HARVARD UNIVERSITY.

LIBRARY

MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

^L l^iic- TaJ/aaa^umj. \ 1911

^^

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

American Philosopliical Society

HELD AT PHILADELPHIA

FOR

PROMOTING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE

VOLUME LV
1916

PHILADELPHIA
THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

1916

V

PRESS OF

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY

LANCASTER, PA.

CONTENTS

The Geology of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
By Ralph H. Soper i

Interrelations of the Fossil Fuels. By John J. Stevenson. . . 21

On Ethnological Tests of Sensation and Perception, with Spe-
cial Reference to Tests of Color Vision and Tactile Discrim-
ination Described in the Reports of the Cambridge Anthro-
pological Expedition to Torres Straits. By E. B. Titchener 204

Two New Terms, Cormophytaster and Xeniophyte, Axiomati-
cally Fundamental in Botany. By William Trelease.... z^^y

On the Effect of Continued Administration of Certain Poisons
to the Domestic Fowl, with Special Reference to the Progeny.
By Raymond Pearl 243

America as the Defender of Neutral Rights. By L. S. Rowe. 259

Legal and Political International Questions and the Recurrence
of War. By Thomas Willing Balch 267

Observations on the Mentality of Chimpanzees and Orang-
utans. By William H. Furness, 3d 281

Symposium on International Law : Its Origin, Obligation, and
Future.

I. OutHne. By John Bassett Moore 291

II. The Judicial Aspect of International Law — Arbitra-
tion. By Charlemagne Tower 297

III. Legislative Aspects. By George Grafton Wilson. 305

IV. International Administration. By Philip Marshall

Brown 31-

V. World Organization. By David Jayne Hill 322

Age Cycles and Other Periodicities in Organisms. By C. M.

Child 33°

Types of Neuromuscular Mechanism in Sea-Anemones. By

G. H. Parker 3+0

Inheritance through Spores. By John M Coulter 344

iii

iv CONTENTS.

The Popes and the Crusades. By Dana C. Munro 348

A Rare Old Slavonic Religious Manual. By J. Dyneley
Prince 357

Jointing as a Fundamental Factor in the Degradation of the
Lithosphere. By Frederick Ehrenfeld 363

Sight and Signalling in the Navy. By Alexander Duane. . . 400

Some Properties of Vibrating Telephone Diaphragms. A. E.
Kennelly and H. O. Taylor 415

The Normal Gastric Secretion. By Martin E. Rehfuss.... 461

The Common Folk of Shakespeare. By Felix E. Schelling, 471

The Origin and Vegetation of Salt Marsh Pools. By John
W. Harshberger 481

Pathological Anatomy of the Injected Trunks of Chestnut
Trees. By Caroline Rumbold 485

Color-Photographs of the Phosphorescence of Certain Metallic
Sulphides. By Edward D. Nichols 494

Cooperation as a Factor in Evolution. William Patten .... 503

A Dynamical Theory of Antagonism. W. J. V. Osterhout. . 533

Obituary Notices of Members Deceased:

Sir Gaston Maspero I

Samuel Dickson XIV

Minutes i

Index xvii

APR 21 1916

PROCEEDINGS

H 'X^^ OF THE

American Philosophical Society

HELD AT PHILADELPHIA

FOR PROMOTING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE

Vol. LV. 1916. No. 1.

CONTENTS

The Geology of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil,
By Ralph H, Soper

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/'^PR 21 1916

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

HELD AT PHILADELPHIA
FOR PROMOTING USEFUL KNOWLEDGE

THE GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA AND RIO GRANDE DO
NORTE, BRAZIL.

Plates I-IV.
By RALPH H. SOPER.

(Read December 3, 191 5.)

Table of Contents.

Page

Introductory i

Topography 3

Coastal sediments 3

A great plateau of crystalline rocks 4

A series of high tables-lands and serras 4

Drainage 5

Geology 6

The Brazilian complex 6

The sedimentary series 8

Sandstones 8

Limestones 9

Sands and clays 1 1

Isolated sandstone areas i4

Summary of observations on the geology of Parahyba and Rio Grande

do Norte 16

Introductory.

The data for the following paper was gathered in a series of
three expeditions made into the states of Parahyba and Rio Grande
do Norte. The actual time consumed in collecting the material
dated from the latter part of March, 1912, until the middle of
February, 1913. The writer was sent into the field by the Brazilian

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. , VOL. LV. A, PRINTED MARCH 28, I916.

2 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

government to investigate the practicability of drilling wells and
procuring water throughout the two states mentioned above. The
notes on the geology were made in connection with and as a part of
that work.

The topography of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte is not
one of strong contrasts. There are no great mountain ranges and
no large rivers. In fact there is not a single stream in either state
that can be depended upon to flow during the entire year. The
climate, for the most part, is hot and dry — a somewhat unexpected
phenomenon for a region in 5 degrees south latitude. The rain-
fall is irregular, being copious one year while the next it may fail
entirely. Moreover, it is seldom distributed over a considerable
time or area, but is more likely to fall locally in a torrent, and then
after a dry period of weeks, there is another torrent.

The states of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte have com-
paratively few inhabitants and their struggle for life during the
last 200 years forms one of the epics of South America. Driven
from their homes time after time by thirst and hunger, they have
always returned and are still in the sertao,^ enduring untold priva-
tions and waiting with infinite patience the arrival of happier times.

The topography of the accompanying map is based on the
" Mappa dos Estados do Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte e Parahyba,"
by H. E. Williams and R. Crandall. With the exception of the
coastal sediments south of Natal, which are shown according to
J. C. Branner, the geology is the writer's own work. The region
covered is an extensive one and the work was done by means of
horseback meanders, a pedometer, pocket compass, aneroid, and
hand level. In general, however, the geological areas shown are
accurate within the map scale used.

The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Professors
J. C. Branner, Orville A. Derby, and to Dr. M. Arrojado Lisboa,
for valuable help and suggestions. Among the papers consulted,
two were found to be of especial value, namely, " The Geology of
the Northeast Coast of Brazil," by J. C. Branner and ".Geographia,
Geologia, Supprimento d'Agua, Transportes, e Agudagem," by
Roderic Crandall.

1 " Sertao " is the word used in northeastern Brazil to denote the back
country or the interior.

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 3

Topography.

The states of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte form three
general topographic divisions. The first is a zone of low coastal
sediments of Cretaceous and Tertiary age. The second is a great
plateau which rises from the western edge of the coastal plain and
sweeps clear across the two states thus embracing more than two
thirds of their area. The third division consists of a series of high
serras which rise abruptly from the surrounding plain, and whose
summits are often remarkably flat.

Fig. I. Index map.

The coastal belt may be further divided into that part which
immediately adjoins the sea, marked by shifting sand-hills, low
swampy areas overgrown with mangroves and by general poverty
in vegetation ; and second, into the higher sedimentary land, the
limestone and sandstone areas, usually covered by a dense caatinga-
forest. This latter region includes the Chapadas of Apody and Sao
Sebastiao, rich fertile regions almost uninhabited. The topography
of this sedimentary region, as a whole, has a low relief, the only
prominent features being the line of sand dunes which stretches
along the coast (especially prominent in the vicinity of Natal), and

- Caatinga is a Brazilian term for a low, brushy forest.

4 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

the low, plateau-like chapadas mentioned above. In the eastern part
of Parahyba the coastal sediments are scarred by short streams
which have narrow, fertile valleys and steep banks, where erosion
has cut deeply into the soft beds.

The plateau region can be described briefly as a great rolling
plain of hard, crystalline rock, covered irregularly by a growth of
caatinga, dense or sparse according to the character and degree of
decomposition of the underlying rocks. It covers by far the greater
portion of the two states and ranges from an elevation of lOO meters
near the contact with the sediments, to 300 meters further inland.
It is in this region, locally known as the " alto sertao," that drought
is most severely felt.

Rising abruptly from this undulating plateau and attaining a
height of from 500 to 600 meters, is a series of serras which form
the only relief in the monotonous topography. Most marked of
these serras is the Planalto de Borborema with a mean elevation of
about 500 meters, which reaches from the southern portion of Rio
Grande do Norte, clear across the central portion of Parahyba and
forms a part of the boundary of that state with Pernambuco. In
the vicinity of Campina Grande it has a width of more than 100
kilometers but narrows to the north of there. The Serras Canna-
brava, Jabitaca, Baixa Verde and Teixeira form a part of the
boundary referred to above.

From the Serra Teixeira there is a low line of mountains
stretching away to the eastern part of Ceara. Some of the larger
ones are the Serra Mellado, Serra Catharina and the Serra do Vital.
There are several more, smaller and without names, significant only
in that they form a part of a general structural feature. The
Serra Santa Catharina is the most important of the mountains
named and reaches a height of about 650 meters. To the north of
this mountain line, beginning near Souza and stretching in a north-
east direction almost to Catole do Rocha, is a long mountain called
the Serra Commissario. I did not cross this serra, but from a
distance it appeared to be a series of small buttes rather than one
great mountain.

Still further north of the Serra Commissario, and forming

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 5

a part of the division line between the states of Rio Grande do
Norte and Parahyba, is another mountain range. Beginning with
the Serras S. Miguel, Luiz Gomes, and Serra Padre, which mark
the meeting point of the three states, Parahyba, Rio Grande do
Norte, and Ceara, and stretching away in an easterly direction are
the Serras Negra, Barriguda, Furada, Patu, and other minor ones.
Between the end of this line and the northeast point of the Serra
Borborema, here called Serra Mattos, lies the Serra Joao do Valle.

All of the mountains or tablelands thus far mentioned are more
or less similarly constructed, that is, they arise abruptly from the
surrounding plain, are usually flat-topped and are composed entirely
of crystalline rocks ; some of them have a core of granite. Other
than the more important serras whose names have been given there
are many small isolated peaks or serrotes of granite and gneiss
which rise irregularly and sharply out of a rolling, caatinga-covered
plain.

There is one other type of mountain found in these states illus-
trated by the Serras Martins, Porto Alegre, and Joao do Valle. The
Serra Joao do Valle I did not visit but saw from a distance. Mr.
Roderic CrandalP describes it as being of the same structure as the
others named. These serras represent an unusual phenomenon.
They rise abruptly from the plain of Rio Grande do Norte, to
an elevation of about 700 meters and their summits are remarkably
flat-topped. The bulk of the mountains are composed of crystal-
line rock, nearly all schist with some gneiss, as is also the surround-
ing country. But their summits are capped with sandstone, about
50 meters thick. These three mountains, in so far as I have been
able to determine, are peculiar in this respect.

Drainage.

The drainage everywhere in Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte

flows to the east or northeast ; in other words it takes the shortest

course to the sea. Along the southern border of Parahyba the

watershed marks the boundary between that state and Pernambuco.

3 Roderic Crandall, " Geographia, geologia, supprimento d'agua, trans-
portes, e agudagem," page 6, Rio de Janeiro, 1910.

6 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

Of the various streams the rivers Apody (or IMossoro), Assu,
Ceara Mirim, and Parahyba, are the most important. The Rio
Jaguaribe in the southern part of Ceara might also be included, for
the territory drained by it is physically the same and has passed
through the same history as the adjoining region in Rio Grande do
Norte. Not a single stream in the entire territory under considera-
tion is perennial. The reason for this is partly the scarcity and
irregularity of the rainfall, partly the hard, impervious nature of
the rocks, and partly the hot, dry climate.

Geology.

For the purposes of the present study the geological formations
represented in the states of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte may
be classed in two groups as follows: first, the ancient (Archean to
early Paleozoic) rocks which have been called the Brazilian complex
by Dr. Branner;* second, the comparatively modern (Mesozoic to
Recent) rocks which we call the sedimentary series.

The Brazilian complex consists of crystalline rocks (mainly
gneiss) and schists disposed in inclined beds which are quite thickly
threaded with dikes and bosses of various eruptives, among which
granites predominate.

The rocks of the second group consist mainly of sandstones,
limestones, and incoherent sand and clay deposits (including dunes),
all of them disposed in horizontal or approximately horizontal beds.

In general terms the two groups as shown on the accompany-
ing map are evenly distributed. With the exception of a com-
paratively narrow strip along the coast and a few isolated spots in
the interior, the whole of the two states is made up of the crystalline
rocks. No attempt at a systematic classification of this division will
be made here. I have not had the time nor the opportunity to do
more than to observe some of the broader features. However, to
intelligently understand the geologic conditions in this region, it is
necessary to know that the rocks of the Brazilian complex cover
practically all of the interior ; and that the more recent sedimentary
beds along the coast have been formed by the deposition of sedi-

4 " Geologia elementar," 2(i ed., pp. 286-289. Rio de Janeiro, 1915.

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE. BRAZIL. 7

ments derived from this original laiul mass. It is necessary also, to
know that these rocks are not homogeneous hut that they arc hard
here and soft and decomposed a few feet away; that they have
been crushed, metamorphosed and recrystallized to a remarkable
extent, and that one may find a hard granite " serrote " standing
out in the midst of an area of soft schist. Everywhere the rocks
are cut by quartz veins which range from a few centimeters to
half a meter in diameter and occasionally there are pegmatite veins.
Mr. Roderic Crandall in his paper entitled " Geographia
Geologia, Supprimento d'Agua, Transportes e Agudagem " makes a
further division which he calls the " Series Ceara." I have not
made this distinction, but have included the rocks of the Ceara
series under the more general head of the schists of the Brazilian
complex. However, they have a few distinguishing characteristics
which I shall give briefly. The Ceara series, where it is distinguish-
able, seems to be composed of acid rocks, usually of a light color.
They contain more or less kaolin and clay and in some cases have a
peculiar earthly appearance. On weathering ofl: they do not weather
into rounded boulders with smooth surfaces, but outcrop in jagged
exposures and the boulders, large and small, have sharp edges — not
rounded ones. The Ceara series usually presents a schistose ap-
pearance and in places according to Mr. Crandall, may contain
lenses of hard, vitrified sandstone. In other places there are masses
of limestone completely isolated in areas of schist. However, there
does not seem to be any systematic separation of this series from
the other rocks and it is often, if not usually, impossible to make
any distinction at all. No attempt has been made by anyone to map
them separately. Hence, although all of the schists are i)robably
not strictly crystalline, I have included them with the crystalline
rocks of the Brazilian com])lex.

In regard to the distribution of the granites, I have already said
that they form the axes of some of the principal serras. Also, they
are especially noticeable along the contact of the crystalline mass
with the sediments. In such a vicinity the former usually takes the
shape of rounded boulders and bosses of granite and gneiss. Small
patches of granites, however, are found occasionally outcro])ping

8 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

throughout the crystallme areas of Parahyba and Rio Grande do
Norte.

The sedimentary series, as previously indicated, may be sepa-
rated into three divisions. First, there is a bed of rather coarse-
grained and sometimes conglomeritic sandstone which directly over-
lies the crystalline rocks. In color it is usually brick-red but may
also be yellow or white. The color is probably due to varying
amounts of iron stain. The contact between this sandstone and the
crystalline rocks was first seen where it crosses to the southeast side
of the Rio Jaguaribe, a few kilometers to the south of Limoeiro.
From there it passes close to the village Taboleiro d'Areia and con-
tinues to follow the general direction of the Chapada do Apody,
but about 9 kilometers back to the southwest of the Chapada, until
it reaches Passagem Funda. At this point the contact is 15 kilo-
meters to the south. From here it continues to follow the direction
of the escarpments of the Chapadas Sao Sebastiao and Vacca IMorta,
always from 8 to 12 kilometers to the south of them. These last two
named escarpments are in reality only a continuation of the scarp of
the Chapada do Apody. At Assii the contact passes almost through
the city and from there on to Natal it is very regular, always approach-
nearer to the coast as we go south. It passes very close to the village
Garapeba, and to the railway station Baixa Verde, passes just north
of Taipu, south of Ceara Mirim, and is seen about 5 kilometers west
of Macahyba. From this point south it is noted a few kilometers
west of S. Jose, passes through Curimatu, goes close to Espirito
Santo, and Pedra de Fogo. Thus the sandstone is exposed in a nar-
row strip from near Aracaty, at least to Natal and probably on down
into the state of Pernambuco. A section at right angles to its length
would show a consistent width of exposed area from 8 to 12 kilo-
meters. The only reliable structure that I have seen in this rock was
in the vicinity of Apody, along the escarpment of the Chapada do
Apody, and near Assu, along the Lagoa Piato. In these places the
sandstone beds dip from 3 to 8 degrees to the northeast or toward
the sea. There are some good exposures near Garapeba also, but
little structure is evident there. For the most part the exposed
sandstone is seen on the surface as an incoherent, heavy, yellowish-

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 9

brown sand, with no hard rocks at all. No fossils have ever been
found in this sandstone. The beds are at least 30 meters thick.

Directly overlying the sandstone is a bed of hard, fine-grained
limestone which is usually of a grayish or yellowish color. It is
exposed in a continuous strip from near Aracaty to Natal and is
known to exist in several places between Natal and Parahyba. It is
not unlikely that this strip of limestone continues on uninterrupted
into the state of Pernambuco. As is shown on the accompanying
map, the escarpment of Apody, beginning in the vicinity of Uniao,
follows a general southwest direction until it reaches a point about
due west of Apody. There it swings sharply about and follows a
northeast direction to Passagem Funda. At Passagem Funda the
river Apody has cut squarely through the chapada and the east side
of the river is known as the Chapada do Sao Sebastiao while the
west side retains the name of Apody. In reality the two low plateaux
comprise a single physical feature. The escarpment of the Chapada
do Sao Sebastiao is a continuation of the scarp of the Chapada do
Apody. This former makes a detour to the south and then follows
a northeast direction to the village Rua da Palha. Here the same
thing has happened as was noted at Passagem Funda. The Rio
Upanema has cut through the Chapada do Sao Sebastiao and the
part of the serra which lies to the northeast of the river has become
known as the Serra or Chapada da Vacca Morta. The escarpment
of the Serra Vacca Morta trends a little to the northeast from Rua
da Palha as far as the northern margin of the Lagoa Piato, and
finally becomes lower and lower until about 6 kilometers east of the
lagoa, it merges with the low hills that make up the topography of
that region. The remarkable thing about this escarpment which
varies from 30 to 100 meters in height, is that it marks the contact
between the sandstone and the limestone. Everywhere along its en-
tire length the base of the escarpment is sandstone while the top is
limestone. The whole surfaces of the Chapadas of Apody, Sao
Sebastiao and Vacca Morta, are limestone. From the Lagoa Piato
to Natal the contact between the sandstone and limestone has been
only approximately located. It crosses the Rio Assii about 9 kilo-
meters north of the city of that name and continues in a general
easterly direction. Near the fazenda Sant'Antonio, 30 kilometers to

10

SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

the southeast of Assi'i, the contact is exposed again. Thereafter it
was found about 4 kilometers south of Baixa Verde (the village —
not the railway station), and again a little to the north of the rail-
way station — Itapassaroca. At Ceara Mirim the limestone is 31
meters below the surface (near the church), and it has been noted
about 20 kilometers west of Natal, near Macahyba. South of Natal
the writer has not explored the limestone, but Dr. J. C. Branner^
reports that it is found near Sao Jose, Goianinha, Pequiry and Para-
hyba. Hence it is probable that the same geologic relations exist to
the south of Natal, as are known to exist to the north.

^^^^

■ vr'?~^^^^!VVT^i2i5=R==i=;

:f^w.-^.-=

Fig. 2. Section across the Chapada do Apody.

The limestone exposed in the strip above mentioned has a vary-
ing width, which reaches its maximum in the vicinity of'Mossoro.
Here a cross section would show a width of at least 70 kilometers.
At Assu probably 25 kilometers would cover it. From Baixa Verde
a section east would show the limestone to be about 16 kilometers
wide while in the vicinity of Natal it is probably less than 10 kilo-
meters across.

The only place where the structure was clearly seen in the lime-
stone was along the scarp of the Chapada do Apody and along the
Rio Apody, from Passagem Funda to Sao Sebastiao. There, rock
dips toward the northeast ; in places it is horizontal. At the fazenda
Sussarana, 23 kilometers northeast of Apody, and again near the
village Sao Sebastiao, Mr. Crandall, in the paper previously re-
ferred to, reports that he observed the sandstone underlying the
limestone. This means that in spite of the apparent seaward dip the
beds are horizontal, or approximately so. Furthermore, a well has
been drilled in Mossoro to a depth of 45 meters. The first 30 meters
were in limestone and the last 15 in sand. Judging from this the

^ J. C. Branner, " Geology of the northeast coast of Brazil," Bulletin of
Geological Society of America, Vol. XIII., pp. 93-95. Rochester, 1902.

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. H

same horizontal relation exists clear to Mossoro, for if the sandstone
dipped uniformly seaward, even at an angle of one degree, it must
in the 60 kilometers from Passagem Funda to Mossoro attain a con-
siderably greater depth than 30 meters. The limestone has a thick-
ness of between 30 to 50 meters. This estimate is based upon the
exposures along the Rio Apody and upon two wells drilled, one in
Mossoro above mentioned, and the other in Macau. The well in
Macau showed the limestone to be 44 meters thick. The age of
these limestones lies between the late Cretaceous and early Tertiary.
Air. Crandall" reports fossils from them (these fossils are in the
museum of the " Servigo Mineralogico " in Rio de Janeiro), and I
have found a few.

Finally, overlying the limestones and extending on to the sea, is
the third division of the sedimentary rocks, a more recent deposit,
mostly sands and clays. The surface of this deposit is very sandy
but when drilled into it is seen to contain a great deal of clay. The
sand is calcareous in places. I have not seen any bedded rock be-
tween the limestone and the ocean but in some places there are
patches of hard, sandstone boulders, often of a conglomeritic nature.
The best exposures of these recent beds were seen during a trip
from Lagoa dos Mattos to Areia Branca. From this first named
place on to Mutomba, and again for two kilometers at the Morro
do Thibau, the sandstone is exposed in a bluff which varies in height
from 15 to 20 meters. This rock usually has a belt of conglomerate
at the base about 3 meters thick. Over this is a highly colored sand-
stone, rather hard and cemented with iron. Next there is a soft,
marly sand, whitish and usually from 2 to 3 meters thick and with-
out bedding planes. Over all are dunes of medium-grained, reddish-
brown, unconsolidated sand. The whole bluff is highly colored and
may show shades of brown, red, purple, lemon color and white.
These beds nearly all contain more or less iron and lime and in some
localities contain a great deal of earthy matter including kaolin
and clay.

Further down the coast just south of the village of Touros,

6 Roderic Crandall, " Geographia, geologia, supprimento d'agna, trans-
portes e agudagem," Publication of the Ministerio da Viacao e Obras Pub-
licas, p. 31. Rio de Janeiro, 1910.

12

SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

there is an exposure of yellow, coarse-grained sandstone with beds
almost horizontal or dipping gently toward the sea. Fifteen kilo-
meters further south there is a blufif about 3 meters high composed of
a sandy clay, white, brown, and reddish colors. It very much
resembles the blufif noted near Lagoa dos IMattos.

-_-^-_ E ---

•v'.'- — „in ■ ._^-

1)

.12
13

14

13'.

Fig. 3. The log of a typical well drilled in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte.

1. Fine sand and clay.

2. Yellow sand.

3. Sand and clay.

4. Sand and clay with quartz pebbles.
5- Clay.

6. Sand and clay.

7. Sand and clay with quartz pebbles.

8. Clay.

9. Sand and clay with quartz pebbles.

10. Yellow sand.

11. White sand with clay.

12. Yellow clay with sand.

13. Red sand with clay.

14. Coarse sand with clay.

15. Coarse sand.

These deposits of sediments stretch in an unbroken strip from
near Aracaty and probably further north, to Recife and probably
further south. Their width varies : At Mossoro it is about 35
kilometers, at Macau 22 kilometers, at Ceara Mirim 25 kilometers,
at Natal about 20 kilometers and at Parahyba about 20 kilo-

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 13

meters. Their thickness increases as the coast is approached. At
Areia Branca they have a thickness of at least 90 meters, at Macau
of 106 meters, and at Natal of at least 108 meters. I have never
found any fossils in them, but Dr. J. C. Branner' describes fossils
in yellowish, calcareous sandstone along the coast at Ponta de
Pedras, which he refers to the Tertiary. It is very probable, though
of course not certain, that these beds are to be correlated with the
sands and clays here described in Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte.
The geologic history of this part of the coast of Brazil, basing
our opinion upon the information already given, must have been
about as follows : the rocks of the basal complex or the crystalline
mass after a long period of erosion were finally submerged along
the coast of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte during Cretaceous
or Pre-Cretaceous times. The sea encroached on the land, much
further than the present contact between the crystalline and sedi-
mentary areas. It was during this first period of subsidence that
the coarse-grained sandstone was deposited. Following this deposi-
tion a moderately pure limestone was laid down directly on top of
the sand. Whether or not the land rose and the sandstone was sub-
jected to erosion before the limestone was deposited, is not known
definitely. The exposures of bedded sandstone are few, but where-
ever noted the strata of sand and limestone were conformable.
Therefore, I am of the opinion that both were laid down during the
same period of deposition, but that the contact marks a great change
in physical conditions. Following this period the land rose. Ap-
parently there was little disturbance for the beds are horizontal
or they dip gently toward the sea. Considerable erosion must
have taken place at this time for the limestone is worn very thin in
places. During Post-Cretaceous times the land along the coast was
submerged again and the more recent beds of sand and clay were
deposited. Physical conditions must have again changed for the
absence of calcareous matter in these latter beds show that animal
life was scarce. Once more the land rose and has probably remained
above the sea from that time until the present day. The surface of

"^ J. C. Branner, " Geolog>' of the Northeast Coast of Brazil," Bulletin of
Geological Society of America, Vol. XIII., p. 47. Rochester, 1902.

14 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

the sand and clay deposits is more or less calcareous due to the lime-
laden waters which pass over it, but the rocks a short depth below
the surface are quite free from lime.

With the exception of the region about Mossoro and Assu the
entire series of sedimentary rocks seems to be deposited in a fairly
even line down the coast, the belt always becoming a little narrower
toward the south. In the locality excepted there is a large basin
inland. This can readily be explained by the nature of the drainage
in that region. The three rivers Jaguaribe, ]\Iossor6 and Assu, are
the largest along this part of the coast, and although they drain a
large area their mouths are close together. Naturally in their im-
mediate vicinity erosion was deeper and more general than in areas
of lesser drainage. Hence, when the land sank the water was able
to reach much further inland in this vicinity than in any other along
the coast of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, and the subsequent
deposition covered a correspondingly larger territory.

Other than the sedimentary rocks along the coast there are several
areas of stratified rocks, smaller and completely isolated, in the states
of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte. Chief among these is the
sandstone basin of the Rio do Peixe. Beginning at the approximate
juncture of the Rio Piranhas with the Rio do Peixe and extending

Fig. 4. Section across the sandstone basin of the Rio do Peixe, Parahyba.

over the divide into the head waters of the Rio Pendencia, a distance
of 80 kilometers, there is a basin of reddish sandstone. The basin has
a varying width which averages between 9 and 12 kilometers for the
entire length, and has, moreover, a long arm which extends more
than 12 kilometers up to Belem. It is an isolated area of sandstone
in the midst of a vast stretch of crystalline rocks. The typical rock
is a reddish and rather fine-grained sandstone, which, in the upper
part of the basin, or roughly that part above Souza, is very common

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 15

and forms most of the valley floor, as well as the low hills well up
toward the contact. As a general thing, however, the margins of the
basin, or the part nearest the contact with the crystalline rocks, are
composed of a coarser sandstone than the parts further down. In
fact, the part nearest the contact is often a conglomerate, having
small quartz pebbles, some the size of a hen's egg, imbedded in the
sand. As a rule these sandstone beds dip gently to the south or a
few degrees to either side of south. There is also evidence of a small
syncline near the southern boundary of the valley. This syncline was
shown near Acauan and again near Sao Joao in relatively the same
position. However, it is small and is not likely to prove to be of any
econornic importance. The reddish and yellowish sandstone is inter-
bedded with a likewise reddish clay. This clay covers so large an
area that it must be taken into consideration. In appearance it is
very much like the sandstone but of a finer grain. In several places
in the valley it was found plainly interbedded with the sandstone.
It is most common in the lower part of the basin, that is, it is found
from one end to the other but in any one cross-section of the valley
the clay would be more likely to be found near the river or in the
lower part. The whole of this deposit of sediments is intergraded
between a coarse sandstone of a conglomeritic nature, a medium-
grained sandstone, a fine-grained sandstone of a partially clayey
nature, and a typical clay. At times one may find all these dififerent
grades of rocks interbedded in one place.

So far as I know no fossils have ever been found in these rocks.
The sandstone very much resembles that which underlies the lime-
stone in the coastal belt, and it is provisionally referred to the Cre-
taceous. There is a possibility of its being connected with the sand-
stone of the Serra Araripe. There is also a possibility of its having
been connected with the sandstone of the coastal belt. Indeed, it is
difficult to account for its presence on any other hypothesis.

The Serras of Martins, Porto Alegre and Joao do Valle are a
series of sandstone capped mountains which rise abruptly to a height
of 650 to 700 meters. The last named of these was not visited by the
writer. The first two have a layer of hard, quartzitic, coarse-
grained sandstone which attains a maximum thickness of about 50
meters, and which lies horizontally on the crystalline rocks. No

16 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

fossils have been found, but it is not improbable that this sandstone
was also once connected with that nearer the coast. The bases of the
Serras Martins and Porto Alegre, are formed of old metamorphic
schists. There is a mass of isolated limestone near the base of the
Serra Martins. So far as I have been able to ascertain, these sand-
stone capped serras, the sandstone basin of the Rio do Peixe, and
the coastal belt of sediments, form the total of sedimentary areas in
the states of Parahvba and Rio Grande do Norte.

Fig. 5. Section across the Serra Martins, Rio Grande do Norte.

One of the most interesting things in this connection is the rela-
tion of the geology to the topography. The crystalline area may
usually be recognized by scattered serrotes of hard granite, by occa-
sional mountains which rise abruptly from the surrounding plain, by
great, gently undulating stretches, covered with a scattered growth,
and by low ridges, steep-sided and rocky. On the other hand the
sedimentary area is notable first of all for its vegetation, which as-
sumes the form of an impenetrable forest : often there is a thick
undergrowth from 3 to 4 meters in height. The only prominent topo-
graphic features are a few low ridges and the broad Chapadas of
Apody and Sao Sebastiao, which on the south, end in a low escarp-
ment, but which on the north, slope gently toward the sea. Also,
very noticeable are the short streams with their steep banks which
cut cleanly through the soft sediments. These hard rocks and undu-
lating plains of the crystalline complex which give rise to a rapid
drainage, and the long, almost level stretches on the sedimentary
areas, play an important part in the conservation of the water supply.

Summary of Observations on the Geology of Parahyba and
Rio Grande Do Norte.
I. The two great groups of rocks in the region covered are
crystalline and sedimentary.

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 17

2. The crystalline division is mainly gneiss and schists and in-
cludes the ancient (Archean to Paleozoic) crystalline rocks with
bosses and dikes of various eruptives. It covers the greater part of
the states of Parahyba and Rio Grande Do Norte.

3. The rocks classified by Mr. Roderic Crandall as the Ceara
series are here included with the schists, since they are usually in
that form. These particular schists are not all crystalline schists and
may include layers or lenses of quartzite and of limestone.

4. The granites form the axes of some of the principal
mountains.

5. It is impossible in a short expedition to determine the distribu-
tion of the crystalline rocks. They have been metamorphosed and
intruded to a remarkable extent, and they seem to have crystallized
in a very irregular manner.

6. The typical vegetation on the crystalline area is a scattered
growth of low trees and brush of small root development, called
caatinga. Caatinga forests, however, are not confined to areas of
crystalline rocks.

7. The topography is characterized by great undulating plains,
abrupt mountains, rocky, steep-sided hills, and peaked serrotes.

8. The crystalline rocks have been subjected to great crushing
forces. The schists usually stand at a high angle and the rocks are
everywhere cut through by quartz veins which vary in width from
a few centimeters to half a meter. Occasionally there are pegmatite
veins.

9. The rocks are usually soft and decomposed to a depth of from
3 to 10 meters.

10. The sedimentary series forms the comparatively modern
(Mesozoic to Recent) rocks.

11. It is confined for the most part to a comparatively narrow
strip along the coast.

12. This series reaches the entire coastal length of the states of
Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte and varies in width from about
120 kilometers in the vicinity of Mossoro, to 30 kilometers at Natal
and about 30 kilometers at Parahyba.

13. The sediments thin out on the interior side until their margin

18 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

becomes a series of isolated patches overlying the granites and
gneiss.

14. The sedimentary rocks have three main divisions : — a deposit
of sandstone, one of limestone, and a more recent deposit of sands
and clays.

15. The sandstone directly overlies the uneven face of the crystal-
line rocks. It is of a medium grain, is conglomeritic in places, and is
usually of a white or reddish color. It has a thickness of at least
30 meters and probably more. It is exposed in a continuous strip
from near Aracaty to Natal and probably further south ; its average
exposed width is from 8 to 12 kilometers.

16. In general this sandstone dips gently to the northeast. No
fossils are known to have 'been found in it, but on account of its
association with the limestone, it is commonly referred to late Cre-
taceous or early Tertiary age.

17. The sandstone is overlain by a bed of hard, fine-grained,
yellowish and grayish limestone.

18. The limestone is exposed in a continuous strip from near
Aracaty to Natal and is known to exist in several places between
Natal and Parahyba. Its width varies from about 70 kilometers in
the vicinity of Mossoro, to 25 kilometers at x\ssu, and less than 10
kilometers at Natal. It has a thickness of from 30 to 50 meters.

19. In general the limestone dips gently toward the sea — to the
northeast. It is of late Cretaceous or early Tertiary age.

20. The contact between the limestone and the underlying sand-
stone, is marked from Uniao to Assu, by a low escarpment which
varies in height from 30 to 100 meters.

21. The limestone in turn is overlain 'by a partially consolidated
deposit of sands and clays. Where these beds are exposed along the
coast they are highly colored and contain much iron.

22. The area of sands and clays is exposed in a continuous strip
from north of Aracaty, to south of Recife. They have a width
which varies from 35 kilometers at Mossoro, to about 15 kilometers
at Parahyba. Their thickness at Areia Branca is more than 90
meters, at IMacau it is 106 meters, and at Natal it is more than 108
meters.

23. At only one or two places along the shore are these sedi-

AND RIO GRANDE DO NORTE, BRAZIL. 19

ments consolidated, and the structure when it is rehable shows hori-
zontal bedding. I have not found any fossils in these beds but
Dr. J. C. Branner reports fossils from similar beds at Ponta de
Pedras which he refers to Tertiary age. It is not unhkely that
these beds (in Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte), are of the
same age.

24. The Serras of Porto Alegre and Martins are capped with
layers of quartzite, about 50 meters thick. Mr. Roderic Crandall
reports that the Serra Joao do Valle is a similar mountain.

25. No fossils have been found in the sandstone of the above
named serras.

26. The valley floor of the basin of the Rio do Peixe is com-
posed of a reddish sandstone, conglomeritic in places and inter-
bedded with a reddish clay. This area is from 9 to 12 kilometers
wide and is about 80 kilometers long. It is entirely surrounded
by cr}''stalline rocks.

27. The age of this sandstone of the Rio do Peixe is provision-
ally referred to the Cretaceous, but so far as is now known no
fossils have been found in it.

28. It will be noticed that practically the entire sedimentary belt
along the coast is tilted gently, toward the sea.

29. There is a series of shifting sand dunes along the coast espe-
cially noticeable in the vicinity of Natal.

30. There are many clay beds in the sediments along the coast.
Some of them may be of economic value.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES I.-IV.
PLATE I.
Geologic map of the states of Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

PLATE II.

A. Part of the Chapada do Sao Sebastiao, showing the topography and
the dense caatinga growth.

B. Exposure of limestone near Passagem Funda, Rio Grande do Norte.

20 SOPER— GEOLOGY OF PARAHYBA

PLATE in.

A. Isolated serrote of granite in the midst of an area of schist and gneiss,
near Martins, Rio Grande do Norte.

B. Exposure of sandstone along the Chapada do Apody, near Passagem
Funda, Rio Grande do Norte.

PLATE IV.

A. Serra do Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Norte. The flat summit is of
sandstone which rests on crystalline rocks below.

B. Part of the limestone scarp of the Chapada do Apody showing a luxu-
riant growth of vegetation.

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CONTENTS

Interrelations of the Fossil Fuels.

I

By John J. Stevenson

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INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

I.

By JOHN J. STEVENSON.

{Read April 14, igi6.)

Peat and the Tertiary Coals.

Prefatory Note. — In an earlier treatise/ the writer considered
some problems bearing upon the accumulation of coal in beds.
Other, but closely related, problems will be considered here in the
effort to ascertain how closely the fossil fuels, aside from petroleum,
are related to each other in their physical and chemical character-
istics as well as in their mode of accumulation. In preparing for
these studies, the writer has travelled scores of thousands of miles
in foreign regions to secure information respecting disputed locali-
ties and, in this land, he has made examinations in almost all of the
coal-producing states. But life is short and distances are great; a
man can gather little by direct study ; to secure the knowledge neces-
sary for intelligent discussion of the subject, he must collect and
compare, as far as possible, the observations reported by others.
This has been attempted ; several thousands of reports, notes,
memoirs and monographs have been read and the abstracts have
been digested, in so far as they contained matter bearing on the
problems in hand. All citations, except where otherwise stated, are
at first hand.

Some may regard study after this fashion as wasted force,
especially because the matters involved appear to possess little of
economic interest ; but the labor has been performed without com-
pulsion and with no hope of reward, except that of criticism by

1 " The Formation of Coal Beds," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. L., pp.
1-116, 519-^43; Vol. LI., pp. 423-553; Vol. LIL, pp. 31-162.

21

22 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

those who may regard the work as defective and the conclusions as
unsound. The study has been made solely' to find solutions of
problems which had perplexed the writer during more than 45
years. The results are presented, not because they are final, but
in the belief that those students who take up the investigation anew
at some future time, when knowledge shall have been increased,
will find their labor lessened by this opening of by-paths in the litera-
ture ; and equally in the hope that credit may be restored to some of
the earlier students, whose work has been forgotten or ignored.

The autochthonous origin of coal is taken for granted in this
work ; argument in favor of that doctrine has been presented in the
writer's " Formation of Coal Beds."

The various terms applied to fossil fuels have, in a general way,
sufficiently definite significance. When one hears the words peat,
brown coal, coal, anthracite, he recognizes each as referring to a
substance with which he is familiar. Museums contain specimens
from many localities, properly labeled, so that the names become for
students thoroughly definitive. Tables of comparative analyses are
given in textbooks, which mark oft' the limits of the several sub-
stances with ample distinctness. It is true that in most textbooks
and in most lecture courses there is proper though somewhat inci-
dental statement that the specimens represent, for the most part,
what may be termed typical forms, and that from each type in
each direction to the next the transition is practically imperceptible.
Yet that that conception lacks concreteness, the more so because
each appears to be characteristic of a certain stage in the earth's
history. But the names are those of groups, each comprised of
members differing greatly in chemical and physical features ; and
there are strange overlappings, for in the groups less advanced
chemically, one finds substances very similar to some in the more
advanced, while in the latter he occasionally meets with forms almost
indistinguishable from some of the former.

Since the extent of chemical change, as a rule, increases with
the age of the deposit, it is most convenient to consider the fuels
in the order of their occurrence in time.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 23

Peat.

Peat is the familiar accumulation of more or less changed vege-
table matter observed in localities sufficiently moist. It is most
abundant in Pleistocene and Recent deposits, but a very similar
material occurs in the Tertiary and, even in the Carboniferous, one
finds a substance, which in hand specimens can hardly be dis-
tinguished from well-dried peat.

Conditions Requisite for Accumnlation. — As asserted long ago
by Alex. Brongniart, constant supply of moisture in considerable
quantity is a prerequisite for growth of peat. Ponds and shallow
lakes in glacial drift have been favorite localities in the northern
part of the temperate zone, where deposits vary in extent from a
few square rods to several scores of square miles. Areas of deep
water are made shallow by accumulating animal and vegetable
remains, largely of humble types, and eventually become filled with
normal peat. But such deposits are, individually, of small extent,
though they are so numerous that, collectively, they cover much of
the formerly glaciated surface within North America and Europe.
Peat areas of greatest extent are those originating on coastal plains
or on those bordering rivers, where the sluggish drainage is checked
readily by petty obstacles and small patches of swamp become united
until a great space has been occupied. Some deposits of this type
have an area of many hundreds of square miles.

Peat has provided fuel for much of northern Europe during cen-
turies and the literature with reference to it is voluminous ; but it
has no economic importance within the tropics, so that definite
statements respecting its occurrence are comparatively few. Ex-
plorers naturally were concerned more with geography and anthro-
pology, so that one finds usually little aside from incidental state-
ments to the effect that a region is swampy, boggy and difficult to
traverse. But more than one hundred years ago, Jameson- stated
that Anderson had received peat from Sumatra. Certainly the
conception that true peat is confined to the temperate zones is
erroneous. Livingstone in 1858 and 1866 presented abundant evi-

- R. Jameson, " An Outline of the Mineralogy of the Shetland Islands,
and of the Island of Arran," Edinburgh, 1798, pp. 151-153.

24 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

dence of its existence in equatorial Africa. Wall and Sawkins in
i860 found peaty deposits on the island of Trinidad, which even
after desiccation at 300° F. contained 35 per cent, of organic matter.
In 1870, Hartt reported his discovery of peat in the state of Sao
Salvador, S.L. 10°, as well as in the state of Sao Paulo, both in
Brazil. Brown described peaty deposits in the Demarara region ;
" from Santa Rosa on through the Staboots, the head of the Bara-
bara River, there are many tracts of open land, composed of black
bog-mud formed by decayed vegetables and covered with a growth
of rank sedges and rushes." Some portions of these " savannas "
are permanent swamps, in which the Ita palm, Maiiritia flexuosa, is
one of the prominent trees, rising to the height of 60 feet. Har-
rison, in discussing the same region, says that peat occurs in many
of the low-lying coast lands, where it is from i to 10 feet thick,
though usually not exceeding 4 feet. Considerable portions of this
" pegass " land are covered with the Aeta palm.^

Long ago, Lyell described the general features of the Dismal
Swamp and of the cypress swamps of the lower Mississippi River,
both of which were discussed in detail by Shaler at a later date.
Kuntze* in 1895 described the vast wooded swamp, a mass of peat
extending for 3 degrees of latitude along the Lourengo River of
Brazil. The conditions in Florida, where the peat areas are great
and the deposits often very thick, have been described in detail by
Harper, and several observers have made note of the peat in Ber-
muda. Livingstone, Cameron. Lugard and Miss Kingsley have
presented proof that peat is abundant in equatorial Africa.^

During the progress of the Dutch explorations in Sumatra, 1891,
Koorders observed a great Flachmoor covered with a 30-meters-
high mixed forest growing on peat, which Larive's measurements

2 G. P. Wall and J. G. Sawkins, " Geology of Trinidad," London, i860,
pp. 62, 63 ; C. F. Hartt, " Geology and Physical Geography of Brazil," Boston,
1870, pp. 365, 509 ; C. B. Brown, " Physical, Descriptive and Economic Geology
of British Guiana," Geol. Survey, London, 1875, pp. 34, 91;" J. F. Harrison,
" Pegass of British Guiana," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. LXIIL, 1907, p. 292.

* O. Kuntze, " Geogenetische Beitrage," Leipzic, 1895, pp. 67, 68.

s For deta;iled statement of these observations in tropical and subtropical
regions, see " Formation of Coal Beds, II.," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. L.,
191 1, pp. 565-573-

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 25

proved to be 9 feet thick. Examination, microscopical and chemical,
showed that this peat has structure and composition wholly similar
to the peat of Europe, though the plants from which it is derived
are different.^

Molengraaff" studied central Borneo in 1893-94. On many
pages he notes the presence of marshes along the larger rivers and
describes them as boggy. These marshes in many cases are densely
wooded though frequently covered with water during several months
in succession. A considerable deposit of peat was seen near the
Tebaoeng River. In ascending Babas Hantoe, one of the Madi
mountains, he reached, at 500 meters above the sea, an extensive
plateau, on which the forest contains many conifers, these increasing
upward until at 700 meters they were paramount. There a soft soil
had been reached, mosses had appeared and the character through-
out was that of a forested swamp. The deeply trodden narrow
path wound among wet spongy cushions covered with moss until at
1,000 meters the area was a genuine morass and advance could be
made only by leaping from the root of one tree to that of another.
The altitude is not sufficient to remove the locality from tropical
conditions, as this is almost directly under the equator. On the
other side of the mountain, he descended into a valley, which at first
showed patches of marshy forest with peat. Farther down, the
peat patches became continuous and he soon recognized that the
whole of this valley and probably the whole Madi plateau are
covered with a marshy forest, standing in a thick layer of peat,
which consists of the half decayed remains of all kinds of trees,
shrubs and mosses, a true tropical peat bog ; but, like tropical fens
generally, it is composed chiefly of remains of trees, thus contrasting
with fens of temperate zones, which originate so frequently from
mosses and a limited variety of shrubs. The yellow-brown fen
water from this peat area flows into the Tebaoeng River.

Koorders, as cited by Potonie, reported that, in old Javan and

6 H. Potonie, " Die Enstehung der Steinkohle und der Kaustobiolithe
iiberhaupt," 5te Aufl., 1910, pp. 152-160.

7 G. A. F. Molengraaff, " Geological Explorations in Central Borneo,
1893-94," Leiden, 1902, pp. 83, 84, 307, 310. The citations are from the edition
in English; the edition in Dutch was published in 1899.

26 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Sumatran forests, where hard woods grow, fallen trees are numerous,
which though decades old are still in condition good enough for
export. Molengraaff gives an illustration more remarkable, because
the conditions are not constant. The Lake district of the Upper
Kappewas River is merely the overflow area during flood time. The
lakes contract during the dry season, leaving only shallow channel-
ways in which fish accumulate. The Malays gather in camps to
harvest the fish and the camp fires frequently spread, causing great
destruction in the forest. In one portion of this district, a great
" submerged " forest remains, composed of medium-sized charred
stumps, in varying stages of decay and all broken off at approxi-
mately the same height. A sprinkling of younger trees was seen, but
owing to the unfavorable conditions — flooding and fires — the forest
cannot recover. This locality was described by Ida Pfeiffer in 1846,
when the features differed little from those observed by Molen-
graaff, almost half a century later. Evidently, decay of rooted
stumps may be as slow under the equator as in temperate regions.

Wichmann^ gathered available information respecting peat de-
posits in the Indian archipelago, summarizing observations by Jung-
huhn, Koorders, Molengraaff, Machielson, Schwaner, Teyssmann,
Van Nouhys and himself. The largest fen in Java is in Samarang;
about 2,500 hectares have been brought under cultivation but not
less than 1,500 still remain as swamp. Borings at one locality show
that the peat is from 30 to 31 meters thick and " peat islands " have
risen in it at various times. The Javan peat is an inferior fuel as
it contains much ash ; that from Kapogan has 27 per cent.

Very many swamps within the east coast residency of Sumatra
have been drained and placed under cultivation ; but much still re-
mains untouched. A great fenland of 80,000 hectares, between the
Siak and Kampar rivers, has been known long time and it has been
described by Koorders, botanist to the Ijzerman expedition of 1891.
As Wichmann presents the matter, peat is evidently a commonplace
in Sumatra. He refers to Molengraaff's observations in central
Borneo. W. J. M. Machielson found fens along several rivers in
another portion and C. A. L. M. Schwaner reported them from

8 C. E. A. Wichmann, " The Fens of the Indian Archipelago," A'. Akad.
Wetetisch., Amsterdam, Vol. XII., 1909, pp. 70-74.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 27

several localities in the south and east divisions, where all the streams
are blackwater. Some of the Borneo peat is very good, that col-
lected by J. W. V^an Nouhys containing only 4.58 per cent, of ash.

A very great part of the fenland in the x\rchipelago has been
drained and converted into rice, sugar cane or tobacco plantations,
but Wichmann estimates that the area of existing fens exceeds
1,000,000 hectares or more than 3,800 square miles. The uniformity
of climatal conditions prevents the variations observed in fens of
colder regions. The structure, in Wichmann's opinion, resembles
that seen in the Coal Measures, where roots of Lepidodendron and
Sigillaria are found in the floor of coal beds ; so in the tropical fens,
the trees are rooted in the subjacent clay. As accumulation of peat
does not choke the trees rapidly, these frecjuently remain erect in
the peat.

It would seem to be sufficiently evident that a hot climate offers
no hindrance to the accumulation of peat, if only the conditions
exist which are required for that accumulation in a cool climate.

Even a very severe climate does not prevent the growth of peat.
Nathorst" visited the Renntier-tal of Spitzbergen in 1882 and saw
there, resting on the river debris, 0.25 meter of clayey peat under-
lying 2 meters of peat : he cites Gunnar Andersson as stating that
the upper division consists chiefly of brown moss, but that some
layers are crowded with leaves of Salix polaris. Nathorst found a
leaf of Salix reticulata in the underlying impure peat. Andersson
believes that peat-formation has ceased in Spitzbergen and that the
deposits are relics of a less cold period. Be that as it may, there
can be no doubt that bogs are numerous, though in many instances
they are thin. The writer in 1904 found enough peat on both sides
of Advent bay, N.L. 78°, to make walking not too attractive and
there was living vegetation on the surface in many places. A. E.
Stevenson reported that the black mud is more than knee-deep for
considerable distances along the shore of Icefiord to more than 12
miles south from below Advent bay. Peat was seen on Bell sound.

3 A. G. Nathorst, " Beitriige zur Geologie der Baren Insel, Spitzbergen,
iind des Konig-Karl. Landes," B\dl. Geol. Inst. Univ. Upsala, Vol. X., 1910,
P- 403.

28 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

RusselP" has described conditions on the tundra and in the in-
terior of Alaska. He says that " without exaggeration, it may be
stated that the whole of Alaska, excepting the steepest rock slopes
and the tops of high mountains, is covered with a dense carpet of
moss." The reported thickness of peat on the tundra is from 2 to
150 even to 300 feet. The peat is growing, though the depth to
frozen material is only from 8 to 14 inches. Capps^^ has described
an Alaskan peat deposit, exposed in a blufif for more than a mile.
The peat, 39 feet thick and resting on unconsolidated glacial till, is
fibrous, with abundant stumps and roots, but probably consists mostly
of Sphagnum. The mass is divided at 7 feet from the top by 2 feet
of white volcanic ash. The surface beyond the edge of the bluff is
covered with a thick coat of Sphagnum and supports a dense forest
of spruce with little undergrowth. The peat, ash and till are perma-
nently frozen at a few inches back from the edge of the bluff', though
that is subjected to the long hours of summer sunshine. Even the
surface is frozen at a depth of 6 inches in early July.

The arrangement of roots shown by spruce trees growing at the
edge of the bluff as well as by the stumps, which compose a great
part of the deposit, is wholly unlike that ordinarily observed. Spruce
growing on solid ground, frozen or not, has radial roots, parallel with
the surface and penetrating only a few inches ; but, at this White
River locality, the roots of trees growing on the edge of the bluff
and those of stumps buried at different levels in the peaty mass have
a very different arrangement. Instead of a single, flat-based set of
radial roots, these trees all show a central stem, often several feet
long, from which roots branch off at irregular intervals, with an
upper set of roots near the surface, corresponding to those of the
normal tree. Investigation proved that roots below the frost-line
are still undecayed, though they differ in color from the uppermost
set of radial roots and evidently are no longer active. Capps reached
the conclusion that, in each case, the seedling spruce, having estab-
lished itself on the mossy soil, sent out the normal radial roots ; but

10 I. C. Russell, " Notes on the Surface Geology of Alaska," Bull. Geol.
Soc. Amcr., Vol. I., 1890, pp. 125, 126, 129.

^1 S. R. Capps, " An Estimate of the Age of the last great Glaciation in
Alaska," Journ. Washington Acad., Vol. V., 1915, pp. 108-115.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 29

the rapidly thickening moss and consequent rising plane of frozen
ground cut off nutriment from the existing roots, necessitating the
formation of a newer set nearer the surface. He measured one tree,
which had 24 inches of vegetable matter above the lowest horizontal
roots. At 6 feet above the surface it had 373 annual rings, so that
the growth of the peaty mass had been at the rate of one foot in
about 200 years. One foot of the compact peat lower down repre-
sents a much longer period.

TyrrelP- has studied peat deposits in a great part of Canada. He
notes that in northern Canada the peat, 10 to 12 feet thick, often
rests on a plate of clear ice. The water for this came from springs
below the permanently frozen ground and it favored the growth of
peat mosses in summer. The peat of Canada, except in the southern
portion, consists practically of undecomposed moss from top to
bottom, as the intense cold prevents change, the lower portions
being frozen. In the Klondike region, the moss layer is rarely
more than 5 or 6 feet thick, but there may be below it a variable
mass of " muck," a mixture of sand and vegetable matter, the latter
not from mosses. This muck he thinks originated in part as vege-
table mould which has slidden down into the narrow valleys. It may
contain about 30 per cent, of plant material.

Cochrane,^^ who crossed Siberia long ago, was more interested
in the people, the roads and the weather than in geology, but he has
given some notes respecting localities in eastern Siberia, where his
progress was impeded. On the return journey from Nishney
Kolymsk, N.L. 69°, E.L. 160°, southwestwardly to Okotsk, N.L.
60°, E.L. 142°, he travelled over a region of mostly overflowed
meadows, alder country and " marshy swamps " ; the last part of the
distance, 7 days' journey, is a continuous swamp covered, at times,
with fallen trees. Between Okotsk and Yakutsk, N.L. 62°, the route
from the Okota River passes for long distances across wooded
swamps ; for 50 miles east from the Aldan River, the region is a

^~ J. B. Tyrrell, " Crystophenes or Buried Sheets of Ice in the Tundra of
Northern America," Joitrn. of Geology, Vol. 12, 1904, pp. 232-236; also letter
of August 3, 1915.

13 J. D. Cochrane, " Narrative of a Pedestrian Journey through Russia
and Siberian Tartary," Amer. ed., Phila., 1824, pp. 220, 225, 234, 238, 319,
325, 342.

30 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

most dreary, swampy plain, the road being a wooden causeway in
the latter half of the distance. Forty miles of swamp were en-
countered in the 80 miles east from the Lena River. Cochrane
thinks that Siberia is an impregnable province, as, owing to the vast
extent of the swamps, a few hours of work would render any one
of the roads impassable.

Atkinson^"* has given some information respecting western
Siberia between Ekatherineburg and Tomsk. In going from Omsk
to Kainsk, a distance of about 200 miles, he crossed much swampy
area, continuous at one time for 31 miles. There are many lakes
south from Kainsk in an area of 150 by 40 miles, all of them sur-
rounded by broad belts of reeds. Alorass prevails between the lakes
as well as for nearly 100 miles farther southward.

Nordenskiold's^^ references to peat are merely incidental. His
studies were along the coast and excursions into the interior were,
for the greater part, comparatively short. The plain on the Yalmal
peninsula, west from the mouth of the Yenisei, is tundra-like, full
of marshes and streams ; on Taimur land farther west, the plains are
covered with a continuous, very green vegetation, a mixture of
grasses and allied plants with mosses and lichens. In the Gyda pen-
insula, where Schmidt obtained remains of Mammoth in 1866, N.L.
70°, the stratum containing the remains rests on marine clay and is
covered with sands alternating with beds of decayed plant material,
completely corresponding with peat deposits formed in lakes of the
tundra. The description of the Chukch peninsula, in northeast
Siberia, is very similar to that given by Cochrane.

Incidental references in a description by the Comite geologique
of Russia^*^ give some conception of the marsh-covered area on both
sides of the Transsiberian railway. The Steppe de Baraba, between
the Irtych and the Ob, about 10 degrees of longitude, is described as
differing from steppes at the west in that it has many great marshes

1* T. W. Atkinson, " Oriental and Western Siberia," New York, 1858, pp.
151, 153, '156.

15 A. E. Nordenskiold, "The Voyage of the Vega," New York, 1882, pp.
154- 253, 309, 422.

1^ " Apergu des explorations geologiques et minieres le long du Trans-
siberien," Public par le Comite Geologique de Russie, 1900, pp. 4, 52, 63, ii.i.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 31

and forests of birch and aspen. Beyond the Ob, the road passes for
about 50 miles through a marshy forest of pines and firs, which
extends from near Tomsk southward for more than 300 miles almost
to the head of the Kia River. In the area west from Lake Baikal,
within the drainage area of the Yenisei, there are impassable marshes
of vast extent, sometimes forested — the Taiga. This condition
exists between the Kau and Oka Rivers and northward to the An-
gara. Beyond Lake Baikal, broad valleys hold great marshes covered
with vegetation throughout and conifers are abundant in such locali-
ties. East from the Yablonovy mountains, the Taiga is characteristic
of moist area ; pines, firs and black birches are the common forms.

True peat is present in localities where the required conditions
appear to be wanting. The so-called forest peat has accumulated to
a thickness of several feet in many places within the Rocky Moun-
tain region, the material being merely ofl:"al from dense forests of
giant firs. In northern New England, one often sees the surface in
railroad cuts more or less covered with moss-peat, though the rock
is a gravelly sand. This is wholly similar to the Rohhumus, seen so
commonly on rock surfaces within forests of both Europe and North
America. But the needed conditions are here, though not sufficient
to encourage rapid growth. The offal from the trees is abundant and
retentive of water, while the moss, once saturated, parts very slowly
with its moisture.

Extent of Peat Deposits. — As already stated, a peat deposit may

cover only a few square feet or it may cover an area of hundreds

even thousands of square miles. The subtropical Everglades of

Florida embrace not far from 7,000 square miles; the partly living,

partly buried peat of Holland, Belgium and north France has nearly

as great extent, as shown by Lorie. Russell's exploration of Alaska

led him to assert that peat covers not only the vast tundra but also

most of the wooded region as well as of the river plains. The buried

deposit of the Ganges delta has been found in numerous borings

within a space of more than 2,500 square miles. Skertchly has shown

that in the Fenland of England the peat is practically continuous

throughout 1,800 square miles. ^' Great areas exist on the north

1" R. M. Harper. "Preliminary Report on Peat Deposits of Florida." 1910;
J. Lorie, " Les dunes interieures, les tourbieres basses et les oscillations du

32 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

German border some of which are comparable to the English Fenland.
In the majority of the cases cited, accumulation occurred on coastal
plains, but the great rivers of Alaska, Sumatra, Paraguay, Brazil and
other lands flow amid vast plains, which are peat covered in much of
their extent.

The total area, within which peat has been accumulating since
the Quaternary began, probably exceeds that in which similar de-
posits accumulated during any prior period of similar duration. That
is not to say that contemporaneous deposits wxre at any time con-
tinuous throughout the area ; they were not and they are not, any
more than brown coal or stone coal was continuous throughout the
regions in which rocks of the respective ages are found. One must
always bear in mind that the great deposits of peat did not begin at
the same time throughout their present extent. It is altogether prob-
able for all, as it is certain for many, that originally they were small
separated patches, beginning in favorable localities and becoming
united by transgression. This process is not confined to low-lying
areas; Lorie^^ has proved its importance in the Hochmoors of Hol-
land. If conditions favoring growth were checked, the individual
deposits would remain isolated.

Growing peat offers great resistance to erosion, as is well-known
to those who are familiar with conditions on streams which are
subject to violent floods. But where the accumulation is on a
permeable yielding material, it may be floated oft' after long con-
tinued flooding. A good illustration has been given by Carpenter,^'*
who, in describing a ride through the Panama canal, says that on
Gatun lake he found floating islands, tropical swamps lifted from
their foundations by the rising water, some of them several acres in
extent. Other notes by this author may be given here, though

sol," Arch. Mus. Teylcr, II., Vol. III., 1890, pp. 424-437 ; I. C. Russell, " Sur-
face Geology of Alaska," Bull. Geol. Soc. Amcr., Vol. I., 1890, p. 129; C.
Lyell, " Antiquity of Man," 1871, pp. 2Z^, 337 ; W. T. Blanford, " A Manual
of the Geology of India," 1879, p. 400; S. B. J. Skertchly, "The Geology of
the Fenland," Mem. Geol. Surv. of Great Britain, 1877.

IS J. Lorie, " Les hautes tourbieres au nord du Rhin," Arch. Mus. Teylcr,
II., Vol. IV., 1893, p. 169.

1^ F. G. Carpenter, " Steaming through the Canal," Los Angeles Times,
January 10, 1914.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 33

they concern matters to be considered on another page. He was
surprised by the abundance of floating and aquatic plants. Already,
within the few weeks of the lake's existence, great beds of water
lettuce and of water hyacinth had covered much of the surface and
were associated with extensive patches of green scum. The water
hyacinth had become a pest. The destruction of forests had been
rapid ; non-water-loving trees were killed by gradual rise of the
water-level, but palms showed great power of endurance. Fre-
quently one of the latter is seen with its trunk completely submerged
and only the crown of leaves showing above, resembling a bunch
of gigantic ferns on the surface.

But when dried by exposure to light and air peat is unstable
material. Change in direction of drainage may deprive a consider-
able area of the needed moisture and growth will be stopped.
Unless the surface be invaded by trees, running water will break
continuity of the bog and that will be ruptured into " hags," of
which Scottish writers have given vivid descriptions. In a moist
climate, this process of destruction is slow, as is seen in much of
England and Scotland, because peat absorbs moisture and retains it
with great tenacity. It may well be that growth may be checked or
wholly stopped in one portion of an area while it continues in
another, as in the Fenland of England, where peat still grows in
one district, though the general climatic change has caused cessa-
tion elsewhere. If untoward conditions continue, the peaty cover
becomes desiccated and is removed by the wind or other agencies —
a fact which is unpleasantly familiar to those who have cultivated
drained peat bogs.

Pcat-foniiing Plants. — Peat, being merely vegetable material
undergoing chemical change with greater or less exclusion of
oxygen, may be the product of any group of plants. The popular
belief, based on surface study of bogs in- northern Europe, has
always been that mosses are the chief source of material for peat;
and this no doubt led to the conception that no true peat is to be
found within the tropics, since neither Sphagnum nor Hypmtm
prospers amid tropical conditions. Yet more than lOO years ago

34 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Alex. Brongniart^° announced that peats, consisting wholly of leaves,
had been observed in Holland and that similar deposits, formed of
leaves from resinous trees, occur in the Jura. There are very many
peat deposits without Sphagnum. It and other mosses occur rarely
in the peats of Florida and it seems to be wanting in the Kampar-
Siak area of Java. Molengraaff asserts that mosses contribute
little to the peats of central Borneo. C. A. Davis has shown that
Sphagmiui is a comparatively late comer into the Michigan peats
and that it is still absent at a great proportion of the localities.
Even in northern Europe, many observers have made it clear that
mosses are only a few of the peat- forming plants ; and in the older
deposits there are thick benches in which Sphagnum is almost or
altogether wanting. But mosses are all-important in arctic and
sub-arctic deposits of this day, while they are comparatively unim-
portant in those of the temperate and sub-tropical as well as
tropical areas.

Sedges appear to have been the most important peat producers
in much of the north temperate zone; but a peat deposit is not the
product of any single plant or group of plants, though this is not
to deny the existence of such deposits, for they do occur under
exceptional conditions. In the southern part of the United States,
one finds conifers and deciduous trees making the chief contribu-
tions ; the condition is evidently the same in central Borneo, where
according to Molengraaff, the peat consists almost wholly of re-
mains of trees, and Koorders makes a similar remark respecting
Java. Any plant, apparently, may become a peat-maker ; the
hyacinth, introduced into Florida, where it threatened to ruin the
navigable rivers, has become a peat-producer of no little importance.
Certain members of the palm family contribute to the peat deposits
of Florida and it appears altogether probable that, when the peats
of the Amazon, Orinoco and Paraguay have been studied, palms
will be found among the most important of the contributing plants.

It is well known that the sedge-association, in advancing from
the shore of a lake or pond, is very apt to form a floating mat. One

20 Alex. Brongniart, " Traite elementaire de mineralogie," Paris, 1807,
T. II., p. 41.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 35

finds this shown in the Sudd of the Upper Nile. Willey-^ speaks of
that as the serious obstacle to navigation between Khartoum and
Gondokoo. The principal interruption is 25 miles long and within
150 miles there are three others aggregating 60 mjles. The growth
is very rapid after an unusually high fiood in the upper rivers, which
brings down much vegetation and sediment; but if the rainy season
be short, the growth is checked and the current carries out the
young plants, not yet strong enough to resist. The top in the older
denser areas is so dry that it can be burned, but the mass is so
matted that it must be cut wnih saws and the pieces dragged away.
This Sudd consists mostly of w^ater-papyrus and a bamboo, known
as elephant grass, with a convolvulus creeping over all. Besides
this ;'// situ material is more or less of transported stuff. One would
imagine that this last would be in comparatively small proportion on
the low^er sections as most of it would be stopped by the first raft.

Wright-- cites Willcox to the effect that the Sudd interferes seri-
ously with the river's flow. It causes division into numerous
streams, wdiich lose themselves, north from Lado, N.L. 6°, in the
extensive swamps ; Willcox suggested that the channel could be
opened by dredging and could be kept open by planting willows
on the banks, which would enable the strong current to prevent
closing. The absence of willows along the banks makes control
of the swamps impossible. Wright cites also Lord Cromer, who
notes Major Peake's discovery that the Sudd is not simply a tangle
of vegetation floating on the water, but is a mass of decayed vege-
tation, papyrus roots and earth, much like peat in consistence and
so compressed by the current that at places elephants can cross it
safely. According to Willey, the thickness is only a few feet in
the overflowed swampy area but increases abruptly to 15 and 20
feet in the channel. The close resemblance to the floating mat of
more familiar types of sedges is evident. Were it not for the rapid
current underneath, the whole channel would soon be filled by the
more or less decayed material from the under side of the mat. But

21 D. A. Willey, " The Barrage of the Nile," Nat. Geog. Mag., Vol. XXL,
1910, pp. 174, 184.

-- G. F. Wright, " Scientific Confirmations of Old Testament History,"
Oberlin, 1906, pp. 74-77.

36 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

these currents, even in great flood, are powerless against the mat ;
the river at some places is diverted into a false channel but at others
it passes through a series of shallow lakes.

The groups of higher plants, contributing to production of peat,
are for the most part those which prefer a soil containing organic
acids formed during decomposition of vegetable matter. Some of
them are provided with root modifications, enabling them to grow
even when rooted in water-covered peat. Others, the ordinary
conifers and deciduous trees of swamp- areas, have no such modi-
fications and grow only on the less moist portions. In case the
water-level rise permanently so as to prevent aeration of the roots,
the trees die ; but mere accumulation of peat about the roots is not
the direct cause of death, as it is proved abundantly by the exist-
ence, of mighty trees in the western forests, the intervals between
them showing several feet of peaty accumulation, in which young
firs and scrubby oaks have grown from the seed. The great Taxo-
diuui and Nyssa are rooted directly in the water-covered peat, but
aeration is secured by means of the "knees" and the arched roots
which rise above the water surface. Aeration is as necessary lo
these trees as to the others and they can be drowned quite as easily
as the junipers. Lowly forms of plant life make, as a rule, merely
incidental contributions to peat, but under certain conditions they
may accumulate in mass. Some forms of fresh water algse are con-
stituents of organic muds in pools or ponds, which so often become
the foundation for peat, while occasionally one finds a layer of
diatomaceous earth in or over the peat.

Classification of Peat. — The great economic importance of peat
in some German states led early to close study of that material in
all its phases and, of course, to classification, a differentation of the
varieties of peat and of the types of deposits. This work had been
done in great part by the diggers before scientific students began, so
that in all efforts at classification one finds greater or less use made
of the popular terms. ZirkeP^ offered a grouping based on the
character of the original materials ;

Moostorf, derived from water-loving mosses, chiefly Sphagnum,
23 F. Zirkel, " Lehrbuch der Petrographie," Bonn, 1866, Vol. I., p. 398.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 37

Conferventorf, from free-swimming plants, Confervse, Naiads, etc.,
Haidetorf, heath-peat from various heaths, largely Erica tetralix,
Holztorf, mostly from mouldered stems of trees,
Meertorf, from seaweeds, is of rare occurrence.

No one of these forms, except very rarely, is found as the mass
of a bog, but all may be seen in the vertical section of a single
deposit, indicating variations in conditions- during growth. Zirke!
gives also the ordinary terms designating difference in composition
or structure ;

Pechtorf is pitch black to brownish black and is apparently almost
homogeneous ; the plant remains are so changed as to be prac-
tically unrecognizable and the material, when dried, is very
similar to Tertiary Pechkohle.

Rasentorf is yellowish brown or wood-brown and the remains of
plants are distinct.

Fasertorf designates fibrous remains of plants, penetrating the
Pechtorf.

Papiertorf is wood- or soot-brown, with the remains of plants little
changed and in separable layers.

Torferde is a peaty earthy substance, friable and with few recogniz-
able plant remains.

Baggertorf is a black-brown, pulp-like peat, obtained by dredging ;
it dries to a hard mass showing no vegetable structure.

Vitrioltorf contains much ferrous sulphate.

Some of these terms are unimportant, but others are of wide
application, designating types which have been considered in all dis-
cussions. Von GiimbeP* introduced a number of new terms, several
of which have come into general use. For Pechtorf, he prefers
Torfpechkohle, which is the Dopplerit of Haidinger ; instead of
Baggertorf, he suggests Specktorf and for Papiertorf, Blattertorf.
For Fasertorf he would substitute Torffaserkohle ; the former term
is employed by several writers as descriptive of the felted mass of
peat so that it is not definitive. The Conferventorf of Zirkel is

-* C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrjige zur Kenntniss der Texturverhaltnisse der
Mineralkohlen," Sitz. d. k. Bayer. Akad. d. JViss.. 1883, pp. 128-134.

38 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

clearly the Dy-gyttja of H. von Post, the Lebertorf of Caspary, the
Sapropel-mud of Potonie.

The salient characteristics of peat deposits are practically the
same in all lands and the descriptive terms employed in different
languages are almost equivalents ; the German Hochmoor may be
regarded as the Heathermoor of Scotland, the tourbiere haute of
Holland and France ; the Niedermoor, Rasenmoor, Wiesenmoor and
Griinlandmoor are but phases of the bogmeadows, morasses and
tourbieres basses of other lands ; and the Waldmoor is a forested
bog. Danish students long ago recognized the types under the
names of Lyngmose, Svampmose or Hoermose, for the Hochmoor;
Kjaermose or Engmose for the bogmeadows ; and Skovmose for the
wooded bog. Later German writers in some instances use Hoch-
moor, Flachmoor and Zwischenmoor. These several types, where
the succession is normal, occur in definite relation to each other,
marking successive stages in the growth of a deposit.

Groivth of Peat Deposits. — The succession of stages in growth
of a peat bog was determined in detail more than lOO years ago.
All who have visited ponds in process of filling by peat are familiar
with the ofttimes concentric bands of differing plant associations
around the central water-area. This striking feature was empha-
sized by observers at a very early date, but a comparatively recent
reassertion of the relation, as bearing on the formation of coal beds,
seems to have come as a revelation to some, who had already dis-
cussed various questions relating to coal and coal beds. It is at
least strange that the literature respecting peat appears to be un-
known to so many geologists, since it is not confined to brief notes
or to memoirs scattered through publications of learned societies,
but includes elaborate treatises, some of them more than loo years
old. Many of these appear to be inaccessible in this country, but
they have been cited so frequently by writers in Europe that one
must believe them readily accessible there. Their existence has
been ignored in discussion of coal relations, except where a casual
reference enables a writer to show that the credit for an independent
discovery does not belong to some later investigator. The facts

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 39

concerning growth of peat in water-basins have been known long
time and the reports of observations were pubHshed widely.

In 1839, Palliardi-^ of Franzensbrnnn, Bohemia, described a peat
bog near that city, which had been dug for fuel during many years.
It covers a space of one by three miles and is from 4 to 5 feet thick,
occasionally reaching a maximum of 14 feet. The peat grows again
in spaces whence it has been removed. In the second year, algse
appear and in the third there is a more definite vegetation, duck-
weed being prominent. During the fourth and fifth years, rushes,
sedges and reeds form a floating cover, which the natives term the
" cow paunch." Within ten to twelve years the surface is covered
with Erica, Vaccimim, Salix and Pinus; and after thirty to forty
years the peat may be cut again, if the water-supply have been con-
stant and the cattle kept off. The deeper the deposit, the denser,
more like brown coal and richer in bitumen the peat becomes.

In 1854, Yogt-*' recognized that the first stage is apt to be marked
by accumulation of aquatic animals and plants, the latter mostly
free algae. Somewhat later, Heer-" described the process in detail.
In water, organic life begins with the algse; even pure water, ex-
posed to light and air, is full of little plants with boundless capacity
for increase ; they quickly appear in vast multitudes, which eventually
sink to the bottom and, mingled with newer, higher forms, give a
layer of organic matter. Then follow the floating mosses in great
lawns with myriads of seeds, which, in spite of their minuteness, in
time form a considerable mass of organic substance. Thus the way
is prepared for life conditions of flowering plants, which arrive
quickly. Bladderworts appear and the water-milfoils root in the soil ;
water-lilies spread out their leaves and cover the water; reeds press
out from the shore ; rushes and sedges form a thick complex of roots,
which gradually extends over the whole and the water is concealed.
This peat mass, constantly growing denser, draws moisture from
below and in its soft, damp polster nest Menyanthns, Andromeda and

25 Palliardi, in W. A. Lampadius, " Ueber den Schwartztorf und dessen
chemische Eigenschaften," Journ. f. pr. Chcm., 1839, 2te Bd., pp. 16-18.

26 C. Vogt, "Lehrbuch der Geologic," 2te Aufl., 1854, Bd. II., pp. 107, 108.
2" O. Heer, " Die Schieferkohle von Utznach und Diirnten," Zurich, 1858,

pp. 2-5.

40 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

heaths, which develop the peat foundation. The lake closed, forest
vegetation, birch and fir, advances ; the firs do not grow high, but
they break ofif after attaining a certain height and weight, sinking into
the soft material, where they are converted into peat, as is the less
imposing vegetation. They are readily overturned by the wind, so
that peat is crowded with birch and firs. Peat originates partly from
mosses, partly from water-plants, partly from swamp-plants, especi-
ally the grasses and rushes, partly from woody plants. The hard
parts change slowly while the softer parts become a pulpy mass
enveloping the others. By climatic changes a Waldmoor may be con-
verted into a Torfmoor and that again into a Waldmoor, giving a
section in which a succession of forests is shown.

Three years later, von Post-® grouped the successive deposits into
mud (Gyttja), mud-peat (dytorf) and peat (torf), his conclusions
being the outcome of more than 20 years' experience in the peat
industry. In 1893, he presented a resume of his studies as a lecture
before the Upsala Institute. He had found that most of the Swedish
peat mosses began in water-basins and that the bottom material, clay,
mud or calcareous tufa, is sediment from more or less muddy water.
A most important stratum is the brown earth, Dy in Swedish, which
was formed by precipitation from the brown waters, containing
huminic substances, quite analogous to the brown waters of rivers.
These huminic substances, leached from accumulations on the land
surface, are carried into the lakes by heavy rains. Spring water usu-
ally contains salts of calcium, iron and aluminum. When this enters
the lake, huminic salts of slight solubility are precipitated, giving the
brown layers, the Dy or Dy-jord. As this material goes down, it
carries with it algK (diatoms, etc.), fragments of mollusks, water
insects and other debris, including excrement of animals. The pas-
sage to ordinary peat is gradual. Dy may be forming in the open
portion of a lake while successive stages of bog-development are
shown on the shores — and it may re-appear within the peat. Over-
flow, giving a constant rise of the water-level, may cause destrue-
ns H. von Post, in K. Vet. Akad. Handl. (4), 1861, not seen by the writer;
" The Formation of Peat-mosses with Especial Reference to the Theories of
A. Blytt," Bull. Geol. Inst. Univ. Upsala, Vol. I., 1894, pp. 284-288.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 41

tion of trees on a forested moor and bring about return of the peat
moss condition.

Pokorny,"^ after exhaustive study of the Hungarian moors, pre-
sented a classification of the deposits and described the stages of
growth. He recognized two general types, Hochmoors and Flach-
moors, equivalent to the supra-aquatic and infra-aquatic of Les-
quereux. The former include both forested and Sphagnum moors
and are confined to higher land, while the Flachmoors, of many sorts
and with many names, are on lower land and have an approximately
level surface, contrasting with the convex surface of Hochmoors.
The successive stages in growth of the Flachmoor are Hydrophyton,
Rohrwald, Rohrwiese, Wiesen, Moorwiese, which correspond to those
indicated by observers already cited. It is not necessary to make
citations from the works by Rennie, Steenstrup, Senft or others of
the earlier investigators in northern Europe, for their conclusions
dififer in wholly unimportant details from those of the later students.
It is certain that the successive stages in development of a peat de-
posit were recognized more than three fourths of a century ago ; since
that time, the scheme has been modified only in detail.

In 1910, Potonie, using the JMemel delta moor as the illustration,
summarized the stages thus, in descending order :

Sea-climate Hochmoor,
Hochmoor, -\ Hochmoor Vorzone, in part with Arundo
phragmites.

Conifer inner forest zone,

P)irch zone.

Alder moors.

Reeds and rushes, shore zone,
Sapropel deposits.

In a Hochmoor under a land climate, where the rainfall is less,
the succession is completed by a heath stage, during which plants of
the heath family take possession of the surface. This, Potonie sug-
gests, may be regarded as the expiring stage of peat growth. If a
boring were made through the Hochmoor and underlying materials

29 A. Pokorny, " Untersuchungen iiber die Torfmoores Ungarns," Site.
Akad. JViss. IVicn. Bd. XLIII, Abt. I., 1861, pp. 59-65, 86.

Zwischenmoor,
Flachmoor,

42 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

to the mineral floor, it would pass through beds of the several stages,
each of which would be crossed in following the surface from the
Hochmoor to the water's edge.

But one must always bear in mind that the order as given is not
absolute ; it is merely that observed where the filling of a basin has
been continuous and undisturbed ; any .one or most of the stages may
be omitted and any stage may be repeated. Local conditions control
the succession. That in Michigan, as ascertained by Davis, is, ascend-
ing, (i) A deposit formed by Chara and floating algse; (2) in the
shallower water, Potamogeton followed by water-lilies; (3) next
behind is the floating mat of sedges extending to a considerable dis-
tance from the shore; material from the under side of this mat accu-
mulates near the shore and (4) shrubs and Sphaginiiii appear; (5)
tamarack and spruce advance with ferns.

These stages are distinct around the open water and the trees
are all rooted in the peat, which continues to accumulate while the
trees are growing. Sphagnum is seen first after the surface rises
to 2 inches above the water-level.

This general succession is that observed in peat deposits formed
within gradually shallowing water-basins ; it applies only locally to
the great deposits formed on extensive plains.

The Lebertorf or Sapropel Stage. — Klaproth"'^ appears to be the
first describer of the material known in later time as Lebertorf.
In 1807, he reported the chemical composition of a new combustible
" fossil," which came from near Bartenstein in East Prussia. The
detailed description of the substance leaves no room for doubt as to
its relations. No later notice has been seen by the writer prior to
those by Steenstrup and von Post.^^ The former recognized a de-
posit of amorphous material which rests on tlie underclay of bogs,
while the latter described the Dytorf, which usually underlies the
peat. The substance was rediscovered by Caspary^- in 1870. He

30 M. H. Klaproth, " Beitrage zur chemischen Kenntniss der Mineral-
korper," Vol. IV., 1807, pp. 378, 379.

31 Streenstrup, summarized by Morlot, trans, in Ann. Rep. Sniifhson. Inst._
1861, pp. 304 ff. ; H. von Post in Swedish Academy, 1861.

32 R. Caspary, " Lebertorf von Purpesseln," Schrift. k. phys.-okon. Ges
Konigsherg, liter. Jahrg. 1870, Sitz., pp. 22, 23.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 43

had received from Purpesseln near Gumbinnen in East Prussia a
peat, so peculiar that he visited the I'ocahty to learn its mode of
occurrence. The moor was of moderate size and shaped like the
figure 8, the broad portions being joined by a narrow strip. In the
northern division, under a cover of one foot, he found Wiesentorf,
9 feet thick, black-brown and excellent fuel, containing many hard
roots and fragments of stems. This overlies 5 feet of " Lebertorf,"
which is almost homogeneous, green-brown, very elastic, with coarse
conchoidal fracture, with no trace of leaf structure and in appear-
ance almost like animal liver. Occasionally, a root fragment occurs.
The substance can be ground to powder under water.

When dried, Lebertorf is wholly different. It is grayish-black
and almost invariably laminated, but the laminae are irregular, with
no great extent, often as thin as paper and at times in meshes. It
parts very slowly with its water ; dried by exposure to the air, it is
hard and, when cut with a knife, has brilliant black surface like jet.
Under the microscope, fresh Lebertorf is found to consist of minute,
light, grayish-brown granules with no trace of structure; bits of
crustacean tests and well-preserved pollen of P'mus sylvestris are
abundant ; with them are occasional disintegrated parts of plants,
showing cell structure. The southern portion of the moor seems
to have only an insignificant trace of Lebertorf, the ordinary peat
resting directly on the impermeable blue marly clay.

In 1883, von GumbeP'' examined Lebertorf from Purpesseln and
discovered that it has a felted structure. It contains some insect
remains, leaves of grasses and mosses, many round balls, probably
spores, and vast quantities of pollen grains, more than 1,000 to the
cubic millimeter. Specimens from Kimmersdorf, near Gesterode,
and from Doliewen, about 100 miles east from Konigsberg, agree in
that the cross section shows a uniformly dense mass composed of
dull material like Boghead. The laminae are exceedingly thin and
contain clear yellow particles and lens-like segregations of red-brown
tint along with several thousand pollen grains to the cubic centi-
meter. He was impressed by the extraordinary resemblance to
cannel and conceived that both substances originated in the same way.

33 C. W. V. Gumbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 132, 133.

44 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Friih^* remarks that algse are rare and merely accessory con-
stituents of peat, but in some cases they are essential constituents.
Alaterial sent to him by F. E. Geinitz from the bottom layer of a
moor at Gustrow was, when dry, hard, brown, homogeneous, with
a greasy luster on the cut surface. It is laminated, consists in great
part of well-preserved Chroococcacese with colonies of other forms
of algas, accompanied by pollen of conifers and Corylus as well as by
chitinous fragments. He examined Lebertorf from Jakabau, re-
ceived from Caspary, in which he found pollen and indeterminate
remains of higher plants, embedded in a mass composed chiefly of
algae — Chroococcace^e, Hydrodictyse and diatoms. Lebertorf from
Doliewen, received from Jentzsch of Konigsberg, resembles the peat-
shale or Torfschiefer from Gustrow and contains, along with pollen
of Corylus and conifers, well-recognized colonies of Macrocystis as
chief constituents. The Purpesseln material is similar in compo-
sition. Typical Lebertorf has been found at several places in Swit-
zerland, where as elsewhere it consists chiefly of algse, belonging to
genera which are gelatinous. Diatomtorf belongs in this group ; he
had a specimen from Oldenburg containing 90 per cent, of diatoms.

Jentzsch^^ states that the Lebertorf of Caspary occurs at many
places in Germany. Caspary recognized that it has a granular struc-
ture ; V. Giimbel regarded the granules as exceedingly disintegrated
plant remains, while Friih believed them to be alg?e. Friih had
examined a dried specimen from Doliewen. Jentzsch procured fresh
material from that locality and sent it to him. Jentzsch and Cas-
pary could find no evidence that Chroococcaceze are present in this
substance, structureless granules alone were recognized. All Leber-
torfs show as chief constituents these roundish granules, which
Caspary, v. Giimbel and Jentzsch regard merely as disintegrated
plant material ; associated with these are pollen from Piniis and cat-
kins, bits of plant tissue, remains of crustaceans and often, but not
always, diatoms and Pediastruui.

In a note appended to this paper, he gives the substance of a
letter received from Friih respecting study of the fresh material

34 J. J. Friih, " Ueber Torf unci Dopplerit," Trogen, 1883, pp. 20-24.
^^ A. Jentzsch, " Mikrostruktur des Torfs," Schrift. k. ph.-okon. Ges.
Konigsberg, Jahrg. 24, 1883, pp. 47-53-

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 45

from Doliewen. This had convinced Friih that the micrococcus-
forms are not all Chroococcace?e. He is certain, at all events, that
Lebertorf is not genetically an algse peat ; the algse are only acces-
sory; pollen plays the chief role. •

The elaborate microscopical examination of oil shales by Bertrand
and Renault after 1890 led them to look upon those shales as accumu-
lations of algre and remains of other types carried down during
precipitation of organic salts — an explanation very similar to that
suggested by H. v. Post. Tliese studies recalled similar studies of
coal by Reinsch and led to farther study of Lebertorf. Potonie'^*^
made examinations in many localities, which he discussed at various
times, publishing his final conclusions in 1910. The Lebertorf of
Caspary, Faulschamm and plankton deposit of authors, is termed
sapropellite by him. It contains diatoms, Pcdiastniiii and other
forms of alg^e with pollen of Pinus, Coryliis, Alnus and Bctitla along
with remains of various aquatic animals. It accumulates rapidly in
enclosed basins and it has rendered some German lakes so shallow
that they are no longer navigable. Jefi^rey'" has observed that the
bottom of lakes and ponds becomes covered with vegetable matter
swept in by breezes or washed in by rains. This is finer in the deeper,
less disturbed portions, but coarser in the shallower parts. In one of
his figures, showing the finer type, one finds excrement of fish, snails
or amphibia, mingled with pollen of conifers. In the other, showing
the coarser material, there are merely remains of roots, leaves and
other vegetable " flotsam and jetsam." It is noteworthy that he has
found no trace of algse in the lacustrine muck examined by him.
Pollen grains and spores are the most important constituents.

The composition of Lebertorf is variable, certain constituents
being more abundant at some localities than at others ; but of all the
constituents, pollen appears to be the most important ; other remains
are to be regarded almost as accessory, though always present.

Lebertorf cannot be recognized at all localities. Not infrequently
it is absent in the lake deposits of north Germany as also in many
of tho'se in Sweden and Switzerland. Undoubtedly, the plankton

36 H. Potonie, " Enstehung," etc., pp. 19-22.

^'^ E. C. Jeffrey, " On the Composition and Qualities of Coal," Econ.
Geol, Vol. IX., 1914, p. 72iZ, Figs. 151, 152.

46 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

conditions existed, but other growth seems to have been far in excess.
Sapropelic deposits, as foundation for ordinary peat, appear to be
practically wanting in the United States, as no reference is found in
publications by Shaler and Harper, while Davis^^ observed them in
only three of the many bogs examined by him in Michigan. The most
noteworthy of these is that of the Algal lake ; but the forms in that
deposit are no longer thought to be algae, their relations being still
undetermined.

Lebertorf conditions may reappear at almost any time during
the history of a peat bog. Sernander-'^ long ago observed the lens-
like structure characterizing portions of moors in Sweden, and
Weber had called attention to the same feature in northern Ger-
many. The study of peat deposits in Narke by the Geological Com-
mission led to discovery of the causes and the results were published
in 1905. The prevailing opinion had been that shoots of the
sphagnum-carpet grow uninterruptedly upward, wdiile the under
parts die and are converted into peat. But the sphagnum-tips are
killed very easily. On portions of the carpet, where such destruc-
tion has taken place, growth ceases, while the surrounding moss
continues to grow, so that a depression results. Such depressions
are very numerous and are due to various causes. One type, fre-
quently observed in Heath- and Waldmoors, is caused by accumula-
tion of offal from the plants ; another is caused by surface growth
of liverworts or certain forms of algse; while a third comes from
fires, footsteps or other accidents. As the surrounding Sphagnum
continues to grow, the depressed spots become filled with water ;
plants growing on the surface are killed and a Dy-like deposit covers
the bottom. The ordinary process of filling follows, sphagnum in-
vades the pool and eventually fills it. The depressions sometimes
increase by transgression and attain considerable size. An illus-
trative section, given by Sernander on his Plate 3, shows that in-
terruptions of this kind are of frequent occurrence. Similar de-
pressions are familiar in bogs of all sorts.

In many cases, especially where the water is calcareous, this

3» C. A. Davis, " Peat," pp. 203, 247, 267.

39 R. Sernander, " Guide to Excursions," Coiig. Geol. Int., XL, Excur-
sion A7, p. 25.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 47

plankton deposit of bacteria, algse and especially pollen and spores
is concealed in the accumulation of marl from Chara and mollusks.
At best, it is characteristic only of filled water-basins ; it occurs
rarely in the great deposits originating on broad coastal or river
plains. This is not to assert the total absence of such material.
Those great deposits frequently were due to union of numerous
smaller ones, each of which filled a depression of moderate extent
and afterward expanded by transgression on the plain. Lebertorf
may form the floor in the original depressions, though it may be
thin, owing to rapid invasion by the plants giving normal peat. In
the other condition, where swamps were caused by obstructed
drainage, Lebertorf-forming agencies no doubt existed, but they did
not predominate. Indeed, those agencies are always present, except
during periods of interrupted growth, due to dryness, as one may
learn by descriptions of almost all bogs, which show that freshwater
algse along with pollen and spores are accessory constituents at all
horizons. Whenever a pond is formed in any considerable deposit,
such as Dismal Swamp, originally covering not less than 1,500
square miles, the conditions are prepared for formation of a Leber-
torf lens.

The Succeeding Stages Vary. — The earlier studies were made
almost wholly upon peat deposits filling former water-basins, which
had escaped covering and which had had a, so to say, continuous
history from a very early period. When the process of filling was
uninterrupted save by variations in temperature or moisture, the
normal succession may be shown by the bogs in a great area, as in
most of Sweden, north Germany and the British Isles. But where
the origin was difl:'erent, a wholly dissimilar section may be found.
Geikie, in describing the moors of Scotland, says that they often
mark the sites of lakes and ponds, but at times they cover the ruins
of ancient forests. When the forest was overthrown, drainage was
intercepted, stagnant swamps were formed and water-mosses took
root. He refers to several illustrative instances. In the Forest of
Mar, large trunks of Scotch fir, which fell from age and decay, were
soon immured in peat, formed partly from decay of their perishing
leaves and branches and partly from the growth of Sphagnum and

48 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Other marsh plants. On Loch Brown, the peat cover was com-
pleted over the site of a decayed forest in less than 50 years. In
1756, the Wood of Drumlanrig was blown down and experienced a
similar fate.*"

Miller*^ has cited the Earl of Cromarty's description of peat
growth in central Ross-shire. When very young, the earl had ob-
served a wood of very ancient trees, doddered and mossgrown, evi-
dently passing through the last stages of decay. Many years later,
he passed through the same district and found that the wood had
disappeared, while the heathy hollow was occupied by a green
stagnant morass. In his old age, he revisited the locality ; the sur-
face was irregular and pitted, for the highlanders were digging
peat in a stratum several feet deep. The aged forest had been
replaced with an extensive peat moss.

The sphagnum-stage is not rarely the first. Dachnowski*- found
Sphagnum growing in Ohio on wet sand, where it formed tussocks
often more than 4 feet high. This matter will be considered in
another connection.

It may be well to note, parenthetically, some other observations
by Dachnowski. Davis had recognized in Michigan that Sphagnum
is indifferent to calcareous salts, growing as well where the water is
hard as where it is soft. In Ohio, the nature and quantity of the
mineral salts seem to be unimportant, since the heath-sphagnum
meadows are abundant in counties where they rest on limestone,
while in one locality Sphagnum grows in profusion near springs
charged with calcium carbonate ; this plant in Ohio as in Michigan is
indifferent to that salt, for Dachnowski found it abundant in one
locality and wanting at another, the conditions being the same in
both. Deficiency in mineral matter does not prevent growth of
trees on peat ; they grow well on the floating mat of heath-sphagnum
and in places where the peat is 30 feet thick. In Ohio, the heath-
association does not mark the final stage, for it is followed by the
bog shrubs. The final stage is marked by the bog-forest association,

40 A. Geikie, " The Scenery of Scotland," 2d ed., London, 1887, pp. 388-392.

41 H. Miller, " The Old Red Sandstone," Boston, i860, p. 174.

42 A. Dachnowski, " Peat Deposits of Ohio," Geol. Surv. Ohio, Bull. 16,
1912, pp. 224-256.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 49

of which tamarack {Larix laricina) and arbor vitte (Thuja occi-
dentalis) are among the first to invade the surface. When bog
conditions have disappeared and the surface has become covered
with mould, deciduous trees advance and crowd out the conifers.
As the mould-cover is very thin and the wet peat is reached very
quickly, the roots of this forest group rarely extend downward more
than a foot, but they spread out in all directions, as do those of the
conifers, thus giving stability.

Structure and Constituents of Peat Deposits. — An intimate ex-
amination of a peat deposit leads to conviction that the process of
accumulation may not be so simple as is indicated in the preceding
generalized paragraphs. There are many modifying conditions.

A peat bog shows, speaking generally, a thin layer of living
plants on top, under which the vegetable matter becomes more and
more disintegrated downward until, toward the bottom, the greatest
part shows no vegetable structure to the iinaided eye and the mass
consists of felted stuff cemented by a humus-like substance. This
cement is removable easily by weak solution of caustic potash and
the dried residue tends to fall to a powder. The change downward
is not, however, always in increasing ratio.

A peat deposit is rarely continuous from bottom to top, but is
commonly divided at irregular distances by partings of one sort or
another. These may be thin, consisting of finely divided mineral
matter holding a charcoal-like substance, Torft'aserkohle of v.
Gitmbel, or they may be thicker and composed of sand, clay or
other transported matter. The thickness of individual partings
varies greatly, so that the intervals between the several benches
of the deposit may increase or decrease. Lorie's''^ observations in
Holland, Belgium and north France make this variation sufficiently
evident. The benches themselves differ in peculiarities of the peat
and in character of the ash, as one would suppose in view of the
different plant-associations marking the several stages of growth.

The opinion has been expressed that a layer of organic material
is essential as prerequisite to formation of a peat deposit, and the
assertion has been made that, in any event, a Hochmoor with its

*3 J. Lorie, " Les dunes interieures," etc.. Arch. Mus. Teylcr, II., Vol. III.,
pp. 424-427. 444-

50 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

mosses cannot begin on inorganic material. This material can
hardly be determined satisfactorily either positively or negatively,
as the thickness of the organic layer is regarded as immaterial, one
author holding that it may be so thin as to be unrecognizable, while
he still insists that it must be present. There can be no doubt
that, when a Hochmoor increases by transgression, it is likely to
rest in part upon inorganic material. Rohhumus on bare rock, the
sphagnum-peat described by Dachnowski and some instances to be
noticed on a later page appear to indicate that a moss peat may
begin on inorganic surfaces. At the same time, it is beyond all
question that, of deposits originating on the surface of plains, a
very considerable proportion began on forested areas, where the
litter afforded excellent base for peat growth after the drainage had
been impeded. Shaler, many years ago, referred to transgressing
bogs in New England, which invaded forests and eventually killed
even the water-loving trees. Lewis** says that in the lowland
mosses of Wigtonshire, Scotland, the till surrounding the original
area of obstructed drainage carried birch and CaUima, which were
replaced gradually by hazel and alder. In these deposits, Betula is
abundant even on the floor. Sanford regards the Everglades of
Florida as due chiefly to impeded drainage. Peat operators have
long known that if the bog be stripped clean to the underclay, peat
growth begins very much more slowly than when a thin cover of
vegetable matter has been left on the clay.

The partings in peat deposits, when consisting of clay, sand or
marl, indicate subsidence or flooding. They may be so numerous
as to render the mass worthless, the laminations of peat and foreign
matter being alike thin ; or there may be alternations of fairly clean
peat with layers of intimately mingled organic and inorganic ma-
terials. The former indicate very frequent floodings, while the
latter tell of a long period of subsidence interrupted by longer or
shorter periods of comparative stability. A good illustration of the
latter condition is that given by Debray*^ in his description of a

44 F. J. Lewis, " The Plant Remains in the Scottish Peat Mosses," Pt. I.,
Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., Vol. XLL, 1906, pp. 699-722.

45 L. Debray, " fitude geologique et archeologique de quelques tourbieres

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 51

section in the valley of the Somme. The deposit is 8 feet thick in
13 wholly distinct benches, varying in thickness from one third to
one meter. Four benches, aggregating 2 meters, are of excellent
peat, but the others are, in several cases, little better than carbona-
ceous shale; the ash is calcareous. Similar illustrations are to be
found in the American treatises.

In areas where floodings of muddy water are wanting and where
climatal variations show little change from year to year, there may
be no benches and the mass may be continuous from bottom to top.
Johnson**' has described a peat deposit, which shows about 15 feet
of sphagnum-peat, practically continuous. Cook,*^ in discussing the
bogs of New Jersey, states that the peat is so crowded with logs of
CJianicrcvparis that one has difficulty in thrusting a sounding rod
to the bottom. The condition is the same throughout, even where
the peat is 13 feet thick; the Waldmoor growth was uninterrupted.
A similar story is told by the cypress swamps. R. M. Harper and
others have shown that, in the cypress swamps of Florida, the peat
is so filled with logs and woody roots as to be without commercial
value. Lyell's*^ statements respecting the cypress swamps of the
Mississippi region are in similar terms ; for he says that the con-
tractor, in excavating for foundations of the New Orleans gas
works, soon discovered that he had to deal not with silt but with
buried timber; the diggers were replaced with expert axemen. The
cypress and other trees were " superimposed one upon the other, in
an upright position, with their roots as they grew." The State
Surveyor reported that, in digging the great canal from Lake
Ponchartrain, a cypress swamp was cut, which had filled gradually,
" for three tiers of stumps in the nine feet, some of them very old,
ranged one above the other ; and some of the stumps must have
rotted away to the level of the ground in the swamp before the
upper ones grew over them." It should be said that the whole

du literal Flamand et du Departement de la Somme," Mem. Soc. Set. Lille,
Vol. XL, 1872, pp. 471, 472. 475-478.

■**5 D. W. Johnson, " The Shoreline of Cascumpeque Harbor, Prince Ed-
ward Island," Geogr. Journ., 1913, pp. 152-164.

4^ G. H. Cook, " Geology of New Jersey," 1868, pp. 301, 355, 360, 484.

48 C. Lyell, " Second Visit to the United States of North America," Lon-
don, 1850, Vol. II., pp. 136, 137.

52 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

delta region of the Mississippi is subject to frequent floodings, but,
in a great part of the area, the dense " cane brakes " act as filters,
so that the water is freed from its load of silt and continuity of
swamp growth is uninterrupted.

There are serious interruptions in the growth, which are not due
to flooding or to merely local variations in the water-level but rather
to widespread changes in conditions. Benches in thick deposits
frequently appear to represent cycles of deposition and these often
are separated by thin partings of exceedingly fine mineral matter,
containing more or less of fibrous material resembling the mineral
charcoal of ordinary coal. Such partings were explained long ago
by Lesquereux as due to a period of dryness, when the peat ceased
to grow and the surface was destroyed by oxidation to a greater or
less extent. The period of exposure may be brief or it may be
long continued. A. Geikie and Lewis have made clear that peat
forms now in only exceptional localities within Scotland, as the
climate has become less moist; and Skertchly asserts that peat is
no longer forming in the Fenland of England, save in a dark narrow
valley of Suffolk. The peat is wasting in those areas. Similar
statements come from other parts of northern Europe. Leaving
out of consideration Taxodhim, Nyssa, certain palms and the trees
of the Kampar areas, it is certain that most of the trees growing on
peat do not thrive when the material is very wet. Some, it is true,
show a notable degree of adaptation. C. A. Davis saw in Michigan
a birch in healthy condition, though its roots had been covered with
water during more than a year; and there are other types which
do well if only the water cover be absent during a considerable part
of growing season : the tamarack at times takes root far out on the
floating bog, but it grows slowly as do other trees which accompany
it. One may learn much respecting changing conditions during the
growth of a peat deposit by noting the distribution of trees.

Zincken"*'' cites Hartig as saying that in the " rothe Bruche '' on
the Harz there occur in the lowest 5 feet of the 39 to 40 feet thick
Hochmoor, firs with stems 18 inches thick. Higher, is a layer with
large pines, on which is another with smaller plants of the same

'**' C. Zincken, "Die Physiographic der Braunkohle," Hannover. 1867, p. 38.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 53

genus, while in the next layer the forms are stunted. Both firs and
pines are wanting in the upper portion of the mass. Sernander and
Kjellmark°° discovered that in northern Nericke, Sweden, the succes-
sion is (i) Living peat; (2) sphagnum-peat; (3) bed of stumps and
roots; (4) sphagnum-peat, passing downward into peat composed
chiefly of Phragniitcs and Eqnisctnm. The stump layer has birches
with needles and bark of Picea ahies, Finns sylz'estris with fruits,
seeds and leaves of other plants.

In the Harz locality, increasing wetness destroyed the trees ; in
Nericke, trees advanced when the moisture decreased, only to be
destroyed when once more the moisture increased.

According to Poole,"^ the great turbary, known as the South
Marsh, is double. The upper part is 7 to 8 feet thick and is worked
for use as fuel ; the lower portion, of about the same thickness, has
on its surface everywhere the stumps and roots of trees, standing
as they grew. Woodward states that the peat is composed mostly of
sedges, so that it is clear that tlie restoration of marsh conditions led
to destruction of the forest which had grown on the bog surface.
Skertchly^- recognized five successive forests in the peat of Wood
fen near Ely. Number i, at the bottom, is of oak and the trees are
rooted in the Kimmeridge Clay ; Number 2 is at an average distance
of 2 feet above the other and consists of yews and oaks, the lower
forest having perished before this began, as roots of Number 2 some-
times rest on stumps of Number i ; at 3 feet higher, are the remains
of another forest, all firs, and another is just above that; while im-
mediately below the present surface is still another, resembling the
modern trees of the region. There were five successive forests, of
which all except the first were rooted in the peat. As Skertchly re-
marks, it is evident that, while in general the climate of the Fenland
may have favored peat making, still there were intervals when peat
was formed, if at all, in very limited areas, the other portions being

5° R. Sernander und K. Kjellmark, " Eine Torfmooruntersuchung aus
dem nordlichen Nericke," Bull. Gcol. Inst. Upsala, Vol. II., 1896, pp. 321, 324.

51 G. S. Poole, cited by H. B. Woodward, in " Geology of Eastern Som-
erset," Mem. Geol. Surv. London, 1876, pp. 146, 156.

^- S. B. J. Skertchly, "The Geology of the Fenland," pp. 130, 151, 165,
168, 169.

54 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

invaded by forest. The non-peat-making intervals must have lasted
more than 150 years, as appears from the size of the trees. The
region is now passing through another dry period and the peat bogs
are not increasing. De la Beche^^ has referred to the Drumkelin bog
in Donegal, Ireland, as affording a striking illustration of interrup-
tion in accumulation of peat. At 16 feet below the surface and rest-
ing on 15 feet of peat, a house was reached 12 feet square, 9 feet high
and constructed wholly of oak. When the peat had been removed
from about the house, a paved pathway was disclosed, leading to a
hearthstone covered with ashes. Near the house were stumps of oak
trees, which evidently were growing when the liouse was inhabited.
A layer of sand had been spread over the surface before the little
building was erected. This pause in growth of the deposit was of
sufficiently long duration to permit forest growth and to invite habita-
tion. It was followed by return of swamp conditions, during which
16 feet of peat accumulated.

Geikie^* has recorded several cases of which only two need be
recalled here. At Strathcluony, three tiers of Scotch firs were seen,
separated by layers of peat. Several tiers were exposed in a railway
cutting across the Big Moss, one of standing firs with branching
roots at 6 feet below the surface, a second at 12 and a third at 16 feet
below the surface ; so that, counting the present surface growth, four
forests have grown there since the bog-making began ; that is to say,
the swamp conditions have been interrupted four times by periods of
lessened moisture, the last being the present. The preceding three
were succeeded by periods of wetness during which peat-making pro-
ceeded vigorously. It must not be supposed that even in the drier
periods accumulation of peat ceased wholly. It has been known a
long time that the offal of conifers can accumulate as peat. Reinsch^^
says that in the Fichtelgebirge needles of Fichten, Tannen and Fohren
are important as peat-making material and that in time they accumu-
late in such quantity that a quaking bog is the result. One must in-
sist here that the mere accumulation of peaty materials around and

53 H. T. de la Beche, "The Geological Observer," Amer. ed., 1851, p. 134.

54 J. Geikie, " The Great Ice Age," 3d ed., London, 1895, pp. 286-293, 303.

55 H. Reinsch, " Ueber den Torf des Fichtelgebirges," Joiirn. f. pr. Client.,
Bd. XVI., 1839, p. 486.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 55

between the trees was not the direct cause of their destruction ; but
accumulation in an increasingly moist climate might well contribute
indirectly by retention of moisture and thereby bringing about the
condition in which proper aeration of the roots could not take place.

Lesquereux, Heer, Geikie, Grand'Eury and others have shown by
sections in Britain and central Europe this alternation of swamp and
forest conditions, while Steenstrup, Blytt, von Post, Andersson, Ser-
nander and others have made the matter abundantly clear for the
Scandinavian areas. ^"^

The causes of these alterations have been subject of much dis-
cussion, as they are among the most striking features of peat de-
posits. Andersson^' maintains that the presence of tree stumps in
a bog is not necessarily evidence of actual change in climate ; that
can be explained by the ability of peat bogs to invade forests and to
convert them into swamps, as has been proved by several Swedish
observers. But this familiar fact can explain only the presence of
trees rooted in the underclay; it does not explain the presence of a
forest layer with its roots wholly enclosed in the peat. This indi-
cates invasion of the swamp area by the forest. A change in direc-
tion or extent of drainage might answer well as explanation of local
appearance of trees, for only a slight lowering of the water-level
would suffice. But changes in drainage or the encroachment by
swamps, while accounting well for local variations in a swamp, great
or small, cannot suffice as explanation of widespread variation appear-
ing almost contemporaneously in immense areas. Some general
cause must be sought. Blytt and von Post have presented incontro-
vertible evidence of alternations in climatal conditions throughout
Scandinavia ; Lewis has done the same for Scotland as J. Geikie has
done for a wide area ; while Schreiber,^^ after detailed study within
the province of Salzburg, showed that the variations in bog life were
associated with climatal changes involving migration of the snow-
line in the Alpine regions.

^<^ See " Formation of Coal Beds, II.," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. L.,
pp. 604-613.

5" G. Andersson, " Studier ofver Finlands torfmosser och fossila kvar-
tarflora," Bull. Com. Geo!, de Finlande, No. 8, 1898, p. 186.

58 H. Schreiber, " Vergletscherung und Moorbildung in Salzburg." Sepa-
rate from Oester.-Moorzcitschr., Staab, 1912, pp. 14, 15.

66 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Preservation of Vegetable Ulatter in Bogs. — The chemical proc-
esses leading to conversion of plant matter into peat do not fall
within the scope of the present inquiry, but some features must be
considered, though without reference to their causes.

Even a casual examination is enough to convince the observer
that these processes do not attack all plants or all portions of a plant
ec[ually. Bunbury^^ says that the peat in a great bog was found to
be merely a black mud, so decomposed as to show no vegetable struc-
ture; but at 15 feet down in this mud there was found a horizontal
layer, 2 to 6 inches thick, of compressed, undecayed moss, Hypniim
fliiitaiis, without admixture of other material. The peat below this
layer is like that above it. Skertchly"" notes a similar case. In the
turbary near Ely, the peat is digged to a depth of 4 feet. At the
top for about a foot it is chestnut brown and not bedded ; this is suc-
ceeded by 3 feet of black peat, which is bedded, contains roots of
reeds, flags, etc., but in the mass shows vegetable structure obscurely ;
at the bottom is a layer, almost wholly Hypmim, which dries to a
yellow tint and preserves the vegetable structure. It is well known
that the soft parts of plants disappear quickly to become the pulp,
in which the harder parts are embedded and of which they them-
selves eventually become part.

The bark of trees is resistant, even that of trees whose wood
decays rapidly. Darwin''^ remarks that in the valleys of Tierra del
Fuego, it was scarcely possible to crawl along, the way being bar-
ricaded by great mouldering trunks, which had fallen in every direc-
tion. When passing over these natural bridges, one's course was
often arrested by sinking knee-deep into the rotten wood; at other
times, when attempting to lean against a firm tree, one was startled
by finding a mass of decayed matter, ready to fall at the slightest
touch. There are few living in the temperate zone who have not
been startled in like manner by the crashing of a log on which they
had set themselves in the woods. The bark had remained sound

s^ C. J. F. Bunbury, " Notice of Some Appearances Observed in Drain-
ing a Mere," Quart. Jonrn. Gcol. Soc, Vol. 12, 1856, pp. 355, 356.

^•^ S. B. J. Skertchly, " Geology of the Fenland." p. 135.

•'i C. Darwin, " Journal of Researches," Amer. ed., New York, 1846, Vol.
I., p. 302; Vol. II., p. 44.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 57

though the wood was wasting away. The rate of decay is indefinite.
Darwin estimated that in the neighborhood of Valdivia in ChiH, a
stump of 1 8 inches diameter would be changed into a heap of mould
within 30 years ; but in Java, Koorders, cited by Potonie, saw much
fallen timber, decades old yet still in condition for export. In the
northern part of the United States, stumps of maples, elms and
spruces, 18 inches to 2 feet or more in diameter, are often sound
enough after 25 years of exposure to require blasting for their
removal. The wood of oaks and conifers is especially resistant, yet
even those may go rapidly. Lesquereux,^- in referring to the sunken
forest of Drummond lake in the Dismal Swamp, says that standing
stumps of bald cypress (Taxodimn distichuni) are decaying so that
many of them are hollow. Fruits and leaves of trees, falling into
the water and drifting, are arrested by the hollows of these trees
and fill them almost completely. De la Beche,*'^ in discussing the
decay of plants, observes that " this kind of decay is still more in-
structive where upright stems of plants in tropical low grounds,
liable to floods, retain their outside portions sufficiently long to have
their inside hollows partially or wholly filled with leaves and mud or
sand, the whole low ground silting up, so that sands, silt and mud
accumulate around these stems, entombing them in upright position,
without tops, though their roots retain their original extension."
Potonie, in 1895, called attention to the fact that hollow alder stumps
in West Prussia swamps, exposed to high water, are filled with sand
even to the roots, so that they must be cleaned out before the axe is
applied.

Generally speaking, the wood of deciduous trees decays rapidly
while that of conifers changes slowly. Lesquereux, on the page pre-
ceding that just cited, records that in Denmark, about 20 miles below
Copenhagen, there is an extensive grassy plain with one foot of
humus as the soil. Underlying that is a bed of peat-like material,
6 feet thick, composed wholly of closely packed, flattened birch bark.
This, free from earthy matter, is cut out and dried in long rolls.
The woody part of the stems, now nearly fluid or transformed into
a very soft yellow mud, is at the bottom of the deposit, whence it is

'^~ L. Lesquereux, " Geology of Pennsylvania," 1858, p. 847.
'^^ H. T. de la Beche, " Geological Observer," p. 133.

58 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

removed in buckets and dried for fuel. Debray''* found plant re-
mains resembling burnt straw within the peat, — the Torffaserkohle
of V. Giimbel, a by no means rare occurrence in peat. Birch bark
retains its silvery color; the wood of oak is hard and black, but other
woods are soft, yellowish and shrink much in drying. Debray ob-
served in this peat of the Somme valley, some shrubs in an inverted
position, which he very properly regards as proof that they did not
grow where found. Skertchly*^^ reports that the birches of Ruskin-
ton fen are represented only by their papery bark, which retains its
silvery luster; the bark of elms is preserved but the wood is rotten
like touchwood ; wood of oaks, always stained black, is often sound
enough to be used for gates and fencing posts, though usually fit
only for fuel ; but the wood of conifers is little changed, that of yews
retains the peculiar brown color, while that of firs is as white and
sound as if from living trees and the odor of turpentine is distinct
when the wood is cut. The Chamo'cy parts of the New Jersey peat
is so good that much of it can be used in building and in cabinet
work ; the preservation of oak in 'bogs of Ireland and Switzerland
is familiar to all who have visited those countries.

The wood in peat deposits does not always represent material
dead or wasted prior to burial. The logs and stumps in the lower
portion may be remains of a forest destroyed by advance of the
swamp, but that is not necessarily the case with such remains
higher in the peat. Trees growing on the surface of peat are up-
rooted readily by the wind as they have an unstable soil ; if the
forest be not too dense, such overturned stems sink into the pulpy
mass and the deposit becomes crowded with stems, embedded before
decay had set in.

Thus one finds logs, in all stages of decomposition, embedded
in pulpy matter, derived largely from the soft parts of plants and
holding also the waste of various woods as well as abundant pollen,
spores, bacteria, fungi and freshwater algae.

Effect of Pressure on Peat. — Many years ago Lesquereux as-
serted that peat has a laminated structure and since his time other
observers have referred to laminated peat ; but this lamination is not

•'^ L. Debray, " fitude Geologique," etc., pp. 445, 449, 450.
"s " Fenland," pp. 160, 161.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 59

so distinct in ordinary peat as to attract the attention of a casual
observer. Under pressure, however, the structure is well-defined.

Spring*^'' tested the effect of compression on Holland and Bel-
gian peat, mature but retaining much material showing organic
structure. Under pressure of 6,000 atmospheres, this was changed
into a black, brilliant block, with all the physical aspect of a coal ;
the fractured surface, as seen under the glass, was distinctly lami-
nated, while evidence of organic texture had disappeared. Under
this pressure, the peat became plastic and ran out into the chinks of
the compressor. Thoroughly matured peat, after this compression,
does not absorb water and does not return to its original form.
von GiimbeP^ subjected spongy sphagnum-peat to a pressure of
6,000 atmospheres, by which it was rendered apparently homo-
geneous and as hard as pasteboard. A pressure of 20,000 atmos-
pheres increased the density to that of sole leather. In each case,
lamination was distinct and the streak was lustrous, but when
placed in water, the material swelled to almost the original bulk.
Evidently, pressure of brief duration suffices to produce permanent
physical change in well-matured peat though not in the immature
substance. But one is not dependent on laboratory results ; the
experiment has been performed in nature many times and on a
grand scale.

Forchhammer,*'^ in his descriptions of dunes on the Baltic coast,
of Denmark, states that among those dunes are numerous lakes
and ponds characterized by abundant vegetation and by formation
of peat. When an unusual storm passes over the dune, sand is
blown into the ponds and puts an end to growth of peat. This
buried peat, known as Martorv, is exposed when currents cut away
the coast. The phenomenon is not confined to the mainland ; on
the north side of Seeland, there was a pernicious stretch of quick-
sand early in the eighteenth century but, before 1760, it had become

^^ W. Spring, " Recherches sur la propriete que possedent les corps soHdes
de se souder par action de la pression," Bull. Acad. Roy. Bclg., II., Vol. 49,
1880, pp. 367, 368.

6" " BeitrJige," etc., pp. 127, 128.

^s G. Forchhammer, " Geognostische Studien am Meeres-Ufer," Ncucs
Jahrbuch, Jahrg. 1841, citations from pp. 13, 14.

60 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

watered and covered with a dense forest of fir. On the border of
the dune, the sand covered part of a peat-moor, where it had stopped
growth while accumulation continued unchecked on the uncovered
portion. Peat from the latter does not differ from that of bogs
in the neighborhood, but that from the sand-covered portion has
been changed into a wholly different substance. Ordinary Moor-
tor f, dried, weighs from 1 6 to 20 pounds per cubic foot, but that
which has been compressed by the dune weighs 78 pounds. In
ordinary peat, dried, one finds scarcely any trace of layers, but this
compressed peat is almost shale-like in lamination. The Seeland
peat is formed mostly of offal from a forest vegetation, but in hand
specimens one cannot distinguish it from brown coal.

V. Giimbel in 1883 found that the Martorv has alternating bright
and dull laminae, the bright portions consisting chiefly of ribs and
hard parts of grass leaves with admixture of other parts, pollen,
etc. He thought that it bears much resemblance to Lebertorf, but
it is clearly of different origin. One would surmise from the condi-
tions that this Martorv contains both mature and immature peat.
The observations by Jentzsch are confirmatory. He remarks that
the Martorv found near Rixhoft in East Prussia is derived without
doubt from the Bielawe and other moors, that it is compressed
material from underneath the dunes, which now separate those
moors. Nilson"^ has described a vast gravel deposit which follows
the Baltic coast of Sweden for a long distance beyond Ystad and,
at various places, rests on peat.
This material is similar in composition to the recent peat of Sweden.

Lesquereux's'^'' description of conditions in the valley of the
Locle in Switzerland is equally to the point. On the side of the
valley, under a heavy bed of marl, he found 3 inches of compressed
material, hard, fragile and with brilliant fracture ; lower down the
slope, where the marl is but 4 feet thick now, the deposit is 6 to

69 Nilson, cited by J. Geikie, " Prehistoric Europe," p. 473.

" The peat under this stone wall is so compressed that, when dry, it is
almost as hard as brown coal ; the trees also are, like the layers of coal,
pressed together, and when a fir chip is broken, it is found to be black and
shining in the cross-section, all the result of great pressure and age."

■^0 L. Lesquereux, " Quelques recherches sur les marais tourbeux," Mem.
Soc. Sci. Nat. Ncuchatd, Vol. III., 1845, pp. 95, 127.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 61

7 inches thick and retains some peat-like features, but is a passage
from the hgnite of the border to the peat of the open valley, which
has been growing continuously, so that it is now 8 feet thick. In
another connection, he remarks that some deposits of lignite are
surrounded by peat. Goeppert's^^ observation is very similar. A
deposit of peat was found in the low part of a valley near Helvetihof
in Upper Silesia. On both sides of the valley, a portion of the
deposit is covered with 2 to lo feet of soil and sand beds, under
which the peat has been changed into a distinctly laminated, hard
black mass, almost like stone coal ; whereas the peat in the open
valley, uncompressed, has the usual brown color and comparatively
loose structure.

Preservation of Peat Deposits. — The surface of a dead bog is
often irregular as though it were wasting away ; the peat-cover of a
drained area, under cultivation, disappears within a few years as
ploughing exposes more and more of it to oxidation, drying and
the winds. A casual observer of the "hag" region of Scotland
feels justified in believing that peat is formed only to decay and that
little of it will survive to reach a more advanced stage of trans-
formation. This is the conclusion reached by an eminent student of
coal problems and his opinion appears to have been accepted as fact
by several authors. But the conclusion cannot be accepted as final ;
it seems to be based on incomplete observation or on lack of
familiarity with conditions in great areas. The process of removal,
where man does not interfere, is slow, because peat, with its felted
structure and its obstinate retention of water, offers great resistance
to erosion. A very thin cover of fresh peat protects itself and the
underlying rock from removal. The effect of oxidation is not
rapid, as it is necessarily superficial, circulation of air in the drying
peat being confined to the newer portion.

Lowering of the water-level does not mean that the surface is

to become dry and pulverulent, to be swept away by the wind. In

most cases, that lowering of the level leads to invasion by plants

which cannot endure wet conditions, to the growth of a rather dense

cover of vegetation which, by its accumulating offal, protects the

'^ H. B. Goeppert, " Abhandlung eingesandt als Antwort auf die preis-
frage," etc., Amsterdam, 1848, pp. 104, 105.

62 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

peat already formed and adds to the mass. As soon as local or
general conditions again become favorable, peat growth in the ordi-
nary way would be resumed and the invading vegetation would be
killed. The record of alternating wet and dry periods is distinct in
very many deposits which offer no evidence of serious waste during
the passage from one to the other. Some of the less moist periods
must have continued for centuries, if one may judge from the age
of rooted trees in the forest layers. Certainly the desiccation
process did not extend deeply, for the roots of trees in those layers
are spread horizontally in shallow depth, as though avoiding the wet
peat below, just as do the roots of the invading forest trees now.

It is wholly possible that comparatively little of the peat now
forming will reach a later stage in transformation ; the agricultural
importance of peaty lands is understood, as is also the method for
their preservation, so that the work of drainage and reclamation will
be more and more extensive in the future. But with that this study
is not concerned. The questions involved deal with conditions
prior to man's interference with nature's operations. The evidence
all encourages the belief that a very great part of the older peat has
been protected and that the peat now forming in uninhabited regions
will be protected in like manner, to become a genuinely fossil fuel.
Buried peat deposits are known throughout the world.

Forchhammer, Jentzsch, F. E. Geinitz and others have described
dune-covered bogs along the Baltic shores and C. A. Davis has re-
ferred to the same condition in IMichigan. The process continues in
those regions. One finds frequent notes respecting submerged
bogs, often continuous with living bogs on the shore, as though the
swamp had advanced up the surface during the subsidence. In
some localities, portions of the submerged bog are already covered
with materials from the land, while other portions are still free from
cover ; in such cases, the overlying deposit should contain marine
forms. At times, the influx of inorganic matter continues until
land conditions, have been restored and the peat extends over the
new surface. Borings in northwestern Europe pass through a suc-
cession of peat bogs separated by sand or clay. Similar relations
are exposed in deep excavations and occasionally in uplifted areas.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 63

J. Geikie'- has given numerous instances of submerged deposits
on the coast of Scotland. Farther inland, in the Carse lands on both
sides of that country, deeply buried deposits have been exposed by
the rivers. The River Tay has cut its channel down to a peat bog,
now forming the river bed and underlying about 17 feet of alluvial
material, which near the top contains cockles, mussels and other
marine forms. In some parts of the wide Carse area, this ex-
tensive deposit rests on alluvial sands but in others on marine clays.
The peat is much compressed and splits readily into laminje, on
whose surfaces are small seeds and wing cases of insects. As a
rule, it is marked off sharply from the overlying clay and silt, but,
at times, it is covered with vegetable debris which was drifted in
from places higher up in the valley. Skertchly'^^ found that on the
Isle of Ely the peat underlies 4 to 8 feet of silt and clay and rests
on clay, both roof and floor being marine, the peat marking an
interruption in deposition of the clays. Several peat beds are within
12 feet; the lowest, 18 inches thick, is normal, black and clean; but
the higher peats are irregular and impure, mingled with clay, show-
ing the contests between plants and muddy water. Travis^* has
described a case of marine association, which shows also a by no
means unusual relation of the beds. The Seaforth Dock excava-
tion, 40 feet deep, 180 wide and 900 long, exposes two beds of
peat. The lower, 18 to 24 inches thick, rests on gray sand and is
shown for about 280 feet. At 5 to 10 feet higher, the interval
being filled with Strohicularia clay, is the upper bed, 12 inches thick,
which is exposed for 480 feet. It overlaps the lower one. which
thins out. The peat in both bands is firm, woody, with occasional
fragments of bark and twigs, but it contains no stumps or trunks of
trees.

Lorie has recorded a great number of borings in Holland, which
illustrate the succession of buried peat beds, separated by sands
deposited beneath the sea. Rutot has given records showing peat
beds intercalated in marine sediments on the coast of Belgium.

^2 J. Geikie, " The Great Ice Age," 1895, pp. 290-293.
■^3 S. B. J. Skertchly, " Fenland," pp. 140-143.

^* C. B. Travis, " Geological Notes on Recent Dock Excavations at Liver-
pool and Birkenhead," Proc. Liv. Geol. Soc, Vol. XL, 1913, pp. 237-275.

64 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Sirodot" refers to a locality, where one finds a series of alternating
peat and marine deposits, which he explains by supposing that a
bar was formed and broken repeatedly, so that the enclosed area
was alternately freshwater and marine.

But this burial comes also to inland deposits, to those on great
deltas or at the heads of long estuaries, where the covering ma-
terial is of freshwater origin. Much of the Holland-Belgium-
France area, in alb more than 7,000 square miles, was not under the
sea at any time since the peat began to form ; the great peat bed
of the Ganges delta is at 20 to 50 feet below the somewhat irregular
surface and is covered with river silts in an area of not less than
2,500 square miles. Entombment seems to be the fate of large
and small alike. Phillips^*' has recorded the section of the Holder-
ness peats, thus: (i) Clay; (2) peat, with plants, trees and roots;
(3) variegated clays, with freshwater Lynmcra; (4) peat, like No.
2; (5) clay with freshwater Cyclads ; (6) bituminous clay; (7)
coarse sandy clay. Number 2 is the persistent member of the sec-
tion, but varies greatly in thickness and character. Near Hull, it is
30 feet below the surface and 2 feet thick, containing large trees,
Buried swamps abound on the Atlantic coast of the United States,
especially along streams emptying into the long estuaries occupying
" drowned valleys." One citation suffices to illustrate the condi-
tions. Berry'^" says that such swamps are exposed by erosion at
many places along the James, Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers,
all emptying into Chesapeake bay. Most of those observed in
1907-09 were cypress swamps, though some were of the open type
with birch, oak, pine and other forms. When quiet conditions ac-
companied subsidence of the forest bed, clay is the roof, contain-
ing Uitio, if the locality be near the head of the estuary, or Rangia
cuneata, if farther down within reach of saline water. This condi-
tion of quiet subsidence is shown in the photograph of an exposure

''■5 Sirodot, "Age du gisement de Mont-Dol," etc., Comptcs Rendus, Vol.
87, 1878, pp. 267-269.

76 J. Phillips, " Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire," 2d ed., 1835,
Vol. I., pp. 25-27.

'■" E. W. Berry, "Pleistocene Swamp Deposits in Virginia," Amcr. Nat-
uralist, Vol. XLIIL, 1909, pp. 432-436.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 65

near Tappahannock, Virginia, where a bed of massive hard peat is
exposed for half a mile. This is covered with plastic clay, i to 4
feet, underlying 10 to 15 feet of coarse sand. One sees many
cypress stumps in place, with their " knees " projecting into the sand.
Where the subsidence was accompanied or followed by disturbance,
the evidence appears in the more or less planed or eroded surface
on which gravel or sands rest, as is shown in a photograph of peat
with embedded cypress stumps, which is unconformable by erosion
to the overlying sands.

Greater interest attaches to the interglacial buried peats, which
have been covered with material transported during the Ice Age.
These, underlying clays, sands or gravels, exhibit many features
which are important here. Such deposits have been observed in
many lands.

The deeply buried peat of Montgomery county, Ohio, originally
studied by E. Orton, Sr., has been restudied by Dachnowski.'*^ The
exposure is in the bank of a tributary to the ]Miami River and under-
lies 80 to 100 feet of stratified clay and gravel. There are indica-
tions that the deposit is part of a large area and that it marks the
deeper portion of an extensive water-basin. The thickness, as now
exposed, is from i to 4 feet, but, 45 years ago when Orton's descrip-
tion was written, it was from 12 to 20 feet. The uppermost layers
contain undecomposed sphagnum-mosses and underlie fine silty blue
clay. The lower portions grade into a well-decomposed, very com-
pact peat which holds fragments of wood. This peat rests on several
feet of fine sand underlain by clay and gravel. Near the southern
margin, according to Orton, a large quantity of timber was found,
roots, branches and twigs, much of which had been flattened by
pressure. The wood is largely but not exclusively coniferous. New-
berry^^ recalled Collett's discovery in much of southern Indiana of
a buried deposit, 2 to 20 feet thick, containing rooted stumps. In
later years, W J McGee, F. Leverett, F. B. Taylor and J. W. Gold-
thwait have described interglacial deposits, some of which are very
extensive.

"s A. Dachnowski, " Peat Deposits of Ohio," Geol. Surv. Ohio, Bull. 16,
1912, pp. 102, 103.

''^J. S. Newberry, "Geological Survey of Ohio," Vol. II., 1874, pp. 30-32.

66 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Dunlop®" has given details of a section observed by him at about
two miles from Airdrie, Scotland. The order, descending, is (i)
Alluvium, 3 feet; (2) peat, with trees standing up through it, 2 feet;
(3) Upper Boulder clay, containing a 4-inch layer of vivianite near
the bottom, 4 feet; (4) sand with partings of fine clay, 11 inches;
(5) peat, I foot 5 inches; (6) Boulder clay, not measured. The
upper peat bed is recent, 'but the lower is interglacial. The peat of
the latter splits readily into layers and darkens somewhat rapidly
on exposure. Some layers consist of seeds of Hippuris vulgaris and
Menyanthiis trifoliata; others are wholly of mosses and, near the
bottom, are some containing abundant remains of beetles. But no
traces were found of the trees usually found in bogs, aside from
some leaves resembling willow. The cover is sand but silica is prac-
tically wanting in the peat, which, air-dried, contains 6 per cent, of
ash, mostly oxide of iron. In this bed are boulders of sandstone and
gneiss, varying in size and distributed irregularly ; all are waterworn
and those which are little disintegrated show ice-markings.

Reid's*^ report, on behalf of a committee, which studied the de-
posits at Hoxne, on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, England,
relates that at that place a bed of lignite, i to 3 feet thick and dis-
appearing at the borders of the valley, rests on a carbonaceous clay
containing lacustrian shells and some drifted seeds. The bulk of the
lignite consists of alder wood preserving the bark, offal from alders
along with remains of other plants, all of the swamp-loving type —
altogether, 37 species of flowering plants and 11 of mosses. The
presence of pools in the swamp is indicated by the occurrence of
Va'vata, Pisidinm, rare fishbones and elytra of 'beetles in the lignite ;
every plant indicates a temperate climate. A black loam, 13 feet
thick, overlies the lignite : it is beautifully laminated and contains
well-preserved remains of plants belonging to a cold climate, the
arctic willow and birch. Fragments of plants belonging to a tem-
perate climate occur in this loam, but their condition shows that they
were derived from the underlying deposit. Above the loam are

80 R. Dunlop, " Note on a Section of Boulder-Cla}', containing a Bed of
Peat," Trans. Gcol. Soc. Glasgow, Vol. VIII., pp. 312-324.

81 C. Reid, " The Relation of Paleolithic Man to the Glacial Epoch," Rep.
Brit. Assoc. Adv. Set., 1896, pp. 400-415.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 67

gravels and brick-clay, the latter containing freshwater shells, frag-
ments of wood and paleolithic implements. These facts presented by
Reid show that the peat has been converted by pressure into a lignite-
like substance; the growth of the swamp was checked and the peat
may have been exposed during the considerable period of changing
climate, which led to the introduction of a subarctic flora. Direct
superposition and conformability are certainly not evidence of con-
tinuity of deposition.

De la Harpe*- saw a bed of peat at Lausanne, Switzerland, one
meter and a half thick, underlying gravel and resting on marl. The
peat is mixed with marl in the l6west part and the highest part
contains some fine micaceous sand. Here and there in the black
peat are occasional rock fragments, wholly isolated, as though one
had cast them into the soft mass. Seeds, tree stems and branches,
altogether decayed, were observed with, here and there in the upper
part, a fragment of bark resembling birch. The underlying marl is
without pebbles but has abundance of Lyinncca, Vali'ofa, Planorhis,
Cyclas and Pisidiiun.

Keilhack^^ saw a coal deposit near Lauenberg on the Elbe, with
these relations, descending: (i) Upper clay, with shells; (2) diluvial
sand, 15 meters; (3) coal bed, consisting of (a) fragmentary coal
with stems and branches, {b) fruits and leaves, (c) moss; (4) clay;
(5) diluvial sand with Cardinm edidc.

No additional details are given in the abstract. During the dis-
cussion, Hauchecorne and Beyrich insisted that the material is not
coal but peat. Evidently the change in physical character was suffi-
cient to make the relations somewhat doubtful. It is to be noted that
the transformation is most advanced in the upper part and that the
moss at the bottom appears to have undergone little change.

The deposits at Klinge, near Kottbus in Brandenburg, have given
rise to much discussion as did that at Lauenberg. Keilhack^* ex-
amined the great excavation and observed this succession, descend-

82 Ph. De la Harpe, " Sur un gisement de tourbe glaciaire," Bull. Soc.
Vaud. Lausaufie, Vol. XIV., 1877, pp. 456-458.

83 Keilhack, Zeitsch. d. d. geol. Gesell, Bd. XXXVIL, 1885, p. 549.

84 H. Keilhack, " Der Alter der Torflager und ihrer Begleitschichten von
Klinge bei Kottbus," Zeitsch. d. d. geol. Gesell., Bd. XLIV., 1892, pp. 369-371.

68 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

ing: (i) Diluvial sand, 2 to 2.5 meters; (2) carbonaceous clay, 1.2
meter; (3) brown coal, peat-like, i meter to 3 decimeters; (4) clay
marl, 3 to 3.5 meters; (5) peat, 45 centimeters; the upper part is
Aloostorf with seeds and reeds, while the lower portion has leaves,
wood, seeds, rhizomes of Nymphcca; (6) Lebertorf with diatoms,
I.I meter.

The Lebertorf is a lens-like deposit and is replaced in the southern
part of the excavation by a meter of sand. Keilhack could not
determine the age of the beds and maintained that the matter could
be determined only by a boring. A. Nehring, in the discussion, held
that the deposit is interglacial and probably equivalent in age to the
Schieferkohle of Utznach and Diirnten. Credner*^ visited the same
locality and obtained a section, evidently from another portion of
the excavation. The peat is a single bed with maximum of a meter
and a half. Number 4 of Keilhack's section being absent. The
Lebertorf rests on clayey marl overlying sand. He thinks that the
peat is post-glacial. In the following year, Potonie^*^ summed up con-
clusions presented by H. Credner, H. Keilhack, A. Nehring as well
as by other observers and discussed in detail the relations of the
flora found in the Klinge deposits. This is distinctly diluvial. The
succession is that of so many peat-filled basins, Lebertorf below,
succeeded by peat in which are many erect rooted stumps, clearly
in situ. The compression, due to weight of the overlying deposit,
had so changed the appearance that Keilhack thought it brown coal
with peat-like features, while Credner preferred to call it peat with
resemblance to brown coal.

Weber^' described two interglacial peat deposits, exposed during
excavation of a canal from the Elbe to the Eider. One, seen where
the canal emerges upon the Eider lowland, is exposed for more than
1,600 feet. The underlying material varies. The bed is in two
divisions separated by sand ; the upper one has suffered much from
disturbance and is broken up badly, while the lower one is practically

s^ H. Credner, " Ueber die geologische Stellung der Klinger Schichten,"
Ber. Ges. Wiss. Leipzig, Bd. XLIV., 1892, pp. 385-402.

^° H. Potonie, Natiirzinss.-Wochenschrift., Bd. VIII., 1893, pp. 393 fif.

s^ C. Weber, " Ueber zwei Torflager im Bette des Nord-Ostsee-Canales
bei Griinenthal," Neucs Jahrhuch, 1891, Bd. III., pp. 62 fif.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 69

undisturbed, though at one end of the exposure it is curved upward
so as ahnost to reach the surface. The succession in the lower
division is clearly that observed in peat-filled ponds. The quartz
sand on which the peat rests is without lime; by increase of humic
matter, it passes gradually into peat with roots, leaves and fruits
of Potamogcton and rhizomes of Phragmites; Hypnmn fluitans
appears at the top of this bottom layer, which passes upward into a
thin layer of hard peat, mostly Hypnum fluitans accompanied by
Potamogefon and Phragmites, the latter increasing above. Inde-
terminate fragments of beetle-elytra, pollen of conifers and Betiila,
with spores of Hypnum are abundant. This in turn passes very
gradually into the third layer, 65 centimeters thick, very sandy.
brittle peat, containing abundance of twigs and roots of Finns syl-
z'cstris with leaves, seeds and wood of Betula verrucosa, leaves of
willow and wood of Corylns; there is much compressed wood, prob-
ably willow, some wood of fir and juniper was seen along with rhi-
zomes of Nuphar, Typha, Potamogcton, etc. The highest layer is
moss-peat, about a meter and a half thick, mostly Hypnum hamifolius
with very little wood and rare Sphagnum.

