great and rapid advance in 
that fascinating branch of pure science at no distant date. 


History of the Development of Electric Motive Power 

There is, however, one last example of the interaction of science 
and industry which may claim closer attention. In the history of the 
development of the electric motor one finds abundant illustration of 
both aspects of that interaction. 

We go back to the year 1821, when Faraday, after studying the 
phenomena of electromagnetic deflexion of a needle by an electric cur- 
rent (Oersted’s discovery), first succeeded in producing continuous 
rotations by electromagnetic means. In his simple apparatus a piece 
of suspended copper wire, carrying a current from a small battery, and 
dipping at its lower end into a cup of mercury, rotated continuously 
around the pole of a short bar-magnet of steel placed upright in the 
cup. In another variety of this experiment the magnet rotated around 
the central wire, which was fixed. These pieces of apparatus were the 
merest toys, incapable of doing any useful work; nevertheless they 
demonstrated the essential principle, and suggested further possibili- 
ties. Two years later, Barlow, using a star-wheel of copper, pivoted 
so that the lowest point of the star should make contact with a small 
pool of mercury, found that the star-wheel rotated if a current was 
sent through the arm of the star while the arm itself was situated 
between the poles of a steel horseshoe-magnet. Shortly afterwards 
Sturgeon improved the apparatus by substituting a copper disc for the 
star-wheel. The action was the same. A conductor, carrying an 
electric current, if placed in a magnetic field, is found to experience a 
mechanical drag, which is neither an attraction nor a repulsion, but a 
lateral force tending to move it at right angles to the direction of flow 
of the current and at right angles to the direction of the lines of the 
magnetic field in which it is situated. Still this was a toy. Two 
years later came the announcement by Sturgeon of the invention of the 
soft-iron electromagnet, one of the most momentous of all inventions, 
since upon it practically the whole of the constructive part of electrical 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 343 


engineering is based. For the first time mankind was furnished with 
a magnet the attractive power of which could be increased absolutely 
indefinitely by the mere expenditure of sufficient capital upon the iron 
core and its surrounding copper coils, and the provision of a suffi- 
ciently powerful source of electric current to excite the magnetization. 
Furthermore, the magnet was under control, and could be made to 
attract or to cease to attract at will by merely switching the current 
on or off; and, lastly, this could be accomplished from a distance, even 
from great distances away. How slowly the importance of this dis- 
covery was recognized is now a matter for astonishment. To state 
that Sturgeon died in poverty twenty-six years later is sufficient to 
indicate his place among the unrequited pioneers of whom the world 
is not worthy. Six years elapsed, and then there came a flood of sug- 
gestions of electric motors in which was applied the principle of inter- 
mittent attraction by an electromagnet. Henry in 1831 and Dal Negro 
in 1832 produced see-saw mechanisms so operated. Ritchie in 1833 
and Jacobi in 1834 devised rotatory motors. Ritchie pivoted a rapidly 
commutated electromagnet between the poles of a permanent magnet— 
a true type of the modern motor—while Jacobi caused two multipolar 
electromagnets, one fixed, one movable, to put a shaft into rotation 
and propel a boat. A perplexing diminution of the current of the 
battery whenever the motor was running caused Jacobi to investigate 
mathematically the theory of its action. In a masterly memoir he 
laid down a few years later the theory of electric motive power. But 
in the intervening period, in 1831, Faraday had made the cardinal 
discovery of the mechanical generation of electric currents by magneto- 
electric induction, the fundamental principle of the dynamo. Down 
to that date the only known way—save for the feeble currents of 
thermopiles—to generate electric currents had been the pile of Volta, 
or one of the forms of battery which had been evolved from it. Now, 
by Faraday’s discovery, the world had become possessed of a new source. 
And yet again, strange as it may seem, years elapsed before the world 
—that is, the world of engineers—discovered that an important dis- 
covery had been made. Not till some thirty years later were any 
magneto-electric machines made of a sufficient size to be of practical 
service even in telegraphy, and none were built of a sufficient power 
to furnish a single electric light until about the year 1857. In the 
meantime in America other electric motors, to be driven by batteries, 
had been devised by Davonport and by Page; the latter’s machine had 
an iron plunger to be sucked by electromagnetic attraction into a hol- 
low coil of copper wire, thereby driving a shaft and flywheel through 
the intermediate action of a connecting-rod and crank. Page’s was, 
in fact, an electric engine, with two-foot stroke, single-acting, of 
between three and four horse-power. The battery occupied about three 


344 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


cubic feet and consumed, according to Page, three pounds of zinc per 
horse-power per day. ‘This must have been an under-estimate; for if 
Daniell’s cells were used the minimum consumption for a motor of 
100 per cent. efficiency is known to be about two pounds of zine per 
horse-power per hour. 


Electric Motive Power Impossible in 1857 

Upon the state of development of electric motors fifty years ago 
information may be gleaned from an exceedingly interesting debate at 
the Institution of Civil Engineers upon a paper read April 21, 1857, 
“On Electromagnetism as a Motive Power,” by Mr. Robert Hunt, 
F.R.S. In this paper the author states that, though long-enduring 
thought has been brought to bear upon the subject, and large sums of 
money have been expended on the construction of machines, “ yet 
there does not appear to be any nearer approach to a satisfactory result 
than there was thirty years ago.” After explaining the elementary 
principles of electromagnetism, he describes the early motors of Dal 
Negro, Jacobi, Davenport, Davidson, Page and others. Reviewing 
these and their non-success as commercial machines, he says: “ Not- 
withstanding these numerous trials . . . it does not appear that any 
satisfactory explanation has ever been given of the causes which have 
led to the abandonment of the idea of employing electricity as a motive 
power. It is mainly with the view of directing attention to these 
causes that the present communication has been written.” He admits 
that electromagnets may be constructed to give any desired lifting 
power; but he finds that the attractive force on the iron keeper of a 
magnet of his own, which held 220 pounds when in contact, fell to 
thirty-six pounds when the distance apart was only one-fiftieth of an 
inch. To this rapid falling off of force, and to the hardening action 
on the iron of the repeated vibrations due to the mechanical concus- 
sion of the keeper, he attributed the small power of the apparatus. 
Also he remarked upon the diminution of the current which is observed 
to flow from the battery when the motor was running (which Jacobi 
had, in his memoir on the theory, traced to a counter electromotive 
force generated in the motor itself), and which reduced the effort 
exerted by the electromagnets; this diminution he regarded as impair- 
ing the efficiency of the machine. “All electromagnetic arrange- 
ments,” he says, “suffer from the cause named, a reduction of the 
mechanical value of the prime mover, in a manner which has no 
resemblance to any of the effects due to heat regarded as a motive 
power.” Proceeding to discuss the batteries he remarked that as ani- 
mal power depends on food, and steam power on coal, so electric power 
depends on the amount of zine consumed; in support of which proposi- 
tion he cited the experiments of Joule. He gives as his own results 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 345 


that for every grain of zine consumed in the battery his motor per- 
formed a duty equivalent to lifting eighty-six pounds one foot high. 
Joule and Scoresby, using Daniell’s cells, had found the duty to be 
equivalent to raising eighty pounds one foot high, being about half the 
theoretical maximum duty for one grain of zinc. In the Cornish 
engine, doing its best duty, one grain of coal was equivalent to a duty 
of raising one hundred and forty-three pounds one foot high. He put 
the price of zinc at £35 per ton as compared with coal at less than £1 
per ton, which makes the cost of power produced by an electre motor 
—if computed by the consumption of zine in a battery—about sixty 
times as great as that of an equal power produced by a steam-engine 
consuming coal. He concludees that “it would be far more econom- 
ical to burn zinc under a boiler and to use it for generating steam 
power than to consume zinc in a battery for generating electromagnet- 
ical power.” 

In the discussion which followed, several men of distinction took 
part. Professor William Thomson, of Glasgow (Lord Kelvin), wrote, 
referring to the results of Joule and Scoresby: “These facts were of 
the highest importance in estimating the applicability of electromag- 
netism, as a motive power, in practise; and, indeed, the researches 
alluded to rendered the theory of the duty of electromagnetic engines 
as complete as that of the duty of waterwheels was generally admitted 
to be. Among other conclusions which might be drawn from these 
experiments was this: that, until some mode of producing electricity 
as many times cheaper than that of an ordinary galvanic battery as 
coal was cheaper than zine, electromagnetic engines could not super- 
sede the steam-engine.” Mr. W. R. Grove (Lord Justice Sir William 
Grove) remarked that a practical application of the science appeared 
to be still distant. The great desideratum, in his opinion, was not so 
much improvement in the machine as in the prime mover, the battery, 
which was the source of power. At present the only available use for 
this power must be confined to special purposes where the danger of 
steam and the creation of vapor were sought to be avoided, or where 
economy of space was a great consideration. Professor Tyndall agreed 
with the last speaker, but suggested that there might be some way of 
mitigating the apparent diminution of power due to the induction of 
opposing electromotive forces in the machine itself. Mr. C. Cowper 
spoke of some experiments, made by himself and Mr. E. A. Cowper, 
showing the advantage gained by properly laminating the iron cores 
used in the motor. He put the cost of electric power at £4 per horse- 
power per hour. He deprecated building electric motors with recipro- 
cating movements and cranks; described the use of silver commutators ; 
and mentioned the need of adjusting the lead given to the contacts. 
There was, he said, no reason to suppose that electric motors could be 


346 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


made as light as steam-engines. Even in the case of small motors of 
one tenth or one hundredth of a horse-power, for light work, where the 
cost of power was of small consequence, a boy or a man turning a 
winch would probably furnish power at a cheaper rate. Mr. Alfred 
Smee agreed that the cost would be enormous for heavy work. Al- 
though motive power could not at present be produced at the same 
expense on a large scale by the battery as by coal, still they were enabled 
readily to apply the power at any distance from its source; the tele- 
graph might be regarded as an application of motive power transmitted 
by electricity. Mr. G. P. Bidder considered that there had been a 
lamentable waste of ingenuity in attempting to bring electromagnetism 
into use on a large scale. Mr. Joule wrote to say that it was to be 
regretted that in France the delusion as to the possibility of electro- 
magnetic engines superseding steam still prevailed. He pointed out, 
as a result of his calorimeter experiments, that if it were possible 
so to make the electric engine work as to reduce the amount to a small 
fraction of the strength which it had when the engine was standing 
still, nearly the whole of the heat (energy) due to the chemical action 
of the battery might be evolved as work. The less the heat evolved, 
as heat, in the battery, the more perfect the economy of the engine. 
It was the lower intensity of chemical action of zine as compared with 
carbon, and the relative cost of zine and coal, which decided so com- 
pletely in favor of the steam-engine. Mr. Hunt, replying to the 
speakers in the discussion, said that his endeavor had been to show 
that the impossibility of employing electromagnetism as a motive 
power lay with the present voltaic battery. Before a steam-engine 
could be considered, the boiler and furnace must be considered. 
So likewise must the battery if electric power were to become eco- 
nomical. Then the president, Mr. Robert Stephenson wound up 
the discussion by remarking that there could be no doubt that 
the application of voltaic electricity, in whatever shape it might 
be developed, was entirely out of the question, commercially speaking. 
The mechanical application seemed to involve almost insuperable diffi- 
culties. The force exhibited by electromagnetism, though very great, 
extended through so small a space as to be practically useless. A 
powerful magnet might be compared to a steam-engine with an enor- 
mous piston, but with exceedingly short stroke; an arrangement well 
known to be very undesirable. 

In short, the most eminent engineers in 1857 one and all condemned 
the idea of electric motive power as unpractical and commercially im- 
possible. Even Faraday, in his lecture on “ Mental Education” in 
1854, had set down the magneto-electric engine along with mesmerism, 
homeopathy, odylism, the caloric engine, the electric light, the sym- 
pathetic compass, and perpetual motion as coming in different degrees 


ADDRESS BEFORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 347 


amongst “subjects uniting more or less of the most sure and valuable 
investigations of science with the most imaginary and unprofitable 
speculation, that are continually passing through their various phases 
of intellectual, experimental or commercial development, some to be 
established, some to disappear, and some to recur again and again, like 
ill weeds that can not be extirpated, yet can be cultivated to no result 
as wholesome food for the mind.” 


Fifty Years Later 

Fifty years have fled, and Hunt, Grove, Smee, Tyndall, Cowper, 
Joule, Bidder and Stephenson have long passed away. Lord Kelvin 
remains the sole and honored survivor of that remarkable symposium. 
But the electric motor is a gigantic practical success, and the electric 
motor industry has become a very large one, employing thousands of 
hands. Hundreds of factories have discarded their steam-engines to 
adopt electric-motor driving. All traveling cranes, nearly all tram- 
cars, are driven by electric motors. In the navy and in much of the 
merchant service the donkey-engines have been replaced by electric 
motors. Electric motors of all sizes and outputs, from one twentieth 
of a horse-power to 8,000 horse-power, are in commercial use. One 
may well ask: What has wrought this astonishing revolution in the 
face of the unanimous verdict of the engineers of 1857? 

The answer may be given in terms of the action and reaction of 
pure and applied science. Pure science furnished a discovery; indus- 
trial applications forced its development; that development demanded 
further abstract investigation, which in turn brought about new appli- 
cations. It was beyond all question the development of the dynamo 
for the purposes of electrotyping and electric light which brought about 
the commercial advent of the electric motor. For about that very 
time Holmes and Siemens and Wilde and Wheatstone were at work 
developing Faraday’s magneto-electric apparatus into an apparatus of 
more practical shape; and the electric lighthouse lamp was becoming 
a reality which Faraday lived to see before his death in 1867. That 
eventful year witnessed the introduction of the more powerful type of 
generator which excited its own magnets. And even before that date 
a young Italian had made a pronouncement which, though it was lost 
sight of for a time, was none the less of importance. Antonio Paci- 
notti in 1864 described a machine of his own devising, having a spe- 
cially wound revolving ring-magnet placed between the poles of a sta- 
tionary magnet, which, while it would serve as an admirable generator 
of electric currents if mechanically driven, would also serve as an 
excellent electric motor if supplied with electric currents from a bat- 
tery. He thereupon laid down the principle of reversibility of action, 
a principle more or less dimly foreseen by others, but never before so 


348 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


clearly enunciated as by him. And so it turned out in the years from 
1860 to 1880, when the commercial dynamo was being perfected by 
Gramme, Wilde, Siemens, Crompton and others, that the machines 
designed specially to be good and economical generators of currents 
proved themselves to be far better and more efficient motors than any 
of the earlier machines which had been devised specially to work as 
electro-magnetic engines. Moreover, with the perfection of the dynamo 
came that cheap source of electric currents which was destined to 
supersede the battery. That a dynamo driven by a steam-engine 
furnishing currents on a large scale should be a more economical 
source of current than a battery in which zine was consumed, does not 
appear to have ever occurred to the engineers who, in 1857, discussed 
the feasibility of electric motive power. Indeed, had any of them 
thought of it, they would have condemned the suggestion as chimerical. 
There was a notion abroad—and it persisted into the eighties—that no 
electric motor could possibly have an efficiency higher than 50 per cent. 
This notion, based on an erroneous understanding of the theoretical 
investigations of Jacobi, certainly delayed the progress of events. Yet 
the clearest heads of the time understood the matter more truly. The 
true law of efficiency was succinctly stated by Lord Kelvin in 1851, 
and was recognized by Joule in a paper written about the same date. 
In 1877 Mascart pointed out how the efficiency of a given magneto- 
electric machine rises with its speed up to a limiting value. In 1879 
Lord Kelvin and Sir William Siemens gave evidence before a parlia- 
mentary committee as to the possible high efficiency of an electric 
transmission of power; and in August of the same year, at the British 
Association meeting at Sheffield, the essential theory of the efficiency 
of electric motors was well and admirably put in a lecture by Professor 
Ayrton. In 1882 the present author designed, in illustration of the 
theory, a graphic construction, which has been ever since in general use 
to make the principle plain. The counter-electromotive force gener- 
ated by the motor when running, which Hunt and Tyndall deplored 
as a defect, is the very thing which enables the motor to appropriate 
and convert the energy of the battery. Its amount relatively to the 
battery’s own electromotive force is the measure of the degree to which 
the energy which would otherwise be wasted as heat is utilized as 
power. Pure science stepped in, then, to confirm the possibility of a 
high efficiency in the electric motor per se. But pure science was also 
brought into service in another way. An old and erroneous notion, 
which even now is not quite dead, was abroad to the effect that the best 
way of arranging a battery was so to group its component cells that its 
internal resistance should be equal to the resistance of the rest of the 
circuit. If this were true, then no battery could ever have an efficiency 
of more than 50 per cent. It was supposed in many quarters that 


ADDRESS BEXORE BRITISH ASSOCIATION 349 


this misleading rule was applicable also to the dynamo. The dynamo 
makers discovered for themselves the fallacy of this idea, and strove 
to reduce the internal resistance of the armatures of their machines to 
a minimum. ‘Then the genius of the lamented John Hopkinson led 
him to apply to the design of the magnetic structure of the dynamo 
abstract principles upon which a rational proportioning of the iron 
and copper could result. A similar investigation was independently 
made by Gisbert Kapp, and between these accomplished engineers the 
foundations of dynamo design were set upon a scientific basis. To the 
perfection of the design the magnetic studies of our ex-president, 
Professor Ewing, contributed a notable part, since they furnished a 
basis for calculating out the inevitable losses of energy in armature 
cores by hysteresis and parasitic currents in the iron when subjected 
to recurring cycles of magnetization. Able constructive engineers, 
Brown Mordey, Crompton and Kapp, perfected the structural devel- 
opment, and the dynamo within four or five years became, within its 
class, a far more highly efficient machine than any steam-engine. And 
as by the principle of reversibility every dynamo is also capable of 
acting as a motor, the perfection of the dynamo implied the perfection, 
both scientific and commercial, of the motor also. The solution in the 
eighties of the problem how to make a dynamo to deliver current at a 
constant voltage when driven at a constant speed, found its counterpart 
in the solution by Ayrton and Perry of the corresponding problem how 
to make a motor which would run at constant speed when supplied 
with current at a constant voltage. Both solutions depend upon the 
adoption of a suitable compound winding of the field magnets. 

A little later alternating currents claimed the attention of engi- 
neers; and the alternating current generator, or “alternator,” was 
developed to a high degree of perfection. To perfect a motor for 
alternating currents was not so simple a matter. But again pure 
science stepped in, in the suggestion by Galileo Ferraris of the ex- 
tremely beautiful theorem of the rotatory magnetic field, due to the 
combination of two alternating magnetic fields equal in amplitude, 
identical in frequency and in quadrature in space, but differing from 
each other by a quarter-period in phase. To develop on this principle 
a commercial motor required the ingenuity of Tesla and the engineer- 
ing skill of Dobrowolsky and of Brown; and so the three-phase induc- 
tion motor, that triumph of applied science, came to perfection. Ever 
since 1891, when at the Frankfort Exhibition there was shown the tour 
de force of transmitting 100 horse-power to a distance of 100 miles with 
an inclusive efficiency of 73 per cent., the commercial possibility of 
the electric transmission of power on a large scale was assured. The 
modern developments of this branch of engineering and the erection of 
great power-stations for the economic distribution of electric power 


350 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


generated by large steam plant or by water-turbines are known to all 
engineers. The history of the electric motor is probably without par- 
allel in the lessons it affords of the commercial and industrial impor- 
tance of science. 

But the query naturally rises: If a steam-engine is still needed 
to drive the generator that furnishes the electric current to drive the 
motors, where does the economy come in? Why not use small steam- 
engines, and get rid of all intervening electric appliances? ‘The 
answer, as every engineer knows, lies in the much higher efficiency of 
large steam-engines than of small ones. A single steam-engine of 
1,000 horse-power will use many times less steam and coal than a 
thousand little steam-engines of one horse-power each, particularly if 
each little steam-engine required its own little boiler. The little electric 
motor may be designed, on the other hand, to have almost as high an 
efficiency as the large motor. And while the loss of energy due to 
condensation in long steam-pipes is most serious, the loss of energy 
due to transmission of electric current in mains of equal length is 
practically negligible. This is the abundant justification of the electric 
distribution of power from single generating centers to numerous elec- 
tric motors placed in the positions where they are wanted to work. 


WHAT PRAGMATISM IS LIKE 351 


WHAT PRAGMATISM IS LIKE? 


By GIOVANNI PAPINI 


FLORENCE 


1. Pragmatism can not be defined 
HOEVER should define pragmatism in a few words would be 
doing the most anti-pragmatic thing imaginable. In fact, he 
who should try to include in a single brief phrase all the tendencies and 
theories which make up pragmatism would surely be doing something 
generic and incomplete, and the pragmatists despise nothing so much 
as vagueness and indefiniteness. 

On the other hand, I want you, my readers, to be interested at once 
in the argument, and love, says Leonardo, is born, and increases with 
acquaintance. But how shall I proceed? I might give two or three 
definitions of pragmatism which I have here quite ready, and which 
reduce all its characteristics and elements to a singie one, but I do not 
fee] that I can recommend my wares. 

I could tell you, for example, that pragmatism is nothing but “a 
collection of methods for augmenting the power of man,” but you could 
answer that even a manual for tunnel builders would then form a part 
of pragmatism. Another pragmatist could, on the other hand, assure 
you that his doctrine is founded upon preoccupation with the future 
(consequences, previsions), and that therefore it might also be called 
prometheism. You would promptly ask him if books of meteorology, 
or manuals of prophecy from dreams, or the Utopias of the reformers, 
form parts of pragmatism. 

It would be worse yet if any one should undertake to say that the 
theory of pragmatism lays stress upon the practical and, in the 
selection of its doctrines, substitutes the criterion of utility for that 
of truth. This definition contains much that is true, but one must 
examine closely what is meant by the practical and by utility, in order 
that they may gain an undeniable meaning. In fact, what theory is 
there whose originator does not claim for it practical consequences ? 
What theory would be completely unutilitarian? Theories have a 
certain sort of utility which coincides with their truth, as, for example, 
it is commonly useful to hold theories which bring about true previ- 
sions. And there is another sort of utility in contrast with this, as, 
for example, the moral enthusiasm which a belief might give us, even 
though it were entirely absurd. 


* Translated by Katharine Royce. 


352 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


These definitions might be continued, but you would probably 
arrive at the conclusion that pragmatism, instead of being something 
new, embraces a vast number of already existing things, and that it is 
already accepted and practised, consciously or not, by all thinking men. 

In this, however, you would be wrong, because, seriously, pragmatism 
contains new things, and if it is practised by many, it is not recognized 
or accepted by all. The blame les with the definitions, since they must 
not or can not be made as long as books. For definitions, reduced to a 
single phrase attempting to give an explanation and résumé of the 
whole, end at best by failing to make really clear that of which they 
treat. Oftener still, they give rise to embarrassing equivocations and 
false representations. In order to show the novelty and specific nature 
of any doctrine whatever, we must come down from the universal to the 
particular, and fill such large abstract terms as potentiality, actuality, 
future, etc., with the wealth of special theories and of concrete facts. 
Without realizing it, I have already given you an elementary first 
lesson in pragmatism. 


2. What may be expected of Pragmatists 

As soon as I have begun one task, another lies before me. One of 
the maxims dearest to the pragmatists is this: that the meaning of 
theories consists entirely in the consequences which their followers 
may expect from them. ‘To affirm anything actually means this: I 
foresee that certain things will follow, or that I shall do certain things. 

Now apply this maxim to the definition of pragmatism itself, and . 
ask me: What actions or beliefs may be expected from a thinker who 
is a confessed pragmatist ? 

That is soon said. These expectations relate almost wholly to his 
choices in the world of thought. That is, we can foresee what things 
he will love and what things he will hate; what problems he will 
consider important, and what ones he will reject as useless; what will 
be his sympathies and antipathies in the world of ideas and of men. 

He will seek in every way not to concern himself with a great part 
of the classical problems of metaphysics (in particular with the uni- 
versal and rationalistic explanation of the sum total of things), which 
are for him non-existent and senseless problems. On the other hand, 
he will concern himself strenuously with methods and instruments of 
knowledge and action, because he will be sure that it is far more im- 
portant to improve or to create methods of obtaining exact previsions, 
or of changing ourselves or others, than to sport with empty words 
around incomprehensible problems. 

His sympathies will be with the study of the particular instance; 
with the development of prevision; with precise and well-determined 


WHAT PRAGMATISM IS LIKE 353 


theories; with those which serve as the best instruments for the most 
important ends of life; with conciseness, with economy of thought, ete. 

Naturally he will have an antipathy for all forms of monism; for 
all universal phrases which signify nothing or too much; for obscure 
babblings about absurd and inconceivable questions. He will distrust, 
I say, the pretended evidence and intuitiveness of principles; the 
faith in a sole and changeless truth; all agnostic theories which make 
what lies beyond sense a synonym of the unknowable. He will reject 
all that refuses to change or to adapt itself, all that claims to rule 
in the name of the divine right of the absolute. He will show no 
respect or subservience to the famous “ reality” of the ordinary man 
and to the terre a terre of the empiricist. 

That is to say, the pragmatist scorns those doctrines which pretend 
to explain the world by means of three or four mysterious phrases in 
the name of some unique principle. The pragmatist has an equal 
contempt for those doctrines that humbly cling to brute facts, as ex- 
perience gives them to us, without trying to extend them into theory 
(the narrow empiricism and utilitarianism of so-called common sense), 
or into practise (the ethical evolutionism of “ resignation to the laws of 
nature”). Instead we see the pragmatist kindled by a certain spirit 
of enthusiasm for all that shows the complexity and multiplicity of 
things; for whatever increases our power to act upon the world; for 
all that is most closely bound up with practise, activity, life. 

Now if all these characteristics fail to define with sufficient fullness 
and precision what pragmatism is, yet they may give some idea of 
its tendencies. 

But I can do something more to give precision to these ideas: that 
is, I can show in what points pragmatism does not resemble preceding 
systems of philosophy. 


3. Pragmatism is not a “ Philosophy.” 

Pragmatism differs above all from other philosophies through the 
simple fact that it is not a philosophy, if by philosophy you mean a 
system of metaphysics, a system of the universe, a Weltanschawung or 
any such matter. ‘The pragmatist, in so far as he is a pragmatist, does 
not profess idealism rather than materialism, does not believe in the 
doctrine of creation rather than in that of emanation. For him, com- 
prehenstble metaphysical theories (and they are not many), can only 
give rise to moral consequences that differ—for the practical and 
experimental expectations are the same for all. This implies that the 
most .rampant idealist and the timorous materialist would avoid in 
just the same way an automobile which was about to throw them 
down ; while the beliefs of the former would favor certain moral ideals, 


VOL. LXxXI.—23 


354 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


such as pride, nobility, the platonic dream of a world-builder, etc., 
more than those of the latter would. 

For the pragmatist, then, no metaphysical hypothesis contains more 
truth than another. He who feels the need of one may choose it 
according to his purposes and his taste in ideas, but he should not 
greatly flatter himself that his hypothesis can be recognized as the 
most solid and certain, the best proven and demonstrated. 

Pragmatism contains, therefore, no metaphysics, either open or 
implied. For it, the different theories of the world, properly under- 
stood, are but diverse ways of affirming the same commonplace facts, 
and their value consists solely in their form side, which may be more 
or less suggestive, more or less favorable to certain aims and prefer- 
ences of our minds. For the pragmatist, metaphysical theories are 
facts amongst other facts, and for him the thing that matters is the 
power of foreseeing the varieties of behavior of the different men who 
believe in those theories. 

From what I have said, it will perhaps seem clear that pragmatism 
is really less a philosophy than a method of doing without philosophy. 
On the one hand, by striving against problems devoid of sense, such as 
metaphysics, monism and the like, it diminishes the field of action of 
that which, historically speaking, is called philosophy; and, on the other 
hand, by inciting men to act more than to talk, to alter things rather 
than to contemplate them, to force things actually to exist in a definite 
way, instead of asserting that they already do so exist, it enlarges the 
field of action at the expense of pure speculation. Pragmatism would 
seem to be, then, not only something different from philosophy, but even 
hostile to metaphysics taken in the traditional cosmological sense. 

And the differences do not end here. Another equally important 
distinction is the pluralistic character of pragmatic theories, in con- 
trast with the unity and formal organization of systems created or 
elaborated by one single mind. A great many do not yet perceive that 
there is no such thing as pragmatism, but that there are only prag- 
matic theories, and thinkers who are more or less pragmatic. Let it 
be understood that among the theories of these thinkers there are 
affinities and points of contact among their tendencies, otherwise the 
common adjective would not be justified. But that does not do away 
with the fact that pragmatism is a coalition of theories coming from 
various sources and temperaments rather than a handsome system 
sprung from the brain of a single philosopher, or from a homogeneous 
and well-organized school. If you compare its somewhat chance 
formation, to which so many men and countries have contributed with 
rational and well-constructed bodies of thought, such as determinism 
in the works of Spinoza, absolute idealism in those of Hegel, evolution 
in those of Spencer, the difference is most plainly evident. 


WHAT PRAGMATISM IS LIKE 355 


The scattered state of the ideas which have been grouped together 
under the name pragmatism makes it impossible to find a thinker who 
is a pragmatist from head to foot. Some people are, even though un- 
consciously, pragmatical on some points or on certain sides, while they 
are not pragmatical, or are even anti-pragmatical, on other sides. This 
spirit of liberty, this freedom from rigidity which the pragmatists 
have discovered in the sciences exists also in their own doctrine. 


wil 
lh ae o's 


4. Pragmatism is Different from. Positivism 

In making this rapid survey of the differences between pragmatism 
and the philosophies, I have purposely left positivism on one side, 
because the question of its relation to pragmatism is far more com- 
plicated. 

In fact, there are those who maintain—either through timidity or 
ignorance—that pragmatism is nothing but a version, or a trivial 
revision, of what is known as positivism, or agnosticism. Naturally 
there are those who say that it is a perfecting, others who say that 
it is a deterioration of positivism. Mario Calderoni, although he 
asserts that the name pragmatism expresses “ reall, an advance upon 
the system of positivism,” yet affirms the “fundamental identity ” of 
the two doctrines. In fact, he sees nothing more in the struggle of 
Peirce against meaningless questions than a simple continuance of the 
strife of the positivists against metaphysics. Upon this point I do not 
agree with Calderoni, and I marvel that such a passionate lover of 
distinctions should not see what differences there are between the 
two doctrines. 

There are two points in which they seem to agree: the importance 
of prevision, and the rejection of futile and absurd questions. But 
even concerning these two points there are differences, not to mention 
others which we shall examine later. 

In fact, pragmatism does not consider prevision merely as opening 
the way to practical applications, or as an aid in verifying theories, 
but also as a means of definition and interpretation of the theories 
themselves. In this case, therefore, such prevision forms a completely 
new addition to the positivist’s method. 

Pragmatism, like positivism, condemns and discards the absurd 
and empty questions which form so large a part of metaphysics, but 
it does not discard them because they are insoluble. That is to say, 
nearly all the positivists are agnostics, and say that the human mind 
can not succeed in solving these problems. The pragmatists, on the 
contrary, are all anti-agnostics, and maintain that it is not true that 
those problems are too lofty for our intelligence, but too devoid of 
sense, too stupid, and that their unwillingness to busy themselves with 


356 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


such matters is not a proof of the impotence, but of the power of our 
mind. The positivists repudiate metaphysics, but as they do not 
sufficiently explain why they do so, they leave open a way whereby the 
exiled problems may return. And thus a still graver thing happens, 
for the lack in their theories, of a sufficiently profound analysis of the 
methods of science and of philosophy, gives the metaphysical spider a 
chance to spin its web once more even within themselves and in their 
own thought. This may be seen in even the best representatives of 
positivist methods, for these, while raising their voices upon all occa- 
sions against vain and empty metaphysics, yet do not perceive the poor 
and feeble metaphysics in their own books and discussions. Agnosti- 
cism, monism, materialism, evolution, which are almost always asso- 
ciated or confused in the minds of the positivists,.are metaphysical 
doctrines which presuppose in their turn metaphysical premises. Ag- 
nosticism implies the belief in a world more real than ours. Monism 
appeals to universal and unthinkable conceptions. Evolution sup- 
poses a sort of providential plain of the universe, and so on.  Posi- 
tivism, then, is only anti-metaphysical in words, while pragmatism is 
anti-metaphysical in substance. 

And the differences do not end here. There are in pragmatism at 
least three tendencies which in agnostic positivism do not exist at all, 
or at best only in the germinal state. 

First of all is the principle of the economy of thought, traces of 
which may more easily be found in Occam and Leibniz than among 
the positivists. Secondly, the resurrection of the Baconian axiom 
“knowledge is power,” that is, the demonstration of the part played 
by the idea of power and the possibility of power in our beliefs and 
theories. Finally, the emancipation of thought, both from immediate 
facts and from pure rationalism. Both are shown in pragmatism, not 
only by its theories about the free “creation” of facts, and of hy- 
potheses in science, but also by its views concerning the non-necessity, 
for deduction, of the premises being “rational.” That is to say, its 
willingness to start from absurd or fanciful hypotheses, in building up 
new theories and new sciences. It seems to me, then, that this is 
enough to justify the separation of these two lines of thought under 
distinct names, the more so since it can be shown historically that the 
differences between positivism and pragmatism are much greater than 
those which existed between positivism and the earlier so-called “ Eng- 
lish philosophy.” Pragmatism may indeed continue on certain lines 


. 


the work of some of the best positivists, but it may claim, when closely 
considered, to be really made up of differences from positivism. It 
would be hard to differ more than that! 


WHAT PRAGMATISM IS LIKE 357 


5. Why it is Good to be a Pragmatist 

After all this talk my readers probably begin to see what it means 
to be a pragmatist, but it would not surprise me to hear some one say: 
Then, since it seems the pragmatists prefer theories that are of some 
use, tell us, please, what is the use of being a pragmatist. 

The answer, after what I have said, is not difficult. The spiritual 
gains of one who is or becomes a pragmatist are not to be despised. 
The first is a gain of time, for the pragmatist gives a definitive quietus 
to the so-called “ insoluble problems,” the pretended “ enigmas of the 
universe,’ which are merely non-existent or ill-stated problems that 
become soluble when stated in the pragmatic way. The time thus 
saved can be used either in the study of other problems, or in the 
practical application of theories that have been already verified by 
experience. 

The second gain is the mental stimulus given by the consciousness 
of our human control over scientific conceptions, and over our own 
minds, and by the feeling of the plasticity of truth and of the opening 
of ever-wider spheres of possibility offered to the deductive imagina- 
tion, and to the powers of the human soul over the universe. 

This economy of time and strength and this increase of satisfaction 
and enthusiasm will suffice, I should think, to content those who have 
any intention of becoming pragmatists. If these do not suffice I will 
point out other advantages. Pragmatism having the characteristics 
of a thing not yet finished, not completely worked out, not fixed and 
crystallized, can therefore offer to him who turns to it the possibility 
of developing and transforming it, that is, of being not merely one of 
its followers, but at the same time one of its creators. Pragmatism 
thus offers the advantage of not being in itself a metaphysic, but of 
permitting the esthetic or moral enjoyment of possible or actual meta- 
physics. 


6. Who will become Pragmatists ? 


There is one last question that could be asked. Who are the men 
who most readily become pragmatists? Is it possible to predict what 
classes of minds are the most disposed to receive the teachings of 
pragmatism ? 

In order to answer, I should perhaps have to build up the psychol- 
ogy of the pragmatist type. For theories, even the purest and ab- 
stractest, have their actual ground and source in biological needs, and 
in the deepest sentiments of the general human race, or of particular 
exceptional persons. 

This conception of Nietzsche—which the pragmatists have taken 
up and unfolded—of the vital and moral sources of “ pure thought,” 
so-called, shows us, when applied to pragmatism itself, the three groups 


358 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of sentiments which are to be found hidden in the souls of the prag- 
matists. The first group is that of our vital sentiments, that is, of our 
instinctive desires for a larger and richer life, for more extended power. 
Our love of the concrete, of real and particular things, comes in here, 
as well as our fondness for dreams that “ come true”; also our hatred 
of useless words, and of dreams foisted upon reality, that neither let 
us contentedly accept it, nor enable us to alter it. 

The second group may be called the pessimistic sentiments. These 
are shown in the tendency to wish to change all existing things, facts 
and theories. Another manifestation of this is a certain aversion to 
anything that comes to us claiming to be already complete, and forces 
itself upon our acceptance, whether it call itself scientific hypothesis 
or law of nature. 

The third group, on the contrary, is optimistic in its character. 
It consists in sentiments of pride. These are shown in our honorable 
reluctance to accept things ready-made, instead of making them for 
ourselves; in our unwillingness to receive our intellectual inheritance 
without right of appeal or revision. They are also shown by the dis- 
like of submission to what men call the inevitable, the unchangeable, 
the eternal, and by the proud hope of being able to change existing 
things by means of simple spiritual force. 

To come down from this hypothetical psychology to a more exact 
forecast, I believe, in general, that all those who think in order to act, 
who prefer provisional truths that work to over-abstract terms, how- 
ever intoxicating, may be in sympathy with pragmatism. 

Excluded beforehand, consequently, are all pedants devoted to fixed 
formule, all systematizers who see the world under the despotism of 
a symbol; all lovers of immutable truth, of pure reason, of tran- 
scendental conceptions, in a word, all conservatives of a rationalistic 
complexion. But there are, in particular, two classes of minds that 
seem to me destined to form the bulk of the pragmatist army. I 
mean practical men and Utopians. ‘The first, because they find in 
pragmatism the theoretical explanation of their scorn for questions 
that have no sense or practical import, and of their sympathy with 
all that is clear, potent and unencumbered. The second, because they 
find in pragmatism suggestive points of view that encourage them to 
imagine and to hope extraordinary things. The ideas of pragmatism 
about absurd hypotheses, about imaginary sciences, about the influence 
of the will upon belief, and of belief upon reality, seem made on pur- 
pose to stimulate the poets and dreamers of the world of thought. 
Thus pragmatism, in this sole point resembling the Hegelian dialectic, 
succeeds at last in reconciling opposites. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 


on 
Leal 
\o 


THE PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


By CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT, LL.D.. D.Sc. 


JAMES STILLMAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY IN THE HARVARD 
MEDICAL SCHOOL 


IV. DIFFERENTIATION AND REJUVENATION 


Ladies and Gentlemen: In order to present the subject of this 
evening, I will take a few brief moments at the beginning to review 
the results reached in the previous lecture. In the last lecture I 
spoke of the phenomena of growth, and endeavored then to make 
clear to you what I consider the fundamental conception of this study 
—that the decline in the growth power is extremely rapid at first and 
slow afterwards. This change in the rate of growth is of course due to 
things in the animal body itself. It is a logical conclusion for us to 
draw that if we are to study out the cause of the loss of growth power, 
we should do it rather at that period of development when the change 
in the rate of growth is most rapid, for then we should expect those 
modifications to exhibit themselves most clearly because the magnitude 
of cause is likely to be proportionate to the magnitude of result, and 
when the decline is most rapid, then we must expect to find the altera- 
tions which cause that decline in the organism to show themselves 
most conspicuously. You will remember, further, that we spoke of 
growing old as being a much more complicated question than one of 
growth alone, and that there occur, as the years advance, changes in 
the structure of the body. It is convenient to use one collective term 
for all these phenomena of becoming old, and that term, established 
by long usage, is senescence, the becoming old. What, therefore, we 
have to search for at present is a cause, a proximate cause at least, 
of senescence. In order to make the view I am to bring forward this 
evening quite clear to you, I must first of all take advantage of your 
kindness and recapitulate briefly what I said in regard to cells, for 
you will remember that the cell is the foundation and unit of organic 
structure. With your permission I should like to recall more exactly 
to your minds what I said of the cells by having thrown upon the 
screen the slide which we saw before and which we used as an illustra- 
tion of the cell. Here is the picture. Above we see the typical cell 
from the oral epithelium of the salamander, and you remember in the 
center this more conspicuous body with a granular and reticulated 
structure which we called the nucleus, and surrounding it is this mass 
which we called the body of the cell, or the protoplasm. Here is an- 


360 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


other condition of a cell of the skin of the salamander in which the 
nucleus presents a slightly different appearance. Here also we have 
quite a body of protoplasm about the nucleus. Every cell consists of 
these two essential and fundamental parts, the nucleus and the proto- 
plasm. Now the conclusion to which I shall gradually bring you by 


Fic. 39. CELLS FROM THE MouTH (ORAL) EPITHELIUM OF THE SALAMANDER, 


the facts to be laid before you this evening is that the increase of the 
protoplasm is the thing which is to be regarded as the explanation of 
senescence. Though protoplasm is the physical basis of life, though 
it is the actual living substance of the body, its undue increase beyond 
the growth of the nucleus changes the proportions of the two, and that 
change of proportion seems to cause an alteration in the conditions of 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 361 


the living cell itself, and that alteration I interpret, as I shall explain 
more accurately later, as the cause of senescence, as the fundamental 
cause of old age. This slide also shows to us the early development of 
the cells through those phases which result in the multiplication of 
them. The nucleus changes in appearance and becomes a very differ- 
ent-looking structure. These changes I need not now go through 
again. Suffice it to say that after the complicated alterations have 
completed their cycle, we get in the place of a single cell, two, and 


eee Sa fees 


Fic. 40. THREE SECTIONS THROUGH A RABBIT EMBRYO OF SEVEN AND ONE HALF Days. 


each has its own nucleus, and each its own protoplasm. Notice here 
that the two cells which finally result are smaller than the original 
cells from which they sprang. These are by no means imaginary 
pictures, but accurate microscopic drawings from real cells of the 
salamander skin. The two cells which are thus produced from one 
parent cell are characterized by their smaller size, and this smaller size 
applies not only to the cell as a whole, but likewise to its nucleus. 
After having been thus reduced in size, the nuclei and the cells will 
both expand, and soon the daughter cells will return to the mother 
dimension and be as large as the parent cell from the division of which 


362 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


they arose. There is thus. 
we learn, the constant 
fluctuation in the size of 
cells, a fluctuation in their 
dimensions accompanying 
the process of cell division. 
Presently we shall have 
more to say in regard to 
this matter of the change 
in the cell in size. The 
next picture (Fig. 40) 
which I want to recall to 
you is one which we also 
Fic. 41. Ame@ba coli, HIGHLY MAGNIFIED. Drawn had in an earlier lecture. 


from a cover-glass preparation trom a twenty-four 
hour culture. 


‘These represent slices through 
a very young rabbit before 
any of the organs of the 
rabbit have begun to develop. 
We can see here clearly the 
nuclei, as I pointed out to 
you before, nearly uniform 
in structure, and you notice 
that the protoplasm around 
each nucleus is quite small 
in amount. If you will re- 
call the previous picture of 
the skin of the salamander, 


Fic. 42. TERTIAN MALARIAL PARASITE. Two 
upon the screen a moment human blood corpuscles alongside and drawn on 
the same scale. 


ie] «2OCsC«ago, you will realize imme- 
diately, in comparing the 
two, that in these young cells 
the proportion of the proto- 
plasm to the nucleus is very 
small. That is again one of 
the fundamental facts to 
which we shall recur in a 
moment. I wanted to show 
you this picture in order to 
revive in your minds the con- 
ception which I endeavored 


to give you before of the 


Fic. 43. Zrypanosoma Lewisi, from the rat's Undifferentiated tissue, where 


blood with two blood corpuscles alongside drawn on : 
the same scale. the cells have nuclei pretty 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 363 


uniform in appearance and in size, each with its little mass of proto- 
plasm about it, and this protoplasm appearing in all the cells under 
microscopic examination very much the same. We can not in this 
stage of development say of a given cell that it represents any special 
structure, by which, if we saw it isolated under the microscope, we 
could determine from what part of the young embryonic body it was 
derived. When we see a cell from the adult we can determine its 
origin with certainty by its microscopic appearance alone. As devel- 
opment progresses, the simple condition of the cells is gradually oblit- 
erated, but we find another condition arising which we call the differ- 
entiated one. Differentiation is a process which goes on in the body 
as a whole, but of course it is also a function of each individual cell. 
We can see something of the process of differentiation if we study the 
unicellular organisms, those creatures, each of which is complete in 
itself, although it consists of but a single cell, not of countless millions 
of cells as we do. The picture (Fig. 41) which I have chosen to throw 
upon the screen is one which I think might have an additional interest 
to you, for it is a photograph from the living cell known as the para- 
site producing dysentery. Its scientific name is ameba coli. It is a 
photograph from life. Here vaguely in the center, marked with a 
finer granulation, and some of the darker spots in it, we can distin- 
guish the nucleus: here is the outline of the protoplasm of this cell. 
and in it are included some particles of food which this protoplasmic 
body has absorbed for purposes of digestion. This is a unicellular 
parasitic organism with scarcely any differentiation of its structure. 
The next of the slides shows us again another of these parasitic simple 
organisms. The figure here to the right of the field of view is the 
one which should especially attract your attention. The other two 
bodies near it are blood corpuscles, human blood corpuscles. The 
organism in this case is the one which causes malarial fever, and it is 
in a particular stage of its development; that which we distinguish 
as the tertian malarial parasite is the one here represented. You can 
see in this case also the outline of the nucleus, surrounded by the 
protoplasm—the whole thing only a little bigger than a single human 
blood corpuscle. Here also we note the absence of differentiation. 
Another stage of this same tertian malarial parasite is shown next. 
This I have projected upon the screen because it illustrates more clearly 
than the other the nucleus and the small amount of protoplasm about 
the nucleus. The malarial organism is one of great vitality, capable 
of enormously rapid multiplication, and it undoubtedly owes that 
faculty to its constitution, to the relation between the nucleus and the 
protoplasm. I will now show you another picture of parasites—one 
form of which, in a related species, occurs in man. This particular 
form is one which occurs in the rat and is called the Trypanosoma. 
You can see that the body, instead of being a small and simple struc- 


364 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ture, has elongated, acquired-a peculiar form, and here in the interior 
are lighter and darker spots. These do not show very clearly in the 
picture, because it is from a photograph of a living specimen under 
the microscope. The lighter and darker spots correspond to the de- 
tails in the structure of the organism. Here is the tail of the organism, 
twisted, as you see, and in life capable of being bent. The movement 
of the animals in the natural fluid in which they are suspended is 
quite active. Alongside are some blood corpuscles, the figure, as you 
see, is magnified about the same as the one of the malarial parasite 
which I showed you a few moments ago. The next slide exhibits an 


2 
s 
s 
s 
s 
2 
2 


= 


Fic. 44. Stentor cwruleus A, cut into three pieces; B, regeneration of the first piece; 
C, of the middle piece; D, of the posterior piece. After Gruber. 


organism which swims free in the water, and is pretty well shown in 
this figure. It is called the Stentor. Here the chain of beads repre- 
sents the nucleus. Upon the surface of the body there are fine lines 
indicating superficial structure. At this point there occurs what we 
call the mouth. Over the rest of this minute organism there is a 
thin cuticle, but at the mouth the cuticle is absent, and the protoplasm 
is naked or uncovered so that food can be taken in. There are bands 
of hairs showing coarse and stiff in the figure but capable of movement, 
and with the aid of those vibratile hairs, or cilia, the organism can 
swim about in water. Here is another internal structure, the vacuole; 
obviously in an animal like this we no longer have simple protoplasm 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 365 


alone, but the protoplasm in the interior of the cell has become in part 
changed into other things. Here then within the territory of a single 
cell we have differentiation. If now in these unicellular organisms 
we study both the protoplasm and the nucleus, we learn that most of 
these modifications which are so conspicuous upon microscopic observa- 
tion are due to changes in the protoplasm. It is the protoplasm which 
acquires a new structure. In the nucleus, on the contrary, we find 
perhaps a change of form, minor details of arrangement by which one 
sort of nucleus, or one stage of the nucleus, can be distinguished from 
another, but always the nucleus consists of the same fundamental 
constants. There is the membrane bounding it; there is the sap or 
juice in the interior; the network of living threads stretching across 
it; and here and there imbedded in and connected with this network 
are the granules of special substance, which we call chromatin. These 
four things exist in the nuclei and are apparently always present, and 
there is usually not to be seen in the nucleus anything of change com- 
parable, in extent at least, with the change which goes on in the proto- 
plasm—on the other hand, the protoplasm acquires items of structure 
which were totally absent from it before. The nucleus rearranges its 
parts rather than changes them. This is a very important fact, and 
shows us, if we confine our attention even to these little organisms 
only, that the differentiation of the protoplasm is quantitatively the 
more important of the two—the differentiation of the nucleus the 
less important. 

We can now turn from a consideration of these lowest organisms 
to the higher forms, among which we ourselves of course are counted, 
in which the body is formed by a very considerable number of cells. 
Again I should like to take advantage of your kindness and show you 
some of the pictures we have already reviewed, in order to utilize the 
features which they show as illustrations of the fundamental principle 
that the conspicuous change is in the protoplasm. Here we have nerve 
cells. In the first two photographs are represented two isolated nerve 
cells, to show their shape. They have been colored by a special process 
so dark that the nucleus which they contain in their interior is hidden 
from our view; it is of course none the less there. This dark stain- 
ing enables us to trace out the shape of these cells very clearly, and 
you can see that instead of being round and simple in form they have 
their elongated processes stretching out to a very considerable dis- 
tance; these processes serve to catch up from remote places nervous 
impulses and carry them into the body of the cell, and thus assist in 
the work of nervous transmission. The elongation of these threads is, 
as you see, adapted, like the elongation of a wire, to long-distance 
communication. Here are two other figures which represent nerve 
cells treated by a different process, and again artificially colored. But 
the color in this case nas attacked certain spots in the protoplasm, 


366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


otoplasm around the nucleus in both 
e and uniform, but contains these 
Here are other nerve cells; the one 


consequently we see that the pr 
of these figures is no longer simpl 
deposits of dark-colored material. 


Fig.4. Fug.d-. 


Fic. 45, Various KINDS OF HUMAN NERVE CELLS. After Sopotta. 


in the center shows you the accumulation of pigmented matter in the 


protoplasm ; again an index of a change and lack 


of the previous uni- 


4 
AGH,.GROWTH AND DEATH 367 


formity replaced by diversity in the composition of the various parts 
of the single cell. This figure shows us more clearly the principle 
of structure of a nerve cell, for here we have the central body of the 
cell composed of protoplasm with its nucleus in the middle and a 
small spot in the center of the nucleus, and these long branching 
processes running out in all directions which can take up nerve im- 
pulses from other similar or dissimilar cells, as the case may be, and 
carry them to the central body. To carry the message out there is 
typically but one process, which is different in appearance from the other 
processes which carry the impulses in. The latter are branching and 
are therefore called the tree-like or dendritic processes. Here is a 
single process like a long thread to carry the impulses away, and which 


Fic. 46. ParRT OF A HUMAN MUSCLE Fic. 47. SECTION FROM AN ORBITAL GLAND. 
FIBER. 


is called the axon of the nerve cell. In this case the modification of 
the shape of the cell has adapted it to the better performance of its 
functions. Notice also in these cells the enormous increase in the 
amount of protoplasm as compared with the nucleus. In the young 
cell of the rabbit germ, of which I showed you several illustrations a 
few moments ago, we had very little protoplasm for each nucleus, but 
here the protoplasm has many, many times the volume of the nucleus, 
and this is a relatively old cell. 

Next let us look again at the figure of the striated muscle fiber, 
which you may recall from the second lecture, so that it will suffice 
if your attention is again directed to the oval nuclei, and to the lines 
stretching crosswise on the muscle giving it a “striated” appearance. 
You remember, doubtless, that such fibers are the ones which enable 
us to make voluntary motions. Originally each fiber was a set of 


368 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


cells, and the cells had some protoplasm, but, gradually, as deveiop- 
ment progressed, there appeared in them longitudinal fibrils different 
from the protoplasm, and the fibrils also created ultimately the appear- 
ance of cross lines on the fiber. It is the fibrils which perform the 
muscular contractions. It is not the original unmodified protoplasm, 
but the modified or differentiated muscular cell which is capable of 
voluntary contraction. 

The next picture (Fig. 47) shows us clearly and strikingly how much 
the differentiation may vary. We have here another type of differen- 
tiation. These are gland cells; we can see here, as I pointed out to 
you before, the material in the form of granules, which is to produce 
the secretion from these gland cells. This is an orbital gland, and 
here are the cells, which are very much smaller because they have 
discharged their secretion. Three of the cells are represented sepa- 
rately. The first shows us a cell full of the material which is to be 
discharged and is to form a part of the secretion of the saliva. The 
second is a cell which has partly lost its accumulated material, and 
the third is one which has discharged it almost completely, so that it 
has become very much reduced in size. We learn from such structures 
as these that the size of cells may vary also according to their func- 
tional condition. We have here a similar gland. This is sometimes 
called the salivary gland of the intestine, better termed the pancreas. 
Here we can see for each of these cells a nucleus and a body divided 
into two parts, a darker portion around the nucleus and a lighter part 
with little granules in it, which represents the accumulation of ma- 
terial which is to form the secretion. When the cells have discharged 
their secretion, they, like the cells in the salivary gland, are found to 
have diminished in size and become very much smaller indeed than they 
were in their earlier state when charged with the zymogen destined to 
be given out. In this case also we have an illustration of a functional 
variation in the size of the cells. This ends the series of pictures 
which I wanted especially to show to you as illustrating the changes 
of the cells as their differentiation progresses. We can see in the 
bodies of the cells the changes which have occurred. 

Here is a picture which teaches us one thing more about these 
cells. Notice the scattered nuclei, each surrounded by protoplasm, 
completing the cell. The protoplasm of each of these cells is con- 
nected across with the protoplasm coming from another, so that the 
whole set of cells forms an irregular protoplasmic network. Now in 
the spaces between these cells are fine lines. These represent delicate 
structures which we call connective tissue fibrils, which have a me- 
chanical function. By their tensile strength, their power to resist and 
pull, they give a certain supporting power to the tissues. Our picture 
represents one of the tissues which support and connect other portions 
of the body. Now the fibrils apparently lie entirely disconnected from 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 369 


the cells, but a more careful study of the history of the connective 
tissue has revealed the very interesting and instructive fact that the 
fibrils, now separate from the cells, arose by a metamorphosis of the 
protoplasm of the cells—that they are first formed out of some of the 
protoplasm of these cells, then split off from them, and come to lie 
in the intercellular regions, so that here we have another type of cell 
differentiation brought to our notice, one in which the product is 
separated from the parent body to which it owes its origin. Now you 
will perceive immediately, if you recall the series of pictures which 
have just passed before us on the screen, very great differences in the 
types of differentiation which occur in the body, and had we time we 
might find a very much larger range easily to be represented before us. 


Fic. 48. EMBRYONIC SYNCYTIUM FROM THE UMBiLICAL CoRD OF MAN; ¢c,¢, cells; F, fibrils. 


In the second lecture a picture was projected upon the screen, 
which showed motor nerve cells of various animals. You will recall 
that I directed your attention to the fact that the largest animal, the 
elephant, has the largest cells, and the smallest animals, the rat, the 
mouse and the little bat, have the smallest ones. But let me point out 
to you that the question of the size of cells is exceeding complex, and 
that in studying it we have to exercise a great deal of caution. We 
know that, with the exception of the nerve cells and to a minor degree 
with the exception of the muscle fibers, the cells in each animal are 
more or less uniform constants in size. The cells of different organs 
differ somewhat from one another. A single organ may have in its 
different parts typical sizes of cells, but each of these kinds of cells 
has its definite dimensions. When one animal is larger than another, 

VOL. LXxxI.—24 


370 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


it has more cells. Now it is a very important fact for us that animals 
have a more or less constant size of their cells. They do not differ 
from one another by a difference in the size of their cells; the bigness 
of an animal does not depend upon the size, but upon the number, of 
its cells. We can, therefore, in studying the changes of size, to which 
I shall next direct your attention, omit altogether these details, and 
speak of the cells in a general way safely as having a certain uniform 
or standard size. This will save us a great deal of time, for we learn, 
as we study cells, that their size increases with the age of the animal. 
The animal, when it is young, has cells with a small amount of proto- 
plasm. And that, you will perceive from the pictures which have been 
thrown upon the screen, is an absolutely necessary corollary of the 
discovery that differentiation is mainly a function of the protoplasm. 
If there is to be a large degree of differentiation it is necessary that the 
quantity of protoplasm in the single cells should be increased, so that 
there may be the raw material on hand out of which the differentiated 
product can be manufactured. If there is not such a preliminary in- 
crease of the protoplasm, then the differentiation can not occur. In 
order that perfection of the adult structure should be attained, it is 
necessary that the mere undifferentiated cells, each with a small body 
of protoplasm, should acquire first an increased amount of protoplasm, 
and that then from the increased protoplasm should be taken the 
material to result in differentiation, in specialization. 

An undifferentiated cell performs all the fundamental functions of 
life. An ameeba, or any unicellular organism such’as I have presented 
to you upon the screen, does everything which is indispensable to life. 
It takes food; it forms secretions and excretions; its activity depends 
upon chemical alterations going on in the food in the interior of its 
body: it is capable of sensation and of locomotion. It is probable 
that every living cell has all of these fundamental properties of proto- 
plasm. When a cell becomes differentiated, however, though it does 
not necessarily give up any of its vital properties, it becomes different 
from other cells because one of its properties is made conspicuous. 
And in order to acquire that conspicuousness, that excess of develop- 
ment of one function of the cell, a modification in the structure is 
necessary. The apparatus in the interior of a cell to produce the 
exaggeration of the function must be developed, so that to effect the 
complex physiological machinery of the adult body, this differentiation, 
of which I have so often spoken, is indispensable. A nerve cell carries 
on all the vital functions, but it has in addition a special series of 
modifications of its protoplasm which enable it to accomplish the 
transmission of the neryous impulses with greater efficiency than ordi- 
nary protoplasm can do, probably at a higher speed and with a more 
perfect adjustment of communication between the various parts of 
the body than is possible with any machinery of pure protoplasm. So 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 371 


too, the glands have cells which are especially capable of elaborating 
chemical substances which, when they are poured out, accomplish the 
work of digestion, for instance. But these cells are likewise alive in 
all their parts. They have all the fundamental vital properties, but 
there is this tremendous exaggeration of the one faculty, and that in- 
volves an alteration so great in the protoplasm that we can see it 
with the microscope; the microscope affords us a perfect demonstration 
of differentiation, which we can correlate with the function. 

The primary object, therefore, of all differentiation is physiological. 
The higher organism, with its complex physiological relations, is some- 
thing really higher in structure than the lower organism. The term 
“higher ” in biology implies a much more complex interrelation of the 
parts, a much more complex relation of the organism to the outside 
world; and above all it implies in the highest animals a complex 
intelligence of which only a rudimentary prophecy exists in the lowest 
forms of life, possibly scarcely more than a mere sensation. We owe 
then to differentiation our faculties, which we prize. It is the result of 
differentiation that I am able to address you and present before you 
the thoughts which have been accumulated as the result of the studies 
of many years. It is a result of differentiation that you have such. 
parts that you not only hear the actual sound of my voice, but 
interpret—at least I hope so—the meaning of my words and can 
understand the ideas which I am endeavoring to present to you. Hf 
you carry away something from these lectures, and recall it at some 
future time, that also will be a result of the differentiation of struc- 
ture; for every one of you started as a minute germ, consisting of 
protoplasm with a nucleus, and entirely without any differentiation ; 
and by a process so complex that the mystery of it escapes entirely all 
our powers of analysis, those parts which you have have been slowly 
and secretly fashioned. We have approached one of the fundamental 
problems of existence. When we talk of differentiation, we talk of 
the endowments which bring us into relation with the external world— 
into relations with our kind, and which make our internal life so 
complex, a complexity which in itself is a great problem. We touch 
here the fundamental mysteries of existence; we are hovering upon the 
outskirts of our human conceptions. We are not yet able to press 
beyond. But perhaps the time may come when the limit to which I 
can now bring you will be moved farther back, and some of the things 
which are at the present time utterly mysterious and incomprehensible 
to us will be comprehended and he explicable to you. 

