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RHE - SChaNTIEIC.. MONTHLY

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SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

EDITED BY J. McKEEN CATTELL

VOLUME XIV
JANUARY-JUNE, 1922

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NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS
1922

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THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

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HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL
IMPROVEMENT

By Dr Ds F. JONES

CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

HE function of hybridization is the rearrangement of already exist-
a ing characters, the bringing together of qualities scattered about
in different forms into one or a few individuals which represent the
beginning of a new variety, or a new breed. How the common fruits,
flowers and vegetables of our gardens and domestic animals in the fields
and about the house have been multiplied into endless kinds by a re-
combination of a relatively few types becomes apparent when the his-
tory of any particular group of plants or animals is reviewed.

The dahlia is one of the most popular garden flowers due largely
to its easy culture, simple vegetative propagation and the wealth of
colors and forms. The fact that the plants can also be easily grown
from seed, giving an astonishing array of markedly different flowers.
has made this a fascinating subject for experimentation by the amateur
gardener and has greatly increased the number of well recognized va-
rieties. The dahlia was first generally cultivated in Europe in 1789
having been introduced from Mexico. At that time the flowers were
single and not greatly different from Cosmos and Coreopsis which
are its nearest relatives. The first double flowered form was recorded
in 1814 at which time there were listed some 12 well marked color
types. Twelve years later the number of varieties had increased to 60
due to recombinations of the existing color varieties with the double
flowered condition and also new shades of color were brought out by
crossing and doubtless by mutation as well.

The first Cactus dahlia came to light in 1879. This form was a
radical departure from the common type. The margins of the petals
were bent back instead of forward giving the flowers a very distinct
appearance and a welcome change from the extreme forms which look
too artificial. A small flowered: and profusely blooming type known
as Pompon was also discovered. There now existed four main types
based on flower form: Single, Double, Cactus and Pompon. The
double dahlias are classified in two groups by the florists as Show and

6 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Fancy according to color pattern. Crossing between the Cactus and
Show types produced a new dahlia intermediate in form with the tips
of the petals curved backward somewhat like the hooded sweet peas
but with the body of the petals broad and bent forward and double as
in the Show types. This new creation called the Decorative type is one
of the most highly prized and beautiful of all the dahlias. The flowers
are not so compact and artificial looking as the Show and Fancy groups,
and their fluffiness has much of the beauty of the Chrysanthemum and
Aster together with an astonishing array of soft yet brilliant colors.
The broad petaled, semi-double peony-flowered dahlia and the collarette
type with a row of small and odd shaped petals of different color sur-
rounding the central bud are the latest additions to the ever growing
list of varieties of this most popular flower.

The first Cactus dahlia also introduced a new color resembling that
of the cactus, Cereus speciosissimus, from which fact it originally got
its name. Other variations which were brought out from time to time
were dwarf plants, plants with long stemmed and short stemmed flowers,
flowers with petals divided, others quilled and still others rolled into
tight tubes like some China asters. Colors are as profuse in dahlias
as in almost any cultivated flower. They occur in self-colored patterns
and in variegations which are classified into five different types as
shaded, edged, margined, striped and mottled. How the individual
variations first arose is, in most cases, wholly unknown but having once
been found it is not difficult to see how by recombination all these dif-
ferent flower forms, colors and patterns together with differences in the
growth of plants, the more than 3,000 named varieties could be de-
veloped in 150 years.

Many horticultural achievements have not been developed by inten-
tional hybridization. Natural crossing between different varieties grow-
ing together has undoubtedly been responsible for most of the new
forms. Because flowers are so conspicuous new deviations are usually
easily detected and so seed saved. Cultivation gives a plant a far
ereater opportunity for further improvement as compared to wild forms
because of the immense numbers grown and the fact that these are
more under observation. Careful culture also allows many new forms
to live which would be exterminated in the open. Those plants whose
valuable part is comprised in conspicuous flowers or definitely marked
seeds are more extensively multiplied into different varieties than those
plants which are not so easily catalogued. Roses, tulips, irises are a
few notable examples of flowers which are widely diversified in form
and color. Among the vegetables beans are listed in almost endless
variety because the well marked seeds in color and pattern and char-
acteristic pods make the different varieties easily recognized and there-
fore generally kept true to type.

The way in which many varieties of garden and field crops origi-

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 7

THE PROGENY OF A FEW NATURALLY CROSSED BEANS FOUND IN A COMMONLY GROWN
VARIETY. THE OUT-CROSSED SEED TYPE AND THE ORIGINAL VARIETAL PATTERN ARE
SHOWN ABOVE
nate is well illustrated by a natural cross of a commonly cultivated
variety of garden beans. From a plot of Dwarf Horticultural beans
the seeds of which are characterized by splashes and stripes of irregu-
lar red bands on a light background, a few off-type seeds were found
when the crop was shelled. These seeds were densely marked with a
thick mottling of dark brown. There were only a few of the seeds
among many hundreds of thousands of the Horticultural type but they
were very conspicuous on account of their darker color and altered
pattern. They were probably due to natural crossing which had taken
place the year before as the plants were grown adjoining plants of other
varieties. This was proven to be the case when the odd looking seeds
were planted and the resulting seeds harvested. Almost every plant
was different in color and markings of the seeds. A representative

seed from a number of these plants is shown in the figure.

The seeds shown in the illustration having the same markings differ
strikingly in color. The differences are abrupt. Although there are
eleven distinct kinds of seeds in this lot it can be seen that they are
made up of different combinations of color and pattern. In arrange-
ment of color there are three types: self-colored, splashed and mottled.
The colors are cream, tan, brown and red. Only a few of the many
possible combinations of these characters are expressed in this small
number of plants. Each seed is a possible beginning of a new variety.
Some of the combinations are undoubtedly hybrid and will break up in

8 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

later generations. One of the seeds is an exact reduplication of the
parental hybrid seeds. Another goes back to the one known erand-
parent. What the other grandparental variety was can only be con-
jectured.

In addition to these striking differences of color and markings the
seeds differ somewhat in size and shape. Whether these are genotypical
differences or merely modifications due to the growth of the plant can
only be told by further testing. The plants which produced these seeds
differed in no less degree. They were yellow or green podded and the
pods were flat or round. They were diverse in time of blooming and
ripening. They were also unequal in productiveness, hardiness, dis-
ease resistance, stringiness and toughness of the pods. These are the
more important qualities but they are not so surely recognized as the
noticeable seed characters.

Natural crossing in this manner has been the most important agency
in the multiplication of varieties. Striking variations such as occurred
in the beans just described attract the fancy of the gardener. The seeds
are saved and sown. The unusual features may or may not persist.
Some of them may be an improvement over existing sorts. The seed
from the most promising plants is again saved and since beans are
largely self fertilized the hybrid combination of characters are quickly
reduced in numbers and uniform and constant strains are established
in the course of several years, that is, they soon come true to type. The
best of these strains are selected and a new variety has been created or
rather re-formed. Further testing shows whether the new variety has
sufficient merit to be worthy of general cultivation and if it has it soon
finds its way into the seed catalogues. Such in brief is an outline of
the history of nearly all the commonly cultivated vegetables and
flowers.

It is generally thought that selection has brought out these new
forms. Such is indeed the case but the variability induced by crossing
has made the opportunity for selection to be effective. Those charac-
ters which really determine the value of a variety, such as hardiness,
productiveness, quality, and which are dependent upon all parts of the
plant, are so complex in mode of inheritance that it is not at once appar- ~
ent that recombination of definitely hereditary factors takes place just
as surely as in color and pattern. The changes are usually small in
degree and the characters are more easily influenced by the external
conditions. For that reason selection is the means of sorting out the
best hereditary material and with many plants selection must always
be continued to maintain improved varieties at their high level.

The application of selection to plant and animal improvement has
not been greatly changed by the recent advances in the knowledge of
inheritance. It was used effectively long before Mendel’s principles of
heredity were known. But in the past much time and effort have been

J

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 9

wasted in selecting variations which were not inherited and which led
to no change. Mendelism has shown clearly the distinction between
the two kinds of deviations. Only germinal variations can be trans-
mitted permanently. These are brought about either by original
changes in the structure of the hereditary units about whose cause al-
most nothing is known and which are comparatively rare in occurrence,
or by the much more usual and frequent recombination arising from
crossing. The only sure means of identifying these germinal variations
is the progeny performance test.

In one sense hybridization produces nothing new. It merely takes
materials which are already in existence and by putting them into dif-
ferent associations makes forms which have never been seen before.
This is a common if not universal method of diversification. The Aryan
alphabet has only some 30 symbols yet the English language alone has
over 450,000 words. All chemical compounds are different groupings

‘of about 80 elements. That hybridization can produce nothing new is

equivalent to saying that architects can create no new buildings be-
cause they have to use the same bricks and boards, cement and sand
they have always used or the musician can write no new songs because
he has at his disposal only the same set of notes and modulations. The
possibilities for creation by combination are practically unlimited.
Particularly is this true in organic substances where each new com-
pound forms a new unit which can associate with other units to form
new compounds. The hereditary factors as far as known are com-
pounds so complex that their formulas can not as yet be written.

The history of the more recently created breeds of animals shows
that hybridization has furnished the beginnings: controlled matings
and careful selection have followed this up. Poultry furnishes many
excellent examples of the part played by hybridization in animal breed-
ing. The history of their development is the best known for the general
purpose breeds of American origin although all are not agreed as to the
foundation stocks. For the Barred Plymouth Rocks, the most popular
all around fowl among the farmers of this country, the Dominique fur-
nished the pattern and the Black Java or Black Cochin the size. The
Minorca and Brahma were also used it is believed. The first specimens
were exhibited in 1869 from Connecticut. The type of body has been
fairly well fixed and Plymouth Rocks are now obtainable in several
different colors and patterns.

The Wyandotte has a distinct type of its own and is another product
of the American breeders. Its short blocky build and compact frame
set it off from the other larger and more rangy general purpose fowls
but this type is not well fixed probably because more attention has been
paid to feathers and color than to body characters. According to some
authorities a Sebright Bantam and a Cochin hen were first mated to
produce a Cochin Bantam. The offspring were again crossed with

10 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Cochin and also with Silver Spangled Hamburgs. Wyandottes first
made their appearance in about 1870.

The Rhode Island Red remained for a long time as a farm fowl
and was not considered as a distinct breed and was not taken up by the
“Standard” breeders until after it had established its reputation as a
utility fowl. It is one of the most variable breeds in color due to its
extremely mixed origin. Although the material used is somewhat in
doubt both Asiatic and Mediterranean stocks were crossed in native
breeds. According to one writer Red Malay, Shanghai, Chittagong,
Brahma and Leghorn were crossed in every conceivable way. The red
color being distinct from all other common fowls it was easy to estab-
lish a new breed. It illustrates well the point that breeds are based on
a few outstanding easily seen characters and the more valuable features
are built up around them. Such has been the origin of the more recent
breeds. With various modifications it is probably typical of the be-
ginning of all breeds of poultry whose past history is now unknown.

Sheep are among the oldest. of domesticated animals and nowhere
have they been more highly developed than in England. Most of the
modern mutton breeds with which we are now familiar had their origin
there. Some were so excellently formed since very early times that
their beginnings are not known, such as the Southdowns and Dorsets.
The former has very fine qualities as indicated by its widespread popu-
larity and from the fact that it has been used in crossing with other local
strains to produce many of the now prominent breeds. For example
it is generally believed that the Shropshires are the result of crossing
Southdowns with the native horned, black faced sheep of Shropshire.
Also the Leicester and Cotswold breeds are thought to have contributed
something to the prominence of this famous race. Similarly the Ox-
ford sheep grew out of intermixing the Cotswolds and Hampshires,
while the Hampshires in turn got their start in crosses of the native
Wiltshire and Berkshire sheep followed by judicious use of Southdown
rams. Later the Sussex sheep which had a somewhat similar origin
were united to make the material out of which have come the modern
Hampshires. And to-day in the western states the Department of Agri-
culture is endeavoring to unite as many of the good qualities of the
Lincoln and Rambouillet breeds as possible to form a new one for
which the name of Columbia is proposed.

Should one examine the history of the creation of the present day
breeds of swine he would find that much the same line of development
has taken place. Crossing to bring together desired characters from
different types brought out in different places and to serve different pur-
poses. followed by intermating and back-crossing of the progeny and
close selection towards a more or less fixed objective—such has been
the almost unvarying recent history of the smaller and faster breeding
animals. The larger and more slowly reproducing farm animals, the

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 11

cow and the horse, are not so easily handled in this way. The creation
of new varieties which means the culling out of enormous numbers of
inferior individuals is too expensive a procedure to be undertaken with-
out good reason. But is it not a logical assumption from the known
history of the smaller animals that crossing has played an equally im-
portant part in their early development which had already reached a
high plane before the written history of the breeds began?

It has long been stated that the chief contribution of France to
agriculture, the Percheron horse, reached its highest development fol-
lowing the infusion of the heredity of the Arabian horse into the native
heavy horses after the defeat of the Saracens in 732. Sanders and
Dinsmore, recent writers on the Percherons, are, however, strongly of
the opinion that the influence of the Arabian horse has been greatly
exaggerated and even question whether or not mixing ever occurred in
any important amount and persisted. They base their chief argument
on the fact that the color pattern of the Percheron is distinct from the
markings of the Arabian. Unless this objection is supported by more
convincing evidence it can hardly be conclusive as it would not be ex-
pected that a complex parental pattern would be recovered completely
from such a mixture unless it was specifically selected for. It is a
fact that the Arabian war horses were present in France in large num-
bers and magnificent animals they undoubtedly were. It can hardly be
doubted that they were frequently crossed with native stock. How
many of their desirable qualities have persisted is largely to be con-
jectured. But the Percheron differs from the other heavy draft breeds
most noticeably in neatness of body and lightness of foot, qualities
which could very easily have come from part Arabian ancestry.

Wheat being the most important bread making cereal in Europe
and America, naturally a great deal of attention has been given to the
upbuilding of this plant. Most of the varieties now widely grown have
come from individual plant selections from older varieties. A beard-
less head in a field of bearded wheat or a blue-stemmed plant in color-
less sorts attracts attention. Seed may be saved from such plants and
if the progeny prove to be sufficiently distinct and better a new variety
is in process of formation.

The Scotch Fife wheat has been popular in the Northern States
and Canada. Its origin is typical of many other varieties. David Fife
living in Ontario received a quantity of wheat which had come original-
ly from Russia. He planted it in the spring but it proved to be a winter
variety and consequently only three heads ripened, these belonging to
a single plant. Sown again the following year the wheat proved re-
markably resistant to rust and from these few plants the seed was
rapidly increased and widely grown. In time a number of some-
what different types of Fife developed and by crossing among these
types the Marquis wheat which has played a considerable part in Ca-

12 ; THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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THE DIFFERENT TYPES OR AGRICULTURAL SUB-SPECIES OF MAIZE. DENT CORN IS THE
STANDARD PRODUCER IN THE MAIN CORN GROWING REGION AND COMBINES FEATURES
OF THE NORTHERN GROWN FLINT AND SOUTHERN FLOUR TYPES

nadian wheat growing was produced by William Saunders of the
Canadian Experiment Station at Ottawa.

Fultz is one of the best known of the older varieties of American
wheats. It originated from three heads of beardless wheat in a field
of Lancaster. Later S. M. Schindel of Hagerstown, Maryland. crossed
Fultz and Lancaster and out of this came Fulcaster, which is a bearded,
semi-hard, red grained wheat considerably resistant to rust and
drought. It has been grown generally over the country but particularly
in the region from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma.

One of the best illustrations of a successful plant breeding enter-
prise from the standpoint of practical results obtained was the potato
varieties produced by E. S. Carman, late editor of the Rural New
Yorker. Rural Blush, Rural New Yorker No. 2, Carman No. 1. Car-
man No. 3 and Sir Walter Raleigh are varieties which came from a
collection of 62 varieties which were gotten together for the purpose
of crossing. Artificial pollination proved to be impossible on account
of failure to find good pollen but from seed bolls naturally formed
(undoubtedly many of the seeds resulted from crossing between differ-
ent varieties) a large number of seedlings were raised and from these
the five best were distributed after careful testing. It is stated that at one
time 80 per cent. of the potatoes grown in this country were either
Carman’s productions or seedlings from them. He accomplished what
he set out to do in producing a better potato than the old Early Rose
and Peach Blow.

That natural crossing has played a large part in the production of
corn varieties of all kinds is apparent to every one. The ease by which
pollen is carried by the wind and the practice of growing many different
sorts near together or even in the same field maintain a constant state

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 13

of out-crossing and a resultant variability out of which selection can
start new departures.

The history of Reid’s Yellow Dent, now one of the most popular
varieties throughout the corn belt, is typical. Robert Reid brought
with him to Tazewell County, Illinois, from Ohio seed of a local va-
riety know as Gordon Hopkin’s corn. This was planted in the spring
of 1846 and did not thoroughly mature, consequently the seed did not
germinate well the following year. The missing hills were replanted
with an early variety known as Little Yellow corn. The corn has not
been purposely mixed since then and by selection the type of this well
known corn has been developed.

The improvement of the famous variety of corn known as Leam-
ing was first begun in 1826 with the use of Indian varieties commonly
grown at that time and is probably the first variety of corn to be sys-
tematically selected. It is also probably the first dent variety of modern
type to be developed. According to a grandson of the original Leam-
ing' some of the material used at the start consisted of the purple or
black seeded varieties. Evidences of this aleurone color are still seen

THIS CORN PLANT WITH PERFECT FLOWERS IN A SINGLE TERMINAL INFLORESCENCE IS
BOTANICALLY QUITE SIMILAR TO A DISTINCT TRIBE OF GRASSES, THE SORGHUMS, WHICH
GIVES CONSIDERABLE PROBABILITY TO THE THEORY OF A HYBRID ORIGIN OF MAIZE

! Wallace’s Farmer, Dec., 1910.

14 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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THE GREAT VARIABILITY OF MAIZE ADAPTING THE PLANT TO A RANGE OF CONDITIONS
FROM THE EDGE OF THE ARCTICS TO THE TROPICS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD IS
DIFFICULT TO ACCOUNT FOR UNLESS A MIXED ANCESTRY IS ASSUMED

at rare intervals in this variety. That the large-eared, compact-rowed,
many-seeded variety now so familiar should be got out of the few-rowed,
round-seeded, floury and flinty varieties grown by the Indians for
many centuries is a really remarkable instance of plant improvement
through hybridization followed by thorough-going selection.

The dent type of corn was not produced for the first time in Leam-
ing as this kind of corn has been known since very early times having
been reported to be in the possession of the Powhattan Indians as early
as 1608. The characteristic indentation of this most productive kind
of corn is due to a corneous outer layer surrounding a center of soft
starch. The greater shrinkage of this soft starch than the hard starch
outside on drying bring about the depressed and folded tip from which
the type gets its name. The two kinds of corn grown by the natives
of America were floury varieties in Mexico and adjacent regions and
flint varieties in the north. That the combination of flint and floury
types has made possible the dent corn now so widely grown is some-
what more than a surmise. The absence of leaves on the modified
leaf sheaths forming the husks on the ears, a characteristic of dent
corn, is common for floury corn but not flint corn. On the other hand
the corneous nature of the endosperm and early maturity are largely
flint features.

A familiar example of the rapidity with which varieties can be
produced by crossing is furnished by the yellow varieties of sweet
corn which have been introduced during the past few years. Prac-
tically all of them owe their start to a small eared, yellow seeded va-

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL “15

riety known as Golden Bantam. This variety for some time was little
known and not appreciated because its yellow color differentiated it
from all other varieties of sweet corn commonly grown and made it
appear like field corn. It was finally realized that Golden Bantam
was somewhat more tender in texture and better flavored than any
other variety. Its small ears and low yield induced many to cross this
corn with the larger growing corns and then to regain the yellow color
combined with larger stalks and ears and as much of the quality of
Bantam as possible. The yellow color is easily regained because in the
second generation following the cross of yellow and white one seed in
every four will be pure yellow but retaining the sweetness and tender-
ness of Golden Bantam in a larger and more productive corn is more
difficult. Some success has been achieved judging from the popularity
of the new yellow sorts such as Golden-rod, Golden Giant, Buttercup,
Bantam Evergreen and a host of others which represent a recombina-
tion of the characters of Golden Bantam and such standard varieties
as Evergreen, Howling Mob and Country Gentlemen. Yellow color
has now become the badge of honor among sweet corns.

The number of new roses continually being offered are so great
that only an exceptional variety or novelty creates much interest.
Within recent years the climbing American Beauty has attracted con-
siderable attention. This variety was developed from a crossing of
American Beauty and Rambler and possesses the large flowered, long

NO OTHER PLANT THAN MAIZE EXHIBITS A GREATER RANGE IN SIZE, SHAPE, TEXTURE
AND COLOR OF SEEDS

16 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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SIZE OF PLANT IS ALSO ASSOCIATED WITH THE ADAPTIBILITY OF MAIZE TO VARIED
CONDITIONS

stemmed features of one parent combined with the profuse bloom and
rampant growth of the other.

Practically there are limits to what can be done by hybridization
and selection although no one can say exactly what these limits are.
Certain characters are antagonistic. Fruit growers dream of an apple
with the productiveness and hardiness of a Ben Davis or Baldwin com-
bined with the delicacy, sweetness and flavor of a McIntosh or North-
ern Spy. Yet the tough skin, thick cell walls and low sugar content
of the Ben Davis are probably the very things which make it resistant
to disease and able to produce abundantly under adverse climatic
conditions.

The plant breeder who sets out to produce a wheat with the best
milling and baking qualities together with maximum yielding capacity.
resistance to disease and severe climatic conditions has a task which is

extremely difficult if not impossible. Likewise the animal breeder can

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 17

not expect a rapid maturity and tenderness of flesh together with ability
to withstand adverse conditions.

Those qualities which have been developed in domesticated forms
are the ones which make them less able to cope with their surroundings.
Wild species on the other hand are constantly selected on their ability
to endure climatic extremes, pests and diseases. Their chief aim in
life is apparently to provide for reproduction. Anything beyond this
is a handicap. Moreover there are physiological limits beyond which
it is impossible to go. Obviously a cow cannot be expected to give
milk which is all cream, neither can a sugar beet be all sugar. What
the limit is can not be closely approximated. Certainly if one were
familiar with only the wild gourds he would be inclined to think a
pumpkin or water melon weighing over 100 pounds a fantastic dream
not to be actually realized. The lime tree gives no indication that a
near relative could produce a fruit as large as the tropical grape fruit
which often weighs over ten pounds. Between the wild cattle in the
parks of England and the prize winning Shorthorns and Herefords at
the live-stock expositions there are almost incredible changes.

Selection even in the long expanses of time in which plants and
animals have been domesticated could not bring these vast differences
were it not for the variability made possible by frequent crossings
between widely diverse stocks. When the origin of the familiar cul-
tivated plants and domesticated animals is looked into it is significant
that nearly all of the more important ones have been derived from
more than one wild species and these are usually from separate
regions.

As an example of a valuable animal which has been cared for in
nearly every part of the world the domestic fowl can be taken. It has
long been thought that all the diverse breeds and types of chickens
came originally from the Jungle Fowl of India, Southern China and
the East Indies but it is now believed that the unknown ancestor of the
Aseel or Malay Fowl. which has been bred in captivity for over 3.000
years, is also in part responsible for present divergent development
exhibited by the many different breeds and races.

According to Davenport “The Aseel has many points of difference
from the Jungle Fowl and brings in a whole set of characters that our
domestic races have and the Jungle Fowl lack. Thus the Jungle Fowl
is a slender, agile bird with long wings, erect tail and a good flyer:
while the Aseel is a very broad, heavy bird with short wings, drooping
tail and unable to fly. The Jungle Fowl has a long slender beak, that
of the Aseel is short and thick. The comb of the former is single.
high, that of the latter triple (or “pea”) and low. The former has
slender olive colored shanks; the latter thick and yellow shanks. The
Jungle Fowl has a red eye; that of the Aseel is pearl colored. The

VOL. XIV.—2.

18 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Jungle Fowl has the well known English Black-breasted Red Game
pattern; the Aseel is mottled. The Jungle Fowl is the foundation stock
of our nervous, flighty, egg laying races—the Leghorn, Minorca, Span-
ish, Andalusian, etc.—the races that first spread over Europe, probably
from the stock that was brought back from Persia by the expeditions
of Alexander the Great. All of these races ordinarily carry the deter-
miners of the Jungle type of coloration. Representatives of the Aseel
type (which had long been established in Eastern Indian and China)
were brought to America, becoming the ancestors of the Asiatic breeds
and the fine general purpose breeds—the Plymouth Rocks, Wyandottes,
Orpingtons, ete. Such do not regularly carry the Jungle type of color
pattern. In one case on the contrary,—namely the Buff Cochins—they
introduced a new kind of color which (arisen in China 1,500 years
ago) has never been produced independently since. The fowl of the
Aseel type are poor egg layers, but their stocky build and great size
make them unrivalled as ‘table birds.’ ”

Of all domesticated animals the dog is probably the most varied
in size, in form, in color and in covering. Ranging from the Poodle
and Dachshund to the Bulldog, Greyhound and Great Dane, the dog
has been the companion of man in nearly every part of the world.
The near relatives to the dogs are numerous and although they are truly
wild many are capable of being tamed and most of them will cross
with some breeds of dogs. The timber wolf of Russia, the Jackal of
Europe, Asia and Africa, the coyote of North America and the dingo
of Australia have all probably contributed something to present day
forms. Even the fox is quite like the dog in certain respects and may
be remotely connected with some of our dogs.

Catlike animals are numerous in all paris of the world and more
than one species have been brought together in the making of this pet.
The common wild-cat of England (Felis catus) and the Egyptian cat
(Felis caffra) are probably the immediately sources of the familiar
kinds of cats but the golden cat (Felis temmineki) of northern India,
Tibet and the Malay Peninsula, the fishing cat (Felis viverrina) of
India, the spotted leopard cat (Felis bengalensis) are near relatives
which might have added something to the variety of form and color
so characteristic of this animal.

The pig is a widely domesticated animal which reached its greatest
development when the breeds of Europe and Asia were brought to-
gether and their qualities intermingled. Early in the 17th and 18th
centuries Chinese hogs were introduced into Europe and from these
sources there grew up the great breeds of Yorkshire, Berkshire, Poland-
China and Duroc-Jersey. Many of these breeds have been perfected
and named in this country but their foundation stock came originally
from England, the Continent, and from Asia. The wild ancestors of
the pig are considered to be the wild boar of Europe and Africa (Sus

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 19

scrofa) and the Indian wild boar (Sus Cristata) but almost every re-
gion of the earth has its native species more or less closely allied to
domesticated swine.

One could extend this recital of the origin of tame animals to
show that in the case of sheep there are at least six wild species which
could have been drawn upon and a host of more distantly related forms
and with cattle domesticated forms are classified in two species, Euro-
pean and East Indian, and any number of closely allied wild species.
The horse is rather unique in being the only animal with no closely re-
lated wild congeners from which it could be re-established in case the
horse became extinct. Either the horse has had a comparatively simple
origin or else it has been cared for so long that its prototypes have been
lost.

Although much of the history of domesticated races is largely sur-
mised there can be no doubt but that the intercrossing of different
species from separated regions has played a very important part in
their great alterations to suit the needs of man. Desirable qualities
existed in several forms of allied animals in different regions. Tribal
migrations and commercial intercourse furnished the means for bring-
ing them together and as far as they were sexually compatible crossing
undoubtedly was utilized to combine good features; and also the cross-
ing and resulting variability brought out new possibilities not before
realized. How else can one account for the great flexibility of domes-
ticated races as contrasted to wild species?

The same occurrence of species-hybridization is largely at the bot-
tom of the development of cultivated plants. Some forty-two distinct
species and sub-species of cotton have been described from both the
Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Many of these are cultivated in
various parts of the world. In this country 99 per cent. of the cotton
grown is the short staple upland type and the remainder is the long
fibered Egyptian or Sea Island cotton, so called as it was grown suc-
cessfully only on the islands off the South Atlantic coast, and parts
of the mainland. It is now grown in Egypt and in the irrigated valleys
of the southwest.

Authorities differ as to the origin of the cultivated cottons. Cross-
pollination of the plant is easily effected by insects and hybridization
between species introduced into new regions has certainly taken place.
Watt considers upland cotton to be various hybrids between Gossypium
herbaceum, G. mexicanum and G. hirsutum. The former is the old
world form which probably originated in north Arabia and Asia Minor.
The other two species are natives of the southern United States, the
West Indies and Mexico. Sea Island cotton is generally considered as
G. barbadense originating in Barbados or other West India islands but
Watt is convinced that it too has had a mixed beginning. He considers

20 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

it as having been developed somewhere in South America and having
the Peruvian or Andes cotton, G. perwvianum as one parental stock.

Indian corn is perhaps the best example of a widely cultivated
plant having apparently a single origin. Belonging to a small sub-
division of the grass family its nearest wild relative is teosinte with
which it hybridizes readily. Teosinte, Euchlaena mexicana, is a large
semi-tropical grass which is sparingly cultivated and differs in many
ways from maize. The seeds are born in one-rowed spikes. If corn
has been derived solely from teosinte there has been a remarkable se-
quence of changes in that the original condition of two or more spike-
lets in a place which is typical of most cereals has been replaced by the
one-rowed spike in the pistillate inflorescences of teosinte and then re-
gained in the paired-row condition in the ears of maize. Collins has
pointed out that there exists in pod corn, Zea mays var. tunicata a form
with perfect flowered terminal inflorescences, which strongly suggests
another species as one of the original stocks. These perfect flowered
plants can not be distinguished by present botanical standards from a
distinct tribe of grasses, the sorghums. In those characters in which
maize differs most from teosinte it approaches the characters of this
perfect flowered pod corn. Certain other considerations also make it
highly probable, although not proved, that maize likewise must be as-
signed a hybrid origin. The great variability and extreme plasticity by
means of which corn is grown in many regions from the edge of the
arctics to the tropics throughout the world would be difficult to com-
prehend on any other assumption.

Of all cultivated plants the rosaceous fruits give the most unmis-
takable evidence of having been developed by means of species hy-
bridization. Some thirteen wild species of apples exist in the temper-
ate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Many of these have char-
acters which entered into the make-up of this widely cultivated fruit.
The cherry-plum-apricot-peach-almond group intergrades from one to
the other so that it is impossible for the taxonomist to fix any exact
limits to any division. Bailey lists 75 species and over 150 horticul-
tural types of plums alone. From six native species 300 named va-
rieties have been produced since the settlement of the New World.

The rose itself is both the despair of the systematic botanist and
the delight of the gardener bent on originating new forms. The rose
grows wilds in nearly all parts of Europe, Asia, Northern Africa and
North America. The taxonomists have great difficulty in defining a rose
species. Bentham and Hooker list 30 while a French botanist, Gan-
dager, describes 4.266 species from Europe and Western Asia alone.
Most botanists recognize over 100 species. The more common horti-
cultural types and the specific names under which they go are as
follows:

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 21

Horticultural Types and Species of Rose

Ayrshire R. arvensis Memorial R. Wichuraiana
Banks Rk. Banksiae Moss Rk. gallica var.
Bengal R. chinensis MUSCOSA
Bourbon R. Borbonica Musk R. moschata
Champney Rk. Noisettiana Noisette R. Noisettiana
Cherokee R. laevigata Praire R. setigera
Cinamon R. cimamonea Provence R. gallica
Damask R. Damascena Scotch R. spinossvma
Dog R. canina Sweetbrier R. rubiginosa
Eglantine R. rubiginosa Tea R. chinensis

The names of the two principal groups of the large flowered roses,
such as the Hybrid Perpetuals and Hybrid Teas, denote their mixed
origin. The latter group, of which the variety La France is a popular
representative, is the result of back-crossing a hybrid combination of
the Provence, Chinese and Cabbage roses on to the tea-scented China
rose.

The development of the native varieties of grapes, after the inabil-
ity of the European varieties to thrive in the Eastern part of this
country, furnishes one of the most interesting chapters in horticultural
history. Many species of grapes grow wild in North America and in-
dividual seedlings of some of these wild forms came very early into
cultivation and are still grown. The principal native species and the
most important varieties derived chiefly from them are:

Vitis labrusca Catawba Concord
is rotundifolia Scuppernong
ee aestivalis Norton
x riparia Clinton

From these varieties as basic stock have come nearly all of the many
excellent grapes now grown. Concord is the leading variety. In New
York 75 per cent. of all the grapes grown are Concords alone. This
variety and its derivatives produce three-fourths of the grapes grown in
the eastern region. The history of the Concord is obscure but the evi-
dence indicates that it is the product of a large fruited plant of the
wild fox grape pollinated by a plant of the Catawba variety which was
growing near by. The botanical characters of the Concord are almost
wholly labrusca but some of the self-fertilized seedlings of Concord
show strong indications of influence by Vitis vinifera, the European
grape. Catawba, one of the assumed parents of Concord, is also a
seedling of labrusca brought in from the wild but it shows even more
indications of vinifera characters than Concord in the vinous flavor of
the fruit, susceptibility to mildew, appearance of occasional seeds and
especially in the seedlings of the Catawba, many of which resemble
vinifera more than the parent. The Catawba was one of the first native
grapes to be cultivated. It originated in 1819 in Montgomery County,
Maryland, and is still widely grown. While it is not positively known,

bo
bo

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHEV.

there seems to be little doubt that crossing took place between Euro-
pean varieties and the wild plants growing near by. Large numbers
of the vinifera grapes were grown at that time in an attempt to find
some that would withstand the ravages of unaccustomed insects and
diseases in the new world. These chance crosses gave size and sweet-
ness together with resistance and made possible for the first time satis-
factory grape culture. Hedrick in the “Grapes of New York” gives the
derivation of all the leading varieties. In many cases the parentage is
doubtful as many varieties have originated as chance seedlings which
were noted as being superior in some respect and propagated for that
reason. Out of 205 varieties 74 are the result of a combination of
V. labrusca and V. vinifera. Eighty-eight varieties are more complex
hybrids but most of them have either vinifera or labrusca heredity in
addition to other native species. The remaining 43 varieties listed as
coming from single species are mainly seedlings of Concord and this,
as has been stated, is strongly suspected of a hybrid American-European
origin.

The systematic production of new grape varieties is illustrated by
the work of Roger, one of the early hybridizers. The American va-
riety Carter was pollinated by Black Hamburg and Chasselas, two Eu-
ropean varieties. A large number of seedlings were raised and from
this lot 45 were chosen as sufficiently promising to be sent out for trial.
From these a number of named varieties were placed on the market
and some are still grown of which Agawam is the most popular. The
Concord, although the most widely cultivated grape at the present time,
is somewhat lacking in quality. It is exceeded in this respect by many
varieties such as Diamond, Dutchess and Brighton which have been
derived from Concord by bringing in more of the qualities of the sweet
European grape.

The opportunities for hybridization of species are not so evident for
animals as with plants at the present time. Most of the types and breeds
are well established and experimentation with animals is so costly
that it is doubtful if radically new forms will ever supplant them.
Plants can be raised by the millions for the purpose of producing only
a few of merit without prohibitive expense but with animals the situa-
tion is different. One instance serves to indicate what the procedure has
probably been in the past in the creation of new kinds of animals.
The American buffalo crossed by domestic cattle has given a type with
the hybrid name Cattalo which is promising as a range animal for the
exposed prairies. The first generation progeny of such a cross are
sterile in the males but the females crossed back with tame bulls give
animals which are still highly variable but combine in various degrees
the conformation of the beef breeds with the ruggedness of the buffalo
and the flesh also partakes somewhat of that animal which was so highly
prized by the native Indian and early plainsman.

HYBRIDIZATION IN PLANT AND ANIMAL 23

This outline of the origin of domesticated animals and plants in-
cludes only those forms which show clear evidence of having had a
mixed beginning. Not all plants and animals have such a complicated
ancestry. The pea and soy bean among plants and horses among ani-
mals. as a few examples, have had a comparatively simple line of
descent yet they are represented by great variations in nearly every fea-
ture and are important additions to the list of cultivated and domes-
ticated plants and animals.

The evidence is sufficient, however, to show that the one word which
gives the key to the creation of useful forms of life is hybridization.
The bringing together of qualities scattered about among different
species, their rearrangement and from these still higher developments
along strictly new lines this is what hybridization makes possible; and
while it is not the primary method of evolution it is the most rapid
means of changing animals and plants under the controlling hand of
man. When it is noted that the forms which have come into domestica-
tion within recent times and especially where rapid progress is made
are unmistakably the result of hybridization it can not be doubted
that germinal mixing in the past has been a most potent agency in the
creation of valuable forms of life.

It is not without significance that the plants and animals in both
the eastern and western hemispheres which best serve the needs of man
originated at or near the places where the great continents join.
Southern Europe, Asia Minor and Northern Africa in the old world
have been the birth place of staple cereals such as wheat and barley.
Cotton and alfalfa are other plants of great value indigenous in this
region. The grape vine, date palm, fig and olive are also native here.
Sheep, swine, cattle, and horses were early used in these regions, as far
as the evidence shows, for the production of food and clothing and
carrying burdens. In the new world maize, beans, long staple cotton,
potato, sweet potato, tomato, squashes and tobacco are the outstanding
plant contributions and all of them come from Central American or
adjoining regions.

In each of the two Hemispheres in which early civilizations de-
veloped through long periods of time uninfluenced by each other— the
Egyptian, Assyrian in the East and the Inca, Mayan, Aztec in the west—
we find the greatest progress in man’s achievements made where the
paths leading from one continent to another cross each other. During
this period of upbuilding use was undoubtedly made of the plants and
animals nearest to hand. The fact that diverse forms of life made so
by intermingling of different races from widely separated regions were
here most abundantly available furnished the best opportunity for the
origin of domesticated animals and plants and points the way for future
progress.

24 THE SCIENTIFIC. MONTHLY

ADVENTURES IN STUPIDITY: A PARTIAL-ANALYSIS.
OF THE INTELLECTUAL INFERIORITY OF A
COLLEGE STUDENT

By Professor LEWIS M. TERMAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

ny youth whom we will designate as “K’’ entered Stanford University

with credentials showing graduation from a small but accredited’
California high school. On matriculation he presented 15 units of high
school work, all of which were of “recommended” grade. The only
suspicious circumstance was the fact that he had spent five years in high.
school and was almost 20 years old. He registered in mechanical
engineering (woodwork), psychology (mental hygiene), drawing (still
life, perspective). Thee weeks later the instructor in drawing asked
me to give the boy a mental examination, because of suspected mental
deficiency. This instructor stated that he had never had a student who.
seemed so completely unable to grasp the principles of perspective or
who made such foolish and absurd mistakes in trying to draw simple
objects.

A Stanford-Binet test gave K a mental age of 1214 years. Some of
the results of this test were so incredible that in the next few weeks I
devoted about twenty hours to a further study of the case, applying a
large assortment of standardized educational and mental tests. As we
shall see later, his scores on the various intelligence scales ranged from
12 to 131% years, and on the educational tests from the median for grade
5 to the median for grade 9 or 10. Average achievement in the educa-
tional tests was not far from grade 7.

K was of course not told the results of the tests. Effort was made.
however, to impress him with the fact that he would have to work very
hard in order to pass his courses. From time to time I gave him advice
on use of references, methods of study, note taking, etc., partly to see
whether it would be possible for an individual so lacking in intelligence.
to pass a college course. K responded with willing, even dogged, in-
dustry. He refrained from participation in the usual freshman frivoli-
ties and studied every night until 10 or 11 o’clock. It is not surprising,
however, that at the end of the term he failed in all his courses and was
dismissed from the university. His examination in psychology had in-
cluded such questions as “Explain how anything is (a) retained, and

ADVENTURES, IN STUPIDITY 25

(b) brought back to consciousness. Distinguish between (a) philosophy
and psychology; (b) sensation and perception; (c) mind and soul”! *

In physical and personal appearance K was rather prepossessing
than otherwise. He carried himself well and had a pleasant smile and
expressive eyes. As he also had good clothes, excellent manners and a
high-powered automobile, he was promptly initiated into one of the
Greek letter fraternities.

For purposes of observation I invited K to my home for dinner. His
behavior and manners gave unmistakable evidence of a home environ-
ment above the ordinary. However, in spite of a certain superficial
polish, a discerning observer would readily note the extreme common-
placeness of his remarks, and occasional almost infantile crudities of
language. He talked little, answering often with only a knowing smile
or a softly spoken yes or no. There was something in both smile and
voice that tended to disarm suspicion and to incline one to give him the
benefit of the doubt, if doubt should arise. His attitude toward me was
always one of child-like trustfulness. At no time during the tests did
he raise any question regarding the propriety of taking so much of
my time, as college students almost invariably do under such circum-
stances, and at no time did he appear self conscious or apologetic be-
cause of his poor showing.

Investigation disclosed the fact that K belonged to one of the most
prominent families in the small city where he lived. His father was a
banker, proprietor of the leading general store, and had formerly been
a member of the lccal school board. K’s mother is said to be a superior
woman. K is an only son. His one sister, several years his senior, is
a graduate of the University of California.

When K left the university he came to my office to bid me good-
bye and told me he was glad it was all over. He said he had not wanted
to come to college or even to graduate from high school. He “never
could learn books anyway,” and now that he had done his best in college
and failed he was glad to go back home to work in his father’s store.

We will first recount K’s test performances in some detail, and later
examine them in order to discover, if possible, the psychological nature
of their inadequacy.

STANFORD-BINET TEST
YeAR VIII, Credit, 12 months.

Although all the tests in this year were passed, K’s responses to
three of them gave clear evidence of intellectual inferiority. For ex-
ample, Finding Similarities brought the following responses, each given
only after 15 to 30 seconds of thinking:

1 Only one of K’s teachers knew anything about the results of the mental
tests, or even that such tests had been given.

26 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

(a) Wood and coal—‘Both used for firewood.” (b) Apple and peach—
“Skin about the cnly thing.” (c) Iron and silver—‘Don’t know that one.
Oh yes, they are heavy.” (d) Ship and automobile—‘Propeller.”

In the Ball and Field test K studied for two minutes and said he
could not do it. Persuasion finally brought a response which showed
barely enough plan to satisfy the requirements for year VIII. Inferior-
ity of practical judgment was evidenced by the crossing of lines and by
the lack of parallelism.

Vocabulary. Score 45, or about median for 13% years. Typical responses :
Lecture—“To be taught. Sort of lecture course. One who relates about
his experiences.” Skill—“Knowledge.’ Ramble—“Go fast.’ Civil—“‘Don’t
know.” Nerve—‘Pertaining to mind. Get more nerves. Sort of brain.”
Regard—‘Meaning good.” Brunette—‘White, I guess.” Hysterics—‘Per-
taining to the nervous system.’ Mosaic—“Pertaining to architecture from
a foreign country.” Bewail—‘Can’t think of that at all.” Priceless—‘No
value.” Disproportionate—‘Can’t think of it at present.” Tolerate—“Try to
get away from.” Frustrate—‘Sort of nervous.” Harpy—‘Happy, I guess.”
Majesty—‘Don’t know how to use it. Would it pertain to a queen?” Treas-
ury—'‘‘Pertaining to money.” Crunch—‘“Don’t know.” Sportive—‘Pertaining
to sport; not sure about it.’ Shrewd—‘Conservative.” Repose—‘‘Don’t
know that one.” Peculiarity—‘Very peculiar.” Conscientious—‘Good in his
work, I guess.” Promontory, Avarice, Gelatinous, Drabble, all met the an-
swer, “I don’t know.” Philanthropy—“Would it be wealthy?” Irony—
“Strong.”

Year IX. Credit, lo months. Failed on Rhymes.

No error in Date, Weights, Change or Four Digits reversed.

Three Words. (a) “The boy hit the ball into the river.’ (b) “Men
must work to have money.” (c) “The lakes flows into the river and the
river comes to a desert where it dries up.”

Rhymes. (a) No rhyme found for day even in two minutes. “I can’t
seem to get any.” (b) Mill—*Pill, bill, hill, rill’. (50 seconds). (c) Spring
—‘“Spring, sprung.” Told to give rhymes, “I can’t seem to think of any.”

YEAR X. Credit 10 months. Failed on Report.

Absurdities. No error; answers given quickly.

Designs. One correct, the other half correct.

Reading and report. Read passage in 18 seconds without error. “A fire
burnt three blocks near the center of the city. There was a girl asleep in
bed. While at the fire a fireman burnt his hands.”

Comprehension. (a) What ovght you to say, ete—‘Nothing.” (b)
Before undertaking, etc——“Think about it.” (c) Why judge, etc.—“Actions
count more. You can see him so much on his actions. Actions usually tell
a great deal about a man. He might not have much talking ability.”

Sixty words. In successive half minutes gave 10; 15, 10, 11, 7, and 7
words; total 69. Hardly any of the words given were what Binet would call
“aristocratic” words. Class series all very brief.

YEAR XII. Credit, 21 months. Failed on Ball and Field.

Abstract words. Hazily explained but all scored plus.

Dissected sentences. (a) and (c) correct. (b) “I asked my teacher for
paper to correct.”

Fables. (a) Hercules and Wagoner—“Don’t sit in the same rut and call
for help but get out and do it yourself.” (Half credit.) (b) Milkmaid—‘Not

ADVENTURES IN STUPIDITY 27

to be thinking so far ahead.” (Full credit.) (c) Fox and Crow—‘“Let’s see.
I know, but can’t think. The crow was too vain of herself.” (Half credit if
liberally scored.) (d) Farmer and Stork—“That the innocent sometimes
may be caught and the guilty get away. You must not judge all by the ones
being caught.” (No credit.) (e) Miller, son and donkey—“Mustn’t do
everything what other people tell us.” (Full credit.)

Five digits reversed. One of three correct.

Picture interpretation. First picture brought description only, the others
were fairly plausibly interpreted.

Similarities. (a) Snake, cow, sparrow—‘“Don’t know unless it would
be the tail.” (b) Book, teacher, newspaper—“Learn knowledge from all of
them.”. (c) Wool, cotton, leather—‘“Clothing.” (d) Knife-blade, penny,
piece of wire—‘“Steel.” (e) Rose, potato, tree—“Skin, or the heart.” (The
first three were scored plus, the last two minus.)

Year XIV. Credit, 12 months. Failed on Vocabulary, President and
king, and Clock problems.

Induction. Answers were 2, 2, 4, 8, 12, 32. That is, the principle was
grasped only at the last folding.

President and King. (1) “President has more power. He has a cabinet
and rules over the cabinet. A king is mostly a figurehead and is ruled over
by parliament.” (2) “President is commander-in-chief of the army.” (3)
“President has the veto power and a king has not.” (Scored plus on power,
minus on accession and tenure.)

Problems of Fact. (a) and (b) both plus. (c) Indian coming to town—
“Carriage; wagon.”

Arithmetical Reasoning. All correct in 20, 30 and 7 seconds, respectively.

Clock Problems. (a) 6:22—“It would still be 22 after 6.” (Task ex-
plained again.) “Will it go like this—25 after 6?” (Failure in 2 minutes. )
(b) 8:10—After 2 minutes, “I can’t do it.” (c) 2:46—After 172 minutes, “T
see now, it would be I5 after 10.”

AVERAGE ApDULT. No credit.

Responses on Vocabulary and Fables have already been described.

Abstract Words. (a) Laziness and idleness—“One is not willing to
work, and other because he won’t work.” (Scored plus, but is hazy.) (b)
Evolution and revolution—‘Revolution means revolves. Don’t know the
other word.” (c) Poverty and misery—“Poverty is without means, misery
might be with means but not wanting to use them. One suffering.” (Plus
on liberal scoring.) (d) Character and reputation—“Reputation is what you
have had, character is what you have got at present.”

Six Digits Reversed. No success. Not over two successive digits given
correctly in any series.

Enclosed Boxes. (a) and (b) correct. (c) “10.” (d) “17.”

Code. Time, 5 minutes and 40 seconds. Only two letters correct.

Superior ApuLt. No credit.

Paper cutting test. Made one hole in center of paper.

Eight Digits Forward. Not over three successive digits given correctly
in any series.

Thought of Passages. (a) “Tests that you are giving at present is very
good for the scientific—let’s see—the scientific way. This test may help a
person in something what they take up. I forget the rest.” (b) “Let’s see—
many people—happiness—we do not have all happiness in life—and many
people wish upon us that—let’s see—I can’t get it.”

Seven Digits Reversed. Would not attempt.

28 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Ingenuity test. Showed no comprehension of the task whatever, although
I twice explained it and even solved the first problem for him.

The mental age score is 12 years,-5 months. The distribution of suc-
cesses and failures does not differ especially from what one might ex-
pect of an average child of 12 or 13 years. Qualitatively, however,
many of the responses are characteristically different from those of an
average child of the same mental age. They show more of what Binet
called “maturity” of intelligence, and less of “rectitude.”

K’s 14 years of schooling have brought his vocabulary about a half
year or year above the average of his mental age and have made
him a fairly fluent reader (pronouncer of words). He makes change
quickly and solves simple arithmetical problems, but in practical judg-
ment, in finding likenesses and differences, and in a certain inaccuracy
and slowness of thought suggesting faint awareness, his stupidity is
more apparent. ,

YERKES-BRIDGES POINT SCALE
Total score, 79 points, or about median for 13 years.
The following failures were typical:

Repeating 21 syllables. Three errors.
Absurdities. (a) I have three brothers, etc.—“Let’s see. It should be

Paul, Ernest and J.” (b) Swinging cane with hands in pocket, etc—‘“That .

one’s all right.” (c) Guidepost directions (if you can’t read this sign in-
quire of the blacksmith, etc.)—“He never would be able to find the black-
sinith.

Analogies. (b) Arm is to elbow as leg is to—‘abdomen.” (c) Head
is to hat as hand is to—“arm.” (d) Truth is to falsehood as straight line
is to—“I have to pass that one.” (e) Storm is to calm as war is to—“Have
to pass that too.” (f) Known is to unknown as present is to—“Known. No,
I don’t know.”

YERKES-Rossy ADOLESCENT POINT SCALE

Total score, 48 points. Satisfactory age standards are not available
for this scale, but 48 points is probably not far from average for 13
years. Typical responses include the following:

Digits Forward. Memory span, 5 digits.

Repeating Sentences. Failed on all sentences of more than 14 syllables.

Comprehension Questions. (b) Actions versus words—“What they
usually do is what they usually say.” Asked to explain, “What a person
usually does, he has his mind made up and if he should say anything that way
his mind would run in the same order.” (c) Why honesty is the best policy—
“Because you're never caught in a lie; if you are, always there’s nothing to
hinder you from getting a position.”

Definitions. (d) Conceit—“One who only thinks about himself. One
who thinks nobody is as good as he is—the branches of work what he’s in—
pretty, or anything that way.” ;

Analogies. Whole is to part as six is to—‘“half.” (f£) Sunday is to Sat-
urday as January is to—“February.”

ee

ADVENTURES IN STUPIDITY, 29

Opposites. Wise—‘“not wise.” (20 sec.) Silent—‘still” (18 sec.).
Simifar—“things” (20 sec.). Cheap—‘“goods” (7 sec.). Never—‘“will” (12
sec.). (Here task was explained again, as it was evident K had lost the
goal) Joy—‘“gloom” (4 sec.). Prompt—‘late” (6 sec.). Vacant—‘‘don’t
know.” Busy—‘“dull” (12 sec.).’ Distant—‘“close” (3 sec.). Lazy—‘don’t
know” (35 sec.). Easy—‘“hard” (2 sec.). Generous—‘“close” (3 sec.). Hor-
rid—‘“mild” (12 sec.). Rude—‘“good” (5 sec.). Top—“tail” (13 sec.). Many
‘—“few” (2 sec.). Rough—‘“calm” (4 sec.). Upper—‘“lower” (3 sec.). After
—‘“before” (2 sec.).

Letter Line Test. Only one point credit.

Code Learning. No credit.

Army (1917) InprvipuAL EXAMINATION

Of tests A to V of the original individual examination methods pre-
pared for use in the army (1917), the following were given:

Clock Test. Could tell time promptly and, when clock was visible, could
tell what time it would be if hands were reversed. Failed on latter when
clock was not visible. (About a 12 or 13-year performance.)

Knox imitation. Six successes in ten trials. No success beyond five
moves.

Porteus maze. One error in 10-year maze, two in II-year maze and none
in mazes for 12 or 13 years. (About a 13 year performance.)

Orientational information. No failure.

Vocabulary. Average for two series of 50 words each was 21 correct
definitions. Easy words failed included voluntary, perpetual (“motion in a
line”), embers, tragic, optimist, repent, capitulate, contemplate, bestow, cooper
(“builds coops”), hypocrite (“sort of non-believer”), etc. (About a 13%
year periormance.)

Disarranged sentences. Two of three correct. (12 years).

Absurdiiies. Series 1 and 2, twenty absurdities in all, were given. Only
the following were failed: Series 1 (i)—A mistake is much worse than a
lie, for all people make mistakes and all liars tell lies; Series 2 (g)—Just
before sunset we sat in the shade of a tall tree and amused ourselves by
watching the shadows as they gradually grew shorter and shorter. (At least
a 12 year performance).

Rhymes. For stone three rhymes were found in one minute, for permit
one, and for resist four.

Likenesses and Differences. Series 1 and 2 were given, on 20 items in all.
There were six failures, besides several passes of low value. (12 or 13-year
performance.) Typical inferior responses were as follows:

How hat and coat are alike—“Both gold rimmed.”

Rose, potato, and tree—‘“Can’t get that.”

Animal and plant—‘“Both have hearts.”

Lamb, calf, and child—‘“All have feet.”

Grass, cotton, tree, and thistle—“All green.” '

Memory for Designs. Of the five designs, two were reproduced correctly
and two half correctly (liberal scoring). This is probably about a ten-year
performance. .

Logical memory. Passages 1 and 2 were given. These. are perhaps
slightly more difficult than the Binet passage (Fire in New York), and have
20 “memories” each. Both were read fluently and without error. Seven
memories were given for the first and 11 for the second. (11 or 12-year
performance).

30 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Comprehension. All five series were given, or 25 in all. There were
eight failures. (About a 10 or II-year performance). The following errors
are typical:

Why are people who are born deaf usually dumb also?—“Don’t know.”

You are hauling a load of lumber; the horses get stuck in the mud, and
there is no help to be had. What would you do?—“Go for help.”

Why has New York become the largest city in America?—‘Because of
its size and wealth. It covers such a large area.”

Why should women and children be rescued first in a shipwreck ?—“There
ain’t any reason.”

Why should people have to get a license to get married?—“There would

be too many marriages.” ; : ;
Sentence Construction (3 words). All five series given, 15 items. All
the responses were correct. (This test belongs at 9 or IO years).

The scoring of this series of individual tests has not been standard-
ized and age norms are lacking, but I estimate that the value of K’s
performance is about equal to that of an average child of 12 or 13 years.

Miscellaneous Tests

Trabue Completion Tests. Series B. (3) “The stars and the stripes will
shine tonight.” (6) “She could if she will.” (7) “Brothers and sisters
should always try to help the other and should not quarrel. (9) “It is very
annoying to have a tooth-ache, which often comes at the most bad time
imaginable.” (10) “To make friends is always the— it ftakes:7
(Score is 12, or approximately seventh grade ability).

Series C. (6) “The boy who studied hard will do well.” (7) “Men are
more capable to do heavy work than women.” (8) “The sun is so hot that
one can not sit in it directly without causing great discomfort to the eyes.”
(9) “The knowledge of man to use fire is of important things
known by but unknown animals.” (10) “One ought to take great care
to do the right of , for one who bad habits it to
get away from them.” (Score again is 12, seventh grade ability).

Easy opposites. The easy opposites of List 3, Whipple’s Manual, brought
the following responses: (1) Best—‘“poor” (3.2 sec.); (2) weary—‘tired”
(2.4 sec.) ; (3) cloudy—‘clear” (.6 sec.) ; (4) patient—“impatient” (2 sec.) ;
(5) careful—“not careful” (5 sec.) ; (6) stale—‘‘old” (.8 sec.) ; (7) tender—
“tough” (1 sec.); (8) ignorant—“bright” (.6 sec.); (9) doubtful—‘don’t
know” (6 sec.) ; (10) serious—“number” (3 sec.) ; (11) reckless—‘“not reck-
less” (.8 sec.) ; (12) join—“not joined” (1.2 sec.) ; (13) advance—“not ad-
vanced” (3.6 sec.); (14) honest—“dishonest” (.6 sec.); (15) gay—‘don’t
know” (9 sec.); (16) forget—“remember” (.8 sec.); (17) calm—‘“rough”
(.8 sec.) ; (18) rare—“tender” (.6 sec.); (19) dim—“bright” (.8 sec.) ;
(20) difficult—“easy” ( .6 sec.).

By the usual method of scoring only 8 of the 20 responses are cor-
rect. Although reliable age norms for this list are not available, this
is probably no better than children of 9 or 10 years ordinarily do. The
haziness of K’s mental processes and his difficulty in holding to a goal
are especially striking. The average time is 3.3 seconds, as compared
with the Woodworth-Wells norm of 1.11 seconds for adults. This large
difference is in line with K’s time record in the Kent-Rosanoff test and
suggests marked intellectual inhibition.

ADVENTURES IN STUPIDITY 31

Whipple's information test. After checking up the words as marked,
it was found that K was able to define only 5 of the 100 words and to
give a rough, inexact explanation of only 5 others. This is probably
not far from an average eighth grade ability.

Matching proverbs test (Otis). K was given the three Otis pro-
visional lists. These resembled the form of the test included in later
published editions of the Otis Group Scale, but were not identical with
the latter. K’s scores on the three lists were 4,9 and 6. The average of
6.3 represents about eighth grade ability.

Absurd pictures. The Terman series of 44 absurd pictures was next
given.” As these do not measure above 12 years, it is not surprising
that K succeeded with all but two. His intellectual deficiency is clearly
not found chiefly on the perceptual level.

Group Examination A (Original 10-Test Alpha)

Test 1. Oral Directions. Only 2 correct. Weighted‘score 6. (About
8% years).

Test 2. Memory for digits. Four correct. Weighted score, 8. (About
Q years). Extreme memory span, 5 digits. (8 or 9 years).

Test 3. Disarranged sentences. Nine correct, 3 wrong. Raw score, 6;
weighted score, 12, (About 12 years.) People are many candy of fond—
marked false. Property floods life and destroy—marked false.

Test 4. Arithmetical reasoning. Raw score, 6; weighted score, 18.
(12% years.) How many hours will it take a truck to go 66 miles at the
rate of 6 miles an hour?—Ans. “to.” If you buy 2 packages of tobacco at
7 cents each and a pipe for 65 cents, how much change should you get from
a two-dollar bill?—Ans. “1.28.”

Test 5. Information. Raw score, 28; weighted score, 56. (About
16 years. )

Test 6. Synonym—Antonym. Score, 21. (About 16 years.) Score of
this test is not weighted. Omitted definite—vague, concave—convex, adapt—
conform, debase—exalt, repress—restrain.

Test 7. Best Answer. Five attempted, 4 correct. Weighted score, 12.
(About 11% years.) Why judge a man by what he does rather than by:
what he says?'—“It is wrong to judge anybody.”

Test 8. Number Series Completion. Raw score, 7; weighted score, 14.
(About I5 years.)

Test 9. Analogies. Six correct. (About 10% years.) This test is not
weighted. Omitted or failed on items like the following:

(5) Dress—woman: feathers—(bird, neck, feet, bill) ;
(6) Water—drink: bread—(cake, eat, coffee, pie) ;
(7) Shoe—foot: hat—(coat, nose, head, collar).
Test 10. Number Cancellation. Score, 19. (About 15 years.)

Total weighted score, 175. This is about median for the high seventh
grade, or age 131% to 14, and is approximately equivalent to score 70

on Alpha. The lowest score earned by any Stanford University student
in a group of 300 tested was 205. However, K evidently does consider-

2 Described in J. of Applied Psychology, 1918, vol. 2, p. 348. The pic-
tures themselves have not been published.

32 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ably better on this kind of test than on tests of the Binet type, perhaps
because it is more subject to the influence of schooling.

KENT-ROSANOFF ASSOCIATION TEST

K presented no symptoms whatever of psychopathological ten-
dencies, but the Kent-Rosanoff test was given in order to compare his
responses with those found by the authors for typical dull subjects.
The results showed 14 per cent. of “individual” and 4 per cent. of
“doubtful” reactions. Kent and Rosanoff found 6.8 per cent. of in-
dividual responses for normal adults, 14.3 per cent. for normal ten-
year olds, and 26.8 per cent. for insane adults. Eastman and Rosanoff
found 13.2 per cent. for delinquents (presumably averaging much be-
low normal in intelligence). Accordingly, as far as individual re-
sponses are concerned, K’s performance resembles that of a dull youth
or normal child.

The median frequency of the responses was 22, which is considerably
lower than for normal adults. In this case, the low score indicates dull-
ness rather than mental eccentricity. There were no predicate reactions.

There was only one instance of failure to respond, and seven in-
stances of perseverance. These figures are not greatly different from
those found for normal adults.

Average reaction time was 3.1 seconds, + 1.54. The average for
college students is usually between 1.5 and 2.25: for children or men-
tally inferior adults, about 3. Four responses required more than 10
seconds. K’s slow reaction time, as well as the quality of his responses,
indicates mental inferiority.

Educational Tests

Handwriting. Smooth and legible, entirely lacking in infantile qualities.

Grades 14 on Thorndike scale.

Kansas silent reading. Slightly better than eighth grade ability.
Buckingham spelling test. Lists 1 and 2. Better than ninth grade ability.

Courtis arithmetic. The results are shown in the following table:
Process | Attempts| Right | Notes
PNGIUOR Geer soesee 16 | II | Far above eighth grade.
Subitaction.. 2242-2. Tay eee II | About eighth grade.
Multiplication ....... II 7 | Slightly below eighth grade.
IDIVASTOM 4 ae acest Satved 7 4 | Between fifth and sixth grade.
Speed of Reasoning.. | 5 2 | About fifth grade.

The striking thing in the above table is the rapid: deterioration in
quality of performance in the successive parts of the test from addition
to reasoning. That is, the higher the mental processes involved in a
test, the more clearly it brings out K’s subnormality. In speed and ac-
curacy of adding he compares favorably with the average high school
pupil, while in arithmetical reasoning he is little above fifth-grade
ability. Three errors, all as absurd as the following, were made in in-
dicating operations necessary to solve problems:

————

ADVENTURES IN - STUPIDITY 33

1. The children of a school gave a sleigh-ride party. There were 9
sleighs used, and each sleigh held 30 children. How many children were there
in the party? Ans.—‘Subtract.”

History. History was K’s favorite school subject. He had studied
it for four years in high school, covering ancient, medieval and modern,
English, and American History. Van Wagenen’s American History
Scale (Information B) was first given. From K’s responses, we learn
that New York was settled by the English, that the Missisippi Valley
was first explored by the United States and England, that Lafayette
and Hancock were American generals in the Revolutionary War, that
Jamestown was not settled until after the fall of Quebec and the capture
of New Amsterdam by the English, that Louisiana was not purchased
until after the Missouri Compromise and the Dred Scott Decision, and
that Alexander Hamilton was president of the United States. This list
of interesting facts could have been greatly extended. The performance
indicated about seventh or eighth grade ability.

Sackett’s Ancient History test was also given. This is also chiefly
an information test. The test is in six parts.

I. What the following were noted for: Hannibal, Cheops, Solon, Attila,
Mithridates—“Don’t know”; Demosthenes—‘Great writer”: Charlemagne—
“He was a ruler over Egypt”; Constantine—‘Ruled over Egypt.”

II. Name one of each of the following, from ancient history: a sculptor,

a historian, a philosopher, a builder, a poet—‘Don’t know.’ A painter—
“Raphael” ; law-giver—“Demosthenes.”
III. Historical significance of important events. K could tell nothing

whatever about the historical significance of the Battle of Tours, the Age
of Augustus, the Check of the Saracens, the Reign of Alexander the Great,
the Age of Pericles, the Burning of Carthage, the Peloponnesian War, etc.

IV. Important battles. Could not tell who fought or won any of the
important battles listed.

V. Important dates. The closest he came to any of the ten dates was
about 100 years. The Roman Empire was established about 100 iN, ID eheval
felletonthe sbatbarians about 261A. Ds” The Saracens were also defeated
around 100 A. D. Most of the events in this list he had “never heard of.”

VI. The most important contribution of each of the following to civili-
zation: Greeks—“No idea unless ships. Sort of a fleet is what they had
mostly.” Teutons—‘Came from Northern Europe. Don’t know what they
gave to the people.” Phoenicians—‘Don’t know who they were.” Saracens
and Arabians—“Don’t know.” Romans—“Don’t know, unless it was the great
art what they had.” Hebrews—“Hebrew language only thing I know.” (Who
were the Hebrews?) “Don’t know who they were.” (Are they related to
the Jews?) “Sort of same thing; are not Jews, though.” Persians—“Don’t
know.” Egyptians—“Don’t know.” Babylonians—“Don’t know.” Prehistoric
Man—*Don’t know,’

K’s stock of historical information may be inferred from the fact

that of the 55 questions in the above six series, 2 were answered cor-
rectly. He did know that Cicero was an orator and that Alexander was

a warrior (“general”).

VOL. XIV.—3.

34 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

NOTES ON READING AND HOBBIES

Reading. K stated that from the time he entered high school he had
read from one to two hours a day, chiefly newspapers and magazines.
The latter included American Boy, The Youth’s Companion, Popular
Mechanics, The Literary Digest and World’s Work. Asked what books
he had read through, he could name only the following: Little Women,
Alger’s books, Robinson Crusoe, and several volumes of Draper’s Self
Culture. Said he had also read a book about the Civil War, but could
not name it. Could not remember that he had ever read a book of
travel, any novel, or any books on mythology. He had read no poems
except those in his school texts—*“I don’t like poetry.”

Hobbies. Seems never to have had any persisting hobbies. Four
years earlier had put up a telegraph line, which worked, and learned
some of the Morse code. This interest lasted only one winter. Had
never tried wireless telegraphy. Once he “helped” another boy con-
struct a biplane model. It seems that this was a simple affair and that
K played only a minor role in it. Can ride a motorcycle, but “does
not take care of it himself or try to fix it when it is out of order.”
Likes an auto better; says he can grease it, fix the fan belt, repair
punctures or adjust the carburetor. However, could not explain the
principle of the gas engine or tell what the carburetor and commutator
are for. Has never had a set of tools and admits that he was “never

much good” with them.
to)

THE PsYCHOLOGY OF STUPIDITY

The details of K’s test performances have not been set forth merely
as amusing illustrations of intellectual gaucherie. Let us see what
light they throw or. the psychology of stupidity, for the essential nature
of intelligence or stupidity is best grasped by thoughtful observation of
the bright or dull mind in action.

First, however, it will be well to note that the degree of stupidity
with which we are here concerned is really not extreme. K is in fact
only moderately less dull than the average of the genus homo, judging
from the intelligence scores made by nearly two million soldiers. His
intelligence is probably not equalled or exceeded by more than 70 per
cent. of our white voters, by more than 50 to 60 per cent. of semi-
skilled laborers, by more than 40 to-50 per cent. of barbers or team-
sters, or by more than 20 to 30 per cent. of unskilled laborers. It is
probably not equaled or exceeded by more than 30 to 40 per cent. of our
South Italian or by more than 20 to 30 per cent. of our Mexican im-
migrants. Compared to the average American Negro, K is intellectually
gifted, being equalled by probably not more than 10 to 15 per cent. of
that race. Among the Jukes, Kallikaks, Pineys or Hill Folk, he would
represent the aristocracy of intellect. Just as we are prone to forget
how the other half lives, so we are equally likely to forget how the other

oo
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ADVENTURES IN-- STUPIDITY

half thinks. It is now fairly well established that the strictly median
individual of our population meets with little success in dealing with
abstractions more difficult than those represented in a typical course of
study for eighth grade pupils, that the large majority of high-school
graduates are drawn from the best 25 per cent. of the population, and
that the typical university graduate ranks in intellectual endowment
well within the top 10 per cent. K is stupid only by contrast. Only oc-
casionally does an individual of his moderate ability manage to gradu-
ate from high school or enter college. Only an exceptional combination
of dogged persistence and parental encouragement or other favoring
circumstances can accomplish it. But the introduction of intelligence
tests is showing that the majority of colleges and universities do un-
knowinely enroll a few students of K’s intellectual caliber. How this
happens and how it may be prevented are questions with which we are
not here concerned.

In what, psychologically, does K’s stupidity consist? Certainly not
in the ordinary sensorial, perceptual or sensorimotor processes. In
visual acuity he probably equals or exceeds the average savant. In the
cancellation of given letters or figures in a mass of printed matter he
would rank little if at all below the average of college students. He is
probably in less danger of being run over by an automobile than the
average college professor. He can probably drive an automobile as
skillfully as the average lawyer, doctor or minister could do with the
saine amount of experience. There is nothing in his intelligence that
would prevent him from reaping world renown as a champion
athlete. His handwriting would be a credit to a statesman. His spelling
is unquestionably more accurate than the spelling we find in the letters
and official reports of Colonel Washington, afterward the savior and the
father of his country.

Going from these relatively simple functions to the slightly higher
processes of memory, we at once find unmistakable evidence of K’s
mental inferiority. His memory span is only five digits, direct order,
and four digits, reversed order. But we have to do not merely or
chiefly with a weakness of memory for discrete impressions. He is
able to recognize and pronounce almost any printed word in his spoken
vocabulary, but his memory span for words making sentences resembles
that of a child of eight or ten years. His “report” of glibly read pass-
ages of the newspaper type is childish in its scantiness and inaccuracy,
while his report of abstract passages rises little above zero efficiency.
He is sometimes able to carry out directions given orally in 15-word
sentences, but he responds with only a blank stare to similar directions
in 30 to 40 word sentences. So many sounds will not coalesce in his
mind into a meaningful whole. Nor is this weakness confined to memory
for words, for he does little better with simple geometrical designs. He

26 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

is unable to reproduce correctly simple geometrical designs because he
apperceives the figures merely as composed of many lines in apparently
complex relationship to one another.

How can we reconcile this apparent weakness of memory with the
fact that K’s fund of general information, as measured by the army test,
is equal to that of the average high-school sophomore? Does not the
acquisition of information depend upon memory? The answer is that
it depends largely on the kind of information. The kind called for in
the original form of the army test relates largely to every-day perceptual
experiences (common animals, plants, advertisements, sports, etc.).
In information involving memory for abstract terms or appreciation
of logical relationships, K makes a ludicrous showing. Information
about base-ball champions or movie stars is within his reach; historical
information is not.

K’s success is no more brilliant when it comes to feats of constructive
imagination. He was able to draw a clock face so as to show the posi-
tion of the hands at any specified time, but he could not in imagination
reverse the hands. He could not construct in imagination the situation
represented by the problem of enclosed boxes. In the Binet paper cutting
test, he could not imagine how the notched sheet of paper would look
when unfolded. He could not retain or manipulate visual imagery well
enough to reproduce the letter code. To think out new combinations
of machinery or forces, as in the field of mechanical inventions, appears
to be as far beyond him as the ability to manipulate abstract language
symbols,

The weakness of K’s constructive imagination is also shown in his
lack of resourcefulness in meeting practical difficulties like those in-
volved in the Ball and Field problem, the ingenuity test or the Knox
Imitation test. The latter is not, strictly speaking, an imitation test,
for success in its more difficult parts depends chiefly on adopting the
scheme of numbering the positions, as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., and remembering
the numbers. This required resourcefulness is of a kind K can not bring
to bear on a new problem. If he were a factory laborer, he could
doubtless be taught to perform satisfactorily fairly complicated kinds of
routine work, but he would not be likely to devise any new procedure to
make work easier or lighter.

In the appreciation of absurdities of a kind which are chiefly on the
perceptual level or which involve only the simplest of ideas (absurd
pictures), K makes a fairly good showing. He shows somewhat less
ability to detect absurdities expressed in language, particularly if ex-
pressed in fairly long or complicated sentences. To absurdities on the
level of the abstract he is of course blind. He would doubtless read
without the slightest suspicion of fraud a poem or sermon or legal
document constructed so as to contain nothing but absurdity, provided

Yo
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4HOUCENTURES EN STOPIDITY

only the language was sufficiently smooth-flowing. The absurdity about
the road which was down hill in both directions involves little more
than the re-presentation of sensed experience, hence was well within K’s
ability. That about the three brothers demands an appreciation of
language relationships which proved to be beyond him.

In “Combinative ability” of the kind which Ebbinghaus rightly re-
garded as such an important aspect of intelligence, K reveals, notwith-
standing fourteen years of schooling, the capacities of an average child
of twelve years. His desert-rivers-lakes sentence is correct in form,
but absurdly foolish. In the Trabue test we find habitual associations
dominant over sense, as in “The stars and stripes will shine to-night”;
also a weak appreciation of sequential relationships and language form,
as in “She could it she will,” “The boy who studied hard will succeed,”
etc. The meaning of a simple mixed sentence like “people are many
candy of fond” is not grasped by K because he is unable to profit from
logical cues. He sometimes reacts to pictures by descriptions rather than
interpretations because he sees merely parts without grasping the whole
ihey compose. Subtle meanings, whether of language or pictorial repre-
sentation, are lost on him. The gulf that separates him from Millet is
as enormous as that which separates him from Shakespeare. In no in-
tellectual activity that involves the “elaboration of parts into their
worth and meaning” (Ebbinghaus) could he possibly excel. “Two and
two” as numbers he can put together by the simple laws of habit: “two
and two” as parts of a more complex situation will not combine.

In comprehension K fails equally with simple cause and effect re-
latiorships in nature, human relationships, and the rationalization of
custom. Why the deaf should also be dumb is as much a mystery to
him as why the rainbow is many-colored. New York is the largest
city “because it covers such a large area.” Why honesty is the best
policy, why women and children should be saved first in a shipwreck.
why marriage licenses are necessary, involve issues too subtle for
him to grasp. Although his inferior powers of comprehension render
him incapable of real morality, his moral life, measured by the
ordinary standards, appears to be quite normal. He is honest, and con-
siderate and not likely to commit bigamy or marry without license.
He follows custom but can not see beneath it or behind it. He is about
as likely to be a moral reformer as to be a philosopher or poet or in-
ventor or scientist.

Closely associated with this weakness of comprehension is his in-
ability to interpret fables, which usually bring either a comment in
terms of the concrete situation or else a generalization which is beside
the point. He grasps crudely the general trend of the story, but is in-
sensible to the thought fringes which give it meaning. He is able to
imagine the objects and activities described, but taken in the rough such
imagery gets him nowhere. It is no wonder, therefore, that he should

38 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

match as equivalents proverbs of the most diverse meaning, for proverbs
are generalized experience expressed in highly figurative language. K’s
moral life will never be integrated by principles of action derived from
experience. It is more likely to consist of rule-of-thumb behavior.
And if he can not generalize his own experiences he is not likely to read
much meaning into the behavior of others. He is not likely to develop
that intuitive appreciation of the motives and attitudes of others which
are necessary for the exercise of leadership. He will make as little
headway in understanding the universe of personalities around him as
in understanding the laws of gravity, the properties of the atom, the
theory of evolution, or the canons of poetry.

Striking examples of the poverty of K’s intellectual resources are
seen in the various tests of association. Of the dozens of words in his
vocabularly which rhyme with spring he could not think of one. During
the last minute of the sixty-word test he was able to name words only
at the rate of 7 in a half minute. Analogies involving concrete ob-
jects he can sometimes complete correctly, more often not; but his re-
sponse is not often wholly irrelevant. Arm is to elbow as leg is to—he
completes with “abdomen”: a part of the human body, but not the part
called for by the logical relationships given. In naming opposites he
sometimes loses sight of the goal and responds with a synonym, as in
weary—"‘tired”; stale—“old.” In other cases he responds with a word
which is frequently associated with the stimulus word in everyday
phraseology, as cheap— “goods”: never—‘will.” Still other responses
are either slightly inexact, at best—“poor,” or else almost but not quite
irrelevant, as top—‘tail’”; horrid—“mild.” Both the low “frequency”
of the Kent-Rosanoff response words, and the slowness with which they
are given, indicate a lack of variety in concept interconnections, with
consequent poverty of verbal associations. As Binet might put it, K’s
ideas lack direction, are not fruitful, and do not multiply. They are
inert and lack valence. The result is intellectual sluggishness and
haziness. Our subject will never draw hair-splitting distinctions; he is
even incapable of quibbling or making puns.

An essential aspect of the higher thought processes is the ability to
associate ideas on the basis of similarities or differences. This ability
is involved in such diverse mental acts as the understanding of simple
figures of speech, the appreciation of poetry, the scientific classification
of natural phenomena, and the origination of hypotheses of science or
philosophy. Intellectual superiority is especially evidenced in the abil-
ity to note essential likenesses and differences, as contrasted with those
which are superficial, trivial or accidental. It is here that K displays
one of his most characteristic weaknesses. An apple and a peach are
alike because they have a skin: iron and silver, because they are heavy:
an animal and a plant. because they have hearts: a snake, a cow and a

ADVENTURES IN STUPIDITY 39

sparrow, because they have a tail; grass, cotton, tree and thistle, because
they are green. Other similarities given are far-fetched or inaccurate.
A hat and a coat are alike because they are gold rimmed; a rose, a
potato and a tree, because they have a skin or heart. There is little
logical connection among K’s concepts; they do not light up one
another: they have not been subsumed under classes; they lack definite-
“ness of content.

All of this is again brought out in the vocabulary test, which in a
remarkable degree is a test of one’s ability to distil concepts—from
experience. Mere schooling affects it a little, but very little. Although
K has attended school fourteen years, his vocabulary is less than a year
beyond the standard for average children of his own mental age. Both
the school and the cultural influences of a superior home have failed to
give him an understanding of such common words as civil, brunette,
bewail, priceless, disproportionate, tolerate, shrewd, repose, character
or reputation. His definitions are occasionally infantile in form (given
in terms of use, etc.), but are more often vague, or grossly inaccurate
without being wholly irrelevant. For example, lecture means “to be
taught”: ramble, “to go fast”; conscientious, “very good in his work”;
brunette, “white”; tolerate, “to get away from.” All of these words he
has probably seen or heard scores of times, but he has failed to grasp
their meanings because of inability to analyze the situations in which
they have appeared.

Summing it all up we may say that K responds normally to simple
situations directly sensed, and that his inferiority is chiefly evident in
responses involving intellectua! initiative, planning, range and flexibility
of association, analysis of a situation into its elements, alertness, and
the direction of attention toward the significant aspects of experience.
Most of all, K is stupid because he is not adept in the formation and
manipulation of concepts; because he is unable to master the intellectual
shorthand of general ideas.

What is the practical bearing of the above facts on K’s vocational
outlook? While an exact answer to this question is at present not pos-
sible, a few tentative predictions may be ventured. K is at present per-
forming the duties of a regular clerk in his father’s store, apparently
with success, but it is unlikely that he will ever be able to manage a
business of any considerable importance. That he will ever succeed his
father in the local bank is hardly in the bounds of possibility. Perhaps
he will know how to get credit and how to grant it with fair discretion,
but he will never understand the principles of credit by which banking
is carried on. He may learn how to purchase bonds, to clip coupons,
and how to save his income; but he will never know what a bond is.
That he could become a minister, lawyer or doctor is unthinkable. He
will never engage in theological disputes or concern himself about

40 THE SCIENTIFIC -MONTHEY,

principles of artificial immunization. On the other hand, a hundred
kinds of skilled or at least semi-skilled work are open to him. As far as
intelligence is concerned there is no reason to suppose that he could
not be a reasonably good baker, barber, bricklayer, butcher, carpenter,
drill sharpener, freight checker, game warden, glass blower, harness-
maker, horse-clipper, jail-keeper, joiner, lathe-hand, policeman, pro-
fessional baseball player, plumber, prize fighter, peddler, railroad
brakeman, riveter, roofer, section boss, soldier, street car conductor,
timer, truckman, valet, weaver or yardman. There are doubtless also
innumerable kinds of routine clerical work in which he could do well.
For all we know he may become a successful business man, but this is
unlikely unless through the shrewd choice of assistants or marriage to a
capable woman.

Whatever he does for a living, K may be expected to become a citizen
of average respectability, though he is not likely to be elected to im-
portant office or to play a leading réle in the affairs of his community.
As a voter, he will never glimpse the fundamental problems relating to
taxation, tariff, government ownership, systems of credit, education,
labor or capital. If he ever concerns himself at all with political mat-
ters, it will probably be as a loyal adherent to his party and a devout
repeater of its catchwords.

GERTAIN ONIDTES IN SCIENCE 41

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE
By Professor R. D. CARMICHAEL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

| ee the several sciences taken as a whole form one science is a
proposition which has often been urged, sometimes apparently
as an article of faith and sometimes as a reasoned conclusion. To an
individual who holds, with nearly religious fervor, the doctrine that
the universe is one and that the truth of science asymptotically ap-
proaches the absolute truth about the universe, there can be no doubt
of the oneness of all science; there is no room or opportunity, except
through error, for that diversity which destroys the oneness of the
whole. To an individual of such an outlook it may be almost or quite
an article of faith that all science is one. But to him whose universe
is not so tidy, in whose thought there is the ever-present possibility
that after all we may be building on insecure foundations, the assertion
of the unity of science can be made only on a reasoned analysis of its
characteristics and on the established fact of the presence in it of
such dominant qualities as bind the whole indissolubly into one. To
exhibit such elements and to show that they have such qualities is a
task of large proportions, for beyond the possible achievements of a
single paper. Our purpose is the more modest one of exhibiting cer-
tain common elements, certain unities, in science as a whole and of
partially analyzing the way in which their presence affects the char-
acter of scientific truth.

The unities in science, however far-reaching, can never be absolute.
Whatever is common to two domains of knowledge appears in each of
them colored by the dominant light of the particular discipline. Per-
haps the most obvious unity of all is that of experimentation and
observation; its presence in natural science is almost universal. But
in mathematics it is partially obscured from view by a universal in-
sistence upon logical connection in exposition, so that the processes of
experimentation and observation which were employed in discovery
are not in evidence in the finished product. In the case of empirical
theorems stated as conjectures (such as have occurred frequently in the
history of the theory of numbers) we have the most notable partial
exception to what is the general rule. The results conjectured are
senuine empirical theorems. Mathematics differs from the natural
sciences in refusing to accept these conjectured theorems without a
logical demonstration. In thousands of cases it has been observed,

42 RHE SCOLEN TIFIC MONEY’

for instance, that an even number is a sum of two primes and no even
number is known which does not have this remarkable property. It is
conjectured to be true that every even number is a sum of two primes.
But, as long as a logical demonstration is wanting, no mathematical
memoir or treatise will assert its truth. Such an ideal of carefulness is
possible as a practical ideal for the control of actual mathematical
exposition; and, since it is possible, we insist upon it absolutely. But,
from the greater complexity of its problems and the nature of the truth
with which it deals, natural science can not insist upon such perfec-
tion of logical form but must rely upon incomplete induction from
particular observations to general laws and their subsequent experi-
mental verification either directly or through the intervention of their
consequences. The nearly universal unity of experimentation and
observation is seen in varying colors in the different sciences.

Probably a more important, if less obvious, unity is that of inven-
tion or creation. This is most clearly in evidence in pure mathematics;
but an examination of it as it appears there leads to the judgement that
it is perhaps dominant throughout all science. There are those who
wish to have the universe so tidy that nothing actually novel could
happen in it, that happening would be impossible, that every event
should be a mere consequence of the events which have preceded it.
But there are others who would not object to the surprises and thrills
of true novelty, who would not be disconcerted by the conclusion that
a law reached inductively by the mind is essentially a creation of the
mind, made (to be sure) for the purpose of relating in thought a class
of observed phenomena, but none the less a veritable creation or
invention. The whole matter turns on this question: Are the laws
obtained by induction found in nature and dictated entirely by nature,
or does the mind in some manner impose its own bias upon them?
It appears that we are forced to the latter conclusion, particularly
when we see the dominance of a general theory like the atomic theory
or the rapid inroads of such a one as the theory of relativity and re-
flect how these were conceived in the mind before there existed any
empirical evidence for them. In such cases as these the mind has
either imposed its own bias upon the laws of nature or it has had an
uncanny foresight of them before they appeared in experimental sci-
ence. The former seems to be the more natural and justifiable
hypothesis. :.

There is much to be said in favor of the thesis that natural science
should be considered a construct of mind rather than a paraphrase of
nature wrought out by the mind. The processes of invention are most
in evidence in the formulation of hypotheses, and most clearly when
these are based on only a few observations. There is no experimental
proof, and perhaps in the nature of things there can be none, for the

CERTAIN, UNITIZES, IN SCIENCE 43

hypothesis of the conservation of energy on which all modern physical
science is based. This seems to be a law imposed by the mind for its
convenience but without direct experimental support: at best it is
contradicted by no experimental fact.

But invention seems also to be present in the process of experi-
mentation. The experimenter is not a merely passive recipient. He
is active in directing the course of events. He invents phenomena
which would be non-existent without his guiding influence. He gives
attention to what he wills and ignores other things. He will not see
all that happens, nor will he record all that he sees. He selects before
he places on record for the examination of others.

The principle of direct causality is almost universally held to
underlie all natural science; the principle of inverse causality is also
generally asserted as true, but with less confidence in the assertion.
If the principle of causality exists at all in mathematics it must be in
some greatly attenuated form. It can hardly be said that the iri-
angularity of a Euclidean triangle is a cause having as an effect the
proposition that the sum of the angles of the triangle is equal to a
straight angle—unless one thinks of the cause-and-effect relation as
having here a quality peculiar to mathematics. But in the natural
sciences the principle seems to rule supreme. In some of them it is
employed mostly in the direct sense, as in physics where one generally
utilizes it for proceeding from the cause to the effect; in others the
principle of inverse causality is more often in evidence, as in geology
where we infer the past state of the earth from its present state. If
the principle of causality affords a unity in science it can do so only
on the assumption of at least the three well-distinguished forms which
we have just mentioned. Moreover, however one approaches it, it
involves him in speculative difficulties from which it is hard to extricate
himself. It is a severe, if not an impossible, task to adjust his con-
ception of the principle and his practice in its use so as to avoid just
criticism and his own dissatisfaction with it.

The difficulties which we have seen here in these cases are probably
to be found, singly or in combination, in the case of most of the more
obvious unities in science. The element of unity may fail to be as
well marked as we like throughout the whole range of the sciences,
as in the case of the unity of experimentation and observation; or it
may be of such character that people can not be brought to general
agreement about it as in the unity of method involved in the hypothesis
of invention or creation; or it may lack somewhat in oneness, as in the
case of the three forms in which the principle of causality appears.
The main object of this paper is to discuss certain actual or possible
unities not having these defective qualities.

The complexity of nature is great beyond our ability to understand

44 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

or perceive. The material universe is too rich in form and the full-
ness of phenomena for us to reach the whole extended complex in a
single grasp of the mind. The extreme variety of kinds of objects,
the multitudes of individuals of a kind, their almost innumerable
relations in time and space, the ramifying causal connections among
them and their mutual dependencies, their diverse relations to our
own life and thought, and the hidden things in them which our organs
of sense are unable to perceive even when supported by the power-
ful instruments of science—all these tend to produce a complexity in
the presence of which we are helpless so far as logical organization
of all impressions is concerned.

Even in the realm of those objects of thought which are constructed
by the mind itself there is too much diversity for us to contemplate the
whole at once if we are to do anything other than make glib general
statements unsupported by anything more than a certain appeal to the
imagination. It is evident that the mind is able to contemplate suc-
cessively the elements of a range of objects ef thought far too vast to
be embraced in a single encircling mental act. This is true not only
in general but alse in the case of such extended ranges as pertain to
a single domain, as for instance that of mathematics or that of
philosophy.

Two quite distinct worlds about which we should have exact in-
formation may be conceived separately: the world of matter and the
world of logical thought. Let us examine the two things presented to
our consideration by the physical phenomena of matter on the one
hand and on the other hand that special domain of logical thought
which is embodied in mathematics. There is a very wide range of
mathematical knowledge apparently unconnected with the properties
of matter. There are physical properties of matter, so complicated
that mathematical methods are still powerless in their presence.
Each of these domains is vast in its extent. There is a relatively nar-
row strip on which the two overlap, the properties of matter yielding
themselves to mathematical formulation and the mathematical truth
seeming to have its concrete embodiment in the properties and phe-
nomena of matter. The existence of this common region of the two
things apparently so widely separated has arrested our attention and
has directed it so forcibly to the striking parallelism that we have
sometimes felt that we have in it a fair measure of evidence for believ-
ing the whole universe to be rational. So far this conclusion has too
much the appearance of a pious wish and two little the character of
a demonstrated result to justify our confidence in it. The relative
narrowness of the common region of the two is rather disconcerting
if we examine it closely. Even if all physical relations should be re-
duced to mathematical formulation we would still have far to go to

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 45

reduce all phenomena to rational order and to find logical connections
among all their parts.

This diverse character of the most widely separated elements of
physical and of mathematical science is one evidence of the necessity
for breaking up into parts the total body of material concerning which
we seek to attain exact and permanent knowledge so as to bring it
within the range of such methods as we are able to conceive and em-
ploy in one connected investigation or analysis. But if we break this
material up into parts it is only by ignoring certain connections of
importance, only by making abstraction of elements which may be
omitted for the intended partial view but are essential to a complete
understanding of the whole.

The general situations actually presented by nature or by thought
are too complex for us if we are to gain permanence or invariance in
the conclusions which we reach. We have to create ideal situations
where we are more at home and over which a restricted range of
method will carry us with safety and with conclusions of sufficient
penetration to have abiding value. We have to adapt our procedure
to the strength of tool afforded by our minds when brought to their
state of highest effectiveness. With a more penetrating insight less
abstraction would be necessary; but only omniscience would enable us
to conceive and handle at once the total flux of nature and thought.
We have to work subject to the restrictions of our essential limitations.

This process of abstraction has been carried further in mathematics
than in any other science, having attained a place of importance there
long before its primary character was recognized in other disciplines.
Every organism possessed of locomotion has to deal with the problem
of space relations, and particularly an architectural animal like a
beaver or a man. Long experience in construction and measurement
will give rise to a certain body of empirical knowledge and rule-of-
thumb methods for making standard constructions. To such a state
of advancement the knowledge of space had already attained among
the ancient nations of the Orient and particularly among the ancient
Egyptians. But their progress was intercepted by their inability to
make needful abstraction of the essentially irrelevant and to concen-
trate on those properties which afford the essential elements of geo-
metrical form as such. They could only imperfectly conceive a tri-
angle as anything more ideal than a piece of land of a certain outline
or a flat stone of a certain shape.

As long as the problems are conceived as those of the space re-
lations of material objects there is present to thought a large disturb-
ing element which successfully turns the attention away from what is
essential. In order to construct a theory of the space relations of
objects it seems to be practically necessary to do a more ideal thing

46 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTALY

first. Before one can make serious progress in the way of definite
conquest, one must abstract from the general complexity of the situa-
tion and attain to a new one relatively much simpler. In fact, not only
in the study of properties of geometrical space but also in many do-
mains of science it is necessary to create a new situation having certain
analogies with the actual one of nature but being so much simpler
that we are able to grasp the interrelations of all its parts.

This idealizing of the problem of space relations was first effec-
tively achieved in the geometry of the ancient Greeks. They were able
to get away quite completely from the material triangle and to conceive
the ideal triangle defined by certain essential ideal properties. Like-
wise they were able to make abstraction of what was not necessary to
the purposes of a pure geometry in the various lines and circles and
other figures which they wished to consider. This new attitude toward
the subject matter of the theory of geometrical space allowed an
altogether unforeseen extension of knowledge; geometry came into be-
ing in one of those forms which stand as part of the modern theory.
By abstraction of unessential elements the mind came to behold a much
simplified object of thought and analysis a knowledge of whose
properties gave the needful insight into the space relations involved in
normal everyday experience.

For a long time this body of geometrical truth stood apart from
all other knowledge, separated by qualities of generality and ideal
conception from all other doctrines whether of mathematics or of some
other discipline; but, after a time, algebra began to assume a like
position of separate completeness and it existed so until algebra and
seometry were brought together by the invention of analytical
geometry.

The abstraction of the unessential in the study of space relations,
dificult as it was and effected only in relatively recent times, seems to
have been the easiest large abstraction for the human race to achieve.
This was probably due to our intimate racial acquaintance with the
space of experience during the whole period of our evolutionary
history and to some peculiar adaptation of ourselves to the understand-
ing of spatial relations. That our long drawn out experience with it
is not in itself sufficient to enable us to fix attention upon the essential
elements and to understand their relations is shown by the fact that
we have been quite as long acquainted with the weather as with space
relations and that we have not yet been able to reduce to the form of
an exact science our knowledge of its daily changes—unless indeed we
have been hindered in such progress by essential changes in the char-
acter of the weather during geological ages while the relations of
space have been an invariant element throughout our experience.

The fact that mathematics first succeeded in making these large

= a ES ee ee eee as

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE ; 47

abstractions from the complexity of the environment in building up its
body of doctrine and that is today relative the furthest advanced
of the sciences raises the question as to whether there is a general
correlation between the state of advancement of -a science and its suc-
cess in forming appropriate abstractions. The just conclusion seems
to be that no science is far advanced until it has first succeeded in

isolating by abstraction a large body of material, conceived ideally

apart from the matrix of its environment and possessed of such es-
sential properties as make it possible to pass from the conclusions of
this ideal science into the actual complexity of phenomena with a bet-
ter understanding of important phases of the latter than is otherwise
possible. |

In meteorology, where successful abstraction is exceedingly diff-
cult, we find a relatively small body of securely achieved truth. The
same is true in our study of industrial organization and of the com-
plex phenomena of the social relation. But if we turn to the work of
the astronomer in celestial mechanics, where nature herself almost
made the abstractions for him, we find a science relatively far ad-
vanced and one which achieved its position of preeminence early in the
modern era.

Under the inspiration afforded by the laws of Kepler Newton medi-
tated on the question as to the ultimate law of nature upon which the
properties of the planetary orbits depend; and he was led to conceive,
and establish by. geometrical reasoning, the principle of universal
gravitation and the law that the force of attraction between two ma-
terial particles is directly proportional to the product of their masses
and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
These discoveries of Newton condensed an almost immeasurable volume
of thought into a compact and simple formula, bringing the theory
and observation of past ages to a focus from which new lines might
diverge in many directions. Laplace undertook to draw out the conse-
quences of the laws of Newton, his purpose being to “offer a com-
plete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar
system, and to bring theory to coincide so closely with observation
that empirical equations should no longer find a place in astronomical
tables.” His success in both respects brought him very close to his
lofty ideal.

The “Mécanique Céleste” of Laplace holds a unique place in the
history of science. It was the first instance in which an extensive uni-
fied and logical theory had been developed for a large class of ob-
served phenomena. A very few fundamental principles lay at the
basis of the entire work, owing to abstraction of unessential details;
and it was developed from these principles in its entirety solely by
mathematical processes, this logical procedure being rendered possible

4§ TE SCIENTIFIC MONDTHEY

by the essential simplicity of the ideal situation. In such a body of
truth there is something esthetically satisfying in a high degree. It
could not fail to have a profound effect on the development of
thought.

The cosmical and subsequently many terrestrial phenomena having
been explained, it was natural that Newton, and still more Laplace and
his school, should attempt the explanation of molecular phenomena
by similar methods, importing into molar and molecular physics the
astronomical view which had arisen in mechanics. This celestial
mechanics became the model for the exact sciences. Men sought to
give to other theories an equally beautiful and logically consistent
form. The start from a few principles, easily enunciated and readily
comprehended; the forward march of the theory into new fields, com-
prising in the range of its explanation an ever-increasing portion of
observed phenomena; and its ultimate comprehensiveness in this re-
spect—these things gave it a hold on the imagination. It thus became
a profound factor in the development of the whole of physical science
in its mathematical form. The cold touch of exact thinking and the
calculating mind, both products of the method of abstraction in the
development of scientific truth, have proved to be the spell by which
knowledge has been found, new sciences have been created and a novel
trend has been given to the development of thought.

Perhaps I may digress widely enough to indicate how the pre-
carious character of scientific advancement is indicated by some of
the matters now in consideration. Suppose that our earth, instead of
being one of a few planets moving around a single sun, had been one
of several satellites of a large planet moving about the center of
eravity of a double star: then it is clear that the facts of astronomical
observation which would first have pressed themselves upon our at-
tention would have been much more complex than those of our actual
system. When we consider the long period of time which it required
the race to unravel the intricacies of the much simpler system of which
the earth is a part and the uncertain and haphazard way by which it
took the necessary steps, we see that there is room for grave doubt as
to whether we would ever have conceived a suitable explanation and
whether (having missed such a guide as this) we would be in a position
successfully to attack or even to conceive the problems of natural
science. Our progress has been made under the inspiration of the
ideal afforded by astronomy on account of a success due to abstractions
to which the nature of the observations pointed the way. Could we
have ever conceived such an ideal if we had been confronted with a
much more complicated astronomical system? And could we have
already built up, or would we have ever been able to build up, a body

CERTAIN UNITIESAN SCIENCE " 49

of science comparable to that which we possess today? Certainly the
answer can not be a confident affirmative.

Natural science and mathematics are not the only domains of
thought in which the principle of abstraction is prominent; it appears
also in speculative philosophy. But its relation to the latter is quite
different from that to the former domain. In science we are quite
_willing to admit abstraction frankly as a universal characteristic which
is necessary on account of the limited character of the intellect. But
the philosopher desires to get away from it as far as possible. He
wishes to embrace in his system an ever-widening range of material;
and he would be most pleased if it might be ultimately comprehensive.
He knows that he has not attained to such an ideal and probably never
expects to; but he still feels a certain sense of uneasiness when he finds
a body of truth quite unrelated to the system by which he has brought
things to order in his own mind.

But in art and literature the matter is quite different. Here the in-
tention is to contemplate at once the whole stream of life and existence,
at least so far as to have no purposed exclusions. Here one deals
with the actual complexity of events and even with the character and
emotions of individuals. One does not state theorems; one does not
announce universal laws; one does not reach rules-of-thumb for doing
mechanical things; one does not even find general principles upon
which there is universal and permanent agreement nor those by which
one may have precise guidance for conduct in any given situation;
but one does reach permanent conquest in the creation of things of
enduring beauty; one produces lasting values for the emotional life
even if one does not increase the body of exact knowledge.

From the foregoing considerations it appears that the method of
abstraction, as an active means for clearing off the ground and an
active support to the consequent investigations, is common to all
science and is characteristic of science. It is therefore one of the im-
portant characteristic unities in scientific method. We find it necessary
to isolate one subject from another by abstraction in order to avoid
being smatterers. We reduce our serious problems to ideal abstrac-
tions because no deep-lying problem can be solved without reducing it
to abstractions. If we do away with them we do away with mathe-
matics and logic and natural science. They have thoroughly justified
themselves through the marvelous conquests of modern science which
they have so effectively supported.

But these abstractions are not without their dangers. It has been
said that the supreme fallacy of the academic mind is carefully to make
abstractions and then straightway forget that they are abstractions.
“The expert in the conceptions belonging to one field of knowledge
legitimately solves the problems of that field in their terms. But some-

VOL. XIV.4.

50 THE SCIEN TIFICMMION TPAEY

times he forgets that these are very special and limited notions of
truth, applicable only to that one field. He ignores that his science is
only one abstracted aspect of concrete life, separated from other as-
pects of life only for the sake of specialization of labor. Ignoring
this, he attempts to solve the problems of other fields with his own
field’s special concepts. Thus, a biologist sometimes endeavors to re-
duce all psychology to biological concepts; or an economist to reduce
all moral values to the special values of the economic world.”

Perhaps, for the sake of unity in point of view, one may be allowed
to treat, as resulting from a certain form of the method of abstraction,
a quality of the mathematical formulation of the laws of nature which
first appears explicitly in the general Einstein theory of relativity.
This is not the place to give any of the technical developments! be-
longing to the latter theory. But it is a matter of general scientific
interest to indicate the character of a new ideal for the form of
scientific laws which was first insisted upon in the investigations
of Einstein, particularly as it can be successfully described without any
of the heavy mathematical machinery which is essential to a detailed
development of the theory. This ideal emerges in connection with the
analysis of the now celebrated principle of equivalence, which we may
enunciate as follows: A gravitational field of force is exactly equiv-
alent to a field of force introduced by a transformation of the co-
ordinates of reference so that we can not by any possible experiment
distinguish between them.

The notion of transformation of coordinates of reference, which ap-
pears here, is quite essential to an understanding of the quality of
mathematical formulation of laws which we wish to explain. Perhaps
we may best approach the matter by conceiving a geometrical curve
fixed in the space interior to a given room of four walls meeting at
right angles. If we take the floor and two adjacent walls to be a
system of reference by means of which to locate the positions of a point
in the room, then we can uniquely define the positions of a point
on our curve by giving its distance from the floor and from each of
the two walls selected. If the point moves along the given curve then
the numbers expressing these distances will be related according
to a law determined by the shape and position of the curve; these three
variable numbers will satisfy certain equations of condition. If we
used the ceiling and the other walls as a system of reference we should
in general obtain different equations of condition for the same curve.
Those would be further modified if we chose for reference system
some other set of three planes mutually perpendicular to each other,
and especially so if these planes should be oriented in some new
directions.

1 The reader interested in these developments will find them in the second.
edition of my “Theory of Relativity,’ Wiley & Sons, 1920.

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 51

It is clear that these changes in the system of reference have in no
wise affected the properties of the curve itself, though they have con-
stantly modified the mathemaitcal expressions by means of which we
may most compactly and most completely describe the curve and its
position. Let us for a moment forget these systems of reference and
study the curve itself by passing along it from point to point. Two
characteristics will force themselves upon our attention; the amount of
bending of the curve as we pass along it, its curvature; the amount of
twisting of the curve, its torsion. These are intrinsic properties of the
curve itself capable of representation at each point by definite numerical
values. These numerical values can be expressed in terms of the three
distances pertaining to any given one of the systems of reference men-
tioned above; it turns out that definite rather simple formulae exist
for expressing the curvature and torsion in terms of the named
measurements. Since these describe intrinsic properties of the curve
their values must be unaltered by the transformations of variables due
to the changes of the system of reference; that is, they must be invari-
ants of the transformations.

It is seen therefore that the analytic expressions for the curvature
and torsion are unchanged in form and in value as we pass from one
system of reference to another. It can be shown that they completely
determine the intrinsic properties of the curve. Then we have in them
a complete mathematical description of the intrinsic properties of the
curve in a form from which we have abstracted those pecularities which
belong to the special system of reference by means of which we de-
scribed the curve and its position in the first place. This sort of ab-
straction is of frequent and important use in mathematical investiga-
tions. It affords one of our methods of excluding from consideration
those things which are irrelevant to the central purpose of the investi-
gation and of fixing attention upon those things alone which are un-
altered by, or are invariant under, the transformations permissible
among the elements in consideration. A similar but extended use of
invariants is a central feature of the Einstein theory of relativity.

Two rather considerable extensions of the method are necessary in
order to realize the situation in the Einstein theory. The first has to
do with a generalization of the system of reference. In what we said
above we contemplated the location of a point always through the
measurement of its distances from three planes. Now we wish to re-
place the three planes by three warped surfaces, perhaps twisted and
corrugated and bent into a great variety of shapes and restricted only
enough to allow us to utilize them successfully for the location of
points in space. By means of these we are to describe the space-
configurations with which we have to deal.

The other step which we wish to take is that in connection with the

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ot
bo

introduction of time into our system. We can not well develop the
mechanics of three dimensions by means of what is simply static in
three dimensions; and the introduction of motion and the analysis of
velocities and accelerations require the use of the time variable.
Moreover, we are not to think of time and space as independent but
are to consider the two together as furnishing the four-fold extension
of a time-space centinuum. This gives us, of course, a space of four
dimensions; and in this space of four dimensions the movements of the
natural world are represented by static figures. In this space of four
dimensions we are to choose as a system of reference four warped
three-dimensional spaces by means of which the location of points in
this four-dimensional space shall be defined.

With these conceptions in mind we shall undertake to make clear
the nature of the central ideal upon which Einstein insists. He wishes
to have the laws of nature expressed in such form with respect to this
four-dimensional continuum that there shall be no change in the form
of these laws when we pass from one of these systems of reference to
another; the statement is to be an invariant one when all quantities
involved are changed in accordance with a transformation which car-
ries us from any one of these systems of reference to another; let us
say for convenience that the laws are to be stated in covariant form.
When we have put them into such form we have abstracted from the
statement whatever pertains to the particular system of reference em-
ployed.

It is a grave question whether the laws of nature are capable of
formulation under such radical restrictions; and an affirmative answer
can be maintained only after a searching examination. The best way
for a just trial of it is to employ one of the best established and most
satisfactory laws; none could be more suitable than the Newtonian law
of gravitation. Hence one of the first efforts of Einstein to test out the
theory was made in the attempt to apply it to celestial mechanics. It
turned out that the Newtonian law of attraction does not accord with
the ideal of covariance of the laws of nature; it is not capable of ex-
pression in precise covariant form. Is the principle then to be sur-
rendered? Not without further evidence; it may be, after all, that the
law of Newton is. not exact.

The next task of the investigator, then, is to inquire whether there
is some slight modification of the Newtonian law which will bring it
into covariant form without making it false to experimental fact. It
was not difficult to show that the Newtonian law was a very close ap-
proximation to a law which is indeed covariant; and the latter was
then taken to be the law which should replace the Newtonian law.

Questions which force themselves upon our attention then are the
following: Does the new form of the law have any definite advantages

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 53

over the old? Can it be subjected to an experimental test to determine
which of the two approximate laws is the correct one? Now it hap-
pens that the Newtonian law has long been known not to agree exactly
with observation in the matter of the motion of the planets. In the
case of Mercury the discrepancy is altogether too great to be attributed
to experimental error. If the law of Einstein is applied to the prob-
lem it accounts for all these motions within the limits of experimental
error. Here it scores its first victory over the Newtonian law.

A second crucial test of the theory is offered by its prediction of
the deflection of a ray of light which passes through a strong gravita-
tional field. This prediction was tested by observations made in-
dependently at two stations during the eclipse of the sun of May 29,
1919. The problem was to determine the amount of bending in a
ray of light passing near the sun and hence through its strong gravita-
tional field. The values for the deflection obtained at the two stations
are 1.61 and 1.98 seconds of angular measure, resulting in fairly good
agreement with the predicted value of 1.74 seconds of angular measure.

The ideal of the covariance of the laws of nature as a practical ideal
thus passes successfully its first test, and indeed in a dramatic manner.
That Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations may be reduced to a co-
variant form and hence that all electromagnetic phenomena described
by them are in agreement with the principle of relativity may be
readily shown; and thus the ideal of covariance meets a second funda-
mental test. There is no known case in which it must certainly be sur-
rendered, though there is an important one which remains still in
doubt (see p. 105 of my “Relativity” already referred to).

If all the laws of nature can indeed be expressed in covariant form
we have through this fact brought to light a certain profound unity in
the laws of natural phenomena, one which will surely be satisfying in
an esthetic way to every one who contemplates it with understanding.

We have insisted upon the importance of abstraction as a means of
bringing the complexity of the phenomena contemplated within the
power of the mind for purposes of systematic analysis. There is also
another quite as important reason for making abstraction of certain
elements involved in the general complex of the environment: and that
is the necessity or desire to find a range of phenomena and objects of
thought about which there can be at least a fairly good agreement.
The propositions concerning which there is general agreement among
competent persons are said to have an objective validity; others are
called subjective. Upon being pressed for a definition of “objective”
as employed in the phrase “objective character of science” the scientist
sometimes asserts that the objective is that which pertains to the world
which is external to ourselves or to the world of objects whose essential
character is not affected by the subject who contemplates it. But if he

54 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

is further pressed for a criterion to determine whether a given thing
is objective he has to return to the conception of the objective as that
about which there is general agreement among competent persons.

It may be objected that this definition describes merely that which
is invariant and that we ought to refer to the invariant character of a
scientific thought rather than to its objective character. But it seems
to me that “objective” as applied to things of science has no scien-
tifically definable sense except that which rests upon the idea of in-
variance, at least if one admits (as I think he must in matters of
science) that a definition should be so stated that it is theoretically
possible to determine whether or not a given thing meets that defini-
tion. Moreover, “objective,” as the word opposed to “subjective,”
seems to be well suited to convey the connotation desired. At any
rate, it is our purpose to proceed from this as a tentative definition to
a more penetrating analysis of the ideal of the objectivity of science,
an ideal which can be attained in any particular situation only by ex-
cluding from consideration a large portion of the attendant circum-
stances.

Regardless of the way in which we frame the definition it is agreed
that an essential quality of scientific truth is its objectivity. It must
depend solely upon the object studied and not upon the subject who
investigates. It must be impersonal, having validity independently of
the temperament or the peculiar disposition of the individual who re-
ports it. What do we mean by such a demand as this? What can we
mean? It is clear that the investigator can not be a mere passive re-
cipient of impressions, a tablet on which nature registers her character-
istics. He must be active in several ways; he chooses the things to
which he shall direct his attention, his reason or intelligence is an
essential element of the registering apparatus, and he is restricted by
the limitations of his sensory equipment. He can obtain and convey
only that information which his nature fits him to acquire and report
upon. The demand for objectivity can not be a requirement that he
shall do otherwise. But it is a call for the exclusion of the subjective
element, the element which is peculiar to his individuality; and this
exclusion is to be brought about by such comparison of his report with
that of others as shall make it possible to determine those elements
which are independent of his individuality.

But it is clear that such a procedure affords us no means of ex-
cluding what is peculiar to the human race as such. This would re-
quire the existence of many cognate races of widely different social
characteristics by the comparison of whose scientific conclusions we
could eliminate that which is peculiar to each, retaining as a residue
only that which has objective validity relative to the group of races as
a whole. Such a procedure, if the means were at hand for realizing

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 55

it, would carry us one step further toward the far-off goal of absolute
truth. But we shall have to be content to work without such means
of removing. from our body of knowledge the elements which are
peculiar to our racial individuality. This affords no occasion for dis-
satisfaction, since the only use we have for our science is that which
can be realized by human beings. But it is sufficient to assure us that we
have no means of reaching absolute objectivity in our science, if such
a thing is indeed conceivable.

The conclusions or observations which we shall admit as having
the required objective validity are those which are invariant in the
sense that they are reached by all normal human beings who investigate
properly the pertinent matters. We can not get along without the
qualification of normality of the individuals admitted to the group for
which we seek the invariance in consideration nor can we omit the
requirement of the proper investigation of pertinent matters. It is
hard to see how we can altogether remove subjective considerations
from the process of determining when these conditions are adequately
met. We can not avoid the conclusion that the highest objectivity
realizable in practice falls far short of the quality of being absolute.
The conclusions and observations which have the requisite objective
character are those only which are invariant for a properly determined
group of individuals; and the determination of the group to be ad-
mitted can be effected only by the members of the group, since there
is no external intelligence that sets them apart.

It is convenient to distinguish two types of objectivity, as here de-
fined, differentiated as to range of time through which exists the group
of individuals by means of which each is realized. We may call the
one contemporary objectivity and the other historical objectivity, the
former being asosciated with a group living contemporaneously and
the other with a group scattered through a long period of time, say
the whole historical period. All the general truth which is universally
approved in a given age among people properly qualified to form a
judgment upon it possesses this contemporary objectivity. That
which meets with acceptance from age to age with unchanging uni-
formity has the higher order of historical objectivity. From the truth
possessing contemporary objectivity that and that alone survives to
attain to historical objectivity which impresses itself alike upon the
peoples of succeeding ages.

The subjective character of matters of taste is notorious. Even the
milder objectivity of the contemporary sort is seldom attained, and
always only imperfectly. Universal agreement on such a judgment of
values in a given age carries with it no assurance that succeeding
ages will conéur in the conclusion. Yet there are some judgments con-
cerning matters of art which go far towards exhibiting the qualities of

or
l=r)

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

historical objectivity. There is an abiding unanimity, for instance, im
ascribing a high excellence to the finer elements of Greek sculpture.
The more magnificent creations of this art impress with their marvelous.
beauty the people of one age after another: and these all appear to ob-
tain from them a joy of the same general character. It is true that in-
dividuals represent this to themselves variously and that they differ
greatly when they seek to give an account of the way in which they
are affected. But certain elements of the judgment of value seem to-
be invariant from age to age and from individual to individual. So far
as this is true we have a manifestation of objectivity even in these mat-
ters of judgments of taste.

If we find thus a measure of objectivity in these things which are
usually esteemed to be highly subjective in character, we also find cer-
tain elements of subjectivity even in the matters of science and marked
elements in some bodies of truth considered objective by those who
develop them. Merz, in his “History of European Thought in the
Nineteenth Century,” a work to which the present author is greatly in-
debted in several ways, says: “Most of the great historians whom our
age has produced will, centuries hence, probably be more interesting
as exhibiting special methods of research, special views on political,
social, and literary progress, than as faithful and reliable chroniclers
of events: and the objectivity on which some of them pride themselves
will be looked upon not as freedom from but as unconsciousness on
their part of the preconceived notions which have governed them.”
Thus the objectivity to which these historians have attained appears to.
be only contemporary in character.

In forming a judgment of the significance of modern science it is
important to ascertain the character and measure of objectivity to
which it has attained as a whole and to make a classification of it
into parts according to the extent of its success in becoming objective.
A large portion of what is now current has gained its position so re-
cently and has so forcibly ejected the earlier explanations to make
place for itself as to raise a reasonable question of doubt concerning
the validity of the whole structure. When theories have changed so
constantly, so long and so profoundly, we can not well believe that
we have suddenly come to a state of stability. The changes are likely
to continue. If they are retarded for a time they will probably break
forth later with increased violence. It is not long since we witnessed a
period of explosions in the theory of matter and motion; and indeed
we do not yet appear to have come to the end of it.

In the midst of this rapid change what permanent truths are to be
perceived? Which can maintain themselves through the present gene-
ration and achieve historical objectivity through the support of future
thinkers? It seems clear that it can not be the theoretical explanations,

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 57

except in relatively few instances if indeed in any, at least if the ex-
planation is conceived to carry with it the means of affording a pene-
trating insight into the phenomena explained. If the theoretical ex-
planations do not abide, what is there left? Simply and solely the
account of relations among phenomena, however. these are expressed,
whether by means of the mere record of observations or through the
“more powerful tool of scientific theory conceived merely as a mne-
monic device and a support to the weakness of the intellect in its de-
ductions. The statement of relations has in many cases attained histor- .
ical objectivity in natural science: but theoretical explanations have
usually suffered change from age to age and the process seems likely
to continue.

Mathematical truth, so far as it is expressed in definite theorems,
has achieved almost complete historical objectivity. A result once at-
tained abides through the ages. Errors are made with relative in-
frequency and these are usually corrected with such definiteness as to
secure general and abiding agreement. The permanence of result has
for a long time been considered one of the essential glories of the disci-
pline. But there is lack of such complete objectivity concerning the
character of the truth attained. Our conception of the position of.
Euclidean geometry in thought and philosophy, for instance, is far
different from that of the ancients owing to the existence of the so-
called non-Euclidean geometries of relatively recent times.

If we analyze the remoter origins and earlier bodies of thought by
aid of the criteria which we are using, we shall find that we can not
deny to the proto-science.of savages a certain contemporary objectivity
even though its explanations are framed in terms which we perceive to
be anthropomorphic or mythological. That the “sun is the flaming
chariot of the sun-god, driven day by day across the heavens” is an
immediate fact of observation expressed in anthropomorphic lang-
uage; and probably no more was read into this statement of fact
than we are accustomed to transport from our theories into our account
of what: happens during an experiment or formerly into the similar
statement that two bodies attract each other. The primitive expla-
nations maintained their place for a long time: and much useful
knowledge was acquired through their assistance and much skill was
gained in logical analysis before it was possible to prove them in-
sufficient. “A false theory which can be compared with facts may be
more useful at a given stage of development than a true one beyond
the comprehension of the time, and incapable of examination by obser-
vation or experiment by any means then known. The Newtonian the-
ory of attraction might be useless to a savage, to whose mind the ani-
mate view of nature brought conviction and helpful ideas, which he
could test by experience.” We can deny to the savage neither the use-

58 TLE SCIENTIFIC MONTALY

fulness nor the contemporary objectivity of the proto-scientific ex-
planations which he offered. They were objective to him in every -
defined sense in which our science is objective to us. If one points out
the anthropomorphic element in them, our criticism will at once be
hushed by the anthropomorphism of many of our current conceptions,
as for instance that of force. If one objects to the mythical element in
their thought let him first take up arms against the colossal myth of
the ether in the science of the past century and cut off our thought
from this fiction of the scientific imagination. As long as we find it
necessary to transport into our theories such elaborate creations as
that of the ether (brought in without a shred of direct evidence for
their existence) we have little room to complain of the thinkers who
formed the proto-science of the savage. Measured by the time through
which their explanations maintained their contemporary objectivity,
the period during which current scientific explanations have held their
place is strikingly short.

The objectivity of truth is never absolute, but always relative to a
group. of thinkers or the age or ages to which the group belongs. We
have no means of removing from our knowledge the marks of our
racial characteristics or reaching further into our understanding of
nature than to these elements which our sensory equipment enables us
to perceive. We have to determine with the best standards we may
the group of people in relation to whom we shall insist upon the in-
variant character of truth as recognized. Since at any time in our
history future experience is yet to be evolved we can strictly speak-
ing, have only a sequence of contemporary objectivities, as it were, and
never a complete historical objectivity. We can have no logically
certain means by which to choose securely those elements of thought
in any age which make the nearest approach to complete historical
objectivity. A subjective element, that is, an element which varies es-
sentially from individual to individual, is necessarily present in every
attempt to reach a means of determining what truth has the dignity of
an objective character.

The sciences in coming from under the tutelage of philosophy have
not completely shaken off the incubus of its unsupported speculations
and prejudices. Phenomena are observed through the goggles of
philosophical preconceptions, not only in psychology and biology, but
also in chemistry and physics. and even in mathematics; and the con-
clusions or appreciations are affected in various ways and to different
extents. In our generation, in the case of physics (the most advanced
of the natural sciences) there is going on a veritable revolution in
regard to the philosophical preconceptions on which it is based. As
evidence we cite the current discussions of space and time and gravita-
tion.

CERTAIN UNITIES IN SCIENCE 59

Again the objectivity of a natural science is relative to the character
and measure of abstraction through which it was built up and the
syntheses by which the separated elements were afterwards brought
together and combined into a unity. This process of synthesis can
never be carried to completion without the certain loss of objectivity
in the resulting knowledge; and as long as it is not carried to comple-
tion we have no means by which to be assured that a matter first
treated as essentially irrelevant shall not later come into the focus of
attention. In fact, this very thing has recently happened in physics.
In studying the properties of light physicists were for a long time con-
tent to leave out of account the gravitational field as having no ap-
preciable (or even conceivable) influence; but the Einstein theory has
forced them to a fundamental revision of this supposition and has led
them to conceive of the ray of light as warped out of a straight path
by the action of a powerful gravitational field.

The failure of science to obtain completely its universal ideal of
objectivity does not diminish our interest in it. Indeed it is rendered
more attractive to those of us who are pleased with a dynamic rather
than a static world. Truth is never to be set off in tubes hermetically
sealed. It is living and hence possesses the universal quality of life
_ of doing the unexpected thing. Its growth is not hemmed in. We
may look forward to its continued progress and novelty as long as we
who develop it are finite intelligences.

60 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THOMAS HARIOT—1560-1621

By F. V. MORLEY
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD

HIS year marks the tercentenary of the death of Thomas Hariot,
T one of the most interesting of the Elizabethan scientists. He was
born at Oxford, and went to St. Mary’s Hall in times when there were
“menne not werye of theyr paynes, but very sorye to leue theyr studye.”
The students being without fire were “fayne to walk or runne vp and
downe half an houre to gette a heate on theyr feete whan they go to
bed.” In those times the birch was still in the buttery hatch and the
proctors stalked outside the colleges with poleaxes for any “schollers”
out after hours. Fines that now come from a student’s patrimony were
taken from his own skin. And in those far-off days in England there
still survived the custom of hazing freshmen.

But apparently Hariot did not suffer overmuch from the discipline.
At any rate he made somewhat of a name for himself in mathematics—
in that subject then still allied to the black arts. Aubrey tells of a
contemporary of Hariot’s who studied mathematics that he was vul-
garly supposed to be a conjuror, and the scout or college servant used
to tell freshmen and other simple people that the spirits passed up and
down his staircase thick as bees. A jocular mind could have played up
the superstition and become another John Dee. Apparently Hariot was
too skeptical to believe what would willingly have been credited to
him and too honest to gain by what he did not believe. But this is
speculation and the only fact to go on is his appointment as a bone fide
mathematician with Sir Walter Raleigh.

How this appointment came about is not quite clear. We have for
it the authority of Hakluyt addressing Raleigh in 1587 (translated) :

By your experience in navigation you saw clearly that our highest glory
as an insular kingdom would be built up to its greatest splendor on the
firm foundation of the mathematigal sciences, and so for a long time you
have nourished in your household, with a most liberal salary, a young man
well trained in those studies, Thomas Hariot; so that under his guidance
you might in spare hours learn those noble sciences, and your collaborating
sea captains, who are many, might very profitably unite theory with prac-
HEE we. 2

Raleigh, one of the most remarkably versatile men of a time that
specialized in versatility, had been collecting experts who would be use-

1 Peter Martyr’s “De Orbe Novo” (Paris, 1587). The preface, containing
this passage, is by Hakluyt.

THOMAS HARIOT—1560-1671 : 61

ful in his colonial schemes, and two years before this letter of Hakluyt’s
he had sent Hariot out in the big expedition to Virginia, or to what is
now North Carolina. There Hariot stayed for a full year, acting as ex-
plorer and surveyor and reversing his previous position in adding prac-
tice to his theory. After that year among the savages he came back to
England and fell into the society of the keenest minds of his time. For
Raleigh had been prevented from going to Virginia and while his
argosies were oversea he had amused himself, in intervals of court ac-
tivities or fighting or retirement to the country, with an “office of ad-
dress,” apparently a sort of institution for the diffusion of knowledge
and a liaison center for intellectuals. Whether or not this suggestion
worked out in the Royal Society, there were in the group of men several
scientists Warner and Hues are usually mentioned—and into it came
Hariot. But it was broader than a scientific society, as it would have
to be to keep up with the interests of its patrons, Raleigh and Henry
Percy, Earl of Northumberland. It had its literary side, with the lead-
ing and outstanding figure of Christopher Marlowe.

All information as to the group is exceptionally tenuous, resting
largely on the gossip of contemporaries. But it is pretty clear that the
members soon began to discuss religious subjects and it was here that
they particularly scandalized the times. Rumors are thick about
“Sir Walter Rawley’s School of Atheisme,”’ whose master was said to
be aconjuror. The term of condemnation was very loosely used. There
is nothing to show that Raleigh or Hariot had views more extreme than
perhaps unitarian or deistic ones and there is much evidence that they
were religious in a broad and tolerant sense. But they were great per-
sonal friends of the scornful and heterodoxical Marlowe. It has been
clearly shown by Mr. F. K. Brown? that the dramatic poet was a vigor-
ous exponent of extreme heresy and it was the expression of his views
+n reckless manner that caused the suppression of the club. Marlowe
was killed before he could be convicted and probably the dagger saved
him from the stake. Raleigh was kept under surveillance, his house
searched, his private table-talk examined, and as he says, he was “tum-
bled down the hill by every practise.” But he was too powerful a man
to sit still under the cloud. After a burst of eloquence in Parliament
on behalf of religious toleration he set forth in an adventurous pursuit
of El Dorado across the Spanish Main and cleared his blood by letting
some of the dons’.

Hariot, just as much implicated, behaved very differently. It is
probable that he went to one of Raleigh’s Irish estates and there worked

2 See F. S. Boas, “Works of Thomas Kyd,” (Oxford, 1901), Introduc-
tion, pp. Ixx ff. ,

3 “Marlowe and Kyd,” Times Literary Supplement (London) June 2, 1921.

62 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

quietly at mathematics until the cloud blew over. We hear no protest
from him unless long afterwards to Kepler (translated) :

For things are in such a pass with us, that still yet I may not freely

philosophize. Still yet we stick in the mire. I hope the Good God will make
an end to these things shortly. After which better things are to be
expected. . . . 4%
And when he came again to London towards 1600 he was a man well
known to contemporary scientists. He is mentioned in Hues’ “Globes”
(1593-4), in Davis’ “Seamen’s Secrets” (1595), in Torporley’s “Di-
clides Coelometricas” (1602). He lived at Sion House, Percy’s seat on
the Thames near London, from some time shortly after 1604 until near
his death in 1621. It was from there that he carried on his correspond-
ence with Kepler on optical subjects and a more familiar and interesting
corre: pondence with various pupils such as Sir William Lower. His
purely mathematical work was apparently completed before he went
to Sion House. The years there were interrupted by constant attendance
on Raleigh and Percy, both confined to the Tower. Such time as he
could find he put upon astronomy, but a great deal went to the carrying
of books to the Tower when the insatiable Raleigh was writing his
History of the World, and to similar services for his caged masters. He
was with Raleigh up to the end, and present by the scaffold at the
execution. He did not survive by long his first patron and his most
gallant friend. Marlowe and Raleigh both gone, the third of the trium-
virate passed away by a more cruel exit than either the dagger or the
axe. He had suffered for a long time from cancer of the lips, and it
came to a lingering end on July 2nd, 1621. He was buried in the
churchyard at St. Christopher’s, the spot since absorbed into the garden
of the Bank of England.

* * *

Marlowe, Raleigh, and Hariot—none of the three lived to finish
their work. It would not do to say that Hariot was as striking a figure
as either of the others: but that does not take all of his tragedy
away. He has not been quite fairly treated by posterity. The fault
was largely with himself, for he published none of his own work. Most
of his mathematics was, as has been said, thought out before 1604 and
probably before the change of centuries. A reflection of his teachings
is obtained from the letters from his pupils, such as in the passage
from Sir William Lower in one dated February 6th, 1610:

Kepler I read diligentlie, but therein I find what is to be so far from
you. For as himself, he hath almost put me out of his wits. . . (I dream)
not of his causes for I cannot phansie those magnetical natures, but aboute
his theorie which me thinks . . . he establisheth soundlie and as you say
overthrowes the circular Astronomie. Do you not here startle, to see every

4 “Epistolae ad Ioannem Kepplerum,’ Hanschius (1618) p. 380.

THOMAS HARIOT—1560-1621 63

day some of your inventions taken from you: for I remember long since
you told me as much, that the motions of the planets were not perfect circles,
So you taught me the curious way to observe weight in Water, and within
a while after Ghetaldi comes out with it in print. A little before Vieta pre-
vented you of the gharland of the great Invention of Algebra. al these were
your deues and manie others that I could mention; and yet to great
reservedness had robd you of these glories, but although the inventions
be greate . . . yet when I survei your storehouse, I see they are the
smallest things and such as in comparison of manie others are of smal or
no value. Onlie let this remember you, that it is possible by to much procrasti-
nation to be prevented in the honour of some of your rarest inventions and

Speculations: ... + ©

Lower is accurate as regards the dates of the work on specific grav-
ity; one of Hariot’s paper is dated 1601 and Ghetaldi published in
1603. Vieta’s algebra came out from 1591-1600, and we may fairly
suppose that Hariot’s work was contemporary.

It was his “to great reservednesse” and “to much procrastination”
that has hindered us from knowing exactly what his work comprised.
One attempt was made by his friends to salvage it from oblivion. The
“Artis Analyticae Praxis” came out posthumously in 1631, in the same
year as Oughtred’s “Clavis.” The latter was in many ways inferior in
originality, in scope, in suggestiveness; but as a textbook it was ex-
cellent, small and available. It was moreover a living product of a
well-known author, not a work patched up from the manuscripts of a
man ten years dead. The “Clavis” had a more direct influence on Eng-
lish teaching; but it is a fair question as to which had the greater effect
on the history of research. For the “Praxis” was read by Descartes and’
every line of Descartes’ analysis bears token of the impression. The
Frenchman carried to their conclusion, with typical French lucidity and
brilliance, things that remained obscure to Hariot’s executors. That
there are omissions in the “Praxis” that Hariot would never have al-
lowed is shown, for instance, by the general impression (fostered by
Montucla) that he did not admit negative roots. But manuscripts in
the Harleian collection of the British Museum show that on the other
hand he was fully aware of them and accorded them equal rights. Such
an omission a man of Descartes’ genius would fill up and would be
fired to more than simple reparation. No attempt should be made to
detract from Descartes, except perhaps from his complete originality.
It was fortunate that the work fell into such hands, and the fact is re-
gretted only by those who like to think of genius as without a precedent.

As for the book itself, it appeared in a thin folio. Percy had made
the publication possible, and the dedication was to him. On the final]
page appeared the following note (translated) :

9

5 The letter, is quoted in full in Rigaud, “Supplement to Dr. Bradley’s
Works,’ (Oxford, 1833) pp. 42-45, and in Stevens , “Life of Hariot,” (Lon-
don, 1900) pp. 120-124.

64 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

To Mathematical Students

Out of all the mathematical writings of Thomas Hariot, not without
good reason has this work on Analysis been published first. For all his re-
maining works, remarkable for their manifold novelties of discovery, are
written in precisely the same logical style, hitherto seldom seen, as is this
treatise; whch is entirely composed of all manner of specimens of brilliant
reasoning. And this was done with valid reason, so that a preliminary treatise,
besides its own inestimable value, might well serve as a necessary prepara-
tion or introduction to Harivt’s remaining works, the publication of which is
now under serious consideration. Of this accessory use of the treatise we
have thought it worth while to remind mathematical students in these brief
remarks.

The contents followed in Vieta’s footsteps, with improvements in
notation and some simplification in technique. But the chief thing in
the book, and one of great importance, was the bringing over to one
side all the terms of an equation and equating them to zero. It was
a simple and yet a real step ahead. As Whitehead says, it started the
study of algebraic forms. The resolution of an equation of the nth
degree into n simple factors gave immediate rise to the fundamental
theorem of algebra. And though there is the real temptation to read
into the terse statements what may not have been thought out, the warn-
ing against Tennyson’s expression

I thowt ’a said whot ’a owt to ’a said
may be borne in mind, and yet much claimed for Hariot.

How much more the painful lips might have said, or might have
been recorded if the “serious consideration” above mentioned had ma-
tured, is of course difficult to know. It would take very careful work
to read, digest, and judge the eight large volumes of Hariot’s manu-
scripts lying untouched in the British Museum. There are more, ap-
parently, at Petworth. They consist of fragmentary calculations, with
occasional connected notes on a diversity of subjects—on astronomy,
physics, fortifications, shipbuilding, and all the branches then known
of mathematics. And yet even a cursory glance will show some gieams
of gold. There is a well-formed analytical geometry, with rectangular
coordinates and a recognition of the equivalence of equations and
curves. There are notes on combinations and the tables of binomial
coeflicients worked out in both the forms we now call “Pascal’s triangle”
and “‘Fermat’s square.” And there is one page, otherwise blank on
which appears

CON Auf Wb
Lom)
=

6 “Artis Analyticae Praxis’ (London, 1631) p. 180.

THOMAS HARIOT—1560-1621 65

This is certainly prior to the usual dates given for binary numeration.
There is no guarantee that these things were original with Hariot, and
some may be much older. But at least it is an instance of his knowl-
edge. We may take Lower’s praise how we will, but there is little
doubt that Hariot’s executors would have had material as interesting
as the preliminary treatise.

More publicity has been given to Hariot’s astronomical work, partly
because of the dramatic discovery of the papers by Baron de Zach; and
the encyclopedias tell how he used his early training in navigation in
his observations of Halley’s comet with a cross-staff. Sun-spots he
watched with the naked eye, though he admits this gave him pain. Both
Hariot and Galileo seem to have borrowed the telescope from the
Dutch very shortly after its invention and to have used it simulta-
neously. With.the help of his servant and instrument maker, Chris-
topher Tooke, Hariot seems to have supplied his pupils with telescopes
and asked their aid in observation. His own recorded observations go
back io July, 1609, a month after Galileo’s first construction; and
partly independently and partly with the knowledge of the Italian he,
too, observed the moon, the satellites of Jupiter and later the comet
of 1618.

Some time, perhaps, there will be published extracts from the cor-
respondence of the time, for it throws delightful light on the mental
attitude of the scientists. Lower’s letters, for example, are charming
in their naive statements. In the letter above quoted he begins

I have received the perspective Cylinder that you promised me and am
sorrie that my man gave you not more warning, that I might have had also

the 2 cr 3 more that you mentioned to chuse for me. . . According as
you wished I have observed the Mone in all his changes. . . . In the full

she appears like a tarte that my Cooke made me the last Weeke. here a
vaine of bright stuffe, and there of darke, and so confusedlie al over. I
must confess I can see none of these without my cylinder.

And when he wishes to compliment Hariot in another letter some five
months later he says he has done more

then Magellane in opening the streightes to the South sea or the
dutch men that weare eaten by beares in Nova Zembla.

Perhaps this last is not too high a compliment; but when the com-
pliments to Hariot are discussed the truth will be seen of a statement
made above. He has not been fairly treated. There are errors on. both
sides, from Montucla’s curt dismissal to the adulation of Baron de Zach.
To the latter Hariot’s use of the telescope was proof of his inventing 11,
and a mark of superiority to Galileo. In short, more harm has been
done to Hariot by his admirers than by his opponents; as in the con-
troversy started by Wallis to prove that Descartes borrowed all his
algebra from Hariot without acknowledgement. and hence that Hariot

VOL. XIV.—S:

66 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

was the greater man. The folly of these disputes is never more re-
grettable than in their reaction on the individuals who would have been
loth to start them. In both cases, of the attempted detraction from Gali-
leo and from Descartes, Hariot has suffered more than by his decent
oblivion. But what might have been claimed for him is an interest and
a high intelligence in his work, carried on under a tragic illness and
under the sense of futility borne in upon him by the deaths of his
friends, in those blood and thunder times a little more than three cen-
turies ago.

ia

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST 61

DRU DRURY, AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
ENTOMOLOGIST

By Professor T. D. A. COCKERELL
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

LL entomologists are familiar with the name of Dru Drury, one
A of the fathers of their science in England. Living in the time
of Linneus. when the discovery and description of new forms of life
was rapidly increasing the bounds of zoology and botany, he entered
fully into the spirit of the new knowledge and contributed largely to it.
Something more than an amateur collector, he keenly interested him-
self in the natural history of insects, and did everything in his power
to encourage biological investigations. He corresponded with some of
the prominent zoologists of his day, and with many persons in foreign
countries, who were interested in collecting insects. His letters were
copied, nearly always in his own hand, in a large book. When at
Funchal, Madeira, recently, | was greatly interested to find this letter-
book in the possession of Mr. C. O. L. Power, of the firm of wine
merchants, Power, Drury and Company. Henry Dru Drury, the former
head of the business, was my father’s greatest friend, and I was named
Dru after him. He died in 1888, but Mrs. Power is also a descendant
of the entomologist and the letter-book thus still remains in the family.
Mr. Power kindly gave me the following pedigree. The known ancestry
goes back to Thomas Drury of Fincham in Norfolk, who died in 1545.
William Drury, who lived at Godmanchester and Tempsford, had a son
Dru Drury, born in 1688. His son, born February 4, 1725, was Dru
Drury the entomologist. He is described as of Wood street in the
Parish of St. Alban, London, citizen and goldsmith; afterwards of the
Strand, of Enfield and of Turnham Green, all in the county of Middle-
sex, and of Broxbourne, Hereford. He married Easter Pedley, daughter
of John Pedley of London, soapmaker. He died. January 15,1804, and
was buried at the church of St. Martins in the Fields. He had three
children, Mary, born 1749; William (goldsmith, of Turnham Green),
born 1752; and Dru, born 1767. William had a son, Henry Dru Drury,
born 1799, whose sons were Henry Dru Drury, my father’s friend, born
1837, and Charles Dru Drury. The last was the father of Mrs. Power
(Gertrude F. Drury), now living at Funchal. Charles Dru Drury. who
lived at Blackhéath, and died at the early age of 32, was interested in
entomology. /

68 THE SGLEN TIPIC MON DiELey,

I was very kindly permitted to borrow the precious letter book for
a number of days, and with my wife’s assistance obtained copies of the
more interesting letters. These I give in chronological order, but in
many cases only portions of letters are quoted. It will be seen that
Drury was indefatigable in seeking to enlarge his collection by corre- -
sponding with persons living abroad, but that while doing this, he also
did his utmost to persuade them to study insects and discover their
life-histories. With others, he raised funds to send Smeathman to Africa
(letters 18, 19, 25), but he was somewhat embarassed because only in-
sects were received, whereas some of the subscribers asked for and
expected other things. He tried to get Thomas James of New York
(letter 2) to study the “caterpillars” or nymphs of dragon flies, and
in short do the sort of work which Professor Needham has been doing
in that state in our own times. In his letters to Dr. Pallas, the eminent
naturalist residing in Russia, he discussed the state of affairs in Eng-
land. and many of his remarks would be pertinent today. We get an
account of the circumstances connected with Captain Cook’s first ex-
pedition, with which Banks and Solander sailed as naturalists. At
first it seems a little surprising that there is no mention of Captain
Cook. but he was not famous at that time and was not even a captain.
We hear of the disappointment occasioned by Banks’s failure to publish
the expected volumes on the natural history of the voyage. The fact
was. that although Sir Joseph Banks was a splendid man and one of
the most useful citizens of England, he was not adapted to scientific
research, with its continued attention te minute details. His position
in relation to natural history was that of.a patron and promoter, rather
than a student. The correspondence with Moses Harris brings out
some of the difficulties in getting the “Illustrations” properly illustrated.
Harris, who here appears as the artist, was himself a very capable
entomologist who introduced the method of studying the venation of the
wings of insects. He published a large work on British Insects, giving
names. with descriptions and figures, to a number not previously
described. This work has been strangely ignored by subsequent taxo-
nomists. though proper binomials are furnished in the index, as in
Drury’s Illustrations. Verrall, writing on Diptera, has restored several
of the names proposed by Harris. The letter to Linnzus shows the
respect Drury had for that great naturalist. In his Illustrations of
Exotic Entomology, Drury gave no scientific names in the text, but in
the index supplied a full set of binomials, using the strict Linnean
method. Haworth, writing in 1807, said that Drury was the first in
England to adopt the Linnean method throughout in this manner.
Although Drury took so much interest in the correspondents who sent
him insects he unaccountably failed to cite them in his book. Their
names were, however. found by Westwood in a manuscript list of

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST 69

Drury’s, which also gave more exact localities. When editing a new
edition of the Illustrations if 1837, Westwood published much of this
information. Drury encouraged Fabricius to study and describe the
insects in his collection. There is a good description of the zeal and
industry of this great master of entomology, who described a prodigious
number of species in a manner which we should now consider inade-
quate. The Fabrician types in the Banks collection may be seen at the
British Museum today. In the preface to the third volume of the
Illustrations, Drury complains that whereas he had always thrown his
cabinet open to all students, advantage had been taken of this to describe
and even figure some of the species without his consent. This was
especially unfortunate since it involved a number of forms which were
described in the volume and obliged him to suppress the names he had
_ proposed to give them. No name is mentioned, but one has only to
look at the index to see that Cramer was the culprit.

At the end, I have quoted a letter describing Drury’s business fail-
ure. and his fortunate return to solvency or even prosperity. He lived
many years longer, but the correspondence of his later-years has ap-
parently not been preserved.

Regarding Drury’s life and work as a whole. we have an excellent
example of that innate taste or passion for natural history which in-
spires a certain number of individuals in every generation and which
the majority can neither appreciate nor understand. But we are also
struck by the fact that favorable circumstances are needed to render
such aptitudes fruitful and of benefit to mankind. Many such men as
Drury, all through the ages, have lived and died without leaving any
permanent memorials. The favorable circumstances in Drury’s case
were especially the organization of zoological and botanical knowledge
led by Linneus, combined with the penetration of nearly every part
of the world by British commerce. It was possible to come by the
materials for greatly enlarging our knowledge of insects, and a method
had been devised for conveniently recording discoveries. Drury, tak-
ing advantage of these conditions, was able to make important and
permanently valuable contributions to the science he loved so much.

(1) To Mr. Robt. Killingley at Antigua. Jan. 4. 1762.

The Beetles which were in ye spirits among the other things were
very acceptable and exceeding pretty, insomuch that I cannot help
placing them in ye foremost rank of all the specimens you have now
sent, indeed Insects I must confess do really afford me the ereatest
pleasure of all animals, and as such I will take the liberty of begging
a favor of you to try to breed some of the Libellas (vulgarly called
horsestingers): [gives full directions for breeding ].

(1-a) To Mr: Hough—geing to Africa with Capt. Johnson [slaver to
to take slaves to Jamaica] March 22. 1762.

70 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The Locusts and Grasshoppers will be found to be very numerous
in Africa and also in Jamaica where they differ in a very extraordinary
manner from our European ones, some being just like leaf and branch
of a tree. others like half a dozen straws joynd together, all of which

are very acceptable to us.

(2) To Mr. Thomas James of New York. Apr. 25, 1767.
[ Describes apparatus he sends for taking water insects, and continues | :
You may breed a great number of Insects, particularly Libellas,
whose cats [nymphs] always live in ye water, for which a few direc-
tions will not be unnecessary. Get a large Buckett, pail, or washing
tub and put in it some weeds that grow in ye water, fill it three parts
full with water and in ye spring: search ye waters above mentioned
for Insects and put in it as many Libella Cats as you please. Be sure
to put in a great number of ye small sorts, because ye large sorts prey
and feed on ye small ones as you will have many opportunities of
observing. If you find ye number of small ones decrease very fast
you must supply the tub with fresh ones, and once in three weeks or
a month change ye water. You must make a contrivance of a frame
covered with gauze to go over ye Buckett or Tub so that when ye
Libellas are bred they cannot fly away.

(3) To the Rev. Mr. Devereux Jarratt, Virginia. May 13. 1767.

In my letter of July 12th I described ye method of killing Insects
by dipping a needle in Aqua Fortis and sticking it into them, but I
cannot neglect ye present opportunity of informing you that all that
trouble may be saved and the insects may easily be killed by sticking
them on ye end of a piece of board and holding them to ye fire, in doing
which great care must be taken not to hold them too near, especially
Moths or Butterflies, because it will make their wing crumple and con-
tract so much as to spoil them.

(4) To Dry Pallasm + Nov. 12. 7 1767:

I don’t know whether you have heard Mr. Dupont has relinquished
collecting of Subjects of Natural History, but so it is, he has given it
over and is now very busy making drawings of every specimen he has.
and when that is finished intends to dispose of ye whole. Another
piece of news [ must inform you of is Mr. Da Costa is going to publish
plates of nondescript animals—shells, Insects, etc. in periodical num-
bers, five plates with their descriptions being a complete number. Thus
Natural History is I hope gaining ground by slow degrees in this
Kingdom. I wish Gentlemen of Fortune studied it more and Politics
less. It would I believe be better for us, but at present every man is
a politician and sets up his opinion as ye Standard of Judgement, a
practice that produces ye greatest distractions among our great men. I.

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST 71

need not mention to you when this is ye case ye Arts and Sciences never
flourish so rapidly as when assisted by Concord and Unanimity, but
these disadvantages are not sufficient to prevent ye number of Naturalists
increasing here and I hope to live to see ye time when ye name will be
as respectable as that of a Judge or a Doctor.

(5), Lo Dr. Pallas. Eeb. 28, 1768.

I am delighted with your account of Count Orlof’s making natural
researches in ye distant parts of ye kingdom. How I honor him for
such an attempt! I wish we had a Count Orlof among our Ministers
of State: what opportunities he might have in ye present age for dis-
coveries! When all ye known parts of ye Globe are visited by our
ships! But oh! these party affairs! These are ye bane of every prac-
ticable improvement. Believe me ye little Sphere of Life that I move
in makes me neglect no opportunity that may be layd hold of for ad-
vancement of natural Knowledge. What then might those Personages
do in those grand departments, on whose Nod numbers wait, and where
happiness or misery is communicated to thousands by a little motion
of a pen. Do you know that we are (the English) possessing ourselves
of an island situated near ye Strait Magellan in South America [Falk- |
land Islands], and intend to preserve it as a colony to England? Per-
haps you may not have heard of it but so it is. And I have not been
idle in endeavoring to get Articles of Natural History from thence.

I have read over your paragraph concerning the India Company
very carefully and am afraid your wishes outrun probability, for since
I wrote my last I have learned some circumstances that I was then
ignorant of. I do not find that they have ever sent out any Botanist or
other Naturalist with a settled salary. It is ye curse of this Country
for public Bodies seldom to reward ingenuity unless compelled to it by
a sense or fear of shame. I could mention many instances of this kind.
And their practice has been to send over persons in some inferior office
whose circumstances have compelled them to accept it ‘tho their merits
entitle them to a superior reward. Nor do I know or hear of but one
single Gentleman who has a soul generous enough to break through
such a mean practice. Indeed if his interest was so great as to become
a director (an event not impossible) he would most certainly as I
am informed send out some Gentlemen to India with handsome salaries
to make inquiries in Natural History. Mr. Sullivan is ye Gentleman I
mean. :

I sincerely lament with you ye fall of ye Aurelian Society,’ there
wanted but two or three good members to have made it become respect-
able, but Da Costa’s temper and principle was sufficient to overturn a

1 This seems to have been the first entomological society. There was a
later Aurelian Society, before the foundation of the Entomological Society

of London.

72 THE SCLEN TIETG, MON PEE

Kingdom. I imagine ere this you have heard of his Fate. If not. I will
tell you. He is no longer Librarian to ye Royal Society. He is dismissed
from thence with ignominy and disgrace. He was deficient in his ac-
counts above £1100, for which reason they siezed on all his effects, and
they are to be sold by public auction. It was no uncommon practice
with him to make many Gentlemen annual Fellows in his accounts who
had paid their proper quotas to be perpetual ones, and thus by placing
them on this footing he annually secreted large sums from ye society.
Vl] tell you how it was discovered. Dr. Hope of Edinburgh? having
been chose a Fellow by ye recommendation of a gentleman in London
(I believe Dr. Fothergill) was surprised to see his name omitted in ye
annual list published, and wrote to London desiring his friend to in-
quire ye reason; who in examining into ye affair found he was himself
entered in ye book as an annual member, tho’ at ye same time knew
he paid ye necessary sum to become a perpetual one. This neglect in
ye librarian being discovered they proceeded to examine several others
and found | am told upwards of thirty who were entered in that man-
ner and their fines applied to his own private purpose. Hence ye
periodical work he intended to publish, which I mentioned in my last,
is entirely stopt: the circumstance ] must own I am very sorry for on
account of Natural History in general. But if it can not be promoted
by men of better principles than him it is better perhaps for it to lye
dormant? = 59%.