The conditions are similar to those recorded in many recent peat
deposits. But during deposition of the overlying sand, as shown
by Weber's profile, the lower beds sufl:ered much from erosion at
one side, where the upper surface is jagged. The whole mass, in-
cluding both divisions and the sand parting, has been subjected to
severe lateral pressure, producing disruption of the upper division,
upturning of both, so that the old peat deposit is almost united to
the recent bog covering the present surface.

]\Iolengraaff®^ reports that, in Borneo on the JMandai river, he
saw thin layers of peat alternating with clay loam, the peat so com-
pressed as to resemble brown coal. On the same river he saw thin
beds of coal, evidently of recent origin ; it is of poor quality, is lami-
nated, lustrous, and has cleavage in two directions, breaking into
parallelopipedons.

The deposits of Schieferkohle show similar features but on a
much more extensive scale. Heer®'' examined the Schieferkohle at

88 G. A. F. Molengraafif, " Borneo," etc., Eng. ed., p. 43.

89 O. Heer, " Die Schieferkohle von Utznach und Diirnten," Zurich, 1858,

70 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Diirnten, where he found about 12 feet of coal resting on marly
clay, with freshwater mollusks, and underlying about 30 feet of sand
and gravel. The bed is divided by six partings of dark earthy ma-
terial unfit for fuel and, in all, about 2 feet thick. The benches of
coal are not alike. The lowest contains much wood and cones of
Pinus abies, which are wanting in higher parts of the bed. In each
of the upper benches, one finds, first, layers of moss felted into dense
masses and pierced by reeds, which are followed by trunks lying
in all directions, associated with roots, barks and pieces of wood,
seldom very thick and always pressed flat. The annual rings are
distinct though, at times, they have been distorted by the pressure.
Some stems are wholly coaled as if by lightning. The tree trunks,
as in peat, are embedded in a brown-black substance, derived un-
questionably from herbaceous plants and originally forming a pulpy
mass. This succession appears in every bench except the highest,
in which reeds and mosses predominate, while stems of trees are
comparatively rare. At Unterwetzikon, the lignite rests on marl
with freshwater shells. At Utznach, there are two beds of lignite,
5 and 3 feet thick, separated by 16 to 20 feet of marly deposits. At
Morschwyl, the Schieferkohle, variable in thickness, overlies and
underlies marl and has a cover of 26 to 70 feet. It contains vertical
stems, which in many cases extend into the overlying marl.

Heer's study of the plants proved that the resemblance of Schie-
ferkohle to peat is complete. The trees are Pimis abies, P. sylvestris
and P. montana, which are prostrate — they must have been over-
turned and been sunken in the bog. The wood is soft when first
removed, but it hardens quickly on exposure ; the bark is commonly
present and twigs and branches, retaining the leaves, occur fre-
quently. Other trees are yew, larch, white birch and sycamore. The
last is represented by a few leaves in the lignitiferous clays. Corylus
is not rare ; Menyantlins is represented by abundant seeds and PJi rag-
mites abounds in the clay partings with Scirpus; Sphagiinni and
three species of Hypnwn were obtained at Diirnten. The Schiefer-
kohle and its partings contain abundance of mussels and swamp in-

pp. 7-1 1 ; "The Primseval World of Switzerland," London, 1876, Vol. I., pp.
29, 30; Vol. II., 155, 157, 160-163.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 71

sects, while among the higher animals which perished in the bog are
Rhinoceriis leptorhimis and Elcphas antiquns.

Deicke**" looks upon the Swiss diluvial coal as a link between
peat and brown coal ; it passes over into both types. He discussed
only the Alorschwyl deposit as Heer had given details respecting
those at Utznach and Diirnten. The coal lies in diluvium, 40 to 50
feet above the ]\fiocene, is covered with drift-material, often 80
feet thick, and rests on ashen-gray shale or on a clayey sand con-
taining small pebbles. The lowest coal layer encloses very many
stems of trees, among which Scotch fir, red and white spruces, oaks,
birches and others can be identified. All had been broken off and
the fragments are from 8 to 12 feet long with, in some cases, a
diameter of 3 feet. Except wdiere the stumps are rooted, the stems
are prostrate and show very marked compression. Birches are much
flattened, the width of a stem being often 24 times its thickness.
Conifers are less compressed, the width being rarely more than 4
times the thickness. Above this layer is a clay-shale parting, one
foot thick, on which rests a coal composed chiefly of grasses and
mosses, but containing many birches, some Scotch firs and rare
spruces. In the clay shale and in the lower coal, Deicke found a
great quantity of cones of Scotch fir, red and white spruce, rare
cupulas of oak, seeds of various grasses and wings of insects. The
second bench of coal is succeeded by 4 feet of coaly shale, on which
is another coal bed, averaging 3 feet and broken by shaly partings.
The whole deposit thins away toward the borders. The coaly shale
has nests of Schieferkohle and shows erect stems which, though frac-
tured, are not compressed. Deicke recognizes Waldmoor conditions
here ; a forest was overwhelmed by mud, on which a Torfmoor
developed. The trees died and were blown over; cones of spruce
and fir remained in the mud and projected into the growing peat;
Scotch firs, birches and the rest grew on the peat and were destroyed,
wdien that material increased. Then came the influx of detritus and
the resulting compression. Wood comprises about one tenth of the
mass. When exposed to the air and sunshine, the lignite changes,
loses texture and becomes Pechkohle ; but complete change takes

90 J. C. Deicke, " Ueber die Diluvial-Kohle bei Morschwyl im Kanton
St. Gallen," Ncucs Jalirbuch, 1858, pp. 659-663.

72 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

place only in small stems and is rare when the diameter exceeds 2
inches. One end of a stem may be changed while the other retains
its woody structure.

Kle'bs^^ described a coal which he saw at about 30 miles south-
west from Konigsberg: it underlies 15 feet of sand and overlies
gravel, both of them diluvial. The section, descending, is : Black
earthy coal, i foot; clear brown coal, 7 inches; dark, brown coal,
3 inches. The three benches are as sharply distinct as those of any
peat bog or bed of stone coal. The whole thickness, including the
thin partings, is 2 feet and the middle bench is harder than that
above it.

Von Glimbel,^^ who had studied the Bavarian Schieferkohle in
place, subjected to microscopical examination material collected at
localities in Bavaria and Switzerland. He describes the Schiefer-
kohle as partly loose, partly dense in structure, often like Pechkohle.
It contains many flattened branches and parts of trees belonging to
conifers, birch, willow, alder, in part lignite but at times already
Pechkohle. Solution of caustic potash converts the less dense por-
tion into a soft closely felted mass, in which the microscope shows,
as predominating, parts of mosses and grass leaves. Tissue of wood
appears rarely. The dense Pechkohle required treatment with
Bleichflussigkeit (potassium chlorate and nitric acid) in order to
bring out the structure. The densest material is that from Mor-
schwyl, which shows the same plants as those in the looser or less
dense portions along with an amorphous textureless substance like
dopplerite. The density is due to this material, which he terms
Carbohumin. Pollen, spores of mosses and lichens are not very
abundant ; cones of conifers are numerous in the coal mass, but are
little deformed though they lie alongside of compressed stems. The
inside of stems is yellowish and soft like decayed wood, but the
bark zone has been converted into bright Pechkohle.

The Bavarian localities are typical. At Imbergtobal, near
Sonthofen, a brown coal deposit is divided by partings of sandy
marl, which are crowded with plant fragments and conifer needles

91 R. Klebs, " Die Braunkohlenformation um Heiligenbeil," Schrift. Ges.
Konigsberg, Jahrg. 21, 1880, p. 82.

^- C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 135-138.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 73

and have the features suggesting deposition by floods, which re-
peatedly overspread the continuously growing peat. They bear
close resemblance to the partings seen in most coal beds. At Gross-
weil, near the Kochelsee, the Schieferkohle consists of easily sepa-
rated layers of brown coal, twigs and wood fragments with others
of leaves of grasses and mosses. The composition is made clear by
solution of caustic potash. Sphagnum is the chief constituent of
the moss layers ; in others, pollen is abundant with small nests of
fibrous peat and an alga. The deposit is distinctly one of peat and,
at all localities, the coal-like and the peat-like portions pass gradu-
ally into each other.

Von Ammon^^ has given some notes respecting the distribution
of Bavarian Schieferkohle. He states that a diluvial formation
extends along the Loisach in an area of 9 by 2 kilometers between
the Murnauer AIoos and the Kochelsee. In this is embedded the coal
bed mined near Gross weil (about 40 miles south-southwest from
Miinchen), which he thinks is a forested Flachmoor of intra-
morainal age. It was opened at one time near Ohlstadt, where it is
double and about 1.6 meter thick. At 10 meters above is another
bed showing coal, 0.7 and 0.6 meter, separated by a parting of one
meter. The coal is an earthy brown coal with inclusion of lignite.
The Schieferkohle of Sonthofen varies much but is often several
feet thick. At Josephsfelde, the thickness is from one to 3 meters;
at Imbergtobal, there are two beds, three meters apart ; the lower
is from 2 to 5 meters thick and upper about 1.5 meter and impure.

Schieferkohle occurs in extensive deposits within Upper Austria,
Styria and Tyrol. Lorenz"* reported upon the conditions observed
by him in the Hausrucker mountains of Upper Austria. The suc-
cession is : Fragmentary material, Kohle-Tegel system, Tegel, and
the deposits appear to be conformable. The coal-marl system is
from 100 to 150 feet thick and at most localities it shows three coal
beds. The top and bottom beds are 7 to 8 feet thick, but the
middle one is 12 feet. The lower beds are separated by a small

92 L. V. Ammon, " Bayerische Braunkohlen unci ihre Verwertung,"
Miinchen, 191 1, pp. 9, 10, 63.

'■^^ J. R. Lorenz, " Ueber die Enstehung der Hausrucker Kohlenlager,"
Sitz.-Bcr. k. Akad. IViss. IVicn, Bd. XXII., 1857, PP. 660-664.

74 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

interval, but the top bed is usually about 90 feet above the second.
Each bed is limited above and below by coaly shale, 2 inches to
2 feet thick, which passes gradually into gray-blue marly clay. The
lower beds are double, divided by carbonaceous shale. The parting
in the lower bed is 2 inches thick, at 2 to 3 feet from the floor and
is known as the " Hohl-lag " ; that in the middle bed, known as the
" Koth-lag," is almost paper-thin but is persistent. Besides these
there occur occasionally in these beds layers of charred material,
one third to one half inch thick and termed "Brand-lag"; they are
of limited extent and cannot be regarded as partings. As the
peculiarities of the beds convinced the author that these are com-
posed of in situ plants, he explains the "Brand-lag" as derived
from burned vegetable matter^ — that possibly the surface of the
deposit had been ignited by lightning. After the fire had burned
out, vegetation began anew. The mass of charred matter is enclosed
in unchanged lignite, the separation being sharply defined.

Schreiber^^ has referred to two diluvial moors, one near Piehl in
Styria and the other at Hopfgarten in Tyrol. That at Piehl is at
200 meters above the bottom of the present valley and is from one
to one and a half meter thick. It underlies 150 meters of con-
glomeratic materials, and this great burden has so compressed it
that it resembles brown coal; but Schreiber objects strenuously to
the term Schieferkohle, preferring Schiefertorf, to distinguish it
more sharply from the Tertiary brown coal. At Piehl, it rests on a
marl ; the lowest layer is brown hypnetum peat with loose texture,
on which rests reed or rush peat, containing much earthy matter.
Then follows a comparatively thick layer of Bruchtorf, composed
chiefly of firs and birches. The highest layer is ,a sedge-moss peat
and is thin at all localities examined by Schreiber. Overlying this
bed is sandy clay, succeeded by moraine stuff and glacial debris.
The Hopfgarten deposit overlies more than 100 meters of glacial
debris, from which it is separated by clay bands. It was measured
at three places and the thickness seems to be almost constant at
about a meter and a half. The lowest portion is Riedtorf, with
much mud and consisting mostly of sedges, though, here and there,

95 H. Schreiber, " Vergletscherung und Moorbildung," etc., pp. 27-29.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 75

reed and brown moss peat are shown. Well-marked Bruchtorf
follows, composed mostly of Fichte, though occasional specimens of
Scotch fir and birch were seen. According to Zailier, the sedge-
moss peat follows, but Schreiber saw only a mere fragment of it.
The deposit underlies moraine stuff. The Hopfgarten peat is less
like coal than that at Piehl, though both are of the same age.
Schreiber explains this by difference in the pressure.

Bursting Bogs. — Peat often remains a long time in the condition
of " quaking bog." The floating mat constantly increases in thick-
ness, so that at length it can carry large trees ; but, under it, material
from the bottom of the mat accumulates slowly and is pulpy. After
long-continued rains, water may collect in such quantity as to break
the cover and the black mud may be discharged upon lower levels.
Lyell,^'' referring to the Solway moss in southern Scotland, states
that its surface, covered with grass and rushes, shakes under the
least pressure, the bottom being unsound and semi-fluid. On De-
cember 1 6, 1772, having been filled like a sponge during long-con-
tinued heavy rains, this bog swelled above the surrounding area and
finally burst. A stream of half consolidated black mud crept over
the plain with speed like that of an ordinary lava-current. The
deluge covered about 400 acres. Tait^''' says that a very great part
of the moss of Kincardine is a quaking bog, the peat being so wet
as to be semi-fluid. During the process of reclamation, the support
for the mass was removed and, on March 21, 1792, the peat began
to run on the west side and the flow covered about an acre. On the
same day in 1793, the flow was repeated and the peat mud covered
nearly 12 acres of the cleared space. The extreme depth of the
overflow was 8 feet.

The phenomenon is by no means rare. Lyell conceives that
lakes and arms of the sea must occasionally become receptacles of
drift peat ; and in this way he would explain alternations of clay
and sand with deposits of peat, found frequently on some coasts.
This explanation would sufifice only for some indefinite and in-
significant deposits ; it is difficult to conceive how the required con-

^6 C. Lyell, " Principles of Geology," New York, 1872, Vol. II., pp. 510, 511.
9^ C. Tait, " An Account of the Peat-Mosses of Kincardine and Flanders,
Perthshire," Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, Vol. III., 1794, p. 278.

76 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

ditions could exist on great plains ; lake deposits are too small to be
important in this connection.

The Floor or Mur of Peat Deposits. — In regions where cal-
careous matter abounds, the floor of peat originating in ponds or
lakes is apt to be the familiar lake marl, formed by Chara and
mollusks, and containing other freshwater forms. Where calcareous
matter is lacking, fine clay is the usual floor. Marl and clay are
almost impervious ; the impression has prevailed that peat grows
only on a floor impervious to water.

But marshes and bog deposits may originate on rock of any sort,
which is free from constituents injurious to plant life. The great
Okefinokee Swamp of Georgia and the much greater Dismal Swamp
of Virginia and North Carolina rest, in great part, on sand and in
each the peat is thick. The buried peat of the Holland-Belgium-
France area has mostly a floor of blue clay, though in many places
it rests on sand. Typical freshwater peat may overlie marine sands,
clays or limestones. The Carse land peats of Scotland, according
to J. Geikie, have as the floor marine sands or marine clays ; Mog-
gridge found a similar condition in the Swansea excavations.
Rohhumus or Trockentorf, so familiar in our forests, grows on bare
rock ; even granite may be the floor.

Davis"^ saw " climbing bogs " in northern Michigan, which had
grown on smooth glacier polished granite. One, on an isolated rock
hill, showed Sphagnum in spots, evidently thrifty and making a good
growth, but most of the surface was covered with reindeer lichen,
both in the open and under trees and shrubs. The peaty cover is
thin and fibrous, with little moisture, but this supports the usual
trees and shrubs, conifers with white birch and mountain ash as well
as some heaths. A small island, with rounded glaciated surface and
embracing about 3 acres, rises about 30 feet above Bubbling lake.
The peat covering it is usually thin, about one foot but occasionally
reaching 3 feet. It is coarse, spongy and brown, contains tree
trunks, not thoroughly rotted, along with abundant partially de-
cayed roots and stems of plants. When this locality was examined,
the peat was so dry as to burn. The flora consists of the conifer-

^* C. A. Davis, " Peat," 1907, pp. 264-269.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 77

heath society. An indication of the mode in which peat formation
began was observed on the north side of this island, where some
spaces of otherwise bare rock were covered with a mat of Sphagnum
with other mosses and lichens. As soon as these form their de-
posit, other plants obtain foothold and thenceforward accumulation
of peat is continuous, if atmospheric conditions remain favorable.
The growth of peat in a region where rain, at times, is wanting for
weeks and where the soil is a coarse peat, only an inch or two deep
and resting on a smooth rock, is due to condensation of atmospheric
moisture in fogs. The plant society of this high, dry peat bed is
very closely allied to that which characterizes the older and more
mature portions of peat beds with a rock substratum — a confirma-
tion of the belief that both are xerophytic habitats.

Chevalier's^'' observations in the Niger area, between 5° and 9°
N.L., show that in that region, at 200 to 400 meters above sea-level,
a sedge grows luxuriantly on the bare granite and gneiss, where it
attaches itself so firmly as to resist the winds and the tropical rains.
There, in hundreds of square miles within French West Africa, this
sedge-growth has caused an accumulation of peat, 5 to 30 cen-
timeters thick. The conditions are wholly unfavorable to increase
of peat, as there is a dry season, during which the plants wither and
the loss is accentuated by fires ; yet the surface is covered with a
fibrous material, described as very humic.

Ordinarily, however, some organic film is necessary, if the
growth is to be rapid. As already stated, those engaged in the peat
industry learned long ago that, if peat be removed wholly so as to
lay bare the underclay, regeneration of the bog is very slow ; but if
a thin cover of peat be left on the floor, it is more rapid. The
passage from the floor to clean peat may be gradual or abrupt. If
the accumulation be in a pond, the transition may be marked by a
faux-mur, showing laminae of sand, clay or marl and peat, or it
may consist more or less of the Lebertorf or Sapropel mud. In
other types of deposits this faux-mur may consist of alternating
peat and silt or sand, evidence of repeated Hooding before the peat-
forming plants gained the mastery. At times the passage is abrupt,

99 A. Chevalier, " Les tourbieres de rocher de I'Af rique tropicale,"
Comptes Rendns, Vol. 149, 1909, pp. 134-136.

78 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

especially where expansion of the bog was by transgression, as is
so often observed in plain deposits. The peat itself may be the
mur for a new deposit, as where the drying of the upper portion
invites invasion by a forest growth, to be destroyed by increasing
moisture and return of bog conditions.

A very notable feature of the mur is the abundance at many
places of roots and rooted stumps. This has been observed in all
parts of the world, and the instances are so numerous that only a
few need be cited as illustrations. Tait'^°'^ states that the mosses
described by him cover about 9,000 acres. The lowest part of the
peat consists very largely of decayed wood, mingled with some
black earth and occasional bunches of heather, better developed than
those now growing on the surface of the bog. Innumerable tree
trunks are at the bottom, lying alongside of their stumps, which,
like the heath bundles, are still fixed in the clay. A considerable
portion of the moss has been reclaimed by drainage and by complete
removal of the peat. The trees at the bottom are oak, birch, hazel,
alder, willow and, in one place, a few firs. In one clearing, 40
large oak trunks were found lying by their rooted stumps. These
stumps, rooted in the clay, rise about 3 feet and are so little
changed that they can be removed only with difficulty. But the
stumps of other trees are so badly decayed that little can be said
about them except that they are rooted in the underclay. Aiton^"^
has remarked that the suggestion that peat deposits originated in
forests is abundantly supported by the very frequent occurrence
of trees or roots in the underclay. He never had examined a moss
of any great extent without finding on its borders and where the
peat had been removed " roots of trees still in the ground with their
fangs extended as they grew." Along the river Aven, roots of trees
are found under every moss " with their shoots firmly clasped into
the earth, where they grew." Geikie^°^ says that in many mosses,
the tree stumps are of approximately uniform height and that the

100 Q Xait, " Peat-Mosses of Kincardine," etc., pp. 228, 269, 271, 272.

101 W. Alton, " A Treatise on the Origin, Qualities and Cultivation of
Moss-Earth," Glasgow, 1805, pp. 29, 33.

i°- J. Geikie, " On the Buried Forests and Peat-Mosses of Scotland,"
Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinh., Vol. XXIV., 1867, pp. 379, 381.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 79

peat grows over the trees which it has killed. A moss on the Isle
of Man shows large trees, erect in place, with 20 feet of peat over
them.

In 1837, the officers of the Ordnance Survey^"^ reported that the
lowest layer of fir trees overlies 3 to 5 feet of turf ; but not so with
the oaks, as their stumps are commonly found resting on the
gravel or on small hillocks of gravel and sand, which so often stud
the surfaces of bogs.

Reade^"* has shown that a railway cutting through Glazebrook moss
exposed 18 feet of peat containing, in a thickness of 3 to 4 feet
near the base, remains of trees and branches embedded in the peat.
When the peat has been removed, one sees the oak and birch stools
rooted in the underclay. A fine overturned tree with roots at-
tached was exposed. It was 46 feet long and 3 feet in diameter
just above the root.

Skertchly's"^ observations are equally to the point. In describ-
ing conditions in the Fenland counties of England, he says that
trees are to be found in the peat everywhere, but that Digby and
Bourn for the north and near Ely for the south are the most con-
venient localities for study. At these places, the trees rooted in situ
are mostly oaks and are often of gigantic size ; in not a few in-
stances, the stems are 70 to 80 feet long and clear to the branch,
distinct evidence of forest growth. In one moor he examined an
overturned tree, which was 36 feet long with maximum diameter
of 30 inches. Bark was preserved on the underside of the tree, but
was carbonized and it crumbled into cuboidal fragments. In
another fen, oaks are numerous and all are broken off at 2 to 3 feet
from the ground, that is at the top of the peat. Some birches were
here but only the bark remains ; a few elms also, which were

102 " Ordnance Survey and Report of the County of Londonderry," cited
by R. C. Taylor, " Statistics of Coal," 2d ed., 1855, p. 169.

" It is a very remarkable fact, though very common, that successive layers
of stumps and trees, in the erect position and furnished with all their roots,
are found at distinctly different levels and at a small vertical distance from
each other."

^0* T. M. Reade, " On a Section through Glazebrook Moss, Lancashire,"
Quart. Journ. Gcol. Soc, Vol. 34, 1878, pp. 808, 810.

i°5 S. B. J. Skertchly, " Geology of the Fenland," pp. 158-162, 167.

80 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

recognized by their bark, the wood having decayed. Near Ely, he
found a forest of yews, which penetrated the underclay into a thin
layer of sand, in which their roots were spread out horizontally ;
thence the stems passed upward into the peat. In another fen,
where the lowest peat is fetid and is known as "bears' muck," he
saw a forest of oaks wnth roots extending into the Kimmeridge
Clay below. The stumps, broken off usually at 3 feet from the
roots, are associated with the prostrate stems.

Lorie^*"' cites Belpaire pere to the eft'ect that in Zeeland trees
rooted in the subsoil occur frequently in the peat. In discussing the
conditions within an area of 1,400 square miles in Holland, Lorie
says one finds there one or more peat beds covered with a greater
or less thickness of sediment; these are autochthonous and contain
stems of trees rooted in the subsoil. He has described a fossil forest
near Fochtelos in the great Hochmoor of Smilde, Holland. For-
merly, one saw there only a marshy heath ; but the surface was lowered
by drainage and by cultivation of buckwheat, so that the forest
became visible. The trees are oaks with some aspens. The greater
proportion of them have been broken oft" near the surface, probably
after death, and the stems lie usually in a southwest to northeast
direction. Those examined by Lorie appeared to be rooted in the
peat but very near the bottom ; but his guide maintained that all the
fully exposed stumps seen by him were rooted in the subsoil.

Sections published in works on the Scandinavian swamps show
the frequency of trees in the lower part of peat deposits, rooted in
the underclay. A^on Post"' has published a photograph of the forest
bed in the Tarns jomoor, which had been exposed by removal of the
peat.

Potonie"'^ has discussed a great moor near Stelle, which is ac-
cessible in dry years. At one locality he saw, underlying 0.03 meter
of sedge-peat, on which is one meter of sphagnum-peat, a forest

106 J. Lorie, Arch. Mus. Teyler, II., Vol. III., 1890, pp. 424-427; II., Vol.
IV., 1893, p. 183.

107 L. Von Post, " Die Torfmoore Narkes," C. R. Xllme Cong. Geol. Int.,
Stockholm, 1912, pp. 1282, 1283.

108 H. Potonie, " Ueber Autochthonie von Karbonkohlen-Flotzen," etc.,
Jahrh. d. k. preuss. gcol. Landesanst, 1895, pp. 25, 26: "Die Entstehung der
Steinkohle," Naturw.-lV ochcnschr., II., Bd. IV., 1905, pp. 7-9.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 81

bed, which is filled with many large and small remains of firs, yews,
oaks, birches and alders. The stems are mostly prostrate but with
them are many stumps of fir and oak rooted in the bed. The same
author, in a later publication, asserts that a Hochmoor may originate
on a bed of sand if only there be sufficient moisture. To prove his
position, he gives a reproduction of a photograph showing the floor
of an extensive Hochmoor, which expanded by encroachment upon a
forest growing on sand. The vertical stumps are exposed where the
peat was removed.

The condition is familiar in the United States; G. H. Cook, N. S.
Shaler, C. A. Davis, D. W. Johnson and others have considered the
subject in detail. Davis has described conditions in the Pocosons
or swamps on the coastal plain in North Carolina. But there are
many peat deposits which did not originate on forested areas ; those
have no trees rooted in the soil below. There are others beginning
in open area but expanding by transgression into a forested area ;
these have the rooted trees in one portion but not in the other.

It is unnecessary to cite evidence that the peat itself may be a soil
for growth of non-water-loving trees. In every land, the peat de-
posits show successive forest beds, the trees being rooted in the
peat and not penetrating to the underclay or subsoil. Numerous
instances have been noted in preceding pages. But it is well to
emphasize the fact that the opinion that plants have repugnance to
thrusting their roots down into peat and that trees do not grow on
peat, living or dead, is wholly erroneous. Plants disliking an acid
soil certainly do not thrive on peat; but there are plants for which
an acid soil is essential. Among these are some of the largest trees
of America. That they have grown luxuriantly is certain, for in
many of the extensive peat deposits in this country, the peat is com-
mercially worthless because it is so crowded with stumps and stems.
In many vast swamps of the coastal plain, a sounding rod cannot be
thrust to the bottom and a similar condition has been reported from
many places in the interior.

The Roof or Toit. — The roof of a buried peat bog may be as
variable as the floor. It may be sand, clay or marl, freshwater or
marine; the transition may be gradual, a faux-toit consisting of

82 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

alternating lamin?e of peat and sediment; or it may be abrupt. Of
course, the trees growing on the surface of the bog cannot escape
when the bog is killed; if the floods be violent and the winds be high
many of the trees, rooted in yielding soil, will be overturned; but if
the covering material be conveyed by the ordinary winds or by an
overflowing flood, the larger number of the trees will remain erect
or at most inclined. Davis^°^ has given an illustrative case. He has
figured a standing tree trunk seen near Marquette, Michigan. The
outer dune at that place had been cut by a storm only a few days
before his visit. The waves had undercut the bank and the sand
had slipped ofi^, leaving a vertical face. Near the base was a layer
of peat, one foot thick, filled with unchanged roots of shrubs and
Norway pine. A partly decayed trunk of pine, rooted in the peat, its
roots not extending below it, rises 8 feet through the overlying sand.
That the accumulation resting on the peat was not due to a sudden
overwhelming is clear, for at 2 feet above the peat is a layer of
Norway pine needles, while from that to the surface, are irregular
layers of sand with roots of trees, grasses and leaves of pine. The
accumulation was slow enough to permit vegetable growth at several
levels, but the stem did not break away, though the climate is moist.
It is possible for trees to remain alive for a long time after a thick
cover of porous material has been laid on the surface. Geinitz,^^**
has described a forest of great oaks and beeches, growing on a bed of
peat and covered in part by a dune. On the surface of the advancing
dune, one sees, as it were, thick-stemmed oak and beech shrubs ; but
these are merely the upper portions of trees, still living, but in great
part buried in the loose sand. At Morschwyl in Switzerland, where
the overlying deposit is fine-grained, stems 6 feet high project from
the peat into the marl above. Berry has described the buried bog
on the Chesapeake waters, where the cypress knees pass into the
overlying deposit. Seventy years ago, Lesquereux found leaves in
the marl overlying peat and the partings of Schieferkohle have plant
impressions. These leaves are transported material.

At several localities to which reference has been made, one finds

109 C. A. Davis, " Peat," 1907, p. 253.

110 F. E. Geinitz, " Nach der Sturmflut," Aus der Natur, Vol. IX., 1908,
pp. 76-83.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 83

a succession of peat beds, separated by clay, sand or marl, while
peat is forming on the present surface. Some of these beds show
trees rooted in the underlying material.

Soils of l^egetation. — The rocks intervening between peat hori-
zons occasionally show what may be termed soils of vegetation, on
which plants grew but no peat accumulated. Thomson"^ states that
in making excavation for a naval dock in Bermuda, this succession
was found, beginning at 25 feet below the surface : ( i ) Calcareous
mud, 5 feet; (2) coral crust, 20 feet; (3) a kind of peat and vege-
table soil, containing stumps of cedars in vertical position and the
remnants of other land vegetation with remains of Helix hermndi-
cnsis and of several birds.

This old soil of vegetation rests on the usual ''base rock" of
the islands. Buried soils of vegetation have been noticed by all
students who have visited the Bermudas. They are distinct at several
places along the south shore where, in 1895, the dead cedar forest
with trunks still erect protruded through the seolian beds, which
in many spots were already covered with a dense growth of oleander
and young cedars. No peat is found in the Bermudas except in
" sinkholes " and estuaries ; the porous rock permits rainwater to pass
down quickly to tide level so that neither spring nor stream exists
on the islands ; but one finds buried soils with Helix and plant
remains at various levels in the " sandstone " as the slightly consoli-
dated ffiolian rock is termed.

Hilgard^^- saw, near Port Hudson on the Mississippi, brown muck
overlying white or blue clay and underlying 93 feet of later deposits.
This muck, 3 to 4 feet thick, contains cypress stumps, representing
three, perhaps four generations. The stumps are rooted in the tough,
somewhat sandy underclay. A similar deposit was seen at many
places within lower Louisiana and usually several generations of
cypress trees are shown. At one locality, huge stumps, 5 to 8 feet
high, have their roots buried in a stratum of brown clay ; the tops of

111 C. W. Thomson, " The Atlantic," 1878, Vol. I., pp. 297, 298.

112 E. W. Hilgard, " On the Geology of Lower Louisiana and the Salt
Deposit on Petite Anse Island," Siiiithson. Contrib., No. 248, 1872, pp. 5, 6,
7, 9, II, 26.

84 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

the stumps are surrounded by similar clay but the middle portion is
enveloped in yellow silt. A reddish loam is the superincumbent
material to the surface. At about a mile below the Port Hudson
locality, a deposit was seen, 30 feet above the stump horizon and
resembling a river sandbar both in structure and contents. There,
one finds no stumps but abundance of large drifted stems belonging
to several species and some of them erect. These last, as Hilgard
describes them, can be no other than " snags," which are even now
only too numerous on sandbars along the river's present channel. At
many places one finds living cypress swamps on the newer deposits.

The deep oil wells of the delta, according to Harris, ^^'^ have
proved that there are many muck beds in the Recent deposits of the
delta region.

A section measured by Colenso"* in the tin-producing area of
Cornwall shows features not unlike those observed by Hilgard near
Port Hudson: the succession is (i) Bed of river sand and gravel, 20
feet; (2) sand, containing tree trunks lying in all directions and
mostly oaks, with bones of various mammals, red deer and whales,
20 feet; (3) silt or clay, 2 feet; (4) sand with marine shells, con-
tains salt, 4 inches ; (5) sludge or silt, contains recent shells and bones
of mammals, 10 feet; (6) dark silt mixed with decomposed organic
matter, about 12 inches, on which is a layer of leaves, hazel nuts,
sticks and moss, 6 to 12 inches, this mass is apparently in place of
growth and extends with some interruptions across the valley; (7)
tinground, thickness varying according to irregularities of the under-
lying rock surface. Roots of trees are seen in this " ground " and
on top of it oyster shells still remain fastened to some of the larger
stones and to stumps of trees. The roots of oaks are in their normal
position and can be traced to their smallest fibers, even as deep as
2 feet.

Here one has the soil of vegetation with its trees while, above it,
are layers containing drifted logs and others of distinctly marine
origin. It is worth noting that, at Sandycock in the same district,

113 G. D. Harris, Geol. Surv. of Louisiana, Rep. for 1905, pp. 233, 240.
ii'ij. W. Colenso, "Description of Happy-Union Tin Stream-work at
Pentuan," Trans. R. Gcol. Soc. Cornzvall, Vol. IV., 1832, pp. 29-39.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 85

Rashleigh"^ found 4 feet of peat in the upper part of the section,
while the merely vegetable soil of Colenso's section is " solid
black fen."

The presence of trees unassociated with peat has been regarded
by some as evidence of allochthonous origin, as reforestation of an
area after entombment of the peat seemed improbable. But refores-
tation is comparatively rapid on a new surface, provided only that
there be moisture. During the great Missouri River flood of 1903,"''
the water, diverted from the channel by obstructions piled against a
railroad bridge, swept over a wide area. Crops were ruined and a
nursery field, near Topeka, Kansas, was covered with sand, which
buried the young trees. But within three months, the naked fields
were green with young cottonwoods, growing from seed blown in
after subsidence of the flood waters. Even dunes, consisting of loose
sand, become covered with vegetation and eventually with forest.

Reforestation is rapid even amid untoward conditions. Seventy-
five years ago, the White Mountains of New Hampshire were cov-
ered with a dense forest, mostly spruce. Lumbermen denuded a very
great part of the surface and their labors were supplemented by
forest fires, which destroyed trees elsewhere. Where the soil was
burned off, so as to be washed away and to expose the glaciated sur-
face, nothing grew ; but elsewhere the restoration was rapid. Plants
of various types took prompt possession and prevented erosion. They
were succeeded by birch and cherry, in whose shade the conifers
grew. On the neglected farms of that region, one finds all stages
of restoration, from pasture lots invaded by sturdy weeds to the
forest of fir^ and spruces, which have overcome the birches. The
conditions are similar in Ontario, as Miller and Knight"' have
shown. Their statement respecting one area is :

" Years ago, the area was visited by heavy fires which destroyed all but
a few of the pine trees that were numerous and made the area important for
its timber. On the part of the lake referred to, a few red pines and one or

115 p. Rashleigh, " An Account of the Alluvial Depositions at Sandry-
cock," Trans. R. Geol. Soc. Cornzvall, Vol. II., 1822, p. 282.

11^ H. C. Frankenfield, " The Floods of the Spring of 1903 in the Missis-
sippi Watershed," Bull. M, U. S. Weather Bureau, 1904, p. 62.

11" W. G. Miller and C. W. Knight, " Pre-Cambrian Geology of South-
eastern Ontario," Toronto, 1914, p. 18.

86 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

two white ones escaped the fire and were left as seed trees. Poplars have
since grown up and now have a height of fifty or sixty feet or more. Back
from the shore, where the seed has been blown, in the shade of the poplars,
there is now a pretty growth of young pine trees, four or five feet in height."

In a letter, W. G. Miller states that the condition is familiar in many
portions of Ontario.

Rock streams may still be seen at many places in the Allegheny
mountains and in their path the forest has been removed. But even
these coarse breccias become covered. Agnew^^^ says that, when he
returned by canal from Harrisburg to western Pennsylvania, he ob-
served long stretches of stone-covered mountain side, bare of all
vegetation from base to summit, the slope varying from 25 to 40
degrees. In later years, coming to Harrisburg to sit on the Supreme
bench, he could find none of the naked spaces. The rocky surface
had become covered with trees, the few remaining bare spaces being
merely dots in the forest. The writer may add his testimony to the
same efifect. Rock streams are not wanting now in the Allegheny
Mountains but they are not those, which were striking features in the
scenery forty years ago; they are of later origin.

Forest growth may appear quickly after an area has emerged
from marine conditions. One finds dense forests and great peat
deposits directly on Post-Pliocene marine beds at many places along
the Atlantic coastal plain of the United States. Darwin^^^ saw on
the island of Chiloe a bed of marine shells, the species being Venus
costellata and Ostrca edulis, both now living in the adjacent bays.
These were closely packed, eiribedded in and covered by a very
black, damp, peaty mould, 2 to 3 feet thick, out of which a great
forest of trees was growing.

It has been showai that forests on plains or even on rolling sur-
faces may bring about formation of peat deposits, but this does not
occur always. Trees growing on peat have been entombed, others
not associated with peat have met similar fate. River deposits have
overspread extensive areas of forest, so that one finds in the rock

118 D. Agnew, "Nature's Reforesting," Proc. Amcr. Phil. Soc, Vol.
XVIII., 1878, pp. 26, 27.

ii'-* C. Darwin, " Geological Observations in South America," London,
1846, p. 28.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 87

separating peat beds, trees singly or grouped, growing from an
ancient soil with but small accumulation of offal about the stems.
The buried forests of Oregon and Alaska, described by Newberry
and Russell, are typical. Medlicott's^-** resume of Ormiston's ob-
servations may be noticed in this connection, as they show how a
forest, growing in an old soil of vegetation, may be succeeded by a
marine deposit, while the stems remain erect. Excavations for a
government dock were made on Bombay island off the west coast
of India. In a space of about 30 acres, 382 trees and stumps were
uncovered, of which 223 were erect. Some of the prostrate stems
were without roots but others had been overthrown in place, for
the roots were still embedded in the soil. The stumps are rooted
in a thin soil of decomposed basalt and are surrounded by a stiff
blue clay on which rests black marine mud, 4 to 5 feet thick.
Stumps projecting above the clay into the black mud have been
drilled by Teredo ; in some cases the holes pass downward through
the trunk toward the root and are filled with indurated clay. The
trees are Acacia catechu; how far the forest extended is unknown,
as no investigation was made beyond the limits of the excavation.

The opinion, that stems of trees would not endure while a con-
siderable thickness of rock accumulates, is based on very serious
misapprehension of the facts or on a priori reasoning. The writer
has seen slender canes standing erect near the mouth of the Missis-
sippi River, though they had been dead long enough to permit
deposition of several feet of fine silt around them. Weed^-^ has
shown that the Yellowstone Park diatom deposits cover many
square miles. A typical marsh is in the Upper Geyser basin, where
the waters encroached upon the timber and killed the pines, whose
bare gray stems stand upright in the marsh or lie half immersed in
the ooze. The diatomaceous earth is sometimes 6 feet thick and the
"gaunt poles of the dead pines stand in a white powdery soil, which
is evidently a dried portion of the marsh mud."

120 G. E. Ormiston, cited by H. B. Medlicott, Records Geol. Surv. of
India, Vol. XIV., 1881, pp. 320-323.

121 W. H. Weed, "Diatom Marshes and Diatom Beds of tlie Yellowstone
National Park," Bot. Gac, Vol. IX., 1908, pp. 76-83.

88 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Wright^-^ has described the buried forest near the Muir glacier
in Alaska. This was deeply buried under gravels, over which the
ice extended at a later period. The ice retreated and erosion began,
which eventually uncovered the forest. The trees are of large size,
mostly like those now growing on the Alaskan mountains and are in
a state of complete preservation. These are standing upright in the
soil on which they grew, with the humus still about their roots.
Some are exposed throughout while others are shown only in part.
Many are broken off at from 5 to 20 feet above the roots ; Wright
thinks this fracturing due to cakes of ice, that being indicated by
scars on the trunks. Russell,^-^ writing about a portion of Alaska
farther west, states that the Yahtse River, issuing as a swift cur-
rent from beneath a glacier, has invaded a forest at the east and has
surrounded the trees with sand and gravel to a depth of many feet.
Some of the dead trunks, still retaining their branches, project above
the mass, but most of them have been broken off and buried in the
deposit. Other streams east from the Yahtse have invaded forests,
as is indicated by dead trees standing along their borders. Where
the deposit is deepest, the trees have already disappeared and the
forest has been replaced with sand flats. The decaying trunks are
broken off by the wind and the stems are buried in prostrate position.
Nordenskiold,^-* in discussing the distribution of trees in the Yenesei
region says :

" Besides these there are to be found in the most recent layer of the
Yenesei tundra, considerably north of the present limit of actual trees, large
trees with their roots fast in the soil, which show that the limit of trees in
the Yenesei region, even during our own geological period, went farther
north than now, perhaps as far as, in consequence of favorable local circum-
stances, it now goes on the Lena."

Resistance to Erosion. — The opinion, that trees would be up-
rooted and carried away by the strong current of a flood, is not well-
supported as a generalization. The instances cited from Russell and
Wright would seem to suffice in refutation and the writer has dis-

122 G. F. Wright, " Ice Age in North America," 1889, pp. 57-59.

123 I. C. Russell, "Second Expedition to Mount St. Elias," Thirteenth Ann.
Rep. U. S. Geol. Surv., 1893, Pt. I., p. 14, PI. XII.

12* A. E. Nordenskiold, " The Voyage of the Vega," p. 287.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 89

cussed the matter somewhat in detail elsewhere.^^^ But it may not
be amiss to cite some additional evidence showing that floods and
torrents are almost powerless against living vegetation. In the
summer of 1895, the writer was marooned during three days by a
flood on the Little Wichita River of northern Texas. The flood was
widespread, affecting also the area of the Brazos River. It came
abruptly, so that in a single night, the petty streams, flowing at 30 to
40 feet below the general level, filled their little valleys and over-
flowed ; the parched area of the preceding day w^as covered with water
more than hub-deep in many places. The current was extremely
rapid; by mistake of the guide, the party were caught in it on one
stream and narrowly escaped being swept away with the horses and
the heavy conveyance. Within 2 miles of the city of Archer, the
flood had invaded an extensive area, covered with trees and shrubs.
Rapid outside, the movement was insignificant within this wooded
area, the trees and shrubs, though not dense, being as efficient in
checking the motion and in breaking up the current as is debris in a
mountain forest. After cessation of rain, the flood subsided almost
as quickly as it had risen. A ride of 60 miles over the area affected
by it gave ample opportunity for studying the effect. The roads and
sandy places were gashed and gullied ; cultivated fields in the line of
the torrents, one eighth to half a mile wide, were swept clean of the
thin cover of soil, but where the surface was protected by grass the
destruction was unimportant. Trees and shrubs, except those stand-
ing on loose material, w^ere uninjured, while in extensive clumps of
bushes there was no evidence of disturbance, aside from an accumu-
lation of debris, deposited where the current first reached the plant-
obstruction. The fierce current was powerless against trees, even
against the clumps of bushes.

Reade,^-'' writing of floods on the Senegal and Gambia Rivers,
says:

" If a boat was to be moored in the rivers to the top of an acacia tree
just projecting above the water, you would find it afterward in the dry sea-
son hanging forty feet above your head."

125 See " Formation of Coal Beds, II.," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. L.,
pp. 520-546.

126 \Y_ w_ Reade, " Savage Africa," New York, 1864, p. 363.

90 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

After these violent floods have abated, the forests are seen practi-
cally uninjured by their brief submergence. The remarks by
Harris^^' are in place here. The Hawash River rises in the Abys-
sinian highlands at 8,000 feet above sea-level. In the dry season, it
can be forded easily but during the rainy season it is often converted
into a fierce torrent inundating the broad valley, which is covered
with trees and dense undergrowth, through which the explorer makes
way only with great difficulty. When the expedition approached
this river, it was very evident that there had been a flood, as " pen-
sive willows that drooped mournfully over the troubled current,
were festooned with recent drift, hanging many feet above the level
of the abrupt banks." The condition was very similar to that ob-
served by the writer in going by steamboat from San Francisco to
Sacramento, almost 50 years ago. He was perplexed by the presence
of clumsy debris in branches of trees at about 15 feet above the
water. This marked the level of the floods.

The Ohio Valley flood of j\Iarch-April, 1913,^-^ was one of the
most disastrous recorded. The damage to the towns of southeastern
Ohio, as stated by Horton and Jackson, was almost 147,000,000 dol-
lars, 36,000 buildings were flooded or destroyed and 220 bridges were
carried away. The report is illustrated by 22 plates, showing con-
ditions during and after the flood in several large cities, which suf-
fered most severely. These show that trees in the streets resisted
not only the current but also the debris carried by the water ; houses
and timber were piled around the trees and even the telegraph poles.
One of the photographs gives ample proof that this was no gentle
backwater overflow but a typically torrential movement.

The tenacity with which trees resist removal by floods is, to use
a moderate term, remarkable. For many years the writer has ridden
annually for more than 200 miles along the Connecticut River in
June and September. In many places, trees cover the face of first
terrace, extending frequently to within 18 inches from the line of
low water. The terrace or " first bottom " is composed of uncon-

127 W. C. Harris, "The Highlands of Ethiopia," Amer. ed., New York,
1844, pp. 94-96.

128 A. H. Horton and H. J. Jackson, U. S. Geo!. Survey, Water Supply
Paper, No. 334, 1913.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 91

solidated river drift, which where unprotected is attacked energeti-
cally by the current. The trees along the lower portion of the bank
have roots almost horizontal, as the wet ground is little more than
a foot below the collar. In very many cases the roots are exposed
to a distance of two to three feet from the trunk, the loose material
originally surrounding them having been removed. Several of these
trees have been observed each year, during ten years the exposed
portion has increased steadily, but the trees have continued to grow
and apparently they are as solidly fixed as at first.

But in the sands under and over peat deposits as well as in rocks
contemporaneous with such deposits, one finds logs, even tree stems
with attached roots. Rivers undercut their banks, trees and plant
debris fall into the water and are transported. Some of this material
is carried to the sea, there to decay, but some is dropped in shallows
or stranded on the river plain during subsidence of the flood, to be
covered by deposits brought by succeeding floods.

Contemporaneous Erosion. — Little rivulets are seen in the smaller
bogs, but great swamps, in which peat is accumulating, are more or
less imperfectly drained by rivers with sluggish flow. The streams
are subject to floods, during which they bring down more or less
organic material mingled with plant debris. Much of this is de-
posited in the channel way and much of the rest is spread over the
flooded portion of the swamp. Sometimes an obstruction dams the
stream and diverts its course, leaving below the dam a stagnant pool,
which in time becomes concealed by peat ; but the story is revealed
when a drainage canal is cut, for the half-filled channel way is shown
by a " roll " in the underclay. The drainage system is often distinct
in a buried bog. Lorie's^-^ observations in the peat region of Hol-
land-Belgium prove that the channels of large rivers have been filled
with sediment and that these are traceable easily when the records
of borings have been platted.

Banks of the intersecting streams are irregular, as plants spread
out into the water, often becoming floating fringes. When the
channelway is filled gradually by deposit of inorganic matter, the
fringes are not torn away but are enveloped in approximately normal

1-3 Cited in "Formation of Coal Beds, II.," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol.
L., pp. 617-619.

92 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

position, to be exposed as irregular strings of peat when laid bare by
a drainage canal. If, however, the filling be abrupt and violent,
masses of the peat are rubbed off to be embedded in the sand, while
the adjacent portion of the bog is very apt to show crushing or
folding.

Filled channels occur frequently in rocks associated or con-
temporaneous with the peat deposits. The Missouri and Mississippi
Rivers have shifted the channels at many places and the abandoned
" ox-bows " in numerous instances have been filled with material dif-
ferent from that of the banks. The rivers of the Gran Chaco of
Paraguay and Argentina flow in constantly shifting channels, the
older ways becoming filled to be exposed by a new change in direc-
tion of flow. A. Geikie^^'' has described several cases of channels in
the drift beds of Scotland, eroded and refilled during the Glacial
period. Others have been noted by J. Geikie and by J. Croll.

Some Chemical Features of Peat. — It is well known that mature
peat, when first taken out, is plastic ; but when thoroughly dried it
is no longer plastic. The same effect is said to be produced by
freezing. It is evident, as said by v. Giimbel more than thirty years
ago, that peat contains some substance, which is soluble in the fresh
condition but is insoluble when dried. Microscopical study of ma-
ture peat shows that the minutely divided vegetable matter is accom-
panied by an amorphous substance, sometimes so abundant that
the fragments appear to be cemented by it or even to be embedded in
it. The earliest reference to this substance, known to the writer,
is that by Reinsch,^"^ who stated that in the Fichtelgebirge there are
two kinds of peat, Rasen- and Pechtorf. Rasentorf occurs in thick
deposits, 2 to 12 feet, but Pechtorf is in thin layers, as shown in
his material from near Rautengriin on the left bank of the Eger river.
The latter feels damp, almost greasy, is about twice as heavy as
Rasentorf, has lustrous, brown-black surface and consists of roots
embedded in an almost black substance.

Definite information respecting this material seems to be due

^30 A. Geikie, " On the Glacial Drift of Scotland," Trans. Geol. Soc.
Glasgow, Vol. L, Pt. II., i868, pp. 65 ff.

131 H. Reinsch, " Ueber den Torf des Fichtelgebirge," Jonrn. f. pr.
Chcmie, Vol. XVI., 1839, PP- 489-495-

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 93

to Doppler/^^ who stated that he had received from Salzburg, in
Tyrol, about 15 pounds of a black gelatinous substance, which had
been obtained near Aussee in a peat bed, about 10 feet thick. It
occurred in layers at 6 to 8 feet from the surface and it had been
rejected as worthless. Schrotter,^^^ who studied this chemically,
ascertained that, dried at 100° C, it lost 78.5 per cent, of water and
became a hard mass with conchoidal fracture and vitreous luster,
resembling greatly the pitch obtained by distillation of coal tar.
Dried at ordinary temperature, about 18° C, it parted with 66.22 per
cent, of water. The wet gelatinous material lost 14.6 per cent, to
caustic potash, equivalent to 68 per cent, of the dried material, but
when dried, it lost nothing to the potash solution. Hydrochloric acid
precipitated from this solution a brown substance which, dried, con-
tains; Carbon, 48.06; hydrogen, 4.98; nitrogen, 1.03; oxygen, 40.07;
ash, 5.86.

If ash and nitrogen be ignored the composition is, compared with
that of cellulose,

Carbon 51.59 4324

Hydrogen . . . .' 5.34 6.30

Oxygen 43-03 50.56

The presence of ammonia is evident when a fragment is boiled with
caustic potash. He recognized in this gelatinous substance simply
a more than usually homogeneous peat, owing its gelatinous character
to the great quantity of absorbed water.

At the same meeting, Haidinger^^* discussed the mineral relations
of this material, to which he assigned the name, Dopplerit. It is
amorphous, but thin sections, under strong power, show the pres-
ence of fine fibers in the mass. One of the pieces received from
Doppler enclosed fragments of unchanged peat, in which Phragmites
communis was recognized. Haidinger believed that this structureless
peat is the beginning point of the whole series of changes, which
up to that time had been wholly conjectural.

132 Doppler, " Ueber ein merkwurdige in Oesterreich abgefundene gela-
tinose Substanz," Sitz.-ber. k. Akad. IViss. Wien, 1849, Bd. 3, Abt. 2, p. 239.

133 Sch rotter, the same, pp. 285-287.

134 w. Haidinger, the same, pp. 288-292.

94 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Von GiimbeP^^ made an elaborate study of Dopplerit in 1858.
He found that the Berchtesgaden dopplerite dififers in some respects
from that of Aussee. After drying in air, it gives off 12 per cent,
of water at 100° C. ; when heated to red heat in a closed vessel, it
yielded 66.33 per cent, of non-coherent coke, retaining the form of
the original fragments. The ash is but 1.67 per cent, of the dried
material and consists mostly of lime. Treated with absolute alcohol,
it yields a considerable quantity of resinous matter, which v. Giimbel
thinks consists of two resins. The variability of composition at dif-
ferent localities leads him to believe that dopplerite is not a true
mineral, but is merely a homogeneous peat and he suggested instead
the term Torfpechkohle because 'oi its resemblance to the Tertiary
Pechkohle. The mode of occurrence at Berchtesgaden is peculiar,
the succession in the pits being (a) Rasen- and Moorerde; (b)
Specktorf ; (c) Fasertorf ; (d) Specktorf ; (e) Fasertorf with roots;
(/) gray marl; (g) calcareous pebbles. (/) is almost impervious to
water. The Torfpechkohle is found chiefly between (d) and (e),
but (c) contains much of it in irregular streaks. Two vein-like
branches pass upward from the main deposit overlying (e) and con-
tinue through the higher benches into (a). He is convinced that the
material was soft and that under pressure it flowed into crevices.
This feature suggested that plant materials were softened as one
step in the conversion into coal.

Kaufmann^^" received specimens of a lustrous black coal, occur-
ring in a peat layer at Obburgen in Unterwalden, Switzerland. It
agrees with dopplerite in all essential features. The material was
from a Hochmoor, where it was found at 12 to 14 feet below the
surface and in masses 6 inches to a foot thick, embedded in the
black peat; but it often occurs as veins, streaks or nests. When
fresh, it is gelatinous but it becomes hard on drying; it is odorless,
has greasy luster and mahogany streak; softer than talc, it cracks
under pressure. Examined under the microscope it is homogeneous,

^35 C. W. V. Gumbel, " Ueber das Vorkommen des Torf-Pechkohle (Dop-
plerit) im Dachelmoos bei Berchtesgaden," Neiics Jahrbuch, Jahrg. 1858. pp.
278-286.

^'■^'^ F. J. Kaufmann, " Ueber den Dopplerit von Obburgen und viber das
Verhaltniss des Dopplerit des Torf und mineralischen Kohlen," Jahrb. k. k.
Geol. Reichsanst., Bd. XV., 1865, PP- 283-290.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 95

but there are some fine granules, more or less transparent, and occa-
sional traces of cell structure. Under water, dopplerite remains un-
changed for years. Once dried, it is equally stable ; when wetted
again, it may soften so as to show the print of the finger nail, but
no farther change appears after several months.

Muhlberg analyzed four specimens, three from Obburgen and
one from Aussee the original locality. In all the carbon is higher
while oxygen and nitrogen are lower than reported by Schrotter.
The difference was enough to induce Muhlberg to make additional
study. The material was treated with caustic potash and the dis-
solved substance was analyzed. It is richer than dopplerite in
carbon. Kaufmann finds evidence that the varying composition is
due to varying extent of change in the vegetable matter. Peat ex-
amined in thin slices shows sufficiently well the organic structure
but it contains bright specks, soluble in boiling caustic potash ; these
are very rare in young peat but are abundant as nests in mature
peat. This dissolved material acts as that dissolved from dopplerite.
The proportion dissolved by caustic potash increases with the age of
the peat, as shown by the following results of Kaufmann's experi-
ments : 25 to 30 per cent, from peat directly under the living plants ;
54 per cent, at 3 feet below the surface, loose ; 55 per cent, at 6
feet below the surface, darker, fibrous ; 65 per cent. 9 feet below the
surface, cofi^ee-brown, compact, comparatively heavy. Blackish-
brown, heavy, compact peat with black pitch-like streak yielded
yy per cent.

According to Billingsley's^^^ notes, the peat of the South Marsh,
3 to 15 feet thick, is accompanied by a pitch-like substance, which
occupies the spaces between the vegetable fragments.

Zincken cites von Tschudi (1859) to the efifect that dopplerite
is found in Switzerland near Bad Gonten in Canton Appenzell,
where, beyond the depth of 9 feet, it occurs in streaks up to 5 inches
thick. Humus acid flows from this and hardens to Pechkohle ; he
cites J. W. Herz as authority for this composition of dopplerite :
Water, 15.03; ash, 3.39; carbon, 5747; hydrogen, 5.32; oxygen,

13T Cited by H. B. Woodward, " Geology of Eastern Somerset," etc.,
1876, p. 156.

96 STEVENSON-INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

36.25; nitrogen, 0.86. The material analyzed was air-dried; the
ultimate composition as given is ash and water free.

Demel/2^ studying dopplerite from the original locality, found
that it would not give up all its water at less than 120° C. ; but this
high temperature should not be prolonged, as decomposition begins
quickly. His specimens contained no nitrogen, thus differing from
those analyzed by Schrotter and Muhlberg. The ash varies little
from 5 per cent. The carbon approaches that obtained by Kauf-
mann but is nearly 5 per cent, more than that reported by Schrotter,
with also an increase of 0.4 per cent, in the hydrogen. He assigns
the formula of QoHi^Oc to dopplerite. A large part of the mineral
is soluble in caustic potash, from which it may be precipitated by
acids. This precipitate has less hydrogen, the formula as determined
by Demel, being C^Ji^nO^. The ash, 5 per cent., contains 72.67 per
cent, of calcium oxide, equivalent to about 3.63 per cent, of the dried
dopplerite, along with 12.02 per cent, of alumina and ferric oxide.

Von Giimbel in his later study, recognized the calcareous nature
of the ash, which is snow-white ; he thinks there may be a chemical
combination of the calcareous and organic constituents.

Friih's^^^ discussion was more elaborate than that by any one
of his predecessors. He compared the features of dopplerite from
many localities. It is present throughout some peats as brown
flakes, one centimeter to a decimeter, giving a mottled appearance
to the mass, which he terms Marmortorf. He found it only in
Rasentorf (grass and sedge), or at the junction between Rasen- and
Hochmoor (Sphagnum peat) ; that is to say, only in peat rich in
water, a condition which favors ulminification. Dopplerite and peat
are not separated sharply, there being always a passage zone. Evi-
dently the dopplerite was fluid ; it is associated frequently with a
twig or root, along which it flowed ; sometimes, it is in thin sheets ;
it may fill preexisting cracks in the peat or in the underlying
materials. The calcareous ash led him to believe that it is present
in the Rasentorf because that thrives in calcareous water, whereas
Sphagnum does not ; at the same time. Sphagnum is convertiljle into

138 •\Y. Demel, " Ueber den Dopplerit von Aussee," Sita.-ber. k. Akad.
Wiss. Wien, 1883, Bd. 86, Abt. 2, pp. 872-878.

^3° J. J. Friih, " Ueber Torf und Dopplerit," Trogen, 1883, pp. 64, 68, 69-72.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 97

dopplerite, for Friih saw clopplerite of sphagnum origin at the
junction of Hoch- and Rasenmoor, where the water was very
abundant. He objects very strongly to regarding the material ex-
tracted by caustic potash as the true dopplerite; he believed the
mineral to be an ulmin product ; the potash dissolves both ulmin
and humin products. Dopplerite, according to Friih, is most
abundant in the lower portions of a deposit, but the microscope
detects flakes of ulmin-like material throughout the mature peat. It
is well to recall here the fact observed by C. A. Davis in Michigan
and by Dachnowski in Ohio, that Sphagnum is indifferent to the
character of the water, limy constituents not interfering with its
growth. Equally, Rasenmoors do not require calcareous waters,
for the water of the Rhine and of the Aleuse is thoroughly fresh.
Kinahan, in 1861, referred to the tarry fluid wdiich trickled from
an Irish bog — evidently dopplerite.

H. L. Fairchild in 1881 and Lewis in 1882 described a dopplerite-
like substance obtained near Scranton, Pennsylvania. Lewis's^*"
description is the more in detail. This substance is in swamp muck
at the bottom of 8 to 10 feet of peat and occurs in irregular veins.
It is black and jelly-like when fresh, but on exposure becomes
tougher and more elastic. Caustic potash dissolves it. Analyzed
by J. M. Stinson, it proved to contain: Carbon, 28.989; hydrogen,
5.172; nitrogen, 2.456; oxygen, 56.983; ash, 6.400. The formula
as determined from the analysis seemed to be CioH^sOir,. There is
little combined nitrogen as the quantity of ammonia is small

Foster^*^ studied a substance wdiich appears to be very closely
allied to dopplerite. The deposit is in northwestern New Mexico
along a broad " wash," draining into the canyon of the Chaco River.
Its existence was indicated first by a Navajo Indian, who said that
wherever the Indians had sunk wells within an area, 10 miles long
and of considerable width, they had encountered this material. The
collector reported that normally it underlies clay and soil, but some-
times the clay is absent. At the first test pit, clay is absent and the

140 H. C. Lewis, " On a New Substance Resembling Dopplerite, from a
Peat Bog at Scranton," Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Vol. XX., 1882, pp. 112-117.

141 \Y Foster, " A Remarkable Carbonaceous Deposit near Putnam, New
Mexico," Econ. GcoL, Vol. VIII., 1913, pp. 360-368.

98 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

deposit, there liquid, was reached at 3 feet from the surface. It
ran into the pit as rapidly as it was baled out. Four miles away
on the same wash, a second pit reached, at 3 feet, one foot of clay
resting on the deposit, more than 10 feet thick, the bottom not
reached. At this locality, the substance has the consistence of
gelatin, becoming denser with increasing depth. Dried, it is black,
brittle, hard and, when powdered, resembles coal dust. In two
trials, the material yielded 59.69 and 53.74 per cent, of water.
Burned at a low temperature, it left 53.53 per cent, of ash, con-
taining 3.03 of lime and 9.39 per cent, of soda. Ignoring the ash,
the composition is: Carbon, 56.04; hydrogen, 6.76; nitrogen, 2.04;
oxygen, 35.16, which approaches very closely to the composition
of dopplerite analyzed by Herz, Kaufmann and Demel. The ash
is apparently a silicate of aluminium and sodium ; it is very finely
divided and shows no trace of diatoms ; Foster suggests that it may
be chiefly disintegrated soda-feldspar. Jeffrey^^- examined the sub-
stance under the microscope ; he found no trace of organic structure
but crystalline mineral matter is present.

It is certain that peat contains an amorphous substance derived
from the vegetable matter. This, originally more or less soluble,
becomes insoluble when deprived of its water. The quantity is
small in the newer peat but increases downward, being most abun-
dant in the mature peat, where in many cases the vegetable frag-
ments appear to be embedded in it. Its composition is variable,
being dependent, apparently, upon the extent of chemical change in
the plant matetial.

Composition of Peat. — In all works treating of general geology,
one finds tabular comparison of the fossil fuels, based on the aver-
age of a great number of analyses. One may not deny the utility of
an " average," when the averaged analyses are all from one mine
on a bed of coal, the desire being to ascertain the general grade of
the material as shipped. Yet even in that case, the defects in the
method become painfully evident to the man, wHo having purchased
on the basis of the average, receives coal from the less desirable
portions of the mine. " Peat " is a generic term including products

14- E. C. Jeffrey, letter of December 19, 1914.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 99

of vegetable matter undergoing a chemical change which differ in
composition according to the extent of that change, according to the
nature of material and according to the conditions under which the
change was made. Many matters have to be considered ; if these
be ignored, the comparison is worthless.

All writers on peat deposits have called attention to the fact
that a notable physical change is observable as one follows the peat
downward from the surface, the disintegration of vegetable matter
increasing so that in the great mass of the mature peat, little trace of
organic matter can be recognized by the unaided eye, while in many
respects the lower portion bears much resemblance to brown coal.
The specific gravity increases with this change. Mills and Rowan^*^
state that young Hanoverian peat has the gravity of 0.113 to 0.263,
whereas that of the maturer peat is from 0.639 to 1.039. The
chemical change is gradual but more and more marked with increase
of depth. Cornet^'** has given three illustrative analyses as follow :

C.

H.

0.

N.

Ash.

Surface

Two meters and one half

Four meters and one half

57.75
62.02
64.07

543
5.21
5.01

36.06
30.67
26.87

0.80
2.10
4-05

2.72
7.42
9.16

The ultimate composition is calculated ash and water free. The
extraordinary increase of nitrogen in the lowest portion may be
dvie in part to the presence of some plankton materials. Jentzsch^*^
says that in the province of Preuss, the peat deposits vary in thick-
ness from a few inches to 17 meters. The composition of a peat
used for fuel is, water free: Carbon, 56.90; hydrogen, 5.54; oxygen,
31.88; ash, 5.66. In his later publication he compares peat from
several localities in the same province, thus :

1*3 E. J. Mills and F. J. Rowan, " Fuel and its Applications," 1889, p. 18.

1^* J. Cornet, " La formation des Charbons et des petroles," Extrait de
I'ouvrage, Geologie, T. III., p. 25.

1*5 A. Jentzsch, "Die geognostische Durchforschung der Provinz Preus-
sen im Jahre 1876," Schrift. k. Phys. Okon. Gesell. Konigsberg, Jahrg. 17,
1877, pp. 120, 122 ; " Ueber die Moore der Provinz Preussen," the same, Jahrg.
19, 1878, .pp. 128-131.

100 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Surface peat
Denser peat
Dense peat..

c.

H.

0.

N.

49.90
57.50
62.15

5. 80
6.90
6.29

42.80

31.87
27.20

1-75
1.66

Ash.

3.50
2.08
2.70

Mills and Rowan^*^ have given analyses of surface and dense
peat from three localities in Ireland,

C.

H.

0.

N.

Surface peat

58.694
59.920
60.018
60.476
61.022
61.247

6.971
6.614
5-875
6.097
5-771
5-6i6

32.883
32.207
33.152
32.546
32.400
31.446

I -45 1
1.258

"

0.954

Denser peat

0.680
0.807

.'

1.690

In the region whence these samples were taken, the growth of peat
has been very slow during a long period, so that the surface peat,
or rather, that from near the surface has undergone much greater
change than that in similar position within areas where growth still
continues. The same authors give results obtained by Woskre-
sensky who analyzed Russian peat, which evidently came imme-
diately under the growing surface ; it contained about 41 per cent,
of carbon with 54 per cent, of oxygen and nitrogen.

Mulder^^'^ analyzed fuel peats from localities in Holland and
found the carbon varying from 59.27 to 61.05 per cent, and the
oxygen from 32.50 to 34.71 per cent.

Zincken"^ has given the results of two analyses of Schiefer-
kohle from Utznach, in Switzerland ; the first is of the ordinary
material, but the second is of a dense coal, hard, almost black and
with conchoidal fracture ;

c.

H.

0.

N.

I

II

55.27
• 56.04

5.70
4.70

36.84
36.07

2.19
2.19

146 " Fuel and its Applications," p. 20.

^*^ G. J. Mulder, " Ueber das arabische Gummi, die pectische Saure und
die Zusammensetzung der Torfarten," Journ. f. pr. Cheniie, Vol. XVI., 1839,
p. 246.

148 " Physiographie der Braunkohle," p. 24.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 101

If one may make a suggestion on the basis of these results, it would
seem as though mere pressure has had little influence here, for the
hard Schieferkohle of Utznach contains much less carbon than
is found in some mature recent peats.

Von Ammon^*^ has published an analysis of Schieferkohle from
Grossweil in Bavaria, which, reduced to pure coal, shows : Carbon.
60.59; hydrogen, 4.86; oxygen and nitrogen, 34.55. The ash is 8.21.
This coal, according to v. Ammon, is to be regarded as an earthy
brown coal with inclusion of lignite ("bituminous wood"). It is
of the same age as the Utznach Schieferkohle. C. A. Davis has
given a long series of analyses from American localities, to which
reference will be made in another connection. It suffices here to
note than in four samples, with ash varying from 3.84 to 6.69, the
carbon varies from 51.8 to 59.5 and the oxygen from 41.4 to 32.6,
the determination being on basis of pure coal.

Peat, according to its age and its place in the deposit, may
vary in carbon-content from much less than 50 per cent, in the
upper portion to more than 64 per cent, in the mature portion, the
calculation being on basis of the pure fuel. The more mature the
peat, by so much the more it resembles brown coal in chemical and
physical characters.

Nitrogen is present in all peats, of which analyses have been
published. The analyses by F. M. Stanton, which have been tabu-
lated by Davis, ^■''° make this clear for the United States. The
quantity bears no relation to that of the ash. Peat from Leon
county, Florida, has 4.28 of ash and 2.30 of nitrogen, while another
from Lake county in the same state, has 21.94 of ash and 2.53 of
nitrogen. One from Connecticut with 45.31 of ash has 1.92 of
nitrogen, while another, with but 3.98 of ash, has 1.48 of nitrogen.
Sulphur is always present, sometimes in sufficient quantity to be
utilized. It and nitrogen are original constituents and are not due
to the transported matter.

Study of ash in peat affords some insight into the conditions

prevailing during growth. The mineral content may be original.

that is, derived from the plants themselves, or it may have been

149 L. V. Ammon, " Bayerische Braunkohlen," etc., 191 1, p. 10.
15" C. A. Davis, " Uses of Peat," pp. 186-203.

102 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

introduced by wind or running water. When the deposit has been
protected from influx of silt, the ash may be less than 2 per cent,
of the dried material; but there is every gradation from that per-
centage to shale, clay, or sand with merely a trace of vegetable
matter. Such variations are commonplace in upland bogs and are
illustrated by one in Ohio, recorded by Dachnowski, which had
more than five times as much ash on the shallow border as in the
deeper portions. Analyses published in European works are too
commonly of material from localities where peat is dug, where it is
of proved economic value ; so that one is liable to suppose that peat
with less than 10 per cent, of ash predominates. It would appear,
however, that a much poorer grade of peat predominates, except
where, in lowland areas, checking of streams at the borders causes
dropping of the load or where a dense protecting fringe of plants,
like the "cane brakes" of the Mississippi delta, act as filters. The
analyses by Stanton in C. A. Davis's work are of samples from
many localities in 8 states. Practically all of them were taken
from previously unexplored deposits and, being collected according
to the official method, they represent the whole thickness. A com-
parsion of the results shows that the peat from

24 localities has less than 5 per cent, of ash.

74 localities has less than 10 per cent, of ash.

28 locahties has less than 15 per cent, of ash.

28 localities has less than 20 per cent, of ash.

28 localities has less than 30 per cent, of ash.

20 localities has less than 40 per cent, of ash.

43 localities has more than 40 per cent, of ash.

The lowest percentage is 1.53, which is less than that of the plants:
only 98 samples show less than 10 per cent., while 147 show more,
a vast preponderance of worthless material. The analyses, tabulated
by Dachnowski,"^ are from 61 localities in Ohio ; none is below 3
per cent., 14 are below 10 per cent., while 12 are above 20. When
one considers that the samples, in all cases cited, were taken because
the peat appeared to be such as might be utilized, it is evident that
good fuel peat is only a small part of whole now existing.

151 A. Dachnowski, " Peat Deposits in Ohio," pp. 366, 367.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 103

The composition of the ash depends on the character of the
plants and on that of the rocks over which the streams flow.
Potash and soda are usually present, but in small quantity as their
salts are soluble and easily removed. Lime, iron, alumina and silica
remain. Mills and Rowan"- have published 27 analyses by Kane
and Sullivan, giving composition of ash from Irish peats. In these
the lime varies from 12.432 to 45.981 per cent of the ash. Dach-
nowski gives analyses by J. W. Ames from 12 localities in Ohio,
which show the lime varying from 2.210 to 4.529 per cent, of the
ash. When one considers the notable quantity of certain conifers
in peats, the low percentage of lime is a little perplexing ; in most
good peats it is only a fraction of one per cent, of the dried peat.

The action of various solvents upon peat was studied long ago
by several chemists. Hunefeld^^^ examined some loaf-like masses
found in a peat bog near Borreby in Sweden. The proximate com-
position of the material was: Resin, 16.8; resinous matter like
asphaltum, 40.0 ; wax, 2.2 ; coaly matter, with trace* of humus, 38.0 ;
oxide of iron with gypsum, 3.0. The material was supposed by him
to be changed bread, wdiich had been buried for about 800 years ;
but Berzelius objected that one cannot conceive how the constituents
of bread could give a substance with this composition. Hunefeld
studied numerous peats, treating them with alcohol and ether and
obtaining 4 to 5 per cent, of resinous matter. There seems to be
every reason to believe that his original work was correct and that
he showed that resins, wax and asphaltum exist in peat, where there
was no possibility that they were introduced from any external
source.

Popular dread lest the draining of Haarlem lake might cause
serious injury to the public health led Mulder^^* to examine the
dense and the less dense peats separately, but by the same method.
The peat was first boiled in water, which afterward was drained o&,
and the washed peat was dried and treated with boiling alcohol.

^52 E. J. Mills and F. J. Rowan, " Fuels," etc., p. 16.

1^3 Hunefeld, " Nachtragliche Bemerkung iiber das Brod in Torfmoore,"
Journ. f. pr. Chemic, Jahrg. 1838, Bd. HI., pp. 456-460.

^^* G. J. Mulder, " Untersuchung iiber die Harze des Torf s," Journ. f. pr.
Chemte, Vol. XIX., 1840, pp. 444-453.

104 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

When exhaustion was complete, the peat was dried and treated with
Steinol. He obtained four resins, three of which are soluble in hot
alcohol, but the fourth is soluble only in the Steinol. These are
from the denser peat. Analyses of the resins obtained from the
less dense peats show that they are not the same, though closely
related. The quantity of resinous material seems to be greater in
the lower part of a deposit ; and Mulder believed that it was formed
during the process of Vertorfung and not derived from the plants
directly.

Smith^^^ utilized solvents in the study of some peats from Scot-
land. In his memoir, he summarizes the results obtained by Hune-
feld, Reinsch, Mulder and Jacobsen. He treated his peats with
naphtha and alcohol and obtained, as the result of several experi-
ments, 6 per cent, of a solid resin, black and with waxy fracture.
This material has : Carbon, 73.39 to 73.55 ; hydrogen, 10.78 to 10.49;
oxygen, not given. Smith says that such wax can be obtained from
peat by distillation, but the method of solution secures the crude
product as it exists in the peat. He cannot accept the suggestion
that the resinous material is due to chemical change but maintains
that it must be traced to the original plants themselves ; the increase
in proportion downwards is due to the waste of more easily decom-
posed materials while the resistant resins remain unchanged ; but in
a rnore advanced stage of chemical action, the resins themselves are
attacked and are removed in solution.

In considering these experiments and others of similar character,
one cannot determine how much is resin and how much is paraffin
material. Graefe's method of treating with benzol gives an ap-
proximate determination of the waxes. Von Ammon states that
the Schieferkohle of Grossweil has 3.73 per cent, of material soluble
in benzol ; Kraemer and Spilker^^*' examined a considerable number
of peats, treating them with benzol and in some cases with toluol.
They obtained from 3 to 8 per cent, of wax, the quantity in Hoch-
moors being less than in other types.

155 R_ Angus Smith, " A Study of Peat, Part I.," Mem. Manch. Lit. Phil.
Soc, III., Vol. v., .1876, pp. 303-331.

156 G. Kraemer und A. Spilker, " Das Algenwachs und sein Zusammen-
hang mit dem Erdol," Bcr. d. Chcm. GcsclL, 1912, Bd. i, p. 1213.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 105

It is wholly certain that the paraffins are present and that one
is not compelled to go outside of the original plants to find a source
for these or for the resins. The abundance of conifers leaves no
doubt as to one source of the resins and waxes and these are char-
acteristic of swamp plants. They are alike resistant to chemical
change. The mode of occurrence of the New Zealand Kauri gum
afifords the necessary illustration for the resins. Penrose^^^ states
that this gum, a true resin, is a secretion of the Agatha australis,
now living within an extensive area in New Zealand. The resin
accumulates in large quantity on all parts of the tree and the
bark, which peels off and is heaped on the ground, is saturated with
it. The fresh exudations are unimportant commercially and the
supply is obtained from the buried or " fossil " gum. This is found
in regions now covered by the Kauri tree, in others whence the trees
have been removed as well as in some where the only evidence of
former forests is the presence of buried roots and other portions
of the trees. At times, the Kauri forests have disappeared and
have been replaced by those of other trees, the only proof of a
former forest being the gum and the roots. That the antiquity of
early Kauri forests is very great appears certain, for there are trees
in the newer forests, which are supposed to be not less than i,ooo
years old. At some localities, the gum is found in successive layers,
separated by clays or sands, evidence of forests destroyed one after
the other. The Senegal copal occurs vnider similar conditions. In
many cases the resin-filled portions of the trees have been preserved,
though all others have disappeared.

Distillation Products from Peat. — Lampadius published in 1839
the results of his investigation of products obtained from peat by
distillation at and above the " cracking point." The experiments
have been repeated many times and with similar general results.
Two recent studies will suffice here. The Ziegler^^^ process of
producing coke from peat with saving of the by-products, has been
tested on a commercial scale at some places in Germany. About 33

1"'^ R. A. F. Penrose, Jr., " Kauri Gum Mining in New Zealand," Jotirn.
of Gcol.y Vol. XX., 1912, pp. 38-44.

i^s C. A. Davis, " The Uses of Peat," U. S. Bureau of Mines, Bull. 16,
191 1, pp. 128-142.

106 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

per cent, of good coke, containing 90 per cent, of carbon, is obtained
from high-grade peat ; though hard and compact, it retains the
peat-structure. The tar, a mixture of the more readily condensed
hydrocarbon compounds, rarely exceeds 4.5 per cent, of the dried
peat, varies much in quantity and is a black viscous liquid. Sub-
jected to fractional distillation, it yields, after separation of water,
ammonia, light and heavy oils, paraffin wax, creosote and asphalt.
The crude oils are said to be identical with those of petroleum in
properties and appearance. The character of the tar water, contain-
ing lighter or less readily condensed compounds, depends in part
on the character of the peat ; the fibrous, less decomposed peats yield
more methyl alcohol and acetic acid with less ammonia than those
which are darker, thoroughly decomposed and structureless, which
contain more combined nitrogen. This tar water contains ammo-
nium salts, acetic and other acids as well as methyl alcohol.

The permanent gases vary with the character of the peat, the
quantity of water and the temperature at which the coking is done,
there being in every case a considerable proportion of air. The less
decomposed peat gives the greatest quantity and the poorest quality.
The variability in composition appears from two analyses, the first
being from the Ziegler plant at Oldenburg and the other from that
at Beuerberg ; the percentages are in volumes ;

I. II.

Carbon dioxide 27.4 15.5

Oxygen 2.2 i.i

Nitrogen 22.5 21.9

Carbon monoxide 8.6 20.4

Carburetted hvdrogen 14.8 1

QH. : i.oj ^2.4

Hydrogen 23.6 28.6

The gas burns with a feebly luminous flame. Von Ammon^-'^^ has
published results obtained during destructive distillation of Schiefer-
kohle from Grossweil, which is a well-decomposed peat with 60.59
of carbon. Two samples, each weighing one kilogramme, were
tested, one retaining the woody structure, the second resembling
earthy brown coal. The results are very different from those ob-
1^^ L. V. Amnion, " Bayerische Braunkohlen," etc., p. 10.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 107

tained by the Ziegler process. The coke is 23 to 24 per cent., the

watery constituents vary Httle from 63 but the tar is from 1.24 in

the earthy to 2.87 in the woody material. The earthy coal yielded

105.63 liters of gas whereas the woody material yielded only 97.55.

The composition of the gas is

-I. II,

Carbon dioxide 38.59 50.86

Carbon monoxide 16.80 10.60

Hydrogen 18.90 1590

Carburetted hydrogen 0.60 i.io

CnHm 2.10 2.10

Oxygen 0.60 0.30

Nitrogen 22.60 17.70

Sulph. hydrogen 0.21 0.74

The tar-water of number L, the ligneous type, is acid, that of the
other is alkaline. The amorphous, more changed material has less
acetic acid and more nitrogen combined as ammonia, but the gas
shows great increase in carbon dioxide with decrease of carbon
monoxide. The results may not be wholly comparable, since the
lignitic, woody material may contain some constituents in greater
proportion than found in the amorphous peat; the former is conif-
erous wood while the latter was formed in great degree from plants
of wholly different type.

Summary. — Before proceeding to consideration of the Tertiary
coals, it is well to summarize the facts recorded in the preceding
pages.

1. The area of Quaternary and Recent peat deposits is appar-
ently greater than that on which carbon deposits were laid down
during any preceding period of similar duration ; yet it is but a
small part of the earth's surface, for there are vast spaces on which
no peat has formed since the Quaternary began, though much of
the peatless regions has been forested.

2. Peat bogs vary in size from a few square feet to thousands
of square miles. The smaller deposits are due to filling of pools,
ponds or lakes by plant invasion, while the more extensive deposits,
those on coastal or broad rivers plains, originated, certainly in some,
probably in most cases, in small, isolated bogs, which became united

108 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

by transgression. These, though continuous superficially, are not
strictly contemporaneous throughout. The buried deposits of
Holland-Belgium-France are continuous with living bogs on the
mainland ; but the buried peat, in greatest part, is older than that
now exposed, as evidently the marsh crept gradually inland during
the subsidence. In like manner, the great deposits formed on
plains show notable variation in thickness as well as in composition.
The vast peat-covered plains of Alaska and Siberia have a con-
temporaneous top layer, but the underlying portions of the deposits
are probably very far from being strictly contemporaneous.

3. The condition prerequisite to formation of peat is an abundant
supply of moisture with sluggish drainage ; this does not mean that
alternating wet and dry seasons are necessarily preventive. If the
supply of moisture suffice to keep the main mass moist, the loss
during the dry season is more than made good by growth during
the wet season, as shown by some tropical swamps. This condition
of moisture depends greatly upon the topography, which determines
the character and extent of drainage. Temperature is important as
affecting rapidity of growth. In Spitzbergen, 78 degrees, North
Latitude, peat covers considerable areas but the deposits are very
thin, for the season of growth is brief and the temperature is always
low. But the growth is much greater in the Alaska region to
beyond the Yukon, where the plane of perpetual frost is within 6 to
14 inches from the surface. The atmospheric temperature during
the summer is higher and the winter temperature is lower than in
Spitzbergen as the climate is continental, not insular. In the cold
regions, decomposition is less advanced than in lower latitudes and
the accumulation is of vegetable matter rather than of peat, properly
so-called. In the tropical areas, where the topography permits
proper moisture conditions, it is evident that prolonged high tem-
perature in no wise prevents accumulation but rather encourages
it by favoring rapidity and density of vegetable growth. Koorders,
Molengraaff, Harrison, Kuntze and others have described the vast
deposits in tropical East Indies and South America. Harper, Hil-
gard, Lyell and others have described subtropical peat deposits in
the United States, while manv observers have written about the

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 109

temperate zone peats of North America and Europe as well as about
those of the arctic and sub-arctic areas. In North America, the
passage from subtropical peats of Florida to those of the subarctic
areas is gradual ; the plant-life changes, but the peat varies little in
character. The fact is certain that in the tropics as in the tem-
perates, peat accumulates where the necessary conditions exist and
that it does not accumulate in either when those conditions are
wanting.

4. Peat may be derived from any land plant, but ordinarily the
flora contains many types. The constituent plants vary at the several
horizons in a deposit, but for the most part the peat does not consist
of any one plant or class of plants. Occasionally a layer consists of
remains of a single species, but the occurrence is comparatively rare.
The peat-making forms are not the same at all localities. In northern
Europe, certain mosses, chiefly Sphagnum, are the important constitu-
ents in the upper layers, so also in some parts of North America ; but
there are considerable areas in both regions where mosses are either
wanting or are wholly unimportant. Sedges have been the efficient
peat-producers in much of the north temperate, even at some tropical
and subtropical localities. But there is no limitation ; conifers, palms,
deciduous trees, mosses, sedges, in a word, any water-loving plant or
any plant preferring a slightly acid soil will yield peat under similar
conditions ; the soft parts become a pulp but the harder parts change
more slowly. More than 100 years ago, Al. Brongniart called atten-
tion to peat in Holland composed of leaves of conifers and Reinsch,
almost 75 years ago, observed similar peat in Germany ; the forma-
tion of peat from ofifal of oaks and conifers is a familiar phenomenon
in the Rocky Mountain region.

In Tierra del Fuego, where conditions are subarctic, the chief
peat producer, according to Darwin, is a sedgelike plant, Astelia
pumata; in the Falkland islands, every plant is a peat-maker while
at Chiloe, Astelia pumata and Donatia magellanica make up the mass
of the peat. The Nile Sudd consists chiefly of sedges and grasses;
in Florida, not only conifers of various types but also grasses and
sedges contribute, and even the hyacinth has become important. But
they all give peat; the sedge-conifer-moss peat of Germany is almost

110 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

the same in composition as the peat from Sumatra and other islands
within the tropical regions. The differences in composition of peats
from these widely separated localities are little greater than those ob-
served in the several benches of any thick deposit.

5. The felted structure of the peat is not due to any special
character of the plants, for it is present in forest litter. The extent
of chemical and physical change increases downward in a deposit.
At the top of a growing bog, one finds living plants, but within two
or three inches, the mass consists of dead material, slightly changed
in color but with small increase in percentage of carbon. Lower
down, the organic structure becomes less and less distinct and, at
length, the whole mass is, to the unaided eye, merely a pulp, in
which are embedded fragments of wood and occasional leaves. The
condition is described by both Darwin and Thomson for southern
latitudes. The former, in writing of Tierra del Fuego, says that
Astclia piiinata constantly produces new leaves on the growing stem,
while the older ones decay. Traced downward into the peat, the old
leaves can be seen in all stages of decomposition until the whole
has been blended into a confused mass. Thomson says of the
Falkland peat that roots of Empetnim, Myrtus, Caltha and sedges
can be traced downward for several feet, but finally all structure is
obliterated and the whole is reduced to an amorphous, structureless
mass. Examined under a glass, this pulp proves to consist mostly
of plant remains, fragmentary and irregular in form. The unequal
action of decomposing agencies causes this peculiarity of form,
which might suggest to some that the plant remains had been sub-
jected to attrition during transport by running water. But the ma-
terial is of in situ origin, and all stages of change are distinct.

The several parts of plants are affected dift'erently and not all
plants are aft'ected alike. Hypnum appears to be especially resistant,
for layers of the almost unchanged moss have been found under-
lying a considerable thickness of pulpy material. The soft parts
of plants are reduced quickly and the wood of most deciduous trees
is reduced but little less rapidly. The wood of oak and conifers
remains unaft'ected for long periods, practically the only apparent
change being increase in hardness. The bark of nearly all trees

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. Ill

persists even after destruction of the other portions, so that the
flattened bark becomes, as it were, an imprint on the pulp.

6. The stages of growth in peat deposits depend very largely on
the original topography of the area. In the filling of water-basins,
the first stage is formation of mud on the bottom. This may be cal-
careous, formed by Chara and mollusks, and may hold remains of
water animals, pollen, spores, freshwater algse and vegetable remains
of other sorts, floated in by streams or blown in by the wind. If
streams carry detritus and the water have low calcareous content,
the bottom is covered eventually by fine silt with similar organic con-
tent; but if the pond be free from influx of detritus and calcium
salts, the first deposit is a mud consisting of remains of aquatic
animals, freshwater algae with spores and pollen blown in by the
wind. This is the Lebertorf stage, the Sapropel stage of Potonie.
This material, in some cases, increases with great rapidity, and the
water, at length, becomes so shallow that certain types of aquatic
plants take root and the formation of normal peat begins ; first, the
plants rooting under several feet of water ; then reeds encroach and
the rushes and sedges advance to form a floating cover, on which
shrubs and even trees take root along with ferns and, in man}^ locali-
ties, eventually Sphagnum. The trees advance, conifers first, to be
followed by deciduous forms of the forest type when the surface be-
comes dry to a depth of a foot or more. Throughout, one finds abun-
dance of spores and pollen grains, and occasionally a lens of Lebertorf
occurs, marking the site of a pool or pond in the growing mass. This,
in a general way, is the succession as worked out by the early ob-
servers and confirmed by all students during the last third of a
century.

The succession may dift'er somewhat in deposits formed on plains
bordering great rivers or on coastal areas. These begin frequently,
perhaps generally, in small, shallow ponds, caused by local obstruc-
tion of drainage and expanded by transgression, which led to union
of many small deposits. The Lebertorf stage could exist in the
original small spaces but not in the newer portions formed during
transgression, except where local ponds originated in the peat.

7. The accumulation of peat has been continuous in few locali-

112 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

ties ; even small deposits show pauses like those which characterize
those of greater extent. Many times a cyclical order is distinct and
the deposit is divided into benches. The process was interrupted
again and again, so that the surface became dry enough for growth
of trees, not merely of conifers but, in some cases, even of deciduous
trees of forest type. Sometimes such pauses were of long duration
as is shown by the age of the trees. The forest growth was fre-
quently very dense, for the peat is loaded with stumps and broken
stems. A considerable proportion of the trees were overturned, per-
haps by the wind, and sank undecayed into the soft pulp. The
moister conditions returned, the trees were drowned and peat growth
was resumed. This succession may be repeated several times in a
single deposit.

The benches may pass gradually, the one into the other, or they
may be defined sharply by partings. At times the parting consists of
Torffaserkohle or mineral charcoal, mingled with extremely fine
mineral matter, the residuum on the surface of peat long exposed to
oxidation. Such partings mark a period of dryness without invasion
by forest, during which the peat wasted. But partings of clay, sand
or marl mark invasion by water carrying detritus. After a period,
long or short, the surface is again covered with shallow water and
peat making is resumed, the parting serving as mur for the new
accumulation. The parting of Torfifaserkohle and ash may be con-
tinuous with the thick parting of transported material, so that when
peat making has been resumed over the latter, the process would
extend over the thin parting of wasted peat. It is important to bear
in mind that the thin parting is more than equivalent in length of
time to the thick parting. The new peat, expanding by transgression,
required a period for advance; the peat underlying the parting of
transported material may be strictly contemporaneous throughout,
except that the upper part is represented by the thin parting. A
thick cover of detrital matter may bring accumulation finally to a
close in one portion of an area while growth continues in another.
Sand dunes in some localities within the United States have covered
bogs of small size so that no farther increase was possible ; but in
the Baltic region, as shown by German and Scandinavian geologists,

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 113

dunes have covered great portions of the peat area, while other great
portions have remained uncovered and in continuous growth.

8. Expansion of peat deposits by transgression has been observed
in all parts of the world. Trees, still standing but killed by advanc-
ing marshes, have been described by several writers in the United
States, and the process of covering the stems has been made clear
in preceding pages by citations from Scottish authors. In many
deposits of wide extent, the fact of transgression becomes evident
only after removal of the peat for fuel or during reclamation. The
stumps of the invaded forest are laid bare, their roots still fixed in
the mur of the deposit, while their broken and shattered trunks are
prostrate in the peat, which accumulated around the trees and de-
stroyed them by preventing aeration of the roots. JNIany of these
great deposits have no trees rooted in the mur in some portions,
while those are abundant in other portions. The stumpless spaces
mark the places where the bog originated; those with stumps and
prostrate stems mark expansion by transgression on the forest area.
These features are characteristic of peat deposits in the British Isles,
the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden as well as of those East
Indian swamps which have been reclaimed for agricultural purposes.

9. The effect of pressure on peat is to render it so similar physi-
cally to brown coal that the contrast with normal peat is very great.
Forchhammer, Jentzsch, Nilson, Lesquereux, Goeppert and Schreiber
have w^ritten in detail respecting this matter and incidental observa-
tions are to be found in writings by other authors. Even the long-
continued pressure of peat itself in a deep deposit has much the same
effect on the lowest layers.

10. Peat contains introduced materials of various kinds. Logs
and stumps are not of these ; they are merely the more resistant
parts of peat-making plants, embedded in pulp from less resistant
portions. Fragments of rock, sometimes angular, sometimes water-
worn, have been reported from a few localities. The comparative
infrequency of references may indicate rarity of occurrence, localiza-
tion within the peat or the indifference of observers. The facts avail-
able are so few that any suggestion as to the origin of these frag-
ments would be worthless. Often, there is much silt; at times, one

114 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

finds pockets of sand or clay, even of freshwater limestone. The
limestone cannot be regarded as extraneous, for in all probability it
was formed sur place in ponds within the swamp ; but the other
materials are of foreign origin and indicate more or less frequent
flooding by detritus-laden water. In considerable areas, the quantity
is so great as to render the peat worthless ; in others the material is
localized, as in bogs of lake or pond origin, wdiere the peat on the
borders is commercially worthless, while midway in the basin it is
almost free from mineral admixture. The several benches of a peat
deposit often difTer notably in mineral-content, showing variations
in conditions during formation. Bones of mammals, shells of fresh-
water mollusks, remains of beetles and other insects are of common
occurrence. Peat deposits have yielded the best specimens of Pleisto-
cene mammalia ; domestic cattle are often mired in swamps and
whole troops of armed men have perished in Scottish swamps during
flight after battle.

II. The floor or mur of peat deposits may consist of any mineral
material not injurious to plant life. Ordinarily, in swamps originat-
ing in ponds, it is composed of more or less nearly impervious stuff,
clay, lake marl or Lebertorf mud. Where a deposit has increased
by transgression, the mur may be shale or even sand ; but in the latter
case the immediate floor is apparently the cover of forest offal, the
underlying sand having been rendered more or less nearly impervious
by humic acid derived from the organic cover. The characteristic
feature of the mur is the presence of roots belonging to peat-making
plants. In original localities, where peat was formed in open areas,
the roots are those of reeds, rushes water-lillies, etc. — the Rohrricht-
boden of German writers being a familiar condition. Where the
deposit originated in forests or encroached upon them, one finds in
the mur a tangled mass of roots, oaks, conifers, alders, birches and
other plants, from which the stems very commonly pass into the peat.
These stems rarely extend beyond the peat cover and they are broken
off at practically the same level. Where the deposit consists of sev-
eral benches, each becomes in turn a mur for the next, and roots are
distributed in the peat-mur as in the original clay or other nnir; in
each bench the stumps are cut off at or below the top of the peat.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 115

It is seemingly probable that the pause at the close of the bench-
formation was long enough to permit complete decay of exposed
parts of the stems. Usually, however, the decay was complete before
the end of the peat- forming period and one generally finds the upper
part of the bench continuous over the tops of the stumps. The dura-
bility of stumps and of some woods is remarkable even when they
are exposed, and it is much greater when they are buried in peat or
in loose material containing much moisture. But decay of the wood
is much more rapid than that of the bark; a stem may become hollow
and the space may be filled with silt or sand holding leaves or remains
of small animals, as Lesquereux, De la Beche and Potonie have
shown.

12. The roof or toit of a peat deposit may be as variable as the
floor. As in the latter one finds usually a gradual passage from
the rock to the peat, giving a faux-mur, so on top one finds similarly
a gradual passage from peat to rock, a veritable faux-toit. In this,
one recognizes frequently roots, stumps and prostrate stems, remains
of the forest which covered the peat. But the forest was not always
present ; the deposit was buried before the cycle had been completed,
so that one finds, mingled with the silt or sand, leaves only of upland
vegetation. The roof may be of freshwater, marine or aeolian origin,
it may be sand, clay, marl or limestone ; the calcareous beds accumu-
late slowly, the others slowly or rapidly. Erect trees, rooted, are
found in the roof material, but unlike those in the peat, they are not
all broken off at the same height. Where engulfing material is
seolian sand not deposited continuously, the trees may adjust them-
selves to the conditions and a long period may elapse before their
death, so that the buried forest may remain in normal position and
the erect trees may penetrate a notable thickness of rock, as in the
Baltic provinces. When the material has been transported by run-
ning water, the accumulation may be less rapid, but enough so to
kill the trees by rendering the cover too wet. The erect stems may
be of any height, from mere stumps to a score or more feet and
they may be surrounded by rocks of various kinds, sands or clays,
in mass or in alternating layers.

Under the term " roof '' may be comprehended all rocks between

116 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

one peat horizon and the next. Very often one finds in this interval
alternation of land, freshwater and marine conditions. The immedi-
ate roof may be clay succeeded by sand, both of freshwater origin,
but on these may rest sand or marl with shells of familiar marine
mollusks. The sands frequently contain transported remains of
plants, in some cases trunks of trees, prostrate, inclined or even
approaching the vertical and accompanied at times by bones of vari-
ous mammals, with land, freshwater or brackish water shells. The
plant remains usually differ from those in the peat, and they appear
to have come from undermined banks of rivers. An interesting and
by no means uncommon feature is the occurrence of " soils of vege-
tation," bearing remains of forest growth, there being an accumula-
tion of forest offal about and between the stumps. These mark ex-
posed surfaces on which trees grew but where swampy, peat-forming
conditions did not prevail. Erect as well as prostrate trunks are
present, all enveloped by the mass of sand or clay which buried the
old soil.

13. All areas in which peat accumulates have imperfect drain-
age ; the streams are usually sluggish and are easily diverted. The
peat, at times, encroaches on the channelways and eventually fills
them. This condition is recognized readily v^^hen the section is ex-
posed in excavations for reclamation canals, for the silt or sand
forms a " roll " on the bottom, narrowing upward and covered by
peat. Sometimes a new channel is formed during a flood and the
sand-laden water tears away the peat, sometimes to the bottom, giv-
ing a " roll " in the roof, which narrows downward. Similar condi-
tions are not rare in interval rocks between peat horizons, buried
channelways being of frequent occurrence. This contemporaneous
erosion marks the existence of land surfaces.

14. Plants growing on peat show great adaptability to changing
conditions. Birch requires that the roots have free access to air,
but C. A. Davis states that he has seen birch making thrifty growth,
where the roots had been covered during two growing seasons by
a foot of w^ater. Shaler described the habits of Ta.vodiiun dis-
tichum, the familiar cypress of our southern swamps. Where the
region is dry, the plant shows no peculiarity of root structure; but

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 117

when it grows in a swamp, wJiere the roots are in the saturated peat,
covered with water, it puts forth the curious " knees," which
project beyond the water surface and provide means for aeration.
If the water-level be changed abruptly, so that the knees are sub-
merged, the tree dies, as appears in the New Madrid area, where
during the earthquake of 1811, the land sank and the swampy area
became a lake. Nyssa is provided with an equivalent protection
for aeration. Conifers are found far out on the wet sedge-mat,
which floats on the surface of a lake ; but they grow slowly amid the
untoward conditions and usually are overturned by the wind before
attaining great size, as their roots are radial and very near the
surface. Capp's observations respecting conditions in the White
river district of Alaska are thoroughly illustrative. Peat as a soil
is not repugnant to plants. The acid character of new peat is
offensive to most of our deciduous trees and to many other plants;
but many others, among them majestic trees both conifer and
deciduous, thrive best on the damp acid material. When a bog
ceases to grow, the thin upper layer becomes freed in considerable
measure from the acid and the moisture ; usually it is occupied
quickly by the ordinary forest trees of the region, though the
saturated peat may be only a foot below. The roots of these trees
are radial, creeping near the surface.

15. Peat, deprived of moisture and exposed to the air, quickly
undergoes change. The soluble cementing material becomes in-
soluble, or is removed, the mass becomes pulverulent and is apt
to be swept away by the wind. The vast reclamation works, which
have converted swamp areas into agricultural land, have e?^hibited
the changes on a grand scale. The natural conclusion seemed to
be that peat has been formed only to waste away. But this is an
error. Peat has been formed to be preserved. Peat deposits in
Scandinavia, Germany and Great Britain have existed since the
Glacial period and in not a few localities they are still growing.
But the growth has been interrupted many times and for consider-
able periods ; the surface was exposed, but not long. Under ordi-
nary conditions, shrubs and trees advance as the peat surface dries
and the Waldmoor or forested bog is protected from waste. Under

118 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

other conditions, the bog may be covered by mineral materials, as
on the lowland of Holland, Belgium and France, and waste by
oxidation is prevented. By one method or the other the peat is
preserved indefinitely : by the former method, the continued increase
of peat is assured in most cases, as the forested surface again be-
comes marshy and peat production is resumed, to end again in a
forest. This cycle has been reported again and again from peat
bogs of northern Europe. The thickness of a deposit depends, other
things being equal, upon the period of growth ; the thickest deposits
reported are those in Alaska and in tropical and subtropical regions ;
in those regions climatal changes have been comparatively small
since the Quaternary began.

i6. The composition of peat depends ordinarily upon its age,
that at the bottom of a deposit not only approaches complete disin-
tegration, so that to the unaided eye it shows no trace of organic
structure, but it also is far advanced in carbon-enrichment. Yet
peat from neighboring localities, where conditions seem to have been
similar, may show great dissimilarity in composition ; one finds
strange contrasts even in the benches of a single deposit, for some
may be far advanced while others consist of almost unchanged
plants. This study is not concerned with the processes involved in
conversion of vegetable matter, so that one must be content with the
statement that some benches were buried when those processes had
been checked at an early stage and that apparently no progress has
been made since burial. The carbon in peat may vary from little
more than 40 per cent, in the topmost layer to 49 in the next — the
first used for fuel — and to 64 in the bottom portions. But in bogs
where the surface growth has ceased or has been unimportant for a
long period, the part immediately below the surface may have 58
to 60 per cent. Oxygen shows similar variation ; there being 36 to
40 per cent, in the highest part used for fuel while the oldest,
densest portions may have only 26 or 27 per cent. The ordinary
fuel peat has from 57 to 64 per cent, of carbon. Density is not
evidence of advanced change ; the dense, hard, black Schieferkohle
of Utznach, compressed by the heavy cover, has 56 per cent, of
carbon and 36 of oxygen.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 119

The ash is extremely variable even in a single deposit. Only a
small proportion of the peaty material on the earth's surface is
good enough for fuel and a great part of that now forming is little
better than carbonaceous shale, with 25 to 50 or more per cent, of
mineral matters. At times peat is found with less ash than should
be expected, less than that contained in the original plants. Solu-
tion has made possible the removal ; potash and soda are usually
present, but in small quantity, the greater part having been removed.
Lime, iron and alumina are always present, though in exceedingly
variable proportions, this being due perhaps to the character of the
drainage area — but this suggestion is not always satisfactory.

At many localities, the organic acids in solution have become
a cementing material, more or less disseminated throughout the
structureless mass, dopplerite in peat, Carbohumin in Schiefer-
kohle. In peat, it is gelatinous, but after the water has been
removed it is hard and insoluble. It has reached the latter condi-
tion in Schieferkohle.

Resins, waxes and paraffins exist in peat, from which they can
be extracted by solvents. They have been derived directly from
the plants ; there is no reason to believe that they were formed during
the conversion into peat or that they were introduced from an
external source.

The Tertiary Coals.

Tertiary coals, of the ordinary types, are termed Braunkohle in
Germany and Austria but in France and English-speaking countries
they are known as lignite. The passage from peat to brown coal is
extremely gradual and occasionally, as indicated on preceding pages,
determination of the relations is merely a matter of personal equa-
tion. In Europe generally the complex group known as brown coal
has abundant points of similarity distinguishing it from the
Palseozoic or " stone " coals, so that, as Mesozoic coals are com-
paratively unimportant, the effort there has been to ascertain why
brown coal and stone coal are so unlike and to discover reasons why
the former could not be converted into the latter. But in North
America the condition is wholly different, for coals of all types
from wood-like lignite to bituminous, even to anthracite occur at

120 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

times within a .single district, in a single bed or even within the
limits of a single estate. The passage from one type to the other
is so gradual that chemists and geologists of North America have
labored to discover some means of distinguishing them. The prob-
lem is no longer one of merely abstract or scientific interest ; it is
of the utmost practical importance, since within a vast area the only
source of supply is in the Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous deposits.
The effort is to determine distinctions which will be available for
both the seller and the purchaser of fuel.

In most works, the characteristics of brown coals are given
definitively. Though in mass the color may be black, yet the
powdered material has a brown tint; the content of water is con-
siderable and air-dried specimens retain lo per cent, or even much
more, so that brown coals have been termed hydrous; jointing or
cleat is wanting or at best ill-defined ; the water in air-drying escapes
through shrinkage cracks or along bedding planes and the coal falls
into small fragments ; brown coals do not coke ; solution of caustic
potash attacks brown coal and acquires a reddish or brownish tint ;
brown coals contain more carbon than peat but notably less than
the stone coals.

These features are characteristic of brown coals in general but
they are not wholly distinctive. Some brown coals yield a black
powder and some Carboniferous coals give a brownish powder;
many Carboniferous coals retain more than lo per cent, of water
and there are Tertiary coals with very much less ; there are Tertiary
coals with very distinct cleat while there are Carboniferous coals in
which cleat is very indefinite; there are Carboniferous coals in ex-
tensive areas whose included water escapes along the bedding planes
and the coal breaks first into slabs and then into small fragments ;
a very great proportion of Carboniferous coals do not cake while
there are Tertiary coals which yield good coke ; caustic potash solu-
tion attacks many Carboniferous coals ; the carbon-content is not
definite. In fact, the passage from brown to stone coal is as grad-
ual, chemically, as that from the growing layer of peat to brown coal.

A proper examination of this matter will be in place only after
study of the Palaeozoic coals. For present purposes, the classifica-

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 121

tion by Hoffmann^''" must answer. He recognized a gradual change
in the chemical and physical character of the upper Mesozoic coals
from east to west within the Bow and Belly river region of western
Canada. In the eastern strip of that district, the fuels have all the
characteristics of lignite (brown coal) ; those of the middle strip are
intermediate between lignites and true coals, the latter being found
in the w' estern strip ; while in the mountains, farther west, anthracite
occurs. All belong to the same general horizon in the Upper Cre-
taceous. Reasoning from the series of analyses which he had
made, he grouped the fuels into lignites, lignitic coals and coals.
Lignites are fuels which, on exposure to the air, tend more or less
to. disintegrate and tp fall to pieces ; they all communicate a deep
brownish red to boiling solution of caustic potash and contain lo to
15 per cent, of hygroscopic water, sometimes even more; they do
not yield a coherent coke. Lignitic coals show much less tendency
to disintegration, give less deep coloration to the potash solution,
have less hygroscopic water, 5 to 9 per cent., and are practically
non-caking. Coals are hard and firm, give only slight coloration
to the solution of caustic potash and yield a non-coherent coke by
slow coking, but a firm coke by fast coking. In the relations of car-
bon, hydrogen and oxygen they closely resemble some British non-
coking coals. This grouping is very similar to that used by the
United States Geological Survey, which is, lignite, subbituminous
and bituminous coal.

Coal has been found in all portions of the Tertiary column.
Pliocene deposits of some economic importance have been found in
Italy, Hungary, Germany, New Zealand and Alaska. The Mio-
cene coals of Hungary, Bohemia, Germany, Bosnia, France, Spitz-
bergen, Iceland and Greenland as well as those of Trinidad and the
adjacent portion of South America are of great extent ; coal of this
age has been found in Central America and occasionally in North
America, but the deposits are apparently unimportant. Oligocene
coals are mined extensively in Hungary, Germany and Switzerland,
but they have not been recognized definitively in North America ex-

i*"' G. C. Hoffmann, " Chemical Contributions to the Geology of Canada,"
Rep. Prog. Geol. Surv. Canada, 1882-4, Pt. M, pp. i, 2, 5-8; Ann. Rep. li
Pt. R, pp. 9-18.

122 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

cept in western Canada. Eocene coals are present in Bavaria,
Austria and Hungary, but, for the most part, the areas are incon-
siderable. Deposits of this age in India, Java, Sumatra and Borneo
are well known, while those of western North America are the
main source of supply for a vast area.

Classification of Tertiary Coals. — As the Tertiary brown coals
have supplied a great part of the fuel consumed in Germany and
much of France during more than two centuries, they have been
classified to the last degree of detail. Brongniart^''^ recognized four
types. Lignite jayet, which he thought equivalent to Pechkohle,
though it is evident that his reference is to the mineral jet; Lignite
friable, la houille limoneuse of Brochant, regarded by him as syn-
onymous with the German Moorkohle ; Lignite fibreux, which retains
the woody structure ; Lignite terreux, bituminose Holzerde, com-
monly known as Terre de Cologne, black to blackish brown, with fine-
grained earthy fracture, mostly homogeneous, but containing em-
bedded trunks of trees.

Zirkel's^*'^ grouping utilized the popular names as employed in
Germany : Pechkohle, compact, brittle, pitch-black, waxy or greasy
luster, conchoidal fracture ; approaches stone coal but is structure-
less; Gemeine Braunkohle, or common brown coal, compact with
more or less conchoidal fracture, less hard and brittle than Pech-
kohle, blackish brown to pitch black, with or without woody struc-
ture, passes on one side into Pechkohle and on the other into Moor-
kohle, a dense mass even in structure, black with bright streaks, is
closely related to Erdkohle, or earthy brown coal, which is a friable
mass of dust-like more or less loosely consolidated fragments, with
dull luster and earthy fracture ; Lignit or wood brown coal, in
masses showing texture of wood, twigs, flowers, roots, etc. ; Bast-
kohle and Nadelkohle are merely varieties of Lignit; Blatterkohle,
Dysodil and Papierkohle are finely laminated ; Wachskohle contains
62 per cent, of paraffin.

Zincken^*^^ presented a somewhat similar classification but in such
detail as to exhibit sufficiently the great complexity of the group

161 Al. Brougniart, " Mineralogie," T. 2, pp. 50 fif.

162 F. Zirkel, " Lehrbuch der Petrographie," Bd. I., pp. 390-392.

163 C. Zincken, "Die Physiographic der Braunkohle," pp. 168 ff.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 123

known as brown coal. The terms, for the most part, are those in
popular use, showing that the distinction between the several mem-
bers is notable, (i) Gemeine Braunkohle, in more or less hard
masses, with or without trace of woody structure, brown to blackish
brown, with bright streak, dull fracture, breaks into irregular angu-
lar fragments, is intermediate between Erdkohle and Pechkohle; (2)
Erdkohle, earthy brittle, yellowish to dark brown, wholly amorphous,
much cleft by drying, alternating bright and dull laminae, the former
more common in the upper part of beds while the denser varieties
in the lower part of the bed give a shorter flame. The varieties
are very numerous ; Schwelkohle, very bituminous, resinous, yields
tar, illuminating gas and paraffin ; Schmierkohle belongs in the
upper part of beds and wdien damp feels like clay, Colnische umbra
is an earthly brown coal utilized as coloring material, Russkohle,
earthy, dusty, of irregular occurrence; (3) Lignit, masses of wood,
more or less fossilized, passes over into ordinary brown coal, is
yellow to dark brown and breaks like wood, may contain patches
of Erd-, Pech- and Glanzkohle, some lignits in drying become
Pechkohle. It is derived mostly from resinous trees, the stems
being flattened by softening and pressure. The varieties are nu-
merous; Bastko'hle forming layers or parts of layers, more or less
of bark structure belonging to Pinus, Taxiis, Alniis, etc., Nadel-
kohle, bundles of tissues of palms with parenchyma removed ; (4
and 5) Dysodil or Papierkohle and Blatterkohle, in very thin lami-
nae; (6) Moorkohle contains abundance of remains of swamp
plants as well as compressed woody roots, small stems, etc., usually
associated with deposits of lignit and occurs in the low^er portion
of the bed or fills spaces between the stems; (7) Pechkohle, dense,
more or less brittle, rather tender, breaks into sharp angular frag-
ments, black brown to pitch black, dull pitch-like to greasy luster
and irregular to conchoidal fracture, passes over to common brown
coal on one side or to Glanzkohle on the other ; sometimes it occurs
in Moorkohle, while at others it includes thin to 5-inch layers of
Glanz-, derived from conifer stems pressed flat; (8) Glanzkohle
is dense with conchoidal fracture, is blackish with greasy, vitreous
or metallic luster ; sometimes it forms whole beds but it is often as-

124 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

sociated with other types and not rarely one finds laminae of Glanz-
alternating with those of dull coal, giving a banded appearance to
the section. This is the hardest variety of brown coal and is de-
rived prevailingly from resinous woods. (9) Gayet or jet, dense,
hard but not brittle, richly bituminous.

Von GumbeP°* was satisfied with a much simpler classification.
His subdivisions are Lignit, Pechkohle, typical Braunkohle, which
includes all the other varieties of authors. He adds Faserkohle,
the same with mineral charcoal or fusain.

Toula's^"^ system is as simple as that of v. Giimbel, but quite
different in the method of grouping. Glanz- and Pechkohle are
varieties of the black coals ; Moorkohle in many ways resembles
peat ; Blatterkohle or Dysodil and Lignit are defined by him as by
other writers. All are allied closely to types of materials observed
in peat deposits.

The array of terms is formidable, but the condition is less com-
plex than it appears. A bed never consists wholly of any one type;
ordinarily several kinds of coal are found in a single bed, where
those most in contrast are often found in intimate association.
The great variety shows sufficiently well that the term brown coal
or lignite is applied to a group of substances differing in mode of
occurrence as well as in chemical and physical character, among
them some closely allied to peat and others which bear great re-
semblance to the Palaeozoic coals. Owing to the great diversity
in conditions, it is necessary to present descriptions of deposits in
the order of their age and in some detail, reserving until the close
an effort to determine the features which are in common.

The Pliocene Coals. — Descriptive notes respecting the Pliocene
coals are comparatively few. Some of the deposits are on the bor-
der line between Tertiary and Quaternary, so that the age is in-
determinate. Collier^^*' discovered an area of this kind near the
palisades of the Yukon River in Alaska. Bluffs of silt and gravel,
150 feet high, line the river and contain so many bones of large

164 C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 139 ff.

165 F. Toula, " Die Steinkohlen," Wien, 1888, p. 18.

166 A. J. Collier, " The Coal Resources of the Yukon, Alaska," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 218, 1903, pp. 43, 44.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 125

mammals that the deposit is known as the " bone yard." Recent
land and freshwater shells as well as cones of a Picea, like those of
the Yukon spruces are associated with them. These silts and
gravels enclose beds of vegetable matter, one more than 20 feet
thick, in varied stages of conversion, from pliable wood to brittle
brown lignite. As a whole the similarity to recent peat is very
close. Collier's description suggests that the deposits mark sites
of flood-plain swamps, more or less forested and subject to over-
flows by floods which, like those of this day, left behind sands as
well as the trees from undermined sandy banks of the river,

Haast^*^^ saw at several localities in New Zealand, deposits of
lignite or " lignitic brown coal," belonging to late Tertiary or in
some cases to early Quaternary. At one, the bed is 3 feet 2 inches
thick and the coal retains the woody structure ; at another, he
measured 14 feet of brown coal while at a third, the section shows
numerous beds, 2 inches to 5 feet thick, separated by fireclays, shales
and porphyritic tufas. Some lignites are distinctly ancient peat
bogs while others are composed chiefly of timber. Hutton^'''® recog-
nized undoubted Pliocene lignites at many places in southern New
Zealand, especially around the margins of old lake basins and in
river valleys, which existed prior to the great depression of the
newer Pliocene. Occasionally, one finds well-preserved stems and
usually the vegetable origin of the material is distinct to the unaided
eye ; but, at times, the mass is compact, brown, structureless and
cannot be distinguished from brown coal. The thickness at one
place is 30 feet ; but " like all hgnite beds " the deposits are local
and not connected.

Hantken^*''* states that in Hungary the Pliocene frequently con-
tains lignite and that the deposits are freshwater, holding Uiiio and
Paludina. The beds are broken by irregular partings and vary
much, even abruptly, in thickness and quality. One bed has 8
benches of brown coal, in all 3.5 meters, with 7 partings of clay,
the whole thickness being 6.36 meters. The lower benches are

1^" J. Haast, Rep. New Zealand Geol. Survey for 1873-4, PP- I4. I5-
168 p -y^. Hutton. " Geology of Otago," Dunedin, 1875, pp. 96, 98.
16^ M. Hantken, " Die Kohlenflotze und der Kohlenbergbau in den Liin-
dern der ungarischen Krone," Budapest, 1878, pp. 341, 343, 352, 353.

126 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

harder than the upper ones. At another place, the bed consists
of brown coal, 7.5 meters, clay, 0.25 meter, brown coal, 0.25 meter.
The lower bench is harder and better than the upper one, which is
crowded with stems of Sequoia langsdorffii. The roof is clay, with
impressions of plants.

Von Amnion^"'' has described the Gustav mine, near Oettingen
a.M. in Bavaria, as yielding Moor- and Alooskohle with included
Lignit (bituminose Holz). This chief bed, underlying upper Plio-
cene clay, is from 8 to 16 meters thick and is mined in open work-
ings within an area of about 2,000 acres (800 ha). At Schwarzen-
feld, the workable coal is but 2.5 meters thick and contains not
far from 16 per cent, of wood. In all cases, the observer appears to
have been impressed profoundly by the resemblance of these deposits
to peat beds, both in structure and in distribution.

Miocene Coals. — Marine conditions prevailed in the present
coastal plain along the Atlantic in North America during the Mio-
cene and conditions favoring accumulation of vegetable matter did
not exist in the adjacent region, for no coal has been found. But
the vegetation was there and swamps were on some of the streams,
Berry^^^ discovered the remains of a cypress swamp near Richmond,
Virginia, associated with the well-known diatomaceous earth of that
region. Among the characteristic plants are Taxodium, Nyssa,
Salix, Quercus and others of types familiar in modern cypress
swamps. The conditions for some reason were equally unfavor-
able elsewhere on the continent, and no coal positively identified as
Miocene has been found anywhere in economic quantity except
within a petty area in California. There,^^^ in the Monte Diablo
range, is the bed, which was mined long ago and for many years
was the chief source of fuel for steamboats. The bed, as measured
by Arnold, is 14 to 16 feet thick and has a dip of about 70 degrees.
The coal varies greatly in quality both vertically and horizontally,
specimens from some openings being, in composition, very much

i"o L. V. Ammon, " Bayerische Braunkohle," etc., pp. 15-21, 26, 27.

171 E. W. Berry, " A Miocene Cypress Swamp," Torrcya, Vol. VIII., 1909,
pp. 233-235.

172 R Arnold, " Coal in the Monte Diablo Range," U. S. Geol. Survey,
Bull. 285, 1906, pp. 223, 224.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 127

like bituminous coal while those from others are lignitic. There is
a marked variability in the percentage of ash. In burning, this
coal gives off an enormous volume of smoke.

Pardee^'^^ has recorded brief notes respecting deposits in Mon-
tana, which appear to be on the border line between Miocene and
Oligocene. They are lenticular and consist of remains of vegeta-
tion, which grew on the fiats, mingled with silts from the muddy
water which frequently flooded the spaces. The coal attains a maxi-
mum thickness of 7 feet, is banded, with alternating bright and
dull laminae, has semi-conchoidal fracture, splits along the bedding
planes and has two sets of joints, intersecting at right angles. It
is usually dense and brittle, but at one mine some of the layers are
rather tough and woody. The streak is brownish and the coal tends
to slake on exposure. The dip throughout the region is gentle.

The Miocene coal of Greenland was discovered long ago and it
has been utilized in a small way. Brown^"* gave numerous sections
from one area. The important bed of the region explored by him is
on Heer's creek, wdiere it is double, showing coal, 2 feet 6 inches,
shale, I foot 6 inches, coal, i foot. The coal is but slightly coherent,
has cubical fracture and breaks down readily on exposure. Retinite
is abundant in lumps from mere specks to the size of a marble.
Many stems of trees are in the upper bench, but they have been
replaced with chert. Somewhat later, Heer^'^ described a bed of
coal near Discovery Harbor, 25 to 30 feet thick and with extreme
dip of 10 degrees. The overlying black shale is rich in plant
remains ; among which, as in Spitzbergen, conifers hold the first
place, ten species having been recognized ; with them are eight species
of dicotyledons, belonging to families usually well represented in
swamp floras, such as birch, elm, waterlilly and other types of similar
habit. Heer regards the whole assemblage as indicative of swamp
origin for the deposit. The coal falls to pieces readily on exposure;

^■^3 J. T. Pardee, " Coal in Tertiary Lake Basins of Southwestern Mon-
tana," U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 531 G, pp. 11-15.

1"* R. Brown, " Geological Notes on the Noorsack Peninsula," etc.. Trans.
Geol. Soc. Glasgow, Vol. V., 1877, pp. 91, 95.

i"2 O. Heer, " Notes on Fossil Plants Discovered in Grinnell Land,"
Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, Vol. 34, 1878, pp. 68-72.

128 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

but the analysis of an air-dried specimen by R. J. Moss as given on
p. 563 of the volume just cited, shows for it a composition not far
from that of a well-advanced bituminous coal: Water, 2.01; ash,
8.49; carbon, 82.97; hydrogen, 6.15 ; oxygen and nitrogen, 10.87.

The coal beds of Trinidad,^'^ in the West Indies, are part of a
deposit originally continuous southward in Venezuela, where it under-
lies an area of not less than 36,000 square miles. This region lies
south from N. L. 10 degrees, where the climate during the Miocene
was intensely tropical, as it still is. The newer Parian group has a
fauna allied to that of the Miocene and the coal beds are in the lower
members, the Caroni and the Moruga. Those of the former, from
mere films to 4 feet 6 inches thick, are well shown in the interior
where the upper beds, with dip of 15 degrees, are distinctly ligneous,
but the lower beds, with dip of 40 to 50 degrees, are, to the naked
eye, structureless. No roots were recognized in the underclays. The
Moruga beds are not important ; frequently they are little better than
carbonaceous shale. At two places, roots were seen " rectangular to
the bases of the strata." The accompanying rocks in both divisions
are chiefly shales, but the Caroni contains a thick sandstone with
ripple-marked surfaces.

Returning to the north, important deposits of coaP' ' have been
opened in the Miocene on Advent Bay. The bed is triple at 60 yards
from the crop, showing coal, i foot 8 inches, clay, 2 to 4 inches, coal,
I foot 7 inches, sand, 3 to 5 inches, coal, i foot.

In the upper benches the coal is hard, grayish-black, imperfectly
laminated and with a somewhat conchoidal fracture. The bottom
bench is black, laminated, rather lustrous and tends to be prismatic.
Mineral charcoal is present in considerable quantity. In general ap-
pearance, coal from the upper benches is mostly splint-like but that
from the lowest bench is remarkably like ordinary bituminous coal.
Air-dried specimens contain less than 5 per cent, of water. Caustic
potash solution attacks the coal throughout and acquires a very in-

1"*^ G. P. Wall and J. G. Sawkins, " Report on the Geology of Trinidad,"
London, i860, pp. 41-50.

1"^ J. J. Stevenson, " The Jurassic Coal of Spitzbergen," Ann. N. Y. Acad.
Sci., Vol. XII., 1895, pp. 82-95. The assignment of this coal to the Jurassic
is an error; Nathorst has shown that it is Miocene.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 129

tense coloration. On the pure coal basis, the upper benches contain
almost 10 per cent, more volatile than that from the lowest bench.

The Sutarbrandur of Iceland was described briefly by Jardin.^'^
Robert had supposed that these deposits consisted merely of drift-
wood, but Jardin recognized that the quantity is too great to admit
of that explanation. The beds are numerous, having been seen on
all coasts except the southern ; they are horizontal and their thick-
ness is from mere films to 12 meters. The material is sometimes
compact and free from inorganic admixture, at others, it is frag-
mentary, mingled with pebbles and dirt while at others still it is
almost pulverulent. When compact it consists of alternating dull
and bright laminae. IMouchet's study with the microscope showed
that this coal is derived chiefly from conifers.

Geikie^"^ states that in the Faeroe Islands coal of Miocene age
is associated with dark carbonaceous clays and is more or less len-
ticular. The formation is 10 to 15 feet thick on the island of
Suderoe, where he observed two types of coal; one is bright, with
glassy fracture, not soiling the fingers and not unlike some of the
Scotch parrot coals ; the other is dull, lusterless, soils the fingers
and shows vegetable structure. These alternate in the seams but the
dull slaty coal is more abundant than the other. Johnstrup, cited
by Geikie, held that every lens of glance represents a flattened stem,
in which annual rings can be seen. Geikie found this not true of the
thinner streaks and threads. The glance coal has 12 to 14 per cent,
of water and only 2.5 per cent, of ash ; whereas the better quality of
the slaty coal has 11 to 17 per cent, of water and 10 per cent, of ash.
The conditions resemble those in the Scottish coal fields, which led
Geikie to suggest that the coals are due to gradual accumulation of
different plants or of different parts of the same plants.

Fournet^^*' saw at Sonnaz near Bourget in France a coal bed with
this structure: Lignite, 1.30 m. ; clay, 0.30 m. ; lignite, o.io m. ; clay,
0.05 m. ; lignite with Planorbis, 4 m.

1"^ E. Jardin, " Note sur le Sutarbrandur d'lslande," Bull. Soc. Geol.
France, II., Vol. 23, 1866, pp. 456-459.

i"^J. Geikie, "On the Geology of the Faeroe Islands," Trans. Roy. Soc.
Edinb., Vol. XXX., 1882, pp. 227-230, 240, 267.

i^^J. Fournet, "Note sur les lignites tertiaires de-la Tour-du-Pin (Isere),"
Bull. Soc. Geol. France, II., Vol. XL, 1854, pp. 763-772.

130 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

This bed underlies 52 meters of sand and gravel; at 5 meters
below it is a thin streak of lignite resting on white clay, which con-
tains Helix and Planorbis. At Tour-du-Pin, the partings are marly
and the underclay contains laminse of lignite, which become thicker
as the bed is approached. The lignite there is distinctly laminated
and is so hard that it can be removed only with picks. The laminae,
completely " bitumenized," show vegetable impressions but no leaves
or flattened stems. Near Vion, on the border of Isere, mineral
charcoal is abundant between the lamin?e and embedded trunks of
trees are not rare. Some parts of this deposit are brown, but others
are " bitumenized." The constituents are distinct, for Fournet recog-
nized debris of birch, juniper, fir, cherry and walnut, with sedges,
rushes, elytra of insects and Planorbis. He was impressed by the
remarkable resemblance to coal beds ; the partings, the passage of the
floor into the lignite, the lamination and the abundance of mineral
charcoal. One cannot fail to see in Fournet's description an equally
close resemblance to peat deposits ; land and freshwater mollusks,
elytra of insects, all found in the lignite as well as in the underclay,
the character of the plants, the structureless mass in which the plant
remains and the shells are embedded.

Daubree^^^ published some notes respecting his observation in the
Lower Rhine area. Near Soultz-sous-Forets, he found marls with
layers of sand. The latter contain bituminous lenses, which near
Bechelbronn have 2 per cent, of bitumen with some pyrite. They
hold much carburetted hydrogen and disastrous explosions have oc-
curred in the works. Some thin beds of lignite were seen, which
have impressions of Helix, Lymncca and Bulimus. The same shells
were seen at Lobsann, where, above the marls, are freshwater lime-
stones with thin lignites, in all from 5 to 9 meters thick. This hme-
stone yields 10 to 18 per cent, of bitumen and contains gypsum as
well as pyrite. It is rich in Cliara, the individuals being silicified and
remarkably well preserved ; but other remains of vegetables are in
poor condition.

The lignite streaks are very thin and only some millimeters apart,
there being alternate layers of lignite and limestone, sometimes 40

181 Daubree, " Notes sur le gisement du bitume, du lignite et du sel," etc.,
Bull. Soc. Geol. France, II., Vol. VII., 1850, pp. 444-450.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 131

to the meter ; but occasionally the lignite is 30 to 60 centimeters
thick and is mined. Quartz masses are present in the lignite as well
as in the limestone, which, judging from Daubree's description, are
probably of secondary origin. This Lobsann fuel is the lignite bacil-
laire, the Nadelkohle, which is merely debris of palm trees, from
which connective tissue has been removed, leaving the loosened
bundles of fibers. This constitutes the greater part of the beds and
the arrangement shows that the stems w-ere prostrate. But with this
is another fibrous type, much finer and allied to mineral charcoal.
Microscopic examination proved that this is derived from coniferous
wood; palms and conifers were associated in the forests. Succinite
is abundant in this lignite, but the balls are rarely larger than a pea
and usually are of pinhead size; he counted 40 droplets in a cubic
decimeter. It is most common in beds consisting largely of conifer-
ous debris, the fibers of mineral charcoal being still impregnated with
the resin, as appears distinctly under the microscope. This lignite is
always laminated, the laminae being less than one millimeter thick
and alternately bright and dull, the latter being the less pure. Buli-
iiiits and Planorhis were obtained from the lignite. This freshwater
series of lignites and limestones is succeeded by marine marls, con-
taining Spatangiis, Cerithium, Vcnericardia and other forms of simi-
lar habit.

Potonie^®- described the great deposit of brown coal near Senften-
berg in Niederlausitz. The bed is more than 10 meters thick, and is
mined by stripping at several places. The author gives reproduc-
tions of two photographs, one being a panorama of the principal
excavation, the other showing distribution of erect stumps. As in
many recent and Quaternary peat deposits, one finds here several
generations of forest, one above the other, embedded in humus
material, the only difference being that homogeneous peat has been
converted into brown coal. In the floor, as in the roof, are many
great erect stumps, those of the former being rooted in the under-
clay, those of the latter, in the brown coal. Some stumps have a
diameter of several meters and the intervals between trees are such

182 H. Potonie, " Ueber Autochthonie von Carbonkohlen-Flutzen und des
Senftenberger Braunkohlen-Flotzes," Jahrb. d. k. prciiss. geol. Landesanst. f.
1^95, P- 97 ff- Citations from separate, pp. 19-24.

132 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

as are observed in recent forests. These belong mostly to Taxodium
distichum, the bald cypress of American swamps. Many of the stems
are hollow and, especially those near the bottom of the mass, con-
tain Schwelkohle. The presence of an ancient Torfmoor, resting on
the clay cover of the brown coal, indicates that peat-making condi-
tions recurred here until diluvial accumulations began. The sand
overlying this old bog contains erect stems belonging to either Pinus
syhestris or Picea excelsis and stumps have been found in the peat
itself. One great uncompressed fragment of a trunk was found by
Potonie, but usually the prostrate stems are flattened. The presence
of Schwelkohle in the hollow stumps led the author to suggest that
it was formed by the flow of resins, which, he thinks, must have
been great in the injured trees. Schwelkohle is, for him, essentially
a fossil resin ; it burns with brilliant flame when pure.

The forest of the roof is well shown in a photograph reproduced
on a postal card, for which the writer is indebted to W. Gothan of
Berlin. It shows ten or more erect stumps, 4 and more feet high,
distinctly rooted in the coal and associated with some prostrate stems.
These were overwhelmed by the detritus which brought peat-growth
to an end. Kukuk^®-^ has reproduced a noteworthy photograph of
the Victoria stripping in Niederlausitz. The brown coal has been
removed and the floor is exposed with the very numerous great
rooted stumps of Taxodium distichum.

Russwurm^^'^ has given a section of the brown coal bed at Oreb-
kau, about 50 miles south-southwest from Frankfurt a.O. and some-
what more than 10 miles northeast from Senftenberg. The bed is
9 meters thick, is divided by a thin parting and underlies 10 meters
of mostly black clay, containing comminuted fragments of plants.
The upper bench, free from wood, is lump coal (Knorpelkohle) and
bears shipping, so that briquetting is unnecessary ; but the lower
bench is fine coal (Formkohle) and tender, but it is rich in wood,
the quantity increasing downward until at the bottom the stems pre-
dominate. Russwurm found no erect stems. A second bed, at times
3 meters thick, is here at half a meter to 4 meters below the main

182a p Kukuk, " Unsere Kohlen," Leipzig, 1913, p. 25.
is^ P. Russwurm, " Braunkohlen Formation, etc., bei Orebkau," Zcitsch.
f. pr. GeoL, Jahrg. 17, 1909, pp. 87 ff.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 133

bed ; at one excavation, the beds are so near together that they are
mined as one, but elsewhere they must be mined separately.

According to Katzer, the Bohemian brown coals belong to the
Miocene. Grand'Eury^^* says that at Steinkirche near Budweis in
southern Bohemia, the mass of lignite, at the bottom of a superficial
basin, filled with sand, lignitic clay, wood, herbaceous plants and
roots, is a forest peat covered with mud. Katzer^®^ reports that in
the Budweis area he saw a coal bed, consisting of an upper bench,
3 decimeters thick, with stems almost completely coaled, and a lower
bench consisting mostly of Moor- and Erdkohle. At another place,
a bed, 2 meters thick, holds here and there, a great abundance of
stems and is so pyritous that it is utilized in the manufacture of
vitriol. The same author^^^ has described the Grottauer beds on the
Neisse River, immediately south from the border of Saxony, which
are in the middle or lower Miocene. In one shaft, 45 meters deep,
47 layers of alternating coal and shale were crossed. The important
bed, reached at 4 meters from the surface, has four benches of coal,
in all 10.35 meters, separated by three thin partings of clay and shale.
Another shaft shows similar alternations but the succession differs
somewhat, the second and third partings being irregular, sometimes
absent. The principal bed has an extreme thickness locally of 16
meters in the western part of the trough, where dips rarely exceed

5 degrees and the beds show little evidence of disturbance, aside
from crevices in the coal. The eastern wing of the trough is much
disturbed, faults and folds occur frequently while the crevices in the
coal, often still open and half a meter wide, extend downward 5 or

6 meters. Sulphates, chiefly alum, are shown on the walls of these
crevices.

The Grottauer brown coal consists very largely of " fossilized
wood." Freshly removed from the mine, it has a wood-earthy ap-
pearance; but when dried the blocks not only preserve the wood
structure but show also the forms of stems, roots and branches, all

^®* C. Grand'Eury, " Sur la formation des couches de Stipite," etc.,
Comptcs Rendus, T. 130, 1900, p. 1688.

185 F. Katzer, " Geologic von Bohmen," Prag, 2te Aufl., 1892, p. 1425.

186 F. Katzer, Ocstcrr. Zeitsch. f. Berg, und Hittt., Bd. XLV., 1897. Sepa-
rate, pp. 5-18.

134 STEVENSON— INTERRELx\TIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

pressed flat. The color is brown or reddish brown, but usually the
bark is black. Stems and coals are not in separate layers but are
intermingled. At times the coal is very impure and spaces between
the stems are filled with loamy mud. Occasionally one finds nests
of soft, deep black, sometimes granular coal, resembling linden char-
coal. The fresh material can be worked with a knife, saw or plane;
after complete drying, it can be pulverized only with difficulty. The
w^ood-like coal, dried at iio° C, has carbon, 53.22, hydrogen, 5.56,
oxygen and nitrogen, 37.95, ash, 3.27. This is better than the average
as generally the ash is higher.

The " gas coal " of Falkenau occurs, according to Katzer, as the
top bench of the middle coal bed at that place, and is somewhat more
than 30 inches thick. The lower benches of the bed are thin, irregu-
lar and of poor quality. Yon Giimbel's^^" study of this Falkenau
material showed that it consists chiefly of much disintegrated vege-
table matter. Treated with Bleichflussigkeit, it exhibits the needles
of intermingled Faserkohle. With these are abundant pollen exines
and very many minute bodies resembling those seen in diluvial brown
coals. The deep brown spores of lichens or alg^e are clearly recog-
nizable. The voluminous mostly white ash, 7.75 per cent., consists
of clay flakes and quartz grains with some fragments retaining plant
texture. This composition, as ascertained by v. .Giimbel, is very
much like that of a Lebertorf.

The Lower Miocene deposits of Brennberg near Oedenburg in
Hungary were studied by Nendtvich,^^® who described the coal as a
lens. It has suflr'ered much from disturbance, the dips varying from
40 to 50 degrees and crevices in the coal are filled with Russkohle
(soot-coal) and slate. The thickness in the deeper part of the basin
is from 10 to 20 fathoms, but the bed decreases toward the borders.
The woody structure is distinct in some portions of the coal, which
are finely fibrous and in part like ebony. The faux-toit is well-
marked, consisting of alternating layers of coal and clay, and shows
leaf impressions. According to Grand'Eury, the underclay contains
no roots.

IS" C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., p. 145.

188 Q M. Nendtvich, " Ungarns Steinkohlen," etc., Haidinger's Bcrichte,
Bd. III., 1848, p. 38.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 135

Hantken^®^ summarized the available information respecting the
Miocene coals of Hungary. He found that the conditions in the
middle Miocene resemble those in the Pliocene, in that the coal de-
posits occupy very small areas and vary greatly in thickness as well
as in cjuality. A bed near Edeleny, 3.24 meters thick, has four
benches ; the clay partings are in all less than three fourths of a
meter; one is pyritous, another contains Helix and plant remains
and the third is carbonaceous. The underclay is carbonaceous and
contains Helix as well as plant impressions. The deposits near
Brennberg and Saljo-Tarjan are more important. The coal bearing
group, at the bottom of the Miocene, is 27 to 40 meters thick and
holds four coal beds at Brennberg, from 2 to 7.5 meters extreme
thickness. The overlying sandstones are about 130 meters thick.
At Saljo-Tarjan, the main bed is 2 meters thick, underlies sand-
stone and conglomerate and rests on marly clay. But Grand'Eury
found that the floor varies. At an opening in Saljo-Tarjan, the coal
rests on rhyolite-tuff, but at Mitra-Novak one coal bed rests on
sandstone while another rests on clay.