The increase of the protoplasm is then, as we have clearly seen 
from the pictures, the mark both of advancing organization and of 
advancing age. It is certainly somewhat paradoxical to assert that 
the increase of the protoplasm is a sign of old age, a sign of senescence, 
since protoplasm is the physical basis of life. It undoubtedly is such, 


Swi POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


and we should hardly anticipate that its increase would have a dele- 
terious effect. But such is, it seems to me, clearly the case. But it is 
not merely, of course, a question of the increase of protoplasm which 
we must bear in mind in estimating the cause and effect, but also the 
question of differentiation, in consequence of which protoplasm becomes 
something else and different from what it was before. This altera- 
tion, then, together with the increase of the protoplasm, is the change 
which in all parts of the body marks the passage from youth to 
old age. 

It seems to me not going at all too far to say that the increase of 
protoplasm is a fundamental phenomenon. I wish to give you a more 
precise notion of this increase; and I am glad to be able to do so in 
consequence of a research carried on by Professor Eycleshymer in my 
laboratory and completed by him afterwards in his own laboratory at 
the University of St. Louis. He studied the development of the 
muscle fibers in the great salamander, known scientifically by the name 
of Necturus. These muscle fibers are somewhat cylindrical in shape. 
Their ends can be accurately determined so that the precise length of 
a fiber can be measured, and its diameter also. Hence the total volume 
of a fiber may be calculated. It is possible also to measure the nuclei 
and to count the number of nuclei in a fiber. Thus by measuring the 
diameter and length of the fiber, and then estimating the number and 
the diameters of the nuclei, we can calculate the proportions. As a 
matter of fact, the nuclei remain nearly constant in volume, not really 
quite so, but sufficiently constant to serve as a basis of measurement. 
Dr. Eycleshymer found that when a Necturus had a length of eight 
millimeters, it possessed, for each nucleus in its muscle fiber, 2,737 
units of protoplasm, but when it was seventeen millimeters, it possessed 
for each nucleus 4,318 units per nucleus; at twenty-six millimeters, 
8,473 units; and in the adult, which measures approximately 230 
millimeters, it has 22,379 units per nucleus. In other words, as a 
salamander passes from the eight-millimeter condition, when the de- 
velopment of its muscle fibers is just fairly begun, up to the adult state, 
when the differentiation of the muscle fibers has been completed, it 
increases the proportion of protoplasmic substance and protoplasmic 
derivatives from 2,700 to 22,300 per nucleus. I give round numbers. 
The increase is approximately sevenfold. There is in the adult in the 
muscle fiber seven times as much protoplasmic substance in propor- 
tion to the nucleus as there was at the start of development when the 
muscle fiber could first be clearly recognized as such. This is an 
accurate measure and gives us a good idea of the general law of proto- 
plasmic increase. It is the only instance, I yet know of, in which we 
have an accurate measure and can give quantitative values, though we 
do know that there is a more or less similar increase occurring in per- 
haps every tissue of the body. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 373 

While the increase of the protoplasm is going on, we find that there 
is an advance in the structure, in the differentiation. Now you may 
recall what I have mentioned earlier in this lecture, the further funda- 
mental fact that the loss in the rate of growth is greatest in the young, 
least in the old, and that as we go back from old age towards youth, 
and then into the embryonic period, we find an ever-increasing power 
of growth, but that it is during the embryonic period that the loss of the 
power of growth is greatest. It is to the embryonic period, therefore, 
that I have turned in order to ascertain whether the rate of differentia- 
tion shows a similar relation in the development of the organism. 

We have a large series of microscopic preparations of rabbit embryos 
in the embryological laboratory of the Harvard Medical School. 
Utilizing these, I found that at seven or eight days of development there 
is scarcely a trace of differentiation. The cells are in the condition of 
those which I showed to you earlier in the lecture upon the screen. At 
sixteen and a half days, a stage of development of which I have some 
good preparations, I found that a great deal had been accomplished. 
At seven days there was no brain, there was no spinal cord, nothing 
that could possibly be called skin or muscle, or intestine or heart. 
None of those things were yet produced. But at sixteen and one half— 
in other words, after a very brief period indeed—only nine days of the 
whole life of the animal—there have arisen from this inchoate begin- 
ning all the principal organs of the body. The brain is there, divided 
up into its principal fundamental parts; the spinal cord has its nerves 
in connection with the various parts of the body; there is a trace of 
the skeletal element ; the stomach, the liver, the pancreas, the intestines, 
are all present and well defined; the heart is a large and beating organ, 
amply supplied with blood, connected with vessels, which carry out and 
bring back the blood and are all far along in. their development. 
Equally instructive is the microscopic examination, for we can see that 
the cells themselves have been changed. Not only have the great 
organs been mapped out in this brief period, but the cells which belong 
to them have for each organ acquired a characteristic quality. In the 
brain there are nerve cells with their long processes to carry the im- 
pulse in; the single process (axon) to carry it out. The glands in the 
stomach have the cells which are to build them already there. The 
muscles which are to move the stomach are beginning to appear as cells 
of a special form. Nerve fibers extend down into the gastric region 
and to the various distant organs of the body. Muscle fibers can be 
recognized along the back and in the limbs, and so in every part of 
the body we can detect cells already far advanced in their develop- 
ment. It is not certainly too much to say that in the brief period of 
these nine days fully as much differentiation has been accomplished as 
is accomplished during the entire remainder of the life of the animal. 
We do not, at present at least, possess any method of measuring dif- 


374 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ferentiation, which enables us to state it numerically, but no one who 
is familiar with these matters and observes the structure, as I have 
myself observed it, would hesitate for a moment, it seems to me, to 
decide that my assertion is perfectly within the bounds of truth, that 
within a period of nine days, half of the entire differentiation which is 
to occur in the whole life of the rabbit has been completed. We must 
from this conclude that the rate of differentiation is very rapid at first 
and afterwards declines, and as we compare the different stages of . 
development we can see readily that this is the case. The progress in 
the additional development in the rabbit from sixteen and one half 
days up to the time of its birth is far greater than the progress which 
occurs after birth. We find, moreover, in the study of these embryonic 
conditions, some instructive things, for in certain parts of the body the 
process of differentiation hurries along, and as the cells are differ- 
entiated their power of growth, to a large extent, is stopped. On the 
other hand, there are various provisions in the developing animal for 
keeping back certain cells, allowing them to remain in the young state. 
Such cells may afterward differentiate. 

From all that has been said it seems to me legitimate to conclude 
that there is an intimate correlation between the rate of differentia- 
tion and the rate of growth. I am inclined to go the one step farther, 
and bring them into the relation of cause and effect; and I present to 
you as the main general conclusion of this first part of our series of 
lectures, the conception that the growth and differentiation of the 
protoplasm are the cause of the loss of the power of growth. Now if 
cells become old as their protoplasm increases and becomes differ- 
entiated, we should expect to find that there would be a provision for 
the production of young cells. It is rather mortifying to reflect that 
the simple conception which I have now to express to you, although it 
lay close at hand, failed to combine itself in my mind for many years 
with the conception of the process of senescence as I have just described 
it to you. It is somewhat, it seems to me, like two acquaintances of 
mine who lived long side by side, seeing one another frequently until 
they were fairly past the period of youth, when their attachment be- 
came very close and by a sacrament they were permanently joined 
together. So in the minds of men often two ideas lie side by side which 
ought to be married to one another, and there is no one ready, so dull 
is the owner of the mind, to pronounce the sacramental words which 
shall join them, and the rite long remains unperformed, and when at 
last such neighbor ideas, which naturally should be united in close 
companionship, are brought together and made, as it were, into one, we 
are astonished that the inevitableness of the union had not obtained 
our notice before, it is so very obvious. And so in regard to the con- 
ception of what constitutes the restoration of the young state, I have 
only this excuse to offer, which I have indicated to you, that even the 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 375 


natural thought fails to occur to us. We are very dull even if we are 
scientific. 

The pictures now before you represent certain early stages in the 
progress of development of a mammal by the name of Tarsius, a 
creature related to the lemurs. The various figures illustrate the multi- 


if 2 


Fic. 49. Yarsius spectabile. SECTIONS OF THREE OVA IN VERY EARLY STAGES. 1, before 
cleavage; 2, cleavage into four cells; 3, muiticellular stage. 


plication of the cells. That which I wish to call your attention to 
can be well demonstrated by the comparison of the first figure, in 
which there is a single nucleus, with the figure at this point having a 
number of nuclei. Both figures represent the very earliest stages of 
development and show the full size of the whole germ, which is about 
the same in the two stages. The total amount of living material has 
not changed essentially, but evidently there has occurred a marked 
increase of the nuclear substance. The nuclei have in the right-hand 
figure multiplied in number and their combined volume is much greater 
than the total volume of the single nucleus in the left-hand figure. 

We can get a further notion of the nuclear increase by studying the 
very early development of a salamander. Here upon the screen is the 
egg of a salamander. It represents really but a single cell. It then 
divides into two cells; each of those cells has a nucleus which we can 
not see because these pictures are taken from the living egg, and the 
living egg is not transparent. Here it is dividing into four, here the 
upper portion of the four cells has been split off, and we have seven 
cells showing in the figure, and an eighth on the back. Here the 
number of cells has increased very much, and as you view these figures 
you will notice that they look very much indeed like oranges divided 
into segments. It seems, in fact, as if this egg, which was spherical in 
form, were being divided up into a certain number of segments. The 
process was first observed in the eggs of some of the amphibia, frogs, 
toads and salamanders, and it was therefore called segmentation, be- 
cause it was not known at that time what the process really meant. 
We have then before us an ovum and a series of stages of the segmenta- 
tion of the ovum, and the result of that segmentation is to produce an 


376 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ever-increasing number of cells which, in the last: of the figures upon 
the screen, have become so numerous that we are no longer able to 
readily count them. Every one of these cells has its own nucleus. 
When the process of segmentation is complete and reaches its final 
limit, we then sce, if we examine that stage of development, cells of the 
young type, such as I have described to you, in which there is a 
nucleus with a small amount of protoplasm about each nucleus. — It 


seems to me, therefore—and this is a new interpretation which I present 


Fic. 50. Amblystomum punctatum. PROGRESSIVE SEGMENTATION OF THE OVUM. 
1, unsegmented ovum ; 9, advanced segmentation. 


to you—that the process of segmentation of the ovum, with which the 
development of all the animals of the higher type invariably begins, 
is really the process of producing young cells. It is the process of 
rejuvenation. There is not any considerable growth of the living pro- 
toplasmic material of these eggs, and at the final stage the total volume 
of the egg is scarcely bigger than before; and such increased volume 
as has occurred has been due to the absorption of some of the surround- 
ing water. In many animals not even this increase by the absorptiom 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 377 


of water takes place. During the segmentation of the ovum the condi- 
tion of things has been reversed so far as the proportions of nucleus and 
protoplasm are concerned. We have nucleus produced, so to speak, to 
excess. ‘The nuclear substance is increased during this first phase of 
development. 

— Naturally, as-we embryologists looked upon these things in earlier 
days and thought of the progress of development, we conceived of the 
earlier stage as younger, and of the-oyvum as being the youngest stage 
of: all, a conception which in terms. of time is obviously correct, but 
as regards ihe nature of the development, ft seems to me clearly, is not 
correct. ° The ovum is a cell derived from the parent body, fertilized by 
the male element, and presenting the old state to us, the-state in which 
there is an excessive amount of protoplasm in proportion tothe nucleus ; 
and in order to-get anything which is young, a process of rejuvena- 
tion is necessary, and that rejuvenation is the first thing to be done 
in development. The nuclei multiply; they multiply at the expense 
of the protoplasm. They take food from the matérial which ‘is ‘stored 
up in the ovum, nourish themselves by it, grow and multiply until they 
become the dominant part in the structure. Then begins thesother 
change; the protoplasm slowly proceeds to grow, and as-it grows, dif- 
ferentiation follows, and so the cycle is completed. ~ Whether other 
naturalists will be inclined to accept this conception that the process of 
the segmentation of the ovum is that which we must call rejuvenation 
or not, I can not say, for the matter has as yet been very little discussed, 
but you will see that it hangs as a theory well-together. We have 
first an explanation of the process-of the production of the young 
material, and out of that young material the fashicning of the embryo. 
The cycle of life has two phases, an early brief one, during which the 
young material is produced, then the later and prolonged: one, in 
which the process of differentiation goes-on, and that. which was young, 
through a prolonged senescence, becomes old. I believe these are the 
alternating phases of-life, and that as we define senescence as an in- 
crease.and differentiation of the protoplasm, so we must define rejuvena- 
tion as an increase of the nuclear material. The alternation of phases 
is due to the alternation in the proportions of nucleus and protoplasm. 

‘In the next lecture I shall be able to convince you, I hope, that this 
conception of the relation of the power of growth to the proportion of 
nucleus and protoplasm enables us to understand various problems of 
development, certain possibilities of regeneration and reconstruction of 
lost parts, and that it also leads us naturally forward to the considera- 
tion of the problem of death as it is now viewed by biologists, so that 
our next lecture will be upon the subject of regeneration and death, the 
natural topics to follow after to-night’s discussion. 


MR. ALEXANDER AGASSIZ. 


President of the Seventh International Zoological Congress. 


THE PROGRESS 


OF SCIENCE 


Ww 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


THE INTERNATIONAL ZOOLOG-— 
ICAL CONGRESS 


THe Seventh International Zoolog- 
ical Congress, held at Boston on August 
19-24, was probably a greater success 
than its promoters had ventured to 
hope. Although it may have seemed 
inappropriate to hold it anywhere but 
in, or close to, Agassiz’s famous mu- 
seum at Cambridge, all disappointment 
on this score was quickly forgotten 
upon reaching the magnificent new 
buildings of the Harvard Medical 
School. Rarely had zoologists been 
so splendidly housed; and never, per- 
haps. had they received more open- 
handed hospitality from the people 
among whom they had chosen to meet. 
The attendance at the congress was 
very large, including distinguished 
workers from Japan, Russia, Austria, 
ete., with large delegations from Ger- 
many, France and England. No single 
man can sum up the achievements rep- 
resented by the assembly, but counting 
work instead of heads, it is possible 
that as much as one fourth of the total 
zoological strength of the world was 
represented. The papers and ad- 
dresses, as at all such gatherings, were 
of all degrees of interest and impor- 
tance; but it is certainly true that 
many noteworthy contributions were 
offered. Perhaps the greatest en- 
thusiasm was aroused by Bateson’s ad- 
dress on problems connected with hered- 
ity. The whole subject of genetics, 
as Bateson calls it, was very much to 
the front, and anything in reference to 
it was eagerly received. Tower, of 
Chicago, the author of the remarkable 
researches on the potato-beetle and its 
allies, was present; and Shull’s ac- 
count of his experiments with the 
“elementary species” of shepherd’s 


| botanical. 


It is an interesting sign of 
the times that a paper dealing ex- 
clusively with plants should be con- 
sidered appropriate at a zoological 
congress; an indication that biology is 
again coming to be studied in a broad 
way, and that one can not afford to 
ignore either animals or plants, when 
dealing primarily with the one or the 
other. 

At the general meetings, held at 
Jordan Hall, it was a keen pleasure to 


/see and hear such standard bearers of 


purse was welcomed, though actually 


the science as Hertwig, Murray and 
Brooks, not to speak of Alexander 
Agassiz, the president of the congress. 
At the last general meeting the report 
of the committee on nomenclature was 
unanimously adopted, and thus some 
matters of importance, which had long 
been in dispute, were at length settled, 
so far as they can be by such means. 

Several excursions were arranged for 
the members of the congress. One to 
the Arnold Arboretum gave the for- 
eigners an opportunity of seeing a fine 
series of living American trees; while 
the geneticologists, if one may so eall 
them, were glad to be conducted by 
Professor Sargent through his planta- 
tion containing species of thorns. An- 
other party was conducted to the place 
where extensive experiments are being 
made in rearing the parasites of the 
gypsy moth, and all who saw this work 
came back with enthusiastic accounts 
of it. On another day the congress 
was entertained at Wellesley College; 
while on Saturday a visit was made to 
Harvard University, where President 
Eliot and Mr. brief 
speeches explaining the history and na- 


Agassiz made 
ture of Harvard University in general 
and the Museum of Comparative Zool- 
ogy in particular. 


At the termination of the Boston 


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382 POPULAR 
week the congress went to Woods Holl, 
where they were shown all that the 
laboratories held. A pleasing feature 
of this visit was the reading of a letter 
from Dr. Dohrn, of the Naples Zoolog- 
ical Station, regretting his inability to 
be present, and the sending to him of 
a warm message of regard, signed by 
all in attendance. In the afternoon of 
Sunday the members embarked on the 
Fishhawk, on their way to New York, 
a sample dredging being made so that 
all might see the method employed by 
the Bureau of Fisheries in exploring 
the local waters. 

The excursion was continued in New 
York, Philadelphia and Washington, 
the members being elaborately enter- 
tained in each city, with special refer- 
ence to the scientific and zoological 
interests. Thus in New York a day 
each was devoted to Columbia Univer- 


sity, the American Museum of Natural | 


History, the Station for Experimental 
Evolution of the Carnegie Institution 
at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, the 
Zoological Park and a trip up the 
Hudson to Garrison as guests of Pro- 
fessor Osborn. On Saturday there 
were trips to Yale and Princeton. On 
Monday and Tuesday in Philadelphia 


[E] Less than $500 per capita 
E3$500 to 1000 
ZZBioo0 * 1500 ” 

1500 2000 "” 
ZB 2000 5000 "" 


GMB 5000 and over 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


‘the members visited the Academy of 


Natural Sciences, the Zoological Gar- 
den, the American Philosophical So- 
ciety and the University of Pennsyl- 
vania. At Washington the visitors 
were welcomed by Secretary Wilson 
and shown under the most favorable 
auspices the vast work being accom- 
plished for science by the national goy- 
ernment. A trip to Niagara Falls and 
the University of Toronto completed 
the excursion, which had been remark- 
ably well arranged and with which the 
foreign delegates expressed themselves 
as more than pleased. 


THE WEALTH OF THE UNITED 
STATES 


THE census office has issued a report 
of more than 1,200 quarto pages con- 
taining a vast amount of information 
in regard to the wealth, debt and taxa- 
tion of the country in 1904. The total 
wealth is placed at about 107 billion 
dollars, as compared with 88 billion 
in 1900, 65 billion in 1890 and 43 bil- 
lion in 1880. The per capita wealth 


is now $1,318, and the annual in- 


crease not far from $40 per year. 
While the per capita wealth of Great 
Britain, 


France and Australia is 


PER CAPITA WEALTH FOR EACH STATE AND TERRITORY, 1904. 


THE PROGRESS OF 


NATIONAL 
925,011,637 


NATIONAL 
COUNTY 851,912,752 


196,564,619 


STATE 
234,908,873 


COUNTY 
145,048,045 


STATE 
211,210,487 


MUNICIPAL 
1,387,316,976 


TOTAL 2,789,990,120 
TOTAL 1,989,112,842 


MUNICIPAL 
744,239,610 


TemOOL OSTRCT 88,70) 008 


TOTAL DEBT OF THE UNITED STATES 
LESS SINKING FUND 


TOTAL 3,042,605,395 


SCIENCE 383 


1870 


NATIONAL 
1,919,326,748 


NATIONAL 
2,331,169,956 


STATE 
274,745,772 


COUNTY 
124,105,027 


TOTAL 3,199,846,714 


MUNICIPAL 
706,847,166 
MUNICIPAL 
AND 
SCHOOL DISTRICT 
328,244,520 


slightly larger, the total wealth of the , 


United States surpasses by far that of 
any other country. The per capita 
distribution, as shown on the map, will 
surprise some readers. It is over 


$5,000 in Nevada, and over $2,500 in| 


California and Montana, whereas it is 
under $2,000 in New York, Pennsyl- 
vania and Massachusetts. teas 
greater in Iowa than in Pennsylvania 
or Illinois. The form of wealth is in 
round numbers distributed as follows: 
Real property and improvements, 63 
billion dollars; live-stock and farm im- 
plements, 3 billion dollars; manufac- 
turing machinery, 3 billion; gold and 
silver bullion, 2 billion; railways, 11 
billion; street-railways, ete., 5 billion; 
manufactured products, ete., 18 billion. 

The total national, state and munici- 
pal debt of the country in 1902 was 
about two billion, seven hundred and 
ninety million dollars, or $35.50 per 


This is an inerease of about 


capita. 
800 million dollars since 1890, but a 


decrease as compared with 1880. The 
accompanying chart shows the distribu- 
tion of this debt, the most striking fact 
being the steady decrease in the debt 
of the national government and the in- 
crease in municipal debts. This is of 
course a gratifying change, the na- 
tional debt being due to the cost of 
war, and municipal debt in the main 
to improvements of lasting value. The 
per capita national debt has decreased 
from $60.46 in 1870 to $11.77 in 1902. 
As the rate of interest has very greatly 
decreased, the burden of the national 
debt on each individual com- 
paratively slight. It would, however, 
seem to be only the prudence that is 
expected from each citizen for the 
whole nation to pay its debt without 
undue delay. 


is now 


It is a question whether 


it would not be wiser for municipalities 


7 


354 POPULAR 
to invest their savings in improvements 
rather than to contract debts, but this 
is an open question, as it is reasonable 


to expect future years, and even future 


generations, to pay for advantages that | 


may be bequeathed to them. ‘The re- 
port contains a very elaborate discus- 
sion of the taxation and revenue sys- 
tems of the United States and of the 
several states. In 1902, the total ex- 
penditures of the national government 
were about 617 million dollars; of the 
states and territories, about 85 million; 
of the counties, 197 million; of the 
cities 551 million, and of other minor 
civil divisions 222 million. The re- 
ceipts from revenues almost exactly 
balance the expenditures. 


SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 


WE record with regret the death of 
Dr. William Thomson, an eminent 
ophthalmologist of Philadelphia, and 
of Dr. Gaylord P. Clark, dean of the 


college of Medicine and professor of | 


physiology at Syracuse University. 

PROFESSOR LUDWIG VON GRAFF will 
be president of the eighth Zoological 
Congress, which is to be held at Graz 
three years hence.—Professor J. J. 
Stevenson, of New York University, 
and Professor W. M. Davis, of Harvard 
University, were delegates from the 
Geological Society of America to the 
centennial celebration of the founda- 
tion of the Geological Society of Lon- 
don, which took place at the end of 
September. 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Dr. E. Ray LANKESTER will retire 
_from the directorship of the Natural 
History Museum, London, in October. 
It is understood that the inadequate 
pension originally proposed by the 
trustees has been about doubled. The 
trustees have decided not. to appoint a 
new director, though it is possible that 
this plan may be changed.—At the 
Meudon Experiment Station, which is 
affiliated with the Collége de France, 
M. Daniel Berthelot has been appointed 
director of the laboratory for plant 
physies, and M. Muntz, director of the 
laboratory for plant chemistry.—By an 
act of the last legislature, the professor 
of geology at the State University of 
Colorado became also, by virtue of his 
office, the state geologist. $5,000 is 
| appropriated annually for this service. 


YALE UNIVERSITY has received a 
bequest calling to mind that of Smith- 
son for the establishment of the Smith- 
Archibald Henry 


Blount, an Englishman, who is not 


sonian Institution. 


known to have been in America or to 
have had any conection with Yale Uni- 
versity, has made that institution his 
residuary legatee, to which it will profit 
to the extent of about $400,000. Yale 
University has also received $150,000 
for a lecture hall for the Sheffield Sci- 
entific School. This is a gift of Mrs. 
James B. Oliver, in memory of her son, 
a former student of the school, who 
was recently killed in an automobile 
accident. 


Deo es Bad 
POE ban, oC LRN Ce 
DEON Eb ny 


NOVEMBER, 1907 


THE SCOPE AND IMPORTANCE TO THE STATE OF THE 
SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS? 


By ProressoR KARL PEARSON, F.R.S., 


UNIVERSITY OF LONDON 


T needs more than a little boldness to suggest within the walls 
of one of our ancient universities that there is still another new 
science which calls for support and sympathy; nay, which in the near 
future will demand its endowments, its special laboratory, its technical 
library, its enthusiastic investigators and its proper share in the cur- 
riculum of academic studies. 

The prestige of an ancient university does not wholly depend on 
the extent and novelty of the fields it cultivates, nor even on the ex- 
ternal reputation of its doctors and masters. JI remember my Savigny 
well enough to know that historically a university does not express the 
universality of the learning taught within its walls, but that the word 
emphasizes the corporate character of its masters and scholars. I also 
understand—with the experience of four universities behind me—not 
only the social, but the educational value of the traditional wniversitas 
of the middle ages; that common life of teacher and scholar which we 
now find preserved in broad outline, if in detail obscured, at two Eng- 
lish universities alone. 

As your guest to-day, even if I had the necessary knowledge, it 
would be ill-fitting to praise or to criticize modern Oxford. My intel- 
lectual debt to Oxford is too great to make me an unbiased judge; look- 
ing back on the stadia of intellectual growth from the days of the 
Oxford schoolmaster who taught me scientific method and a love of 
folk-lore in failing to teach me Greek grammar, the sign-posts are 
marked with Oxford names, whose moment to me must be a small part 
of what it formed to the mental life here. I note those: of Mark 

1 Fourteenth Robert Boyle lecture delivered before the Oxford University 
Junior Scientific Club on May 17, 1907. 

VOL, LXXxI.—24, 


386 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Pattison, from whom I learned that the method of science is one with 
the method of true scholarship; of Henry Nettleship, whose width of 
view in academic matters aided those of us who were struggling against 
prerogative and prejudice in London; of York Powell, who taught me 
that a study of history is incomplete if it pass by the great biological 
factors which make for the rise and fall of nations; of Raphael Weldon, 
whose life culminated in Oxford, and whose activity will, I trust, con- 
tinue to bear fruit here—of Weldon who taught us that biology is ripe 
for receiving aid from the exact sciences; who, breaking down yet an- 
other barrier, emphasized the unity of logical method throughout the 
whole field of knowledge. 

The calm, critical judgment of these men, their scorn, one and all, 
for the rhetorical, the superficial, the idola of the market-place, have 
built up my Gentile conception of Oxford and given me a not unwhole- 
some fear of an Oxford audience. Their keen power of sympathy, 
however, their very intense, if much repressed, national spirit—amount- 
ing to the truest form of patriotism—would, I believe and trust, have 
been not wholly withdrawn from me to-day in my endeavor to put 
before you the claims of this new science of mankind. 

I do not demand your attention for this new field of inquiry because 
a university is expected to embrace all sciences. On the contrary, I 
do it partly because I think the success of a university, as of an indi- 
vidual, depends largely on specialization in study. Now there is one 
form of technical education, which, although Oxford is too modest to 
give it a name, has yet been largely claimed for this university. I refer 
to the education of statesmen and administrators. There is need, I 
venture to hold, of a more conscious recognition of the existence of a 
school of statecraft, and that recognition must involve a fuller study of 
what can make and what can mar national life and racial character. 
We are told by a poet, who, understanding the spirit of his age, care- 
fully balanced himself on the fence which separates the field of true 
insight from that of conterminous platitude, that “the proper study 
of mankind is man.” But he has not helped us to see wherein this 
proper study of man consists. In all our universities there are branches 
of study which deal more or less directly with man. We have philos- 
ophy with its discussions of man’s mental processes, ethics with the 
consideration of man’s affections, passions and conduct; Fichte, Hegel 
and other ethical philosophers have given us, here and there, luminous 
ideas, flash-lights on society and state. But has philosophy, as such, 
taught us a single law by aid of which we can understand how a nation 
becomes physically or mentally more vigorous? Has it taught our 
statesmen to make their folk fitter for its task on the world-stage, or 
helped a race to meet a crisis in its history? We have had other 
branches of the science of man, measuring him, classifying him by his 
hair, by his skin or by his skull. Yet anthropometry and craniometry, 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 387 


while piling up facts and figures, have done little to enable us to see 
wherein human fitness for its functions really consists. Their pro- 
fessors disagree, much as do those of another branch of the study of 
man—political economy. What weight have philosophy, anthropology 
or political economy at present in the field of statesmanship? Would 
the man who, rising in the House of Commons to-day, appealed to the 
laws of economic science, be even sure of a hearing? And if we turn 
to the study of history, surely more potent than these other branches 
in the aid it provides for the administrator, is not its lesson rather that 
of example and analogy than of true explanation and measurement of 
the causes of national evolution ? 

If the German people dominates to-day the French; if Japan rises 
like a mushroom—with the stability and the strength of the oak; if 
Spain and Holland disappear from the fore rank of nations, can we 
throw light even for an instant on these momentous facts of history by 
such studies of mankind as are summed up in philosophy, anthropology 
or political economy? I fear not. As instruments of education, as 
means of illustrating logical method, or of developing powers of healthy 
inquisitiveness and effective expression, they may be of value, in part 
indeed of unrivaled value. But as they stand at present they do not, 
alone or combined, form a technical education in statecraft. 

And here I would like to make a fundamental distinction between 
what I understand by a technical education and a professional instruc- 
tion. I do not believe that the university ought to busy itself in the 
least with the latter. It is taught most effectively in the barrister’s 
chambers, in the architect’s office, in the engineering workshop, in the 
government department, or in the hospital ward. The tendency now- 
adays to replace apprenticeship by professional instruction in college 
or university is a fatal one. The academic purpose should be concen- 
trated on the development of the mind as an instrument of thought. 
It may do this by aid of philosophy, or by aid of language, or of sci- 
ence; but it can not do it by any form of purely professional instruction. 
By technical education I mean something very different from an in- 
struction in the facts, formule and usages of a profession. It consists, 
I hold, not in learning an art, but in developing the mind by studying 
that branch of science which must lie at the basis of each profession. 
The theory of elasticity is as potent an instrument for mental discipline 
if we illustrate it on bridge-structure, as if we confined our attention 
to metal spelks and snips of pianoforte wire in the physical laboratory. 
The science of medicine—think for a moment even of such points as 
immunity, incubation and crisis—affords material for reasoned observa- 
tion and leads to a mental alertness, which may be equaled but can not 
be excelled in any other branch of biological inquiry. The true test 
of all technical education lies in whether we can answer in the affirma- 
tive the question: Does it provide adequate mental training for the 


388 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


man who has no intention of professional pursuits? If we can, then, 
and then only, may we assert that it is a fit subject for academic study. 

By a superficial knowledge of many things, we break all continuity 
in education ; we may reach a “ top-dressing,” but the subsoil has never 
been turned and cultivated. From this standpoint, academic education 
will, I feel certain, grow more and more technical education; the man 
who has exercised his mind in thoroughly examining one small field of 
knowledge, who has seen its solved and unsolved problems, and who has 
tried his own powers in even some little bit of pioneer work, has received 
a training which will stand him in good stead, whatever he may after- 
wards turn his mind to in life. I can conceive a great university for 
the training of mind, in which the whole teaching force should be de- 
voted to the manufacture of problems, calculated to exercise and develop 
the youthful mind, without any regard to their bearing on real knowl- 
edge. Such was very nearly the system of the Cambridge mathemat- 
ical school of a generation ago. It produced splendid lawyers, subtle 
theologians and a few ardent students of science. But the labor ex- 
pended in the manufacture of problems, the sole purpose of which was 
to provide material for mental gymnastics, might have achieved Euro- 
pean reputation for the manufacturers had it been devoted to the press- 
ing problems of technical science. It is because every university has 
a duty in the creation of new knowledge, as well as a duty in education, 
that it seems desirable that our mental training should take as its prob- 
lems those which are actually demanding solution in practical life. 

If we are to have a school of statecraft, I venture to suggest that a 
special technical education shall be developed for it. We must not be 
content with the mental gymnastics which can be provided by philos- 
opby or political history. We must add that study of the biological 
factors which York Powell saw was so needful to historical investiga- 
tion. We must approach with the detached mind and calm criticism 
of Mark Pattison those problems as to the rate of change of races, a 
knowledge of which Raphael Weldon has told us is “ the only legiti- 
mate basis for speculations as to their past history and future fate.” 

If we attempt to define the scope of statecraft we enter no doubt 
the field of controversy, but may we not extend the condition which so 
fitly expresses the primary need of the individual—the healthy mind 
in healthy body—to the swarm of individuals with which the statesman 
has to deal? ‘Taking the word “ sanity ” in its broadest sense of health 
and soundness, the primary purpose of statecraft is to insure that the 
nation as a whole shall possess sanity; it must be sound in body and 
sound in mind. This is the bedrock on which alone a great nation can 
be built up; by aid of this sanity alone an empire once founded can 
be preserved. There are secondary important conditions—too often 
regarded as primary—which are undoubted parts of statecraft. The 
nation must have the instruments and the training needful to protect 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 389 


itself and its enterprises; it must hold the sources of raw material and 
the trade routes requisite to develop the wealth upon which its popula- 
tion depends; it must have the education necessary to make its crafts- 
men, its traders, its inventors, its men of science, its diplomatists and 
its statesmen the equals at least of those of its rivals on the world-stage. 
Nay, perhaps as important as all these, it must have traditions and 
ideals so strong that the prejudices of individuals and the prerogatives 
of classes will fall before urgent national needs; it requires teachers, 
be they pressmen, poets or politicians, who grasp the wants of the nation 
as a whole; who, independent of class and party, can remind the people 
at the fitting moment of their traditions and their special function 
amid nations. 

Yet if we come to analyze these secondary conditions, we shall find 
in each case that their realization depends on the fulfilment of our 
primary condition. Without high average soundness of body and 
soundness of mind, a nation can neither be built up nor an empire pre- 
served. Permanence and dominance in the world passes to and from 
nations even with their rise and fall in mental and bodily fitness. No 
success will attend our attempts to understand past history, to cast 
light on present racial changes, or to predict future development, if we 
leave out of account the biological factors. Statistics as to the preva- 
lence of disease in the army of a defeated nation may tell us more than 
any dissertation on the genius of the commanders and the cleverness of 
the statesmen of its victorious foe. Lost provinces and a generation of 
hectoring may follow to the conquered nation whose leaders have for- 
gotten the primary essential of national soundness in body and mind. 

Francis Galton, in establishing a laboratory for the study of national 
eugenics in the University of London, has defined this new science as 
“the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair 
the racial qualities of future generations, either physically or mentally.” 
The word eugenic here has the double sense of the English well-bred, 
goodness of nature and goodness of nurture. Our science does not pro- 
pose to confine its attention to problems of inheritance only, but to 
deal also with problems of environment and of nurture. It may be 
said that much social labor has already been spent on investigating the 
condition of the people; there have been royal commissions, parliamen- 
tary and departmental committees, and much independent effort on the 
part of philanthropists, medical men and social reformers. I would 
admit all this, and would try to appraise it at its true value. 
Some of it has provided useful material for eugenic study; much 
of it is the product of wholly irresponsible witnesses with com- 
ments by commissioners equally untrained in dealing with statis- 
tical problems. Witnesses, commissioners, philanthropists, social re- 
formers, as a rule, and medical men only too frequently sadly need 
that technical education, that power of reasoning about statistical 


390 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


data, which I think will become general when eugenics has been made 
a subject of academic study, and minds specially trained to this branch 
of scientific inquiry are placed at the disposal of our statesmen. I do 
not, of course, say that there was no eugenic research before Francis 
Galton invented the word and named the new science. But I believe 
the day not distant when we shall recognize that he seized the psycho- 
logical moment to assert its claim to academic consideration; and that 
in the time to come the nation will be more than grateful to the man 
who said that the university is the true field for the study of those 
agencies which may improve or impair our racial qualities. 'To become 
a true science, you must remove our study from the strife of parties, 
from the conflict of creeds, from false notions of charity, or the unbal- 
anced impulses of sentiment. You must treat it with the observational 
caution and critical spirit that you give to other branches of biology. 
And when you have discovered its principles and deduced its laws, then, 
and then only, you can question how far they are consonant with cur- 
rent moral ideas or with prevailing human sentiment. I myself look 
forward to a future when a wholly new view as to patriotism will be 
accepted ; when the individual will recognize more fully and more clearly 
the conflict between individual interests and national duties. I fore- 
see a time when the welfare of the nation will form a more conspicuous 
factor in conduct; when conscious race-culture will cope with the ills 
which arise when we suspend the full purifying force of natural selec- 
tion; and when charity will not be haphazard—the request for it being 
either a social right, or the granting of it an anti-social wrong. But 
if we are to build up a strong nation, sound in mind and body, we -hall 
have to work in the future with trained insight: I feel convinced that 
real enlightenment will only follow a scientific treatment of the biolog- 
ical factors in race development. 

There is an element of danger in the study of eugenics, which I 
would not have you overlook. If the attention be fixed on the factors 
which make for deterioration; if we spend our days over statistics of 
the insane, the mentally defective, the criminal, the tuberculous, the 
blind, the deaf and the diseased, the inevitableness of it all is apt to 
reduce us to the lowest depths of depression. But this is only one side 
of the picture; the inevitableness is just as marked when we come to 
deal with health and strength, with ability and intelligence. If the 
iniquity of the fathers be visited upon the children to the third and 
fourth generation—assuredly so is their virtue. If this needs emphasis, 
study the two pedigrees I put before you. In Fig. 1 we have the pedi- 
gree of a family in which eccentricity, insanity and phthisis have re- 
curred generation by generation—associated occasionally with great 
ability. The general “want of mental balance” is the mark of the 
stock. In Fig. 2 we have the pedigree of a family in which extreme 


391 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 


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392 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ability not correlated with such want of mental balance has descended 
through five generations. 

Yet apart from this, to the true man of science, nothing is impure 
or repulsive. His mission is to study all phases of life; and in the 
case before us to determine their relation to national fitness and racial 
degeneracy. I can not put it better than in the words of Francis Bacon: 

Pedigree Of Able Ffomily 


Able 


—, 


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weave 7 very Able Able 2 
z Se g We. } aot ee aoe 2 é é oe 8 g 
: af | Fi | 3 
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Oo oO q os iS; Ab eae 3 ? ade 
| Able 
ase ade 1°) 
Fie. 2. 


But for unpolite or even sordid particulars which, as Pliny observes, 
require an apology for being mentioned, even these ought to be received into 
natural history, no less than the most rich and delicate; for, natural history is 
not defiled by them any more than the sun, by shining alike on the palace and 
the privy; and we do not endeavor to build a capitol or erect a pyramid to the 
glory of mankind, but to found a temple in imitation of the world, and con- 
secrate it to the human understanding, so that we must frame our model accord- 
ingly; for whatever is worthy of existence is worthy of our knowledge; but 
ignoble things exist as well as the noble. 

Those who have not the courage, or it may be the strength to face life 
as it is, must avoid science; or at least the portion of it termed national 
eugenics. ‘Those who fear to know humanity in its degradation, as well 
as in its nobler phases, will scarce reach the standpoint of knowledge 
from which they can effectively help the progress of our race. They 
will be ignorant of the essential factors which alone can determine 
whether a nation shall be sound in mind and body. Disease and 
health, vigor and impotence, intelligence and stupidity, sanity and 
insanity, conscientiousness and irresponsibility, clean living and license 
—all things which make for strength and weakness of character—must 
be studied, not by verbal argument, but be dissected under the statistical 
microscope, if we are to realize why nations rise and fall, if we are to 
know whether our own folk is progressing or regressing. Only by 
such examination can we understand the disease; only by such means 
can we suggest a valid cure where we find there is that in any com- 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 393 


munity which is making for degeneracy. The study of eugenics centers 
round the actuarial treatment of human society in all its phases, 
healthy and morbid. 

In every branch of science there exist, I believe, three chief stages of 
development. These stages are not always completely differentiated, 
and forms of the earlier stages may usefully survive into the later 
periods. 

The first stage is the tdeological. Men have formed ideas about 
phenomena on the basis of very limited experience. They spend their 
time and energy in discussing these ideas without much reference to the 
phenomena themselves. This discussion of ideas—this wrangling over 
definitions—is not idle. It not only led in medieval times to a phi- 
losophy which gave a by no means contemptible educational training ; 
but in some of the most developed forms of science, as in the founda- 
tions of our most advanced pure mathematics, ideology can again do 
work of the greatest service. It corresponds to the pre-Baconian state 
of most sciences. 

The second stage is the observational. It is a reaction against 
the purely introspective attempt at a natural philosophy. It consists 
in observing phenomena critically, and recording and describing their 
sequences. It is a fundamental stage towards any really scientific 
theory of nature. It will always remain a large factor in scientific 
work. But while it needs the mind of special width and creative power 
to invent a reasonable theory, and demonstrate it by the right type of 
observation, it is possible for the average man to observe carefully and 
to go on observing through a long lifetime. The result is the ac- 
cumulation for decades and decades of observations made with little 
idea of testing a definite theory of organic or inorganic nature. These 
observations form a large proportion of scientific literature; and, I 
fear, are not always of service when the creative, scientist desires to 
test his theories. The time spent in hunting up data, which may after 
all fail to give the special small detail requisite, would often have 
sufficed to produce more adequate observations made ad hoc. Hence I 
think there will be, if there be not already, a reaction against purely 
observational or descriptive science. 

The third stage in all science is the metrical. We proceed from 
observation to measurement, to accurate numerical expression of the 
sequences involved. It has been more than once asserted that by quan- 
titative analysis you can not obtain more than lies in the data from 
which you start. The statement is either merely platitude; or else, if 
more than idle, it is false. The object of analysis is not to obtain more 
from data than exists therein; but to find out what actually does exist 
therein; and that is usually far from obvious to untrained inspection. 
The actual positions of the moon can be observed and recorded day 
by day. Such are the data. Shall we assert that lunar theory as it 


394 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


exists to-day—the product of nearly two and a half centuries of work 
by some of the finest mathematical intellects—contains no more than 
the data from which they started? I think we may leave such an 
attitude to those who do not grasp that the highest aim of science 
is not the presentation of facts, but the regulating of a world of con- 
ceptions, by aid of which we can mentally describe those facts. From 
the data themselves we have to determine whether this “ statuting of 
mind ” is legitimate within the limits of our observations. “ Analysis 
can not get more out of the data than is already in them,” cries the 
biologist. On the contrary, having added to the data mind, the com- 
bination provides a great deal that had no previous existence. Even 
Huxley could write: 

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which 
grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness, but nevertheless what you get out 
depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not 
extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite 
result out of loose data. 

On the contrary, I assert that our modern mathematical methods 
reach a perfectly definite result when applied to such data; they meas- 
ure the deviation, the differentiation of pease-meal from wheat-flour ; 
that is to say, they determine quantitatively the exact degree of loose- 
ness in the data themselves. Is it fear of discovering the exact degree 
of looseness in their own data, which leads some votaries of descriptive 
science to belittle metrical investigations ? 

Nay, I do not hesitate to assert that any branch of science, until it 
reaches its third or metrical stage of development, is incomplete and 
fails to provide the highest mental training possible. There are few 
departments of scientific investigation which provide so thoroughly for 
discipline in all the three branches of science, the ideological, the ob- 
servational, and the metrical, as biology; this is particularly true of 
its applications to man. What better training in ideology than a study 
of the theory of the state from Plato, through Aristotle and Hobbes till 
we reach, in Comte, the view that the science of society is impossible 
without biology? What fitter training in observation than the biologist 
provides, when he teaches us experimentally the facts of inheritance 
and the influences of environment? What more precise exercise for the 
mind than the actuarial appreciation of these biological factors “as 
agencies which improve or impair the racial qualities of future genera- 
tions ” ? 

Here, I firmly believe, is in broad outline the scheme necessary 
to form a school of statecraft. The mind must be led through each of 
the ascending stages of science—till it is able to measure accurately 
and to describe in fitting words those fundamental biological factors 
on which the progression and the debasement of human societies alike 
depend. 

But you may ask me if I am not painting a science of the future; 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 395 


if I am not merely repeating the vague words of the old sociologists, 
from Comte to Herbert Spencer? Where is the material, what-are the 
methods, how definite are the deductions of this new science of 
eugenics ? 

First then: where is the material ? 

I reply that every large school and university in this country can 
provide physical and psychical material for the student of eugenics if 
he will set to work and observe. Every medical officer in asylum and 
hospital is in charge of a great eugenics laboratory if he would only 
realize it. And many indeed are realizing it. Quite recently between 
300 and 400 pedigrees of tuberculous stock; 400 family histories of 
insanity; 400 descriptions of parentage and home environment of 
mentally defective children, with as many of normal children from one 
district, and upwards of 1,000 from a second district, have reached the 
Eugenics Laboratory in London. If this seems to lay all stress on the 
abnormal and defective side, I may add that the laboratory possesses 
records of nearly 400 noteworthy families—a part of which have been 
published—and that I have reached now a series of nearly 300 normal 
family histories, many of them containing 50 to 100 individuals, with 
psychical and physical descriptions and entries as to ailments and 
causes of death. These are but, of course, the beginnings of a collection 
which one hopes and trusts will one day represent large samples of the 
physique, the mentality, the fertility and the disease of wide classes of 
the nation. The success of this sort of eugenics laboratory collection 
depends upon spreading widely three convictions: (1) that really useful 
results have flown, and will flow, from contributing to it; (2) that in- 
dividuals, if appealed to frankly, will frankly tell the truth that lies 
within their knowledge; and (3) that the individual becomes a non- 
identifiable statistical unit before the record passes into the hands of 
the computer.” 

Beyond the special collections of an individual laboratory there is 
already available a fair amount of published material. The United 
States has issued special censuses of the blind and of deaf-mutes. 
The Edinburgh Charity Organization Society has issued an excellent 
memoir on the home environment and the physique of 700 to 800 school 
children ; above all, there are the registrar general’s annual reports, the 
censuses, the reports of fever hospitals, of lunacy commissioners, and 
of the medical officers of asylums. Of some, but less value, are the 
reports of government commissions and the works of energetic, but 
statistically untrained, philanthropists like Charles Booth and Seebohm 
Rowntree. Important special researches, like that of Mr. Tocher on 
the insane of Scotland, or that now being carried out by Dr. Goring on 


* The Eugenics Laboratory will gladly forward schedules (1) for general 
family history or (2) for special family abnormalities to any one interested 
in eugenic inquiry and willing to aid. 


396 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the convicts in his trajesty’s prisons, serve to increase the total data 
already available or nearly so. While all eugenics workers crave for 
more material, and for better quality of material, yet there already 
exists ample material upon which to base the beginnings for our 
science. 

If we turn from material to method, we note that except in ‘so, far 
as results for animals have application to man, we can not experiment 
on individuals, and our methods must, therefore, be those applicable to 
mass-observations—that is to say, those actuarial methods applied to 
biological data which we now term the methods of biometry. It is not 
needful for me to enlarge now or here on those methods. Suffice it to 
say that they appear to measure effectively the relationship between 
factors which are not causally linked together. For the explanation of 
what follows I would state that the arithmetical value of a certain 
quantity—the so-called coefficient of correlation—is chiefly used to 
measure this relationship. Starting when the quantities are absolutely 
independent with zero value, it rises with their complete causal rela- 
tionship to unity. Table I. shows the sort of values taken by this 
coefficient for various kinds of association, when the variates lack the 
absolute dependence of pure causation. 


Tante f. 


CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS 
High Correlation 1 to .75 


Right and Jett. semury an IAN. Satie 214 ays oes eae & SOT tee 98 
Hinger, and sforearmein Mans syecre esis cre ols lennon els are tye eke area ee 85 
Hootand sforearm sine many ey) otis oie letersi tosses lejeite aise eTeasieee 80 
Middle phalanges of middle and little finger .................... 76 
Considerable Correlation .75 to .5 
Weight: and stature aniwomanl \..c sion ciocsineieisamisincl ies oereleds eer ee 12 
Wan Ver Vane SU ANe HEE GUEETY Toho lle aie ra watts ete a mone ale eS tod hte .66 
Vaccination and recovery in cases of smallpox .................. .60 
Weight and ‘strength-of pull, man): 2 s)2.\5 <2. s fae al 
Moderate Correlation .5 to .25 
HOTreaATMS OL CWO DROUNETS ta teense salons eleva a ciel oie rege eleeivinns eee eee 49 
Deviations in bank reserve and discount rate ................-5- Yi 
Coatscolor an horse, and ita) eramdsinen. 2 cryetcis ae cei syate ieee eee 30 
High barometer in Portugal and low barometer in Norway ....... . 27 


Low Correlation .25 to .00 


Resemblance of Aphis to its grandmother ...................... - 24 
Sizejof family, .mothersand danghter ti...) were velo eter ee 21 
Duration of lives; «mother, and danehter Sot) ne. net 15 
Leneth and breadthvof Parisian Skills so, sm eu 4) aets elaine 05 


From method I turn finally to illustrate the nature of the conclu- 
sions which have already been reached by eugenic inquiry. As a pre- 
liminary, I must picture for you what I think evolution means in the 
case of human societies. 

There was a time when, thinking over the marvelous intellectual, 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 397 


artistic, and physical development of ancient Greece, I could wonder 
how still more ample it might have been had there existed a master 
spirit or an imperious motive to weld those statelets into one great 
nation and check the rarely ceasing internal wars and personal feuds. 
Looking back—from what some of you may consider a less ethical, but 
I believe a more scientific standpoint—I now see a direct correlation ° 
between the achievements of Greece and the intensity of its intertribal 
struggles. The pax romana did not provide the Greek spirit with an 
atmosphere as bracing to either bodily or spiritual development, as the 
instability and storm which accompanied the earlier conditions. 

The struggle of man against man, with its victory to the tougher 
and more crafty: the struggle of tribe against tribe, with its defeat for 
the less socially organized: the contest of nation with nation whether 
in trade or in war, with the mastery for the foreseeing nation, for the 
nation with the cleaner bill of health, the more united purpose of its 
classes, and the sounder intellectual equipment of its units: are not 
these phases of the struggle for existence the factors which have made 
for human progress, which have developed man from brute into sentient 
being? We have been told that “the cosmic process is opposed to the 
ethical”! But from the standpoint of science, is not the ethical the 
outcome of the cosmic? Are not the physique, the intellectuality, the 
morality of man, the product of that grim warfare between individual 
and individual, between society and society, and between humanity and 
nature, of which we even yet see no end? The ethical as the product 
of the cosmic process will indeed aid us when we pass outside the 
field of science. But standing well within the boundaries of that 
field, are men to cry like little children because the world is not “as 
it ought to be”? 

Nach ewigen ehrnen 
Grossen Gesetzen 
Miissen wir alle 


Unseres Daseyns 
Kreise vollenden. 


Nay, what has been rather man’s method in mastering the physical 
universe? Has he not studied those brazen eternal laws, and guided 
the course of his being by that knowledge? Realize that the most 
valuable part of that knowledge is scarcely two hundred years old. 
And when we turn to biology—to the biological factors which control 
man’s life and its relations to that of other organisms—are we not yet 
at the very dawn of discovery—a dawn whose actual storm-drifts 
foretell the coming flood of light? 

Plato, in the Fifth Book of the “ Laws,” describes what he terms a 
purification or purgation of the state. Permit me for my weakness, 
not yours, to cite it from Jowett’s translation: 


The shepherd or herdsman, or breeder of horses, or the like, when he has 
received his animals will not begin to train them until he has first purified them 


398 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


in a manner which befits a community of animals; he will divide the healthy 
and unhealthy, and the good breed and the bad breed, and will send away the 
unhealthy and badly bred to other herds, and tend the rest, reflecting that his 
labors will be vain and without effect, either on the souls or bodies of those 
whom nature and ill-nurture have corrupted, and that they will involve in 
destruction the pure and healthy nature and being of every other animal, if he 
neglect to purge them away. Now, the case of other animals is not so impor- 
tant—they are only worth mentioning for the sake of illustration, but what 
relates to man is of the highest importance; and the legislator should make 
inquiries, and indicate what is proper for each in the way of purification and 
of any other procedure. Take, for example, the purification of a city—there 
are many kinds of purification, some easier and others more difficult; and some 
of them, and the best and most difficult of them, the legislator, if he be also a 
despot, may be able to effect; but he who, without a despotism, sets up a new 
government and laws, even if he attempt the mildest of purgations, may think 
himself happy it he can complete the work. The best kind of purification is 
painful, like similar cures in medicine, involving righteous punishment or in- 
flicting death or exile in the last resort. For in this way we commonly dispose 
of great sinners who are incurable, and are the greatest injury to the whole 
state. But the milder form of purification is as follows: when men who have 
nothing, and are in want of food, show a disposition to follow their leaders in 
an attack on the property of the prosperous—these, who are the natural plague 
of the state, are sent away by the legislator in a friendly spirit as far as he is 
able, and this dismissal of them is euphemistically termed a colony. And every 
legislator should contrive to do this at once. 

Now may we not claim Plato as a precursor of the modern eugenics 
movement? He grasped the intensity of inheritance, for he appeals to 
the herd and the flock; he realized the danger to the state of a growing 
band of degenerates, and he called upon the legislator to purify the 
state. Plato’s purgation, if you will accept the view I have endeavored 
to lay before you to-day, has in fact hitherto been carried out by natural 
selection, by the struggle of man against man, of man against nature, 
and of state against state. This very cosmical process has so de- 
veloped our ethical feelings that we find it difficult to regard the process 
as benign. A hundred years ago we still hung the greater proportion 
of our criminals or sent them for life across the seas, not even euphemis- 
tically terming it a “colony.” We shut up our insane, making no 
attempt at cure; the modern system of hospitals and institutions and 
charities was scarcely developed ; the physically and mentally weak had 
small chance of surviving and bearing offspring. There was a con- 
stant stern selection purifying in Plato’s sense the state. The growth 
of human sympathy—and is not this one of the chief factors of 
national fitness?—has been so rapid during the century that it has 
cried Halt! to almost every form of racial purification. Is not this 
the real opposition which Huxley noticed between the ethical and 
cosmic processes? One factor—absolutely needful for race survival— 
sympathy, has been developed in such an exaggerated form that we are 
in danger, by suspending selection, of lessening the effect of those other 
factors which automatically purge the state of the degenerates in body 
and mind. 

Do I therefore call for less human sympathy, for more limited 


charity, and for sterner treatment of the weak? Not for a moment; 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 399 


we can not go backwards a single step in the evolution of human 
feeling! But I demand that sympathy and charity shall be organized 
and guided into paths where they will promote racial efficiency, and 
not lead us straight towards national shipwreck. The time is coming 
when we must consciously carry out that purification of the state and 
race which has hitherto been the work of the unconscious cosmic process. 
The higher patriotism and the pride of race must come to our aid in 
stemming deterioration ; the science of eugenics has not only to furnish 
Plato’s legislator with the facts upon which he can take action, but it 
has to educate public opinion until without a despotism he may attempt 
even the mildest purgation. To produce a nation healthy alike in mind 
and body must become a fixed idea—one of almost religious intensity, 
as Francis Galton has expressed it—in the minds of the intellectual 
oligarchy, which after all sways the masses and their political leaders. 

Let me put before you a little more in detail the biological aspects 
of national growth. The Darwinian hypothesis asserts that the sounder 
individual has more chance of surviving in the contest with physical 
and organic environment. It is therefore better able to produce and 
rear offspring, which in their turn inherit its advantageous characters. 
Profitable variations are thus seized on by natural selection, and per- 
petuated by heredity. 

Now if we are to apply these biological ideas to the case of man, 
we must have evidence (1) that man varies, (2) that these variations, 
favorable or unfavorable, are inherited, and (3) that they are selected. 

Is it needful now to show that man varies? We not only know he 
varies, but the extent of variation in both man and woman has been 
measured by the biometric school in nearly two hundred cases. The 
variability within any single local race of man amounts from 4 or 
5 to 15 to 20 per cent. of the absolute value of the character. 

Secondly, are these variations inherited? Of this there is not the 
slightest doubt. They are not mere somatic fluctuations, but cor- 
respond to real geminal differences. The problem of inheritance is 
closely associated with that of the resemblance of members of the same 
stock, due caution being paid to the possibilities of environmental in- 
fluence. Now we may separate the characters in which we are at 
present interested into three: (a) the physical, (b) the pathological and 
(c) the psychical. 

Table II. gives us the resemblance between parent and offspring for 
a number of physical characters in man. Please note that the coeffi- 
cient recorded is zero if there be no relationship and unity, if parent 
and offspring show an invariable relationship in the character under 
discussion. We see that the resemblance in the case of man lies between 
4 and .5. It is about half-way up the correlation scale. Again the 
lower part of Table II. gives us corresponding measures of resemblance 


400 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


between brethren for like characters; we notice that the resemblance lies 
between .5 and .6. 
TaBLe II. 
INHERITANCE OF PHYSIQUE 
Paternal Inheritance. Males Only 


Method Authority Ages Intensity 
Family measurements : 
Staturess...csiesecedssecenscecseess Pearson and Lee Adults 51 
a] UE Reis Bae Ane Aner poce: ‘se pos es 45 
POreaYIs.ses 0s 22 cdace eee seoaeeeee es a A fe .42 
Family records : 
Dive COMO te ccers sees saceceraecones OG eS a 55 


Fraternal Inheritance 


i 
Family measurements : 


Sfaturesti cctscscocteccsesscsaceese Pearson and Lee Adults 51 

SEPT Goa Sede es oreernacsedcona re Oo NE SG ee Bs 

IN OTECATIM hss. .ccostscsesatecsees sete ce BAS AGS ee -49 
Family records : 

RIVE CONOK .cs.covasccesodehscaaeme 4 spite (is > a 52 
School observations : 

iy GICGIOE sscn-ccrerseeceeneassseeaee Pearson Boy and boy 54 
School measurements :* 

ifead bread thivse.scsee-2cesess ees AS Sh CE 59 

lend lengthss:-ssscccs--s0r=-aeee eb COWES anes -50 

Head) Welg@ht: co 2cs- acme onme sos < Shen goS cS mise .55 

Cephalic Index: 272. .22---ssees07 | of Sain Saal .49 


Mean paternal value, .48. Mean fraternal value, .53. 


For both parental and fraternal inheritance in man we find for 
physical characters much the same values as we find in the cases of 
cattle, horses and dogs. This is illustrated in Table III. 