I cannot conclude this long Epistle without conjuring you not to
let ye summer pass without making captives of all ye insects that fall
in ye way. Don't think me too troublesome thus repeating it, for I
assure you my desires for knowing what kinds Russia affords are too
great to be suppressed. Dr. Solander * who I saw yesterday desires his
kind respects to you. We are trying to establish a Society upon a
more general plan than ye late Aurelian, in which Mr. Fabricius.> a
very ingenious worthy young Gentleman of Denmark, joins us, and
[in] which | hope we shall succeed.

[Count Gregory Orloff, when he failed in his schemes at the Rus-

2 John Hope, born 1725; was professor of botany and superintendent of
the Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Died 1786.

3 Da Costa is still remembered by conchologists. For instance, the com-
mon Helix virgata was named by him.

4 Daniel Charles Solander was born in Sweden in 1736, and was a pupil
of Linnzus at Upsala. In 1760 he went to England, and was chosen to ac-
company Banks on Cook’s first voyage around the world. He died in 1782.
He worked in zoology and botany, but is best known as a student and de-

scriber of plants.

5 John Christian Fabricius, born 1742. Died 1807. He was professor of
rural and political economy at Copenhagen, but gave most of his time to the
study of insects. The “very ingenious worthy young gentleman” was about
26 when the above letter was written.

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST (c

sian Court, was ordered to travel, and seems to have had ambitious
plans. Peter Simon Pallas was born in Berlin in 1741, and went to
Russia at the request of the Empress Catharine II, to investigate the
natural history of the Russian dominions. He died in Berlin in 1811,
having produced works of first class importance, insuring him a perma-
nent place among the great explorers and zoologists of the world.
Catharine had a genuine interest in the progress of science and Pallas
naturally gave Drury a very enthusiastic account of the work done and

planned. |
(6) Dr. Pallas. Apr. 11. 1768.

I cannot help having a great impatience hanging about me to know
how Count Orlof’s Scheme goes on. I am as anxious for its success
as some young Girls are for that of their Lovers: can’t you oblige me
with some information concerning it. We have a scheme on foot here
that is somewhat akin to Count Orlof’s. but not on so extensive a Plan.
You know ye transit of Venus will happen in June 1769, and as an ac-
curate and nice observation of it in different parts of ye World will be
of great utility and consequence to Astronomy, some Gentlemen in
that science are to go out this year from hence to ye South Seas in order
to make those observations. Mr. Banks, a gentleman of considerable
fortune, is extremely desirous of availing himself of this opportunity
and going with them in ye same ship in order to make discoveries in
Natural History, and to this end is actually making preparations for
that purpose.

His being a strong naturalist, possessed of a large fortune, and be-
ing determined to spare no expense, are circumstances that give all well _
wishers to that study, ye highest expectations of his success. The route
is intended first to ye Madeira Islands, from thence they are to go by
easy voyages along ye coast of Brazil, thro ye streights of Magellan,
and to refresh at some of ye Spanish towns on ye western coast of South
America, having already a passport or permission from ye King of
Spain to do so. After they have made ye observation, which is to be
done on some Island as much to ye southward as possible, they pro-
pose to return to Europe by ye way of ye East Indies. The whole will
in all probability not take them less than two years and a half. Hence
you perceive we have Gentlemen in Europe whose desires for ye im-
provement of Nat. Hist are equal to those of any Person in ye World.
But I must inform you of one circumstance and that is that Mr. Banks
has judgement enough to prevent his engaging in Affairs of State, and
consequently by detaching himself from all parties has more leisure
to pursue his darling Studies. | wish from my soul we had many more
of his Stamp in this kingdom.

(7) Mr. Thomas James, New York. Aug. 1. 1768.

I have sent this (4 guineas) lest you should be in want of ye

[ie THE SCIENTIFIC-MON THEY.

money and whatever arises more from ye sail of ye insects I shall cer-
tainly remit to you immediately upon my disposing of them. You
mention in your last that you are removed forty miles from where you
were before. This alteration probably may enable you to discover some
new species, a circumstance that will give me great pleasure, particu-
larly if you meet with any new beetles or Insects of ye transparent wing
tribe. I shall trust to your ingenuity not to send me any more large
Flies that you already stock’d me so plentifully with, particularly the
large Emperor, the Great Fritillaries, the Black Swallow-Tails and a
large Fly of a brown orange color having a black border spotted with
white running along ye edges of ve wing both inside and out, ye tendons
of wings being black: ye caterpillar is yellow ringed with black hav-
ing two black horns and two black tails. [This is the milkweed butter-
fly, Anosia plexippus|. You once sent me a black Fritillary of a mid-
dling size, a little bigger than your Pearl Border but not near as big as
ye great fritillaries, which was much wasted. I wish I could receive a
pair or two that were fine

(8) To Mr. Du Pont, going to Jamaica. Oct. 14. 1768.

Please to enquire for Robert Taylor at Mr. Archdeacon’s in Spanish
Town. He is there as gardener, and well versed in ye knowledge of
Insects. I offered him in a letter ] wrote to him in August six Pence
apiece for ye insects he should send me provided there was not more
than two of a sort. Perhaps he may think that price too small and
may refuse sending me any on that account, if so I will get you to make
ye best bargain ye can with him.

(9) To Dr. Giseke at Hamburg, Nov. 3, 1769. .[We read the name
Gische, but it is evidently Paul Dietrich Giseke, 1745-1796. |
Mr. Brunnich I find does not abate in his ardour. His resolution in
surmounting ye dangers and difficulties of travelling surprises me. I
am glad to hear he is in being; when he was in England he promised
to write to me often and exchange some insects with me, but I] suppose
his active state of life prevents him. The Pap. Apollo {Parnassius
apollo| he was to procure for me some specimens of; if you have an
opportunity of sending a letter to him I will entreat you to mention
that circumstance. I am sorry to hear of poor Dr. Slosser’s death. If
he had been of ye same opinion with me concerning inoculation we had
not now mourned his loss. I am as ignorant as you of ye place of Mr.
Fabricius existence, but I am in daily hopes of hearing from him. I
wish | could also give you some account of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander
but I am of opinion we shall learn no news of them till their arrival
in England. I can only say may Heaven be propitious to natural his-
tory and preserve such capital Pillars of it.

(10) To Dr. Pallas. san. 145217 70.-

=]

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST

You ask me of what news in Nat. Hist. in these parts. The best I
can give you is that it is making great progress here, and the avidity
with which books on that subject are bought here is surprising. I men-
tioned in one of my letters Da Costa’s affair. He is now confined in
ye King’s Bench Prison at ye instance of Royal Society and has been
there near a year, from whence, I imagine, he will never return. He is
at present engaged in writing a history of shells which he hopes will
make its appearance this summer. Pray have you heard of Dr.
Schlosser’s © death? Dr. Giseke, a physician of Hambourge and a great
botanist, wrote me word ye 23rd of September, 1769, of this melancholy
truth. He died about two months after his wife, who perished with an
unborn infant, under ye operation of inoculation. I heartily lament
the loss of such a worthy man’s death but who can control his fate!
I have just rec’d a letter from Mr. Brunnich, who returned from his
travels to Copenhagen in October. He tells me he sent you a treatise
on Fishes from Leipsic, which he wants to know if you received. He
proposes to visit England sometime this year on his way to Scotland.

(11) To Moses Harris at Crayford. Mar. 15, 1770.

I have this day looked out two setts of prints col’d in ye best man-_
ner for Col. Gordon and Mrs. Robinson, and in looking them over I
observed some plates of fig. 1. plate 12 to be coloured in a manner far
from ye original. Those three sets you did last you have made ye spots
on each of ye under wings or rather ye patches that are of a beautiful
Saxon green in ye fly, in ye plates are mazerine blue, and that part that
runs over ye scarlet eyes on ye abdominal edges, you have made of a
pea green instead of being ye same color with ye patch itself, which
it is in ye natural subject. Likewise in two other sets this figure is
coloured blue in one wing and green in ye other which makes it look
of such an odd appearance that I dare not venture to send either of
them to any person of my acquaintance.

1770, he writes com-

(12) Moses Harris at Crayford. [On Apr. 5,

plaining to M. H. that he is so slow painting the plates and says: |
I wish to Heaven you was removed from that damned place where

you are now buried and come to London, for then I could scold you

by word of mouth, and now I am forced to employ a great deal of time

in doing it by letter which I can but ill spare.

(13) To Dr. Linneus. Aug. 30. 1770.

Most excellent Sr. I cannot better express the strong inclination
I have of testifying my respect to you as ye greatest Master of natural
history now existing than by presenting you a copy of a work I have

just published here. Believe me Sr it is not from vanity I take the

6 Johann Albert Schlosser.

76 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

liberty of making you this offering. nor, poor as it is (for I am truly
sensible of its defects), would I make it to any person that is inferior
to Linneus in the study of Nature. But to whom should I pay my
acknowledgements of this sort but to the Father of natural history?
You Sr I consider as that Father, and therefore I beseech your kind ac-
ceptance hereof, a circumstance that will do me great honor and favor
and at the same time countenance my weak endeavors to promote a study
that I must confess to prefer to every other.

Permit me also to take this opportunity to congratulate you on the
effects which your Systema has had among the followers of natural
history here in London, ye number of which, although not equal to
those found in many other countries, are yet every day increasing to
such a degree as could not have been suspected a little time ago by its
most sanguine well wishers. That it may still increase and flourish and
that you may, with health, live to see its study carried to ye furtherest
ends of ye Earth is ye hearty wish of Sr your sincere admirer and most
humble servant.

P. S. The honour of a few lines addressed to me at no. 1, in Love
Lane, Aldermanbury, informing me of the Packett having reached the
place of its destination, will be exceedingly acceptable. —

[In an accompanying list of documents is mentioned a letter, now
lost, from Chas. Linneeus, son of the great naturalist. It is probably
this letter, dated March 10, 1780, which is printed (pp. x-xi) in West-
wood’s edition (1837) of Drury’s Illustrations of Exotic Entomology.
Linzus named a fine Cimex after Drury. |

(14) To Dr. James Greenway. In Dinwiddie Co. Vir. Dec. 18. 1770.

I must not neglect ye present opportunity [to say] that the con-
tents of one of ye vials you sent me was a most acceptable present. It
contained some uncommon Insects. I never saw any Juli (for such
they were) so large. Permit me to beg you would save for me any of
that kind you chance to meet with. I don’t mean ye lizards, they are
animals I don’t collect, but /nsects are my darling pursuit, therefore
any that come under that denomination either large or small will meet
a hearty reception. [The Juli are millipedes, not now considered in-
sects, but Drury used the term in the broader sense. |

(15) To Mr. Storm, Principal Gardener to the Hortus Medicus in
Amsterdam.
July 19. 1770.
In England we are very fond of other insects besides Butterflies and
Moths, and a small Beetle sometimes is more acceptable than a large
butterfly.

—

(16) To Mr. Brunnich, at Copenhagen. Jan. 3. 1772. [Morten

a |
~]

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST

Thrane Briinnich, 1737-1827, a well-known zoologist, especially
remembered today in connection with ornithology. |

The little cargo of insects you sent me | received with great pleasure.
There were many of them new to me. How happy I should be to have
a sight of the great collection you certainly must have made in your
travels.

In your next letter pray inform me if you have heard anything of

Dr. Pallas. I want very much to know whether he is alive, and how
he does. I have not had a letter from him since he quitted Petersberg
and entered onto that long and dangerous journey into Siberia. I shall
also be glad if you will relate this part of my letter to Mr. Fabricius,
perhaps he can tell you something concerning him. At the same time
you communicate this to Mr. Fabricius I will beg you to present my
sincere and best respects to him, and tell him I often think with the
highest pleasure of ye many agreeable hours we spent together when he
was here in England. How happy I should be to enjoy the same again.
(17) To James Greenway, Dinwiddie Co., Virginia. 1772.
On the 31st of Dec. I received a letter from Dr. Giseke advising me
that he had sent a box of books for you, but by a subsequent letter I
learned the ship put back by distress of weather after being out about
amonth. As soon as I receive them I shall convey them to you by the
first ship that goes to James River. I suppose it is unnecessary to in-
form you that the Dr. has been chosen almost unanimously Professor
of Natural Philosophy at Hambro’, as I have no doubt but his letter
will inform you of that matter and likewise ye great satisfaction it has
given him, a satisfaction that all his friends cannot help participating.
Public testimonies of approbation are seldomer given to men of merit
than the undeserving. This is a melancholy truth that is every day
seen on this side of the Atlantic and therefore cannot be supposed to
come from an invidious pen, therefore what sober thinking mind can
help rejoicing at seeing worth rewarded.

(18) To Mr. Thomas Bolton, Worley-Clough, near Halifax.
Feb. 9. 1772.

I take the liberty of recommending my good friend Mr. John
Latham,’ Surgeon at Dartford in Kent, to your friendship and cordiality.
He is a gentleman every way deserving it and when [I tell you he is a
staunch Friend to Natural History I have no doubt but that would be
sufficient to recommend him to your notice if he had no other amiable
qualities, but believe me his general good character is such as will fix
him a worthy correspondent. His great Forte is ornithology but other

7 John Latham; born 1740, died 1837. Eminent as an ornithologist, pub-
lishing many important works. He began his General History of Birds, in
ten quarto volumes, in his eighty-second year.

78 THE SCIEN TIFIC- MONTHLY

parts of Natural History he is acquainted with as Fossills, Insects and
I think Botany.

I have the pleasure to inform you that I have almost completed the
second Volume of Illustrations. A work I think preferable to the first
because there are a great many more uncommon insects in it than there
was in the former; indeed, it consists entirely of nondescripts, many
of which I received from the Coast of Africa, and are such as were
never before seen in Europe. I am only sorry | have it not in my power
to give the nat. hist. of every one of them, how happy I should be to
be able to do.that! but so long as distant countries afford few or no
men of speculation we must not expect it. A Banks and Solander are
to be found only in an Age; and ye wonders of, creation must not be
expected to be opened and displayed but by slow and gradual means.

Men of Fortune indeed have it in their power to come at this know]-
edge easier than other people, but when luxury and dissipation fix
themselves in any nation, little expectations can be formed in favor
of nat. hist. unless it be with those who have wisdom enough to shun
those dissolute paths, and secure a mode of entertainment and instruc-
tion that will always be found in the tracks of nature. “Tis with much
pleasure we may perceive a few of such persons existing at this time,
as a proof of which I need only mention (what I suppose you have
before heard) of a gentleman being sent to the coast of Africa to col-
lect the subjects of natural history. His name is Smeathman, and as he
is furnished with a general knowledge of nature we form great expecta-
tions of having new scenes disclosed to us that were never heard or thot
of in that great theatre. He is a man of sense and Letters and therefore
qualified to give juster accounts of things than what are at present to

be depended on.

(19) Mr. Smeathman at Sierra Leone. Mar. 1. 772.

I desire when you send me the next letter you would be particularly
careful to write small, I insist upon it you don’t write larger than this.
Let me have none of your damned large s¢rambling characters that
won't allow you to put above six words in a line, and by that means
prevent me from knowing in what manner you live, how you spend your
time and what reception you have met with among the Blacks, how
they relish your catching Birds and Flies, whether they laugh at you
for so doing and whether you have yet made a journey into the interior
parts of the country. In short 1 want to have ye whole history of ye
present life compiled in a sheet of paper. and I am so anxious to hear
fromm you that I most heartily curse this avarice of the Merchts for
carrying their ships such an enormous way around as ye West Indies
and not sending them directly to Europe. However I sincerely hope
you don’t neglect recording every circumstance that can enrich a His-
tory of Africa, for if you don’t publish one when you come home I

DRO DRURY, BIGRTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST 79

think you will deserve to live on “Sordid scraps on surly proud men’s
doors.” Your judgment and abilities strongly enforce ye necessity of
it, not only as an emolument to yourself but as a duty you owe to every
speculative man, and depend on it much is due from every man of
ability in his respective sphere. [In the third volume of the Illustra-
tions Drury quotes many biological observations by Smeathman. |

20), Vo Dr. Giseke. July 13, 1772.

I imagine you have heard before this of the situation of Mr. Banks
and Dr. Solander with respect to their intended Voyage. They neither
of them go any more a kingdom hunting: a misunderstanding between
them and our government is the occasion, and Mr. Rheinhold Forster,
who published several things, as Centuria Prima Descript. Insectorum,
a translation Kalm’s Travels in North America etc. is pitched on to go
in their room, nay he is actually gone, and tho’ his abilities are not
considered as equal to those of Banks and Solander yet great expecta-
tions are formed by government from him. The event will prove
whether they are well founded. I think if I am not mistaken I men-
tioned in one of my letters my desire of knowing what was become of
Dr. Pallas, whether any letters had been received from him lately, and
what success had attended his physical voyage? If you can give me
any information of these matters I beg you will do it in your next let-
ter. I have not received a line from him these three or four years nor
have I been able to get any intelligence about him.

(21) To Mr. Latham, Surgeon in Dartford. July 31. 1772.

Mr. Whiting and Bartlet long to see your Collection of Birds, and
if Thursday next will not be inconvenient we will all pack ourselves in
a post chaise; but if that day should not be quite agreeable I will beg
you to favor me with a line by Monday’s post and we will appoint
some other time.

(22) To Dr? Kerr at:Calcutta, “Feb. 12.1773.

[Writes a long letter begging Dr. Kerr to obtain insects for him,
and pointing out the interest of the subject. |

Let me observe further that if your speculations should extend so
far as to inquire into the way of life of numberless insects you will
have such [word lost] opend as will astonish you and at the same time
that you receive the highest entertainment. Mankind may be improved
by committing your observations to paper, for we in Europe are ig-
norant of the Nat. Hist of thousands of animals that live between the
Tropics, particularly those of India.

(23) To the Rev. Mr. Devereux Jarrat, May 5, 1773.
I should think myself unpardonable to neglect writing to you by
the opportunity that now offers itself. The bearer, Mr. Abbot, is a

80 DREREVS CLENT IEC MUO NHI,

young Gentleman going to Virginia on purpose to collect the various
articles in Natural History: in doing which he proposes to spend some
months, perhaps years, according to the success he meets with in the
various departments of that pursuit.

(24) To Mr. Thomas Boulton, at Werley Clough. June 24, 1773.

Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander brought home a very fine collection
of insects, a great number of which are new to me and indeed to
everybody else. They are not in general so large as one would expect
_ Insects to be that are found in those hot countries they visited: but
then many are extremely singular and remarkable. There are Cur-
culiones exceeding long and slender like the Anchraco, some not less —
than three or four inches, besides many new species Scarabei, Chryso-
melae and in short all ye genera Coleoptrata. The new species of
Lepidoptera are not so numerous as | expected, but these are amply
atoned by ye other Orders. I do not as yet know if they intend to
publish figures of them among ye other things they intend to give ye
world, but I hope they will if ye spirit of kingdom hunting does not
possess them too strongly. The plants they brought are very numerous,
of which I think Dr. Solander told me they had above seven hundred
undescribed. These I know they intend figuring and therefore it is
likely you will in time see them all. Mr. Banks is now going to Wales.

I think you remember Mr. Fabricius. He is now in London and very
busy in making descriptions from Mr. Banks’ and my collections, where
he will have employment for some months, a pleasure he seems to enjoy
with as much glee as a Lover of Wine does ye sight of his Cellar when
well stored with full Casks and Bottles, enjoying by anticipation ye
pleasure he is to receive in emptying them. You seem to lament the
want of a Friend with whom you may converse or correspond on the
subject of entomology. Indeed, | am sorry for it and I judge of you
by myself whose knowledge and delight therein would soon become
trifling and flat if I had no one to talk to on that subject.

I can only say I will with much pleasure answer your letters though
perhaps I may sometimes be late in doing it, but believe me I shall be
glad to correspond at all times with a friend on these subjects. Your
account of ye little Beetles I am much pleased with.

I have read it over a great many times and each time enjoy a pleas-
ure equal to yours when collecting them. How happy are ye men that
can thus converse with the great Author of the Universe! For cer-
tainly this is holding conversation with him. Can we do it by any
other means? Can we consider ye investigation and observation of
these his works in any other light than that of preserving and holding
a friendly intercourse with him? If it can be explained in any other

DRU DRURY, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENTOMOLOGIST 81

manner let those do it whose souls are not sufficiently capacious and
susceptible of entertaining and grasping ye vast idea.

(25) To the Dowager Duchess of Portland. Aug. 13. 1773.

May it please your Grace, the subscription to Mr. Smeathman which
your Grace inquires after is £100, being the same sum as paid by Dr.
Fothergill etc, and which I have no doubt but the things he will send

over in less than a twelve month will be more than sufficient to discharge.

(26) To Mr. Keuchan, at Jamaica. June 13, 1774.

You inquire after Mr. Smeathman, who is settled on the Coast of
Africa. He has been there almost three years but has sent nothing
over except insects, a circumstance which astonishes us, for his patrons
expected a great variety of subjects long before this in ye different
branches of Natural History. Many of the insects that he has sent are
surprisingly fine. A great number entirely new, especially among the
Coleoptera, some of which are very large.

(27) To Mr. Keuchan at Jamaica. Jan. 21, 1775.

[ told you in my last of a young Gentleman gone to settle in Vir-
einia in pursuit of Nat. Hist. His name is Abbot.’ and by a letter
lately sent I find he intends to remove to the southward, therefore don’t
be surprised if you should see him at Jamaica; perhaps he may touch
there, but I recommended Surinam to him as yielding more wonderful
insects etc. Whether he will go there I do not know.

(28) To Dr..Pallas. Nov. 4. 1775.

Mr. Banks’s publication nobody can tell when it will make its ap-
pearance. Whenever it does it will be not only voluminous but ex-
pensive, a circumstance I am surprised he does not attempt to avoid.
It has been 4 years preparing, and it seems to me that 4 years more
will not complete it. Would it not therefore be best to publish a single
volume first? The World thinks so, and he has been told this, but in
vain. You require me not to publish any of the Insects you send me.
Be assured this requisition shall be punctually observed, and I hope
you have given ye same intimation to those Friends to whom you have
sent some of your duplicates. Indeed I must inform you that I do
not entertain the least inclination to publish any more Volumes, not-
withstanding my Cabinet is so exceeding rich. If I was disposed to
publish any more I could easily furnish three more volumes equally as

8 John Abbott, who made many observations on the insects of Georgia,
and beautifully figured numerous species. His work was published in part,
edited by Sir J. E. Smith, in 1797, and the new species thus made known are
credited in our lists to Abbott and Smith. His drawings are now preserved
in the British Museum (Natural History).

VOL. XIV.—6.

82 THE. SCIENTIFIC MONTHEY

good as those already done, without having recourse to any other, but
my time is so much engrossed by my present business that I have no
leisure to go through a work of that kind. If I had time to spare I
should pursue it with infinite pleasure. I must give up all thoughts
(notwithstanding the solicitations of my friends) of ever again engag-
ing in that employment.

(29) To Mr. Robert Killingley, Mar. 23, 1776.

1 shall make no apology for sending you the two books enclosed,
Major Roger, Acco’ of North America, and Hasselquist’s Travels. I
wish I could give you equal characters to the two, but ye former seems
to me to be taken from Charlevoix Acco’ of North America. several.
passages being copied almost verbatim,—the other | need not praise.
you will immediately see ye Man of Letters in ye style and thoughts—
the descriptions are charming in my opinion, notwithstanding they are
so very short and concise, indeed, I cannot help being angry with him
for not being more elaborate and prolix in places.

I flatter myself you will enjoy a great joy in ye reading it, your
taste for Natural History at all times gives you an opportunity of
relishing subjects of this kind with a glee ten times stronger than that
of an ordinary person. Need I mention this is ye person that Linneus
so often quotes in his Systema Nature, and who was so eminently
serviceable to him by furnishing so many subjects in that work?
[Frederic Hasselquist, born 1722, was a pupil of Linnzus. He made
large collections of plants and animals in Palestine and Egypt. |

(30) Dee. 21> 177s:

Last year I lost more than £16,000, the effect of which was, O!
terrible to relate, I was obliged to be a Bankrupt. As my misfortunes
did not arise from extravagance or dishonesty the world saw my dis-
tress and pitied me. By the assistance and kindness of my Friends |
have got re-instated in my business, which: I really think is much
greater than it ever was. The civilities and kindness I have received
from the public are beyond conception, and I have no doubt but a few
years if Providence allows me Health will place me in a much happier
and better situation than I ever was. Would you believe it? The
Queen herself. to whom I am Goldsmith, has been so very kind as to
say that “She hoped I should do well again.”

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 8:

vy

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES
By Professor LYNN THORNDIKE

WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

OR about fifteen centuries the name of Galen dominated the study
of medicine. But at the close of the nineteenth century an Eng-
lish student of the history of medicine said, “Galen is so inaccessible
to English readers that it is dificult to learn about him at first hand.”
Another wrote, “There is, perhaps, no other instance of a man of equal
intellectual rank who has been so persistently misunderstood and even
misinterpreted.” A third obstacle has been that while critical editions
of some single works have recently been published by He!mreich and
others, no complete edition even of the Greek text of Galen has ap-
peared since that of Kthhn of a century ago, which is now regarded as
very faulty. A fourth reason for neglect or misunderstanding of Galen
is probably that there is so much by him to be read. Athenaeus stated
that Galen wrote more treatises than any other Greek, and although
many are now lost, more particularly of his logical and philosophical
writings, his collected extant works fill some twenty volumes averaging
a thousand pages each. There are often no chapter headings or other
brief clues to the contents, which must be ploughed through slowly and
thoroughly, since some of the most valuable bits of information come
in quite incidentally or by way of unexpected digression. Besides
errors in the printed text there are numerous words not found in most
classical dictionaries. It is therefore perhaps not surprising, in the
words of one of the English historians of medicine quoted above, that
“few physicians or even scholars in the present day can claim to have
read through this vast collection.”

Yet Galen deserves to be remembered, not merely as one of the great
names, but as one of most original minds and attractive personalities
in all the long history of medicine. It is not difficult to make out the
the main events of his life, his works supply an unusual amount of per-
sonal information, and throughout them, unless he is merely transcrib-
ing past prescriptions, he talks like a living man, detailing incidents
of daily life and making upon the reader a vivid and unaffected im-
pression of reality. Daremberg said of Galen that the exuberance of
his imagination and his vanity frequently make us smile. It is true
that his pharmacology and therapeutics often strike the modern reader
as ridiculous, but he did not imagine them: they were the medicine of
his age. It is true that he mentions cases which he has cured and those

$4 LPHE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

where other physicians have been at fault, but official war despatches
do the same in the case of their own side’s victories and the enemy’s
defeats. Vae victis! In Galen’s case, at least, posterity long confirmed
his own verdict. And dull or obsolete as much of his medicine now
is, his scholarly and intellectual ideals and love of hard work are still
a living force, while the reader of his pages often feels himself carried
back to the Roman world of the second century.

Galen, who does not seem to have been called Claudius until the
time of the Italian Renaissance, was born about 129 A. D. at Pergamum
in Asia Minor. His father, an architect and mathematician, transmitted
much of this education to his son, but even more valuable, in Galen’s
opinion, were his precepts to follow no one sect or party but to hear
and judge them all, to despise honor and glory, and to magnify truth
alone. To this teaching Galen attributed his own peaceful and pain-
less passage through life. He did not grieve over losses of property
but managed to get along somehow. He did not mind it much when
some vituperated him, but thought instead of those who praised him.
In later life Galen looked back with great affection upon his father
as the gentlest, justest, most honest and humane of men. On the other
hand, the chief lesson he learned from his mother was to avoid her
failings of a sharp temper and tongue, whereby she made life miser-
able for their household slaves and scolded his father worse than
Xanthippe ever did Socrates.

In one of his works Galen speaks of the passionate love and enthu-
siasm for truth which have possessed him since boyhood, so that he has
not stopped either by day or by night from quest of it. He realized
that to become a true scholar required both high natural qualifications
and a superior type of education from the very first. After his four-
teenth year he heard the lectures of various philosophers, Platonist
and Peripatetic, Stoic and Epicurean: but when about seventeen,
warned by a dream of his father, he turned to the study of medicine.
The incident of the dream, like many other passages in Galen’s works,
shows that even men of the finest education and intellectual standards
were not free from the current beliefs in occult influences. Galen first
studied medicine for four years under Satyrus in his native city of Per-
gamum; then after his father’s death, under Pelops at Smyrna, and latex
under Numisianus at Corinth and Alexandria. This was about the time
that the great mathematician and astronomer, Ptolemy, was complet-
ing his observations in the neighborhood of Alexandria, but Galen does
not mention him, despite his own belief that a first-rate physician
should also understand such subjects as geometry and astronomy, music
and rhetoric. Galen’s interest in philosophy continued, however, and
he wrote many logical and philosophical treatises, most of which are
lost.

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 85

Galen returned to Pergamum to practice and was, when but twenty-
nine, given charge of the health of the gladiators by five successive
pontiffs. During his thirties came his first residence in Rome. In two
of his works he gives two different explanations for his departure from
the capital city. In one he says, “When the great plague broke out
there (in the reign of Marcus Aurelius) I hurriedly departed from the
city for my native land.” In another his explanation is that he became
disgusted with the malice of the envious physicians of the capital and
determined to return home as soon as the sedition there was over.
Meanwhile he gained great fame by his cures, but the jealousy and
opposition of the other physicians multiplied, so that presently, when
he learned that the sedition was over, he went back to Pergamum.

His fame, however, had come to the imperial ears and he was soon
summoned to Aquileia, north of the Adriatic, to meet the emperors on
their way north against the Germans who had invaded the frontier. An
outbreak of the plague there prevented them from proceeding with the
campaign immediately and Galen states that the emperors fled for Rome
with a few troops, leaving the rest to suffer from the plague and the
cold winter. On the way Lucius Verus died, and when Marcus Aurelius
finally returned to the front, he allowed Galen to go back to Rome as
court physician to his son Commodus. The prevalence of the plague at
this time is illustrated by a third encounter which Galen had with it
in Asia, when he claims to have saved himself and others by thorough
venesection. The war in which Marcus Aurelius was engaged lasted
much longer than had been anticipated and meanwhile Galen was occu-
pied chiefly in literary labors. In 192 some of his writings and other
treasures were lost in a fire which destroyed the Temple of Peace on
the Sacred Way and the great libraries on the Palatine hill. Of some
of the works which thus perished he had no other copy himself. He
began one of his works on compound medicines of which two books
had been already published all over again because most of the pub-
lished copies had been destroyed in the fire. Galen was still alive and
writing during the early years of the dynasty of the Severi and probably
did not die until about 200.

Although the envy of other physicians at Rome and their accusing
Galen of resort to magic arts and divination in his marvelous prognos-
tications and cures were perhaps neither the sole nor the true reason
for his temporary withdrawal from the capital, there probably is a great
deal of truth in the picture he paints of the medical profession and
learned world of his day. Too many other ancients, from Vitruvius,
Pliny the Elder and Juvenal to Firmicus Maternus in the fourth cen-
tury, substantiate his charges to permit us to explain them away as the
product of personal bitterness or pessimism. We feel that these men
lived in an intellectual society where faction and villainy, superstition

86 TEES SCLEN TIFICAMON GHEY

and petty-mindedness and personal enmity, were more manifest than in
the quieter and, let us hope, more tolerant world of our time. The
status belli may still characterize politics and the business world, but
scholars seem able to live in substantial peace. Perhaps it is because
there is less prospect of worldly gain for members of the learned pro-
fessions than in Galen’s day. Perhaps it is due to the growth of the
impartial scientific spirit, of unwritten codes of courtesy and ethics
within the leading learned professions, and of state laws concerning
such matters as patents, copyright, professional degrees, pure food and
pure drugs. Perhaps, in the unsatisfactory relations between those who
should have been the best educated and most enlightened men of that
time we may see a symptom of the general intellectual and ethical
decline of the ancient world.

Galen states that many tire of the long struggle with crafty and
wicked men which they have tried to carry on, relying upon their eru-
dition and honest toil alone, and withdraw disgusted from the madding
crowd to save themselves in dignified retirement. He especially mar-
vels at the evil-mindedness of physicians of reputation at Rome.
Though they live in the city, they are a band of robbers as truly as the
brigands of the mountains. He is inclined to account for the roguery
of Roman physicians compared to those in a smaller city by the facts
that elsewhere men are not so tempted by the magnitude of possible
gain, and that in a smaller town everyone is known by everyone else
and so questionable practices cannot escape general notice. The rich
men of Rome fall easy prey to unscrupulous practitioners who are
ready to flatter them and to play up to their weaknesses. These rich
men can see the use of arithmetic and geometry, which enable them to
keep their books straight and to build houses for their domestic com-
fort, or of divination and astrology. from which they seek to learn
whose heirs they will be: but they have no appreciation for pure phil-
osophy aside from rhetorical sophistry.

Galen more than once complains that there are no real seekers after
truth in his time, but that all are intent upon money, political power.
or pleasure. You know very well, he writes to a friend in one of his
works, that not five men of all those whom we have met prefer to be
rather than to seem wise. Many who have no real knowledge make a
great outward display and pretense in medicine and other arts. Galen
several times expresses his scorn for those who spend their mornings
in going about saluting their friends, and their evenings in drinking
bouts or in dining with the rich and powerful. Yet even his friends
have reproached him for studying too much and not “going out” more.
But while they have wasted their hours thus, he has spent his, first in
learning all that the ancients have discovered that is of value, then in
testing and practicing the same. Moreover, now-a-days many are try-

GALEN: THE MAN AND AIS TIMES 87

ing to teach others what they have never accomplished themselves.
Thessalus not only toadies the rich but secured many pupils by offering
to teach them medicine in six months. Hence it is that tailors and dyers
and smiths are abandoning their arts to become physicians. Thessalus
himself, Galen ungenerously taunts, was educated by a father who
plucked wool badly in female apartments. Indeed, Galen himself
by the violence of his invective and the occasional passionateness of
his animosity in his controversies with other individuals or schools of
medicine, illustrates that state of war in the intellectual world of his
age to which I have adverted.

I suggested that possibly learning compared to other occupations
was more remunerative in Galen’s day than in ours, but there were
poor physicians and medical students then as well as those who were
greedy for gain or who associated with the rich. Many doctors could
not afford to use the rarer or stronger simples and limited themselves
to easily procured, inexpensive, and homely medicaments. Many of
his fellow students regarded as a counsel of perfection unattainable by
them Galen’s plan of hearing all the different medical sects and com-
paring their merits and testing their validity. These students said tear-
fully that this course was all very well for him with his acute genius
and his wealthy father behind him, but that they lacked the money to
pursue an advanced education, perhaps had already lost valuable time
under unsatisfactory teachers, or felt that they did not possess the dis-
crimination to select for themselves what was profitable from several
conflicting sects or schools.

Galen was, it has already been made apparent, an intellectual aris-
tocrat, and possessed little patience with those stupid men who never
learn anything for themselves, though they see a myriad cures worked
before their eyes. But that, apart from his own work, the medical pro-
fession was not entirely stagnant in his time, he admits when he asserts
that many things are known today which had not been discovered he-
fore, and when he mentions some curative methods recently invented
at Rome.

Galen supplies considerable information concerning the drug trade
in Rome itself and throughout the empire. He often complains of
adulteration and fraud. The physician must know the medicinal sim-
ples and their properties himself and be able to detect adulterated med-
icines, or the merchants, perfumers, and herbarii will deceive him.
Galen refuses to reveal the methods employed in adulterating opobal-
sam. which he had investigated personally, lest the evil practice spread
further. At Rome at least there were dealers in unguents who corre-
sponded roughly to our druggists. Galen says that there is not an
unguent-dealer in Rome who is unacquainted with herbs from Crete.
but he asserts that there are equally good medicinal plants growing in

88 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the very suburbs of Rome of which they are totally ignorant, and he
taxes even those who prepare drugs for the emperors with the same
oversight. He tells how the herbs come from Crete wrapped in cartons
with the name of the herb written on the outside and sometimes the
further statement that it is campestris. These Roman drug stores seem
not to have kept open at night, for Galen speaks of the impossibility
of procuring at once the medicines needed in a certain case, because
“the lamps were already lighted.”

The emperors kept a special store of drugs of their own and had
botanists in Sicily, Crete, and Africa who supplied not only them with
medicinal herbs, but, according to Galen, the city of Rome as well.
However, the emperors appear to have reserved a large supply of the
finest and rarest simples for their own use. Galen mentions a large
amount of Hymettus honey in the imperial stores—ev sais avto-
Kpatoptkais azro#)«xats—whence our word “apothecary.” He proves that
cinnamon loses its potency with time by his own experience as im-
perial physician. An assignment of the spice sent to Marcus Aurelius
“from Barbary” was superior to what had stood stored in wooden jars
from the preceding reigns of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius
while after Commodus had exhausted this recent supply and Galen had
to turn again to the older store in preparing an antidote for Severus,
he found it still weaker than before. That cinnamon was a commodity
little known to the populace is indicated by Galen’s mentioning his loss
in the fire of 192 of a few precious branches which he had stored away
in a chest along with other personal treasures. He praises the Severi,
however. for permitting others to use theriac, the noted compound medi-
cine and antidote. Thus, he says, they not only as emperors have re-
ceived power from the gods, but in sharing their goods freely they re-
semble the gods, who rejoice the more, the more people they save.

Galen himself, and the same seems to have been true of other physi-
cians, was not content to rely for medicines either upon the unguent
sellers or the bounty of the imperial stores. He stored away oil and
fat, leaving them to age, until he had enough to last him for a hundred
years, including some from his father’s lifetime. He used some forty
years old in one prescription. He also travelled to many parts of the
Roman Empire and procured rare drugs in the places where they were
produced. Very interesting is his account of going out of his way in
journeying back and forth between Rome and Pergamum in order to
stop at Lemnos and procure a supply of the famous terra sigillata, a
reddish clay stamped into pellets with the sacred seal of Diana. On his
way to Rome, instead of journeying on foot through Thrace and Mace-
donia. he took ship from the Troad to Thessalonica: but the vessel
stopped in Lemnos at Myrine on the wrong side of the island—Galen
had failed to realize that Lemnos. had more than one port. and the

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 89

captain would not delay the voyage long enough to enable him to cross
the island to the spot where terra sigillata was to be found. Upon his
return from Rome through Macedonia, however, Galen took pains to
visit the right port, and for the benefit of future travelers gives careful
instructions concerning the route to follow and the distances between
stated points.

Galen also describes the solemn procedure by which the priestess
from the neighboring city gathered the red earth from the hill where it
was found, sacrificing no animals, but wheat and barley to the earth.
He brought away with him some twenty thousand of the little discs or
seals, which were supposed to cure even lethal poisons and the bite of
mad dogs. The inhabitants laughed, however, at the assertion which
Galen had read in Dioscorides that the seals were made by mixing the
blood of a goat with the earth. Berthelot, the historian of chemistry,
believed that this earth was “an oxide of iron more or less hydrated
and impure.” C. J. S. Thompson, in a recent paper on “Terra Sigiliata,
a famous medicament of ancient times,” tells of various medieval sub-
stitutes for the Lemnian earth, and of the interesting religious cere-
mony performed in the presence of Turkish officials on only one day in
the year by Greek monks who had replaced the priestess of Diana.
Pierre Belon witnessed this ceremony on August 6th, 1533, by which
time there were many varieties of the tablets in existence, “because each
lord of Lemnos had a distinct seal.” When Tozer visited Lemnos in
1890, the ceremony was still performed annually on the same day, and
must be completed before sunrise or the earth would lose its efficacy.
Moslem khodjas now shared in the religious ceremony, sacrificing a
lamb. But in the twentieth century the entire ceremony was abandoned.
Through the early modern centuries terra sigillata continued to be held
in high esteem in western Europe also, and was included in pharmaco-
peias as late as 1833 and 1848. Thompson gives a chemical analysis
of a sixteenth century tablet of the earth and finds no evidence therein
of its possessing any medicinal property.

To come back to Galen, in another passage he advises his readers,
if they are ever ir Pamphylia, to lay in a good supply of the drug
carpesium. In a third passage he tells of three strata of sory, chalcite,
and misy, which he had seen in a mine in Cyprus thirty years before
and from which he had brought away a supply, and of the surprising
alteration undergone by the misy in the course of those years. He
speaks of receiving other drugs from Great Syria, Palestine, Egypt.
Cappadocia, Pontus, Macedonia, Gaul, Spain, and Mauretania, from
the Celts, and even from India. He names other places in Greece and
Asia Minor than Mount Hymettus where good honey may be had.
Much so-called Attic honey is really from the Cyclades, although it is
brought to Athens and there sold or re-shipped. Similarly genuine

90 (ITE SSCLEN TIPE MONA THEY

Falernian wine is produced in but a small section of Italy, but imita-
tions are prepared by those skilled in such knavery. As the best iris
is that of [lyricum and the best asphalt from Judaea, so the best pe-
troselinos is that of Macedonia, and merchants export it to almost the
entire world, just as they do Attic honey and Falernian wine. But the
petroselinos crop of Epirus is sent to Thessalonica (Saloniki) and
there passed off for Macedonian. The best turpentine is that of Chios,
but a good variety may be obtained from Libya or Pontus. The best
form of unguent was formerly made only in Laodicea, but now it is sim-
ilarly compounded in many other cities of Asia Minor.

We are reminded that parts of animals as well as herbs and ae:
were important constituents in ancient pharmacy by Galen’s invective
against the frauds of hunters and dealers in wild beasts as well as of
unguent-sellers. They do not hunt the animals at the proper season
for securing their medicinal virtues. but when they are no longer in
their prime or just after their long period of hibernation, when they
are emaciated. Then they fatten them upon improper food, feed them
barley cakes to stuff up and dull their teeth, or force them to bite fre-
quently so that virus will run out of their mouths. The beasts of course
were also in demand for the games of the arena.

Besides the ancient drug trade, Galen gives us some interesting
elimpses of the publishing trade, if we may so term it, of his time.
Writing in old age, he says that he has never attached his name to his
works and has never written for the popular ear or for fame, but fired
by zeal for science and truth, or at the urgent request of friends, or
as a useful exercise for himself, or, as now, in order to forget his old
age. He regards popular fame as only an impediment to those who
desire to live tranquilly and enjoy the fruits of philosophy. He asks
Eugenianus not to praise him immoderately before men, as he has been
wont to do. and not to inscribe his name in his works. His friends
nevertheless prevailed upon Galen to write two treatises listing his
works, and he also is free enough in many of his writings in mention-
ing others which it is essential to read before perusing the present
volume. Perhaps he felt differently at different times on the question
of fame and anonymity. He also objected to those who read his works,
not to learn anything from them, but only in order to calumniate them.

It was in a shop on the Sacra Via that most of the copies of some
of Galen’s works were stored when they, together with the great libra-
ries upon the Palatine, were consumed in the fire of 192. But in an-
other passage he states that the street of the Sandal-makers is where
most of the book-stores of Rome are located. There he saw some men
disputing whether a certain treatise was his. It was duly inscribed
Gaienus medicus and one man, because the title was unfamiliar to him.
had just purchased it as a new work by Galen. But another man who

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 91

was something of a philologer asked to see the introduction, and, after
reading a few lines, declared that the book was not one of Galen’s
works. When Galen was still young, he wrote three commentaries on
the throat and lungs for a fellow student who wished to have some-
thing to pass off as his own work upon his return home. This friend
died, however, and the books got into circulation. Galen also com-
plains that notes of his lectures which he had not intended for publica-
tion have got abroad, that his servants have stolen and published some
of his manuscripts. and that others have been altered. corrupted, and
mutilated by those into whose possession they have come, or have been
passed off by them in other lands as their own productions. On the
other hand, some of his pupils keep his teachings to themselves and are
unwilling to give others the benefit of them, so that if they should die
suddenly, his doctrines would be lost. His own ideal has always been
to share his knowledge freely with those who sought it, and if possible
with all mankind. At least one of his works was taken down from his
dictation by short-hand writers, when, after his convincing demonstra-
tion by dissection concerning respiration and the voice, Boéthus asked
him for commentaries on the subject and sent for stenographers. Al-
though Galen in his travels often purchased and carried home with
him large quantities of drugs, when he made his first trip to Rome he
left all his library in Asia.

Galen dates the practice of falsifying the title pages and contents
of books back to the time when kings Ptolemy of Egypt and Attalus
of Pergamum were bidding against each other for volumes for their re-
spective libraries. At that time works were often interpolated in order
to make them larger and so bring a better price. Galen speaks more
than once of the deplorable ease with which numbers, signs, and other
abbreviations are altered in manuscripts. A single stroke of the pen or
slight erasure will completely change the meaning of a medical pre-
scription. He thinks that such alterations are sometimes malicious and
not mere mistakes. So common were they that Menecrates composed
a medical work written out entirely in complete words and entitled
Autocrator Hologrammatos because it was also dedicated to the em-
peror. Another writer, Damocrates, from whom Galen often quotes
long passages, composed his book of medicaments in metrical form so
that there might be no mistake made even in complete words.

Galen’s works contain occasional historical information concerning
many other matters than books and drugs. Clinton made much use of
Galen for the chronology of the period in his Fasti Romani. Galen’s
allusions to several of the emperors with whom he had personal rela-
tions are valuable bits of source-material. Trajan was, of course,
before his time, but he testifies to the great improvement of the roads
in Italy which that emperor had effected, comparing his own systematic

92 THEY SCIEN TIPLG MONT EY,

treatment of medicine to the emperor’s great work in repairing and
improving the roads, straightening them by cut-offs that saved distance,
but sometimes abandoning an old road that went straight over hills
for an easier route that avoided them, filling in wet and marshy spots
with stone or crossing them by causeways, bridging impassable rivers,
and altering routes that led through places now deserted and beset by
wild beasts so that they would pass through populous towns and more
frequented areas. The passage thus bears witness to a shifting of pop-
ulation. Galen also sheds a little light on the vexed question of the
number of persons in the empire, if Pergamum is the city ht refers to
in his estimate of 40,000 citizens or 120,000 inhabitants, including
women and slaves but perhaps not children.

The evils of ancient slavery are illustrated by an incident which
Galen relates to show the inadvisability of giving way to one’s passions,
especially anger. Returning east from Rome, Galen fell in with a
traveler from Gortyna in Crete. When they reached Corinth, the
Cretan sent his baggage and slaves to Athens by boat, but himself with
a hired vehicle and two slaves went by land with Galen through
Megara, Eleusis, and Thriasa. On the way the Cretan became so angry
at the two slaves that he hit them with his sheathed sword so hard that
the sheath broke and they were badly wounded. Fearing that they
would die, he then made off to escape the consequences of his act, leay-
ing Galen to look after the wounded. But later he rejoined Galen in
penitent mood and wished Galen to administer a beating to him for his
cruelty. Galen adds that he himself, like his father, had never struck
a slave with his own hand and had reproved friends who had broken
their slaves’ teeth with blows of their fists Other men were accustomed
to kick their slaves or gouge their eyes out. The emperor Hadrian was
said in a moment of anger to have blinded a slave with a stylus which
he had in his hand. He, too, was sorry afterwards and offered the
slave money, which the latter refused, telling the emperor that nothing
could compensate him for the loss of an eye. In another passage
Galen discusses how many slaves and how much clothing one really
needs.

Galen also depicts the easy-going, sociable, and pleasure-loving
society of his time. Not only physicians but men generally began the
day with salutations and calls, then separated, some to the market-
place and law courts, others to watch the dancers or charioteers. Others
played at dice or pursued love-affairs, or passed the hours at the baths
or in eating and drinking or some other bodily pleasure. In the even-
ing they came together again at symposia which bore no resemblance
to the intellectual feasts of Socrates and Plato but were mere drinking
bouts. Galen, however, had no objection to the moderate use of wine,
and mentions the varieties from different parts of the Mediterranean

GALEN: THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 93

world which were especially noted for their medicinal properties. He
believed that discreet indulgence in wine aided digestion and the blood,
and relieved the mind from all worry and melancholy and refreshed it.
“For we use it every day.” He classed wine with such boons to hu-
manity as medicine, “a sober and decent mode of life,” and “the study
of literature and liberal disciplines.” His three books on food values
- (De alimentorum facultatibus) supply information concerning the an-
cient table and dietary science.

Galen’s allusions to Judaism and Christianity are of considerable
interest. He seems scarcely to have distinguished between them. In
criticizing Archigenes for using vague and unintelligible language and
not giving a sufficient explanation of the point in question, Galen says
that it is “as if one had come to a school of Moses and Christ and had
heard undemonstrated laws.” And in criticizing opposing sects for
obstinacy Galen says that it would be easier to win over the followers
of Moses and Christ. In a third passage Galen criticized the Mosaic
view of the relation of God to nature, resenting it as the opposite ex-
treme to the Epicurean doctrine of a purely mechanistic and material-
istic universe. This suggests that Galen had read some of the Old Tes-
tament, but he might have learned from other sources of the Dead Sea
and of apples of Sodom, of which he speaks in yet another context.
According to a thirteenth century Arabian biographer of Galen, he
spoke more favorably of Christians in a lost commentary upon Plato’s
Republic, admiring their morals and admitting their miracles. This
last is unlikely, since Galen believed in a Supreme Being who worked
only through natural law.

Like most thoughtful men of his time, Galen tended to believe in
one supreme deity, but he appears to have derived this conception from
Greek rather than Hebraic sources. It was to philosophy and the Greek
mysteries that he turned for revelation of the deity. Hopeless criminals
were for him those whom neither the Muses nor Socrates could reform.
It is Plato, not Christ, whom in another treatise he cites as describing
the first and greatest God as ungenerated and good. “And we all nat-
urally love Him, being such as He is from eternity.”

But while Galen’s monotheism cannot be regarded as of Christian
or Jewish origin, it is possible that his argument from design and sup-
porting theology by anatomy made him more acceptable both to Mo-
hammedan and Christian readers. At any rate he had Christian readers
at Rome at the opening of the third century, when a hostile controver-
sialist complains that some of them even worship Galen. These early
Christian enthusiasts for natural science, who also devoted much time
to Aristotle and Euclid, were finally excommunicated; but Aristotle,
Euclid, and Galen were to return in triumph in medieval learning.

94 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE MORTALITY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS’

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF THE VIGOR OF THE
RactaL ELEMENTS IN THE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES

By LOUIS I. DUBLIN, Ph. D., Statistician

METROPOLITAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY, NEW YORK

Y interest in this subject arose in connection with another study.
M Some eight years ago, | began to investigate the reasons for the
increasing mortality of the American people after age 45. The mor-
tality figures for the previous decade had shown that, while there had
been very marked declines in the mortality rates of our population in
infancy, in childhood, and in early adult life, that beginning with the
age period 45 and continuing well into old age, there had been a slight
increase in mortality. This was very puzzling because such conditions
did not appear in England, in Germany, or in the Scandinavian coun-
tries for which comparable data were at hand. This was evidently a
condition characteristic of America. Why should there be such an
adverse change in the death rate during a period of extraordinary
activity in public health and when so much was being done to improve
the sanitary conditions of the country? Living and working conditions
were undoubtedly getting better all the time for the great mass of the
population. But these improvements were not being reflected in the
facts of the death rate for middle life and beyond. After much labor
on this problem, it finally occurred to me that the facts could, perhaps.
be explained very simply as the result of the character of our recent
immigration. My hypothesis was that, if the foreign stocks that had
been coming into the country in increasing numbers actually had a
higher death rate than the native stock at the older ages of life. that
the very fact of their coming would be sufficient to account for the
increase in mortality of the whole population.

To test this hypothesis, it was necessary to construct tables of mor-
tality for the several race stocks, including the native born of native
parentage, the native born of foreign or mixed parentage and the for-
eign born. For the last group, it was necessary also to prepare a table
for each one of the important foreign nativity classes. I turned to the
data for the State of New York where there was a large representation
of the three groups of the population, where registration of deaths was

1Read before the second International Congress of Eugenics, Sept.
21, s1O2Te

THE MORTALITY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS 95

good, and where I was fairly familiar with the living and working con-
ditions of the people. Data were for the year 1910. The results were
published in the American Economic Review, Vol. VI, No. 3, 1916.2
Later, assisted by Mr. G. W. Baker, I supplemented the findings for New
York State with those for Pennsylvania.'

The following is a summary of our chief results. For more details,
reference will have to be made to the two papers referred to above.

EN BIE: i
Deaths per 1,000 white population among native born of native parent-

age, among natwe born of foreign or mixed parentage, and among foreign
born, by sex and by age period:- New York State, 1910.

MALES | FEMALES
Native Native | Native

Age Period Native born of | For-|| born of born of | For-
born of foreign eign| native foreign | eign
native or mixed born par- or mixed! born

parentage parentage entage parentage

Ages 10 and over:

Crude rate 13.8 13.2 AS 12.4 9.7 16.6
Standardized rate 13.8 17.2 17.1| 12.4 13.9 16.2
10-14 2.5 Be 2.5 | 2.6 Day 2.4
15-19 216 4.1 4.4]| a2 B32 Be)
20-24 5.0 6.8 5.2 || 4.7 5.2 4.0
25-44 6.9 14.3 8.7 || 5-7 9.3 7-3
45-64 | 18.8 28.2 28.0)| 14.3 20.0 23.4
65-84 173 89.9 | 90.4/| 68.2 73.9 87.7
85 and over 268.9 323.0 272.7|| 242.3 324.9 270.5

Table | presents a comparison of the actual facts of mortality
in three principal classes according to nativity in the population of
New York State in 1910. In both sexes, the death rates of the foreign
born and of their native born offspring are considerably in excess of
those for the native born of native parents after the period of middle
life is reached. There is little difference during the periods of child-
hood, of adolescence, and of early life; but there the similarity ceases.
The excess mortality of the foreign stock reaches its maximum at about
age 60 and continues to the end of life but to a less degree. In the
important age period 45 to 64, the death rate of males (28.0) was
49 per cent. higher than that for native males of native parentage and
that for foreign born females was 64 per cent. higher than for females
of native stock. Similar conditions exist in the State of Pennsylvania.

In view of the fact that the foreign born and their native offspring
make up a considerable proportion of the total population of both
New York (63.9 per cent.) and Pennsylvania (43.5 per cent.), there
is no room for doubt that our explanation of the increasing mortality

2 actors in American Mortality. A Study of Death Rates in the Race
Stocks of New York State, 1910.

3 The Mortality of Race Stocks in Pennsylvania and New York. Quar-
terly Publications American Statistical Asscciation, March, 1920.

96 THE SCIENTIFIC*-MONTHLY

after age 45 is correct. The foreign born enter the United States, for
the most part, as adults; they have lower vitality than the native stock
and their addition to the population can have only one effect, namely.
to increase the death rate at the middle ages of life and at the older
ages.

Our problem today, however, is somewhat different. I propose to

give you the results of our investigations with especial reference to the
relative vigor of the several race groups that make up our newer im-
migration. Obviously, that is what will interest you as eugenists con-
cerned as you are with the character and potentialities of the various
eroups which are making the American of the future.
To determine the relative vitality of the several race stocks, we con-
structed a series of life tables from the facts of mortality already
referred to. There is no better test; for they tell us the average after
lifetime of each group. The figures of expectation were calculated
beginning at age 10 in each case because of the small number of for-
eign born persons living in New York State below this age. The
figures for the five principal foreign races are given in the following
charts, the countries of foreign birth being arranged alphabetically.
The expectations for those born in the United States of native par-
entage are given for comparison.

With the exception of the Russian born, the native males of native
parentage have a greater expectation at age 10 than any of the for-
sign groups. In New York State, the Russians are almost entirely
Jews who are noted for their longevity. At age 10, the expectation

EXPECTATION OF LIFE AT AGE 10

Foreign Race Stocks Living in New York State,1910
Cotapared with

Native Born ot Native Parentage

MALES FEMALES
Country of Birth Years Years

Uniteo STATES 65 5557
(NATIVE PARENTAGE) | | tial tat yi ey | }
ey

ENGLAND SCOTLAND 50.27 aR |
AND WALES

GERMANY

IRELAND

ITALY

56

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Statistical Bureau

RAE MORTALIEY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS 97

of Russian born males is 53.44 years, as compared with 52.96 years
for native males of native parentage. Similar conditions have been
described by various observers for Jews living in Germany, Russia
and Hungary. They invariably have lower death rates and longer
expectation of life than do the people among whom they live. Their
addition to the population of New York State has, therefore, an effect
very different from that of the other foreign peoples. They increase
‘the longevity of the total population rather than decrease it. Next
in order of longevity are the Italian males with a life span of nearly
o2 years at age 10; next are the English, Scotch and Welsh, 50.27
years; the Germans, 49.44 years; and the Irish, 38.69 years. The
surprising fact of this chart is the very low life expectation of the
Irish males. It is actually two years less than the expectation of
negro males living in the Registration States at the same age. We
shall attempt later to give some of the causes which are responsible
for very unfavorable conditions in this race.

Among foreign born females, very similar conditions appear.
The greatest expectation is found among Russian born females, who, at
age 10, have an average after lifetime of 55.82 years. This is almost
identical with the expectation of females of native stock. Then fol-
low in the order named the females born in Germany, Italy, England,

ABER 2
Expectation of life at selected ages. By sex, for persons born in spect-
fied country and living in New York State, 1910:

Sex; country of birth 119 9] 20 | 40 60

Males: _ Living in New York State,

1910, Born in: &

United States (native parentage)... 52.96 | 44.80 29.22 14.92

England, Scotland and Wales.... 50.27 | 42:23 | 26.79 | 13.78

COGICIRT eh a is CR Oe oe 49.44 | 40.80 | 25:51| " ren

learn lime pt SO ge ee? Se er 38.60 | 21.36 18.16 nies

Ba ycate ates Aiea he eer teem em Soy Bese 51.04 | 44.26 28.75 15.08

Reaissia (mostly “Jews)’..:...-s..2<. 53.44 44.84 | 27.85 13.95
Living in specified country :

England and Wales, 1910-1912..... 53.08 | 44.21 27.74. | 13.78

DEO ad: “TOL Le = 2h tien ba ee Ue 51.86 | 43.27 | 27 2Eal 13.54

Germatiy: SEGOL=161O0. .. fo icsa akc. . 51.16| 4256/ 26.64| 13.14

Nisin TOOL TOTO. a0 8 de. 51.25 | 43.00 | 28.00 | 13.67
Females: Living in New York State,

1910, Born in: | |

United States (native parentage)... * 55.87 | 47.55 | 31.57 | 16.30

England, Scotland and Wales...... 52.66 | 44.01 | 28.17 14.86

Geman oye ee 5. ht. . Bae wee 54.35 45.57 29.31 14.60

IE! BCC ve a en eg a Re 45.90 37.40 22.20 11.30

LIGING, oe Eas SoM ieee aEag eA ated 52.92 | 44.94 29.68 15.66

eisciae (mostly. Jews)... 01. .e0.. 55.02 46.60 29.84 14.73
Living in specified country:

England and Wales, 1910-1012..... 55.91 47.10 30.30 15.48

SiSOi0 SETA SiC) I ee ea Be re 53.83 45.35 29.48 SUG

Germany, OOT=1910. . 25.4.) peed 53.35 44.84 29.16 14.17

fealy STOO TOTO. +. sncy tee. ee 51.50 | 43.67 29.00 13.92

VOL. XIV.—7.

98 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Scotland and Wales, and Ireland. In every case. the expectation of
life for females is in excess of that for males of the same nativity
group. The excess varies from seven years among the Irish to only
about one year among the Italians.

The following table shows similarly the facts of the expectation at
other age periods than 10 for each one of the foreign race stocks as
compared with the native born of native parentage:

In view of the interest that attaches to the several race stocks, we
present a chart for each of them which shows the facts of mortality
for the principal causes of death.

ENGLISH, ScoTCH AND WELSH

The mortality rates of the British are among the most favorable in
Europe. Their addition to the population of New York State might,
therefore, be expected to be a favorable one. Yet, as we have seen,
the expectation of life of both males and females of this nativity falls
from two to three years short of that of the native stock at age 10.
The fact is that the expectation of the British living in New York State
is about three years less than for men and women living in England.
Among the several causes of death, we find higher death rates among
the British born for cancer, organic heart disease, pneumonia and
violence. They have lower death rates for tuberculosis. The differ-
ences are never very great and it is difficult to single out any particular
cause of death as especially responsible for the conditions described.
For our purposes, however, it is important to remember that the

MORTALITY OF P
ENGLAND, SCOTLAND & WALES

LIVING IN NEW YORK STATE 1910

PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF DEATH
Standardized Death Rates per 100,000 at Ages 10 and Over

MALES FEMALES

Causes of Death Death Rate per |O0O00 Causes of Death Death Rate per [OQ000

Teberculasis(ez.7 Tabercul:
ofthe langs 227.9 of the Lun

107.8

/

Zo

Organic )
eases }-

of Heart)

145.0
Paeumonia Va2e Preumonio {764
Brights) {407 Brights --(328
Disease) \056 Disease) 255
Violence | Viol

161.2 folence \ 4
excluding! 1/089 excluding (7
Suicide 0 60 120 180 240 300 560 420 4B0 ~uicide

0 60 120 180 20 300 360 420 460

Persons born in United States: <——— Persons born in Eng. Soot 6Wio —

For both men and Women, the British-born show higher deathrates than the
natwe-+orn for cancer, heart disease, pneumonia_and Violence excluding suicide

ey have lower death rates for tuberculosis. The expectation is about three
years less at age 10 than for men and Women living in England

Metropolitan L

FHE MORTALITY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS 99

British immigrant living in New York State does not show up as
favorably either as do his own people in his native country or as the
native stock in the United States.

Immigration from England, Scotland and Wales into the State
of New York has been of minor importance in recent years. In 1910,
there were only 193,359 of these foreign born people in New York
State, constituting 7.1 per cent. of the foreign born and only 2.2 per
cent. of the total white population of the state.

GERMANS

The Germans constitute a very much larger group of the foreign
stock in this state. In 1910, there were 436,874 German born persons,
constituting 16.0 per cent. of the foreign born whites and 4.9 per cent.
of the total white population.

In this group, the males show up much worse than do the females.
The longevity of males, as measured by the life tables at age 10, is
fully three and one-half years less than that of native males of native
parentage; while the German born females have an expectation only
one and one-half years less than that of females of native stock. With
the exception of tuberculosis, German born men and women have
higher death rates than the native born for all important causes of
death. The so-called degenerative diseases play a very important
part in their high mortality. Heart disease and Bright’s disease both
show excessive rates among males and females. Cancer is also much

MORTALITY OF PERSONS BORN IN

EI2MANY
LIVING IN NEW YORK STATE 1910
PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF DEATH
Standardized Death Rates per |OOOOO at Ages 10 and Over

MALES FEMALES
Causes of Death Death Rate per [00000 Causes of Death Death Rate per |OO0O00

Tuberculosis \i98.0 :
of the Lungs. 279 Bberolass lee e

Eee 59'9,
Cancer CH

Organic
2634
Diseases} -4537°5
of Heart

154.9 fiz
Pneumonia (56 2 Prensa onial SS

ere ..{204.0} ee (ee

Deh Wee Disease
Violence Violence

135.2
excluding; 1708.9 oan} 324
Suicide 0 60 120 180 240 300 360 420 4g0 Suict

0 60 120 180 240 300 360 420 480

Persons born in United States: C—— > Persons born in Germany

German-born men endwomen have death rates higher than the native-horn for
cancer, heart disease, pneumonia and Brights disease, but lower death rates
tor tubercylosis. German-born men in New York State have much lower ct-
ation of life than German-horn Women. The difference is five years at age 10.

Metropolitan Life /nsurance Company

100 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

higher among them than in the native population. Suicide is also an
important element, although not shown in the chart. The mortality
characteristics of the German born living in New York State recall
similar facts for the native population of Germany, but to an exag-
gerated degree. The mortality rates of Germans living in their native
country have shown remarkable improvement during the decades prior
to the war and were among the most favorable in Europe. German
males living in New York State showed an expectation of life almost
two years less at age 10 and considerably higher death rates for the
principal causes than are found for the Germans in their own country.

IRISH

The Irish living in New York State present a very serious situation
from the standpoint of longevity. They form an important part of the
population, representing in 1910, 13.5 of the total foreign born and
4.1 per cent. of the total white population of the state. The high point
in the immigration of this race was reached long ago, so that today
we must consider not only those who were born abroad but their native
born children as well. The Irish stock in New York State in 1910,
thus considered, comprised 12.2 per cent. of the total white popula-
tion in 1910.

A very high death rate is coupled with the numerical importance
of this race. The effect on the mortality condition of the entire popu-
lation is, therefore, considerable. As shown in Chart 1, the longevity
as measured by the expectation of both Irish born males and females
is least of any of the foreign stocks listed. Striking excesses of mor-
tality exist. Thus, Irish males at the age period 25 to 44 have a death
rate of 18.5 per thousand, or nearly three times that for native males
of native parentage (6.9 per thousand). Irish born females at the
same age period show a rate of 12.0 per thousand, much less than for
Irish males, but nearly twice that of native females of native parent-
age. Taking all ages 10 and over together and with due regard to the
differences of age distribution, we find that the standardized death
rates for both Irish males and females are about twice that for natives
of native parentage.

The following chart shows that these results follow from an exces-
sive mortality from every principal cause of death, but especially so
from tuberculosis, pneumonia, and violence:

It is difficult to understand these facts in view of the rather favor-
able mortality condition of the Irish in their own country. The figures
for those living in New York State are not far from twice as high as
those reported by the Registrar General of Ireland for the more im-
portant age periods of life. The factors which produce these differ-
ences will repay further study.

THE MORTALITY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS 101

MORTALITY OF PERSONS BORN IN
IMELAND

LIVING IN NEW YORK STATE !I910
PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF DEATH
Standardized Death Rates per 100,000 at Ages 10 and Over

MALES FEMALES
Causes of Death Death Rate perIOOOOO CausesofDeath Death Rate per 1OQOOO

Taberculosis{4724 Taberculosis\2482
of the Lungs 279 of the Lunds 40!

1364 ITT
Cancer 781 Cancer ffF7

Dire 3702

Diseases} 7
2040}
of Heart

2
7 76
Pheumonja (i. Li Pneumonia JG ee

bus) 2777 Brights | ee

153.G Disease

Disease

Vi Viol
Violence folence =
7 63.
celcins| (58 exc} { 361
uicide 0 G0 120 180 240 500 360 420 480 ~Surcide

0 60 120 180 240 300 360 420° 480

Persons born in United States. ===] Persons bornin Ireland: _——Z

Trish born show highest death rates of any race stock in New York State
and much higher rates than found in Ireland.. All important causes
show excessive mortality, especially tuberculosis ond heart disease

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

ITALIANS

The Italians have very favorable death rates in New York State
and enjoy a good expectation. In this respect, the [talian born males
show up relatively better than do the females. Among the males, we
observe especially low rates for tuberculosis, cancer, heart disease and
Bright’s disease. On the other hand, they have higher death rates
from pneumonia and violence, both of which may well reflect the
hazards peculiar to their occupations.

Italian born females, unlike the males, have relatively high death
rates from tuberculosis of the lungs and organic heart disease. Like
the males, they have high pneumonia rates. The figures indicate that
the conditions of life in New York State are not particularly favorable
for Italian women in spite of a good endowment of bodily vigor.

It is important to note that in spite of the marked change in the
environmental conditions in New York State as compared with their
native country, which, for the large majority of the Italian immi-
grants is the warm south, the Italian born live longer and suffer less
from most serious diseases in their new abode than in their home
country.

According to the 1910 census, the number of persons of Italian
birth in New York State was 472,192. This was 17.3 per cent.
of the foreign born whites and 5.3 per cent. of the total white popula-
tion. This number is large in view of the recent date at which the
Italian immigration began. A steady stream of this nativity may be

102 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

expected to come to the United States. Their addition to the popula-
tion from the point of view of longevity involves little, if any, loss
to the total population.

MORTALITY OF me BORN IN

UVING IN NEW YORK STATE I910

PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF DEATH
Standardized Death Rates per 1|0OOO0O0O at Ages 10 and Over

MALES FEMALES
Causes of Death Death Rate per OOOOO Causes of Death Death Rate per IOQOOO

of Heart,
gemma F508
Brght=\ I (1973 Brights| < (eee

Disease } J VSS.6F isease)

Violence ) Gene ee fod (32

60 120 180 240 300 360 420 Sed J 0 60 120 180 240 300 360 420 480 |
Persons born in United States: ——— > Persons born in Italy: ——< |
Italians in New York State have favorable death rates and e good expectation. Cencer

ee his di sease death ses are lower than for nats Ve-born. The Itslian
rate end the men s high eccident desth rate

Metropolitan Life insurance Company

RussIANS

The Russian born living in New York State form the largest group
among the foreign stocks studied. In 1910, there were 558,952, or
20.5 per cent. of the total foreign born and 6.2 per cent. of the total
white population. Although no absolutely trustworthy figures are
available, it is obvious that in New York State, the Russian born are,
for the most part, Jews, and it is this fact that explains the very low
death rate and greater longevity which the Russian born enjoy. As
shown in Chart 1, both males and females of this race have an ex-
pectation as good as the native born of native parentage; in fact, the
males are slightly better than the native stock. The full significance
of this fact appears when we consider the very favorable conditions of
life of this people in their new environment. They are, for the most
part. relatively newcomers and, many of them are still suffering from
the difficulties arising out of poor housing and of bad economic status
incidental to a period of adjustment in a new country. This fact again
bears out what is generally known—that the Jews as a people have
extraordinary vigor.

As shown in Chart 6, these Russian born in New York State have
very much lower death rates from pulmonary tuberculosis than is found
among the native born. In the age period 25 to 44, for example,

THE MORTALITY OF FOREIGN RACE STOCKS 103

males show a tuberculosis death rate of 117.1 per 100,000, as com-
pared with 352 among natives. Females, likewise, at this same age
period, show a tuberculosis death rate a little more than one-half that
of native born females. It is this favorable condition as to tuber-
culosis which almost by itself explains the favorable mortality which
is observed in this race. On the other hand, Bright’s disease is higher
among these people, especially in the later age periods. Likewise
cancer has an excessive death rate among males. The low death rate
from violent causes points to the absence of hazard in the occupations
engaged in by them.

MORTALITY OF PERSONS BORN IN
SIA

LIVING IN NEW vorkK STATE !I9!10

PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF DEATH
Standardized Death Rates per |OOO00 atAges 10 and Over

MALES FEMALES
Causes of Death Death Rate per 100000 Causes of Death Dea

Taberculosis{i25, 6a Taberculosisl 74.7’
of the Lungse2? of the Lungsl40!

14 | 123.7
Cancer --~--}'5 4) — Cancer

12
Organic | Organic | i
Diseases} -\3575 D:
of Heart} tis | of Heart =

Pneumonia (60 Peden :

Brights \__ fiee.2 Brights \_ {i

Didose J \e36 Ditose } ;
[es

Persons born in United States: ——— Persons born inkussi: ——«

Violence } ( Violence

excluding} 083 | _| seeding ;
Suicide “ ) 0 60 120 180 240 300 360 420 4a0uicide

2 eet
120 180 20 300 360 420 480 |

The Russian-born in New York State are mostly Jews. Their low tuberculosis death rate,
one-half that of the native-born, accounts for the low general death rate and
the high expectation of lite amomg them. VJews show higher death rates than
the native-born tor pneumonia and Brights disease. Jewish men have a high cancer rate

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

We may, therefore, conclude that:

1. The several races that make up the foreign born population
of New York are variable as to their natural vigor as measured by
their mortality rates or by life tables.

2. With the exception of the Russians, who are, for the most

‘part, Jews, the expectation of life of the foreign born is less than for
the native born of native parentage.

3. Of the foreign born, Russians have the best expectation fol-
lowed in order by the Italians, the English, Scotch and Welsh, the
Germans, and the Irish. The last have a particularly low expecta-
tion.

4. With the exception of the Russians and Italians, the mortality

104 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

is higher among these races living in New York State than in their
native country.

5. This condition may be due to the difficulties of adjustment to
new conditions of life; or to the poorer quality of the immigrants as
compared with their own people who stay at home, or to a combina-
tion of both these factors.

TIE PROGRESS, OF SCIENCE

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE’?

THE TORONTO MEETING OF
THE AMERICAN ASSOCIA-
TION FOR THE ADVANCE-
MENT OF SCIENCE

As guests of the University of
Toronto and the Royal Canadian In-
stitute, the American Association for
the Advancement of Science holds its
seventy-fourth meeting at the Uni-
versity of Toronto from December
27 to 31. Meeting with the various
sections of the association and in
many cases joining in their pro-
grams are twenty-five associated so-
cieties.

The association is American, its
field covering North, Central and
South America, but it has never
met south of the United States. Its

1 Edited by \Watson Davis, Science
Service.

last meeting in Canada was at To-
ronto twenty-two years ago. Previous
had been held in Mont-
real in 1857 and 1882.

Professor Eliakim Hastings Moore,
head of the department of mathe-
matics at the University of Chicago,
will preside at the general sessions.
Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the Bu-
reau of Entomology of the U. S.
Department of Agriculture, will de-
liver the address of the retiring presi-
dent on the evening of the first day,
his title being, (a) “On some presi-
dential addresses; (b) “The War on
the Insects.”

At the joint invitation of the
American Association and the Ameri-
can Society of Zoologists, Dr. Wil-
liam Bateson, director of the John
Innes Horticultural Institution, Eng-
land, will attend the meetings and

meetings

| SAAS re
H leon en wae: is

Wve a) ie

———

MAIN BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO

OLNOUWOL oO ALISUHAIN

lia aig ya) NOILVIOANOD

MNES INO GILES S OPS CLEN CE 107

HART HOUSE

will make his principal address be-
fore a general session on “The Evo-
lutionary Faith and Modern Doubt.”

Another address before a general
session of the American Association
will be delivered by Sir Adam
chairman of the Hydro-electric Com-
-mission of Ontario, his subject be-

Zeck,

ing “Hydro-electric Developments in
Ontario,” illustrated by motion pic-
tures. Sir Adam Beck’s address will
be under the auspices of Section M
(Engineering) which has on its pro-
gram other papers on engineering
progress in Canada, including oil de-
velopments in the far north, mining
operations in Canada and
problems of railway engineering.
Among the symposia, most of
them arranged jointly by a section
oi the American Association and re-
lated societies, are: Insects as dis-
seminators of plant diseases, origin
of variations, utility of the species
concept, orthogenesis, The quantum
theory, Frost resistance and winter
killing of plants, Synoptic weather
charts, Cooperation of Canada and
the United States in the field of
agriculture, Crop zones, The struc-

eastern

ture of the atom, The child: Its

health and development.

In addition to the scientific and
technical programs, entertainments
and social features have been ar-

ranged by the local committee, in-
cluding a reception at the Royal On-
tario Museum, which contains some
of the finest scientific collections on
the continent, an informal conver-
sazione in Hart House, also boxing,
wrestling, fencing, basket-ball, gym-
nastics, group games, diving, swim-
ming, band music and bag-pipe music,
water polo and indoor baseball in
Hart House, an exhibition of artistic
skating and an ice hockey match,
and a showing of popular educational
motion pictures on various subjects.
An exhibition of new apparatus for
scientific research and new scientific
products will be held in the univer-
sity’s exhibition hall.

The facilities and entertainment
offered the American Association by
the University of Toronto and the
Royal Canadian Institute promise to
be a great factor in the success of
the meeting. The University of
Toronto compares favorably in size

| papers and eighteen reels of motion

108 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY
and equipment with the leading
American universities. Hart House,

the social and recreational center of
the university, contains assembly
halls, libraries, a complete gym-
nasium, dining halls and a_ well-
equipped theater.

The Royal Canadian Institute,
Canada’s oldest scientific society, is
made up of professional, scientific
and business men interested in scien-
tific progress. Jointly with the Uni-
versity of Toronto, this organization
has made the arrangements for the
meeting.

Several Canadian scientific soci-
eties will join with the American
Association in its meeting, among
them being the Royal Astronomical
Society of Canada. The societies
associated with the American Asso-
ciation which will join in the Toronto
meeting are: The American Mathe-
matical Society, The Mathematical
Association of America, The Ameri-
can Physical Society, The American
Meteorological Society, The Ameri-
can Society of Zoologists, The En-
tomological Society of America, The
American Association of Economic
Entomologists, The Botanical Society
of America, The American Phyto-
pathological Society, The American
Society of Naturalists, The Ecologi-
cal Society of America, The Ameri-
can Microscopical Society, The
American Nature-Study Society, The
American Metric Association, The
Society of American Foresters, The
American Society for Horticultural
Science, The Association of Official
Seed Analysts, The Society of Sigma
Xi, The Gamma Alpha Graduate
Scientific Fraternity, and the Phi
Kappa Phi Fraternity.

THE AMERICAN ORNITHO-

LOGISTS’ UNION
Ornithologists of the country
gathered at Philadelphia from No-
vember 8 to II to attend the thirty-
ninth annual meeting of the Ameri-
can Ornithologists’ Union. Forty

pictures were presented during the
meeting and bird naturalists from as
far away as Holland, England and

| the Pacific coast were in attendance.

A large number of papers were
about South American and tropical
birds, ranging in habitat from
Panama to Patagonia. Bird banding
in its various phases was considered
in other papers and there was the
usual quota of technical papers on
bird names, life habits and history.

The union recorded a net gain of
264 members added to a membership
which already at the beginning of the
meeting numbered 1,350.

Four American Ornithologists were
given the highest honor that can be
conferred upon them by their fellow
workers when they were elected to
fellowship in the union. The num-
ber of fellows is limited to fifty, and
with these four elections only one
vacancy remains. Those honored
were: Dr. W. H. Bergtold, an or-
nithologist and practicing physician
of Denver, Colorado; Major Allan
Brooks, of Okanagan, British Colum-
bia; James P. Chapin, American
Museum of Natural History, New
York City, and Dr. Glover M. Allen,
Boston Society of Natural History.

Five members, the grade of mem-
bership next lower than fellow, were
elected as follows: S. Prentiss Bald-
win, expert on banding birds, Cleve-
land, Ohio; George L. Fordyce,
treasurer of the Wilson Ornitho-
logical Club, Youngstown, Ohio;
F. C. Lincoln, Biological Survey,
Washington, Di 1G. 7G He Rovers:
Princeton University, and Dr. Casey

A. Wood, Chicago.

The entire quota of twenty-five
honorary fellows from foreign lands
was filled for the first time since
1890 by the election of five foreign
ornithologists. Fourteen correspond-

| ing fellows, all foreign, were also

elected.
Memorial addresses on three fel-
lows who died during the past year

_—— s

- RHE PROGRESS, OF SCIENCE

were delivered. The deceased fel-
lows are: Dr. J. A. Allen, American
Museum of Natural History, New
York City; Charles B. Cory, Field
Museum, Chicago, Illinois, and Wil-
liam Palmer, U. S. National Museum,
Washington, D. C.

The Brewster Memorial Medal
was awarded to Robert Ridgway, of
the U. S. National Museum, for his
work on the “Birds of North and
Middle America,” vol. 8, which in
the judgment of the council was the
most meritorious work on Ameri-
can birds published during the last
two years. This medal is to be
awarded biennially, and this is the
first award.

A feature of the annual banquet
was the appearance in costume of
representatives of Alexander Wil-
son, John James Audubon, and C. S.
Rainesque, pioneer bird lovers who
lived in Philadelphia in the early
half of the nineteenth century.

The following were elected offi-
cers: Dr. Witmer Stone, Academy
of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia,
president; Dr. George Bird Grin-
nell, New York City, and Dr. Jona-
than Dwight, New York City, vice
presidents; Dr. T. S. Palmer, Buio-
logical Survey, Washington, D. C.,,
secretary; and W. L. McAtee, Bio-
logical Survey, treasurer.

SUSPENSION OF GOVERN-
MENT SCIENTIFIC PERI-
ODICALS

Important scientific periodicals of
the Department of Agriculture have
suspended publication owing to the
tailure of the Congress to give spe-
cific authority for their continuance
after December 1, the date set by
law for the death of all government
periodicals not individually author-
ized by the Congress.

When the Congress adjourned
without giving any committee author-
ity to determine which periodicals
should continue to appear, some
forty-one publications issued by the
government departments suspended

109

publication, in most cases without
any notice.

From a_ scientific standpoint, of
those ‘that are suspended, four De-
partment of Agriculture publications
are the most important. The Ex-
periment Station Record, with its
concisely written abstracts of agri-
cultural literature, knitted together
the research activities of the univer-
sities and agricultural experiment
stations. The Journal of Agricultur-
al Research was the medium for
making public those researches that
as yet would hardly be of general
interest to the practical farmer. But
in this journal have been announced
some of the most important experi-
mental work of the department and
affliated experiment stations. Me-
teorology in all its phases was the
field of the Monthly Weather Review,
edited from the Weather Bureau.
Public Roads had a circulation of
4,000 copies a month and carried de-
tails and research of the federal aid
program to engineers and road build-
ers.

Four other Department of Agri-
culture periodicals were doing a real
service. The Weekly News Letter,
circulation 126,000, kept the 106,000
collaborators and employees of the
department in touch with its activi-
ties and served to take current in-
formation to those especially interest-
ed in agriculture. Weather data
were carried promptly to 3,300 by the
weekly National Weather and Crop
Bulletin. The weekly Market Re-
porter was published to give 11,200
bankers, colleges, economists and
others prompt data on live stock,
grain, produce and other agricultural
prices. The Monthly Crop Reporter,
with an edition of 114,500, was sent
to libraries and organizations inter-
ested in agricultural estimates, but
the bulk of the edition went to col-
laborators of the department who aid
in compiling crop statistics.

By suspending the forty-one gov-
ernment periodicals, it has been esti-
mated that from $500,000 to

JOSEPH LEIDY
Statue erected in the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania in
honor of the distinguished naturalist and anatomist

JOSEPH CRIBS TUE
Photograph from the copy of the portrait by Gilbert Stuart, recently pre-
sented to the United States National Museum by the American
Chemical Society

112

$1,000,000 will be saved each year,
but this may be mistaken economy.

It is not inconceivable that even the |

temporary suspension of the periodi-
cals mentioned may cause a much
greater loss to the country than the
saving on the forty-one periodicals.

The inability to publish the results
of important government researches
is becoming a serious situation, even
apart from the suspension of the
scientific periodicals. Printing appro-
priations of practically all govern-
ment scientific bureaus have been
greatly reduced, and only the manu-
scripts that are most important can
be published, and these often after
undue delay.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
WE record with regret the death
of Bert Holmes Hite, professor of
agricultural chemistry in the Uni-
versity of West Virginia; of Wil-
liam Speirs Bruce, oceanographer and
polar explorer; of Etienne Boutroux,
professor of philosophy at the Sor-
bonne; oi Dimitri Konstantinovitch
Tschernoft of Petrograd, known for
his work on the metallography of
iron; of Ch. Francois-Franck, form-
erly lecturer on physiology at the
College de France; and of Julius

Hann, Austrian meteorologist.

LEE PROGKESS OF SGIENGE

ELIMINATION of industrial waste
was the principal topic discussed at
the forty-second annual meeting of
the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers held in New York City
from December 5 to 9. Separate
sessions were held to consider the
wastes of power generation, machine
shops, railways, use of fuel, materials
handling, textile manufacture, wood
manufacture, and the aeronautic in-
dustry. A national program of in-
dustrial education and training as a
fundamental necessity in the develop-
ment of the industries of this coun-
try also had a place on the program.
Honorary membership was awarded
to Henry R. Towne, directing head
of the Yale and Towne Manufactur-
ing Co., and Nathaniel G. Herreshoff,
who has played a large part in the
development of the science of naval
architecture both through his inter-
est in yacht racing and his work on
commercial and war vessels.

THE relation of chemical engineer-
ing to national defense was the lead-
ing topic of the fourteenth annual
meeting of the American Institute of
Chemical Engineers held in Balti-
more, December 6 to 9. Visits were
made to Edgewood Arsenal and to
various Baltimore industries.

THE’ SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

BPEBRUARY, 1922

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING
SYSTEMS

By Professor RALPH S. LILLIE
THE NELA RESEARCH LABORATORY, CLEVELAND, OHIO

ROWTH has perhaps a better claim than any other life-process
to be called ‘‘fundamental,’’ since it is the indispensable
basis or condition of all vitality. This is true not merely in the
obvious sense that all organisms are products of growth; even
when an animal or plant has ceased to ‘‘grow,’’ 7. e., add to its
total living or organized material, it continues automatically to
renew its own substance and to repair losses and damage; without
this continual renewal no life can persist. We may thus regard
the adult organism as still ‘‘growing,’’ but the growth is ‘‘latent’’
—masked by the simultaneous loss inseparable from all vital activ-
ity. Visible increase in size is thus not the only evidence of growth;
whether an organism grows visibly or not is in fact determined
by the relative rates of two opposed processes, one of which builds
up and accumulates, while the other breaks down and dissipates.
In all life the primary or fundamental process is the building-up
of the specifically organized living substance by constructive
metabolism; but this process is always accompanied by chemical
breakdown or destructive metabolism, with loss of material to the
surroundings. Briefly, therefore, we may describe the essential
situation as follows: when metabolic construction exceeds destruc-
1 tion there is ‘‘growth’’ (in the ordinary sense of visible increase) ;
\when the two are equal there is balance, or simple maintenance;
when destruction predominates there is regression or atrophy.
Visible growth represents simply the accumulated excess of con-
struction over destruction.

This constant association of destruction and repair has long
been recognized as the essential or distinguishing peculiarity of
the living state; while the organism ‘‘lives,’’ the effects of loss or
destruction are continually being offset or compensated (often
over-compensated) by new construction. The life process is thus

VOL. XIV.—8.

114 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

fundamentally a process of construction; it is a synthetic or
creative agency; and all of its special peculiarities as a natural
process are expressions of this characteristic power of specific

‘synthesis. Claude Bernard has given perhaps the clearest and

most comprehensive expression of this fundamental fact, which was
already perceived by Lavoisier and in a vague way appreciated even
in ancient times (cf. Heracleitus). The following passage is charac-
teristic :!

The synthetic act by which the organism maintains itself is at bottom
of the same nature as that by which it repairs itself when it has undergone
mutilation, or again by which it multiplies and reproduces itself. Organic
synthesis, generation, regeneration, reintegration, healing of wounds (cica-
trization) are different aspects of an identical phenomenon... .

Bernard’s characterization is well known; ‘‘la vie, e’est la créa-
tion;’’? he thus emphasizes the all-importance of construction or
synthesis in the vital process.

Living material, then, is primarily growimg material. In
higher organisms this is sufficiently obvious in early development ;
later it becomes less and less evident because of the progressive in-
crease of the destructive processes—relatively to the constructive —
in the total metabolism. It is clear, however, that without the con-
tinuance of the synthetic processes which determine growth there
can be no continued life at any stage. Growth therefore must be
regarded as the universal index of the presence of hfe. We rec-
ognize this in the case of lower organisms like bacteria; and test
their ‘‘livingness’’ by determining if they are capable of growth;
if there is no proliferation in the culture medium the culture is a
sterile one; either no organism were introduced, or those intro-
duced were ‘‘dead.”’

Most multicellular animals and plants reach their final or adult
stages through a process of progressively increasing size and com-
plexity, beginning usually with a small and structurally simple
germ (e. g. egg-cell) ; we describe this germ as ‘‘developing into”’
or ‘‘growing into’’ the adult form. This verbal usage expresses
incidentally the necessary dependance of reproduction on growth.
The growth involved in a single reproduction is often very exten-
sive; thus the ratio between the mass of an adult human being and
that of the fertilized egg-cell from which he develops is approxi-
mately fifteen billion to one;? this enormous accumulation of ma-
terial occurs in each reproduction. There may, however, be repro-
duction without simultaneous growth (certain cases of fission) as

1 Lecons sur les phénoménes de la vie, Vol. 2, p. 517.

27. ¢., the ratio of the mass of an individual of 60 kilo to the mass of an
ovum of 2004, diameter (volume about .000004 c.c.).

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 115

well as growth without reproduction, and it is important to realize
clearly the general nature of the organic processes which these
terms represent. This may best be done by considering the ease
of micro-organisms; here the two processes are less sharply distin-
euishable and the terms are often used synonymously; thus bac-
terial growth and bacterial reproduction are usually regarded as
identical. In such eases, reproduction simply follows automatically
and regularly upon growth, so that the two are not practically
separable; the one involves the other. Reproduction has been de-
fined as ‘‘discontinuous growth,’’ and this phrase expresses a con-
ception which seems to be universally applicable. The essential
fact in every case of reproduction is that portions of the growing
organism continue to grow after detachment from the parental
stock, and in so doing give rise to other complete organisms of the
same kind. Reproduction of higher plants by cuttings is a ease in
point and in animals asexual reproduction and regeneration of
the whole from a fragment afford similar instances. From such
eases the logical transition to cases of gametic reproduction is sim-
ple; in this case the detached portion is a specialized unicellular
structure (egg-cell) requiring fertilization in order to start its
eyele of growth; but it represents none the less a detached portion
of the parental organism.

What we observe in the ease of higher animals is that when we
trace the organic individual back to its beginning—or at least to
the stage usually regarded as the beginning of individual life—
we come finally to a small often microscopic mass of protoplasm,
usually a single cell (germ-cell) which itself is the product of
crowth from the parent organism. In this germ we see little or
nothing of the characteristic organization of the adult. Yet it is
by the progressive accumulation and transformation—through the
activity of this at first minute portion of living substance—of ma-
terials taken from the surroundings that the adult organism is by
degrees built up.

Let us now consider briefly, from the point of view of general
physiology, the essential nature of this process of growth or up-
building, which we call individual development or ontogeny.

The germ adds to its substance, or grows, by incorporation of
non-living materials taken either from the surroundings or from
its own reserves (yolk),—food, water, salts; these it transforms
physically and chemically in a definite manner which is specifie for
each organism. The most remarkable chemical feature of this
transformation is the predominance of certain complex syntheses,
especially the synthesis of colloidal substances of high molecular
weight and highly specifie or individualized chemical constitution.

116 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

These are the proteins, which are regarded by most biologists as
forming the basis of organic specificity. Part of these substances,
together with certain other products of the metabolic transforma-
tion, are chemically stable under the conditions prevailing in the
living system, and are laid down in definite situations and at defi-
nite times in the form of a more or less solid, resistant or perma-
nent residuum or deposit which forms the structural substratum
of the growing organism. And since the rate of these synthetic
or constructive processes exceeds that of the accompanying de-
structive processes, especially in the early stages of development,
the living and organized material steadily accumulates; in other
words, the organism grows. The rate of growth is not uniform
in different regions; usually certain regions proliferate actively
at certain times; then, as their growth activity subsides, other re-
gions become active; the existence of growing zones or growing
apices (buds or shoots in plants) is in fact one of the most charac-
teristic features of developing organisms. All of this growth pro-
ceeds in an orderly and definite manner, in regular sequence and
with strict correlation between the rates of growth in the different
regions. Eventually the whole system acquires a more or less per-
manent form and dimensions, corresponding to the adult state;
after this stage is reached the constructive processes gradually be-
come less and less active, and eventually they fail to offset the
destructive processes. Natural death then follows.

As the germ or embryo grows it ‘‘differentiates,’’ 2. e., becomes
by degrees more and more diversified, structurally, chemically, and
physiologically. Different regions are set apart as the seat of spe-
cial formative processes which give rise to special morphological
structure with corresponding special physiological activity, and by
degrees the systems of organs so clearly distinguishable in the
adult make their appearance. The development of correlating or
integrative mechanisms goes hand in hand with this differentia-
tion. It is customary to regard differentiation as a process dis-
tinct from growth, since its essential feature is the appearance of
new qualitative characters, both structural and functional, 7. e., of
diversification; while the term growth has a primarily quantita-
tive significance and has reference to inerease in size, considered
as such. Differentiation in embryonic development is perhaps the
most impressive and mysterious of all organic processes, and its
apparently purposive character has long furnished the vitalists
with their strongest arguments. In the multicellular organisms it
appears to have acquired a special physiological basis or deter-
minative mechanism which has become superposed on that of sim-
ple growth—as we find it in unicellular organisms where cells give

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS TUG

rise typically only to other cells of the same kind. Apparently
some additional factors, which impart definite and special direc-
tions to the formative processes in different cell-groups, are pres-
ent in the higher organisms; and the evidence from genetic and
cytological studies indicates that this special basis for differentia-
tion is to be found in the specific differences between the chromo-
somes of the germ-cells. In some way, depending apparently on
the manner in which the elementary chemical components of these
structures are sorted or distributed in the series of mitotic cell-
divisions, special kinds of structure-forming metabolism are local-
ized in definite regions of the developing embryo.

The ‘‘chromosome theory of heredity’’ has performed notable
services and is probably true, even if it is not the whole truth. But
it should not be overlooked that growth and heredity, in their most
general aspects, must be independent of special mechanisms of this
kind. Specific growth and its manifestation in heredity are the
final or visible expressions of the property of specific metabolic
construction, which is based on specific chemical synthesis and is
possessed by all forms of living matter—we may even say by all
living structures which preserve their identity during the life of
the cell or organism of which they form part. The chromosomes
themselves grow and reproduce, and this capacity can hardly be
referred to the existence of sub-chromosomes; in this respect chro-
mosomes are like all other living structures. This, however, need
not prevent their having a special function as repositories and dis-
tributors of substances which control the special nature of the
structure-forming metabolism in different parts of the organism.

While in higher organisms growth and differentiation, consid-
ered abstractly, may be regarded as two distinct processes, in real-
ity the two are inseparable, and on a strictly objective view these
terms must be regarded as denoting two aspects of a single com-
plex process rather than two essentially different processes.
‘‘Growth”’ is usually given a quantitative definition, as signifying
increase in the quantity or mass of the living material; thus we
may express the growth of an embryo in mass-units or weights
and draw curves showing correctly, within certain ascertainable
limits of error, the rate of growth from day to day. But while
this growth is proceeding it is in fact associated with increase of
complexity, with the continual appearance of new qualities and
activities in the organism. These features of the total organic
process differ from growth in not being representable in simple
quantitative terms and in requiring special methods of deserip-
tion; yet they are all based upon growth. Such considerations il-
lustrate the sense in which the growth-process is fundamental or

118 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

foundational in all life-processes. Obviously without its occur-
rence the adult organism could never arise from the minute ‘‘un-
differentiated’’ egg-cell. Whatever the special nature of the form-
ative activities may be, it is at least clear that they must have
material to work on, and this material is furnished by growth.
Increase in the quantity of organized or living material is sim-
ple growth, and proceeds automatically in all forms of protoplasm
under favorable conditions. Increase in structural or organiza-
tional complexity is usual when growth is associated with develop-
ment—as in higher organisms—but is not always present; thus we
do not usually conceive of development as occurring in dividing
bacteria or yeast cells. In the lowest organisms the result of
growth is the formation of more and more living material of the
same kind, simple and ‘‘undifferentiated,’’ structurally and physio-
logically. For example, there is no progressive increase of complex-
ity during the growth of bacteria in a culture medium—except in so
far as this is necessarily involved in any quantitative increase;
more and more protoplasm of the same kind, definite and specific
in structure and activity, is built up from the environmental ma-
terials by a strictly repetitive kind of process. We may note here,
as a matter of general or philosophical interest, that it is simply
because the same series of transformations is repeated in each bae-
terium as it grows and divides that we conceive of the process of
reproduction as involving ‘‘heredity.’’ The daughter-cell repeats
the life-cycle and hence the qualities and activities of the parent-
cell. If we wish, we may express this fact by saying that it ‘‘in-
herits’’ its qualities from its parent; but this terminology need not
confuse our conceptions of what really and objectively occurs. In
higher organisms we have the same type of situation, except that
a more complex cycle of metabolic and formative transformation
is repeated in each reproduction. In either case the constancy of
the metabolic syntheses which underlie the growth-processes form-
ing the new living material is what makes possible the constancy
of the outcome in the growth and development of the individual
organism, whether this organism be a bacterium or a human being.
In many animals evidence of differentiation is seen early in
development, 7. e., before the germ has proceeded far in its growth.
Even uncleaved eggs show partial differentiation in many cases.
In the vertebrate embryo the various systems of organs, nervous,
skeletal, digestive, circulatory, are distinguishable soon after the
germ layers are formed; these embryonic foundations, once estab-
lished and partly individualized, continue to grow and soon ex-
hibit secondary differentiations; their functional activity and in-
terdependence increase at the same time. Each organ system is

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 119

often described as if it developed independently by inherent po-
tencies of its own; but this is merely an accident of descriptive
procedure, where the whole is often disregarded in considering the
details. In reality no organ system or other part develops in iso-
lation. The growth and development of the organism as a whole
is marvellously balanced and correlated; a system of checks and
controls prevents the excessive growth of one region at the expense
of another. The shape and proportions of the embryo at each
stage of development are as constant as they are in the adult; and
a similar constancy must characterize the underlying physiologi-
eal processes. The problem of the physiological conditions deter-
mining the correlation of growth processes in organisms has many
aspects of fundamental interest. It includes the special problem
of the nature of transmissive processes in protoplasm (nervous and
related transmissions), as well as the broader biological problem
of the unification or integration of the various organic processes
of the individual. The unity of the formative processes represents
a special feature of organic unity in general, and cannot be con-
sidered apart from other eases of functional integration. Develop-

ment is perhaps the most striking example of an organic activity

which is at the same time highly complex and highly integrated.
The final or adult stage of even the highest animals is attained
with a constaney and exactitude which never fail to arouse our
wonder. We cannot trace the causal sequence in any detail and
may never be able to do so. And yet when we consider the matter
more closely, and especially when we observe the degree to which
exactitude—constaney of repetition—is inherent in all natural
processes (as the achievements of physics and astronomy show per-
haps most clearly), it ceases to be a matter of special surprise that
organie processes like growth and development should exhibit a
similar regularity. If, as physiology assumes, the organism is a
synthesis of simpler physical and chemical processes, its activities
should partake of the regularity of the component processes. In
fact, a similar quantitative regularity becomes apparent whenever
single organic activities are isolated and presented to observation
in a form suitable for measurement. Accordingly, with constancy
of initial constitution and constancy of environing conditions we
should expect a living germ, like any other natural growing sys-
tem, to exhibit constancy in its cycle of development. That it does
show such constancy is the very fact which we designate as “‘hered-
ity.’’ Many years ago Professor C. O. Whitman gave clear and
striking expression to this thought in the following words: ‘‘Germ-
cells behave alike in development, not because anything is trans-
mitted to them, but because they represent identical material and

120 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

constitution and are exposed to essentially like environmental con-
ditions.’’ And with respect to the exactitude of development he
says: ‘‘ We easily forget that only physical processes can approach
such exactness.’’? .We may safely assume that given a germ of a
definite constitution and normal environmental conditions, a
‘*spiritus rector’’ is as little needed to guide development along a
constant course to a definite or predetermined end as to guide the
course of the planets about the sun. Constancy in the initial con-
stitution of the germ, and in the environmental conditions implies
constaney in the sequence of physical and chemical transforma-
tions which form the basis of growth and development.

Although the developing organism is a highly unified or inte-
grated system, yet many facts, especially those of tissue culture
and certain departments of experimental embryology, show that
the cells forming each system of organs have an independent power
of growth; when they are isolated in sterile plasma and supplied
with oxygen they will continue to proliferate and give rise to other
cells of the same kind. An isolated part of an embryo will undergo
differentiation; or if it is transferred from its normal position in
the embryo to a distant region in the same or another embryo (as
in grafting experiments) it will continue, for a time at least, with
its usual development and differentiation. Such facts illustrate
again the specific nature of the formative processes or powers of
erowth innate in each form of protoplasm; when it grows it gives
rise to other protoplasm of the same kind, similarly constituted
structurally and with a similar chemical organization and similar
physiological activities. We have evidence, in the existence of
specific eytolysins, of the chemical differentiation of the different
tissue-proteins of the same animal, just as we have evidence of
specific chemical differences between the corresponding proteins
of different animals. While our most delicate means of diserimi-
nating between different native proteins are the biological tests,
especially those of anaphylaxis and precipitin-formation, which do
not give us direct information of chemical constitution, yet we
eannot doubt that the structural proteins of each species of cell
have specific or highly individualized peculiarities of composition
and configuration; and that these peculiarities are related in a
definite manner to the specific structural and physiological peculi-
arities of the cell. Reichert has shown that the hemoglobins from
different animals have specific crystallographic peculiarities; 1. e.,
in separating from solution they form aggregates of specific form
and structure. No doubt the same process occurs in the case of

3See Vol. 2, pp. 179, 180, of Whitman’s posthumous Studies on Inher-
itance in Pigeons (Carnegie Institution, 1918, edited by O. Riddle).

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 121

the other cell-proteins as they are deposited during growth to form
the protoplasmic structures characteristic of the species; if this
is the ease, the specific morphological or histological features of a
given cell must depend ultimately upon the specific features of
chemical structure and configuration possessed by the cell-proteins.
The toxic effects of foreign proteins upon cell-structure, as seen
(e. g.) in specific hemolytic effects, are an indication of the incom-
patibility of such compounds with the normal cell-structure of the
species.

In all cases the cell-proteins, ike the majority of cell-constitu-
ents other than salts and water, are synthesized within the cell by
the processes of specific constructive metabolism from materials
furnished by the surroundings. Since in general every chemical
compound, when it is deposited in solid form from a solution, forms
a definite type of structure, seen in constaney of erystal form, it is
to be expected that in living protoplasm the formation and depo-
sition of chemical compounds with specific chemical characters will
involve the origination of specific structure, and secondarily of
specific physiological activities corresponding to that structure.

In general any solid material with a specific chemical composi-
tion must possess a specific physical structure. This conelusion
is not merely a generalized inference from the facts of erystal-
formation, special texture or other properties of solids, but has
been brilliantly substantiated by the methods of X-ray analysis
of crystal structure recently developed in England by W. H. and
W. L. Bragg. And we may infer that the special features of the
new structure formed in any growing system, whether living or
non-living, will have a similar dependence on the chemical compo-
sition of the structural material.

The study of the strueture and properties of growing imor-
ganic systems, especially as related to the chemical composition of
their components, may thus be expected to throw some light upon
the more general features of the growth-process in organisms.
Such systems may be regarded as elementary or generalized models
of organic growth. Organic growth is peculiar in the complexity
of its materials, conditions and outcome; it gives rise to the highest
products of synthesis found in nature; but in other respects it
shows various definite affinities with certain types of inorganie
erowth. It may be of interest, therefore, to consider briefly some
results of a study which I have recently made of certain inorganic
growth-models, and their bearing on some of the more general
problems of organic growth.* In particular the conditions deter-
mining the structural specificity of these inorganie growths, and

4 Biological Bulletin, 1917, Vol. 33, p. 135, and 1919, Vol. 36, p. 225.

122 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the manner in which they are influenced by external conditions
(electricity, contact, temperature, presence of foreign chemical sub-
stances), show certain resemblances to organic growth which seem
te throw light on some of the more fundamental features and econ-
ditions of the latter.

It is well to realize that growth processes are by no means con-
fined to living organisms, but are to be found everywhere in na-
ture—in other words that organic growth is a special example of a
universally distributed type of natural process. Hence the analy-
sis of what growth is, in its more general and simpler aspects, must
be a matter of great interest to all biologists. The more special
problem of the nature and conditions of organic growth, as dis-
tinguished from other forms of growth, is likely to become more
open to successful attack if the simpler cases are considered first.

By the term growth, as applied to ordinary physical objects,
we usually mean simple increase in the quantity of some material
forming a more or less definite system or aggregate; the system
thus Increases in size while retaining its special distinguishing
properties or identity. Simple accretional growth are instances,
e. g., avalanches, stalactites, deltas, crystals. In the ease of or-
ganie growth something additional and highly characteristic is
involved. Growth is not the result of simple accumulation of ma-
terials already existing as such in the environment of the growing
system; but the added material is chiefly of a kind not found in
non-living nature and formed within the system itself through the
specific chemical transformation of material taken from the sur-
roundings. New chemical compounds are created in new and char-
acteristic structural and other relationships. Part of the material
thus synthesized, especially the protein and lipoid part, is built up
to form the living and organized substratum of the growing cell
or organism.

Such considerations show (incidentally) that the conception
of organic development prevailing at one time, of an unfolding,
increasing, or becoming evident of something already in existence
or latent in the germ, is no longer a tenable one. The creation or
new appearance of novelty seems to be an essential fact in most if
not all natural occurrence; and this is notably the case in organic
growth. To a modern biologist the epigenetic conception of de-
velopment is the only one possible; new characters arise at each
ontogenetic stage in correlation with the formation of new chemical
compounds in new physical combinations. |

In the ease of inorganic growth, therefore, we should expect to
find the closest resemblances to organie growth in those growing

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 123

systems where growth is dependent on the chemical transformation
of material incorporated from the surroundings, followed by depo-
sition of the more permanent reaction-products within the growing
system. It is well known how a erystal in a supersaturated solu-
tion increases in size while retaining definite form; the packing or
mutual apposition of molecules similar in their shape and size and
with their axes parallel explains the regularity in the structure of
the whole resulting system; similarly an ice-crystal in subcooled
water forms the center of deposition for further ice-erystals. In
both of these cases material taken from the surroundings is trans-
formed and deposited to build up a definite solid structure, but
the transformation is physical rather than chemical. On the other
hand in such examples of inorganic growth as the extension of a
rust spot on a sheet of iron immersed in water, or the formation
of ‘‘lead trees,’’ the new material is formed by chemical trans-
formation.

Inorganic growths dependent on such ‘‘germ-actions’’ often
closely simulate organic forms; the frost patterns on window panes
are a beautiful example; in this ease the ice crystals are formed in
apposition to one another and an apical growth results. The hexa-
gonal erystal system of water is favorable to the formation of deli-
eately branching arrangements ; the characteristic ‘‘twinning,’’ well
seen in snow-flakes, also contributes to this result. The already
formed crystal structure determines the formation of further
erystalline deposit of the same kind, the apices or projecting angles
of the structure forming the regions of most rapid deposition. In
this manner long rows of erystal structure with lateral branches are
built up by the opposition of new crystals at the extremities of the
erystal-pattern already laid down. The resemblance to plant-
growth depends on this peculiarity ; a terminal or apical habit of
growth is common to growing stems, leaves, roots and other plant
organs, and determines the final structure of the whole system.

In the formation of tin-trees or lead-trees the form adopted
by the growing system depends on a similar apical process of de-
position, but in this case special electro-chemical factors enter.
When a piece of zine is placed in a solution of a lead salt, the zine
dissolves as Zn ions, and metallic lead separates out simultaneous-
ly; by continuation of this process there is built up by degrees a
characteristic tree-like or branching structure. Each portion of
lead as it is deposited forms a cathode in the zine-lead couple; and
hence more and more lead is separated from solution by a process
of local electrolysis. The new metal is deposited in erystalline
form and most rapidly at the apical regions, hence the deposit ex-
tends in a branching manner. A similar tendency to a branching

?

124 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

or arborescent form of deposit is not infrequent in the electrolytic
separation of metals at cathodes.

Closer analogies to organic growths are seen in the precipita-
tion-structures formed from metals immersed in solutions of salts
whose anions form insoluble compounds with the metals; struc-
tures are built up of a tubular or quasi-cellular structure with
semi-permeable membranes for walls; and the resemblance both in
appearance and conditions of formation to certain types of plant
growth is in many respects surprisingly close. These structures
are related to those investigated by Leduc and Herrera, and formed
by introducing crystals or solutions of alkali-earth and heavy metal
salts into solutions which form precipitation-membranes with the
introduced salt. The growths obtained by placing copper sulphate
in ferrocyanide solutions are good examples. Leduc’s book, ‘‘the
Mechanism of Life,’’ gives a fascinating account of these phe-
nomena. The growths formed from metals are, however, peculiar
in the fact that the structure-forming precipitate is deposited as
the result of local electrolysis at the metallic surface; the presence
of this electric factor thus renders these inorganic growths amen-
able to electric control (acceleration, retardation, directive in-
fluence), and this feature gives them an additional interest as
models of organic growth-processes.

The methods of producing these growths are very simple. When
a piece of iron wire is placed in a solution of potassium ferricyan-
ide (2 to 4 per cent.), containing some egg-white or gelatine to act
as protective colloid and a little sodium chloride, delicate blue-
green vesicles and tubules of ferrous ferricyanide are quickly
formed ; the tubules grow out rapidly into the solution, and within
half an hour or less the whole wire is covered with a dense filament-
ous growth resembling blue-green algae. Iron is an especially fa-
vorable metal for such experiments, apparently because of the pres-
ence of numerous local electric couples between different areas of
the metallic surface, and filaments several centimeters long are
readily obtained. These often exhibit delicate and regular cross-
striations and other appearances suggestive of organic structure.
If instead of iron the related metals, cobalt and nickel, are used, a
different type of growth is obtained, coarser and more vesicular in
structure and with finer tubules; many of the latter follow a char-
acteristic tortuous or zig-zag course. To produce rapid growth
with these metals it is necessary to accelerate the reaction by the
contact of a nobler metal, e. g., copper or platinum; a copper wire
wound about one end of a strip of nickel (or cobalt) greatly pro-
motes the growth of precipitation-structures. This effect, which

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 125

may be regarded as a kind of catalytic action, depends on the
formation of a local couple, the nickel becoming anode and hence
sending ions more rapidly into the solution; the accelerating in-
fluence of the copper is perceptible for some centimeters from the
contact. Zine and cadmium, another pair of closely related metals,
also readily form highly characteristic vesicles and tubules, which
frequently give rise to compound structures of quite remarkable
beauty and symmetry, especially with zine. Here also the contact
of a nobler metal is necessary for rapid growth; the same effect
may be produced by carbon, e. g., by marking the strip of zine with
lead pencil. In all such experiments the growth is most rapid
near the catalyzing metal or carbon, and a gradient in rate of
growth is seen extending for several centimeters from the contact.
Copper wires in contact with carbon or platinum also produce
characteristic growths. Each metal in fact forms a definite type
of precipitation-structure, having morphological characters which
are specific for that metal; and it is interesting to note that the
structures formed from closely related metals, e. g., zine and ecad-
mium, or cobalt and nickel, resemble each other more closely in
certain characteristic structural details (e. g., the zig-zag tubules
of cobalt and nickel) than when the chemical relationship is more
distant. Something analogous to family resemblance is seen in
such eases. In organisms also morphological similarity and chem-
ical similarity are closely associated.

The resemblances between organic growths and precipitation-
growths are of a general rather than particular kind, and too much
emphasis should not be laid on superficial points of agreement. Yet
when we consider the broad features of the transformative activity
in the two cases and its fundamental determining and controlling
conditions, certain identities appear which indicate that organic
erowth processes are largely conditioned by general factors of the
same kind as those present in the above inorganic systems. In
both cases the specific features of growth are referable to the spe-
cific peculiarities in the chemical composition of the structural ma-
terial. We find that in the precipitation-growths a slight variation
in chemical composition, e. g., the substitution of cadmium for
zine, makes a definite change in the kind of structure developed;
similarly it is possible that in organic growth a slight variation in
the chemical composition of a structural protein, such as the sub-
stitution of one amino acid for another in the chain, may modify
definitely the physical or other properties of the newly formed
structure. One might suggest that the appearance of a sudden
variation or mutation in an organism is the result of a chemical
change of this kind. The formation of a new compound in forma-

126 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

tive metabolism may thus mean the appearance of a new structural
and physiological character.®

But it is with respect to the problem of correlation, of the mu-
tual influence exerted upon one another by growing parts of the
same organism, that the metallic model shows perhaps its most
striking resemblances to the growing and developing organism.
We describe this phenomenon in organisms by saying, for example,
that the growth of one region inhibits the growth of another, usual-
ly adjoining, region. Why it should do so is the problem. Why
should a single blastomere of the 2-cell stage give rise to a half
organism when the other blastomere develops by its side, but a
whole organism when it develops in isolation? Or a plant bud
begin growing only after an adjacent growing bud is removed or
ceases active growth? Evidently some physiological influence of
a repressive or inhibitory kind is exerted through a distance, and
in at least some cases this influence can be shown to be independent
of direct transfer of material between the two regions concerned.
Such facts suggest that this type of control, like other forms of
chemical control at a distance, may be electrical in nature. Is it
possible that the bioelectric currents, always present in living or-
ganisms, influence the chemical processes underlying organic
growth? Currents arising in association with the metabolic pro-
cesses in a rapidly growing region might then control growth pro-
cesses at a distance from this region, just as the electric currents
in the iron-zine-ferricyanide system control the formation of pre-
cipitation-tubules by one metal at a distance from the other.

The inhibiting influence exerted by an actively growing part
of an organism upon the growth of adjacent parts is a phenome-
non of too general occurrence to be referred to special conditions
peculiar to any one organism or group of organisms. Its basis is
apparently some physiological condition common to all organisms.
The transport of growth-inhibiting substances is clearly not the
condition in such well-known effects as the prevention of the
erowth of axillary buds in seedlings by the growth of the ter-
minal bud. Recent experiments have shown that we can prevent
the inhibitory influence from passing by conditions that do not
interfere with the transport of material along the stem.® If the
inhibitory influence is not due to transport, to what is it due?

5 If closely related species can be distinguished by precipitin or anaphyl-
axis tests, it is probable that mutants can similarly be distinguished from their
parent organisms, although apparently no experiments of this kind have been
tried. Leo Loeb finds evidence that there even exists a chemical differential
between individuals of the same species (cf. Amer. Naturalist, 1920( Vol. 54,
pp. 45, 55).

6 Cf. Child and Bellamy, Science, 1919, Vol. 50, p. 362; Botan. Gazette,
1920, Vol. 70, p. 249; E. N. Harvey, Amer. Naturalist, 1920, Vol. 54, p. 362.

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 127

We cannot answer this question fully at present, but it is per-
haps sufficient to point out that the fundamental problem involved
is the general problem of the transmission of physiological inftu-
ence in living protoplasm. Through what means does a physiolog-
ical process occurring at one region affect processes at other re-
gions? If we leave out of consideration the numerous instances
where the mechanism of physiological correlation is evidently of a
transportative kind, as seen in the effects of the various growth-
determining hormones (thyroid, pituitary, ovary, etc.,) or of the
hormones determining glandular secretion or rate of respiration,
we have remaining a large class of effects highly characteristic of
living matter in all of its forms, namely, those transmissions of
local states of activity or excitation known generally as protoplas-
mie transmissions. Sherrington points out that in higher animals
there exist two chief methods by which the various chemical and
physiological activities are integrated or made to work in harmony,
namely (1) integration by transport of chemical substances (usual-
ly special metabolic products) from region to region, chiefly in
the blood stream, and (2) integration by transmission of physio-
logical influence, excitatory and inhibitory, to a distance through
the living protoplasm without material transport between the re-
gions; the chief example of this type of process is nervous trans-
mission. The nervous system is the chief integrating and coordi-
nating system in higher animals; nervous transmission, however,
is merely a specialized form of a type of transmission present
everywhere in protoplasm. If the metabolic processes underlying
(e. g.) muscular contraction can be thus controlled at a distance,
it is not difficult to believe that those underlying growth can be
similarly controlled. This mode of influence has been called physio-
logical distance-action, after the analogy of chemical distance-ac-
tion, and our problem is to determine its physico-chemical nature.
One of its most characteristic manifestations is seen in the transmis-
sion of growth-inhibiting and other formative and correlating in-
fluence in growing and developing organisms.

For our purpose the most instructive instances are those in
which the growth of one region controls that of an adjoining re-
gion. How can a growing bud on a piece of stem in a Bryophyllum
prevent the growth of roots or shoots on an attached leaf,’ or one
growing axis inhibit another in the blastodise of a Fundulus egg,’
unless there is transfer of inhibiting substances from the actively
growing to the inhibited area? or unless the actively growing re-
gion appropriates all of the available nutriment? Yet both of

7J. Loeb, Botan. Gazette, 1915, Vol. 60, p. 253.
8C. R. Stockard, Amer. Journ. Anatomy, 1921, Vol. 28, p. 115.

28 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

these modes of explanation are apparently inapplicable in many
cases. The only general physical conception which seems to me
to throw some light on this and related problems is the one which
regards physiological distance-action as a special case of the phe-
nomenon called by Ostwald ‘‘chemical distance-action,’’ and well
known to all students of electrochemistry. By this term is meant
the influence which the chemical reaction at one electrode-area of
a circuit exerts upon those at the other electrode-area. This in-
fluence has a reciprocal character, dependent ultimately on
the fact that the flow of electricity around the circuit is in one
direction; hence oxidation at one electrode is associated with the
reverse process, reduction, at the other. According to Faraday’s
law the rates of the two opposite electrochemical reactions must
be equal, hence variation in the one involves a corresponding va-
riation in the other. The above precipitation-growths from metals
furnish many striking examples of this influence; the contact of
a piece of zine with an iron wire immersed in a ferricyanide solu-
tion prevents the outgrowth of precipitation-filaments from the
iron, even at a distance of several centimeters from the contact;
at the same time their formation from the zine is promoted. In
this case it is not possible to assume that inhibitory substances
are derived from the zinc, where growth of filaments is rapid,
and transported to the iron. Yet there is a definite influence, ex-
erted through a distance, which inhibits the outgrowth of precipi-
tation-filaments from the iron so long as they are being rapidly
formed from the zine. This influence is electrical and depends
simply on the passage of the electric current around the circuit
constituted by the two metals and the salt solution. Metallic zine
in contact with the solution is electrically negative or anodic; the
zine ions given off to the solution form the precipitate of zine
ferricyanide which builds up the filaments. The iron is eathodie,
7. €., the positive current is in the direction from solution to metal,
thus preventing the passage of iron ions into solution; hence no
precipitate forms. If, however, we sever the iron wire from metal-
lic connection with the zine, e. g., by cutting off its projecting ex-
tremity, the isolated portion at once develops filaments. The com-
pensating or inhibiting condition is removed when the electrical
circuit between the two metals is broken.

In cases of regeneration in animals or plants the removal of a
portion of the organism frequently initiates an extensive process
of growth and development at the cut surface. We may infer
therefore that many stationary or quiescent regions of the organ-
ism are capable of active growth or proliferation, but do not mani-
fest this power until they are removed from the influence of other

GROWTH IN LIVING AND NON-LIVING SYSTEMS 129

regions. Is it possible that in such eases what prevents growth is
the passage of electric currents between regions of different growth-
activity, the more active regions—which are those of greater meta-
bolic or synthetic activity—inhibiting the less active through the
currents associated with their growth?

There are many facets which point in this direction. Hermann
and Miuller-Hettlingen found that in seedlings the regions near the
actively growing zones—terminal buds or root-tips— were negative
relatively to those near the cotyledons ;° regenerating hydranth
heads are negative to the stems; the growing zones in planarians
and annelids are negative to intermediate regions." Further
studies in this field are desirable, but all of the evidence now avail-
able agrees in indicating that regions where growth and eell-divi-
sion are active are in general negative to inactive regions—nega-
tive, that is, in the same sense as the stimulated recion of a mus-
cle or nerve is negative to the unstimulated. The regions where
the positive stream of the bioelectrie circuit enters the living sys-
tem from the surrounding medium are the regions of most active
growth; those where it leaves are the quiescent or less active re-
gions. The physiological or metabolic asymmetry is associated
with an electrical assymmetry or potential difference. Such active-
ly growing regions, in addition to their electro-negativity, show in
general a higher oxygen-consumption and carbon-dioxide output
and a greater susceptibility to poisons than less active regions. A
connection between the metabolic processes underlying growth and
the bioelectrie currents is thus indicated. In plants removal of
oxygen has been shown to abolish these currents, a fact indieating
that oxidation-processes are concerned in their production.

If the bioelectric currents have a direct influence on growth, we
should expect that electric currents led into the growing systems
from outside sources would have a similar influence. Regions
where the positive stream enters the growing system from the sur-
roundings should be favorably influenced in their erowth, since
such regions correspond to the ‘‘negative’’ regions in the bioelec-
tric circuits of growing organisms; these regions, as just shown,
are those of most rapid growth. Recently it has been found by
Lund that regeneration of new polyps from the cut stems of the
hydroid Obelia may be experimentally controlled by weak electric
currents passing lengthwise through the stem; the formation of
hydranths is promoted where the current passes so as to enter the
stem, 2. ¢., at the eut end facing the anode, and inhibited at the

9 Pfliiger’s Archiv., 1883, Vol. 31, p. 193.

10 A. P. Mathews, Amer. Journ. Physiol., 1903, Vol. 8, p. 294.

11 Cf. C. M. Child, Biol. Bulletin, 1921, Vol. 41, p. 90.

VOL. XIV.—9

130 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

other end. A polar influence on formative processes, correspond-
ing to that on stimulation processes, is thus shown.” These inter-
esting observations agree with those of the Indian investigator,
Bose, who finds that the electric current influences growth-move-
ments in higher plants in a polar manner, the anode enhancing
and the cathode depressing the normal rate; and also with the
recent experiments of Sven Ingvar in the Yale laboratory, which
have shown that weak constant currents exert a directive influence
on the outgrowth of the processes from embryonic nerve cells;
here also a polar influence is seen, the processes growing toward
the anode being morphologically different from those growing to-
ward the cathode."

If the growth processes in living organisms are thus subject to
artificial electrical control, it seems reasonable to infer that the
natural or physiological methods of control in normal growth and
development are also in large part electrical. The bioelectrie cur-
rents would thus become essential formative factors, just as they
are essential factors in excitation and transmission ; organic polar-
ity, as Mathews suggested, would become electrical polarity. This,
however, would again be referred to chemical polarity, since we
must assume that the bioelectrie currents, like the currents in
metallic couples or other current-yielding systems (where the en-
ergy of the current is derived from chemical reactions at sur-
faces) are the expression or accompaniment of chemical processes
in the living system. The metabolic processes underlying growth are
of complex and largely unanalyzed nature, but we know that they
are typically associated with the consumption of oxygen and in-
elude specific syntheses by which the new structure-forming com-
pounds are built up. Can we then say that the chief method of
construction of such compounds is electro-synthesis? Such a char-
acterization. may not in itself add much to our knowledge, but it
suggests directions in which research may be profitable. It im-
plies, especially, that the basis of all such effects, like the basis of
other manifestations of irritability, is to be sought in the condi-
tions determining the electrical sensitivity of living matter, one
of its most fundamental characteristics. This in turn is almost
certainly conditioned by the polyphasie and film-pervaded strue-
ture of the protoplasmic system.!§

12 BE. J. Lund, Journ. Exper. Zoology, 1921, Vol. 34, p. 471.

13 J. C. Bose, Proc. Roy. Soc., B. 1918, Vol. 90, p. 364

148. Ingvar, Proc. Soc. Exper. Biol. and Medicine, N. Y., 1920, Vol. 17,
p. 198.

15 Cf. my discussion of the basis of protoplasmic irritability and trans-
mission in THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY, 1919, Vol. 8, pp. 457 and 552.

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF FRESH-AIR 131

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF
FRESH AIR

By Professor WM. A. McCALL and BRONSON L. HUESTIS

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

ILL NYE’S History of the United States shows two drawings
which compare the Indian women of fancy with the Indian
women of fact. It is a pity that Nye did not think of cartooning
the ventilation of fancy and the ventilation of fact. After the
customary school instruction plus a deep draught of tradition we
were caught unawares by a recent article in THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY asserting that human life could continue in the same
room with oxygen-consuming plants. Perhaps some one will yet
have the temerity to assert that the nostrils were made smaller
than the mouth to prevent the breathing of all out-of-doors at one
gasp, thus suffocating ourselves with too much fresh air. Is fresh
air really essential? Are mental and physical prosperity greatest
in 100 per cent. fresh air? Is it open air that human nature
craves or is the primeval association of open air?

What is man’s attitude toward the open air, as shown in the
history of the race? Back somewhere in the time when man dwelt
in the “‘well ventilated arboreal tenements’’ of the tree tops, some
individuals, finding more to interest them on the ground, moved
down from their leafy heights, and learned to walk upright. Beset,
however, by countless enemies, he was compelled to seek some
shelter, and so began the life in caves which has persisted ever
since. Deserting the forests for more open country, man found
his original covering of hair inadequate, and betook himself to
clothing, the second step in the complete enclosure of his body.

Officially, man was a troglodyte, or cave dweller, up to a recent
era in his history. As an actual, but unadmitted, fact, he is one
yet. The ancient cliff-dwellers in their caves, and the more modern
Moqui in his pueblo, are not so very different from the up-to-date
apartment-house denizen, or shall we say, inmate. It does seem
as though man for ages past had thriven in a completely enclosed
state. Even in the matter of clothing to this day we go about
protected to the utmost, the only exceptions being the rags of
poverty and vice versa.

Ventilation has been for eons either unknown or unheeded. In

132 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

most eases entirely different considerations have fixed the construc-
tion of the buildings in which humans pass a great part of their
time. In northern lands, for defense against cold, the Eskimos
build their igloos, and the Lapps their huts, with one undersized
door as the only opening. Many other examples are familiar.
Ventilation as we know it, is truly a modern notion. In 1660,
Sir Christopher Wren devised a erude system of ventilation for
the Parliament Buildings in London, seemingly the first official
recognition of the idea; but the spread of the idea has taken many
years. In fact, those of us who have visited the hails of our own
congress, will agree that those halls are to this day ventilated
solely by the newspapers. The old four-poster bed, with its heavy
canopy and impermeable curtains, is a commonplace of a day not
far gone. It is but yesterday since we kept our windows shut at
night, for fear of some poisonous ‘‘miasma’’ in the night air.

The modern preference for open windows, open-air schools
and so on is due to one or the other of the following causes; either
the desired sensation of being different from our fathers and
mothers or the realization of some actual benefit to be derived from
the new order of things. Let us see, then, what sort of opinions
are actually held about the conditions which fix the desirability
of the kind of air with which we surround ourselves.

Mr. Ellsworth Huntington, in a 1915 publication of the Yale
University Press, says:

To-day a certain peculiar type of climate prevails wherever civilization is
high. In the past, the same type seems to have prevailed wherever a great
civilization arose. Therefore, such a climate seems to be a necessary condition
of great progress.

The foregoing, part of an attempt to show the part played by
climate in human. development, is unfortunate, for a moment’s
thought will show that while each particular civilization may have
its peculiar climate, these respective climates differed more wide-
ly than the civilizations they represented. Ancient Egypt, a coun-
try of great heat and dryness, is rated as a civilization, along with
ancient Greece, with its temperate climate and adequate rainfall.
A high civilization arose in Rome and along the warm, sunny
slopes of Italy, but this fact proves nothing against the greatness
of fog-visited Britain. In New York City, a more or less active
hive of human effort, both extremes and all possible means of cli-
mate are experienced from one day to the next!

It is an acknowledged fact that warm air makes us sleepy.
It is equally undisputed that we find it difficult to sleep on a warm
night. When we suffer from certain ailments, our doctors, recon-
mending a change of climate, send us to Colorado, Arizona, or

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF FRESH-AIR 133

some place with an equally dry atmosphere. Yet we have au-
thorities who regard dry air with dread. Watt, in 1910, wrote
as follows:

Insanity grows on those who live in hot, dry air, do exasperating work,

and feel abused. . . . Men are breaking down in business by too much atten-
tion to it, they think. The real trouble is, they are conducting their business
in hot, dry rooms during the cold months of the year.
The same writer gives dryness as a cause of the falling-off in
church attendance. It is to be hoped that the increased ““dryness’’
to which the country is being subjected, will have the opposite
effect. We are used to regarding dampness of air or climate as an
unhealthful condition, but dryness seems to be just as bad, in the
opinion of many. Early writers went to great extremes in both
directions, attributing to air conditions all sorts of things, ‘‘from
the color of a man’s skin and the contour of his face, to the
prevalence of religious ideas, and the (supposed) fact that more
twins are born in Egypt than elsewhere,’’ to quote from Stecher,
in “‘The Effect of Humidity on General Efficiency.’’

Popular opinion is an excellent way to give permanence to
prejudice. Bliss claims that so thoroughly has the fresh-air taken
hold of many, that neither facts nor figures to the contrary are of
the slightest interest. A remarkable example of this is found
in the description of an experiment made in 1913-14 by D. C.
Bliss, superintendent of schools of Montclair, N. J. He says:

A surprising feature of the whole experiment with the open-window classes
is the attitude of the parents. Almost without exception they are convinced

that their own children benefited greatly by the plan. This conviction is so
positive that it is not affected in the least by the statistics of the classes.

These statistics, which showed a slight balance against the
open-window classes, will be referred to later.

Many of us, then, believe that for health, atmospheric econdi-
tions should be thus and so. Clearly, however, a consideration of
opinion from all sources shows about half of us in favor of ‘‘thus,”’
and the rest of us firm believers in ‘‘so.’? In other words, publie
opinion, the strongest of forces in a discussion like this, is at the
same time the least reliable. With the two camps of believers
arranged back to back, it is at least possible that one is in the
right, but opinion itself furnishes no safe ground for judgment.
That opinion will often unconsciously pervert fact to serve its
own ends was rather amusingly shown by press and other com-
ments on an address recently made by the writer before the Inter-
national Conference of Women Physicians. The newspaper
writers took just enough actual words from the address to make
some humorous reading which had no especial connection with the

154 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

speaker’s meaning. A telegram was received from an association
in a small city, asking for a statement of the speaker’s true po-
sition. He replied that he was in favor of rightly controlled open-
air schools for experimental purposes. The secretary of the asso-
ciation wrote back, much pleased with the speaker’s ‘‘implied per-
mission to quote you as favoring a rightly controlled open-air
school.’’ Using the same words, nearly, but with a vast differ-
ence in meaning, this little episode illustrates perfectly what might
be called ‘‘auto-interpretation.”’

Since children are probably more sensitive to environmental
conditions perhaps the best way to study the effects of fresh air
versus various degrees of non-fresh air is to investigate experience
and experiments with open-air, open-window, and otherwise fresh-
air schools. The first open-air school was opened in the woods
at Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, and soon spread all over
Germany. Not long afterward, the first English open-air school
was opened at Bostall Wood, near London. Then came the Brad-
ford School, since which many others have been established in
England. The first open-air school in the United States was at
Providence, R. I.; we now have them all over the United States.
There are some in Boston; there is one on the roof of the Horace
Mann School at Teachers’ College, Columbia University; there are
some on abandoned New York City ferry boats. There are spe-
cially endowed schools of this open-air type in Chicago. Hence
comes the argument that the schools must be satisfactory, because
they have spread so rapidly.

Secondly, we have no record of a single open-air school which
has been abandoned; another argument worth noting.

Third, every account, except one, gives most glowing descrip-
tions of the success of this work.

Fourth, children gain rapidly in weight. Here is a sample
from one of the open-air schools. In two and one half months the
children in this school gained 3.6 pounds on the average, whereas
the children in the ordinary schools gained but one pound on the
average.

The fifth proof is that the open-air schools have considerable
therapeutic value. Here are some figures from some of the German
schools. Of thirty-four children who were anemic, after being in
the open-air schools for some time, one case was aggravated, nine
were unchanged, eleven were improved and thirteen cured. Of
38 cases of scrofula, none was aggravated, eight were unchanged,
22 were improved and eight cured. Of 14 cases of heart-disease,
none was aggravated, seven unchanged, seven improved and none
cured. Of 21 cases of pulmonary disease, one was aggravated,

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF FRESH-AIR 135

eight were unchanged, eight were improved, and four were cured.
This makes a total of 107 children that were studied; of which
number but two were aggravated, 32 were unchanged, 38 improved
and 25 cured.

Next, there comes the claim from England and Germany that
education is twice as efficient, in the sense that the pupils spend
but half their time on regular school work, and still keep up with
their corresponding grades in the ordinary schools.

A number of other claims are made, such as increased happi-
ness of the children; improvement in attendance; and one state-
ment is made that truthfulness rose several degrees!

A critical inspection of these claims reveals that they are large-
ly claims and nothing more. They may be true, they may not be
true. Open-air schools are such a radical departure that their
very novelty appeals to radicals and enthusiasts. This alone
might account for the rapid spread of the idea.

The claim that education in open-air schools is twice as efficient
does not appear to have been checked by objective tests. Subjective
estimates of mental changes are known to be extremely unreliable,
particularly when made by interested though honest individuals.

The increase in attendance recorded for the open-air schools, it
must be said, took place entirely during those months of the year
when the weather is at its best. This is typical of most of the ar-
guments advanced; they are not checked against certain other pos-
sible explanations of the results besides the presence of fresh air.

Here is a typical day for the pupils in the ordinary school,
which may be compared with the typical day of the open-air school
scholars. In the ordinary school, the pupils spend all their time
during the best part of the day, that is, from nine to twelve o’clock
and from one o’clock to three, in the classroom. The medical,
dental and optical care they receive from the school authorities
is inadequate to put it as charitably as possible, and they receive
little other attention aside from their regular lessons. Here
is the program of the open-air school for a day. Reports state
that the enthusiastic cooperation of the best dentists, physicians
and oculists in town is readily secured, so that the children are
constantly receiving better attention than they would in their own
homes. At eight a. m., an hour before the ordinary schools begm,
the open-air pupils are served with hot soup, bread and butter.
After every half-hour, they have vigorous exercise. At ten a. m.
they have two glasses of milk, bread and butter. At 12:30 they
have a good dinner, followed by sleep. At 4 p. m. there is milk,
rye bread and jam. At 7 p. m.—notice how late—the pupils are
given a good supper, and sent home. Of course, the regular les-

136 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

sons are given in the intervals between the items noted above.
The program outlined is actually followed in many schools, and all
adhere to a similar schedule in greater or less degree.

We find in one of the glowing descriptions of these schools the
following unintentional admission—quoted exactly:

‘“‘There is unanimous agreement that if children are to be
benefited by open air, they must be well-fed.’’ This statement is
typical of the weak points in the arguments thus far given: Is it
fresh air that produces the results, or is it superior feeding and
physical care; and would it be possible to produce the same effect
in the ordinary schools, by an equally increased care? The argu-
ments do not tell us.

What light do carefully-controlled researches throw upon this
whole question? Experimental results tend to show that mental
activity, obviously one of the main factors in education, is not
readily subject to outside influences. Poffenberger, administering
strychnine in moderate doses, noted that no effect was produced
on the mental powers of his subjects. Hollingworth reached the
same conclusion with regard to caffein in the proportions found in
coffee and certain other beverages. Results are not yet available
from the national experiment conducted to discover the effect of
reducing the national percentage of alcohol to 2.75. On the whole,
mentality appears to be a peculiarly well insulated function. The
writer after years as a teacher, has found the insulation impene-
trable in many eases.

But there are experiments dealing with open-air directly. A
study was made by Norsworthy, Hillegas, McCall and others at the
Horace Mann School, New York City. On the roof of the build-
ing were constructed two classrooms, each having its southern side
completely open, and large windows in its other sides and roof.
Provision was made to shield books and blackboard from the direct
glare of the sun, but otherwise the children were exposed to sun-
shine and air. The southern exposure could be closed off by a
canvas cover during a driving rain. A playground was provided
on the adjoining roof.

The open-air test was begun with a third grade and a fourth
grade class. After the first year a fifth grade class was held in a
room in the building below, this room having its windows open
wide at all times. There were throughout the test several control
classes in ordinary indoor classrooms, for purposes of comparison.
The test continued through the four school years from 1912 to
1916. Psychological tests were made in each December and May
by Norsworthy and Hillegas. At the same time, Dr. H. B. Keyes
gave each child a thorough physical examination. There were

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF FRESH-AIR 137

eight of the psychological tests given each time. The scores of
these tests were summarized into a combined score for the four
years. This result showed a small, but real, balance in favor of the
open-air classes. This was also true for the physical tests for the
first year, those for the other three years not being available. We
must accept these results, however, with proper caution, because
of the possibility that other factors than those tested were respon-
sible for the result. The children who made up the open-air group
were selected from those having physical or nervous weaknesses
or tendencies. There were extra lunches and frequent outdoor
play ; these were denied the indoor classes, which might have had
them about as well as the outdoor pupils. In any case, we must
be careful about comparing the performances of more or less in-
comparable groups.

Consider now the experiment conducted by D. C. Bliss, super-
intendent of schools of Montclair, N. J., to determine the possible
advantage of open-window classes. In this experiment, the same
types of children were selected for both open-window and control
classes. One class each from the second, third and fifth grades,
were selected for the open-window group, each grade being lo-
eated in a different building, and each checked by a control class
of the same grade and size in the same building but under indoor
conditions. During the cold months, the open-window groups
were well wrapped, and protected against strong drafts, though
their classrooms were maintained at a temperature of 50 degrees
Fahrenheit. During the experiment, the open-window pupils were
provided with light forenoon lunches at the parents’ expense.

The tests measured three items: degree of nutrition, measured
by fluctuations in weight; general health, indicated by attend-
ance; and mental condition, shown by simple tests given twice
each day.

A summary of Bliss’s results shows no difference between the
open-window and control groups in the psychological tests, and a
small, but notable superiority in health for the control groups.
In the previous year, an experiment had been made in which the
open-window class was unprovided with the special lunch, and the
room-temperature allowed to go as low as it would. Under these
conditions, the health of the open-window classes showed up even
less favorably.

Whatever our previous idea, then, the contradictory results of
the two experiments cited should give us pause. More informa-
tion is evidently needed. To this end, we ought to note the inter-
esting and expertly directed experiment made by the New York
State Commission on Ventilation, to determine the effect on mental

138 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

work, of recirculated air versus plenty of fresh air. The Board
of Education of New York City permitted the commission to fit
up especially for the test a couple of rooms in a school building
that was in the course of erection. Hence the desired air condi-
tions could be perfectly maintained. In one room, ventilating
ducts provided a continuous influx of fresh air, the used air being
drawn out. In the other room, the used air was drawn out, washed,
and sent back again, so that the greater part of the air in the
second room was used over and over. Only enough fresh air was
introduced to prevent noticeable odor. The washing took out the
dust, and probably the germs and some, at least, of the carbon-
dioxide. Even so the C O, content of the air in the recirculating
room was always much higher than in the fresh-air room, occa-
sionally rising to twice as much. In both rooms, the purity of
the air and the steam used by the heating-plant were constantly
noted. A standard comfortable temperature of 68° and humidity
of 50 per cent. were maintained in both the experimental and con-
trol rooms.

The experiment lasted from February to June of one year, and
to make conelusions doubly reliable was repeated during the fol-
lowing school year. An unusually elaborate series of educational,
psychological and physical measurements were made. The di-
rectors of these experiments were national authorities in their re-
spective fields of education, psychology, medicine, physiology,
sanitation, physics and engineering. No technique that these
scientists could devise was omitted. Every effort was made to
make the conclusion from these experiments final. What was the
conclusion? The results from all the educational and psychologi-
eal measurements when carefully summarized, showed roughly
two per cent. greater progress and achievement for the pupils who
were in the partly fresh air. The results from the medical meas-
urements substantially agreed with those from the mental meas-
urements, and the second experiment agreed with the first.

In addition to having no demonstrable deleterious mental or
physical effects, the recirculation plan required only half the coal
for heating that was needed for the fresh-air room. This enormous
saving, widely applied, would buy for children many things of
known mental and physical worth.

Glancing back over the propaganda for and against open-air
schools we are tempted to paraphrase Pinckney: ‘‘Millions for
defense but not one cent for’’.... the truth. There has never
been a really valid experiment to show whether open-air schools
are desirable or undesirable. It is undoubtedly true that anemic
pupils in open-air schools have more rapidly improved in weight,

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL EFFECTS OF FRESH-AIR 139

health, hemoglobin and the like, but the thinnest readers of this
article have a good chance of growing fat and hemogloby on the
sanitary and feeding schedule of the best open-air schools! Per-
sonally we are inclined to favor open-air schools, not for the sur-
plus of fresh air but because that seems to be the only way to
secure for a few pupils a scientific attention which should be the
privilege of all pupils. But such a policy is altogether too much
like the Chinaman who burned his house to roast his pig.

Not even the admirable experiments of the New York State
Commission on Ventilation tell us whether open-air schools are or
are not advisable. Open- air schools usually bring sunshine to their
pupils as well as fresh air. Furthermore the Ventilation Commis-
sion’s experiments used typical pupils as subjects. Though it does
not appear probable, it may be that anemic and diseased pupils
prosper better on fresh air than normal pupils. But as matters
now stand undiluted fresh air for children is on the defensive.
The only trustworthy experiments to date have gone against abso-
lute fresh air. Verily we are by nature Cave Dwellers still!

140 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK
By J. HOWARD BEARD, M. D.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

UBLIC health work is as old as history. Among the ancients
a part of it was purposeful; a part without intention,—both
were valuable in the preservation of mankind.

The Egyptians filtered the muddy water of the Nile which
rendered it potable, and in a measure prevented the spread of dis-
ease. Their custom of mummifying the dead by keeping them in
brine for seventy days, then drying and placing them in tombs in
the hills above the over-flow of the Nile was not without sanitary
significance. They had rules concerning meat inspection, bathing,
clothing, diet, and care of infants. Joseph’s Well near the pyramid
of Gizeh was excavated through solid rock for 297 feet, and is an
excellent example of their efforts to obtain pure water.

The ruins of antiquity show that large reservoirs were common
in ancient times. It is well known that the Chinese, for thousands
of years, have used alum as a coagulant in the clarification of muddy
water. The inhabitants of India, over 4,000 years ago, knew, ‘‘It
is good to keep water in copper vessels, to expose it to sunlight, and
to filter it through charcoal.’’

The Hebrews were the founders of public health work. Their
methods were influenced by the practices of the nations that lived
in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, and probably by Persia.
The Apostle Luke, a physician, says, ‘‘ Moses was learned in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians.’’ The Hebrews obtained excellent re-
sults in wholesome living by making hygiene a part of their religion.
The high priests were sanitary police. Their mandates covered
diet, the touching of unclean objects, prevention of contagious dis-
ease, isolation, disinfection, sanitary inspection, removal of nui-
sances, certain industrial practices, personal hygiene, and medical
jurisprudence.

The teachings of the Greek philosophers and physicians con-
tained principles which promoted the well-being of the people as
a whole. The laws of Solon and Lycurgus were especially helpful
in improving the health of the masses. The Spartan requirements
for warriors, the Olympic games and the emphasis placed upon the
winning of distinction in them, together with the prominence given

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 141

to physical perfection in sculpture, art and literature inspired the
youth to maintain a high degree of health.

The Romans were among the first of the ancients to provide
methods for good ventilation of houses. Cremation, systems of
drains and public baths were important contributions to sanitation
and hygiene. The cloacae of the Romans were the forerunners of
our sewerage systems. The great aqueducta, which brought fresh
mountain water to Rome, played an important part in the preven-
tion of epidemics. Their analogues are found today in the water
supply of New York which has its source in the Catskills and is
carried to the city by the Croton and Catskill aqueducts.

The Crusades, mis-rule, and innumerable wars prepared the
soil and sowed the seed of the great epidemics in the middle ages
which threatened man with extinction and gave the fatal thrust to
tottering civilizations. Crowded conditions, the bad sanitation of
the walled medieval towns, and gross immorality were the great
predisposing factors. Gorton tells us that as late as the 16th cen-
tury the English housewives swept the refuse from their dwellings
into the streets. People seldom bathed or washed their clothes.
Even eminent ecclesiastics swarmed with vermin. The garbage
was emptied into unpaved streets and ground to mush when it
rained. At nightfall shutters were opened and sewage poured into
the streets.

The intellectuals of Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople were
lost in a maze of theological controversy. Epidemics were regarded
as a ‘‘visitation from God’’ inflicted alike upon the innocent and
the guilty, to chasten a sinful world. As a result, no great effort
was made to prevent them. Humanity escaped from the severe
ravages of ergotism, scurvy, and influenza to be swept off by black
death. Bubonic plague appeared in 1346 and killed sixty million
people, over one-fourth of the earth’s inhabitants. Plague. visited
London many times and would have depopulated it had not the
people fled. Burning of the city killed the rats and reduced the
plague. In 1495 syphilis appeared at the siege of Naples in epi-
demic form. In a few years, it had spread over the world,—a sad
commentary on the morality of the time.

In the midst of the ravages of the plague, the first guardians of
public health were appointed, and quarantine was attempted. It
was tried in Venice and later extended to other Mediterranean
ports, and to the North and Baltic seaboards. Health ordinances
were promulgated and pest houses erected. During this period
leprosy was at the height of its virulence and leprosaria were
founded for the isolation of its victims. Each leper was compelled
to earry a rattle, and to give notice of his presence by sounding

142 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

an alarm. The crude quarantine of the middle ages became the
modern procedure based on scientific knowledge; the scavenger and
the nuisance inspector specially trained live again in the expert
sanitarians of today.

Although measures for the prevention of nuisances and for the
imposition of quarantine were adopted in colonial days, as far back
as 1647, it was not until 1849 that the State authorities began to
consider seriously their duties in connection with public health. In
May of this year the Governor of Massachusetts appointed a com-
mission under Lemuel Shattuck to ascertain the health needs of the
commonwealth and to make recommendations.

The Shattuck commission advised the establishment of a cen-
tral Board of Health charged with the general execution of the
health laws of the State, the creation of local Boards of Health,
the taking of a census of the people, and a systematic registration
of marriages, births and deaths. It recommended an investigation
into the cause of disease, abatement of the smoke nuisance, adoption
of means for public health education, and other far-reaching mea-
sures. The report of the committee to the legislature was pigeon-
holed for twenty years, but in 1869, the State Board of Health of
Massachusetts began work under a broad charter, which has been
the model for other states. In 1877 Illinois became the second
state to establish a Board of Health.

Permanent governmental health organizations in the country
came into existence to combat repeated outbreaks of cholera, typhus
and yellow fevers. They were created when disease was supposed
to have its origin in filth; when sewer gas and foul odors were
thought to be the cause of epidemics and night air to earry illness
and death.