Katzer^^° has described in considerable detail the brown coal
deposit near Banjaluka in Bosnia, which, according to the fauna,
appears to be IMiocene, though its flora indicates Oligocene age. Ter-
tiary beds occupy a basin of about 80 square kilometers and are
surrounded by rocks belonging to dififerent periods. The succession
of psammites, marls, limestones and tender conglomerates is appar-
ently freshwater throughout. The one important coal bed, mined
near Banjaluka, is in three benches ; the partings are very thin in the
northwest part of the mine, where the bed is single ; but they thicken
rapidly, the upper and middle benches disappear in succession and
only the lowest or Lauser bed remains. Where the bed is triple as in
the Lauser district, the succession is : Hard limestones and soft marls,
freshwater, 100 meters ; marls, more or less carbonaceous, containing
Melanopsis; upper bench of coal, with extreme thickness of 4 meters ;
gray to brown marls, calcareous, containing on top layers of com-
pressed Unio; middle bench of coal, 2 meters; yellow to gray soft

1S9 M. Hantken, " Die Kohlenflotze und Kohlenbergbau," etc., pp. 313-325.
190 p. Katzer, "Die Braunkohlen Ablagerung von Banjaluka in Bosnian,"
Berg. u. Hi'itt. Jahrh., Bd. LXL, 1913, pp. 153-227.

136 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

marls, with many films of bright coal and layers filled with com-
pressed fossils, mostly Planorbis and Melania; Lauser coal or bottom
bench, 2 to 2.5 meters ; gray, brown to blackish sandy marls with thin-
bedded calcareous marls holding coal smnts and carbonaceous shale.

In reading this section, one might easily suppose that it refers
to some peat locality in northern Ohio. The coal differs somewhat
in the several benches but the general character is the same through-
out. The woody portions pass gradually into Pechkohle, which is
the prevailing type and is not always laminated.

The Oligocene Coals. — In the Zsil Valley of Hungary, according
to Hantken,^"^ the great adit, which crosses 567 meters of Oligocene
rock, dipping at 30 degrees, cuts 14 beds of coal, one of which is
41.12 meters thick. The marly beds in contact with the coal are very
dark and contain carbonate of iron. At Szt. Ivan in the Gran dis-
trict, a bed, 12.4 meters thick, has four benches of coal, the partings
being freshwater limestone and in all 3.7 meters thick. It underlies
a conglomerate of dolomitic fragments and rests on a carbonaceous
shale passing downward into freshwater limestone. Partings in coal
beds of this Gran area show notable variations in thickness, one of
them increasing in a short distance from 1.9 to 17.45 meters. Fresh-
water conditions seem to have prevailed almost throughout, but in
the Nagy-Kovacsier basin, the lowest coal bed underlies shale con-
taining Natica and Cerithkim, though freshwater limestones are the
predominating rocks above. The coal shows marked variation in
composition. Nendtvich^^" said in 1848 that the coal of the Gran
region is black, with dull luster, mostly shaly but sometimes with
conchoidal fracture. It is non-caking and yields only a slightly
luminous gas. The woody character must be marked, for Nendtvich
speaks of the material as tough and hard to pulverize. The chief
drawbacks are the readiness with which it falls to pieces on exposure
and the tendency to spontaneous combustion.

The Oligocene coals of Germany are found in many small areas.
Plettner^^^ described in detail the greater number of the compara-

191 M. Hantken, " Die Kohlenflotze," etc., pp. 247, 259, 260-263, 280, 286, 289.
132 C. M. Nendtvich, " Ungarns Steinkohlen," etc., pp. 25-31.
193 Plettner, " Die Braunkohlen Formation in der Mark Brandenburg,"
Zcitsch. d. d. geol. Gescll., Bd. IV., 1852, pp. 249-483.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 137

lively small basins within Brandenburg, where the coals are of great
importance. At Wittenberg, on the Elbe, where the bed is 8 to 12
feet thick, the coal is blackish-brown and pulverulent; the inhabi-
tants wet it and mould it into bricks. The upper part of the bed con-
tains much fine quartz sand, but there is none in the lower portion.
The dips vary from 9 to 20 degrees. A rather extensive basin is near
]\Iuskau, on the Neisse River about 70 miles south of east from
\\'ittenberg, where the coal is hard, imperfectly laminated and shows
numerous imprints of leaves on surfaces of the laminse. It rests on
a fine clay and underlies about 10 feet of sand, succeeded by 5 inches
of leaf-bearing clay, above which is another coal bed of unknown
thickness. The coal is dull with earthy fracture and shows no trace
of organic structure, aside from the leaf imprints. A yellow resin,
mealy or dust-like, is abundant. At Griineberg, 50 miles northeast
from Muskau, the coal is hard and laminated ; it is dark brown but
the included plant remains, heaped in great quantity on the surfaces
of laminae, are yellowish brown. The waxy yellow resin is plentiful
and is often enclosed in the fossil wood, especially between the
annual rings.

Fiirstenwalde is near the river Spree at a few miles west from
Frankfurt a. O. Plettner has preserved the records of numerous
shafts and borings, which exhibit such variations that the coal beds
must be lenses. The dips are from 20 to 70 degrees. The important
bed is triple. The great bench at the bottom, 10 to 11 feet thick, is
the best and usually contains little Formkohle ; but, at times, that type
of coal forms most of the upper benches. There is a notable differ-
ence in quality, coal from the middle bench being the worst. Plettner
in this district distinguished three types of coal, which he recognized
elsewhere : ( i ) Knorpelkohle, the hardest and most appreciated,
brownish to coal-black, with at times a bluish luster ; it breaks into
Knorpel or sharp-angled parallelopipedons, 2 to 9 inches in diameter ;
the fracture is earthy, luster none and plant remains are not common ;
(2) Erdig- or Formkohle, light brown, of loose texture, earthy, fri-
able. (3) Bitumenose Holz, which is present in all benches of a bed,
embedded in the coal ; sometimes it is fragmentary but at others
whole stems are found ; these are usually prostrate, erect stems being

138 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

rare. There is little difference in the wood and the fragments appear
in all cases to belong to the genus Pinus. Ordinarily they are com-
pressed and the annual rings are ellipsoidal. A yellowish-white resin,
without succinic acid, is present in all types of the coal.

Buchow, west from Fiirstenwalde, is at a few miles east from
Berlin. There the coal is laminated with, as Plettner remarks,
enough bitumenose Holz to keep one from forgetting the vegetable
origin of the coal, as he might do if he consider only the homo-
geneous substance in which the wood is embedded. At Freinwalde,
15 or 20 miles north-northeast from Berlin, the dip is only 10
degrees, whereas at Buchow it is 15 to 60. The coal at Freinwalde
contains no wood and burns with a very disagreeable peat-like odor ;
this type, observed also at Buchow, is the ]\Ioorkohle of Plettner.
Plant remains, recognizable by the unaided eye, are few, and such
as were seen were pierced by threads of resin ; but, in the neighbor-
ing area of Falkenburg, wood abounds.

This Moorkohle is shown near Frankfurt a. O. and at some other
places. The dips in the basins of this eastern region vary from
10 to 60 and in one basin even to 90 degrees. At most localities the
coal is laminated and contains resin as well as wood ; the latter is
often converted into Pechkohle and in that conversion it loses struc-
ture. Plettner calls attention t othe fact that the change into Pech-
kohle rarely affects the w'hole fragment. The converted portion is
not altered by exposure to the air and does not separate into lamellse.

The coals of Sachsen or Prussian Saxony have been studied by

many observers. Laspeyres^^'* examined an area near Trotha and

Dolau, where the coal was mined by stripping. The lower bed is

2 to 6 meters thick and divided by an irregular parting of sandy

clay. The upper bench is often so poor as to be worthless ; the lower

bench is better but consists chiefly of Formkohle with some Knor-

pelkohle. It contains much coarse or earthy retinite in nests, streaks

or layers, as well as much pyrite, petrified wood and charcoal. At

a little distance higher is the upper bed, with extreme thickness of 5

meters. This consists of Formkohle, small particles of brown-black

coal, more or less closely packed together. Occasionally it is dust-

19* H. Laspeyres, " Geognostische Mittheilungen aus der Provinz Sach-
sen," Zcitsch. d. d. geol. Gesell, Bd. XXXIV., 1872, pp. 298-302.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 139

like and of cinnamon color, a Schwelkohle. Some Knorpelkohle is
present along with bituminose and petrified wood, the replacement in
the latter being with pyrite or silica. The plant remains are chiefly
wood, which predominates in some parts. This is wholly coniferous
and, excepting a few Abietinae, belongs to cypress. Occasionally
one finds great stems passing gradually into either earthy or compact
coal, in which Laspeyres thinks he has proof that the varied condi-
tions observed in coal must be ascribed to irregular working of the
conversion process, though he is convinced that much of the earthy
brown coal may be due to destruction of other parts of the plants,
which, being tender, offered less resistance to the process and lost
all structure.

Credner,^^^ in discussing the same area, gives as the Oligocene
succession : Lower, consisting of light-colored sands, clays with
brown coals ; Middle, dark gray to green gray sands and clays with
marine forms ; Upper, light-colored sands, gravels, clays with brown
coals.

The Lower Oligocene, about lOO meters thick, is a mass of
irregular variable strata. The coal beds are usually 4 to 5 meters
thick but in places a maximum of 8 or 9 meters is reached. There
seem to be practically two beds, but his general statement exhibits
the irregularity of deposit, for he says, (T) That the beds are not
continuous, but are interrupted locally, as they thin out; (2) Con-
sequently only one bed occurs in places where two were expected ;
(3) It is questionable if these apparently local, lens-like individual
beds are actually one and the same throughout, for the relations
of the beds are extremely variable; (4) Locally, one finds more than
two beds.

The coal is mostly earthy or soft brown coal, mingled with more
or less of Knorpelkohle and bitumenose Holz, the latter sometimes
though not often replaced with pyrite and silica. The woody ma-
terial is in small proportion and all the phenomena indicate swamp
origin. In this connection he cites A. Penck's investigation of the
Tanndorf brown coal, which showed that the lower shaly portion
of the deposit is rich in well-preserved remains of floating plants,

195 H. Credner, " Das Oligocan des Leipziger Kreises," Zeitsch. d. d. geol.
Gcsell, Bd. XXX., 1878, pp. 615.

140 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

such as Salvinia and Trapa; the next layer is full of Arimdo stems
with leaves of Salix, evidently blown by the wind. Above this is
the coal, composed of Sequoia, Betula and Palmacitcs stems. One
sees here the gradual filHng of a freshwater basin, through accu-
mulation of in situ vegetation. The abundance of still erect tree
stems, some rooted in the floor and others rooted in the coal itself
and extending meters into the overlying sand, suggest that all the
stems, prostrate as well as erect, are those of an in situ vegetation.

Naumann^^*^ remarks that stems, prostrate, piled irregularly and
compressed, are often enclosed in earthy brown coal. At times,
however, erect trees are found, cylindrical and retaining their roots,
so that they are where they grew. One finds in these areas that
locally all the prostrate stems lie in the same direction, showing that
the same force had broken them off and laid them down. He adds
a new example of erect trees. Some years prior to publication of
his work, the brown coal had been exposed by stripping near
Wiirzen in the province of Sachsen ; on the surface of the coal,
within a space of about half an acre, he saw between 40 and 50
trees, their roots interlocked within the coal bed.

A mineral, termed pyropissite, occurs at numerous places within
Sachsen, sometimes pure but often mingled with ordinary brown
coal to form the Schwelkohle, which has been of no little importance
as a source of oils. Stohr's^"^ description of conditions, prefacing
his discussion of pyropissite, gives some details not recorded by the
authors already cited. The strata generally are in no regular order
and appear to dovetail ; the brown coal alone appears to be well-
defined. The formation is from 30 to 60 meters thick and under-
lies 3 to 30 meters of diluvial deposits. The roof of the coal is
sand, clay or hard sandstone and there is a similar variation in the
floor, though commonly that is plastic clay. The brown coal, where
mined, averages about 6 meters, but the thickness varies from a few
centimeters to 10, 16 and at one place 20 meters. Owing to irregu-
larity in the floor, due to prior erosion, the coal occurs in shallow

196 Q -p Naumann, " Lehrbuch der Geognosie," 2te Aufl., 1862, Bd. III.,
p. 204.

1^' E. Stohr, " Das Pyropissit Vorkommen in den Braunkohle bei Weis-
senfels und Zeitz," Ncues Jahrhuch, Jahrg. 1867, pp. 407-409.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 141

troughs but sometimes it crosses the separating ridge. Not unfre-
quently, there are " Sanclsacke," where the roof descends, at times,
even to the floor. Usually these are filled with sand or gravel but
sometimes with plastic clay. The coal is really in one bed, divided
in some places by a sandy parting. The lower portion is Knorpel-
kohle, but is inferior as it contains much pyrite. The upper bench,
though Formkohle, is a good fuel. Occasionally, a worthless, heavy,
sand-like dust, termed Russkohle, composes whole layers in the bed.
Pyrite, gypsum and retinite accompany the coal ; at one place, amher,
in lumps as large as one's fist, is found in the roof. Bituminous
wood, pressed flat, as well as silicified wood is found in many mines.

Fiebelkorn^°® at a later date described the area examined by
Stohr. Like him, he recognized only one bed, which where mined
is from 4 to 21 meters thick and occupies a rather regular trough.
Occasionally another bed, about one meter thick, is seen above it,
the interval being filled with clay. The main portion of the trough
is divided into numerous subordinate troughs separated by low
ridges. Very often the coal is wanting on these ridges and the coal
in the troughs is lens-like. The coal is usually earthy in type, a
more or less friable mass of yellowish or reddish to dark brown or
black material, coarse-grained, with rather shining streak and in gen-
eral showing no organic texture. Toward the bottom, it not rarely
becomes Knorpelkohle ; but for the most part it is Formkohle and
on drying falls into dust. The bed contains numerous coaled stems
separated by spaces of one to five meters. The overlying beds are a
succession of white and dark sands with some clay layers, all well
exposed at several places where the cover is stripped. The floor is
usually clay but sometimes sand. It is well shown near Teuchern
and near Granschutz, where roots decending into it from the coal
are distinct. He traced these in some cases to the depth of a half
meter. They are those of reeds, grasses and rushes, marking the
floor of a swamp.

Potonie regarded the Formkohle as, in most cases, of secondary-

allochthonous origin. It was originally an autochthonous coal but

had been removed and redeposited elsewhere. To this matter, refer-

198 y[ Fiebelkorn, " Die Braunkohlenablagerungen zwischen Weissenfels
und Zeitz," Zeitsch. f. pr. Geologic, Jahrg. 1895, pp. 353-364, 396-415.

142 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS

ence will be made in another connection. Raefler,^^^ opposing the
doctrine, examined closely most of the mines in the Sachsen area.
Extended reference to this work will be made in discussion of the
doctrine of Potonie. The plates illustrate well the lens-like form of
the brown coals, showing isolation of the several portions of the beds
and suggesting that the lenses were not wholly contemporaneous.
The rudely crescent forms observed in cross-sections of the lenses
with depressed upper surface make clear the effect of compression on
the thick mass of vegetable matter midway in the little trough.
Several of his profiles indicate " Sandsacke " filled with " glazial
Diluvium." The coal is very little disturbed in many places but in
others the plications are very close. Some of these are evidently pre-
glacial and the erosion was extreme ; but it does not seem to have
been contemporaneous in any case.

Pyropissite occurs in some portions of the Sachsen area. It is
described by Zincken as amorphous, earthy, with earthy fracture ; it
is gray to yellowish to white, greasy to gummy feel and fuses to an
asphaltic mass ; it passes into Schwelkohle, a mixture of pyropissite
and ordinary brown coal. Here only the geological relations may be
considered; other matters belong under chemistry as of the brown
coals.

Stohr,-"" in the memoir already cited, states that in southern
Sachsen pyropissite is an integral part of the coal bed. The pure
mineral yields 40 to 50 pounds of tar to the ton, from which paraffin
and mineral oil are obtained ; Hhe ordinary material yields only 20
to 25 pounds. Until recently, the Schwelkohle was thought to be
worthless and of rare occurrence; but, though absent from most of
the area, it is present at many localities. It is not always a distinct
bench, but at times forms laminse in the upper part of the Feuer- or
fuel coal. The distribution seems to be lens-like, for Stohr refers to
nests of Schwelkohle. A variable layer of Russkohle intervenes
between the Schwelkohle and the roof, ordinarily not more than
6 inches thick, but at one stripping he found this layer from 2 to 3
feet. He summarized his observations thus :

193 F. Raefler, " Die Entstehung der Braunkohlen lager zwischen Alten-
burg und Weissenfels," Inauguration Dissertation, Jena, 191 1.
200 E. Stohr, Neucs Jahrbuch, 1867, pp. 410-424.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. ]43

Pyropissite occurs only where the cover is less than i6 meters;
(2) it is sometimes the upper bench, but, where the bed is very thin,
it is the only bench ; it is not always limited to the upper bench but it
may be distributed in the underlying Feuerkohle ; it occurs as leaves
in the main Feuerkohle, sometimes with distinct demarcation from
the surrounding coal but at others passing gradually into it; (3) it is
always accompanied by Russkohle, gypsum, and pyrite; retinite ap-
pears to be absent; (4) the character of the roof may be important;
under gravel and sand it is better than under clayey conglomerate;
but under a clay roof he has seen it both good and bad.

Von GiimbeP"^ studied the pyropissite of Weissenfels. It is
powdery, dust-like, brown-yellow and difficult to moisten. Under
the microscope, it shows only indefinite grains, opaque lumps and
scattered leaves, ill-preserved and belonging apparently to some moss.
After removing the resinous substances by alcohol and ether and
treating the residue with Schultze's reagent, he found little evidence
of organic texture, aside from something like Faserkohle; there are
some spiral threads, and spores and pollen are indicated by rounded
patches. The ash, 14.2 per cent., consists of quartz grains, crystals
and opaque black balls. No diatoms were seen. Pyropissite from
Sauforst in southern Bavaria and of Miocene age, is in general much
the same; but remains of grasses and of moss leaves are numerous,
while pieces of wood are present, retaining structure though con-
verted into a yellow friable material like the groundmass. After
treatment with ether, the parts of leaves as well as the pollen grains
become more distinct ; pollen exines are very abundant.

Fiebelkorn, in the memoir already cited, gives sections showing
the relations of Schwelkohle to ordinary coal. The bed at Grube
396 near Teuchern is only 6 to 7 meters thick, but at a little distance
away it is 16, and, generally speaking, the whole bed is good. Some
grains of coal are shown in the roof and the coal itself, especially
in the upper part, shows alternating bright and dull laminae. The
section at this place is : Black earth, 0.60 ; loess, 7.50 ; Tertiary shale
and sandstone, 6 to 8 ; impure coal, 0.30 ; Feuerkohle, 2.30 ; Schwel-
kohle, 0.50; Feuerkohle, 0.30 Schwelkohle, 4; Feuerkohle, 3; clay

-*^^ C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 146-148.

144 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

and roots, 2.50. The measurements are in meters. Fiebelkorn
makes no reference to the Rnsskohle, which Stohr found associated
with the Schwelkohle. The distribution of the latter is quite different
from that seen by Stohr, for here the two types of coal alternate.
The Schwelkohle changes into pyropissite toward the border of the
trough.

The Oligocene coal of the Cologne-Bonn region on both sides of
the Lower Rhine has been mined during a long period. Davis-°- has
given a brief description of the deposit near Horrem, which shows
the general conditions. The brown coal contains about 60 per cent,
of moisture and is soft, at most, slightly consolidated in the bed.
Fresh from the mine, it resembles rather woody, half dry peat or
muck from a swamp forest. The included wood, mostly lignite,
appears, even when dry, to be no more changed or carbonized than
the wood found in many peat beds. When dry, it is still soft enough
to be whittled easily, the chips being scarcely more brittle than those
from kiln-dried wood of similar types. The deposits range from 32
to 328 feet in thickness, the average being about 72 feet. The coal
is covered with relatively thin gravel and clay ; this overburden is
removed by stripping, and the coal is mined in open cuts. The
moist brown coal, as it lies in the bed, is nearly black, unconsolidated
and contains a large percentage of fine material, which is friable even
when wet.

The brown coals near Bonn were studied long ago by Horner,-"^
who saw four types at the mines : ( i ) A dark brown or black earthy
substance, friable to pulverulent, rarely showing lamination and
found usually as the upper portion of the beds ; (2) a cemented mass,
in which leaves and fragments of wood are mingled with the earthy
coal; (3) wood in different stages of bitumenization, with all shades
of color from light brown to black, the last approaching jet; (4)
Papierkohle, highly bituminous, burning with bright flame, separating
into laminse as thin as writing paper and leaving a white ash ; it is a
mixture of earth and comminuted vegetable matter. It should be

202 C. A. Davis, " Production and Uses of Brown Coal in the Vicinity of
Cologne, Germanj'," U. S. Bureau of Mines, Techn. Paper 55, 1913, pp. 5, 6.

-02 L. Horner, " On the Geology of the Environs of Bonn," Trans. GcoL
Soc, II., Vol. II., 1836, pp. 449, 450, 459.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 145

noted here that " bitumenization " as used by Horner and others of
the earher writers is practically synonymous with " coalification "
of some French writers and refers merely to the extent of conversion.

The several kinds of coal are found at times in a single bed. The
wood is ordinarily in fragments of inconsiderable size, but some-
times large stems are found. These, when prostrate, the usual posi-
tion, are flattened; but trees have been met with, erect, with roots
attached and the stems passing through some benches of the coal.
Horner thinks that these may have been floated in, being held in posi-
tion by the weight of the roots. One of these trees w^as 7 and
another 1 1 feet in diameter ; the depth of water in which such trees
could be floated must have been considerable. The writer has seen
great floods on great rivers and he has seen many floating trees with
roots attached, but he has never seen one floating in vertical posi-
tion, except w'here it seemed wholly probable that the roots were
loaded with earth or stones. If these trees near Bonn had been
floated in erect position, the inorganic materials ought to appear with
them. Horner states that the wood is often well enough preserved
to be utilized in timbering the mines. Pyrite is common and " amber"
occurs in irregular balls. The wood, at times, is replaced in part or
altogether with carbonate of iron.

The section of a shaft at Utweiler is as follows: Soil, 2 feet 6
inches; loess, 9 feet 5 inches; basalt, 31 feet 9 inches; indurated clay,
prismatic, changed by the basalt, i foot ; clay, coaly, neither slaty nor
columnar, 6 inches ; black pitch coal, in prisms, perpendicular to face
of the basalt and with dolomite in the interstices, i foot 2 inches;
small coal, 4 feet ; brown coal or bituminous wood, unaltered and
with structure preserved, contains in the lower portion kidneys of
compact clay-ironstone, 8 feet 6 inches.

The influence of the basalt disappears within 7 feet. The con-
stitution of the thick bottom coal recalls the condition so often seen
in the lower part of peat deposits formed by encroachment upon
forested areas.

Heusler-°^ has given a full description of conditions in the Lower

204 C. Heusler, " Beschreibung des Bergreviers Brulil-Unkel und des
Niederrheinischen Braunkohlenbeckens," Bonn, 1897, pp. 32-42, 45-52, 132,
161, 163.

146 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Rhine region. The important localities are Deutz, at a short dis-
tance west from Cologne, Bruhl and Unkel, about 25 and 45 miles
south from Cologne. Other areas are as far as Linz, a few miles
beyond Unkel. Three types of coal are found in this region ; Blat-
terkohle or Dysodil, Alum brown coal and the Earthy brown coal
which is manufactured into briquets. The first and second, limited
chiefly to the upper portions of the basin in the Siebengebirge, ex-
tend northward on the left bank of the Rhine to Friesdorf near
Bonn, while on the right bank they are found as far as Spick in the
Deutz-Runderoth district. Heusler asserts that the difference in
these coals has no relation to age and is due merely to local
conditions.

Blatterkohle occurs in isolated patches near Linz, Orsburg,
Oedingen as well as on the Hardt, especially near Rott. The de-
posits are irregular and alternate with clay, sand and ordinary brown
coal. Near Linz, three layers were seen, i.i, 0.78 and 4 meters thick,
each containing more or less of lignite-like coal and many remains
of aquatic animals, 10 species having been recognized. Near Orsburg,
three layers were seen, separated by clay and poor coal ; batrachians
of several genera are abundant in the coal. In an isolated basin, this
section was obtained : Hard earthy brown coal with lignite, 0.94 ;
bituminous clay, 0.63 to i.io; laminated siliceous beds, with leaf im-
pressions, 0.16 to 0.26; Blatterkohle and Polischiefer, 0.26 to 0.78;
lignite, pyritous, with leaf impressions and remains of fish, 0.63 to
i.io; semi-opal, 0.16; Blatterkohle, laminated, pyritous, some lignite,
nests of Polischiefer, fragments of plants, insects, fish remains, 0.31 ;
gray, pyritous clay, 0.31.

The measurements are in meters. The association with diatoma-
ceous earth is by means unusual. Near Oedenberg, the Blatterkohle
is very thick, but is so mixed with infusorial earth as to be of little
value. In the Rott area, at the Krautgarten mine, the finely laminated
Blatterkohle, at the bottom, is separated by almost 2 meters of gray-
ish-white clay from a meter-thick bed of ordinary brown coal above.
In this mine, the coals contain remains of mammals, amphibia, fish,
insects of six orders, with crustaceans, mollusks and polyps as well
as abundant plant fragments of many types. Heusler's description

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 147

shows that here one has a good example of pond-filhng. The same
relations are seen on the left bank of the Rhine near Oedenberg and
Liessen ; at the latter, Blatterkohle attains its greatest thickness, vary-
ing from 3.8 to 16.5 meters. The total area of rich Blatterkohle
barely exceeds one square mile.

Alum brown coal, like Blatterkohle, is confined to the more
southerly portions of the region containing the Oligocene basins ;
it is found especially on the Hardt near Putzchen and Spick on the
right, and near Godesberg and Friesdorf on the left side of the
Rhine, where it is associated with layers of ordinary and lignite-like
brown coal. The Hardt area is about 10 by 4 kilometers and in-
cludes the Rott deposit already referred to. The coal there is 3 to
4 meters thick, mostly earthy brown coal and so pyritous that the
ashes are used in the alum industry. Midway, is a meter of lignitic
brown coal, composed largely of prostrate stems. One of these, a
conifer, was 1,600 years old, that being the number of annual rings.
But erect stems are by no means rare; one mine near Bleibtreu
yielded 35 such stems in a space of 10 acres, the diameter varying
from 0.78 to 2.82 meters or about 9 feet. Pyrite replaces or pene-
trates much of the stems and roots. This lignite on drying becomes
black and changes into a typical Pechkohle. The plants are mostly
conifers and palms. The relations of the coals are shown in a section
measured near Friesdorf, thus : Loam and river drift, 5.2 ; brown coal
and alum clay, 0.94; clay and bituminous wood, 1.26 to 1.57; brown
coal (lignite), 0.16; bituminous clay, 0.31; brown coal and lignite,
0.16; gray pyritous clay with lignite, 1.57; brown coal, 2.51; black
alum clay, 1.57; Blatterkohle, 0.47; lignite, 0.47; earthy brown coal,
0.94 ; Blatterkohle, 0.63 to 0.94 ; earthy brown coal, 0.47 ; Blatter-
kohle, 0.63 to 0.94.

The association of Blatterkohle and pyrite seems, from Heusler's
sections, to be very intimate at most localities. Nineteen species of
plants have been recognized at Friesdorf, a large part of them belong-
ing to genera well represented in swamp floras. Erect stumps are at
FiJssenich and Stockheim.

Alumkohle and Blatterkohle become rare northward and earthy
brown coal, like the Formkohle of Sachsen, is the usual type. Lig-

148 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

nite or bituminous wood is present in this coal and the species are
like those as on the Hardt and at Friesdorf ; stems are especially
well preserved in mine Friedrich Wilhelm JMaximilian, near Turnich
on the Erft, but many of the Hardt species are not represented.
Deposits between the Rhine and the Erft are quite regular, with clay
floor, containing more or less brown coal, and often have a clay roof,
but very frequently the cover is a diluvial deposit of varying thick-
ness, through which water passes into the porous brown coal and
downward to the clay floor; this surface water injures the coal.
There is no distinction here into earthy brown coal and Schwelkohle
as in Sachsen ; the only difference is in state of preservation — earthy
and lignite-like brown coal. The former is from the soft parts of
plants and is utilized in manufacture of briquets ; the latter yields the
lump coal. It is not known whether or not any Schwelkohle like that
of Sachsen exists in this region. The Schmierkohle, found in the
Hangenden near Bruhl^ is said to yield a greater proportion of distil-
lation products than does the underlying earthy coal ; but it is much
mixed with clay and has a great percentage of water ; both water and
ash decrease downward in the mass of the bed. The thickness in the
area of earthy brown coal varies greatly and abruptly ; in the Bruhl-
Liplar region it is from 5 to 104 meters.

The Rhenish brown coal contains in many places what is known
as oolite wood, the woody matter being largely or wholly replaced
with spherules of carbonate of iron. In searching the survey coal
collections at Berlin, Gothan-''^ found a piece of the brown coal from
the Donatus mine near Cologne, which contained similar spherules
of carbonate of iron. Deposition had not been confined to the wood,
but had reached into the actual peat. Specimens were obtained from
Fliigel, who had mapped the area, and they proved to be a part of the
bed replaced with material like that of the plant-balls described by
Stur. Gothan suggested the name of Torfdolomite. IMicroscopic
examination by Horich showed that the plant remains as a rule are
not well preserved ; they are so disintegrated that in many cases they
cannot be identified. Roots are best preserved, probably because they

205 W. Gothan und O. Horich, " Ueber Analoga der Torfdolomite (Coal
Balls) des Carbons in der rheinische Braunkohle," Jahrb. k. preuss. Lande-
sanst., Bd. XXXI., Teil II., 1910, pp. 38-44.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 149

entered when the surrounding mass had already become peat. They
show no sign of compression. Some fragments of stems show the
great lacunae characteristic of plants belonging to a moist habitat.
The great variety in the plants suggests that the deposit is a typical
Waldtorf, which accords with the belief that the brown coals were
deposited as Waldmoors.

Von Giimbel-"*' examined the Blatterkohle obtained near Bonn.
After treatment with Schultze's reagent, it showed under the micro-
scope only scattered plant cells, exines of pollen, algas-like clumps and
some very indefinite particles, which appear to correspond to bits of
animal matter. The descriptions by Horner, v. Giimbel and Heusler
show that Blatterkohle is of sapropelic origin and that it is wholly
similar to Lebertorf.

De Serres-"' described Oligocene brown coals in southern France.
At the important gypsum quarries of Lac, near Narbonne, he ob-
served that between the beds of gypsum there are others, marly and
containing remains of plants and fishes, the latter being freshwater
forms. Dysodil, like that of Sicily, occurs in layers between thick
beds of marl overlying the gypsum. It is typical, in paper-thin
laminae and burns quickly with an abominable odor. Between the
laminae are enclosed imprints of fishes and plants, the latter appar-
ently dicotyledonous. The number of fishes is prodigious ; there are
not merely imprints, there is even the actual substance, at times, in
the marl beds and between the dysodil laminae. The lower part of
the section is mostly a limestone mass with lignites (brown coal).
The succession near Caunnette is r ( i ) Calcareous sandstone, belong-
ing to the compact gray macignos, exploited at Carcassone, 40 to 50
meters; (2) freshwater limestone, fissile, whitish, without trace
of organisms; (3) limestone, very compact, with many fluvia-
tile shells, Lymncra and Planorbis being most abundant, 10 to 20
meters ; (4) argillaceous limestone, allied to the macignos, 2 to 4
meters; (5) very bituminous freshwater limestone, divided by thin
layers of hard, black, lustrous lignite, 10 to 12 meters; (6) carbona-
ceous shale, blackish, " nerf " of the workmen, contains numerous

-0^ C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 146-148.

20" M. de Serres, " Observations geologiques sur le Departement de
I'Aude," Soc. dcs Sci. Lille, 1835, pp. 439-471.

150 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Lymncca and Planorbis; (7) first lignite, friable and of inferior
quality, often has Lymncca and Planorbis in top portion, 0.50 to i
meter; (8) blackish carbonaceous shale, with river shells and kidneys
of freshwater limestone; (9) second lignite, better than the first, but
more irregular, o to 0.50 meter; (10) blackish carbonaceous shale
with freshwater limestone, holding Unio, Lymncca and Planorbis;
ill) freshwater limestone, with more or less of lignite, 10 to 15
meters; (12) third lignite, very irregular, rarely thick enough to be
mined; (13) irregular freshwater limestone resting on the nummulitic
limestone.

Unio and Cyclas occur, though somewhat rarely, in the Caunnette
lignite. Near the village of Songragnes, de Serres found lignites
of apparently the same age, associated with blackish, bituminous
marls, which contain much pyrite and some jet. The lignite en-
closes many nodules of amber, at times as large as a hen's Qgg. Some
are translucent, others opaque, but all yield succinic acid. The note-
worthy feature is the mass of freshwater limestone, with minimum
thickness of 250 feet and interrupted only by freshwater carbonaceous
shale with lenses of brown coal.

The Eocene Coals. — Molengraaff-^^ has shown that coal-forming
conditions existed in central Borneo during the Eocene. The coal is
thin at most localities but occasionally it is of workable thickness.
One exposure on the Mandai River has a bed, one meter thick,
enclosed in shale and rich in carbonized tree trunks, which are partly
silicified. Clayey layers of an overlying sandstone contain many
impressions of leaves. On the Tabaoeng River, he saw a bed in
three benches, 4, 1.40 and 2 meters respectively, separated by thin
partings of shale and clayey sandstone, in which are concretions
with plant imprints. The lower benches are fissile and evidently of
poor quality, but the top bench consists of black pitch-coal, which
seems to be good. These localities are within one third of a degree
north and south from the equator. The sandstones of this coal-
bearing group, not more than 40 meters thick, have grains of coal at
many places and the associated volcanic tuffs, of undetermined age,

208 G. A. F. Molengraaff, " Geological Explorations in Central Borneo,"
1902, pp. 59, 60, 93.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 151

contain erect and prostrate stems, which, according to Molengraaff,
are distinctly in loco natalis.

Hutton-°'* described important deposits of brown coal in New
Zealand, which belong to the Upper Eocene. At one locality he saw
two beds, 6 and 2 feet, underlying and overlying shales with leaves ;
the dip is 25 degrees. In another valley, the upper bed is 10 feet
thick and has dip of 10 degrees. The mining operations are exten-
sive and the coal everywhere is rich in " ambrite." In a later publica-
tion, he refers to bituminous shale near Dunedin and to a similar
shale near Orepuke. That near Dunedin varies in thickness from
6 feet to 18 inches within a distance of 20 chains — a pronounced lens.
It yields 42 gallons of crude oil per ton. The Orepuke shale is
equally rich.

The coal of Haring, in the Tyrol, and its peculiarities have
attracted notice from numerous students. Reuss-^° stated that the
coal rests on gray to brown shale-clay, which becomes increasingly
coal-like as it approaches the coal ; at the same time it becomes more
calcareous and finally passes into a crumbling coal, mixed with marl.
It is rich in shells, Helix, Planorbis and a small bivalve, usually so
crushed as to be unidentifiable. Some layers seem to be composed
wholly of these shells ; no remains of plants were observed. The
coal, at times 30 feet thick, varies from Pechkohle to shining black
" Schieferkohle " and nowhere shows any woody structure. The
benches are 3 to 6 inches thick and the partings often consist of
bituminous limestone, with nests of more or less shell-bearing lime-
stone. The dip is from 30 to 35 degrees. The roof is a thin-bedded
fetid limestone with many indistinct bivalves and, more rarely, Fusus
and Rostellaria. It contains also abundant fragmentary remains of
plants, among which SaH.v, Erica, palms and other forms have been
identified.

Von GiimbeP^^ speaks of this coal as embedded in undoubted
marine marl deposits, containing both brackish water and freshwater

209 p \Y Hutton, Reps. New Zealand Geol. Survey for 1871-72, pp. 107,
108, 181; "Geology of Otago," p. no.

21'^ Reuss, " Geognostische Beobachtungen durch Tyrol," Ncues Jahrbuch,
1840, pp. 162-164.

211 C. W. V. Giimbel, " Beitrage," etc., pp. 149, 150.

152 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

as well as land shells, along with remains of plants. The peculiar
features of the deposit led him to recognize a condition analogous
to that of cedar swamps on the low border of a bay. Treated with
Schultze's reagent, the coal shows under the microscope that the
bright layers are composed of leaves, epidermis and plant-parts with
parenchymatous structure. The dull layers are more intricate.
Faserkohle is quite abundant.

Haidinger,"^- 20 years earlier, had described a characteristic frag-
ment of mineral charcoal obtained at Haring. He thought it prob-
ably an inclusion in the peat from which the brown coal was formed.
This Faserkohle passes so gradually into the enclosing glance coal
that Haidinger was inclined to believe it a case of external con-
version into coal. At the same time, the Faserkohle is interwoven
with vein-like lines of bright coal, which in his opinion could have
been introduced only in a gelatinous condition like that of dopplerite.

Heer-^^ notes that, near the Diirnten Schieferkohle area, a deposit
of lignite occurs in soft sandstone of the Molasse. It often con-
tains tree trunks but other parts of plants have become indistinguish-
able. Yet one finds marsh plants in the marls overlying the lignite,
while the underlying limestone contains Unio and Planorhis.

The Bovey Tracey deposits in Devonshire, England, were de-
scribed in great detail by Pengelly.-^* They had been subject of
discussion during many years and the associated clays had been uti-
lized on an extensive scale. The excavation, at the time of Pen-
gelly's examination, was more than 100 feet deep, 350 feet wide and
almost 1,000 feet long. His section, greatly condensed, is: Clays,
sandy clays, thin sands and 4 beds of lignite, 7 to 15 inches thick;
this lignite is poor, loose, brittle, woody ; the clays are dark to gray,
with streaks and fragments of lignite, 37 feet 7 inches; lignite with
partings, 14 feet of lignite in 5 benches with about 7 feet of clay in
the partings ; the uppermost bench is more or less wood-like and at
the bottom is a mass of dicotyledonous leaves ; two of the clay part-

212 w. Haidinger, Vcrhandl. k. k. Gcol. Rcichsant., Bd. XIV., 1864, p. 241.

213 O. Heer, "The Primaeval World of Switzerland," Eng. Trans., London,
1876, Vol. I., p. 32.

214 W. Pengelly, " Lignite and Clays of Bovey Tracey, Devonshire," Phil.
Trans. Roy. Soc, Vol. 152, 1863, pp. 1019-1038.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 153

ings have streaks or fragments of lignite; the thick bottom bench is
No. 25 of Pengelly's section, 20 feet 11 inches; clays and sands,
stems and leaves are abundant in the upper half and thin streaks of
lignite were seen in the lower part, 44 feet i inch ; lignite with part-
ings, 17 feet of lignite in 9 benches and 3 feet 2 inches of clay in
the partings ; the lignite benches are 3 inches to 4 feet thick, 20 feet
9 inches.

Roots descend from the lowest bench of the upper lignite into
the underclay and the coal of that bench consists very largely of
fronds of great ferns associated with leaves of other plants. The
lower bed shows noteworthy variation in its benches. The third,
descending, is woody and somewhat charred; the fifth and sixth are
very hard and compact, not so tough as some of the others. The
bottom bench is divided by a thin parting of " charred lignite " into
an upper portion, 9 inches thick, which breaks into " irregular glassy
pieces," and a lower portion, 3 feet 3 inches, which is hard light
brown, less heavy than the ordinary lignite, is brittle woody and looks
like ordinary coal. ]\Iineral charcoal is present in all the benches.
Of the about 50 species of plants recognized by Heer, Sequoias are
most abundant and they form the greater part of one bed. Cony-
beare-^^ has remarked that, in the Bovey Tracey area, one can see
" the most decided wood pass into a substance nO' wise differing from
common coal in chemical characters."

The Lower Tertiary coals of the United States of America are
of great economic importance. They are of all grades from woody
lignite to bituminous, even coking coal, and anthracite ; and all are
utilized. The basins and the fragments of basins which have escaped
erosion are mostly in areas bordering on the Rocky Mountain region ;
but besides these there is a very extensive area in Texas and petty
deposits are found in a few other localities west from the Mississippi
A'alley.

The deposits carrying brown coal in Texas have been grouped by
Dumble'-^*^ into the Timber Belt, the Yegua and the Fayette, the last

-15 W. D. Conybeare, "Outlines of Geology of England and Wales,"
London, 1822, p. 345.

216 E. T. Dumble, " Report on the Brown Coal and Lignite Deposits of
Texas," Austin, 1892, pp. 125, 135, 151, 165.

154 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

being the newest. Coal beds from a few inches to lo or more feet
thick are numerous in the Timber Belt. The enclosing clays, in many
cases, are extremely dark and contain much silicified wood as well
as lenticular masses of iron carbonate. Silicified wood is abundant
in the Yegua.

Penrose,-^' in a publication of somewhat earlier date, described
the lignite as occurring in a broad area, which in some portions ex-
tends eastward to within 150 miles from the Gulf coast. He sepa-
rated the rocks into two divisions of which the upper may be Mio-
cene. The coal beds are often double, as shown by a section in
Robertson county, where the benches, 12 and 2 feet thick, are sepa-
rated by 2 feet of clay. This is the important bed of the lower group
and its coal is lignite, black, friable and woody. The upper group,
along the Colorado River, has beds one to 10 feet thick, some of
which contain masses of wood, including tree trunks partly silicified,
partly lignitized. The coals of this upper group are all in lenticular
deposits. Texas brown coals hold not only trunks, branches and
leaves of trees but also reeds and other forms characteristic of
swamp vegetation. In some beds, the coal shows distinct vegetable
structure, but generally the mass of the material has been so
thoroughly converted that no trace of structure is visible to the
unaided eye. Frequently the coal is amorphous and soft, while at
others it is hard, black, brilliant, with either cubical or conchoidal
fracture — but all possible gradations exist between these extremes.
The rocks throughout are undisturbed and coal of both types appears
often in a single section. At the San Tomas mines, 25 miles above
Laredo on the Rio Grande, a coal bed was seen with this structure :
lignite, 2 inches; clay, 4 inches; coal, i foot 3 inches; black clay, 2
inches; coal, i foot 3 inches. The underlying clay contains just
below the coal streaks of lignite — a faux-mur. The coals are mas-
sive glossy black and with conchoidal fracture, without trace of
vegetable texture ; but the thin top bench is a true lignite with the
plant texture well-preserved. Kennedy-^^ in the same state found

21^ R. A. F. Penrose, Jr., " Preliminary Report on the Gulf Tertiary of
Texas," First Ann. Rep. Geol. Survey of Texas, 1890, pp. 26, 43, 52, 53, 94, 95.

218 W. H. Kennedy, " Harrison County " ; J. H. Herndon, " Smith
County"; Second Ann. Rep. Geol. Survey, pp. 155, 156, 267.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 156

at one locality, two embedded trunks, i6 and 20 feet long, 18 and
20 inches thick. The shorter stem was silicified throughout but the
other was so at only one end, lignitized at the other; the conditions
merging imperceptibly. At one place he saw a silicified stump, of
which the interior had decayed before, silicification began. Herndon
observed that within Smith county the coal beds are lenticular ; the
coal is brown to black, earthy to hard and frecjuently contains resin.
Phillips and Worrall in 1913 estimated the brown coal area of Texas
at not less than 60,000 square miles. The coal in many mines is very
tender and the loss in screening even the freshly mined coal is very
serious.

D. White-^'' studied two typical localities in the Texas field,
whence a lignite, not very wood-like, is obtained. The deposit near
Hoyt in Wood county appears to have been made in a bayou or
lagoon of irregular form, one half to three quarters of a mile wide,
and it thins toward the margins. The floor is buff sandy clay, trav-
ersed locally by large roots of land plants, clearly in place. The coal,
with maximum thickness of 9 feet, is dark brownish black, fairly
well bedded, mostly moderately xyloid but with many lenses of
brownish, more massive coal, with conchoidal fracture, waxy to
satiny look, and amorphous ; zones of well-laminated coal were seen.
These, darker than the main benches, show cuticles and small woody
particles, like much Palaeozoic coal. The lenses are more or less
canneloid. Amber is present in the upper part of the bed, which is
distinctly xyloid ; mineral charcoal is not abundant, but there is
an inch parting which consists of densely matted fragments of char-
coal. There were large trees, one log, partly silicified and somewhat
flattened, was more than 70 feet long. The roof varies ; at times it
is " dirty coal," at others it is a bony coal and occasionally it is a
carbonaceous clay, several feet thick.

The deposit near Rockdale was laid down similarly in an estuary
or bayou, 10 miles long and one half to one mile wide. Two beds
are worked by many owners in this area. The floor of the upper
bed is gritty clay overlying sand and well-filled with roots, travers-
ing the old soil in all directions at angles to the bedding; some of
these are more than 3 inches thidk. The bottom bench of coal con-

-19 D. White, " Origin of Coal," Bureau of Mines, Bull. 38, 1913, pp. 12-19.

156 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

sists of one to 3 inches of " black jack," a stiff, black coaly material
with fragments of wood and stems. The coal is clean and solid
for 6 feet; above that it is streaked with thin washes of white sand
and dirt and irregular lenses of sand which seem to be in ripples.
Higher, the sand washes are thicker and at length predominate,
with intervening black muds, carrying waterworn vegetable ma-
terials. Above this is compact laminated clay, 3 feet thick, with
many stems and traces of what appear to be roots. The upper part
of the dirty coal, where it begins to be laminated, is rather distinctly
marked with roots, branching rather irregularly downward and some
of them appear to have extended a long distance into the coal below.
Many of these seem to have rotted and the cavities to have been
filled with white sand and clay, disfiguring the coal. Amber or
fossil resin is abundant in some layers and the coal has joints, 10
to 12 feet apart. The lower bed rests on drab clay, filled with roots
in place, which is covered by a thin layer of old humus, followed by
more than 6 feet of black, splintery coal with conchoidal fracture,
becoming dirty and laminated on top. On this rests light-colored
clay with carbonized roots, 10 to 30 inches thick, which is succeeded
by 6 to 18 inches of coal. Tree fragments are fairly common in
this lower bed. White's description shows that the faux-toit is
characteristic at both Hoyt and Rockdale ; and that the faux-mur is
present throughout at Rockdale.

At Lester, in Ouachita county of Arkansas, the lenses of cannel-
oid coal are such that White regards them as presenting the lignite
stage of cannel. The locality is in the Camden coal field, which is a
small, irregular and very shallow basin with extreme dimensions of
7 by 15 miles. The rocks are unconsolidated sands and clays with
some ferruginous sandstone. There is one workable coal bed, vary-
ing from 2 feet 6 inches to 6 feet, owing to the uneven floor. This
floor is usually clay and holds no roots, except in one place, where
it is sand and shows many roots in place. In one portion of the
field, a carbonaceous mud forms the bottom of the bed and contains
lignitized stems and twigs with fragments of ferns and dicotyledons.
The roof is a light gray plastic clay. The coal or canneloid lignite
has the general structure and appearance of a somewhat impure

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 157

cannel, is so soft and tough that it can be cut with a knife. It is
free from foreign matter except at the bottom; occasioiiall}" a thin
carbonaceous mud, with slender stems as jet-hke fragments covers
the coal and a thin xyloid bench was seen midway in the bed. The
coal has high volatile, high illuminating power, high heating effici-
ency and gives copious yield of oil when distilled — the best yields 38
gallons per ton.

Thiessen,--" in discussing this Lester material, says that it con-
sists of vegetable debris from a herbaceous flora, but contains bits
of angiospermous and gymnospermous w'ood, showing that a wood-
flora existed. Everything is so well disintegrated and decomposed
that very little is recognizable except the most resistant parts of
plants. Exines of spores and pollen grains, resins and an undeter-
mined waxy or resinous substance are conspicuous. The interstices
are filled with more finely macerated parts of those constituents.
Spores of fungi are present but are not abundant. The spore exines
are mostly those of ferns, there being few from lycopods, while the
pollen is both angiospermous and gymnospermous. Spores and
pollen grains make up about 30 per cent, of the mass and are associ-
ated with abundance of cuticles. The resinous bodies are of two
kinds, one, the lighter in color, is the more refractive and is paraffin-
like in consistency; the other is less abundant and less refractive.

Eocene coals of the Rocky Mountains and adjacent areas are
especially important w^ithin the states of Utah, Wyoming, Montana
and North Dakota, where mining operations have been extensive at
many places. The citations which follow are mostly from the more
recent publications, as those of earlier date were made when oppor-
tunities for observation were not so good and dependence had to be
almost wholly on natural exposures.

In one area within Utah, Richardson--^ found the coal between
beds of freshwater limestone, black bituminous, containing abun-
dantly the crushed shells of Sphccrinm and Physa. One bed is 36
feet thick, with 4 partings, of which the thickest is but two inches
and a half. The rocks are faulted and the dip is from 10 to 15:

220 j^_ Thiessen, " Microscopic Study of Coal," the same, pp. 232-238.
--^ G. B. Richardson, " Coal in Sanpete County, Utah," U. S. Geol. Sur-
very, Bull. 285, 1906, pp. 281.

158 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

degrees. The coal, as far as proximate analysis shows, is a very
fair bituminous coal. The deposit is irregular and, in one direction,
thins away within two miles.

Eocene deposits cover a great part of eastern Wyoming. Taff---
found that, in the Sheridan coal field, the upper member of the
Fort Union, about 2,200 feet thick, consists of friable, loosely con-
solidated sandstones, coal beds and slightly indurated shales, all with
gentle dip, seldom exceeding 4 degrees. The coal beds are in three
groups ; the lower or Tongue River contains ascending the Carney,
Monarch, Dietz, No. 3, No. 2 and No. i, Smith and Roland coal
beds, all of which are of workable thickness, the thinnest being 5 and
the thickest somewhat more than 30 feet thick. The Intermediate
group contains some lens-like coal beds, which at some places are of
sufficient thickness for mining. The Ulm group or highest has two
beds 16 and 12 feet. Nearly all of the beds are at least double and
some of the highest beds are broken by partings. The coal is ap-
parently almost uniform throughout; the weather attacks all alike.
The only important distinction is that coal from the Intermediate
and the Ulm has somewhat more water and shows the texture or
fiber of some plants, whereas that from the Tongue River, though
high in water, shows no woody texture to the naked eye. The
thicker beds for the most part are without lamination ; silicified
wood is not rare.

Wegemann--^ examined an area contiguous to that studied by
Tafif in northeastern Wyoming and continuous with the extensive
fields of eastern Montana and western Dakota. The exposed rocks,
about 1,000 feet thick, belong to the upper part of the Intermediate
and lower part of the Ulm, as defined by TafT. Wegemann saw
many local unconformities and great variations in the rocks. A
notable feature is the coarse sandstone filling channels in beds of
coal and shale, due clearly to subaerial erosion. The cross-bedded
sandstone denoting shallow water, the fine shale, proof of quiet
water, the numerous coal beds and the repeated evidence of sub-

-22 J. A. Taff, " The Sheridan Coal Field, Wyoming." U. S. Geol. Survey,
Bull. 341, 1909, pp. 127-130, 133, 144-147-

-23 C. H. Wegemann, " Barber Coal Field, Wyoming," U. S. Geol. Survey,
Bull. 531, I., 1913, pp. II, 12, 19.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 159

aerial erosion are regarded as marking the presence of a great river,
meandering over broad flats.

The coal is dull black with vitreous streaks and is brittle; but
the woody origin is still distinct and fragments of Sequoia are
abundant, associated with leaves of dicotyledonous plants. Trunks
and stumps, erect or prostrate and partially silicified, embedded in
the coal or projecting from the sandstone, are by no means rare.
Coal beds are usually less variable than the other members of the
section. The Healy coal of the Ulm group has been traced in an
area of about 600 square miles, but the name designates a horizon
rather than a coal bed. Where it is a single bed, it varies within
short distances from a few inches to 18 feet, but often it is repre-
sented by a series of beds in a vertical section of 50 feet. This
horizon is exceptional in extent, other beds, as a rule, having very
limited area. One, 15 feet thick, quickly thins to a few inches and
disappears ; often a bed thins away and another is seen in the section
at a little above or below its place. These are merely overlapping
lenticular deposits. Contemporaneous deposits of coal are frequently
separated by barren spaces. That these conditions, described in de-
tail by Wegemann, are characteristic throughout Wyoming is evi-
dent from the incidental references by other observers.

Eocene deposits cover much of eastern Montana, extending
northward across the state from Wyoming into Canada and east-
ward into North Dakota. The isolated basins of eastern Montana
have been studied by several geologists. W^oodruff and Woolsey--*
examined fields on the western side of the area, where they observed
conditions hardly differing from those seen in Wyoming. Wood-
ruff states that the coal beds with maximum thickness of 5 to 10
feet were evidently formed in basins. Many of them have carbona-
ceous shale, at times containing streaks of lignite, as floor and roof;
at one mine he obtained Unio in the roof. Woolsey remarks that the
coal beds in his area are very irregular and are lenticular. Resin is
especially abundant in the Bull Alountain field, where the beds are

224 E. G. Woodruff, "The Red Lodge Coal Field. Montana"; L. H.
Woolsey, " The Bull Mountain Coal Field," U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 341,
1909, pp. 94-97, 103, 104: 62-77.

160 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. ■

broken by many partings and the coal, more or less laminated, is
jointed.

A small area examined by Rogers--'' is farther northeast ; there
the more indurated rocks of the lower division show mud cracks,
cross-bedding and rippled surfaces. The coal of that division is
brittle and fairly compact, though in some cases the woody texture
■is distinct. The coal of the upper division is mostly lignitic ; but
this distinction is not absolute, for vitreous coal is found in some of
the higher beds and woody lignite is by no means uncommon in the
lower division. Throughout, the coal beds are irregular ; in all parts
of the section, beds thin out and others appear at 8 or lo feet higher
or lower, so that Rogers is compelled to recognize horizons rather
than contemporaneous separate deposits.

Farther eastward, beyond the Yellowstone River, one reaches
the great lignite area w'ith its numerous independent basins, which
were examined by Bowen, Herald, Vance, Stebinger and Beckly.--*'
The southern or Baker field shows mostly lignitic coal, woody in
structure, brown and tough ; the beds are broken by partings of con-
siderable thickness and the benches are seldom of workable thick-
ness. In the Terry field, all the deposits are irregular; the coal beds
vary abruptly in thickness and character, often changing from coal
to shale within a few yards. Even the comparatively persistent bed
at the base is so irregular that Herald is inclined to speak of it as
a " lignitic zone." The lens-like form of the deposits is character-
istic throughout. The Glendive area is somewhat farther north.
The lowest coal bed is apparently continuous along an outcrop of
150 miles, but Hance found it extremely variable in thickness and
quality. Its coal is inferior to that of the bed, 50 to 150 feet higher.
In places, two sets of joints are distinct.

Stebinger, after study of the Sydney field, which extends to the
Canadian border, was not willing to admit that the lens-form is a
persistent feature, though he recognizes fully the abrupt and ex-

"^ G. S. Rogers, " The Little Sheep Mountain Coal Field," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 531 F, 1913, pp. 9, 11, 19, 20, 23, 24.

226 " Lignite in Montana," U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 471 D, 1912 ; C. F.
Bowen, pp. 21, 38, 39; F. A. Herald, pp. 56. 60, 62, 78; J. H. Vance, pp. 89, 92,
97, 98; E. Stebinger, pp. 106, 107, 115; A. L. Beckley, 152.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 161

tensive variation in coal beds. Two beds appear to be really per-
sistent for long distances; he had traced for 120 miles one which
he regards as the equivalent of a bed in North Dakota. The coal is
lignitic throughout, though it often resembles sub-bituminous. After
weathering, the grain of the wood disappears, the color changes to
black and the material is no longer tough, but is brittle. The greater
part was formed from trunks of trees and fragments of wood ; even
entire logs, usually prostrate, can be traced on the fresh face of a
mine. Coal in the lower 500 feet of the formation is less woody in
appearance than that from the upper 500 feet. The extreme vari-
ability of the coal beds led him to infer that conditions were very un-
stable in the old moors. Beckly found the lignite very tough and
wood-like in the Culberston field.

In considering the remarks on ^Montana areas, one must bear in
mind that in most of the region the studies have been confined to
natural outcrops and that tracing of the beds has been made in con-
siderable areas by means of clinker lines, the burned outcrops. Ex-
tensive mining operations are concentrated, the localities being very
few. The intervals between coal beds are reported as varying
greatly. Speaking in a general w^ay, it would seem that the measure-
ments are too few for determining whether or not such variations
are merely irregularities. The comparatively few detailed measure-
ments are not enough to show the relations of the several benches
of any bed in a large area. There is enough, however, to raise doubt
respecting the actual continuity of the beds for any considerable
distance.

Leonard,--' in his synoptical description of the Dakota region,
calls especial attention to the great variability of the accompanying
rocks. The coal seams are from one inch to 33 feet thick and usu-
ally they are not persistent in extended areas. A seam may be
pinched out or perhaps it may be replaced by another at the same or
a slightly difi'erent horizon. Two seams may overlap, so that while
both are to be seen in one section, only one of them may be present
at half a mile away. Some can be traced in the river bluflfs for

--' A. G. Leonard, " North Dakota-Montana Lignite Area," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 285, 1906, pp. 316-330; A. G. Leonard and C. D. Smith, "The
Sentinel Butte Lignite Field," Bull. 341, Pt. 2, 1907, pp. 15-35.

162 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. ,

several miles, but sooner or later they disappear. In Dakota, the
coal is largely wood-like, tough and showing the grain ; flattened
trunks of trees frequently differ little from wood except in color.
Often, the same seam is composed of alternating layers of tough,
brown lignite and of black, lustrous more brittle material. The
character of the coal changes toward the west ; in Dakota it is woody
and brown, but just beyond the Montana line it is largely lustrous;
the same feature was observed still farther west at Glendive.

Leonard and Smith saw 9 coal beds of workable thickness, the
lowest of which, according to Beckly, is about 400 feet above the
Glendive bed — at the 'bottom of the Eocene. As result of broader
studies, they modify the general assertion of lens-form and assert
that some of the important beds have been traced continuously for
24 m)iles, while they have been correlated with much certainty for
greater distances. Dips are very gentle throughout the region ex-
amined. Pockets of lustrous, black, textureless and brittle coal are
scattered through many seams and are less pure than the lignite.

The Eocene coals continue into Canada, where they become less
important and are overshadowed by those of the Mesozoic.

D. White--'^ examined several localities within the Dakota region
and gathered material, which was studied microscopically by Thies-
sen. The observations are so important that they must be given in
full abstract. The coal bed, mined at Wilton, North Dakota, is
near the bottom of the Fort Union or early Eocene, a freshwater
formation, which stretches, in almost horizontal condition, from
central North Dakota westward to the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
At Wilton, the floor of the bed is white plastic clay, 4 to 5 inches
thick, resting on white sandy clay and occasionally showing large
roots in the place of their growth. The thickness of the coal is said
to average about 7 feet, with a maximum of 14. The lowest 18
inches is a good lignite, broken by very thin clay partings; a half
inch parting of mineral charcoal appears at several feet higher. A
thin 'bench was seen, consisting of laminated coal, which resembles
the bituminous types of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic. The top coal in-
cludes a bony bench, formed apparently from dead aquatic or far-
decayed vegetation mingled with mineral sediments, and a brownish

228 D. White, "Origin of Coal," pp. 7-1 1.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 163

layer near the bottom appears to contain grasses, stem fragments
and chips of wood. The basal coal is almost black as are also the
lenses or local layers of amorphous coal. When freshly mined, the
mass is distinctly woody, tough and somewhat elastic ; some large
pieces are brownish-yellow as if from a recent bog. Often the
" brown wood of a single piece verges into black, and even into a
typical glossy lignite, having a conchoidal fracture and approaching
jet. It is notable that the probable saturation with decomposition
products in solution, that has produced the jet-hke wood, resembling
black vulcanized rubber, has not penetrated to the center of some
of the fragments, which are inwardly brown or even yellow." Parts
of some fragments appear to be charred while other parts are brown
and woody. Wood makes great part of almost all the hard pieces
examined, and logs, lying in all directions, are frequently in masses.
To the naked eye, resin appears to be present in small quantity ;
silicified stems rarely occur.

The noteworthy features of the bed at Wilton, as summarized by
White, are (i ) an underclay, seemingly penetrated by roots; (2)
evidence of periods, when herbaceous vegetation held the ground in
certain areas and produced thin benches; (3) evidence of periods of
great accumulation of wood of arboreal size; (4) relative scarcity
of thinly laminated earthy or amorphous lignite (peat), this being
dependent on the more or less nearly complete decay of the plant
tissues; (5) evidence of frequent near approach to asepticity in the
water body, so that decay seems to have been arrested quickly; (6)
evidence that the surface was exposed at times to air, leading to
formation of mineral charcoal. He thinks that the high water-con-
tent is a legacy from an unreduced or immature brown peat and also
that the accumulation of logs, decayed only in part, indicates rapid
growth of the coal.

The coal at Glendive, Montana, is very near the bottom of the
Fort Union ; it has been followed in a northerly direction for more
than 50 miles. The fuel is dull black lignite, containing a large
proportion of wood, sometimes in great slabs, both dull and jetified.
No roots. were seen in the underclay; mineral charcoal is present in
a layer as well as in scattered pieces and the coal contains very many

164 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

lumjDs of amber-like resin, some of them apparently still attached to
the wood. At the bottom of the bed there is a thin layer of dirty
lignite.

The coal at Lehigh, North Dakota, is in the upper portion of the
Fort Union, and the bed mined there is but one of many, 20 seams
having been counted in one short section. ]Most of these had been
laid down in freshwater swamps ; usually they rest on underclays
and frequently they have clay partings. The thickness is reported as
varying from 6 to 8 and even more feet, " the greatest developments
being found in the hollows of the floor, the coal thinning on all
sides to the ' rise,' though on the whole it is relatively regular in
bedding and thickness." The bed is singularly clean. The lower
bench is free from all partings, except the charcoal layers, which are
apt to be sulphurous. It is a dark brown, earth-colored lignite in
which the large amount of wood is noteworthy. The grain of the
wood is conspicuous as are also compressed trunks of trees with
their branches, which compose about 75 per cent, of the whole.
Some logs are gnarly, one to two feet wide and several inches thick.
Some fragments are fully jetified, others partly so and others still,
not at all, aseptic conditions having prevented decay. There seems
to be little resin. The roof and floor could not be studied, but roots
were observed in underclays of some higher beds.

Thiessen--^ studied the coals of Montana and North Dakota, col-
lected by D. White. They are all xyloid lignites, consisting of 75 to
85 per cent, of woody material. The interstices are filled with
debris from a large variety of plants and parts of plants, a binding
stuff or " Fundamental matter." This semi-decayed, macerated, dis-
integrated material, composed of wood, parts of angiospermous and
gymnospermous leaves, herbaceous stems, bark, roots, exines of
spores, pollen, resinous and waxy bodies, cuticles, is cemented by
matter, which apparently was once plastic. Spores and pollen exines
form a considerable portion of the mass. The trunks of trees are
wholly of conifers, mostly Taxadinese and Cupressinese, with a few
Abietinese, there being no stems certainly recognizable as dicoty-
ledonous.

He compares the conditions with those observed by him in peat

229 R Thiessen, " Microscopic Study of Coal," pp. 221-232.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. ]65

deposits within Michigan and Wisconsin, where Thuja occidenfalis
(white cedar), Larix laricina (tamarack) and Picea luariana (black
spruce) abound, the Thuja being predominant. The growth is so
dense that only a thin mat of mosses, liverworts and lichens with an
occasional herbaceous plant can grow on the ground beneath. The
peat, on which the forest stands, consists of logs and branches,
lying in all directions, much changed and more or less macerated.
The interstices are filled with " debris, in which macerated parts of
stems and branches, cone scales, leaves, thalli of mosses and liver-
worts, pollen grains, etc., are plainly recognizable.

Nothing of algal origin was found in these coals.

The important coals of Eocene age on the Pacific coast are those
in the state of Washington, where one finds all types of coal from
peat-like lignite to hard dry anthracite, passing into graphite. Much
of the area was studied years ago by B. Willis and G. O. Smith; but
since their examination, mining operations have been developed on a
large scale at many places, so that it seems best to utilize in this
synopsis only the latest results. "^°

The Cowlitz River, rising in southern Lewis county, flows across
Cowlitz county to the Columbia. The coal in this area is lignite
throughout except where changed by eruptive rocks. At one locality.
Collier saw a bed, more than 20 feet thick, as exposed in two open
cuts, and composed of material " apparently little better than peat."
It contains fragments of wood, which, though brittle, are flexible
and elastic. Similar coal was seen in Lewis county, six miles away
toward the northwest. The wood is so well preserved that one can
whittle it easily. This fuel has little ash and is given to spontaneous
combustion. Throughout the area, the coal is so woody that mining
is difficult.

Some anthracite has been found on the eastern side of Lewis
county, but most of the coal in that area is semi-anthracite to semi-
bituminous : the beds are thin and the ash is high. At about 30 miles

230 E. E. Smith, " Coals of the State of Washington," U. S. Geol. Survey,
Bull. 274, 191 1, pp. 152, 158, 161, 167, 180, 190; G. W. Evans, "Coals of King
County, Washington," Washington Geol. Surv., Bull. 3, 1912, pp. 28, 29, 31-33,
59, 65, 116, 152; A. J. Collier, "Coal Resources of Cowlitz River Valley,"
U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 531 L, 1913, pp. 9, 12.

166 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

farther west, in the Ladd area, where dips vary from 32 to 40
degrees, the coal varies from anthracite to bituminous, both coking
and non-coking; but in the Mendota-Chehalis area, about 30 miles
farther west, the coal is sub-bituminous. Some of the beds in this
latter area are more than 9 feet thick ; the coal is massive, banded
and, in some mines, is on the border line between sub-bituminous
and lignite. The dips are from 12 to 54 degrees, mostly above 30.
At jNIendota, where the coal is grayish-black and low grade sub-
bituminous, irregular lenses of soft, cannel-like coal are present.
When freshly mined, these are black, but they quickly become brown
on exposure. They contain so much volatile matter that when
ignited by a match they burn like cannel with a long smoky flame.

In the northern part of Pierce county, 30 to 50 miles north from
the Ladd area of Lewis, mining operations are extensive. Two beds
at Burnett have laminated, good bituminous coking coal, which has
been utilized in manufacture of illuminating gas. The dip is 45
degrees. At Pittsburg, two beds with dip of 58 to 60 degrees are
mined and yield bituminous but non-coking coal. At Wilkeson, three
beds, with dips of 20 to 60 degrees in different parts of the same
mines, give a bituminous coking coal, well laminated, with varying
ash in the several benches. The jointing is close and there is not
much lump coal. At Carbonado, 12 beds have been worked, all of
them more or less broken by partings and with dip of from 20 to
60 degrees. The coal is dense and bituminous, comparing very
favorably with good bituminous coal from the Coal Measures. The
lowest three beds are described as coking. At Montezuma, the coal
is coking, semi-bituminous and the dips are 65 to 70 degrees. Resin
occurs in low-grade sub-bituminous and to some extent in the higher
grades within Lewis, Thurston and King counties.

Evans made detailed study of the coals in King county. Those
in the western part have much moisture and are sub-bituminous, but
farther east the bituminous type is riot uncommon. The newer coals
are more nearly lignitic than those from the lower beds. Through-
out the whole column of about 8,000 feet, one finds great variation
in composition and, far too often, the ash is so abundant as to make
the coal worthless commercially. Several beds are quite regular in

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 167

occurrence within considerable spaces, but they change so abruptly
in thickness, structure and composition that correlation in the dif-
ferent areas is impossible; the associated rocks are equally variable.
The floor is usually clay or shale, often carbonaceous, but occasion-
ally it is sandstone. Some parts of the county lost much coal during
formation of pre-glacial valleys, now filled with glacial drift; while
several coal beds suffered much from contemporaneous erosion and
were replaced in considerable areas with sandstone. Evans notes
tree trunks extending from the coal into the roof. D. White,^^^
when at Rentoul in 1908, saw " kettle bottoms," or erect stumps of
trees, 6 to 18 inches in diameter, standing directly on the coal, with
black shale and coal filling the casts of the decayed boles. The coal
is distinctly xyloid and jetified wood is strongly in evidence. Evans
found a silicified erect stump showing the annual rings. Thiessen-^^
ascertained that the coal collected by D. White contains a great pro-
portion of debris, the quantity being almost equal to that of the
woody matter. The woody component is coniferous and resinous ;
the debris is very resinous, apparently almost one half of its mass
consisting of such material. Exines of spores and pollen are rather
abundant but cuticles are rare.

The province of British Columbia, Canada, adjoining the state of
Washington at the north, has a number of isolated coal basins,
mostly of small extent. The available knowledge respecting the
region has been digested by Bowling,-^' from whose work this syn-
opsis is taken. It seems probable that the deposits are of Oligocene
age in many of the places where the coal is economically important.
In the Tulameen district, according to C. Camsell, the coal-bearing
rocks occupy a basin in the older rocks, with an area of about 5
square miles. The section measured is about 2,500 feet and the
middle portion, 460 feet, carrying the coal beds, begins at 600 feet
from the bottom. Four beds with, in all, 20 feet of coal have been
discovered and prospected. The coal throughout is in alternate
bright and dull bands, the latter predominating; but the dull bands

231 D. White, " Origin of Coal," p. 24.

232 R_ Thiessen, " Microscopic Study of Coal," p. 243.

233 D. B. Dowling, " Coal Fields of British Columbia," Geol. Surv. of
Canada, Mem. 69, 1915, pp. 263 ff., 289 ff., 298 ff., 309, 321.

168 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

include many small lenses of bright coal. The dip is from 20 to 70
degrees, usually about 40. The ash, as shown by the analyses, is
rather high, the samples being prisms from the whole bed. Some
of the coal gives a strong coherent coke. On Hat Creek, G. AI.
Dawson obtained this section : ( i ) Grayish and brownish shales and
sandy clays, with thin layers of lignite, about 20 feet; (2) lignite
with shales, shaly and lenticular layers of silicious limestone, iron-
stone and shale; the lignite is fairly good, forms about two thirds of
the whole and contains much crumbling aliiber, 26 feet; (3) lignite
with little impurity, compact below, softer above, 42 feet, with the
bottom not reached.

The lignite of the great mass is without foreign materials aside
from irregular masses of calcareous or silicious stumps. Analyses
show that the quality is good, there being only 9 per cent, of ash
and 8.60 of moisture.

There are several small areas along the upper portion of the
Fraser River; the hgnite is unimportant but G. ]M. Dawson has given
some notes respecting the rocks. The material of the upper beds is
pale greenish and grayish white, very fine-grained and often a fire-
clay; at times it is rich in diatoms. The beds are mostly horizontal
but occasionally a local disturbance gives a dip of 20 degrees. Im-
pressions of roots and branches are common and two silicified stumps,
evidently in place, were seen. The beds turn up around the stumps
and thin out toward them. The lignite, at the bottom of the section,
is not in well-defined beds but is interstratified throughout with clays
and appears to have been deposited as driftwood by somewhat rapidly
flowing water ; it is not pure enough to be of any value. Small spots
and drops of amber are abundant in some layers. Little is known
respecting the extent or importance of the other areas. The field
geologists of Canada are in full accord with the palaeontologists in
the belief that these widely separated deposits were laid down in lakes
or in estuaries.

The Eocene coals of Alaska have been studied more or less in

detail during the last 40 years. Dall's'-^* examinations were made

in 1875, and the essential portions of his descriptions have been

234 W. H. Dall, "Report on Coal and Lignite of Alaska," Seventeenth
Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Survey, Pt. I., 1896, pp. 771-908.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 169

republished in his report upon a reexamination of the region in 1895.
His studies were confined to the southern coast and the adjacent
islands. Coal was discovered long ago on Admiralty Island, which
is east from Baronoff Island, on which Sitka is situated. The first
opening was made on Mitchell Bay and the coal was tested on the
U.S.S. Saginaw, but the resin was so abundant as to render it
unfit for use. The beds are very thin but, owing to the urgent
need for fuel, they were studied carefully. The especial features
are the woody structure and the abundance of resin. Kachemak Bay,
near the mouth of Cook's Inlet, on the Kenai Peninsula, is 1,200
miles west from Admiralty Island. Furnhjelm, long ago, saw there
a bed of coal, 9 to 1 1 feet thick, underlying clays, pebble rock and
sands, and resting on partly bituminous laminated clay shale. It
was black, brilliant and contained grains of amber. From the asso-
ciated rocks he obtained Unio, Aninicola, Melania and elytra of a
beetle, along with 44 species of plants, both conifers and dicotyle-
dons. The bed was no longer exposed when Dall visited the locality,
but, at Coal Point, he saw a bed 7 feet thick. In 1895, this bed had
been opened ' at the Bradley mine, where it showed leaf-bearing
partings and the best coal was at the bottom. Two other beds were
examined on this bay, 4 feet 7 inches and 6 feet thick. These are
complex. The coal dififers in the several beds; that at the Bradley
mine is evidently a glance, not soiling the fingers and, on drying,
breaking into cubical fragments, whereas that from the Eastland
mine is fibrous, dull charcoal black.

At Amalik Harbor, 150 miles farther west, some thin coal beds
were seen, as also at Chignak, nearly 300 miles beyond. Amber
has been obtained on the shore of Portage Bay southward from Chig-
nak and from several other places in that region, as well as from
several of the Aleutian Islands. Many thin 'beds of lignite were
seen on Unga Island. One of these is very complex ; the upper
portion has half a dozen benches of bright and dull coal, each 4 to
5 inches thick, with thicker partings of carbonaceous shale. The
bench is fairly clean and 18 inches thick. Analyses of coal from this
bed gave

On the basis of pure coal, the volatile is 49.55 and 81.26 in the two

170 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

coals. Both are described as lignite but the composition of the
lower bench, dull coal, suggests that it is of Lebertorf origin. Coal
from a bed on Kachemak Bay is of the same type, as it has 71.3
per cent, of volatile.

Upper part.
Lower part.

Water.

11.26
10.58

Volatile.

Fixed Carbon.

40.51
66.21

41.24
15.26

6.99
7-95

Eldridge,-^^ during examination of a district in eastern Alaska,
discovered 10 to 15 deposits of low-grade lignite, 6 inches to 6 feet
thick. The material resembles a mass of compressed carbonized wood.
Stumps, one to two feet in diameter, are common and stand erect.
These, by their appearance and by their association with abundance
of slivers and other carbonized material, suggest that the coal beds
originated in swamp vegetation. Occasionally, the coal shows no
woody structure and resembles the higher grades of lignite, which
shade off into bituminous coal.

Collier, not long afterwards, examined beds along the upper
Yukon River, where the coal is either lignite or lignitic, little dis-
turbed and usually contains amber. He visited a locality in the
province of Yukon, Canada, 20 miles from Dawson and 7 from the
Klondike, where R. G. McConnell had seen a double bed with 5 to 6
feet of coal^ hard, without woody fiber and of practically the same
composition in both benches. At 20 miles below Dawson, he saw
3 beds mined, all with one or more partings and all showing
abundance of resin. At Washington Creek, 80 miles below the inter-
national boundary, he found a bed measuring clean coal, with thin
partings, 5 feet 6 inches ; dirty coal, 2 feet 6 inches ; sandstone, 2
feet ; shale, 2 inches ; coal, 2 feet. The dip is 45 degrees, but there is
neither crushing nor faulting. The coal is black, glossy and has
conchoidal fracture, but it often shows woody structure and it con-
tains streaks as well as grains of resin. The coal beds, seen by Col-

235 G. H. Eldridge, "Reconnaissance of the Sushitna and Adjacent Ter-
ritory, Alaska," Twentieth Ann. Rep. U. S. Geol. Survey, 1900, Ft. VII.,
pp. 21-23.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 171

lier-^*' at numerous localities farther down the Yukon, show the same
general features as those already referred to.

IMartin and Katz-^' found in the Matanuska region beds of dark
fissile shale with bands of ironstone. The coal beds, in some cases,
are thick and commercially good, but in others they consist merely
of thin alternating layers of coal and shale, so that, though the coal
predominates, the thick mass is worthless. The upper half of the
section, about i,ooo feet, is composed chiefly of dark shales with
thin beds of sandstone and many thicker beds of carbonaceous shale,
which are leaf-bearing and include petty lenses of coal. The authors
saw several fossil logs and tree stumps in an exposure, where one
of them is 20 feet long and vertical to the bedding. Petrified frag-
ments of wood appear to be not rare.

Henshaw-^^ has given a brief note respecting the great bed on
Chicago Creek, in Seward Peninsula and almost directly under the
Arctic circle. The dip is 18 to 36 degrees and the thickness is 88
feet. The coal is frozen as in Spitzbergen and the modest mining
operations are prosecuted during the short summer. The tunnel had
been cleaned out only a short time before Henshaw's visit and he
w^as able to make examination of the whole bed. It is an almost
continuous mass of coal, broken only by a few layers of bony coal
and sandy shale. Atwood-^^ notes that in the Cook Inlet area, the
coal beds are many, varying from mere films to 20 feet. At a mine
near Tyonek, the coal is a tough, woody lignite and contains large
trunks of trees, which are only partly converted. The mode of their
occurrence suggests to him that they may be logs drifted into a pond
or swamp, or that they are a group of fallen forest trees.

Tertiary coals have been observed at many localities in Siberia,
but available notes respecting them are few and the age of the coals
seems to be somewhat uncertain. The summary description of

236 A. J. Collier, "The Coal Resources of the Yukon, Alaska," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 218, 1903, pp. 17, 19, 22-26, 30-39.

237 G. C. Martin and F. J. Katz, " Lower Matanuska Valley," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 500, 1912, pp. 44-48.

238 p_ p_ Henshaw, " Mining in the Fairhaven Precinct," U. S. Geol.
Survey, Bull. 379, 1909, pp. 362.

239 -vv^ \\/-_ Atwood, " Mineral Resources of Southwestern Alaska," the
same, p. 117.

172 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Siberian resources"'*" states that south-southwest from the Irtych
River a thin bed of hgnite was seen, which retains the woody texture
and contains grains of amber. Lignite-bearing Tertiaries are of
notable extent in the Transbaikal region ; they are later in origin than
the present topography of the country; the rocks show leaf impres-
sions and contain silicified stems of dicotyledonous trees. The lignite
beds are 2 to 4 meters thick but are lens-like, thinning away at the
borders.

Some Chemical Features of tJie Tertiary Coals. — The literature
dealing with the chemistry of Tertiary coals is voluminous, but
comparatively little of it is serviceable for the present study. An-
alyses, for the most part, are of coal from localities where the fuel
values had been proved long before the analyses were made : com-
paratively few are from deposits which are not important econom-
ically. In the United States and Canada, the samples are prisms
from the whole face of a bed, only such partings being removed as
should be separated from the coal before shipment. Analyses of
such samples afford no clue to the varying conditions during accumu-
lation of a bed. It is well understood that a proximate analysis of
coal containing a high percentage of water yields at best only ten-
tative results, varying in any case with the temperature employed.
Ultimate analyses are, from the geologist's standpoint, little better,
since coals of wholly different types may have practically the same
ultimate composition, as was shown by Carnot. Coals are apparently
mixtures of various hydrocarbons, respecting which very little is
known, as only a few of them are acted on by solvents. But one
must make use of the material within reach and much can be learned
by comparison of analyses made after the same method ; the official
laboratories in the United States afford abundant material.

In studying the mature deposits of peat, known as Schieferkohle,
V. Giimbel discovered a dopplerite-like material, which had saturated
the mass and had become insoluble. A similar substance is in brown
coal. Glockner-*^ examined the black lustrous coal, with conchoidal

240 Le Comite Geologique de Russie, " Apergu des Explorations geolo-
giques et minieres le long du Transsibirien," St. Peterbourg, 1900, pp. 42, 68,
87, 123, 153-

-■*! Fr. Gltickner, " Ueber Zittavit, ein epigenetische, dopplerit-ahnliches
Braunkohlengestcin," Zcitscli. d. d. gcol. Gcscll., 191 1, pp. 418, 419.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 173

fracture, which he saw in the brown coal of Zittau in Saxony.
Siegert and Hermance had thought it identical with Pechkohle or
Glanzkohle, but Glockner objects to both terms as not specific,
bcause they have been employed loosely in description of both brown
and stone coals. He regards dopplerite as almost equally bad, be-
cause there is no agreement respecting it, except as to the fact that
it is formed in recent peat moors. He prefers a new name for this
tertiary substance, which is distinguished from dopplerite by its
brittleness and its hardness, 2.5. Analysis of this zittavite, dried at
105° C, yielded carbon, 61.89, hydrogen, 5.32, oxygen, 30.43, nitro-
gen, 0.21, ash, 1.95. Comparing these results with those obtained by
Demel, Kaufmann and Schrotter for dopplerite, one finds that
Glockner's material is more advanced than that studied by those
chemists. They obtained for air-dried, ash-free dopplerite

Carbon.

Hydrogen.

Oxygen and Nitrogen.

Demel

Kaufmann

56.42

55-94
51.69

S-8o
5.20
5-34

37-20
38.86

Schrotter

43-03

One can hardly regard zittavite as a good mineral for, like dopplerite,
it varies in composition and there would seem to be little reason
for giving it a new name, except to distinguish the geological posi-
tion. Glockner recognizes similarity in origin, for zittavite is due
to humic solutions formed during change of woody material into
lignite and earthy brown coal, which circulate through the mass.
He cannot believe that it results from action of calcium carbonate,
because limy matter is but 0.47 per cent, of the whole. The charac-
teristics suggest very close relationship to the carbohumin of v.
Giimbel. D. White has expressed frequently the conviction that
the conversion of wood intO' jet-like lignite is due to saturation by
soluble compounds generated during 'decomposition of vegetable
matter.

With comparatively few exceptions, students of the Tertiary
coals have noted the presence in greater or less quantity of resins
in streaks, nests or isolated globules, especially in coals of lignitic
and sub-bituminous types, even occasionally in those closely allied to

174 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

the bituminous grade. The scanty notices of PHocene coals contain
few references to resins, the only definite note being that by Hutton
respecting New Zealand, in which he states that the coal often con-
tains large lumps of retinite. Thiessen found much resin in the
Miocene coal of Monte Diablo of California; Brown and Potonie
note the considerable proportion of resins in the coals of Greenland
and southern Prussia. The Oligocene coals of Germany and British
Columbia are rich in resin and, at times, it is found in cavities within
fossil wood. Eocene coals throughout, when they are lignite or sub-
bituminous, are notably resinous, material of that type occasionally
composes a great part of the mass. The term retinite is employed
frequently as a group name, but the resins are many. Amber or
Bernstein, the best known popularly, has been reported from numer-
ous places, widely separated. Dall states that it has been obtained
at many points in Alaska ; Daubree observed it in the Bas-Rhin
province and Potonie says that it is abundant at Senftenberg. But
this mineral occurs in commercial quantity chiefly on the Baltic coast
of Prussia, where, according to Karsten,-*- it is procured by digging
and by dredging. In the former process, the recent sands are
removed and the underlying clay shales, known as " amber veins,"
are exposed, in which are nests of brown coal and amber, apparently
much compressed. These overlie coarse greenish sand, under which
the important deposit is reached. This, with the overlying sand,
extends under the sea and is the source of the amber, which is
thrown on shore by the waves or is obtained by dredging.

Potonie-*^ states that Bernstein occurs over the whole of Xorth
Germany, Poland, Russian Baltic provinces and Finland as well as
in many other regions ; but it is most abundant in Sammland, near
Konigsberg. There it occurs at three horizons. The original deposit
is now below the sea, whence it is washed up by the waves ; but
these Eocene beds were gashed by glaciers and now the mineral is
found also in glacial drift. The Bernstein forest grew on Creta-
ceous debris. This fossil resin, originally fluid, is an exudation

242 H. Karsten, "Ueber das Vorkommen des Bernsteins an der preussische
Kiiste," Karsten's Archives, Vol. 2, 1830, pp. 289, 290.

243 H. Potonie, "Der baltische Bernsteins," Natur-Wochcnsch., Bd. VI.,
1891, pp. 21-25.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 175

from a conifer, which Conwentz has named Piinis succinifera. The
resiniferous organs were mostly in the bark and twigs but were
abundant even in the w^ood itself. The conditions in these old forests
were very similar to those observed in conifer forests of Bohemia :
there could have been hardly any sound trees in the old Bernstein
forests ; wind, weather, saprophytes and other plant parasites, in-
sects and other animals caused injury and led to flow of the resin.
Bernstein is complex, consisting of gedanite, soft, yellow, trans-
parent and fusing at about i8o° C. ; glissite, brown, opaque; stantie-
nite, black, tender, brittle ; bechanite, brown, tender, brittle ; suc-
cinite, transparent, lustrous, yellow, brittle, fusing at 250-300° C.

The resemblance of these resins to some of recent age is very
great and the origin is similar. They are exudations from coniferous
trees and are resistant to decomposing agents, so that the propor-
tion becomes greater as the process of decomposition advances in the
vegetable material. Amber is associated, at times, with fragments
of the trees whence it was derived, but in many places, as is the
case with the recent kauri and copal, the woody materials have dis-
appeared, leaving the resin free in the sands.

Pyropissite is locally characteristic of Oligocene coals in much
of the Sachsen area of southern Prussia, where it, as well as Schwel-
kohle, a mixture of pyropissite and fuel coal, is distilled for the
paraffins ; it occurs also in the Miocene and Eocene of other regions.
Karsten,-*^ in a brief communication to the German Geological So-
ciety, described it as a peculiar earthy brown coal, w^hich forms the
roof of a bed near Weissenfels as well as of one near Helbra, be-
tween Mansfeld and Eisleben. It passes gradually into the ordinary
brown coal, has gravity of 0.9 and leaves 13.5 per cent, oi ash. At
from 100° to 125° C, it gives off a heavy white vapor and at red
heat the product is an oily liquid. Stirred in an open vessel, the
whole mass liquefies and becomes pitch-like ; in burning it gives oft' a
disagreeable odor. The composition, ash and water free, is carbon,
68.92, hydrogen, 10.30, oxygen, 20.78, while that of the associated
brown coal is carbon, 64.32, hydrogen, 5.63 [oxygen and nitrogen,
30.05]. The last two constituents are not given by Karsten.

24-iKarsten, Zcitsch. d. d. gcol. GcscU., Bd. II., 1850, p. 71.

176 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Schwelkohle was formerly cast aside as worthless, but it has
been utilized in the paraffin industry during later years as the supply
of pyropissite is practically exhausted. As shown by Raefler the coal
is richest in pyropissite on the borders of several petty basins, the
proportion decreasing toward the middle. In the larger basin near
Zeitz in Sachsen, the proportion of pyropissite becomes negligible as
one goes eastward, but it increases again farther east, beyond the
central line of the basin. The origin of the material is obscure.
Potonie, in describing the Senftenberg coal, says that many of the
stumps, Taxodiiim disfichuni, are hollow and those at the bottom con-
tain Schwelkohle in the cavity. But the Schwelkohle in hollow
stumps is not confined to the bottom of the deposit though it is more
abundant there. He thinks that this substance was produced by flow
of resin, which must have been great in the wounded trees ; but one
has difficulty in conceiving how a stump, which had been dead long
enough to become hollow, could still retain enough vitality to pour
out a great quantity of resin for healing of its wounds. Whether or
not it is a resin may be open to discussion. The microscopic study
of the Weissenfels pyropissite by v. Giimbel led to no definite results
but in the Sauforst material he found a great quantity of exines of
pollen. The mode of its occurrence seems to suggest that it is not
unrelated to the Lebertorfs in origin. Potonie regards it as resinous
and its occurrence as layers or smuts in what he recognizes aS
autochthonous coal is explained by the suggestion, that these may
mark dry places, where the exposed coal was removed by decompo-
sition and the resin was left unmingled with foreign matter.

It appears wholly probable that pyropissite was an original con-
stituent, not a product of chemical action during conversion of the
vegetable material. Kraemer and Spilker thought it formed by green
algae while Witt believed that it was derived from spores. Graefe,
considering the contrast between pyropissite and the undoubted resin,
retinite, cannot regard a resin as the source of pyropissite, and
concludes that wax-like secretions of plants were in chief part the
original material. Treated with benzol, pyropissite yielded 69.5 per
cent, of "bitumen," while good Schwelkohle yielded 27.3 per cent. —
the calculation in each case being for the dry substance. Raefler

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 177

says that the poorer the coal is in benzol extract, the richer it is in
resin. " Bitumen " from pyropissite contains no resin soluble in
ether, but that from bitumen-poor coal may contain 25 per cent.

Bredlick-'*^ states that Schwelkohle, when dried, resembles an
earthy brown coal soaked in a wax-like bitumen. It is not homo-
geneous but consists of layers of richly bituminous lignite. It fuses
at 150° to 200° C, thereby differing from fuel coal, which is in-
fusible. He cites Riebeck on composition of pyropissite, which, ash-
free, is carbon, 73.48, hydrogen, 11.70, oxygen, 14.80, while the
associated fuel coal, according to Bredlick's analysis, has carbon,
64.78, hydrogen, 5.65, oxygen and nitrogen, 29.56. The several
substances, when subjected to destructive distillation, yield

Tar.

Water.

Coke.

Gas and Loss.

Pyropissite

Distillation coal

Fuel coal

64.2

33-0

5-0

7-7
23.0

63-5

16.3
35-0
25.0

II. 8
9.0
6.5

Gas begins to pass off from pyropissite at 120° C. to 150° C,
and the maximum temperature reached in the process is 640° C. The
tar is of butterlike consistence when cooled, has gravity of 0.85 to
0.91, consists chiefly of paraffins and olefins, there being only traces
of benzol and its homologues. This tar is fractioned and yields a
paraffin free oil and paraffin wax, with a residuum. The last, about
one third of the whole, is placed in another retort and heated to
beyond the " cracking point." The gas from Schwelkohle is in-
ferior; according to Graefe, its composition is: Carbon dioxide, 10.9;
heavy hydrocarbons, i.i ; oxygen, 6.3; carbon monoxide, 8.5;
hydrogen, 22.6; carburetted hydrogen, 6.4; ethane, 2.0; nitrogen,
42.2. The candle-power is from 8 to 12.

The Blatterkohle or Dysodil, which is a Tertiary Lebertorf, has
been found in Sicily, France, Bohemia and other countries, but the
most important deposits are near the Rhine in the Siebengebirge.
The composition of material from Westerburg, according to Cassel-
mann,^*® is: Carbon, 62.80; hydrogen, 6.76; oxygen and nitrogen,

245 W. Bredlick in " Fuels Used in Texas," Bull. Univ. Texas, 307, 1913,
pp. 169-178.

246 Cited by C. F. Zincken, p. 180.

178 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

19.43 ; ash, 11.00. This coal, which is utiHzed, like Schwelkohle, for
production of oils and paraffin, yields, according to H. Vohl,-^' by
distillation: Water, 24.214; tar, 20.014; coaly residue, 46.326; gas,
9.446. The Blatterkohle of Rott yields 15 to 20 per cent, of tar on
the large scale. This tar, when fractioned, gives: Photogen, 16;
solarol, 24; paraffin, 20; hard paraffin, 4, from 100 pounds of tar.

Cannel-like coal has been reported from Washington. Alaska and
Arkansas. That from Lewis county of Washington is extremely
high in volatile, but no analysis is available. Analyses of two coals
from Alaska show 71.3 and 81.26 of volatile. The Lester coal of
Arkansas has 68.06 per cent., in the pure coal, and the best quality
is said to yield 38 gallons of oil per ton. Lenses of cannel-like coal
occur at Hoyt in Texas, but no analysis has been made. " Oil shale "
of high grade has been found in New Zealand.

Analyses of brown coal, both proximate and ultimate, seem to be
abundant enough for all purposes. Those from European locali-
ties are almost all from mines which have been long in operation and
which yield coal proved to be marketable. In much of the areas
within the United States, the coal has been mined in a small way
to supply the owner's needs or those of a very sm.all population ;
samples have been taken from these as well as from mines of great
capacity, so that the reports from Government laboratories tell much
respecting the variations in character. In almost every instance, the
samples are prisms from the whole face of the bed, so that there is
little information as to varying conditions during accumulation of
the beds.

Comparatively few analyses of Pliocene coals have been reported.
Hutton has given four for the Otago, New Zealand, basins and
Hantken has given six for those of Hungary ; reduced to pure coal
basis, these are

I.

II.,

III.

IV.

v.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

Volatile

51.6
48.3

71. 1
28.8

56.3
43-6

53-3
46.6

20.1

22.2

23.7

2^.0

27.4

46.0

Fixed carbon

79.9 1 nn.n

76.2 1 74. Q

72.6 1 ^.'K.Q

Hutton's specimens were air-dried and contained from 11 to 16 per
24" Cited by Heusler, p. 133.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 179

cent, of water. The ash is from 2.80 to 29.58. The samples were
evidently selected specimens and Hutton seems to think that the
selection was not always judicious. The water in Hantken's samples
varies from 17.57 to 27.2 and the ash is low, barely 5 per cent., ex-
cept in Xo. IX., where it is almost 20 per cent, of the dried material.
Xo relation appears here between the quantity of ash and that of
volatile matter.-*®

Von Ammon-*^ published several ultimate analyses from mines in
Bavaria ;

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

Carbon

Hydrogen . . .
Oxygen

68.64

6.56

24.79

69.42

6.38

24.20

62.76

4.91

32.29

69.70

5-70
24.90

65.90

5-32

28.68

Xo. I. is a briquette with 10 per cent, of water and 13.21 of ash;
X^o. n. is a fresh specimen from the Oettingen locality and contains
63 per cent, of water ; Xo. 3 is lignit, bituminous wood, from
Schwarzenfeld and Xo. IV. from the same place is woody; these
have 41 and 36 per cent, of water but the ash is only 2.28 ; Xo. V.
is a strongly dried brown coal, which has 24 per cent, of water and
9 of ash.

The number of analyses is small but they represent the best coals
in the petty areas whence the samples were taken. Compared with
peats, the proximate analyses show notable decrease in volatile, so
great indeed in the Hungarian coals as to suggest the possibility of
some metamorphic action. The ultimate analyses from Bavaria show
an advance beyond mature peat in the carbon but it is not constant,
for X"o. III. is poorer in carbon and richer in oxygen than some
peats.

Miocene Coals. — Arnold has published two analyses from the
^lonte Diablo field in California, one representing a 5-feet cut at
the top and the other, the lower part of the bed ; Pardee has given
two of the coal in southwestern Montana. These, made by the
Bureau of IMines, show :

248 F_ \Y. Hutton, " Geology of Otago," p. 97; M. Hantken, op. cit., p. 341.

249 L. V. Ammon, op. cit, pp. 18, 27.

180 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Volatile.

Fixed
Carbon.

Sulphur.

C.

H.

0.

N.

Water.

I

II

Ill

IV

54-57
53-78
52.90
59.20

45-43
46.22

47.10

40.80

5-64
4.80
1-53
2.15

79.87
70.42
72.20

6.66
5-08
6.73

12.05
21.64
17-93

1.42
1-33
0-99

7-13
6-93

10.00

The dips in the Monte Diablo area reach 70 degrees ; the water in
the coal is always low, sometimes not more than 3 per cent. ; the ash
is from 4 to 18 per cent.; but everywhere the coal seems to be very
far from the bituminous grade. In southeastern Montana, the ash
varies from 15 to 25 per cent.

The air-dried samples of Greenland coal, analyzed by Moss, as
already cited, resemble a good bituminous coal, but the coal is a
typical brown coal in all physical features. Miocene coals from
Trinidad were analyzed by Percy, who obtained

c.

H.

0 and N.

Water.

Ash.

I

II

III. . . .

72.98

72.20

80.11
77.16

4-75
5-40
5-51
5-83

22.95
22.40

14-35
16.89

16.80

17-65

20.50

5-90

3-90
2.40

IV

3-44

In every case, the specimen for analysis was taken from the
outcrop ; all are attacked energetically by caustic potash. Experi-
ments in the Survey laboratory showed that No. IV cakes. Resins
appear' to be wanting. '^°

A. S. McCreath's analyses of coal from the Miocene of Advent
Bay, Spitzbergen, gave for dififerent parts of the bed

Water.

Volatile.

Fixed Carbon.

Sulphur.

Ash.

Upper part . . 3-3io
Lower part . . 4.696

19.790
28.560

62.763
57-171

0.467
0.413

13.670
9.160

N. Dubois determined the ultimate composition of slack coal from
the lower part of the bed, thus : Water, 4.14 ; carbon, 67.88 ; hydrogen,
4.05; oxygen and nitrogen, 11.90; ash, 12.03, or about 83 per cent,
of carbon and 14 of oxygen in the pure coal. The notable features

-°*5 G. P. Wall and J. G. Sawkins, " Trinidad," etc., pp. 123, 126.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 181

are the low water throughout and the great difference in volatile of
the two parts of the bed, more than 9 per cent, in the pure coal.
This coal is very similar in appearance to many Carboniferous coals
but it is attacked by caustic potash to an unusual degree.-'^

Von Ammon-^- reports analyses from the small Miocene area in
Bavaria, which exhibit much variability in composition.

c.

H.

GandN.

I

II

III...

49.01
70.93
60.43

5-15
4-25

4-47

45-82
24.81
35-08

The ash varies from 3 to 28 per cent, and the sulphur from 0.40 to
8 per cent. The first and third are very similar to peat in compo-
sition; the second is a Pechkohle from Schwarzen Moor.

The Grottauer coal of Bohemia contains, according to Katzer,
50 per cent, of water when freshly mined; dried at 110° C, it has
carbon, 53.22, hydrogen, 5.56, oxygen and nitrogen, 37.95, ash, 3.97.
The sulphur, as pyrite and in organic combination, sometimes reaches
3.84 per cent.

The Hungarian coals show considerable variation in composition.
Nendtvich-"^ gives analyses from two beds thus :

Rudolphilager .
Josephilager . .

Water.

18.68

17.00
17.82
17.10

Volatile.

49.11
44.02
67.00
54.00

c.

70.849
72.185
72.490
71-360

H.

4-715
5-185
5-175
5-095

OandN.

24-445
22.630
22.235
23-545

These are from near Oedenburg ; having been made according to
the same method, they are comparable. They make clear that for
comparisons one needs both ultimate and proximate analyses. The
second from Rudolphi and the first from Josephi have almost the
same ultimate composition, yet the latter yields about 2^ per cent,
more volatile than the former, showing that it has very different
constituents. The analyses for each are from diff'erent portions of

251 In Annals N. Y. Acad. Sex., Vol. XVI., 1905, pp. 86, 87.

252 L_ V. Ammon, op. cit, pp. 62, 64.

253 C. M. Nendtvich, " Ungarns Steinkohlen," etc., pp. 40-44.

182 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

the bed. The ash varies from about 2 to 5 per cent. Hantken'^*
gives three analyses, which are equally illustrative; one is of coal
from fideleny and the other two from near Brennberg.

c.

H.

0.

I

53-85
71.92
71.90

4.21
4-95
5-14

41.94

II

23.53

Ill

22.89

These are all used as fuel; at fideleny, the ash varies from 15 to 21
per cent, and the water from 21 to 61 per cent., so that the fuel is
of decidedly poor quality ; but at Brennberg, the water does not
exceed 18 per cent, and the highest ash is 3.45. These Miocene
deposits are confined to very small areas.

Oligocene Coals. — These are of great importance in Prussia and
in Hungary. Hantken-^^ has given proximate analyses of coals from
the Zsil valley and from two parts of one mine near Gran :

Water.

Fixed Carbon.

Ash.

Volatile.

I

4.83
14.09
12.727

58.50
59.53
38.035

6.55
3-55
8.217

36.67

II

Ill

22.53
40.921

Ultimate analyses from two localities in the Gran area, including
the mine. already referred to, have been given by Hantken and four
others were published by Nendtvich :

I. Szt. Ivan

II. Gran . . .

III. Gran . .

IV. Tokodt

V. Sarisap .

VI. Csolnok

VII. Zsemli

C.

64.92

69.30

68.58

67.495

67.85

71.55

71.89

O and N.

30.10
27.00
26.75
27.80
27.22
23.25
23-31

Volatile
in Pure Coal.

27-45
51.82
31-30
38.77
47.44
40.45

The two coals from different parts of the mine at Gran have practi-
cally the same ultimate composition, yet in the pure coal there is a
difference of 23 per cent, in the volatile. The contrasts are not

254 M. Hantken, op. cit., pp. 315-325.

255 M. Hantken, pp. 247, 259, 260, 262, 280, 286, 289; C. M. Nendtvich, p. 32.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 183

so great in the coals analyzed by Nendtvich, but there is a differ-
ence of 7 per cent, in the volatile of two coals with essentially the
same ultimate composition. The water in these Hungarian coals is
from 4.83 to 17 per cent, and the ash from 4.23 to 11 per cent.

The coals of Brandenburg, in the region studied by Plettner,
show notable variation, according to analyses reported by Zincken;

C.

H.

0 and N.

Perleberg, Erdkohle

Frankfurt a. O., Knorpel

Neudorf, Formkohle

Fiirstenwalde, Formkohle

66.32
65.60
60.00
70.64
68.37

5.20
5.36
6.56
5.22

5-47

28.48
29.04
33-44

24.14

Knorpelkohle

26.16

A great part of the Sachsen coal is Formkohle, which according to
analyses by Karsten and Bredlick, cited on an earlier page, contains
from 62.74 to 64.32 of carbon and the oxygen varies little from 30
per cent. The analyses of the Brandenburg coals seem to indicate
that the composition and the physical structure of the coal- are not
related, Formkohle being highest and lowest in carbon as well as
in oxygen. These Oligocene coals differ not much from mature peat
in their composition. ^^^

Katzer analyzed two samples from an opening in the Lauser
bench of the bed near Banjaluka in Bosnia, which show no great
variation ;

c.

H.

0 and M .

I

74-51
71-83

5-08
4-96

20.41
23.11

II

The water is from 21.82 to 29.05 and the ash, 7.40 to 8.45; sulphur
is high, from 6 to 7 per cent.

The Oligocene coals of British Columbia are, in many cases, bitu-
minous; the region being more or less affected by eruptive rock. It
is not certain that the analyses reported give any clear conception
respecting the general character of the coal, as the samples analyzed
were selected from the outcrops.

256 C. Zincken, pp. 28, 29.

184 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Eocene Coals. — The analyses of Southland coals in New Zealand,
reported by Hutton, are all proximate ; they show the volatile vary-
ing from 39 to 63.74 in the pure coal, while the water is from about
15 to 17 and the ash from 2.80 to 12.45 per cent. The samples
appear to have been selected and not to be representative of the
whole bed. No relation appears here between the proportion of ash
and that of volatile. Zincken has given an analysis of the English
Bovey Tracey coal, apparently by himself, and Dana"^' has published
an analysis by Vaux. Ash and sulphur free, these are

c.

H.

0 and N.

I

69-95
69-52

5-93
5-90

24.11

II

24-56

The Eocene coals of Texas are mined extensively at many locali-
ties and Phillips and Worrell"^^ have made numerous analyses, the
samples having been collected in all cases in accordance with the
official method. The composition of these coals varies greatly, even
in a single bed within a limited area. The conditions are clear from
comparisons of the samples taken from several mines near Rockdale
in Milam county. All are reduced to pure coal basis except for
water and ash, which are for the coal as received :

Water.

Ash.

Volatile.

Fixed
Carbon.

C.

H.

0 and N.

1538....

32.79

10.70

61.8

38.1

69.71

5-54

24.74

1539 —

34-72

11.76

60.8

39-1

73-63

5-48

20.87

1540 -...

32.27

12.05

74-3

25-5

67-36

4.99

21.64

I54I —

33-63

18.27

86.2

13-7

72.84

5.07

22.08

1542.-..

31-52

9-45

71.7

28.2

67.38

S.50

27.11

IS43----

29.07

26.47

54-2

45-7

77.11

5.46

17.41

The samples are all from the same bed and are in close proximity ;
it is clear that no relation exists between ash and volatile matter.
It is equally clear that the conditions were not the same throughout
the basin during accumulation of the peat. This appears from the

257 C. Zincken, p. 28; J. D. Dana, "Manual of Geology," 1895, p. 662.

258 ^_ B Phillips and S. H. Worrell, " The Fuels Used in Texas," pp.
85-89. 91, 92, 98, 100.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 185

variation in percentage of the ash; but it is more apparent when
one considers the composition of the ash in the several samples :

Silica.

Alumina.

Ferric Ox.

Calc. Ox.

Magnes. Ox.

Sulphuric Acid.

1538

1539

1540

I54I

1542

1543

21.64
33-06

27.44
23.20

42.20
47-04

16.20
16.77
28.87
11.94
23.02
23-18

II. 10
8.47

24.85
5.08
2.02

18.32

25-23
23.00

7.00
38.17
15-93

6.64

4.36
1.28
0.00
1. 00
2.12
0.00

18.01
17.10
10.45

7-79

12.81

4-58

In these coals one has another illustration of indefiniteness of
analyses as indications of the actual composition of coal. Nos. 1539
and 1 541 have almost the same ultimate composition, yet there is a
difference of more than 25 per cent, in the volatile.

Analyses of coals in the Wyoming-Montana-North Dakota region
are numerous. Taff and Wegemann cut samples in the Sheridan and
Barber fields. Ten beds were sampled in a vertical section of about
1,900 feet. The variations in composition are less than those found
within a single bed in the Rockdale area of Texas. The volatile in
the lowest bed is 46.30 and that in the highest is 47-67 ; but in one
midway in the section it is 44.69, and in the one next above it is 53-20,
while in the next to the highest it is only 43-97- The carbon varies
from 74.37 in the lowest bed to 70.97 in the highest, but in a bed
almost midway in the section it is 71.96. The oxygen is 20.42 in the
lowest bed and 22.95 i^i the highest, but is lowest in an intervening
bed. The coal throughout this region appears to be remarkably free
from inorganic matter, as the ash varies from 4.10 to 9.95 per cent,
of the dry coal and it is usually less than 7 per cent.-^^

Somewhat farther north, in the Red Lodge field of eastern Mon-
tana, samples were cut by Woodruff and were analyzed at the same
laboratory. Eight analyses were made of six beds exposed in a sec-
tion of approximately 475 feet. The volatile is from 37.35 in the
lowest bed to 45.85 in the highest ; but in another analysis, the lowest
bed shows 43.35 and the fifth bed, ascending, has but 42.66. The
carbon is 72.66 in the lowest and 74.41 in the fifth bed, while in the

239 U. S. Bureau of Mines, Bull. 22, 1913, pp. 307-309-

186 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

same beds the oxygen is 20.77 ^^^ 16.94 in the two analyses of the
bottom bed while it is but 17.85 in the fifth. The ash is from 6.02
to 13.31 per cent, of the freshly mined coal, which contains 8.60 to
11.69 of water. Much of the coal, according to these analyses,
would be regarded as inferior. In this field, as in the Sheridan,
there is no relation between ash and volatile and comparison of
analyses shows that position in the section is not very important.
Proximate analyses from the Miles City field in Montana tell the
same story, for the volatile varies from 42.49 to 49.60 in sound coal
from the lowest bed, while a single analysis of crop coal from a bed,
800 feet higher, shows 48.09. Water in the lowest bed is from 29.25
to 43.70, while that of the highest is 35.51."'''^

Analyses were made of 7 samples cut in the Snyder mine near
Glendive on the eastern border of Montana.

Water.

Ash.

Volatile.

Fixed
Carbon.

C.

H.

0 and N.

2423

39-94

5.61

45-40

54-60

3812

34-55

7.20

60.67

39-33

72.79

4-74

20.58

3815

33-65

6.90

49.84

SO. 16

67.87

3-97

26.80

3816

34-89

8.07

76.23

23-77

73-04

4-43

20.20

3817

31.26

6.80

68.49

31-51

70.92

4.07

23.72

3819

33-06

8.33

51-70

48-30

3820

33-06

6.26

65.62

34-38

Ultimate analysis was made of only four samples. In all cases, sam-
pled by the official method, the coal is sealed in waterproof cans
at once, so that it reaches the laboratory in fresh condition.

The ash varies in this small mine from 8.62 to 12.44 P^r cent,
of the dried material ; no relation exists between it and the volatile ;
3816 and 3819 have practically the same ash, 12.39 and 12.44, but
there is almost 25 per cent, difference in the volatile. 3815 and
3816 have almost the same ultimate composition, but their volatile
differs by almost 16 per cent.

The Leonard and Smith samples are from eastern North Dakota,
and their bed C is taken to be about 300 feet above the Glendive bed ;
bed G is somewhat more than 250 feet above C.

-•50 The same, Bull. 22, pp. 124-126.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 187

2428 C
5779 E
5782 E
5782 F
5784 F
2427 G

Water.

38.45
34-50
35-72
35-40
43-51
29.78

Ash.

5 -69
7-51
8.86
5-64
6.39
6.56

Volatile.

Fixed Carbon

50.16

49.84

51-05

48.95

57-53

42.47

64.86

35-14

50.37

49.63

50.74

49.26

No ultimate analyses of these samples were made, but the proximate
analyses suffice to show the great variability in conditions under
which the coals accumulated ; there is notable difference in ash ; in
the two analyses of coal bed F one finds a difference of more than
14 per cent, of volatile.

The coals of the state of Washington have great economic im-
portance and a great mass of analyses is available. In that state
one finds all grades of coal from peat-like material to graphitic
anthracite within the Eocene column ; at many localities the coals
yield coke of excellent quality. One may select only a few of the
analyses as illustrating the variations. In King county the water is
low, rarely exceeding 12, usually below 9 and in a great number
of cases is below 6 per cent, in the freshly mined coal. The ash is
high, not often below 12 and very frequently above 20 per cent, in
the dry coal. The first five analyses, which follow, are from the
several beds near Issaquah and are of subbituminous coal; the sixth
is bituminous and the seventh is of coking coal from Bayne.

Water.

Ash.

Fixed
Carbon.

C.

OandN.

8544 I - .
8445 11.

11736 III

11737 IV,
8543 V.

9114

9485 . • ■ ■

14.2
13.8
15-9
16.S
15-I
4-9
4.2

13.59
20.53
11.4
24.4
13-36
4-74
11.62

40.9

47-3
48.4
52.4
39-9
46.2

38.3

59-1
52-7
51-6
47-6
60.1
53-8
61.7

76.51
74-77

75-52
79.96
81.52

5.66
6.00

5-41
5-86
5-65

17-34
18.51

17-55
13-67
12.30

At Ronald in Kittitas county, a coking coal is found with composi-
tion dift'ering very slightly from that of the coal at Bayne. In Pierce
county, coking coals are mined at many places with 3 to 5 per cent,
of water in the fresh coal ; the ash is rather high in some of them,

188 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

reaching even to i6 per cent, of the dried coal; not a few of these
coals have 84 to 87 per cent, of carbon. But not all of the beds yield
caking coal, even where its composition is closely similar to that of
the others.

The coals of Lewis county show extremes of variation, for there
one finds anthracite with 6.8 of volatile and 93.2 per cent, of fixed
carbon in the pure coal, whereas at Mendota the coal is lignite with
20 per cent, of water and J^^ per cent, of carbon. At Ladd the coals
are bituminous and that from No. 2 is coking. It has 4.1 of water
and 84.62 of carbon. It yields 34.2 per cent, of volatile from the
pure coal. The other beds mined on this property have only 6 to 8
per cent, of water but the volatile is much higher, 43 to 48 per cent.,
and they are not caking. The ash throughout is high, 18 to 26 per
cent, of the dry coal.-*^^

Igneous rocks are reported as cutting the coal bearing rocks at
a few localities in King and Pierce counties, but for the most part
the variation in the coals is regional and apparently is not due to
local causes.

The Alaskan coals show all types from lignite to anthracite. The
anthracite coals are in the Bering River region where the carbon
content at times reaches 90 per cent. ; but in the same region are
bituminous and semi-bituminous coals. The lignitic type, however,
prevails in the greater part of the territory.

c.

H.

0 and N.

Volatile.

I

67-45
69.08

68.77
68.47
69-57

64.60
69.89
64-43
69-59
67.40

5-27
5.28

5.02
5-53

5-04
5-44
5-07
5-39
5-19
5-47

26.63
25.16
25-93
25-37
24.66

29-55
23-56
29-73
24-78
24.71

64.44

II

Ill

50.86
50.53

IV

55-15

V

VI

VII

54-41
59.16
45-84

VIII

58.93

IX

53-55

X

56.97

At Coal Harbor, Unga of Ball's descriptions, in western Alaska,
the analyses give for the coal^ ash and water free: Carbon, 68.76;
hydrogen, 5.30; oxygen and nitrogen, 24.89; volatile, 50.29.

261 E. E. Smith, U. S. Geol. Survey, Bull. 474, 191 1, pp. 42, 43,
65, 66, 67.

51, 64,

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 189

On the borders of Kachemak Bay, farther east, ten samples were
collected which have the composition shown in the preceding table,
calculated after the same method :

Number VII. gives the composition of pebbles of lignite forming
part of a conglomerate at the bottom of the Kenai (Eocene) in this
district.

Nine samples were cut from the bed on Chicago Creek in the
Seward Peninsula, which is 88 feet thick. In each case the sample
represents a 12-feet cut. The results of analysis are:

c.

H.

0 and N.

Volatile.

I

II

Ill

IV

71.69

71-25
70.78
70.41
74.82
69-33
67.32
68.56

68.68

S-oi
4.85
5.05
4.72
4.71
4.61
4.85
5-01
4-83

22.18
23.02
22.96
23-62

19-43
24.41
25-90
23-77
24.46

44-84
45-89
44-96
43-98

V

VI

43-83
44.70

VII

46-73

VIII

46.25

IX

46.51

In the Kachemak area the moisture in freshly mined coal varies
from 17.44 to 28 per cent, and the ash is from 10.50 to 20.34 per
cent, of the coal, dried at 105° C. But in one sample it is only 7.81.
In the Chicago Creek bed the moisture is from 32 to 42 per cent, of
the fresh coal and the ash is from 5.77 to 6.49 in dried coal from the
upper half of the bed, as represented in analyses I. to IV., but in the
remaining analyses it increases, becoming 9, 11, 31, 21 and 26 per
cent., fractions being omitted.

The Kachemak analyses show that the carbon content varies
from 64.60 to 69.59, but the volatile is from 50.86 to 64.44. Coals
with almost exactly the same ultimate composition differ about 5 per
cent, in the volatile. The Seward analyses prove great uniformity in
composition of pure coal throughout the immense bed, the variation
in carbon being only from 68 to 71, except in one cut, midway, where
the maximum of 74 per cent, is reached. The volatile is greatest
in the lowest third, where the ash is greatest ; but there is no rela-
tion between the ash and the volatile; for in IX. the ash is 26.15 per
cent, of the dry coal and the volatile is 46.51, while in VII. the ash

190 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

is 31.70 and the volatile is 46.73; in II. the ash is 5.77 and the
volatile is 45.89.

Summary. — It is now in place to gather the facts presented and,
if possible, to ascertain how far they may be related to the problem
in hand.

The testimony throughout shows that Tertiary coal beds are no-
tably limited in extent, their area varying from a few square rods to
several hundreds of square miles — in some cases apparently even to
2,000 square miles; the extent being limited by the topography as
the deposits appear, for the most part, to have accumulated in shallow
ponds or in well-defined valleys. The lens-like form has been empha-
sized by almost all observers in every portion of the Tertiary. Un-
fortunately the details recorded for most localities are insufficient to
justify an attempt at working out the history of any bed, known to
exist within a large space. Detailed study is impossible at present in
the United States and Canada, where alone the great beds are known,
because those occur in regions with sparse population, where, for long
distances, one must depend on imperfect natural outcrops or on the
less definite lines of clinkered rock, caused by spontaneous com-
bustion of the coal. The perplexity is increased by variations in
thickness and composition of the intervening rocks, as well as by
similar variations in the coal beds themselves, which make correla-
tion extremely difficult. Several American observers decline to
regard the coal deposits as continuous in large areas and prefer to
describe " coal horizons." All agree as to the lens-like character of
very many beds ; even those who are unwilling to accept this for the
great beds, frankly present the frequent changes into shale and the
local disappearances of the coal as serious problems. Some ob-
servers have shown that the lenses often overlap, that a coal thins
out and may be replaced by another at a few feet higher or lower.
This feature, so characteristic of American localities, was recognized
by Credner and by Raefler in the coals of Prussian Saxony.

The rocks intervening between beds of Tertiary coal may be
conglomerate, gravel, sandstone, sand, shale, clay, limestone or
alternations of such deposits. Ordinarily, these are of freshwater
origin, but, not infrequently, one finds layers with brackish- water

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 191

fossils and occasionally a bed with typical marine forms. At most
localities the bedding is irregular and the rocks seem, in many cases,
to be composed of dove-tailing lenses ; lenses of fine clay occur
frequently. Sandstones and sands are cross-bedded in great areas ;
ripple-markings and mud-cracks have been reported from many
places. Conditions in the western United States appear to indicate
that these deposits were made on plains, where the sands drifted
and where the water was collected in shallow pond-like areas. The
gravels in many cases indicate filled channel-ways.

These intervening rocks frequently contain drifted materials.
Leaves and stems of upland vegetation are found in the sands of
Siberia ; Collier saw cones of Picca, bones of mammals, land and
freshwater shells in beds overlying Pliocene lignite on the Yukon ;
Grand'Eury observed wood, roots and spots of lignite at Budweis;
Colenso in Wales described a deposit very like that of Alaska; the
sections in western North America usually contain reference to these
drifted plant remains. But not all the plant remains were trans-
ported ; at many places they mark old soils of vegetation, surfaces
where plants grew, but not long enough for accumulation of coal.
There are many references to these in preceding pages and only one
need be added. Darwin,-^- in a publication later than his " Re-
searches," gave a detailed description of the petrified forest seen on
the Uspallata range of Chili. The stumps, exposed in a small area,
were in green and brown sandstone, which had been removed by ero-
sion so as to show the erect stems in place. Fifty-two stumps were
examined, projecting 3 to 5 feet — in one case 7 feet — from the sur-
face. Whether or not they were rooted, he could not determine, as
the lower part in every case was still buried in the rock. The dip
was 25 degrees and the stems were vertical to the bedding. It was
suggested to him that the trees might have been transported, but
that explanation seemed insufficient ; it might suffice for a single
stump but not for a clump of 52 trees, which belonged to an inland
coniferous flora, not to a coast vegetation. The conditions convinced
him that erosion had laid bare only a small part of the forest.

Occasionally, lake marls, interrupted by beds of brown coal,

-'''- C. Darwin, " Geological Observations in South America," London,
1846, pp. 202.

192 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

accumulated in great thickness, as in southern France. It is evident
that some were made close to estuaries, for several observers have
recorded that thick deposits, crowded with freshwater fossils, are
interrupted by layers containing forms which are unquestionably
marine. The intervals between Tertiary coal beds vary so greatly
and so abruptly in thickness that, where natural exposures are the
only dependence, correlation of beds in any area is difficult, often
impossible.

The roof of a Tertiary coal bed may be composed of any kind of
rock, transported or formed in sitit. There are abundant illustra-
tions of transition from the underlying coal to the roof rock, from
accumulation of coal to final destruction of plant life on the bog
surface, alternating laminae of vegetable and mineral material testi-
fying to the struggle between silt overflows and the dwindling bog.
This faux-toit is a characteristic feature ; at times it is merely a
carbonaceous shale ; at others it is a very impure coal. Very often
the immediate roof is distinctly transported material with leaves,
twigs and broken bits of wood, even fragmentary trunks of trees.
It may be marine shale, rich in fossils, or it may be a marine lime-
stone, as at Haring, containing bits of water-loving plants, such as
Salix, Erica and palms. Or it may be sand enveloping erect trunks
of trees, which grew on the dried surface of the bog, as at Senften-
berg or near Friesdorf in the Cologne area. Grand'Eury-*^^ remarks
that the fossil forest in the roof of the great coal bed at Petroszeny,
in Hungary, rivals that of Purbeck and that the trunks, erect, are
rooted on the top of the coal, while around the stems at the bottom
of the deposit are branches of Taxodium distichnm, clearly fallen
from the stumps. A similar condition is reported from localities in
the United States and in Europe. At times, the roots of trees grow-
ing in the faux-toit, pass downward into the coal as described by D.
White for a mine in Texas and by other observers in places where the
stumps are rooted in the coal. Grains of coal are not rare in the
roof or the accompanying rocks, showing clearly that a coal deposit
had been exposed to erosion. In much of the Oligocene areas of
Prussia, the original roof has been removed and has been replaced
with late drift material. The gradual disappearance of coal-forming

-^^ C. Grand'Eury, Comptes Rendus, T. 130, 1900, p. 1689.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 193

conditions is shown very frequently by a faux-toit ; but not rarely the
passage from coal to roof is abrupt, which may indicate, perhaps,
that peat-making had ceased for some time prior to the burial under
transported material.

The coal beds are rarely single ; they are divided by partings into
benches, which differ greatly in thickness and in composition, though
there are beds which are remarkably uniform in composition through-
out. The coal may be hard or soft, massive or laminated, and the
several types may be in separate benches or even in the same bench.
Generally, the coal is hard enough to require the use of heavy tools
in mining so that it comes out in lumps, Knabben- or Knorpelkohle
of the Germans. This type is especially characteristic in the United
States. But in somewhat extensive areas within Germany one finds
abundantly the other type. Form-, Fein-, Rieselkohle of the various
localities, fine-grained, earthy in appearance and but slightly coherent.
All types of coal, enumerated by authors, may be found in a single
bed or even in a single bench. Fragments of wood are numerous,
lignite at one end where the annual rings are distinct, while at the
other end they have been converted in shining Pechkohle, apparently
without trace of vegetable texture. A similar condition is seen in
many cases of replacement, for one part of a stem may be wholly
silicified while the other remains wood. In such cases, the original
structure frequently remains distinct, whereas in replacement with
dissolved carbon compounds, as in Pechkole, the structure disappears.
The distribution of Formkohle in a bed is indefinite ; it may occupy
the whole space from floor to roof, interrupted only by partings; it
may be at the bottom or at the top, or it may alternate with benches
of other coals. Its mode of origin is discussed elsewhere by the
writer.

Macroscopically, the coal consists of various fragments of organic
and of inorganic origin, embedded in a structureless mass, in which
the unaided eye can find no trace of texture; but under the micro-
scope, this structureless mass proves to be minutely divided plant
debris. Woody materials are often predominant, occasionally more
than three fourths of the mass. Logs are reported from all locali-
ties, but they are distributed irregularly through the deposit, at least

194 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

as a rule. At times, prostrate stems as well as rooted stumps are
abundant especially in the lower portions, but at others they occur
within definite horizons in the higher portions ; the smaller fragments
are frequently converted into mineral charcoal. These conditions,
observed in widely separated American localities, are similar to those
observed in many European places, though, there, mases of logs are
not so common as in the American lignitic coals ; but the logs are
found in all sorts of coal, Formkohle as well as Knorpelkohle and,
many times, they are of enormous size. Prostrate logs are, with rare
exceptions, compressed, often so compressed that it would seem as
though only the bark remains, but erect stumps are very rarely com-
pressed. Leaves and the strongly compressed stems appear as im-
pressions on the structureless debris though occasionally, as at Bovey
Tracey, leaves may form the great mass as slightly compressed logs
do elsewhere. The logs belong mostly to conifers and they have been
preserved because of the resin-content. The debris, formed from the
Softer, more readily decomposed plants and portions of plants, con-
tains spores, pollen grains, bits of dicotyledonous plants as well as of
the softer parts of conifers. The disintegration and decomposition of
the material has led to enrichment in resins, as shown under the
microscope. Replacement of wood is common, the replacing material
being for the most part, silica, pyrite, calcium and ferrous carbonates ;
this replacement has been observed in the peaty material of the
debris, giving the nodules, which Gothan and Horich have termed
torfdolomite.

Animal remains have been found in coal at many localities.
Sedgwick and Murchison, as well as Anker,- discovered bones of
mammals in the Eocene bogs of Styria ; Katzer saw teeth and bones
of mammals in the Banjaluka coal; Fournet saw abundance of land
and freshwater shells in the French lignite ; v. Giimbel observed
Helix in some layers of Pechkole in southern Bavaria. The dysodil
or Blatterkohle of the Lower Rhine region contains many species
of batrachians, fishes and insects, while that of southern France
is closely packed with fish remains, retaining at some localities much
of the original animal matter. Inorganic materials are normal con-
stituents of coal ; some of the admixture is due to silicious organisms.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 195

for diatoms are of common occurrence, occasionally following im-
portant deposits ; a greater proportion is derived from the mineral
content of the coal-producing plants themselves ; but when the quan-
tity is considerable, the most of it is of extraneous origin. Pockets of
sand and silt have been reported by almost all observers. The silt
is often distributed intimately throughout the coal or it may be col-
lected in thin laminse, such as render the coal worthless, or it may be
in comparatively thick partings ; even pebbles of rock have been
reported from a few localities.

Brown coal deposits, with rare exceptions, are broken by part-
ings. These may be so thin as hardly to be seen by the unaided eye,
yet they are distinct, for the coal separates on their planes ; they
may be a foot or more in thickness and composed of any material
transported or formed in place. Each definite parting is roof to the
underlying, and floor to the overlying coal. Roots, leaves and fresh-
water, as well as land shells have been reported from clay partings
in Hungary and Bosnia, leaves from New Zealand and Borneo and
freshwater shells from shale and marly limestone partings in France.
References to other regions are in preceding pages. Each parting is
evidence of interrupted coal-accumulation; but its thickness at any
place is no evidence respecting the duration of the period of interrup-
tion, for the thickness is a variable quantity. Russwurm notes a part-
ing which increases from 0.5 to 4 meters within a short distance ; near
Gran in Hungary is one which is 1.9 meter in one mine but 17.45
meters in another, only a little way off; Evans has described one in
Washington, which thickens from 4 to 90 feet within a horizontal
distance of 3,200 feet, while in another direction it quickly decreases
to 10 inches. Such variations are due to merely local causes as the
deposits, for the most part, are of very limited extent. The changes
are comparable to those observed in the rocks intervening between
coal beds, often so great as to make correlation of the coals difficult.
The partings, which consist largely of mineral charcoal, are im-
portant, as they appear to be often persistent throughout a basin ;
yet they are rarely more than half an inch thick. These indicate a
positive change in conditions which made growth of vegetation im-
posible and led to exposure of the peaty surface to atmospheric

196 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

action. A layer of mineral charcoal and minutely divided inorganic
matter may be the residuum from a considerable thickness of peat ;
the proportion converted into mineral charcoal and so rendered prac-
tically indestructible would be small compared with that wasted by
oxidation and removed by the wind.

Evidence of long-continued interruption of ordinary peat forma-
tion is afforded by forest beds within the coal deposit. At Sen f ten-
berg, as shown by Potonie, the surface of the bog became dry enough,
more than once, to permit growth of trees; in the Cologne-Linz area,
the dryness was such and the period so long that a forest, containing
trees with i,6oo annual rings, had full opportunity for development.
In much of the Cologne region, the vast proportion of the stems
are prostrate, but that condition is by no means evidence that they
are in any but the place of growth. They are merely overturned
trees as are thoise of the white cedar swamps of New^ Jersey or those
in the cypress swamps of Florida or the bogs of Borneo. One layer
in the Cologne-Linz district is a meter thick but erect stumps are
present among the prostrate stems, as Horner and Heusler have
shown. Trees of such immense size as those described by Horner
indicate a very prolonged period of comparative dryness, during
which the peat, as soil for the trees, was protected from wasting by
offal dropping from the dense forest cover. A somewhat similar
condition was noted by Wegemann in the Barber coal field of
Wyoming.

The floor of coal beds is as variable as the roof, but it is usually
clay or marl. The transition from the coal is occasionally abrupt,
but in most cases the passage is gradual, through a faux-mur, con-
sisting of alternating layers of coaly material and the mur rock.
Very frequently the mur contains fresh water shells, that condition
being reported from many places in all parts of the wofld. Land
shells are not rare ; they may have been floated in or they may mark
drier places in the swamp. Leaves are found frequently in the marls
and clays. The notable feature of the mur is the presence of roots
attached to stems projecting into the overlying coal. At times the
roots alone remain recognizable, the stems having been merged in
the coal. Usually these are those of swamp types; but in cases

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 197

where the stumps project into the coal other forms may occur. The
classic illustration is that at Senftenberg, described by Potonie,
where one sees complete evidence of destruction of a forest by a
transgressing bog. Kukuk's photograph of wholly similar conditions
is equally conclusive. Not rarely the stumps had become hollow
before entombment.

No complete statement respecting the flora of the brown coals
can be made; the plants obtained from the associated rocks cannot
be utilized as they are enclosed in rocks of transported material and
represent, in part at least, the upland flora ; they are as inconclusive
as would be lists of forms found in the clays and sands which had
slipped down on a swamp, to one endeavoring to determine the plants
of peat. It is necessary to confine one's investigation to such infor-
mation as can be obtained from the coal itself, though in some cases
evidence from the enclosing shales may be utilized as illustrating
prevailing conditions in the immediate vicinity.

The logs and stumps within the coal beds are almost invariably
conifers. In Greenland and Spitzbergen, recognizable remains are
rare in the coal and the logs are usually silicified ; but the associated
shale shows that, during its deposition, the prevalent types of the
immediate vicinity were conifers and other forms of acid-loving
plants, a swamp flora, so that swampy conditions prevailed in the
area whence the shale material was drawn. The Pliocene coal of
Hungary is crowded with stems of Sequoia; the Miocene swamp
of Virginia contains Taxodimn, Nyssa, Salix, Quercus and other
types belonging to genera familiar in recent cypress swamps. At
Bovey Tracey in the Eocene, ferns and Sequoia predominate, yet at
the bottom of one bench there is a mass of dicotyledonous leaves.
Fournet found a typical swamp flora in the Vion lignite, where he
recognized birch, juniper, fir, cherry and walnut, with sedges and
rushes. Daubree, near Lobsann on the Lower Rhine, found that the
mineral charcoal is from conifers while the peculiar fibrous coal, his
lignite bacillaire, which forms the greater part of some deposits,
is derived from Palms. At Senftenberg Taxodiuin distichwii is the
prevailing type in the coal, but in the upper layer are stumps of
Finns or Picea. Conifers and palms are the most abundant types in

198 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

the Hardt district of the Cologne-Linz region. The woody fragments
in Brandenburg mines are practically all from conifers; in Sachsen,
the fossil wood is coniferous, belonging almost wholly to the
cypresses; but at Tanndorf, where the conditions are well shown,
Penck found Sah'inia and Trapa in the lower portions, succeeded by
a layer with Arundo, which is followed by normal peat with Betiila
and Palmacitcs. Reuss's collections from the fetid limestone roof
of the Haring coal show that the coal was formed at the head of an
estuary for, mingled with remains of marine animals, it contained
abundant fragmentary remains of Salix, Erica, palms and other
swamp plants, which, it would seem, must have been torn away from
the still living swamp on the shore, continuous with the buried swamp
which has given the Haring coal. American localities tell the same
story respecting the woody materials. Grand'Eury,"*^* in summing
up the results of his studies, asserted that in the lignite areas of
Tertiary age he had found as many stumps with roots and branches
in situ, as in Carboniferous coal basins. From their position, even
in the midst of rocks and limestones, it is to be presumed that the
in situ roots are evidence of plants growing on bottoms subject to
inundation. The flora shows instances of local variation, one strik-
ing illustration being that recorded by Heusler in the Cologne area.

Very few observers have given detailed record of localities where
evidences of contemporaneous erosion are distinct. The writer has
made careful comparison of sections preserved in basins of con-
siderable magnitude and he is convinced that the variations in coal
and the intervening rocks are such in many areas that they can be
explained as due only to contemporaneous erosion. The absolute
proof of such erosion cannot be secured except where coal mining
has been well-developed — and there are few such localities in the
American Tertiary. European basins are small and the petty varia-
tions due to contemporaneous erosion are easily overlooked. Very
clear cases of such erosion have been reported from the interval
rocks of Wyoming but in no case is the extent fully revealed. Evans
has shown that in Washington some coal beds have suffered severely

-*'* C. Grand'Eury, Comptcs Rendus, T. 138, 1904, pp. 666 ff., 740 fif.

STEVENSON— INTKRRKLATTONS OE THE EOSSIL EUELS. 199

and that, in considerable spaces, the coal has been removed and has
been replaced with sandstone.

The intimate resemblance of many brown coal deposits to those
of peat has been affirmed by many observers. Collier recognized the
resemblance in Alaska and Washington as did Eldridge in Alaska;
Haast was positive respecting it in southern New Zealand ; several
authors have described the Moor- and IMooskohle of Prussia and
Bohemia ; Gothan and Horich have shown that the Torfdolomite of
the Lower Rhine is merely mature peat replaced by inorganic matter ;
Smith and Travers-''^ described as peat an impure brown coal under-
lying the London clay. In many places the coal has been found rest-
ing on the characteristic reed beds.

Few students have made minute investigation of the structure
and succssion of individual beds. Penck's observations at Tanndorf
have made clear that the brown coal at that place is in a lake basin :
the muddy floor afforded roothold for floating plants, on whose debris
rushes and other plants of similar habit grew, until the surface be-
came such as to permit growth of shrubs and trees. Others have
reported the occurrence of swamp plants in the brown coal, but they
have not said anything about their vertical distribution in the deposit.
Similarly, the presence of land and freshwater shells has been noted
by numerous writers, but there is rarely any information as to their
distribution in the bed. All that one may assert is that these indicate
the existence of pools or ponds in the marsh. Expansion of the
accumulating area by transgression, after the manner of swamps, is
distinct at many places. Stohr has shown that in a part of Prussian
Sachsen, the deposit began on an irregular surface as a number of
separate lenses, which often became united by crossing the dividing
ridges ; so that the coal is from o to 20 meters thick, being thinnest
on the low rolls separating the narrow troughs. D. White's descrip-
tion of conditions at Lehigh, North Dakota, is wholly similar ; the
greatest thickness is in the hollows of the floor and the coal becomes
thinner toward the "rise." At Senftenberg and Orebkau, as appears
from description by Potonie and Russwurm, transgression upon
forests is clear. At Senftenberg, the forest was living when the marsh

^G-"' W. Smith and M. W. Travers, Journ. Soc. Chcm. hid., Vol. XL, 1892,
P- 591.

200 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS.

invaded it, and the stems, still erect, extend into the coal ; but at
Orebkau, the condition appears to have been different. There, logs
increase downward until at the bottom they constitute practically the
whole mass. The forest growing in loose material must have been
overthrown, for in the mines examined by Russwurm, no erect stems
were seen. Many beds of brown coal seem to be wholly without tree
trunks, just as there are many peat bogs without fragments larger
than a twig; these had not reached the stage of tree-growth. Inter-
ruptions in growth are equally characteristic of peat bogs and brown
coal beds. Some are shown by partings containing much mineral
charcoal, others by partings of transported mineral matter, while
others still by the forest layers. At Bovey Tracey, a great mass of
leaves in the lower part of a thick bench is the remaining evidence of
a dicotyledonous forest, whose non-resinous stems have disappeared.
A succession of forests is shown at Senftenberg, even to the last,
which was entombed in the covering sands as was that at Wurzen in
Sachsen. The great forest bed of the Hardt area marks a long,
though not total interruption; growth of normal peat ceased for the
time, but accumulation most probably continued ; offal from conifer-
ous trees accumulates to notable thickness in many parts of the world
without injury to the trees; Capps has shown that in Alaska, where
the plane of perpetual frost is at only a few inches below the surface,
the gigantic spruces adjust themselves to the conditions and throw
out new sets of roots as the peat surface rises.