TasLe IIT. 
PARENTAL INHERITANCE IN DIFFERENT SPECIES 
Species } Character ‘Mean Ve sig Dee Pale aaea 
10 Ei rapndasancenaato eB ston cas seaariconcee | Stature 51 4,886 
Span 48 4,873 
Forearm 42 4,866 
Eye color .50 4,000 
ETGVERG pst panne ene acen ean dncesiae dant es | Coat color | 52 4,350 
Basset, HOUnNd cc. .csecences see ccoansens | Coat color .O2 823 
ETE VWOUMC sa. caneun- as sasmavertoyaconuee | Coat color 1 9,279 
x. |sRight antenna | 44 
Aphis eee eee meme eee teen teaser eset eeeeeeee Frontal breadth | 368 
, | ¢ Protopodite 47 
Drip trina tee ank ey eee \o See eee 
‘git (® _t Body length 96 
Mean j.......-+2eeceeceeeeeeeeeseees a — .48 


Turning now to diseased or pathological cases, we have at present 
only three types that have been dealt with. These are Mr. Edgar 


* Reduced to standard age of twelve years. 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 401 


Schuster’s results for the inheritance of deaf-mutism; Mr. Heron’s re- 
sults for the inheritance of the insane diathesis, and my own work on 
pulmonary tuberculosis. It is worth noting that these results are all 
first-fruits of Mr. Galton’s foundation of a eugenics laboratory. 


Tasium EV: 


PATHOLOGICAL INHERITANCE 


Condition Investigator Parental Fraternal 


Peat mutism: ooo. oo... esecascceccoveses Schuster 54 .73 
IRSANE Mp oo e eae antne= areca nnaene nue Heron 58 -48 
Pulmonary tuberculosis.............. Pearson 50 48 

Mean value: 2-0 2c- nce se ce cancer 4 06 


Now it must be admitted at once that these diseased states are far 
harder to deal with than simple quantitative characters. Their treat- 
ment involves more assumptions, and the data are less trustworthy. 


TABLE V. 


ScHooL OBSERVATIONS. RESEMBLANCE OF SIBLINGS 
Physical Characters 


Character Boys | Girls Boy and Girl 

Digaltlyc.cc.csh esas eseeedsesscastecscasess 52 ol .O7 
IO ete se toke enna e ar nemenaes aa 04 52 53 
Hlatnicoloriscecssscst+cssccesesecceuse cee .62 -56 .5d 
Wunliness: 4-507 s2ccss nsec Hiveeweosebs 52 .o2 2 
Wepnalic WGCK.. 5... scscasesce-can ens 49 54 43 
CANCE peer cn so anncadereaeoanss=- 50 43 46 
iElieadi breadtint--cc-2 usccescseecs eens 59 -62 54 
eleag rete icc e-cace-coeccdees-eese-o--* 59 52 9 

1 AT eet oe eee ek Se | 54 .53 ‘pL 

TaBLe VI. 


ScHooL OBSERVATIONS. RESEMBLANCE OF SIBLINGS 
Psychical Characters 


Character Boys Girls Boy and Girl 

WAV ACEEY on ap asesedan ane dent nntaxcoors eas 47 43 49 
INGKETELV ENCES) .sccccececstsaccncavesesss ats) 44 -O2 
ERETOSPCCRON secs encnasaess=secauss ce 59 47 63 
BS UIATALY ane Reese eeeeancenaae. cae 50 OT 49 
Conscientiousness........ss..ssseeeeee .09 .64 .63 
PNGIAROL.<« sansauanesosnasnasenoeae © Ponseds 51 49 51 
URI TIINEG 5s feapnandeseenasnsade? deaaaeenes -46 47 44 
13 Ehi(s W shins) errr nd conn ue 53 56 48 

Mearns oi oec2behateeoateasses ss 459 .51 .O2 


But from what I show in this table I think we may safely draw two 
conclusions: (a) the tendency to diseases of mind and body is inherited ; 
(5) this inheritance may be slightly greater, it is hardly likely to be 
less, than the inheritance of quantitatively measurable physical char- 
acters. 

VOL, LXx1.—26. 


— 402 


I now turn to the inheritance of the psychical characters. 
again we tread on more difficult ground. 


POPULAR SCIENCE 


MONTHLY 


Here 
On first investigating the 


problem myself I worked with school children, and for the following 


reasons. 


INTENSITY oF RESEMBLANCE 
- & @ Ny = SO 
Ta edn 


ae 
Fis ea cas 8 Me 
Mee 


sci WODEEE 
Seer aeeee 


= 
o @ 
9 
7) 
- 
= 
a 
co 


INTENSITY OF aan 


Fig. 3. COMPARISON OF RESEMBLANCE FOR 
PHYSICAL AND PSYCHICAL CHARACTERS, 


bad physique, 


moral characters and the mental temperament, 
and with much the same intensity. 


The teacher compares the individual with his general experi- 


ence of many children; he thus 
approaches much more nearly an 
absolute standard than if we ask 
for an isolated return as to a single 
family from this or that relatively 
inexperienced recorder. Secondly, 
it is not often that we can find 
any data of the psychical char- 
acters of father and son taken at 
about the same period in life. 
If you will look at Tables V. and 
VI. and Fig. 3 you will see that 
I have not been able to discover 
any difference in intensity of 
inheritance between the psychical 
and physical characters in chil- 
dren. Mr. Schuster has been 
able to get over my difficulty at 
least for one character, that of 
ability in father and son as judged 
by the Oxford Class Lists. In a 
recent memoir published by the 
Galton Eugenics Laboratory he 
obtains the results given in Table 
VII. If we allow for an academic 
selection of intelligence, we reach 
values singularly close to those 
obtained for the physical charac- 
ters. I have added some results 
of my not hitherto pub- 
lished, taken from my family rec- 
ord schedules. To sum up, there 
appears no doubt that good and 


own, 


the liability to and the immunity from disease, the 


are inherited in man 


As a next stage, I point out—if it be needful to do so—that Figs. 
4 and 5 show that those who live longest, and may be presumed to be 


*The tables reproduced here are drawn from my Huxley lecture or other 


biometric memoirs. 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 403 


TABLE VII. 
INHERITANCE OF ABILITY. MALE AND MALE 
Paternal Inheritance 


Method Authority Ages | Intensity 
Oxtord!'class\ lists! /225-.0.\.csesececees Schuster Adults 49 
amily TECOPGs 22. /kese-ssnesene r= ss Pearson Adults 58 


Fraternal Inheritance 


Oxford class listsy cs. 4cc<c.5<<es's-<ces Schuster Adults 56 
amily TEGOPOS..c.cc0 ss ssp <cse anes Pearson Adults .O4 
School class lists..........0.0.-0.2-+-+- Schuster Boys 56 
School observations. ..............0068 Pearson Boy and boy 52 


Mean paternal value, .54. Mean fraternal value, .54. 


the healthiest, leave most offspring. One link still remains unproven: 
Are these variations subject to selection? Is the death rate in man a 
function of his constitution? Or does man fall in his youth or prime 
or dotage by the purely random bolt of death? The possibility of 


e Mothers and NW? of Children 


laren 


number of Chi 
b & + i) 


. 


Age af Death 


Fig. 4. 


solving this last problem occurred to me when studying the inheritance 
of longevity. If longevity depended only on the physical constitution, 
we might expect it to be inherited at the same rate as other physical 
characters. I found it to be inherited always at a lesser rate. The 
difference could only be accounted for by the partly random character 
of death’s aim. This was the key to measuring the proportion of the 
selective and non-selective death rates in man. ‘Table VIII. gives you 


5’The data are from the records of the Society of Friends, and show with 
little doubt an unrestricted birth rate. 


404 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the results. With these results it appears to me that Darwinism is 
clearly and definitely established for man. 

It is not so many years ago since a distinguished statesman, speak- 
ing within the walls of this university, asserted that, “ No man has 
ever seen natural selection at work.” At that time all the criticism 


Forners and N° of Children 


Qa 


a 


w 


Number of Children 
& 


. 


Age of Deot/# 


Fie 5. 


possible seemed, “ Every man who has lived through a hard winter, 
every man who has examined a mortality table, every man who has 
studied the history of nations, has probably seen natural selection at 
work.” And thirteen years later I should add: The time has now 
come for statesmen. to inquire whether natural selection is doing its 
work efficiently; that it applies to man no longer admits of question. 
Can it possibly be that agencies under the control of the legislator are 
suspending that Platonic purification of the state which in olden time 
natural selection worked almost automatically ? 


TaBLE VIII. 


NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN. PERCENTAGES OF DEATHS DUE TO SELECTIVE 
DEATH RATE 


Deduced from Age at Death of Kindred 


l = 


From Parental Heredity Data 


From Fraternal Heredity Data 


Value | § Selected 4 Non-selected Value Selected % | Non-selected 
= an 

o 67.5 32.5 4 84.1 15.9 

4 58.4 41.6 45 79.3 20.7 

“45 BGs) wih Spade Maeda 75.2 24.8 


Thus between 55 and 75 per cent. of deaths in the case of man are selective. 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 405 


This is the next point concerning which eugenics may have some- 
thing to tell us. In order that natural selection should be suspended, 
it is not sufficient to reduce the selective death rate; it is necessary that 
the relative fertility of the unfit should be higher than that of the fit. 
If the unfit variations leave to any state their heritage of unfitness, 
what can save that state from degeneracy, what hinder a catastrophe 
when that state has to prove its only title-deed to seizin of the earth? 


TaBLeE IX. 
FERTILITY IN PATHOLOGICAL AND NORMAL STOCKS 
Pathological 
Authority Nature of Marriage anit 
Deaf-mutes, England................. Schuster Probably completed 6.2 
Deaf-mutes, America................. Schuster fs a 6.1 
Tuberculous stock...........sceccseee | Pearson $e ee 5.7 
AINOLIC SLOCKS «c-<os<s see cesereceoss Pearson oy $ 5.9 
UmsANe BLOCK sss ceecs sees scscensess sates Heron a sf 6.0 
Edinburgh degenerates.............. Eugenics Lab. | Incomplete 6.1 
London mentally defective......... fe ut ss 7.0 
Manchester mentally defective....| se es se 6.3 
@rimiinals7;. 2. 5.<02..cc0scscedensnestsssses Goring Completed 6.6 
Normal 
English middle class................4+ Pearson 15 years at least— 6.4 
begun before 35 
Hamnithy TECOTGS |..5.52-2-0s.0ecanssesses Pearson Completed 5.3 
English intellectual class .,......... Pearson All completed mar- 4.7 
riages 
Working class N. 8. W.............. Powys Completed 5.3 
Danish professional class............ Westergaard 15 years at least 5.2 
Danish working class................. Westergaard 25 years at least 5.3 
Edinburgh normal] artizan.......... Eugenics Lab. | Incomplete 5.9 
London normal artizan .............. «6 ne ag 5.1 
American graduates...........ssc000 Harvard Completed ? 2.0 
English intellectuals ................. S. Webb Said to be completed 1.5 


All childless marriages are excluded except in the last two cases. Inclusion 
of such marriages usually reduces the average by 1% to 1 child. 


In Table [X. I have placed the fertility of deaf-mute, tuberculous, 
criminal and insane stocks, and below them the fertility of more normal 
classes in the community. It is at once obvious that degenerate stocks 
under present social conditions are not short-lived, they live to have 
more than the normal size of family. Natural selection is largely 
suspended, but not the inheritance of degeneracy nor the fertility of 
the unfit. On the contrary, there is more than a suspicion of the sus- 
pension of the fertility of the fit. If further evidence be needful, look 
at the results in Table X. for the correlation between all that makes 
for unfitness and the number of children per married woman under 
fifty-five. Mr. Heron has indeed shown us that the survival of the 
unfit is a marked characteristic of modern town life. Every condition 


406 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


which makes for bad nurture as well as bad nature seems to.emphasize 
the birth rate. 

As we have found conscientiousness is inherited, so I have little 
doubt that the criminal tendency descends in stocks. To-day we feed 
our criminals up, and we feed up the insane, we let both out of the 
prison or the asylum “ reformed” or “cured” as the case may be, 
only after a few months to return to state supervision, leaving behind 
them the germs of a new generation of deteriorants. The average 
number of crimes due to the convicts in his majesty’s prisons to-day 
is ten apiece. We can not reform the criminal, nor cure the insane 


TABLE X. 


CORRELATION OF BirTH RATE MEASURED ON WIVES OF REPRODUCTIVE AGES WITH 
SocriAL AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERS OF POPULATION OF LONDON 
For 1901 Census. David Heron 
Birth Rate 


Characters Correlated cE 
With males engaged in professions ...........-+--++eeeeeeee — .78 
With female domestics per 100 females ................-.--- — .80 
With female domestics per 100 families ...............-+---- — 16 
With general laborers per 1,000 males ...............--.+-5- + .52 
With pawnbrokers and general dealers per 1,000 males ....... + .62 
With children employed, ages 10-14 ..............-----eeee- + .66 
With persons living more than 2 in a room ................- + .70 
With infants under 1 year dying per 1,000 births ............ + .50 
With death from phthisis per 100,000 .................------ + .59 
With total number of paupers per 1,000 .................... + .20 
With number of lunatic paupers per 1,000 .................. + .34 
Infant Mortality 

Wraith. children sed 22 9. cio cies acts we cetnpaiaee avetevnns iets any aie etae + .59 

i fa a) (HEM ria aap Seoare oe SY Ape tye) Puree nces 2 + .54 

2 FE? |] ee OME poets ok beet tucye REA c/o check eater exten + .34 


(per 100 wives) 
These last results show that the infantile mortality of the fertile classes 
does not compensate for their predominant fertility. 


from the standpoint of heredity; the taint varies not with their moral 
or mental conduct. These are products of the somatic cells; the dis- 
ease lies deeper in their germinal constitution. Education for the 
criminal, fresh air for the tuberculous, rest and food for the neurotic 
—these are excellent, they may bring control, sound lungs, and sanity 
to the individual; but they will not save the offspring from the need 
of like treatment, nor from the danger of collapse when the time of 
strain comes. They can not make a nation sound in mind and body, 
they merely screen degeneracy behind a throng of arrested degenerates. 
Our highly developed human sympathy will no longer allow us to 
watch the state purify itself by aid of crude natural selection. We see 
pain and suffering only to relieve it, without inquiry as to the moral 
character of the sufferer or as to his national or racial value. And this 
is right—no man is responsible for his own being; and nature and 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 407 


nurture, over which he had no control, have made him the being he is, 
good or evil. But here science steps in, crying: 


Let the reprieve be accepted, but next remind the social conscience of its 
duty to the race. No nation can preserve its efficiency unless dominant fertility 
be associated with the mentally and physically fitter stocks. The reprieve is 
granted, but let there be no heritage if you would build up and preserve a virile 
and efficient people. 


Here, I hold, we reach the kernel of the truth which the science of 
eugenics has at present revealed. The biological factors are dominant 
in the evolution of mankind; these, and these alone, can throw light on 
the rise and fall of nations, on racial progress and national degeneracy. 
In highly civilized states, the growth of the communal feeling—upon 
which indeed these states depend for their very existence—has not kept 
step with our knowledge of the laws which govern race development. 
Consciously or unconsciously we have suspended the racial purgation 
maintained in less developed communities by natural selection. We 
return our criminals after penance, our insane and tuberculous after 
“recovery,” to their old lives; we leave the mentally defective flotsam 
on the flood-tide of primordial passions. We disregard on every side 
these two great principles: (a) the inheritance of variations, and (0) 
the correlation in heredity of unlike imperfections.* The statesman, as 
usual, is inert, waiting for the growth of popular opinion. Doctors, we 
are told, do not believe in heredity. If that be so, they have small idea 
of the most plentiful harvest yet reaped by modern science. The phi- 
lanthropist looks to hygiene, to education, to general environment, for 
the preservation of the race. It is the easy path, but it can not achieve 
the desired result. These things are needful tools to the efficient, and 
passable crutches to the halt; but at least on one point Mendelian and 
biometrician are in agreement—there is no hope of racial purification 
in any environment which does not mean selection of the germ. 

If I speak strongly, it is because I feel strongly; and the strength 
of my feeling does not depend on the few facts I have brought before 
you to-day. It would be possible to paint a lurid picture—and label 
it race-suicide. That is feasible to any one who has seen, even from 
afar, the nine circles of that dread region which stretches from slum 
to reformatory, from casual ward and stew to prison, from hospital and 


*We are at present only reaching light on what is a very important prin- 
ciple, namely, that stocks exist which show a general tendency to defect, taking 
one form in the parent, another in the offspring. Neuroses in the parents be- 
come alcoholism or insanity in the offspring; mental defect may be correlated 
with tuberculosis, albinism with imbecility; and one type of visual defect in the 
father be found associated with a second in the son. We can not at present give 
this fact scientific expression, but it would appear that there is something akin 
to germinal degeneracy which may show itself in different defects of the same 
organ or in defects of different organs. The solution, perhaps, lies in a tendency 
to general defect in the gamete. Even now, I doubt whether it is absolutely 
unscientific to speak of a general inheritance of degeneracy. 


408 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Qistribhulion of Tuhercu/ous Members 


wn Famils 


—— 0b6served Turberculous Offspring 


ase eapecled,) = oe2 


— 
7 z = | Ss o 7 a2 =) 70 @ 42 %¢S 18 ss and 


Over 
Order Of Birth 
FIG. 6, a. 


Bstribution af insane Members 


“M2 in Famils 


EMO CCLES o2 oz 


mey 
N 


fregue 
Finan aa 
° 8 io 


& 
iN) 


Order of Birth 
Fig. 6, b. 


sanatorium to asylum and special school; that infernal lake which sends 
its unregarded rivulets to befoul more fertile social tracts. But the 
scope of eugenics is not to stir the social conscience by an exaggerated 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 409 


Qistribution of Criminals in Family 


— Observed Criminal Offspring 
See expected, or o2z 


guencyg 
a ae 


a 
9% 


Tale 


| ey 
42 73 ¢@#% 5 16 ¢7? geand 
over 


SSS 
Se 9 70 4 
Order of Birt 


7 


FIG. 6, ¢. 


picture of racial dangers. Those dangers are not wholly recent, if they 
are increasing in intensity; they are not peculiar to England, as a brief 
acquaintance with French and German conditions will suffice to show. 
Nay, even in the new world men are awaking to the peril which high 
civilizations risk from their treatment of degenerates. What we leave 
to private effort, the establishment of a eugenics laboratory, they pro- 
pose in the United States to do by a government office. The American 
proposal to establish a laboratory in the Department of the Interior for 
the study of the abnormal classes and the collection of sociological and 
pathological data, has only one, but that a grave defect. No eugenics 
laboratory which confines its attention to the study of the abnormal can 
fulfil its functions. The positive side is as important as the negative 
side, and the application of the laws of inheritance to the betterment of 
the good is as vital as and far more likely to inspire us with hope of 
achievement than concentrating our investigations on the excision of 
the bad. 

If we realize the antinomy which eugenics brings to our notice 
between high civilization and racial purgation, we ask: How can the 
dominant fertility of the fitter social stocks be maintained when natural 
selection has been suspended? I do not think any wise man would be 
prepared with a full answer to this question to-day. There is no sov- 
ereign remedy for degeneracy. Every method is curative which tends 
to decrease the fertility of the unfit and to emphasize that of the fit. 


410 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


We may find it difficult to define the socially fit, although physique and 
ability will carry us far; but when we turn to the habitual criminal, the 
professional tramp, the tuberculous, the insane, the mentally defective, 
the alcoholic, the diseased from birth or from excess, there can be little 
doubt of their social unfitness. Here every remedy which tends to 
separate them from the community, every segregation which reduces 
their chances of parentage, is worthy of consideration. Strange as it 
may seem, we are not much beyond the cure suggested by Plato—what 
is “ euphemistically termed a colony,” for the degenerates of each sex. 
The duty of the man of science is to find out the law, and if possible 
waken the conscience of his countrymen to its existence. It is the 
function of the statesman to discover the feasible social remedy which 
is not at variance with that law. 

But, thus far, I have touched on only one side of the problem, the 
reduction in bad stock. Is not something more to be insisted upon 
with regard to the increase of good stock? Have we not treated the 
birth of children as something that concerned the individual and not 
the state? May not a source of racial greatness lie in a national spirit, 
like that of Japan, which demands the healthy able child from fitting 
parents, and looks with sinister eye on those who provide the state with 
the halt and diseased? I may have overlooked the point, but I have 
not noticed that this first principle of duty to the race, of national 
morality, has been fully insisted upon by our ethical writers. I have 
often heard false pride of ancestry condemned, but I have not seen the 
true pride of ancestry explained and commended. Surely the man who 
is conscious that he comes of a stock sound in body, able in mind, tested 
in achievement, and who knows that, mating with like stock and main- 
taining himself in health, he will hand down that heritage to his chil- 
dren—surely such a man may have a legitimate pride in ancestry, and 
is worthy of honorable mention in eugenic records? It seems to me 
that those who have the welfare of the nation, and our racial fitness 
for the world-struggle, at heart must recognize that this is the ideal 
which the racial conscience demands of its saner members. 

A clean body, a sound if slow mind, a vigorous and healthy stock, 
a numerous progeny, these factors were largely representative of the 
typical Englishman of the past; and we see to-day that one and all 
these characteristics can be defended on scientific grounds; they are the 
essentials of an imperial race. 

As we have found an antinomy between high civilization and race 
purification by natural selection, so there appears to be a corresponding 
antagonism between individual comfort and race welfare. It is again 
the tendency of higher civilization to suspend the more drastic phases 
of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fitter. The man 
of education, or made position, says “the chances of my children are 
better if I have but few of them,” and we reach the startling condition 


THE SCIENCE OF NATIONAL EUGENICS 4II 


of America, where the classes of ability—the classes which take as their 
standard an academic education—are not reproducing themselves, their 
average number of offspring being less than two; we reach the state of 
affairs which Mr. Sydney Webb tells us is demonstrable in another in- 
tellectual circle in this country, an almost childless population of non- 
inherited ability. And against this we have to set the maximum fer- 
tility which is reached by the degenerate stocks! Individual welfare 
and race welfare, are they really as opposed as they appear? Is it true 
insight to consider that the fewer children the better is their prospect 
in life? JI can not think that the time has come when the family is 
no longer an effective social unit. Is the family of two really in a 
stronger condition to face the world? Is there not mutual help and 
strength in kinship, and as age comes on must the old and feeble be 
left to the care of strangers? Eugenically Mr. Powys, in his fine 
memoir on fertility and duration of life in New South Wales,’ has 
shown that in Australia the longest-lived women are the mothers 
neither of small nor of inordinately large families. They are the 
mothers of five to six children. Eugenically we have shown that the 
two or three first-born members of a family are more liable to insanity 
(Heron), tuberculosis (Pearson), criminality (Goring) and mental 
defect. Fig. 6 will illustrate this. The excess of pathological cases 
among the earlier born is very significant. Economically, is it not 
true that if six degenerates are born to two, and not six, sound men 
and women, those two will have to do triple work to provide—in prison, 
asylum, institution and hospital—for this mass of the incompetent? 
I am not sure that a strong case could not be made out against the 
small family even on the basis of individual welfare! But I would 
rather appeal on this point to race instinct and to the social conscience. 
The progress of the race inevitably demands a dominant fertility in 
the fitter stocks. If that principle be not recognized as axiomatic by 
the mentally and bodily fit themselves, if the statesman does not accept 
it as a guide in social legislation, then the race will degenerate, until, 
sinking into barbarism, it may rise again through the toilsome stages of 
purification by crude natural selection. I am not pessimistic in this 
attitude. I know that the English people has been aroused to self- 
consciousness more than once in its history, and I believe that now it 
can be brought to realize that safety lies in a conscious race-culture. If 
race feeling can be appealed to by men trained to see the bearing of 
great biological laws on human growth, then we shall not create a mere 
passing wave of national emotion conveniently satisfied by the appoint- 
ment, dead before the report, of a royal commission. The time seems 
upon us when the biological sciences shall begin to do for man what the 


* Biometrika, Vol. IV., pp. 233-92. 
’ It seems to me that here science has a word to say with regard to reform 
of a hereditary peerage. 


2 
qe 


412 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


physical have done for more than a century; when they shall aid him 
in completing his mastery of his organic development, as the physical 
sciences have largely taught him to control his inorganic environment. 
To bring this about we need above all two factors. First: a knowledge 
of inheritance, variation, selection and fertility in man, and the rela- 
tion of these results to racial efficiency. To this special branch of 
biology, Francis Galton has given the name of the science of national 
eugenics, and in founding the Francis Galton Laboratory for National 
Eugenics in the University of London he has been the pioneer in assert- 
ing that even from the academic standpoint “ the proper study of man- 
kind is man.” Eighty years ago there were no physical laboratories in 
the universities of this country, sixty years ago there were no physio- 
logical laboratories, thirty years ago there were no engineering labora- 
tories. ‘To-day there is only one laboratory for national eugenics. I 
believe that every university twenty years hence will offer its students 
training in the science that makes for race-efficiency and in the knowl- 
edge which alone can make a reality of statecraft. The eugenics labora- 
tory then will require no apology, it will be too well recognized a part 
of university equipment. 'The second factor which seems to me needful 
is an altered tone with regard to those phases of our sexual life upon 
which the health and welfare of the nation as a whole so largely depend. 
In this matter I think we can learn from the spirit of our youngest 
allies, the Japanese, and from the practise of our oldest allies, the 
Jews. With both, race-preservation and race-betterment have assumed 
the form of a religious cult. And one aim of my lecture to-day is that 
I may appeal to the younger members of my audience, on whom 
responsibility for forming opinion will shortly fall, to weigh these 
things well, for they touch closely our national safety. On the one 
hand, I do not raise an alarmist picture of our coming decadence, nor, 
on the other hand, would I leave you without insisting that there is 
grave occasion for earnest thought. I would raise interest in a new 
and, I believe, potent branch of science; I would call for a strengthen- 
ing of racial conscience, and a scientific basis for conduct, as our grow- 
ing civilization stems natural selection as the purifier of the state. 
Thus it is that eugenics passes from science into practise, from knowl- 
edge to a creed of action. This can not be expressed better than by 
Francis Galton’s concluding words in his “ Eugenics as a Factor of 
Religion ”: 

Eugenie belief extends the function of philanthropy to future generations, 
it renders its actions more pervading than hitherto, by dealing with families 
and societies in their entirety, and it enforces the importance of the marriage 
covenant by directing serious attention to the probable quality of the future off- 
spring. It sternly forbids all forms of sentimental charity that are harmful to 
the race, while it eagerly seeks opportunity for acts of personal kindness, as 
some equivalent to the loss of what it forbids. It brings the tie of kinship into 
prominence and strongly encourages love and interest in family and race. In 


brief, eugenics is a virile creed, full of hopefulness, and appealing to many of 
the noblest feelings of our nature. 


PETER KALMW’S “TRAVELS” 413 


PETER KALM’S “ TRAVELS ” 


By SPENCER TROTTER 


SWARTHMORE COLLEGE 


STUDENT of our early colonial history once remarked to me 
that we should have lived some two hundred years before our 
time, then we might have thoroughly enjoyed the country. By 
“country ” he meant the natural, primitive condition of the land 
as it appeared to the first generation of Europeans born on its 
shores. It was far from being the inhospitable wilderness that their 
fathers had known. Homes of some comfort stood in the midst of 
cleared land; the fields yielded an abundant harvest; flourishing young 
towns and the king’s highway gave to the new country a semblance of 
old-world civilization. And yet, withal, the ancient woods and the 
wild life were but a bow-shot from its door-steps. 
This observation of my friend makes a strong appeal to the imagina- 
tion of those of us who love simple ways and nature undisturbed. We 
may voice the poet’s regret that 


The world is too much with us, 


but in truth it would doubtless be a great hardship if we should find 
ourselves, by some trick of a fairy godmother, back in those primitive 
days. A man’s life is so largely made up of the things of the mind 
that it is the picture of the thing that makes for happiness far more 
than the reality. 

The past is a fine canvas for our pictures. The pigments of fancy 
blend in pleasing effects, and distance in time as well as in space lends 
its enchantment. Many things are potent to suggest these pictures— 
the faded leaves of a diary, a bit of finery, the site of some long-for- 
gotten house, an old book—trifles light as air that turn the hard lines 
of a modern scene into the soft, hazy light of the past. 

The peculiar charm of an old book is the atmosphere that per- 
vades it. Its pages may contain nothing of interest, even to the most 
curious reader, but with the lapse of time the dullest volume acquires 
a certain distinctive character. An old book breathes of the past; the 
scent of its stained and musty leaves penetrates into the dim chambers 
of the mind where fancy slumbers. And when fancy stirs and awakens 
its neighbor, long-forgotten memory, mayhap we have here the reason 
for this endearing quality of old things, for who knows what shreds 
of ancestral memories were wrapped in the bundle of our inheritances. 


414 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


This flotsam and jetsam of the literary past, drifted on to the upper 
shelves and into out-of-the-way places, may yield some bit of treasure 
—some record vivid with the life of old days and of places long since 
blotted out. 

Among such driftwood is occasionally to be found a rare fragment 
of Americana—the “ Travels into North America,’ by Peter Kalm. 
It is a quaint old book with the observations and reflections of an 
inquisitive naturalist who visited this country in the middle of the eight- 
eenth century. There is no attempt at style or literary finish of any 
sort—it is the plain narrative of a man whose interests were by no means 
confined to natural history. The book is charming in the desultory 
treatment of its subject matter—in its utter lack of logical arrange- 
ment. In one place we read of “cyder” making, and in the very 
next paragraph the author abruptly launches forth in a dissertation 
on “a certain quadruped which is pretty common, not only in Pensyl- 
vania, but likewise in other provinces, both of South and North 
America, and goes by the name of Polecat among the English. In 
New York they generally call it Skunk.” In another place some pe- 
culiarity in the marriage ‘of widows is followed by a dissertation on 
divers remedies used against the toothache. 

Kalm was omnivorous as to facts. He meant to tell everything 
about the new country, and sets this forth in the following remarkable 


title— 
TRAVELS 
INTO 
NORTH AMERICA; 
CONTAINING 
ITS NATURAL HISTORY, AND 
A circumstantial Account of its Plantations 
and Agriculture in general, 

WITH THE 

CIVIL, ECCLESIASTICAL AND COMMERCIAL 

STATE OF THE COUNTRY, 
The MANNERS of the INHABITANTS, and several curious 
and IMPORTANT REMARKS on various Subjects. 


A perusal of the book fully justifies this title. One is convinced 
that “no circumstance interesting to natural history or to any other 
part of literature has been omitted.” The book was first published at 
Stockholm in 1753 under the title “ En Resa Til Norra America,” 
and it was subsequently translated into both German and English. 
The English translation, edited by the naturalist, John Reinhold 
Forster, was first published at London in 1772, in three volumes, and 
is dedicated to the Hon. Daines Barrington, the same to whom Gilbert 
White of Selborne addressed so many of his letters. 

Kalm, who held the position of “ Professor of G2conomy in the Uni- 


PETER KALM’S “TRAVELS” 415 


versity of Aobo in Swedish Finland,” was sent out at the instance of 
the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm to make “ such observa- 
tions and collections of seeds and plants as would improve the Swedish 
husbandary, gardening, manufactures, arts and sciences.” Iceland 
and Siberia were first proposed as the countries to be explored for 
this purpose, but Linneus “thought that a journey through North 
America would be yet of more extensive utility.” What Sweden gained 
by this change of plan we do not know, but the literary and scientific 
world of that day gained much, and we of to-day—lovers of old books 
and quaint recitals—find great store of pleasure in these pictures of 
the past. 

Kalm’s book is full of local color and redolent of the soil and the 
air of the country. The simplicity and directness of statement put 
ene at once in sympathy with the man. His personality is in every 
page, but there is no striking of the literary attitude. He is entirely 
simple-minded, almost child-like—a gentle, companionable man. 
Listen to this naive rehearsal on the first day of his setting foot 
ashore at Philadelphia: 

I found that I was now come into a new world. Whenever I looked to the 
ground, I everywhere found such plants as I had never seen before. When I 
saw a tree, I was forced to stop, and ask those who accompanied me, how it was 
called. The first plant which struck my eyes was an Andropogon, or a kind of 
grass, and grass is a part of Botany I always delighted in. I was seized with 
terror at the thought of ranging so many new and unknown parts of natural 
history... . At night I took up lodging with a grocer who was a quaker, and 
I met with very good, honest people in this house, such as most people of this 
profession appeared to me; I and my Yungstraem, the companion of my voyage, 
had a room, candles, beds, attendance, and three meals a day, if we chose to 
have so many, for twenty shillings per week in Pensylvania currency. But wood, 
washing and wine, if required, were to be paid for besides. 


Kalm had numerous letters of recommendation— 


Mr. Benjamin Franklin, to whom Pensylvania is indebted for its welfare, 
and the learned world for many new discoveries in electricity, was the first who 
took notice of me, and introduced me to many of his friends. He gave me all 
necessary instructions, and shewed me his kindness on many occasions. 


A Swede himself, Kalm naturally spent much of his time among 
the Swedes, descendants of the first Swedish settlers on the Delaware. 
At the village of Raccoon on the New Jersey shore, he sojourned with 
his brethren for many weeks during the winter and spring of 1749. 
The village has long since disappeared; the place where it once stood 
is now not certainly known, but Raccoon Creek still falls into the 
Delaware, nearly opposite the Pennsylvania town of Chester, and the 
searcher after old sites may spend some pleasant hours, if only with 
the haunting sense of the vanished hamlet that once stood somewhere 
in this neighborhood. Here Kalm gained much information from the 


416 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


mouths of old Swedes who remembered the land in the earlier days 
of its settlement. 

The first houses that the Swedes built consisted of but one little 
room, with the door so low that one had to stoop in order to get in. 
“As they had brought no glass with them, they were obliged to be 
content with little holes, before which a movable board was fastened.” 
The cracks and crannies were stopped with clay. Clay was also used, 
in many instances, in the construction of their chimneys. 

Before the English came to settle here, the Swedes could not get as many 
cloaths as they wanted; and were therefore obliged to make shift as well as they 
could. The men wore waistcoats and breeches of skins. Hats were not in 
fashion; and they made little caps, provided with flaps before. They had worsted 
stockings. Their shoes were of their own making. Some of them had learnt to 
prepare leather, and to make common shoes with heels; but those who were not 
shoemakers by profession, took the length of their feet, and sewed the leather 
together accordingly; taking a piece for the sole, one for the hind-quarters, and 
one more for the upper-leather. At that time, they likewise sowed flax here, 
and wove linen cloth. Hemp was not to be got; and they made use of flaxen 
ropes and fishing tackle. The women were dressed in jackets and petticoats of 
skins. Their beds, excepting the sheets, were skins of several animals; such 
as bears, wolves, ete. 

Such “ superfluities ” as tea, coffee and chocolate were unknown 
to these first settlers on the Delaware, but rum they had at “ moderate 
price” and “sugar and treacle they had in abundance. . . . Almost 
all the Swedes made use of baths; and they commonly bathed every 
Saturday.” Their carts must have been remarkable constructions, 
the wheels sawed from thick pieces of the liquidambar tree. 

These old Swedes had a small idea of the value of land and sold 
large tracts to English settlers for a mere song. One old Swede told 
Kalm that his father sold an estate, which at the time of Kalm’s visit 
was reckoned at three hundred pounds value, “ for a cow, a sow and 
a hundred gourds.” 

Kalm was evidently much impressed by the spirit of liberty that 
prevailed amongst the«people. Speaking of the decrease of certain 
wild birds, as compared with their former abundance, he says: 

But since the arrival of great crowds of Europeans, things are greatly changed; 
the country is well peopled, and the woods are cut down; the people increasing 
in this country, they have by hunting and shooting in part extirpated the birds, 
in part scared them away; in spring the people still take both eggs, mothers 
and young indifferently, because no regulations are made to the contrary. And 
if any had been made, the spirit of freedom which prevails in the country would 
not suffer them to be obeyed. 

In another place he refers to the freedom displayed in taking fruit 
from the orchards. 

The orchards, along which we passed today, were only enclosed by hurdles. 
But they contained all kinds of fine fruit. We wondered at first very much 


PETER KALM’S “TRAVELS” 417 


when our leader leaped over the hedge into the orchards, and gathered some 
agreeable fruit for us. But our astonishment was still greater when we saw 
that the people in the garden were so little concerned at it, as not even to look 
at us. But our companion told us, that the people here were not so exact in 
regard to a few fruits, as they were in other countries where the soil is not so 
fruitful in them. We afterwards found very frequently that the country people 
in Sweden and Finland guarded their turnips more carefully, than the people 
here do the most exquisite fruits. 


Among the many customs of the people which Kalm noted are the 
following curious passages relating to marriage— 


There is a great mixture of people of all sorts in these colonies, partly of 
such as are lately come over from Europe, and partly of such as have not yet 
any settled place of abode. Hence it frequently happens that when a clergyman 
has married such a couple, the bridegroom says he has no money at present, 
but would pay the fee at the first opportunity; however, he goes off with his 
wife, and the clergyman never gets his due. This proceeding has given occasion 
to a custom which is now common in Maryland. When the clergyman marries 
a very poor couple, he breaks off in the middle of the Liturgy, and cries out, 
Where is my fee? The man must then give the money, and the clergyman 
proceeds; but if the bridegroom has no money, the clergyman defers the mar- 
riage till another time, when the man is better provided. People of fortune, of 
whom the clergyman is sure to get his due, need not fear this disagreeable ques- 
tion, when they are married. ... There is a very peculiar diverting custom here, 
in regard to marrying. When a man dies, and leaves his widow in great poverty, 
or so that she can not pay all the debts with what little she has left, and that, 
notwithstanding all that, there is a person who will marry her, she must be mar- 
ried in no other habit than her shift. By that means, she leaves to the creditors 
of the deceased husband her cloaths, and everything which they find in the house. 
But she is not obliged to pay them anything more, because she has left them all 
she was worth, even her cloaths, keeping only a shift to cover her, which the 
laws of the country cannot refuse her. As soon as she is married, and no longer 
belongs to the deceased husband, she puts on the cloaths which the second has 
given her. The Swedish clergymen here have often been obliged to marry a 
woman in a dress which is so little expensive, and so light. 


There are various references in Kalm’s book to the aboriginal 
inhabitants of the country, though at the time of his visit the Indians 
had retired from the immediate vicinity of the seaboard. “It is very 
possible,” says Kalm, “ for a person to have been at Philadelphia and 
other towns on the sea shore for half a year together, without so much 
as seeing an Indian.” Most of Kalm’s observations concerning the 
natives, their manners, customs and food, are at second hand, but may 
be regarded as fairly reliable, his information being obtained from the 
older Swedes, who, in the earlier days of the settlement, had been well 
acquainted with the Indian people that dwelt by the Delaware. 

What pleases the reader most in Kalm’s book, I think, is the gen- 
eral picture of the country and the local color which he gets from the 
scattered observations and descriptions throughout the pages. Nat- 
urally Kalm was much impressed with the extent of forest in this new 

VOL. LXXI.—27. 


418 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


world. Furthermore he was a botanist, and had an eye for the various 
kinds of trees, the remarks upon which, and upon the great variety of 
plants that he observed and collected, occupy a considerable portion 
of the narrative. He tells us in one place that grass formerly grew 
in the woods which were then quite open, with little or none of the 
underwood growth which characterize our woodlands to-day. The set- 
tled parts of the country must have had a wild and shaggy look, even 
in Kalm’s time, for he speaks of the stumps of trees in the corn-fields— 
« real backwoods’ picture—and notes that the farms were widely sepa- 
rated from one another: 
The greatest part of the land, between these farms so distant from each other, 
was overgrown with woods, consisting of tall trees. However, there was a fine 
space between the trees, so that one could ride on horseback without incon- 
venience in the woods, and even with a cart in most places; and the ground was 
very plain and uniform at the same time. ... In some parts of the country the 
trees were thick and tall, but in others I found large tracts covered with young 
trees, only twenty, thirty, or forty years old; these tracts, I am told, the Indians 
formerly had their little plantations in. .. . The woods consisted chiefly of sev- 
eral species of oak, and of hiccory. 

An old Swede, Nils Gustafson by name, ninety-one years of age, 
told Kalm that 
he could very well remember the state of the country, at the time when the 
Dutch possessed it, and in what circumstances it was before the arrival of the 
English. He added, that he had brought a great deal of timber to Philadelphia, 
at the time it was built. He still remembered to have seen a great forest on the 
spot where Philadelphia now stands.* 

Kalm had a practical turn of mind. Being a professor of 
“ (economy, he was at all times on the look-out for the uses of things. 
Whatever contributed to human welfare seemed to him of the first 
moment. What a particular plant or tree yielded in the way of dyes, 
or food, or timber, or remedies against sickness; the nature of soils, 
the qualities of rocks and stones for building purposes; the thrift, or 
want of it, on the part of the people; how they clothed and housed 
themselves; how prolific they were, what they ate, how they cooked 
their food, how they cared for their stock and crops—all such matters 
find a conspicuous place in his pages. And so he goes rambling de- 
hghtfully on—deseribing and commenting upon everything that he saw, 
or even heard of—here about wine-making, or fences, or s»ring-houses ; 
there about some curious custom, or remarkable occurrence. He was 
forever putting a question— quere,” as he called it—‘‘ where did the 
Swedes here settled get their several sorts of corn, and likewise their 
fruit-trees and kitchen-herbs?” ‘“ Whence did the /nalish in Pensyl- 
“Where did these Swallows 


\)°: 
) 99 


vania and New Jersey get their cattle 


* According to Heckwelder, this site was called by the Indians Kiequenaku, 
which means the ‘* grove of the long pine trees.” 


PETER KALM’S “TRAVELS” 419 


[Chimney Swifts] build their nests before the Huropeans came and 
made houses with chimneys?” He had much to say about the more 
familiar birds? and beasts that he met with and heard of—their 
peculiarities and habits, and occasionally a grotesque story concerning 
some one of them. The weather, too, took up a large share of his 
attention, and he appears to have kept a careful record which is in- 
serted as an appendix to the second volume of the translation. 

Kalm constantly refers to his friend Dr. Linnzus, who evidently 
held the author of the “ Travels” in high esteem. The generic name 
of our laurels—Kalmia—was bestowed by the great naturalist in honor 
of his humble friend, and Kalm, in speaking of the laurel, refers to 
this fact. John Bartram, the first American botanist, and whose 
house, built in 1731, is still standing, surrounded by its delightful old 
garden, was another to whom Kalm constantly refers in terms of 
friendship. His intercourse with Bartram and with Benjamin Frank- 
lin during his sojourn in Philadelphia was evidently a great source 
of satisfaction to Kalm, for he makes frequent allusion to his visits 
to and conversations with these worthies. 

The “ Travels ” were not confined to the neighborhood of Phila- 
delphia, though the author spent much of his time in this vicinity. 
He yisited New York on one or two occasions, and made an arduous 
journey to Montreal, by way of the Hudson, and was at one time in 
some danger from an attack by the Iroquois. He seemed particularly 
struck with the French women of Montreal—their looks, dress, and 
good manners—and draws some rather invidious comparisons between 
them and their English sister residents. “In their knowledge of 
ceconomy,” he says, “they greatly surpass the Hnglish women in the 
plantations, who indeed have taken the liberty of throwing off the 
burthen of housekeeping upon their husbands, and’ sit in their chairs 
all day with folded arms.” These remarks brought forth a defensive’ 
foot-note on the part of the English translator. 

The “Travels into North America” is to be read in a spirit of 
simplhecity, for in such a spirit it was conceived. One reads it as he 
reads “ The Compleat Angler,” or “ The Natural History of Selborne,” 
or Sir Thomas Browne—books that exhale a perennial fragrance, hav- 
ing their roots deep in the soil of things personal. 


- See article by the writer in the Auk, Vol. XX., No. 3, July, 1903. 


HUSAVIK. 


‘'SNOWZMOUNTAINS ON SKJALFANDI. 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 421 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 


By L. P. GRATACAP 


AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


10 


HEN came Husavik, a large village looking amazingly well with its 
extended domiciles cleanly cut in the sunlight, at the base of some 
old crater cone, which Professor Gourdon told us repeated the worn- 
down voleanic stocks of Auvergne, which that notable pioneer Guettard 
first pointed out were igneous accumulations. And how bare it all was! 
Two wild white swans suddenly swept through the foreground. We 
dropped off a sysselman here; a kind of local magistrate, governor, 
collector of the port, friend of the fatherless and widow, and. general 
Pooh-bah who raised his hat as he left us as if he expected us to recog- 
nize his official importance. Icelanders pay the most formal respect to 
each other and doffing his hat for a person of a large acquaintance must, 
in so uncertain a climate, insure a popular man a permanent cold in 
his head. The sysselman, who thus returned to his domain, had an 
earnest mien, and was typical of the strong, resolute and intelligent 
temperament and mind of these boreal democrats. 

We turned westward again over the Skjalfandt, the broad bay west 
of Husavik, toward the beautiful range of mountains on the opposite 
shore, the Viknafjoll hills. As they came near to hand in the trans- 
figuring light of the setting sun, they were revealed as a series of 
enfilading peaks standing up behind each other, with the pockets 
between them spotted with snow, while snow-fields like spotless rugs 
hung low down on their steep flanks. They grew upon our eyes in 


FLAT ISLAND NEAR HUSAVIK. 


422 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


AKREYKI, DOCK FOR SfEAMER. 


magnificence and beauty, they seemed to exhale a spell in that northern 
latitude that drew us to them, pressed close upon the gunwales of our 
ship, in wondering silence. 

The weathering, and subaerial erosion here was most pronounced— 
and the range seemed clearly older than the east-coast rocks. The 
sides of the mountains plunged with unhesitating precipitancy into the 
water. The beds composing them had variable inclinations. Still we 
drew nearer and closer—with wonderful displays of red rock disin- 
tegrating into rubble, and long sweeping and steep surfaces of com- 
minuted stone. The higher cells, cirques or valleys in the mountains 
were floored with snow, and occasional glacial patches were uncer- 
tainly described. At a distance these mountains looked like a serrated 
range on a single base of extension, but nearer they were seen to be in 
ranks thrown up in most effective hummocky confusion. 

And now a thousand lights play over them, and now they gleam 
with one consentaneous and single glory, like a pale and myriad 
facetted ruby. New features come into view on every side, at each new 


inclination of the ship; a rainbow stands upright piercing the zenith, 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 423 


AKREYRI. 


almost above them, and the sun floods the skies with pink and purple 
hues, painting also the low-lying bars of cloud with gold, to be itself 
slowly, slowly, quenched in a roseate ocean. And still the alpine glow 
bathed all the scene with opalescent reds, with violet colorings and 
russet lines, while the shadows of the higher peaks lay black upon the 
snows of the valleys below them. The picture remained perfect for an 
hour, its high lights shifting, but its beauty penetrating and immanent, 
spreading all over the solemn austere hills with changing marvelous- 
ness. 

In the morning we found ourselves at the bottom of a fiord at the 
head of which we confronted an extensive marsh. This was Akreyri, a 
good-sized place, running around a curved shore with large frame 
houses, some three stories high, and a good road along the shore and up 
into the hills. About a quarter of a mile from the landing dock there 
is a deep til] morainal deposit, packed with rounded pebbles, and preva- 
lent evidence of an old beach line. Back of the shore on the village 
side rose sculptured snow mountains, and opposite across the fiord 
the long slant of a hill dissected by rill channels. This hill was the 


424 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ODDEYII. 


usual wall or palisade of lava flows, with green grassed slopes at its foot. 

The town, containing about 3,000 people, consists of sizable frame 
houses, some quite large. The public school is commodious, and there 
is a hospital and a hotel. The streets are named and the houses num- 
bered. Here trailing along the roadsides and dotting the fields in color 
patches were the wild pansies (Viola tricolor). 

The next stop was in the Skagafiord at Saudarkrokr, where a 
remarkable raised beach suggested geological themes. If I was not 
mistaken in my notes on the conversation between a fisherman and the 
steward of our steamer, the fisherman was induced to furnish us with 
good herring at about a farthing a pound, which same fish sell for 
almost twelve cents a pound in Copenhagen. Fish were all about us 
and the herring nets, floated by buoys, seamed the water, with fishermen 
moving slowly to and fro gathering them in. The Icelander peasant 
fisherman is very poor, and, clad in rough clothes, with hairy bristling 
whiskers and worn eyes and shock hair, has sometimes quite an aborig- 
inal appearance. He wears a sheep-skin slipper on his foot and heavy 
encasing woolen socks underneath leggings, and has no scruples about 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 425 


RYKIAFIORD, 


wading in the water as indifferently as if he wore Goodyear Rubber 
Company boots. 

More geological themes stared us in the face at Blonduos where a 
glacial river discharges its mineral burdens into the sea in a turbid 
muddy tide. Again at Reykiarfiord we were called upon to esteem the 
endurance of the Icelander. The place is rough and stony, with a 
few houses and turf-covered cabins, an eider duck island or so, and 
wore an expression of depressing loneliness, albeit in the bright sun- 
light it bravely challenged our admiration. Again on our way with 
our former tireless companion—fog. In the weird night dawn, with 
the fog dissipated and the north cape passed, we pushed on to Isafjar- 
darjup; and the high shores with dark menacing and austere contours 
loomed strangely over the fringed spray-scurried waves hissing around 
us. We plunged headlong into the inky billows until the cape head- 
land gave us shelter, and the confusion about us subsided, and in the 
morning we woke in Isafiord—a thriving town on a crescentic spit of 
land enclosing a quiet lake-like harbor in which the Vesta floated. 

This fiord was the usual thing; walled in by high cliffs, plainly 


426 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Cop FLAKES IN THE VILLAGE OF ISAFIORD. 


banded by the successive flows of igneous rock, while at one point 
on the east wall an amphitheatrical cup was seen, just such as pre- 
vailed elsewhere, but here somewhat larger and accessible, and which 
begins the degradation and removal of the basaltic cliffs. 

Early in the morning we left the steamer for the shore, and tra- 
versed the town. We saw the big cod storehouses where perhaps 
$10,000 worth of dried flat cod were piled up in snowy walls to the 
roof. Women work, spreading and weighing them, over the rocks. 
These women work eight or ten hours a day, and receive about fifty 
cents a day, the men about one dollar. The fish, headed and cleaned, 
of course, are gathered into flat piles over night, covered with oil skins, 
on which planks are placed, carrying a weight of stones, and distributed 
in the morning if the day is clear. There are perhaps three or four 
such establishments in the town, and they fill it with bustle and com- 
mercial activity. Stores (Verzlun), opened by German and Scotch 
traders, dispense to the people dry goods, art material, decorations and 


utensils, coffee houses entertain them, and, judging from the crowded 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 4 


N 
~I 


— 


SRT ES 


COD ON STONES, ISAFIORD. 


post-office—to which our steamer had brought the letters—the outer 
world regularly reaches their doors. 

I looked into the modest little church through its windows and 
discovered the altar with candles and a figure of the Christ. The reli- 
gion of the island is Lutheran. The graves were marked in many 
instances by polished granite tombstones, many with Thorwaldsen’s 
“ Night,” in a white medallion of porcelain, upon them, and all more 
or less covered with tin flowers and tin palms with linen flowers, in 
white, and many withered wreaths of bear-berries. 

After breakfast I climbed up into the amphitheater on the palisades 
to the east, which in the shadows of the morning seemed remote and 
fascinating, with a great boulder of liparite flung upon its extremest 
lip like a propylon at the entrance of a temple. The views from this 
cup of erosion with its steep talus-slopes of comminuted stone— 
splinters and angular chips dislodged by frost, were superb—the outer 
fiord with its snow mountains with the water at their feet dyed bleu 
foncée, and the hill country southward with snow banks and threading 


428 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


DYRIFIORD VILLAGE. 


streams and Isafiord below me like a map. The outer entrance of the 
Isafjardarjup is magnificent and was seen about two o’clock in the 
morning, a bold, deeply fissured and mountainous coast. 

Our next stop was Thingeyri, on the Dyrifiord, which was a small 
place in a rather deep fiord, the sides of the fiord displaying a series of 
radiating valleys divided from each other by eroded walls of rock, 
which presented sharp prow-like fronts on the fiord. The landscape 
here had a dusty, dry and barren expression with poverty of green 
surfaces, the rock gravelly and crumbling, and a hard strange loneli- 
ness enveloped everything. The long morainal wall at the mouth of 
the fiord has been dissected by elevation and the attacks of the sea, and 
continues the encircling chain of evidence around the shores of the 
island, of its elevation since glacial times, its emergence, which has 
brought in many places beds of marine shells into dry and exposed 
positions. To the south as we rolled again on the waters of the 
Denmark Strait, headland after headland succeeded each other down 
the coast with splendid sweeping beaches between. ‘Then came a most 
remarkable long precipitous wall, like a creation of masonry, spattered 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 429 


WEATHERED PALISADES IN DYRIFIORD. 


fantastically with white splotches of guano, and celebrated as a home 
for the sea-birds, a veritable basaltic dike, eaten into by time and 
weathering, and furnishing innumerable nooks and ledges for the great 
population it harbored. 

Desperate and vain efforts to get it to “ go off ” involved the captain 
and the engineer in savage denunciations of a small brass cannon, whose 
thunders were to awaken the sleeping (or dozing) inhabitants of this 
mural metropolis. When at last it sputtered its salute, a solitary bird 
rose jeeringly in the air, and the show was over. 

Now we were crossing the Breitfiord (the broad fiord) a vast bay, 
sprinkled with stumps of rock in chains of islets, and darkening 
ominously under gathering wind-clouds, whose first puffs began to 
rumple and whiten the wide expanse. Then came a marine idyll, a 
little grass-covered island with rocky reefs and walls, and its upland 
quaintly decorated with a little village and small farm houses, whose 
roofs were white with flowering shepherd’s purse and wild mustard, 
shooting up most naturally from the turf gables. The men and women 
were out harvesting the hay, and the pictorial charm of everything was 


430 POPULAR SCIENCE .MONTHLY 


HouUsES AND SURF WALL AT FLATEY ISLAND, BREITFIORD. 


increased by a slanting towered church very odd and lovely too, with 
its disheveled graveyard about it. 

We crossed the bay to Stykkisholm, a picturesque village made up 
of snugly elbowing houses, crumpled together on a high rock, with 
black islets all about. It was ten o’clock p.M., and a yellow splendor 
filled the western sky, against whose wild light the sharply scissored 
outlines of the mountains ran in a black silhouette. The great are- 
like boats came off in the morning from the shore, and were loaded, 
and their cargoes discharged on the dock, bands of women carrying the 
sacks on their backs, or taking the broad planks (for making furniture) 
between them. 

We left Stykkisholm in the morning, which was cold and clear, and 
steamed out over the broad fiord with the snow mountains distantly 
gleaming and the lead-bottomed clouds in angry rolls pouring over 
them to the south. Towards three in the afternoon we reached the 
crater-peak of Snaefells, with its glacier or jokull, which terminates 
the long peninsula between the Breitfiord and the Faxafiord. At first 


Snaefells was clouded and capped with mists. Then we saw a long 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND 431 


LITTLE CHURCH ON FLATEY ISLAND, BREITFIORD. 


flat flow of trap on the coast, spattered, like the bird-rock we had 
passed, with guano, and riddled with caves and excavations, and fol- 
lowing that, we approached the shore at the base of the magnificent 
mountain. It was a beautiful picture, its expanded base rising into 
a dome on which spread the ice and snow cap-like flat helmet, sur- 
mounted by two monticules or mammillary peaks, one darkened by an 
enclosed rock. The view of the mountain improved each minute, until 
at last its glorious argent dome was swept clear of clouds, and in the 
lucid brilliant air shone like a silver shield. The physical aspects of 
the mountain below the snow fields were most interesting. The gut- 
tered flanks, deeply channeled with a network of rainures, whose inter- 
laced troughs resembled the crossing and interference of paths of 
flowing material, but was interpreted by Professor Gourdon as purely 
erosive, were highly instructive. The spectacle the mountain made 
was undoubtedly very fine, and for the whole afternoon, until actual 
semi-night and knotted clouds hid it from sight, it remained the 
majestic crown to the broad panorama of snow mountains stretching 


eastward. We were now in the Faxafiord. 


432 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


STYKKISHOLM. 


And then came Reykjavik, of which and the interior of Iceland the 
editor may permit me to say something at another time. 


DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 433 


NOTES ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 


By FRED DELAND 
PITTSBURGH, PA. 


XVI. Tue Harp Times oF 1885 
HE year 1885 will never be forgotten by the “hard times” suf- 
ferers—nor by many operating telephone companies. For com- 
mercial and industrial conditions rapidly sld down to bedrock, and 
thousands who were thrown out of employment suffered for the bare 
necessities of life. Some of the local telephone companies had a fair 
income, but nearly all had to defend at heavy cost, a series of systematic 
attacks upon the rates charged for local service. In 1885 the bank 
clearances were over fifteen billions of dollars less than in 1883, the 
production of pig iron was lessened by nearly 600,000 tons, while its 
price fell to $18 a ton from $22 a ton in 1883. So great a commercial 
and industrial depression naturally affected the financial growth of the 
parent Bell company; and then, that its bitter cup might be full to 
overflowing, all the power of the United States government was 
brought to bear on the fundamental Bell patent, in the hope that it 
might be invalidated. Referring to this most unjust and discreditable 
attempt to lend the dignity and the power of the United States to a 
deliberate scheme to filch honors justly awarded, the editor of The 
Nation wrote that this 
decision to have the validity of the Bell telephone patent tested in the courts 

. insures the success of one of the worst stock-jobbing schemes now before 
the public. The stock in trade of the companies on whose motion the suit is 
brought consists of a paper capital of several millions, and a few patents of 
insignificant value which they probably never intended to use. 

In July commercial conditions in the east experienced a brief boom, 
brought about by the absorption of the costly West Shore line by the 
New York Central interests. But the farming community had in- 
vested heavily in West Shore, and following the reaction due to heavy 
losses distributed among a large number of grangers came increased 
distrust not only in railway, but in all industrial securities, including 
even those of the best local Bell companies. 

However, the farmers were enriched by the greatest crop of corn 
ever grown up to that year, exceeding by one hundred and forty million 
bushels the bumper crop of the previous year, while the yield of cotton 
secured by planters in the south was nearly as large as the summer 
before. But the farmers harvested one hundred and fifty-five million 

VOL, LXxI—28 


434 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


bushels less of wheat than in 1884, and a bushel of wheat was worth 
nearly two bushels of corn, wheat selling at an average export price 
of 87 cents and corn at 49 cents per bushel. On the Chicago market 
wheat ranged from 733g cents to 9184 cents per bushel. During the 
fiscal year beginning July 1, 1885, there was exported only 57,759,209 
bushels of wheat having an aggregate value of $50,262,715, as against 
106,385,828 bushels in 1882 having an aggregate value of $119,879,341. 

Each month brought reports of the large number of telephones 
taken out at the request of subscribers; yet, when the returns for the 
year were tabulated, the totals for all the Bell companies in the 
United States showed a net gain in subscribers of 2,903. Owing to 
the extreme financial depression this was an entirely unexpected 
increase. 

One company, in reporting a gain for the year of nineteen stations, 
expressed its elation over the fact that it meant a net gain of thirty 
paying stations through the elimination of a number of deadheads. 
This company reported having “ removed 1,147 instruments and placed 
1,179,” during 1885, and added: 


When we analyze the places in which we gain and lose, we find that of the four- 
teen exchanges containing over one hundred subscribers, which we are working 
to-day, all but three are larger than they were a year ago, while of the nineteen 
exchanges of less than one hundred, all but six are smaller than they were in 
April, 1884. 