SANITATION

Under the influence of the filth theory of disease, the efforts of
public health officials were concentrated on the abatement of nui-
sances by scavenging, by constructing sewers, and by building
water-closets. They enforced measures to prevent overcrowding,
to insure better housing, to promote ventilation, and to provide for
a supply of safe milk and of unpolluted water. Such was the nature
of public health work until the decade of the 80’s, when the rapid,
brillant discoveries of bacteriology, showing the relation of micro-
organisms to diseases, gave to the world a different conception of
the cause of contagion.

The ‘‘sewer-gas-foul-odor-night-air era’’ of publie health work
was one of considerable progress. In their vigorous attempts to
eliminate ‘‘emanations which polluted the air,’’ sanitarians made
great contributions to comfort, common decency, and public health.

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 143

We know now the safe disposal of sewage and the provision of
pure water supplies were great factors in the eradication of cholera,
and in the reduction of typhoid fever and the ‘‘diarrheas.’’ Less
crowded living conditions and cleaner houses did much to decrease
vermin and louse-borne typhus fever. General cleanliness may
have slightly diminished the incidence of disease spread by the
secretions from the nose and throat. It had little effect upon the
occurrence of yellow fever.

While the pioneers in public health did much for comfort, con-
venience, and civic betterment, their erroneous conception as to the
cause of disease has remained an unhappy legacy to succeeding
generations. There are many today who fail to distinguish between
filth, contaminated with disease germs, and unsightly rubbish, in
itself incapable of causing illness. Believers in sewer gas are not
entirely extinct even among the medical profession. Emphasis
upon air as a carrier of disease kept down bed-room windows and
delayed the building of sleeping-porches for several generations.
Fear of air-borne disease still causes a great waste of formaldehyde
gas in fumigation which is often more effective in the production
of psychic calm than in the destruction of pathogenic bacteria.

In 1893 Smith and Kilbourne brought to the attention of the
world the role of the tick in the spread of Texas fever in cattle.
Within a few years the relation of the mosquito to malaria and yel-
low fever, of the rat and the flea to plague, of the tsetse fly to
African sleeping-sickness, and of the louse to typhus fever were
shown. These discoveries of insect transmission of disease were of
as far-reaching importance to the world as those of Copernicus,
Columbus, or of Edison. Ross, Reed, Nicolle, Kitasato, MeCoy and
others showed insects to be the center of a system around which
revolved the great pestilences which have scourged the race from
antiquity. They did not discover unknown continents, but they
made it possible to create a new world within the tropics. The
practical use of their researches made the Panama Canal possible,
saved the South from yellow fever, reduced disease and increased
progress wherever the flea, louse, or mosquito are to be found.

The knowledge of the relation of insects to disease intensified
sanitation. Stagnant pools were drained or filled, swamps ditched,
rain barrels screened, and tin-cans destroyed to eliminate the
breeding places of the yellow fever and malaria producing mos-
quito. In sereening against the mosquito, the danger from the fly
was reduced. To prevent plague, the rat was destroyed along with
his fleas, to the great saving of food stuffs. Domestic sanitation and
personal hygiene made new progress, as it became generally known
that typhus fever was carried by the louse.

144 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

IsOLATION

Following the demonstration that communicable disease was due
to specific micro-organisms, over-emphasis on the environment as
the origin of disease gave way to control of man in preventing it.
Rules and laws for the isolation of patients and carriers were en-
acted. Enforcement of these regulations gave rise to compulsory
notification of communicable disease and the establishment of labo-
ratories to ascertain the presence or absence of the specific bacteria.
The length of incubation, the period of communicability, and the
manner in which the disease is transmitted became the factors
determining the length and nature of quarantine.

A great deal was expected from thorough isolation. Much was
accomplished, but careful observation soon revealed that complete
eradication of disease by this method was not to be realized. Isola-
tion with bacteriological control, in all probability, will eliminate
typhoid, paratyphoid, and the dysenteries. It has kept cholera be-
yond the seaboard, and in connection with sanitation, has made
typhus fever a comparatively negligible disease in this country.

The failure of the discovery of the cause of chickenpox, small-
pox, measles, German measles, and searlet fever make it impossible
to obtain the results first expected from isolation, because of the
inability to recognize all cases before they have become communi-
cable, and to determine with certainty the exact period at which
they cease to be infectious. For a similar reason mild cases and
carriers are missed. Scarlet fever and infantile paralysis present
typical forms which are frequently overlooked. Whooping cough
and mumps are often transmissible before symptoms are sufficiently
developed for diagnosis.

In dealing with sputum-borne disease, isolation is very helpful,
but often ineffective. The epidemic of poliomyelitis of 1916 taught
health officers their inability to suppress it. It was stopped by the
falling temperature of autumn rather than by the will of applied
science. Influenza swept the world in 1918 and burned out before
means could be found to control it. Meningitis exacted a deadly
toll in the armies of both Europe and America; measles, compli-
cated by pneumonia, proved one of the most fatal of diseases to
soldiers in cantonments.

Experience with isolation in the prevention of disease has shown
that to be effective it must be early. The failure to isolate promptly
the first patient cannot be off-set by the most rigid quarantine of
subsequent cases. Isolation has probably done a great deal to elimi-
nate virulent strains of many communicable diseases since they are
usually quickly recognized. ‘‘Every case of tuberculosis isolated
means an average of three less new infections.’’

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 145

Group PRACTICE

For centuries medical practice has been individual. The patient
sent for the doctor, was cared for by him, and paid the bill. As ht-
tle was known concerning the cause, method of spread, or means
of prevention of disease, the physician had little responsibility to
the community beyond the observing of a crude quarantine and the
giving of an opinion as to the relation of nuisances to illness. The
rapid advances in biology, chemistry and preventive medicine have
shown the social and economic aspects of disease, and are rapidly
changing medicine from being paramountly personal to predomi-
nantly public.

Tf a child should have infantile paralysis in a community, the
public would insist upon it receiving every consideration essential
to comfort and an early recovery, but the people would want to
be sure that the case was so managed that other children would
not lose their lives or be erippled for life. The citizens of any city
would be greatly interested in a single case of Asiatic cholera oe-
curing in their midst because it might prove the match for an ex-
plosive epidemic that would effect the lives of thousands and turn
millions in trade from the channels of business.

As a result of this public appreciation of the importance of dis-
ease, there have arisen numerous agencies endeavoring to prevent
accidents and illness in particular groups of individuals. These
organizations are rendering a fine service in the education of the
public, in the improvement of health, and in civie betterment, but
they greatly need to be correlated, and to be given responsibility
commensurate with their relative importance. It is essential for
them to become a unified force for health in order to secure a syn-
chronous attack upon disease with the best available methods.

MATERNAL AND CHILD WELFARE

The United States loses one mother for every 154 births, the
highest rate of the seventeen principal countries of the world. Over
23,000 women died in 1918 on the altar of maternity, at least 50 per-
cent. a needless sacrifice to poverty, ignorance, and inadequate
medical and nursing attention. The United States stands eleventh
in infant mortality, losing one in every ten during the first vear of
life, which is twice that of New Zealand, the lowest. In the United
States a new born child has less chance of living a week than a
man of ninety; of living a year than a man of eighty.

The great enemy of the mother and baby is poverty. The smaller
the wage of the father, the poorer the family, the greater the hard-
ships upon the mother, and the less the chance of the child to sur-
vive the first year. Income plays the chief role in locating the home
and in determining its kind. Low income often sends the mother

VOL. XivV.—/O

146 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

to work, substitutes artificial for natural food, encourages bad
housing, and promotes insanitary surroundings. Studies of infant
mortality, made by the Children’s Bureau in Waterbury, Con-
necticut, showed that children born in rear houses or in houses on
alleys had a death rate of 172 per 1000; those located on the street,
120.6. In Manchester, New Hampshire, the rate was 123, where the
number of persons averaged less than one per room, and 261.7
where they averaged more than two but less than three. The mor-
tality for babies whose mothers were employed outside of the home
was 312.9 per thousand while the rate was 122 for those whose
mothers had no occupation but the care of their households.

From surveys in small cities, in rural districts, and in the large
eity of Baltimore, it was found that regardless of color, race, or
nationality, the infant death rate varies inversely with the income
of the father. When the father’s income represents the ability to
insure care and comfort ($1850 a year or more), the death rate
was one-fourth as high as when the father’s earnings fell into the
lowest wage group ($450 or less).

Ignorance, as exhibited in the feeding and care of the infant,
is an important factor in the death rate. It is not, however, limited
to any one class of society, but operates most viciously in the
group whose means of defense are most weakened by poverty. The
mother, both ignorant and poverty stricken, is a menace because
she is socially helpless unless the community or a philanthropist
takes the responsibility of providing her adequate medical and
nursing care, proper instruction in hygiene of maternity and of
infancy, and decent housing.

Application of available knowledge will reduce maternal and
infant mortality by 50 per cent.; possible 75 per cent. The great
public health problem is to educate the individual to demand, and
the community to supply the necessary protection for mothers and
children by providing prenatal and postnatal clinics and maternity
hospitals or wards in a general hospital. It is necessary to supervise
rigidly the training of midwives, and to provide better education
for medical students in obstetrics.

A comprehensive plan in maternal and child welfare must in-
clude teaching and practical demonstrations for mothers in the
household arts essential to her welfare and to that of her child.
Consultation centers or welfare clinics for children must provide
for periodical examinations and instruction as to nutrition, health,
exercise, and recreation. It must take into consideration the wel-
fare of the defective, delinquent, and dependent children. It must
conserve the rights of children in reference to person, labor, educa-
tion, and law. It must guarantee the interest of the child will be
paramount in marriage and divorce, and that it shall receive justice
whether legitimate or illegitimate.

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 147

RuraL HEALTH WorK

It is estimated for the country at large that for every com-
posite group of 71 persons, one will die during the year ; two will be
in bed constantly ; thirty will have impairment of health, ranging
all the way from the person who is just able to be out of bed to
the one not quite up to normal; twenty-five will be what we call
healthy, while thirteen will have that vigor essential to rendering
dynamic the inspiration of high ideals. This general average ap-
plied to the rural sections which contain 48.1 per cent. of the popu-
lation of the country, makes it possible to visualize the problem
of rural health work and its relation to the ability of the rural
population to pursue its vocation effectively. As the rural popula-
tion feeds and clothes the state and is the foundation upon which
cities and industries are erected, its illness presents a striking phase
of the economies of disease.

The problem of rural health work can be successfully approached
only by education of the individual to appreciate the importance
of disease and to adopt the methods necessary to prevent it. The
most effective educational agency is an adequate county health or-
ganization directed by a full time health officer with a sufficient
number of properly trained public health nurses, sanitary in-
spectors and clerical assistants to do the work.

The first duty of the organization is the education of the public
in respect to hygiene and sanitation. To this end, lectures and
demonstrations are given, pamphlets and folders distributed, and
articles on live health topics are prepared for the county papers.
Exhibits are arranged in the schools and at the county fairs. The
assistance of the movie is obtained and cooperation is given to every
organization in teaching the facts concerning health.

Another important function of the county health organization
deals with the control and prevention of communicable disease. In
cooperation with attending physicians, the county health officer en-
forces the quarantine regulations of the state, determines the sources
of contagion, and in collaboration with the public health nurses,
visits schools and homes; in cooperation with teachers and parents
he institutes measures for prevention of disease, arranges for phy-
sical examinations of children, and advises as to corrective mea-
sures. The public health nurses carry out the follow-up work. The
health officer ascertains the occurrence of tuberculosis in the county,
adopts measures to prevent its spread, and arranges with local
physicians to establish clinies for persons with suspicious symptoms
of the disease.

As far as practical, each home in the county is visited by the
health officer, and a survey made of the construction and use of

148 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

latrines, the safeguarding of the water supply, and the handling of
milk. He inspects the screening and advises as to the means to be
employed for the elimination of the breeding places of the fly and
the mosquito. A nurse visits each house where bottle-fed children
are suffering from digestive disturbances, and gives instruction to
mothers in the essentials of home sanitation and infant care.

As only 56 per cent. of the 3,027 counties in the United States
have hospitals, a number of the directors of county health organi-
zations find it necessary to give considerable time to the creating
of public sentiment favorable to the establishment of adequate
hospital facilities or centers where clinics may be held. These
clinics are held in cooperation with the local physicians and with
specialists from the State Department of Health or from the state
medical schools.

INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE

The wide use of chemistry in industry, the substitution of steam
for water-power, the evolution of refrigeration, the increasing ap-
plication of very high temperatures in working metals, the neces-
sity of working in rarified and compressed air, the almost universal
use of electrical energy in the mechanical arts, the development of
rapid transportation, the extensive employment of artificial light,
the strenuousness of a machine-set pace, and the overcrowding in
manufacturing centers and in factories have produced new types of
illness, have intensified the ravages of communicable disease, and
have created industrial hygiene as an important branch of public
health work.

Far-seeing managers of modern industries have found it to be
as important to conserve, stabilize and render efficient their work-
ing forces as to prevent waste, adopt better methods of manufactur-
ing, or to improve their salesmanship. They have noticed that out-
put increases, their labor troubles diminish, and their overhead ex-
penses decrease where human and mechanical engineering are best
coordinated. They know that the most capable workman is healthy,
contented, and is able to do his work rapidly and well.

The number of industries that are establishing welfare depart-
ments to deal with their employees is steadily increasing. Greater
efforts are being made to improve the morale among workers by
providing better sanitary conditions in work-shops, and by the con-
struction of adequate safe-guards against accident, dust and fumes.
Men and women are given medical attention and surgical care
where the employer is responsible. Precaution is taken to prevent
and to control communicable disease.

Sanitary lunch-rooms are provided to furnish adequate food at
cost. The employees are given instruction in safety-first, first aid,

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 149

and hygiene. When the labor is monotonous and exhausting, ar-
rangement is made for rotation in work, period for relaxation per-
mitted, and time allowed for recuperation.

The director of industrial welfare gives advice to the employees
in the adjustment of social and financial difficulties. He endeavors
to provide profitable recreation, and he encourages thrift, domes-
ticity, and morality. There is a close relation between the home
and the community life of a man and his industrial efficiency and
reliability. While the worries which beset a workman are his pri-
vate affair, they take a great deal of his attention from his job at
the expense of his employer, and sooner or later become a problem
for his physician. Tactful advice leading to contentment and con-
structive living is neither meddlesomeness nor paternalism, —it
pays dividends to both employer and employee.

MeEpIcAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS

Preventive medicine does some of its best work in connection
with public schools. Proper medical supervision of schools includes
a school nurse service as well as medical inspectors. It applies to
buildings and to equipment, as well as to the mind and to the body
of the child. About twenty million children, nearly one fifth of
the population of the country, are compelled to spend, on an aver-
age, five hours a day in school one hundred and sixty-five days in
the year. Under such circumstances, as effective precautions should
be taken to insure ventilation, lighting, heating, proper furniture
and general sanitary conditions in the school to provide for the
child’s physical welfare as to enforce its attendance. It is obviously
unfair to require a child to occupy a seat likely to produce body
deformity or to study in a light that may impair its vision. It
is equally unjust to bring together a number of young persons at
an age when most susceptible to communicable diseases without
medical supervision, unless the school is to provide a great dis-
ease exchange for the community. It must be remembered that the
twenty million children of elementary-school age come in contact
more or less intimately, with approximately twelve million others
of pre-school age. These younger children are very susceptible to
infectious diseases and are in the age group in which eighty-five per
cent. of the mortality occurs.

When medical inspection is properly done, a disease history of
the child is obtained on entry, and a number of defects and funce-
tional diseases will be discovered on examination that may be cor-
rected. It provides a careful medical record preliminary to phys-
ieal training, will determine in what individuals corrective gym-
nastics are needed, and, by periodical examination, will ascertain
the physical progress of the child. The community should realize,

150 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

however, that it is of little value to spend money to discover de-
fects unless provision is made to remedy them when they are found.
Each school district should provide a dispensary service for school
children and parents must be educated to consult their family
doctor on questions of prevention before their children become ill.

PuHysicaL EKpucaTIon

Physical education is preventive medicine in action. It should
have for its purpose the development of the functional power of
the child to the highest level consistent with the most successful

raining of its intellect; it should meet the needs of the weak, who

require it most, as well as of the strong; it should be graded for
various ages; its progress should be determined by tests and mea-
sures of development, strength, agility, endurance and ability to do.
Its proficiency should be based upon well-defined accomplishments,
not upon certain periods of exercise.

In general, provision must be made for the physical education
of three classes of individuals: (1) the physically normal, (2) the
subnormal, (3) the abnormal and physically defective.

The physically normal individual should be required to take
general exercise, but should be encouraged to select some form of
sport and to acquire a fondness for it. In the primary school it
may mean games and outdoor exercise; in the high school or college
the development of an ‘‘athletic hobby’’ to keep him in ‘‘ fighting
trim’’ when required to lead a sedentary life.

The subnormal individual, underweight and understrength, for
his age, undeveloped but organically sound, will require special and
general exercise to meet the tests of normal. Having shown his
ability by passing the required efficiency tests, he may be further
educated in that group.

The abnormal group is composed of individuals distorted as to
posture or carriage, but who may become greatly improved by cor-
rective gymnastics. In this class are also those with heart lesions,
hernia, diseases of the joints, marked flat feet, ete. A’ considerable
number of these could be cured by proper surgery, and would be,
if their parents were so advised by a medical inspector in whom
they had confidence. All would be greatly benefited by special cal-
isthenics and other light forms of exercise under medical super-
vision. In many instances members of this group have been led
to attach too much importance to their condition. Nothing will
do more than safe, beneficial exercise to lift them from the despair
of chronic invalidism to the enthusiasm of physical well-being.

Physical education is a great antidote for antisocial tendencies.
It teaches temperance, self-control, courage and endurance. It
produces the ability to play the game to the end and to lose with a

PROGRESS OF PUBLIC HEALTH WORK 151

smile or to take victory with modesty and magnanimity. It Ameri-
eanizes and de-hyphenizes by the democracy of the playground and
by the catholicity of its games. It places the nation on the solid
foundation of physical soundness, morality, and vitality.

ORGANIZATIONS Promotine Pusiic HEauTa
Organizations promoting intelligent child labor legislation and
passage of wise laws improving working conditions, particularly
of women, are engaged in important public health work. Military
training, the Boy Scout and Camp Fire Girl movements and mass
athletics lead to physical vigor and constructive thinking. The
practical application of mental tests and careful study of factors
influencing their results stimulate interest in the social and physical
welfare of children in the largest sense. The creation of parks and
playgrounds provides fresh air, exercise, and shade essential for
the well-being of children, especially of small children. City zoning
tends to ventilate dwellings, to introduce sunlight into the home,
to reduce noise and to purify the air.- It leads to that restfulness

essential to complete recuperation from a day’s work.

THE DEMONSTRATIVE MretHop

Nothing equals in effectiveness a clear-cut demonstration of
what can be done. The International Health Board is actively en-
gaged in showing what results may be obtained by intensive prac-
tical application of preventive medicine. For example, it enters
a community where malaria is prevalent, and concentrates its at-
tack upon the disease by destruction of the breeding places of the
mosquito, treatment of persons with malaria, and by screening all
houses. It drains swamps, ditches, meadows, fills in or oils stagnant
pools, clears away underbrush, and stocks the creek with top min-
nows to eat the mosquito larvae.

Its agents in cooperation with the local health organizations,
visit every home in the community in search for defective drain
pipes, uncovered rain barrels, and for bottles, cans, or other objects
that may hold water in which mosquitoes may breed. The screening
of the house is examined and advice is given as to how to make it
most effective. If members of the family have malaria or give a
history suspicious of the disease, they are examined clinically, and
a course of quinine administered.

Such an intensive attack is invariably followed by a most sig-
nificant reduction in the occurrence of malaria. As every home is
visited, the work receives wide publicity. It becomes the chief topic
of conversation at the meeting of the sewing circle, on the golf links,
and at the corner grocery. On conclusion of his work, the director
summarizes his findings, estimates the cost, and shows that the pre-

152 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

vention of malaria saves both money and suffering. He calls atten-
tion to the increased value of the drained land and the general im-
provement in appearance of the community by the removal of the
underbrush and the stagnant pools. The people at first are skep-
tical, later become curious, and in the end are convinced that pub-
lic health work of this type is of immediate value to them. They
know what has been done and how it was accomplished, and are
usually ready to see that the proper measures are adopted to pre-
vent the return of the disease.

The intensive method has been widely used by the Rockefeller
Foundation in its campaign against malaria and hookworm. In
Framingham, Massachusetts, it is being utilized in the study and
prevention of tuberculosis. The United States Public Health Ser-
vice uses it in certain counties and towns for educational purposes
and it has been employed by other organizations in the promotion
of child welfare.

DIsEASE EXTERMINATION

In certain strata of the earth are to be found the remains of
animals and plants which once inhabited it, but were unable to
survive the conditions of their environment. They perished for
lack of food, could not adapt themselves to the variations of the
soil, could not withstand the unfavorable alterations of temperature
and moisture, or were unable to resist their enemies, both animal
and vegetable. It is within the power of man to so alter his living
conditions and to so change the environment of micro-organisms as
to enforce either their biological modification or extinction.

The virus of smallpox would have a hazardous existence in a
vaccinated world. The Schick test, toxin-antitoxin immunization
and antitoxin administration present to the virulent diphtheria
bacillus the problem of the American bison. Asiatic cholera and
typhoid fever await the coup-de-grace of sanitation and inoculation.
Successful warfare on the cootie brings extinction to typhus fever.
Malaria and yellow fever are ready for the fate of the dinosaur,
when means available are universally used in their eradication.
Bubonie plague, the giant of pestilences, takes its place with the
mastodon, when measures adopted to control it in America are
used throughout the world.

Economies, sociology, and preventive medicine point to a hun-
dred ways for the promotion of the public welfare,—to a thousand
paths for the successful pursuit of health and happiness. It is futile
to seek a far distant Utopia through a maze of ‘‘isms’’ and
‘“pathies,’’ when education to appreciate and to use the fruits of
the research laboratories of the world will produce those living con-
ditions and that healing which are the very essence of practical
Christianity.

ELECTRONS AND ETHER WAVES 153

ELECTRONS AND ETHER WAVES'
By Sir WILLIAM BRAGG, F.R.S.

| PROPOSE to ask you this evening to consider for a short time

one of the outstanding problems in physics. I am justified, I
think, in saying that so far it has proved insoluble, but for all that,
it lacks neither interest nor importance. It is important because it
relates to very fundamental things with which we are deeply con-
cerned, and as to its interest, it comes in many ways.

Man’s interest in radiation is naturally very old indeed. The
warmth of the sun, the light that it gives by day, and the hght
of the moon and stars by night, fill a first place in their importance
to him. When experimental science began to grow rapidly its first
efforts were devoted to an attempt to unravel the laws of propa-
gation of light and heat. Among the famous pioneers Newton
and Huyghens represented two opposing schools of thought. The
former advocated a corpuscular theory of light, the latter main-
tained that light consisted of a wave motion. Ina restricted sense,
the wave theory has completely triumphed; it explains the ordi-
nary phenomena of light and especially of the intricate effects
which depend on interference of waves with the greatest satisfac-
tion and precision. But, on a wider view of light phenomena, the
victory of the wave theory is not so absolute, for it is certain that
a great part is played by corpuscular radiations, the corpuscles
being the electrons of recent discovery. It seems that we must
admit the importance of each view and, to a certain extent, we
can accurately define the part that each must play: but, there is
one great exception. There is one problem in connection with the
interrelations of electron waves and corpuscles which seems to
ridicule all our attempts to understand it. If we could solve it we
should have made an immense advance, both in knowledge and in
our power of handling materials. We should perhaps have added
a new province to the realms of physical thought. And it iS
because of this obvious importance and because of our failures to
find the solution that I hope you will be interested in looking at
the question once again in the light of recently aequired knowl-
edge.

We are going to consider the relations between the energies

1 The Robert Boyle Lecture at Oxford University for the year 1921.

154 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

carried by ether waves and the energy carried by electrons. Let
us first set down the distinctive features of each form of radiation.
As regards wave radiation, we must say that the energy spreads
‘outwards and weakens as it spreads, just as a sound dies away in
the open air. And next we must add that all waves show the
extracrdinary phenomenon of interference. Two sets of waves
can tend to destroy each other’s actions at certain places and times,
making good such losses by increased actions at other places and
other times. By the aid of this principle, Young and Fresnel,
and a host of workers who have followed them, have built up
optical theories of great power and completeness. Note that the
characteristics of a simple wave are its length and its amplitude:
it has no others.

Corpuseular radiations have been obvious to us on the grand
seale only since the discovery of radium and of X-rays. Beside
the X-rays, the projection of helium atoms from the bursting
atoms of radio-active substances, we find in the general radiation
of radio-active substances streams of high speed electrons. The
main features of these rays which concern us now can also be
stated briefly :

Electrons are to be found everywhere forming part of every
atom. They can be set in motion by electric forces, as in the
X-ray tube, or they may be expelled from radio-active substances.
Such radiation like light radiation has qualities. The flying par-
ticles may be more or less in number, and the speed of each can
fall between wide limits. In other respects it is, at present.
assumed that they are all like each other. We have not been
acquainted with electron movements so long as we have been
acquainted with wave motions in ether. The reason is perhaps a
simple one:

An electron can only maintain a separate existence if it is
traveling at an immense rate from one three-hundredth of the
velocity of light upwards, that is to say, at least 600 miles a second
or thereabouts. Otherwise the electron sticks to the first atom it
meets. The action of a powerful induction coil and space to move
in freely, where there are no atoms to impede it, provide favorable
circumstances for observation, and we have only been able to
realize these conditions with sufficient success in more recent years.

We now know, therefore, radiation in two forms, and each is
independently full of interest. But it is the extraordinary con-
nection between them that is so fascinating and yet beats us when
we try to explain it. We have known for many years that there
is some connection between waves and electrons because light, espe-
cially of short wave length, can cause a discharge of negative elec-

ELECTRONS AND ETHER WAVES 155

tricity, that is to say, of electrons, from substances on which it
falls. This, which is known as the photo-electric effect, has been
earefully examined with a view to discovering relations between
the wave length of the ether radiations and the velocity of the
ejected electrons. But the experimental difficulties of obtaining a
close insight into the effect were always considerable until we had
to do with the new variety of light which Roéntgen discovered.
The very short wave length which is associated with X-rays goes
with a photo-electrie effect which is so greatly intensified that we
ean examine it in detail, and now the relation between wave and
electron takes on an importance which arrests attention.

We can take the question in two stages: in the first as a general
question. In the second we bring in effects which depend on
details of atomic structure.

The general question ean be stated quite simply. We have seen
that a wave motion is defined by two qualities. The one, the wave
length; the other the amplitude. When an X-ray falls upon any
material substance we find that electrons are ejected: the wave
radiation has produced an electron radiation. Hlectron radiation
has characteristics also, namely, number and speed. In what way
then are the characteristics of the waves related to the character-
istics of the electron movements which are excited by them? The
answer is simple but surely unexpected. The velocity of the
electron depends on the wave length only; the number of electrons
depends on the intensity, but not on the wave length. Moreover,
the relation between the wave length of the one radiation and the
velocity of the other is of the simplest kind. If we define the
wave length by stating the number of waves that pass by a given
point in a second and eall this number the frequency, then the
energy of the electron is equal to the frequency multiplied by a
constant quantity. This constant is not new to us, it had already
turned up in connection with investigation of interchange of
energy, where waves are concerned, and is well known as Planck’s
constant. That, however, need not concern us now.

The essential point is that a wave radiation falling on matter
of any kind whatever and in any physical condition, liquid or
solid or gaseous, hot or cold, causes the ejection of electrons. In
actual experiment we cannot usually examine the speed of the
electron at the instant of its production. We have generally to
wait for the electrons to get outside the body in which they arise
before we can handle them in our experiments. Those that have
come through the deeps of the material have lost speed by ceolli-
sion with the atoms on their way out. Consequently, we have in
response to the incidence of waves of a definite frequency, that is
to say, of so-called monochromatic radiation, an output of elec-

156 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

trons of various speeds ranging downwards from a maximum
which is given by the above-mentioned relation. There does not
seem to be any doubt that the electrons all had originally quite
the same definite speed, and that the differences in speed are
acquired subsequently.

In this process we see energy of wave radiation replaced by
energy of electron radiation. There is an exactly converse process.
If we direct a stream of electrons against any material substance
we can eall into being ether waves. They arise at the point of
impact and their quality is, in the general sense, determined by
the velocity which we have given the electron stream.

Among the waves so originated there are some whose frequency
is related to the energy of the individual electron m the electron
stream by the same constant as before. There are others of lesser
frequency, such as we might suppose to be originated by electrons
that belonged to the original stream, but have lost energy by colli-
sions with the atoms of matter. Here again, there is no doubt
that the electrons produce waves for which the frequency is exactly
determined by the use of Planck’s constant as above.

In order to realize the full significance of these extraordinary
results, let us picture the double process as it occurs whenever we
use an X-ray bulb. By the imposition of great electrical forces
we hurl electrons in a stream across the bulb. One of these elec-
trons, let us say, starts a wave where it falls. This action is quite
unaffected by the presence of similar actions in the neighborhood,
so that we can fix our minds upon this one electron, and the wave
which it alone causes to arise. The wave spreads away, it passes
through the walls of the bulb, through the air outside, and some-
where or other in its path in one of the many atoms it passes over
an electron springs into existence, having the same speed as the
original electron in the X-ray bulb. The equality of the two
speeds is not necessary to the significance of this extraordinary
effect ; it would have been just as wonderful if one speed had only
been one half or one quarter or any reasonable fraction of the
other. The equality is more an indication to us of how to look for
an explanation than an additional difficulty to be overcome.

Let me take an analogy. I drop a log of wood imto the sea
from a height, let us say, of 100 feet. A wave radiates away
from where it falls. Here is the corpuscular radiation producing
a wave. The wave spreads, its energy is more and more widely
distributed, the ripples get less and less in height. At a short
distance, a few hundred yards perhaps, the effect will apparently
have disappeared. If the water were perfectly free from viscosity
and there were no other causes to fritter away the energy of the
waves, they would travel, let us say, 1,000 miles. By which time

ELECTRONS AND ETHER WAVES 157

the height of the ripples would be, as we can readily imagine,
extremely small. Then, at some one point on its circumference,
the ripple encounters a wooden ship. It may have encountered
thousands of ships before that and nothing has happened, but in
this one particular case the unexpected happens. One of the ship’s
timbers suddenly flies up in the air to exactly 100 feet, that is to
say, if it got clear away from the ship without having to crash
through parts of the rigging or something else of the structure.
The problem is, where did the energy come from that shot this
plank into the air, and why was its velocity so exactly related to
that of the plank which was dropped into the water 1,000 miles
away? It is this problem that leaves us guessing.

Shall we suppose that there was an explosive charge in the
ship ready to go off, and that the ripple pulled the trigger. If
we take this line of explanation we have to arrange in some way
that there are explosive charges of all varieties of strength, each
one ready to go off when the right ripple comes along. The right
ripple, it is to be remembered, is the one whose frequency multi-
plied by the constant factor is equal to the energy set free by the
explosion. The ship carries about all these charges at all times,
or at least there are a large number of ships each of which carries
some of the charges, and externally the ships are exactly alike.
Also we have to explain why, if we may drop our analogy and
come back to the real thing, the ejected electron tends to start its
career in the direction from which the wave came. This is a very
marked effect when the waves are very short.

Dropping the analogy, how do the electrons acquire their
energy and their direction of movement from waves whose energy
and momentum have become infinitesimally small at the spot
where they are affected, unless the atom has a mechanism of the
most complicated kind? And if the intervention of the atom is so
important, why is it that in these effects a consequence of the
intervention does not depend upon each atom itself—whether, for
example, it is oxygen or copper or lead?

We may try another line of explanation and suppose that the
energy is actually transferred by the wave from the one electron
to the other. If it is the atom which pulls the trigger and causes
the transformation, then how does it happen that the whole of
the energy collected by the wave at its origin can be delivered at
one spot? Rayleigh has told us that an electron over which a
wave is passing can collect the energy from an area round about
it whose linear dimensions are of the order of the wave length.
But any explanation of this kind is entirely inadequate. What-
ever process goes on it is powerful enough on occasion to transfer
the whole of the energy of the one electron to the other. Nor can

158 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

there be any question of storing up energy for a long period of
time until sufficient is acquired for the explosion. For it is not
difficult to show that when an X-ray bulb is started and its rays
radiate out, the actual amount of energy which can be picked up
by an atom a few feet away would not be sufficient for the ejected
electron, though the tube were running for months; whereas we
find the result to be instantaneous.

I think it is fair to say that in all optical questions concerned
with the general distribution of energy from a radiating source
the wave theory is clearly a full explanation. It is only when we
come to consider the movements of the electrons which both cause
waves and are caused by them that we find ourselves at a loss for
an explanation. The effects are as if the energy were conveyed
from place to place in entities, such as Newton’s old corpuscular
theory of light provides. This is the problem for which no satis-
factory solution has been provided as yet: that at least is how it
seems to me.

No known theory can be distorted so as to provide even an ap-
proximate explanation. There must be some fact of which we are
entirely ignorant and whose discovery may revolutionize our views
of the relations between waves and ether and matter. For the
present we have to work on both theories. On Mondays, Wednes-
days, and Fridays we use the wave theory; on Tuesdays, Thurs-
days, and Saturdays we think in streams of flying energy quanta
or corpuscles. That is after all a very proper attitude to take. We
cannot state the whole truth since we have only partial statements,
each covering a portion of the field. When we want to work in any
one portion of the field or other, we must take out the right map.
Some day we shall piece all the maps together.

Meanwhile, even if we cannot explain the phenomena we must
accept their existence and take account of them in our investiga-
tions. We must recognize that wave radiation and electron radia-
tion are in a sense mutually convertible. Whenever there is one
there must be the other, provided only there is matter to do the
transforming. We do not yet know more than a little of the part
that this process of interchange plays, but we know that it is very
prominent when the waves are very short, or, what is the same
thing, the electrons moving swiftly. It is the movement of the elec-
trons in the X-ray bulb that originates the X-rays themselves. They
as waves pass easily through the wall in the tube and through ma-
terials outside: their energy finally disappears and is replaced by
moving electrons. It is the latter alone that produce directly the
effects which we ascribe to X-rays. We may suspect that similar
effects to these take place when the waves are long, but the cor-
responding electron velocities are so small that it is difficult to mea-

ELECTRONS AND ETHER WAVES 159

sure them or observe their effects. Nevertheless, the carrying for-
ward to these regions of experience gained elsewhere has led to ex-
traordinary results, as for example, in the theories of Bohr regard-
ing the relations between the structure of an atom and the radiation
it emits.

- T have spoken of the first stage in this examination of the rela-
tions between ether waves and electrons. May I now go one step
further and bring in certain curious and lately discovered relations
between the interchanges and the nature of the atom itself. All
that I have said before is mainly independent of atomic nature; I
want now to consider certain experimental results which are super-
imposed upon the former without in the least invalidating them and
which obviously have a first importance on our appreciation of
atomic structure.

When an X-ray of given wave length strikes an atom, it may
result in the ejection of an electron of equivalent energy as de-
seribed above. And in such a relation between wave length and
energy there can be no trace of any influence of the nature of the
atom. But it may sometimes happen that the energy instead of be-
ing handed over or transformed in one complete whole is trans-
formed in a series of successive stages, and these stages are really
characteristic of the atom. Let me give an illustration:

Let us imagine an X-ray of wave length equal to two-tenths of
an Angstrém unit (100-millionth of a centimeter), such as comes,
under ordinary circumstances, from a powerful X-ray bulb. It
falls on a silver atom; it may, as in the general process, preduce an
electron of energy equivalent to itself, but it may also divide up this
energy into two parts. One part is characteristic of the silver atom.
Tt is an amount which the silver atom is for some reason especially
liable to absorb or develop. It is peculiar to the silver atom, no
other atom absorbs just that quantity. Leaving out of account for
the moment the balance, let us follow the course of happenings to
this particular quantity of energy. It excites in the atom a series
of rays characteristic of the atom. These rays are divided into
groups characteristic of the atom, but of a general arrangement
whieh is the same for all atoms. It appears that the absorbed
energy is divided up between various rays, probably giving rise to
one out of each group, and in that way its whole total is spent.

These rays we now analyse with an X-ray spectrometer using a
erystal as our diffraction grating. It is by their use that we have
been able to study the architecture of crystals and to find the way
in which the atoms, under the influence of their mutual force, ar-
range themselves in crystalline form.

Going back for a moment to the balance, the difference between
the energy characteristic of the original X-ray and that amount of

160 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

energy which was used up in the way just described, this energy
it appears is found in the possession of an electron whose velocity
can be measured with accuracy. Here we have an extraordinary
instance of a partition of energy between wave and electron. We
find the action of a wave resulting in the initiation of both electrons
and waves, but the simple relation which we had in the general case
is only modified to a slight degree. There may be several items in-
stead of one in our balance sheet, but the balance is still good. This
action follows just as well as a consequence of the impact of an
electron having the necessary energy as it does from the incidence
of an X-ray in the way I have described. We should notice in addi-
tion that when X-rays or electrons fall short in their associated
energy of the amount characteristic of the atoms, there is no result
at all, and this is reflected in the fact that neither of them is ab-
sorbed in the atom so much as if they were respectively a little
higher in frequency or a little greater in velocity.

The curious and essential feature of all this mass of informa-
tion which I have been trying to put before you in a rough and
summary form is the interchangeability of ether waves and elec-
trons. Energy ean be transferred from one to another through the
agency of matter. The transference is governed by the simplest
arithmetical rules. In the exchange it is the frequency of the wave
which is to be set against the energy of the electron, and it is just
this that makes the greatest puzzle in modern physics. It is the
block at one point which is choking the entire traffic and on which,
therefore, all our interests must concentrate.

CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 161

CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD ONE HUNDRED
YEARS AGO

By GEORGE R. COWGILL, Ph. D.

YALE UNIVERSITY

HE recent appearance of a paper! discussing the chemical
changes which occur in the blood concomitant with various
disease conditions calls to mind a series of studies of this fluid
made one hundred years ago. In 1821, the leading Swiss scientist
of the time, J. L. Prévost, and his student, J. B. A. Dumas, who
became the foremost French chemist during the middle of the nine-
teenth century, published in the ‘‘ Bibliothéque Universelle, Sciences
et Arts,’’ volumes seventeen and eighteen, a series of three papers
entitled ‘‘Examen du Sang et Son Action dans les Divers
Phénoménes de la Vie.’” To the present-day mind these papers
are interesting not merely because they are accounts of studies
made one hundred years ago, but because they touch upon a va-
riety of topics, each of which in the course of a century ’s progress
has attained to a greater or lesser degree the rank of a separate
science. It would serve no purpose to point out the several paths
followed in this development; those who are at all familiar with
the history of the natural sciences, particularly chemistry, realize
that they must read the nineteenth century in its entirety if they
would know the complete story of that development.

In their earliest communication Prévost and Dumas state that
the relation of the blood to the nervous system is primarily the
subject of their research. Inasmuch as the changes occurring
in this master tissue were believed to be slight and difficult to
detect, the blood was made the special object of study. The first
paper of the series deals with certain purely physiological and
morphological aspects of the study together with an account of
some experiments concerning blood transfusion. In the second
article are presented the results of chemical analyses, while the
last communication deals essentially with the phenomenon of se-
cretion.

The conception of the general character of the blood as a fluid
containing many minute red globules suspended therein was an

1 Myers, V. C.: Journ. Lab. Clin. Med., V, 343 (1920).
2 XVII, 215, 294. XVIII, 208.

VOL. XIV.—/]/

162 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

inheritance from the early micrographers. Prévost and Dumas
were unable to see how the fiuid portion of the blood could in-
fluence the nervous system, and therefore easily persuaded them-
selves that a study of the red globules could furnish the desired
information regarding the action of the blood during life. In
the morphological studies which were made, the shape of the blood
corpuscles was the first point to receive attention. Sir EK. Home
had set forth the view in his Croonian Lecture for 1818 that the
red blood cells are spherical bodies ‘‘composed of a central globule
and a coloring-matter envelope.’’ During the latter part of the
eighteenth century Hewson had published an account of observa-
tions of the blood and had considered the corpuscles as flat plates
furnished with a ‘‘saillant’’ point in their center. By this ‘‘sail-
lant’’ point was doubtless meant what we now understand as the
nucleus, for, as Prévost and Dumas remark, Hewson was led to this
view as a result of examining the blood of the toad and the frog,
forms in which the erythrocytes are recognized by present-day
histologists as being nucleated. In order to determine which of
these two views was the correct one, Prévost and Dumas examined
the blood of forty-five different species of animals. Descriptions
were given for each sample and the corpuscles were measured. The
measurements were made by means of a camera-lucida arrange-
ment, the object being traced on the camera-lucida field and its
real dimensions deduced by a knowledge of the magnification em-
ployed. It is interesting to compare the diameter of the human
erythrocyte as determined by these investigators with that given
in modern textbooks. Prévost and Dumas obtained 6.6 microns
as their result while present-day textbooks state approximately
7.5 microns. The smallest value noted by these workers was 3.8
microns, this being the diameter of the erythrocyte in the goat
Capra Hircus.

Some of the conclusions reached were as follows: the globules
are circular in shape in all mammals, their size varying among dif-
ferent species; they are elliptic in birds with but shght variation
in size in this class; in all cold-blooded animals the erythrocytes
are elliptic in shape.

Blood transfusion as a therapeutic measure has had a long
history. The success of the operation was never assured, however,
until comparatively recent times; there were unknown factors op-
erating, when blood from one individual was introduced into the
vessels of another, which too often led to fatal results. This was
particularly true a century ago and earlier, when the blood of
animals was occasionally transfused into the human being. With

3 Philosophical Transactions, 1818, 172 & 185.

CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 163

the discovery by Prévost and Dumas that demonstrable morpho-
logical differences exist among the bloods of different animals,
it was natural for them to assume that such differences accounted
for the varying results obtained when blood was transfused. They
performed a series of experiments to test this idea. It was shown:
(1) that in general, transfusion of blood between animals of the
same species is a complete success; (2) that between animals having
‘‘olobules’’ of the same shape but of different dimensions trans-
fusion after severe hemorrhage results in only a partial relief of
short duration; while (3) injection of cireular ‘‘globules’’ into a
bird results in death following ‘‘violent nervous symptoms com-
parable to those obtained after the administration of the most
intense poisons.”’

In their chemical examination of the blood Prévost and Dumas
fixed their attention upon ‘‘l’albumine’’ of the serum and the
‘‘eoloring matter which surrounds the globule.’’ As would be ex-
pected, no very exhaustive examination of these substances could
be made considering the fact that suitable methods for analyzing
organic compounds were not available. The name ‘‘l’albumine”’
was being applied to a complex something contained in the blood
serum largely because it possessed the property of coagulating
under the influence of heat in a manner similar to egg-white, and
indeed, very little more was known concerning this substance. The
coagulation temperature of ‘‘l’albumine’’ of the serum was de-
termined to be 75° Centigrade.

Analyses of a general character were made upon the blood of
twenty different species of animals; both the whole blood and the
serum were analyzed for ‘‘eau, particules,’’ and ‘‘albumine et sels
solubles.’’ In analyzing different samples of blood from the same
animal it was noticed that the results did not always agree. It
was reasoned that under certain conditions the veins must absorb
considerable blood material; experiments were therefore performed
to see how quickly the animal body could regenerate blood. Sue-
cessive hemorrhages were made and the blood samples which were
drawn at intervals were analyzed. The only change worthy of note
was the content of corpuscles in the whole blood ; the difference was
slight, however, and Prévost and Dumas concluded that the veins
are able to absorb blood material rapidly. In the light of modern
physiology it would be said that these experimenters obtained a
decrease in the erythrocyte content of the blood. An examination
of the serum analyses submitted shows that remarkably constant

4This should doubtless be translated as ‘‘albumen,’’ which is used by

modern physiological chemists in a generic sense; it is quite clear, however,
that Prévost and Dumas considered ‘‘1l’albumine’’ to be a single substance.

164 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

values were obtained for the water and the albumen. The follow-
ing conclusions are of interest: (1) arterial blood contains more
“*particules’’ than does venous blood; (2) the blood of birds con-
tains relatively the largest number of ‘‘particules’’; (3) the blood
of mammals comes next and among them the carnivora seem to
have more than the herbivora, while (4) the cold-blooded animals
appear to possess relatively the smallest number.

Three experiments were performed in studying the coloring
matter of the blood.

*¢(1) When ashed in an open crucible . . . . there resuited a considerable
quantity of red powder more or less rich in peroxide of iron according to the
nature of the blood employed; (2) when treated by boiling nitric acid so as
to destroy the animal matter, a clear colorless fluid resulted in which a few
drops of prussiate of ammonia formed a large amount of blue precipitate;
(3) when dissolved by means of caustic potash and the resulting solution
boiled with prussiate of ammonia, a brown liquor was obtained, in which the
addition of a quantity of oxalie acid sufficient to saturate the potash brought
about a precipitate of a greenish-blue color, which was nothing else than the
albumen colored by the prussian blue.’’

All of these experiments confirmed the idea that the coloring
matter of the blood ‘‘est formée d’une substance animale en com-
binaison avec le péroxide de fer.’’ It was suggested that this ani-
mal matter might be ‘‘l’albumine’’ although the caution of these
authors prevented them from being dogmatic on this point; they
preferred to leave the question open for future research to decide.

When considering the phenomenon of secretion and the be-
havior of egg-white through which is passed a galvanic current,
Prévost and Dumas approached the problem with the formula
which was current at that time. The interesting topic of the day
was electricity. Davy discovered the power of the electric current
to decompose potash and soda in 1806; Oersted observed the effect
of an electric current on a magnet in 1819; Ampére followed this
in 1820 by showing that the direction in which a magnet moves de-
pends upon the direction in which the electric current flows rela-
tive to the magnet. This dominating interest in electricity in 1821
is easily revealed by a perusal of the volumes in which the papers
of Prévost and Dumas appeared; there are to be found papers
by such men as Ampere, Arago, Oersted, Davy and Faraday.

Prévost and Dumas were not immune against this electric virus;
they were interested in the experiments reported by an investi-
gator who had tested the effect of a galvanic current on egg-
white. The current had decomposed the egg- white, ‘‘the coagu-
lated albumen wandered to the positive pole, and the caus-
tic soda to the negative pole.’’ This experiment was inter-
preted by the students of that early day to mean “‘that the white

CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 165

of egg is to be regarded as an albuminate of soda with excess of
base.’’ Prévost and Dumas repeated this experiment and exam-
ined microscopically the coagulum which collected about the posi-
tive pole. They found globules similar to those found in milk,
pus, blood and muscle. This observation led them to make a gen-
eralization concerning the phenomenon of secretion.

Nous considérons la surface circulante de chaque organe sécréteur comme
douée d’une polarité constante en vertu de laquelle les produits de la séerétion
sont formés et isolés. Et si 1’on se rappelle que les mucus et les produits non
globuleux sont généralement alkalins; que, d’un autre coté le lait, le pus
trés-sain, le chyme, et les muscles, sont globuleux et acides, on reconnoitra la
plus grande analogie entre leur formation et celle des deux corps que nous
obtenons dans ]’experience galvanique sur 1’albumine.

Just as evolution has been the formula of the past half century
with which to explain all things, physical or metaphysical, animate
or inanimate, and appears about to give way to a new formula,
namely, relativity, so electricity was the formula one hundred
years ago. There is in the passage cited above, in which polarity
was brought into relation with secretion, simply an attempt at
using the formula of the time. Another very interesting use of
this formula is to be found in the closing chapter of Thomson’s
History of Chemistry published in 1830.

From the mouth the food passes into the stomach, where it is changed to
a kind of pap called chyme. The nature of the food can readily be distin-
guished after mastication; but, when converted into chyme, it loses its charac-
teristic properties. This conversion is produced by the action of the eight
pair of nerves, which are partly distributed on the stomach; for when they
are cut, the process is stopped: but if a current of electricity, by means of a
small voltaic battery, be made to pass through the stomach, the process goes
on as usual. Hence the process is obviously connected with the action of
electricity. A current of electricity, by means of the nerves, seems to pass
through the food in the stomach, and to decompose the common salt which is
always mixed with the food. The muriatie acid is set at liberty, and dis-
solves the food; for chyme appears to be simply a solution of the food in
muriatic acid.

The first definite proof—as far as the writer has been able to
determine—that urea exists in the blood was furnished by Prévost
and Dumas exactly one hundred years ago. In the third paper
of the series under consideration, these authors described certain
experiments in which both kidneys were removed from animals
(dogs, cats and rabbits). Analysis of the blood of such animals
showed the presence of a large amount of urea which was sepa-
rated by means of the nitrate method; the urea was identified by
determining its properties and by performing an elementary

5 Page 319.

166 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

analysis. H'rom the blood of unoperated animals, on the other
hand, no such substance could be isolated.

The significance of their discovery was fully appreciated and
the authors discussed its bearing on the theory of renal secretion.
The failure of other experimenters to show the presence of urea in
the blood of normal animals had been interpreted to mean that
the substance was not present in the blood but was formed in the
kidney ; the same idea of kidney function was held by Berzelius
who maintained that the kidney was the organ for oxidizing sulphur
and phosphorus (considered by him to be elements of albumin)
since sulphates and phosphates were found in the kidney secretion
in relatively large amounts but were absent from normal blood.
Prévost and Dumas concluded that urea was eliminated by the
kidney to a degree corresponding to its formation elsewhere in the
body: ablation of both kidneys, as had been performed in their ex-
periments, resulted in a failure of the body to eliminate this sub-
stance and consequently its accumulation in the blood in a quantity
sufficient to enabie its isolation and identification. This new point
of view, namely, that the kidney functions to eliminate substances
which are already present in the blood, they felt was supported
by the evidence obtained from the study of gout. The existence
of sodium ‘‘lithate’’ caleuli in the joints was considered as evi-
dence for the existence of sodium ‘‘lithate’’ in the blood. Since
the secretion from the kidney contained sodium ‘‘lithate,’’ it
was considered possible that the calculi form in the joints because
the blood contains too much for the kidneys to eliminate, and this
idea for many decades has been the principle underlying the
therapy of gout.

Prévost and Dumas thus enunciated a new view of kidney fune-
tion. That view has come down to the present as the working prin-
ciple which guides the physiological chemist in much of his work
on the chemistry of the blood and of the kidney secretion. In the
course of a hundred years, however, with the development of or-
ganic chemistry and the invention of methods there has appeared
such a refinement of procedure that micro methods have in a great
many cases taken the place of the more cumbersome—but not less
accurate—macro or gravimetric methods. Instead of the modern
physiological chemist being required to perform operations of a
drastic sort such as the complete removal of both kidneys, or com-
pelled to work with large quantities of material, or to perform
combustions over a coal fire, he takes, as is indicated in one of the
current methods,® such a small quantity as ten cubic centimeters

6 Folin and Wu: Journ. Biol. Chem., XXXVIII, 91 (1919).

CHEMISTRY OF THE BLOOD ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 167

of blood and analyzes it for non-protein nitrogen, urea, creatine,
creatinine, uric acid, and sugar, some of which are present in as
small quantities as a few milligrams per one hundred cubic centi-
meters of blood. To these might be added calcium, chlorides, phos-
phates, amino nitrogen, cholesterol and the acetone bodies and still
the list would be incomplete.

Following the lead of Prévost and Dumas, and others who might
be mentioned, the modern physiological chemist, armed with new
weapons for research, is pushing his chemical studies back beyond
the membranes of the kidney glomeruli and tubules to the blood,
and discovering relations of inestimable value to medical science.
The following words, written in 1821, are still worthy of attention
in 1921:

General hydropsy, hematuria and many other affections enter a new day
when considered from this particular point of view. The characters of the
kidney secretion acquire a very powerful interest in that they serve to indicate
the condition of the mass of the blood and the typical changes to which this
important fluid is subject.

For the scientist especially, the story of the past is the record
of progress in methods through which problems are approached
and in ideas which direct the activities of the investigator. He who
inherits by virtue of his scientific lineage all of the achievements
of by-gone days would do well not to exalt unduly his own efforts
or fail to appreciate his debt to those who laid the foundations
upon which the more modern structure is built. The substance
that seems relatively simple to the modern chemist has not always
appeared in this light; it has often been necessary to unravel a
mass of seemingly conflicting data in order to reveal this simplicity.
The chemistry of the blood in 1821 consisted essentially of a small
body of facts concerning the blood-clot, the coagulable proteins,
the coloring-matter, and a few soluble salts; the passing of a cen-
tury has resulted in the advancement of this particular branch of
knowledge almost to the rank of a separate science. The only
standard by which the work of the present may be compared with
that performed one hundred years ago is that of the scientific
method itself; that our fore-fathers in 1821 used this method well
is certified by the fact that their results have stood the test of time;
whether or not the contribution of 1921 shall possess the same clear
title to longevity depends upon the degree of keen insight into
problems, the skill in the use of methods, and finally the measure
of self criticism which may be existent among the present genera-
tion of investigators.

168 THE SCIENTIFC MONTHLY

ENUMERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO
POPULATION

By Dr. KELLY MILLER

HOWARD UNIVERSITY

HE Bureau of the Census was established for the purpose of
enumerating the population of the United States, and for the
collection and collation of other statistical data bearing on the
social welfare of the nation. The government bases its caleula-
tions upon the information furnished by this bureau. The basis
for congressional representation, military conscription and other
federal regulations are based upon the census enumeration within
the limits of the several states. Publicists and social philosophers
base their conclusions upon the same data. It is, therefore, a
matter of the greatest importance that the enumeration should
be reliable and trustworthy. The Bureau of the Census ranks as
a scientific department of the government. Constantly repeated
errors of this bureau tend to impeach its scientific reputation and
to vitiate the conclusions based upon its output. Numerous com-
plaints have been made by competent critics not only repudiating
the results, but also impugning the motive. Manipulation in be-
half of sectional and partisan advantage has been freely charged.
Senator Roger Q. Mills, in an article in The Forum, bitterly com-
plained that the south was deprived of its due quota of representa-
tion by the imperfection of the enumeration of 1890. Indeed,
the alleged inaccuracies of the eleventh census provoked a flood
of condemnatory literature.

Various enumerations of the negro population by the Census
Office since 1860 have not been very flattering to the scientific repu-
tation of that bureau. These enumerations have been not only
inherently erroneous, but so conflicting and inconsistent as to de-
mand caleulated corrections. It may be taken for granted that
the enumerations up to 1860 were reasonably accurate and re-
liable. The negroes, up to that time, were in a state of slavery,
and the master had merely to hand the lst of his slaves to the
enumerator, just as he would the list of his cattle or other forms
of chattel. There was every facility and every reason for accurate
returns. The negro population up to 1860 was inflated by im-
portation of slaves from Africa, and, consequently, it was impos-

ENUMERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO POPULATION 169

sible to check the accuracy of the count by the ordinary statistical
tests. Beginning, however, with the census of 1870, this popula-
tion has been cut off from outside reinforcement and has had to
depend upon its inherent productivity for growth and expansion.
It, therefore, becomes an easy matter to apply the ordinary statis-
tical checks to test the accuracy of enumeration.

It is conceded that the enumerations of 1860, 1880, 1900 and
1910 were accurate within the allowable limit of error. Accord-
ing to these enumerations, the growth was more or less normal
and regular, and conformed to the requirements of statistical ex-
pectation. But the enumerations of 1870, 1890 and 1920 are so
flagrantly discrepant as to demand special explanation and cor-
rection. A miscount at one enumeration upsets the balance for
two decades. If it be an undercount, it makes the increase too
small for the preceding decade and too large for the succeeding
one. Accordingly, the only consecutive decades upon which we
can rely for accuracy concerning the growth of the negro popu-
lation would be the 1850-1860 and 1900-1910. In order to escape
obvious absurdities, the figures for the other decades must be sup-
plied by reasoned interpolations. The mere exhibit of the several
enumerations by the Census Office will convince the student of
their inherent improbability.

Necro POPULATION AT EAcH CENSUS, AND DECENNIAL INCREASE, 1860-1920
Decennial Per cent. of

Wear: Number. Increase. Inerease
eso 9 Ea eid ee a eR 4,441,830 803,022 22.1
a ES57 PSC AEN SE EA VAL ate FIL BASE AAAS 4,880,009 438,179 9.9
PSS Ole rity Leer POLE Ne eee lay 6,580,793 1,700,784 34.9
SG Oe ee AAA COD Nes A 7,488,676 907,883 13.8
IIS | eeieeh oie UR RST Pe I RL 8,833,994 1,345,318 18.0
ELT eee EE IN eR EE Ce 9,827,763 993,769 11.2
OD, Ocean OEE Say SUM AINA 2, 10,463,013 635,250 6.5

The irregularities of these figures are as whimsical as if pro-
duced by the sport of the gods. The normal growth of population
uninfluenced by immigration or emigration shows a gradual in-
crease in decennial increment and a gradual decline in the rate
of increase. Wherever there is found to be a wide divergence
from this law, it must be accounted for by special contributory
influences. The column giving the decennial increments, instead
of showing a gradual behavior, jumps back and forth with unae-
countable capriciousness. A sudden drop from 803,022 to 438,179
is offset by an alarming rise to 1,700,784 for the next decade, when,
lo and behold; there is a swift decline to 907,883 for the following
ten years. We look aghast at the upward bound to 1,345,318,
thence a downward drop to 993,769, followed by a still further

170 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

startling decline to 635,250. It makes the head swim to try to
keep track of such whimsical variations. The decadal increase
per cent. shows similar irregularities. The rhythmical rise and
fall of these figures impresses one as the alternate up and down
motion of boys playing at see-saw. Why should the ordinates of
a curve, which should move smcothly downward, drop suddenly
from 22.3 to 9.9, then rise to 34.9 and drop again to 13.9, then
rise to 18.0 and decline again to 11.2 with a final slump of 6.5?
Such variability has perhaps never been experienced by any human
population. The internal evidence of error is overwhelming. The
Census Bureau has sought to make corrections for the evidently
erroneous enumerations of 1870 and 1890. But the equally dis-
erepant figures of 1920 remain so far indisputed.

The census of 1870 has been universally discredited. The
greatest error of enumeration falls, naturally enough, on the negro
race. This race had just been set free, and had not reestablished
itself in definite domiciles. Political conditions in the South were
in the fiux and flow of readjustment. The machinery of the Cen-
sus Bureau was not sufficiently efficient to cope with so complicated
a situation. Statisticians, recognizing the evident error, have tried
to correct the mistake by statistical computation. The Census
Bureau estimates the error in the negro population for the decade
to be 512,163. An acknowledged error of a half million, it would
seem, would put this bureau on the lookout for similar errors in
the future. But the census of 1890 was notoriously faulty. Here
again the undercount, it is obvious, fell mainly in the South, and
largely among the negro population.

The Census Bureau, in commenting upon the apparent irregu-
larities of returns for 1890, states: ‘‘According to the returns,
the rate from 1880 to 1890 was very much lower than even the
last rate, that of 1870-1880, and the rate for 1890-1900 was much
higher than during the preceding or succeeding decade. Such
abrupt changes in a class of the population which is not affected
by immigration seem very improbable and almost force the con-
elusion that the enumeration of the negroes in 1890 was deficient.
In the special volume on ‘‘ Negro Population of the United States
1790-1915,’’ the director further declares:

The presumption of an undercount at the census of 1890, therefore, rests
upon the improbability of the decennial rates of increase themselves as devel-
oped from the census returns; the inconsistency of the indicated changes in
the rates from decade to decade with the changes in the proportion of children
in the negro population, and upon the improbability of the decennial mortality
indicated for the decades 1880-1890 and 1890-1900..... The number of

omissions at the census of 1890 cannot be accurately determined, but it would
seem to be a fair assumption that the decline in the rate of increase from

ENUMERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO POPULATION 171

deeade to decade was constant, and that the rate fell off in each of the two
decades 1880-1890, 1890-1900 by approximately the same amount. On this
assumption, the probable rates of increase for the four decades, 1870-1910, are
22.0, 17.9, 13.8, 11.2. ... A rate of 17.9 per cent. for the decade 1880-1890
would give a negro population in 1890 of nearly 7,760,000, which, in round
numbers, exceeds the population as enumerated at the census of 1890 by
270,000. This is probably the number of omissions of negroes at the census
of 1890, on the assumption that the retardation in the rate of growth in the
20 years 1880-1900 was constant.

By making the estimated correttions for acknowledged error
in the counts of 1870 and 1890, decadal growth from 1880 to 1890
would be reduced and from 1890 to 1900 increased, so as to pro-
duce reasonable conformity with the laws of normal growth. A
gradual decline in the rate of growth from 22.3 per cent. to
11.2 per cent. in 60 years will prove that the negro element con-
forms to the regular law of human population. This decline would
appear even more gradual if we consider that the rate of 22.1
from 1850 to 1860 was contributed, in considerable measure, by
African importation. The Census Bureau offers the following
table with corrected numbers for 1870 and 1890:
Necro PorpuLATION: DECENNIAL INCREASES, WITH ESTIMATED ALLOWANCES

ror 1870 AND 1890
Decennial Per cent. of

Year. Number. Increase. Increase.
TAG) sah te ea eee Raia alas 9,827,763 993,769 11.2
BDO eae ee ee ee ane 8,833,994 1,073,994 13.8
TSEC) eo ee rr evecare ee aa 7,760,000 1,179,207 17.6
NSS (edaie Pee EL Seals See 6,580,793 1,188,621 22.0
ESS 7 iO estmek ie eee Pests Se SORE Cee 5,392,172 950,342 21.4
ES 6 rae a, Ae eA Rar be 4,441 830 803,022 22.1

According to the recent bulletin issued by the Bureau of the
Census, the negro population showed a surprising and unexpected
decline during the last decade. In 1910 there were 9,827,763
negroes, and in 1920 10,463,013, giving a decadal increase of
635,250 or 6.5 per cent. If these figures were added to the table
corrected to 1910, the disparity would be as glaring as any which
has yet come from the Census Bureau. The sudden drop in de-
eadal increase from 993,769 to 635,250, or from 11.2 per cent. to
6.5 per cent., is so strikingly out of harmony with the more or less
regular movement of the table as to call loudly for correction or
explanation. The table shows a gradual decrease in the decen-
nial increment from 1880 to 1910, a decline of 194,852 in three
decades. But now we are called upon to accept a sudden decline
of 358,519 in a single decade.

The decennial rate of increase dropped from 11.2 per cent.
between 1900 and 1910 to 6.5 per cent. between 1910 and 1920,

172 THE SCENTIFIC MONTHLY

whereas we should have expected a gradual decline of not more
than 1 or 2 points. On the face of the figures it seems probable
that the Census Bureau has again committed an error in the enu-
meration of the negro population. As this bureau has admittedly
committed grave errors in enumeration of the negro population
in two preceding censuses, it is but reasonable that the obvious
discrepancy can be most reasonably accounted for by an error in
the present count.

Aside from the internal evidence itself, there is sufficient rea-
son to suppose that this count might have been erroneous. The
mobile negro population has been greatly upset by the world war.
There was a mad rush of negroes from the South to fill the vacuum
in the labor market caused by unsettled conditions. Thousands
of negro homes were broken up and their members scattered with-
out definite residential identity. In the cities especially, it seems
probable that the count was greatly underestimated. The negro
migrants lived for the most part in improvised lodgings and board-
ing houses whose proprietors had little knowledge and less interest
in the identity of the boarders. The census official, visiting such
boarding houses with a large number of negro boarders would, in
all probability, receive an inaccurate underestimate by the ig-
norant and uncaring proprietors. As an illustration of such in-
accuracy, I cite a quotation from an editorial of the Dispatch of
Oklahoma City:

If the census enumerators over the United States were as careless in the
count as they were shown to be by this publication during the poll of the
population last year, the general charge is right that the black man has made
a much larger numerical advance than the official, yet faulty, records show.
It wili be remembered that the Dispatch made the charge during the enumera-
tion that there was a laxness and really seeming desire to overlook the black
man in this city. Our charge was printed in the daily papers. To cap it all
off, the irate enumerator in the section of the city where the Dispatch is
located, appeared on the evening that the charge was published, and demanded
of the editor the basis of the charge. We took him out into the 300 block on

East 2nd Street and found 33 black men whom he had not counted, folk who
told him so, and whose names he did not have on his lists.

If a presumption of undercount was justified by the statistical
indication for 1870 and 1890, surely a like presumption would ob-
tain for the census of 1920. There are but three methods of ac-
counting for this sudden slump in the growth of the negro popu-
lation. First, an undercount of the Census Bureau, second, a
sudden increase in the death rate, and third, a decrease in the
birth rate of the negro population.

It is known that the death rate of the negro is decreasing rather
than increasing under improving sanitary conditions and general

ENUMERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO POPULATION 173

social environment. The Director of the Census states that ‘‘the
death rate has not changed greatly.’’ Instead of adhering to the
‘‘fair assumption’’ of a steadily declining rate of increase, as
was done for the faulty enumerations of 1870 and 1890, the Di-
rector of the Fourteenth Census accepts the violent leap from
11.2 to 6.5 and endeavors to vindicate the count of 1920, by as-
suming a sudden decrease in negro birth rate.

On this point the Census Bureau explains:

The rate of increase in the negro population, which is not perceptibly
increased by immigration or emigration, is by far the lowest on record. This
element of the population has been growing at a rapidly diminishing rate
during the past 30 years, its percentage of increase having declined from 18
per cent. between 1890 and 1900 to 11.2 per cent. during the following decade
and to 6.5 per cent. during the 10 years ended January 1, 1920. Such data
as are available as to birth and death rates among the negroes indicate that

the birth rate has decreased considerably since 1900, while the death rate has
not changed greatly.

The statement, “‘this element of the population has been grow-
ing at a rapidly diminishing rate during the past 30 years,’’ that
is, since 1890, presupposes the accuracy of the census of 1870,
which presumption the census office itself discredits in a previous
statement. It entirely overlooks the fact that the rate rose sud-
denly from 13.8 for 1880-1890 to 18.0 for 1890-1900. With the
indicated corrections the rate of increase has declined within the
expected limits of fluctuation from 22 per cent. for the decade
1850-1860 to 11.2 per cent. for the decade 1900-1910, making a drop
of 10.8 points in 6 decades. The sudden downward drop by 4.6
points in a single decade certainly calls for a more satisfactory
explanation than a sudden and unaccounted for decrease in birth
rate. The only statement which the Census Bureau vouchsafes
to account for this rather startling conclusion is a very hesitant
and uncertain one:

Such data as are available with regard to birth and death rate among
negroes indicates that the birth rate has decreased considerably since 1910,
but the death rate has not changed greatly.

On examining the data on which this conclusion is based, we
find that they are wholly insufficient to justify the sweeping con-
clusion imposed upon it. The mortality statistics are based upon
returns from the registration area. Only five southern states are
now included in the area, namely, Maryland, Virginia, North Caro-
lina, South Carolina and Kentucky, from which birth and death
rates are collected annually, and even these states were not ad-
mitted to the birth registration area in 1900. So that the compu-
tation of birth and death rates for the colored population of these
states is neither adequate nor convincing.

174 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Birte Rate or Necro PoruLaTion 1N SPECIFIED REGISTRATION STATES, 1900
AND 1919 (CoMPARATIVE)
BIRTH RATE

STATES AND COLOR 1900 1919
Maryland:

LD tht fake Sate ns 8 SR air RR ere Pee Emaar Sit Bae PAS pa 19.0

OTC a nae eae ee nee nat ae Beene 27.9 26.7
Virginia:

SUVs Tbe eee tne coe yo Ee A eee 31.5 25.9

WOLOTEC eee ee ee en ee eee 33.1 27.8
North Carolina:

SWI FO eee re hs Fe Ee Ae eee 34.3 29.3

GOlLOTOC We ee he, ek es Ret 2 ene 36.5 28.5
South Carolina:

AW ili beater pier ne ei ae eee sts a 32.3 2

Colored) 2s Pen Ye.) as ede oo ee Re 38.2 26.2
Kentucky:

AV Pets see eas ek ie ee le 24.7

Colored tree ar Fs be ee A ee eee ee 25.2 ier

Those are the only heavy negro states within the registration
area.

These states were not all included in the registration area for
1900. Mortality statistics in the non-registration area are noto-
riously inaccurate and unreliable. Birth registration is especially
unsatisfactory even in the registration area.

Return of negro births would naturally be most inaccurate.
Negro births, especially in rural and small urban communities are
not always attended by regular physicians or certified health
officials. The midwife still plies her trade. There is a relatively
large number of illegitimate births among negroes. Official re-
turns in such cases would not be apt to be rendered fully for pru-
dential reasons. It is therefore evident that the rapidly declining
birth rate revealed by the census is based upon noncomparable
and inadequate data.

Even the apparent rapid increase in the white death rate
awaits fuller explanation before the figures can be relied upon
with assurance. It is curious to note that the birth rate among
the whites in South Carolina fell from 32.3 in 1900 to 27.1 in 1919,
the death rate rising but slightly from 10.4 to 10.6 during the
same interval. And yet the white population of that state in-
ereased from 557,807 in 1900 to 818,538 in 1920. There was a
vigesimal increment of 250,731 with little or no reinforcement
from immigration. This unexplained increment in the white pop-
ulation seems also to discredit the reliability of the recorded mor-
tality statistics within the states so recently added to the regis-
tration area.

Tt is well understood that these states, except South Carolina,

ENUMERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO POPULATION 175

have shown a comparatively slow rate of increase in negro popu-
lation for 30 years preceding the census in question. The facts
are indicated in the following table:

DECENNIAL RATE oF INCREASE OF THE NEGRO POPULATION IN CERTAIN REGIS-

TRATION STATES: 1880 To 1910
RATE OF INCREASE

NAME 1890 1900 1910
PaLOB chests Ris) eh ots eee ek SEER se Uh bale Tid a ore 13.5 18.0 11.2
Misr yilrred 4) 5.2 he sae te eee aE evan e ly ato 2.6 9.0 —1.2
AVS genie? 4 | eo See et ee eee et ee REL) 6 4.0 1.6
North yy) Caxolinaly-tn a eemnrent snare £ ese inde oi It) 5.6 AGES} tars
NOuthy Caroling eee: sea eee ere oar ea 14.0 13.6 6.8
TES OMG 17 Cay ibs aco ea LE LB OT —1.2 6.2 — 8.1

From the table it will be seen that the increase in negro popu-
lation in the southern states within the registration area has been
considerably lower than that for the country at large. In Mary-
land, there is an actual decline in the negro population of 1.2 per
eent, from 1900-1910 and the small gain of 2.6 from 1880-1890.
In Virginia the highest rate of increase during the past 30 years
was 4 per cent. In Kentucky there was an actual decline for two
of the three decades. The low rate of increase in the border states
is due to the large emigration of the negro from these states to
the nearby northern states and cities. It is well known that the
negro who migrates to the North and the large cities is made up
of younger people of both sexes who, if they had remained at home,
would naturally tend to increase the birth rate.

The low birth rate revealed by the census in these states is
due to the migration of the negro population of reproductive age
from those states within the registration area. This, of course,
does not affect necessarily the birth rate of negro population as a
whole. A better view of the birth rate of the negro population
may be secured by considering the growth of this population in the
more typical southern states not so much affected by migration
during the same period.

DECENNIAL RATE OF INCREASE OF THE NEGRO POPULATION IN CERTAIN Non-
REGISTRATION STATES: 1880-1910

NAME 1890 1900 1910
MIG U S taAbes yan eee eee eet ee UBS) 18.0 12
Georgia). tee kee een es ede CP DON ee 18.4 20.5 13.7
PAN aaa 8 Sebi At oh aoe a Be UeeL cela ae OLN 13.1 21.9 9.8
(MESSISSIp PU! |s.2- cette ees ee Ce eee es Res 14.2 22.2 11.2
d Boy aU Esr ee; Rh eaMeeeaneieaey ee aie LOY BMY BAIS OER UC Re tur 15.6 16.4 9.7

Thus it will be seen that four heavy negro states, with an ag-
gregate negro population of nearly four million, shows a rate of
increase far greater than those in the registration area. The in-

*Footnote: Exclusive of population especially enumerated in 1890.

176 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

crease in those states was due wholly to the excess of births over
deaths. But this does not tell the whole story. While the stream
of migration was not so pronounced from these states as from the
northern tier of southern states, still there has been a considerable
northern movement for the past three or four decades.

From a comprehensive view of the whole situation, it seems
perfectly clear that the sudden decline of the negro population
as revealed by the census of 1920 is due to miscount rather than
to the declining birth rate. If we should estimate an error in
count of 300,000, scarcely greater than that conceded by the Cen-
sus Bureau itself for the count of 1890, the negro population dur-
ing the past 60 years would have followed more or less consist-
ently the ordinary laws of growth. Let us accept the substan-
tial accuracy of the census of 1860, 1880, 1900 and 1910 and esti-
mate the error for 1870 at 512,163, for 1890 at 270,000, as con-
ceded by the Census Bureau, and Jet us still further allow an error
in the count, 300,000 for 1920, as here suggested. The growth of
the negro population since 1850 will be as follows:

NeEGEO POPULATION
Decennial Per cent. of

Number. Increase. Increase.
IC a Shh ss ee he 10,763,013 935,250 9.6
AD Nhe 8 oh Pa 9,827,763 993,769 iia bebe
TICS PARE eae a ri ae Aiea 8,833,994 1,073,994 13.8
ES OO) tres Ea ge ee ted 7,760,000 1,179,207 17.6
fo fo) UME ase eae en 6,580,793 1,188,621 22.0
E70 Reet eae oo ade 5,392,172 950,342 21.4
BS GO ees reas Oa see ede Ie 2 ace 4,441,830 803,022 221

The table makes the negro population behave more or less
normally, and is certainly more reasonable than the startling de-
viation revealed by the face of returns, and the explanation is
more acceptable to reason than that urged by the Census Bureau,
of a sudden and unexplainable decline in the negro birth rate.

It is a source of surprise to note that the American mind seems
to expect that any fact which affects the negro will deviate from
the normal course of human values. It is prone to accept with
satisfaction wild assertions and unsupported theories, without
subjecting them to the test of logic and reason. If it is seen in
the Census, it is so. Any statement issued upon the authority of
the government which seems to be belittling to the negro will be
seized upon by would-be social philosophers and exploited through-
out the nation to the disadvantage of the race.

De Bow, relying upon the low rate of increase in the negro
population, revealed by the census of 1870, proved to the entire
satisfaction of those who were satisfied with this type of proof

ENUERATION ERRORS IN NEGRO POPULATION UE

that the negro could not withstand the competition of freedom
and would, forthwith, fall out of the equation as an affected factor.
The census of 1880, showing the unheard of increase of 34 per
cent., set all of De Bow’s philosophy at naught. But thence arose
another school of philosophers which declared that this unheard of
increase in the negro population threatened the numerical as-
cendaney of the white race, and, therefore, the black man should
be returned to Africa from whence his ancestors came. The cen-
sus of 1890 refuted this conclusion by showing only an increase
of 13.8 per cent., but, no whit abashed, another type of anti-negro
propagandism arose, declaring that the rapid decline in the race
indicated inherent, degenerative physical tendencies threatening
to the health and stamina of the American people. The census
of 1900, showing a rise of decadal growth to 18.0 per cent., pro-
duced a calm in the domain of social speculation. But the preced-
ing prophecies of evil are still of record. It seems to be the nature
of the prophet to ignore the failure of the fulfillment of his
prophecies.

It is particularly unfortunate that such loose and unscientifie
propaganda can be bolstered up by data from governmental docu-
ments which the uninquiring mind is disposed to aecept with the
authority of holy writ. The calamity philosophers have already
dipped their pens in ink to damn the negro race to degeneration
and death by reason of the latest census figures. The thought, and
perhaps the conduct, of the nation may be misled on the basis of
erroneous data, backed up by governmental authority.

The broader question arises in the scientific mind. If the data
on negro population furnished by the census can not be relied
on, as is clearly shown by past enumerations, what assurance is
there that collateral information, such as death rate, birth rate,
occupation, illiteracy, ete., are to be given full credit and confi-
dence. The negro problem is the most complicated issue with
which we have to deal. Straight thinking and sound opinion based
upon accurate data are absolutely necessary to enable us to reach
any conclusion of value. The Census Office has now become a per-
manent bureau, which, it is hoped, will take rank with other scien-
tific departments of the government.

Statesmen and publicists should have serious concern about
the accuracy of negro statistics in view of the importance of the
political and sociological conclusions based upon and derived
from them.

VOL. XIV.—/2

178 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

WEATHER CONTROL
By Professor D. W. HERING

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

T is not in human nature to suffer from a prolonged or repeated
| evil without seeking for a remedy. Severe weather of any
kind—heat, cold, rain or drought—if long continued causes dis-
tress and the only way to escape the ill effects of such extremes is
to control the weather, either to mitigate it when it is becoming
too severe or to take proper measures in advance to secure the
kind of weather that is wanted. Savages and unenlightened peo-
ples have resorted to all sorts of charms and incantations ; to medi-
cine-men, rainmakers, rain-gods, ete. These mummeries have been
the subject of many articles and some elaborate treatises. The cere-
monies are often curious and ingenious; some are grossly super-
stitious and others are mere chicanery, but usually the method of
the rainmaker among primitive folk is based on homeopathy or
imitative magie—for instance, he will attempt to produce a noise
like thunder with the idea that this will result in the bursting
forth of the genuine article and its attendant rain; or he will sub-
ject puss to an enforced bath in spite of her repugnance to it to
bring about a rain, inasmuch as when she washes her face it is a
sign that rain is coming. These practices have been common also
with pagan nations of the highest civilization. Jupiter Pluvius
was one of the most potent of the Roman Deities, and of course
when the gods controlling the elements are angry they must be
propitiated by suitable ceremonies. For excessive cold we provide
extra means of heating, for tornadoes eyclone cellars, excessive
rainfall and floods present problems for the engineer if he would
ward off the destruction they would cause; these measures have
reference to individuals or to isolated places, but the actual con-
trol—the production, prevention, or moderation of any special
kind of weather over large districts—has not been accomplished
or even attempted in the case of heat, frost or winds, though it
has been undertaken with regard to the production of rain, and,
according to Professor McAdie, of the U. S. Weather Bureau, me-
teorologists are of the opinion that ‘‘rain-control is a scientific pos-
sibility. Successful rain engineers will come, in time, from the
ranks of those who study and clearly understand the physical

Appleton and Co.)

of D.
KING”)

STORM

(Courtesy

POLLARD ESPY (“OLD

OF JAMES

PORTRAIT

180 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

process of cloud formation.’” The modern rainmaker therefore can
be nothing if he is not scientific. He must have a scientific ground
for his process however fallacious it may be.

If any one can be ealled the Father of the United States
Weather Service, it is James Pollard Espy (1785-1860). From
his meteorological studies he evolved a theory of the manner in
which clouds are formed in high regions of the atmosphere and
produce rain. This was to the effect, essentially, that heated air
at any locality rises into rarer regions and expands; this expan-»
sion is accompanied by fall of temperature which condenses the
vapor in the immediately contiguous air as well as within the
ascending column; this condensation liberates sufficient heat to stim-’
ulate the further rise of the central column of air, with continuous
expansion, cooling, and condensation of vapor into clouds, until
they are eventually precipitated as rain.

He thought that this natural process could be accomplished ar-
tificially by maintaining large fires over extensive areas, and sought
governmental aid to undertake experiments for that purpose. He
cited the practice of American Indians in burning the prairies to
produce rain, and his agitation of the subject attracted so much
attention that numerous instances were reported which seemed to
confirm his theories, but his petitions to the legislature of Pennsyl-
vania and to Congress were humorously refused. He acquired
high repute as a meteorologist in Europe as well as at home,
and in 1841 he published his Philosophy of Storms which
included his proposed method of producing rain artificially.
In 1845 he was placed in charge of the meteorological work of the
U.S. Signal Service, his division being known as the Meteorologi-
cal Bureau of the War Department, in the conduct of which he
became familiarly known as ‘‘Old Storm King’’—a sobriquet
which meant that if the public regarded his theories as vagaries,
they thought none the less kindly of him on that account. His
branch of service was afterwards transferred to the Department
of Agriculture, and continued as the U. S. Weather Bureau.

Although Espy’s theories are now know to be not wholly sound,
their promulgation was a great incentive to further work along
their line. The many instances of rain occurring either during
or immediately after a severe battle or heavy cannonadine had
been often commented upon, and in 1871 Mr.*Edward Powers pub-
lished a book on ‘‘War and the Weather’’ containing a large col-
lection of data to show that heavy cannonading was followed even
in very dry regions by copious rainfall. He developed a theory
that although concussion did not cause the formation of clouds in
the surface atmosphere, which was lacking in moisture, in some

WEATHER CONTROL 15]

way it did cause precipitation from the higher strata of air which
carried moisture. His contention all turned upon the question
whether, in the United States, in times of drouth at the surface
of the earth, the upper air has a considerable supply of moisture
derived not from surface evaporation, but brought from the Pa-
cific ocean; that ‘‘it is not the moisture of the surface air east of
the mountains that causes the rain; it is the rain that causes the
moisture.”” The idea that at a great height there is a generally
prevalent flow of air eastward and above that a stratum flowing
westward is still entertained, and aviators are seekine to deter-
mine whether it is correct.

As might have been expected, Mr. Powers’ theory too was pooh-
poohed, but his arguments and illustrations were too cogent to be
ignored, and the prospeet of large financial benefit that mieht be
obtained from a successful application of these ideas in the pro-
duction of rain was alluring enough to induce capitalists to finance
an attempt on a large seale. The national government went so
far in its sanction of the enterprise as to authorize an expedition
for the purpose of conducting experiments under the direction of
General R. G. Dyrenforth. The Midland Ranch, in the northwest-
ern part of Texas, was selected for the place to conduct the ex-
periments, which were frequent and varied, during the period
from the ninth to the twenty-fifth of August, 1891. Both the
place and the season were thought to be above rather than below
average dryness. The affair attracted much attention, and reports
of the experiments were read eagerly throughout the whole coun-
try. Various forms of bombs and balloons were used to produce
explosions and concussions at different altitudes. General Dyren-
forth’s report to Congress, (Senate: Hx. Doc. No. 45, February
25, 1892), was to the effect that the experiments were not exten-
sive enough or sufficiently long continued to make safe deductions:
and Mr. George E. Curtis, who was meteorologist for the expedi-
tion, concluded that ‘‘these experiments have not afforded any
scientific standing to the theory that rain-storms can be produced
by concussions.’’ At the same time, the leaders and participants
in this expedition did not think the theory was disproved, and its
advocates regarded the tests as insufficient. Much discussion fol-
lowed. Professor Alexander McFarlane, of the University of
Texas, in a letter to the San Antonio Daily Express, of December
4, 1891, said *“‘The trial of Friday, August 25, was a crucial test,
and resulted not only in demonstrating what every person who has
any sound knowledge of physies knows that it is impossible to
produce rain by making a great noise, but also that even the ex-
plosion of a twelve-foot balloon inside a black rain cloud does not

182 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

bring down a shower.’’ This ‘‘crucial test,’’ however, was fol-
lowed next day by a precipitation that was characterized by differ-
ent persons as anything from a mere sprinkle to a heavy rainfall,
two or three miles to the northwest of the place where the experi-
ment was made, but in a direction in which the wind would have
carried the clouds. It was not certain that the rain was due to
the explosions, and it was unfortunate that the experiments re-
sulted in this negative fashion and were inconclusive. One conse-
quence of these efforts, especially to be noted, is related by Mr.
Curtis. He calls attention to the rash conclusions that were drawn
from the telegraphic and incomplete reports of the effect even of
preliminary experiments and trying out of the apparatus, and
adds ‘‘charlatans and sharpers have not been slow to seize the
opportunity thus afforded. Artificial rain companies have sprung
up and are now (1892) busily engaged in defrauding the farmers
of the semi-arid States by contracting to produce rain, and by
selling rights to use their various methods.’’

Thirty years have elapsed since the Dyrenforth experiments—
what has become of the weather mongers’ pseudo-scientifie preten-
sions and practices? As lately as February 1, 1921, the public
press reported from Medicine Hat, Alberta, the announcement by
the United Agricultural Association that ‘‘Rainmaker’’ Hatfield
had been engaged to increase precipitation during the dry season
at the rate (sic) of $4,000 an inch. The ‘‘Rainmaker’’ says he ean
produce rainfall by chemical and other scientific methods, and is
to operate over a section of about one hundred miles radius. That
last is a very clever stipulation. It greatly inereases his chance
of success and makes it much safer for him to guarantee it, for
a circle of one hundred miles radius covers just a hundred times
as large an area as one of ten miles radius and gives him one hun-
dred times as great likelihood of apparent success somewhere, as
if the region of his efforts were the smaller district.

A sequel to this appears in later dispatches from Milwaukee,
in which Wisconsin farmers are said to offer ‘‘Rainmaker’’ Hat-
field $3,000 an inch for producing rain. The item states further
that ‘‘ Hatfield has made rain for the farmers in three counties in
Washington State, where he was paid $3,000 an inch. His rain-
making equipment consists of a huge tank 20 feet high in whieh
Hatfield brews a mystie chemical mixture which, he Says, opens
up the clouds.’’ (New York Times, July 27, 1921.)

There is here the same difficulty in tracing any connection be-
tween supposed cause and effect—the same kind of difficulty, that
is present in the pretensions of the dowser. The operator goes
through his performance, (so does the Indian medicine-man) ;

WEATHER CONTROL 183

somewhere in some measure, rain falls; and the blunder, as old
as man, of counfounding post quod with propter quod, continues.

The process of passing from aqueous vapor through clouds to
rain is not yet well determined and the rainmaker, who must per-
foree be scientific, is obliged to proceed in a manner that he can
show conforms to ‘‘theory.’’ Unfortunately there is a _ super-
abundance of theories—at least five, and all have good scientific
support, while not one is conclusively established to the exclusion
of the others. The rainmaker favors a combination of two; (a),
that dust nuclei should be in the air, about which water vapor can
eather, (smoke, either from surface fires or exploded bombs will
meet this need); and (b), that jars or coneussions will so jostle
or disturb the air that the water particles will attach themselves
to these nuclei. The process of coalescence begun, it will continue
of itself although the exact reasons for so doing are not altogether
understood ; or at least physicists are not agreed upon them. This,
however, is not the rainmaker’s concern so long as they do act.
Mr. MeAdie flouts the coneussion idea. He says ‘‘ Rainmakers of
our time bane and thrash the air, hoping to cause rain by con-
cussion. They may well be compared to impatient children ham-
mering on reservoirs in a vain endeavor to make water flow.’’

That was written in 1895, but in 1918, nearly a quarter of a
century later, a popular old English almanac, Raphael’s Almanac
or the prophetic Messenger and Weather Guide, gives this caution
to its readers: .

No reliance should be placed on weather predictions during the war, as
the terrific bombardments cause violent concussions in the atmosphere, pro-
dueing clouds and rain, particularly in the southeast and east of England.
Weather control by artificial means, however, is not regarded as
unscientific, and meteorologists are not hopeless of ultimate success
in accomplishing it, at least in producing rain. At the time of the
Dyrenforth experiments the psychologist, Elmer Gates, was demon-
strating in his laboratory at Chevy Chase, Maryland, the produc-
tion of rain electrically. Electrifying the air at one spot, (like a
limited area of the earth’s surface), causes expansion by the mu-
tual repulsion of air particles; the air becomes less dense and rises,
currents thus set up encounter colder air in the upper regions, and
moisture is precipitated.

Various processes for rain-making have been patented, and the
business is carried on with a good deal of financial suecess by the
dowsers of the clouds. They succeed in getting testimonials ap-
parently with little diffieulty, in which the witnesses testify to
things as of their own knowledge, which occur simultaneously in
places twenty miles or more apart, and similar inconsistencies.

ae
ge a

(Courtesy of Everybody's Magazine, and the Art

ILLUSTRATION OF SHOOTING AWAY HAIL STORMS

. Jules Guerin)

WEATHER CONTROL 185

When clouds take on a sinister aspect it behooves man to do
what he can to fend off the injury which they threaten. A hail-
storm may work havoc, and in a few minutes may wreck all the
hopes which the agriculturist has ereeted upon the labors of an
entire season. It means disaster. Especially has this been the
ease in the rich wine-growing districts of France, Italy and Aus-
tria. Hailstorms are not uncommon there, but familiarity does
not breed contempt. The growers have learned to recognize pretty
readily the signs of such storms, which cover usually a small area;
and the clouds from which the hail falls are massed in a limited
region or pass over a narrow strip of territory.

After various haphazard experiences of viticulturists, one of
them, an Austrian, Alkert Stiger, invented a form of cannon in
1896 which could be readily and effectively used for the purpose of
repelling and breaking up such storms. This cannon somewhat re-
sembles the old bell-mouthed blinderbuss in form, with a chamber
at the breach for a cartridge containing only powder, and a fun-
nel shaped tube lke the cone of a megaphone. Housed in little
shacks on the hillsides, these are ready for use at short notice, and
since they are distributed amone the many adjoining vineyards,
a whole battery of them can be brought into action promptly.
The grapes are maturing and the vineyards are in their most vigor-
ous growth from July to September, just at the time of year when
hailstorms are most frequent, and the workmen accordingly are
alert in watching for siens of danger. When the storm is seen
to ke gathering, the cannons are brought out and directed against
the threatening cloud. Signals are sent from vineyard to vine-
yard and upon the first appearance of the destructive hailstone
the counter bombardment begins. From the mouth of the cannon
issues a mass of heated gas, smoke and smoke rings, propelled
violently against the lowerine cloud. The smoke rines are like
those discharged from the smoke stack by the puffs of a locomo-
tive, but with far greater energy of propulsion. In a sense this
Was anticipating the war, for it was a veritable gas attack in the
realm of the aeronaut. The theory of the action is not very defi-
nite or well assured. Whether the rings of smoke disrupt the
clouds, or whether sufficient local heating of the air causes warm
air to rise and intercept the hail, converting it into rain or pre-
venting the congealing of water vapor into hail, is uncertain; but
there seems sufficient evidence of the efficacy of the plan in dis-
persing the clouds and checking the storm of hail. The cannons
literally shoot it away.

186 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FROIN IN i MISSISSHeP

BY A.S.Pearse

2)
pe
pe
(=

AKE Pepin is caused by the delta of the Chippewa River,
L which dams up the Mississippi. It is thirty miles long and
has an average depth of about twenty-five feet. Its waters support
many fishes and clams which are of commercial value. In order to
give a picture of the life of the fishermen, the routine of a typical
day at the end of June is described.

The wren that lived in the tomato can we had nailed to the tree
beside our shack sang at four o'clock, as usual. I lay in my cot
and drowsily thought of Chaucer’s couplet :

And small foules, a great hep,

That had afroyed me out of slepe.
The wren sang again and then I heard the lapping of the river on
the sand. The water sounded so near that I peeked over the side

THE MiNNESOTA BLUFFS

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI 187

OUR HOME FOR A MONTH

of the cot to see if it was in the shack, but the floor was dry. With
clothes in one hand and boots in the other, I sneaked out on our
front porch, which consisted of a barn door that we had salvaged
from the river. The mighty provider of porches had risen eight
inches during the night and was busily engaged in hurrying trees,
logs and all sorts of riff raff toward New Orleans.

The sun touched the Minnesota bluffs. Ghostly clouds of mist
erept over Lake Pepin. I pulled on my boots and washed. The
wren sang some more. Another day had begun.

I ate my breakfast, then rubbed the spoon and pan in the sand
at the margin of the river, rinsed them at the pump, and stood
them on the table to dry. We rejoiced in a regular cistern pump,
which, driven in the sand, gave us plenty of clear, cool water. The
Israelites with Moses were no more appreciative than we!

2 Sy

OUR LABORATORY

188 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

I slid the skiff gently into the river and pulled against the cur-
rent out on Lake Pepin. As I left our cove, I could hear the
‘‘put-put’’ of Earl’s engine as he brought his launch around to
take out the scow. At night Earl always put the launch in the
slough behind the bar, safe from storms. He had a fine start this
morning and should, with luck, have his seine out at ten o’clock.

The gill nets did good work. They had been set in the deepest
part of the lake (55 feet) and I was rewarded for the long pull
with sixteen hacklebacks,! two saugers, a channel eat, and two clams.
There was a big carp in the two-inch mesh net and I got him to
the very surface of the water. But the net was rotten and he was
caught only by the saw-spine on his dorsal fin. Just as I was slip-
ping the dip net under him—a mighty flop, and he was gone! The
clams were without pearls, too. But we would have hackleback
for dinner!

OFF TO SET THE SEINE

As I rowed back to camp, Earl and his crew were loading the
big seine into the scow. The lake had been rough the day before,
and the seine was badly tangled in the brush. Charley had his
waders on and was towing the scow along the shore by hand while
the others stowed the seine.

At the shack I found Tasche—wide awake, full of breakfast and
ready to go out to the trot-line. Jean was already spearing carp.
As soon as my catch was unloaded, Tasche jumped into the skiff
and rowed away up the big slough. I had searcely taken care of

1 Sand-sturgeon, Scaphyrhynchus platorhynchus (Rafinesque).

Published with the permission of the United States Bureau of Fisheries.

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI 189

HAULING THE SEINE

the fishes from the gill net and straightened up the shack a little,
when he was kack. I knew by the splash of his oars and the set
of his back that he had something. But we went through the reeu-
lar formula for such oceasions. I hailed:

What luck?

Pretty fair.

The skiff dug its nose into the sand and Tasche said.

Got some more channel-eats.

How many?

Three. One of them about five pounds.

Anything else?

Why, yes: I got an eel!

DIPPING THE HAUL INTO THE SKOW

190 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

HAULING THE SEINE

With a whoop I ran down the beach. This was the only eel we
cot all summer! It was a fine old fellow, about three feet long.
Tasche held it up, still attached to a leader from the trot-line.

‘‘T was afraid to take him off. He’s too slippery to hold!’’,
he said.

It was a strange fish with a strange history—hatched in the
Atlantic Ocean and caught a thousand miles up the Mississippi.
We made a hasty examination of the eel and put the other fishes
in the ‘‘live ear’’ for future study. We were anxious to be at
the hauling of the big seine.

As it turned out we had plenty of time, for the seine was not
quite loaded when we reached the lake. It was soon on board the
seow, however, and five minutes later Earl was towing it out into
the lake. Earl handled the launch and Floyd, on board the scow,
watched the line that was fastened to a tree on shore and ‘‘paid
out’’ as they went along. When the line was out, Earl turned his
course parallel to the shore to spread the seine. The great net was
2,000 feet long and 28 feet deep. The mesh was two and a half
inches, bar measure; except a hundred and fifty feet in the center,
which was two inches. After the net was out, Earl turned directly
toward the shore while Floyd paid out another hauling line.

Floyd waded ashore with the end of the line, slipped it through
a pulley which was lashed to a sturdy stump, and then handed it
to Charley. That worthy took a couple of turns around the wheel
of his hoisting engine—already popping away at a good rate.

The hauling of the seine took about two hours. First a long

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI A91

line came ashore and was neatly coiled. Then the wooden brail
at one end of the net appeared above the water. Two of the boys
pulled a hauling line down the beach to where the line from the
other end of the net was fastened. They rigged another pulley
and, without moving the hoisting engine, began hauling again.
Another line was coiled down and finally the brail at the other end
of the net crawled slowly up the beach.

When the brail got almost to the pulley, George threw the line
off the engine and the hauling stopped. Earl took the end of the
line out into the lake until the water was above his waist, stuck
his toe under the bottom of the net and raised it so that he could
grasp it with his hands. The hauling line was made fast to the
lead line. Earl signaled to George and the net began to come on
shore. Floyd and Charley took stations about thirty feet away
from the water on either side of the net, which they stretched and
piled down neatly on the sand to dry. Every time the knot on
the lead line came up to the pulley, Earl waded out and fastened
the hauling line further along the net.

Earl was ‘‘boss’’ because he was, physically and mentally, the
best man of the crew. He had travelled all over the United States
and served in France during the war. At thirty-three he had come
back to his old home on the Mississippi and settled down to spend
his life as a seiner—because he loved the outdoors and fishing, and
rejoiced in hard work as a strong man should. He always took
the hardest tasks; and indeed no other in the crew could do them
as well. Altogether Earl was as honorable and rough and fair and
profane and instinctively courteous as one could wish—a real man
who asked no favors and expected to give none, but would when
you least expected it.

When nearly half the net was in, the hauling line was changed

nme te eo ig sil fe

DIPPING THE HAUL INTO THE SKOW

192 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

wes
es

*
Pe

DRYING THE NET

to the other end and another period of stretching and piling en-
sued. At ten o'clock there were only a few hundred feet of the
seine left in the lake. Earl waved his arms and George stopped
the engine. All the crew then began pulling in the ‘‘center’’ by
hand. <As the space between the seine and the shore grew narrower,
the fish began to flop. A twenty-pound carp flipped over the top
of the seine and Earl yell to old Charley,

‘“Hold up that cork line! G—! They’ll go like a flock of sheep.’’
And Charley ‘‘held up.’

‘“There’s a big spoonbill!’’ said George. ‘‘They’ve been awful searee
this year. Twenty years ago we used to get a thousand pounds a day.’’

‘Shut up,’? said Earl. This was no time to spin yarns.

Finally the net was in and the crew gathered around in.a little
circle, holding the edges of the net well above the water so that no

LOADING THE NET ON TO THE SKOW

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI 193

high jumper could escape. Tasche and I lent a hand while Floyd
brought up the scow. Then Earl took a dip net, stepped among
the flopping fishes, and ‘‘ladled’’ the catch into the scow.

There were many carp weighing from fifteen to twenty pounds
—great, glittering, golden fellows that taxed even Earl’s sturdy
muscles. There was also a good number of sheepshead, river
earp (which the Lake Pepin fishermen call ‘‘white earp’’), red
horses, and a mud cat—all marketable fishes. The prize of the
day was a forty-two pound spoonbill. At the tail of the catch were
about sixty mooneyes—beautiful, silvery fishes—which Earl saved.
Mooneyes are not fit for human food, but are ground up and used
as an ingredient of chicken feed.

THE HAUL

The game fishes were all put back into the water as soon as pos-
sible. It fills an unsuccessful fisherman with reeret to see ten-
pound pickerel and wall-eyed pike cast back into the lake. George
also threw back about fifty black bass, white bass, blue-gills, and
crappiles.

As soon as the catch was all on board the secow, Floyd jumped
into the flopping mass and began putting the small carp and buffalo
back into the lake. He also recovered a few game fishes that had
not been previously thrown out. Earl meanwhile was bringing up
the launch and before Floyd had all the ‘‘culls’’ overboard he was
on the way to Pepin. In half an hour after the catch left the net
it was on ice in Jim Broateh’s fish house, and that evening some of

VOL. XIV.—/3

194 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE NET IS IN

the fishes were on sale in Minneapolis and Chicago. The best part
of the catch, however, was sold in St. Louis and New York two
or three days later.

After the “‘haul’’ had gone to town, Charley and George pulled
in the center of the net and spread it neatly on the sand. <A big
pike had turned belly up and was floating along the beach.

‘‘He’ll never live,’’ said Charley. ‘‘I believe Ill cook him for
dinner.’’ i

‘““What sort of fish do you fellows usually eat?’’ I asked.
Charley evidently thought I was too curious on short acquaint-
ance and did not answer. George, however, who could not forego
an opportunity to say something, after pondering a moment said,

‘“Well, we mostly eat carp and sucker.’’

Tasche and I went back to the shack. As we came down the
shore a big softshell turtle ran from a sand bar where she had
been digging a nest. She seuttled awkwardly but swiftly down to
the water, leaving a trail like a caravan.

We dined on fried sturgeon at our table under a willow tree.
For dinner, sturgeon is the king of all fresh-water fishes. After
the skin is off and the ‘‘chord’’ has been pulled out, there are no
bones. The flavor is delicious and, when well cooked, a sturgeon
‘‘melts in the mouth.’’

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI 195

The softshell climbed out on the bar again while we ate. She
found a spot that suited her and began to throw spurts of sand
out behind. We tried to slip away from the table without being
noticed, but she gave us one neck-stretchine look, then tore down
the beach and disappeared into the water with a grand splash.
We saw her no more.

After dinner we went up to the seiners’ shack and talked a
while. Sitting on the sand we had a magnificent view across the
river to the tree-covered Minnesota bluffs, which tower four hun-
dred feet above the water. As we talked scores of swallows hunted
over the bars. Floyd spent all his leisure whittling. Today he
was working on an American eagle perched on a ball. He finally
cut a great gash in his finger and Earl tied it up. Talk drifted
on from women to high prices, and from high prices to war, and
finally to fishing. I asked the boys concerning the number and
variety of fishes they caught in the big seine. After some debate
Karl made the following ‘estimate of the average catch per day
during the season (June 15 to November 15), and the others agreed
that it was ‘‘about right :’’

Canp bothesG ermiaieeaant dao yl ele Peed thon bt 500 lbs.
Dogfish (1,000 lbs. on some days in autumm).............................. 400 Ibs.
Sheepshea dy (+= oe tee eee eee See Lk. 20) ADS:
Suckers and redhorses.................... =. ee OOO DS
Walleyed pike =o sel Sees SS ee OO else
IMGONCY.e races. 2A. 159 Sete eRe tn eS, eee Sorta? 100 Ibs.
Ricken elie ees ec a ee ee ae ee es Ce et De 50 Ibs.
Bf © ee tS aE eee oe seed pe ODDS:
Spoonbill eee eee ee ee ee eee es 25 Ibs.
Catfishes sand) sbuliheaid saseser a eee pe mth eens coda Ca | 25 lbs.
White: bass). 22..2v205.c. ee ee as 8 cto eae ee ee 10 Ibs.

LOADING THE NET ON THE SKOW

196 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE SEINING CREW

Black bass GiwOmspCCles|)|-:.2:.2..2..5 ese oo. a eee ee 10 Ibs.
By Lie cor eee ee eee = ot 5. eee Se Ee eee eedetuatouts a iloy
Crap plese. ee ee Boe ene ANOS. Per ENE C 8or S Eie itp:

At three o’clock the crew started loading the seine into the
scow. Tasche and I got out the minnow seine and dragged along
the shore to catch bait for the trot line. We eaught a lot of shiners,
a few little suckers, about two hundred log-perch, and a tadpole
eat. While we were seining Jean came back from the sloughs with

CHARLEY

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI 197

thirty-two carp that he had speared. Once he had lunged too far
and slid over the bow of his boat. His clothes were still wet—and
his language scandalous! Jean cleaned his cateh and left for
Pepin, where his carp would soak in brine overnight and be ready
for smoking the next morning.

A fly fisherman tried his luck past our shack. He was an aris-
toegat among fishermen, with a man to row for him and a beau-

TASCHE WITH HIS CATFISHES

tiful outfit, and he knew his business. Drifting alone near shore.
his fly fell forty feet away in the exact spot that he chose and it
flickered over the water in a way to make any bass long for it.
We did not begrudge this fisherman the two fine bass that came
into his landing net. He deserved them!

After ‘supper Tasche rowed up into the slough and set the trot
line. I sat by the fire, cooking rice and dried apples for breakfast.
Before nine o'clock we had our cots set up and were spreading

el
(en)
(ora)

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

TASCHE “RUNNING” THE LINE

our sogev garments out for the night. As I dozed off the hoot
owl started his nightly refrain.

And smale foules maken melodie
That slepen alle night with open eye.

The United States has resources of great commercial value in
its larger lakes and rivers. Though there are many fishes in
swamps, creeks and ponds, such small bodies of water can never
furnish great enough numbers to be of value to commerce. Their
resources should be conserved, however, for the sportsman and
small boy. Every fish caught on a hook and line probably costs
dollars in tackle and time, but it is worth what it costs in health
and the wealth of spirit which accrues to those who live outdoors.

There has always been some conflict of interests between those
who fish for the market and those who fish for sport or to get a
fresh dinner. The one wants a continued supply of large fishes ;
the other is after a few fine specimens that he can show his neigh-
bor with pride—caught by himself! There will always be these
two classes of fishermen and civilization must keep a place for them.

The citizens of the United States have already committed some
errors in the administration of the fisheries resourees in the Mis-
sissippi River. Aggressive and interested sportsmen have secured
the passage of certain laws; those concerned in making money
have fathered concessions which helped their business. There has
been a deal of prejudice, misunderstanding, and thoughtlessness.
To a scientist, such conflict seems unnecessary.

The ‘‘ultimate’’ food resources for the animals in the Missis-

FISHING IN THE MISSISSIPPI L9G

Sippi are in the aquatic vegetation. Water plants, given solar
energy, can make living substance from minerals, water, and ear-
bon dioxide. As animals cannot do this, they depend on plants
for food, directly or indirectly. The Mississippi River itself does
not contain many plants. Its bottom shifts too rapidly and its
water is usually too turbid to permit the passage of solar energy
to any except very shallow depths. Its chief value for fishes is as
a highway through which passage is permitted to the great stores
of food in tributary swamps, ponds, and other situations where
plants flourish.

What are the foods of the chief commercial fishes? The carp
is omnivorous, but its food is chiefly vegetation. It does great
damage to aquatic plants, grubbing up wild celery and other
plants which might afford food and shelter for ducks and game.
Its best feeding grounds are in swamps. The dogfish feeds largely
on crawfishes and minnows, The sheepshead eats snails, clams, and
mud. The suckers and red horses feed chiefly on mud and the
small organisms associated with it. All these fishes of commercial
importance as food do injury to man. The carp destroys vege-
tation; the dogfish eats game fishes; the sheepshead, and to some
extent the carp, devour many young clams which might otherwise
grow large enough to be made into buttons. Suckers and earp

follow other fishes when spawning and eat their eggs. In all re-

spects it is desirable that the resources represented by these four

TASCHE AND THE EEI

200 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

food fishes be conserved, by preserving swamp areas and sloughs,
and it is also desirable to keep catching the larger fishes continually
in order to check the injury they may do. The sportsman who
talks of prohibiting seining, while fishing by ‘‘sportsman’s’’ meth-
ods continues, is advocating the unchecked increase of ‘‘rough’”’
fishes which will compete with the game fishes in aquatic habitats.
Wise, supervised seining is one of the best means of increasing
game fishes.

The fishes the sportsman most loves are insect and fish eaters.
Both the favorite foods of these fishes are usually associated with
aquatic plants. The bass hunt among aquatie vegetation for im-
mature insects and skim the surface for adults; the pickerel and
pike lurk along the margins of water gardens, ready to snap up
any small fish that passes. These fishes are most often found where
water plants grow abundantly.

There have been marked changes in Lake Pepin during the past
decade. Time was when a seiner caught a thousand pounds of
spoonbills every day and when buffaloes were second in commercial
importance only to spoonbills. Big sturgeon were also common.
Now these fishes are scarce; the carp, sheepshead and, onee de-
spised, dogfish have taken their places in the markets. Fish epi-
eures have been obliged to lower their standards. The causes of
the decrease of the more desirable food fishes is uncertain. Per-
haps overfishing, the introduction of the carp, the pollution of
the river by industrial wastes, and the construction of dams have
contributed, but there is no satisfactory scientifie explanation.

A great natural asset like Lake Pepin should be appreciated —
natural reservoir, source of free food for the poor man, livelihood
for the fisherman, recreation for rich and poor. It is worth much
to the nation. The Mississippi is an opportunity—for science to
vain a knowledge of causes, for the government to conserve and
improve valuable resources.

FLOWER SEASONS 201

FLOWER SEASONS
By CHARLES ROBERTSON

CARLINVILLE, ILLINOIS

HE statements made here are based upon observations made
from 1884 to 1913, at Carlinville, Illinois, regarding the
blooming seasons of 470 indigenous and 54 introduced entomophil-
ous (insect pollinated) flowers. Twenty-three native and seven
introduced species, with an average of five days, are excluded as
fragmentary. The blooming time of each flower includes early
dates for early seasons and late dates for late ones, and is there-
fore, when correct, longer than the time for a single season. Un-
less otherwise specified the statements relate to indigenous species.
March—The season opens on the 15th and shows only 21 plants
in bloom for the month. Nevertheless, March shows the highest
percentages of trees, 19.0; shrubs, 14.3; woody plants in general,
33.3; acaulescent herbs, 23.8; and white flowers, 57.1; Salicacerx,
9.5; Parietales, 23.8; Ranales, 19.0; Caryophyllales, 14.2;, and
Polemoniales, 9.5; Thalamiflore, 61.9, and Archiclamydex, 85.7——
all of the characteristic early groups, except Monocotyledons anil
woody climbers.

Apriu—This month shows the highest percentages of flowers
coming in bloom, 78.6; greenish-yellow flowers, 17.4, and non-social
flowers, 75.7; Coronariee, 9.7; Ranuneulacee, 11.6; Crucifere,
8.7; Rosacex, 8.7; Liliacex, 3.7, and Violacex, 7. 7. The Parietales
and Salieacee show April maxima.

May—The following show May maxima: Monocotyledons,
Thalamiflore and Archiclymydee; Ranales, Coronariee and Um-
bellales; Orchidacew, Caryvophyllacee, Rosaceew, Ranunculacer,
Crucifere, Liliacew and Umbellifere; trees, woody plants in gen-
eral, pendulous flowers and greenish-yellow flowers. May shows
the highest percentages of Calyciflore, 29.1; Monocotyledons, 14.0,
and Umbelliferz, 6.0. Half the families with more than six species
have May maxima. May shows more suborders, families and gen-
era than August, and more families at the maximum, but the groups
are represented by fewer species. Therefore, if the fourteen fam-
ilies with more than six species are thrown together, August will
show the maximum of species. Only 16.5 per cent. of May fiowers
bloom through the month, while 58.6 per cent. of August flowers

202 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

are continuous. The Infere begin to form a marked element of
the flora.

June—No dominant groups, except Polemoniales, show a maxi-
mum in June. They have less influence in the composition of the
June flora than in that of any other month. All are declining from
an early maximum or rising to a late one. June shows a maximum
of woody climbers, all of the species blooming in the month, and
of shrubs, but fewer species than in May. It is the most hetero-
geneous, having the most orders and the most familes, and more
genera than any other month except July, which has the same
number.

June has the most discontinuous blooming seasons. The Sero-
phulariacew, Rosales, Parietales and Thalamiflore show depres-
sions. June 2 has fewer flowers in bloom than any other day from
May 10 to September 24. More species, and a higher percentage
of species, go out of bloom than in any other month except Sep-
tember and October, which close the season. In number beginning
to bloom it is exceeded only by July. Uniting those beginning and
ending gives the highest number for any month. The difference
between the percentage of flowers and the percentage in bloom to-
eether is greatest for June. The Personales, Lamiales, Com-
posite and Papilionacew enter as important elements of the flora.

July—The Calyeifiore, Bicarpellate, Rosales, Gentianales,
Asclepiadacexw, Papilionaceew, white flowers, and introduced plants
show July maxima. It has the highest percentages of perennial
herbs. 72.0, Rosales, 16.4, and Papilionacew, 10.0. The Bicarpel-
late for the first time surpass the Calyciflore. The dark colors
begin to preponderate over yellow, including greenish-yellow.
Woody plants form only 8.0 per cent. of the July flora. It shows
the most flowers beginning to bloom, and more genera than any
other month exeept June, which has the same number.

Comparing July and August gives the following percentages:
Of the flora, 53.1, 51.4; of flowers of the month blooming through
the month, 37.6, 58.6; of flora in bloom at maximum, 41.7, 42.7.
July has the most flowers in bloom, but fails to show the maximum
on account of less continuous blooming.

August—This month shows maxima for Infere, Asterales, Com-
posite, Alismacexw, the general entomophilous flora, zygomorphous,
dark colored, yellow flowers and perennial herbs. The most re-
markable thing about August is that 142 of its species, 58,6 per
cent.. bloom through the month. The nearest approach to this is
July with only 94 species, 37.6 per cent. continuous. This is directly
connected with the long blooming seasons of the later flowers. The
effect of this is that July, while it has eight more species in bloom

FLOWER SEASONS 203

in the month, shows five less in bloom simultaneously and that only
on the last day. In the case of the Asterales, also, there are three
more species in bloom in September, but one less at the highest
point of those in bloom together. The position of the principal
groups of Dicotyledons is just the reverse of what is found in May.
August differs from May in having fewer dominant maxima, but
in having more species in each. Only 16.5 per cent. of May flowers
are continuous, while 58.6 per cent. of August flowers are so.
August has the highest percentage of Personales, 7.4.

September—The characteristic of September is the decline of
general flora. While in August only 51 plants, 21.0 per cent., go
out of bloom, in September 115, 57.2 per cent., do so. September
shows the highest percentages of dark flowers, 32.3, yellow, 29.3,
Lamiales, 11.4, and Labiate, 8.9. It shows a maximum for Con-
volvulacex.

October—The flora is 24.7 per cent. less than in August and 3.9
less than April. It has the highest percentages of social flowers,
60.4; annuals and biennials, 42.3; Asterales, 47.0; Polygonacew,
9.4; Infere, 50.6, and Sympetale, 70.5.

A peculiarity of October is connected with the differences in
the blooming habits of indigenous and introduced plants. - The in-
digenous ones bloom a shorter time and have become adjusted to
the climate so that they decline in anticipation of the approaching
cold. The introduced plants average twice as long and often quit
blooming only when they are frozen. In October 18.0 per cent.
of the indigenous and 64.1 per cent. of the introduced plants are
in bloom. While the introduced plants are only 10.1 per cent. of
the total flora, they are 28.5 per cent. of the flowers in bloom in
October, 39.1 per cent. of the flowers blooming after October 16th.

Another peculiarity of October is that the Thalamiflore pre-
dominate over the Calyciflore for the first time since April. This
helps to explain the higher percentage of white flowers in October
over September.

November—This is altogether fragmentary and shows only in
unusually late seasons. There are eight indigenous. 57.1 per cent.,
and six introduced species, 42.8 per cent.

DR. J. PLAYFAIR McMURRICH

Professor of Anatomy in the University of Toronto, President of the American Association for

the Advancement of Science.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 205

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE’

THE TORONTO MEETING OF | exact and natural sciences, and from

THE AMERICAN ASSOCIA- a number of distinguished men who
DION OR Eh ee) - were proposed, - Dr. J. Playfair
VANCEMENT OF MeMurrich, professor of anatomy in
SCIENCE the University of Toronto, was

elected. Dr. MeMurrich’s scientific
research and publications have not
been confined to human anatomy, but
include comparative morphology, the
factors of evolution and the history
of science. Born and educated at
Toronto, he has had wide experience
in the universities of the United
States, having received his doctorate
ot philosophy and taught at the
Johns Hopkins University, and hay-
ing held chairs successively at Clark,
Haverford, Cincinnati and Michigan,
before accepting the professorship of
anatomy at Toronto in 1907. Dr.

At the meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science and of the associated scien-
tific societies held at Toronto during
Christmas week, the total registration
was 1,832, and the number of papers
and addresses presented before forty
sections of the association and asso-
ciated societies numbered about 900.
The meeting was much larger than
had been anticipated, partly through
the participation of the citizens of
Toronto and Ontario in accordance
with the precedent set by the British

Association. The number in attend- ;
ance from the United States was 867. | MceMurrich will preside at the meet-

The arrangements made by the Uni- | ™g to be held next year at Boston,
of Toronto and the Royal | 2ud will give his address at the
Canadian Institute for scientific ses- | Meeting to be held the following year

sions and for the enjoyment of the | &t Cincinnati.
unusually The American Association holds its

versity

visiting members were
About 800 were provided larger convocation week meetings

complete.
once in four years, successively in

with rooms and meals in the dormi-
tories and halls of the university, New York, Chicago and Washington.
It is planned that all the scientific
workers of the country shall unite in
these meetings and it is hoped that

and many of the dinners and social
events were held on the university
grounds.

The meeting of the scientific men they will ultimately be joined by
of North America was both pleasant scholars who carry forward research
and useful and will lead to their | 1 subjects not usually included
closer cooperation for the advance- under the natural and exact sciences.
ment of science. Both this year and The meetings at the intervening two-
last a number of leading Canadian | Year periods, as the one next year at
men of science were elected chair- | Boston, are intended to bring to-
men of the sections, and this year, gether most of the associated socie-
for the first time since Sir William | es. On the intervening alternate
Dawson held the office in 1882, a | Years, many of the special societies
Canadian was elected to the presi- | find it an advantage to meet sep-
dency. In accordance with the usual | 2vately in smaller university towns,
sequence of alternating between the where the personal contacts are
closer. Thus this year the important

1 Edited by Watson Davis, Science | 8'OUPS of sciences devoted to anato-
Shania my, physiology, biological chemistry,

THE

206

DR.
Director of the John

’
WILLIAM BATESON, F.R.S.
Innes Horticultural Institution, Merton, London
lege, the anthropologists at the

pharmacology and experimental path-

ology met at Yale University. The
geologists, including the paleontolo-

gists and meteorologists, met at Am-
herst, an early center of geological
science in America, whose traditions
have for fifty years been carried for-
ward by Professor B. K. Emerson,
to whom a presentation was made.
The geographers met at Washington,
the Col-

astronomers at Swarthmore

SCIENTIFIC

MONTHLY

3rooklyn Institute and the psycholo-
gists at Princeton.

This somewhat wide scattering of
the societies associated with the asso-

ciation made the success of the
Toronto meeting the more notable.
It has indeed often been the ease

that meetings more remote from the
familiar centers have been especially

enjoyable. Toronto is near the

THE PROGRESS

OF SCIENCE 207

SIR ROBERT FALCONER

President of the University of Toronto

limit of

but it is convenient of access from

northern scientific activity,

the east and west. The University
of Toronto and the city unite some
of the
newer civilizations, and the meeting
had features of the

ciation.

characteristics of older and

British Asso-

Among them was the conferring of
honorary degrees at a special convo-
sation of the University of Toronto
by Sir Robert Falconer, president of
the university, on the presidents of
the association for last year and this
and on the: from England,
whose official appearances added
much to the interest of the meeting.

guest

The address by the retiring
dent, Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the
Bureau of Entomology of the United
States

reviewed the war on inseets, in which

presi-

Department of Agriculture,
he himself has been a field marshal.
Dr. Howard also reviewed preceding
betore the

Associations,

presidential addresses

British and American
with which he has had opportunity to
become especially familiar in the
course of the eighteen years during
with
a long line of distinguished men in

which he has been associated

his service as permanent secretary of
the association.
Howard’s

Preceding Dr. address,

208 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Sir Robert Falconer welcomed the
association in admirable terms, and
Professor E. H. Moore, of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, responded with
felicity for the association. At the
second general meeting, Dr. William
Bateson, director of the John Innes
Horticultural Institution at Merton,
London, and present as the guest of
the American Association and of the
American Society of Zoologists, gave
an address on ‘‘ Evolutionary Faith
and Modern Doubt,’’ in which he
argued that while the fact of evolu-
tion is not in question, the problems
of the origin of species are still
unsolved. Dr. Bateson paid a tribute
to the ‘‘Stars that have arisen in
the West,’’ by whose work solutions
have been found for many of the
difticult problems of genetics, includ-
ing the direct association of the
chromosomes with the developing

organism.

RESOLUTIONS OF THE AMER-

ICAN ASSOCIATION - CON-
CERNING THE PUBLIC
WELFARE

The National Academy of Sciences

is by law the scientific adviser of the |

government, but the American Asso-
ciation and the associated scientific
societies have equal responsibility,
representing as they do the consensus
of opinion of scientific men. It may
be hoped that in the future the
council of the association, composed
largely of delegates from the asso-
ciated national societies, may take
an active part in enlightening public
opinion and in guiding legislation on
problems concerned with the ad-
vancement of science and its appli-
cations to the public welfare. At
Toronto several resolytions looking
in this direction were adopted by
the council.

It put on record its opposition to
any action by which the Forest
Service or the National Forests of
the United States or of Alaska would
be removed from the jurisdiction of

the U. S. Department of Agriculture.
The suspension of scientific peri-
odicals issued by the government,
such as the Journal of Agricultural
Research, the Experiment Station
Record and the Monthly Weather
Review, was condemned. The intro-
duction of non-native plants and ani-
mals. into the national parks and all
other unessential interference with
natural conditions was opposed. A
resolution declared that the American
Association ‘‘recognizes the need and
timeliness of fundamental research
scientific principles which
must underlie the formation, stand-
ardization and introduction of an
international auxiliary language.’’

Noting that it had already affirmed
its belief in the desirability of
the adoption of the metric system by
the United States, the council urged
consideration by Congress of the
metric bills before it.

The United States Commissioner
of Fisheries having presented _ his
resignation, the council went on
emphasizing the prime
importance of securing a man who
possesses the special experience and
scientific knowledge of the field,
combined with the necessary admin-
istrative ability for discharging the
duties of the position.

on the

record as

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

We record with regret the death of
Henry Turner Eddy, professor emer-
itus of mathematics and mechanics
in the University of Minnesota and
dean emeritus of the graduate
school; of Dr. Howard B. Cross, of
the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research, of yellow fever while
studying that disease at Vera Cruz;
of Henrietta Swan Jewett, of the
Harvard College Observatory; of
Earl Jerome Grimes, associate pro-
fessor of biology at the College of
William and Mary, and of Max Ver-
worn, professor of physiology at the
University of Bonn.

~’

THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

MARCH, 1922

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE
By H. A. MARMER

COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY, DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

S a phenomenon of every-day occurrence the regular rise and
fall of the tide must have been noted early in the history of
mankind. It so happens, however, that the maritime people of
antiquity whose history has come down to us lived close to the
shores of the Mediterranean Sea where the tide is very small. As
a consequence, the tide received scant attention from these people,
since it was of little importance in their every-day aifairs, and the
tidal knowledge possessed by them was not very extensive.

Not only did the maritime people of antiquity disregard the
tide for practical purposes, but even as a subject of study and
speculation tidal phenomena received little attention. In conse-
quence of the small range of the tide in the Mediterranean the
tidal phenomena were not very impressive, and the regularity of
their occurrence was frequently masked by the disturbing effects
of wind and atmospheric pressure. So far as biblical literature
is concerned, there appears no direct reference to the tide either
in the Old or New Testaments. And even in classical literature
the passages dealing with tides are relatively few in number.

In common with the early explanations advanced for other
physical phenomena, the earlier attempts at explaining the tides
were based largely on fanciful notions. Some of the ancient
philosophers believed the earth to be an animal; it therefore ap-
peared entirely logical to ascribe the rise and fall of the tide to
the breathing of this animal or to its drinking in and spouting out
a certain portion of the water. Another explanation based on the
same belief regarded the water as constituting the blood of the
earth and the tide as the beating of its pulse.

With the growth of a more critical spirit more rational theories
were advanced, and we find the tide ascribed to differences in the
level of the sea, to the discharge of rivers into the sea, to whirl-
pools and eddies, and finally to sun and moon. Just how early
the connection between moon and tide had been recognized we

VOL. XIV.—14.

210 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

do not know; we do however have record of the fact that Pytheas
of Massilia who lived about 325 B. C., and who navigated the
ocean from the Strait of Gibralter to the British Isles, noted a re-
lationship existing between moon and tide.

When we come toward the end of the first century of the Chris-
tian era, we find the tides ascribed definitely to the action of sun
and moon. In his Historia Naturalis, which appeared in the year
77 A. D., Pliny, the Elder, speaks of the tides in the following
words:

Much has been said about the nature of waters; but the most wonderful
circumstance is the alternate flowing and ebbing of the tides, which exists,
indeed, under various forms, but is caused by the sun and moon.

In succeeding passages, Pliny describes some of the principal
phenomena of the tides. He is aware that there are two high and
two low waters in a day; that the tides at any given place follow
the moon’s meridian passage by an approximately constant inter-
val; that the extent of rise and fall varies with the changing
phases of the moon, and that the tides are higher at the times of
the sun’s equinoxes than at the solstices. He does not however
advance any explanation for the relationship of moon and tide
except that in the concluding passage of the section devoted to
tides he says:

Hence we may certainly conjecture, that the moon is not unjustly
regarded as the star of our life. This it is that repienishes the earth; when
she approaches it, she fills all bodies, while when she recedes, she empties
them. From this cause it is that shell-fisk grow with her increase, and that
those animals which are without blood more particularly experience her influ-
ence; also, that the blood of man is increased or diminished in proportion to
the quantity of her light; also, that the leaves and vegetables generally, as
I shall describe in the proper place, feel her influence, her power penetrating
all things.

That the tide is brought about by the combined action of sun
and moon, Pliny definitely states; but he likewise definitely ascribes
the leading réle to the moon. The early formulation of the prob-
lem of the tide may therefore be stated as follows: The moon
governs the rising and falling of the surface of the sea; how does
the moon do this?

PROGRESS TO THE TIME OF NEWTON

This problem of the agency by means of which the moon exerts
its influence on the waters of the earth appears to have engaged
the attention of many of the leading philosophers in the centuries
following Pliny. Thus at the beginning of the eighth century,
some six hundred years after Pliny, we find the noted English
scholar, the Venerable Bede, devoting to the tides a chapter in his
De Temporum Ratione. And while on the English coast the tide
is a much more impressive phenomenon than on the shores of the

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 211

Mediterranean, there appears no progress in Bede’s remarks
toward a solution of the problem of the tide.

Indeed, virtually no progress can be recorded for sixteen hun-
dred years following the time of Pliny. While we find Kepler and
others attributing the tides to an attractive force of the moon
analogous to magnetic attraction, there were not wanting others,
among whom must be mentioned Gallileo, who contended that the
idea of the moon being the principal cause of the tides was pre-
posterous. The state of knowledge regarding the tide about the
middle of the seventeenth century is well summarized in the Geo-
graphia Generalis of Bernhardus Varenius which appeared in
1650. The following quotation is from an English translation by
Dugdale in 1733:

There is no Phenomenon in Nature that has so much exercised and
puzzled the Wits of Philosophers and learned Men as this. Some have
thought the Earth and Sea to be a living Creature, which, by its Respiration,
causeth this ebbing and flowing. Others imagined that it proceeds, and is
provoked, from a great Whirlpool near Norway, which, for Six Hours, absorbs
the Water, and afterwards, disgorges it in the same space of Time. Sealiger,
and others, supposed that it is caused by the opposite Shores, especially of
America, whereby the general Motion of the Sea is obstructed and rever-
berated. But most Philosophers, who have observed the Harmony that these
Tides have with the Moon, have given their Opinion, that they are entirely
owing to the Influence of that Luminary. But the Question is, what is this
Influence? To which they only answer, that it is an occult Quality, or Sym-
pathy, whereby the Moon attracts all moist Bodies. But these are only
Words, and signify no more than that the Moon does it by some means or
other, but they do not know how: Which is the Thing we want.

NEWTON’sS CONTRIBUTION

With the discovery of the law of gravitation by Newton, the
connection between moon and tide received a rational explanation.
In his Principia, which appeared in 1687, Newton proved that the
tides were a necessary consequence of the law of gravitation. The
sun and moon in their varying positions relative to the earth bring
about attractive forces which, with regard to the solid earth and
the overlying waters, are unequal. And it is these differences of
attraction which give rise to the tides.

Newton treated the problem as a static one. Simplifying mat-
ters by supposing the sea to cover the whole earth and to assume
at each instant a surface of equilibrium, he was able to deduce the
principal phenomena of the tides in terms of the theory of gravi-
tation. Thus, from this method of treatment it followed that two
high and two low waters should occur each day and that the range
of the tide should be greatest about the times of new and full
moon and least when the moon was in quadrature. Furthermore,
morning and afternoon tides should be unequal except when the
sun and moon are in the plane of the equator.

212 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Having shown the adequacy of the theory of gravitation to
aceount for the principal phenomena of the tides, Newton did not
push his investigations further, but left the development of the
theory of the tides to subsequent investigators. And it appeared,
at first, as if the problem of the tide were nearing a complete
solution.

But it soon became evident that Newton’s theory of the tide
could not be made to explain a number of important features. On
the assumption of the surface of the sea being a surface of equi-
librium in response to the tide-producing forces of sun and moon,
the range of the tide should not be over three feet, and should
vary from the equator to the poles. As we actually find the tide
in nature, however, the rise and fall varies from less than a foot
to more than forty feet, but without the slightest relation to lati-
tude. Furthermore, according to this theory, the daily inequality
in the tides, that is, the inequality in the two high or two low
waters of a day, should be zero at the equator and very consider-
able in the higher latitudes. Yet we find this inequality quite
negligible on the coasts of Europe and very marked in the equa-
torial regions of the Pacific.

There are other features of the tide which this theory leaves
unexplained. In fact, the basis of this static theory is in one re-
spect completely at variance with the actual condition of things,
for the surface of the sea in response to the tide-producing forces
does not even approximate toward a surface of equilibrium.
Nevertheless, this theory of the tide, as formulated by Newton,
furnished the foundation on which all subsequent work was based;
and in the hands of Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) this static theory,
known as the Equilibrium Theory, was developed sufficiently to
give it practical value in the prediction of tides for any particular
port when based on tidal observations made at that port.

It may be of interest to note here that in 1738—some fifty years
after Newton’s formulation of the law of gravitation—the
Académie des Sciences at Paris proposed the problem of the tides
as the subject of a prize essay. Two years later this prize was
divided among four contestants: Daniel Bernoulli, professor of
anatomy and botany at Basel; Colin Maclaurin, professor of mathe-
matics at Edinburgh; Leonard Euler, professor of mathematics
at St. Petersburg and the Jesuit Antoine Cavalleri. The three
first mentioned based their essays on the principle of gravitation
and on Newton’s theory of the tide, but Cavalleri based his on
Descartes’ theory of vortices. This appears to have been the last
honor paid to Descartes’ theory which had already been aban-
doned by most philosophers in favor of Newton’s more rational
theory.

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 213

With the discovery of the law of gravitation, the formulation
of the problem of the tide became somewhat changed, for it was
now no longer a question as to the agency by means of which the
moon controlled the tide. The problem now resolved itself to
deriving a formula which would express completely the relation
between the rise and fall of the sea and the tide-producing forces
brought about by the gravitational attraction of moon and sun.
This, as we found, Newton’s static theory of the tide did not ac-
complish.

THE Dynamic THEORY

Toward the close of his prize essay on the tides, Euler attempted
to treat the problem as one of fluid motion. However, the equation
he derived to express the tidal conditions is regarded as not ex-
pressing the true tidal conditions, but merely somewhat analogous
ones. And it is to Laplace that we must credit the first attempt
at a solution of the tidal problem as one of fluid motion. In
other words, he approached the problem from the standpoint of
dynamics and his theory is known as the dynamic theory of the
tides.

Laplace’s theory of the tides is contained in his Mécanique
Céleste, and his contribution has been of profound importance in
the development of the subject. He determined the fundamental
tidal equations and expressed the tide-producing forces in the
form of the potential, from which the actual forces upon any
point of the ocean can readily be obtained. He showed further
that these forces could be put in the form of a trigonometric series
in which the angle varied with the time. But the solution of the
equations resulting from the dynamic theory, after introducing
the complex conditions of the existing oceans, either surpasses
the power of analysis or entails such enormous labors as to be
practically impossible. So that Laplace’s theory, although very
profound, does not sueceed in expressing by means of a formula
the rise and fall of the tide as we actually find it in nature.

A different approach to the dynamie solution of the problem
was made by Airy, who treated the rise and fall of the tide as the
movement of waves in canals. While expressly stating that this
theory was imperfect, since this mode of treatment would not
apply to every part of the ocean, he nevertheless derived a number
of important results which serve to explain many of the observed
phenomena of the tides in rivers and channels to which none of
Laplace’s results is strictly applicable.

Following Airy, a number of eminent mathematicians—Ferrel
and Harris in America; Stokes, Kelvin, Darwin, Rayleigh, Lamb
and Hough in Great Britain ; Lévy and Poinearé in France; Borgen
in Germany—have added to the further development of the theory

214 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of the tides, either by dealing with the matter directly or by in-
vestigating some of the mathematical and physical questions in-
volved. In the meantime there had also occurred a very notable
increase in our knowledge of the geographical distribution of the
tides brought about, in part, by the use of the automatic tide gauge
for securing continuous observations over a considerable period
of time.

SUBSTITUTION OF ‘‘PROBLEMS’’ FOR ‘‘THE PROBLEM”’

With the extension of our knowledge of the rise and fall of the
tide as it actually takes place in the various oceans, it became evi-
dent that the use of a simple mathematical formula to express the
phenomenon was becoming increasingly difficult. For the coordina-
tion of the material at hand necessitated such an overloading with
corrections of the simpler formule previously in use that the unity
and simplicity assumed became altogether fictitious.

There thus came to be a tacit recognition of the fact that in-
stead of being confronted with a problem of the tide, the phe-
nomenon involves a number of problems. In other words, the
tides as they manifest themselves in the various oceans constitute,
not a single phenomenon, but a number of phenomena united only
by the bond of a common sustaining foree in the gravitational action
of sun and moon.

The earliest formulation of the problem of the tide involved
the determination of the agency whereby the moon controlled the
tide. With the announcement of the law of gravitation, the prob-
lem shifted to deriving a mathematical formula to express com-
pletely the rise and fall of the tide at any point in response to
the tide-producing forces of sun and moon, this involving the
assumption that the tide represents a world phenomenon. Now
we come to a further shift in the recognition that the phenomena
of the tides as we find them in nature involve a number of prob-
lems. As matters stand now we may formulate the problems of
the tide as follows: Given the tide-producing forces of sun and
moon and the form, size, depth and location of an ocean basin or
other body of water; required the resulting tidal phenomena.

It is to be noted that in the present formulation of the old
““problem of the tide’’ there is a tacit recognition of the fact that
the tide may not constitute a single world phenomenon, and that
the tides in any given ocean basin may be independent, to a very
large extent, of the tides in the other oceans. This change of view
resulted directly from the increased knowledge of the behavior of
the tides at various places. The tides of the north Atlantic were
the ones with which the first investigators were familiar, and the
ones with which they compared their theories. The tides of the

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 215

Pacifie were found to be considerably different, and the tides in
the Gulf of Mexico differed still further. And as accurate ob-
servations for the lesser known regions increased, further differ-
ences in the tides were brought to light.

This increase in the store of accurate information regarding
the tides of the seven seas, while disastrous to the elegance of the
solution of the problem of the tide, permitted a mechanical con-
ception of the movement of the tide. By a synthesis of the results
of these widely scattered tidal observations it had become possible
to construct a theory, based on the observed times and heights of
the tide, as to the mechanism whereby the tides along the various
coasts are brought about by the tide-producing forces of sun and
moon.

WHEWELL’S PROGRESSIVE WAVE THEORY

In 1833 William Whewell presented before the Royal Society
of London a memoir entitled ‘‘ Essay Towards a First Approxima-
tion to a Map of Cotidal Lines.’’ Included in this memoir was a
map of the world on which were drawn so-called cotidal lines, that
is, lines joining points at which high water occurs at the same time.
On this cotidal map, the tide is shown progressing from south to
north in the Atlantic, Pacifie and Indian Oceans, while in the
Southern Ocean, the belt of water that completely encircles the
globe southward of the great land masses, the tide is shown as
progressing westward.

It is to be remembered that tidal observations have been con-
fined almost without exception to the immediate vicinity of the
coast, and that over the wide expanses of the open ocean the time
of high water is not known from direct observations. The joining
by a cotidal line of two points separated by a wide expanse of water,
ean only be made in accordance with certain assumptions, and the
entire character of a cotidal map depends on these assumptions.
Whewell expressly emphasized this by stating in his conclusion to
the memoir ‘‘T shall be neither surprised nor mortified if the lines
which I have drawn shall turn out to be in many instances widely
erroneous: I offer them only as the simplest mode which I can
now discover of grouping the facts which we possess.”’

The name of Whewell and also that of Sir John Lubbock (1803-
1865) should have been included in the list of those whose work
contributed considerably to the advancement of our tidal knowl-
edge. Dealing largely with observational results these two inves-
tigators analyzed and coordinated enormous masses of tidal data
at various ports. And it was at Whewell’s suggestion that in 1835
the United States and several European countries cooperated in
securing simultaneous tidal observations covering a period of
about three weeks at a number of points.

216 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

As represented by Whewell the tide has its origin in the South-
ern Ocean. Here, it was argued, the tidal forces have almost un-
interrupted sway and the moon in its journey around the earth
compels the tide in this ocean to keep time with its own motion.
And it is from this tide wave, which is constrained to keep step
with the moon, that tides are propagated to the north through the
three great channels of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Whewell’s progressive wave theory, or, as it is frequently called,
the Southern Ocean theory, therefore sets up the forced tide wave
in the Southern Ocean as dominating the tides of the world. From
this primary forced tide wave, progressive waves set northward
through the various oceans at a rate dependent on the depth of the
tidal waterway. And the differences in the times, ranges and types
of the tide are accounted for as being due to differences in depth
and width of channel, to changes in the configuration of the shore
line and to interferences of tide waves coming from different
directions.

This progressive wave theory has many things in its favor: it is
very plausible and explains certain features of the tides as they
are found in nature. And it has had many distinguished propo-
nents, notably Sir George Darwin, son of the great Darwin and
himself a mathematician of the highest rank. To quote Darwin,
‘*Tt is interesting to reflect that our tides to-day depend even more
on what occurred yesterday or the day before in the Southern
Pacific and Indian Oceans than on the direct action of the moon
to-day.”’

Too many of the characteristics of the tides however, are left
by the progressive wave theory to be explained by changes in cross
section of channel, configuration of coast line and by interferences
of tide waves coming from different directions. Moreover, a num-
ber of investigators had from time to time suggested stationary
waves or oceanic oscillation as a probable explanation of the very
considerable rise and fall of the tide at many places on the open
coast. And at the beginning of the present century the stationary
wave was made the basis of a new theory of the tide.

Harris’ STATIONARY WAvE THEORY

This newer theory is diametrically opposed to the ideas ad-
vanced by the Southern Ocean theory of the making of the tide.
It does away with the conception of a single world phenomenon
and substitutes regional oscillating areas as the origin of the domi-
nant tides of the various oceans. It may be of interest to note
here that the older theory is due to European mathematicians and
tidal workers, while the newer theory is the outgrowth of American
genius. Almost entirely, the stationary wave theory is the work

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 217

of one man, the late R. A. Harris of the United States Coast and
Geodetic Survey. Before taking up this newer theory, it will be
of advantage to digress for a moment to a consideration of pro-
gressive and stationary waves.

Along the coast we are familiar with the waves that come in
from the ocean, the crests of which progress uniformly from point
to point. If for the moment we call the crest of such a wave high
water and its trough low water, it is evident that when this wave
travels over a body of water, the times of high and low water will
progress uniformly from one end to the other of the body of water.
This kind of wave is known as a progressive wave, and such a wave
travels with a speed depending on the depth of water.

A wave of a totally different kind may also be made to travel
through a body of water. Suppose we have a vessel, say a
rectangular tank, partly filled with water. If we raise and then
immediately lower one end, a wave will be started which puts into
oscillation the whole body of water. But it will be noticed that
high water will occur at one end when it is low water at the other
end, and that for the body of water as a whole, high water will
occur simultaneously for one half at the same instant that it is
low water for the other half. This type of wave is known as a
stationary wave.

If we start stationary waves in tanks of various lengths filled
with water to different depths, we will find that the time taken
for a wave to travel from one end to the other and back, or the
period of the wave, depends only on the length of the tank and the
depth of the water. And if it is desired to maintain a wave of
this kind in a tank, it is only necessary to apply a slight foree to
the tank at regular intervals; but it will be found that if this force
is applied at intervals that coincide with the period of the wave
we will have the maximum results.

Now to come back to the tides, the Stationary Wave theory
states that the dominant tides of the world are caused by station-
ary waves which are set up and maintained in various portions of
the oceans by the periodic tidal forces of sun and moon. Accord-
ing to this theory therefore, the tides do not constitute a general
world phenomenon, but are local phenomena, the tides of any
given region being due primarily to the stationary wave oscilla-
tion of that region.

The principal tidal forces of sun and moon have a period of
about half a day. A stationary wave of the same period, in the
deep waters of the ocean, has a length of approximately five thou-
sand miles. Ona map of the world that shows soundings we can
therefore locate regions which have the requisite lengths and depths
to support a stationary wave having the same period as the prin-

218 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

cipal tidal forces. Dr. Harris has done this and has outlined the
systems of oscillating areas for the various oceans; and further-
more, by theoretical considerations, he has connected the phases of
oscillation of these systems with the phases of the tide-producing
forces.

The stationary wave theory thus makes of the tides of any
given body of water a separate and distinct problem. If the body
of water is small and sufficiently deep, we shall have equilibrium
tides, that is, the surface will arrange itself normal to the direction
of terrestrial gravity as disturbed by moon and sun. If the body
of water is situated along the coast, the tide may be due either to
a progressive wave from an oscillating system of the open sea or
to a dependent stationary wave excited in the body of water itself.
But in the open ocean the dominant tide is due to a stationary
wave oscillation brought about by the tide-producing forces of sun
and moon acting upon such portions of the ocean basin as are sus-
ceptible of sustaining stationary waves having the same period
as the tide-producing forces.

It was unfortunate for the stationary wave theory that at its
birth it met with adverse criticism at the hands of Sir George
Darwin, who dissented absolutely from the views advanced by
Harris. In his well known book on The Tides and Kindred Phe-
nomena in the Solar System, Darwin further disparaged this fea-
ture of Harris’s work by stating that ‘‘One cannot but admire his
courage in attacking so formidable a problem ; but I do not propose
to explain his conclusions because I cannot bring myself to believe
in the trustworthiness of the principles on which he reties.’’

Darwin’s adverse criticism, in view of his well-deserved repu-
tation as an authority on tidal matters, together with the weight
carried by the name of Darwin, resulted in bringing Harris’ theory
into disfavor in Europe for some time. But in 1910 there appeared
the third volume of Poincaré’s Lecons de Mécanique Céleste in
which after subjecting the various tidal theories to searching analy-
sis, the great master states ‘‘I] est vraisemblable que la théorie
définitive devra emprunter a celle de Harris, une part notable de
ses grandes lignes.’’ Due to Poincaré’s exposition of Harris’ work
and also to the ease with which a number of otherwise baffling
questions can be answered by the aid of the stationary wave theory,
recent tidal researches have come more and more to be based on
this newer theory of the tide.

THE PREDICTION OF TIDES

In the development of the theory of tides, a number of inter-
esting collateral problems have been brought to light. As exam-
ples we may mention the determination of the mass of the moon

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 219

from the observed heights of the tide; the prediction of the times
and heights of high and low water; the determination of the rigid-
ity of the earth from tidal observations; the effects of tidal fric-
tion; the variations in mean sea level. Even the briefest discus-
sion of these collateral problems would not be possible in the present
paper and we shall therefore limit ourselves to summarizing the
work on two of these problems, namely, the prediction of tides and
the effects of tidal friction.

An advance knowledge of the times and heights of high and
low water is obviously of considerable importance to the mariner
in entering or leaving a harbor; and the practical value of such
knowledge led, early, to the prediction of tides for the construc-
tion of tide tables. It may perhaps be of interest to note here
that the oldest tide table of which there is record is one now in
the library of the British Museum. It is a manuscript table that
appears to have been written in the thirteenth century, and gives
the time of ‘‘flod at london brigge,’’ that is, the time of high water
at London Bridge. The time of high water as shown in this old
tide table is made to increase by a constant difference of 48 min-
utes from day to day and is given not for calendar days of the
month, but only with reference to the age of the moon.

To predict the tides two different methods have been employed.
The older one, technically known as the nonharmonic method, is
based on the close relationship existing between the time of high
or low water at any given place and the moon’s meridian passage.
It begins by determining, from tidal observations made at the port
for which predictions are desired, the time intervals elapsing be-
tween the moon’s meridian passage and the occurrence of high and
low water. These time intervals, known respectively as the high-
water and low-water lunitidal intervals, have an approximately
constant value for any given place and after having been once
determined from a month or more of observations, may be used
for making a rough tide table for that place by adding to the times
of the moon’s meridian passage as given in a nautical almanac.

As stated above, the lunitidal intervals for any given place are
only approximately constant. During a lunar month they undergo
periodic changes, depending principally on the variations in phase
and declination of the moon. From long series of tidal observa-
tions these periodic changes may be determined, and by using these
as corrections to the lunitidal intervals, satisfactory predictions
of the times of high and low water may be secured. And for many
years the tide tables issued in the various countries were con-
structed substantially as here outlined.

The height of the tide was predicted in a similar manner. The
average heights of high and low water at the port for which pre-

220 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

dictions were desired were determined from observations. To
these average heights there were then applied corrections for
changes in the phase and parallax of the moon, these corrections
likewise being derived from observations. And the tide tables pro-
duced by this method worked quite satisfactorily for Europe and
for the Atlantic coast of the United States, where the tide is of a
simple type. But when the nonharmonic method is used for the
prediction of tides of a more complex type, such as found on the
shores washed by the Pacific and Indian Oceans, it necessitates so
many corrections as to become prohibitive. Before the need for
accurate tide tables covering the whole maritime world became press-
ing, the mathematician had introduced a more powerful method
for the prediction of tides, known as the harmonic method.

In the harmonic method the tide is conceived as being made up
of a number of simple harmonic waves, each of which may be re-
ferred to some motion of sun or moon. In other words for sun and
moon as tide-producing agencies this method substitutes a number
of hypothetical tide-producing bodies which, with respect to the
earth, have cireular orbits in the plane of the equator. Each of
these simple tide-producing bodies is assumed to give rise to a tide
of its own kind, and the tide as it actually occurs in nature is thus
considered as being made up of a number of simple harmonic tide
waves each of which has a period corresponding to the period of
its particular hypothetical tidal body.

The periods of revolution of the assumed tidal bodies and hence
the periods of the simple constituent tides, are determined once
for all from the known motions of sun and moon. These periods
being independent of local conditions are therefore the same all
over the earth; what remains to be determined for the various sim-
ple constituent tides is their phases and amplitudes which vary
from place to place and which ean be determined accurately only
from observations. The mathematical process by which these
phases and amplitudes are disentangled from the tidal observations
at any place is a very ingenious one known as the harmonic analy-
sis and is due to that versatile British mathematician, William
Thomson, better known as Lord Kelvin, who first proposed it in
1867. Since that time the harmonic analysis has been extended
and perfected chiefly by Darwin, Ferrel and Harris.