The benches of a coal bed often are dissimilar. One finds no
evidence of widespread climatic changes during the period of a
single bed's growth. In most cases, there is evidence of notable
variation in moisture conditions and dryness appears in some locali-
ties to have prevailed for long periods ; but there is no evidence
that these variations were due to any but local causes. They are
much like those which may be seen in almost every peat deposit.
At Bovey Tracey, one bench is composed almost wholly of fronds
of ferns while another is a mass of Sequoia stems ; near Budweis, the
upper bench contains stems completely coaled, while the lower bench
is composed mostly of the imperfectly changed Moorkohle. Hantken
has described a bed of which the upper part is woody, crowded with

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 201

Sequoia, while the lower part is hard coal. At Orebkau, the upper
bench is Knorpelkohle, with very little wood, while the lower bench
is Formkohle with much wood. Variations of similar type are re-
ported from American localities and they are such as are familiar to
students of peat deposits. They are so characteristic that one finds
it difficult to avoid the conclusion that, as in peat bogs, the process of
conversion was arrested in some benches while it continued in others.
It seems hardly possible that the dififerences developed after burial,
as conditions since that time must have been practically the same for
all portions of the deposit.

The differences in physical features are accompanied by differ-
ences in chemical composition. The lower portion of the coal bed
on Advent Bay, Spitzbergen, has 9 per cent, more volatile than is
found in the upper portion. Coals from different parts of the same
mine show even greater contrast; 18 per cent, near Gran in Hungary,
23 near Brennberg in the same kingdom, 35 at Glendive in Montana ;
and similar variations are shown by analyses of samples from neigh-
boring mines on the same bed. The ash content tells the same story ;
in six mines on the same bed, near Rockdale, Texas, the ash varies
from 9.43 to 24.67. The comparison is more instructive when one
considers the composition of the ash, for the samples analyzed were
prisms representing the full thickness of the seam, only such part-
ings being removed as should be separated before shipment of the
coal. The silica is from 21 to 47 per cent., alumina from 12 to 28,
ferrous oxide from 2 to almost 25, lime 6 to 38 and sulphuric acid
4.58 to 18.01. These samples were taken in an area of probably not
more than 2 or 3 square miles. It would appear that conditions
during accumulation varied greatly in the different parts of even
small areas, just as they do in the swamp areas of this day.

Sapropelic or Lebertorf material is an important constituent of
many swamps, though there are very many in wdiich no trace of it
exists. It has been reported occasionally from the Tertiary coal.
Dall obtained at Amalik Harbor, Alaska, a dull coal which contains
81.26 per cent, of volatile matter; at Mendota in Washington there
are lenses of what appears to be Lebertorf, the coal having all the
features of cannel and burning with a long smoky flame; lenses of

202 STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FITELS.

wholly similar material were observed by D. White at Hoyt, Texas ;
the same observer has described the cannel-like material of the
Lester bed in Arkansas, very rich in oils and in gas of high candle-
power; it is rich also in spores and pollen exines. Tertiary "oil
shale" of high grade is reported from New Zealand. The mode of
occurrence and the chemical as well as physical constitution indicate
very close relationship to the Lebertorfs. Pyropissite presents some
problems not yet wholly solved, though they have attracted attention
from many students ; but there appears to be little evidence to sup-
port the hypothesis that it is merely the resin of the original plants,
concentrated by physical agencies during transportation of the more
or less converted peat or brown coal ; while there is much to suggest
that it is related to the Lebertorfs. The condition is different in the
case of dysodil or Blatterkohle ; that is without doubt of sapropelic
origin. It occurs in lenses, sometimes at the bottom, at others in the
upper portion of a bed, while, occasionally, it forms the whole mass.
This contains abundant remains of aquatic animals, spores, pollen
and, at times, is rendered almost worthless by the great proportion
of diatomaceous earth.

Haidinger, in studying the Faserkohle from the Haring deposit,
discovered that it contained a material, which he believed was intro-
duced when in the condition of dopplerite, a soluble constituent of
peat; D. White in several publications has maintained that the jeti-
fied wood, so abundant in the xyloid Tertiary coals of the United
States, owes its character to the infiltration of dissolved products of
vegetable decomposition. Glockner reached the same conclusion re-
specting the "Glanzkohle" of Zittau. Von Giimbel regarded the
" Carbohumin " or cementing material of brown coal as merely dop-
plerite which had passed over to the insoluble condition. Doppler-
ite, as the analyses show, is not a true mineral but is a mixture of
various humic or humic and ulmic compounds, which after losing
an indefinite proportion of water, is so changed that it cannot regain
plasticity even by prolonged submergence in water. The zittavite
of Glockner appears to be a wholly similar substance; the terms
dopplerite, Carbohumin and zittavite indicate the geological horizons
of the occurrence.

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 203

The carbon content of brown coal varies ; in a general way it
gives proof of great advance over peat, yet in many localities the
process of conversion stopped short of the stage reached by most
of the fuel peats of which analyses are available. Pliocene coal of
Bavaria has from 62 to 69 per cent. ; jMiocene coal from one mine
in Bavaria has but 49, the fideleny coal of Hungary has but 54 and
the Grottauer coal in Bohemia has 53; but in other localities in
Bavaria the carbon is almost 71 and near Brennberg in Hungary it is
'J2. The Oligocene coal in the Gran^Comorn district of Hungary
shows 65 to almost 74; the Brandenburg coals have 60 to almost 71,
the Zeitz area of Sachsen 64.78, and the Cologne area only 62.
Eocene coal of Bovey Tracey has almost 70; coal at Rockdale,
Texas, contains 67.36 to 77.11 in samples from several mines on the
same bed. In the northern areas within the United States, there
are few analyses showing less than 70 and some reach 75, but in
Alaska coal from most of the beds has from 64 to 70. In Alaska
and Washington, there are localities where the carbon content is
much higher, but those do not concern the matter in hand, as there
is reason to look upon them as more or less metamorphosed.

Beyond all question, there is at most localities distinct evidence
of progressive enrichment in carbon with loss of oxygen as one
descends in the scale. The extremes of carbon content in peat are
40 and 64 ; in the IVIiocene, 49 to 72 ; in the Oligocene, 58 and 70,
in the Eocene, 64 to 79. At the same time one must recognize that,
as in peat deposits, the progress of change was checked in some
localities at a much earlier stage than in others.

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CONTENTS

PAG!

On Ethnological Tests of Sensation and Perception, with Special Reference to Tests of Color
Vision and Tactile Discrimination Described in the Reports of the Cambridge Anthro-
pological Expedition to Torres Straits. By E. B. Titchener 204

Two New Terms, Cormophytaster and Xeniophyte, Axiomatically Fundamental in Botany.

By William Trelease ... 237

On the Effect of Continued Administration of Certain Poisons to the Domestic Fowl, with

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3UM 6 1916

STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 203

The carbon content of brown coal varies ; in a general way it
gives proof of great advance over peat, yet in many localities the
process of conversion stopped short of the stage reached by most
of the fuel peats of which analyses are available. Pliocene coal of
Bavaria has from 62 to 69 per cent.; Miocene coal from one mine
in Bavaria has but 49, the fideleny coal of Hungary has but 54 and
the Grottauer coal in Bohemia has 53 ; but in other localities in
Bavaria the carbon is almost 71 and near Brennberg in Hungary it is
']2. The Oligocene coal in the Gran^Comorn district of Hungary
shows 65 to almost 74; the Brandenburg coals have 60 to almost 71,
the Zeitz area of Sachsen 64.78, and the Cologne area only 62.
Eocene coal of Bovey Tracey has almost 70; coal at Rockdaki,
Texas, contains 67.36 to 77.11 in samples from several mines on the
same bed. In the northern areas within the United States, there
are few analyses showing less than 70 and some reach 75, but in
Alaska coal from most of the beds has from 64 to 70. In Alaska
and Washington, there are localities where the carbon content is
much higher, but those do not concern the matter in hand, as there
is reason to look upon them as more or less metamorphosed.

Beyond all question, there is at most localities distinct evidence
of progressive enrichment in carbon with loss of oxygen as one
descends in the scale. The extremes of carbon content in peat are
40 and 64 ; in the Miocene, 49 to ']2 ; in the Oligocene, 58 and 70,
in the Eocene, 64 to 79. At the same time one must recognize that,
as in peat deposits, the progress of change was checked in some
localities at a much earlier sta^e than in others.

ON ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION AND PER-
CEPTION WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO TESTS OF
COLOR VISION AND TACTILE DISCRIMINATION
DESCRIBED IN THE REPORTS OF THE CAM-
BRIDGE ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPEDITION
TO TORRES STRAITS.

By E. B. TITCHENER.

(Read April 7, igi6.)

The work of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres
Straits was planned to include a psychological study of the native
population. The " equipment of a small psychological laboratory "
was taken out to Murray Island and set up in the disused mission-
ary house ; and the tests made, there and elsewhere, were conducted
by Messrs. Rivers, Myers, McDougall and Seligmann. The leader
of the expedition was already known to the natives, whose goodwill
was thus assured.^ On the whole, I suppose that field-work in
psychology has never been done under better conditions : the ap-
paratus had been considered and chosen beforehand, the experi-
menters were competent, the natives were amenable. Yet I think
that no home-staying experimentalist can read the psychological part
of the Report with satisfaction. At any rate, the impression left by
my own repeated reading is that the tests were inadequate to their
purpose.

In the present paper I criticize, as severely as I can, two samples
of this field-work. I have chosen tests whose results have been widely
quoted, and I have chosen them for their strength rather than for
their weakness. It is true that the Report is fifteen years old; and
it is true that, during the past fifteen years, experimental psychology
has made great methodical advances, social anthropology has grown

^ See Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres
Straits, II., 1901, v. f., I ff. This volume is referred to, in later notes, by the
letter R.

204

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 205

apace, and psychotechnics has come to the forefront of discussion.
It does not follow, however, that my criticism is out of date. For
field-psychology is still in its first beginnings. Something, no doubt,
has been learned ; and an expedition that we should organize today
would hardly be content to repeat the programme laid out for Mur-
ray Island. The labor and ingenuity spent upon mental tests have
not been simply thrown away. I doubt, nevertheless, whether the
new expedition could be certain of improving, in any material way,
upon the work of its predecessor; and if this doubt is well founded
— nay, if there is any doubt in the matter at all — then a detailed criti-
cism of the older tests, supported as mine is by collateral experiment,
ought to be of service.

It is, perhaps, not out of place to add that I am criticizing experi-
ments with which I have the greatest sympathy. My own lifelong in-
terest in psychology came by way of anthropology; and if I chose the
laboratory in preference to the field, that was only because I was
convinced that the first necessity of experimental psychology, as a
science, was the standardizing of instruments and procedures. I
realize that time presses ; the primitive stocks are fast changing or
disappearing. I realize, too, the difficulties of work in the field : the
unaccustomed mode of life, the lowering of health, the indifiference
and trickiness of the native, the frequent breakage or failure of ap-
paratus and the impossibility of replacement or of proper repair.
My criticisms are thus offered in the friendliest spirit ; and my aim
is to lead up to positive suggestion rather than to conclude with a
merely negative result.

One further point, and these introductory remarks may be ended.
The critic of tests performed in the field is at a serious though un-
avoidable disadvantage, in that he has nothing more to go upon than
what the field-workers include in their report. When an experi-
mental study is published by a laboratory, it is open to any other
laboratory to repeat the work with observers of the same order of
intelligence and training, by the same methods, with similar instru-
ments. Tests made in Torres Straits cannot be thus controlled ; the
printed pages are all that we have. I have tried, nevertheless, to
make parallel and illustrative experiments of my own. If the reader

206 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

finds them relevant to the issues discussed, the credit is largely due
to the fullness with which the authors of the Report have written.
They remind us, time and again, that human nature is much the same
the world over. The old lady on Murray Island who, " by associa-
tions of some kind," gave her own and her friends' names when she
was asked to name a set of colored papers, have we not met her —
with all respect be it spoken — in our summer sessions? The man
who was asked to arrange the colors in the order of his liking, and
who handed them back in almost exactly the order in which they
had been presented by the experimenter in an earlier test, is a fairly
familiar figure in our laboratories. If, then, I presently compare
the observations of my colleagues with those of a Papuan chief, I
am not necessarily falling into absurdity.

I. The Delicacy of Tactile Discrimination.

I begin with McDougall's experiment upon the limen of dual im-
pression upon the skin. His conclusion is as follows : '' These figures
indicate that in the skin areas tested the Murray Islanders have a
threshold of tactile discrimination of which the value, in terms of
distance of two points touched, is just about one half that of English-
men, or we may say in other words, that their power of tactile dis-
crimination is about double that of Englishmen. And ... we may
assume that this result is true for all or most parts of the skin."-
I shall try to show that the conclusion does not follow from the ex-
perimental data.

McDougall used " a small pair of carpenter's dividers with blunt
metal points."

" These two points were applied to the skin simultaneously with light
pressure lasting about one second. The subject was told to keep his eyes
shut, and the area of the skin operated on was further guarded from his
view. ... He was told to say 'one' or 'two' according as he judged that
one or both points touched his skin. . . . The threshold that I sought was
. . . not that distance at which two points can be distinctly felt, but a slightly
lower one, that distance at which they yield a sensation perceptibly different
from that yielded by a single point.

" One point was applied in every experiment about as frequently as the
two points. ... In order to keep the attention and interest of the subject as
keen as possible, I found it necessary to tell him after each answer whether

2 R, 192, 195.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 207

he was right or wrong, for in default of this precaution many of the subjects
soon contented themselves with random answers."^

It is a minor but still a relevant detail of criticism that the metal
points should have been replaced by hard wood or hard rubber. The
metal points appeal to the temperature senses as well as to the sense
of pressure. I pass, however, to more important things. It will be
noticed that although, on general principles, " the procedure should
be, as far as practicable, without knowledge on the part of the sub-
ject,"'* the method is in fact full of suggestion. The subject knows
what is being done to him; he is to judge whether "one or two
points touched his skin." The stimulus-error, with all that it brings
in its train, is thus not only admitted but even welcomed. Secondly,
the one-point stimuli are " about as frequent " as the two-point.
The subject thus has recurring opportunity to check or control his
dual judgments. And since he is told " after each answer whether
he was right or wrong," the control is continually renewed and the
difiference between single and dual stimulation is continually empha-
sized.

The results obtained may be illustrated from the f orearm-limens ;^

Murray Islanders.

Average of 50 men 19.8 mm. (median, 20; extremes, 40 and 2)

Average of 25 boys 14.0 mm. (median, 15; extremes, 25 and 2)

Englishmen.
Average of 23 men 44.6 mm. (median, 40; extremes, 90 and 10)

It is clear that the Englishmen have the higher average limen. It
is also clear, however, that the range of the results is excessive.
In the case of an elementary perceptive discrimination, we do not
expect values that range between 40 and 2. or between 90 and 10
units of measurement. The results suggest, then, that different
subjects may have been doing different things. Fortunately we have
collateral evidence which not only confirms the suggestion but also
indicates what the different things aimed at and done may have been.

The limen sought by McDougall was, it will be remembered, " not

3R, 190 f.
4R, 189.
5R, 191 f.

208 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

that distance at which two points can be distinctly felt, but . . . that
distance at which they yield a sensation perceptibly different from
that yielded by a single point." It has long been known, however,
that between the limits "point" and "two points" there are a num-
ber of distinguishable perceptive forms. Gates, working recently
in my laboratory, distinguished " circle," " line " and " dumb-bell " ;
but there were slight differences within these categories ; and there
is no doubt that more such forms could be made out.*^ Suppose,
then, that an observer is set or disposed for " dumb-bell " ; his limen
will be relatively high. Suppose, on the other hand, that he is set
for " circle " ; his limen will be relatively low. In either event he
will be reporting " a sensation perceptibly different from that yielded
by a single point " and lying on the hither side of " two points dis-
tinctly felt"; but the limens wall be the limens of two different per-
ceptive forms, and therefore will not be comparable the one with the
other. Here, I take it, is the principal key to the wide range of
McDougall's results. Some of his observers judged "two" as soon
as the impression of the points differed in the slightest degree from
"one"; others judged "two" only when the points were on the
brink of falling apart or had actually done so. If this inference is
correct, the comparison of the Alurray Islanders with the English-
men is null and void.

I made, to test it, a rather venturesome experiment. With IMc-
Dougall's instrument " it was not possible satisfactorily to apply the
two points at an interval less than 2 mm."' The aesthesiometers
regularly used in my laboratory have hard-rubber points (diameter
I mm.) which may be directly apposed. With our instruments,
therefore, it is possible to employ a dual stimulation with a separa-
tion of o mm. ; in other words it is possible to compare the impres-
sion of a single point with that of two apposed points. It occurred
to me that I might be able, under the suggestive influences of
McDougall's method, to discriminate these two impressions. I asked

6 E. J. Gates, " The Determination of the Limens of Single and Dual Im-
pression by the Method of Constant Stimuli," Amer. Journ. Psych., XXVI.,
1915, 152 ff. M. Foucault ("LTllusion paradoxale et le seuil de Weber,"
1910, 124 f.) distinguishes six intermediate perceptive forms.

7R, 191.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 209

the first available experimenter to make up a haphazard series of 32
stimuli, 16 dual and 16 single, and to perform the test upon my fore-
arm in AIcDougall's way. The experimenter was wholly unprac-
tised, so that I worked under unfavorable conditions: the time of
impression varied, its intensity varied, the instrument was set down
sometimes slowly and sometimes with impact, the ready-signal was
often omitted, and so forth. As a preliminary I was given four
stimulations, two single and two dual ; by these few experiences I
tried to fix in mind the difiference of the two perceptive forms. Then
came the series; and it turned out that I was able to judge the two-
point impression correctly in 11 out of its 16 appearances. That is
a correctness of almost 70 per cent.

The result was encouraging — so much so that I determined to
repeat the trial under better conditions. A few days later, then, I
worked through the same series with change of order (not that I
should have recognized the original order!) and with proper regu-
lation of times and intensities and warning-signals. I now judged
the two-point impression correctly in 15 out of 16 cases. Since
McDougall's liminal value requires only 13 correct judgments,^ my
present limen of dual impression, calculated in his way, is some-
thing less than zero. I have at least equalled the performance of
Meiti and Tapau and Biskak.^

I give the series in full, since they are instructive to those familiar with
the aesthesiometric experiment.

Trial I. Preliminary Stimulations, 4.

Stim. Jdgt. Stim. Jdgt. Stim. Jdgt. Stim. Jdgt.

2 2 I I 2 I I 2

I I 2 2 I 2 2 2

I 2 I I 2 2 2 I

2 2 2 I 2 2 2 I

2 2 I I I I 2 I

2 2 I 2 I 2 I I

I 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

I 2 I I I 2 I ...I

Summarizing we have :

2 judged as 2 11 times i judged as i 8 times

2 judged as i 5 times i judged as 2 8 times

8 R, 190.

9 R, 203 f .

210 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

Trial II.

Preliminary

Stimulations, 6.

Stim.

Jdgt.

Stim.

Jdgt.

Stim.

Jdgt.

Stim.

Jdgt.

2. . . .

, . . . .2

2. . .

2

I

I

I

I

2

2

2.. ,

2

2

2

2

2

I. . . .

,....!

2...
I. . .
2.. .

I

I

2

2

2

I

2

2

I

I

I

2.. .

I

I. . . .

,....!

I

2

2

2

I

I

I. . .

2

I

I

I. . .

I

I

2

2. . .

2

I. . .

I

2. . .

2

2

2

I. . .

I

2. . .

2

I. . .

I

Summarizing we have:

2 judged as 2 15 times I judged as i 14 times

2 judged as i i time i judged as 2 2 times

I need not say that there was no hint of duahty in the perceptive form
which underlay the judgment "two"; I yielded, without compunction, to the
stimulus-error. Moreover, since I was interpreting and not describing, I can
say very little of the perceptive forms themselves. The one-point impres-
sions were solidly homogeneous, and often had a trace of sting in them ; the
two-point impressions were duller and coarser, and at times gave a hint of
something like granulation. I did not as a rule think of the two-point im-
pressions as larger, more diffuse than the others, though I recall that the
one-points with sting were rather definitely small.

The range of McDougall's results might thus be accounted for.
We have still to discuss the fact that the average limen of the Mur-
ray Islanders is smaller than that of the Englishmen.

Rivers, writing of these same Murray Islanders, lays great stress
upon " the over-development of the sensory side of mental life "^° in
the savage. Myers, dealing with a like theme, points out the inter-
pretative character of their sensory interests. " Probably the mode
of life led by primitive peoples and their general mental status com-
bine to make them more aware of and attentive to the majority of
external stimuli than we ourselves are. ... A faint odor may be
simultaneously perceptible to the civilized and to the uncivilized in-
dividual. To the latter it will be full of meaning and so will at once
engage his attention; for the opposite reason it is apt to escape the
notice of the former." Let us look at McDougall's results in the
light of these general statements. The task set to the Murray

10 R, 44 f ., 64.

II R, 181 f.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 211

Islanders was a task of sensory interpretation ; they were not to get
a distinct perception of two separate points, but only "a sensation
perceptibly different from that yielded by a single point." I have
shown that they might have chosen any one of several perceptive
forms, and I have argued that different subjects did, as a matter of
fact, read different meanings into the instruction given. Their gen-
eral tendency toward a low limen I ascribe to that sensory interest,
that ingrained habit of interpretation of external stimuli, which
Rivers and Myers attest. They were to find a " sensation per-
ceptibly different " from another, and they carried the difference —
some of them — as low in the scale of separation as 2 mm.

The Englishmen also read dift'erent meanings into the instruction
given. They were, however, as a group, less interested in the
minutiae of external stimuli than the savages ; their power of sensory
interpretation was less ; they paid, we may suppose, more attention to
the particular instrument used, and to its probable effect upon the skin.
They looked for a sensibly dual impression ; and though they did
not ah confine the judgment "two" to cases in which the stimuli
fell apart for perception, yet they naturally tended in that direction.
It is very significant that "among the Englishmen were five of the
educated class, and these gave a rather higher threshold than the
rest, who were all of the lower class. "^- The farther we go from the
savage's sensory interest and power of sensory interpretation, the
larger do our limens become ! Not, of course, that the educated
Englishmen were necessarily less sensitive than the rest, but simply
that they took " duality of impression " in a stricter sense.

I conclude, then, that we have no right to say " of these Murray
men that their sense of touch is twice as delicate as that of English-
men." That may or may not be the case; but, in any event, the
conclusion does not follow from McDougall's experiments. So far
as relative " delicacy of tactile discrimination " is concerned, these
experiments leave us precisely where we were.

I have tried to find a reasonable explanation of McDougall's re-
sults taken at their face value. I have now to express a complete
distrust of his formal procedure. The "test" of the Murray Is-

1- R, 192.

212 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

landers — McDougall describes it as " a combination of the method of
minimal changes with the method of right and wrong answers "^^ —
bears all the earmarks of an incomplete psychophysical method. My
criticism, in brief, is that fragments or sections of established methods
cannot, without very rigorous trial and definite proof of reliability,
be combined to form a new method.

Number of Pre-

Separation of Points

Correct Dual

Subjects.

liminary Trials.

(Mm.) in Test-series.

Judgments.

Test-limen (Mm.).

I

29

22

5

24

4

25?

2

21

40

48
6o
56

52

48
50

5
3
9

10
10

7
4

52

8

52

3

i6

30

40
50

4
7
9

45

8

45

4

12

20

30 (discarded)
30

6
8

7

25

8

25

S

6

30

6

40

8

40

6

12

30

25

35

8

7
7

40

10

30

7

56

—

—

?

8

11

30
40

2

4

50

8

50

9

23

36

9

34

8

34

10

21

49

9

48

II

10

35 (discarded)

35 (discarded)

40

SO

6o

8o

8
3
4
8
8

10

70

9

50

The aim of McDougall's procedure, on the quantitative side, was
to get eight correct dual judgments out of a possible ten. I have be-
fore me the data of a careful performance of Whipple's test (1910)

13 R, 191.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 213

on the " discrimination of dual cutaneous impressions."^* They
have not been pubHshed; but by the kindness of my colleague, Pro-
fessor Kennedy-Fraser, I am allowed to quote from them in this
place. The aim of this test also is to " seek a distance such that
about 8 correct judgments in lo are made, i. e., such that double con-
tact is reported as double in 8 of lo trials." The condensed results
from eleven subjects, obtained after the prescribed preliminary
practice, are given in the table on page 212.

The subjects of this test received no instruction regarding per-
ceptive form, and the range of the limens (25 to 52 mm.) may be
partly due to that omission. If we consider the results solely from
the quantitative side, we may draw the following inferences:

1. It is dangerous to repeat a test-series (Subject 2) ; to repeat
is to give the method an opportunity to contradict itself. Conversely,
the result comes out most neatly with the use of few test-series and
fairly wide steps.

2. Inversions are not uncommon. Subjects i, 2, 4 and 6 furnish
instances in which a lesser separation of the compass-points yields a
greater number of correct judgments.

3. The weight to be attached to the preliminary trials is left to
the discretion of the experimenter (Subjects i, 10). The test-pro-
cedure thus contains an element of uncertainty.

4. The test as prescribed may break down altogether (Subject
7). The failure in this particular instance is due, not to the inter-
currence of paradoxical judgments,^^ but to irregularity of the nor-
mal judgments; the subject evidently changed his standard as the
trials w'ent on.

1^ G. M. Whipple, " Manual of Mental and Physical Tests," 1910, 207 fif.

1" This possibility was foreseen by Whipple (op. cit, 211). The discard-
ing of series by the experimenter (Subjects 4 and 11) was done for cause;
but it too introduces an element of uncertainty.

To meet the variety of perceptive form, Whipple recommends in his sec-
ond edition (I., 1914, 247 ff.) a method of contrast. "The threshold may be
taken as the distance at which two errors are first made with the ten double
points, unless subsequent better records with lesser separations show that
these errors were due to a temporary lapse of attention." I am afraid that
repetition would still be dangerous ; not only attention but also basis of
judgment might shift from series to series.

214 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

All of these defects are characteristic of an imperfect, incom-
plete, partial method. It may be said, I think, without qualification
that numerical results of the same kind as those obtained by McDou-
gall and by the performers of Whipple's 1910-test may be got by
fractionating the results of the method of constant stimuli. Here is
an illustration from my own laboratory.

Determination of the Two-point Limen by the Method of Constant

Stimuli.

80 series, 400 observations. Stimuli 0, 6, 12, 18, 24 mm.
(A) Results Arranged in Groups of 10 Series.

Stimuli.

Percentage of Dual Judgments.

Percentage
Limits.

Difference.

0

30

10

20

10

0

0

20

20

0-30

30

6

30

80

20

30

30

50

40

20

20-50

30

12

SO

50

70

60

40

70

80

50

40-80

40

18

30

90

90

70

80

90

90

50

50-90

40

24

100

100

80

90

100

100

100

80

80-100

20 Av. 32

(B) Results Arranged in Groups of 20 Series.

0

20

15

0

20

0-20

20

6

55

25

40

30

25-55

30

12

50

65

55

65

50-65

15

18

60

80

85

70

60-85

25

24

100

85

100

90

85-100

15 Av. 21

(C) Results Arranged in Groups of 40 Series.

0

17

10

10-17

7

6

40

35

35-40

5

12

57

60

57-60

3

18

70

77

70-77

7

24

92

95

92-95

3 Av. 5

(D) Result of 80 Series.

0

14

6

37

12

59

18

74

24

94

The cases of inversion (4) are printed in italics.

We notice that, as the size of the group increases, the range de-
creases and the distribution of judgments grows increasingly con-
stant ; that is what we should expect. We notice also, however,

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 215

that the 8 series of (A) are of the order of test-series. If we
ascribe them hypothetically to 8 different subjects, we may fix the
8-in-io Hmen of the last five as 21, 18, 15, 12 and 24 mm. respectively
(range 12-24) I ^o limen can be calculated for the first three. Even,
then, if the basis of the test is enlarged, and we take 50 judgments
from every one of our supposed 8 subjects; and even if the basis is
regularized, and we test all the subjects by the same stimuli; even so,
the limen shows a wide range and proves in certain cases to be in-
determinable. It is plainly not enough, in this test, to secure eight
out of ten right answers by a rapid procedure applied " under the
same conditions" to a number of unpractised subjects. For the
conditions during such a test are only by chance the same for dif-
ferent persons ; the probability is that they are diverse ; and the repe-
tition of the test on the same subject may change the original finding.
From this point of view, also, McDougall's results are open to grave
suspicion.

It is fatally easy for the field-worker and the laboratory-worker
to misunderstand each other. So I had better say at once, and em-
phatically, that I do not want to see the refinements of the home-
laboratory carried into the field. When Galton suggested that " in
testing the delicacy of the various senses ... we should do wrong if
we pursued the strict methods appropriate to psychophysical investi-
gations,"^"^ I take him to have been heartily in the right. I criticize
McDougall's combination-method on the formal ground that it is
not a method, whether fine or coarse ; it is, so far as I can see, essen-
tially the rough equivalent of a section or fragment of the method
of constant stimuli; and as a mere fragment of a method it can lead
us nowhere. We are fortunate in having the method of constant
stimuli in the background, to give us numerical norms ; but we can-
not use a piece of a method as if it were the whole.

II. Color Vision

I have chosen, as a second example, Rivers's work upon color
vision. This is a very painstaking bit of research, and its conclusion

I*' F. Galton, "On the Anthropometrical Laboratory," etc., Jonrn. Anthrop.
Inst., February, 1885, p. 4 of ofifprint.

216 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

is stated with becoming caution. The conchision is " that the color
vision of the Papuan is characterized by a certain degree of insensi-
tiveness to bkie (and probably green) as compared with that of
Europeans. "^^ I do not think that the observations made warrant
the inference drawn from them; and I therefore take up the cudgels
on behalf of the Papuan. To avoid overmuch detail I confine my-
self strictly to Rivers' report; I deal with the major question of
blue, and leave green out of account; and I consider only the obser-
vations taken on Murray Island.

The quantitative work was done with Lovibond's tintometer.
" The essential part of the instrument consists of three series of col-
ored glasses, red, yellow and blue, very delicately graded so that each
forms a series by means of which one passes from a color so faint
as to be indistinguishable from colorless glass up to a glass of a high
degree of saturation. "^^ The results, stated in terms of the unit of
the instrument, are as follows •}'^

R.

B.

17 Murray Islanders.

18 Englishmen

I7.6± 7.66
3i.7±22.5

26.s±9-7i
20.5=b8.ii

6o.o±i6.5
36.4i15.13

Rivers has excluded from his Murray averages the results found with
one boy who probably suffered from " a slight degree of photopho-
bia."-** He includes in the English averages the results of four ob-
servers who were " exceptionally insensitive to red " and of two who
were "insensitive to blue."^^ If we ourselves exclude these cases,
we get the revised figures :

Englishmen (14) 18.0 + 5.5 (18) 20.5 + 8.1 1 (16) 34.1 + 13.66

The exclusion of the defective subjects brings the averages into
closer accordance with Rivers' theory ; and for that very reason he

" R, 94.

18 R, 70 f. Various forms and uses of the tintometer are discussed by
J. W. Lovibond, " Measurement of Light and Color Sensations," 1893. I am
not familiar with the instrument, and Lovibond's description is, unfortunately,
not always full. The yellow glasses " have a distinctly greenish tinge " and
the red glasses are " distinctly bluish " (R, 71, 74 f.).

19 R, 72.

" R, 7i.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 217

may have thought it fairer to leave them in. The Murray Islanders
and the Englishmen now agree as regards red and yellow ; both the
liminal values and their mean variations are of the same order; but
they differ markedly as regards blue.

On this point I have two remarks to offer, (i) In experiments
which I have made with Hering's colored glasses, my observers
have reported that it is difficult to determine the chromatic limen of
R and B (I have had no such report for Y), because the faintly
colored glass shows, at the moment of exposure, a flush or wave of
color which immediately disappears through adaptation. It is pos-
sible that the four English observers who were " exceptionally in-
sensitive to red " failed to notice this momentary flush in the neigh-
borhood of the limen, while the other Englishmen and the Murray
Islanders (whom we know to be keenly interested in red) noticed it
and placed the limen accordingly. The range of results for the
Murray Islanders is 40 to 5 ; the range for the 14 Englishmen is 40
to 10 : a remarkably close agreement. In the case of blue, it is pos-
sible that the 16 English observers noticed the flush and reported it
as color, while the Murray Islanders (who are definitely uninterested
in blue, since they have in their surroundings no blue object of rev-
erence or utility) disregarded it. The range for the Murray Is-
landers is 100 to 30, and that for the 16 Englishmen 80 to 15; the
ranges are thus of the same order of magnitude, are very large, and
show a wide overlap. My distinction, therefore, must not be pressed ;
the possibility is rather that the Murray men tended to overlook the
flush, the Englishmen to report it as blue. In the case of yellow
(for which, as it happens, I have no report of the flush) the ranges
are 50 to 10 for the Murray Islanders and 60 to 4 for the 18 English-
men. The agreement is less striking than for red, but is still fairly
close.

There is, then, a possibility that the difference in the case of blue
may be due, in part at least, to regard or disregard of the supralim-
inal flush of color to which I have called attention. I have myself
had student-observers who disregarded the flush, both of R and of
B, because they thought the field should look colored during the

218 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

whole period of observation.^^ There is, however, a second possi-
bility, to which I now turn.

(2) Geissler, working upon the chromatic limen with colored
papers, found that increase of the general illumination markedly de-
creased the limen of B, while it had no such marked effect upon the
limens of R and Y. I am not quite sure of the figures which should
be quoted for comparison ; but it appears that, for two observers, in-
creased illumination (natural daylight "several times as bright" as
the artificial daylight otherwise used) lowered the limen of B, in
degrees of the color disc,

from 4.12 or 4.64 to 1.83,
and

from 5.28 or 5.80 to 2.96.

Whichever pair of larger figures we take, as a basis of comparison,
" the striking fact is that the limen for blue in natural light was low-
ered."-^ I can parallel this result by observations on colored glasses.
In 1890 I visited with Mr. (later Sir Francis) Galton the anthropo-
metrical laboratory which he had equipped at South Kensington ; and
among other things I worked awhile with Galton's " instrument for
testing the perception of differences of tint."^* My notes tell me
that the laboratory attendant and I " made a great hash " of our trials
with blue, and that Galton remarked on the gloom of the laboratory
as unfavorable to color work. I cannot remember that we worked

22 The tintometer limens for the four red-insensitives are 50, 70, 80, 120.
Rivers thinks that the subjects with the two highest Hmens "had probably
some degree of weakness of the red-green sense" (R, ^z)^ and they may
belong to Nagel's anomalous or atypical trichromates (W. Nagel, " Ueber
typische und atypische Farbensinnsstorungen," Zts. f. SinnesphysioL, XLIIL,
1908, 299 ff.). The two blue-insensitives have limens of 50 and 60; other
subjects, not characterized as insensitive to blue, give 45, 60, 60, 80. These
high limens may be due simply to lack of practice; experience in the labo-
ratory shows that undergraduates are far more likely to give the name " gray "
to a slightly bluish gray than to a red-gray or a yellow-gray of the same
chroma; blue is undoubtedly like gray. These considerations modify my
argument in detail ; they do not affect its principle.

23 L. R. Geissler, "Experiments on Color Saturation," Amcr. Journ.
Psych., XXIV., 1913, 177 f-

24 F. Galton, " Exhibition of Instruments," etc., Journ. Anthrop. Inst.,
August, 1889, 27 f.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 219

with glasses of other colors ; perhaps we did ; the thing that struck
me, at any rate, was the difficulty of distinguishing blues in a darkish
room. Recent work with Hering's colored glasses shows that a shift
of the instrument employed, on a gray snowy day, from the window
to the middle of a large gray-painted room produces the following
changes in liminal values (three observers; method of Hmits ; conven-
tional units) :

Liglit.

Dark.

Obs.

B.

Y.

R.

B.

Y.

R.

I....

II....

III....

36.0

26.75

42.2

48.5
32.0
47.0

59-75
45-75
43-0

68.5
41.25

59-2

54-5
42-5
68.6

83.S
51-0
78.4

I give no further details, since I attach little importance to the nu-
merical values; however carefully the work is done, it is full of
errors. I notice only that B is the one color that suffers consistently
in the dark, and that it suffers on the average much more than Y
and about as much as R. The figures are :

Increase of Limen in Dark.

Obs.

B.

Y.

R.

I

32.5
14-5
19-5

6.0
10. 0
21.6

23.75

II

5.25

Ill

35.4

Average

22.1

12.5

21.5

If, now, the tintometer in Torres Straits was set up in a room of
" the disused missionary house," and in England in a well-lighted
laboratory room — we are not informed as to the English conditions —
then we may be pretty sure that the Murray Islanders were at a dis-
advantage on the score of blue. That conclusion follows both from
Geissler's results and from my own. Such a disadvantage, whether
acting alone or combined with a tendency to disregard the supra-
liminal flush, might account for the difference in the average limens
of Murray men and Englishmen. It may be that the Murray Island
limen for Y (slightly higher than the English, despite its somewhat

220 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

closer range) is due to the same difference of general illumination.
We are then, it is true, left at loose ends in the matter of R. Here,
if comparson is at all permissible, Geissler's results are in agreement
with Rivers' ; my own are in disagreement. But we do not know
whether the two R glasses were alike. Above all, I cannot tell
whether the tintometer-series of colored glasses are so combined
with grays as to show the same " brightness " throughout, or whether
during an experiment they brighten with decrease of chroma ; I can-
not tell, either, whether the colorless field, with which the colored field
is compared, itself varies with the " brightness " of the colored glasses
or remains the same for all.^^ In my own experiments " brightness "
varied with chroma, but the colored and colorless fields were of ap-
proximately the same "brightness" in every observation. Here are
possible differences of procedure that might affect the results.

I said just now that we are not informed of the conditions under
which the English tests were made. It is worth noting, however,
that Rivers found excessively high limens " in testing Europeans in
too strong a light."-" Since too strong a light (daylight) could
hardly be obtained save in a specially lighted laboratory room, it
seems probable that my supposition as regards the placing of the
tintometer is correct.

All of these criticisms are offered, of course, with the greatest
reserve ; Rivers may be able to meet them point for point. Taking
his report as it stands, I think they are sufficient to cast serious
doubt upon the conclusion which he draws from the tintometer-
results. The report, however, is incomplete; we lack details of ex-
perimental procedure and conditions ; and the English observers, who

25 Lovibond speaks of neutral-tint glasses, standards, units ; he also has
dififusive glasses, thin slips of ground glass (op. cit., 21, 31 fif., 48, loi f.). It
would therefore seem possible to keep hue and " brightness " of the colored
glasses constant while chroma varied, and to equalize the " brightness " of
the colored and colorless fields. Rivers does not tell us whether this was
done. In setting up the instrument for differential determinations, he found
that the " difference in brightness " of the glasses rendered the results incon-
clusive (R, 74). If brightness affected these results, must it not have affected
the others? and if it was compensated in the other experiments, might it not
have been compensated in these?

2« R, 72-

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 221

might have been thoroughly tested, are characterized only in round
terms. The instrument employed may have been the best available ;
it embodies a vast deal of patient labor ; but it has not made its way
into our laboratories, and it has not (so far as I know) received a
thorough trial in any laboratory. We have no proof that it is ade-
quate to a comparative testing of color vision.

I pass to the vexed question of color nomenclature. On Alurray
Island " there was great definiteness and unanimity in the nomen-
clature for red, rather less so for orange and yellow, less so for green,
and very great indefiniteness for blue and violet."-'^ " In Murray
Island there is no proper native term used for blue. Some of the
natives, especially the older men, use golegole, which means black
[cuttle fish], but the great majority use a term {hiihihubi] borrowed
from English and modified so as to resemble the other members of
their color vocabulary [the color names are formed by reduplication
from the names of various natural objects]. Another word, susert-
sitseri [rainbow], is used occasionally for blue and also for green,
and in the absence of the borrowed word this might have been used
more often. "-^

The absence of a word for blue, if the fact stood alone, is no
argument against sensitivity to blue. For the savage names only
what interests him, and we have seen that his interest is directed
upon the interpretation of sensory stimuli. But there is in Murray
Island no such sensory stimulus, no object of daily use or interest —
no pigment, for instance — of a blue color. I think that Rivers
would not dispute this position, if the fact stood alone. It is only
because of other facts, and because the character and distribution
of the other color-terms in the vocabulary arouse suspicion, that
he would argue — always tentatively — from " defective color lan-
guage '' to " defective color sense." We must therefore get a con-
spectus of the vocabulary at large.

I have arranged the data for Murray Island in the form ot a
table.-'' Above stand the names of the objects from which the color

" R, 54 f .

28 R, 66 f .

29 From R, 53 ff.

222 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

names are derived. The colors are indicated by their initials (R,
red; I, indigo; etc.). A capital letter means that the color was
designated by the name of the object at the head of its column in the
majority of cases, or (for Y, I and V) by considerable groups of the
subjects; a small letter means that the color was so designated less
often, sometimes by a single subject. Rivers has, unfortunately,
not stated these results in numerical form. A -}- or — sign after a
letter means that the color name was modified by " big " or " little " ;
thus, o — means that orange was called "little blood-blood" by a
few subjects; p+ means that purple was called "big blood-blood"
by (as it happens) one man.

73

O

o

3

u
X!

o

o

•c
s

3

H

Is

>6

V

o

1

M
'u

P3

+4

i5

3

+

c

3

£1,

"t5

c

•a
Pi

cm

_i

s
U

"3
P

MS

c3 3

(5u

u

Q

O J

c 2
.2 —

< +

1 +

R,R+.r-

o, o —

o

O
Y

o
Y

g-
bg-

y

y

yg

yg

YG
G

bg
b

y

yg

g

bg
b

yg
g

bg
b

yg
g

bg
b

yg
g

BG

b
i

B
I

b
I

i

b

V —

V

V

V

V

V

V

V

P-.P+

p

P

P

I have included in the table all but two of the color names em-
ployed. BG was called " dirty yellow-ochre " as well as " little yel-
low-ochre " ; I have not thought it worth while to make a separate
column for this compound form. V was called blood-white, if kake-
kakck means white ; I return to this case presently.

Let us now look at the distribution of the color-names, taking the
column of the table as unit. Then

R has I name

0 has 4 names

Y has 5

YG has 7

G has 6

BG has 6

B has 8 (or 7

if

' bkie " is excluded)

I has 4 (or 3

if

'blue " is excluded)

V has 8 (or 9

if

" blood-white " is in

P has 4

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 223

Rivers' phrases are :

'■ great definiteness and unanimity for R " ( i name)

'' rather less so for O and Y " (4 and 5 names)

"less so for G" (6 names)

" very great indefiniteness for B and V " (8 and 8 or 9 names)

The rise from 5 to 8 thus changes a " rather less great definiteness
and unanimity" to "very great indefiniteness." Yet the B names
group, clearly enough, with the YG, G and BG names. We need, as
I said above, the actual numbers of subjects who used particular
terms ; then we could weight the data of the table.
Rivers' further findings^^ are as follows :

White paper is called
Deep black paper
Dull black paper

Gray (162° W+ 198° Bk)3i

Gray (49° W + 3ii° Bk)3i
Holmgren's pale green test

wool
Violet test wool

Brown wools are called

Slightly saturated colors and

dull black are called
Color of native skin
Dark colors
Dark
Bright, glittering

KAKEKAKEK, zazcrzazcr, lime.
CUTTLE, BIG CUTTLE, kukikuki.
CUTTLE, LITTLE CUTTLE, ashes-cuttle,

ashes, gray clay, New Guinea earth, dirty.
kakekakek, little kakckakek, ashes-kakekakek,

ashes-zaserzaser.
ashes, gray clay, cuttle.
kakckakek, ashes, little turmeric, zazerzazer,

xroOT-flower.
ashes, kakekakek, zazcrzazcr, little blood,

cuttle,
little blood, little turmeric, ashes, cuttle, dull,

"according to their prevailing tone and

shade."

diidii.

cuttle.

knpekiipe.

kupcktipe, kukikuki, kakerikakeri.

zoromzorom.

The cruces of the vocabulary are kakekakek and cuttle. Rivers
translates kakekakek roundly by white ; he does not know the deriva-
tion of the word.^^ We find it applied to white paper, light gray
paper, Holmgren's apple-green test wool, the violet test wool, and

3<^ R, 54.

31 We are not told whether these grays were mixed from the dull black
or the deep black paper.

32 R, 49, 56.

224 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

(in the form hlood-kakekakek) to violet paper. ^^ I suggest that it
is the equivalent, on the side of light, to dudu on the side of dark;
that is, that it means " light and inconspicuously colored." If I were
guessing at its derivation I should expect to find that the object
kakck is something of use and interest which is not easily found by
reason of its lightish, faded or washed-out color. The term "blood-
white " for violet would then be practically the same as the " little-
blood " already entered in my table.

Cuttle is applied to black paper, dark gray paper, brown wool, na-
tive skin, blue paper, indigo paper, and violet paper and test wool.
Rivers translates the word by black ; he notes that the older men use
it for blue, and remarks on the fact that " intelligent natives should
regard it as perfectly natural to apply the same name to the brilliant
blue of sky and sea which they give to the deepest black. "^* The
thing is strange to us : but we must consider the native. In the first
place, we do not know whether the derivation of the word is present
to the native's mind. Rivers thinks that " newborn child color "
may simply mean " light " f^ 1 suppose that the specific reference to
the skin-color of the newly born has dropped away. Cuttle-color,
in the same way — especially since the word is an old one — may have
a general and not a specific meaning. What, then, in the second
place, may this meaning be? Rivers seems to derive it from the
inky secretion of the animal. But the word gole means, not cuttle
ink, but cuttlefish ; and it is characteristic of these animals that they
change color, chameleonwise, to suit the color of their surroundings.^"
May it not be that the thought in the native's mind, when he uses
the word gole, is " can't find him," " can't see him " ? (The chief of
Muralug called black by a word which another native translated as
"No, can't see him. "2^) And if this is the case, is it not natural

33 The " violet test-wool " is apparently the relatively unsaturated violet
that Rivers used in his experiments on color-matching (R, 49).

34 R, 55, 56, 66, 94.
3=^ R, 55, 56.

36 R. Lydekker, " The New Natural History," VI., 327. The inky dis-
charge of the cuttle fish is also regarded as a "defensive reaction"; and
" cuttle ink " as well as " cuttle-fish " might suggest the thought " hard to
find."

" R, 59-

E. B. TITCHENER-^ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 225

that the adjective golegole should be applied to any large expanse
within which no discriminable features can be made out ? The dark
of night, the skin of the body, the expanse of sea and sky, these
are precisely the things to which a term meaning " uniform," " even,"
"undifferentiated," is suitable. Then, of course, when the native
is asked to characterize black, blue, brown, violet papers or wools, —
a wholly novel task, — he gives them the name that he has ascribed
to the color-expanses, the large even color-fields; he calls them all
golegole. On this hypothesis, we may pair golegole with zvarowar,^^
just as we paired kakekakek with dudii; for zvaroxvar is used of
marked, patterned, particolored fields, as I have assumed golegole
to be used of undifferentiated expanses.

Guesswork! the objector will reply. Guesswork, no doubt ; but a
guess that is suggested directly by the reading of Rivers' text. The
Murray Islanders have, for instance — my table shows it — a color
name derived from the secretion of the purple-yielding mollusc, and
another derived from the name of the mollusc itself. The Western
Tribe has, apparently, only one word, derived from the name of the
mollusc; the same tribe has a term for dark brown derived from
saingiii, ink of cuttlefish, but no color name derived from the cuttle-
fish itself .^^ So far, then, as my data go, it is not fanciful to argue
that gole, meaning cuttlefish, does not necessarily carry the meaning
of inky black.

Even, however, if this particular guess is wrong, the argument
on behalf of the Murray men is still not at an end. I see no reason
why they should be interested in the " brilliant blue of sky and sea " ;
for the brilliant blue means fine weather and calm. One or two
individuals of the Western Tribe called orange by a word meaning
sunrise, and violet by a word meaning a cloud which is black on the
one side and kiaur [violet?] on the other; there is no reference to
blue sky.*° The chief of Muralug called YG sea-color, G " like an-
other kind of sea, another wind," and B "sea with another kind of

3« R, 55-

39 R, 56, 60.

40 R, 61.

226 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

wind, plenty blow";*^ the inference is plain. I cannot here take the
space to analyze these other vocabularies ; I have chosen that of ]Mur-
ray Island as the most favorable to Rivers' hypothesis of defective
blue-vision. But I point out that the case against that hypothesis
does not stand and fall with my interpretation of golegolc.

The subject of color nomenclature may be approached from an-
other angle. No one can read the Murray Island terms without
wondering what a group of civilized persons would make of colored
papers, if they were required to give them the names of concrete
objects. I thought it worth while to make an experiment on the
matter. I cut two-inch squares from three of the Milton Bradley
series, the spectral colors, the tints No. i, and the shades No. i;
54 colors in all. These were mixed in haphazard order, and were
shown to 5 observers, two women and three men. The instruction
ran : " You are to name these colors by first impression as soon as
shown. Use no abstract color names, but use always the name of
some concrete object that the color suggests to you. You may also
use the words. Dull, Dark, Bright, Light, if the stimuli impress you
in that way, without seeking any specific color name." I included
these four terms because the Murray Islanders used words of the
same significance. The experiment went smoothly in a period of
some 20 minutes ; the only modification of procedure was that, if an
observer gave " sky " for blue, I called for a second concrete name.
" Sky," as I have shown, was foreign to the Murray Island vocabu-
lary. I subjoin the results for all colors in which blue was involved.

I have italicized the terms Dull, Dark, Bright, Light. In the
whole series of 270 namings, these words were used 64 times (I ex-
clude the cases in which Sky was changed to Light, though I regard
these as significant). In the 120 cases of what we may call the
blue-range, quoted above, the words occur 43 times. The general
percentage is thus 23.7, the percentage for the blue-range is 35.8.
If we take simply the three blues (GB, B, VB), the percentage is
35-5 (or, if the "Sky-Lights" are included, 42.2). Were then my

*i R, 59. " These instances," says Rivers, " illustrate very well the liking
of these people for similes." They seem rather to show the direction of
practical interest.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SExNSATION. 227

observers " insensitive to bine " ? Not a bit of it : their color-vision,
by the regnlar laboratory tests, is normal.

Tints No. i.

Obs.

BG.

GB.

B.

VB.

BV.

V.

RV.

VR.

I (f.)

[sky]
light

[sky]
light

bright

violet

hyacinth

violet

light

light

2(f.)

robin's

small

[sky]

amethyst

handker-

ribbon

a per-

orchid

egg

girls
[frocks]

skies

badly

painted

rmg

chief
border

fume

3 (m.)

robin's
egg

water

a dress

light

light

a gown

light

violet

4 (m.)

faded
grass

[sky]
light

[sky]
light

dull

dull

dull

dull

light

5(m.)

robin's
egg

robin's
egg

a wagon

dull

dull

hat-
ribbon

light

violet

Spectral Colors.

1 (f.)

2 (f.)

3(m.)

4 (m.)
Sim.)

quoise
china

grass

light
verdigris

bright

Japanese
porcelain

water

wall-
paper

dull

bright
bright

[sky]
back-
ground

of
picture

[sky]
Japanese
stamp
lake-
water

ink

aniline
dye

a dress

[sky]

Japanese

stamp

ink

violet
poodle

a blacked
eye

a dress
violet

violet

a smart
furniture

shop
peacock

dark

violet

violet

a maga-
zine

light, dull

dull

violet

dark
books

dark

photo-
graphic
paper
dull

Shades No. i.

I (f.)

dull

dark

a dress

dark

ink

violet

dark

dark

2 (f.)

7

Van-

linen

blotting

marking

?

?

Alice in

tine's

hang-

pad

pencil

Wonder-

shop

ings

land
[cover]

3 (m.)

dark
. trees

bluejay

baseball

dark

necktie

dull

grape-
juice

grapes

4 (m.)

wall-
paper

dark

dark

dark

sunset

dull

dark

p

5 (m.)

curtains

dull

7

dull

dull

violet

dull

dark

The question-marks mean that no judgment was given in the sense of
the instructions ; the observer said " thick like velvet," or " pleasant," or
" ugly," or " dignified," or " thought of color-theories."

228 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

We cannot hope, of course, to invert this experiment; we cannot
expect, if we ask for names of R, Y, G and B objects, to find a
greater scattering in the B-list than in the others. For blue flowers,
bhie articles of dress, blue hangings and blue china and other house-
hold gear are common enough ; and experiment shows that blue sky
and green grass are more often associated than are red and yellow
to any object of their color.*^ We live in a world where blue has its
acknowledged place. The Murray Islander does not. Blood he
knows, and red and yellow ochre, and turmeric, and the brilliant
deep-green gall-bladder of the turtle — all of them objects of the
highest importance in the conduct of his life ; but blue he has no
dealings with. " Every detail of the behavior of the natives in
connection with the naming of color was consistent with the idea,"
Rivers says, " that blue was to them a darker or a duller color than it
is to us."^' I submit that their behavior is equally consistent with
the idea that blue did not interest them.

Not much need be said of Rivers' work on the matching of
wools. " The natives," we are told, " understood what they were
required to do very readily in most cases. "^^ Rivers does not him-
self inform us what this requirement was; but it was evidently the
matching of wools for hue (color tone). The lack of any explicit
statement to this effect is, I think, significant. We are so accus-
tomed to classify colored objects by their hue, their "color" proper,
that the classification seems to us to be natural and normal. The
Murray Islander, however, appears to classify by total impression ;
the wools appeal to him by their combined hue, tint and chroma ; and

*- 1 asked the 19 students who happened to be in my laboratory at the
time (8 women and 11 men) to write down the names of the first five R, Y,
G and B objects that occurred to them. The order was varied, so that any
practice-effect might be roughly compensated. Green grass came 17 times,
blue sky 15 times, and red blood only 8 times, out of the possible 19. The
B objects fell into the same rough groups as the others (person, personal
adornment; clothing; articles of personal use; — house, household furniture;
— vegetation, flowers, fruit; beasts, birds, insects; — landscape and seascape).

4^ R, 94. I am glad to find myself, on this point, in substantial accord
with R. S. Woodworth ("The Puzzle of Color Vocabularies," Psych. Bull.,
VII., 1910, 329 ff.).

44 R, 49.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 229

now one of these moments and now another may be the basis of his
judgment. " One could often hear a native saying kakekakek to
himself as he picked up a colorless wool to place with the green,"
i. e., with Holmgren's apple-green test wool.*^ Rivers regards the
" natural tendency to put together all the wools to which the same
name was given " as a fallacy of nomenclature.**' It looks rather
as if the native varied the basis of his comparison from hue to tint
and chroma. For " the same name " is not applied to different
colors without a reason.

The actual " matches " are as follows :*'^

Test Wool. Matched Wools.

Holmgren's red reds, saturated pinks.

Bright green greens, often blue-greens, occasionallj' almost

pure blues.

Holmgren's purple "very readily matched by all, though the ma-
jority refused to take pink wools if much
less saturated."

Holmgren's apple green "matched correctly by the majority," often

" with bluish or violet wools of about the
same saturation," by 7 with " neutral wools
with a faint pinkish tinge."

Yellow " matched correctly by nearly all," by 2 men

and 5 children with reddish wools, by i
man and 3 boys with blue wools.

Blue matched by 27 (out of 107) " with violet as

well as with blue or bluish green wools," by
I man with an almost colorless wool, by i
man with a brown and with a yellow wool.

Violet " matched or compared by 12 with neutral

wools and by 14 with distinctly reddish or
pinkish wools," by i boy with a brown wool,
and by the chief (who called all kake-
kakek) with a B and a G wool of about the
same saturation.

The only facts that claim particular attention, after our foregoing
study of the color vocabulary, are (i) the confusion of yellow with

*= R, 49-

*6 R, 49 f ., 93. Here is a chance for the obverse fallacy : my observer
2 (f.) gives marking-pencil for BV Shade i and for Spectral OR. We hap-
pen to know that examiners use differently-colored pencils ; but suppose that
the vocabulary was strange to us, and that we found the same object called
BV and OR!

47 R, 50.

230 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

blue by a man and three boys; and (2) the confusion of blue with
yellow by one man. The boys are ruled out by Rivers on the ground
of carelessness ; the men remain. Rivers, however, gives us the
clue to their behavior : " the yellow test wool used by me was a dull
yellow," and blue is also regarded by the natives as a dull color. If
the men muttered or thought akdsakds as they matched or compared
all is in order.*^ My observer 5(m.) gives the name "dull" to the
" shades" of YO, Y, GB and VB.

I said just now that we are accustomed to classify colored objects
by their hue; the following experiment shows that we can classify
them, without trouble, by other means. I showed the 125 wools of
the standard Holmgren set to my colleagues Drs. Boring, Foster and
Weld, with the following request : " Arrange these wools into groups
of similars, on the basis of first impression. Do not set out to judge
by hue or tint or chroma; do not try to maintain any uniform basis
of judgment; group the wools simply by the first impression they
make upon you." I had recourse to highly experienced observers,
because I thought that they would be less biased in favor of hue
than undergraduate or graduate students ; I thought also that they
would be less afraid of making " foolish " matches. The result of
the test is that Boring distinguishes 9 groups, Foster 18, Weld 4.
Hue has a marked influence on choices : but Boring, who shows this
influence most strongly, still throws together R, O, P, V, and in
another group Y, G, BG, V ; Foster groups with the Holmgren test-
purple R, G, BG, B, P and V wools ; and Weld groups with the
same test wool R, O, Y, G, BG, P and V wools. This is a single
test, to be sure, and the same observers would probably have made
different groups had it been repeated. The fact remains, neverthe-
less, that if the prejudice in favor of hue is weakened or removed
an expert observer will find likenesses of color-impression at least
as wide-ranging as those of the Murray people.

It has not seemed necessary to enter in detail upon other tests
than those conducted on Murray Island ; and it does not seem neces-
sary to discuss here the remaining tests of contrast, after-images,
etc. I find in them nothing to invalidate what has been said above.

48 R, 50 f., 55 f.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 231

Let us now see what can be urged on behalf of the blue-vision of
the islanders.

1. Within the period of a generation, "the great majority" of
the Murray Islanders have learned to use the modified English word
bulubulu for blue colors. In the tintometer experiments, " owing
to the fact that biilnbuin had become the general term for blue, there
was no indefiniteness in the naming of this color " ; and in the work
on contrast the subjects " were all in the habit of calling blue bulubulu
when talking to me.""'^ This ready adoption of a foreign term seems
to indicate that the natives could distinguish blues when onc.e their
interest and attention had been directed toward them.

2. In testing Europeans with the tintometer, Rivers found that
oftentimes "the subjective contrast color was seen when the objec-
tive color failed to be recognized." On Murray Island this phenom-
enon was rare. " In many hundred observations, a color was only
stated to be on the wrong side 15 times. No less than 6 of these
occurred with a B glass when the opposite aperture was called bam-
baiii [turmeric] ; in one case the opposite aperture was called R.
The aperture opposite the R glass was called bulubulu 4 times and
giacgiac [newborn child, light] once; opposite a Y glass, B was seen
twice and R once. Some of these were no doubt accidental, but it
is interesting that the instance which occurred most often was when
the objective color was B, to which they seemed so insensitive."^"
It is equally interesting that the Y glass gives a B contrast twice out
of three times; and the contrast-R may be justified for a greenish
yellow glass shown in poor illumination. Moreover, the R glass was
a carmine, and the complementary of carmine is BG. The report of
bulubulu four times out of five (though giasgias: is itself an occa-
sional word for blue) does not look like insensitivity.

3. In the test of negative after-images " R was most readily seen
and B was doubtful. "^^ But the stimuli were zigzags of colored

«R, vi.,2, 66, 7i,8of.

^° R. 81. The anomalous reds (if both are anomalous) may be com-
pared with the anomalous light violet or purple (for me the color is definitely
a purple) which workers in my laboratory have found even under achromatic
adaptation; see L. M. Day, "The Effect of Illumination on Peripheral
Vision," Amcr. Journ. Psych., XXIII., 1912, 573 ; and cf. the anomalous
peripheral pinks or purples of R, 78.

^1 R, 82.

232 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

paper shown for lo to 20 sec. on a gray ground, or of gray paper on
a colored ground ; and in what iUumination ? The method favors
R; I can reproduce the results with observers of normal vision.
There is nothing to show that the IMurray men were not the victims
of circumstances ; and Rivers does not report corresponding tests of
Europeans.

4. Rivers lays no great stress on his observations of color-pref-
erence. " Among saturated colors/' however, " R easily had the first
place, followed by B, while Y and G were distinctly less favored.
. . . Complementary colors were commonly worn together, Y with
B and G with R."^- The first of these facts is a little surprising, in
view of the practical importance of yellow and green ;^^ taken to-
gether with the second, it may perhaps indicate that the natives, once
their attention has been called to color as such, have a normal appre-
ciation of blue.

Here, however, we are dealing with fairly large surfaces of
color, surfaces that would be viewed in indirect as well as in direct
vision. One of Rivers' strongest points against the native is that,
peripherally, " the color blue was recognized readily, even more read-
ily than other colors. The color of the patch used was saturated,"^*
but even so the results do not accord with those obtained in direct
vision, so that the two sets of observations need to be reconciled.
I have tried to show that the tests of direct vision are not convincing.
It seems, also, that Rivers' argument from the sensitivity of the

52 R, 84.

52 1 have said nothing of the supposed relative insensitiveness of the
islanders to G, partly for reasons of space, partly because the position of B
is the more important. H. E. Houston and W. W. Washburn ("On the
Naming of Colors," Amcr. Joiirn. Psych., XVIII. , 1907, 523) found no over-
lap of B and Y or R and G, but a marked confusion of B with G and B
vi^ith P. It is notevi^orthy that H. K. Wolfe ("On the Color-Vocabulary of
Children," University of Nebraska Studies, I., 1890, 23) finds no such con-
fusion of B and G. Many points of Wolfe's investigation are of interest in
connection with the Murray Island results. Thus " the pupils seem loth
to confess their ignorance ; four fifths of them attempted to name orange,
and only one fifth knew what it was" (24); and the expressions "dark
white" and "light dark" were used in good faith and with meaning (28).

54 R, 79. If the tests were made in the order in which they are reported
(of. R, 49, 53, 70) the name bulubulu may have become standardized simply
by the progress of the tests themselves.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 233

peripheral retina proves too much. For if, by the aid of indirect
vision, large expanses are better seen and more readily named than
small patches of color, how is it that the brilliant blue stretches of
sea and sky are still called golegole by subjects whose attention has
been called to their color? And how is it that the blue of the rain-
bow is called golcgolcP^

On behalf of the Papuan, then, let so much have been said. I am
not in the least concerned, in the present paper, with his macular
pigmentation ; that is another story. I am concerned only with the
adequacy of Rivers' tests to various problems of sense-psychology.
The tests appear to me to be inadequate. If Rivers can meet my ob-
jections, he must at any rate go beyond the limits of his printed
report, and I shall have done some service in bringing out further
observations and further arguments.

III. General Remarks.

What, now, are the requirements of a field-test? It should set
the subject a task which is both simple and definite; it should be
capable of performance in a relatively short time and with apparatus
that is strong, portable and relatively cheap ; it should be laid out so
simply that its conduct is easily mastered and so definitely that there
can be no variation in its procedure ; and it should yield results
that are directly relevant to the object of the test, are expressible in
numbers and thus are intercomparable. These, in general terms, are
the requirements : how shall we go to work to meet them ?

We must realize, first of all, that the test is not a laboratory ex-
periment; we must set ourselves at a certain remove from the
laboratory; and especially we must avoid misleading analogies drawn
from laboratory technique. I have pointed out that McDougall offers
his sesthesiometric method as a combination of the methods of mini-
mal changes and right and wrong cases ; and I daresay that this
title gives the method a sort of cachet in the minds of many readers ;
it may have had a reassuring influence upon McDougall himself.
Rivers makes, I think a like mistake in his introductory discussion.

^■'' R, 69 f. The good observer who described the rainbow from memory
as red, white and black probably used the terms kakckakek and golegole, so
that the description might be interpreted as red, faded-looking, blue.

234 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

" I believe," he writes, " that the smallness of the mean variation in
most of the quantitative investigations will convince those acquainted
with the procedure of experimental psychology of the trustworthi-
ness of the observations."^*'' But what is the procedure of experi-
mental psychology? A set of instructions, carefully formulated and
intelligently grasped ; an instrument of precision ; a large number of
observations, made in accordance with a prescribed method and suffi-
cient for mathematical treatment; a variation of conditions to throw
this or that aspect of the subject-matter into high relief; experiments
distributed regularly over months or years. Under such circum-
stances, truly, the m. v. may be an index of steadiness of attention
or of general attitude. Not by any means necessarily under other
circumstances! For a small m. v. may mean that the subject has
over-simplified his instructions, and is performing an easier task
than the task set him ; or that he has discovered some secondary
criterion of judgment, some shortcut to response, and is not perform-
ing his allotted task at all. Or a small m. v. may mean that the unit
of the instrument is too large, and that the performance of the task
is thus artificially regularized. In these cases uniformity of result
would spell laziness, or perverted ingenuity, or too gross a gradua-
tion of stimuli ; in other and more extreme cases it might be due to
fatigue or to motor habit. We cannot argue directly from labora-
tory-experiment to field-test.

Secondly, however, we must make full use of the laboratory. I
suppose that most laboratories possess records of practice-work done
by undergraduate students according to the schemata of the principal
psychophysical methods ; I have quoted a record of this sort, a de-
termination of the two-point limen by the method of constant stimuli.
Such records are not worth publishing, but they are worth preserv-
ing.^" They furnish norms of the performance of comparatively un-

56 R, 4.

°^ It is important to preserve not only the numerical values of the limen
and of the measure of precision but also the rough data of the whole experi-
ment. If the students are supplied with two cross-section forms and a
carbon paper the duplicate may easily be obtained.

The rough data of the field-tests should also be accessible ; all through
this paper I have felt the need of further detail. I should think that sales
to laboratories could be assured beforehand, enough to cover the cost of
mimeographing the complete records.

E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION. 235

practised observers, and they thus provide a ready means of testing
any abbreviated test-method that may be proposed. Is it enough to
take 10 observations of a kind, and has the 8-in-io Hmen any definite
significance ?" Is it enough to take 5 observations, and has a 4-in-5
limen any vahie? These are questions not of pure but of appHed
mathematics ; they can be answered only in the Hght of comparative
data ; and the control-data are ready to hand in the laboratories. It
is useless to make tests in tlie field, and to repeat them later upon
civilized subjects, until we know whether the test-procedures are
themselves methodically reliable. So the laboratory may help on the
score of method. It may also help in other ways ; our discussion of
the perceptive forms in aesthesiometry applies, mutatis mutandis,
to more than one of the Torres Straits experiments. The analyses
of the laboratory show what the tests are really doing, what psycho-
logical level has been reached. The test of an optical illusion, for
example, may tell us nothing of the relative magnitude of the illusion
in the case of savage and civilized subjects, but may nevertheless
bring out the psychologically important fact that savage and civilized
approach the particular task set them in different ways, or come to
it in different attitudes of mind.

I am not inviting the field-worker to fall between two stools ; I
am rather pleading for cooperation. The field-worker seeks to ob-
tain psychological data which shall enable him to rank a primitive
race in relation to the various strata of his own civilized community.
He knows, in a rough way, what can be done with a primitive popu-
lation ; the home-staying psychologist does not. The laboratory-
worker, on his side, knows that a good many of the tests commonly
employed are scientifically worthless ; yet he cannot be continually
playing the critic. Is it not a clear case for cooperation ? So far as
I know, we have to-day no approved aesthesiometric test that can be
carried into -the field. No: but if we settled, plainly and positively,
what it is that we want the test to tell us ; and if the field-worker
kept guard over complexity of technique and the laboratory- worker
over sources of error ; then a test would be forthcoming.

''^ As regards the sesthesiometric test I have answered this question in
the negative. My own first series with the apposed compass-points gives
runs of 10 consecutive dual impressions with 8o per cent, correct judgments.
Unfortunately the whole run was not lo but i6.

236 E. B. TITCHENER— ETHNOLOGICAL TESTS OF SENSATION.

In conclusion I offer a tentative suggestion as regards the gen-
eral conduct of field-tests ; it is always dangerous to be positive,
but I take the risk. There is, I understand, a present tendency
among those interested in mental tests to break away from tests of
the " all or none " type and to substitute for them a set of tests which
permits of fractional grading. The "all or none" tests, it is argued,
cannot be applied to a long series of subjects, whereas tests which
may be rated for part-performance have a practically unlimited
range of application. I suppose that both kinds of test will be re-
tained, each in what turns out to be its proper sphere; and I am
disposed to think that, for anthropological purposes, the " all or
none " type should, at first and on the whole, be preferred. Every-
one who has worked with Hering's instruments must have been
struck by the fact that they serve admirably for their one predestined
experiment but that they can with great difficulty, if at all, be adapted
to other uses. The demands of undergraduate teaching have led
most of us, perhaps, consciously or unconsciously to favor instru-
ments of a more flexible, more variously usable sort. Yet it may
be that, for the primitive subject, tests of Hering's kind are, at
least in the beginning, the more desirable. I wonder if a large
number of testlets, each one sharply cut to a particular purpose,
might not be better than tests which require serial or repeated obser-
vation; and if the single-value result might not lend itself to mathe-
matical treatment better than the somewhat arbitrarily chosen " rep-
resentative " value of a test-series.

TWO NEW TERMS

CORMOPHYTASTER AND XENIOPHYTE

AXIOMATICALLY FUNDAMENTAL IN BOTANY

By WILLIAM TRELEASE.
(Read April 14, igi6.)

A generation ago botany possessed in the popular mind the
unenviable reputation of being a dictionary study because of the
rather large vocabulary necessitated by precise organography, though
its terms were mostly self-evident to one possessing knowledge of
the proper or current meaning of Latin roots. The specialization in
biology that the last quarter-century has brought about has revealed
so many new facts and ideas calling for equal precision that its
burden of verbiage has grown inordinately, largely through the
coining of Greek derivatives from roots not always used with apt
differential meaning, e. g., many words, of which I shall use several
monotonously, in which the omnipresent "phyte" and "sperm"
appear. This has grown, sometimes quite unnecessarily, to such a
degree that a general biologist is likely to be puzzled by the language
of a general treatise on either botany or zoology, while current pub-
lications on the newer branches of botany may be all but meaning-
less to a person familiar with the science at large, — sometimes, it
must be confessed, when the essential ideas might have been con-
veyed in language intelligible to people of unspecialized training,
and entirely free from technicalities.

Though I share the popular horror of pedantry or unnecessary
technicality in expression, and would reduce rather than increase the
vocabulary of specialization, it should not be understood that I fail
to see that new knowledge and thought call for new expression, quite
as much as new and varied tools became necessary as the rough
construction of the stone age passed into the refined shaping of
wood and metal that characterizes the age of steel ; and the purpose

237

238 WILLIAM TRELEASE— TWO NEW TERMS :

of the present communication is to propose the addition of two
more to the words of precision of our day. Both of the new
terms may be dispensed with, it is true, as they have been thus
far, if one be disposed to paraphrase sufficiently, or to avoid refer-
ence to the well-known facts that they express ; but these facts are
so fundamental to a correct understanding of plant morphology that
the latter course can scarcely be looked on as desirable, while the
former — as every thinking teacher of the science has discovered —
proves far from easy. One of them refers to the one-time division
of the Vegetable Kingdom into Thallophytes and Cormophytes, now
a question of morphology rather than of taxonomy ; the other, also
morphological, to the entities that compose the life cycle of one of
the highest plants, whose alternating generations are usually spoken
of as sporophyte and gametophyte (or the non-sexual and the
sexual generation).

It is understood in a sense that the characters of genus, family
and higher taxonomic groups are to be read into the characters of
every species ; but even novices know that this can be done only
by reading into these group characters a number, sometimes large,
of aberrations and exceptions ; so that the popular idea of a
thallophyte, with the body undifferentiated into stem and foliage,
is not shaken by the occurrence of very stem-and-leaf-like algse, any
more than the popular idea of a cormophyte, with regularly disposed
foliage on a supporting axis, is disturbed by seeing that a vegetating
Wolffia possesses the simplest thallus configuration, though internally
differentiated and in due season flow'ering like other cormophytes.
The real difficulty lies in the fact that a more important difference
exists between thallophytes and cormophytes, so that when properly
defined these groups include respectively plants with the body un-
differentiated morphologically ; and plants with the body differ-
entiated into root and shoot, the latter usually further differentiated
into stem and leaf. These characters at once mark the mosses and
liverworts as being neither thallophytes nor cormophytes, for
although they possess what may be called stem and leaf they lack a
morphological root. This is intensified by the universally under-
stood circumstance that it is the sexual or gametophytic generation

CORMOPHYTASTER AND XENIOPHYTE. 239

in the mossworts that possesses stem and leaf, the non-sexual or
sporophytic generation being undifferentiated, so that no real homol-
ogies are to be traced between the shoot of a mosswort and the
shoot of a fern wort or seed plant. Hence it comes that careful
botanists do not fall into the popular error of treating the moss-
worts as cormophytes because mosses and liverworts have what we
usually speak of as stem and leaf, though the fact may be obscured,
perhaps even when stated, that greater morphological reasons dictate
the entire abandonment of the old and in a way convenient but now
meaningless division of the Vegetable Kingdom into flowerless and
flowering plants, in the former of which the heterogeneous as-
semblage called thallophytes and the well-defined taxonomic groups
bryophytes and pteridophytes stand as coordinated. Even though
we abandon thallophyte and cormophyte as of serious taxonomic
use just as the subdivision of the former into fungi, algse, and lichens
is recognized as more suited to popular than to scientific diction, the
essential fact remains that these two words, properly defined, stand
for realities in morphology, which, supplemented by a comparable
designation for the mossworts (which now bear only the group
name bryophytes, comparable with pteridophytes and anthophytes or
spermatophytes), divide the Vegetable Kingdom into three main
divisions : Thallophytes, with the body undifferentiated into
morphological root, stem, and leaf ; Cormophytasters or pseudo-
cormophytes, with differentiation of the sexual generation into
cormoid and phylloid. — the so-called stem and leaf ; and Cor-
mophytes, with differentiation of the non-sexual generation into
root and shoot, and of the latter, usually, into true stem and leaf.

Recognition that with these gross characters are associated
numerous structural details (e. g., the absence of a specialized dif-
ferentiation between sexual and non-sexual generation even in
those thallophytes which by their nuclear behavior show an alterna-
tion of generations ; the presence — as in many algas — of pyrenoids
and of large chromoplasts in the sexual generation of the liver-
wort Anthoceros, and of stomata — as in mosses and cormophytes —
on its unusually evolved non-sexual generation ; the appearance of a
rudimentary conducting strand in the non-sexual generation of this
liverwort and of mosses ; the universal development of stomata and

240 WILLIAM TRELEASE— TWO NEW TERMS :

of vascular tissue in the cormophytes) indicates the significance for
phylogeny and morphology of the emphasis that is here laid on the
coordination of thallophyte, cormophy taster and cormophyte in
botanical terminology.

The second term proposed refers to what is commonly called the
endosperm of angiospermous plants, sometimes spoken of as sec-
ondary endosperm. Very probably descriptive botanists will con-
tinue for a long time to speak of seeds as being albuminous or
exalbuminous according as they possess or lack a food-reserve in
the seed, which is used by the embryo in the early stages of germina-
tion. They have not been deterred greatly by the difficulty that
sometimes exsits in determining quickly whether or not this reserve
tissue is really absent or merely reduced to so thin a layer as to be
overlooked — though they try to indicate this difference; nor, for
practical reasons, by the now very old knowledge that the ambiguity
of the word albumen might make the employment of endosperm and
perisperm in its place preferable in descriptive botany. Morpholo-
gists, however, have adopted the latter terminology of necessity, as
indicating respectively food-reserve within or exterior to the embryo-
sac or megalospore (as, of course, the name substituted for the in-
accurate " macrospore " should have been coined), — "exalbumi-
nous " seeds being those in which what would have remained as
" albumen " has been used up during the maturing of the seed.

Quite as great mischief has been wrought here as with the terms
thallophyte and cormophyte, by indiscriminate adoption of this
betterment. Although the endosperm of a gymnosperm may be
homologised with the endosperm of an angiosperm on the apparent
but inapplicable ground that both are transient tissues formed within
the embryo-sac, it is well known to every botanist that the gymno-
spermous endosperm — represented in angiosperms by antipodal cells
and synergids — is really homologous with the sexual generation of
bryophytes and pteridophytes ; while the angiospermous endosperm,
or secondary endosperm, originates from the " endosperm nucleus,"
— after a process which can be called scarcely anything but fertiliza-
tion except through an over refinement of definition.

If no other considerations were involved, the simplest way might
be to speak of the gymnospermous endosperm and its homologue in

CORMOPHYTASTER AND XENIOPHYTE. 241

angiosperms as prothallus, at once indicating its equivalence with
the structure known by this name in the higher cryptogams and
facihtating remembrance of the close parallel between pteridophytes
and spermatophytes in their alternation of generations ; and to con-
tinue to speak of the angiospermous endosperm as "albumen."
But quite apart from the undesirability of perpetuating the latter
word except in the most general taxonomic usage, there is a deep-
lying morphological reason for giving a special designation to this
" endosperm " of the highest plants.

From the point among thallophytes where an alternation of gen-
erations is first recognizable either in somatic or nuclear differentia-
tion, that part of a life cycle which produces egg or sperm, or
which has the haploid or as Lotsy has called it the x chromosome
number, is spoken of as the gametophyte or sexual generation ; and
that part which produces neither egg nor sperm but begins with
them, and which has the diploid or 2.v chromosome number, is
spoken of as the sporophyte or non-sexual generation. To be sure
not all cells that are not haploid are diploid, for transient fusions of
more than two nuclei are known, and the beginnings of the endo-
sperm in a number of aberrant angiosperms start with a blended
endosperm nucleus comprising several haploid nuclei ; but it is char-
acteristic of the reserve tissue in question that its origin is not in a
reduction of chromosomes giving a haploid tissue (as in the game-
tophyte), or solely in a fusion of contiguous nuclei giving 2.v (as
usually in the sporophyte), or nx chromosomes (as in rare and ex-
ceptional tissues and in aberrant angiospermous endosperm), but
that it is a structure distinctly not forming a part of either gameto-
phyte or sporophyte. Its origin is found in a union involving the
2x or exceptionally nx "endosperm-nucleus" (itself derived from
a union of the polar nuclei of a typical eight-nucleated embryo-sac,
or from the fusion of several nuclei when this number has been
increased), and a second nucleus of the pollen as yet indistinguish-
able from its sperm companion which unites with the egg to form
the embryo or initial of the sporophyte ; and this union differs from
fertilization in the usual sense only in that one of the combining
nuclei has already fused with one or more others so as to have
more than haploid chromosomes.

242 WILLIAM TRELEASE— TWO NEW TERMS.

This unit in angiosperms, neither sporophyte nor gametophyte,
gives a first manifestation of crossing in cases where this can be
recognized in the forming seed, e. g., when sugary and starchy corn
or kinds with colored and colorless endosperm are crossed, where
the phenomenon has been called aptly xenia. The transient genera-
tion itself, but not necessarily accompanying hybridity, contrasted
morphologically with sporophyte and gametophyte though neither,
may be designated with convenience and propriety as the

XENIOPHYTE.

The significance of this overlooked generation, confined to the
most recent and highest of all plants, the angiosperms, not hinted at
elsewhere in the Vegetable Kingdom, and originating from the
gametophyte in as distinct specialization of gametoid initials as &gg
and sperm, is likely to claim serious attention as speculative reasons
for evolutionary success and failure come more to the foreground,
even though the xeniophyte appears to have reached its term with
no more specialized development than the production of a sort of
cambium zone and without having achieved the independence pos-
sessed by gametophyte and sporophyte — to the latter of which in its
most evolved form the xeniophyte now serves as transient host.

The University of Illinois.

ON THE EFFECT OF CONTINUED ADMINISTRATION

OF CERTAIN POISONS TO THE DOMESTIC FOWL,

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE

PROGENY.!

By RAYMOND PEARL.

I. The Problem.

(Read April 75, 7916.)

One of the outstanding problems of genetics is that of the origin
of new heritable variations. W^ith the passage of time and the
accumulation of exact experimental data it becomes increasingly
clear that this factor is the basic one in all evolutionary change,
whether progressive or retrogressive. Just now it is the fashion to
speak of new heritable variations as mutations, but such designation
does not appear either to make the facts concerned any different
from what they were under an older terminology, nor does it
essentially contribute to our knowledge about them. Indeed it is,
so far as I can see, entirely fair to say that but little in the way of
essential advance has been towards the solution of this problem
since Darwin's examination and analysis of it. The two leading
students of variation since Darwin, Bateson and De Vries, have to
be sure, contributed greatly to our knowledge of certain aspects of
the phenomena of variation ; notably, on the one hand, in the direc-
tion of establishing a number of definite principles or laws of
morphogenesis which control or determine in large degree the
somatic expression of germinal differences, and, on the other hand,
in very precisely and minutely analyzing the genetic behavior of
various heritable variations, after they have appeared. But it is the
problem of the origin, the determination, the causes of those germinal
differences which lie behind somatic variations, and indeed are the

1 Abstract of Paper No. 97 from the Biological Laboratory of the Maine
Agricultural Experiment Station.

243

244 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

heritable variations, which appears to be the basic problem of
genetics.

One may expose systematically the germ-cells of an animal to
something unusual or abnormal in the surrounding conditions, and
then analyze, so far as may be, not only the new heritable variations
themselves (provided any such appear), but also the factors which
underlie their causation. One is the more encouraged to undertake
experimentation in this direction, because of the very interesting
results of such studies which have been reported during the last few
years, particularly those of Stockard- and Cole,^ with mammals and
birds. In this connection mention should also be made of the work
of Sumner with mice, Kammerer with lower vertebrates. Tower
with insects, and MacDougal with plants.

The problems with which this investigation deals are specifically
these :

1. Does the continued administration of ethyl alcohol (or similar
narcotic poisons) to the domestic fowl induce precise and specific
changes in the germinal material, such as to lead to new, heritable,
somatic variations?

2. Failing a specific effect is there a general effect upon the
germinal material leading to general degeneracy of the progeny?

3. What in general are the effects upon the soma of the treated
individual of the continued administration of such poisons?

4. Are the somatic effects upon the treated individuals of a sort
to give any clue as to the probable origin, or mechanism of the
germinal changes?

The present paper reports, in brief abstract, the results obtained
from the beginning of the experiment in September, 1914, to Feb-
ruary I, 1916. A complete report is now in process of publication
in another place. In that report the data will be presented in detail,
with probable errors, etc.

- Cf. for summary and bibliography of earlier papers Stockard, C. R.,
and Papanicolaou, G., " A Further Analysis of the Hereditary Transmission
of Degeneracy and Deformities by the Descendants of Alcoholized Mam-
mals," Amcr. Nat., Vol. L., pp. 65-88 and 144-177, 1916.

3 Cf. Cole, L. J., and Bachhuber, L. J., " The Effect of Lead on the Germ
Cells of the Male Rabbit and Fowl as Indicated by their Progeny," Proc.
Soc. Expcr. Biol. Med., Vol. XII., pp. 24-29, 1914.

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 245

11. Material and Methods.

General Plan.

The general plan of this investigation involves some features
which have not been incorporated in earlier researches in this general
field. In the first place, it was thought desirable to use tzvo pure
breeds of poultry for the foundation stock in the experiments rather
than one, and in consequence of this make the offspring of the
treated animals F^ crossbreds rather than pure-bred birds. The
primary consideration in favor of this plan was that, by its adoption,
a much more manifold opportunity seemed likely to be given to test
any putative influence of the poisons on the germ plasm. It should
be possible in an experiment of this sort to see whether in F^ the
usual conditions as to Mendelian dominance are in any manner or
degree disturbed by the administration of the poisons to the parents.
Further, when the F^ individuals from treated parents are them-
selves bred there will be an opportunity to apply the most delicate
of all genetic tests for the composition of the germ plasm, namely
the test of segregation in F, and succeeding generations.

In the investigation here reported the foundation stock used came
from pedigreed strains of two breeds, Black Hamburgs and Barred
Plymouth Rocks. Both of the strains used have been so long pedi-
gree bred by the writer, and used in such a variety of Mendelian
experiments, that they may be regarded as " reagent strains," whose
genetic behavior under ordinary circumstances may be predicted
with a degree of probability amounting practically to complete cer-
tainty. Furthermore the results of crossing these two breeds recip-
rocally have been thoroughly studied by the writer.

Substances Used and Mode of Administration.

In the present investigation three different series of birds were
started. To the birds in one series was administered 95 per cent,
ethyl alcohol. To those in the second series was administered
methyl alcohol, and to those in the third series, ether.

The method followed in these experiments for the administration
of the poisons was essentially that which has been used by Stockard,
namely the method of inhalation.

246 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

In the present experiments inhalation tanks of two different sizes
have been used. They are essentially square boxes of galvanized
iron, having at the top a round opening which serves as a means of
entrance and exit for the bird. This opening is tightly closed by
a cover during an experimental treatment. Below the bottom of
the tank is a cylindrical reagent chamber closed by a tight fitting
cover from below. In this projection below the floor of the tank
proper is placed absorbent cotton saturated with the particular re-
agent used. Over the top of the reagent chamber is placed a piece
of heavy galvanized wire gauze of about half-inch mesh which
serves to complete the floor of the inhalation compartment proper,
without obstructing the diffusion of the fumes from the reagent
chamber.

Regarding the mode of administration of the poisons used it was
found early in the work to be undesirable to depend entirely upon
the evaporation of the reagent from cotton in the chamber at the
bottom of the tank. This process took altogether too long a time
to saturate the air of the tank wnth the vapor. Practically from
the beginning we have used a combination of this method plus a pre-
liminary saturating of the air with the vapor of the substance used
by means of an atomizer. The routine procedure is this : there is
placed in the reagent chamber at the bottom of the tank a piece of
absorbent cotton soaked with the reagent to be used, ethyl or methyl
alcohol or ether, as the case may be. Then the operator quickly but
thoroughly fills the whole of the tank proper by means of an
atomizer with a saturated vapor of the same substance. The birds
to be treated are then introduced quickly, allowing as little as possible
of the vapor to escape in the process. When the birds have been
introduced the cover of the tank is tightly closed and left in that
condition for one hour. It is to be understood throughout this
paper that every bird designated as a " treated bird " has spent one
hour every day in one of these tanks subjected to the fumes of the
reagent specified in the particular case.

The number of treated birds used in the experiments to the date
covered in this report is 19. The number of untreated control
brothers and sisters is 58.

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL.
III. Results.

247

A. In tlic Treated Individuals.

Before entering upon any discussion of the efifect of the alcohol
treatment on the progeny it seems desirable to examine with some
care into the effects, both structural and physiological, upon the
treated individuals themselves. In this examination attention will
be confined to characters which are capable of quantitative definition
and measurement. The main results are summarized in Table I.

TABLE L

Showing in Summary Form the Effect of Continued Administration of

Alcohol (Ethyl and Methyl) and Ether, by the Inhalation

Method, upon the Treated Individuals Themselves.

Character or Quality Studied.

Mean number per bird of consecutive days of
treatment

Net percentage mortality (to Feb. i, 1916) ex-
clusive of birds accidentally killed

Mean body weight of females (in gms.)

Mean egg production per bird, 14 months

General activity

Sexual activity

Treated In-
dividuals.

344-2

o

3266

183.97

Reduced

Reduced

Untreated
Controls.

41.0
2953

180.80
Normal
Normal

Net R esult
on Alco-
holists.

+

The plan of this table is as follows : In the last column of the
table a plus sign denotes that, with reference to the particular charac-
ter discussed, the alcoholists have been favorably affected ; a minus
sign that they have been unfavorably affected as compared with
untreated controls. A zero indicates that no effect of the treatment,
one way or the other, has been detected.

From these summarized data it is possible to gain a tolerably clear
comprehension of the objective happenings in these experiments so
far. The treated animals themselves are not conspicuously worse
or better than their untreated control sisters or brothers. The sur-
vivors, i. €., those not killed by accident, are after roughly a year
and a half of daily treatment, becoming a bit too fat for their best
physiological economy, but except for that point, and the reduced
activity which goes with it, they are very much like normal fowls.

248 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

Their apparently much better mortality record is indeed conspicuous,
but in view of the small numbers involved, no great significance
can be attached to it. It is probable that with larger numbers of
birds as the experiments proceed this apparent superiority in rela-
tive mortality will disappear or be much reduced.

Regarding egg production the following details are of interest :

The egg production of the treated birds and the untreated con-
trols was entirely normal in respect of its seasonal distribution, as
well as in regard to its amount.

There has been no significant difference in the egg production of
the treated birds and their untreated control sisters, either in the
total average number of eggs produced per bird, or in the seasonal
distribution of this production. Taking the whole untreated flock,
the mean production per bird in the 15 months was 184.74 eggs, while
the mean production for the treated birds was 183.97, making a dif-
ference of 0.77 egg in favor of the untreated. Taking the " special
control " mean of 180.80 eggs there is a difference between this and
the treated of 3.17 eggs in favor of the treated. Obviously the only
conclusion which can be drawn from these insignificant differences
is that the inhalation treatment has not affected the egg produc-
tion of the birds, either favorably or adversely.

During the months of July, 1915, to October, 1915, inclusive the
mean production of the treated birds fell below that of the control
sisters. The difference between the two curves in this region, how-
ever, is no greater than may at any time occur between two similarly
managed groups of sisters, according to the writer's experience with
egg records. There appears to be no reason to attach any signifi-
cance to this dip of the treated below the control curve. Taking the
whole period covered by the report it is clear that the two curves
wind about one another, now one, now the other being uppermost,
just as curves for two random samples of the same material would
be expected to do.

B. In the F-^ Progeny of Treated Individuals.

In this section of the paper it is proposed to discuss the effects,
so far as any are observable, of the alcoholization of one or both of
the parents upon the progeny in the first generation. Different

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 249

characters of the progeny will be considered, and as before primary
attention will be given to such characters as admit of quantitative
expression.

1. Plan of Matings in 191 5. — The alcoholized birds and the un-
treated controls were mated early in February, 191 5. Eggs were
saved for incubation from these matings from about February 15.

The general plan of the matings in 19 15 was to breed a treated
male of each of the three classes, ethyl, methyl and ether, with (a)
untreated control females, and (b) with treated females of his own
class {i. e., ethyl ^ X ethyl $, methyl ^ X methyl $, ether S X ether
5). In addition to these matings an untreated control male was
mated with (a) untreated control females, (&) ethyl females, (c)
methyl females, and ((/) ether females.

All of the matings were of the type Black Hamburg ^ X Barred
Plymouth Rock $. There were produced 234 chicks from matings
wherein one or both parents were treated.

2. Germinal Dosage Index. — In the present investigation the fol-
lowing reasoning has been used in devising a numerical expression
of the dosage, so far as concerns the progeny. Two germ cells, a
sperm and an ovum, unite to form the zygote of each progeny indi-
vidual. It is proposed to designate as the " total germ dosage index "
the total number of days during which the two gametes making the
offspring zygote have been exposed to alcoholic influence while so-
journing in the body of the treated individuals. Such a germ dosage
index could, of course, be calculated for each individual progeny
chick born. It seems, however, more desirable for present purposes
to combine the figures for each mating, and take the sum of the
number of days from the beginning of treatment of the male parent
to the average date of hatching of the progeny, plus the number of
days from the beginning of treatment of the female parent to the
average date of hatching of the progeny as the germ dosage index
for that mating. This can be expressed in a formula as follows :

Total germ dosage index in days=^(Mh — A(^)-j-(]\In — A^)
where

il/ft =Mean date of hatching of progeny.

A(^ = Date when treatment of (^ parent began.

A2 ^Date when treatment of $ parent began.

250

PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

The total germ dosage index for the F^ progeny in these experi-
ments ranges from 130 days to 354 days with the matings for the
different substances used well scattered over the range.

3. The Fertility and Hatching Quality of the Eggs from Alcohol-
iced Parents. — One of the surest and most delicate indicators of con-
stitutional vigor and vitality in poultry which has yet been discovered
is the hatching quality of the eggs. Anything which upsets the gen-
eral metabolic balance or impairs the vitality of either partner in a
mating will show its effect in a diminished hatching power of the
eggs from that mating. In view of these facts an examination of
the data relative to this character in these alcoholic matings becomes
of especial interest. A summarized statement of the effects on the
progeny is given in Table II.

TABLE II.

Showing in Summary Form the Effect of Continued Administration of

Alcohol (Ethyl and Methyl) and Ether, by the Inhalation

Method, upon the Progeny.

Character Studied.

1. Mean germ dosage index. .

2. Percentage of infertile eggs

{i. e., eggs in whicli no
zygote was formed)

3a. Percentage of embryos dy-
ing in shell

36. Percentage of fertile eggs
(i. e., zygotes) which
hatched

4. Percentage of all eggs which

hatched _.

5. Percentage mortality under

180 days of age

6. Percentage mortality over

180 days of age

7. Sex ratio: percent, cfcf..

8. Mean hatching weight per

bird, males

9. Mean hatching weight per

bird, females

10. Mean adult weight per bird,

males

11. Mean adult weight per bird,

females

12. Percentage of weak or de-

formed chicks

13. Abnormalities of Mendelian

inheritance

Offspring of

Treated cf cf

X Un-
treated 9 9 .

Treated cf cf

X
Treated 9 9.

137-8

36.6

63.0
47.1
21. 1

5-9

48.9

34-91
35-04
2,669
2,020

0.7

o

299.0

59-2
26.9

72-3

29.4

10.6

13-6
45-5

36.97

37-17

2,815

2,063

o

All Treated
Parents.

210.35

41.7
33-3

66.7
38.6
17.6

10.3

47-7

Untreated
Controls

0.4

25-3

42.2

2.392

1,928

I.O

Net Result
on Alcohol
Offspring.

+
+

+

+
O

+

+

+

+

+

0

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 251

Summarizing the general features of the above results regarding
production of offspring by alcoholized parents it may be said that
the average percentage fertility of eggs is diminished and the average
hatching power of the fertile eggs is increased after alcoholization of
the parents. The reduction in average fertility of the eggs is due
chiefly to the efifect on the germ cells of the males and females, whose
sexual activity is in general somewhat diminished by the treatment.
Also alcoholized females are not as attractive to the males as untreated
and hence are discriminated against in the matings, and furthermore
probably the oviduct of the treated female does not furnish quite so
favorable an environment for sperm as the oviduct of untreated
females. The net result is that alcoholized parents produce on the
average fewer ofifspring per mating unit than do normal, untreated
parents under conditions otherwise similar.

4. Mortality of Fj Chicks. — According to the results of earlier
work in this general field it would be expected that there would be
a decidedly higher rate of mortality among the offspring of the
alcoholized parents than the normal.

Taking all the evidence of the present experiments into account,
it admits of no doubt that the probability that a chick on the Maine
Station's poultry range in 191 5 would survive to maturity was not
diminished, but, on the contrary, was in general substantially in-
creased, if that chick's parents had both been subjected to a daily
dosage of alcohol for from four to seven months before it was
hatched. Since the chicks from treated parents were indiscrim-
inately mixed with those from normal parents in housing, yarding,
feeding, watering, etc., the fact that the former sort of chicks
showed a lower mortality than the latter sort cannot be attributed to
differential treatment after hatching.

5. The Sex Ratio in the F^ Progeny of Alcoholized Parents and
Normal Parents of the Same Breeds. — It has been claimed at various
times and by various persons that the general metabolic condition of
the parents at the time of conception is a factor in sex determination,
or at least has an influence on the sex ratio.

The figures give no ground for asserting that the relative pro-
portions of the sexes produced are significantly different in the alco-
holic and normal control series. If the treatment has had an in-

252 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

fluence on this character it has been so shght as not to be statistically
discernible in samples of the size here dealt with.

6. Hatching Weight of F^ Progeny. — In the present series of
experiments there is no significant difference in mean hatching weight
between the offspring of treated males and the offspring of normal
untreated control males when both are mated to normal untreated
females. The slight differences which do appear are of the same
order of magnitude as their probable errors.

Both the male and the female offspring of matings in which
both parents were treated have a larger mean hatching weight
(i. e., are heavier when hatched) than the offspring of either com-
pletely normal control matings, or of matings in which the father
only is treated. The differences here are relatively large and are
statistically significant in comparison with their probable errors.

7. Grozvth of the F-^ Progeny. — Growth, as measured by increase
in body weight, is universally recognized by physiologists and by
practical animal husbandmen as one of the most valuable indices of
innate constitutional vigor and vitality which it is possible to obtain.
On this account it was thought to be of first-class importance to
study the growth of the offspring from alcoholized as compared with
untreated parents.

The offspring of alcoholized parents, whatever the nature of the
mating, showed a higher mean adult body weight than oft'spring of
untreated parents of the same breeds mated in the same way. This
is true of both sexes.

In the case of the male chickens there was no substantial differ-
ence in the rate of growth in the three lots until after an age of
about 100 days was passed. From that point on the male offspring
of treated (j^J* X untreated and treated 5? grew at a more rapid rate
than the controls. The differences in mean body weight for a given
age became increasingly large as the age advanced. At 200 days
of age we have by interpolation on the curves the following set
of comparative mean body weights.

Comparative Mean Body Weights at 200 Days of Age.

Absolute Weight. Relative Weight.

Males ex untreated Jc^ X untreated $? 2,392.32 gm. 100

Males c.r treated c?c? X untreated $$ 2,668.97 gm. 112

Males f'.r treated c^c^ X treated $? 2,815.25 gm. 118

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 253

In the case of the female chickens there was no substantial dif-
ference in the rate of growth in the three lots until after an age of
about 150 days was passed. During the next 25 days the controls
grew faster than the chicks from treated parents. At and after 200
days of age, however, the offspring of treated parents (one and
both) showed a higher mean body weight than the controls. We
have t-he following set of comparative mean body weights at 250 days
of age, obtained by interpolation on the curves.

Comparative Mean Body Weights at 250 Days of Age.

Absolute Weight. Relative Weight.

Females ex untreated cj'c^ X untreated ?? i,g27.72 gm. 100

Females ex treated J'c? X untreated $$ 2,020.38 gm. 105

Females ex treated c?c? X treated ?$ 2,062.98 gm. 107

At all ages in the case of the male chicks, and in all ages but two
(12.5 and 19.5 days) in the case of the female chicks, the mean body
weight of the offspring having both parents alcoholic was higher than
that of the offspring having one parent only, the father, alcoholic.
The differences are, for the most part, insignificant in comparison
with their probable errors, but the uniformity with which the " both
parents treated " curves maintain their superiority over the " father
only treated " curves is noteworthy, and significant.

There are no distinctive differences in relative variability between
the three different lots of chicks. In general the relative variability
tends to diminish after an age of about 30 days is past.

The evidence derived from a study of the growth of the chickens
in this experiment lends no support to the view that parental alcohol-
ism necessarily reduces the vitality of the offspring or induces degen-
eracy. On the contrary the data plainly indicate that the offspring
of alcoholized parents are in some degree superior in vigor and
vitality to those from untreated parents.

8. Deformities in the F^ Progeny. — One of the most striking
features of Stockard's results on the alcoholization of guinea pigs
is that a considerable percentage of the progeny of treated parents
exhibit gross malformations of various organs, particularly the
eyes. In the present experiments with poultry, nothing of this sort
has made its appearance. The proportion of such abnormal chicks

254 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

produced in the breeding season of 1915 from alcoholized parents
was no greater than the number produced from untreated parents.
In actual fact there was exactly one chicken out of 234 hatched from
alcoholized parents in 191 5 that was too weak to band, and was in
consequence killed at the time of hatching. None was deformed.
Out of 1,527 chicks from untreated parents, 16, or i.o per cent.,
were weak or deformed or both.

Discussion of Results.

We have seen that out of 12 different characters for which we
have exact quantitative data, the offspring of treated parents taken
as a group are superior to the offspring of untreated parents in 8
characters. The offspring of untreated parents are superior to those
of the alcoholists in respect of but two characters, and these are
characters which are quite highly correlated with each other and
really should be counted as but a single character. Finally with
respect to two character groups there is no difference between the al-
coholists and the non-alcoholists. The character groups which have
been dealt with in this study, and for which definite quantitative
data are herein presented, seem to cover a much wider range of
physiological and genetic factors and phenomena than has ever been
included or even approached in any previous study regarding the
effects of parental alcoholism upon the progeny. They have the
further advantage of being characters which are measurable (either
statistically or otherwise) and on that account greatly reduce, if
they do not entirely eliminate, the possibility of personal bias or
prejudice influencing the results.

The mutual accordance of the results from characters involving
such a manifold range of physiological factors is striking. This
fact in considerable degree offsets the fact that as yet our series of
experimental animals is statistically small, leading to such large
probable errors that the individual differences are not in every case
significant in comparison with their probable errors. The experi-
ments are of course being continued and expanded, and concurrently
the probable errors of differences are being reduced. If results in
the same sense as the present ones continue to appear (as seems to

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 255

be the case) they are bound presently to become very convincing to
such persons as are not prevented by prejudice from accepting or
appreciating scientific evidence on the problem of the effect of paren-
tal alcoholism upon the progeny.

We may evaluate our results in general terms as follows :

1. There is no evidence that specific germinal changes have been
induced by the alcoholic treatment, at least in those germ cells which
produced zygotes.

2. There is no evidence that the germ cells zuJiich produced
zyygotes have in any respect been injured or deleteriously affected.

3. The results with poultry are in apparent contradiction to the
results of Stockard, Cole and others with mammals. I believe, for
reasons which will presently appear, that this contradiction is only
apparent and not real, paradoxical as such a statement may appear.

4. The results with poultry are in a number of important respects
in essentially complete agreement with those of Elderton and Pear-
son* on parental alcoholism in man, and of Nice^ in mice.

The interpretation of these results which seems to account best
for all the facts is that the apparent discrepancy between the avian
and mammalian results is fundamentally due to a difference in
degree of resistance of the germ cells to alcohol. On this basis it is
possible, I believe, to frame an hypothesis which will bring together
in a satisfactory manner under one point of view the apparently
discrepant results of Stockard, Pearson, Nice and the writer.

At the outstart let us remind ourselves of a point which one is
apt to overlook in considering results of this sort, namely that the
germ cells which produce the zygotes, which are the progeny of our
experiments, are only a very minute fraction of all the germ cells
which the parents produce. Let X be the total number of germ
cells (ova or spermatozoa) which the individual produces, and let a
be the number which succeed in taking part in the formation of

* Elderton, E. M., and Pearson, K., " A First Study of the Influence of
Parental Alcoholism on the Physique and Ability of the Offspring," Eugenics
Lab. Mem., X., pp. 1-46, 1910. (Second edition.)

5 Nice, L. B., " Comparative Studies on the Effects of Alcohol, Nicotine,
Tobacco Smoke, and Caffeine on White Mice. I. Effects on Reproduction
and Growth," Jour. E.vper. ZooL, Vol. 12, pp. 133-152, 1912.

256 PEARL— EFFECT OF CERTAIN POISONS

a zygote, and let A be the number which do not so succeed. Then,
of course, A^=X — a, or put the other way about,

X=A-\-a.

This is the fundamental gametic equation. We know that A is
enormously greater than a. There is furthermore a great deal of
evidence that a is not a random sample of X, but on the contrary is a
highly selected sample. To Roux in his *' Kampf der Theile " is to
be given the credit for first pointing out what now seems axiomatic,
that there is constantly going on a struggle for survival among the
cells of the organism, the physiologically " best " being the survivors.
To the philosophical breeder of animals nothing seems more cer-
tainly established than that this process of selection is constantly
going on and is of very special importance among the germ cells.
Direct and convincing observational and experimental proof of it
has been given by the double mating experiments which Cole and
Davis and Cole and Bachhuber have carried out.

Granting the existence of variation in the vigor or resisting
power of germ cells we have the necessary basis for the action of a
selective agent. The hypothesis which we wish to suggest is that
alcohol acts as such a selective agent upon the germ cells of alco-
holized animals. The essential points in such an hypothesis may be
put in the following way.

1. Assume the relative vigor, or resisting power of germ cells
varies or grades continuously from a low degree, say i, to a high
degree, say lo, and further assume that the absolute vigor of the
whole population of germ cells, measured by the mean let us say,
is dififerent for different species.

2. In the intensity of dosage employed in inhalation experiments
alcohol does not destroy or functionally inactivate all germ cells.
The proportionate number of the whole population of germ cells
which will be inactivated by such dosage may fairly be supposed to
depend upon the mean absolute vigor or resisting power character-
istic of the particular species or strain used. In a species with germ
cells of absolutely low mean vigor proportionately more will be
functionally inactivated than in a species of high absolute mean
vigor of germ cells.

3. Besides the germ cells which are wholly inactivated by the

ON THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 257

deleterious agent, and which we may designate as class (a), we may
fairly assume that there is a possibility of two other classes existing,
viz., (b) germ cells which, while not completely inactivated, are so
injured by the agent as to produce zygotes which are measurably
defective in some degree, and (c) germ cells which are not measur-
ably affected by the agent at all in the dosage employed, and produce
zygotes which are not discernibly otherwise than perfectly normal.

4. It appears entirely fair to assume that germ cells of the
(a) class are of relatively the lowest mean vigor or resisting power,
class (b) next, and class (c) the highest. The proportionate num-
ber of the two sorts of zygotes corresponding to classes (b) and
(c) of germ cells which would be expected to appear in any experi-
ments made to test the point would clearly be a function of the
mutual relationship or proportionality between two variables, the
dosage of the deleterious agent on the one hand, and the mean
absolute resisting power of the germ cells characteristic of the strain
or species of animal used in the experiments on the other hand.

5. If the dosage of the agent be relatively high in proportion to
the mean absolute resisting power it would be expected that all the
germ cells would fall into classes (a) and (b), producing no zygotes
at all or zygotes in some degree defective. This about represents
the condition, so far as can be judged from the data given, with
Stockard's alcoholized guinea pigs and Weller's*^ lead-poisoned
guinea pigs. The dosage is sufficiently high in proportion to the
absolute germinal resisting power that all or practically all of the
offspring are defective in greater or less degree and in reference to
some one or more characters. Stockard's Fo and F3 results indicate
that though the untreatd F^ animals from alcoholists may appear
normal, they really are somewhat defective.

6. If, on the other hand, the dosage, though absolutely the same,

be relatively lower in proportion to the mean absolute resisting

power of the germ cells it would be expected that all three germ

cell classes (a), (b) and (c) would be represented. The zygotes

actually formed would be chiefly produced by (c) germ cells, and

to a much smaller extent by (b) cells. Under these circumstances

it would necessarily follow that a random sample of the zygotes

6 Weller, C. V., " The Blastophthoric Effect of Chronic Lead Poisoning,"
Jour. Med. Research, N. S., Vol. XXVIIL, pp. 271-293, 1915.

258 PEARL— EFFECT OF POISONS ON DOMESTIC FOWL.

produced after the action of the deleterious agent would, on the
average, be superior in respect to such qualities as growth, etc.,
which may be supposed to depend in part at least upon germinal
vigor, to a random sample of zygotes formed before the action of
the agent, because the germ cells of class (c) are a selected superior
portion of the total gametic population.

7. Essentially that proportionality between effective dosage of
the deleterious agent and absolute resisting power of the germ cells
outlined in the preceding paragraph (6) is believed to have obtained
in the present experiments with fowls, Nice's experiments with
mice, and nature's experiments with the workingmen's populations
studied statistically by Elderton and Pearson.

There is much detailed evidence which can be adduced from my
own experiments and from the Hterature in support of the above
hypothesis. This evidence will be discussed in the complete paper.

Finally, I wish again to emphasize that, in my opinion, the results
here set forth are not contradictory to those of Stockard. Anyone
who bases a criticism of his results on the present experiments will
go beyond the facts. Our results seem to me to be supplementary
to those of Stockard, and to throw an interesting light on the need
for caution in reaching a correct interpretation of all experiments in
which a mildly deleterious agent acts upon the organism. It would
seem clear that there is need for caution in this difficult field. If the
conclusions as to the utterly dreadful and relentlessly certain effects
of parental alcoholism on the progeny which have been transported,
as it seems to me somewhat recklessly, from Stockard's guinea pigs
to human beings, were really true for the latter, then I can see no
escape from the further conclusion that a great majority of the
individuals belonging to the higher intellectual and social classes in
the countries of Western Europe today ought to be blind, dwarfed,
and degenerate wretches, because social history gives definite and
uncontrovertible evidence that their parents and their grandparents
on the average consumed proportionately as much and probably
more alcohol than the corresponding generations of Stockard's
guinea pigs. The absence of general degeneracy in these social
classes could not be more completely and scientifically demonstrated
than it has been by the events of the past two years.

The experiments here reported are being continued.

AMERICA AS THE DEFENDER OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS.

By L. S. Rowe>, Ph.D., LL.D.
{Read April 13, 1916.)

To the historian of international law, the year 191 5 will stand
forth as marking a crisis in the development of the spirit of legality,
similar in many respects to the crisis of the early years of the nine-
teenth century. It is too early to predict the condition in which our
system of international law will emerge from the present conflict,
but it is evident that this condition will depend in large part on the
attitude and policy of America. It is no less clear that at the close
of the present struggle the system of international law must be sub-
jected to revision of a far-reaching character. The lack of har-
mony between the rules of international law and the conditions of
modern warfare has been a source of constant irritation, and it is of
great importance to the world's peace that these causes of irritation
be removed.

Whatever may be the nature of these changes, it is evident that
the pressing, immediate problem is to preserve the existing fabric
of international law, and to await the termination of the war before
any radical changes are undertaken. The civilized world, and par-
ticularly the neutral nations, look to America to assume the leader-
ship in the performance of this world service. That the United
States is called upon to play an important part in the performance of
this service is attested by the contributions of this country to the
development of international law during the nineteenth century.
These contributions point the way to the larger role which we are
now called upon to play.

We sometimes take for granted that there is an inherent and in-
evitable tendency of international law constantly to develop toward a
higher and higher plane, and forget that there have been several
periods in history during which the achievements of one epoch have
been sacrificed by its successor. The shifting of the equilibrium of

259

260 ROWE— AMERICA AS THE

power from the basin of the Mediterranean to northern Europe is
probably the most striking illustration of the loss involved when
belligerent interests find no countervailing force.

The situation which confronts us today marks another epoch in
the development of international law. The issue is clearly and defi-
nitely formulated : shall the interests of belligerents reshape and
determine the fabric of international law, or shall neutral interests
become an increasingly dominant influence in establishing the rules
that shall govern the relations between states ?

Recent events in Europe have placed a new aspect on the part
w^hich America is called upon to play in the development of inter-
national law. The appeals of all the contending parties to accepted
legal principles, as justification for their respective policies, is suffi-
cient indication of a deeply-rooted respect for the " opinion of man-
kind/' which is, in the last analysis, the basis of the spirit of legal-
ity ; both in municipal and in international law.

In spite of the constant appeals to established legal principles by
all parties, there is noticeable a disquieting and dangerous tendency
to encroach upon those neutral rights, the observance of which rep-
resents the results of a long and bitter struggle, marking one of the
great achievements, if not the greatest achievement, of the nine-
teenth century. The broadening of the rights of neutrals has been
accompanied by a corresponding development of neutral obligations.
Viewed from the broadest possible standpoint, the development of
neutral rights and obligations represents the most important step,
first, in narrowing the area of conflict, and, secondly, in developing
that world spirit of legality and settled rule which is the funda-
mental as well as the ultimate purpose of international law.

Under the guise of adapting the principles of international law to
the new conditions of warfare, the policy pursued by the parties
to the present conflict has not only undermined the basis of neutral
rights, but threatens to destroy the hard-earned gains of the nine-
teenth century. We are apt to forget at times that the recognition
of neutral rights is a matter of so recent development that it repre-
sents the least stable division of international law. It is becoming
increasingly evident, furthermore, that the interests of advancing

DEFENDER OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS. 261

civilization are so closely bound up with a broadening recognition of
the rights of neutrals that the defense of the ground gained during
the nineteenth century acquires a new significance and a new dignity.

It is this situation that places upon the republics of the American
Continent a new and far-reaching obligation. Their defense of the
rights of neutrals will be all the more effective if they are conscious
of the fact that in making such defense they are at the same time
furthering the higher interests of humanity. There is a noticeable
tendency in the state documents issued by the parties to the present
struggle, to take the view that while neutral rights are all very well
in their way, they can only be recognized in so far as they do not
interfere with the eft'ective waging of war. It is this spirit which
dominates the British proclamation of November 2, 1914, the Ger-
man declaration of February 4, 191 5, and the British Order in Coun-
cil of March 15, 1915. In reading these documents one has the
impression of being thrown back into an earlier and more primitive
period. Even in language there is a striking similarity with some
of the documents issued during the Napoleonic struggle. It requires
little or no effort to understand the point of view which has dictated
these documents, and one can not even repress a certain sympathetic
understanding of measures which are undoubtedly intended either to
safeguard fundamental national interests, or dictated by considera-
tions which are believed to be necessary to national self-preserva-
tion. But it is also well to remember that Napoleon as well as the
Allies were quite as sincere in 1807 as are the belhgerents of 1916,
and that had it not been for the "Armed Neutrality," on the one
hand, and the influence of the United States, on the other, the last
vestige of neutral rights would have disappeared, and with such
disappearance civilization would have descended to a distinctly
lower plane.

International as well as municipal law develops as a result of a
compromise between conflicting interests, real or imaginary, and to
allow any state or group of states in the society of nations to pur-
sue a policy in flagrant disregard of the rights of third parties, is to
destroy the basis of order, law and settled rule. It is this situ-
ation which places so heavy a responsibility on the republics of

262 ROWE— AMERICA AS THE

the American Continent. By the inevitable logic of events they
have become the only effective defenders of neutral rights, and
unless they unitedly respond to the call they will become accomplices
in the destruction of that delicate fabric of international law which
represents the triumph of world interest over selfish national de-
sign, and which is the expression of the spirit of social order in
international affairs.

The obligation assumes the character and dignity of a world duty,
and can only be effectively performed through the united action of
the American republics. It is true that the interests of the neutral
nations of Europe are in many respects similar to our own, and there
is every reason to hope and expect that they will support the united
policy of the nations of the American continent. There is, how-
ever, much to be gained in giving to the principles which we are
prepared to support a distinctive American background, and in em-
phasizing the fact that in the present crisis of the world's affairs the
republics of America have not only become the special guardians
and custodians of neutral rights, but are also prepared to fulfil
with no less zeal, every neutral obligation. The world service which
the republics of America are called upon to perform, through their
united action, is of a two-fold character :

First. They must firmly and unitedly maintain those neutral
rights which have received the sanction of long continued practice
and observance, and

Second. They must be prepared to carry one step further the
law relating to neutral rights and obligations.

As regards the first point, we cannot hope to make much progress
unless it is possible firmly to establish the principle that belligerent
convenience is no adequate basis for a system of international law
and that, in fact, such a principle is destructive of all law.

The most notable advances in international law have been made
because of the increasing importance of neutral interests and the
compromises which belligerents have been compelled to make be-
cause of this fact. With each conflict there is evident a tendency
on the part of belligerents to undermine, usually through forced
and unnatural interpretation, the accepted principles of international

DEFENDER OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS. 263

law, and it is only when this tendency is opposed by the definite and
concerted assertion of neutral rights that the international legal
structure is maintained. This situation makes the concerted asser-
tion of neutral rights in the present crisis a matter of vital im-
portance, in view of the manifest and natural tendency on the part
of all belligerents to make belligerent convenience the sole and final
test of legality.

At no time since the Napoleonic struggle has such an opportunity
offered itself to the neutral countries of the civilized world. The
republics of the American continent should lose no time in reaching
a clear and definite agreement as to the rights which they are pre-
pared to maintain. So strong has become the influence of world
opinion on the action of individual states that such a concerted and
united action would have a far-reaching eft'ect in preserving the
rights sanctioned by law and usage and, after the close of this
conflict, in securing the recognition of new principles which, by
reason of their influence in narrowing the area of conflict, are cal-
culated to promote the broader interests of civilization. It would
have been a splendid example of continental solidarity, if at the
outbreak of the European war, the delegates of the republics of
America had assembled and remained in permanent session for the
maintenance of neutral rights, as well as to consider the scope and
limits of their neutral obligations.

" What," it will be asked, " are the specific things for which such
a league of neutrals should strive?"

It would involve too great an encroachment upon your time to
take up, with any degree of detail, the specific rights which should
be made the subject of concerted action. Such a discussion would,
in reality, involve a commentary on the entire law of neutrality.
The real point that I wish to make is that we should learn to think
and act " continentally " on these great basic questions which affect
so intimately the spirit of order and legality in international aft"airs.
It is undoubtedly true that the modern conditions of maritime war-
fare call for a modification of certain of the accepted principles of
international law, but if the extent and character of such modifica-
tions are to be determined exclusively by belligerent convenience.

264 ROWE— AMERICA AS THE

we are certain to descend to a lower plane in the adjustment of inter-
national relations. It may well be that the Declaration of Paris
requires revision, and that the Declaration of London no longer
meets present needs, but in such revision the voice and influence of
non-belligerents should be heard and given due weight. Probably
the most pressing questions upon which neutral action is necessary
are:

First. Shall we admit the right of belligerents indefinitely to
extend the list of contraband articles, so that the distinction between
absolute and conditional contraband practically disappears ?

Second. Shall we accede to the rule that the doctrine of con-
tinuous voyage can under any circumstances be applied to condi-
tional contraband ?

Third. Shall we admit of the refining away of the distinction
between a " naval or military base," and all the other ports of a
country, so as practically to destroy the distinction ?

Fourth. Shall we agree to a reestablishment of the old rule of
the Consolate del Mare, that enemy goods on board neutral vessels
are liable to capture, even if such goods are not contraband of war?

Fifth. Shall we accede to the new definition of blockade, and to
the penalties attached to the violation thereof ?

Sixth. Shall we agree to the new interpretation placed on the
" right of search " ?

Seventh. Shall we tolerate the hovering of belligerent cruisers
along the coast line of the republics of America.

Eighth. Serious consideration should also be given to the plan
proposed by the Museo Social Argentine, which has aroused much
discussion in the countries of South America. This important or-
ganization proposed, soon after the outbreak of the war, that steps
should be taken by the republics of America to eliminate belligerent
operations from American waters, and also to secure the freedom
of all purely inter-American commerce, irrespective of the question
whether such commerce was carried in neutral or belligerent bot-
toms. While this represents a most important extension of neutral
rights, the recognition of such a principle would have avoided much
unnecessary suffering inflicted on the American republics by reason
of the European conflict.

DEFENDER OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS. 265

These are all questions the mere formulation of which indicates
how deeply they affect the structure of international law. In a
period characterized by extreme retaliatory measures by all parties
to the conflict, it is not likely that any real and permanent results
can be secured in preserving the structure of international law
unless the efforts receive united support.

It is also incumbent upon the republics of America to give due
consideration to the question of neutral obligations. The unsatis-
factory condition of the law in this respect has been illustrated time
and again during the course of this war in the abuse of the hos-
pitality of neutral ports to secure coal, supplies and provisions for
belligerent squadrons. While the letter of the law has been com-
plied with, its spirit has been constantly violated, and the question
now presents itself with renewed insistence whether important modi-
fications should not be introduced into the law regulating the obli-
gations of neutrals in order effectively to guard against such abuses.

The outbreak of the European war came so unexpectedly, deal-
ing such a severe blow to the economic and financial interests of all
the republics of America, that the first period of bewilderment was
followed by a period of anxious questioning with reference to their
position as neutrals. The uncertainties and anxieties of the situa-
tion were increased by the presence of belligerent squadrons in the
south Atlantic and south Pacific. The question of the interpreta-
tion of the rules relating to the shipment of supplies ostensibly
shipped in pursuance of legitimate commercial transactions, but in
reality intended for belligerent cruisers on the high seas, presented
a problem so difficult and delicate that no one country could hope
alone to grapple with the problem in a satisfactory way. Similarly
the question of preventing the ports of America from becoming
bases of operation was an exceedingly difficult one owing in part to
the extended coast line, and partly to the inadequate facilities for
patrolling the same. It was here that the opportunity presented
itself to the republics of America to assume a real position of leader-
ship in the preservation of international law.

When the war broke out all arrangements had been completed
for the assembling of a Pan-American Conference in Santiago,

266 ROWE— THE DEFENDER OF NEUTRAL RIGHTS.

Chile, in October, 1914. The machinery was, therefore, ready for
the holding of a Congress of neutrals which might have performed
a great service in the more definite formulation of neutral rights and
neutral obligations. The healthful restraint imposed on belligerents
by reason of the presence of vigorous and united neutral interests
has been lacking, and the result has been a marked and disquieting
decline in the standards of international dealings.

Although the most effective moment for an united stand of the
neutral nations of America would have been immediately after the
outbreak of the European war, it is not too late to repair at least
some of the damage that has been done. The machinery for such
a conference is at hand in the International Commission of Jurists
provided for by the Pan-American Conference of 1910. This body
should be called immediately and remain in permanent session as a
Congress of neutrals until the close of the war. Its deliberations
and conclusions should have to do with the rights which the neutral
nations of America are prepared to maintain, and the obligations
which they are prepared to fulfill. The mere fact that such a Con-
gress is in permanent session cannot help but impress itself upon
the imagination of the entire civilized world, and have a far-reach-
ing effect on the policy of the belligerent nations. Not only would
such a Congress serve to preserve the spirit of legality, but it would
give to the world an example of international solidarity which would
mark an epoch in the history of international relations. To allow
such an opportunity to slip by is to prove ourselves unworthy of the
great mission entrusted to the free nations of America and to pro-
claim ourselves unable to defend the highest interests of civilization.'

LEGAL AND POLITICAL INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS
AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR.

By THOMAS WILLING BALCH.
(Read April is, 19 16.)

A recourse to war in our day is such a terrible visitation not only
for the belligerent nations but also in the long run through its in-
direct effects for all neutral powers as well, that humanity of late
years has cried aloud more insistently perhaps than at any other
period of history for some way of avoiding the scourge of war. Un-
fortunately as yet it is not generally appreciated that the real causes
which produce war are deep-seated and not generally apparent on
the surface, while the events which as a rule actually precipitate war
are in themselves more or less of trifling importance.

Though we cannot see the elimination from the world of all
war any more clearly than we can look for the complete eradication
of consumption or cancer, nevertheless, international publicists are
working to find a way to save the world from the woes inflicted by
war with as stout hearts and as much hope of success as the
surgeons, physicians, chemists and others who are working to guard
humanity from bodily disease and ailment. And how international
justice shall in all cases be substituted for war as arbiter between
nations, is as difficult a problem calling for solution as any knowm to
the human intelligence.

To-day I shall present for your consideration especially one point
of this problem, to wit, that the causes of disagreement arising
between the members of the family of nations seem to divide
naturally into two great groups. Into one of these groups fall the
cases which can be settled by invoking jural rules, while to the
other group belong those problems which usually call for an appeal
sooner or later to war. To the former of those two groups of
cases belong all the cases of difference which, however they may be
decided in favor of one contestant or the other do not really affect

267

268 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

the future political development and power in the world of either
party to the cause of difference. To the latter group belong all the
cases of difference upon whose solution depends the future political
power and prestige in the world of one or more of the contesting
nations.

As far back at least as the first suggestion of the Geneva Tri-
bunal, discerning jurists and publicists had appreciated that the cases
of disagreement which arose between nations naturally separated
into these two groups of cases, the first of which is more strictly
legal, and the second of which is more strictly political. And as
more and more of the former class of cases, that is legal cases, were
successfully referred for settlement to international tribunals named
ad Jioc, while at the same time cases of the second group, that is
political cases, were referred to the arbitrament of war, the vital
difference between these two classes of international cases became
apparent to an ever-growing number of jurists. And the present
war should make it clear to every one possessed of ordinary common
sense, that as the social organism of the world is now constituted,
there can be no hope of eliminating all wars. For where it becomes
not a question of which of two nations or groups of nations is
right, according to the rules and usages of the law between nations,
but which of such contestants shall have the power to map out the
political policy of a larger or smaller portion of the world in its
own interest, a judicial court, even were a supreme court of the
world in existence, could not decide which side was the stronger.
All that a court of law can do is to decide which contestant is right
according to the law. And between municipal and international
tribunals there is this radical difference at present ; that back of the
former there is the whole police anci military force of the state of
which any given court is an organ to enforce the judgment of that
court. While back of an international tribunal to-day there is only
the public opinion of the world, and the military power of one of
the contestants, or one group of contestants to any case to insure
the acceptance of the decision. And if the last sanction is invoked
it means a return to the original arbitrament of war.

To designate these two great classes of cases mto which the
questions of difference arising between nations naturally seem to

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 269

divide, the French publicists have used the terms cas juridiqucs and
cas politiqucs to describe respectively the cases that are susceptible
of a judicial solution and those which are not. In England, West-
lake^ and Oppenheim- have used the terms legal and political cases
to designate respectively the cases which may be solved by an appeal
to judicial procedure, and the cases which seem to lead sooner or
later to war. Among American publicists Hershey^ also has used
the terms legal and political. Likewise in the proceedings of the
two Hague Peace Conferences, the terms jiiridique and legal were
used respectively in French and English.* Of late years pacifists in
this country have applied to those two great divisions of international
questions the terms justiciable and non- justiciable. These latter
terms, however, are not so good as the terms legal and political used
by the great British international publicists and commentators. For
the word justiciable is distinguished from the word justifiable by a
difference of only one letter, and as a consequence a confusion of
the words is liable to arise in the popular prints. Also the ex-
pression non-justiciable is a negative term and consequently inferior
for that reason to the expression political which is a positive term.

Following the nomenclature devised for the purpose by the great
French and British international jurisconsults and commentators,
I have applied to these two great categories of international ques-
tions, the terms legal and political cases respectively. And in an
effort to differentiate between the cases which so far nations have
been willing to refer to judicial settlement, that is legal cases, and
those w^hich nations have preferred to submit to the decision of war,
that is political cases, the present writer ventured to advance at the
close of 1913 the following definitions of legal and political cases
in the affairs of nations.^

1 Thomas Balch, " International Courts of Arbitration," 1874, 6th edition,
Philadelphia, 1915, page 63.

2 Lassa Oppenheim, " International Law," 2d edition, London, 1912, Vol-
ume II., page I.

3 Amos S. Hershey, " Essentials of International Public Law," New York,
1912, pages 323, 338.

* A. Pearce Higgins, " The Hague Peace Conferences," Cambridge at
the University Press, 1909, pages 122-123.

s Thomas Willing Balch, " Differends juridiques et politiques dans les
rapports des Nations : Revue Generale de Droit International Public," Paris,
1914, page 181.

270 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

In any investigation of how far judicial settlements have and
can be successfully substituted for war in deciding the differences
arising between nations, it is necessary to look far back in the history
of our own period of civilization to examine the political changes
which gradually led to the formation of what we now call nations.
and also to scan carefully the attempts which have been made in the
past to mitigate the severity and curtail the area of war.

When feudalism had developed and extended throughout Europe,
the relations of man to man upon which feudalism was based re-
sulted in a constant clashing of individuals over matters of more
or less moment without, however, the existence of any restraining
force to compel individuals to keep their quarrels within bounds
so as not to cause detriment to the political life and well-being of
other individuals who were not interested in the cause of discord.
As a consequence, it was perfectly proper for one feudal lord who
was at war with another feudal ruler but whose lands did not touch.
indeed might even be far apart, according to the means of com-
munication of the times, to march his retainers and men-at-arms
across the lands of the intervening neighbors who had no cause of
quarrel with either of the belligerent lords. The warring lords in
so doing were merely making use of the public highways. Gradually
there began to form, first in the west of Europe, by the grouping

" The expression, legal cases, should be recognized to mean questions
arising between nations which, while a cause of dispute between two or more
sovereign states, do not threaten by their solution in favor of one side or the
other, the independence or any vital interest of either party. The expression,
legal cases, furthermore, should be recognized to apply to all those cases
which do not affect the vital interests of the contesting nations, whether there
are or are not rules of the law of nations upon which the majority of the
great powers of the world are agreed, ready at hand to apply to such cases in
arriving at a judicial decision for their solution.

" The expression, political cases, should be recognized to mean questions
arising between states which, owing to the facts and interests involved in
those cases, do threaten, in any attempt to solve those questions by a judicial
decision, in the future to affect and alter either favorably or unfavorably the
political power and influence of one or more of the nations parties to the con-
troversy. The expression, political cases, furthermore, should be recognized
to apply to all those cases which do affect the vital interests of the contending
nations ; even though there may be rules of international law generally recog-
nized by the nations the application of which to those cases would decide
them strictly on legal grounds in favor of one side or the other."

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 271

of many fiefs, both small and large but speaking similar dialects or
patois, round one overlord, generally called a king, a new kind of
political organism. Based roughly upon a similarity of language
there began to grow up slowly at the expense of feudalism the
kingdoms of France, England, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, Branden-
burg, and various other political bodies which were the ancestors of
the modern European nations. In these newly forming political
organisms, the relation of the overlord to his vassals and their sub-
'1--^ ^^Ui-^A Tn I'nrlirprt allcffiancc of the sub-

CORRIGENDUM.

In Air. Thomas Willing Balch's paper in the current volume
of fhe Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Vol
i^V, for 1916) the two paragraphs in fine print at the boitom of
page 270 have been misplaced, they should have been printed at the
top of the page.

[Please tip in to face page 270]

eilLlLV KJL LllV, xv,^v^„.

ever growing power of the king or overlord. In that way the
modern nations of Europe were slowly formed.

6 xhe feudal relation introduced in England by Duke William of Nor-
mandy marked an important step forward towards the development of the
nations as they exist to-day. For William the Conqueror required from all
feudal vassals of every degree in England an allegiance to himself as king,
The difference in feudalism as thus established in England from the feudalism
developed in France and elsewhere on the continent may best be shown by the
difference in the French and the English feudal oaths which in substance were
as follows :

The French Feudal Oath.

On bended knee and with uncovered head I make myself thy man of life
and limb and earthly honour.

The English Feudal Oath.

On bended knee and with uncovered head I make myself thy man of life
and limb and earthly honour, saving my allegiance to my lord the King.

270 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

In any investigation of how far judicial settlements have and
can be successfully substituted for war in deciding the differences
arising between nations, it is necessary to look far back in the history
of ovir own period of civilization to examine the political changes
which gradually led to the formation of what we now call nations,
and also to scan carefully the attempts which have been made in the
past to mitigate the severity and curtail the area of war.

When feudalism had developed and extended throughout Europe,
the relations of man to man upon which feudalism \va<i hac^ri ^-

J. .IV, expression, legal cases, should be recognized to mean questions
arising between nations which, while a cause of dispute between two or more
sovereign states, do not threaten by their solution in favor of one side or the
other, the independence or any vital interest of either party. The expression,
legal cases, furthermore, should be recognized to apply to all those cases
which do not affect the vital interests of the contesting nations, whether there
are or are not rules of the law of nations upon which the majority of the
great powers of the world are agreed, ready at hand to apply to such cases in
arriving at a judicial decision for their solution.

" The expression, political cases, should be recognized to mean questions
arising between states which, owing to the facts and interests involved in
those cases, do threaten, in any attempt to solve those questions by a judicial
decision, in the future to affect and alter either favorably or unfavorably the
political power and influence of one or more of the nations parties to the con-
troversy. The expression, political cases, furthermore, should be recognized
to apply to all those cases which do affect the vital interests of the contending
nations; even though there may be rules of international law generally recog-
nized by the nations the application of which to those cases would decide
them strictly on legal grounds in favor of one side or the other."

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 271

of many fiefs, both small and large but speaking similar dialects or
patois, round one overlord, generally called a king, a new kind of
political organism. Based roughly upon a similarity of language
there began to grow up slowly at the expense of feudalism the
kingdoms of France, England, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, Branden-
burg, and various other political bodies which were the ancestors of
the modern European nations. In these newly forming political
organisms, the relation of the overlord to his vassals and their sub-
jects was not one that permitted an indirect allegiance of the sub-
jects of his vassals to the overlord as was the case in purely feudal
times. The Kings of France, of England,^ of Scotland, of Sweden,
of Denmark, the Electors of Saxony, of Bavaria, of Brandenburg,
the Grand Dukes of Nassau, of Baden, demanded and obtained more
and more a direct allegiance from all their subjects regardless of the
claims of the feudal nobility as middle men to interpose their claims
of sovereignty between their sovereign liege, the king, or elector,
or grand duke or as the case might be, and their own immediate
tenantry and personal men-at-arms. By degrees the political rela-
tions between all of the latter, whether men-at-arms or peasants,
and the king became as direct a personal relation as that between
the king and his immediate feudal vassals. Gradually the sovereign
entity of the feudal nobles disappeared and became merged in the
ever growing power of the king or overlord. In that way the
modern nations of Europe were slowly formed.

G The feudal relation introduced in England by Duke William of Nor-
mandy marked an important step forward towards the development of the
nations as they exist to-day. For William the Conqueror required from all
feudal vassals of every degree in England an allegiance to himself as king.
The difference in feudalism as thus established in England from the feudalism
developed in France and elsewhere on the continent may best be shown by the
difiference in the French and the English feudal oaths which in substance were
as follows :

The French Feudal Oath.

On bended knee and with uncovered head I make myself thy man of life
and limb and earthly honour.

The English Feudal Oath.

On bended knee and with uncovered head I make myself thy man of life
and limb and earthly honour, saving my allegiance to my lord the King.

272 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

Thus on some islands in the river Seine in the northern part of
modern France a settlement started which in time developed into the
city of Paris. The islands were chosen as a place of settlement
in the beginning because the water about them formed a natural
boulevard against attack. A line of fighting men gained the local
feudal lordship there ; and in the course of time they extended their
landed possessions to both banks of the river and then bit by bit in
all directions. From one of their number, Hugh Capet, though he
was not the first of his line to rule there, the family came to be
known as the Capetians. Then, as time passed, the territorial
domains of the Capetians and their Valois successors was extended
still farther, sometimes by conquest in war, sometimes by marriage.
It was by the marriage, for example, of three French kings, with
two successive heiresses of Britanny where the Salic Law did not
obtain, that the Celtic-speaking Duchy of Britanny was united to
the French crown and so politically to France.'^ Slowly but surely,
in spite of many checks caused by the English on the one side or
the Burgundians on the other, the territorial power of the Capetians
grew, until in time, they came to be looked on as kings of France
and head of a growing state. More and more the Capetians and
their Valois successors absorbed the sovereign power from the feudal
barons, whether large or small, about them, until by the time of the
peace of Westphalia, the French nation stood out as a clearly cut
and fairly harmonious unit.

Within the Germanic Empire by an apparently reverse process
the same result was attained. For within the Holy Roman Empire,
which Voltaire aptly said was " neither Holy, Roman, nor an
Empire," the great feudal vassals of the emperor, instead of having
their feudal sovereign rights gradually curtailed and absorbed by
merger in the sovereignty of their overlord, the emperor, as happened
in France for instance, on the contrary were able to increase their
own sovereign rights at the expense of the emperor, until he became
a mere shadow which came to an end in 1806 as a result of Na-

^ Charles the Eighth and Louis the Twelfth married in succession the
Duchess Anne ; and Frangois de Valois, who became Francis the First of
France, married Claude de France, Duchess of Brittany. The son of this last
pair, Henry the Second, became botli King of France and Duke of Brittany.