This company was operating thirty-three exchanges with an aver- 
age of 171 subscribers to each exchange, and was in a stronger financial 
condition than three fourths of the other companies. Yet its treasury 
stock was unsalable at any reasonable price, even though the purchaser 
knew that the entire proceeds of the sale would be devoted to new 
construction. Two and three years previously people went wild over 
telephone stocks, not only borrowing money from banks to use in pur- 
chasing telephone securities, but actually mortgaging homes. But 
during 1885, it was only possible to dispose of many local telephone 
stocks by allowing an enormous discount of from 50 to 80 per cent. 
from par value. So this company told its stockholders that 


we are convinced that we are now at the period when we must look to our cur- 
rent earnings to pay for all expenditures of every kind whatsoever. The system, 
as now established, must not only maintain itself, but must provide for the 
ordinary extensions and improvements which the growth of population and 
business and the development of improved apparatus may demand. 


Notwithstanding the several concessions granted its licensees by 
the parent company during the previous year, it perceived early in 
1885, that the prevailing industrial conditions coupled with the low 
financial condition of a majority of the local companies, rendered 
necessary a further modification in relationship. During 1884 the 
parent company returned $806,634 to the operating companies in which 
it held shares of stock, which was its proportion of the net earnings, 


DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 435 


that this amount might be spent for necessary improvements and ex- 
tensions on the part of the local companies. 

Following many of the numerous consolidations, the parent com- 
pany granted to the consolidated companies a perpetual license cover- 
ing the exclusive use of Bell equipment in specified territory, in ex- 
change for the short-term licenses that had expired or were about to 
expire. In return for these perpetual exclusive rights the local com- 
panies issued to the parent company from 20 to 33 per cent. of the 
capital stock of the new organizations. Thus parent and operating 
companies became joint partners having every reason to protect each 
other’s interests, even after the expiration of the fundamental patents. 

Owing to the stress of financial conditions, early in 1885, the 
parent company decided to call a conference of the operating com- 
panies to ascertain what mutual action was advisable, in order to restore 
confidence among the shareholders of the consolidated companies, as 
well as to awaken an interest in telephone securities on the part of 
prospective purchasers. With that end in view it invited all local 
companies to send one or more representatives to a meeting to be held 
in Boston, June 8 to 13. 

During the sessions of this conference all phases of relationship 
were broadly discussed and many perplexing problems thoroughly 
threshed out, several important concessions were made, and a further 
reduction in royalties announced. At the closing session the delegates 
tendered to the parent company a vote of thanks 


for the substantial benefits resulting from the conference and its disposition to 
strengthen our hands in developing the business; (and assured) a continuance 
of our hearty support and cooperation, with renewed vigor and confidence. 


In its annual report for 1885, the parent company referred to the 
results of this conference as follows: 


With longer experience the telephone companies have learned that the cost of 
maintaining and reconstructing their plant has been generally underestimated, 
and many of them have in consequence been forced to recognize that the profits 
upon telephone business are less than they had expected and believed. For this 
reason they have appealed to us to make certain concessions in their contract 
relations, and we have given this subject careful consideration. . . . We have 
met our licensees; first, by agreeing when desired, that our share of net earnings, 
jointly with theirs, may be used for construction purposes, so that we in these 
cases are sharing the cost of developing the business; second, we have made a 
reduction in the royalties on telephones used in small places where the rates 
are low. This reduction involves a loss of royalty amounting to about $200,000 
per annum on our present business. 


While comparisons are rarely pleasant to present, yet it is inter- 
esting to compare this voluntary action on the part of the Bell com- 
pany, with the resolutions passed by the licensees of another parent 
public utility company. This latter parent company was not in the 
telephone business, but it made arrangements 


by which these local companies had the exclusive and absolute right to the sale 
of apparatus in their respective territories. In return for this they gave to the 
company a certain percentage of their capital stock, not for one year or two 


436 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


years, or any fixed length of time, but perpetually and upon any increase of 
capital stock. These licensees, however, were not guaranteed by the parent 
company against infringers of the patents, or given protection in any way equal 
at the time to the rights which they sacrificed. The makers of other apparatus 
which infringed the patent came into their territory unmolested and sold in 
competition with them. The result is that during the past ten years the 
licensees have not secured any considerable portion of the profits which justly 
belong to them. In return for the stock which they surrendered the local com- 
panies were to secure a special rate upon apparatus, which would enable them 
to compete successfully with any rivals. As a matter of fact this privilege was 
never secured and the apparatus of other manufacturers could be obtained upon 
the market at a price which was actually less than that which they had to pay 
to the parent company. 


During the year 1885 systematic attacks upon the rates charged 
by operating Bell companies were started in several states, notably in 
Massachusetts and in Indiana. In Massachusetts the movement began 
the previous year, and is said to have been instigated by and supported 
almost entirely through the efforts of one man who felt that he had not 
been fairly treated by his associates when the local company in which 
he was a shareholder had been absorbed in a general consolidation. 
The method this man adopted was to employ boys in different cities 
to rapidly circulate petitions in favor of reducing telephone rates in 
the respective localities. Naturally, not only friends and acquaintances 
of the boys, but thousands of other persons signed the petitions to help 
the lads earn the promised pennies. In this manner a total of about 
50,000 signatures were secured. When these petitions were presented 
to the legislature, it was shown that nearly three fourths of the signers 
were not subscribers to telephone service, that a number of names had 
been placed on the petitions without authority, and that many of the 
alleged petitioners could not be located. For instance, ninety signa- 
tures were secured in Lynn, and only four of the entire number repre- 
sented telephone subscribers. Of the eighty-six non-subscribrs, the 
names of twenty-seven did not appear in the city directory, nor could 
the individuals be found. Then it was publicly charged that this lot 
of petitions had been shown to the Bell interests and offered to them 
for $12,000 in cash. It was further stated that 


as no purchaser could be found, the whole batch of petitions finally found their 
way to the legislature, which, in its final judgment, placed the same value upon 
them as the directors of the Bell company had previously done. 


On April 13, 1885, the Indiana legislature passed a drastic law 
that later was repealed: 


that no individual, company or corporation now or hereafter owning, controlling 
or operating any telephone line in operation in this State shall be allowed to 
charge, collect or receive as rental for the use of such telephones a sum exceed- 
ing three dollars per month where one telephone only is rented by one individual, 
company or corporation. Where two or more telephones are rented by the same 
individual, company or corporation, the rental per month for each telephone so 
rented shall not exceed two dollars and fifty cents per month. 


When this law went into effect, six different companies or individ- 
uals were operating telephone exchanges in Indiana under Bell licenses, 


DEVELOPMENT OF TELEPHONE SERVICE 437 


and as this bill threatened to largely reduce their prospective incomes, 
it required wise planning to keep the outgo within the estimated in- 
come in order to avoid bankruptcy. The first step taken was to sus- 
pend night service in some places. In turn the citizens, the great 
majority of whom had never patronized the telephone company, ex- 
hibited an utter disregard for the rights of others by cutting down the 
telephone poles. A large number of exchanges and over one hundred 
toll stations in Indiana were closed, and all improvements and exten- 
sions ceased. 

Fortunately for all concerned, there was a golden lining to the dark 
cloud that overhung the telephone field in 1885, in this that no less 
than six important decisions were rendered in favor of Bell interests. 
Five of these were judicial, being handed down in the United States 
circuit courts in the respective districts, and one was the important 
decision rendered by Commissioner Butterworth of the Patent Office. 

It may be recalled that on October 23, 1884, the examiners-in-chief 
in the United States Patent Office, after a very thorough and complete 
investigation of certain interference claims involving the invention of 
the telephone, and after each claimant had had his rights fully pre- 
sented in lengthy arguments, decided that 


Bell is the only one of the contestants having patents. Bell is not only a pat- 
entee, but it is to him that the world owes the possession of the speaking 
telephone. 


Earlier in 1884 the examiner of interferences had rendered a sim- 
ilar decision, after eighteen months of thorough investigation. This 
decision was exceedingly elaborate, making a printed volume of over 
three hundred pages, and reviewing the law and the evidence, inclu- 
ding every fact and phase with great care. From this decision the 
claimants appealed to the examiners-in-chief, as stated, and from their 
decision to the commissioner of patents. After a seven days hearing 
the commissioner decided that 


Bell discovered, and his patent showed that a certain combination of magnet, 
diaphragm and armature, when arranged in a specified connection with other 
specified parts, constituted an apparatus which would transmit articulate speech. 
Up to this time no one else had done this, or had known it. The combination 
was the result of his conception and the outgrowth of his theory, and the appa- 
ratus, being a materialization of that conception and in conformity to that 
theory, was his original invention. 


In January, 1885, Judge Butler, in the United States Circuit Court, 
District of Pennsylvania, in granting the motion of the parent Bell 
company for an injunction, decided that 


upon full and patient examination of everything submitted to us, we believe 
that the alleged new matter is but the refuse and dregs of the former cases— 
if I might be allowed the use of so homely an illustration, I would say, but the 
heel taps found in the glasses at the end of the frolic. 


In March, 1885, Judge Wallace, in the United States Circuit Court, 
Northern District of New York, in granting the request for an injunc- 


438 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tion against an infringing company, stated that 


this is a case in which an injunction must issue, beyond any sort of doubt. The 
questions upon the merits, for the purpose of preliminary injunction, have been 
already disposed of in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey cases, 


In June, 1885, Judge Wallace, in deciding that the Molecular Com- 
pany had infringed “all the claims” of the Bell patent, stated: 


After Bell has pointed out the way, it may now be seen to be a simple thing to 
introduce his method into the Reis apparatus. Some of the experts have doubt- 
less convinced themselves that these modifications of the Reis apparatus do not 
involve any difference in the principle of the apparatus. It is too late to accept 
this theory after the lapse of so many years of fruitless experiment with the 
method of Reis, as originally suggested by Bourseul, and with the apparatus of 
Reis, as modified by various experimentalists down to the time of the promulga- 
tion of Bell’s method. It seems impossible to escape the conviction that had the 
speaking telephone been left where it was left by Reis, and by those who en- 
deavored to develop and perfect his theory, it would only have realized the 
speculations of Bourseul. 


In July, 1885, Judges McKennan and Acheson, in the Circuit Court 
of the United States, Western District of Pennsylvania, in allowing 
an injunction stated 


that while this country has been agitated for several years past by litigation 
about this Bell telephone, and while there were decisions in the courts, at any 
rate in Massachusetts and in New York, and in this circuit, these defendants, 
with the knowledge of all these decisions, have entered upon a course of infringe- 
ment of the rights of these complainants, that have been passed upon by the 
courts. .. . If these people, believing that they had a right to do it, without any 
decision of the Court, and without any notice whatever from the party whose 
rights they sought to appropriate, had commenced this business, it might be 
said with some sort of claim of equity, that they had been misled, and that 
therefore, they ought not to be stopped by an injunction where such injunctions 
would subject them to loss which they did not expect. That is not the case here 
as I have said several times. They have invited this controversy. They have 
stood up and said to Bell, * You are not the inventor of this thing, and we are 
going on in defiance of the patent which has been granted by the Government, 
and in defiance of the decisions of the Courts sustaining it.” Now, that is just 
the aspect of the case, and I know of no rule by which the Court has heretofore 
been governed in the disposition of motions of this kind, which would justify us, 
for one moment, in treating these defendants with special favor, even inde- 
pendent of the decisions of the Circuit Courts. The injunction is allowed. 


In December, 1885, Judge Wallace said: 


Since the decision of this case in December last, additional proofs have been 
taken on the part of the defendants (The People’s Telephone Co.) and by consent 
of complainants, have been presented for the further consideration of the Court 
after argument of counsel. All the new evidence is cumulative merely. Such 
as consists of the testimony of new witnesses to knowledge of the existence of 
Drawbaugh’s talking machine prior to the date of the Bell patent, is far less 
persuasive than much which has already been considered and rejected as in- 
credible. . . . The legitimate effect of the evidence is to show that Drawbaugh 
was very near the realization of the invention, if he had really constructed 
instruments like the exhibits /’, B and C, prior to the date of Bell’s patent. It 
does not, however, alter the fact that he was unable to make such instruments 
at a period long subsequent to the time when he claims to have made them; 
and in view of this fact the evidence does not tend to materially fortify the 
testimony of the witnesses, who think, or profess to think, that they heard, or 
saw efficient practical instruments in operation at Drawbaugh’s shop on the 
occasions to which they refer. The conclusions which were reached at the 
former hearing have not been modified and the decree ordered should not be 


disturbed. 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 439 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, AND SOME LEARNED 
SOCIETIES OF PARIS? 


By EDWARD F, WILLIAMS 


CHICAGO 


I 


alien Institute of France has been called the greatest educational 

work any government has ever organized and supported. Be that 
as it may, there is no denying that the service it has rendered learning 
and literature, scientific research and the fine arts, has been extensive 
and stimulating, that, beginning with the organization of the French 
Academy in the time of Richelieu, its history covers in a good degree 
the history of the intellectual and social development of the French 
people. 

The institute embraces in its present organization five academies 
which in the order of their establishment, if not in importance, are as 
follows: The French Academy, to which the forty immortals belong, the 
Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres, the Academy of Sciences, 
the Academy of Fine Arts, the Academy of Moral and Political Science. 
The academies existing at the time of the revolution were abolished by 
the Convention as aristocratic in their tendency, and some of their 
members, known or supposed to be in favor of the monarchy, were 
guillotined, but as it was soon discovered that the knowledge of the 
members of the Academy of Sciences could be made of use to the new 
government, they were appointed on the commission of weights and 
measures. Thus some of the members of the old organization, meeting 
occasionally for the discussion of scientific subjects, managed to pre- 
serve at least the semblance of an academy of science. The so-called 
National Institute of Science and the Arts was recognized by the 
Directory August 22, 1795, and divided into three classes: (1) phy- 
sical science and mathematics, (2) moral and political science, (3) 
literature and fine arts. From about 1667 to 1806 the sessions of the 
academies were held in the Louvre, in the great hall of Henry II. 
Since that time they have been held in a building which belongs to the 
institute, the Mazarin Palace, which was built by Cardinal Mazarin 
for the College of the Four Nations during the years 1661-5. It 
contains his library of more than 100,000 volumes, which is cared for 


1 Authorities: Maury, ‘ History of the Old Academy of Science’; reports 
of the academy from year to year; statements in Minerva from its foundation; 
‘History of Paris Educational Institutions,’ by Alexandre De Maistre. 


440 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


by a member of the institute. The institute has its own library also, 
equally large and embracing nearly all the books which are of interest 
to its members. The five academies are thus housed under one roof 
and on different days occupy for their gatherings the same rooms. To 
the public only the halls are open in which the annual meetings or 
receptions are held, though far more important for the members of the 
institute are the laboratories, or the rooms in which they do their work. 
While each academy is independent, there is yet a government com- 
mon to the five academies in addition to the supervision exercised over 
them by the minister of public instruction. The institute has had no 
political power, and care has been taken to reduce its possible political 
influence to the lowest terms. So great was the fear of this influence 
that parliament in the time of Richelieu hesitated for more than two 
years before granting the original academy a charter. It was this 
same fear which led the convention to abolish the academies altogether. 
The history of the last hundred years shows how groundless these fears 
were, and how wise it is to favor organizations of learned men for 
the cultivation of whatever fields of literature or science they choose 
to enter. 

The institute was reorganized by Napoleon in 1803 as the Imperial 
Institute of France, and divided into four classes: (1) Mathematics 
and natural science, (2) French language and literature, (3) classical 
languages and literature, (4) fine arts. After the restoration in 1816 
the institute was again reorganized as the Institute of France and 
to it in 1832 a fifth academy was added, that of moral and political 
science. Each of these academies, or classes, elects its own members, 
subject to the approval of the government, but are all controlled by a 
committee representing each one of them. 


The French Academy 


The oldest of these academies (l’Académie francaise), the French 
Academy, was founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1634. It received at 
Richelieu’s request letters of recognition from Louis XIII. in January, 
1635, but was not recognized by parliament till July 10, 1637. As 
early as 1630 a number of literary men had met at each others houses 
to discuss subjects of a literary nature and to encourage each other in 
efforts to improve the language and literature of the nation. Richelieu, 
then prime minister, determined to give the association his favor and 
to bring it into connection with the government. As a government 
institution he believed it would reflect credit upon the reign of the 
sovereign. For a few years the meetings were held in the Royal 
Library. Its purpose was declared to be, to improve the French 
language, criticize literary works and make a dictionary. Richelieu 
was anxious that it should publish a grammar also, a rhetoric, and an 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 441 


authoritative treatise on poetry, but for some reason his wish has not 
yet been realized. 

Membership in the academy was made difficult from the first. A 
few men, Boisrobert, Conrart, Chapelaine, Rotrau and Corneille were 
enrolled as a matter of course, as charter members. But only the most 
eminent literary men were to wear its honors. Two years after its 
recognition by parliament the number of its members was fixed at 
forty, and this number has remained unchanged till now. The privi- 
lege of being one of the forty must be sought for, and the person 
desiring election must personally visit each one of the members and 
solicit his vote. In the case of Buffon, Thiers and Béranger the rule 
was set aside, but as Béranger declined the offered honor, the rule of 
personal solicitation has become more rigid than ever. 

The reception of a new member is public and is a great occasion. 
The new member is expected to eulogize the man whose place he has 
been chosen to fill, and to give in writing an estimate of the value of 
his works. To his thanks for the honor he has received through his 
reception into the academy the president responds in a few fitting 
words. The public, sometimes dissatisfied with the action of the 
academy, has created a forty-first chair, into which it puts the man 
who has been overlooked or neglected. In this chair it has seated 
Descartes, Pascal, Moliére, Rousseau, Diderot, Dumas pére, Balzac, 
Alphonse Daudet, Emile Zola. In 1778 the bust of Moliére was set 
up in the hall with the inscription: 

Rien ne manque a sa gloire, il manquait a la nétre. 

Though by no means a bureau of lexicography, its chief work, out- 
side of criticism, has been the making of a dictionary of which the 
first edition, after fifty-nine years of labor, appeared in 1694, the 
eighth in 1896. Colbert when prime minister is reported to have been 
very impatient over the progress the dictionary was making, and one 
day, quite unexpectedly, came upon the academicians when at their 
work. Listening for a time to the definitions. proposed for a very 
simple word, to the discussions which followed, and perceiving the 
difficulties in securing a definition at once comprehensive and accurate, 
he concluded that the task in hand would require far more time than 
he had thought, and was indeed a far more difficult task than he had 
supposed. From this time on he ceased his criticisms. The academy 
is now planning and at work on a historical dictionary of the language, 
on a scale so large that a wag has said it will take at least a thousand 
years to complete it, but he adds, as it is made up of immortals, the 
element of time need not be considered. 

The academy expends more than 100,000 francs a year ($20,000) 
in prizes. These are granted for the best work in poetry, history or 


442 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


moral philosophy which has appeared during the year, and also for the 
best oration or essay. 'The Montyon prizes, worth 22,463 francs, are 
for the best work of any sort by a Frenchman produced during the 
preceding twelve months. A prize, worth 21,940 francs, is for the 
best work on the application of knowledge to the arts. The Gobert 
prizes are for the best history of France, or on some point connected 
with its history. A special prize is offered every year for the best 
poem or essay upon a subject which the academy itself suggests. 

The government pays each of the members of the academy the sum 
of 1,200 francs a year as a pension. The same sum is given to the 
members of the other academies which belong to the institute. The 
secretaries of the different academies receive 6,000 francs annually. 
Special grants are made from time to time for special objects. Thus 
in 1902, 10,300 francs were voted for the dictionary and other publica- 
tions, 4,000 francs for a special prize, and 13,900 frances for miscel- 
laneous uses. Sessions are private, save at the reception of a new 
member, the annual meeting in November, and the gathering of all the 
academies on October 25, when the large hall is crowded to suffocation. 

It is impossible to estimate the influence which this academy has 
exerted on the literary life and taste of the French people. Nor can 
one determine the value of its contributions to the development and 
purification of the French language. There can be no doubt of its 
usefulness, or that in its work it has more than realized the hopes of 
its founders. Its influence at present is hardly less powerful than in 
the earlier years of its life. In fact, it may be truthfully said that in 
its unique character and position it has long been, and still is, the 
wonder and despair of other nations. 


The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres 

This academy, the ‘ little academy,’ as it was nicknamed, the second 
in the order of formation, was established under the ministry of Colbert 
in 1665. At first it was simply a committee of four persons chosen 
from the French academy to work on inscriptions, form devices or 
emblems, suggest medals representing important and striking facts in 
the national history and furnish designs for the royal tapestry. It did 
not receive its name or enter upon its definite field of labor till 1701. 
Prior to this time its members, whose number had been gradually 
increased, discussed antiquarian and archeological subjects, and in this 
direction did good work. It was in the year 1701 that the Abbé 
Bignon asked the king to recognize it as an academy, give it a name 
and determine its duties. 

Although the request of the abbé was received favorably, the new 
academy did not receive its charter till the time of Ponchartrain, July 
16, 1706. Its name or title was not given till 1716. Then, as now, it 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 443 


had forty working members resident in Paris. There were ten asso- 
ciate or free members, in training for vacancies in the active member- 
ship. There were eight foreign associate members and fifty correspond- 
ing members. This academy was suppressed by the Convention in 
1793 and did not reopen under the Directory in 1795. 

It was reconstructed by Napoleon in 1803 under the title of 1716, 
and its old field, the study of language, assigned to it. It now gives, 
through carefully selected committees, special attention to the study of 
Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as to those connected with 
French history, to Assyriology, Egyptology, epigraphy and the literary 
history of France. It looks after the French schools in Rome and 
Athens, which under its guidance have made important antiquarian 
researches and discoveries in Greece, the Grecian islands, Italy, Asia 
Minor, North Africa and Syria. Its Mémoires are full of extremely 
valuable information. Its activity along its various lines of study and 
research is unabated, and the means for the enlargement of its work, in 
addition to government support, are constantly increasing. 

It grants several prizes, but no one of them is so highly esteemed 
and so eagerly sought for as the one which secures its holder two years’ 
residence and study in Rome and Athens. The prize is won in a 
severe examination and against many competitors. It was through the 
influence of members of the school at Athens, and under their personal 
direction, that the temple at Delphi was uncovered, and that many 
other interesting remains of Grecian antiquity have been brought to 
light. To no one of the academies connected with the institute are 
students of history, the classics, antiquities of every sort and oriental 
languages, more deeply indebted than to the academy of inscriptions. 
Some of its members have been among the leading scholars of the nine- 
teenth century. Its standard of work is very high, as one who will 
read the jubilee history of the school in Athens will discover. Nor 
is its work of less interest or importance to-day than it has been in 
the past. While granting prizes every year there is one prize, the 
Louis Fould, worth 20,000 francs, which prior to 1896 had never been 
awarded. It is offered once in three years for a satisfactory history 
of the arts of design, their origin and progress, and their transmission 
through different peoples to the time of Pericles. The subject is so 
difficult and the scholarship required so extensive and accurate that 
few can hope to win it. 


The Academy of Sciences 


The Academy of Sciences, regarded by scientific men as the most 
important part of the institute, and whose history will be related more 
fully in other articles, was founded by Minister Colbert in 1666. It 
grew out of informal gatherings of scientific men who met from time 


444 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


to time to discuss reported discoveries in the scientific world and to 
suggest and criticize theories of their own. It is the largest of all the 
academies connected with the institute, having sixty-eight members, 
two secretaries, ten free members in training for vacancies in the active 
membership, ten honorary members residing in France, eight foreign 
associates and one hundred corresponding members. It receives an 
annual grant of 64,000 francs for publications and has a large amount 
of money at its disposal for prizes. The work of the academy, which is 
very extensive and which aims to cover the whole scientific field, is done 
through committees. In the mathematical section of the academy there 
are committees for geometry, mechanics, astronomy, geography and 
ship building. In the section devoted to physics there are committees 
for chemistry, mineralogy, botany, rural economy, anatomy, zoology, 
medicine and surgery. The sessions are on Mondays at 3 P.M., although 
the members of the academy are in their laboratories every day in the 
week with the exception of Sunday. Its work in science has perhaps 
been more brilliant and extensive than that of any other scientific 
academy in the world. It offers an annual prize of 3,000 francs for the 
best discussion which has appeared during the year on a mathematical 
topic or on one in physics. It has six Montyon prizes at its disposal, 
worth in all 44,845 frances. The valuable Laland prize for astronomical 
work is under its control. Its annual meeting is in December. Its 
Mémoires are of the greatest value, and are highly prized by scientific 
students the world over. From property made over to it by the 
Due d’Aumale in 1886, at Chantilly, it is thought an income of at 
least 550,000 francs each year will be received. This income is not 
yet fully available. 


The Academy of Fine Arts 


The Academy of Fine Arts, though existing under this name only 
since 1795, was really founded by Mazarin in 1648 as an academy of 
painting. Sculpture was made one of its departments in 1664, music 
another in 1668, architecture another in 1671. In 1815 this academy 
was fourth in order of importance in the institute and in order of 
organization. At that time some of the first men in France were mem- 
bers of it. Its chief interest is, and has been, in and for the fine arts. 
In this department of study it has been preeminent. Although its 
publication fund has been only 6,000 francs a year, it has brought out 
many valuable works, among them a dictionary of the fine arts. It 
has forty members, ten associate members in training for the vacancies 
which may occur, ten foreign associate and sixty-one corresponding 
members. Its annual meeting is one of the great social events of the 
year. It takes place in October. Women are always present in large 
numbers. While the addresses are interesting, the chief attractions are 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 445 


in the distributing of the prizes, which consist of a medal and a diploma 
which entitle the possessor to a two years’ residence in Rome. These 
prizes are granted for excellence in painting, sculpture, architecture 
and musical composition. Its meetings, like those of the Academy of 
the Immortals, are in private, while those of the other academies, 
though attended by but few, are open to the public. 


The Academy of Moral and Political Science 

The Academy of Moral and Political Science was the creation of 
the revolution. By its originators it was made the fourth in the in- 
stitute. Suppressed by Napoleon in 1803, it was reestablished in 
1832 at the suggestion of Guizot, then prime minister. It began 
with thirty members, but in 1855 the number was increased to forty, 
with ten free members in training for the vacancies, forty-five cor- 
responding members and six foreign associate members. The academy 
does its work through five groups of men who form committees on 
philosophy, morals, legislation, public law and jurisprudence, political 
science and statistics, general and philosophical history. Its sessions 
are on Saturdays at 1 p.m. The academy has always been an object of 
dread to revolutionists, and to men like the first Napoleon, but of 
special interest to lovers of freedom and progress. Some of the most 
distinguished names in French history are on its books, names of men 
like Bartholomew St. Hilaire, who was an active member more than 


fifty years, Guizot, Louis Reybard, Jules Simon, Cousin, Geraud, Hip- . 


polyte Passy, Michelet and scores of others almost as eminent. 


Other Learned Societies 

But the institute, far-reaching as have been its aims, has by no 
means met all the needs of the learned men of Paris or prevented 
them from forming self-supporting societies in large numbers for 
special work in various fields of research. It has, in fact, stimulated 
the formation of these societies. The names of some of the more im- 
portant of these societies follow: 

The Academy of Medicine, formed by royal command December 
10, 1820, has a constitution like that of the Academy of Sciences and a 
large membership. Its meetings are on Wednesdays during the work- 
ing portion of the year. 

The French Association for the Advancement of Science, now 
united with the Scientific Association of France, was founded by Le 
Verrier in 1864 and has at least 3,400 members, each one of whom 
pays as dues 20 francs a year. 

The National Acclimatizing Society of France, zoology and botany 
applied, founded in 1854, has a membership of 1,000. The dues are 
25 francs a year. 


446 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


The Astronomical Society, founded 1803, has 500 members. Its 
dues for Frenchmen are 9 francs, for foreigners 12 francs. 

The Anthropological Society: founded 1859; 500 members; dues 
30 francs. 

The National Society of French Antiquarians: founded 1805. Till 
1813 The Celtic Academy. 

The Asiatic Society: founded 1822; 250 members; dues 50 francs. 

The Biological Society: formed 1848 ; 40 members, 22 associate and 
15 corresponding members; dues for active members 20 francs, for 
associate 15 francs. 

The Botanical Society of France: formed 1854; 360 members; dues 
30 francs. 

The Society of the National School of Maps: formed 1839: 346 
members; dues 10 francs. 

The Chemical Society: formed 1857; 1,500 members; dues for 
Frenchmen 36 francs; foreigners 25 francs. 

The National Society of Surgery: formed 1843; 35 members; dues 
60 francs. This society is formed of the most eminent surgeons, and 
is therefore limited in its membership. 

The International Society of Electricians: formed 1883; 1,270 
members; dues 20 francs. 

The Entomological Society of France: formed 1832; 490 members; 
dues 25 francs. 

The Geographical Society: formed 1821; 2,078 members; dues 
36 francs. 

The Geological Society of France: formed 1830; 30 members. 

The Association for the Encouragement of Grecian Studies in 
France: formed 1867. 

The Society of French History: formed 1833; 600 members; dues 
30 francs. 

The Society of Diplomatic History: formed 1886; 600 members; 
dues 20 francs. 

The Paris Society of Linguistics: formed 1864; 228 members; 
dues 20 francs. 

The Mathematical Society of France: formed 1872: 280 members; 
dues 20 francs. 

The Paris Society of Medicine: formed 1796; 70 regular members; 
15 honorary ; associates unlimited; dues for regular members 30 francs. 

The Meteorological Society of France: formed 1852; 145 members; 
dues 10 francs. 

The French Society of Mineralogy: formed 1878: 200 members; 
dues 20 francs. 

The French Society for Numismatics: formed 1865; 200 members; 
dues 30 francs; receives associate members whose dues are only 20 
francs. 


THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE 447 


The French Society for Physics: formed 1873; entrance fee 10 
francs; dues 20 francs, half as much for non-resident members. 

The Society of Ancient French Texts: formed 1875; 350 members; 
entrance fee 10 francs; dues 25 francs. 

The Zoological Society of France: formed 1876; 350 members; 
dues 20 francs. 

Societies for the study of electricity, architecture, political and 
social science are filling an important place in the higher life of the 
city. 

Observing the dates of the formation of these societies, one will 
perceive that nearly all of them came into existence during the nine- 
teenth century, most of them in the first half of the century. By these 
dates one can trace with a good degree of accuracy the progress of 
science, and especially of that branch of science which each society 
represents. Other societies will of course be formed as the call for 
them arises. In many respects better work is done in these inde- 
pendent bodies than in the academies connected with the institute, 
which in part at least are under the control of the government, and 
in which membership is limited to those who have already won fame. 


448 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


RECENT VIEWS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEK 
TEMPLE 


By Dr. ALEXANDER F. CHAMBERLAIN 


ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY, CLARK UNIVERSITY, WORCESTER, MASS. 


REEK genius was brought a little nearer that of the commonalty 

of mankind, some years ago, by the discovery that marble statues 

were painted red in imitation of the wooden human figures long after 
marble had come into use as a material for sculpture. It now seems 
as if the Greek temple was to be recognized as the imitation of some- 
thing previously existing, and that once again the “ gulf” over which 
the Greek mind is supposed to have suddenly leaped has been reduced 
to quite ordinary human dimensions. It has long been customary to 
look upon the Greek temple as absolutely unique; the Doric temple, 
even if it was suggested by the rock-hewn tombs of Beni-Hassan in 
Upper Egypt, being, after all, unlike anything else in the world. But 
the numerous archeological investigations of the last few years have 
resulted in making it certain that many ideas, formerly conceived of as 
strictly Hellenic or Egyptian, were rather Mediterranean or even 
European. And it is fair to argue that the Greek temple had behind it 
something that was not necessarily characteristic of the ancient Nile or 
AXgean alone. The more we know about the prehistoric Mediterranean 
area, the less are we inclined to attribute to one race or to one people 
the chief contributions to human civilization arising within its bounds. 
In 1905, in an article in Globus, the German geographical and 
ethnological journal, Professor K. Fuchs put forward the theory that 
“the wooden prototype of the Greek temple was an Almenhaus, the 
house of a rich cattle-breeder of the central European plateau, whom 
a long winter compelled to lay in great stores of hay and forced to 
erect over the stable a large hay-loft which kept it warm.” To central 
Europe belonged in ancient times a house which was, “ at the same time 
the primitive form of the modern Czik wood-houses, the ancient Greek 
temple, and several modern Alpine types of dwellings.” Beginning 
with the gable, Professor Fuchs derives each prominent part of the 
Greek temple from corresponding portions of the prehistoric central 
European cattle-breeder’s house, and really advances some very good 
arguments, as the illustrations to the article indicate, for the opinion 
held by him. Even the columns find their place in this explanation, 
but not so satisfactorily as in the later theory of Sarasin. That the 
Greek temple had a wooden prototype is now beyond doubt, but it is by 


THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEK TEMPLE 449 


no means certain that its ancestor was the cattle-house of the natives 
of prehistoric central Europe, whatever their racial affinities were. 
Nevertheless, there are remarkable analogies between the prehistoric 
“winged house” and the ancient Greek peripteros. Fuchs’s theory, 
however, is rather “local,” and therefore not so widely applicable as 
that of Sarasin. 

Dr. Paul Sarasin, who, with his cousin Fritz, is well known for 
notable researches among the primitive peoples of Ceylon, Celebes, etc., 
propounded before the Berlin Anthropological Society in 1906 a new 
and attractive theory of the origin of the Doric temple, viz., from the 
“lake-dwelling,” or “ pile-dwelling,” characteristic of certain regions 
of the ancient and the modern world. His essay, with numerous illus- 
trations, has since been published in the Zeitschrift fiir Hthnologie. 
It deserves the careful perusal of every student of the history of art 
and architecture, for his intimate knowledge of the “ pile-dwelling,” 
particularly in Celebes, enables Dr. Sarasin to go into very interesting 
details in this matter, and to set forth his arguments in a most striking 
manner, enforced by the illustrations, which are very much to the 
point, and also somewhat convincing. According to Sarasin, the 
Greek temple with columns “ is a highly idealized and conventionalized 
expression of the original pile-dwelling ”—the columns are the piles, 
the ornamented superstructure the dwelling fixed upon them, the tri- 
glyphs the window-strips, the metope the partition, etc. In order to 
fully appreciate the merits of Sarasin’s theory one must bring up be- 
fore the mind the wooden forerunner of the Doric peripteros: “ The 
columns were wooden pillars, the architraves wooden beams, the tri- 
glyphs wooden strips, the metopes boards with carved ornament; the 
wooden roof was covered with mud-thatch, and the wooden ridge ended 
in a bird made of cut boards (the acroterion).” Reducing the height 
of the columns a little, and increasing somewhat that of the super- 
structure, one has a building strikingly similar to (in many respects 
identical with) the pile-dwelling. The figures of the temple of Posei- 
don at Paestum and a pile-dwelling in Central Celebes show this 
very clearly. And it should be said that the pile-dwellings of Indo- 
nesia, occurring on land as well as in water, represent better a “ pile- 
dwelling period,” than the “ reconstructed ” lake-dwellings of Switzer- 
land. During the later stone age and the bronze age, Dr. Sarasin 
thinks, moreover, pile-dwellings of a sort comparable with those to be 
met with in Celebes, were found over a considerable portion of Europe, 
not merely in lakes, rivers, etc., but also in swamps, and on the dry 
land. Such a one was, apparently the pile-dwelling of the Wauwyl bog 
investigated in 1904, and closely resembling the Celebean pile-dwelling 
of the marshy Lake Limbotto. In all probability there existed com- 
monly in Europe to the end of the bronze age, and sporadically (in 

VOL. LXXI.-—29 


450 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Hungary, for example) much later, pile-dwellings of the kind in ques- 
tion. In Greece and many other parts of the then known world, the 
original human dwelling was the house on piles, which, therefore, was 
also the first dwelling of the gods and the first temple—the orthodox 
temple, as Sarasin phrases it—was a pile-dwelling. In very ingenious 
fashion Sarasin shows how the peculiarities of the various portions of 
the Greek temple can be developed from the pile-dwelling. The 
megaron, too, finds an analogue in the lobo, or “men’s house” of 
Malaysia. 

The simplest form of the column is, of course, the pile driven into 
the pillar or resting upon it; the basis of the Ionic and Corinthian 
columns is to be seen in the stones placed under the piles to prevent 
too early decay, ete. The so-called echinus, the lower, round portion of 
the capital of the Doric column, corresponds to the round disc of 
stone or wood placed on top of the piles as a protection against rats, 
ete. The abacus has also its prototype in the pile-dwelling in the rest- 
piece for the beams, which is placed on the middle of the disc just 
described. The so-called proto-Doric columns of Egypt, which lack the 
echinus, go back, Sarasin suggests, to a pile-dwelling without such 
protective discs. The perpendicularity of the columns of the Ionic and 
Corinthian temples, as well as the shght upper inclination of the 
Doric, comes naturally enough from the conditions of the wooden piles 
and their arrangement. So also square columns and even fluting. 
The so-called edicula, according to-Sarasin, is derived, not from the 
tent, as some have supposed, but from the small shade-roof seen in 
front of many Celebean pile-dwellings, under which the occupants sit 
protected from sun and rain. The “ wall-temples” and the celle are 
easily developed: from the open space under the dwelling in the pile- 
houses by building in between the columns—the prototypes are seen 
in the Celebean houses. 'The transformation of the upper part of the 
pile-dwelling, when no longer used for habitation, into the super- 
structure of the Greek temple with its ornamentation (the frieze has 
its forerunner in the pile-dwelling’s wooden carvings, ete.) was easily 
possible with an artistically-minded people. The substitution of stone 
for wood, Dr. Sarasin thinks, may have been an Egyptian invention. 

If the present writer may be permitted to add to the ideas set 
forth by Dr. Sarasin, he would like to suggest the possibility of the 
existence of pile-dwellings in caves (such have been reported from pre- 
historic Sicily) having had something to do with the development of 
the original wooden pile-dwelling into the stone temple. 

The theory of Sarasin has the advantage of proposing as the origi- 
nal prototype of the Greek temple something that was more or less 
cosmopolitan, a building that was common and natural over a large 
portion of the prehistoric world, and not some merely “ local *’ model. 


THE ORIGIN OF THE GREEK TEMPLE 451 


As Dr. Sarasin points out, the pile-dwelling served also as prototype 
of the Chinese and Japanese temples (in this case, since they are 
mostly constructed of wood the likeness is even more striking) ; like- 
wise in Farther India, Hindustan, Arabia, Asia Minor, Egypt, etc., 
and even in prehistoric America. Moreover, not merely the “long 
temple,” but the “round temple,” goes back to the pile-house, as 
may be seen from the round pile-dwellings ascribed to the land of 
Punt, in Egyptian pictures dating from ca. 1500 B.c., which are prac- 
tically identical in shape, ete., with pile-dwellings still to be seen in 
the Nicobar Islands and in certain parts of Africa. 

Taken altogether, Sarasin’s essay is one of the most interesting and 
suggestive contributions to the literature of the evolution of archi- 
tecture that has appeared in a generation, and it illustrates the way 
in which the anthropological investigator can assist in the solution of 
many puzzling problems, which meet with no successful interpretation 
at the hands of the closet-student or the biased classicist. Dr. Sarasin 
has given but another proof of the fact that the highest genius of the 
ancient Greeks lay not in inventing great or beautiful things out-of- 
hand, but in idealizing, beautifying and harmonizing what had already 
long existed in common and wide-spread forms and fashions. And to 
that great art no human race is utterly a stranger; and many of them 
are much nearer the Greeks than most of us believe. 


452 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


FERTILITY AND GENIUS 


By CHARLES KASSEL 


FORT WORTH, TEXAS 


R. ROOSEVELT’S measuring of swords with the followers of 
Malthus has been so much used as a butt for mere jest that 
it seems difficult to approach the subject in a serious mood. ‘To the 
thoughtful mind, none the less, the question is one of absorbing in- 
terest. With the economic phase of the problem, we are all, of course, 
familiar—the least informed needs no one to tell him that the more 
numerous the offspring the severer the strain upon the material re- 
sources of the family. It is with the psychological side of the matter 
that our chief interest is bound up. Does a large progeny mean a 
heightening or weakening of intellectual force in the offspring? Does 
it imply characteristics of temperament and disposition which we need 
not look for in the scions of smaller families? Upon this subject we 
are without data save such as are afforded by the pages of biography ; 
but if the facts we gather from the lives in our libraries are a safe 
guide to a conclusion upon this question our worthy executive may 
well congratulate himself upon his insight and philosophic wisdom. 
We have examined some hundred or more biographies of noted 
characters—the most eminent, as we deemed, of those whose lives were 
accessible—and, of these, seventy-six mentioned the number of chil- 
dren making up the family of which the personage treated was a 
member. The data thus obtained we have tabulated in order, with the 
following result: 
Horace Walpole—historic in English annals for political astuteness 
—was one of nineteen children. 
Benjamin Franklin was one of seventeen children. 
John Marshall—that greatest of American jurists 
fifteen children. 
Peter the Great—the monarch to whom Russia is in great part 
indebted for what she is to-day—was one of fourteen children. 
Napoleon Bonaparte—one of the most colossal figures in history— 
was one of thirteen children, as was also Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 
the English poet. 
Samuel Adams, the American patriot and statesman; Sir Walter 
Scott, the English poet and novelist; the American writer James 
Fenimore Cooper, and, last, but greatest of all, Alfred Tennyson—that 


was one of 


FERTILITY AND GENIUS 453 


minstrel of a many chorded harp—belonged to families of twelve 
children. 

Lord Nelson, the English admiral; Washington Irving, the Amer- 
ican essayist, and James Buchanan, aforetime president of the United 
States, were members of families of eleven children. 

The number ten, perhaps, enjoys a prouder boast than any other, 
for among those who can claim membership in families of that num- 
ber are the mighty names of George Washington, Daniel Webster, 
Samuel Portland Chase (whose father, we may observe in passing, 
was one of nine sons), Henry George, Thomas Carlyle and Oliver 
Cromwell. 

Of those historic characters who were members of families nine in 
number, illustrious examples are Thomas B. Macaulay (whose father 
was one of thirteen children and whose grandfather was one of fourteen 
children), Charles Sumner, General Sam Houston, Albert Sidney 
Johnston, Robert E. Lee (whose father was one of eleven children, 
Patrick Henry and ex-president Grover Cleveland. Mr. Cleveland’s 
ancestry is one truly remarkable for the very numerous offspring of 
which his progenitors became parents for generations reaching back to 
colonial times—far the most remarkable of all we have discovered. 
Moses Cleveland, a remote ancestor of the ex-president, was the father 
of eleven children; his son Aaron was the father of ten; the latter’s 
son Aaron was likewise the father of ten; this Aaron’s son of the same 
name was also the father of ten; a son of the third Aaron, also of the 
same name, could claim an additional son for each of the three pre- 
ceding him, for he was the proud parent of thirteen children; a son of 
this Aaron, named William, became the father of Richard, who in 
turn became the father of Grover. It is thus apparent that Mr. 
Roosevelt’s warm interest in the ex-president springs not altogether 
from a high opinion of his talents or his services. 

Thomas Jefferson, Thomas H. Huxley and Charles Dickens were 
each one of eight children, while James Madison, Henry Clay, Samuel 
J. Tilden, Paul Jones, Martin Luther, Wiliam Wadsworth Longfellow 
and William Cullen Bryant were members of families consisting of 
seven. As characters coming from families of six we find W. H. 
Seward, Lewis Cass, John Milton, Thomas DeQuincey, William E. 
Gladstone and Rufus Choate, while Noah Webster, William Words- 
worth, Cardinal Richelieu, John Keats, James Russell Lowell, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, Robert Fulton, Gustavus Adolphus and Louis Agassiz 
—a goodly company, it must be owned, but only three more than those 
springing from families of ten—were each one of five children. The 
number four lays claim to the names of Charles Francis Adams, the 
Duke of Wellington, Henry D. Thoreau, John G. Whittier, Balzac and 


454 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Christopher Columbus, but of Whittier it must be added that his 
father was one of eleven children, his grandfather one of nine children 
and his greatgrandfather one of ten children. Constituting one of a 
family of three was Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allen Poe, David Hume, 
Vietor Hugo, Robert Browning and Edmund Burke. Albert Gallatin, 
Alexander Pope, Lord Byron, J. J. Rousseau and Aaron Burr make 
up the personages who can claim but a single brother or sister, though 
the mother of Alexander Pope, it is worthy of mention, was one of 
seventeen children. William M. Thackeray, Robert L. Stevenson, John 
Ruskin (whose father was hkewise an only child) and Alexander 
Hamilton were single offspring. 

A studied effort to swell the larger numbers by reference to biog- 
raphies other than those mentioned would, it is needless to say, have 
added many a name to the lists, and fuller inquiry might show that of 
those whose names appear among the smaller numbers not a few could 
boast an ancestry noteworthy for numerous offspring, as in the case of 
Whittier, Pope and others. It has not, however, been our purpose to 
warp biography in the remotest degree to support or to refute a theory. 

By casting together the historic names we have given and dividing 
the gross number of children by the total number of names we arrive 
at a figure a fraction less than seven—a number which we believe the 
statistics of population will show to exceed by not a little the number of 
children in the average family. It is true, of course, that statisticians, 
in computing the average number of children in families at large, 
would consider in the calculation families wholly without children, 
which would make the disparity less glaring—none the less the average 
progeny in families from which eminent personages have sprung 
would still be so large as to be striking. 

It is apparent, upon a careful study of the figures we have given, 
that those who were members of large families were in general distin- 
guished for great firmness of character—such as Napoleon, Peter the 
Great, Cromwell, Nelson, Washington and others. This is perhaps 
explained by the self-dependence one of many children reared by the 
same parents would acquire in the course of his youth; and the neces- 
sity of accommodating his enjoyments to those of his numerous brothers 
and sisters would serve a highly useful purpose in teaching him self- 
control, and also, perhaps, in teaching him resourcefulness. Among 
those, on the other hand, who were single children, or one of but two 
or three, no few displayed precisely the opposite qualities. However, 
we indulge in no theories—we call attention to the facts merely. 
Some reader of inquiring mind, perhaps, may be tempted to explore 
the subject farther. 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 485 


THE PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


By CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT, LL.D., D.Sc. 


JAMES STILLMAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 


V. REGENERATION AND DEATH 


Ladies and Gentlemen: In the last lecture I treated the conception 
I had formed of the processes of regeneration and told you that I 
looked upon the change which occurred first in the developing germ 
as one of rejuvenation. The process has for its technical name the 
segmentation of the ovum. The appearance of this segmentation proc- 
ess was illustrated to you by the pictures thrown upon the screen. 
Cytomorphosis is a term which we have frequently used in the course 


Fic. 51, THE SEGMENTATION OF THE OVUM OF Amblystoma punctatum, to show the 
earliest phases of development in the egg ofa newt. After A. C. Eycleshymer. 


456 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of these lectures, and I have led you, I hope, to the appreciation of the 
idea that in cytomorphosis we have at least a part of the explanation of 
old age. We have learned that the young cells which are produced by 
the segmentation of the ovum in the body in large part changed into 
old cells, and also that old cells can not go back in their development 
and again become young; so that one might easily be led to the sus- 
picion that there could be no possible new young, a conclusion obviously 
absurd, for there is a constant renewal of the generations. Some 


Fig. 52. THE SEGMENTATION OF THE OvuM oF Planorbis, to show the earliest,phases of 
development of the egg ofa pond snail. After Carl Rabl. 


device, therefore, must exist by which that which is young is perpetu- 
ated, for that which is old can not again become young, and of that 
device I should like to say something this evening. 

As a preliminary to the discussion of this interesting phenomenon, 
it is necessary to say a few more words in regard to the nuclei. You 
recall that the units, out of which the body is constructed, the cells, 
consist each of a little mass of protoplasm with a central body called 
the nucleus; and you will, I hope, recall that the increase of the proto- 
plasm and the subsequent differentiation of the cell we looked upon as 
the cause of old age, and the increase of the nucleus as the cause of 
youth, of rejuvenation. In addition to what has been said concerning 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 457 


the size of the nucleus, some further explanation is necessary, and that 
ean best be given with the aid of some illustrations upon the screen. 
The first of the pictures will, I hope, serve to recall to your minds what 
I said in regard to the process of the segmentation of the ovum. Here 
is an ovum, No. 1, a single cell, but relatively of enormous size, the 
ovum or germ of a newt, and the plate illustrates to us the gradual 
process of division of the original single cell into a number of distinct 
cells, and each of these we call a segment, and the formation of them, 
segmentation, a name which we keep from the olden time when the 
process was first observed by some French investigators, because it is 
so descriptive of the appearance presented to the eye by the changes 
which are going on. Were we to name the process now we should cer- 
tainly call it a process of cell production. 

The next of our pictures shows us the eggs of a common snail, the 
Planorbis, a little fresh-water snail, the coils of which le flat in one 
plane—hence its name. No. 1 is the original germ; No. 2 shows it 
about to divide into two; No. 3 is a side view; No. 4 a top view of 
the ovum with two segments; No. 5 is cleft into four segments; No. 6 
into eight. Nos. 7 and 8 illustrate the further progress of the cell 
multiplication; No. 9 represents the under side of the same egg of 


GAO 


uf 2 


Fic. 53. THREE SECTIONS THROUGH THE SEGMENTING OVA OF A MAMMAL, Tarsius spec- 
tabile. 1, ectoderm; 2, mesoderm; 3, entoderm; 4, Hensen’s knot; 5, entoderm; 6, mesen- 
chyma; 7, entoderm; 8, medullary groove; 9, ectoderm; 10, large motor neurone; 11, spinal 
ganglion ; 12, mesenchyma; 13, cartilage ; 14, Wolffian body; 15, kidney; 16, striated muscle ; 
17, heart muscle; 18, esophageal entoderm ; 19, tracheal entoderm; 20, liver; 21, entoderm; 22, 
motor neurone; 23, spinal ganglion; 24, dermis; 25, hypodermis; 26, cartilage; 27, 28, Wolffian 
tubules; 29, pelvis of kidney; 30, heart muscle; 31, esophageal entoderm; 32, tracheal ento- 
derm. After A. A. W. Hubrecht. 


which the top is figured as No. 8. The number of cells (segments) is 
thus constantly increasing and already it is evident that they have 
become somewhat unlike in character. Were the picture still further 
magnified, we could see that in these cells a change is going on in the 
nuclei which, however, I can better demonstrate to you by means of the 
following picture, one which we saw in the last lecture. These are 
sections through the early developing germ of a mammal named Tar- 
sius spectabile. It is a creature nearly related to the lemurs, having 


458 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


a special interest to naturalists, owing to the fact that in its early 
development it offers features of resemblance to man which are very 
striking and instructive. The plate is from a series of drawings made 
under the direction of Professor Hubrecht, the principal student of the 
development of this type of animal. Here (No. 1) we can see an early 
stage in which the germ consists of but a single cell, and at this point 
is the nucleus. Note its size and then compare it with the nuclei in 
Nos. 2 and 3 in which several of these cells, as they appear in a section, 
are represented. The cells themselves are now smaller because they 
have multiplied by the division of the original germ, but the nuclei in 
them are likewise smaller. And in the older stage, No. 3, where the 
number of cells has begun still further to increase, we see that there is 
another and more marked reduction in the size of the nuclei. Contrast 
the single nucleus of the early stage with the small nuclei of the later 
one, and notice how very striking is the change in the size. Thus dur- 
ing the early development of the individual, and it seems to be true of 
all animals, we find that there is an actual rapid reduction in the size 
of the nucleus. As we have learned that the proportion of the nucleus 
and the protoplasm is so important, we must attribute to this alteration 
in the dimensions of the nucleus great significance. 

We have next a series of figures which have interested me very 
much and which I only recently secured as the result of studies I have 
been making in my own laboratory at the Harvard Medical School. 
These pictures are now shown publicly for the first time, and record a 
fact which, so far as I know, has never yet been clearly noted and 
recognized as important by any investigator. The four figures at the 
top represent four single nuclei taken from different parts of a rabbit 
seven and one half days after the commencement of its development. 
The second set of figures, 5, 6, 7 and 8, show nuclei from different 
characteristic parts of a rabbit embryo of ten days. Note, please, the 
size of these nuclei, the curious network of threads in their interior 
and the existence, generally more or less in a central position, of a mass 
of material which stands out conspicuously and represents a condensa- 
tion of the nuclear stuff at that particular point. Such a central body 
is highly characteristic of these early stages. Next we come in the 
series of figures, from 9 to 20, stretching across the screen in two 
lines, to a rabbit embryo of twelve and one half days. Instead of 
having nuclei of large size we have now nuclei which are obviously 
small. Instead of having nuclei which are more or less alike in ap- 
pearance, we have now nuclei of great diversity. Every one of these 
figures, as you will readily see if you run your eye along from one end 
of the lines to the other, has a distinetive character of its own. In this 
period, then, of two and one half days, there has been a revolution in 
the character of the nuclei of the developing embryo. Where before 
the nuclei were alike, now they have become unlike. Two of these I 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 459 


Fic. 54. NUCLEI FROM RABBIT EMBRYOS. 14, age, seven and one halfdays. 5-8, age, ten 
days. 9-20, age, twelve aud one half days. 21-33, age, sixteen and one half days. 


should like especially to call your attention to, because they are the 
nuclei of the nerve cells—this one, No. 11, from the spinal cord and 
the right-hand one, No. 10, from the cluster of nerve cells upon the 
root of a spinal nerve. Finally, we have the series of figures from a 
rabbit of sixteen and one half days represented in the two lower rows, 
21 to 33. In these, if you will leave aside from consideration for the 
moment 22 and 23, which are obviously of a different size, all are now 
smaller than they were at twelve and one half days. Every one of the 
nuclei here represented is characteristic. We have here, for instance, 
nuclei of the excretory organ; a nucleus of the connective tissue; 
we have nuclei from the lining of the wind-pipe and the lining 
of the gullet. Every one of them differs from every one of the 
others pictured. But if we had drawings of a number of nuclei 
from the same part of the body and same kind of tissue, we should 
see that they would be essentially similar. We learn then that 
there is acquired a great diversity in the structure of the nuclei 
as well as in that of the protoplasm, of which we have seen so 
many examples in the previous lectures. You will recall, that as 
regards the size of cells the nerve cells present a noteworthy excep- 


460 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


tion in that they differ according to the size of the animal; and 
their nuclei differ also, for as the cells become big the nuclei grow 
likewise. Here are nerve-cell nuclei in the rabbit of twelve and 
one half days not differing in their dimensions essentially from the 
nuclei of other types, but in the two lower figures, 22 and 23, we 
see nuclei corresponding to the cells of the rabbit at sixteen and 
one half days. These cells have begun to enlarge, to assume the 
greater dimensions of the nerve cells, which is characteristic of the 
rabbit ; and accompanying the enlargement of the cells there has been 
an expansion of the nuclei also. But this does not affect, as you will 
readily see by the pictures upon the screen, the nuclei of any other sort 
of tissue, the nuclei of any other organ of the body. 

We must therefore add to our conceptions in regard to the relations 
of the nucleus and protoplasm, as quantitatively expressed, this further 
notion that there is during the early period of development an actual 
reduction in the size of the nucleus. When this reduction has taken 
place it is of course evident to any one at all acquainted with the prin- 
ciples of cytology that the cells are in a very different state from what 
they were in before. They are no longer such cells as they were when 
the nucleus was large, and the nuclei in the different parts of the body 
alike in character. Here the relations are fundamentally changed. 
We do not find that these nuclei ever get back from the complex variety 
of organization which they present to us in later stages to the earlier 
condition when they were all alike; yet only with cells of this uniform 
sort can development begin. We should therefore, if we reasoned only 
from the data which I have thus far presented to you, come to the con- 
clusion that reproduction would be impossible, that the cells of the 
body, having been so changed, as we have seen, are no longer capable of 
returning backwards along the path they have journeyed ; they can only 
remain where they are, or go yet further onward in the career of cyto- 
morphosis. Nature, however, has met this difficulty by a way which 
we have only recently discovered. We are not yet sure that the way 
we have discovered is the only way, that it is the universal method in 
the case of all animals for accomplishing the purpose. ‘The discovery 
of this method of providing for the perpetuation of youthfulness from 
one generation to another, the youthfulness of the cell of man, is due 
to the investigations of Professor Nussbaum, of Bonn. ‘The theory, 
which he put forward, has been verified by subsequent examinations 
and investigation, and confirmed, I am glad to say, in part by some 
very interesting and careful observations which have been made here 
in Boston. Perhaps the very best confirmation of all is the recent 
extension of our knowledge in regard to this theory which comes from 
the investigations of Dr. B. M. Allen, made at Madison, on the process 
as we find it in the developing turtle. It is really essentially a very 
simple thing. Nature seems to take some of the cells which are in the 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH. 461 


primitive condition, with the protoplasm still undifferentiated and the 
nucleus of the embryonic or simple organization, and hold them apart 
from the rest of the body, not separating them so that they come off 
and leave the body, but so that they have a different history; so that 
they escape the change which the other cells of the body must pass 
through. These cells of a simpler character are gathered together, 
kept asunder, and not allowed to progress in the development of all the 
cells which form the body proper. We have Jearned, for instance, that 
in the development of the dog-fish very early, before any organs exist, 
cells are formed into a cluster. They le by themselves, are easily 
recognized under the microscope, and they have obviously the primitive 
character which I have endeavored to explain to you. And they re- 
main such. Meanwhile as development progresses, all the remaining 
cells—all those not part of these clusters, pursue their proper careers, 
become differentiated; but the cells in the clusters do not change for 
a long period. Later as the organs become differentiated, we can 
recognize in the direct descendants of these cells, which have been 
traced from stage to stage so that their history is known with certainty, 
those cells which in the adult we call the germ cells, and which are to 
serve for the reproduction of the species. These cells are set apart at 
all periods. They represent germinal matter which is withheld from 
the metamorphosis which the rest of the body undergoes. They have 
a continuous history. Hence we bestow upon this method, under the 
conception that it is applied to secure propagation of the species, the 
term—theory of germinal continuity. It is the theory of hereditary 
transmission which I think is now universally held by all competent 
biologists. Our study of nuclei and of their relations to protoplasm 
serves to clear up in our minds, it seems to me, to some degree at least, 
the necessity which really exists for this device of germinal continuity, 
of the setting apart of certain cells of the rejuvenating sort, of the 
young sort, of the embryonic type (the term you apply to them matters 
little), which cells are those used to produce the new offspring of the 
next generation. All this, of course, fits perfectly with the doctrine 
which I have been telling you of again and again in this course of 
lectures, that the progress of differentiation is always in one direction 
and ends in the production of structure which, if it is pursued to its 
legitimate terminus, results in the degeneration and death of the cell. 
Obviously such a set of changes as I have thus indicated can not produce 
the sort of a cell which is necessary for reproduction. 