Now it is obvious that when the period, phase and amplitude
of a simple harmonic constituent tide is known, it is not a difficult
matter to find the height of the tide due to that constituent at any
given future time. To predict, therefore, the tide that will actually
occur at some future time, it is only necessary to add together the
heights of the constituent tides at that time. The labor involved
in doing this by ordinary methods of computation, however, is so

THE PROBLEMS OF THE TIDE 221

great as to be prohibitive, and it was only after Lord Kelvin had
devised a machine which mechanically effects the summation of
all the various tidal components, that the prediction of tides by
the harmonic method was put on a practical basis.

Since Kelvin’s first tide predictor, made in 1872, there have
been introduced improved mechanical tide predictors, notably two
devised in the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the earlier one in
1883 and the later one in 1910. In the tide tables for our own
country, issued annually in advance by the Coast and Geodetic
Survey, all the predictions are made by means of the mechanical
tide predictor and this is also true to a large extent of the tide
tables published by the other leading maritime nations. And the
accuracy of these predictions as determined by comparison with
the actual times and heights of the tide is all that one can expect
in view of the disturbing influences of wind and weather. The
problem of the prediction of tides, in so far as this is based on
previous observations made at any given port, may therefore be
considered as completely solved.

THe Errects oF TIDAL FRICTION

In the motion of the waters brought about by the tides, fric-
tion is produced by the movements of the water particles against
each other, by the movement of the water over the beds of seas and
rivers and by the movement of the water on the shelving shores
along the coast. There is, furthermore, friction produced in the
yielding of the solid earth to the tide-producing forces of sun and
moon. This tidal friction consumes energy which can come only
from the rotational energy of the earth. In other words, tidal
friction acts as a sort of brake on the rotating earth, tending to
reduce its rotational velocity and as a consequence tending to make
the day longer. The stock of energy possessed by the earth, how-
ever, is So enormously great as compared with the friction produced
by the tides that it is only by a minute quantity that the day is
lengthened by tidal friction even over a period of years. And
while attempts at an accurate numerical estimate of the amount of
this lengthening of the day has thus far been unsuccessful it ap-
pears probable that it is of the order of something like the thou-
sandth part of a second in a century.

The effect of tidal friction is not confined to the earth alone,
but makes itself felt on the moon. A mathematical investigation
proves that besides decreasing the rotational velocity of the earth,
tidal friction also tends to increase the period of revolution of the
moon and to increase the distance between earth and moon. All
these effects of tidal friction are exceedingly small now, but they
have been operating for untold ages, so that by this time the eumu-
lative effect must be considerable.

222 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

With these conclusions as to the effects of tidal friction, sup-
pose we go backward in time and attempt to trace the early history
of the earth and moon. Let us go so far back that the whole life
of man on this earth is but a day in the reckoning, back to the time
when according to the nebular hypothesis our earth was a molten
mass. As we travel backward through time we are undoing the
effects of tidal friction and the day is becoming shorter, the moon
is approaching nearer the earth and the month is becoming shorter.

But it is to be noted that when the moon was nearer the earth
the tides raised were much greater than now, for the tide-producing
power of a heavenly body varies inversely as the cube of its dis-
tance from the earth. And aside from the increased friction due
to the greater tides, the tidal friction varies inversely as the cube
of the moon’s distance from the earth. Hence the efficiency of
tidal friction in increasing the length of day and month and the
distance between earth and moon varies inversely as the sixth
power of that distance. So that when the moon was one tenth her
present distance from the earth, the effects of tidal friction were
one million times as great as they are now. It follows therefore
that although the effects of tidal friction now are excessively small,
they were enormously greater in the remote past when the moon
was nearer the earth.

Based on considerations as outlined above, Sir George Darwin
has investigated the subject mathematically and developed an ex-
eeedingly interesting and very plausible theory as to the early
history of earth and moon, from which it appears probable that
the moon was at one time part of our earth.

The effect of tidal friction is to make both the day and month
longer, but the increase in the length of the day is greater than the
inerease in the length of the month. It follows therefore, disre-
garding any counteracting influences that may intervene, that a
time will come in the distant future when the day and the month
will be of the same length. At this time moon and earth will be
presenting the same faces to each other all the time and the moon
will have ceased producing any tides on the earth, although the
sun will still bring about a rise and fall of the surface of the sea.

The above is but a very meagre outline of this exceedingly
interesting problem. But taken with what precedes it is probably
sufficient to indicate the nature of some of the problems of the
tide. Prior to the formulation of the law of gravitation, the study
of the tide had engaged the attention of the leading philosophers ;
and since Newton’s time many distinguished mathematicians have
contributed to its development. It still constitutes a fertile field
for research, offering to the investigator a number of interesting
problems.

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 223

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT
By Dr. FRANCIS B. SUMNER

THE SCRIPPS INSTITUTE FOR BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ligt are times when we need to remind ourselves that the
organism—the real organism, which lives and grows, and
functions and acts, and in some eases thinks—is not an isolated
phenomenon in nature, but is part of a complex system of inter-
acting forces. It is utterly unintelligible, indeed we shall see pres-
ently that it does not even exist, except in organic relation to the
outer world. Nevertheless, various trends in present-day biologi-
eal discovery and speculation have confirmed us in the habit of
viewing the living being as a distinct and independent entity, and
of underrating the importance of a thorough knowledge of its en-
vironmental relations. Add to this the inevitable increase of spe-
cialization in all fields of science, which has tended to separate and
to keep apart those whose studies relate chiefly to the isolated
organism from those who are concerned primarily with its condi-
tions of life and occurrence in nature. It is possible that these
tendencies have already passed their zenith, and that the move-
ment toward a greater measure of integration in biology is making
satisfactory headway. But a perusal of the writings of those who
form the dominant groups at the present time does not furnish
much ground for this belief.

Let me be somewhat more conerete in regard to the causes
which have led to this relative neglect of the environment by
modern biologists. Morphology has for years, and perhaps un-
avoidably, confined itself to the study of preserved organisms, or
more frequently of the excised organs or tissues of organisms.

Physiology—when it has broken away from medical bondage
and asserted its rights as an independent science—has commonly
studied the activities of animals or plants, or isolated parts thereof,
under strictly ‘‘controlled,’’ i. e., highly unnatural conditions.
Taxonomy has dealt with collections of stuffed, pickled, pressed
or otherwise preserved material. There has frequently been a rigid
division of labor between the collector, who gathers and preserves
the specimens, and observes them in nature, and the systematist,
who studies and classifies them in his laboratory or museum, with-
out such clues as are afforded by a knowledge of their local dis-
tribution, seasonal occurrence, life history, ete.

224 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

When we come to my own special field of genetics, this
apotheosis of the organism and relative neglect of environmental
factors is particularly evident. Strictly speaking, it is not even the
organism here which is exalted into this position of well-nigh ex-
clusive interest. It is that more or less imaginary entity, the
‘‘oerm-plasm,’’ which is conceived to flow on through the ages as
an uninterrupted ‘‘stream,’’ giving rise, at intervals, to ephemeral
and relatively unimportant objects, the bodies of the individual
organisms. Within broad limits, this ‘‘germ-plasm’’ is not sup-
posed to be affected by the environment at all. It may, it is true,
be killed by lack of food, extremes of temperature, or the like,
or a particular ‘‘stream’’ of germ-plasm may at any time be
brought to an untimely end by its failure to produce individuals
which are adapted to their special conditions of life. But, aside
from this process of selective elimination, the environment is not
credited with the power of calling forth adaptive changes of a
hereditary nature. Furthermore, many biologists are at present
dubious as to whether environmental influences are capable of
producing germinal changes of any sort, even those which result
in the ‘‘mutations’’ upon which selection is supposed to act.

The great volume and the high importance of researches in
Mendelian heredity during the past two decades have lead to a
virtual identification of genetics with Mendelism. This statement
applies not only to the rather confused notions of the layman, but
to the deliberate utterances of the expert, who sometimes explicitly
defines the word genetics in this restricted sense. Now Mendelism,
as we all know, is concerned with the mode of transmission of
certain more or less distinguishable ‘‘unit-characters’’ of the or-
ganism. These last, in turn, are supposed to be the visible mani-
festations of independent, indivisible, and in a high degree un-
alterable ‘‘factors’’ in the germinal substance. Occasional in-
stances are cited, to be sure, in which particular unit characters
depend for their manifestation upon particular conditions of the
environment, and certain geneticists believe—usually as an article
of faith—that unit factors may undergo ‘‘mutation’’ as the result
of sufficiently potent changes in the external conditions. But, on
the whole, the general effect of Mendelian studies has been to em-
phasize the isolation and independence of the organism—or at
least, of its unit factors—and to minimize the importance of the
environment, except as imposing limiting conditions to existence
or growth.

After more than a generation of stalwart drubbing, Lamarck-
ism is believed by most biologists to have yielded to the inevitable
and to have gone to its last repose in an unhallowed grave. Not

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 225

only are individual acquirements believed to be ineapable of
hereditary transmission, but for man, at least, the rdle of external
circumstances in the development of both body and mind, during
the single lifetime, is frequently denied any very high impor-
tance. Environment—the ‘‘eulture medium’’—must furnish a
certain low minimum of requirements for normal development.
Beyond that, it is impotent to alter the preordained course of the
individual life history.

The foregoing picture is not intended primarily as an indiet-
ment of recent biological philosophy. My chief object has been to
point out some of the reasons for the relative neglect of the natural
environment as an object of biological research. That the prevail-
ing viewpoint which I have outlined above, is largely founded upon
exact knowledge must, I believe, be admitted. That it represents
an extreme position, and overlooks important lines of evidence, is
to some of us equally clear. While I ean not here enter into an
extended justification of this last contention, I feel bound to indi-
cate rather briefly the sort of facts upon which it is based.

In the first place, one can not overlook the utter bankruptey
of the Mendelian-Mutation scheme of things to account for evoln-
tion, and particularly to account for the origin of adaptive struc-
tures and funetions.t Hereditary differences among organisms, ac-
cording to this theory, depend upon the presence, in their respective
‘‘oerm-plasms,’’ of somewhat different unit factors. Every nat-
ural species and most artificial races are known to be far from
homogeneous in their hereditary make-up. As the result of selec-
tion—natural or artificial—individuals carrying certain favorable
factor combinations may be perpetuated to the exclusion of others.
As long as this process of sorting out is possible, the average char-
acter of the race may be altered in one direction or another. Sooner
or later, however, we reach a condition in which all members of
our selected strain possess the particular factor combination that
insures the highest possible manifestation of the character for
which we are selecting. In respect to these particular factors, our
material has become homogeneous, and further progress along this
line must cease.

Now, as a matter of fact, we all know that in some cases such
progress has been continued indefinitely. We may point to abun-
dant instances from nature, in which a tendency, once started, has
been continued throughout ages of geologic time. The reduction

1Qne prominent geneticist, Heribert-Nilsson, when confronted with the
contradiction between the ‘‘facts’’ of Mendelism and the ‘‘theory’’ of evoln-

tion, escapes from his dilemma by casting the latter overboard! (Festkrift
Lunds Universitet, 1918).

VOL. XIV.—15.

226 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of the lateral toes of the horse’s foot is an often cited example,
which is as good as any. Certain breeding experiments, likewise,
have shown the possibility of continuous modification throughout
many generations. In some instances, this has occurred among
the cultures of those who insist most strongly upon the truth of
the ‘‘sorting out’’ conception of selection. Occasionally, too, there
seems to be a sudden revival of the efficacy of the selective process,
some generations after stability seemed to have been reached.

We are all familiar with the current explanation of these phe-
nomena. Effective selection, in a race which has become homo-
geneous in respect to the factors concerned, is only possible through
the occurrence of ‘‘mutations’’ or spontaneous changes in these
factors. If such changes chance to occur in the same direction
as the changes which were initiated by our selective process, the
latter is given a new lease of life, until a condition of racial uni-
formity is once more established.

It is well to consider for a moment where such a conception
leads us. There would seem to be nothing particularly mysterious
in the fact that a race of organisms should undergo continuous
changes in a given direction, as the result of ‘‘mutations,’’ arising
without any reference to environmental needs. Progressive
changes are going on all about us in the inorganic world, some of
these continuing for untold periods of time. What does need ex-
plaining is the fact that these changes, in the organic world, are so
often in the direction of increasing adjustment to the conditions
of life. Darwin’s explanation of this fact—one which he felt
obliged to supplement by another quite different explanation—is
known to us as the theory of natural selection.

At the present day, there are probably as many estimates of
the effectiveness of natural selection as there are biologists who
are competent to express an opinion on the subject. All are prob-
ably agreed that it must be regarded as one of the factors of evo-
lution. But most recent biologists are strongly impressed by
various considerations which were either unknown to Darwin or
were probably not sufficiently recognized by him. In the time al-
lotted I can speak of only one of these. This is the inadequate
supply of variations which are actually available as material for
selection. At a time when most individual differences were believed
to be more or less hereditary, and when practically no bounds had
been set to the efficacy of the selection, it was much easier to assert
the ‘‘all sufficiency’’ of this principle as the cause of progressive
evolution. Even then, it must be remembered, there were many
who denied the possibility that wholly random variations could
furnish an adequate basis for evolution through natural selection.

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 227

In recent years, this difficulty has been magnified many fold.’
A large part of the variability of organisms, including many dif-
ferences of survival value in the struggle for existence, are be-
lieved to be ‘‘somatic’’ or ‘‘phenotypic’’—that is to say, non-
hereditary. In respect to any given character, so much of the
variability as is found to be inheritable is attributed to the action
of relatively small numbers of unit-factors, which can be readily,
and rather speedily, segregated in particular descent lines, if the
degree of selection is rigid enough. Thus a very limited amount
of permanent modification may be brought about fairly promptly.
After that, we are forced to wait for the decidedly capricious
process of mutation to help us further along the road.

One having a limited acquaintance with the discoveries of Mor-
gan and his co-workers might be disposed to exclaim at this point:
That is easy! New mutations are coming to light every day in
the case of Drosophila. Would not this prove to be true with every
race of organisms, if studied intensively ?

I fear that such persons are leaning on a very frail reed. When
we examine into the nature of these mutations of the fruit-fly, we
find very little promising material for a theory of progressive
evolution. Many of them are obvious deformities and abnormali-
ties, not only in the sense of being departures from the typical
condition, but in the sense of rendering the insects unfitted for
life in nature. The body may be warped, the wings so abbre-
viated as to be useless, the legs duplicated or greatly shortened,
the eyes reduced in size or suppressed altogether. Many of the
mutant factors described by these authors belong to the class
known as “‘lethals.’’ That is to say, their presence in a homozy-
gous condition results in the death—or failure to appear—of all
the organisms so affected. Indeed, most of the mutant strains
are distinctly less hardy, or more difficult to raise, than are flies
of the wild type. The best that can be said for any of the modifi-
cations thus far appearing is that they are harmless to the organ-
ism. Those which are not positively deleterious consist in changes
in the color of the body or eyes, in the number or form of bristles
on the thorax, and other trivial departures from the normal con-
dition. So far as I know, not a single one of these mutations—
and there are some two hundred of them described—ecan be said
to represent a better adapted type of organism. With a very few
exceptions, they consist in obvious losses of structures or materials
previously present.

We are, not, of course, warranted in concluding from this
that mutations of evolutionary value never occur. It is quite
possible that they do. But what we actually know at present re-

228 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

garding such mutations as occur in our breeding cultures affords
no safe ground for the belief that evolution has come about
through the accumulation of these by natural selection.” This belief
seems particularly difficult in the case of very slow breeding ani-
mals, such as the elephant, which have none the less undergone
enormous structural modifications during relatively brief periods
in the earth’s history.

Here then is one difficult situation in which we find ourselves,
if we follow the lead of the majority group of biologists in ques-
tioning the positive effectiveness of the environment as an agency
in evolution. Are we not brought back to a viewpoint similar to
that of Naegeli, who held ‘‘that animals and plants would have
developed about as they have even kad no struggle for existence
taken place, and the climate and geologic conditions ..... been
quite different from what they actually have been?’”* According
to Naegeli, the environment has had merely a pruning effect upon
the tree of life, eliminating certain branches and permitting cer-
tain other others to grow. If this be the truth, we must, of course,
aceept it. But we should accept it on evidence, and not on au-
thority.

That the environment may have had a far more positive in-
fluence upon evolution than is admitted by the Mendelian-Muta-
tionist school of biology is further rendered probable by certain
recent experiments. I refer particularly to the remarkable work
of Guyer and Smith upon the inheritance of artificially induced
eye defects in rabbits. The studies of these authors seem to prove
conclusively that one particular class, at least, of ‘‘aequired char-
acters’’ may be transmitted indefinitely from one generation to
the next. And the mechanism by which these acquired characters
seem to have been registered in the germ-cells is of a type which
is conceivably operative on a large scale throughout the living
world. I am waiting with interest to see whether the results of
these remarkable experiments are to be explained away or robbed
of their significance for biological theory.*

Another field in which this depreciative attitude toward the
power of environment is at present conspicuous is that of eugenics
and the study of character formation in man. Sinee I have recently

2 Professor Bateson, who is usually regarded as a pioneer ‘‘mutation-
ist,’’ has recently declared (Scienck, January 20, 1922) that ‘‘we have no
reason to suppose that any accumulations of characters of the same order’’
[i. e., ‘*transferable’’ or segregating ones] ‘‘ would culminate in the pro-
duction of distinct species.’’

3 Kellogg (Darwinism Today, p. 278).

For present purposes it is immaterial whether these phenomena be
attributed to ‘‘parallel induction’’ or to ‘somatic induction.’’

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 229

published a special article on this subject,” I shall take the hberty
of quoting rather extensively from this. My first object in the
article referred to was to point out the very general confusion
which exists regarding the relations between heredity and environ-
ment in human development.

‘<Every ‘character’ (whether we mean by this word a bodily part or
organ, or a trait or mental disposition) has a hereditary basis. Likewise,
every character is due, in its final state, to the interaction of this hereditary
basis with other parts of the developing body, and with the sum-total of
external conditions, physical and biological, which we call the ‘environment’
of the organism.

‘‘ However, it seems quite proper to speak of differences between two
organisms as due solely to heredity or solely to environment. Thus plants of
different stock, reared under identical environments, might differ greatly in
size or in other respects. These differences would be of purely germinal
origin. On the other hand, two plants of identical heredity might be reared
in different soils and come to differ widely in size or otherwise. Such differ-
ences would be purely environmental.

‘¢ | |. . The familiar question, Which is the more important, heredity
or environment? is not capable of answer when stated in that form. One
might as well ask, Which are the more important in the construction of a
house, the building materials or the carpenters? We may, however, as just
indicated, frame the question in another way: Are the differences which we
observe among our fellow men due chiefly to differences of heredity or to
differences of environment, using the last term in its broadest sense?é Even
here, we must be more explicit. Do we refer to the differences between the
white man, the Chinaman, and the negro, or do we refer to the differences
which we observe among individuals of the same race? The differences
between the various races would be granted by most persons to be hereditary.
But the differences within a given race are regarded by many as being due,
in large degree, to the circumstances of life—to feeding, home surroundings
and ‘bringing up.’ This is claimed particularly for the mental and moral
characteristics. ’’

‘‘Francis Galton, after reviewing the evidence derived from the study
of identical twins, thus expresses his belief regarding the relative potency of
heredity and environment in determining human differences: ‘There is no
escape from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture,
when the differences of nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found
among persons of the same rank in society and in the same country.’

‘‘And truly, I do not see how we can escape this conclusion, if we bear
in mind Galton’s reservation. ... .

‘7 think it likely, however, that many recent geneticists, especially some
of those who are active in the eugenics movement, would throw out Galton’s
reservation and insist that ‘nature prevails enormously over nurture’ in deter-
mining the mental and moral differences among an entire population, regard-
less of its social strata.

‘<The opposite, or ‘environmentalist’ philosophy, in its extreme form,

5 Heredity, environment and responsibility. Bulletin of the Scripps
Institution, No. 10, July 2, 1921.
6 See Popenoe and Johnson, ‘‘ Applied Eugenics,’’ p. 3.

230 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

would assert that almost any individual may be given almost any type of
physique, intellect, or moral character, if taken sufficiently early and sub-
jected to a proper regimen during the period of growth and character
formation. ....

‘Tt is my own belief that the scientific geneticists and eugenicists are
much nearer the truth than the mere undisciplined lovers of mankind, but
that they have been led into a somewhat extreme position by their efforts to
square the facts of life with certain biological theories. Now there are various
considerations of a strictly scientific nature which would seem to establish
the presumption that non-inherited factors in the formation of human char-
acter should be given more weight than is frequently accorded them by
biologists. ’’

The time at my disposal does not permit of an adequate dis-
eussion of these considerations. I shall restrict myself to a brief
mention of one of them. This is the probability, admitted by most
biologists, that civilized man has undergone little if any improve-
ment in his inherent mental make-up since the dawn of history.

While it is not necessary to admit such extreme claims as have
been made by some biologists, I think there is no escape from the
conclusion that mankind, or the civilized part of it, has made lztile
advance in potential brain power during the entire period of his-
tory—little in comparison with his racial achievements in science,
philosophy, art, invention, morals, ete. In other words, human
progress has been extrinsic rather than intrinsic. We have built
up an enormously compiex world of racial acquirements, consisting
of customs, laws, and knowledge, as well as all the physical para-
phernalia of civilization.

Thus, if it is really true that the innate brain power of man-
kind has undergone little or no increase since paleolithie times, the
higher mental status of the modern man is due almost wholly to
a fuller development in each of our lives of potentialities which
were present in the man of the Old Stone Age. This, of course,
is but another way of saying that even such enormous differences
as distinguish a Cro-Magnon cave-dweller from a modern Euro-
pean are chiefly, if not wholly, environmental.

It may be worth while, in the interests of clear thinking, to
undertake an analysis of this distinction which we are so prone
to draw between organism and environment. How far is this
antithesis a real one, and how far is it a mere matter of conveni-
ence? Let us consider this question, first of all, in its bearing upon
the science of genetics.

The sum-total of causal agencies which result in the production
of a complete organism from a fertilized ovum are commonly
grouped under two heads: (a) the material constitution of the
fertilized ovum itself, particularly of its chromosomes; and (b)
external influences which act upon the developing organism, from

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 231

the moment of fertilization to the close of the life cycle. This
elassification corresponds in the main to the familiar antithesis
between heredity and environment, nature and nurture. As a
matter of fact, the distinction thus drawn is largely a chronological
one, the influences acting before fertilization being lumped together
along with ‘‘nature,’’ those acting after that event being assigned
to ‘‘nurture.’’ If we insist that heredity relates only to the ‘‘in-
trinsic’’ factors in the situation—to the material constitution of
the ‘‘germ-plasm’’ independent of environmental influence at any
period—it seems to me that we are dealing with something purely
imaginary. There never is a period in the history of the germ-
cells or their forerunners when they are not vitally dependent
upon their living environment. Every step in their history in-
volves an interaction between certain factors which may be called
‘‘intrinsie’’ and other factors which are external to these. What
is ‘‘intrinsic’’ at one moment may have been ‘‘extrinsiec’’ the mo-
ment before. Whether this relation is of a type which makes pos-
sible the form of inheritance assumed by Lamarck is a question
which we need not consider here. I merely wish to point
out that no hard and fast distinction can be drawn between
heredity and environment as conditioning the life of an organism.
The distinction is largely one of chronology, and the moment of
demarcation between the two must be chosen rather arbitrarily.
In practice, to be sure, the distinction implied by these words is in
the highest degree useful. But we should not imagine that it is
an absolute one.

It may be of interest to carry this analysis a step further. I
am prepared to defend the somewhat paradoxical thesis that the
organism and its environment constitute an inseparable whole;
that if we could detach all environmental elements from this com-
plex there would be no organism left. Nor do I intend this as a
mere bit of Hegelian dialectic. A moment’s reflection serves to
show that we can draw no sharp line of division, not even a theoret-
ical one, between the two.

If I should ask you whether the nest of a bird constituted a
part of the organism or a part of its environment, I presume that
every one present would resent the question as an insult to his
intelligence. Nor would there probably be any hesitation if the
question related to the patch-work dwelling of a caddis-worm, even
though this dwelling is carried around by the larval insect, as if
it were an integral part of its body.

The situation becomes somewhat less clear, perhaps, when we
consider the calcareous tube of a marine annelid. Here is something
which is definitely secreted by the epidermal cells of the organism,

232 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

and which forms a sort of permanent integument. It does not,
however, in this case, retain any organic connection with the body
of the worm. But when we pass to the shell of a mollusk we find
that there is such an organic connection with the body, so that the
animal cannot be dislodged without extensive injury to its living
tissues. Moreover, the purely mineral ingredients of the shell are
sandwiched in between layers of a substance which we commonly
speak of as ‘‘organic,’’ though not in this case as living. Does
such a shell belong to the organism or to its environment?

If there be any doubt in the case of the mollusk, let us consider
the bony carapace of the tortoise. This, likewise, is composed in
part of mineral salts, in part of equally lifeless ‘‘organic’’ mate-
rials, produced through the metabolism of living matter. But in
addition to these lifeless elements, we here encounter a multitude
of living cells contained in minute spaces scattered throughout the
bony substance; and even blood-vessels and nerves, which provide
for the nutrition and growth of these cells. All persons would
probably agree that such an exoskeleton belongs to the creature’s
body.

Let us pass next to a consideration of the internal fluids which
are concerned with distributing food and oxygen to the living
tissues and with carrying away their waste products. Perhaps a
reversal of the order previously followed would here be instructive.
In the case of vertebrates, the blood is itself commonly classed
among the tissues of the body. Cells of several kinds are present,
along with a fluid, intercellular matrix consisting, in large part,
of proteid substances, approaching in complexity those which com-
pose the ‘‘protoplasm’’ of the living cells.

Among the mammals, the blood maintains a high degree of con-
staney in its composition, regardless of changes in the external
medium. A seal or a porpoise may pass from fresh to salt water,
or vice-versa, without undergoing any change in the concentration
of the blood. This is not true, however, of the fishes. Those which
are capable of living equally well in fresh and salt water show a
higher salt content in the latter than in the former.

Now among fishes—or at least the bony fishes—this concen-
tration of salts in the blood is not proportional to that of the water
in which they happen to be. But the case is quite different with
many marine invertebrates. As a result of osmosis and diffusion
both the concentration and composition of the salts in the body
fluids of such animals is rapidly brought into conformity with that
of the water in which they are placed.

In the ecoelenterates, it is well known that the gastrovascular
cavities and their contained fluids are in direct connection with the

THE ORGANISM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT 233

surrounding ocean, while in the sponges the only circulating me-
dium is the sea-water itself, which is propelled through multitudi-
nous canals by the motion of the flagella. Once more, is it not
obvious that the distinction between organism and environment is
a conventional and arbitrary one?

This line of argument would be quite incomplete without refer-
ence to the transformations which constitute that most character-
istic process of living matter, metabolism. Unfortunately, my
limited knowledge of biochemistry would not make it possible for
me to discuss the subject adequately even if my allotment of time
permitted. But even such slight knowledge as I do possess enables
me to assert with confidence that there is no definite point in the
process at which we can say for the first time: This is no longer
food; it has become living matter. Nor, on the descending phase
of the metabolic eyele, is it possible to distinguish the moment at
which the living passes over into the non-living. But food and
waste matters belong to environment. They can hardly be re-
garded as parts of the organism.

In short, the organism and the environment interpenetrate one
another through and through. The distinction between them—
let me repeat—is only a matter of practical convenience. Should
not such considerations affect our attitude toward the propriety
of neglecting the environment as an object of biological research ?
I make no pretense, of course, that such neglect is universal. An
active and important group of present-day biologists is giving its
chief attention to the organism-environment complex. My criti-
cisms—so far as I have made any—relate to general tendencies and
average conditions, and these have not, I believe, been unfairly
portrayed.

234 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA AS A PSYCHO-
LOGICAL PROBLEM’

By Professor EDWARD K. STRONG, JR.
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

A’ interesting phenomenon of the last few years has been
the unanimity with which millions of men and women have
conformed in their thinking and in their actions to what certain
leaders wanted. Vast sums of money have been raised for liberty
and victory loans, for the Red Cross and for many other agencies.
Citizens of the United States consented to universal conscription,
cut down their daily use of sugar, closed down their factories on
certain days, and went without gasoline for their autos voluntarily
and enthusiastically. To an extraordinary degree men and women
in nearly all the countries of the world have cooperated in earry-
ing out programs necessitating radical changes in their every-day
life; and they have done so not because they were ordered to do
so, and so were forced to it, but because they freely responded to
suggestions presented in skillfully conducted propaganda.

Because of the surprising success of all this propaganda, the
innumerable times it has been employed and the ease with which
it has been carried out, people generally have become conscious
of propaganda as a great tool or method for influencing others.
Propaganda has, of course, existed for ages. But it has not been
comprehended so clearly by the mass of people as it is to-day. And
certainly it has never before been employed on such great numbers
of men and women. To-day it is a clearly recognized method of
social control.

If propaganda were a means of influencing others along lines
only of benefit to society, it could be hailed with great acclaim.
But unfortunately it can also be employed for dishonest and so-
cially vicious programs, just as well as for honest and worth-
while movements. At the present time the advertising of patent
medicines that can not possibly cure, and of stock in companies
formed for no other purpose than to defraud the public, appears

1 Retiring vice-presidential address before Section I, Psychology, Amer-

ican Association for the Advancement of Science, at Toronto, December 30,
1921.

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 235

in altogether too many of our publications. Federal authorities
estimated that in five years, 1910-15, the 2,861 swindlers that were
arrested had defrauded the public of $351,000,000, averaging a
dishonest gain of $123,000. All authorities are agreed that such
swindling increased very greatly during the war, and _ possibly
reached its climax some time after the armistice. If so, it is now
on the decline. Let us hope so!

The drive, a new form of propaganda, has now become a regu-
lar business. According to James H. Collins, somewhere between
a billion and a billion-and-a-half dollars have been raised in one
year for various causes other than governmental. Many of these
have been worthwhile, but unfortunately many have been the re-
verse. A bureau that makes a business of investigating national
and interstate money-raising activities, reported that by April,
1920, the number of drives had risen to 1,021, of which the bureau
approved only 124. The district attorney of New York County
investigated 534 money-raising. activities in 1918 and put 384 of
them out of business. One gang of ex-convicts had obtained
$500,000 in eight months.

But we are less concerned here with swindling propaganda
than with those forms not so palpably dishonest. It is important
that our citizens be protected from pecuniary loss, but it is far
more important that the United States, for example, deals with
Russia, Mexico and the Irish question in the right way. And it is
just such problems that furnish us with propaganda very difficult
to handle.

As a case in point, consider the Russian situation. Those op-
posed to the Bolsheviki have attempted to destroy the movement
by linking it up in our minds with the fact that the Bolsheviki
were under German influence, that they were anarchists, that
they were guilty of murder and atrocities, that they persecuted
the Church, that they had nationalized women and were deliber-
ately corrupting the morals of children, and now, recently, that
their government is so unstable that we can not do business with
them. The friends of this political and social revolution have told
us entirely different stories. And so-called unbiased persons have
often made statements which do not agree with what any one else
has set forth.

Consequently to-day the average citizen confesses he really
does not know what the facts are in this and many other important
issues. He has been deluged with facts, near-facts and falsifica-
tions put forth by imterested parties, so that he has a mass of
undigested and conflicting ideas on these subjects, or else has be-
come frankly partisan to one view.

236 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

President Butler, of Columbia University, recently called at-
tention to the dangers to society of this sort of thing. ‘‘Liberty,”’
he said, ‘‘which once was endangered by monarchs and by ruling
classes, has long since ceased to fear either of these; it is now
chiefly endangered by tyrannous and fanatical minorities which
seize control for a longer or shorter time of the agencies and in-
struments of government through ability and skill in playing upon
the fears, the credulity and the selfishness of men.’”’

The question naturally arises, is there no way of controlling
propaganda? Certainly there are ways and they are enforced
more or less in the ease of certain types of propaganda. But there
are other types which are not so easily evaluated and consequently
not so easily handled.

A perusal of literature on this subject gives one the impres-
sion that very few to-day are sincerely interested in the matter,
except those apparently who desire to control or eliminate propa-
ganda directed at their own. It is still viewed as highly ethical
for us to sort and reject and trim in the name of our own view of
truth, justice, democracy and loyalty to our group. But it is
anti-social for the other fellow to do so. If we are Republicans
we want the editor of our newspaper to give us good Republican
views and to damn the Democrats. If we are Democrats, we want
the reverse. We really want ‘‘facts’’ that support our views. It
is too uneomfortable to be confronted with many counter ‘‘facts.”’

Naturally as a psychologist, I view this matter as an interesting
psychological problem. It is my purpose in this place to discuss
certain psychological aspects of the subject and to point out some
of the ways in which propaganda may be controlled. It is also
my purpose to eall attention to certain types of propaganda which
at present I see no way of controlling, in the hope that others may
become interested in the subject and labor to work out some ade-
quate methods.

First of all let us clarify the use of certain terms which are
employed in discussing the subject and at the same time come to
an understanding of the psychological elements which are involved.

The word ‘‘propaganda’’ means essentially the spread of a
particular doctrine or a system of principles, especially when there
is an organization or general plan back of the movement. Propa-
ganda differs from ‘‘education’’ with which it is purposely con-
fused, in that in the case of the former the aim is to spread one
doctrine, whereas in the case of the latter the aim is to extend a
knowledge of the facts as far as known. Advertising men have
never been able to agree on a definition of ‘‘advertising’’ and I
should not want to attempt here what they have failed to do. But

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 237

I think we ean distinguish between advertising and propaganda
by saying that advertising is usually concerned with making
known and desirable a definite commodity or service with the defi-
nite aim of leading many individuals, as such, to acquire the com-
modity or service. Propaganda ineludes many types of advertis-
ing, but it is mainly concerned with the subtle presentation to the
public of information so chosen and so focussed that among many
individuals there develops a general ‘‘point of view’’ which is
favorable to the aim of the propagandist and leads to action in
that general direction. A further distinction between these two
methods of influencing people pertains to the methods employed
rather than the object. The advertiser buys space upon which
appears his message, and the reader knows it a paid advertise-
ment. The propagandist may advertise, but he especially aims to
employ space he did not buy, at least directly, and not to permit
the reader to know that the material is propaganda. He believes
his material will have greater effect when its source is unknown.

It is clear that both advertising and propaganda make use of
argument and suggestion. And much has been written and said
as to these two methods of influencing others. We have no quarrel
in this paper with argumentative or ‘‘reason-why’’ appeals to
the public. But we are very much concerned with appeals in-
volving suggestion.

The term ‘‘suggestion’’ has been employed in a great variety
of ways, sometimes in a narrow sense, but usually in a rather broad
and indefinite way. Frequently it is used to cover all the means
of imparting information and exerting influence other than
through reasoning. Without going into the subject here, let us
recognize three phases of non-rational influencing of others. In
the simplest form one or more ideas are presented which are
known to be associated in the minds of the audience with another
idea not mentioned. The audience thinks the non-mentioned idea
because of their established habits of thought. In this way a
speaker may denounce most viciously and unfairly a prominent
man without giving his name, by skillfully referring to one
or more of his known characteristics. The desired effect is ac-
complished and without making it possible for the prominent man
to reply. Then there is the more complicated phase of suggestion
where an action is brought into the mind of the audience—the
action being a familiar one and also one that will be desired as
soon as mentioned. Thus a school boy at recess says, ‘‘Let’s get a
drink.’’ The other boys might not have gotten a drink if they
had not been reminded of the action. But as soon as it is called
to mind, they feel the desire and so go. So also a nation like Ger-

238 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

many, all primed for war, as in 1914—I don’t refer here to her
military preparations, but to the state of mind of her citizens—
was ready to act immediately when her leaders said ‘‘Let’s fight.’’
It was the absence of just such a mental state in the United States
that kept us out of war. Later on the attitude was developed—
almost over-developed before it had a chance to function—and we
were eager to act when the word was given.

In both these phases of suggestion the effect is produced be-
cause there exists within the mind of the person being influenced
certain habits of thinking and action and when the proper stimulus
or cue is given the associated thinking and acting immediately fol-
low. There is still a third phase of suggestion, which I prefer to
call motivation, in which a person is led to do something which is
unfamiliar or which he would not do if it were merely mentioned.
It is because of this third method of influencing others that the
control of propaganda is so difficult. Let us see what this process
of motivation is.

Consider an example: An electric light and power company
launched a newspaper campaign some time ago in order to sell
vacuum cleaners. The appeals were made to women to buy the
cleaners in order to save labor and to make their homes cleaner
and healthier. Many cleaners were sold. But the stock on hand
was far from exhausted. Some time later the company launched
another campaign, in which they directed their appeals to hus-
bands, not wives. In these advertisements they depicted, for ex-
ample, a successful business man in his office surrounded with
filing cases, typewriters, dictaphones, and the like, and in another
cut, showed the wife at home with a dust-cap on her head, sweeping
the dining room, with the dust flying all about. The caption under-
neath read something like this: ‘‘Why not equip your wife’s office
like your own?’’ This second campaign sold more vacuum clean-
ers than the first one. Why? Because the man’s love for his wife
was aroused and this strong force was coupled to the idea of
vacuum cleaners. Buying a vacuum cleaner then became a most
satisfactory manner of expressing love. In advertising to the
wives, on the other hand, no such fundamental motive was aroused.
The vacuum cleaner would save labor, it is true, but it would not
give to the wife as much satisfaction for the money as a new rug
to be seen by every one coming into the home, or as new clothes
for the children.

In this case we have men led into doing something they had
no intention of doing, of buying something that little concerned
them, and that they probably knew very little about. They were
so led beeause love for their wives was aroused and they were

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 239

shown how this love could be very adequately expressed. With
minor changes, the advertisement could have sold them an electric
washing machine, or any useful household device. They were not
sold, then vacuum cleaners so much as they were the satisfaction
of pleasing their wives.

Motivation involves two elements—first, the arousal of a strong
desire, and, second, the presentation of a certain action which ap-
pears to be a satisfactory way of expressing the aroused desire.
Moreover the action in such eases is not one that the individual
would perform if it were merely suggested.

The question has often been discussed: Could the United
States have declared war in 1914? I think there is no doubt that
there was insufficient war sentiment at that time to have permitted
mere suggestions from the President to be effective. But I think
there is also equally no doubt that proper propaganda would have
motivated the country into war. The years 1914 to 1917 may be
looked upon as a period in which such sentiment developed and
was finally put into action in a calmer and far less emotional man-
ner than usually prevails at such a time.

Recent work in psychology has emphasized the distinction be-
tween an ‘‘idea’’ and a ‘‘sentiment.’’ The sentiment, according
to Rivers, is an idea emotionally toned. ‘‘House’’ is thus an idea,
whereas ‘‘home’”’ is a sentiment, for home always ineludes an emo-
tional consciousness of mother and father, brothers and sisters, old
familiar associations and the like. When the sentiment becomes
suppressed and lost to consciousness it is ealled a ‘‘complex.”’
Sentiments and complexes, we are coming to see more and more
are extremely important in explaining behavior; much of abnormal
conduet being traceable to the existence of complexes.

Motivation is thus the process of deliberately developing a sen-
timent, of deliberately associating an idea with an emotion, of tying
together in the mind of another the love for wife and the idea of
buying a vacuum cleaner, or of sympathy for the Belgians and
hatred of the Germans, and the idea of war.

The aim of propaganda is to develop sentiment and then pre-
cipitate action through mere suggestion. Let us consider some
implications which are involved in all this.

First of all let us note that theoretically any emotional element
ean be associated with any specifie line of action. Practically, eer-
tain combinations are difficult to accomplish, but theoretically
they are possible. Thus, the correspondence schoo] arouses the
boy’s love for his mother and challenges him to make her proud
of him and ‘‘funnels’’ the aroused emotional desire into taking a
correspondence course. The same appeal could be utilized to get

240 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

young men to go to church, to quit gambling, to work harder for
their employer, to enlist when war is declared, to do anything the
boy could be made to believe his mother would approve of.

In the last political campaign for President of the United
States, the maternal instinct was appealed to by both sides. A
Democratic editorial appealed as follows:

‘‘Mother of America! Mother of Pennsylvania! Mother of
Pittsburgh! Do you want your boy to go to war? Is the roll of
battle drums sweeter in your ears than the song of his voice in the
home? Would you rather have his hands in fierce grip on gun
in battle’s rack than have his arms in love about your neck? That
is the question you must answer to your God and your fellow-man
when you go into the voting booth on November 2. Do not let
demagogs confuse you. The issue is plain: A vote for the league
is a vote for peace; a vote against the league is a vote for war. .. .
Mother of an American boy! The munition makers of the world
are arrayed against American participation in the League of Na-
tions. They are snatching at your vote, because with it they may
claim the body of your first-born. Mother of a Pittsburgh boy!
The question comes home to you! Your boy was not born to be
food for guns.”’

A Republican advertisement stated in part:

‘‘Women! For your own good vote the Republican ticket. .. .
The American woman asks of her country: That it be a secure
place for her home and for her children and that it be security
with honor. That it give her children opportunity to lead their
lives even better than she and her husband led theirs. That it be
just in its relations with other nations, and merit the pride which
the best of its citizens have in it, in its history and its ideals.
A poliey which has these purposes will have the support of Ameri-
can womanhood and American motherhood. That is the Repub-
lican policy and has been Republican policy from the days of
Abraham Lineoln. The Republican policy is to protect the se-
curity of the United States by preserving its right to make de-
cisions regarding its actions in the future as events in the future
demand. The Republican party is unwilling to pledge now that
it will protect European boundary lines and to deprive Congress
of the power to say in each case what the action of the United
States will bes... .7”

Here we have the same instinctive emotional element aroused
and then associated with two diametrically opposite lines of action.
Both of these articles are intended to arouse a mother’s love for her
boy and consequent horror of war, and then show that her desire
could be best obtained by voting the Democratic ticket in one case
and the Republican ticket in the other.

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 241

A second fact can be considered regarding motivation. It is
that no logical connection needs to exist between the emotion
which is aroused and the program which is outlined. And f: rther
still, there need be no logical establishment of the fact that the
program is really the best one to be pursued or even that it is
honestly conceived.

Consider the propaganda for the Red Cross, an organization
for which we are all enthusiastic. The Red Cross has rendered
inestimable service. And because its work has touched our hearts
a real sentiment has been built up about its name. So strong is
this sentiment that one now finds himself unable to resist the
request for annual dues. But my friends—I have asked several—
and I do not know whether all the money that is now raised is
really needed, nor how it is spent, nor whether the organization is
efficiently administered or not. I am not saying this in the way
of criticism: I am only pointing out that when one’s emotions
have been properly aroused one acts as directed and without in-
tellectually considering the matter.

Take the recent ‘‘Clean-up and paint-up’’ campaign as another
illustration of what most would eall a worthy propaganda. A
trade journal, The American Paint and Oil Dealer, started it off
with an editorial in May, 1912, in which it was pointed out that
for many years there had been special campaigns inciting people to
clean-up their towns and their neighborhoods for some specific
gala occasion. It was now time ‘‘to back the idea that you clean
up and paint up and keep cleaned and painted up, not just once
a year, but the whole year through.’’ ‘‘The idea was to incul-
eate into the minds of people pride in home and city, and in thrift
and cleanliness, and to appeal to that pride to the end that it
might be organized and wisely directed for the benefit not only
of the paint industry, but of the whole United States of America.
Enlisted in this campaign were various types of people. Material
was prepared that appealed to every one of these types in a most
specific manner.”’

R. F. Soule writing in Associated Advertising tells us how
Chambers of Commerce were the principal bodies that helped put
the campaign over. He describes how fire departments were
aroused to the need to prevent fires as well as to put them out;
how police departments became much more interested in enforeing
sanitary ordinances along with the street-cleaning departments;
how women’s clubs helped the good work along; ete. In 1920
there were 7,000 towns and cities engaged in this campaign. And
illustrative of the work accomplished it is reported that in Cinein-
nati 384 buildings were torn down that were a fire menace and

VOL. XIV.—16.

242 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the city so cleaned up as to lessen the annual premiums for fire
protection by $850,000.

According to Soule not over $25,000 was spent in any one year
by the organization back of this campaign, although a great deal
of publicity was given in newspaper editorials and in the adver-
tising of many companies in connection with their own products.

Now note: This campaign is characterized as having been
unselfish. The big idea was not to sell merchandise, it is claimed,
but ‘‘to sell the people of this country citizenship, pride of home
and ownership, and a desire to be of greater service to the com-
munity of which they were a part.’’

These were the motives, desires or wants that were aroused and
then hundreds of business men saw to it that they were expressed
by way of buying their goods, whether it was paint, oil, lawn
mowers, flower seeds, or even safety razors. Clearly any emotional
desire can be coupled up with any line of action and there needs
to be no real logical connection between them.

Propaganda depends upon this psychological process of mo-
tivation for its suecess. And motivation, as we have seen, is the
deliberate process of arousing one’s emotions and desires and then
suggesting a line of action by which these desires may be expressed.
And we have seen further that any emotional element can be asso-
ciated with any specific action; and that when one is well mo-
tivated he ignores intellectual considerations touching upon the
honesty of the statements or the efficacy of the program.

So much for our analysis of motivation—the principal psycho-
logical process in propaganda. Now let us consider how propa-
ganda may be controlled by society so that dishonest and pernicious
campaigns may be prevented without interference to worth while
propaganda.

The most convenient method of considering the many angles of
the subject will be through discussing propaganda in terms of the
following three aspects: First, propaganda considered with regard
to the truth or falsity of the statements in which it is presented;
second, with regard to the action suggested as the means of satis-
fying the aroused desire; and third, with regard to the emotional
element, the desire that is aroused. The matter of control ean ac-
cordingly be discussed in terms of these three question: First,
how far can propaganda be controlled in terms of the validity of
the statements which are made? Second, to what extent ean propa-
ganda be controlled in terms of the action which is proposed? And
third, to what extent can propaganda be controlled in terms of the
emotional elements that are involved ?

First of all, then, how far can propaganda be controlled in
terms of the validity of the statements which are made?

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 243

Society has long dealt with false statements and already has
postal regulations, laws against slander, libel and the like. To
protect politicians the English law provides a fine not to exceed
£100 if the name and address of the printer and publisher is omit-
ted from a poster relating to the candidature of any person for
Parliament and other offices. The Association of Advertising Clubs
of the World carries on a steady campaign against dishonest adver-
tising and has accomplished a great deal of good against this type
of propaganda. At this time, thirty-six states have passed the
Printers’ Ink Statute or a modification of it, thereby facilitating
convictions in such eases. And the Association of Advertising
Clubs of the World is spending money and effort in enforcing it.
Control of propaganda publicly making dishonest statements can
clearly be taken care of.

But unfortunately many undesirable propaganda will not fall
under the class of propaganda publicly making dishonest state-
ments. One very undesirable sort is spread by word of mouth. No
one knows from whence it comes, and exactly what is back of it.
We had many stories thus circulated against the Germans during
the war, and we have the same sort of thing carried on against
prominent men almost all the time. Stories of Roosevelt’s exces-
sive drinking were thus cireulated. And it was not until they
were publicly expressed that he had an opportunity of disposing
of them through law suit. Such word of mouth propaganda is
fostered in times of emotional stress and particularly wherever
people believe they are not being told all the facts. The best pos-
sible cure for it is publicity of the sort that makes people believe
they are getting all sides to the question.

But in addition to this sneaking underhand propaganda there
are all sorts of campaigns which are very undesirable, but which
adhere technically to the truth. They cannot accordingly be pros-
ecuted for dishonesty. Some of them, however, give false im-
pressions just the same. This is so because the human brain does
not necessarily think in a logical manner. For example, the state-
ment, ‘‘No watchman here between 6 P. M. and 6 A. M.’’ means
just that and no more, but actually the effect is as though the
statement had gone on to say that a watchman was on duty in the
day time. For a distributor of a food product to advertise that his
goods contain no arsenic is to give the impression that the goods
of at least one of his competitors do contain that poison. And the
lurid page description of two successful gushers between which
the advertising company’s property is located gives the impres-
sion one is surely buying stock in a gusher-to-be, even though the
company’s property may be several miles from either of the de-
seribed oil wells.

244 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Then there are other kinds of propaganda which deal with this
subject in such a general way that no one can challenge their state-
ment. One of the packing companies ran an advertisement some time
ago which came no nearer to stating facts than this: ‘“‘ Possibly, we
are partially to blame for the lack of understanding which exists
in regard to our business. In the past, knowing that attacks upon
us have been based on tissues of half-truths, adroitly handled in-
uendo and misinformation, we may have forgotten that the publie
were not in full possession of the facts.’? The statement is a
very clever one, undermining criticism without giving a single fact
in reply except the company’s own belief that all attacks have been
based on half-truths.

To require that propaganda contain truths and not falsehoods
is a desirable regulation, but it will not stop undesirable cam-
paigns.

Let us consider second to what extent propaganda can be con-
trolled in terms of the action which is proposed.

If the proposed action is that of buying, it is not difficult to
evaluate the propaganda, or advertising as it would usually be
in this case, upon the grounds that the individual did or did not
get value received. But if the proposed action is that of giving
money for some cause or charity, justification upon such grounds
is far more difficult. If a woman, very fond of cats, wants to
endow a hospital for them, run by thoroughly incompetent people
whom she likes, isn’t that sufficient to justify her action and the
propaganda, as far as she is concerned? It is hard to attack such
action in terms of the rights of individuals, but it is being more
and more attacked upon the grounds of social welfare. Business
men through their Chambers of Commerce in sheer defense are
increasingly investigating such propositions and in many places
list the charities that they will countenance. Out of the war has
come the Community Chest movement whereby all social agencies
in a district make up their budgets in advance and after they have
been gone over by both disinterested and interested parties, a sin-
ele united effort is made to raise the total amount in one campaign
for the year. Such plans help the worthy cause and interfere with
the unworthy one. But they do not eliminate the unworthy cam-
paigns.

The establishment of bureaus, whose business it is to investi-
gate all organizations asking for funds—organizations like the Na-
tional Information Bureau—renders it easier to determine whether
any organization is desirable or not. Can society go farther here?
Can society not only positively help the worthy cause, but put the
unworthy, inefficient or unnecessarily duplicating agency out of

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 245

business? There is no question but that many individuals are
being fooled every year and much money squandered through such
non-worthwhile causes. But at the same time, we must remember
that most new uplift movements have encountered great opposi-
tion at the start, and to increase this opposition still more through
the establishment of legal regulations may do society in the long
run more harm than good.

In addition to campaigns to sell a commodity or service or to
obtain gifts, there are other campaigns devoted to accomplishing
specific actions of a sort much more difficult to estimate fairly. Po-
litical campaigns aim to secure votes for certain men; propaganda
appears from time to time to influence citizens to vote for or
against certain measures; propaganda appeared in many forms a
short time ago, appealing to citizens of the United States to inter-
vene in Mexico; lobbies are familiar accompaniments to our legis-
latures, each one aiming to accomplish a specific program; unions
appeal to public opinion to aid them in winning a strike and com-
panies appeal to the same public to help them prevent or break
the strike, ete. We are so accustomed to our political machinery
that we do not often stop and ask ourselves whether it is geared
up so as to serve society in the best way. Only when some enthu-
siastie social uplifter boasts that she and four others alone put a
measure through a state legislature by the use of skillful lobbying,
or a secretary of a business man’s organization calmly announces
months in advance that Congress will do away with a bureau be-
eause his organization is demanding such action, and his prophecy
comes true, does one wonder whether some sort of control of propa-
ganda would not be worthwhile even here. And one waxes quite
indignant, as did a former Secretary of War, when he comes to
realize that much of the propaganda for bringing back the bodies
of our dead soldiers was instigated by the journal of the under-
takers and casket makers.

To control such propaganda we must have facts and we must
have a body to review the facts. This we do not have in many
eases. A political campaign on a clean-cut issue is supposed to be
a trial as to the merits of the two sides before all the citizens who
through their votes decide the issue. This is the theory of democ-
racy. It works pretty well in many eases, surprisingly well in
some. But in most campaigns the issue is not clean-cut and in
nearly all campaigns the political strategist endeavors to confuse
the issue, so that many a time a citizen votes against what he really
wants. And then there are many measures coming up in our fear-
fully complex life of to-day upon which the average man is not at
all competent to pass judgment. Except in a few instances, so-

246 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ciety has not yet organized itself so as properly to handle such
matters. In the case of struggles between capital and labor, we
are steadily advancing toward the insistence upon both sides that
they shall present the facts as they see them and also toward the
establishment of tribunals which shall weigh all the facts and de-
cide the issue. The impartial chairmanship program maintained
by the clothing industry in Chicago and other cities has worked
very satisfactorily and seems to be the ideal machinery for con-
trolling propaganda in that field. Its greatest merit lies, it seems
to me, in the fact that complaints are studied and evaluated very
shortly after they arise, thus eliminating the getting under head-
way of extensive propaganda with all the arousal of emotions that
propaganda assures.

But there are many issues to-day, strongly supported by a
minority, regarding which it is difficult to obtain facts. And as
long as one side is insistent and the other side largely indifferent,
society cannot expect that the minority will present facts regard-
ing their claims. For it is not facts that will sell the program,
but emotion and the emotion which is aroused needs not be logically
connected with the issue. So a few harrowing tales of deserted
mothers and their poverty stricken children bring us a mother’s
pension program because a few people believe this is the best solu-
tion. Possibly it is. I am not here arguing the ease. But how
much real thinking has entered into the matter by disinterested
parties before a legislature has voted!

We have briefly considered the possibilities of controlling
propaganda in terms of the action which is proposed—when the
action is that of buying, giving money, or gaining support for
definite political or other issues. But there is an entirely different
type of response which some propaganda aims to accomplish. It is
that where no definite act is suggested, at least directly, but where
publie opinion is to be changed. Pro-German propaganda before
and during the war, or pro-Irish propaganda to-day, or the New
Era Movement of the Presbyterian Church, or the International
Typographical Union advertising in the newspapers do not aim at
getting any one to do a specific act. What is aimed at is the de-
velopment of a broad sentiment with the perfectly clear under-
standing that when this sentiment is established the individual
will do something to forward the cause. To evaluate the propa-
ganda in such eases, the entire program must be considered. And
as individual members of a big movement emphasize different as-
pects it is very difficult to determine just what the movement stands
for. For example, legal action was instigated some time ago
against a union because in its constitution, if I remember correct-

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 247

ly, it stood for a soviet type of government. But no progress
could be made because no specific action had been taken by the
union, openly against the laws of the United States. Now possibly
the constitution as far as this point was concerned was and had
always been a dead letter. But possibly the point was the very
heart and center of the union’s life. Still, how can its propaganda
be limited until it has resulted in definite action? But if it cannot
be controlled until anti-legal action commences, then there can be
no control of such situations until most of the harm (or good) has
been accomplished. For if the propaganda has accomplished the
establishment of a certain sentiment without interference and then
specific action has been suddenly advocated, no legal machinery in
existence can stop the action. The existence of a sentiment in
Great Britain, that treaties to which they were a party must be
observed, was one of the factors that forced that nation into war
with Germany when the latter violated the neutrality of Belgium.
As Sir Edward Gray said, ‘‘My God, what else could we do!”’

There is another very vexatious phase of this point. When
a sentiment has been established the individual may do almost any-
thing which he feels will advance the cause in which he is inter-
ested. Can a propagandist be held responsible for the actions of
his followers because he stirred them up originally. A newspaper
publisher’s propaganda against McKinley may have caused that
president’s assassination, as some have felt. But is the publisher
responsible for an act he did not specifically advocate, even
though, for the sake of argument here let us say, he did stir the
assassin emotionally and against the President? The newspapers
report the non-cooperation propaganda of Mahatma Gandhi of
India and how this leader is fasting one day a week in protest
against the rioting which his followers are indulging in. To main-
tain that the publicist is responsible for what his followers do
seems very unfair: to hold that he is entirely unaccountable opens
the way for most subtle and dangerous attacks on society.

This leads us squarely up to the issue: shall propaganda be
evaluated only on the basis of the actions that result or on the
basis of the motives back of the propaganda?

Our law basically concerns itself with man’s behavior and takes
little account of motives. But a distinction is made between wilful
murder and unintentional manslaughter. And a man can be con-
victed of murder if a person’s death results within a year from
his shooting at a chicken with intent to steal it. The intention to
steal makes the accidental death murder. Here man is held re-
sponsible for the final results of his criminal intention in just
about as far reaching a manner as if he had inflamed another who

248 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

then went out and murdered a complete stranger. Responsibility
for the actions of another under certain circumstances, has been
established. The Court of Appeals of New York State has recently
awarded damages to an employee who when reprimanded by his
foreman for negligence called the foreman a liar, and was struck
and knocked down by the foreman. His glasses were shattered
and vision in one eye destroyed. it was held that the employer
should be held responsible for an excitable and violent foreman
in the prosecution of his duties as such, at least until there is suf-
ficient interruption in the performance of such duties as to justify
the conclusion that the foreman had abandoned his employment
and that the assault was an independent and individual act, as
distinguished from acts within the terms of his employment.

In connection with the Espionage Act the Attorney General’s
Department opposed the proviso that ‘‘anti-war utterances or
propaganda would not be punishable if made with good motives
and for justifiable ends’’ on the grounds that it would make it
difficult to prosecute and convict. Regulation according to this
view must be in terms of actions, and motives can not be econsid-
ered. Twenty-two states have adopted the Printers’ Ink Statute
regulating dishonest advertising in which no reference to motive
or intention is made. Sixteen other states have, however. inserted
the word ‘‘knowingly’’ or its equivalent, thus making it necessary
to prove that the dishonest advertising was intentional. Legal
action in these sixteen states is based primarily then upon the
motive, not the act.

The 1918 Report of the Attorney General states the policy of
that department regarding the enforcement of the Espionage Aet.
It is of significance here. One paragraph reads as follows:

‘““The Department throughout the war has proceeded upon the
general principle that the constitutional rights of free speech, free
assembly and petition exist in war time or in peace time, and that
the right of discussion of governmental policy and the right of
political agitation are most fundamental rights in a democracy.
It has endeavored to adhere to the principle that neither the
Government nor any group or class of citizens should be permitted
to take advantage of the war situation to suppress discussion and
agitation of domestic problems, whether political, social, economic,
or moral. At the same time, however, it has held to the view that
neither under the guise of political theory, social conviction, or
religious creed should any man or group of men be permitted to
indulge in propaganda which has the deliberate purpose of dis-
integrating our strength in the war or which is of an essential
nature necessarily producing that effect.’’

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 249

In other words, the policy outlined here maintains that the
welfare of the nation is paramount and that any propaganda
which can be classified as injuring the national war program will
be condemned regardless as to how this propaganda could be
classified in terms of rights of free speech, free assembly and the
like. And further that motive is of little consideration in com-
parison with an overt act.

So far we have considered the possibilities of controllmg propa-
ganda from the two aspects: first, as to whether the statements
in it were true or false; and second, as to whether the proposed
action was socially worth while or not. This discussion has seem-
ingly emphasized the necessity of taking motives into account.
Now let us consider the third aspect of the subject—the element of
aroused desire, the emotional background and _ psychologically
true cause of the action.

We have seen that theoretically any emotion may be aroused
as the basis for stirring one to act and that there needs be little
or no rational connection between the two. The detailed suffer-
ing of a little girl and her kitten can motivate our hatred against
the Germans, arouse our sympathy for the Armenians, make us
enthusiastic for the Red Cross, or lead us to give money for sup-
port of a home for cats. The story may be true or concocted for
the purpose; the inferences against the Germans or for the home
for cats may be also true or false; the organization carrying on the
propaganda may be efficiently administered or not—all these eon-
siderations little concern us. We feel the emotion, we want to do
something because by acting we will feel better, and away we go
regardless of mere intellectual considerations.

Here is the real psychological problem concerning propa-
ganda. Take away the emotional element and society need have
no fear of propaganda. For man is always very slow to act in
terms of ideas alone. Witness his indifference when he really
knows the political organization in control of his municipality is
flagrantly dishonest. He does nothing until his emotions are
aroused by a whirlwind speaker, or by personal injury. So long
as a radical writes or speaks in a philosophical manner society
ean rightly be indifferent. But when he discards the intellectual
aspects of his views, seizes upon some slogan and fills his writings
or speeches with concrete tales of human suffermg and the arro-
gance of the rich, society rightly becomes alarmed. For now the
radical is setting fire to dynamite and neither he nor any one else
ean tell what may result.

At the present time the prospects do not appear over bright
of controlling propaganda through regulation. There is, however,

250 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

a method of weakening its influence, and that is by fighting one
propaganda by another, or by general publicity. The trouble,
however, with fighting bad propaganda by good propaganda, aside
from the very practical consideration that the former is usually
better equipped financially, is that seldom is the public supplied
with facts upon which a real conclusion can be thought out. In-
stead it is inflamed to take sides and a deadlock results, or the
matter is settled by some sort of resort to force. Just in this way
arose the turmoil about the League of Nations program. Instead
of thinking it through and arriving rationally at a real conelusion,
Wilsonites and anti-Wilsonites became emotionally aroused and
it was voted down because the latter group had the greater force
measured in votes. Both sides know the real issue is not dead,
and the Republicans who defeated Wilson’s program are now
attempting at Washington to find the conclusions we should have
reached months ago. Fighting propaganda with propaganda is
not likely, then, to give us satisfactory results.

Can propaganda be controlled through publicity? Yes, if we
had perfect publicity. But that, apparently, we cannot have.
Hence, we can only hope to have partial control by this means.

It has been suggested that propaganda could be controlled by
national control of all publicity. Would such regulated and cen-
sored publicity help here?

The two extremes of publicity are no freedom of speech and
complete freedom to say whatever one wants to. The Anglo-Saxons
have decided that freedom is better than no freedom. The French
lean quite strongly to centralized control of all publicity. Ob-
servers both from within and without that country testify that
such censorship deadens public interest in the news of the world.
And it certainly makes possible all manner of mouth-to-mouth
whisperings—the most insidious and undermining of all propa-
ganda. An editorial in the New York Times only the other day
ealled attention to the marked difference in behavior of radicals in
this country and abroad concerning Sacco and Vanzitti, who have
been condemned to the electric chair for murder. Abroad the Reds
have inspired the rank and file of their group with rage over the
so-called persecution by the American Government of those radi-
eal leaders and several assassinations have been attempted as a
result. In this country no such disturbance has resulted because,
as the Times points out, everyone is familiar with all the facts
of the case and so even the Reds can not be stirred up over the
affair.

Possibly publicity is the one best cure we have to-day for
handling those forms of propaganda which are not readily con-

CONTROL OF PROPAGANDA 251

trolled by other means. But if this is the case it means that more
of our newspapers and magazines will have to convince the public
that what they print is not controlled by certain interests. At
the present time I should judge that great numbers of citizens
believe most newspapers, if not their own, distort the facts to fit
their purposes. And again, if publicity is to cure the evils of
propaganda, it means that society must work out some more satis-
factory method than now exists of providing the groups of poor peo-
ple with adequate publicity to offset the enormous advantage that
groups composed of wealthy people have in commanding the
printed page. Too few newspapers print to-day, and too few can
ever afford to print, the detailed testimony in a labor controversy,
yet unless the laboring man feels his side is presented, he will have
supplied to him and will read wild denunciations of capital instead
of the sworn testimony of his leaders as given before a board of
arbitration.

Another means of controlling propaganda lies in educating the
public to an understanding of the methods employed in propa-
ganda. It is thought that man likes to feel he is being appealed
to on logical grounds: that he resents being ‘‘soft-soaped.’’? And
that he does not want to be “‘worked,’’ or to have something ‘‘ put
over on him.’’ Possibly, it is contended, articles such as have ap-
peared recently in our magazines recounting the methods by which
propagandists have fooled men and women may educate the pub-
lie to see through a publicity campaign. Personally, I do not be-
lieve that very much can be accomplished in this way, for, as Bar-
num claimed, the public likes to be fooled; and secondly, clever
appeals to the emotions will nearly always win when pitted against
intellectually held convictiois.

In closing, I want to emphasize one point. It is possible to-day
for a group to carry on a very subtle propaganda with the imme-
diate aim of developing some sentiment. There is no machinery
to stop them, whether the sentiment is socially good or bad. For
sentiment is an emotional state of mind and as long as no action
results, society to-day has no way to handle it. So France mourned
at the Strasbourg statue in Paris each year and kept alive the
sentiment to retake Alsace-Lorraine. Of course, we completely
sympathize with her. But it made Germany prepare all the more
for war. And the world sat back and looked on while Germany es-
tablished the sentiment in the minds and hearts of her citizens
that they lived only for the fatherland and that war was the truest
expression of their country’s life. The Grand Army of the Re-
public and the Confederate Veterans have perpetuated northern
and southern antipathies and the American Legion must of neces-

252 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

sity keep us antagonistic toward Germany. For these organiza-
tions are surcharged with emotion. General O’Ryan is quoted in
the papers as follows:

‘‘Ten years from now the battlefields of Europe will not look
as they appear to-day. They will bear monuments of men on
horseback and the young men will grow up thinking of war in
terms of medals, glory and men on horseback rather than in terms
used by the young men of to-day who were in the war. Delay in
solving this problem will mean that those who profit by war will
get control of the kids and that’s what they want. The young-
sters will be hypnotized to believe anything in the name of patriot-
ism and they wiil want to get medals and glory of their own.’’

If war is to be eliminated, it will be necessary to control the
sentiments that are developed in each and every country. Simi-
larly if peace is to be attained between capital and labor, the right
sentiment will have to be developed. Many an employer has been
smarting under conditions now past when labor had the whip hand.
He is now getting even, as he says. He is reacting to a sentiment
of revenge and at the same time building up a similar one in the
minds of his employees. This is the sure road to worse conditions.

As far as I ean see, society has reached the point in its develop-
ment when it must take motives into account, because man has now
learned how to arouse motives to action in an economical and
wholesale way. And in regulating motives society must come to
evaluate the sentiments that propaganda is aimed to create, and to
regulate in some way the use of phrases arousing emotions, as dis-
tinguished from phrases appealing to rational consideration.
Without control in some way of the emotional element in propa-
ganda, legal action will never stop the most dangerous of propa-
ganda which arouses a sentiment first of all and then at the proper
moment in one fell swoop precipitates that sentiment into action.

PUBLIC HEALTH 253

PUBLIC HEALTH AND EXPERIMENTAL
BIOLOGY

By Professor HARRY BEAL TORREY
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

I

AST October, in the library of the College of Physicians
Li; in Philadelphia, I came upon a letter from Lord Lister to
Dr. W. W. Keen. It was dated 4th April, 1898. It began as
follows :

12 Park Crescent, Portland Place, London W.
4th April, 1898.
My Dear Sir:

I am grieved to learn that there should be even a remote chance of the
legislature of any state in the Union passing a bill for regulating experiments
on animals.

It is only comparatively recently in the world’s history that the gross
darkness of empiricism has given place to more and more scientific practice;
and this result has been mainly due to experiment upon living animals. It
was to these that Harvey was in a large measure indebted for the fundamental
discovery of the circulation of the blood. And the great American triumph
of general anesthesia was greatly promoted by them. Advancing knowledge
has shown more and more that the bodies of the lower animals are essentially
similar to our own in their intimate structure and funetion; so that lessons
learned from them may be applied to human pathology and treatment. If we
refuse to avail ourselves of this means of acquiring increased acquaintance
with the working of that marvelously complex machine, the animal body, we
must either be content to remain at an absolute standstill or return to the
fearful haphazard ways of testing new remedies upon human patients in the
first instance, which prevailed in the dark ages... .

My own first investigations of any importance were a study of the process
of inflammation in the transparent web of the frog’s foot. The experiments
were very numerous and were performed at all hours of the day in my own
house. I was then a young unknown practitioner; and if the present
(English) law had been in existence, it might have been difficult for me to
obtain the requisite licenses; and even if I had got them, it would have been
impossible for me to have gone to a public laboratory to work. Yet without
these early researches which the existing law would have prevented, I could
not have found my way among the perplexing difficulties which beset me in
developing the antiseptic system of treatment in surgery.

In the course of my antiseptic work at a later period I frequently had
recourse to experiments on animals. One of these occurs to me which yielded
particularly valuable results, but which I certainly should not have done if
the present law had been in force. It had reference to the behavior of a
thread composed of animal tissue applied antiseptically for tying an arterial

254 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

trunk. I had prepared a ligature of such material at a house where I was
spending a few days at a distance from home; and it occurred to me to test
it upon the carotid artery of a calf. Acting on the spur of the moment, I
procured the needful animal at a neighboring market; a lay friend gave
chloroform and another assisted at the operation. Four weeks later the calf
was killed and its neck was sent to me. On my dissecting it, the thread,
instead of being thrown off by suppuration, had been replaced under the new
septic conditions, by a firm ring of living fibrous tissue, the old dangers of
such an operation being completely obviated.

At the very time that I was reading these words, twenty-two
years after they had been written, The Country Gentleman for Oc-
tober 16, 1920, was carrying broadeast over the United States an
article entitled ‘‘ Vivisection’’ by an antivivisectionist, which after
exhibiting the grossest ignorance of the purposes and practices of
contemporary investigators who use animals in their experiments
concludes as follows:

Alienists—Doctor Bishop and various others of high standing—have
taken a further step than the mere plea of needless cruelty in their arraign-
ment of vivisection.

They claim that vivisectors are not actuated by any scientific zeal, but
are mental degenerates. In other words, that vivisection is a recognized
form of mental perversion—a savage mania which is known to the keepers
in every mad house. It is of the same order as the spirit which incites mur-
derers of a certain type to rip their human victims’ bodies to pieces. | !

The author is obviously irresponsible, and his work would be
negligible were it not for the fact that it receives official endorse-
ment. On the editorial page, under the caption ‘‘Vivisection,”’
cognizance is taken of the statement already quoted, in an editorial
which is essentially a brief abstract of the article ending with these
words:

Other doctors, here and in Europe, go a step further, by declaring that
cases of a recognized form of mental perversion are known among vivisectors.
The public should understand this vivisection argument from both sides. The

accompanying article supplies such needful information in a way to prove
antivivisection’s case.

My attention had been attracted originally to this number of
The Country Gentleman by editorials in two eastern newspapers
that were disposed to be sharply critical of the appearance of this
propaganda on the eve of the November election in California
where an antivivisection measure was on the ballot.

The motive prompting the appearance of the article at that
time need not concern us. The charges implied in the editorials
to which I refer have been officially denied, and I am glad to accept
the denial. Indeed, it should be said that on February 12 The
Country Gentleman printed a very able defense by Dr. W. W.

PUBLIC HEALTH 255

Keen of what he very properly calls experimental research. It
even introduced with kind words the widely known and respected
author. Its editorial columns are, however, silent. This silence
after Dr. Keen’s admirable exposition of the facts contrasts signifi-
cantly with the warm editorial endorsement of the October article,
in which one looks in vain for the slightest first hand knowledge of
contemporary experimentation.

Yet The Country Gentleman is published in Philadelphia. The
Saturday Evening Post, published by the same company, was
founded by Benjamin Franklin, the same Benjamin Franklin who
was one of the founders of the Philadelphia Hospital in which the
students of the first school of medicine to be founded in the United
States were taught by its first professor of clinical medicine. From
that time Philadelphia has been a great seat of medical learning.
Two of our best medical schools now flourish there. On the roster
of the College of Physicians are many of the most illustrious names
in the medical history of the last century and a half. Its wonder-
ful library is said to be surpassed in this country only by that of
the Surgeon General’s Office in Washington.

II

There is no need to dwell further on this remarkable exhibition
of opposition to a principle which has not only been repeatedly
established in fact, but has recently been ratified by a decisive
majority at the polls. California is free, for the present at least,
to safeguard the health of its people by the necessary research.

What part may experimental biology be expected to play in this
connection ?

An answer to this question will depend first upon what we may
consider experimental biology to be. As I think of it, its limits
are set by no group of organisms nor by any circumscribed body of
facts. The field of experimental biology is the living world. Its
materials are omnipresent there. Its problems are general, funda-
mental problems of organisms, carried to the limits of human in-
terest. Its method is analytical. Its object is the discovery of
mechanisms, processes, dynamic relations. I like to think of it as
an attitude of mind rather than a department of biological knowl-
edge. For there is no department of biological knowledge that may
not reveal this interest in the fundamental problems, dynamic re-
lations, and analytic methods which to my mind characterize ex-
perimental biology.

What is the relation between experimental biology, thus con-
ceived, and the public health ?

Health is a name we apply to a standard of mental and physieal

256 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

fitness that varies with our enlightenment and our individual
necessities. This standard is maintained by both private and pub-
lic agencies. Private agencies are concerned primarily with indi-
vidual cases involving some form of treatment. This treatment
may be: (1) applied by the individual himself when in control
of the necessary means, as provided, for instance, by the rules of
personal hygiene or athletic training ; or (2) applied by an expert
upon whose superior skill or insight he temporarily relies.

These experts form a heterogeneous assemblage, including such
different elements as masseurs and physio-therapists, physical di-
rectors, physicians and surgeons and all others who may be licensed
by law to render professional services under definitely prescribed
conditions. This heterogeneity raises many perplexing practical
problems, which however, need not detain us here.

While private agencies are concerned primarily with the prob-
lems of private individuals, public agencies are concerned pri-
marily with the interests of the public as a whole, especially with
those sources of danger whose control demands collective as against
individual effort. The general method of the public agencies is
prevention. This we are accustomed to contrast with treatment,
the traditional method of the private agencies. These methods in
certain respects, do contrast sharply with each other. Where pre-
vention succeeds, treatment becomes superfluous. And in so far
as private practice is dependent upon the treatment of preventable
disorders, its function is temporary only—of the nature, let us
say, of emergency service. But it must be recognized that treat-
ment may be essentially preventive in nature, and is becoming
more and more so, as old-fashioned prescription writing is dis-
placed by the instruction of patients in the care of their bodies
and the avoidance of disease. The functions of private and public
agencies are thus entirely compatible. No reputable physician will
prolong treatment for his own profit, nor will he hesitate to make
it unnecessary if he can. Though worthy of his hire, he is never-
theless a publie servant. Under no other theory can the state
appropriate the sums it does for his professional training. It is his
duty to destroy disease and develop a sturdy race just as it is
the duty of the teacher to dispel ignorance and encourage resource-
ful, self-reliant minds. His is a double function: to cooperate with
public agencies in preventive measures and to care especially for
those whom such measures have failed to protect.

So much for the relation of public and private agencies. From
whatever angle the problems of health may be contemplated, they
are scientifie problems. They are also fundamentally biological
problems, of a sort to invite an experimental method of attack.

PUBLIC HEALTH 257

iil

The problems of public health center about the control of the
causes of disease. Disease may be defined as a more or less radical
departure from a standard of bodily or mental health, variously de-
termined, which may be taken as a standard of reference. It isa
relative term, in no sense a definite entity. Thus defined, it has a
variety of causes. Some of these are well known, and form the basis
of the public health work of the present day. Some of them—
how many we cannot say—are quite unknown. It is toward the dis-
covery and control of these that experimental biology may be ex-
pected to make its chief contributions to the health of the future.
Accordingly I shall attempt to gain space for the discussion of
these problems of the future by avoiding more than a summary
reference to the conquests of the past.

These conquests were largely initiated by Pasteur and a few
of his contemporaries. The mysteries of suppuration vanished in
the light shed by his experimental studies on fermentation. And
contagion received its clear explanation in the demonstration of
the transportation of an infecting organism by some appropriate
carrier from one host to another. Thence arose a dominant motive
in prevention, the discovery and eradication of pathogenic organ-
isms and their means of dispersal—by fumigation, quarantine,
sanitation, destruction of breeding places, and carriers and their
breeding places, and so on. New organisms are being almost daily
disecovered—witness the organism of yellew fever recently isolated
by Noguchi, and many additions to our knowledge of the intestinal
fauna to which Professor Kofoid and his co-workers have made
such notable contributions.

When it is not possible to prevent infection, the same result,
since Pasteur, may be achieved by immunizing the host with spe-
cific antitoxie sera and vaccines of various sorts.

When neither contagion can be prevented nor immunization
effected, it is naturally sound practice to discover the infection
at the earliest possible moment. This is one reason for such
agencies as public health nurses and public dispensaries.

Education in hygiene is another means of prevention—effica-
cious both against infectious diseases (e. g., tuberculosis) and those
lapses from health that are referable to other causes connected
with the customary mode of life, such as bad housing, dangers of
occupation, unsatisfactory food and clothing, and so on.

With this sketchy summary of public health activities as they
are commonly practiced, we may turn to certain aspects of the
general problem which have for the most part a future signifi-

VOL, XIV.—17.

258 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

eance. First, let us consider the group of psychopathic disorders.
These are due to a variety of causes, among which are defective in-
heritance, syphilis, alcoholism, accidental injuries, social including
occupational maladjustments, sex maladjustments, defects in edu-
cation, especially early education. The first may be controlled by
prevention of propagation, and in severe cases in no other way, as
has been established by studies in heredity. The manner of pre-
vention is open to question. Segregation of the sexes is entirely
possible, but presents some practical difficulties at the present time.
Sterilization laws are in effect in a few states. But the recent ex-
perimental results of Steinach throw some doubt upon the all-
round efficacy of the usual method of vasectomy. In the tests
of rats whose vasa had been ligated, the sex cells degenerated ; but
the interstitial tissue hypertrophied with a corresponding aug-
mentation of the sex impulse. It is obvious that such an operation,
effective though it may be as a method of sterilization, is of ques-
tionable protection for the public against a potential rapist and
carrier of venereal disease. Further experiments are needed.

Spyhilis continues to resist all methods of prevention, but in-
fections are subject to control as a result of the experimental in-
vestigation of Sehaudinn, Metchnikoff, Ehrlich and others; that
complete cures are effected, however, has still to be demonstrated.

Alcoholism is—theoretically—preventable by law. There ean
be no question of the salutary effect of even our present degree of
prohibition upon the prevalence of venereal disease and the milder
psychopathic cases, as well as crime and poverty. As a eause of
degeneracy Pearson’s well-known statistics are supported, on the
one hand, by the performances of Pearl’s aleoholized fowls, and
opposed, on the other, by Stockard’s degenerate guinea pigs which
continued to reappear for several generations after one ancestor,
a male, had become an involuntary victim of aleoholism. Whether
the present law in the United States represents a position of bio-
logical stability can not be determined until further careful experi-
mentation produces more, and more varied, data on the physiolog-
ical effects of aleohol on the human mechanism as a whole.

Social and occupational maladjustments, though often appar-
ent to casual inspection, offer to the nerve physiologist and psy-
chologist a multitude of subtle problems in abnormal human reae-
tion that have hardly begun to receive proper attention, important
though they appear in the analysis of psychopathie eases.

Sex maladjustments, further potent sources of ill health, pre-
sent another array of problems to the student of nerve physiology
and the endocrine organs and their inter-relations, that have so
far been merely reconnoitered.

PUBLIC HEALTH 259

Finally, the education of early life provides large opportunity
for the crossing of reflexes in tangled patterns that exert a warp-
ing influence upon normal behavior. Here is a field for both bio-
logical experimentation and the prophylaxis of biological instrue-
tion. We hold our young too cheap. To develop with careful
teaching their natural interest in themselves and the normal
processes of organic nature, is to provide insurance toward a nor-
mal life.

In a second group of disorders that from the increasing fre-
quency of their incidence and their obscure causation are of dis-
tinct publie concern, I have placed the malignant tumors and the
affection of the endocrine glands.

Time will not permit me to dwell upon the grave seriousness
of the problems they present, and the great opportunities they
afford for experimental analysis.

Similarly it will not be possible to consider further the subject
of eugenics, which has already been touched upon in connection
with psychopathic disorders.

The few illustrations that have been cited will suggest some-
thing of the place of experimental biology in the medical research
of the future.

IV

In closing I would like to tell you of two education experiments
that are being made in Oregon bearing on the present subject of
discussion. The first is the introduction of elementary biology
into the school systems of three cities of the state. The courses are
planned for the third to eighth years (inclusive) of school life.
They are in charge of specially trained teachers who are under-
taking to teach the subject as science and encourage the experi-
mental method. The results for the past year are everything that
could be wished. The children are enthusiastic, and have carried
the infection of their interest to other classrooms and to their
homes. The wide-ranging observation, initiative, inventiveness,
keen criticism and clear thinking of these eight-to-ten year olds
have astonished and pleased parents and school authorities alike.

The course covers the whole field of biology. One of its objects
is to provide a natural, unconscious and authentic approach to the
problems of adolescence. To one who has waited many years for
the establishment of such instruction, the admirable teachers’ re-
ports embodying its first fruits read like fairy tales. I suggest it
as a Serious experiment in mental and moral prophylaxis.

The second project to which I have invited your attention is a
seven year course in medicine. The student who enters the univer-

260 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

sity with the intention of studying medicine enrolls at once as a
student of medicine, in a curriculum that extends without break
through the seven years of formal instruction preceding the as-
sumption of his professional degree.

The prime object of this curriculum is the fusion of those
phases of medical education that are customarily known as the
work of the pre-medical, pre-clinical and clinical years into a
single organic whole. By this means it is hoped

(1.) To introduce students early to medical problems that
they may see the very practical connection between their basic
work and ultimate professional suecess—avoiding, however, the
serious error of permitting the substitution of the superficial
drama of the clinic for the fundamental scientific knowledge on
which their later clinical success must rest.

(2.) To stimulate intensive cultivation of the medical sciences,
biology, chemistry, physics and psychology, by means of which
te continue indefinitely to live in the present of medical achieve-
ment—to quicken especially the spirit of research.

(3.) To indicate that medicine is beyond all things a ealling
that makes demands on every human resource—on all the full-
ness of experience, the ripeness of wisdom, the subtle understand-
ing of men.

4.) To make every student of medicine wise and skilful in
the technic of his profession.

(5.) To make him a public-minded citizen, thoughtful of his
community, jealous for its future.

It may be said further that a department of experimental
biology has been added to the traditional subjects provided by law
for medical schools, and a directorship of research in fundamental
medical science with functions extending throughout the entire
seven year course.

These are concrete expressions of the view that has been here
supported—that medicine has a biological foundation and with the
public health must needs prosper on biological research.

THE CONSERVATION OF MAMMALS 261

THE CONSERVATION OF THE MAMMALS AND
OTHER VANISHING ANIMALS OF
THE PACIFIC

‘By Dr. BARTON WARREN EVERMANN

MUSEUM OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

T the Pasadena meeting of the Pacifie Division of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science two years ago,
the writer presented a paper on the ‘‘Scientific and Economic
Problems of the Mammals and Birds of the North Pacifie.’’ In
that paper attention was called to the inadequacy of our knowl-
edge of the distribution, abundance and habits of even the most
common species of marine mammals of the North Pacific. We know
only approximately what the species are. There may be 44, as
given in the most recent lists, or there may be more or not so many ;
we do not know with any certainty.

Excepting the fur-seal, our knowledge of the various species
is very incomplete. We know the fur-seal fairly well, but not
completely in all its aspects by any means. Much has been added
in recent years to our knowledge of certain of the whales, through
the investigations of Dr. Roy C. Andrews, but of others little or
nothing has been learned since Scammon in 1870.

In the paper referred to, attention was called to the richness
of the North Pacifie as a field for scientific investigation and some
of the problems were mentioned. The commercial or economie
necessity for an immediate study of some of these problems was
urged. At the Pan-Pacifie Scientific Conference held at Honolulu
in August, 1920, he again called attention to this matter and ex-
pressed the hope that some cooperative arrangement might be per-
feeted whereby the various countries bordering on the Pacifie might
jointly undertake such investigations.

During the last three years, through the cooperation of the
California Sea Products Company of San Francisco, a considerable
amount of very interesting and useful data has been assembled
regarding the whale fishery on the California coast, but we do not
yet know even approximately well the life history of a single
species of those great animals.

The whales are only one illustration of the incompleteness of

262 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

our knowledge of the animals of the Pacific. Even our knowledge
of the fur-seal, about which more has been written than about any
other animal (man excepted) in the world, is still incomplete in
several very important respects. We know only a trifle about the
sea lions, harbor seals, walrus, elephant seal, the porpoises and the
sea otter. Much remains to be learned concerning the life history
of the halibut, the herring, the tuna and the sardine, before we
can formulate laws for their proper utilization and conservation.
We are only now, chiefly through the painstaking investigations
of Dr. Charles H. Gilbert, beginning to understand what must be
done to save the salmon fishery and make it a going concern.

Most of the animals mentioned, as well as many others about
which we know little, are of wide distribution and their effective
study and conservation can be brought about only through inter-
national cooperation. And this brings us to a consideration of the
nature of the cooperation that will be most effective, and the ways
and means by which it may be brought about.

it is now desired to offer some suggestions upon this phase of
the subject and to call attention to a few of the problems of most
pressing moment.

In the first place, it must be realized that these problems, cer-
tainly many of them, are international in their scope, and not
limited in their relations merely to two or three of the most im-
portant countries concerned ; that mistake was made by the United
States in the fur-seal treaties.

When the Paris Tribunal was formed in 1892, the United States
and Great Britain thought they were the only countries seriously
concerned. This view was no doubt based upon the fact that only
their citizens were, or had been up to that time, engaged in pelagic
sealing. The vital mistake made was the assumption that other
countries were not likely sooner or later to go into the business.

Up to that time, it is true, no other country had seriously en-
gaged in killing fur seals in the open sea of the North Pacific; even
the Japanese had not yet done much, if any, pelagic sealing.

The Japanese government was anxious to join the United
States and Great Britain in the treaty of 1892, but her advances
were not encouraged. And what was the result? Japan immedi-
ately embarked with great vigor in the vastly remunerative and
extremely fascinating sport of killing seals in the open sea. Not
being bound by the Paris Tribunal regulations, J apan could law-
fully kill seals at any time and anywhere in the ocean, even right
up to the 3-mile limit around the seal islands and along the Ameri-
can coast. So vigorously did the Japanese carry on this business,
and so defective in other respects were the regulation of the Paris

THE CONSERVATION OF MAMMALS 263

Tribunal, that the Alaska fur-seal herd steadily and rapidly de-
creased from 402,850 seals in 1897 to 127,745 in 1911.

A new fur-seal treaty was negotiated in 1911, the participating
countries being the United States, Great Britain, Russia, and
Japan. The United States and Great Britain had at last learned
that the problem did not concern them alone, so Japan and Russia
were permitted to come in. But who knows how soon some other
countries may not be tempted to engage in pelagic sealing? In
1911, our fur-seal herd had become reduced to about 127,000 seals.
Under the protection of the present treaty it has increased to
more than 550,000. Very soon fur-seals will be so abundant in the
North Pacific as to promise great profits to adventurous spirits who
may be tempted to engage in pelagic sealing ; indeed, it is thought
some pelagic sealing has already been going on in the last year or
two. What is to prevent them from outfitting in China, Mexico,
Peru, Chile, or other countries bordering on the Pacific, sailing
under the flags of those countries, and again endangering the ex-
istence of the fur-seal herd? Any of those countries has a perfect
right to engage in the business if it wishes to do so. The only
question they need to consider is whether it can be commercially
profitable. And the rapid increase of the herd gives the answer to
that question.

The present treaty became effective December 15, 1911, and
runs for a period of 15 years. It seems to be fairly well observed,
and the herd, although some pelagic sealing has apparently been
going on, and in spite of some mismanagement on the islands, has
increased rapidly. By 1926, when an opportunity will be afforded
to revise the treaty, or even to withdraw from it if any of the
signatory powers should wish to do so, the herd will probably con-
tain not fewer than 1,000,000 seals.

It can be assumed, I think, that the treaty will be continued in
1926. The opportunity then afforded should not be neglected to
invite all countries bordering on the Pacifie and any and all others
ever likely to become interested in pelagic sealing, to become parties
to the treaty.

The opportunity to correct certain other defects in the present
treaty should be taken. For example, under the present treaty,
the aborigines on the coasts of the United States, British Colum-
bia, Alaska, Japan and Russia, are permitted to kill seals in the
open sea and along their shores. This is a very unwise provision,
in that it permits the killing of female seals which has always been '
regarded as the most objectionable feature of pelagic sealing. The
number of seals killed every spring by our Indians on the coasts
of Oregon, Washington and Alaska, and by those on the coast of

264 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

British Columbia, is already great and is increasing every year.
Granting this concession to the Indians or other aborigines 1s un-
wise and unnecessary and should be withdrawn.

COOPERATION IN A STUDY OF THE PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC

Steps have already been taken looking toward cooperation
among bodies of scientific men of the countries bordering on the
Pacifie for the purpose of investigation and study of the scientific
problems of the Pacific. The Pan-Pacifie Scientific Conference
which was held at Honolulu in August, 1920, devoted most of its
time to discussion of these problems and to consideration of the
method of attack.

The National Research Council, established in 1916 under the
Congressional Charter of the National Academy of Sciences and
organized with the cooperation of the national scientifie and tech-
nical societies of the United States, has taken cognizance of the
matter. In the Council’s Division of Foreign Relations has been
formed a Committee on Pacific Investigations, which has already
begun consideration of the preliminary problems involved. Evi-
dently, one of the first questions to consider is that of the nature
of the cooperation that will avoid embarrassing entanglements,
and which will bring results.

The National Research Council, through its Division of For-
eign Relations, has already addressed letters to similar organiza-
tions or bodies of scientific men in several of the countries border-
ing on the Pacific, inviting them to cooperate with the Committee
on Pacific Investigations in a study of the problems of the Pa-
cifie of broad or international interest. It is understood that
favorable replies have been received from various countries ad-
dressed. The exchange of views expressed by the biologists, geolo-
gists, meteorologists, oceanographers and others at the Honolulu
Conference last year showed clearly that the scientific men of the
Pacific area are alive to the importance of the scientific problems
of the Pacific and to the necessity of cooperation in their study.
The replies received by The National Research Council abundantly
bear out the same conclusion. The time, therefore, seems oppor-
tune, for consideration of ways and means.

METHOD OF COOPERATION

The problems to be studied are so many, so large, and so com-
plex, that their solution can not be brought about in a day. They
will require time and money. Whatever may be the character of
the organization at the beginning, it is more than probable that
the work must sooner or later depend upon government patronage.

THE CONSERVATION OF MAMMALS 265

It is doubtful if this could be secured until after a campaign of
education has been carried on. The holding of the first Pan-
Pacifie Conference at Honolulu last year, under the patronage of
the Pan-Pacifie Union, did much to develop public and govern-
ment interest in the matter. Other similar conferences that may
be held perhaps in the near future, in Japan, New Zealand or
Australia, and perhaps in America, would prove very effective
in inereasing this interest. The Pan-Pacifie Union would, in all
probability, be glad to act as host and provide the funds to meet
all necessary expenses. These conferences would almost certainly
result in the taking up of certain more or less local investigations
by local scientific institutions or bodies of scientific men.

When the governments see what private and institutional
agencies are doing, they will begin to realize that some of these
investigations can be carried on only with government aid and
international cooperation. Then the time would be ripe for effect-
ing an organization for the study of the scientific problems of the
Pacific, something like The International Council for the Explora-
tion of the Sea.

In the meantime, it would help greatly if the various scientific
agencies on the Pacific Coast of America could unite in some sort
of a cooperative organization to study some of the important and
pressing problems right at their doors. Among the problems that
concern us here on the American coast the following may be men-
tioned :

(1.) The Gigantie Tortoises of the Galapagos Islands. Fifteen
species of these wonderful animals are known from those islands.
Some are already extinct; others are certain of very early extinc-
tion unless steps be taken very soon to protect them.

(2.) The elephant seal of Guadalupe Island should be looked
after at once. It may already be too late.

(3.) The Heermann gull and other sea bird breeding rookeries
on islands in the Gulf of California. The California Academy of
Sciences expedition to those islands this year found eggers from
La Paz, Guaymas and other places at the islands gathering the eggs
as fast as they were laid and taking them for food. Only a few
years of such practice will prove fatal to the breeding rookeries
of these interesting birds.

(4.) The sea turtles of the Gulf of California and the west
coast of Lower California are in great danger of extermination.

(5.) The sea lions and harbor seals from the Gulf of Cali-
fornia to Bering Straits need careful study. We do not yet know
sufficiently well their relation to the fisheries.

266 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

(6.) The sea otter, now nearly extinct, should receive imme-
diate attention.

(7.) The whales of the Pacific supply one of the most im-
portant and urgent fields for investigation.

(8.) The salmon, halibut and herring of our northern coast
present a number of problems of mutual interest to the United
States and British Columbia.

(9.) The tuna and other migratory fishes of the southern
California coast.

(10.) The walrus of the North Pacific is being rapidly and
ruthlessly destroyed.

Each and all of these present problems require for their inves-
tigation and solution the cooperation of two or more American
countries.

There are on the Pacific Coast of America more than a score of
scientific and educational institutions as well as numerous commer-
cial and social organizations, and hundreds of scientifie men that
should be interested in the study and conservation of these animals.

It ought not to be difficult to bring about some sort of an organ-
ization of all, or at least a considerable proportion of these various
units to work unitedly for the conservation of these vanishing
natural resources. Such an organization, working through com-
mittees, would carry great weight with the several governments
concerned and should in time be able to accomplish important
results.

Tt would seem that this is an opportune time for taking the
initial steps for bringing about the cooperation necessary for a
study of these problems. With this object in view the following
resolution has been offered:

Whereas, Our knowledge of the habits, distribution, and abundance of
the marine mammals, certain species of food fishes and other interesting and
important animals occurring on the Pacifie Coast of America, is not adequate
as a basis for the formulation of laws and regulations for their conservation
and proper utilization, and

Whereas, There is reason to believe that several of these species will in
the near future become extinct unless measures are promptly taken for their
preservation, and

Whereas, The problems involved are such as concern the several countries
of America bordering on the Pacific, now therefore be it

Resolved, That a committee of five, representing the Pacific Division,
American Association for the Advancement of Science, be appointed by the
president to take up with the committee on Pacific investigations of the Divi-
sion of Foreign Relations of The National Research Council, the question of
effecting an organization of the institutions and biologists of the American
countries bordering on the Pacific for the purpose of formulating and carrying
out a comprehensive plan for the scientific study of the mammals, birds, fishes,

THE CONSERVATION OF MAMMALS 267

reptiles, and other marine animals of the Pacific coast of America now threat-
ened with extinction.

Note.—The above resolution was unanimously adopted by the
Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science at its meeting at Berkeley, California, August 4,
1921. President George E. Hale at once appointed the following
as members of the Committee:

Mr. Norman B. Scofield, of the California Fish and Game Commission;

Professor Edwin C. Starks, of Stanford University ;

Captain W. C. Crandall, of the Scripps Institution for Biological
Research ;

Dr. Walter P. Taylor, of the U. S. Bureau of Biological Survey ;

Dr. Barton Warren Evermann, of the California Academy of Sciences,
as chairman.

Dr. Hale has recently authorized the enlargement of the com-
mittee and the following have been added:

The committee has been organized and is now formulating the
problems to be taken up and the method of procedure. It is be-
lieved that it will be able to accomplish much for the conservation
and proper utilization of the marine life of the Pacific.

Mr. W. E. Allen, Scripps Institution for Biological Research, La Jolla,
Calif. ;

A. W. Anthony, Museum San Diego Society of Natural History, San
Diego, Calif. ;

Professor William A. Bryan, Museum of History, Science and Art, Los
Angeles, Calif. ;

Dr. Harold C. Bryant, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley, Calif.;

Professor John N. Cobb, College of Fisheries, University of Washington,
Seattle, Wash. ;

Dr. C. McLean Fraser, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B. C.;

Dr. G. Dallas Hanna, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco,
Calif., Secretary ;

Dr. Harold Heath, Stanford University, Calif. ;

Dr. William E. Ritter, Scripps Institution for Biological Research, La
Jolla, Calif. ;

Mr. Alvin Seale, Steinhart Aquarium, California Academy of Sciences,
San Francisco, Calif. ;

Dr. F. B. Sumner, Scripps Institution for Biological Research, La Jolla,
Calif. ;

Mr. Will F. Thompson, California State Fish and Game Commission, San
Pedro, Calif.

268 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY

By Professor JOHN H. GEROULD
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

OW often it happens that a great discovery, before it finally
flashes out upon the world, smoulders for a long time in
men’s minds, dimly understood, its full significance unfelt! So it
was with wireless telegraphy, which by Marconi’s great imagina-
tion and skill was transformed from a piece of laboratory appara-
tus, capable of transmitting electric waves across a room, into a
ereat system, flashing messages across oceans and around the
world. So it was with each of the three great biological discoveries
of the nineteenth century, the cell theory, organie evolution and
Mendelism. The last, indeed, as the reader knows, lay dormant
during the final third of the century, ready to spring into rapid
and luxuriant growth at the opening of the twentieth.

Organie evolution, it is well known, had its birth in the master
mind of the great French naturalist, Lamarck, at the very begin-
ning of the nineteenth century, fifty years before the appearance
of Darwin’s ‘‘Origin of Species,’’ but probably few, even among
the ranks of professional biologists, are aware that the cell theory
owes its conception to the same fertile, comprehensive mind.

Probably no statement in the history of biology is more widely
accepted and quoted by biologists today than that the cell-theory,
viz., that all plants and animals, as well as their embryonic forms,
are composed of similar elementary parts, the cells, founded
in 1838 and 1839 by the German botanist Schleiden and his friend,
Sehwann. So when the present writer first read in Lamarck’s
‘‘Philosophie Zoologique,’’ published in Paris in 1809, the follow-
ing statement, he could hardly believe his eyes. ‘‘No body can
possess life if its containing parts are not a cellular tissue,’ or
formed by cellular tissue.’’ And further, ‘‘Thus every living body
is essentially a mass of cellular tisswe in which more or less com-
plex fluids move more or Jess rapidly; so that, if this body is very
simple, that is, without special organs, it appears homogeneous, and
presents nothing but cellular tissue containing fluids which move
within it slowly; but, if its organization is complex, all its organs

1 The italies in this translation correspond to those in the original.

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY 269

without exception, as well as their most minute parts, are en-
veloped in cellular tissue, and even are essentially formed of it.’’

In the introduction to the chapter on the ‘‘ Physical Causes of
Life,’’ in which the words just quoted occur, Lamarck calls atten-
tion to the phenomena of organization and its development, espe-
cially in the lower animals, the consideration of which should con-
vince the reader, he says, that (1) ‘‘The entire operation of na-
ture in forming her direct creations [the development of the indi-
vidual] consists in organizing into cellular tissue the little masses
of gelatinous or mucilaginous matter that she finds at her disposal
and under favorable circumstances; in filling these cellular masses
with fluids that they are adapted to contain; in vitalizing them
by setting the contained liquids in motion with the aid of subtle
exciting fluids that ceaselessly flow into them from the surround-
ing medium.’’

How much more modern this sounds than the idea that those
of us who are biologists at the beginning of the twentieth century
are accustomed to hold regarding the doctrine of those who worked
and wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth! We have been wont
to think of the conception of the cell in those earlier days as being
a cavity surrounded by a cell-wall that was then regarded as all-
important, and here we find Lamarck declaring that the ‘‘little
masses of gelatinous or mucilaginous matter,’’ the protoplasm of
later writers, organized into cellular tissue, are the essential vital
elements, just as we hold to-day! Of the ‘‘subtle exciting fluids
that ceaselessly flow into them from the surrounding medium,’’ we
are even to-day almost in ignorance. What Lamarck had in mind,
as one gathers from reading elsewhere in the same work, was electric
action. Lamarck seems to have anticipated by more than a hundred
years the application of the electron theory to the cell, a field which
to-day is still almost wholly unexplored.

Lamarek’s conception of the mechanics of development set
forth in his second essential condition of life is as follows:

Cellular tissue is the matrix (literally ‘‘gangue,’’ or vein-stone) in which
all organization has been established, and through the medium of which the

different organs have been successively developed by the movement of the
contained fluids, which have gradually modified this cellular tissue.

The comparison of cellular tissue to a matrix or veinstone, in
which the fluid living substance, energized and set in motion by
forces acting chiefly from without, is gradually moulded into defi-
nite organs is not an apt simile, to be sure, from our present point of
view, and yet even to-day are we able to replace it by a metaphor
that would be more exact? In the conception now in vogue, how-
ever, the shaping of organs is attributed especially to the enzyme-

270 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

like action of the chromosomes, to internal physico-chemical phe-
nomena which Lamarck covered under the expression movements
of ‘‘fluides contenables,’’ acted upon by subtle exciting fluids,
‘‘which ceaselessly flow in from the surrounding media.’’ Present
conceptions (Weismannism and Mendelism) lay great emphasis
upon the role in development believed to be played by cell nuclei,
which were unknown to Lamarck. Thirty years later, when
Schleiden and Schwann approached the subject, cell-nuclei had
been discovered.

It is worth a passing notice that in a clear and keen analysis
of the differences between organic and inorganic bodies, which
Lamarck states had been already discussed by M. Richerand, but
to which he adds his own ideas, growth of organisms is described
as being by ‘‘intus-susception,’’ a notion that the present writer
has been aceustomed to regard as much more modern.

The statements thus far mentioned were taken from the first
volume of the ‘‘ Philosophie Zoologique.’’ In the second, Lamarck
devotes an entire chapter to cellular tissue, in which he says: ‘‘It
has been recognized for a long time that the membranes that form
the envelopes of the brain, of nerves, of vessels of all kinds, of
glands, of viscera, of muscles and their fibers, and even the skin
of the body, are in general, the productions of cellular tissue.
However, it does not appear that any one has seen in this multitude
of harmonizing facts anything but the facts themselves; and no one
so far as I know, has yet perceived that cellular tisswe_is the gen-
eral matrix of all organization, and that without this tissue no
living body would be able to exist nor could have been formed. In
a foot-note he adds, ‘‘Since the year 1796 I have been accustomed
to set forth these principles in the first lessons of my course.’’

In the same year (1809) that Lamarck published this classic
work, another great Frenchman, Mirbel, brought out the second
edition of his ‘‘Exposition de la Théorie de. l’Organisation Végé-
tale.’”’ The general conclusion reached in the book was that ‘‘The
plant is wholly formed of a continuous cellular membranous tis-
sue,’’ or stated as the first of a set of botanical ‘‘aphorisms’’ that
he had prepared for the Musée de 1’Histoire Naturelle to accompany
a large and beautiful plate illustrating the finer structure of
plants, ‘‘Plants are made up of cells, all parts of which are in con-
tinuity and form one and the same membranous tissue.’’

Mirbel was probably the most distinguished and industrious
plant anatomist at the opening of the nineteenth century, and it is
interesting to trace in his works the earliest stages of the develop-
ment of the cell theory. In 1802 appeared his ‘‘Traité d’ Anatomie
et de Physiologie Végétales.’? Here are only the incoherent ele-

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY 271

ments of a cell theory. He had not yet arrived at the idea that all
plants are essentially cellular, and he regarded the cell-wall as of
primary importance. Cells he found, in fungi and Fucus, in the
epidermis and parenchyma of the higher plants, more abundantly
in herbs than in trees, in sprouts than in old wood. The embryo
was composed ‘‘almost entirely’’ of cell tissue. But he had not at
the time discovered the origin of the tubes that are embedded in
the deeper tissues of plants, so that this earhest version of the first
‘‘ Aphorism,’’ quoted above, then read: ‘‘Plants appear to be en-
tirely composed of cells and of tubes, all parts of which are eon-
tinuous.’’ Tubes, however, it will be noted, were omitted from
this aphorism when it appeared in 1809?

How much collaboration there may have been between Lamarck
and Mirbel, who was thirty-two years his junior, does not appear
from evidence now at hand, except that both must have been elose-
ly associated in the Musée de 1]’Histoire Naturelle, but in 1809 both
entertained somewhat similar views regarding the structure of
plants. .

As Mirbel expressed it in his letter to Treviranus included in
his ‘‘Théorie de 1’Organisation végétale,’’ all plants are formed of
‘fone and the same membranous tissue, variously modified,’’ not of
distinct and separate elementary organs existing independently
and held together by interwoven tubes and fibers; moreover he
laid great stress upon his observation that cells freely communieate
with one another by pores.

Whether Lamarck based his more extensive generalizations,
which included animals as well as plants, upon Mirbel’s observa-
tions as well as upon his own, it is evident that both held in 1809
the essential features of the cell theory.

As Mirbel’s first aphorism stated it, ‘‘Les végétaux sont com-
posés de cellules, dont toutes les parties sont continues entre elles,
et ne présentent qu’un seul et meme tissu membraneux.”’

It must be recognized, however, that Mirbel laid emphasis
upon the membranous cellular tissue as fundamental, rather
than upon the cell as a unit. The folding and modification of this
tissue during development resulted in the specialized full-grown
plant. And, to Lamarck, cellular tissue was the matrix within
which the organs, 7. e., the blood vessels, nerves, and other ‘‘tubes’’
are moulded by the movements of the contained fluids. The
thought of both was centered upon the organism as a whole and

2It was not until 1832-33 that his studies on the structure of Marchantia
convinced him by direct observation that the trachew are formed from cells,

and do not constitute an exception to the rule that all plant structures are
cellular in origin.

212 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the primacy of cellular tissue. But to Mirbel’s mind this tissue
was membranous. Bichat had just laid the foundations of animal
histology by the classification and description of tissues among
which he included membranous cellular tissue, by which he ap-
parently meant undifferentiated connective tissue. Probably this
important and remarkable work influenced Mirbel. Neither Mirbel
nor Lamarck apparently thought of the individual cell as the ele-
mentary unit.

The idea of the individuality of the cell, an important contri-
bution to the cell theory, is due to Dutrochet, 1824, who set the
notion forth in a book apparently very little known at present.

This is a fascinating account of his own physiological experi-
ments on the movements of the sensitive plant, on growth move-
ments and heliotropism in plants, and on muscular action in ani-
mals. He was also something of a histologist, though his micro-
scopes (simple lenses of high magnification) were undoubtedly
poor, and his methods of treating tissues with nitric acid and strong
alkalis a bit drastic. After summarizing the then recent (1824)
researches of Milne Edwards (Mémoire sur la structure élémen-
taire des principaux tissus organiques), who had found in the
tissues of animals nothing but masses of globules (globules ag-
glomérés) he says, ‘‘T have verified the exactness of these observa-
tions: everywhere, indeed there is found in the organs of animals
only globular corpuscles, sometimes united into longitudinal and
linear series, sometimes massed in a confused manner.’’ After
numerous details, which we pass over, he states, ‘‘From this
we may draw the general conclusion that the globular corpuscles,
which by their assemblage make up all the organic tissues of ani-
mals, are actually globular cells of exceeding smallness, which ap-
pear to be united only by a simple adhesive force; thus, all tissues,
all animal organs, are actually only a cellular tissue variously modi-
fied. This uniformity of finer structure proves that organs ac-
tually differ among themselves merely in the nature of the sub-
stances contained in the vesicular cells, of which they are entirely
composed.’’

Then, after telling of the wonderful diversity of cell organiza-
tion in plants, which he believed to be greater than in animals,
he exclaims, ‘‘One can not conceive how a diversity of products so
astonishing can be the work of a single organ, of the cell! This
astounding organ, in the comparison that can be made between its
extreme simplicity and the extreme diversity of its real nature, is
truly the fundamental element (piéce fondamentale) of organiza-
tion ; everything, indeed, in the organic tissue of plants, is evidently
derived from the cell, and observation has just proved to us that

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY 273

it is the same with animals.’’ Thereupon he points out that the
blood itself is a fluid tissue, capable by coagulation of becoming
like other tissues. In it the corpuscles, which he regards as cells,
float freely.

But closer examination of Dutrochet’s work reveals the fact
that the cell theory which he held rested upon an insecure basis of
fact. This was due not so much to imperfect observation with
imperfect microscopes as to the fact that the ultimate organic unit
had not yet been accurately defined. That every bit of living matter
has its spherical nucleus was still undiscovered.

It was the aim of the naturalists of that period, however, to
resolve all organisms into their ultimate parts. The ultimate parts
that they found were minute globules of various sizes, some cells,
some nuclei, some nucleoli, some merely granules within the cyto-
plasm. It was unfortunately upon the observation of these diverse
globules that Dutrochet based his excellent conclusions. He un-
doubtedly saw cells, and his figure of a segment of an arm of
Hydra seems to prove that he saw nuclei, but the latter were to
him ‘‘nervous corpuscles,’’ corresponding to bodies in the cells
of the sensitive plant, which, his figures suggest were probably
nucleoli or chromosomes. He showed corresponding granules also
in the stem of Vorticella, arranged in linear order. Possibly these
were cytoplasmic microsomes; certainly they were not cells.

The fundamental ideas of Schleiden and Schwann’s cell theory
were thus contained in the writing of these and other writers of
the previous generation, who have not been recognized as its found-
ers chiefly because the term cell, in their minds, was loosely de-
fined. They had not learned that a typical unit mass of living
matter has a single spherical nucleus. The discovery of this fact
made the establishment of the cell theory sure, and in the present
writer’s opinion was even more important than the work of
Schleiden.

Although the nucleus had been seen and figured by still earlier
writers, its general occurrence in plant cells was first recognized
by Robert Brown, 1833, a by-product of his work on fertilization
in orchids and milkweeds.*

It was this work that furnished Schleiden with his inspiration,
and led to his attempt to discover the relation of the nucleus to
the development of the cell, to answer the question: ‘‘How does
this peculiar little organism, the cell, originate?’’ This question
he answered to his own satisfaction, though not to ours, when he
described the birth of the young cell by the appearance of a sort

3p. 710-713. See References to Literature.
VOL. XIV.—is.

274 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of lens-shaped bud upon the surface of the nucleus, or ‘‘eytoblast,’’
as he renamed it.

It is difficult in these days to follow Schleiden through the de-
tails of his ‘‘discovery,’’ but it would appear that by the great
solubility of cellular tissue (cell walls), when not too thick, a fact
which ‘‘some physiologists ——-— have felt prepared to deny,’’
the new-born eells first float free, then become massed together
and secrete about themselves new walls, in which the nucleus be-
comes imbedded, if it has not already been absorbed or ‘‘east off
as a useless member.’’ This incorrect idea of the general method
of formation of new cells overemphasized their freedom, and is
reflected in Schleiden’s oft-quoted remark of that ‘‘ Each cell leads
a double life: an independent one, pertaining to its own develop-
ment alone; and another incidental, in so far as it has become an
integral part of the plant.’’ It is around this version of the cell
theory, further elaborated by Haeckel in his conception of the or-
ganism as a cell state or cooperative colony of free citizens, that
much discussion and criticism of the cell theory has centered, led
particularly in the last decade of the nineteenth century by Sedg-
wick, 1895, and Bourne, 1896. The outcome of this and still more
recent discussions has been to swing the emphasis away from
Schleiden’s version, founded as it was upon misconceptions of the
process of the formation of new cells and ignorance of the univer-
sal fact of nuclear and cytoplasmic division, back to the point of
view of Lamarck and Mirbel that, in its growth, the cellular or-
ganism reacts as a whole.

Although Schleiden did not originate the idea of the cell theory,
which, as his ‘‘Phytogenesis’’ shows, he got directly from Mirbel
and his own German contemporary, Meyen, he did good service
to science by calling attention to Robert Brown’s discovery of the
universal occurrence of the nucleus in plant cells, and especially
by stimulating his friend Schwann in the prosecution of those m-
portant and epoch-making studies into the structure of animal
cells that we have so long regarded as the foundation of the cell
theory.

Schwann, as the preface of his classic work indicates, evidently
knew little of the ideas of the French biologists who had drawn
the plans and begun to lay the foundations of the cell theory thirty
years earlier. The physiologist, Dutrochet, for example (whom
Sehwann does not mention), while he had held the Lamarck-Mirbel
cell theory, having no standard by which to decide what a cell is,
had left the notion of the animal cell in that confused, almost
chaotic state, in which Schwann says that he found it. Schwann
does refer to an isolated observation of Turpin, who compares the

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY 275

cells of the epithelium of the vagina with those of the parenchyma
of plants, and of Dumortier, who had drawn the conclusion, from
researches into the embryology of the snail, that Mirbel’s proof of
the development of plants from a single cellular tissue would not
apply to animals, but there is probably little doubt that Schwann
found in contemporary literature much confusion regarding the
cell in animals.

The beautiful plates which Schwann has left us are a perennial
memorial to his skill as an investigator and a striking demonstra-
tion of the essential features of various types of cells in animal
tissues. Schwann, moreover, recognized that the egg is a single
cell, though he was unable to decide whether its nucleus (germinal
vesicle) is indeed a nucleus or a young cell.

Both Schleiden and Schwann were inquisitive to know how
new cells are formed. They knew as little about it as did Lamarck.
Schleiden’s guess, that a lens-shaped excrescence forms upon the
surface of a nucleus and furnishes a sort of intracellular bud from
which the new cell develops, has already been mentioned. Schwann
thought that their germ is a nucleolus, which, escaping from the
nucleus into an intercellular, cell-producing ‘‘cytoblastema,’’ grows
by a process akin to crystallization, first generating the new nucleus
and then the surrounding protoplasm.

But to follow the cell theory further would bring us beyond
its dawn and to the break of day, to the time when the question
that had perplexed the mind of Schleiden, ‘‘ How does this peculiar
little organism, the cell, originate?’’, was answered by the discoy-
ery of the interesting phenomena presented by the nucleus in eell-
division. That discovery brought the cell theory into a new epoch,
fraught with new and perplexing questions as to the nature of the
forces that divide nucleus and cytoplasm, and shape the growing
organism.

As we ponder upon these problems and seek to devise new ex-
periments to solve them, we should do well now and then to turn
back to the suggestive thoughts of Lamarck, who, untrammeled by
some of the modern working hypotheses that tend to become erys-
tallized in our minds as dogma, approached the great problems of
life with the keen mind of a seer.

Résumé: (1) The cell theory was stated originally by Mirbel
and Lamarck in 1808 and 1809, thirty years before Schleiden and
Schwann. (2) Mirbel, like Schleiden, showed in 1808 that all
plants are composed of cells, of cellular tissue, which he regarded
as everywhere continuous, primarily membranous, and variously
modified into all other plant tissues. He laid especial emphasis
in the earlier years of his brilliant investigations upon cell walls,

276 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

which he believed to be porous, allowing free, though slow, cireula-
tion of the contained fluids. (3) Lamarck, a year later, 1809,
extended the idea of cellular origin to include both animal and
plant structures. To him, cellular tissue was the matrix in which
the organs (tubes of various sorts) are shaped by the movements
of the contained fluids, which he regarded as essential vital sub-
stance. (4) Both Mirbel and Lamarck thought of the organism
as a cellular whole, not as an agglomeration of units. (5) Dutro-
chet in 1824, adopting the Mirbel-Lamarck theory, introduced the
idea of cellular units as composing the animal and plant organism,
but the idea of the cell-unit had not yet been standardized and
made definite by the discovery of the nucleus. (6) Robert Brown
in 1833 recognized the universal occurrence of nuclei in all plant
cells. The idea of the cell as a unit then became definite. (7)
Schleiden in 1838 extended Brown’s discovery by his own investi-
gations of plant tissues, and stimulated his friends Schwann to
research into the cell structure of animal tissues. He failed to dis-
cover how new cells originate, though this was the chief aim of his
classic paper on phytogenesis. (8) Schwann in 1839 made a most
important contribution to knowledge of animal histology, isola-
ting, and accurately describing and drawing, many different va-
rieties of cells. He added to the cell theory of Lamarck, Mirbel,
and Dutrochet, guided by Brown’s discovery of the nucleus, a
clear-cut conception of the nature and limits of the individual ani-
mal cell. His elaborate speculative comparison between the origin
and growth of crystals and of cells was founded on an erroneous
belief as to the origin and development of new cells out of nucleoli,
but, nevertheless, contains suggestions as to the nature of growth
that foreshadow some of the more recent ideas of bio-chemistry and
bio-physies.
REFERENCES TO LITERATURE

Bourne, G. C., 1896: A Critieism of the Cell Theory; being an answer to Mr.
Sedgewick’s Article on the Inadequacy of the Cellular Theory of Devel-
opment. Quart. J. Micr. Sci., Vol. 38, p. 137-174.

Brown, R., 1833: On the Organs and Mode of Fecundation in Orehidee and
Asclepiadee. Trans. Linnean Soc. of London, Vol. XVII, p. 685-745,
pl. 34-36 (Read Nov. 1 and 15, 1831), 1833.

Dutrochet, M. H., 1824: Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur la
structure intime des animaux et des végétaux et sur leur motilité. Avec
2 planches. Paris, 1824.

Lamarck, J. B. P. A., 1809: Philosophie Zoologique. Tomes 1, 2. Paris,

1809. (New edition, facsimile of the first, published in 1830).

Mirbel (Brisseau-Mirbel), C. F., 1802: Traité d’Anatomie et de Physiologie
Végétales. Tome 1, 2. Paris, An X.

1808: Exposition et Défense de ma Théorie de 1l’organisation végétale.
(Published in Holland. First edition of the following work).

THE DAWN OF THE CELL THEORY 277

1809: Exposition de la Théorie de 1’organisation végétale. 2me ed. (revue

et augmentée). Avec 9 planches. Paris, 1809.

1833: Complément des observations sur le Marchantia polymorpha.
Archives de Botanique, Tome 1, p. 97-124.

1835: Recherches anatomiques et physiologiques sur le Marchantia poly-
morpha, etc. Mem. de 1l’Acad. roy. des Sci. de 1’Institut de France,
Tome 13, p. 337-436, pl. 1-10.

Schleiden, M. J., 1838: Contributions to Phytogenesis. Trans. by H. Smith.
Sydenham Soc., London, 1847, p. 231-263, pl. 1, 2. [Appended to
Swann’s paper ].

Schwann, Th., 1839: Microscopical Researches into the accordance in the
structure and growth of Animals and Plants. Trans. by H. Smith.
Sydenham Soc., London, 1847, p. I-XX, 1-224, pl. 1-4. [Followed by
Schleiden’s paper, ‘‘ Contributions to Phytogenesis’’].

Sedgewick, A., 1895: On the Inadequacy of the Cellular Theory of Develop-
ment, etc. Quart. Jour. Micr. Sci. Vol. 37, p. 87-101.

278 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

JAPANESE INFUENCE IN CHINESE
MEDICAL EDUCATION’

By Dr. E. V. COWDRY

CHINESE STUDENTS IN JAPAN

HE forty-fifth annual report of the Japanese Minister of State

for Education, published in 1920, is an imposing volume of
about four hundred pages, printed in English. It is an analysis of
the activities of the department for the fiscal year 1917-1918, and
clearly shows how Chinese students of all kinds come to Japan for
their education. They are found from the Kindergartens to the
Imperial Universities, in the technical schools, Academy of Music,
Fine Art School, in the Schools of Agriculture and Forestry, of
Sericulture and Filature, even in the schools for the deaf, in fact
almost everywhere. In the public and private special schools 980
are studying law and polities (giving Japanese ideals a strong foot-
ing in China) as compared with 66 in medicine. In the Imperial
Universities, where it is more difficult to gain admission, there are
but 18 in medicine. It is quite clear from the context that the
Chinese are often listed simply as ‘‘foreigners,’’ though a very
small minority of foreigners are probably Europeans. <A conserva-
tive estimate would place the number of Chinese students at well
over 4,500. The report, as far as it concerns us, may be summar-
ized as follows:

Horeignerssingelementary schools..:..2.:...... ee eee ee Te
Foreigners in public and private kindergartens..............---.--------- 27
Chinesewine Tokyo: school for the Deat.. 2... 1
Chinese in Tokyo Higher Normal School for Men.........-...-....- 79
Chinese in Hiroshima Higher Normal School.......--...-2-.22......-.-..- 6
Chinese in Tokyo Higher Normal School for Women.................... 7
Foreigners in normal schools.......... Soci seVosuied esasadadusntoeesoeasatet® Goat ota 1
Foreigners in public and private middle schools...............0-.....-. 11
Foreigners in public and private higher schools for girls............ 1
Chinesesinybsyetentschools::. 2.2) 000) tal ial a eye eae 154
Foreigners in Tokyo Imperial University......... feet De pie Peete 52
Chinese in Kyoto Imperial University.............----c.---2.-c-ccc1:-ssoseeoee 29
Foreigners in Tohoku Imperial University.......-...22.02.22..02...---- 17
Chinese in Kyushu Imperial University.........0.2...22.20..-2seeseceeeeeo-e- 10
Chinese am -Kokyoy bine Art, School: 22.20) te eee 13

1 Anatomical Laboratory of the Peking Union Medical College and the
Laboratories of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, New York.

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 279

Foreigners in publie and private special sthools::22) 02 ))400 i 1,188
Foreigners in Tokyo AGadenyeob, Master... tir Se 11
Chinese in Kagoshima Higher Sehool of Agriculture and For-

1 Ga eee eames eID I ATE = cB doe bee eens Bs 10
Chinese in Tokyo Higher School of Sericulture and Filature.... 4
Chinese in Tokyo Higher Commercial Sehool......... 24
Chinese in Kobe Higher Commercial School... 14
Chinese in Nagasaki Higher Commercial School... 8
Foreigners in Tokyo Higher Technieal School... 202
Chinese in Osaka Higher Technical School... 27
Chinese in Kyoto Higher Technical School... 5
Chinese in Nagoya Higher Technical mchogr ets Moy 10
Chinese in Kumamoto Higher Technical School... i
Foreigners in public and private technical schools... 29
Foreigners in public and private miscellaneous schools... 3,052

4,962

Since the elementary schools maintained by the Chinese com-
munities in Yokohama, Osaka and other large commercial centers,
and some private schools, are apparently not always included, it
is safe to estimate that the number of Chinese students returning
home each year to enter professional or business careers is well
over a hundred. During the past few years some ill-feeling has
developed but there are indications that a few of the more progres-
sive Japanese are alive to the fact that these students may be con-
verted into ambassadors of good will between the nations. It is
unlikely that there has been any great falling off in number. De-
tailed reports subsequent to 1917-1918 are unavailable; but Mr.
Shun Ichi Ono has very kindly obtained data from the official
records kept in the ‘‘Inspection Office for Chinese Students in
Japan,’’ maintained in Tokyo by the Chinese Government, show-
ing that 199 Chinese students have registered for courses in medi-

cine (including dentistry) for the academic year 1921-1922 dis-
tributed as follows:
Achi Medical School...
Chiba Medical School for Women
Chiba. Special, MedicaliSchoole ne Pe 50

Kyoto Imperial University
Kyoto Medical School

Kyushu Imperial University
Mizuhara Midwifery School

—
RSP OOUE NPD WOK GS HE

280 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Nippon: Modieal Schools (Pokey) soon one ee eee 2
Okayama, Special Medical ‘Sehoole 22 ooo
Osaka ‘Woental Shehagier 2.) a) ee ee
Osaka, Pretectnraleedical Sends oe. cscs ace nee aero ee
SE Oey, e PV ma teall Mas C1 Oe ae ea ence ee ene
AM} eS fay) Viney ae ae NL OAR et EEN ry oe ee le er ar oe ae eeasacen
OE) oy Me heft rd ISO 1 0) a ES ore ee eee eee
Tokyo Medical School for Women.............----.--<---<-c---ceseeeeeeeneesenmee=
HAG} 's cay bie eaten ye (S*clsrs)e] La RSS gee BR eer eae
Mok-yomEN Arora ComtlCal iS CHOON. oi ane casen acne er ee crete eee reece

i"

e
powuan do & OH DH w

The records show that the expenses of 118 of these students are
paid by the Federal or Provincial Chinese governments and that 54
come at their own expense. The means of support of the remaining
27 are not given. It is interesting to note that none of the govern-
ment students attends the Imperial University Medical Schools,
perhaps on account of their insufficient pre-medical training or in
view of the relatively high fees. They attend for the most part the
special medical schools of which Chiba appears to be the most pop-
ular, with an enrollment of 50 students. The Nippon and Tokyo
Medical Schools, which also attract a considerable number, are
of rather inferior grade.

The fact that 25 out of the total number of 199 students, or a
little over 12 per cent. are women, is indicative of the broad-minded
policy which the Chinese are adopting toward medical education for
women. It is indeed a considerably larger percentage of women
medical students than we find, even in the United States, where in
the year 1920-1921, they amounted only to 5.9 per cent. It is
significant also that 9 of them are maintained by the Chinese
government; but why they should be sent to Japan where the op-
portunities for women medical students are distinctly less favorable
than in China’ it is very difficult to suggest.

The instruction offered is fairly uniform, because, in Japan,
government control is far-reaching, and the private schools are
usually well-organized and systematie in the enforcement of their
requirements. Judged by the ‘‘Standards of the Council on Medi-
cal Edueation and Hospitals of the American Medical Association, ”’
with liberal allowance for difference in local conditions, very few
of the Imperial Universities and special medical schools would
fall below ‘‘B’’ grade while quite a number would probably
be granted ‘‘A’’ rating. From our point of view there
seems to be room for improvement in at least two directions.

2 Jour. Amer. Med. Assn., Chicago, 1921, Ixxvii, 531.
8’ Cowdry (E. V.), Anat. Record, Phila., 1920, xx, 52.

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 281

The Japanese have outdone the Germans in the domination
of the lecture method and have failed to compensate for so
doing by giving elective courses and by making the curriculum
elastic. For example, in thirteen representative medical colleges,
lectures consume on an average of 59.67 per cent. of all the time al-
lotted to the teaching of anatomy.* In one ease they take up as
much as 90 per cent. Since approximately the same proportion of
lectures is given in other subjects, it is fairly obvious that the stu-
dents have but little opportunity to discover things for themselves
and to develop originality. The rigidity of the curriculum and the
absence of any elective courses worthy of the name tend in the
same way to stifle individual initiative. On the other hand, it can
not be denied that students do learn the principles of medicine in
a thorough if cut-and-dried fashion and that they profit greatly by
their experience in other ways.

Only one Japanese instructor has volunteered the information
(quite unsolicited) that Chinese students are in some eases unfairly
treated. The accusation usually comes from foreigners, who know
nothing first-hand, or from Chinese, who have also studied in the
United States or in Europe. As a matter of fact, Chinese students
are probably treated with indifference, or with a shade of patron-
age, which they may easily resent when they notice how different
it is in the United States, where the instructors are particularly
interested in them and vie with each other in their efforts to bring
out their best qualities, so that, in effect, they receive preferential
treatment. I have received verbal confirmation of the statement
made in the report of the China Medical Commission of the Rocke-
feller Foundation® that entrance requirements are reduced in the
ease of Chinese students. This probably does not apply to the
Imperial Universities. Actually, it is an encouragement to Chinese
students to take up the study of medicine, though the motive may
have been to increase the number of students for political or
financial reasons.

It is perhaps safe to assume that these young Chinese, like many
of their Japanese teachers, come to believe that Western supremacy
depends upon nothing more than skill in mechanical inventions.
This interpretation is soothing to their feelings, which are some
times ruffled by the apparent erudity of Western customs. The
more thoughtful among them may notice how thoroughly the
Chinese classics are studied throughout the Empire and what ex-
cellent libraries are to be found in Tokyo, almost rivaling those in

4Cowdry (E. V.), Anat Record, Phila., 1920, xviii, 84.

> Rockefeller Foundation, 1914, Report of the China Medical Commission
on Medicine in China. University of Chicago Press, 113 pp.

282 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Peking, as compared with the easy way in which the classics are
dismissed from consideration in the occident. As they follow the
successive steps in Japan’s renaissance, they cannot help observing
that it is quite possible to take advantage of Western discoveries
without jeopardizing the fundamental ideals of oriental civiliza-
tion. Far from being injured by the new teaching Shinto and
Buddhist shrines receive financial support from the Imperial De-
partment of Education and are gradually imereasing in number.
Whether this increase is commensurate with the increase in popula-
tion, I am unable to say, but even a casual visitor will notice how
carefully the temples are tended in comparison with the dilapidated
and neglected appearance of national monuments in China. They
note also that the Japanese have overcome their scruples and have
organized a system for obtaining bodies for dissection, which is
unique in its efficiency. During the year 1914-15 over one thousand
bodies were available at the Tokyo Imperial University alone ; about
ten times the yearly supply for the whole of China.

BODIES DISSECTED IN THE JAPANESE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITIES

YEAR TOKYO KYOTO TOHOKU KYUSHU
aI FL) Bho Xen eae ae Se ee ee 781 370 223 378
aU ead ly eee ees eee 939 416 173 396
OTSA Ge Ee eee ee Sa 724 435 93 438
git ot a eee oe Pe Pal Cae 1,328 427 94 330
9 a sae es Soe ek Sees 888 433 89 329

The atmosphere in which the students live is charged with a
strange mixture of liberalism and autocracy. Surprising innova-
tions are being made, some of which are almost without parallel,
even in the United States. The real significance of the enforce-
ment of a law, passed some years ago, according to which the Presi-
dents of the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto are ap-
pointed on the recommendation of a nominating committee elected
by the faculty, instead of by the Emperor, probably escapes them;
but they do observe that freedom of speech is increasing and that
the voting franchise is being extended. Growing confidence in the
democratic methods of private schools is exemplified by the Presi-
dent of the Kyoto Imperial University sending his son to the Keioh
University in preference to a government institution, an action
which caused lively discussion and comment. The liberal and
progressive element is certainly gaining strength in all domestic
affairs, but unfortunately it is still quite inconspicuous in the for-
eign policy pursued by the government in Korea and in China.
Both at home and abroad these students have had a taste of the
shady side of militarism so that many of them become intensely
liberal in their sympathies. With their pride of race they feel, and

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 283

are justified in feeling, that what Japan has done they ean also do.
As far as they are able, they will try to duplicate her successes and
to avoid the painfully mistaken Prussian philosophy of her mili-
tary leaders. On their return to China, many of them secure posi-
tions of responsibility and exercise considerable influence (often
political) in the federal and provincial medical schools and _ hos-
pitals. It is natural for them to send their own students to Japan,
to buy their medical supplies in the Japanese markets with which
they are familiar, and, in some eases, to appoint skilled Japanese
instructors to important posts in which other foreigners would not
be tolerated. Only recently, following the Shantung award, has it
become necessary to replace these Japanese by Chinese in the medi-
cal schools of the capital.

Professor John Dewey® sums up the situation as follows:
‘* Although cultivated Japanese as well as politicians like Marquis
Okuma have long proclaimed the right and duty of Japan to lead
China, to be the mediator in introducing western culture into Asia
(ineluding India, where they look upon the English’ as alien inter-
lopers), few Americans have taken seriously the dependence of
China upon Japan in just these ways. I have seen books on the
development of modern Chinese education which do not mention
Japan, which attribute the renovation of the Chinese system to
American influence, and which leave the impression that it is molded
upon the American common school system. As a matter of fact, it
is molded administratively wholly after the Japanese system, which,
so far as Western influence enters in, is based on the German sys-
tem, with factors borrowed from French centralization. I have
visited nine provinces and seen the educational leaders in the
capitals where the higher schools are concentrated. There are but
two cities, Peking and Nanking, where, in the government schools,
direct western influence begins to approach the Japanese, either in
methods or personnel. To talk about returned students and fail
to discriminate between those from Japan and those from Europe
and America is to confuse everything touched by the discussion.’’
He goes on to say that ‘‘By far the greater number of the revolu-
tionary leaders who formed the Republic were Japanese or had
lived in Japan as refugees and imbibed its culture as they never
assimilated that of the West.’’

JAPANESE TEACHING IN CHINA

In addition to training Chinese students at home, the Japanese

6 The Asia Magazine, 1921, xxi, 582.

7In this, the Japanese are deceiving themselves, because anthropologists

hold that the English are Aryan and consequently more closely related to the
Hindus (who are also Aryan) than are the Japanese.

284 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

are actively carrying medical education into China. In 1911 the
South Manchuria Railway Company established a good hospital and
medical school at Mukden. The arrangement of buildings is illus-
trated on page 290. Visitors are ushered into a reception room and,
after a fitting delay, are received by the director who conducts them
on a tour of inspection. On entering the wards, which extend out
behind the main hospital building and are spotlessly clean, dispen-
sation is courteously granted so that it is not necessary to follow
the Japanese custom and remove one’s shoes. Any dirt that may
have been introduced is quietly wiped away by nurses wearing their
black and heavily-oiled hair piled high in pompadour, precisely as
in Tokyo. Passing from building to building, along paths bordered
with newly planted trees, one is impressed with the completeness
of it all. No necessary detail of equipment or administration seems to
have been forgotten. The new laboratory building, shown on page
291, would not seem out of place on the campus of one of our best
universities. It is semi-fireproof and the rooms are laid out upon the
unit system and supplied with moveable furniture so that they may
be easily adapted to meet the changing demands of medical science.

Useful information is given in the official announcement, printed
in English (for the convenience of foreigners), from which I quote
verbatim as follows:

AIMS OF COLLEGE

The aims of the college lie in training Japanese and Chinese physicians
ot fine character and competent ability who assume their parts to contribute
to the progress of medical science, particularly to study the natures of, and
the cures for, endemics peculiar to Manchuria.

STATUS OF COLLEGE
The college stands on a plane equal to the medical colleges at home under
government management. It is organized according to the Imperial College
Act. It goes without saying that the graduates of this college are entitled to
every privilege and qualification accorded to the graduates of home colleges.

COMPETITIVE ENTRANCE EXAMINATION

The competitive entrance examination for the first year grade of the
principal course is conducted in:

Mathematics (algebra, geometry and trigonometry), physics, chemistry,
natural history (zoology, botany, physiology and hygiene), composition, for-
eign language (either English or German), Japanese (for Chinese applicants
only), ete.

The standard of the examination is put on a level similar to that of a
graduate of a middle school.

The entrance examination for the first grade of the preparatory course
is held in mathematics (arithmetic and algebra), physics, geography, and
history, Chinese classics, drawing, etc., on a level with the third year of the
middle school.

CURRICULUM
The new students joining the first year grade of the preparatory course

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 285

are to take up the study of ethics, Chinese classics, Japanese, mathematics,
physies, chemistry, biology, gymnastic exercises, etc., in the eourse of two
years, and then pass into the first grade of the principal course.

The curriculum of the principal course running four years comprises:
Physics, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, inter-
clinique, surgery, kinderclinique, dermatology, the science and treatment of
venereal diseases, rhyno-laryngo-otology, opthalmology, gynecology, psychology,
hygiene, bacteriology, medical jurisprudence, dentistry and oral surgery,
ethics, Chinese or Japanese (Chinese for the Japanese students and Japanese
for the Chinese), German, gymnastic exercises, etc.

MontTHLY EXPENSES OF STUDENTS

The monthly expenses of a student inclusive of tuition fee, dormitory
expenses, etc., amount about Y 17 each.

I am indebted to Doctor Motoi Yamada, Director of the college
at the time of my first visit, for many courtesies and to his successor,
Doctor M. Hirano, for the following detailed information whieh
shows a steady inerease in the proportion of Chinese students com-
pared with Japanese, and enables us to calculate the cost of the
education provided. In 1921 the outlay for current expenses ex-
ceeds the income by 394,773 Yen, so that each of the 212 students
represents a yearly expenditure of 1,862 Yen or about $931 U. S.,
which compares favorably with the tuition fee of 17 Yen per month
(including dormitory and other expenses). On the basis of ten
months’ instruction per year, this would amount to 170 Yen, or
about $85 U.S. :3

ANNUAL BupegeT or 1921
(School) (Hospital)

Buildin sy Olds yer eee asia e acetate eeeeer nee redeewereenseea-metecnseme 186,912 314,348
TVS} rpg Ub OVER ECYE Ra ae Eero reer 5,400 9,000
1 3-(6 10) ds ee eR ee eee mere 8,100

TV GCOMNE), oes oo ae a cae ccs te cess eee eae eees tae aeons cetbne 6,472 434,574
Current Expenses:

(Osh AE quleeeneer nm anaeemeeeise ee Lami Ry OC A ANID teat iut cs Ue ae aed 278,703 557,116

STUDENTS
(Japanese ) (Chinese ) (Total)

a Or 0) 0 COR EY See ly ees ce Re eee treet ed 18 13 31
TOF 0 9) EV pes ee ee i rt rem Bere AU As 25 15 40
Mie! “ela sg iicc- ee ee Re a eal cena 19 yf 36
Second) classe. cit evs Nae een ea eee enn 28 16 44
Wars Cla ges. cesses meet eee ae es ae es ee ees mL 37 14 61

Bota. ee ces tee Te ee eee eae 127 85 212

8 The Report of the Council on Medical Education and Hospitals (Jour.
Amer. Med. Assn., Chicago, 1921, Ixxvii, 534) for the year 1920-1921 shows
that in 42 American medical schools listed in Class A, the fees for each
student range from $175 to $350 per year, which does not include the very
large item of living expenses.

286 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

GRADUATES
(No.) (Year) (Japanese) (Chinese) (Total)
VSG ES ae ate ee 1915 ial 0 11
A ts Wee bie eater te cae et 01 ot 2s 1916 12 0 12
Srl eae 1917 17 4 21
Ath) Vi.) UT te eee mee see te ee 1918 24 11 35
Sy pesmeeneee eer en Ure kG to a 1919 24 14 38
oF Wager eer Sie an pL eee SRL AEREIE OS 1920 25 15 40
NYA Dg Me Set oa Sp IE oe ee 113 44 157
BopviES FOR ANATOMICAL PURPOSES
(Year) (Men) (Women) (Total)
ILO NG PP pret eek Bay ES DE ee ee 3 2 5
LO NOU tyasen ee Wee eres ban ee Le ts ee dt e: 18 5 23
TASES ARES ceulin ed aes Al BA eed eee ee ee 31 7 38
aL il Ayaan ee Nee eg) oh te 44 10 54
TUL TESS oe PG AS el ye De Pe 120 21 141
GG yeaa eee ee Ra ree as Sh acca 88 15 103
DIS Ue ies ee Ik es HE a ae eae ae 65 14 79
EQS siete eae aera et a Ae eee 56 14 70
gC NS eS ee 34 10 44
NOD pees et Fae Neat a 5 so coat Eedee baee 71 12 83
PATIENTS
(Year ) (Outpatients) (Inpatients) (Total)
GUO MALS ee ees eee cei ected nc aatn tsa: coats 23,543 13,884 37,427
AO) a Re ee ee 35,890 20,000 55,890
a ICG IS Si ee a ae re 62,035 34,701 96,736
BLO a Ae Ne oe ee 68,911 49,628 118,539
SUOMI sh etree ener seNsee E ok oto 69,536 67,257 136,793
TICS yeti a ee a eee 84,839 70,507 155,346
MONT epee ants ese ece et IE tT ey 114,423 75,888 190,311
TNS ees ates ieee ee REL 222s wontetn noes 116,135 74,847 190,982
HU O)TT: Gidea ea rere ae ee ose oee dan case cod test os 126,033 83,417 209,450

A beautiful booklet, bound in yellow silk, containing a splendid
selection of photographs of the buildings, clinics and points of
interest, has been recently published and may be obtained from
the director. In the pre-clinical divisions there is an adequate full-
time staff, so that the college is able to distribute every year a most
creditable volume of reprints of scientific contributions. An im-
portant innovation is made with respect to travel. Entire classes
of students have visited our college in Peking and make other ex-
peditions in order to become familiar with local conditions.

The Chinese students at Mukden appear to be treated on a basis
of absolute equality with their Japanese companions; whereas, in
the Japanese Government School at Seoul (Keijo Medical School),
a special and more advanced course is provided for the Japanese
which gives them certain privileges not enjoyed by the Koreans.
The two courses are clearly set forth in the yearly Japanese an-

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 287

nouncement.2 In practical gross anatomy, for instance, the
Japanese are given 144 hours and the Koreans only 36. No harm-
ful results of the present régime are noticeable, probably for the
reason that a missionary institution, the Severance Union Medical
College, gives excellent medical training to classes chiefly composed
of Koreans which compensates so that highly trained Koreans, as
well as Japanese, enter medical practice.

The Japanese Government maintains a medical school in For-
mosa, which admits Chinese students, and is reported to be in good
condition. The Japanese military authorities have closed the for-
mer German Medical School at Tsingtau, though the hospital is said
to be open. I am told that Professor M. Miyajima, of the Kita-
sato Institute of Infectious Disease, has recently visited Shanghai
in order to report on the advisability of opening there a branch
of the Institute. Such action would meet a need which has long
been felt for sera of different kinds.

A Japanese society, of which the late Marquis Okuma was presi-
dent, operates a system of hospitals in the larger cities, such as Pek-
ing, Nanking, Shanghai, ete., and a new one is now under construe-
tion at Hankow. The entrance to the Dojin Hospital of this society
in Peking is shown on page 292. The style of architecture is very
characteristic of Japanese buildings in China. While these hos-
pitals are intended primarily for Japanese residents, and occasion-
ally afford asylum to Chinese political refugees, they do take in
number of Chinese patients and serve as active centers for the dis-
semination of ideas of western medicine. The cures which are
effected lead the people to doubt the efficacy of native Chinese
medicine which is a stride in the right direction for dissatisfaction
with present conditions is the strongest motive for improvement.

Japanese drug stores are widely scattered in many towns
throughout China. The drugs are not of the best and morphine is
often sold in disguise, as has been shown in a careful survey under-
taken by the ‘‘ Peking and Tientsin Times”’ in 1920. But we recall
that other nations hold no monopoly of virtue with respect to
either opium or patent medicines. The drugs dispensed in these
stores at considerable profit are, at least, improvements on native
Chinese remedies which are often made up on the principle that they
must be as disgusting as possible in order to frighten away the
evil spirits which cause the disease. The stores will continue to
be little clinics where informal advice is given regarding minor ail-
ments. Good business demands that the proprietors attempt to give

®TI am indebted to Dr. E. T. Hsieh for a translation.
10 By Professor Hiroshi Ohshima of the Kyushu Imperial University.

288 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

satisfaction to their customers and not impose upon them to the
point of losing their patronage. ‘‘A little medicine is a dangerous
thing’’ where it leads te ignoring the valuable advice of competent
physicians; but, in China, where there are so few physicians, a
little western medicine is certainly better than none at all. It is,
at least, a competitor in a small way, and weakens the monopoly
of native medicine, which, with its large elements of faney and
superstition, exercises, in my opinion, a strong inhibiting influence
upon independence of thought and action.

In times of plague and famine, the Japanese are always among
the first to come forward to help. Just at present there is a ten-
deney to disparage their efforts and to look for hidden motives
which may not exist. When they contribute to famine relief, it
is called propaganda; when they erect a new hospital, it is also
called propaganda, leading, it is said, directly to disarming oppo-
sition and to making the penetration and eventual control of China
easier. Every action in which a selfish motive cannot be imme-
diately seen is labeled in the same way, and they are not slow to
return the compliment by suspecting the actions of other foreign
nations. There can be no doubt that many Japanese regard the
expenditures of the Rockefeller Foundation in China as propa-
ganda pure and simple. An aphorism of the Chinese philosopher,
Lao Tzt!! is @ propos: ‘‘He who has not faith in others shall find
no faith in them.’’ This mistrust is lamentable because it makes
cooperation so very difficult. As a matter of fact, the absence of
organized Japanese propaganda in China with attractive conces-
sions aiming at the establishment and maintenance of cordial rela-
tions is most noticeable.

Japanese help comes in a perfectly natural and straightforward
way. The Chinese Army Medical School in Peking may be in part
regarded as an outcome of the repeated demonstration by the
Japanese in North China of the practical value of a really efficient
army medical service. Regimental surgeons in the south of China
are trained at the Kwangtung Provincial Medical School at Can-
ton, which is below par in both equipment and personnel. During
hostilities, officers from the headquarters of the Chinese Red Cross
in Peking are occasionally supplied to the southern troops.

Japanese settlements in the treaty ports and elsewhere are, as
one would expect, growing much more rapidly than those of other
nations. The in-coming Japanese bring with them improved
methods of sanitation and for the care of the sick which they place

11 Giles (Lionel), The Sayings of Lao Tzu. London, John Murray, 1917,
53 pp.

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 289

at the disposal of the Chinese at a price which the Chinese are
usually well able to pay. It is not at all a question of charity,
which the Chinese find it so difficult to understand. Their schools
and hospitals in China, like those of the Chinese Government, are
absolutely free from religious teaching. Conversion to Shintoism
is not even a desideratum. The Japanese have numerous temples
in China which ean be recognized by the peculiar arches, called
tori, at their entrances, but there is no attempt to demonstrate,
or even to suggest, the superiority of the form of Buddhism which
they profess. It is, I think, safe to say that without the tremen-
dous force and inspiration of the missionary motive the Japanese
have, indirectly and without any spirit of altruism, accomplished
more in the introduction of modern medicine than any other na-
tion. Certainly the results obtained by the non-missionary organ-
izations of any country (except perhaps the United States) do
not bear comparison with those of the Japanese. Of the thirteen
medical schools under foreign control (not counting Japanese),
eleven are under missionary auspices, the Medical Department of
Hongkong University is a Government Institution and the Peking
Union Medical College is ‘‘sympathetie with the missionary spirit
and motive’’ with six of its thirteen trustees appointed by mis-
sionary societies.

It is to be hoped that the Japanese will adopt the plan of offer-
ing scholarships or prizes to Chinese students to enable them to
study in Japan. To be most effective, these scholarships should
come from the Imperial Japanese Department of Edueation in
cooperation with the Foreign Office but commercial organizations
trading in China are in a position to help. If, for instance, some
of the large firms dealing in medical supplies, comparable to Bur-
rows Wellcome & Co., in England, should offer a scholarship to
the student graduating at the head of his class in each of the Chi-
nese provincial medical schools enabling him to study for a year
in a Japanese Imperial University, it would establish cordial re-
lations and the firm would certainly not be the loser in the long
run. This might pave the way for the establishment of a system
of exchange professorships between Japanese and Chinese Univer-
sities. If the Japanese will only coordinate and systematize their
influence in the introduction of modern medicine into China, im-
portant results will surely follow for their opportunity is unique.

JAPAN’S QUALIFICATIONS AS TEACHER

European nations ean help China but the help is as nothing
compared with what the Japanese are capable of givine. They

VOL. XIV.—19.