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 273

poleon's victorious career. The gradual crumbling away of the
Germanic emperor's sovereignty was doubtless due to the fact that
he was an elective and not a hereditary prince as was the case with
the kings of France and England, for example. As a result within
the Germanic Empire there grew up among the welter of small
feudal princelings the powerful political units of Hanover, Saxony,
Bavaria and Brandenburg, to name only the more important of the
developing German states.

Whether in the west, or the center of Europe, however, the im-
portance of relatively small potentates gradually vanished before the
rise of the new order of political entities, such as France and
England and Brandenburg. As a result, questions began to arise
between these more powerful political organisms, while the ques-
tions growing out of the relations of individuals to one another fell
more into the background with an ever-growing tendency to
disappear.

For it was not to the interest of the king or elector or however
the supreme overlord of the new order of political organisms might
be called, to have their vassals, whether great or small, quarreling
and fighting. A continual warfare among the vassals and subjects
of the overlord meant an impairment of their sources of revenue and
a corresponding loss of power and influence in dealing with their
equals about them. And as a consequence the new supreme sover-
eigns sought by every means in their power to curb the carrying on
of private war by their barons. As this war of individuals was
gradually suppressed, until to-day in any well-administered state it
does not prevail, war began, however, to occur between the newly
developing states. As humanity in western and central Europe was
delivered gradually of the curse of private war by the growth of the
institution of the kingly power, as personified in the royal courts
backed up by the police power of the king, there grew up, however,
in place of the disappearing strife between individuals, war between
the newly forming nations. The rising power of the kings and their
like had rescued the European peoples from the continual state of
armed peace and war which thrived under the feudal regime. But
with the rise of the new nations, for private war there was sub-

274 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

stituted war between the new order of sovereigns. Towards the end
of the sixteenth century, GentiHs wrote in the "De jure belH " :
" Bellurn est piiblicorum armorum iusta contentio." Which may be
rendered into EngHsh, as follows, " War is a just contention of the
public force. "^ And from this same curse of war in a new form the
peoples strove to find deliverance.

During the Middle Ages and indeed until fairly recent times,
the authors of the various plans, often more or less fantastic,
advanced to do away with war and maintain peace between the
nations, aimed to accomplish their object by one stroke of states-
manship. Humanity did not realize that changes in the social
structure of the peoples can only be accomplished slowly and with
the passage of much historic time. While none of the plans to
change the world at once into an unarmed camp of peace succeeded,
nevertheless, some minor points of difference arising between the
new order of sovereigns that emerged from feudalism, as feudalism
gradually gave way before nationalism, were referred for settlement
to some kind or other form of arbitration. And when the young
republic of the New World entered into the membership of the
family of nations much impetus was given to the application of
international arbitration as a way of settling international difficulties.
Still wars occurred to devastate now this, now that land. The
eagerness of humanity in the nineteenth century to rid itself of the
curse of war and all its accompanying hardships and miseries was
abundantly attested by the enthusiasm with which it greeted the
official prominence given to mediation, as a means of reconciling
rival nations, by the congress of the leading powers of Europe held
at Paris in 1856. But as time passed, it was realized that mediation
could not blot out war between nations. Then came the trial of the
Alabama claims before the Geneva Tribunal in 1871-72. That
epoch-marking event, coming just after a bitter and costly war
between two of the leading powers of the world, gave new hope to
a world that dreaded war and all its attending sufferings and evils.

s Alberici Gentilis, I. C. Professoris Regii, " De Ivre Belli, Libri III.
Nunc primum in lucem editi. Ad illvstrissimvm Comitem Essexiae, Hanovise,
apud Hasredes Guilielmi Antonii MDCXII.," book one, chapter II., entitled,
" Belli definito," page 17. The above reference is to the third edition. The
first edition was published in London in 1598.

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 975

And when the Bering Sea Fur Seal case was carried in 1893 to an
international court named ad hoc for judicial settlement, and that
case was followed a few years afterward by the submission, thanks
largely to President Cleveland, of the Venezula-British Guiana
boundary to another international tribunal constituted likewise ad
hoc, the hopes of humanity in the gradual abolition of war rose, and
those hopes rose still higher with the assembling at the call of the
Emperor Nicholas the Second of the First Hague Peace Confer-
ence asking for the limitation of armaments, although that was not a
fruit of the labors of the conference.

The more that the subject of peace and war among nations is
examined, in the light of past and present events, the more apparent
it becomes that new forces must be developed to induce nations to
be willing to submit their causes of difference which diplomatic
means cannot solve to an international tribunal for solution. The
great dread of the loss and suft'ering brought on by war is sufficient
to induce nations in most cases where matters are involved that do
not affect their power and strength in the world to agree with their
rivals to submit such cases to some sort of international tribunals
for decision. But the dread of war is not sufficient to cause nations
to agree to seek a judicial solution concerning those questions which
do affect the future place and power in the world of nations. In
other words in cases of dispute involving the "place in the sun"
of nations it is hopeless, where it is uncertain which side is the
stronger, to hope for a submission of such cases to international
tribunals. International tribunals in their relations to nations have
not the compelling power behind them, as municipal courts have in
their relations to individuals, to force nations to appear at their
bar and abide by their judgments. In the present order of things
in the world, nations only take cases to international tribunals which
they are willing to submit to such courts ; there is as yet no force
devised to compel nations to appear before such tribunals as count-
less numbers of individuals are made to appear almost any day in
the municipal courts.

In such questions of difference, as resulted in the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870-71, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the

276 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

South African War of 1899-1902, the Russo-Japanese War of
1 902-1905, and the present Great War, it would have been useless
for any tribunal to have attempted to settle the controversy on the
basis of jural rules. The underlying cause of trouble in each of
those cases did not involve merely matters which would not affect
the future political development and power of the contestants at
the council board of the nations of Europe, no matter how the
matters in dispute were decided. On the contrary, the cause of
strife in each case was because each side wished to possess some-
thing which they could not both have, but upon the possession of
which, according to the way the question of difference was solved,
whether by arms or jural means, the future influence among the
members of the .family of nations of the rival contestants would
be enhanced or lowered.

To build up some sort of international organism which will
at all times maintain peace between nations will require much time
and effort. Yet something already has been done towards the
realization of that object. The machinery necessary to permit
judicial settlements to replace wars has been developed. Doubtless
it can be perfected still further. But that is not, however, the
weak point in the eft'ort, now many centuries old, to maintain peace
and avoid the curse of war. The real difficulty is how to induce
nations to submit all their differences to some sort or other of
international tribunals. Consequently, in order to eliminate war
between nations as much as possible, one of the important objects
to aim at at present is not so much to try to perfect the judicial
machinery for deciding disputes between nations, but rather to
do away as much as possible with the things that produce war.
In other words, to so change the status of certain relations between
nations that the desire to resort to war in order to obtain some-
thing will be done away with.

One necessary step to this end of world peace, provided that it
is an attainable thing, would be to remove from the world of what
may be called some of the hardships that press on certain nations.
So far as possible this should be done upon the principle of an
equitable quid pro quo. An example of that sort of thing was the

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 277

world wide territorial rearrangement concluded in 1904 by France
and Great Britain. By that arrangement each of those two powers
gave up to the other some territory to rectify their frontiers or im-
portant privileges in exchange for something elsewhere of equiva-
lent value. In that way the causes of possible clash in the future
between them were reduced to a minimum.

In the same way, looking to the present and the future, the
United States, for example, could arrange to give Canada one or
two, possibly more franc ports along the x\laskan lisicrc in ex-
change for some other privilege, so that merchandise going into or
out of the Dominion would be assured at all times of passage to or
from Canada through the Alaskan lisicre without any vexations or
delays arising from our customs.

Or even the United States might give to Canada in exchange for
the Island of Campobello, a narrow strip of land leading down to
one of the fiords which advance into the lisicre so that a Canadian
railroad could be built to tide water with sufficient space upon the
shore to allow a commercial port to be developed.

Another problem which calls in the interest of peace for a wise
solution is the need of the great Russian Empire for a port which
is never locked up with ice.

It has been suggested that a neutralization of the ocean trade
routes of the world would make for the maintenance of peace
among the nations. Then, of course, there naturally arises the ques-
tion how shall that neutralization be maintained? In other words,
if the nations agree to neutralize the ocean trade routes, how can
that agreement be upheld in times of war?

A rearrangement or reconstruction of the status quo between
individual nations, however, while helping to make more secure in
given cases the peace of nations, would not of itself go very far
in eliminating the desire for war between all nations. Something
additional is necessary if any serious hope of securing world peace
is to be looked for.

One solution of how to maintain peace in the world would be
a return to the state of things which did actually occur in the latter
part of the period of civilization immediately preceding our own
civilization, when the Roman state gained dominion for a consider-

278 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

able period of historic time over practically the whole known world,
and for that period of time extended the benefits of the Pax Romana
to the many kinds of peoples living within the frontiers of the empire.
The Roman law did much to bring peace to the world. But the
Pax Romana was extended, it must not be forgotten, by force of
arms and was maintained only so long as the Roman legions were
able to uphold the power of the empire and prevent the barbarians of
the outside unknown world from breaking through the Roman
frontiers. And when that force of arms ultimately was no longer
sufficient to restrain the rising tide of humanity outside of the
empire, the Roman law was swept away with the fabric of the empire
and in its place for several centuries chaos reigned.

The conquest of the world, however, by one power as a means
of obtaining peace among the nations, is asking all nations, con-
queror and conquered alike, to pay a high price. In our own period
of civilization persistent efforts have been made to find some other
way to do away with the arbitrament of war between nations. And
the most generally talked of way in recent years of eradicating war
from human affairs seems to be the formation of a world federation.
The thought of the formation of a world state superimposed on the
present members of the family of nations is not at all a new idea,
though some of those who to-day are pressing it forward as the
magic wand which will free a suffering world from the dread and
cost of future war when the present conflagration has burnt itself
out, seem in perfect good faith to believe that it is an idea developed
in our own day and generation. That this is not so can be easily
seen by any one who will look up what Henry Quatre and the Due
de Sully, Cruce, Penn, the Abbe Saint Pierre, Kant, Lorimer, and
other publicists have said on that subject.

As far back as the year 1623, indeed, fimeric Cruce, a French-
man, propounded in an embryonic form a league to enforce peace by
assembling at Venice a congress of ambassadors to sit permanently
with the mission of settling cases of difference between sovereigns
and with the backing of the combined forces of all the powers repre-
sented.^ This was really a forerunner of the movement to develop

9 Thomas Willing Balcli, " Le Nouveau Cynee de fimeric Cruce," Paris,
1623, Philadelphia, 1909, page loi, et seq.

AND THE RECURRENCE OF WAR. 279

an international force to insure peace among the nations which was
launched last year here in Philadelphia in our old Pennsylvania State
House, only a stone's throw across the square from this hall. That
League to Enforce Peace was organized on June i6 and ly last.^°
The most important object of the league in its purpose to form a
league among the nations for the preservation of peace is described
in a brief paragraph as follows :

"The signatory powers shall jointly use forthwith both their
economic and military forces against any one of their number that
goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the
signatories before any question arising shall be submitted " either to
an international judicial tribunal or to a council of conciliation.

The idea of the league embodied in the above resolution is not to
form a league to make war in order to maintain the peace of nations
upon a power not a member of the league, but merely to restrain a
member of the league from attacking another member state without
first having submitted legal cases of quarrel to an international court
or political disputes to a council of mediation. That proposal is a
first step, if it can be carried successfully into effect, towards the
formation of either a World Federation, or at least a federation of
a great part of the world. The difficulties in the way are enormous.
Nevertheless, C'est le premier pas qui coute, the bishop told the
King of Paris when the latter was thinking of adding by conquest
to his domain the little town of Saint Denis a few miles to the north
of Paris. Perhaps the step taken in the historic Colonial State
House of Pennsylvania last June, may possibly be the first step
towards the formation of a great international force that will up-
hold the peace of nations.

As upon the ending of the present Great War, a great deal will
possibly be heard of substituting international justice for inter-
national war in settling the differences of nations, and indeed already
much has been said on that subject in the Americas since the war
began, it will be well not to forget the stern realities that the world
must face in seeking to accomplish such a beneficient object.

A study of the history of the world, more especially since the

^° " League to Enforce Peace," printed by the League to Enforce Peace,
Fifth Avenue, New York, 191 5.

280 BALCH— INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS

conclusion of the peace of Westphalia and including the course of
the present war, would seem to show that while it would be well
to do everything possible to avoid war by a recourse to international
courts in all possible cases, and much can be done to promote that
laudable object, still it is well also to remember that the Creator has
ordained our world in such a way that force of some kind, sooner or
later, is at the hack of all social evolution. You may hold back the
laws of nature for a time and even in a way deflect them from their
course, but ultimately those laws will prevail and one of those laws
of nature is the law of force. And a great and important reason
for not forgetting at the present time the realities that the world
must face in the effort to do away with war as far as possible, is
that just as the Thirty Year's War helped the passing away of
feudalism before the incoming new era of nationalism, so it is pos-
sible that the Great War will mark a change no less important from
nationalism to a new order of things in the world.

It may be said of the questions of disagreement which arise be-
tween the members of the family of nations, that, owing to the
realization more and more each year by the peoples of the world of
the benefits derived from the interplay of commercial interests be-
tween nations, as well as the appreciation that war to-day through
its great destruction of wealth and life penalizes victors as well as
conquerors, there has grown up an invisible, perhaps one might say
an intangible force to induce nations to settle most of their legal
differences by an appeal to international tribunals. For when inter-
national cases can be settled by an appeal to jural rules upon the
basis of justice without hurting or endangering the future power in
the world of a nation, the peoples have been contented to see their
governments invoke international tribunals to decide between the
nations. But as yet there has not developed a sufficient force of any
sort to induce or compel nations to submit all their political differ-
ences to judicial settlement for solution. And so it leaves us face
to face with a momentous problem : How will humanity devise a force
sufficiently strong to cause nations to settle all their differences
without an appeal to war, or in other words, how will the nations
transform the present political cases into legal cases?

OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF
CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS.

By WILLIAM H. FURNESS, 30., A.B, M.D.
(Read April 13, igi6.)

\\ hen in the course of un-human events some years ago in
Borneo, I became acquainted with several members of the genus
Wild-man that made the island famous, I was possessed with the
idea that with constant human companionship and surroundings at
an early age, these anthropoid apes — the orang-utan (which of
course you know is a Malay name meaning Wild-man or Man of
the Jungle ) — were capable of being developed to a grade of human
understanding perhaps only a step below the level of the most primi-
tive type of human being inhabiting the island — I mean the wander-
ing tribe of Punans. If deaf, dumb and blind children have been
taught by beings they could not see to use language they could not
hear would one not be justified in an earnest endeavor to teach the
higher apes with faculties and senses alert and with traditional
powers of imitation, to do the same to a limited degree? It seems
well nigh incredible that in animals otherwise so close to us phys-
ically there should not be a rudimentary speech center in the brain
which only needed development. I have made an earnest endeavor
and am still endeavoring, but I cannot say that I am encouraged.

I took as my pupils, or patients, whichever it may please you to
consider them, the orang-utan of Borneo and the chimpanzee of
Africa. The other anthropoids, the gibbon and the gorilla, are ex-
ceedingly difficult to keep in captivity ; the gibbon is very frail and
the gorilla, animal dealers declare, soon succumbs to homesickness.

My first orang-utan I obtained in February, 1909, in South
Borneo, when it was, as well as I could estimate, about one year
old ; it still had all its milk, teeth. It had been in captivity only a
week and yet it was as docile as a human baby and never attempted

281

282 FURNESS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF

to bite. It survived four years and eight months. I obtained
another orang in 191 1, which Hved two and a half years in captivity,
but although gentle and affectionate it absolutely refused to be
educated.

Two chimpanzees, each about a year old, absolutely untrained,
I bought from Cross, the animal dealer, in Liverpool in the autumn
of 1909. The first one died of pneumonia at the end of five months
when her intellect, which showed great promise, was just awaken-
ing. The second, which was imported for Dr. Witmer, spent her
first months in this country at his laboratory of psychology at the
university. After a severe attack of pneumonia she came out to my
place to convalesce in company with my orang-utans ; she has been
with me ever since and is the sole survivor of my four pupils. (I
mention these dry facts merely to indicate the material I have
worked with, the approximate ages of my pupils and the somewhat
limited extent of my experience. Frequently for weeks at a time
I have spent as much as six hours a day in their company, but this
is not one hundredth part enough.)

In teaching articulate speech I found the first difficulty to be
overcome in both the orang and the chimpanzee is their lack of use
of lips or tongue in making their natural emotional cries. These
natural cries are almost entirely, I think I may say, head tones —
shrieks, squeals, or grunts, made for the greater part on inspiration.
They unquestionably have, however, distinctly different sounds to
indicate their simple emotions of fear, anger and joy. The orang in
one respect does use the lips, to make a sound indicating warning or
apprehension ; this sound is made with the lips pursed up and the
air sucked through them — an exaggerated and prolonged kissing
sound, followed by a grunting expiration and inspiration. Strange
to say, the chimpanzee seems to appreciate on hearing this sound
that danger is near, although it never makes this sound itself. When
uttering this warning, the hair of the head and shoulders bristles
up, but there is no showing of teeth or other signs of aggression.
My oldest orang would make this sound on command (I had merely
to say " What is the funny sound you make when you are fright-
ened?"). Their expression of pleasure, as I have heard it, is
several high-pitched squeaks made with the lips closed. Their ex-

CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS. 283

clamation of anger is a deep toned guttural grunt or bark much like
that of an angry hog-; I have heard this from the young orang-utan
and from the full-grown just recently captured.

The chimpanzee indication of fear is a quick, high-pitched shriek
and a bark very like a dog. The exclamation of joy is really much
like laughter. The mouth is opened wide and the sound made is a
long drawn ah-a-a, with a rising inflection, this is followed by three
or four short, quick Ahs. A sound of greeting and friendliness is a
series of 00s made by rapid expiration and inspiration, and with
lips protruded, merely for the projection of the sound. My chim-
panzee when greeting friends at a distance amplifies this sound into
more or less of a shout of long-drawn high-pitched notes, which
when once started, apparently, must be kept up to a logical conclu-
sion ; I have been impelled on many occasions to put my hand over
her mouth to subdue the noise but the shout will still continue forced
through my fingers while she looks up at me compassionately as one
having no ear for melody. Contentment over food seems to be
expressed by grunts very much like a young pig.

If these animals have a language it is restricted to a very few
sounds of a general emotional signification. Articulate speech they
have none and communication with one another is accomplished by
vocal sounds to no greater extent than it is by dogs, with a growl,
a whine, or a bark. They are, however, capable to a surprising
degree of acquiring an understanding of human speech.

In the case of the orang-utan it took at least six months of daily
training to teach her to say " Papa." This word was selected not
only because it is a very primitive sound, but also because it com-
bined two elements of vocalization to which orang-utans and chim-
panzees are, as I have said, unaccustomed, namely : the use of lips
and an expired vowel sound. The training consisted of a repetition
of the sounds for minutes at a time, while the ape's lips were
brought together and opened in imitation of the movements of my
lips. I also went through these same maneuvers facing a mirror
with her face close to mine that she might see what her lips were
to do as well as feel the movement of them. At the end of about
six months, one day of her own accord, out of lesson time, she said
" Papa " quite distinctly and repeated it on command. Of course, I

284 FURNESS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF

praised and petted her enthusiastically ; she never forgot it after
that and finally recognized it as my name. When asked " Where is
Papa?" she would at once point to me or pat me on the shoulder.
One warm summer's day I carried her in my arms into a swimming
pool ; she was alarmed at first but when the water came up to her
legs she was panic stricken ; she clung with her arms about my neck ;
kissed me again and again and kept saying " Papa ! Papa ! Papa ! "
Of course, I went no further after that pathetic appeal.

The next word I attempted to teach her to say was " cup." (Let
me say that by this time she understood almost everything that it
was necessary for me to say such as " Open your mouth," " Stick
out your tongue," " Do this," etc., and she was perfectly gentle and
occasionally seemed quite interested.) The first move in teaching
her to say cup was to push her tongue back in her throat as if she
were to make the sound "ka." This was done by means of a bone
spatula with which I pressed lightly on the center of her tongue.
When I saw that she had taken a full breath I placed my finger
over her nose to make her try to breathe through her mouth. The
spatula was then quickly withdrawn and inevitably she made the
sound " ka." All the while facing her I held my mouth open with my
tongue in the same position as hers so that her observation, curiosity,
and powers of imitation might aid her, and I said ka with her
emphatically as I released her tongue. After several lessons of,
perhaps, fifteen minutes of this sort of training each day she would
draw back her tongue to the position even before the spatula had
touched it, but she would not say ka unless I placed my finger over
her nose. The next advance was that she herself placed my finger
over her nose and then said ka without any use of the spatula ; then
she found that in default of my finger her own would answer the
purpose and I could get her to make this sound any time I asked her
to. It was comparatively very easy from this to teach her to say
" kap " by means of closing her lips with my fingers the instant she
said ka. At the same time I showed her the cup that she drank
out of and I repeated the word several times as I touched it to her
lips. After a few lessons when I showed her the cup and asked
" What is this ? " she would say cup very plainly. Once when ill at
night she leaned out of her hammock and said " cup, cup, cup,"

CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS. 285

which I naturally understood to mean that she was thirsty and which
proved to be the case. I think this showed fairly conclusively that
there was a glimmering idea of the connection of the word with
the object and with her desire.

By getting her to stick out her tongue and then by holding the
tip of it up against her teeth and at the same time forcing her to
breathe through her mouth I finally got her to make the sound Th.
This was preliminary to teaching the words : the, this, that.

All this was encouraging I will admit but then — " I never nursed
a dear gazelle . . . ," etc. ; the poor little animal died four or five
months after this first tiny inkling of language. I have tried per-
sistently for five years to teach my surviving chimpanzee pupil to
say " mama " ; she says it, but very poorly. I think I must honestly
say it is a failure. Again and again I have tried by the same
method that I used with the orang-utan to teach her to say cup, but
to no avail. On the whole I should say that the orang holds out
more promise as a conversationalist than does the chimpanzee ; it
is more patient, less excitable, and seems to take instruction more
kindly.

As to a comprehension of the connection of spoken words with
objects and actions both the orang-utan and chimpanzee, I think,
exceed any of our domestic animals ; both of my anthropoids have
been able to understand what is said to them, more intelligently
than any professionally trained animals I have ever seen. In their
education the enticement of food has never been used as an incen-
tive to actions, and praise and petting have been the only rewards.
In other words my object has been to endeavor to make them show
signs of thought rather than a perfunctory performance of tricks.
The very hardest thing that I have had to contend with is inatten-
tion and lack of persistence. The slightest sound is enough to
divert their minds entirely unless they are deeply interested.

Both the chimpanzee and the orang-utan possess a retentive
memory for objects in connection with actions, in other words, for
the association of ideas ; they knew precisely the right key for every
lock and padlock in their apartments and could pick them out of a
bunch of ten or twelve other keys and could unfasten the lock. It
was the shape and size of the key that they remembered, I am con-

286 FURNESS: OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF

vinced ; they were tested with dupHcate keys placed on different key
rings and the right key was always selected — two of the keys were
for Yale locks and hard to distinguish. On one occasion when I
took Mimi, the chimpanzee, as a demonstration to one of the classes
in psychology at the university she surveyed the audience assembling,
possibly 125 m.en and women, with great interest while sitting
quietly in a chair in the amphitheatre ; as a group of four or five
people entered at a door on the side, she turned her eyes toward
them. In the group was one who had been her devoted doctor and
nurse during her severe attack of pneumonia four years previously.
She had not seen him since her recovery. The instant she caught
sight of him she jumped from her chair, rushed to him, threw her
arms around his neck, putting her face close to his and giving her
shout of greeting. It was too marked a demonstration of aft'ection
to be anything short of actual recognition. There are, however, as
we all know, many instances of quite as remarkable feats of memory
as this among dogs and horses and possibly cats.

After an absence of six months I have found that my apes have
forgotten nothing that I have taught them, although during my ab-
sence their course of instruction ceased entirely and they refused
to do for others what I had taught them. Both the orang-utan and
the chimpanzee have been able to learn the letters of the alphabet in
order up to M. This is merely a demonstration of memory for dif-
ferent shapes in a certain sequence ; the letters which I used are cut
out of wood ^ inch thick by four inches square. The chimpanzee
recollects quite accurately just the sequence of these shapes in the
series. By name she does not distinguish them as well, except where
the letter sound is very distinct : B, F, H, L, M, seem to be easy for
her to recognize whereas A, K, E, D, C, G, are confusing. When
asked for the letter / she is apt to mistake it for her eye to which she
points. When the letters are drawn the same size and width with
chalk on a blackboard or printed in black on white cards she fails
to recognize them. To test her ability to compare shape and size I
have used an ordinary form-board consisting of ten differently
shaped blocks about half an inch thick and a board wherein are cut
ten hollows corresponding in size and shape to the blocks. The
hollows are about ^ inch deep and to make them more easily seen

CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS. 287

are painted black inside. The trial consists of placing quickly all
the blocks in their corresponding hollows. The actual time required
by an adult human being is about twenty seconds. It is strange
that with so quick a memory for the shapes of the letters and the
keys she should find so much difficulty in mastering the form-board.
After hundreds of trials she is never certain to get all ten blocks
in place without considerable hesitation and one or two misfits. The
more elaborate they are in shape the easier it appears to be for her
to place them ; the five point star is almost always her first selection
from the pile and seldom does she hesitate over it ; the equilateral
cross is likewise readily placed, but the simple square, the oblong and
the lozenge are invariably shifted from one hole to another all over
the board. The shortest time in which she has placed them all
correctly, so far, is 35 seconds ; and the very next trial may have
taken 2^ minutes.

I do not wish to generalize, but from my experience with a very
bright chimpanzee and an exceptionally receptive orang-utan I
should say that the ability to recognize the significance of graphic
representation is as lacking in the anthropoid mind as is the inclina-
tion to speak. The crudest scrawls of the cave dwellers are hun-
dreds of centuries ahead of the simian thought. I have spent hours
trying to get my anthropoids to draw two crossed lines on a black-
board. If the board be placed lying flat on the floor in front of
them they will draw horizontal lines with the swing of the arm. if
the board be placed upright they draw nearly perpendicular lines
merely as the weight of the arm carries the chalk down. With
pencil and paper they make nothing but scrawling zig-zags with no
method in their madness, and no amount of copy set or guiding of
their hands will induce them to do otherwise. They have, however,
a decided sense of color. Both of them have been taught to know
red, blue and yellow by name and the chimpanzee can select and
place in separate piles blocks colored violet, blue, green, yellow,
orange and red.

In testing their color sense I tried first with a red, a blue and a
yellow block and a board whereon were painted squares of the same
colors a little larger than the blocks ; I showed them over and over
again what I wanted them to do and saying the names of the colors

288 FURNESS : OBSERVATIONS ON THE MENTALITY OF

as I placed the blocks on the squares correspondingly colored.
Then a block was given to them and they were expected to place
it correctly, but it never was done in a way to convince me that they
recognized the color. Next they were tested with pieces of ribbon
of exactly the same length and width and luster; I endeavored to
get them to select and hand to me the color that I asked for. For
a month or more I thought that they knew the colors, but to make
sure I placed the ribbons in another room and told one of the apes
to go and bring me one of the colors, and while she was getting it I
kept repeating the name of the color so that she should not forget.
This was a complete failure, again and again. They evidently had
been reading my expression and the direction of my eyes, when,
sitting opposite to them, unconsciously, I followed the direction of
their hesitating hands with a glance of approval or disapproval.
This was really very observant on their part, but not to the point.
They were completely at a loss when I closed my eyes and held
out my hand to receive the color that I had asked for.

This did not prove, however, that they could not recognize the
different colors ; merely that they did not know them by name. The
next trial therefore was with 24 blocks, 8 red, 8 blue, 8 yellow ; all
scattered over the table. One color was called for by name and if
that was selected rightly then all the others of that color must be
picked out and placed in my hand. I would never accept a wrong
color, but would either close my hand or snap it out of their fingers ;
the lesson would not stop until all the eight blocks of each color had
been rightly selected, so they gradually learned that a quick selection
of right colors meant a speedy release to play. In this manner also
they learned the names of the colors as applied to blocks, but if other
red, blue and yellow objects such as ribbons were placed among the
blocks I could never get the apes to consider them in the same
category as the blocks merely because they were of the same color.
When the chimpanzee knew the three colors distinctly both by name
and by sight a new set of twenty-four was given to her, but this time
there were four each of violet, blue, green, yellow, orange and red.
It was decidedly unexpected to find that she readily appreciated the
difference of these new tints and at the end of the first lesson was
able to build up all the blocks in separate colors, although the tone

CHIMPANZEES AND ORANG-UTANS. 289

of coloring of the green and the blue, and the yellow and the orange
were very much the same. My chimpanzee, at least, has an appre-
ciation of color distinct from tone.

Actions which on first thought would seem to require almost
human intelligence such as stringing beads, threading a needle, using
a spoon, or a fork, drinking out of a cup, washing the hands, etc.,
our anthropoid cousins seem to accomplish with great facility.
Possibly these are but slight modifications of instinctive actions of
use in the pursuit of food, or to satisfy a natural curiosity. A twig
or a stick may be poked into a hole to pry out a grub or the kernel
of a nut, a drink of water out of the hollow of a leaf is like drinking
from a cup; sticky juice of fruit on their hands they naturally find
may be counteracted by a good rubbing in sand or water, therefore,
I do not think that such actions demonstrate any marked degree of
mentality. But tying a knot in which three or four different motions
were required and where no object other than the formation of a
knot was attained, required long and persistent instruction. The
knot was tied hundreds of times while the ape was apparently
closely observing every action and then her hands were put through
the motions but yet she would only twist one end of the rope round
the other when left to herself. Simple actions such as digging with
a spade, or trowel, scrubbing, sweeping, screwing in a screw she
learned entirely by imitation.

I am eager to be able to say truthfully that my anthropoids have
showed signs of reasoning (I mean have deduced an inference from
certain premises), but truthfully I can say that I have seen only the
faintest rays of evidence, unless association of ideas which in point
of fact 'is merely learning by experience, is reasoning. The chim-
panzee if given the key to the closet in her room will fit it in the
lock, turn it in the right direction, slip back the little spring catch,
open the door, get the top of the spigot which is kept there to avoid
a waste of water, fit the top of the spigot, get a drink of water and
finally turn the water off'. It appears as if in this act there were a
sequence of ideas concerted to accomplish a purpose and therefore
to a certain extent there were reasoning. I am inclined to think,
however, that such an act with the chimpanzee is governed by a
simple succession of ideas rather than by a pre-arranged sequence

290 FURNESS : THE MENTALITY OF CHIMPANZEES.

of actions, with a definite object in view. It would seem that the
inabiHty to compare one object with another or one action with
another preckides their mind from either deductive or inductive
reasoning, and that their brains are as incapable of reasoning as
we do, as a dog's paw (for instance) is incapable of holding a pen as
we do. They undoubtedly can be taught, owing to their physical
resemblance, to imitate human actions to a remarkable degree, but
their highest notch of mentality after four or five years of training
is hardly comparable to that of a human child of a year and a half.
Rev. Sydney Smith in the introduction to one of his lectures on
moral philosophy says :

" There may, perhaps, be more of rashness and ill-fated security in my
opinion, than of magnanimity or liberality; but I confess I feel myself so
much at my ease about the superiority of mankind — I have such a marked and
decided contempt for the understanding of every baboon I have yet seen — I
feel so sure that the blue ape without a tail will never rival us in poetry,
painting and music — that I see no reason whatever, why justice may not be
done to the few fragments of soul and tatters of understanding which they
may really possess. I have sometimes, perhaps, felt a little uneasy at Exeter
'Change from contrasting the monkeys with the 'prentice boys who are teas-
ing them ; but a few pages of Locke, or a few lines of Milton, have always
restored me to tranquility."

I regret that I am forced to admit, after my several years ob-
servation of the anthropoid apes, that I can produce no evidence that
might disturb the tranquil sleep of the reverend gentleman.

Wallingford, Pa.,
April, 1916.

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CONTENTS

I'AGE

Symposium on International Law: Its Origin, Obligation, and Future.

I. Outline. By John Bassett Moore 291

n. The Judicial Aspect of International Law — Arbitration.

By Charlemagne Tower 7 297

in. Legislative Aspects. By George Grafton Wilson . . . 305

IV. International Administration. By Philip Marshall Brown 312

V. World Organization. By David Jayne Hill 322

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iUN IG 1916

SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW: ITS ORIGIN,
OBLIGATION, AND FUTURE.

{Read April 15, 1916.)
I.

OUTLINE.

By JOHN BASSETT MOORE, LL.D.

I. Origin. — International law, like all other kinds of law,
originated in the necessities of intercourse between human beings.
Just as rules developed for the regulation of life within individual
groups, so, as groups became permanent and were transformed into
states, rules developed for the regulation of their intercourse with
one another. The system thus gradually formed was not artificial
in any sense other than that in which all legal systems are artificial.
Regulation is just as essential to the relations between groups of
men as it is to the relations between individual men.

In spite of the fact that it was formerly the fashion of writers
to say that the law of nations, or international law, was altogether of
modern origin, the recent researches of scholars have tended more
and more to disclose the existence of well-defined rules for the
regulation of international intercourse among the ancients. There
existed, for example, among the Greeks and the Romans, a large
body of customary law governing their intercourse with aliens and
with alien states. Among the Greek states themselves, there was a
large body of usages in accordance with which their relations were
conducted. The judicial settlement of disputes between them, by
means of arbitration, was carried to a very high point and was at-
tended with a large measure of success. Within the past twenty
years, much light has been thrown on this subject by the study of
inscriptions, which has conclusively demonstrated as clear and pre-
cise an application of the judicial method to the settlement of dis-

291

292 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

putes between the independent Greek states, as has been made to the
settlement of disputes between nations in recent times.

These things I particularize for the purpose of emphasizing the
point that all law, so called, whether national or international, grows
out of the necessities of human intercourse. We commit a funda-
mental error in thinking of any system of law as an artificial
creation.

II. Obligation. — It was altogether in harmony with the view
above expressed that Grotius and other so-called founders of the
modern system of international law regarded its acceptance as a
fundamental condition of the admission of a state to its benefits.
By these writers the system was regarded as having had its origin
among the Christian states of Europe, and non-Christian states
were admitted to its benefits only to a limited extent. In course of
time, this conception ceased to be sufficiently comprehensive. By the
Treaty of Paris of 1856, Turkey was expressly declared to be
admitted to the benefits of the public law and concert of Europe.
Subsequently, certain states of the Far East, beginning with Japan,
expressly assented to the system and were duly recognized as par-
ticipants in it.

But, so far as obligation is concerned, it matters not whether the
system was tacitly accepted or expressly adopted. In both cases,
the obligation is the same.

It is necessary, however, to observe the distinction between
obligation and enforcement — between the duty to observe a certain
rule and the power to compel its observance. The failure to make
this distinction constantly produces confusion. We know, as a
matter of fact, that, in the attempts to enforce municipal law, a
failure of justice often takes place. The skill of an attorney or the
bias of a juror may, and no doubt often does, result in the acquittal
of a guilty defendant, and yet it does not occur to anyone to say
that, because the defendant thus escaped the punishment which he
should have been obliged to undergo, the duty of obedience to the
law did not in his case exist. Such a suggestion w^e should regard
as absurd. Nevertheless, we daily hear the allegation that there is
no such thing as international law, because, forsooth, some nation
has violated, or is said to have violated, an acknowledged rule.

MOORE— OUTLINE. 293

There is as little reason for the assertion in the one case as in the
other.

III. The Future. — Since the great conflict in Europe began,
the days have perhaps been rare on which the teacher or student of
international law has not been greeted with the profound remark
that there is no such thing as international law, or that international
law has come to an end. As there are comparatively few persons
who have deeply studied international law, it should not seem to
be ungracious to say that such remarks betray a want of informa-
tion, or at any rate of reflection. The rules of international law
are by no means so indefinite or uncertain as they are often sup-
posed to be, or as interested persons often seek to make them appear
to be ; nor is their observance by any means so casual as is sometimes
imagined. It would be difficult to find in international law an
example of uncertainty greater than that which attended the in-
terpretation and enforcement of the so-called Sherman Anti-Trust
Law, which, after twenty years of strenuous controversy, was left
to be interpreted according to the " rule of reason." Nor is inter-
national law in ordinary times badly observed. It is, in fact, usually
well enforced ; and any differences in regard to its interpretation
and enforcement are, except in matters of a political nature, com-
monly left to international tribunals for determination, in connection
with individual claims.

The present misconception in regard to international law is
largely due to the tacit but unfounded assumption that municipal
law is well enforced in time of war. Precisely the contrary is the
fact. There is indeed an ancient maxim of the common law, to the
effect that in the midst of arms the laws are silent — Inter arma silent
leges. This maxim was not a creation of the fancy, but was merely
an expression of the results of experience. Law never has been
and never will be found in a flourishing condition between firing
lines. War itself means that the reign of law has been superseded
by a contention by force. During war the ordinary law is con-
stantly superseded by martial law, which has been defined as the
" will of the commander-in-chief " ; and while this does not mean an
unregulated will, or mere caprice, it does signify the supplanting of
the system by which rights are ordinarily regulated and enforced.

294 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

The fact is not today generally appreciated that the fundamental
guarantees of personal liberty were set aside in the United States
during the Civil War, and that the people lived under a military
dictatorship. A benevolent dictatorship it may have been and no
doubt generally was, but it was nevertheless a dictatorship. When,
soon after the outbreak of the war, a citizen of the state of Mary-
land, which had not seceded from the Union, sought to avail himself
of the writ of habeas corpus, the marshal of the court w^ho sought
to serve the writ was informed by the military officer who held the
prisoner in custody that he took his orders not from the courts but
from the War Department at Washington. The meaning of this
was that the constitutional guarantees of personal liberty were
suspended ; and grave statesmen went so far as to announce that
they approved the course of the administration just in proportion as
it disregarded the law. There were many persons at the time who
thought that the constitution of the United States had come to an
end, just as many persons are now saying that international law has
come to an end. The difficulty with such persons is that they look
for law between firing lines, and regard a temporary phase as a
permanent condition.

I do not hesitate to affirm that the violations of international law
during the present conflict in Europe, fierce and wide extended as it
is, have not exceeded, either in number or in importance, those that
occurred during the wars growing out of the French Revolution
and the succeeding Napoleonic Wars. In reality, many recent viola-
tions, which are commonly supposed to be new, have precise prece-
dents or analogies in what took place in the former titanic struggle,
in which there were extensions of the contraband list and interfer-
ences with commerce under pretences of blockade, just as there have
been during the present great struggle. These things are done, not
because of any uncertainty as to the law, but because the parties to
the war, being engaged in a life and death contention by force,
naturally think more of their own safety than of the interests of
neutral nations.

Nor is there in these things any reason for discouragement as to
the future of international law. As the ordinary rules of inter-
course have in all previous conflicts been more or less disregarded,

MOORE— OUTLINE. 295

according to the exigency or the intensity of pressure, so it has been
found that, when the incidents of the struggle came to be surveyed,
there arose a general desire to extend the domain of law, to define
its rules more clearly, and to take measures for their more effectual
enforcement. This was what happened after the Thirty Years'
War. The same thing occurred after the close of the wars growing
out of the Spanish Succession. It happened again after the close of
the Napoleonic Wars ; and a similar phenomenon distinguished the
ending of the Crimean War. Many of the mournful lucubrations
regarding violations of international law in the present war have,
consciously or unconsciously, a partisan character, and are intended
to further the interests of the one side or the other. We should be
on our guard against such lamentations. They are by no means new
in character ; they are characteristic of all wars. All armed contests
are characterized by charges and countercharges of violations of
law, and such charges are partly false and partly true. There never
took place, and never will take place, a contention by force in which
the so-called rules of war were not violated. War itself means the
killing and maiming of human beings, and, in the passions it excites
and the fears it creates, excesses will inevitably be committed. It is
in the nature of things that it should be so.

Judging, therefore, by the past, we are justified in looking for-
ward to important developments in international law after the
present great conflict shall have been ended. These developments
will naturally take place along the ordinary lines of legal progress.
In the first place, there will always be dififerences to be settled.
This is a matter of primary importance, since it involves the avoid-
ance of conflict and the preservation of peaceful conditions of legal
growth. We may call this the judicial aspect, which has been dealt
with chiefly through international arbitration.

But, in the second place, while law must be interpreted, it must
also be progressive, and must keep pace with changes in conditions.
The greater part of international law has been developed through
usage, but, during the past hundred years, it has undergone a marked
development through acts which were in their nature legislative. To
what extent is it possible to enlarge and render more efficient the leg-
islative method in the international sphere? Up to the present time,

296 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

the chief obstacle has been the requirement of unanimity. Acts
which seemed to be beneficent have been blocked because two or
three powers, or perhaps one power, refused to assent to them.

In the third place, we have the administrative aspect of the
system. Is it possible to develop anything in the nature of an inter-
national administration ? We know that in certain matters, such as
that of the posts and the telegraph, marked progress has been made
in that direction. The great difficulty arises when we come to deal
with things of a contentious nature. We have heard a great deal of
'* international police." An examination of what has been said on
the subject must be admitted often to betray an exceedingly slight
comprehension of fundamental conditions. So far as the phrase
" international police " implies the use of force, it involves the most
serious of all problems with which the student of international
affairs and the statesman can be confronted. The use of force
effectively is a matter that readily assumes immense proportions ;
the use of force ineffectively may readily create a condition of
anarchy.

Lastly, we are brought to the consideration of the question as to
whether and to what extent it is possible, by means of organization,
to secure the more effective development, interpretation and en-
forcement of international law. It is not a new question, but it is a
very serious and difficult one. Europe has been trying for hundreds
of years to find a solution of it, but has not yet succeeded. The
mere association of nations, as they now exist, in an alliance or
league, with a view to bring force to bear upon a recalcitrant nation
as readily as it can be applied to a recalcitrant individual in a muni-
cipality, would of itself afiford little assurance either of effectiveness
or of permanency. The difficulties are too complex to be solved by
any single agency.

Columbia University,
April, 1916.

TOWER— THE JUDICIAL ASPECT— ARBITRATION. 297

II.

THE JUDICIAL ASPECT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.—

ARBITRATION.

By CHARLEMAGNE TOWER, A.B., LL.D.

Whilst the prhiciples of international law have been enlarging
their influence and developing, in their application to the great
variety of questions which have arisen from time to time out of the
advance of civilization during the past hundred years, and their
.authority has been continuously extended as the result of a wider
recognition throughout the world, by mutual agreement, of the rights
of one people, in its international and sovereign capacity, toward an-
other people, no means of promoting harmony has been discovered
which has proved to be so efficient as the recourse to arbitration in
the settlement of international disputes.

The employment of it in the nineteenth century increased at cer-
tain periods with such rapidity that it has been shown by a compara-
tive statement to have doubled in the number of cases in each period
of ten years in comparison with that of the same length of time
immediately preceding it ; and if we were to enumerate the nations
which have submitted their disagreements to its adjustment we
should include not only the United States but the great Powers of
Europe as well — Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Ger-
many and Russia, as also almost every country in the world — for
instance, we should have, besides Spain, Denmark, Belgium, Hol-
land, Norway and Sweden — Turkey, Greece, Persia, China, Japan,
Mexico and all the republics of Central and South America.

Statesmen of all the cabinets of the world have turned to this
method of arriving at conclusions which shall safeguard national
honor and content public opinion on both sides of a controversy,
without a breach of international relations and without recourse to
the force of arms.

We must admit, unhappily, from the evidence that is forced upon
us by the spectacle of the great conflict now going on amongst the

298 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

nations of Europe, that arbitration has not been able always to pre-
vent war; that, even with its conciliatory processes of mediation and
intervention, it has been swept aside by war; that nothing has been
devised which, in the present attitude of the peoples of the earth in
their relations to each other, and in the existing conditions of the
human mind, can abolish war. But, just as international law itself
if forced beyond a given point is found to have its limitations, so its
component parts, of which arbitration is one, can not be expected to
attain to that which no human agency has as yet made possible.

That it is a method of avoiding conflict and preserving peace,
there can be no possible doubt ; nor can we fail to admit its efficacy
when we consider how frequently heretofore it has intervened amidst
the passions of men, and how, even in our own case, when the in-
terests and temper of the people were drawing them to the verge of
a conflict it has turned aside from us the frightful disaster of a
modern war.

It may be said, indeed, with honor to the generous purposes of
the American people in their public dealings with other nations, that
this principle of fair and just consideration of the claims of right
on both sides has been taken as the basis upon which they have
rested their contentions in the international controversies that have
presented themselves, ever since the establishment of the independence
of the United States.

It appears in the plan for the adjustment of the differences sub-
sisting between ourselves and Great Britain immediately after the
Revolutionary War, and for the establishment of our boundary lines
along the River St. Croix mentioned in the treaty of peace ; and we
see it in the provision made by Mr. Jay's treaty, to that end, in 1794,
that the disputed questions should be referred to the final decision
of commissioners, one of whom is to be appointed by the King of
Great Britain, one by the President of the United States, by and
with the advice and consent of the Senate, and these two commis-
sioners are to agree upon the choice of a third; or, if they can not
so agree, they shall each propose one person, and of the two names
so proposed one shall be drawn by lot in the presence of the two
original commissioners. The three commissioners so appointed shall
be sworn impartially to examine and decide the said question, ac-

TOWER— THE JUDICIAL ASPECT— ARBITRATION. 299

cording to such evidence as shall respectively be laid before them on
the part of the British government and of the United States.

We have here the principles of arbitral adjustment fully devel-
oped at the outset, and we have employed it repeatedly in the same
manner through an exceedingly interesting and important series of
negotiations by which not only the St. Croix dispute was adjusted,
but the whole boundary line along our northern frontier has been
established, from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific ; the northeastern
boundary by Mr. Webster and Lord Ashburton in 1842, — the line
from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, and from thence to
the ocean. So that when the San Juan water boundary was finally
determined by the decision of the German Emperor, as arbitrator,
in 1872, General Grant was able to report to Congress in his annual
message, in December of that year, that:

" This award confirms the United States in their claim to the important
islands lying between the Continent and Vancouver's Island, . . . and leaves
us, for the first time in the history of the United States as a nation, without
a question of disputed boundary between our territory and the possessions of
Great Britain on this continent."

The success of this kind of negotiation, and perhaps a growing
habit of thought which resulted from it and attached itself to it,
very naturally increased the value, as it also extended the influence
upon men's minds, of the advantages to everybody concerned, that is
to be gained through the amicable adjustment of international dis-
putes where that course is possible. Thus it came to be generally
accepted, that arbitration is the most direct and efifective method of
settling such controversies, especially in cases where actual national
integrity or national honor is not at stake ; and the immediate efifect
of this was made evident by the greatly increased ratio of arbitral
adjustment, already noted, in the course of the nineteenth century, in
which substantially all the nations of the world have taken part.

The high point was reached, however, one may safely say, in
considering all the circumstances, that the greatest political and moral
result that the world had ever seen to come out of an international
settlement was attained by the Geneva Tribunal in its composure of
the difficulties then existing between the United States and Great
Britain which had arisen out of the Alabama claims, both on account

300 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

of the extremely grave situation in which the two nations found
themselves, the delicacy of the relations involved which touched the
national pride of each in a manner quite capable of producing acts
of hostility at any moment, and the importance of the questions of
right and of injury which were actually at issue as the cause of the
dispute. In some respects also the ground was new ; and this was
an untraveled road which seemed at the time to be quite impossible
of approach, even after the inducements held out by the United
States government. Mr. Adams announced, in fact, in his note to
the British Foreign office that he was : " directed to say that there is
no fair and equitable form of conventional arbitrament to which the
United States would not be willing to submit."

But, even after the lapse of two years, Lord Russell's mind was
still so completely in revolt against the idea that it could be possible
for Great Britain to entrust to the decision of a foreign power such
a delicate question of national responsibility, that he declared ab-
ruptly :

" It appears to her Majesty's government that there are but two ques-
tions by which the claim of compensation could be tested ; the one is : Have
the British government acted with due diligence, in good faith and honesty,
in the maintenance of the neutrality they proclaimed? The other is: Have
the law officers of the Crown properly understood the foreign enlistment act,
when they decHned, in June, 1862, to advise the detention and seizure of the
Alabama?

" Neither of these questions could be put to a foreign government with
any regard to the dignity and character of the British Crown and the British
nation. Her Majesty's government are the sole guardians of their own
honor. They cannot admit that they have acted with bad faith in maintaining
the neutrality they professed. The law officers of the Crown must be held to
be better interpreters of a British statute than any foreign government can
be presumed to be. Her Majesty's government must decline to make repara-
tion and compensation for the captures made by the Alabama."

On our side, in the meantime, Mr. Seward reflected, in his in-
structions to ]\Ir. Adams, the intensely strong national feeling and
the determination of the whole American people, when he declared
that there was not a member of the government nor, so far as he
knew, any citizen of the United States who expected that this country
would in any case waive its demand upon the British government
for the redress of wrongs committed in violation of international

TOWER— THE JUDICIAL ASPECT— ARBITRATION. 301

law ; " the massive grievance," as Mr. Sumner said, " under which
the country had suffered for years, and the painful sense of wrong
planted in the national heart."

It must be looked upon as the triumph of international for-
bearance and of the willingness upon the part of the two nations
to compose amicably their dift'erences, which turned aside the menace
and reestablished peaceful relations at the moment when we were
upon the brink of war. Its influence and its lasting moral effect
were unquestionably greater, not only as between ourselves and
Great Britain but also in their direct bearing upon all the Powers of
the world, than could probably have been produced by any result
obtainable through the arbitrament of war. The most remarkable
instance in this connection is perhaps the agreement reached in regard
to the famous " Three Rules " of the Treaty of Washington relat-
ing to the " due diligence " that a neutral government is bound to
employ in preventing belligerent cruisers from arming and equipping
or from departing from its waters, which was the basis of the Amer-
ican case relating to the Alabama claims. For the British commis-
sioners were finally instructed to declare that they could not assent
to those rules as a statement of principles of international law in
force at the time when the Alabama claims arose, but that

" Her Majesty's government, in order to evince its desire of strengthening
the friendly relations between the two countries and of making satisfactory
provision for the future, agreed that in deciding the questions between the
two countries arising out of those claims, the arbitrator should assume that
her Majesty's government had undertaken to act upon the principles set forth
in the rules in question."

Thus it was possible to employ the method of arbitration in order
to prepare a common meeting-ground upon which the nations could
approach each other as equals, and treat without prejudice — each
recognizing the right of the other to present its claims as they ap-
peared from its own national point of view, and to seek justice.

Probably nothing of the kind had ever influenced the world like
it before; and it marks a stage of progress from which the world
can never recede ; for arbitration is a growth which in the aft"airs
of men indicates the advancing steps of civilization.

We have, of course, as the great example and proof of this, the

802 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

conferences at the Hague, to which the nations went in 1899 and
1907, ready to make concessions each of its own personal interests
in the effort to attain to results beneficial to all.

Whilst the reduction of the heavy burden of the armaments then
resting upon the peoples of Europe was the motive of the Emperor
of Russia in calling the First Conference together, and whilst the
Conference did not find itself able even to bring that subject to
serious consideration by the Powers, it reached definite results in
other directions which must be regarded as very remarkable steps
forward in the progress of mankind.

With its memorable declaration that, " in order to obviate as much
as possible the recourse to force in the relations between states, the
contracting Powers agree to use their best efforts to insure the
pacific settlement of international disputes ; " and " for the purpose
of facilitating immediate recourse to arbitration in cases which have
not yielded to diplomatic effort," the conference established a per-
manent court, accessible at all times and competent for all arbitral
questions, as a world tribunal before which nations may appear as
litigants and have their cases heard.

The Conference of 1907 enlarged the field of peaceful endeavor
still further by providing for more extended efforts toward arbitral
adjustment through the good offices and mediation of other Powers;
so that,

"in case of serious disagreement or dispute, before an appeal to arms, the
Powers agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances will permit, to the
good offices or mediation of one or more friendly Powers. And, indepen-
dently of this recourse, the contracting Powers deem it expedient and desir-
able that one or more Powers, strangers to the dispute, should, on their own
initiative and as far as circumstances may allow, proffer their good offices or
mediation to the states in conflict;"

a very great variance from the older customs of Europe which is of
especial importance because of the concessions which it implies.
For, in the extreme sensitiveness of national honor and the jealously
guarded distinction of national personality, a war was looked upon
formerly as a subject that related solely to the belligerents engaged
and their friends and allies, in which no one would venture to inter-
fere who was not interested in it, anv more than one would inter-

TOWER— THE JUDICIAL ASPECT— ARBITRATION. 303

fere with the participants and their respective seconds in a duel,
expecting not to be considered impertinent or not to give offence.

But the Conference agreed, and this marks the enlargement of
human thought, that Powers wdiich are strangers to the dispute may
take the initiative, that they shall have the right to offer their good
ofihces or mediation, even during the course of hostilities ; and that the
exercise of this right can never be regarded by either of the parties
in dispute as an unfriendly act.

The part of the mediator consists in reconciling the opposing
claims and appeasing the feelings of resentment which may have
arisen between the states at variance.

The judicial element of international law has thus become, in a
sense, the paramount influence in the establishment and adjustment
of international relations. It is this which will direct the course of
such relations in the future; and upon it will be largely built up the
international law of the future. The Conferences at the Hague have
erected a new and substantial fabric ; so that we have now, provided
by its court of arbitration, a tribunal of recognized competence and
fixed rules of procedure, open to all ; whilst the contracting Powers
formally agreed, at its inception, that the award of the court of arbi-
tration, duly pronounced, " puts an end to the dispute definitely and
without appeal."

Our own government entered during Mr. Roosevelt's adminis-
tration, whilst Mr. Root was Secretary of State, into separate con-
ventions with several of the great European Powers, Great Britain,
for instance, France, Spain, Russia, and with the republics of South
America, which provide, under regulations agreed to at the Hague,
that

" Differences which may arise of a legal nature, or relating to the inter-
pretation of treaties existing between the two contracting parties, and which
it may not have been possible to settle by diplomacy, shall be referred to
the permanent court of arbitration, provided that they do not affect the vital
interests, the independence, or the honor of the two contracting states, and
do not concern the interests of third parties.

" In each individual case, however, before appealing to the permanent
court, the contracting parties shall conclude a special agreement defining the
matter in dispute, the scope of the powers of the arbitrators and the periods
to be fixed for the formation of the arbitral tribunal and the several stages
of the procedure. Each of these special agreements must be made, however,

304 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

under the terms of these treaties, by the President of the United States with
the advice and consent of the Senate."

It is interesting to note that, from the point of view of the foreign
relations with the peoples of other countries, the government of the
United States has taken part in proceedings in arbitration, where
awards have been made by the arbitrators, in 83 cases altogether;
for example, with France 2, with Russia i, with Spain 6, with
Great Britain 17, with Germany i, with China 3, with Brazil 3, etc.,
and the results of these different settlements are very well worth
notice also in this connection; for, the aggregate of all these awards
is $92,855,000.00, of which about sixty-nine millions were in our
favor, and about twenty- four millions against us. So that, taken
altogether, nearly 75 per cent, of all the awards have been made in
favor of the claims of the United States government, and 25 per
cent, opposed to them.

So much for arbitration in the past. If we look forward the
future presents many problems to the statesmen and judges and
lawyers of all the Powers, which will have to be met by them when
order has been restored once more and men resume the habits of
civilized life after this period of conflict which we are now passing
through. The world requires order and tranquillity as the condi-
tions under which civilization may continue to progress. After
all the sacrifice, and all the terrible suffering and distress entailed by
this armed conflict, in spite of the courage and devotion and patriot-
ism so freely shown on every side, the one prominent intellectual
gain that we and all men hope to see as the result, will be the con-
viction of the futility of war, and renewed confidence in the precepts
of international law. The rules of adjustment and forbearance and
concession which led the nations to the Hague, must be restored and
must point the way again during our generation, let us hope, and
for beyond our day, to international well-being through the aid of
law and justice and arbitration of disputes, with mutual respect,
toward the peace of the world.

Philadellphia,
April, 1916.

WILSON— LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS. 305

III
LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS.

By GEORGE GRAFTON WILSON, A.M., Ph.D., LL.D.

It is peculiarly fitting that the legislative aspects of international
law should be presented before a philosophical society. In true in-
ternational law there must be some classes of rights which may from
their nature be regarded as resting upon philosophical bases. Cer-
tain laws are recognized as binding among states because they appeal
to mankind as having a sound foundation in human reason. Inter-
national law so far as resting on such ideas as sovereignty and equal-
ity of states must find support in philosophical concepts. Similarly,
in international legislation a view that may be called philosophical
must be taken.

The early writers often sought a philosophical basis in the law
of nature which might be discovered in the dictates of right reason-
ing, dictates not to be arbitrarily set aside even by deity which had
created the reasoning faculty. Thinkers have realized that interna-
tional law must make an appeal to the mind of mankind rather than
to that of men of a single type. From the very nature of the law as
international it must receive the approval of representatives of states
differing widely in fundamental ideals and national policies.

The nature of the state, which is the person in international law,
determines the scope of the law and the range of international legis-
lation. The state being a political entity responds and must re-
spond to stimuli which are political. There is then involved in in-
ternational legislation the question as to what is for the public well-
being in contradiction at times with what may be for the well-being
of a given individual or group of individuals. The degree to
which different states will consider the well-being of individuals
within the state will again be a political question determined by
the degree of participation which the individual may have in state
affairs. Accordingly when international law is formulated with
view to application to a few homogeneous states, its range may be

306 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

wide because the consensus will be large, while attempts to reach
an agreement among many heterogeneous states will result in the
lessening of the range of possible legislation. This is strikingly evi-
dent in such an attempt as that in private international law, so-
called, where the proposition to unify the laws of marriage and
divorce has been made. An attempt which has not met with com-
plete success even among the reasonably homogeneous states of the
United States could hardly be successful among the nations.

The representatives in power among the states of the world are
usually desirous of retaing the positions which they may for the
time be occupying. They therefore usually give heed to what seems
to be the will of the state. The state being a political entity seeks
what it regards as advantageous to itself. This was particularly
true when all foreigners were regarded as barbarians or as enemies,
and the idea still is very potent. Indeed there are few states even
now which would sacrifice themselves for the good of the world at
large, and their representatives are governed accordingly. While
the utility theory may have disappeared in some fields of thought,
it has not disappeared in international affairs. Bentham's influence
is not merely evident in the name internatinoal law, but also in many
of its foundations.

If, then, international legislation must largely rest upon the recog-
nition of advantages to be gained or to be hoped for and if the in-
terests of states are in fact or supposedly antagonistic, this legisla-
tion will be limited in scope. On the other hand, in so far as states
can be shown that their interests are common and that action or re-
striction of action is of advantage to all, the scope of international
legislation will be extended. Presumably the well-being of a modern
state would be closely bound with the well-being of its citizens
whether this be embodied in the formula "life, liberty, and the pur-
suit of happiness " or in other words.

Legislation usually refers not to the general idea of right and jus-
tice but to what is tnacted as in the idea of lex, hi Gesets. Accord-
ingly the legislative aspects of international law are somewhat strictly
limited. If then international legislation be considered merely as
that body of principles formulated by agreement among states, the
application of the above propositions is evident.

WILSON— LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS. 307

The destruction of life without advantage to any state was one
of the first matters to receive attention as a subject for a formulated
international agreement. This proposition that a state should not
take or sacrifice lives of men without commensurate advantage would
seem almost self evident. Yet the first international agreement re-
lating to this matter to receive general assent was concluded in 1864,
and known as the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the
Condition of Wounded in Armies in the Field. The represen-
tatives of twelve European states stated in the preamble their pur-
pose to be to mitigate " the evils inseparable from war, to suppress
useless severities, and to ameliorate the condition of soldiers wounded
on the field of battle." It would seem a long time for the world
to wait for such legislation. This Geneva Convention of 1864,
which provided for the immunity of the hospital corps, was not im-
mediately ratified, however. The United States did not adhere to
this Convention till 1882, and this was the only international agree-
ment of general scope and relating to war to which even the United
States became a party before the end of the nineteenth century, a
fact seeming to indicate that there is difficulty in international legis-
lation.

In regard to property there had been propositions and formal
declarations which had become embodied in law. The Declaration
of Paris of 1856 received the approval of many states, and by this
Declaration (i) privateering was prohibited; (2) neutral goods and
enemy goods under a neutral flag were protected ; and (3) paper and
ineffective blockades were discouraged, but the United States did not
adhere to this Declaration, though announcing in the Spanish Amer-
ican war in 1898 that it proposed to observe the principles of the
Declaration.

Other matters became increasingly the subject of international
legislation, and before the end of the nineteenth century, general con-
ventional agreements had been made and signed by a large number of
states acting together upon such matters as an " International Bureau
of Weights and Measures" (Metric System), 1875; "International
Protection of Industrial Property," 1883 ; " Protection of Submarine
Cables " (in time of peace), 1884; " Exchange of Official Documents,
Scientific and Literary Publications," 1886; " Repression of African

308 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Slave Trade," 1890; "Formation of an International Union for the
Publication of Customs Tarifif," 1890; and " Regulation of Importa-
tion of Spirituous Liquors into Certain Regions of Africa," 1899.
Such international agreements became a part of the written law of
nations, but covered only a very small part of the entire field of inter-
national relations in peace and war.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century there was developing
an idea that there should be a wider common agreement among the
states of the world upon matters of common interest and that the
will of these states should be formulated in conventions. Plainly,
if the nations of the world constituted a family the rules of action
for its members might be stated. The family idea had been ad-
vanced as the basis for international relations and the membership
in the family had gradually enlarged. It was coming to be believed
that the nations had sufficient unity of interest and willingness to act
together to enlarge the scope of international agreement. This
was in a somewhat comprehensive way put to the test in 1899.

While the United States and Spain were still at war, at the diplo-
matic reception of August 12, 1898, at St. Petersburg, Count Moura-
vieff, Russian imperial minister of foreign afifairs, delivered to the
representatives of the Powers a communication from His Majesty
the Czar. The nature of the document gave rise to surprise, but
its character and source demanded immediate attention. Mention-
ing the competition in development of means of international com-
bat and the effect of this competition upon the states of the world,
he proposed an international conference, saying that

" To put an end to these increasing armaments, and to find means for
avoiding the calamities which menace the entire world, that is the supreme
duty which lies upon all nations."

The United States replied that

" Though war with Spain renders it impracticable for us to consider the
present reduction of our armaments, which even now are doubtless far below
the measure which principal European pqwers would be willing to adopt,
the President cordially concurs in the spirit of the proposal of His Imperial
Majesty."

Another circular was presented to the Powers on January 11,
1899, containing a tentative program. This program suggested

WILSON— LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS. 309

agreement upon (i) limitation of armaments; (2) restrictions upon
new methods of warfare; (3) prohibition of firing from balloons;
(4) prohibition of submarines and rams; (5) adaptation of prin-
ciples of Geneva Convention of 1864 to naval warfare; (6) neutrali-
zation for vessels saving those overboard after battles at sea; (7)
revision of rules of war on land; and (8) acceptance of principles
of mediation and arbitration with view to preventing armed conflicts.

It will be observed that of these eight topics suggested, seven look
to furthering peace by limitations upon the conduct of war, and the
last topic suggests a quasi-legal method of furthering the movement
toward peace.

The international conference suggested by the Czar and repre-
senting twenty-six Powers met on the 20th of May, 1899, in the
House in the Woods in the quaintly beautiful Dutch city. The Hague,
and remained in session a little more than two months. It is known
as the First Hague Peace Conference. The Conference drew up
three conventions, three declarations, one resolution, and six wishes :
Conventions (i) for the pacific settlement of international disputes
by means of good offices and mediation, commissions of inquiry and
arbitration; (2) regarding the laws and customs of war on land;
(3) adaptation of Geneva Convention of 1864 to maritime warfare;
Declarations (i) prohibiting the discharge of projectiles from bal-
loons; (2) the use of projectiles for the difTusion of deleterious or
asphyxiating gases; (3) the use of expanding bullets; Resolution-
affirming the desirability of the restriction of military budgets;
Wishes for further consideration of various matters upon which the
Conference had not reached agreement. The last topic upon the
program suggested by the Czar, had become the first Convention of
the First Hague Conference, or the furtherance of the aim of peace
by means quasi-legal in character assumed a foremost place in the
results of these deliberations at The Hague ; and the first item in
the program, the attainment of international peace through the re-
striction of the means by which each nation had hitherto maintained
its rights, viz: effective armament, became the subject of a resolu-
tion and a wish. The last had become first. The Conference had
asserted its confidence in the law as the method for settling interna-
tional disputes.

310 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

While many cast ridicule upon the results of this First Conference
at The Hague, states, however, gradually adopted the Conventions
drawn up in 1899, and a law for nations deliberately drawn by the
representatives of the states assembled for that purpose became a
fact.

There followed eight years later a Second Hague Conference
which further elaborated and formulated conventional agreements,
and to this conference representatives of forty four of the states of
the world came, giving ample evidence of the tendency to accept the
principle of international legislation. Some of the conventional
agreements have been tested in the course of years. The court es-
tablished for the settlement of international disputes has attained a
recognized standing. Cases afifecting all parts of the world and more
than one third of the nations of the world have already been decided.
Many principles have been involved. The awards accepted unhesi-
tatingly have tested the strength of the law.

The Second Hague Conference, building upon the legislation al-
ready formulated, endeavored to extend its scope. Among the
propositions which have not been adopted as yet into the law of
nations was that to establish an international prize court. This
proposition was generally approved in principle though a satisfactory
method of selection of judges was not devised. To supplement this
prize court convention an attempt was made by ten maritime na-
tions in 1908-1909 at the International Naval Conference at London
to formulate the laws which the court should apply. The Declara-
tion of London of 1909 embodied the labors of this Conference.

Not merely in these broad national matters has the formulation
of the law progressed, but in recent years many such matters as the
following have become subject of general international agreements:
literary and artistic copyrights, 1902; sanitary measures, 1903; white
slavery, 1904; potent drugs, 1906.

While rights, persons, and property, and jurisdiction on land
and sea earlier had received attention, in more recent years the use
of the air has been the subject of international regulation as in the
conventions of 1906 and 1912. To the last of these conventions the
representatives of about forty non-American political unities affixed
their signatures, many of the larger states allowing here, as in some

WILSON— LEGISLATIVE ASPECTS. 311

other conventions, participation in the formulation of the law to the
divisions of which the state entity was composed. The legislation
thus rested upon a broader base than in many conventions of earlier
years.

The progress in the application of the law for nations has been
exceedingly rapid. Cases which have defied the best efiforts of
diplomacy for generations have been settled by due process of law
in a few weeks. Cases which might have resulted in long and disas-
trous international contention have been resolved in the light of law.
Where recourse to legal settlement of disputes was in earlier times
the last resort, it has become the first, and not merely the parties to
the controversy may begin the action, but third parties may of right
suggest or even try to bring the parties to submit the case to the
decision of the court.

A glance at conventions since 1899 will show how rapid is the
formulation of the law for nations. These international laws, in
addition to many private matters, cover the pacific settlement of in-
ternational disputes, limitation of the employment of force in the
collection of contract debts, laws for war on land, rights and duties
of neutral powers and persons in war on land, status of enemy mer-
chant ships at the outbreak of hostilities, the transformation of mer-
chant ships into warships, the laying of automatic contact submarine
mines, bombardment by naval forces in time of war, care of sick and
wounded in time of war, rights and duties of hospital ships, exercise
of right of capture in maritime war, prohibition of discharge of pro-
jectiles, from balloons, rights and duties, of neutral powers in time of
war, the establishment of an international prize court, and the law
for its guidance.

The progress of the development of a law for nations within the
years since 1898, when the first proposition of the Czar was put
forward, has been greater than the progress in the two hundred and
fifty years preceding from the epochmaking treaty of Westphalia
in 1648 to the year 1898.

At the end of the nineteenth century, conventional international
law covered but little of the possible field of international contention ;
now but a small part of the field is not covered by formal written
agreement, having after ratification the force of law not merely in

312 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

the domestic courts but in the court for the nations which will ad-
judicate the developing volume of international law, the court which
is to be the crowning institution of the judicial systems of the world.

Harvard University,
April, 1916.

IV.
INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION.

By PHILIP MARSHALL BROWN, A.M.

James Lorimer, that vigorous and most stimulating Scotch
publicist, treating of the question of world organization, remarked
more than thirty years ago that :

" The great impediment (in the way of the grow^th of international
jurisprudence) ... is the hopelessness caused by the debris of impossible
schemes which cumber our path, and from these it must be our first effort
to clear it."

Among the " impossible schemes " must probably be included
Lorimer's own earnest attempt to solve this great problem which
he characterized as The Ultimate Problem of International Juris-
prudence.

Starting with the assumption that international order is to be
secured in very much the same way as national order, he says :

" Savages are incapable of municipal organization beyond its most rudi-
mentary stages; and yet it is by means of municipal organizations that men
cease to be savages."

Following out the logic of his uncomplimentary analogy between
nations and savages Lorimer reaches the conclusion that an inter-
national legislature, judiciary, and executive are required to secure
that order and freedom among nations which he holds to be the aim
of international law. Candor compels him to admit that

" progress in the direction of the ideal by means of mutual aid, regulated by
positive law, though possible within the state may be impossible beyond it;
the ultimate problem of international jurisprudence, while demonstrably

BROWN— INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. 313

inevitable, may be demonstrably insoluble. The science of jurisprudence,
when prosecuted in the direction of the law of nations, may end in a reductio
ad absurdum."

Nevertheless, Lorimer has the courage to believe in an international
administration of law comparable to the enforcement of municipal
law.

Immanuel Kant, presenting another " impossible scheme " in his
memorable essay on " Perpetual Peace," also asserts that :

" Nations must renounce, as individuals have renounced, the anarchical
freedom of savages, and submit themselves to coercive laws; thus forming a
community of nations (civitas gentium) which may ultimately extend so as
to include all the peoples of the earth."

Kant is careful, however, to define his community of nations as
meaning " a federation of peoples, but not necessarily an inter-
national state." He furthermore concedes that :

" This juristic state must arise from some sort of compact. This com-
pact however must not be based on compulsory laws like that lying at the
basis of a state; it must rather be that of a permanent free association, like
the above mentioned federation of dififerent states."

It would seem that Kant, in his instiiictive aversion to a universal
state possessing coercive powers, revealed a better understanding of
the facts of international existence than Lorimer. The trouble with
many such attempts to deal with international problems would seem
clearly to be that confusion of thought must always arise whenever
we try to reason by analogy between nations and individuals. This
is evident in considering questions of honor, morality, and par-
ticularly so in treating of the international functions of the state.

In considering the problem of international administration, we
ought clearly to recognize at the outset that nations do not meet
together and intermingle in a community as do individuals. They
do not merge their interests as savages renouncing anarchical free-
dom. They do not agree on common conceptions either of legal or
moral rights and obligations ; choose their own magistrates ; accept
the rule of the majority; and for mutual advantage submit to the
benign rule of a common sovereign.

Individuals have every reason to come intimately together in the
daily pursuit of a vital community of interests. Through their

314 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

political organization they may secure ready and effective checks on
the abuse of power by legislature, judges, and executive. As live,
integral parts of a municipal organization, they can regulate, alter,
abolish, and create anew the national state within which they have
chosen to merge their interests.

It is obvious that hardly any of this reasoning applies to inter-
national relations. The most that nations, jealous of their integrity,
and conscious of their exalted missions, ask of each other is freedom
to achieve their own worthy ends. That freedom is to be found
in separate existence, not in community existence : in a mutual
rcognition of each other's interests, not in submission to a common
sovereign. They cannot possibly accept the idea of a supranaitional
law imposing, as does municipal law, trying restrictions, complicated
obligations, or punitive ordinances. The truth of this has been
exceedingly well expressed by Reinsch, in urging the necessity of
cooperative action between nations, Avhen he says :

" Any attempt to urge states into action without showing a specific need,
on the mere plea of the interest of internationalism, would be, in so far, to
jeopardize the normal development and ultimate success of the great move-
ment which is one of the most notable phenomena of the era in which we are
living. Nor should we expect states readily to give up that power of self-
determination, of freely selecting their means, methods, and activities, which
constitutes the essence of political sovereignty; however essential, in their
own interest, a participation in common action may be, they still remain the
principal guardians of human rights and interests, and ought therefore to
retain to themselves the necessary freedom of action which such a trust
requires."

The desire to convert international law into supranational law
arises probably from the Austinian concept of the need of a superior
sanction to law, a concept which has obscured the profound fact
that the law of nations is of a distinctly different character from
municipal law.

It may be truly affirmed that the lex gentium is of a more ele-
vated nature. Applying as it does inter gentes, it does not appeal
to the policeman ; it appeals to reason itself, to the sense of equity,
to a higher moral consciousness. It is based solidly on the Golden
Rule interpreted in an imperative, utilitarian, and ethical sense, as
enlightened self-interest. It is simply the recognition of mutual

BROWN— INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. 315

interests, of common legal rights and obligations. And the basic
sanction of the law of nations consists in the consciousness of what
Gareis has concisely stated as " anticipated advantages of reciprocity
as well as fear of retaliation."

It would seem clear therefore that what is needed is not a
sovereign international organization to create, interpret, and enforce
law. The need is rather of a complete, just, understanding between
nations as to what constitutes their mutual interests.

International congresses and conferences as adjuncts to diplom-
acy are greatly to be favored in order to accomplish this great end.
The functions of such conferences are of two kinds : one, political —
and this the most fundamental — to determine the respective rights
of nationalities in all that is essential to their free development ;
and the other, legislative, in order to formulate the law which shall
safeguard these rights.

The establishment of an international tribunal as the supreme
court of appeal when doubts arise concerning the interpretation of
these laws is of course a logical necessity. It is by no means clear,
however, that such a tribunal should possess coercive power, any
more than in the case of the Supreme Court of the United States in
controversies between states.

It may safely be asserted as a general principle that any compul-
sion of a nation that does not appeal to enlightened self-interest may
prove a grave menace ; and where enlightened self-interest exists
there is no need of compulsion. At any rate, in a normal state of
international order estabHshed on a mutual recognition of definitely
formulated interests, if a recalcitrant nation should need coercion or
chastisement, such an unwelcome task might better be performed
through some such limited agency as an alliance of nations, whether
openly avowed or in the disguised form of the proposed League to
Enforce Peace. Power of such threatening proportions could never
readily be entrusted by nations to the free action of a genuine inter-
national executive.

If the preceding reasoning be accepted as sound ; if we concede
that international law has no pretence to be supranational law ; that
it invokes no sovereign sanction, but appeals to the enlightened self-
interest of states ; then an international executive becomes unneces-

316 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

sary and even abhorrent. It would have a thankless task, and
prove a constant cause of friction, a means of .unjust coercion, a
menace to national sensibilities and convictions.

The question naturally arises : how then is international law to
be efficiently administered ? The answer, however, seems obvious ;
it is to be administered by national agencies. The courts of most
nations are generally sympathetic to the law of nations. It is of
pointed interest to note that even now, in the midst of this fearful
war, the Supreme Court of the German Empire should have seen
fit to protect the patent rights of a French national actually fighting
in the trenches in the defence of France !

When a court applies international law as a part of municipal
law there can hardly be any doubt as to the intrinsic value of that
law. The difficulty is not in the nature of the law of nations, or in
its enforcement. It lies in the failure of nations to formulate that
law with precision, or to provide an adequate body of law covering
the wide range of subjects which so often give rise to international
litigation.

This is particularly evident in that branch of international law —
which is truly an integral part — well characterized as Conflict of
Laws. The grounds for these conflicts should be removed. The
rights of aliens in their sojournings and wanderings as citizens of
the world should be defined by mutual agreement. The rights of
foreign creditors should be clearly determined. So likewise in
regard to what may be termed international torts, where aliens are
wronged by acts of the state.

This great task remains in large measure to be performed through
diplomatic agreements, conferences, and, if you will, through inter-
national legislation. The problem of the administration of this law
may safely be left to national courts under the safeguard, in some
instances, of an appeal to an international court.

There is no sound reason for believing that nations actually
prefer recourse to war, or even to reprisals, in order to settle differ-
ences of a clearly justiciable nature. The present war has demon-
strated all too eloquently the horrors, the awful cost, and the folly
of litigation by force of arms. If the just political aspirations and
national rights of states are satisfactorily gratified and determined.

BROWN— INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. 317

the serious grounds for international litigation by force will be
effectively removed. This can be done neither by the imperious
will of a conqueror nor of an international sovereign executive. It
can only be accomplished through mutual concessions, by the free
will and consent of nations.

It may be thought that in eliminating the possibility of an inter-
national administration through the agency of a supreme executive,
we have virtually excluded the possibility of any international ad-
ministration whatever. But this is far from being the case. On the
contrary, a survey of the already existing agencies for international
administration proves most suggestive and encouraging.

For example, the European Danube Commission has been of
very great value in time of peace in the regulation of the international
commerce of the states bordering on the river, as well as of other
states represented on the Commission.

The administration of the Suez Canal in time of peace has been
of an international character, though as long as England controls
Egypt, it would be obviously a fiction to affirm that this waterway
was truly internationalized.

Tangiers may properly be denoted as an international city, ad-
ministered as it is by representatives of various Powers. Its situa-
tion, however, is quite abnormal, constituting a species of modus
Vivendi in the light of the conflicting ambitions of France and
Spain, the Powers most vitally concerned.

A most interesting problem awaiting solution at the outbreak
of the great war in 1914 was the disposition of the icy island of
Spitzbergen, where the presence of coal deposits allured foreigners
of various nationalities, and required the establishment of some
form of municipal administration. It is understood that some such
anomaly was agreed upon in principle, though the precedent of the
codominium of Samoa by England, Germany, and the United States
certainly does not augur well for the success of another codominium
in Spitzbergen,

We are perhaps bound in this connection to speculate somewhat
on the possibility of the internationalization of Constantinople and
the two neighboring straits. It may be conceded that an interna-
tional administration by officials of some such nationality as the

318 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Swiss might prove feasible of organization and successful of opera-
tion. From the political point of view, however, such an arrange-
ment could hardly satisfy in the long run the ambitions of Russia
to hold in her own hands the best natural gateway to the Empire.
The uncertainty that an international administration would be able,
though willing, to effectively guarantee the security and the facilities
demanded by so great an Empire, would doubtless constrain Russia
to vigorously oppose any such arrangement. However that may
be, if it be granted that Constantinople and its approaches should
be internationalized, such an arrangement would be necessarily of
an abnormal, exceptional character.

Other abnormal forms of international administration are to
be found in the foreign Sanitary Board, and the Dette Publique of
Constantinople. Imposed on the Turks to guard against dangerous
epidemics, and to protect the financial interests of European in-
vestors, these two institutions, respectively, have been an affront to
Ottoman national pride, and cannot claim a permanent existence.
The Dette Publique, incidentally, raises the interesting question
whether there should be an international bankruptcy law which
would permit of placing an entire nation in the hands of receivers
for the benefit of all foreign creditors, instead of the hands of the
loan sharks of one nation which for political reasons may have
encouraged such loans. The Sanitary Board, likewise, suggests the
question whether nations should not be authorized to intervene in
the affairs of any nation which may be criminally negligent in
matters involving the health of neig-hboring peoples.

Other special instances of abnormal administration are to be
found in the mixed courts of Egypt for the trial of cases affecting
foreigners, and in the foreign settlements of Shanghai, Canton, and
Tientsin. It is certainly of interest to note that in countries where
extraterritorial privileges still exist, foreigners have found effective
ways, even while their respective nations are at war, to administer
their common municipal settlements, and adjudicate their legal dif-
ferences. Such arrangements, however — it must be repeated — can
only be regarded as temporary and exceptional in character.

Of much more vital interest and significance from the point of
view of international administration are those numerous and highly

BROWN— INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. 319

important organizations known as Public International Unions
which have to do with such matters as Communication, Economic
Interests, Sanitation, Police Powers, Scientific, and other purposes.

These Unions may be characterized, perhaps, as non-political,
and non-lucrative, as opposed to alliances or commercial under-
takings. A mere enumeration of certain of these agencies is most
suggestive. The Telegraphic Union, The Universal Postal Union,
The International Union of Railway Freight Transportation, The
Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, Works of Litera-
ture and Art, The International Red Cross, all of which have their
home in Switzerland, have been accomplishing most beneficial results
in their special fields. There are also the Metric Union in Paris,
the Agricultural Institute in Rome, the International Maritime Office
at Zanzibar for the suppression of the slave trade, the Permanent
Ofifice of the Sugar Convention, the International Office of Customs
Tariffs, and the Interparliamentary Union at Brussels. Of a dis-
tinct character and importance is the Bureau of Arbitration at The
Hague.

When one considers the wide range of subjects of so great im-
portance to the peoples of the different nations, the imagination is
stirred wnth the possibilities of such agencies for purposes of inter-
national administration. In just such normal, reasonable w^ays are
the peoples of the earth best able to advance their common interests
and facilitate that mutual understanding which must lie at the very
base of international law. In a similar way the unlimited array of
scientific, literary, religious, industrial, economic and other societies
organized between nations will also contribute incalculably to the
breaking down of prejudices and the " perfection of the relations
between states " which, according to Lorimer, is the true purpose of
international law. Diplomacy and law itself are spared consider-
able strain and friction by the creation of all these agncies.

The most interesting and pregnant suggestion has been put forth
to the effect that a central international bureau might well be estab-
lished in some such Olympic precinct as Switzerland to serve as
the home of all the various public international unions, a kind of
supreme " clearing house " for these and many of the other socie-
ties and organizations having a non-political, non-lucrative purpose.

320 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Such a suggestion would seem to offer the most fruitful possibilities
from every point of view as a practical means of helping on the
cause of international solidarity.

An international " clearing house " which has in it the elements
of great promise is the Pan-American Union in Washington. Here
center the interests of twenty-one American republics. If Canada
could find the way to come in, this Union would comprise virtually
the whole of the Western Hemisphere, a world in itself, set apart
from the troubled worlds of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

It is true that the Pan-American Union as yet possesses little
power of an administrative nature. Nevertheless it exists as the
tangible utterance of an ideal that may ultimately be realized.
There do not seem to be any insuperable obstacles in the way of
conferring increased powers on the Union to at least discuss ques-
tions of mutual interest to the nations concerned, or to recommend
legislation or action which their relations may demand. It is quite
conceivable that the Union might even be given legislative power to
enact ad referendum, regulations and laws on specified topics such
as intercommunication, trade, industry, and other {questions of a like
character. Here might gradually be centered the routine adminis-
tration of many matters, very much as is done now through the
various international bureaus established in Switzerland.

It is possible of course that such an organization through the
natural accretion of administrative powers might take on something
of the character of an international executive. Whatever might be
its ultimate evolution, by serving as a general " clearing house," a
central common forum for discussion, suggestion, or even legisla-
tion, the Pan-American Union \vould certainly prove of immense
service in achieving some degree of international organization in at
least this portion of a distracted world.

By way of summary, I have endeavored within the necessarily
restricted limits of this paper to establish in rough and cursory out-
line the following points.

I. There is no true analogy between international and municipal
problems. Though nations must need have recourse to war at times,
they are not savages. The ends sought by individuals within a com-

BROWN— INTERNATIONAL ADMINISTRATION. 321

mimity are very different from the ends sought by nations within
the community of nations.

II. International law is quite distinct in character from munic-
ipal law. It is truly f/rfcmational, and not supranational. It does
not appeal for its recognition and enforcement to a sovereign au-
thority. It appeals to the sanction of enlightened self-interest, to
"anticipated advantages of reciprocity as well as fear of retalia-
tion." Its enforcement must necessarily lie with national agencies
though allowing for appeals in certain instances to some kind of
authoritative international tribunal.

III. The great need is, not of a sovereign enforcement of the
law of nations, but of a much more comprehensive and definite
formulation of that law. A clear understanding of the mutual
interests of states which it is the object of international law to
protect is urgently required.

IV. Diplomacy and international conferences can accomplish
in the main the great task of determining the rights and obligations
of states, and of providing the law which should apply in contro-
versies and litigations involving these rights and obligations.

V. Nations cannot jeopardize the freedom ncessary for the
achievement of their separate purposes and ideals by submitting to
a common sovereign possessing coercive powers. An international
executive thus becomes undesirable and repugnant, a menace to the
legitimate aims and sensibilities of nations.

VI. If an international executive is undesirable, there exist,
however, other agencies of great importance for purposes of inter-
national administration. The Universal Postal Union with its head-
quarters in Switzerland is an excellent example. By utilizing and
perfecting these agencies, by providing a central international " clear-
ing house " for the many non-political, non-lucrative interests of
nations — the Pan-American Union, for example — international
solidarity may be most effectively attained. In like manner the en-
couragement of international societies and congresses covering the
entire field of human interests wnll be of immeasurable aid to the
great cause of internationalism.

In conclusion, therefore, we would do well to consider whether
in our anxiety to accomplish something definite for the cause of

322 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

world peace, it would be wise to attempt the creation of new inter-
national agencies. Would it not be prudent to follow Lorimer's
injunction against " impossible schemes " and to avoid his example
by adding no more "debris'' in the pathway of international juris-
prudence ?

We cannot presume to foretell or anticipate the destinies of
nations. A world state may yet evolve. We are not concerned
however with remote events of a problematical, speculative nature.
Our immediate duty would not appear to impose the creation of a
perfect scheme of world organization. Does it not rather consist
in the utilization and perfection of the agencies already at hand?

Princeton University,
April, 1916.

V.
• WORLD ORGANIZATION.

By DAVID JAYNE HILL, A.M., LL.D.

That there is a legal bond of relationship between the sovereign
states composing the society of nations, has been amply shown by
the distinguished speakers who have already presented their views.
That this is in some sense a fact, no competent authority would deny ;
but in order to render it a secure basis for an effectual organization
of the civilized nations of the world, it is necessary that there should
be among them practical unanimity in accepting and maintaining a
common understanding of the nature of this legal bond, and of the
consequences that should follow from it.

The Conception of Christendom.

Back of such a common understanding there must be, as a con-
dition of its existence, some uniformity of conviction regarding the
nature of the state, the source and extent of its authority, and the
normal purposes and relations of separate political communities.

The first common ground of this kind was furnished bv Chris-

HILL— WORLD ORGANIZATION. 323

tianity. Before its existence there were, indeed, certain generally ac-
cepted juristic principles, derived from the experience of right and
wrong in the conduct of neighboring peoples; and an important con-
tribution to the clearer apprehension of them was made by the Stoic
philosophy, which was itself a fertile source of elementary legal
conceptions. But it was the sense of a wider community, inspired
by the possession of a common religious faith, involving ideas of
duty, fidelity and honor, that eventually made possible a nearer ap-
proach than had ever before been made to the idea of an actual so-
ciety of nations — a " Christendom," in which all races of men were,
or might become, participants.

The Society of States as Defined by Suarez.

Looking, as Christian princes did, to a common .divine source of
their authority, this feeling of community had in a certain degree long
existed before its natural grounds were distinctly formulated. This
was first done in the sixteenth century, in a passage of remark-
able clearness and depth of insight, by the Portuguese theologian,
Franciscus Suarez, who wrote :

" The human race, however divided into various peoples and kingdoms,
has always not only its unity as a species but also a certain moral and quasi-
political unity, pointed out by the natural precepts of mutual love and pity,
which extends to all, even to foreigners of any nation. Wherefore, although
every perfect state, whether a republic or a kingdom, is in itself a perfect
community composed of its own members, still each such state, viewed in
relation to the human race, is in some measure a member of that universal
unity. For those communities are never singly so self-sufficing but that they
stand in need of some mutual aid, society, and communion, sometimes for
the improvement of their condition and their greater convenience, but some-
times also for their moral necessity and need, as appears by experience. For
that reason, they are in need of some law by which they may be directed and
rightly ordered in that kind of communion and society. And, although this
is to a great extent supplied by natural reason, yet it is not so supplied suffi-
ciently and immediately for all purposes; and, therefore, it has been possible
for particular laws to be introduced by the practice of those nations. For
just as custom introduced law in a state or province, so it was possible for
laws to be introduced in the whole human race by the habitual conduct of
nations."

324 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

The Dissolution of Christendom.
It was, as Professor Moore has pointed out, among the Christian
states that international law had its beginning ; and for a long period
they alone were regarded as constituting the society of states and
entitled to the consideration which that law demanded. But long
before the admission of non-Christian nations into that community,
Christendom had completely lost its original unity ; fraternity be-
tween the nations had almost vanished ; schism in religion and the
rivalry of dynasties had destroyed all but the ceremonial relations
between states; and, although philosophic jurists, like Pufendorf
and Wolf, propounded theories that rendered plausible the estab-
lishment of a world-state, the political conditions of Europe rendered
them illusory.

Projects for a World-State.

It is especially interesting at this time to recall the fact, that
most of the great projects for a thoroughgoing legal organization of
the world have had their origin in periods of time when human
reason and conscience have been roused to protest by the infamies
that accompany great wars. Thus it was that, in the midst of the
Thirty Years' War, Emeric Cruce proposed that A^enice be chosen
as the permanent seat of a corps of ambassadors who by their votes
should settle all international differences. It was during the " Rob-
ber Wars " of Louis XIV. that William Penn, whom Montesquieu
has called " the modern Lycurgus," propounded his plans for uni-
versal peace. It was at the conclusion of the struggle for the Spanish
Succession that Fenelon presented to the Congress of Utrecht his
famous dissertation, in which he said:

" Neighboring states are not only under obligation to treat one another
according to the rules of justice and good faith; they ought in addition, for
their own safety, as well as for the common interest, to form a kind of
general society and republic."

It was upon the same occasion, that the Abbe de Saint-Pierre elab-
orated his extension of Sully's alleged " Great Design," in which —
anticipating the present program of the League to Enforce Peace
— he proposed not only the submission of differences to judi-

HILL— WORLD ORGANIZATION. 325

cial decision, biU the total abolition of the separate use of force,
and the agreement that, in case of a refusal to observe treaties or
to obey the rules and judgments imposed, the other members of the
alliance should compel a refractory sovereign to comply by arming
unitedly against him, and charging to his account the expense of this
forcible constraint. And it was during Napoleon Bonaparte's con-
quest of Italy, that Immanuel Kant wrote his famous essay on
" Eternal Peace."

The Extension of Constitutionalism.

It is quite natural, therefore, that we should at this particular time
experience a new interest in the problem of world organization ; for
it is evident, not only that all the devices hitherto proposed for secur-
ing international justice through legal procedure have thus far failed
of accomplishing their purpose, but that the rescue of civilization
from complete destruction depends upon some new relation to be es-
tablished between force and law.

It is possible for almost any intelligent man familiar with modern
constitutions to construct upon paper a plan of international organi-
zation that most other intelligent men would probably agree was
worthy of universal adoption, and which some intelligent men would
even afifirm ought to be forcibly imposed upon all mankind by a
union of constitutional states.

Some of us have hoped that the development of constitutional
government throughout the world, if it had not already reached that
point, would soon advance so far as to render it possible for states
founded upon constitutional principles voluntarily to extend the
application of them, so that they might become operative between
states as well as within their separate jurisdictions; for this is all
that would be required to establish a constitution of civilization that
would not efface or suppress the idea of nationality, but merely
recognize all responsible states, great and small, as juridical persons,
bound by their own structural principles to admit their limitations,
their responsibilities, and their amenability, as local organs of justice,
to that greater organism of which they would form a part.

326 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

The Exclusion of Imperialism.

By such a procedure there might be established that relation
between law and its enforcement that is necessary for the solution
of this problem ; and it is not to be doubted that it is in this direction
that we may seek for a solution.

It must not be overlooked, however, that, if we are to promote
world organization through constitutionalism, we cannot begin auspi-
ciously by abandoning its principles ; and, by means of a forcible im-
position of what we happen to consider to be law and justice, really
substitute for the anarchy we deplore the imperialism we should
thereby embrace.

An empire founded upon a declaration of the rights of man
would, indeed, be preferable to a condition of anarchy and violence;
but we have no assurance that such an empire can long exist. What
we know historically of imperial governments does not encourage
such an expectation. They either develop into despotisms, as the
Roman Empire did, or radically change their character and become
democracies. We have an example of the latter process in the trans-
formation now taking place in the British Empire. For the first
time the British colonies are persistently referred to as " autono-
mous " ; and this word has been used in this sense by a conservative
member of the government, ]\Ir. Bonar Law, speaking for the
cabinet upon an official occasion ; when he made the interesting state-
ment, that what had been impossible before the war will be easy
after it, and that the relation of the colonies to the mother-country
would never again be what it was before. In fact, it is a confed-
eration of autonomous states, rather than an empire in the proper
sense, that is coming into existence in what has been known as the
British Empire.

It is in this modification of the conception of sovereignty — which
must yet endure even greater modifications — that we find a ground
of hope for a permanent and pacific organization of mankind. Un-
less we start out with the postulate, that the State is founded upon
the inherent rights of its citizens ; and, therefore, reaches its limits
of authority where their collective rights of safety and possession
end, we shall have no constructive principle upon which to base a

HILL— WORLD ORGANIZATION. 327

better organization of the world. The right of superior aggressive
force once admitted, no matter how noble and elevated its aims may
be, imperialism has triumphed; and, if imperialism is to triumph,
it will create its own rules of action in defiance of international law.

The Antagonism of the Constitutional and the Imperial

Ideals.

As the basis of any practicable scheme of world organization, it
is necessary to lay down the postulate, that every free community of
men may form a government for the protection of their inherent
rights. But this fundamental political right, which we call by the
ambiguous name " sovereignty," is by no means an unlimited right.
It is necessarily limited by the similar right of other coexistent com-
munities; and, from the constitutional point of view, it is further
limited by the fact that there are inherent personal rights, which no
government may justly take away.

I am aware that a contrary view is held, which maintains the
unlimited right of majorities to determine what the law may be;
but, upon this principle, it is evident that the greater Powers, simply
by the preponderant weight of numbers, might wholly extinguish
the smaller nations. That is the theory of imperialism, which claims
an unlimited right of national expansion, restrained only by the
measure of power to carry it into execution. Its motto is " Might
makes right."

Constitutionalism, on the contrary, proceeds upon the principle
that local liberty should be secured by general law. It is opposed
to forcible aggression, and resorts to force only in its own defense.
It accords to a neighbor the same rights that are claimed by itself.
It proposes a gradual substitution of law for force in the regulation
of the world.

The Outlawry of Violence.

Being itself a product of a long process of social evolution, and
dependent for its very existence upon those growths of mind and
character that qualify men for self-government, constitutionalism
cannot expect an immediate or an easy triumph. It must patiently
abide its time, until the nations shall have acquired the wisdom to

328 SYMPOSIUM ON INTERNATIONAL LAW.

organize justice by voluntarily accepting the limitations which it
imposes.

There is, however, one means of promoting this result without a
resort to violence. When nations manifest fitness for admission
into the Society of Sovereign States, they are admitted to its privi-
leges. When they violate its laws, and by their conduct show their
unfitness for participation in it, why should they not be denied the
privilege of intercourse with civilized nations?

There is, it is true, no central authority possessing the power to
render a sovereign state an outlaw ; but any government, in standing
for the maintenance of international law, or for the vindication of
its own rights under it, may, if it is willing to pay the cost, sever its
diplomatic and its trade relations with a persistent law-breaker.

But the cost would often be considerable; and, judged from the
point of view of expediency, it requires either a serious ofifense or a
certain amount of courage to take such a step. But, without courage,
so long as savagery, brigandage, and imperial ambitions disturb the
peace and order of the world, there can be no international progress.
Whatever rights, or prestige, or influence any nation possesses to-
day, it enjoys because someone has defended them.

The Duty of National Defense.

And so, after a general survey of international relations, we are
forced to the conclusion, that, between submission to injustice and
the ability to defend the rights of a nation, there is no alternative.
But there is still another aspect of the subject. The maintenance
of the reign of law in the world against aggression and violence must
be regarded as a duty which every civilized nation owes to every
other, as well as to itself. International law is our law. We have
helped to make it ; we hold ourselves under obligation to observe it ;
and we cannot, without moral delinquency, refuse to defend it.

So long as armed force is necessary to maintain human rights, it
is incumbent upon us to furnish our contingent for their defense. It
may be that a right course will be resented, and that the severance of
diplomatic and commercial relations with a powerful nation might
provoke an attack in response. Very well ; then it becomes our
duty, not only in defense of the reign of law, but in our own de-
fense, to be prepared to resist it.

HILL— WORLD ORGANIZATION. 329

■ For this purpose it is only a confession of feebleness to depend
upon alliances. There is no strength in a rope of sand, and no posi-
tive result can come of the mere addition of nullities. If conflict be-
comes necessary, someone must bear the brunt of it. The future
peace and order of the world depend upon the attitude of the great
nations. To be a great nation, and at the same time to refuse to
assume a great nation's responsibilities, is a recreant evasion of duty.
Applying this doctrine to the United States of America, our in-
fluence for peace and justice will be in proportion to our strength.
If we are weak, our only safety lies in silence ; but in a great moment
silence is dishonorable. If we would speak with effect, we must be
strong. We do not require a great standing army, but we should
be able, in case of need, promptly to place in the field an army pro-
portional to the nation's territorial extent ; for it is that which we
may be called upon to defend. But above all, we should be strong
upon the sea ; for it is there that the destinies of the world are to be
determined.

Washington,
April, 1916.

MAGELLANIC PREMIUM

Founded in 1786 by John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London

I916

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge

ANNOUNCES THAT IN

DECEMBER, 1916

IT W.'LL AWARD ITS

MAGELLANIC GOLD MEDAL

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lating TO NAVIGATION, ASTRONOMY, OR NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (mERE
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PROCEEDINGS

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Vol. LV. 1916. No. 5.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Age Cycles and Other Periodicities in Organisms. By C. M. Child . 330
Types of Neuromuscular Mechanism in Sea-Anemones. By G. H.

Parker 340

Inheritance through Spores. By John M. Coulter 344

The Popes and the Crusades. By Dana C. Munro 348

A Rare Old Slavonic Religious Manual. By J. Dyneley Prince . . 357
Jointing as a Fundamental Factor in the Degradation of the Litho-

sphere. By Frederick Ehrenfeld • , 363

Sight and Signalling in the Navy. By Alexander Duane .... 400

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HILL— WORLD ORGANIZATION. 329 ' '

For this purpose it is only a confession of feebleness to depend
upon alliances. There is no strength in a rope of sand, and no posi-
tive result can come of the mere addition of nullities. If conflict be-
comes necessary, someone must bear the brunt of it. The future
peace and order of the world depend upon the attitude of the great
nations. To be a great nation, and at the same time to refuse to
assume a great nation's responsibilities, is a recreant evasion of duty.

Applying this doctrine to the United States of America, our in-
fluence for peace and justice will be in proportion to our strength.
If we are \yeak, our only safety lies in silence ; but in a great moment
silence is dishonorable. If we would speak with effect, we must be
strong. We do not require a great standing army, but we should
be able, in case of need, promptly to place in the field an army pro-
portional to the nation's territorial extent ; for it is that which we
may be called upon to defend. But above all, we should be strong
upon the sea; for it is there that the destinies of the world are to be
determined.

Washington,
April, iqi6.

AGE CYCLES AND OTHER PERIODICITIES IN
ORGANISMS.

By C. M. child, Ph.D.

{Read April 15, igi6.)

According to the group of biological theories of which the Weis-
mannian theory is the best example, the process of aging is irre-
versible and progresses always in one direction. Young individuals
arise from the germ plasm, that fountain of perpetual youth, and
once started on the path of development there is no turning back
for them but they go on inevitably toward the one end — death.
These theories neglect, however, to tell us why a part of the living
protoplasm of a species should differentiate, grow old and die and
another part remain perpetually young, and why, once started on
the downward path, there is no possibility of return for the develop-
ing organism.

Within recent years the suggestion has been made more than
once that development may be a reversible process and the fact has
been established beyond doubt, that at least many cells, even in the
higher animals, may undergo more or less dedififerentiation as well
as dififerentiation. Since aging or senescence is very evidently
closely associated somehow with the processes of development and
differentiation we are then brought face to face with the question ;
can cells or organisms grow young as well as grow old? If re-
juvenescence as well as senescence is a characteristic feature of life
then we must expect to find that young cells or organisms arise, not
from a perpetually young germ plasm, but from old cells or organ-
isms through changes in the opposite direction from those which
constitute senescence. Life from this point of view is then a cycle
consisting of alternating periods of senescence and rejuvenescence.
If such age cycles exist, we should expect to find them in their sim-
plest terms in the simple organisms, anA hi my own experimental

330

PERIODICITIES IN ORGANISMS. 331

attack on this problem I have been primarily concerned with these
simple organisms.

It has long been known that in the higher animals and man the
most characteristic physiological feature of the process of senescence
is a progressive decrease in the rate of metabolism, or of certain
fundamental metabolic reactions from birth and undoubtedly from
still earher stages onward. This is accompanied, as Minot and
others have shown, by a decrease in the rate and final cessation of
growth.

In my own experiments on the lower animals I have found that
a similar decrease in metabolic rate and rate of growth occurs dur-
ing the life history. A very simple method has made it possible to
use the metabolic condition to a very large degree as a criterion of
physiological age. This method depends on the fact that the sus-
ceptibility to many, if not all, agents which kill by decreasing
metabolism in one way or another, varies with the general metabolic
rate. In concentrations of such agents which kill in the course of a
few hours the individual with the higher metabolic rate is the more
susceptible and dies sooner than the individual with lower rate.
This method has been checked and controlled by various others in
many ways and can be used very widely for comparing the metabolic
condition of different individuals among the lower organisms.

I have found that the general metabolic rate in the simple ani-
mals, particularly in certain of the planarian worms which have
been the chief experimental material, decreases from a very early
stage of development on through life, as growth and development
proceed. A progressive decrease in rate of growth also indicates
that these animals undergo senescence.

These planarians undergo a process of fission in nature in which
the posterior body region separates ofl: and becomes a new individual,
but we do not need to wait for the occurrence of such fission, for
we can induce the development of new individuals by cutting the
animals into pieces. Each piece develops a head at its anterior
end, a tail at its posterior end, and undergoes more or less dedif-
ferentiation and internal reorganization and usually develops into
a new whole with the characteristic structure of the species, but

332 CHILD— AGE CYCLES AND

of smaller size than the individual from which the piece was taken,
the size of the new individual depending on the size of the piece.
In undergoing this reconstitution the piece uses up a part of its own
body substance as a source of energy and of the new cell material
formed.

A test of the metabolic condition of the new individual thus
formed shows that it is physiologically younger than the animal
from which the piece was taken, and the smaller the fraction of
the original body from which it developed, the younger it is. By
feeding it can be made to grow, to go through the life history and
to become old again, and may then again be cut into pieces which
once more become young individuals, and this process can be car-
ried on for a long time, probably indefinitely. I have carried an
experiment of this sort through twenty generations. Evidently
the process of reconstitution of these pieces into new animals in
some way brings about a greater or less degree of rejuvenescence.

Another experiment affords a clue as to the manner in which
this rejuvenescence occurs. If the full-grown planarians which
are 25-30 mm. in length are deprived of food, they do not die of
starvation in a few days, but gradually become smaller, and can be
reduced to a length of a millimeter or less before death occurs.
Tests of metabolic condition show that during this reduction the
metabolic rate is increasing, the animals are growing younger.
Morphologically also they show indications of rejuvenescence. By
feeding we can stop this process of rejuvenescence at any time and
make the animals begin to grow old again, and we can repeat this
process again and again.

In another species of planarian in which the length of the life
cycle under ordinary conditions in nature is about two months, I
have been able to keep the same individual worms alive and in
essentially the same physiological condition for a much longer
period than the usual length of life, simply by regulating quantity
and quality of food, i. e., the animals were fed just enough of the
food, found by experience to be most suitable, to prevent reduc-
tion in size and not enough to permit growth. With this procedure
they remained in practically the same physiological condition, of

OTHER PERIODICITIES IN ORGANISMS. 333

the same physiological age during nearly four years, while other
members of the same original stock, fed in the usual way, passed
through some twenty generations.

These experiments afford some insight into the nature of the
process of senescence and rejuvenescence. We see that when the
animal is adding to its protoplasmic substratum by growth and
transforming it by processes of differentiation it is growing old,
but when it is using up previously formed protoplasmic material,
as it does in reconstitution and starvation, it is growing young. In
the simple animals where the structural substratum of the body
built up under one sort of conditions is readily broken down under
other conditions in the absence of nutrition, or in reconstitution,
rejuvenescence occurs readily and may carry the animal back almost
to embryonic stages, but the evolution of the higher forms is very
evidently associated with a physiological stabilization of the struc-
tural substratum of the body and we find that in man and the
mammals bodily rejuvenescence is apparently limited. A large
part of the structural substratum is either not available for nutri-
tive' purposes or cannot be broken down rapidly enough to supply
the demands, and death occurs before any great degree of rejuve-
nescence has taken place in the body as a whole. But that some
slight degree of bodily rejuvenescence may occur even in man can-
not be doubted.

It is impossible to consider here all the various lines of evidence,
but it may be said that the facts at present available indicate that
senescence consists in a decrease in metabolic rate determined by
the changes in, and the progressive accumulation of, the relatively
stable components of the protoplasmic substratum during growth,
development and differentiation. Rejuvenescence, on the other
hand, is an increase in metabolic rate determined by the; break-
down of previously accumulated structural substances in dediffer-
entiation, starvation and reproduction and the development of new
protoplasmic substance in place of that eliminated. We may say,
in short, that the organism grows old when the primitive embryonic
protoplasmic substratum is modified or added to by changes in the
colloids and accumulation of relatively stable components by growth

334 CHILD— AGE CYCLES AND

and differentiation, so that the protoplasm becomes less active chem-
ically, and that it grows young when the protoplasm previously thus
modified loses these modifications to a greater or less extent and
approaches or attains the primitive undifferentiated or embryonic
condition and becomes more active chemically. The youngest
protoplasm is protoplasm reduced to its lowest terms as a colloid
substratum of chemical reaction and aging occurs as this protoplasm
is modified by changes in the colloids and accumulation of relatively
inactive substance.

In the lower animals the processes of asexual reproduction are
essentially similar to the reconstitution of pieces experimentally
isolated and all such processes are accompanied by some degree
of rejuvenescence. Even in the unicellular animals, I have found
that every cell division with its accompanying processes of reor-
ganization, giving rise to a new individual is accompanied by some
increase in metabolic rate, i. e., some degree of rejuvenescence.
Under certain conditions senescence and rejuvenescence may bal-
ance each other and asexual reproduction may continue indefinitely,
while under other conditions the degree of rejuvenescence may not
be sufficient to balance senescence in each generation, and in such
cases a progressive race senescence occurs.

Turning now to sexual or gametic reproduction, we must in-
quire how it is related to the age cycle. The facts are these : the
sex cells develop only at a very advanced stage of the senescence
period of the individual, and in many of the lower animals sexual
maturity can be experimentally prevented by keeping the animals
physiologically young through asexual reproduction or reconstitu-
tion or even periodic starvation. If the sex cells are perpetually
young, undifferentiated cells it is not easy to account for the rela-
tion between sexual maturity and advanced physiological age.

As regards their morphological structure, the sex cells are
among the most highly differentiated and specialized cells in the
organism. The period of their development from the mother germ
cells is a period of growth and differentiation like that of the other
parts of the organism during development. Physiologically also
this period is a period of decreasing metabolic rate, of senescence

OTHER PERIODICITIES IN ORGANISMS. 335

in all cases thus far examined. In short, both morphological and
physiological evidence force us to the conclusion that the mature sex
cells or gametes are highly differentiated, physiologically old cells.

It has been shown by Loeb, Warburg and others, that an in-
crease in the rate of oxidation follows fertilization and Warburg
has shown further that an acceleration of the oxidation-rate con-
tinues through the cleavage stages and at least to the swimming
larval stage in the sea urchin. I have found that in all forms
examined thus far, including echinoderms, annelids, fishes and am-
phibia, the increase in susceptibility during early development indi-
cates that the rate of metabolic reaction increases up to a certain
stage of development and then begins to decrease. All the facts at
hand then indicate that the early period of embryonic development
is a period of physiological rejuvenescence. Morphologically- also
it is a period of dedififerentiation. The highly specialized structure
of the egg is lost and the cells gradually become undifferentiated
or embryonic in appearance.

In fact the evidence indicates very clearly that the sexual repro-
ductive cells or gametes represent the final stages in a period of
differentiation and senescence, that their union initiates a process
of rejuvenescence which continues through the early stages of em-
bryonic development and is followed again, as the differentiation
and accumulation of structural substance overbalance dedifferen-
tiation and reduction, by a period of senescence which may be prac-
tically continuous throughout the life of the individual as in the
higher animals and man, or which may be interrupted or balanced
by periods of rejuvenescence connected with asexual reproduction
and other processes, as in many lower forms. The stage of most
extreme youth is not then at the beginning of embryonic develop-
ment but at some later stage, varying in different animals and in
different tissues of the same body.

If these conclusions are correct there is no germ plasm in the
sense of a perpetually young protoplasm handed on from genera-
tion to generation, but the organism undergoes growth, differentia-
tion and senescence as a whole and in both asexual and sexual re-
production rejuvenescence occurs. In the higher animals and man

336 CHILD— AGE CYCLES AND

sexual reproduction is the only process and the sex cells the only
cells in which any very great degree of rejuvenescence occurs in
nature, but in the lower forms all cells of the body may undergo
rejuvenescence as well as senescence in asexual reproduction, star-
vation, and various other processes. Even in the mammals and
man, however, evidence is accumulating that at least many of the
tissue cells may undergo a considerable degree of dedififerentiation
and rejuvenescence under proper conditions and with the further
development of experimental technique we may expect further evi-
dence along this line.

If this point of view is correct, life, so far as age is concerned,
is a periodic cycle in which senescence alternates with rejuvenes-
cence. The periods of growth and differentiation, in short of de-
velopment, are the periods of senescence, the periods of dedifi'eren-
tiation and reduction, the periods of rejuvenescence. It can be
shown further that in at least many cases the process of senescence
by decreasing the efifectiveness of the physiological integrating fac-
tors in the individual leads automatically and necessarily to the
physiological isolation of parts and so to reproduction of one sort
or another and rejuvenescence. The sequence of the two periods
follows necessarily from the constitution of protoplasm. The
period of senescence is the period of accumulation and decreasing
dynamic activity, and in the highly integrated individual it may end
in the death of some or most parts. In any case, however, the
period of senescence leads in one way or another to the physiolog-
ical isolation of cells or multicellular parts, as I have shown else-
where,^ and these, if they are capable of continued existence after
such isolation, undergo dedifferentiation just as the piece experi-
mentally isolated from the planarian body undergoes dedifferentia-
tion, because the conditions which previously maintained dififeren-
tiation are no longer present and the supply of nutrition is cut off.
If the isolated part lives, it lives at the expense of its own substance
and the portions of it which required the special conditions result-
ing from the physiological association with other parts for their for-
mation and maintenance are the first to break down and serve as a

1 Child, " Individuality in Organisms," Chicago, 1915.

OTHER PERIODICITIES IN ORGANISMS. 337

source of energy. In this way the isolated part undergoes a process
of dedifferentiation and in so doing becomes physiologically younger
and approaches or attains the generalized or undifferentiated con-
dition of that particular protoplasm. If sufficient energy is avail-
able in the form of nutrition, either from its own substance or from
its environment, this period of dedifferentiation is followed by a
new period of differentiation and senescence. In other words, from
being a differentiated, specialized part it becomes an undift'erentiated
or generalized whole by the loss of its speciaHzed features and then
undergoes a new course of speciaHzation as its constitution de-
termines.

In the evolutionary adjustment between the period of rejuvenes-
cence and environmental conditions natural selection has unques-
tionably played an important part, for it is evident that no species
can persist from generation to generation in which a source of nu-
trition is not available in time to save the parts concerned in repro-
duction from death by starvation. If this were not the case the
period of dedifferentiation and rejuvenescence would end in death,
as in the case of the starving planarian. Rejuvenescence may follow
senescence automatically, but for a new period of senescence fol-
lowing the rejuvenescence, nutrition from without is sooner or later
necessary.

We must now inquire whether this age cycle is unique in organic
life or whether there are other periodicities which in any way re-
semble it. I believe there are many other periodicities of essentially
similar character. Fatigue, for example, as distinguished from ex-
haustion, results from the accumulation of substances which retard
metabolism and recovery, from the removal of these substances.
The chief difference between this periodicity and the age cycle is
that the substances which produce fatigue are products of catabolism,
essentially waste products and that they are soluble and readily re-
moved, while in age they are essential constituents of the differen-
tiating protoplasmic substratum.

Again, the period of so-called loading of the gland cell is a
period of decreasing metabolism and accumulation of substance
with marked change of structures in the cell and resembles the

338 CHILD— AGE CYCLES AND

period of senescence except that it may take place in a few hours.
The loaded gland cell, like the egg, usually requires stimulation be-
fore it is able to initiate the process of discharge, but, once begun,
this process undergoes acceleration, the metabolic rate rises, the cell
loses its peculiar structure and becomes less specialized in appear-
ance. This is comparable to a period of rejuvenescence, and in the
presence of nutritive material this period is again followed by a
period of loading and decreasing metabolic rate.

In the green parts of a plant in the presence of light and carbon
dioxide loading of the cells with starch and a progressive decrease
in activity occurs, while in darkness the starch may be transformed
to sugar and carried to other parts, and the cells regain their former
condition.

Again in seasonal and other periodicities similar alternations
appear, a period of accumulation and decreasing dynamic activity
is followed by a period of quiescence in which recovery gradually
occurs or after which activity may rapidly increase when external
conditions such as temperature permit. Periods of encystment fol-
lowing growth and accumulatory periods in the lower organisms,
and periods of hibernation or estivation following periods of active
nutritive intake are to a greater or less degree essentially periods of
rejuvenescence.

In many of these cases the beginning of the period correspond-
ing to rejuvenescence is determined by environmental rather than
internal factors but this is incidental. The progressive period in-
stead of proceeding to its natural termination is interrupted, and a
regressive period initiated by external conditions. The organism
in such cases merely responds to the rhythms in its environment,
but such responses are minor periodicities which show certain re-
semblances to the periodicity of the age cycle. The course of life
is then a complex periodic curve made up of many periodicities of
various lengths, the normal age cycle being the longest for the in-
dividual.

But in conclusion, we may at least raise the question whether
there are not periodicities of this sort extending beyond the life of
the individual. Is there not evidence in favor of the view that evo-

OTHER PERIODICITIES IN ORGANISMS. 339

lution is a secular senescence of protoplasm, interrupted here and
there by periods of rejuvenescence? Such periods of evolutionary
rejuvenescence if they have occurred, have probably, like some of
the minor periods in the life of an individual, been determined by
environmental factors, for the natural, internally determined period
of secular protoplasmic senescence has not yet reached its termina-
tion. In any case the general similarity between evolutionary and
individual differentiation suggests that similar factors are at work
in both cases, and since the period of individual differentiation is in
general a period of senescence, the suggestion that something of
similar character is occurring in evolution is not wholly unwar-
ranted.

University of Chicago,
April, 1916.

TYPES OF NEUROMUSCULAR MECHANISM IN SEA-
ANEMONES.,

By G. H. PARKER, S.D.

(Read April 15, igi6.)

Sea-anemones possess at least four systems of organs by which
they react to environmental changes : the glandular system, especially
the mucous glands, the ciliary system, the nematocyst system, and
the muscular system. Of these the first three are strictly local in
their responses in that they become active only in the exact regions
where they are stimulated. Moreover they remain normally re-
sponsive in animals that have been so completely anesthetized with
magnesium sulphate or chloretone as to exhibit no nervous activity.
Hence there is good reason to assume, notwithstanding the opinion
held by some of the older workers, that none of these three systems
are under nervous influence. The fourth system, the muscular, is
well known to be controlled by the nervous system of these animals.
In the common New England sea-anemone, Metridhirn marginatum,
the neuromuscular mechanism includes at least thirteen muscles or
groups of muscles. Two of these are ectodermic, (i) the longi-
tudinal muscle of the tentacles and (2) the radial muscle of the
oral disc; the remaining eleven are entodermic and are as follows:
(3) the circular muscle of the tentacles, (4) the circular muscle of
the oral disc, (5) the circular muscle of the oesophagus, (6) the
sphincter, (7) the circular muscle of the column, (8) the circular
muscle of the pedal disc, and the five mesenteric muscles, namely,
(9) the basilar muscles, (10) the longitudinal mesenteric muscles,
(11) the transverse mesenteric muscles, (12) the parietal muscles,
and (13) the longitudinal muscles of the acontia or nettling
filaments.

The nervous mechanism by which these muscles have long been
supposed to be brought into action is a network of neurofibrils and
the like which permeates the deeper regions of the ectoderm and the

340

MECHANISM IN SEA-ANEMONES. 341

entoderm and the two parts thus estabhshed are beUeved by many
investigators to be continuous in the oesophageal region where ecto-
derm and entoderm are confluent. According to O. and R. Hertwig
(1879-1880), Wolft" (1904), and others this nervous network is
more extensively developed in the oral disc than elsewhere and
constitutes there a primitive central nervous organ. Groselj (1909),
however, believes that this centralization is in the oesophagus. Many
other workers (Nagel, 1892; Loeb, 1895; Parker, 1896. Havet,
1901 ; Bethe, 1903; Jordan, 1908, 1912) maintain that this network
is not sufficiently centralized anywhere in the actinian's body to
justify the statement that the nervous system of the sea-anemone is
other than a diffuse one.

X'igorous stimulation of almost any part of the surface of a
sea-anemone is commonly and quickly followed by the complete
contraction of the whole animal ; and the response is so protracted
that actinian muscle has come to be regarded as specially adapted
to tonic contraction rather than to the rapidly changing phases of
contraction and relaxation so characteristic of the muscles of the
higher animals. This view has gained such strength that von
Uexkiill (1909) and Jordan (1909, 1908, 1912) have come to look
on these muscles as almost exclusively tonus muscles and Jordan
(1908) especially has gone so far as to deny to sea-anemones the
possibility of muscular reflexes such as are so usual among the
more differentiated animals. An adequate examination of the
muscular activities of sea-anemones will show, I believe, that these
animals have a much more complex muscular mechanism than has
been previously suspected and that at least three and possibly four
types of muscular activity can be distinguished in them.

The simplest of these types is that seen in the longitudinal muscle
of the acontium. This muscle can be brought into action by the
direct application of an appropriate mechanical or chemical stimulus.
Its contraction changes the acontium from a long straight filament
into a loosely twisted, spiral one. This response is strictly local in
relation to the stimulus and does not spread appreciably from the
region stimulated to other parts. It is as well pronounced in acontia
that have been in an anesthetizing solution (magnesium sulphate or
chloretone) long enough to abolish all nervous activity in other parts

342 PARKER— TYPES OF NEUROMUSCULAR

of a sea-anemone as it is in normal acontia. I therefore conclude
that the acontial muscle is one that is normally stimulated directly
and that it is without nervous connections. In this sense it repre-
sents primitive muscle unassociated with nervous tissue as has
already been identified in sponges (Parker, 1910).

A second type of muscle is that seen in the circular muscle of
the column of Mctridium. When a portion of the column of this
animal is fully anesthetized with magnesium sulphate, a mechanical
stimulus will not elicit from it the usual contraction of the animal as
a whole, but a ring of contraction will extend more or less com-
pletely around the column. When the column is not anesthetized
and the sea-anemone is vigorously fed, this muscle exhibits
peristaltic movements which apparently depend upon nervous ac-
tivity. The circular muscle of the column, therefore, seems to be a
muscle open to direct stimulation and also under the control of
nerves. In this respect it resembles the sphincter pupills of the
vertebrate eye which responds not only to nerve impulses but also
directly to light.

A third type of muscular mechanism in sea-anemones is seen in
the longitudinal muscles of the mesenteries. These contract when
almost any part of the surface of a Metridium is stimulated, but
they fail to respond when the animal is deeply anesthetized. Hence
I conclude that they are primarily controlled by nerves. Under
ordinary stimulation their action is profound and lasting and is one
of the most important elements in the general contraction of the
animal as a whole. It is their activity that in large part has given
grounds to the idea that the actinian muscle is specialized almost
exclusively on the side of its tonicity.

Finally a fourth type of muscle mechanism is that seen in the
transverse muscles of the mesenteries, particularly of the complete
mesenteries. When food juice is discharged on the tentacles or lips
of an expanded Metridium, the transverse mesenteric muscles con-
tract and thus open the oesophagus preparatory to what t:nder
normal circumstances would be the swallowing of the food. On
withdrawing the stimulus these muscles quickly relax and the
oesophagus closes. This reaction is so definite and precise in its

MECHANISM IN SEA-ANEMONES. 343

relation to the stimulus and so invariable in its occurrence that it
must be regarded as a true reflex and as an example of such an
operation it certainly compares very favorably with what is often
seen in many of the higher animals.

The muscular reactions of the sea-anemones are then by no
means all of a kind, but range from direct muscle responses of a
most primitive character to true reflexes. The more complex
operations of these animals such as food-taking, creeping, and so
forth, are not to be regarded as the result of the action of a rela-
tively uniform neuromuscular mechanism, but depend upon some
combination of the various types of muscular or neuromuscular
activity possible to these animals. These operations are often ex-
tremely complex and call for a high degree of coordination and yet
this coordination is almost entirely of local origin, for an isolated
tentacle will react to food almost exactly as an attached one does
and the pedal disc, even after the oral disc has been cut away, will
creep in a fashion indistinguishable from that of a whole animal.
There is therefore good grounds to agree with those who maintain
that the nervous system of the sea-anemone is essentially dift'use
lacking obvious centralization.

Harvard University,
April, 1916.

INHERITANCE THROUGH SPORES.

By JOHN M. COULTER, A.M., Ph.D.

(Read April 14, i()i6.)

The modern history of botany is a series of segregations of sub-
jects. Each new segregate has attracted a certain number of re-
cruits from the older subjects. There have always been two cate-
gories of botanists : those who move on promptly to the newer
phases of their subject, and the old guard that never moves on. The
latest segregate of the series is plant genetics, which is making so
large an appeal to botanists that if the epidemic continues all bot-
anists are in danger of becoming geneticists. What I wish to pre-
sent has a bearing upon the work of this important modern field of
botanical activity. In this presentation, however, I shall not intro-
duce the details of material. These details are too numerous for
the time allotted, and too technical for any audience excepting one
of professional botanists.

Plant geneticists have begun, just as did plant morphologists, by
using the most complex material. So long as plant morphologists
focused their attention upon seed plants, they were accumulating
data that could only be interpreted empirically. When they in-
cluded a study of the lower forms, the simpler groups became keys
to the more complex ones, and interpretation became scientific. In
plant genetics w^e are still mainly in the stage of complex material.
Sexual reproduction is selected as the method of reproduction to be
investigated, and the particular sexual structures selected are so
peculiarly involved with other structures that it is impossible to
analyze the factors involved in the results. Not only are the sexual
structures beyond the reach of observation and of experimental
control, but there is an alternation of two forms of reproduction,
inheritance being carried through one generation to express itself
in the next.

844

COULTER— INHERITANCE THROUGH SPORES. 345

Furthermore, the origin of embryos produced in seeds is not
assured. \Miile we may assume that, for the most part, they are
the result of fertilization, which in its gross aspects can be controlled,
the increasing number of cases of parthenogenesis, vegetative
apogamy, and sporophytic budding introduces a serious element of
uncertainty. The program between pollination and fertilization,
and between fertilization and the escape of the embryo from the
seed, is a very long one, and not a single stage of it is under observa-
tion, much less under control. In other words, we are working
empirically upon our problem as yet.

If sexual reproduction must be studied, it would seem desirable,
therefore, to use material selected from the more primitive sexual
forms, material in which the sexual structures are not so involved
with other structures, in which the whole performance of fertiliza-
tion and embryo development is in sight and capable of control.
The difference between a sex act and an embryo development under
cover, and in the open, when experimental control is the end in
view, is too obvious to need further explanation. Furthermore, in
these simpler sexual forms the origin of sex is observable, so far
as it is represented by the sexual cells, and the general conditions
of origin are known, conditions which are sadly in need of analysis
in experimental work. It must be evident that a knowledge of
the factors involved in the origin of sex may throw some light on
the function of sex in general. But the origin of sex involves a
still more fundamental problem.

Sexual cells are phylogenetically related to spores, that is, spores
are historically intermediates between vegetative protoplasts and
sexual cells. This suggests that the origin of spores and in-
heritance through them deserve attention as a preliminary to the
origin of sexual cells and inheritance through them. In other
words, there are certain things that all forms of reproduction have
in common, and these should be kept distinct from the things which
are peculiar to sexual inheritance.

yiore primitive than reproduction by spores is reproduction by
ordinary protoplasts, shown notably by one-celled plants in which
cell division results in reproduction and in which the succession of

346 COULTER— INHERITANCE THROUGH SPORES.

cell divisions is rapid. The fact that such plants can be induced to
form spores contrary to their normal habit, indicates that the con-
ditions of spore formation can be determined. These conditions
are described as yet in terms so vague that they mean little more
than environment, and this may be external or internal, depending
upon whether one speaks from the standpoint of the plant or of the
protoplast. Experimental work has shown that a spore may be
defined as a protoplast, usually separated from its old wall, always
separated from organic connection with other protoplasts, and by
virtue of this latter fact, capable of producing a new individual.
If this is a spore, what is a sexual cell which may be derived from
the same protoplast? Neither of them is a protoplast of special
cell lineage, as has been proved by inducing spore formation and
gamete formation in any cell lineage.

The plant geneticist may not be interested in the conditions that
result in gamete formation, and even less interested in the condi-
tions that result in spore formation, but these are fundamental to
the problem of reproduction, and therefore fundamental to the prob-
lem of inheritance. A practical plant-breeder may be interested
only in the fact that he can obtain a new individual from a seed,
the pedigree of whose embryo in the nature of things cannot be
demonstrated, but only inferred ; but a scientific plant-breeder, whom
we now call a geneticist, must be interested in the conditions that
determine inheritance, and these include the conditions that deter-
mine reproduction in general.

No more favorable material for determining the fundame\ital
facts of inheritance can be found among plants than spores of the
simpler forms. They are accessible, and therefore capable of con-
trol ; a succession of spore-produced individuals represents a line
whose purity cannot be questioned ; the so-called " modification of
the germ plasm " can be accomplished with a precision that is
impossible in an ovary and ovule-enclosed Qgg, to say nothing of
the sperm. In short, freed from all entanglements of sex, the pos-
sibiHties of variation in pure lines can be determined, and the pos-
sibilities of the inheritance of such variations. Such work will
establish the facts common to all inheritance, and will enable us to
recosrnize the contribution of sex to inheritance.

COULTER— INHERITANCE THROUGH SPORES. 347

To indicate that this is not a visionary programme, I wish to
say that such experimental work has been begun, and that the initial
results indicate that the stage of promise is merging into the stage
of performance. It is demanding not merely the technique of plant-
breeding, but it involves also the technique of cytology to discover
the structural changes, and the technique of physics and physiolog-
ical chemistry, to determine the conditions and substances that are
factors in the various processes. Perhaps of largest significance is
the fact that just as the doctrine of evolution broke up a static
taxonomy, so this experimental work with inheritance is breaking
up a static morphology, encrusted with rigid definitions, and is
making this great field dynamic.

THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES.

By DANA C. MUNRO, L.HD.

(Read April zj, /g/6. )

The First Crusade was the work of Pope Urban H., whose won-
derful speech at the Council of Clermont led thousands to take the
cross. From that time the Popes always felt that the crusades were
peculiarly their task and under their inspiration, even if some of
the expeditions, like the one against Constantinople, escaped from
their direction. For they believed that the crusades were God's
work and that they were His agents. According to Fulk of
Chartres, Urban at Clermont used the following words :

" I speak to those who are present, I shall proclaim it to the absent, but
it is Christ who commands. Moreover, if those who set out thither lose their
lives on the journey, by land or sea, or in fighting against the heathen, their
sins shall be remitted in that hour; this I grant through the power of God
vested in me."

The Pope set the time of departure, ordered who should go and who
should not go, offered privileges to the participants, and threatened
with excommunication all who should not fulfill their vow. For
two hundred years and more the Popes were always proclaiming that
the crusades were on imperative duty and everyone recognized their
preeminent concern in the holy wars.

Why did the Popes enter upon this undertaking? What did
they hope to gain for the Church and for Christendom from these
crusades ? Many have attempted to answer these questions and their
answers have been very contradictory, too often reflecting merely
the prejudice of the writer. Thomas Fuller in his History of the
Holy War said :

" Though the pretences were pious and plausible, yet no doubt the thoughts
of his holiness began where other men's ended, and he had a privy project
beyond the public design: First, to reduce the Grecians into subjection to
himself, with their three patriarchs of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constanti-
nople; and to make the Eastern Church a chapel of ease to the mother church
of Rome."

348

MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES. 349

Without quoting farther from Fuller we may note that many
scholars have agreed with him that the main purpose of the Popes'
action was the desire to bring the Greek Church under the Roman
curia. The most notable exponent of this idea in recent years is
M. Kohler, the editor of the Revue de VOrient latin and of the
Armenian Documents in the Rectieil des Historiens des Croisades,
and one of the best informed scholars in this subject.

Others have thought that Urban was moved by the appeal for aid
from the Emperor at Constantinople, and with the bread view of a
statesman realized the necessity of protecting Europe most effectively
by carrying the war into the enemy's country. It is possible that he
foresaw the gain in authority that would accrue to the papacy from
the leadership in a universal movement which would arouse religious
enthusiasm and be conducted under the guidance of the Church.
It is also possible that he was influenced mainly by the spirit of the
age, with its kindred virtues of asceticism and valor. As most of
his letters concerning the crusade have been destroyed, there is not
enough material to make it possible to dissect and weigh his motives.
It is easier to understand and explain why the succeeding Popes
should have continued to interest themselves in a movement which
they believed to be God's work and which was apparently bringing
such important results to the Church.

In the first place the preaching of the crusades aroused great
religious enthusiasm and led many sinners to reform, at least tem-
porarily. Peter the Hermit preached right living as well as the
Crusade ; and, in particular we are told by one of those who had
seen him that " he led the prostitutes back to their husbands and
added to their dowries from his own resources." Some of the
preachers had many qualities of the modern evangelist: a biting wit,
a ready tongue, a keen sense of humor, a magnetic personality ; some
were accused of evil-living and greed. Fulk of Neuilly, who
claimed that he had given out 200,000 crosses with his own hands,
raised money to build a house for magdalens and for a church, as
well as for the cause of the crusades. He bandied jests equally
readily with Richard the Lion-Hearted and with the mob. When
the crowd pressed too closely upon him he would lay about him
vigorously with his staff and those who were hit felt honored by

350 MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES.

the blows. On one occasion when some in his audience tried to
secure as relics bits of his garments, he seized upon the most pre-
sumptuous and proclaimed that his own clothes were not sacred
objects, but that he would and did sanctify the garments of the man
he held, whose clothes were at once torn from his body, in bits to
be preserved as relics. Such preachers naturally appealed to the
common people, who seldom heard any sermons, and had a great
influence in kindling religious zeal. The preaching of the crusades
frequently led many to enter monasteries to expiate their sins, in-
stead of taking the Cross. Caesar of Heisterbach tells of the
marvelous effect of Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons and states that
Bernard sent all who were fit into monasteries ; to the others he
gave the Cross. After the fall of Jerusalem such a wave of piety
spread over western Europe that wars were abandoned for a time
and the cardinals took a vow to go afoot until the Holy City was
rescued from the infidel. In the next century a most striking out-
burst of religious enthusiasm led to the Children's Crusade, which
was to be a missionary movement, not a military campaign. Thus,
undoubtedly, through the preaching of the crusades there was a
great amount of religious fervor, some real piety and reformation
in manners, and a greater interest in the Holy Land and all con-
nected with it. This would redound to the credit of the head of the
Church and increase his influence and power.

The Popes offered privileges, both spiritual and temporal, to
all who took the Cross. Because of the intense enthusiasm for the
crusades and also because of the weakness of most of the monarchs
in Western Europe during the first half of the twelfth century, the
Church, and especially the Pope, were allowed through these privi-
leges to encroach upon the sphere of the temporal authorities. All
crusaders were given the protection of the ecclesiastical courts ; thus
when a vassal took the cross he might escape to a considerable extent
from the jurisdiction of his feudal lord. Moreover, his family and
property were taken under the protection of the Church and in this
way many cases were taken from the feudal courts. In his privilege
for the Second Crusade Eugene III. gave vassals who took the
Cross, the right, under certain circumstances, to mortgage their fiefs

MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES. 351

without the consent of their suzerains ; this was a direct encroach-
ment on property rights, but amid the intense enthusiasm for a
movement in which both the German emperor and the French king
participated this usurpation passed without much comment. It is
significant, however, that this privilege was not renewed in later
grants. The Popes also gave permission for non-payment of in-
terest on debts owed by crusaders and directed that the monarchs
should take steps to enforce this. Philip Augustus actually followed
the mandate, by an ordinance arranging the extent to w^iich this non-
payment of interest should be allowed. This encroachment upon
property rights provoked less opposition because the creditors were
frequently Jews. As each crusader was under the protection of the
Church the Popes interfered in case of capture of individual
crusaders by their enemies and also to prevent warfare which would
hinder men from fulfilling their vows. They used the censures of
the Church freely for this purpose and, on the whole, with general
approval. They even interfered w^ith the amusements of the
nobility, repeatedly forbidding tournaments and threatening to ex-
communicate all participants. Other instances might be cited to
show the manner in which the Popes added to their temporal power
and control over those who were not members of the clergy, so
that after a century of crusading activity the Pope's power had been
enormously enhanced. Of course, the increase in their temporal
authority was not wholly due to the crusades ; other agencies were
at work ; but the religious wars preached by the Popes had a very
important share in the growth of temporal power which had reached
so great an extension by the time of Innocent III.

In the thirteenth century the influence of the crusading move-
ment in adding to the Pope's power can be illustrated in many ways.
Frederic II., in a burst of enthusiasm caused by his unexpected
attainment of the imperial crown, took the Cross. From that time
until he started on his expedition, twelve years later, he was con-
tinually hampered by his vow and had to make many concessions to
the Pope, in order to obtain permission to delay its fulfillment.
When an energetic pontifif, Gregory IX., was elected, Frederic was
obliged to start on his expedition, although he had not completed his

352 MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES.

diplomatic preparations. When he put back on the plea of illness
he was excommunicated and his crown placed in jeopardy. He
probably regretted frequently and very bitterly his youthful enthus-
iasm. The Pope preached a crusade against his Sicilian kingdom ;
and this illustrates another means by which the power of the popes
was enhanced. They repeatedly preached crusades against their
temporal foes and offered to the participants in these wars the same
privileges, spiritual and temporal, which were given to those who
went on expeditions against the Moslems. These holy wars were
sometimes directed against monarchs and other rulers, sometimes
against cities, at other times against heretics like the Albigenses, or
against the heathen in the north and northeast of Europe. These
armies played an important part in the history of the thirteenth
century.

This century also saw the temporary union of almost all Chris-
tian lands under the authority of the Pope and this was directly
due to the crusades. The capture of Constantinople led to the
establishment of a Latin patriarchate there. Bishops of heretical
churches in Syria acknowledged the supremacy of the Latin Church.
The ruler of Armenia sought to have the title of king bestowed
upon him by the Pope and promised in return to bring the Armenian
Church under the Pope. For a time there seemed a possibility that
there might be one all-inclusive Catholic Church, under the authority
of the Pope.