I wish there were time to enter more fully into this question of the 
size of nuclei, for there is much which might be said concerning it. 
This much more, however, ought to be said to you—that the problem of 
the size of nuclei is by no means a simple one. It has been found, for 
instance, in the experiments made upon some of the simple alge, the 
so-called Spirogyra, which every elementary student of botany probably 


462 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


has looked at in the laboratory, that by certain artificial conditions, as 
made in the experiments of Professor Gerassimow, the size of the 
nucleus can be changed in the cells, and when the size of the nucleus 
is changed, the size of the cell alters also. And again, we know that 
the nucleus provides certain chemical supplies for the hfe and fune- 
tioning of the cells. This is very strikingly the case, for instance, in 
regard to the cells which secrete. These. when they give off the ma- 
terial which they have accumulated in their protoplasm as a prepara- 
tion for the act of secretion, are found not only to reduce the bulk of 
their protoplasmic bodies, but the bulk of the nuclei as well. And we 
know again that the size of nuclei may be changed by somatic condi- 
tions, by food supply, so that in every generalization reached by the 
study of the size of nuclei, we must be very circumspect, and not fancy 
too easily that we have reached a safe conclusion unless we have taken 
into consideration all the possible factors by which the size may have 
been varied. 

In what I have said to you hitherto in regard to the power of 
growth, I have directed your attention chiefly to the power of growth 
as it exists in a cell in consequence of that cell’s condition. When the 
cell is in the young state, it can grow rapidly; it can multiply freely ; 
when it is in the old state it loses those capacities, and its growth and 
multiplication are correspondingly impeded, and if the organization is 
carried to an extreme, the growth and the multiplication of the cell 
cease altogether. 

We find, however, that there is something a httle more complicated 
yet to be considered, for it is not merely a question of the capacity of 
the cells, but also of the exercise of that capacity, which we must deal 
with. Here comes in a factor which we learn from the study of regen- 
eration. The phenomena of regeneration are very important and very 
instructive. We shall come to those in a moment. It will make our 
study of regeneration clearer, more significant, I think, if we pause for 
a moment to consider certain fluctuations in the natural development 
of the organism. We see, for instance, in the brain that early the cells 
begin to assume the character of nerve cells and that thereafter their 
multiplication ceases. But, curiously, there will be a spot in the spinal 
cord, for example, where the change of the cells into nerve cells has not 
taken place, and from that growth will go on. Cells will migrate from 
that spot and reach their ultimate destination. When the child is 
born it is very incapable of movement. There is scarcely more than 
the power of twitching about in a disorderly fashion. Its muscles can 
contract, to be sure, but any sort of motion that implies a harmonious 
working together of various muscles, the baby at birth is quite incapable 
of. This phenomenon is doubtless due to the fact that the cerebellum, 
the small brain, is as yet imperfectly developed. If we examine the 
brain of the child at birth, we find at the edge of the cerebellum a line 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 463 


along which the production of new cells is going on» These new cells 
migrate over the surface of the cerebellum without changing at all into 
nerve cells. They form a distinct layer which is well known to every 
investigator of brain structure, and presently after birth these cells 
accomplish a second migration, but in a different direction. Instead 
of moving in a constant current over the surface of the brain, each 
one takes a vertical pathway from the surface down towards the in- 
terior of the cerebellum; and arrived there it changes and becomes a 
nerve cell, or at least a part of them do; and with that the machinery of 
the cerebellum is complete. Thus, structurally, the cerebellum at 
birth is an uncompleted organ. Now, the cerebellum is that portion 
of the brain which regulates the combination of muscular movements, 
which secures that which the physiologists term coordination of move- 
ments, and it is not until the cerebellum has been perfected that it can 
perform this function. Were there not some provision of this special 
sort for allowing cells to be produced and added to the brain, the full 
complexity of the brain could not be attained, because after the cells 
have begun to change into nerve cells they lose their power of multiph- 
cation, and this is a device very exquisite in its working to supply to the 
brain the requisite number of cells to give it its full measure of com- 
plexity. 

Another instance of the reservation of cells of a simple type is 
afforded us by the skin, about which I shall have something more to 
say in a few moments when we speak of the process of regeneration. 
It is not only in the period of childhood, and not only in the cerebellum, 
that we find cells exist such as I have just described to you, but it is 
in other parts of the body also and at other periods of life that we find 
the like phenomena ; and in part I have already referred to these. You 
remember I told you in a previous lecture there is always in the body, 
even at the extreme of life, a store of cells of the young type, which is 
garnered in the marrow of the bones. The cells in question can mul- 
tiply, and their descendants in part undergo a change in consequence 
of which they are converted into blood corpuscles. The undifferen- 
tiated or young cells are preserved in the marrow precisely for the pur- 
pose of making up the necessary number of blood corpuscles to replace 
those which are lost either by accident or in consequence of normal 
physiological processes. J mentioned to you that in the lining of the 
intestine there is a constant loss of cells and we find in every simple 
gland of the intestine, in every little gland of the stomach, a center for 
cell production, a center where there is a group of cells which are not 
differentiated, but retain their simple organization. 

I could multiply these instances almost indefinitely, but perhaps it 
will be better to call your attention to an illustration of quite a different 
sort. We know that in order to have a very complex organization, the 
number of cells in the body must be very large indeed. Obviously a 


464 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


small insect, a mosquito or a little beetle, whatever it may be, is not 
big enough to have a great many cells; and, unless it has a great many, 
it can not attain the differentiation of complicated organs such as we 
possess. Now, the lower animals are born, so to speak, early, and as 
soon as they hatch out, they have to support themselves. We see that, 
for instance, in caterpillars. They are born very little creatures, but 
each caterpillar must look out for itself, obtain its own food, move 
about to that food, must, when the food is swallowed, digest it, and 
must carry on the correlated functions of secretion and excretion; it 
must breathe. In order to do all this the larva, or young caterpillar, 
to follow our special instance, must have some differentiation already 
established; but, as we have already learned, differentiation impedes 
growth. In other words, in such a larva the multiplication of cells is 
held back by the very demands of the conditions of its existence. If it 
is to have organs which are to function, it must have differentiated 
parts, and, if it is differentiated, its growth power must be sacrificed. 

Now how has nature proceeded in order to produce a higher type of 
animal, one in which the number of cells is much greater? Very in- 
geniously. She provides the developing organism with a food supply 
which it carries itself. If, for instance, you recall the egg of the 
salamander, which I showed you upon the screen, you will remember 
that that is a structure of considerable size, and its size is due to 
the accumulation of food material, material which we designate 
by the term yolk granules, which lie in the living protoplasm of that 
germ. This supply of food is so great that it will last the organ- 
ism a considerable period. While it is growing it has nothing to do 
but to digest that food supply which it already possesses. It does not 
have to exert itself to obtain it, and no further digestive process is 
necessary than that inherent in all living protoplasm. So the young 
salamanders develop in a most advantageous condition, and can actu- 
ally produce a much greater number of cells because it is possible, with 
this internal food supply, for the growth to go on only with the cells 
of the embryonic or youthful type for a considerable period, and then, 
when their number has considerably increased, steps in the process of 
differentiation. 

In the higher animals this accumulation of food for the nourish- 
ment of the germ is carried yet further. As you know, the egg of the 
bird is much bigger than that of the salamander, and in the highest 
animals, in the mammals, there are other special contrivances which 
nature has introduced to secure ample and adequate nourishment of 
the developing germ. There the perfection of the process is made yet 
greater and in these forms there is a long period during which the pro- 
duction of cells goes on; the cells all remain simple, and by the time 
they begin to change the number of cells is so great that the possibili- 
ties of an infinite variety, almost, of peculiarities in them are given, and 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 455 


there are cells enough to allow this variety to be worked out. This we 
call the embryonic type of development. 

We see, therefore, that nature has recognized a restriction which 
she herself has put upon development, the restriction which obliges 
development, if it is to be ample, to prolong the accumulation of the 
undifferentiated cells. In response to that condition, she substitutes 
for higher types of animal that development which we call embryonic, 
leaving for the lower type that which we call larval. Thus we see in 
the growth and formation of the higher animals and in the history of 
the comparative development of the animal kingdom, fresh illustra- 
tions of the great importance of the young type of cells. 

We can see the same thing also in regard to regeneration. The 
regenerative process depends to a large extent upon partial differentia- 
tion, or even upon its total absence. Regeneration is a most interest- 
ing and wonderful process. I took pains only this afternoon to look 
at that famous classic by the Dutch Abbé Trembley on hydroids or 
polyps as he calls them. “The Fresh Water Polyps,” a book published 
in 1744, was well printed, and on such good paper that it looks to-day 


<- 


Fic. 55. VIGNETTE FROM TREMBLEY’S CLASSIC MEMOIR, representing Trembley making 
his experim2nts on regeneration in fresh-water polyps. 


almost like a new book. He made the curious experiment of cutting 
one of these minute fresh water polyps—they are perhaps an eighth 
of an inch long—in two, and made the startling discovery that each 
half of the polyp would make up what the other half had deprived it 
of; each half, in other words, would become a new polyp. That which 
was lost was regenerated. After him came a series of yet more remark- 
able experiments by the famous Italian naturalist, Spallanzani, one of 
the masters of experimental research, and he discovered that regenera- 
tion was a property which was not peculiar by any means to polyps, 


VOL. LXxI.—30 


466 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


but existed in the earth-worms, and even among vertebrates; for he it 
was who discovered that if the head of an earthworm be cut off, the 
worm will form a new head with a new brain and a new mouth. He 
first discovered that if you cut off the tail of a salamander a new tail 
will grow out. He it was, moreover, who discovered that this power 
of replacing the lost part is greater in the young—greater in the earlier 
stage than in the later. ‘This indicates in a general way the nature 
and process of regeneration. We have many kinds of regeneration; 
we may have that of the single cell or that of the whole organism. 

We pass now to the next of our slides, which represents a creature 
of the kind called Stentor. It isa single cell. Here is the nucleus of 


FIG. S56. Stentor. 


the cell; its protoplasmic body is large, and something of the structure 
of this I have told you in a previous lecture. A German investigator, 
Professor Gruber, has succeeded in dividing one of these Stentors, a 
unicellular creature, animalcule, common in fresh water, into three 
parts in such a method of cutting as is illustrated by the figure on the 
left. Each of the three parts will then restore itself and become a 
complete Stentor. In such experiments the protoplasm over the nu- 
cleus begins to grow; gradually the original form is again assumed ; 
the creature grows larger and larger, until each piece acquires the 
parent size, and, so far as we can see with the ordinary microscopic 
examination, identically the parental structure. That which was lost 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 467 


has been regenerated. We learn, then, that regeneration is a faculty 
which a single cell, a single unit, may possess. 

Our next picture demonstrates a similar phenomenon. These are 
muscle fibers which have been injured. Now every muscle fiber con- 
tains in its interior its contractile substance, in regard to which I 
have already spoken to you, but it also contains a certain amount of 
substance which is still undifferentiated protoplasm. Now when a 


Fic. 57. STRIATED MUSCLE FIBERS IN PROCESS OF REGENERATION. 


muscle fiber of this sort is injured, we find that the muscular structure, 
properly so called, will in many cases quite disappear, but then the 
protoplasmic material, which is the undifferentiated substance, will 
begin to grow, and the nuclei will begin to multiply. This may happen 
at the end of a muscle fiber, producing there a considerable mass of 
protoplasm, with nuclei multiplying in it, or we may find a chain of 
nuclei, each with its separate court of protoplasm body; such nuclei 
will multiply. When the increase of the undifferentiated protoplasm 
has gone on far enough, the injured muscle will produce again the 
muscular substance proper—the contractile fibrils. Muscular fiber, in 
other words, can be regenerated by itself. 

A similar thing to this happens when a nerve is cut across. The 
nerve fiber, which is connected with the nerve cell from which it arose, 
is capable of growing out again. It can regenerate itself, and that 
is a well-known phenomenon, and in many surgical cases it becomes a 
phenomenon of very great importance. 

Let us go back to another familiar figure. Here is represented the 
lining layer of the cesophagus with the cells composing it, the upper 
anes being horny, the lower ones those which are capable of active 


nm 


468 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


growth. We are rather dull. We do not often stop to think about 
things. We buy a new horse which comes from the country, has never 
seen a train; drive him to the station, and are frightened, perhaps, 
because the horse himself is so much alarmed—possibly have a narrow 
escape because of the excitement which his first sight of a train causes 
him. But that horse, after a few months’ discipline, will scarcely turn 
his ear, much less his head, to look at the train which a short time 
before so frightened him and held his attention that nothing else could 
get into his mind save the fright that train gave him. So we, too, 
act a good deal like the horse. We see a thing the first time and it 
surprises us; the next time it seems like an old acquaintance, a thing 


Fig. 58. SECTION OF THE EPITHELIAL LINING OF THE HUMAN CisuPHAGUs. 


familiar and therefore unregarded. I say this apropos of the skin. 
How many of you have thought what the lesson of the skin is in 
regard to the power of growth? Spring is coming; we shall soon be 
taking to our boats, rowing or canoeing, and the first day we do so 
doubtless we shall have blisters upon our hands, and the outer part of 
the skin, raised by the blister, will probably fall off and be lost alto- 
gether. The softer, underlying skin will be exposed, will be sensitive 
and uncomfortable for a while, but soon the cells behind the surface 
will assume a horny character, the cells underneath will grow and 
multiply, and presently the wound will be healed over. Did you ever 
stop to think that that means that there is a reserve power of growth 
in the skin all the time? always ready to act, to come forward, waiting 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 469 


only for the chance, and that there is besides something which keeps 
it in, which holds it back, which stops it? We call this stopping 
physiological function—inhibition ; we say that the growth of the skin 
is inhibited; though in the deep part of the skin all the time there 
are the cells ready to grow as soon as that power of inhibition is taken 
away; while it is active they will not grow. The simple blister tells 
us all that. There is, then, a power of regulation which expresses 
itself in this inhibitory effect. When a salamander has its tail cut 
off by the experimenter and the new tail grows, just enough is pro- 
duced. The new tail is like the old. The tissues grow out until the 
volume of that which is lost is replaced, and then they stop. But if 
the tail should be cut off again, regeneration would occur again. The 
experiments may be repeated many times over. It indicates to us that 
always the growing power is there, but it is held in check. What that 
check may be is one of the great discoveries we are now longing for. 
The discovery, when made, is likely to prove of great practical im- 
portance. The phenomenon of things escaping from inhibitory control 
and overgrowing, is familiar. Such escapes we encounter in tumors, 
cancers, sarcoma and various other abnormal forms of growth that 
occur in the body. They are due to the inherent growth power of 
cells kept more or less in the young type, which for some reason have 
got beyond the control of the inhibitory force, the regulatory power 
which ordinarily keeps them in. No picture of the growth or develop- 
ment of the living animal would be complete if it confined its attention 
only to the power of growth in relation to cytomorphosis. It must 
also include the contemplation and study of this regulatory power of 
the organs. Experiments are being made in many places, minds are 
at work in many laboratories upon this problem of regulation of 
structure and growth. Much is to be hoped from such researches; 
not merely insight into the normal development, but insight also into 
the abnormal. Nothing, perhaps, is more to be desired at the present 
time than that we should gain scientific insight into the regulatory 
power which presides over growth. It would be of immense medical 
importance. Could we understand it, and could we from our under- 
standing derive some practical application of our scientific discoveries 
in this field, we could say of it justly that it was as noteworthy a con- 
tribution to medical knowledge as the discovery of the germs of disease, 
and would doubtless prove equally beneficial to mankind. Although, 
then, the study which I have been laying before you must necessarily 
seem in many respects abstruse and far away from practical applica- 
tions, we learn that it is not really so, and that it leads by no very 
remote path to the consideration of problems the useful applications of 
which are immediately obvious to every one. 

We find in the process of regeneration that it is always the young 
cell which plays the principal part. This is beautifully illustrated in 


470 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the picture upon the screen. There is a little creature, which many 
of you have seen in the garden, consisting of joints, which rolls itself 
up into a little ball, and therefore is often called the “pill-bug.” It 
is not, however, an insect or a bug, properly so-called, but belongs 
to a family of crustaceans. It has on its head a little feeler which 
we call the antenna. The particular kind of arthropod, the antenna 


Fig. 59. SECTIONS THROUGH THE ANTENNA OF Oniscus {IN VARIOUS STAGES OF REGENERA- 
TION AFTER AMPUTATION. After Ost. 


of which has been studied and drawings of it made to furnish us this 
plate, is known by the name of Oniscus. In his researches the experi- 
menter, Dr. Ost, cut off the antenna in the middle of a joint and 
found that it rapidly healed over. Here is pictured the process of 
healing going on. Part of the antenna has been cut off in this case, 
the wound was healed over here, No. 1, a, the new tissue has begun to 
grow, No. 2, b, and the cells at this point are very simple in character. 
They spread out and grow, and then, within the interior of the hard 
shell of the feeler, a retraction of the substance occurs, and the new 
growing cells within this space gradually begin to shape themselves out, 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 471 


No. 3, 6, and we see presently an accumulation of cells which is 
assuming a definite form, No. 4, b, that in the next figure has clearly 
become the promise or beginning of a new terminal joint, Fig. 60. 
The minute study of this process has shown that the regeneration 
depends practically exclusively upon the cells of the young type, and 
that after they have grown out and accumulated here in this manner, 
No. 3, 6, some of them undergo differentiation, becoming muscle cells; 
others change in the manner indicated here, 
where we see a commencing alteration of 
the nuclei, which is further accented in 
Fig. 60, and leads to such a grouping of the 
cells that the glands, which were originally 
present there, are also reproduced. The 
regenerative process, then, clearly illustrates 
to us from another point of view the great 
importance of the young type of cells. 

This completes the evidence which my 
time permits me to lay before you in order 
to convince you that really the young type 
of cells is physiologically and functionally 
important, that it really does possess the 
power of growth such as I have attributed 
to it. 

We will pass now to another part of our 
subject, with which the lecture will close. 
Age represents the result of a progressive 
cytomorphosis. We have learned that of 
cytomorphosis death is the end, the culmina- 
tion. It is a necessary result of the modifi- 
cation and change of structure which goes 
on in every individual of our species and of 
all the higher animals. We are familiar gacchmne Awstan on Onin 
with the death of cells. It occurs constant- ¢vs- After Ost. Advanced stage, in 

A which the young new joint is al- 
ly and, as I have endeavored to explain to r;eaay shaped within the old shell. 
Voustbep aye ay eres part. in life, It pro- @ cicatricial tissue |-0; resenexated 

. = tissue: j, new joint; cu, cuticula 
motes the performance of various functions (old shell). Magnified. 
which are of advantage to the body as a 
whole, which could not be accomplished without the death of some cells. 
But the death which we have in mind when we speak ordinarily of death 
is something different from this. It is the death of the whole. But 
even the death of the whole has its strange complications. A great 
deal of our knowledge of the functioning of the body is due to the 
fact that the parts do not die when, as we commonly say, the body as 
a whole, the individual, is dead. The organ is alive and well. One 


472 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of the most impressive sights which I have ever seen has been the 
sight of the heart of a quadruped, a dog, continuing to beat after it 
had been taken out from the body. The dog was dead—the rest of 
his body was dead—but the heart lay upon the physiologist’s table 
beating. The experimenter could supply it with the necessary circula- 
tion. He could give stimuli to it, and under these favorable condi- 
tions make important discoveries in regard to the functioning of the 
heart. So too I myself made experiments upon a muscle once part of 
a living dog, separated entirely from the parent body, supphed with 
its own artificial circulation, and from those experiments was able to 
discover some new unexpected results in regard to the nutrition of 
the muscle, and the changes which chemically go on in it. This over- 
living, then, of the parts of the body, their separate life, is something 
which we must familiarize ourselves with, and the great importance of 
which we must carefully acknowledge, for much of the benefit which 
the medical practitioner is able to render to us and to our friends 
to-day is due to the knowledge which has been derived experimentally 
from the study of the over-living or surviving parts of a body which as 
a whole was dead. 

Death is not a universal accompaniment of life. In the lower 
organisms death does not occur as a natural and necessary result of 
life. Death with them is purely the result of an accident, some ex- 
ternal cause. Natural death is a thing which has been acquired in 
the process of evolution. Why should it have been acquired? You 
will, I think, readily answer this question if you hold that the views 
which I have been bringing before you have been well defended, by 
saying that it is due to differentiation, that when the cells acquire the 
additional faculty of passing beyond the simple stage to the more com- 
plicated organization, they lose something of their vitality, something 
of their power of growth, something of their possibilities of perpetua- 
tion; and as the organization in the process of evolution becomes higher 
and higher, this necessity for change becomes more and more im- 
perative. But it involves the end. Differentiation leads up, as its 
inevitable conclusion, to death. Death is the price we are obliged to 
pay for our organization, for the differentiation which exists in us. Is 
it too high a price? To that organization we are indebted for the 
great array of faculties with which we are endowed. To it we are 
indebted for the means of appreciating the sort of world, the kind of 
universe, in which we are placed. To it we are indebted for all the 
conveniences of existence, by which we are able to carry on our physio- 
logical processes in a far better and more comfortable manner than can 
the lower forms of life. ‘To it we are indebted for the possibility of 
those human relations which are among the most precious parts of our 
experience. And we are indebted to it also for the possibility of the 
higher spiritual emotions. All this is what we have bought at the 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 473 


price of death, and it does not seem to me too much for us to pay. 
We would not, I think, any of us, wish to go back to the condition of 
the lowly organism which might perpetuate its own kind and suffer 
death only as a result of accident in order that we might live on this 
earth perpetually; we would not think of it fora moment. We accept 
the price. Death of the whole comes, as we now know, whenever some 
essential part of the body gives way—sometimes one, sometimes 
another ; perhaps the brain, perhaps the heart, perhaps one of the other 
internal organs may be the first in which the change of cytomorphosis 
goes so far that it can no longer perform its share of work, and failing, 
brings about the failure of the whole. This is the scientific view of 
death. It leaves death with all its mystery, with all its sacredness; 
we are not in the least able at the present time to say what life is, still 
less, perhaps, what death is. We say of certain things—they are alive; 
of certain others—they are dead; but what the difference may be, what 
is essential to those two states, science is utterly unable to tell us at 
the present time. It is a phenomenon with which we are so familiar 
that perhaps we do not think enough about it. 

In the next lecture there will be some other general aspects of our 
subject to present to you, and a formulation of the general conclusions 
towards which all the lectures have aimed. 


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THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


475 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


MORTALITY STATISTICS 

Tue Bureau of the Census has just 
issued its annual report on mortality 
statistics for the year 1905. There is 
surely nothing more dramatic than 
tables of death rates, however uninter- 
esting they may appear to the casual 
observer. Thus the death rate in In- 
diana and in Michigan is scarcely above 
13 a thousand, whereas in European 
Russia it is 33. If the population of 
European Russia is assumed to be 130 
million, this means that of the 4,290.- 
000 people who die annually in that 
country 2,600,000 would not die if the 
conditions were as favorable as they 
are in Indiana and Michigan. There 
is no reason to suppose that the Rus- 
sians are naturally less vigorous than 
those living in our central states, and 
this great loss of life—besides which 
the number of those killed in the Rus- 
sian-Japanese war is_ insignificant— 
must be due to conditions of life which 
could be remedied. It is probable that 
in the cases of the states quoted, and 
in some parts of Great Britain, Nor- 
way and Sweden where the rate is 
equally low, it is still very much high- 
er than it should be. We may hope 
that the publication of the death rates 
may itself have a tendency to call at- 
tention to the enormous annua! sacri- 
fice of life, and it is consequently for- 
tunate that the Bureau of the Census 
is now able to publish annually a vol- 
ume of statistics and that the area 
covered by the statistics tends to in- 
crease. 

In 1890 the states in which registra- 
tion was effective had a population of 
about twenty million, and in addition 
there were registration cities having a 
population of about ten million. In 
the year 1906 the states of California, 


Colorado, Maryland, Pennsylvania and 
South Dakota were added to those 
which maintain effective registration. 
The population now included in the 
registration area is over thirty-six mil- 
lion, or nearly half the total popula- 
tion. 

Indiana and Michigan have the low- 
est death rates among the registration 
states; the death rates being, respect- 
ively, 15.3 and 14.7 in their cities, and 
12.7 and 12.8 in their rural districts. 
In New York City the death rate was 
19.4 as the average of the five years 
from 1900 to 1904. The cities having 
the lowest death rates were St. Joseph, 
Mo., St. Paul, Minn., and Minneapolis, 
Minn., where rates, respectively, of 7.6, 
10 and 10.6 are assigned. Charleston, 
S. C., has the highest death rate—31.3 
—but here, as in other southern states 
with abnormally high death rates, the 
incidence is on the negro population. 
The death rate at Charleston, for ex- 
ample, is 22.9 for whites and 44.3 for 
negroes. 

Tuberculosis of the lungs is still by 
far the most fatal of all diseases, caus- 
ing 172 deaths each year for each hun- 
dred thousand of the population. It 
is followed by pneumonia with 135, 
heart disease with 121, diarrhea with 
113, and nephritis and Bright’s disease 
with 94. There is a tendency for dis- 
eases such as apoplexy and cancer, 
which affect mainly elderly persons, to 
increase, and this is of course a grati- 
fying indication that the relative num- 
ber of those living beyond middle age 
is increasing. Contagious diseases nat- 
urally show large fluctuations, but 
searlet fever appears to have decidedly 
decreased, the number of deaths per 
thousand having fallen from 12 to 7. 

We reproduce diagrams originally 


476 


1811 1821 1831 1841 


MARK. 
O opts 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


1851 1861 1871 1881 


AVERAGE ANNUAL BIRTH RATES OF CERTAIN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES PER 1,000 
OF POPULATION, BY DECADES (STILLBIRTHS EXCLUDED). 


prepared under the auspices of the | 


French government showing graphic- 
ally the number of 
births and deaths per thousand of pop- 
.ulation in those countries which pub- 
lish adequate statistics. It will be 
noted that in all parts of the civilized 
the birth and the 
death rates tend to decrease, and that, 


average annual 


world both rates 
as a rule, those countries having the 
lowest death rates have also the lowest 
As is well known, the low- 
est birth rate is that of the French— 
22.2 during the decade 1891 to 1900 
This is followed very 


birth rates. 


and still falling. 
closely by the figures for Ireland—23. 


There is then a break to Sweden and 
Switzerland, with birth rates, respect- 
ively, of 27.2 and 28.1. The highest 
birth rates recorded are in Servia and 
Roumania. Germany has a birth rate 
of 36.1; England and Wales of 29.9. 
During the last twenty years the birth 
rate has fallen in every country and 
the death rate has also fallen in prac- 
The lowest death 
rates, 16.1 and 16.3, respectively, are 


tically all countries. 


in Sweden and Norway. The highest, 


33.4 and 30, respectively, are in Russia 
and Spain. 


It should be remembered that the 


birth rate and the death rate have 


THE PROGRESS OF 


1801 
To 


1811 1821 1831 


SCIENCE 477 
1851 1861 1871 1881 1891 
To TO To TO To 
860 


1S 


AVERAGE ANNUAL DEATH RATES OF CERTAIN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES PER 1,000 
OF POPULATION, BY DECADES (STILLBIRTHS EXCLUDED). 


probably decreased even more rapidly | the admission of the officers of state 


than the statistics show, as births and 
deaths, a rule, tend to more 
accurately recorded now than formerly. 
Thus it is by no means certain that the 
birth rate in England increased from 
the period 1841-50 to 1871-80. Even 
now when an infant dies at an early 
age, the registration of both birth and 
death is sometimes not recorded, and 
this custom was doubtless formerly 
more prevalent than it is at present. 


as be 


THE GROWTH OF THE 


UNIVERSITIES 


STATE 


THE first bulletin of the Carnegie | 


Foundation, which is concerned with 


| 


universities to retiring allowances, con- 
tains a good deal of interesting in- 
formation in regard to the growth of 
these institutions, part of which is 
summarized in the accompanying table. 
The first column gives the date of 
founding, and some may be surprised 
to find that the first state universities 
were. established in the south, Mich- 
igan, often looked upon as the oldest 
state university, being in fact the tenth 
in order. Another circumstance per- 
haps not generally known is the fact 
that two state universities were estab- 
lished in Ohio at the early dates of 
1804 and 1824, and that the Ohio State 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


478 


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THE PROGRESS OF 


University at Columbus was not estab- 
lished until 1870. The University of 
Florida, established in 1904, makes the 
number of state universities thirty- 
nine, and, as there are three in Ohio, 
the number of states and territories 
having state universities is thirty- 
seven. 

Nearly all the universities of the 
eastern states have at one time or an- 
other received appropriations from the 
state and have been to a certain extent 
under state control, and at present 
certain universities, such as Pennsyl- 
vania and Cornell, may be regarded as 
partly state institutions. 
the governor of the state is a member 
of the board of trustees and appropria- 
tions are made by the state for the 
support of the university. 

The next column of the table gives 
the numbers of instructors and stu- 


dents, according to which the Univer- | 


sity of New Mexico, with 89 students 
and nineteen instructors, is the small- 
est of the institutions, while the largest 
are Wisconsin, with 3,571 students and 


317 instructors; Minnesota, with 3,955 | 


students and 317 instructors; Illinois, 


tors; 
and 332 instructors, and California, 
with 4,173 students and 403 instruc- 
tors. According to the figures annu- 
ally compiled by Professor Tombo and 
published in Science, the five largest 
universities which are independent of 
the state are Harvard, with 5,343 stu- 
dents and 583 instructors; Chicago, 
with 4,731 students and 341 instruc- 


tors; Columbia, with 4,650 students 
and 600 instructors; Cornell, with 
4,075 students and 525 instructors; 


and Pennsylvania, with 3,934 students 
and 375 instructors. It will thus be 
seen that the leading corporations do 
not differ greatly in size. 


The table next gives the annual tui- | 


tion fees, whence it appears that Indi- 
ana, Arkansas, Nevada and Oklahoma 
charge no fees, while in a number of 
other states the fees are nominal. 


In each case | 


SCIENCE 479 
eral of the universities charge higher 
fees to non-residents than to residents 
of the state. Perhaps the most inter- 
esting data on the table are the com- 
parisons of the annual income apart 


| from tuition fees of these universities 


in 1896 and 1906. There is here an 
increase that holds for every institu- 
tion without exception and which is 
certainly most remarkable. Thus the 
annual income of the ten principle uni- 
versities of the middle west was in 
1896 $1,689,200, whereas ten years 
later it was $4,577,700. The figures 
given in the table are, however, some- 
what obscured by the fact that there 
is no distinction made between appro- 
priations for current income and for 
new buildings. The two following col- 
umns give the approximate total ap- 
propriations from the state and gifts 
from private sources, showing clearly 
how largely state universities are de- 
pendent on the public for support. 
Thus Illinois, which has received $6,- 
000,000 from the state, has only re- 
ceived $25,000 by private gift. Some 
of the universities, as Michigan and 


| California, have, however, received con- 
with 4,074 students and 408 instruc- | 


Michigan, with 4,136 students | 


siderable gifts. In his report President 
Pritchett urges that the universities 
must depend either on public appro- 
priations or on private gifts, and this 
point of view is on the whole supported 


| by these figures and by conditions in 


Sev- | 


| foreign 


The 
however, are not necessarily final. 


conditions, 
In 
New York City, for example, there are 


countries. 


admirable museums of natural history 
and of the fine arts and botanical and 
zoological gardens which are supported 
almost equally by the city and by pri- 
vate gifts. 


SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 
We regret to record the deaths of 
Major James Carroll, U. 8. A., known 
for his researches on yellow fever, and 
of Professor W. O. of Wes- 
leyan University, known for his re- 


Atwater, 


searches on nutrition. 


480 POPULAR 

An institution for the suppression of 
tuberculosis is planned in Germany in 
honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary 
of the discovery of tuberculosis by 
Professor Robert Koch. Appeal is 
made for contributions sufficient to 
make the institution a tribute of grati- 
tude to Koch, similar to those with 
which the name of Pasteur has been 
honored in France and that of Lister 
in England—A “Morley Chemical 
Laboratory,” named in honor of Dr. 
Edward W. Morley, emeritus professor 


SCIENCE 


MONTHLY 


of chemistry, will be built at Western 
Reserve University during the present 
year. 

Proressor A. N. SKINNER, of the 
U. S. Naval Observatory, has retired 
on reaching the age limit of 62 years. 
—Dr. Ellwood Mead, chief of irriga- 
tion investigation of the U. 8. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture and professor of 
irrigation in the University of Cali- 
fornia, has accepted the office of chief 
of irrigation investigations for Aus- 
tralia. 


JS sb aab 
Peewee 5 Cl Ne 
MEO INA ERE: ¥ 


DECEMBER, 1907 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 


By PROFESSOR BASHFORD DEAN 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


SIA, whatever its contributions to art and science, has, humanely 
speaking, taught little to the west as to either the means of form- 

ing its illustrative collections or the manner of displaying them; in fact, 
as far as I am aware, the trend of Asiatic culture has been rather to 
deter its people from collecting. For such an interest, to pure eastern 
ideals, would foster. the heresy that the things of this world are to be 
the more highly prized: or, in another direction, it might suggest unde- 
sirable ostentation. It is from the latter point of view, in fact, that a 
Japanese collector will still decline to exhibit his treasures outside of 
the circle of his intimate friends. In any event, whatever be the rea- 
sons, I think it may safely be said that comprehensive collections were 
early unknown in the east. In India, land of fabulous riches, the pre- 
European collections appear to have been confined to the cabinets of 
rulers and the wealthiest civilians, and were made up largely of deco- 
rated objects, ivories, jewels, arms, now and then menageries—the last 
sometimes including exotic animals. Such collections were usually 
little more than a gathering of valuable heirlooms, objects obtained . 
during travels, and curiosities generally.1 And similar conditions pre- 
vailed, as far as I was able to find, in China. In Japan, small collec- 
tions were, and are, very numerous. Professor Morse, knowing his 
theme more accurately than Huish, describes the Japanese as a nation of 
collectors; but such collections, as I think all will agree, are notable for 
their quality rather than their comprehensiveness, and are formed in the 


1T recall, as a typical specimen in such an early collection a copy in ivory 
of a human skeleton which a rajah (of Tanjore) had caused to be prepared in 
Paris—for a genuine one could not, according to the rules of caste, be used in 
his anatomical inquiries. 


482 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


strictest sense for private use. In Japan, as elsewhere in Asia prior to 
the invasion of European methods, there was not, I believe, a single 
public musewm, unless indeed we regard as museums the storehouses of 
temples. These, however, contained little more than the reserve stock 
from which objects for temple service or decoration were chosen. 

The earhest Asiatic museum appears to have been established in the 
Moluccas, about half a century after their definite settlement by the 
Dutch, and in the classic work? of Georgius Everhardus Rumphius, 
written at the close of the seventeenth century, we have a record of the 
number and variety of objects which had been gathered together by this 
enterprising collector in the room of curiosities in Amboyna (Amboin- 
sche Rariteitkamer). It is evident that this collection was well repre- 
sented in mollusks, crustaceans and echinoderms. It contained a number 
of minerals and a small collection of fossils, the latter representing many 
groups. The descriptive catalogue of Rumphius, it may be mentioned, 
is well known to naturalists as containing the first account of the soft 
parts of the chambered nautilus, accompanied, too, by a figure which 
for a century and a half proved the most accurate in existence. Few 
details appear as to the organization of this pioneer Asiatic museum. 
Its founder was a well-to-do merchant in Amboyna, and it was prob- 
ably installed in one of his warehouses. As far as I am aware, there is 
no proof that it was formally opened, in the sense of a modern museum, 
but by analogy of contemporary collections it is probable that the curi- 
osity room of Amboyna was as freely open to visitors as the similar 
collections in London, Dresden or Paris. 

In India the modern public museum found its definite foothold at 
the time of the extension of British rule. At the end of the eighteenth 
century, there were already active collectors among the officials of the 
East India Company, but in general the material then collected, 
whether ethnological, plant or animal, found its way into Europe. 
In the work of Linneus, for example, we find record of many Indian 
species which had been sent him by European collectors. It was by 
such early workers in various Indian cities that societies were formed 
which became of considerable importance toward the middle of the 
nineteenth century. And it is to these local societies that the origin of 
many of the recent museums is due. 

In the present paper it is not my plan to refer even in outline to 
all museums of Asia. Those of Japan are so important that they 
might conveniently be reserved for a separate paper. The Dutch mu- 
seums, moreover, I have not had an opportunity of visiting, nor yet 
those on the continent in the Malayan states. When in Calcutta, I 


* Amsterdam, Francois Halma, 1705. Part of the collection, as Mr. C. 
Davies Sherborn has kindly ascertained for me, was later sent to Europe and 
sold, 1682, to Cosmo de Medici III. It was subsequently transferred to Austria 
as part of the Medicean inheritance. 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 483 


was told by Dr. Annandale of the interesting museum at Kuala Lumpur 
in Selangor, the federal capital of the Malayan states, which promises 
toa be most complete. A building is here in process of construc- 
tion, which will make this museum twice the size, for example, of 
the well-known museum at Colombo. Its present curator is the orni- 
thologist, Mr. H. C. Robinson, formerly of Liverpool. I learned also 
of the museum at Thai Ping, capital of Perak, which contains a remark- 
able ethnological cabinet and an extensive collection of Malayan rep- 
tiles.. This museum, under the direction of Mr. Leonard Wray, is, I 
was told, one of the most interesting in Asia. The museum at Bankok, 
on the other hand, is less important, in spite of the apparently more 
favorable conditions under which it has grown up. And its arrange- 
ment leaves much to be desired. 

Of the museums in the Dutch East Indies, that at Batavia is easily 
the first, containing extensive local collections, both ethnological and 
faunistic. A second museum, at Trevandrum on the west coast of 
Java, has received the favorable comment of experts. Its collection 
of whales is especially complete. 

The museums in China may be dismissed with but few words. In 
the Chinese treaty-ports there is little interest in museum matters on 
the part of resident Europeans, whose ways are commercial, and under 
existing conditions the Chinese authorities can hardly be expected to 
grant funds for such purposes. The best Chinese museum is the 
one at Hong Kong. It has a separate building with well-lighted 
galleries, and exhibits a fairly extensive series of natural history and 
ethnological objects, coins, etc. It is clear, however, that its resources 
are very restricted, and such a museum, whatever its effect upon the 
oriental visitor, is apt to be uninspiring. In Peking, however, in con- 
nection with the Imperial University of China, an important museum 
will soon be opened; it may be mentioned that this branch of the gov- 
ernmental educational work has been largely directed by the Japanese. 

The museums of the following cities may be given a more detailed 
report, viz., Singapore, Colombo, Madras, Calcutta, Lahore and Jaipur. 
The museum in Bombay is said to be uninteresting, and I neglected to 
visit it. 

SINGAPORE 

The museum at Singapore, known as the “ Raffles Museum,” had its 
origin (1844) as a proprietary library in which local curiosities came 
to be preserved. In 1874 the institution was taken over by the 
British government (Straits Settlements), and in 1887 the present 
building was provided to house a collection acquired at the time of the 
Victorian Jubilee. The building is well proportioned, suitably lighted 
and planned, Fig. 1, but too small for its needs, and the authorities 
are now constructing an addition. This will be of the same size as the 


484 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


pat 
a 
= 
Ss 
4 
Si 
2 


Fic. 1. SINGAPORE. ‘}HE RAFFLES MUSEUM AND LIBRARY. 


earlier building, and is to be connected with it by a wide gallery pass- 
ing from behind the main staircase. Each building measures about 
250 feet long by 50 feet wide; the cost of both buildings amounts to 
about $100,000. Building, it will be seen, is distinctly less expensive 
than in the Occident ! 

The site of the museum is in a small city park. Entering the 
building from the town side, one passes into a spacous rotunda well 
filled with cases, and giving one the preliminary color of the local 
fauna. Prominent, for example, is a tiger fairly wel mounted, and 
with a jungly background. This huge creature had been, I was told, 
the household pet of a local Rajah. One may mention, incidentally, 
that the tiger is decidedly on the increase in the Malay Peninsula, 
indeed even in the immediate neighborhood of Singapore. The col- 
lection of insects in the museum is important. In the rotunda is a 
series of native beetles and orthopters, including among the former, 
wonderful longicorns and Scarabeeids; and, among the orthopters, 
the best examples I have seen of leaf insects and walkingsticks. At 
one side of the rotunda is the entrance of the Raffles library (now 
grown to 30,000 volumes), which is devoted largely to works dealing 
with local natural history and ethnology. At the back of the rotunda, 
one ascends the stairs and enters the natural-history gallery and the 
ethnological rooms. Among noteworthy exhibits I recall the collection 
of local butterflies and moths, and a series, possibly the best extant, 
of paradise birds. The reptiles include turtles, crocodiles, and a 
great number of local snakes. The cases containing the gibbon and 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 485 
ourang would, I am sure, be cordially envied by the best western 
museums, even though the mounting is not quite up to the present 
standard. I recall particularly one male ourang with a splendid head, 
and of extraordinary size. Among the zoological rarities are the relics 
of a very young dugong. This had been brought to the museum living 
and the preparations are accompanied by sketches of the living animal. 
In invertebrate material there is the usual range of crustacea, corals 
and sponges, most of them carefully determined. The ethnological 
cabinet (Malayan) is important, as one might expect, and its arrange- 
ment is well carried out. There are models of houses, some with 
inao suspended about them, suggesting primitive Japanese buildings, 
even with the curious “ frog-thigh beams ” crossing at the ridge pole, as 
in the most primitive Shinto temples, and with these are many sug- 
gestions of relationship with Japan. Of Dyak objects there are rich 
gatherings, including a collection of krisses, costumes, ornaments, 
etc. There are a number of the sharply-perforated carvings still 
used to decorate Urala ceremonial feasts, groups of objects used in 
marriage ceremonies, collections illustrating local basket-making, an 
art in which the Malayans are especially skillful. There are.also cases 
of native cloths, coins and ornaments of gold and silver, the latter 
not as good in quality as one might reasonably expect. In the artistic 
treatment of many of these objects there are obvious affinities with 
the South Seas. Much of the success of the present museum has 
been due to the labors during the past dozen years of the director, Dr. 
R. Hanitsch, whose picture, as he stands in front ot his bungalow, near 


Hine 
he 


Fic. 2. SINGAPORE. BUNGALOW OF THE MusrEUM-DIRECTOR, Dr. HANITSCH. 


486 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the museum garden, is shown in Fig. 2. Dr. Hanitsch is a graduate of 
the University of Jena, and was for many years demonstrator in zoology 
in the University College of Liverpool. The former director was the 
well-known ornithologist, Mr. W. Davidson. 


CoLOMBO 


This museum, oldest in its building (1877) and in some regards 
best of Asiatic museums, was built on the outskirts of the city in the 
middle of the old cinnamon gardens. It is especially important to the 
general visitor as giving him the only practicable glimpse of the antiq- 
uities of Ceylon. It stands back from the red road, its buff-colored 
and long two-storied facade appearing prominently against a setting 
of tropical trees. On the ground floor are arranged the antiquities: 
in one room are objects in precious metals and stones, arm-rings, neck- 
laces, utensils, caskets, sword handles;.and near by are figures dressed 
in Cingalese finery of early times; on another side is a library con- 
taining Ceylonica, and a mass of the ruler-shaped books with palm- 
leaf pages scratched with Sanscrit ; on still another side, in an imposing 
gallery, is a collection of architectural and decorative objects in wood 
and stone, including the colossal lion brought from Pollonarna, on 
whose back the native kings sat when they administered justice. Here 
also is the beautiful window from the ruin of Yapahoo, and a huge 
portrait statue of a twelfth-century king. On the walls of the main 
staircase are copies of the frescoes of the caverns of Sigiri. The collec- 
tion of antiquities extends even into the garden, whcre several o* the 
larger statues and a shrine are exhibited. The upper story of the 
museum is devoted to natural history, and here the distinguished 
director, Dr. Arthur Willey, has arranged groups of animals to give the 
visitor an adequate picture of the wild life of Ceylon. Alcoholic and 
dried specimens are well displayed and labeled, and even living speci- 
mens are interspersed, as in a case containing leaf-resembling insects. 
Dr. Willey has taken greatly to heart the need of exhibiting hving 
creatures in the interest of his museum and, in the garden adjoining 
his office, he thas arranged a small menagerie, which has proved a 
great attraction no less to foreign visitors than to natives. Nor does 
Dr. Willey escape his living charges even when he goes to his bungalow, 
for there I saw a fine series of the rare lemur, Loris, as well also as a 
specimen of [chthyophis glutinosa, the earthworm-Like amphibian whose 
development was studied by the Sarazins. 

No one should leave Ceylon before paying a visit to the renowned 
botanical gardens, with a small museum, at Peradeniya; for it is but 
seventy miles from Colombo and at a delightful altitude (1,500 feet). 
For here within a small area one may see, with a minimum of discom- 
fort, the rarest and most striking tropical plants, from minute orchids 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 487 


to banyan trees: and one wanders about as in a land of enchantment, 
amid traveler’s palms, which will spout water if one punctures a stalk, 
breadfruit, cocoanuts, nutmegs, cinnamon, deadly upas trees, Bauhinia 
racemosa, with‘its cable-like stems, and the telegraph-plant, Desmodium 
gyrans, automatically lifting and dropping its leaves. Incidentally, 
too, there are zoological interests. Not uncommon are trees infested 
with flying foxes: and in the neighborhood the traveler to the east 
may see his first elephant working in the fields, but willing to show 
his paces for a few pice; so too one might happen to make the acquaint- 
ance of land-leeches, which find their way unpleasantly through the 


3. 8. COLOMBO. CITY MUSEtM, 


But as an offset to this he may see a wild 
rr. Or he may discover a cobra and induce it 


Mapras 

dras is in many regards a quite modern in- 
are new and spacious, built of dark brick and 
icenic style, Fig. 4. Its collections illustrate 
uistory, archeology and art of southern India. 
) is the important Connemara library, rich in 
history of Madras. The natural-history section 
seum, part of its collection dating from 1846, 
nterest of including within its animal galleries 
mens. ‘The archeological section is rich in pre- 
lly pottery: it contains, however, many objects 
enteenth centuries, arms, armor and cannon, of 
s well as of native wars. Among other curious 


“ONIGTING WAASNIY 


sage 


HO 


: 


“‘SYUCVIV 


pol 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 


MADRAS. 


VIEW IN ONE OF THE NATURAL HISTORY GALLERIES. 


Fic. 6. 


MADRAS. GALLERY OF METAL WORK. 


490 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


relics is a large swinging-post terminating in an elephant head, probably 
unique, which in a remote village was used up to relatively recent times 
for human sacrifices. The art objects are represented in great variety 
and are attractively exhibited, textiles, pottery, wood and metal work, 
musical instruments, drawings. One recalls especially the suite of 
pictured. cotton curtains for which Madras has long been noted; also 
the beautiful repoussé work in precious metals (Fig. 6). The museum 
is distinctly one of the most successful in India. Its director is the 
zoologist, Dr. Edgar Thurston. 


CALCUTTA 


The museum of Calcutta is far and away the most imposing of 
Asiatic museums, representing, as it does, the government of India in 
the imperial capital. Its buildings, Fig. 7, are the most extensive and 
its collections the most important. In this region, moreover, it is the 
oldest, for it preserves the collections of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 
founded in 1784. 

The success of the museum, it may be remarked, has been due in no 
small degree to its tradition of selecting directors eminent both as 
scientists and as executives. It was to Mr. Bly, anearly curator of the 
Asiatic society (1842 to 1862), a voluminous correspondent of Darwin, 
by the way, that the credit belongs for securing governmental assistance 
in erecting the museum’s first building. His successor was John 
Anderson, who remained in charge until 1886. And his, in turn, was 
Dr. Wood Mason, 1886 to 1893. And from that time to the present, 
the director has been Major A. Alcock, widely known for his researches 
on the deep-sea fauna of the Pay of Bengal. 


Fig. 7. CaLtcutta. THE INDIAN Museum. Front view. From Chowringhee. 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 4y1 


Fie. 8. CALcuTTaA. HALL OF INDIAN MAMMALS. 


At the time of the opening of the new museum (about 1890) the 
collections of the Asiatic Society were transferred to the British govern- 
ment. They comprised principally three classes of objects, zoological, 
ethnological and archeological, the last of unique importance. They 
include the antiquities secured by Colonel Mackenzie from the Amra- 
vati tope (1796 and 1816), and the collections of the Tytlers, Kittoe and 
General Cunningham. The last named investigator, one of the founders 
of the museum, secured for it also the objects from the Bharhut stupa. 
The entire collection thus contains in large measure the figured speci- 
mens in Indian archeology and it is especially rich in the finds from the 
neighborhood of Lucknow, Nagpore, Benares and Delhi. The ethno- 
logical cabinet is based upon the collection of Roer, whose catalogue 
dates from 1843. By 1882 no less than 600 crania were listed. The 
zoological division of the museum is based upon the Blyth collection of 
the Asiatic Society. As early as 1862 there were represented 600 
species of mammals, 2,000 species of birds, 300 of reptiles, and 1,000 of 
mollusks; and since this time the zoological collection has increased 
vastly. Figs. 8, 9, 10. 

The Calcutta museum expanded notably about two decades ago, 
when it incorporated two allied institutions. The first of these was 
the economic museum of the government of Bengal (added in 1887), 
whose collections are arranged in separate galleries, and the second, the 
collections of the geological survey, these added (about 1890) when 
the public museum was opened. ‘The subsidy for the latter institutions, 
it may be mentioned, is separate from that of the main museum, about 
40,000 rupees a year being granted by the government for their annual 
support. And a similar appropriation is made for the remainder of the 
museum. 


492 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Under the present director the 
work of the museum has made 
notable advances. During the past 
twelve years over 100,000  speci- 
mens have been entered in the 
books of the museum and the 
new material has been extensively 
studied. Especially through the 
cruises of the Investigator carried 
out under Major Alcock’s direction 
(Major Alcock came to India as 
surgeon-naturalist (1888-1892) to 
examine the sea-barriers of India), 
a wealth of marine material has 
been placed in the hands of special- 
ists throughout the world. And 
the museum had already published 
many memoirs upon it—twenty- 
five, or thereabouts. It might be 
mentioned, as a sad commentary 
upon the relation of politics and science in India, that the well-known 
gallery of fishes arranged by the director, after years of labor, has 
recently been demolished by order of the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, who 
could find in Caleutta no other gallery in which to house a collection 
of relics of the Sepoy rebellion ! 


Fig. 9. CALCUTTA. PORTION OF THE BIRD 
HALL. 


The invertebrate collections of the museum are extensive and well 
displayed. Particularly interesting is the entomological cabinet which 
includes the de Nicéville lepidoptera and the Dugeon hymenoptera, the 
latter comprising about 1,000 type specimens. The entomological sur- 
vey undertaken by the museum is its last development, establishing in 
1903 the first entomological laboratory in India, in connection with a 
commission of forestry. Equally important are the geological ma- 
terials exhibited in the museum. 
Of meteors, no less than 400 falls 
are represented. Of ores there are 
many varieties, especially in man- 
ganese. In fossils there is valu- 
able Cretaceous material, inclu- 
ding the types of Blanford ; among 
late acquisitions there is a wonder- 
ful specimen of Hlephas antiquus 
(namadicus). The fossil mam- 
mals from the Sewalik Hills near 
Simla are also preserved in the 


Fre. 10. CALCUTTA. A CASEIN THE REPTILE 
GALLERY. 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 493 


gallery of paleontology, but they fail to impress a visitor who has seen 
the associated remains of late Tertiary mammals in other museums. 


LAHORE 


The museum at Lahore is known to most foreigners as the “ wonder- 
house” of Kipling, and in front of its door stands the ancient cannon 
with its memories of Kim and his lama. Although intended to rep- 
resent the natural sciences as well as the arts, this museum need 
hardly be referred to in the former regard, for its specimens are few 
and poorly displayed. In its materials for the study of art, however, 
it ranks among the foremost in the east. Its predecessor was a school 
of arts, founded as a memorial to the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, and carried 
out during the early seventies, under its first principal and curator, 
Mr. J. Lockwood Kipling (1875-92). The development of the pres- 
ent museum then came about as a result of the Victorian jubilee. A 
general subscription secured the necessary funds, and the corner-stone 
of the present building (Fig. 11) was laid by Prince Victor in Feb- 
ruary, 1890, and its collections were opened to the public two years 
later. The design was furnished by Mr. Lockwood Kipling in coop- 
eration with the Indian architect Bryam Singh. 

As in the majority of the Indian museums, the native style has been 
as closely followed as museum needs would permit, and the tall galleries 
and massive doorways (Fig. 14) leave pleasant impressions in the 


Fic. 11. LAHORE. THE MUSEUM, 


THE HALL OF GR#&CO- 
BACTRIAN SCULPTURE. 


Fic. 12. LAHORE. 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


visitor’s mind. The exhibit space 
includes about 28,000 square feet 
and the galleries are 45 feet high. 
As already noted, the museum is 
interesting in its art exhibits, espe- 
cially in its Greeco-Bactrian sculp- 
tures, for these, as is well known, 
played a most important part in 
the early art of northern India. 
This collection, occupying a special 
gallery 100 feet in length (Figs. 12 
and 13), was brought together in 
the northwest provinces during the 
early seventies, and is unique. ‘To 
be mentioned also are the collec- 
tions of carved wood, musical in- 
struments, Hindu portraits, inclu- 
ding a series of the Singh, Hindu 
drawings, many Afghan documents, 
and technical exhibits decidedly 
modern in museum technique, illus- 


trating, for example, the arts of the Punjaub, glass making, lac turning, 


leather work, ete. 


In connection with these there are models of local 


industries cleverly carried out in terra-cotta by native artists. One may 


mention also a remarkable series 
of Madras curtains elaborately 
stamped with religious ceremonies 
and personages. The present ad- 
ministration of the art school and 
museum is in the hands of Mr. 
Percy Brown, artist and archeolo- 
gist, well known for his studies on 
Greco-Bactrian art. The museum 
is now affiliated with the Asiatic 
Society of Bengal, with the Geolog- 
ical Survey of India and with the 
Forestry Commission. As an echo 
of Indian social 
hears that the museum has been 


conditions one 
opened one day a month for Hindu 


women, women attendants then 
taking charge of the galleries. The 
museum is popular, and the attend- 


ance averages over 1,000 a day. 


DETAIL IN HALL OF 


LAHORE. 
SCULPTURE. 


Fig. 13. 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 


Fig. 14. LAHORE. THE HALL OF NATIVE ARTS. 


Fic. 15 JAIpuR. HALL OF METAL WORK. 


495 


‘WONASOY AHL ‘wOdIve ‘OT ‘DIA 


NOTES ON ASIATIC MUSEUMS 497 


JAIPUR 


Jaipur may be mentioned, finally, as furnishing the best type of a 
museum supported by a native prince—in the present case by the 
reigning maharajah, Sir Sawdi Madho Singh. It is an imposing 
monument to this ruler’s modernness, and it has already borne inter- 
esting fruit in developing and bettering the many art-industries of 
Jaipur. 

The building is by no means a small one—at least two hundred feet 
in length. It stands in the public gardens, an elaborate structure in 
Indo-Saracenic style, with shaded balconies and corridors, and with 
numerous courtyards cooled by plants and fountains, Fig. 16. Its 
scientific collection is small, limited to models and specimens of minor 
interest. But in modern and semi-modern art objects, in metal, stone, 
wood or textile, the present museum is, I believe, unsurpassed. Espe- 
cially beautiful are the examples of metal work, Fig. 15, many of 
which are the family treasures of the maharajah—gun-metal and silver 
bidri work, damaskeens from Kashmir, silver repoussé from Trichin- 
opoly and Ceylon, articulated objects in silver from Bengal, silver 
figures from Mathura, enamels in gold from Jaipur, in silver from 
Multan, brasses numberless, and a bewildering series of jewelry from 
all parts of India. Nowhere can one receive a more illuminating 
impression of the decorative possibilities in native art. An excellent 
reference, by the way, is the beautifully illustrated handbook of the 
museum prepared by its honorary secretary, Colonel Hendley (1895). 


VOL. LXXI.—32. 


498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE PLACE OF LINNAIUS IN THE HISTORY 
OF SCIENCE? 


By PrRoFEssoR ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY 


WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS 


(ice recent celebrations of the bicentenary of Linneus’s birth had 

one sort of appropriateness in somewhat higher degree than is 
usual in such commemorations: they helped pay the debt of posterity 
to one of the great figures of the history of science in the currency that 
he had especially valued. For Linnzus had very markedly the last 
infirmity of noble mind. Famam extendere factis was his chosen 
device, which he often prints, with a pride justified only by the event, 
upon the title-pages of his books; and his biographers are at one in 
emphasizing the intensity of his desire for fame. It was, indeed, the 
solid and enduring fame of the productive scholar that he sought, not 
the applause of the groundlings; his ambition was to link his name 
to some lasting and imposing part of the ever-enlarging fabric of 
organized knowledge, and thereby to take rank among the acknowl- 
edged masters of those who know. That this ambition, large as it was, 
has been more than fulfilled, is sufficiently evidenced by the world- 
wide commemoration of this anniversary of his birth—even in cities of 
the western continent which were themselves non-existent when he 
came into the world. No naturalist of his century, and few natural- 
ists of any period, have so universal a popular reputation, or are, by so 
nearly common consent, given a place among the immortals not far 
removed from Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz and Newton—to 
mention only his predecessors. Yet, when seriously scrutinized, Lin- 
neeus’s position in the history of science is a peculiar one. With his 
name there is commonly associated no epoch-making hypothesis, not a 
single important discovery, not one fundamental law or generalization, 
in any branch of science. The forty years of his active life constitute 
a period prolific in fruitful hypotheses and signalized by the original 
enunciation of a number of valid generalizations of the first order of 
importance ; of none of these was he the author. To go no farther than 
the biological sciences which Linneus professed: Before 1750, Dau- 
benton and Buffon had begun to establish the new science of com- 
parative anatomy and were making known the striking homologies 
which run through the structure of all species of vertebrates; between 


* Revision of a paper read before the Academy of Science of St. Louis at 
its celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Linneus. 


LINNAUS 499 


1745 and 1751 Maupertuis had promulgated, and defended with effect- 
ive arguments, the theory of the transformation of species; in phys- 
iology, the significant fact of the independent irritability of muscle was 
discovered by Haller in 1757; in embryology, the doctrine of epigenesis 
was revived and finally established by Caspar Friedrich Wolff in 1759. 
As for the science of botany, the foundations had been laid, and the 
general outlines and principles which were to continue to rule during 
Linnzus’s time had been established by the end of the preceding cen- 
tury. The founder of modern scientific botany is Cesalpino (1583). 
In microscopic plant anatomy and histology, the investigations and de- 
scriptions which were to underlie the science for something like a century 
had been made before Linneus’s birth by Grew, Malpighi, Leeuwenhoek. 
In plant physiology, the réle of the sap had been studied by Malpighi, 
and the fundamental facts made clear by Hales in his “ Vegetable 
Staticks,’” 1727; the function of pollen in the fecundation of seeds had 
been shown by Camerarius before the end of the seventeenth century ; 
the existence of the sexual distinction in plants had been insisted upon 
by a long succession of botanists, English, German, Italian and French; 
and during Linneus’s lifetime the physiological réle of leaves was being 
made clear (so far as the condition of chemistry at the time permitted) 
by the philosopher Christian Wolff? and by Bonnet.® 

Not only is all this true, but it is also a fact that Linneus has been 
not absolutely unfairly represented, by one of the historians of modern 
science, as an obstacle to the scientific progress of his time. President 
White, in his “ Warfare of Science and Theology,” after speaking of 
certain anticipations of nineteenth century conceptions by DeMaillet, 
Robinet and Bonnet, remarks: 

In the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was thrown 
across this current—the authority of Linneus. . . . The atmosphere in which 


he lived and moved and had his being was saturated with biblical theology, and 
this permeated all his thinking. 