290 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

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have almost accomplished the task which China is beginning.
Seventy-five years ago, the same kind of native medicine was
powerful in Japan. With the aid of their strongly centralized
government, they have rigorously attacked it and have almost
banished it from the Empire so that the casual visitor has to look
carefully indeed to find any traces remaining. The picturesque
priest-doctors of Old Japan, illustrated so well in a recent number
of the ‘“‘National Geographic Magazine,’’ are seldom seen. The
old Chinese pharmacopeia with its noisome preparations has been
east aside; and acupuncture, or the art of healing by relieving the
body of the malicious excess of male or female principles through
needle-sticking, has been made unpopular. An intellectual revolu-
tion has, in fact, been accomplished. Thanks also to the ecireum-
stance that the Japanese have borrowed their writing and. their
culture from China, it is relatively easy for them to make them-
selves at home and to understand local conditions. It is fashion-
able now-a-days to harp on racial differences, but in Peking Can-
tonese are sometimes mistaken for Japanese; and, when I visited

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION 291

the Tokyo Imperial University with a Japanese friend who out of
politeness to me spoke English, he was at first mistaken by his
fellow-countrymen for a Chinese. Similarity of this kind is of
course exceptional, but it is none the less significant. Nobody
would long mistake a European for a Chinese. And, lastly, the
Japanese have the advantage of propinquity. With the establish-
ment of a new line of fast steamers between Shanghai and Nagasaki,
reducing the time of passage to less than thirty six hours, travel
will be greatly expedited. Close estimates show that it costs less
than one tenth as much for Chinese students to obtain a good
medical education in Japan as it does in the United States. Under
these circumstances it is not surprising that some of the provincial
governments send more students to Japan than do all the rest of

NEW LABORATORY BUILDING OF THE SOUTH MANCHURIAN RAILWAY MEDICAL SCHOOL
DEVOTED CHIEFLY TO INSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH IN THE PRECLINICAL SCIENCES

the world put together. I am informed!? that the Province of
Chekiang maintains approximately thirty students of different
kinds in Europe and America as compared with about one hundred
in Japan. Students who have to save up and pay their own way
find the low traveling expenses and simple seale of living in Japan
very attractive.

Though I agree with the late Marquis Okuma that it is the right
and duty of Japan to aid China, I do not for a moment advocate
anything approaching a monopoly in this respect ; for if the help of
other foreign powers are withdrawn, or pursued with less vigor,
it would be a very real catastrophe. Japan’s contribution can be
made of great value in spite of the fact that she is naturally unable

12 Dr. Tsang G. Ni of the Hangchow Provincial Medical School, Hang-
chow, Chekiang.

292 _ THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

to compete on an equal footing with Western nations in the intro-
duction of western culture and philosophy. She gives what she
has herself absorbed in the manifold applications of science to
human welfare; but China is such an immense country that there
is ample room for all the assistance that can be rendered. The
goal is still afar off. As a matter of fact, hardly a beginning has
yet been made since the large rural population remains untouched.
We have to guard against misplaced optimism. China’s tradi-
tional inertia will probably prevent the change from spreading
over the nation with lightning-like rapidity as in Japan. A stable
and united government is one prerequisite and Japan can help as
none other to this end if she so desires. The calling of the Arms

ENTRANCE TO THE DOJIN HOSPITAL, PEKING

Conference in Washington is in reality a challenge to the liberal
party in Japan to arise and throw off part of the burden of arma-
ments, to refrain from military aggression and political intrigue
in China and to lead other nations in a constructive program
which will eventually place China in a position to help herself and
to contribute her share toward ‘‘the welfare of mankind throughout
the world.’’

The way is plain—all that is needed to extend Japanese in-
fluence is to put in practice a sufficiently comprehensive and well
thought out program in which cooperation is the key-word. It is,
after all, a problem in racial psychology. During many cen-

CHINESE MEDICAL EDUCATION H 293
turies China has been the intellectual master of Japan.’ Now
a rather delicate adjustment is required in the mental attitude of
the new teacher as well as the old master. Japan’s great suecess
in adapting herself to the outside world, and the outcome of an
unequal struggle with Russia, has bred arrogance, but I am one of
those who believe that when she adopts a conciliator y and helpful
attitude, China will meet her more than half way. Certain it is
that the great masses of China’s vast agricultural population have
not yet awakened even to a realization of their wrongs. They toil
on in philosophic calm and regard all foreigners with indifference.
Much depends upon the spirit in which they, through edueation,
slowly come to develop coherence and national ideals. In this, also,
Japan will play a leading role.

18 Pujikawa’s Geschichte der Medzin in Japan (Tokyo, 1911) is replete
with references to Chinese influence in the introduction of medicine into
Japan, particularly during the Tang and Ming dynasties. Not only was
medicine introduced by travelers and priest-doctors but the Japanese govern-
ment sent special students to China to study medicine as early as 608 A. D.
Not until the coming of Europeans did Chinese influence begin to wane.

294 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

A CURIOUS MATHEMATICAL TITLE-PAGE
By Professor F. CAJORI

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

GG IRCLES to square and cubes to double would give a man

C excessive trouble.’’ Thus sings old Matthew Prior, indi-
cating that ‘‘many knotty points there are, which all discuss but
few can clear.’’ Indeed, hundreds of would-be pathfinders of the
intellect, from the time of Anaxagoras down to ours, have gone
into eestasy in the belief that they had solved the impossible prob-
lem of the squaring of the circle, only perhaps later to be cast into
the depths of disappointment upon learning of their failure. Many
have died under the delusion that they had accomplished the im-
possible.

The problem of the quadrature of the circle presents a strange
phenomenon in the history of thought. A geometric construction
is to be effected on very definite assumptions and restrictions—the
use of a pair of compasses and an ungraduated ruler.

One element of strangeness lies in the fact that the problem
has no bearing whatever on practical life. The mathematician and
engineer can compute the area of a circle to any desired degree of
approximation; if they wish, they can carry approximations to
hundreds of decimal places, although five or six places suffice in
practice.

Another feature constitutes a source of pride to present-day
mathematicians. Unlike some philosophieal questions which are
as far from solution now as they were aeons ago, the circle-problem,
after thousands of years of intellectual effort, has been finally and
definitely conquered; in 1882 it was proved by conclusive demon-
stration accepted by all trained mathematicians, that, under the
restrictions imposed, the circle can not be squared.

One item of interest, in connection with the quadrature of the
circle, is not generally known. The problem suggested an illus-
trated title-page which is perhaps the most unique that has ever
adorned a mathematical book. In 1647 the Flemish Jesuit mathe-
matician, Gregory St. Vincent, published a wonderful geometry,
containing genuine pearls of new geometric truth, but unfortu-
nately also a false diamond, the quadrature of the cirele. We
reproduce the title-page, which presents to the eye the nature of

A CURIOUS MATHEMATICAL TITLE-PAGE 295

Auc lore cn
4, ¥Orxcorio * "2
| VINCENTIO 2

“57 Spies ck Sede ae Coe et
IOANNEM ET IACOBVM MEVRSIOS. ANNO M DC. XLYIL
Cum proslese Caloress Fes Rrwe 1 rae : ae

APN

For this photograph I am indebted te Professor H. Bosmans, S. J., of Brussels.

THE ENGRAVED TITLE PAGE OF GREGORY ST. VINCENT’S QUADRATURA CIRCULI,
ANTWERP, 1647

296 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

our obstruse problem. Seldom has a subtle abstract question
found such striking concrete illustration. In the fore-ground are
three bearded men in old-time garb. One of them with staff in
hand has just drawn upon the ground, a circle and an equivalent
triangle. On the right, the sphere and the cube suggest among
other things the accomplished cubature of the sphere. As if these
two drawings were not sufficient reference to the solution of the
great problem, there is shown also the transmutation of the square
and circle into each other by the solar beam of light passing
through the square opening in a board and forming upon the
ground below, a circular illuminated area. Mutat quadrata ro-
tundis. One of the cherubs indicates by a pair of compasses that
the figure is a circle. Another gives vivid evidence of surprise
and delight. We omit descriptions of the twisted and fiuted
columns and other details, and only point out the challenge which
this engraving makes to modern pedagogues, to equal or surpass,
if they can, this powerful appeal to the eye.

Recently the present writer experienced a surprise by the dis-
covery that this same title-page (with only very shght changes in
unimportant details) was appropriated. sixty years later in an
edition of the collected works of another noted Jesuit mathema-
tician, Andreas Taequet. This edition appeared at Antwerp in
1707, some years after the death of Tacquet. Hence this ‘‘bor-
rowing’’ was done by the editors and publishers. Evidently the
novelty and impressiveness of the picture appealed to them so
strongly that they used it in Tacquet’s works even though this
mathematician is not associated with the problem of squaring the -
circle. Tacquet is known chiefly as a teacher and as the editor of an
edition of Euclid which was translated into English and used in
Great Britain as a school book for the larger part of a century.
The title-page of the 1707 publication represents therefore the
transfer of a fanciful portal originally opening into the mystic
realm of transcendental mathematics, to a well-trodden avenue
leading to elementary schools.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE’

ECLIPSES AND THE EINSTEIN

THEORY
EINSTEIN will be the moving spirit
behind two expeditions that will |

spend six months or more traveling
to Australia this year to have the
opportunity of observing the eclipsed
sun for six minutes.

May 29, 1919, when the moon last |

obscured the whole of the sun, pho-
tographs taken by British astron-
omers off the west coast of Africa
and in northern Brazil showed a shift

of the images of stars that has, in |

less than three years,
thoughts of even unscientific people
to the Einstein theory of relativity.
September 20 of this year is the date

on which Einstein’s theory can again |
y

be put to the test of actual observa-
tion.

In an arid country, whose principal
vegetation is a prickly plant that
will penetrate even fairly thick leg-
gings, a party of American astrono-
mers, headed by Professor W. W.
Campbell, director of the Lick Ob-
servatory, will set up an observatory.
This site will be northwestern
Australia on a desolate coast, but to
compensate for the bleakness of the
place and hardship of the journey
there, it is expected that the Amer-
ican astronomers will have the clear-
est skies through which to photo-
graph the stars visible due to the
eclipse. An Australian warship will
carry the party from Sydney to the
temporary observatory site. Close at
hand there is a telegraph station,
Wollal, which will keep the expedi-
tion in touch with the outside world:

But the British, whose expeditions
secured the photographs of the 1919

in

1 Edited by Watson Davis, Science
Service.

shifted the |

eclipse, are going to compete with
the Americans in observing. South
of Java, 250 miles, on Christmas
Island, they will erect their tele-
scope, and they, too, are hoping for
fair weather, with cloudless skies, so
that they will settle to the satisfae-
tion of all physicists and astronomers
whether or not the sun attracts the
star light passing by it.

If chance and the elements do not
cooperate with the astronomers this
fall, it will mean only a _ postpone-
ment of the day of judgment for
Einstein’s theory. There are more
total solar eclipses coming. Inelu-
ding the one this year, there are three
in the next three years.

Nearly a year later, September 10,
1923, San Diego will be the objective
of astronomical expeditions or there
will be telescopes set up in western
Mexico. The time that the tele-
scopes can be in action is only about
half of that of this year’s eclipse, as
the totality will be only three and a
half minutes, at about mid-day.

The further in the future the
eclipses are, the less favorable they
are astronomically but the closer
they come to the eastern part of the
United States. On January 25, 1925,
New Yorkers will see the sun extin-
guished shortly after it rises, and a
number of large observatories will
have a chance to observe a_ total
eclipse at home without the necessity
of a special expedition. The weather
conditions of this eclipse are expected
to be the poorest of the three.

After this time, if the evidence for
or: against Einstein is not sufficient,
the world must wait until the next
eclipse, August 31, 1932, unless by
means of photographic plates, sensi-
tized to blue light only, the powerful
yellow light of the sun can be ignored

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spqaoys ‘puvpsug ‘uoydueyynog yu Osan?) 94 WO Woyvy SV yduas oyoyd oy, ‘UOTTpodxe OY} JO LOQUIOU ULIGOMION © ‘Tosytiny [epy pue
jsan@) ayZ FO OPTLM UTVyduH YIM WOTPVSIOATIOD UL ST ‘qui oy} ye UMOYS ‘Gg ATUNULE WO BSBOSTP }IVOY WOIF Potp OM ToyopyovyG ysousgy Ig

ALUVd SIH JO SUMANAN OML ANV NOLHTMOVHS LSANUA WIS ALVT AML

*poomiapuf) puD poomiapun 4q panddns ydvid010Yd

THE PROGRESS

ABOARD THE CARNEGIE, JANUARY 16, 1922
To the left are Captain J. P. Ault, of The Carnegie, and Mr.
Colin, Captain Frolich Hanssen and Mr. Steen, members of the
Norwegian Legation. 9
sen and Dr. Louis A. Bauer.

and the very blue light of some stars
can be made to record itself on the
special plates in spite of the sun.
That is a possibility, in view of the
progress of photography.

Since the velocity of light is a
leading factor in the Einstein theory,
it is now the subject of experiment
The
question whether blue or yellow light

has the greater velocity has been an-

by astronomers and physicists.

swered. Probably varying wave-
lengths of light have the same ve-

locity. The chances are five to one
that the difference the time of
passage of blue light and yellow light
through empty space is less than one
second in three hundred years. This
is the conclusion that has been an-
nounced by Dr. Harlow Shapley of
the Harvard . Observatory after a
study of light from the remote glob-
ular star cluster, called Messier 5,

in

OF SCIENCE 299
To the right are Captain Roald Amund-
whose light takes 40,000 years to

reach us.

Interest in Einstein has not waned
since he came into general notice in
1919 or since his visit to this country
in April of last year. The latest
EHinstein book is not an explanation
of theory, but a book about
Einstein himself, ‘‘Einstein, the
Searcher,’’ a translation from Alex-
ander Moszkowski, a friend and ad-
mirer.

his

IXPEDITIONS TO THE POLES
AND THE TROPICS

ALTHOUGH the two poles have been
conquered, the frigid zones still
attract the typical explorer who goes
to unknown parts of the globe to

make additions to scientific knowl-
edge.

Last September, Sir Ernest
Shackleton and a little party on

300 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Photographed, January 16, by Dr. Louis A. Bauer.

CAPTAIN ROALD AMUNDSEN
On board The Carnegie wintering in the Potomac River. Though
the day was cold Captain Amundsen made a flying trip from New
York unencumbered by an overcoat.

started south to

on a

board the Quest
spend several years voyage
around the coast line of the Ant-
arctic continent. He planned to
bring back scientific data on the
magnetism, biology,
geology and meteorology of that
region. Now news that
Shackleton is dead, even before he
began the real work of the trip that
he planned as his ‘‘swan song.’’ But
his expedition will continue.

In Baffin Land at a place called
Nauwatta, Dr. D. B. MacMillan and
his expedition are wintering. They
are busy making observations of
magnetic, atmospheric-electric and
auroral effects. They are in the land
of mysterious polar lights,
shooting rays dance in rhythm with
the quivering magnetic needle. With
the cooperation of the Department of
Terrestrial Magnetism of the

oceanography,

comes

whose

Car-

negie Institution of Washington, Dr.
Louis A. Baner, director, special pho-
were carried
into the polar regions for the first
These should give data which
whether the aurora
borealis comes close to the earth or
whether it penetrates no deeper than
sixty miles into the earth’s atmos-
tests seem to
indicate. Unexplored lakes in the
interior of Baffin Land will probably
be accurately placed on the map by
Dr. MacMillan.

About June 1, Captain -Roald
Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer
who discovered the South Pole, will
set out from Seattle to make another
attempt at drifting across the Arctic
Sea frozen in the ice. Aboard the
Maud will be instruments for deter-
mining the magnetism and the mag-
netic-electric effects at the different

tographic instruments

time.
will determine

phere as Norwegian

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

parts of the Arctic that the ship
will visit. Soundings of the sea and
meteorological observations will also
be made. There will be little leisure
for Dr. H. U. Sverdrup, who will
have charge of the scientifie work of
the expedition. It is rumored that
Captain Amundsen, in addition to his
interest in the scientific work, has a
natural desire to be the first man to
visit both ends of the earth.

While the coldest regions are being
discovered and charted, there are
also scientific men who will contend
with the heat and life of the tropics.
This spring the Carnegie Institution
is again sending parties headed by
Dr. Sylvanus G. Morley and Dr. C. E.
Guthe into the ancient country of the
Maya to learn the details of their
ancient civilization. The Field Mu-
seum of Natural History at Chicago
has announced that there will be six
expeditions that will leave for the
tropics before the summer is well
under way, to be in the field from
two to five years. Two geological
parties will visit the area from Brazil
to Patagonia. The Isthmus of
Panama and the state of Colombia
will be visited by an archeological
expedition and another party will go
to the Malay Peninsula to study the
ethnology of that region. Peru will
be searched by two expeditions, one
zoological and the other botanical.

THE CONCILIUM BIBLIO-
GRAPHICUM

So fast and broad has been the
progress of science during the last
few decades that the all-around scien-
tifie man no longer exists. All that
an earnest worker in science can hope
to do is to keep fairly well informed
in the small corner of the field of
science that he has selected. But to
keep complete track of the re-
searches in a single subdivision of sci-
ence is perhaps an even larger task
than following a number of matters
in a general way.

Contributions to science are being

301

made in practically all the countries
of the world, reported in their own
journals and in their own languages.
The average student has access to
only the limited library of his own
college or institution. Few are so
situated that they can see the bulk
of the periogical literature even in
their own field or have easy access to
many new books.

Speaking in commercial terms,
trade associations of science are
needed. So are proper sales organ-
izations and publicity departments,
but that is another story. The point
has been reached when the distribu-
tion of scientific knowledge among
research factories is, because of the
possibilities for the elimination of
waste, an important enterprise for the
progress of science itself. Produc-
tion of science requires its proper
distribution.

The re-establishment on a firm
basis of the Concilium Bibliograph-
icum at Zurich, Switzerland, which
has just been accomplished, is an im-
portant step in improving the chan-
nels for the distribution of science.
The International Catalogue of Sci-
entific Literature is now officially
dead from the prevalent financial dis-
order. The Royal Society could not
take up its work completed only as
far as the fateful year of 1914.

A stream of cards, 3x5, the library
standard, has begun to flow out of
the Concilium Bibliographicum. The
contents of periodicals in the fields of
zoology, physiology, evolution and
anatomy are listed on these cards
with title and author. The subject
matter is indicated by a number in
the elaborate system of classification
that has been devised. Students,
libraries and others can get just as
many or as few of these cards as
they wish. They can subscribe to all,
or to those referring to one kind of
butterfly. There are now subscribers
in twenty-three countries, and one
third of the total is in America.

The card system has advantages

302

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE FREER GALLERY
Located on the Mall in Washington, this is the latest of the group of buildings

of the Smithsonian Institution.

over the yearly volumes, months or
years late, that are the usual forms
of bibliographic work. Cards allow

wide distribution in a minimum of

time. The references of the Con-
cilium are also assembled in book
form by years for libraries and

others who want them.

The Concilium Bibliographicum is
an American institution, in spite of
its location. It is a living memorial
—which is the best kind—to Dr. Her-
bert Haviland Field, Harvard gradu-
ate and zoologist, who died in April
of last year. In 1895, realizing how
lack of prompt references hampers
research work, he established the
Concilium in the scientific center of
Zurich. It never paid expenses. Sub-
sidies from friends, then loans, kept
it going and producing, until the war,
which stopped the whole project. Dr.
Field died suddenly while doing his
best to re-establish his life’s work.
His efforts had been hampered by
Europe’s post-war curse, fluctuating
exchange.

The Concilium has now been put
on its feet, its obligations paid off, its

The Freer art collections are now being
installed

in it.

staff held together and its future
assured by grants of the Rockefeller
Foundation, given through the Na-
tional Research Council. Dr. Vernon
Kellogg, permanent secretary of the
National Research Council, visited
Zurich to accomplish the re-establish-
ment. Dr. J. Strohl, of the Univer-
sity of Zurich, a zoologist and an ac-
complished linguist, now heads the
reorganized staff
himself, heart and soul, into the work.
At present the control of the Con-
cillum is in the hands of the Swiss
Society of Naturalists and the Na-
tional Research Council, awaiting the
time that a representative interna-
tional board can take control.

It is planned to expand the field
covered by the work of the Con-
cilium to cover other fields of science
as soon as conditions permit. The
abstracting of important papers is
also being considered.

and has thrown

A CORPORATION FOR THE AD-
VANCEMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
ALL scientific men are concerned

with the advancement of the science

THE PROGRESS

in which they work, but only psychol- j

ogists are professionally occupied
with human conduct and its control.
It is consequently becoming that they
should make a new departure in the
organization of their own work.

It has not hitherto been possible
for scientific men to follow scientific
research as an independent profes-
sion. There is no way of paying for
the work that is of the greatest value
to society. three fourths of
those engaged in scientific research
in this country are professors who
earn their living by teaching; about
a tenth are in the government
service; others are in museums,
botanical gardens and the like. It is
only in recent years that a few scien-
tific men have been employed to do
scientific work in endowed research
institutions and in industrial labora-
tories.

There searcely exists at present
any method by which a scientific man
engaged in research can be paid in
accordance with its value or by which
the economic proceeds of research
ean be used for further work. <A
single advance in the applications of
science, such as the Bessemer steel
process, the electric motor, or the
internal combustion engine, adds bil-
lions of dollars to the world’s wealth,
but the profits go to the millionaire
who keeps a private yacht and to
the laboring man who rides five miles
for five cents. If one tenth of the
economic value of scientific research
could be reserved to pay the scien-
tific men who do the work in order
that they might adequately carry for-
ward other researches, knowledge and
its applications to human welfare
would increase as never before.

Like the physical and biological
sciences, psychology has supplied to
society services worth manyfold their
cost. But universities are indigent
and government is shortsighted. An
individual psychologist has no way to
collect payment for his work. The
services of psychology to the army in

Some

OF SCIENCE 303
quickly sorting recruits into classes in
accordance with their intelligence
were worth many million of dollars
to the nation, but the psychologists
who created the tests were not paid,
and only charity is now available to
pay tor the research necessary to im-
prove the tests and to adapt them to
business and industry.

The Psychological Corporation, now
granted a charter by the State of
New York, with the leading psycholo-
gists of the country as its directors,
is the first business corporation whose
objects are the advancement of sci-
ence and whose profits must be used
for scientific research. Its central
office is in the Grand Central Ter-
minal, New York City, and branches
are in course of establishment in

Boston, Washington, Pittsburgh,
Chicago, San Francisco and other
cities. The scientific work of the cor-

poration will, however, be done in
existing laboratories and institutions.
The president is J. McKeen Cattell;
the vice-presidents are Walter Dill
Scott and Lewis M. Terman; the
chairman of the board is Edward L.
Thorndike, and the directors include
James R. Angell, Richard E. Dodge,
G. Stanley Hall, C. E. Seashore,
EK. B. Titchener, R. S. Woodworth,
R. M. Yerkes and the other psycholo-
gists who have contributed most to
the advancement of their science.
The Psychological Corporatiom
plans to maintain adequate standards
in applied psychology, to assure op-
portunities and proper payment to
those competent to do the work, and
to use all profits for psychological
research. Its charter reads:

The objects and powers of this cor-
poration shall be the advancement
of psychology and the promotion of
the useful applications of psychol-
ogy. It shall have power to enter
into contracts for the execution of
psychological work, to render expert
service involving the application of
psychology to educational, business,
administrative and other problems,
and to do all other things, not incon-
sistent with the law under which this
corporation is organized, to advance

304

psychology and to promote its useful
applicrtions.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

We record with regret the death
of Professor Charles Baskerville,
director of the Chemical Laboratory
of the College of the City of New
York; of Dr. Pearce Bailey, the New
York neurologist; of Sir William
Christie, formr astronomer royal; of
Sir German Sims Woodhead, profes-
sor of pathology in the University of
Cambridge, and of Father Guiseppi
Lais, vice-director of the Vatican
Observatory.

Sm David PRAIN is about to retire,
under the age rule, from the direc-
torship of the Royal Botanic Gardens,
Kew, which he has held since 1905.
He will be succeeded by Dr. A. W.
Hill, who has been assistant director
since 1907. Dr. Hill, before his ap-
pointment to Kew, was lecturer in
botany in the University of Cam-
bridge, of which he is a graduate.

Dr. HueH M. SuirH, who has been
United States commissioner of fish-
eries since 1913, has tendered his
resignation. Mr. Herbert Hoover,
secretary of commerce, has written
to Dr. Smith: ‘‘I believe your service
for thirty-six years, rising from the
bottom to the top, in one of our great
scientific bureaus, is unique in the
history of the government. The
whole country is under an obligation
to you for so long and faithful a
service.’

Mur. Marie Curi£ on February 7
was elected a member of the Paris
Academy of Medicine. It is the first
time a woman has been elected a mem-
ber of one of the French academies.

The committee had presented six

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

names as candidates to succeed the
late Edmund Perrier. The five men

| nominated withdrew their names when

they found out that Mme. Curie’s
name was on the list,. and she ob-
tained 64 votes against 15 blanks.

THE officers of the Ramsay Memo-
rial Fund announce that the dean and
chapter of Westminster have con-
sented that a tablet containing a
medallion portrait of Sir William
Ramsay should be placed in West-
minster Abbey in the place immedi-
ately below that occupied by the
Hooker tablet. The tablet is being
executed by Mr. Charles Hartwell,
A.R.A. It is anticipated that the
unveiling will take place in October
next. At the request of the Ramsay
Memorial Committee a commemora-
tive medal of the late Sir William
Ramsay has beeen executed by the
French sculptor, M. Louis Bottée.
The medals will be struck in London
when it is known approximately how
many copies will be required.

A ‘SUMMER meeting of the Amer-
ican Association for the Advance-
ment of Science will, by recent vote
of the executive committee of the
council, be held at Salt Lake City
from June 22 to 24, in conjunction
with the annual meeting of the Pacific
Division of the association. Ar-
rangements for the meeting are in
charge of Mr. W. W. Sargeant, secre-
tary of the Pacific Division. All
members of the association and of the
associated societies are invited to be

| present, and all associated societies

are invited to hold sessions. Sections’

of the association are also invited to

hoid sessions, but no attempt will be
made to have all sections represented
on the program of the meeting.

THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

APRIE,. 1922

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CORRESPONDENCE
IN TWINS

By ARNOLD GESELL, Ph.D., M. D.

DIRECTOR OF YALE PSYCHO-CLINIC, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

I. THe Strupy or Twins

WINS have always captured the curiosity and imagination of
T man. They figure in myths, traditions, superstitions, in art,
in humor and in advertising. They are written in the constella-
tions. Recently they have become one of the problems of science.
Ancient Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Indians, as well as Hot-
tentots used to kill both or one of a pair of twins, on the theory that
twins were omens of ill luck or a form of sin. Though we hold no
such erroneous conception, now-a-days, there is still a great deal
of romancing about twins.

An antiquarian could compile a very interesting history of the
subject. He could show how monsters and double monsters have
left their impress upon legend and superstition. He could review
for us the prescientific interpretations of such monsters and twins.
Gould and Pyle in their Anomalies & Curiosities of Medicine have
collected interesting facts revealing the extravagant and absurd
character of these interpretations. Classical writings are sprinkled
with truthful observations and conjectures; but modern embry-
ology and teratology which have shed scientific ight on the prob-
lems of twinning may be said to date back only to the eighteenth
century.

The popular interest in twins, which is itself a suggestive psy-
chological phenomenon, is by no means of recent date. For ex-
ample, we have evidence to show that the Biddenden Maids who
were born in Kent in 1100 A. D. excited quite the same curiosity
which did the Siamese twins in the days of P. T. Barnum. The
broadside reproduced from Ballantyne’s Antenatal Pathology sums
up the facts.regarding this historical case (Figure 1). Whether
these sisters were actually united by the arms may be questioned;

VOL. XIV.—20.

306 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

EIDDENUEN-

A SHORT ‘AND CONCISE ACCOUNT OF

ELIZA AND MARY CHULKHURST.

Who were born Joined lozether by the Hips and Shoulders,

IN THE YEAK GF OUR LORD 3100
At BIDDENDEN, in the County of KENT,

4 COMMONLY CALLED
*

THE BIDDENDEN MAIDS, |

THE READER will observe by the Plate of them, that they
lived together in the aboye state Thirty-fonr years, at the expiration
#] of which time one of them was tiken ill andin a short time died;

the surviving one was advised to be separated from the body of her-
deceased Sister by dissection, but @pe absolutely refused the separa-

tion by saying these wordx.—*As we came together we willalso go

together,”.and in the space of about Six Hours after her Sister’s

decease she was taken ill and died also, :

Ry their Will they bequeath to the Chorchwardens of the Parish
F: of Biddenden and their suceessors Churchwardens for ever, certain
| Picees or Parcels of Land in the Parish of Biddenden, containing [4
4 Twenty Acres, tore or fess, which now let at 40 Guineas per ;
-| annum There are usually made, in commemoration of these
A wonderful Phenomena of Nature, about 1,000 Rolls with their
Pe Tiapression printed oa them, and given away to all strangers on [7
| Faster Sunday after Divine Service in the afternoon; also about
> S00 Quartern Loaves and Cheese in proportion, to all the poor 5

| Inhabitants of the said Parish.

Reproduced from Ballantymes Antenatal Pathology and Hygiene.
Wm. Green & Sons, Edbg., 1904, p. 642.

FIGURE 1. “BROADSIDE” OF THE BIDDENDEN MAIDS

but there is no doubt that by their twin will they bequeathed twenty
acres. the income from which the church wardens were instructed
to spend in distributing cakes (bearing the impression of their
conjoined image) to all strangers in Biddenden, at the close of
divine service each Easter; and also ‘‘270 quartern loaves, with
cheese in proportion, to all the poor in said parish.”’

About four centuries later, at about the time when America was
discovered, we have another historical instance, the dicephalic
twins. known as ‘‘the Scottish Brothers.’’ They were described in
quaint language by the Scottish historian, Lindesay, as follows:

In this mean Time there was a great Marvel seen in Scotland. A Bairn

was born reckoned to be a Man-Child; but, from the Waste up, was two fair
Persons, with all Members and Portraitures pertaining to two Bodies, to wit,

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 307

Two Heads, well-eyed, well-eared, and well-handed. The two Bodies, the
One’s Back was fast to the Other’s; but, from the Waste down, they were
but one Personage, and could not know by the Ingyne of Man, from which
of the two Bodies the Legs and Privy Members proceeded. Notwithstanding
the King’s Majesty caused take great Care and Diligence upon the Upbring-
ing of their two Bodies in one Personage, caused nourish them, and learn
them to sing and play upon Instruments of Musick; who, within short Time,
became very ingenious and cunning in the Art of Musick; whereby they could
sing and play two Parts; the one the Treble, and the other the Tenor; which
was very dulce and melodious to hear. The common People who treated them
also, wondered that they could speak diverse and sundry Languages; that is
to say, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, English, and Irish.
Their two Bodies long continued, to the age of twenty-eight years; and the
one departed long before the other, which was dolorous and heavy to the
other; for which many required of the other to be merry. He answered,
How can I be merry, that have my true Marrow as a dead Carrion about my
Back, which was wont to sing and play with me. When I was sad he would
give me Comfort, and I would do the like to him; But now I have nothing but
Dolour of the Bearing so heavy a Burden, dead, cold, and unsavory, on my
Back, which taketh all earthly Pleasure from me in this present Life: There-
fore I pray to Almighty God, to deliver me out of this present Life, that we
may be laid and dissolved in the Earth, wherefrom we came.

The Hungarian sisters were born in 1701, and died almost simul-
taneously in their twenty-second year. They were conjoined twins,
similar to the Biddenden sisters, and according to Gould and Pyle
excited great curiosity. This curiosity was not limited to the
populace. The twins were exhibited all over Europe, were exam-
ined by scientists, celebrated by poets (including Pope), described
by Buffon in his Natural History, and memorialized in a Latin
poem and in a bronze statuette. The sisters Millie-Christine (col-
ored, born 1851); the Bohemian sisters (born 1878); the sisters
Ritta-Christina (born in Sardinia, 1829) ; the Tocci brothers (born
in Turin, 1877), all were conjoined twins and more or less famous
in their day.

Most famous of all, however, were the Siamese twins (Figure
2), who were discovered in Siam and rescued by a British mer-
chant, in 1824, when they were about thirteen years old. They
were rescued in this sense. King Chowpahyi was planning to put
them to death, because he thought they might bring evil to his
country; but the merchant prevailed upon his majesty to allow
them to go away for exhibition. They went directly from Siam
to Boston, and later were shown the world over. Although of
Chinese extraction, they adopted America as their home, settled
down as farmers in North Carolina, under the name of Bunker,
and married two sisters at the age of forty-four. They ‘became
Christians; and died in 1874.

From the time when they landed in Boston and were examined

308 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

From Gould & Pyle Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine.
W. B. Saunders. Phdpha., 1897, p. 168.

FIGURE 2.. THE SIAMESE TWINS AT THE AGE OF 18

by a Harvard professor, they became the object of both scientific
and popular attention. A vast amount of literature has been
written in regard to them. In 1830 a scientific memoir was read
before the Royal Society of London, and is to be found in the
Philosophical Transactions of that year. The memoir reports a
lack of strong resemblance in Chang and Eng; striking corre-
spondences in their pulse rates and in their tastes; reciprocity of
symptoms under similar conditions of disorder; differences in
dreams; and a remarkable degree of consent and mutual adjust-
ment displayed in the physical movements of the twins. It is com-
forting to know that Chang and Ene could playfully tumble head
over heels, without the slightest inconvenience. The author of this
fascinating report, rather naively remarks that ‘‘they are at pres-
ent very much attached to each other.’’ As a matter of fact until
their death they showed an affectionate forebearance for one an-
other; and a highly developed sympathy, understanding and
adaptation.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 309

To bring this historical retrospect to date, it should be men-
tioned that there are at the present writing living in Washington
a pair of ‘‘Siamese twins,’’ natives of the Philippines, boys now
in their teens. Under a ruling of the director of the census bureau
they were counted as two persons in the last enumeration.

Twins have played a prominent part in modern medical litera-
ture, and the annual volumes of the ‘Index Medicus’? and the
Surgeon General’s catalogue carry a considerable number of titles
of articles on some phase of the subject. Significantly enough
there is usually one group of references sub-classified under the
head of Twins, one blighted. Taruffii in his monumental work on
Teratology devotes 1,650 pages to the consideration of double
monsters.

For biologists, twinning has become a problem of central im-
portance. Bateson has defined twinning as the production of
equivalent structures by division; and emphasized its fundamental
nature. Important studies in symmetry, asymmetry, teratology,
sex and heredity, have been made in this field. H. H. Newman,
of the University of Chicago, has made extensive studies of twin
production, habitually exhibited in the nine-banded armadillo of
Texas; and has written a valuable volume on The Biology of
Twins.t H. H. Wilder has reported in The American Journal of
Anatomy, studies of physical resemblances in twins, shown by skin
patterns of soles and palms. Galton has made a similar comparison
of finger prints in 17 pairs of twins. Baldwin has made physical
measurements of 3 pairs of fraternal twins and determined their
differences in anatomical ages.

In 1918, The American Genetie Association announced its de-
sire to communicate with twins living in any part of the world.
Six hundred twins and parents of twins responded with letters
and photographs; and in December, 1919, the Journal of Heredity
devoted an entire number to discussion of the data on the general
subject. This number contains an article by Dr. C. H. Danforth
on Resemblance and Difference in Twins. Goddard devotes two
pages to certain eugeniec phases of the problem in his work on
‘‘Feeblemindedness: its Causes and Consequences.”’

The present writer, in 1921, published a study of 40 cases of
hemi-hypertrophy, and discussed this condition in relation to
mental defect and to twinning.” Hemi-hypertrophy is a unilateral
enlargement of the body, which is interpreted as a developmental

1 Newman H. H., The Biology of Twins (Mammals), University of Chi-
cago Press, 1917; pp. 186.

2Gesell, Arnold, Hemi-hypertrophy and mental defect. Archives of
Neurology and Psychiatry, Vol. VI, pp. 400-423.

310 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

anomaly dating back to an early embryonic stage of cleavage,—
a form of asymmetry due to a possible deviation in the normal
process of twinning. The relatively frequent complication of
mental defect is attributed to an abnormality in this process of
bilateral twinning which involves a disturbance of normal tissue
development. .

The psychological aspects of the phenomenon of twins have
not received their full share of attention. There are, however, two
notable exceptions. The versatile Galton, who left few human
‘problems untouched, made a suggestive, though rather leisurely,
excursion into the subject in his Inquiries into Human Faculty in
the year 1883. He used the questionnaire method and reported
the returns of 80 cases of close similarity. Much of his material
was anecdotal; but it was used to good advantage to prove the
dominating influence of nature over nurture. He found only two
eases of strong bodily resemblance being accompanied by mental
diversity. He makes this characteristic suggestion: ‘‘It would be
an interesting experiment for twins who were closely alike to try
how far dogs could distinguish between them by scent!”’

In 1904, Thorndike published an important monograph en-
titled ‘‘ Measurements of Twins,’’ based on precise measurements
of 50 pairs of unselected public school twins from 9 to 15 years
old, in 6 mental traits, and 8 physical traits. ‘“‘The arguments
concerned the lack of differences in the amount of resemblance (1)
between young and old twins, (2) between traits little, and traits
much subject to training and (3) between mental and physical
traits, and also the great increase in resemblance of twins over ordi-
nary siblings. The resemblance of twins was found to be approxi-
mately .80 or .75 to .80 in amount.’’ The author considers that
his data give well-nigh conclusive evidence that the mental like-
nesses found in the ease of twins and the differences found in the
case of non-fraternal pairs, when the individuals compared be-
longed to the same age, locality and educational systems, are due,
to at least nine-tenths of their amount to original nature.®

‘The form of distribution of twin resemblance seems to be that
of a fact with a central tendency at about .80 and with a great
variability, restricted towards the upper end by the physiological
limit of complete identity. Such a distribution would be most
easily explained by the genesis of twins as a rule from two ova
and by a great reduction of the variability of contemporaneous
germs and ova below that of germs and ova developed at different
times.’’ (p. 638.)

3 Thorndike, Edward L. Measurements of Twins, Archives of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods, Vol. I, pp. 1-64.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 311

Thorndike therefore refuses to classify twins into the two
classical divisions, duplicate and fraternal. He does not find two
coherent species of resemblance; and he doubts that there are but
two corresponding modes of genesis (monozygotic and dizygotic).
He believes that there is considerable specialization of resemblance
in all type of twins. Although he finds that resemblance in general
appearance and countenance is correlated by no means perfectly
with resemblance in other traits, his figures show a tendency toward
such resemblance. The medians of resemblance in (1) three head
measurements, (2) in three stature and arm measurements, (3) in
perception, (4) in association,—of twins of the same sex (a) closely
alike and (b) not much alike in countenance are as follows: 1. (a)
Boece) (0. 2. (a) 86; (bh) soda mca) 84: (b) 63. 4. (a) 94,
Cb) “70:

II. A Curican Comparison oF DUPLICATE TWINS

We report herewith a case, or rather a pair of cases, which will
serve as a basis for the consideration of the problem of resem-
blances in twins. We became interested in these two children, not
because they were twins, but because of the exceptional superiority
of their intelligence; and they were first studied from this point of
view. Accumulating evidence, however, gradually convineed us
that, regardless of their caliber, they presented a remarkable degree
of correspondence in physical and mental constitution. It is this
correspondence which is here emphasized. The facts have psycho-
logical interest, and may not be without some biological signifi-
cance.

The twins will be referred to with an impersonal A and B, be-
cause there is no intention to publicly extoll them. We are not
concerned to reveal their identity—except in the sense indicated
identical twins!”’

ce

by the term
(a) DEVELOPMENTAL HIsToRY

A complete family chart of the twin sisters A and B would show
evidence of superior endowment in the immediate ancestry on both
the maternal and paternal sides. Scientific and linguistie ability
of high order and physical energy are some of the traits which are
found in the two immediate generations. The trait of twinning
likewise has a hereditary basis in this instance; for the mother
also bore two boys, twins who died in infancy.

Their sisters A and B were born six years later, by Caesarian
section, somewhat prematurely, weighing respectively 4.5 and 5.3
pounds. They thus escaped some of the hazard and strains which
may accompany birth.

Their prematurity did not hinder precocity. At any rate,

312 THE SCIENTIFIC. MONTHLY

FIGURE 5. TWINS A AND 8B IN BABYHOOD

they very early showed unmistakable signs of more than ordinary
alertness and attainment. At six months A startled her mother
by rising suddenly into a sitting position in the mother’s lap. Very
soon after this B showed the same capacity. (Figure 3.) At 11
months they had both begun to walk and talk; indeed they were
talking sentences, such as, ‘‘I see you, Auntie, * * *.’’ They
spoke clearly with less than the usual infantile lisping; and, ae-
cording to report, with more than the usual degree of purposive,
voluntary speech imitation. In October, 1915, at the age of three
they began the study of French, and in less than a year (by April,
1916) they were reading elementary English, French and Es-
peranto. Their mother was a very constant companion ; and stimu-
lated this development by the aid of plays and games, but the
children needed no prodding. They were distinguishing parts of
speech with the aid of a Teddy Bear at the age of four; and at the
same age one of them asked a searching question in regard to the
Immaculate Conception. Formal arithmetic was begun at the age
of six, and in less than a year they were solving mentally problems
in fractions and percentage. They entered Grade III at the same
age, and now at the age of nine, they are in Grade VII, doing
Junior High School work. They are not prigs: they are attractive,
animated, sociable children, with a bubbling sense of humor. They
are popular with their playmates. They can take charge of a
gymnasium class in which most of the members are two to four

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 313

years their seniors, and preserve excellent attention and discipline.
They speak mature but not pedantic English, and they speak
French with the fluency of a native. They have read Genesis in
Italian and are now speaking a little Italian. They have read the
Book of Knowledge in its entirety in French: and a year ago
embarked on Russian. They play duets on the plano; but not with
rare distinction. They swim; they ride horseback; they write
jingles, and. they read by the hour. Their school work does not
tax them; they do not worry about it; and they are far from fas-
tidious in regard to the form of their written work.

In this brief general review of their developmental history it is
impossible to make any noteworthy distinctions between A and B.
They have been inseparable, and abreast. Physically as well as
mentally there has been a correspondence. They have both es-
caped most of the children’s diseases; and neither has suffered a
physical setback. So ,that now, as when they were babies, they
are practically interchangeable children. The general impression
made by physique, countenance, demeanor, conversation is one of
complete similarity. A rather thoroughgoing analysis does not
seriously disturb this impression of underlying identity of psycho-
physical make up.

(b). PHysicaL Tests aND MEASUREMENTS

Some twenty-five physical tests and measurements were made
to determine the degree of physical correspondence between A and
B. The results of this portion of the study:are summarized in the
accompanying table. An inspection of this table will show that in
many items the correspondence amounts to complete identity and
that in others it amounts to practical identity. Nowhere was a
pronounced deviation revealed. The difference in standing height
is one fourth inch in favor of A. The sitting height shows the
same difference. Corresponding to this there is a difference of
only one pound in weight. This disparity, however, is a variable
one and sometimes B is slightly ahead of A in weight. The
head girth shows a difference of but one eighth of an inch and the
cephalic index which represents the relation between width and
length of head shows a difference of only 0.7. The cephalic width
is only 0.2 mm. greater in the case of B and the cephalic length 0.1
greater in B.

A very interesting and tangible criterion of anatomical devel-
opment consists in the degree of ossification of the carpal bones. It
is possible to ascertain this degree of ossification by a precise meas-
urement of the exposed bone area as revealed by the X-ray (Figure
4). Such measurement can be made by means of the planimeter.

314 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FIGURE 4. X-RAY PHOTOGRAPHS OF LEFT HANDS OF A AND B

Showing close correspondence in ossification of carpal bones.

Since, however, we were purely interested in making a comparison
between A and B, our measurements were made by ascertaining
the two major right angle diameters by means of a mm. rule. An
examination of the table will show that four of the seven bones
measured exactly alike. In the three other instances there was a

FIGURE 5. PALM PRINTS OF TWINS

Showing identity of skin patterns of right hands of A and B.
Formula, 9-9-5-5.C.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 315

PHYSICAL TESTS AND MEASUREMENTS OF TWINS,
A AND B, AGE 9

ITEMS COMPARED A B
Seaugines herria. 80 ea Gece eee eee eee.) SBE 4956
ouitaniore Were hih.... cak eer ass 2534 251%
Govern: Sc. 70 hs oe ee eee Sa Tene 56% 551
JEUSO UIE fo gt UReman i SMO O. CeReE RSC ene Pee a ee 20% 205%
Pfecuemaidtn (minis) ete tk Ae eee (84 13.6
TE TEE 1s (310 3 Cilia Gaia) ae ames SE a ee eee 16.5 16.6
Mephalie sindex:.i- 1 2) ee eee 812 81.9
Diameters of carpal bones:

SIE | LLC C0 I Pegi eer nner one. see ee eee see eee 5x10 5x10

Sern Ey pe ee ec cewe eeeeeee Bee ee (osu) 8x11

UUM URORI: , ks ee nee herrea eae foetal (reali!

Barge A UIT 2 oak 3 a a ee ee eh oro LO 9x10

BIL TseATO CZ Cl acess eee ee re re erence 7x¢a7 7xea7

Ose MAO NUM: oor lsee ee ee ee ae 11x 20 12 x 20

Winterton) 322s ee Beers: ae Sy See 8x15 9x15
MUG rales xqOSCG) (VTC Ae enn serene een eee 676 724
Friction skin patterns:

PERG Tits eo eee ee ee meee 9955C 9955C

Mie Lith pspo sant Sooo 2 ees eee ae ance 9955C 9955C

BEC ort 0) see ae eee er ee do. do.

Weft SOLE a eee ee Ae oat eee eae do. do.
Blood pressure:

SSVSUOMIGE Ooi. eit ayes a ce tee Meee eee 95 96

Diastolic. 12 Sen. celine SE Me eR Re ee 65 70
Esl ap CEOS UI G4) tee eee ee ee 104 110
Bicodma ce luitinatonw er OU pes een ee II Il
IWiaGCINe? POCK i: ct cca trc shone eee ae ee do. do.
Dynamometer :

Saori Gy ein eee eee Bi Bete ae Pree 13 12

I GES i red tks 6X6 [one eee ae ee ee te eee ee 12 11
SSPEROIACEGT © cco 22 sese scene nee eee ene nee — 78 80
Tapping rate: 7

Right, Wands. 855 ccs eee ne ee ee cee 130 130

Met whan 22. se oe ee oe i oe ieee 127 118
SULA? RO GV et st= a eee SRO ep ee uN perv 14 li
Ment OMA Poo EA a ee do. do.
Birth mole (upper lip)........ Dy SE. LM aes eases oe / ido: do.

disparity of only one mm. in one or two diameters. Calculating
the area on the basis of these diameters it appears that the total
carpal bone area of A is 676 square mm. and of B 724. This is a
very slight difference indeed and is no greater than that which is
often found between the right and left hands of the same indi-
vidual. According to Baldwin’s figures, an average disparity of
about 50 square mm. is to be expected between the left and right
carpus. Baldwin has made a comparison of the carpal develop-
ment in four pairs of fraternal (non duplicate twins) and the aver-
age amount of difference in bone area of these four pairs is 421

316 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FIGURE 6. PLANTAR PRINTS OF TWINS
Showing identity of skin patterns of right feet of A and B.

sq. mm., a difference over ten times greater than that found in A
and B, whom we regard as duplicate twins.

There is no more interesting means of making a physical com-
parison than that reported by the friction ridges of the skin. These
friction ridges are found only on the surfaces of the palm and the
sole. According to the comparative anatomist they date back to
an arboreal ancestry, when certain animals in their aetive life
among the boughs were much benefitted by the non-skid qualities
of such ridges. The ridges were coarser in those days; but we still
inherit them in indestructible patterns which appear in the fourth
month of intra uterine life and are carried to the grave.

Sir Francis Galton said “‘Let no one despise the ridges on ac-
eount of their smallness for they are in some respects the most

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 317

important of all anthropological data.’’ Even in the ridge details
there is absolutely no change in an individual from birth to old
age. They furnish, therefore, a powerful aid not only for purposes
of identification but for the comparison of individuals. A study
of the palms and soles of A and B were made by Wilder’s method.
The right palms and right soles were mapped out to indicate the
major subdivisions of the skin patterns. A remarkable degree of
identity was shown in both the palmar and plantar patterns (Fig-
ures 5 and 6). The formula for the palm patterns is the same for
both palms of both individuals, namely, 9.9.5.5.c. A minute analy-
sis of certain areas of these patterns will show that the develop-
mental correspondence has extended even to some of the minutie
which are not regarded by Wilder as subject to detailed heredi-
tary control. If the psychological correspondence of these two
children approximates to any degree their anthropometric corre-
spondence as indicated by the palm and sole diagrams, it is very
great indeed.

A measurement of the blood pressure showed a difference of
only one mm., systolic measurement and 5 mm. in the diastolic. Of
these two measurements the systolic can be more accurately made
and it is also the more important and the more readily ascertained.
The correspondence is interesting. The resting pulse showed a
difference of about six beats to the minute. A chemical diagnosis
of the agglutination properties of the blood was made. In both
cases the test showed the blood to'belong to group II.

The development of bio-chemical tests for the measurement of
individual differences is still in its infancy. The Benedict test for
the determination of minute quantities of sugar in normal urine is
supposed to reveal personal equations, but the conditions for ac-
curate tests were too complex to carry out. An interesting simi-
larity of a bio-chemical character was, however, exhibited in the
reactions of the two girls to vaccination for smallpox. In both
instances there was a very slight reaction without constitutional
symptoms which occurred at the same time for both children.
The dynamometer, spirometer, tapping and steadiness tests are in-
cluded in the table because they have physical as well as psycho-
physical aspects. The differences revealed by these tests were very
small indeed. The tapping rate for the right hands was identical.

Dentition is of course related to development. The first denti-
tion could not be observed, but when the children were 8 years
of age, the right upper permanent incisor was in both children in
a similar incompleted stage of eruption. This is shown in the
accompanying photograph (Figure 7) and presents a rather

318 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FIGURE 7. TWINS A AND B AT AGE 8
Showing correspondence in eruption of right upper incisor (1 and 2); and in
location of tiny pigmented mole near left corner of mouth (3 and 4.)

startling indication of developmental correspondence. Finally may
be mentioned one permanent indication of underlying identity of
constitution. This is a tiny pigmented birth mole on the upper
lip, situated a short distance from the left outer corner of the
mouth in both twins. So here ‘‘the standard mole of the penny-
novelists’? could not even be relied upon for the purpose of per-
sonal identification, because both twins have the self-same mole!
(Figure 7.)

There are several very tiny pigmented areas in the facial skin
which are limited to one twin; and there are no doubt other physi-
eal deviations which minute study would disclose. Even two hairs,
each but a half inch in length, taken from the same head, would
as Wilder says, prove to be ‘‘absolutely unlike if magnified suff-
ciently to show the epidermic markings that cover the surface
with a fine tracery.’’ By such ultra refined standards, complete
identity is a mathematical impossibility; but general, coherent
correspondence and absolute identity are two quite different con-
siderations. Our data compel us to recognize a basic develop-
mental and physical correspondence in Twins A and B.

Since this correspondence has expressed itself in such struc-
tural details as teeth, skin patterns, birth moles, and cranial and
carpal bones, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it should also
assert itself in the general architecture and organization of the
nervous system. We can gather some light on this point by in-
quiring into the mental correspondences, through the use of psycho-
metric methods.

(ec) Mentat AnD EpucaTionan MEASUREMENTS:

The adjoined table summarizes the results of a group of intelhi-
genee, performance, and educational measurements of A and B

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 319

which were made at the Yale Psycho-Clinic, and at the home of
the children. The writer wishes to acknowledge the assistance of
Dr. Margaret Cobb in the administration of these tests. The co-
operativeness of the subjects who entered into all of the situations
in the spirit of a game, enlivened with rivalry, aided us. The sub-
jects deserve our especial thanks; for they were indispensable in
this particular study.

MENTAL AND EDUCATIONAL A B A B
TEST ScORE* AcE Norm. REMARKS
Her TIMNG bs, BANOO! ise nent sete 188 181 13.5 138 | Average JE KOE
Paesinet: Awe? 8:22.25 179 185 14.75 15.25 4 A, 1834
J B, 183

3. Vocabulary, Age 7.......... 50 50 14 14
4. Vocabulary, Age 8.......... 52 54 14, 144
5. Vocabulary, Age 9.......... 67 65 16 16
6. National Intelligence,

LNG A seen eee a ee ae 136 155 15 15+.
em Onbeus; c.4. ute 2 orate tee 12.25 11.25 A shows more fore-

sight.
1S), SHON 0) sree eee eee eer 18 20 dell 13
oy Heature “Profile: 150s 250s 15 10
OED rao onal: 22 eee A oe 195s 70s 6 10
1h, «DST Hae Se eee tee 25's 30s 141 14
MP2, (1seravae (Cini oye ees ee eek eee a 10 14— 18
ie tedly\ Aces. 27 see 2 20D moors 9 10
14. Seguin Form Board........ 28s 30s 7+ 67
15. Healy Coordination........ 305 445 A more deliberate.
HGRROPPOSIGES: ee eee ee 40s 80s B spent 45 sec. on last
word.
if, Rasy Directions —...-..... 98s 85s No errors; both
18. Hard Directions .............. io St alos showed intense in-
| terest and attention.

UGS TSyyiaal oo AD Siete e eee eee 23.4 12:2) 2 9
20. Trabue Language Com-

TOL GLO TIS eee eee 13 13 35 G
21. Kansas Silent Reading.. 12.9 21.5 12.5 13.5
22. Woody Fundamentals of

PAT MINT C TG pees eee 28 26 12.5 12.5
23. Ayres Spelling ................ WELT VALS aS '5
24. Ayres Handwriting ........ 60 60 13 13 Differentiation in-

creasing.

25. Drawing (Thorndike)... 10.5 10.5

INGOT A Cys (lth) eee 90% 80%
Average for combined

ISIS pe cl as Eee oa 13.6 18.9
Average for perform-

ANCE RLCS hSieere eee eee lS om 2:
Standard deviation.......... 2.83 2.91

*S = second.

320 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The mental examinations were not, of course, all made at one
sitting; but the twins were always submitted to the selfsame tests
on the same days.

The results of these tests for which we have standardized age
norms are plotted on the accompanying chart (Figure 8), in which
the solid line stands for A’s performance and the broken line for
B’s. It is hardly necessary: to give mathematical expression to
these curves. The two lines show a striking degree of cohesion.
Note, for example, how they both plunge down on the formboard
test, and how equally they rise on the vocabulary tests. The most
pronounced disagreement is that shown in the feature profile test.
Here there was apparently a more or less fortuitous circumstance,
which disturbed B’s attack of the problem. Indeed it is quite
likely that not a few of the minor disparities shown in the per-
formance scores in various tests indicate variation in the condi-
tions of the test, beyond our control, rather than fundamental dif-
ferences in mentality. In view of this, the amount of psycho-
logical correspondence actually revealed by the tests is all the
more significant.

A » “ * x , & “ ‘ a . ~ a ° Le
: iE V Fi T
: aa 5 ) EB o 5 4 yf R i mM : AN ‘ M,. Yo
eat A wR T : e Sih Re eae
in a =&B a Ht ay oe, °y A Ealy \ fy A
Near eee BI p . ¢ . ¢ ‘y me Pare AC vB
CoE ice is FO TG b, gin acti,
Leven] T * eeioeeees Roa & A om pee) Ee eae

MENTAL MEASUREMENTS oF Twins, AccQ@—— 42-— Be-—-— ee Bee tee

FIGURE 8 GRAPH SHOWING CORRESPONDENCE IN MENTAL MEASUREMENTS OF A AND B

The results are plotted on the basis of mental age scores, the heavy straight

dotted line representing the chronological age. The tests in order are (a)

Binet, (b) National Intelligence, (c) Symbol Digit, (d) Trabue Completion,

(e) Porteus, (f) Vocabulary, (g) Ship, (h) Feature Profile, (i) Diagonal,

(j) Triangle, (kh) Knox Cube, (1) Healy A, (m) Seguin Form-board (n)

Kansas Silent Reading, (0) Ayres Spelling, (p) Woody Mixed Fundamentals
of Arithmetic, (q) Vocabulary II.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 321

Prars Mita, Cob, @

LY At ty. @

4921
es. iA awe MMe NI ca

FIGURE 9. HANDWRITING OF A AND B (REDUCED TO TWO-THIRDS)

Showing a moderate degree of similarity in 1920 specimens, and an accentua-
tion of points of difference a year later. The specimens marked 3 show the
third trial at spelling the ‘‘word,’’ antidisestablishmentarianism.

Qualitatively as well as quantitatively the tests revealed a con-
sistent similarity with respect to general alertness, intensity of at-
tention, deliberation, cooperativeness, sense of humor, and emo-
tional reactions. Comparative ratings with regard to quality of
responses were attempted in 25 of the Binet tests. In 12 of these
our rating was equality, in 13 a slight superiority in favor of B
who showed perhaps a little more directness, conciseness and power
of generalization. But these ratings were subjective at best, and
rested so near to the limit of imperceptible difference, that it would
be pedantie to insist on their importance. For once let us insist
on resemblance rather than differentiation.

VOL. XIV.—21.

322 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

18. Give the child a pencil (but no ruler) and say: In the space below have the child draw a man and a
You see that (pointing to the square). I want you to | tree with a bench under it. Give no further directions
make one just like it. Make it right here (pointing | 4, accistance.
to the space adjoining). Go ahead. Repeat this for-
mula for each figure.

19. Point to the
round field, and
say to the child:
Let us suppose
that your ball has
been lost in thts
round feld. You
have no idea what
part of the field it
is in; but you
know it ts there
somewhere. Now
take this pencil and
begin ct the gate
and mark out a path to show me how you would hunt
tor the ball so as to be sure not to miss it.

FIGURE 10. DRAWING TESTS—TWIN A

In addition to the purely psychological tests, several educa-
tional tests were given to measure achievement in reading, writing,
arithmetic, spelling and drawing. The results showed close sim-
ilarity in every instance, with the exception of silent reading,
in which B made a somewhat superior score.

In spelling, the standard Ayres word list was used. By way
of good measure, the girls were also given a chance to spell ‘‘the
largest word in the language.’’ They responded with their usual
eagerness. I pronounced, three times, the formidable ‘‘word’’
antidisestablishmentarianism. They tried to spell it after each

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 323

18. Give the child a pencil (but no ruler) and say: In the space below have the child draw a man and a
You see that (pointing to the square). I want you to | tree with a bench under it. Give no further directions
make one just like it. .Make it right here (pointing
to the space adjoining). Go ahead. Repeat this for-
riula for each figure.

or assistance.

19. Point to the
round field, and
say to the child:
Let us suppose
that your ball has
been lost in this
round field. You
have no tdea what
part of the field it
ts in, but you
know it ts there
somewhere. Now
take this pencil and
begin at the gate
and mark out a path to show ine how you would hunt
for the ball so as to be sure not to miss it.

FIGURE 11. DRAWING TESTS—TWIN B

pronunciation. The results of the third trial are shown in the
illustration. Both inserted a superfluous ed, in the middle; A
missed the rest of the word by one letter, and B by three. (Fig-
ure 9.)

The reactions of the twins in the field of drawing are pictured
in the accompanying illustrations, (Figures 10 and 11). The
twins were asked independently to copy a square, a diamond and
a star; to trace the route in the ball and field test, and to draw
(without copy) a man and a tree with a bench under it. These
responses under controlled conditions furnish a basis for ob-
jective comparison. The general similarity is unmistakable, as

324 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

shown by the illustrations. The similarity of the free drawings of
man, tree and bench is the most remarkable. It can, of course,
be partly accounted for by the conventionalizing effect of recipro-
cal imitativeness, favored by the intimate companionship of these
two children; but after all the fact that this conventionalizing
process should produce such an assimilative result denotes an
underlying similarity in mental constitution.

Handwriting is an expression of ‘individuality. It is not neces-
sary to go as far as the graphologists do and consider it an index
of character; because it is of course subject to fortuitous, mechan-
ical and purely technical influences. However, Wilder and Went-
worth are probably correct in their statement that ‘‘more than
any other single gesture or habitual pose, a man’s natural hand-
writing is the product of what’ he has experienced, learned, and
practiced repeatedly, mind and body cooperating in every stroke.”’
Osborn interprets penmanship as the combined product of mus-
cular habits and mental patterns which ‘‘differ in a marked manner
in different individuals and this variation radically affects the
visible result.’’ On these constitutional variations rests the pos-
sibility of identifying individuals and detecting forgery through
handwriting. é

When it comes to a comparative study of twins, handwriting
therefore suggests itself as a psycho-motor test. It must indeed
be a delicate test, for complete similarity is apparently very rare.
Galton, however, reports one case in which not even the twins
themselves, though adults, could distinguish their own handwrit-
ing. In our own ease of A and B, there was a moderate degree
of similarity at the age of 8, as shown by the accompanying illus-
trations (Figure 9). The reader will note, however, a little more
angularity, compression and reduction in size, in B’s specimen.
These differences in the course of a year have become accentuated,
so that the general similarity of the earlier stage is disappearing.
That the differentiation will grow still more marked with ado-
lescence is not improbable. And who knows what other chiro-
graphic metamorphoses will attend this period, in which individ-
ualism in loops, hooks, flourishes, ete., frequently abound ?

The vocabularies of A and B deserve particular discussion ;
because we may feel certain that these two girls have been sub-
jected to a nearly identical language environment. They have
been inseparable; they have talked and held their tongues to very
nearly the same extent; they have had the same mother, the same
mother tongue; they have had equal instruction in the same for-
eign languages; they have listened, usually at the same time to the

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 325

same relatives, friends and teachers; have studied the same lessons
-and have read much the same books. With what results?

It would be fallacious to say, that because A and B have been
exposed to the same verbal environment, they will be familiar
with the same words. Familiarity with words depends upon other
factors than mere impression. It depends upon the capacity to
assimilate meanings, concepts, contexts, inflections. It depends
upon curiosity and attitudes, upon social propensities, tastes,
preferences, and above all upon maturity.

Numerous psycho-metrie determinations of the vocabulary of
children have shown a consistent tendency for the vocabulary score
to increase with age, and with intelligence. Vocabulary is so
highly correlated with mental development, that even the son of
an immigrant, who hears nothing but a foreign language at home,
will after brief residence in this country earn a high vocabulary
rating, if he is of superior endowment.

Our twins have since babyhood shown a sprightly facility in
the realm of words. They have taken much delight in various
forms of sound and word play, and have betrayed a lively and
often humorous interest in words. Both of the children like to
rhyme, and B is blosspming into poetical composition. The aec-
companying sample is not unpromising, when we consider that
the chronological age of the ‘‘poetess’’ is nine!

THE BIRTH OF FLOWERS
When flowers first were born,
The earliest flow’r of Morn,
Was the Rose,
So Sweet and wondrous in its
pose.
The flowers all assembled
To chose their Queen,
The fairest one amongst
them I ween;
The rose spoke up
And said, ‘‘The one that

goes latest to
bed.’’

It was possible to make a satisfactory comparison of the twins
A and B by means of a vocabulary test. This test, Terman con-
siders to have a far higher value than any other single test in the
whole intelligence measuring seale. The test consists of 100 words
derived by random selection from a dictionary containing 18,000
words. An abbreviated series of 50 words of increasing difficulty
ranging from gown and tap to shagreen and complot was given to
both A and B. This virtually constituted a graded scale of 50

326 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

individual tests, and revealed a startling degree of resemblance;
A failed on 16 of the test words; B failed on exactly the same
words, and on only one additional word, namely harpy. The ecal-
culated vocabulary score of A at the age of 9 is 65 and for B it is
67, a standard equivalent to the average adult level.

VOCABULARY TEST

TNE 33 ALB:
Ds) SOW feces eas eee eee Sf, S26.) Mas ee
Peni 9) Route cee eee eos t-te OT. OSA ete eee +
a BC OLCH Ur cee teens ea ee Sag 2a 72), 621) Week ee ee eee Ye ey ~ +
4. puddle 2c. csreee ie eta BS YT OO. DTC LOSS caer stare eee ++
De CNVCLOPCy assess eee -. 30. disproportionate -...... ae tot
6; Tolle. (ee ee a ee. cis) (31), tolerate: pa) + o+
7 125 18 UM Slee Ee Bs BN ap) sho) 192) artless: (foie ee eae — —
S., eyelash its 2s nist je 2) 33. depredation (2 22a =
OS COP DOE. cress ae eee rea: a eg ORN I Sy Bud ley nnic a a ee See te et ae t+o+
aL OS CUTSC Heise eee nee een oe) Se) 735. Ferustrate ees see fees es
Spork. ie 2 eee ee Spt) sls N36) Wapyy (seems eee eee ee =
PQ OUt WAT) (2st ec. Met obs 2 aiff Om ake ete See ee —- —
13. southern ......... Ce eben ts). BBs ACHES gh aan ceetares errr —= =
WA: Nocturne yn erases. —- = ‘39. milksop ) 22s —_ —
15. dungeon |o eee oe RE 40. Inerustatien; Gok ee = =
1G skal, Se ee)! oe!) ae retrosetavemee. et eee —_—- —
L7esTamble) hts Beek oe 42. a Der pris Spee eee —- —
ESS heaved 2:22: Cee eee Lon 2 + <.: 43. avhromapie(=.5 222.22. —_— —
AOS ngure, | oto +, 4. 44, perfanctory 2 2 —- —
20. nerve .......... yt ace ane ofa fat) (BOs CHS TIS DEY meee se eee a
PAU Yeifod (2s ptm te atae aeta 4. ut | 46piseatorial: see —_— —
Gets POSALG cea nt eee a A. =), 47s sudorite | 22s —_ —
QecOSLAVG | tater eet. te) ABS PATLOEER niece eee —- —
24, (brunette ee stereo .... + 4», sA9. silagesen: 2 2b ee = =
20s NY StGYICS foe eee ens tS 50. .comploticass esa eee st) [iat

+, passed. —, failed.

This degree of correspondence is truly remarkable when we
reflect that this searching test, in a statistical sense, compasses the
whole wide domain of the English language. Although we must
give due weight to the similarity of verbal and academic environ-
ment to which A and B have been subjected, do not the results
of the test testify even more eloquently to an underlying similarity
of nervous constitution and organization ?

Incidentally we may record a characteristic reaction which
occurred in the course of the first vocabulary test which I gave
to the twins at the age of 7. A encountered a word which sounded
familiar, but for which she could frame no definition. The word
was civil,—‘ Civil, don’t know; can’t say; and yet I think I know.
O, that reminds me: it is like that story about space. A teacher
asked his pupil to define space. The boy said, ‘I can’t tell you
what it is, but I’ve got it in my head.’’’ Thereafter, whenever

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 327

an unfamiliar word was presented, A smiled slyly, tapped her
head and said, ‘‘I guess it’s that space story again!’’ Even so,
both girls at the age of seven had a vocabulary score of 50, equiv-
alent to the mental age of 14. Moreover, they knew when they
didn’t know. Mentally inferior children venture wild definitions
in the field of the unknown.

There are no satisfactory objective methods for directly meas-
uring emotional and volitional traits. We, of course, secure data
concerning them indirectly through so-called intelligence measure-
ments; but we are chiefly dependent upon clinical inference and
estimate. Even so, it would require a psychological Boswell to
furnish a complete comparative picture of the temperaments and
dispositions of A and B. Long continued and intimate observa-
tion might reveal some interesting disparities in the emotional
sphere. The ordinary observer would probably develop a par-
tiality for one of the twins on the ground that A or B is less as-
Sertive, more reasonable, more affectionate, than B or A. But
this preference might indicate the inveterate selective and dis-
criminative tendency of human perception, quite as much as a
fundamental diversity in the twins.

Assuming that there is at present a high degree of correspond-
ence in temperamental traits: does it follow that such will always
be the case? Hardly so. To begin with these children have not
as yet come into full possession of all of their mental inheritance.
Adolescence brings with it many new psychic characters, and
these may not be equally shared, or equally assimilated by A and
B. And as we look down the future we must reckon with the dif-
ferentiating power of differences in fortune, social position or pro-
fessional career. We have noticed that one twin is definitely more
dependent upon demonstration of affection by the mother ; that one
is becoming interested in the violin, the other, perhaps in poetry.
Suppose that one should seek distinction in music and the other
in letters. Even such a relatively small disparity in vocation
might ultimately create by accretion a very decided difference in
mental content, habits of thought, social attitudes, outlook upon
life; so that the conditioned reflexes and complexes of A would
become quite distinguishable from those of B; an interesting dif-
ference in vegetation, growing upon much the same soil. Person-
ality in its higher expressions is always so conditioned by social
and educational factors that it would be futile to deny the possi-
bilities of differentiation even with “‘duplicate twins. ’’

But we are concerned with the present status of twins A and
B, age 8. At that age we gave them an opportunity to express
some of their likes and dislikes on paper. It was a simple, almost

328 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

impromptu test; but the results were amazing. They independent-
ly answered in writing a questionnaire, which is reproduced with
their replies exactly as they gave them.

QUESTIONS ON LIKES AND DISLIKES, ANSWERED IN WRITING
INDEPENDENTLY BY A AND B

Question: If you had $1,000.00 to spend, how would you do it? Tell me
about it on this page.

Answer: A. I would buy a painting outfit and learn to use it. Take
Mother to Europe (because she wants so much to go).

B. I would buy a horse (like Black Beauty), a riding habit, the Universal
Anthology for Mother and a barrel of sugar for my horse.

Question: What is the most unpleasant thing you have to do every day?

Answer: A. Practice on the piano.

B. Practise on the piano.

Question: What is the most agreeable thing you do every day?

Answer: A. Ride horse-back.

B. Ride horse-back.

Question: What is most likely to make you angry?

Answer: A. Our dog.

B. Rasputin. (The dog.)

Question: What is it your ambition to be when grown up?

Answer: A. An artist.

B. To teach.

Question: What game do you like best?

Answer: A. Play lady and dress up in Mother’s clothes.

B. Mother.

Question: What was the most fun you had last summer?

Answer: A. Going in swimming.

B. Going in swimming.

Question: What is your favorite color?

Answer: A. Green.

B. Green.

Question: What is your favorite book?

Answer: A. Bible stories.

B. The Bible.

Question: What is your favorite song?

Answer: A. Red, White and Blue.

B. Home Sweet Home.

Question: What is your favorite study in school?

Answer: A. Reading.

B. Reading.

It would be easy to exaggerate the significance of these ques-
tionnaire results, and yet it is inconceivable that they would have
been possible without a considerable degree of correspondence in
personality traits. The same conclusion must be drawn from the
results of the vocabulary tests made at seven, eight, and nine years
of age. The close correspondence in mental level revealed by the
Binet ratings is also undeniable. There were several points of dif-
ference in the I Q at the ages of seven and eight, but the average
for the two testings was within one point,—183.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 329

5B
If .
‘
oe
DN Aes
xit te a
iM Z A
3 oy
AA
é Gi
a ob
i 3g 4
t Ka

SAN
oe

~
FIGURE 12. COMPARATIVE PSYCHOGRAPH

Showing intellectual correspondence of Twins A and B at age 8. Forty-four
graded intelligence tests were given. All the tests at the mental age levels of
8 to 12 inclusive were passed with facility.

OHAPUNY PEE pporpPR OABop e

The I Q, or Intelligence Quotient, expresses the ratio of mental
age to chronological age. If these two ages are the same in a given
individual the I Q is 100. If the mental age is less than the
chronological, the I Q is below 100. If the mental age is in ad-
vanee the resulting I Q is above 100. Children with an I Q of
65 or less are usually feebleminded. Children with an I Q of 120
or more may be regarded as relatively superior. The psychological
literature reports very few cases with an I Q as high as 180.

A comparative psychograph of the performances of A and B in
the Binet tests gives a fair graphic picture of the degree of intel-
lectual correspondence of these two children at the age of 8. The
diagram (Figure 12) is so drawn that suecess and failure are in-
dicated in corresponding meridians. All the tests in the age levels
below 12, were passed with great facility and are not included.

330 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

One half of the psychograph proves to be almost a mirror image
of the other.

(d) GENERAL CONCLUSION

Reviewing, then, the developmental history of A and B, and
the results of scores of tests,—the physical, the anthropometric,
the psychological, performance and educational measurements ; and
considering the collective weight and tendeney of these findings,
and the wider diversity which would have been shown by a sim-
ilar study of ordinary siblings—it seems highly probable that this
pair of twins were of nearly duplicated or identical genetic ante-
cedents.

The general conclusion is inescapable that the consistent sim-
ilarity between these two children is based upon a fundamental,
inherent similarity in endowment. It would, however, be wrong
to ignore the equalizing influence of a practically identical en-
vironment. Indeed, in studying the development of personality
it is rather artificial to bring nature and nurture into rigid con-
tradistinction. Personality represents the resultant cooperative
product of both intrinsic and extraneous factors, and the inter-
action of these factors in highly dynamic relations. It is because
these dynamic relations are so sensitive, that any marked psycho-
logical similarity even between co-twins at the relatively old
age of eight years is impressive. It may even be usual that one of
a pair of twins begins with or early acquires a physical or tem-
peramental advantage which gives him a different status in the
social situations of life; and initiates a differentiating process
which waxes with what it feeds upon. But in the present in-
stance, such a strong differentiating tendency has not become very
apparent. I should not be willing to say that it will never come
into power. We have already suggested the differentiating possi-
bilities of a wide difference in vocational or social careers. Even
now a consistent partiality for one child on the part of the mother,
a physical accident or an unshared illness, or an emotional crisis
limited to one child, might become the germ for a pronounced
differentiation of personalities. But on the whole, the equalizing
factors have hitherto with A and B remained dominant.

Among these factors we should mention a pleasant degree of
jealousy and emulation. Neither wishes to be out done by the
other. For example, when at the age of seven I gave them the
delightful privilege of filling my hod with chunks of ecannel coal,
they both insisted that they be permitted to put on the big gloves
and that they also be permitted to put exactly the same number
of chunks into the hod. This propensity, which fundamentally is

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 331

hereditary, has preserved a kind of balance of power and has helped
to impress a certain identity on their respective personalities.
Neither has become a leader of the other.

The argument that similar experiences have made these chil-
dren similar does not bear close scrutiny ; experience, after all, is
a descriptive term for the reactions of an organism to its environ-
ment. As Dewey puts it, the combination of what things do to
us in modifying our actions, and what we can do to them in pro-
ducing new changes constitutes experience. From a clinical point
of view, the experience argument begs the question. What we
really wish to know is to what degree have these children actually
had similar experiences. Our conclusion is that they have mani-
fested similarity of experience to a remarkable degree, due pri-
marily to the structural parity of the nervous system with which
they were endowed. A similarity of environment has developed
a corresponding functional parity. But here again the considera-
tions become involved; for this so-called similarity of environment
has consisted not only in the same house, similar beds, similar
clothes, similar food and identical instruction; but the twins have
had each other, and each has earried around much the same en-
vironment, because each apparently assimilated much the same
things for her milieu. There has at least been a high degree of
reciprocity between nature and nurture!

(To be concluded.)

332 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

DEHYDRATION AND THE PRESERVATION
OF FOODS

By Dr. HEBER W. YOUNGKEN

PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY AND SCIENCE

HE possibility of partaking of strawberries and apples in

regions of the earth remote from their native habitats and dis-
triets of production at first thought seems unlikely. Upon later
reflection, however, the likelihood seems possible, since we realize
that they may be canned, dried or even refrigerated. But the
chance of being able to have them in a condition almost like that
in which they would appear when gathered in fresh from the gar-
den or orchard and placed on the table with little or no natural
flavor removed, after transportation to either of these remote points,
is a far different proposition. Yet I hope to show before the con-
elusion of this article that the ingenuity of man has made it quite
possible to enjoy not only the full flavor and flesh of strawberries
and apples in arctic or torrid climes, but in addition other fruits,
vegetables and meats which are not produced in these regions.

The whole secret of being able to procure the kind of food you
want where and when you want it is in its preservation. The rea-
sons foods do not normally keep indefinitely are partly biological
and partly chemical. The chemical agents responsible for food
spoilage are called enzymes, the biological agents, microorganisms.
All living cells of plants and animals normally contain enzymes that
possess the power of changing substances insoluble in water into
water-soluble substances without themselves suffering any change
during their term of activity. These enzymes are produced by the
living matter of the cell and remain active after the death of the
cell. Some of them have the power of attacking carbohydrates such
as starch or inulin, breaking these substances down into water-
soluble sugars, others attack proteins such as albumens and globu-
lins, splitting these up into water-soluble peptones, etc., still others
attack fats breaking them down into water-soluble fatty acids and
elycerin. Some of the enzymes are present in the cells of the food
itself, others occur in the eells of microorganisms which attack
food. All enzymes require a certain amount of warmth and the
presence of water in order to get in their activity.

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 333

From the earliest period of the human race of which there are
records man has striven to preserve foodstuffs available in season
and region of abundance for use in times and places of scarcity.
The ancients practiced sun drying of food on a large scale.

The following are the methods chiefly employed in the preserva-
tion of foods: (1) Drying, (2) Salting, (8) Pickling, (4) Smok-
ing, (5) Refrigeration, (6) Canning, (7) Dehydration.

Dryineé oF Foop

The methods upon which foods are dried are based upon the
principles that sufficient heat kills enzymes and the removal of
water inhibits the growth of microorganisms, as well as prevents
enzymic activity. In some instances, protective layers may be
formed through drying by changing the former relationships of
tissue constituents. Thus, for example, in the curing of pork, the
fat, which is for the greater part isolated in distinct cells, becomes
diffused throughout the outer layers of the flesh and forms a
water-proof exterior to the ingress of microorganisms.

The removal of water in foods to an extent below the minimum
required for the growth of microorganisms is secured in a number
of ways. The most common ones are the uses of heat either in the
form of sun’s rays or from an artificial source. Sun drying is the
oldest of these. In regions where the moisture content of the air
is low, as in many of the fruit districts of California and other
western states, exposure to the sun’s rays accomplishes rapid dry-
ing. In this method insects and dust frequently have full access to
the food. In more humid localities and with other types of food
artificial heat is employed and so we have kiln drying and drying
by means of centrifugal action. Kiln drying is much employed
in the preparation of evaporated foods. In this method materials
are laid on a sereened floor under which heating appliances are
built. The mass of material is stirred up occasionally during the
drying. Drying by heat always results in concentrating the
solutes. The acids in the juices of many fruits, when concentrated,
may be antiseptic, 7. e., retard the growth of microorganisms. F're-
quently the sugars present reach so great a concentration as to
plasmolyze the cell contents of any microorganisms present and
so prevent their multiplication.

The disadvantages of all these methods of drying lies in the
facts that they are slow, not all materials can be so treated and
the products resulting do not regain their natural appearance,
odor or taste when prepared for diet.

: SALTING
This is a method of preserving meats and fish. It has been

334 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

used. for many centuries and next to drying is the oldest process
known. It is dependent upon the principle that salt abstracts
water from the tissues of the fleshy food and so causes a concen-
tration of the solutes within the cells too great for the growth of
bacteria. It gives the food a paler color and extracts at least 25
per cent. of the protein content. The great disadvantage in this
method is the danger of undersalting or oversalting. Undersalted
foods putrefy in time. Frequently the putrefaction is masked and
ptomaine poisoning occurs after eating these. Oversalting de-
stroys the natural flavor and extracts much of the nutritive sub-
stances.
PICKLING

Pickling consists of the preservation of food in brine contain-
ing varying percentages of salt, vinegar, weak acids and _ occa-
sionally condiments. Many foods such as olives, cucumbers,
cauliflower, beets, and some meats and fish, are preserved by this
method. That pickling is not always a safe method of food perser-
vation has recently been emphasized by many outbreaks of
botulism poisoning from pickled ripe olives.

SMOKING

This is a method of preserving flesh foods and flesh derivaties
such as meat and fish. It consists of first placing the fleshy food
in brine with or without condiments for a week or longer. A
smouldering fire is then built in a specially constructed chamber.
The flesh foods are taken out of the brine and hung up, being ex-
posed for varying periods of time to the wood smoke and heat.
The volatile substances in the wood smoke such as creosote, acetic
acid and other germicidal substances penetrate the food at least
superficially and either kill any putrefactive organisms present or
retard their growth.

REFRIGERATION

Refrigeration is a method of preserving foods which is based
upon the principle that cold inhibits the activity of microorgan-
isms. During the past two decades it has revolutionized the meat
and eges industries. In the meat industry it permits slaughtering
to take place all the year round and great cargoes to be trans-
ported in refrigerating chambers across oceans and continents and
through equatorial regions not much the worse for the transporting.

Foods preserved by refrigeration generally command a higher
price than those preserved by other methods. This is in part due to
the fact that the general appearance of cold storage food resem-
bles that of the perfectly fresh article. In numerous instances,
also, refrigeration, for a reasonable length of time, preserves not

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 335

only the appearance but also the delicate flavor, chemical composi-
tion and nutritive value of the original articles.

During the storage of food it undergoes some loss of water
and volatile principles by evaporation and various volatile prin-
ciples may be absorbed from the air of the storage room. But by
far the most important point to be considered in this connection
is the behavior of the biologic content ‘of the food during this
period. It should be emphasized here that refrigeration not only
impedes the growth of microorganisms, but tends to preserve them
as well. In addition to the organisms present in the food when
it is stored, other microbes such as bacteria, yeasts and molds, may
gain access to the food from time to time either by actual contact
with other things or through the circulating air within the cold
storage chamber.

As to whether these implanted forms will survive depends upon
their nature and ability to adapt themselves to the conditions exist-
ing within the stored food. Some perish, others may survive in
the passive condition, still others may survive in their active form,
multiplying rapidly. It has been known for some time that some
bacteria can grow at a temperature of zero and that many ean
reproduce at a fraction of a degree above that point. If microbie
activity is, therefore, to be inhibited, the food must be frozen.

Methods of refrigeration vary depending upon the article to
be refrigerated. In the production of chilled meats, the flesh of
mammals is first placed in a cold chamber at a temperature of
about +-2° for the first 48 hours and then stored at a temperature of
+I1° or +2° if chilled meat is desired. During the chilling process
the enzymes of the dead flesh and bacteria present are active, bring-
ing about a ripening or curing, which makes the meat more tender
and gives it a more desirable flavor. If the chilling process be
allowed to proceed beyond the point where the muscle sugar is
nearly completely fermented, the changes in the meat due to the
decomposition of proteid material by bacterial enzymes makes it
dangerous and unfit for consumption.

In the preparation of frozen meat, the dressed article is chilled
in an air-chamber at —20° until it is frozen solid and later kept
at a temperature below —4°. Such meat remains practically un-
changed for long periods. The difficulty arises when it is thawed.
If warmed slowly the melting water crystals are absorbed by the
protein material and the original structure of the flesh restored
almost completely, but bacteria are always bound to enter in a
prolonged process of this kind and cause some decomposition. In
order to prevent this, the thawing is usually carried on rapidly
and so the normal structure of the meat is not restored. It is

336 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

softer, darker and moister than chilled or fresh meat and prone to
rapid decomposition if kept at room temperature for even short
periods.

In the refrigeration of fish and poultry, these articles are
chilled by packing in ice immediately after death and frozen as
rapidly as possible. In thawing similar changes take place as in
frozen meat but the bacterial decomposition proceeds more ener-
getically. After thawing is complete the products spoil rapidly.

Eggs should be stored at a constant temperature which should
be between +0.5° and +1° and at a constant humidity of 70 per
cent saturation, if superior results are to be attained. But even
with the best of control and precautions there is some deteriora-
tion in the cold storage article due to the facts that the enzymes
within the egg are not necessarily inhibited nor is the growth of
all of the bacteria prevented.

Milk is more rapidly changed by bacterial activity than any
other food. In up to date dairies it is therefore cooled immediately
after it is drawn from the animal and kept at a low temperature
until delivered to the consumer. But even at this low tempera-
ture the milk bacteria multiply slowly. Freezing alone prevents
their multiplication. If the milk is very clean, however, it may
be kept sweet for several weeks at a temperature slightly above
the freezing point.

Fruits and vegetables are refrigerated at a temperature slightly
above zero and at a constant humidity of about 60 per cent. satura-
tion. In spite of modern methods of refrigeration it is not prac-
ticable to ship fresh sea foods to distant inland towns or to send
some perishable fruits and vegetables of the tropics to colder
climes.

CANNING

Canning is a method of food preservation the principles of
which include the destruction of microorganisms which produce
the fermentative and putrefactive changes by heat and subse-
quently sealing the container to prevent the access of more
microorganisms.

The principle of employing heat in the preservation of food
had its origin in the experiments of Spallanzani, who in 1765
boiled meat extract in flasks for an hour and hermetically sealed
them, after which no change took place in the material. Spallan-
zani, however, was not aware of the real cause of these changes.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, Tyndall and Pas-
teur successfully demonstrated that living microorganisms were
always found where fermentation and putrefaction took place,
that these organisms could be killed by heat and that if substances

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 337

liable to decomposition which had been sterilized by heat were kept
so that no organisms could gain entrance, they would keep in-
definitely without spoiling. But long before the causes of fer-
mentation and putrefaction were known canning was discovered.

During the Napoleonic wars the French government faced the
problem of maintaining an adequate supply of food for their army
and navy and offered a prize of 12,000 franes to the person who
could invent the best method of preserving food. Stimulated by
this offer, Nicholas Appert, a Parisian confectioner, undertook the
task. After several years of ardent investigation he discovered a
method which he submitted to the Minister of the Interior. A
number of substances which Appert had preserved including meat,
vegetables, fruits, milk and soup were examined by the Bureau
Consultif, a commission appointed by the minister, which inciuded
such men as Gay Lussae, Bardel, Scipion-Perrier and Molard.

This body reported that when the jars were opened after sev-
eral months, the foods were found to be perfectly preserved and in
every way satisfactory in flavor and appearance. On the strength
of this report, Appert was awarded the prize of 12,000 franes. It
was not until the following year (1810) that Appert published his
discovery under the title of ‘‘L’ Art de Conserver pendant plusiers
toules les substances animal et vegetables’’ (‘‘The Art of Preserv-
ing Animal and Vegetable Substances.’’)

Appert’s method consisted of enclosing food in glass jars which
were then corked tightly, placed in a bath of boiling water the
time varying according to the article treated and taking the jars
from the bath at the prescribed time and in a proper manner.
Appert later used tin cans as containers. The success of his
method was dependent upon sterilization and the absolute exclu-
sion of air. These same principles are applied in the canning of
to-day.

From France the canning method was introduced into England
by Peter Durand, who in 1810 obtained a patent from the Eng-
lish government for the preservation of a variety of food in her-
metically sealed tin cans and glass jars. Among the first to intro-
duce the process into the United States were Ezra Dagget and
Thomas Kensett, who in 1819 began to manufacture canned oys-
ters, lobsters and salmon. In 1820 William Underwood and Charles
Mitchell opened a canning factory in Boston, where they packed
currants, plums, quinees and eranberries.

Enormous losses were experienced during the early years of the
canning industry due to the defective nature of the square tin cans.
The square ean finally gave way to the economically superior round
can. A press for manufacturing can tops was invented in 1850.

VOL. XIV.—22.

338 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

In 1883 a hand capping machine was patented and later various
other kinds of machinery replaced hand labor.

The Civil War did more to stimulate the canning industry in
America than any other factor. To-day it is recognized as the main
method of preserving foods in this country and likewise the most
popular.

DISADVANTAGES OF CANNED F'oops

It is a well-known fact amongst chemists and physicians of to-
day that the heat necessary to bring about the successful steriliza-
tion of milk, fruits, vegetables and meat destroys vitamines. These
vitamines are regarded as absolutely essential for the growth, de-
velopment and protection of the body against certain diseases such
as scurvy and beri-beri.

In writing on the vitamines, Colonel Vedder, M. C., U.S. A.,
states: ‘‘It should also be noted that all canned foods must be
regarded as possible beri-beri producers. It has been shown by
numerous investigators, including the writer, that heating to 120°C.
destroys the beri-beri preventing vitamines in certain foods. All
protein foods that are ‘canned’ must be subjected to about this
amount of heat in order to kill all the putrefactive organisms and
such canned foods are, undoubtedly, beri-beri producers when
used in excess.’’

I have recently been informed by Mr. P. R. Buettner of Dan-
bury, Connecticut, that canned tomatoes retain some of their
natural vitamines due to the protective power of the acid in this
fruit during processing.

The second disadvantage of using canned goods is in their
great cost of production. From four to seven ounces of tin plate
are used for each container. To this must be added the cost of
packing cases and the handling, canning and transportation of
much water. A third disadvantage is the fact that they have
limited keeping qualities. There is always danger of crushing and
spoilage in transporting them. Moreover, most of those products,
when prepared for the table do not possess the same appearance,
odor and taste as those of the freshly prepared articles from the
field or garden.

DEHYDRATION

Dehydration in the modern sense of the term may be defined
as the process whereby perishable foods with or without previous
treatment are subjected to the action of carefully regulated eur-
rents of air in which the temperature and humidity are properly
controlled.

The method results in the food products gradually losing water,

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 339

but without giving up their color or flavor or having their cellular
structure impaired. Accordingly, the dehydrated food will re-
absorb water, swelling up to its normal size and appearance. When
cooked it will have the same appearance, flavor and odor of freshly
cooked material made from fresh vegetables.

Dehydration dates back to 1850, when Masson, a Frenchman,
dried a large number of vegetables and fruits with a blast of warm
air at temperature near 70° C. Sometime later, Passburg of Ber-
lin obtained excellent results with vacuum drying apparatus. It
was not, however, until the Boer War that products of this nature
began to be manufactured on a considerable scale. During this
period many thousands of pounds of dried vegetables, mixed so as
to form a basis for an easily prepared soup, were produced in
Canada and shipped from there to the British Army in South
Africa.

Stimulated by the possibilities of marketing products of this
nature on a commercial scale, a number of Americans established
factories in this country and by 1910 began to manufacture de-
hydrated vegetables and soup mixtures. These products, how-
ever, never became popular, partly because they were not quite
equal to the fresh article when cooked and partly because of the
great popular demand for canned foods.

War is without doubt a great stimulator of human ingenuity,
no less in perfecting methods than in inventing new ones. Just
as the Civil War stimulated the introduction of new methods in
the canning industry, so the World War established new methods
and perfected older ones in the dehydration industry. With the
problems of supplying our armies in distant fields and our ships
in foreign seas with a variety of foods, and the limit of our ton-
nage, the food situation became acute. More and more demands
were made by the government for dehydrated products in order
to save transportation of water and to provide our fighters with
fruits and vegetables that could not be obtained in England and
France. Thousands of tons of these foods were shipped abroad
during the war to the forces of the United States as well as the
Allies.

It was the dehydration process that probably enabled Germany
to maintain her food supplies during the war. That it was suc-
cessful in that country can not be doubted when we consider the
following statistics: In 1898 there were only three small dehydra-
tion plants in Germany. Eight years later the number in opera-
tion was thirty-nine, in 1914 it had increased to 488, in 1916 to
841 and in 1917 to about 1,900. By August Ist of this year there
were 29 concerns manufacturing dehydrated fruits and vegetables

340 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

in the United States. To this may be added at least a dozen firms
who manufacture dehydrated animal products.

The methods of dehydration employed at the present time are
varied in details of procedure. All, however, are founded on the
same basic principle, namely, to remove the water contained in
and between the cells of the food so as to obtain a product which
ean not spoil as a result of microbic or enzyme action.

The water taken away by these methods is only replaceable
water and so the nutritional value of the food has not been altered.
Moreover, if dehydration is applied while the fruits, vegetables
or animal products are absolutely fresh, the flavor-giving sub-
stances are preserved intact. In the best grades of dehydrated
products the rate of evaporation is such as to bring about the re-
moval of water without rupture to the cell walls.

By means of this process the weight of the food is reduced from
80 to 90 per cent. and the bulk is diminished to one fourth or one
sixth of the original volume. By means of compression the nearly
dried material may be brought to a compact form as, for example,
in the Veco products. Not all the water is removed, the amount
remaining varying depending upon the character of the food to
from 7 to 15 per cent. But sufficient is removed to concentrate the
solutes to the extent of producing plasmolysis.

The manner in which the material is prepared influences to
some extent the quality of the product. If the first temperature
applied to the fresh material is too high, certain changes take place
in many vegetables giving them an appearance of scorched or
scalded substances and diminishing their water-absorbing power.
Accordingly, in dehydrating vegetables, the fresh material should
be subjected to air having a low temperature and high humidity
and gradually brought to a high temperature and low humidity.

METHODS OF DEHYDRATION

The methods of dehydration employed at the present time are
as follows:

(1). Tunnel Systems. These consist of long chambers or
tunnels into the end of which the fruits or vegetables are intro-
duced on screens or racks and through which a strong current of
dry air is blown. While there are several modifications in the ar-
rangement of the screens and in the method of heating and driving
the air, it may be said that in general the heat is supplied by coils
of steam pipe and the air is forced in by powerful fans. In some
plants the racks of vegetables are placed on trucks which run on
tracks, so that the material is introduced at one end of the tunnel
where the temperature is low and humidity relatively high, grad-

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 341

ually moved on to where the temperature is higher and the hu-
midity relatively lower and delivered at the other end in dry form.
By this means the moisture is uniformly extracted by capillary
attraction without destroying the cell structure. On account of
the gradual reduction of the moisture content, the cells shrink
slowly without breaking down and the product retains all of its
natural flavor, color and food value. In other plants the tunnels
have side openings where the trays are inserted and removed by
hand.

In the Hammond tunnel system, the patents of which are owned
and controlled by the Unted States Dehydration Company of Den-
ver, Colorado, the prepared fruits, vegetables or animal foods are
placed in a rectangular tunnel and gradually conveyed through it,
the moisture, temperature and rate of air flow all being properly
coordinated. The air is allowed to take its course straight through,
passing over the top of the trays or underneath them. Most of
the products are steam blanched or dipped in hot water before be-
ing introduced into the drier which operation has been found quite
necessary in preserving the color and keeping qualities of vegetables.

The Cook-Kelly process employed in the manufacture of
‘‘Cookelized foods’’ is another of these tunnel systems. In prepar-
ing foods by this process, fruits and vegetables are brought into the
factory and washed, peeled, pared, sliced, cubed or riced, put on
wire screen trays and placed in a rectangular tunnel approximately
35 feet long. Heated air is blown through this tunnel, the cur-
rents of this air taking the form of a sine curve as they g0 upward
through one tray and downward through the next and so on. The
trays are shoved along periodically which causes the air to reverse
its passage through the products on the tray from time to time,
evaporating the moisture from the products and earrying the
moisture off through the other end of the tunnel.

(2). Vacuum Methods. These have been employed with suc-
cess in the dehydration of fruits, vegetables and animal products.
The apparatus consists of a heavy cast iron chamber containing a
large number of steel shelves heated either by steam, hot water or
electricity, a condenser and a vacuum pump to exhaust the air from
the chamber and maintain a high vacuum on the system. The
material to be dried is placed on flat screens which slide into the
shelves. Heating is partly by conduction from the metal trays and
partly by radiation from the next shelf above. The temperature
is regulated by a thermostat, so that overheating is impossible.
Through the constant application of a vacuum to the process, the
water vapor is removed and the material dehydrated.

This method is particularly advantageous for the dehydration

342 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of potatoes and apples or other vegetables containing an oxidase fer-
ment. It is this ferment which causes the darkening of such mate-
rials when their flesh is exposed to the air. Since air is removed
from the chamber no darkening results by this process. However,
if such vegetables are subsequently placed in water, darkening will
result, since the ferment has not been entirely destroyed. This is
overcome by blanching or steam treatment before the foods are
dehydrated. In the dehydration of milk and eggs by the vacuum
method, heated rollers are employed. These, with various attach-
ments, are enclosed in a chamber in which a high vacuum is main-
tained. The heated roller picks up a film of egg pulp or milk which
dries rapidly under reduced pressure and is continuously scraped
off by a knife as dried flakes or powder. In the dehydration of
meats, this method is probably unequalled by any other one in its
effectiveness. Large steaks and chops can be handled without oxi-
dation and completely dried. The fats remain white and are not
melted. The product is essentially raw meat with water removed.
Usually a temperature of 130° F. is employed. Fish, lobster, meat,
clams, oysters, shrimps and other protein foods that ordinarily
putrefy easily can be preserved in excellent form by this method.
Sinee these products are dried to about 30 to 35 per cent. of their
original weight, the concentration of the solutes is too great to per-
mit bacterial development. Most fruits and vegetables require
higher temperatures than those to which flesh foods are subjected
when dried by this method. With some of the products this method
gives good results but is rather severe with others, tending to break
down their cellular structure.

(3). Kiln Method. In this method of dehydration, square
chambers with sloping roofs and perforated floors are utilized. The
floor is heated from below by a stove or furnace. The materials to
be dehydrated are spread on the floor to a depth of four or six
inches. The hot air from the heating device passes up through the
vegetables, removing the moisture, which is conducted through a
ventilator in the roof. The mass of vegetables is turned over now
and then by men with shovels during the drying. The advantage
of this method is mainly its cheapness. The disadvantages are those
of overheating or underheating. However, a number of products
made thereby have proven satisfactory.

(4). Special Dehydrators. A number of special types of cham-
bers or machines are now in use, differing from those previously
considered only in certain details of construction. Many of these
have appliances to carefully regulate the drying.

KEEPING QUALITIES OF DEHYDRATED Foops
That dehydrated foods will keep for a long time, if properly

DEHYDRATION OF FOODS 343

prepared, is evidenced by the following occurrence: During the
Boer War the British Army in South Africa was supphed with
thousands of pounds of dehydrated vegetables mixed so as to form
the basis of a quickly prepared soup. At the close of the war one
of the Canadian manufacturers was left with 30,000 pounds of this
mixture for which he could not find a market, probably due to the
faet that consumers much preferred to buy such vegetables in the
recent condition. He placed it in barrels which were paraffined
and stored it away. Fifteen years later, after the outbreak of the
world war, these were shipped to the British Army in Europe and
used in the preparation of soups of splendid quality. If dehydrated
foods are properly prepared and kept in paraffined containers free
from insect pests and ingress of moisture, there seems to be no
reason why they should not keep for indefinitely long periods.

ADVANTAGES OF DEHYDRATED Foops Over OTHER PRESERVED
Propucts

Dehydrated foods are superior to dried or evaporated articles
because they regain the natural appearance and keep the natural
odor and taste of the fresh articles when prepared for the table.
Moreover, they have better keeping qualities.

Their advantages over refrigerated articles lies in the Saving of
cold storage charges, in the lessened transportation charges and in
their superior keeping qualities. Their advantages over canned
foods lie in the great saving in freight charges (since the water
content is reduced to 5 or 10 per cent.), in their freedom from spoil-
age, their greater ease of handling, their Superior keeping qualities,
and in the cheap containers that may be used. Moreover, there is
no danger of botulism, nor are any of the vitamines destroyed. De-
hydrated foods can be shipped to any part of the globe without
deterioration.

PossIBILITY OF DEHYDRATION IN THE UNITED STATES

While much has been accomplished in the field of dehydration in
the United States since the beginning of the world war, the surface
has only been scratched. A goodly number of vegetables, fruits and
a few animal products are being dehydrated successfully while
scores of others have not as yet been taken up. Each kind of vege-
table or animal food must be studied separately in order to properly
perfect its best means of drying by this method. Dehydration is
destined to stabilize the crops of the nation. Year after year, de-
cade after decade, we are confronted by either feast or famine in
respect to certain fruits or vegetables.

A good crop one year with correspondingly low prices has often
been followed by a small crop the following year with high prices.

344 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

With an extension of this industry the surplus of years of great
yield can be stored and made available in later years when prices
are higher and the crop leaner. In a short time the amount of
planting would be equalized and all would be able to secure an ade-
quate supply of these foods at normal prices.

Again, dehydration is destined to conserve food materials. It
is a notorious fact that about half of the perishable fruits and vege-
tables grown in this country is wasted annually on the farm, at the
freight station, in transit or in the hands of the commission mer-
chant both as a result of poor transportation facilities and irregu-
larities in marketing.

According to the Los Angeles Examiner, ‘‘only 40 per cent. of
the California products contributed to relieve the famine sufferers
in China ever reached them in edible condition.’’ ‘*‘ Had the wasted
60 per cent. been dehydrated, it would not have failed of its merci- -
ful purpose.’’

Again, on account of the strict grading laws enforced by the
Potato Growers’ Association, it is estimated that about 50,000
bushels of No. 2 undersized, sound potatoes are annually lost to
farmers. The potato dehydrating industry is comparatively recent
in America and dehydrated potato flour is bemg manufactured
from some of the previously wasted material. With the spread and
development of this and other allied industries much of what had
previously been wasted will be conserved for the benefit of the peo-
ple. The dehydration of the sugar beet and the banana offer won-
derful possibilities in this direction.

It is conceivable that dehydration, now in its infancy, will
within the next decade, when the nature of its products become
more generally known, rival, if not outstrip, the other processes of
preserving foods.

A PERPETUAL SUBMARINE WAR 345

A PERPETUAL SUBMARINE WAR

By it. E CORER

ASSISTANT, IN CHARGE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY, U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES,
WASHINGTON, D. C.

ATIONS of men have battled with each other until they have
become weary of war. Now they declare war against war.
The recent world struggle, with all its consequences to every one
concerned, was enough to reveal the folly of internecine strife.
Besides, is it evidence of our boasted wisdom for groups of men to
contend in mortal combat with one another while engaged against
a common enemy? For all men are allies in a warfare more en-
during than the disastrous conflict recently precipitated by the
Central States of Europe, more wide-spread and pervasive in its
actions, and at least equally critical in its bearing on the survival
of the human race.

Our opponents in this war are small of stature, but in numbers
they are legion. Conspicuous among these unrelenting adver-
saries are the tribes of insects. They, as well as others, wage war
uneceasingly upon us: they besiege our crops, they attack our build-
ings and our clothes, they destroy our animals, and they even attack
our bodies with their poison darts, planting in us the germs of
such diseases as yellow fever, typhoid, typhus and bubonic plague.
It is like the war that Whitman sings of—‘‘a longer and greater
one than any, waged * * * with varying fortune, with flight,
advance and retreat, victory deferred and wavering, and yet,
methinks, certain, or as good as certain in the end.’’ But—

Assuming that the worst came to the worst, that the insects had
acquired mastery both on land and in the air—still we might re-
treat to the waters hoping to build submerged and protected homes.
Should we find safety there? It is true insects are almost non-
existent in the sea, but they may have submarine allies. At any
rate, we find there other dangerous enemies. Such are the boring
animals of various groups which attack submerged structures of
wood and even those of stone.

The principal naval powers opposing us are the shipworms,
which, of course, are not worms at all, but rather are mollusks and
not distantly related to the luscious oyster. It seems remarkable
indeed that an animal of such ingratiating qualities and gentle
habits as the oyster should have a near relative of even milder
appearance which eternally engages in destruction of the property

346 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of man. New piling placed at great expense may be destroyed
within a period of comparatively few months. Large and expen-
sive buildings may be brought to collapse. Vessels of wood may
be so weakened by the ravages of shipworms as to fall an easy
prey to storms. Of course, the harm done by shipworms is often
anticipated and such measures taken that the ships, buildings and
wharves do not collapse, but these preventive measures are effected
only at an annual expense which in the aggregate is enormous. The
damage accomplished by shipworms each year can hardly be es-
timated, but when we are told by a reliable engineer that in the
northern area of San Francisco harbor alone, the damage by marine
borers made evident within a period of two years was estimated
by competent engineers to be in excess of 15 million dollars, the
imagination can frame some picture of the total losses in all parts
of the world—to say nothing of the costs of defense in harbors
and at sea.

What is this powerful submarine enemy called by so impotent
a name as ‘‘shipworm?’’ If we can imagine an oyster having a
very small shell, about the size of one’s little finger nail, but with
the body projecting from the rear end of the shell for a distance
equal to the length of the finger or even of the whole arm, we have
a very rough picture of the shipworm. The portion of the body
protruding from the shell, practically the entire animal indeed, is
surrounded by an extension of the soft mantle which lines the shell.
Thus the animal is in the shape of a long tube, having the shell
at one end and at the other two small tubular openings called
siphons. No matter how far the shipworm may burrow into a plank
or a log, the little siphons remain always at the outside pinhole
opening through which the animal began its travels and destructive
action in the wood. It is through these tubes that the Teredo
breathes and derives the greater part of its food. Through one
tube a stream of water steadily flows in, while through the other it
flows out. In course of its passage through the animal the water
bathes the small blood vessels, bringing in fresh supplies of oxygen
and taking away the waste gases; it is also thoroughly filtered,
yielding up to the animal the minute microscopic organisms and
detritus required for food.

It is not strange that this mollusk lives so largely outside of its
shell inasmuch as its life in burrows in the wood diminishes the
need for a protective shell. Such of the shell as it retains about
the forward end of the body is modified to form a grinding organ
which is much more effective in its operations than one would sus-
pect from a cursory examination. The shell is marked with ridges
that in reality are composed of fine sharp teeth like those of the
surface of a rasp. The two halves of the shell are not fitted to-

A PERPETUAL SUBMARINE WAR 347

gether like those of a clam, where there is a hinge with an elastic
ligament that keeps the shell valves apart except when they are
drawn together by two strong muscles that pull together, one being
near each end of the shell. In the shipworm the valves of the shell
are pivoted above and below and while there are two muscles, as
in the clam, it seems that, instead of pulling together, they contract
alternately. The alternate action of the muscles therefore throws
first the front edges of the shells together and then the rear edges.
It is this rocking movement of the two parts of the shell which
causes the rasp-like shell to grind away the wood ahead.

These little destructive carpenters are not known to be governed
by any union rules but they grind away industriously and at least
make a living at the job. For them indeed it is a living wage or
death. If one puts an ear upon the surface of a piece of wood in
which they are working, the rhythmie rasping sounds heard may
ceive the impression that some creatures within are sleeping soundly.
The impression will be erroneous; the sounds indicate merely that
shipworms are doing a day’s work for a day’s wage.

Much of the fine sawdust produced by the rasping of the wood
is taken into the stomach along with the living organisms from
the water and it is yet a disputed question to what extent ship-
worms actually feed upon the wood which they continually grind
up. Toa large extent surely they feed upon organic matter, living
or dead, which is carried in the sea water; this they strain out,
as previously indicated, while the stream of water passes through
their gill plates.

So far we have spoken of shipworms as if they were of one race
or tribe. As a matter of fact there are several kinds of boring
mollusks called shipworms besides boring animals of other groups.
The principal boring mollusks belong to one family which scien-
tists have maliciously named Teridinide. There are some boring
mollusks which do not belong in the typical shipworm family.
Among these is one called Pholas which bores in rocks such as lime-
stone and sandstone, and occasionally wood, but never in hard or
compact rocks. Another, euphoniously named Martesia, is found
in timbers of wooden ships in West Indian waters. Xylophaga,
which is not, as might be thought, a musical instrument, really ac-
complishes serious damage to marine structures and to the covering
of submarine telegraph cables.

Giants among shipworms are. the plumed pile-worms! which
may be three feet in length and have a head diameter of
nearly one inch or approximately the thickness of the human thumb.
They are said to burrow at the rate of 14 inch a day; thus it ean
be seen that a great deal of damage can be accomplished by a few
individuals in course of a few weeks. The increasing effectiveness

348 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of the attack may be appreciated when it is considered that they
begin breeding at the age of 30 days and that a single healthy
mother may cast millions of eggs into the sea water.

But the real king of the shipworms is the pet of our South At-
lantie Coast, sometimes known as Teredo dilatata. A female which
attains a length of 4 feet and a head diameter of 1 inch has the
right to her ‘‘big head’’ for she lays one hundred million eggs at a
sitting—enough to fill 4 or 5 thimbles. This apparent enormous
waste in egg production is rendered necessary because great quanti-
ties of eggs or larvae may be destroyed in the first few hours of life
by physical conditions existing in the water or may be consumed as
food by innumerable small fioating animals.

The ‘‘shipworm’’ of the dykes of Holland? is less properly so
called because it is not so often found in the timbers of ships as are
other species. Its burrows are smaller and more symmetrical and
regular than those of the giant pile-worm. It lives and dies within
a year. The eggs are said to be held within the body of the ma-
ternal parent while they develop into free-swimming larve that
subsequently escape into the sea. They are believed to remain in
this free state about a month, during which they develop a ‘‘foot”’
and a pair of shells, before they settle down on wood and transform
into the boring adult form. The number of eggs is estimated at a
little less than two million. The free-swimming habit of the larve
of this shipworm, and of the eggs and larve of those previously
mentioned, is most significant because it enables the juvenile ship-
worms to travel long distances with the currents of the sea and thus
to invade new territories.

The burrow of a shipworm enters the wood at right angles to the
surface as a small pin hole, but soon turns and traverses it obliquely
or parallel to the surface and usually downwards. The shipworm
never bores completely through the wood but, guided by some in-
stinct, the nature of which we can not define, it turns away just
before breaking through the inner face of the wood. If, however,
shipworms do not make a perforation completely through the bottom
of a vessel they may so fill it with their burrows as to leave little
more than an empty shell that is easily broken through by any
blow or direct pressure.

Not all marine borers are shipworms. Any boy who has turned
over a log of wood in the yard or in the forest may have observed
the small ‘‘pillbugs’’ which live beneath the wood. These are ecrus-
tacea belonging to the same large group of animals to which pertain
the crabs, shrimps and lobsters. If a pillbug is left undisturbed for

1 There are distinct species of this genus on our two main coasts, Xwlotra

setacea of the Pacific and NXylotra gouldi of the Atlantic.
2 Teredo navalis.

A PERPETUAL SUBMARINE WAR 349

a few moments it will be observed to unroll itself to assume a flat-
tened form and crawl away. It might interest this boy to know
that the pillbug has a relative in the sea called gribble (scientists
eall it Limnoria lignorum) which ereeps into small erevices of
wharf piles, even those which have been treated with creosote for
protection, and, by gnawing away the wood, creates burrows which,
when made in large numbers, will soon reduce the creosoted pile
to an hour-glass shaped peg. The young have no free-swimming
stage but, as soon as they leave the mother, begin to ‘‘dig in’’ for
themselves. Hence they form family communities, and new colonies
no doubt arise by the drifting of crumbled portions of pile to places
where new homesteads may be established. A single square inch of
wood has been found to contain nearly 400 individuals, adult and
young. Another pillbug borer (Sphaeroma) digs into mud, wood,
or even rock itself, but it seems to dig for shelter, not for food.
Some of these are known to destroy piling in fresh-water.

Again, there is the feathered crustacean borer, called Chelura
tenebrans, which works along with the pillbug borers and is known
as a destroyer of wood both in Europe and North America. It is
related to the familiar sand-hoppers or beach-fleas, though it has
some external resemblance to the pillbug borers.

Our tale might be interminable if we proceeded to tell of
the boring worms and the little sponges that make the familiar
holes in the shells of oysters as well as in rock structures composed
of limestone and that are of more economic importance than might
at first appear. There are barnacles, too, that bore into limestone
and coral.

Perhaps most interesting of all to the collector are the several
kinds of boring clams which are often found encased in caleareous
rocks. It is an exhilarating surprise to break with a hammer what
appears to be a solid rock and in smooth oval burrows find com-
pletely formed clams entombed, as it were, within the rock but in
healthy lving condition. The chambers in which they live will be
found to be connected with the outside only by small pores through
which, with the usual currents of water, the clams derive their sus-
tenance. Some of these cavities are undoubtedly excavated by the
abrasive action of the rotating or rocking shell, but others are said
to be found in rocks so hard that the excavation may not be sup-
posed to have been effected solely by the mechanical action of the
fragile shell. If an acid is employed in dissolving the rock it seems
remarkable that the calcareous shell of the animal is not itself dis-
solved, and perhaps it would be except for the protective horny
covering of the shell.

It is not to be assumed that the submarine war is altogether one-
sided and that man has no means of defense against the destructive

350 . THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

action of the marine borers. It has been held that, in some cases,
at least, leaving the bark on wood piling affords some protection
against borers but certainly this is a very poor defense, both be-
cause the bark itself may be attacked by borers, though they like
it less than the wood, and because the bark is likely to be knocked
off or cracked. It requires but a very small opening for the borers
to get the first foothold after which their destructive action rapidly
extends. Metal sheeting for piling is sometimes employed but a
metal such as copper, which will withstand for a considerable period
the corrosive action of salt water, is costly, tempting to thieves and
liable to injury. Paints and treated burlap are also used but these
are liable to damage from the contact of boats or drift, to the
formation of cracks, and especially to injury in storms. Neverthe-
less there are coatings which have been found to give piling a life of
5 to 8 years. Concrete casings have been employed but great care
is needed in their application and such casings are likewise sub-
ject to injury from the battering of boats against the piles.

An ingenious person once suggested the use of jointed collars
of loose floats put in series around the piling with the idea that the
continual battering of the floats from wave action would destroy
the larve of the borers before they could effect an entrance into the
wood. It requires, however, such a little break in the surface to
harbor the minute larve of the borers that the plan does not seem
to have been as effective in practice as it appeared to be in theory.
Electrolysis and dynamite explosions have been employed for the
destruction of the larve but the necessity of frequent repetition of
the processes and perhaps other deficiences in their operation
have prevented their demonstrating such results as could have
secured their general adoption. For wood piling nothing more ef-
fective has yet been developed than impregnation with creosote
oils which, while hot, are foreed into the wood under substantial
pressure. The protection afforded by creosote is, however, also
limited in duration.

Of course wood may be displaced altogether for submerged
structures by the use of iron or concrete, but the mechanical diffi-
culties and the high expense of using either material are equivalent
to a very high tribute paid for protection from our enemies; or,
as we may prefer to put it ‘‘ Millions for defense but not one cent
for tribute!’’ Call it defense or tribute, as you please; in any
event, until additional discoveries may be made, we protect our
submarine structures from the depredations of marine borers only
through very great expense in initial costs or in frequent replace-
ments.

Shipworms and their allies remind one of the man who made his
living suing the railroad. How did he live before the railroad

A PERPETUAL SUBMARINE WAR 351

was built? Some one also asked how mosquitoes found satisfaction
and profit in life before man invaded their haunts. So the question
occurs: Were there no cohorts of shipworms before civilization
developed to the point where men ‘‘went down to sea in ships’”’ or
built structures out into the shore waters. It must be remembered
that forests and rivers are nearly as old as the sea, and there were
floating logs before there were ships or the hollowed logs that
served for transportation of coastal tribes of men. Nor have marine
borers been altogether dependent upon the chance log that drifted
into their habitat. Along the shores of tropical countries there
have long existed forests of mangroves whose aerial roots hang
down into the salt or brackish waters, to serve as lodging places
for oysters, barnacles and other living things of the sea. Not often
can a shipworm find a suitable home in the green and growing
tree, but one of its ‘‘associated powers,’’ the tribe of pillbug borers,
is not disturbed by the presence of flowing sap. No matter how
green the stem or root, these ‘‘shock troops’’ assuredly cut their
trails through the bark and into the wood, causing eventually the
death of the affected piece. The way thus prepared for the main
forces, the molluscan borers soon fill the dead wood with their bur-
rows, until finally it is so weakened as to fall away and bear its
burden of oysters to the mud.

So when man appeared with his floating and fixed structures,
the triple alliance of shipworms, pillbugs, and feathered borers,
were not found in a state of unpreparedness. All the methods of
submarine attack had been developed, the armies were in training
and the invisible warfare began at once. ‘‘Sunk without warning’’
must have been the sad report of one of the early sailors of the sea.

Did the wise neighbors jeer the unfortunate victim of a bold
impulse to brave the sea, or did the tribe in sympathy and alarm
assemble to propitiate their god? We do not know, but we can
imagine that, sooner or later, the cause was sought by some in-
quiring mind and that in time it was discovered that, by keeping
the family log in fresh water and sea water alternately or by regu-
larly hauling it out in the sun, the trouble was obviated—the un-
Seen enemy defeated.

Thus began this war against war, and, as marine structures in-
creased in number, size and complexity, new tactics of defense
were evolved. And yet, here we are in the 20th century still rela-
tively defenseless, and only beginning to realize that, did we dk-
vote one half the thought and scientifie skill to the age-old sub-
marine war that we recently did to a man-made under sea
attack, we might have an earlier hope to win a battle of the aves—
the battle of the borers.

352 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTALY

THE NEGRO ENUMERATION OF 1920
A REPLY TO DR. KELLY MILLER

By LE VERNE BEALES

EXPERT SPECIAL AGENT, BUREAU OF THE CENSUS

N an article entitled ‘‘Enumeration Errors in Negro Popula-
tion,’’ published in the February, 1922, issue of THE SCIENTIFIC
Montuuy, Dr. Kelly Miller asserts that the 1920 enumeration of
Negroes was seriously defective, basing his assertion mainly on the
fact that the rate of increase shown for the Negro population be-
tween 1910 and 1920 was less than might have been expected under
normal conditions. With this utterly inadequate basis for his
claims, and presumably without giving any study to data as to
Negro age distribution, he declares that the enumeration of 1920,
like those of 1870 and 1890, was ‘‘so flagrantly discrepant as to de-
mand special explanation and correction.’’ (Page 169.) Disregard-
ing the reduction in the Negro birth rate due to the abnormal con-
ditions prevailing during the last decade, and making no allow-
ance for the excessive mortality due to the influenza epidemic, he
estimates that the true rate of increase in the Negro population
between 1910 and 1920 was 9.6 per cent., a rate which would be
substantially in line with those for preceding deeades. In order to
obtain this normal-appearing rate of increase, he adds 300,000 to
the number of Negroes enumerated in 1920, asserting that the
estimated total thus obtained ‘‘makes the Negro population behave
more or less normally’’—despite the fact that conditions were far
from normal during the last decade. (Page 176.)

As a matter of fact, a careful examination of all—not merely a
part—of the available data which are sufficiently reliable to be
worthy of consideration demonstrates the substantial completeness
of the Negro enumeration in 1920. The evidence supplied by the
census figures themselves is so convincing that there is really little
need to consider collateral data. Nevertheless, the birth and death
statistics for the Negroes in those states which maintain adequate
registration systems have been carefully examined and have been
found to be in harmony with the decennial census figures.

It was a well-known and unquestioned fact before the census
was taken that there had been, during the latter half of the last
decade, an unusual and very considerable migration of Negroes
from the South to the North and West. The census confirmed that

THE NEGRO ENUMERATION OF 1920 353

fact and showed that the migration during the entire decade had
amounted to about 400,000. Such a movement would naturally
have a tendency to break up the home life and family relationships
and result in a reduced birth rate. That this was the ease ig.
brought out clearly by an examination of the following figures for
Negro children under 10 years of age:

Increase (+) or De-
AGE GROUP 1920 1910 crease (—)

IPS ay te
Number Per cent.

Total under 10 years............ 2,409,906 | 2,509,841 —99,935 —4.0
to 0G eT =
Seu 9 G2) di a RP 1,266,207 | 1,246,553 +19,654 +1.6
Wnder 5 years 2! 1,143,699 1,263,288 | —119,589 —9.5

There is nothing imexplicable about this condition. The de-
parture of hundreds of thousands of Negroes, most of whom were
undoubtedly in the younger adult ages, from the South brought
about a material reduction in the number of Negro births in that
section ; but the presence of these migrants in the North and West
did not result in any counterbalancing increase in N egro births. The
Negro birth rate is much lower in the North and West than in the
South, and in some states it falls below the Negro death rate. In
1920, of the 18 northern and western states in the birth-registra-
tion area, only four showed natural increases due to excess of
births over deaths among the Negro population, the rates of such
increase ranging from 1.4 per 1,000 Negro population for Penn-
sylvania to 5.2 for Massachusetts. The remaining 14 northern and
western states showed natural decreases in their Negro population
due to excess of deaths over births, ranging from six tenths of 1
per 1,000 for Ohio to 19.1 for Maine. The birth-registration area
also includes five southern states and the District of Columbia. Of
these, the District and four states show the following rates of nat-
ural increase in Negro population for 1920: District of Columbia,
1.9 per 1,000; Maryland, 6.4; South Carolina, 11; Virginia, 12:1-
North Carolina, 15.1. The figures for Kentucky indicate a natural
decrease of 1.8 per 1,000.

In order, therefore, to test the completeness of the 1920 census
figures for the Negro population by comparing them with the re-
sults of preceding censuses, it is necessary to make the comparisons
between the number of Negroes 10 years of age and over enumer-
ated at each census and the total number enumerated at the preced-
ing census. In this way the births during the decade are eliminated
from consideration, and the mortality among the Negro population
enumerated at the beginning of the decade is ascertained. The fol-
lowing table shows, for each census year from 1850 to 1920, the total

VOL. XIV.—23.

354 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Negro population and the Negro population 10 years of age and
over, as enumerated, together with the percentage by which the
number at the ages of 10 and over fell below the total number enu-
merated at the preceding census:

TABLE 1
ToTaL NEGRO POPULATION AND NEGRO POPULATION 10 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER,
WITH PERCENTAGE BY WHICH NUMBER 10 YEARS OF AGE AND OVER
FELL BELOw ToTaL NUMBER AT PRECEDING CENSUS: 1850-1920

Per cent. by which
| Negro population | number 10 years of
CENSUS YEAR Total negro 10 years of age|age and over fell
population and over below total at pre-
ceding census

1920 10,463,131 | 8,053,225 18.1
1910 9,827,763 7,317,922 17.2
1900 8,833,994 6,415,581 14.3
1890 7,488,676 5,328,972 19.0
1880 6,580,793 4,472,373 8.4
1870 4,880,009 3,428,757 22.8
1860 4,441,830 3,084,940 15.2
1850 3,638,808 2,500,353 4a

The following table gives adjusted figures for 1870 and 1890.
The revised total for 1870 in the first column has been published
heretofore in the decennial census reports. The revised total for
1890 in the first column is given on page 28 of the Bureau’s special
report, ‘‘Negro Population in the United States: 1790-1915.’’ The
revised figures for 1870 and 1890 in the second column have been

TABLE 2
ToraL NEGRO POPULATION AND NEGRO POPULATION 10 YEARS OF AGE AND
OvER, AS ESTIMATED FOR 1870 AND 1890 AND AS ENUMERATED IN OTHER
CeNsuS YEARS, WITH PERCENTAGE BY WHICH NUMBER 10 YEARS OF
AGE AND OvER AT EacH CENSUS FELL BELOW ToTAL NUMBER

AT PRECEDING CENSUS: 1850-1920

RG LI Ti) Pl LE OI wD baosrcn ane ce

Negro population number 10 years of

CENSUS YEAR Total negro 10 years of age | age and over fell
population and over | below total at pre-
ceding census
1920 10,463,131 8,053,225 17.4*
1910 9,827,763 7,317,922 17.2
1900 | 8,833,994 6,415,581 17.3
1890 7,760,000 5,525,000 16.0
1880 6,580,793 4,472,373 | 17.1
1870 5,392,172 3,790,697 14.7
1860 4,441,830 3,084,940 15.2
1850 3,638,808 2,500,353 sic

*Adjusted to exclude mortality due to influenza epidemic.

THE NEGRO ENUMERATION OF 1920 355

calculated on the assumption that the age distribution at the two
censuses in question was the same for the Negroes omitted as for
those enumerated. The revised rate for 1910-1920 in the third
column has been calculated by deducting the estimated mortality
due to the influenza epidemic in 1918 and 1919 (60,000) from the
total decrease. The revised rate, therefore, represents the normal
mortality during the decade among the Negroes enumerated in 1910.

In preparing the foregoing tables no adjustment has been made
on account of the change in the census date from June 1 in 1900
to April 15 in 1910 and to January 1 in 1920, and the effect of im-
migration has also been disregarded. The numbers of Negro chil-
dren who reached the age of 10 between April 15 and June 1, 1910,
and between January 1 and April 15, 1920, were undoubtedly
somewhat larger than the numbers of deaths of Negroes 10 years
of age and over during the same periods. On the other hand, the
number of Negroes 10 years of age and over as enumerated at each
census would be reduced by the exclusion of the immigrants who
arrived during the preceding decade. As it would be impossible
to calculate accurately the slight effect of either of these opposing
factors, they have both been disregarded ; but the resultant error is
too shght to have any significance as affecting the comparability of
the percentages for the several decades.

The rates in Table 1 show conclusively that the 1870 returns
were far from complete, and indicate that the 1890 returns were
also incomplete, although not to so great an extent as those of 1870:
but, as will be seen from the revised rates in Table 2, the decrease
due to normal mortality in the Negro population enumerated in
1910, as shown by the census returns for 1920, was in entire har-
mony with the corresponding decreases during preceding decades.

It may be mentioned in passing that the mortality during the
last decade among the Negro population enumerated in 1910, as
indicated by the percentage in Table 1, is no more than might be
expected from an examination of the mortality rates for the colored
population (Negroes, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, and other non-
whites) of the death-registration area, which—excluding the ab-
normal year 1918—ranged from a maximum of 23.4 per 1,000 eol-
ored population in 1911 to a minimum of 18 in 1920. For 1918 the
rate was 26 per 1,000. These rates do not show at all definitely
the total colored mortality, since the death-registration area con-
tains only a part of the colored population, but they do indicate
that the Negro mortality during the decade was fully as great as
that shown by the decennial census figures. 7

Thus the census returns for Negroes 10 years of age and over
in 1920 not only afford no ground whatever for an assumption that
the enumeration was deficient, but in large measure demonstrate

356 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

their own substantial accuracy, and therefore, in the entire absence
of any credible evidence to the contrary, must be accepted. Hence
if the charge that the enumeration of the Negro population as a
whole was deficient is to be sustained it must be accompanied by
proof of an incomplete enumeration of children under 10. No such
proof has been offered. Moreover, as has already been pointed out,
the unprecedented northward migration of Negroes between 1910
and 1920 resulted in a marked decline in the birth rate, and the
census figures show only what might have been expected in this
respect. Furthermore, it would be idle to claim that the census
takers, while successful in enumerating the parents and older chil-
dren, were guilty of overlooking scores or hundreds of thousands
of the younger children. Such an assumption is unworthy of se-
rious consideration. The most difficult part of the population to
enumerate is made up of the roving or ‘‘floating’’ element, which
consists mainly of unattached adults—or, at any rate, of adults
separated from their families; but the enumeration of children
presents no special difficulties.

In order to forestall further allegations of underenumeration
based on obvious discrepancies in the statistics for certain age
eroups, it may be added that these have been carefully considered
and are found to have no material effect on the accuracy of the
returns for the total number of Negroes aged 10 and over or the
total number at all ages. The number of Negro men reported as
between the ages of 20 and 35 was probably too small, but the num-
ber reported as between the ages of 45 and 55 was probably too
large. The obvious explanation of this condition is that there was
a general overstatement of the ages of Negro men whose true ages
were between 20 and 50, but the total number of men under 55, as
enumerated in 1920, is not unduly small. The Negro population
of both sexes in the age group 20 to 54 formed 47.3 per cent. of the
total Negro population of all ages in 1920, as against 44.6 per cent.
in 1910 and 41.8 per cent. in 1900. It is clear, therefore, that there
was no serious underenumeration of young or middle-aged Negro
men, but merely an overstatement of their ages.

Another test of the accuracy of the 1920 returns is found by
comparing the sex distribution of the Negro population as shown
by the last three censuses. The males outnumber the females
among the Negro population of every northern and western state
except New York and New Jersey; and the roving or floating ele-
ment, which is by far the most difficult to enumerate, is made up
mainly of males. If, therefore, there had been any considerable
number of omissions in enumerating this element in 1920, the result
would have been a decrease in the indicated ratio of males to fe-
males as compared with 1910 and 1900. On the contrary, however,

THE NEGRO ENUMERATION OF 1920 357

the returns show increases in this respect both for the total Negro
population and for the Negro population 10 years of age and over,
as will be seen from the following statement:

EXCESS oF FEMALES OVER MALES AND SEX Ratio In NueGRO POPULATION:
1920, 1910 anv 1900

Excess of females over
males Males to 100 females
AGE LIMIT ee ee ee ee
1920 1910 1900 1920 1910 1900
LAU APA eS aa 44,259 | 56,001 | 60,900 99.2 98.9 98.6
Ten years and over....| 34,301 | 43,150 | 53,784 99.2 98.8 98.3

These figures alone supply fairly conclusive evidence that there
were no wholesale omissions in enumerating the migrant Negroes
in the North and West.

Dr. Miller’s assertion that ‘‘The internal evidence of error is
overwhelming”’’ (page 170) may therefore be reversed in meaning ;
for the internal evidence, when considered in all its phases, cer-
tainly sustains the substantial accuracy of the enumeration. Never-
theless, in order to make assurance doubly sure, the results of the
enumeration in every county in the southern states in 1920 were
scrutinized in comparison with the figures for 1910 and 1900, and
a careful examination of the original returns was made for the few
counties which showed decreases that appeared suspiciously large
as against the increases or decreases during the preceding decade;
but in no ease was anything found to indicate that the enumerators
had neglected to canvass the Negro population generally, or any
considerable part of it.

Dr. Miller asserts that—

se... An acknowledged error of a half million [referring to the census

of 1870], it would seem, would put this bureau on the lookout for similar
errors in the future.’’ (Page 170.)

And again:

‘*. ... As this bureau has admittedly committed grave errors in enum-
eration of the negro population in two preceding censuses, it is but reasonable
that the obvious discrepancy can be most reasonably accounted for by an
error in the present count.’’ (Page 172.)

The present Bureau of the Census is in no way responsible for
the errors of 1870 and 1890. The Census Office has been in eon-
tinuous existence since July 1, 1899, and has been existence as a
permanent office, under substantially its present organization, since
July 1, 1902. Not one person connected with the census of 1870
is now in.the service of the Bureau, and only a very few of the
officials and employees of 1890 are in the present office.

Dr. Miller points out that the World War greatly upset the
mobile Negro population, and continues:

358 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

««.... There was a mad rush of negroes from the South to fill the

vacuum in the labor market caused by unsettled conditions. Thousands of
negro homes were broken up and their members seattered without definite resi-
dential identity.”’ (Page 172.)

He is thus fully aware of the Negro exodus from the South, but
is willing to consider it only in connection with the difficulties in
the way of enumerating the migrant Negroes in their northern
abodes, disregarding entirely the pronounced decrease in the Negro
birth rate which resulted from this unusual migratory movement.
He continues :

*“TIn the cities especially, it seems probable that the count was greatly
underestimated. The negro migrants lived for the most part in improvised
lodgings and boarding houses whose proprietors had little knowledge and less
interest in the identity of the boarders. The census official, visiting such
boarding houses with a large number of negro boarders would, in all prob-
ability, receive an inaccurate underestimate by the ignorant and uncaring
proprietors.’’ (Page 172.)

The proprietors of lodging houses were required to do far more
than make an estimate of the number of their lodgers. They were
required to give the name and as many as possible of about 15 items
of information in regard to each lodger whom the enumerator was
unable to interview personally. Moreover, it would be an exceed-
ingly unbusinesslike lodging-house keeper who would not at least
know how many lodgers he had.

Dr. Miller quotes from an editorial in the Oklahoma City Dis-
patch, in which it was asserted that 33 Negroes had been overlooked
in one block. During the enumeration many similar charges were
made by newspapers, chambers of commerce, and other organiza-
tions, and some of them were couched in violent and abusive lan-
guage. These charges were duly investigated and in most cases
were found to rest upon very slight foundation or no foundation
at all. A newspaper in a certain city having a population of ap-
proximately 15,000 asserted that the city had been underenu-
merated by about 10 per cent. In reply the Bureau offered to re-
canvass the entire city for the purpose of verifying or correcting
the original enumeration if the editor could prove that in some
part of the city, to be selected by himself, the enumeration had
been deficient to the extent of 2 per cent. The editor then brought
the matter to the attention of the local commercial elub, which, after
investigation, expressed in writing its satisfaction with the enu-
meration and its belief that the work had been properly performed.

In another city, whose population was approximately 23,000,
complaints were made that the enumeration was ‘‘so absurd that
it amounts to nothing short of an insult,’’ that it was ‘‘absolutely
ridiculous,’’ and that the alleged errors were due to ‘‘gross incom-
peteney of enumerators.’’ The Bureau requested the complain-

THE NEGRO ENUMERATION OF 1920 359

ants to supply proof in the form of names and addresses of per-
sons omitted. They organized a canvass of a part of the city, se-
cured 1,239 names of persons purporting to have been bona fide
residents and to have been missed by the enumerators, and sent
these names to the Bureau; but from this number it was possible,
through careful and painstaking investigation, to sift out only 91
names of persons who were actually entitled to enumeration and
had been missed.

From these examples it is obvious that little credence is to be
placed in a mere newspaper statement that the enumeration was
incomplete. It is easy to assert emphatically that a city or town
has a far greater population than the census returns show, and
there is little difficulty in producing persons who will declare them-
selves to have been missed by the enumerators. But when a thor-
ough investigation is made it is found in the great majority of cases
either that the persons were enumerated without knowing it, the in-
formation regarding them having been supplied by others, or that
they were not entitled to enumeration as bona fide residents of the
eity or town in question.

One instance of miscalculation on Dr. Miller’s part is worthy
of special mention, not because it has any direct bearing on his
claim of underenumeration of the Negro population, but because
it illustrates forcibly the lack of care and occasional disregard of
mathematics displayed in the preparation of his article:

‘«Even the apparent rapid increase in the white death rate awaits fuller
explanation before the figures can be relied upon with assurance. It is curious
to note that the birth rate among the whites in South Carolina fell from 32.3
in 1900 to 27.1 in 1919, the death rate rising but slighly from 10.4 to 10.6
during the same interval. And yet the white population of that state increased
from 557,807 in 1900 to 818,538 in 1920. There was a vigesimal increment of
250,731 with little or no reinforcement from immigration. This unexplained
increment in the white population seems also to discredit the reliability of the
recorded mortality statistics within the states so recently added to the regis-
tration area.’’ (Page 174.)

There has been no rapid increase in the white death rate. For
the death-registration area as a whole (which has been increasing
in extent from time to time) the death rate for the white popula-
tion decreased from 17.1 per 1,000 in 1900 to 12.6 in 1920, and
during the entire period there was no pronounced increase from
one year to another, except in the case of the rate for 1918, 17.4
per 1,000, which, because of the influenza epidemic, was consider-
ably higher than that for the preceding year, 13.7.

The increase in the white population of South Carolina is in no
way inconsistent with the birth and death rates cited by Dr. Miller.
In fact, although the death rate for 1900 is probably open to ques-
tion (the state was not then in the death-registration area), it hap-

360 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

pens that the figures harmonize very closely indeed. The rate of
natural increase due to excess of births over deaths in 1900, accord-
ing to the figures, would be 21.9 per 1,000 white population, and
the corresponding rate for 1919 would be 16.5. Assuming that the
annual rate of natural increase in the white population decreased
from 21.9 per 1,000 in 1900 to 16.5 in 1919, the decrease in the rate
of increase being uniform throughout the period, the vicennial in-
crease would be approximately 257,000, or only about 4,000 less
than the increase of 260,731 shown by the census figures (not 250,-
731, as stated by Dr. Miller).

To summarize:

Dr. Miller’s claims are based mainly on the fact that the in-
crease shown by the Negro population during the last decade was
abnormally small. He assumes that the true increase must have
been a normal one, despite the fact that the conditions during the
decade were abnormal.

The census figures themselves show that the number of Negroes
10 years of age and over enumerated in 1920 bears an entirely nor-
mal relation to the total number of Negroes enumerated in 1910.
Furthermore, the mortality during the decade among the Negroes
enumerated in 1910, as shown by the census returns, is seareely as
great as that indicated by the mortality statistics for the colored
population of the death-registration area.

The returns show that the number of Negro children under 10
years of age, and especially the number under 5 years of age, as
enumerated in 1920 were abnormally small. This condition was a
natural result of the unprecedented Negro migration from the
South to the North and West during the decade. Moreover, since
the census takers were obviously successful in enumerating all or
substantially all the adults and older children, there is no possi-
bility that they overlooked a very large number of children
under 10.

The ratio of males to females in the total Negro population and
in the Negro population 10 years of age and over in 1920 was
higher than in 1910 or 1900, the increase from census to census
being substantially uniform. Thus there could have been no whole-
sale omissions in enumerating the migrant Negroes in.the North
or West, among whom the males far outnumber the females.

For the foregoing reasons the writer, after a thorough study
not only of the census returns but of such available collateral data
as have any bearing on the matter, is of the opinion that the enu-
meration of Negroes was probably as nearly complete in 1920 as
in 1910 or 1900, and finds no ground whatever for attacking the
1920 census as inaccurate beyond the small margin of error which
is inherent in any great statistical undertaking.

AERONAUTIC ACCIDENTS OF TWO YEARS COHPARED 361

AERONAUTIC ACCIDENTS OF TWO YEARS
COMPARED

By Dr. FORD A. CARPENTER
MANAGER DEPARTMENT OF METEOROLOGY AND AERONAUTICS,
LOS ANGELES CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

N September 16, 1919, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce
created a department of meteorology and aeronauties and
this newest creation in any commercial organization took for its
motto “*To make the Soil productive and the Air safe.’’ The man-
ager being both a meteorologist and an aeronaut has been able to
apply the principles of weather science directly to problems of
agriculture and aeronautics. The first is being accomplished
through climatic surveys of agricultural districts, and the second
by making all sources of meteorology available to air pilots. Real-
izing the necessity of accurate data on which to base the relation
ot weather to aeronautie accidents, statistics as to flying activities
have been collected day by day from the press dispatches during
the past two years. While the period is admittedly very short, it is
believed that sufficient data have been collected to show the rela-
tive importance of weather elements in aerial navigation, the pro-
portionate value of the other factors, and the comparison of these
compilations one year with the other.

As has been well said: ‘‘An airplane accident is hardly ever
due to a single cause. Usually several factors are involved * * *
An error in judgment by the pilot is perhaps the most common
cause of airplane accidents.’’* Bearing this fundamental in mind
we will consider first the statistics of the year 1920-21.

Figures as to airmileage are not available, neither is informa-
tion as to the airworthiness of the various kinds of aireraft, or the
airmanship of the pilots: such phases of the subject, will, of neces-
sity, be neglected in this study.

During the twelve months ending September 15, 1921, there
were reported from various parts of the United States 76 aireraft
accidents in which 137 deaths occurred. This was more than twice
as many as occurred during the previous year. Fifty-eight per
cent. of the fatalities occurred among government airmen, 31 per

1 Airplanes and Safety, The Travelers Ins. Co., Hartford, Conn., 1921.

362 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

cent. in commercial flying, and 11 per cent. among spectators in
ground accidents.

The classification of deaths among officers and others connected
with the government shows the following distribution :

HAST TVY pee sae ers eee ee ee aE i ee 59 per cent.
DTD ia ls aes Te SES eae Sens aeeenin-28 19 per cent.
Acer erin eee eas Cea ato Lh ee eer veente
Worest), Patwol sn os ek gs, vi OE eeIEb:

The kind of aireraft in which fatalities oceurred are classified
thus:

BENG UOT GCM OL aN 2 See manne eee embers © engl! A) 83 per cent.
eee et icp ae ae Reeals LR ie SNe nee aan peeeae epee gS niece ns 12 per cent.
Ballon ee eee 82 Soccer hee ier cheer eee 4 per cent.
NE RUSE rst ie ek Pi An en ieee Rea eerie nan R Ramee neon er 2 Er yTss <a Ory rh

Comparing the causes of all aeronautie fatalities one year with
another we have this table:

1920 1921
NANO ETOUD Loses === e225. 38 per cent. 36 per cent.
GMb (etc Set. 24 per cent. 19 per cent.
Weather conditions................. 11 per cent. 16 per cent.
Wotliigy sy (eee ed 9 per cent. 12 per cent.
Structural defects................. 0 per cent. > 2 per cent.
Unknowa 2 .....--.:.-.- 18 per, cent. 15 per cent.

Prepared by the Dept. of Meteorology and Aeronautics of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.

COMPARISON OF FATALITIES IN AVIATION ACCIDENTS
FOR THE YEARS ENDING SEPT.15, 1920 AND 1921

1920-55 FATALITIES 1921-137 FRTALITIES

UNKNOWN

FLYING FATALITIES OF 1920 AND 1921 COMPARED

The segments of the circles show the percentage of fatalities in all kinds
of aviation accidents from five known and one group of unknown causes. It
is instructive to note that while stunting as a death-producing feature has
decreased from 24 per cent. to 19 per cent., engine trouble still remains the
prime cause. The weather conditions of 1920-21 were no more unpropitous
than those of 1919-20 so that the increase from this cause from 11 per cent.
to 16 per cent. may be laid to the ignorance or disregard of weather indica-
tions.

AERONAUTIC ACCIDENTS OF TWO YEARS COMPARED 363

As will be observed by perusing the accompanying diagrams
the proportion of accidents resulting from the principal causes
remains unchanged. Notwithstanding the advances made in motor
construction during the past year fatalities arising from faulty
engines was decreased only 2 per cent. Stunting accidents dropped
off 5 per cent., probably because of the dulling of the public appe-
tite for such acrobatics. Weather conditions are shown to be an
increasing cause of accidents doubtless due to the pilots’ insuffi-
cient meteorological knowledge. There were an increasing num-
ber of collisions in midair and with spectators. Structural defects,
as such, first appeared last year as the cause of 2 per cent. of the
fatalities.

Transportation over the sea, on the land and through the air
will never be rendered absolutely safe for we have to deal with
human fallibility and the changing elements. It is only needful
to call attention to the fact that notwithstanding long familiarity
with the water, marine accidents show little diminution in pro-
portion to the passenger-mile. With railroads such is not the ease
for vigilence and scientific control have reduced fatalities most
markedly during the past decade. However, that next newest
method of transportation, the automobile, does not show a decrease
in the number of people killed by it, but rather an increase. As
to aerial locomotion, a study of accidents indicates five ways of
making it safe and dependable:

1. Improve the motor in dependability; devise a new motive power if

necessary.
2. Absolutely eliminate stunting by penal statute except as a military

measure.

3. Educate the pilots in meteorology; make every airman a meteorologist
ag every mariner is weatherwise.

4. Increase vigilance in the inspection of aircraft.

5. Strict supervision of flying fields and the education of the publie in
their attitude towards aerial navigation.

Public confidence in practical aeronautics will come with in-
creased safety: no other element is so vital. That the air will be
made safe for general transportation is assured for the need is im-
perative. Time is the only inelastic thing given to man and
everyday flight, outdistaneing the locomotive or the automobile,
is the only way in which the busy man may increase his day’s work
by annihilating time.

364 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE
By DONALD A. LAIRD

THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

VER nine tenths of us are now confirmed movie goers. The
remaining one tenth will without doubt soon be enthusiastic
converts to the silver screen, while those few who do not attend or
are not regular in their movie habits either do not know what they
are missing or else it is physically impossible for them to attend.

Among the millions who are weekly movie goers there are at the
most only a few hundred who understand why the pictures seem
to move. Every one knows that countless thousands of pictures are
flashed on the screen in rapid succession and in such wise as to pro-
duce the effect of motion. This is about the limit of common knowl-
edge regarding why the movies move. But after you have read and
understood and remembered this account of the why of the movies
you may count yourself among the few hundred who understand
how the effect of motion is produced.

It is easy to take things for granted without striving for an
understanding of them. This is the great American characteristic.
We are too easily content with a half truth or with a superficial
explanation.

As adults we seem largely to have lost the thoroughgoing in-
quisitiveness which characterizes certain periods of childhood. Then
we asked what, why, where, when, how, and ended up with why is
it that way. Now as adults only a single, cursory question is asked
and, lest we betray ignorance or slowness to comprehend, we let an
““Oh, yes! That is so’’ take the place of the series of follow-up ques-
tions which should be put to clarify and explain things.

The best intellectual tonic we can experience as adults is a re-
version, as it were, to this inquisitiveness of our childhood which
foreed us to stick to a problem until it was satisfactorily and
genuinely solved or understood.

When one really once understands some of the applications of
science in providing the comforts and recreations for his daily life,
one comes into a realization of the wonderful progress of science
with a clearness and a force which can be obtained in no other way.
And at the same time one has his appreciations of the newer con-
veniences and luxuries vastly deepened.

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 365

So pause from time to time as you read this article and reflect
upon the marvelous complexity and achievement of the daily movie.
And, by the same token, make the attempt to spread this curiosity
and appreciation out into the numerous phases of applied science
which touch upon your life from the electric grill in the morning to
the violet ray bath at night.

The story of the development of the motion picture industry is
a fascinating bit of history in financial organization and interna-
tional trade competition. Why the movies move is as fascinating a
morsel from the recent history of appled science and the progress
of mechanics.

The present excellence of clearness, freedom from flicker, and
the illusion of motion in the movie are due to the ingenious applica-
tion and capitalization of certain facts primarily from the field of
psychology. It will be necessary to review these interesting dis-
coveries in order to establish a basis for an understanding of why
these pictures, which are really intermittent, motionless and flat,
nevertheless appear to be continuous in motion, and to possess depth,

There are three questions for us to answer regarding the mo-
tion picture. First: Why is it that the pictures seem continuous
when as a matter of fact the screen is in almost total darkness six-
teen times a second and in partial darkness sixteen or more addi-
tional times each second? Then the second question is: Why do
we get the impression of motion from these pictures which in real-
ity are absolutely motionless? And, third: Why do the pictures
have the appearance of depth when in reality they extend only to
the right and left, and up and down and do not possess any ob-
jective third dimension or depth?

It is to the eye that the motion picture makes its first appeal.
And since it is through vision that the apparent motion is per-
ceived it will be necessary for us to take up first of all some phases
of the structure and function of the eye as a basis for our under-
standing of the movies.

I

The human eye is a miniature camera, capable of a large va-
riety adjustments. The eye is wonderfully responsive, and auto-
matically so, to the slightest change in light, color, or position.
But it is not without its defects and shortcomings even in so-called
normal eyes. It is by the capitalization of some of these peculiari-
ties, which almost amount to defects, that the movies are made
possible.

Just behind the pupil of the eye is a small crystalline lens that
automatically adjusts itself to different distances and conditions

366 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of vision. The eye thus differs from all other cameras in being
self-focusing.

No light ean enter the human eye except through the lens, since
the remainder of the eye forms a lhght-proof box. The rays of
light which pass through this lens into the eye are focused upon
the inner surface of the eyeball. This is covered with a layer of
highly specialized nervous substance which is acted upon by
changes caused by the light. This specialized layer is called the
retina and corresponds to the sensitive film or plate in the ordinary
camera.