The crusades also brought to the Church and to the Popes an
enormous increase in wealth. Crusaders gave freely to the Church
before starting for the East ; they also mortgaged or sold their
property to ecclesiastical foundations under conditions very ad-
vantageous to the latter. The Orders of the Temple and Hospital
received great endowments and became very wealthy. Men who
had taken the Cross and were unable to go, purchased exemption
from their vow. Taxes for the crusades were frequently collected
and handled by the Church. It is not possible to give any estimate
of the total amount which the Church received through the crusades,
but it was enormous. Consequently the Popes became much more
powerful, especially through their control over the appointment of
the officials who profited by this wealth.

MUXRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES. 353

While the Popes and the Church gained so much in so many
different ways, their disappointments were severe and their losses
heavy. There could be no disguising the fact that the crusades,
on the whole, had been a failure. When the monarchs returned
home ignominiously from the Second Crusade even Bernard of
Clairvaux felt sick at heart over the failure of the movement which
he had preached. The Crusade of Richard the Lion-Hearted and
Philip Augustus had not rescued Jerusalem ; the Fourth Crusade
had been shamelessly diverted against a Christian Empire; the Fifth
had secured a diplomatic triumph which the Pope did all in his
power to thwart and belittle ; the minor expeditions had achieved
little or nothing; the heroic St. Louis had been obliged to ransom
himself from captivity. These failures did not injure the papal
power to any marked degree because the Popes and their legates had
been responsible for the conduct of the military operations only to
a very limited extent. For the First Crusade Urban II. had ap-
pointed a papal legate, Ademar of Puy, who proved of great assist-
ance to the expedition ; he died before the capture of Jerusalem and
his loss was keenly felt by the crusaders. Although other legates
were sent with the various expeditions, no one played a prominent
part, except Cardinal Pelagius, whose lack of tact, to put it mildly,
was principally responsible for the failure of the Crusade against
Damietta. The leaders of the various crusades to the Orient were
not designated by the Popes. With the exceptions of Urban II.
and Innocent III., the Popes did n,ot take an active part in laying
the plans for Crusades against the Moslems ; the expedition for
which Urban made the plans was successful ; Innocent's orders were
not obeyed. The leaders in the Church, like St. Bernard, were able
to throw the blame for failure upon the ignorance and sins of the
crusaders.

Jerusalem was conquered and held for some scores of years but
the Holy City did not become the head of a Church state as the
Pope probably hoped that it would. When, before its capture in
1099, the leaders gathered to discuss the election of a ruler, the
Church party in the army protested, saying that no earthly monarch
ought to wear a crown of gold where our Saviour had worn a

354 MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES.

crown of thorns. For the moment the nobles yielded ; afte*- the
capture of the city they elected Godfrey, Defender of the Holv
Sepulcher. This title probably marked a concession to the point
of view held by the clerical party. When Dagobert was elected
Patriarch of Jerusalem and demanded that Godfrey should give up
the Holy City, the latter temporized, promising that he would hand
over Jerusalem to the Patriarch when he had secured other con-
quests. But after his death his brother Baldwin was crowned king,
and Jerusalem gradually became an hereditary monarchy, in which
the Patriarch was clearly subordinate to the King, and the latter
was wholly independent of the Pope. The Christian conquests in
Syria, instead of being the home of garrisons ever ready to propa-
gate the faith by the sword, soon became commercial centers whose
inhabitants were intent mainly on living in peace and carrying on
trade with the infidels. They viewed askance the bands of crusaders
from the West who might interfere wnth their commerce by pro-
voking hostilities. Even members of the military Orders, whose
main purpose was supposed to be the defence of the Holy Land,
formed friendships with the Moslems, whom they entertained in
their castles and allowed to pray to Allah in their chapels. The
direction of the great Crusades escaped from the Popes, and in spite
of Innocent's commands and repeated excommunications the French
and Venetians persisted in going to Zara and Constantinople and in
sacking those Christian cities. Frederic H., excommunicated for
not going on a crusade, went and was excommunicated again for
going while excommunicate. Despite the efforts of the Pope and
of the leading churchmen in the Holy Land he made peace with the
Mohammedans and secured Jerusalem by diplomacy. The crusaders
who settled in the Holy Land soon ceased to be as devout and narrow
as their brethren in the West. They intermarried with the natives,
both heretics and Moslems, adopted the customs of their wives, and
some of their superstitions. Even the Templars w'cre generally
believed to be contaminated by the Mohammedan beliefs. The
monastic chroniclers, especially those from the West, are very out-
spoken about the evil lives led by the Christians of all ranks, even
the patriarchs, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. From the East these

MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES. 355

conditions spread to the West, to the great detriment of the Church.
The merchants carried back not merely Oriental wares, but also
Oriental heresies, which spread rapidly in the West along the com-
mercial highways. Soon crusades had to be preached against the
heresies which were mainly due to the crusades. All of these
factors detracted from the power of the Popes.

It was easier for the heresies to spread because of a growing dis-
trust of the Church, due to many causes, e. g., all teaching in France,
Germany and England had been done by the clerics and the
crusaders found that many things which they had been taught were
untrue. One chronicler of the First Crusade naively expressed his
surprise at the bravery of the Turks who he had been taught to
believe were cowards. Possibly this idea was due to Urban's speech
at Clermont, for William of Malmesbury reports that the Pope
said : the Turks are

" feeble men, who, not having courage to engage in close encounter, love
a flying mode of warfare. For the Turk never ventures upon close fight;
but, when driven from his station, bends his bow at a distance and trusts
the wind with his meditated wound ; and as he has poisoned arrows, venom,
and not valor, inflicts death on the man he strikes. Whatever he effects,
then, I attribute to fortune, not to courage, because he wars by flight, and
by poison. It is apparent, too, that every race, born in that region, being
scorched with the intense heat of the sun, abounds more in reflection, than
in blood ; and, therefore, they avoid coming to close quarters, because they
are aware how little blood they possess."

Many another crusader learned that the information which he had
received had been misinformation, and began to doubt. The polit-
ical crusades brought discredit upon the Church and the Popes who
ordered them. Many men realized that the Popes were using their
power for worldly ends. In the thirteenth century it was ever more
difficult to induce men to take the Cross. In 1233 the Pope offered
an indulgence of 20 days to all who would listen to a sermon on the
crusades; in 1249 the indulgence was increased to 40 days, and in
1265 to 100 days, in the hope that some might be led to take the
Cross.

Many of the preachers were charged with misappropriation of
the funds which they raised for the crusades. Walter von der
Vogelweide voices this feeling in his verses :

356 MUNRO— THE POPES AND THE CRUSADES.

"Little, methinks, of all this silver in God's cause is spent:
To part with a great treasure priests are ill-content."

As Walter was a partisan of the Hohenstaufens and opposed to the
papacy he might be considered prejudiced. But the same idea was
common ; e. g., Matthew Paris, the historiographer of the monastery
of St. Albans writes :

" By divers wiles the Roman curia strove to take their property from the
simple people of God, seeking nothing but their gold and silver."

Thomas Fuller, later, put it bluntly, the pope "got a bag of money
by it." All reformers in the Church felt that this wealth had
brought corruption in its train and while few realized the part that
the crusades had played in bringing in this wealth, many denounced
the corruption of the papal curia and its greed for gold.

Church unity was attained for only a short time. The Greek
Empire, for whose aid the First Crusade had been preached, had
been brought under the Latin Church, but had been so weakened by
the attacks of the crusaders that it could not much longer be " the
bulwark of Europe " against Islam. The fall of the Latin Empire
of Constantinople led to the return of the Greek patriarch. Heresy
and opposition to the Church spread in the West. There was a
marked decline in religious fervor ; interest in the next world
dwindled as the zest in living the present life increased, because it
seemed better worth living. There was a great growth in the use
of indulgences and it would be especially interesting to trace out
their connection with the privileges of the crusaders. It is not feas-
ible here, however, to follow the whole course of events. The facts
which have been given are sufficient to show how completely the
hopes of the Popes had been frustrated. If we weigh all the evi-
dence we see the manifold ways in which the crusades affected the
power of the Popes and we may well conclude that some roots of
the reformation are to be found in them and the Popes' connection
with them.

Princeton University,
April, 1916.

A RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL.

(Plate V.)

By J. DYNELEY PRINCE, Ph.D.

(Read April 13, 1916.)

In the library of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan in New York City is
a very rare old Slavonic Roman Catholic prayer-book, printed in
Glagolitic characters in the so-called Croatian variant of the Church
Slavonic language. The work bears the Latin title at the end of the
text: Alphabeticum ct Prcces Illyricae, impr. Ven. per Andream de
Torresanis de Asida, 1527, followed by the Slavonic title: stainpani
V* Byiietcich po Andrei Toresani is Asuly, " printed in Venice by
Andreas de Torresanis de Asula," which words are followed by the
date, 1527, indicated in Glagolitic characters. On the front fly-leaf
are written the words: c libris Evelyn, Venetiis, 1645. This un-
doubtedly is John Evelyn, the well-known English virtuoso, who
visited Venice in 1645, ^^i^ evidently purchased this book there (cf.
National Biographical Dictionary, p. 79). According to Bishop
Butler (Renouard, Totn. II., p. 276), this work was unique in his
time ( 1 774-1839) and a collated and perfect copy. The first
allusion of recent date to this edition of A. de Torresanis de Asula
seems to have been made by Dobrovsky in his correspondence with
Kopitar, published by Ritter Vatroslav von Jagic. It is interesting
to note that A. de Torresanis was also the printer of the first book
in Serb proper ("The Hours") in Venice, 1493.

This Morgan edition of the Croatian prayer-book is the only one
which can be placed at the present time, although there must be
several copies in existence in European libraries. The book con-
sists of seven clearly printed pages in excellent preservation and
contains many woodcuts. On the front binding are two portraits ;
on the left, of a crowned queen, with the Italian legend : scetri e

* See below on the notation.

357

358 PRINCE— RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL.

corone doppo morte F{^fanno) iivlla, "scepters and crowns are
of no avail after death," and on the right, of a man, apparently a
king, with the Italian device: caran(?)o (=corono) la vita mcntre
opero bene, "1 crown (my) life by working well." On the rear
binding on the left, is a portrait of a man with the words : colgi le
rose e lassa star le spine, " pluck the roses and leave the thorns,"
and on the right, of a woman with the partially erased phrase : c- . . .
misura ogni suo passo. There is no title-page, the text beginning
directly, as shown by the accompanying plate, with the Glagolitic
alphabet, followed by a complete syllabary {ha, he, hi, ho, bu, hy, h:)
and the Pater Noster and Ave Maria.

The Church Slavonic language was originally the vernacular of
the Macedonian Slavs at the time of SS. Cyril and Method, the two
great Greek missioners of the Eastern Orthodox faith to the wild
Slavonic tribes. When these various Slavonic peoples adopted the
Eastern form of Christianity with its accompanying rite, this lan-
guage began to take on different aspects under the influence of the
particular idioms. Thus, we find a Serbo-Croatian, a Russian and
a Bulgarian reduction of the Old Slavonic, in each of which coun-
tries the older language appears partially disguised under the garb
of the respective vernacular. It should be remarked that the Serbs
and Croats are linguistically identical, differing only, in that the
Serbs write their language in a modified form of the Cyrillic
alphabet, while the Croats, who are for the most part Roman
Catholics, use the Latin letters. The Old Slavonic, having been
accepted at an early date as the idiom of the Scriptures and the
Liturgy, naturally became the first literary language of the Serbo-
Croats. Although this Church language was not identical with the
Serbo-Croatian vernacular of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
it must have been fairly intelligible, as it became the regular literary
medium in the hands of the ecclesiastical classes, from whom all
literature naturally proceeded. From the thirteenth to the eight-
eenth centuries, all Serb books were, therefore, printed in the Old
Slavonic of the Serb redaction, under which head much of the early
Croatian literature also falls, although the Ragusan and Dalmatian
literatures made use of the actual vernacular as their vehicle much

PRINCE— RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL. 359

earlier than did the Serbs themselves. We find essentially the same
conditions affecting the use of the Church Slavonic in Russia, where
the older idiom appears as an archaized dialect of Russian in Old
Slavonic dress. Among the Bulgarians, however, who were of
Hunnic origin, their adopted Slavonic idiom differed less than Serb
or Russian from the primitive Church Slavonic form of Macedonian,
which is sometimes, therefore, erroneously known as " Old Bul-
garian." Church Slavonic is not " Old Bulgarian," but simply stood
in a very close relationship to the Slavonic dialect adopted by the
Non-Slavonic Bulgars.

The Croats came very early under the influence of the Roman rite,
which, however, was permitted by tb*" Pope to be celebrated in the Old
Slavonic language, which <-h>'s took on the specially Croatian form,
in which the Morgan text is printed. This Croatian variant is prac-
tically identical with the Serb redaction. Its chief characteristics are
the omission of the nasalized vowels of the original Macedonian and
a few other concessions to the current vernacular, some of which will
be noted below. It is interesting to observe that this Croatizing
idiom written in Glagolitic is still in use among the Roman Catholics
of Istria, Dalmatia, the Adriatic islands, and, in fact, all along the
Croatian coastland. The Croatian Old Slavonic in Glagolitic has,
during the course of centuries, become the medium of a very consid-
erable literature (cf. v. Jagic, in Branko A^odnik's Einlcitung zur
Kroatischcn Literatnrgeschichte , Agram). In fact, there are to this
day some old people who can read no other character than the
Glagolitic, which went into disuse at a very early date among the
Orthodox Slavs, who universally adopted the Cyrillic, which thus
became the parent of the modern Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian
alphabets. It is probable that the Cyrillic system was an evolution
from the Greek uncial letters, while the Glagolitic, now a distinctly
Roman Catholic alphabet, was developed from the Greek minusciilae
(Isaac Taylor, Archiv filr Slavische Philologie, V., 191 ff.).

The Morgan text is especially interesting, because it presents the
Croatian Church Slavonic of the early sixteenth century in a highly
satisfactory manner, as may be seen from the following translitera-
tions with commentary of the "Lord's Prayer" and "Hail Mary"
shown on the accompanying plate (Plate V).

360 PRINCE— RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL.

The following system of notation has been adopted. The con-
sonants and vowels are to be pronounced as in Italian, except in the
case of a = Roumanian a, i^ heavy u, as in Turkish kyz, "girl";
c^=^ts; c = Eng. ch; c/z = Germ. guttural ch; e^=^ye; e^=e in
"met"; ■ia = ya; ie = ye; /_, as in dlgi, "debts," is pronounced with
the inherent vowel of the I, as occurs often in Czech ; r, as in
mrtvich:, is pronounced with the inherent vowel of the r^ similar to
the vowel of the /; s = sh; st is one letter, formerly pronounced sht,
as indeed is still the case in Bulgarian. In Russian, this combina-
tion =i'/!c/!, all in one sound, a later modification of the primitive
pronunciation. In the Glagolitic text, y is an indeterminate symbol
used indifferently for e, ie, ia, e and in some Glagolitic texts even
for i; c^zh (French ;'). The signs : and ' represent respectively
the Russian hard sign, originally an indeterminate vowel, probably li,
and the Russian soft sign, at first an i, which later developed into a
mere palatalizing of the preceding consonant, as nas' =nashy. The
hard sign : is not always used in the Morgan text and the soft sign '
does not appear at all.

In addition to the material treated in this paper the ^Morgan text
contains some selections from the Psalter — the version of Ps. CX is
especially interesting — the Magnificat, the symbols of the Apostles
and a few prayers. I intend to publish later a complete redaction
of all this material which is particularly valuable for the study of
the Croatian variant of the Old Slavonic.

MOLITVA NeDILNA.

Weekly Prayer.

M. oce nas: iae na nchysich: \ sveti-se

Z. ot'cc (oce) nas' ize {i)esi na ncbesecli: \ da sz'atit: sa
Cr. oce nas koji si na nebesima | da se sveti

Father Our who art in heavens ; be sanctified

M. hue tz'oe \ pridi cesarastvo tvoe \ budi vola tvoy

Z. iiiia tz'oe \ dapHdct cesar'stvie tvoe \ da badct vole (z'olia) tvoe
Cr. inictvojc\ da dodje carstvo tvoje\ da bud e volja tvoja

name thy ; let come kingdom thy ; let be will thy

M. yko na nybesichi na zemli \Chleb: nas: vsagdanni

PRINCE— RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL. 361

Z. efiO{iako) }ia ncbcsc inasemi {seml'i) \Chleh:nas' nad'nevudi
Cr. kao na nchn i na semlji \Hljeh nas potrebni

as in heavens so also on earth ; Bread our daily

M. dai nam danas \

Z. (iiasustnoi) dai (podarai) nam na vsck: (z'sak:) d'n' \
Cr. daji nam svaki dan \

give us to-day (Z. for every day) ;

]\I. / odpusfi nam digi nase ykoBe i mi

Z. / ostazn nam: grcchoi (grechi) nasa iko (eko, iako) i sami
Cr. / oprosti nam grijehc nase jer i mi

And forgive to us sins our as also we

M. otpiisstanio dlcnikom: nasimi \ I ne zvvedi

Z. ostavleem: vsckomon dliznikon {dolzniku) nascmou \ I ne v.vedi
Cr. oprasfamo svakome diihniku sz'Ojeiuu \ I nenaredi

forgive debtors our . And not lead

M. nas: z' napast na izhavi nas od nepriezni \ Amen

Z. nas: v iskousen'e n:(no) iabavi ndi{nas:) of nepriezni \ Amen
Cr. nas u napast nego izhavi nas od zla \ Amen

us into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Pozdravlcnie And'ela
Greeting of the Angel
M. Zdro'va Marie milosti plna. G(ospod' ) s toboju . Blazena Ti esi
Hail Mary of Grace full. The Lord with Thee. Blessed Thou art
v zenacJi. I blagoslavlen: plod utrobi tvoee Is(ous). Sveta Marie
among women. And blessed the fruit of womb thy, Jesus. Holy Mary,
Mati Boziy moli za nas: gresnich: . I takoe moli za nasicli:
Mother of God pray for us sinners . And also pray for our
mrtvich: Amen.

dead (ones). Amen.

Commentary.
Pater Noster.

The abbreviations M., Z., and Cr. indicate respectively Morgan
Text, Codex Zographensis, and the modern Croatian version. It will
be observed at once in the text of \.\\q Pater N oster ih^i M. is true Old
Slavonic and approaches closely to the idiom of the Z. version. Note

362 PRINCE— RARE OLD SLAVONIC RELIGIOUS MANUAL.

the following peculiarities : AI. uas:=^Z.nas'^ with soft sign, probably
the original form; nebysich: interchanging with nyhesich, illustrating
the indeterminate character of the Glagolitic y; M. si'eti-se ^=Cr. se
svcti with omission of 3 p. — f, seen in Z. svafit: sd; yi. pridi — bitdi,
imperatives, instead of cohortative da in the other versions ; here M.
seems more archaic than Z. ; tvoy; y =^ia; yko; y = c or ia, as ykoze;
in nyhesich, 3' is clearly e, as in chJcb; daiias "to-day" is modern
Croat from Old Slavonic d'n'-\-s'; cf. Czech dues, "to-day";
note the form in M., vsagdanni "daily"; otpusstamo, with pure
Croatian ending of i p. pi. — aino=Z. ostav-l-eem; d I anik:=^ modern
Cr. dnznik with loss of I, as is characteristic in the modern idiom.

The following differences of translation should also be noted : Cr.
potrcbni does not mean " daily," but " necessary " ; the Russian Sla-
vonic form nasiistnoi also means "actual; needful." Observe the
change in modern Cr. from the vowelless preposition v into 11, in u
napast " into temptation."

The forms in parentheses represent the variants of the Russian
Church Slavonic from the text of the Codex Zographensis.

Ave Maria.

Note that takoc, " also," appears in modern Croatian as takod-
je{r). The ordinary western version of the Ave Maria ends : " pray
for us sinners now and in the hour of death," whereas the M. ver-
sion has "pray for us sinners and for our dead (ones)," a most
unusual variant in a Catholic work!

The Russian Old Slavonic version is as follows: "O Virgin
Mother of God, Hail. Blessed Mary, the Lord is with thee. Blessed
art thou among women and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, whom
Thou hast borne as a Salvation for our souls." I can find no trace
of either this or the Croatian version of M. in any Catholic work.
It is significant, however, that in the many Orthodox hymns to the
Virgin, she is regarded as the special patron of the faithful departed,
which probably accounts for the M. variant laying stress on this
particular aspect.

JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR IN THE
DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE.

Plates VI-VIII.

By FREDERICK EHRENFELD, Ph.D.

(Read April 14, igi6.)

This paper is the result in part of a study of the various factors
of rock weathering and erosion which I began some years ago and
which has been influenced further by a study of the efifects of
marine erosion along the north Atlantic coast.

At a certain point I had the idea of trying to find for mechan-
ical weathering a definite factor comparable to the part which chem-
ical non-equilibrium plays in chemical weathering ; further study
convinced me, however, that there is one factor which is constantly
acting in advance of all other factors of both weathering and erosion,
and that this factor is jointing.

In almost all studies and in most textbooks and other geological
writings on the subjects of weathering and erosion the matter is
usually approached from the point of view of the contact of the at-
mosphere, and the results of both weathering and erosion are often
spoken of as the attaining more or less perfectly of an equilibrium
between the surface of the lithosphere and agents of the atmos-
phere. Thus both the formation of " clay " and the formation of
a " peneplain " or base level are regarded as the final products of
weathering and erosion ; they are the conclusion of a cycle of changes
which began in a condition of non-equilibrium, ran through various
well-marked stages and ended at last in so-called final products
which would or do remain permanent until some general earth
change takes place, when a similar cycle will begin anew. If this
is a fair statement of the matter, as I think it is, then these are the
results of the contact of lithosphere and atmosphere to produce a
surface equilibrium.

363

364 EHREXFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

When, however, the much larger subject of the reduction of the
Hthosphere in general to a condition of something like equilibrium
is considered, these so-called linal products of " clays " on the one
hand and of "peneplains" on the other are seen to be not final at
all but are really the end products of a series of agents which are
more or less accidental or local. The second point then upon which
I wish to rest a case is that the degradation of the Hthosphere in-
cluding both the factors of weathering and erosion is something
which is not essentially atmospheric in its control but is rather some-
thing which is a fundamental feature of the hthosphere structure
itself ; and that all the agents of frost, surface drainage, glacial ac-
tion, chemical weathering or other surface or atmospheric agents
are by their nature essentially accidentals which do influence local
results but are not the controlling factors. If I may illustrate the
point by an appeal to some other framed structures besides the
Hthosphere such as the behavior of metals under stress, we may
make the comparison by considering the active life or coherency of
a pair of car wheels or axles. This active life is conditioned not
so much by nature of the particular train of which the wheels or
axles are a part but rather by the nature of the steel and also by the
fact that it is almost, if not quite, impossible to make masses of steel
which will be destitute of flaws which will become joints, or to make
a steel which will continue elastic. The fact that one wheel may
outlive the other twice over in active service is more a question of
time factor than it is of difference of the agent which produced the
final break ; the eventual cause of the break will in the vast majority
of cases be due to some inherent factor in the wheels themselves
rather than to a particular agent or a particular occasion or accident.
One of the great problems of metallurgy to-day is to produce a
steel without joints and it is also one of the problems of geologists
when they try to conceive of the Hthosphere without these same fun-
damental lines of weakness which we call joints ; almost the only
condition of the Hthosphere where we can hypothecate no jointings
is in a molten mass.

This tendency of earth matter to arrange itself in definite lines
of weakness seems to become more striking the farther we investi-
gate the fundamental structure and the behavior of the Hthosphere

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 365

under geological conditions. Even unconsolidated sands show this
same disposition under the atmosphere to arrange themselves in the
repeating patterns which are so common in the case of rock masses
undergoing disintegration under the influence of the atmosphere.
One of the illustrations of this I wish to show is from the behavior
of the loose sands which overlie the Talbot formation along the
Delaware Coast (Figs. 1-2. Plate VI). These sands are disin-
tegrating and falling in a series of parallel lines which are surpris-
ingly like the joint control of weathering in such a place as the Grand
Canyon of the Colorado and indeed in many mountain and other ele-
vated rock structures. This parallelism show'n even in these loose
sands seems to appear in practically all types of rock structure and
would seem to be part of the essential character of rock masses them-
selves, though I do not in this case, of course, mean that these sands
are to be regarded as jointed ; I do mean, however, that the shape of
the sand under disintegration is something which is due to the nature
of the sand itself and is not atmospheric in its original cause.

The literature regarding joints and jointing structures is now
large and w^idespread. It need not be reviewed in detail here as it
is general principles that I wish to discuss, not the details of the
literature. However, certain general works may be cited. Earlier
discussion will be found in the work of Giinther ;^ also Giinther ;-
Leipoldt and Peschel;^ Penck ;* Supan.^ All geologists are doubt-
less familiar with the discussions, on earth features including joints
in the monumental work of Suess on " The Face of the Earth."
Later literature references may be found in papers by W. M. Davis
in the publications of the United States Geological Survey, and to
his papers in the BnlletUf of the Geological Society of America.

Those who are interested in the nomenclature of faults and
joints may consult the report of the committee" of the Geological

1 " Lehrbuch d. Geophys.," Stuttgart, 2 vols., 1883.

2 " Handbuch d. Geophysik," 2 vols., Stuttgart, 1899.

3 " Physische Erdkunde, etc.," Leipzig, 2 vols., 1879-80.
* " Morph. der Erdoberflache," Stuttgart, 2 vols., 1894.
^ Grundziige dcr Phys. Erdkunde, 191 1.

^' Vol. XXIV., pages 187-216 especially.

7 Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., Vol. XXIV., pp. 163-186.

366 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

Society of America ; Hobbs* in a long series of papers has discussed
quite fully the subject of jointing in the relation to earth features
and surface conditions. I. D. Scott^ discusses joints and fracture
systems as effecting relief and control of drainage and gives also a
summary of the literature on the general topic of joints. One of the
surprising things about this literature in regard to joints is the almost
complete agreement among textbook writers in the comparative neg-
lect of jointing as a really important active factor in earth dynamics;
the subject of jointing is usually considered as a phase of structural
geology rather than as an active controlling agent in the behavior of
the lithosphere. This is, I believe, a serious neglect and a condition
of affairs which is totally unwarranted by the nature of the sub-
ject. One of the chief points I wish to emphasize in this discussion
is the proposition that earth fracturing is one of the essential active
fundamental geophysical constants akin to igneous agents in the
continuity of its action and the universality of its results, that it is
inherent in the nature of the lithosphere ; no portion of the world
as we know it to-day is free from the action of jointing and I be-
lieve it can ultimately be demonstrated and proved that this jointing
of the lithosphere has been active throughout the past geological
history as a general controlling factor in the great geographic and
paleographic changes shown by the records of historical geology.
Evolution of the lithosphere without the controlling influence of
jointing seems to me an impossible hypothesis.

It may be worth while to classify into a few general groups the
manner in which jointing is now seen to be a controlling factor in
the changes occurring in the lithosphere ; among these groups may
be cited the following :

(a) Repeating patterns of authors.

(b) Control of river drainage. ^"^

(c) Coast lines.^^

s Details may be found in " Earth Features and their Meaning," New
York, 1912; "Earthquakes," New York, 1907; see especially Bull. Gcol. So-
ciety of America, Vol. 15, pp. 483-586.

^ Gerlands, Bcitr. zur Geophysik., XIII. , 1914, pp. 163 ff. ; idem., pp. 241-260.

10 Hobbs, " River Systems of Conn.," Journal Geology, Vol. IX., 1901, pp.
469-485. Iddings, ibid.. Vol. XIL, 1904, pp. 94-105.

11 Hobbs, " Lineaments of the Atlantic Border Region," Bull. Gcol. Soc.
Amer., Vol. XV., pp. 483-506.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 367

(d) Boundaries of geological formations.^^

(e) Tectonic control of earthquake shocks. ^^

(/) Atmospheric weathering such as in the Grand Canyon, bowlder

weathering, etc.
(g) Shore Hnes.^^

(//) Valley formation due to faulting under joint control.^*
(/) Grand features of the earth as related to lines of fracture and

block movements resulting therefrom. ^^
( y ) Plateau fracturing and disintegration.^"

Other literature might also be cited but these references are deemed
enough for the immediate purpose of illustration.

It is evident, then, that systems of fracture along definite lines
of direction extending both over wide areas of country and in
lines of great length, are to be regarded as playing a major part in
lithosphere evolution, and that jointing must be regarded as one of
the active agents at work in the behavior of the lithosphere.

The discussions in the literature of the science concerning the
origin and nature of fjords illustrate probably as well as any one
phase of the subject the attitude of writers toward the relation of
joints to earth-structure. Giinther^^ gives a resume of the discus-
sions of theories regarding fjords and groups them into the follow-
ing classes : The Depression Theory, the Cleavage or Fracture
Theory, the Glacial Theory, the Erosion Theory. It will be noted
that all but one of these theories seek to explain the origin of fjords
upon some basis really exterior to the nature of the lithosphere con-

1- Hobbs, "Earthquakes," New York, 1907, passim; includes also refer-
ence to other joint literature.

13 Shaler and Tarr, " Geology of Cape Ann, Mass.," 9th Ann. Rep. U. S.
G. S.. 1887-88, pp. 529-611.

1* Kemp, "Preliminary Report on the Geology of Essex County, N. Y.,"
Report N. Y. State Geol. Survey, 1893, pp. 438 ff.

15 Hobbs, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer., Vol. XV., pp. 503-506.

16 E. Erdmann and Nathorst, Erdmann, " Descr. de la form. carb. de la
Scania," 1873, Royal Swed. Geol. Institution. Nathorst, " Geol. Foren Stock,"
IX., pp. 74 ff. See also Suess, " The Face of the Earth," Vol. 2, especially
for resume of these papers and also discussions of the structures of the Cana-
dian and Baltic shields. (The English translation by Sollas is the one re-
ferred to.)

1" Giinther, " Lehrbuch." Vol. II., 1882, pp. 463 ff.

3G8 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

struction. Thus, Supan^^ says that " There can be no reason to
doubt that fjords are submerged valleys," and compares the Laxe
Fjord of Norway to the one which would be formed by the submer-
gence of the wedge-shaped Thalbucht of Salzburg, supposing that
the sea were to overflow it. This may be perfectly true as far as it
goes, but it leaves yet unexplained the reason for the similarity of
the structure of the two places indicated and also fails to explain
one of the characteristics of fjord coasts and that is their remark-
able parallelism of structure, a parallelism which unites their struc-
ture wnth the parallelisms seen in other aspects of the surface of
the lithosphere. The fracture or splitting theory is attributed by
Giinther to Peschel and Leipoldt and may be stated as follows : The
destruction and breaking up of the coast was attended with its ascen-
sion ; originally the cracking or splitting was not farther than the
ascent of the greater layers which, in consequence of the uplift,
arched over and later the fracturing extended through a shrinkage
and diminution of the mass. " The uplift and destruction were
simultaneous." It was proposed in brief that the destruction and
breaking up of the coast was contemporary with its ascension. The
erosion theory and the glacial theory have been involved in the wide
discussion in the literature, as, also, may be said of the depression
theory. It may be objected to each of these that it uses an agent
which is more or less accidental as a primary cause and makes no al-
lowance for the nature of the rock or material structure of the coast
and also fails to explain the remarkable parallelism of fjord struc-
tures. ^Moreover, as has been indicated in the literature quoted,
there are numerous other places to be observed where the present
structure of the lithosphere would produce a fjord coast if it were
to come in contact with marine erosion ; the Grand Canyon area,
also the canyons of the Yellowstone and indeed the parallelism of
small stream valleys such as may be seen in the Appalachian folds
near Harrisburg, for example, possess the necessary physical struc-
tures to produce a parallel indentation of the coast, supposing that
some agent of erosion, such as glaciation, were to be involved.
Glaciation then and marine erosion are to be regarded as accidents,
not as the primary cause of fjord coasts. Even if we assume that

18 Op. cit., page 579.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 369

fjords are submerged valleys, that still does not explain the parallel
structure which is to be observed on both sides of the north Atlantic
coast ; indeed, the similar character of the rock structure on the
north Atlantic coast, in America and Europe both, and in the islands
of the Arctic Sea, demand a general structure rather than simply a
general agent.

When the discussions of principles concerning fjord structures
are applied generally to a wide tract of the earth's surface, such as
for example the North American continent, certain points may be
shown, and I wish to suggest that that part of the North American
continent included between lines drawn from the mouth of the
McKenzie river through Great Bear Lake and Great Slave, Atha-
baska, Winnipeg, and the Great Lakes and another line drawn from
Cape Cod to Nova Scotia parallel in general with the St. Lawrence
river up to Newfoundland, is controlled by a series of master joints
whose general angles of direction may be read from the lines of
present sea-coast, lake distribution, entrance of sea channels, bays
and harbors and that these are all to be conceived of as essentially
attributable to a general cause which is independent of local condi-
tions and is an essential part of the structure of the North American
continent. Further, that this great extent of continental land has
been in the past and is now, although it is often regarded as one of
the fixed segments of the lithosphere, undergoing disintegration and
degradation in a manner controlled essentially by something which
is independent of atmospheric contact and may be explained on the
supposition of the falling apart of a series of segments of the earth
due to the development of these lines of jointing. I conceive this
disintegration and development of jointing to be due to the loss of
elasticity in this portion of the lithosphere. This mass of the conti-
nent has been since Archean times loaded repeatedly by the recep-
tion of sediments extending from early Paleozoic to Mesozoic times,
it has been flooded from time to time by water, overrun by glacial
ice, and even if not presumably subjected to elevation or subsidence
it has nevertheless been subjected to a series of earth pressures and
strains so that a series of master joints have become a primary part
of its structure.

That under the combined attack of atmospheric weathering in

370 EHREXFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

its various aspects, and also under the attack of the forces of the
sea, these joints have become great Hues of weakness, so that the
whole outer portion of the lithosphere is here undergoing a profound
and far-reaching disintegration. This sequence of events of re-
peated loading by sediment and erosion of the surface by ice caps
has produced a wornout condition of the lithosphere structure at
this point, so that even if we regard the Canadian Shield, and
analogously the Baltic Shield, as one of the fixed segments of the
earth, we may still observe that it is undergoing degradation just as
other surfaces of the earth are undergoing degradation. The fact
that it may be regarded as fixed so far as up and down motion is
concerned does not conceal the further fact that under the loading
indicated the mass has lost its elasticity as a steel mass will even-
tually lose its elasticity and will be subjected to falling apart. It is
possible, then, to regard even the fixed positive elements or horsts
as subject to disintegration and reduction through combined jointing
and marine aggression, in other words, it is possible, in my estima-
tion, to demonstrate a reduction of the lithosphere below sea level.
As 1 conceive the situation we are witnessing, in short, the destruc-
tion of a continental mass through the combined efifect of forces
from without and from the inherent weaknesses which have been
brought about through past geological conditions ; that finally we
have here not so much a rise or fall of land as we have of litho-
sphere planation or reduction upon a grand scale, and that this
planation is hastened and largely induced through the weaknesses
in the continental mass itself.

It may further be seriously questioned whether the " peneplain "
of this Canadian area may not eventually have to be regarded as due
rather to marine denudation rather than to atmospheric erosion.
One of the objects of this study has been to consider the old and
now somewhat neglected subject of marine denudation in connec-
tion with the modern study of joints. Further details of this will
be considered later in this discussion.

Since there is stratigraphic evidence for believing in the exist-
ence of former land connection across the northern hemisphere with
perhaps former water channels leading down into the present Europe
and North America the question of the disintegration and degrada-

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 871

tion of this land mass becomes one of considerable interest in the
physical history of the area in discussion. That the usual processes
of land surface erosion and continental degradation are not enough
to explain such continental destruction may possibly be a matter of
opinion, rather than absolute proof. However the coal beds and
flora of the Pennsylvanian found in Spitzbergen, the occurrence of
Mesozoic deposits across practically the area of the northern part
of the hemisphere, the similarity of certain vital groups on separated
areas of this vast tract of the earth argue for the existence of such
a destroyed land mass, a land mass which has left its relics in the
form of islands in the arctic sea, in the form of indentations and
multitudes of channels and in the similarities which are to be ob-
served in the structures of the Canadian and Baltic provinces.

The literature concerning some of these arctic islands is referred
to elsewhere in this paper but from their present situation and
methods of destruction I believe the explanation of the destruction
of this former land mass lies essentially in two things, a definite
structure in the lithosphere itself and in marine denudation or
degradation ; thus showing in the combination of these two elements
the fact of land or lithosphere surface degradation below sea level.
It is of course true that other forces such as change of sea level
may be involved in this. Since the descriptions given of the marine
degradation now in progress at Spitzbergen indicate a very definite
joint control both in the lines of fracture and in the vertical faced
cliffs caused by marine erosion acting against a jointed structure of
the rock, we may explain this along precisely the same lines that the
disintegration along the coast of New England and in the islands of
Casco Bay may be explained, that is, by jointing and the disintegrat-
ing eft'ect of marine and atmospheric attack. The theory that the
Canadian Shield^^ is a peneplain and has been so since Pre-Cambrian
time, is not interfered with by this suggestion ; it is rather all of it
involved in an attempt to explain this and other great continental
degradation upon more definite ground than the usual processes of
atmospheric agents acting as the forces of erosion. I believe it is
possible to show that below the zone of ordinary base leveling or
peneplanation lies a still further zone of possible degradation through

18 Pirsson and Schuchert, " Textbook of Geol.," pp. 556 flf.

372 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

the destructive influence of those joints which are part of the funda-
mental nature of the hthosphere itself.

The old problem of marine planation which was so much dis-
cussed by the geologists of the former generation had at least ele-
ments of truth in it, elements which are, I believe, covered by the
mutual action of joints and marine attack producing degradation of
the Hthosphere below sea level. So that marine planation does act
to produce a further degradation of the hthosphere below the base
level of erosion or below Davis's peneplain. That to restate the
point, weathering and surface erosion proceed by the usual well ob-
served methods and reduce the hthosphere to residual sands, clays
and peneplain but this does not complete the possible further degra-
dation of the surface of the Hthosphere because the joints which
have developed as one of the primary features of the Hthosphere
extend on down below sea level and granted an agent of transpor-
tation, for instance the sea, and its currents and tides, there is still
the sub-base level process of degradation proceeding. It must be
remembered that the sea is one of the most powerful reducing and
transporting agents known and acts always against the continental
masses somewhere, so that a system of jointing once started and the
sea playing against it, the action of reduction is carried along rather
quickly as geological time goes. I have personally observed in the
garnet-mica-quartz schist rocks south and west of Portland Harbor,
Me., the complete reduction from jointed blocks in the sea cliffs
down through various stages of pebbles and gravels to sands which
are composed of quartz sands and the garnet crystals from the mica
schists, while the mica is by tidal action carried out beyond the shore
to deeper water (Fig. 3. Plate VH).

I put some considerable emphasis upon this because the actual
beach evidence and the evidence from sands and gravels on the fore-
shore in many cases fail to show all the intermediate stages so that
there is here suggested the possibility of many coarse and fine sands
in the older geological formations having been formed by a process
of rapid joint splitting, beach grinding and tidal distribution of the
residue. The rapid accumulation and great diversity of sands,
gravels and conglomerates of the Pottsville, for instance, may have
been due to such combined action of a jointing structure and a rapid

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 373

agent of grinding. In the case of the Pottsville one of the marked
features of it is the occurrence at variable intervals of massive
siliceous conglomerates which alternate with fine sands and coal beds.
David White-*' has summarized the literature in regard to the Potts-
ville and the following quotations are from his paper :-^

" the Pottsville formation is in the type region composed chiefly of massive
siliceous conglomerates . . . which comprises a series of ponderous conglom-
erates which are more variable in color, composition and assortment in the
lower part and more quartzose, dense and light colored near the top . . . and
are interspersed with a number of carbonaceous beds workable over consid-
erable areas. . . . The conglomerates intercalated in increasing proportion in
the upper beds of the Mauch Chunk consist of irregularly bedded poorly
assorted or sometimes apparently unassorted pebble or bowlder accumula-
tions in a matrix of coarse arkose sands colored by reddish or greenish shale
washes. The pebbles are mostly of quartz, though sandstone, syenite, chloritic
schist, limestone and even red and green shales and conglomerate fragments
are also present. Occasionally the pebbles which are sometimes subangular
attain a diameter of 3 or 4 inches or more; . . ."

Further in the same report (pp. 861-863) White discusses the occur-
rence of these conglomerates and their possible origin and says :

" The remarkable strength and varying activity and direction of the move-
ments of the early Pottsville sediments over the Mauch Chunk delta in the
Schuylkill-Swatara region during a period of oscillating tide level are proved
by the alternation and high degree of irregularity in the Pottsville beds, by
the transportation of the conglomerate building material to a long distance
from the present margin — i. e., by the long radius of the fan — and by the
size of the bowlders which are sometimes encountered far from the margin
of the field. In illustration of the latter circumstance, the occurrence of
bowlders, 7 or 8 inches in diameter in Head Mountain, described by Rogers
('Geol. Pennsylvania,' Vol. II., pt. i, p. 22) may be cited. . . . The inter-
ruption of the general subsidence by short periods of elevation and stability
. . . accounts also for the readiness with which the conglomerated sediments,
which usually almost directly, when not immediately, overlie every Lykens
coal, were swept across the carbonaceous deposits on the recurrence of the
general downward movement."

White, in discussing the origin of these Pottsville sediments of
so pronounced a character, seems to fall back upon the idea of a
rapidly depositing series of coarse sediments washed down from
high lands back. (See quotations as above.) There are indicated

20 David White, " The Stratigraphic Succession of the Fossil Floras of
the Pottsville Formation, etc.," 20th Annual Report of the Geol. Survey, U. S.,
pp. 749-953 (Part 2).

-1 Idem, pp. 762-763, 861-863.

374 EHREXFELD— JOINTIXG AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

here certain physical conditions which are favorable to the preva-
lence of jointing influence. These are the marked mechanical na-
ture of the disintegration and the rapidity of deposit of the sedi-
ments before chemical weathering or disintegration had had time to
act, the repeated occurrences of coal swamps overrun by heavily
bedded gravels which indicates an unstable rock equilibrium fa-
vorable to the idea of the presence of joints; and finally the pres-
ence of subangular blocks and large pebbles and bowlders shows a
rapid mechanical disintegration. It would seem to be evident then
that the accumulation of conglomerates, such as in the Pottsville,
demand a rapid mechanical disintegration running ahead of chem-
ical weathering, and a grinding and transporting agent to reduce
the joint blocks to rounded bowlders, pebbles and sands before
chemical disintegration has time to occur. This, it will be observed,
is practically the same idea as shown in the formation of arkose
sediments generally. This point will be discussed later in con-
nection with the similar formations in the Newark formation.
This reducing agent referred to need not necessarily be marine.
In the small tributaries to the Monongahela river, small streams
flowing rapidly down slopes across jointed beds of sandstone, lime-
stone and shale, I have frequently collected rounded oblong pebbles
6 to 8 inches in length and also roughly rounded rectangular blocks
of limestone which are manifestly the result of surface erosion
and grinding on blocks due to jointing. The shales under these
conditions pass rapidly to muds and are borne along to make river
flats, alluvial plains upon which river and stream ice might deposit
the larger pebbles and even the angular fragments ; the ability of
river ice to do this is a matter of fact proven by observation. The
dry summer stages of such tributary streams show many such cases
of comparatively contemporary joint degradation; often the orig-
inal joint structure would have to be inferred from the nature of
the surface gravels if it could not be seen in the immediately adjoin-
ing hills.

In the case of marine planation there is also the further fact
that an increase in the encroachment of the sea upon land masses
acts in a manner analogous to the rejuvenation of a stream by
elevation of the land surface, it increases its cutting and transport-

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 375

ing power and also increases the rate of land degradation. Thus
the factor of jointing serves to unite processes of atmospheric and
marine degradation and because it has probably done so in the past
as well, it enters into the problem of paleogeography. The trans-
gressions of the sea, the filling of old sea channels and bays by
masses of jointed limestone, sandstone, or the clay rocks, material
which would rather readily reduce to sands and gravels and muds,
all become factors which may eventually perhaps be shown to be
due to jointing degradation. The interbedded limestone conglom-
erates observed by Logan, Prime, Walcott^- and others certainly
suggest a method of origin involving both a mechanical method of
rapid erosion and also a time interval between the deposition of
the original limestone layers and their subsequent breakdown to
gravel or even bowlder form. Anyone who has personally exam-
ined these conglomerates in York County, Pa., can have no doubt
as to the angular nature of the fragments of the conglomerate and
Walcott (p. 39, op. cit.) refers to the "angular fragments of lime-
stone with sharp, clear cut edges " in the redeposited conglom-
erates ; in some cases these bowlders are " from 3 to 4 feet " in
diameter, these last from Tennessee. In discussing the origin of
these conglomerates Walcott believes " that the sea bed was raised
in ridges or domes above the sea level and thus subjected to the
action of sea shore ice, if present, and the aerial agents of erosion.
. . . The inference is drawn that the debris worn from the ridges was
deposited in the intervening depression beneath the sea." Walcott
does not consider jointing in this connection at all though it may
be regarded as a necessary adjunct for more than one reason. For
one thing it is very much to be doubted if marine erosion as hy-
pothecated could occur unless the rock masses of the limestone were
already in some separated block form, ready to be torn apart and
beaten about by tidal action ; if on the other hand erosion against
a sea cliff or against a mass of rock exposed to atmospheric weath-
ering be regarded as having occurred we must again, in the case
of limestone, believe that jointing was the predominant factor as
otherwise the limestone would be reduced to weathered residues

22 Bull. U. S. G. S. No. 134, PP- 34-40; pis. X.-XIV. Especially p. 36
and p. 39.

376 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

which would be much slower in their accumulation and would
hardly be in block or even pebble form at all. Secondly the eleva-
tion of the original beds could scarcely have come about without
fracturing as there is no reason to suppose that the beds were so
deep seated as to come within the " zone of flowage," the elevation
was not probably great and would under the circumstances be in-
cluded in the zone of fracture.

From the paleogeographic point of view the subject is possessed
of possibly more than passing interest because of the fact that it
introduces into the study of unconformity or non-conformity a
means of determining the time factor, and also the means of deter-
mining the fact of a break in the succession of deposition, and it
may also serve to determine the fact of a stratigraphic break with-
out the recession of the sea. Walcott's idea of the events of the
formation is practically sub-marine planation, a thing which could
hardly occur without a very rapid cause of breakdown in the lime-
stone, such as would result from jointing.

I have no desire to burden the nomenclature of the science with
any new terms, but the idea of jointing causing a record of a dis-
conformity which would otherwise be lost seems to me worth the
notice. If the displacement of the lower limestones had occurred
without jointing it is most probable that there would not have been
enough disintegration to have left any record unless the time inter-
val had been long enough to bring about the usual atmospheric
weathering. In the physical conditions supposed by Walcott the
development of jointing would also act to prevent the persistence
for any great length of time of a barrier to faunal migrations.

In connection with the discussions of the conglomerates of the
Pottsville above, reference is made to the arkose conglomerates and
sands of the Newark. Since the granite pebble conglomerates of
an arkose character are now to be observed in formation along the
coast lines where rock disintegration and degradation are controlled
by joints and may easily be seen to be so, as along the coast of
Maine for instance, I believe it to be probable that the arkoses of
the Newark of the Atlantic coast states are also due to rock de-
struction caused by joints, inasmuch as the sediments are composed
of materials which show a mechanical disintegration always in ad-

IX THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 377

vance of chemical weathering. In this case the destruction and
degradation would follow upon the previous history of the region.

The disturbances of the Appalachian Revolution had brought
about a condition in the rock masses involving both folding and
fracturing. During the closing stages of the Pennsylvanian, and
most probably for some time after the close of this time proper
there were conditions of non-equilibrium, the position of the sea
level was not probably fixed but was in an oscillatory condition.
This condition of the lithosphere in that portion of the North Amer-
ican continent now known as the Atlantic border would involve a
system of rock structures in which by successions of strains, folds,
shiftings of sea level, the elastic resistance had been destroyed.
The rock masses would pass by variations of uplift and erosion into
the zone of fracture as well as the zone of folding. The Newark
time would appear then as a time in which the strains of the previous
time era had developed a great mass of fractured and jointed rock
as the outer portion of the lithosphere.

The physical conditions of the continent east of the present Ap-
palachian mountains were manifestly very different from those
west. What it was that induced the great degradational move-
ments to form the thick deposits of the Newark must be some-
what a matter of conjecture. That it was rapid is indicated by
the nature of the sediments, that it did not in large parts of the
area follow long periods of thick accumulation of a soil cap from
chemical weathering would also seem to be a legitimate conclusion
from the pronounced mechanical nature of the sediments, as the
granitic sandstones for example.

The character of the early Pottsville sedimentation together with
the Newark series as described from its series along the eastern
states would however seem to call for an explanation based upon
the idea of a quick mechanical rock destruction and transportation
such as jointing would induce. The fracturing of the surface for-
mations of the lithosphere had probably already occurred, there
was needed the agent to separate and remove the segments small
and great due to this fracturing. This might have been just as it
is now in various portions of the earth due to steep surface drain-
age, glaciation or any one of the active means of transportation.

378 EHREXFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

The closing stages of the Permian have been supposed to show
even in North America evidences of glaciation. This may have
been sufficient to explain some of the arkose sandstones but there
hardly seems to be enough evidence at hand to hypothecate this as a
general condition extending into the Newark. All that I am en-
deavoring to demonstrate is the fact of a physical condition in the
surface portion of the rock structure favorable to easy and rapid
disintegration rather than to try to establish any one particular
means of the transportation of the broken rock fragments.

On the edges of the Canadian shield or "peneplain" as it has
been called and along the edges of the continent bordering the Gulf
of Maine may be seen in active operation to-day the results of a
jointing structure to hasten marine erosion; this is taking place now
after glaciation has removed the surface soil cap, the jointing is
now fully exposed to whatever means of rock transportation may
be at hand.

From the fact that practically all stages in the formation of
granite sand, pebble and bowlder flats may be observed in progress
along this coast we may reasonably infer that the formations out
beneath the low tide level extending over the continental shelf would
show the marked characteristics of a marine arkose analogous to
the continental arkoses of the Newark. There would thus seem to
be recurrent eras of a rapid joint degradation differing from the
longer periods of the usual chemical weathering and erosion, these
periods following either periods of earth strains or periods in
which after removal of the soil cap jointing would then proceed to
a further reduction of the lithosphere.

Jointing, then, acts as a connecting factor in uniting continental
and marine erosion into a process or series of processes which, so
far as the lithosphere is concerned, are consecutive. Here again
the real controlling factor in the degradation is the structure of the
lithosphere itself, not the particular agent, because, conceivably,
surface continental erosion followed by marine erosion are simply
two stages of a general degradational process. There must have
been in former geological times reduction of the land surfaces after
the completion of a cycle of erosion ; it does not follow that every

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 379

base level produced by erosion was followed by a rise of land
masses and a return of the cycle of erosion, and so on to an in-
definite extent. From what has just been stated previously it will
be seen that I conceive these fundamental earth joints to have
played an active, possibly a controlling, part in paleographic his-
tory. The connection and disconnection of land masses, the open-
ing and closing of channels of sea migration, the filling up of chan-
nels by the rapid formation of beach gravels and tide flow ; the
formation of tide and sand flats and bowlder and pebble flats (Fig.
4. Plate VII) such as are so common along the upper Atlantic
coast line (glacial in many cases, no doubt, but still due to jointing),
must all have played their parts in past geographic changes of both
.land and sea. The jointing which may doubtless be observed in the
Alaskan coast in the neighborhood of Behring Sea, would, under
these circumstances, be an active factor in the separation of land
connection between America and Europe, and Asia.

Furthermore, according to this hypothesis of joint control, the
destruction of a great continental mass of land across the northern
hemisphere, which seems to be indicated by the fact of the relics
of such a mass in the islands of the north of Europe and North
America, and the distribution of islands in the Arctic Sea, all with
their connected deposits of Paleozoic and Mesozoic, becomes a pos-
sibility explainable upon more definite grounds than simply the
hypothesis either of sea aggressions alone or of glacial or other
erosive processes alone. This continental destruction is indicated
by the character of the sea clifi:'s of Spitzbergen and their rapid
angular disintegration and the reduction of the lithosphere through
a series of blocked islands which are now disintegrating under the
structural weakness of joints and the transporting power of marine
erosion. The details of this may be seen by reference to the lit-
erature. Thus the islands of Franz Josephs Land, Spitzbergen, and
Bear Island in the Arctic Sea ha\e been appealed to by various
authors in illustration of the theory of jointing. I. D. Scott^^ and
Hobbs-* reproduce the figure from the original exploring expedi-

-3 Op. cit., pi. 2.

24 Hobbs, Bull Gcol. Soc. Amcr., Vol. 22, pi. 8, Fig. 2.

380 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

tion.-5 The description-'^ given of the breaking down of these
island masses is that of the remains of a plateau structure shown
throughout the island group, with fjords which are characteristic
alike of the small islands and "the mainland." Against these
island remnants of a plateau carrying the remnants of the horizontal
layers of Carboniferous, Permian and Miocene deposits "the sea
unceasingly beats in the further destruction of the fragments of
the plateau, while strange pillars and towers indicate the wide ex-
tent of the islands " destroyed in this way. This description with
the illustrations given in the literature referred to shows plainly
enough the destruction of the land masses by lines which are mani-
festly joint lines, and is fairly characteristic of similar sea coast
shapes to be seen along the shore of the North Atlantic ocean both
on the American and European sides.

These towers and pillars referred to are strikingly similar to
some structures referred to in a recent valuable paper by Barrell,-''
in which the origin of certain plains along the eastern Atlantic coast
is connected with former marine erosion. The discussion of this
paper brings out the question of marine origin for those upstand-
ing land masses commonly known as " monadnocks."

Those interested in the arguments for the fact of marine plana-
tion along the Atlantic coast of North America should consult
Barren's paper.

It has long been a thought of mine that it might be possible to
have established some time the demonstration of " monadnocks "
being residues left from a jointing structure in which mechanical
disintegration had played a predominant part. As may be seen in
the discussion of the paper referred to this idea is inherent in the
conception of marine plains as developed by Barrell.

In the largest view of the matter Bear Island, Spitzbergen and
other like land remnants are "monadnocks," if by this term is
meant any residue of a former land surface which stands as a seg-
ment not now reduced to a general level. This sort of residual

25 Norske Nordhavs Exped., Bd. s; also Pctcrm. Mittcil., 1870, S. 249 ff.
Other references and a German translation will be found in '' Unser Wissen
von der Erde," von A. Kirchofif, Vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. 394 ff.

-<^ " Unser Wissen," etc., as cited pp. 395 ff.

^~ Bull. Gcol. Soc. Amcr., Vol. XXIV., 1913, pp. 688 ff.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 381

land surface is not however to be explained by ordinary land ero-
sion, nor does marine erosion explain it any more easily unless
there be entertained at the same time the conception of some struc-
ture such as the joint segments here discussed. Steep cliffs and
deep fjords do not per force mean a sunken coast line primarily,
they may be I conceive land or rock shapes due essentially to great
joint lines.

That there exists observed evidence for believing in the ability
of a jointed structure to induce a breaking down and destruction
of plateaux is shown by the investigations of E. Erdmann and
Nathorst.-" These investigations were carried out in the struc-
tvires of Scania, an old province in southern Scandinavia and in the
opinion of so able a critic as Suess justify the opinion that

"Scania is formed of fragments of a great plateau broken by joints. ... As
E. Erdmann has shown the whole region is traversed by great longitudinal
fractures which run from northwest to southeast ; along these the whole
country has been let down irregularly with the formation of troughs and
horsts."

The investigations of Nathorst have shown further that this sub-
sidence has taken place at different times,

" and that it is possible to classify the fractures according to their age. . . .
In this country which has not been subjected to any folding since the Cam-
brian period we have a new and instructive example of the breaking down
of a tableland accomplished piece by piece." (Suess, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 48.)

Some of the fractures present have been determined by Nathorst
as older than the Trias.

There exists then more than simply hypothetical ground for
considering jointing as one of the great fundamental shaping factors
of the earth. The essential unity of the great mass of the upper
portion of the northern hemisphere will probably be shown more
and more as stratigraphic investigation on both the continents of
Europe and America proceeds. This unity is already shown how-
ever in the similarity of structures now to be observed over widely
separated areas, in the analogies if not actual parallelisms along
the northern coasts and arctic lands where marine denudation is

28 See citations given earlier in this paper. Their studies are reviewed by
Suess in Vol. 2 of the English edition of " The Face of the Earth," 1906,
pp. 46 ff.

382 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

proceeding by a method which can rationally be explained only
upon the basis of some generally determining cause such as the
jointing which is shown with practically universal distribution.

That such block or fracture destruction is even now proceeding
over portions of the land masses is believed to be true; certain
structures in the British Isles (universally regarded as remnants
of the former wide extension of Europe) more especially in Scot-
land point to a decided indication of such block distintegration or
fracturing. The approximate parallelism of the Hebrides, the
Faroe, the Orkney and the Shetland islands ; the same parallel
identations of the coast lines, the remarkable series of firths which
find their greatest and most striking expression in the vast gash
which almost cuts Scotland into two parts as the firth of Moray
passes into Loch Sess and this on into Loch Linnhe and ends at
length in the firth of Lome, all these are so striking in their rela-
tions and occurrence that the conclusion is almost forced on us
that here also is to be seen the illustration of a land mass passing
into block disintegration by a series of fractures which exist inde-
pendently of surface agents of weathering or of erosion.

As the whole mass of the northern hemisphere is contemplated
in its upper parts, with its widespread likenesses, its analogies of
structure and its broken remnants of former continuities to be ob-
served in the sediments of the arctic islands and in America and in
Europe, the reason for this unity of structure and unity of disin-
tegration must be sought not in the atmospheric elements which
have played upon it but must be sought for in the essential nature
of the lithosphere itself.

As we journey round from lower Europe about the Canary and
Madeira islands up through the British islands to Scandinavia, on
through the arctic seas and islands and so on down the American
coast there is everywhere shown the same disintegration of the land
mass by a factor which controls all the atmospheric and erosion
agents ; there is seen a mechanism which whatever agent plays
upon it, whether glacier, frost, expansion and contraction from
change of temperature, or from the ceaseless pounding of the sea,
still runs always far in advance of them all and reaching even below
the level of the sea and the atmosphere determines in advance the

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 383

destruction of the land mass. This factor is the presence of joints.

Connected with the problems of the degradation of the litho-
sphere is the necessity of meeting the problems of the reduction of
former continental masses leaving now only residues of them as
islands or separated continental units such as Africa, Australia
and other masses believed to have been united formerly into the
Gondwana Land of authors.-^

Here also is to be included Erla, the former great continental
mass extending across the northern half of the globe.

Some geologists would meet this problem by disputing in the
first place the existence of such continental land masses, as Gond-
\vana, and hold firmly to the theory of permanent ocean basins.
That this idea of permanent ocean basins is a widespread and deeply
rooted one is well enough known to need no special proof.

We may note, however, one reference to it from one of the older
textbooks — thus Geikie :^'^

" From early geological times, the present great areas of land and sea
have remained on the whole where they are, and that the land consists mainly
of strata formed of terrestrial debris laid down at successive epochs in the
surrounding comparatively shallow sea."

" Without this continent, [Eria] on the other hand, paleontologists can-
not explain the known distribution of Permian land life, and, further, its
presence is equally necessary for the interpretation of the peculiar distribu-
tion of marine faunas beginning certainly with Devonian and ending in the
Cretaceous."^!

Connected with this is the related idea of a former worldwide
Mediterranean, the Tethys of Suess which extended around the
globe as a great encircling ocean of which the present Mediterranean
is a remnant. ^-

The problem then is not one which can be dismissed by dis-
puting the matter in the first case because the weight of evidence
is against such a position, and the stability of the sea floor is an
hypothesis which rests more on supposition than proven fact, while

-9 Convenient reference may be made to Pirsson and Schuchert, " Text
Book of Geology," Vol. 2, passim; also Suess, " Lethea Geognostica " of
Freeh, Paleozoicum, contains maps of Gondwana.

30 Geikie, " Textbook of Geology," 3d ed., rev., p. 650, London, 1893.

'1 Pirsson and Schuchert, " Textbook," Vol. 2, p. 761.

'2 Pirsson and Schuchert, op. cit., p. 761.

384 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

the belief is more and more growing among geologists that the
lithosphere is governed by processes and laws which act generally
to its total mass and not locally or in limited portions. Thus the
idea that the laws which govern the general behavior of the litho-
sphere cease to act or change their character in that portion of the
earth under the hydrosphere seems to me untenable in the first
place and unproven in the next.

The " repeating patterns " of various authors^^ if they mean
anything at all must involve some general fundamental character
of the structure of the lithosphere, a character which under stresses
in the mass of the lithosphere would be as likely to occur under the
oceans as under the atmosphere contact. It is hardly reasonable
to attempt to dismiss these repeating patterns as due to " chance,"^*
they are too widespread and have been too often described and
identified with fundamental structures in the lithosphere. So that
the principle involved in repeating patterns as indicating a definite
characteristic of the lithosphere may be accepted certainly as a con-
structive working basis if not yet generally accepted as one of the
proven facts of geophysics.

Applying then this principle to the mass of the lithosphere under
the hydrosphere it should be possible to determine from the distri-
bution of islands, volcanoes, coral reefs and other features, sys-
tems of joint control beneath the hydrosphere analogous to the
systems of joint control of continental surface features beneath the
atmosphere. In short the control of the lithosphere surface be-
neath the oceans by joints I regard as being of equal value and
importance as the control exercised by jointing in the lithosphere
beneath the atmosphere.

Owing to the comparative ease with which islands on the conti-
nental shelves may be shown to be parts of the masses of the con-
tinents, and, as in the very remarkable and beautiful example
shown in the islands of Casco Bay in the Gulf of jNIaine, demon-
strated to be distributed along lines governed by jointing the prob-
lem becomes really complex and more difficult of proof when con-

23 See especially Hobbs, " Repeating Patterns in the Relief and in the
Structure of the Land," Bull. Gcol. Soc. Amer., Vol. 22, pp. 123-176, 191 1.
^* Bull. Geol. Soc. Amcr., Vol. 22, p. 717 (discussion).

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 385

siclered in connection with the islands which he out beyond the
shelves of the continents in those portions of the oceans which are
generally regarded as separate and distinct from continental struc-
ture. The connection of the repeating patterns and joints may be
demonstrated from the structures along the New England coast and
as it illustrates the principle referred to will be described in some
detail. The particular problem here may be stated as follows : to
show in the first place that the lines of distribution of the islands,
bays, harbors, reefs, and other land masses in the Gulf of Maine
are arranged in some definite structural relation with each other
and with the rock masses of the main land, and secondly to con-
nect this structure with processes of degradation above and below
sea level. If this can be done and certain lines of uniform control
shown to be present it is then proposed to apply the same line of
reasoning to oceanic islands which are now not so connected with
adjacent land masses as those islands in the Gulf of Maine are,
and try to show that lines of jointing have been in control of the
distribution of these islands; and lastly that lines of joint control
being a factor in the behavior of the lithosphere we have here a
general agent controlling the degradation, that is the lowering, of
the lithosphere surface irrespective of whether the other agents
present are variations of atmospheric or of hydrosphere contact.
Part of the demonstration of marine planation in connection
with the New England coast has been rendered unnecessary by
the publication of Barrell's paper just referred to ; this being pub-
lished after I had begun my own investigation. However, this
paper establishes the point which may be regarded as of very great
importance, and that is the demonstration of former widespread
plains of marine origin rather than simply plains due to atmos-
pheric means of erosion and degradation. In connection with these
New England plains may be mentioned also the terraces of the
Maryland Geological Survey^^ such as the Wicomico, Sunderland,
Talbot, etc., terraces which are undoubtedly of marine origin,
though not necessarily of joint control in any manner, but built on
older marine plain development. It is desirable, however, for the
sake of the argument to show some of the character of marine

35 Maryland Geological Survey, Pliocene and Pleistocene, Baltimore, 1906.

386 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

planation at present in action along the New England coast. The
data mentioned are taken from personal observation of my own
and part from the published literature on the subject. Particular
reference may be made to the following sheets of the U. S. Topo-
graphic Folio, namely, Casco Bay, Portland, Booth Bay, Bath,
Penobscot and the following hydrographic charts, Nos. io6, 107,
315, of the U. S. Navigation Bureau, and also the U. S. Coast
Pilot,^^ for details as to soundings, situation of reefs, bars, islands
and harbors. It is not necessary to give the details of this.

The shore of the coast of Maine is almost a continuous succes-
sion of rocky points, entrant bays, steep cliffs, or outlying islands
and reefs, all connected more or less by sand bars, sand dunes,
necks, tidal flats or by back lying marshes. Out beyond the actual
shore or strand line lie in addition successions of islands, reefs and
rocky points, these all practically being composed of the same sort
of rock as that exposed along the shore and with some rare excep-
tions are not to be distinguished from the rock masses in connec-
tion with the mainland or shore line except by the fact that these
outlying masses are surrounded entirely and continuously by sea
water. The topographic features about Portland Harbor and Casco
Bay will illustrate sufficiently these various features. The most
marked feature of Casco Bay is the extraordinary number of
islands, rocky points and reefs which, as may be seen in the various
publications referred to, are arranged in a general parallelism and
in a northeast-southwest direction. This direction is practically
the same as shown by the prevailing dip and strike of the rock
masses about this portion of the Maine coast. These Casco Bay
islands are so eminently arranged in repeating patterns as to sug-
gest, even without the necessity of any actual plotting being done,
definite lines of joint control, the submerged reefs as may be seen
in the navigation charts are frequently continuations of the same
jointing structures. If the general lines of jointing and the pre-
vailing lines of strike be compared with some of the small islands
and necks near Portland Harbor, the general connected structure
of all is apparent. Thus, for example, at Prouts Neck, near Port-

36 u. S. Coast Pilot, Atlantic Coast, Parts I., II., St. Croix River to Cape
Ann. Washington, 191 1.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 387

land Harbor, the present distribution of islands and reefs shows
the same general lines of direction and the same construction as
the lines of distribution in Casco Bay. Indeed they are all parts
of the same general structure. Fronts Neck itself I have deter-
mined to be a structure composed of a series of parallel reefs cov-
ered in part by glacial pebble flats, sand dunes, peat bogs, cedar
swamps and contemporary pine wood ; the pine woods are now
growing mostly over sand dunes which he across the old lines of
parallel reefs. These lines of reefs are shown at certain intervals
along the direction of the Neck and are parallel with similar lines
of islands and reefs which lie out to seaward from Scarboro Beach,
often appearing as isolated masses of rock, in many cases now sur-
rounded by bogs or sand dunes. The Neck ends in a mass of rock
probably formerly an island in which the same general direction
of dip and joint distribution may be seen. The sea encroachment
on Fronts Neck itself displays the same joint control of steep cliffs,
angular block fragments and contemporary pebble and shingle
beaches, such as are common on both sides of the north Atlantic
coast. When these lines of Fronts Neck are plotted as to general
position and direction they fall into the same scheme as shown in
the other structures in Casco Bay. This cannot be regarded in any
manner as accidental, but part of the same structure common to this
portion of the lithosphere.

The structures around Bath, Booth Bay Harbor and similar
places along the coast of Maine, are usually referred to as indicat-
ing processes due to glaciation^' or are regarded as evidence in
regard to a displaced coast line, all of which may be perfectly true,
but it does not disguise the fact that these structures again may
be plotted along a system of lines of jointing. In fact, I regard
the entire distribution of islands, reefs, flats, etc., within the Gulf
of Maine, not as remnants of the former surface of peneplanation,
due to atmospheric erosive agents, but as structures due to the
combined action of marine planation and essential lines of weak-
ness due to jointing in this portion of the lithosphere, so that the

3- See Shaler, " Geo. Hist, of Harbors," 13th Ann. Rep., Pt. 2, U. S. G. S.,
pp. 114-118, 1893.

388 EHREXFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

repeating patterns may be carried out here into the idea of marine
planation to reduce the land surface below the ordinary base level.

This, I take it, is another way of stating one of the points of
Barren's paper, referred to above, that in the plains adjacent to
the New England coast upstanding structures such as the " ^Monad-
nocks " of authors, may be regarded, as the towers and figures re-
ferred to off the coast of Spitzbergen, as indicating outlines of
marine planation.

I hope to discuss in a later paper some further details of this in
regard to some structures about Portsmouth Harbor.

The relationship of marine planation to what has been developed
as the theory of peneplains is thus a very far reaching problem.
That the known action of the sea to wear away the land mass has
been underestimated and neglected is perhaps due to the fact that
no constant or nearly constant factor to hasten marine degrada-
tion has been taken into consideration. The reasoning of some of
the older authors would seem to have been based upon the things
which are to be observed only as results of local storms and also
fails to consider the possible factor of the nature of the litho-
sphere itself as an active contributing cause in hastening the reduc-
tion of the land mass.

Some very interesting discussion of the arguments pro and
con of marine denudation or degradation may be found in the
various editions of A. Geikie's well-known " Textbook of Geology."
Thus (3d ed., rev., p. 448) Geikie says:

" But were it not for the potent influence of subaerial decay, the progress
of the sea would be comparatively feeble. The very blocks of stone which
give the waves so much of their efficacy as abrading agents, are in great
measure furnished to them by the action of the meteoric agents."

Taken in connection with the more recent studies in jointing as
controlling rock disintegration, and in connection with what may be
seen along the continental borders both land and marine the above
statements will be seen to be an incomplete statement of the factors
in the case.

That entire continental masses may not be seen to have been
reduced by this marine planation should not prejudice the case, it
is exceedingly improbable that any one agent alone has ever re-

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 389

duced any considerable continental mass ; nor should the value of
a factor be judged simply from the lateral extent of its spread.
The investigations of Barrell already referred to would certainly
indicate if not prove that marine aggression has played a most im-
portant part in the leveling of the land surface.

It may be worth while to note further that jointing is not simply
a vertical matter, it seems so under certain forms of atmospheric
attack but under the transporting power of a sea aggression climb-
ing the land surface the development and the existence of horizontal
joint lines will accelerate the rate of land degradation in a manner
analogous to the acceleration of stream erosion due to change of
level.

It is interesting that almost all of the illustrations chosen by
Geikie show the controlling action of joints to shape not alone the
clift's but to accelerate the action of marine erosion yet he gives
but incidental reference to the presence of joints, and seems to lay
most emphasis upon the aerial agents though each illustration given
shows in nearly every instance the effect of the controlling action of
joints. Again I venture to state that the object of this study in
most part is not to claim for either land or marine degradation the
superiority as a universal agent of land surface reduction but to
try to establish the fact of the presence of one factor which may
be regarded as controlling both and which under conditions, favor-
able now to land erosion, now to sea erosion, enters as the dominant
medium for shaping the resulting surface of the stony portion of
the earth more technically known as the lithosphere. And that in
the nature of the relation of the three elements of the earth, atmos-
phere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, the attempt to restrict the forces of
lithosphere degradation to an assumed base level fixed by the sea
level is an untenable position. Untenable because of the fractured
nature of the rock mass itself and also because of the fact that the
sea level is not constant, so that whether the sea level move up or
down either from the shifting of the land mass or from the sea
itself there will still be presented below sea level the constant factor
of joint weakness in the mass of the earth itself to induce disin-
tegration and further leveling ; connecting in this manner land or

390 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

atmospheric erosion and marine erosion as two stages of a con-
secutive process.

There remains further the consideration of this in connection
with the outhned shapes of the various continental shelves; the
rapid descent of the lithosphere off these shelves being a general
characteristic of all. The consideration of this subject must be
with our limited information so largely speculative that it is not a
subject which I now wish to discuss. The idea of attempting to
carry the repeating patterns out to the sea floor beyond the limits
of the shelves and to try to establish joint influence in the distri-
bution of oceanic islands may however prove to be connected with
the rise of blocked masses of the lithosphere.

It was proposed earlier in this paper to apply the method of
" repeating patterns " to some island groups not connected closely
to continental shelf land in order to draw a comparison if possible
of similar jointing control in their distribution.

For the purpose of such comparison the following groups have
been chosen though it is not by any means believed that these are
the only ones which would yield concordant results ; these are first
the group of the Isles of The Shoals in the Gulf of IMaine, secondly
the Canary and ^^^ladeira group. With these for the sake of further
development of the argument will be compared the islands of
Oceania of the Pacific. It is not my intention to discuss in any
detail the general geology of any of these groups, what it is de-
sired to bring forth is their group morphology or more particularly
the relations of their positions to each other. To consider the
Shoals group first, this is a group of about seven actual islands
with however a number of rock ledges which though submerged
beneath the tide are an essential part of the construction of the
whole group as may be seen from the navigation charts.'^ The
figures or plotting of position are taken from chart io8.

The nearness to the present shore line of these islands with
their rather evident similarity of position to other groups of islands
in the same general vicinity makes no argument as to their essen-
tial connection with the mainland necessary. This is especially

38 See Chart No. io8, Wells to Cape Ann, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Sur-
vey. Also U. S. Coast Pilot, Atlantic Coast, Pts. I. and II., pp. 142-143-

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 391

evident after an inspection of that portion of the waters and land
masses along the Gulf of Maine. The positions of this group have
been plotted by drawing lines connecting the greatest numbers of
the islands including reefs which are regarded as islands. While
the distribution of these islands is not so striking as the islands of
Casco Bay to the north and east yet it is apparent that the appli-
cation of the repeating pattern establishes here the existence of a
fairly regular system of jointing which may be stated to control
the position of this group as a series of upstanding residues of
erosion from an older land surface, a small illustration of the more
widely known case of the British Islands as remnants of a former
series of connected structures all part of the mass of the continent
of Europe.

With this plotting of the Shoal Islands may be compared the
plotting of the positions of the Canary-Madeira group. I have
used for this the map from C. GageP^ in his discussion of the
islands of the middle Atlantic. (These were shown by lantern
slides while reading paper.) The arrangement of practically all of
these Atlantic islands shows lines of a parallel grouping so very
similar to the development of continental volcanic vents and fis-
sures along lines of separated segments or joints that it will hardly
be disputed that the same principle has worked in each case. These
islands consist in part, according to Gagel, of volcanic cones built
up from the floor of the sea and in part are "broken remnants of
the European-African continent. "*°

According to Gagel three of the Canary group, namely La
Palma, Fuertaventura and Gomera " show the undoubted represen-
tatives of very old volcanic, archean and sedimentary formations,
which form the true sockets (=Sockel) of the islands and prove
themselves to be part of an old great continent, whose shattered
fragments still appear in these islands." The other islands of this
group consist of recent volcanic eruptives of Tertiary or Quater-
nary age carrying in some instances portions of marine Tertiary

39 C. Gagel, " Die Mittelatlantischen Vulkaninseln," in " Handbuch der
Regional Geologic," Vol. 7, part 10, Heidelberg, 1910, pp. 1-32. Here will be
found the literature for this group noted and original references given.

■i'> Op. cit., p. 31.

392 EHREXFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

sediments and in other cases as on Tenerif, Hierros and Antaos,
the incoherent volcanics carry loose fragments of " older or at
least coarsely crystalline rocks " which Gagel considers may have
come from an older deep-seated "socket" or portion of the islands.

There is presented here then a construction in which may be
seen two phases of joint influence, the broken and more or less
symmetrically arranged fragments of residues of a continental struc-
ture, and secondly the rise of volcanic masses to the surface through
the open fissures which lie between the aforementioned segments.

The Azores show likewise recent eruptive products with ap-
parently no sediments earlier than middle Miocene ; there is the
further fact of deep sinking of the sea floor between some of these
islands, as over 6,000 feet between Graciosa and Corvo.*^

The general position of all these island groups of the Atlantic,
their relations to the surrounding lithosphere shapes are all of im-
portance ; the positions of the Canary-Madeira group near the
great adjustments incident to Mediterranean conditions, and the
position of the Azores on the great Atlantic plateau are part of the
general idea that these are all structures which are to be regarded
as .behaving in the same way as similar structures do on those por-
tions of the lithosphere which are now continental. There are
here evidences of the controlling action of a system of joints which
are believed to have played their part not in surface degradation in
the usual sense, but have been active in a system of movable seg-
ments which wdien under stress have resulted most probably in an
essential up and down movement.

I have attempted to demonstrate block or joint development in
, the first place as an integral part of the lithosphere itself in a man-
ner analogous to its presence shown in the larger land masses.
That it has been the controlling factor in the disintegration of a
former land mass represented by the islands now under discussion
is too much to take as anything which can so easily be demonstrated.
That it has been an active factor in marine denudation at this locus
seems to me rather more than a supposition and appears as prob-
able from the action of joint planes to produce an acceleration of
marine degradation elsewhere. If these ideas be carried to the island

*i Gagel, op. cit., p. 9.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 393

groups of the Pacific such as the Solomon, New Caledonia, Kerma-
dec, New Zealand groups there will be found an arrangement of
island masses which have for many years suggested to geologists
definite plans of grovip arrangement. It is not needful to detail
these here as they are too well known to need review, having been
considered so often in connection with the origin of coral reefs ; a
recent bibliography has been published by P. Marshall.^-

What seems to the present writer one of the most suggestive of
recent theories in regard to these island structures in general was
put forth by Alexander Agassiz in various studies published in the
Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology.*^

As is of course well known the main ideas concerning coral
islands in the Pacific have centered about the ideas of subsidence
and numerous suggestions have been ofifered to satisfy this re-
quirement. Aggasiz in i898'*'* in discussing the reefs about Aus-
tralia expressed the idea that too much emphasis had been laid
upon subsidence and wished to bring in the factor of marine plana-
tion with "terraces of erosion" upon which coral masses would by
natural extension grow together and form the Great Barrier Reef.

In later writings (Memoirs, Vol. XXVIII.) Agassiz has again
cited marine erosion as developing the platforms upon which the
reefs of various sorts would develop.

Given a water condition favorable to coral life there is no doubt
that coral life would start along the rocky structures of the north
Atlantic just as is now to be seen in the warmer seas. The prob-
lem here is not the coral life but rather the development of a plat-
form upon which the coral organisms may persist. There can be
httle doubt that coral reef developments of various sorts would
be found today along Madeira-Azores groups if the water condi-
tions were favorable.

I would wish to suggest then that a profitable field for further
study of coral life in the field in the Pacific islands may be found

*2 p. Marshall, " Oceania," " Handbuch der Regional Geologic," Vol. 7, pt.
2, Heidelberg, 191 1. Reference may also be made to Suess, Dana, A. Agassiz,
Murray and many others.

*^ See particularly Mem. Mns. Comp. ZooL, volumes from 1898 to 1903.

^* Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., XXVIII., 1898; see also Agassiz, Mem. Mus.
Comp. Zool., XXVIII., 1903.

394 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

in the more careful study of these islands as developments from
jointing or segmented structures.

The marked character of volcanic products from the island vol-
canoes, such as the successions of andesitic lavas supposed to be
characteristic of the Pacific type compared for example with those
from the Philippines which are much more varied though frequently
andesitic, and with those from the Sandwich group which are essen-
tially basic, may perhaps show some solution to the physiographic
development of the region indicated.

That the igneous history of some of these groups has been a
very long one is indicated by the same sort of reasoning as applied
to rock masses elsewhere. This may be taken to mean a long period
of time in which the segmented condition or open fissure condition
has prevailed.

It is not accidental nor casual but from the evidence at hand we
may with reason conclude that the surface of the lithosphere be-
neath the hydrosphere in this Pacific district of Oceania has been
subject to tectonic movements, fissuring extrusion of igneous masses
in a manner analogous to other parts of the lithosphere such as
continental masses in which a jointing or block structure may be
shown to be present.

Connected with this discussion is the general structure of the
solid portion of the earth, now commonly referred to as the zones
of fracture and flowage. These, as is known, are divided into
more or less definite lines so that under certain supposed pressures
rock masses will move in flow lines rather than in fracture lines,
such as is indicated in many diagrams of mountain making. This
may be regarded by some authors as a factor against the proposi-
tion of joint control which I have proposed. Further reflection,
however, will suggest the thought that while the zones of fracture
and flowage do represent definite differences in the behavior of the
rock masses of the earth, that these lines of zone are not, however,
fixed in their actual distance below the surface of the lithosphere.
In other words, it is not only possible to conceive but I think the
circumstances compel us to conceive of a certain rock mass passing
from the flowage zone to the fracture zone by release of pressure.
That is, if we take certain types of mountain structure represented

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 395

by the conventional lines of anticline and syncline structures,'*^ a
geosyncline, for example, or anticline would develop into a series
of fractures in the outer portion of the lithosphere if the pressure
which made the original fold were to continue or were to be applied
without a heavy series of overlying beds. The zone of flowage
would become a zone of fracture by release of pressure from above
without necessarily there being a release of other strains in the
mass of the rock. To make a practical application, the Appalachian
folds and the fan-shaped folds of Heim, in the Alps, are often
represented in diagrams as having developed as surface folds of
the lithosphere, that is, it is practically stated that we might con-
ceive a portion of the outer lithosphere structure to be practically
destitute of faults from the fact that the rock structures under
pressure assume a fold-flowage structure. Thus, in Fig. 285, in
Pirsson & Schuchert, p. 362, the evolution of the Appalachian moun-
tains is represented as having occurred as a series of zones of
surface folding followed by erosion of the folded zone producing
the usual peneplane. This I conceive to be at least an unlikely
series of developments in spite of the weight of the authority back
of the theory.

If the pressures which developed the Appalachians took place
in a mass so that folding and flowage took place, we would almost
of necessity have to suppose a heavy super-incumbent mass of rock,
so that instead of fracturing taking place the rocks under the intense
pressure would move by lines of flow ; on the other hand if the
above pressure were applied to a mass of rock without this heavy
overlying weight, then fracturing would almost certainly have to
follow. So, if in such a mass as the Appalachians where the force
of the uplift continued through a long period of geologic time, with
processes of surface erosion proceeding, it is an allowable supposi-
tion to believe that the zone of flow would pass upward into a zone
of fracture and expose the outer portion of the lithosphere to a
much more rapid means of degradation than would follow from the
usual processes of erosion and degradation on an unfractured mass.
So that the zone of flowage in this case, and it would apply to other

45 See. for example. Figs. 285-291, Pirsson and Schuchert, "Textbook of
Geology." Also Dana and others.

396 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

uplifted or folded areas, may be imagined to pass into a zone of
fracture by a lessening of the distance between the outer atmos-
pheric contact and the mass of rock in question. I do not wish to
complicate the discussion by citing hypothetical cases, but we may
perhaps legitimately imagine that folded areas such as the Appa-
lachians and the Alps would continue to be subject to earth strains
after erosion had removed a considerable part of the overlying
weight of rock mass. This would then allow these folded masses to
pass into fractured masses of various degrees of intensity. The
bearing of this on joint control of degradation is, I think, obvious
enough.

In connection with other courses of the rock mass of the earth
which are not subject apparently to these intense pressures, such
as the Canadian Shield, I have already stated that I believe the
source of fracture there to be the successions of overloading by sedi-
mentation, ice accumulation, marine inundation, with the consequent
wearing out of the elasticity of the original rock mass. The rock
mass under these circumstances would then simply proceed to fall
apart, depending upon the presence of some agent such as marine
erosion capable of removing the blocks due to jointing. The illus-
trations given of the disintegration of the mass of the coastal plain
near Ogunquit, Me. (Figs. 5-6. Plate IX) will show practically how
a mass of folded rocks will when exposed to release of pressure break
down into segments which can easily be seen to be the result of
wide reaching joints. Almost the whole coast of IMaine is an illus-
tration of this.

As for these rocks near Ogunquit, they show all the marks of
what is usually referred to as rock bending under pressure, S-folds
are not uncommon, isoclinal folds are evidently quite frequent and
it is a very probable supposition that here is a mass of rock w-hich
has been under such stress that distinct folds developed and that
now very definite lines of jointing are in control of the lowering
of the land mass.

It is of course entirely possible or even probable that some of
this jointing was simultaneous with the folding. I hope in a later
paper to discuss the evidences for this.

But the essential fact stands out that here is a portion of the

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 397

stony portion of the earth passing into complete disintegration
under the combined action of a great system of jointing which has
already broken down the coherency of the mass, and under marine
transportation ( erosion ) .

It is my expectation in a later paper to present further results
of the study of this locality.

From the discussion given, there may be deduced, then, the
following propositions :

Proposition lo. — That the lithosphere has certain constant phys-
ical factors which act universally and independently of local surface
conditions : one of these is, for example, igneous action, and an-
other is jointing.

Proposition ib. — That this jointing develops as an essential re-
sult from the nature of the lithosphere itself which shows in prac-
tically all cases from continental masses to loose sands the regu-
larity of lines of weakness.

Proposition 2a. — That surface features of the lithosphere, both
sub-atmospheric and sub-oceanic, are controlled not by the agents
of the atmosphere nor hydrosphere, but by the distribution of lines
of master and minor joints.

Proposition 2h. — That surface drainage, glaciation, variations
of weathering, may be regarded as accidental; that behind all of
them, and also running ahead of them as the essential controlling
factor, is jointing.

Proposition ?. — That joints have been present throughout all
the geological history of the lithosphere, considered as possessed of
solid portions.

Proposition 4. — That in the development of continental outlines,
including continental shelves, and also in the development of sur-
face continental features due to weathering and to atmospheric and
marine erosion, the controlling factor is not atmospheric nor climatic
nor marine primarily, but is due to the fundamental nature of the
lithosphere itself as shown in its lines of jointing.

Proposition 5. — That the " repeating patterns " of authors which
show joint control of the lithosphere on the continental surfaces
may, with equal truth and value, be applied to the interpretation
of the sub-oceanic lithosphere and that the distribution of oceanic

398 EHRENFELD— JOINTING AS A FUNDAMENTAL FACTOR

islands, volcanoes, reefs, and so on, may be explained Ijv joint con-
trol of the structure of the lithosphere.

Proposition 6. — That jointing being a constant factor in the
structure of the lithosphere and producing lines of easier displace-
ment than folding, is one of the fundamental factors in the shifting
of land and sea level, whether the shifting be regarded as having
taken place under the hydrosphere or in the continental masses.

Proposition 7. — That jointing should be regarded by students
of geophysics as an essential dynamic and constant factor in the
behavior of the lithosphere and that it has been so practically
throughout all geologic time.

Proposition S. — Base line or base level of erosion is a term which
refers to the results of atmospheric degradation and does not ex-
press the final results of continental land surface reduction. Since
the relative positions of land and sea are known to be subject to
change without any essential change in the character of the rock
masses sea level can not be used as a term to express the equivalent
of the lowest limit of continental land surface reduction or degra-
dation.

From this there may be deduced principles which are proposed
as a

Law of Joints.

1. The lithosphere is subject by its nature to the development
of lines of weakness or fracturing which in turn develop into actual
movable segments.

These segments or joint lines develop in such regularity of ar-
rangement that they may be said to occur in "joint-systems" which
are shown at the surface as controlling agents in land erosion and
land shaping ; and they act beneath the surface inducing tectonic
movements which are independent of atmospheric or marine contact.

2. Degradation of the lithosphere is fundamentally a factor in
its own structure and will occur whenever an agent capable of
transporting the movable joint blocks is in contact with the litho-
sphere.

This applies to those portions of the land or rock mass below
sea level.

IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE LITHOSPHERE. 399

3. Atmospheric erosion and marine planation are two separate
phases of a general process of lithosphere degradation which are
frequently connected into consecutive stages by the presence of
joint lines which extend from beneath sea level up into the mass of
the lithosphere above sea level ; these lines are also horizontal and
thus act to produce flat surfaces.

4. Degradation of the lithosphere surface may occur also by
the vertical displacement of these joint segments irrespective of
atmospheric or marine contact.

5. Joint control of lithosphere degradation has been active since
the period when the lithosphere possessed a solidified structure and
has been a fundamental factor in the evolution of the lithosphere,
or geomorphology.

Detailed Observations on Plates VI.-VIII.

Plate VI., Figs, i and 2. These sands are entirely unconsolidated but
are rather gritty. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Plate VII., Fig. 3. Joint disintegration in quartz-mica-garnet schist,
Prouts Neck, Maine. The loose segments fall to water level and through a
pebble-gravel process are reduced to quartz and garnet sands, the mica washes
to sea. The original rock character is thus totally destroyed by a rapid me-
chanical action working through joints.

Fig. 4. Bowlder flat at Sea Point, Maine, above Portsmouth Harbor.
Tliis flat is composed of incompletely reduced joint blocks from the adjacent
rock masses and appears to be built out over a reef which lies parallel to a
series of other reefs and small rock segments in place. The flat is a prolific
breeding and feeding ground for vast colonies of mollusca, small Crustacea,
lime secreting algae, Laminaria and other forms of animal and plant life.
Angular blocks coated with lime carbonate are frequent. The relation of such
bowlder flats to life distribution suggests interesting paleographic analogies.

Plate VIII., Fig. 5. Block disintegration proceeding in a folded area in
coastal plain. The folds are now to be seen with their tops in most cases
cut ofif and are broken into blocked segments. This fracture may be seen
to extend below the level of the cHfif. Near Ogunquit, Maine.

Fig. 6. Angular edges forming an abi'upt series of sea terraces. The
entrance of one of a series of parallel coves or small bays may be noted. In
front of the cliff extends a broad platform iliduced by the horizontal jointing.
Clififs near Ogunquit. Maine.

(All of the illustrations are from photographs taken by the author.)

SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

By ALEXANDER DUANE, M.D.

(Read April jj, 1916.)

Perhaps a better title for my paper would have been " Desultory
Notes of an Ophthalmologic Signalman." Such a title, moreover,
would indicate the paper's only excuse for being. For desultory
as the notes unfortunately are, the author has felt that they might
be of some service because, being both an ophthalmologist and a
signalman, he had a somewhat unusual advantage in studying the
subject. As an ophthalmologist, he had been concerned with the
observation of visual phenomena and knew something of the phys-
ical and psychic factors underlying them ; while as a signalman, quar-
termaster, and signal officer in the naval militia and navy, he acquired
a practical acquaintance with the various forms of naval signalling
under service conditions.

In considering the subject it is important to have some idea of
what constitutes naval signals and to know in general how they are
made and interpreted.

For the purpose of this paper, signalling may be defined as the
art of communicating with another person by means of symbols
other than written or spoken words ; such symbols consisting, ac-
cording to the method employed, of shapes, lights, sounds, move-
ments, or any sort of exhibit whatever that can be appreciated at a
distance. These symbols, either singly or combined in groups, are
use, according to some special system, to denote individual letters,
digits, or other characters ; and these characters in turn are com-
bined according to some preconcerted code to form messages.

The special symbols employed in any one system are called the
elements of that system ; and the system is said to have 2, 3, or 10
elements, according to the number of different kinds of symbols
used in it to form the letters or characters. Thus a signal consisting
of a display of lights vertically over one another at a ship's mast is
said to be made by the Ardois Method. It is made with two ele-
ments, since only two kinds of symbols (viz., red and white lights)

400

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 401

are emploved. These elements are combined according to the In-
ternational Morse System to form letters ; and a succession of such
letters may form an arbitrary combination to be interpreted by the
Nav}' Code.

Methods of Signalling.
The methods used in navy signalHng are as follows :

(a) Motions.
Wig-wag (movement of flag, torch, search-light, or other object
from side to side).

{h) FlasJics of Light.
Flash lantern and winker light.

(c) Colors, Fixed or Moving.
Display of colored and white lights (usually several in one display)

(Ardois Method).
Projection into the air of rockets or red and green stars (Very

Method).
Coston and other lights.

{d) Forms.
Cone, top, and drum.
Square flag, pennant, and ball.
Semaphore.

{e) Forms and Colors.
Hoists of colored flags.

(/) Sounds.
Steam whistle, bell, gunfire.
Telegraph (usually wireless).

Systems of Signalling.

The systems commonly used in naval signalling are these :

Dot-Dash System. — Comprises two or usually three elements,^

viz.. right, left, and front motions (Wig-wag) ; short, long, and

extra long flashes (Winker Light, Heliograph) ; red and white lights

(Ardois) ; red and green stars and rocket (Very Method) ; short,

long, and extra long (or single, double, and triple) sounds (Sound

1 Really in these systems there is a time interval (between letters) wliich
constitutes a fourth element.

402 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

Signals). Two of the elements are combined to form letters accord-
ing to the International Morse Code, and if there is a third, this is
used to form an interval or make some special signal.

Semaphore System. — Comprises 8 elements, viz., the eight posi-
tions of each of the two arms of the semaphore (or the two arms of
a man). Combinations of these according to a special code form
the various letters of the alphabet and special signals.

International Hoist. — Comprises 27 elements (flags denoting 26
letters of the alphabet and one answ^ering or code pennant).

Naz'v Hoist. — Comprises 45 elements, viz., the 26 alphabetic flags
of the International System and 19 others (repeaters, guide, recall,
position, etc.)

International Distance System. — Comprises 4 elements, viz. cone,
top (inverted cone), drum, ball. (A square flag may be used for
cone, pennant for top, a pennant tied back to halHards or a flag tied
in the middle for a drum.) These combined according to a special
system form letters and special signals.

Naz'v Distance System. — Comprises 3 elements, viz., cone, top,
and drum. These combined according to a special system form
letters and special signals interpreted by the Navy Code.

Signal Codes.

Signal codes are divided into two great classes. Alphabetic and
Signal-Book Codes. In an Alphabetic Code the letters or digits in-
dicated by the special system employed have their actual value as
letters or digits, and are further combined to form words and num-
bers just as they are in ordinary writing — to form,. in other words,
what we may call spelling messages. In a Signal-Book Code, the
letters indicated by combining the elements in the system used are
mere indexes referring to special messages or words contained in a
code-book. Thus the elements i, 2, 3, of the dot-dash system, when
used in its ordinary way as an alphabetic code, would if combined
thus, 22 2122 3, denote the actual letters M Y, spelling the word
]\IY. But the same letters whether sent by the Dot-Dash System,
the International Flag System, or the International Distance Sys-
tem would, if interpreted by the International Code, have no mean-

DUAXE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 403

ing as letters, but would denote the message "Ship disabled; will
you tow me ? "

The following codes are used :

Alphabetic Codes. — Unless notice by special signal is given to
the contrary, all messages sent by wig-wag, Ardois, telegraph, winker
light, and semaphore are spelling messages. All of these are inter-
preted by the International ]\Iorse Code except the semaphore, and
this is read by the semaphore code. In certain cases the flags of
the International System may also have their alphabetic meaning
and be used to form spelling messages.

Signal-Book Codes. — All messages sent by flag hoist, shapes,
steam-whistle, and Very stars, and occasionally- messages sent by
other methods are code messages, to be interpreted by special signal
codes. These signal codes are the —

Intenmtional Code used with the International Flag Hoist. It
includes the slightly variant code used with shapes for sending In-
ternational Distance Signals.

Navy Code used with flag hoist, shapes, steam whistle, and Very
stars. The regular Navy Code includes battle signals, general sig-
nals, boat and deck signals, and speed signals. To these may be
added the towing, running, and riding lights (International), buoy
and lighthouse signals (U. S.), storm signals, and the various offi-
cers' and national flags.

Of course a message, whether a spelling or code message, may
be transformed by cipher, previously agreed upon or denoted by the
signal sent.

What a Signalman Has to Do.

The signalman must have an intimate working knowledge of
eight difl:'erent methods of signalling (by wig-wag, light flash, Ar-
dois, Very stars, sounds, shapes, semaphore, and flag hoist) to be
used according to six different systems. He must know with abso-
lute certainty the signification (often multiple in each case) of some
30 combinations of right and left movements, 30 combinations of
red and white lights displayed over one another, 30 combinations of
red and green stars projected into the air, 30 combinations of short
and long flashes or of short and long sounds, 30 different positions

-When preceded hy the special call meaning "signals follow."

404 DUAXE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

of the semaphore, and some 50 different flags, not to speak of the
various national flags. In addition, he must know the various day
and night position and speed signals, danger signals, truck light, side
lights, and weather signals, the different kinds of buoys and beacon
lights, and must be able and ready to pick up boats, ships, and
rocks. He is the " eyes of the ship " and on his vigilance and sight,
speed and accuracy, the ship's safety may largely depend.

The signalman's duties then are both highly important and also
are varied and complex. They demand a considerable degree of
intelligence and skill. In this as in all other skilled work, experi-
ence and practice count enormously. To an outsider it is amazing
to see the facility with which an experienced man can fulfill all
these duties and carry them on for a long time without apparent
mental and physical fatigue. One signalman, who did not claim to
be specially proficient, told me that he once read visual signals with-
out intermission for two hours and a half, and when his work was
done felt no more tired than if he had been reading a book for the
same length of time. Yet during this long period eyes and mind
must have been intent with scarcely a moment's respite on ever-
varying combinations of symbols. And the quickness with which
signals are appreciated and the necessary responses given is equally
astonishing. For example, when in squadron evolutions a flagship
is setting flag signals, the flags, bent on to the halliards, do not,
of course, break out so as to be visible until they are started on their
way up. Yet it is no uncommon thing for every ship in the
squadron to send its answering pennant up before the flagship's
display has reached the top, thus showing that in two or three
seconds at the most the four or five flags comprising the signal have
been read, understood, and answered by every signalman — and that
even when some of the ships are several miles away.

Such expertness, of course, comes only with practice. The be-
ginner not only discerns signals less readily, less far, and particu-
larly with less certainty than the expert, but he tires soon, so that
his work quickly becomes unreliable." Now even in time of peace,

■'• Recognizing this, a quartermaster will not keep an inexperienced signal-
man looking too long, especially through a field-glass, at a semaphore or
winker light, but will relieve him after a few sentences have been taken. So

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 405

but, of course, much more in time of war, the exigencies of the
service may be such that the skilled man is not available. He may
have to be replaced by a man not sufficiently trained. This is par-
ticularly the case under present-day conditions when our warships
are deplorably undermanned. It is important, therefore, to consider
what difficulties an inexperienced man has to contend with and how
these difficulties affect his reading of signals.

There is another aspect of the matter. There are some men
who never become good signalmen. The practice has been to dis-
cover whether this is so or not by selecting a man haphazard, trying
him out, and rejecting him if he fails. It would be better surely to
be able to form some idea in advance of what the causes of dis-
qualification are, so that the right sort of man might be picked out
in the first instance and no time wasted in training the inefficient.

From both points of view it becomes us to consider the factors
that determine a man's ability to perform signal duty. These fac-
tors are: (i) The character of the signals themselves and the way
this character is affected by external conditions. (2) The signal-
man's own physical and mental qualifications.

Intrinsic Character of Signals Themselves.

Signals differ very greatly in :

/. Visibility. — Some even under the best conditions can hardly
be seen beyond two or three miles (by the tyro not so far), others
can be seen any distance.

2. Legibility. — Some signals, especially those having a large
number of elements (flag signals) or in which the elements are
shown in groups (Ardois) or very rapid succession (semaphore,
hand wig-wag), can usually be seen further than they can be read —
although it must be stated that this discrepancy between legibility
and visibility is most marked with beginners and diminishes rapidly
as experience grows. Other signals ( winker light, wig-wag by
flashlight or searchlight. Very stars) can be read even by begin-
ners as far as they are seen.

J. Amount of Strain They Impose on the Sight and Attention. —

also a signalman, when finding himself getting unsteady, will ask a companion
by him to take his place.

406 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

This is particularly great with the semaphore and especially the
winker light.

External Conditions Affecting Signals.

These are :

1. Faulty Technique in Sending. — ^Mistakes may occur with any
method ; but faulty technique gives trouble particularly with the
hand wig-wag, hand semaphore, and winker light. It affects visi-
bility scarcely at all, but often greatly reduces the legibility of mes-
sages. By impairing legibility it puts an added strain on the sight
and attention of the observer.

Faulty technique includes not only carelessness in the mechanical
execution of the signal, but also failure to acknowledge signals
properly, failure to secure a proper background when requested,
failure to correct errors, and too slow sending. Such faults, if
persisted in, unduly prolong the message and weary the receiver.

2. Weather Conditions. — These naturally affect both visibility
and legibility, especially the latter. Flag hoists and Ardois become
particularly difficult to read in thick weather and m^y have to be
replaced by distance signals or even by sound signals. Flag signals,
if the ship is not under way, require some breeze for their proper
display ; but a gusty wind may interfere a good deal with their
legibility.* The sun, if behind the observer, is usually a help espe-
cially in hand wig-wag, hand semaphore, and flag displays. The
light shining on the display and reflected from it, makes the signal
stand out better, especially when the latter is in motion or shows
contrasting colors (hand wig-wag, hand semaphore, flag signals).
Per contra, the sun behind signals not only tends to drown them out
so that they are hard to read, but also causes so much irritation and
dazzling as the result of glare, that the eyes may soon tire and be-
come unserviceable.

A strong wind blowing in the observer's face may make the eyes
water and so interfere with the reading of signals.

5. Use of Field Glass. — Some signalmen prefer to use the naked
eye, but many habitually use either a spy-glass or generally a low-
power field glass. This about doubles the distance at which sig-
nals can be read and increases the legibility of some signals, espe-

4 For the tyro at least. The older and more experienced man will find
little trouble on this score.

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 407

cially the night semaphore. When, however, the ship is rolHng or
pitching a good deal, it is difficult to keep the glass on the object.
It then becomes quite hard to read the signals, and the strain on
the attention is considerably increased. And even when there is
no motion the use of a glass causes more strain than looking with
the naked eye.

4. TJie Motion or Position of the Sliip. — This not only makes
the use of a glass difficult, but even with the naked eye interferes
with the observation of signals. So too, the ship may be so placed
that flag or semaphore signals are not easily seen or have a poor
background.

5. Occlusion of Object by spars or funnels or by the sudden dip-
ping of the ship in a heavy swell.

Influence of These Conditions in Special Cases.

The visibility and legibility of the chief methods of signalling
and the demands they make upon the eyesight may be summarized
as follows :

/. Hand Wig-Wag. — The regular wig-wag signal kit comprises
two-foot, four-foot, and six-foot flags, white, red and black. The
black flag is supposed to be used with a sky background, but is rarely
employed. The red flag theoretically would show better than the
white against a green or white background, but, as a matter of fact,
the white shows best under almost all circumstances.

The wig-wag is visible a very considerable distance. Its legi-
bility varies very greatly with the technique of the sender and with
the background. Given a good sender and a good sky background,
the wig-wag messages with the large flags can be read over six
miles^ even with the naked eye. This method requires close atten-
tion, but is not particularly tiring to the eyes.

Very legible is the night wig-wag with oil or electric lantern.

2. Wig-Wag by Searchlight. — A searchlight projected against

a cloud and waved from side to side like the hand wig-wag, can be

seen and read practically any distance. Vessels have signalled in

this w^ay from ocean to ocean across the Isthmus of Panama — the

5 The statements in this and the following paragraphs regarding range
of visibility are to be taken as the maximum for expert receivers. For ordi-
nary signalmen, particularly when the weather conditions are not good, these
distances would be halved.

408 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

ships being forty miles apart. The messages are very legible and
the method not taxing to the eyes.

J. Hand Semaphore. — This has largely replaced wig- wag, be-
cause the signals can be made faster. I am a tyro at it myself, and
for that reason, perhap, it seems to me more difficult and less leg-
ible than the wig- wag. It certainly requires careful technique,
otherwise certain combinations are indistinguishable from each other
(e. g., O from I and W from X). It is said that a good observer
can read signals three or four miles, but this depends greatly on the
sender and the background.

4. Machine Semaphore. — By day the semaphore arms are read-
ily seen if the background is good. By night the lights on the two
arms are apt to blend in the acute angled signals (H, O, T, W, Z),
making it somewhat difficult to determine whether one or two arms
show. This difficulty does not obtain when a field-glass is used.
If the night semaphore is worked rapidly, the after-images pro-
duced by one display might theoretically be confused with the dis-
play following, but this seems not to occur. The shifting lights are
somewhat trynng to the eyes of the inexperienced. The range of
legibility is variously stated at one to three miles or more.

5. Winker-Light. — This, like the heliograph which it greatly re-
sembles, can be seen practically any distance, provided the sender
or receiver is sufficiently elevated above sea-level and intervening
obstructions. If the technique of sending is good, the light-flash can
be read as far as it can be seen. In India, where sending can be
done from great elevations, the heliograph, they say, can be read a
hundred miles. I have signaled with it sixteen miles. It might be
used that far on shipboard. To do so would require both observer
and sender to be rather more than forty feet above sea-level.

The winker light is quite trying to the eyes, especially when re-
ceived through a glass, and beginners cannot receive long at a time
without their attention flagging and their work being unreliable.
Twinkles and flashes'' impinging in rapid succession on a partially
dark-adapted eye, cause considerable strain, although it is a strain
to which one does get remarkably accustomed.

Just as the searchlight is used for wig- wag it is also used for

^ Readers of Kipling will recall his graphic lines :

" A heliograph tempestuously at play."

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 40i)

throwing dots and dashes of hght against a cloud. Such signals,
which are the same as winker-light signals, can be seen and read
practically any distance.

6. Ardois Signals. — The Ardois is not as fast as the semaphore,
but faster than the winker light or wig-wag. The signals are easily
seen and easily read. Observers differ a good deal as to the range
of visibility of the Ardois — some alleging that it can not be read
more than three miles under the most favorable conditions, others
that it can be seen from four to six miles. This is with the electric
lamps on shipboard which are slung twelve feet apart. In some ex-
periments that we made at our Fire Island signal station during the
Spanish-American War, similar lamps lighted by acetylene were
read eight miles.

At long distances the several lights of the display run together
into a continuous bar, but even then it is possible to read the signals
by noting whether the bar is long or short and whether it is plain
red or plain white, or white beaded with red. The red light
naturally looks smaller and dimmer than the white, and it would
doubtless be an advantage if the red lamp were made larger and of
more candle-power so as to equalize the visibility of the two.

The x\rdois displays may be obscured by funnels, masts or other
interventions ; and it sometimes happens that in the complex of wires
that go from the keyboard to the lamps some part will give out, so
than one or more of the thirty combinations is defectively given.

The Ardois makes very little tax on the eyes.

7. Flag Displays. — Flags of battleship size can be read six miles
or more by a practiced observer. This, however, obviously depends
on many factors — the clearness of the atmosphere, the direction of
the sun,'^ the way the flags blow out in the wind,* the character of
the background, etc. The colors used are white, red, blue, yellow,
and black (the last in only three of the flags). White is by far
the most conspicuous color, and in the party-colored flags may be
the only part visible. Some, in misty days or at dusk, find difficulty
in discriminating between certain flags like L and U but the experts
say they never have trouble on 'this score.

' Sun behind flags interferes very seriously with the ability to read them.
'^ A little flapping enhances the legibility of the flag; a good deal of flap-
ping impairs the legibility.

410 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

Flag signals, being necessarily intermittent, make no great de-
mands on the eyesight.

Factors in the Signalman Himself.
The factors that may affect a signalman's'-" efficiency are :

1. Faulty vision.

2. Defective color vision.

3. Refractive errors, including defective accommodation.

4. Muscular errors.

5. Slow reaction time.

6. Slow adaptation.

7. Effect of after-images.

8. Fatigue from prolonged, excessive strain of eyes and body.

7. Faulty Vision. — Fortunately in our navy, owing to the in-
sistence of the medical officers, the visual requirements are high,
so that seamen generally, and hence the signalmen also, must have
good vision in each eye without the aid of glasses. ^° It is very im-
portant that this standard be maintained. I may add that it is a
great pity that the same standard has not been maintained in the
army. In the conditions of naval service and of army service too,
acute vision is important, and glasses are a considerable handicap.
Readily fogged by moisture, smoke, or grease, they may obscure the
vision just when it is most needed. For in quick signalling, when
a second or two lost may mean the loss of a message and the conse-
quent delay of a whole squadron in some important evolution, one
has not time to clean glasses or replace them when broken. And
if one pulls the glasses off and goes on without them, the sudden
change in visual acuity and the sudden strain on the accommodation
thereby produced may, even with no very great refractive error,
reduce the sight below service requirements. I myself had a good
example of this during a week's cruise on the San Francisco in 1896.
Without glasses I had a vision of some |^to|^. Soon after the
cruise started my glasses were broken. When it came my turn to
act as gun-pointer, I could not see the target ; when I took my place

^ What is said here about signahnen appHes in general to gun-pointers
and others doing similar work making special demands on the eyesight.

10 The requirements are \1 in each eye and for gun-pointers f " in the
eye used for sighting.

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 411

as lookout, I had a half hour of concentrated misery, since I was
absolutely uncertain whether the dancing spots on the horizon were
lights to be reported or mere ignes fatui. Certainly I was not quali-
fied to be " the eyes of the ship " that night.

2. Defective Color Vision. — Obviously a signalman must be free
from even slight defects of color perception. It is his business to
deal with colors (red, white, and green lights, and various colored
flags) seen often in the most unfavorable atmospheric conditions.
It is fortunate that our navy like all others recognizes the impera-
tive necessity that every man in it should be free from color defects.
It clings, to be svu'e, to the outworn Holmgren test with wools,
when experience has shown that it would be better to use the equally
simple and more certain tests of Nagel and of Stilling, as well as
the very practical lantern tests. Still our medical officers are very
keen in this regard, and it is very rarely the case that any man with
color defects slips by them. Moreover, in signal training, the pres-
ence of any serious defect would soon show itself by some failure
in reading Ardois signals and especially in making out certain flags
at signal distance.

J. Refractive Errors. — Moderate uncorrected refractive errors —
hyperopia and astigmatism of a dioptry or so — are quite compatible
with keen sight. Eyes affected with them, however, may give out
under prolonged strain either of the eyes themselves or the whole
body. This has been seen in the European war, in which, as noted
by two English observers, men with only a minimum amount of
hyperopia suft'er such deterioration of sight from the prolonged
strain and fatigue of trench fighting that they become useless as
marksmen. In view of the very exacting demands made on a naval
signalman, and in view of the fact that in our short-handed navy the
hours of work of any one man may be inordinately prolonged, it
would seem important that men with even slight errors of refrac-
tion should be carefully tested under exacting service conditions,
and if they show tendency to give out under the strain, should be
kept on probation until it is definitely determined whether they are
fit for the work or not.

4. Defects of the Eye Muscles. — No man with an obvious squint
would be allowed to enter the navy, but many a man may get in
with a comparatively large latent deviation caused by muscular im-

412 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

balance. These defects cause much the same trouble as refractive
errors. That is, they cause undue strain and hence may ultimately
produce temporary disability of the eyes as the result of prolonged
fatigue of the eyes and the body. It would be well to put candi-
dates for signal work through a careful examination for these
errors, and, if they are present, put the candidate himself on pro-
bation or in extreme cases reject him altogether for signal work.
Of errors of this sort it may be remarked, first, that confusion
due to them is revealed by the fact that it disappears if one eye is
shut ; second, that troubles of this sort may be accentuated or con-
verted from latent into positive sources of mischief by some of the
conditions of naval service, c. g., by the too prolonged use of a spy-
glass which excludes one eye from vision.

5. Slotv Reaction Time. — In the complex process of seeing, inter-
preting what is seen, and expressing or acting on the interpretation,
a certain time is consumed, which difl:'ers in different people. In
certain avocations it is important that this time be reduced to a
minimum. For a railway engineer, a motor driver, a pilot, a gun-
pointer, or a signalman this need is imperative. This is well recog-
nized in the navy, where a man, no matter how keen-sighted, how
intelligent, or how steady, is rejected for gun-pointing or for sig-
nalling, if on trial he is found to be persistently too slow. A man
must be sharp in all his reactions, " quick on the trigger," as they
say. Such men fortunately are fairly numerous in our navy, con-
taining as it does bright, active, and wholesome youngsters, abound-
ing in physical energy and spirit. Even among these, however,
there may be some who do not react quickly enough to be good
signalmen. Would it not be well to weed these men out by psycho-
logical tests of their reaction time, taken when they are first detached
for signal work, rather than, as at present, to find out by weeks of
useless trial that they are too slow?

6. Sloznj Adaptation. — A signalman's work on shipboard requires
quick adaptation. With varying sunlight, the glare from water and
bright work, lights below decks of varying intensities, signal lights,
ship's light, and searchlights, he is often required to change sud-
denly from one condition of illumination to another. This change
requires quick retinal adaptation, as otherwise there may be confu-
sion in seeing with a retina ill-adapted to the existing illumination.

DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY. 413

It also causes visual discomfort which may after a time result in
visual disability. The causes of this discomfort, as Feree has
])ointed out, are sudden dilatations and contractions of the iris, con-
junctival irritation, and fatigue of the exterior eye muscles.

The effect of slow or imperfect adaptation on signalling effi-
ciency has not, so far as I know, been examined scientifically. It
would seem as if this were a promising field for the physiologists,
psychologists, and our naval medical men.

7. Effect of After-images. — After-images conceivably may be a
cause of confusion in signals by night semaphore, by winker light,
antl by flashlight — and possibly by Ardois. That they have this
effect is doubtful, but the case requires study.

8. Effects of Ocular and General Fatigue. — It is obvious that to
do signal work as it should be done, the signalman must be con-
tinuously alert and mentally and physically quick. He must not
only be all the time in a state of physical efficiency, but must have
a good store of surplus energy so as no time to be close to the limit
of his resources. Usually this desirable state obtains, for in the
first place our seamen are picked men — physically fit and mentally
alert. In the second place, life on board ship is stimulating and
wholesome to mind and body, and tends to keep men constantly in
good condition.

One serious drawback is to be noted. Reference has been made
more than once to the fact that our navy is undermanned. The re-
sult is that even in the ordinary routine work the men have to work
overtime, and when doing high pressure work, as in performing
evolutions or target practice, they may have to work almost con-
tinuously for many hours at a time. No body of men, however fit,
can keep up continuously under such a strain. Efficiency in all
directions is impaired, and, not least, efficiency in signalling.

Conclusions.

From these desultory observations the following conclusions may
be drawn.

I. The standards of vision and color vision now required in the
navy should by no means be diminished, but rigorously maintained.
It would be well if equally high and rigid standards could be applied
to the army. And it becomes us as laymen to uphold in every

414 DUANE— SIGHT AND SIGNALLING IN THE NAVY.

way the efiforts of the medical men of the navy to maintain these
usual standards, which too often are assailed by politicians and
well-meaning friends of candidates who, we may believe, are ig-
norant of the danger to which they would expose our ships.

2. A man detailed for signal work in the navy should be exam-
ined for slight errors of refraction and for muscular anomalies.
If these are present, he should be tested from time to time to see
what effect these errors are having on his signal capacity, and if
they are impairing it he should be relegated to other duty.

It would be well to collect a considerable mass of data on this
point, so as to determine once for all the effect that by and large
these errors of refraction do produce on signalling ability and other
tasks — gun-pointing and lookout work — which require a high de-
gree of sustained visual power.

3. It would be well if psychological tests of the reaction time
could be made to determine the fitness of men for signal work, and,
particularly when the tests indicated sluggishness, to repeat them
later from time to time as checks on the signalling efficiency.

From these experiments, too, a good deal of valuable data could
in time be accumulated, which would, c. g., show the true relation
existing between reaction-time tests and signalling efficiency.

4. The present deplorable undermanning of the navy should not
be permitted to continue. Putting it on no higher plane than simple
business prudence and national self-interest, it is vital that the
highly specialized work of our navy should be properly done ; and
it cannot be done when a ship, as now, carries but two thirds of
its minimum complement.

In conclusion, I should like to put in a plea for the extension of
signalling throughout the country. It is healthful stimulating work,
that carries one into the open, that becomes fairly fascinating as
one pursues it, and that may be extremely valuable in time of need.
To be able to talk to a companion or stranger miles away by the
motions of the wig- wag or hand semaphore (made with a hand-
kerchief and stick), by sound signals, or by extemporized flash
lantern or searchlight not only is often a great saving of time and
trouble, but in many an instance will be the means of averting some
supreme disaster and of saving life itself.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

Some Properties of Vibrating Telephone Diaphragms. A. E. Kennelly
AND H. O. Taylor 415

The Normal Gastric Secretion. By Martin E. Rehfuss ' 461

The Common Folk of Shakespeare. By Felix E. Schelling . . 471

The ^Origin and Vegetation of Salt Marsh Pools. By John W.
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1916

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To THE Secretaries of the

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
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Philadelphia, U S. A.

^iiQ

SOME PROPERTIES OF VIBRATING TELEPHONE
DIAPHRAGMS.

By a. E. KENNELLY, S.D., A.M., and H. O. TAYLOR, Ph.D.

{Read April 14, 1916.)

This investigation was conducted by the Research Division of
the Electrical Engineering Department, of the Massachusetts Insti-
tute of Technology, during the years 1915-16, under an appropria-
tion from the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. The
experimental work was carried on at Pierce Hall, Harvard Univer-
sity. It constitutes a continuation of the researches reported by the
same authors in the paper read last year before the American Philo-
sophical Society,^ and in the paper by Kennelly and Affel, read
last year before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,^
dealing with the motional-impedance circle of telephone receivers.

It is now well established that the motional-impedance circle
of a telephone receiver; i. e., the circular locus of that part of a
receiver's impedance which is due to the motion of the diaphragm,
enables the characteristic constants A, m, r and ^' of the instrument
to be determined experimentally. Its diameter, OD, Fig. 4, is
depressed below the resistance axis OA (resistance component of
impedance), through a certain angle, AOD, which is designated by
/^i° + 1^2^ ■ Here j3-^^ is regarded as the angle of lag of the pull on
the diaphragm behind the alternating current in the coils giving rise
thereto ; while ^80° is regarded as the angle of lag of the E.M.F. in-
duced in the coils, behind the velocity of the diaphragm's vibrational
motion producing it.

The researches here reported have been two-fold namely :

1 " Explorations over the Vibrating Surfaces of Telephonic Diaphragms
under Simple, Impressed Tones," by A. E. Kennelly and H. O. Taylor, Proc.
Am. Philos. Soc, Vol. LIV., April 22, 1915.

2 Bibliography, 10.

415

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL LV, Z, JULY ID, I916.

416

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

1. Investigations were made with a view to ascertaining how
the two lag angles, /?i° and (3o° compared with each other, in a given
receiver, and to what extent they depended upon the impressed fre-
quency and upon variations in construction.

2. In the course of this research, which has involved the obser-
vation and plotting of some sixty motional-impedance circles, cer-
tain departures from the circle were noted, due to abnormalities or
irregularities in the mechanics of the receiver diaphragm under test.
Investigation was directed towards determining the nature and
causes of these departures.

I. Investigation of the Depression Angles /?i° and /Jo".

The method adopted for investigating the magnitudes of the
two component depression angles ^^'^ and (3.° was an optical one,
involving Lissajous figures.^ A small and powerful beam of hght

Telephone
Receiver

Kxpioring mirror
supported so as to
vibrate onhoriiontal
axis

Arc Lomp

Duddell
Vibration

Caivanomettrr

To Rayleigh Bridge
and Vreeland QiciWator

Fig. I. Diagram of Optical System for Producing Lissajous' Figures.

from an arc lamp, A, Fig. i, was directed onto a tiny triangular ex-
ploring mirror, about 0.5 mm. in length of edge m, as referred to
in both of the preceding papers of this research.* This mirror was
elastically supported in contact with the center of the outer surface
of the telephone diaphragm D, so that vibratory displacements of
the latter would cause the mirror, in, to rock about a horizontal

3 Bibliography, i.

4 Bibliography, 9 and 10.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 417

axis. The reflected arc-light beam then fell upon the mirror M,
of a Duddell bifilar vibration galvanometer,^ in the same circuit as
the telephone receiver coils C, and so arranged as to vibrate about
a vertical axis, under the action of the current which actuated the
telephone. The beam finally produced a spot of light on the trans-
parent screen, S. Owing to the two independent mirror vibrations
being of the same frequency, but about mutually perpendicular axes,
this spot of light traced Lissajous figures on the screen, and the
observed shape of these figures enabled calculations to be made as
to the phase differences between the movements of the two mirrors
in and M. It was therefore necessary to make an initial examination
into the phase relations of the Duddell galvanometer mirror M,
with respect to the alternating current operating it.

Observations on the phase relations of vibration galvanometer
mirrors have already been published.*' It was found, however, in
the research here reported, that as might be expected from the
differential equation of motion of such an instrument as an oscillo-
graph or vibration galvanometer, it inherently possesses a motional-
impedance circle, like a telephone receiver. The motional-imped-
ance circle of a vibration galvanometer, or an oscillograph, differs
from that of the ordinary telephone receiver, in having its diameter
coincident with the resistance axis, or very nearly so; so that I3i°=^
jSg^^o. This means that the vibrational angular velocity at reso-
nance is in phase with the vibromotive force, which in this case is
also in phase with the actuating alternating current. From an ob-
servation of the instrument's motional-impedance circle and deflec-
tions, the essential mechanical and electrical constants of the instru-
ment, for its particular state of adjustment, can be readily deter-
mined. This theory and technique for vibration instruments, which
are only side issues of the main research here reported, are dis-
cussed in Appendix I. It suffices here to note that provided the
Duddell galvanometer is out of tune, even only a few per cent, with
respect to the actuating currents, its mirror displacements will be
substantially either in phase with, or in opposite phase to, the ac-

5 Bibliography, 5.

6 Bibliography, 6.

418

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

tuating current. If the alternating current has a lower frequency
than the particular resonant frequency to which the instrument is
adjusted, the mirror displacements will be substantially in phase
with the current; whereas if the A.C. frequency is higher than the

Vrbrctiiori,

Ghost clue ^o defect m

Oscillograph Mirrar.

LiS5djou5 ficjure for Diaphr«<jfn ff)
^^hokvin^ Phase Difference ir\ Vibrution

Fig. 2.

instrument's resonant frequency, the mirror displacements will be
in opposite phase to the current. There was therefore no prac-
tical difficulty in ensuring one or the other of these two conditions,
as might be desired, for impressed alternating-current frequencies
up to 1,500 '— ', the Duddell galvanometer employed having a range
from 100 to 2,000 '~'.

Fig. 2 is a photographic record of a Lissajous figure, obtained
on the screen S of Fig. i, for a particular case. These test records
were photographed and analyzed. The well-known analysis is re-
produced in Fig. 3. The Lissajous ellipse ABCD about the center
o and coordinate axes Xx and Yy, is supposed to be described in the
direction of the arrows. Corresponding i)oints on the circles
A^B^C-^D.^ and AoBX.,D^, are projections from the ellipse on the Y
and X axes respectively. The phase difference between the simple
harmonic motions of Fy and Xx is any one of the four equal angles
a,, cto, a:t, and a^■ Owing to imperfections in the photographic

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

419

record and tracing process, these four angles ordinarily are not quite
equal ; but their arithmetical mean may be taken as the observed
phase difference. Since in the photographic record, the oscillations

Fig. 3. Lissajous' Diagram.

of the telephone diaphragm produce the vertical component, and
the oscillations of the galvanometer mirror (in phase with the cur-
rent), produce the horizontal component, the lag of the diaphragm
vibration behind the current becomes determined. This lag angle
should agree with the lag computed by mechanical impedance (90"
— a^), except for the angle /?i°. It was found that by varying the
impressed A. C. frequency, the Lissajous ellipse could be made to
pass through all its forms, i. c, straight line, ellipse, circle, ellipse
and straight line. The particular form offering easiest recognition
and greatest precision of measurement, is the straight line, under
which condition the two displacements are in either cophase or op-
position. This means that the diaphragm displacement would be
in ± cophase with the current, or the diaphragm velocity in quadra-
ture with the current. Referring to Fig. 4, OA represents the
standard phase of A. C. vector current. OB, in quadrature there-
with, is the phase of the diaphragm's vibrational velocity when the
Lissajous figure is a straight line. By observing, on the Rayleigh

420

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

bridge, the motional impedance OC of the telephone at this fre-
quency, the angle BOC is the lag of the motional E. M. F. behind
the velocity producing it, and is equal to the angle p.^. Since the

The three vector^ (current,

diaphragm ve/oc/fi/ and count-
er electrompf-ive force) refer ,
to Li'ssaJoU'S figure ohsen/a-
tions which ivere ma</e y/hen
the current and d/'aphragm
vibrational displacements
were in ± cophase.

'Telephone Receiver
B

Impedance Circle
10 5 0 10 10 20 ohrns

I ' I I I

Velocity Circle
I .5 O 1 2 3 cm/sec

Inillhhl I I I

/Vo Load

"fo -3o -zo -lo 0 10 zo 30 40 SO /t'cs/'Stance
Fig. 4. Undistorted Circles of Motional-Impedance and Velocity.

depression angle AOD of the motional impedance circle, taken from
the observation plot is j8i° -\- 1^-2°, the angle jSi" is immediately deter-
mined. The test therefore requires the motional-impedance circle
to be obtained over the principal range of frequencies, in Fig. 4 from

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

421

857^--' to 1,050'--', then adjusting the frequency to the particular
value (1,013'—') at which the Lissajous figure becomes a straight
line, measuring the motional impedance in the circle at this point,
and then deducing ^2° and (3^° geometrically. In the case of Fig. 4,
^81*^ = 36° 38' and I3J^ = 46° 20'. The precision obtained in measur-
ing these angles corresponds however to a probable error of one
degree for a single observation, so that reliance cannot be placed on
the minutes of arc.

The following table collects the results obtained with one bipolar
telephone^ receiver B with two successive diaphragms, i. e., dia-

TABLE I.

Effect of Diminishing Resonant Frequency on Pi° and ^j°.

Test
No.

Tel.
Diaph.

Load
Gm.

Ohms.

/.

A

hyps
sec.

A

dynes

absamp.

IO«.

m

Gm.

r

dynes
kine '

dynes
cm.
106.

^1.

^2.

At/'

^1 + ^2.

I
2

3

4
5
6

B
B
B
B
B
I

0

0.6

0.6

0.73

1.2
0

81.25
97-5
97-5
92. 5
102. 5
17.6

958
761.4
796.5
794-5
680
1,100

245
169
173
141
100
261

5-49
7-75

6.69
7.18

7.07

5.36

0.757
1.32

1-33
1-95
2.44
3-o8

371
616
459
551

487
1,608

25-75
41-5
33-3
48.6
44.6
148

36° 38'
29° 52'
25° 17'

24° 54'
19° 53'
57° 44'

46° 20'
46° 56'
53° 09'
51° 42'
52° 17'
28° 54'

1,013
811
850
845
732

1,132

82° 58'
76° 48'
78° 26'
76° 36'
72° 10'
86° 38'

Note: In the case of Test 2, the load of 0.6 gm. was applied to the dia-
phragm at its center ; whereas in the case of Test 3 it v/as applied at a point
I cm. off the center.

phragm B and diaphragm i. The first line in the table corresponds
to the set of observations given in Fig. 4, where there was no load
attached to the center of the diaphragm, the diameter Zm of the
motional-impedance circle was 81.25 ohms, the resonant frequency
/o was 958 '-', the damping coefficient A, 245 hyperbolic radians per
second, the force constant A, 5.49 megadynes per absampere, the
equivalent mass m, 0.757 gm., the frictional or mechanical resist-
ance r, 371 dynes per kine, the elastic constant s, 25.75 megadynes
per cm. At the frequency f, of 1,013 '— ', the angle /So" was 46° 20',
and at 958 ^, /3i° was inferred to be 36° 38'.

The successive series of observations 2, 4, and 5 were obtained
by attaching increasing loads to the diaphragm, so as to lower the

' The details of this receiver are given In the paper of bibliography No. 10.

422

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

resonant frequency f^. In the case of test No. 3, the load, a small
copper disk, about i cm. in diameter, was intentionally placed on
the diaphragm excentrically, i. e., at a distance of i cm. ofif center.
It will be seen from the table that as the resonant frequency /q was
lowered, and with it /'_, the magnitude of ^1° was considerably re-
duced but 1^2° was, if anything, slightly increased. The sum /^i" +
yS„° between /o = 680'~' and /o=958'-~' has increased from about
^2° to 83° ; while ^1" has increased from 20° to 37°.

The inference to be drawn from this series of tests is that ^^^
and /32° are, in general, unequal. The angle jB-^^ increases with the
frequency, but ^^2° is apparently more nearly constant. A reason
which suggests itself for this relation is that the lag jB^, between flux
and current, is due not only to hysteresis but also to the eddy cur-
rents of skin effect. Owing to hysteresis and skin effect in the
steel cores of the telephone electromagnet, the resultant flux lags
behind the exciting current to an extent ji^^ which depends upon the
impressed frequency and may rise theoretically to 45° at relatively
high frequencies, owing to skin effect alone. In the case of ^0°,
however, this is a lag between vibrational velocity of the diaphragm
and the C.E.M.F. thereby produced. An oscillatory change in
length of air-gap may set up hysteretic and eddy-current retardation
in the flux oscillation thereby generated, but the skin efifect should
perhaps be less than when the flux oscillation is generated from an
external magnetizing coil.

In order to ascertain the effect of an increased air-gap on the
angles /?i° and ^o^, ring washers of pasteboard, of successively in-
creasing thickness, were inserted under the diaphragm, between it
and the clamping surface of the receiver. Starting with a clearance
between poles and diaphragm, of 0.32 mm. this was increased up to
about I mm. with the results as shown in the following table, the

TABLE IL
Effect of Increasing Air-Gap on ^1 and /S^.

Test

No.

Tel.
Diaph.

Clear-
ance
Mm.

D
Ohms.

A

A

hyps
sec.

A

dynes

absamp.

Xio«.

m
Gm.

r
dynes

dynes
cm.
X106.

^i"-

ft»-

At/'

jSlO + ^jO.

kine

I
2

3

B
B
B

0.32
0.70
1.08

92.5

25.6

9.9

794-5
764-3
770.6

■141
76.4
61.9

7.18
3-92
2.14

1-95
3-93
3-76

600
465

48.6
90.6
88.5

24° 54':5i°42'
36° o',48°42'
32° 54'i50°24'

84s
783
791

76° 36'
84° 42
83° 18'

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 423

load attached to the center of the diaphragm being 0.73 gm. in each
case.

It appears from this table that the increase in air-gap greatly
diminished the force-factor A and the amplitude of vibration, which
is proportional to the diameter D of the impedance circle. The
equivalent mass and the elastic constant are both increased. It
appears that ^0° has undergone but little change ; whereas /J^" has
distinctly increased.

The inference to be drawn from Table I. and Table II. col-
lectively, is that ySo" seems to be nearly constant for a given receiver ;
but that /?i° is affected both by the air-gap length and the impressed
frequency. Thus there seems to be no close connection between jSi°
and yffo"- I" the first five cases of Table I., and in all the cases of
Table II., the angle ^^2° exceeds jS^"; but this is not necessarily true
in all cases. In test 6 of Table I., p^P is considerably less than (i^^.
This case refers to another receiver and diaphragm. In the par-
ticular instrument investigated by Kennelly and Pierce® in 191 2,
the angles ^^^ and ySo° happened to be nearly equal.

A number of tests were made with a series of different thick-
nesses of diaphragm in one and the same receiver. The results
showed that the angles ^^^ and ^0° were different with different
diaphragms ; but the quantitative relations have not yet been ascer-
tained.

2. Investigation of REiJNTRANT and Distorted Circle Diagrams.

The engineering research department of the Western Electric
Co., when examining some motional-impedance diagrams in 191 3,
seem first to have discovered cases of distorted and reentrant
circles. Such cases presented themselves in the course of the M.
I. T. researches in 1915.' Distorted diagrams of this type appear
in Figs. 5 to 9 and 11 to 17 of this paper.

These distorted circle diagrams presented themselves at first in
a small percentage of the cases of telephone receivers tested in the
M. I. T. researches. When first encountered in these, they were
regarded as curiosities of unknown origin, and were set aside. At

8 Bibliography, 7.

424

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

a later period, they were taken up for investigation, since marked
abnormalities of such a type adversely affect the circle-diagram
method of analyzing telephone receivers. For a long time, the

An absorption region of .

the diaphragm appears at
69/,$^. Being far removed .
from resonance, it is very
smalt

A second absorption
region^ due to strain imposed
t>t/ a temporary irregulanfy
in damping^ appears at
789.5^.

TeTLEPHONE: RECEIVETf? B.

Load at Center, 0.73gm.
iMPEDANCE Circle

ZO 30 ohms

10 5 0

iMirlMiil

■-, ■ . -•^c -JO -io -lu " lu e.u ^c tu ov Of

fresisrance

Fig. 5. Distorted Motional-Impedance Circle. Small Distortion, Rising on

the right.

cause of these abnormalities baffled enquiry ; but finally their origin
was apparently brought to light, and it also became possible to pro-
duce them artificially, at will.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 425

Fig. 4, already referred to in connection with the depression angles
)ffi° and /?o'', presents a smooth motional-impedance circle, all the
observed points falling nicely upon its circumference. Neverthe-
less, there is reason to believe that this circle contains a small inner
loop distortion between the origin o and the lowest indicated fre-
quency of 857 '—'. No measurements were made in this case below
857 '— ' ; but it is probable that, had they been made, the distortion
loop would have been too small to notice. The central amplitudes
of vibration were also measured by the explorer in the case of Fig.
4, and from these the vibrational velocities x of the diaphragm were
computed. They lie closely to the inner circle indicated in the figure.
This shows, moreover, as has been pointed out in earlier publica-
tions, that the motional-impedance circle may be regarded as a
velocity circle, taken to a suitable scale, disregarding the phase
lag ^/.

When the diaphragm of the receiver B, considered in Fig. 4, was
loaded at the center by a small copper washer, about i cm. in di-
ameter and weighing 0.73 gm., a repetition of the test gave the dia-
gram shown in Fig. 5, the analysis of which appears in Table I.
This diagram shows two internal loops or abnormalities, one a little
loop near 691.9—', well defined however by numerous observations,
and the other a larger loop near 789.5 — '. The latter proved to be
a temporary visitor, and since it did not appear in subsequent tests,
it may be left out of consideration here. It suffices, therefore, to
notice that the loop at 691.9'—' had a length of about 2.5 ohms, and
occurs in the circle at an angular distance of about 30° from o, the
origin of the circle. The resonant frequency of the loaded dia-
phragm as a whole was apparently 794.5 ^~-'.

The load on the diaphragm was then increased to a total of 0.975
gm. This had the effect of bringing the resonant frequency down
to 699.4 '—' ; or close to the frequency at which the abnormality (at
691.9'—') had appeared. The result of the test under this condition
is shown in Fig. 6. The distortion loop is central at 697.2 '— ', and
has a length of 42.5 ohms on the motional-impedance scale. It
is evident that when the diaphragm is brought nearly into reson-
ance with the frequency of the distortion loop, the magnitude of the

426

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

loop is greatly enlarged. By drawing the circumference of the
circle as it would appear in tHe absence of distortion, and marking
off thereon the computed positions of' the various observed fre-

.D/'aphragm Velocity

(normal ) at fK'e^onance,
3.66 cm/jec

Depression Angle^ 73°36

Motional Impedance
(normal ) ot /x'esonance,
//O ohm^.

Max. Absorption
Impedance ^ ^^.5 ohms

Telephone F?ecEivEf? B
Load at- Cen]rer,0.S75gm.

Impedance Diagr/km

SHOWING

Construct/on of

ABSOf?PTION Gf?aph

fr'esistance -^'> -3° -20 -lo o 10 20 jo ^o so (,0

Fig. 6. Distorted Motional-Impedance Circle. Distortion Nearly Central on

Main Diameter.

quencies, it was noticed that the chords, or vector differences, be-
tween the distorted and undistorted points gave rise to an approxi-
mate circular locus, when referred to the origin. This showed

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

427

that, at least to a first approximation, the distortion consisted
of a negative or absorption circle, of the same general character as
the main impedance circle, but which is swept over much more
rapidly. The constants A', m' , r' and / of this absorption circle
were capable of being roughly determined.