Yet, though in the intellectual movement of his time Linnezus was 
an extreme conservative, if not something of an obscurantist; though 
he was far surpassed by several of his contemporaries in that kind of 
insight and constructive power which leads to the discovery of the 
great general laws of nature; and though the heavy pioneer work even 
in his favorite science had been done before his time by the great 
investigators of the end of the seventeenth century—though all this is 
the case, none of these others equals Linneus in popular repute or in 
accepted standing in the history of science. I can not say that I think 
this altogether just, though if it be less than just, the proper inference 


2“ Entdeckung der wahren Ursache von der Vermehrung des Getreydes,” 
1718. Cf. also his “ Verniinftige Gedanken von dem Gebrauche der Theile in 
Menschen, Thieren und Pflanzen,” 1725, Pt. II., chap. 5. 

3“ Récherches sur l’usage des feuilles,” 1754. 


500 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


is not that we should praise Linneus less, but some of the others more. 
I have, however, mentioned these things, not for the sake of measuring 
out Linnzus’s glory with a hopeless attempt at exact distributive justice, 
but for the sake of defining more precisely, and in terms of explicit 
contrast—which is the only illuminating way of defining—the nature 
and limits of Linneus’s contribution to the evolution of the sciences. 
He was the one naturalist of first eminence whose work lay entirely, or 
almost entirely, within the sphere of descriptive and classificatory sci- 
ence. His réle is precisely described by the term which he himself em- 
ployed; he was not the originator of, nor a great discoverer in, botany, 
but he was the “reformer” of that science, reformator botanices, and 
in a less degree, of zoology. And in using this term to describe his 
work, the emphasis should be upon the “form.” He was, in other 
words, an unsurpassed organizer, both of scientific material and of 
scientific research; he introduced form and order, clearness and pre- 
cision, simple definitions and plain delimitations of boundaries, into 
sciences previously more or less chaotic or confused or impeded with 
cumbrous and inappropriate categories and terminology. 

This reformation was the result of the three improvements effec- 
tually introduced by Linnzus and indissolubly associated with his 
name. ‘The first, which seemed the most impressive and did most to 
establish his fame among his contemporaries and for several genera- 
tions thereafter, was really the least permanent and the least valuable 
of his contributions: this was the introduction of a new artificial sys- 
tem of classification, based, in the botanical field, upon the differences 
of the sexual organs of plants. The second was the introduction of the 
binomial nomenclature, the system of so-called “trivial” names, 
which put a final end to the hopeless length and complexity of botanical 
and zoological specific names, and sharply differentiated the naming of 
organisms from the description of them. The third and, I suppose, 
the most useful as well as most durable of all of Linneus’s improve- 
ments, was the establishment of a new descriptive terminology in 
botany, the drawing up of a set of terms, each with clearly defined 
meaning, for designating concisely the distinguishable parts and organs 
of plants, and the several types of form of which each part is sus- 
ceptible. By these means Linneus imposed order and harmony upon 
a realm that had hitherto suffered much from anarchy; he gave a com- 
mon language to those who tilled its fields, and provided them with 
working tools of an unprecedented simplicity and convenience. And — 
where he thus introduced order he also, as a natural consequence, intro- 
duced abundance. Both directly and indirectly Linneus immensely 
augmented the store of concrete botanical information. The science 
thus simplified and systematized and given a convenient means of ex- 
pression became vastly more attractive and interesting; in particular, 


LINNAUS 501 


it came to be a field in which many minds, of all orders of ability, 
could do useful work, and could make their work dovetail into the 
work of others in such wise that each was conscious of having con- 
tributed a definite part to an immense and impressive edifice of an 
intelligible outline and design. Alike by the superior convenience of 
his classification, nomenclature and terminology, by the force and 
serious enthusiasm of his personality, and by the example of his ad- 
mirably exact observation, Linneus stimulated a prodigious amount of 
ardent and careful botanical and zoological research on the part of 
others. His own pupils went out, literally by the score, not only over 
Europe, but to the uttermost parts of the earth, to collect new species 
and study geographical distribution. A number of these young en- 
thusiasts, whose names are honorably recorded by one of Linnzus’s 
biographers, lost their lives in these expeditions. The eight volumes of 
Linneus’s “ Ameenitates Academice” contain 186 dissertations by 
almost as many of his pupils, the subject and treatment being in 
nearly every case suggested, and the results corrected, by Linnzus him- 
self; most of these contain contributions of valuable—and many con- 
tain what were in their day highly original—botanical, zoological or 
mineralogical data. Nor was the effect of Linnzus’s simplification and 
systematization of botany limited to the setting of other and younger 
men of science to work. His efforts also notably increased the general 
vogue of botany, as a result of which it long enjoyed an exceptional 
popularity and an unusual amplitude of endowment among the sciences. 

This aspect of Linneus’s work is effectively presented—all the more 
effectively for a considerable touch of rhetorical exaggeration—by 
Magdeleine de Saint-Agy in his continuation of Cuvier’s “ Histoire des 
Sciences Naturelles” (1845); the passage illustrates so well, if not 
precisely, what Linneus did, at least what he had the credit of doing, 
that I venture to translate it. 


The influence of Linneus, says this historian, was not limited to the in- 
vestigations and voyages which he caused to be made; in imitation of him, 
similar voyages and investigations were ordered made by several states. Sweden, 
being a small and poor country, had no great means for multiplying such expedi- 
tions; but England, France and Russia had them carried out in great numbers; 
and Linnzus during the last years of his life had the pleasure, as Condorcet puts 
it, of seeing nature interrogated on all sides in his name. There was no class 
of people—even to princes—who did not busy themselves with natural history, 
and above all with botany—since this science presents none of the difficulties 
of anatomy and since the method of Linneus is of a simplicity which renders 
it accessible to everybody . . . Botany thus became universally familiar. Those 
who were fond of gardening multiplied the varieties of their plants, since they 
could now know the names of them without being Latin scholars, and since 
gardeners could now understand one another when referring to the plants they 
cultivated. All gardens, both botanical and pleasure gardens, were filled with 
a multitude of plants which rich folk had brought at great expense from foreign 


502 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


lands. The taste for botany dominated all minds; kings became botanists, prop- 
erly so called, and were desirous of having their own botanical gardens. Louis 
XV. had the garden of Trianon; George III., that of Kew; Francis I., emperor 
of Austria, that of Schoenbrunn. These three princes were useful to the science 
by their gardens and by the emulation which they occasioned; but it is after 
all, to the happy discovery of a dual nomenclature that these advances were 
primarily due. From the moment when common names were to be had, corre- 
sponding in all parts of the globe, collections were zealously made; museums 
were enriched; and it was not difficult to multiply researches, now that the 
science was within everybody’s reach. . . . Such is the prodigious impulsion 
that Linneus gave to the science of natural history. 


Yet it is important, in the interest of historical truth, to point out 
that even in these things which constitute his peculiar work—speci- 
fically, in his reformation in taxonomy, nomenclature and terminology 
—Linneus was in no respect a pioneer or an originator. It was his 
good fortune to be able to develop and carry through suggestions and 
outlines of procedure which had been made by his seventeenth-century 
precursors, and to exploit to the utmost an abundant legacy of botanical 
knowledge, methodological ideas, and botanical interest which had 
come down to his generation. Nothing, indeed, could be farther from 
the truth than the notion which appears to have wide popular currency, 
that there was little botanical study or knowledge worth mentioning 
before Linnzeus. It is, on the contrary, eminently a case where 
vixerunt fortes ante Agamemnona. Any who suppose sixteenth and 
seventeenth century botany to be a negligible quantity will find it in- 
structive to examine the shelves of the hbrary of the Paris Jardin des 
Plantes; or to remember that Jean Bauhin’s “ Historia universalis 
plantarum ” (1660), consisting of forty books, contained descriptions 
of some 5,000 plants, with 3,500 figures, and cost the equivalent of 
about $18,000 to produce—or that, a little later, Ray’s “ Historia 
plantarum generalis” gave a classified arrangement and description of 
11,700 plants. And while Linneeus assuredly gave, as has been said, 
a great impulsion to the popular and fashionable interest in botany and 
zoology, it was an interest which was extremely well developed before 
his time—which, in fact, made his own work and his own contemporary 
fame possible. It was not through his influence first that states and 
monarchs learned the propriety of establishing botanical gardens. The 
Jardin royal du Louvre, for example, was established by Henri IV. 
in 1590, and the Jardin des Plantes was founded in 1626. By the 
middle of the seventeenth century both public and private gardens, 
often with scientific establishments connected with them, were becom- 
ing fairly common. And, as I have said, the particular reforms 
through which chiefly Linnzus achieved his results were essentially not 
discoveries nor innovations of his own. It will be profitable to note 


* These figures are taken from Hoefer’s “Histoire de la Botanique,” 1872. 


LINNAUS 203 


briefly the earlier history of the ideas involved in each of these three 
reforms. 

First, then, concerning classification. Linneus’s great precursors 
in this field were Cesalpino,®> Ray and Tournefort. Cesalpino was a 
sixteenth-century enthusiast of the revival of the Peripatetic philos- 
ophy; and it was largely the influence of a fresh study of Aristotle’s 
logic and metaphysics which led him to condemn all the then cus- 
tomary ways of classifying and naming plants—by their medicinal or 
other practical properties, the localities in which they are found, and 
the like—as being based upon mere “ accidentia,’ and to insist upon 
the necessity of an orderly arrangement by genera and species founded 
upon the presence of common visible characters.* In his selection of 
the characters by reference to which the primary division into genera 
is to be made, he is guided by considerations drawn from the Peripa- 
tetic metaphysics. The essential character of any “substance” con- 
sists in its “end” or “function” (opus). The distinctive function 
of the vegetative soul is twofold, nutrition and “ the generating of its 
own like”; the latter is the higher, and it also presents more numerous 
and sensible points of variation in different plants. It follows that 
plants should be divided into genera according to the differences in 
form and arrangement of their “ fruit-producing” organs (ex modo 
fructificandt, ex proprus quae fructificationts gratia data sunt). With 
this as a starting-point, Cesalpino proceeds to a series of successive 
divisions in which 840 species find place. MRay’s contributions to tax- 
onomy had less success and influence than those of Cesalpino and of 
Tournefort, and are therefore historically less significant ; but concern- 
ing their intrinsic merit it is worth while quoting the recently expressed 
opinion of a living botanist of high authority, who places Ray’ as a 
taxonomist above Linneus himself. It was the English naturalist, 
says M. Bonnier,’ who must be regarded as “ the true founder of the 
natural method”; “he it was who first enunciated the essential prin- 
ciples on which the classification of plants ought to be founded, who 
made clear the difference between phanerogams and cryptogams, who 
discovered the distinction between monocotyledons and dicotyledons, 
who established in a rational manner the main divisions of the vegetable 
kingdom.” 


51519-1603. Cesalpino was a physician to Pope Clement VIII., and pro- 
fessor of materia medica and director of the botanical garden at Pisa. He was 
the original discoverer of the circulation of the blood; the doubts which have 
been sometimes expressed whether he anticipated Harvey’s conception in its 
fullness have been shown to involve the overlooking of an explicit passage in 
Cesalpino’s “De Plantis” (1583): ef. Du Petit-Thouars in “ Biographie Uni- 
verselle,” s. v. 

*“ De Plantis” (1583), Lib. I., Cap. XIII. 

7™« Historia Plantarum,” 1686. 

8“ Le monde végétal,” 1907, pp. 48-9. 


504 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


At a natural method Tournefort made no more attempt than did 
Linneus. But of the principles and purposes of a good artificial 
classification he had an entirely clear comprehension; and of such a 
classification of then known plants he gave an elaborate and imposing 
exemplification. Of what a “natural system ” would be, if one could 
attain to it, Tournefort, like his Swedish successor, had a conception 
rather mystical or theological than scientific; it would be an arrange- 
ment of animals and plants according to the “ natural ” or “ essential ” 
species established by “the Author of Nature.” But for his actual 
scheme® he recognizes plainly that the primary criteria are the prac- 
tical ones of simplicity and convenience. A genus or species, for 
botanical purposes, is “simply the whole group of plants that have a 
character in common which essentially distinguishes them from all 
others ”; and in the selection of the characters by means of which the 
division is to be made we may ignore metaphysical considerations. 
Tournefort observes (apparently reflecting upon Cesalpino) : “ Let no 
one say that, since the sole end of nature is the production of fruit, 
we ought to consider the fruit as the noblest part of the plant. The 
intentions of nature are not in question here, nor yet the nobility of 
the several parts; what concerns us is to find means of distinguishing 
different kinds of plants with the greatest possible clearness. If the 
least of their parts served this purpose better than those which are 
called the noblest, it would be necessary to prefer the former.” 'Tourne- 
fort’s actual classification, based upon the characters of both flowers 
and fruit, realized these ideals of serviceableness, convenience and con- 
sistency somewhat imperfectly. But it was the ruling one in the 
science for nearly half a century; and, accompanied as it was by careful 
descriptions of an immense number of species, it furnished a model 
upon which Linnzus needed only to improve. 

The Swedish naturalist’s simplification of nomenclature was not 
only approximated, but acually anticipated, by at least one of his 
predecessors. As Professor Underwood has pointed out, the binomial 
system of naming plants was used by Cornut in his “ Canadensis Plan- 
tarum Historia” as early as 1635.1° Later Tournefort, a botanist of 
greater eminence and influence, though he followed this example only 
partially, insisted emphatically upon the need for a reform and sim- 
plification of nomenclature. So far as the names of genera are con- 
cerned, he observes that “one ought to make a very great difference 
between naming plants and describing them”; he remarks that “ noth- 
ing is so unfavorable to the reformation of botany as the habit which 


°* Klemens de la Botanique,”’ 1694; the Latin version of this, “ Institu- 
tiones Rei Herbarie,’’ with some alterations, appeared in 1700. 

* Underwood in Torreya, October, 1903, and in PopuLaR Scrence Monruty, 
June, 1907. A brief and often binomial nomenclature is ascribed by Bonnier 
to Belon (d. 1574), whose work I have not seen. 


LINNAUS 5°05 


has come to prevail of judging of the nature of plants from the ety- 
mology of their names,” and recommends that generic names be formed 
exclusively “ out of words that have of themselves no meaning”; and 
he ridicules the long descriptive names then used by many botanists.1* 
The designations of species, however, he considers, should consist of the 
name of the genus plus a clear descriptive indication of the differentia 
of the species; and since the latter can not always be expressed by a 
single word, Tournefort does not employ a uniformly binomial nomen- 
clature. But from the reforms already recommended and adopted 
by the great botanist of the preceding generation to the Linnean sys- 
tem of “ trivial ” specific names, the step was easy and obvious. 

Again, in providing botany with an appropriate set of terms for 
the concise indication of the parts and organs of plants, Linnzus was 
merely following the suggestion and extending the work of another 
great seventeenth-century reformer in science. It was Joachim Jung?” 
—a naturalist whose intellectual force so impressed his contemporaries 
that Leibniz did not hesitate to compare him to Aristotle, or Comenius 
to liken him to Euclid—who was the father of comparative morphology 
in botany, who introduced into the study of the characters of plants 
real thoroughness and precision, who insisted upon the need for a sys- 
tem of clear, unambiguous organographic terms, and who himself 
devised and introduced a number of the terms still in use. His “ Isa- 
goge Phytoscopica ” (1622) was wholly devoted to urging and exempli- 
fying this reform; all the principal parts of plants are distinguished 
and defined with admirable clearness, their possible variations of form 
noted, and new and explicit names for these variations proposed. Jung 
seems,** for example, to have been the first to employ the terms petiole 
or pedicule and perianth; to classify the arrangements of leaflets as 
digitate and pinnate, and to subdivide the latter sort into paripinnate 
and imparipinnate; to speak of the disposition of leaves as opposed, 
alternate, triangulate, ete. The descriptive terminology of botany has, 
of course, since expanded immensely; but the credit for the origination 
of the language of that science must unquestionably be assigned to 
Jung and not to Linneus. 

It still remains true, however, that Linneus united these three 
reforms in a single system; that he carried each of them farther than 
had any of his predecessors; and that by the force of his personality 
he was able to gain for them a general acceptance which they had 
hitherto lacked. Though we must, therefore, make some deduction 

1“ Klemens de Botanique,”’ 1694, pp. 14, 36, 38. 

“Born in Liibeck, 1587, died at Hamburg, 1657. He published compara- 
tively little, and his principal botanical works were brought out by friends after 
his death. 


%The assertion that Jung was not anticipated in the use of these terms 
rests upon the authority of Hoefer, “ Hist. de la Botanique.” 


506 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


from the current view of the originality of Linneus’s work as reformer 
and organizer of botanical knowledge, we need not on that account 
greatly lower our estimate of its actual importance in the history of 
science. And yet we must, to get a just picture, always remember the 
character, as well as the magnitude, of that work; we must remember 
that it was, all but exclusively, form, system, nomenclature and specific 
observations that Linneus contributed to the biological sciences, rather 
than fundamental discoveries, pregnant hypotheses or illuminating 
general ideas. Even in the presence of the impressive picture of the 
solid results of Linnzeus’s life-work drawn by the French historian of 
these sciences, one can not help recalling a caustic remark—which I 
have already elsewhere cited—of Linnzus’s contemporary, Maupertuis, 
then president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Maupertuis spoke of 
zoology ; but we may generalize his observation: “ All these treatises on 
plants and animals which we as yet have,” he says (about 1750), “are 
—even the most methodical of them—no better than pictures pretty to 
look at; in order to make of natural history a veritable science, natural- 
ists must apply themselves to researches which can make us acquainted 
not simply with the form of this or that organism, but with the gen- 
eral processes of nature in the production of organisms and the con- 
servation of them.” 'Towards making natural history a veritable science 
in this sense Linnezus did relatively little; but it is not quite true to 
say that he did nothing at all. Towards the discovery or the estab- 
lishment of two generalized laws respecting the processes of nature in 
the production and the perpetuation of vegetal organisms Linnzus 
made some contribution; and of these something ought briefly to be 
said, the more because they are often neglected in the accounts of 
Linneus’s work. 

1. Although, as has been remarked, the fact of sexuality in plants 
had been noted by a number of great naturalists before 1718, the doc- 
trine was not, in Linneus’s youth, at all generally accepted. It was 
possible at the beginning of the eighteenth century for a botanist so 
eminent as Tournefort to combat and ridicule the idea; and for the 
Imperial Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, so late as 1759, to 
offer a prize for the best argument either for or against the doctrine 
of sex in vegetables. Linnaeus gave the weight of his authority, as 
well as of some new experimental evidence, to the affirmative of this 
question. By him the fact may be said to have been finally established ; 
and by his sexual system of classification the idea was made a familiar 
and fundamental common-place of even popular botanical knowledge. 

2. By his doctrine of the “ Prolepsis Plantarum” and “ Meta- 
morphosis Plantarum ”—which one of his disciples declared to be “ the 
most subtle discovery of any which can be put forward by the investi- 
gators of nature in our age,” but which there lacks space to set forth 


LINNAUS 507 


in its details—Linneus began that theoretical reduction of the several 
parts of a plant to modifications, under special conditions, of a few 
simple organs, which Goethe was to elaborate and carry much farther 
in his “ Metamorphose der Pflanzen” (1790). Goethe makes due 
acknowledgment of his debt to Linneus (who was his constant study 
in his early years**) in that treatise, the place of which in the history 
of botany is well known. Contemporary botanists would, I suppose, 
incline to question whether this theory has done greater service or harm 
to the progress of their science. Its chief value lay in its tendency to 
suggest the idea of the unity of type—and eventually the idea of the 
common derivation through processes of transformation—of different 
species. Both of these ideas were far from the mind of Linneus; with 
him the theory took the form only of the purely specific doctrine of the 
interchangeability of leaf and flower under varying conditions of nour- 
ishment, or at different phases of the individual plant’s growth. 

In these two instances, then, Linneus made some contribution to 
the unification, as well as to the augmentation, of knowledge. Yet his 
lack of any penetrating insight into the larger relations of biological 
facts and the absence in him of any sound grasp of scientific method, 
disqualified him from taking a place among those who have materially 
enriched our stock of the ideas and categories which may be used in the 
interpretation of nature. His emphasis upon the static aspects of the 
world of living organisms—upon the fixed characters of species—and 
upon the descriptive rather than explanatory business of scientific 
inquiry made his influence, on the whole, an obstacle to the develop- 
ment and diffusion of those evolutional ideas which were already stir- 
ring in a number of minds of his generation. His ineptitude in the 
more philosophic part of the naturalist’s work could not be better 
shown than in the one treatise in which he attempts a broad philo- 
sophical view and a wide correlation of organic phenomena. ‘This 
writing, “ Giconomia Nature,” which was greatly admired by his con- 
temporaries, points out in how diverse and complicated ways organisms of 
different species interact with one another, and are reciprocally adapted 
to one another, as wellas to the conditions of survival in their environ- 
ment. In dilating upon this Linneus may be said to call attention, 
more than a century before Darwin, to the reality and importance in 
nature of the struggle for existence between species; for he shows how 
every kind of organism has its natural enemies, with which it keeps up 


* The poet himself wrote in his “ Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums ” 
(1817): “ After Shakespeare and Spinoza, it was Linneus who had the greatest 
influence upon me—chiefly, indeed, by the opposition that he provoked. For 
when I strove to make my own his sharp, clear-cut divisions and his apt and 
serviceable but often arbitrary laws, an inner conflict arose in me: what he 
sought forcibly to hold apart, the deepest need of my nature made me wish to 
bring back to unity.” 


508 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


an unceasing warfare or competition, as a result of which the otherwise 
excessive multiplication of each kind is prevented and the equilibrium 
of nature is preserved. But all these just observations lead Linneus 
to nothing more useful to science than the quam pulchre! We are 
invited to see in the arrangement whereby the lion saves the lamb from 
the Malthusian inconvenience of over-multiplication simply an evi- 
dence of design in nature. It never occurs to the great naturalist to 
consider that, as Maupertuis put it, “since only those creatures could 
survive in whose organization a certain degree of adaptation was pres- 
ent, there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that such adaptation is 
found in all the species that now exist.” Looking upon the same gen- 
eral class of facts as those which were to be considered by Wallace and 
Darwin, Linneus finds in them nothing but the occasion for the whole- 
sale introduction of teleological considerations, in place of causal 
explanations. In setting the example of such a proceeding, Linnzus 
certainly did much to hold biology back from its proper methods and 
its proper problems. In this, as in his general failure to take a philo- 
sophie view of his subject, his mental attitude was peculiarly uncon- 
genial to the greatest intellect—if not the greatest botanist—of those 
whom he largely influenced. Goethe kept up a lifelong protest against 
all purely descriptive science and all introduction of teleological notions 
into the explanation of natural phenomena. And it is from Goethe in 
his old age that I may, in closing, quote a somewhat severe, but not 
unilluminating, remark upon the master of the poet’s early botanical 
studies ;1° since it contains a sort of philosophical pun, it is necessary 
to give it in the German: 


Eine zwar niedere doch schon ideelle Unternehmung des Menschen, ist das 
Zihlen, wodurch im gemeinen Leben so vieles verrichtet wird; die grosse 
Bequemlichkeit jedoch, die allgemeine Fasslichkeit und Erreichbarkeit giebt 
dem Ordnen auch in den Wissenschaften Eingang und Beifall. Das Linnésche 
System erlangte eben durch diese Gemeinheit seine Allgemeinheit; doch wider- 
strebte es einer héheren Einsicht mehr, als dass es solche férderte. 


Yet if Linneus was not qualified to lead biology into the promised 
land of that “higher insight ”—if he even somewhat delayed its prog- 
ress thither—it must still be said that he left all the sciences with 
which he dealt incomparably better provisioned for that progress than 
they would have been without his work. He left to them an intensified 
ardor for the scrutiny of all the phenomena of nature, a better com- 
mand of their own materials, and a greatly enriched and better ordered 
store of those concrete facts out of which, in time, scientific generaliza- 
tions often almost spontaneously develop, and by which they must 
always eventually be tested. 

8 « Aphoristisches,” Weimar-Ausg., Teil II., Bd. 6, §356 (1829); cited by 
Wasielewski in his “ Goethe und die Descendenzlehre.” 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 509 


THE PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 


By CHARLES SEDGWICK MINOT, LL.D., D.Sc. 


JAMES STILLMAN PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 


VI. THe Four Laws or AGE 


Ladies and Gentlemen: I have referred in these lectures repeatedly 
to the cell and its two component parts, the nucleus and the proto- 
plasm. To-night I shall have only a few references to make directly 
to these, and shall pass on for the latter part of the hour to another 
class of considerations bearing upon the problem of age. Before we 
turn to these new considerations, however, I wish to say a few words 
by way of recapitulation concerning the changes in the cells as corre- 
sponding to age. Cells, as you know from what I have told you, 
undergo in the body for the greater part a progressive change which 
we call their differentiation. We may say that there are four kinds 
of cells for purposes of an elementary classification to be used in a 
simple exposition like the present. The first kind are those cells of 
the young type, in which the protoplasm is simple, and shows as yet 
no trace of differentiation. These cells are capable of rapid multipli- 
cation, and some of them are found still persisting in various parts 
of the adult body, and serve to maintain the growth of the body in its 
mature stage. Another class of cells presents to us the curious spectacle 
of a partial differentiation; such are the muscle fibers by which we 
accomplish our voluntary movements. These fibers consisted originally 
only of protoplasm with the appropriate nuclei, but, as they are differen- 
tiated, part of the protoplasm changes into contractile substance. 
Another part remains pure protoplasm unaltered. If now the mus- 
cular or contractile portion of the fiber be destroyed, the undifferen- 
tiated part of the protoplasm then shows that it has still the power of 
growth. It has only been held back by the condition of organization, 
and we see in the regeneration of these fibers evidence of the fact that 
so long as the protoplasm is undifferentiated it has the power of 
growth, which, however, does not reveal itself unless an opportunity is 
afforded. Third, we come to the cells which are moderately differen- 
tiated; such, for instance, are the cells of the liver, and, if for any 
reason a portion of the liver be injured by accident or disease, we find 
that these partially differentiated cells reveal at once that they have a 
limited power of growth still left. If we pass on to the fourth class, 
that in which differentiation is carried to the highest extreme, we find 
that the cells do not have the power of multiplication. Such are the 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


510 


nerve cells by which the higher functions of the body are carried on. 
They represent the extreme of cellular differentiation, and almost never 
do we see these cells multiplying after the differentiation is accom- 
plished. Presented in this form, we then recognize, it seems to me 
clearly, the effect of differentiation upon the growth of cells. The facts 
are clear as to their meaning. 

We can, however, proceed a little farther than this, because we can 
actually determine, approximately at least, the rate at which cells mul- 
tiply, and that we can do by means of determining the mitotic index. 
The mitotic index is the number of cells to be found at any given 
moment in the active process of division out of a total of one thousand 
cells. 

May I pause a moment to recall this picture to you and ask you to 
notice at this point the curious darker spot which represents a nucleus 
in process of division? You will see it would 
be easy in such a preparation as this to count 
the nuclei one by one until one had got up toa 


a ® thousand, and to record, as one went along, 
mong ee 5) how many of the nuclei are in process of divi- 
SS a sion, for the nucleus in division is easily recog- 

oF eo 4 j nized. This process of division is named 


mitosis: the figure which the nucleus presents 
while it is undergoing division we call a mi- 
totic figure. Counting the dividing nuclei, we 
-—+ may determine that in a thousand cells there 
are a given number which have nuclei in proc- 
ess of division, and such a number I propose to 


Fig. 61. PORTION OF THE all “ the mitotic index.” I wish now only to 


OUTER WALL OF A PRIMITIVE 


MUSCULAR SEGMENT OF A CAT 
EMBRYO OF 4.6 MM. Harvard 
Embryological Collection 
Series 398, section 115, The 
resting nuclei are oval, pale 
and granular. The dividing 
or mitotic nuclei, of which 
there are three, are dark, ir- 
Tegular in outline and show 
the chromosomes. In this 
ease the dividing nuclei all 
lie near the inner surface of 
the wall. The picture illu- 
strates the ease with which 
mitotic figures may be recog- 
nized. 


only 10. 


There has already been a great reduction. 


call to you attention this picture because it 
enables me to illustrate before you the method 
of measuring the mitotic index. 

In the rabbit embryo at seven and one half 
days, I have found by actual count that there 
are in the outer layer of cells, known techni- 
cally as the ectoderm, 18 of these divisions per 
thousand. In the middle layer, technically the 
mesoderm, 17, and in the inner layer, the ento- 
derm, 18. At ten days we find the number al- 
ready reduced, and the figures are, respectively, 
14, 13 and 15, and for the cells of the blood 
In the next phase 


of development (rabbit embryo of thirteen days), we find, however, 
that the parts are growing irregularly, some faster, some slower. We 
note that wherever a trace of differentiation has occurred, the rate of 
growth is diminished: where that differentiation does not show itself, the 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH SEE 


rate of growth may even increase in order to acquire a certain special de- 
velopment of a particular part. So that instead of uniformity of values 
for the mitotic index, we get a great variety. But, nevertheless, the 
general decline can be demonstrated by the figures. In the spinal cord 
the index is 11, in the general connective tissue of the body 10; for the 
cells of the liver 11; in the outside layer of the skin 10; in the excretory 
organ 6; 1n the tissue which forms the center of the limb also 6. There 
has, then, been a rapid decline in the rate of cell multiplication just in 
this period when differentiation is going on. This is, so far as I know, 
an entirely new line of research. The counting of a thousand cells is 
not a thing to be done very rapidly ; it must be undertaken with patience, 
care, and requires time. It has not, I regret to say, been possible for 
me yet to extend the number of these counts beyond those I have given 
you, but it is easy to say that in the yet more differentiated state, the 
number of cells in division is constantly lessened, and it is only a ques- 
tion of counting to determine the mitotic index accurately. That there 
is a further diminution beyond that which the mitotic indices I have 
demonstrated to you represent is perfectly certain. I only regret that 
I am not able to give you exact numerical values. 

I wish very much that my time permitted me to branch off into 
certain topics intimately associated with the general theme we have been 
considering together on these successive evenings, but we can only 
allude to a few of these. The first collateral subject on which I wish 
to speak to you briefly is that which we call the law of genetic restric- 
tion, which means that after a cell has progressed and is differentiated 
a certain distance, its fate is by so much determined. It may from that 
pass on, turn in one direction or another, always progressing, going 
onward in its cytomorphosis; but the general direction has been pre- 
scribed, and the possibilities of that cell as it progresses in its develop- 
ment become more and more restricted. For instance, the cells which 
are set apart to form the central nervous system after they are so set 
apart can not form any other kind of tissue. After the nervous system 
is separated in the progress of development from the rest of the body, 
its cells may become either nerve cells proper or supporting cells 
(neuroglia), which latter never acquire the nervous character proper, 
but serve to uphold and keep in place the true nervous elements. They 
represent the skeleton of the central nervous system. After the cells 
of the nervous system are separated into these two fundamental classes 
they can not change. A cell forming a part of the supporting frame- 
work of the brain can not become a nerve cell; and a nerve cell can not 
become a supporting cell. The destiny of them becomes more and 
more fixed, their future possibilities more and more limited, as their 
cytomorphosis goes on. 

The law of genetic restriction has a very important bearing upon 
questions of disease. When disease occurs, the cells of the body offer 


512 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


to us two kinds of spectacles. Sometimes we see that the cells causing 
the diseased condition are more or less of the sort which naturally be- 
long in the body; that they are present where they do not belong, or 
they are present where they ought to be, but in excessive quantity. 
There is a kind of tumor which we call a bony tumor. It consists of 
bone cells such as are naturally present in the body, but that which 
makes this growth of bone a tumor is its abnormal dimensions, or per- 
haps its being altogether in the wrong place. The second sort of 
pathological alteration, which I had in mind, is that in which the cells 
really change their character. Now, the young cells are those which 
can change most; in which the genetic restriction has least come into 
play ; and accordingly we find that a large number of dangerous, morbid 
growths, tumors, arise from cells of the young type, and these cells, 
having an extreme power of multiplication, grow rapidly, and they may 
assume a special character of their own; their genetic restriction has 
not gone so far that all their possibilities of change in the way of differ- 
entiation have been fixed; there is a certain range of possibilities still 
open to them, and they may turn in one direction or the other. Hence 
there may be pathological growths of a character not normally present 
in the body. It seems to me, so far as my knowledge of this subject 
enables me to judge, to be true that all such pathological growths de- 
pend upon the presence of comparatively young and undifferentiated 
cells being turned into a new direction. The problem of normal 
development and of abnormal structure is one and the same. Both the 
embryologist and the anatomist, on the one hand, and the pathologist 
and the clinician on the other, deal ever with these questions of differ- 
entiation, and practically with no others. All that occurs in the 
body is the result of various differentiations, and whether we call the 
state of that body normal or pathological matters little; still the cause 
of it is the differentiation of the parts. 

The second of the collateral topics which I should like briefly to 
allude to is another branch of the study of senescence. The fact was 
first emphasized by the late Professor Alpheus Hyatt that in many 
animals there exist parts formed in an early stage and thereafter never 
lost. The chambered nautilus is an animal of this kind. The inner- 
most chamber represents the youngest shell of the nautilus, and as its 
age increases, it forms a new chamber in its shell, and so yet more and 
more until the coil is complete. When we examine a shell of that kind 
we see permanently before us the various stages, both young and old, as 
recorded in shell formation. And so too in the sea-urchin, and in 
many of the common shell-fish, we find the double record, of youth and 
old age, preserved permanently. This has made it possible for Pro- 
fessor Hyatt and for Professor Robert T. Jackson, who has adopted a 
similar guiding principle, to bring a great deal of new light into the 
study of animal changes, and to attack the solution of problems which 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 513 


without the aid of this senescent interpretation, if I may so term it, 
would be utterly impossible. This is an enticing subject, and I wish 
I had both time and competency to dwell upon it. But it is aside, as 
you see, from the main inquiries with which we have been occupied, 
for our inquiries concern chiefly the effect of cell-change upon the 
properties of the body, and the correlation of cell-change with age. 

A natural branch of our topic is, however, that of longevity, the 
duration of life. Concerning this, we have very little that is scien- 
tifically satisfactory that we can present. We know, of course, as a 
fundamental principle, that every animal must live long enough to 
reproduce its kind. Did that not occur, the species would of course 
become extinct, and the mere fact that the species is existing proves, 
of course, this simple fact—that life has lasted long enough for the 
parents to produce offspring. The consideration of this fact has led 
certain naturalists to the supposition that reproduction is the cause of 
their termination of life; but it is not, it seems to me, at all to be so 
interpreted. We know, in a general way, that large animals live longer 
than small ones. The elephant is longer lived than the horse, the horse 
than the mouse, the whale than the fish, the fish than the insect, and 
so on through innumerable other instances. At first this seems a 
promising clue, but if we think a moment longer we recognize quickly 
the fact that a parrot, which is much smaller than a dog, may live 
one hundred years, whereas a dog is very old at twenty. There are 
insects which live for many years, like the seventeen-year locusts, and 
others which live but a single year or a fraction even of one year, and 
yet the long-lived and the short-lived may be of the same size. It is 
evident, therefore, that size is not in itself properly a measure of the 
length of life. Another supposition, which at first sounds very attract- 
ive, is that which explains the duration of life by the rate of wear, of 
the using up, of the wearing out, of the body. This theory has been 
particularly put forward by Professor Weismann, who in his writings 
calls it the Abnutzungstheorie—the theory of the wearing out of the 
body. But the body does not really wear out in that sense. It goes on 
performing the functions for a long time, and after each function is 
performed the body is restored, and we do not find at death that the 
parts have worn out. But, as we have seen, we do find at death that 
there has been an extensive cytomorphosis, cell-change, and that the 
living material, after having acquired its differentiation, passes now 
in one part, now in another, then in a third, to a yet further stage, that 
of degeneration, and the result of degeneration, or atrophy, as the case 
may be, is that the living protoplasm loses its living quality and be- 
comes dead material, and necessarily the functional activity ceases. We 
must, it seems to me, conclude that longevity, the duration of life, 
depends upon the rate of cytomorphosis. If that cytomorphosis is 


VOL. LXxI.—33. 


514 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


rapid, the fatal condition is reached soon; if it is slow, the fatal condi- 
tion is postponed. And cytomorphosis in various species and kinds of 
animals must proceed at different rates and at different speeds at 
different ages. Birds grow up rapidly during their period of develop- 
ment; the cell change occurs at a high speed, far higher than that 
which occurs in man, probably, during his period of development. But 
after the bird has acquired its mature development, it goes on almost 
upon a level for a long time; the bird which becomes mature in a single 
year may live for a hundred or even more. There can be during these 
hundred years but a very slow rate of change. But in a mammal, a 
dog or a cat, creatures of about the same bulk as some large birds, 
we find that the early development is at a slower rate. The animals 
take a much longer period to pass through their infancy and reach 
their maturity, but after they have reached their maturity they do not 
sustain themselves so long. Their later cytomorphosis occurs at a 
higher speed than the bird’s. This is a field of study which we can 
only recognize the existence of at present, and which needs to be ex- 
plored before, to any general, or even to a special scientific, audience, 
any promising hypotheses can be presented. Definite conclusions are 
of course still more remote. 

Next as regards death. The body begins its development from a 
single cell, the number of cells rapidly increase, and they go on and 
on increasing through many years. Their whole succession we may 
appropriately call a cycle. Each of our bodies represents a cell cycle. 
When we die, the cycle of cells gives out, and, as I have explained to 
you in a previous lecture, the death which occurs at the end of the 
natural period of life is the death which comes from the breaking 
down of some essential thing—some essential group of members of 
this cell cycle; and then the cycle is broken up. But the death is the 
result of changes which have been going on through the successive 
generations of cells making up this cycle. There are unicellular organ- 
isms; these also die; many of them, so far as we can now determine, 
never have any natural death, but there are probably others in which 
natural death may occur. It is evident that the death of a unicel- 
lular organism is comparable to the death of one cell in our own bodies. 
It is not properly comparable to the death of the whole body, to the 
ending-up of the cell cycle. Is there anything like a cell cycle among 
the lower organisms? among the protozoa, as the lowest animals are 
called? It has been maintained by a French investigator, by the name 
of Maupas, that such a cycle does exist, that even in these low organisms 
there is a cell which begins the development, and that gradually the loss 
in the power of cell multiplication goes on until the cycle gives out 
and has to be renewed by a rejuvenescent process, and this rejuvenating 
process he thinks he has found in the so-called conjugating act of these 
animals, in which there occurs a curious migration of the nucleus of 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 515 


one individual into the cell body of another. Whether he is right or 
not remains still to be determined. You will recognize, I hope, from 
what I have said, that we have now some kind of measure of what con- 
stitutes old and young. We can observe the difference in the propor- 
tion of protoplasm and nucleus, the increase or diminution, as the case 
may be, of one or the other. If it be true that there is among protozoa, 
among unicellular animals, anything comparable to the gradual decline 
in the growth power which occurs in us, we shall expect it to be 
revealed in the condition of the cells—to see in those cells which are 
old an increase in the proportion of protoplasm, and consequently a 
diminution in the relative amount of nucleus. That subject is now 
being investigated, and we shall probably know, within a few years at 
least, something positive in this direction. At present we are reduced 
to posing our question. We must wait patiently for the answer. 

The scientific man has many occasions for patience. He has to 
make his investigations rather where he can than where he would like 
to. Certain things are accessible to our instruments and methods of 
research at the present time, but other things are entirely hidden from 
us and inaccessible at the present. We are indeed, more perhaps than 
people in any other profession of life, the slaves of opportunity. We 
must do what we can in the way of research, not always that which we 
should like most to do. Perhaps a time will come when many of the 
questions connected with the problems of growing old, which we can 
now put, will be answered, because opportunities, which we have not 
now, will exist then. Scientific research offers to its devotees some 
of the purest delights which life can bring. The investigator is a 
creator. Where there was nothing he brings forth something. Out of 
the void and the dark, he creates knowledge, and the knowledge which 
he gathers is not a precious thing for himself alone, but rather a 
treasure which by being shared grows; if it is given away it loses noth- 
ing of its value to the first discoverer, but acquires a different value 
and a greater usefulness that it adds to the total resources of the world. 
The time will come, I hope, when it will be generally understood that 
the investigators and thinkers of the world are those upon whom the 
world chiefly depends. I should like, indeed, to live to a time when it 
will be universally recognized that the military man and the govern- 
ment-maker are types, which have survived from a previous condition 
of civilization, not ours; and when they will no longer be looked upon 
as the heroes of mankind. In that future time those persons who 
have really created our civilization will receive the recognition which is 
their due. Let these thoughts dwell long in ‘your meditation, because 
it is a serious problem in all our civilization to-day how to secure due 
recognition of the value of thought and how to encourage it. I believe 
every word spoken in support of that great recognition which is due 


516 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


to the power of thought is a good word and will help forward toward 
good results. 

In all that I have said, you will recognize that I have spoken con- 
stantly of the condition of the living material. If it is in the young 
state it has one set of capacities. If it is differentiated, it has, accord- 
ing to the nature of its differentiation, other kinds of capacities. We 
can follow the changing structure with the microscope. We can gain 
some knowledge of it by our present chemical methods. Fragmentary 
as that knowledge is, nevertheless, it suffices to show to us that the con- 
dition of the living material is essential and determines what the 
living material can do. I should like to insist for a moment upon this 
conception, because it is directly contrary to a conception of living 
material which has been widely prevalent in recent years, much de- 
fended and popularly presented on many different occasions. The other 
theory, the one to which I can not subscribe, may perhaps be most 
conveniently designated by the term—the theory of life units. It is 
held by the defenders of this faith that the living substance contains 
particles, very small in size, to which the vital properties are especially 
attached. They look at a cell and find that it has water, or water con- 
taining a small amount of salts in solution, fillmg up spaces between 
the threads of protoplasm. Water is not alive. They see in the 
protoplasm granules of one sort and another, in plants chlorophyll, in 
animals perhaps fat or some other material. That is not living sub- 
stance, and so they go striking out from their conception of the living 
material in the cell one after another of these component parts until 
they get down to something very small, which they regard as the life 
unit. I do not believe these life units exist. It seems to me that 
all these dead parts, as this theory terms them, are parts of the living 
cell. They are factors which enable the functions of life to go on. 
Other conditions are also there, and to no one of them does the quality 
of life properly attach itself. Of life units there is an appalling array. 
The most respectable of them, in my opinion, are the life units which 
were hypothetically created by Charles Darwin in his theory of pan- 
genesis. He assumed that there were small particles thrown off from 
different portions of the body circulating throughout the body, gather- 
ing sometimes in the germ cells. These particles he assumed to take 
up the qualities of the different parts of the body from which they 
emanated, and by gathering together in immense numbers in the 
germ cells they accomplished the hereditary transmission. We know 
now that this theory is not necessary, that it is not the correct theory. 
But at the time that Darwin promulgated it, it was a perfectly sound 
defensible theory, a theory which no one considering fairly the history 
of biological knowledge ought to criticize unfavorably. It was a fine 
mental achievement, but I should like also to add that of all the many 
theories of life units, this of Darwin’s is the only one which seems to 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 517 


me intellectually entirely respectable. Of supposed structural life units 
there is a great variety. Besides the gemmules of Darwin, there were 
the physiological units of Herbert Spencer. Professor Haeckel, the 
famous German writer, has special structural life units of his own 
which he terms plastidules; he gave them the charming alliterative title 
of perigenesis of the plastidules; the rhythm of it must appeal to you 
all, though the hypothesis had better be forgotten. Then came Nageli, 
the great botanist, who spoke of the Idioplasma-Theilchen. Then 
Weisner, also a botanist, who spoke of the Plassomes. Our own Pro- 
fessor Whitman attributed to his life units certain other essential quali- 
ties and called them idiosomes. A German zoologist, Haacke, has 
called them gemmules. Another German writer, a Leipzig anatomist, 
Altmann, calls them granuli. Now these different life units, of which 
I have read you briefly the names, are not identical according to these 
authors. Everybody else’s life units are wrong, falsely conceived, and 
endued with qualities which they do not combine. There is a curious 
assemblage here of doxies, and each writer is orthodox and all the 
others are heterodox; and I find myself viewing them all from the 
standpoint of my doxy, that of the structural quality of the living 
matter, and, therefore, interpreting every one of these conceptions as 
heterodox, not sound doctrine, but something to be rejected, condemned 
and fought against. These theories of life units have filled up many 
books. Among the most ardent defenders of the theory of life units 
is Professor Weismann, whose theories of heredity many of you have 
heard discussed ; though I doubt if many of you, unless you recall what 
I said previously, are aware of the fact that the essential part of 
Weismann’s doctrine was the discovery of the theory of germinal con- 
tinuity by Professor Nussbaum, whose name is seldom heard in these 
discussions. Weismann has gone much farther in the elaboration of 
the conception of life units than any of the other writers. He thinks 
the smallest of the life units are biophores. A group of biophores 
brought together constitutes another order of life units which he calls 
determinants; the determinants are again grouped and form ids; and 
the ids are again grouped and form idants. If you want to accept 
any theory of life units, I advise you to accept that of Weismann, for 
it offers a large range for the imagination, and has a much more 
formidable number of terms than any other. 

I want to pass now to an utterly different line of study, the question 
of psychological development. If it be true that the development is 
most rapid at first, slower later, we should expect to find proof of 
that rate in the progress of mental development. In other words, we 
should expect to find that the baby developed faster than the child 
mentally, that the child developed faster than the young man, and the 
young man faster than the old. And do you not all instinctively feel 
immediately that the general assertion is true? In order, however, that 


518 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


you may more fully appreciate what I believe to be the fact of mental 
development going on with diminishing rapidity, I should lke to pic- 
ture to you briefly some of the things which the child achieves during 
the first year of its life. When the child is born, it is undoubtedly sup- 
plied with a series of the indispensable physiological functions, all those 
which are concerned with the taking in and utilizing of food. The 
organs of digestion, assimilation, circulation and excretion are all 
functionally active at birth. The sense organs are also able to work. 
Sense of taste and of smell are doubtfully present. It is maintained 
that they are already active, but they do not show themselves except in 
response to very strong stimulation. Almost the only additional faculty 
which the child has is that of motion, but the motions of the new-born 
baby are perfectly irregular, accidental, purposeless, except the motions 
which are connected with the function of sucking, upon which the 
child depends for its nourishment. The instinct of sucking, the baby 
does have at birth. It might be described as almost the only equip- 
ment beyond the mere physiological working of its various organs. But 
at, one month we find that this uninformed baby has made a series of 
important discoveries. It has learned that there are sensations, that 
they are interesting; it will attend to them. You all know how a 
baby of one month will stare; the eyes will be fastened upon some 
bright and interesting object. At the end of a month the baby shows 
evidences of having ideas and bringing them into correlation, associa- 
tion, as one more correctly expresses it, because already after one month, 
when held in the proper position in the arms, it shows that it expects to 
be fed. There is, then, already evidence and trace of memory. At two 
months much more has been achieved. The baby evidently learns to 
expect things. It expects to be fed at certain times; it has made the 
great discovery of the existence of time. And it has made the discovery 
of the existence of space, for it will follow, to some extent, the bright 
light; it will hold its head in a certain position to catch a sound appar- 
ently from one side; or to see in a certain direction. The sense of 
space and time in the baby’s mind is, of course, very imperfect, doubt- 
less, at this time, but those two non-stuff realities about which the 
metaphysicians discuss so much, the two realities of existence which 
are not material, the baby at this time has discovered. Perhaps, had 
some great and wonderfully endowed person existed who preserved the 
memory of his own psychological history, of his development during 
babyhood, we should have been spared the gigantic efforts of the meta- 
physicians to explain how the notions of space and time arose. With- 
out knowing how, the baby has acquired them, and has already become a 
rudimentary metaphysician. We see, also, at the end of the third 
month, that the baby has made another remarkable discovery. It has 
found not merely that its muscles will contract and jerk and throw its 
parts about, which is doubtless earlier a great delight to it; but that 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 519 


the muscles can contract in such a way that the movement will be 
directed ; there is a coordination of the muscular movements. I should 
like to read to you just these three or four lines from Miss Shinn, who 
has given perhaps the best story of the development of a baby which 
has yet been written. This is not merely my opinion, but also the 
opinion of my psychological colleagues at Cambridge whom I consulted 
before venturing to express the idea before you, and I find that they 
take the view that Miss Shinn’s book, which is charmingly written, is 
really done with such precision and understanding of the psychological 
problems involved that it may fairly be called the best of the books 
treating of the mental development of a baby. Miss Shinn says, re- 
ferring to the condition of the child at the end of two months—“ Such 
is the mere life of vegetation the baby lived during the first two months; 
no grown person ever experienced such an expansion of life—such a 
progress from power to power in that length of time.” She is not 
thinking of senescence, as we have been thinking of it, but she makes 
precisely the assertion, which seems to me to be true, that the baby in 
two months has accomplished an amount of development which no 
adult is capable of. And now at three months we find another great 
discovery is made by the baby, that it is possible to bring the sensations 
which it receives into combination with the movements which it makes. 
It learns to coordinate its sensory impressions and its motor responses. 
We hardly realize what a great réle this adjustment, between what our 
muscles can do and what our senses tell us, plays in our daily life. It 
is the fundamental thing in all our daily actions, and though by 
habit we perform it almost unconsciously, it is a thing most difficult to 
learn. Yet the baby has acquired the art, though he only gradually gets 
to be perfect in it. Again we see, at the end of the fourth month, 
that the baby begins to show some idea of another great principle— 
the idea that it can do something. It shows evidence of having purpose 
in what it does. Its movements are no longer purely accidental. At 
four months we find yet another equally astonishing addition to the 
achievements of this marvelous baby. He makes the amazing discovery 
that the two sides of an object are not separate things, but are parts of 
the same. When a face, for instance, disappears by a person’s turning 
around, that face, to a baby of one month, probably simply vanishes, 
ceases to exist: but the baby at four months realizes that the face and 
the back of the head belong to the same object. He has acquired the 
idea of objects existing in the world around him. That is an enormous 
achievement, for this little baby has no instructor; he is finding out 
these things by his own unaided efforts. Then at five months begins 
the age of handling, when the baby feels of everything. It feels urgently 
of all the objects which it can get hold of and perhaps most of all of its 
own body. It is finding that it can touch its various parts and that when 
its hands and parts of its own body come in contact it has the double 


520 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


sensation, and learns to bring those together and thereby is manufactur- 
ing in its consciousness the conception of the ego, personal, individual 
existence, another great metaphysical notion. Descartes has said— 
Cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore Iam. The baby, if he had written 
in Descartes’s place, would have said—“ I feel, therefore Iam.” The 
first five months constitute the first period of the baby’s development. 
Its powers are formed, and the foundations of knowledge have been laid. 
The second period is a period of amazing research, constant, uninter- 
rupted, untiring; renewed the instant the baby wakes up, and kept up 
until sleep again overtakes it. In the six months’ baby we find already 
the notion of cause and effect. You see he is dealing mostly in meta- 
physical things, getting the fundamental concepts. That there is such 
an idea as cause and effect in the baby’s mind is clearly shown by the 
progress of its adaptive intelligence. It evidently has now distinct 
purposes of its own. It shows clearly at this age also another thing 
which plays a constant and important réle in our daily life. It has the 
consciousness of the possibilities of human intercourse; it wants human 
companionship. And with that the baby’s equipment to start upon life 
is pretty well established. It has discovered the material universe in 
which it lives, the succession of time, the nature of space, cause and 
effect, its own existence, its ego and its relationship with other in- 
dividuals of its own species. Do we get at any time in our life much 
beyond this? Not very much; we always use these things, which we 
learn in the first six months, as the foundation of all our thought. 
By eight months baby is upon the full career of experiment and ob- 
servation. Everything with which the baby comes in contact interests 
him. He looks at it, he seizes hold of it, tries to pull it to pieces, 
studies its texture, its tensile strength, and every other quality it pos- 
sesses. Not satisfied with that, he will turn and apply his tongue to it, 
putting it in his mouth for the purpose of finding out if it has any 
taste. In doing this, hour after hour, with unceasing zeal, never inter- 
rupted diligence, he rapidly gets acquainted with the world in which 
he is placed. At the same time he is making further experiments with 
his own body. He begins to tumble about; perhaps learns that it is 
possible to get from one place to another by rolling or creeping, and 
slowly he discovers the possibility of locomotion, which you know by 
the end of the year will have so far perfected itself that usually at 
twelve months the baby can walk. During this period of from five 
months to twelve the baby is engaged upon a career of original research, 
unaided much by anybody else, getting doubtless a little help and, of 
course, a great deal of protection, but really working chiefly by himself. 
How wonderful it all is!’ Is any one of us capable of beginning at the 
moment we wake to carry on a new line of thought, a new series of 
studies, and to keep it up full swing, with unabated pace, all day long 
till we drop asleep? Every baby does that every day. 


AGH, GROWTH AND DEATH 521 


When we turn to the child who goes to school, behold how much 
that child has lost. It has difficulties with learning the alphabet. It 
struggles slowly through the Latin grammar, painfully with the subject 
of geometry, and the older it gets, the more difficult becomes the 
achievement of its study. The power of rapid learning, which the 
baby has, is clearly already lessened. 

The introduction of athletics affords a striking illustration of the 
decline of the learning power with the progressing years. When golf 
first came in it was considered an excellent game for the middle-aged ; 
and you have all watched the middle-aged man play. He was so awk- 
ward, he could not do it. Day after day the man of forty, fifty, or 
even older, would go to the golf field, hoping each time to acquire a 
sure stroke, but never really acquiring it. The young man learned 
better, but the good golf players are those who begin as children, twelve 
and fourteen years of age, who in a few months become as expert and 
sure as their fathers wished to become, but could not. In bicycling it 
was the same. Hight lessons was considered the number necessary to 
teach the intelligent adult to ride a wheel. Three for a child of eight. 
And an indefinite number of lessons, ending in failure, for a person at 
seventy. It would have been scientifically interesting to have kept an 
exact record of the period of time which it took at each age to learn 
bicycling, but I think enough has been said to convince you that if we 
could acquire such a measure of psychological development as would 
enable us to express its rate in figures, we should be able to construct a 
curve like the curve which I showed you in the third lecture illustrating 
the decline in the rate of growth, and we should see that during the 
early years of life, the decline in the power of learning was extremely 
rapid, during childhood less rapid, during old age very slow. But the 
great part of the decline would occur during early years. 

Here we see the principle of stability, in maturity, which we see 
also illustrated in structure and growth. The mind acquires its devel- 
opment; it retains that development in the adult a long time. But 
surely there comes a period when the exercise of the mind is difficult. 
It requires a great effort to do something new and unaccustomed. A 
sense of fatigue overwhelms us. I believe that this principle of psy- 
chological development, paralleling the career of physical development, 
needs to be more considered in arranging our educational plans. For 
if it be true that the decline in the power of learning is most rapid at 
first, it is evident that we want to make as much use of the early years 
as possible—that the tendency, for instance, which has existed in many 
of our universities, to postpone the period of entrance into college, is 
biologically an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the 
young man get to college earlier, graduate earlier, get into practical 
life or into the professional schools earlier, while the power of learning 
is greater. 


522 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Do we not see, in fact, that the new ideas are indeed for the most 
part the ideas of young people. As Dr. Osler, in that much-discussed 
remark of his, has said, the man of forty years is seldom the productive 
man. Dr. Osler also mentioned the amiable suggestion of Trollope in 
regard to men of sixty, which has been so extremely misrepresented in 
the newspaper discussions throughout the country, causing biologists 
much amusement. But I think that Dr. Osler probably took a far too 
amiable view of mankind, and that in reality the period when the learn- 
ing power is nearly obliterated is reached in most individuals very 
much earlier. As in every class of biological facts, there is here the 
principle of variation to be kept in mind. Men are not alike. The 
great majority of men lose the power of learning, doubtless some more 
and some less, we will say, at twenty-five years. Few men after twenty- 
five are able to learn much. They become day laborers, mechanics, 
clerks of a mechanical order. Others probably can go on somewhat 
longer, and obtain higher positions; and there are men who, with ex- 
treme variations in endowment, preserve the power of active and orig- 
inal thought far on into life. These of course are the exceptional 
men, the great men. 

We have lingered so long together studying phenomena of growth, 
that it is natural to allude to one more, which is as singular as it is 
interesting, namely, the increase in size of Americans. It was first 
demonstrated by Dr. Benjamin A. Gould in his volume of statistics 
derived from the records of the Sanitary Commission—a volume which 
still remains the classic and model of anthropometric research. Any 
one, however, can observe that the younger generation of to-day tends 
conspicuously to surpass its parents in stature and physical develop- 
ment. How to explain the remarkable improvement we do not know. 
Our discovery of the fact that the very earliest growth is so enormously 
rapid, makes that earliest period especially important. If the initial 
growth can be favored a better subsequent development presumably 
would result. In brief, I find myself led to the hypothesis that the 
better health of the mothers secures improved nourishment in the early 
stages of the offspring, and that the maternal vigor is at least one 
important immediate cause of the physical betterment of the children. 
Much is said about the degeneracy of the American race, but the con- 
trary is true—the American race surpasses its European congeners in 
physical development. 

You will naturally wish to ask, before I close the series of lectures, 
two questions. One, how can rejuvenation be improved ; the other, how 
can senescence be delayed. These questions will strike every one as 
very practical. But the first, I fear, is not an immediately practical 
question, but rather of scientific interest, for we must admit that the 
production of young individuals is, on the whole, very well accom- 
plished and much to our satisfaction. But in regard to growing old, 


AGE, GROWTH AND DEATH 523 


in regard to senescence, the matter is very different. There we should, 
indeed, like to have some principle given to us which would delay the 
rate of senescence and leave us for a longer period the enjoyment of 
our mature faculties. I can, as you have readily surmised by what I 
have said to you, present to you no new rule by which this can be ac- 
complished, but I can venture to suggest to you that in the future 
deeper insight into these mysteries probably awaits us, and that there 
may indeed come a time when we can somewhat regulate these matters. 
If it be true that the growing old depends upon the increase of the 
protoplasm, and the proportional diminution of the nucleus, we can 
perhaps in the future find some means by which the activity of the nuclei 
can be increased and the younger system of organization thereby pro- 
longed. That is only a dream of the possible future. It would not 
be safe even to call it a prophecy. But stranger things and more 
unexpected have happened, and perhaps this will also. 

I do not wish to close without one added word. The views which 
I have presented before you in this series of lectures I am personally 
chiefly responsible for. Science consists in the discovery made by indi- 
viduals, afterwards confirmed and correlated by others, so that they 
lose their personal character. The views which I have presented to 
you, you ought to know are still largely in the personal stage. Whether 
my colleagues will think that the body of conceptions which I have 
presented are fully justified or not, I can not venture to say. I have 
to thank you much, because between the lecturer and his audience there 
is established a personal relation, and I feel very much the compliment 
of your presence throughout this series of lectures, and of the very 
courteous attention which you have given me. 