In the camera the momentary exposure of light causes a chem-
ical change on the sensitized surface of the film. But before the
picture can be brought into view further chemical changes must
be effected by the photographer in the processes of development
and fixation.

Not so with this marvelous human camera. Although vision
is essentially momentary in character, due to the continual move-
ment of the eye itself, exposure follows exposure and chemical
change follows upon chemical change. There is not time to eall
in the photographer to develop and fix the pictures after each
exposure. Indeed, there is no need.

Nature has provided the human camera with a chemical sub-
stance sensitive to light which automatically renews itself. This
material is called rhodopsin, or visual purple, from its appearance
in freshly dissected eyes. This visual purple permeates the entire
retinal structure and is probably the keystone to vision.

The development and fixation in the human camera takes place
mainly outside the eye. This occurs principally in the brain, to
which the eyes are connected by a direct nervous pathway. The
retina of the eye is the outpost of the brain, but the nervous mate-
rial in the retina is not affected directly by the rays of light
focused upon it by the erystalline lens.

There is an interesting bit of experimental evidence which
demonstrates this beyond doubt. Retinas which have been washed
free from all chemicals which might permeate the network of nerv-
ous fibers have been used for experimentation. It has been found
that in order to stimulate this purely nervous structure of the eye _
directly the light must be so strong as practically to destroy these
nervous elements. And still it is a matter for common observation
that we can see, that is, our retinas are stimulated by lights of
weak intensity.

The only explanation is the one already suggested. The light
acts first upon some photo-chemical substance which bathes the
retina, and the changed chemical composition which the light waves
bring about stimulates the nervous parts of the retina.

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 367

Just what this substance is remains an open question. There
is some evidence to indicate that it is not the visual purple. For
example, Kiihne found that through continued exposure to light
the visual purple in a frog’s eye was completely bleached. Still
the frog reacted to light and changes in light in a practically nor-
mal manner after this thorough bleaching had taken place.

The visual purple is probably the chemical medium for the
adaptation of the eye to light or dark illumination. In passing
from the open air into the darkened motion picture theater it takes
some time for one’s eyes to ‘‘get used to the dark.’’ This is tech-
nically known as adaptation, and its chemical basis in the eye is
the visual purple. This same substance may have a prominent part
in the general vision, or another still undiscovered chemical sub-
stanee may be the basis for vision.

At any rate, vision is primarily photo-chemical. Without the
intervention of some photo-chemical material the energy which we
eall light has no ordinary effect upon the eye.

The light which is focused upon the retina by the lens alters
the arrangement of the molecules in the photo-chemical substance.
This changed chemical condition stimulates the nervous endings in
the retina and these carry their impulses to the brain where they
are developed (perceived) and fixed (remembered).

This photo-chemical structure in the retina of the eye is not only
the keystone in ordinary vision; it is through some of its properties
that the motion picture is made possible. We will now turn our
attention to those properties of this substance upon which the
motion picture depends.

Every material mechanism exhibits a property which physi-
cists term imertia. By virtue of this property matter tends to
remain in a state of uniform inactivity or uniform motion unless
acted upon by some external force. One finds many illustrations
of this in every-day life. Let us take an example from automo-
biling. If it were not for the inital inertia to be overcome there
would be no need for a shift of gears from low through interme-
diate into high in order to get the machine under way. The initial
sluggishness or inertia of the machine has to be overcome before
the automobile can be propelled at its usual speed. And when
onee under way it will continue to move when the power is shut
off ; it is necessary to apply the brakes in order to bring the ma-
chine to a halt. The effects of inertia are met with both in start-
ing and stopping an automobile.

But what has this matter of inertia to do with motion pictures?
A great deal, indeed. An example or two will suffice to demon-
strate the inertia which is present in the eye.

368 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

It is only to be expected that we find inertia in the organ of
vision since we have found the eye to be mecano-chemical in opera-
tion. Inertia is found in the eye as in any other material mech-
anism.

Inital inertia—the inertia to be overcome in starting—mani-
fests itself in the retina in what is known as the latent time. A
few hundredths of a second elapse between the moment a beam
of light falls upon the retina and the beginning of the resulting
nervous impulse in the retina. This time is consumed in overcom-
ing the molecular inertia of the photo-chemical stimulating me-
dium.

In the case of the automobile the inital inertia can be over-
come quickest by the highest powered car. In the ease of the
retinal lag—the inital inertia—the latent period also decreases
with an increase in the intensity of the lght.

This initial lag in the retina is difficult to demonstrate except
with the aid of intricate laboratory apparatus. The retinal per-
sistence, or what corresponds to the inertia of stopping in the
automobile, however, is easily demonstrated. In a recent issue
of The Journal of Experimental Psychology I described a new
apparatus for the study of visual after-images. A rough and
ready demonstration apparatus along the same lines ean easily
be improvised.

Stand in a dark room with the eyes about two feet from a
round, gas-filled, clear glass electric bulb. Remain in the dark for
about five minutes so the visual purple of the eye may become
adapted to the dark. Then switch the light on for just an in-
stant, watching the bright yellow filament closely.

What is seen after the light is switched off? Although all
stimulation is removed an identical image of the red-hot filament
remains for a considerable length of time and is seen as if it were
projected out in space in front of the eyes. Move your eyes and
you will find this image follows the movements of the eye, showing
that it is not imaginary but really in the retina. This phenomenon
is due to the inertia and is termed retinal persistence.

This retinal persistence is always present and the experimental
procedure simply accentuated it in a manner to make it readily
observable. All ordinary visual images persist for about three
thousandths of a second at the full intensity of the original stim-
ulus, even after it has ceased to act upon the eye. Intense stimu-
jation, such as the gas-filled bulb and the movie screen give, or
long continued stimulation, causes the terminal inertia to remain
for a much longer time.

This identical image which remained after the stimulus was
withdrawn is known as the positive after-image. After this posi-

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 369

tive after-image fades away it is followed by another which is the
exact reverse in coloring and hence ealled the negative after-image.

If you will try the light bulb experiment again you will ob-
serve, after the positive after-image has disappeared, a line iden-
tical in form and position with the red hot filament, but opposite
in coloration. This is the negative after-image. Under these con-
ditions it is usually so dark as to be easily seen even in the already
dark field of the eye. Usually this dark image is seen fringed
with a narrow light greenish-yellow band. When colors are used
to cause these negative after-images, they always have the com-
plementary coloration. _ or example, the negative after-image of.
a blue square of paper is yellow, the negative after-image of a
green paper is red.

Negative after-images have little to do with the movies except
in colored projection. They are simply mentioned here that some
adequate comprehension may be given of the great complexity of
the retinal inertia as it is manifest in visual persistence. It is
also largely through a study of these after-images that the nature
of the photo-chemical properties of the eye was first brought under
observation.

We are now near an answer to the first problem which we
Set up regarding the movies.

As almost universally projected at present, sixteen separate
pictures are flashed on to the screen within one second. In the
earlier machines, as in Edison’s kinetoseope, the film was passed

pin steadily. But with the bright

illumination and large pictures

now in use the picture has to be
still while on the sereen, Other-
wise nothing but one great, big,
rectangular blurr would be seen.

In order to accomplish this
still projection of the individual
pictures to produce the motion
cam band picture each picture jis jerked

Figure 1. Maltese Cross Movement for befor :
jerking the pictures before the lens one is) e the lens rae at a time. A
at a time. The pin wheel revolves Maltese Cross movement, such
steadily, the cam band holding the . t ;
Maltese cross firmly in position until 2S ny used for the escapement in
the pin enters the slot; on the oe Swiss watches, jerks the film
is turned go degrees. he axle that : : .
carries the cross also carries a sprocket down oe by picture in the
which meshes with the danse the modern projector. That the film
film and jerks it down picture by pic- < d

ture as the pin pulls the cross around May be held rock Steady aft-
one-quarter of a turn. er the intermittent ‘Maltese
Cross’’ movement has pulled it down it is passed through a ten-

sion gate which holds the film tightly at all times.

VOL. XIV.+-24.

370 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The clearness, freedom from flicker and illusion of motion are
all furthered by the addition of the shutter. This revolves in the
path of light of the projector and is timed so that the large blade
of the shutter completely cuts off the light while the intermittent
movement is pulling down the next picture. The film is thus not
seen while in movement but only after it has come to rest.

This shutter cuts the hght
completely off from the screen
while each picture is being
jerked into place. Sixteen times
in each second the screen is in
complete darkness. In addition
to this there is a ‘‘flicker’’ blade
or two in the shutter which
passes in front of the picture
and partially shuts off the light
while it is being projected on to
the screen. The purpose of this
Figure 2. Shutter which revolves in ““flicker’” blade will be men-

front of the lens, interrupting the path tioned and explained directly.

of light. The large blade cuts off the ie :
light while the film is being jerked 12 View of the findings of

down; the smaller blades are the our brief survey of the proper-
peo BENG ties of the eye and especially the
manifestations of the retinal inertia it will now be possible for an
adequate explanation to be given for the apparent continuity of
the movie which is actually intermittent.

Retinal persistence is the key. Although the light thrown on
the screen is interrupted thirty-two or more times each second
a positive after-image of each picture remains until the next pic-
ture is projected in full intensity on the sereen. The actual period
of darkness on the retina is bridged over by the retinal persistence.
This is what gives apparent continuity to the motion picture.

The shutter is a significant factor in giving the pictures clear-
ness by shutting off the movement of the pictures as they are
jerked into place. The absence of flicker, however, is also largely
due to two other factors, namely, the intensity of illumination
used and the ‘‘flicker’’ blade of the shutter.

The duration of the retinal lag and persistence varies accord-
ing to the intensity of the stimulus, which, in this ease, is the
brightness of the light. As the intensity of the illumination in-
creases, the period of lag decreases, while the period of persist-
ence increases. Thus with the strong illumination which the
modern electric are furnishes, the appearance of continuity is
furthered and the intervals of actual darkness are covered by
brighter positive after-images than would otherwise be possible.

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 371

If the same films and projection apparatus that are now used
to project the motion picture were combined with the old acety-
lene light source there would be a reappearance of the flicker due
to the lengthened lag and shortened persistence. It is therefore
apparent that the bright illumination not only gives clearness and
brightness, but also aids in the steadiness, continuity and the elimi-
nation of the flicker.

Now to take up the part of the ‘‘flicker”’ blade. Upon first
thought it would seem disastrous to introduce any more flicker
than absolutely necessary in order to cover each jerk of the film.
Obviously such is not the case. The reason for this will be made
clear by reference to some laboratory experiments.

Figure 3. When a disc composed of two sectors such as is shown at the left
is rotated with sufficient speed the colors fuse and produce an intermediate
grey such as diagrammed. Before the proper speed of rotation is reached
flicker is present rather than fusion.

When a dise composed of two equal black and white sectors
is rotated by an electrie motor whose speed is under control three
series of phenomena are observed as the speed is increased. With
only a few revolutions each second it is still possible for the two
Sectors to be clearly seen. As the speed is gradually increased,
however, there seems to be a slight admixture of color with the
black and white sectors which now appear to be pulsating slightly.
These colors are known as Fechner’s colors, after the pioneer in
psychological investigation who first observed them. They are due
to peculiarities in the photo-chemical materials in the retina.

The second phenomenon oecurs when the speed of rotation is
still further increased. This is known as flicker. The even, pul-
sating, rhythmical alternation of the black and white observed
with the slower speed is replaced by an unsteady, wavering
flicker which produces a great strain on the eyes. This experi-
mental flicker is similar to the flicker which accompanied the
earlier attempts to project motion pictures.

Inereasing the speed of rotation still more causes this flicker
to become more and more steady until at last a certain point is
reached at which fusion is produced. When this is reached, the
unsteady, fluctuating flicker is displaced by a blend of black and
white which appears as an even, smooth, grey. In contrast to the

372 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

strain of the flicker, this fusion of the two colors is pleasing to
look upon and resting to the eyes.

Stated in terms of the retinal inertia, this fusion results when
the stimuli impinge upon the retina with such rapidity that the
initial lag of the one blends or fuses with the residual persistence
of the other.

Without the ‘‘flicker’’ blade on the shutter of motion-picture
projector the intervals of light and darkness are so far separated
that only the flicker phenomenon is produced. If the speed of the
projector were increased so as to overcome this flicker it would
result in each picture being shown for so short an interval that there
would scarcely be time for each one to overcome the inital lag of
the retina. With the addition of this ‘‘flicker’’ blade, however,
the number of interruptions is doubled without increasing the
speed and thus fusion is made to replace flicker.

It will be recalled that in the experiment just described the
resulting fusion was neither white nor black but an intermediate
grey. This lessening of intensity by the interruptions follows a
definite course which is predictable by Talbot’s law.

In modern motion picture production the overcoming of the
flicker has also resulted in lessening to a considerable extent the
apparent intensity of illumination in the projected pictures. But
through the aid of the intense electric are and the mirror screens
the lighting used is so high powered that the resulting fusion is
still bright and clear.

8

The illusion of motion in the photo-play can not be explained
in the positive way in which we accounted for the appearance of
continuity and the clearness and freedom from flicker. There is
still some controversy among psychologists regarding the percep-
tion of visual motion in ordinary life. The problem is gradually
becoming settled, but in fairness we must review the chief accounts
which are current. Then we can not only decide which one best
explains the visual perception of motion in the motion picture but
we ean also see what the motion picture can contribute in a con-
structive way to these theories.

There are several of these classical theories which must be
mentioned in this connection. Eye movements have been used
for a long time to account for the perception of motion by the eye.
This theory holds that the eye follows moving objects and that we
get the impression of motion from the strain and tension on the
six muscles that move each eye. There are two major objections,
however, which seem to render this theory untenable in its usual
form.

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 373

In the first place, the more recent experimental work indi-
eates that after all our judgment of the movements of the eye
muscles is very inaccurate. If our knowledge of these move-
ments were used as a basis for an interpretation of motion in the
external world such motions would be grossly misinterpreted to
say the least. A second fatal bit of evidence against the theory
is that in addition to our inaccurate knowledge of the eye move-
ments, the movements themselves do not conform to the external
motions or objects with any degree of accuracy. This is plainly
shown in the illustration of the movements of an eye in following
the outline of a circle.

We must look, then, to the nervous and retinal elements of the
eye rather than to its musculature for an explanation of the per-
ception of visible motion.

The phenomena of retinal streaming has been used by some
psychologists as a partial explanation of the perception of motion
by the eye. This starts from the fact that there is an after-image
of movement. If you look at a moving stream from a bridge and
then turn your attention to the bank of the stream the latter seems
to be moving in a direction opposite to that of the stream. This
is a negative after-image of movement and its explanation has
been attempted by assuming an actual movement on the part of

some of the retinal elements. But we have
no corroborative evidence of this stream-
ing of the retinal elements, in fact, what
we know of the actual structure of the
LN retina tends to contradict this assumption.
It is quite improbable that the perception
Photograph, taken by Of motion is due to an actual and corre-
ae ee ae sponding movement of certain elements in
in following the outline the retina.
Sec le For some time it was also stated by some
psychologists that there is a special sensation of motion. This was
done by the earlier introspective psychologists who used the inner
experience of motion, which could not be analyzed further, as the
basis for their classification of the senses. The other criteria for a
sensation, however, they ignored. They did not stop to analyze the
physical stimulus to determine whether or not it was unique or a
part of other stimuli. They also neglected to search for or indicate
the sense organ which is necessary if there is to be a special sense of
movement. Obviously as a special sensation movement fails to
meet these requirements.

If we analyze movement as a stimulus we find that it resolves
itself into a series of changes in the stimulation of the retina. Are
these changes continuous and steady in ordinary vision or are they

374 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

seen only in certain progressive stages as in the motion-picture
film? In other words, is the stimulation which produces the move-
ment in the motion picture the same or different from that of daily
life? We shall have an answer to this in a moment.

The eye is constantly in motion; it is never at rest for more
than a few hundredths of a second at a time. Ordinarily we are
completely unaware of these constant movements of the eye, but
they are present and have been accurately observed and studied
in detail in the laboratory. In reading a line of print, for ex-
ample, the eye does not progress evenly and smoothly, but makes
five or six irregular jumps.

Partial blindness characterizes the eye during these periods
of their motion. For a time it was thought the eye was com-
pletely blind while in motion. It has been proved now that during
these periods it is not completely anesthetic although it senses
only a vague, indefinite, hazy blurr at most.

Thus in ordinary vision, although the moving object may be
progressing at a uniform rate, the actual retinal stimulation is
jerky due to the incessant movement of the eye. Ordinary vision
is essentially momentary in character and cross-sections motion
in various phases, just as the motion-picture camera photographs
progressive phases of the action. In either instance there is no
difference between the perception of motion. The motion itself is
not seen. What is seen is the change in positions and a blurr
which may be looked upon as the sensory index of the change.

The perception of motion, both actual and pictured, is largely
a matter of apperception. The movement between the positions
actually seen is supplied by the mind from its storehouse of past
experiences. The successive pictures shown or scenes perceived

PAN AL 3 4 5
out of sight they anchored their ships behind a

THIS IS AN ACTUAL RECORD OF THE EYE PAUSES IN READING A LINE OF PRINT BY A
FAIRLY EFFICIENT READER. ALL OUR VISION IS CHARACTERIZED BY THESE MOMENTARY
FIXATIONS OF THE EYE
serve as a framework along which the mind ean fill in the idea of
motion. The apparent motion results not alone from the succes-
sive stimulation In advancing position, but ineludes the synthe-
sizing activity of the higher mental processes. The motion picture

is no exception to real life in this respect.

And neither is the perception of motion by the eye an excep-
tion in the filling-in activities of imagery and expectation. The
same filling-in activity of the mind is at work in reading. Only
a very few of the letters in any line are really clearly seen, the
remainder are supplied by the mind’s integration. It is for this
reason that the inexperienced proof-reader passes over error after

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 375

error; in ordinary perception the eye touches only the high spots,
the mind does the rest to round out and complete the awareness
of objects and activities.

IIl

Emphasized again, we find these inner activities at work in
the perception of depth, or nearness-farness, in the three dimen-
sional objective world and in the flat two dimensional world of
the photo-play.

Our ordinary environment extends not only to the right and
left, and up and down, but some objects are also seen close to us
while others are far away. This nearness-farness is depth or the
third dimension. Just how we perceive depth was one of the first
problems to receive the attention of the early experimental psy-
chologists.

The main criteria which we have to assist us in the perception
of depth take issue from the fact that our vision is normally
binocular. Two eyes make us much more accurate in the percep-
tion of the third dimension than would otherwise be the ease.

Two brief examples will suffice to indicate the réle of the sec-
ond eye. Close one eye and glance around your room. You will
notice a loss of the plastic appearance of the furniture. It all looks
flat and as if it were in one plane. Try walking around with the
same eye closed and find out how inaccurate is your perception
of distance.

With one eye still closed attempt to touch your index fingers
together about a foot in front of your eyes. See! You missed
by from one to three inches, may be more. Try doing the same
task now with both eyes open. You will bring your fingers to-
gether on the first trial.

There are two prominent ways in which the fact that our
vision is normally binocular contributes to our perception of depth.
In the first place there is the matter of convergence. When look-
ing at near objects the muscles on the nasal side of the eyeballs
contract so that both eyes may be directed toward the objects.
With far objects it is the muscles on the temporal side that econ-
tract. There is thus a measure of convergence in terms of muscle
strain.

More important than convergence is the disparity of the retinal
images. Since the eyes are separated by a few inches each one
sees a given object at a slightly different angle from the other.
You can easily demonstrate this by holding a closed book at arms
length in front of you with the back of the book toward you.
Look at it first with one eye and then the other. The difference
between the two views is marked indeed and in each case the
appearance lacks plasticity or depth.

376 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

When the same book is seen in the same position by the same
eyes simultaneously a different appearance is noted. The two
widely disparate views have fused into one which has depth and
relief.

This principle of disparity is used in the ordinary stereoseope.
The two pictures on the card are taken from a slightly different
angle. When viewed through the stereoscope the prismatic lenses
bend the rays of light so that the pictures are seen by each eye as
if they were of a single object in front of them. Since the pictures
have the requisite disparity the resulting appearance is one of a
single object in clear relief.

It is not known how it is that these two images which are
physiologically different still combine to form a perception that
possesses the quality of depth. The important thing, however, is
that such is the fact. And in this we again have an example of
the integrating activities of the mind.

Motion pictures are fiat and lacking in any real quality of
depth or any qualities that will give convergence or disparity.
Then how is it that nevertheless the observer receives the impres-
sion of depth from this representation which is in a single plane?
In answering this we shall be initiated still deeper into the almost
mysterious processes of integration that are accomplished by the
nervous system.

At the outset it is evident that we are certain of our pereeption
of the third dimension in the photoplay. The actors not only walk
from right to left but enter and exit through a door at the rear
just as they would on a real, three dimensional stage. Then we see
the screen troopers gallop away and out of sight into the distant
hills. There is no denying the fact that we receive the impression
of depth; and there is no denying the fact that as an objective
quality depth is lacking in the motion picture.

While the most accurate and predominant factors in the per-
ception of depth are the physiological ones of disparity and con-
vergence, there are still a large number of so-called secondary fac-
tors which assist materially in building up these perceptions. It
is more fitting that these factors be termed psychological rather
than secondary and of late this has come to be the common practice.

What we have long known as perspective is perhaps the most
important psychological factor. Distant objects are smaller than
near objects; the lines in the visual field converge toward a vanish-
ing point. Perspective is significant in normal, binocular percep-
tion of the three dimensional world; it is ultra-significant in the
flat world of the motion picture, and even painting for that matter.
It is largely this factor which gives apparent depth to flat represen-
tations. Artists have long made conscious use of this in their paint-
ings; the Japanese and Chinese still create pictures in which the

WHY THE MOVIES MOVE 377

perspective is omitted. This results in a characteristic flatness and
unreality in appearance.

Again in this perspective we find the integrating activities of
the nervous system prominent. Although distant objects cast a
smaller image on the retina than near objects the former are still
interpreted, not as small people and things, but as of usual size but
more remote.

Distant objects are also partially hidden by those nearer the
observer. Very distant objects are also seen through a haze and are
higher in the field of vision. Shadows are another factor in pro-
ducing the impression of relief. Without these shadows a photo-
eraph would be flat and lack plasticity. Amateur photographers
usually overlook this and their photographs are characteristically
“*flat’’ in appearance.

The motion pictures utilize all these psychological factors to
cive the spectators the impression of depth. In addition they take
advantage of certain common illusions by having the action take
place in the background rather than in the foreground; through
this procedure the impression of depth is increased. Sometimes
the action in the background is provided by the sea or by a breeze
waving the trees. It does not need to be human action to produce
the illusion.

The scenic arrangements of the photo-play are selected not alone
for their artistic features but, as well, for their depth producing
qualities when projected on to the sereen. Although this objective
sereen presentation is flat and without depth, it is possible to take
advantage of these psychological factors and thus produce screen
dramas as full of depth and plasticity as they are of action and
human interest.

Paneled walls in the sereen settings are popular with the di-
rectors since these enhance the perspective of lines; round tables
are discarded in favor of long rectangular ones for the same rea-
son. The rooms used in filming the various scenes are enormously
exaggerated as to depth, not primarily to produce an appearance
of lavishness, but that the factor of depth may be made to stand out
clearer in the projected, flat picture.

What ean the scientist predict as to the future development of
the technique of the photo-play? In the first place, there are hin-
drances to any great future development in the elimination of
flicker due to the rather large individual differences in the retinal
lags. It is necessary for the projection to meet the requirements
of the great majority of the spectators, and there will always be
some who, through physiological idiosynerasies, do not receive the
continuity of impression and clearness at its maximum. It would
not be impossible for those who ean afford the luxury to have their

378 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

eyes tested for the factors involved in motion picture projection and
have a projector built to meet their individual requirements just
the same as glasses are ground to order.

Daylight projection is not impossible but will remain a dream
for many years. Certain features of the flicker phenomena are a
serious handicap in achieving this end. The fusion phenomena
takes place with the slowest speed and with the weakest illumina-
tion when the general illumination is at its weakest. As the gen-
eral illumination is increased it becomes necessary for the speed
of interruption, or the illumination of the screen, or both to be
increased greatly in order to overcome flicker and retain fusion.
Mechanical difficulties at present are not such as to make projec-
tion of motion with a bright illumination of the theatre out of the
question.

Another handicap in the production of fusion is in the facet
that apparent motion appears on the screen. This complicates the
fusion and in eases of jerky or sudden motion tends to produce
flicker of itself. The basis for this is demonstrated in the labora-
tory where simply moving the hand between the eyes and the re-
volving sectors which are fusing immediately brings about an occur-
rence of flicker. One observes this from time to time in the com-
mercial motion picture, especially in the news reviews where foot-
ball action is portrayed. The government war films of marching
soldiers afford a good example of this where fusion takes place
from the trunks of the soldiers up, but where flicker is seen in the
same pictures where the movements of the legs complicate the
projection.

Colored projection will always be hampered not only by the ex-
pense and great mechanical difficulties involved, but also by the fact
that the lag varies with the colors and it is impossible to get the
smoothness that is obtained with black and white. Negative after-
images of the colors which are projected with a light stronger than
is usual in daily life also contribute to the difficulty of successful
colored projection.

The effect of depth will always suffer so long as it is necessary
for the photo-play spectators to view the pictures at distances and
from angles at which they were not photographed. The maximum
effect of depth is obtained when one is at the same position in rela-
tion to the scene at which it was photographed. This is one reason
why extreme side seats are undesirable. And at the same time no
position in the auditorium is perfect in this respect for the various
scenes are photographed from different angles and distances.

The photoplay is rapidly becoming an art unto itself and is
receiving the merited attention of students of art and aesthetics.
Fundamentally, however, it is a triumph of applied science and is
only one of the many examples of the rapid progress which has been
made in this field in the more recent decades.

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 379

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT?
By Professor A. T. POFFENBERGER

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

HEN one examines the literature concerning the subconscious
he meets a mass of contradictions. It is a concept which has
become popular only in recent years; yet it is perhaps three hun-
dred years old, having been first proposed by Leibnitz about the
year 1600. By those who accept it, it is considered one of the most
important discoveries of the age; by those who do not accept it,
it is considered nonsense. In it some find the means of curing most
of the human’s ills, others find the belief in it a symptom of an
ailment itself requiring radical treatment. The very name subcon-
scious seems to be self contradictory: it is a consciousness of which
we are not conscious. The believer speaks of his subconscious as
though it were as familiar a possession as his teeth or his hair, and
yet by its very nature the subconscious can be directly known to
no one—it can only be inferred. The subconscious has become
so popular that one meets the term on every hand, in conversation,
in the newspapers, even in the doctor’s consulting room. It is
quite as familiar a term as ‘‘camouflage,’’ or ‘‘normaley,’’ yet it is
one of the most abstruse of meta-physical or, if you prefer, of
scientific conceptions.

Now the recent popularity of the concept of the subconscious
rests largely upon the fact that it forms the basis for a number of
theories and doctrines which are very interesting to people, such
as psychoanalysis, spiritualism, mental telepathy, those wierd mul-
tiple personalities so well represented by Robert Louis Stevenson
in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the hysterias which are of an
equally mysterious sort. There has seemed to be in the mental
phenomena covered by the above mentioned terms and in others
less striking in character, a real need for some concept which shall
bring them all within the law of cause and effect. Without at this
time attempting to give a definition of the subconscious or even
of consciousness, some of these mental experiences will be reviewed,
beginning with the simplest and most easily verified and passing
to the more complex and less well-established ones. After this sur-
vey of material needing explanation, the subconscious will be de-
seribed as it has been conceived by various authorities. I will then
present an alternative view, according to which the concept of the
subeonscious would be made to appear superfluous.

(1). I-see a play at the theater and for several days following

380 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

I think nothing about it, but on Sunday, when my mind is more
at rest, I live the play experience over again. Where has the ex-
perience been in the meantime? This you will recognize as a sim-
ple illustration of memory, in which an impression is received, lost
from consciousness and later recalled.

(2). Iam reading a book in which I am very much interested.
I follow the intricate thread of the story, and get the fine shades
of meaning, and neglect entirely such mechanical matters as the
letters making up the words, and even some of the words them-
selves, the margins of the pages, the style of the type. And yet my
understanding of what is written depends upon at least some of
these matters, for any changes in them will alter the meaning. How
can they thus register their effect, contribute their share to the
meaning of the whole, and I not see them?

(3). Wordsworth thus expressed a belief common to the nor-
mal man in the following lines:

The eye it cannot choose but see;
We cannot bid the ear be still;

Our bodies feel where’er they be,
Against or with our will.

And yet it is a well-established fact that one does pick and
choose among all the objects which come within the range of his
senses, those which he shall look at, listen to and feel. Without
this picking and choosing life would indeed be a ‘‘ blooming, buzzing
confusion.’’ Still those aspects of our surroundings which we did
not choose to observe, which were neglected in favor of others, are
sometimes recalled. I am very much absorbed, let us say, in read-
ing Well’s ‘‘History of the World’’ and am oblivious to all my
surroundings. I see none of the objects around me, hear no sounds,
feel no pressure of the clothes upon my body. But I suddenly re-
call that the clock has struck eleven. How is it possible for me to
recall this experience, which I did not have?

Or perhaps I am granted an introduction to Charlie Chaplin,
the king of moving-picture comedy, and, after this good fortune,
I am besieged with questions about him. How did he look? Does
he really wear a mustache? And his feet—are they really like
that? What kind of a hat does he wear? I am much confused
to discover that I can answer none of these questions. I fear my
veracity may be questioned—perhaps I did not really meet him.
Now it is said by Morton Prince, who has for many years been
interested in such matters as this, that if I were to allow myself
to be hypnotized, I could in that state answer all these questions
correctly. How is it possible to give forth information while
under hypnosis that I was never conscious of, that so far as I
know, I have never experienced ?

(4). I am listening to the roar of the distant surf, which is

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 381

made up, as every one will readily agree, of millions of tiny waves
breaking upon the shore. The sound produced by any single one
of these tiny waves is quite too faint to be heard. The sum of them
we do hear, however. How can a million unheard stimuli produce
one that is heard? A million zeros added together ought still to
leave zero. The effect of each tiny wave has been described by one
authority as an ‘‘imperceptible psychic occurrence.’’ The mean-
ing implied here is that the experience may be psychic or mental
and yet not be perceptible.

(5). Let us take another case of the same sort. Suppose that you
are asked to decide which is the heavier of two weights, one of them
weighing 100 grams and the other weighing 102 grams. These
two weights, if lifted one after the other by the right hand, will be
indistinguishable to you, that is, they will seem identical in weight.
Suppose then that you are given the second weight of 102 grams
and a third weighing 104 grams. These two weights will also seem
identical to you. But if you now compare the 100 gram weight
with the 104 gram weight, you can tell which is the heavier. You
have then this proposition: No. 1 is identical with No. 2; No. 2
is identical with No. 3. Therefore, No. 1 must be identical with
No. 3. (Two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to
each other.) But it is not, and you have proved it, because you can
correctly distinguish between them. How shall we explain this
contradiction between logic and experience?

(6). The student of mathematics meets a problem that he can
not solve. He works upon it for days and even nights, but to no
avail. Finally, when about to give up, he wakes some morning
with the correct solution in his mind. Or perhaps the correct solu-
tion occurred to him in a dream. The following is an instance
which was reported to me a few days ago: A certain member of
a college faculty has been computing numerous partial correla-
tions, a very tedious statistical operation, and has been very much
interested in seeking a short-cut method of solution. A few nights
ago he dreamed a method which reduces the time of computing
partial correlations to one twentieth of the time required to do the
same thing by the original method. Now how was this problem
solved if the individual did not consciously take part in the solu-
tion? And he will testify that he did not in his waking moments.

(7). The sudden flashes of genius, the inspirations which are
often responsible for great inventions, are much like the case just
described. What is their source? To their owner they seem to be
spontaneous, and he does not recognize them as the product of his
thought.

(8). From the type of case just described, it is only a relatively
short step to those that go by the name of automatic writing. One
sits as if in a trance, or perhaps conversing with an associate, while

382 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

his hand writes answers to questions whispered into his ear, all
unknown to him. Or perhaps as in the case of Patience Worth, a
popular figure a year or two ago, the hand composes poems quite
beyond the comprehension and capacity of the woman herself, and
writes in languages unknown to her. To quote from a description
of her ease in The Psychological Review, ‘‘The meaning of what is
written is, naturally enough, frequently not understood by her.
Neither its form nor its substance is determined by her conscious-
ness. They are apparently the creation of a self whose existence
she is, for the most part, completely unaware of. And this self is
no mere by-product of a more fully developed mind. Patience
Worth is a personality of tremendous creative energy.’’ Where
shall we look for the explanation of these mysterious and startling
occurrences ?

(9). Rivers, the English psychologist, has shown that ques-
tions of a somewhat similar sort arise in connection with the study
of the animal kingdom. The tadpole with all his tadpole habits—
to omit the possibility of tadpole thoughts—becomes a frog with
a need for an entirely different equipment of behavior. What has
become of the tadpole habits in the fully developed frog? What
prevents them from encroaching unvon the frog habits, and playing
havoe with the frog’s well ordered life? Or take the frog itself,
an amphibian. While living under water, where are his land
habits? While on land, where are his water habits? Why do these
habits not interfere with each other? How is this shifting from
one set of habits to another possible without interference ?

Or, to return to the human species, take the statements of Paul
in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter XIII, ‘‘When I
was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought
as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’’

Here is a set of problems quite like those cited for the frog.
Where are the childish things put, so that there shall be no cropping
up of childish speech at inopportune moments to embarrass the
man?

(10). Consider now a rather mysterious case, but one which
is reported in the literature as authentic. A certain man loses his
affection for his wife, and matters go from bad to worse until he
hates the sight of her. About this time he goes blind and remains
so for years. He is permanently cured of his blindness when in-
formed that it is a functional disturbance, the result of his wish
that he might never have to see his wife again. He was barred
by his religious scruples from the more customary remedy for such
difficulties. How could this man have such an unfortunate wish
and not know it, and how could that wish have such a terrible
effect upon his bodily mechanism ?

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 383

(11). There must be included in our list of cases, the so-called
phenomena of mental telepathy which have been investigated by the
societies for psychical research. In such cases there is reported to
be a communication between minds through channels other than
those of the senses. Ideas are said to come directly into the mind
of the recipient. Cases have been reported and investigated in
which such communication is said to have taken place over a space
as great as 5,000 miles. By what means are these mental experi-
ences to be explained? Whether they represented real cases of
telepathy or not makes little difference, explanation is still nee-
essary.

To pass from these cases to those of supposed communication
between the living and the dead is not such a great step if one be-
lieves the former to occur independently of the sensory and motor
mechanisms of the body. What is the solution for all these phe-
nomena of mental telepathy and spiritualism ?

Each of these instances which I have cited, whatever attitude
one may take toward them, demonstrates a real need for explana-
tion. How are these things possible? How shall they be inter-
preted? In order to help us in answering these questions, let us
look to the older and more firmly established sciences to discover
how they handle somewhat similar problems. Take astronomy for
instance. In mapping the behavior of the planets and determining
their course through the heavens, certain aspects of their behavior
could not be accounted for in terms of the influences exerted by the
known neighboring planets. Explanation required that there be
some other influence at work. What then more natural than to
conceive of this influence as being like those already known? There
must be another planet, exerting gravitational force sufficient to
produce the effects noted, and to exert this force the planet must
be of a certain size, distance and position with relation to the other
heavenly bodies. Such a planet was looked for and Neptune, at
first a concept, became a fact.

In physics and chemistry there was need for explanation of
certain physical phenomena. To satisfy this need the molecule was
conceived, in character much like the elements already known.
Later the behavior of the molecule needed explanation and this in
turn led to the concept of the atom. The atom, then, is endowed
with the characteristics necessary to produce those effects for which
explanation is sought.

In physiology much the same procedure has been followed. In
communities where certain types of food are used rather exclu-
sively, certain diseases are prevalent. Thus the users of polished
rice and corn in great quantities are subject to the disease pellagra.
Communities which eat their rice unpolished and live upon mixed

384 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

diets do not have this disease. The disease is then due to lack of
something in the body which is necessary for its normal function-
ing. This particular something, which has never been, so far as
I know, directly experienced, is given the name vitamin. The
vitamin is then endowed with the characteristics necessary to ex-
plain facts which are observed. Many illustrations of concepts
thus formed could be taken from the various sciences. These con-
cepts remain constructions of the mind until man can experience
them with his senses, whereupon they become facts. The planet
Neptune is a fact, the atom and the vitamin remain concepts.

To satisfy the need for explanation of the mental experiences
which I have cited, and which do not seem adequately accounted for
by reference to consciousness alone, what more natural, then, than
to hypothecate another consciousness having the same general
characteristics as the one we know but separate from it—a sub-
consciousness? The particular characteristics of this subconscious-
ness will be those that it needs to have in order to account for the
phenomena that it was conceived to explain, just as the planet
Neptune needed to have certain characteristics to produce the
known effects. When experiences pass out of consciousness, they
enter the sub-consciousness. The sound of each tiny wave that
contributes to the roar of the surf, does not affect our conscious-
ness, therefore its affects our sub-consciousness, and only the sum
total reaches our consciousness. We do not see the margin of the
page, the typographical errors, the spelling of the words in the
book we are reading, but they are registered on the subconscious.
If mathematical problems are not solved in our consciousness, they
must be solved in our subconsciousness. We are not conscious of the
wish to lose our sight—it is a subconscious wish. We do not keep
track of the passage of time while asleep, but the subconscious does.
Our consciousness gets its data by way of the senses, the subcon-
scious communicates with other minds more directly. The an-
swer to one or many of these questions, the need for explanation
has been satisfied by the concept of the subconscious.

Since the subconscious is created to satisfy needs for explana-
tion it is differently conceived by different authorities according
to the needs that they feel. Each of the illustrative cases that I
have cited gives a clue to a certain concept of the subconscious,
which may be found in the literature.

There are those who look upon the subconscious as simply a
repository for memories. What is no longer in conscicusness has
passed into the subeonscious. Along with this there usually goes a
very far reaching assumption, namely, that since everything passes
into the subconscious, no experience is ever actually lost, but re-
mains in the subconscious, and is capable of being recalled if the
proper means be used.

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 385

This concept is expanded still further. Not only are all the
accumulated experiences of the individual’s life time stored here,
but even those of his ancestry immediate and remote. It is said
by those who hold to this view that the proper devices will also
reveal these stored memories. To cite just one case taken from a
book advertised ‘as having received a prize given by the French
Academy of Sciences: A young woman traced her history back
through eleven previous lives, in which she was a great variety of
individuals. In the ninth life, for example, she was a male guard
of the Emperor Probus who ruled in the year 269 A. D. This case
illustrates well the extremes to which assumptions may be carried
when based on a simple but unverifiable concept.

Then again there are those who think of the subconscious as a
device for recording experiences to which we are not attentive—
so-called marginal experiences—as illustrated by the failure to see
the margin of pages, ete. According to this view, Wordsworth is
right and all objects that come within the range of our senses make
their impression either in the conscious or the subconscious. It is
difficult to imagine to what an extent this addition would expand
the content of consciousness. Add to this also the view that the
subconscious can perceive stimuli that are too faint to be perceived
by consciousness, as illustrated by the perception of the sounds
from the minute waves making up the surf, and you have material
for making the subconscious thousands of times as populous as the
conscious. There is very evident here the danger which arises from
an unchecked expansion of a concept.

I will describe a third form of the subconscious in somewhat
more detail, because it is the basis for the whole system of psycho-
analysis with which most persons to-day have at least a reading or
conversational acquaintance. The subconscious is made the re-
pository for memories, imaginings, dreams, wishes and fears which
are out of harmony with the ethical standards and ideals of the
individual. There are certain contents of consciousness which must
be ostracized. Since nothing can be forgotten, these unwelcome
euests are driven out of consciousness, and suppressed into the sub-
consciousness. There is according to this view an open door be-
tween the two chambers of consciousness. Undesirable content may
be removed from consciousness, but it tends to return the way that
it came. There is a constant struggle to prevent the return into
consciousness of what is undesirable. A censor is hypothecated
who or which shall be keeper of the door and which shall admit
through the door into consciousness only those contents which are
desirable. But these evil ideas are not to be so easily outwitted.
They try to disguise themselves by appearing in a modified or sym-
bolic form and thus slip past the censor. Or they wait until night

VOL. XIV.—25.

386 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

when the censor is fast asleep and then slip into consciousness in
the form of dreams. Or, if the censor is not then asleep he is less
alert and eruder symbolism is effective in gaining a passage into
consciousness. Sometimes even during full wakefulness one may
find himself coveting his neighbor’s wife because a malicious idea
has slipped past the censor.

Now the evil contents of the subconscious have the same relation
to the bodily mechanisms as do those of consciousness. Just as
worry may destroy the appetite, fear may paralyze the limbs and
strong expectation sharpen or dull the sensitivities, so the subcon-
scious fears, wishes, ete., may be responsible for dire physical ills.
Witness the case of blindness as the fulfillment of a wish not to
see one’s wife, which was cited earlier. The psychoanalyst can
eure these ills. He must find the cause which is hidden in the
subconscious, and appears in consciousness only in the form of
dreams or cunningly disguised in the form of symbols. The psycho-
analyst solves the symbols, interprets the dreams, discovers the
wish, the fear and the evil thought, shows jt to the patient, and a
basis for the cure is then established. The treatment consists in
a re-education of the patient, in developing in him a saner attitude
toward his life’s problems, a stronger courage to meet his fears,
a sense of personal responsibility for his wishes.

Finally, the subconscious is considered by some persons to be
quite like consciousness in its functions, and to be very closely
related to consciousness, with the same powers of associating, creat-
ing and elaborating the material assimilated through the senses.
Such a subconscious would be like the eco-conscious described by
Morton Prince, and represented by his cases of double personality.
This basic notion of the subconscious is then enlarged to embrace
functioning far transcending that of consciousness, so that the
products of the subconscious activity are of supernormal character.
Thus James in one of his letters written in 1901 says, ‘‘I attach
the mystical or religious consciousness to the possession of an ex-
tended subliminal self, with a thin partition through which mes-
sages make irruption. We are thus made convincingly aware of the
presence of a sphere of life larger and more powerful than our
usual consciousness, with which the latter is nevertheless continu-
ous.’’ A still further extension and elaboration of this form of the
subconscious frees it from all necessary connection with the physi-
eal body and allows it to float free to communicate directly with
other consciousness of like sort, whether the physical body pre-
viously housing it is dead or alive. Such a view is interestingly de-
scribed by F. W. H. Myers in his ‘‘ Human Personality.’’

I have elaborated at length upon the need for explanation of a
mass of experiences and the satisfaction of this need through the

“THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 387

concept of the subconscious. I have pictured this concept as it
appears to its champions. Let us now briefly examine the subcon-
scious in the light of the criteria which science demands that every
concept shall satisfy. These criteria are:

(1). The experiences which the concept is to explain must be
facts of observation.

(2). The concept shall not conflict with known facts.

(3). The concept shall resume the largest range of facts.

(4). The concept shall be the simplest possible to explain the
facts. .

The first of these conditions is peculiarly difficult to satisfy.
When applied to our problem we find the validity of many of the
experiences which I have listed certainly open to question.
Some of them depend upon introspective report. They may be
checked, however, if studied under experimentally controlled con-
ditions. They do not lend themselves readily to such a check, but
where it is possible, the check has often not been employed. Is it,
for example, a fact that nothing is ever entirely forgotten? How
shall we prove it one way or the other, and upon which side rests
the burden of proof?

The application of the second eriterion, that there shall be no
conflict with known facts, offers some difficulty also. The objec-
tion has been raised that the one essential fact about consciousness,
that needs no proof, that is self-evident, is its quality of being
known, its quality of being an individual’s own experience. The
subconscious cannot be directly known, cannot be part of one’s own
experience. It therefore lacks that which makes consciousness what
it is. It is self contradictory. It is a non-conscious consciousness,
a contradiction of terms. To push this criticism further would lead
into the realm of metaphysics. There is too little agreement about
the ultimate nature of consciousness itself to derive much help from
this source in the solution of our problem.

The third and fourth criteria, as to simplicity and range of facts
covered can be more easily investigated. Is there an alternative
concept which will be simpler and cover a wider range of facts, or
are there already generally accepted concepts sufficient to account
for the experiences accounted for by the subconscious? One alter-
native is the view that what is not conscious is physiological, that
nothing need be interposed between consciousness and the fune-
tioning of the nervous mechanisms with which consciousness is cor-
related. Let us apply this concept to a few of our illustrations. The
neural patterns or neurograms, as the traces of activity which are
left in the: nervous system have been called, are according to this
view, sufficient to account for the facts of memory. Memories are
forms of potential consciousness in the sense that when the neural
patterns become active, consciousness results. The view that noth-

388 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ing is ever forgotten or entirely lost would be untenable since these
neural patterns of memory fade out with age just as the habit pat-
terns do or as any impressions made upon organic tissue do.

Those striking conflicts between logic and psychology where
stimuli too weak to arouse consciousness may by summation become
conscious are easily explained in terms of the inertia of the central
nervous system and the well established facts of summation of
stimuli. In the case of a simple nerve reflex with its center in the
spinal cord, a stimulus may be too weak to produce any muscular
reaction at all, but if the same weak stimulation be frequently re-
peated, a full muscular response will follow. So the sound waves
produced by a single tiny ocean wave may not be sufficient to over-
come the inertia of that part of the nervous system concerned with
hearing, but a million of them acting together may quite conceivably
break through this resistance and cause the roar of the surf.

The interrelations among the neural patterns, the changing
tensions within the patterns themselves, the facilitations and inhibi-
tions that one pattern exerts upon another ; these together with the
conscious processes of association correlated with them are sufficient
to account for much that has been attributed to the subconscious,
such as the sudden solution of puzzling problems, the bursts of
genius, awaking at a pre-established time, and the shiftings of habit
systems and memory systems illustrated by the simple case of the
tadpole and the frog. Take for instance, the supposed solution of
a puzzling problem during sleep. In the examination of the prob-
lem from all sorts of angles, many sets of associative connections,
wrong patterns as well as useful ones have been established. There
is interference among these associative patterns—the wrong ways
of dealing with the various stages as well as the right ways are fresh
in the mind, and the nervous patterns of both sorts are ready to act.
Let a night’s sleep intervene, and certain associative connections
weaken, leaving others relatively stronger. An entirely different
set of relations is established among the neural patterns. When
the individual awakes and his neurograms become active, the right
solution corresponding to these neural readjustments, ‘‘pops into
his mind.’’

A much simpler case may illustrate the point better. One is
writing on the typewriter and makes a simple mistake, thereby
forming a wrong associative connection between sight of a letter and
the appropriate muscular response. He tries again and repeats
the mistake—the nerve impulse takes the course of least resistance
which is the recently used association path. How shall the error be
corrected? A night’s sleep is not in this simple case necessary, but
a few moments of rest will serve to give the older, more frequently
used, right connections the ascendency over the newer wrong one,
and the word is correctly written. The same type of interpreta-

THE SUB-CONSCIOUS—WHAT IS IT? 389

tion covers that multitude of cases of slips of the tongue and pen,
and failures of habit mechanisms which to the psychoanalyst come
under the head of the psychopathology of every-day life. Such
eases of interference among association paths are known in labora-
tory terminology as reproductive interference. It may seem that
the chances of hitting the right solution of a difficult problem in
this way are very slight. Genuine eases of this sort are about as
rare as you would expect them to be under these circumstances. It
is their rarity that makes them so conspicuous when they do occur.

If we add to the concepts just described, the influence of mo-
tives, determining tendencies and deeply rooted springs of action,
which may be thought of either in their conscious or physiological
aspects, you can account for the phenomena which in the subeon-
scious are explained by the censor and symbolism.

One is born with certain tendencies to action already established,
a large share of which are commonly included in the term instinct.
Some of these tendencies are, in the light of our social customs, good
and some are bad. All are modified, developed and cultivated in
the course of our education into forms of behavior which conform
more or less closely to the demands of society. Some of these, of
course, need more modification than others. These instinctive forms
of behavior, as well as their modifications, are conceived in terms
of neural patterns. Now when the natural sex impulses, for ex-
ample, are modified by training, we need not think of both the
modified and the original neural patterns as existing side by side
or one beneath the other. The one has rather been modified into
the other and ceases to exist. On the side of consciousness, the
neural patterns are represented by determining tendencies prescrib-
ing in a positive fashion, what the individual shall do, when these
neural patterns become active, rather than in a negative fashion de-
termining what he shall not do, by the repression or inhibition of
the original mechanisms. Thus in the properly trained individual
the censor, with its suppressing activities exerted against what is
wrong, gives way to the functioning of neural patterns and deter-
mining tendencies in the direction of what is right. The honest man
is honest not because he keeps the thief in him suppressed, but be-
cause his training has developed tendencies which guide him in the
path of honesty.

The phenomena of symbolism have been ably interpreted by
Professor Hollingworth in his book, ‘‘The Psychology of Functional
Neuroses,’’ in terms of redintegration, or the tendency to reproduce
the whole of a past experience when only a part, and sometimes a
very unessential part, of the original stimulus is present. Here we
have only the familiar mechanism of association in consciousness,
and neural patterns or neurograms in the nervous system, with no
intervening subconscious or other mechanisms.

390 - THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Finally, recognize the flexibility of the imagination and the in-
fluence upon mental experience of expectation and suggestion, and
you can account for the phenomena of telepathy, spiritualism and
similar mysteries, if these survive at all the application of the first
criterion of a concept, namely the proof of their existence as facts.

For such interpretations as I have illustrated, not a smgle new
concept need be added to those which are already in good standing
in the sciences of physiology and psychology. To the majority of
psychologists this sort of interpretation, which assimilates the facts
into a system of concepts already in existence, seems to satisfy more
fully two of the demands of science, namely, simplicity and range
of facts covered, than does the construction of a new concept. It
further avoids the danger of adopting a concept which has been
made to connote so much that is mystie, extravagant, and even
charlatanical in character.

There is one objection which has been raised against the sub-
stitution of consciousness and brain activity for an intermediate
subconscious, co-conscious or. super-conscious. It is the demand that
each science shall stay within its own realm. The physiologist must
not introduce a psychological conception into his chain of cause
and effect, nor must the psychologist fill up the gaps in his reason-
ing with cells and nerve currents. A conception must be in the
same terms as the phenomena which it is designed to connect. The
conceptions of psychology must all be constructed within the psy-
chological series. The conceptions of physiology must be con-
structed within the physical series. The mathematician insists on
regarding bodies as bounded by continuous surfaces, whereas the
physicist is compelled to regard them as bounded by discontinuous
atoms. Neither of these modes is more true than the other. The
question is merely which one has the greater practical value in the
particular sphere of thought in question. Add to this criterion of
practical value, the two criteria previously discussed, namely, sim-
plicity and range of facts covered, and the.shifting from science to
science and from physical to mental would seem to be justified.

The best established and scientifically supported concepts are not
objects, but mental experiences erected upon the sum total of facts
known. New facts are accumulated and concepts change. A planet
was conceived to explain a set of facts and led to the discovery of
Neptune. The molecule was conceived as the physical unit to ex-
plain a set of facts, but gave way to the atom; this in its turn has
been replaced by the electron. What may be the fate of such con-
cepts as the vitamin and the subconscious in the future only the
future will reveal. Science performs its legitimate function today
when it resumes known facts under concepts which at once are the
simplest, the most inclusive and the most in accord with other
known facts.

DISEASE AND INJURY AMONG FOSSIL MEN 391

DISEASE AND INJURY AMONG FOSSIL MEN
AND THE BEGINNINGS OF SURGERY

By Professor ROY L. MOODIE

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO

HE remains of ancient stone age man occasionally show evi-
ih dences of disease and injury. These evidences among the neo-
lithic and paleolithic races of western Europe have been studied
by Raymond and LeBaron, and mention of sundry other lesions
is to be found in the writings of Keith, Manouvrier, Ruffer, Bau-
douin and other students of anthropology. These studies are based
on remains of human races found in western Europe, since no
representatives of the stone age men, as they are called, have been
found in the western Hemisphere. The remains of these early
races are scanty, and many of the skeletal elements are normal.
Some few, however, give us an insight, because of their pathologi-
cal conditions, into the possible cause of their pathology and the
necessity of the introduction of surgery to care for these injuries.
Trephining, itself a traumatism, was introduced quite early among
ancient man, as were finger amputation, cauterization and possibly
scarification. These phases of primitive surgery have already been
discussed in previous contributions and it remains to point out
the original need for surgery, the factors underlying its develop-
ment, as well as the data on which these conclusions are based.

Man’s oldest representative, or man’s precursor, is identified
in the oldest well-authenticated skeletal manlike remains found
in 1891 by Dr. E. Dubois, at that time a surgeon in the Dutch
Army, stationed in Java. In the leisure of his station he had
undertaken paleontological excavations along the banks of the
Bengavan River, near Trinil, in the central part of the island of
Java. He found, quite widely scattered, a calvarium, some teeth,
a portion of a jaw and a left femur entire. These important re-
mains were described by Dubois in a finely illustrated quarto is-
sued at Batavia in 1894. His work was immediately received as
one of the greatest contributions to the study of the antiquity of
man. Although a very extensive literature has developed concern-
ing the antiquity of man, this discovery still ranks as the most
marvelous revelation of man’s ancestry so far known. The inter-
est to us in this curious ape-like form is that the femur shows

392 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FIGURE 1

Anterior view of the left femur of the oldest known human representative,
Pithecanthropus erectus, portions of whose skeleton, 500,000 years old, were
found in 1891 in a river deposit in Java. The femur shows an extensive
medial exostosis due to some chronic. infection or other irritation along the
line of the tendinous attachment of the iliopsoas and pectineus muscles. This
is the oldest example of human pathology.

Posterior view. After Dubois.

marked exostoses (Figure 1) indicating the presence of a patho-
logical condition of great severity. This is the oldest evidence of
pathology in a humanoid form.

On account of the very great interest attached to such a dis-
covery the pathology has been widely discussed. The great path-
ologist Virchow, who was also an eminent student of anthropology,
called attention to the similarity of the medial exostoses on the
femur of the ancient form to those seen in modern femora. He
exhibited a number of these which he had selected from the col-
lections of the Berlin Pathological Institute (Figure 2).

The next oldest known form representing man is that desig-
nated Eoanthropus, meaning the dawn man. Sir Auckland Geddes,
after an examination of these Piltdown remains, decided that this
ancient Englishman, who lived and died thousands of years ago,
had suffered a pathological alteration of the bones of the skull.
He based his conclusions on the remarkable thickness, coupled with

{
or
Noy

FIGURE 2

Modern human femur showing medial exostoses similar to those ex-
hibited by the Pithecanthropus. These drawings were used by Virchow to
demonstrate to the anthropological society of Berlin that the pathology of the
most ancient man-like form was similar to modern pathology. Some scholars
had argued that the femur was not human, being misled by the pathological
deformation.

DISEASE AND INJURY AMONG FOSSIL MEN 393

the characteristic outline of the temporal ridge, which can only
find their diagnosis in Acromegaly. He fails, however, to differ-
entiate this condition from Paget’s disease which produces a sim-
ilar pathology. It is possibly due to this factor that the remains
were preserved. Thus it is seen that the oldest representatives of
man had suffered from disease. Where there is a disease or injury
even among wild animals, there is always some instinctive, though
primitive, means of healing. While from the actual evidences
nothing whatever is known of the state of surgery during the most
ancient periods of man’s development, may we not safely surmise
that these primitive ape-like humans pondered in a vague way,
over the means of curing disease and injury and thus laid a founda-
tion for the development of that knowledge of surgery which we
see emerging from the darkness in the late Paleolithic and early
Neolithic races thousands of years later? An instinctive licking of
an injury is the forerunner of antiseptic appliances, or the sucking
of pus wounds. Quietness and seclusion after fracturing a limb
was the instinctive act preceding the use of bark, skin, or hardened
elay splints.

The most famous of the skeletal remains representing men of
the old stone age, when surgery had its first recorded existence,
are the portions of a skeleton of an extinct species of man found
in a cave in the valley of the Neander River, in the Rhine province
of Prussia, hence the individual is known as the Neanderthal man.
The proximal end of the left ulna had evidently been fractured
(Figure 3) since there is a marked widening of the articular fossa.
The left humerus also shows signs of injury in consequence of
which it doubtless remained much weaker than the right bone.
Virchow thought that the condition of the bones of this ancient
man indicated rickets. If se this would be the oldest evidence of
rickets in man, but Schwalbe restudied the question and decided
that there was no evidence of malnutrition and his conclusions are
widely accepted. .

FIGURE 3
Left ulna of an ancient man, known as the Neanderthal man, whose skeleton,
found in a cave in the valley of the Neander river of Europe, has aroused
considerable interest on account of the primitive human characters which it
exhibits. This skeleton, which is about 75,000 years old, shows evidences of
injury in the divaricate olecranon, possibly due to a severe blow on the elbow
producing a fracture. Drawn from a photograph of the original by Hrdliéka.

394 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

One of the most interesting cases of ancient injury which has
come down to us is a specimen of a lumbar vertebra of a late stone
age man, showing an arrowpoint deeply embedded in the visceral
surface. Older injuries of a similar nature teach us that ancient
man was liable to such inflictions incident to war and the chase.
During this period wounds made by blows from stone hatchets,
arrow and spear points are fairly common. Many of these injuries
as shown on the remains found in the ancient. sepultures show
evidences of long standing and final healing, thus pointing, in-
distinctly to be sure, to some preventive measures being taken.
LeBaron from his study of ancient human skeletons arrived at
the conclusions that early man reduced and fixed fractures with
great perfection, evidenced by the great numbers of well-healed
fractures. Among 18 cases he examined only 3 had healed badly.

Nearly all types of fractures are found among the remains of
ancient man. The frequency of spondylitis deformans is striking.
Pott’s disease was occasionally observed. Alteration of skulls due
to ulcerations; scoliosis; various hyperostoses; caries of bone and
teeth; atrophy of the skull; exostoses and osteomata and many
varieties of arthritides indicate to us the variety of afflictions to
which early man was subject. It is no wonder that, with this array
of pathology to contend with, early man saw the necessity of deal-
ing with them. While many of the earliest recorded evidences of
surgery were developed as a phase of religious procedures, there
must have been many therapeutic measures known to them which
have not been recorded but whose presence we may infer from
the pathological evidences of their skeletal remains. Surgery
then in its earliest beginnings was derived from three sources:
(1). Instinetive acts after injury or during the progress of a
disease; (2). Surgical operations on the body which though de-
veloped in connection with religious practices often had therapeutic
results; (3). Voluntary mutilations, practiced apparently since
the earliest dawn of humanity. This was the condition of path-
ology and surgery among those man-like creatures of the hills and
forest from whom the modern human races have slowly evolved.

THE PRO GRESS OF SCIENCE 39

THE PROGRESS OF

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF
RADIO TELEPHONY
WASHINGTON,
month, has been the scene of a con-
ference that has laid down the rules
ot the ether and
basis of America’s youngest, fastest-

during the past

has furnished the

growing and most astonishing indus-
try. It was twenty-five years ago this
summer that Marconi patented the
first wireless apparatus in England.
But the immediate events that pre-
radio

cipitated this conference on

telephony called by Secretary of

Commerce Herbert Hoover have been

1 Edited by Watson Davis, Science

Service.

or

SCIENCE’
only a little over a year in develop-
ment. The electron tube made pos-
sible the transmission of the human
voice by wireless with as much ease
as over the ordinary wire telephone.
During the war electrical engineers
succeeded in

and physicists using

effectively the radio telephone be-
tween airplanes and ground stations.
This accomplishment, hastened by the
led to post-war
development of the radio telephone.

On December 15, 1920, the Bureau
of Markets of the
Agriculture and the Bureau of Stand-
Com-

stress of war, has

Department of

the Department of
took a
largely responsible for the new move-

ards of

merece in cooperation step

Copyright by Harris and Ewing

MR. HERBERT HOOVER
Secretary of: Commerce, who presided over the recent
telegraphy at Washington, where Mr. Hoover has installed a radio receiving
apparatus in his home as well as in his office

congress of radio-

Copyright by Harris and Ewing

HERBERT WORK, M.D. ;
Postmaster General of the United States

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

ment. A short market and weather
report in telegraphic code was sent
out by radio from the Bureau of
Standards as an experiment. For four
months this trial service was kept in
operation and the amateur radio
operators on the farms near Wash-
ington were able to give their fathers
information that had an economic
value. They liked this prompt news,
and on April 15, 1921, the air mail
stations at Washington, Omaha and
St. Louis took up the work of scatter-
ing the Department of Agriculture
information.

From then on the story of radio
rivals that of a rush to a new gold
field. apparatus
saw the possibilities of selling outfits
if they broadcasted music and enter-
tainment, newspapers radioed news,
and even the phonograph shops, little
suspecting a formidable rival, adver-
tised records by playing them into
the ether. Radio became an industry.
It ceased to be only a plaything for
scientifically inclined boys. It came
out of the laboratory into the world.

But back of this new-born industry
is the radio engineer, the physicist
and the electrician. The radio boom
caused a cluttering of the ether.
There was a demand for government
regulation. The first task of science
‘was to aid in formulating wave
length allocations and the regulations
that will govern future radio com-
munication. Radio is a public utility.
Broadcasting of governmental infor-
mation has first rights on the ether,
according to the recommendations of

Manufacturers of

the conference.

In addition, the Bureau of Stand-
ards was asked to solve these prob-
lems: (1) The reduction of the rate
of building up (increment) of oscil-
lations in radiating systems. (This
rapid building up of oscillations oce-

curs in damped wave and interrupted °

continuous-wave transmitters, and
may be eliminated by the substitution
of other types of transmitter. It

- may, however, be reduced in these

397

types by proper circuit arrange-
ments.) (2) The reduction of har-
monies in continuous wave trans-
mitters and of irregularities of oscil-
lation (‘‘mush’’ in are transmitters
and ‘‘swinging’’ of the frequency in
all types of continuous wave trans-
mitters not employing a master oscil-
lator). (3) The comparison of the
variable amplitude method with the
variable frequency method of con-
tinuous wave telegraphy. (4) The
preferable methods of telephone
modulation to avoid changes in the
frequency of oscillation. (5) The
proper circuit arrangements of regen-
erative (including oscillating) re-
ceivers to avoid radiation of energy
(as by the use of a radio-frequency
amplifier with an untuned antenna or
with a coil aerial). (6) The use of
highly selective receiving apparatus,
including a list of approved forms.
(7) The use of receiving coil aerials
instead of antennas, with special ref-

erence to high selectivity. (8) The
reduction of interference with radio
communication of other’ electrical

processes, such as the operation of
X-ray apparatus and electrical pre-
cipitation. (9) The study and
standardization of wave meters.

In addition, the conference recom-
mended that the Bureau of Standards
make a study of the relation between
the normal reliable range of a station
and the antenna power on the basis
of the use of reliable receiving ap-
paratus, and of the width of wave
band required for satisfactory radio
telephony.

While the technical problems of
radio telephony were being considered
by a conference presided over by
Secretary Hoover, engineer, Dr.
Hubert Work, physician, was sworn
in as postmaster general, the second
scientifically trained member _ of
President Harding’s cabinet. It is
said that Mr. Hoover is the first en-
gineer to hold a high official position
in the government of the United
States since George Washington.

398

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Us Ss

Certainly there has never before been
an engineer and a physician in the
cabinet. Dr. Work is president of
the American Medical Association.
Mr. Hoover at the time of his ap-
pointment to the cabinet was presi-
dent of the Federated American En-
gineering Societies.

Mr. Hoover has been
engineer an opportunity
present administration began.

giving the
the

Elim-
the un-

since

ination of waste in industry,
employment conference, building and
housing research, and regula-
tion have all come about through his
engineering. Soon Dr. Work
joined the cabinet, there was the un-
usual occurrence of a postmaster gen-
eral presiding over a session of a
conference on the public health in the
United States.

THE HELIUM AIRSHIP
DuRINnG the same period that radio
has been rapidly passing through its
adolescence, the
phase of aerial navigation has re-
ceived a series of discouragments.
First came the ZR-2 disaster in Eng-

radio

after

lighter-than-air

land, then the Roma collapsed on our -

own territory. These were
panied by two administrative blows
to airship building, the
the British to abandon airship build-

ing, and the prohibition by the Allies

accom-

decision of

NAVY BLIMP, INFLATED WITH HELIUM GAS

of dirigible construction in Germany
after a Zeppelin has been built for
the United States.

Within a few days after the Roma
disaster, undaunted by misfortunes
and prohibitions, commercial inter-
ests announced plans for the begin-
ning of airship transportation in this
country. Within a year a corpora-
tion hopes to have large rigid ships,
built partly in Germany according to
the design of Dr. Johann Schutte, in
operation New York: and
Chicago.

Inflammable hydrogen added to the
horror and magnitude of both the
ZR-2 and the Roma disasters. In this
unhappy way, public attention has
been called to helium, the safe bal-
loon gas. This ‘‘rare’’ gas, only in
recent years first discovered in the
promises to lessen greatly the
dangers of lighter-than-air transpor-

between

sun,

tation. All who have been concerned
in the commercial development of

helium hope that Congress will pro-
vide sufficient funds for the work now
in progress and that the Navy blimp
C-7, which this fall demonstrated
helium to be a practical balloon gas,
is only the forerunner of future
American airships, held aloft by the
safe gas that at present only America
can produce.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 399

THE BLIMP IN FLIGHT

THE SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND |]

PUBLIC HEALTH OF THE
JOHNS HOPKINS UNI-
VERSITY
THE Rockefeller Foundation has
made a gift of $6,000,000 to the
Johns Hopkins University for endow-
ment and buildings for the school of
hygiene and public health.
Since this school was opened in
1918 the foundation had furnished
the funds required for its mainte-
nance from year to year. With the
acceptance of -the present gift the
trustees of the university assume full
responsibility for the future needs of

the school as they develop.

This new type of institution places
emphasis upon the development of
preventive medicine and upon the
training of health officers, Under
the direction of Dr. William H. Welch
the school has

substantial
progress in the four years since it
was established.

made

Twenty-seven states
foreign countries are now
represented in the student body num-
bering 131. The faculty of the
comprises scientists in the
fields of bacteriology and immunol-

and ten

school

ogy, sanitary engineering, chemical
hygiene, physiological hygiene, med-
ical zoology, epidemiology, vital sta-
tistics and public health administra-
tion.

The regular courses of study lead
to the degrees of doctor of public
health, doctor of science in hygiene,
and bachelor of science in hygiene.
A certificate in public health is given
to those completing certain special
courses. Short courses or institutes
are provided for health workers in
service who can not be absent from
their positions for more than a few
weeks at a time. Last year thirty-six
health officers from eight states took
these’ short intensive courses.

Up to this time the school has been
housed in old buildings, situated in
the center of the city of Baltimore,
and formerly used by Johns Hopkins
University for laboratories of physics,
chemistry and biology. The present
gift, in addition to’ providing endow-
ment, will make possible the erection
of the new building for the school on
a site adjacent to the Johns Hopkins
Medical School and Hospital.

Work on the main building, the

400

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

plans for which already have been 7 College Observatory last fall, has

drawn, is expected to start this sum-
mer. It will be located on a site
which has already been acquired at
the southeast corner of Monument
and Wolfe streets and is so designed
as to admit of its liberal expansion.
The contract for its erection will be
let as soon as the architects, Archer
& Allen, of Baltimore, have com-
pleted drawing the detailed speci-
fications

The enterprise will be part of a
general scheme of building to be
started by the university this year,
including in addition to the new

school of hygiene, which will cost |

$1,000,000, $800,000 for the new
Woman’s Clinic and a new patho-
logical building, the contracts for
which have already been let; $500,000

been elected to the Paine professor-
ship of practical astronomy, which >
has been vacant since the death of
Professor Edward C. Pickering, in
TOTO:

Proressor Soton I. BaiLey, of the
Harvard College Observatory, sailed
on March 1 from New York to Peru
to take charge of the Harvard astro-
nomical station at Arequipa. He is
accompanied by Mrs. Bailey and by
Miss Annie J. Cannon of the ob-
servatory staff.

Dr. VERNON KELLOGG, zoologist,
secretary of the National Research
Council, Washington, D. C., and John
W. Davis, attorney, of New York

| City, formerly ambassador to Great
| Britain, have been elected trustees of

for a new chemical laboratory at |

Homewood and between $400,000 and
$500,000 for dormitories at Home-
wood.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

WE record with regret the deaths
of Dr. John Casper Branner, long
professor of geology and later presi-
dent of Leland Stanford Junior Uni-
versity; of Charles William Waidner,
chief of the Division of Heat and
Thermometry of the Bureau of
Standards; of Rear-admiral Charles
Henry Davis, formerly superintendent
of the Naval Observatory; of Charles
Leonard Bouton, associate professor
of mathematics at Harvard Univer-
sity; of Frank Bottomley, the Eng-
lish chemist, and of Senator Ciami-
cian, professor of chemistry at Bo-
logna.

Dr. Hartow SHAPLEY, who was
appointed director of the Harvard

the Rockefeller Foundation.

Dr. GreorGE E. HALE has resigned
as president of the Pacific Division
of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science to attend
the meeting of the International Re-
search Council in Brussels. Dr.
Barton Warren Evermann, director
of the Museum of the California
Academy of Sciences, has been elect-
ed president to succeed Dr. Hale,
and will give the address at the
meeting to be held in Salt Lake City
from June 22 to 24. It will be re-
membered that the American Asso-
ciation for the Advancement of Sci-
ence will hold a summer meeting at
Salt Lake City in conjunction with
the Pacific Division.

THE Rockefeller Foundation has
given six million dollars to Johns
Hopkins University for the endow-
ment and buildings of the School of
Hygiene and Public Health.

THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

MAY, 1922

THE RELATION BETWEEN RESEARCH IN
HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL
GENETICS

By Dr € Ca biprce
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON, STATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL
EVOLUTION

I. INTRODUCTORY
HE workers in any primarily biological science need at fre-
quent intervals to spend a certain amount of time in con-
sidering the research methods and aims of their science with a
view to possible changes.

The more their branch of science is dependent upon or cor-
related with other allied sciences, the more urgent becomes such
a procedure.

New discoveries of a fundamental nature in one branch of
science should have a strong influence on related fields. In fact,
such changes, when they exist, are bound to make their presence
felt sooner or later outside their immediate field, and it is the
desire to assure that it be ‘‘sooner’’ rather than ‘‘later’’ that jus-
tifies the expenditure of time and effort in continually looking
about for such unutilized or unfulfilled relationships.

The sooner any such relationship is recognized and admitted,
the sooner can progress of a firm and lasting nature be made in
both branches of research concerned.

It is with just such a relationship between the genetical aspect
of eugenics and the field of experimental genetics that the present
paper hopes to deal. The existence of this relationship has long
been admitted, but the full scope of its extent, possibilities, and
responsibilities does not seem to be completely realized at present.

In order to bring out the facts in the case more clearly, it will
first be advisable to review briefly the general lines of progress
in research on human heredity in the past two decades. We may
then consider this progress in its relationship to the contemporary

VOL. XIV.—26.

402 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

advance in the field of experimental genetics, and in so doing
bring out the need for certain changes in the methods of research
in human heredity. Finally, we may outline a program of possible
studies in human genetics which could be undertaken at once, be
built up gradually, and eventually be utilized as the foundation of a
more exact and lasting approach to our proper understanding of
the inheritance of human traits.

II. THe Past ProagRess oF RESEARCH IN HUMAN GENETICS

Investigations in the genetic aspect of eugenics may be said to
have progressed along two main lines, or perhaps better, from two
different viewpoints. On the one hand, biometrical interpretation
of data has been continued by the Galton laboratory, under the
direction and leadership of Karl Pearson, while, on the other hand,
the search for mendelizing characters has been earried on chiefly
by the American School of Eugenicists under Davenport.

The biometric school, which has avowedly used statistical meth-
ods and a non-mendelian approach to the problem, has established
the fact of inheritance of many traits. Such publications as ‘‘The
Treasury of Human Inheritance’’ and ‘‘Biometrika’’ contain the
records of a great number of painstaking and meritorious investi-
gations by this group of workers. The type of inheritance in-
volved, however, remains, under these methods of analysis, obscure
and unapproachable.

The mendelian school has gone farther, for, in addition to having
established the fact of inheritance for many traits, it has been able
in not a few cases to procure evidence bearing on the type of in-
heritance as well.

The exactness with which the cases of mendelian inheritance
in man have been established is not, and can not be, under present
methods, of the same order as that of a result based on experi-
mentations. The question of which eases are, and which eases are
not, well established is, therefore, to some degree a matter for per-
sonal opinion.

We may, however, take the opinion of a careful and conserva-
tive geneticist, such as Castle, as a fairly safe guide in estimating
the number of cases of apparently mendelizing characters in man.

In his text-book on ‘‘Geneties and Eugenies,’’ 1920, Castle lists
some twenty-three characters as having been found to be men-
delian, and approximately thirty-two others as either ‘‘non-
mendelian’’ or unanalyzed. In presenting these eases there have
been many publications from, or inspired by, the Eugenics Record
Office of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. This institu-
tion has indeed provided funds and personnel for the great ma-
jority of the research which has procured the evidence for the type

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 403

of inheritance involved in most of the cases recorded by Castle.
To a consideration of the ultimate value of this work, we shall
return later. In the meanwhile one may mention such researches
as those of Goddard on feeblemindedness, of Davenport and Weeks
on epilepsy, of Bulloch and Fildes on hemophilia, and of Esta-
brook on the Jukes, to obtain an idea as to the sort of research that
lies at the basis of the cases cited by Castle.

Recently the work of Mohr, on brachyphalangy, and of Stan-
ton and Seashore, on musical ability, has contmued, by methods
of direct observation, the lines of mendelian analysis in as eareful
and painstaking a manner as the means of collecting the data have
made possible. Their work represents the farthest advance in
methods at the present time.

Without going into the details of the work cited, we may say
that upon the rediscovery of mendelism, efforts were made by the
majority of eugenicists to extend that law to humans, and that,
broadly speaking, these efforts have been successful.

Ill. THE RELATION OF PROGRESS IN GENETICS TO EUGENIC
PROBLEMS

While these investigations in human heredity have been under
way, research in experimental genetics has been far from idle. Its
progress has, in fact, been enormous, and the relatively recent de-
velopments of our knowledge as to the basis of certain hereditary
characters has brought to light new genetic principles of the great-
est importance.

Thus, to Mendel’s original laws of segregation and of inde-
pendent assortment and recombination of the genes, we find added,
by the work of Morgan and his associates, linkage, crossing over,
limitation of linkage groups, and the intra-chromosomal questions
of interference and the order of the genes.

Obviously, these new discoveries open up a wide horizon, and
introduce us to a type of detailed genetic analysis not formerly
imagined. They also, however, focus our attention upon the nature
of our data on human inheritance, in order to observe whether
these data are sufficiently accurate to be amenable to analysis by
the finer tests mentioned above.

When this question is calmly and dispassionately considered,
we are forced to the conclusion that data on human inheritance,
collected by the present methods, are not sufficiently accurate to
justify their being used to determine the degree of linkage or cross-
ing over, or such matters as the limitation of linkage groups, inter-
ference, or the order of the genes.

Thus, while ‘‘family histories’? and reports of field workers
give information of greater scientific value than data less ecare-

404 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

fully obtained, they have certain fundamental and unavoidable
inaccuracies. For example, evidence obtained by field workers
concerning the individuals who are themselves interviewed is prob-
ably fairly accurate. So, too, is the documentary evidence sub-
mitted by an individual of responsibility and intelligence con-
cerning her- or himself. The mass of information in family records,
or that obtained by field workers concerning dead or absent indi-
viduals is, however, too uncertain to use in the finer methods of
genetic analysis.

It is the fact that geneticists have clearly recognized this situa-
tion, while many eugenicists have given little sign of having done
so, which has brought about the existing prejudice. Such preju-
dice certainly exists to a marked degree and forms one of the most
unfortunate but telling bits of evidence of the need for radical
changes in the method of eugenic research.

There can, moreover, be no narrowness present as a factor in the
situation, for the geneticist has been living in plenty and does not
wish a changed attitude on the part of the eugenicist for any selfish
reason. Rather he expects of the eugenicist merely a critical atti-
tude, involving realization of the fundamental weakness in his
data and steps to correct it.

While experimental genetics was in its infaney, (1905-1910),
one did not hear from geneticists so much eriticism against, or
sense so much distrust for eugenicists. Because, however, since
that time, eugenics has made little or no progress towards a truly
experimental attitude we now find a real breach between these two
sciences. This is most unfortunate, for they should be closely re-
lated and entirely sympathetie.

Undoubtedly the geneticists have been a bit unreasonable in
expecting the immediate adoption of experimental methods by
eugenicists. On the other hand, there is much to justify their at-
titude of criticism. Thus we find that among more than one hun-
dred papers given at the recent International Congress of Eugenics,
not one paper on human geneties introduced us to data of sufficient
accuracy to provide evidence on the degree of linkage, the order
of the genes, or the size and nature of linkage groups.

Another piece of evidence as to the réle played by the work in
human heredity in the advance and conduct of experimental
genetics is seen in the bibliography of a modern text-book such as
Morgan’s ‘‘Physical Basis of Heredity.’’ Here, among approxi-
mately six hundred references, we find less than two per cent. are
to works dealing primarily with human heredity.

Evidence of this kind must not be taken as an indication that
we should expect research in human heredity to prove the best field
for pioneer work in experimental genetics. To do this would be

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 405

asking too much. There is, however, a serious aspect to the ques-
tion when we realize that present methods in human inheritance
studies will not give us the chance to utilize the definite methods
of genetic analysis now possible. It is not a matter for chagrin,
but involves an unfulfilled duty. If eugenics is ever to be an applied
science, it must be able to predict with a fair degree of accuracy
the results of individual matings. Without this, no practical sys-
tem of mate selection can be suggested. Since the question of mate
selection is daily becoming of more general interest, this line ean
not and should not be avoided. If advice as to what type of con-
sort shall be chosen is given in individual eases under the condi-
tions of our present incomplete knowledge of quantitative values in
human heredity, we shall soon be in serious trouble. This will
result if and when advice is given and followed with a markedly
unsuccessful outcome. A few such eases would be sure to give the
existing interest and confidence in the eugeniec movement a severe
and possibly permanent setback.

The non-scientific public expects great achievements and ac-
curacy in the case of any process which is supposed to be scientific.
If, however, ‘‘science’’ fails, they are quick to turn and rend it
with ridicule and an exaggeration of its weakness. This means
that those who have at heart the success of the eugenic movement,
must, therefore, before it is too late, take a definite stand against
overinterpretation of data within their particular field, or else be
prepared to experience an ever increasing lack of sympathy on
the part of the biological sciences and the educated public.

As before stated, it seems that we owe it to the future of human
genetics to face the situation fairly and frankly. To do this, the
fundamental interdependence of experimental genetics and human
genetics has been made the keynote of the situation.

In working out a program for work on human genetics, we are
faced with certain inherent characteristics of our material. The
fact that these form definite limitations in some eases, forces our
attention to them whether we desire it or not. In considering
them, however, we shall, I think, find that the obvious disadvan-
tages are not without some compensations and alleviating cireum-
stances, which may easily be turned to our advantage.

Thus, while the slow breeding of mankind makes it impossible
to expect or hope for the great numbers obtainable from laboratory
material, and lengthens the space between generations to a some-
what disquieting degree, yet it offers opportunities of a peculiar
nature as well.

For example, the long period of adolescence gives us a remark-
able chance to develop to the fullest extent the study of the un-
folding during ontogeny of the hereditary traits, and to weigh

406 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

with a high degree of detail the influence of such external agents
as training, education, and other similar forces, upon the individ-
ual and its descendants. We can and should know our human in-
dividual—whether ancestory or progeny—in as many stages of
his ontogeny as we possibly can. This is the peculiar opportunity
afforded by human material. We can not ignore it by attempting
a classification of our individual based on fragmentary informa-
tion—but, rather, we should utilize it to the fullest extent. What
might then, at first, be considered as a handicap, may with patience
and eareful planning be turned into a valuable asset. No insect
material can give us this chance—and when we consider that labo-
ratory mammals afford us an excellent basis for the development
of methods of research applicable to humans and for a ‘‘compara-
tive’’ genetic analysis—we begin to see the real possibilities of
the situation.

In a somewhat similar way it has been objected that in man we
ean not control the matings made; this indeed is true. But if we
can not control the matings, we can, at least, record them and, by
finger prints and blood tests, check on data. This is no small ad-
vantage, and makes the eventual utilization of carefully collected
data certain and of great value.

We have already dwelt on the inaccuracy of information based
on anything short of exact tests or measurements of the individual
in question—an inaccuracy which makes change imperative. As
an aid in establishing and extending the desired methods of ob-
servation and recording, will come the definite cooperation of the
individuals themselves, or of those controlling them, once results
of promise can be shown.

The possibility of introducing some such program as the one
suggested will be scouted by many—and in some eases, indeed, by
those now engaged in eugenical research. Until a point of view
generally similar to the one above outlined is adopted, however,
we may expect that the work in human genetics will fail to carry
real conviction to experimental geneticists and to the public at
large.

It is entirely probable that the attitude that eugenics is or
should be primarily dependent upon genetics may be seriously
questioned. Should this be the case, however, it seems that a short
consideration of the apparently non-genetie aspects of eugenics
will bring home to us the fact that we are, even in these subjects,
actually relying on genetic information before we can hope for
progress.

Thus in the eugenice aspect of the immigration problem, we
are faced at once with the fact that we are dealing with race—a
fundamentally genetic problem. Racial differences in fecundity

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 407

and susceptibility to disease will determine just what numerical
réle any given nationality will play in forming the future popula-
tion. Differences in type of mental makeup and in degrees of
mental capacities from the viewpoint of intellectual achievement,
moral responsibility and adaptibility to a new environment will be
essential matters in determining the value of various nationalities
as sources of potential citizens. The physical and psychological
traits of various combinations and types of hybrids among the
different European and Asiatie nations, attained under the eondi-
tions of life in the United States, will give the best possible
criterion as to their permanent value as constructive elements in
the formation of the future American nation.

Similarly, the question of legislation involving eugenic meas-
ures must frequently appeal to our knowledge of genetic principles
as applied to man. Unless the environmental influences not trans-
missible to future generations can be separated from those differ-
ences that are truly genetic, we shall be at a loss to know how strict
our system of segregation and confinement of criminals should be.
So, too, unless we know the degree of inheritance of criminal traits
in different racial combinations, we shall not know whether a similar
legislative treatment of all individuals, regardless of their racial
composition, is either justified or wise. So, too, in efforts to deter-
mine parentage, genetics through blood tests may be useful if
properly evaluated.

Thus, in any scheme of general education along lines of eugenic
measures, we are faced again and again with the fact that the
limiting factor in the situation is our knowledge of the laws of
genetics as applied to the particular subject im question.

In thus presenting briefly some of the factors operative in
maintaining a proper relationship between genetic research in
man, and experimental genetics, an effort has been made to bring
out the fact that we have reached a point where a recasting of
our methods of gathering data on human inheritance for this pur-
pose is imperative.

The work in human genetics already accomplished has given
results so promising that we should be able to enter a new long-
time program with enthusiasm and complete confidence as to its
final outcome. If we ean, in this long-time program, obtain, as we
eo, data for immediate interpretation and at the same time lay
the foundation on which eventually a scientific and experimental
study of human heredity may rest, we shall have initiated a line
of investigation worthy of the loyal support of all experimental
eeneticists and of the best efforts of those intimately connected
with eugenic research. ;

408 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

IV. THE PROPOSED PROGRAM

A. General Considerations.

In suggesting a program of this type, no one can be more clearly
conscious than the writer, of the need for encouraging discussion
and cooperation between geneticists and eugenicists before any
definite scheme of work is adopted. In fact, it is probable that an
‘‘aeceptance in principle’’ of some such outline as that here given
will be sufficient action at the onset. This will give opportunity
for the introduction of modifications either of methods or materials
as the work progresses. Some such elasticity is necessary, for it is
not humanly possible to foresee all the problems which are bound
to arise.

In the main points, however, there is real hope of agreement
provided the inadequacy of present methods of collecting data is
frankly admitted. Obviously, the new program to be adopted in-
volves (1) more accurate methods of collecting data as to the bio-
logical nature of both physical and psychological traits of human
individuals, (2) the utilization of data so collected for three main
purposes, (a) the contrasting of naturally existing different bio-
logical groups of individuals in respect to characters recordable
by direct observation, (b) the building up of an ever increasing
detailed knowledge, by the method of direct observation, concern-
ing the individuals from birth to death, and (¢) the continuation
of this process to include the descendants of such individuals. By
this means, pedigrees will eventually shape themselves which are
of sufficient accuracy to be considered quite as exact from an ex-
perimental point of view as are many of those of laboratory mam-
mals used in genetic research.

Much is heard of the unselfishness of science and its devotees,
and of their willingness to sacrifice their individual capacities and
efforts in the search for truth. Yet it is doubtful whether there
would be even the shghtest chance for the adoption of a viewpoint
similar to the above unless it can be shown that the returns to be
expected during the lifetime of the observer are in themselves suf-
ficient to enlist his interest.

Fortunately, the value of the ‘‘immediate’’ returns is, in the
case of the suggested eugenics program, so great that one is justi-
fied in considering some of them in detail, despite the recognition
of the fundamental selfish element always present, which often
makes a similar consideration necessary even in other cases having
little or no merit.

In outlining the possible problems to be investigated, it will be
advisable to keep in mind the features of particular interest to the
United States. The problems of other nations will, however, be
sufficiently allied to ours to make the utilization of some slight

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 409

modification of the lines of work suggested here, entirely feasible.

Bearing in mind then, that the prime requisites of the new at-
titude is direct observation, we must first seek to ascertain where
the best opportunities for such observation exist.

B. Opportunities and Problems.

The chance to study human material from the various view-
points shortly to be considered is offered at many times during the
lifetime of the individual. At many of these points the information
desired could be obtained with a minimum of effort and with great
accuracy.

Thus, maternity hospitals, primary schools, secondary schools,
colleges, city and state institutions, general hospitals (of all grades),
military and naval units, factories and large commercial concerns,
offices of dentists and physicians, social and church organizations,
employment bureaus, boy and girl scouts, census officials, immigra-
tion stations, Y. M. C. A.’s and Y. W. C. A.’s and similar organiza-
tions are some of the points at which it would be possible to obtain
data of biological value by physical or mental examinations con-
ducted by properly trained observers.

Obviously, the earlier in the life of the individual we begin to
gather the data, the more will be the genetic and the less the ex-
ternal contributions to its character; the earlier, also, shall we be
able to recognize the initial stages in the appearance of both bene-
ficial and harmful hereditary traits. In the former case we should
be able to assure proper opportunity, physical and mental, for
the exceptionally endowed individual, and, in the latter, apply at
the earliest possible moment the restrictive, corrective or curative
measures necessary for such deficients as might be found. The
economic saving would be enormous, but even so it would be only
a tiny fraction of the permanent biological benefit to the race.

Clearly, maternity hospitals provide us with the chance to ob-
serve directly the individuals at birth. Their records are, or could
be made, inclusive of information concerning many physical and
even mental attributes of the child. Studies on the sex-ratio, body
length, weight, head form, early growth rate, incidence of abnor-
malities or disease are only a few of the questions easily capable of
being investigated by direct observation in such institutions.

Certain of these points have already been successfully investi-
gated in laboratory mammals or in man. As a single example of
this, the variations in the sex-ratio (number of male progeny to
each one hundred female progeny) may be briefly considered.

Variations in the sex-ratio are of importance economically as
well as biologically. It is therefore important to investigate the
various factors which underlie their modification.

410 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Hybridization has been recognized as one such factor. R. and
M. Pearl (1908) and the writer (1919) showed that in man the
progeny of matings between parents of different nationalities had
a higher proportion of males than those between parents of the
same nationality. The same fact has been found to hold true for
races of birds (Ducks, Phillips; Pigeons, Whitman, and Riddle;
Pheasants, Geoffrey-Smith and Haig-Thomas; Poultry, Davenport,
Pearl; and in laboratory mammals, Rats, King; Mice, Little.

In a somewhat similar way, King (1918) showed that more
males proportionately occurred in the first litter among rats than
among subsequent litters from the same parents, and the writer
found the same to be true in humans (parents from white races
and of the same nationality), when the first births are contrasted
as a group with the subsequent births. This fact, for example, has
a possible bearing on the popular belief that in time of war an
excess of males above the ‘‘normal’’ ratio is produced. There
might be an interesting element of truth in the popular belief,
because in war time the proportion of first births in the population
is greatly increased. If, now, these produce an excess of males,
it would follow that this fact would be noticed and remarked on,
since, at that time especially, men are at a premium.

The occurrence of sex-linked lethal factors killing approxi-
mately fifty per cent. of the male progeny in certain matings has
been frequently observed in insects (Morgan and his co-workers).
Evidence for their existence in mammals, (mice, Little, 1920) and
in man (Little and Gibbons, 1921) has been offered. The evidence
in man is Statistical and can not be made more definite until our
methods of collecting data have become more accurate.

The sex-ratio of stillbirths in man is a matter of the liveliest
interest. On the one hand, it bears on this same question of lethal
factors, and on the other, it provides important evidence on the
sex-ratio at conception—and thus on the possible control of sex
in mammals through the selection of one or the other type (male
forming or female forming) of sperm.

So also, the sex-ratio of illegitimate births is worthy of inves-
tigation. There has been a certain amount of evidence obtained
(Heape, 1908) that there is an excess of females among the progeny
resulting from illegitimate births. It would be interesting in this
connection to see whether the use of contraceptive methods, or pos-
sibly an unusual occurrence of endocrine abnormalities (due to the
unusually high number of mental defectives among the mothers of
illegitimate children) have altered the secretions of the female re-
productive tract sufficiently to mean that a selection of female-
forming sperm is being made, and the male-forming sperm more

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 411

frequently eliminated during their passage through the female gen-
erative tract.

In the primary and secondary schools of great cities we have
remarkable opportunities for work of some of the types which we
have outlined. Representatives of many different nationalities are
brought together in essentially similar environment and are under
almost daily observation for long periods. The chance is clearly
given to study differences in mental capacity of individuals, na-
tionalities, and races. Particular talents may be studied and many
of the investigations now being made with exceptional children
could be extended and supported by approach from a new angle.

The preliminary experiments of Vicari (1921) on mice have
shown that F, hybrids produced by crossing Japanese waltzing and
albino non-waltzing mice (the two parent stocks being thus from
different laboratory races) made a better record in learning a sim-
ple psychological problem than did either parent race. This sug-
gests strongly that the well known phenomenon of hybrid vigor,
or heterosis, applies in the ease of at least some mental character-
istics as well as in physical traits.

It would be of the greatest value to compare the school records
and psychological tests of children whose parents are of the same
nationality with those of children whose parents are from different
nationalities. Later the records of back-crosses and of F’, hybrids
could be similarly studied.

So, too, the study as to whether there was correlation between
general or specific mental capacity and grade of skin color in mu-
lattos would be extremely interesting.

Growth curves and resistance to children’s diseases are other
matters on which children of ‘‘hybrid’’ and ‘‘pure’’ matings could
be compared. In this ease, if the analogy with the laboratory mam-
mal holds, we should expect the first generation hybrids to be
clearly superior.

Other viewpoints and matters for investigation as applied to
the school material would be quite as important. Thus, it has been
long debated with considerable warmth of feeling as to whether
first-born children were inferior mentally and physically as a
group, or last-born children superior as a group, to other children
as a whole. The material for settling, or at least throwing light
on, this point seems to be in a condition to gather in the schools.

The effect of age of parents at the time of birth of the child,
or of transference of an individual from one environment to an-
other, of birth and rearing in the city as compared with the coun-
try, are all of them interesting and contrasted points of view that
may be investigated profitably and economieally.

412 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

It is also, at least theoretically, possible that by the extensive
use of mental tests, methods may be devised for recognizing the
carriers of recessive feeble-mindedness. If this were actually ac-
complished, the value to the community would be enormous.

C. Training of Observers.

We must not send out as observers individuals who look for
anything except accurate, concrete, and unbiased data. There
must be no reliance on ‘‘hearsay’”’ or ‘‘reported’’ evidence of any
type. The judgments as to any individual’s traits or abilities,
physical or mental, must be recorded as standardized measure-
ments from direct observation. In this way, any mistakes of
methods or technique will become evident at the earliest possible
moment, and modifications can thereupon ensue. If the ‘‘field
worker report’’ type of information be relied on, we shall have
inaccuracies continually introduced by the varying personal equa-
tions of both the observer and the observed.

The acceptance of this last general point means that a large
body of observers capable of and interested in taking accurate
observations must eventually be trained and organized. The need
of some such body of trained observers should not, however, prove
any souree of worry to us. The idea of training eugenic workers
for the specific purpose of research is already in practice.

At the present time, field workers so trained are sent out to
collect data from a critical point of view without, in many eases,
ever having performed an experiment in animal genetics. This
seems to be one of the points on which genetics and eugenics clash
sharply. There would perhaps be real hope for reconciling the two
if such field workers had been given a laboratory course in genetics,
or if they merely went out to measure and record by standardized
methods certain mental or physical traits of individuals by direct
observational methods. In this last case, training in accuracy, and
some knowledge of each field worker’s ‘‘individual error’’ would
be indispensable.

But the training of specialized field workers, or ‘‘field observ-
ers’’ as they might perhaps be called, is expensive and is only one
of the ways to go about gathering data based on measurements.
There are in addition two great groups of individuals, either or
both of which might easily be specially trained, and who could,
in the course of their professional duties, obtain data of the utmost
scientific value. These are medical men and the teachers of primary
and secondary schools.

A properly planned and executed lecture course with demon-
strations would give the average medical student some ideas on
the gathering and recording of biological data. This would suffice

HUMAN HEREDITY AND EXPERIMENTAL GENETICS 413

for arousing his interest and at least introduce him to the genetic
point of view. Individual researchers in eugenics or organizations
conducting eugenic research could then arrange with medical
men for the joint interpretation of the data which the medical
man had gathered.

The same principle could be followed in the case of school
teachers in whose training a course on the biology of their material,
and on means of recording data could most profitably be inserted.

The suggestions as to the training of medical men and teachers,
as well as to the modification of the functions of the eugenic field
worker, are all of them based on essentially the same principle.
This involves the clear separation of the function of collecting and
recording of data from its final interpretation, unless all the col-
lectors and observers are, in the highest degree, trained in scientific
methods and thought in either genetics, general biology, or both.
They should confine themselves to the mechanical and, in so far as
possible, impersonal work of gathering data in the form of perma-
nent, records, obtained from standard tests under direct observa-
tion.

With data of this type we should find the experimental genet-
icist becoming more frequently interested in a problem of human
genetics than he ever can be under the existing methods.

In colleges as well as in other educational institutions, the em-
ployment of observers to collect and record data will result in
educating the general population of the institution in the problem
under consideration. The whole scheme will undoubtedly work out
on the basis of compound interest and result in a steady increase
in the numbers and efficiency of workers.

The value of collecting data in large business concerns or fac-
tories is also clear. Here one will be able to gather information
as to efficiency under certain performance tests, as well as on the
general mental attributes of accuracy, consistency, and industry.
Psychological tests of the type of those in use in the army are
already in a state of development sufficiently advanced to be of
ereat value.

D. Conclusion.

The program as outlined is admittedly incomplete and in tenta-
tive form. Generally speaking, it utilizes natural gathering places
of people at all ages, and by a continuation (with certain modi-
fications) the training of eugenic field workers, together with the
training of school teachers and medical men, it plans to interest an
ever increasing group of observers who will gather by methods of
direct observation, data on human genetics.

It proposes to decrease to a minimum, or to abandon, except for

414 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the preliminary work, methods of pedigree study as at present
practiced, and by the processes outlined above to replace it grad-
ually by pedigrees more nearly comparable in their degree of ac-
curacy with those obtained by experimental geneticists working
with mammal material.

It proposes to collect data on such subjects as birth, length and
weight, head form, sex-ratio, rate of growth, susceptibility to dis-
ease, incidence of abnormalities (morphological and physiological),
mental capacity, specific and general, age at maturity, as well as
the variations commonly recorded such as hair color, shape, eye
color, skin color, et cetera.

Furthermore, as indicated above, any and all of these points
may be analyzed on the basis of contrasting the progeny of rela-
tively pure (inbred) and hybrid (outbred) matings, of first births
as compared with subsequent births, of young parents as compared
with old, of negro with white and other racial types, of country
bred parents with city bred, of college graduates with non-college
graduates, of parents who were first children compared with those
who were not, of brunettes versus blondes within any particular
nationality, of parents suffering with various diseases as opposed
to those not so afilicted, of births out of wedlock compared with
legitimate births, of parents from tropical climates as compared
with those from temperate or arctic, and eventually of children
born to the same parents in one climate compared with those born
from the same parents in a new environment.

The above plan has its justification in the belief that under the
present methods the breach between eugenicists and geneticists will
become wider and wider, and without it eugenics will not be able
to utilize the existing genetic methods of analysis and so maintain
its place among the truly experimental sciences. Because the per-
manent welfare of the eugenic movement is at present prejudiced,
a radical and immediate shift in viewpoint on the part of those
directing eugenic research and thought is urged.

By looking ahead to the time when the pedigrees built on the
new plan are beginning to take definite form, we can rest assured
that there will be ample reward in the shape of information suffi-
ciently accurate to warrant a detailed program of ‘‘mate selec-
tion’’ work at just about the time that the public as a whole is
ready for it, and in an approach to the problems of human heredity
in a way not now possible.

In the meantime, we shall have accomplished a great amount
of research of direct biological and economic value to our country,
and shall have laid a firm and respected foundation for research
in human genetics throughout the world.

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 415

MENTAL AND PHYSICAL CORRESPONDENCE
IN TWINS. II

By ARNOLD GESELL, Ph.D., M. D.

DIRECTOR OF YALE PSYCHO-CLINIC, NEW HAVEN, CONN.

III. THe Basis or CORRESPONDENCE AND DISPARITY IN TWINS

The problem of resemblance in twins is one of critical signifi-
eance. If we could solve it with any completeness even for one
pair of duplicate twins, we should thereby gain much insight into
more general problems of heredity, development and education.
Dr. Morton Prince has ealled double personality a veritable gold
mine for the study of psychological phenomena. Duplicate twins
represent double personality in a different but no less pregnant
sense.

Individual differences among unrelated human beings are al-
most infinite in variety. We do not expect even two leaves from a
forest to be exactly alike; much less human beings. Persons promi-
nent in public life often have a double; but the degree of identity
will usually not bear very close inspection. Very rarely indeed
do police bureaus find eases of even apparent physical duplication
among criminals and crooks. A remarkable and authentic case,
reported from the U. 8S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas,
relates of two colored prisoners, Will West, No. 3426, and William
West, No. 2626, whose photographs and Bertillon measurements
as well as names were strikingly alike, and who with their hats
on were almost indistinguishable. But even this resemblance
proved to be superficial, and did not rest on any developmental
identity.

The question of correspondence and disparity in twins involves,
of course, the deeper problem of the genesis of twins. It can not
be said that this problem has been solved. Biologists have for some
time accepted a classification of human twins into two distinct
types: (1) fraternal twins, who may or may not be of the same
sex, who show ordinary sibling or fraternal resemblance, and are
presumably derived from two separate eggs (dizygotic) ; (2) dupli-
cate twins, who are always of the same sex, closely resemble one
another, and supposedly originate from one fertilized egg only
(monozygotic). The existence of both types of twinning has been
indisputably established in the lower animals. There can be little

416 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

question about the occurrence of dizygotic (biovular) twinning
in the human family. There has, however, been some question in
regard to the frequeney of mono-zygotie twinning; and the pos-
sibility of reconciling specialization of resemblance and disparities
in co-twins with this mode of genesis. Biologists and embryolo-
gists, however, continue to recognize two distinct types of human
twinning. Obstetricians have adopted the same distinction, and
maintain that it is usually possible by an examination of the pla-
centa and foetal membranes to determine whether any given pair
of twins was mono- or bi-oval in origin.

Thorndike, as we have seen, seriously doubts whether twins
represent two distinct modes of fertilization and genesis, and thinks
there is no need of it, whatever, to explain the facts of the likeness
of twins, ‘‘for the closest likeness grades off gradually into notable
difference as one ranks twin pairs by their resemblance.’’ (Figure

9 if 2 190

From Thorndike’s Measurements of Twins.
Archives of Philosophy, Psy. and Sci. Methods, Vol. I. p. 44.
FIGURE 13. THE FORM OF DISTRIBUTION OF RESEMBLANCE IN TWINS

13) He admits that there is an increase in the resemblances of
children born at the same time over ordinary siblings; but thinks
it is due to a reduction of variability among germs produced at the
same time. In his series of twins, he found that even the most
similar twins differ markedly in some traits. This specialization
of resemblance he holds disproves the existence of the identical-
twin species. ‘‘The most identical twins will in some respect be
less like each other than ordinary siblings.’’ His argument is
summed up as follows:

The objections to the genesis of any considerable percentage of twins by
the development of two individuals from one ovum after fertilization are:
first, this specialization (of resemblance) which is well nigh universal;
second, the non-appearance of any such well-defined group of especially similar
twins; third, the fact of triplets, all three as identical as any two twins;
fourth, the too great frequency of close resemblance.

Let us consider some facts regarding the development of twins,
which may perhaps diminish or divert the force of these objections.

Bateson has given us a very broad conception of twinning in
his formula ‘‘the production of equivalent structures by division.’’
He regards it as a fundamental manifestation of life. ‘‘When I
look at a dividing cell, I feel as an astronomer might do if he

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 417

beheld the formation of a double star; that an original act of
nature was taking place before me.’’ Cellular division, as such,
is not twinning; but the tendency of the divided or repeated parts
to assume symmetrical relations may be so regarded; and this
tendency is an almost universal feature of biological mechanics.
The fact that the experimental embryologist can bring about the
growth of a paired structure by a simple wound: of a single limb
bud reveals the fundamental nature of twinning. Of similar sig-
nificance is the fact that Loeb produced a 90 per cent. increase in
twins by a simple immersion of his experimental eges in lime-free
sea water, which caused the segments of the living eges to fall
apart as they were formed. Newman, likewise, regards the phe-
nomenon of twinning as a ‘‘very fundamental process almost uni-
versal in the field of biology. For wherever we have bilateral
doubling, we have twinning in some form.’’

From this point of view every bilateral individual may be con-
ceived as being morphologically a pair of twins. This view is so
legitimate that it need not be called paradoxical. The human in-
dividual is undoubtedly derived from a single fertilized cell. He
is monozygotic in origin. From this zygote, through a process of
symmetrical division, develop all his right and left hand homolo-
gous organs and the right and left halves of his ‘‘unpaired’’ organs
and structures. He is a product of developmental duplicity. Now
in the case of true, complete monozygotic twins, this process of
dupleation has been earried to such a degree that two offsprings

ME MOOE

KA ARE E
NON ae
¥ RO WS Mh

From American Journal of Anatomy, Vol. Ill, p. 473.

FIGURE 14. WILDER’S DIAGRAMS SHOWING THE INTER-RELATIONS OF VARIOUS SORTS
OF DIPLOPAGI AND DUPLICATE TWINS

VOL. XIV.—27.

418 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

result from the single ovum. A perfectly symmetrical bilateral
individual on the one hand, and a perfect pair of duplicated in-
dividuals on the other represent the ideal extremes of the process
of twinning. Between these extremes there are many gradations
and deviations, some of them benign, other monstrous, in charac-

From Gesell’s Hemi-hypertrophy and Mental Defect,
Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, Vol. VI, p. 409

FIGURE 15. A CASE OF HEMI-HYPERTROPHY,. AGE 13

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 419

ter. Instead of a full twinning of the whole body, there may be
twinning of various parts or only of one part. For example in the
type of twinship known as diprosopus diopthalmus, described by
Ballantyne, ‘‘the size of the head and the presence of two noses
may be almost the only signs of duplicity.’’

- Wilder’s diagram, reproduced in Figure 14, shows graphically
some of the numerous interrelations: of diplopagi and duplicate
twins. We should, I think, add the condition of hemi-hypertrophy
to this series. Hemi-hypertrophy would be represented by a
drawing in every respect like the normal figure Al, except that
one half would be portrayed as definitely larger than the other.
Hemi-hypertrophy is a total unilateral enlargement of one half of
the body. This rare anomaly may be interpreted as an atypical
or imperfect form of twinning,—a variant of the same process
which may produce a double headed monster, or a completely sym-
metrical individual. Sometimes the disparity of the two sides of
a hemi-hypertrophie individual is so great that there will be eight
teeth on the enlarged side when none have erupted on the other ;
as though the individual had two physiological ages, or as though
he were two different, conjoined hemi-creatures! Careful meas-
urements of a case of hemi-hypertrophy, studied by the author
when the subject was 13 and 20 years of age, showed that the mild
gvigantism was a permanent condition and involved apparently the
whole right side. (Figure 15.) The right half of the nose was
larger, the right nares twice that of the left in diameter, the right
palpebral fissure was wider; on the same side the cheek and lips
were fuller; the arm was larger, the right hand was relatively more
enlarged than some of the other structures; the right leg and foot
were similarly enlarged. On palpation the hypertrophied side
had a more doughy feel than the left. This suggested redundancy
of the subeutaneous tissue, but the roentgen rays showed that the
bones themselves had participated in the hypertrophy. (Gesell,
Op. cit.)

Davenport regards size or stature as a unit character of in-
heritance, subject to mendelian principles; but this does not assist
us in interpreting the curious stature anomaly embodied in hemi-
hypertrophy. We are probably dealing with some quantitative im-
balance in the processes which normally determine symmetry and
twinning.

Newman has made suggestive researches into heredity and or-
ganic symmetry in armadillo quadruplets. He has noted some
eases in which one lateral half of the body has quite a different
number of scutes from the other half, and one of these halves re-
sembles the maternal condition. Since each set of quadruplets

420 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

have the same genetic constitution in as much as they arise from
one zygote, he concludes that some irregularity in the mechanism
of the mitotic cell division is responsible for the anomalies of sym-
metry. This factor is by no means a simple one. ‘‘Now in the
armadillo there are many evidences of a system of symmetry com-
mon -to all of the quadruplets, upon which has been superimposed
a secondary symmetry system between twins. This in twins is
more or less obliterated by a tertiary symmetry between the ante-
meric halves of the single individuals.”’

R. G. Harrison discusses rules of symmetry in his monograph
‘*On Relations of Symmetry in Transplanted Limbs.’’ This study
is based on 462 eases of grafting of Lmb buds in amblystoma punce-
tatum. He agrees with Morgan that the potential factors of sym-
metry reside in the constitution of the egg. ‘‘It is the intimate
protoplasmic structure that underlies symmetry.’’ Likewise re-
versal of symmetry. ‘‘As an alternative to the hypothethis of
rotation, we might consider reversal as due to reversal of mole-
cular asymmetry according to analogy with the behavior of op-
tically active compounds.’’ ‘‘There is an analogy between the
production of enantiomorphic hmbs and the production of situs
inversus viscerum, as effected by Speemann. (Speeman obtained
a large number of twins in Triton by constricting the eggs in seg-
mentation stages or in early blastula. In many of the cases one
individual, usually the right, developed complete situs inversus
viscerum.) Either the reversal may be due to reversal of the in-
timate structure, or it may take place in spite of the intimate
structure through the direct action of mechanical factors on the
individual parts of the differentiating system.’’ (Journal of Ex-
perimental Zoology, Vol. 32, p. 1.)

Another form of asymmetry, no less startling than hemi-hyper-
trophy is that of gynandromorphism. A gynandromorph is an
animal that is male on one side and female on the other. This
differentiation may include the reproductive organs, gonads and
ducts. Usually it is longitudinally bilateral, but it may be antero-
posterior. This curious phenomenon is most frequent in insects
but has been reported in birds and in a few mammals. A beautiful
case was described in a mutillid wasp in which the male half of the
body was black and winged like the male while the female half was
a rich red and wingless.

The problem of gynandromorphism has been extensively studied
by T. H. Morgan and C. B. Bridges and reported in their contribu-
tions to the geneties of Drosophila Melanogaster. They found one
eynandromorph among every 2,200 flies. The authors consider a
gynandromorph to be a hybrid whose genes are carried by the sex

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 421

chromosome ; and they give definite evidence that the peculiar sex
mosaic condition is due to an elimination of one X chromosome,
usually at some early division of the segmenting nuclei.

The asymmetry embodied in hemi-hypertrophy and even in
gyandromorphism is benevolent when compared with the deformi-
ties and monstrosities that may occur in the field of pre-natal
pathology, where one twin becomes a mere parasite upon its normal
ecotwin. The germinal conditions may have determined an entirely
normal pair of twins, of equal partnership in the rights of life.
But in all single ovum (monozygotic) twins there is always a cer-
tain area of the placenta in which there is an anastomosis between
the two vascular systems of the pair of embryos. If the balance
of power between the two uterine inhabitants is equal; and if na
marked positional or physiological preference is given to either
one, this partial community of blood supply earries no penalty.
But a stronger or favored embryo may appropriate an increasing
monopoly of blood, so that the sibling foetus degenerates into an
acephalic, acardiae, trunkless or amorphous parasite. Here, as Bal-
lantyne remarks, nature ‘‘attains to the extreme limit of terato-
logical expression.’’ One twin may be relatively normal, but the
ecotwin dwindles developmentally into a vegetative mass of mal-
formed, or unformed tissues.

This glimpse into the teratology of the subject shows that twin-
ning actually expresses itself in two apparently contradictory end
results. It may produce perfect symmetry and mirror imagery;
or it may produce gross disparity. Nowhere in the study of man
do we find such complete duplication of individuality as among
monozygotic twins; and nowhere do we find also such profound
and monstrous degrees of individual difference as among twins
of monozygotic origin. in this biological sense the range of in-
dividual difference is incomparably greater among monozygotic
twins than among unselected pairs of individuals; for we must
include among the former those aberrant foetuses which are so
extraordinarily grotesque that they have lost all semblance even
to the embryonic human form.

It must be recognized that dizygotic twins may undergo see-
ondary fusions in the developmental period and be born as con-
joined twins; but true double monsters are placed more readily
in the monozygotic category. Wilder holds that there is a close
relation between duplicate twins and double monsters; of the type
in which one twin is a degenerate parasite upon the other, and
also of the lightly conjoined type of twins, who can sometimes be
severed successfully by a surgical operation. Newman agrees with
Wilder in the view that these are all monozygotic in origin, and

429 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

LEGEND
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PEDIGREE CHART FOR FIVE GENERATIONS

The diagram above illustrates a remarkable record of ‘‘a woman who, in three successive marriages, has never had a single child at a
birth.” A history of this case shows that there have heen multiple births in each of four successive gencrations. The propositus who is
indicated by No. Sin the third generation (111-3) was married three times. (Pig. 35.)

From the Journal of Heredity, Vol. 10, p. 383.
FIGURE 16. A CASE OF HEREDITY TWINNING

asks the question, ‘‘What more natural, therefor, than to infer
that separate twins which are of the same sex and strikingly alike
are also monozygotic?’’ Parenthetically it may be stated that
Newman has definitely established the fact that armadillo twins.
are monozygotic in origin, and that twimning is a specific heredi-
tary character in this species.

The problem of physical and mental resemblance in dizygotie
twins is more simple. Dizygotic twins must be considered merely
as two contemporaneous individuals. As a class such contem-
poraries doubtless show a higher degree of psycho-physical re-
semblance than non-contemporaneous siblings, but in any given
pair we must be prepared to find ordinary fraternal individual
differences. Such twins usually look no more alike than ordinary
brothers and sisters, are easily distinguished by physical, mental
and temperamental characteristics. (Figure 17.) Indeed one such

From Journal of Heredity, Vol. 10, p. 402.
FIGURE 17. FRATERNAL (DIZYGOTIC) TWINS
Their mother writes, ‘‘ They are so utterly unlike in every way that it is hard
for any one to realize that they are twins.’’

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 423

CHART 84
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) Gd IN] Gi NIN] CM &? ©

EDDLE B

From Goddard's Feeblemindedness, its Causes and Consequences

FIGURE 18. FAMILY CHART OF TWINS, ONE MENTALLY NORMAL, ONE FEEBLE MINDED

twin may be mentally normal while the cotwin is backward or even
feeble-minded. Goddard made a study of the family histories of
327 feeble-minded individuals. Fifty-one of his charts recorded
the birth of twins. In four of these cases, one of the twins was
mentally normal and the other feeble-minded (Figure 18). Sur-
prising as this may seem to those who make the term ‘‘twin’’
snyonymous with resemblance, it is not difficult to explain. Two
Separate ova were in each case probably fertilized by separate
spermatozoa. In one case both gametes were defective, in the
other only one or neither. There is no reason to expect duphea-
tion or identity under such conditions of conception.

A few cases of twins have been reported in which one child
was normal and the other of the mongolian type of mental defi-
ciency (Figure 19). Mongolism is characterized by a small rounded

From Journal of Am. Medical Asso., Vol. 78. No. 1. (Dr. Stafford McLean).
FIGURE 19. MONGOLIAN IDIOT AND NORMAL TWIN SISTER AT 6144 MONTHS

424 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

skull, hypertrophied tongue with enlarged circumvallate papille,
oblique almond eyes, and frequently lax joints, broad, flabby hands
and feet, defective circulation, and nearly always imbecile mental-
ity. Mongolans look so much alike, it has been remarked, that they
appear to be members of the same family. However, Mongolians
themselves do not beget children and the cause of the condition is
very obscure. If the cases of one Mongolian in a pair of twins
have been correctly diagnosed and reported, it suggests that the
twins were dizygotic and the defect one of specific hereditary
transmission. If it represents an endocrine disturbance, it may be
that the endocrine defect itself was germinally determined. It is,
however, necessary to be cautious in conclusions on this point.
I have, myself, seen a pair of mentally subnormal, duplicate twins,
pupils in a special class, who presented physical and mental fea-
tures intermediate between true mongolism and the simple clinical
variety of feeblemindedness. How shall we explain these semi-
mongol or mongoloid types in presumably a genetically identical
pair?

The necessity of caution in interpreting the role of chromo-
somes and hormones in asymmetric twins is well warranted by the
confusion which associated itself with the rationalization of the
freemartin. The freemartin is well known to eattle breeders as a
sterile twin, born cotwin to a normal male. Professor Newman
eredits F. R. Lilhe with having solved this baffling and contro-
versial mystery. ‘‘Lillie’s work has revealed the true nature of
the freemartin; it is a sterile female whose gonads remain in the
juvenile stage so that they resembles testes, and which has certain
secondary sexual characters of the male due to the presence for a
considerable period of male hormones in the blood borrowed from
its male cotwin. The animal is hermaphrodite only in a very
limited sense. The work leaves no question as to the dizygotic ori-
gin, not only of opposite-sexed, but also of same-sexed bovine
twins.”’

If hormones play a regulative réle in prenatal development, it
might be argued that the interchange in blood supply made pos-
sible by the vascular anastomosis in the placenta of monozygotic
twins, would tend to exert an equalizing influence upon the foetuses.

‘The term mongolian has just been used in a clinical and not
an ethnological sense; but it indirectly recalls those instances in
which twins actually present racial disparity rather than resem-
blanee. This amazing possibility rests on the well recognized oc-
currence of super-fecundation, in which one impregnation is after
a brief interval followed by another and the mother gives birth te
dizygotie twins. Under illicit conditions there may be two fathers,

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 425

From Journal of Heredity, Vol. X, p. 428.
FIGURE 20. IDENTICAL TWINS FROM JAPAN, YEIICHI AND YUJI OGATA, OF TOKIO

of not necessarily similar race, for the pair of twins. Dr. John
Archer, the first man to receive a medical degree in this country,
reported a case in which a white woman was delivered of twins,
one white and the other mulatto.

We are, therefore, confronted with an extraordinarily wide
gamut of quantitative and qualitative diversities in the field of
human twinning. The factors which bring about these diversities
are not only germinal, but post-germinal, genetic and develop-
mental. Their combined action may help to obscure the bi-modal-
ity of the distribution curve for twin resemblances, but leave un-
impaired the validity of a classification into the two traditional
groups.

It must be remembered that there are wide variations possible
within either of these groups. Neither process works with iron
elad rigidity or uniformity. For example, Williams recognizes
that single ovum twins may be produced in one or all of as many
as four different ways: 1. By fertilization of two polar bodies.
2. By premature separation of one or more blastomeres from a
segmenting ovum. 3. By cleavage of the embryonic area. 4. By
double gastrulization of the blastodermie vesicle. Moreover we
must recognize the indisputable occurrence occasionally of an
ovum with double germinal vesicle (two nuclei). Boveri has sug-
gested the additional possibility,—actually demonstrated on eggs
of sea-urchins and bees—that a sperm may occasionally unite with
only one half of a precociously divided ovum, leaving the other
half to develop parthenogenetically (Danforth). Recently Pro-
fessor R. S. Lillie has suggested that the process of development is

426 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

basically regulated by some physiological influence of a repressive
or inhibitory kind comparable to chemical-distance action, which
is indeed essentially a form of bio-electriec control through poten-
tial-difference. We have already noted the existence of purely
nutritional and hormone factors in the developmental period; and
we have Newman’s general observation that im human twins,
‘‘twinning is by no means a single fixed process, but is highly
variable, evidently beginning earlier and being more complete in
some cases than in others.’’

Now these various suggestion do not suddenly elarify the prob-
lem of correspondences in twins, but they do make more intelligible
the distribution of correspondences and disparities which is ac-
tually found; and they do not necessitate the denial of a relatively
frequent occurrence of monozygotic twinning.

From Journal of Heredity, Vol. X. p. 409.
FIGURE 21. TYPICAL DUPLICATES

CORRESPONDENCE IN TWINS 427

Very pertinent to the whole question of resemblance of twins
is Newman’s theory of’ somatic segregation. The conception of
specialization of resemblance is dependent, of course, upon some
kind of unit character method of hereditary determination; but
Newman holds that although every character has a genetic basis
in the zygote, ‘‘the exact expression of character is dependent upon
developmental or epigenetic factors that vary in each individual
case.”’

For this reason there may be disparities between two sides of
an individual, disparity even in the friction ridge patterns of his
two hands; or a disparity in statwre as we have noted in our case
of hemi-hypertrophy. Such asymmetries are expressions of dif-
ferentiation through somatie segregation.

‘“‘The unilateral appearance of an inherited unit character,
such as a friction-skin pattern, almost certainly implies some uni-
laterality in the somatic distribution of the differentiating factor
for this character. Whether the character appears in one or in
both of a pair of twins (which are genetically equivalent to the
right and left sides of a single individual), or, finally, whether it
appears in one, two, three, or four of a set of armadillo quadru-
plets, depends on whether the differentiating factor is distributed
during the earliest cleavage in a unilaterat or bilateral fashion;
in other words, whether, with respect to the differentiating factor
in question, the earliest cleavages have been equational or differ-
ential.”’

In brief, the early somatic divisions in the genesis of twins may
be fully as important agents in segregating unit characters, as are
the germinal division which characterize the maturation of the
gametes. Specialization of resemblance in twins is consistent with
this view, but it is also quite consistent with a monozygotic inter-
pretation of twins which reveal numerous fundamental corre-
spondences. :

The statistical facts concerning specialization of twin resem-
blance investigation will serve as a wholesome deterrent of rash
eeneralization; but they should not prevent us from recognizing
thoroughgoing similarity when it actually presents itself. After
all. an accumulation of numerous specialized resemblances with a
few exceptional disparities, in two paired individuals, amounts
practically to duplication.

To a clinical psychologist who is so constantly impressed with
the differences which obtain both among normal and abnormal indi-
viduals. it seems almost like a violation of the laws of nature to
find in one afternoon two personalities which are practically indis-
tineuishable. From the biological point of view, however, there is

428 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

no reason why such instances of almost complete duplicity should
not occasionally occur. The germinal and the somatic determina-
tions of development may be so nicely balanced during the period
of conception and cleavage, that we may have two persons who,
psychologically as well as morphologically, stand for but one in-
dividual to the pair. Of the case of A and B, described in the
foregoing pages, Shakespeare might again have said, ‘‘The apple
cleft in two is not more twin than these two creatures.”’
AuTHoR’s Nore: The reader of this article may be acquainted
with an interesting pair of twins. The author will be grateful to
receive any letters or photographs, bearing on the problem of
physical and mental resemblances in twins. He is particularly
interested in developmental correspondences observed in infaney
and childhood. Address: Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

LATENT LIFE, OR APPARENT DEATH 429

LATENT LIFE, OR, APPARENT DEATH

By Professor D. FRASER HARRIS

DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, N. S., CANADA

O the ordinary person nothing seems easier than to be able to
. distinguish between life and death, or to be less abstract,
between a living animal and a dead one. A child ean tell a dead
tree in the woods when it sees one. <A person naturally thinks of
the entire organism as alive, the signs of its life being that it is
warm, that it breathes, that its heart beats and that it is aware
of its surroundings, all of which is in sharp contrast with the cold,
still, unconscious corpse in which the beating of the heart has
ceased for ever.

If asked to say whether an animal lying in the road was alive or
dead, we should at once try to arouse it, stimulate it as it is tech-
nically called, and if, on its receiving the stimulus—a shout, a pin-
prick, a touch with the boot—the animal jumped up or turned
over, you would at once say it was alive; if it failed to so so, you
would assume it was dead. In physiological language, an animal
on being stimulated if alive will respond in some way or other, if
dead it will not. Exactly the same reasoning applies to the isolated
tissues, heart, muscle, ete., of the body; if they are alive they re-
spond to stimulation, if dead they do not.

Response or reaction to the environment is then the great ecri-
terion of life; this property of being able to respond to a stimulus
is called affectability or irritability. A dead organism having no
affectability, fails to respond to stimulation ; it is dead to the world.
Response to stimulus is the chief test of livingness whether of in-
dividual, organ, tissue or cell.

Now we ean state quite precisely the differences between a living
animal and a dead one, for at present we are leaving plants out of
account.

A living animal organism is characterized by the following eapa-
bilities or powers:

(1). It can feed, that is assimilate to itself material (food)
chemically often quite unlike the composition of its own tissues,
for cannibalism is not exactly a common custom. This digestion
and incorporation involves excretion, or the getting rid of material

430 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

useless or injurious to the organism. The one word ‘‘metabolism’’
covers all the changes wrought on matter by a living being.

(2). It ean transform the potential energy of food into the
kinetic energy of heat (animal heat), movement, nerve-energy and
electric current. <A living organism under this aspect is an energy-
transforming machine.

(3). It is able to resist infection and, within limits, all agencies
tending to compromise its integrity. It can manufacture anti-
bodies, as they are called; they are biochemical responses to bio-
chemical insults.

(4). The living body has a life history; it has birth, youth,
prime, senescence. In other words, it goes through an orderly
sequence of irreversible phases. Every living thing springs from
‘an egg or ovum, which, being duly fertilized, enters on a course
of evolution or progressive unfolding of its tissues from the simple
to the complex, from the few to the many, from the immature to
the mature. The living being is never stationary; it has time re-
lations. It is interesting to note that amid this constant change of
material, the personality or identity of the organism is maintained.

(5). Finally, it can reproduce itself: clearly all organisms
that are to survive must be capable of reproducing their like.
Except in the lowest forms, where buds ean be east off and there-
after attain to the likeness of the parent (asexual method), the
method is the sexual, which requires the congress of two physio-
logically different individuals, the male and female parents from
whom proceeds the new organism.

None of these things can a dead organism do; it can not feed,
nor excrete nor produce heat; it passes through no sequence of
events, it can not reproduce itself, and finally it putrefies. Death,
then, is the permanent impossibility of exhibiting the characteris-
ties of vitality ; it is an irreversible state. In the author’s terminol-
ogy, death is a state of infinite physiological inertia, the biological
antipodes of affectability.

Livingness is exhibited not only by entire organisms but by
their constituent tissues and cells. For tissues and cells can feed,
excrete, produce heat and electric current, give rise to anti-bodies,
and, finally, produce new elements. The reason for the life of the
entire individual is that each of its ultimate constituents is alive.

In judging of the livingness of isolated organs, tissues and cells
we must have some convenient method capable of being followed
out in the laboratory. The signs of life in the laboratory are, for
instance, in the case of muscle—it absorbs oxygen, it gives out
carbon dioxide, it produces heat, it twitches or contracts, and
finally it can evolve an electric current.

LATENT LIFE, OR APPARENT DEATH 431

Of all these signs of life, the one mentioned last is by far the
most delicate, for tissues which have lone since ceased to exchange
gases with the atmosphere and even to produce detectable heat,
ean still give an electric current on being adequately stimulated.
The isolated heart of the frog or tortoise, for long after its gaseous
exchanges and heat-production are imperceptible, ean yield dis-
tinet electric currents to that sensitive instrument. the gealvano-
meter. Even after the heart has ceased to beat, as far as the un-
aided eye is concerned, it can still spontaneously evinee electric
disturbance; tissues other than the heart of course need first a
stimulus. The evolution of electric current is, then, the most deli-
cate sign of life, and it is also the last sign.

But it is also the first sign of life, for Professor A. D. Waller,
the English physiologist, has shown that the hen’s egg will give
an electric current just as soon as the almost invisible speck repre-
senting the future chick is constituted on the surface of the yolk.
Such widely different things as brain, liver, heart, muscle, eye,
seeds, green leaves, fruits and sea-weed will, on being stimulated,
produce an electric current. These currents are of course of very
feeble voltage; only in electric eels and other fishes are they so
powerful as to cause the death of other animals. The electric cur-
rent, since it is producible as soon as a being can be said to be
alive at all, and since it can be recorded long after every other
sign of life is gone, has been picturesquely called the alpha and
omega of animate existence.

Now it is clear that there must be degrees of livineness in tis-
sues, for, whereas some like liver and heart are intensely alive,
others such as the upper layers of the skin have little vitality and
yet others—enamel of teeth and horn of nail and hair—are abso-
lutely dead. Thus when Horace said ‘‘non omnis moriar’’ he was
not even altogether alive.

It is similar with entire organisms; we can construct a seale of
all degrees of livingness from the great physical and mental vitality
of a Helmholtz, a Gladstone or a Kelvin at one end, down to the
somnolent stupidity of the country yokel at the other. Further-
more, vitality undergoes diurnal variations, being at its maximum
at about ten o’clock m the forenoon and at its minimum between
3 and 4 o’clock a. m., a time when it is well known those who are
moribund usually die. Napoleon, whose saying that an army
marched on its stomach is based on sound physiology, used to say
that what concerned him was the state of a man’s courage at 4 a. m.

Compare the degree of vitality enjoyed by a eupeptie young
man just returned from a holiday with the depression of the hope-
less sufferer from melancholia. In melancholia all the tissues are

432 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

demonstrably less alive, less oxygen is absorbed, less carbon dioxide
excreted and less heat evolved.

Dr. Waller has shown that a green apple gives on stimulation a
more intense electric response than a ripe one, for the excellent rea-
son that it is younger, less mature. But that it not all: if the green
apple and the ripe one be very nearly killed by having had sent
through them a very violent electric stimulus (shock), both apples
for a time will be unable to show electric current but the young
apple will revive sgoner than the the older one. The analogy with
human beings is surprisingly close.

Medical thought at the present time is greatly interested in that
other sign of vitality, namely, resistance to infection, the power
of making anti-bodies of which the class called anti-toxins is the
best known.

New vegetables and animals can enter into a certain state in
which, although they are not showing any of the ordinary signs of
life, they are nevertheless not dead: this state is called latent life.
The only sign of livingness exhibited in latent life is the electric
current of Waller: in all other respects the organisms or tissues
may be regarded as dead. They are taking in no oxygen, giving
out no carbon dioxide, evolving no heat and are performing no
movements, so that the condition is also called apparent death.
A dried seed is a good example of this condition; it seems dead,
but the ordinary person can ascertain whether or not it is dead
by planting it in the ground and waiting until it has or has not
produced a plant. If it produces a plant it was alive, but we have
lost our seed, although we have gained a plant. Similarly, to know
whether an egg is alive( impregnated) or not, ‘‘wait and see’’ if it
hatches; if it does it was alive, but again we have lost our egg if
we have gained a chick. Waller’s method with seeds or an egg is
to send a strong (electric) shock through it; if it produces an elec-
trie response it is alive. Not only has Waller used the electric re-
sponse as a sign of life, he has also made it a quantitative measure
of the degree of vitality. He selected a number of seeds of Phaseolus
from one to five years old and tested one of each age for the pro-
duction of electric current. The respouses in fractions of a volt
were for the five years respectively—O.0170; 0.0052; 0.0043;
0.0036; and 0.0014—a very remarkable demonstration of the sta-
tistical aspect of livingness. The older the seed the less the re-
sponse; it is what one would have supposed, but it could not be
taken for granted.

These seeds were dry, they were to all intents and purposes
dead; they were lying in a pill-box doing nothing vital, but they
were not dead, they were in latent life; they could germinate and

LATENT LIFE, OR APPARENT DEATH 433

they could produce electric current. Drying is an excellent method
for sending many living things into la vie latente. It used to be
asserted that wheat found in mummy eases could germinate.
Mariette, the Egyptologist, definitely denies that this wheat can
do so; placed in water it becomes a clayey pulp. It is true, how-
ever, that seeds of the gorse have germinated after being 30 years
in latent life; seeds, after 87 years in a herbarium have sprouted,
and seeds kept for 200 years have actually produced plants.
Becquerel, the French naturalist, submitted the seeds of wheat,
mustard and lucerne to the following drastic treatment—having
perforated the seed-coats, he dried the seeds in a vacuum at 40° C.
and sealed up the seeds in a tube almost exhausted of air for one
year, submitted them to the temperature of liquid air (minus
198° C.) for three weeks and of liquid hydrogen (minus 250° C.)
for three days and then placed them on moist cotton wool, when
they germinated! Some fairy tales are not so interesting as this.

But it seems that even animal organisms can enter into latent
life. Ever since 1719 we have known this, for the Dutch naturalist,
Leeuwenhoek, found minute animals called Rotifers dried up in
mud apparently dead but able to live again when moistened with
water.

This rising as it were from the dead is called Anabiosis. Be-
sides the Rotifera, or wheel-animalcules, other minute animals the
Tardigrada, or bear animalcules, the Anguillulide, or paste-eels,
and some kinds of thread worms are all known to be able to sur-
vive extreme degrees of desiccation for as long as twelve years.
These animals are in a state very closely resembling death, but it is
not death for it ean be recovered from. Death is the permanent
impossibility of living again; it is an irreversible state which latent
life is not. From death Science knows no recall, no resurrection,
but from latent life it does. From it an organism can either go
back to full life or on to death. Latent life rather than sleep is
the image of death.

Obviously, only simple or lowly animals ean live after being
dried up; and yet the wheel-animalcules are not so extremely sim-
ple seeing that they have a nervous system.

A much more widely applicable method of sending organisms
into latent life is that of cooling them. By abstracting their heat,
a large number of very different sorts of plants and animals can
be so devitalized as to become apparently dead; that they are not
dead is known only from the fact that on being thawed they can
evince the usual signs of life.

The bacteria, the simplest of all plants, show extraordinary
resistance to refrigeration, for it has been proved that they can

VOL. XIV.—28.

434 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

be frozen down to the temperature of liquid air and yet retain
their vitality. The late Professor MacFadyen chilled certain
disease-producing organisms down to the temperature of liquid
air and made them so brittle that they could be powdered up in a
mortar, but after all this severe treatment it was found that on
being thawed, they had retained all their disease-producing prop-
erties. The bacteria of putrefaction have been frozen at the tem-
perature of solid alcohol and have yet on thawing retained their
full capacity to cause putrefaction. These frozen bacteria were
evidently not dead but only in latent life. The fact that the
“‘oerms’’ of decomposition of meat can be sent into latent life by
being frozen is taken advantage of in the commercial process of
cold storage. The beef is dead and, as we all know, liable to putrefy
unless it is frozen. Were there no germs of putrefaction on the
meat it would not putrefy ; but it does not ‘‘go bad’’ on its journey
from the Antipodes because the germs of putrefaction on it are
by the refrigeration sent into latent life. That they are merely
in suspended animation and not dead is proved by the familiar
fact that as soon as the meat is thawed out, it will ‘‘go bad’’ with
great rapidity which means that the bacteria on it and in it have
returned to their active vital condition of fermenting or decom-
posing the meat.

Recent research on the preservation of fruit in refrigerators has
shown that the spores of the Black Spot fungus can be kept for six
months at minus five degrees centigrade and yet germinate at ordi-
nary temperatures. It is a curious fungus, for its optimum tem-
perature is as low as zero centigrade. The whole problem of the
storage of fruit is being studied in the light of recent work in
Biology. Fruits—apples and pears—pulled off the tree and kept
for some time are still alive; in fact they are still breathing, that
is taking in oxygen and giving out carbon dioxide; they are not
dead, they are not even in latent life. They are not dead because,
for one thing, they are not putrefying, and in fact their tissues
and ferments are still too active to permit of them being de-
seribed as in latent life. They are, as everyone knows, ripening,
and this consists in their ferments forming sugar out of un-sweet
materials. By being chilled, however, fruits can be brought into
latent life which is evidently the condition to have them in if
storage for a long time is desired.

Apples keep best at one degree centigrade; freezing the fruit
destroys it because it breaks up the structure of the living cells
and kills them and so prepares them for active decomposition. Of
course, to freeze a solid mass like an apple requires a temperature
lower than the freezing point of water (0° C.). Apples are found

LATENT LIFE, OR APPARENT DEATH 435

to live best, that is ‘‘keep’’ best in an atmosphere containing more
oxygen and much more carbon dioxide than does the ordinary air.

Coming now to the animal kingdom, we find that by the ap-
plication of cold many organisms can be sent into latent life. Sir
Ernest Shackleton has reported that in the South Polar seas there
are certain lowly marine organisms frozen motionless in the ice
for ten months in the year, but able to swim about actively for the
other two. They pass alternately from life to latent life, from ap-
parent death to life; they have a yearly anabiosis. As one might
expect, the cold-blooded animals survive degrees of refrigeration
which would kill the warm-blooded. Physiologists know that
snails, water-beetles, insects, frogs and fish can withstand tempera-
tures so low that warm-blooded animals would be killed outright.

Sir John Franklin in his Polar Expedition of 1820 reported on
carp fish frozen so hard that the intestines of some of them could
be taken out en bloc, and yet that others of the same batch of fish
revived and moved actively when thawed before a fire. Fishes
frozen in a block of ice at minus 15° C. have been known to sur-
vive although the bodies of some of their companions were so hard
they could be powdered up along with the ice. A fish has been
frozen in a block of ice, then sawn in half along with the ice and
each half has, on being melted, performed active movements.

The louse (Pediculus) has been known to be alive after no
fewer than seven days submersion in freezing water. The frog is
an animal that can withstand being frozen without being killed.
It is possible to exhibit at the beginning of a lecture on physiology
a frog frozen so stiff that it ean be held out horizontally by the
toes like a piece of board and yet, on allowing the frog to thaw, to
show that it can skip about before the end of the hour like any
other healthy animal.

On the approach of winter frogs descend into the mud at the
bottom of the pond and there rest in latent life until next spring ;
this is their form of hibernation. In all probability they are not
frozen stiff, but their life processes must be at an exceedingly
low ebb. Snakes behave in a similar manner.

The French scientist Pictet has stated that frogs can endure
a temperature of minus 28° C. This seemed to the writer so very
low a temperature for frogs to live through that he made a num-
ber of experiments on the subject to gain further information.

He found that frogs could be frozen stiff as regards their skin
and muscles and yet remain alive inasmuch as their hearts were
still beating although probably not carrying on an efficient circu-
lation of blood. It was found that if ice formed around the in-
ternal organs and especially around the heart, they could not sur-

436 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

vive. It was shown that, in the case of a frog whose mouth tem-
perature had been minus 7.5° C. for three hours, and whose heart
had stopped beating, that the muscles of the eyes and of the tongue
would still respond by twitching when stimulated by powerful
electric shocks. It was found that the duration of chilling had an
important effect, a frog whose internal temperature was minus
10° C. was alive at the end of the first hour but not at the end of
the second. Temperatures lower than minus 10° C., if the frogs
survived them, could have been endured only for comparatively
short periods.

When we come to the warm-blooded animals, we find that, as
might be expected, they cannot withstand anything like the ex-
treme degrees of drying and chilling which the more lowly and
hardy animals are able to endure. Nevertheless tissue changes can
become so depressed in some of the warm-blooded animals that a
state of virtually latent life can be entered upon. Such a condi-
tion is seen in the hibernation or winter sleep of bears, tortoises,
hedge-hogs, dormice and marmosets. On the approach of winter
these animals, having already laid on a large store of fat, retire
into some place of shelter, and, ceasing to breathe, go into a deep
sleep until the spring. The amount of oxygen they consume is the
irreducible minimum, the heat they evolve is very small; they live
on their own body-fat and other tissues, for of course they eat no
food at all. When they emerge next year they are extremely thin.
We learn from these cases of hibernation that even after breath-
ing ceases, the animal may yet live; but it may surprise some read-
ers to learn that even after the heart has ceased beating the organ-
ism does not necessarily die all at once. The fact is, many of the
tissues of the body live for a long time after the body as a whole
is dead. In more technical language this is local life after somatic
death. Thus some muscles live for hours, and the skin and hair-
roots live for days after general or somatic death. It is well known
that if the face be shaved immediately after death, that the hairs
will have grown to a perceptible extent within the next day or two.
In regard to the human being, we pronounce the person dead when
breathing has ceased and the pulse is no longer perceptible. The
breathing may be so slight that only by the moisture of the breath
condensing on a mirror ean it be known to be going on. Shake-
speare alludes to this in King Lear:

I know when one is dead and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth—lend me a looking glass.
If that her breath will moist or stain the stone,
Why then she lives. (Lear, Act V, se. 2).

Though the pulse at the wrist be no longer felt, yet the heart

LATENT LIFE, OR APPARENT DEATH 437

may be alive, fluttering rather than beating in such a eondition
that if we could get at it and massage it, it would revive to some
extent for a time at least. This possibility is now made use of by
the surgeon whose patient’s heart may stop during an abdominal
operation. Without loss of time he inserts his hand into the wound
and strikes the heart a few gentle blows through the diaphragm
with the result that the heart sometimes recommences beating.

It may be now asked, can a human being enter into the state of
latent life? The answer is ‘‘Yes;’’ but in so replying, we must
recollect the kind of suspended animation which is compatible with
the delicate protoplasmic structure and the complicated chemical
behavior of human tissues. No mammal, no human being can be
dried up or frozen stiff like some of the lowlier creatures and yet
live. What we may admit is that life in man ean be retained when
all the vital processes have sunk to a minimum.

What is known as trance or narcolepsy is the form which latent
life takes in the human being. Every now and again we hear of
cases of persons, usually young women, going into profound and
prolonged sleep from which they do not awake for weeks or months.
During that time they take no food, they searcely breathe, their
heart’s action is at a minimum. This is of course quite different
from the hypnotic or mesmeric trance. Some people fear this
state of trance very much; they are in dread of falling into it and
being buried before they are really dead. Hence they insert ex-
plicit injunctions in their will that their physician is to open a
vein or in some other way assure himself that they are dead before
burial is permitted.

It is doubtless true that certain persons have been buried alive
in the sense that while the heart’s action was still at a minimum,
they have been placed in a coffin. Stories of persons ‘‘laid out’’
for the undertaker, and reviving on his arrival are not unknown.
Some persons have revived on the bier; but the number of persons
buried while the body as a whole lived is in reality very small.
Moribund persons have been buried at times of great confusion
during plagues and epidemics.

Possibly the most famous case of narcolepsy is that of Colonel
Townsend of Dublin which has been described by the well-known
Dr. Cheyne:

He could die or expire when he pleased, and yet .... by an effort he
could come to life again. He composed himself on his back and lay in a still
posture for some time... . I found his pulse sink gradually, till at last I

could not feel any by the most exact and nice touch.

Dr. Baynard could rot feel the least motion in the breast nor Dr. Skrine
perceive the least soil on the bright mirror he held to his mouth... . could
not discover the least symptom of life in him. We began to conclude he had

438 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

carried the experiment too far, and at last we were satisfied he was actually
dead .... By nine in the morning... .as we were going away we ob-
served some motion about the body, and upon examination found his pulse
and the motion of his heart gradually returning; he began to breathe heavily
and speak softly.

Still more extraordinary are the narratives of the Fakirs of
India who are said to allow themselves to be built up in sealed tombs
for weeks without food and to be alive at the end of that time.
Reports of these cases of human suspended animation are now too
numerous and too well authenticated by European eye-witnesses
of unimpeachable integrity to be set aside-as either in themselves
untrue or as due to collective hallucination.

Many people if asked to give an example of suspended anima-
tion would refer to the case of some one apparently dead through
drowning. Strictly speaking a person rescued from drowning may
be moribund, but not quite dead; there is, in physiological lan-
guage, enough local tissue life present to ensure the living of the
entire organism provided oxygen be got into the blood and so to the
tissues before they utterly perish. Therefore, still speaking strictly,
a drowned person is not in latent life, not in a condition which can
be kept up indefinitely and which will pass into full life in due
time. On the contrary, a drowned person is dying; but most for-
tunately, the several tissues do not die the moment the individual
as a whole dies but can survive long enough to be revivable if only
enough oxygen can reach them sufficiently soon. Of course, it all
depends on the heart and nervous system; if the heart is dead the
individual cannot live again; if the heart, though moribund, is
capable of absorbing oxygen and of beating again, the individual
will live provided also his central nervous system and particularly
the center for breathing is still alive. In the actual practice of
‘first aid,’’ it is well to assume that the person is alive and to per-
severe with artificial respiration while keeping the body warm for
as long a time as two or three hours before pronouncing life ex-
tinet.

The tales of frogs being found alive in the midst of blocks of
marble just broken open in the quarry have been the subject of
much controversy but they are not now credited.

The latent life of isolated tissues is a remarkable phenomenon.
Alexis Carrel of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research has
actually been successful in causing tissues isolated from chick em-
bryos to grow in glass vessels in a drop of blood-plasma for as long
a time as two or three years at ordinary temperatures. When, how-
ever this ‘‘culture’’ was placed in a refrigerator all growth was
stopped, and as long as it was chilled, it exhibited no growth, the

LATENT LIFE, OF APPARENT DEATH 439

isolated tissues having gone into latent life. Fragments of heart
muscle can similarly be kept in vitro for two or three months;
these beat spontaneously during all that period but ceased beating
when sufficiently chilled.

In some few eases latent life seems to be capable of being entered
upon after drastic treatment with certain chemicals. The insect,
the louse, is a case in point. A recent writer from Russia thus
describes its powers of resistance: ‘‘The louse is one of the hardiest
and most prolific pests: the majority of disinfectants and insecti-
cides he scorns; he can survive having drops of pure aleohol or
chloroform dropped on him.’’

The state of latent life may be regarded as a condition of high
resistance towards those conditions which make for death. Ab-
straction of water and of heat are both of them conditions tending
towards death; they involve speedy death in many organisms. But
such animals or plants as ean reduce their metabolism (respiration
and heat-production) to the irreducible minimum may escape
death in the half-way house of latent life. It is apparent death,
not real death which is a condition that can not be recovered from.
In the author’s terminology, the property of affectability has fallen
to a minimum, that of physiological inertia has risen towards a
maximum, the absolute maximum being reached in death itself.

All poisons tend to kill protoplasm, to immobilize it; death is
the complete immobilization of living molecules; whereas latent
life is a degree or stage towards this end. Any agencies like desic-
cation or refrigeration, or reagents like alcohol or chloroform
which diminish molecular mobility, tend to render life latent and
thereafter to extinguish it. Upon this partial immobilization de-
pends the efficacy of a large number of our drugs and the action of
many poisons. To abolish consciousness we administer chloroform, a
substance which, by uniting for a time with certain of the chem-
ically active radicles constituting protoplasm, immobilizes more
or less completely the whole molecular complex. The immobiliza-
tion of the molecules of the cells of the brain has as its psychical
correlative the disappearance of consciousness. The anesthetic
really tends to immobilize the brain cells, the cells of the breathing
center and the heart cells; what the surgeon wants is cerebral im-
mobilization with its counterpart unconsciousness to pain without
heart paralysis which would mean death.

The organism in latent life is not dead for it is capable of
manifesting once more all the vital attributes which no dead thing
ean do. It is however very far from being fully alive, for it may
be manifesting none of the attributes of livingness save the possi-
bility of developing a feeble electric current which can be detected

440 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

only by a delicate apparatus accessible to biological experts. It
is not dead however much it looks it.

In living matter, the molecular whirl] is at its intensest; in ~
latent life the molecular whirl is for a time arrested; in death the
molecular whirl has been stopped for ever. In life the dancers
are in the mazes of an elaborate figure; in latent life each indi-
vidual is standing stock still; in death every dancer has fallen
over. In latent life the weights of the protoplasmic clock have
been seized by a mysterious hand; in death they have descended to
their full extent and can not be wound up again, for the cord is
broken. In latent life there is only a stoppage, in death the end
has been reached. In life ‘‘the sands of time’’ are running out
rapidly ; in latent life the stream has stopped; in death the sand
is all in the lower globe.

In a sense very different from what the author of the lines
meant it, yet in a sense profoundly true:

’Tis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.

THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 441

THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN CHINA

By Dr. WILLIAM HENRY ADOLPH
SHANTUNG CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

HE writer recollects in attending his first course in industrial
\ chemistry that the lecturer introduced each subject with the
statement, ‘‘This substance was first discovered by the Chinese.’’
There were but one or two exceptions to this order of service. More
recent studies have caused an expression of a shade of doubt as to
the truth of all these claims made in behalf of the Chinese. The
people of China did early develop a skill in dyeing, glass-making,
manufacture of gunpowder and fire-works, preparation of cements,
etc., and this implied a knowledge of some sort of chemistry. The
early Chinese knew the distinction between green vitriol and blue
vitriol; while Pliny as late as the first century A. D. confounded
the two. They had indigo at a very early period and used it in
dyeing. They are responsible for many things long before the
European world had developed a need for them; but, on the other
hand, the tendency has been to consider the hoary annals of Chi-
nese history a convenient dumping ground for disposing of clouded
beginnings.