From the Impedance and
Velocity Circles it is seen

that, if the Impedance

Circle has a reentrant

loop, the diaphragm

Velocity/ Circle has one
also.

Telephone F?ece:ivep B
Load atCenfer, l.3gm.

impedance:

10 5 O /O 20 30 ohm

linilMiil I I I

vELociry

z

I .5 0 I

I""'""' '

3 cm/sec

Resistance "■*'' '^° -^'^ 'i^ <^ '^ ^° -^^ ■^^ ^'^ ^°
Fig. 7. Distorted Impedance and Velocity Circles. Distortion Loop Setting

in the Left.

By still further increasing the load on the diaphragm to 1.3
gm., and thus bringing its resonant frequency to 680 -—', or below

428

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

the frequency of the distortion, the next test, indicated in Fig. 7,
showed that the distortion loop, central at 704 — ', had moved over
to the left hand side of the diameter OA, and had diminished to

A minor absorption
circle at 7IZ^ is

superimposed upon the
major absorption circle

at 637.5^.

Telephone FPeceivep B
Load a\ Center^LZgm.

Fesistance "fo -3° -^°

40 50 60 fo

Fig. 8. Doubly Distorted Motional-Impedance Circle.

about 17 ohms of departure CE, from the main circle. The central
ampHtudes of the diaphragm's vibration were again measured in
this case, and from them the inner circle of vibrational velocity
O abed was deduced. This also shows the distortion at c. The cor-

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

429

responding approximate motional-impedance distortion circle is
marked at OGF, at an angle lagging more than 90° behind the
diameter OA.

On reducing the diaphragm load to 1.2 gm., the distortion loop
in Fig. 8 was enlarged to 20.5 ohms at CE; and the distortion at
697.5 '~~' is brought slightly nearer to the bottom of the circle. The
deduced distortion circle OGF, is also brought to a lag of some-
what more than 90° behind the diameter OA. Incidentally a small
new and transient distortion appears at H.

■^////

Fig. 9. Amplitude Measurer.

Summing up the disclosures of the last few figures, it appears
that one and the same distortional disturbance in a diaphragm, resi-
dent near 700 —', by suitably diminishing the resonant frequency of
the diaphragm in successive steps, was made to appear, first as a
small loop near the origin on the right-hand side, then as a greatly
magnified loop near the diameter, and finally passing off as a small
loop near the origin on the left-hand side. The deviations from the
main circle are only approximately represented by absorption circles.
Moreover, the angle COF , Fig. 7, is approximately equal to the
angle CO A.

430

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

An outline theory of the absorption graph is offered in Appen-
dix 11.

C

M fedg

■^f^

~' Y^ Crank ^o^ernin^ hn^or

s

?

3)

SIDE V(£W or EXPLORE!!

TOP VIE>V OF CXPLOfEir

Fig. 10.

It was noticed, after a time, that whenever the distortion near
700 '—' manifested itself, the amplitude measurer of Fig. 9 was
mounted on the receiver. This particular form of amplitude meas-
urer was described in an earlier publication. This led to the sus-
picion that the clamping screws in the brass frame F might be re-
sponsible for these distortions of the impedance circle. On actual
trial, the removal of the amplitude measurer and its clamping frame

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

431

from the receiver, removed the distortion from the impedance circle.
It thus became evident that the apphcation of clamping pressure to
the composition cap of the telephone receiver, warped it slightly, and

Y
The Amplitude of Vibration is represented by distance from O to the Curve.

xOXj axis of ti^htlif clamped
diaphra^rn boundary.

yOY, axis of loosely clamped
diaphragm boundarij

The amph'tude of vibration
of diaphragm was measured
at a distance of I, $3 cm. from
the center atinten'ah of 15°,

The experimental conditions
are ^ame as in Fiq. IZ.

Telephone Receiver B

CLAMPED IN
ViBR'ATlON ExPLOF?EI?
Load citCenfe rp.d7S^n< .
Frequency of Vibration, 5 84/v

Micron*
0 ( 2 3 ■I 5 6
I I I I \ I I

Fig. II. Amplitudes of Vibration around Imperfectly Clamped Diaphragm.

interfered with the uniformity of boundary vibration around the
clamping circle. This also indicated the importance of employing
metallic clamping rings around the cap, or otherwise ensuring that

9 Bibliography, Kennelly and Affel, Fig. lO.

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. , VOL. LV, AA, JULY ID, I916.

432 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

the clamping of the diaphragm is unchanged when the amphtude
measurer is appHed.

In order to investigate the matter further, the diaphragm B of
the receiver was mounted in the vibration explorer Fig. lo, de-
scribed in a preceding paper.^° It may be seen that the diaphragm
is here supported under a clamping ring, which is attached to the
main frame by four machine screws. Two of these screws, dia-
metrically opposite each other, were removed, leaving the diaphragm
clamped tightly under opposite points only, thus simulating the
effects of the clamps of the amplitude explorer in Fig. 9. The
diaphragm had a central load of 0.975 g"i-> ^^^ the same receiver B
was screwed into the explorer to actuate it. The impressed fre-
quency was maintained at 584 '—', and with an alternating-current
strength of 2.26 milliamperes rms. The amplitude of vibration
under these conditions was measured at various angular positions
15° apart, at uniform radial distances, 1.93 cm. from the center, the
clamping-ring diameter being 5.24 cm. The results obtained are
shown geometrically in Fig. 11. Here the axis of the tightly
clamped boundary is horizontal, and the axis of the loosely clamped
boundary where the screws were removed, is vertical. It will be
observed that the average amplitude in the latter axis is about 9
microns ; while in the former it is about 7.6 microns ; so that the
mean amplitude along the loosely clamped diameter is some 18 per
cent, more than that along the tightly clamped diameter, with inter-
mediate values in intermediate directions. This indicates the im-
portance of securing uniformly tight clamping around the boundary
of a telephone diaphragm.

The motional-impedance diagram for this case is shown in Fig.
12. No localized distortion loop is visible ; but there is a general
shrinking of impedance, and therefore of diaphragm velocity, over
a considerable range of the diagram (559'—' to 618''—'). No distor-
tion loop was obtained at any time in the vibration-explorer tests,
as though no definite absorption frequency was brought about ; but
there was a fairly proportional degree of absorption over a wide
range of impressed frequency.

10 Bibliography No. 9, Kennelly and Taylor.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

433

The inference from the preceding results was that a distortion
loop was due to the presence of local and loosely clamped diaphragm
boundary areas, having a natural frequency independent of the main

Vibration Explorer used
as Cap of Telephone
/?ece/Ver. Clamp of
Explorer attached by
two (Screws diametricallt^
opposite.

An Absorption^ ivhich
centers about no particular
frecfuency, /s apparent in
the resonance region.

Telephone R'ECEivEf? B.

Load a^ Cenfer: OSPSam

FfECEIVEF? CLAMPED
IN
ViBFPATION EIXPLOFPEFP

Ifesistance'^^ '^^ '^° '"^ ^ '" ^'^ ''^ '"' ^^ *"
Fig. 12. Distorted Impedance Circle with Unlocalized Distortion.

diaphragm, and having constants r, m, and s of their own. The
local areas received their vibrational energy from the main dia-
phragm. According to this view, it would only be necessary to
attach a local vibrational system, with its own r, m, and ^ to a prop-

434

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

erly clamped diaphragm, in order to simulate the localized distor-
tional behavior of an irregularly clamped diaphragm.

With this object in view, a small piece of bent hard copper strip
was fastened by sealing wax to the center of the diaphragm, as
shown in Fig. 13. The weight of this spring was 0.6 gm. in all,
of which the free portion weighed only 0.2 gm. The free period

Fig. 13. Plan and Longitudinal Section of the Test Receiver with Secondary
Vibrational System Attached to Center of Diaphragm.

of this spring, when mounted on the diaphragm, was adjusted, by
trial, to approximately 750^, which is nearly the same as the
diaphragm thus loaded. Fig. 14 shows the motional-impedance
diagram of receiver B with the diaphragm and its spring load. It
will be observed that between 660 '-' and 866 r-^, the diagram forms
a large reentrant loop, and the actual amplitude, at 753 '-', is only
about 4 per cent, of the inferred undistorted diameter OA. It is
evident that, in this case, the form of the diagram is completely

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

435

changed, there being now two maximum motional-impedances, one
near 676'—', and the other near 840 ^-'. Nearly midway between
them (753'—'), the motional impedance almost vanishes at OB.

0

62

5~

0

a

3

393r

,0732

\ 753.5

?7g~"-o

790-^

804^

-^

653-

*«4.:

7

/

,»/

\

^

./

i
1

70Z.Z

.