To recapitulate—for we have now arrived at the end of our hour— 
we may say that we have established, if my arguments before you be 
correct, the following four laws of age. 

First, rejuvenation depends on the increase of the nuclei. 

Second, senescence depends on the increase of the protoplasm, and 
on the differentiation of the cells. 

Third, the rate of growth depends on the degree of senescence. 

Fourth, senescence is at its maximum in the very young stages, and 
the rate of senescence diminishes with age. 

As the corollary from these, we have this—natural death is the con- 
sequence of cellular differentiation. 


524 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


RADIOACTIVITY OF ORDINARY SUBSTANCES 


By W. W. STRONG 


JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 


URING the latter part of the nineteenth century a great deal of 
work was done upon electrical discharges in rarefied gases. In 
1895 Rontgen made the epoch-making discovery that such a discharge 
was the source of very penetrating radiations. These radiations he 
called X-rays on account of their unknown nature, and he found that 
they possessed the power of making a gas a conductor of electricity by 
producing in it a great number of positively and negatively charged car- 
riers or ions. Besides ionizing a gas, the X-rays were found to affect 
a photographic plate just as light rays do and to be able to penetrate 
thin sheets of the metals and many other bodies which are opaque to 
light. It was found in the course of experimentation that these X-rays 
were closely related to the stoppage of the cathode particles or cor- 
puscles, and the phosphorescence on the walls of the vacuum tube 
which these corpuscles excite. In 1897 J. J. Thomson found that 
these cathode particles or corpuscles were small negatively charged 
particles of an apparent mass only one seven-hundredth that of the 
hydrogen atom and that in a “ high vacuum” tube in a strong electric 
field they acquired a velocity approximating that of light. All the 
properties of the corpuscles were found to be the same, no matter what 
kind of gas or electrodes were in the discharge tube. Their mass was 
found to vary with their velocity in such a way that the whole mass 
of the corpuscle could be ascribed to the electric charge which it car- 
rie?. From this most important discovery it was concluded that all 
the common substances were partly made up of corpuscles, and this 
conclusion has been strengthened by all later discoveries. After 
Thomson’s discovery, Stokes showed that the sudden stoppage of the 
corpuscles by the walls of the discharge tube caused intense electro- 
magnetic disturbances to travel out from the point of impact. These 
disturbances are the X-rays and travel with the velocity of light. 


DISCOVERY OF RADIOACTIVITY 


When Roéntgen announced his discovery, it created a great impetus 
in the study of everything related to electrical discharges. Now it 
had been known for a long time that some bodies like the uranium 
salts phosphoresce when exposed to sunlight, and it occurred to H. 
Becquerel that such a phosphorescing body might emit X-rays, this 


RADIOACTIVITY 525 


emission being analogous to the origin of X-rays in the phosphorescing 
glass walls of a vacuum tube. In accordance with this view in 1896 
he exposed a photographic plate to uranium sulphate which was cov- 
ered with copper and aluminium foil and found that the plate was 
acted upon. Accidentally he found that this action took place, no 
matter whether the uranium nitrate was phosphorescing or not, and he 
found that uranium which had never been exposed to sunlight pos- 
sessed the same property. He found that these radiations from ura- 
nium were similar to the X-rays in their penetrating power. This was 
the first discovery of the possession of radioactivity by a body, +. e., the 
power of a body to ionize a gas, to affect a photographic plate or to 
produce phosphorescence. 

Madame Curie then took up the problem of finding whether other 
substances possessed the properties of uranium and found that tho- 
rium did. She made a detailed investigation then of all the elements 
and found that none, with the exception of uranium and thorium, 
possessed these properties even to the order of the hundredth part of 
that of uranium. She, however, found that some minerals possessed 
a greater radioactivity than uranium or thorium, and concluded that 
these must contain elements more highly radioactive than either of 
these. After much tedious, but brilliant, work she was able to sepa- 
rate out the very radioactive element radium. As a result of the work 
of the Curies, and many others, it was found that thorium, uranium, 
radium and actinium were radioactive, the latter two being intensely 
so. None of the other elements were found to possess any radioac- 
tivity to within the limits of the experimental errors of the method of 
observation. 

The study of these radioactive elements has been the source of very 
important discoveries in physics. These elements are found to emit 
spontaneously a continuous flight of material particles, projected with 
great velocity, and also to be the source of radiations similar to X-rays 
and called y rays. We will now describe the material particles, which 
are of two kinds, the a and £ rays. 

The a rays consist of positively charged particles shot out by the 
radioactive body with a velocity approaching that of light. They are 
readily absorbed by thin sheets of metal foil or by a few centimeters of 
air. The @ rays are far more penetrating in character than the a 
rays and consist of negatively charged bodies projected with velocities 
of the same order of magnitude as that of light. As far as known, 
they are identical with the corpuscles. Of the three kinds of rays, the 
a Tays produce the greatest amount of ionization and the y rays the 
least. With a thin layer of unscreened radioactive matter spread on 
the lower of two plates, say 5 cm. apart, it will be found that the rela- 
tive order of ionization due to the a, 8 and y rays is as 10,000 to 100 
to 1, whereas the average penetrating power is inversely proportional 


526 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


to the relative ionization. The photographic action is due almost 
entirely to 8 rays. 


THE DISINTEGRATION THEORY 


The radioactivity of the radio-elements is not a molecular, but an 
atomic, property, and the rate of emission of the radiations depends 
on the amount of the element present and is unaffected by the applica- 
tion of any known physical or chemical forces. In order to explain 
the emission of positively and negatively charged particles, Rutherford 
and others consider the radio-elements as undergoing spontaneous 
changes and that the energy of projection of the a and @ rays had pre- 
viously been stored up in the atom as rapid oscillatory or orbital motion. 
This breaking up of the atoms is considered to be accompanied by the 
production of a series of new substances which have distinct physical 
and chemical properties. For instance, thorium produces an intensely 
radioactive substance, thorium X, which is soluble in ammonia. Tho- 
rium gives rise also to a gaseous product, the thorium emanation, and 
this is the source of another substance, which is deposited on the sur- 
face of bodies in the neighborhood of the thorium, and which is known 
as the “excited activity” or the “active deposit.” If a negatively 
charged wire is brought into close proximity with thorium salts, the 
“active deposit” will form upon it. The “active deposit” itself 
decays into a succession of products. 

Following will be given some of the products of the various radio- 
active elements and some of their properties. 


TABLE I. 


TRANSFORMATION PrRopucts. THE THORIUM GROUP 


Time to be Seri Range of Physical and Chemical 
Product pis 2 See Radiations a Rays Properties 
Thorium 2(10)% yrs.| Rayless (?) Insoluble in ammonia 
Radiothorium | ? a rays 3.9 cm. 
Thorium X 3.6 days oh 5.7 cm. Soluble in ammonia 
Emanation 54 secs. - 5.5 em. Inert gas condensing 
i" at —120° C 
‘a ( Thorium A : 
me sy = The active deposit 
a 3 isconcentrated on the 
= Thorium B 1 hr. a rays 5.0 em. cathode in an elec- 
Fj tric field. 
& (Thorium C Very short| a, f,y rays | 8.6 cm. 
THE URANIUM GROUP 
Uranium | (10)? yrs. a rays 3.5 cm. | Soluble in an ex- 
cess of ammonium 
carbonate 
Uranium X 22 days 8 &y rays Insoluble in ammo- 


' nium carbonate. 


RADIOACTIVITY 527 


Tue ACTINIUM GROUP 


Actinium Pag, Rayless Insoluble in am- 
monia =— 
Radioactinium) 19.5 days | a rays 4.8 cm. Carried down in an 
actinium solution by 
adding BaCl, 
Actinium X 10.2 days a 6.55 em. Soluble in am- 
monia 
Emanation 3.9 secs. cs 5.8 cm. Behaves like a gas 
-@ ( Actinium A 36 min. Rayless 
a The active deposit 
& is concentrated on 
= the cathode in an 
= electric field 
< Actinium B | 2 min. a, B, y rays 
THE RADIUM GROUP 
Radium 1,300 yrs. | @ rays 3.50 cm. Allied chemically 
to barium 
Emanation 3.8 days 4 4.33 cm. Inert gas of heavy 
molecular _ weight, 
condensing at 
© —150° C. 
32 | Radium A 3 min. es 4.83 cm. The active deposit 
2.8 Radium B 26 min. Braysof low is concentrated on the 
AS penetra- cathode in the elec- 
ae ting power tric field 
Om 
<¢ \ Radium C 19 min. a, 8, y rays | 7.06 cm. 
_| Radium Dor) 40 years Rayless Volatile below 
=&|  Radiolead 1,000° C. 
22] Radium E 6 days B rays Non-volatile at 
as 1,000° ©. 
25 | Radium F or| 140days | a rays 3.86 cm. Deposited in bis- 
8 polonium or muth in solution. 
<5 radiotellu- | 
rium 


In connection with these tables it may be well to consider the a 
particles a little more. It has been found that the a particles of any 
one product are emitted with the same velocity. It is found that after 
passing through a definite distance of gas, they then cease to ionize it. 
If the gas is air under normal conditions of pressure and temperature, 
this distance will be the range of the a particle. All experiments up to 
the present indicate that the a particles of the different products differ 
only in the speed of projection, this speed determining the range of 
ionization. Rutherford has found an empirical relation between the 
range of the a particle and its velocity at any point in its path. If 
r is the remaining range after passing through a screen, its velocity 
is V=.348 V, Vr-+ 1.25, where V, is the initial velocity of the a 
particles emitted from radium C, and is 2.06 (10)® cm. per sec. The 
initial velocity of expulsion of an a particle from a certain product 
will then be a constant. The value of e/m for all a rays measured 
has been found to be the same and to be about 5.07 (10)* electro-mag- 
netic units. It thus follows that all the radio-elements possess the 


528 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


common constituents, the a and 8 particles. It has been found that 
after a certain critical velocity has been reached, the a particles all at 
once cease to produce any ionization, phosphorescence or photographic 
action. If a substance emits particles with a velocity less than this 
critical velocity, we should have no method at present available for 
detecting them. As to the enormous amount of ionization produced 
by radium, one can partly grasp it when one considers that an a par- 
ticle produces about 80,000 ions and one grm. of radium emits about 
6 (10)*° a particles per second. ‘The y rays also differ in penetrating 
power. The y rays from radium and thorium are very much stronger 
than those from uranium and actinium. 


THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN VARIOUS ELEMENTS 

By actual experiment in the laboratory it is possible to watch the 
gradual formation of helium and actinium. ‘The rate of formation 
of helium from radium is known roughly, so that if in any rock the 
helium formed from radium has not been allowed to escape, a quite 
accurate estimation of the age of the rock can be made. Radium has 
also been found by Boltwood and Rutherford to grow in actinium 
solutions. But by investigating elements which appear together in 
the rocks it is possible to learn much more. In fact it was from the 
occurrence of helium in radioactive minerals that the brilliant predic- 
tion of the production of helium was made. Boltwood, Strutt and 
McCoy have shown that the amount of radium present in radioactive 
minerals always bears a constant ratio to the amount of uranium 
present. For every gram of uranium there is present 3.8 (10)~7 grms. 
of radium. From this coexistence in a constant ratio, one is justified 
in assuming that radium is a product of uranium. If this is true it 
is easy to explain the existence of radium in rocks that contain 
uranium. Otherwise, on account of the short period of disintegra- 
tion of radium, it would be difficult to account for its distribution 
through the rocks. It has also been found that minerals of the same 
age contain uranium and lead in the same ratio, so that it seems quite 
certain that lead is a disintegrated product resulting from radium. 
Recent experiments by Rutherford seem to indicate, however, that 
actinium is not a direct product of uranium, as radium is considered 
to be. The existence together of various other elements has been used 
as an argument for their relationship. At present, however, the evi- 
dences are very meager and often conflicting. This field of experi- 
ment is one that promises very important results, however. 


Tue DISTRIBUTION OF RADIUM 


Considerable work has recently been done by the Hon. R. J. Strutt 
upon the amount of radium contained in various kinds of rocks widely 


——_—_ ~— RADIOACTIVITY 529 


distributed over the earth. As this kind of work will probably have 
considerable geological importance, a few of Strutt’s results will be 
given. A solution of a definite amount of the rock was stored until 
the equilibrium amount of radium emanation had accumulated. Now, 
as we have seen that uranium and radium occur in a constant pro- 
portion, it is possible to use a mineral of known uranium content and 
to compare the amount of radium emanation emitted by this and that 
emitted by the given rock. Following are some of Strutt’s results, 
using 3.8 (10)-* grms. of radium as accompanying 1 gram of uranium 
in uranium minerals. 


TaBLeE II. 
RADIUM CONTENT oF IGNEOUS RocKs 
Name Hock toctity | Density | Ratlumares, | Pala ze 
Granite Rhodesia 2.63 | 491 (10)-? | 12.9 (10)-2 
a Cornwall 2.62 4.80 (10)-* | 12:6 (10)-" 
Blue grouud Kimberly 3.06 is (10j}—2 ) -6:29:/(410)-4 
Leucite basanite Vesuvius 2.72 Lik (10) |) 466610) -2 
Hornblende granite | Assouan, Egypt 2.64 1.26. (10)-™"| °3:32,C10)-= 
Hornblende diorite | Heidelberg 2.89 ¥.02" (10)+7"|" 2.94 (10)-2 
Augite syenite Norway 2 73 -95 (10)-*} 2.60 (10) 
Granite Isle of Rum 2.61 pon, AAD) a4 OT (10) 
Basalt Greenland 3.01 son (10)-2 -94 (10)-# 
Native iron a6 -218 (10) -# 
Meteoric iron Thunda Undetectable 
i eS Virginia ae 
De ok: Santa Catarina oe 


RADIUM CONTENT OF SOME SEDIMENTARY Rocks 
Radium Content per 


Name of Rock Locality Gram in Grams 
Oolite Bath 3.00 (10)-? 
Marble East Lothian £99) ((10)=4 
Roofing slate Wales 1327 (10)=> 
Gault clay Cambridge 5:09) G10)=2 
Clay Essex 89 (10)-? 
Red chalk Hunstanton 57 (10) 
White marble India 228) LO) a= 
Chalk Cambridgeshire 2405 (10) 54 
Deposit from Bath hot springs 425 (10)-? 
Cambridge tap water .400 (10)-? 
Sea salt AiW@ (i) 
Boiler crust, Cambridge .040 (10)-? 
Sea salt Omaha .0204 (10)- 
Sea water Atlantic .003 (10)-? 


These two tables give but a few of the analyses of Strutt. They 
show the very wide distribution of radium both in the igneous and in 
the sedimentary rocks. The average radium content of the rocks exam- 
ined by Strutt is high, whereas that of sea salt is quite small. Strutt 
finds that the radium content necessary to maintain the earth at a 
constant temperature is about 1.75 (10)-** grms. of radium per cubic 
centimeter of the earth. This is very much less than the lowest 
radium content of any of the rocks. For this reason he believes that 

VOL. LXxI.—34. 


530 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


radium is to be found only in an outer crust of the earth, at least if 
the earth is becoming cooler. In making these calculations, the effect 
of thorium and uranium and the possible radioactivity of ordinary 
materials is not taken into account. If the heating effect of ordinary 
materials is of the same order of magnitude as is to be expected from 
the ionization they produce, the earth’s temperature gradient would 
be many times larger than that observed. Strutt believes this to be 
an argument that ordinary matter possesses no genuine radioactivity 
of its own. CC. B. Thwing claims, however, that he has been able to 
find a temperature gradient in small cylinders of the various metals 
and rocks. At present nothing very definite can be said as to the 
heating effect of the radioactivity of substances upon the temperature 
of the earth. Having considered the radioactivity of the various 
rocks, we will now take up the atmosphere. 


RADIOACTIVITY OF THE ATMOSPHERE 

It was found after considerable work had been done on ionization 
that the free air is very considerably ionized. Now in the table of 
the transformation products of the radio-elements, it will be noticed 
that several products have the property of condensing on a highly 
negatively-charged wire. Elster and Geitel and others tried exposing 
such a wire in the open air and found that there was an active deposit 
vf radium and thorium formed on the wire. The amount of active 
deposit was found to depend upon the locality and the weather condi- 
tions. If the air had been undisturbed for some time as the air in 
caves and cellars, it was found that the active deposit formed was 
much greater. Air sucked through the pores of the ground was found 
to be very active. From these results, Elster and Geitel concluded 
that the radium and thorium emanations (which behave like gases) 
ooze up through the ground and percolating waters and have their 
origin in the radium and thorium in the soil. The emanation then 
breaks up into the various products as given in Table I. The emana- 
tion in this course gives rise to positively charged carriers, which are 
driven to a negatively charged wire by the electric field. It is to the 
emanation and its products that the ionization of the air is attributed. 
Thorium C and radium C give off y rays, and, as these are very pene- 
trating, they would be the source of a very penetrating radiation, and 
this latter has been discovered several years ago. The ionization in 
a closed electroscope is measured, and thick lead screens are then 
placed around the electroscope, and the ionization is again measured. 
The ionization in the latter case is found to be very considerably de- 
creased, the penetrating radiation having been largely cut off. Whether 
all the penetrating radiation can be explained as due to radium C and 
thorium C will be taken up later. 


RADIOACTIVITY Ron 


As the potential of the earth is negative compared with that of the 
air, the active deposit is dragged down to the surface of the ground 
and upon the leaves and branches of plants and trees. A hill or 
mountain top concentrates the earth’s field and so receives a greater 
amount of the active deposit. In this way Elster and Geitel explain 
the greater ionization on hills and mountains. Experiments show 
that the active deposit tends to collect on dust particles. These dust 
particles serve as nuclei for the condensation of raindrops and snow- 
flakes. The deposit resulting from evaporating rain and snow should 
be very radioactive. This was found to be true by Wilson and Allen. 
Again, a big rain or snow should carry down most of the active deposit, 
and as the emanation does not emit y rays, the amount of y radiation 
from the radioactive matter in the air should be very much decreased. 
The penetrating radiation, if it consists mainly of y rays, should then 
become very small. This has been found to be borne out by experi- 
ments made by the writer. It must be remembered that the emana- 
tion is insoluble in water and as this does not seem to be carried down 
by water or snow, the products radium C and thorium C would soon 
be in equilibrium again after the rain or snow. 

The effect of the presence of radioactive matter in the atmosphere 
upon ordinary phenomena is perhaps very great, though at present little 
is known. It has been found that deep wells and hot springs contain 
considerable radium. From this Elster and Geitel suggest that the 
curative effect of thermal springs and the physiological action of the 
air at high levels may be related to the large amount of radioactive 
matter present. ‘The presence of radioactive matter, and therefore of 
ionization, in the air probably plays a very important réle in the 
growth of plants. It has been found that vegetables grown in an 
atmosphere electrified positively are much above those grown in normal 
fields both in quantity and in quality. The ionization and nucleation 
produced by radioactive matter in the air are very essential for the 
condensation of rain and hail, and serve to explain the enormous ac- 
cumulation of static electricity during thunderstorms. Simpson and 
others have measured the activity of the air which has blown over the 
sea and have found it small. Now if most of the radium and thorium 
emanations come from the pores of the soil and underground cavities, 
the results obtained by the above investigators would be expected, for, as 
will be seen from Table II., the radium content of ocean water is very 
small. Eve has recently measured the ionization over the ocean and 
has found it to be the same as the ionization over the land, a rather 
unexpected result. In this state the matter rests at present. A 
crucial test would be to expose negatively charged wires far out in the 
ocean and find whether there was any active deposit and to test for the 
presence of a penetrating radiation. According to J. Joly, the distin- 
guished geologist, Eve’s results can easily be explained. Geologists have 


532 POPULAR SCIENCH MONTHLY 


for some time made an approximate estimate of the age of the oceans 
by making determinations of the amount of salt which they contain. 
By analyzing the waters of rivers flowing into the ocean for the salt 
which they contain and determining the total annual outflow of all the 
rivers into the ocean, and supposing these constants to have been prac- 
tically constant during the past, it is easy to make an estimate of the 
approximate age of the oceans. Now if radium and uranium always 
exist in a constant proportion, the present radium content of the ocean 
would have been supplied by the rivers in a comparatively short length 
of time. For this and other reasons Joly believes that uranium and 
radium are not always to be found associated together. Now we know 
that radium has a short period of decay, so that it must constantly be 
supplied from somewhere. Joly believes that the source is at least 
partly outside of the earth. This radium is gradually being brought 
down to the surface. This would account for the ionization over the 
ocean and the wide distribution of radium over the earth. Elster and 
Geitel’s theory of the escape of the emanation from the upper layers of 
the soil would still hold true. If radium exists outside the earth, it 
would be expected that the upper layers of the earth’s atmosphere would 
be highly ionized by the y rays. This highly ionizing radiation would 
serve to explain some of the phenomena of atmospheric electricity. 
According to C. T. R. Wilson, the positive potential of the atmosphere 
is largely to be attributed to the carrying down of negative charges by 
raindrops and snowflakes. The upper layers of the atmosphere, being 
highly ionized and quite good conductors, would conduct the remaining 
positive charge to places of lower potential and would thus always aid 
in equalizing the potential of wet and dry regions. 


RADIOACTIVITY OF THE METALS 

After the discovery that several of the elements were radioactive, 
it was natural to ask if radioactivity was a universal property of all the 
elements. Madame Curie’s work showed that if the ordinary elements 
are radioactive at all, they must possess this property to but a very 
slight degree. In order to detect any possible radioactivity, it was 
necessary to have very sensitive instruments. It was found by Wilson 
and Geitel that there is a leakage of electricity through a gas in a 
closed vessel and that this leak could be measured very accurately by 
means of an electroscope. Now either the ions are produced spon- 
taneously in the gas, by a radiation which is capable of penetrating the 
sides of the electroscope or by radiations from the walls of the electro- 
scope itself. Rutherford, Cooke and McClennan have shown that some 
thirty or forty per cent. is due to a very penetrating radiation sup- 
posed to be the y rays emitted by the radium and thorium products in 
the air and ground. By using lead screens around the electroscope, 
they were able to decrease the rate of leak to a certain limiting value 


RADIOACTIVITY 533 


beyond which they were unable to go, no matter how much lead was 
used. Strutt and others then found that for electroscopes of the same 
dimensions, the amount of ionization depended on the material forming 
the walls. For vessels of the same shape and size, lead walls gave the 
greatest amount of ionization, tin and iron considerably less, aluminium 
and glass the least of all. Strutt found that different specimens of the 
same metal gave a different ionization and he therefore concluded that 
the radioactivity of the metals was probably due to a common impurity. 

Patterson then tried using different gases and found that the 
ionization was proportional to the density. This fact is strong evidence 
that the ionization is not spontaneous within the gas, but is due to a 
radiation from the walls of the vessel. Patterson also found for the 
given vessel which he used (30 em. in diameter and 20 cm. long) that 
the current through the gas was independent of the pressure above 300 
mm. of mercury and varied directly as the pressure below 80 mm. The 
ionization was found independent of the temperature up to 450° C. 
That the ionization was related to the pressure as stated above would 
indicate that above 300 mm. of mercury all the radiation was absorbed, 
whereas below 80 mm. it was not all absorbed. 

The most complete work on the radiations from the metals and 
their salts has been done by Campbell. In experiments on the radia- 
tions from the metals, Campbell used an aluminium-lined box. Inside 
this was a wire gauze cage containing a gauze electrode. The cage 
would allow the admission of radiations, but not of ions. Then by pla- 
cing two sheets of metal so as to radiate into the cage, one sheet being 
arranged to slide back and forth, it was possible to measure the ioniza- 
tion produced at different distances of this sliding sheet from the cage. 
The curve which was plotted from the values of the ionization and the 
distances gave the values of various constants from which it was pos- 
sible to determine the values given in a table which is shortly to follow. 
Before considering this table it is needful to say that the curves in- 
dicated (when the external penetrating radiation was cut off): (1) 
an easily absorbable radiation from the sheets of metal placed aside of 
the cage; (2) a more penetrating radiation from the same; and (3) 
the radiation from the gauze cage. When the external penetrating 
radiation was not screened off, the curves showed in addition an ioniza- 
tion due to (4) the external pentrating radiation; (5) to the penetra- 
ting radiation excited by it; and (6) to the easily absorbable radiation 
also produced. In the table, a is Bragg’s constant for the intrinsic 
absorbable radiations, a constant which corresponds to the range of the 
a particles of the radioactive elements; s is the number of ions pro- 
duced per second by the intrinsic absorbable radiation from one square 
centimeter of the surface of the metal, when totally absorbed in air; 
dX is the coefficient of absorption of the easily absorbable secondary 
radiation; s’ is the number of ions produced per cubic centimeter by 


534 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the easily absorbable secondary radiation from one square centimeter of 
the metal under the circumstances of the experiment; V is the number 
of ions produced in 1 cc. by the intrinsic penetrating radiation from the 
whole box and lead screen; V’ is the number of ions produced in 1 c.c. 
by the external radiation and the penetrating radiation excited by it. 


Tanne (i. 
Metal s x | V WA a A 
Lead (1) 270 0 10.2 14.2 1 
££. %(2) 260 0 13.4 26.3 12 
Copper (1) 103 160 22, 22 9 6 
cers 6-5) 110 Q1 8.1 27.4 9 25 
Aluminium 117 0 14.8 if 6 0 
Tin 144 156 aii! 18.9 9 » 
Silver 146 146 25.5 17.0 8.5 9 
Platinum 74 411 ieo 14.1 12 4 
Gold 78 169 10.4 16.8 10 .6 
Zine 72 51 15.4 16.8 10 5 
Tron 119 124 12.3 10.5 13 eo 


d is the coefficient of absorption of the easily absorbable secondary radiation. 


By using a strong electrostatic field, an attempt was made to deter- 
mine whether the ionizing agents for the intrinsic absorbable radiation 
were charged. These radiations were found certainly not to be of the 
B type and very probably to have a nature similar to that of the a rays. 
No radium emanation was able to be detected from the lead used. 

From the constancy of the value of s for the different specimens of 
the same metal and on account of the variation in the values of a for 
the different metals, Campbell rightly concludes that there seems to 
be no doubt but that the ordinary metals are feebly radioactive. In 
some cases the experimental and theoretical curves agree so well that 
it would seem that the radiations are homogeneous. 

Campbell has also investigated the radioactivity of the metals and 
their salts in a similar way. He finds that the emission of radiations 
is an atomic property and that salts prepared by totally different 
methods and from materials derived from different sources, produce the 
same ionizing effect. It is only the metal that produces any measurable 
ionizing effect. The following are some of the results: 


| | | 


Ree eater iaasiices 7% | arbitrary Units 

Lead 9.3 Tin 4.4 
Lead sulphate (1) 6.8 Tin sulphide (1) 4.1 

«c a ( 2) 7 «6 “ (2) 3.9 

ce ce (3) 7 hay? “ ae (3) 3.8 
Lead monoxide 8.2 | Bismuth 6 
Mercury 9 Bismuth oxide 5.7 
Mercurous oxide 5 Potassium sulphate 70 
Mercuric oxide 6 * 


RADIOACTIVITY 535 


: = a | —s | Tay h 
Substance fuse | se | Pogue ole mee 

Potassium sulphate (1) 44.7 4s9 | 1,090 | 2920 

LE ss (2) 5 471 1,050 fb 215 

Potassium chloride (1) 52.1 495 951 |. 135 

“cc a3 (2 ) “cc “ce | ce 139 

Potassium iodide It) 255 276 1 fS0 oi ece 

Potassium nitrate 38.6 388 | = 1,005 | 498 
Potassium sulphate (from wood) 44.7 474 | 1,060 
Orthodase 16.5 201 he e220 | 
Rubidium alum 16.6 128 768 


The use of numerals after the name of the substance is to indicate that the 
substance was made by a distinct method of analysis. 


It will be noticed that the ionization from potassium and rubid- 
ium is very large compared with that from the other metals. It was 
found that the penetrating power of the potassium and rubidium 
radiations was also quite large. A given sample of a potassium salt 
gave the following results: 


Number of 


Sheets of Foil Ionization Decrease 
0 f 467 
1 361 106 
Pe 299 62 
3 265 34 
4 240 25 


It will be seen that the rays are very heterogeneous and vary in 
penetration from that of the very penetrating B rays of uranium down- 
ward. Sodium, lithium and ammonium salts showed no more activity 
than zinc. The rays from rubidium were found less penetrating than 
those from potassium. The activity of uranium is about a thousand 
times that of potassium. Photographs were also taken by making use 
of the rays from potassium and rubidium. 

Campbell’s results are in consonance with the experiments made 
some time ago by J. J. Thomson. Thomson showed that rubidium and 
potassium emit negatively charged particles which were deflected by an 
electrostatic field in the same way as the ordinary corpuscles. 


CoNCLUSION 
In summing up we find that: 

1. Some of the elements, as radium and thorium, are intensely 
radioactive. 

2. Radium is very widely distributed through the rocks of the earth, 
and in radioactive minerals is found to exist in a constant proportion 
with uranium. 

3. Radium and its products are also to be found in the air and play 
an important role in atmospheric phenomena. 

4, The ordinary metals are slightly radioactive, emitting radiations 
that seem very much like the a radiation from the radio-elements. 

5. Potassium and rubidium emit radiations similar to the f rays. 


536 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE INFLUENCE OF DIET ON ENDURANCE AND 
GENERAL EFFICIENCY 


By PRorressoR RUSSELL H. CHITTENDEN 


SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY 


A Vcgtegr ace a study of the physiological needs of the body 

for food! has indicated that the real requirements of the sys- 
tem, especially for proteid foods, are far below the amounts called for 
by existing dietary standards, and still farther below the customary 
habits of the majority of mankind. The ability of the body to main- 
tain a condition of physiological equilibrium, with a true nitrogen 
balance, ete., on a relatively small amount of nitrogenous food, would 
seemingly imply that the large surplus so generally consumed consti- 
tutes an entirely uncalled-for drain upon the system, as well as upon 
the pocket of the individual, and without any compensatory gain. 

In our experimental study of this question, observations on many 
individuals have extended over such long periods of time that there is 
apparently perfect safety in the conclusion that the new dietary stand- 
ards which aim to conform to the true needs of the body are perfectly 
adapted to maintain health, strength and vigor indefinitely. Further, 
the many data obtained in our experimental studies, reinforced by a 
multitude of personal experiences from all over the world, communi- 
cated to the writer, all lead to the view that there is great personal gain 
in the acquisition of dietary habits that tend toward moderation and 
simplicity. Renewed health, increased vigor, greater freedom from 
minor ailments, ete., are so frequently reported as the outcome of tem- 
perance in diet, that we are forced to the conclusion that the surplus 
of proteid food so commonly consumed—amounts far beyond what the 
physiological necessities of the body demand—is wholly unphysiological 
and in the long run detrimental to the best interests of the individual. 
There is seemingly sound philosophy in so changing the customs and 
habits of our daily life that they will conform more or less closely to 
our present understanding of the physiological requirements of the 
body. 

It is certainly not presumptuous to assume that physiological ex- 
perimentation can tell us definitely and concisely how much and what 
kinds of food are needed to supply the daily waste of tissue and to 
make good the loss of energy incidental to varying degrees of bodily 


+See Chittenden: “ Physiological Economy in Nutrition ” and “The Nutri- 
tion of Man,” Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. 


THE INFLUENCE OF DIET ON ENDURANCE _— 537 


activity. This we have sought to ascertain by our studies of the past 
five years, and confidence in our results is augmented by the fact that 
when living on a lower level of proteid consumption bodily strength 
and endurance are unquestionably increased; muscular fatigue and 
soreness as concomitants of severe or prolonged muscular effort di- 
minish or are wholly wanting; thus raising the suggestion that under 
true physiological conditions the muscles of the body are capable of 
more prolonged effort, and with greater freedom from disagreeable 
after-effects than when the system is charged with an excess of ni- 
trogenous and other waste incidental to large intakes of proteid food. 
In other words, consumption of proteid food in closer harmony with 
the true needs of the body is accompanied by a smoother and more 
efficient working of the bodily machinery; less friction and better 
results follow a daily diet in which excess is avoided and the intake 
made to correspond more closely with physiological requirements. 

Those who are skeptical of the real value of a relatively low intake 
of proteid food frequently acquiesce in the general statement that as a 
physiological experiment it may be quite true that equilibrium, physical 
vigor, efficiency, etc., can be maintained by a smaller amount of pro- 
teid food, but they are inclined to the view that in the long run more 
abundant supplies of nutriment will be demanded in harmony with 
the ordinary customs of mankind. This is a reasonable objection, and 
one that time only can answer. It is quite possible—though not very 
probable—that an experiment of several years’ duration even may fail 
to show certain deleterious effects which eventually may manifest them- 
selves, assuming that the body does actually need more proteid food 
than our experimental results imply. This may be a purely theoretical 
objection, but it is one that is deserving of some consideration, since it 
is unquestionably true that there are many factors in the broad subject 
of nutrition not yet fully understood, and there are many phases of 
proteid metabolism not wholly clear. So far as any experimental 
evidence is concerned, however, there is nothing, in the writer’s opinion, 
that can be construed as giving weight to this objection. Neither are 
there any observations bearing on the customs or habits of peoples or 
communities that can be adduced in favor of possible danger to the 
individual from a continued intake of proteid food in harmony with 
our experimental data; certainly none that is not equally susceptible 
of plausible explanation on some other ground. 

As has been stated in another place,” a daily intake of 60 grams, 
or two ounces, of proteid is quite sufficient to meet the needs of a man 
of 70 kilograms body-weight, and this without increasing unduly the 
amount of non-nitrogenous food. In fact, for a man of the above 
weight doing an ordinary amount of work, the total calorific value of 


2“ The Nutrition of Man,” p. 272. 


538 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


the daily food need not exceed 2,800 calories. As compared with the 
ordinary statements of the body’s needs, this means a saving of one 
half in the amount of proteid food and about one fifth in the amount 
of non-nitrogenous food daily. That these smaller amounts of food 
are quite sufficient to meet the needs of the body is indicated by the 
condition of the subjects after many months of living at these lower 
levels. Especially noticeable, because at that time wholly unexpected, 
was the decided gain in bodily strength and endurance manifested by 
all the subjects of experiment. This gain was spoken of as gain in 
“total strength,’ but the element of endurance was incorporated 
therein, since the final product? was a compound of the dynamometer 
tests of individual muscles and the number of times the individual 
could pull up and push up his body on the parallel bars. The natural 
interpretation of the results obtained was that the increased muscular 
efficiency was a direct or indirect result of the lowered proteid metab- 
olism of the body. In other words, it might be reasoned that the 
smaller consumption of proteid food was a nearer approach to normal 
conditions, and as a result there was manifested an increased muscular 
efficiency. However this may be, bodily strength and endurance were 
certainly increased, and the question naturally arises, will this improved 
state of the body continue for any length of time under such conditions 
of diet? In other words, may we expect to find an improved physical 
condition of the body in following habits of life which seemingly accord 
more closely with true physiological needs, avoiding that excess of food 
intake that the common practises of mankind sanction? 

One of the first subjects experimented with by the writer was 
Horace Fletcher, who in 1903 spent several months in our laboratory* 
and was at the same time carefully tested by Dr. William G. Anderson, 
director of the Yale Gymnasium, as to his physical condition. For 
some five years Mr. Fletcher had practised a certain degree of absti- 
nence in the taking of food with, as he believed, important economy, 
t. e., great gain in bodily and mental vigor and with marked improve- 
ment in his general health. He found that under his new method of 
living he was possessed of a peculiar fitness for work and with freedom 
from the ordinary fatigue incidental to extra physical exertion. In 
the laboratory observations made at that time, it was found that he 
was not metabolizing more than fifty grams of proteid per day, while 
at the same time his body was essentially in a condition of nitrogen 
equilibrium. Dr. Anderson, as the result of his observations on Mr. 
Fletcher, concluded that, considering his age, he had never seen an 
individual able to work in the gymnasium with fewer noticeable bad 
results, since he was able to do the work of trained athletes and not 


*“ Physiological Economy in Nutrition,” p. 259. 
*See Poputar Science Monraty, June, 1903, p. 127. 


THE INFLUENCE OF DIET ON ENDURANCE _ 539 


give marked evidences of over-exertion, although not in training. At 
the time these experiments were tried Mr. Fletcher weighed one hun- 
dred and fifty-seven and a half pounds, and was in his fifty-fourth year. 

While, naturally, we have not been able to obtain daily records of 
the quantity of food taken by Mr. Fletcher during the past four years, 
observations made from time to time have confirmed his general state- 
ment that he lives essentially at this same low level of proteid metab- 
olism. In June, 1907, Mr. Fletcher was again at New Haven for some 
weeks, thus giving us an opportunity to test his rate of nitrogen ex- 
change and his physical condition. It was found that the amount of 
nitrogenous or proteid food consumed daily never exceeded sixty grams, 
and that his nitrogen metabolism averaged not far from seven grams 
per day. His body-weight was found to be one hundred and seventy- 
seven and a half pounds. We thus had an opportunity of testing the 
physical endurance of a man who has for at least nine years practised 
a degree of physiological economy in nutrition, which means a daily 
consumption of proteid food in amount less than one half that called 
for by the ordinary dietary standards. It would seem reasonable to 
suppose that if a low nitrogen intake is destined eventually to prove 
detrimental to the individual, some sign of such deleterious effect 
would manifest itself during this period of time. If, on the other 
hand, consumption of proteid food in harmony with the lower dietary 
standards which the writer is disposed to advocate on the basis of his 
experimental results, is beneficial to the individual, then one might 
expect to find a continuance of the same physical vigor noted in the 
earlier observations on Mr. Fletcher, in spite of the fact that at this 
date the subject was nearly fifty-nine years of age. 

Through the kindness of Dr. Anderson, of the Yale Gymnasium, 
Mr. Fletcher was subjected to a variety of tests, the outcome of which 
is best presented in the words of Dr. Anderson, as given to the writer 
in a report made under date of June 28, 1907. 


On June 11, 1907, Mr. Fletcher again visited the Yale Gymnasium and 
underwent a test on Professor Fisher’s dynamometer. This device is made to 
test the endurance of the calf muscles. (Soleus and gastrocnemius.) The sub- 
ject makes a dead lift of a prescribed weight as many times as possible. In 
order to select a definite weight the subject first ascertains his strength on the 
Kellogg mercurial dynamometer by one strong, steady contraction of the muscles 
named—and then he finds his endurance by lifting three fourths of this weight 
on the Fisher dynamometer as many times as possible at two- or three-second 
intervals. One leg only is used in the lift, and, as indicated, the right is usu- 
ally chosen. 

Mr. Fletcher’s actual strength as indicated on the Kellogg machine was 
not quite 400 pounds, ascertained by three trials. In his endurance test on the 
Fisher machine he raised 300 pounds 350 times and then did not reach the limit 
of his power. Previous to this time Dr. Frank Born, the medical assistant at 
the gymnasium, had collected data from 18 Yale students, most of whom were 
trained athletes or gymnasts. The average record of these men was 87.4 lifts, 
the extremes being 33 and 175 lifts. 

It will be noticed that Mr. Fletcher doubled the best record made previous 
to his feat and numerous subsequent tests have failed to increase the average 


540 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of Mr. Fletcher’s competitors. Mr. Fletcher informs me that he has done no 
training nor has he taken any strenuous exercise since February, 1907. On 
two occasions only during the past year he reports to have done hard work in 
emergencies; once while following Major General Wood in the Philippines in 
climbing a volcanic mountain through a tropical jungle on an island near 
Mindanao for nine hours; and once wading through deep snow in the Hima- 
layan Mountains, some three miles one day and seven miles the next day, in 
about as many hours. This last emergency experience came through being 
caught in a blizzard near Murree, in northern India, at 8,500 feet elevation, 
on the way to the Vale of Kashmir. These two trials represented climatic 
extremes and Mr. Fletcher states that neither the heat nor the cold gave him 
discomfort, a significant fact in estimating physical condition. 

Before the trial on the Fisher ergograph, the subject’s pulse was normal 
(about 75); afterwards it ran 120 beats to the minute. Five minutes later it 
had fallen to 112. No later reading was taken that day. The hands did not 
tremble more than usual under resting conditions, as Mr. Fletcher was able to 
hold in either hand immediately after the test a glass brimming over with 
water without spilling a drop. The face was flushed, perspiration moderate, 
heart action regular and control of the right foot and leg used in the test normal 
immediately following the feat. I consider this a remarkable showing for a 
man in his fifty-ninth year, 5 feet 614 inches in height, weighing 17744 pounds 
and not in training. 

In order to make a more thorough test of Mr. Fletcher’s powers of endur- 
ance under varying degrees of physical strain he underwent on the 17th, 18th, 
- 19th, 21st and 22d of June, 1907, the following: 

1. Going up 32 steps of a spiral stairway at natural speed. 

2. While in the lying position, raising the trunk to a vertical position a 
prescribed number of times and continuing as many more times, at will, as 
agreeable. 

3. While standing with arms upraised to the full bending forward and 
downward, touching the floor with the fingers without bending the knees. 

4. While holding two 25-pound iron dumb-bells, first flexing the elbows and 
then raising the weights to arm’s length above the head. 

5. A daily test on the Fisher dynamometer, not for endurance, but for meas- 
uring pulse acceleration. 

It became necessary to make a change in the character of the movements 
on the final day of the test on account of the chafed condition of the subject’s 
skin, and we added: 

6. “ Running in place,’ with knee lifting forward and upwards to the ex- 
treme possible height. 

7. Rapid extension of the arms upward, outward and downward. 

8. Same as 7, but holding one-pound wooden bells in each hand. 

Pulse readings were taken before and after each test, and in the following 
report the average pulse for each exercise is given: 

After quickly climbing 32 spiral steps, five trials, the average pulse was 
115.2 beats to the minute. 

After trunk raising, five trials, 50, 60, 70, 100 and 100 times; the latter 
two trials in one day, five hours apart; average pulse, 115.2 beats. 

After trunk bending, five trials, 60, 100, 150, 200 and 300 times; the latter 
two trials in one day, five hours apart; average pulse, 150 beats. 

After lifting the 25-pound bells, five trials, 5, 5, 10, 10 and 10 times; 
average pulse, 138 beats. 

After tests on the Fisher dynamometer, four trials, 50, 60, 60 and 60 times; 
average pulse, 120 beats. 

After rapid arm work for three minutes, average pulse, 156 beats. 

After similar work holding wooden bells (two minutes), average pulse, 
156 beats. 

After running in place as rapidly and as strenuously as possible for one 
minute, average pulse, 144 beats. 

After each test the respiration and heart action, while active, were healthy, 
and, under such conditions, normal. 

There was not the slightest evidence of soreness, stiffness or muscular 
fatigue either during or after the six days of the trials. The chafing of the 
skin was due to the rubbing of the “tights ” worn while lying down and raising 
the trunk. Mr. Fletcher made no apparent effort to conceal any evidences of 
strain or overwork and did not show any. He informs me that he felt no dis- 
tress whatever at any time. 


THE INFLUENCE OF DIET ON ENDURANCE 541 


During the thirty-five years of my own experience in physical training and 
teaching I have never tested a man who equalled this record. The latter tests, 
given in June, 1907, were more taxing than those given in 1903, but Mr. Fletcher 
underwent the trials with more apparent ease than he did four years ago. What 
seems to me to be the most remarkable feature of Mr. Fletcher’s tests is that a 
man nearing sixty years of age should show progressive improvement of mus- 
cular quality merely as the result of dietetic care and with no systematic 
physical training. 

Such a record of endurance as this, especially when made by a man 
fifty-nine years of age, can hardly fail to attract our attention. Further, 
when it is remembered that the subject of this test was not in training, 
the question naturally arises as to the cause of this phenomenal show- 
ing. Why a man of fifty-nine years of age, without training, should 
be able to far surpass the record for endurance made by young and 
vigorous athletes can only be surmised, but it certainly seems plausible 
to assume that the explanation is to be found in the careful dietary 
habits which this man has followed for the past nine years. In any 
event, it is fair to suppose that habits of life, leading to a relatively 
small intake of nitrogenous food, are not inimical to a general condi- 
tion of physical efficiency and muscular endurance. We may go even 
farther and assume that the remarkable showing made by this subject 
is due directly to his temperate dietary habits. Mr. Fletcher would 
doubtless lay special stress upon his habit of thorough mastication and 
of abstaining from eating until the appetite strongly demanded food. 
This phase of the subject we need not discuss here. The main point is 
that this particular subject has during these nine years made a practise 
of consuming daily a quantity of proteid food not more than one half 
that demanded by ordinary dietary standards. In other words, his 
habits of living have been essentially in accord with the conclusions 
arrived at by our experimental studies bearing on the requirements of 
the body for proteid food. 

We see in these results possible progressive muscular recuperation 
after middle life by means of diet alone. If a man by careful atten- 
tion to his diet can show progressive gain in endurance and general 
efficiency after fifty without systematic training, it is a fact well worth 
knowing. In any event, the data afforded by this particular subject 
corroborate in striking fashion the conclusions arrived at by laboratory 
experimentation, and tend to confirm the view that there is perfect 
safety and probable gain to the body in a system of dietetics which 
approximates to true physiological requirements and avoids undue 
excess. 


542 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ? 


By PROFEssOR EDWARD S. MORSE 


PEABODY MUSEUM, SALEM, MASS, 


EAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ was born in Motier, 
Switzerland, May 28, 1807, and died in Cambridge, December 
14, 1873. 

He was one of the great naturalists of the world, a student of 
Cuvier, beloved by Humboldt, counting every distinguished name in 
science as an admirer and idolized by his associates. At the age of 
twenty-four he had an international reputation. He had conferred 
upon him many degrees, one of which was the doctor’s degree of medi- 
cine and surgery, in the preparation for which Von Siebold says he 
prepared seventy-four theses on anatomical, pathological, surgical and 
obstetrical subjects, also investigations in materia medica, medicina 
forensis and the relation of botany to these topics. 

He studied at the medical school at Zurich, the University of 
Heidelberg and at the University of Munich. Investigations of the 
widest diversity in natural science were embodied in 415 papers, 
memoirs and books, many in quarto and folio, representing nearly ten 
thousand pages and a thousand plates. 

Besides his profound attainments as a naturalist he was equally 
remarkable as a teacher and most eloquent as a lecturer. Always en- 
thusiastic in his own work, he had the further power of inspiring this 
enthusiasm in others. At the age of twenty-three, in a letter to his 
brother, he said: “ What troubles me is that the thing I most desire 
seems to me, at least for the present, farthest from my reach, namely, 
the direction of a great museum.” He little foresaw that thirty-one 
years from that time he would see the inauguration with pomp and 
circumstance of the great museum at Cambridge of which he was the 
originator and director. Nor could he have anticipated that his son, 
profiting by his engineering and geological studies in the Lawrence 
Scientific School with which this museum was affiliated, should use that 
knowledge in securing the fortune by which the museum has expanded 
far beyond the most ardent imagination of its founder. 

In the very prime of his manhood, in the very height of his fame, 


1Read at the unveiling of the Agassiz tablet at the Hall of Fame, New 
York, May 30, 1907. In the preparation of this brief address I am indebted 
to Mrs. Elizabeth Agassiz’s charming tribute to her husband in her “ Life and 
Letters of Louis Agassiz” and to Marcou’s “Life of Agassiz.” 


JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ 543 


he came to our country, and by his enthusiasm, his eloquence, his 
winning and democratic ways, he won the hearts of all, and from his 
advent here may be dated the wide-spread love of natural science among 
the masses. 

Agassiz’s contributions as a naturalist covered the entire range of 
the animal kingdom. A study of his bibliography exhibits communica- 
tions, papers and memoirs on every Cuvierian class. A further study 
of this bibliography indicates that, as a young man, he grappled with 
some of the most difficult groups of the animal kingdom. ‘The fishes 
had been one of the most distracting divisions of the higher animals. 
The limitations of their genera, the homologies of their bony structure, 
had daunted most zoologists who confined their work to the description 
of species. Agassiz’s first important work was the “ Fishes of Brazil,” 
based upon material brought home by Martius and Spix. ‘This was 
done at the age of twenty-two. The work was written in Latin, dedi- 
eated to Cuvier, and illustrated with a folio of ninety plates. At the 
age of twenty-three he issued his prospectus of the natural history of 
the fresh-water fishes of central Europe, which was completed twelve 
years after, accompanied by a folio atlas of forty-one colored plates. 

Difficult as was this task, he wrestled with a still more difficult one, 
namely, the “ Fossil Fishes,’ and in nine years had completed this 
remarkable work in five quarto volumes with 400 colored folio plates. 
This publication alone placed him in the front rank of naturalists. 
An eminent geologist has written in regard to this work that Agassiz’s 
power of classifying fossils and his success in reducing to order thou- 
sands of specimens of fishes, a great many of which were perfect puzzles 
to every one, was simply marvelous. The echinoderms, with their 
complicated covering of curious plates, spines and minute appendages, 
formed another most difficult group for study. From the number of 
fossil species in the rocks in his neighborhood Agassiz was led to a 
minute examination of both living and fossil forms which culminated 
in his great monograph of echinoderms with many plates. 

The prodigious extent and character of the work done before he 
was thirty years old may be appreciated when it is stated that on a 
meager salary of $400 a year he established a lithographic press at 
Neuchatel, he employed two skilful artists, published a number of 
parts of his monograph of the echinoderms, several parts of his fossil 
fishes, made a profound study of the glacial phenomena of the Alps as 
well as of the geology and paleontology of the Jura and superadded to 
all this work the monographing of two molluscan genera, Mya and 
Trigonia. Ernest Favre, in his biographical notice of Agassiz, says, 
in regard to this period of his life, that he displayed an incredible 
energy, of which the history of science offers, perhaps, no other 
example. 


544 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


His original way of dealing with subjects is well illustrated in his 
studies of fossil bivalve mollusca. It had been customary to describe 
the external markings of the shell and when possible the muscular 
impressions within. Agassiz soon realized the importance of studying 
the interior contour of the shell, and forthwith proceeded, by means 
of casts, to bring to light the relations of these fossils with their living 
representatives. His maxim was to have abundant material—thou- 
sands of specimens, if necessary—for any proper research. In studying 
glaciers he literally rode on the back of one for weeks at a time. He 
furthermore urged his students to read all that had been written on a 
subject before publishing. 

Agassiz not only defined many new species of animals in various 
classes, but he was continually dwelling on the affinities and homologies 
among the various groups; more particularly their classification and 
their geographical and stratigraphical distribution. His studies in em- 
bryology and his familiarity with the work of Von Baer led him to 
recognize the general truth that the young of higher animals in their 
respective groups resembled the mature forms of animals lower down 
in the scale. From these studies he soon grasped the greater concep- 
tion that this principle was carried out in time as well, and that fossil 
animals in the early horizons of geological history resembled the 
embryonic or early condition of higher animals now living and hence 
the idea of comprehensive or prophetic types. This same broad grasp 
of fundamental principles was remarkably illustrated in his studies of 
glacial phenomena in the Alps. One of his biographers says, “ With 
his power of quick perception, his unmatched memory, his perspicacity, 
and acuteness, his way of classifying, judging and marshaling facts, 
Agassiz promptly learned the whole mass of irresistible arguments 
collected patiently during seven years by Charpentier and Venetz, and 
with his insatiable appetite and that faculty of assimilation which he 
possessed in such a wonderful degree he digested the whole doctrine 
of the glaciers in a few weeks,” and added a great many new and 
important facts. 

From his study of the glaciers of the Alps he soon announced his 
belief that the whole northern hemisphere had at one time been covered 
by an ice sheet. The various records of this vast sea of ice which had 
been interpreted by the most eminent geologists as the result of diluvial 
action and flowing mud he rightly attributed to the action of ice. In 
the face of the most strenuous and even bitter opposition he trium- 
phantly established the former existence of the Great Ice Age. Subse- 
quent studies, while modifying the limitation of the great ice sheet, 
have only strengthened the views of Agassiz. 

Agassiz’s absorbing interest in the structural relations of animals 
led him to define with greater accuracy the limitation of various groups. 


JEAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ 545 


As a student of the great French naturalist, Cuvier, he became an 
eloquent advocate of the existence in nature of four great branches 
of the animal kingdom. He was early convinced that branches, classes, 
orders, families and genera had as distinct an existence in nature as 
species, and his life work was to make clear and rigid their definition. 
His eager desire to understand the relations existing between obscure 
forms was expressed one day in a private talk to his pupils, when he 
earnestly exclaimed, “'The lamprey eel has been my puzzle and my 
misery for twenty years.” 

Not only in many technical essays, but as an eloquent teacher, he 
made these principles of classification so plain that vast audiences were 
able to grasp his conceptions. Those who heard his lectures on the 
subject will never forget the vivid way in which he impressed upon his 
auditors these views emphasized by graphic blackboard drawings. 

In his methods of study in Natural History he presented in a 
popular form the leading features of his belief in the systematic rela- 
tions of animals as embodied in his famous “ Essay on Classification.” 
The following quotation from his Methods of Study will indicate the 
ideas which were surely preparing the ground for the acceptance of 
the theory of evolution: 

Man is the crowning work of God on earth, but though so nobly endowed, 
we must not forget that we are the lofty children of a race whose lowest forms 
lie prostrate within the water, having no higher aspirations than the desire for 
food; and we can not understand the possible degradation and moral wretched- 
ness of Man, without knowing that his physical nature is rooted in all the 
material characteristics that belong to his type and link him even with the 
fish. The moral and intellectual gifts that distinguish him from them are his 
to use or to abuse; he may, if he will, abjure his better nature and be Verte- 
brate more than Man. He may sink as low as the lowest of his type, or he 
may rise to a spiritual height that will make that which distinguishes him 
from the rest far more the controlling element of his being than that which 
unites him with them. P 

Not only by such expressions just quoted, but in other statements, 
he certainly prepared the way for the more prompt recognition of 
Darwin’s views. 

Inspired by the belief in the existence in nature of categories of 
structure, he strengthened old homologies and established many new 
ones. In representing the four Cuvierian branches by schematic lines, 
he did not draw a series of lines one above the other, or enclose each 
group by sharply defined brackets, but drew these lines, parallel it is 
true, but side by side in an ascending scale, slightly overlapping. He 
endeavored to indicate by such a diagram his belief, which was correct, 
that the higher members of a lower group were more advanced in 
structure than the lower members of a group next above. Thus while 
the vertebrates were higher as a branch than the articulates, the highest 
class of the articulates, the insects, were higher in structure than many 


VOL. LXxI.—35. 


546 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of the lowest vertebrates. In this way he broke up the idea that the 
animal kingdom formed a continuous ladder in creation, from the 
lowest form to man. This was an important approach to a phylo- 
genetic diagram, for it was readily seen that the lower forms in each 
great division had closer affinities with each other than existed among 
the higher members. In other words, that his schematic lines should 
not be made parallel, but should converge below—a genealogical tree 
in fact. His generalized or prophetic types lend overwhelming sup- 
port to this conclusion. 

It has been repeatedly said, and with truth, that Agassiz’s teachings 
paved the way for the prompt acceptance of the theory of evolution— 
first, because he familiarized the great public with a structural knowl- 
edge of the animal kingdom and the affinities existing between the 
different groups, and, second, because he demonstrated the recapitula- 
tion theory of Von Baer, and added the great conception that the 
history of the animal kingdom from the earliest geological horizons 
added further proof of these principles. Agassiz came to an environ- 
ment well fitted to encourage him. He came to an intellectual center 
famous for its leadership in science and letters, but the hearty recep- 
tion accorded him in widely separated regions leads to the conviction 
that had he settled anywhere in the Country he would have inspired the 
same enthusiasm and induced hard-headed legislators everywhere to 
have voted large appropriations, and private citizens to contribute 
generous sums. It required only his touch to bring into recognition 
names among us that had before his magic influence been known only 
in limited circles. Men of the caliber of those of 1846 are a thousand 
times more widely known to-day, not because of the changed character 
of the public press, which celebrates with equal prominence and im- 
partiality girl graduates of a public school and men who have revolu- 
tionized the world by their inventions, but becouse he made us appre- 
ciate the worth of an investigator. Our nation has always believed 
in education and public schools, and hence has universally approved of 
high endowments for educational purposes. His great plea and one 
that had its effect on the legislators was that the museum was an educa- 
tional institution, that it was to be opened every day free to the public 
and that it was a sound investment, though its dividends were wholly 
intellectual. .A few personal reminiscences may be of interest at this 
point. In the early part of the civil war, one of our class enlisted and 
received an appointment as an officer of the line—the rest of us bought 
a fine sword and presented it to him. On showing the sword to 
Agassiz, he instantly threw himself into the attitude of a fencer and 
became absorbed in thrust and parry, utterly unconscious of our amaze- 
ment at his earnestness and skill. We learned afterwards that as a 
student at Munich he had not only fought a number of student duels 


JHAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ 547 


in which he was always the victor, but on one occasion he had chal- 
lenged a whole class, whereupon the best swordsman was selected to 
meet him, when he insisted that he had really challenged every member 
of the class to fight. After four had crossed swords with him and 
been vanquished the remainder were quite ready to retire. Agassiz 
with all his genius had no capacity for business and, as he admitted, 
was incapable of doing a simple sum in addition; nevertheless, he 
plunged into investigations which to carry out involved the expendi- 
ture of large sums of money. Mrs. Agassiz in the charming tribute to 
her distinguished husband says: 


He was frugal in his personal habits. At this very time, when he was keep- 
ing two or three artists on his slender means, he made his own breakfast in his 
room and dined for a few cents a day at the cheapest eating houses. But where 
science was concerned the only economy recognized, either in youth or old age, 
was that of an expenditure as bold as it was carefully considered. 


While expressing his great appreciation of the many honors given 
him by distinguished societies, he seemed to be indifferent to the 
certificates of these honors. As an illustration of this indifference I 
may cite an experience that a few of us had with an enormous mass of 
pamphlets which were unpacked and which Agassiz asked us to classify 
and arrange by their respective subjects. Intermixed with these 
pamphlets were numerous diplomas, some of them badly wrinkled, 
attesting to his election as associate or honorary member of great 
societies and academies, university degrees, and, if I remember rightly, 
medals of honor also. 

Very few are aware of the profound influence Agassiz’s devotion 
to his work and his enthusiasm had on the character of Harvard Col- 
lege. To apply an expression of Froude, he came in to this staid 
college community like a meteor out of the clear sky. One day as he 
crossed the college campus I drew a sketch of him: it contradicts every 
custom and tradition of the Harvard professor since the foundation of 
the college in 1638. On his head a soft hat, in his pockets his hands, 
in his mouth a cigar! President Eliot, in his address at the Agassiz 
commemorative meeting of the Cambridge Historical Society, said that 
Agassiz’s ability in securing from hard-fisted members of the General 
Court large appropriations for his museum, excited the envy of other 
departmental chiefs. Yet in obtaining these large sums from the 
legislature, and from private citizens as well, he finally provoked the 
habit of liberal giving to the college as a whole. Thus the college 
grew into a university, and the inception of this growth dates from the 
advent of Agassiz. His advice was followed in shaping the work of 
the Smithsonian Institution. A similar influence must be accredited 
to him in enlarging the work of the United States Coast and Geodetic 
Survey. Professor Bache, then superintendent, was an intimate friend 


548 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of Agassiz, and the broadening views of Agassiz on the work of this 
important branch of the national government was marked. The Amer- 
ican Association for the Advancement of Science is indebted to Agassiz 
for the remodeling of the old Society of Geologists and Naturalists 
along the line of the British Association, of which he had long been a 
member. He became president of the association in 1851. Agassiz, 
Bache and Henry were the leading spirits in originating the National 
Academy of Sciences. The character of the man is indicated by the 
fact that the highest authorities in art, science and literature were im- 
mediately drawn to him and found in him a true friend and a charm- 
ing companion. 