In tracing the early sources of science, it should be noted that
there were three distinct centers of almost independent develop-
ments—first, India; second, China, and third, the Egypt-Arabia-
Europe area which is our own. The Hindus claim responsibility
for being the teachers of both China and Europe in cultural mat-
ters, but there is doubt as to the validity of their claim, and there
seems little ground for believing that in the development of chem-
ical concepts these three areas were very closely related. It is of
no small importance to discover that each of these three spheres
developed a similar attitude of mind toward natural phenomena
and went through the same steps of growth independently.

China likewise began with an age of alchemy; this was followed
by the age of the iatro-chemists. These periods in each case were
somewhat in advance, chronologically, of our own. An elaborate
system of medicine was developed and mercuric chloride was used
as an antiseptic in surgery, though there is no ground for believ-
ing that the Chinese had any idea of the principle of sepsis. This
is but one of the many examples in China where practice far out-

442 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ran theory till theory was left hundreds of years behind. China’s
ancient bridge-building and canal construction are other examples.
The period of the iatro-chemists held sway in China till the close
of the nineteenth century, and the modern period has just begun.
Two hundred years ago, China and the occident were probably at
the same milestone in chemical science. It is just during the last
two hundred years that we have forged ahead and the Chinese
have stood still.

AGE oF ALCHEMY

The alchemists, as in Europe, began with an interest in the
metals. The copper age came to China possibly a little earlier
than to the occident, and the working of copper ores and the prep-
aration of its alloys were well known at an early period. Alchemy
received form as a distinct art about 1100 B. C. The important
metals were five in number—gold, silver, copper, iron, tin. Lead
was known but used only as an adulterant of tin so was not digni-
fied by a place among these five. Mereury was likewise known;
its common name was and is still water silver. These five metals
for centuries and centuries were the metals. It is of note that in
present day Chinese parlance the name for hardware store means
when translated five metals shop.

With the five metals begins the evolution of the idea ‘‘element.’’
The Chinese seem to have been desirous very early to reduce every-
thing to a primary substance, to resolve all compounds into ele-
ments. lLoa-dze, the Aristotle of China, dates at 700 B. C.; our
Aristotle is usually dated 350 B. C. The terms ‘‘element,’’ ‘‘orig-
inal substance,’’ etc., are frequently used, and seores of volumes
in the literature of older China discourse upon the original pri-
mary substance, though with scant experimental support. The
five metals were regarded as convertible one into the other; a va-
riation of this idea makes lead a complex which may be changed
under proper conditions into any one or all of these. This belief
grew from the fact that the galenites of China invariably contain
a good sprinkling of all these five metals.

ATOMIC THEORY

The clearest atomic theory makes all compounds and substances
reducible to a single substance which is a gas. This gas may recom-
bine with itself and assume various forms and groupings. These
are the secondary elements and one philosopher likens them to
vortex rings. These now are of two kinds, either positive or nega-
tive principles. Combination between a negative and a positive
may take place, and all the simple material substances are formed
in this way. The theory has a flavor slightly like onr present-day

THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 443

ideas of the constitution of the atom. It is doubtful whether there
was any more experimental evidence in the hands of the Chinese
to support these ideas than was possessed by Heraclitus with his
early fire-air-earth-water theory. It is quite certain, however,
that the Chinese did have more actual experience with chemical
substances and with what we now call chemical industries than had
these sages of ours. This theory was put into its final shape in
China about the tenth century.

Gunpowder was one of the substances which the Chinese had
early discovered. It was typical of substances whose action was
readily explained by this theory; a certain amount of one sub-
stance was mixed with a certain amount of another, and positive
uniting with negative produced the explosion.

One of the commonly used American chemistry texts makes the
statement that in the eighth century the Chinese recognized that
air was composed of two gases, an active gas which was termed
negative and which would combine with metals, sulphur and char-
coal. Moreover, it is stated that they knew that a number of min-
eral substances evolved this gas on heating, among which was salt
peter. The writer has been unable to locate the Chinese sources
from which all this information is derived. While the idea of posi-
tive and negative principles in chemical combination was a well
reeognized one applied to all sorts of substances, stili the above
statement is probably couched in modern phrases which give it
more of a chemical flavor than the original Chinese possessed.

No very clear distinction, if any, seems to have been observed
between compounds and mixtures, and alloys were looked upon
as genuine cases of combination. Much study and experiment was
directed to the bronzes. In fact, the composition of the ancient
bronzes is one of the interesting topics of chemical study in China
to-day. The ancient Chinese seem to have gotten it into their
heads that a law of simple ratios was required for the best com-
binations of copper and tin, and the following comprise the ‘‘Six
Ratios’’ from a book dated about 1000 A. D.:

Cu:Sn Ratio Variety of Bronze
bell metal
axes
spear heads
swords
knives
mirrors

pPwrnow rp oO
a ee

This was probably an a priori set of ratios. There may have
been some experiment attached, but the theoretical ratios for the
manufacture of these different bronzes was not strictly adhered to
in practice as recent analyses have shown.

444 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

It is of note that zine and antimony—and China is the present
day home of the antimony industry—were identified very late
among the metals. Zine was originally confounded with lead and
afterwards became known as secondary lead which term it carries
in the spoken language of to-day. No mention of antimony is
found in the old literature.

The substances derived from the metals—like blue vitriol, the
oxides, ete., were all recognized as definite compounds and the Chi-
nese also evolved a ‘‘phlogiston theory’’ proposing a fire element
to explain this relationship. This was several centuries before the
labors of Becker and Stahl! It was a very obvious method of ex-
plaining their observations, since the Chinese possessed almost none
of the chemical reagents, acids, ete., which our alchemists used, and
heat was the universal agent used in most transformations.

It would be impossible to even touch upon the metallurgy of the
ancient Chinese. This had been made a study for centuries and
had been reduced to a well-polished art. The actual methods ean
still be observed in use in China to-day, moreover they are essen-
tially the methods which were in use in Europe before modern
industry appeared. A modern metallurgist has suggested that the
Chinese discovered the pneumatic method for the manufacture of
steel at an early date, and that this accounts for the phosphorus
content of the famous Shansi steels. |

AGE OF IATRO-CHEMISTRY

Tatro-chemistry reached its high-water mark in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. The study of medicine had been assidu-
ously followed by the Chinese down the ages, and the original
edition of the Ben Tsao Gang Mu, the materia medica used at the
present day, was written by old Shen Nung at about 2800 B. C.
He is the Chinese ‘‘father of medicine’’ who corresponds to our
Hippocrates of about 450 B. C. The original of this materia medica
contained mention of one hundred substances. Through later re-
visions, it has been enlarged to include about six hundred, of which
one hundred and thirty-three are inorganic substances. It was
put into its present form about 200 A. D.

Many of the inorganic compounds were made directly from the
metal, and considerable stress was laid on the purification of the
original metals. The methods of amalgamation and cupellation
had been both used since ancient times. The important inorganic
compounds included blue vitriol, copper carbonate, copperas, the
iron salts, tin oxide, white lead, red lead, litharge, and all the com-
mon mereury compounds. The methods by which they were made

THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY IN CHINA 445

are similar to those our own alchemists employed. All these meth-
ods in remarkable detail are to be found in this Ben Tsao Gang Mu
which is the handbook in every Chinese drug shop.

White lead is manufactured from little lead plates by a method
which is the Old Dutch process in its essential features. China
and Holland did have some intercourse in ages back and the sug-
gestion has been made that the Old Dutch process may have come
from China.

Practical chemistry in China was held back considerably by the
faet that the acids and alkalis, except soda and acetic acid were
unknown. Sulphates were prepared by oxidation of the sulphides,
and although they did not have sulphuric acid, they were able to
bring about the same reactions by using blue vitriol and green
vitriol at high temperatures.

ERRORS OF CHINESE SCIENTISTS

Characteristic of the Chinese ‘‘scientists’’ down the ages is
that they lacked the inductive method. The philosophers con-
stantly preferred a priori deduction and have reasoned everything
by analogy. It seems that they truly had glimpses of the experi-
mental method but deliberately chose the other. A group of nat-
ural philosophers arose in the eighth century, whose leader Cheng
declares: ‘‘You must examine one thing to-day and another thing
to-morrow, and when you have accumulated a store of facts your
knowledge will burst its shell and come forth into fuller light,
connecting all the particulars by general laws.’’ If China had
only taken seriously the thoughts of this school instead of deliber-
ately discarding them, we, the oecident, might be the student in-
stead of the teacher in the modern school of science.

In addition to this, there is the spirit of inaccuracy which is
one of the most real characteristics of Chinese life, which is not so
much the cause as it is an attendant feature of China’s backward-
ness in scientific matters. China has a fine system of decimal units,
theoretically. But practically, while ten inches always make a
foot, a foot may be one of fifty different standards, depending upon
what it is that it is desired to measure, cloth, or silk, or timber,
ete., and according to the standard used it may signify a length
varying from 10 to 16 English inches. Distance along a road is not
absolute, but depends on another factor :—is the road easy travel-
ing,—is it through flat, or through mountainous country. A mile
up hill is shorter than a mile downhill. There is a very nice prac-
tieal philosophy behind some of these things, but they all point to
an attitude of mind which has tended to retard a desire for ac-
curate measurement and accurate thinking.

446 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

CONCLUSION

The above is but a rapid summary of some of the early accom-
plishments of the Chinese in the field of chemistry. The available
Chinese literature has only been superficially touched. It is hoped
an interest in more exhaustive studies will be roused.

It is evident that there were early minds at work in China on
chemistry, and while difficult to assign dates to each of the im-
portant forward steps, it seems clear that previous to the seven-
teenth century China held her own, and in point of time was pos-
sibly a little ahead of Europe. It seems also true that early Chi-
nese investigations were not more entangled with superstition and
necromancy than were the European. Chemistry in China stop-
ped growing about three hundred years ago, and admittedly the
glory of past achievements fades because the Chinese failed to
give their findings to the world.

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 447

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF
MATHEMATICS

By Professor ROBERT D. CARMICHAEL

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

ATHEMATICAL thought has exercised over my spirit a
fascination which is far-reaching in its effect upon my ac-
tivity and happiness. It is not an easy matter to present the char-
acteristics of this thought to one who has not been initiated into
the remarkable secrets of the science; indeed the difficulty is so
great that the task has seldom been attempted and not always with
happy consequences. And yet I have felt that I could not fail of
moderate success in this matter if I could reflect with any skill
the enthusiasms of my own delight, since I believe that the fire of
natural and spontaneous interest in one mind has the quality of
producing a corresponding exaltation in another.

There are elements of mathematical thought which illuminate
my spirit with a brilliant radiance whose after-images are pleasant
to contemplate. Perhaps I can not bring to you now one of these
moments of illumination of joy, for one can not produce them to
order or easily recapture them but I can hope to present certam
after-images which show some qualities of the original.

The impulse for the advancement of knowledge which is both
most fundamental and most far-reaching in its practical and ideal
effects is that which grows out of the pursuit of truth for truth’s
sake. What do we mean by this? What do we mean by mathe-
matics for its own sake? It is clear that we do not intend to set
up mathematics as a monster which must be worshipped, whom it is
our duty to delight with the incense of human sacrifice. We mean
rather to direct attention to the human values which are inherent
in it apart from its use as a tool in any of the varied ways in which
it may be so employed. Our purpose is to focus attention upon
its primary values, those which it has in and of itself, those which
are intimate to its own character and do not depend upon its uses
outside of its own domain.

We are fundamentally so constituted that we delight in know-
ing for the sake of knowing. It is our most abstract and our most
general motive in science. It actuates most powerfully our choicest
spirits, moving them sometimes with a fervor akin to that of re-

448 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ligion. A marvelous curiosity to know, insatiable and always de-
manding further satisfactions, creates a longing which can pe re-
lieved only by knowledge. It projects itself into the unknown and
leads the researcher in ways yet untrodden to a goal which can not
be foreseen. At the outer beundary line of knowledge, faint glim-
merings may be detected in the darkness of ignorance beyond.
What beckons us forth we do not know. Whether it can bring us
any good we have no means of foretelling. It may lead us to a
tragical something which will make it necessary for us, in much
pain, to cast away some of our most cherished prejudices. But,
whatever lies beyond in that which is concealed from our present
vision,
We work with this assurance clear,
To cover up a truth for fear
Can never be the wisest way;
By every power of thoughtful mind
We strive a proper means to find
To bring it to the light of day.

Systematic and unsystematic thought. In its further reaches
mathematics is perhaps the most abstruse of our mental disci-
plines; but in its first stages it is the simplest of those sciences
which have attained permanence of result. Mathematics is the
field of thought in which permanent progress is easiest. It has
obtained this facility through abstraction. The problems of nature
are complex beyond our ability to cope with or perceive. In the
first attempt to make progress in the way of definite conquest, we
must abstract from the complexity of the situation and attain to
a new one relatively much simpler. In fact we may find it neces-
sary to create a new situation having certain analogies with the
actual one of nature but being so much simpler that we are able
to grasp far more successfully the interrelations of its parts. It
is precisely this procedure which has guided the development of
mathematics.

It is not that the mathematician refuses to be interested in the
immeasurable complexity of nature. It is rather that he seeks
permanence of conquest, even though it be at the expense (in the
first instance, at least) of a narrowed range of use. The way in
which mathematics has interacted usefully with other elements in
the progress of thought justifies her method of abstraction as
profitable; it certainly conforms to the requirements of esthetic
delight for the mathematician himself.

But the abstractions of mathematics leave us in a rarefied at-
mosphere too far removed from concrete experience to be a satis-
factory resting-place for the mind of an inquisitive organism like

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 449

man. He seeks to get closer to concrete phenomena. But, unless
he is content to deal in vague and uncertain generalities, he finds
the complexity of nature far too great for him even though he has
forged a mathematical tool to assist in his labors. He must still
confine attention to certain groups of phenomena abstracted from
their surroundings. He must try, so to speak, to lift them from
the matrix of their environment. Thus we arrive at the exact
sciences of natural phenomena, as, for instance, the science of me-
chanics, through the use of abstraction as a necessary preliminary
to exact and permanent intellectual conquest.

But it is clear that we do not understand even these restricted
ranges of phenomena which we have separated in thought but not
in reality from their environment until we have considered all the
elements in that environment and have synthesized the disjoined
knowledge of its parts into a comprehensive understanding of the
whole. When we come to these questions of greater complexity we
feel less certain of our results and far less confident of the per-
manence of our conclusions. The history of philosophy with its
changing systems and the flux of its emphasis is a striking eom-
mentary on the difficulty of the general problem. And even here in
the comprehensive problems of philosophy itself large abstraction
has already been made from the complexity of phenomena and
life and existence.

In definite contrast with the systematic thought of mathematies,
the natural sciences, and certain parts at least of philosophical
truth and speculation, stands the unsystematie thought of art and
literature. Here one deals with the actual complexity of life and
even with the character of individuals and their emotions. ‘It is
the privilege of art to represent at a glance the whole of its object,
and thus to produce at once a total effect on the mind of the be-
holder.’’ Not infrequently men of science have seemed to over-
look the importance of this body of unsystematie thought in art
and especially in literature. But it appears that the development
of unsystematic thought is necessary to sanity; not that its un-
systematic character as such contributes to this end, but that
through no efforts being made at systematic statement one ean
allow the whole flux of life to be reflected at once, at least so far
as to have no purposed exclusions. If one is to have the systematic
exactness of pure science it can be only after many relevant con-
siderations are shorn off and attention is fixed on a part only
(usually a small part) of the whole. This is necessary to definite
conquest and the method is to be freely used. If one stops with
this, however, a one-sided unbalanced view results which con-
tributes forcibly to a lack of sanity in outlook and general judg-

VOL. XIV.—29.

450 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ment. With the continued development of systematic thought, let
us encourage and support the free development of unsystematie
thought in poetry and other forms of literature and art. The lat-
ter have abiding qualities of intrinsic human worth which science
can never replace.

The domains of systematic and unsystematic thought have
usually little effect the one upon the other; and yet between these
two great arteries of our culture there must be somewhere a vital
connection. The historians of general thought have not yet prop-
erly taken into account the vast body of unsystematic thought in
the literatures of the world where for millenniums it has awaited
their research. Nor on the other hand has the poetry of exact
truth been written nor have its cultural elements in any repre-
sentative case found their way into the general thought of man-
kind.

Literature not only takes the complex whole of life at a glance
but it also internationalizes its local subjects and gives them a
value which endures independently of time and place. Mathe-
matics and poetry lie, if not on, at least not far from the extremes,
the one of systematic and the other of unsystematic thought, and
thus are about as far removed as possible one from the other. And
yet they have a very striking common property, namely, the prop-
erty of permanence. No other large domains of thought than
mathematies and literature have acquired large bodies of truth
retaining their values essentially unimpaired for two thousand
years, not in a stagnant state, but in a state of vitality and effective-
ness. It is a matter of great inspiration to see the Greek geometry
and the Greek tragedy surviving through the ages and retaining
the active power to excite our admiration and increase our happi-
ness to-day.

The language of exact truth. Communication to others requires
the previous construction of a language having the requisite flexi-
bility. If we look into the remote origins of our culture we shall
find reason for believing that it was language which initiated the
marvelous release of the powers of man inherent and undeveloped
in our primitive ancestors and coming to their fruition only after
many ages of progress. It was and is a fundamental element in
accumulating and retaining the heritage of the past so that each
new generation, in periods of development, is able to begin a little
further on than the preceding one.

There is something subtle in the way in which language makes
it possible to pass the experience and thought of one generation
along to the next. The phenomena of nature present themselves to
us ordered in space and time, but without apparent logical eonnec-

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 461

tions to bind them together. As long as we meet them merely in
the multiplicity of their separate existences we can not get far
towards an understanding of them or of a mastery over them. It is
necessary that they shall be ordered into groups or sets, each held
together by some tie which serves in our mind either as a unifying
or as a connecting element. The combination of distinct elements
into a whole and the formation of these groups depends on a process
which the mind constructs for itself slowly and only after much
labor. Any means of giving a considerable measure of permanence
to the constructions of one individual mind or of one age, will be
of great value in maintaining mastery and effecting its further
development.

Let us conceive, if possible, the condition of prehistoric man at
a time when language was in the process of construction for the
first time. When a tribe of men reach agreement concerning the
common elements of a set of objects, as for instance the trees of
the forest, and signalize a realization of their common features by
giving to them some such name as tree, they crystallize into definite
form a class of experiences felt by each of them in a more or less
vague way. The idea denoted by the word becomes more distinct
by constant recurrence and both word and idea take their places
as part of the mental possessions of man.

This primitive process has been repeated in all ages of our his-
tory ; it recurs often in the present day, notably in connection with
the development of scientific thought. In youth we listen to the
words of those of the previous generation, trace in their features
some mark of the anxieties through which they have lived, and
share remotely their enthusiasms and aspirations, their passions
and their joys. But we receive through them in the language
which they teach us a more living inheritance and a more eloquent
testimonial to their ways of thought. ‘‘Unknowingly they have
themselves altered the tongue, the words and sentences, which
they received, depositing in these altered words and modes of
speech the spirit, the ideas, the thought of their lifetime. These
words and modes of speech they handed down to us in our infaney,
as the mould wherein to shape our minds, . . . as the instru-
ment with which to convey our ideas. In their language, in the
phrases and catchwords peculiar to them, we learnt to distinguish
what was important and interesting from what was trivial or in-
different, the subjects which should oceupy our thoughts, the aims
we should follow, the principles and methods which we should
make use of.’’

A word or a way of thought into which so much experience of
the race has been instilled can easily be taught to the children of

452 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

a new generation and be made to serve for them as a nucleus about
which they can gather experiences of their own similar to those
first embodied in the language. Thus through the various words
which they use and the various turns of phrase which they employ
they have a subtle means of assistance in organizing their early
experience so that they are able to make much more rapid acquisi-
tion of knowledge than their ancestors who first had the confusion
of unorganized impressions out of which to construct the initial
organization of truth.

To the individual who is brought up in a civilized and intel-
leectual age words and their organization into sentences certainly
come earlier than clear and conscious thought. Through the use
of our parents’ tongue we are introduced to the complex processes
of highly abstract reasoning in a manner which is truly marvelous.
The way of thinking of our ancestors, preserved in some measure
in the constructions of their language and in the peculiar ways of
expressing thought developed through ages of progress, becomes to
us our most precious heritage from the past. A highly significant
part of the development of mankind is summarized into the forms
and words of language in such a way as to be capable of trans-
mission and to be of unmeasured value in passing on to the chil-
dren the acquisitions of their ancestors.

What the language of daily life does for the thought of usual
intercourse the language of mathematics does for the thought of
exact truth. Everything which I have said about language in
general I can now transfer to the language of mathematics in re-
spect to its use in connection with exact thought. It furnishes
the essential means for the expression of the latter. It supplies
the support without which the mind would be unable to carry
through the processes necessary to attain the more profound or
far-reaching results. There is a certain storing, as it were, of in-
tellectual force in the mathematical symbols from which it can be
released suddenly with almost explosive power. These become
mighty engines through the aid of which we can rear intellectual
structures quite inaccessible to our unsupported power.

The invention of number was the first step in the creation of
the language of mathematics; and the choice of adequate and con-
venient symbols for the representation of integers is one of the
chief triumphs of the intellect. A long and arduous mental strug-
gle, in which some of the finest minds of antiquity had part, pre-
ceded the conception of zero and the introduction of a symbol to
represent it in the way now familiar even to our children. The
result of a long and important development of thought is embodied
compactly in this remarkable sign. The introduction of a symbol

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMAFICS 453

like 4/5 marks a new stage in the development of mathematics.
The general fact is repeated in many situations; but I ean not go
into a further analysis of this matter. It is sufficient to our pur-
pose if we realize that the language of mathematics is an essential
support to the mind in all its processes of exact thought and that
the results emerging in this way can be expressed only in mathe-
matical terms.

Being a lover both of mathematics and of poetry I enjoy find-
ing certain general similarities between them. I have already
alluded to one very striking common property of them, namely the
property of permanence. I wish now to direct your attention to
the historical fact that poetry was the primary and most important
means by which the language of ordinary intercourse was brought
to a stage of relative perfection just as mathematics was the essen-
tial means in creating the language of exact truth. Ordinary
language having been brought to perfection by the labors of the
poets was then appropriated by writers of prose; exact language
having been developed by the mathematicians has been employed
freely by the cultivators of every exact science.

Mathematics and philosophy. Philosophy and mathematics
started life together. After a brief period of companionship they
parted company and each went its own way. Mathematics was
the first science to emancipate itself from the tutelage of philos-
ophy; it gained its freedom at the dawn of Greek civilization.
Mechanics next succeeded towards the close of the Grecian period,
physies obtained its independent position at the opening of the
modern era, biology about the beginning of the nineteenth century,
and psychology in its latter half. Sociology as an independent
seienee has hardly yet passed its period of infancy.

When men began consciously to cast about them to understand
their universe, they found it possible in a relatively short time to
procure and contemplate a large body of unsystematie thought,
a wealth of philosophic explanation, and a rather large body of
speculative proto-science of nature. But in respect of mathematical
knowledge they had to begin much nearer the bottom. In the less
exact disciplines there was an ebb and flow of movement with a
general progress forward, accompanied often by a discarding of
what at one time was considered well established. But in mathe-
maties a conquest once made is almost never lost and there is a
consequent unbroken enlargement ef doctrine. Since it pushes
its conquests out in many directions, is frequently annexing new
domains, never yields up what it has once attained, and remains
youthful in its spirit of conquest, mathematics is destined to be-
come. if indeed it is not already, the most extensive scientific doc-
trine in the whole range of knowledge.

454 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Early in the history of thought philosophy soared the heights
on wings of speculative grandeur and soon reached an eminence
which it has never surpassed. Mathematics took time to dig deep
till it was in possession of secure foundations on which to build.
Here it reared a magnificent structure of enduring beauty. In
our generation this mathematies has reached forth a hand of con-
quest and has annexed certain restricted domains of philosophy.
“*The first real advance in logie since the time of the Greeks was
made independently by Peano and Frege—both mathematicians’’
working with the tools and from the point of view of mathematies.
In former days the nature of infinity and continuity belonged to
philosophy, but now it belong to mathematics. An important part
of the theory of classes has been annexed by this greedy conqueror.

But more than all this, it has injected its spirit into a large
province of modern philosophy. Among the philosophies of the
present day Bertrand Russell distinguishes three principal types,
combined in varying proportions in single philosophers but in
essence and tendency distinct, namely, the classical tradition, evo-
lutionism, and the method of logical atomism. The last has crept
into philosophy through the critical serutiny of mathematies.
According to Russell it represents ‘‘the same kind of advance as
was introduced into physics by Galileo: the substitution of piece-
meal, detailed, and verifiable results for large untested generalities
recommended only by a certain appeal to the imagination.’’

A doctrine which lay quiescent in the domain of philosophy
for many generations has recently been brought by mathematical
methods into the activity of vigorous life. The modern theory
of relativity is a precise physico-mathematieal realization of the
philosopher’s speculation of relativity. The existence of the
philosophical doctrine has been of profound value in the creation
of the mathematical doctrine; but the latter is now so far in ad-
vance of the former that the philosopher is rare who is able to
follow the train of thought by which the more exact theory is
brought to fullness. This mathematical conquest of a domain of
philosophy has in our generation yielded a penetrating insight
into certain fundamental matters both of physies and of philosophy.
A theory of gravitation, satisfying for the most part in its broad
aspects, has come into being for the first time. Under the impulse
of this theory our notions of force and mass have suffered consid-
erable change and our conceptions of time and space have under-
gone a veritable revolution.

Without going into more detail in these matters, I may insist
upon the fact that one of the profound intrinsic human worths of
mathematics lies in its conquest over intellectual matters of peren-

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 455

nial interest on which agreement cannot be reached until they are
penetrated by the spirit and methods of mathematics and the in-
variant elements of truth are extracted and justified by a convine-
ing array of precise evidence.

Mathematics and the foundations of science. Mathematies is
autonomous. What is intimate to it, its nature and strueture and
laws of being, must be sought in itself. Logically the mathematical
sciences can be developed in complete independence of all other
sciences; and when pursued in this way to their goal they com-
pletely realize their object. Owing to its self-sufficiency, its ab-
stract character, and its exclusion of complicating factors from the
ideal considerations with which it is concerned, mathematics is es-
sentially easier than the other branches of systematic truth. The
appearance of greater difficulty, which has deceived most people,
grows out of the fact that it is relatively further advanced than
any other subject. It requires the learner longer in mathematies
than in other sciences to attain an elevation from which he may
enjoy the prospect of unexplored territory. Its wildernesses are
further from the confines of civilization; and the ignorant picture
them as filled with horrid monsters of indescribable physiognomy.
But the hardy intellectual traveler who explores in this land of
the far unknown finds nature gracious, there as well as here, in
dispensing her beauties and joys and comforts.

As a discipline which is unique through its being more com-
pletely developed than any other it may be utilized as an object
lesson of importance in the development ef thought. The mind
has not been able to chart unknown regions and to explore them
systematically. Truth, when attained, often has an appearance
quite unexpected. Its central characteristics can not be antici-
pated before it appears in thought. Consequently, the extended
development of any discipline affords a means of analyzing the
methods and foundations of successful thinking and of extracting
by such analysis principles of guidance for all domains of exact
thought. In certain important respects mathematics affords just
such a support to the mind in finding its way to truth; it has con-
tinuously rendered a service of this character since the days of
the early Greek philosophers. This contribution has varied in
detail from age to age, ranging from marvelous uses in interpret-
ing physical phenomena to marked support in speculative philos-
ophy and the theory of knowledge.

During the last half century or so mathematics has come
definitely to a stage of self-consciousness with respect to its proc-
esses and presuppositions; and these have been analyzed and sub-
jected to critical logical scrutiny. The foundations on which the

456 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

subject is built are understood with a completeness foreign to any
other domain of thought. From this fact it may well serve as a
matter of instruction to point the way to a suitable and needed
analysis of the presuppositions on which any given discipline
is founded.

The importance of such an analysis seems not always to be ap-
prehended. The sciences of nature are shot through with presup-
positions not recognized. Even in the more precise reasoning of
mathematies there was much to be elucidated by a critical scrutiny ;
and certain presuppositions had to be brought into the focus of
attention before it could be properly said that we understood the
foundations of the science. Elsewhere such analysis has been
made only very imperfectly ; the success achieved by mathematies
in this work has not yet borne its proper fruit. It has been made
clear that no science has been brought to a truly objective stage in
its development until the presuppositions lying back of it are per-
ceived as such and the grounds for making them are clearly real-
ized. In the sciences of nature this process is more difficult than
in mathematics; this, indeed, accounts for the fact of earlier sue-
cess in mathematics than elsewhere. But when the result is once
achieved in one science no other should rest satisfied until the same
end is reached in an appropriate way.

Mathematics and the method of thought. Perhaps it will be
agreed that we can nowhere study the processes of thought. by
which the intellect reaches appropriate decisions, more effectively
than in that domain where it has been most successful in attaining
enduring results of significant value. If this principle is agreed
upon, it is a corollary that mathematies is a field of thought whieh
will yield us some of our most definite information as to the es-
sential elements in the methods of clear and accurate thinking.
Unfortunately, mathematicians themselves have generally been but
little interested in the broad principles of method which their
achievements are capable of bringing to light; they have usually
been disposed to stand apart from the broader questions of a theory
of knowledge, satisfied apparently with the self-sufficiency of their
own discipline. Outside of their fold there has never been a group
of thinkers with the requisite information and training to elicit
from the body of mathematics the instruction which it is thus
capable of affording. This field of promising possibility lies un-
cultivated while we lack those advantages which its fruitage well
may yield.

It is important to ascertain the character of those regions of
thought in which new methods have most frequently arisen into
clear consciousness. Owing to precision of ideas and processes

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 457

in mathematics we can answer that question definitely and with
considerable confidence for that discipline. New methods have
usually come to light in connection with well-defined and well-
restricted problems. Experience has forced upon us a realization
of the profound importance of deep penetration into even the
simplest matters. When a new means of illuminating them has
been discovered its radiance spreads to adjacent fields and often
overleaps great barriers to shed new light in most unexpected
places. The connections between different elements of thought
ean not be anticipated successfully ; it requires the event to exhibit
them. The presuppositions which underlie truth become apparent
gradually as we derive the remotest consequences of what is already
known. For the researcher everywhere the character of the sue-
cess in mathematics emphasizes the importance of detailed and
penetrating and carefully analyzed investigations of basic matters.

The continuous advance in the understanding of the presuppo-
sitions of our science, the axioms or postulates on which it rests,
and the resulting modifications in our views of its significance im-
press us constantly with the supreme necessity of the logical co-
herence of knowledge. No principle is thoroughly understood until
all of its consequences are developed and their ramifications are
ascertained. This process can be carried out only through the
most searching logical scrutiny; it is desirable that the intuition
shall be present in discovery, but the logical faculties should domi-
nate exposition completely. ‘‘To supersede the employment of
common reason, or to subject it to the rigor of technical forms,
would be the last desire of one who knows the value of that intel-
lectual toil and warfare which imparts to the mind an athletic vigor,
and teaches it to contend with difficulties and to rely upon itself
in emergencies.’’ But when its results are once attained and they
are to be put to the test of a systematic organization for deter-
mining the coherence and consistency of the parts, no glow should
be permitted except that which comes from the cold light of logie.

A more deep-lying problem of the method of exact thought is
brought out by the question as to the fundamental character of
that mental process by which scientific truth is discovered. Nat-
ural science always proceeds in one of three ways: mathematically,
experimentally, or by hypothesis. Have all these methods funda-
mental matters in common one with another and with the processes
of mathematics itself? And, if so, arc they of such sort that it is
useful to the progress of science or to our delight in it to have them
brought to attention? Owing again to the relatively more ad-
vanced state of mathematics as compared with the natural sciences
we can consider for it, in a more objective way than for them, this

458 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

question as to the basic characteristics of the process of discovery.

Not a few mathematicians are agreed that these characteristics
are summed up in considerable measure in the word invention.
Some of the things in mathematics one may think of as being dis-
covered; but others, and the more fundamental things, seem to
have been created by the mind. The positive integers, for instance,
were not found in nature but were created by the human spirit.
After their creation many of their properties have been discovered.
This relation between invention and discovery pervades most of
the mathematical literature. Mathematical space has been created,
not found in nature, as is shown by the fact that the mathema-
tician has several kinds of three-dimensional space as well as nu-
merous spaces of higher dimensions. It is true that his creative
power was released through observation of the environment; but
it can not be maintained that the environment dictated the
geometry since in that case only one geometry could have resulted.
A full analysis of the matter would carry us much too far afield,
but we may assert that the process of discovery in mathematics is
primarily that of invention.

This leads the mathematician to suspect that the method of
exact thought everywhere is largely dependent upon invention,
that the hypotheses of science are not extracted from nature but
are invented by the mind through a release of its powers brought
about by natural phenomena. Since one’s procedure in forming
hypotheses is doubtless much affected by his conception of the
nature of the process it is important that the laborers in each
science shall ascertain the corresponding fundamental character-
isties of their processes of discovery.

If we should suppose that the advance of knowledge among
the most cultivated people is in the direction of making life not
worth while this would operate to destroy the part of society so
affected with pessimism and the whole earth would ultimately be
left to the less advanced. Thus a philosophy which makes life
not worth while will have a natural tendeney to destroy itself,
so that it can not become permanent. That philosophy of the
method of thought which results from a contemplation of mathe-
matical progress leads to a doctrine which dignifies the process of
thinking, exalting it to a place of veritable creative grandeur. It
proceeds in the direction of making life worth living. It is opti-
mistie in outlook and thus has one of the first qualities which are
essential to permanence.

The invariants of human nature. Another value of mathe-
maties is in its creation or clarification for its own use of various
concepts which are afterward seen to serve as a unifying element

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 459

about which other large domains of truth may be systematically
organized and the relations of fact thus be brought to clearer un-
derstanding. Everywhere we are confronted by change; nature
seems to be in an eternal flux. The complexity of particular phe-
nomena is bewildering and we should be lost in their maze if we
could not find some means of ascertaining the elements of per-
manence in the midst of the flux. In mathematies we have the
same situation freed of distracting elements and idealized in a
way which makes it possible to give a rather complete analysis
of the whole matter. The flux and change of nature is replaced,
in the ideal situations of mathematies, by what we call a group
of transformations. The elements in consideration are subject
to transformation according to the laws prescribed by the group
which governs the phenomena; and our problem is to determine
the things which are unchanged in the midst of the general flux
allowed by the controlling group; in other words, we are seeking
what we call the invariants, or the invariant combinations, of the
elements subject to the flux permitted by the group. This concep-
tion, vaguely present in much of scientific speculation, has been
recreated by mathematics into precise form, has been clarified,
and has been utilized so fully that we now find it to be true that
a large portion of the whole of mathematics has to do consciously
or unconsciously with the theory of invariants. The essential
elements of the logical characteristics of a situation of this sort
are brought out clearly by the mathematical theory. The result-
ing body of truth furnishes us with a model by which we may be
guided in the contemplation of the elements of permanence in any
ehanging situation.

Whatever the subject of inquiry in any domain of exact thought
there are certain entities whose mutual relations we desire to ascer-
tain. The combinations which have an unalterable value under
the changes to which the entities are subjected are their invariants.
It is the purpose of the theory of invariants to determine these
combinations, elucidate their properties, and express in terms of
them the laws which are involved in the given situation. The
‘laws of nature’’ are expressions of invariant relations under the
changes occurring in nature or brought about by directive agency.
Two problems concerning natural phenomena demand attention.
{f we know the group of changes we may demand the determina-
tion of the invariants; if we know the invariants we may demand
the determination of certain (if not all) possible groups under
which these invariants persist. To enforce the judgment that in-
variants are a fundamental guide in present day science we have
only to cite the fact that the theory of relativity has been devel-

460 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

oped in intimate dependence upon and under the guidance of the
theory of invariants.

To pursue this matter further would carry us too far in the
direction of a study of the usefulness of mathematics in the devel-
opment of natural science, a matter which we are purposely ex-
cluding from present consideration. It has been said by them of
old time that the proper study of mankind is man. Our purpose
keeps us closer to this problem than to the study of nature. It is
a fair question to ask what mathematics has to teach us concerning
human nature. What do we mean by human nature except those
characteristics of individual people which are unchanged from
one to another, and from age to age? Those elements which are in-
variant through the whole group of human beings as far as they
may be brought under observation? And how shall we determine
the characteristics of this human nature other than by an analysis
of the invariant elements in human experience and thought?

It can not be maintained that mathematics affords the best
means for pursuing this study. In fact, it is probably generally
supposed that mathematics makes no contribution at all to the
problem of human nature, of the invariants among the qualities
of individuals; we shall attempt to show that this judgment is
incorrect.

The best means of studying human nature of course arises
from the usual relations of life. But these in themselves are quite
insufficient for a complete analysis. The continued acceptance of
a large body of vital mathematical truth through some millen-
niums suggests the invariant character of certain elements of
human thought in its logical aspects, just as the continued appeal
of ancient poetry (for instance) to people of cultivated taste be-
speaks an unchanging element of human nature in its finer emo-
tional aspeets. The presence of such invariant elements, wherever
they may be found, is an instructive matter for the historian of
eulture and civilization.

Where can one find a systematic analysis of literature, that
great storehouse of material for the understanding of human
nature and the progress of unsystematice thought, having for one
of its primary objects the ascertainment of the invariant elements
of human nature in its emotional aspects? A study of the changes
in taste and their cause contributes indirectly to this end; but
both literature and mathematics, in different ways and with refer-
ence to different parts of our nature, can be made to yield im-
portant values towards an understanding of its invariant elements.

Since the historian of thought and civilization is seeking to
bring his analysis of the progress of culture into systematic form

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 461

it is perhaps no great surprise that he has found it difficult, and
so far has not found it possible, to utilize successfully the truth
which is half-concealed and half-revealed in the unsystematic
thought of literature. But it is rather astonishing that such his-
torians of thought have not been able to utilize the systematic
work of mathematics in their expositions. I know of only a single
instance where a general analysis of the progress of thought has
taken an adequate account of the domain of mathematics, and that
is in the work of J. T. Merz on ‘‘The History of European Thought
m the Nineteenth Century.’’! This excellent general analysis has
not had for one of its purposes to bring out the invariant qualities
of human thought, and hence of human nature, as they are made
manifest by the abiding truths of mathematics. The contribution
which mathematics has to make to the study of human nature has
not yet been considered in a systematic way.

And still it is certain to those who contemplate the nature of
mathematical truth that many characteristic qualities of human
thought are to be determined from such an analysis. It is a sig-
nificant fact for the understanding of ourselves that the demon-
strations in Euclid’s Elements gain the same adherence to-day as
in his time and in all the intervening ages; an invariant quality
in the processes of reasoning and the ground for conviction
through demonstration abides through the ages. There is abso-
lute agreement in all times and all places that the number of prime
mtegers is infinite, bespeaking a unity of the whole race in its
understanding of the properties of elements conceived in the first
place with exactness. The properties of a Euclidean triangle are
in harmonious agreement even though they have been discovered
by numerous thinkers of many generations. A sphere did nothing
for the Greeks contrary to what it does for us to-day. The prop-
erties of a cube are invariant, whoever derives them and in what-
ever age he lives. It is an eternal truth that every integer is the
sum of squares of four integers, and there is unanimity as to this
fact and as to its demonstration. The persistence of mathematical
theorems and the continued agreement as to their proof indicates
a profound unity in the characteristic thought processes of those
who contemplate them, exhibiting one fundamental phase of human
nature.

Artistic delight in mathematical truth. Truth serves many
ends. When a science has reached a certain stage of development,

1 To this magistral work and to many articles in the Encyclopedia Brit-
tamnica I am under deep obligations in connection with this address. I have
also profited by reading C. J. Keyser’s The Human Worth of Rigorous Think-
ing, Columbia University Press, 1916.

462 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

varying greatly with the character of its material, it begins to
throw off into the body of society great practical or even esthetic
values which could not be realized without it. Astronomy has
enabled us to have some conception of the vastness of space and
the hugeness of the mass of matter, perhaps infinite in its totality,
distributed through this space. Geology has released the imagina-
tion to contemplate enormous periods of time and, through its in-
fluence on biology, has rendered marked service in making possible
our conception of the long progress of life on the planet, culmina-
ting in man. Mathematics, by exhibiting a body of truth which
ean live through millenniums without needed corrections, and at
the same time can grow in magnitude and range and interest, has
given the human spirit new ground for believing in itself and for
rejoicing in its power of consistent thought.

It is not enough to accumulate the elements of knowledge or
even by means of them to control nature for our use; we must
appropriate them by idealizing them into things of beauty and
motives to conduct. Truth may be made to yield the highest de-
lights of contemplation in the spirit of artistic performance. This
is generally realized in the case of the unsystematic truth afforded
by literature and the other fine arts. It is less in evidence in the
greater body of systematic truth. But when the latter is brought
to its highest order of perfection, as it is in the domain of mathe-
matics, it becomes capable of yielding the purest and most intense
delights in artistic excellence. They are of a sort to be enjoyed in
large measure only after an adequate training; and in that respect
there is a certain exclusiveness about them. But to those who are
willing to pay the price of adequate knowledge mathematies yields
a gratification of the artistic sense surpassed by that arising from
no other source. ‘‘The musician plays and the artist paints sim-
ply for the pure love of creation.’” The mathematician creates
abstract and ideal truth for the pure love of discovery and of con-
templation of the beauty of his mental handiwork.

In pursuing esthetic satisfactions we create a beautiful theory
for the sake of our delight in it, as in the case of the theory of
numbers or of abstract groups. Working in such fields with the
simpler elements of mathematical thought we make progress of a
sort not at first possible with the more complex materials. We
bring the theory to a higher state of perfection; there are fewer
lacune; the connections of the various parts are exhibited with
clarity ; we have a sense of having seen to the root of the matter and
having understood it in its basie characteristics. The theory thus
developed becomes an ideal in the light of which we get a new

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 463

conception of what should be attained in other fields where the
labor and the difficulty are greater. Results in one field of mathe-
maties may thus become of great value in a totally different range
of mathematical ideas or even in other disciplines altogether.
Moreover, when such progress is attained we often find that the
tools employed in bringing it about are sufficient for dealing with
more difficult matters, so that the one completed theory furnishes
us not only the ideal, but also the means, for further valuable
progress.

A characteristic delight in mathematical truth is that which
arises from economy of thought realized through the creation of
general theories. When we develop the consequences of a set of
broad hypotheses we find that our results, which are attained by a
single effort, have applications at once in many directions. Thus
we see the common elements of diverse matters and are able to
contemplate them as parts of a single general theory pleasing for
its elegance and comprehensiveness.

Fundamentally mathematies is a free science. The range of its
possible topics appears to be unlimited; and the choice from these
of those actually to be studied depends solely on considerations of
interest and beauty. It is true that interest has often been, and
is to-day as much as ever, prompted in a considerable measure by
the problems actually arising in natural science, and to the latter
mathematics owes a debt to be paid only by essential contributions
to the interpretation of phenomena. But, after all, the fundamental
motive to its activity is in itself and must remain there if its prog-
ress is to continue.

‘“The desire for the one just form which always inspires the
literary artist visits most men sometimes’’ and is ever present to
the mathematician in his hours of creative activity. The one just
form which the mathematician seeks is more ideal and perhaps
more delightfully artistic than that sought by any other thinker;
for it is primarily a form of abstract thought in which he is inter-
ested, a form which remains the same as ages come and go, as lan-
guages are developed and die away, as the canvas of the painter
rots to fragments and the material of the sculptured image is re-
solved by decomposition into its elemental dust. It is a thing of
beauty which is indeed a joy forever.

For many people the numerous practical applications of mathe-
matics have obscured its artistic elegance. But it is not the only
fine art which in another aspect is also of the greatest practical
utility. This quality it shares with the noble art of architecture.
The two equally satisfy the following informal definition given

464 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

by Sidney Colvin: ‘‘The fine arts are those among the arts of
man which spring from his impulse to do or make certain things
in certain ways for the sake, first, of a special kind of pleasure,
independent of direct utility, which it gives him so to do or make
them, and next for the sake of the kindred pleasure which he de-
rives from witnessing or contemplating them when they are so
done or made by others.’’ Both mathematies and architecture
possess all the qualities here enumerated. Each is of essential
practical utility, contributing necessary elements to the material
comforts of man. And, more than this, each delights the artistic
sense through beauties peculiar to itself and furnishing the ideal
reason for its existence.

From a certain point of view the four main divisions of
thought—mathematies, natural science, philosophy, that unnamed
one ruling without definite system in the domain of art and lit-
erature—are the stones and brick and mortar from which is builded
the culture of the time, into which are wrought the values received
from the past, and through which our development shall proceed
to the acquisition of new power for further conquest. We break
the environment into parts in thought and from these we fashion
new objects such as never before existed in the universe—objects
both concrete and ideal—and these we put together in ways well
pleasing to ourselves to serve the ends we propose or erect the
constructs we conceive.

But this is too mechanical to be the whole truth. The more
profound values lie deeper and have their fruition only in the
fullness of the character of man. If science did not touch a more
profound matter than mere motion or reach to constructs which
can not be adequately pictured by material symbols, it would fall
far short of the glory of Living Thought. But it does forcibly
react in a profound way with all our activities, particularly
through the emotions excited by the play of the artistic sense. In
fact, the elements of all Thought are parts of one body, living and
organized, inspired by the breath of the Universe itself and pul-
sating with the life of truth in its deeper manifestations.

The problem of consistent thinking. The leading character-
istic of man is the power to think. There is nothing of higher
esthetic interest than to determine whether we can think consist-
ently. This fundamental question ean be answered in the affirm-
ative only by exhibiting the results of consistent thinking. The
existence of mathematics affords the best conceivable proof of its
possibility and gives the spirit of man leave to believe in itself,
since here admittedly is a body of consistent thought maintaining

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 465

itself for generations and even for millenniums, able to sustain
all the attacks of logie and all the tests of the practical life.

There was a time when this confidence in the permanence and
consistency of mathematics was absolute. The fundamental meth-
ods of argumentation men conceived to belong to a class of innate
er inherent ideas which had been put in the mind of man by the
Creator. The initial hypotheses and basic notions of a mathe-
matical discipline they thought of as belonging to the same ecate-
gory. If these innate ideas did not have all the elements of abso-
lute certainty, there could be only one conclusion: the Creator had
deliberately deceived man. Since they considered this to be abso-
lutely impossible, they had complete confidence in the certainty of
mathematical results.

Nowadays we seek a more earthly reason for confidence in our
constructions in science. Our agreement that mathematics is pos-
sible as a consistent body of truth we now understand to rest on
postulates for which admittedly we have no logical demonstration.
Perhaps these postulates may be framed in the following way:
Reasoning is possible and does not lead to wrong results when em-
ployed according to the universally accepted rules; mathematical
objects can be created or discovered by the mind; we can actually
formulate consistent axioms or postulates concerning these objects.
With each of these three statements there are grave logical diffi-
culties. We can not assert that we have an immediate perception
of them as true; we can not, by direct illumination, see their
validity. We must examine each of them in the cold light of ex-
perience and accept it only in so far as it meets the most exacting
demands. Our confidence can never be absolute. As J. B. Shaw
has said in his ‘‘Philosophy of Mathematies:’’ ‘‘We may found
our deductions on what premises we please, use whatever rules of
logic we fancy, and can only know that we have played a fruitless
game when the whole system collapses—and there is no certainty
that any system will not some day collapse!’’

Let us proceed further with the difficulties of the situation.
In all preceding generations conceptions in mathematics have been
used with confidence which, in the experience of a later day, were
found to be not sufficiently well defined; they have been discarded
or essentially modified, sometimes after generations of confident
use. It is not likely that men have heretofore always made mistakes
of this kind and that we have suddenly come upon an age in which
mathematical conceptions are refined to the last point of analysis.

We are then forced to the conclusion, however unwelcome it
may be, that the certainty of mathematies after all is not absolute,

VOL. XIV.—30.

466 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

but relative. To be sure, it is the most profound certainty which
the mind has been able to achieve in any of its processes; but it
is not absolute. The mathematician starts from exact data; he
reasons by methods which have never been known to lead to error ;
and his conclusions are necessary in the sense, and only in the sense,
that no one now living can point to a flaw in the processes by
which he has derived them.

Let us make as concrete as possible the difficulties and the
immense values which are at stake. Let us suppose that the
Euclidian geometry should become untenable under the weight of
eonstant aceretions and should go crashing down to helpless ruin;
in that day man’s hope of reaching tolerable certainty anywhere
in his thinking would be destroyed and even the world of mind
would become a dark confusion of irrational elements. The char-
acter of such a loss suggests the magnitude of the present value.

What certainty have we that such loss does not impend? We
have no logical demonstration of its impossibility; and in the na-
ture of things can not have such a demonstration. The same un-
certainty attends all other truth, and in even more marked degree.
There is no logical certainty of the consistency or the permanence
of truth; at most there is a moral certainty. From mathematics
we have the strongest grounds for the latter. When thousands of
persons through thousands of years examine thousands of theorems
proved by numerous methods and in numerous connections and
there is always absolute unanimity in the compelling character
of the demonstration and the consistency of results, we have a
ground of moral confidence so great that we can dispense with the
proof of logical certainty and comfortably lay out our lives on the
hypothesis of the permanence, consistency and accuracy of mathe-
matical truth. The existence of mathematics gives the mind the
best reason yet advanced for believing in its powers and the essen-
tial accuracy of its careful processes.

Emotional exaltation arising from the contemplation of mathe-
matical truth. A profound emotional exaltation arises from the
contemplation of mathematical truth either in the static aspect of
accomplished results or in the dynamie aspect of a science with
an everlasting urge to further development. By the ideal values
which it constructs and by the permanence of its results mathe-
matics gives to the spirit of man the right and the courage to believe
in itself and to trust its controlled flights. Here it justifies its
claims to preeminence more completely and more profoundly than
in any other part of its broad domain. It exhibits a body of truth
which is permanently pleasing and which exacts confidence at all
times and among all thinkers who examine it.

THE LARGER HUMAN WORTH OF MATHEMATICS 467

By building first on its narrow and exactly conceived founda-
tions and by adding bit by bit to its possessions of permanent
truth, mathematics has made possible a release of the imagination
of man such as ean be completely realized to-day by only a rela-
tively few individuals, a release however which will allow an ex-
panse of the general human mind to-morrow or the next day. Vast
new domains of contemplation are opened up by the non-Euclidean
geometries, theories of hyperspace and space of an infinite number
of dimensions, functions of an infinite number of variables and
funetions of lines. Such conquests give a new sense of power and
mastery and increase the dignity of man. In the presenee of so
many beautiful creations of his thought ‘‘the mathematician lives
long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop
off ;’’ he rejoices in the grandeur of the heights to which his eon-
trolled imagination attains.

If one is to realize the intenser delights afforded by the eon-
templation of mathematics he must of course be a deep student
of its secrets. It is only when he is able to devote a large share
of his energy to research and is successful in the creation or dis-
covery of important new truth that he may rejoice in the fullest
glow of delight through a realization of himself in such ideal eon-
quests. However important the work of preserving past discoveries
and handing down to the future the accumulated tradition and
however far-reaching such a stream of influence flowing in hidden
ways in the minds of cultivated people, it can not be placed in the
same category with that creative work which guides instructor and
student alike and teaches generations what to think. It is the great
glory of mathematics in our time that its achievements are being
immensely enriched and extended by the researches of the present;
so that this, the oldest of the sciences, has the vigor and the spring
and the growth of the youngest of them. He who discovers a facet
or makes known a new law or adds a novel beauty to truth in any
way makes every one of us his debtor. How beautiful upon the
highway are the feet of him who comes bringing in his hands the
gift of a new truth to mankind!

Alone before the wild and restless force

Of nature we have seen man’s active soul
Stand forth in awe without a sure resource

Of power to overcome or to control

The salient things submerged beneath the whole.
And we have seen in vision some new power
Spring up from hidden depths of mind and roll

With bounding joy to conquest, hour by hour
Increasing till the strength of man reached fullest flower.

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

What stage of progress have we now attained
In this process of far-unfolding thought?
What ground to think that it shall be maintained?
Have we the fullness of our conquest brought
And reached the depths where nature works and caught
From her the deepest blessing she can yield?
Or fathomed her profounder secrets fraught
With good, no major truth remaining sealed
From sight, with only minor things to be revealed?

If so, no glow of zeal could move our thought;
Our life would lose its meaning and its zest;
No vision of the future could be caught
By mind’s prophetic penetration, blest
With prospect large; in pessimistic rest
And deep stagnation then must mind abide
Without a great compelling interest
To bring its power to action and to guide

Its strength to ways of joy or largest use provide.

But crescent science such a view as this

Dispels; for largest things with keen insight

We feel; the growth of knowledge must dismiss

From thought such pessimism; its darkening blight

Of shadow is illumed by sure foresight.

We joy to see new worth to be attained

And know the present conquest is but slight

Compared with wider truth that shall be gained
For thought’s dominions, now by science unexplained.

We need the willing mind to consecrate
Its strength to finding truth, the zeal to bring
From nature’s storehouse values good and great
And lay them at the feet of man. To wring
From restive nature some unwilling thing
Were joy supreme. The means for our release
To greater power we seek. The bounding spring
To growth shali move in us and never cease

To bring to us new joy and truth’s renowned increase.

ON FOUNDER’S DAY 469

ON FOUNDER’S DAY
By Professor EDWARD L. NICHOLS

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

N Founder’s Day it is well that we should remember the
founder. Even after the lapse of half a century his person-
ality is still vivid.

To the undergraduate of the early seventies, Ezra Cornell was
a familiar figure. We saw him often on the campus or in the
work-shops of Sibley—a tall spare man, of shrewd but kindly
countenance. Then in 1874 occurred his death. We all marched
with the cadet corps at his funeral. A few of us had the privilege
of standing at his bier as members of the guard of honor.

If you would get a definite picture of the personality of the
founder, read those pages in the autobiography of Andrew D.
White which treat of the beginnings of the university. You will
be impressed in that account with two great qualities, breadth and
insight.

Consider the far sightedness evinced in that incident of the
choice of site for the new institution. It is a matter of record that
Ezra Cornell insisted on the present spacious campus, now world-
famed for its natural beauty, first among American university
sites in that regard. When his first board of trustees favored a
location lower down and more convenient to the village in the
valley, a location ample for any school which they could imagine
as likely ever to grow up on this hillside, he made his prophetie
retort since become famous: ‘‘Gentlemen, some of you will see five
thousand students on this hill.”’

Not one of them, it is safe to say, had the slightest expectation
of the fulfilment of so extravagant a claim; but as we all know it
has literally come to pass long since.

To us in these days when five thousand has become a sort of
standard or average size for the enrollment of the larger univer-
sities in this country, there is nothing wild or improbable about
Mr. Cornell’s remark. But in 1868 there was no university in the
land with half that number of students. Moreover, even to-day,
five thousand at Cornell is a very different thing from five thon-
sand in any town of a million people, where the local demand
would fill several universities of that size.

478 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

What kind of a school did the founder have in his mind when
he saw in his vision ‘‘five thousand students on this hill?’’ To me
his well-known motto tells the story.

‘*T would found an institution where any person can find in-
struction in any study.’’

Here we have two great attributes specified, Democracy and
Breadth. It was not the definition of a college, for the American
college, then as now, was neither broad nor democratic.

Something quite different was clearly in the founder’s mind—
a place having at least two of the great qualities of a university.

With the wise and liberal cooperation of Andrew D. White, the
founder succeeded in getting something quite different actually
started—a place free from sectarian bias or control, where all sub-
jects were on an equal basis; where women were on equal terms
with men; where eminent scholars from abroad—men such as
Agassiz, Lowell Curtis, Froude, Freeman, Bayard Taylor, Boyesen
and Adler—added their influence to that of the resident faculty.

These accepted commonplaces of to-day were so far from ac-
cepted half a century ago that the new Cornell was launched amidst
a hurricane of mingled abuse, derision and applause. Now, after
more than fifty years, we find a growth of college and university
population here and elsewhere out of all proportion to the growth
of the country and a growth of material equipment even greater
than the growth of the student body. Never in the history of the
world have such large amounts of property been set aside for
education as in American endowments within the last half century.

Comparing Cornell with other American universities, we note
the almost complete disappearance of the gulf which once sepa-
rated us from our sister institutions, and we can not but ask our-
selves whether we have indeed abandoned the ideals and purposes
of the founder or whether those great principles have commended
themselves elsewhere, and the movement has been towards our po-
sition. That the movement has been this way I believe we may
claim, and be proud of it, but of course we have all developed and
are approaching a common standard.

Comparing American students with those of the rest of the
world we notice one striking difference.

University students abroad have been identified with every for-
ward movement—their radicalism has frequently been a source
of alarm to those who stand for ‘‘things as they are.”’

A hundred years ago and a little more, when Napoleon felt
strong enough to announce the empire, all France was subservient
but the students of Paris. They in a body refused to sign the oath
of allegiance to the emperor.

ON FOUNDER’S DAY 471

In 1848 when Prussia was in revolt and the throne was very
near to overthrow, the revolutionary camps were full of students.
A foolish, ill-judged movement it proved to be, and a very ex-
pensive one to some of them personally. But if it had carried and
Germany had become a republic, there would have been no German
Empire in 1870 and no world war in 1914!

Again in 1878 the situation was so serious in Berlin that
mounted police patroled the streets all night in platoons. In those
days the students hired public halls in the city and crowded them
evening after evening to listen to orators who urged the abolition
ef autocracy and the conversion of Germany into a social demo-
cratic state.

Again in Russia in the early years of this century—at what
terrible cost did students work for the overthrow of ezardom!
Russian prisons were filled with them and it seemed as though
Siberian convict camps would soon contain all the intelligence of
Russia. And they failed, and we all agreed that it was a foolish,
futile demonstration; but again, in view of the suddenness with
which the Russian government crumbled a few years later it may
not have been so forlorn a hope.

Finally, consider how every now and then the student body at
Tokio breaks out into protest against the government; recall that
highly dramatic episode in Shanghai when a handful of students
captured a gunboat in the harbor and proceeded to bombard the
arsenal; also the very recent Chinese student strikes—seemingly
the most harmless and footless of all forms of protest, but which
are said to have brought about the resignation of at least two
high officials in Peking nevertheless!

At home what do we find? Student bodies infected with radi-
calism? Never! On the contrary, if we are to go by what opinions

-are most loudly voiced and which are taken as typical; opinions by

which we are judged; the American undergraduate is a tory and
a reactionary. Take his attitude on any of the great questions
of the day, from the status of women in the university, on which
subject his view is medieval, to the league of nations.

We have just been through one of the greatest of revolutions
and have dethroned a king, but I have heard of no great student
eutery against King Barleycorn.

Now nobody wants a university full of anarchists. They are
eertainly a nuisance, harmless but still a nuisance—but since every-
where else in the world students are progressive, why not here
also? ‘‘It’s natural for boys to be liberals’’ they say in England
‘‘they turn tory fast enough as they get older.’’

The answer I find in one word: tradition.

472 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Our vast growth in American educational institutions is after
all largely social—literally millions for fraternity houses, dormi-
tories, stadiums, etc., as against thousands (and this means a thou-
sand to one) for the advancement of knowledge. The fraternity
houses at Cornell have cost more than all the buildings on the
eampus (west of Bailey Hall). The student body spent on one
football game this year more than the entire annual income of our
new Heckscher fund for research.

Now social institutions are governed by tradition, not reason,
and tradition is bad. It is tribal in nature.

In the Solomon Islands they have the canoe tradition. Before
a new canoe can be put in the water, a ceremony must be per-
formed involving a human head—an enemy’s head if possible, or if
not the head of a member of a neighboring village found straying
from home, or the head of a slave of the tribe, or even the head of
some useless member of the tribe itself. Incidentally the owner of
the head is eaten, and by strict adherence to such traditions the
natives had pretty well eaten each other out of existence by the
time the Europeans came along and offered them more modern
means of destruction.

Now most of our traditions are much like that in spirit. Such
maxims as: ‘‘The king can do no wrong,’’ ‘‘We fight it out first
and talk about it afterwards,’’ ‘‘Might makes right’’ are as old as
the human race. All the traditions of caste, of the vendetta and
feud, of lynching, of racial antipathy and above all the great tra-
dition of war, are of savage origin.

As to the better so called traditions of fair-play, of sportsman-
ship and the like—they are modern and artificial. They are not
native to us, but have to be acquired and are all too readily relin-
quished. Note the constant effort necessary to maintain a high
standard of sportsmanship even in college sport; how hard to ac-
cord applause and consideration to an adversary ; how easy to lapse
into a primitive boorish muckerism! Are we in American student
circles, and especially here at Cornell, governed by tradition rather
than reason?

If what they say of us istrue: That there is no scholarly inter-
est among students; that undergraduates read nothing; that they
do not think, then have we indeed departed from the great ideals
of the founder. For tradition is aristocratic not democratic, reac-
tionary not liberal, feudal or tribal in spirit, based on custom, on
mere superstition, anti-rational, anti-intellectual.

Let us admit sorrowfully that the world is so near to its prim-
itive savage state that it must still be governed by tradition, not
by reason.

ON FOUNDER’S DAY 473

Of a university the opposite is true:

There principles have supplanted tradition. A university is
essentially democratic; it lives to think and by thought; it is ever
progressive not reactionary. Its chief function is the advance-
ment of knowledge. Are we then a university, as the founder
intended us to be, or not?

We are, or I should not be speaking to you to-day on this sub-
ject!

Here on Kast Hill in Ithaca, where Ezra Cornell planned to
have it, there is a university.

‘‘T do not speak of this great group of buildings, nor of their
contents, nor of any college or group of colleges. These colleges
are useful establishments but collectively they do not constitute
the Cornell of which I am thinking.

Here and there upon the campus in laboratories and seminary
rooms and libraries you may have become aware of individuals
and groups—old and young, men and women, at work at some-
thing which does not appear in undergraduate schedules or ecur-
ricula.

Theirs is the most fascinating and most important work in the
world: the discovery of new truths and principles. They are add-
ing to the world’s stock of knowledge, and it is by means of this
knowledge that the world is slowly—oh so slowly—getting away
from its tribal traditions.

They are the university—the kind of university we may well
believe the founder would delight in were he alive now.

Such work is creative and therefore immortal. He who adds
a single real fact to our knowledge of the universe has won a place
in the hall of fame. His recognition may not be immediate nor
local, but whenever in the course of time that fact is made use of
the discoverer will be remembered.

A Scottish schoolmaster a century ago made just one contribu-
tion to the science of optics. His name is a familiar one to-day
to every school boy in the world who studies physies, and will be
for centuries to come. He doubtless devoted a life time to teaching ;
but fine and beautiful and important as teaching is it is ephemeral,
like newspaper work. Its influence lasts, but the source is soon
forgotten.

If Cornell University should be wiped out by some great scourge
or cataclysm—even as some of the European universities may yet
be by the great war—it would be utterly forgotten in a single
generation in spite of its great services in the teaching of tens of
thousands of.students. But it will not be forgotten whether it live
or die, for it will have contributed something to the world’s knowl-

474 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

edge. These investigators—they are of the immortals. Neither
they nor their work will die. They are the soul of the university
and the soul lives on. Nor will the memory of the founder die,
for he made his contribution in that motto of his and though his
ideal were to fail of realization and be forgotten, we can easily
imagine scholars of the far future finding his saying and acclaim-
ing:

So here was one who in the darkness of the nineteenth century
had the modern idea, for he said:

*‘T would found an institution where any person can find in-
struction in any study.’’

To those of my hearers who are undergraduates I would say,
strive to get in touch with the real university which I have de-
scribed, for until you do you will not be of the university. You
may be enrolled in this or that college and after four years go out
with our label on you, but, unless you have taken some part, be it
only that of a breathless, eager, looker-on at some one of the
creative activities of our researchers and scholars, you will never
get the best—the only really worth-while thing that Cornell has
to offer you.

UNUSUAL HUMAN FOODS 475

UNUSUAL HUMAN FOODS
By Professor ALBERT M. REESE

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

N that interesting book by Simmons, ‘‘ Animal Food,’’ published
many years ago, is described almost every imaginable kind of
animal food used by civilized and savage races of man, from man
himself, in the interesting, if gruesome, chapters on cannibalism,
down to the lower invertebrates.

It is my purpose, in this short article, to call attention only to
those types of animal food not commonly eaten by Americans that
I have actually eaten and proved to be palatable. Many others
might, of course, be mentioned on good authority, but only those
which I have myself eaten will be described. Some of these ob-
viously could have no economie importance in the United States;
others might be added to our menus, and a few are already on the
market in some localities.

Let us begin with the highest group of animals, the Mammalia.

Monkeys. Owing to the strong anatomical resemblances be-
tween man and some of the monkeys, it is possible that some of the
reported cases of cannibalism have been due to mistaking monkeys,
which are quite generally used for food in some countries, for
human infants or children. This resemblance would probably be
sufficient to deter most people from eating monkey meat, if the
animal were cooked entire, but if the hands, head and feet be re-
moved and the body be dismembered, the human resemblance is
lost and, unless told, the average person would not know what ani-
mal he was eating. Monkey stew or minced monkey meat would
probably be eaten and enjoyed by anyone who did not know what
animal was before him. As in all animals, the flesh may be tough
or tender, probably depending upon the age of the monkey and
on how it is prepared. Just what familiar flesh it resembles in
taste it is hard to say, but it is certainly a very agreeable food.

Peccary or bush-hog is another animal that makes a very ac-
ceptable dish, though, of course, not one of any importance out-
side the countries where these animals occur. The flesh may some-
times be tough, but is excellent, resembling, as might perhaps be
expected, pork more than anything else.

Opossum. This animal is familiar to most people in this coun-
try, but, except among the negroes of the South, is not fully appre-

476 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ciated as an article of food. While not numerous enough in most
sections to be of much importance it might be raised in captivity.
Its flesh is quite pleasant to the taste, possibly resembling fresh
pork as much as anything.

Woodchuck or ground-hog is a very familiar rodent in many
parts of the country, being so numerous in some places as to be
quite a serious pest. Why the ground-hog is not more generally
eaten is hard to understand, for, when properly cooked, it can
scarcely be told from rabbit. Its legs being small it does not have
the fine hams of the rabbit, but there is sufficient flesh on a good
sized animal to be well worth cooking. It is customary to soak
the flesh in water to remove the ‘‘gamy’’ taste, though the neces-
sity for this is doubtful.

Muskrats are sold in the eastern markets under the name of
marsh hares, at about the same price, per pound, as rabbits. They
may be cooked in the same way that rabbits and squirrels are pre-
pared, and possibly would not be distinguished in taste, by the
average person, from the more familiar animals.

Considering the enormous numbers of muskrats that are killed
for their fur, this animal should be more generally used for food.
The flesh is darker, before cooking, and is not so attractive as that
of the rabbit, but its taste when well prepared is certainly ex-
cellent.

We Americans have many silly ideas and prejudices in regard
to what is fit to eat, and it is one of these prejudices that keeps
many people from eating woodchuck, perhaps because of its rela-
tion to rats and other disagreeable rodents; people do not seem to
realize that rabbits and squirrels, which they do not hesitate to
eat, are also rodents.

Whale meat has been used for food by the Japanese and others
for generations, but it is only within a few years that we Ameri-
cans have begun to realize the possibilities of these huge mammals
as a source of food. It is said that there are no ‘‘choice cuts’’ on
a whale; all the flesh is equally good. Imagine an animal from
which Porterhouse steaks may be cut in half-ton chunks!

On our Pacific Coast and, perhaps, in the largest cities of the
east, fresh whale meat may be bought in the markets. The writer
has never tasted the fresh meat. In certain western cities whale
meat is canned, and in this form may be obtained almost anywhere.
This canned meat looks like canned beef, and when made into stews
or cooked in other ways would probably not be distinguished by
the average person from excellent canned beef. Why it is not
more generally used it is difficult to understand, unless the popular
idea that whales are fishes has something to do with it.

UNUSUAL HUMAN FOODS 477

Birds, unfortunately, are nearly all suitable for human food.
The writer is opposed, on principle, to the use, under ordinary cir-
cumstances, of birds as food, with the exception, of course, of do-
mestic breeds and perhaps certain of the water fowl.

However, there is one bird, only too well known in almost every
corner of the United States, that might well be an artiele of diet ;
it is the house or English sparrow. There is very little difference
of opinion in regard to this species; it is a pest—in some places
a serious nuisance—against which a nationwide war of extermina-
tion has been declared. In destroying these birds by traps or guns,
why not make use of them as food? To be sure they are small,
but they are nearly as large as the bobolink that was formerly so
extensively used for food under the name of reed-bird. They are
easily prepared, and when properly roasted taste just as good, so
it seems to the writer, as the famous reed-birds. The bones are
so tiny that most of them can be eaten along with the flesh. At
certain seasons of the year when they congregate in large flocks
it is not difficult to shoot, with fine shot, or to trap in various
ways, these birds in considerable numbers. If the use of English
sparrows as food could be encouraged it might help in the war to
reduce their numbers.

Ldible birds’ nests, while of no importance in this country,
form quite an important article of commerce in some parts of the
Orient. In China, whieh is apparently the chief market, they bring
fancy prices. These nests are, as is well known, formed of the
dried saliva-like secretion of birds, and are of about the size and
shape of the nests of cemented twigs built by our chimney swifts.
The material resembles gelatine and when treated with water swells
in about the same way. Properly cooked the edible bird’s nest is
supposed to be a remarkable delicacy. The writer prepared, ac-
cording to the only recipe available, a nest obtained near the Island .
of Palawan of the Philippine group. The result was a gelatinous
mass without a particle of taste. Hither the nest was stale or there
was something wrong with the method of preparation, since none
of those who tasted it was enthusiastically anxious for more.

The writer once ordered bird’s nest soup at a Chinese restau-
rant. While the taste was excellent, there was nothing but the
name on the menu to indicate that the dish was not ordinary
chicken soup. Besides the fine particles of chicken there were
small, tasteless lumps of gelatine that may have been bird’s nest
or may have been ordinary gelatine. There was absolutely no taste
other than what would be expected in chicken soup. Perhaps the
soup has been Americanized to satisfy the present demand.

478 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Reptiles. There is scarcely a group of animals against which
there is such a general and unreasoning prejudice as the Reptilia,
and this applies as much to their use as food as it does in other
respects.

Almost anyone will eat turtles, nearly all species of which may
be used for food; yet when alligators or lizards are suggested they
are usually declined with disgust, often with the statement ‘‘be-
eause they are reptiles.’’ An illustration of this was once seen in
South America. The writer had expressed the desire to taste the
flesh of the iguana, which lizard was said by the English gentleman,
whose guest he was, to be commonly used for food. The English-
man spoke enthusiastically of the flavor of the big lizard; but when
a few hours later, the writer, after skinning a freshly killed caiman
or South American alligator, suggested cooking some of the flesh,
this same Englishman declined, with vigorous expressions of dis-
cust, to consider eating the crocodilian. Another illustration was
seen years ago in central Florida. The individual, in this case, in-
stead of being an educated English gentleman, was a very ignorant
and erude youth, who had said that he would not be caught eating
a dirty ‘‘varmint’’ like a ’gator. Shortly afterwards, during his
absence from camp, we cooked some alligator steaks, and on his
return, had them served as ‘‘fish.’’ We all partook; the youth in
question eating with evident enjoyment the despised ‘‘varmint’’
under the name of “‘fish.’’

The writer has described in a previous issue of this journal’ an
alligator dinner given at a boarding house in a college town, where
some thirty people, of both sexes and of various occupations, ate
alligator meat every individual declaring the meat to be unusually
palatable. In this case the meat was cut into pieces and cooked
in eracker crumbs, like a breaded veal cutlet, which it resembled
somewhat in taste and texture. It is probably the silly prejudice,
illustrated above, that keeps the alligator from being used exten-
sively as a source of fresh meat in the regions where the species
is found.

The use of turtles as food, from the lowly snapper to the aristo-
eratic diamond-back, is too familiar to need mention here. The use
of the eggs of these animals is less common, especially in this coun-
try, though in some tropical regions they are extensively used.
While scarcely comparable to the fresh eggs of domestic fowls,
some turtle eggs are decidedly palatable.

Amphibia. As among the reptiles, so among the amphibia,
there is an unjustifiable prejudice against certain forms by people
who do not hesitate to eat other species. Almost anyone will eat

1 December, 1917.

UNUSUAL HUMAN FOODS 479

frog legs (for some reason only the hind legs are commonly eaten,
though the rest of the muscular parts are equally good), while
very few people would dream of using the larger salamanders,
closely related to the frogs, as food. Of course these salamanders
can not be obtained in such large numbers as frogs, and, their legs
being small, most of the meat would have to be obtaimed from their
tails; but some of them are quite large, and are more or less of
a pest in streams where they abound, so that it would seem a waste
of good food to destroy them instead of eating them.

The azolotl and other moderate sized salamanders are said to be
used as food in Mexico and to be exposed for sale in the Mexiean
markets. Perhaps the most common of these large salamanders is
Necturus, popularly known as the mud-puppy or water-dog, though
these names are also applied to Cryptobranchus or the hellbender.
As necturus is rather thick-bodied and may reach a length of 12
to 18 inches there is considerable meat upon it, which in flavor is
very similar to that of frogs. The animal is harder to skin than
the frog, but it may be cooked im the same way, and it is doubtful
if the average person would distinguish between the taste of its
fiesh and that of a similarly prepared frog.

Cryptobranchus allegheniensis, the American giant salamander
or hellbender, popularly known as alligator or water-dog is the
largest of American salamanders, reaching a length of two feet and
a weight of nearly two pounds. It is found in the waters tributary
to the Ohio River, in some places being quite abundant. As in
Necturus the legs are too small to be of use as food, and as in Nee-
turus the skin is rather hard to remove; but the flesh is equally
agreeable and during the breeding season the eggs, of which a
considerable mass may be fornd in a single animal, are also of a
very pleasant flavor.

An illustration of the persistence of the taste of ether in an
animal killed with that reagent was seen in a hellbender which
after being etherized, was skinned, cleaned, washed and, after sev-
eral hours, was fried in egg and eracker crumbs. In spite of the
washing, the intervening hours, and the heat of cooking the flesh
still retained a distinet flavor of ether, though the eggs had no
such taint.

Fishes. Since nearly all of the common fishes are used for
food, and there is but little popular prejudice against members of
the class, attention will be called to but one group that should be
more generally made use of as food: this is the Elasmobranchs, or
sharks and skates. In the markets of China these forms are com-

480 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

monly displayed for sale. The fins, especially of certain species, are
in demand as a source of gelatine.

Certain of our sharks are now canned and put on the market
under the trade names ‘‘gray fish,’’ ‘‘deep-water swordfish’’ and
perhaps other names. While not of such a desirable flavor as can-
ned salmon these canned sharks are excellent substitutes for fresh
fish and should be more generally used. The addition which their
use would make to our food supply may be seen from a statement
made by Kelloge in his ‘‘The Shellfish Industries’’ that ‘‘It has
been estimated that thirty-seven million dogfish, equal in weight
to half the total cateh of the Massachusetts fishermen, were taken
by them in 1905.”’

Of invertebrates but one or two will be mentioned. Nearly
everyone likes lobster, either fresh or canned, but its near relative
of fresh waters, the crayfish, is unknown as an article of food in
many regions where it is quite abundant. In certain sections of
the west and south crayfish are used as food and are extensively
canned, but, as has been said, they are unknown as an article of
food in many places where, if not sufficiently abundant to sell
commercially, they could be easily collected in sufficient numbers
for family use. When prepared in about the same way that fresh
lobster is cooked the crayfish makes a decidedly pleasant dish,
and the mass of abdominal muscle in the “‘tail’’ of a large crayfish
is considerable.

Fresh water mussels. In many of the rivers and other bodies
of fresh water in various parts of the country are found several
species of fresh water mussels. In some localities where they are
of certain species and are of sufficient abundance they are collected
and their shells are used for making pearl buttons. It may be pos-
sible that these mussels are used for food at times, but I have never
heard that this is done. Owing to the frequent pollution by sewage
of the streams in which they live, it would probably be unwise
to eat them raw, but there is no reason why they should not be
eaten after being properly cooked. They are, to be sure, some-
times very tough, but this might be remedied by special methods
of cooking, and the flavor, while not so delicious as that of some
of the salt water bivalves, is decidedly agreeable.

Squid and perhaps other cephalopod molluses are sometimes
displayed for sale under the name of devil-fish, by Italian stores,
even at a distance from the coast. They are used in making soup
and possibly in other ways.

The writer had a soup or stew made from an eviscerated speci-
men, using milk, seasoning with salt and pepper, and adding a

UNUSUAL HUMAN FOODS 481

lump of butter. The flesh, while not so delicate as that of an oyster,
was not especially tough, and the soup was very much like fiat
made from oysters, but with an additional taste that w as not very
agreeable. Possibly the addition of celery or some other flavoring
substance might counteract this undesirable taste.

This devilfish soup was given to a domestic science class of about
twenty young women; about half of these young women voted that
they liked the preparation, and all were interested in trying a
new dish.

At thirty cents a pound it is not likely that squid will become
especially popular on Ameriean tables.

The reluctance of people towards eating untried articles of food
is mentioned by V. Stefansson in an goucle in THE Scienvrrre
Montuuy for December, 1920. He says: “‘Similarly we found
that ‘well brought-up’ men, used in their ee to a large variety
of foods, both domestic and imported, take very readily to any new
thing (such, for instance, as seal meat). But men ‘poorly brought-
up’ and used to only half a dozen or so articles of food in their
regular diets are generally very reluctant to try a new food unless
it has been represented to them in advance as an expensive or
specially delicious thing.”’ . . . ‘For one thing, the man of
the laboring type has a feeling of being degraded when he-is com-
pelled to eat the food of ‘savages,’ while the man of the intelleec-
tual type is appealed to by the mild flavor of adventure in experi-
menting with ‘native food.’’’ Stefansson found that Eskimo
women were much slower to try new kinds of food than were the
men.

VOL. XIV.—31.

482 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

REGARDING THE HABITS OF TARANTULAS'
AND THE EFFECTS OF THEIR POISON

By W. J. BAERG

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

S one who has grown up north of the Mason and Dixon Line and
had seen tarantulas only in collections, I had never given
these big hairy spiders any serious thought. However, when I came
to the Ozarks of this region and heard some of the weird stories
telling how these tarantulas would jump on a person from a dis-
tance of 15-25 feet, and how their bite proved almost always fatal,
I developed considerable curiosity in regard to these terror-inspir-
ing objects. Upon learning that these spiders are fairly common
on the stony hillsides near the college campus, I immediately set to
work and in a short time assembled a small collection. It seemed

HOLE OCCUPIED BY TARANTULA, SHOWING THE WEB OVER THE HOLE. NEARLY
NATURAL SIZE

1 Eurypelma_ steindachnert Ausserer, determined by Professor C. R.
Crosby, Cornell University.

TARANTULAS AND THE EFFECTS OF THEIR POISON 483

desirable to me, since so little is known about their habits, that I
keep a few alive for daily observations.

In the Ozark region the tarantulas are commonly found lying
in holes. These holes vary from 11% to 2 inches in diameter and
from 8 to 12 inches in depth. They are apparently not made by
the spiders themselves, but are appropriated from gophers, ground
squirrels and other small rodents. Most of the holes when the
spiders are ‘‘at home’’ are covered with a thin webbing, some are
merely lined around the edge.

It would seem that flooding these holes with water might be an
easy way to get the spiders; but here, as elsewhere, inference is
misleading. The simplest way that I have so far found is to insert
a slender stick into the hole and gently tease the spider, whereupon
it usually proceeds to leave the hole at once.

Having found that a large grasshopper once a week or ten days
and a small dish of water solved all the problems of feeding, I en-
countered no further difficulties in keeping the tarantulas under
bell jars on the laboratory table. During the winter the feeding
problem is still further simplified, for, although these spiders re-
main active all through the year; yet they refuse all food from
some time in October till about the middle of April, and require
nothing but water for their sustenance and well-being.

HOLE OCCUPIED BY TARANTULA SHOWING WEB AROUND THE EDGE OF HOLE.
NEARLY NATURAL SIZE

484 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

VIEW OF UNDERSIDE OF TARANTULA SHOWING THE BROKEN FANG. NEARLY
NATURAL SIZE :

One female tarantula, about 214 inches long, has now been
under observation for more than two years, and is apparently
doing very well under the simple diet outlined above.

The process of molting, or shedding the skin, seems sufficiently
interesting to be briefly described here. The skin splits around
the upper edge of the main body (cephalothorax) in such a way
that the entire top from the base of the chelicere (the arms that
operate the fangs) to the base of the abdomen comes off like a lid.
The skin of the abdomen may or may not split along the middle
of the back.

A year ago the molting took place on August 15, this year on
August 20. The latter molt occurred from 8 to 11 in the morning
and I was able to observe the entire process. The first conspicu-
ous evidence of molting is the lifting of the upper surface of the
cephalothorax. This remains attached over only a short distance
near the base of the right chelicera.

TARANTULAS AND THE EFFECTS OF THEIR POISON 485

A significant feature in the process of molting is that it pro-
ceeds practically without any visible effort on the part of the
tarantula. About all that one is able to observe is that the body
by rather faint pulsations gradually oozes out of the old skin,
rising up and moving to the left in such a manner that by the time
that all the appendages and the abdomen have been extricated from
the skin the tarantula is seen lying on its side and facine in the
opposite direction of the skin. At this stage the spider turns on
its back and begins to exercise its legs in a more or less leisurely
manner for about one hour when it gets back on its feet and be-
haves in the normal way.

Some time this year during the month of May I obtained a
large female which was apparently heavy with eges. Instead of
placing her under a bell jar, like the others, I put her into a large
battery jar half filled with dirt, thinking that she would probably
make some sort of a hole preparatory:to egg-laying; but she made
no such an attempt.

On the morning of June 28 the spider constructed a large
silken bag all around herself and kept busy on the inside of it for
some time. On the next day she was on the outside of the bag
which had now shrunken to the size of a black walnut without the
hull. From now on the tarantula spent practically all her time
sitting over the bag.

On July 20 I made a small opening in the bag and took out a

TARANTULA AND EGG SAC. NEARLY NATURAL SIZE

486 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

few eggs and young spiders. The eggs are white in color, globular
and about two millimeters in diameter. The young spiders match
the color of the eggs so well that they are quite difficult to see when
small. The young were at this time feeding on the eggs still un-
hatched. A few days later, July 24, I decided to take out all the
egos and young for further study. The bag contained at this time
460 eggs in apparently good condition, 113 young spiders, and 90
egos which were shrivelled up. This makes a total of 663 eggs as
originally laid. The shrivelled eggs had obviously furnished the
food for the young spiders. Hoping that I might get some in-
formation on the final result of this struggle for existence, I re-
placed the eggs and the young spiders in the bag and closed the
slit that I had made with some glue. Unfortunately my efforts
interferred with the instincts of the spider for on the following
morning I found her enjoying a breakfast consisting of her own
eges and young spiders.

It is well known that tarantulas, in fact all spiders in general,
are cannibals. Thinking that I might get some more detailed in-
formation on this particular habit, I placed two large females,
that had just been brought in from their natural homes, under
a large bell jar. Contrary to what might be expected, they were
quite peaceable. One sitting quietly on one side of the jar, the
other opposite her, behaving much like two persons not on speak-
ing terms. This attitude they steadfastly maintained in spite of
my efforts to bring them together. Thus they remained from nine
o’clock in the morning till noon, when I left the laboratory. How-
ever during my absence, at least one of them must have realized
that it was lunch time. On my return at about one o’clock P. M.
I found one of the females sitting comfortably on the abdomen of
the other and busily feeding on its contents. There was no evi-
dence of any struggle. The dead tarantula was badly torn on the
upper surface of the abdomen, but showed no other injury. The
victor showed no evidence whatsoever of having been attacked.

It we may judge from these observations, there seems to be no
definite fighting spirit. Several individuals apparently tolerate
each other till one develops a desire for food.

Recently when an intelligent young man told me that his brother
had been bitten by a tarantula and had died as a result a few days
later, I decided to make some sort of a study of the effects of the
much-dreaded venom.

Accordingly a guinea pig, seven months old and weighing about
635 grams was secured and the experiment was carried out in the
following manner. The hair on the inside of the right hind leg

TARANTULAS AND THE EFFECTS OF THEIR POISON 487

was cut off close to the skin, and then having fastened the leg and
holding the pig firmly an attempt was made to have the tarantula
implant her fangs on the prepared spot. The spider used in these
tests was a large female, whose body measured 21% inches in length
and 1 inch across the thorax. After several attempt it became ob-
vious that she was unable to penetrate the skin of the pig. Con-
sequently in an effort to obtain some evidence on the nature of the
poison, the chosen spot on the leg was disinfected with aleohol and
treated so as to remove the difficulty in penetration. Hereupon
after a little agitation the tarantula proceeded to implant both
fangs well into the flesh of the guinea pig’s leg. A second trial
was made and in this, one of the fangs entered the flesh. Both
times when the tarantula struck the guinea pig gave evidence of
more or less pain. A number of observations on temperature,

= oe =

CROSS SECTION OF CHELICERA SHOWING FANG, AND ROW OF TEETH, POSITION AND
RELATIVE SIZE OF POISON GLAND. ENLARGED ABOUT TEN TIMES
respiration, ete., were made; but as all of these proved to be of
obviously little value, they are omitted here. There developed a
slight swelling in the leg which possibly was due mainly to the
preparatory treatment. At no time did the guinea pig refuse to

use the leg in walking around.

For the next subject I selected a white rat, about one month
old. The tender skin of this animal was an advantage, for the
tarantula was easily induced to implant her fangs deeply into the
flesh of the inside of the right hind leg, and without any difficulty

3)

repeated the act. The four spots where the fangs had penetrated

488 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

assumed a reddish appearance; but the blood did not gather in a
drop. When the tarantula struck, the rat struggled and gave
other evidence of more or less pain.

Since the rat gave apparently a definite response to the effects
of the poison, the observations are given here in condensed form.
At first, immediately after the tarantula had struck, the rat seemed
bewildered. With eyes closed it ran about in the cage holding up
the wounded leg. After about 15 minutes it ceased to run and for
a half an hour it jumped around in a jerky way. Then it seemed
to go into a state of coma. For a half an hour it remained rather
quiet with only a sudden movement of the legs now and then.
During the two hours following the rat moved about restlessly,
holding the wounded leg close to the body. Later it became quiet
again and soon began using the wounded leg. Four hours from
the time it was bitten the rat opened its eyes and an hour later it
behaved as if it had entirely recovered. After several hours it
partook of a hearty meal consisting of milk and corn meal.

According to a theory held by nutrition chemists a full-grown
rat represents in many ways one thirtieth of a grown man. That
is to say that a man requires thirty times the amount of food
needed for a rat, ete. Assuming that a man would also require
thirty times the amount of spider venom in order to suffer the
same agony; I decided to try the ‘‘deadly’’ poison on myself.

On the morning of August 10, I induced the large tarantula,
used in the previous tests, to strike me twice on the inside of the
small finger of the left hand. In the first attempt the fangs barely
penetrated the skin. The second was more successful, at least one
of the fangs went well under the skin just below the first joint.

The blood gathered a little in the openings but did not collect
in drops. A small amount of the poison, a clear, colorless, and taste-
less liquid, was present in all four places where the fangs had
struck. The sensation produced by the strike was that of a stab
of a pin. This pain, if I may eall it a pain, decreased gradually
so that two hours after the biting took place no trace of the pain
remained. At no time was the finger at all stiff.

On the following day the experiment was repeated. An effort
to use another tarantula than the big one used in the previous
tests failed, she could not be induced to strike, in spite of all teas-
ing and with fangs conveniently placed on the tender portion of
the small finger. So the large female was again brought out and
she did not disappoint me. After but little teasing she struck
violently twice. At the first strike I felt a strong desire to groan,
at the second, in which the spider seemed even more desperate,

TARANTULAS AND THE EFFECTS OF THEIR POISON 489

she broke her left fang off at the middle. The poison was used
more generously than on the day before, two large drops collected
and ran down on both sides of the finger. In one of the pune-
tures a small drop of blood collected, the others merely assumed a
reddish color:

The pain was very much as has been noted for the previous
test, at first fairly sharp and then becoming gradually dull till in
about two hours all trace of pain had disappeared.

It should be added that I did not resort to the use of any disin-
fectants, in fact the punctures were not tampered with in any way.
With regard to relative susceptibility to insect poisons, I should
probably be considered an average individual. The sting of a bee
causes moderate swelling and a pain that lasts for ten or fifteen
minutes.

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‘THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

491

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE'

STARS AND MOLECULES

THE range of research has been ex-
panded in opposite directions and
has opened up two hitherto unattain-
able regions, the minutest and great-
est, the constitution of the atom and
the constitution of the stellar uni-
verse. The two extremes meet in the
method of investigation for the lab-
oratory and the observatory have
gone into partnership. The variations
in the movement .of the electrons in
their orbits about the nucleus reveal
the chemical relationships and
actions of the elements as well
the age and motions of the stars.

The laws that have proved useful
in explaining the properties of gases
are now found useful in interpreting
the sidereal system. Dr. F. H. Seares,
in a recent address at the Carnegie
Institution of Washington, showed
that the gas law of the equipartition
of energy applied in general to the
stars. The massive stars have the
lowest velocities, while the smaller
stars move more rapidly. Professor
Seares says: ‘‘ This equal distribution
of the energy of motion can scarcely
hold rigorously for the stars, since
such a state can exist only when the
motions are completely at random,
which is not the case with the stars.
Some of them move as groups, having
motions which are parallel and equal.
That it holds even approximately is
surprising, for in a gas the state of
equipartition is brought about by the
collisions and close encounters of the
molecules. But the stars do not
collide, or at least so rarely that in
practice we may consider that their
motions take place without mutual
interference. How then has the equal
distribution of energy among the

Ee-
as

1 Edited by Watson Davis, Science
Service.

]) stars come about?

We do not know;
but obviously its existence is a cir-
cumstance that must be considered in
any theory which pretends to account
for the development of the stellar
universe. ’’”

This peculiar behavior of the stars
results from an extensive investiga-
tion of the masses, densities, and
diameters of stars of all classes by
Professor Seares, combined with re-
cent measures of stellar velocity by
Dr. W. 8S. Adams and his associates
at Mount Wilson Observatory. When
the stars are classified according to
their intrinsic brightness or candle
power and their temperature, it is
found, as first shown by Hertzsprung
and Russell, that the hottest stars do
not differ widely in intrinsic bright-
ness, but that among the cooler stars
—those which red—there are
enormous differences in luminosity,
amounting to 10,000 fold or more.
And, what is more extraordinary,
there is a gap between the two ex-
tremes of brightness, within which
we find no red stars at all. We thus
have the so-called giant and dwarf
subdivisions of stars, a grouping
which shows most clearly among the
stars of lowest temperature, but per-
sists to some degree through all the
intermediate temperatures and dis-
appears only in the case of the bluish
white stars of high temperature.

The classification according to
intrinsic brightness and temperature
thus reveals two great divisions of
stars, both of which run through the
entire scale of temperatures: the
giants. which, roughly, are of the
same order of brightness, all very
luminous; and the dwarfs which
merge with the giants among the
very hot stars, but become fainter
and fainter as we run down the tem-
perature scale. Our sun is a typical

are

492 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

dwarf star of intermediate tempera-
ture, whose brightness is about 1/100
that of an average giant.

The study of astronomical pro-
cesses in terrestrial laboratories has
been made possible by the use of
heavy currents of electricity. Dr.
Gerald L. Wendt has by this means
heated thin tungsten wires to the
temperature of the hottest stars,
some 50,000° F. and reports to the
Chicago Section of the American
Chemical Society and to the National
Academy of Sciences that the metal
is decomposed almost completely into

helium. This, if true, would be a |

more complete and extensive disrup-
tion of the atoms than has been at-
tained by Sir Ernest Rutherford, of
the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge,
who has obtained traces of hydrogen
by bombarding the nucleus of nitro-
gen and other elements of low atomic
weight with alpha particles.
Professor R. A. Millikan, of the
California Institute of Technology, is
also studying the constitution of
atoms by bombarding with alpha
particles, using his oil-drop detector
to catch and count the ejected elec-
trons. His method is to suspend in
such a field a minute oil-drop, of
diameter about one hundred thous-
andth of an inch, giving it just
enough charge to neutralize the force
of gravity upon it and therefore to
keep it just suspended in midair
tending to move neither up nor down.
He then shoots alpha rays immedi-
ately underneath the drop and wien
one of these rays goes through a
helium atom which is also under-
neath the drop and detaches from it
an electron, the residue of this atom
becomes thereby electrically charged
and is thrown instantly upward by
the field into the oil drop to which it
sticks, thereby communicating its
charge to that of the drop and
changing the balance of the forces
which had theretofore acted upon the
drop. The result is that the drop
begins to move upward at a speed

which is proportional to the amount
of charge communicated to it by the
advent of the atom of helium upon it,
so that if the alpha particle knocked
out just one electron from the helium
atom, the oil drop which instantly
caught that ionized atom would begin
to move upward with a speed which
would be proportional to the value of
this single electronic charge. But if
the alpha particle had the good for-
tune to pick off both electrons from
the helium atom as it shot through it,
the charge communicated to the oil
drop by the capture of the residue of
the helium atom would then be twice
as large as before and the motion
would therefore be twice as rapid.

| By catching in this way the residues

of ionized helium atoms at practically
the instant at which they become
ionized, it is possible to tell without
the slightest uncertainty whether the
alpha particle in shooting through
the atom has knocked off just one of
its electrons or both of them.

The results of Dr. Millikan’s ex-
periment are very interesting. He
found that his alpha particles, which,
it will be remembered, are moving
with a speed very much faster than
that of an ordinary bullet, got both
electrons every sixth shot. That is to
say, five shots out of six which got
anything knocked only one of the two
electrons out of the helium atom, but
on an average every sixth successful
shot knocked them both out. These
facts throw some light on the struc-
ture of the helium atom, for they
show that the two electrons in their
revolutions around the nucleus of the
helium atom must get into the same
region of the atom a considerable por-
tion of the time, otherwise they could
not both get into the way of the
alpha particle bullets as frequently
as they are found to do. It is also
interesting that Dr. Millikan has not
yet found any atom save the helium
atom, which loses more than one
single electronic charge when an

| alpha partiele is shot through it.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

AN INTERNATIONAL LAN-

GUAGE

THERE is a conflict between the
political and scientific tendencies of
the times and it will be curious to
watch which influence prevails. In
the political field nationalism is the
order of the day. The war gave birth
to a dozen nations. Interna-
tional intercourse hampered by
tariff barriers, postal impediments
and the revival of obsolescent lan-
guages.

But which
knows no nationality and which may

new

is

now comes the radio
put a girdle round the earth seven
times a second. It is impossible to
partition the ether. Its waves sprend
impartially in all directions and any-
body may listen in without the con-
sent or knowledge of the sender. The
Eiffel tower talks to people of thirty
tongues. So long as intercommunica-
tion was confined to print, mail and
telegraph, it was possible to get along
with the aid of interpreters, but when
millions are receiving messages with-
out intermediaries they must have a
common language. Whether this will
be gradually and capriciously evolved
out of the and
maritime codes; whether the nations
may set aside their mutual jealousy

so far as to adopt one of the modern

current commercial

languages; whether Latin, the old
international language, will be
brought into use in its classical,

ecclesiastical or a simplified form; or
whether an. artificial language, such
as Esperanto or Ido, will find ae-
ceptance, remains to be seen. It is no
longer an academic question, but has
suddenly become of pressing practical
importance. It should receive serious
attention by competent philologists.
It is of peculiar importance to the
scientist who formerly could get
along fairly well with a reading
knowledge of English, French and
German but who now must master
not only Italian, Russian, Dutch and
the Seandinavian languages, but also
Polish, Czech, Japanese, Chinese,
Irish and Hebrew if he wants to read

493

the reports of research in the original.
Patriotic pride is strong in the newer
nations and demands the publication
of their in
But the more pow-
erful the impulse for the multiplica-
tion of languages and the wider! the
fields in which science is cultivated,
the more necessary will become an
international medium of communicéa-
tion.

scientific achievements

the vernacular.

The whole progress of civilization
during the past century and a half
has been toward making the world a
smaller place to live in. Railroad,
electric line, automobile, airplane and

' airship have all made transportation

of concrete things easier and faster.
The wire telegraph and telephone and
the radio telegraph and _ telephone
have taken information instantane-
ously to the whole world.

There is a missing link in ,this
great time-contraction of the globe.
The Japanese’ trans-Pacifie radio
operator can, in international code,
tell the American operator that at-
mospherie disturbances are interfer-
ing with communication; they can
hold a rather extended technical con-
versation in code. But difference in
language prevents the simplest kind
of exchange of ordinary information
between many peoples of different
countries, in spite of the fact that
mechanical means of communication
are highly developed.

International language will soon
become an acknowledged world neces-
sity. Like all the other great devel-
opments of modern times, it must
first undergo development and scien-
tifie study. An international auxil-
lary language that will bring people
of alien tongues together is not a re-
mote possibility. If it existed to-day,
if the generation that is growing up
to-day were being taught an accepted
international language, there is little
question but that the next generation
of the world would be able to easily
“listen in’’ on radio broadcasting
from any nation.

Pioneer work in the scientific con-

-

JOHN CASPER BRANNER
Formerly professor of geology at Stanford University and at the time of his
death president emeritus.

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

sideration of the international auxil-
iary language problem is being done
by the Committee on an International
Auxiliary Language of the Interna-
tional Research Council, headed by
Dr. F. G. Cottrell. Much progress is
being made as those who attended
the symposium on the subject at the
Toronto meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of
‘Science know.

INTERNATIONAL MEETINGS
AT ROME

THE International Research Coun-
cil, organized in 1919 at Brussels,
will meet again in that city on July
18 of this year. Meanwhile the Inter-
national Astronomical Union and the
International Geodetic and Geophys-
ical Union will meet at Rome on
Méy 2. The United States will be
represented at the astronomical meet-
ing by Professor Frank Schlesinger,
Yale University, chairman of the
American delegates; Dr. R. G. Ait-
ken, Lick Observatory; Dr. C. E. St.
John and Professor F. H. Seares,
Mount Wilson Observatory; Dr. H. D.
Curtis, director of the Allegheny Ob-
servatory; Dr. O. J. Lee, Yerkes
Observatory; Professor H. N. Rus-
sell, Princeton University; Professor
John A. Miller, Swarthmore College;
Professor Edward Kasner, Columbia
University; Dr. Harlow Shapley,
director of the Harvard College Ob-
servatory, and Dr. Frank B. Littell,
of the U. S. Naval Observatory.

Dr. William Bowie, chief of the
division of geodesy of the U. 8. Coast
and Geodetic Survey, will head the
American delegation to the geodetic
and geophysical meeting, and will be
delegate to the section on geodesy.
Other delegates are: Section on ter-
restrial magnetism, Dr. L. A. Bauer,
. director of the department of terres-
trial magnetism of the Carnegie Insti-
tution of Washington; section of
seismology, Professor H. F. Reid, of
the Johns Hopkins University; see-

tion on meteorology, Dr. H. H. Kim-:

495

ball, of the U. S. Weather Bureau;
section on physical oceanography,
Dr. G. W. Littlehales, of the hydro-
graphic office of the Navy Depart-
“ment; section on voleanology, Dr.
H. S. Washington, of the geophysical
laboratory of the Carnegie Institu-
tion of Washington.

American astronomers met in
Washington just before the American
astronomical delegates left for Rome
and considered many of the subjects
that will come up for international
consideration.

One of the questions on the agenda
of the Rome meeting that will inter-
est and affect the ordinary person
most directly is the reform of the
calendar. The American section did
not instruct its delegates on this
matter but it is expected that some
action will be taken by the Interna-
tional Astronomical Union meeting.
Much of the discussion by astrono-
mers at Rome will relate to the uni-
fication of nomenclature and plans
for international cooperation in vari-
ous projects. A new system of
spectrum classification of stars will
be recommended by the American

1 delegates, and plans for the deter-

mination of terrestrial longitude by
wireless telegraphy will be laid. An-
other important question that will
arise is the variation of latitude, or
the ‘‘wabbling’’ of the earth. About
twenty years ago, the Ukiah, Calif.,
Observatory was established as one of
five latitude stations, and valuable
data have been obtained. But the
astronomers realize the need of
further knowledge of the factors that
affect the accuracy of their measure-
ments and will urge additional sta-
tions.

Each one of the sections of the
International Geodetic and Geo-
physical, Unions has full agendas.
The scientists of Europe will discuss
the triangulation nets of many of
their countries and Africa, as well as
the establishment of a fundamental
longitude net of the world. Euro-

496

peans will have as an example of |
international cooperation the United |
States, Mexico and Canada which are
using the same triangulation net with |
effective results. Isostasy, or the dis- |
tribution of densities of the earth,
will also be considered. Volcanolo-
gists will lay plans for getting to the
eruptions in the least possible time
and they will also arrange to chart
the volcanoes that discharge their
lava into the sea instead of the air
and for this reason are seldom dis-
covered. They will consider tapping
the voleanie energy of the earth by |
holes leading down into the hot por-
tions, as is now being done in Italy.
Equally interesting questions will be
discussed by those who study the
earth’s magnetism, earthquakes and |
the oceans.

The International Union of Pure
and Applied Chemistry meets at
Lyons, France, from June 28 to July
2. From August 10 to 19 there will
be an International Geological . Con-
gress at Brussels, Belgium. In June

| ered a

| France.

there will be an International Chem-
ical Conference at Utrecht, Holland,
to which distinguislfed chemists of all
nations, including Germany and
Russia, have been invited. Pro-
fessor W. A. Noyes is acting as chair-
man of the committee to select Amer-
ican members of the conference, the
other members being Professor Stieg-
litz, Professor Lewis and Dr. Whit-
ney.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

WE record with regret the death of
Benjamin Moore, Whitney professor
of biochemistry at the University of
Oxford and formerly professor of
physiology at Yale University; of
Augustus D. Waller, professor of
physiology at the University of Lon-
don; of Theodor Liebisch, professor
of mineralogy at Berlin; and of
Camille Jordan, professor of mathe-
matics at Paris -and editor of the
Journal de Mathématiques.

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Stk ErNest RUTHERFORD, Caven-
dish professor of experimental '
physics in the University of Cam-
bridge, has been named as president
of the British Association for the

' Advancement of Science for the an-

nual meeting to be held at Liverpool
next Frank Dyson was
elected president of the British Op-
tical Society at the annual meeting.
At the same meeting Professor A. A.
Michelson, of the University of Chi-
cago, and Dr. M. von Rohr, of Messrs.
Carl Zeiss, Jena, were elected hon-
orary fellows of the society.

year.—Sir

PROFESSOR ALBERT EINSTEIN, of
the University of Berlin, has deliv-
of four lectures in
Paris on the ‘‘ Theory of Relativity,’’
under the auspices of the College de
After Vilhjalmur Stefansson
had delivered a lecture before the Na-
tional Geographic Society, the society
made the announcement that its Re-
search Council had awarded him the
Grant Squires prize ‘‘in recognition
of the unique interest and importance
of his book, ‘The Friendly Arctic,’
the outstanding geographic publica-
tion of 1921.’’

series

ESTABLISHMENT of fellowships in
medicine to increase the supply of
qualified teachers and investigators is
announced by the National Research
Council. The fellowships, supported
by appropriations of the Rockefeller
Foundation and the General Eduea-
tion Board, will be open to Americans
or Canadians of either sex holding or
qualified to hold degrees of doctor of
medicine or doctor of philosophy
from approved universities. The ap-
propriations are $100,000 a year for
five years. Successful candidates, to
be known as fellows in medicine of
the National Research Council, will
be at liberty to choose the institutions
or universities in which they will

work. The fellowships in medicine
are similar to the fellowships in
physics and chemistry established

under the same auspices.

THE SCIENTIFIC
MONTHLY

JUNE, 1922

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS'

By Professor WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER

BUSSEY INSTITUTION, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LECTURE I

GENERAL REMARKS ON INSECT SOCIETIES. THE SOCIAL BEETLES

URING the past fifty years, the science of living organisms has

y itself, like a living organism, developed so rapidly that it
has more than once changed its aspect and induced its votaries to
change their points of view. The future historian of the science
will probably emphasize the difference of attitude towards the
living world exhibited by Darwin and his contemporaries and that
of the present generation of twentieth century biologists. He will
notice that the works of the Victorians abound in such phrases as
the ‘‘ struggle for existence,’’ ‘‘survival of the fittest,’’ ‘‘Nature,
red in tooth and claw,’’ and disquisitions on the unrelenting ‘com-
petition in the development, growth and behavior of all animals
- and plants. This struggle, as you know, was supposed to constitute
the very basis for the survival of favored forms through natural
selection. There can be no doubt that even to-day we must admit
that there is much truth in all this writing, but we would insist
that it depicts not more than half of the whole truth. To us it is
clear that an equally pervasive and fundamental innate peculiarity
of organisms is their tendency to cooperation, or ‘‘mutual aid,’’
as it was called by Prince Kropotkin. Even to the great Victorian
naturalists the fact was familiar—though they failed to dwell on
its great social significance—that all living things are genetically
related as members of one great family, one vast, living symplasm,
which, though fragmented into individuats in space, is nevertheless
absolutely continuous in time, that in the great majority of organic
forms each generation arises from the cooperation of two individ-
uals, that“most ‘animals and plants live in associations, herds, col-

as.
1 Lowell Lectures.
VOLe) XiVi—s32:

498 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

onies or societies of the same species and that even the so-called
‘*solitary’’ species are obligatory, more or less cooperative members
of groups or associations of individuals of different species, the
bioccenoses. Living beings not only struggle and compete with one
another for food, mates and safety, but they also work together to
insure to one another these same indispensable conditions for de-
velopment and survival. The phenomena of mutualism and co-
operation are, indeed, so prevalent among plants and animals and
affect their structure and behavior so profoundly that there has
arisen within very recent years a new school of biologists, who
might be called ‘‘symbiotists,’’ because they devote themselves to
the investigation of a whole world of microorganisms which live in
the most intimate symbiosis within the very cells of many if not
most of the higher animals and plants.

If asked why it seems advisable to devote six lectures to social
life among the insects, I might say that these creatures exhibit
many of the most extraordinary manifestations of that general
organic cooperativeness which I have just mentioned, and that
these manifestations have not only an academic but also a practical
interest at the present time. For if there is a world-wide impulse
that more than any other is animating and shaping all our indi-
vidual lives since the world war, it is that towards ever greater
solidarity, of general disarmament, of a drawing together not only
of men to men but of nations to nations throughout the world, of
a recasting and refinement of all our economic, political, social,
educational and religious activities for the purposes of greater
mutual helpfulness. As Edward Carpenter says:

The sense of organic unity, of the common welfare, the instinct of
Humanity, or of general helpfulness, are things which run in all directions
through the very fibre of our individual and social life—just as they do
through that of gregarious animals. In a thousand ways: through heredity
and the fact that common ancestral blood flows in our veins—though we be
only strangers that pass in the street; through psychology, and the similarity
of structure and concatenation in our minds; through social linkage, and the
necessity of each and all to the other’s economic welfare; through personal
affection and the ties of the heart; and through the mystic and religious sense
which, diving deep below personalities, perceives the vast flood of universal

being—in these and many other ways does this Cc iinon Life compel us to
recognize itself as a fact—perhaps the most fundamental fact of existence.

The social insects may also be singled out for special treatment
for the following more particular reasons: first, because they
represent Nature’s most startling efforts in communal organization
and have therefore been held up to us since the days of Solomon
as eminently worth imitating, or to be avoided as an ‘‘abschreck-
endes Beispiel’’; second, because these organizations are simpler
and more perspicuous than our own and we can study their origin,

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 499

development and decay and subject them to experimentation;
third, because many of them represent clean-cut products of com-
paratively simple evolutionary tendencies and hence final and rela-
tively stable accomplishments; fourth, because they show us the
extent to which social organization can be developed and inte-
erated on a purely physiological and instinctive basis, and by con-
trast therefore throw into sharper relief some of the defects and
virtues of our own more intellectual type of society; and fifth,
because they are so remote from us that we should be able to study
them in an unbiased and truly scientific spirit.

I wish to dwell somewhat on the third of these reasons for the
purpose of placing in clearer perspective the great antiquity and
completeness of the social organization of insects. Some years
ago the museums of K6nigsberg and Berlin sent me for study an
extraordinary collection of ants in lumps of Baltic amber. There
were 9,560 specimens, representing 92 species and 43 genera. As
you know, the Baltic amber is merely the fossil resin of pines
which flourished during Lower Oligocene Tertiary times in the
region which is now Sweden. The lquid resin exuded from the
tree- trunks precisely as it does to-day, and great numbers of small
insects, especially ants, were trapped in the transparent, viscid
masses which hardened, fell from the trees or remained after the
rotting of the wood and were carried down by the streams and
embedded in what is to-day the floor of the Baltic Sea and the
soil of Eastern Prussia. The lumps are now brought to the sur-
face either by mining or by the action of the waves which east
them up on the beaches. So beautiful and lifelike are the insects
preserved in the amber that by comparison all other fossils have
a singularly dull and inert appearance. Many of the specimens
which I was able to examine were as exquisitely preserved as living
ants embedded in Canada balsam by some expert microscopist.
My study showed conelusively that the ants have undergone no
important structural modifications since the Lower Oligocene, that
they had at that time developed all their various castes just as we
see them to-day, that their larve and pupx were the same; that
they attended plant-lice, kept guest-beetles in their nests and had
parasitic mites attached to their legs in the very same peculiar
positions as in our living species, and that at least six of the seven
existing subfamilies and many of the existing genera were fully
established. Some of the species in the amber were even found to
be practically indistinguishable from those now living in Northern
Europe and North America. The Baltic amber also contains social
bees, wasps and termites, and though these are not so well known,
what I have said of the ants will also mutatis mutandis prove to
be true of them. Since my work was published Cockerell and

500 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Donisthorpe have described a number of ants from the Bagshot
Beds of the Isle of Wight, also of Oligocene age, and very recently
Cockerell has deseribed a typical ant, Eoformica eocenica, from
even earlier strata, the Green River Eocene of Wyoming. We must
conclude, therefore, that these insects—and the same is very prob-
ably true also of the wasps, bees and termites—had their origin
in the Cretaceous, if not earlier. What I wish to emphasize is the
fact that all the main structural and social peculiarities of these
insects were completed by the beginning of the Tertiary and that
they have since been merely marking time or developing only the
slight modifications which serve to distinguish genera, species,
subspecies and varieties.

Now how many years have elapsed since the beginning of the
Tertiary? Geologists have, of course, made many and diverse
estimates. I shall take the most recent, which are much in excess
of earlier computations. Barrell gives the time since the begin-
ning of the Tertiary as 55 to 65 million years. But the social
insects are the most recent—the mere newly rich, so to speak—in
the great class Insecta, which has a fossil record extending back
to the Upper Carboniferous. And as our earliest known fossils are
perfectly typical insects, it is probable that the earliest Hexapods
made their appearance in the Silurian, if not earlier. This would
make the period during which these wonderful creatures have
been living and multiplying on our planet about 300 million years!

In order that we and the impatient reformers in our midst may
experience the proper feeling of humility let us now compare the
age of man and his society with that of the ants. During the Oli-
gocene and early Miocene, while these insects, together with the
uncouth primitive mammals, represented the dominant animal life
of the plains and forests of the globe, the early Primates were just
splitting into two tribes, one of which was. destined to produce the
modern apes, the other the Hominide, or humans. Our ancestors
were probably just forsaking that life among the tree-tops which,
as Woods Jones has shown, has left its ineffaceable impress on all
the details of our anatomy. A large part of the diet of these early
Hominids and their immediate ancestors probably consisted of
those same ants which had already developed a cooperative com-
munism so complete that in comparison the most radical of our
bolsheviks are ultra-conservative capitalists. By a hundred thou-
sand years ago our ancestors had reached the stage of the Neander-
thal man, whose society was probably somewhat more primitive
than that of the Australian savage of to-day. And so far as the
actual, fundamental, biological structure of our society is con-
cerned and notwithstanding its stupendous growth in size and all
the tinkering to which it has been subjected, we are still in much

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 501

the same infantile stage. But if the ants are not despondent be-
cause they have failed to produce a new social invention or con-
vention in 65 million years, why should we be discouraged because
some of our institutions and eastes have not been able to evolve a
new idea in the past fifty centuries?

I find that social habits have arisen no less than 24 different
times in as many different groups of solitary insects. Careful in-
vestigation of the life-histories of tropical species will probably
increase this number. These 24 societies, which I propose to con-
sider in more or less detail in this and the following lectures, rep-
resent very different stages in the evolution of the social habit.
Some of them are small and depauperate, mere rudiments of
societies, some are extremely populous and present great differen-
tiation and specialization of their members, whereas others show
intermediate conditions. And while each of the 24 different so-
cieties has its own peculiar features, we nevertheless observe that
all of them have arisen in the same manner and have the same
fundamental structure. Each is a family consisting of two parent
insects and their offspring or at least of the fecundated mother
and her offspring, and the members of the two generations live
together in more or less intimate, cooperative affiliation. During
the long history of the Insecta this situation has developed time
and time again and quite naturally out of the very general pro-
pensity of female insects to lay their eggs on food suitable to the
hatching larve or to make protective structures or burrows, to
store them with food and to oviposit on it. As a rule, the mother
insect then dies and never sees her offspring, but all such parental
eare, which is also very prevalent among many other animals and
even among plants, is nevertheless a potential or implicit nursing
or fostering, which readily become actual or explicit in such species -
as manage to survive the hatching of their young and can there-
fore continue to feed and protect them. It is difficult, neverthe-
less, to draw a hard and fast line between certain solitary forms
and some of the societies or families I have selected, for there is a
finely graded series of cases of parental care between complete
indifference to the offspring and the families of what may be called
the ineipiently social or subsocial forms. As the societies grow
in size and complexity they naturally change from associations in
which the progeny depend on their parents to associations in which
the parents come to depend on their progeny.

John Fiske and others have claimed that human society has been
rendered possible by a lengthening of infancy and childhood, since
this obviously involves more elaborate care of the young by the
parents and a greatly increased opportunity of learning on the
part of the child. This is true, but it is equally true that the adult

502 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

life of the parents must also be prolonged to cover the retarded
juvenile development, and the insects show us that the lengthening
of the adult stage comes first and makes social life possible. In
solitary insects, of course, it is just the brevity of adult life that
prevents the development of the social habit, no matter how long
the larval period may be. This period may, in fact, extend over
months or even years in certain insects which have an adult stage
of only a few days or hours.

Momentous consequences necessarily follow from the lengthen-
ing of the adult life of the parent insect and the development of
the family, for the relations between parents and offspring tend
to become so increasingly intimate and interdependent that we are
confronted with a new organic unit, or biological entity—a super-
organism, in fact, in which through physiological division of labor
the component individuals specialize in diverse ways and become
necessary to one another’s welfare or very existence. Since this
integration necessarily leads to an important modification of the
activities of the originally solitary insects composing the society
it will be advisable to dwell for a few moments on the basic be-
havior of insects.

The activities of insects, like those of other animals, are an ex-
pression of three fundamental appetites or appetencies. Two of
these—hunger and sex—are positive and possessive, the other—
fear or avoidance—is negative and avertive. These appetites ap-
pear as the needs for food, progeny and protection. So far as I
am able to see, they manifest themselves in insects in essentially
the same manner as in the higher animals, such as birds, mammals
and man. The appetites of hunger and sex arise from internal
stimuli which compel the organism to make random or trial and
error movements till appropriate, specific external stimuli are en-
countered. Then a sudden, consummatory reaction occurs and the
relieved organism lapses into quiescence’ till the internal stimuli
again make themselves felt. In the case of fear or aversion, harm-
ful or disagreeable stimuli, usually of external origin, cause ran-
dom movements till the organism escapes or succeeds in ridding it-
self of the noxious or discomfort-producing situation, when it be-
comes quiescent. And the behavior of insects, like that of other
animals, seems to be made up of successions of such appetitive or
avertive cycles, which may be repeated during the life-cycle, or—
and this is particularly true of insects—the whole life-cycle may
consist of a few appetitive cycles of very elaborate patterns—the
so-called ‘‘instinets.’”’

Now when insects or other animals, for that matter, take to
living in societies these fundamental appetites, which as solitary
individuals they have been exercising for millions of years, are

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 503

by no means lost or suppressed but become peculiarly modified.
Since the environment of the social is from the outset much more
complex than that of the solitary insect, it must respond not only
to all the stimuli to which it reacted in its presocial stage but also
to a great number of additional stimuli emanating from the other
members of the society in which it is living. Even man, as Berman
says, “‘with the growth of his imagination and the increase in num-
ber and density of his surrounding herd, has become the subject
of continuous stimulation.’’ The result seems to be a greatly in-
creased responsiveness of the organism. It becomes, so to speak,
socially sensitized, and all its appetites and emotions become hyper-
trophied or even perverted. This will be clear for the insects from
the following very summary considerations:

(1.) Social life encounters serious and urgent difficulties in
the matter of food, for the colony must have aceess to a supply
which is abundant, nutritious and easily and continuously avail-
abie in order that all the adult members as well as the young may
be adequately nourished. Such an ideal food-supply is rare so
that social insects are, as a rule, chronically hungry and in the
presence of food positively greedy. Whenever possible both bees
and ants gorge themselves to the utmost. While an ant is feeding
on nectar or syrup her abdomen may be snipped off with a pair
of scissors, without interrupting her repast. We shall see, how-
ever, that she appropriates only a very small portion of the swal-
lowed food and that she distributes most of. it among her nest-
mates. Hence, though she behaves like a glutton, we must refrain
from regarding her as such. When we see a man importuning
everybody for food or money we naturally regard him as avaricious
or greedy, but when we learn that he is turning in all his collee-
tions to the Red Cross, he is transformed in our estimation. Not
only does the social insect thus develop an unusual appetite for
food but it also develops elaborate methods of apportioning the
food among the adults and brood of the colony according to their
various needs. Furthermore, the greatest economy in the use of
food, which is of course energy, must be practiced and various
methods of preserving and storing it for consumption during sea-
sons of scarcity must be devised. And since insect societies must
compete with many other hungry animals they tend to specialize
in their diet and to take to foods that can not be readily utilized by
other organisms. All this specialization leads eventually to the
development of a caste peculiarly adapted to provisioning the col-
ony. As we shall see, this caste comprises the so-called ‘‘workers.’’

(2.) The reproductive gives rise to even more serious diffi-
culties than the nutritive appetite. If all the individuals in the
colony are permitted to reproduce without restraint, the popula-

504 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

tion will very soon outrun the food-supply and all its members
will suffer from malnutrition or starvation, or it will have to re-
solve itself into smaller and feebler communities, and spread over
a larger territory. The higher social insects have overcome this
difficulty by rigidly restricting reproduction, except when food
happens to be unusually abundant, to a few individuals and sup-
pressing it in all the others. Hence the fecundity of: certain
females, the queens, and of the males, or drones, becomes greatly
‘enhanced or hypertrophied, while the remaining females, the
workers, are reduced to physiological sterility. But it was found
most convenient, while thus developing the queens and males as a
reproductive and the workers as a nutritive caste, and depriving
the latter under normal conditions of the capacity for reproduc-
tion, to leave them in possession of their primitive parental in-
stincts, that is, an ardent propensity for nursing the brood.

(3.) In the higher social insects fear is very readily aroused
and can be easily studied in all its manifestations from abject
cowardice and ‘‘death-feigning’’ in small and feeble species to
panic rage in very populous communities. It is certainly of great
biological sigiificance, because these insects and_ their helpless
brood are sedentary, or fixed to a particular environment and are
therefore exposed to the unforeseen attacks of enemies, inunda-
tions of great changes of temperature. Hence, we find that they
not only make elaborate nests and fortifications but have developed
powerful jaws, hard skulls, pungent or nauseating secretions and
deadly stings. The workers originally assumed the protective
role in addition to their other functions, but in many ants and
most termites a special warrior or soldier caste has been evolved.
Then, precisely as in man, many wasps, bees and ants found that
the best method of defence is offence and their enemies were at-
tacked before they could reach the nest. From this it was, of
course, only a step to the organization of marauding and plunder-
ing expeditions and the development of aggressive warfare.

All the very complicated manifestations of the hunger, sex and
fear appetites are so inextricably interwoven and interdependent
that it is impossible adequately to study any one of them in isola-
tion. I shall therefore have to refer to all of them again and
again, but I wish to put the main emphasis in these lectures on the
hunger appetite, because it is the most fundamental, exhibits the
most astonishing developments and is found to have an even greater
influence on the reproductive and protective appetites than we had
supposed. The recent work of the biochemists and physiologists °
on the vitamines and internal or endocrine secretions, or ‘‘en-
eretions’’ as some German investigators call them, has shown that
extremely minute quantities of certain substances may have very -

a

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 505

profound and far-reaching effects on the metabolism, structure
and functioning of living animals, and there has lone been a sus-
picion that the differentiation of the fertile and sterile castes
among social insects may be due to very delicate chemical stimuli.
I shall endeavor to show that such stimuli. may also play a deter-
mining role in maintaining the integrity or solidarity of many
insect societies.

Before describing the various societies in greater detail I wish
briefly to compare them with human society. I use this word in
the singular, because at the present time, owing to the creatly
increased facilities of transportation and intercommunieation,
what were once numerous independent human societies have prac-
tically fused or are about to fuse to form one immense, world-wide
society. Human and insect societies are so similar that it is diffi-
eult to detect really fundamental biological differences between
them. This assertion may be supported by the following consid-
erations:

(1.) It is sometimes said or implied that human society is a
rational association, due to intelligent cooperation, or contract
among its members, whereas insect societies are merely physio-
logical or instinctive associations. The second part of this state-
ment is correct, but he who would seek support for the first part
im the works of present day sociologists, psychologists and philos-
ophers will be disappointed. The whole trend of modern thought
is towards a greater recognition of the very important and deter-
mining role of. the irrational and the instinctive, not only in our
social but also in our individual lives. The best proof of this state-
ment is to be found in the family which by common consent con-
stitutes the primitive basis of our society, just as it does among
the insects, and the bonds which unite the human family are and
will always be physiological and instinctive.

(2.) It may be said that insect societies are discrete entities,
each of which arises as a single family, increases in population for
some time and then dies away, whereas human society—the Great
Society of Graham Wallas—is a mixtures of families and groups
which grow and continue indefinitely. This is an important dis-
tinction but not absolute, since human society must have arisen
from a single family or a few families, such as we find among the
anthropoids. The difference would therefore seem to lie in the
fact that our society no longer repeats its earliest phylogenetic
Stage as does that of the social insects. But there are some insects,
such as the honey-bee and some South American bees and wasps,
that no longer repeat this incipient stage but from time to time
send off new colonies, or pocieties by swarming, much as did the

506 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Phoenicians and early Greeks and the nations of western Europe
in more recent times.

(3.) Korzybski, in an interesting book entitled ‘‘The Man-
hood of Humanity,’’ has recently endeavored to emphasize another
difference, the existence of social heredity, or what he calls ‘‘time-
binding,’’ in human society and its absence among animals. Cer-
tainly no one can overestimate the importance of tradition and
social heredity. We should still be in the anthropoid stage if we
had failed to preserve and add to the capital of culture and mores
transmitted to us by former generations or ceased to transmit them
and the fruits of our own activities to our descendants. It is clear
also that the social insects do not bequeath lbraries, institutions
and bank accounts to their posterity, and that each colony or society
begins anew with the structural and instinctive equipment ac-
quired by true, or organic heredity. This explains why we see
so little change in these insects during the past 50 million years.
Nevertheless, the distinction is not absolute. There are, as I shall
show, ants, termites and beetles that cultivate fungi and bequeath
them to succeeding generations. Social insects may also be said
to bequeath real estate, that is, their nests, pastures and hunting
erounds; and since the young queens of ants and termites often live
for some time in the parental nests before they establish colonies
of their own, there is reason to believe that they may acquire a very
slight amount of experience by consorting with their sisters and
parent queen.

(4.) It may be said that the social insects differ from man in
not having learned the use of tools, but there are species of ants
that use their larve as shuttles in weaving the silken walls of their
nests, and the marvelous engineering feats of many social insects
show that they are our close rivals in controlling the inorganie
environment.

(5.) That they have acquired an equally astonishing control
of their organic environment is shown by the fact that they are the
only animals besides ourselves that have succeeded in domesticating
other animals and enslaving their kind. In fact, the ants and
termites may be said to have domesticated a greater number of
animals than we have, and the same statement may prove to be
true of their food-plants, when they have been more carefully
studied.

(6.) It may be maintained that we have developed language
and this, of course, is a true distinction, if we mean by language
articulate speech, but the members of an insect society undoubt-
edly communicate with one another by means of peculiar move-
ments of the body and antenne, by shrill sounds (stridulation)
and by odors.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 507

The wonder has always been, not that there are so many dif-
ferences in structure between such disparate organisms as insects
and man, but that there are so many striking similarities in be-
havior. And the wonder grows when we find that social organ-
ization at least incipiently analogous to our own has arisen de
novo on at least 24 different occasions in nearly as many natural
families or subfamilies belonging to five very different orders of
insects. A list. of the groups that form these various societies is
given in the accompanying table.

1. Scarabeide (Copris, Minotaurus )
2. Passalide (Passalus)
Coleoptera 3. Tenebrionide (Phrenapates)
(Gynandrarchic ) 4 4. Silvanide (Tachigalia Beetles)
5. Ipide (Ambrosia Beetles )
| 6. Platypodide (Ambrosia Beetles)
Sphecoidea
7. Sphecide (Sphex)
8. Bembicide (Digger Wasps)
V espoidea
9. Eumenine (Synagris)
10. Zethine (Zethus)
*11. Stenogastrine (Stenogaster )
*12. Epiponine (Chartergus, Belonogaster, etce..)
*13. Rhopalidiine (Rhopalidia, ete.)

Hymenoptera *14. Polistine (Polistes)
(Gynarchic ) 4 *15. Vespine (Vespa)
Apide

16. Halictine (Halictus)

17. Ceratinine (Allodape)

*18. Bombine (Bumble-bees )
*19. Meliponine (Stingless Bees)
*20. Apine (Honeybees)

*21. Formicide (Ants)

Dermaptera L 22. Forficulide (Earwigs)
(Gynarchic ) 0

Embidaria s! 23. Embiide (Embia)
(Gynarchic ) L

Isoptera ;*24. Termitide (Termites, or ‘‘White Ants’’)
(Gynandrarchic ) 1

In this list the first to tenth, the sixteenth and seventeenth,
and the twenty-second and twenty-third are incipiently social or
subsocial; the remaining ten, marked with asterisks, are definitely
social. In the termites and all the beetle groups the colony consists
of a male and female parent and their offspring of both sexes;
in all the Hymenoptera, Dermaptera and Embidaria the female
alone founds‘ the colony, which is developed by her daughters.
The former groups are therefore gynandrarchic, the latter
gynarchie. These differences will become clearer as we proceed.

508 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Let us examine first the six beetle societies which have been de-
veloped by species belonging to as many different natural families.

(12) Scarabwide—For our knowledge of the habits of the
dung-beetles we are indebted to one of the greatest entomologists,
J. H. Fabre. His observations are recorded in parts of four of
the ten volumes of his ‘‘Souvenirs Entomologiques,’’ and comprise
some of their most remarkable chapters. Some notion of the diffi-
culties which he encountered while working out the life-histories
of these insects may be gleaned from his statement that: he did not
succeed in completely elucidating the habits of one of them, the
sacred Scarabeus, till he had had it under observation for nearly
forty years. He studied quite a number of species and found
startling diversity in their behavior. Some of them, the Aphodii,
e. g., merely lay their eggs in fresh dung and the hatching larve
feed on the substance. Among the others, which resort to much
more elaborate methods of caring for their progeny, three different
types of behavior may be distinguished:

(A.) The Sacred Scarabeus (Fig. 1) above mentioned and
many allied forms are fond of the open sunlight and are often seen
making perfect spheres of fresh cattle manure and trundling them
away to cavities in the soil or under stones. These pellets are
devoured by the beetles. Fabre found that a single beetle will not
only eat but digest a mass of dung equal to its own body-weight
in 12 hours. When the female beetle is ready to lay she makes a
very similar pellet, but this time of sheep’s dung and rolls it into
an elliptical chamber which she has previously excavated in the

FIG. 1
Sacred scarabei (Searabeus sacer) trundling their pellet of dung.
After E. J. Detmold.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 509

soil. This chamber is about as large as one’s fist. She then makes
a erater-shaped depression surrounded by a circular flange at one
pole of the pellet, lays a large egg in it and draws the material of
the flange over it till it is completely enclosed. The pellet is now
pear-shaped. Thereupon the mother beetle leaves the chamber
and proceeds to dig another and provision it in the same manner.
The hatching larva consumes the inside of the pellet, pupates

FIG. 2
Male Sisyphus beetle (Sisyphus schefferi) holding the dung pellet while the
female digs the burrow to receive it. After E. J. Detmold.

within it and emerges as a beetle in due season. There is, of course,
nothing social about this insect. But in a smaller, allied form,
Sisyphus schefferi (Fig. 2), Fabre found that the male helps the
female trundle her pellet to a convenient spot, guards it while she
excavates a cavity, assists her in lowering the pellet, waits for her
till she has oviposited in it in the same manner as the Secarabeus,
and then departs with her to repeat the performance.

(B.) In Copris, of which Fabre studied two species, C. his-
panus and C. lunaris, we have a closer approach to a social condi-
tion. These insects are crepuseular and dig a chamber as large as
a large apple immediately under the pile of dung. This is then
carried down in masses and leisurely devoured. During the breed-
ing season, however, the beetles associate in pairs and the male
and female not only cooperate in exeavating a chamber but also
in nearly filling it with dung, which they then proceed to knead
into the form of a smooth ellipsoid as large as a turkey’s egg (Fig.
3). In the ease of C. hispanus the male then deserts the female
and the latter proceeds to cut the ellipsoid up into four
spherical pellets, each of which is treated like the pellet of the

510 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Spanish Copris (Copris hispanus) ‘seen her large ellipsoid of dung in
her subterranean chamber. After J. H. Fabre. ‘
sacred Searabeus, provided with an egg and converted into a
regular ovoid (Fig. 4). The mother remains in the chamber,
guarding the pellets and keeping them free from fungus growth
for four months, while the larve are developing within them.
After the young beetles hatch the mother accompanies them to
the surface of the soil and the family disperses. In the case of C.
lunaris the male remains in the chamber with the female and helps
her manufacture the ovoids, which owing to his assistance are
twice as numerous as they are in hispanus. When the young
beetles emerge they are escorted to the surface by both parents.
(C.) Other beetles, like Geotrypes, Onthophagus and Minotau-
rus, dig long tubular tunnels into the soil immediately under the
dung. As a rule, they do not make spherical pellets but pack the
deeper, blind end of the burrow with layers of dung till it forms

i

FIG. 4
Spanish Copris (Copris hispanus) guarding her ovoids of dung in the sub-
terranean chamber. After E. J. Detmold.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 511

a sausage shaped mass above the egg or enclosing it at one end.
The behavior of Minotaurus typhaus (Fig. 5) is even more aston-
ishing than that of Copris. The male and female beetles mate in
March and together dig a tubular gallery straight down into the
soil to the remarkable depth of five feet. The male remains above,
works the dung up into elliptical pellets and lowers them down
the shaft, while the female, after laying an egg in the sand at the
bottom of the burrow, receives the pellets, tears them apart and
packs the fragments down, as if she were working in a silo, till
they form a mass as big as one’s finger. Then she digs in suecession
a few branch galleries off from the main shaft, furnishes each of
them with an egg and provisions it in the same manner. By con-
structing an ingenious apparatus and providine the beetles with
an unlimited supply of manure, Fabre induced one male to make

FIG. 5
Lowermost portion of burrow of the Minotaur (Minotaurus typheus) showing
the male bettle lowering the dung in pellets and the female storing it in
layers above her egg. After J. H. Fabre.

239 pellets and hand them down to the female, but unfortunately
the latter had died at the bottom of the gallery, so that there were
no eggs and the pellets had not been torn apart and stored. The
development of the young requires five months and the female
very probably remains in the burrow till the brood hatches and
crawls up to the surface.

(2.) Passalide—These large, active, jet-black, flattened and
parallel-sided beetles (Fig. 6) are common throughout the tropics
of both hemispheres. A single species, Passalus cornutus, occurs
in the United States as far north as Michigan and Massachusetts.
Ohaus, who first studied the habits of several species in the forests

512 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of Brazil, has shown that they form colonies consisting of a male
and female and their progeny and make large, rough galleries
in rather damp, rotten logs. The broadly elliptical yellowish green
or greenish black eggs, to the number of a dozen or more, are laid
in a loose eluster and guarded by the parents. The larve are
drab-colored and cylindrical, with the hind pair of legs reduced
to peculiar short paw-like appendages which can be rubbed back
and forth on striated plates at the bases of the middle legs (Fig. 7),
thus producing a shrill note. On the dorsal surface of the abdo-
men of the adult beetle there is also a stridulatory organ in the
form of patches of minute denticles which may be rubbed against
similar structures on the lower surfaces of the wings. Ohaus found
that the parent beetles triturate the rotten wood and apparently

FIG. 6
Passalus sp. Adult beetle and rather young larva, about twice natural size.

treat it with some digestive secretion which makes it a proper food
for the larvee, since their mouth-parts are too feebly developed to en-
able them to attack the wood directly. They are therefore com-_
pelied to follow along after their tunnelling parents and pick up
the prepared food. All the members of the colony are kept together
by stridulatory signals. The noise made by the beetles is so loud
that it is possible to detect the presence of a Passalus colony in a
log by merely giving it a few sharp raps. I have been startled on
more than one occasion in Central America by the shrill response
thus elicited from large Passali that were burrowing deep in the
wood. When the larve are mature they pupate in the burrows and
the emerging beetles are guarded and fed by the parents till they
are fully mature. Observations that I have made in Australia,

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 513

uf,
i ? /
St 7/

BGA
Microphotograph showing abbreviated, paw-like hind leg of Passalus larva
and the striated surface over which its toothed edge is rubbed during stridu-
lation.

Central America, Trinidad and British Guiana confirm Ohaus’s

statements.
(3.) Phrenapates—Nearly a century ago Kirby deseribed a

FIG. 8
Phrenapates Bennetti, a social Tenebrionid beetle, from a specimen in the
Museum of Comparative Zoology. Photograph by Mr. Leland H. Taylor.

VOL. XIV.—33.

514 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

peculiar beetle from Colombia as Phrenapates bennetti (Fig. 8).
It is about an inch long, jet-black and shining and superficially
resembles Passalus, but belongs to a very different family, the
Tenebrionide. G. C. Champion records it from Central America
(Panama to Guatemala), and states that he “‘met it in plenty in
decaying timber in the humid forest region of Chiriqui and fre-
quently dug it out of cylindrical burrows, probably made by the
larve, in the solid wood.’’ Some years later Ohaus encountered
the insect in Ecuador and gave a more detailed account of its
habits. The male and female gnaw in the wood of the silk-cotton
tree (Bombax) a narrow, cylindrical gallery about a foot and a
half long and make roomy niches on each side of it at definite inter-
vals. All the work is neat and smooth, unlike the burrow of Passa-
lus. In each of the niches Ohaus found an egg or one or two larve,
the latter feeding on fine, elongate shaving which filled the niches
and had evidently been provided by the parent beetles. The eggs
are laid at rather long intervals so that the larve, unlke those of
Passalus, vary considerably in size. They resemble our common
meal-worms (Tenebrio moliter), but are milk-white. No stridu-
latory organs could be detected in the beetles, but like some other
Tenebrionids (Blaps) they emit a penetrating odor.

(4.) Tachigalia Beetles—During the summer of 1920 I dis-
covered in the jungles of British Guiana a couple of Silvanid beetles
which lead a more spectacular existence than some of the preced-
ing. These beetles, which Messrs. Schwarz and Barber have named
Coccidotrophus socialis and Eunausibius wheeleri (Fig. 9) are less
than a quarter of an inch in length and have long, slender, sub-
cylindrical, red or chestnut brown bodies, with short legs and elub-
shaped antenne. They occur only in the hollow leaf-petioles (Fig.
10) .of a very interesting tree, Tachigalia paniculata, and only in
young specimens 114 to 7 ft. high while they are growing in the
shade under the higher trees of the jungle. The older trees, which

FIG. 9
Tachigalia beetles, the larger Coccidotrophus socialis, the smaller
Eunausibius wheeleri.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 515

may attain a height of 40 feet or more, have all their petioles in-
habited by viciously stinging or biting ants. Each beetle colony
is started by a male and female which bore through the wall of
the petiole, clean out any pith or remains of previous occupants it
may contain and commence feeding on a peculiar tissue rich in
‘ proteins, which is developed in parallel, longitudinal strands in the
wall of the petiole (Figs. 11 and 12). As they keep gnawing out
this tissue they gradually make grooves and pile their feces on
the ungnawed intervening areas, so that the interior of the petiole
assumes a peculiar appearance (Figs. 13 and 14). While the
beetles are thus engaged numbers of small mealy-bugs of the genus

FIG. 10
Bases of leaf-petiole of Tachigalia paniculata (a) of young, shade tree; (b) of
large, sun tree, both nearly one-half natural size. Pieces of the older petiole
and adjacent trunk have been cut out to show the cavity.

516 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Pseudococcus (Ps. bromeliew) (Fig. 15), covered with snow-white
wax, wander into the petiole through the opening made by the
beetles, settle in the grooves, sink their delicate sucking mouth-
parts into the nutritive tissue and imbibe its juices. The beetles
soon begin to lay their small, elliptical, white eges along the edges
of the grooves (Fig. 14) and the hatching larve, which are beau-
tifully translucent, run about in the cavity and feed on the same
tissue as the parents. But incredible as it may seem both the adult
beetles and the larvex in all stages have learned to stroke the mealy-
bugs with their antenne, just as our common ants stroke similar
mealy-bugs and plant-lice, and feed on the droplets of honey dew,

FIG. 11
Cross-section of base of a young, uninhabited petiole of Tachigalia paniculata
showing the bands of protein-containing nutritive tissue (dark). Photograph
by Professor I. W. Bailey.

or saccharine excrement which they give off when their backs are
properly titillated. So greedy are the Silvanids for this nectar
that I have seen a beetle or a larva stroke a mealy-bug for an hour
or longer and receive and swallow a drink every few minutes.
When two or more beetles or two or more larve or a group of
beetles and larve happen to be engaged in stroking the same mealy-
bug, they stand around it, like so many pigs around a trough, and
the larger or stronger individual keeps butting the others away
with its head. The butted individuals, however, keep returning
and resuming their stroking till the knocks become too severe or
the stronger individual leaves and begins to stroke another mealy-
bug. Thus the beetles and their progeny have discovered a rich
food supply, consisting in part of the proteid-containing tissues
of the Tachigalia and in part of the sugar and water discharged
by the mealy-bugs, which in turn imbibe the sap of the tree. The
beetles lay their eggs at intervals so that larve in all stages are

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS

ht
e
ba |

FIG. 12
Enlargement of one of the bands of nutritive tissue of the preceding figure,
showing the rather homogeneous protein-containing cells. Microphotograph
by Professor I. W. Bailey.

found in the same colony. When mature each larva constructs a
cocoon of minute particles bitten out of the plant tissues (Fig. 16),
creeps into it, closes the opening from the inside and pupates.
When the young beetles hatch they remain with their parents and

Cross-section of Tachigalia petiole inhabited by a flourishing colony of Coc-

cidotrophus socialis. The gnawed out areas of nutritive tissue are seen above,

with the frass piled on the intermediate areas; below three cocoons have been
sectioned. Photograph by Professor I. W. Bailey.

518 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

soon begin to lay eggs, so that eventually the colony consists of
several dozen beetles, larva, pupwe and mealy-bugs in all stages
and all living peacefully together, except for the little family
bickerings of the beetles and larve over the milking of their pa-
tient, snow-white cattle. When the petiole becomes too crowded,
pairs of young beetles leave it, enter other petioles of the same

FIG. 14

Enlarged drawing of a part of the wall of a Tachigalia petiole inhabited by

Coccidotrophus socialis; showing the food grooves and frass ridges, the

entrance with its wall, the eggs, an intact and broken cocoon of the Coccido-

trophus and two cocoons of the Coccid parasite, Blepyrus tachigalie, one of
them after the eclosion of the parasite.

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 519

FIG. 15
Pseudococcus bromelie Bouché. Sketch of an adult living female with intact

covering and peripheral pencils of wax.

or other Tachigalia trees and start new colonies. As the tree grows
and emerges from the undergrowth into the sunlight, the ants
which then take complete possession of it oust the beetles from the
petiolar cavities but adopt their mealy-bugs, just as the invading
German army appropriated the French cattle. There are many
other extraordinary insects associated with the Tachigalia, its
beetles and mealy-bugs, but I must omit an account of them be-
cause they are irrelevant to the present discussion.

(5.) Ipid Ambrosia Beetles—The family Ipide comprise small,
eylindrieal, red-brown or black beetles which live in the trunks and
branches of trees. The group is now divided into two sections, one
of which includes the bark-beetles, which are nonsocial and make
the beautiful, radiating burrows so commonly seen on the inner
surface of the bark of sickly trees, the other includes the ambrosia
beetles (Fig. 17), which are social and run their burrows right into

the wood of healthy or recently felled trees. The name ‘‘ambrosia
beetles’’ is derived from a term applied by Schmidberger to the

fungi which the beetles cultivate as food for themselves and their

520 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

larve. Structurally the two sections of the family Ipide can be
readily distinguished by the mouthparts, the bark-beetles having
their maxille armed with a row of 12 to 20 strong tooth-lhke bristles
adapted to gnawing bark, whereas the maxille of the ambrosia
beetles are fringed with 30 to 40 delicate, curved bristles, evidently
suited to cropping the soft hyphe of their food-fungus. Fourteen
genera and nearly four hundred species of ambrosia beetles have
been described. One genus alone, Xyleborus, which is cosmopolitan,
contains 246 species. The fungi that grow in the galleries often

J

FIG. 16
Six successive stages in the construction of the cocoon by the full-grown larva
of Coccidotrophus socialis.

give their walls a black stain, so that the value of the wood thus
affected is greatly impaired. One species, Yyleborus perforans,
has a bad reputation in the tropics, where it goes by the name of
‘““tippling Tommy,’’ because it has a strong predilection for boring
in the staves of wine, beer and rum easks and thus causing much
leakage. It might be adopted by our prohibitionists as their
totem-animal.

The ambrosia beetles were first carefully studied in this country
by H. G. Hubbard, whose untimely death deprived us of one of
our most talented entomologists. I can not do better than quote
his concise account of two of our species of Pterocyclon (mali

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 521
and fasciatum): ‘‘The sexes are alike, and the males assist the
females in forming new colonies. The young are raised in separate
pits or cradles which they never leave until they reach the adult
stage. The galleries, constructed by the mature female beetles,
extend rather deeply into the wood, with their branches mostly in
a horizontal plane. The mother beetle deposits her eges smely in
circular pits which she excavates in the gallery in two opposite
series, parallel with the grain of the wood. The eggs are loosely
packed in the pits with chips and material taken from the fungus
bed which she has previously prepared in the vicinity and upon
which the ambrosia has begun to grow. The young larve, as soon
as they hatch out, eat the fungus from these chips and eject the
refuse from their cradles. At first they he curled up in the pit

fA

FIG. 17
Ambrosia beetle, Xyleborus celsus Hichh., of the hickory (after Hubbard) ;
a, female beetle; b, male; c, piece of hickory, showing burrows of X. celsus in
the sap-wood; d, ambrosia grown by X. celsus on the walls of of the burrows;

e, same more enlarged.

made by the mother, but as they grow larger, with their own jaws
they deepen their cradles, until, at full growth, they shghtly ex-
ceed the length of the larve when fully extended. The larve swal-
low the wood which they excavate, but do not digest it. It passes
through the intestines unchanged in cellular texture, but cemented
by the excrement into pellets and stained a yellowish color. The
pellets of excrement are not allowed by the larve to accumulate
in their cradles, but are frequently ejected by them and are re-
moved and east out of the mouth of the borings by the mother
beetles. A portion of the excrement is evidently utilized to form

522 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

the fungus bed. The mother beetle is constantly in attendance
upon her young during the period of their development, and guards
them with jealous care. The mouth of each eradle is closed with
a plug of the food fungus, and as fast as this is consumed it is
renewed with fresh material. The larve from time to time per-
forate this plug and clean out their cells, pushing out the pellets
of excrement through the opening. This debris is promptly re-
moved by the mother and the opening again sealed with ambrosia.
The young transform to perfect beetles before leaving their cradles
and emerging into the galleries.’’ The ambrosia of Pterocyclon
‘‘is moniliform and resembles a mass of pearly beads. In its in-
cipient stages a formative stem is seen, which has short joints that
become globular conidia and break apart. Short chains of cells,
sometimes showing branches, may often be separated from the
mass. The base of the fungous mass is stained with a tinge of green,
but the stain of the wood is almost black.