\

2lg~o

-JO

-10

/

1

1
1

\

1
1

1

n

1
\

\

\

94^

1
/
/

I

1

c\\

\
N

>

1

1 /
' /

\

S^^Q—

./

/k76

V

~~~- —

\

-0833

rJ

/

/

-no

\

\

^

/

-yo

^—

V

Natural Frequency of

Spring Load about 750

An Absorption ffegion
— /s present at 750^.

-v,

Telephone: F?ECE:n
Spring Load ahCen

B _

^

1

/Resistance "■*<' "•?<' ■•20 -/<? ^^ /o zo 30 40 so eo
Fig. 14. Distorted Motional-Impedance Diagram. Large Distortion Loop.

The amplitudes of vibration of the diaphragm, as deduced from
the motional-impedance diagram of Fig. 14, are shown in Fig. 15
with amplitude ordinates, and abscissas in impressed frequency. It
will be seen that the amplitude almost vanishes at 753 '-', which is

43G

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

approximately the natural frequency of the loaded diaphragm ob-
tained from the undistorted circle OCAD of Fig. 14. The curve of
Fig. 15 has two sharp resonance peaks, whereas the inferred am-
plitude curve of the diaphragm, without abnormality, has, as usual,
only one, ABCDE. It was noticed during the test represented in

9'

■"\^

('

\

/

\

1

\
\

B

/

\

\

D

,

->

/

\

/

\

/

\

1,

/

/

\

\

/

\

/

\

y

\

/

X.

X,

^

•v/

\

\

,,-

^

'

-'■

\

/

^

^■^

\

\^

5'

'""^

A

\

■ Resona

icelfinje-

/

/

~--

■—-

^B

E

b

^—

1.

X ■» J I i i -

"TEL-EPHONE Receiveif? B

NATURAL FI»EQUENCY. 7iO^.

Spring L Odd at Center.

Natural Tretjueney if
Load, abou^ T50fv.

Fig. 15. Relative Amplitudes of Diaphragm Vibration witli Spring Attached.

Fig. 14, that the receiver gave practically no sound at 753 '— ' ; but
gave loud sounds for frequencies slightly removed on either side
of this. This peculiar property of a spring-loaded diaphragm to be
silent at a certain selected frequency, but to sound loudly at a small
departure therefrom on either side, may have practical applications.

The natural frequency of the spring load was then altered to
about 913 '—', leaving the natural frequency of the diaphragm at
712-—', a little below its preceding value. The effect of this change
on the motional-impedance diagram is shown in Fig. 16. Here
the distortion loop is reduced in diameter nearly one half, and is
located much nearer to the origin on the left-hand side of the im-
pedance circle.

By lowering slightly the nattu^al frequency of the diaphragm to
about 698 '-', leaving the natural frequency of the spring load un-
altered, the distortion loop in Fig. 17 is brought still nearer to the
origin O , and its dimensions further diminished.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

437

When two independently clamped telephone diaphragms were
mounted, one below the other, in parallel planes, the upper sup-
ported in the vibration explorer, the lower in the receiver B, and

A/a/-ura/ Fre<^uency
of 'Spring Load, abouf"
3/3^.

Absorph'on /r'eff/on at
0/3^

Telephone FfECEivEf? B
Spring Load al" Center

>0 ZO 30 40 so 60

R'e3i\5l'ance-^'^ -^o -zo -lo

Fig. i6. Distorted Impedance Circle. Spring Load out of Tune with

Diaphragm.

both connected rigidly, between their centers, by an aluminum bar
6 cm. long, and 2 mm. X 2 mm. in section, the whole system gave
an undistorted motional-impedance circle, corresponding to the nat-

488

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

ural frequency and other constants of the composite single system.
The inference seems therefore to be warranted, that any vibratory

I?

An Absorption fx'eg/on
/5 present at 9/0^,
about tt?e A/atura/
Fre^fuency of the
Spring Load.

Telephone PEcErivErP? B
Spring Load atCent-er

JO ZO JO 40 50 £0

ffesi stance -^ '-^^ -^o ''^

Fig. 17. Distorted Impedance Circle. Spring Load Further out of Tune

witli Diaphragm.

system including diaphragms properly clamped around their edges ;
but so connected as to possess only a single free period, will be
unable to produce a distorted motional-impedance circle.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

439

Torsion-Pendulum Model for Illustrating Motional
Velocity Phenomena.

A psychological obstacle to the use of the motional-velocity
circle conceptions, in their abstract quality, and remoteness from
concrete apprehension. Thus, in the case of the telephone receiver,
its motional-velocity circle is obtained through the medium of the
motional-impedance circle, as determined from electrical measure-

Amplitude Graph K, Velocity Circle K,

0 .2 A ■€ .i 1.0 rad, 0 .2 .■* e e jo rad/sec

I I I I I I I I I 1 1 1

W<\

TL

Ul

TL

=bK,

Fig. i8. Multiple Coupled Torsion Pendulum Model.

ments. It is therefore a great advantage to be able to construct a
motional-velocity circle from direct observations on a simple dynam-
ical model.

A useful and very simple dynamical model for illustrating the
conditions of diaphragm vibration and the resulting motional-im-
pedance circle has been designed and constructed as indicated in
Fig, i8. It consists of a hollow brass cylinder K^ which, in the
particular model used, has a mass of 1,200 gm., a radius of gyration
of 2.48 cm., and a moment of inertia of 7,470 gm.-cm.^. This is
suspended by a brass wire of diameter 0.76 mm., of a length ad-

440 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

justable, by means of a clamping screw ti', between lo and 40 cm.,
with a corresponding oscillation frequency range of 0.6 to 0.3 '—'.
The logarithmic decrement being very small, it oscillates about the
suspension-wire axis with but little diminution of amplitude for
several minutes. In the model used, the time constant, or the time
of fall to i/eth amplitude, is 216 seconds. This driving cylinder
takes the place of the A.C. generator in the case of the telephone.
The smaller solid brass cylinder A\ has a mass of 26.8 gm. and a
moment of inertia of 8.4 gm.-cm.-. It is suspended from the driv-
ing cylinder by a smaller wire of copper, having a length usually
kept constant at 23 cm., and of 0.13 mm. diameter. This driven
cylinder corresponds to the telephone diaphragm, and performs
oscillations of the period impressed on it by K,,. The driving cyl-
inder Kq is so much larger than the driven cylinder /v^, that the
reaction of the latter is insignificant. With K^ and /v^ in action,
all the dynamical phenomena of the telephone diaphragm and its
velocity circle can be observed, the frequency impressed by /v^ being
adjusted by successive steps through a considerable range, by shorten-
ing up the main suspension wire Lq. As the impressed frequency
overtakes and passes the natural frequency of /v^, with its suspen-
sion Lj, the phenomena in the vicinity of resonance are reproduced.
The K^ system has its )>!, r, and s, in substantially the same manner
as the oscillographic systems described in Appendix I.

Technique of Model. — In operating the model, the cylinder K^
is first set by hand in torsional oscillation about the suspension-wire
axis, with the lowest frequency of longest suspension Lq, and with
as little side swing as possible. The initial angular amplitude of K^^
may be made 90° or more. After a few oscillations, the coupled
pendulum system settles down to a substantially steady state, the
oscillations of K^ having the same frequency as those of K^. The
oscillations are allowed to subside naturally under the damping con-
stant (A = 0.00462 hyps, per second) until a convenient standard
amplitude is reached, as is indicated by a pointer P^, upon a suitably
supported angular scale 5"o. When this happens, the eye of the
observer at O can observe also the angular amplitude of K^ as well
as the angular phase-difiference of the two elongations at P^^^ and

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 441

P^^S^. The decay of amplitude is so slow, that these conditions re-
peat themselves very closely for several oscillations above and below
the standard amplitude of K^ ; so that the observations can be re-
peated at several successive oscillations for an average.

The oscillation frequency of Kq is then increased in small suc-
cessive steps, by shortening up the suspension L^,, and the above men-
tioned observations are repeated at each step. The amphtude of
oscillation of /v^ increases rapidly as resonance is approached. In
the model used, the resonant sharpness A is 252, but this can be
controlled at will, by applying any motional resistance to Kj^ which
is substantially proportional to the velocity. Fig. 18 gives the an-
gular-amplitude and angular-velocity circles for the model. It is
seen that the semicircular range of resonant frequency, as computed
from the circle diagram, is between 0.3692 ^ at o)^ and 0.3707 -—^
at ojo. For impressed frequencies below this range, the oscillation
of i^i comes nearly into cophase with /Vy. On the other hand, at
impressed frequencies above this range, the amplitude of K^ comes
nearly into opposite phase with K(,. At resonance, the oscillation of
/v\ is in quadrature with the amplitude of iv 0 ; or the angular veloc-
ity of iv'i will be in cophase OA with the vector torsional force or
vibromotive force (V.M.F.) exerted by the wire on /v^. This
V.M.F. is proportional to the angular displacement between the ends
of Lj, and the observations obtained must be corrected to constant
maximum cyclic V.M.F.

A student working with the model in the above described man-
ner, can acquire a concrete conception of a motional-velocity circle,
based upon direct observations of oscillations executed so leisurely
that they are easily observed directly by the eye, without the use of
reflecting mirrors or of electrical apparatus. Moreover the oscil-
lations are sufficiently large to be perceived directly by a large class.
When A'^ oscillates in air, the motional resistance r seems to increase
somewhat with the amplitude. When K^ was allowed to oscillate
in water, the motional resistance was found to be more nearly
constant.

When it is desired to study the phenomena of absorption, a sec-
ondary torsion pendulum LJ-Cn is attached to K^. It is then con-
venient to adjust the natural frequency of the secondary pendulum

442 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

K2 into approximate coincidence with that of K^. Under these
conditions, the phenomena of absorption, at or near resonance, can
be readily observed. It has been possible in this manner to check
the causes and essential characteristics of telephone-diaphragm ab-
sorption.

Absorbing Influence of the Amplitude Measurer on the
Vibration of a Diaphragm.

It was observed in the course of the preceding tests, in which
the amplitude measurer was successively on and off the receiver,
that the application of the device, apart from the warping effect of
its clamps, slightly diminished the diameter of the impedance circle.
In one case, this diameter, without the explorer, was 100.6 ohms,
and with the explorer 92.5, all other conditions remaining un-
changed. In other words, the application of the amplitude meas-
urer reduced the vibrational velocity and vibrational amplitude about
8 per cent., without appreciably affecting the other constants of
the instrument. This shows that when precision is needed, the
motional-impedance circle should be taken with the amplitude meas-
urer both on and off successively. The difference between the two
motional-impedance diameters will indicate what correction should
be applied to the measured amplitudes.

In conclusion, the authors desire to express their acknowledg-
ments to Professor C. A. Adams and Mr. A. A. Prior, for their
collaboration in the analysis of an oscillograph ; also to Dr. G. A.
Campbell for valuable criticisms and suggestions on the MSS.

APPENDIX I.

Outline Theory of the Bifilar Oscillograph and Duddell
Vibration Galvanometer.^^

It is assumed that the apparatus consists of a bifilar vertical sus-
pension, of adjustable tension, part of which suspension vibrates in
a fairly uniform magnetic field. The two vertical wires of the

11 This theory is substantially the same as that developed in the Kennelly
and Affel paper (Bibliography, 10), with respect to vibrating diaphragms,
replacing translatory forces by corresponding couples.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 443

suspension carry the testing current, and are connected mechanically
by a small mirror, which optically serves to indicate the angular dis-
placement of the bifilar system at the mirror. It is further assumed
that the restoring torque is sO dyne-perpendicular-cm. ,^- proportional
to the angular displacement d radians ; that the resisting torque dis-
sipating the energy of motion is r9, or is proportional to the angular
velocity 0 radians per second ; also that the inertia torque, resisting
change of angular displacement, is md, where nv is the equivalent
moment of inertia of the system at the mirror, and 0 is the angular
acceleration in radians per sec.^. The impressed displacing torquCt
or vibromotive torque (V.M.T.), is assumed to be simply harmonic
of the type

/ = ImAe^""' = iA, dyne perp. cm. Z , (i)

where i is the complex instantaneous current passing through the
suspension, with maximum cyclic value /« absamperes. A is the
torque constant of the instrument, in dyne perp. cm. per absampere,
y= V — I, w= the impressed angular velocity, and t is the time in
seconds from the moment when the real component of f starts posi-
tively through zero towards its maximum cyclic value. The real
component of ( i ) is the instantaneous torque. The equation of
motion is

md ~\- rO -\- s6 = f , dyne perp. cm. Z , (i)

whence, in the steady state, i. e., neglecting the exponentially decay-
ing transient term,

• / / radians

. , 5 \ s ' sec.

r -\- j\ moo — - I

^. (3)

Here s is the mechanical impedance of the vibratory system. In the
ordinary bifilar oscillograph, none of the four constants A, in, r and
^ is supposed to change, except through accidental changes of tem-
perature. In a vibration galvanometer, however, the tuning of the
vibratory system imposes changes in the impedance s, and in its

12 In a torque t, dyne-perp.-cm., the force /i dynes is assumed to act
perpendicularly to the radius arm i cm., at which it is applied. A torque is
therefore not properly expressible as dyne-cm., but as dyne perpendicular
cm. ; or dyne 1 cm.

444 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

components, especially in the elastic constant ^.
From 3, we have

1^ /

jco I r + j ( WO) - - j I

radians Z (4)

The instantaneous E.M.F. overcoming the counter E.M.F. of vibra-
tion is

Af AH
e^ = Ae = — = — = JZ, abvolts Z , (5)

z z

where Z is the motional-impedance of the instrument.
Hence, at resonance,

A6m = ImZm, abvolts, (6)

and

_ ImZm _ ImZm dyne perp. cm.
Bm <^oGm ' absampere

where /,« is the maximum cyclic value of the current in absamperes,
Zm is the maximum motional-impedance — which is reactanceless, or
a simple resistance — and 6m the observed maximum cyclic resonant
angular displacement, in radians. The resonant impressed angular
velocity at which this occurs is denoted by wq radians per second.
Atoj = ojo (4) becomes

Aim

coor
whence

radians, (8)

Aim dyne perp. cm.

dmO^o ' radian per second

From the motional-impedance circle of the instrument, as plotted
from observations of impedance at dififerent impressed frequencies,
the decrement per second A, or the hyperbolic angular velocity of
decay in amplitude, may be obtained, by taking half the difference
between impressed angular velocities cu^, w, at the quadrantal points
in the circle ; or

f 0)2 — '•'i
A = — = = 7r(«2 — Wi), hyps, per sec, (10)

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 445

where n^ and 11.-, are the corresponding impressed frequencies ; whence

r r
W7 = — r = , gm.-cm.-. (ii)

At these quadrantal frequencies, the deflection amphtudes will be
very nearly (9,„/V2 radians. Finally, by observing the angular
velocity w^ of resonance, when 9m becomes a maximum, we obtain

coo = \/— , radians/sec, (12)

\ m

whence

, dyne perp. cm.

5 = wcoo^ -r. . (13)

radian

Consequently, all four constants A, m, r and .$• can be found for any
assigned adjustment of the vibration galvanometer, by measuring
(a) its motional-impedance Zm in a Rayleigh bridge, to a measured
alternating current /,„ maximum cyclic absamperes, {b) noting the
deflection 9m in radians, at resonance, on either side of the scale zero,
(c) the resonant angular velocity oj„ and {d) the impressed fre-
quencies at the quadrantal points fio, «i cycles per second.

Two additional checks on the above results can be obtained, if
desired, (i) by passing a small measured continuous current h ab-
samperes from a storage cell and measuring the steady deflection
produced. If 9s is the corresponding steady deflection obtained, in
radians ; then

sds = IsA, dyne perp. cm., (14)
whence

IsA dyne perp. cm.

^^~d7' radian ' ^^^^

It should be noted, however, that the value of ^, obtained in this
continuous-current test, is found to differ slightly from that found
by A.C. measurements. The latter are to be preferred when avail-
able. (2) By disturbing the vibratory system, and allowing it to
oscillate freely to rest, according to the formula.

— = e , numeric, (16J

Vn

446

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

where Ot is the oscillographically recorded ampHtude, at a time t
seconds after release, when the initial amplitude is 0^ radians.

Resistance

Freq

380
387
994
1000
1007
1013
1020

Observations
Resist. React.

ohm

156.3
156.6
15 7.9
170.0
15 8,0
156.7
15 6.3

ohm

8.35
9.88
12.38
8.4 6
2.53
M8 0
6,44 0

Defl.

rod.
.0052
.0087
,0157
.061 I
,0209
,0105
,0044

Calcu lations

Max. T?esonance Impedance, \3.8ohms
Max. Resonance D€fiection,0,06 1 1 rod.
Current: Strength, 5.5-\0"^ampe.res. Tm.s
Qaadrantal Points at 33er^ar\d[005^
N<atural Freqwency, |000.5/v.

Current, Max. Cyc!. Value, 7.78-I0' jbsomp.
Mcix.V/b. Velocity, 3S3 rad/seo.
Log. Decrement A Z8-3 hnp^/sec.

per second • J< /

A, Torijwe Const, 2804 ^^3^;;;^

m, E^uiv. Moment of Inertia,
1.006 /O'^t^m-cm^

r, F?esistance Cons^. j ^^^^^
5.697-10-^ -^37^

5, Elastic Const.

397.5 J^":/^^

DuDDELL Vibration GAUVANOMeTER
Fig. 19. Motional-Impedance, Velocity and Deflectional Circles.

Fig. 19 shows two circular graphs starting from the common
origin O, for the Duddell galvanometer used, as tuned to 1000 /—'.
The circle OARB is the motional-impedance circle at impressed

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 4i7

frequencies (obtained from a Vreeland oscillator and Rayleigh
bridge), between 980-—' and 1,020 '—'. It will be observed that the
maximum impedance of the instrument Z„,, at resonance, was the
diametral resistance OR = it,.S ohms, or 13.8 X lo** absohms. The
R.M.S. current strength in the instrument was 0.55 milliampere
= 5.5 X io~^ absampere. The maximum cyclic current Im was thus
7.78 X lO"^ absampere. At the impressed resonant frequency of
1,000.5 ^~"> the angular velocity would be Wq^ 6,286 rad./sec. Sub-
stituting in (7)

7.78 X 10-^ X 13-8 X lo^ 107.4 X lo^

6.286 X 10^ X 0.61 1 X 10-^ 3.83 X lo^

dyne perp. cm.

= 2804 : .

absampere

The lower circle in Fig. 19, Oa and b shows the magnitudes of
the deflections, each side of the scale zero, in radians of arc. The
maximum observed deflection at Or ^0.0611 radian, was obtained,
within the limits of experimental error, at the same frequency as
the maximum resistance OR of the motional-impedance circle. Sub-
stituting the value of A just found in (9) we obtain

_ 2.804 X 10^ X 778 X io~^ _ 21.82 X io~^

^ ~ 0.61 1 X io~^ X 6.286 X 10^ ~ 3.83 X 10-

, dyne perp. cm.

= 5.697 X io~^ . .

rad. per sec.

The maximum cyclic displacing torque was by ( i )

7.78 X lO"'^ X 2.804 X 10^ = 0.2182 dyne perp. cm.
The quadrantal points B and A on the motional-impedance circle
are at 996 '— ' and 1,005 ^~'' making the damping constant A ^3.142 X
9 = 28.3; so that the oscillations of the instrument would naturally
fall to i/eth, or to 36.8 per cent, of the initial amplitude, in a time
constant of 1/28.3 = 0.0353 second. Substituting this value of A in
(11), we obtain

5.697 X io~^ _. „ dynes

m = ^ -^-^ = 1.006 X 10 ^ gm.-cm.-; or

56.6 ' • • ' j.^^ pgj. gg^ 2

PROC. AMER, PHIL. SOC, VOL LV, BB, JULY lO, I916.

448 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

Finally from (13), we obtain

dyne perp. cm.

5 = 1.006 X 10"'' X 6286- = 397.5 T- •

radian

The reason for making the diameter Or of the deflection graph
lag 90° behind the diameter OR of the impedance circle, and the
diameter OR' of the velocity circle, is that according to (4), the
phase of any displacement 0 is 90° behind the corresponding velocity
0. Strictly speaking, while the velocity graph is a circle ; the de-
flection graph is only approximately a circle, since in (4), the vari-
able oj appears directly as a factor in the denominator. The angular
velocity of maximum deflection to,/, is not the same as the resonant
angular velocity w^, but is

; — 7, n radians ^ .

Wrf = Vcoo- - 2A^ "^e^" ' ^^"^^

while the angular velocity of free oscillations wf, in the presence of
damping, lies between ioa and w^ ; namely

I — „ , radians , ,

cof = Vcoo-- A^ . 18)

sec.

In this case, taking lo^ = 6,286.0, w/= = 6,286.06 and m = 6,286. 1 3 ;
or the damping is so small, and the resonance is so sharp, that the
difference between these three important and characteristic angular
velocities is very small.

We may define the sharpness of resonance, or sharpness of tuning
(inverted V),^^ in relation to the resonant and quadrantal angular
velocities w^, oj^ and o)^ by the formula^ ^

COo COo Wo . , .

A = = —7 = , numeric, (19}

0)2 ~ toi 2A no — Wi

which in this case is 6,286/56.6=111.1, a relatively high figure of
merit in regard to tuning.^** The reciprocal of A may perhaps be

13 Suggested by Dr. R. L. Jones. Bibliography No. 8. The expression
" sharpness of tuning " has also been suggested by Barton (bibliography, 4)
with a different quantitative meaning.

1* In the case of a certain experimental monopolar telephone receiver,
tested by Kennelly and Pierce (bibliography, 7), the sharpness of resonance
was found to be 161. 2, the highest experimental value in electromagnetic appa-
ratus yet observed in these researches.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 449

called the bhtntness of resonance, in this case 9.006 X lO'^. The
semicircular range of resonance may be expressed in angular velocity
measure, as the range of angular velocity o).^ — oj^ between quadrantal
points, or 2A, in this case 56.6 radians per second. The same range
may be expressed also in frequency measure by n.^ — n^, or the dif-
ference of frequencies at quadrantal points =A/7r, in this case g — ■.
All frequencies outside of these quadrantal points may be regarded
as outside the semi-circular range of tuning. At the frequencies
of these quadrantal points, n.-,, n^, the resonant kinetic energy mani-
festly falls to one half.

Referring to the dotted curve ABODE, Fig. 15, of the undis-
torted amplitude of the diaphragm's vibration, the ordinates Bb and
Dd indicate the amplitudes bounding the resonant range. The ex-
pressions defining these ordinates .x\ and Xr, are :

— = — p • — and — = — p • — , numeric, (iQa)

.To V2 Wl Xq -yJ2 71 2

These ordinates are 6.35 and 6.0 microns, respectively, in Fig. 15.
The resonant range is 778 — 732 = 46 ---', and the resonant sharpness
is thus 753.5/46=16.4. It is thus possible to determine the sharp-
ness and the range of resonance from a curve of amplitude against
frequency, as well as from a circle diagram of velocity or of im-
pedance.

The sharpness of resonance may also be defined by the acoustic
interval or numerical ratio e between the quadrantal frequencies.

C02 W2

numeric.

(20)

^e also have

coo (jOi r

numeric.

(21)

This criterion c is connected with the resonant sharpness A by the
relation

A = , numeric, (22)

c — I

since any pair of frequencies, lying on the velocity circle, at equal

450 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

angles on opposite sides of the resonant diameter, have the resonant
frequency as their geometric mean. The acoustic criterion c is,
however, in general, less satisfactory than the resonant sharpness
\ ; because the greater the resonant sharpness the greater becomes
^ but the smaller becomes c.

From an examination of Fig. 19, it is evident that, at resonance,
the phase of the deflection or angular displacement of the mirror is
just 90° behind the phase of the angular velocity, and of the current
in the instrument. If OR represents the current phase; then, at
resonance, Or is the phase of the mirror's maximum elongation. At
impressed frequencies below 980^ — \ the phase of displacement in
the deflection graph is almost exactly coincident with that of the
current. On the other hand, at impressed frequencies above
1,020'—', the phase of displacement is almost exactly opposite to, or
180° removed from, that of the current.

An attempt was made to ascertain how the constants A, m, r and
.y of the Duddell instrument varied with difl:"erent tuning and lengths
of free suspension. It was found, however, that owing to some
friction in the suspension pulley, the tension of the two wires did not
equalize sufficiently to prevent the appearance of partial unifilar
characteristics, which vitiated the results. Such departures from
pure bifilarity would not, however, aflfect the above mentioned phase
relations between displacement and current.

A similar set of measurements may be applied to an oscillograph.
The normal alternating-current strength required to operate the
oscillograph may, however, be greater than can conveniently be sup-
plied through a Rayleigh bridge, as used for testing telephones or
vibration galvanometers. In that case, a convenient technique is to
supply a measured R.M.S. current from a Vreeland oscillator to
the oscillograph vibrator, and observe the amplitude of the mirror's
deflection thereby produced, on each side of the zero, reducing the
same to radian measure from the geometry of the optical system.
The angular velocity ojq radians per second, necessary for maximum
resonance, has to be carefully observed, and at the same time the
maximum resonant mirror deflection 6m radians. This gives equa-
tions (8) and (12). The freciuency is then gradually changed until
the deflection is reduced in the ratio i/\/2, the change being made

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 451

first by raising the frequency slightly above resonance, and then
lowering it. These measured angular velocities (Oo and oj^ cor-
respond to the quadrantal points on the motional-impedance circle,
and supply A by formula (lo). Finally, the continuous-current
strength,. /s abamperes, necessary to produce a steady mirror de-
flection 9s radians, is measured as in (14). These four equations
suffice to evaluate A, m, r and .y for the instrument. An oscillo-
graphic natural decay curve, corresponding to (16), may also be
taken as a check on the results.

The following are the results of a series of observations made
on an experimental bifilar oscillograph^" with two strips, each of
active length 3.5 cm. in a magnetic field of approximately 16 kilo-
gausses. The strips were of phosphor bronze, 0.366 mm. wide (15
mils), and 0.013 ^'^^- thick (0.5 mil), each under a tension of ap-
proximately 30 gm. weight, spaced 1.5 mm. on centers, and having
a mirror fastened to and across them, about i mm. X 0.5 mm., near
the middle of their active length. The vibrator was air damped,
/. e., it did not work in oil.

^=3,750 dyne perp. cm. per abampere,
^'0 = 2,530.5 ^, coo = 1.59 X 10* radians/sec,
?n= 1.322 X lO"^ gm.-cm.-,

^ = 2.78 X io~^ dyne perp. cm. per radian per sec,
^ = 3,360 dyne perp. cm. per radian,
«., = 2,547^, «.,= 2,514^,
A= 103.7 hyps, per sec,
A = 76.7,
M2 — "i = 33'-">

^s//s = 1-11 5 radians per abampere,
Im == 0.002 absampere,
Z,„ = 5.075 X 10^ absohms =5.075 ohms.

By plotting the deduced angular velocities 6 at different impressed
frequencies close to resonance, a fairly good circular locus was ob-
tained. The diagram is the same as that of Fig. 19, except as to the
scales of magnitude and numerical values.

12 Bibliography, 11.

452 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

APPENDIX II.

Outline Theory of the Absorption Diagram.

The following provisional theory was arrived at by searching
for a quantitative expression that would satisfy the impedance dia-
grams when distortion was present. It bears a close analogy to the
theory of alternating-current coupled circuits in the steady state.

The equation for the ordinary motional-impedance circle, con-
sidered as representing a vibration velocity circle, and neglecting the
depression angles ;8i° and /?„° is^*'

AI F F ,. ,. / , s

Xm, = — = — = ;;- max. cyclic kmes Z , (23)

(mco-^)

where

F = AI =^the maximum cyclic V.M.F. to standard phase, dynes Z ,

A = force constant of the receiver, dynes/absampere,
/ = maximum cyclic current strength, absamperes,
r = mechanical resistance of diaphragm, dynes/kine,

w = equivalent mass of diaphragm, gm.,
J r= elastic constant of diaphragm, dynes/cm.,
^^ = mechanical impedance, dynes/kine /_,
M^^ 21711, impressed angular velocity, radians/sec,

mq = resonant angular velocity, radians/sec,
w ^impressed frequency, cycles/sec,

Wq = resonant frequency, cycles/sec,

y= V— I,

;i-,„ ^ mechanical displacement amplitude of diaphragm,

max. cyclic cm. Z ,
;t:„i = vibrational velocity of diaphragm, max. cy. kines Z •

When the vibrating diaphragm supplies motional power to a
dependent vibrational system, having its own natural frequency n^.,
and therefore its own mechanical constants s^, nu, r^_ and Sn, the de-
pendent or secondary system will exert a max. cyclic counter vibro-
motive force (C. V.M.F.) — /„, on the driving force F ; so that the
resulting equation of motion becomes

If' Bibliography, 9.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 453

F-f2

OCa = = Xyn — X2, kill 68 Z , (24)

where Xa is the max. cycHc velocity of the diaphragm in the presence
of absorption. The C.V.M.F. f., is proportional to the velocity Xa,
to the mechanical resistance r^ of the dependent system, and to the
relative phase of Xn and n, as defined by the complex ratio ro/^To.
That is,

/2 = XaT'i ( — ) = Xa — , max cy. dynes Z . (25)
\ 22 / Z2

The secondary C.V.M.F. /. will therefore be out of phase with the
velocity Xa of the diaphragm, except at the frequency «y„ of second-
ary resonance, when s-, = ro ; and

/02 = Xar2, max cy. dynes Z. (26)
Substituting (25) in (24), we obtain

Xa = , max cy. kines Z , (27)

whence

F F

Xa = "0 = — , — , max cy. kmes Z . (28)

r2" Z + Za

z + —

S2

The effect, therefore, of the dependent system having a secondary
resonant frequency is to add a new absorption impedance

Za = ?'2"/22

to the primary impedance s.

Solving (24) for .r„ the absorption or secondary velocity we obtain

( F\ Za . ( Za \

X2 = 17) '^^~T — = Xm I ~7~ I , max cy. kmes Z . (29)

\ Z J Z -\- Za \Z -\- Za J

From an examination of (28), it is evident if the primary and
secondary frequencies are tuned to coincide, i. e., if «Q,r=:«p, then
at this frequency, Zo='r^ and z^r, so that

F

Xa = — , . max cy. kines Z . (^o)

r -\- r2

In this case, the velocity, in the presence of distortion, is in phase

454

KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

with the impressed force at the doubly resonant frequency ; but is
less than it would be in the absence of the secondary system, in the
ratio r/(r -j-Tn). Moreover, at all other frequencies, the resulting

Constant's assi^m&al in
ccmputah'or? of graphs:

f = 3000 /v

m = Z.5 7JU~ ^.O

r = 800 n = 300

S =50x10^ I = SOx/O'

Telephone D/aphpaom

AB50f?PT(0N

Graphs computed for Consonance

0 1 z 3 4-

Vetocif-y cm/jec

Fig. 20. Computed Distorted Velocity Circle.

velocity Xa is less than the normal velocity. The secondary velocity
Xo is greatest at the doubly-resonant frequency, and falls oft rapidly
as this frequency is departed from on either side.

Fig. 20 gives the computed graphs for a particular case, where
ABCDH is the normal-velocity circle x,n, in heavy line, and ahcdh

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 455

of Xa is the distorted velocity graph ; also ab'c'd'h' of Xn is the ab-
sorption velocity graph, reckoned negatively. At any impressed
angular velocity, such as 4,450 radians per second, the nndistorted
or primary velocity Xm would be OD cm. per sec, leading the im-
pressed V.M.F. by the angle EOD. The observed velocity Xa, in
the presence of distortion, is Od; while the vector difiference between
the Xm and Xa, or Dd, is equal to x.^^ — Od' or Od' reversed.

It will be observed that the graph of .r., a'b'c'h' is only approxi-
mately a circle. It may be regarded, in the light of (29), as the
graph of a vector fraction of a motional circle.

It should also be noted from (28) that when the primary and
secondary resonant frequencies differ, the resultant velocity .r„ will
not come into phase with the V.M.F. at either resonance frequency,
but will trace a dissymmetrical loop. The absorption velocity graph
a'b'c'h' will be likewise dissymmetrical.

Fig. 6 shows the observed graph Oabch of motional impedance,
and therefore of velocity, with reference to an impressed force in
the vector direction OE. The heavy circle OABCH is the inferred
nndistorted or primary graph, as deduced from the segment AOH.
The foliate graph Oa'b'c'h' is the vector difference, or secondary
graph of absorption. It will be observed that except for a slight
difference in the primary and secondary resonant frequencies, the
case presented in this test agrees closely with the geometrical rela-
tions indicated in Fig. 20.

Referring to Figs. 7 and 8, it will be observed that the angle
AOC is approximately equal to the angle COF. This means that,
at secondary resonance, the absorption velocity OF lies nearly as
far in angle beyond the vector OC, of that frequency on the nndis-
torted circle, as OC lies from OA the mean diameter. Formula
(29) gives a ready explanation for this; because at secondary reso-
nance Sa = r.-,, so that

xo = Xm ( — ~— I , kines Z . (31)

If, as in the cases represented by Figs. 7 and 8, n is small by com-
parison with z, this becomes approximately

.To = A-,„ I -- , kines Z . (32)

456 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

or the vector X2=^0F, is displaced from the vector .r,„=OC by a
phase angle equal to the angle of the primary impedance 2, which is
itself the angle AOC. In other words, the factor n/^ is a complex
quantity whose argument is the negative of that of s. Owing to the
presence of r.-, in the denominator of (31), the angular deviation of
x.^ from ix'm will be always somewhat less than the angle ^^OC of
z; so that the vector CE parallel to FO of secondary resonance,
always intersects the diameter OA at a point a little nearer to the
origin than the center of the main impedance circle.

The theory also explains why a distortion loop, when the sec-
ondary frequency is much below the primary frequency, is very
small, and near to the origin on the right ; also, as the resonant fre-
quencies are made to approach, the loop enlarges, falling nearer to
the main diameter, and finally, as the resonant frequencies pass each
other and again diverge, the loop shrinks in size, and passes off
towards the origin on the left. In (29), if secondary resonance
occurs much above or below primary resonance, the loop due to this
resonance will appear remote from the diametrical point A, Zo again
reduces to r,, and

Z \ S + ^2 /

^-2=-(^7^r7j- ^mesA, (33)

since r, is then certainly small by comparison with z, this is approxi-
mate to Fr^/z- ; or varies inversely as the square of the impedance
modulus. On the other hand, as the primary and secondary reso-
nances approach, z approaches r, and x., finally attains a maximum
possible value at Fr.^/r{r -\-r^). If r.^ = pr, this becomes

rvo

This shows that in order to have a secondary absorption velocity
nearly equal to the primary velocity, it is necessary to have the two
resonant frequencies n^ and n^r, nearly coincident, and p large by
comparison with unity ; or the secondary resistance large by com-
parison with the primary resistance. In such a case, if the two
frequencies do not quite coincide, there will be nearly zero velocity
and amplitude near to the secondary frequency and a maximum
velocity on each side of this, as in Figs. 14 and 15.

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 457

Summary.

1. The depression angles ^^^ and (S.,^ of the diameter of a tele-
phone receiver's motional-impedance circle are not closely connected,
and are differently affected by impressed frequency. In some cases
(3j° was found to be the greater, and in others ^/. Increase in fre-
quency increased ftj°. Neither angle was markedly affected by
changes in air-gap. The relations between ^i" and ^o" ^'^^Y be con-
veniently studied by means of Lissajous figures.

2. Both the vibration galvanometer, and the oscillograph, have a
motional-impedance circle, and a corresponding useful series of mo-
tional constants A, m, r and .y. Tests were made on well-known
types of these instruments, and their theory is outlined in Appen-
dix I.

3. The motional-impedance circle of a telephone receiver may
sometimes reveal a distortion, accompanied by an absorption and a
suppression of power. The distortion is ordinarily a reentrant loop.
It may also be a general shrinking of velocity, over a considerable
range of frequency, accompanying a flattening of the impedance
circle.

4. A distortion in the form of a reentrant loop is attributable to
the existence of a secondary or dependent vibratory system, having
its own motional constants and resonant frequency. The invading
loop may in particular cases be so large as almost to bring the mo-
tional impedance to zero near the main diameter. In such a case,
there will be two frequencies of markedly large amplitude, one on
each side of the frequency of greatest absorption.

5. A distortion in the form of a general flattening of the imped-
ance circle might be accounted for by the existence of secondary vi-
bration in a dependent attached system, not having a definite natural
frequency.

6. The dissymmetrical clamping of an amplitude measurer to the
cap of a telephone receiver may introduce such deformation of the
clamping circle as will give rise to a reentrant loop or loops. Care
should therefore be taken to avoid introducing dissymmetrical
stresses when applying such an instrument to a receiver.

7. A dependent motional system, consisting of a short strip spring

458 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— PROPERTIES OF

fastened to the center of a telephone diaphragm, and tuned nearly
into consonance therewith, gave rise to a large reentrant loop.

8. A provisional but apparently satisfactory theory of loop dis-
tortion is given in Appendix II.

9. An experimental form of coupled multiple pendulum is de-
scribed, which affords a visual manifestation of the essential phe-
nomena of the motional-impedance circle, and of its loop distortions.

10. Means are described for applying a correction for the ab-
sorption due to the use of an amplitude measurer, when determin-
ing the motional constants A, m, r and .r of a telephone receiver,

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

1. M. J. Lissajous. Memoire sur I'fitude Optique des Mouvements Vibra-

toires. Annales de Chimie et de Physique (3), p. 147, LI., 1857.

2. Rayleigh. Theory of Sound, Vol. I., p. 147, Macmillan Co., 1894.

3. A. Campbell. On the Measurement of Mutual Inductances by the Aid of

a Vibration Galvanometer. Phil. Mag., p. 494, May 14, 1907.

4. E. H. Barton. Text-Book of Sound, p. 146. Macmillan Co., 1908.

5. W. Duddell. Bifilar Vibration Galvanometer. Phil. Mag., pp. 168-179,

July, 1909 ; Electrician, 63, pp. 620-622, July 30, 1909.

6. Frank Wenner. A Theoretical and Experimental Study of the Vibration

Galvanometer. Bull. Bur. of Stand., Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 347, Feb.. 1910.

7. A. E. Kennelly and G. W. Pierce. The Impedance of Telephone Receivers

as Afifected by the Motion of their Diaphragms. Proc. Am. Acad, of
Arts and Sciences, Vol. XLVIII., No. 6, Sept., 1912; also Electrical
World, N. Y., Sept. 14, 1912; also British Assoc. Adv. Sc. Report Dun-
dee meeting, 1912.

8. R. L. Jones. Simple Vibratory Systems and their Impedance Analysis.

Western Electric Co. Eng. Dept. Report, Sept. 24, 1914.

9. A. E. Kennelly and H. O. Taylor. Explorations over the Vibrating Sur-

faces of Telephonic Diaphragms under Simple Impressed^ Tones.
Proc. Am. Philos. Soc, Vol. LIV., April 22, 1915.

10. A. E. Kennelly and H. A. Afifel. The Mechanics of Telephone-Receiver

Diaphragms, as Derived from their Motional-Impedance Circles. Proc.
Am. Acad, of Arts and Sciences, Vol. LI., No. 8, Nov., 1915.

11. H. G. Crane and C. L. Dawes. Construction of a Lecture-Room Oscillo-

graph. Electrical World, p. 424, Vol. 67, February 19, 1916.

List of Symbols Employed.

A Torque constant of a vibration galvanometer or oscillograph

(dyne-perp.-cm. per absampere). Also force constant of a

telephone receiver (dynes per absampere).

c = n./ni Acoustic interval between quadrantal frequencies (numeric),

A Damping constant, a hyperbolic angular velocity (hyp. radians

per sec).

VIBRATING TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS. 459

c^. Instantaneous emf. opposite and equal to cemf. of motion
(abvolts Z).
e = 2.71828 Base of Naperian logarithms.

/ Instantaneous vibromotive force or torque (dynes) or (dyne-

perp.-cm.).
/, Force entering into a torque (dynes).
!■ Maximum cyclic vibromotive force or torque, (dynes) or

(dyne-perp.-cm.).
/... Maximum cyclic counter V.M.F. of absorption (dynes Z).
0 Angular deflection of vibrator mirror (radians Z).
dm Maximum angular deflection at resonance (radians).
6*0 Initial amplitude of angular deflection at moment of release

(radians).
Os Steady angular deflection produced by a continuous current

(radians).
6t Amplitude of angular deflection at time t after release (ra-
dians).
0 Complex instantaneous angular velocity (radians/sec. Z).
0 Complex instantaneous angular acceleration (radians/sec. 2 Z).
/ A continuous current strength (absamperes).
Im Maximum cyclic current in the vibrator (absamperes).
i Complex instantaneous current strength (absamperes Z).

/ Length of radius arm on which a torque acts (cm.).
m Moment of inertia of vibrating system (gm.-cm.-). Also

mass of linear vibration system (gm.).
nu Mass of a secondary linear vibration system (gm.).
n Impressed frequency (cycles per sec).
;;„ Resonant frequency (cycles per sec).

Ml Frequency at earlier quadrantal point in motional circle (cy-
cles per sec).
H3 Frequency at later quadrantal point in motional circle (cycles
per sec).
p^r./r^ Ratio of secondary to main mechanical resistance (numeric).

TT = 3.1416

r Torque of resistance to angular velocity (dyne-perp.-cm. /ra-
dian per sec). Also resistance to vibrational motion of a
diaphragm (dynes/kine).
r. Resistance of secondary or dependent system to motion

(dynes/kine).
s Torque of angular displacement (dyne-perp.-cm. /radian).
Also elastic constant of linear vibration system (dynes/cm.).
^2 Elastic constant of secondary linear vibration system

(dynes/cm.).
/ Elapsed time (sees.).
T Torque (dyne-perp.-cm.).
A = w„/2A Resonant sharpness, or sharpness of tuning (numeric).

460 KENNELLY, TAYLOR— TELEPHONE DIAPHRAGMS.

X

Xm
X

Xa

Z

Zm

Z

Za = r^^/z._

0} =z2'Tn

w„

, = 2Trno

<^i

= 2TTni

w.

=^2TriU

Wd

= 2Trn(l

Wf

= 27rnf

=

ab.

or abs.

kine

V.M.F.

Z

Instantaneous displacement of diaphragm (cm.).

Max. cyclic displacement of diaphragm (cm.).

Complex velocity of diaphragm (cm. /sec).

Max. cyclic velocity of diaphragm (cm. /sec).

Max. cyclic velocity of diaphragm in presence of absorption
(cm. /sec).

Max. cyclic complex velocity of secondary system (cm. /sec).

Motional impedance of vibrator (absohms Z).

Maximum motional impedance at resonance (absohms).

Torque of mechanical impedance to angular velocity (dyne-
perp.-cm./rad. per sec. Z). Also force of mechanical im-
pedance to diaphragm velocity (dynes/kine Z).

Mechanical impedance of secondary system (dynes/kine Z).

Change of primary mechanical impedance, due to presence of
the absorption or secondary system (dynes/kine Z).

Angular velocity of impressed frequency (radians per sec).

Angular velocity of resonance (radians per sec).

Angular velocity of earlier quadrantal point on motional circle
(radians per sec).

Angular velocity of later quadrantal point on motional circle
(radians per sec).

Impressed angular velocity producing maximum angular de-
flection (radians per sec).

Angular velocity of free oscillation (radians per sec).

Nearly equal to.

Prefix indicating a C.G.S. magnetic unit.

I cm. /sec

Vibromotive force.

Indication of a complex unit.

THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

By martin E. REHFUSS, M.D.

(Read April 14, 19 16.)

The human gastric secretion has been the subject of persistent
study ever since it was reaHzed that there was apparently secreted a
free mineral acid in the stomach. Not only has this fact, the presence
of a true acid secretion, given rise to endless discussion, but the
mechanism of gastric digestion has been attacked from every angle.
The x-ray and especially the fluoroscope has thrown much light on
gastric movements but has left us hopelessly in the dark as to the
intimate chemistry and the respective physico-chemical changes which
occur while the kaleidoscopic changes in form are recorded. It has
until very recently been practically impossible to investigate either
normal or pathological digestion satisfactorily in man. The funda-
mental principles were laid down by the painstaking work on fistulas
on animals by the Pavlov school and a host of investigators who
recorded many observations in man by means of the old stomach
tube. With the exception of a few fistula cases such as the historic
instance of Alexis St. Martin and the occasional case of gastric
fistula consequent to an acquired stenosis of the esophagus there are
no coordinated observations on normal digestion in man. This was
owing to the lack of a method by which it was possible to follow
every phase of gastric digestion. In spite of the lack of a method,
the use of the bulky and wholly undesirable stomach tube was fol-
lowed and many observations were made.

In the fall of 1913, while studying the work of Hayen, I en-
deavored to find a tube which could be introduced into the stomach
and left in place. The original tube was a modification of the Ein-
horn tube, but it was neither sufficiently heavy nor of sufficient
calibre for this purpose. I then devised a special tip olivary in type
and of such a form as to be easily swallowed and of sufficient weight
to seek the bottom of the stomach, or the most dependant portion of

461

462 REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

the greater curvature of the stomach by gravity. A number of tips
were made, but finally one was found which was the most satis-
factory— and it was slotted in such a way that the diameter of the
slots represented the maximum bore of the rubber tubing. This in
turn was glass molded in order that it gave rise to no irritation
while in situ. This tube was swallowed in the natural way : it gives
rise to practically no irritation and I was able to satisfy myself by
radioscopic examination that it reaches the lower part of the stomach.
Another important feature was the fact that this tube could be left
in place for hours with practically no discomfort and that it con-
stituted practically a " via ouvert " or a direct communication to the
stomach at all times so that the progress of digestion could be ac-
curately followed and the examination of the material removed faith-
fully recorded. For the first time it was possible to follow every
step in the chemical evolution of digestion and at the Jefferson
Medical College, under the supervision of Dr. Hawk and with the
collaboration of Drs. Bergeim, Fowler, Spencer, Clarke and others,
we began an extensive survey of normal and pathological digestion.
Before discussing the important findings regarding gastric diges-
tion, the first salient feature which became apparent was the im-
possibility of interpreting the findings of a single examination of the
stomach as determined by the old method. In a communication to
the Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. LXIV., pp.
567-573 — I made the following statement which has been since con-
firmed by other workers (Carroll, Pollock, Talbot) :

1. It is impossible to interpret the figures obtained by the ex-
amination of the test meal removed in one hour time by the usual
technic.

2. The one hour period represents but one phase in the con-
stantly changing cycle of gastric digestion.

3. It is absolutely impossible to judge from the old method what
has preceded or what will follow this point.

We were able to show for instance that normal figures at the one
hour point may be preceded or followed by entirely different phe-
nomena in the brief course of 10 or 15 minutes and that for an
accurate analysis of the phenomena, it is essential that we make an
examination at every interval during digestion. This method of

REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION. 463

examination, I have called the " fractional examination or determi-
nation of gastric digestion," because it consists in removing at in-
tervals a fractional portion of the actively changing gastric contents
for examination. From the material which is removed by aspira-
tion, by newer methods a complete chemical, bacteriological and cyto-
logical examination may be made and curves constructed represent-
ing the progress of gastric digestion.

By means of this tube, the first important observation which we
made was the nature of the material found in the empty stomach.
It has been generally considered that this material should not exceed
20 c.c. in health. We found in a study of over 100 normal medical
students, that the quantity of material in the empty stomach prac-
tically always exceeded this point and in the above series, the average
was 52.14 c.c, more than twice the quantity formerly considered
normal. We found furthermore that this material was in most in-
stances a physiologically active secretion capable of inducing gastric
digestion and giving as average figure for the above series a total
acidity of 29.9 in terms of N/io NaOH necessary to neutralize 100
c.c. of secretion (phenolphthalein) and 18.5 free acidity (Sahl
method). Pepsin determination in 53 cases gave an average of
(2.8). We were further able to demonstrate by means of a special
method devised in our laboratories the presence of trypsin almost
constantly in the residuum, which was shown to be inversely propor-
tional to the free acidity.

In other words we found at whatever time we examined the
stomach regardless of the presence or absence of food a physio-
logically active secretion in the stomach. If as was performed on
several occasions, we removed the complete residuum and then with-
out introducing food in the stomach examined the organ somewhat
later, a physiologically active secretion could be removed even though
in digestive power it was lower than the material seen during the
digestive periods. In health therefore it is correct to assume that
there is always a minimal secretion in the stomach which at regular
intervals undergoes perturbations due to the influence of hunger,
psychic influences of sight, taste, and smell of food, and finally the
complex digestive cycle following the introduction of food into the
stomach.

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LV, CC, JULY lO, I916.

464 REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

We found this " residuum " of the empty stomach one of the
lightest fluids in the body with an average specific gravity of 1.0056
and an average cryoscopic index of — 0.470 which when compared to
the index of blood — .0560 seems to indicate a tendency for osmosis
of material to take place from the blood into the lumen of the
stomach. We found bile in almost one half the normal residua, and
this phenomenon may be present or absent in the same individual
without any subjective phenomena whatsoever.

We then made an investigation of many substances in the stomach
of the normal healthy subject and used for that purpose water, meat
extracts, tea, toast and since that time many of the various food-
stuffs concerning which we shall have more to say in the future. In
a convincing series of experiments on water it was immediately evi-
dent that water is a strong gastric stimulant and while it may be true
that the bulk of the liquid leaves the stomach in the first twenty
minutes along the " rinne " of the lesser curvature, we found that
water either cold or warm is a strong gastric stimulant, yielding an
acidity in certain instances of over 100 in less than twenty minutes.
In the normal individual on many occasions water produced fully as
great stimulation as an Ewald meal of toast and tea so that it became
a serious question as to whether or not the stimulative eft'ect of an
Ewald meal was not due to its water content, but the dry toast in-
duced a very definite characteristic secretion.

In our studies we were unable to demonstrate two essential points
which have previously been considered as belonging to the phe-
nomena of digestion. It was impossible to demonstrate any " latent
period" for the human gastric glands, as Pavlov demonstrated in
animals and secondly — it was impossible to demonstrate any glandu-
lar fatigue which Foster and Lambert attempted to point out. In
the water series despite any possible dilution of the water introduced
we obtained figures of from 50-120 (0.18-0.44 per cent. HCl) with
an average of 'j'j (0.28 HCl) considerably over that ordinarily con-
sidered normal for man. It is probable that the juice secreted at the
height of digestion is distinctly higher than that usually considered
and the contention of Umber, Bickel, Sommerfeld, Hornberg and
others that the gastric juice of man is very similar (0.4-0.5 per cent.)
to the gastric juice of the cat and dog is true.

REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION. 465

Some time ago Dr. Hawk and I published a paper on the direct
evidence of the secretion of a gastric juice of constant acid concentra-
tion in the human subject. We have been criticized for considering
the " digestive " plateau while food w^as in the stomach as evidence
of this. On the contrary however — the evidence when there is no
food in the stomach namely the " plateau " or " constant acid level "
seen in certain cases after water introduction, presumably after all
water has left the stomach or when the diluting action of water can
be no longer felt and again the " constant acid secretion " — frequently
seen after all food has left the stomach are the most powerful argu-
ments for the secretion of a constant acid grade.

Normal Secretory Curve.

For the investigation of gastric disturbances it becomes absolutely
essential that we have a standard, any deviation from which con-
stitutes a pathological finding. Such an arbitrary and concrete
standard is obviously impossible because in every individual there is
a characteristic functional output. It is possible to draw the limits
of health for any group of individuals, but practically every group
of bodily functions undergoes many variations owing to a multitude
of variable factors in the course of the day. Under exact conditions
the output is the same, but exact conditions are somewhat difficult to
approximate. From a very large series of observations on normal
healthy medical students, the following statements seem entirely
justifiable :

(c) Each individual has a characteristic gastric response.

(b) Under identical conditions, physical and environmental, the
type and character of the gastric response to a certain stimulus is
essentially the same.

(c) There are several varieties of normal secretory response,
normal in that they are found in individuals absolutely free from
gastrointestinal symptoms and to all intents and purposes enjoying
perfect health.

We have tried various meals but for simplicity, availability and
short gastric transit we have studied the Ewald meal 35 grams of
toast and 240 c.c. of weak tea or water in an attempt to outline the
normal gastric response.

466 REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

We found that healthy medical students reacted to the Ewald
meal in one of three ways :

1. The " isosecretory " type shows a steady rise, high point, in
terms of tenth-normal sodium hydroxid, 60, usually sustained for
from half an hour to an hour, and then a gradual decline with a
total disappearance of the food residues in from two to two and one
half hours.

The curve is usually steady and unbroken ; its high point is
usually rounded and not abrupt and is to be found in the neighbor-
hood of one hour.

2. The " hypersecretory " type shows a rapid response to stimuli,
often a marked change in the acidity even of the five-minute samples,
rapid increase in acidity, high point from 70 to 100 or over, either
sustained or abrupt, and a slow decline or none at all in the usual
time. The food left the stomach in normal time from two to two
and one half hours, but even after the passage of all food material
there was often encountered an outpouring of pure gastric juice for
half an hour, one hour, or even several hours. This finding, which
was obtained in many cases, is so pronounced and distinct that we
call it a " continued digestive secretion " in contradistinction to
" hypersecretion " because it occurs in normal symptomless persons.
This type we call the hypersecretory type because of the general
tendency of the acidity to assume exaggerated proportions.

These represent but two of such curves in which the tendencies
described were pronounced and the " continued " secretion was quite
prominent. Several cases in which the acidity approached that seen
in the isosecretory type likewise showed this phenomenon.

3. The third or " hyposecretory " type is similar to the first but
there is usually a slower ascent, slower response to stimuli, and a high
point from 40 to 50. Digestion is usually completed in two and one
half hours. This is the type least frequently encountered.

A consideration of the curves from the examination of normal
persons indicates that there is no normal curve which will hold for
all cases.

A distinction should be made of terms "secretory" refers to the
quantity of secretion, " acidity " to the quality or acid grade of the
secretion. " Hypersecretion " means the individual who responds to

REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION. 467

every stimulus with an abundant secretion, " hyperacidity " whose
response although possibly not excessive is still of a high acid grade.
However it is found that those individuals with excessive quantity
compared to a normal mean usually show also hyperacid compared
to a normal mean which one might call the " isoacid " figure.

In other words after studying the average collective response of
all normal individuals it becomes apparent that while the motor func-
tion in perfect health varies within very narrow limits, the quantity
and quality of the secretion has considerable variations. There is a
group by no means small in which the secretion is very abundant,
the acid figure high, and there is often present a post-digestive or
continued secretion. These people always react in this way while
there is a group diametrically opposed who show a rather tardive
secretory response. Both are normal : both without symptoms : both
must be considered in the analysis of any pathological case.

Careful study as far as I can ascertain seems to demonstrate that
hypersecretory individuals give hypersecretory responses to all forms
of gastric stimuli. Whether it be bread, bread and tea, meat, milk or
a mixed meal — our " hypersecretory " students give always an hyper-
secretory response — and our hypersecretory normal type give as a
rule with any form of stimulus a low or a so-called hyposecretory
response. In the many experiments numbering several thousand we
have been able to predict almost always the type of response which
a certain individual would give after trying him out with a certain
substance. Of course there are daily variations and extreme fatigue
as well as gastric abuse will entirely change the gastric output as we
have been able to demonstrate.

These findings are extremely important because they must make
us cautious in drawing unwarranted diagnostic conclusions on the
cjuantity and quaHty of the secretion. In over 4-0 per cent, of our
cases, we found figures exceeding 60 total acidity and it is perfectly
apparent that the diagnosis of pathological hyperacidity for figures
exceeding 60 must be entirely rewritten when it is evident that this
occurs at some phase in the digestive cycle of many normal in-
dividuals.

Over 30 per cent, of normal cases develop an acidity in excess of
70 or 0.25 per cent. HCL and the probabilities from our experi-

468 REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

ments are that the perfectly pure secretion varies between 0.3-0.4
per cent, of HCL instead of the 0.2 per cent, of chnicians.

An extensive study was made of the psychic secretion and for
this purpose healthy students were selected, the stomach evacuted
and residuum removed before any food was taken, and the tube
left /';; situ. They were then placed in front of a weighed steak, and
the secretion from the sight and odor of food recorded by complete
interval evacuations, this was followed by the chewing of the meat
but no material could be swallowed, all meat being expectorated
after a definite time interval of chewing. These experiments, the
first ever performed on healthy non-traumatized hunian subjects,
and as yet unpublished, are full of interesting data. In 33 separate
observations on about 12 subjects, the following points were
recorded :

(a) There is a definite psychic secretion varying in duration of
from 60-80 minutes, perhaps longer if the psychic stimulus is
continued.

(b) There is no latent period as Pavlov indicated.

(c) The amount of secretion in the series without atropine
varied in 14 pure psychic cases from 105 c.c. to 274 c.c. with an
average of 122 c.c. during the period. After the oral or hypodermic
administration of atropine, which presumably cuts out the psychic
responses, in 12 cases the quantity removed varied from 15.5 c.c.
to 64 c.c, with an average of 37.6 c.c. a difference of 85.4 c.c. on
the average or in other words of 69.2 per cent, (more than two
thirds).

(d) There is evidence to believe that the chemical secretion is
induced at a very early period, and probably occurs well in the first
hour.

(e) In 12 out of 21 straight experiments without atropine the
acidity exceeded a total acid of 70 varying from 74 to 114.5 T. A.
0.41 HCL with an average of 97.3 c.c. indicating in over one half
the normal psychic responses give an acidity in excess of 70 while the
average is equal to or above this point. This finding is supple-
mented by the fact that in 14 out of the 21 cases the free acid ex-
ceeded 50, the figure frequently given for normal total acidity.
These findings in themselves throw an entirely difl:"erent light on the

REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION. 4G9

whole subject of pathological gastric chemistry. In only two in-
stances out of 12 atropine experiments did the total acidity exceed
70 (16.6 per cent.) and they were 79.5 and 71.5 respectively, while
in four of those cases (33 per cent.) the free acid exceeded 50. In
other words, it was possible to demonstrate directly a definite reduc-
tion both in the quantity and in the acidity of the psychic secretion
after the administration of atropine.

(/) On a pathological case (ulcer) we were able to demonstrate
a marked increase in the quantity of the psychic secretion under the
same circumstances as well as an increased velocity in the formation
of the secretion.

While the psychic response may vary markedly under certain
circumstances, the phase which we call chemical late in digestion
and which we attribute to secretagogues, hormones, the formation
and absorption of certain gastrins, is remarkably constant.

Normally the factor of safety is very great in the stomach,
but any pronounced deviation from normal whether due to excessive
ingestion of indigestible food, indulgence in alcoholic liquors or to
marked fatigue of any kind is usually followed by recognizable
gastric disturbances, among which are a tendency to excess of or
persistent secretion and frequently minimal food retention due to
disturbed motility.

A consideration of the foregoing facts enables us to construct a
rational basis for the interpretation of pathological phenomena. In
the first place it must be evident that normally the evacuation time
is remarkably constant. Abnormally any variation can occur from
a marked acceleration of the gastric contents seen in certain forms of
achylia and in the accelerated peristalsis of certain forms of duodenal
ulcer and duodenal irritation to the delayed evacuation only partial
seen in certain forms of atony to the pronounced delays seen in the
various forms of pyloric stenosis.

From a secretory standpoint, many things may occur. The
evolution may be entirely abnormal. The development of the secre-
tion may be accelerated or retarded, in reality delayed gastric
digestion ; or there may be at any phase in the gastric cycle the
entrance of pronounced secretory perturbations as hypersecretion or
the elimination or secretion of a juice of high acid grade. The

470 REHFUSS— THE NORMAL GASTRIC SECRETION.

reverse, disturbances pointing to insufficient acidity and secretion are
found.

While this is not the place to discuss the question of ulcer and
cancer, the former has a constant tendency to induce gastric phe-
nomena of the spastic type together with excessive secretion and
increased acidity, while the presence of the latter has a definite down-
ward tendency on the secretory causing either an inhibition or neu-
tralization or late formation of the secretion due to a mucosal lesion.
Every variety of change in the specimens can occur from positive
disturbance in the quantity and quality of the secretion to the ad-
mixture of purely pathological exudates or transudates consisting of
blood, pus, bacteria which are more or less characteristic of certain
conditions as well as definite fermentative phenomena seen in cer-
tain forms of stasis. A recognition of the normal type and its
thorough understanding is essential to the interpretation of the
pathological responses which occur.

THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

By FELIX E. SCHELLING, A.M., LL.D.

(Read April 13, 1916.}

" Shakespeare . . . seems to me," says Walt Whitman, " of astral
olenitis, first class, entirely fit for feudalism. His contributions,
especially to the literature of the passions, are immense, forever dear
to humanity — and his name is always to be reverenced in America.
But there is much in him ever offensive to democracy. He is not
only the tally of feudalism, but I should say Shakespeare is incar-
nated, uncompromising feudalism in literature."

With such an arraignment of Shakespeare's universality and his
sympathy with his fellow men, let us consider the common folk of
his plays with a view to discover the poet's actual attitude towards
that humbler station in life into which he was himself indisputably
born. For our purpose we exclude all personages of rank, all his
characters of gentle birth, together with all those, whatever their
varying degrees of servitude who wait upon royalty or form in any
wise a part or parcel of the households of great folk. This excludes
all of Shakespeare's heroes. It will also exclude Shakespeare's
fools, from trifling Launce and the delectable Feste to the sad-eyed
companion in folly of King Lear. And even Falstafif, who was
sometime page to Sir Thomas Mowbray and a gentleman, however
unlanded, mvist stand in his dignity without our bounds.

There remain for us, in our middle domain, some ihree or four
score personages who have speaking parts, of a diversity the equal
of their betters and inferiors, even although their actual roles are,
for the most part, subordinate. Conveniently to treat so many of
the undistinguished, we must group them, a process the more justifi-
able when we consider that thus we can best ascertain, what are
really Shakespeare's prejudices and whether they are of class or
individual.

471

472 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

The drama by Shakespeare's day had ah-eady evolved, or rather
created by iteration, several very definite stock personages. One of
these is the pedant or schoolmaster, so well known to Italian comedy ;
and Holof ernes, in "Love's Labour's Lost," with his loquacity,
affectation of learning and essential ignorance, is Shakespeare's most
certain contribution to the type. As to " the pedant " so nominated
in " The Shrew," this personage is taken over bodily from Gascoigne's
" Supposes," the translation of an Italian play, and performs no
" pedantic '' function ; while Pinch, in " The Errors/' is called in
momentarily to exorcise the devil out of half maddened Antipholus
of Ephesus. In the Welshman, Sir Hugh Evans of " The Merry
Wives of Windsor," we modulate, so to speak, from the schoolmaster
to the parson, for Evans apparently performed the functions of both.
Evans is no fool, however he may have sung to keep up his courage
on one memorable occasion, in breaking voice, ungowned and sword
in trembling hand, while he awaited the coming of his terrible adver-
sary, the Erench Doctor Caius, deceived in the meeting like himself,
by a parcel of incorrigible wags.

Shakespeare's curates, parsons and religious folk are many. Of
the class of Evans are Sir Nathaniel, in " Love's Labour's Lost " and
Sir OHver Martext in " As You Like It." Sir Nathaniel is zany to
the ponderous folly of Holofernes, he who plays the role of
" Alisander " to the latter's Judas in the immortal " ostentation, or
show, or pageant, or antique of the Nine Worthies " ; while our joy
in Sir Oliver lies more in his delectable cognomen " Martext " than
in the very brief scenes in which he is brought in to " despatch "
Touchstone and his Audrey into matrimony under the greenwood
tree. The Shakespearean friar is a more important personage, from
the plotting, necromantic Home and Southwell in the second part of
" Henry VI " to Juliet's Friar Lawrence with his minor counterpart
of minor function, Eriar Erancis in " Much Ado," and the Duke,
disguised as such, in " Measure for Measure." Whether a matter
wholly referable to his sources or not, Shakespeare conceived of the
friar of Roman Catholic Verona, Messina or Vienna, in a very
different spirit from that in which he represents the small parson.
Sir Hugh or Sir Oliver. Eriar Erancis in "Much Ado" detects
the " strange misprision in the two princes " whereby the Lady Hero

SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 473

is slanderously wronged, and it is his prudent advice, which, fol-
lowed implicitly by the lady and her friends, rights that wrong in
the end. The likeness of this function of Friar Lawrence is patent
to the most superficial reader ; but unhappily for his prudence and
his ingenuity, the accident to his messenger, the precipitancy of
Romeo, the influence of the very stars is against him and he fails
where his brother friar had succeeded. Nowhere in Shakespeare
does the clergy function with more dignity than in " Measure for
Measure " whether in the role of the chaste and devoted novitiate,
Isabella, or in the grave and searching wisdom of the Duke. What
Shakespeare's attitude toward formal religion may have been we
have little that is definite to go by. Who can doubt that it was he,
however, and none other, who paid for the tolling of the great bell
of St. Saviours when his brother's body was laid there to rest?
And who can question with all his scenes of religious pomp and
dignity that Shakespeare recognized, with Wolsey, that all these
forms of earthly vanity are

a burden
Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven ?

We may regret that Shakespeare has nowhere exhibited to us, like
Chaucer in his " poure Persoun of a toun," his ideal of the cloth.
It has been wittily said that it is a credit to human nature that no
critic has as yet called Shakespeare a Puritan. It is somewhat less
creditable that some have gone about to show him the satirist of
Puritanism, especially in Malvolio. It was Jonson, the moralist,
who satirized Puritanism, not Shakespeare, whose business was with
qualities that differentiate men in the essentials of their natures and
in the conduct which these differences entail.

Let us glance next at the physicians of Shakespeare. In Dr.
Caius of " The Merry Wives," albeit he is boastful of his intelligence
from the court, the doctor is lost in the gross wit of the Frenchman's
ignorance of English satirized. The apothecary who sells Romeo
his death potion, in his " tattered weeds," could assuredly not have
been of a profession in which there are no beggars. The father of
Helena in " All's Well," although he left to his daughter the mirac-
ulous cure of the King of France by means of his medical secrets.

474 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

is reported a man of dignity, learning and much experience in his
practice. The doctor in Macbeth has won the praises of his own
jealous profession with the professional aptitude of his comments on
the somnambulist symptoms of Lady Macbeth ; while the physician,
Cornelius, skilled as he is in poisons, honorably deceives the wicked
queen of Cymbeline with a sleeping potion instead of the deadly
drug which it was her purpose to administer to the unhappy
Imogen.

Unlike his contemporary Middleton and some others, Shake-
speare does not satirize the profession of the law ; and the lawyer, as
such, scarcely figures in the plays. At opposite poles, in the plays
which have to do with Falstafif, we have Master Shallow " in the
county of Gloucester, justice of the peace and ' coram,' " described
by Falstafif as " a man made after supper of a cheese-paring . . .
for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved
upon it with a knife." And we have likewise the grave and honor-
able Chief Justice Gascoigne, whose courage and impartiality in the
exercise of his high functions caused the regenerate Prince to choose
him for his guide and counsellor on the assumption of his new royal
dignities. As to the lesser functionaries of the law, the watchman,
the constable and the beadle, Shakespeare exhibits the general free
spirit of his time and laughs, as the rest of the world has ever
laughed, at the insolence, ineptitude and ignorance of the small man
dressed in a little brief authority. It might be argued with some
likelihood of success that this is identically the spirit that marks
the Sheriff of Nottingham as the butt of the lawless pranks of Robin
Hood, the attitude towards constituted authority which combined in
the free ranging devils of the old miracle plays the functions of
policing the crowd and catering to its merriment. Beyond his
designation, " a constable," Dull in " Love's Labour's Lost," scarcely
represents for his class more than his name ; and as to Elbow in
" Measure for Measure," his " simplicity " like his malapropisms,
seems a faint and colorless repetition of these qualities in the im-
mortal Dogberry. Dogberry is universal, the ubiquitous, inevitable,
unescapable man of weight, ponderous alike physically and mentally ;
for I am persuaded with an old-fashioned American critic, that
Dogberry was "of ample size — no small man speaks with sedate

SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 475

gravity. . . . No man of the lean and dwarfish species can assume the
tranquil self-consequence of Dogberry. How could a thinly covered
soul [exhibit] . . . that calm interior glow, that warm sense, too, of
outward security, which so firmly speaks in Dogberry's content and
confidence."^

Our obvious generalization as to Shakespeare's estimate of the
learned professions, then, is this : he found, in all, earnest, honorable
and capable men and honored them as such ; and he found like-
wise among them the stupid, the pedantic, the pretentious and the
absurd. It was for their follies that he ridiculed them, not because
of their class or their station in life.

Of the small gentry of Elizabethan England, Master Ford and
Master Page with their two merry wives offer us the best example
in comedy. The discordant plans and plots for a provision in life
for Mistress Anne Page are in keeping with many a like uncon-
scious parody on the grand alliances of folk of higher station. The
foolish Slender, who is likewise a small landed proprietor, is nearer
an absolute fool or " natural " than any of Shakespeare's clowns,
professional or other, for wit proceeds no more out of him, how-
ever he beget wit in others, than it ever comes forth from the mouth
of Andrew Aguecheek his cousin-german (so to speak) of Illyria.
In Alexander Iden, who meeting with Jack Cade in his Kentish
garden, kills him in single fight, we have a serious personage of
much Slender's station in life. But Iden has his wits as well as
his valor about him and his knighting is his deserved reward.
Nearer the soil, if closer to royalty, is the kind-hearted, allegorical
minded king's gardener who apprises the queen of Richard II. of
the monarch's mischance in falling into the hands of his enemy,
victorious Bolingbroke. In the country folk that fill in the back-
ground of "As You Like It" and the later acts of "The Winter's
Tale," Shakespeare's English spirit comes into contact with the
conventional types of Italian pastoral drama. Corin is the typical
shepherdess, beloved but not loving, and Sylvius, the pursuing shep-
herd unbeloved. But as if to correct an impression so artificial, we
have, beside them, William and Audrey, English country folk in
name and nature like Costard and Jaquenetta, and in Shakespeare's

1 Henry Oiles, " Human Nature in Shakespeare," 1868.

476 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

maturer art, far more redolent of the soil. William, like Slender,
and many a man of better station, is a mere natural ; but his witless-
ness is as distinguishable from the folly of the Shakespearean
" clown," as his boorishness differs from the literal simplicity of the
Shepherd who becomes foster brother to Perdita in " The Winter's
Tale." Mopsa and Dorcas with their shepherds of the sheep shear-
ing, in these charming comedy scenes, are English country folk ; and
Autolycus, despite his fine Greek name, is a delightful English rogue
and incorrigible vagabond.

And now that we have all but touched the bottom of the Shake-
spearean social scale, we may note that in Shakespeare poverty does
not necessarily make a man vicious ; nor does roguery destroy humor
in a man or deprive him of his brains. The porter in Macbeth is a
foul-mouthed drunken lout ; the nameless " old man " in the same
tragedy is a credulous recorder of marvels. But Adam, the old
serving man of Orlando, is faithful almost to death. Dame Quickly
of London is a silly old muddlehead, alike innocent of morals and of
common sense ; and her sister Dame Quickly of Windsor is a shame-
less go-between and meddler ; but the widow, keeper of lodgings for
pilgrims in "All's Well," has a virtuous and honorable disposition.
The drawer, Francis, in " Henry IV." " sums up his eloquence in
the parcel of a reckoning " ; but there is no keener, droller fellow in
the world than the grave digger in " Hamlet," and it is dubious if
for natural parts, however diverted to the " doing " and undoing of
his fellows, Autolycus has ever had his equal. Shakespeare's
carriers talk of their jades and their packs ; his vintners and drawers
of their guests and their drinking ; his musicians disparage their
own skill and have to be coaxed to show it ; and his honest botchers,
weavers and bricklayers hate learning, and in their rage variously
kill a poet and hang a clerk. And curious as all this may appear to
him who habitually views the classes below him as merely his serv-
ants or the objects of his organized charity, all this — save possibly
the homicides — is as true of today as of the age of Shakespeare.

And here perhaps as well as anywhere, we may digress into " the
Shakespearean prejudice as to mobs." The mob figures as such
conspicuously three times in Shakespeare's plays, in the second part
of "King Henry VI.," in "Julius Cresar," and in " Coriolanus." It

SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 477

is represented in all three cases as fickle, turbulent, cruel, foul and
possessed of a rude sense of humor; and this last is Shakespeare's —
perhaps, more accurately, the Elizabethan — contribution to the pic-
ture. It has been well observed that Tudor England presented no
precise parallel to the persistent struggle of the Roman plebs against
the bulwarks of patrician oligarchy. And it is doubtful if Shake-
speare would have sought for such parallels had they existed. In
unessentials — and the picture of the mob is such to the dramatic ac-
tion of these two Roman plays — Shakespeare is always faithful to
his sources, and Plutarch's crowd is cruel, seditious, and " con-
temptibly responsive" to the most obvious blandishments of the
demagogue. In the admirable scenes of Jack Cade's rebellion,
although the material was nearer home, Shakespeare once more
followed his sources, here in Holinshed and Halle. Neither of these
worthies comprehended in the slightest degree the actual political
issues underlying the Kentishmen's revolt, which historically was as
respectable as it was fruitless. But Shakespeare was not seeking
historical accuracy, but dramatic eflfectiveness and fidelity to the ob-
served characteristics of ignorant men escaped from the curb of the
law. Shakespeare, as to the mob, was no sociologist, and his yearn-
ing for the submerged tenth was not that of many a worthy gentle-
man of our own time who otherwise misrepresents the unshriven
objects of his solicitude. In short a mob was to the unlettered
dramatist merely a mob. Man running in packs unbridled by
authority was a phenomenon better known to unpoliced Elizabethan
England than to us, and Shakespeare found most of his own im-
pressions in this matter to tally remarkably with those of Plutarch
and Holinshed.

With Shakespeare's mob we leave the country and meet with the
small tradesmen of towns ; for even the Kentish " rabblement " of
Jack Cade is represented, like that of ancient Rome, as made up of
small trades people — cobblers, butchers, smiths and the like — not folk
of the fields. Individually as collectively, Shakespeare has a greater
appreciation for the humors of the tailor, the joiner, and the bellows-
mender than for his psychology. The drunken tinker of " The
Shrew " the author found in his source and, unlike that source,
wearied, he dropped his adventures when the play within the play

478 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

was at an end. The hempen homespuns with the illustrious weaver,
Bottom, at their head, repeat in their absurd drama of " Pyramus
and Thisbe," a situation already sketched in " Love's Labour's Lost,"
one in which the banter and cruel interruption of ungentle gentles
evidently reproduces a situation by no means unknown to better
actors than Bottom, Flute and Starveling. A kindly spirit speaks in
the words of Theseus :

For never anything can be amiss
When simpleness and duty tender it ;

for truly is he tolerant who can find words of praise for the good
intentions of the amateur actor, a being little loved of god or man.
To the professional player, whom he knew better than any other
man of art, Shakespeare is courteous and appreciative in the person
of Hamlet, and we know from an often quoted sonnet, how deeply
he could feel the degradation which popular contemporary opinion
attached to the player's art.

The merchant, in Shakespeare's day, was a far more dignified
person than the mere man of trade. A merchant, it is true, waits
with a jeweller, but also with a painter and a poet, in the anteroom of
silly, sumptuous Timon. But ordinarily, the merchant is a more
dignified person, extending courtesy to strangers, as in " The Comedy
of Errors," taking risks for his merchandise and for himself, as in
the case of old ^geon, in the same play, who has ventured on
markets forbidden and is imprisoned for his daring. The most
notable Shakespearean merchant is, of course, Antonio, the mer-
chant prince of Venice, an adventurer in the Elizabethan sense into
strange markets and a gambler for high commercial stakes. His
gravity — or presaging melancholy — befits his dignity, and his gener-
osity to Bassanio, a fellow adventurer (but in more than the Eliza-
bethan sense), is only equalled by his authority among his fellow
merchants and his scorn of the unrighteous Jew. Shylock, too, is
of the merchant class, but a pariah alike for his race and his practice
of usury. But Shylock will take us into precincts irrelevant ; for
the Jew, whatever your thought of him or mine, is not of the
common folk even of Shakespeare.

SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE. 479

Next to the merchants come Shakespeare's seamen, the noble-
minded Antonio of " Twelfth Night," Sebastian's friend, the out-
spoken sea-captain, boatswain and mariners of "The Tempest," the
attendant sailors and fisher folk of " Pericles." Shakespeare was a
landman ; save for an occasional line, his descriptions of the sea, in
the richest of all literatures in this respect, are none of them im-
portant. The mariner as such he treats with the respect due a person
only partially known. With the soldier, in a martial age, Shake-
speare was better acquainted and he knew him from the kings and
great commanders of the historical plays to such pasteboard and
plaster military men as Parolles, Nym and Pistol. Of Falstaff's
levy and his rabble attendants, from Bardolph of the carbuncled nose
to the minute page, it may be said that they cut a sorrier figure in
France than at the Boarshead in Eastcheap. But Shakespeare's
army levied better men than these ; the heroic gunners on the walls
of Orleans, the brave and capable captains of four kingdoms, Gower,
Fluellen, MacMorris, and Jamey in " Henry V.," and the manly
English soldiers Bates, Court and Williams. If the refined, modern
critic, versed in the psychological researches of an incessantly prying
world, would learn whether the old dramatist, Shakespeare, had
any notions as to the mental processes and moral stability of the
common man, let him read and ponder the simple incident of King
Henry V. incognito, and the soldier Williams and their arguments
.pro and con as to the responsibility of princes. Williams is the type
of the honest, fearless, clear-headed " man in the street " who honors
his king, not slavishly because he is a king, but for the qualities that
make him kingly, who respects manhood (his own included) above
rank and is the more valiant that he knows the cost of valor. There
are several well-known tales of military devotion — they are not
English — of the soldier, wounded unto death in a quarrel, the
righteousness or wrong of which he cares not even to inquire, who
dies blessed and content that he has obeyed in unquestioning faith, the
august commands of his master. Williams is not of this type. His
free soul will challenge his gage in the eye of his prince and when
his heart tells him he is right, let the devil forbid. Shakespeare,
too, knew the common man, who is bleeding today for England ;
and his trust, like ours, was in him. Nor did our wise old dramatist,

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. , VOL. LV, DD, JULY I9, I916.

480 SCHELLING— THE COMMON FOLK OF SHAKESPEARE.

for all his scenes of the pomp and circumstance of war, forget its
terror, its sorrow and its pathos. In the third part of " Henry VI.,"
that unhappy king is seated alone on the field of battle as the
struggle surges away from him. And there enters " a son that hath
killed his father dragging in the dead body," and later "a father
bearing his dead son." Poignant are the words of these common
men in their common woe, the battle woe of all ages and all times
in the grip of which the least are as the great and the greatest as
the poorest.

In the taverns, the brothels and the jails, Shakespeare found the
foulmouthed, the ignorant and the dishonest and he represented them
in all these particulars in a faithful, if at times, forbidding, reality to
life. Moreover, his prejudice against evil is pronounced in the very
repulsiveness of such scenes. He knows that there are impostors
among beggars, that trial by combat is only a somewhat cruder
method of getting at the truth than trial by jury, that there are
corrupt and incompetent magistrates and fools abounding in all walks
of life. Moreover, he depicts in his plays a feudal state of society,
for such was English society in his day. But there is nothing in
these honest dramatic pictures of English life, from the king on his
throne to Abhorson with his headsman's axe, to declare Shakespeare
prejudiced against any class of his fellow countrymen. Wherefore,
our obvious generalization as to Shakespeare's attitude toward com-
mon folk, whether they be learned or unlearned, is this : he found
among them the stupid, the ignorant, the pretentious and the absurd ;
but he found likewise in each class the earnest, the honorable and
capable, and honored each after his kind as such. For their follies
he ridiculed them ; for their virtues which he recognized, he loved
them, deflecting neither to ridicule nor respect because of station in
life.

THE ORIGIN AND VEGETATION OF SALT MARSH

POOLS.

(Plates IX-XIV.)
By JOHN W. HARSHBERGER, Ph.D.

(Read April 14, igi6.)

The natural, undisturbed surface of the salt marshes of our
eastern Atlantic coast is fairly uniform in character (Plate IX., Fig.
i) from Cape Cod south, as far as the mouth of Chesapeake Bay.
They are formed at the mouths of rivers, which empty into the ocean,,
and behind the barrier islands of sand, which fringe the coast, in
the quiet waters of the lagoons which become fringed with salt
marshes of varying width (Plate IX., Fig. 2), or the open lagoonsv
or bays, are completely invaded and converted into a salt marsh of
fairly large size. The tidal channels, or thoroughfares, as they are
called in New Jersey, still permit the entrance of sea water and the
surface of the marsh is partly, or wholly, flooded with water de-
pending upon the state of the tide.

The outer margin of the salt marsh where it touches the open
lagoon (Plate IX., Fig. 2), or the tidal thoroughfare, is fringed with
a broader, or a narrower strip of the tall salt grass, Spartina glabra
(Plate X., Fig. i), depending upon the level and slope of the marsh
surface. Back of this strip, or association, we find the rush salt
grass, Spartina patens, which grows at a slightly higher tidal level,,
and is of varying width and outline, and then come the extensive
areas of the black grass, Jimcus Gerardi, upon which the economic
value of the marsh depends. Sometimes there are extensive areas
covered with the lesser salt grass, Distichlis spicata. The samphire,
Salicornia europcca, grows sometimes in pure association, sometimes
mingles with Spartina patens and Distichlis spicata, while the sea-
lavender, Limoniiim carolinianum, also grows in association with the
grasses and samphire in places over the surface of the marsh, as
also Snccda maritima and Atriplex pattda. Where fresh-water con-

481

482 HARSHBERGER— THE ORIGIN AND

ditions begin to prevail, that is along the inner tension line of the
salt marshes, we find Hibiscus moscheutos, Baccharis halimifolia
and Iva frutescens along with Ptilimnium capillaceum, Cicuta
niaculata, Myrica carolinensis and other plants, either in front of,
or in the center of the thicket vegetation.

The surface conditions, which we have described above, may be
disturbed by the action of strong eddying currents of wind, which
blow across the salt marsh. The grasses and other marsh species
are blown down and become matted and twisted, so that marsh
surface has a billowy apearance (Plate X., Fig. 2) with extensive
areas of erect marsh plants, and depressed portions of greater or
less size of prostrated grasses. With exceptionally high tides, which
carry the dead stems, leaves, and other remains of the marsh plants
about with them, the floating material is carried in over the marsh
and deposited upon the surface of the salt marsh plants, especially
in the hollows of the grassy surface, which have been caused by the
wind (Plate X., Fig. 2, and Plate XL, Fig. i). These rafts of
vegetable debris are left on the surface of the marsh with the tidal
;retreat, and as the water level may not rise again to a similar level
ior several days, or even months, the drift material smothers the
growing plants beneath it, and rapid decay sets in. This smothering
action may be effective in larger or smaller areas of the marsh
(Plate XL, Fig. i), and the tops of the plants are not only destroyed,
but the decay reaches the underground parts as well. Not only are
the underground parts destroyed, but also the surface of the salt
marsh sod, which is above the permanent ground water level. De-
pressions in the salt marsh are thus formed, which vary in size
from a few feet across to areas an acre or more in extent. These
depressions usually have steep sides and become filled with water at
high tides, and thus constitute the typic salt marsh pools (Plate XL,
Fig. 2 ; Plate XIL, Fig. i ) which are in evidence in every salt marsh
along the Atlantic coast.

Various algae begin to grow in these quiet pools (Plate XL,
Fig. 2), and an investigation of the algae found in such pools at
Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, showed the presence of the
following blue green algae: Lynghya scmiplena, Microcoleus chtoiia-
plastcs, Oscillatoria limosa, Rivularia atra and such diatoms as

VEGETATION OF SALT MARSH POOLS. 483

Pleiirosiguia angulatum, Melosira nummuloides and a species of
NaviciiJa and Synedra. With the retreat of the water and the dry-
ing up of the pools, these alg?e and diatoms form crusts, or matted
masses (Plate XII., Fig. 2), mixed with the dried leaves of Zostera
marina and the remains of other plants. In one pool pieces of news-
paper were found stuck together by the mat of blue green algse.
The mats of partially dry algse and diatoms (algal paper) assist in
the further disintegration of the peaty surface of the pool bottom,
but a limit is reached beyond which the process of decay is checked.
With a change in drainage of the salt marsh, some of the pools
are only occasionally filled with salt water, and the algse begin to
die and disappear, leaving a barren soil, which in very dry
weather may sun crack, as shown in the photograph of such a
pool in the salt marsh back of Atlantic City, New Jersey (Plate
XIII., Fig. i). Such denuded areas are now invaded by typic salt
marsh species. One such pool investigated was tenanted by a
pioneer plant, Atriplcx patida, while an old crescent-shaped de-
pression was completely invaded by Triglochin maritimum in pure
association, and another area with Pluchea camphorata, Plantago
maritima Solidago sempcrvirejis. Still another bare area was in-
vaded by Spcrgularia marina, Plantago maritima and a few weak
plants of Solidago sempcrvirens.

An extensive area completely denuded of vegetation by the
smothering action of drift material and completely riddled with
the burrows of the fiddler crabs, Gelasimus pugnax (Plate XIV.,
Fig. i), was found occupied by a pure association of the samphire,
Salicornia europcca, which is frequently the pioneer species on such
mud flats (Plate XIII., Fig. 2). Not all of the areas in our eastern
salt marshes are due to the smothering action of the drift material,
which consists largely of the dried remains of Spartina glabra and
Zostera m^arina, but occasionally, we find a sloping gravel bank, as
at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, where a fresh-water spring
controls during a large part of the day the soil conditions, and
where the gravel soil is so hard as to preclude the growth of the
usual salt marsh species (Plate XIV., Fig. 2). Under such condi-
tions Lilceopsis lincata grows. It is an interesting little umbellif-
erous plant with fleshy spatulate leaves, a running stem, and a

484 HARSHBERGER— SALT MARSH POOLS.

small umbel of white flowers. During part of the day it is ex-
posed to submergence by salt water and during the rest of the
day, its leaves are subjected to the action of air and ..sunlight, while
its roots and creeping stems are influenced by fresh water. Such
a plant must change its osmotic relations several times a day,
alternately being exposed to the action of salt and fresh water.
It was under such conditions of environment that the plant was
first detected in New Jersey by Thomas Nuttall, who found it near
" Egg Harbor," apparently near Beesley's Point.

Soon the typic salt marsh species such as Spartina glabra,
S. patens, Distichlis spicata, Juncus Gerardi gain access to the
barren ground occupied by the pioneer species (Plate XIIL, Fig. 2;
Plate XIV., Fig. i), which are gradually replaced by the plants
which are dominant in the salt marsh. After these vicissitudes of
salt marsh existence, we find the climax vegetation restored, and
the areas formerly denuded by the smothering action of drift ma-
terial and alg3e appear again, and the usual flat, featureless, meadow-
like physiognomy of the salt marsh surface appears again (Plate IX.,
Fig. i). In the study of the origin of salt marsh pools, we have
traced the successional history of plants which are normal con-
stituents of the salt marsh flora, but which become associated to-
gether in a dififerent way upon the genesis of the pools of larger
and smaller size, which are typic features of the meadow-like ex-
panses of our eastern Atlantic halophytic marshes. As the genesis
of the pools with their algse and other species of flowering plants
are due directly to the action of the tides in carrying the flotsam and
jetsam of salt plants over the surface of the marsh, so with the
elevation of the marsh, and the absence of the daily or periodic
flooding of the surface with sea water, we find a cessation in the
formation of tidal pool formation and the permanence of a level,
uniform surface of salt marsh, which may later change its physi-
ognomy and floral character, when fresh-water conditions come to
prevail. The ecologic succession of such converted areas of salt
marshes is an entirely different problem, but its essential feaures
have been described previously in a paper^ entitled " The Reclama-
tion and Cultivation of Salt Marshes and Deserts."

1 Harshberger, John W., Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Phila-
delphia, July, 1907.

PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF THE INJECTED
TRUNKS OF CHESTNUT TREES.

(Plates XV-XVIII.)

By CAROLINE RUMBOLD, Ph.D., Dr. CEc. publ.

{Read March 3, igi6.)

While working on tree injection in connection with the chestnut-
tree Wight, a large number of Paragon chestnut trees (orchard trees)
were made the subjects of experimentation by introducing into their
trunks different substances in solutions of varying dilution. The
method used in making the injections has been described in
Phytopathology (i).

The injections were made to discover the effect of the chemicals
on the chestnut trees and in turn on the parasitic fungus Endothia
parasitica (Mur.) A. & A., the cause of the chestnut-tree blight.
The reason for undertaking these experiments is mentioned, because
the processes devised for this investigation not discussed in this
paper, have rendered the phase of results here presented, somewhat
uneven and unfinished. Further study on this subject is in progress.

The chemicals used in the injections were about 50 in number:
hydrocarbons, metals and alkali metals. So far an examination of
the trunks and branches of injected trees shows that their reactions
to the different chemicals were alike in kind but varied in intensity.
The effect of the chemicals on the leaves of the trees differed, but
this will not be discussed at this time.

The injected solution passed through the vessels of the youngest
and the one year old rings of wood. There were exceptions to this
rule, which will be explained later.

The reaction in the trunk and branches of the tree varied with
the distance from the point of injection. The affected region ex-
tended up and down the trunk in a line whose width usually was
but little more than the injection hole. The cells through which the

486

486 RUMBOLD— PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF

solution passed acted like a blotter, with the result that the farther
from the point of injection, the more dilute was the solution and the
smaller the injected stream. Correlated with this, the tree tissues
appeared more normal as the distance from a point of injection in-
creased and the area of disturbance decreased. Occasionally all
stages of reaction to an injection could be seen in a tree: death — at
the point of injection — retarded growth, stimulated growth and no
reaction.

The results of the injections, to which particular attention is
called here, are of interest from a histological standpoint.

1. A strong inhibitory effect on the growth of the cambium layer
was noticed; so strong that as a tissue it often disappeared. The
cambium cells changed into xylem.

2. There was an irregular formation of the new year ring of
wood. During its formation isolated groups of xylem cells ap-
peared in the midst of the phloem.

3. Phloem cells were converted into xylem by cell division fol-
lowed by lignification, or the cell walls were lignified without cell
division.

4. All of the cells of the phloem region were capable of change
with the exception of the stone cells, the bast-fibers and their ac-
companying cells containing crystals.

5. There was a production of wound tissue showing various
degrees of abnormality. The wound tissue was abnormal in that
its position was reversed from the one in which it is customarily
seen, and frequently the cells composing it had unusual shapes.

6. Cork formed prematurely. It was apparently correlated with
the irregular growth of xylem in the phloem region.

Another region of response to the injections was the xylem,
evidenced by an increased formation of thylloses and a thickening
of cell walls. This response, while pathological, was one which was
expected. For this reason no emphasis is placed upon it in this
discussion, but it will be referred to in connection with the paths of
the injected solutions.

These points can be elucidated best by a view of some sections
cut from injected trees. They have been selected from many, as
they illustrated the points emphasized in this paper.

THE INJECTED TRUNKS OF CHESTNUT TREES 487

Observations.

The PatJi of tJie Injected Solutions in the Trees.

As stated before, the path of the sokitions usually was through
the vessels of the youngest ring of wood (Figs. 2. 5, 10, and 11).
It sometimes happened that the stream was shifted from these
vessels. Fig. i shows such a case. This section was cut from a
tree which had been injected with methylene blue. The. stain had
colored the passages taken by it. The solution of methyene blue
was not toxic, but it was stimulating enough to cause the forma-
tion of thylloses, which finally plugged the vessels through which
the stain passed. The main stream then passed through the vessels
of the older year ring. The amount of such shifting appeared to
vary with the toxicity of the injected chemical, for killing solutions
never changed their paths (Fig. 2). This shifting by removing the
source of irritation that is the injected solution from, or bringing it
in closer proximity to, the cambium layer had a decided effect on the
growth of the cambium and phloem tissues.

The Wound Tissue Formed.

The character of the wound tissue depended on the toxicity of
the injected solution. Quick killing was not followed by stimulation
other than the formation of normal wound tissue (callus) to cover
the wound. Fig. 2 shows an instance of this. The section was cut
from a branch of a 9-year-old tree, which had been injected in May
with meta cresol i-iooo G.M., the branch having been cut in Oc-
tober. Callus had formed on both sides of the path of the injected
chemical. The photograph shows one side of this path which could
be distinguished readily by a stain (s). The callus which had
formed is as normal as though the tree had been cut by a knife;
the wound cambium or bark cambium (be) surrounds the newly
formed tissues; the groups of bast-fiber (bf), the protective cells,
have the formation one sees in a one-year-old twig; the phloem (p),
cambium layer (c) and xylem (x) are normal.

There are transitions from such normal wound tissue as that just
described, which are caused by the varying toxicity of the injected

488 RUMBOLD— PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF

chemicals. They exhibit more and more abnormahty as wound
tissue, until the sections show not wound tissue but stimulated growth
of cells.

Fig. 3 shows a wound tissue formation in a ten-year-old tree
which had been injected in June and July with nitro phenol-para
1-500 G.M. and felled in November. The path of the main stream
is shown on the right-hand side of the photograph. The cells had
been killed and a callus had formed which was not as well developed
as the callus shown in Fig. 2. On the right-hand side the dark
streak in the xylem shows the path of the solution. In this region
the solution must have been much diluted as compared with the
main stream. Here the phloem, cambium layer (c) and year ring
of wood are normal, with the exception of the xylem cells in the
immediate neighborhood of the path of the solution. Somewhat
left of the center a stimulating effect is seen in an abnormally placed
group of xylem cells in the midst of the phloem.

Questionable wound tissue is seen in Figs. 4 and 6. The xylem
formation can be regarded as irregularly formed year rings of wood.
In this case the growth of the rings of wood has been stimulated,
for the normal ring of xylem had nearly completed its growth before
injection began. Or the extra growth of xylem cells on the far
side, as regards the cambium region, of the bast-fiber groups can be
regarded as a form of wound tissue (callus). The premature bark,
which always appears with the abnormal xylem, can be regarded as
part of a wound tissue. Fig. 8 gives a detail showing the suggestive
arrangement of the protective cells, stone cells, and bast-fibers, in
relation to this extraordinary xylem.

Inhibitory Effect on the Growth of the Cambium.

This was a phenomenon common to the injected trees. Fig. 4
shows a section which had been cut from a sixteen-year-old tree,
injected with lithium carbonate 1-500 G.M. in July, August, Sep-
tember and October and felled in November. The section shows
the relation between the path of the injected alkali (s), the cambium
layer region (c), the irregular growth of xylem cells (x) and the
irregular growth of bark cambium {be). Fig. 5 shows the enlarge-

THE INJECTED TRUNKS OF CHESTNUT TREES 489

ment of a portion of Fig, 4. In the center of the photograph in the
region of the cambium layer are cambium cells which have changed
into xylem. It shows also that the phloem cells are changed into
xylem by division and by thickening of the walls. A group of
xylem cells has started growth on the far side of a group of bast-
fibers. Fig. 6 shows a section from the same tree, in which this
situation, exhibited in Fig. 4, is more pronounced. Fig. 7 shows an
enlargement of the cambium region (c). Here it can be seen that
the rows of bast-fibers are surrounded by xylem.

The inhibitory effect on the cambium was transitory. In time
a new cambium layer formed, arising from phloem cells. It sepa-
rated the irregularly formed xylem from the phloem. It formed a
wavy row of cells, but its growth was normal.

Premature Formation of Cork.

Correlated with the abnormal growth of xylem in the phloem
region was a premature formation of cork. This was formed in so
striking a manner that the path of an injected solution could be
traced on a tree by the raised lumps of cork extending up and down
the tree trunks. This cork formation was not in a continuous ridge
of tissue, but appeared in irregularly shaped lumps. So certainly
was its formation connected with a disturbance of the cambium and
phloem tissues, that one could tell by a cursory glance at a smooth
barked tree at what points the above mentioned tissues were de-
ranged. In the case of the lithium-injected trees, the spectroscope
showed the presence of lithium in the cork, showing a connection
between the abnormal tissues and the foreign chemical injected into
the tree. Fig. 6 shows that the formation of this cork is due to an
unusual development of bark cambium from phloem cells.

Xylem Developed from Phloem Tissue.

The xylem which had formed by division of the phloem cells,
and often appeared to be a form of wound tissue, has been partially
described. Fig. 8 shows the development of such xylem. The
group of stone cells partially surrounded by xylem was part of a
row of such cells. Rows of stone cells often were found in the

490 RUMBOLD— PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF

phloem region in the injected trees. It can be seen that there is a
close relation between the protective cells, i. e., stone cells and bast-
fibers, and the xylem which is formed by cell-division of phloem
cells. Whether any of these groups of protective cells formed after
injection future experiment will show. It seems probable that they
did, as according to Moeller (2) such a formation can occur in the
normal growth of the chestnut, Castanea vesca.

An irregular growth of the year ring of wood is shown in Fig.
9, which is a section cut from a fourteen-year-old tree injected
May, June and July with nitro phenol-para i-iooo G.M. and felled
in November. The section shows the year ring of wood only. The
formation of xylem on the far side of the bast-fibers is shown in a
more pronounced form than in the previously discussed sections.
No phloem cells are in this section except bast-fiber and stone cells.
The cells on the near side of the bast-fiber groups have been con-
verted into xylem by a lignification of their walls.

Xylem also was formed by the thickening and lignification of
phloem cells without cell division. The section shown in Fig. 10
was cut from a fourteen-year-old tree, which had been injected in
June and July with picric acid i-iooo G.M. and felled in Novem-
ber. The cells of the dark-stained groups in the phloem region have
lignified cell walls and the shape of phloem cells. This process of
lignification is uninfluenced by the proximity of bast-fiber groups.
No vessels are formed. It can be seen that the old phloem rings
are capable of change, for here the nine-year-old ring shows lignified
cells. Fig. II, shows a portion of Fig. 10, enlarged. In Fig. 11, a
stone cell has been surrounded by xylem cells of abnormal shapes.
The pits in the cell walls can be seen.

Discussion.

The investigations of Schilberszky (3) showed that secondary
extra-fascicular vascular bundles could be formed on the outer side
of the bast-fiber cells in pea and bean seedlings. He found this
new tissue developed by the division of the cells of the starch sheath
or endodermis. The starch sheath acted as a cambium layer, pro-
ducing phloem cells on its outer side and xylem cells on its inner

THE INJECTED TRUNKS OF CHESTNUT TREES 491

side. He produced this result by cutting away a part of the seed-
lings' stems, when they were actively growing.

Schilberszky's result, obtained by cutting, was produced by the
injections, w^hen the solutions were toxic enough to kill or to retard
the activities of the fibro-vascular bundles and the cambium layer.
But the forms assumed by the deranged tissues, resulting from the
injections, were not as definite as those obtained by the knife. This
was probably for the reason that the toxic solutions did not usually
make definite wounds, but killed only groups of cells or single cells,
while other groups were simply retarded in growth or even stimu-
lated. Also the shock from the incision was a single one, while in
the case of the injections the source of irritation was present for
weeks or months.

As stated before, Schilberszky found the extra-fascicular vas-
cular bundles developed from the starch sheath, which is situated
just outside the bast-fiber cells in the case of the pea and bean
seedlings. This row of cells produced both phloem and xylem
tissue.

In the case of the injections the result cannot be attributed to the
stimulation of a single tissue but rather of three: phloem, cambium
and xylem. So far the examination of the trees has not shown a
development of new extra-phloem cells. The xylem cells found in
the phloem region appear to have been produced by cell division of
the phloem cells followed by lignification, or by a lignification of the
original phloem cell walls. The isolated groups of xylem usually
commenced to develop just behind the groups of bast-fiber, and
this might indicate that the cells there were meristematic or cells
which retained unusual regenerative powers. It has not been known
hitherto that they were meristematic cells. It seems more probable
from the way in which the groups of xylem cells increase, that these
phloem cells first respond to stimulation because of their position
behind the bast-fiber groups. Osmosis in the case of the bast-fibers
must be extremely slow. Therefore, an irritant coming from the
direction of the injected chemical would strike the cells situated just
back of the bast-fibers from two sides at once. Those phloem cells,
exposed directly and from one direction, would respond more slowly
by a lignification of their cell walls.

492 RUMBOLD— PATHOLOGICAL ANATOMY OF

All the cells of the phloem are capable of change with the ex-
ception of the stone cells, the bast-fibers and their accompanying
cells containing calcium oxalate crystals. Not only can the cells
respond which are in the recently formed rings of phloem, but those
in the rings eight and nine years old. From the phloem cells are
formed bark cambium, cambium and xylem.

Summary.

So far an examination of chestnut trees, injected with chemicals
in solution, shows that the reaction in the trunks and branches, as
evidenced by abnormal tissues, was alike in kind, but varied in
intensity.

With increased distance from a point of injection the tissues
became more normal and the area of disturbance decreased. All
stages of reaction could be seen in a tree : death, inhibited growth,
stimulated growth and no reaction.

The regions of response were the phloem, cambium, and xylem.

The Phloem. — The most remarkable response from a histo-
logical standpoint, was that given by the phloem. Xylem cells
formed in the midst of the phloem region. This xylem was formed
by division of the phloem cells with subsequent lignification of the
walls, or by lignification of the phloem cell walls without division.
All the cells in the phloem were capable of change, except the stone
cells, the bast-fibers and those cells containing calcium oxalate
crystals, which accompany the bast-fibers.

The phloem cells changed into bark cambium, cambium and
xylem cells.

Cork formed prematurely, due to an unusual development of
bark cambium in the phloem region.

TJie Cambium. — The cambium layer often disappeared. Its
cells were changed into xylem.

The Xylem. — The xylem responded by increased formation of
thylloses and thickening of cell walls.

Wound Tissue. — Wound tissue formed which varied from
normal to abnormal according to the toxicity of the solution injected.

Botanical Laboratory,

University of Pennsylvania,
April 17, 1916.

THE INJECTED TRUNKS OF CHESTNUT TREES 493

LITERATURE CITED.

1. RuMBOLD, Caroline. Methods of Injecting Trees. Phytopathology, 5:

225-229. 1915.

2. MoELLER, Joseph. Anatomie der Baumrinden, p. 68. Berlin, 1882.

3. ScHiLBERSZKY, Karl. Kunstlich hervorgerufene Bildung sekundarer (ex-

tra faszikularer) Gefassbiindel bei Dikotyledonen. Ber. d. D. bot. Ges.,
10: 424. 1892.

EXPLANATION OF PLATES.^

Fig. I. Unstained free-hand section. Section cut from a tree eight years
old, injected with methylene blue during the latter part of April. The tree
was felled in October. Dilution of methylene blue solution was i gram to 4
liters of water.

Fig. 2. Auerbach stain. Section cut from a tree nine years old injected
in May with meta-cresol i-iooo G.M. The branch was cut from the tree in
October.

Fig. 3. Delafield's hsematoxylon. Section cut from a ten-year-old tree
injected June and July with nitrophenol-para 1-500 G.M. Tree felled in
November.

Fig. 4. Auerbach stain. Section cut from sixteen-year-old tree injected
with lithium carbonate 1-500 G.M. in July, August, September and October.
Tree felled in November.

Fig. 5. An enlargement of a part of Fig. 4.

Fig. 6. Auerbach stain. Section cut from the tree shown in Figs. 4 and 5.

Fig. 7. An enlargement of a part of Fig. 6.

Fig. 8. An enlargement of a part of Fig. 7.

Fig. 9. Heidenheim's iron alum hsematoxylose. Section cut from a
fourteen-year-old tree, which was injected May, June and July with nitro-
phenol-para i-iooo G.M. Tree felled in November.

Fig. id. Auerbach stain. Section cut from a fourteen-year-old tree
which was injected in June and July with picric acid i-iooo G.M. Tree felled
in November.

Fig. II. An enlargement of a part of Fig. 10.

COLOR-PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE PHOSPHORESCENCE
OF CERTAIN METALLIC SULPHIDES.

By EDWARD L. NICHOLS. ^
(Read April 14, igi6.)

Among the most beautiful and interesting of phosphorescent sub-
stances are the sulphides prepared and described several years ago
by Professors Lenard and Klatt/ of Heidelberg. These substances
which consist of the sulphide of barium, calcium or strontium, with
a small admixture of some metallic salt — usually of copper, bismuth
or lead — are prepared by heating with a flux such as sodium sul-
phate, sodium borate or lithium phosphate. After exposure to day-
light or to violet or ultra-violet rays they glow for a considerable
time with characteristic colors which depend upon the particular
mixture used.

Variations in the brightness of phosphorescence with the time
find convenient indication by means of the curve of decay and the
effects of temperature, etc., on the intensity are likewise capable of
graphic or analytical expression. These relationships have already
been extensively studied by the authors just cited and others and in
a paper read before the American Philosophical Society in April,
1910, I presented the results of such an investigation. The subtle and
fleeting changes of color which occur as the phosphorescence dies
away or when the substance is heated or cooled or when we compare
sulphides varying in composition, do not lend themselves to such
methods of expression. The efifects must be seen to be appreciated
and it seemed of interest to try to record some of the phenomena by
means of color photographs.

Now the glow of even the brightest of these phosphorescent sub-
stances is in reality of very low intensity and color-plates such as the
Lumiere plates used in the experiments to be described are relatively

1 Lenard and Klatt, Annalcn dcr Pltysik, 15 (1904), also Lenard, ibid.,
31, p. 641 (1910).

494

PHOSPHORESCENCE OF METALLIC SULPHIDES. 495

slow. The total light effect obtained by a single excitation is in-
adequate for the proper exposure of the plate when used in the
camera in the ordinary manner. Indeed it was found in some pre-
liminary trials by Professor G. S. Moler and the writer that a plate
placed in immediate contact with a tube containing the phosphores-
cent sulphide as soon as practicable after intense excitation and
allowed to remain for several minutes or until nearly the whole of
the total light effect had been utilized, was decidedly under-exposed.

On the other hand the color effects to be recorded change rapidly,
especially during the first few hundredths of a second after excita-
tion so that it was necessary to obtain the equivalent of a large num-
ber of successive short exposures each made at the particular time
after excitation for which the color record was desired.

To this end a special form of phosphoroscope^ was constructed
by means of which the substance, enclosed in a flat tube of glass
about 10 cm. long and from i cm. to 1.5 cm. wide, was viewed
through a revolving disk with alternate open and closed sectors of
45° aperture. The disk was mounted on the shaft of an alternating
current synchronous motor on a 60-cycle circuit and excitation was
by a series of five sparks (£, Fig. i) between zinc terminals.

The sparks were produced by the action of the secondary coil
of a small step-up transformer with condenser C, in the same circuit.

!

e:

1

T

Fig. I.

A spur wheel of zinc (5) was mounted on the shaft of the motor
and its four arms passed the two terminals of the sparking circuit
with an air space of about i mm. The wheel was adjusted so that
this passage coincided with successive crests of the alternating-cur-

- See a paper presented by Nichols and Howes at the meeting of the
Am. Phys. Society, Washington, April, 1916, abstract Physical Revieiv (2),
VII., p. 586, 1916.

PROG. AMER, PHIL. SOC, VOL LV, EE, JULY I9, I916.

496 NICHOLS— COLOR-PHOTOGRAPHS OF

rent wave and the sectored disk was shifted until the sparking
occurred during eclipse, i. e., at the time when a closed sector ob-
scured from view both the sparks and the substance under excita-
tion (see Fig. 2, position i).

With this arrangement the specimen, which was mounted verti-
cally in a line parallel to the row of spark gaps and distant from
them about 2 cm., was intensely illuminated 120 times a second and
was visible during intermediate intervals of 1/240 of a second, each

Fig. 2.

beginning about .0001 second after excitation ceased (see Fig. 2,
position 2).

For observations during later stages of decay the wheel could be
driven slowly by means of a direct-current motor or moved stepwise
an eighth of a revolution at a time at the desired rate.

Since some of the most striking changes of color are produced
by differences of temperature, the tube containing the phosphorescent
sulphide was mounted within a cylindrical Dewar flask with un-
silvered walls. The lower end rested in a metal mercury cup while
the upper end passed through a heating coil (see Fig. 3). From
the bottom of the mercury cup, M, a copper rod projected down-
wards into liquid air. The region at A could thus be maintained
at a temperature of + 20° C, or higher, while the lower end at B
was at approximately — 185° C.

A fairly stable temperature gradient soon established itself and
the colors of phosphorescence through the entire range could be
observed and photographically recorded.

Excitation under these conditions was obtained by inserting the
sparking device within the Dewar flask and many photographs were
made in that way; but this is a procedure demanding special pre-

PHOSPHORESCENCE OF METALLIC SULPHIDES.

497

cautions, as the atmosphere above the liquid air is very rich in
oxygen and conflagration of the insulating materials and even the
metal parts is likely to occur.

The principal phenomena to be studied were those due to :

r>.

M J L B

LIQUID AIR

Fig. 3.

1. The change of color during the decadence of phosphorescence.

2. The effect on the color of phosphorescence when excitation
occurs at temperatures between -|- 20° and — 185°.

Changes During Decay.

To confirm the well-known phenomenon of change of color dur-
ing decay it is only necessary to mount one of the sulphides in the
phosphoroscope and excite with the disk running at normal speed,
i. e., 1,800 rev. a minute. The appearance as viewed through the
revolving disk is then that due to its phosphorescence during the
interval .0001 to .004 second (approx.) after excitation. If the
excitation be stopped by breaking the spark circuit the changes of
color as phosphorescence dies away can be followed for several
seconds.

In the case, for example, of a sulphide known as No, 33 (Ba,
Cu, NaoB^Oy) the initial tint of red-yellow changes to a deep red.
Another preparation, No. 3 (Ca, Bi, NajSO^; CaF^NaoB^O^), which
is typical of many, appears bluish green through the rapidly revolving
disk and changes very rapidly after the close of excitation to a deep

498 NICHOLS— COLOR-PHOTOGRAPHS OF

violet. (Photographs were shown at the meeting illustrating these
and similar cases.)

The work of Lenard and others using a very different pro-
cedure has shown the spectra of these substances to consist oi broad
overlapping bands distinguishable from each other chiefly by the
mode of excitation, duration, and the influence of temperature and it
is clear that in these and similar cases we have to do with two or
more such bands.

In the first of these two examples the change of color may obvi-
ously be explained by the more rapid decay of the band of shorter
wave-length ; an hypothesis readily verified by observing the sub-
stance as seen through the disk with a spectroscope. What appears
as a single very broad band collapses promptly from the green end
when the exciting circuit is broken, leaving the red portion only,
which persists for many seconds.

We have to do then with a combination of a band of very
short duration (having its crest in the green) and a band of long
duration in the red and the color at any time after the close of
excitation is the sum of the instantaneous values of the two com-
ponents.

Since the decay of the green band is very rapid indeed, its in-
tensity becoming negligible in a small fraction of a second, the
appearance of the phosphorescent surface when observed by ordinary
methods is chiefly due to the red component and it appears of a
much more ruddy color than when viewed through the rapidly re-
volving disk. The same is true of all the other barium sulphides
studied.

The Ca and Sr sulphides in general appear as greenish blue, pure
blue or even violet as in the example cited (No. 3) when viewed
in the ordinary manner ; but in the phosphoroscope they are green,
going over into blue or violet after the cessation of the periodic
excitation. Here obviously we again have to do with two bands of
which the green is of very short duration, while it is not in this
case the band of longer wave-length which persists but that of
greater refrangibility. It appears in general that these sulphides fall
into two distinct classes : Those of which the persistent band is of
longer wave-length, i. e., red, chiefly if not exclusively barium

PHOSPHORESCENCE OF METALLIC SULPHIDES.

499

sulphides, and those of which the persistent band is of shorter wave-
length.

Thirty-four sulphides examined by the method already described
showed color changes in accordance with the foregoing classification.

Color Changes Due to Cooling.

Since the intensity of the band of rapid decay vanishes in a small
fraction of a second, ordinary observations of the phosphorescence
of these sulphides pertain, as has already been pointed out, to the
persistent band alone. It is not possible moreover to isolate the rapid
band by the use of the phosphoroscope, since during the brief period
immediately following excitation we have both bands present and the
color due to their combination.

The slow bands, however, are greatly diminished in intensity
by cooling the phosphorescent substance and are often reduced almost
or quite to the vanishing point. Thus it is possible by lowering the
substance during the experiment to temperatures approaching that o£
liquid air, to observe the color and intensity of the rapid band, by
itself.

When we cool the lower end of a tube of the BaCu sulphide No.
33 with liquid air, as described in a previous paragraph, and observe

F

AS1

SLOW

RED-YELLOW

/^

-- +20"

-40°

(^-^

RED

GREEM

-120'

-- BLACK

RED-YELLOW—

160°

---RED

GREEN

A

180°

B

— BLACK

Fig. 4-

its phosphorescence through the sectored disk, the red-yellow of the
upper (warm) end merges gradually into a brilliant green occupy-
ing the cooler regions below. A red-yellow patch occurs still lower
down, while at the very bottom where the temperature approaches

500

NICHOLS— COLOR-PHOTOGRAPHS OF

that of liquid air there is a return to green. The distribution of
colors and approximate temperatures are indicated in Fig. 4 (A).

That this remarkable distribution of colors is to be interpreted
as the result of the killing off of the " slow " red band by cooling
and its subsequent recurrence at about — 160°, is beautifully con-
firmed by the appearance of the tube after the entire cessation of
excitation. When the spark circuit is broken, the green vanishes at
once but the red regions above and below continue to glow for many
seconds as indicated in Fig. 4 (B).

In 1910 I measured the change in the phosphorescence of this
substance^ effected by temperature. The curve, which is reproduced
in Fig. 5, applies to the red band only, since the green band would
have vanished long before observations of brightness could be made

140° -120° -100°- -eo"

Fig. S-

by the method then employed. It describes exactly the appearance
noted in Fig. 4B, i. e., a rapid diminution on cooling, complete dis-
appearance at about — 120° C, a recurrence of measurable intensity
below — 140° with a maximum at — 160°.

All BaCu combinations, so far as examined, have a red-yellow
color of phosphorescence at room temperature with the red band of
longer duration, but the relative intensity of the red varies greatly

^Proc. of Am. Philosophical Sac, XLIX., 275, 1910.

PHOSPHORESCENCE OF METALLIC SULPHIDES.

501

with different fluxes and proportions. While the persistence of the
green band at low temperatures seems to be a general property of
these substances the recrudescence of the red as in the example here
considered is not so apparent in other cases. In the other substances
of this class it must be regarded either as masked by the brightness
of the green component or entirely absent. In the former case one
might expect a modification of the green at the temperature in ques-
tion and in several specimens thus far studied this is clearly the case.

The effect of cooling the phosphorescent sulphides of calcium
and strontium is analogous to that just described.

The band of long duration is greatly weakened or disappears;

FAST
GREEN -BLUE— — - +20*

GREEN -

SLOW

A

185

Fig. 6.

—VIOLET

- -BLACK

8

the other, which in all these cases, so far as has been observed, is a
green band, persists.

Since the band destroyed by cold is, however, blue or violet, the
change of color is in the opposite direction from that noted in the
case of the barium compounds, i. e., from blue or blue-green to green
instead of from red-yellow to green.

The most striking example in this class is perhaps the combina-
tion (Ca, Bi, Na.SO^; CaF,, Na^B^O^) already referred to. The
greenish blue of early phosphorescence, as observed through the
sectored disk at -|-20°, goes over to a full green of short duration
in the cold portions of the tube, the phosphorescence of long dura-
tion being in both cases of a remarkably rich pure violet. See
Figure 6.

It is obvious that the methods described in this paper bring out
from quite a new standpoint the structure of the phosphorescence

502 NICHOLS— PHOSPHORESCENCE OF METALLIC SULPHIDES.

spectra of these sulphides and enable us not only to record the
changes of color but to explain them.

Many interesting points are still to be determined which are
likely to have a bearing upon the theories of luminescence.

It will be possible for example, having shown that the bands of
short duration are really separable by cooling from the components
of slow decay, to locate these properly by the use of the spectro-
photometer and phosphoroscope.

We shall then know whether the green band which persists at
low temperatures is the same for all the sulphides or, as is more
likely, varies in position and character with the compound employed ;
in what manner the components of long duration depend on the
composition; whether the loss of brilliancy which many of these
substances undergo with age, affects both sets of bands, etc.

Physical Laboratory of Cornell University,
April, 1916.

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Vol. LV. 1916. No. 7.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Cooperation as a Factor in Evolution. William Patten .... 503
A Dynamical Theory of Antagonism. W. J. V. Osterhout .... 533
Minutes ix

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1916

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SEP 6 19tf7

COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

By WILLIAM PATTEN.

{Read April 15, 1916.)
I.

Evolution is the summation of power through cooperation. For
evolution, so far as a science of relative measurements can estimate,
is a process of self-maintained growth, or progressive creation; and
cooperation, which is the joint action of discrete powers in a common
service, is the only knowable way of creating new things and new
kinds of power. It is the cooperative action, for example, between
atom's, or cells, or organs, or human beings, that creates the new and
larger units, called molecules, or individuals, or organisms, or so-
ciety, all of which are endowed with powers different in quantity and
in quality from those of their constituent parts. These larger units,
with their appropriate powers, then constitute the ways and means
for further cooperative action and for the creation thereby of still
larger units with new creative powers.

The duration and progress of evolution depends on the attain-
ment of a fundamental righteousness in the methods of cooperation,
the "right" methods being attained by "accident," by "trial and
error," and by " design." The process, in any case, is inevitably
accumulative, or a process of growth, because of the inherent creative
and saving power of cooperation.

Any change in the existing methods of cooperation either checks,
or accelerates, the rate of evolution, or modifies its direction, the
result depending on the creative value of the change.

Given equal time and opportunities, the degree of progress, or
the length of the genetic line, indicates the creative value of the
methods of cooperation that were used to attain the result. The
methods of internal organic cooperation of the animal, for example,
have yielded incomparably higher products than those of the plant,

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LV, FF, AUG. 19, I916.

503

504 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

although one has had the same length of time for development, and
the same opportunities in the world at large, as the other. On the
other hand, the prevailing methods of cooperative action between the
plant kingdom and the animal kingdom are essential factors in the
evolution of life as a whole, and in the creation of the highest prod-
ducts of both kingdoms. Hence our estimates of values will vary
with our visual angle ; that is, according as we consider each method
or individual by itself, and as an end in itself, or as several different
methods, or individuals, acting together for a larger end.

As the vertebrate has progressed farther in the same time and in
the same general surroundings than the plant, or than the starfish,
or the snail, it is well to inquire what are the basic methods of struc-
ture and organization on which this progress depends.

In such an inquiry, we may confine our attention to the internal
structure of the individual organism, ignoring, for the time being,
its external environment ; for, in the main, the external environment
is a common factor, affecting all kinds of life in the same way ; any
special response of the individual to its environment is due to the
special structure and special internal life of that individual.

The external environments, for example, of the dog and his
master, of father and son, of the bee and the flower, may be essen-
tially the same, but these environments will not affect all their resi-
dents in the same way. The things in them that cooperate with the
life of one may have no existence in the life of the other because the
inner structure and response of the one to the other is different.

Thus while the initial source of our knowledge of living things
is external, as our knowledge of these things deepens, it tends to ex-
press itself more and more in terms of their inner mechanism of
response and in the cooperative action of their various internal parts.

The older school of naturalists laid too much emphasis on the
external environment of the completed individual, and of necessity
ignored its complex inner mechanism of response to the outer
world, because that mechanism was inaccessible to them. The more
modern school of genetics lays too much stress on the beginning of
individual life, on the assumption, expressed or imphed, that at the
beginning of things, the solution of vital problems is simpler and

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 505

easier, and that their solution carries the solution of end results
with them.

This is only a fraction of the truth. The beginning of life is
apparently simpler than the end because fewer questions are asked.
The later structures have not at that time arisen and do not then call
for explanation. But no formula for Alpha will serve for Omega.
Every phase and stage of life brings its own problems; each one has
its own creative power. The biologist must consider each of these
problems as they arise, individually and organically ; both as inde-
pendent units and as dependent members of a genetic series, or
organic whole. For each phase of life is created by that which pre-
cedes, and is the creator of that which follows. For this reason,
while every science is tributary to every other science, each one is
the rightful arbiter in its own field. The sociologist, who now leans
too heavily on the biologist, is as likely to be led astray as those who
formerly learned too heavily on the theologian. The true sociologist^
like the morphologist, is master in his own field, and in things socio-
logical it is his business to teach the biologist and the theologian. For
he alone is best able to estimate the creative value of the cooperative
innovations upon which each stage of social progress stands, just
as the morphologist can best estimate the creative value and direc-
tive influence of perforate gill clefts, and the four-chambered heart,
or a particular mode of dentition, without reference to germ-plasma
and chromosomes, and without waiting for the students of heredity
to decide for him whether acquired characters are inherited, or not.
The morphologist knows that the tongue, the hand, the brain, the
skeleton, and the yolk of the egg have a directive and creative value
that is wholly their own product, a value which can never be meas-
ured in terms of chromosomes, or in terms of any other remote
antecedent conditions, any more than the properties of water, or
protoplasm, or consciousness, can be measured, or be profitably dis-
cussed, in terms of chemical elements. Each part and organ, at each
stage of its progress, must be measured in terms of its own existing
properties, not in those of its constituents, nor in those of remote
antecedent conditions.

506- PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

II.

That cooperation is an important agent in human and in animal
societies has often been recognized, but, so far as the author is
aware, it has always been considered as something unusual or ex-
ceptional in nature, and has been chiefly or solely attributed to the
instinctive or intelligent actions of social organisms.

We maintain, however, that cooperation is a universal creative
and preservative agent. Its sphere of activity includes cosmic, as
well as organic, social and mental processes ;, its directive influence
is as commanding in the one field as in the other, and its creative and
preservative power is no less effective whether it is called into action
by " trial and error," or by " accident," or by " design."

The broader interpretation herein proposed provides a rational
basis for the identification of the two great protagonists in nature:
construction and destruction ; it helps us to visualize the evolution
of world power through the conversion of disorder into order ; and
it provides a common starting point, a common agency, and a com-
mon terminology for all students whose subject matter is the product
of evolution, or growth.

The familiar terms " evolution," the " struggle for existence " and
the " survival of the fittest " are essentially meaningless and unsatis-
fying terms because they fail to indicate what is good and what is
evil, or to give any comprehensive explanation of how things come
into being, why they endure, and how they increase in power. These
questions lie at the root of all organic or inorganic products ; they are
the fundamental questions which all sciences and all religions seek
to answer.

But when we realize that evolution is the summation of power
through cooperation, that what we call " evil " is that which prevents
or destroys cooperation, and " good " is that which perpetuates or
improves cooperation ; when we realize that the " struggle for exist-
ence " is a struggle to find better ways and means of cooperation, and
the " fittest " is the one that cooperates best — we shall then realize
that science and religion and government stand on common ground
and have a common purpose. Until this basic truth, is recognized
there can be no common goal for intellectual endeavor ; no common

FATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 507

rules for individual and social conduct; no common standard of
what is right and what is wrong; and no common knowledge of
that which creates and preserves and that which destroys.

That all evolution, or growth, is the summation of power through
cooperative action is axiomatic. But while this axiom does not
define what power is, nor what the nature of the ultimate act of
cooperation is, it goes far toward satisfying our intellectual demand
for some universal instrument of creation and preservation, and at
the same time it provides us with a single standard for the measure
of service. For service is always the product of cooperative action ;
it is that which creates and preserves new products by new ways
and means of cooperation.

But the extent to which cooperation is attained depends on the
extent to which " righteousness " is attained ; for cooperation can-
not take place except the right things are brought into a definite time
and space relation to one another. The chief service of cooperative
action, therefore, consists in the conveyance of the right kinds of
power to the right times and places for further cooperative action.

The universal measure of progress, therefore, is the progress of
cooperative action by the part and the whole for the part and the
whole.

In the world at large, progress is measured : ( i ) by the diversity
of its products; (2) by the power of these products to sustain one
another through mutually profitable exchange; and (3) by their
power to create, with the profits, a better system of cooperative
service.

In the organic world, the individual plant, or animal, is created
and preserved: (i) by its internal system of organic cooperation;
(2) by its cooperative response to the larger cosmic processes in
which it resides; and (3) by its cooperation, directly or indirectly,
with other living organisms.

And the welfare and security of the entire fabric of organic life,
and of its highest products, is assured by conserving the welfare and
security of all its cooperating parts.

508 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

III.

But every analysis of nature leads to the question of growth, for
growth is everywhere an underlying phenomenon in evolution.
While the basic impetus to growth is doubtless unknowable, the
conditions which divert, restrict, or liberate that impetus may be
observed and estimated.

Our interpretation of nature is based largely on the following
conclusions concerning growth, which are herewith submitted, with-
out, for the present, further discussion or defense.

1. Morphology is the science of form, and form is the outward
expression of growth.

2. The vis a tergo in life is the product of internal cooperative
exchange (metabolism).

3. Growth is profitable exchange with the outside world, or the
local accumulation of those agents whose demands are the impetus
to exchange.

4. The rate at which growth proceeds depends: (a) on the in-
herent nature of the growing point, or its affinity or " demand " for
more materials; (b) on the distribution of supplies; (c) on the
capacity of the conveyers, that is, on their capacity to convey com-
modities to and from the growing points, or the growing points to
the sources of supply; and (d) on the cooperative, or creative, value
of the service rendered by the exchange.

5. A local population of molecules, cells, or human beings, can-
not give or take more than the existing conveyers can carry ; nor can
exchange take place beyond the point where delivery and removal
can be made.

6. The capacity of a conveyer depends on the load it can carry,
the distance it can be carried, and the speed. The factors, load, dis-
tance, and speed, vary with the commodity; and different methods
of conveyance are required for different commodities. In human
society, there is one method for the individual man, one for water,
coal, groceries, and ideas. In protoplasm, different methods are
required to convey solid and liquid foods, oxygen, and waste prod-
ucts, or to transmit light and other stimuli.

7. In all such cases, the capacity of the conveyers is limited. It

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 509

is temporarily limited by the methods of constructing, or arranging,
the conveyers ; these methods may be changed or improved. It is
permanently limited by the inherent nature of the conveyer, and by
the nature of the things to be conveyed ; these conditions cannot be
modified or improved.

8. But there are no limits to the demands for more materials,
for the old demands remain till satisfied, and being satisfied, create
new demands.

9. When many commodities are required at a given point at the
same time, the rate of growth is determined by the maximum ca-
pacity of the slowest conveyer.

10. Since there are unlike local rates and directions of conveyance,
unlike local growths arise, unlike in volume, or in quality, or in both.
These products of growth become the new agents by whose coopera-
ative action further growth is made possible.

Evolution, therefore, is not due to the subdivision of labor be-
tween like units ; rather is it that growth inevitably creates different
kinds of laborers thereby making the subdivision of labor the im-
perative condition of their existence.

Growth, therefore, creates the power which is used to satisfy its
own demands, and a surplus power, or profit, for freedom of action,
which is then used to experiment and explore, thereby finding better
w^ays and means of satisfying its demands.

The same principle may be expressed in commercial or economic
terms instead of dynamic terms : progress cannot take place unless
the creative value of the service performed pays the cost of the
service and yields a surplus profit for freedom. Freedom then be-
comes the instrument for the discovery, or invention, of better ways
and means of service.

11. Growth inevitably creates diversified conditions which tend
to check its own progress till released by better cooperation. For
growth reduces the immediately available supplies, thereby requiring
greater expenditures to procure them ; moreover the new internal
conditions created by growth create new products, with new de-
mands, faster than the right ways of administering them can be
found.

In order, with diminishing supplies, to meet the increasing de-

510 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

mands of a growing body, the conveyers must ultimately be utilized
to their full capacity ; when that point is approached, the rate of
growth will- diminish, for the expenditures for conveyance will tend
to exceed the creative value of the products. The previous rate of
growth can then only be maintained by economizing, or improving,
or by extending, the ways and means of conveyance. That is to
say, either the lines of conveyance must be lengthened, or the rate
of conveyance accelerated, or the powers of penetration increased.

But better conveyance simply means better methods of coopera-
tion to that end between the older products of growth ; that is, it
means the using of those methods which yield more profitable ex-
change, or which create still more voluminous and diversified prod-
ucts. These new products then constitute the new means to a still
larger end ; for the creation of diversified products is essential to
the invention of new methods of organic cooperation.

12. Growth, therefore, is automatically controlled. For since the
rate and the extent of growth depends on the capacity of its con-
veyers, growth will be checked whenever the new demands created
by growth approach the full capacity of its conveyers, and it will be
released when better ways and means of conveyance have been
found. Thus growth always tends to outrun cooperation, and better
cooperation always produces more growth, with new inperfections
which still better cooperation alone can remedy.

13. The rate and direction of evolution varies greatly from time
to time, according to the methods of cooperation utilized.

These changes of pace and direction in evolution are the real
basis of our systems of classifying the organic and inorganic prod-
ucts of nature.

14. The principal kinds of conveyance in the internal organic
life of the individual are nervous, alimentary, vascular, and excre-
tory; in the external life they are cosmic circulation, locomotion,
and communication. All the epoch-making events in organic evolu-
tion are due to the introduction of better service in one or more of
these methods of conveyance.

15. The changes of pace in organic evolution, following the adop-
tion of important improvements in cooperation, in retrospect appear
as gaps of larger or smaller magnitude, between classes, orders, and

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 511

species. These apparent gaps would still be present, even though the
records were complete,

i6. Growth follows the easiest and most profitable lines of con-
veyance, and its products accumulate along the lines of least resist-
ance. Thus the form and structure, or morphology, of a given
organism is the physical machinery of life and the outward expres-
sion of its internal methods of cooperative action. Life (physiol-
ogy) is the act of creating that machinery.

The rapid rate, the certainty, and the precision of embryonic
growth reveal the efficiency of the initial, established methods of
organic cooperation. The universal onset of individual senility and
death — the one the accumulation, the other the culmination of un-
coordinated growth — reveals the present imperfections in the methods
of organic cooperation. But the perpetual renewal and reinforce-
ment of individual life, to which evolution testifies, reveal the larger
process, and are an assurance of the immortality and perpetual prog-
ress of organized nature.

17. Cooperation in the inner life of the individual is a pre-
requisite to cooperation in the outer life. It is the means by which
it attains greater power and that larger physical volume that inevi-
tably goes with larger power; and this larger organic power of the
individual is the instrument by which it finds the larger sources of
supplies, and the better ways of cosmic and social cooperation ; it is
the instrument by which it attains that which is good for itself, and
avoids that which is evil.

And the demands of its larger volume is an added obligation for
better internal and external cooperation in self-preservation.

18. The same laws which prevail in the inner and outer life of
animals and plants prevail in the social life of man. Man's social
progress is measured by the degree to which he has extended the
mutually profitable give and take of cooperative action beyond him-
self, into the family, tribe, and state, and into the world of life at
large. The chief agents of civilization — language, commerce, sci-
ence, literature, art, and religion — are the larger and more enduring
instruments of conveyance which better enable the part and the
whole to avoid that which is evil and to find that which is good, and
which yield a larger surplus for freedom.

512 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

IV.

Let us consider a few special cases that may serve to make our
meaning clearer. We shall have space to refer to a few of the more
important points only.

Let us assume that equal units or cells are growing under uniform
conditions, suspended in a medium from which they draw their
varied supplies. Such units will tend to form a solid sphere, in-
creasing in volume till its radius is nearly equal in length to the
longest line of conveyance requisite for metabolism (Fig. i. A).
The sphere might enlarge beyond that point, but if it did, an ever
larger central space would be formed, filled with fluid, or non-living
materials and the thickness of its living walls could not be greater
than the longest line of effective conveyance through protoplasm,
nor less than the one necessary for structural stability, or cohesion.

Growth in a spherical form beyond either of these limits, would
be impossible. But since there are more such lines of exchange, in
a cylinder or disc, with two or three unlike axes, than in a sphere of
equal volume, as fast as all of the possible lines of conveyance are
occupied, the spherical body, of necessity, assumes a more and more
discoidal or cylindrical form, C, E. This change of form cannot
be regarded as an extraneous " variation " to accommodate growth ;
it is the inevitable result of growth attaining its fullest expression. It
marks the successive steps in the attainment of the maximum length
of the lines of conveyance, the attainment of the maximum number
of such lines, and the accumulation of the products of growth along
the lines of least resistance.

When the cylindrical, or discoidal, body has reached its limits of
growth, still further increase would be possible by opening up the
interior, D. But here again the increased dimensions attainable by
this improvement in conveyance are limited, for the walls could not
exceed a definite thickness without the formation of a new barren
area (coelomic cavity) between the inner and outer surface of the
walls, and when that limit was reached, growth should again cease.

But the inevitable effects of these changes, even if we assume that
no minor complications arose, would be very great. They would
tend : ( i ) to orient the cylindrical, or disc-shaped body to the chief

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 513

external lines of force acting upon it; (2) to determine its own
direction of movement, and thereby determine its distribution in
space; (3) to establish definite internal lines of conveyance, unlike

Fig. I. A-E. Diagrams indicating the lines of exchange in a hypo-
thetical growing body suspended in a nutrient fluid, and the form and
structure it would assume if growth followed the lines of easiest convey-
ance and its products accumulated along the lines of least resistance.

F-I. Diagrams to illustrate how local inequalities in radial growth would
be obliterated and the original asymmetry restored by the tendency of the
other parts to grow along the paths of least resistance.

J-L. Diagrams to illustrate the conversion of radial growth into the
apico-bilateral growth, the body of the radiate type, /, becoming the head
of the bilateral type, L. The new cylindrical body supplants the old spher-
ical one owing to the greater economic advantages and creative power of
linear and bilateral distribution over radial distribution.

514 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

in direction, in content, and in speed ; solid bodies passing freely
in and out of the interior, and various other agents passing through
the walls from within outwards, and still different agents in the
opposite directions from without inwards; and (4) the character of
the structures produced along the lines and points of unlike condi-
tions would necessarily be unlike in texture and arrangement.

This purely hypothetical case is cited to show that a progressively
diversified structure, reacting to the outside world at each succes-
sive stage in its own peculiar way, is an inevitable accompaniment of
growth, whatever the initial nature of the growing material may be.
That is, the form and the structure of such an organism are the
resultant products of an internal growth, which follows the lines of
easiest conveyance, and whose products accumulate along the lines
of least resistance. And the structure of the organism so produced
determines its reaction, as a whole, to the outside world. On the
cooperative value of that reaction depends its survival, or elimina-
tion, or the particular time or place, or sphere, of external environ-
ment within which it may endure.

The obvious conclusion is that it is futile, and essentially unsci-
entific in method, to seek for the " explanation " of the structure and
function of an adult organism, in terms of germinal units, when the
only " explanation " to be found, if any, is in the analysis of a long
series of internal and external conditions, and when the things to be
explained are the last terms of the series, not the first.

A body produced in the manner indicated above would have the
essential characters of a radiate animal, or one growing at equal
rates along its corresponding oral radii. Two principal modifications
of this method of growth might arise, due to some constant local
condition : namely increased tangential growth, or increased growth
along one radius. The former, if carried to an extreme, would tend
to form a spiral, or might revert to the original radial form (Fig.
I, F-I). Such a method of growth carries with it obvious mechan-
ical difficulties and no apparent advantages. The uniradial method,
if carried to an extreme, leads toward the bilateral type of apical
growth, and carries with it those great mechanical and economic ad-
vantages which have led to its retention and elaboration in all the
more highly organized animals (Fig. i, J-L).

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 515

But none of the higher animals begins its life as an isolated point
within a nutrient solution. It is true that an adult animal may be
sessile or free, and the mode of life adopted has an important mould-
ing influence on its form and action. But what is more important,
because more constant and universal, is the fact that practically every
individual metazoan, from the very outset, begins its life as a sessile
organism, for it is attached to a more or less inert spherical body (the
egg yolk), whose store of non-living contents tends to increase in
volume with the progress of evolution. The growth of the embryo
is initiated at some point in that body, usually near its surface.
Under these conditions, the products of growth inevitably tend to
take on the form of a four-layered film, growing in an apico-bilateral
direction, with a distributing space, or coelom, between the layers,
because that way provides the most economic solution of the initial
problems of exchange upon which growth depends, and the most
accessible places for the accumulation of the products of growth ;
moreover it is the only way in which the more voluminous specialized
growth of the higher organisms can take place.

The volume of the egg, or its circumference, at once determines
the distance the film has to grow in order to enclose the yolk, and
the volume determines the amount of growth that may occur before
taking in new food supplies from without. But the volume of the
egg food cannot change the graded sequence of time and space con-
ditions that must inevitably appear in a film growing over the surface
of a nutritive sphere.

These graded series of time and space relations determine the
basic lines of conveyance and growth, which in turn are expressed
in terms of structural gradients, or axes and surfaces, such as the
gradient to the right and gradient to the left, gradient from head end
to tail end, from the neural surface to the haemal surface, and from
the outer layers to the inner layers.

The fact that in all apico-bilateral growth the lines of unlike
time and space conditions created by the progress of growth coincide
with unlike morphological structures is presumptive evidence that
these conditions are essential factors in the creation of those struc-
tures and that they are the underlying cause of the homologies in

516 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

serial organs and concentric layers which prevail throughout the
entire series of segmented animals.

Fig. 2. Diagram to illustrate the transition from the radial to the
apico-lateral type of growth, in an arachnid embryo growing on a spherical
yolk surface.

A-C. Surface view showing relation of the gastrula stage (radial type)
to the apico-bilateral type; also the relation of marginal growth (concres-
cence), apical growth, blastopore, primitive mouth, and telopore, to one
another.

D-G. Same, in transverse section.

H-J. Longitudinal sections showing the four primary channels of ex-
change, nervous system, alimentary canal, heart, and coelom.

With the growth of the film around the egg, the great landmarks
in the morphology of segmented animals may be definitely located:
namely, head and tail end, right and left sides, and neural and
haemal surfaces; and the three great channels of conveyance: nerve
cord, alimentary canal, and heart, with the segmented channels aris-
ing from them, are definitely established (Fig. 2). It might well
be said that these landmarks are as unmistakable as the north and
the south pole, or the right and left hand, if it were not for the fact

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 517

that they are persistently confused in practically all of our text books,
a condition chiefly due to the incubus of an ancient terminology that
had its origin before the days of embryology ; a terminology based
on the position of the animal in locomotion, not on its internal struc-
ture and its mode of growth.

The peculiar advantages of bilateral apical growth over the radial
plan, are apparent when we examine the embryo of one of the higher
invertebrates, such as a scorpion, or Limulns, where all the impor-
tant organs are clearly laid down in triaxial gradients coincident with
the chief lines of conveyance (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Diagrams (mercator projections) of arachnid embryos show-
ing how apico-bilateral growth on a spherical surface follows the lines of
easiest conveyance and least resistance, thereby determining the chief mor-
phological features of the embryo. From Patten, " The Evolution of the
Vertebrates and their Kin."

In the radial plan, there are only two unlike sides, oral and
aboral, while innumerable homologous points on corresponding radii,

518 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

in their time and space relations to the whole, are alike. In the
apico-bilateral plan, there are six unlike sides, and no two points in
the whole body are exactly alike.

It is this greater diversity in local conditions, capable of infinite
expansion, that ultimately creates in the higher, segmented animals
the greater diversity in organic products so essential to cooperation
and the subdivision of labor.

At the same time it will be observed that the location of the
various organs fixes the location of the points of intake and discharge
of special commodities thereby establishing a certain necessary order,
or sequence of events, in the passage of these commodities through
the three great channels of conveyance.

But a linear arrangement of many similar organs, so character-
istic of primitive metamerism, would not, in the more voluminous
stages of the higher animals, give fullest expression to the latent pos-
sibilities of apical, bilateral growth. That is brought about by the
gradual breakdown of metamerism, most clearly marked at the
cephalic end, and chiefly due to the reduction in the number of
multiple parts and to the concentration of functions according to
a definite linear order at those points best fitted for the performance
of their function. That is to say, in the rearrangement of organs
that inevitably follows increase in volume, or in the " competition " of
organs for position, each function, as in a growing, well-organized
factory, tends to become established in that place in the system where
it thrives best, or cooperates best, and for that reason is best able
to perform its function. And this tendency will be perpetually
operative because of the greater cooperative and creative value of its
service to the whole organism when it is so placed. But any arrange-
ment of functions must be subject to the previously established fun-
damental order of inflow and outflow through the three great chan-
nels of exchange: nervous, alimentary, and vascular; to the mechan-
ical requirements of organic and bodily movements ; to the inherent
limitations in the tensile strength of protoplasm ; and to its powers
of resonant response.

The history of the evolution of the arthropod-vertebrate stock,
covering a period of many millions of years, is chiefly the history of
the growth of old organs, the addition of new ones, and the per-

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 519

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eye

cL

OXC

cay c *

2 4 tp'

C

..ttifiK.

canv

Figs. 4a and 4b. Diagrams illustrating the embryonic development of an
arachnid embryo and the hypothetical transition stages to one of the vertebrate
type. For further exlanation, see Patten, " The Evolution of the Verte-
brates and their Kin."

petual readjustment of the new and the old to one another in such
a way as to give better organic cooperation. And because of this
improvement in organic cooperation, the individual organism in-
evitably increases in volume, in power, and in freedom.

PROC. AMER, PHIL. SOC, VOL. LV, GO, AUG. I9, I916.

520 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

Fig. 4b.

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 521

If we compare the embryo of an arachnid, scorpion, or Limitlits,
with that of a primitive vertebrate, the basic similarity in their mode
of growth, the arrangement of their parts, and the natural transition
of one type into the other, is clearly apparent (Figs. 4a and 4b).

In both cases, there are in their appropriate places, the medullary
plate, the chief sense organs, the neuromeres, somites, lateral plates,
heart, primitive streak, notochord, and germ cells ; there is also the
inevitable concrescence of the germ-wall as it spreads in an apico-
bilateral direction over the spherical surface of the Qgg, as well as
many other more detailed resemblances that we can not go into here.

All these structural resemblances show that the chief points of
intake and discharge, the basic routes for the conveyance of com-
modities, and the sequence of way stations and terminals, that are so
characteristic of the vertebrate stock, are already well established
in the higher members of the arachnid stock.

But there are some striking differences which we will briefly
consider, as they also illustrate the principles we have in mind. The
three most important ones are as f ollow^s :

1. In the arachnids, the stomod?eum, or cesophagus, passes through
the floor of the medullary plate, while in vertebrates it lies in front
of it.

2. In arthropods, there are several pairs of jaw-like appendages
which are located on the neural surface, and which, in chewing or
biting, move alternately in a right and left direction. In typical
vertebrates, the jaws consist of one or two unpaired arches, the
posterior arch being freely movable in an antero-posterior direction.

3. The gill chambers of the vertebrates open into the alimentary
canal, while, in arachnids, they do not.

In at least two of these cases, the differences are more apparent
than real, for the prevailing methods of growth in the arachnids, if
carried further, would ultimately lead to the conditions found in the
vertebrates.

That is to say, the concentration of the cephalic neuromeres in
the head region of the arachnids has already narrowed the stomo-
dseal opening through the floor of the forebrain to a minute canal
barely large enough for the passage of fluids, thereby compelling the
great majority of arachnids to adopt a liquid diet.

622 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

Moreover the arachnid medullary plate, by a process of embryonic
invagination and overgrowth, barely falls short of forming a closed
chamber. Neither of these processes could be carried much further
without either completely constricting the cesophagus, or shutting up
the mouth inside a hollow brain. Such an event would be fatal

new

Fig. 5. Diagrammatic sagittal sections of the arachnid and vertebrate
type of embryos. For further explanation, see Patten, " The Evolution of
the Vertebrates and their Kin."

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 623

unless a new opening into the alimentary canal were already available
elsewhere. Such an opening is available in what I have called the
cephalic navel, a temporary embryonic opening into the enteron,
lying on the hremal surface of the embryo in a region corresponding
to that where the vertebrate mouth is located.

What has probably taken place, then, is this : in the vertebrates the
old invertebrate oesophagus (Fig. 5, A) has been gradually choked
up by a vigorously growing nervous system and its external opening
competely enclosed within the brain chamber. A new entrance to
the alimentary canal was then established through an old channel,
of unknown significance, in a more convenient place. The remnants
of this old, shut-in mouth and oesophagus are still conspicuous
features (otherwise inexplicable) in the brain of all vertebrates,
/'. c, the infundibulum, the saccus vasculosus, and the large opening
in the roof of the fourth ventricle, now closed by a thin membrane^
the choroid plexus (Fig. 5, 5).

The position of the jaws is also changed by the same cause, for
the great size of the embryonic forebrain, at an early period, lifts the
head of the embryo off the surface of the egg, and forces the jaws,
or oral arches, apart, toward the haemal surface, where they con-
verge around the new oral opening (Fig. 4, 31-34). At least three
pairs of arches are involved in this movement, and the important
steps in the process may still be observed in many vertebrates.

The transfer of all three pairs of oral arches to the haemal sur-
face may be readily observed, although heretofore overlooked, in
frog embryos (Fig. 6). Their ultimate union, along an elongated
median depression, gives rise to the fronto-nasal process, the maxil-
lary and mandiblar arches, and gives us the key to the morphology
of the facial region in all the higher vertebrates.

Similar conditions may be seen in the adult stages of a very
primitive living vertebrate, Myxine (Fig. y,E), and also in the
Ostracoderms, which form the connecting link between the giant
sea scorpions and the true fishes. In Bothriolepis (Fig. 7, A') both
the maxillary and mandibular arches are provided with bony plates
located on the ha?mal side of the body and which work against each
other in a transverse direction, thus furnishing an instructive tran-

524 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

sitional stage between the typical arthropod and typical vertebrate
jaws.

pynx.< .

Fig. 6. Development of the jaws of the frog. The figures show the
presence of three pairs of appendage-Hke oral lobes of the arthropod type,
their migration from the neural to the haemal side of the head, and their
union to form the transverse unpaired upper and lower jaws of the verte-
brate type. From Patten, " The Evolution of the Vertebrates and their Kin."

Evidence of a similar condition is seen in man, for one of the
chief events in the embryonic growth of his face is the concrescence

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 525

of several pairs of oral arches to form the unpaired jaws, and some
of the adjacent organs of the adult (Fig. 8).

Fig. 7. ^-Z). Development of the jaws of the sturgeon. After Sa-
lensky. E, head of Bdellostoma, a primitive vertebrate, showing three
pairs of oral appendages similar to those in the frog embryo. F , Bothrio-
lepis, an ancient, extinct animal of vertebrate affinities, with mouth parts
intermediate in character between those of arthropods and vertebrates. 'From
Patten, " The Evolution of the Vertebrates and their Kin."

The conditions that led to the opening of the ingrowing gill
chambers into the outgrowing enteric diverticula are not apparent.

526 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

although such an opening seems to have taken place at several differ-
ent times in the evolution of the arachnid stock.

Fig. 8. Human embryos showing the three pairs of oral arches that
help to form the face and jaws. From Patten, "A Problem in Evolution."

But the facts we wish to emphasize here are that the communica-
tion in vertebrates of the gill chambers with the alimentary canal has
two very different effects: (i) it greatly increases the respiratory
power by directing the respiratory current through the gills in a
constant direction, that is, in at one side and out the other, instead of
in and out through the same opening; and (2) it at once makes
it impracticable to carry on digestive action at any point in front of
an open visceral cleft.

The thyroid gland is doubtless the remnant of the prebranchial
digestive glands^ modified, or temporarily thrown out of commission,
by the opening up, in this manner, of the visceral clefts (Fig. 9).

The corresponding organs of the arachnids (scorpion) are vol-
uminous thoracic, or prebranchial, digestive glands, which in their
grosser morphological relations, and in their histological structure,
strongly resemble the thyroids of vertebrates.

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 527

These differences between the mouth, jaws, and gills of verte-
bates and those of the arachnids are as significant, therefore, as the
resemblances, and point to the same conclusion. For the peculiar
conditions found in the vertebrates are seen to be the inevitable result
of the conditions prevalent in the arachnids ; here, as elsewhere,
growth inevitably occupies the easiest paths of conveyance, and the
products accumulate along the paths of least resistance.

Fig. 9. Diagrams indicating the probable manner in which the arachnid
gill sacs, in vertebrates, come to open into the alimentary canal. The usage
of these passages for respiration prevents their usage for digestion. The
anterior haemal outgrowths, which never communicate with gill sacs, give
rise to the thyroid glands. A, scorpion. B, hypothetical transition stage. C,
vertebrate. From Patten, " The Evolution of the Vertebrates and their Kin."

In these particular cases, the forced migration of the jaws to the
haemal surface, the formation of a new mouth outside the medullary
plate, and the opening of the gill sacs into the alimentary canal,
result in mechanical and economic improvements of the greatest im-

528 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

portance. The great cooperative value of these improvements led to
the rapid expansion and the readjustment of other organs expressed
in the term evolution, and the increased rate with which these events
follow one another is perhaps the chief reason for the large gap, in
retrospect, between the vertebrates and their more immediate arach-
nid ancestors.

V.

The special cases above cited are peculiar only in the magnitude of
their ensuing results. The principles involved are universal. It is
because the rate of evolution and the creative value of its products
vary greatly from time to time and place to place, that there is any
real basis, historic and vital, for classification. It is this historic
process and its sequence of causal conditions that our systems of
classification tend to portray more and more fully.

Classification is not merely the arrangement of animate and in-
animate things according as they are hke or unlike, any more than
history is a mere record of events.

Classification is history in tabloid form, and there is little value
in either one or the other if they do not in some measure express
the change of pace and direction of evolution and the creative value
of the innovations that produced them.

There would still be great epochs in history, however complete
the records might be ; for the same reason, the transition from a
lower class of animals to a higher one will always appear, in retro-
spect, as a relatively large gap, marked by the appearance of a few
cooperative characters of small magnitude in themselves, but of
great creative value.

A familiar example of this principle is seen in the transition from
fishes to amphibia, where the chief event was the apparently insig-
nificant enlargement and short-circuiting of one of the branchial
blood vessels. This event ultimately led to the substitution of lungs
for gills, and to many other changes of far reaching importance in
the internal and external administration of their lives.

The four chambered heart ; the hot, even tempered blood ; pla-
cental nutrition; and articulate speech, are other examples of those
incidental products of growth, whose appearance is epoch-making

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 529

in evolution, because of their extraordinary cooperative value and
their power to create new instruments of conveyance, or to reach
new sources of power.

VI.

In the administration of the outer life of the individual, the same
laws of growth prevail as in the inner life. That is, group growth,
or increase, in the number of individuals follows the easiest lines of
conveyance (of supplies to individuals, or of individuals to supplies)
and the products of growth accumulate, provincially, along the lines
of least resistance.

And the individual itself is subject to the same law of cooperation
as are its own internal constituents. It cannot endure except in so
far as the new problems in the external administration of its life,
that are raised by increase in numbers, are solved by the use of better
methods of cooperation with other individuals and with the physical
conditions outside itself. But the very power essential to that end
is the power whith is created within the individual by its methods
of internal organic cooperation between muscles, and nerves, and
other organs. Thus there are five principal methods of coopera-
tion essential to the evolution of life: (i) Cosmic cooperation; (2)
internal organic cooperation; (3) external cooperation of the indi-
vidual with its physical surroundings; (4) external cooperation of
individuals with one another (internal social cooperation) ; and (5)
cooperation of groups, or classes, of individuals, such as plants and
animals, or different nationalities, with one another (external social
cooperation).

VII.

While the chief gain, result, or end in life is the perpetuation and
aggrandizement of the individual unit, there are two distinct and
mutually supplementary methods, in the long run, of attaining that
end, namely: for the individual (i) to take all it can get, and (2) to
give all it has ; because thereby a larger product is attainable than
can be attained by any individual alone, and because the welfare of
the individual is better assured through the larger unit of which it is
a cooperative part, than it is by its own unaided efforts.

530 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

Or, stated in other terms : the greater power of the individual to
take what it requires is gained by using more profitable methods of
internal organic cooperation. This internal power of the individual
is the essential instrument for more effective external, or cosmic
and social, cooperation ; and it is again reinforced by giving it, or ex-
pending it, in cooperation with other individuals, for a still larger
unit. The ultimate gain in this dual method of give and take is a
progressive summation of organic power at the expense of inorganic
and unorganized nature; and this process is progressively creative
and preservative.

Thus the ultimate " interests " of the larger and of the smaller
unit are identical ; and the " interests " of the one and the other are
alike served by the freest give and take of cooperative action ; for
organic evolution, or progress, is nothing else than the summation of
power through the cooperative action of its constituents.

The " conflicts " in nature, which have always claimed such a
large share of man's attention, are often mistaken for creative and
constructive agents. The exaggeration of this tendency in recent
years is an error for which the biologists themselves are largely
responsible. But the one supreme truth that nature insistently
teaches is that conflict and aggression are never creative forces,
except in so far as destruction may serve to redistribute power so
that ultimately it may be linked with other powers in better coopera-
tive action. Evolution and progress is always measured by con-
struction, or by the degree to which conflict decreases and coopera-
tion increases.

The confusion of thought indicated above arises from the fail-
ure to recognize that the struggle for existence, if there is such a
struggle, is a struggle to find better methods of cooperation, and the
" fittest " is the thing that cooperates best.

In the larger estimate of progress, the progress of cooperative
action in the inner and in the outer life of the individual, as well as
in that of the great social life of nature as a whole, of which every
individual is an organic part, must be given their correct, relative
values ; for each one of these three phases of progress is an instru-

PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION. 531

ment to the same end, the aggrandizement and security of the whole
by the part and the part by the whole.

From this larger point of view, what we call " evil " is that which
prevents or destroys cooperation, and " good " is that which perpetu-
ates and improves cooperation. Evolution in nature, as a whole,
proceeds with the attainment of righteousness, or as fast as the better
ways of avoiding that which is evil and of attaining that which is
good, are found by the part and by the whole.

As the animal and plant life of the world becomes more complex
individually, and more unified as a whole, the necessity for wider and
better cooperation in exchange becomes more imperative ; or to put it
another way, life at large, individually and in its various aggregates,
grows in unity and in the summation of power, as fast as it finds
and makes use of better methods of conveyance for mutually profit-
able exchange, or creates new instruments to that end.

In the inorganic world, and in the lower phases of organic life,
the right way to cooperative action is found by " chance," during
a prolonged period of trial and error. It is a slow process, but in-
evitably accumulative and accelerative, for there is a directive and
preservative element, a tendency towards finality and completion, in
cooperative action, that is none the less effective whether it be found
by accident or by design. In the higher phases of individual life,
the more elaborate series of preservative and cooperative acts are
called " instincts and intelligence." The chief element in " intelli-
gence " is the power to foresee and to select the better time and place
for cooperative action, thereby greatly accelerating the process of
attaining good and avoiding evil.

VIII.

The same laws that govern the growth of plants and of animals,
govern the growth of human society. Society in its growth follows
the easiest and most accessible lines of conveyance ; and its rate of
growth depends on the cooperative value of its inventions for the
preservation and profitable exchange of its own products, intellec-
tual or physical. Science, literature, and art, are the reservoirs and
distributing channels for the one, and commerce for the other.

532 PATTEN— COOPERATION AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION.

They are the agents produced by growth that supply the demands of
growth, and the profits of this exchange will provide the new means
for supplying the new demands.

Need it be said that the chief function of statesmanship is to keep
these social reservoirs full and the channels of exchange open ; and
to find better methods of cooperative action between individuals,
states, and empires, in order better to meet the new problems in the
give and take of commodities that arise with the growth of the
individual and of his various social groups?

A DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

By W. J. V. OSTERHOUT.
(Read April 14, igi6.)

When toxic substances act as antidotes to each other we ck.1 this
action antagonism. The writer has found that an accurate measure
of antagonism is furnished by the electrical resistance of living
tissues. A toxic substance causes a fall of resistance : but if another
toxic substance be added and the fall of resistance be thereby in-
hibited it is evident that this result is due to antagonism. The
amount of antagonism may therefore be measured by the fall of
resistance.

A series of such measurements is reported in the present paper. ^
The method of making these measurements has been previously
described. -

The experiments consisted in determining the electrical resistance
of Laminaria AgardJiir in NaCl .52 M, in CaCU .278 M and in
various mixtures of these.

In order that each solution might contain as nearly as possible
the same kind of material the following method was employed.
Seven disks were cut (by means of a large cork borer) from the
same part of a frond : each disk was placed in a separate tumbler of
sea water. A second lot of seven disks were cut, as close to each
other as possible, and placed in the tumblers, so that each tumbler
contained two disks. This was continued until each tumbler con-

1 In an earlier series (Pringsheim's Jahrh. filr wiss. Bot., 54: 645, 1914)
the maximum antagonism was found in mixtures containing less NaCl than
is here reported. The present series comprises six sets of experiments (in
the earlier there were only three), was made at more nearly constant tem-
perature and with an improved technique. The later results may therefore
be regarded as more reliable.

^Science. N. S., 35: 112, 1912.

' This is the most common species at Wood's Hole, Mass. ; it was for-
merly identified as L. saccharina and is so referred to in earlier papers by
the writer.

533

534 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

tained one hundred disks. By this means the material in the dif-
ferent tumblers was made as similar as possible. The disks in each
tumbler were then packed together (like a roll of coins) to form a
cylinder whose resistance was measured. Throughout the experi-
ments the different lots were kept side by side and treated as nearly
alike as possible, except that they were placed in dift'erent solutions.

Great care was taken that all the solutions (both pure and
mixed) should have the same conductivity as sea water.

The distilled water used in making the solutions was prepared
with especial care, the first and last part of the distillate being dis-
carded. It was distilled from a glass still (which had been used
for some months) using plugs of cotton in place of cork or rubber
stoppers.

The salts used were the purest obtainable, being for the most part
Kahlbaum's (in some cases Merck's blue label reagents were
employed).

The mixtures were made in the following proportions :

Molecular Proportions.

NaCl .52 M. c.c.

CaClz .278 M, c.c.

NaCl.

CaCl2.

963

37

98

2

914

86

95-24

4.76

7SI

249

85

15

496

504

65

35

247

753

38

62

The results* are shown graphically in Fig. i (cf. Table III.).
As will be seen on inspection of the figure, the resistance rises at
first (except in pure NaCl) and subsequently falls.

Evidently two processes are involved, one of which produces a
rise, the other a fall in resistance. While these processes might be
looked upon as independent, everything points to the fact that they
are casually connected, and it seems natural to assume that they
represent two chemical reactions, one of which is dependent on the
other.

* The results are expressed as per cent, of the net resistance in sea water
at the start of the experiment. They might also be expressed as per cent, of
the control but this has no especial advantage for the present investigation.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 535

We may suppose for the sake of simplicity that they represent
two monomoleciilar reactions^ of the type

160%

A^M-^B,

*_ioo. NaCl + 0. CaCls

D_ 98

2.

o_ 95.24 ..

4.76

A- 85

15.

▼ _ 65.

35:

x_ 33. 1.

62.

®_ 0. „

100.

SEA WATER

75 hours

Fig. I. Curves of electrical resistance of Laniinaria in NaCl .52 M, in
CaCU .2y9>M, and in mixtures of these (the figures show the molecular per
cent, of CaCls in the mixture). Some points are omitted in order to avoid
undue crowding (these may be obtained from Table III).

in which a substance A breaks down into an intermediate substance
M which in turn breaks down to fonn B. In such a reaction the
amount of M at first increases, reaches a maximum and then
decreases.

The nature of this process is evident from a consideration of
Fig. 2. If the reservoir A be filled with water while M and B are
empty, and if water be allowed to flow from A into M, the amount
of water in M (for convenience this amount is called 3') will first

^ Or other reactions of the first order as for example when two sub-
stances react but one is present in great excess.

PROC. AMF.R. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LV, HH, AUG. 22, I916.

536 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

increase and then decrease. The rate of increase and decrease and
the maximum attained will depend on the relation between the two
outlets K^ and Ko. We may suppose that if A'^ is equal to Kn we
get the upper curve shown in the figure, while if K^ is less than K2
we get the lower curve (in the latter case both constants are sup-
posed to be smaller than in the former). This is analogous to what
occurs in the reaction A-^M -^ B if /v^ is the velocity constant of
A -^ M and A'o is the velocity constant of M —^B.

-K.

n

Fig. 2. Diagram illustrating consecutive reactions in which a substance
M is formed by the reaction A — > A/ and decomposed by the reaction M -^B.
Explanation in text.

We find that the resistance of the tissue likewise increases to a
maximum and then decreases. If we assume that the resistance of
the protoplasm is due to a substance" M we can calculate the rate at
which the resistance will increase and decrease with any given values
of /Ci and K^.

If we suppose that in sea water the substance M results from the
decomposition of A., which is in turn formed at a constant rate, the
amount of M will be constant (after equilibrium has once been

^ Instead of a substance we might assume that M is a physical state or a
mixture provided it fulfilled the necessary conditions of formation and dis-
appearance.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 537

attained). For convenience we assume that at equilibrium the con-
centration oi M (which we call 3;) is equal to 0.2951 and that the
net resistance (expressed as per cent, of the net resistance in sea
water) is equal to 3053' + 10, the 10 being added because at death
the resistance drops to 10 per cent. {i. e., the resistance of the dead
tissue is 10 per cent, of that of the living). The resistance in sea
water will therefore be (.2951 X 305) + 10= 100 per cent.

Let us assume that the velocity constant of the decomposition of
M in sea water is .540. If the velocity constant of the reaction
A^>M is one thirtieth as great (.540-^-30= .018) the concentra-
tion of A must be 30 times as great as that of M in order to keep
M constant. Hence the concentration oi A (which will be called
x) must be .2951 X 30 = 8.853.

On transferring from sea water to such a mixture as 65 NaCl -\-
35 CaCL we assume that the production of A ceases while the de-
composition of A and M go on at an altered rate, the velocity con-
stant for A^M being changed to .000481 and that of M^B to
.00859. We can now calculate the value of y at any subsequent
time, T.

The value of y at the start is .2951 and this will decrease (by the
ordinary monomolecular formula) in the time T to

y= .295i(e-^'=0.

In this formula e is the basis of natural logarithms and Ko is the
velocity constant of the reaction M-^B, which results in the de-
composition of y.

The value of x at the start is 8.853 • this will produce during
the time T a certain amount of y part of which will be decomposed.
The amount remaining at the end of the time T is given by the
formula'

y = .^.^S2>[-~^){e-'''' - e-^-^'),

" Rutherford, E., " Radioactive Substances and their Radiations," 1913,
p. 421. The values e-^^"^ and c-KiT may be obtained from Table IV. in the
Smithsonian Mathematical Tables, Hyperbolic Functions, by G. F. Becker
and C. E. Van Orstrand, 1909. See also Mellor, J. W., " Chemical Statics and
Dynamics, 1909, pp. 16, 98, 118.

538 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

in which K.^ is the velocity constant of the reaction A-^M.
total value of y at the time T will be

The

y = .2951 (^-"^0 + 8.853 (^:;4^J U

-e-"""-^).

If we put A'i = . 000481 and /v,o = . 00859 we obtain as the
amount of resistance the values given in Table III. and plotted as a
broken line in Fig. 3 (the values obtained experimentally are plotted
as a continuous line).

Fig. 3. Curve of electrical resistance of Lamiuana in 65 NaCl + 35
CaCl; ( ), the trial curve (— ) calculated from the veloc-
ity constants K^ = .000481 and K2 = .00859, and the theoretical curve

( ) calculated from the velocity constants K^ = .000482 and Kn =

.00859.

Evidently the curve of resistance,^ as calculated, agrees^ fairly

8 The agreement in other mixtures may be seen in Table III. and Figs.

6-9.

9 The fact that the theoretical curves can not be made to assume any
desired form but can only be varied within certain limits shows that if they
fit the experimental curves they express processes similar to those which
take place in the tissue.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 539

well with the curve of resistance in 65 NaCl -f- 35 CaCU obtained
experimentally.

We see that in 65 NaCl -{- 35 CaCL the resistance of the tissue
behaves as if it were directly proportional to y (the amount of M)
when the velocity constant of A-^M is .000481 and the velocity
constant of M-^B is .00859. ^^ may interpret this to mean that
some substance, A, in the protoplasm breaks down to form M, the
substance to which the resistance of the protoplasm is due, and this
is in turn decomposed, the two reactions having the velocities
indicated.

By making this very reasonable assumption we can account for
all the curves of resistance obtained experimentally.

In order to see how this may be accomplished we may calculate
the constants of all the curves, proceeding in the same manner as
in calculating the constants of the curve of 65 NaCl -|- 35 CaCU.
For this purpose we assume various values until the correct ones are
discovered. The values obtained by this method are given in
Table I.

Table I.

Relation of K2 to Na^AXaCI^.

Constants obtained by trial.

Molecular Proportions.

Amount
of Naj-
XCaCU.

Increase

ofNaj-
XCaCl4.

K:.

K2.

Decrease
of Kj.

In Body of
Solution.

In Surface.

( Decrease of K2)
-7- ( Increase of
Na2XCaCl4).

NaCl,

5f.

CaCl2.

i.

NaCl,

CaCl2,

i.

98

2

83-05

16.95

.0001169

.0001137

.000253

.00672

.00228

19-35

95-24

4.76

66.67

33-33 -0001468 .0001436 .000245

.00590

.00310

21.59

85

15

36.27

63.73 -0000839 .0000807 .000364

.00730

.00170

21.07

65

35

15.66 84.34' -OOOO207 .0000175 .000481

.00859

.00041

23-43

38

62

5.78 94.22 .0000032

.000530

.00900

100

0

.018

-540

0

100

.0018

•029s

An inspection of Table I. shows that as the amount of CaCL
increases, the value of Ko first falls and then rises, the minimum
value occurring at 95.24 NaCl -f 4.76 CaCL (which is the mixture
in which the tissue lives longest). It is evident that in each mixture
of NaCl -|- CaCL a substance is formed which in some way reduces

540 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

the value of K^. We may assume that the amount of this substance
increases as CaCL increases and that its maximum effect on K^ is
produced in 95.24 NaCl + 4.76 CaCU, after which a further increase
of this substance produces less and less effect on Kn. Or we may
assume that the decrease of K^ is directly proportional to the
amount of this substance but that the maximum amount of this sub-
stance is produced in 95.24 NaCl -|- 4.76 CaCL, while in other mix-
tures it is produced in lesser amounts. Let us consider more fully
the latter alternative.

The simplest assumption which we can make is that both NaCl
and CaClo combine with some substance. X, in the protoplasm so as
to form a compound. If we suppose that this compound^'' is
Na2o-X'CaCl2o formed by the reversible reaction

2oNaCl + X + CaCL ^ Na^oAXaCU,

we can calculate the amount of Naoo^CaCloo which will be formed
in each mixture of NaCl -f- CaCL.

The molecular concentration of X can hardly be more than a
small fraction of that of NaCl and CaCU. Hence as NaCl and
CaCL are present in great excess they may be regarded as constant
in concentration and we need only consider the changes in X and
Na^oXCaCLo.

We may calculate the amounts of Na^o^CaCLo formed at equi-
librium in any mixture by means of the formula

ConCNa,oXCaCl»»

A =

(ConcNaci)^°(Conccaci2)(Concx) '

in which i^ is a constant and the molecular concentrations of
Na2o-^CaCl22, NaCl, CaCL, and X are denoted by the abbreviation
Cone. We find that the amount of NajoACaCLo begins with o in
pure NaCl, increases with the increase of CaCL until it reaches a
maximum at NaCl 95.24 -J- CaCL 4.76 and then decreases (as CaCL
continues to increase) until it falls to o in pure CaCL. As this is
exactly what K2 does, we might assume that Na2oXCaCL2 acts
as a negative catalyzer, causing a decrease in Ko which is directly
proportional to the amount of Naoo-X^CaCLo.

10 Such compounds are frequently formed between salts and proteins
as well as with many other amphoteric electrolytes.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 541

To this however there is the objection that the maximum
amount of Na„oZCaCl22 which is produced in NaCl 95.24 -{- CaCL
4.76 could also be obtained in other mixtures, e. g., in NaCl 50 -|-
CaCU 50 if the total concentration of salts in the latter mixture
were increased to the requisite amount. This is contrary to what
we find in antagonism experiments. If antagonism really depends
on the production of a salt compound like Na^oXCaCUo it is evident
that some mechanism must exist which insures that an increase in
the total concentration of salts can have but little effect as compared
with that produced by a change in their relative proportions.

It is easy to see how such a mechanism must exist if the forma-
tion of Naoo-^CaCloo takes place at a surface (at the external surface
of the cell or at internal surfaces). In a surface substances usually
exist in a dififerent concentration from that which they have else-
where in the solution. If NaCl and CaCU migrate into the surface,
so as to become more concentrated there than in the rest of the
solution, their concentration in the surface must increase as their
concentration in the solution increases until a certain point (called
the saturation point) is reached. Beyond this point an increase in
their concentration in the solution produces no effect on their con-
centration in the surface.

When this stage has been reached the formation of Naoo^CaCLo,
if it takes place in the surface, will not be affected by an increase in
the concentration of the salts in the solution. It will, however, be
affected by changes in the relative proportions of the salts. The
number of molecules of salt in a unit of surface will remain nearly
constant, but if the proportion of NaCl in the solution be increased
some of the CaCL in the surface will be displaced by NaCl.

Below the saturation point the relative proportions of the salts
will be of less importance than their total concentration : this is the
case at low concentrations in the region of the so-called " nutritive
effects."

It may be added that these considerations apply no matter
whether the salts which migrate into the surface come from the
outside or from within (or from both directions) : also that they
apply when the surface is completely permeable to salts (so that
we do not assume an impermeable surface in order to account for

542 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISAl

the formation of the salt compound which itself accounts for the
permeability). They also apply if Naoo^CaCUo is formed else-
where than at the surface and subsequently migrates into the surface
for, as the reaction is reversible, the equilibrium in the surface must
be determined by the amounts of X, NaCl, and CaCla, regardless of
whence they are derived.

Let us consider what will happen if NaCl and CaCL do not
migrate equally into the surface. If for example CaCL accumu-
lates in the surface ten times as much" as NaCl we shall have in the
surface NaCl 2 -j- CaCL i when the body of the solution contains
NaCl 20 -f CaCL i (or NaCl 95.24 -f CaCL 4.76).

Let us assume that this is the case and that the salt compound
formed is not NaooXCaCLo but NaoXCaCL. Its maximum amount
will be produced when the solution contains NaCl 20 + CaCl. i or
NaCl 95.24 -|- CaCL 4.76 and will be independent of the total con-
centration of salts so long as the surface is saturated. We may cal-
culate the amounts present in the surface according to the formula. ^-

ConCNa^XCaCU

A =

(ConcNaci)HConccac]s)(Concjf) *

When we have NaCl 95.24 4- CaCL 4.76 in the solution we have in
the surface NaCl 9.524 -|- CaCL 4.76 or NaCl 66.67 P^^" cent. -|-
CaCL 33-33 per cent. ; and since they are present in excess this will

11 There is experimental evidence in favor of the view that CaCU accu-
mulates in the surface more than NaCl.
1- If we write

2NaCl + CaCl. + U„X ^ Na.H.-.AXa + 4HCI

we have at equilibrium

-, _ (ConCNa^H„_4XC.a) (ConCHCl)^

(ConcNaCi)^(ConccaCi2) (ConcH„x)
but

ConCHCl=4(ConCNa2H„_4A'Ca)

so that we may write

(ConCNa2H„_4A'Ca)^

K

(ConcNacOHConccaCia) (ConcH„x)

In the present case this assumption does not fit the facts as well as the one
already made.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 543

be their concentration at equilibrium (as well as during the progress
of the reaction). Putting /C = .000001 and Conc_y =.001 we get

.000001 =

ConCxa-,A'CaCl4

(66.67)2(33)(.ooi)'
whence

ConCNasXCaCU = -000 1 468.

Calculating the amounts formed in other mixtures we get the values
given in Table I.

.000138

NA2XCACL4

Decrease in Kg

.000058

NaCl
CaCl.

Fig.

4. Curve of the increase of a salt compound, NajXCaCU

( ), and curve of the decrease of the velocity constant K2 ( ).

The figures apply to the ordinates of the former curve. The figures for the

ordinates of the latter curve ( ) are 21.59 times as great. The

abscissae represent molecular proportions in the solution (not in the sur-
face). The figure shows that the salt compound inhibits the reaction M — > 5
(which has the velocity constant K2).

It is evident from an inspection of the last column of Table I.
that the decrease in K^ is directly proportional to the amount of

544 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

NaoXCaCl^ (see Fig. 4).^^ Hence we assume that Na2ZCaCl4 acts
as a negative catalyzer to the reaction M -^B.

In some instances the optimum proportion in antagonism experi-
ments turns out to be NaCl 100 -|- CaCl, i. In this case we should,
following the course just outlined, assume that the salt compound is
Naio^CaCli2- It may be objected that this calls for a reaction of
a high order, the occurrence of which seems not very probable.
But it must be remembered that the reaction may take place by
a series of steps each of which represents a reaction of the second
or third order. Such cases are well known in inorganic chemistry.
In the calculations all these steps may be disregarded since only the
final equilibrium need be considered.

An inspection of Table I. shows that the value of iv^ rises and
falls with that of K^ except that as CaCU increases the value of Ky
goes up more rapidly than that of K.^. This is also obvious from
Fig. I, which shows that the greater the per cent, of CaCla in the
mixture the greater the maximum attained. As this maximum de-

Table II.

Relation between (K^ -f- Kn) and Per Cent, of CaCL in Surface.
Constants obtained by trial.

Molecular Proportions.

Ki.

K,.

Ki -i- K2.

Increase of

Ki -^ K2.

(Increase of

In Solution.

In Surface.

Ki-=-K2)-=-(Per
Cent, of CaClj

NaCl.

CaClj.

NaCl.

CaCla.

in Surface).

100

0

100

0

.018

•540

-03333

98

2

83-05

16.95

.000253

.00672

-03765

.00432

-000255

95-24

4.76

66.67

33-33

.00024s

.00590

-04153

.00820

.000246

85

15

36.27

63-73

.000364

.00730

.04986

.01653

.000259

65

35

15-66

84-34

.000481

.00859

.05600

.02267

.000269

38

62

5.78

94.22

.000530

.00900

.05889

.02556

.000271

0

100

0

100

.0018

.0295

.06102

.02769

.000277

pends on the value of K^-^K^ it is obvious that the value of
Ky-^Ko must increase as the per cent, of CaCL increases. We
therefore assume that the value of K^ (like that of Ko) depends on
the amount of NaoXCaCl^ but that (unlike that of K^) it is also

13 The figure makes the curve of Na-jXCaCL, bend more abruptly at the
apex than is actually the case, but it is so drawn because it is not desirable
to use more points in the calculated than in the experimental curve.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 545

dependent on the per cent, of CaCU present in the surface. If this
assumption is correct the vahie of K-^-^K., will be proportional to
the per cent, of CaCL. This is actually the case, as is evident from
Table II. and Fig. 5.

Fig. S. Curve of the increase of K^^K. with increase of CaCL (molec-
ular per cent, in the surface). The figure shows that CaCU acts as a
catalyzer of the reaction A —> M (which has the velocity constant ivj).

We must therefore conclude that the reaction ^ -^ M is cata-
lyzed by CaClo, while the salt compound NaoXCaCl^ inhibits both
A^>M and M-^B. This assumption enables us to calculate the
resistance at any time in any mixture. The calculated results are
given in Table III. together with the observed values. The calcula-
tions are made on the assumption that the decrease of Ko is exactly
proportional to the increase of Na„XCaCl4, that is

and

decrease of Ki
increase of NaoXCaCL

increase of {Ki -^ K2)
per cent. CaCl2 in surface

= 23.29

= .000271.

546 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

Table III.

Observed Values Compared with Values Calculated on a Theoretical

Basis.

Per Cent, of Net Resistance in

Time in

98 NaCI

Q5.24 NaCl

85 NaCl

6s NaCl

38 NaCl

Hours.

+ 2 CaClj.

+ 4.76 CaClj.

+ 15 CaClj.

+ 35 CaClj.

+ 62 CaClj.

Obs.

Calc.

Obs.

Calc.

Obs.

Calc.

Obs.

Calc.

Obs.

Calc.

I

103. 1

103.7

108.2

106.8

I24-S

II5-6

136.I

123.8

148. 1

127.2

2

103.8

105.8

112. 1

III. 2

126. 1

124.8

141-9

136.3

149.0

141.7

3

105.8

106.7

112. 1

II3-8

128. 5

129.8

143-2

142.2

149-0

147-9

4

106.1

106.9

II3.9

115.3

130.2

132. 1

143-9

144.0

149-0

149.7

S

106. 1

106.6

113. 1

115. 8

130.2

132-7

143-9

143-6

149-0

148.8

6

104.9

106.0

II3-I

115.8

130.2

132.3

143-7

141. 7

149-0

146.5

10

102. 1

I0I.8

107.9

112. 5

126.5

125. 1

129-5

129.8

136.I

132.6

25

76.89

84.21

95.21

93-41

96.40

93-80

87.85

87.90

78.21

86.30

50

63.90

61.70

62.50

68.20

S8.11

58-83

47-81

47.80

46.34

44-46

80

38.90

43-49

42.52

47-78

33.92

35-54

26.01

25.88

27.11

23-27

100

31-80

35.09

35.83

38-33

24.01

26.58

17-33

18.90

14.42

17-03

The measurements were made at 15° C. or corrected to this figure. Each
experimental figure is the average obtained from 6 series of experiments.

The constants obtained by this method of calculation are given
in Table IV.

Table III. shows that the agreement between calculated and
observed values is remarkably satisfactory.

Table IV.
Theoretical Constants.

Molecular Proportions.

Ki.

In Solution.

In Surface.

Kj.

NaCl.

CaCls.

NaCl.

CaClo.

100

0

100

0

.018

•540

98

2

83-05

16.95

.000241

.00635

95-24

4-76

66.67

33-33

.000240

.00566

85

15

36.27

63-73

.000360

.00712

65

35

15.66

84-34

.000482

.00859

38

62

5-78

94.22

.000530

.00900

0 1 100

0 1 100

.0017827

.0295

If we disregard all theoretical considerations and proceed by
repeated trials to find what constants most nearly fit the experi-
mental curves we get the values given in Table I. If we construct
curves using these constants we get the results given in Table V.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 547

In Fig. 3 and in Figs. 6-9 are shown curves expressing the
observed values, the values calculated from constants observed by
trial and the values calculated on a theoretical basis.

>

u

►J >-

>

c O

o
U

s

V

u

a
rt

1

Pi

V

0

c
u
U

«

0 0 I') 00 N

On 0> On r^
00 m t^ t- 0

N 00 0 ro P>
in Tj- ro M M

M M M HH M

M On M 0 0

0 0 N M M

M

0

0 M N 00 M

vO 0
00 t^ On 0 0

•^ N ro 00 t^
in t/^ -^r M M

0 NO N M W
M

■(5
0

N t> Ov t-- 00
!>. w t-^ Ov 06
N 't ■<t ^ ■*

M M M M M

0 vO t^ ro
i/p vO ro "^ N 0
0 M NO "Jt ro !>•
T ro 00 Tf N w

M M

0

M 0 0 0 0

0 w <N ro M Tt

00 On 0\ On C\
'i- -^ TT Tf ^
i-t t-t i-t *-i t-^

On NO 00 NO !>• Tt
•^ ro t^ Tj- M Ht

^4

3

r- N 0\ 00 ro
M ro ^ •^ •^

M M M M M

in vO 00 00 On On
iH On r^ t>- in 00

-* N 00 •^ N M

0

M 0\ N 0\ 0\

t^ in 00 00 0 ro

0 w fO ro ro

CO -^ ^ •^ -T
M M M M M

ro On t^ I> vO t^
■^ N 00 rj- cs w

15
U

00 lO 0\0

fOwoO ONfOO f^O tovO Ov
lA'Tl-oo 6 w d row t-^ri-io

-0
0

ir> i-i 10 N N

0 w N M
N m ■^ M On 0

■^0 00 0 0
N N N ro 1^

M M M h-i M

0 vO NO 00 ro '*
ro N On m ro N

uu

0,^

U

ro roo 00 M
vd d N ro ■^

0 W W M H

0 00 On 0
On N q q q On
ro d w NO NO NO
M M On vO rj- ro

M M M W M „ „ 1

^

0

<N w ■- q\ M

00 IN P) ro ro

0 M M M M

M 0 CM ro
IH On N in in 00

ro J~-- in N N in

w 0 OnO •* ro

M „ M M M ^ ^ 1

GO

CO N

'J

0 0 r^ ro 00
fO 10 \0 vO 10
00000

M M M IH M

00 vonO in
9 "^^ 'I •^ ro M
in 0 N On i-I ro

0 0 00 in tt ro

M HI

.a

0

M 00 00 l-< M

ro ro u^ vd vd
00000

M M M Ht (-1

On 0 0 0
On M 00 On On 00
■t N NO ro 06 M
0 0 r^ NO ro ro

0
2;

"a
■•J

M Tf in ■^ ro

1-i d ro M d

^ N M M M

0

w N rf 00 0
cs 00 m N ro
d pj rj- M d

Tt M M 1-1 M

u

sjnojj

1

H M ro "^ "",

0 0 in 0 0 0
M N in 00 0

w

u

•a _

03 E

E o

^ <u

In Table V. the calculated values necessarily show a better agree-
ment with observed values than those in Table III., but even in the
latter the difference between calculated and observed values is sur-
prisingly small. The closeness of the agreement furnishes the most

548 OSTERHOUT-DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

JSOrVc

loo

25 50 73 HOURS
Fig. 6. Curve of electrical resistance of Laminaria in 98 NaCl + 2 CaClj
( ), the trial curve ( ) calculated from the velocity con-
stants K^ = .000253 and K. = .00672, and the theoretical curve ( ),

calculated from the velocity constants .000241 and .00635.

120 %

Fig. 7. Curve of electrical resistance of Laminaria in 95.24 NaCl + 4.76
CaCL ( ), the trial curve ( ) calculated from the veloc-
ity constants K, = .000245 and K. = .00590, and the theoretical curve

( ) calculated from the velocity constants A', = .000240 and K. =

.00566.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAAIICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 549

striking proof of the essential soundness of the theoretical views on
which the calculations are based.

It should be noted that while the values of K^-^Ko for NaCl
and for CaCL fit the general scheme, the absolute values of iii and
K2 in these cases are much greater than we should expect. This
shows that in pure CaClo something accelerates both A ^ M and
M-^B to an equal degree {i. e., multiplies both K^ and Kn by the

140 %

looo

Fig. 8. Curve of electrical resistance of Laminaria in 85 NaCl + 15
CaCL ( ), the trial curve ( ) calculated from the veloc-
ity constants K^ = .000364 and K., = .00730, and the theoretical curve

( ) calculated from the velocity constants K^ = .000360 and K^ =

.00712.

same factor) ; the same is true of NaCl, but here the acceleration
is much greater than in CaCL. This acceleration might be due
to a variety of causes and it seems unncessary to discuss it more
fully at this time.

Figs. 10 and 11 show the curves of resistance in NaCl and in
CaClo and the curves calculated from constants obtained by trial.

Let us now consider briefly an alternative explanation of these
results-

550 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

25 50 73

Fig. g. Curve of electrical resistance of Laminaria in 38 NaCl + 62 CaCL
( ), and the trial curve ( ) calculated from the veloc-
ity constants K^ = .000530 and K.. = .0090.

100%

iOO MINUTES

Fig. id. Curve of electrical resistance of Laminaria in NaCl ( ),

and the trial curve ( ) calculated from the velocity constants

K^ = .018 and Kn = .540.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 551

It might be assumed that no salt compound is formed but that
A'l is increased by CaCL and that the effect is at a minimum at
NaCl 95.24 + CaCL 4.76. In this case /v^ would be very large in
pure NaCl, very small in NaCl 95.24 + CaCL 4.76 (or thereabouts)
and would steadily increase as the proportion of Ca increased.
If /v'2 is increased by NaCl, with a minimum at NaCl 95.24 -f

23 50 75 HOURS

Fig. II. Curve of electrical resistance of Latninaria in CaCU ( ),

the trial curve ( ) calculated from the velocity constants

i^i = .0018 and iv. = .0295, and the theoretical curve ( ) calculated

from the velocity constants i^i= .0017827 and /v. = .0295.

CaCL 4.76, /vo would be large in pure NaCl, would diminish as

CaCL was added until it reached a minimum at NaCl 95.24 -|- CaCL

4.76 and would then rise steadily as more CaCL was added. ^*

In this case it makes little difference whether the value of the

!■* It might also be assumed that both A'l and K-i are increased by CaCl^
(or both by NaCl) with a minimum effect at NaCl 95.24 + CaCU 476
But if only one salt controlled both A', and A', it would make little difference
what the other salt was and this does not fit the facts.

PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC, VOL. LV, II, AUG. 22, I916.

552 OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM.

constant is increased by the salt, the effect passing through a mini-
mum, or diminished by the sah, the eft'ect passing through a
maximum.^''

That catalyzers actually do act in this way is seen when acid
catalyzes lipase, the effect of the acid passing through a maximum.
It was found by Hoyer^" that when oxalic or sulphuric acid is added
to hpase the action of the enzyme was accelerated in proportion to
the amount of acid but that above a certain concentration the effect
rapidly fell off.

Future investigations must decide which explanation fits the
facts in the majority of cases.

We have thus reached a quantitative explanation of the results
of our experiments. Our explanation indicates that the resistance
is proportional to the amount of M which is present in the proto-
plasm. It may therefore be of interest to enquire how the substance
M determines the resistance. If it is produced at the surface, as
we assume, it may form a layer in the surface which offers resist-
ance to the passage of ions. The amount of the resistance would
then depend on the thickness (and continuity) of the layer. This
may also apply to the internal surfaces, such as those of the nucleus,
plastids, vacuoles, and microsomes.

It is evident that whether or not any of these assumptions be
accepted certain facts seem to be established. It is clear that there
are two processes, one of which produces a rise, the other a fall
of resistance, and that their speed may be regulated by NaCl and
CaClo. It is extremely probable that these salts enter into chemical
combination with some constituent of the protoplasm and it is evi-
dent that the compound thus formed might regulate the speed of
one or both of these processes. ^^

15 In all these explanations it is understood that NaCl and CaCU act in a
saturated surface as explained above, so that only the relative proportions
are important.

!•' Hoyer, E., Bcr. dcutsch. chcm. Gcs., 37(2) : 1436, 1904.

1' It would seem that we can imitate completely the variations in re-
sistance which occur in living protoplasm only when we have a system in
which a reaction is going on which results in the production of a substance
which is comparable to that designated as M in the foregoing discussion.
Perhaps this explains why attempts to imitate these effects by experiments on
colloids have not been more successful.

OSTERHOUT— DYNAMICAL THEORY OF ANTAGONISM. 553

It is clear that such consecutive reactions as are here discussed
must be the rule in living matter and that further study of their
dynamics should yield facts of importance.

Summary.

I. Data regarding the electrical resistance of living tissues of
Laininaria in NaCl .52 M, in CaCL .278 M, and in mixtures of
these are given.

II. In order to explain these data it is assumed :

1. That the resistance is determined by a substance M which
is formed and broken down by the reaction

2. That CaCL accelerates the reaction A -^ M.

3. That NaCl and CaCL combine with a substance in the proto-
plasm, forming a compound which inhibits the reactions A -^ M
and M-^B.

III. On the basis of these assumptions a theory is developed to
explain :

1. Why both NaCl and CaCL are toxic.

2. Why when mixed in the proper proportions their toxicity is
greatly diminished (antagonistic action).

3. Why they have opposite effects on permeability.

4. Why the decrease of permeability produced by CaCL must
be followed by an increase when the exposure is sufficiently pro-
longed.

5. Why all toxicity disappears in sea water.

IV. The theory gives a quantitative explanation of the toxicity
of all the mixtures and enables us to predict the resistance {and
permeability) in any mixture at any moment during exposure.

V. The fact is emphasized that life processes must consist
largely of consecutive reactions and that an analysis of the chemical
dynamics of these reactions is indispensable for the solution of cer-
tain fundamental problems of biology.

Harvard University,

Laboratory of Plant Physiology.

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I916

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Vol. LV. 1916. No. 8,

CONTENTS

Obituary Notices of Members Deceased I

Minutes . xiii

Index xvii

PHILADELPHIA

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

X04 South Fifth Street

1916

American Philosophical Society

General Meeting— April 12-14, 1917

The Annual General Meeting of The American Philo-
sophical Society will be held on April I2th, 13th, and
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FEB 5 1917

OBITUARY NOTICES
OF MEMBERS DECEASED.

SIR GASTON MASPERO.

{Read November 3, igi6.)

In the death of Sir Gaston Maspero on June 30, 1916, France
has lost one of her most distinguished scholars — perhaps the most
distinguished — and the world one of the leading Egyptologists,
whose range of learning, however, extended far beyond the borders
of Egyptological research.

Born in Paris in 1846 of parents who were of Italian descent, he
received his early education at the Lycee Louis le Grand, famous
for the long roll of great scholars that passed through its portals.
From the Lycee he went to the Ecole Normale and while in that in-
stitution began to study Egyptian without the assistance of any mas-
ter. At the age of nineteen he was able to translate Egyptian texts
that had been submitted to him by Mariette Bey — at the time the
leading Egyptologist of France. The feat, though remarkable for
a young man, was not so astonishing as that at the age of twenty-
three he was appointed to a professorship of Egyptology at the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes — the graduate school of the Paris University.
Four years later he had established his reputation for eminent
scholarship so firmly as to be chosen to fill the chair of Egyptology
at the College de France, created for the famous Champollion, who
by the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone did for Egyptology in
1827 what a quarter of a century earlier the German scholar Grote-
fend had done for the Cuneiform inscriptions — establishing the de-
cipherment on a secure basis. At twenty-seven he had thus at-
tained to the highest scholarly post in the gift of the French gov-
ernment— the youngest person to have achieved the distinction.
The story goes that a visitor came one day to see the already famous
professor. The door of his apartment was opened by Maspero, who
explained to his visitor that he was M. Maspero, whereupon the
visitor insisted, " Oh, no ; I want to see your father."

His first larger work appeared within two years after he had

III

IV OBITUARY NOTICES.

been elected to the professorship to the College de France. It was
a most ambitious vmdertaking — a " Histoire Ancienne des Peuples
de rOrient," covering Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Palestine and Syria
— but it was carried out with the sure touch of a master. As a sum-
mary of what was then known of the Ancient East it acquired a
high rank, as is indicated by the eight editions through which it
passed, and by being translated into English and German. The work
was an indication of the wide range of Maspero's studies even at
that early age, and it was characteristic of the bent of his mind that
while never losing sight of his special field of Egyptology, he cor-
related Egyptian history, religion and art with the history and
achievements of the peoples with which Egypt had come into con-
tact. In 1875, when Maspero's "Ancient History" appeared, it was
still comparatively easy to master the entire field, because the his-
torical and literary and archaeological material recovered from the
seats of the ancient empires of the East had not yet reached such
large proportions, but with the steady course of excavations in
Egypt, Mesopotamia and later in Palestine, Syria and Asia Minor,
material of all kind increased rapidly. Scholars in all countries of
Europe were attracted to the field, new journals to embody the re-
sults of detailed investigations were established, and as a result
within each section of the field specialization led to further sub-
divisions. Under such circumstances it was well that there should
be a few scholars with the courage, the learning and the ability to
drive abreast through the whole field — men like Eduard Meyer in
Germany, Sayce in England and Salomon Reinach in France. Mas-
pero was a scholar of this broad type.

The new editions of his history, as called for, showed evidence
of, his keeping pace with new discoveries. Numerous investigations
from him in the form of monographs and articles appeared in the
technical journals and proceedings of learned societies of Europe and
this country. The final upshot was the production at the time of the
maturity of his intellectual powers of a monumental work in three
large volumes appearing in French and English, which aimed to
give a continuous narrative from the beginnings of civilization in the
East to the close of the Persian Empire. The general title of this
work — published in 1895-1897 — was enlarged to " Histoire An-

SIR GASTON MASPERO. V

cienne des Peuples de I'Orient Classique," with subdivisions in the
Enghsh edition " The Dawn of Civihzation," " The Struggle of the
Nations " and " The Passing of the Empires." The framework of
the smaller history was filled out down to the smallest details. As
each of the ancient empires was taken up in turn, the oldest Egyptian
and Babylonian principalities, the Egypt of the middle period, the
Babylonian Empire at its height, Egypt in its glory, the Assyrian
Empire, Hebrew history, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, and the
nations of Syria and Asia Minor, notably the Hittites, the entire
material is given to the reader in a most attractive and readable
form, for like most of his countrymen Maspero knew not only how
to investigate but how to write. His style, while not as brilliant as
that of Renan and Taine, partook of the picturesque quahties of
these unsurpassed masters, and was marked by epigrammatic aper-
gus and suggestive summaries as he reached the end of some par-
ticular episode, set forth with close attention to details. Nothing —
not even the smallest article or even a note in an article in any of
the journals of France, England, Germany, Holland, Italy or the
United States — appeared to have escaped his keen eye. Only those
who have themselves worked in any special field can appreciate
what this meant, and what amazing and uninterrupted industry was
involved in such a herculean labor. An inadequate index, which
enhances the difficulty of consulting the work, is the one serious criti-
cism to be passed on a product that still remains without a rival,
even though in parts it has already become antiquated through the
rapid increase of material — during the past twenty years — particu-
larly for the older periods of Egyptian and Babylonian histories.
It is also unfortunate, though not fatal to the work, that the trans-
lator has at times taken liberties with the original to make the results
of critical study in connection with the history of the Hebrews more
palatable to orthodox English readers.

The twenty years intervening between the appearance of Mas-
pero's little history and his monumental work were the busiest in a
career that knew no cessation of labor. In 1878 he himself estab-
lished the first French journal to act as a medium for publishing the
results of detailed studies bearing on Egyptology and Assyriology —
the Rccueil de Travaux relatifs a la Philologie et a I'Archcologie

VI OBITUARY NOTICES.

egyptiennes et assyriennes, appearing quarterly. Maspero was not
only the editor but the main contributor during the nigh forty years
of its existence. Scarcely a number appeared without a contribution
from his pen, and a contribution from Maspero invariably meant
some addition to human knowledge, the result of an investigation of
a new Egyptian text or of one as yet imperfectly understood, the de-
termination of the meaning of an obscure Egyptian word or phrase,
or the discussion of a grammatical problem. Many of the articles
also dealt with archaological aspects or with the art, or entered into
the domain of religious thought and theological speculation of the
Egyptians on the basis of religious texts. In his articles in the
Recueil, as in the many other journals — notably in England and
Germany — to which he occasionally sent his contributions, he con-
fined himself strictly to Egyptological studies ; and through his ef-
forts and example the somewhat loose method formerly prevailing
in the interpretation of Egyptian texts, leading not infrequently to
wild vagaries, gave way to accuracy and had its natural outcome in
the creation of what is commonly known as the Berlin school of
Egyptologists with scrupulous attention to grammatical details under
the leadership of Adolf Erman — though it should at once be added
that Egyptologists, being as human as physicians, do not always
agree in their diagnosis of a grammatical form. Maspero often
found himself in opposition to Erman, and Professor Breasted, of
the University of Chicago, tells an amusing incident in this connec-
tion. Erman had written to Maspero to have the squeezes of the
Pyramid inscriptions examined to ascertain whether certain verbal
forms contained a letter t at the end. The point was of importance
for settling a question of Egyptian grammar. Maspero entrusted
several of his students with the task who reported that there were
no traces of the t. " You see," added Maspero, in recounting the
incident to Professor Breasted, " the old Egyptians who wrote the
Pyramid texts did not possess a copy of Erman's grammar." It sub-
sequently turned out, however, that Erman was correct and that the t
was there.

The anecdote affords an illustration of the difficulties that schol-
ars in the earlier stages of the decipherment of strange signs, re-
vealing a strange language, have to contend with. Decipherment of

SIR GASTON MASPERO. VII

a new script even when a key has been found necessarily involves
"guessing" — and guesses may be right or wrong. It is only by
rigid self-criticism and by testing results at every stage in the
process of unravelling the mysteries of a script that the correct
guess becomes a scientific fact. When Maspero began his career,
the " guessing " stage had not yet been passed either in Egyptology
or Assyriology ; and though remarkable results had been achieved
through scholars like Lepsius, Mariette, Brugsch and Le Page
Renouf in Egyptian, and by Hincks, Rawlinson, Norris and Lenor-
mant and Oppert in Assyriology, yet the ground was uncertain un-
der the feet of men who still belonged to the age of the " pioneers."
The main difficulty in the case of Egyptian was the absence of older
texts. The Rosetta Stone belonged to a very late period, and until
the active and systematic excavations began in Egypt in the late
seventies, under Mariette, followed by the activities of the Egyptian
Exploration Fund and of the German government, the texts at the
disposal of scholars belonged for the larger part to the later dynasties
of Egypt, what is now known as the Middle Kingdom. It was the
great achievement of Maspero to have first made accessible the in-
scriptions found in the Pyramids at Sakkara — the cemetery of an-
cient Memphis — under which the kings of the fifth and sixth dynas-
ties lay buried. The Pyramids were opened just at the time that
Mariette, the distinguished and indefatigable head of the Bulak
Museum, lay on his death-bed. News of the discovery was brought
to him by his associate, Heinrich Brugsch, but it was left to Mari-
ette's natural successor, the young Maspero, to copy the texts with
his own hand and without delay to make them accessible. In the
opinion of Egyptologists this achievement at the age of thirty-five
remains his greatest work, for although some of his readings have
been set aside and some of his interpretations have been superseded
by later investigations, the decipherment was eminently successful.
Through this feat he laid the foundations for the methodical study
of Egyptian grammar on the basis of early and original texts, in-
stead of later ones, which were in many cases imperfect copies.
This applied more particularly to the great and miscellaneous collec-
tion of spells and hymns, conventionally known as the " Book of
the Dead," the correct title of which is "The Book of the Going

VIII OBITUARY NOTICES.

Out into the Day." Maspero recognized that the Pyramid texts
furnished in archaic form the oldest recension of the collection, and
that these texts must primarily be used for determining the struc-
ture of the Egyptian language and for the study of the early re-
ligious beliefs. Maspero thus opened up the second era of Egypto-
logical research, and associated his name for all times with that of
Champollion.

He had been sent to Egypt in 1880 by the French government
as the head of a mission to establish the Institut Francais de I'Arche-
ologie Orientale at Cairo — founded to carry on excavations and to
promote arclijeological research through publications. On the death
of Mariette, the Khedive appointed Maspero as director of the
Museum, a post which he retained for a period of five years. De-
spite his exacting labors in that capacity, rendered more difficult by
the chicaneries of an Oriental government, he continued to edit his
Recueil and to carry on his favorite researches. He also retained
his professorship at the College de France and spent a portion of
each year at Paris, devoted to teaching and writing. In 1883 he was
elected a member of the xA.cademie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres,
and when in 1885 ^^ resigned his post at Cairo, he returned to Paris
the acknowledged head of French Egyptologists, recognized through-
out the world as an authority of the very first rank.

The next fourteen years, from 1885 to 1899, were spent in Paris.
During this period he devoted himself to the training of young stu-
dents of Egyptology, and exhibited a fruitfulness in research even
more astonishing than his previous achievements. Besides the ar-
ticles in his Recucil, his contributions appeared in nunierous jour-
nals outside his native land. Long memoirs alternated with shorter
articles — ranging over the entire domain of Egyptology. Among
popular works which appeared during this period were his " Life in
Ancient Egypt," his " Manual of Egyptian Archaeology and Guide
to the Study of Antiquities in Egypt " and his " Contes Populaires
de I'Egypte Ancienne — the last named a collection of tales, charm-
ingly translated into French with a delightful introduction, set-
ting forth the nature of this branch of Egyptian literature. The
collection includes the famous story of " The Two Brothers," which
wandered to the ancient Hebrews and became part of the popular

SIR GASTON MASPERO. IX

folklore which found a literary expression in the dramatic story of
Joseph and the wife of the Egyptian official who, by the way, was
not Potiphar's wife. It is time to relieve this lady of the unjust sus-
picion that has attached to her for several thousand years.

In 1899 he was again called back to Egypt, this time as the di-
rector of the Service of Antiquities. By the Anglo-French agree-
ment whereby, in return for allowing them free scope in Algiers,
the French government waived further claims on Egypt in favor of
the English, the English government granted the French the con-
tinuance of one privilege in Egypt — the supervision of the excava-
tions of Egyptian remains. This concession was confirmed by the
Convention of 1904 between England and France in regard to Mo-
rocco. The English were interested in live Egyptians and left the
mummies to the French. I suppose that it is a fair question which
nation got the better of the bargain. The living present is always
troublesome — that is what it exists for — but it is a grievous error
to suppose that the dead past belongs in the region where the wicked
cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. If we allowed the
dead past to bury its dead that might be the case, but archeology in-
sists upon exhuming the past, and it is amazing to see how much
trouble these old Pharaohs, who built their temples millenniums ago
and who have been lying beneath their pyramids and in their rock-
cut tombs for ever so long, can make when you dig them up. With
English, French and German archaeologists, backed by their govern-
ments, competing for the privilege of exhuming the past, the task of
the mediator between rival claims was hard indeed. The reviving
interest in archaeological research made it imperative to have at the
head of the Service, which was in control of all work on the tombs
and temples, a man of tact and judgment, one in whose fairness and
ability all could have confidence. One Frenchman after the other
tried the job of director and left the post — exhausted by worry —
and in an unhappy frame of mind. Maspero was called in as a
last resort in 1899 ^^^ maintained the headship till 1914 — a period
of fifteen years.

If the preceding fourteen years were his years of greatest scien-
tific activity, the succeeding fifteen were those of greatest public
service. His time and strength were given to the difficult task be-

X OBITUARY NOTICES.

fore him, which involved the reorganization of the Service, in such
a way as to ensure methodical explorations through the various
agencies, the French Archaeological Institute, the Egyptian Explora-
tion Fund, the German Oriental Society, and the American institu-
tions and certain individuals to whom permission to carry on the
work was granted. The former loose methods were abandoned and
the great monuments of ancient Egypt — such as the temples of
Luxor and Karnak — were protected against spoliation.

A still greater task was his reorganization of the native museum,
involving the transfer from inadequate quarters at Bulak to a splen-
did construction in Khasr-en-Nil at Cairo. Through the fruitful
results of Egyptian excavations, the choice pieces of which remained
in the country, this Museum has become the finest collection of
Egyptian Antiquities in the world. At the same time such was the
wealth of material recovered and such the wise, generous policy
pursued by Maspero with his keen and unrivalled knowledge of Egyp-
tian Archaeology, knowing exactly what to keep and what to send
out of the country to enrich the museums of Europe and the United
States, the explorers received a suitable share of the discoveries
made. To have carried out such a task successfully is to bestow
the highest possible praise on the harmonious combination in one
man of undisputed authoritative knowledge, keen judgment, wise
tact, generosity, broadminded foresight and splendid executive abil-
ities.

That during these years so fully occupied with executive duties
he should have found it possible to keep himself abreast with the
results of excavations carried on now by a large group of scholars in
all parts of Europe and this country, and to have continued his own
investigations in his contributions to the Recueil, to the publications
of the French Archaeological Institute of Cairo and to numerous
other journals, is a striking testimony to his marvellous powers of
work. The preparation of a catalogue of the great Cairo collection,
quite apart from the labor involved in its installation, would in itself
have absorbed the energies of the ordinary scholar, who was not en-
tirely swamped by the daily routine of executive duties. Maspero
found time to bring out several volumes of " Etudes Egyptiennes "
and to gather the memoirs and essays of French Egyptologists in a

SIR GASTON MASPERO. XI

" Bibliotheque Egyptienne." of which nine vohnnes alone constitute
his own contributions, thus brought together from the various
mediums through which they were originally published. He wrote
a large number of less technical articles for the Journal des Dcbats
and the literary periodicals of France, some of which were collected
in a volume " Ruines et Paysages d'Egypte." He found time even
to write reviews of the works of others. Most of these reviews
were of publications within his special field, but not infrequently he
went outside of it to call attention to productions in the larger
realm of Oriental history, religion, archaeology or art. It was a
privilege indeed to have one's work passed upon by such a master.
He could be severe and caustic, but he was also invariably kind and
generous and encouraging to the younger men as they arose in the
ranks. I trust that I may be pardoned for a personal allusion by
referring to the encouragement that I received as a young man by
the honor of having my first larger publication — about twenty years
ago — reviewed by Maspero.

His last important work, published late in 1912 and appearing in
several languages, was an illustrated manual " Art in Egypt " sum-
marizing and elucidating the periods and characteristic features of
Egyptian art in a manner that he alone, with his unrivalled knowl-
edge, was capable of doing. This was followed in 191 3 by an Eng-
lish translation of his collected " Studies in Egyptian Art " that had
appeared in various journals during the past thirty years.

But he carried on all this heavy burden of activity at the expense
of his health. His executive duties bore heavily on him as the years
rolled on ; the hours that he snatched for his own scientific and lit-
erary labors were stolen from a leisure to which he was richly en-
titled. For him, as for so many unceasing workers, the motto of
life was " Repos ailleurs " — a noble but a fatal motto. I saw Pro
fessor Maspero for the last time in the spring of 191 2. During the
fifteen years that had elapsed since I met him in Paris at the Inter-
national Congress of Orientalists, he had grown old and he ap-
peared to be — what in effect he was — worn out by his incessant
labors. He apologized for not being able to devote more time to
visitors, because of the pressure of the work, and one saw that he
was obliged to be feverishly active in order to get through the tasks

XII OBITUARY NOTICES.

of the day. He complained in his quiet way that he was obhged to
spend his days in executive and routine tasks. " Only the even-
ings," he remarked, "can I call my own, and these I must reserve
for my work."

His health began to fail, as a result, no doubt, of this strain ; his
eye-sight, too — he was always very near-sighted — began to suffer,
and in the spring of 191 4 he resigned his post in the hope of enjoy-
ing some remaining years to be devoted to his favorite studies, and
in carrying on the congenial duties of Secretaire Perpetuel of the
Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, to which he was elected
when it became known that he intended to return to Paris. He
reached home in August, just as the War broke out, only to be struck
down by an attack of heart disease, from which he never fully re-
covered. The War brought deep sorrow to him as a French patriot,
and also a severe personal bereavement in the death of his talented
son, Jean Maspero, who fell in battle on the 17th of February, 191 5.
Jean Maspero was following in the footsteps of his father and had
already achieved a high reputation as one of the most brilliant of
the younger scholars of France when he gave tip his life to his
country. The father writes pathetically of this : " Until now I felt
considerably younger than my age. I cannot tell you how I have
aged in a few months." The blow, no doubt, hastened the end, and
he died suddenly at a meeting of the French Academy, of which
for over forty years he had been one of the most distinguished
members.

The death of Maspero suggests a remark of a more general
character. To the man of science such a catastrophe as this, the
most tragic war in history, brings a sorrow additional to that which
affects the patriots of all the belligerent nations (and of neutrals as
well), for it means the severance of international ties which in the
case of Maspero were particularly numerous and close. Through
his writings and through his directorship of the Service of Anti-
quities he was brought into contact with the scholars of all nations —
not least with the savants of Germany, whose activity in Egyptology,
as in all branches of science, is so marked. His Recueil was open
to the scholars of all lands — its international character was shown
by the large number of contributions that appeared in it in Ger-
man and English. Absorbed as we naturally are by the more ob-

SIR GASTON MASPERO. XIII

vious tragic aspects of the great conflict, by the frightful loss of life
and by its economic disasters, we seldom stop to think of its appalling
effect in severing the international bonds created by scholarship,
and which count for so much in the advancement of human knowl-
edge. Scholarship is perhaps the most potent of the forces work-
ing for amity and mutual understanding among nations, upon which
in the last analysis the peace of the world rests. International gath-
erings of scholars, that have multiplied greatly during the past
twenty years and now cover all fields — medicine, the natural sciences,
philosophy, psychology, anthropology, philology, history and archae-
ology, were contributing towards this end. At one blow all these
efforts were swept aside and all hopes for the future shattered.
Maspero must have felt — perhaps more keenly than most scholars —
the cruel stroke which undid the work of years. Without the cooper-
ation of the scholars of all countries — and more particularly of the
two, France and Germany, that take the lead in scholarship in most
fields — international congresses are impossible. This generation
will pass away before a new era may dawn when the scholars of
the world will again be enabled to meet in council and to work to-
gether for the advancement of the highest aims of humanity.

Many were the honors that came to Maspero during his career
from all parts of the world. The Academies of England, Germany,
Austria, Holland, Belgium and Italy and the learned societies of this
country elected him to honorary membership. The American Philo-
sopical Society elected him to membership in 1891. In 1909 King Ed-
ward bestowed a knighthood on him in recognition of his eminent
services to science — a very exceptional distinction in the case of a
foreigner. He was made a Knight-Commander of St. Michael and
St. George ; but perhaps the most significant of all tributes to him
is the circumstance that the directorship of the Service still remains
vacant, two years after he left it. This may be due in part to the
war, but in large part it is because no one has been found fitted to
take his place.

If there is such a thing as a fitting death, Sir Gaston Maspero
was granted this privilege — to pass away under the shadow of the
venerable edifice on the Seine that symbolizes the intellectual glory
of France, and to whose luster he added by his distinguished career.

Morris Jastrow, Jr.

SAMUEL DICKSON.
{Read December i, igi6.)

I have been asked to present a paper commemorative of our late
associate, Samuel Dickson. It is hard to realize that he is dead.
We have seen him in this hall so often that his present appearance
in yonder doorway would not seem unnatural. Whenever he en-
tered our assembly all eyes turned towards him instinctively. His
tall form, his almost majestic mien, his white hair, his shaggy eye-
brows, his carefully trimmed beard and his air of distinction com-
pelled attention. I recall that when Nansen, the Arctic explorer,
was addressing us, it so happened that Mr. Dickson, Senator George
F. Edmunds and Admiral Melville sat side by side in the front row,
and as I looked at these leonine men I realized what the Gauls must
have felt when first they saw the Roman Senate.

Mr. Dickson was a marked man intellectually. Whatever he
said, whatever he wrote attracted attention. Judge McPherson has
put it in the happiest way :

" And who wrote better English ? Everything to which he set his pen
had a certain distinction about it, a crisp and vivid handHng, a happy turn of
phrase, the choice of the inevitable word. He possessed that indefinable
something we call the literary touch, the atmosphere of refinement, of abound-
ing knowledge, of quiet power, of balanced judgment, of unfailing good taste,
that can never be acquired as one acquires a mechanic art. ... It was a keen
pleasure to hear him talk even in the casual ease of familiar speech ; it was
a delight to read anything he took the trouble to write, for he wrote nothing
carelessly, but was at pains to leave his admirable stamp upon correspondence
and minute and formal address alike. We have all enjoyed and profited by
his too rare letters upon public questions, and were always sure that the
familiar (S. D.) at the end was a guaranty of thoughtful, lucid discussion,
always adorned by the grace of expression, and often illumined by the lam-
bent play of irony or humor."

Mr. Patterson of the Pittsburgh bar, who has succeeded Mr.
Dickson as chairman of our State Board of Law Examiners, said
of him :

XIV

SAMUEL DICKSON. XV

" As you came in contact with liim you felt that atmosphere — I hardly
know how to describe it. It was more like the fabled breeze that did not
come from the haunts of men. Tennyson, you remember, described the wind
that blows all day in a land ' where no man is or hath been since the making
of the world.' That expresses my thought somewhat of something which is
entirely apart or free from any stain or taint of other things or of person-
ality. Farther even would he go than those of us who were with him could
go, and never once did he falter in the integrity, clearness and the forcibleness
of his conclusions."

Hon. John Bassett Moore said of him:

" Always abreast of the times, eagerly noting the latest development's in
science, in industry and in oolitics, it may be said that he made almost daily
excursions into the fields of history and literature. He did not, indeed, figure
in the category of omnivorous readers, who devour voraciously whatever
falls in their way, good and bad. His mind was too delicatety and sensi-
tively organized for such a feat. He was singularly discriminating. The
worthless he instinctively rejected, but there was little of real and permanent
value that escaped him. As a result it was always a delight to talk with him,
and his interlocutor never went away emptyhanded. On the contrary, although
he might feel a sense of hunger rather than of satiety, he could at any rate
affirm in the felicitous phrase of Dryden, that he had ' not wanted sweet dis-
course, the banquet of the mind.' "

Mr. J. Levering Jones, one of Mr. Dickson's colleagues in the
board of trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, said of him:

"There was a delicate austerity in his sense of honor. Deviation from
intellectual or legal rectitude was intolerable to him. Upon a question where
either was involved, he made no argument. He would simply make a gesture
and render a decision. . . . He possessed a native dignity of manner, but
mingled with it an unaffected modesty. This gave him the fortunate faculty,
in the discussion of moral questions, of separating himself from the subject
under consideration. What he said, therefore, became charged with an
unusual and invincible force. He rested, in such observations, upon simple
and eternal principles. He conveyed no idea of personal relation to them.
As a declarant or analyst he was only dealing with ethical and spiritual
matters."

Mr. C. Stuart Patterson said of him :

" He was a man of strong convictions, and he never was lacking in the
courage needed for their expression, and yet he was exceptionally broad-
minded and tolerant of differences of opinion, and he could always see and
do full justice to the merits of the opposing view. He was by temperament
conservative; yet, even in his later years, his conservatism was not the unrea-
soning conservatism of old age, but it was an intelligent conservatism based
upon an accurate knowledge of existing conditions, and a just estimate of the
probable results of proposed innovations. In social intercourse Mr. Dickson

XVI OBITUARY NOTICES.

was one of the most delightful of companions. His reading had been wide
and varied, and he had thought much as to that which he had read. His
talk was

" ' Rich with all treasure updrawn from the crypt
Where lies the learning of the ancient world.' "

Former Chief Justice Mitchell said :

" Mr. Dickson was naturally a scholar, a student. In his younger years
he might even have been called a bookish man. In that way he laid a founda-
tion of theoretical knowledge, which fortunately for him and for us, quite
early in life was supplanted by an equipment which is derived nowadays from
what might be called business colleges. He developed a practical quality that
never was surpassed by any of his contemporaries. Yet, with all the years
devoted to the most important litigation, he never quite forgot his natural
bent of scholarship. . . . Naturally a student, he became as active and as
accomplished a man of affairs as the Philadelphia Bar possessed."

Chief Justice Brown said:

" A prince in our Israel has fallen. Full of years and full of honors he
has gone to his fathers in peace His hoary head was a crown of glory, for
his ways were ways of righteousness. . . . Samuel Dickson was a good man,
whose memory is precious to all who knew him. He was singularly faithful
to every duty that came to him ; he was cultured and refined ; he was an
upright citizen, a very learned lawyer and a Christian gentleman."

I have culled these tributes and these discriminating and pene-
trating analyses of his character from the Proceedings of the fleet-
ing of The Philadelphia Bar, held June 7, 191 5, and placed them
side by side because they give you a complete picture of the man.
It only remains for me to give you a sketch of his active life.

He was born at Newburgh, New York, February 2, 1837, ^"d
came when a lad to the city of Philadelphia, comparatively unknown,
and with no advantage of local relationships. His school days
were spent in the Classical Institute of the Rev. John W. Faires,
the best teacher of his time in preparing boys for college. He en-
tered the Arts Department of the University of Pennsylvania in
1 85 1, and graduated in 1855 with the degree of B.A. Registering
as a student of law in the office of Constant Guillou, Esq., he was
admitted to the bar in October, 1858, supporting himself during this
term of three years by acting as first assistant in the school of Dr.
Faires, instructing the highest classes in Greek and Latin, and to the
end of his days his Homer and his Horace were as familiar to his

SAMUEL DICKSON. XVII

pen and tongue as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Byron and Keats.
While waiting for practice he devoted himself for two years to edi-
torial labors upon The Age, the then leading Democratic newspaper
published in Philadelphia. The skill and the experience he there
acquired gave him "the pen of a ready writer," an accomplishment
he never lost. In December, i860, he became the librarian of the
Law Association of Philadelphia as the successor of the scholarly
bibliophile, John William Wallace, who later became the reporter of
the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States and still
later president of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. From
the old folios and black letter octavos illustrating the growth of the
English Common Law, collected largely by Mr. Wallace, Mr. Dick-
son acquired that knowledge of legal bibliography and that taste
for legal history which in after years contributed so largely to the
matter and manner of his forensic discussions.

From the fate of the bookworm and the meager salary of a
librarian he was snatched in 1865 by the discernment of that incom-
parable business man's businesslike lawyer John C. Bullitt, who ap-
preciated the learning and legal ability of younger men, and had
need of a partner so equipped. Thus Mr. Dickson was, quite early in
life, introduced to business associations, which later he came to com-
mand. The law partnership thus formed in 1865 lasted until Mr.
Bullitt's death in 1902. A third partner was admitted in the interim
in the person of Richard C. Dale, whose untimely death in 1905 de-
prived the profession of one of its most conspicuous ornaments and
buttresses of strength. He then organized the present firm of Dick-
son, Beitler and McCouch. He served as a member of the commit-
tee of censors of the Law Association of Philadelphia from 1873 to
1890 and was a stern upholder of the purity of legal ethics. He
served again in this position from 1872 to 1896, when he became the
vice-chancellor of the Association, serving for three years, when he
was elected chancellor and held the place by successive annual re-
elections for ten years, a term of service exceeded only by Mr. Wm.
M. Meredith and Mr. George W. Biddle out of a list of ten prede-
cessors, and which, under the present by-laws, can never again be
equaled. He served his alma mater as a trustee of the University
of Pennsylvania for a period of thirty-three years — from 1881 until

XVIII OBITUARY NOTICES.

his death — having been a member of the Law Committee since 1882,
chairman of that committee since 1896, and a member of the Fi-
nance Committee since 1894.

In 1895 he acted as chairman of a committee of twenty-one
leaders of the bar from all parts of the commonwealth which or-
ganized the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and was chosen its second
president. His address as president, upon " The Development in
Pennsylvania of Constitutional Restraints upon the Power and Pro-
cedure of the Legislature," was as notable as a historical treatise
upon our constitutional growth as it was admirable for the clearness
and vigor of its views. After yielding his presidency he did not,
as so many ex-presidents did, lose interest in the work, but con-
tinued his active relationship to the Association, and in 1902, largely
at his instance, and because of his character, which was a sufficient
surety against unfair or arbitrary discrimination in the exercise of
new and unusual powers, the Supreme Court created the State
Board of Law Examiners of five members, and appointed him a
member. He immediately became its chairman and remained in
that position until his death. His successor as chairman has de-
scribed him exactly: "Though thus the central figure of that or-
ganization and the representative of the Bar of the state, he im-
pressed one strongly with the fact of his complete ignorance of
his being the one or the other. He moved among us as Cj[uietly and
as gently, as inconspicuously, as a tyro. It was an achievement.
It was something out of the way to see one who was so great pass
so Cjuietly and modestly among us."

In June, 1907, he was appointed by the board of judges a mem-
ber of the board of directors of the City Trusts of Philadelphia
charged specifically with the practical administration of the estate
of Stephen Girard, and served that most splendid of municipal
charities with active and well-informed zeal until the close of his
life. He was a manager of the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and
Biology, founded by the munificence of our own former president
Isaac Wistar. He sat as director in the boards of fifteen corpora-
tions, among which were the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Com-
pany, The Lehigh and New England Railroad Company, The Lehigh
and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company, The Lehigh Navigation Electric

SAMUEL DICKSON. XIX

Company, The Fourth Street National Bank, and The Corn Ex-
change National Bank. The mere mention of these names is suffi-
cient to attest the magnitude and importance of their interests. He
was also a member of no less than thirty literary, social, scientific
and charitable associations, of which The Shakespeare Society, The
Mahogany Tree Dining Club, The Lawyers' Club, The Legal Club,
The American Bar Association, The Down Town Club, and The
Triplets are deserving of particular mention. During the life time
of Judge Sharswood, he was a member of a small but choice coterie
especially interested in the study of political economy, among whom
were the late E. Coppee Mitchell and James Parsons, both of whom
were subsequently in the faculty of the Law School ; and he was also
interested in the literary studies of the English poets of the Lake
School conducted by the late Asa L Fish, a man of " fragrant mem-
mory," to use an old but expressive phrase.

His relations to the American Philosophical Society date from
his election as a member April i8, 1884. He served as councillor
during the years 1906-08, 1910-12, and 1914-15. He also, from
time to time, served on important committees, notably the one
charged with the arrangements of the Franklin Bi-Centennial. He
was elected to the Wistar party in 1887 ^^d was chairman of its
executive committee from 1 902-1 909, in which latter year he suc-
ceeded Henry Charles Lea as Dean, and served in that office until
his death. As a host he was charming, radiating hospitality and
warmth.

Mr. Dickson was a widely travelled man both in Europe and
America. One who knew him well wrote :

" He had a wonderful remembrance of the places visited and could lay
out from memory an itinerary for a friend in Italy or Switzerland which was
practicable in every detail. His travels in Greece were the subject of a de-
lightful address delivered at the University of Pennsylvania. Music he loved,
and the theater and his recollections of the great singers and actors made an
interesting part of his many-sided conversation."

I myself recall a scene of my law student days, when on visiting
the Catskills I saw Mr. Dickson, then in his very prime, seated upon
the broad ledge of rock, which jutted out over the valley in front of
the Mountain House, in animated conversation with Mr. Justice

XX OBITUARY NOTICES.

Bradley of the Supreme Court of the United States ; the venerable
Chief Justice Beasley of New Jersey, George Harding, the famous
patent lawyer who had won the Morse Electric Telegraph case, and
the McCormick Reaper case, and the quaint old-fashioned Asa I.
Fish, who was physically the counterpart of Mr. Pickwick, and
mentally his exact opposite. It was an unusual company for a law
student to join, and I listened to a discussion of the famous Slaugh-
ter House Cases, but recently decided by the highest tribunal in the
nation, where Justices Bradley and Field had dissented from the
majority, a discussion which impressed me deeply, so animated had
the debate become. Many years later I saw Mr. Dickson on the
broad piazzas of the United States Hotel at Saratoga in conversa-
tion with E. J. Phelps, of Vermont, and Joseph H. Choate, both of
them subsequently ambassadors to Great Britain, and grouped about
them were Morefield Storey, of Boston, Simeon E. Baldwin, of Con-
necticut, judge, governor and publicist, and John F. Dillon, who left
the federal bench to become a renowned advocate before the Su-
preme Court of the United States ; James C. Carter, the greatest
forensic jurist of his day, and Henry C. Hitchcock, of Missouri, an
eminent disciple of the school of John Marshall. It is no wonder
then that with such associates Mr. Dickson became " one of the
honor men of the Bar of the United States." Indeed, it is known
that when, through the death of Chief Justice Waite, a vacancy
existed in the highest judicial office of the nation, President Cleve-
land seriously contemplated sending Mr. Dickson's name to the
Senate, and nothing but a narrow view of his relationship as counsel
to great corporations prevented his doing so.

It is as a leader of the Bar that he must be finally considered.
Admitted to the Bar of Philadelphia in 1858, of all the men who
were slightly his seniors in standing but seven survived him, and of
the fifty-nine men who were admitted in the same year but two re-
mained. This impressive fact, while in one sense indicating the av-
erage shortness and uncertainty of life, in another illustrated the
persistency of his leadership. From 1776 to 1858 — a period of
eighty-two years — there were admitted to the Philadelphia Bar in
all 2,786 men : at the time of his death there were 2,936 names upon
the roll of living lawyers. This fact indicated the great growth in

SAMUEL DICKSON. XXI

Bar membership during the hfe time of Mr. Dickson, and empha-
sized not only the relative significance of his leadership, but the
circumstance that to the vast majority of the present Bar he must
have appeared as a venerable man. In truth, it is the prolonged life
of a great leader that binds the generations and centuries of lawyers
together. Just as Horace Binney bound his own generation of Ser-
geants and Chaunceys to that of William Lewis, Edward Tilghman
and Jared Ingersoll — the leaders of the Old Bar, as Mr. Binney
called them in his classic brochure of that title — and just as Mr.
Wm. M. Meredith bound that of John M. Read, George Stroud,
Eli K. Price and John Cadwalader to that of Mr. Binney, so Samuel
Dickson has bound his own generation to that of George Sharswood,
William Strong, R. C. McMurtrie, George W. Biddle, Furman Shep-
pard and Theodore Cuyler. It is curious to note how long some of
these overlapping lives have been, for while more than half a gen-
eration younger than Mr. Dickson, I can distinctly recall not only
the forms and the features, but even the voices of Horace Binney,
who was admitted to the Bar in 1800; of James J. Barclay and
Henry J. Williams, who were admitted in 1815; of David Paul
Brown, who was admitted in 1816; of William M. Meredith, who
was admitted in 181 7; and of Eli K. Price, who was admitted in
1822. Yet each man stood in his day and generation for certain
distinct phases of legal principles which cannot be confounded with
those of a later time.

The law, while fixed and stable, undergoes successive changes,
due to the development of society and to the multiplication of busi-
ness issues which vary from generation to generation. Mr. Dick-
son's career is a striking illustration of this. While Mr. McMurtrie
and his contemporaries relied upon the law of Lord Tenterden,
Chief Justice Gibson and Baron Parke, and upon the equity of Lord
Eldon and Chief Justice Tilghman, Mr. Dickson, while thoroughly
familiar with the older precedents, espoused and enforced in argu-
ment the law of Baron Bramwell, Lord Blackburn and Mr. Ben-
jamin and the equity of Sir George Jessel, Lord Esher and Lord
Cairns. His arguments in the Supreme Court of the United States
are proofs of this, notably in Norrington vs. Wright (115 U. S.
188), and Meehan vs. Valentine (145 U. S. 611), in the first of

XXII OBITUARY NOTICES.

which he discussed the divisibility of a time contract to be met by
instalment deliveries, and in the second, in which he sustained the
more recent rule that participation in profits is presumptive but not
conclusive proof of a partnership. In the same way his numerous
engagements in the Federal Courts, and in the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania, illustrate the extent and the character of his devotion
to the complex and varied questions arising out of railroad receiver-
ships, coal carrying and mining contracts, and the various efforts at
legislative restrictions upon vast combinations of capital, both cor-
porate and individual.

In the law of receiverships he was both a creator and an expert,
and his arguments here acc[uired a permanent value as illuminating
a once darkened chamber of equity jurisprudence. His forensic
work in the lower courts, both in the Common Pleas and the Orphans
Court, were marked by the same excellence, thoroughness of prep-
aration and clearness of presentation. While making no claim to
eloquence or skill in cross examination, yet in assisting his colleagues
in sifting and arranging evidence and in the preparation of briefs, he
never overlooked a point or neglected a pertinent authority. Mr.
Bullitt leaned heavily upon him in the Whitaker will case, a case as
renowned in our annals as the famous Tichborne claim in England.
And after Mr. Bullitt had gone and Mr. Dickson took the lead, his
arguments were models of simplicity and strength, for he never
imagined himself profound in proportion to the ability to make one's
self obscure. Clearly do I see the shade of Samuel Dickson joining
that majestic procession of venerable men ascending the empurpled
heights which Virgil tells us belong to the immortals.

Bibliography.

His address, entitled " Ten Days in Greece " ; " The Methods of
Legal Education ;" " Powers and Procedure of the Legislature ;"
" George Sharswood ;" " The Dedication of the New Law School
Building ;" the " Introductory Address," delivered by him as chan-
cellor of the Law Association, upon the celebration of its Centen-
nial in March, 1902, and his argument before the Anthracite Strike
Commission, have been published and disclose a lasting basis for his
fame. Hampton L. Carson,

MINUTES

MINUTES.

Stated Meeting January y, ipi6.

Arthur W. Goodspeed, Ph.D., in the Chair.

Rev. James W. Robins, D.D., owing to his inability to attend
the meetings of the Society, presented his resignation of member-
ship.

The decease was announced of
Richard Stockton Hunter, at Philadelphia, on December 17,

1915-
Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe, at Leatherhead, Surrey,

England, on December 18, 1915, set. 82.
Arthur W. Wright, Ph.D., at New Haven, on December 19,

191 5, set. 80.
George Albert Lewis, at Philadelphia, on December 23, 191 5,
xt. 86.
The following papers were read :
" The Determination of Distances of Stars from Us," by Prof.

John A. Miller.
" The Geology of Sergipe and Northeastern Bahai," by Ralph
H. Soper. (Communicated by Prof. John C. Branner.)
The Judges of the Annual Election held on this day between the
hours of 2 and 5 in the afternoon, reported that the following named
members were elected according to the rules, regulations, and ordi-
nances of the Society, to be the Officers for the ensuing year :

President.
William W. Keen.

Vice-Presiden ts.

Wllham B. Scott,

Albert A. Michelson,

Edward C. Pickering.

Hi

io MINUTES.

Secretaries.
I. Minis Hays,
Arthur W. Goodspeed,
Amos P. Brown,
Harry F. Keller.

Curators.

Charles L. Doolittle,
WiUiam P. Wilson,
LesHe W. Miller.

Treasurer.
Henry La Barre Jayne,

Councillors.

(To serve for three years.)
Louis A. Bauer,
Edward P. Cheyney,
Russell H. Chittenden,
Charles D. Walcott.

Stated Meeting February 4, ipi6.
William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
Prof. William E. Lingelbach (introduced by Prof. Emory R.
Johnson) read a paper on " Nationalism and the European War."

Stated Meeting March s, igi6.
William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
The decease was announced of Sir William Turner, K.C.B.,
F.R.S., at Edinburgh, on February 15, 1916, aet. 85.
The following papers were read :
" Predominating Reactions among the Hydrocarbons," by Wal-
ter F. Rittman, Ph.D. (Introduced by Dr. Keen.)
"The Pathological Anatomy of Injected Chestnut Tree," by
Caroline Rumbold, Ph.D. (Introduced by Prof. Macfar-
lane.)

MINUTES. V

Stated Meeting April /, 1916.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
The following invitations were received :

From the New Jersey Historical Society to be represented at
the opening ceremonies of the 250th anniversary of the
founding of Newark, to be held on May i, 191 6.

From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be repre-
sented by a delegate at the opening of its new buildings on
June 14, 1 91 6.
The decease was announced of the following members :

H. C. Humphrey, on January 9, 191 6.

Louis Duncan, Ph.D., U. S. N., on February 13, 1916, set. 53.

William Angus Knight, LL.D., on March , 1916, set. 81.

James Burrill Angell, LL.D., at Ann Arbor, on April i, 1916,
set. 87.
The following papers were read :

" The Moving Coil Galvanometer and the Recent Improve-
ments in its Construction and Use for Direct Deflection
Work of Precision," by Anthony Zeleny, Ph.D., of Min-
neapolis.

" On Ethnological Tests of Sensation and Perception," by E.
B. Titchener, D.Sc, LL.D., of Ithaca.

Stated General Meeting April i^, 14, and 15, IQ16.
Thursday, April ij.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.

Hermon Carey Rumpus, Ph.D., Walter Bradford Cannon, A.M.,
M.D., John Merle Coulter, Ph.D., Luther Pfahler Eisenhart, Ph.D..
Leland Ossian Howard, Ph.D., Raymond Pearl, Ph.D., and John
Zeleny, Ph.D., recently elected members, subscribed the Laws and
were admitted into the Society.

The decease was announced of Harry Clary Jones, Ph.D., at
Baltimore, on April 9, 1916, set. 50.

The following papers were read :
"The Popes and the Crusades," by Dana C. Munro, A.M.,

Vi MINUTES.

L.H.D., Professor of Medieval History, Princeton Univer-
sity.

"The Common Folk of Shakespeare," by Felix E. Schelling,
Ph.D., Litt.D., Professor of English Literature, University
of Pennsylvania.

"A Rare Old-Slavonic Missal," by J. Dyneley Prince, Ph.D.,
Professor of Semitic Languages, Columbia University.

" On the Art of Entering Another's Body : A Theme of Hindu
Fiction," by Maurice Bloomfield, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
Sanskrit, Johns Hopkins University.

"The Literpretation of Mythology," by Franz Boas, Ph.D.,
Sc.D., LL.D., Professor of Anthropology, Columbia Univer-
sity.

"America's Relation to the Developments of International
Law," by Leo S. Rowe, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of PoHtical
Science, University of Pennsylvania.

" The Work of the Mellon Institute in its Relations to the In-
dustries and to the Universities," by Raymond F. Bacon,
B.S., A.M., Ph.D., Director, Mellon Institute of Industrial
Research, University of Pittsburgh. (Introduced by Dr.
Keen.)

" Sight and SignalHng in the Navy," by Alexander Duane,
M.D., of New York. (Introduced by Dr. de Schweinitz.)

" Observations of the Mentality of Chimpanzees and Orang-
utans" (illustrated with motion pictures), by William H.
Furness, 3d, A.B., M.D., of Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

Friday, April 14.

Executive Session — p.50 o'clock.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.

The Proceedings of the Officers and Council were submitted and

the following nominees for membership were recommended for

election this year :

Residents of the United States.
William Wallace Atterbury, A.M., Radnor, Pa.
Maxime Bocher, A.B., Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.

MINUTES. vii

Percy Williams Bridgman, Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.
James Mason Crafts, S.B., LL.D., Boston, Mass.
Henry Piatt dishing, Cleveland, Ohio.
Edward Murray East, M.S., Ph.D., Boston, Mass.
Frank Rattray Lillie, Ph.D., Chicago, 111.
William E. Lingelbach, A.B., Ph.D., Philadelphia.
Daniel Trembly MacDougal, A.M., Ph.D., Tucson, Ariz.
Charles Frederick Marvin, M.E., Washington, D. C.
Lafayette Benedict Mendel, A.B., Ph.D., Sc.D., New Haven,
Conn.

Forest Ray Moulton, Ph.D., Chicago, 111.
EH Kirk Price, A.B., LL.B., Philadelphia.
Erwin Frink Smith, Sc.D., Washington, D. C.
William Morton Wheeler, Ph.D., Boston, Mass.

Foreign Residents.
Frank Dawson Adams, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.R.S., Montreal.
Wilhelm L. Johannsen, M.D., Ph.D., Copenhagen.
Joannes Diderik van der Waals, Ph.D., Amsterdam.

Morning Session — p.^^ o'clock.
William B. Scott, Sc.D., LL.D., Vice-President, in the Chair.
The following papers were read :
" Two New Terms, Cormophytaster and Xeniophyte, axio-

matically fundamental in Botany," by William Trelease,

Sc.D., LL.D., Professor of Botany, University of Illinois,

Urbana.
" Origin and Vegetation of Salt Marsh Pools," by John W.

Harshberger, Ph.D., Professor of Botany, University of

Pennsylvania.
" The F2 Generations, and Back-, and Inter-crosses of the F^

Hybrids between GBnothera nutans and pycnocarpa," by

George F. Atkinson, Ph.D., Head of Department of Botany,

Cornell University.
" Inheritance through Spores," by John M. Coulter, A.M.,

Ph.D., Professor of Botany, University of Chicago.

viii MINUTES.

" The Dynamics of Antagonism," by W. J. V. Osterhout, A.M.,
Ph.D., Professor of Botany, Harvard Univ. (Introduced
by Prof. Davis.)

"Jointing as a Fundamental Factor in the Degradation of the
Lithosphere," by Frederick Ehrenfeld, Ph.D., Assistant Pro-
fessor of Geology, University of Pennsylvania. (Introduced
by Prof. Amos P. Brown.)

" Sinking Islands versus a Rising Ocean in the Coral-Reef
Problem," by Wilham Morris Davis, Sc.D., Ph.D., Profes-
sor Emeritus of Geology, Harvard University.

" The Petrology of Some South Sea Islands and its Signifi-
cance," by Joseph P. Iddings, Sc.D., late Professor of Petrol-
ogy, University of Chicago.

" Coal Formation," by J. J. Stevenson, Ph.D., LL.D., Emeritus
Professor of Geology, New York University.

" California Lakes and the Solar Hypothesis of Climatic
Changes," by Ellsworth Huntington, M.A., Ph.D., Assistant
Professor of Geography, Yale University. (Introduced by
Mr. Henry G. Bryant.)

" Color Photographs of the Phosphorescence of Certain Sul-
phides," by Edward L. Nichols, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
Physics, Cornell University.

Afternoon Session — 2 o'clock.

William B. Scott, Sc.D., LL.D., Vice-President, in the Chair,
The following papers were read :

"A New and Very Sensitive Indicator for Acidimetry and
Alkalimetry and for Determining Hydrogen Ion Concentra-
tions between the Limits of 6 and 8 on the Sorensen Scale,"
by G. Scatchard and Marston T. Bogert, Ph.B., LL.D., Pro-
fessor of Organic Chemistry, Columbia University.

" Bacterio-chemical Studies of Decay of the Teeth," by Wil-
liam J. Gies, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Chemistry, Co-
lumbia University.

" The Human Gastric Secretion," by Martin E. Rehfuss, M.D.,
Research Associate in Physiological Chemistry, Jefferson

MINUTES. ix

Medical College, Philadelphia. (Introduced by Dr. Philip
B. Hawk.)

" Cerebral Localization," by Harvey Cushing, A.M., M.D., Pro-
fessor of Surgery, Harvard University. (Introduced by Dr.
Keen.)

" The Inorganic Constituents of Marine Invertebrates," by
Frank Wigglesworth Clarke, D.Sc, LL.D., Chief Chemist,
U. S. Geological Survey.

" Some Properties of Vibrating Telephone Diaphragms," by
A. E. Kennelly, S.D., A.M., Professor of Electrical Engi-
neering, Harvard University, and H. O. Taylor, of Cam-
bridge.

" (A) Dimensional Gases and the Law of Reflection of Gas
Molecules from Solid Walls; (B) The Metallic Reflection
of Light from a Gas," by Robert Williams Wood, A.B.,
LL.D., Professor of Experimental Physics, Johns Hopkins
University.

" Some Relations between Matter and Radiation," by William
Duane, A.M., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Physics and Re-
search Fellow of the Cancer Commission, Harvard Univer-
sity. (Introduced by Prof. A. W. Goodspeed.)

" Relation between Changes in Solar Activity and the Earth's
Magnetic Activity, 1902-1914," by Louis A. Bauer, Ph.D.,
Sc.D., Director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
of the Carnegie Institution, Washington, D. C.

Evening Session — 8 o'clock.

Leland Ossian Howard, Ph.D., M.D., LL.D., Chief of the Bureau
of Entomology, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, gave an illustrated lec-
ture " On Some Disease-Bearing Insects."

Saturday, April 75.

Executive Session — p.jo o'clock.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
The pending nominations for membership were read.

X MINUTES.

Secretaries Brown and Keller acted as tellers of the election,
and the Society proceeded to ballot for members.

The Secretaries subsequently reported that the following nomi-
nees had been elected to membership :

Residents of tJic United States.

William Wallace Atterbury, A.M., Radnor, Pa.
Maxime Bocher, A.B., Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.
Percy Williams Bridgman, Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.
James Mason Crafts, S.B., LL.D., Boston, Mass.
Henry Piatt Cushing, Cleveland, Ohio.
Edward Murray East, M.S., Ph.D., Boston, Mass.
Frank Rattray Lillie, Ph.D., Chicago, 111.
William E. Lingelbach, A.B., Ph.D., Philadelphia.
Daniel Trembly MacDougal, A.M., Ph.D., Tucson, Ariz.
Charles Frederick Marvin, M.E., Washington, D. C.
Lafayette Benedict Mendel, A.B., Ph.D., Sc.D., New Haven,
Conn.

Forest Ray Moulton, Ph.D., Chicago, III.
Eli Kirk Price, A.B., LL.B., Philadelphia.
Erwin Frink Smith, Sc.D., Washington, D. C.
William Morton Wheeler, Ph.D., Boston, Mass.

Foreign Residents.

Frank Dawson Adams, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.R.S., Montreal.
Wilhelm L. Johannsen, M.D., Ph.D., Copenhagen.
Joannes Diderik van der Waals, Ph.D., Amsterdam.

Morning Session — lo o'clock.

Edward C. Pickering, D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S., Vice-President, in

the Chair.
The following papers were read :
"Age Cycles and Other Periodicities in Organisms," by C. M.
Child, Ph.D., Professor of Zoolog}^, University of Chicago.
(Introduced by Prof. C. E. McClung.)

MINUTES. xi

" Cooperation as a Factor in Evolution," by William Patten,
A.M., Ph.D., Professor of Zoology, Dartmouth College.
(Introduced by Prof. H. H. Donaldson.)

" On the Effects of Continued Administration of Certain
Poisons to the Domestic Fowl, with Special Reference to the
Progeny," by Raymond Pearl, A.B., Ph.D., Biologist, Maine
Agricultural Experiment Station.

" Types of Neuromuscular Mechanism in Sea-Anemones," by
George H. Parker, Sc.D., Professor of Zoology, Harvard
University.

" Determination of Stellar Magnitudes by Photography," by
Edward C. Pickering, Ph.D., D.Sc, LL.D., Director of the
Observatory, Harvard University.

" Monochromatic Photography of Jupiter, Saturn and the
Moon " (illustrated by Color-Photographs made with the Mt.
Wilson 6o-inch telescope), by Robert Williams Wood, A.B.,
LL.D., Professor of Experimental Physics, Johns Hopkins
University.

" On the Eclipses of Jupiter's SatelHtes," by John Q. Stewart,
B.S., of Princeton. (Introduced by Prof. H. N. Russell.)

" On the Probable Temperature of Mars," by Henry Norris
Russell, Ph.D., Professor of Astronomy, Princeton Univer-
sity.

"A New Catalogue of Variable Stars," by Annie J. Cannon,
A.M. (Introduced by Prof. E. C. Pickering.)

"Legal and Political International Questions and the Recur-
rence of War," by Thomas Willing Balch, A.B., LL.B., of
Philadelphia.

Afternoon Scssio7i — 2 o'clock.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.

Symposium on International Law : Its Foundation, Obligation and
Future.
Outhne,

by Hon. John Bassett Moore, LL.D., Member of the Perma-
nent Court at the Hague, late Assistant Secretary of State.

xii MINUTES.

Judicial Aspects : International y\rbitration,

by Hon. Charlemagne Tower, A.B., LL.D., late Ambassador
to Germany.
Legislative Aspects,

by George Grafton Wilson, A.M., Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of
International Law, Harvard University. (Introduced by
Hon. John Bassett Moore.)
Administrative Aspects,

by Philip Marshall Brown, A.M., Professor of International
Law, Princeton University. ( Introduced by Hon. Charle-
magne Tower.)
World Organization,
by Hon. David Jayne Hill, A.M., LL.D., Member of Perma-
nent Administrative Council of the Hague Tribunal, Late
Ambassador to Germany.

The following paper was read :
" The Isles of the Blest,"

by Paul Haupt, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor of Semitic Philol-
ogy, Johns Hopkins University.

Stated Meeting May 5, ipi6.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
Messrs. W. W. Atterbury, and Eli K. Price, Jr., newly elected
members, subscribed the Laws and were admitted into the Society.
Letters accepting membership were received from :

William Wallace Atterbury, A.M., Radnor, Pa.

Maxime Boclier, A.B., Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.

Percy Williams Bridgman, Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.

James Mason Crafts, S.B., LL.D., Boston, Mass.

Henry Piatt Gushing, Cleveland, Ohio.

Edward Murray East, M.S., Ph.D., Boston, Mass.

Frank Rattray Lillie, Ph.D., Chicago, 111.

William E. Lingelbach, A.B., Ph.D., Philadelphia.

Daniel Trembly MacDougal, A.M., Ph.D., Tucson, Ariz.

Charles Frederick Marvin, M.E., Washington, D. C.

MINUTES. xiii

Lafayette Benedict Mendel, A.B., Ph.D., Sc.D., New Haven,

Conn.
Forest Ray Moulton, Ph.D., Chicago, 111.
Eli KirkPrice, A.B., LL.B., Philadelphia.
William JMorton Wheeler, Ph.D., Boston, Mass.
Frank Dawson Adams, D.Sc, Ph.D., F.R.S., Montreal
Prof. John B. Watson, of Baltimore, read a paper on " The
Homing Problem in Birds."

Stated Meeting October 6, igi6.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.

Dr. William E. Lingelbach, a newly elected member, subscribed
the Laws and was admitted into the Society.

Acceptances of election to membership were received from :

Erwin F. Smith, Sc.D., Washington, D. C.

Joannes Diderick van der Waals, Ph.D., Amsterdam.
Wilhelm L. Johanssen, M.D., Ph.D., Copenhagen.

The decease was announced of
Silvanus Phillips Thompson, D.Sc, LL.D., at West Hamp-

stead, London, on June 12, 1916, set. 65.
Prof. Gaston Camille Maspero, at Paris, on June 30, 1916,

aet. 70.
Sir William Ramsay, K.C.B., F.R.S., on July 23, 1916, aet. 64.
Hon. Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker, at Schwenksville, Pa.,

on September 2, 1916, aet. 73.
Josiah Royce, Ph.D., LL.D., at Cambridge, Mass., on Septem-
ber 14, 1916, aet. 60.
Lion. Seth Low, at Bedford Hills, N. Y., on September 17,
1916, aet. 66.
Dr. A. Parker Hitchens read a paper entitled " The Etiology
and Pathogenesis of Hay Fever as Related to our Present Knowl-
edge of Anaphylaxis " which was discussed by Dr. Macfarlane, Dr.
Davis, Prof. McFarland and others.

On motion the following was unanimously adopted :

xiv MINUTES.

"Whereas an effort is being made to bring into co-operation
existing governmental, educational, industrial, and otber research
organizations with the object of encouraging the investigation of
natural phenomena, the application of scientific principles in Amer-
ican industries, the employment of science in the national defense,
and such other objects as will promote the national welfare, and

"Whereas these objects are among those for which the Ameri-
can Philosophical Society exists,

" Now therefore, be it resolved that The American Philosoph-
ical Society hereby registers its approval of the co-ordination and
federation of the research agencies of the country and expresses its
willingness to join with and assist the National Research Council,
organized by the National Academy of Sciences to accomplish the
above federation."

Stated Meeting November j, igi6.

William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.
The decease of the following members was announced :

James Morgan Hart, A.M., at Washington, D. C, on April i8,
1916, set. yy.

Theodore Newell Ely, C.E., on October 28, 1916, set. 70.
The following papers were read :

" Obituary notice of Prof. Frederick W. Putnam," by Mrs.

Cornelius Stevenson.
" Obituary Notice of Prof. Gaston ]\Iaspero," by Dr. Morris

Jastrow, Jr.
" Conservation of Horses in War," by Dr. C. J. Marshall.

Stated Meeting December i, ipi6.
William W. Keen, M.D., LL.D., President, in the Chair.

The decease was announced of :

Cleveland Abbe, A.M., S.B., Ph.D., at Chevy Chase, Washing-
ton, D. C, on October 28, 1916, set. 78.

Percival Lowell, A.B., LL.D., at Flagstaff, Arizona, on No-
vember 12, 191 6, set. 61.

MINUTES. XV

Mr. Hampton L. Carson read an " Obituary notice of Samuel
Dickson, Esq."

Mr. W. L. Stevenson read a paper on "The Sewage Disposal
Problem Confronting the City of Philadelphia," which was dis-
cussed by Dr. A. C. Abbott, Dr. W. P. Wilson and Dr. Keen.

Dr. Keen presented the Annual Address of the President.

MAGELLANIC PREMIUM

Founded in 1786 by John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London

I917

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge

ANNOUNCES THAT IN

DECEMBER, 1917

IT Wri-L AWARD ITS

MAGELLANIC GOLD MEDAL

TO THE author of THE BEST DISCOVERY, OR MOST USEFUL INVENTION, RE-
LATING TO NAVIGATION, ASTRONOMY, OR NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (mERE
NATURAL HISTORY ONLY EXCEPTED) UNDER THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS :

1. The candidate shall, on or before November i, 1917, deliver free of postage
or other charges, his discovery, invention or improvement, addressed to the
President of the American Philosophical Society, No. 104 South Fifth Street,
Philadelphia, U. S. A., and shall distinguish his performance by some motto,
device, or other signature. With his discovery, invention, or improvement, he
shall also send a sealed letter containing the saine motto, device, or other sig-
nature, and subscribed with the real name and place of residence of the author.

2. Persons of any nation, sect or denomination whatever, shall be ad-
mitted as candidates for this premium.

3. No discovery, invention or improvement shall be entitled to this premium
which hath been already published, or for which the author hath been publicly
rewarded elsewhere.

4. The candidate shall communicate his discovery, invention or improvement,
either in the Englisli, French, German, or Latin language.

5. A full account of the crowned subject shall be published by the Society,
as soon as may be after the adjudication, either in a separate publication, or in
the next succeeding volume of their Transactions, or in both.

6. The premium shall consist of an oval plate of solid standard gold of the
value of ten guineas, suitably inscribed, with the seal of the Society annexed to
the medal by a ribbon.

A.11 correspondence in relation hereto should be addressed
To. THE Secretaries of the

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
No. 104 South Fifth Street

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

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INDEX.

Acidimetry and alkalimetry, new and

sensitive indicator for, viii
Age cycles and other periodicities in

organisms, 330, x
Administration, international, 312, xii
America as the defender of neutral

rights, 259, vi
Anemones, types of neuromuscular

mechanism in sea-, 340, xi
Antagonism, dynamics of, viii, 533
Art of entering another's body: a

theme of Hindu fiction, vi
Atkinson, F, generations, and back-,

and inter-crosses of the Fj hybrids

between QEnothera nutans and

pycnocarpa, vii

B

Bacon, work of the Mellon Insti-
tute, vi

Bahai, geology of. Hi

Balch, T. W., legal and political in-
ternational questions and the re-
currence of war, 267, xi

Bauer, relation between changes in
solar activity and the earth's mag-
netic activity, 1902-1914, ix

Bloomfield, art of entering another's
body, vi

Boas, interpretation of mythology, vi

Brown, international administration,
312, xii

C

California lakes and the solar hy-
pothesis of climatic changes, viii

Cannon, new catalogue of variable
stars, xi

Carson, Obituary notice of Samuel
Dickson, XIV

Cerebral localization, ix

Chestnut trees, pathological anatomy
of the injected trunks of, 485, iv

Child, age cycles and other periodici-
ties in organisms, 330, x

Chimpanzees and orang-utans, men-
tality of, 281, vi

Clarke, F. W., inorganic constituents
of marine invertebrates, ix

Climatic changes, California lakes
and the solar hypothesis of, viii

Color-photographs of the phosphor-
escence of certain metallic sul-
phides, 494, viii

Cooperation as a factor in evolution,
503, xi

Coral-reef problem, sinking islands
versus a rising ocean in the, viii

Cormophytaster and Xeniophyt'e, two
new terms, 2^7, vii

Coulter, inheritance through spores,
344, vii

Crusades, Popes and the, 348, v

Cushing, cerebral localization, ix

Davis, sinking islands versus a rising

ocean in the coral-reef problem,

viii
Dickson, Samuel, Obituary notice of,

XIV
Duane, A., sight and signalling in the

navy, 400, vi
Duane, W., some relations between

matter and radiation, ix
Dynamics of antagonism, viii, 533

E

Earth's magnetic activity, 1902-1914,

relation between solar activity and

the, ix
Ehrenfeld, jointing as a fundamental

factor in the degradation of the

lithosphere, 363, viii
Election of officers and councillors.

Hi
European war, nationalism and, iv
Evolution; cooperation as a factor

in, 503, xi

F

Fowl, effect of continued adminis-
tration of certain poisons to the
domestic, 243, xi

Fuels, interrelations of the fossil, 21,
viii

Furness, W. H., observations on the
mentality of chimpanzees and
orang-utans, 281, vi

Galvanometer, moving coil, v
Gases and the law of reflection of

XVlll

INDEX.

gas molecules from solid walls,
dimensional, ix
Gastric secretion, normal, 461, viii
Geology of Parahyba and Rio Grande

do Norte, Brazil, i
Gies, bacterio-chemical studies of de-
cay of the teeth, viii

H

Harshberger, origin and vegetation

of salt marsh pools, 481, vii
Haupt, P., isles of the blest, xii
Hill, world organization, 322, xii
Huntington, California lakes and the
solar hypothesis of climatic changes,
viii
Hybrids between ffinothera nutans
and pycnocarpa, F, generations,
and back-, and inter-crosses of
the F,, vii
Hydrocarbons, predominating reac-
tions among, iv

Iddings, petrology of some South
Sea islands and its significance, viii

Inheritance through spores, 344, vii

Inorganic constituents of marine in-
vertebrates, ix

International administration, 312, xii

law, it's origin, obligation and

future, 291, xi

questions and the recurrence of

war, 267, xi

Invertebrates, inorganic constituents

of marine, ix
Isles of the blest, xii

Jastrow, Obituary notice of Sir Gas-
ton Maspero, HI

Jointing as a fundamental factor in
the degradation of the lithosphere,
363, viii

Jupiter, Saturn and the moon, mono-
chromatic photography of, xi

Jupiter's satellites, eclipses of, xi

Kennelly & Taylor, some properties
af vibrating telephone diaphragms,
415, ix

L

Law, international : its origin, obli-
gation, and future, 291

, judicial aspect of international,

297, xii

, legislative aspects of interna-
tional, 305, xii

Legal and political international
questions and the recurrence of
war, 267, xi

Light from a gas, metallic reflection
of, ix

Lingelbach, nationalism and the Eu-
ropean war, iv

Lithosphere, jointing as a funda-
mental factor in the degradation
of the, 363, viii

M

Magnetic activity, relation between
changes in solar activity and the
earth's, ix
Manual, rare old Slavonic religious,

357, vi
Maspero, Obituary notice of Sir Gas-
ton, III
Matter and radiation, some relations

between, ix
Mellon Institute, work of the, vi
Members admitted :

Atterbury, W. W., xii
Bumpus, Hermon Carey, v
Cannon, Walter Bradford, v
Coulter, John Merle, v
Eisenhart, Luther Pfahler, v
Howard, Leland Ossian, v
Pearl, Raymond, v
Price, Eli Kirk, Jr., xii
Zeleny, John, v

deceased :

Angell, James Burrill, v
Duncan, Louis, v
Humphrey, H. C, v
Hunter, Richard Stockton, Hi
Jones, Harry Clary, v
Knight, William Angus, v
Lewis, George Albert, Hi
Roscoe, Rt. Hon. Sir Henry E.,

Hi
Turner, Sir William, iv
Wright, Arthur W., Hi
Members elected, x
Membership, acceptance of, xii
Membership, resignation of Rev.

Robins, James W., Hi
Mentality of chimpanzees and orang-
utans, 281, vi
Miller, determination of distances

of stars from us. Hi
Minutes, i

Moore, J. B., international law : its
origin, obligation and future, 291,
xi

INDEX.

XIX

Munro, Popes and the crusade?,

a48, V
Mythology, interpretation of, vi

N

Nationalism and the European war,
iv

Navy, sight and signalling in the,
400, vi

Neuromuscular mechanism in sea-
anemones, types of, 340, xi

Neutral rights, America as the de-
fender of, 259, vi

Nichols, E. D., color-photographs of
the phosphorescence of certain me-
tallic sulphides, 494, viii

0

Qinot'hera nutans and pycnocarpa, F,
generations and back-, and inter-
crosses of the Fi hybrids between,
vii

Officers and councillors, election of,
Hi

Origin and vegetation of salt marsh
pools, 481, vii

Orang-utans, mentality of chimpan-
zees and, 281, vi

Organisms, age cycles and other pe-
riodicities in, 330, X

Organization, world, 322, xii

Osterhout. dynamics of antagonism,
-viii, 533

P

Parahjba and Rio Grande do Norte,

Brazil, geology of, i
Parker, types of neuromuscular

mechanism in sea-anemones, 340,

xi
Pathological anatomy of the injected

trunks of chestnut trees, 485, iv
Patten, cooperation as a factor in

evolution, 503, xi
Pearl, effect of continued adminis-
tration of certain poisons to the

domestic fowl, 243, xi
Perception, ethnological tests of, 204,

V

Periodicities in organisms, age cycles

and other, 330, x
Petrology of some South Sea islands

and its significance, viii
Photographs of the phosphorescence

of certain metallic sulphides, color-,

494, viii
Photography of Jupiter, Saturn and

the moon, monochromatic, xi
Pickering, determination of stellar

magnitudes by photography, xi

Pools, origin and vegetation of salt

marsh, 481, vii
Popes and the crusades, 348, v
Prince, rare old Slavonic religious

manual, 357, vi

R

Radiation, some relations between

matter, ix
Reflection, metallic, of light from a

gas, ix
Rehfuss, normal gastric secretion,

461, viii
Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, geol-
ogy of Parahyba and, i
Rittman. predominating reactions

among hydrocarbons, iv
Rowe, America as the defender of

neutral rights. 259, vi
Rumbold, pathological anatomy of

the injected trunks of chestnut

trees, 485, iv

S

Scatchard & Bogert, sensitive indi-
cator for acidimetry and alkalime-
try and for determining hydrogen
ion concentrations, viii

Schelling, common folk of Shakes-
peare, 471, vi

Sea-anemones, types of neuromus-
cular mechanism in, 340, xi

Secretion, normal gastric, 461, viii

Sensation, ethnological tests of, 204, v .

Sergipe and northeastern Bahai,
geology of. Hi

Shakespeare, common folk of, 471, t'i

Sight and signalling in the navy,
400, vi

Signalling in the navy, 400, vi

Slavonic religious manual, rare old,

357, 'vi

Solar activity and the earth's mag-
netic activity, 1902-1914, relation
between, ix

Soper, geology of Parahyba and Rio
Grande do Norte, Brazil, i

Sergipe and north-
eastern Bahai, Hi

South Sea islands, petrology of
some, viii

Spores, inheritance through, 344, vii

Stars, determination of distances of,
Hi

Stars, new catalogue of variable, xi

Stellar magnitudes, determination of,
by photography, xi

Stevenson, interrelations of the fos-
sil fuels, 21, viii

XX

INDEX.

Stewart, eclipses of Jupiter's satel-
lites, xi

Sulphides, color-photographs of the
phosphorescence of certain metal-
lic, 494, znii

T

Taylor. Kennelly &, some properties
of vibrating telephone diaphragms,

415, i-'^

Teeth, bacterio-chemical studies of
decay of the. viii

Telephone diaphragms, some proper-
ties of vibrating, 415, ix

Titchener, on ethnological tests of
sensation and perception, 204, v

Tower, judicial aspect of interna-
tional law, 297, xii

Trelease. two new terms, Cormo-
phytaster and Xeniophyte, 237, vii

W

War, legal and political, interna-
tional questions and the recur-
rence of, 267, xi

, nationalism and European, iv

Wilson, legislative aspects of inter-
national law, 305, xii

World organization, 322, xii

Wood, dimensional gases and the
law of reflection of molecules from
solid walls, ix

• metallic reflection of light from

a gas, ix

— monochromatic photography of
Jupiter, Saturn and the moon, xi

Xeniophyte, two new terms, Cormo-
phytaster and, 237, vii

Vegetation of salt marsh pools, 481,
vii

Zeleny, moving coil galvanometer, v

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV. No. 1

>

Plate I

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV. No. 1

Plate II

A. Part of the Chapada de Sao Sebastiao, Showing the Topography and
THE Dense Caatin(;a Growth.

B. Exposure ok Limestone near Passagem Fi nda, Rio Grande do Norte.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV. No. 1

Plate III

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Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV. No. 1

Plate IV

Serra do Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Norte. The Flat Summit is
OF Sandstone which Rests on Crystalline Rocks Below.

B. Part ok the Limestone Scarp of the Chapada do Apody Showing a Lux-
uriant Growth of Vegetation.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV. No. 221

Plate V

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First Page of Morgan Text

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate VI

7 :'.-'^Mfh

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Figs, i .\xd 2. Two view.s of symmetrical disintegr.a.tion of s.a.nds in

BEACH TERRACE AT ReHOBETH BeACH, DeL.AWARE. ThE S.ANDS .ARE UNCON-
SOLIDATED; THEY OVERLIE THE TaLBOT FORMATION. (PHOTOGRAPH BY AuTHOr)

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate VII

Fig. 3. Joint disintegration, Prout's Neck, Maine

Fig. 4. JOINTEU-BOWLDER FL.A.T. Sea PoINT, MaINE

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate VIII

Fig. 5. Block jointing in folded .vrea ne.a.r Ogonquit, M.aine

Fig. 6. Angul.^r terrace in rocks, m.a.ss shown in Fig. 5

Proceedings Am. Ph.los. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate IX

Fig. I. General view of meadow-like surface of salt marsh at Cold
Spring Harbor, Long Island, looking north toward Harbor, July, 1913. The
area of the middle ground is occupied by an association of Juucus Gerardi.

Fu;. 2. Lagoon and
Jersey, June 2t„ 1914.

fringing salt marsh liack of Atlantic City, New

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate X

Fig. I. Tall salt grass, Spartina (/labra. fringing salt marsh at Cold
Spring Harbor, Long Island, August, 1914.

Fk;. 2. Surface of salt marsh at Nantucket, Massachusetts, billowed by
the wind, August, 1914.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XI

c£?j».<5aiK«~_ it-

Fig. I. Billowed surface of salt marsh at Cold Spring Harbor covered
with drift material which smothers the other plants, July, 1914.

Fig. 2. Salt marsh pool l)ack: of Atlantic City, New Jersey, June 23, 1914.
The algJE will he noted growing in the upper right side of the pool.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XII

Fig. I. Salt marsh pool at Nantucket, Massachusetts, August, 1914, sur-
rounded in part by tall salt grass, Spartina glabra.

Fig. 2. Dry salt marsh pool at Cold Spring Harl)or, Long Island, with
dry crusts of alg;e, July, 1914.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XIII

Fig. I. Dry salt marsh pool back of Atlantic City, New Jersey, showing
mud cracked with sun cracks, June 23, 1914.

Fig. 2. Denuded area in salt marsh at Atlantic City, New Jersey, re-
invaded hy samphire, Salicoriiia ciiropaca, June 23, KjM.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XIV

Fig. I. Denuded area in salt marsh at Lold Sprnig Harbur, Long island,
riddled bj^ burrows of fiddler crabs and reinvaded by pioneer vegetation of
samphire, July, 1914.

Fig. 2. Gravelly area at inner margin of salt marsh at Cold Spring Har-
bor, Long Island, July, 1914, controlled during low tide by fresh water and
occupied by Lilaeopsis lineata, which is submerged at high tide.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol LV.

Plate XV

Fig. I.

Fig. 3.

Fig. 2.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XVI

1

1

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Fig. 4.

Fig. 5.

Fig. 0.

Fig. 7.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XVII

Fig. 8.

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Fig. y.

Proceedings Am. Philos. Soc. Vol. LV.

Plate XVIII

Fig. I(

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Fig. II.

3 2044 093 311 652

Date Due

DEC S 1953