The students associated with Agassiz at the dedication of the 
museum in Cambridge with few exceptions became heads of many of 
the great museums of the country. 

Professor Hyatt was, at the time of his death, custodian of the 
Boston Society of Natural History. Dr. Scudder had preceded him 
in the same office. Professor Shaler continued at Harvard as professor 
of geology and became dean of the Lawrence Scientific School. Pro- 
fessor Putnam, one of the originators of the Peabody Academy of Sci- 
ence in Salem, and for years director of its museum, is now director of 
the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. Professor Verrill has been pro- 
fessor of zoology at Yale since his graduation and is director of the 
museum at New Haven. Professor Packard, for some years director 
of the Peabody Museum at Salem, was at the time of his death, pro- 
fessor of zoology at Brown University. Professor Bickmore was closely 
identified with the inception of the American Museum of Natural 
History in New York, was its first director and continued in the office 
for many years, and the writer has for twenty-seven years been director 
of the Peabody Museum at Salem. 

This record is certainly a credit to the great teacher whose pupils 
adhered to the initial impulse imparted to them by their master. 

At the age of twenty-two, in a letter to his father, he wrote: 

I wish it may be said of Louis Agassiz that he was the first naturalist of 
his time, a good citizen, and a good son, beloved by those that knew him. I feel 


within myself the strength of a whole generation to work toward this end, and 
I will reach it if the means are not wanting. 


This boyish prophecy was fully established as attested by the 
glorious records of his life. 


Note To THE Eprtor: In view of the distracting state of zoological nomen- 
clature at the present time with the habit of regarding the slightest deviation 
in structure as of generic value with the result that nearly every species has a 
separate generic name, it may be regarded as a misfortune that Agassiz could 
not have established on a sure and enduring foundation his various categories 
of classification. In a conventional manner it would be profitable to adopt his 
definitions, even if the groups have no real existence in nature. Only in this 


JHAN LOUIS RUDOLPHE AGASSIZ 549 


way can relief be secured from a condition which is confusing and exasperating. 

As an illustration of Agassiz’s firm adherence to his principles of classifi- 
cation so clearly elaborated in his famous essay on the subject, I may be excused 
for giving a letter written to me a few days after I had explained to him my 
views regarding the systematic position of the Braciopoda: 

Your statements of last Saturday haunt me and I can not rest before I 
have seen more of your facts concerning the Anneliden affinities of the brachio- 
pods. The most telling evidence in your favor? you have never yet alluded to, 
at least not in my presence. But I must be cautious and wait till I see and 
hear more of your facts. When and where can I see you again? This is not 
a question of structural complication. 

Very truly yours, 


L. AGASSIZ. 
CAMBRIDGE, Jan. 2, 1871. 


?The italics are his. 


550 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 


Dr. WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER 


AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


Gi itee researches of the past few years have materially changed our 

views on the significance and phylogenetic origin of the so-called 
slave-making instincts among ants. And although the subject still 
involves many unsolved problems, we are now in a position to look back 
on its history and marvel at our too implicit confidence in certain 
analogies, at our neglect of the basic principles of phylogenetics, and 
at the inept questions we so long persisted in asking. 

Slavery, or dulosis, is a rare phenomenon among ants. In its pure 
form it is known to occur only in two of the several thousand described 
species, namely, in the sanguinary or blood-red slave-maker (Formica 
sanguinea) and the amazon (Polyergus rufescens). These species, 
with their various subspecies and varieties, are peculiar to the north 
temperate portions of Europe, Asia and America. The phenomenon 
was first discovered by J. Pierre Huber (1810)? and most completely 
described by him and by Forel (1874)? These investigators, of course, 
fixed their attention on the behavior of the workers. To this aspect of 
the subject later writers have added little of importance, and have 
merely fallen into a natural error of continuing in the same path as 
their illustrious predecessors. This was the case, for example, with 
Darwin® and with Wasmann, who for the past quarter of a century has 
been observing the slave-making ants of Europe. Huber and Forel 
showed that the workers of F’. sanguinea and P. rufescens make period- 
ical forays on colonies of ants belonging to the F. fusca group, carry 
home the worker cocoons and larve, and permit some of these to hatch 
and to survive with them in the same formicary. An eminently preda- 
tory species thus comes to live in intimate symbiosis with workers of 
an alien species which are said to function as slaves, or auxiliaries. 
F’. sanguinea is a powerful and very plastic species which continues to 
exercise all the fundamental ant instincts in the presence of its slaves. 
It can excavate galleries in the soil, obtain its own food and bring up 
its own young. Polyergus, however, is abjectly dependent on its 
auxiliaries. It is no longer able to excavate a nest, care for its own 


1“ Récherches sur les meurs des fourmis indigénes,” Paris et Genéve, 1810. 

2“ Ves Fourmis de la Suisse,” Ziirich, 1874. 

*“ On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,” third edition, 
London, John Murray, 1861, p. 244. 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 551 


offspring, or even to take food, except from the tongues of the alien 
workers. It is therefore properly considered as representing a more 
advanced stage of parasitism than sanguinea. A few species belonging 
to the Myrmicine genera Tomognathus and Strongylognathus seem to 
possess analogous instincts, but too little is known of their habits to 
enable us to make very definite statements concerning them. 

It was, of course, impossible to do more than speculate on the 
phylogeny of the slave-making instincts of sanguinea and Polyergus 
without a knowledge of the ontogenetic source and development of these 
instincts, and as these are social activities, that is, carried out simul- 
taneously by a number of cooperating organisms, it was necessary to 
learn something about the origin and development of the ant colony 
as a unit. The bearing on the origin of slavery of the obvious and 
fundamental fact that there is a double ontogeny and phylogeny in 
social organisms, namely, one of the colony as well as one of the indi- 
vidual, has been appreciated only within the past few years and has 
completely changed the aspect of the subject. 

In the great majority of ant species the colony arises and develops 
in the following manner: The single female, or queen, after mating 
during her marriage flight, descends to the earth, divests herself of her 
wings, digs a small cell in the soil, or enters some preformed cavity 
under a stone or in the tissues of a plant, lays a number of eggs, feeds 
the resulting larve with a salivary secretion, and guards and nurses 
them till they mature and constitute a brood of diminutive workers. 
These now proceed to enlarge the nest, to forage for food, both for 
themselves and their mother, and to care for the succeeding broods of 
young. The queen thenceforth gives herself up exclusively to feeding 
from the tongues of her offspring and to laying eggs. The colony 
grows apace, the workers increasing in number, size and polymorphism 
with successive broods. Eventually males and virgin queens are pro- 
duced, though often only after the expiration of several years, when 
the colony may be said to have completed its ontogenetic development. 

It will be seen from the foregoing description that the mother 
queen lapses from the position of an independent organism with 
remarkable initiative to that of a parasite dependent on her own off- 
spring. ‘The latter stage in her life is of much longer duration than 
the former. ‘This singular ontogenetic change in the instincts of the 
queen should be noted, as it foreshadows an important phylogenetic 
development exhibiting two different modifications, one of which is 
excessive, the other defective, in comparison with the primitive and 
independent type of colony formation. The excessive, or redundant, 
type is known to occur only among the Attiine ants of tropical America. 
These raise fungi for food and are quite unable to subsist on any other 
substances. The queens are often very large, especially in the typical 


552 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


genus Atta, and not only manage to bring to maturity a brood of 
workers, but at the same time, as von Ihering,* Goeldi® and Jacob 
Huber*® have shown, have energy to spare to devote to the cultivation 
of a fungus garden. With the appearance of the first brood of workers, 
however, these queens, like those of most ants, degenerate into parasites 
on their own progeny. 

This dependent stage, which, as I have said, is of much greater 
duration than the independent stage in the long life of the queen, 
leads to a number of phylogenetic developments of the defective type. 
These developments first manifest themselves in the adoption of young 
queens by adult workers of their own species. A word of explanation 
will make this clear. In the colonies of many species of Formicide 
we find several queens—in fact, there are comparatively few ants 
whose adult colonies do not contain more than one of these fertile 
individuals. And a study of the growth of such colonies shows that 
the supernumerary queens are either daughters of the original single 
queen that founded the colony, or have been adopted from other colonies 
of the same species. Hence these queens are either virgins, or have 
been impregnated by their own brothers (adelphogamy of Forel) in 
the parental nest, or have been captured by the workers and carried 
into the nest after descending from their nuptial flight. This forci- 
ble adoption leads necessarily to a complete suppression of the inde- 
pendent stage in the life of such queens. JI have shown, in another 
article, that merely removing a queen ant’s wings with tweezers will 
at once call forth the dependent series of instincts, and the same 
result is undoubtedly produced when the workers deialate the virgin 
or just-fertilized queens of their own or other formicaries. Such 
queens, finding themselves surrounded by a number of accomplished 
nurses, the workers, proceed at once to act like old queens that have 
already established their colonies and brought up a brood. 

From this condition of facultative adoption to an obligatory adop- 
tion of the queen by workers of her own species is but a step. And 
here there are three possibilities: first, the queen can establish a colony 
only with the aid of workers of her own species and of the same colony. 
This condition seems not to obtain among ants, although it is well 
known in the honey-bees. Second, the queen must either be adopted 
by the workers of her own species of the same or another colony, or 


*“ Die Anlage neuer Kolonien und Pilzgiirten bei Atta sexdens,” Zool. Anz., 
XXI., 1898, pp. 238-245, 1 fig. 

** Beobachtungen iiber die erste Anlage einer neuen Kolonie von Atta 
cephalotes,’” C. R. 6me Congr. Internat. Zool., Berne, 1905, pp. 457-458, and 
*Myrmecologische Mitteilung das Wachsen des Pilzgiirtens bei Atta cephalotes 
betreffend,” ibid., pp. 508-509. 

°* Ueber die Koloniengriindung bei Atta sexdens,”’ Biol. Centralbl., XXV., 
1905, pp. 606-619, 625-635, 26 figs. 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 553 


by workers of an alien species. This is the case with many queen ants 
that have lost the power of establishing colonies unaided. Third, the 
queen must always be adopted by an alien species. This is the 
case in certain ants, especially in the highly parasitic forms that have 
lost their worker caste. The three conditions here enumerated clearly 
represent the transition from parasitism of the queen on the same, to 
parasitism on an alien species. The latter alone is commonly regarded 
as true parasitism, but the former, which, of course, can occur only 
among social organisms or during social stages in the lives of solitary 
organisms, is parasitism in every essential particular. It is not con- 
fined to ants and other social insects, but has analogies also in human 
societies (trusts, “ grafters,” criminal and ecclesiastical organizations) 
and in human families (when the parents become senile). 

Ant colonies are such closed and exclusive societies that the adop- 
tion of strange queens, even of the same species but from alien colonies, 
usually meets with insuperable opposition on the part of the workers, 
and, as a rule, female ants have to overcome even greater hostility 
when they seek adoption in colonies of alien species. There are, never- 
theless, at least three different methods of overcoming this hostility 
and of effecting an adoption. These may be taken to characterize 
three different forms of social parasitism, as follows: 

1. Temporary Social Parasitism.—I have given this name to a form 
of parasitism which I first observed in our American Formica difficilis 
var. consocians." The fertilized female of this ant, quite unable to 
found a colony unaided, enters a colony of F'. schaufussi var. incerta 
and is adopted with surprising facility. The queen of the latter spe- 
cies disappears, in some manner hitherto unknown, and the consocians 
brood is reared by the incerta workers, which, after functioning as 
nurses, gradually die off and leave a pure consocians colony thenceforth 
able to wax large and lead an independent and aggressive existence. 
This interesting type of parasitism occurs in most, if not all, Formice 
of the exsecta and rufa groups, both in America and in Europe, in a 
Myrmicine ant, Aphenogaster tennesseensis (parasitic on A. fulva) 
and in a Dolichoderine ant, Bothriomyrmex meridionalis (parasitic on 
Tapinoma erraticum). The females of these parasitic species tend 
to become greatly reduced in size (F. difficilis and several allied spe- 
cies: F'. dakotensis, microgyna, impexa, nepticula, suecica, etc.) or at 
any rate to become smaller than the queens of their host species (F. 
truncicola, wasmannt, oreas, ciliata, crinita, pressilabris, etc.). This 
is clearly an adaptation to a mode of life for which an endowment of 
fat and vigorous muscle is not needed, since these various queens do 
not have to starve for weeks or even months while bringing up a brood 


™« A New Type of Social Parasitism Among Ants,” Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. 
Hist., XX., 1904, pp. 347-375. 


554 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


of workers, as in the case of most ants. Santschi has recently made 
the illuminating discovery that the queen Bothriomyrmezx, after entering 
the nest of Tapinoma, actually decapitates the queen of the host species 
and is adopted in her stead. In the other cases the disappearance of 
the host queen has not been accounted for. In the case of F. incerta 
it is conceivable that she may be ejected from the colony or be killed 
by her own workers as in the colonies of the Algerian Monomorium 
salamonis infested with Wheeleriella, a case to be considered presently. 
For the consocians type of social parasitism Santschi® has suggested the 
name “tutelary” parasitism, because the young of this species are 
reared by workers older than the parasitic queen. 

2. Slavery, or Dulosis.—In this case, as I have shown for the Amer- 
ican F. sanguinea,® the female enters a Formica colony belonging to 
some variety of the Ff. fusca or schaufusst group, kills or puts to flight 
the workers that attack her and hastily appropriates a number of worker 
larvee or cocoons. ‘These she carefully guards till they hatch, when 
she is surrounded by a loyal brood—of an alien species, to be sure, 
but nevertheless both able and inclined to bring up her brood when it 
appears. ‘This is “pupillary” parasitism, to use Santschi’s term, since 
the nurses, or host ants, are younger than the parasitic queen. In this 
case the queen of the host species is probably put to flight at the time 
the sanguinea queen enters the nest. Polyergus rufescens colonies are, 
perhaps, founded in the same manner, but unequivocal observations on 
the queens of this species are still lacking. Not only is slavery, at 
least as manifested in sanguinea, distinguished from the other forms 
of social parasitism by the aggressive behavior of the queen, but also 
by a peculiarity of her own workers. These inherit from their mother 
the instinct to enter nests of the host species, and appropriate the 
young, but these queen instincts are intimately associated with the 
feeding instincts of the workers, as the latter forage in companies like 
so many nondulotic ants and consume many of the captured pupe. 
Hence the futility of all attempts, like those of Darwin and Wasmann, 
to understand slavery from a study of the behavior of the workers alone. 

Wasmann”° and Santschi believe that slavery has arisen from tem- 
porary parasitism, but although I myself first advanced this opinion, 
I have been compelled to abandon it. Wasmann found that a colony of 
Formica truncicola, which he has shown to be a temporary social para- 


*“ A Propos des Meurs Parasitiques Temporaires des Fourmis du Genre 
Bothriomyrmex,” Ann. Soc. Entom. France, 1906, pp. 363-392. 

*“ On the Founding of Colonies by Queen Ants, with Special Reference to 
the Parasitic and Slave-making Species,” Bull. Am. Mus. Nat. Hist., XXIL., 
1906, pp. 33-105, pls. VIII.—XIV. 

*“ Ursprung und Entwickelung der Sklaverei bei den Ameisen,” Biol. 
Centralbl., XXV., 1905, pp. 117-127, 129-144, 161-169, 193-216, 256-270, 
273-292. 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 555 


site in all essential respects like F. consocians, would accept and rear 
fusca pupe placed in the nest. This, however, is not dulosis. In order 
to establish his case he would have to prove that the truncicola workers 
can also make periodical forays on fusca for the sake of capturing their 
young, and there is no more evidence that truncicola can do this than 
there is of similar behavior on the part of consocians. Santschi, if I 
understand him correctly, believes that the sanguinea colony restricts 
its forays to the scattered fragments of the original fusca colony from 
which the queen secured her first supply of auxiliaries, and that the 
slave-making expeditions cease when these fragments are exhausted. 
This assumption seems to explain the fact that old sanguinea colonies 
are sometimes slaveless and pure, like the adult colonies of consocians, 
truncicola, ete. It is, however, rendered highly improbable by the fact 
that both in Europe and in North America sanguinea colonies not in- 
frequently contain slaves of two or more different species or varieties. 
There is also some evidence that the same colony may have slaves of 
different species at different times. Professor Forel recently showed 
me near Morges, Switzerland, a colony of Polyergus which in 1904 
contained only F. rufibarbis, but during the current year contained only 
F. glebaria. The similarity between old sanguinea colonies and adult 
colonies of temporary parasites like F. consocians, is more probably 
the result of two very different processes: in the former case of a 
languishing or lapsing of the slave-making instincts with age, in the 
latter, as I have shown, of a gradual extinction of the tutelary workers. 

3. Permanent Social Parasitism.—This occurs in the following rare 
and monotypic Myrmicine ants: the European Anergates atratulus, 
parasitic on Tetramorium cespitum, the Tunisian Wheeleriella sant- 
schit, parasitic on Monomorium salomonis, the North American Hpecus 
pergandet (on Monomorium minutum var. minimum), Sympheidole 
elecebra (on Pheidole ceres) and Epipherdole inquilina (on Ph. pilifera 
coloradensis). All these parasites are unique among ants in lacking a 
worker caste, so that they are compelled to live permanently with their 
respective host species. Santschi*? has recently shown that the just- 
fecundated queen of Wheeleriella enters a Monomorium colony and is 
adopted by the workers, which then actually proceed to kill their own 
queen. ‘The same conditions probably obtain also in the other cases, 
as the parasitic queens are too feeble to assassinate the host queen after 
the manner of Bothriomyrmer. In Anergates the degeneration of the 
species as a result of permanent parasitism is extreme: the male is 
reduced to an apterous, pale and anemic, sluggish, pupa-like creature 
which mates in the maternal nest with its own sisters (adelphogamy), 


“Forel, “ Meurs des Fourmis Parasites des Genres Wheeleria et Bothri- 
omyrmex,” Rev. Suisse Zool., XIV., 1906, pp. 51-69; “ Nova Speco Kaj Nova 
Gentonomo de Formikoj,” Internacia Scienca Revus, 4° Jars, 1907, pp. 144, 145. 


556 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


as Forel has shown, and as I was able to observe during the past June 
in a large Anergates-Tetramorium colony at Vaux, Switzerland. This 
colony contained upwards of 1,000 winged female Anergates and sev- 
eral hundred males. Many of the former, placed on the craters of 
strange Tetramorium nests, entered these at once. The T'etramorium 
workers never killed these females, though they often seized them, 
carried them some distance from the nest and cast them away. The 
males, too, were not killed, although they were more forcibly and imme- 
diately ejected. This behavior is very suggestive, for Tetramorium 
workers when placed on the craters of strange colonies of their own 
species are at once pounced upon and killed. 

It is not improbable that all three of these derivative types, namely, 
temporary, permanent and dulotic parasitism, have developed inde- 
pendently out of the primitive adoptive type of colony formation, al- 
though the details of this development are still very obscure. I have 
already given my reasons for believing that slavery did not arise directly 
from temporary parasitism. Owing to the excessive specialization of 
the permanent parasites and the loss of the worker caste among these 
species, it is not so easy to determine whether they have arisen from 
temporarily parasitic or from dulotic species, for it is conceivable that 
they may have arisen from either, especially as there are other ants, 
such as Strongylognathus and Tomognathus, which combine peculiari- 
ties of both of these categories. The species of Strongylognathus are 
peculiar to the palearctic fauna and, like Anergates, live with colonies 
of the extremely abundant and ubiquitous Tetramorium cespitum. 
The workers and females have sickle-shaped mandibles like Polyergus. 
Two species, S. rehbinderi and S. huberi, as Forel has shown, still pos- 
sess vestiges of slave-making instincts. In S. testaceus, however, which 
is the common European form, the workers are greatly reduced in 
number, showing, as Forel has suggested, that this caste is on the eve 
of disappearing completely and thus leading to conditions like those 
of Anergates and the other permanent parasites. Wasmann once found 
a S. testaceus-Tetramorwum colony containing fertile females of both 
species, and during the past June Professor Forel and I found a sim- 
ilar colony on the Petit Saléve, near Geneva. This colony contained 
a fertile Tetramortwm queen. The much smaller Strongylognathus 
queen could not be found, but must have been present, as there were 
young pupe of this species in the nest. It is evident in this case, there- 
fore, that the parasitic and host queens manage to live side by side 
(allometrobiosis of Forel). This condition arose, perhaps, from slavery 
or temporary parasitism by a suppression on the part of the Strongylo- 
gnathus queen of the instinct to kill or drive away the Tetramorium 
queen. 

The genus Tomognathus is represented in northern Europe by T’. 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 557 


sublevis (parasitic on Leptothorax acervorum) and in North America 
by ZT. americanus (parasitic on L. curvispinosus). The former was 
supposed by Adlerz!? to have only ergatoid, or worker-like females, but 
Viehmeyer*® has recently found winged females as well, and I had 
previously shown that such individuals exist in our American form. 
The workers of both species resemble those of Polyergus and Strongylo- 
gnathus in having blunted or obsolete domestic instincts. Adlerz’s 
observations seem to indicate that the European Tomognathus may 
be dulotic, but they do not altogether preclude the possibility of per- 
manent parasitism. As there are no observations on the behavior of 
the recently fecundated queens, it is impossible to decide whether the 
form of symbiosis exhibited by these ants arose from dulosis or from 
temporary parasitism or merely from a condition of xenobiosis like 
that of the North American Leptothorar emerson or the European 
Formicozenus nitidulus.** 

The accompanying diagram will serve to illustrate the phylogenetic 
relationships of the different types of colony formation among ants as 
formulated in the preceding paragraphs. 

The foregoing discussion shows very clearly that a rational ex- 
planation of slavery among ants can be found only by recognizing the 
phenomenon as a form of parasitism. This conclusion is indeed forced 
upon us by a comparative study of the various allied forms of social 
symbiosis, of the ontogeny of the ant-colony, that is, of the way in 
which it is started and develops, and by a study of the instincts of the 
queen. We myrmecologists seem to have been hampered in reaching this 
conclusion by a knowledge of the habits of the queen honey-bee. This 
insect is peculiar in being permanently and exclusively in the adoptive 


2“ Myrmekologiska Studier—III., Tomognathus sublevis Mayr.,” Bih. 
Svensk, Vet. Akad. Handl., XXI., Afl. 4, 1896, 77 pp., 1 taf. 

#8“ Beitrige zur Ameisenfauna des K6nigreiches Sachsen,” Abhandl. natur- 
wiss. Gesell. Isis, Dresden, 1906, Heft II., pp. 55-69, Taf. III. 

“Since the manuscript of this article was sent to press I have received 
from my friend, Mr. H. Viehmeyer, of Dresden, an interesting communication, 
in which he describes his experiments with a number of naturally dealated 
and therefore presumably fecundated queens of Tomognathus sublevis, Formica 
sanguinea, Polyergus rufescens and F. truncicola. These queens were intro- 
duced into strange colonies belonging to the normal hosts of their respective 
species. The results obtained with F’. sanguinea and truncicola fully confirmed 
my observations on the American sanguinea and consocians. The queens of the 
typical European Polyergus rufescens were much more passive than those of 
the American subspecies lwcidus, used in my experiments, and were adopted on 
the second or third day by the slave species F. rufibarbis, but not by F. fusca 
till a much longer period had elapsed. An ergatoid Tomognathus queen placed 
in a colony of Leptothorax acervorwm “presented the same picture as san- 
guinea, The Leptothorax fled with their larve and then attacked the queen. 


During the course of the day, however, the latter managed to kill all of the 
Leptothoraz.” 


558 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Independent Types Dependent Types 


Redundant Type 
( Attii) 


t 


Primitive Independent => Facultative Adoption of queen 


Type by workers of same species 
(Most Formicide) 


Obligatory Adoption of queen 
by workers of same species 


; 


Obligatory Adoption of queen 
by workers of another species 
ae Sa 
Temporary Social Parasitism ] Slavery, or Dulosis 
(Tutelary Parasitism ) (Pupillary Parasitism) 
£ce 


Permanent 
Social Parasitism 


or dependent stage, that is, she is unable to found a colony or even to 
exist apart from workers of her own species. And as the queen ant passes 
most of her life in similar dependence on her workers, namely, after 
establishing her colony, the earlier and more characteristic manifesta- 
tions of her instincts and her marvelous initiative and plasticity were 
either disregarded or deemed to be of little importance. Attention was 
concentrated on the worker slave-makers whose activities represent a 
combination of queen and worker instincts. Darwin was thus led to 
derive the slave-making from the foraging instincts, and Wasmann— 
well Wasmann could only keep repeating or implying that the slave- 
making ants made slaves, because they were endowed with a slave- 
making instinct—a fine modern example of Moliére’s famous opium 
fallacy and of the resources of scholastic methods in zoology! Was- 
mann supposed that F’. sanguinea is possessed of an extraordinary 
fondness for educating the young of the alien fusca. This was quite 
incomprehensible, especially as sanguinea workers are in no respect 
degenerate or dependent on their auxiliaries. Since I have examined 
many colonies of the European sanguinea, which, as a rule, rears much 
fewer auxiliaries than our American forms of the same species, Was- 
mann’s assumption seems to me to be preposterous. After the habits of 
our temporary parasites and especially after the behavior of the young 
sanguinea queens had been studied, the relations of the dulotic species to 
particular hosts were easily understood, for the young queens are reared 
by workers of a particular host species (fusca or schaufusst or some of 
their varieties) or at any rate meet them frequently in the parental 


THE ORIGIN OF SLAVERY AMONG ANTS 559 


nest. What is more natural, therefore, than that the queens, when 
ready to establish their colonies, should seek out the nests of these 
same species? The sanguinea workers, too, are reared by auxiliaries 
of the same species, so that we are not surprised to find that it is against 
colonies of these that the dulotic expeditions are directed. The ab- 
sence of any tendency on the part of the sanguinea to rear or adopt the 
males and females of the host species may be due merely to a lack of 
familiarity of the slave-makers with these sexual forms, which in all 
probability are characterized by a peculiar odor unlike that of the co- 
specific workers. 

Thus is dissipated much of the mystery with which the subject of 
slavery has been invested, and the phenomenon becomes intelligible as 
a form of parasitism in which the slaves are really the host. The 
dulotic ants differ from the temporary and permanent parasites not 
only in the peculiarity of the worker instincts, but also as representing 
parasites with a synthetic host. In other words, the workers, when 
they snatch the larve and pupe from different nests of one or more 
varieties of F. fusca or schaufussi, are actually constructing a unitary 
colony out of fragments of several colonies of the host species. This 
peculiarity, as I have shown, arises from the inheritance of female 
instincts by the workers and a fusion of these with the foraging in- 
stincts which the worker slave-makers share with this caste in many 
other Formicide. Santschi expresses a similar opinion when he says: 
“In fine, slavery reduces itself to a form of pupillary parasitism that 
perpetuates and extends itself beyond the confines of the nest.” His 
distinction of tutelary and pupillary parasitism is useful, as it calls 
attention to a more active and a more passive form of this phenomenon, 
but the distinction should not be overworked. Although the tutelary 
form would seem to lead more readily to permanent social parasitism 
with all its attendant degenerative characters, we must remember that 
Polyergus, though very passive in the hands of its slaves, is extremely 
aggressive when plundering the nests of the host species, whereas spe- 
cies like F’. consocians and truncicola, though very passive in the earliest 
stages of colony formation, are very aggressive as soon as their colonies 
have emancipated themselves from the host species. The pupillary 
and tutelary types are, moreover, already foreshadowed as consecutive 
ontogenetic stages in the behavior of most ant-queens, for the inde- 
pendent stage in colony formation is pupillary, whereas the closing 
years of the queen’s life are passed in a condition of tutelary parasitism 
on her own offspring and species. 


560 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


A TRIP AROUND ICELAND. 


By L. P. GRATACAP 


AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


III 


EYKJAVIK was reached; the capital of Iceland, that first old 
landfall for the anxious vikings, who found that when they 
threw over their Lares and Penates those undiscerning deities floated 
ashore upon this inauspicious coast. The choice has a certain pictorial 
value, but for commercial purposes those old gods should have exer- 
cised more discretion, and commercial interests are beginning to weigh 
overpoweringly in this arctic metropolis. To the immediate north the 
snow-crowned Esja shines, to the southeast the sturdy eminences of the 
Lénguhlitharfiall swim upward over the horizon; and still farther 
south the volcanic peaks of Krisuvik, where the sulphur quarries are. 
Then to the northwest like a titanic gleaming gem Snaefells with its 
ice mantle draws to its overmastering beauty every eye. But this in 
clear weather, and clear weather is not a very plentiful article in Ice- 
land. In bad weather, which is a trifle more common, the steamers 
may keep their imprisoned passengers for four days before they can 
land. The harbor is called so by a pleasant boreal fiction, which is 
not creditable to Icelandic hospitality. It is expected that next year 
an appropriation of some $400,000 will be granted permitting Mr. 
Smith, the official harbor surveyor of Norway, to execute his accepted 
plans for improving these inclement conditions. 
The town of Reykjavik contains about ten thousand inhabitants. 
It has doubled its size in five years. Stores have developed, and the 
caravans from the interior can return home laden with the furnishings 
of a modern household, not omitting wall paintings and bath-tubs. 
It is scattered over a hilly surface with its more pretentious buildings 
displayed near the water front and around the square where the statue 
of Thorwaldsen faces the Althing (Parliament) house. The buildings 
are of wood (all brought from Denmark, Norway or Scotland), fre- 
quently sheathed with corrugated iron, with foundations, in many 
cases, of concrete blocks. Coals from Scotland are shipped here in 
great quantities, and the houses are thus provided with comfortable 
heating equipments. Some of the houses are also stuccoed. At 
times there is an architectural elaboration noted, but the houses are 
usually plain and serviceable. Two bank buildings of concrete blocks 
(the manufacture of these blocks is carried on in Reykjavik) gave its 
business street a very substantial expression, and two hotels continued 


TRIP AROUND ICELAND 561 


ANSTOR ST., REYKJAVIK. 


the agreeable impression that Reykjavik was becoming popular. 
Photographers are kept busy flattering the vanity of its handsome sons 
and fair daughters; book-stores supply you with literature of all ages, 
from “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to the last verses of Thorsteinson; a 
public library of seventy thousand volumes (in which the Bulletin of 
the American Museum of Natural History may be found) will furnish 
the visitor with undreamed-of learning, and a cathedral with an organ, 
a bishop and a choir will save his feet from erring on Sunday; while 
his incredulous eyes will be shown a public school, a Latin school, a 
ladies’ seminary and a literary club. The last touches of modernity 
are given in a theater and a jail. Surely those long winter nights, 
which scarcely leave any day at all, must approach, in the autumn 
months, shorn of some of their worst terrors. And then there is the 
coffee house, where coffee, only excelled in Arabia, can be obtained, 
and languidly sipped to the accompaniment of popular songs on the 
piano, or in the companionship of garrulous friends. And there is the 
chess club, which meets on Athalstraeti! 

There are two museums in Reykjavik: one a museum of natural 
history (open one hour a week) and a museum of antiquities—the 


VOL, LXXI.--36. 


562 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE OXAIA Foss, THINGVALLIR. 


latter over the bank. Both contain admirable specimens and both, it 
is projected, will be housed with the library in a new public building, 
where room will be provided ample enough to make these three “ foun- 
dations ” an ornament to the city. 

The museum of antiquities has unquestionable importance. Here 
are very old altar pieces (Christianity was introduced into Iceland in 
1000), old vestments and church paintings, with strange archaic 
buckles, girdles of brass, silver and gold, rugs, carved boxes, old cab- 
inets, swords (many of them strips of iron rust), poignards, stone 
pestles and mortars, saddles, bits and bridles, lamps and chairs. 

The crowning group of objects is a collection of most curious hand 
mangles, or rollers, for linen fabrics. These “rullur” are made of 
wood and most elaborately carved, having one uniform form but differ- 
ing in size and in ornamentation. Some, two and a half feet long, 
are covered from end to end with carvings, not grotesque, but simple, 
and rudely or quaintly symbolic and decorative. Glyptic skill has 
been characteristic in Iceland. J saw some excellent modern examples 
in snuff horns made from ivory, with carved motifs taken from the Ice- 
landic mythology. It seems probable that this ability prevailed more 


TRIP AROUND ICELAND 563 


ALMANNAJA WALL AND ROAD. 


in the past than to-day, and may have developed as a recreative feature 
in the long periods of isolation and idleness. Examples of this old 
art are difficult to get, and high prices are paid for authentic specimens. 

I obtained an antique lamp, in hammered brass from Olafur 
Sveinsson, the goldsmith and jeweler (5 Austur St., Reykjavik), who 
deals in every variety of Icelandic curiosities, including belts, brooches, 
head-dresses, mantles, snuff boxes, bed boards, buttons, bracelets, drink- 
ing horns, ete. I paid about four dollars for my little fish-oil lamp 
and prize it greatly. 

From Reykjavik the excursions into the interior are most usually 
made, though, as I described in a former number, they may begin from 
the east or northern ports. But the guides and ponies come from 
Reykjavik and are sent overland. The preparations for a long sojourn 
in the interior are formidable, especially when the trip contemplated is 
beyond the zone of habitation and brings the traveller into the tenant- 
less tracts of the middle island. JI had no such ambitions or expensive 
schemes to consider. The ponies represent the vehicle of transport, 
and none to the accomplished rider could be more acceptable. Their 
endurance is phenomenal. ‘Two are allotted to each rider, in order to 


564 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


ALMANNAJA, ASCENDING ROAD BETWEEN WALLS. 


change animals. Halts are frequent, where the ponies are considerately 
treated, and where pasturage is attractive. The ponies feed a little, 
are remounted, and the journey is continued. Pack ponies carry 
provisions, clothing and outfit. The guides are unusually intelligent 
men, many of them teachers during the winter, and are resolute, 
capable, resourceful and safe. They speak English and can thread 
the devious trails with certainty. In many instances local guides are 
necessary, as in the crossing of the more difficult rivers. 

At last my arrangements were completed, and, with some hastily 
and not very discerningly purchased “ canned goods” (they were Eng- 
lish and Danish preparations), and some oil-skin clothes and a pair 
of loaned water-tight boots, my small cavalcade of fine ponies departed 
for Thingvallir, up Austur street, bound for the distant Gullfoss. As 
a most unpractised horseman, I had felt apprehensive about my ap- 
pearance on one of these jogging ponies, and from the ill-concealed 
mirth amongst the old women on their way to the public laundry on the 
outskirts of the town, my worst suspicions were justified. On my 
return to Reykjavik eight days later, I feel no compunctions in stating, 
I was unnoticed, an excellent testimonial to my improved horseman- 


TRIP AROUND ICELAND 565 


CAIRNS, TO MARK PATHS IN THE W1NTER SNOWS. 


ship. The easy and instantaneous control over these active animals by 
the Icelander is admirable. They are all excellent riders, and with 
bare back or saddle and stirrups shoot over rock-strewn fields with 
confidence. These ponies are most gregarious and mine would whinny 
dismally when left far behind by my precipitate companion. 

The road to Thingvallir from Reykjavik is excellent, and in places 
is receiving reinforcement by stone blocks and gutters. It runs for 
twenty-eight miles (seven Danish miles) and can be used-by bicycles 
and vehicles. ‘Traveling in Iceland is slowly undergoing helpful trans- 
formations; the discomforts and, in a measure, the perils diminish 
with the introduction of roads and bridges though this need not dis- 
courage any one who is looking for adventure. The jokulls will cer- 
tainly repel coercion, and many of the rivers at their periods of trans- 
porting rage throw off the yoke of bridges. Let the young men, who 
wish adventure and exposure, suffer from no qualms of disappointment 
over the disappearance of either from Iceland. 

The region first encountered was a hummocky moorland with stony 
tracts and distant encircling mountain ranges. It grew rapidly more 
wild and interesting. We reviewed a rolling country with distant hills, 
near-by vales and valleys, and breezy brows of rising land—an austere, 


566 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


THE ALMANNAJA. 


lonely country, full of light, and swept over by cold winds. Then out 
again we galloped over more spacious areas with intermediate black 
scoriaceous hills, and here and there in green valleys a farm house. 
There were lakes and morassy heavily-bedded depressions about us with 
stony sheets of rubble and wind-swept acres of upland, in which we 
saw grouse and plover, the latter in numbers. An occasional raven 
croaked ominously, or protesting curlews whistled at our feet. There 
were many verdant spots and many more barren ones with the distant 
snow-covered ranges always in sight. ‘The Thingvallir plain is a 
remarkably undulating or rather abruptly hilly amphitheater with a 
rising and falling road. 

At last, after a passage across a breezy divide, we came in sight 
of the great vain or lake of Thingvallir. From this point on the 
journey gained more and more in interest, and crossing dried-up or 
running stream-beds, and under high banks, with the mountains, 
beyond the lake, looming up with peaked summits and snow-gullies, 
with the occasional appearance of a green oasis about some farmhouse, 
we drew nearer and nearer to our destination, I with great relief, by 
reason of a badly bruised and suffering body. 

The little red-roofed church, distinguished far off amongst its 


TRIP AROUND ICELAND 567 


CHASM AT THE LOGBERG, 


gray and green fields, was seen close at hand, the road began a descent, 
and, in an instant, the portentous gateway of the Almannaja, like an 
Egyptian facade loomed gloomily in our path. We moved slowly— 
awed into temporary silence—down the gradually sloping road between 
the frowning walls, over a bridge spanning a brawling torrent by a 
clear, deep pool, and before us, on a ragged plain, which held a 
fortuitous sort of herbage, fighting its way against the discourage- 
ments of a stony soil, was the Walhalla Hotel. To me, at least, it 
assumed all the radiance of that mythical paradise. 

The next day was brilliantly clear, and we studied our locality. It 
presented a wonderful geological phenomenon. It was a broad valley 
of depression, between mountains, rifted by long parallel chasms, which 
crossed it in the direction of its longer diameter, and which were 
easily descried from a considerable distance, by the furrows they pre- 
sented in the landscape, by reason of the unequal elevation of their 
bounding walls. There were some eight of these remarkable fissures— 
the sundered seams in one vast flooring of erupted rock—and many 
of them, as that one in which the ancient Logberg stood, contained 
softly flowing streams of water. 


WILBUR OTIS ATWATER, 


Late Professor of Chemistry in Wesleyan University, who attained eminence for his inves- 
tigations in metamerism and with the respiration calorimeter. 


THE PROGRESS 


OF SCIENCE 


569 


THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 


THE RISE IN PRICES AND THE 
SALARIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 


THE extraordinary rise in prices 
which has occurred in the course of 
the past ten years—amounting to about 
fifty per cent. according to the index 
numbers of the Hconomist—is a seri- 
ous matter for those who are depend- 
ent on fixed salaries, as is the case 
with most scientific men. It is also 
an obstacle in the way of the advance 
of science. Those who should be en- 
gaged in scientific research may be 


compelled to give part of their time to | 


securing the incomes that are needed; 
some may be diverted altogether from 
the scientific career, while others may 
hesitate to enter it. There has always 
been a kind of panmixia among scien- 
tific workers, a lack of severe selection 
of the most fit. The number of those 
in this country who have undertaken 


scientific work does not considerably | 


exceed five thousand, and those who do 


not prove competent to do work of | 
fortunate that we can not adopt a more 


value are likely to retain their posi- 
tions in institutions of learning or in 
the government service. Should there 
be a negative natural selection drawing 
the ablest men away from a scientific 
career, it would be a serious matter, 
the future of our civilization depending 
largely on the comparatively small 
group of scientific men. 

It is a curious fact that it is largely 
scientific discovery that has lessened 
the incomes of scientific men. Prices 
depend on all sorts of conditions, psy- 
chological as well as material, but in 
the end they are determined by the 


value of gold and the value of gold | 


depends on the cost of production. The 


cyanide process and other advances in 


metallurgy, mining and geology. as well 
as the discovery of new fields, have 
greatly lessened the cost of producing 


gold. The world’s production of gold 
in 1896 amounted to 202 million dol- 
lars, in 1906 to 400 million dollars, or 
almost double. Unlike the wheat crop, 
the annual output of gold is not con- 
sumed, and the supply is probably in- 
creasing more rapidly than industry 
and commerce, while at the same time 
relatively greater use is made of gov- 
ernment notes and bank checks. The 
decreased cost of producing gold tends 
to make all prices higher, and wages 
and debts are payable in value less 
than had been agreed. If the cost of 
production and the demand for gold 
should remain constant, there would 
be an adjustment of the supply; and 
prices and wages would remain con- 
stant on a higher level. But wages 


| reach this level more slowly than most 
| prices, and scientific men and others 


with fixed salaries suffer. As a matter 
of fact, both the production of gold and 
the demand for it will remain subject 
to great fluctuation, and it seems un- 


constant standard of value, such as 
would be obtained by averaging to- 
gether all staple commodities produced 
in a series of years, and letting the 
government issue paper currency pay- 
able in these commodities and secured 
by the property of the nation. 


THE MARIA MITCHELL 
MEMORIAL 


Maria MITCHELL, professor of as- 
tronomy at Vassar College from 1865 
to 1888, a leader in her science, in the 
higher education of women and in the 
movement extending the independence 
of women, was born in Nantucket in 
1818, and was buried there in 1889. 
The Nantucket Maria Mitchell Asso- 
ciation, organized in 1902 purchased 
at that time Miss Mitchell’s birth- 


ELL. 


MITCH 


MARIA 


SW fe 


SCIENCE 


THE PROGRESS OF 


_ 


ue 

- 

rome wea 
tt - 


THE MARIA MITCHELL NANTUCKET MEMORIAL. 


INTERIOR OF THE MEMORIAL. 


572 


place. The building has been fitted up 
as a center of scientific interest for the 
community, classes in astronomy being 
there conducted under the general di- 
rection of Miss Cannon, of the Harvard 
Observatory. This summer Professor 
Mary W. Whitney, a student of Maria 
Mitchell and her successor at the Vas- 
sar Observatory, spent a week at Nan- 
tucket, where she gave lectures and 
informal talks on Maria Mitchell and 
recent work in astronomy. It is in- 
tended to use the building for natural 
history as well as astronomy. 

In March of the present year a five- 
inch equatorial telescope, made by 
Alvan Clark and formerly owned by 
Miss Mitchell, was given to the asso- 
ciation, and it is proposed to build an | 
observatory that will properly house 
the telescope in a fire-proof building. 
Efforts to complete this building, to | 
enlarge the equipment and to maintain 
the work are being made, and those | 
who are interested in the work of 
Maria Mitchell or in a scientific insti- 
tution such as is planned for Nan- 
tucket are invited to join the associa- 
tion, which they can do by paying one 
dollar annually or ten dollars as a 
life member. 


SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 


WE record with regret the death of 
Professor Lucien M. Underwood, head 
of the department of botany of Co- 
lumbia University; of Dr. Edward 
Gardiner, of the Marine Biological 
Laboratory; of M. Maurice Loewy, di- 
rector of the Paris Observatory, and 
of Mr. Howard Saunders, the British 
ornithologist. 


A MEMORIAL meeting in honor of the 
late James Carroll was held by the 
Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical 
Club on October 14. Addresses were 
delivered by Drs. William H. Welch, , 


POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Howard A. Kelly and William S&S. 
Thayer.—The Geographical Society of 
Philadelphia will hold a meeting on 
November 6, in memory of the late 
Angelo Heilprin, founder of the society. 
—Friends of the late Walter Frank 
Raphael Weldon, formerly Linacre pro- 
fessor of comparative anatomy at Ox- 
ford, have offered the university a sum 
of about £1,000 for the foundation of 
a prize, with a view to perpetuate the 
memory of Professor Weldon and to 
encourage biometric science. 


THE Royal Society has this year 
awarded its Davy medal to Dr. E. W. 
Morley, emeritus professor of chem- 
istry, Western Reserve University, and 
its Copley medal to Dr. A. A. Michel- 
son, professor of physics, the Univer- 
sity of Chicago.—Dr. Richard Wett- 
stein, Ritter von Westerheim, professor 
of systematic botany at Vienna, has 
been elected president of the Associa- 
tion of German Men of Science and 
Physicians for the meeting to be held 
next year at Cologne. 


THE American Association for the 
Advancement of Science meets at the 
University of Chicago during convoca- 
tion week, which this year begins on 
December 30. Together with the Am- 
erican Association meet the Society of 
American Naturalists and the special 
societies devoted to anthropology, bot- 
any, chemistry, mathematics, physiol- 
ogy, anatomy, psychology, geography 
and entomology. It is to be hoped that 
all who are able will plan to attend this 
meeting—not only professional men of 
science, but also readers of this journal 
who are interested in the progress of 
science. At the New York meeting last 
year, there were about 2,000 scientific 
men in attendance, and there is every 
reason to believe that the Chicago 
meeting will be equally important. 


INDEX 5 


~I 
w 


INDEX. 


NAMES OF CONTRIBUTORS ARE PRINTED IN SMALL CAPITALS 


Acassiz, G. R., Mars as seen in the 
Lowell Refractor, 275 

Agassiz, What we owe to, Burr G. 
WILpER, 5; Jean Louis Rudolphe 
Agassiz, Epwarp S. Mors, 542 

Age, Growth and Death, the Problem 
of, CHARLES S. Minot, 97, 193, 359, 
455, 509 

American, Philosophical Society and 
Benjamin Franklin, 92; Girls, Health 
of, NELLIE COMMINS WHITAKER, 234 

ANDERSON, Ropert, The Great Jap- 
anese Volcano Aso, 29 

Ants, the Origin of Slavery among, 
WILLIAM Morton WHEELER, 550 

Appalachian Mountains, South, The 
Heart of the, SpENcER TRoTTER, 149 

Argyle, the Duke of, 189 

Asiatic Museums, Notes on, BASHFORD 
Dean, 481 

Aso, the Great Japanese Volcano, Ros- 
ERT ANDERSON, 29 


Balsam Peaks—the Heart of the South 
Appalachian Mountains, SPENCER 
TROTTER, 149 

Benjamin Franklin and the American 
Philosophical Society, 92 

Bicentenary of the Birth of Linnezus, 
Celebration by the New York Acad- 
emy of Sciences, 94 

Botton, FREDERICK E., Some Ethical 
Aspects of Mental Economy, 246 

Bonp, FREDERIC Drew, Poe as an Evo- 
lutionist, 267 

British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, Address of the 
President of the Engineering Sec- 
tion, SyLvaAnus P. THompson, 337 

Brown, Ropert MarsHary, Recent 
Legislation on the Mississippi River, 


Byers, CHAarLES AtMA, Control of the 
Colorado iver regained, 50 


Carnegie Foundation, Retiring Allow- 
ances of, and the State Universities, 
95 

CHAMBERLAIN, ALEXANDER F., Recent 
Views of the Origin of the Greek 
Temple, 448 

Children, School, the Sacrifice of the 
Eyes of, Water D. Scort, 303 

Chinaman and the Foreign Devils, 


CHARLES Braprorp Hupson, 258 

CHITTENDEN, RusseLt H.,. The Influ- 
ence of Diet on Endurance and Gen- 
eral Etficiency, 536 

CLELAND, HERDMAN F., Some Little- 
known Mexican Volcanoes, 179 

CocKERELL, T. D. A., and F. B. R. 
HELLEMS, A Scientific Comedy of 
Errors, 217 

Colorado River, Control 
CHARLES ALMA Byers, 50 

Conscience, The Physical, Reawakening 
of the, RicHarp Cote Newron, 156 


regained, 


DEAN, BasHrorp, Notes 
Museums, 481 

Death, Age, Growth and, the Problem 
of, CHARLES S. Minor, 97, 193, 359, 
455, 509 

DeLAND, FRED, Notes on the Develop- 
ment of Telephone Service, 21, 139, 
226, 313, 433 

Diet, the Influence of, on Endurance 
and General Efficiency, Russett H. 
CHITTENDEN, 536 


on Asiatie 


EASTMAN, CHartes R., Illustrations of 
Medieval Earth-science, 84 

Elements, Transmutation of, and Ra- 
dium Emanation, 287 

Endurance and General Efficiency, the 
Influence of Diet on, RussetL H. 
CHITTENDEN, 536 

Engineering Section of the British As- 
sociation, Address of the President, 
SyLvanus P. THoMpson, 337 

Errors, Scientific Comedy of, T. D. A. 
CocKERELL and F. B. R. HELLEMs, 
217 

Ethical Aspects of Mental Economy, 
FREDERICK E. Boiron, 246 

Eugenics, Probability the Foundation 
of, FRANCIS Gatton, 165; National, 
The Scope and Importance to the 
State of the Science of, Karn PErar- 
son, 385 

Evolutionist, Poe 
Drew Bonn, 267 

Eyes of School Children, Sacrifice of, 
WALTER D. Scort, 303 


as an, FREDERIC 


Fertility and Genius, Cartes Kasset, 
452 

Foreign Devils, the Chinaman and, 
CHARLES BrApForp Hupson, 258 


574 POPULAR 


France, The Institute of, and Some | 
Learned Societies of Paris, EDWARD | 


F. WILLIAMS, 439 
| 


GaLron, Francis, Probability the 
Foundation of Kugenics, 165 
Girls, American, Health otf, NELLIE | 


CoMMINS WHITAKER, 234 

GratacaP, L. P., A Trip around Ice- 
land, 289, 420, 560 

Greek Temple, Recent Views of the 
Origin of the, ALEXANDER F. CHAM- 
BERLAIN, 448 

GREGoRY, WILLIAM K., The Place of 
Linneus in the Unfolding of Science, 
za 

Growth, Age and Death, the Problem | 
of, CHARLES S. Minot, 97, 193, 359, 
455, 509 


Health of American Girls, NELLIE) 
CoMMINS WHITAKER, 234 

Hetteos, F. B. R., and T. D. A. Cock- | 
ERELL, A Scientific Comedy of Er- 
rors, 217 

Helmholtz, Hermann von, 283 

History of Science, The Place of Lin- 
neus in the, ARTHUR O. LOVEJOY, 
498 

Hupson, CHARLES Braprorp, The 
Chinaman and the Foreign Devils, 
258 

Hygiene, The Newer, Witrrep H. Man- 
WARING, 66 


Iceland, A Trip around, L. P. Grava- 
CAP, 289, 420, 560 

Illustrations of Medieval Earth-science, 
CHARLES R. EASTMAN, 84 

Institute of France and Some Other 
Learned Societies of Paris, Epwarp 
F. WILLIAMS, 439 


Japanese Volcano Aso, ROBERT ANDER- 
son, 29 


Kalm, Peter, Travels, SpENcER TROT- 
TER, 413 

KASSELL, CHARLES, Fertility and Ge- 
nius, 452 

Legislation, Recent, on the Mississippi | 
River, Rospert MArsHALL Brown, 
131 

Light, Speed of, and its Wave-length, 
188 


Linneus, Bicentenary of the Birth of, | 
Celebration by the New York Acad- 
emy of Sciences, 94; the Place of, 
in the Unfolding of Science, WIL- | 
LIAM K. Grecory, 121; and the Love 
for Nature, Epwarp K. PuTNAM, 
318; The Place of, in the History 
of Science, ARTHUR O. LovEJoy, 498 

Linnean Celebrations in Sweden, 284 | 


SCIENCE MONTHLY 


Lovesoy, ARTHUR O., The Place of Lin- 
neus in the History of Science, 498 

Lowell Refractor, Mars as seen in the, 
G. R. AGaAssiz, 275 


Man, Forms of Selection with reference 
to their Application to Man, G. P. 
WATKINS, 69 

MANWARING, WILFRED H., The Newer 
Hygiene, 66 

Mars as seen in the Lowell Ret.-actor, 
G. R. AGassiz, 275 

Medieval Earth-science, Illustrations 
of, CHARLES R. EAstTMaAn, 84 

Mental Economy, Ethical Aspects of, 

FREDERICK E. Botton, 246 

Mexican Volcanoes, Some Little-known, 

HERDMAN I. CLELAND, 179 

Minot, CuHarues §., The Problem of 

Age, Growth and Death, 97, 193, 359, 

455, 509 


_Mississippi River, Recent Legislation 


on the, Ropert MarsHaLtL Brown, 
131 


| Mitchell, Maria, Memorial, 569 


Morse, Epwarp §., Jean Louis Ru- 
dolphe Agassiz, 542 

Mortality Statistics, 475 

Mountains, South Appalachian, The 
Balsam Peaks, SPENCER TROTTER, 149 
Museums, Asiatic, Notes on, BASHFORD 
DEAN, 481 


National, Observatory, Early Move- 
ments in the United States for a, 
CHARLES OSCAR PAULLIN, 325; Eu- 
genics, The Scope and Importance to 
the State of the Science of, KARL 
PEARSON, 385 

Nature, Linné and the Love for, Epb- 
warp K. Putnam, 318 

NEwToN, RicHarD CoE, The 
awakening of tne Physical 
science, 156 

New York Academy of Sciences, Cele- 
bration of the Bicentenary of the 
Birth of Linnzus, 94 


Re- 
Con- 


Observatory, National, Early Move- 
ments in the United States for a, 
CHARLES OSCAR PAULLIN, 325 


PapiIni, GIOVANNI, What Pragmatism 
is like, 351 

Paris, Learned Societies of, and the 
Institute of France, Epwarp IF. WI1- 
LIAMS, 439 

PAULLIN, CHARLES Oscar, Early Move- 
ments in the United states for a Na- 
tional Observatory, 325 

PEARSON, Kart, The Scope and Impor- 
tance to the State of the Science of 
National Eugenies, 385 

Peter Kalm’s Travels, SPENCER TROT- 
TER, 413 


INDEX 575 


Philosophical Society, American, and | Slavery among Ants, The Origin of, 


Benjamin Franklin, 92 WititramM Morton WHEELER, 550 
Physical Conscience, The Reawakening Speed of Light and its Wave-length, 
of, RicHARD COLE NEWTON, 156 188 
Poe as an Evolutionist, FREDERIC DREW State Universities, and the System of 
Bonn, 267 Retiring Allowances of the Carnegie 
Porncark, H., The Value of Science, 53 Foundation, 95; the Growth of, 477 
Pragmatism, What it is like, GlovANNI Statistics, Mortality, 475 
PaPINI, 351 Strone, W. W., Radioactivity of Or- 
Prices, the Rise in, and the Salaries of dinary Substances, 524 
Scientific Men, 569 Sweden, Linnean Celebrations in, 284 
Probability, the Foundation of Eugen- 
ics, FRANCIS GALTON, 165 Telephone Service, Notes on the Devel- 
Progress of Science, 92, 188, 283, 379, opment of, FRED DELAND, 21, 139, 
475, 569 226, 313, 433 
PurnaM, Epwarp K., Linné and the Temple, Greek, Recent Views of the 
Love for Nature, 318 Origin of the, ALEXANDER F. CHam- 


BERLAIN, 448 

THOMPSON, SYLVANUS P., Address of 
the President of the Engineering Sec- 
tion of the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, 337 

Transmutation of the Elements and 
Radium Emanation, 287 

TROTTER, SPENCER, The Balsam Peaks 
—the Heart of the South Appala- 
chian Mountains, 149; Peter Kalm’s 


Radioactivity of Ordinary Substances, 
W. W. STRONG, 524 

Radium Emanation and the Transmu- 
tation of the Elements, 287 

Reawakening of the Physical Con- 
science, RIcHARD CoLE NEwToNn, 156 

Refractor, the Lowell, Mars as seen in 
the, G. R. Acassiz, 275 


Retiring Allowances of the Carnegie eae 
Foundation and the State Waivers Travels, 413 
ties, 95 


Universities, State, The Growth of the, 
477 
University Salaries, 58 


River, Mississippi, Recent Legislation 
on the, RoBerRT MARSHALL Brown, 
131; Colorado, Control regained, 


‘HAR ALMA B 5 = : Paar 
Cuartes ALMA Byers, 50 Value of Science, H. PorIncAaRE, 53 


| Voleano, The Great Japanese, Aso, 

Sacrifice of the Eyes of School Chil- ROBERT ANDERSON, 29 
dren, WALTER D. Scott, 303 Voleanoes, Mexican, Some  Little- 

Salaries of Scientific Men and the Rise known, HERDMAN F. CLELAND, 179 
in Prices, 569 

Selection, Forms of, with reference to | WATKINS, G. P., The Forms of Selec- 
their Application to Man, G. P. tion with reference to their Applica- 
WATKINS, 69 tion to Man, 69 

Science, The Value of, H. Porncaré, | Wave-length and Speed of Light, 188 
53; the Place of Linneus in the Un- | Wealth of the United States, 382 
folding of, Wirrtam K. GrecGory, | WHEELER, WILLIAM Morton, The Or- 
121; the Place of Linneus in the igin of Slavery among Ants, 550 
History of, ARTHUR O. LovEsoy, 498 | WHITAKER, NELLIE ComMMINS, The 


Sciences, New York Academy of, Cele-| Health of American Girls, 234 
bration of the Bicentenary of the | WILpER, Burt G., What we owe to 
Birth of Linnzus, 94 | Agassiz, 5 

Scientific, Items, 96, 191, 287, 384, | Wir~rams, Epwarp F., The Institute 
479, 572; Comedy of Errors. T. D. A.| of France and Some Other Learned 


CocKERELL and F. B. R. Hettems,| Societies of Paris, 439 
217 | 

Scorr, WALTER D., The Sacrifice of the 
Eyes of School Chilaren, 303 


Zoological Congress, The Seventh In- 
ternational, 379 


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THE 


?OPULAR SCIENCE 
MONTHLY. 


EDITED BY J. McKEEN CATTELL 


> CONTENTS 


ie Problem of Age, Growth and Death. Proresson CoHarites§. Minor 97 


he Place of Linnzus in the Unfolding of Science: His Views on the 
Class Mammalia. Wiir1am K.Grrcory . ....... . 121 
Recent Legislation on the Mississippi River. RosBert Marsuatt Brown 131 


‘otes on the Development of Telephone Service. Frep DeELanpD . . 139 


he Balsam Peaks—the Heart of the South Appalachian Mountains, 
SPENCER TROTTER 149 


che Reawakening of the Physical Conscience. 
: Dr. RicHarp CoLE Newton 156 


robability—The Foundation of Eugenics. Dr. Francis GAtton. . . 165 
tome Little-known Mexican Volcanoes. Proressorn HeERDMAN F, CLELAND 179 


‘he Progress of Science: 
; Does the Speed of Light depend upon its Wave-length ? ; The Duke of Argyle ; 
MARES POOR, So SS ele, fe gale Se NERS OR eae oh ote KE EAS see! Eee 


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