(6.) Platypodid Ambrosia Beetles—These were formerly in-
cluded among the Ipide but are now regarded as an independent
family. They ean be easily distinguished by their much broader
head and longer feet, the first joint of the tarsi being as long as
all the remaining joints together. The great majority of the species
are tropical, so that their habits have not as yet been very thor-
oughly studied. So far as known, the Platypodids all bore in the
wood of dying or recently felled trees, live in societies and feed on
fungi which they grow on the walls of their burrows. Hubbard
and Swaine have studied some of our North American and Stroh-
meyer has published some observations on one of the few Euro-
pean forms. The following description of Platypus compositus
is quoted from Hubbard: ‘‘They are powerful excavators, gen-
erally selecting the trunks of large trees and driving their gal-
leries deep into the heart-wood. They do not attack healthy trees
but are attracted only by the fermenting of the sap of dying or
very badly injured trees. The death rattle is not more ominous of
dissolution in animals than the presence of these beetles in stand-
ing timber. . . . The female is frequently accompanied by
several males and as they are savage fighters, fierce sexual contests
take place, as a result of which the galleries are often strewn with
fragments of the vanquished. The projecting spines at the ends of
the wing-cases are very effective weapons in these fights. With
their aid a beetle attacked in the rear can make a good defense
and frequently by a lucky strike is able to dislocate the outstretched
neck of his enemy. The females produce from 100 to 200 elongate-
oval pearl-white eggs, which they deposit, in clusters of 10 or 12,
loosely in the galleries. The young require five or six weeks for

SOCIAL LIFE AMONG THE INSECTS 523

their development. They wander about in the passages and feed in
company upon the ambrosia which grows here and there upon the
walls. . . . The older larve assist in exca rating the galleries,
but they do not eat or swallow the wood. The larve of all stages
are surprisingly alert, active and intelligent. They exhibit
-eurlosity equally with the adults, and show evident regard for the
egos and very tender young, which are scattered at random about
the passages, and might easily be destroyed by them in their move-
ments. If thrown into a panic the young scurry away with an
undulatory movement of their bodies, but the older larvee will fre-
quently stop at the nearest intersecting passage and show fight to
cover their retreat.’’? The ambrosia of P. compositus consists of
hemispherical conidia growing in clusters on branching stems. The
long continued growth of ‘this fungus blackens the walls of the
older galleries.

Each species of ambrosia beetle—and this is true of both the
Ipide and the Platypodide—grows its own peculiar fungus in a
pure culture, irrespective of the tree it may select for its burrows.
Strohmeyer seems to have shown how in the case of certain Platy-
podids the mother beetle manages to obtain the spores of the par-
ticular fungus which she cultivates. He finds that she carries
them from the burrows in which she passed her larval and pupal
stages to the new burrows which she makes for her own progeny
in a kind of erate or basket consisting of one or several dense tufts
of long, curved hairs on the top of her head or on her mouth-parts ;
and Schneider-Orelli has found that the females of the Ipid am-
brosia beetles carry the fungus in the fore part of the stomach and
are thus able to infect the walls of the new burrows which they
establish. These are only two of the instances among the social
insects of the actual transmission of a food-plant from generation
to generation.

We may now summarize very briefly the main points of interest
in connection with the social beetles:

(1.) The six unrelated families are all very ancient. Species
of four of them (Silvanide, Tenebrionide, Ipide and Platypodide)
are, in fact, known from the Baltic Amber. The absence of the
dung-beetles from that formation is easily explained, since these
insects are not arboreal, nor are they attracted by liquid resins.
Several of the living genera (Scarabeus , Copris, Onthophagus,
Sisyphus, and Gymnopleurus), however, are known from the Upper
Miocene shales of Oeningen, and Hagedorn mentions several species
of ambrosia beetles as occurring in the African and Malagasy
copal, a fossil resin of comparatively recent formation. There can
be little doubt that all the six families which I have been consider-

524 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ing are much older than these records would seem to indicate.
Most of them, in fact, are cited by Handlirsch as probably having
arisen at the beginning of the Cretaceous or even earlier.

(2.) The substances on which the six groups of social beetles
feed are remarkably diverse, ranging from dung and wood in ya-
rious stages of decay to the living tissues of plants, the honey-dew
of mealy-bugs and delicate fungi. These are all abundant and
ubiquitous substances of vegetable origin, and all the social beetles
manage to store or find their food in such peculiar places that they
can avoid intense competition with most other organisms.

(3.) This abundant but in many eases not very nutritious
food-supply which the*adult beetles seek and exploit primarily for
their own consumption enables them to acquire a considerable
longevity, and this in turn, of course, enables them to survive the
hatching and development of their young.

(4.) In all the groups the parent beetles show a very pro-
nounced interest in their offspring, and feed them directly or, at
any rate, place them in close contact with the food and guard them.

(5.) The father beetle cooperates to a greater or less extent
with the mother beetle in providing for the young, although his
cooperation may be slight. Probably it is really nil in most of the
Ipid ambrosia beetles, the males of which are in many _ species
wingless and very rare, so that mating must take place in the
maternal colony.

(6.) There are neither structural nor physiological differences
between the fully developed young and the adult parents of the
social beetles. In other words, nothing like a development of castes
has made its appearance among them.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 525

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT

By Professor FRANCIS H. HERRICK

CLEVELAND, OHIO

O animal has been so highly extolled on the one hand as a
paragon of virtue, and on the other so roundly condemned
as an unmitigated nuisance as the domestic eat, which has been
associated with man for upwards of three thousand years. Southey
once declared that no home was complete unless it had ‘‘in it a
child rising six years and a kitten rising six months.’’ Friends of
the cat never tire of lauding its domesticity, its neatness, its use-
ful services as a destroyer of rodents, the natural grace and beauty
of its movements, its affection and even its surpassing intelligence ;
while its detractors denounce it as an independent, unsocial ingraie,
attached to the hearth for the comfort it affords, but seldom wasting
any affection on the person who lays the fire or supplies it with
food, as incapable of any unselfish devotion and service, a carrier
of vermin and disease, and the most cruel and remorseless enemy
of bird-life everywhere.

Viewed impartially the cat is a carnivorous animal of rather
moderate intelligence ; courageous and resourceful when put to the
test, it only follows at all times the bent of its strongest instincts ;
like every feline it has keen tactual, visual and auditory senses, but
its nose is small and rather weak; its endurance in relation to its
bodily strength is phenomenal, and we can not but admire its mar-
vellous powers of muscular coordination and control: feeund, and
endowed with a vitality which in the popular mind extends far
beyond life’s usual limits, the cat is unsurpassed as mother and
nurse, and in this field her instinct is never-failine.

In his excellent economic study of the eat, Forbush! reminds
us that while partly tamed this animal has not been fully domes-
ticated: “‘It has not been subdued, confined or controlled, except
in rare cases, but is to all intents and purposes a wild animal. In
most eases it stays in the home of man, mainly because of the
warmth of his fire, the food that it eats and its affection for the
location where it was reared. If, by accident or design, anything

1 Forbush, Edward Howe: ‘‘The Domestic Cat,’? Economie Biology Bul-
letin, No. 2. Boston, 1916.

526 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

occurs to interrupt its association with man, it readily returns to
the wild;’’ and Shaler,? who is also quoted by this writer, says:
‘“As a consequence of the affection which cats have for particular
places, they often return to the wilderness when by chance the
homes in which they have been reared are abandoned. Thus in
New England, in those sections of the district where many farm-
steads have of late years been deserted, the cats have remained
about their ancient haunts and have become entirely wild. In this
state they are bred in such numbers that their presence is now a
serious menace to the birds and other weaker creatures of the
country. The behavior of these feralized animals differs somewhat
from that of creatures which have never been tamed. They have
not the same immediate fear of a man, but the least effort to ap-
proach them leads to their hasty flight.”’

Every one will admit that the cat varies no less in its individual
ways and disposition than does its inveterate enemy, the dog, yet
its attachment is mainly directed to its home and neighborhood,
and while vagabondage may be rarely adopted by choice it is more
commonly enforced. ‘‘Thousands of families, says Forbush, ‘‘go
into the country or to the seaside in summer, taking cats and kittens
with them, and leave their pets on their return to the city, not
knowing, perhaps, that such cruelty is forbidden by law.”’

Varied and voluminous as the literature of the cat is found to
be, especially in the fields of anecdote, general natural history and
anatomy, its homing ability has never been previously tested under
experimental conditions, though accounts of this notorious power
abound in many languages; from time immemorial it has been said
that the cat, like the bad penny, always comes back. Probably all
cats possess this homing power in varying degrees, and all with
fixed abodes might possibly be induced to exercise it under certain
conditions; yet in every case the possession of a power, and the
tendency to use it should be clearly distinguished ; though posses-
sion, in this case, be under the firm grasp of heredity, the use is
determined by experience and the physiological state of the animal
at the moment. Thus it is obvious that an animal with dependent
young would have a double inducement to return to its home pro-
vided local attachments had already taken root; on the other hand,
it is equally clear that, whenever an animal is forcibly removed
from its abode, the diversions or accidents which are likely to attend
it may be of such character as to block or defeat any impulse to
return. In every such case the only facts likely to be either known
or knowable are that the animal on that occasion did or did not
return; we are usually left in complete ignorance of the animal’s

2 Shaler, Nathaniel Southgate: Domesticated Animals, New York, 1895.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 527

inherent abilities, of its struggling impulses or even of its efforts,
should any be made.

The account of experiments to follow is offered mainly as a
sample of this animal’s power under certain conditions; they do
not admit of the usual methods of control; they can be multiplied
indefinitely, but they can not be exactly repeated, since the
variables in each case, of which fear is but one, can not be predicted
and are bound to influence response.

The mother of the first cat with which we experimented was
brought to us in a basket from a town ten miles distant, and never
left us until the following year, when she began to raid the birds
on our premises and was given away ; her offspring, to which I shall
now refer, was born and reared on our place and, so far as we knew,
it had never left it; at the time of which I speak it certainly had
not shown any roaming propensities. The first six weeks of this
kitten’s life was spent in the barn, where it received little or no
attention, and became so wild that it scarce could be handled with
impunity. Shortly after this the mother began to bring it into the
house ; she always entered by a glass-door, which opens to a plazza
at the rear, and soon formed the habit of scratching at the glass
whenever she wished to be let in or out. The kitten soon acquired
the same habit and lost its wild ways completely ; in time it
became a handsome home-loving house-cat, and we were sorry to
part with it, but at the age of fifteen months, when we had to
choose between its companionship and that of any nesting birds
upon our grounds, its banishment became inevitable.

The first experiment casually made with this eat led me to sus-
pect that it was impossible to turn some Thomases around, and I
determined to investigate this point further at the first good oppor- °
tunity. This cat was taken in a gunny-sack over an irreeular
course, mainly by electric car, down a series of hills to a point on
the University Campus in the city of Cleveland, 4.6 measured miles
from its home in Cleveland Heights; there it was given a dish of
milk and the liberty of two rooms, in one of which a window had
been slightly lowered at the top. This was on the morning of a
Monday, and at five o’clock in the afternoon it seemed to be quite at
home in its new quarters; on Wednesday morning, about forty
hours later, it suddenly appeared on the back porch of our house
and gave its usual signal to be admitted. In order to reach its
home this cat had traversed an unknown country, consisting of city
or suburban streets and allotments, had crossed the gulley of the
Belt Line railroad, probably by one of its bridges, and ascended in
the path of greatest resistance a series of terraces to a height of
four hundred feet. That its home neighborhood could have been

528 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

reached by exploratory movements, on the trial and error order, or
by chance alone seemed highly improbable; the only known facts
were that it made a homing attempt and succeeded.

When we tried to have this cat repeat its performance in the
daytime it would not voluntarily leave the building, and even when
set on the ledge of an open window it would quickly drop back to
the floor; it was finally left in some shrubbery outside, and when
I was called away for a brief time it disappeared and was not seen
again. Regrettine the loss of this eat through our failure to keep
it under continuous observation, we decided to test the homing
power, at the next opportunity, in the following way: (1) to take
the cat, as before, under such conditions that the possibility of
orientation through the receptors of sight, hearing and smell would,
in all probability, be completely eliminated; (2) to convey it suc-
cessively in different directions, and gradually increase the distance
at each test, and (3) to release it at a uniform time at dusk, in
unknown territory, and under conditions of as free behavior as it
was possible to obtain.

The experiments to follow were made with another individual,
a female with kittens which were about ready to be weaned; she
had been adopted by a neighbor, and her previous history was not
known; she was a large and powerful animal (See Fig, 1) and had

This cat returned to its home seven times in succession when taken out
blindfolded, by automobile, over distances of one to three miles; in the first

four tests in the direction of the cardinal points, and in one instance after
being put under complete anesthesia.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 529

become such an inveterate hunter of birds and young chickens that
her life had been declared forfeit. This cat could not be trusted
for a moment when the chicks were about, as my neighbor observed
when one evening he tried to entice her from the barn with a dish
of fresh milk; thinking, however, that they would be safe as long
as we stood by, a brood was released; the cat came to call, but was
no longer interested in milk; like a flash she snapped up a chick
from under our noses and made off with it to the barn; and this
was the third victim of that day. I mention the incident to show
how well this animal was able to take care of itself ; whatever its
history might have been, an experiment to follow proves conelu-
sively, I think, that it had never been a vagrant over those parts of
the country to which it was soon to be introduced.

Seven successive returns were made by this cat from points vary-
ing from one to three miles from its home, on June 4-23 (See table) ;
she was secured in a sack, carried to the release station by motor-
ear, and placed under a wooden box which was weighted with

SS

‘
‘

1/4 Mile by
\

Pee emcee ew”

;

are Bow rr a Taam TGF Pidg
aah Tae eee Exxx K

Tinea j KORA Ky x *
meee By KBE KX

Bh ML Be INES ea ee ear ne x

Scale,foet
LGU aS
0 400 800

FIG. 2, HOMING OF CAT: EXPERIMENT NO. 2

Home-territory conventionally indicated by circle of one-fourth mile radius.
Cat taken blindfolded one mile on course, marked by dotted line, to release-
box, R. B. Long arrow marks direct course from release station to center
of home-territory; path of cat after release indicated by arrows and irregular
line; cat oriented correctly and started in the home-direction, but later re-
versed her course and made for the cover of woods (crosses) when disturbed
by dogs; animal under observation 35 minutes after release. Cleveland
Heights, Ohio: June 4, 1920.

VOL. XIV.—34.

530 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

stones; the box was raised at the moment of release by a cord oper-
ated from a green observation-tent 75-100 feet away; (See Figs. 2
and 3) the cat was given its freedom at about the same time in the
evening, and the box was opened towards the north in every ex-
periment except number 4, in which the opening was to the east;
we wished to ascertain (1) whether the cat would continue to return
te home and kittens when taken at varying distances beyond its
known or probable range; (2) whether under such conditions it
would orient immediately and correctly; (3) whether after making
a correct orientation it would strike off in a direct line for its home
and pursue that course, or whether it would be mainly concerned
with cover and safety first. In tabulating these tests the homing
time in all but one instance was less than the estimate given; it
could not usually be exactly ascertained; thus if the cat was set
free at eight o’clock of an evening, and was found with her kittens
again at six on the following morning, the time is given as ‘‘10 hours
(minus) ’’; she might have stolen in at any time during the night,
and on one occasion was detected at two o’clock in the morning,
the probable time of her arrival.

In the first four tests (Nos. 2-5 of the table) the cat was taken

>
R.B. 4
Tent
V\ 1/4 mile +
pone ai feet t (DD ‘i
Forme Wi:
0 ee 600 t im |: aN

\ aa.

FIG. 3. HOMING OF CAT: EXPERIMENT NO. 5
The cat oriented correctly upon release, and moved undisturbed in a
direct line for its home until lost to view; animal under observation six
minutes after release. See table for further details; designations as in Fig. 2.
Cleveland Heights, Ohio; June 18, 1920.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 531

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT: RECORD OF EXPERIMENTS

a

No. Date Distance | Station of Time of | Time of Homing time
in miles | release release return in hours
1 | 4.6 (west) | Campus W. R.| Monday in Wednesday fol- | 38 (about)
Univ. Cleveland evening lowing, 10 A. M.
a June 4 1 (east) | Open field, 400] 7:25 P. M. | Between 11:30| 8 (minus)
ft. from woods P, M. Jn. 4 and
7:30 A. M. Jn. 5
3 June 9 2 (west) Open field, 150} 8:05 P. M. | Before 6:30 A.| 10 (minus)
ft. from highway M. Jn. 10
4 June 10 | 3 (south) | Open field, 900| 7:45 P.M. |2 A. M. Jn. 14| 78
1 ft. from highway
5 June 18 | 1 (north Unoccupied 7:55 P. M. | Before 6 A. M.| 10 (minus)
allotment Jn. 19
——e se :
6 June 21 1 (east) Same as in 7:30 P. M. | Before 6 A. M.| 10 (minus)
No. 2 Jn. 22
i) pe ee See ———_
7 June 22 1 (east) Same as in Nos. | 7:55 P. M. | Before 7:30 A. 11 (minus)
2 and 6 M. Jn. 23
8 June 23 | 144 (east) Ploughed field,| 7:30 P. M. | Before 7:30 A. | 60 (minus)
| 200 feet from M. Jn. 26
highway
9 June 30 | 161% (east) Willoughby, 6:35 P. M. No return

| Ohio |
wa ere ee a ee

Experiments Nos. 2-9 were made with the same cat; in Nos. 6 and 7 place of release the same
as in No. 2; in No. 8 the animal was anesthetized before being taken out; in all cases the cats
were blindfolded and taken a measured distance by electric car or automobile.

in the direction of the cardinal points, to distances of 1, 2, 3, and
1 miles respectively, not because we Supposed the cat to have any
interest in the compass, but simply for convenience in dividing up
the available area; we had in mind also the obvious fact that an
animal like the cat is liable io establish habits of roaming farther
from its home in certain directions than in others, so that any area
familiar to it might be described by a very irregular curve, the
radii extending half a mile or possibly more in certain directions,
or but a few rods in others. In each of these experiments the cat
jumped from under the box, as if in response to an electric shock;
in every case she oriented correctly to her home region, and started
to move in its direction; in one instance (See Fig. 3 and No. 5 of
table) she not only started but continued at a rather rapid pace
toward home until lost to view, and in this ease the right course
took her past the tent. It was thus positively shown that there
was no necessary backtracking over the course that was followed
by the automobile in bringing her out. In the other three cases
when the cat had moved but a few yards in the home direction, and
then suddenly veered and sought cover in fence-rows or woods,

532 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

we found that one or more persons had seen our tent and were
moving towards it. The homing time, as pointed out above, could
not be accurately determined in the first, second and fourth of
these tests, but was probably from four to ten hours; over the
course of three miles (No. 4 of table) 78 hours were required.

In the first test (See Fig. 2) the cat sprang from under the box,
came to attention, as it were, for a moment, facing in the direction
of her home region, which lay a few points north of east ; she moved
slowly for a short distance on this course, mewing almost continu-
ously, then turned more to the north, and after going a few rods
suddenly veered and made for cover in a piece of woods, four hun-
dred feet to the south, passing within a few yards of our tent. At
this juncture a farmer’s boy appeared on the scene with two dogs,
which were soon on the trail, but she out-distanced them and in a
moment was safe in a tree; here we left her to her own devices,
and all that we knew of her subsequent movements was that by
six o’clock on the following morning she was again at home with
her kittens. That she returned the same night, and with little
delay, is most probable. The grass in the field where this test was
made was not at that time very tall, and the cat could be readily
seen by one standing erect; whether the bend in the curve marks
the point at which the cat first sensed the approach of the boy
and the dogs may be doubtful, but there is no doubt that this change
in her course was due to a sudden impulse to find cover.

In the second experiment of the series the animal was taken on
June 9 over a distance of two miles to a point due west, and 1 2/5
miles in air-line from its home; the tent was placed in a corn-
field, one hundred and fifty feet from the highway, along which
automobiles and pedestrians were liable to pass, though rather in-
frequently: the box was opened towards the north, as before, and
the cat, when free, could move in any direction but south without
passing the tent, her home-course being a point or so north of east;
at the moment of release she oriented perfectly and began moving
in the right direction, but as in the previous test she soon swerved
to the north; at that moment also two men, who were coming down
the street, stopped and made a movement as if to approach the
tent; after traveling northward for about a rod, in consequence,
as I believe, of this disturbance, the cat stopped, cocked her ears,
glaneed back at the tent, struck the home-course again and began
moving rapidly up the steep hillside; she continued in the direct
line for home until lost to view at 8:25 P. M., when it was quite
dark; the cat had been under observation twenty minutes, and I
believe made her home rather promptly, but she was not seen again
until the morning following.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 533

On the very next day this cat was subjected to a more difficult
test; she was taken in the usual way over a course three miles to
the south, and the tent was pitched nine hundred feet from the
road in the hope of avoiding all interference; the release-box was
set ninety feet away at the bottom of a run, on ploughed land, and
opened eastward, north being the true course home; on this side,
seventy-five feet away was a fence, with woods stretching beyond,
and at about the same distance south was an unfenced stand of
thick grass, while some three hundred feet to the east lay a stone
wall bordered with small trees; as before the cat came out with
a bound, oriented aright, and moved a few yards on the homeward
line; then, as in the two previous tests she wheeled about and
travelled in an opposite direction, this time entering the tall grass;
in this instance the disturber of the peace was the owner of the
land, who had doubtless seen us placing the tent; his approach
coincided with the cat’s move for cover, and as we stood watching
her she gradually worked over to the easterly fence-row. This was
at 8 p. m., June 10; at two o’clock in the morning of June 14, or
78 hours later, the mewing of this cat was heard under a window
which opened on the lawn of its owner; this, as we had reason to
believe, actually marked the hour of the ecat’s return.

In the fourth and in some respects the most interesting test
(See Fig. 3 and No. 5 of table) we carried the cat by motor-car
one mile north by east, turned into another road, and placed the
tent on newly allotted land two hundred and fifty paces from the
highway, and for once succeeded in avoiding all interruptions.
The box was opened to the north at exactly 7:55 p. m., the home
direction being a few points east of south. As in former tests the
eat came out with a spring; she oriented correctly without the
slightest hesitation, and at once began moving in a direct line for
home; she advanced slowly, paused a number of times, and stood
with ears cocked, as shown in the photograph, but never once turned
from the chosen course during the six minutes that we were able to
keep her under observation; she finally disappeared in a dry water-
course which came from the hillside above; there can be little doubt
that she made home in good time although she was not detected
until early the next day.

The two experiments which followed (Nos. 6 and 7 of table)
were merely repetitions of the first, and were undertaken as a check
upon this test—to ascertain whether the behavior would be similar
in each case, and if the homing time would be improved. In the
first of these: the cat got free prematurely, took the wrong initial
direction, and was soon lost to view in the grass, which by that
time had grown quite tall. In the next trial (No. 7), at the mo-

534 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ment of release, she started on the wrong course, but in a moment
oriented correctly, and was on the homeward path when she dis-
appeared from sight. In neither case could we determine the time
of the cat’s arrival, but in all probability she made home the same
night.

We have already referred to the fact that many cats revert to
the wild or semi-feral state, vagabondage being sometimes adopted
by choice, or more commonly it is forced upon them by the neglect of
their owners. Had the second cat been a nomad of this character,
and in the region about its present home, the experiments just de-
scribed would have no value as tests of its homing abilities; the
whole region for miles around might have been familiar ground.
That the territory embraced in these tests was actually new to this
animal is, I believe, clearly indicated by the next experiment; the
cat was now put under complete anesthesia by chloroform, and
conveyed by motor-car, as before, 114 miles east by north of its
home-site ; somewhere towards the end of the journey she recovered
from the anesthetic so as to appear quite able to take care of her-
self when let out of the bag; the animal was accordingly set free,
without using the blind, in a field fifty feet from the highway ; she
made at once for this road, in a direction opposite that of her home,
and would have gone beyond it but for a gorge which blocked her
path; then she moved beside the road, very nearly back-tracking
for several rods over the course which the automobile had taken,
and disappeared in the cover of bushes. She returned home, as in
all the previous experiments, but only after an interval of 60-70
hours; that is, to home under these conditions from a distance of
11% miles, which ordinarily was accomplished the same night, or at
most in from eight to ten hours, now required eight times as long.
This could hardly have been the case if the cat had awakened to
find itself in familiar territory. To hazard a conjecture I am in-
clined to believe that in this case the cat, finding itself on strange
ground, with all relations with its home-region broken, wandered
about until its lost orientation was by chance restored through the
discovery of familiar objects.

At this stage in our experiments the cat had accounted for so
many chickens that its owner was anxious to be finally rid of it; but
it had proved so good a ‘‘homer’’ I felt that it had fairly earned
its freedom; accordingly it was decided to take a long chance, and
it was liberated in Willoughby, Ohio, 1614 miles from its home, at
a point three miles north of the second bridge which crosses the
Chagrin River in that section; we hope that it found a good home,
where its bird-killing propensities could be more effectively checked ;
it never returned. It does not necessarily follow that the distance

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 535

and other obstacles in this test were too great for this cat’s re-
markable homing ability, for the longer the course the greater the
number of diversions or accidents liable to be encountered ; more-
over this cat’s kittens had now been weaned, and the longer the
attempt to home is protracted or delayed the weaker becomes the
impulse to return, and the greater the chance afforded for new
habits to develop and replace the old.

Possibly most of the stories of cats and other animals returning
to their homes from long distances, when not composed in news-
paper offices, are exaggerated, or based on inexact identification.
As an instance of the latter sort, Claparéde® mentions the story of
a cat taken from Montilier on the shore of the lake of Morat to
Lausanne, a distance of 50 kilometers (about 31 miles), and said
to have returned the following day to its old home, a statement
ample in itself to refute the account; an investigation, moreover,
by Emile Yung, Professor of Zoology at the University of Geneva,
proved that the cat had never left Lausanne, the one seen at
Montilier being another individual of the same size and color.
Claparéde, however, records on reliable testimony the case of a cat
carried in a basket 18 kilometers (11 1/5 miles) by rail to Geneva,
and afterwards returning to its former home at Céligny. In a
characteristic ‘‘Souvenir’’ Fabre* has told the story of the cats,
which accompanied him and his family whenever he was obliged
to change his domicile; in going by carriage from Orange to
Sérignan, a distance in straight line of 4%@ miles, the oldest cat
was confined in a basket, and upon arrival it was made a prisoner
for a week in the hope that it would become habituated to its new
abode; but all to no purpose, for upon regaining its freedom it
returned at once to Orange. When found at its former home the
animal was wet to the skin, and its body was smeared with red
earth, an evidence, as Fabre thought, that it had crossed the
Aygues, a tributary of the Rhone, and afterwards gathered up the
dust of the fields; it was May, he said, and there was no mud; two
bridges cross this stream one at a point above, and the other below,
the course the cat must have followed; but, said Fabre, it took
neither, its instinct directing it home by the shortest course, and
it even overcame its repugnance to water in order to reach its
beloved abode. Upon similar evidence Fabre concluded that an-
other of his cats had returned by crossing the river Sorgue, at
Avignon, where it avoided the bridges in order to follow the more
direct route.

3 Claparéde, Ed.: ‘‘La Faculté d’Orientation Lointaine,’’ Archives de
Psychologie, ii: pp. 133-180, Geneva, 1903.

4 Fabre, J.-H.: Souvenirs Entomologiques, ii, pp. 124-133, Paris.

536 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Hodge’ records an interesting experiment with a large tomeat,
which he and his friends took with them in a boat one dark sum-
mer’s night, on a lake at Madison, Wisconsin; after a time, says
Hodge, the cat became very restless and anxious to go home; he
would climb out to one end of the boat, and stretching his head
towards home, mew almost continuously. Hodge and his friends
then amused themselves by turning the boat slowly round and
round, first one way and then another, to see if they could throw
Tom off his bearings; but all to no purpose for, says Hodge,
‘‘whether right side, left side, bow or stern, Tom was always on
the part of the boat nearest home, and straining as far as he could
in that direction. Fully a mile from any shore, how could he tell
which shore was which?’’ But few lights were visible on the shore,
and none of the party was able to distinguish their own cottages.
They then wrapped Tom in a heavy blanket-shawl, and held him
first on the lap and then flat on the bottom of the boat, while it
was turned round as before; but whenever released, the cat started
‘‘with never a mistake and without the slightest hesitation towards
the end of the boat nearest home. Whether the boat was turned
by a single stroke, as on a pivot, or rowed slowly around in a circle,
the result was always the same. Members of the party were blind-
folded and required to guess whether the boat was turned or
allowed to stand still, or was rowed in a straight line or in a eirecle;
and it was an even chance whether they guessed right or wrong.’’
The tomeat kept his bearings better than any of them. Hodge was
inclined to believe that the cat’s direction-constant was its sense of
hearing and its ability to detect sounds on shore which were too
faint for the human ear.

From the experiments recorded above, though few in number,
I think that we are justified in drawing the following conelusions:
(1) That the returns in experiments 1-5 and 8 were made from
unfamiliar territory; (2) That in the tests 1-5 suecess did not de-
pend upon chance; (3) That the cat did not return over the course
taken by the motor-car on the journey out, or according to a so-
called ‘“‘law of reversal’’ (loi du contrepied), as suggested by
Darwin, and revived by Bonnier and Regnaud; (4) That the
homing power in a more or less direct line is independent of the
sense-receptors of vision, hearing and smell; (5) That under the
conditions described the cat is able to home at night, and probably
does so by preference; (6) That its power of return is not affected
by rotation or any ordinary treatment, barring possibly anesthet-
ization, which the animal may receive, prior to or during the
journey to the point of liberation.

5 Hodge, C. F.: ‘‘ The Method of Homing Pigeons,’’ Pop. Science Monthly,
Vol. 44, New York, 1893-94.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 537

The problem of homing or of ‘‘distant orientation’’ in the higher
animals is very ancient, and the literature of the subject, particu-
larly as concerns the carrier pigeon, is voluminous and vexed to
the last degree. Claparéde in 1906 reviewed the whole field, and
discussed the various theories to which the question of homing
has given rise; again in 1915 Watson and Lashley® gave a résumé
of the whole question in vertebrates, and a concluding account of
their remarkable experiments on the homing powers of the Noddy
and Sooty Terns; they showed that many of these birds when taken
from their nests on Bird Key, Tortugas, Florida, and carried up-
wards of 800 miles in various directions at sea, made successful
homing flights; their birds were untrained; they returned from
territory through which they had apparently never passed, and
over the open ocean, which could afford no landmarks, visible at
least to the human eye. Their results, though admittedly negative,
disproved certain theories of homing; they found no ‘‘special tact-
ual or olfactory mechanism situated in the nasal cavity,’’ which
might function for distant orientation, but thought it ‘‘just pos-
sible’’ that the terns might ‘‘possess on certain parts of the body
(eye-lids, ear covering or oral cavity) sensitive tactual and thermal
mechanisms which might assist them in reacting to slight differences
in pressure, temperature and humidity of air-columns.’’

We are now concerned only with the powers of an animal stand-
ing low on the ground, and moving rather slowly, in orienting to
a known goal—its home, and in homing successfully and repeatedly
by passing through territory unknown to it. The cat’s known
goal, it should be remembered, is not a point but a region, which
if irregular, may be quite extensive; whatever the form of this
familiar area might be, a cat would be as much at home upon any
part of it as when on the hearth of its master’s house. The bird,
which orients to a region of far greater size, could be expected to
have the power of returning to it from a correspondingly greater
distance; and if there is a distinction between proximate and dis-
tant orientation there must be a division of territory surrounding
the goal or its center based upon the presence or absence of fa-
miliar landmarks of some sort.

Wallace’ maintained that the cat was able to return to its home
by the aid of its olfactory sense, that is by picking up in reverse
order, link by link, a chain of different odors, which it had expe-

6 Watson, J. B., and Lashley, K. S.: ‘‘Homing and Related Activities of
Birds,’’ Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 211, Washing-
ton, 1915.

7 Wallace, Alfred Russel: ‘‘Inherited Feeling,’’? Nature, vii, p. 308,
London, 1873; also ‘‘ Perception and Instinct in the Lower Animals,’’ ibid.,
p. 65.

538 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

rienced in its going out; in other words the cat smelled its way out
and back, though leaving no tracks of its own. Aside from the
assumption that the cat possesses an acute sense of smell, which is
probably erroneous, not to speak of the necessarily mixed and
transitory character of all odors in the air, we have seen that as a
matter of fact the cat does not always return over the course by
which it was taken out; on the contrary it often follows the shortest
and most direct route. Darwin® thought that the power of return-
ing to a region from which an animal had been deported, when in-
dications were lacking, might imply the faculty of keeping a dead
reckcning or of registering the various deviations or turns made
in course of the journey; he declined, however, to discuss the ques-
tion as his data were insufficient.

Sinee the animal does not always or usually return, as we have
seen, over the original course, it is evident that it is not called upon
either to exercise a prodigious memory or to repeat reflexly or
otherwise the movements which such a supposed “‘backtracking’’
would imply.

We have shown that the cat can return at night, and think it
probable that it homes mainly during the hours of darkness. In the
greatest distances covered in these experiments (Nos. 4 and 1) or
3 and 4.6 miles, respectively, the animals had in one case 2814 hours
and in the other 17 hours of night-time available; if they moved
forward only or mainly after dark the first would have taken an
average of nine hours to the mile, while the last would have cut
this to four hours, which is rather good time for an animal which
travels as slowly and cautiously as the cat.

When we are thus brought squarely before the problem of ac-
counting for the return of this animal to its home region under
the conditions described, we find no solid ground on which to tread ;
what follows must be regarded as mainly conjecture: (1) The
animal seems to have a direction-constant with reference to its
home-region, which it retains through the journey out, in spite
of all the manifold turnings and twistings to which its body may
be subjected; the animal will not have to recover what it does not
lose; if this direction-constant is lost the animal will be lost; (2)
This power of maintaining orientation does not depend upon
memory nor, as already indicated, upon the receptors which me-
diate vision, hearing or smell; (3) We get over no difficulties by
assuming, as has been often done, a ‘‘sense of direction,’’ for di-
rection to such an animal, it would seem, can mean only the spatial
relation between its body and such objects as appeal to it; and out

8 Darwin, Charles: ‘‘Origin of Certain Instincts,’’ ibid., p. 417.

HOMING POWERS OF THE CAT 539

of the total effective environment of the cat no objects probably
make a stronger appeal than its home or the young which it may
shelter; (4) Though of course possible, it is rather improbable that
an animal like the cat possesses important unknown sense-organs
which come to its aid in orientation; (5) By the process of exclu-
sion we seem to be thrown back upon (a) mental imagery, or a
relation established between the visual and the visualized fields,
and (b) the kinesthetic sense, the sense of movement, or as it is
sometimes called the ‘‘muscle sense,’’ which is of sufficient delicacy
to yield an impulse to action whenever the body is moved.

It may be too great a tax upon our credulity to believe that
the eat can form and utilize mental images in such an effective
way as do human beings, and especially since blindfolding does not
appreciably affect the homing power. Accordingly I am inelined
at present to believe, though unable to prove, that the secret of
this power lies in the kinesthetic sense, which is older by far than
either seeing, smelling or hearing, and by which compensatory
movements of the body can be made and maintained ; in other words
that the constant sought lies back of the ordinary sense-organs, and
that this is in some way bound up with this primitive muscle sense,
which experiment has already shown to be of far greater delicacy
in many animals than in man. It would seem that Hodge’s eat,
to which we referred, perceived every movement of the boat, and
compensated for the movement when given its freedom; if the water
in that lake had suddenly become dry land, is there any doubt
that the animal would have made its home in short order, as our
cats have repeatedly done, when removed a much greater distance
from hearth and young, and when blindfolded at that?

Whether deviations in the position of the body are constantly
adjusted by compensatory movements of some sort is a matter
which future experiment must decide; it did not occur to me to
keep the cats under close observation during their journeys out.
It does not seem probable that such an animal is able to keep a
register of its movements, if it were called upon to do so, in the
way Darwin suggested; were this the case it would be a perfect
homing machine.

540 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FISHES: WHY STUDY THEM?
By ALBERT W. C. T. HERRE

THE PHILIPPINE BUREAU OF SCIENCE

HY should any one study or want to study fish? Perhaps
every man who is not a lounge lizard or a confirmed vale-
tudinarian, certainly every boy, to say nothing of many girls and
women, likes to escape from the trammels of every-day life and
the suffocating indoor artificialities of cities and go a-fishing.
Whether it is the outdoor freedom, the lure of stream or forest,
mountains or the sea, or the joy of hauling in the big fellows,
the fish or the fun of fishing, we must leave to each individual to
determine. At any rate few despise the after period of rest and
reminiscence, when crisp trout or flaky black bass, salmon bake
or Spanish mackerel aux fines herbes, refresh and fortify against
the next day’s adventures.

But to spend most of the year swapping fish yarns and overhaul-
ing tackle and the rest of the time trying to catch fish is not
studying fish, although the true ‘‘ecompleat Angler’’ does really
and truly study fish.

The number of people who are interested in fish in one way or
another is very great, in some countries including the total popu-
lation, while in countries like the United States it is far greater
than one realizes. Yet, like some other things of primary eco-
nomie importance very few people really know anything about
fish, and still fewer make a thorough study of them, though many
people are vitally interested in some economic aspect of fishes.

From the earliest times man has undoubtedly eaten fish when-
ever he could get any, and with the spread of mankind many in-
genious devices were invented for their capture, long before the
dawn of any existing historical records. Since fish cost nothing
to breed or maintain, and since in many regions they came pe-
riodically in uncountable numbers, many groups of people, espe-
cially in cold climates, came to depend upon them as their most
important food. In other regions, such as the low coastal plains
of Asia and the islands adjacent, fish became the most important
source of protein food.

Although at first a purely utilitarian proposition, fishing, like
hunting, with the advent of organized society came to be a recog-
nized sport many thousands of years ago.

FISHES: WHY STUDY THEM ? 541

Very early in the historical period far-seeing men in regions
like Egypt or China began to develop the artificial culture of
fresh-water fish to supplement the food supply of a rapidly in-
ereasing population. In like manner the people of Java, the
Philippines, Formosa and Hawaii developed systems of pond
culture for certain marine fishes. Their methods are still in use
and consist in catching the newly hatched fry in the rivers or
sea and transferring them to ponds where they are kept till large
enough for market, herbivorous fishes only being reared.

Before the dawn of history people had also learned to dry
fish both with and without the use of salt, and to cure them by
smoke. Later came such processes as pickling in brine, or with
the use of vinegar or spices.

With the advent of Christianity into northern Europe and
the subsequent change from savagery to civilization, fish and
fisheries became increasingly important and many regions arose
from nothing because of their control of the production or distri-
bution of fish. We may trace the rise of modern Holland to her
development of a special method of preparing herring.

As population increased and certain countries turned their
attention more and more to foreign trade, valuable fishing grounds
came to be in great demand, and regions like the Grand Banks
were a matter for statesmen and diplomats and fleets to struggle
over.

In primitive society only a small proportion of the total quan-
tity of fish was taken and the balance of nature was never de-
stroyed. As population increased the additional number of fish
required was obtained by improvements in capturing and preserv-
ing, while the better organization of society ensured their distribu-
tion more evenly and to more remote regions. This greater and
slowly increasing eall for food continued for centuries without
seriously impairing anywhere the sources of supply. It was not
until the advent of the modern industrial period and its rapid
development that the rivers of regions like England and the North
Atlantic coast of our own country began to lose their importance
as sources of food supply, and later still when the tremendous in-
crease of factory industries destroyed the swarms of luscious
fish which annually visited them.

But it remained for the enormous development of fish canning
to practically destroy the annual run of Pacific coast salmon, an
industry which rightly handled should have been as permanent as
the production of wool or beef.

It is a bitter commentary upon the organization of modern
industrialism that, as a rule, the men who are in business know

542 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

little or nothing about the thing which they are exploiting. The
fish canner was compelled to know something about the processes
of canning, often paying very dearly for his knowledge, and he
knew more or less about how to sell the finished product, but as
for knowing anything about fish—salmon, for instance—his ig-
norance was ineredibly profound. As a result the salmon is, in
some of the regions where it was almost unbelievably numerous,
practically extinet because the packers not only were entirely
ignorant but would not pay any attention to those who did know,
and used their political influence to destroy the labor of those
who would have made their industry a permanent one.

Another modern method of totally destroying the food supply
upon which millions of people depended was exemplified in India,
where the construction of dams for irrigation by well-meaning
but ignorant politicians and engineers separated fish from their
spawning grounds with fatal results. In other regions the taking
of water for irrigation at a time when tiny young fishes swarm in
the water, without providing in any way for their protection, has
destroyed a primary source of food for the common people.

A little fundamental knowledge concerning fish and their life
histories and habits would therefore certainly not come amiss to
the business man, and would be of great utility to the far-seeing
statesman or state executive, whether concerned with problems of
food production and conservation, or taxation. Particularly
should the latter have some slight modicum of knowledge in order
to be able to appreciate the importance of fostering, to say nothing
of improving, modern methods of fish culture which have revolu-
tionized the fisheries of both fresh and salt water in many regions.

For a very long time there have been men who studied as best
they could the fish life of their region, and since the time of Aris-
totle we have had more or less trustworthy written accounts of
fishes. But the modern study of fishes dates from Artedi, a
friend of Linneus, and since that time a vast literature has arisen,
treating of every conceivable topic which is in any possible way
related to fishes, their lives, or any relation man sustains to them.

And yet with all this activity the actual number of people who
are really engaged in studying fish is very small, and but few
schools in the United States offer courses making fish the central
or only subject of study. In spite of all that has been done and
published, our ignorance of many problems of primary impor-
tance, zoologically and economically, is abyssal. For example, in
the region in which I am now working, where fish form the prin-
cipal animal diet of ten million people, we do not know the most
elementary facts concerning a single fish in the Archipelago, in

FISHES: WHY STUDY THEM ? 543

spite of the fact that money spent in obtaining adequate knowledge
of say the herring family would be repaid ineredibly in advancing
the economic and dietetic welfare of the people.

The surface of the world is by now pretty well explored, and
there are no new continents or even very large areas of land or
water to explore, outside of the polar regions. But enormous areas
on a different plane remain to be explored and there is no question
but what in time very considerable portions of the oceanic depths
and bottom will be studied and the kind and relative abundanee
of their fishes well known. At the present time our knowledge of
many regions is equivalent to that which would be gained by study-
ing the fauna of a continent from samples gained by dragging a
basket on a rope hanging from a balloon several miles up in the
air. large active fishes are not likely to be caught in a dredge
and there may exist, in regions not too deep, vast numbers of fishes
which some day will be known and utilized. Some of them may
be known to-day from a few rare, strange examples, others are
undoubtedly totally unknown as yet, but with improved methods
of deep sea exploration and study man will learn their haunts and
habits and be able to capture them in quantity.

Probably more young people become interested in zoology
through their observations of birds or butterflies than in any
other way, and it is not likely that anything will ever supersede
them in beauty or attractiveness.

But a good exhibit of living fish attracts as many people as
perhaps any other forms of life and in the tropics at any rate the
coral reef fishes are only equalled in beauty and grace of form
and color by the humming birds and butterflies. Fish are cer-
tainly attractive when living, and their study, whether of living
or preserved specimens, can be made equally so if properly pre-
sented. It would seem, therefore, that more schools should offer
courses where fish are the chief subject rather than merely dis-
missing them after the study of one or two types.

The zoologist and student of evolution should realize that no
other group of vertebrates offers such enormous diversity of strue-
ture, form, habitat, habits and development as does that of the
fishes, and then they should act on their knowledge.

The ignorance of even comparatively well-informed people about
fish is stupendous. This is well illustrated when one tells a fish
story. If he tells the plain unvarnished truth about climbing
perch, the gobies or blennies that chase insects over the land and
which leave the water for safety when you try to catch them, or
even about plain ordinary Sangamon river catfish or Cumberland
river eels, they put him down as a liar. But if by way of experi-

544 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

ment he really tells them something wholly imaginary they
promptly accept it as fact and perfectly all right. Only the other
day a party of tourists violently disputed what I was telling them
about a fish in the Aquarium, although they had to admit they did
not know anything about it. The trouble is that people have a
preconceived idea of ‘‘fish,’’ and of its limitations, and do not
realize the enormous plasticity of the class of fishes. In the matter
of fish shapes alone, no human being, even if gifted with the
imagination of an insane Doré, could conceive the vast number of
weird, grotesque, or ‘‘impossible’’ shapes which are actually found
among living fishes. If we merely named examples, whether of
unusual shape, strange physiological powers as that of electricity,
almost unbelievable migrations as that of the common eel, startling
metamorphoses, or astonishing habits, it would require a volume.

It is true that the study of systematic ichthyology requires the
use of a large, expensive and bulky collection of alcoholic speci-
mens, and access to an exceedingly diverse and often very expen-
sive literature, but this last item is true of all systematic work,
whether botanical or zoological. But the extended study of sys-
tematic ichthyology is only one phase, and by no means always the
most important one at that, of the study of fishes. The collecting
of fishes in a neighborhood or limited region is not difficult or ex-
pensive and their determination is a simple matter in Europe,
North America, and many other regions. But there is a vast
deal to study and to learn concerning the fishes of almost every
region. Not only do many fishes undergo startling transforma-
tions, but the embryology and metamorphosis of many common
fishes are totally unknown. In other cases ‘‘we only know a little
and that is all wrong,’’ as has been said about another matter.
The breeding habits of many fishes, both salt and fresh water, are
not at all known while their study could be carried on by any one
willing to devote some time to it over a series of years.

The rate of growth, the time required to reach the reproductive
period, the size reached and the duration of life after sexual ma-
turity, are all problems concerning which we are ignorant ever
about many very common fishes, while their solution demands only
eareful observation over a term of years until sufficient data are
accumulated to deduce the general prineiples underlying them.
The migrations and seasonal movements of fishes, whether due
to variations in the food supply, to sexual impulses, or to climatic
causes, whether latitudinal or vertical in their range, are also mat-
ters of vital importance concerning which we have yet very much
to learn.

Like all other organisms, fishes are the victims of disease,

FISHES: WHY STUDY THEM ? 545

?

‘‘nlague, pestilence and famine,’’ while ‘‘battle, murder and sud-
den death’’ are of course their daily lot. Parasitic fungi, pro-
tozoa, erustacea and worms make life a burden to great numbers,
and some of these, as certain tapeworms, may be readily trans-
mitted to man. Yet very little is known of fish diseases and a
vast amount of valuable work may be done without any necessity
for a great collection of fishes. Many fish, often in uncountable
numbers, are killed by some physiological disturbance which may
be due to an inealeulable increase in diatoms or flagellate protozoa,
or to obscure causes which as yet we can not fathom. Proper con-
servation of the world’s natural resources, therefore, asks that
work be done along these lines, and in almost any college such
research could be carried on while the results would benefit the
whole nation.

Biology, any science, must find its exeuse for existence in
the extent to which it is eapable of being interpreted or translated
into terms of human welfare. Judged by this standard, the study
of fishes, ichthyology, pisciculture, any of its departments. is emi-
nently worth while. The study of fishes, rightly considered and
pursued, will in some one or more of its multifarious phases touch
the life and affect the welfare of almost every one.

Whether it is the statesmen and scientists of Japan, nearly one
third of whose redundant population derives its living from the
fisheries, or Norway, striving to so husband and develop the
fisheries as to permanently ensure food and a surplus for export,
the professor studying the evolutionary aspects of degeneration
or luminosity in fishes, or the business man who seeks the aid of
ichthyologists in making his business of canning permanent by
having it accord with the biological principles controlling the life
history of the fishes he handles, all are alike profoundly interested
in extending and perfecting our knowledge of fishes.

And is not the mountaineer with home-made tackle, or the city
sportsman, or the Banks fisherman equally interested in the same
thing? Yes, even though he does not always recognize or admit it.
And it is the duty of the leaders of scientifie education and thought
to help to make him realize it.

And he, too, who gazes at fish with the eyes of artist or lover,
enchanted by their marvelous variation of color and shape, and
the grace and incredible speed of their movement, or it must be
confessed sometimes amused by their grotesque or bizarre shapes
or movements, is repaid in terms of human welfare.

Whether a human being be inspired by a poem, his emotions
be transformed by the work of master musicians, or he is enrap-
tured before a noble painting, he is certainly in contact with some-

VOL. XIV.—35.

2416 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

thing which may profoundly affect human welfare, no matter how
intangible or superfluous it may seem to some.

And so when one watches the incomparable beauty and grace
of the living meteors that swarm about the coral reefs of the tropic
seas and studies them in their environment, while the world of
every-day affairs drops away from him, he is benefitted in the
same way that a wonderful landscape, a perfect sunset or any
work of art benefits the beholder.

We might add, too, that anything which helps to satisfy the
thirst for knowledge concerning our world and all it contains is
worth while, even if it served no other function.

By studying fish, we may be enabled to sustain or transform
existing industries or develop new ones, thus adding enormously
to the resources of society, we may throw additonal or even new
light upon problems of development, animal distribution and evo-
lution, and we may help to diffuse more generally interest in and
knowledge of a group of animals second only to the domestic ani-
mals in importance and, taken in connection with their setting,
unsurpassed in beauty and esthetic interest.

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 547

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICA-
TION

By Professor FERNANDO SANFORD

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

N a previous paper on ‘‘The Electric Fluid Theories’’ it was
shown that neither the one fluid nor the two fluid theory gave
any physical explanation of the cause of electric attraction or repul-
sion, though it was this explanation which was the principal pur-
pose of the earlier emanation theory. It was also shown that a
fundamental question which was left unsettled was how the electric
fluid is held to a conductor while there is no attraction between it
and the particles of matter.

The only theory proposed during this time which seems to
suggest any explanation of this phenomenon was one proposed by
Cavendish, who regarded the electric fluid in conductors as under
an external pressure and as always flowing in the direction of
least pressure. Cavendish did not discuss the question of the re-
tention of a charge upon a conductor, for he regarded the electric
fiuid as being attracted by the particles of material bodies; but
he seems to have had a very definite notion of an external pressure
exerted upon the electric fluid in a charged body and of the reac-
tion of the electric fluid to this pressure. Thus he says:

When the electric fluid within any body is more compressed than in its
natural state, I call that body positively electrified. When it is less com-
pressed, I call the body negatively electrified.

It is plain from what has been here said that if any number of conduct-
ing bodies be joined by conductors and one of these bodies be positively elee-
trified, that all the others must be so too.

If two bodies, both perfectly insulated, so that no electricity can escape
from them, be positively electrified and then brought near each other, as they
are both overcharged they will each, by the action of the other upon it, be
rendered less capable of containing electricity; therefore, as no electricity can
escape from them, the fluid in them will be more compressed, just as air
included within a bottle will become more compressed either by heating the
air or by squeezing the bottle into less compass: but it is evident that the
bodies will remain just as much overcharged as before.

It will be seen from the above quotations that Cavendish re-
garded the compressed electric fluid in one charged body as capable
‘of transmitting in some way a pressure to the fluid in another body
brought near it. This would seem to indicate that he supposed

548 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

this pressure to be exerted by some external elastic medium which
was itself thrown into a state of stress by the reaction of the com-
pressed electric fluid.

Apparently the first physicist to definitely suggest the pressure
of an elastic medium as the cause of electric attractions and repul-
sions was Dr. Thomas Young. In his lectures which were given
before the Royal Institution and published in 1807 he says:

It must be confessed that the whole science of electricity is yet in a very
imperfect state. We know little or nothing of the intimate nature of the
substanees and actions concerned in it: and we can never foresee, without
previous experiment, where or how it will be excited. We are wholly ignorant
of the constitution of bodies, by which they become possessed of different
conducting powers; and we have only been able to draw some general conclu-
sions respecting the disposition and equilibrium of the supposed electric fluid
from the laws of the attractions and repulsions that it appears to exert.
There seems to be some reason to suspect from the phenomena of cohesion
and repulsion that the pressure of an elastic medium is concerned in the
origin of these forces; and if such a medium really exists, it is perhaps nearly
related to the electric fluid.

Between the time of Cavendish’s writing and the publication of
Young’s lectures there had been great advancement in electrical
knowledge and very important improvement in facilities for elec-
trical measurement. The most important discovery in electrosta-
ties was Bennett’s discovery of contact electrical charges. Gal-
vani’s discovery of muscular contractions due to electrical stimu-
lation of the nerves had attracted a great deal of attention, and
there was much controversy over the question whether the force
with which Galvani was experimenting was really electrical, or
whether it was some force before unknown and which was called
Galvanism. This question was finally settled by Volta, who in
1796 discovered the electrical current set up in a ecireuit contain-
ing two metals and an electrolytic conductor. Then in 1800 Volta
announced the discovery of the voltaic pile, by means of which
the electromotive force of a single metallic pair could be increased
to any desired degree. This was followed the same year by the
discovery by Carlisle and Nicholson of the separation of water by
electrolysis and very rapidly thereafter by the experiments of Davy
and others on electrolytic dissociation. As a result of these inves-
tigations, the study of electrostatic phenomena was neglected, and
aside from the work of Faraday but little of consequence has since
been done in this field.

Faraday’s most important contributions to electrostatics were
his proofs of the perfect equality of the inducing and induced
charges in all eases; his proof that electric induction might some-
times act in curved lines (as he stated it) and hence could not be

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 549

due to the action of forces at a distance, as such action would
necessarily be rectilinear; and finally, in 1837, the discovery of
specific inductive capacity.

This discovery as made by Faraday consisted in determining
the division of an electrie charge between two equal conductors
when one was surrounded by air and the other by some other insu-
lating medium. The apparatus used consisted of two brass balls
2.33 inches in diameter and exactly alike mounted upon insulating
supports concentrically inside of two similar hollow brass spheres
3.57 inches internal diameter. The inner balls were carefully in-
sulated from the outer hollow conductors, and the space between
eould be left filled with air or could be filled with some insulating
solid or liquid. The outer hollow spheres were joined to earth.

C D

Thus in the diagram in Figure 1 the inner spheres are indicated
by A and B, the outer hollow spheres by C and D. C and D are
joined to earth. If, now, A and B are connected and charged, then
separated and the hollow spheres removed from around them, they
are found to have equal charges.

Faraday found that when the space between A and C was
half filled with sulphur and A and B were connected and charged
as before and the outer spheres and the sulphur were removed A
was found to have 2.24 times as great a charge as B. The experi-
ment was repeated with glass, shellac and other substances instead
of sulphur, and it was found that in every case A took a greater
charge than B, but that the magnitude of the charge depended
upon the insulating material between A and C.

Faraday believed that the so-called charges upon A and B were
merely manifestations of some condition known as induction which
had been produced in the medium between the inner and outer
spheres, though why this condition should persist after the me-
dium was removed he does not say. In Article 1174 of Experi-
mental Researches he says:

550 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The conclusion I have come to is that non-conductors, a3 well as con-
ductors, have never yet had an absolute and independent charge of one elec-
tricity communicated to them, and that to all appearance such state of matter
is impossible.

Again (Arts. 1177 and 1178), as far as experiment has proceeded, it
appears, therefore, impossible either to evolve or make disappear one electric
force without equal and corresponding change in the other. It is also equally
impossible experimentally to charge a portion of matter with one electric
force independently of the other. Charge always implies induction, for it can
in no instance be effected without; and also the presence of the two forms of
power, equally at the moment of development and afterwards. There is no
absolute charge of matter with one fluid; no latency of a single electricity.
This, though a negative result, is an exceedingly important one, being prob-
ably the consequence of a natural impossibility, which will become elear to us
when we understand the true condition and theory of the electric power.

The preceding considerations already point to the following conclusions:
bodies cannot be charged absolutely, but only relatively, and by a principle
which is the same with that of induction. All charge is sustained by induc-
tion. All phenomena of intensity include the principle of induction. All
excitation is dependent on or directly related to induction. All currents
involve previous intensity and therefore previous induction. INDUCTION
appears to be the essential function both in the first development and the con-
sequent phenomena of electricity.

From this point of view, the charges of A and B in the above
experiment were merely manifestations of some condition in the
medium between A and C and between B and D. If A assumed a
larger proportion of the total electrification than B, it was because
induction took place more freely between A and C than _ be-
tween B and D. Faraday accordingly said that sulphur had a
greater capacity for electrical induction than air, and that if the
inductive capacity of air were taken as 1, the inductive capacity
of sulphur would be greater than 2.24.

It may be interesting at this point to consider briefly the differ-
ence between the views of Cavendish and Faraday. Cavendish be-
lieved all bodies to contain an unknown quantity of a single electrie
fluid, and that this fluid was always under some kind of external
pressure and that in conductors it always flowed toward the re-
gion of least external pressure and could be in equilibrium only
when the external pressure was everywhere the same over the sur-
face of the conductor or system of conductors in which the fluid
was confined. From his point of view, the reason that A took a
greater charge than B in the Faraday experiment was that the
external pressure on a given charge was less around A than around
B, and hence that an excess of fluid would flow into A until this
external pressure was equalized upon the fluid in the two spheres.

Faraday attributed the state known as electrification not to any
changed condition inside the charged conductor, but wholly to

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 551

conditions in the insulating medium surrounding the conductors
concerned. A charged conductor was only one limiting boundary
of an electrical field. A charge could not penetrate into a con-
ductor, because the state of strain which was the essential condition
of induction could not exist in conductors. In order for this state
of strain to exist the bounding surfaces of the strained medium
must be on different conductors insulated from each other, because
from this theory the different surfaces must support equal and
opposite stresses, and this is impossible over a conducting surface,
which from its nature cannot support an electric stress at all. If
the two surfaces of the region of strain, which Faraday called
the dielectric, are joined by a conductor, the strain is relieved and
the electrification disappears. Hence there can be no electrification
upon the inner walls of a closed hollow conductor, since this would
involve a condition of equal and opposite strains resting upon the
same conducting surface.

It will be seen from the above that Faraday’s theory does not
involve the existence of any electric fluid whatever. Faraday calls
attention to this in a foot-note to his Article 1298. He says:

The theory of induction which I am stating does not pretend to decide
whether electricity is a fluid or fluids, or a mere power or condition of recog-
nized matter.

Even in the production of a current Faraday does not admit
the necessity for the passage of any electric fluid through the con-
ductor. From his point of view, since charging a body consists
in setting up a certain condition of strain in the dielectric between
it and another body, or other bodies, so discharging an electrified
body consists merely in removing this state of strain in the dielee-
tric around it. This strain can exist permanently in an insulator;
it breaks down rapidly in a conductor. While it is breaking down
the current is said to be passing through the conductor.

Faraday’s notion as to the nature of the condition which he
called induction was not clear, as may be shown by the following
quotation from Article 1298:

Induction seems to consist in a certain polarized state of the particles,
into which they are thrown by the electrified body sustaining the action, the
particles assuming positive or negative points or parts, which are symmet-
rically arranged with reference to each other and the inducting surfaces or
particles. The state must be a forced one, for it is originated and sustained
only by force, and sinks to the normal or quiescent state when the force is

removed. It can be continued only in insulators by the same portion of elec-
tricity, because they only can retain this state of the particles.

When a Leyden jar is charged, the particles of the glass are forced into
this polarized and constrained condition by the electricity of the charging

552 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

apparatus. Discharge is the return of these particles to their natural state
of tension, whenever the two electric forces are allowed to be disposed of in
some other direction.

The question as to the cause of this state of polarization is left
entirely unanswered by Faraday, and this question is funda-
mental. The fact that electrical induction could take place in the
best air pump vacuum seemed to require that all space must be
filled with a medium made of polarizable particles, and this as-
sumption was not readily accepted, especially at a time when the
notion of force acting at a distance had become the common heri-
tage of physicists. For this and other reasons Faraday’s electrical
theory did not meet with general acceptance at the time when it
was proposed.

In 1873 Maxwell published the first edition of his Electricity
and Magnetism which brought the fundamental ideas of Faraday
into a position of prominence in English speaking countries which
they have largely maintained up to very recent times.

Maxwell undertook to show in his treatise that the quantitative
laws of electricity and magnetism which had been put into mathe-
matical form on the assumption of forces acting at a distance could
also be put into mathematical form on the basis of Faraday’s
notion of induction.

Thus Maxwell says:

I was aware that there was supposed to be a difference between Fara-
day’s way of conceiving phenomena and that of the mathematicians, so that
neither he nor they were satisfied with each other’s language. J had also the
conviction that this discrepancy did not arise from either party being wrong.

I was first convinced of this by Sir William Thomson, to whose advice
and assistance, as well as to his published papers, I owe most of what I have
learned on the subject.

As I proceeded with the study of Faraday, I perceived that his method
of conceiving the phenomena was also a mathematical one, though not exhib-
ited in the form of mathematical symbols. I also found that these methods
were capable of being expressed in the ordinary mathematical forms, and thus
compared with those of the professed mathematicians.

For instance, Faraday, in his mind’s eye, saw lines of force traversing
all space where the mathematicians saw centers of force attracting at a dis-
tance: Faraday sought the seat of the phenomena in real actions going on in
the medium; they were satisfied that they had found it in a power of action
at a distance impressed on the electrical fluids.

When I had translated what I conceived to be Faraday’s ideas into a
mathematical form, I found that in general the two methods coincided, so
that the same phenomena were accounted for, and the same laws of action
deduced by both methods, but that Faraday’s methods resembled those in
which we begin with the whole and arrive at the parts by analysis, while the
ordinary mathematical methods were founded on the principle of beginning
with the parts and building up the whole by synthesis.

I also found that several of the most fertile methods of research discov-

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 553

ered by the mathematicians could be expressed much better in terms of ideas
derived from Faraday than in their original form.

Maxwell takes pains to emphasize this statement of the purpose
of his treatise. Thus in Vol. II, p. 176, 3d Ed., he says:

It was perhaps for the advantage of science that Faraday, though thor-
oughly conscious of the fundamental forms of space, time and force, was not
a professed mathematician. He was not tempted to enter into the many inter-
esting researches in pure mathematics which his discoveries would have sug-
gested if they had been exhibited in a mathematical form, and he did not
feel called upon either to force his results into a shape acceptable to the
mathematical taste of the time, or to express them in a form which mathe-
maticians might attack. He was thus left at leisure to do his proper work, to
coordinate his ideas with his facts, and to express them in natural, untech-
nical language.

It is mainly with the hope of making these ideas the basis of a mathe-
matical method that I have undertaken this treatise.

Maxwell accordingly undertook to specify the conditions in a
dielectric medium by means of which the induction effects discussed
by Faraday could be explained from the known laws of mechanics.
In doing this he used as much as possible the fundamental con-
cepts of Faraday in so far as these could be determined.

Faraday’s researches were carried on through a term of years
and were presented as they were finished. Naturally, one who de-
parted so fundamentally in his electrical concepts from all who
had preceded him, and who discovered so many new phenomena in
electricity and magnetism, was obliged to modify his views as
he proceeded. In his Experimental Researches Faraday gives us,
not his mature opinion at the conclusion of his work, but the evolu-
tion of his theory as it took shape in his mind. It is accordingly
possible to get different notions of Faraday’s theory from different
parts of his Researches.

Thus, in the discussion of induction which has been in part
quoted Faraday speaks of the phenomena as being entirely due to
a condition in the dielectric medium, and he discusses the direction
of the lines of force of the inductive stress in this medium. In
the early stages of his work he uses the term ‘lines of force’’ in a
purely mathematical sense, that is, as giving throughout their
leneth the direction of the inductive foree. Later he came to think
of the dielectric medium as consisting wholly of physical lines of
force. In one of his latest papers (Proce. Roy. Inst., June 11, 1852)
he discusses the characteristics which must distinguish physieal
lines of force from abstract, or mathematical, lines of force, and
decides that both electrical and magnetic phenomena are dependent
upon physical lines of force; that is, the lines of force are no
longer used to describe phenomena, but to explain them.

554 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

- His later ideas as to the nature of these physical lines of force
are perhaps most fully explained in a letter to Richard Phillips,
Esq., written in May, 1846, and published in Experimental Re-
searches, III., p. 447. Some extracts from this letter are given
below.

You are aware of the speculation which I sometime since uttered respect-
ing that view of the nature of matter which considers its ultimate atoms as
centers of force, and not as so many little bodies surrounded by forces, the
bodies being considered in the abstract as independent of the forces and
capable of existing without them. In the latter view, these little particles
have a definite form and a certain limited size; in the former view such is not
the case, for that which represents size may be considered as extending to any
distance to which the lines of force of the particles extend: the particle indeed
is supposed to exist only by these forces, and where they are it is. The con-
sideration of matter under this view gradually led me to look at the lines of
force as being perhaps the seat of the vibrations of radiant phenomena.

The ether is assumed as pervading all bodies as well as space: In the
view now set forth, it is the forces of the atomic centres which pervade (and
make) all bodies, and also penetrate all space. As regards space, the differ-
ence is, that the ether presents successive parts or centres of action, and the
present supposition only lines of action; as regards matter, the difference is,
that the ether lies between the particles and so carries on the vibrations,
whilst as respects the supposition, it is by the lines of force between the
centres of the particles that the vibration is continued.

Again, in Experimental Researches U1, p. 291, Faraday presents
his theory of the nature of matter in much the same manner as
above. At the conclusion of this discussion, he says:

The view now stated of the constitution of matter would seem to involve
necessarily the conclusion that matter fills all space, or, at least, all space to
which gravitation extends (including the sun and its system); for gravitation
is a property of matter dependent on a certain force, and it is this force
which constitutes the matter. In that view, matter is not merely mutually
penetrable, but each atom extends, so to say, throughout the whole of the
solar system, yet always retaining its own centre of force.

We see from the above that Faraday’s later electrical theory
was based upon a concept of the nature of matter which is no
longer regarded as tenable, but which necessarily profoundly modi-
fied his views on electrical phenomena. It did away at once with
all distinction between matter and the ether, unless those parts of
space in which the centers of force were less numerous than in
other parts could be regarded as a separate medium. Any ques-
tion as to the number of electrical fiuids, or whether there was
any electrical fluid at all, could have little significance. The atoms
of bodies were merely centers from which innumerable contractile
filaments which he ealled lines of foree radiated in all directions
and throughout all space. From his reasoning, these filaments

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 555

must extend to the limits of the physical universe, and every point
in space must be traversed by lines from all the centers in the uni-
verse, as otherwise there would be points in which the law of
gravitation would not apply. Whether these lines of force are of
different kinds, so that gravitation depends upon one kind, electric
phenomena upon another kind and magnetic phenomena upon a
third kind, Faraday does not state, but this condition would seem
to follow from the rest of his theory.

When Maxwell undertook to interpret Faraday to the mathe-
maticians he was compelled to choose between the more or less
contradictory views which Faraday had expressed at different
times, and he naturally undertook to select the views which could
be used as the most satisfactory basis for a mathematical theory
of electricity and magnetism. In doing this, he does not adopt
Faraday’s extreme views of the identity of matter and force. The
distinction between force and energy was much more clearly under-
stood at the time of Maxwell’s writing than it was when Faraday
was carrying on his investigations. In fact, energy, as a concept
distinet from force, was not known to Faraday, and Maxwell shows
early in his treatise that what had been defined as electricity or
electrical quantity could not be measured as energy. He does,
however, adopt Faraday’s concept of physical lines of foree, but
somewhat in the manner of Faraday’s earlier views, in which the
lines of force were regarded as chains of polarized material par-
ticles.

Maxwell first defines his lines of force in a purely mathematical
sense. Thus he says (Elec. and Mag. I, 97):

If a line be drawn whose direction at every point of its course coincides
with that of the resultant intensity at that point, the line is called a Line of
Force.

In every part of the course of a line of force, it is proceeding from a
place of higher potential to a place of lower potential.

Hence a line of force cannot return into itself, but must have a beginning
and an end. The beginning of a line of force must, by Number 80, be in a
positively charged surface, and the end of a line of force must be in a nega-
tively charged surface.

It is easily seen that such a line of force does not pull the
positively and negatively charged surfaces together. It is merely
the path along which a positively or negatively electrified particle
would move if set free on the line of foree. It does not explain
the motion of the particle, it merely describes it. When he under-
takes to explain why an electrified particle would travel along a
line of force, Maxwell says:

At every point of the medium there is a state of stress such that there
is a tension along the lines of force and pressure in all directions at right

556 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

angles to these lines, the numerical magnitude of the pressure being equal to
that of the tension, and both varying as the square of the resultant force at
the point.

In another place Maxwell argues that the state of stress de-
scribed above is the only one consistent with the observed mechan-
ical action of the electrified bodies and also with the observed
equilibrium of the fluid dielectric which surrounds them.

Sir J. J. Thomson, who edited the third edition of Maxwell’s
treatise, takes exception to this claim. He says in a foot-note on
page 165:

The subject of the stress in the medium will be further considered in the
supplementary volume; it may however be noticed here that the problem of
finding a system of stresses which will produce the same forces as those exist-
ing in the electric field is one which has an infinite number of solutions. That

adopted by Maxwell is one which could not in general be produced by strains
in an elastic solid.

This, in connection with the preceding quotation from Max-
well, indicates that Maxwell regarded his dielectric medium as
necessarily a fluid; hence when the only dielectric between the
positive and negative electrical condition is the ether of space, this
medium must be a fluid. This seems to contradict the well-known
fact that the only known forms of ether radiation are of the nature
of transverse waves.

Maxwell goes no further than Faraday in explaining the condi-
tion of stress which is supposed to constitute induction. He merely
attempts to describe it. He says:

It must be carefully borne in mind that we have made only one step in
the theory of the action of the medium. We have supposed it to be in a state

of stress, but we have not in any way accounted for this stress, or explained
how it is maintained.

I have not been able to make the next step, namely, to account by me-
chanical considerations for these stresses in the dielectric. I therefore leave
the theory at this point, merely stating what are the other parts of the phe-
nomenon of induction in dielectrics.

Maxwell’s claim is, accordingly, that if the dielectric medium
between two charges, said charges being always necessarily upon
the opposite surfaces of the dielectric, should contract in the di-
rection of the lines of force normal to its charged boundaries and
should expand in all directions at right angles to these lines of
force, this contraction and expansion would enable him to account
for the other phenomena of electrostatic induction.

Maxwell does make the further assumption that this stress in
the dielectric is analogous to an elastic stress in material bodies.
Thus he says:

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 557

The analogy between the action of electromotive intensity in producing
electric displacement and of ordinary mechanical force in producing the dis-
placement of an elastic body is so obvious that I have ventured to call the
ratio of the electromotive intensity to the corresponding electric displacement
the coefficient of electric elasticity of the medium. The coefficient is different
in different media, and varies inversely as the specific inductive capacity of
each medium.

Farther along in his treatise Maxwell argues that this ‘‘ Elec-
tric Elasticity’’ is the elasticity by means of which lhght waves
are propagated through the ether. Thus he says (Vol. II, p 431):

According to the theory of emission, the transmission of energy is effected
by the actual transference of light corpuscles from the luminous to the illum-
inated body, carrying with them their kinetic energy, together with any other
kind of energy of which they may be the receptacles.

According to the theory of undulation, there is a material medium which
fills the space between the bodies, and it is by the action of contiguous parts
of this medium that the energy is passed on from one portion to the next, till
it reaches the illuminated body.

The luminiferous medium is therefore, during the passage of light
through it, a receptacle of energy.

In the undulatory theory as developed by Huyghens, Fresnel, Young,
Green, etc., this energy is supposed to be partly potential and partly kinetic.
The potential energy is supposed to be due to the distortion of the elementary
portions of the medium. We must therefore regard the medium as elastic.
The kinetic energy is supposed to be due to the vibratory motion of the
medium. We must therefore regard the medium as having a finite density.

In the theory of electricity and magnetism adopted in this treatise, two
forms of energy are recognized, the electrostatic and the electrokinetic (see
Arts. 630 and 636), and these are supposed to have their seat, not merely in
the electrified or magnetized bodies, but in every part of the surrounding
space, where electric or magnetic force is observed to act. Hence our theory
agrees with the undulatory theory in assuming the existence of a medium
which is capable of becoming the receptacle of two forms of energy.

Let us next determine the conditions of the propagation of an electro-
magnetic disturbance through a uniform medium, which we shall suppose to
be at rest, that is, to have no motion except that which may be involved in
electromagnetic disturbances.

Maxwell then proceeds to develop an equation for the velocity
of an electromagnetic disturbance in terms of the specific inductive
capacity and the magnetic permeability of the medium and which,
if the specific inductive capacity be taken as the reciprocal of the
elasticity and the magnetic permeability be taken as the density of
the medium gives an expression for the velocity of a wave motion
in an elastic medium. It also gives an expression for the ratio of
the electromagnetic to the electrostatic unit of electricity, or the ve-
locity with which a unit electrostatic charge must move in order to
become electromagnetically a unit current. This ratio can be deter-
mined experimentally, and gives a quantity numerically equal to
the velocity of light.

558 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

He then says:

In other media than air the velocity V is inversely proportional to the
product of the dielectric and the magnetic inductive capacities. According to
the undulatory theory, the velocity of light in different media is inversely pro-
portional to their indices of refraction.

There are no transparent media for which the magnetic capacity differs
from that of air more than by a very small fraction. Hence the principal
part of the difference between these media must depend upon their dielectric
capacity. According to our theory, therefore, the dielectric capacity of a
transparent medium should be equal to the square of its index of refraction.

In Maxwell’s theory we accordingly find the dielectric medium
of Faraday identified with the luminiferous ether. But the elas-
ticity of the luminiferous ether which is involved in the transmis-
sion of all known forms of radiation must be of the nature of
rigidity, and a fluid dielectric such as Maxwell’s assumption of
contracting lines of force seems to require does not possess rigidity.

It would accordingly seem that while Maxwell’s method of eal-
culating the velocity of light from purely electrical experiments
seems to prove beyond question that the luminiferous ether is the
medium of electric and magnetic induction, the assumption as to
the contraction of this medium in the direction of the electrical
lines of force and its expansion in all directions at right angles to
these lines may require modification.

It is plain that this assumption that an electrical charge is
merely one aspect of a stress in the ether is equivalent to a denial
of an electrical substance per se. It is difficult to see, however,
how from the assumption of a mere contraction of the dielectric
between two conductors the surfaces of the conductors could be
put in qualitatively different electrical conditions such as are
known to distinguish positively and negatively electrified bodies.
Both aspects of such a stress would appear to be exactly alike, just
as the stresses at the opposite ends of a stretched elastic cord.

It accordingly became necessary to make some further assump-
tions to account for the difference in the positive and negative
electrical surfaces. Here recourse was again had to Faraday’s
notion of a polarizable medium; that is, a medium made up of par-
ticles having opposite electrical properties at two opposite ex-
tremities. The ether accordingly came to be regarded by many
of Maxwell’s successors as made up of particles or ‘‘cells’’ hold-
ing positive charges on one side and negative charges on the oppo-
site side, very much as the current magnetic theory regards a mag-
net as made up of molecules having a north magnetic pole on one
face and a south magnetic pole on the opposite face. The polar-
ization of the medium in electrical induction was supposed to con-
sist in the orientation of these hypothetical particles so that their
charges of the same kind were turned in the same direction.

THE ETHER THEORIES OF ELECTRIFICATION 559

Thus Lodge (Modern Views of Electricity, p. 349) says:

Is the ether electricity then? I do not say so, neither do I think that in
that coarse statement lies the truth; but that they are connected there can
be no doubt.

What I have to suggest is that positive and negative electricity together
may make up the ether, or that the ether may be sheared by electromotive

forces into positive and negative electricity. Transverse vibrations are carried
_ on by shearing forces acting in matter which resists them, or which possesses
rigidity. The bound ether inside a conductor has no rigidity; it cannot resist
shear; such a body is opaque. Transparent bodies are those whose bound
ether, when sheared, resists and springs back again; such bodies are dielectric.

A similar view to this was expressed in most text books on Elee-
tricity written in the English language between 1890 and 1900.
Thus in his well-known text book on Electricity and Magnetism
(Edition of 1895) S$. P. Thompson attempts to define electricity
as follows:

Electricity is the name given to an invisible agent known to us only by the
effects which it produces and by various manifestations called electrical.
These manifestations, at first obscure and even mysterious, are now well
understood; though little is yet known of the precise nature of electricity
itself. It is neither matter nor energy; yet it apparently can be associated
or combined with matter; and energy can be spent in moving it. Indeed its
great importance to mankind arises from the circumstance that by its means
energy spent in generating electric forces in one part of a system can be
made to appear as electric heat or light or work at some other part of the
system; such transfer of energy taking place even to very great distances at
an enormous speed. Electricity is apparently as indestructible as matter or
energy. It can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can be transformed
in its relations to matter and to energy, and it can be moved from one place
to another. In many ways its behaviour resembles that of an incompressible
liquid; in other ways that of a highly attenuated and weightless gas. It
appears to exist distributed nearly uniformly throughout all space. Many
persons (including the author) are disposed to consider it as identical with
the luminiferous ether. If it be not the same thing, there is an intimate rela-
tion between the two. That this must be so is a necessary result of the great
discovery of Maxwell—the greatest scientific discovery of the nineteenth
century—that light itself is an electric phenomenon, and that the light waves
are merely electric, or, as he puts it, electromagnetic waves.

In 1893 J. J. Thomson published his Recent Researches in
Electricity and Magnetism, in which he earried the Faraday-
Maxwell theory to a development almost as extreme as the later
views of Faraday, to which reference has already been made. Only
a short time later, he and his fellow workers succeeded in identi-
fying the electrical fluid concerning whose existence there had been
so much argument for 150 years. The development of the ether
theory by Thomson should form the subject of another paper.

560 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

FALSIFICATIONS IN THE HISTORY OF
EARLY CHEMISTRY

By Professor J. M. STILLMAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY

HE earliest developments of any science present difficulty to
historians by reason of the fragmentary character of survi-
ving records, but with the progress of time and the advance of re-
search the story becomes gradually clearer and more coherent. In the
case of the history of the science of chemistry, however, more per-
haps than in any other, factors have been operative that have made
peculiarly difficult the solution of the problems of its early history.
The beginnings of the history of chemical theory, the notions
of the nature of matter and its changes are found in the Greek
philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, and for our knowledge of
these we are mainly dependent on the records of Plato and Aris-
totle.

For our knowledge of the earliest data on the practical arts of
chemistry we are in the first instance dependent upon evidence ac-
cumulated by archeological research with respect to remains of
works of art or manufactures involving chemical knowledge or skill;
in the second instance, to surviving documentary records of ancient
times of established authenticity.

Such in the domain of chemistry are, particularly, Theophrastos
of Eresus (born 371 B. C.), Pollio Vitruvius (1st century B. C.),
Dioserides and Pliny the Elder (first century A. D). These
writers were, however, not chemists by occupation or by experi-
ence.

The earliest practitioners of the chemical arts of whom we
have some definite knowledge appear to have been Egyptian or
Greek-Egyptian practitioners of the arts of metal working, gold-
smiths and dyers. These arts seem to have been long held as a
monopoly by a certain cult of the Egyptian priesthood, and these
arts had been guarded and kept secret, only imparted to initiates
bound by solemn oaths not to reveal them to the uninitiated.

The first recognition of this chemical cult and the philosophy
developed by it connects with the Greek-Egyptian schools at Alex-
andria early in the Christian Era. The art called by the early
Alexandrian writers the sacred or the divine art became only

THE HISTORY OF EARLY CHEMISTRY 561

gradually more widely known through the destruction of the pagan
temples and schools, and the scattering of their scholars, by the
early Christians.

The earliest known designation of this Greek-Egyptian art
which gave rise to our word chemistry is the Greek word chemeia
and is first met with in the third century of our era in writings of
a Christianized Alexandrian, Zosimus, who endeavors to explain
the origin of the term by a fabulous myth. The term is also met
with in the same century in the decree of the Emperor Diocletian
against the practice of this art of chemeia and ordering the de-
struction of all works relating thereto. This decree was issued,
it appears, on account of the belief that these chemists were able
to make artificial gold and silver and that thereby the finances of
the empire might be seriously disturbed.

With the abolition of the Alexandrian and other pagan schools
and the downfall of the Egyptian priesthood, their chemical arts
as practiced were indeed not lost, though their practitioners were
scattered. The early scholars of this chemical cult did not write
for the public. Those who in time ventured to write about the
sacred art, either by reason of their desire not to be considered
as violating their oaths of secrecy, or for fear of not being thought
good Christians, wrote in obscure and mystical allegories or in
vague descriptions of, or allusions to, processes which generally
centered about the transmutations of base metals to precious
metals, or the preparation of elixirs and the philosopher’s stone.
With the increase of power of the Christian Church there seems to
have been a decline of interest in Western Europe in this phase of
Alexandrian chemical philosophy, though in Byzantium there seems
to have been a cult which kept alive to some extent those traditions
and ideas and preserved such writings as then existed.

With the rise of the Moslem power and their conquests of
Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, Morocco and Spain in the sixth to the
eighth centuries, the Arabs absorbed and assimilated the Greek
Alexandrian science, which had been preserved and cultivated
notably by Syrian schools founded by fugitive scholars from Alex-
andria and other suppressed pagan schools. This Greek science
of chemeia thus became known as al-chemia, under which name
it was in the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries again introduced
to western Europe, largely through the medium of Christian
scholars from Spain, Italy and other nations who studied at the
Spanish Mohammedan schools.

This re-introduction into Europe of Arabian elaborations of
Greek-Egyptian alchemy was not without serious opposition. It
was very generally believed that the alchemists possessed the power

VOL. XIV.—36.

562 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

to make gold and silver from base metals, and hence their activities
were viewed with suspicion by civil and ecclesiastical authorities
who feared that state or national finances might be disturbed.
Monarchs of France and of England and other lesser rulers, and
in the fourteenth century Pope John XXII forbade under penalties
the practice of alchemy and the possession of alchemical literature.
As the practice of alchemy was often associated with supposed
magicai powers and the cooperation of evil spirits, church au-
thorities, both Christian and Mohammedan, endeavored to suppress
alchemists and their writings.

One natural result of this situation was to discourage con-
servative and law-abiding persons of scholarly taste from entering
this field of science. Another result was to cause those who never-
theless refused to heed the prohibition decrees either to exercise
great caution in their expressions or to conceal! their identity as
authors.

There were numerous such alchemical writers, for the adminis-
trative machinery was notoriously defective in those times and
the hope of gain in wealth or long life of many influential and pow-
erful persons—even princes—often operated to protect many who
pretended to possess the great art.

Thus in the middle ages, while there were written a very large
number of treatises on alchemical philosophy or pretending to the
knowledge of transmutation or to give instruction in the art, such
writings were nearly always anonymous or pseudonymous. The
authors concealed their personal identity by issuing their manu-
scripts without name, place or date, by giving false dates and
places, or to give their writing greater importance by ascribing
them to some author of established authority in some natural
science, safely dead.

During this period also the literature of technical chemistry
outside of the domain of alchemy proper was very meager. The
artisans and manufacturers were not generally scholars. They
had also little object in informing the public generally as to the
details of their business. So far as writings of that character were
issued, they were for the use of a limited constituency and at-
tracted little notice outside of the particular trade for which they
had practical value. Such manuscripts were rarely preserved in
permanent collections or libraries.

From these causes it can be understood that the history of chem-
istry in the middle ages presents peculiar difficulties, and that sur-
viving records give occasion for many perversions of history. An
early instanee of such perversion is found in early writings issued
under the name of Democritus and generally attributed to the Greek

THE HISTORY OF EARLY CHEMISTRY 563

philosopher Democritus of Abdera (5th Century B. C.). The wri-
tings in question, however, are typical alchemical of the Alexan-
drian school. While they contain recipes for making imitations of
gold and silver, and for dyes and dyeing, ete., they contain also much
mystical philosophy and obscure allegories. Even Pliny, about
75 A. D., refers to magical and superstitious writing of Democritus,
_ and expresses the belief that they are by Democritus of Abdera,
though he admits that that is disputed by others. Pliny’s contempo-
rary, Columella, however, asserts that much that is attributed to
Democritus was in reality written by a certain Bolos of Mendes in
Egypt. This psuedo-Democritus was held in the highest rever-
ence by later alchemists and by them generally considered as De-
mocritus of Abdera. Zosimus about the third century A. D. refers
to him as a great master of the art. So late as the eighteenth cen-
tury Lenglet du Fresnoy in his history of alchemy assumes that
Democritus of Abdera is the author of this literature, though by
later historians it is well recognized that the alchemist Democritus
is a writer of between the first and third centuries of our era.

Even Aristotle was the victim of medieval impostors. Thus the
work on minerals—de mineralibus—attributed to him seems to have
been originally written by a Syrian-Arabian writer of about the
ninth eentury, though rewritten and extended by later Latin
editors. According to Ruska it is the earliest Arabian work on
mineralogy and was a principal source of medieval mineralogy.
Other works falsely attributed to Aristotle are not earlier than the
1ith century and some much later.

So also the eminent Arabian physicians, Rhazes (Al Razi) of
the 9th-10th centuries and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) of the 10th-11th
centuries, were fraudulently credited with works of alchemical
character of a century or so after their deaths, which were much
quoted by Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon
in the thirteenth century. These writing are now believed to have
had no Arabian originals but to have been written by Latin writers
in the 12th and 18th centuries.

A notable perversion of history was the appearance about 1300
A. D. of certain writings important in the history of chemistry
purporting to be the work of the Arabian Geber, which was the
Latinized name of Djaber. The real Djaber lived probably about
the eighth century, and little is known of his personality. He is,
however, considered by later Arabian alchemists as of high repute
in the art. His writings seem to have been unknown to European
chemists during the medieval period. Though his name appears
two or three times among authorities of reputation, neither Vincent

564 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

of Beauvais nor Albertus Magnus seems to have known anything
definite of his works. The works appearing under the name of
Geber were very notable, and made a great impression in the four-
teenth century. They were manifestly the work of an experienced
and capable chemist familiar with and describing well methods of
distillation, sublimation, many furnace operations and the prepara-
tion and purification of many metallic salts and solutions. They
contained our first definite information concerning the preparation
and use of mineral acids—sharp or corrosive ‘‘waters.’’ The
eredulous middle ages accepted generally without question the au-
thenticity of these works as by the eighth century Geber, and the
early historians of chemistry, Hoefer, Gmelin, Kopp, accepted this
interpretation. Kopp indeed in his ‘‘Geschichte der Chemie’’ ex-
pressed some doubts, but did not, however, alter the traditional
course of history. In his later work, however—‘‘Beitrage zur
Geschichte der Chemische’’—he gives strong reasons for doubtmg
the early date of these writings and that they were indeed transla-
tions from any Arabian originals. It remained for M. Berthelot to
establish beyond doubt the pseudonymous character of these wri-
tings. In the libraries of Europe he located and had translated a
number of works, manuscripts in Arabic credited to the original
Djaber or Geber. None of these works bore any resemblance in style
or contents to the work of the Pseudo-Geber. They are indeed
much more like the writings of the early Greek alchemical writings
upon which they are manifestly based.

The acceptance of these thirteenth or fourteenth century wri-
tings as of Arabian origin in the eighth century up to very recent
times has had the result of early Arabian chemists receiving credit
for an advanced knowledge of chemistry which has not been evi-
denced by any Arabian literature known at the present time. This
advanced knowledge is rather to be credited to some Huropean
chemists, probably both Mohammedans and Christians, of the latter
part of the thirteenth century, and the Pseudo-Geber was probably
not himself Arabian but a Latin-writing Spaniard or at any rate
from some other country of southern Europe conversant with the
development of Spanish-Arabian chemistry of that period.

The chemical literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth century
contains almost nothing that evidences any material advance upon
the Pseudo-Geber and his predecessors. Alchemical treatises of
that period are indeed numerous. They are, however, nearly all
anonymous, or pseudonymous. Many were ascribed to the author-
ship of prominent writers deceased. Many were ascribed to emi-
nent churchmen—Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Rai-
mundus Lullus (Lully) and Roger Bacon. In the case of Albertus

THE HISTORY OF EARLY CHEMISTRY 565

Magnus, two alchemical papers attributed to him are included in
the collection of his works published by the French government,
though the principal one of these contains references to authorities
long subsequent to his death. The judgment of recent students of
chemical literature, on the basis both of internal and external ev1-
dence is that all alchemical literature attributed to Albertus, St.
Thomas Aquinas and Lullus are the work of impostors of from a
half-century to perhaps two centuries later. In the case of Roger
Bacon, while there are genuine writings in which he talks about
alchemy and expresses his faith in some of its claims, it appears
quite certain that those writings which pretend to a personal ex-
perience in the alchemist’s arts are all falsely attributed to him.

Raimundus Lullus was a prominent churchman and writer on
theology and philosophy at the close of the thirteenth century who
was killed at Tunis in 1315 while carrying on missionary work
among the Moors. He was reputed as a great master of alchemy
in the later middle ages, and a considerable alchemical literature
exists under his name. His scholarly biographer, B. Haureau,
cites the titles of some eighty alchemical treatises—printed or not—
which are attributed to him, yet it seems well established that he
wrote nothing of that kind. Several of the most popular and ap-
parently earlier works are circumstantially dated between 1330 and
1333, and even these there are reasons to believe are antedated.
The alchemical literature attributed to Lullus is probably not earlier
than the middle of the fourteenth century and much of it later. It
is also very probable that most if not all the alchemical treatises
ascribed to the Spanish physician, Arnald of Villanova, another
eminent authority with medieval alchemists, is apocryphal.

The early part of the sixteenth century is marked by three
writers of note in the history of chemistry, Theophrastus von Hoh-
enheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541), Vannuccio Birineuecio (his
single book on mining and metallurgy was published 1540) and
George Bauer or Agricola (1494-1555). The well-known works of
these authors were widely appreciated by their century, were print-
ed and passed through many editions and translations. The works
of Biringuecio and Agricola were both important technical treatises
appealing mainly to mining and metallurgical coworkers. The
works of Paracelsus were medical and chemical and dealt in his pe-
euliar way with natural philosophy in general and attracted great
attention on account of his emphasis upon the place of chemistry
in medicine.

At the close of the sixteenth century and early in the seven-
teenth, there appeared certain treatises, printed in German, pub-
lished by Johann Thélde, said by him to be translations of ancient

566 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

Latin manuscripts, and to have been written by an alleged Bene.
dictine monk—Basilius Valentinus. The works attributed to Ba-
silius attracted wide attention. They were a strange mixture of
alchemical lucubration and of advanced chemical knowledge. They
dealt with the importance of chemistry in medicine, and with
chemical medicines. They eriticized severely the medical profes-
sion. In all this they resembled the literature of Paracelsus.
Moreover, the theory of the tria prima, of salt, sulphur and mer-
cury as the constituent principles of all material substances, a
theory which Paracelsus had formulated and much reiterated, was
found just as clearly stated. Many passages were so similar in the
writings of the two that students were not slow to infer that one
author must have copied his ideas from the other. Much speeula-
tion and controversy was excited as to date and authorship of the
Basilius literature, but eventually the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries accepted it as of the late fifteenth century and therefore
pre-Paracelsan. To be sure, the archives of the Benedictine order
when searched revealed the name of no such member, nor was any
reference to any such author or his works known previous to 1600.
Nor was any such specifie chemical knowledge as was contained in
some of these works contained in earlier writings than of the six-
teenth century. No original manuscripts from which these books
were supposed to be translated were ever in evidence.

As the bitter war in the medical profession between the oppo-
nents and partisans of Paracelsus and the chemical medicines in-
troduced by him was then at its height, and the conservative and
more scholarly university faculties and the conservative party in
the medical profession were antagonistic to Paracelsus, it is not
improbable that there was a willingness on their part to believe
that Paracelsus had borrowed from Basilius rather than the con-
trary. However that may be, the result was that the Basilius liter-
ature was quite generally accepted as of the latter part of the
fifteenth century, and the earlier historians, as Gmelin, Kopp and
Hoefer and their successors, generally adopted this assumption.
At the same time these historians were skeptical as to the existence
of the alleged Dominican monk of that name.

Kopp, who in his history of chemistry (1843-7) had accepted
the fifteenth century as the period of these writings, in his later
‘“‘Beitrage zur Geschichte der Chemie’’ (1875) presented strong
evidence that the Basilius literature was not previous but subse-
quent to Paracelsus, and in his last work ‘‘Die Alchemie’’ (1886)
he reiterates his belief in the fraudulent character of the work and
that Thélde himself was the real author, a conclusion which later

THE HISTORY OF EARLY CHEMISTRY 567

researches have only confirmed. Prof. Karl Sudhoff, than whom no
living scholar is more conversant with the medical literature of that
period, stated in 1913 in a personal communication that after pe-
rusing thousands of manuscripts there is no possible room for doubt
but that the Basilius literature as well as the Holiandus literature
is all post-Paracelsan.

The works attributed to the alleged father and son Hollandus
are of the same period as those of Basilius. The date of the first
treatise published under the name of Johann Isaac Hollandus is
1572, at which time practically all the Paracelsus literature had
been printed. The rest of the Hollandus literature was consider-
ably later. These works also contain much that is similar to much
in Paracelsus. The doctrine of the three principles was here also
clearly stated. These writings also professed to be of earlier date
and were accepted by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as
also of the fifteenth century on no definite evidence. The works
of the two Hollandus, whoever they were, and if there really
were two, are of much less interest or value than some of the
Basilius works, yet they contained also a great many chemical
facts or points of view not known to the fifteenth century, and
the incorporation of this literature into the fifteenth century his-
tory in the systematic histories of Gmelin, Thomson, Kopp and
Hoefer caused a perversion of the story of chemistry, and gave an
importance to these. writers which they would not have received
if they had been located in their proper chronological order. Not
only did the sixteenth century chemists not depend on them, but
the authors of the Basilius and Hollandus literature had or might
have had the advantage of the works of Paracelsus, Biringuccio,
Agricola and other less important chemists of the sixteenth cen-
tury.

Works of alchemical character were also published under the
name of George Agricola entirely foreign to his thought and easily
recognized as spurious by the historians of chemistry. The ltera-
ture of Paracelsus still presents unsolved and difficult problems as
to authenticity in the great volume of works attributed to him and
first published thirty to forty years after his death.

The foregoing sketch makes no pretension to a complete ac-
count of falsifications in the early history of chemistry, but com-
prises the most notable instances and will serve to illustrate the
difficulties that have attended the story of the early development
of chemical science and the misapprehensions affecting the repu-
tations of early scholars in science.

568 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN
By J. MCKEEN CATTELL

HE modern world is notable for the advance of science, of edu-
cation, of democracy and of social organization. It may be
assumed by a scientific man in a scientific journal that the advance
of science is the most fundamental, for it has made the others pos-
sible. The entire development of our industrial civilization is due
to the applications of science. Democracy has progressed because
the productivity of labor has been so multiphed that one man can
now do the work that once required four, because the length of life
has been so increased that the years of work are doubled. Available
wealth having increased four-fold, education and equality of oppor-
tunity for all have become practical ideals.

Trade guilds, of which universities were once examples, date to
long passed centuries; the modern period has witnessed an elabo-
rate organization of industrial and social groups. Legislatures are
themselves such groups, representing mainly the holding classes.
In order to obtain legislation for others, such as woman suffrage
or the improvement of the conditions of labor, special organization
is required. It is equally essential in commerce and in industry.
Corporations and trade unions have largely replaced the competi-
tive system among individuals and are integral parts of our social
order. There is scarcely any group that has been so backward in
democratic organization as men of science; there is no other in
which the conditions make the right kind of organization more
necessary.

In the slow movement toward democracy men of science have
played a curious part. Their work has made democracy possible,
although this is a result that as a group they have neither sought
nor recognized. They have indeed often regarded it as ignoble to
do useful or profitable work and have not accepted as equals those
who did such work. Men of science have come from the privileged
classes or have been dependent on them. They do not earn their
livings by scientific research, but are usually amateurs, having
either inherited wealth or doing other work for the support of their
families. The most typical scientific man to-day is a university
professor, meagerly supported by charity to tutor the children of
the well-to-do, devoting his spare time to science from curiosity
and emulation.

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 569

The satisfaction of curiosity is a fundamental instinct, the game
of scientific discovery is one of the finest of sports, the appreciation
or kindly envy of others is a pleasant tribute; but the rewards of
science are queerly out of proportion to what science has accom-
plished for human welfare. Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller may
return some of the millions acquired through the applications of
science ; but science would be indefinitely richer if a cent were paid
to it each time a match were struck or a pin used. Full payment
would be three fourths of the wealth produced annually by the
industrial nations. It might be admirable for scientific men to give
what they can and to get only what they need, if they did so volun-
tarily ; but they deserve about as much credit as the natives in an
African protectorate. And they do not get what they need, for
their fundamental want is to be in a position to advance science
to the limit of their ability.

The two most important services to society are the bearing
and rearing of children and scientific research. Their performance
has been dependent on fundamental instincts which organized
society has done more to thwart than to strengthen. It is essential
for the welfare of all that these services shall be rendered. It seems
unlikely that women will permanently accept the promise of bliss
in heaven as a reward for pain on earth, or that scientific men will
regard a title or a degree, a medal or membership in an academy,
as fit payment for their work.

Competitive social organization enables a man to sell his services
to those who will buy them; it makes no provision for services to
society. When physicians limit the spread of disease by learning
its causes they are not paid, but on the contrary lose the fees of
patients. When lawyers avoid litigation, their reward is the lack
of retainers. Should newspapers seek to prevent war they would
limit their circulation. And so it is in all directions.

Art, like science of universal value, is in a better economic con-
dition, for its products can be sold. Joy in work should be the
right of every worker; it may be the greatest in the creative work
of art and of science; but it does not give exemption from the ordi-
nary needs of life; it ean scarcely exist if the worker has not the
means and the time to do his work in the best way. Printing and
engraving, methods of automatically reproducing acting and music,
are scientific inventions which have made art both democratic and
self-supporting. It is also the case that the state pays for works
of art for the use of all. The people and the state must learn to
pay for the products of scientific research.

The situation for science is slowly improving, but through the
working of economic forces, rather than through the efforts of

570 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

scientific men. Students in medical, engineering and scientific
courses must be trained by professors competent in science, and
the university recognizes the advancement of science and scholar-
ship as one of its functions. Foundations are endowed expressly
for scientific research. Commercial firms need chemists, physicists
and biologists in their business, and patent laws make some kinds
of research profitable. The government has learned that it pays
to employ scientific men for practical results, and that in some
directions new investigations must be made. It is recognized that
research not obviously and immediately useful is necessary,
although no satisfactory method has been devised to defray its cost.

Society, controlled by privilege and precedent, has been parasitic
on inborn instinets and inbred sentiments for its scientific research.
The instincts and sentiments are in large measure inherited from
the feudal and aristocratic period and will gradually atrophy, for
the reactions only occur in answer to adequate stimuli. A com-
plete revolution is demanded by modern democracy. The promotion
of science being for the benefit of all is a function of the state and
of a world organization. If a group of nations may make the
maximum military establishment of a given nation a hundred thou-
sand soldiers, it ean perform a more useful function by making
the minimum scientific establishment a hundred thousand men
engaged in research. A decent regard for the opinions of man-
kind should lead each nation to support one research institution of
the same cost as each of its battleships. The benefits of scientific
research are greatest for the nation conducting it; but they accrue
to the whole world, and each nation should contribute in proportion
to its consumption.

Applied science has accomplished much by providing food,
clothing and shelter for nearly all, bath-tubs, telephones and auto-
mobiles for many. But so long as

A man’s work lasts from sun to sun,
A woman’s work is never done,

so long as children work to their hurt and are denied the chance
to prove what they can best do, the production of wealth must
be further increased by scientific research and invention. By medi-
cine, hygiene and better living conditions, infant mortality in some
places has been reduced from one half to one tenth; cholera, small-
pox, yellow fever and the plague have in large measure, tuberecu-
losis, typhoid and other diseases have to some extent been controlled.
But so long as ten million children die needlessly every year, so long
as an epidemic of influenza may kill five million people, the need
for research and its applications is more urgent than any other need.

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 571

Seience has concerned itself mainly with the control of the
physical world: the science of human conduct and of its control is
only beginning. We have been more successful in the production
of wealth than in its distribution and use. Our churches, schools,
law courts, governments and other institutions are in large measure
survivals from a pre-scientifie and a pre-demoecratic era. But little
has been done to investigate the relation of the individual to his
surroundings and to make the most desirable adjustment, still less
to obtain the best kind of individuals. The contribution of the
psychological sciences to the production of wealth should equal that
of the material sciences; their total contribution to human welfare
should be greater. For science has not only supplied the economic
basis for our civilization; it has not only made economic slavery
wanton and intolerable; it has freed us from superstition and
unreason ; it is in itself the most perfect art and the best religion,
the force not ourselves that makes for truth and righteousness.

‘“The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.’’
And this is in large measure because we limit ourselves to the so-
lution of St. Matthew: ‘‘Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.’’ We scientific
men like ‘‘the conies are but a feeble folk’’; but unlike them we
do not make our “‘houses in the rocks’’; rather as sheep we follow
the shepherd to the shearing. We work for the lords of the har-
vest and depend on them to care for us. We have not awakened
from the old dreams; we do not see the new world in which the
workers of the world are learning to direct its work. What was
printed many years ago is surely forgotten, so a reference! to the
situation may be quoted as the writer saw it then, as he sees it now:

Evolution has progressed by the survival of the strong and the cunning,
of those armed with tooth and claw, of those quick to run and ready to hide.
It has given us the vulture and the parasite. Human history has left us the
legacy of the iron hand and the crooked back. The man engaged in scientific
work has too often filled the position of an upper servant—a tutor to the
sons of the rich, a priest subscribing to tenets that are outworn, an employee
dependent on the favor of presidents and boards,—for whom silence is silver
and flattery gold. As the downtrodden have submitted to servitude on the
ground that they will have their reward in a future life, so scientific men
have labored in the hope of recognition and posthumous fame. They have
scrambled for degrees, titles, membership in academies and the like, trying
to climb upon each others’ necks. But the things that have been are not the
things that shall be. The men who labor with their hands have learned to
unite in trade unions; they have shown themseives ready and able to make
the utmost sacrifices for their common cause. And they have won; they have

used the governors of states and the president of the United States for their
purposes. Their leader can speak to the president on terms of equality; the

1 Address of the president of the American Society of Naturalists,
Science, April 10, 1903.

572 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

members of the National Academy of Sciences waited last spring for an hour
in the anteroom of the White House until he did them the honor to shake
hands with them. Is there a university in the world whose faculty would
resign because one member was unjustly treated, or would scientific men sub-
scribe ten per cent. of their incomes to support a faculty that had so resigned?
But the things that have been are not the things that shall always be.

Year after year has passed since this was written. The head
of the American Federation of Labor still dictates to the president
of the United States; scientific men still wait hat in hand on the
almoners of Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Rockefeller. University pro-
fessors even yet find silence to be silver, flattery to be gold. Now
as then the National Academy of Sciences plays the part of an
exclusive social club for those who have arrived. Royal Societies
and Imperial Academies were fine embodiments of the spirit of a
past period. The universities had fallen into dogmatic routine and
external control; scientific men made notable progress by the
organization of academies which they themselves conducted. Scei-
entific invention was then youthful and vigorous; it was stimu-
lating for the amateurs of a city to meet in a club to discuss their
discoveries, usually trivial, but at times of fundamental importance.

But we no longer live in the seventeenth or the eighteenth cen-
tury, even though their dead hands still lie heavy upon us. Science
begot industrial civilization and must now dwell in the house of
the giant that is its offspring. The noble and his serfs, the squire
and his peasants, have been replaced by the capitalist and the pro-
letariat. Kings yielded to parliaments, the barons to the commons.
Now we have an unstable combination of indirect democracy and
temporary dictators, while corporations and trade unions are be-
coming the real forces of government. The Bible has in large meas-
ure been supplanted by the newspapers, the church by the movies.
Mr. Edison rather than Lord Rayleigh is the scientific representa-
tive of the industrial world. The park-like civilization of aristoc-
racy with its hidden peasant hovels is being razed for the creation
of cities and factories. The etiquette of the gentleman is yielding
to the rough ways of democracy.

The adjustment of scientific men and their organizations to
modern democracy has been slow and partial. The land that is the
‘‘mother of parlaments’’ was responsible for the organization of
the first special scientific societies. The Linnean Society for the
promotion of zoology and botany was founded in 1788; the Royal
Astronomical Society in 1820; the Zoological Society in 1826; the
Chemical Society in 1841. In Germany, under the leadership of
Humboldt, the first national association for the advancement of sci-
ence was established in 1828; the British Association followed in
1831. There are now special scientific societies for different sciences

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 573

and national associations for the advancement of science in all the
greater countries.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science held
its first meeting in 1848, being the continuation of the Association
of American Geologists and Naturalists, founded in 1840. The
American Chemical Society was organized in 1876; the American
Society of Naturalists in 1883; the American (then the New York)
Mathematical Society and the Geological Society of America in
1888. The national associations for medicine, engineering and
education were organized at a comparatively early period. There
are now more than fifty national societies in the United States
devoted to the different branches of science.

The principal objects of these organizations have been to hold
meetings for the presentation of scientific papers and in some in-
stances to conduct journals. But they also perform to a certain
extent the functions of guilds or trade unions, and this is more
especially true of the societies concerned with engineering, medi-
eine and teaching. The American Association of University Pro-
fessors, organized in 1915, had such funetions primarily in view,
although it has been timid about the question of salaries and privi-
leges. A union of scientific employees of the government and
unions of academic teachers, affiliated with the American Federa-
tion of Labor, have recently been formed.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science
has made notable progress beyond the similar associations of other
nations by the support of a weekly official journal and by affiliation
with the national societies devoted to the different sciences. It may
be regarded as an association of these societies; they are repre-
sented by delegates on its council and have charge of the scientific
programs when they meet with it. The sixteen sections of the
association cover completely the pure and applied sciences, inelu-
ding the psychological, humanistic and political sciences. Commit-
tees of these sections are formed of representatives of the associa-
tion and of the affiliated societies. The council of the association
and the sectional committees are thus organized on a democratic
basis to represent through the association and through the national
scientific societies the scientific men of the country.

All those professionally engaged in scientific work are eligible
to fellowship in the association and all those interested in the ad-
vancement of science to membership. The members number about
12,000; there are funds for research amounting to over $100,000 ;
the annual dues are only five dollars. In England it costs fifteen
dollars to be a member of the British Association and to receive
the national weekly scientific journal.

574 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The American Association has accomplished important work
through its council, through its executive committee, through its
sectional committees and through numerous special committees,
including the committee of one hundred on public health and the
committee of one hundred on scientific research. The latter com-
mittee, organized in 1914, arranged subcommittees on research in
each of the sciences, on grants for scientific research, on research
in educational institutions, on research under the government, on
research under states and municipalities, on research in industrial
establishments and in other directions. In order, however, that the
association may represent and forward the interests of science
and of scientific men, a more general concern for its work is essen-
tial. Scientific men are intellectually too individualistic and so-
cially too submissive to unite with the loyalty which characterizes
the trade unions. But the future belongs to the national scientific
societies and to the association of scientific workers in which they
are combined.

In addition to a house of commons, we still have a house of
lords. The National Academy of Sciences was chartered by the
Congress in the emergency of the civil war, and was made by law
the adviser of the Government on scientific questions, with the
stipulation that no member should receive payment for his sery-
ices. It was originally limited to 50 members elected for distine-
tion in science; the members now number about 200. The academy
administers funds for research and medals amounting to over
$200,000.

For some fifty years the academy enjoyed a peaceful and pleas-
ant existence. Membership was an honor appreciated by the elect,
and the social features of the meetings were agreeable to the privi-
leged. At that time the eighteenth amendment had not been even
threatened, and certainly no one ever dreamed of the application of
the nineteenth amendment to the academy. The duty of listening
to papers on the scientific program was not onerous, for while they
were often unintelligible they were not numerous. At one meeting
Benjamin Peirce, after writing, correcting and erasing equations
on a blackboard for an hour, remarked that he was sorry that the
only member who could understand them was in South Ameriea.
The election of new members was the great event of the meeting.
No other business transacted was perhaps more significant than
a resolution to endorse the metric system, which was voted in the
negative.

The academy has been called on by the Government to render
only a few reports. Perhaps the most typical of these was to deter-
mine whether the ink with which the Declaration of Independence

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 575

was written can be prevented from fading; for it was not, of course,
a question of preserving the sentiments of that document. It
may also be significant that the academy holds its annual meet-
ings in a museum and is presided over by our most eminent student
of invertebrate fossils. It is said that a representative once asked
in the House ‘‘ What does the National Academy of Sciences do?”’
and the reply was: ‘‘The members write obituaries of each other
when they die, and it is a pity they have so little to do.”’

The advice of the academy has not been sought by the govern-
ment because it has developed its own departments, employing
hundreds of scientific men, and the heads of the bureaus are not
usually members of the academy. Advice given without responsi-
bility and free of charge is usually worth about what it costs.
When thirteen years ago the academicians made their quadrennial
visit to the White House to wait upon President Taft and, follow-
ing various delegations of men, women and children, passed be-
fore him, he recognized Dr. Weir Mitchell and said: ‘‘ Why,
Mitchell, what on earth are you doing in this crowd ?’’ Dr. Mitchell
explained with much dignity what an honorable body it was, being
by law the scientific adviser of the government; but it may be
doubted whether President Taft subsequently remembered the
academy’s existence. .

President Wilson, an eighteenth century academician cast on
the rough waters of the democratic politics of to-day, had appre-
ciative sympathy for the National Academy. Shortly after his
inauguration, the American Association appointed a committee to
urge the selection of a scientific man for chief of the Weather
Bureau, and the committee proposed to the president that he ask
the advice of the academy in accordance with the provisions of the
law. This he did and appointed one of the three scientific men
named by the academy. He also appointed as chief of the Bureau
of Fisheries the scientific man recommended by the American So-
ciety of Zoologists. Such methods are useful so long as scientific
offices are in danger of being used as part of the spoils of office ; but
the appointment and promotion of scientific men in the government
service should be through the choice of their associates, rather than
on the recommendation of an outside body.

The recent revival of the National Academy has, however, not
come from the modest recognition given to it by President Wilson,
but is an adaptive response to modern conditions. Similar move-
ments have occurred in the churches, in the universities and in
other inherited institutions. When in the course of evolution, God
let the dry land appear and saw that it was good, the creatures of
the swamps suffered diverse fates. Most of them became extinet,

576 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

some survived in their shells, a few developed into the higher ani-
mals of to-day. Like the churches, the universities and the rest,
the National Academy of Sciences lies at present on the knees of the
Gods, and only omnisciearce knows its fate. It may be an eddy in
the stream; it may be a stepping stone.

A proximate cause of the reanimation of the academy was the
enterprise of a distinguished man of science, elected to membership
at a comparatively early age, as is the fortune of astronomers—
for most astronomers are born to greatness through the cirecum-
stance that the superiority of their intellect is enhanced by their
costly instruments and by the inaccessibility and sublimity of the
starry firmament. This able and ingenious entrepreneur in science
stirred several academicians by the contagion of his enthusiasm and
took the academy in hand. Lectures have been endowed for the
meetings; proceedings have been established where by resolution
of the academy members are instructed to bury the cream of their
researches; within a single year the ex-president of the nation and
the ambassador of that empire on whose commerce the sun never
sets made addresses at the dinners; an earl and a prince were
present. The Carnegie Corporation has undertaken to erect for the
academy its marble mausoleum.

A national academy, however, is wrapped in the inertia of its
great traditions and bears the Atlantean load of a crystallized earth.
Most ingeniously, a National Research Council has been established
as a committee of the academy. This morganatic spouse can wear
the royal jewels and yet associate with ordinary scientists, engi-
neers and the like. She can be fertile without limit in committees,
as their nourishment may be entrusted to charity. For this reason
she can also adopt all the children on which she can lay her hands;
indeed she may entice or kidnap certain gilded youths who will add
to the family wealth. She has spread her net over the oceans and
has set her traps for international fish, excluding those held to be
unclean.

Even the humble children of the present writer have not escaped
the telescope of this mother of enterprises. While his legal off-
spring may stay at home, some of those of which he was only one
of many guardians have been abducted. Thus all the sub-com-
mittees of the committee of one hundred on scientific research of
the American Association were bodily conveyed to itself by the
Research Council, and the sectional committees of the association,
representing the national societies, have been duplicated by the
council. The committees of the council were originally nominated
in equal share by the American Association, the National Academy
and the Special National Societies; the writer urged that they

THE ORGANIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 577

should be equally responsible to those bodies. But cooperation
prevailed, and when the lion and the lamb lay down together the
lamb was inside the lion. The Research Council also proposed eo-
operation with the American Association as a whole. It offered to
provide a permanent secretary for the association, to rent an office
to the association in the attie of its building, and to let the associa-
tion attend to the popularization of science while the council cared
for research. Whether the Research Council belongs to the National
Academy, or the National Academy belongs to the Research Coun-
cil, or both are satellites of Pasadena, is a problem of three bodies
that is difficult of solution. The American Association still be-
longs to its twelve thousand members, even though they have not
learned to use their heritage.

The Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the
National Research Council are another problem of three bodies.
The Research Council depends on the endowed establishments for
support, but the chairman of the Research Council became presi-
dent of the Carnegie Corporation and its secretary has became a
trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. Scientific research certainly
needs all the money it can get; it is in the interest of the nation
that it get all the money that it needs. Pecunia non olet. A clergy-
man once told his congregation that it was well when the righteous
gave to the Lord, but it was still more blessed when the money was
obtained from the wicked, for then it was all gain. If we are taxed
for the use of steel and petroleum, it is not amiss that a fraction
of the proceeds should be returned to us for science and education.
But after all the people can tax the preemptors of steel and petro-
leum, and it may in the long run be safer and even more profitable
for men of science to be free from the charity and control of the
classes of privilege and sell their services to the people for what they
are worth.

One of those high in office in the National Research Council
began an address:

A general of the regular army listening to a description of the National
Research Council remarked, ‘‘ You are the General Staff of the Army of
American men of science.’’

Mr. Elihu Root, trustee of many institutions and attorney for
many corporations, says in a paper written for the council and
widely distributed by it:

The effective power of a great number of scientific men may be increased
by organization, just as the effective power of a great number of laborers
may be increased by military discipline.

It may be that the officers of the National Research Council
are prepared to command the privates of science and that some

VOL. XIV.—37.

578 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

employers would like to increase the effective power of laborers by
military discipline. But what do the laborers and the scientific
men think about it?

Frivolity may be unbecoming in the sanctuary of the higher
organization of science; but the individual organism can exhibit~
only those defensive reactions which are its natural response to the
situation. The Rockefeller-Carnegie Research Council (the R.C,)
is prepared to direct scientific research and has good intentions for
every day on the calendar. But there you are. Dr. John C. Bran-
ner, in his admirable book of negro stories printed just before his
death, tells us that long ago he visited one of the former slaves of
his father’s plantation and asked her: ‘‘Don’t you think you were
better off as a slave?’’ And this is what Aunt Ellen replied:

De Lawd bless yo’ soul, chile, dat’s a fac’; hit’s jes lak you ben a sayin’.
I knows I had mo’ to eat an’ mo’ to wear, an’ a better house to live in, an’
all 0’ dem things, an’ you all was mighty good to me; an’ I didn’ have none
o’ dese here doctah’s bills to pay. But Law’, honey, atter all, dah’s de
feelin’s.

Unlike the worldly-wise steward in the parable, the scientific
man ean dig and to beg he is not ashamed. He digs for others
and then begs for a bit of the gold that he has dug. But why should
he not keep for himself and for his work part of the treasure that
he discovers? The applications of electricity due to research work
in the laboratory add billions of dollars a year to the wealth of the
world. Why can not scientific men learn how to retain even one
per cent. of such wealth, which when reinvested in research would
again yield high usury to science and to society? It is a long way,
but the world does rise slowly in spiral course to higher levels.
The prime mover is scientific research and its applications. With-
out the commerce and the industry created by science, there could
be only a hereditary aristocracy of privilege and wealth controlling
slaves. We have now reached the stage where we can at least
foresee economic freedom for all. People must be fed and sheltered
before they can be happy and free; they must be happy and free
before they can be good and wise. Economic liberty must precede
intellectual liberty. Science and its applications should be the chief
concern of a democratic nation that would preserve its democracy
and advance the freedom and the welfare of its people.

MARTIAN POLAR RIFTS 579

MARTIAN POLAR RIFTS

By Dr. G. H. HAMILTON

LOWELL CBSERVATORY

N 1902, Dr. Lowell published an extremely interesting article on
t the rifts in the north polar cap of Mars (Popular Astronomy
for March, 1902). It is on account of this article that the present
paper has its being.

Realizing that the oppositions of 1916, 1918 and 1920 had oe-
eurred at about the same Martian season as that viewed by Lowell—
a study was made of drawings of the planet at these times. It is
interesting to note that the observations not only confirm those of
Lowell but add their weight to his conclusions.

It is purposed to chronicle the observations of the three last
oppositions with deductions and show in what manner they agree
with the conclusions arrived at by Dr. Lowell.

In 1916, the two drawings showing the region termed Aerta
near the center of the disk and the north polar cap—those of March
4 and 9, in the eut—depict a rift in the cap, which seemingly
the continuation of the canal Cadmus. That of March 9 also shows
another rift to the north and west of the Arethusa Lucus. The
season on Mars corresponded at that time to our May 24. The cap
was in process of melting and the rifts were seemingly due to some
underlying cause such as would hasten the melting of the polar
snows at those points.

A similar rift to that in the drawing of March 9, 1916, was
observed on February 15, 1918, with a period of slightly over a
Martian year between the two observations. The effect of the
later seasonal date can be observed in the diminished size of the
polar cap. Thé positions of this second rift on the two dates do
not correspond exactly, but this can be accounted for by the diffi-
eulty of positioning small detail or by the fact that there are many
nearly parallel canals in this region, any one of which may have
produced the effect observed.

In 1920, the north polar cap was at about its smallest on May
294. and the canal Cadmus was easily seen to extend northward to
the cap along the position of the rift seen in the drawings of 1916.
In the large drawing of the polar cap of May 27, 1920 (Martian
date August 13) the Cadmus can be seen very well and there is
another rift in the small remaining cap.

580 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

The action of this canal and the rift it seemingly makes in the
polar eap corresponds to the observations made by Dr. Lowell
and the inferences that he draws from them. He says:

If there were strips of vegetation in the midst of the desert that under-
lies the polar cap, such vegetation would make its presence known by appear-
ing as rifts in the snow-field. Such would be the case for the following reason.
The life of plants has this in common with the life of animals, that their vital

processes both generate heat. The fact was not recognized as true of plants

until long after it was well known of animals. Indeed, the discovery that
plants give out heat in growing is of comparatively recent detection.

Now the calorific action of vegetation on snow is very often
observed on earth and we have seemingly had evidence of the same
character upon Mars. If this be so, the two suspected materials—
snow and vegetation—on the planet, vouch for each other. The

POLAR RIFTS ON MARS

May 27, 1920.
March 4, 1916. March 9, Ig16. February 15, 1918. May 24, 1920.
July 8, 1920. August 2, 1920. August 3, 1920.

May 11, 1920. May 12, 1920.

MARTIAN POLAR RIFTS 581

snow, if it be snow, is melted as on earth by vegetation; and the
vegetation, if it be vegetation, melts the snow as on earth.

Observations of this character again were made on August 2,
1920, and the following date, September 20, Martian calendar.
One of the first northern snowfalls occurred near that time, and a
eanal was easily seen going north from the Arethusa Lucus, but
was obliterated completely further north by the new-fallen snow.
The drawing of the next day, August 3, shows that the snow has
melted over the canal—as it would over vegetation—and that there
is left a rift where the day before the cap showed an even contour,
but on the following is made up of two lobes, one on each side
of the now triumphant and still flourishing canal.

Before this date, a snowfall occurred north of the Proponti,
and from the rift seen in the drawing of July 8, this snow must
have fallen earlier even than this and melted over the canal that
leaves the Propontis in a northerly direction towards the eap. This
is an identical example of the phenomenon seen on August 3. It
is also interesting in that it shows the depth of the new-fallen snow
to be much thinner, as Dr. Lowell suggests, than the old winter
cap itself; which can be seen dimly, together with its dark sur-
rounding band, through the new covering of snow.

That the tiny northern cap itself was thin is evidenced in the
drawings of May 11 and 12, 1920, where a slight rift is visible cut-
ting the cap nearly in two. This is no doubt similar to the ‘‘Open
Polar Sea’’ that Dr. Lowell talks of in referring to the small
southern cap.

Detail on Mars is so complex, and the conclusions one can craw
from the secular and seasonal changes so interesting, that when
by careful scrutiny of the disk a marking of great interest is
observed—it would be really better to devote one’s attention to
that area alone and draw it—rather than attempt a drawing of the
whole disk. The marking itself would be swamped in a complete
drawing, without regard to the attention taken from it by an
endeavor to portray the rest of the surface features of the planet.

Mars has given to this world a most interesting and instructive
line of research—I might almost say vital to the future welfare of
the race on Earth.

HONATOS HO ANUAVOV IVNOILLYN
AHL YOu NOLLVYOdUOD AIDANNVO EL Ad GULOWUa Ad OL DNIGTING

HHL FO ONIMVUC 8. LOMLIOUV

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

583

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE’

BUILDING OF THE NATIONAL
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

A Home for the National Academy |

in the national capital will be pro-
vided through the erection of a mag-
nificent building costing $1,300,000
that will house the activities of the
academy and the National Research
Council. A description of the new
building was given by Dr. C. D. Wal-
cott, president of the academy, at the
recent meeting in Washington.

Facing the Lincoln Memorial, the
marble building in simple classical
style will rise three stories from a
broad terrace. It has a frontage of
260 feet. On the first floor there will
be an auditorium seating some 600
people, a lecture hall holding 250, a
reading library, conference
rooms and exhibition halls. The base-
ment contains a cafeteria and kitchen.
The two upper floors will be devoted
to offices.

The building is the gift of the Car-

room,

negie Corporation of New York, while |

the ground was bought at a cost of
about $200,000 through the donations
of about a
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue of New
York is the architect. He is one of
the best known architects in the coun-
designed the St. Thomas

score of benefactors.
try and

Nebraska State Capitol and many
other buildings. The contract for the

Church, the West Point buildings, the |

construction of the building has been |

let to Charles T. Wills, Inc., of New
York, and it is expected that the
building will be ready for occupancy
in the autumn of 1923. Lee Laurie,

the sculptor, has been selected to do |

the decorations, which will symbolize |
and depict the progress of science and |

its benefits to humanity.

A series of |

bronze bas-reliefs will show a proces- |

1 Edited by Watson Davis, Science
Service.

sion of the leaders of _ scientific
thought from the earliest Greek phil-
osophers to modern Americans.

On passing through the entrance
hall the visitor will find himself in a
Here he will see in
demon-

lofty rotunda.
actual operation apparatus
strating certain fundamental scien-
tifie facts that hitherto he has had to
take on hearsay. <A coelostat tele-
scope, mounted on the dome of the
central rotunda, will form a large
image of the sun on the white sur-
face of a circular table in the middle
of the room. Here visitors will be
able to see the sun-spots, changing in
number and form from day to day,
and moving across the disk as the
sun turns on its axis. A 60-foot pen-
dulum, suspended from the center of
the dome, will set swinging
through a long are, repeating the
celebrated experiment of Foucault.
The swinging pendulum will mark an
invariable direction in space, and as
the earth and the building rotate be-
neath it, their rotation will be plainly
shown by the steady change in direc-
tion of the pendulum’s swing over a
divided are. Other phenomena to be
demonstrated in striking form in the
central rotunda are magnetic storms,
earthquakes, pull of
small masses, the pressure of light,
the visible growth of plants, swim-
ming infusoria in a drop of ditch
bacteria, and other

be

gravitational

water, living
interesting phenomena.

In the seven exhibition rooms sur-
rounding the rotunda the
latest results of scientific and indus-
trial research ‘will be illustrated. One
room will be set aside for the use of
another for

central

government bureaus,
industrial research laboratories, others
for the laboratories, observatories and
research institutes of universities and
other institutions. The newest dis-

coveries and advances in the mathe-

584

SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

SKETCH OF ENTRANCE TO THE

NATIONAL

matical, physical and biological sci-
ences and their applications will be
shown in this living museum, whose
exhibits will be constantly changing
One
displayed the

with the progress of science.
be
latest forms of radio telephony; the
next perhaps a set of psychological

week there may

tests or a new find of fossils or a
series of synthetic chemical com-
pounds.

MEDALS OF THE NATIONAL

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

At the annual dinner of the Na-

}

NEW
ACADEMY OF .SCIENCES

BUILDING OF THE

tional Academy of Sciences, April 25,
the J. Lawrence Smith Medal was
bestowed upon Dr. George P. Merrill,
curator of geology at the United
States National Museum. This is a
gold medal of the value of $200, from
a fund established in 1884, as a re-

‘original investigation of
9)

ward for
meteoric bodies. But because inves-
tigators in this field are so rare it has
Dr. Whit-
man Cross, in his speech presenting
the medal, pointed out that Dr. Mer-
rill had continued to on the

work of his predecessor, J. Lawrence

not been given since 1888.

carry

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

OTHENIO ABEL
Professor of Paleontology in the University of Vienna.
From a photograph presented by him to Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn.
Merrillite.
discovered evi-

Smith, on meteorites by the applica-
tion of modern methods of analysis.
The earlier analyses of
were not always to be relied upon,
and Dr. Merrill in his long years of
research has been able to show that
some of the elements previously re-

meteorites

ported as having occurred in mete-
orites are absent and, at the same
time, he has extended the list of ele-
ments and compounds that do exist
in these bodies.
erals he has found a calcium phos-
phate similar to apatite, which has

Among other min-

|
|

named in his honor
Merrill
of

orites, cases where a mineral strue-

been
1D hee

dences

also has

metamorphism in mete-
ture has been broken up and the frag-
ments later fused together lke the
conglomerates found in igneous rocks
in the earth’s crust.

Dr. Merrill in receiving the medal
said that meteorites had in all ages
attracted a great deal of popular
In the earliest times they
were worshipped as divine and nowa-

interest.

days the newspapers give great atten-

586 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

PROFESSOR H.
PROFESSOR

A. LORENTZ, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN,

DAYTON C. MILLER, OF

AND

THE CASE

SCHOOL OF APPLIED SCIENCE
Professor Lorentz gave the principal address, entitled ‘‘ Problems of Modern

Physics, ’

tion to any meteoric fall. Yet few
scientists have made them the subject
of concentrated and long-continued
study. In his work, Dr. Merrill said
he had tried to keep his feet upon the
earth as though his shoes had leaden
soles and to leave to others premature
speculation as to the origin of these
bodies. It is evident from their com-
position that they come from regions
where there is no air, for they con-
tain iron, both in a free state and in
compounds that are not stable in the
their

structure it is evident that some have

presence of oxygen. From
undergone secondary igneous changes.
Merrill quoted the

verse, ‘All my dreams come true to

In conelusion, Dr.

other men,’’ and said that he would

leave the developments and deduc-

tions from his work to future inves-

‘

tigators and ‘‘may all my dreams

come true to other men.’’

> at the meeting of the

National Academy of Sciences.

The address bestowing the Daniel
Giraud Elliot Medal was made by Dr.
Henry Fairfield Osborn.

is intended to be awarded every year

This medal
for contemporary contributions to
Previous awards were made
to F. M. Chapman, C. W. Beebe and
Robert Ridgway. Dr. Osborn sketched
the history of paleontology from the

zoology.

time when Cuvier first announced the
law of correlation. The great Amer-
ican paleontologists, Leidy, Cope and
Marsh, limited themselves mostly to
description. But now again the time
has come when general principles and
relationships may be founded upon a
more substantial basis. Among the
young investigators who are taking
up this work is Professor Othenio
Abel, of Vienna, who has undertaken
a general study of the causes of evo-
lution. His guiding thought is that

morphology depends upon physiology

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE

and that to understand a form we
must know its function. Professor
Abel pursued his studies even during
the war when his family was in such
distress that he had to send out his
children to friends for food, and in
1920 he produced an inspiring work,
entitled Methoden der Paleobiol-
ogischen Forschung.

The medal was received by Edgar
L. G. Prochnik, Austrian chargé
d’affaires, who said that all Austria
would rejoice over this honor done to
one of her Conditions in
Austria are exceedingly hard at pres-
ent on account of the curtailment of
Austria’s resources and it is felt that
the future of Austria in the
mental power of her sons. The Aus-
trian scientists are
bring their country to the rank which
she occupied in science and art pre-
vious to the war. The disposal of this
medal was another proof that science
was not limited in its scope to creed
or nationality. Professor Abel serves
in the ranks of science, the peace
maker. President Walcott, in hand-
ing over the medal to the representa-
tive of the Austrian Legation, said
that the award would carry with it an
honorarium which was to be forward-
ed to Professor Abel.

citizens.

lies

THE SALT LAKE CITY MEETING

THE summer session of the Amer-
ican Association for the Advancement
of Science to be held in conjunction
with the sixth annual meeting of the
Pacific Division of the Association at
Salt Lake City, June 22 to 24, 1922,
promises to be a
meeting.

very successful

Salt Lake City offers many advan-
tages as a meeting place.
of a rich agricultural and mining sec-
tion, it has large and important com-
mercial and manufacturing interests.
But it is perhaps chiefly famed for
its scenic attractions drawing every
year thousands of tourists by auto
and railway from all parts of the
country. The opportunity will be
seized by many who will wish to com-

The center

determined to’

587

bine a pleasure trip to one of the
most interesting sections of the west
with the advantages of a_ scientific
meeting.

The hosts of the Salt Lake City
will University of
Utah, the Utah Academy of Sciences,

meeting be the

the Utah Agricultural College and
the Brigham Young University. Ar-

rangements will be made for the com-
fort entertainment of visitors.
The meeting will be held under the
auspices of, the Pacific Division of
the Association. Dr. Barton Warren
Evermann, the president of the Pa-
cific Division, American Association

and

for the Advancement of Science, will
preside at the general sessions and
will deliver the presidential address
at the opening session on Thursday
evening, June 22

22. He will speak on
*«The conservation

util-
ization of our natural resources. ’’
An of the
meeting will be a symposium on ‘‘ The
Problems of the
The great reclamation project which

and proper

outstanding feature

”)

Colorado River.

has for its object the utilization of
the waters of the Colorado River has
It
is proposed to consider in this sym-
posium the scientific aspects of the
problems involved.

already attracted wide attention.

The arrangement
as follows:
1. General description of the Colorado
River: Mr. E. C.'La Rue, hydraulic

of the symposium is

engineer, United States Geological
Survey, Pasadena, California.° 2.
Archeology of the Colorado River

Basin:
Stanford Uniyersity, California. 3.
Geology of the Colorado River
Basin: Dr. Frederick J. Pack, Deseret
professor, department of geology,
University of Utah, Salt Lake City,
Utah. 4. The conservation of the
waters of the Colorado River from
the standpoint of the Reclamation
Service: Mr. Frank E. Weymouth,
chief of construction, United States

Professor H. R. Fairclough,

Reclamation Service, Denver, Col-
orado. 5. The interstate and inter-
national aspects of the Colorado

River problem: Dr. C. E. Grunsky,

588

vice-president of the Pacific Division,
American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, San Francisco,
California.

The evening address will be given
by Professor James Harvey Robin-
son, head of the New School of Social
Science, New York City, the distin-
guished historian of human evolution.

While none of the sections of the
national association will arrange to
hold sessions at this summer meeting
the various fields of science will be
represented in the meetings of the
affiliated societies of the Pacific Divi-
sion. Those scheduled to hold meet-
ings at Salt Lake City are:

The American Physical Society.

The American Meteorological So-
ciety.

The American Phytopathological
Society, Pacifie Division.

The Ecological Society of America.

The Society of American Foresters.

The Cooper Ornithological Club.

The Pacific Coast Entomological
Society.

The Pacific Slope Branch, Amer-
ican Association of Economic Ento-
mologists.

The Plant Physiologists.

The Utah Academy of Sciences.

The Western Psychological Associa-
tion.

The Western Society of Naturalists.

AN AMERICAN ANTHROPOID
PRIMATE

AT the recent meeting of the Na-
tional Academy of Sciences in Wash-
ington, Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn
announced the discovery of a tooth
giving evidence of a pre-historic and
unknown species of anthropoid inter-
mediate between the ape and the
earliest man. This discovery made by
Harold J. Cook, of Agate, Nebraska,
in the middle Pliocene formations of
that state, in addition to being im-
portant scientifically, has a_ timely
interest because of the attacks that
during the past few months have
been launched at the ground work of

|

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

science through the zeal of opponents
of the facts of the evolution of man,
and has a dramatic or comic aspect
in that it comes from the home state
of William Jennings Bryan.

Worn by use when its owner was
alive, and worn by water in the cen-
turies since, this tooth matches no
known tooth of ape or man, modern or
extinct. It is very different from
the tooth of the gorilla, the gibbon
or the orang. It is nearest to that of
the chimpanzee but the resemblance
is still remote. Nor does it resemble
very closely any human molar, al-
though it is nearer to the human than
to the ape type of tooth. Conse-
quently Dr. Osborn classifies it as a
new species and genus and names it
Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, which
being translated back from the biolo-
gist’s Latin means ‘‘the anthropoid
from the west discovered by Harold
Cook.’’ The fossil was found in the
upper phase of the Snake River beds,
associated with remains of the rhi-
noceros, camel, Asiatic antelope and
an early form of the horse, now ex-
tinct.

In 1908 the American Museum of
Natural History received a similar
tooth but it was so water-worn that
it could not be safely identified. But
the new specimen looks so much like
the other that it may belong to the
same species and gives hope that
other parts may be found in this
field.

The remarkable feature of the dis-
covery lies in the fact that hitherto
no specimens of anthropoid primates,
ancient or modern, have been discov-
ered in America, although they are
common in the Old World. It is pos-
sible that this Nebraska tooth will
open a new chapter in geological his-
tory which may throw light on the
vexed question of the origin of man.

According to Dr. Osborn, the ani-
mal is a new genus of anthropoid,
probably one which wandered over
here from Asia with the large south
Asiatic element which has recently

THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 589

anterior

FIG. 1. MOLAR OF HESPEROPITHECUS

been discovered in our fauna by Drs. , and to make a very careful study of
Merriam, Gidley and others. the animal life which surrounded this

Dr. Osborn and Dr. C. A. Reed, of | man. Unlike the now famous ‘‘ Cave
the American Museum of Natural | Man’’ of the mammoth and reindeer
History, also presented evidence to | period, the Foxhall man was sur-
the academy that man existed before | rounded by relatively primitive mas-
the great Ice Age, which is a new | todons, rhinoceroses, and saber-toothed
and very remote date for the an- | tigers, also by two kinds of elephants,
tiquity of man. The recent discovery | the straight-tusked elephant and the
of Tertiary man near Ipswich, Eng- | southern elephant. This was long
land, known as the Foxhall man, led | before the Ice Age, when England,
Professor Osborn to visit the locality | even in latitude 53°, was enjoying a

FIG. 2, MOLAR OF AMERICAN INDIAN

590

very mild climate. Since it is known
that the Foxhall man was capable of
making ten or twelve different kinds
of flint implements, of providing him-
self with clothing, and of building a
fire, he sets a new and very remote

date for the antiquity of man, be- |

cause he is separated from the Recent
period by the whole stretch of Qua-
ternary time, or the Ice Age. Scien-
tific men have estimated the duration

of the Ice Age from 100,000 to

700,000 years, but Professor Osborn |

is inclined to adopt the imtermediate
estimate of 520,000 years made by
the German geologist, Albrecht Penck.
The Foxhall man is at present known
only by the flint instruments that he
has left behind. Unlike Pithecan-
thropus erectus, the Heidelberg man,
the Piltdown man, and the Neander-
thal art-loving Cro-Magnon
races, parts of his skeleton have not

and

yet been revealed to modern eyes.

SCIENTIFIC ITEMS

WE record with regret the death of
George Bruce Halsted, formerly pro-
fessor of mathematics in the Univer-
sity of Texas; of J. T. Merz, author
of The History of European Thought
in the Nineteenth Century; of Ansel
A. Tyler, professor of
James Millikin University; of Harris
Graham, professor of pathology and
practice of medicine in the American
University of Beirut, Syria; of W. B.
Bottomley, professor of botany
King’s College, London; of Phillippe
Auguste Guye, professor of physics at
Geneva; and of Robert Wenger,
director of the Geophysical Institute
of the University of Leipzig.

biology in

in

At the meeting of the National
Academy of Sciences, held in Wash-
ington on April 26, members were
elected as follows: Edward W. Berry,
professor of paleontology, the Johns
Hopkins University; George K. Bur-
gess, Rufus
Cole, director of the hospital of the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re-

Bureau of Standards;

| Alto;

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

search; Luther P. Eisenhart, pro-
fessor of mathematics, Princeton Uni-
versity; Joseph Erlanger, professor
ot physiology, Washington University
Medical School; Herbert Hoover, sec-
retary of commerce; George A.
Hulett, professor of physical chemis-
try, Princeton University; Charles A.
Kofoid, professor of zoology, Univer-
sity of California; George P. Merrill,
curator of geology, U. S. National
Museum; C. E. Seashore, professor
of psychology, State University of
Iowa; Charles R. Stockard, professor
of anatomy, Cornell Medical College;
Ambrose Swasey, president of the
Warner and Swasey Company; W. H.
Wright, astronomer, the Lick Obser-
vatory, University of California. Dr.
Albert Einstein, of the University of
Berlin, was elected a foreign asso-
ciate.

AT the meeting of the American
Philosophical Society, held in the city
ot Philadelphia, on April 23 and 24,

‘the following officers were elected:

President, William B. Seott; vice-
presidents, Arthur A. Noyes, Hamp-
ton L. Carson, Henry Fairfield Os-
born; Arthur W. Good-
speed, Harry F. Keller, John A.
Miller; curators, William P. Wilson,

Henry H. Donaldson; treasurer, Eli

secretaries,

| Kirk Price; councillors, Lafayette B.

Mendel, Herbert S. Jennings, William

W. Campbell, Robert A. Millikan,
Felix E. Schelling. Members were
elected as follows: Charles Elmer

Allen, Madison, Wis.; Rollins Adams
Emerson, Ithaca; Worthington C.
Ford, Cambridge, Mass.; Frederick
E. Ives, Philadelphia; Irving Lang-
muir, Schenectady; Roland S. Morris,
Philadelphia; George William Norris,
Philadelphia; Charles Lee Reese,
Wilmington; Harlow Shapley, Cam-

_ bridge, Mass.; Henry Skinner, Phila-

delphia; James Perrin Smith, Palo
Charles Cutler Torrey, New
Haven; Robert DeCourey Ward, Cam-
bridge; Henry Stephens Washington,
Washington; David Locke Webster,
Stanford University.

7 BEARD, J.

THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

591

INDEX

NAMES OF CONTRIBUTORS ARE PRINTED IN SMALL CAPITALS

ADOLPH, WILLIAM HENRY, The His-
tory of Chemistry in China, 441
Adventures in Stupidity, Lewis M.
TERMAN, 24

Aeronautic Accidents, Forp A. Car-
PENTER, 361

Airship, The Helium, 398

American Association for the Ad-
vancement of Science, Toronto
Meeting, 105, 205; Salt Lake City
Meeting, 587; Ornithologists’
Union, 108; Anthropoid Primate,
588.

Barre, W. J., The Habits of Taran-
tulas, 482

Beaes, LA VERNE, The Negro Enum-
eration of 1920, 352

Howarp,
Work, 140

Blood, Chemistry of the, GrorGE R.
CoweGiLL, 161

Brace, Sir WILLIAM, Electrons and
Ether Waves, 153

Cagsori, F., A Curious Mathematical
Title-Page, 294

CARMICHAEL, R. D., Certain Unities in
Science, 41; The Larger Human
Worth of Mathematics, 447

CARPENTER, Forp A., Aeronautic Ac-
cidents, 361

Cat, Homing Powers of the, FRANCIS
H. Herrick, 525

CATTELL, J. McKEEN, The Organiza-
tion of Scientific Men, 568

Cell Theory, JoHN H. GrROULD, 268

Chemistry, of the Blood, GrorGEe R.
CoweiILL, 161; History of, in China,
WituiaM HENRY ADOLPH, : 441;
Falsifications in, JoHN M. STILL-
MAN, 560

Chinese Medical Education,
Cowonry, 278

CocKERELL, T. D. A., Dru Drury—
an Eighteenth Century Entomolo-
gist, 67.

Coker, R. E., A Perpetual Submarine
War, 345

Concilium Bibliographicum, The, 301

Conservation of the Mammals, Bar-
TON WARREN EVERMANN, 261

Cownry, E. V., Chinese Medical Edu-
cation, 278

CowGILL, GrorGE R., Chemistry of
the Blood, 161

Death, Apparent, or Latent Life, D.
FRASER Harris, 429

Publie Health

iN

Dehydration, HEBER W. YOUNGKEN,
332 |

Dru Drury, T. D. A. CocKERELL, 67
DUBLIN, Louis I., The Mortality of
Foreign Race Stocks, 94

Einstein Theory, Eclipses and the, 297

Ether Waves, Electrons and, Sir
WILLIAM BraGG, 153; Theories of
the, FERNANDO SANFORD, 547

EVERMANN, BarToN WARREN, The
Conservation of the Mammals and
Other Vanishing Animals of* the
Pacific, 261

Fishes, the Study of, A. W. C. T.
HEERE, 540

Fishing in the Mississippi, A. S.
PEARSE, 186

Flower Seasons, CHARLES ROBERTSON,
2011

Foods, The Preservation of, HEBER
W. YOUNGKEN, 332; Unusual Hu-
man, ALBERT M. REEsE, 475

Fossil Men, Disease and
among, Roy L. Mooprr, 391

Fresh Air, Mental and Physical Ef-
fects of, Wm. A. McCanL and
Bronson L. Huestis, 131

Injury

Galen, LYNN THORNDIKE, 83

Genetics, Experimental, and Heredity,
C. C. Lirrne, 401

GEROULD, JOHN H., The Cell Theory,
268

GESELL, ARNOLD, Mental and Physical
Correspondence in Twins, 305, 415

Growth in Living and Non-Livine
Systems, RatpH S. Livuie, 113

HAMILTON, G. Martian Polar
Rifts, 579

Hariot, Thomas, F. V. Morury, 60

Harris, D. Fraser, Latent Life or
Apparent Death, 429

HEERE, ALBERT W. C. T., Fishes—
Why Study Them, 540

Heredity and Experimental Geneties,.
C. C. Lirrir, 401

Herne, D. W., Weather Control, 178

Herrick, FrRANcIS H., Homing Pow-
ers of the Cat, 525

HuESTIS, Bronson L., and Wm. A.
McCay. Mental and Physical Ef-
fects of Fresh Air, 131

Hybridization, D. F. Jonrs, 5

EL,

Insects, Social Life among the, W1L-
LIAM Morton WHEELER, 497

International, Language, 493; Meet-
ings at Rome, 495

592

Japanese Influence in Chinese Med-
ical Education, E. V. Cowpry, 278

Jones, D. F., Hybridization in Plant
and Animal Life, 5

THE SCIENTIFIC

MONTHLY

Propaganda, Control of, Epwarp K.
STRONG, JR., 234

Psychology, A Corporation for the
Advancement of, 302

| Public Health Work, Progress of, J.

Lairp, DonatpD A., Why the Movies
Move, 364

Linuiz, RaueH S., Growth in Living
and Non-Living Systems, 113

LitrLe, C. C., Human Heredity Bind
Experimental Genetics, 401

McCaLtt, Wm. A., and MHUESTIS,
Bronson L., Mental and Physical
Effects of Fresh Air, 131

Mammals, Conservation of, BARTON
WARREN EVERMANN, 261

Marner, H. A., The Tide, 209

Martian Polar Rifts, G. H. HAmMIL-
TON, 579

Mathematical Title-Page, A Curious,
F. Cagori, 294

Mathematies, The Larger Human
Worth of, Ropert D. CARMICHAEL,
447

Mental and Physical, Effects of Fresh
Air, WM. A. McCaLu and Bronson
L. Huestis, 131; Correspondence
in Twins, ARNOLD GESELL, 305, 415

Minter, Ketity, Negro Population,
168

Mississippi, Fishing in the,
PEARSE, 186

Mooprz, Roy L., Disease and Injury
among Fossil Men, 391

Mortey, F. V., Thomas Hariot, 60

Mortality of Foreign Race Stocks,
Louis I. Dusuin, 94

Movies, Why They Move, Donatp A.
LAIRD, 364

2D SSE

National Academy of Sciences, Build-
ing, 583; Medals, 584

Negro Population, KELLY MILLER,
168; Enumeration of 1920, La
VERNE BEALES, 352

NicHois, Epwarp L., On Founder’s
Day, 469

Organism and its Environment, FRAN-
cis B. SUMNER, 223

Organization of Scientific Men, J.

McKEFN CATTELL, 568

PEARSE, A. S., Fishing in the Missis-
sippi, 186

POFFENBERGER, A. T., The
scious, 379

Progress, of Science, 105, 205, 297,
395, 490, 582; of Public Health
Work, J. Howarp BrEarp, 140

Sub-Con-

| Radio-Telephony,

| Tide, Problems of the, H.

HowarbD BEarD, 140; Welfare, Res-
olutions concerning, 208; Health
and Experimental Biology, Harry
BEAL TORREY, 253

Race Stocks, Foreign, Mortality of,
Louis I. DuBLIN, 94

Government Con-
trol of, 395

REESE, ALBERT M., Unusual Human
Foods, 475

ROBERTSON, CHARLES, Flower Seasons,
201

SANFORD, FERNANDO, Theories of the
Ether, 547

Science, Certain Unities in, R. D.
CARMICHAEL, 41

Scientific, Items, 112, 208, 304, 400,
496, 590; Periodicals, Suspension of
Government, 109; Men, Organiza-
tion of, J. McKEEN CaTTELL, 568

Social Life among the Insects, WIL-
LIAM Morton WHEELER, 497

Stars and Molecules, 491

STILLMAN, JOHN M., Falsification in
the History of Early Chemistry, 560

StronG, Epwarp K., Jr., Control of
Propaganda as a_ Psychological
Problem, 234

Sub-Conscious, A. T. POFFENBERGER,
379

Submarine War, A Perpetual, R. E.
COKER, 345

SUMNER, FRANCIS B., The Organism
and Its Environment, 223

| Tarantulas and their Poison, W. J.

BaeErG, 482

TERMAN, Lewis M., Adventures in
Stupidity, 24

THORNDIKE, LYNN, Galen, 83

A. Mar-
MER, 209

TorRREY, Harry BEAL, Public Health
and Experimental Biology, 253

Twins, Mental ana Physical Corre-
spondence in, ARNOLD GESELL, 305,
415

| Weather Control, D. W. Herine, 178

WHEELER, WILLIAM Morton, Social
Life among the Insects, 497

YOUNGKEN, HEBER W., Dehydration
and the Preservation of Foods, 332

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n non Wekee in ; a MN in Vas Peat, fs hi My Bs f i) hy
i ip , an th ui bt i ys Wy). Pei ae LAr ea ; ine i Vv tt 2, i Ra

yh Li Tih iM ; a ia, Ar My , as dal ean ) ae 1 her ALY, ‘ y i
pi : fit Nan Kk : \‘ ; - Vi ; an HL " 1 in i aA ny AN Rit veal Ak i
AV Nar Wed tub Lan ih eAre hy Lathe Ls VA Wh { if "an
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Physical &
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Serials

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